 In the last episode we shared a conversation I recently had with Jesse Encamp, aka the Karate Nerd. Now he reached out to me and we talked about our YouTube journeys and how we establish our channels. And in this episode, today, we're going to share our experiences and stepping outside the boundaries of our own arts and how we explore the expansive world of martial arts, both traditional and contemporary mixed martial arts. I have a question for you. So, with your brother, so you grew up pretty much doing a lot of traditional Karate training, correct? Yes. So, your brother is now in MMA. Is there a lot of overlapping and not clashing, but like, how do you guys view each other's arts? Like, how do you find that like middle ground to mix? Because you're doing a lot more videos together, which I think is fantastic. So, how is that dynamic working between you? Yeah, well, it's actually, it's interesting. Hmm. I think we learn a lot from each other and we also respect the fact that we both chose different paths. But we understand that there are differences and similarities. And once you have that mutual respect, then you can work together. But if, you know, when we were kids, we were always fighting. And we can't do that now because one will end up in the cemetery and one will be in the hospital or in jail, right? But what I love, because I love learning, right, is when I see Oliver doing MMA, I learn so much about karate because he's doing a lot of what I consider our practical applications of traditional karate techniques that have perhaps never been pressure tested until MMA became a thing, right? And I can then try to deconstruct those techniques and do them in thin air and suddenly it looks like a kata. So I've been doing many of those techniques without even knowing it since I was a kid, right? But he will also discover, yeah, this actually is that kata technique that we did as kids, right? And he didn't even know it because karate has perhaps, I don't know if it's ever been pressure tested in the way that an MMA fighter tests his skills on a daily basis. And sometimes I join him in his classes and just, you know, wash him, train or film him. And sometimes he helps me with karate classes or seminars. So we still share a lot of knowledge and techniques with each other. But obviously he's at a much higher level as a fighter than I will ever be. And I do my more nerdy karate, Kobudo, Okinawa stuff that he sometimes pretends to be interested in. But I can sense that he wants something else sometimes. But I think we get along pretty well, maybe because we had our battles when we were younger. So now, you know, we're more mature, but it's fun to see a different perspective. Because sometimes I want more of that rough kind of practical application and fighting stuff. And then I can get that. But then, and some days maybe he wants some of the more traditional aspects and then he can get that. Because it's a lot to be a professional fighter and just grinding and wrestling every day. It's tough. And so I think that we complement each other very well. So I wish everybody could have a training partner and a brother like that. That's amazing. And especially you're talking about pressure testing. You're not just pressure testing it in a competition, but now you're pressure testing it against pieces of other arts too. So it's like, you know, somebody who trained karate, you know, one day might not have encountered, you know, techniques from other art or a boxing or something. So seeing that mixture together, I think it's fantastic. And I love the video you guys did where you made your MMA kata. I thought that was really, really interesting. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, why not? You could do that. And in my recent video when I went to Thailand, I did a Thai boxing kata, for instance. I mean, it's just the concept of kata. I love it. Why not use it? So many people put down kata, but it's like, if you really look at it, there's so much value you can get out of it. I mean, people are like, oh, if you can't use it in the fight, it's so good. Well, I mean, there's ideas there and it's connective tissue. And, you know, I used, I had a guy sneak up behind me and try to get a sucker punch on my kidney. And I actually ended up doing two steps of our kata. It just, it just happened like, oh, okay, the ideas are there. So it's like muscle memory. Exactly. So I just wish people would kind of have that open-minded and mindedness. And I think like channels like yours are really good to showing because you've got two distinct worlds right there. Because, you know, there's the MMA side, the traditional side, they always clash. But we see with you guys how well it can mesh and how much it's shared ideas. And I think that message is very, very important to put out there because there's just too much fighting on that. It's unnecessary. Yes. And it's funny you brought that up because right now I'm working on a video where we switch lives for one day. So Oliver tries out the karate nerd life and I tried the pro fighter life for one day. And I think that's actually a very fun video and I'm sure you're going to enjoy that. But you're right though because like you talked about, you don't always, you know, you teach the seminar punch strike. That language barrier comes into play and our people are coming from different styles. You know, what makes sense in your art might not make sense to them. So it's like, you're right, you got to keep that in mind. And that is something to go into the kind of, a lot of people don't realize that it's not just a one size fits all. Exactly. Especially if you've never ventured outside of your own style before, you might think that everybody does it the same way. But