If you really want to learn martial arts and self defense, if you want to know how to fight off an attacker and protect yourself and those other people who you care about if the worst ever happened, then you really do need to go and join a club or lessons in some sort of martial art or self defense system.
But there are some people who may not be able to do that. Perhaps money is very tight for you and you can't afford to pay out money every week for lessons, or perhaps you live somewhere quite remote and simply can't find a good quality class within a realistic travelling distance of your home. So is it worth buying books and dvd's and trying to learn how to fight from them?
Well there are clearly limits to what you can learn from a book or a dvd, but understanding these limits can help you to pick out products that may be of some use to you.
Firstly complex techniques are impossible to learn without practicing them. So no matter how clearly they are described, no matter how many step by step photographs or slow motion video sequences you have to work on, you can't learn how to fight just by watching. Because of this it is better to find something that focuses strongly on the basics and on a range of fairly simple techniques, but you can also increase the value that you can get from these training aids by finding someone else who can practice and experiment with you.
A book which looks at strategies, offers training tips, and clear instructions on basic things like how to punch hard will be easier to work from than books or dvds which have lots of specific techniques.
Also if you have had any experience of a martial arts before then finding something similar will make it much easier. So, for example, I am trained in 5 animal style kung fu, but I have learned several other animal styles which there are no classes for anywhere hear me from dvd's. I think I learned pretty well, because I wasn't trying to learn everything from the start, only familiarizing myself with some new variations and new applications of the same principles which I had already learned.
Some self defense knowledge does go a long way, so although (as you would expect me to say) you can't learn to any advanced level without an instructor there with you to spot your mistakes and offer tips to improve what you are doing, it is still worth getting a good quality book or dvd if that is the only option available to you.
Dean Walsh works for Angelgard Publishing, the publishers of How To Fight, and has also published several other online articles of interested to anyone who wants to learn how to fight.
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