Water Boxer, Author at Grant Ching Water Boxing Association

“Kick With Your Fists and Punch With Your Feet”

The title of this blog post is a line from the 2019 dark comedy film The Art of Self-Defense. It’s a pretty good movie, and I recommend it if you like dark comedies. In the movie, the line is meant to be serious advice, but to most viewers it will come across as funny because of the seeming absurdity of it. However, if you understand body mechanics, you’ll know that the concept is actually spot on.

Although kicking with your fists and punching with your feet might seem counterintuitive at first (especially when it comes to kicking), therein lies the key to why the concept works: To strike with real power, you need to focus on the “counter” aspect of the motion/mechanics. Note that this concept is just one of the many principles of counter motion/mechanics that should be applied when striking. But it’s a very powerful one because you’ll let the physics of counterbalance, counterforce, and, depending on the mechanics, counter torque work for you instead of against you, enabling you to deliver a heavier, more accurate strike.

If you don’t believe me, keep your hands at your side and deliver a kick, any kick, on a punching bag or, even better, to a striking pad held by a partner (that way you can get feedback from the receiving end). Then do it by allowing yourself to engage your hands in whichever way you normally would. Unless your normal body mechanics are very off, I’d bet that when you engaged your hands, you had a noticeably more powerful kick. (You can also try the same experiment with a punch, though it’s harder not to engage the feet at all because most punches are thrown while standing up. You could sit and let your feet dangle while throwing a punch. And then do the same punch while standing up.)

So, why does the concept of kicking with your fists and punching with your feet work? Well, probably the most obvious advantage is that it gives you better balance. And you’ll likely notice that it allows you to get more of your body behind your strike. Those two things alone will give you a dramatic increase in power. But they’re just the beginning. They come from an elementary and mostly passive use of counter mechanics. However, once kicking with your fists and punching with your feet become second nature to you, your nervous system will have undergone a rewiring that will allow you to go even deeper. Although getting to this depth can take time, it’s well worth the effort and patience because then you can start to actively use counter mechanics to increase your power even more by more actively engaging your hips (kwa).

The concept of kicking with your fists and punching with your feet is not unique to water boxing (Liuhebafa). However, water boxing’s principle that when one thing moves, all things move (and that when one thing stops, all things stop) is actually one of the big reasons I stumbled on the concept and made sense of it. For water boxers, the joints should move together simultaneously or very close to simultaneously. I was practicing throwing sidekicks (which are not part of water boxing’s primary curriculum) on a heavy bag when I observed that my kicks were lacking real power. At first I couldn’t figure it out. Then I realized that one of the problems might be that I was violating water boxing’s principle of all joints moving together when I kicked. So I focused on getting my joints to move together while kicking.

In the beginning it felt odd to try to engage all my joints while kicking, especially because the legs are in general much heavier and stronger than the arms. But it soon became clear that a powerful, heavy sidekick is not in the feet/legs but in the hands/arms. Although you may come to this epiphany through a different route than I did, I think you’ll find that “kick with your fists and punch with your feet” is more than just a funny line from a movie—it’s one of the main ways to truly deliver a heavy strike.

Should You Learn One Style or Many?

Before I came to Liuhebafa, I was training in Bak Mei. I loved it—in fact, at the time it was all I wanted to learn. But then my teacher told me he wouldn’t teach me more Bak Mei until I learned Liuhebafa. Among other things, he told me learning Liuhebafa would make my Bak Mei better. It didn’t make sense at the time, but now it does. Although it depends on your goals and your resources, following are some of the reasons why I think learning more than one style will make you better:

To compare and to contrast can yield great results in your personal development and in the understanding of your style(s). You may understand fast better if you understand slow. You may see circles where you used to see lines. You may feel powerless when you’re actually very powerful.
Unless you’re only expecting to fight people from your style, you better know what other styles do. This is one of the big reasons why traditional martial artists have often fared poorly in freestyle bouts with MMA fighters. If you think your style has it all, I think you’re going to be very surprised when someone hits you with great force from an angle you never expected or gets out of your rear naked choke by slightly adjusting their alignment in an imperceptible way.
The way I’ve learned traditional Chinese martial arts, the different styles represent different methods/types of power generation. Sometimes these methods/types contradict each other. But sometimes they can actually complement each other. This is probably the primary reason my teacher told me Liuhebafa would make my Bak Mei better.
You’ll engage with new people who likely have different perspectives and different attributes. You’ll see both the strengths and the weaknesses of your style—if you keep an open mind (see the last bullet).
By learning something new, you keep yourself open. And vice versa. This may be the biggest reason to learn more than one style. Think about it this way: if your style’s founder hadn’t been open-minded, you wouldn’t be learning that style right now.

