• Hung Sing – a British school offering Choy Li Fut.  Might be a fine school but had a hard time getting enough info to form an opinion.
• Rick Fowler Kenpo – Fowler is well-known in Kenpo circles but I suspect his distance learning program was stillborn.
• IMMAA – taught by a man who has a black belt in every martial art ever created.
• Shamo Kenpo – dead?
• Dragon Claw – a program that made me sit through a ten-minute droning video for no good reason.

As always – enjoy!

• Wing Lam Kung Fu - a big martial arts business that also does DL now
• World Ving Tsun – Darrell Jordan’s association, which has many brick and mortar schools as well
• Kung Fu Live – which may be a dead program
• New Brunswick Kung Fu Academy – which is run by the greatest martial arts prodigy of all time (if you believe him)
• Southwest Institute of Chinese Martial Arts – offering Shaolin Kung Fu, but requires a lot of travel so perhaps not viable unless you’re near Oklahoma
• Shinja Martial Arts University – a very silly place
• Doc Fai-Wong – a good example of a “hey let’s do DL too” that may not be a fully thought out program
• Black Belt Life – no longer doing DL but noted here as they show up in a lot of search results
• China Hand – a nice Kung Fu program

I’ve also added a much better Styles Directory so those who are looking for a specific style can find exactly what they want.  The styles are much more detailed now – for example, a school offering Baguazhang is tagged with both “Baguazhang” and “Kung Fu”.

Your comments and feedback are always welcome.

His points were:

• There’s a lot of good instructional material out there, and only a small percentage of it involves instructors doing any kind of certification.
• Why is certification so important?  Getting a “black belt” is trivial because there are so many poor quality schools you can walk into, study for a year, go through the motions, and walk out with a cardstock piece of paper with a fancy seal.  In the end, having a black belt really doesn’t mean much so why focus on it?

These are good questions.  There are a few reasons for the criteria I use.

First, programs designed for distance learning are, well, designed for distance learning.  I’ve seen lots of martial arts videos that were more demonstrative than instructive.  If the instructor makes a video knowing he’s never going to get any questions about the material, then he can proceed more or less as he pleases.  That’s not to say that instructors don’t try to make good videos, but a program that is sequenced to teach you a skill step by step is a different design than one that’s made primarily as a demonstration or focus on a particular area.

DL programs must focus on all aspects of the art, from beginning to end.  There are number of video series I’ve seen where the instructor hits maybe 75-80% of the art rather than all of it, because he expects you’re using his material mainly as a supplement.

The point of testing/certification is a reality check.  I’ve learned a number of physical skills via video or book.  For example, I am an amateur woodworker and while I’m not a master craftsman, I’ve managed to create some furniture, a dollhouse, bookshelves, etc. that look as good as what you might buy in stores.

What’s the difference between that and the martial arts?  There’s a reality check.  If I make a table and my wife says “wow, that’s ugly – I don’t want it” then I’ll know my skills aren’t very good.  On the other hand, if I make something and she says “let’s put that in the living room” then I have validation.

Martial arts are a little trickier because ideally you’ll never have the ultimate validation (a real-world fight) and outside of that, it’s subjective.  This is true of local instruction as well as DL.  Some arts provide limited real-world validation through sparring, etc., and certainly an Olympic gold medalist in Judo is a better judoka than someone whose judo is poor.   But many martial arts do not involve sparring.  Having an instructor grade your technique is as close to real-world validation as you can get.

So the reason I focus on certification programs has less to do with finding a way to get a fancy piece of paper and more to do with making sure the instructor’s focus is on DL and that students have a way to validate their learning.

Three interesting programs for this update:

• World Hapkido Association – this listing will be updated once I get some questions answered.  I sent an email and got a nice reply that they’re in the middle of their annual camp and rather busy.  In the meantime, enjoy the info so far.
• Zhe Zong School – I really fell in love with this program, as it appears to be a very traditional practitioner passing on a style in an honest manner.  If you are interested in traditional Kung Fu, check it out.
• Spirit Dragon Institute – $1 a month for a 30-day trial and access to 470+ videos on their site.  A nice low-risk offering.

Enjoy!

I don’t mind taking one for the team when it’s only $1.95.  And take one for the team I did with this pamphlet.

Yes, “pamphlet” is the right word, despite it being called a “book”.  The PDF is only 36 pages long, but six pages are burned by the cover, copyright, legal disclaimer, and three pages for “notes” at the end.  It’s also set in a very large font with generous margins.  I copy-pasted the text into Microsoft Word, which reported that there are about 2,800 words.  This is really an 8- or 10-page pamphlet.

In fact, the whole book is nothing more than six “tips”.  These are hardly rocket science:

1. Find a program that fits you
2. Watch out for scams
3. Practice a lot
4. Find a partner
5. Use other resources
6. Don’t get discouraged

There’s more advice here on BBDL.  Indeed, I bought this thinking perhaps there would be some useful advice I could add here but the the content is completely obvious.

DVD-Rs are made with burners in a desktop or laptop computer.  They’re not as reliable long-term as commercially pressed DVDs.  Commerically pressed DVDs are not an option for most (all?) DL programs, as there are large minimum print runs.

When you get course materials, you should do two things:

• Test-play each DVD.  Find out which if any discs (if any) are defective so you can get them replaced.
• Backup each disc.  I recommend ImgBurn which is free (for Windows – Mac/Linux users will need to find something else).  If a disc gets scratched or becomes unplayable six months later, you can easily burn another copy for yourself.  Since DVD-Rs are not encrypted (like your typical Hollywood movie), you could just drag/drop the files to a folder, but I find having an .iso file for each disc makes reburning very easy.

One thing you should not do is pirate course materials.  The people offering such programs are not getting rich.  The martial arts has never been a path to riches and most instructors are providing programs out of love for their respective arts.

The author searched YouTube for fight videos and made some interesting observations:

• 86% were male vs male and 12% were female vs female
• 94% were people he judged to be 13 to 19 years of age
• 78% of the time, the first attack was a punch
• 85% of the time, that punch was a right
• 97% of the time, it was to the head
• In only 10% of fights did a grab (or lock, hold, etc.) occur
• In only 8% of fights did either party kick.  75% of those were below the knee.
• The most common response to a punch to the face?  A punch to the face (68%)
• 52% of fights ended up on the ground.

There are some serious problems with the methodology, of course.  This isn’t an academic study (though the author has a PhD).  By using YouTube as a source, the fights are overwhelmingly biased towards those that happen in public places, in groups, in the first world, etc.  Also, I suspect attacks on women may be much different.

Still, it reinforces my experience.  The most common street fight fight move is a right hook to the head.

The cover for the August mag is Hee-Il Cho, who has a Tae Kwon Do distance learning program.

• Goju-Shorei
• Crane Karate’s Shorin-Ryu program

Can’t say I was very excited about either.

Besides the two added today, I have a bunch more to sort through, so expect more updates.  Enjoy!