U.S. history alone is filled with stories of people who are self-educated men. No less a personage than Abraham Lincoln became a top-notch trial attorney simply by reading on his own. But is it possible to teach yourself a martial art through a book or a video?
No.
Like those silly ab machine infomercials, the promise of a complete martial art for less than $100 (plus shipping and handling) is a marketing ploy designed to play upon our fantasies of learning something worthwhile. This fantasy can be especially tempting to those of us who don't live in or near a major metropolitan area and thus have few, if any, choices for martial arts instruction. In New York City or San Francisco or Los Angeles or Chicago, one has many style options and choices for martial arts teachers, and the odds are that you can find and actually train with several that are quite good and even world-class. But if you live in a sleepy farming community in Nebraska (for example), consider yourself lucky to find a single Tae Kwon Do school run by a guy who's had maybe three years of actual instruction - tops. It's certainly easier to believe that you can get the good instruction you want by sending away for some instructional materials than to believe that you have no real option if you want to learn something good by actually packing up your entire life and moving.
But that's a fantasy. The sad fact is that books and videos are no substitute for actual instruction - and if you read the fine print in the books and videos, they'll tell you the same thing. Training with a real instructor confers advantages that no video or book, no matter how well-produced, can match.
- Instant feedback. As you learn a technique or a skill, there are bound to be little details you miss and get wrong, no matter how assiduously you imitate the image on the page or screen. Over time, these details become ingrained as habits that can diminish the technique's effectiveness or be detrimental to your health. But a live instructor can spot this and correct it - multiple times, if need be - before it becomes a habit that is difficult to correct.
