Self taught martial arts?

Where do you get the idea that it started with one person?

It took many people over many years to develop martial arts. Then other took that knowledge and shared and or modified it to develop another art.

In the beginning stages of development the people that helped to create martial arts were very knowledgeable about the human anatomy. They studied to heal the body. In understanding the body you must know what heals and what harms. The difference is very small.

Martial Arts were born out of necessity like every other great invention. There was a need to learn how to defend oneself armed and unarmed. There was a need to hide that they were practicing self defense. There was a need to hide certain techniques when practicing to make it look like you were doing another technique. There was a need for slaves to make their art look like a dance over them openly practicing self defense in order to one day be trained well enough to revolt. Our needs today differ.

While you can learn the gross movements of a technique through books and videos there are many subtle aspects that only experience can teach you. A good instructor can help you on that path. There is only one way to learn martial arts without any instruction. Go out and fight. If you survive you'll have learned something. Modern martial arts are the result of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of life and death combats carried out over thousands of years by millions of warriors. To develop a complete system would probably take several thousand fights and a couple of lifetimes. Another problem with this method is that you will eventually run into somebody who's better trained and/or more experienced (or just plain lucky) who might not mind crippling or killing you. Statistically this would happen sooner than later and your budding system would die with you. All of the "new" styles were based on an older one.

Even the masters have masters.

I have seem several self-taught 'martial art masters' over some years of teaching. Some of them could try to talk a good game, and one guy had 7 students! This 'master' could not score a single point in a silly sparring match with an intermediate student. You have taught yourself (and your friend) so many bad habits it may take years to unlearn and learn again. You do no one a disservice except yourself, but the damage can be bad. Allow Sensei Scandal to grade you (consider it a privilege he offered), to see where your mistakes are, or better yet go to pugpaws2's seminar. There you will see the real deal as pugpaws2 put it, and it could be the opportunity of your martial art lifetime to be allowed to train that bunch of old veterans of martial art wisdom. J

I can only speak for Judo but here is how it went.

Kano (founder of Judo) didn't just invent it. He studied under three of the great Jujitsu masters of the time. But when one tells you to do a move this way and another tells you something slightly different how do you know which one is correct. That is what Kano set out to find, so he went through all the Jujitsu moves and found all the ones that fit his ideals and got rid of the rest. That was the start of Judo. Then he took on students and continued to develop the art.

Likewise Bruce Lee started Jeet Kun Do from his Kung Fu training. He was just trying to make it better.

So basically Martial Arts are evolving. Each "inventor" takes what someone else has done and tries to make it better, if it works then they rename it and "invent" a new art.

if i remember correctly bruce lee knew martial arts and was a master when he fought a master and took him down in a few minutes he was dissapointed because he thought he shouls have been able to do it faster sot hen he began trying his own strength training sessions and develope june kun do his own style. i think most martial arts founders got it from someone else and im sure the people that started it all broke bones and twisted ankles before even mastering the basic kicks because they didnt know how to properly kick yet until they taught themselves without harming themselves

Because the person who invented the style did his how life studing and trying to make the martial art the best possible and dident just go on youtube and type in how to win a street figh for 30 seconds and know mastered the art.

LOL HA HA HA HA ....Karate was not invented...it evolved...you could have found this had you got up and went out and trained. This is an exact example of why only a moron would think they can teach themselves something as complicated as martial arts.

It (the martial art) didn't start with one person.

So Ooga and Booga are sitting in their cave. Ooga goes to take the last bronto-burger, and Booga, wanting it, swings his arm violently and hits Ooga. Fast forward thousands of years of men swinging their arms, and slowly evolving that into, "Hey, if instead of swinging in an arc, I let it shoot out like so, it does this." Thousands of branches of possibility culminated into 1 possibility, which we call a technique. That technique was added to others, and becomes a codified collection. The good is kept, the bad discarded – much like evolution.

These were taught to others, improved upon, but nothing was new. It happened over millennia. Certain coincidences led to the formation of different arts as they intersected throughout history. But each person learned from someone before, contributed to the art, and then passed it on. And that first cave man who hit another cave man? He was working on instinct.

Whether they codified the system themselves or not, they were standing on the shoulders of those who came before in order to do it. They learned the initial principles from somewhere, and absorbed them, consciously or subconsciously, into their own art.

The first poster is wrong, nothing has changed since the old days.

Simply put, all martial arts have roots in other martial arts.

Karate comes from Okinawa, from kung fu techniques in China.

Judo comes from jujitsu.

Muay thai comes from Muay Boran.

And so on.

as useful as self taught brain surgery

karate was created by combat, the would have challenges many times to the death, some were prearrange others were sneak attacks, while you were walking alone, or at night you may be jumped by one or more opponents, the better you were the more often you were challenger, those that survived taught there style, many of there moves were hidden in kata and only reviled to one or two students.

yes many styles have roots in others and karate is no different.