Can you learn Martial Arts from internet?

[Blade96]

Hi Blade96,

are you filming your self and watching what your kata looks like?

Or watching a instructional tape from a kata spesialist?

What about the bunkai of kata? Is it on video?

(I've never taped my kata. I've seen my competition matches on super8 film in early 80's and it was terrible

Yeah I taped myself once doing my kata. Everyone said I'm just where they expect an orange belt to be.

I watch kanazawa vids on youtube to learn the moves of my kata. Bunkai, I go train in my karate classes under BB's for that.

I'm gonna tape myself again when I am a green belt and have learned heian yondan pretty good.

[xo-karate]

I am not a kata specialist - and one may think of kata in many ways. BUT if you think of kata as a way of developing your technique and also compination skills - and maybe even drilling different attacks and counters...

Why not study your heian kata and film your techniques as you are doing them with a partner - an attack or a counter in heian - and compare your moves in kata vs bunkai?

This might give you more spirit or a better mental image on what you are doing in your kata. (And first make your technique wronq as you are more powerful, but ...)

[xo-karate]

congratulations for your orange belt:-)

[JusticeZero]

I think you can learn from the internet

The last time I saw anyone trying to learn techniques from a video was a group of high schoolers and a PE teacher working through a cardio kickboxing tape.

I'm honestly amazed that I didn't see anyone rubbing their knees afterward. If they'd have continued doing techniques like that for 30 minutes a day, they would all be confined to wheelchairs inside of two months. And the PE teacher blew me off when I said something.

Without someone who knows the techniques well who can critique your technique and correct form mistakes, you can literally cripple yourself. Kicks especially can destroy your joints permanently if you use poor technique while you're training a lot of reps. And you can get horrific bad habits that then take more time to overcome later than if you just learned it right.

[xo-karate]

Ok JusticeZero - a very good statement - you are writing that people can learn from internet, but it might not be what they think they should be learning. They learn, but wrong things/techniques.

If the "technique" was a aerobic exercise of a kickboxing workout, the main focus might not have been on technical issues. (It sounds like it should have been, if they were breaking their joints.)

I've looked at Gracie academy and I am sure that teaching is very sound. It has a very good pedagogical progression. So there are good sites and not so good ones and there are things to copy and things to just be aware of. We learn in so many ways:-)

I just watch some bjj players roll. Did not mimic them. Just toke notice on how they passed guards and stuff. I am not sure what I learned, maybe something will come from it:-)

My point - if you can learn something bad, you can learn something good - and other way around too.

[bushido_man96]

Systems like Tae Bo are not known for their technical instruction; Tae Bo teaches the minimum of the movements so you can start sweating.

Other instructional videos, like those focused on learning techniques, will likely focus more on proper pivoting of the base foot for kicking, how the technique should look when starting, during, and upon finishing the technique.

Can any kind of video or youtube channel replace a qualified instructor? No. But, as you mention, JusticeZero, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. If the only exposure one can get to MAs is through videos of some kind, then it might be worth it.

[MaxMarks]

If you're studding under an instructor, I think the internet can be a fine supplement. I've definitely looked up techniques and variations on the internet and applied them without issue but that is coming from a well established base of knowledge and then tested within a great martial arts community.

Learning cold from the internet is a whole other thing. It would be too easy to learn bad or wrong technique. It didn't work in Karate Kid when Danial tried to learn from a book! That movie is pretty much the final word on anything related to martial arts. So there you go.

[quinteros1963]

I think you can, but it helps much more to use it as a supplement/ to gain ideas.

[bushido_man96]

Yes, as a supplement, videos and internet serve their purposes much better.

But as far as going by The Karate Kid movie....I'll just leave that one alone.

[JusticeZero]

But, as you mention, JusticeZero, anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Yes and this is true. But part of that is that you want to get better every time. A video doesn't give feedback. Especially if you don't have a solid foundational knowledge to work from, you can be training to do the techniques wrong and never know it until your doctor tells you that you're going to be using crutches for the next few weeks and whatever it was you were doing stop it, and even then not know how to fix it.