You did not, but ChenAn's reply had no real content except to imply I was ignorant and obliquely compare me to Trump and you agreed with that post (Google "stable genius" if you're confused on that last part). While I do find this a little offensive I usually find both your posts and ChenAn's to be interesting and informative. So, I'm primarily interested in hearing some reasoned arguments as to why online training could not possibly be done well or at least adequately rather than being told that I'm foolish to state that I think online training has some potential.
Ok, I did not get the stable genius reference, but now that I’ve looked it up, the Stable Genius Act introduced by Rep Brendan Boyle (see Wikipedia) is downright hilarious, ya gotta admit. But no, it was not my intention to compare you to trump. My gawd, no.
The problem with video instruction is the lack of hands-on interaction with the teacher, which puts the onus of correction onto the student. Meaning: the student needs to be able to recognize his own mistakes, and then correct them and know that he has in fact corrected them and that they stay corrected. This is unrealistic.
Having a training partner is great, but you need the face-to-face physical interaction with the teacher. There are a lot of subtle details that are easy to miss or simply get them wrong, and that often cannot be spotted by the teacher thru video. The teacher needs to make corrections by physically moving you into proper posture. Without that physical interaction, the student is very likely to be doing it wrong. The same corrections need to be made over and over because it takes time and work before the student begins to get it right. That takes a lot of face-to-face and hands-on training time. Subtle details can make the difference between a technique working, or not. The student cannot be reliably self-correcting until he has reached some level of genuine skill and understanding.
My own system has a lot of subtleties that I can guarantee a student would fail to grasp without the interaction of a good teacher, and that makes the difference between learning something that is pure junk and learning something that can be devastating. The teacher needs to be there with the student, in person, to make the required corrections and keep the student on track.
I will admit that some people who are athletically inclined may be able to pick up some ideas that could help them to fight better. But that is a far cry from learning and understanding the method of a martial system. What such a person would get is a low level of some rudimentary skills. This can be deceptive though because it isn’t really that difficult to hurt someone. An untrained person who is athletically inclined could be pretty effective in a fight with raw aggression and attitude alone. So with those low level rudimentary skills he could fool himself into thinking he has really learned something about a martial art. The truth is that what he learned from the video gave him only a slight improvement over what he could already do with his natural abilities.