So you might be asking yourself why, as a Liuhebafa teacher, I’m advocating learning different styles. The answer, it turns out, is a little complex: I myself continue to train in other styles, and I even sometimes teach them to my students (for very specific purposes). I also learn about other styles from my students, who have come from backgrounds such as tai chi, Burmese Bando, judo, kung fu, aikido, and kendo. I exchange ideas, occasionally fists and feet, and the rare chokehold with my wife (who trains in Hung Gar and Choy Lay Fut). Also, when I can, I try to push hands and play with people from different styles—and even with non–martial-artists, who sometimes surprise me.

If you have the time and resources and you want to get good overall, my advice would be to find one style that works best for your mind, body, and soul and then specialize in it, making it your primary style, while continuing to learn other styles, whether casually or formally. You may end up sticking with your primary style your entire life—or, like me, you may someday have a new primary style that fits you better than your previous one. Either way, I think you’ll find that staying open and learning new things will make you better. That is what I’ve found has worked best for me. It’s also why the way I teach and train Liuhebafa is different from many other teachers.

Kung Fu First Dance: Perspective and Gratitude

During these unprecedented times, I think it’s more important than ever that we keep our training in perspective and are thankful for everything that it has given us.

A hundred years ago, we probably would have trained mostly for martial purposes. Today, with most of the world being largely safer and more stable, many of us train for other reasons as well.

When I started training in the martial arts more than 30 years ago, I just wanted to be like Bruce Lee. I could never have imagined that because of my training I would ultimately meet the kung fu girl of my dreams.

In October 2019, I married that kung fu girl—and I got to do a kung fu first dance with her that was magical. Neither she nor the dance would have been possible without my training.

Who would have guessed that my martial art would turn into a marital art? So, the next time you train, be thankful for all the ways your art has enriched your life.

Why I Train on the Heavy Bag

Working out on a heavy bag can yield great results.

Although I’m more of a traditional martial artist than a professional fighter, I find hitting the heavy bag to be one of the best ways to train water boxing. It’s a great workout—and a reality check. Just like sparring with an opponent who is trying to hit you back or grapple you into submission, the heavy bag will force you to think about your art in a different way. I think it can help improve your form (as in your mechanics) and your forms (as in your understanding of Zhu Ji).

One thing I like to do is to focus on a certain strike from a form, work that strike on the bag, and then use that experience to figure out how to improve my mechanics. Obviously, there’s a big difference between hitting the air and hitting a 100-pound bag, especially one swinging toward you or braced by a partner. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised by how well a strike works on the bag—and other times, I’m disappointed. Either way, I find I learn something. When possible, I then incorporate what I’ve learned back into the strike when I practice the form.

I also like to use the heavy bag to figure out how to put different strikes together in a meaningful way. Although some forms have useful combinations of strikes built in, there are many combinations you can put together that you will not find in any form. However, hitting something solid with weight—just like sparring against a noncompliant opponent—will also make you appreciate the potential limitations of a dozen lightning fast punches in a row, if only because hitting the heavy bag in succession like that requires a decent amount of stamina.

As a traditional martial artist, I find that one of the biggest weaknesses in how we sometimes train is that it can make our footwork lousy or impractical. Although doing forms can teach you a lot, working out on the heavy bag teaches you about distance, space, and movement (assuming, of course, you are not just standing in one spot all the time). Like a western boxer, I like to move around the bag. Because water boxing has its own footwork and combat theory, I might look different than Muhammad Ali and Manny Pacquiao—but I still move.

In a previous post, I discussed how I used untraditional training methods like taking video to improve. I find that taking video of my bag workout sessions has really helped me because I can see for myself what I can do better. (Tip: Try taking video from different angles.)

Naturally, working out on the heavy bag has its risks and limitations. You could get hurt (I suggest starting very light, especially if the bag is firm or very heavy, until you’re conditioned). You might get sloppy and complacent because the bag doesn’t hit you back. You could become obsessed with just hitting and ultimately end up one dimensional. You run the risk of overestimating your striking power. (Note: You might also underestimate your striking power. You have to know how to gauge what is and isn’t a powerful strike on a bag and on a real person. Just because the bag doesn’t swing much doesn’t mean you lack power. In fact, the bag might not swing much because you’re actually very powerful!)

