I learned to swim on my own as a little kid. 30 years later, I decided to join swimming classes; I saw that swimming is extraordinarily complex. There are too many things to learn at the same time for someone to be able to pay attention and learn proper form for all of them. Inevitably, you'll learn proper form for one thing, and incorrect for many others, then, with one good habit in the bag, you can start focusing on the next one, then the next one, then the next one. From time to time, you will fall back to the old habits for some certain part of the motion, so you'll need to revisit it, and debug it again.
Tom Brady, who many people consider the greatest quarterback in the history of American football, still has a throwing coach (Tom House [1]), and he's still debugging his throwing motion. After 20+ years of throwing in a professional league.
So, for sure, unlearning habits is difficult, but learning only proper form from the start is probably an exceedingly rare exception. I think for most people the process of learning will involve learning incorrect form first, and attempting to fix this later.
Tom Brady, who many people consider the greatest quarterback in the history of American football, still has a throwing coach (Tom House [1]), and he's still debugging his throwing motion. After 20+ years of throwing in a professional league.
So, for sure, unlearning habits is difficult, but learning only proper form from the start is probably an exceedingly rare exception. I think for most people the process of learning will involve learning incorrect form first, and attempting to fix this later.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_House