Real quick story on one of my Kung-Fu teachers, Tat Mau Wong.
The year was 1996 - I was really getting into Jackie Chan, and Hong Kong Kung-Fu movies. I just loved the flow of the action sequence, and the performance nature of it.
The Kung-Fu school I was at used to do a lot with that in the 80's, but in the 90's, the UFC came, and many martial arts schools transitioned into making fighting/full contact sparring the dominant focus.
After a while, I had enough. But, there were no schools around me that focused in on fluid, performance oriented Kung-Fu.
So, I quit that school, and wondered what to do. I found Tat Mau Wong's videos advertised in a Kung-Fu magazine (top picture). I loved the flow of his forms so much, that I bought all of his tapes, and learned off of the videos.
Fast forward to 1998. I met up with another Kung-Fu group, that did the same style as Tat Mau Wong. I enjoyed the training, but the group moved away from where I was living, and was unwilling to make videos for me to continue my training.
I looked inside another Kung-Fu magazine, and saw that Tat Mau Wong, who's tapes I'd learned from earlier, was now offering a distance learning Kung-Fu program, that would prep someone for taking a Black Belt test! (bottom left pic)
I signed up, right away, and I already knew most of the curriculum, because of the previous tapes.
I ended up going to his academy in San Francisco to prepare and eventually take my Black Belt test (and also my instructor certification test).
I share this story because I embraced digital and distance learning very early on. I have become quite good at learning from watching a video.
It taught me a new level of discipline, where I had to be my own coach for most of this journey. The teachers would help me refine, but ultimately, I carved out the time to learn and train on my own. Tat Mau Wong's support was very important, for sure. But nobody was telling me what to do. In a way, since training in-person wasn't available to me, it probably motivated me more, to work harder.
Thanks to Grandmaster Tat Mau Wong, for making his teachings available to the public.