So long as you keep everything in perspective, I say go whack the heavy bag. At the very least, you’ll get a good workout. At the most, you’ll see your form, forms, and force improve heavily!

Why I Teach (and Why You Should, Too)

When I started teaching several years ago, I actually didn’t want to. I didn’t think I had anything people would be interested in learning. Although I knew I had some skill, I didn’t think anyone would see any value in it. But my teacher told me that I had more than I realized—and that teaching would make me even better. It turned out he was right on both counts.

One of the first people to come check me out was a longtime martial artist with a background in Liuhebafa, Xingyi, and Baguazhang. He had a streetfighter’s mentality and was a tough, physical guy. Being a professional deep sea diver who had traveled the world on his own sailboat, he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty (or bloody). I was sure that the first time he came out to see me would also be his last. But to my pleasant surprise, after he touched hands with me, I could see from his facial expression that he was impressed and that he knew I had something worth his time. Unfortunately, because of his job/travels, he left Los Angeles after only a few sessions. But from that experience I gained the confidence that I could be a teacher and that I had something others wanted to learn.

Having taught the past several years, I now understand why my teacher said that teaching would make me better. In the field of medicine, doctors (in particular, surgeons) have for more than a century learned how to perform procedures by following a model of learning called “see one, do one, teach one.” Basically this means that to learn, you watch a mentor do a procedure, then do the procedure yourself, and, finally, teach the procedure to someone else. Although this model has its critics and has started to change in the last decade or so, it is still widely used (though sometimes with modifications or supplemented with other learning tools), including in fields other than medicine. Why? Because it works. I had seen my teacher do Zhu Ji, I had done Zhu Ji, and now I teach Zhu Ji. That last step has reinforced what I have seen and done, and in some cases it has even corrected or improved it.

Even if you’re not a formal teacher, you can still reap the benefits by teaching informally, for example, when you’re working with your classmates on forms or drills. Obviously, you don’t want to disrespect your teacher or your school, but in most martial arts classes that I’ve been in, senior students often handle much of the teaching. (Perhaps “see one, do one, teach one” actually originated in the martial arts.) Especially if you’re more advanced than your classmates, you may find that showing them what you know increases not only their knowledge but also yours.

The idea that teaching will take your own learning to higher levels is nothing new. But you might be surprised just how much you’ll learn by teaching. I know I have been very pleasantly surprised.

Don’t Underestimate a Push

Since I was a kid, I’ve heard that a push—whether it be in the form of a good old two-handed push, a “push-punch,” or a “push-kick”—is a weak technique because pushing hardly does any damage, especially compared to a snapping type of strike.

In this Bruce Lee’s Fighting Method vid, the narrator says that when kicking the heavy bag, “If there is more push than hit, the sound will be a weak thud.” The narrator then continues by noting the difference between a true kick and pushing type of kick: “In both kicks, there is force exerted, except the hit will do the damage and the push will just knock the opponent down innocuously.”

I’ve seen western boxers and boxing coaches emphasize how push-punches are less effective than snapping punches. I’ve been around many martial artists who talk about how their punches and kicks are like bullets—the opponent doesn’t move back much after being hit (the way they would if they were pushed) but instead drops straight to the ground from the impact (the way they would if they were struck by a bullet). And I’ve heard people comment on how the pushes in tai chi, for example, never seem to really hurt anyone, despite how far the recipient of the push seems to “fly” backward.

So with all these expert opinions, why am I a fan of the push? Simple: I think the push is underrated, misunderstood, and trained and used incorrectly. Consider the following:

