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By Eli Montaigue, 2025.

 

So many WTBA students do not have a local teacher to work with every week, therefore I thought I would (actually my wife told me to) write an article on how to best learn on your own. For any style of martial art.

 

There are three sections here.
How to learn | How to train | How to get the most out of your teacher.

1. How to learn.
The first thing we must take into account, is the fact that learning must be approached very differently when we don’t have the constant guidance of a good teacher.

 

Often people say that Taiji or Bagua should be taught with the student following the teacher, having very little verbal input, because this is how it was traditionally done.

Sure, if you start at age 3 and every training session you do is with the master, great, this should work very well. I learnt a lot of what I know like this and it’s how I teach my children. Push hands would be the main example, just joining hands with Dad and following along, a few tips here and there, but mostly learning by feeling.

 

We must be real though; do you have 24-hour access to the senior master of the style you’re learning? Probably not. Therefore, we need a lot of verbal guidance, we must essentially teach our students how to teach themselves, because 90% of their training time is solo. Or two students learning.

Two beginners cannot “just do it” together, like a beginner can when training with the master. One person in the pair needs to be doing the exercise very well for this to work.
Therefore, we need to give these break downs of each move, step by step.

 

The same with form training, you won’t pick up on the movement naturally if you’re working on your own 90% of the time, so you need these key points to focus on in your training. A grading book is also very beneficial here, as it can help you to track your progress and make sure you’re not going too far ahead before learning the foundations.

 

A lot of people think that grades were invented to earn money, though this is sometimes the case, in my opinion grades were invented for people to be able to track progress when not with their teacher all the time.

 

Even if you are seeing your teacher a few times a week in a group class, you’ll still be doing a large part of your training alone. So, we strike a balance between this tradition of just follow the teacher, and the modern break downs and grading.

 

Gradings help the student know how they are progressing but also help the teacher to know where each of their students are and therefore what they should be teaching them. When you have hundreds of students it’s not possible to remember where each one is at.

2. How to train.

When you train on your own, whether it’s form or bag work, you should do two things.
Just do it, without thinking about it too much, just do it. After you’ve learnt the move that is.  

The second is to REALLY think about it, analyse each move, pretend you are teaching someone else the form. Speak out loud as you walk yourself through each movement. But doing this, you’ll come to movements that you won’t know how to explain them, therefore you don’t know them, therefore you need to go look at the video, if the video does not answer your question, you should make a note to ask your teacher on the next meeting. The balance of this will shift the more advanced you become. As a beginner, you’ll need to do more of the analysing style training, as you get much better, you’ll be able to do more of the just do it method.

Ask yourself questions about the movement, “hmm, where should my centre be facing when I place my heel down after this step?” If you go through your training with a “that’ll do” or a “I’ll get it if I just keep doing it” attitude, you’ll probably never get it. Unless you are one of the 0.000001% of people who have this natural ability. Last thing is to do your form in front of a mirror, or film yourself.

 

3. How to get the most out of your teacher.

If you’re teacher is local, then all you have to do is show up to class and you’re good to go, so let’s look at those people who only see their teacher a few times per year, like so many of my students around the world.

 

Practice really hard on the things you can do on your own! That way, when you meet up with your teacher, you can spend 90% of your time doing the things that cannot be done on your own.

 

For example, practice hard on your form, but also get it corrected online, assuming your teacher gives online lessons. Not everything in your form can be corrected via video, but so much can! If you get all the stuff which can be corrected online out of the way, now when you come for training, that limited precious time can be spent on what needs to be done in person. There is nothing more beneficial to your distance learning than taking some one to one video lessons. As many as you’re able to, but even if it’s only once every few months, this will still make a huge difference. It also means you’re far less likely to be practicing things for months on end incorrectly, then having to unlearn what you’ve been doing all that time.

 

Learning videos, like our MTG videos or the new Foundations Syllabus videos coming soon, are perfect for three things. Learning all the details, learning something new when you already have a high level of skill, or reflecting on something you’ve learnt to get a specific question answered. However, these do not give you the flow experience of a class like the online classes do.

 

Online classes, which are designed to be just like a real group class, are perfect for learning about the flow, the essence of the system. With a standalone video, even if the teacher performs the form for example all the way through in a flowing manner, you still only get one version, you see the same thing every time. This is not Taiji, nor Bagua.

Every time your teacher does the form, it’s different, by following them do the form or whatever training is being presented in the classes, you will subconsciously pick up on all those special things you can’t make logical sense of.

The other great benefit of online classes is that the way you learn each move is much more natural and layered, on a single video it’s simply not possible to fit this all in. A one hour video on basic Taiji for example might have 10 movements taught, whereas a one hour online class would have only one or two, also showing you are quickly you should be progressing to the next move.

Sometimes people think the separate videos are better value, but they do not have the flow. Don’t get me wrong, the MTG videos are amazing, and they are the only option to look back and check a specific move and how to do it, with online training this is impossible as there are so many videos it would take you hours just to find what you’re looking for. And like I said before they are perfect to supplement your training at home when you do learn mainly from a local teacher each week.

But, they do not give you that flow, the essence. This you will only get from the online classes. Also, with online classes, you can ask questions! At the beginning and end of each class there is time to ask. Even if you can’t attend live, you can email in a question and it will be answered the following week during class.

So, if you are serious about training in any martial arts system from a distance, if you’re teacher offers online classes on a weekly basis, you should be seriously considering them.

The cost is often not that high either, for example my classes cost between £1 and £5 per class depending on how many you attend each week. Plus, the membership for these classes also gives you up to 25% discount off private tuition, and up to 50% discount off workshops and MTG videos, making the online training seem very good value indeed.

If anyone has any questions about training on your own, please get in touch and I will do my best to answer all your questions.