Should you start your own Martial Art? Featuring Sensei Seth, Icy Mike, & Rokas Leo 

Who wants to sign up for North American Streetfighting?

If you ever decide to create your own martial art, please name it "The Dewey Decimate System"

Seeing you guys in the same room talking casually is so surreal lol

Dark Rokas has been born. I dig it.

I think Ramsey hit the nail on the head near the end there. A martial art is branding. If you want brand recognition, you need to put your product in front of people and prove its value. The way you do that with violence is competition. Train enough successful fighters and people will know your brand. If you don't want to build your own, operate under someone else's. It's the same way in the trades. I work as a company electrician, operating under a corporate brand. If I wanted to, I could open my own LLC, train my own apprentices, and become recognized for my efforts in my community. No different than with martial arts.

Everyones saying "If Ramsey Dewey says you're good then you're good" Ramsey you should start a series rating viewers skills based on videos they send you.

Ssethmo, Ramsey-do, Icy-Fu, Rok Muay.

I dont know why but I love that everyone is sitting on something completely different 😂

Great to see Ramsey teleporting and meeting the best martial arts RU-vidrs ever

I know it's partly seating position, but seeing all 4 of you in a row like that (4:54 for instance) it's really striking how much of a disadvanatge Icy Mike has been at size wise throughout the whole USDC. Mad respect for how game he's been and how well he's done despite the natural disadvantge. Except the sumo run around, that was kinda dumb.

I really liked this perspective from multiple coaches, especially since all of you have had so much experience with different forms by this point. Glad you used your time with the others for stuff like this as well.

i did not expect a theseus ship reference in a martial arts video xDDD Thanks guys, you are making youtube better!

Very refreshing to see this kind of video where a conversation it's left as it happened and not truncated to a few sound bites. It feels more like a historical document of a cool symposium of popular martial artists than a youtube video - if that makes sense. Good stuff!

If you look through history, this is exactly the scenarios that make history for martial artists. Id like to compare this scene to the famous picture of Kyan sensei, Motobu, Chojun Miyagi and others in 1936 and just remember that this kind of conversation is imperative to martial arts

It's refreshing to see you participants do a video in Ramsey's tempo. With the tourney we've seen all these impromptu collabs and they're all amazing..now that I've seen this I feel it's the most satisfying

Hey Ramsey, in relation to this talk about 'combat Tai chi, I would love to hear your thought on the difference between teaching/training style and martial arts style. Trad. Jiujitsu trains basicly the same throws as judo - but the pedagogical style is vastly different. Does it maybe make more sense to describe HOW you train, instead of what style you train? Anyways - great stuff. And so happy you participated in the championship - so many fun and great things come out of it :-)

The camera illusion makes Icy Mike look 4 feet tall here lol... Great video guys. Thanks

Mike is SO SMALL 😂 Like in this shot you can really see how Rokas, Ramsay and Seth are built a tad different 😂. Love you all, thx for qna.

Cheers Ramsay ! Amazed you can all still talk after all the beatings from the USDC. Great to hear thoughts from such a diverse range of coaches. Too bad you couldnt all meet up in Mordor...Icy Mike would definitely be the right size for Samwise Gamgee.

It's the same ship Seth; humans shed millions of skin cells everyday...but we're still the same people

I love seeing you guys just chilling and talking, listening to other perspectives - even if your opinions all were quite close to another- and just respectfull answering a honest question. This is just really nice to see. 😊 I could listen to you guys all day

I created my own martial art, "Ultima-Fu"!, a combination of Karate, Judo, Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Knitting, Capoeira, Starbucks latte, Tai Chi, Badminton, shuffleboard, and ground wrestling! It's the deadliest, most kick-ass martial art EV-VAAARRRRR!!!

I've been training for 35 years, and yeah, I could start my own martial art, but the truth is that I love traditional Chinese martial arts, it's what I do. I love the forms and working with weapons like spears, 3 section staff, and so on.

Having them all join you for the get out and train part was epic ngl. I feel like everyone who is at a blackbelt or equivalent level should make their own style to the extent they should branch out learn more and determine what works for them personally. I do this and whenever I teach my students back home I teach them the new stuff I learn, but I do not try to get them to fight like me or follow my way. Ultimately, as a martial arts teacher/coach, I see my goal as one to help them learn to think on their own and create their own effective way of doing things. I know I do things differently than the 7 principal people who have taught me, but I don't feel the need to give my way a name as it's just that. I do it my way.