A push (in particular, a two-handed push) can be an excellent way to create space between you and your opponent—space that might just give you enough time and room to avoid further confrontation in a humane way. (Also, if it ever came down to a jury, I also suspect that a two-handed push might be viewed more favorably than a punch, kick, or choke in terms of whether you were using excessive force.)
A push (including a push-kick or push-punch) can help to measure the distance for and/or create space to deliver a more powerful follow-up strike. If you watch the legendary fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, I think you’ll see they push-punch and use both hands to push each other, sometimes to set up a snapping punch, at other times to clear space to rest for a moment, and maybe even to judge the distance between each other. (And yes, I am aware that boxing is a sport and that in an MMA match or streetfight, standup grappling and takedowns come into play, so a push might not work in the same way.)
Depending on how you train, execute, and apply it, a two-handed push could be used to deliver a maiming or even fatal injury because of exactly the reason why most people think it’s weak—it sends you back rather than down. Although “dropping” someone might be ideal, sending someone back can be devastating, too, especially depending on what’s behind them (read one of my previous blog posts to see what I mean).
Most people don’t train to push—and so most people don’t know how to push. There’s a push—and then there’s a push. If you think a push will just knock you down (and you think that getting knocked down can’t do any damage), I encourage you to read my earlier blog post I linked to above.
Some of the best boxers in history (and who are also considered among the hardest hitters) use what I would argue are push-punches to knock people down or out in a devastating way:
- Mike Tyson Knocking Out Eddie Richardson
- Tommy Hearns Highlights
The sound a bag makes when you hit it tells you a lot … or maybe it doesn’t. Do you find the cracking sound some people make when hitting a heavy bag to be impressive, almost like the sound of someone shooting a gun? The problem is that the sound that you hear when someone shoots a gun has nothing to do with the sound of the bullet’s impact with an object—it’s mostly the sound of the explosion when the bullet leaves the gun (and sometimes also the sound of it passing you at supersonic speed). It might sound good to say, “When he hits the bag, it sounds like a gun going off,” but the reason why the two sound similar likely have little relation.

Hopefully, you now see why I’m a fan of the push—it can be a very effective weapon. But there is another reason why I’m a fan: water boxing (and some other arts like xingyi) have refined the push, making it more powerful and useful than you might think. Interested in finding out more? Come check out a water boxing class.

The Power of Posture

Do you have anxiety or depression? I do, and I can tell you from experience that they can be as tough to defeat as any human fighter you might encounter.

In the past couple of years, I’ve discovered that one of the most powerful ways to combat them has been through martial arts. In particular, the practice of a certain posture has increased the stability of not only my physical structure but also my emotional and mental structure. If you think this is a load of BS, I don’t blame you. I’d probably think the same if I hadn’t experienced the power of posture for myself.

So, what exactly is the posture that I’ve found for controlling my anxiety and depression? I’m going to give you two answers, one simple and one not-so-simple:

The simple: Shoulders back and chest out. That’s it. You’ve probably been told to do this since you were a kid. You know, stop slouching and be confident!
The not-so-simple: Shoulders back and chest out is just the beginning. But it’s a good beginning and by itself helps quite a bit.

I don’t use any devices or equipment to hold this posture, however, I do think some of the devices/equipment in this Women’s Health magazine article here could help.

Now I have to admit that I’m not absolutely sure why this posture helps me fight anxiety and depression, but I do have a couple theories:

In the internal arts that I practice, this posture is offensive and enables the issuing of dynamic force. When I feel anxiety or depression coming on, I often find that I’m not in this posture and instead in a more defensive one. However, when I transition into this more offensive posture, I find that the anxiety or depression “backs down” almost instantaneously, as if it knows that I’m in a powerful posture from which I can attack and defeat it.
This posture substantially increases the blood flow to my brain; strengthens my breathing; and aligns and straightens my upper gastrointestinal tract, in particular, my pharynx and esophagus. Recently, I found an article from the National Institutes of Health that seems to confirm what I am experiencing.

If you have anxiety or depression, I encourage you to try this posture. I think you’ll find it powerful and useful. I also encourage you to try a martial art like water boxing, which can help further the development and power of your posture (and offer other benefits). In fact, some studies, like this one from researchers at UCLA, have shown internal martial arts to decrease anxiety and depression. (Some research has also found yoga to have the potential to combat anxiety and/or depression.) And if you want the complete not-so-simple answer to the posture I use to combat anxiety and depression, come check out water boxing at one of my classes or seminars.

The Killer Punch—Definitely Not a Myth but Maybe Misunderstood

Sadly, I was reminded that the killer punch is very much a real thing when I saw news articles about a sports fan in my city who is fighting for his life after being struck. According to at least one article, he was hit just once. A quick Google search finds that one-punch deaths have occurred all over the world, including in Mobile, Alabama; New York City; Nottingham, England; and Vancouver, Canada.

So what have these one-punch killers mastered that makes them so deadly? Are they professional fighters or expert martial artists who train in iron palm or who know some secret technique? Although I can’t say for sure, I suspect that most are not. Part of the reason is that if the puncher were a professional fighter or expert martial artist, that fact would very likely come out in the media—it makes for a more interesting story, for sure. Also, from a legal standpoint it could very well change the nature/severity of the charges against the puncher. (On a side note, although it’s a myth that professional fighters and expert martial artists in the United States must register their hands as deadly weapons, it appears to be possible [although not required] to register them as such in Guam.)

