How do you use old kung fu manuals or diagrams without over-trusting them?
I have been thinking about how people use old kung fu manuals, posture drawings, and movement diagrams as study material.
They can be beautiful and useful for vocabulary, structure, and remembering ideas, but they also seem easy to misread if someone treats a drawing as a full teacher.
For people here who have spent time with manuals or visual notes:
- What do you think they are actually good for?
- Where do they become misleading?
- Are there parts of body foundation, stance, breath, or alignment that are reasonable to study from diagrams?
- What should always be checked with a real teacher or training partner?
Not asking for links or style recommendations. I am more interested in how experienced people set boundaries around written or visual material.