For the last 40 years I have spent my time learning, seeking, developing and refining my interpretation of martial arts. The term “martial arts” was first used as a western concept in recent history. I first began to notice martial arts in the early 70’s, watching Bruce Lee movies. Once I started watching the ground breaking series “Kung fu” starring David Carradine, I was hooked. Martial arts has come a long way since then. You can now learn martial arts online. What does that mean? The recent world wide pandemic has demonstrated to us all that very popular and strong face to face businesses such as martial arts studios, yoga and Pilates studios, dance studios and personal training studios can be closed down and stop trading in an instant. The problem with that is many of these businesses pay a commercial lease and they are expected to continue to pay even though they cannot trade.
For many this signals the end of the line and they close their businesses for good. So, what is the way forward? In order for the martial arts to survive and continue to spread their good message, we have to think out side of the box. How can the masters keep their teachings alive and relevant without a physical dojo? We are lucky that there is such a strong and productive internet culture that can be moulded and adapted to learn martial arts online. Before the internet, in a time when there was no emails, no social media, no websites and no mobile phones, we lived with landlines, telegrams and beepers. To train with a master simply meant that you had to travel to be with them. This was beyond the capability of most people.
When you learn martial arts online, it may not be the perfect situation, but the message is there and like anything worth doing, it comes down to the efforts that we put into it. Whether you are training online or in the physical dojo, no one and no master is going to do the learning for you and no master will give you all the answers you are seeking. Neither do you have to travel 10000km to visit a traditional Ju Jitsu Dojo, costing many hours and thousands of dollars. Be under no illusions as to what this means. You can now get direct access to masters that have done all of the hard work, travelling worldwide to receive teachings that you can now learn without ever having to leave your front door at a time that suits you.
To learn martial arts online is the evolution of teaching. There are just so many great ways that you can learn. A good martial arts online program uses a good website, a good online academy, YouTube and other social media and the most important aspect is you can develop a closer relationship with your teacher. You see, in a good online program you get direct access via email, phone and the icing on the cake is the live streamed teaching and personal training sessions with your teacher.
I sincerely hope that this pandemic will soon be over, and things will return to normal. The real situation is though, we are facing having to live side by side with the virus and all the precautions will remain in place for quite some time. There is also a real possibility that this virus is just the beginning.
Check out my Northstar Ju Jitsu online courses.