You can learn a lot from watching a martial arts training DVD. A lot! If you are going to learn this way, whether you are also receiving some martial arts instruction from a teacher or if you are learning martial arts from instructional videos, there are a few things you need to consider from this mode of instruction.
The first thing that you need to take into consideration is the fact that when you learn from a martial arts video, the information will only flow in one direction, and your martial arts DVD will not be able to make important adjustments to your technique. A good video should address some of the common errors most people make performing certain techniques, but it is highly likely that you will have difficulty mastering any particular move simply by watching a martial arts instructional DVD. Your technique will have to be fine tuned by experience, or if you are training under an instructor your rate of improvement should increase dramatically. Quite simply, nothing beats full contact training with a qualified instructor. Martial arts training DVD’s, clubs, forms, and books are all supplemental to live, interactional instruction. Specially if that instruction involves ‘live’ training. That being said, not all of us are privy either to the money, time or access to qualified instruction. Something is better than nothing.
The other side of this argument, specially for those who train under instructors who aren’t as eclectic or open minded, is that it exposes you to more techniques. This in itself is a mixed bag as well. There are those of us out there, the author included, who like to compulsively ‘collect’ techniques. This can be detrimental if your time is always spent learning new techniques and never bothering to put in the time drilling over, and over, and over until whatever technique it is becomes ingrained into your nervous system. People like this can still benefit from learning from a martial arts training DVD. They simply need to wait until they have processed whatever information they wanted to glean from the video before moving on to purchase the next latest and greatest instructional DVDs on eclectic martial arts that is going to finally make you feel like a complete martial artist.
Learning from a martial arts training DVD can be either a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you go about learning from it. It has been my experience that the best way to learn is to grab a single technique at a time, grab someone and drill with it, then find a way to apply the technique as a sparring drill and then finally use it full contact sparring. So go ahead and get that new DVD, just make sure you grab something useful from it before moving onto the next technique!