Artist gave you good answers, so I'll only add that a successful "self taught" martial artist is most likely a liar, and/or someone who had extensive training in one area and used that to develop skills in another area working with other skilled martial artists but not formally training.
My point is that once you have a good foundation, learning new stuff is more about working with others, practicing, and understanding than about taking classes. So don't believe for a second that the people you cited simply picked up a book or watched videos to learn, they used many different methods, worked their tails off and simply don't tell the whole story
Look El, I don't hate you. But, with all due respect, you are setting a bad reputation for yourself by enforcing this self taught idea.
You can't teach yourself martial arts. You just can't. There are many skills that are too complex for anyone to just teach themselves. Martial arts are very complex, involved, in-depth things. Anyone that believes that they are something you can just teach yourself is downplaying the necessary skill behind martial arts
You need an instructor to teach you martial arts. He has to, you know, actually teach you things and show you what to do. How could you learn something you don't know. Someone has to show you. An instructor has to correct your mistakes and tell you how to improve. You also need partners to work with and spar with. You can train off an imaginary attack as much as you want, but you will not be prepared when confronted with a real one.
You can't teach yourself martial arts. Any claimed self taught person has never been good. They just make themselves unteachable by developing bad habits. You need an instructor, you need partners, you can't learn martial arts on you own.
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Whining? I don't think I'm whining. You're the only one here that's whining.
Self taught in grappling? Yeah right, who are you going to try the moves on? No way, besides who's to say they aren't making all this up. And if you look into some of these names you gave you'll find that they had training and were not 100% self taught as you claimed. But you're probably not going to change your mind anyway. You don't see any of the experienced, senior members on here saying it's possible, do you.
That's because you can't be self taught.
Hmmm. I'm gonna side with the minority on this, and side with a troll on this one.
In order to "be taught", one has to "be shown" knowledge that heretofore was unknown to the student. So in one sense, you cannot teach yourself something you didn't know.
But from a purely scientific point of view, that is how the world progresses. We learn things all the time without having an instructor. We call that learning "discovery". And if that is what these instructorless fighters did, then they learned through discovery.
There is a comparison: would you go to a doctor who didn't go to college? My first thought would be that I wouldn't. But what if you had a disease - like the one in California right now, the one that looks like Polio and which has no known cure. With the logic of "would you go to a doctor who didn't go to college", one with an unknown disease should not go to a doctor who had no experience with that disease, right? I don't think so. Go to the doctor, and be the scientific model: hypothesize, theorize, test.
Thomas Edison was one of the greatest inventors of our time, but his school grades wouldn't get him a job by today's standards. Yet he went up against Westinghouse - another formidable inventor and entrepreneur. And he did it without any training at all.
So is it possible? From face value of your indisputable proof, my answer is moot: you've provided the evidence. And anyway, it has happened in other disciplines - science, medical, entertainment (look at Susan Boyle), sports - so why can't it be done in martial arts? There are people who can do things that the rest of us require training. And in martial arts, there is no accreditation body, so there is no uniformity for testing the learners. That means, there is wide latitude in defining "learning". And "teaching".
The real question is, I think, can it be done efficiently? No, not at all. These instructorless people had to spend years learning what everyone else learned more quickly in class, thereby making time and room to learn new things. People who self-learned had to do everything from scratch. They did not take advantage of a knowledge pool that everyone else has access to. And that robs the student of learning truly new things.
Another relevant question is, can anyone do it? Yes, anyone can do it. But the results won't be pretty. As in school, there are "A" students, and there are "D" students. All pass. by and large, the self-learned students will be the "D" students, and many will be failures. And this is more prevalent in martial arts where there is no standard. A doctor or lawyer who never went to college will soon realize that his inability to pass a test - one that all have to pass - will expose him as self-learned. In martial arts, there is no bar or standard, so, anyone can say they're self-learned.
If Evan Tanner "was a back-to-back state champion in wrestling", then he had some training in wrestling. You cannot be on a wrestling team and not learn something about wrestling from the coach. You have to be coached in order to compete in high school wrestling. Therefore, he is not truly "self-taught". He learned the basics of a method from someone, and THEN, only after actually learning something, discovered things for himself. I consider wrestling to be a martial art, even though I know, yes, it is actually a combat sport. Personally, I do not differentiate between combat sport and martial art, especially if you are talking about what we do in the West.
If you go to Wikipedia, it say that Mike Pyle "grew up in Dresden, Tennessee. At age 17 he moved to Birmingham, Alabama. It was there that he began studying Taekwondo." If you have a foundation in TKD, you can in my opinion, from there, learn MMA from videos and print media, although I still think that a smart person would get a qualified coach/instructor in MMA so that your learning curve can be cut and you can avoid rookie mistakes. Learning TKD gives you good body awareness, particular if you have to learn the forms/poomse/tuls/patterns. Pyle is "self-taught" in BJJ, but he is not completely "self-taught" in martial arts. Wikipedia also says that Pyle's first sanctioned amateur MMA match showed how self-training can fail under pressure. "The young Pyle, who tried various different submissions during the fight, was thrown and slammed several times, at one point being actually throw out of the ring by the future PRIDE veteran. In the end, Jackson won by unanimous decision but Pyle, who had also fought with two broken fingers, felt that he had won and was quick to ask for a rematch. From this fight, Pyle learned that "just jiu-jitsu wasn't going to be able to cut it."
I don't care what field it is, you have to learn from someone else first, before you learn how to do it the way you do it. If it were me and I wanted to do MMA, even though I already have "a lot of training", and have some "real fights" in my history, I would still go to a coach/instructor who knows MMA first and only compete if he or she said so.