How is it, then, that untrained people can kill with a single punch? Simple—it’s rarely the punch itself that is responsible for the death. Although it is possible for a single punch by itself to cause fatal injury to the brain or to induce a person to stop breathing, it’s usually when the punch causes a person to fall backwards and hit their head on a very unforgiving surface, especially pavement, that people die. Note that one-punch deaths rarely occur in combat-sport events: It’s not just that the combatants are tough and well trained. The events are also held on relatively forgiving surfaces to prevent fatal incidents.

With all due respect to martial artists skilled enough to legitimately break coconuts, bricks, boards, and other objects, that skill is unlikely to translate into a killer punch. Those objects are almost always immobilized against movement in the person’s line of force, making it difficult for the object to absorb the impact of the strike and thus making it easier (though maybe not easy) for the object to be broken. The skull and neck of a standing opponent, on the other hand, are not immobilized. And they do a remarkably good job of absorbing blows when an opponent is upright. This is especially true when the head is moved from front to back and, probably to a lesser extent, when moved from side to side.

I don’t doubt that a martial artist who can break coconuts or other hard objects could fracture the back of an opponent’s skull if the person were lying on the ground so that they couldn’t move their head. But it’s hard to get a person to lie still like that unless they’re unconscious (for example, if you’ve choked them out). In that case, though, you’ve pretty much already won the fight.

Of course there are definitely ways to help make a punch more lethal. For example, if a punch knocks the opponent out cold so that they’re unconscious on the way to the ground, the opponent can’t change their posture to better absorb the impact (e.g., tucking their chin, among other things, to prevent or at least minimize the back of their skull from contacting the hard ground and causing a traumatic brain injury). But as we can see from Western boxing matches, most fighters don’t die even when they’re out cold before they hit the canvas—mostly because they’re not hitting pavement.

So yes, the killer punch is real. And once I understood how it works, I also realized that if my opponent is at risk of hitting their head on the pavement, I would be, too—which is why I do my best to avoid getting into fights on the street.

Why I Prefer Being “Heavy” Over Being Fast

When I was younger, I was obsessed with speed. I was a huge fan of the blinding-fast Bruce Lee as well as of those kung fu movies with cool wind-like sound effects for punches and kicks. More than anything, I wanted to be fast. And that was how I thought and trained for probably 20 years.

But around 10 years ago, I started to rethink the importance of speed in unarmed combat. Note that when I say “speed,” I mean the velocity of the movement (not reaction time). And when I say “mass,” I mean the mass behind the movement, not a person’s mass in general (although sometimes a person’s mass in general can also be an overwhelming advantage).

I now prefer being “heavy” as compared with being fast. Don’t get me wrong: I know you must have speed and mass (and other things, too) to be effective. But consider the following two options: (1) having average speed and above-average mass, and (2) having above-average speed and average mass. All other things being equal, which would you take? Unless I knew beforehand that my opponent was especially vulnerable to speed, I’d take the first option—average speed and above-average mass. But why?

First, I think back on my own fights. (For context, most of my fight experience has been in what would be best described as schoolyard fights. Also, I am not including sparring during training as fighting.) In the maybe six or seven fights—I know it’s not much experience, but it is my experience—I’ve had in my lifetime, in only one did I basically give up. And the reason why was because the guy hit me with such heavy blows—on my body—that I felt like I was, well, getting the hell knocked out of me every time he made contact. Basically I felt like I was being hit with a hammer. Interestingly, I don’t think this guy, who was a classmate in high school, had ever had any formal combat training. He just naturally hit with his whole body.

In all my other fights, which in some cases included guys formally trained in a variety of arts, I got hit (including on the head), tripped, and taken down, but I never felt that I was in serious trouble. In fact, in some cases getting hit and even bloodied just pissed me off even more. But when I got hit with that heavy blow from my classmate, I was done—physically and psychologically.

Also, based on my experience on both the giving and the receiving end of martial contact (e.g., a punch, a block, or a grappling maneuver), I find that what gets the recipient’s “respect” the most is when they get hit harder or controlled easier than they expected. Put another way: speed may get the attention of spectators, but a heavy blow will get the attention of your opponent.