It has to be easy to distinguish it from other styles, it has to have some kind of purpose and it has to be taken into use by a lot of people. These guys also needs to respect the system they’ve been training. Many broad system martial arts kind of defeats their own purpose because their curriculum is too big for almost anyone to master well.

I teach others to write computer programs. And I find your discussion applicable to topics more, than just fighting. Especially when Icy Mike said like "it's your students word that matters".

What's remarkable to me is how mature all the participants are. In a context of martial arts, or any other context for that matter, this is a LOT of maturity.

I'm of the opinion you get to a certain level everyone creates their own "style" as they adapt their arts to match their body and personality. So it's really just depends on what you determine is a new style or just your way of expressing the martial art.

I think the Superfoot System is a great example of how to start a martial art in the modern day. Bill didn’t set out to create it, never even had his own Dojo. He just had this really unique way of fighting and was doing seminars enough that people wanted to dedicate their time to learning his way philosophy of combat and making it their own. So the style kind of just formed around him, he never really set out to create a style. Which is why it’s a system, he designed it as something to supplement what ever you train full time. Some people train it as a style but most people train it as this supplement system.

I started learning martial arts in 1971 when I was in the Peace Corps in rural Korea, went to a little gym in my town that was teaching the style "무덕관", Moo-duk-gwan. Traveling around the peninsula a bit, I found there were a number of these "gwans". I got the sense that these styles developed much like your follower's style. The peninsula is rugged in a lot of places; there's a spine of mountains down the middle and the sea all around, so not that long ago in this not very big region places and peoples were pretty isolated. Even when I was there, you'd be in one town and people would speak Korean with a dialect, but then you go over the ridge to the next town, and the dialect is very different. I had a sense that the local martial arts were like that, too. The thing is, to some degree I was wrong. There may have been historic fighting styles that really varied by locale and teacher, but - the Japanese Occupation, roughly 1900 - 45, forbid local fighting styles and so those were (probably) lost. The guys who started the later fighting styles, the gwans all studied Japanese styles, mostly Shodokan, mostly with Funakoshi. Most of them didn't admit it, doing hand waves like "I found an ancient book" or "I studied tomb inscriptions". The most honest guy that I know of was the founder of the small northern style (송무관), Ro Byungjik, who said, yeah, I studied with Funakoshi and was honored to do so. Anyway, long story to say that to my mind, starting your own style back in the day was likely a matter of isolation - but nowadays we aren't isolated, and there's great value of being in a large, even global, community. TKD, was a conglomeration of these, brought about largely because the dictator Syngman Rhee wanted Korea to have a martial art that could go to the Olympics, because Japan had judo in the Olympics. So TKD was a forced marriage of styles, and it's now falling apart, has been for some time, and that's okay and interesting. Myself, after years practicing different flavors of TKD, for the last few years have been studying Parker style kenpo karate, and enjoying it quite a bit (although my cardiologist thinks I'm way too old for violent training (77 isn't that old, and there's another guy in my gym who's got 6 months on me))

The "why" is the reason for creating a martial art. Most martial arts were created out of a necessity. The creator saw a problem and martial art was the solution. The rules for conflict were to make it less than lethal and provide grounds "settle the matter" officially. Sometimes the necessity was health (the legendary Bodhidharma). Other times it was addressing a weakness (Gracie Jujitsu). If the "why" is recognition then your best bet is to hire a PR team.

What a blast, great topic aswell, creating your own martial art feels like old timey fantasy, in where it's not really necesary anymore outside of maybe a specific system that gives more than just hand to hand practices like Tritac Martial Arts

The way Mike is sitting, he looks like a kid hanging out at the adult table.

I'm going to out myself as a science nerd and treat martial arts similar to computer languages. It's long, but I'm passionate about this. There are high level languages which software tends to operate in, such as Python, which you can use to make a variety of useful things. And lower level languages are more fundamental to computer operation, like Assembly. They're really hard to learn, but you're basically a god if you master one or two. And when it comes to new languages, it's not easy to build a new computer language when all you know are high level languages. Understanding that low level function is highly useful, if not outright necessary. In martial arts, I think of these systems as kinesthetic languages. I consider the lowest level styles to be the likes of wrestling and kickboxing. Every culture has them, and they are fundamental to our movements, grappling being lower level than striking in my understanding. A higher level system to me is like Karate or TKD, which adds some finer finesses, restrictions, and specified techniques. And even higher yet is Taijiquan and Aikido. You can make them work, but you need to nail the low level fundamentals first. You don't build a computer from scratch by starting with the apps. You start at the motherboard. In martial arts, too, you need to master the basic movements before anything fancy. New languages come out all the time, which build on that which already exists. Some are enhancements on old things, and even old languages evolve. In the same way, martial arts must evolve to stay relevant, or he left behind to niche applications. And of course, the creation of new martial arts demands excellence in high and low level styles, if it is to be legitimized.

