Can I train Martial Arts on my own? Well, it depends on what you want to get out of your training. If you want a fun activity that is a great workout, training Martial Arts on your own is definitely possible. There are lots of great Martial Arts instructors online that offer fun lessons and workouts that you can watch and do on your own. These instructors will show you proper form for the basics like strikes, blocks, and footwork. Practicing these basics in combos and drills shown by the online instructors will help you to develop good attributes and habits. You may even be good enough to join a Kata competition where you perform a series of moves in the air that simulate a fight against one or more opponents (called a Kata). It is possible that you could even do very well at the competition or even win depending on how much you train on your own. However, I do not recommend entering a competition where you spar someone else and definitely don’t enter a fight where your opponent is trying to submit or knock you out without training with an Instructor and a training partner. 

Instructors do spend lots of time helping their students to have good form and attributes, and this is something you could practice on your own. But there are many things in Martial Arts that cannot be trained without a partner. You can know everything there is to know about Martial Arts on a theoretical level, but until you have had a punch coming at your face at speed you can’t actually apply it. One of my favorite quotes from my Instructor is, “Getting punched in the face turns even a Black Belt into a White Belt.” Sometimes I go into my sparring with the best plans, and then the moment I get punched in the face I forget about them immediately. It takes sparring with someone over and over and over, to actually put my new moves and strategies into action. After sparring for decades at this point, I get hit and can stay relaxed long enough to apply some of my new concepts each time I spar, but getting hit always makes you make more mistakes than you want to. There is no amount of practice on my own that can truly prepare me for a fight the way that sparring does. If you want to be a fighter, you need to activate your “Fight, Flight, or Freeze” response and then try to do your moves against an opponent who is trying to hit you and evading your strikes. 

I started in Martial Arts that focus on Striking, but as I have started to learn about Grappling, I wanted to practice those moves on my own the way that I do with striking. I have found this to be incredibly difficult. It can be hard to imagine how the opponent is positioned without something actually there. I bought an “Uke”, which is just a dummy with limbs that I can manipulate to practice grappling techniques, and this helped but it does not even slightly compare to having a real life person to practice the moves on. Even if my partner is not trying to stop me from doing my moves, it feels much better to grapple a person than an Uke dummy. Just like having punches fly at your face, you can’t know what is like to truly grapple an opponent that is resisting your movement and trying moves of their own without doing it. It is hard to remember which escape to use and all the steps to the escape while your opponent is trying to squeeze all the air out of you or break your joint. You can know every step to doing a submission, but when your opponent is fighting your every move it is so difficult to actually perform it.

The other part of Martial Arts that requires at least a partner is takedowns. You could know everything conceptually about taking someone down but until you actually try to take them down and they resist you or shift their weight you can’t get good at taking someone down. Then trying to do this against an opponent who is allowed to punch and kick while you try to take them down is almost impossible without lots of practice on a live partner. Additionally being taken down and falling safely is a skill all on its own and it really can’t be mastered until you have someone taking you down.

Maybe this last one is a bit obvious, but having a coach or an instructor allows you to notice your mistakes quickly before you create bad habits. If you are practicing on your own, you may not see the error in your form and you will practice that move (with bad form) for hours. Then you will have to spend time breaking the bad habit. In my experience it is almost more hours of practice to break a bad habit than it is to just start with a good habit. Having someone watch your moves and notice bad habits before they form is best if you want to get good quickly. Also if no one is there to point out the error in your form, you may never catch the bad habit and then you will try it in a competition of some kind and lose, or try it in a fight and get knocked out or submitted. You can film yourself and watch it to try to catch your own mistakes, but you may not know what you should be looking for. An Instructor is essential if you want to take your Martial Arts to a competition or use it in a self defense scenario.

There have also been many “Masters” that stopped sparring with their students and only practice on their own. These “Masters” start to create “No Touch” or “One Touch” moves that they claim can end a fight without touching an opponent or just barely touching a single pressure point. None of these moves have ever been shown to work in a real self defense scenario or a fight or any kind. If you practice Martial Arts on your own, know that you may begin to overestimate your abilities and think that you are untouchable or have special powers of some kind. Until you can prove your moves work with an actual live opponent (not just a friend who lets you win), you can’t say that these moves truly work. One of the best benefits of working with an instructor or partner is that it keeps you humble. If you try your move against someone in light sparring and they completely predict it or counter it, you know that you don’t have the move mastered or it’s not a very good move.

Ultimately you need to ask yourself what you want out of the Martial Arts. If you just want something fun to do that will make you stronger and increase your coordination, you can absolutely train on your own with the wonderful instructors you find online. If you want to compete in Kata, you could probably do it without an instructor, although you won’t improve as quickly as the people who do have instructors. Do you want to do point sparring like in Judo, Kumite, and Tae Kwon Do? At minimum you need a sparring partner (more than one sparring partner is best because everyone has a different style of sparring), but without an instructor you will fall behind your peers that do have one. Are you hoping to do full contact sparring like a Kickboxing Match, MMA Fight, Muay Thai Fight, or Jiu Jitsu Match where the goal is to knock out your opponent or submit them? Not only would I not recommend that you try this without a coach, but I am fairly certain that the rules require you to have someone to act as your coach and be in your corner. Do NOT try one of these things without doing light sparring with several partners first. If you are hoping that you will be able to use your moves in a Self Defense scenario, you also need to have an opponent that doesn’t just stand still and also resists your movements. In the words of Bruce Lee “Boards don’t hit back.” It is one thing to practice on stationary targets or slow moving and soft hitting opponents, it is another thing entirely to spar against someone that is trying to hit you back, and even another level of difficulty if that person truly means you harm and isn’t a training partner. So the short answer to the question, “Can I Train Martial Arts On My Own?” Yes you can receive some benefits from training on your own, however you cannot get everything that Martial Arts has to offer by training on your own, you can get a lot but to master all parts you need someone to show you the way and at least one person to let you pressure test your moves against. Come try a Martial Arts lesson for yourself by doing a Free Trial here at Dojo Source.

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