you know, even within the same style, you will have lots of variation. So it's kind of like if you grow up in a small town and you think the whole world is like your town, right? But once you start traveling and expanding your horizons, you will see that there are many ways of life. Just like there are many ways of the martial arts. A little bit of culture shock built into that if you're not prepared for it. Exactly. When I started doing the jiu-jitsu classes, it was such a culture shock for me because the stances are different. A lot of the concepts are different that kind of went against what I had previously learned. But there's so many times where we do a technique. I'm like, oh, we had this in Kempo. It was just called something else. And you start to see that overlap. And like, I love it when people leave comments like, oh, well, if Taekwondo was so good, how can we don't see it in MMA? It's like, well, how come you don't see it? It's there. Exactly. How come you don't see it? Yeah, why don't we see karate? It's there. If we know what to look for, you can see that there's, you know, common roots in there. And then there are artists out there. I mean, so many great knockouts are Taekwondo kicks. Yes. It's not just cage fighting. There's other disciplines. The whole thing is people are taking the best of what they've learned and they're making their own particular blend. And that's the artistry in it. And I think that's the fasting part of it. So yeah, so yeah, overall, I like the idea of, you know, let's take all these different arts for people and just get rid of the bait of which one's better and see, well, what's the best of all of them that you can combine? Like, what can you actually pull? What's this overlining? What's the benefit from each art that you can pull? Because every art has something good in it somewhere. Is there any specific martial art you think that I should explore next? What would be interesting to see me try? Well, from my perspective, have you tried Kemple? American Kemple? Right, right. So I experienced that sort of with Sensei Seth, but obviously I didn't take a real class. Yeah, we just compare them a little bit. But that would be interesting for sure. Which Kemple? Is the American Kemple? Is the American Kemple or is he of a different version? So there's this whole thing about, right, with one with the M and one with the N, right? Well, there's a lot of, yeah, well, that's the spelling, but there's a lot of schools because there's like Shaolin Kemple, there's Hawaiian Kemple, Chinese Kemple, Ed Parker, specifically American Kemple. They're all completely different curriculums. Well, honestly, the only Kemple I've practiced is actually in Okinawa, and he was called Okinawan Kemple. So I haven't really experienced the different American ones, but there seems to be a lot of... Yeah, there's a lot of flavors, and even within the American... There's a lot of politics and splits within the American system, so there's different ones. But Kemple's kind of hard. You got to find the right schools. There's a lot... I hate to say it, but there's a lot of McDojo's that are Kemple schools here in America. It's the same with Al Karate, I think. Yeah. And... But when you find the right Kemple school, because there's... Kemple's got this misconception to it. They're like... People look at her like, oh, you're doing a 20-step sequence. The self-defense sequence, well, that's never going to work. They're never going to stand there. It's like, well, no, we don't expect them to stand there. But this is... Our techniques are almost kind of like mini katas. So you got to look at the situation, and there's like probably a dozen different principles and ideas that you got to pull out and see how they apply. You're not meant to copy and paste these... You wouldn't take a kata and do a whole sequence out in the street from self-defense, but you would take what you learned from it. Exactly. So it's an exercise. It teaches you something. Absolutely. Yeah. Here's the analogy I use. This is my favorite analogy. I use the martial arts like the language. And Kemple's a good way to look at if you're learning a brand new foreign language. So you have your basics, you know, your keon, which is the vocabulary. Those are the words. You learn how to pronounce the words correctly. You learn how to spell them. You learn how to use them. Then you've got your grammar, which are your principles, your rules. And then when you take your grammar and your vocabulary, you put them together, you start to learn how to make sentences. So with Kemple, you learn your basics, and then you learn your different principles. You know how, you know, our power principles, you know, gravitational marriage and all that. And then our self-defense techniques are basically sentences, but they're like... If you're learning the language, they're a sample sentence. You're just seeing an example of how the grammar and vocabulary work together so that once you understand that, you can make your own sentences for a conversation for you to have later, a freestyle conversation. Yeah. And a lot of people think it's just, oh, well, those techniques won't work. What they do, if they're taught correctly, one, there's a lot of schools that don't teach it that way, which is very unfortunate, but I... My first instructor did that. He just taught us how to memorize it and go through it. We didn't really break it down. My second instructor showed me, he's like, first, slow down. He goes, you're doing a ton of hits. He goes, but do you even know what each hit is doing? And he broke it down. And every day we came in, he's like, okay, we're doing this technique this way now. He would change your curriculum constantly. What that did though