Signing up for rokido!

Sensei Seth doesn't talk much but when he weighs in, he basically resolves the entire issue being discussed in 3 sentences. He's right that a new name only matters when it's tied to a rule set/sport. That's how modern martial arts develop. The old way they developed is like kung fu where people think they have secret techniques, but we're beyond that now as a worldwide community. Now lets talk about changing up training methodology in the 21st century! Constraints-led approach/ecological approaches are fast gaining steam now and I'd love to weigh in with yall. - Josh from Combat Learning Podcast

That initial reaction to "I invented my own martial art." is exactly why this guy should not go around saying he invented his own martial art. I'm glad Rokas brought up Matt Thornton's approach as it seems much healthier than this guy's quest for "recognition".

One of the first martial arts schools I joined 7 years ago had this one red flag - the head instructor had made up his own martial arts style with a unique name for his customized "system" (he was also influenced by Systema, even though that wasn't the reason for the quotes). This sort of thing is honestly a red flag for me because that guy turned out to be a narcissistic cult leader running a McDojo. Now, I don't doubt good people exist who might have done this sort of "create a custom martial art" thing, but usually the best and most humble of practitioners have no pretense or delusion about their martial arts training. They don't think of calling it by any different name. They'll acknowledge the skills that were acquired from jiu jitsu, or boxing, or wrestling without having to attach a special name to it.

i wish i could talk to you in real life. you're the best martial arts channel dewey. keep it up

I could listen to you guys talk about these topics all day

One of my favorite things about the Ultimate Self Defense Championship is all of this extra, high-quality content that's come from all of these dudes sitting down and talking together.

Mike went really deep there in the end, after the ship of Theseus problem went right over his head. I grew up in one of those styles that we bowed to a picture. Then I went into another that can be positively culty (yes, it's BJJ lol). I have absolute respect for my instructors, and for the ones that came before them, even though some were better instructors and fighters than they were people. We have to be able to separate things, and we shouldn't idolize anyone. Take the knowledge, but know to set aside the things that don't apply to you or that you disagree with.

I appreciate all the content that came out of you getting together

This is a great discussion. Would love to get more of this format some way or another (although I don’t know that zoom is necessarily an option for you)

I've referred to what rokus does as "rokus's functional akido" before when explaing who he was to my wife that one kinda feels right to say And its not that hes reinvented the wheel its just recognisable Jeff chan posted a video latly showing one of seths kicks and breaking it down. So you could see Jeff used some of seths karate and i dont think it would be weird.

Despite our differences regarding the truth of the LDS doctrine and the existence of deities and an afterlife, I genuinely love you human to human. You provide a premium service, which is potentially life saving, free of charge and do so happily and with honest intentions. You're an exemplary specimen of the species.

I like Mike's impersonations of Ramsey Dewey 😆

Haha, watching this video was like watching history in making. I imagine (and you'll agree) this is how most of the big and important things were made. Bunch of experts brainstorming an idea, embracing it, digesting, evolving and finally materializing in to a common good. One day, when we all left this world, videos like this will be crucial evidence for historians.

PLEASE DO MORE OF THESE!! Rokas - thank you so much for motivating me to sub to all these guys. The Ultimate Self-Defense Championship is the best thing to happen to the martial arts side of youtube since Afro Ninja!

All of these collabs with you guys are so great!

This was great to watch. Thank you, coaches!

I love these types of videos where you guys come together to discuss topic like this.

I love all you guys. What a great video!

Well, I think MMA is a good label to sell any selection of multiple techniques build into a coherent system. So that guy in the first question should just call it MMA with his selection of techniques that fit nice together. He is an MMA coach with his particular style.

I so enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for this.

Seriously that was a good video with all of you together. Hope you got some more of those before you left.

This was a great discussion! Interesting question! I wonna see "that guy's" Stuff!

This was excellent! What a great idea to put this crew together and just talk about an interesting and thought provoking topic. Thanks coaches!

This is a branding question. How to gain recognition: 1. Train lots of people 2. Win professional fights 3. Used in movies 4. RU-vid, tiktok, instagram 5. Record yourself challenging schools 6. Paid advertisement. 7. Franchise, have branches for your school in multiple states and countries. 8. Use certification system 9. Produce fighters that win tournaments 10. Collaborate with other RU-vidrs. 11. Beat Mike Tyson, Conner McGregor, etc 12. Wow factor. Internal mastery like one inch punch, iron body, iron head, immovable structure, Ki, Chi, Prana etc. 13. Shock factor. Trash talk other arts explaining why some stuff doesn't work.