Listen man it's quite obvious that you have your mind set on this and you're going to badmouth anyone who disagrees with you. If you believe you can teach yourself martial arts, fine by me. Knock yourself out.
I don't believe in it. How do you teach yourself BJJ without a partner? Sure you can watch youtube clips but who are you going to try them on?
How do you teach yourself to spar without a partner? Hitting the bag and hitting an opponent are two very different things. I've seen a couple of guys with that attitude. Walking in high and mighty into the boxing gym thinking they were the $hit because they had a punching bag at home. They still had a crap load of bad techniques and bad habits that needed to be forgotten.
But as I said. If you want to do this one man crusade, by all means, go for it.
Good luck!
I look at it from my perspective of having been seriously involved in teaching the martial arts for over 40 years. What I have witnessed many times and heard of from other established instructors is simply this. As far as what I have seen or heard of I know of no people that have ever self taught themselves and showed any ability to really be able to fight. Usually some teenager comes into my classes looking to show off how he can defeat a trained student. Many time the same scenario repeats, like this,.... The self trained guy bring in one or two of his buddies to watch him show us how its done. Then he proceeds to either interrupt my class with a challenge. When allowed to spar with one of the beginner of intermediate color belts, he is quickly shown that he is not what he thinks he is.
***** Now that said, I will say this,.... Those were always kids or young adults with little or no experience before they decided to self-train themselves. They were not the trained fighters you mention. BUT, I think that what you have provided as evidence is very possibly not what it appears. If some of these have been first taught proper skills by someone that knows what they are doing, I can believe that they might have studied some other techniques on their own and learned them on their own. however, many things can't be learned that way. In any case anything self taught will be seriously flawed until it is used against others and someone that knows what they are doing corrects what they see that is incorrectly done.
******* Bottom line is I do not believe that anyone can be at a professional fighter level having been 100% self taught. Everyone needs correction in their fighting. That includes those that have been taught by others and those that self train. The biggest problem with self training is that it takes longer to relearn bad habits fixing the technique than it does to just learn things properly from someone that knows how it should be. *******
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The man who teaches himself a "martial art" has a fool for a master.
Self teaching has never ever worked for anything, never mind something as exacting and precise as a martial art. I do shotokan, and have for many years, so tell me please what do you teach yourself first to learn shotokan? Which kata do you do, and what do those movements mean anyway? You are lost before you begin. Learning to make a fist and hit at somebody is NOT martial art. You can watch videos a lot, and become very good at watching videos, but you can't learn anything even resembling martial art. I have trained several of these 'video warriors' and self made wonders, and they come with so many serious bad habits, stubbornly resisting change because they have trained this mistake repeatedly. From my observation, if you self-train one year, it will take you one year longer to get your first BB. Inversely proportional, train yourself for 3 years, and you need 3 extra years to shodan. Self train over 3 years, and you become nearly hopeless, hire a bodyguard.
Mike Pyle
[Mike Pyle] I was 175 pounds soaking wet. And he was like 200 pounds or so. I agreed to it. I wasn’t thrown in there. I learned that I needed to get better at striking, not just rely on Jiu Jitsu only because that’s all I was trying to do, and he was able to counter that easily with his brute strength. Picked me up, throwing me around. Throwing me out of the ring. It opened up my eyes up that I needed to get more well-rounded.
[Mike Pyle] Oh, it was earlier in both of our careers and I think I was just a bit more advanced than him at the time. I believe he and I spoke after and I believe that was his first or second fight. He hadn’t been training in a lot of Jiu Jitsu and, of course, that was my background. And he wanted, as a wrestler, to go to the ground, so when it did go to the ground, I just had a bit more of an advantage and experience on the ground than he did at the time. We’ve both come a long ways since then. I was just a better man that night, that’s all. I’m sure he went back to the drawing board and began to learn how to stay out of a rear naked choke or to learn it.
Evan
Deana Epperson grew up across the street from Tanner in Amarillo and kept in touch with him throughout the years: He was a good kid. He really didn’t mess with anybody. He didn’t even wrestle -- he pole-vaulted in junior high. He didn’t even start wrestling until our sophomore year in high school, and we were a big school. We were 5A. By our junior and senior year, he was a back-to-back state champion in wrestling. Texas is no joke with wrestling and for him to have never wrestled till 10th grade and then been a state champion in 11th and 12th grade -- that’s just incredible.
Your article points out that they both have had some training. What is your point?
Even after beginning their careers they still are getting more training. Just as Pyle stated that he got some boxing coaches to help him improve his boxing.
There are differences in a martial artist, a fighter, and an athlete. A person can be all 3, but you don;t have to be more than one of them.
I can take an athlete and turn him/her into a fighter. It won;t make them a martial artist. It will only make them an athlete that can fight using some of the thing we teach in martial arts.
the only one in denial is you. you twist the facts to fit your needs and drop the parts that dont make sense to your logic
The fool teaches himself.
The fool is unteachable. Try as you like, attempting to teach a fool is frustrating at best, and often painful. Whenever a fool is faced with wisdom and instruction, he will reject it.
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its quite clear to every one you are the fool, especially if you believe that bs you are spewing.
every name you posted had an instructor at one point they were not completely on there own, the fact that you are in denial of
Evan Tanner didn't teach himself any specific martial art, he made his own and that in my opinion is so much more impressive.
List of self taught MA's add some that you know. post at least 1 credible source to back up your claims. If you have counter evidence post a source.
Evan Tanner
http://www.sherdog.com/news/articles/1/Tanner-According-to-Those-Who-Knew-Him-Best-14360
Mike Pyle
https://xtremecouture.wordpress.com/category/mike-pyle/
Seems despite strong opinions to the contrary it is possible. Haters hate on my mark...ready?.......Go!
