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So what is it that all these martial art “masters” are founding? Just as when a manufacturer adds blue dye to its old detergent and repackages it as “new and improved,” these ‘master” are not creating anything new, they are merely repackaging something old by changing some aspect of it, such as the order in which certain movements are performed.

For example, yoga has been around for thousands of years, and, just as in the martial arts, there are many versions of it. In recent years, Bikram Choudhury founded Bikram Yoga. What is Bikram Yoga? It is sequence of traditional yoga poses performed in a 105 degree room. So what is new about it? Choudhury says it is the order in which he performs the poses. Therefore, it follows that if you change the poses used or the order of the poses, or you change the temperature of the room a few degrees, you too may invent a new style of yoga. For example, Hot Yoga use different poses than Bikram Yoga and trains in an approximately 97.8 degree (body temperature) room.

In the music world, "borrowing" or "sampling" as they call it, has been around forever. For example, "Under Pressure" is a 1981 song recorded by Queen and David Bowie. In 1990, Vanilla Ice used the bass rift from "Under Pressure" on his only hit "Ice Ice Baby." Vanilla Ice defended his song saying the rift was different since one note was different in it.

Martial art “masters” do pretty much the same thing. They rename traditional techniques, change the order of movements in patterns, change the way students salute (bow), change the style of the uniform, and then add some hocus-pocus that flim-flam artists have used for centuries.

Modern automobiles use new technologies, but they still use the original four wheels with brakes on each wheel, a steering wheel, a windshield, a clutch, brake, and accelerator pedals, etc. No one claims to have “founded” a new automobile just because they have improved on the original

If you are interested in learning a martial art, choose one of the older, traditional martial arts; an art that has eliminated all the hocus-pocus of the past and uses modern training methods. If you are interested in self-defense, then choose a martial art that has techniques that have been adapted to defend against the attacks and weapons that you may face in your current surroundings. This does not necessarily mean you have to choose a new “modern” martial art; a traditional art that has adapted to modern times is just as effective as some newly “founded” martial art that claims to be better for modern self-defense situations.

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