"Not bad. You three may be young and have never undergone formal training, but your physiques are already quite impressive." Doflamingo looked at the standing Ace and Sabo as he spoke.
At this point, all three of them were once again battered and bruised. Ace and Sabo were slightly stronger fighters than Luffy, but they were less durable than Luffy, who had eaten the Gum-Gum Fruit. As a result, they looked like they had been beaten up about equally badly.
"Who says so? The two of us train in the forest all the time," Ace said somewhat unconvinced.
"That kind of training does have some effect, but it can't be called formal. At most, it's a crude, self-taught approach." Doflamingo shook his head. "Of course, there are people who rise up from such methods, but in the early stages, they're far inferior to proper training."
To rise up from a self-taught path, what one needed was not training, but desperate battles to the death!
Those Great Pirates out at sea were basically all self-taught. They relied on one life-and-death battle after another to gradually perfect their own combat systems.
Even so, when it came to crucial things like Haki, they had surely undergone systematic study. They could not be called completely self-taught.
And in the early stages, without extensive combat experience or the trial and error of countless different methods, their training efficiency and techniques would definitely not compare to a formal system.
After hearing that, Ace and Sabo both fell silent. Doflamingo continued, "I won't be staying here for too long, but I'll at least lay down a foundation for you, so that you can keep training on your own after I leave."
"I think your training is pretty much the same as when we train by ourselves," Ace