How to Use Video to Grind Martial Arts

The martial arts are full of legends--tales of masters who could fling a larger opponent across a interval with the flick of a finger, or masters who could defeat a assemblage of martial artists without being injured.

One version tells of a boylike undergraduate who wanted to learn a articulation (also called "kata") from a master. According to the legend, the crackerjack performed the sequence of movements one time, turned to the student and said, "I testament be back in one year. At that time, you should hold mastered this form!"

One year later, the crack returned and the student had, in fact, mastered the movements. And he didn't even obtain a DVD player!

In the 35 second childhood that I've studied and taught martial arts, I've never seen anyone--even visual learners--memorize and than a couple of movements of a form by watching it one time. In 1978, however, when I bought my head VCR, it opened up a new nature of martial arts experience for visual learners adoration me.

Wouldn't it be amazing to see videos of some of the great, legendary martial arts masters. Imagine if you could watch the creator of Tai Chi, Chen Wangting, perform his movements hundreds of years ago in the Chen Village. Legendary Hsing-I master Sun Lu Tang, the creator of Sun Tai Chi, lived until the 1930s on the other hand sadly, not elongated enough for camcorders and VCRs to be invented.

Since the early 1980s, martial artists encircling the world acquire been record themselves on video. The rise of the VCR and DVD gave us the chance to objective a master in his tracks or slo-mo the movements adore never before.

I scan and drill the three internal arts of China: Tai chi, Hsing-I Chuan, and Baguazhang. The item mechanics for these arts are incredibly complicated. It takes senility of study to do them correctly.

I've studied in man with some of the finest tai chi masters -- Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang and his brother, Grandmaster Chen Xiaoxing, their students Proficient Ren Guangyi and Chen Bing, and American students and disciples. I have a assemblage of their videos and there is a near total lack of actual instruction on them. Not all ample masters are big league teachers. My best kind teachers have been Americans--students of these masters--who questioned beneath the surface and explained, in plain English, the meaning of the movements.

Body mechanics must be taught clearly for a student to gain properly, and most masters expo the mechanics on video without teaching the details. And that's the problem.

An effective martial arts video requires a teacher who knows how to coach finished video -- with specific visual detail. Most masters only bring about repeated movements at at odds angles with identical little instruction on body mechanics. Without proper protest mechanics, you can't do the internal arts properly. Some of the boss videos I've seen hog been by martial artists who were not considered masters, however they were positive teachers and knew how to use video.

If you try to learn martial arts on video, find a action to pay for feedback on your techniques and movements from a expert teacher. We all believe we look like a great master when we perform, but the reality is usually different from the self-image in our heads.

Employ a camcorder to dossier your movements and then compare them to the video you're studying. Be brutally truthful with yourself. Dispose a brother to look at both videos and declare you where you're production a mistake. Is your body truly doing what the instructor is doing?

Some of my students who vital in other parts of the world lay private videos on YouTube for me to ticker and critique. Sometimes I make video replies to show them the mistakes they're making.

Cipher can alternate face-to-face teaching, but provided you living in a town without cats who edify the arts you want, the development of video and the Internet has prone anyone a chance to end practice enjoy no other continuance in history.


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Ken Gullette teaches Chen Tai Chi, Hsing-I Chuan, and Baguazhang fini his online school, http://www.internalfightingarts.com . He is a tournament prizewinner and his teaching style has been called "inspirational."

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