I appreciated this conversation.

I did invent one once…. It was inspired by Jackie Chan’s cup-holding drunken style, except it was based on holding a bong, so it was a stoned style. It was fun to practice, and an extremely effective defense system against small toddlers.

Canadian folk boxing exists without recognition, but it's also known as "hockey fighting".

This was great a conversation coach!!!

Awesome video. It was great and wholesome to see you all talk together live! :3

I can't believe Rokas was so mean! 😭😭😭😭😭

Tbh I would love to see a collab of coach Ramsey with Stephen wonderboy Thompson two mma guys sharing experiences and also senses Seth icy mike and Jesse e Kano being connected to wonderboy

If he wants recognition, he should make shirts and merch for it. Business cards, stickers, etc.

To be pedantic Hung Gar(Hung Family) aka Hung Kuen(Hung Fist) was created by Hung Hei-gun. Wong Fei Hung was perhaps the most famous practitioner. I believe it originated from Shaolin

Great video and subject. This made my morning. I was organizing some papers and simply just listening to it when I hear Seth go off with his Golem voice haha. That was fairly impressive. The book of Ecclesiastes said it well: “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun." I have seen it done first hand where a guy with a bit of experience leaves the gym, of a martial art that's already a mix of styles, throws lots of it away and adds some odd new stuff, because he states it works great for him, but doesn't realize it probably won't work well for everyone, especially begginers. The gym lasted for about a year, and I'm pretty sure he payed most of the rent with funds from his daytime job. Think he had 5 guys in there at most. I give him credit for trying. He never came back to the original gym. For some reason, I can picture some of these people over selling themselves. Like a guy that's decided to mix his Karate and judo together, but the only strikes he does are exact copies of Paul Pheonix's from tekken. Than his students enter a kudo tournament, and the entire time have the audience wondering what's going on. Aswell as their opponents after a while. "Heeeeeeyaaaaah! If that would of hit, I would smashed you through the wall and we would of had to start fighting outside!" ...."Ok......" guy than winds up for the low hammer fist sweep *thud* "What the heck guy! Did you really just duck down to hammer fist me in the calf!?" "Why isn't this working? Your suppose to go down, than i uppercut palm strike you to knock you into the air, where I than scissor kick you...." "I'm really not sure if what your doing is Karate there guy." Maybe Matt could start his own theoretical style. I don't think anything would be more epic if he went into an organized mma fight and the first thing he did was fire off a haduken, than to have the other fighter jump and fly back as a joke, but he looses his footing, lands hard and ends up out cold. Everyone's just kind of like wondering what just happened. Than some Karate master in the audience stands up and yells "He is the chosen one!"

29mins and im just now realizing Mike is not sitting on a bench or chair. Makes him look so much smaller.

The video itself was interesting, and great to hear everyone's thoughts. Have a buddy who has studied several styles. If you looked up his school it's listed as Karate or Shōrin-ryū Karate, but he incorporates elements of BJJ and a few other styles in the classes when addressing various topics. Don't think he's ever tried to claim it was more than Shōrin-ryū and qualifies, hay, this is something from outside the style that might help in these situations. Off topic, but man this stuck in my head. The camera angles didn't do Icy Mike justice in this video. Think it was in the first episode of the Ultimate Self Defense Championship where Icy Mike said something to the effect of as a smaller person you are always comparing heights. There is this one view that keeps coming up that makes Mike look like a ventriloquist's dummy that had been left on the bench.

This collabs are sick.

21:07 matter vs form, atoms vs purpose, attributes vs essence

This is so cool I love your perspective on situations Ramsey don't stop being who you are

Around 22:45. They mention making a martial art under the name Set-kido (a pun on Seth's name). Which is comical as their is a Martial art in Okinawa Japan which (based off the advertisement and from the Instructors seminars that he does for the local Marines) that is made up of Capoeira, Judo, Karate, Muay Thai. Nobuhiro Hirahara founded the Martial art back in 1992 and has trained many kickboxers and shoot boxers. Most of his time now is spend training Marines for MMA and kickboxing fights. I thought this would be interesting as his classes follow the same structure of the small dojo the Dewey mentioned with the "stand up" philosophy. Hopefully someone enjoys reading this.