Now let’s look at combat sports including boxing, modern MMA, wrestling, judo, etc. Except for the old-school MMA fights back in the 90s and “underground” competitions, notice that all combat sports have weight divisions—but that that there’s no such thing as speed divisions. Why divide competitors into weight classes instead of speed classes? Because whether it’s a striking art or a grappling art or something in between, a big difference in weight between participants is generally considered unfair (and more dangerous) to the lighter competitor. Who would you take the majority of the time in these some-of-the-greatest-of-all-time bouts in boxing, MMA, and freestyle wrestling, respectively: Heavyweight Muhammad Ali versus welterweight Sugar Ray Robinson? Heavyweight Fedor Emelianenko versus middleweight Georges St. Pierre? Super heavyweight Aleksandr Medved versus bantamweight Yojiro Uetake?

I know some people will say that in real-life self-defense situations, speed plays a much bigger role because all it takes is a relatively light hit to the eyes or groin or windpipe to maim or kill. I won’t completely disagree with this—just press on your own windpipe with your finger to see how fragile the area is. But there is a reason why women and children, who are generally smaller and weaker (but can often flail their arms with a good amount of speed), have self-defense classes geared specifically for them, while men, who are generally heavier (and stronger), do not.

I would also add that although it is true that for vulnerable areas and pressure points you only need a modest amount of force, I find it also true that hitting those targets on a moving, reacting opponent can be challenging. Being in a stressful situation can reduce your fine motor skills, making you less accurate. And when we’re talking about vulnerable areas and pressure points, you must be not only fast but also accurate. Don’t believe me? Try angling your finger while pressing on your windpipe and note how just a few degrees of deviation from pressing directly against the windpipe make a substantial difference in the pressure, pain, and ultimately the efficacy.

Thus, I train and teach with an emphasis on being heavy because I think it’s a heavy blow that hurts an opponent more physically and psychologically. And it turns out I can even go back to the blinding-fast Bruce Lee to support my argument. About a year ago, I came across a YouTube video in which James DeMile, one of Lee’s more well-known students, said that when he first met Lee, he was thoroughly impressed at how fast Lee was. Lee, he said, seemed to punch like 50 times a second—but they felt like bee stings and didn’t necessarily keep him from coming forward and continuing to fight. He noted that Lee himself quickly realized that blinding speed might not be enough to stop an opponent in a fight, so Lee began working with his students to figure out ways to add mass to the equation. I only wish I had been as fast as Lee in realizing that.

Traditional Martial Arts, Untraditional Training Methods

I train and teach traditional martial arts. But some of my methods of teaching and training are untraditional. So why do I train a traditional martial art in an untraditional way? Simple: sometimes an untraditional method can offer a better and/or quicker way to get where you want to go.

Of the untraditional methods that I use, one of the most powerful—and easiest—is watching video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I think a video can be worth a thousand repetitions when it comes to training. But the catch is that I’m not talking about watching a video of your teacher or some other master (although that has benefits, too)—I’m talking about watching video of yourself.

By watching video (or sometimes even seeing a photo) of yourself, you will notice things that you never knew you were doing and that, even if someone told you, you might not understand how to correct for a long time. For example, one of my students often overextends his stance, leaning too far forward, while performing one of the postures in Zhu Ji. It’s actually a very common mistake and one that I also made when I started training. Despite my correcting him during several classes, including explaining the purpose of the posture as well as demonstrating the posture and even manually manipulating his stance, he didn’t quite get it. Eventually, I asked him if he was okay with my taking a photo of him with my smartphone. As soon as I showed him the photo on my smartphone, he was able to immediately correct his stance.

Taking video of yourself is also a great way to chart your progress. Words can’t really describe how far I’ve come in the last several years—but the videos I have over that period sure can. It’s fun, enlightening, and sometimes frustrating to watch past videos of myself because I wonder how and why I didn’t catch on to stuff sooner.

I must point out that watching video of yourself is different than practicing in front of a mirror (which is, however, another good and somewhat untraditional method). One of the big differences is that because you’re physically engaged when you’re watching yourself in a mirror, it can be very hard to just observe and look for things. Also, when practicing in front of a mirror, I think the tendency is to become self-conscious, which can work to your disadvantage.

Regardless of your style, I highly suggest you take video of yourself and then analyze it. With the video capabilities of today’s smartphones and digital cameras, there’s no good reason why you can’t take video of yourself performing your forms, as well as while working out on equipment like a punching bag or a wooden dummy and while pushing hands or sparring with training partners (and even with your own teacher if they allow it). Just don’t get too carried away with doing this. I sometimes see fellow martial artists who take (and in some cases post on social media) videos of themselves practically every day. If you get to that point, you should probably put the smartphone or camera down and go back to more traditional methods of training.