Can you be self-taught and develop any REAL skill?
I, personally believe as host of "Martial Arts Chat" Mike Reis does; Yes, you can be self-taught and yes you can learn new things from other styles, even from things like youtube -AFTER you have a solid foundation in PRACTICAL *hands-on* fighting-
Formal instruction is key to learning what you need to do and what you need to look for to learn new technique. The alternative is just to get beaten to crap by people with more skill than you until you get to the point where you can pay attention while being beaten to a quivering heap. Those are the ONLY two ways to learn to fight. Period.
Can you "master" a complete martial art from videos or books? NO, absolutely not. Can you absorb new techniques that way? Yes, you can, provided you know what to look for. Can you successfully apply a technique learned in that way in a defense situation? NO, not until you have practiced it extensively with a REAL training partner who will challenge you and put up resistance to the technique until you work out all the kinks... and you are only going to know how to do that if you have firm foundations in the fundamentals.
Like it or not, all martial arts, like all religions, have the exact same foundations at the most basic level. People need to realize that despite their personal feelings or beliefs about this or that, despite all the overt stylistic differences between one system and the next, they all serve the same purpose to achieve the same end. If you can put aside personal bias and pursue things in their pure form you can move effortlessly from system to system. Just as a Christian could just as easily pass as a Muslim or even a Buddhist if they were in fact true to the fundamental characteristics thereof, a Karate ka could win a fight using Muy Thai techniques.
How you stand, how you move, how you generate and redirect force, all these things are common to every single martial art out there, and even to no-rules street fighting, because they are means to the same end, and there is an optimal way of achieving that end. The style is just a modality, a means of transmission.
At some point in history someone had to come up with the ideas and systems we use today. Just because something is old does not make it necessarily better than something new. Vedic Hinduism is the oldest religion with an unbroken lineage in the world. Christianity, by comparison, is far younger, yet many would vehemently argue its superiority over the other. So why is a 2,000 year old religion better than an 8,000 year old religion? For that matter, why is a 50 year old religion inferior to the 2,000 year old one? Every religion has been re-written and re-structured many times by many men. Martial arts, all of them, have been done the exact same way.
Someone invented Southern praying mantis. According to lore, it was a man who lost to a bunch of "traditional" kung fu masters and was determined to create something better, and he eventually succeeded. Those older style were invented and transmitted and re-formatted too. Yue Fe, father of Eagle Claw, originally learned something called "elephant style" from a Shaolin monk if you believe the stories. So why don't we still see elephant style kung fu? Bruce Lee invented Jeet Kune Do in modern times and no one balks at it. Why? Because the system has been proven effective through practical application. How did sifu Lee accomplish this incredible thing? By having an uncanny grasp of martial arts in general. He was a prodigy, like Mozart, who saw (or "heard" in Mozart's case) his art in everything.
It will take most of you much longer than Bruce Lee to learn even a single new technique. You will have to study, diligently, under a master for considerable time. Eventually, if you remain open minded, yet still well grounded, you will be able to develop your own "style" too, because fighting is fighting, it's a means to an end and your body will be more effective with some techniques than others. Will your "style" become an international sensation like master Lee's? Probably not, but you have to make your art your own nonetheless, because that is what makes one a TRUE martial artist. Because every art is an expression of the artist. Learning the impressionist style does not make you a Monet or a Degas any more than these two artists produce the exact same works.
Bottom line, learning a style, getting your black belt, that is not the final step, it is the FIRST step. That only shows you have the foundations, it does not make you an artist, it is just the end of art school and the beginning of graduate school. So, yes, you can learn martial arts from youtube or from books, provided you know what you are doing to begin with, and you have the nerve to test it out in real life, and to fail a few hundred times before getting it right.
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