I did that back in the late '80s/early '90s, when schools began instituting "zero tolerance for fighting" policies that, in practice, punished students for defending themselves. I found that to be unconscionable, so I developed a style that could only be used nonviolently. It was basically Aikido theory applied via the purely defensive techniques of kickboxing and wrestling, plus some takedowns (modified to reduce the chance of the aggressor getting hurt) and leverage-based pins. The style was called "No Harm No Foul" and it was taught through a series of drills and sparring games. Worked fine for what it was - a way for bullied kids to defend themselves without getting suspended for "fighting". I taught it to groups of elementary and high school aged students and later developed a version for the foster-parents of severely emotionally disturbed kids.

Awesome vid!

HAHAHA. Mai-ki-do (air dance way), Seth-do-ku (Seth way of pain), Ro-katsu (furnace victory, because you burn 'em with technique), and of course, Ram-sei-du-wei-do (The Way of Ramsey Dewey). I can definitely get behind that (because if I get in front of the four of you throwing techniques, I'd have a world of hurt coming my way, haha). Love you guys and your content.

Great video, the multiple view points is so intriguing.

You guys are my own personal Bruce Lee

A stellar video filled with gret advice

Thank you. All of you, for bringing us this as well as the brilliant USD competition.

love you guys

I am subscribed to all of you guys and I enjoy viewing all of your content as well. I am also a martial artist on my own journey for function and truth. You all had excellent and valid points. I especially like what Sensei Seth said about the "style" just being a specific rule set and what Rokas said about if he made Aikido functional it would no longer be Aikido, awesome conversation. I would just like to add 3 things... 1. ALL martial arts, functional or not are based on some combination of striking, takedowns and or grappling. People just do them and teach them differently. Whatever works for you, works for you. 2. Not every "style" or "system" will work for everyone. There are too many different body types and personalities. A small, fast person more than likely wouldn't want to or be able to fight the same way as a big, strong person. 3. And finally, Ramsey himself has said in a previous video, fighting works in a fight! We should try not to get too hung up on things like names and credit and recognition. If what you have works, then it does, people will come to it and in due time, your story will be told.

Unarmed: Wrestling Grappling Striking. Armed: Simple Stick & improvised stuff found out of your dojo. Police Training & Body guard Training. If i ever opened a school we'd do Sparring and Self Defense championship styled assessments. As for the name "What Works". Uniform: what you wear in your daily job.

I’ve never really thought too deeply on creating my own style, just been like, “it would be cool to have something if my own,” but still, there was other take aways from this video. There was other things mentioned, that really made me stop and think about some possible, wrongs, if you will, that I’ve done throughout my martial arts life. An awesome video, a helpful video of you really pay attention, from some very wise men

When you're subscribed to all of these guys it's hard to tell at first whose channel you're on. I'd love to see more group chats from these guys.

Great episode 😊❤

This conversation was a lot of fun to watch!! All of you at the gym just talking whatever is a fun vibe. I wouldn't mind more of this! As a side note the ship of theseus has crossed my mind a few times too when it comes to Rokas' channel. Can you call a hypothetical future functional aikido a school of aikido? Can you call BJJ a school of jujutsu even though it looks nothing like the traditional schools that pre-date judo? The japanese I've met just refer to BJJ as jujutsu at least when I'm around and while I can't see why it would be any different when it comes to aikido I wouldn't mind hearing more from practitioners of aikido.

We love you Ramsey!

You guys need to make this a twice a month podcast. not just one or two of you, no ALL of you together wacking all sorts of issues. i'd subscribe and pay for it no doubt. there is a serious lack of good podcasts about MA

This is the best collaboration in the history of martial arts on RU-vid.

YES ! that s why i got also hyped also by the USDC :) i hope you made more of those with those guys.

Whats it like knowing when you’re in any building or business that you have the biggest egg roll in the room?

I like your conclusion 😊 And thats what I think also. But this concept of you all talking like a podcast I would surely like to see more 😊

Aside from "Why?" promoting a new martial art today for "recognition" wouldn't be too much different than back in the day. Hard work. You're the master, you train other teachers or "disciples" and they open schools on their own. You travel and do seminars. It's almost a life dedication if recognition is what you're after. And it may not happen while you're alive. I haven't watched this whole video yet but just throwing this in.

My former taekwondo taecher, that was very eclectical and added what he thought useful, dindt call his place "X taekwondo school" but simply "Jorge Prieto MARTIAL school", school meaning not his style but his place, his students,, his legacy, etc.

Great collab

Another great video. If you had a school in the states I would love to attend. Very stoic philosophical approach to most topics and I enjoy how you mind works. Having the guys weighing in was also an enjoyable treat.

I feel the "own style" is more related to business branding.