Essentially there is no wrong or right way to teach or learn something. If you can find an acceptable process then things usually have a way of teaching themselves. To speed up the process, you can attempt to isolate so called principles. These can be an instructor framing the key features of a motion or identifying underlying skills to be practiced. They rest is a matter of focused repetiton and exposure to permutations of movement and counter movement.
You have a process: what are gross motor movements, How do you practice them to maximize reps? What are the fine motor skills if any? How do you practice in a way to minimize their usage/maximize their success rate? How is each movement applied against resistance? What gross motor movements lead to tsukuri, what actual techniques arise from various states of kuzushi?
In aikido you have observer driven principles where one guy watches a corrects things that don't look right. Or Uke driven princlpes where uke turns to tori and says," that felt like it might work." Basically most principles that are discussed focus on start points and end points.
The monkey wrench is the need for standardization. That things need to look/feel the same to an observer and produce the same effect. That they look cool when wearing a hakama.
Take a movement like shihonage and kote gaeshi. They both twist the wrist the same and they both put a guy on his ass. A guy like Morty Youshiba probably didnt see the difference after a bazillion reps.
His students needed to see the difference, or else they couldnt learn anything.
He keeps doing that thing, what is that thing, how's he doing that thing? Why is he doing that thing?
Once principles are internalized they are forgotten. That's the point. Legitimate success means you internalized something that isn't easily identifiable or repeatable. success=hard work, patience, and luck. If a cop puts a resistant crackhead on his ass, pins him facedown, cuffs him, without keeping his hand in his center, using unbendable arm, or using same hand same foot how do you explain that? How can Tai Chi guys have the same damn moves as Aikido yet work off of different principles?
What people call principles I tend to call taxonomy of failure. You didn't get asked to the prom because you are ugly and your breath smells. Now go practice not being ugly and buy some Scope.
Hey, you got sumi otoshied because you didn't keep your hand in the center. Wow, thanks man. Did you have to practice 30 years and meditate on a mountain top to glean such heavy wisdom?
Here are two guys who define internalization of principles. The first is a Cristano Ronaldo doing soccer randori and shooting soccer goals in the dark.(watch this even if you hate soccer, Especially if you think Morty was as good as everybody says he was) The second is Mifune doing judo. If you try to identify tangible principles that allow both these guys to move the way they do then great. You should be on their level in six months. You can only identify the starting points and the stopping points. You can label their techniques. But what happens before the start, during the muddy middle, and after?
Real principles are internalized and fluid. The people who have internalized principle come off as arrogant pricks(like ronaldo), or confuse the hell out of you with shinto and ki digressions. Or they don't say a lot at all. The problem is that a lot of people can fake arrogant prick, or pseudo zen shinto bullshit to draw in enough suckers. The real folks tend to not say a lot, because they are too busy practicing to get something right. They are constantly thinking they need a thousand more reps.
And I'm thinking real heavy about taking up judo.
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