Is It Possible To Be Completely Self Taught In Karate?

With the rise in popularity of internet videos, you no longer need to go to a dojo or a competition to see a new technique. To further this new trend, there are many instructional online videos as well as older DVDs to teach you the basics of karate.

The explosion in digital media has led people to ask, “Can I learn karate by myself?”. The answer is not an absolute yes or no, although it may surprise you.

Overall, yes you can be self-taught in karate. Although with that being said, it should really be a last resort. There is really no need to force yourself to learn karate in isolation since so many things can go wrong. If you were living in the wilderness with no human contact then perhaps this method would be best. Otherwise, there are so many academies throughout the world that are far superior to online learning.

Benefits Of Training Karate By Yourself

Cost

The most obvious benefit of learning karate by yourself is of course that it doesn’t have to cost anything. Whilst there are some more advanced and intricate pay-to-learn instructionals online, the vast majority of content on youtube is free.

Of course, you must be careful with whom you are learning from. There have been youtube personalities with large followings who still couldn’t perform basic techniques correctly or defend themselves from an attack. With that being said, in general, the youtube community will police themselves and most charlatans will be exposed sooner or later.

Learning from the internet is almost free and you don’t even have to buy a uniform. If you are extremely broke then this may be the best method for you, if you really didn’t want to pay to learn karate. However, learning online should purely be a stop-gap. You are missing out on many things by just saving money and costing yourself positive life experiences.

Time Saved

There are positives to be found from saving time when training alone. This will happen in 2 main ways.

The first is that if the karate dojo is a long way from your house, then you save time commuting. 20 minutes might seem like a short amount of time, but if you’re driving back and forth 3 times per week. This adds up to 2 hours of travel time. If you’re training karate in your own home, then this time wasted is reduced to 0.

Secondly, you may not like the way that a class is structured. Say for instance that your main focus of karate was to learn only Kata. If you were training at a gym that did a 20 minute warmup, followed by 15 minutes of self-defense techniques, this could be a 35 minute time sink for you. By cutting out these things which you have no interest in, you can add these 35 minutes to purely learning katas.

Convenience

Another main benefit of learning karate by yourself at home is the convenience of being able to train whenever you like, no matter how early in the morning or late at night. When training at a dojo there will be a set time for classes. In most of the western world this time is some time after 6pm whenever most people are off work.

If you have a job with different hours to most people, or simply just want to train at an unusual time (5am perhaps). Then training by yourself offers a massive convenience. You don’t have to rely on anyone else to show up and can structure your own learning. There is no real downside to the convenience aspect of learning karate alone.

Drills

Drills at home are the exception to the rule. Even though you may still be better off drilling in the dojo, this is the one area where there is not too much difference. Once you have a drill down pat, you don’t need to think about it that much and are mostly working on your muscle memory as well as your conditioning. If you already have some experience in karate, then it’s likely you don’t need too much instructor supervision for something you already know and understand well.

Negatives Of Training Karate Alone

Bad Practice With No Instructor

There is a good reason for belts in karate, as well as martial arts in general. If it wasn’t already obvious, it is to denote a hierarchical rank amongst everyone who trains. Therefore, when we step on the mat, we can get a good sense of who knows more than us, as well as who knows less.

If you are an experienced black belt, there is a reason people are paying you to run a class. It’s because they respect your time spent in the sport and your knowledge gained.

When training at home, you are essentially learning from yourself. You may have a great instructor on the screen you are watching, but they cannot see what you are doing. If they cannot see what you’re doing, then they cannot correct your mistakes. This becomes a vicious cycle of continually making mistakes with no correction.

No Idea Of What Is Good Or Bad Form

Following on from lack of an instructor. If you are training at karate at home, you will not really have any idea of what is good or bad form. You can mimic the youtube instructor the best you can, but it will never be perfect.

As a result of this, you could develop a bad habit such as bending your back incorrectly when throwing a roundhouse kick. Whilst this may not seem like a big problem, you could potentially injure yourself quite badly by performing bad techniques again and again.

This is perhaps one of the main reasons why training karate in a dojo is a lot better than training alone.

Lack Of Social Interaction

You may not even like to be around people that much. But even for the most introverted people, at least some social interaction is a positive thing. Nobody wants to be a hermit.

Not only this but you can make friends or at least good acquaintances with your training partners. If they’re of a similar age to you, as well as having an interest in karate, there is a good chance you’ll get along with them. These relationships do not have to be purely social either, your training partners can often see problems with your technique that you can’t. Therefore they may point out a glaring hole in your form that you were previously oblivious to.

No Competitions Or Sparring Partners To Test Your Ability

This is a fundamental problem with training karate alone. Yes, you will be able to train a lot, but even after thousands of hours, you will still not know how good you are. By getting on the mats and sparring, you can immediately place your skill level within the gym. You may have been the best or the worst in the world inside your head, but once you step into the dojo, sparring does not lie.

It’s not just sparring that matters either. You may have thought that your form was outstanding during a specific kata until a new guy showed up at your gym. When watching someone else, if there is a significant disparity between yourself and the other person, you will quickly realize that you weren’t as good as you previously thought.

Lack Of Deep Knowledge About Techniques & Positions

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment and pretend that by watching youtube tutorials, you were able to become a technically proficient karate master. Whilst this is incredibly unlikely, perhaps for 0.01% of the population it is possible.

Even if all the stars aligned for you and this actually happened, you would still be lacking a basic understanding of various karate skills. Basic concepts such as timing, weight distribution, momentum, and general theories of when you should or shouldn’t use a technique are completely lost.

If you’re not training with others, even if you did somehow manage perfect technical performance. You would still be behind a lot of other technically worse practitioners since they know so much about balance and timing compared with yourself.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it is possible to train karate at home by yourself. There is even a small chance you could become technically proficient and somewhat decent at it too.

However, all the signs point towards that you probably shouldn’t do this and you’re far better off training at a dojo with many other people. The positives of training with others seem to far outweigh the negatives. Training partners can be annoying sometimes, but overall they only really benefit you.

Even if you were to have no instructor and only one training partner, this would still be better than training alone. If you add an instructor to the equation, it becomes even more unbalanced in favor of training with other people.

Overall you will just risk yourself learning too many bad habits, and mistakes that are not rectified, and miss out on a lot of fun things such as sparring and making friends. These life experiences are priceless and shouldn’t really be sacrificed so that you can save a small amount of money or even a few hours of your time.