I think it all depends on what you want from Nunchaku, I personally love "performance" nunchaku, just finding your limits then breaking them with more and more flashy difficult moves. It might not be practical for combat, but Im in the UK, if I ever use them for combat, even in self defense, chances are that i get to spend a long time in a small box... soooo, i do it for fun.. And thats exactly what I want from it, and thats what i get from it.. I have a lot of respect for Patrick Gresham, he's shown me some cool moves and i like his creativity with Nunchaku.. I havent really trained much aggresive nunchaku, but I imagine any familiarity with nunchaku is going to be an advantage when learning ANY other techniques.. the flip side is that through self education you can gain bad habits, but with a good teacher and plenty of dedication I imagine these can be rectified..