Well, it's a good question, and one which is often asked by those that want to master the skills of either sporting martial arts, or combat martial arts. The truth is simple, and the answer is quick : No. It is not possible to teach yourself martial arts from scratch to a good level, how ever, this does not mean that you can not teach yourself to fight. You can quite simply teach yourself to fight, but to fight to a martial arts standard without the help of self help dvd's, instructors or aid is almost impossible. The reason is that you can for instance (taking Judo as the example), learn to throw, using improvised techniques, and learn to swipe and pin down using made up techniques, but against the well engineered mechanics of hundreds of years of Judo, the little points, like maintaining balance, and the correct direction to swipe - those little things that is almost impossible to teach yourself - they are the most important techniques. It is, however possible to learn the basics of an art, and progress yourself, so long as you properly understand the under-laying principles of what you do.

What do you guys think? Is it possible to master a martial art, from scratch, with no aid???

I really don't think so. Otherwise what are you going to learn from. Obviously if you are using your head you already know it. I mean you probably can't learn that well either on the internet or book because you need to really see it. Only online way would be a video instructor. It isn't like learning how to do a math problem it involves physical movement and if you aren't taught properly you can hurt yourself.

I run http://www.learnmartialartsonline.net and I think that someone who kows abit of martial arts can use the net to teach themselves more. i don't think you can do it yourself from scratch as you don't have a grounding in the basic principles.

I don't see how it's possible to teach yourself martial arts. I took up Tang Soo Do for awhile, and I can imagine trying to learn from a book, TV, or online. I don't think it would work. I would need a physical instructor, hands on, teaching me the exact positioning, correcting mistakes. And what about when the techniques of sparring? You would never learn that well from any other source then from live teaching.

I agree with you there... I was learning Karate for a bit, and without having trained instructors helping me, and correcting me, I don't think there would have been anyway to progress. I think from books or the internet, you can learn some things... and some moves that could help you in defending yourself, but I don't think that you will be able to learn it to the standards of the actual art, because with every mistake you make, you will keep building on that, and make more as you go along, because there is no one there to correct you, or help you to keep better form.

So, yes, I think you can learn some things from a book, or online, that can be very valuable as ways to relieve stress, defend yourself, or other things... but I don't think that from there, you will be able to be a top fighter, because the people that had formal instruction had people driving them to be better and to work harder and people who would fix any errors that were happening right away.

Plus... the whole two person aspect of it all wouldn't work, and even if you did find a partner to try it, I wouldn't recommend it, because it I don't believe that it would be safe.

Yes, I think we are agreed, it is a very difficult thing to do, nigh impossible. I'd say learning a martial art with aid is quite challenging, and without, you're more or less dead in the water. On another note, people that learn from these sessions, only normally want to fight, or want to learn how to do specific things, they are not interested in the whole idea, and even less in the honour of it all.

It's hard to do a lot of stuff without lessons. I think you could teach yourself a little bit of the basics, but overall, you wouldn't get very far. You wouldn't know what the proper technique was and wouldn't know any drills or whatever. I agree that you can learn from a book, but you won't learn as well as if you had a teacher.

well if its not possible how was it made up? the guy that thought of it had to be GREAT at it...so he taught himself....why could we do the same and teach oursellves? im sure there are quite a few people around the U.S. that have achieved this goal....im not saying that i could....but im sure there are a lot of people in good enough physical condition that could do this

This post has been edited by the_aggie10: Oct 1 2006, 08:42 PM