was, I realized, okay, it's not set in stone. The ideas are the same. He's just changing the order. He's changing the application. Oh, he's bringing MMA into the mix. So now we're going from this technique that used to have 20 sequences. It's got two in the goes through double leg takedowns. So he actually kind of showed me how you break it apart like a Lego set and you can rebuild the bricks together to build something that you need based on what you want and how you know how pieces fit. That reminds me. That's the analogy I like. I like that because actually when I practiced Okinawan Kempo, when I was in Okinawa, the teacher told me that there are three ways of doing a technique. So he said, there is the way that you've been taught. That was the first way. And then there is the second way, which is the way that you do it for yourself based on your own mindset, body type and preference. And then there's the third way, which is the way you teach it. And they're not always necessarily the exact same. So there's a process, there's an evolution always in the technical aspects. So I like that idea at least. So there's not just one that fits all. And I think what you're saying to you to play off that, I think it fits itself because once you teach it in a way, you start to learn it differently and you start to practice it differently. Yeah, exactly. Because I worked with kids for quite a few years teaching kids classes and sometimes taking a technique and breaking it down to the simplest level. There were so many times that I explained it to them. I go, oh, I never noticed that before. So it kind of like enlightened me. I got these little light bulb moments. And of course, when I go back in practice, I now put in those new ideas in. So I think that's just kind of a self-feeding cycle, which helps us improve. Exactly. And that's what teaching is so important. It's like, it's definitely after practicing, it's the second best way to learn something. You just teach somebody else. And like I said previously, you don't even have to be an expert at it. Just teach it for yourself because you want to discover more and learn more and understand more about this technique. But a lot of people don't like that idea because they don't feel confident enough to teach. But yeah. I taught mainly kids and I had an interesting experience again right before the pandemic happened. I was invited to teach at a campus seminar and a good friend of mine was running seminar. I'm like, sure, that'd be great. And then I realized I'm like, wait, you know, I've taught kids. I mean, I taught a couple of adult classes here and there, but they were years ago. You know, I'm still getting back into professional my own material. With the kids program, you know, we don't do the whole adult curriculum. You know, they get the first couple of belt levels. So I knew that stuff real well. And I realized the seminar, they were all black belts. Not just first three black belts, second, third, fourth, fifth. I'm like, what am I going to teach them? You know, like, and like you say, I'm kind of nervous. I'm like, this is not a basic class. I have to come up with something that's not just rudimentary that they already know. But I got to have, I have to give them something fresh. So what I ended up doing was, you know, I've been training judo and then jujitsu for a couple of years. I'm like, why don't I, why don't I do a class based on my observations of how you can mix them. So I took a lot of the jujitsu moves and showed them how to transition from our Keppel techniques using the jujitsu moves, the locks and the submissions and changing. And they seem to get a kick out of that. But that was a really interesting experience for me because I had that overwhelming sense of like, oh, am I qualified to do this? You know, do I have the knowledge for them? But I'm like, I don't want to teach at them. But let's find, let's find something fun to explore. And it worked out well and I had a great time with that. But it's like, you're right. Sometimes you go in and you're like, uh, yeah. Like what do you think would be interesting to see? I'm always trying to search for new topics or ideas. That's a good question. I like what you're doing right now. Um, yeah, no, like how you're going to get North Carolina actually where your sense moved. And really something with, uh, I filmed with, um, you know, I see Mike. Yes. Yes. I filmed with him and Sensei Seth and Wonder Boy and all of them were kind of in the same area. So yeah, those seem to do pretty well when I travel around and meet people. Yeah. That seems to, because that's actually something we were getting ready to put together a series of videos right before the pandemic hit. We were going to be like, oh, let's do a day in the life of and like go to like, because we're in an area, um, I'm in South Florida. So there's Miami, there's Palm Beach. We have a lot of different martial arts around us. I mean, you can find different Chinese schools, Korean schools. I mean, there's, there's BJJ, there's a whole mix. So like, why don't we do topics where we go visit? Like, let's take one class in the school, one class in that school and kind of do like a day in the life of and we were just setting that up and in the pandemic hit and all the schools shut down. We're like, all right, we're putting that on the back burner. Yeah. But I like what you've done. Um, you're, you're a Muay Thai video. Oh, the most recent one. You mean? Yeah. When I went to Thailand. I like the idea. Yeah. And I think students stuff like that. I find that very intriguing when you step outside your box, you're like, Oh, let me go try this. And then you work with them and spar them. I love to see that, that I don't want to say clash because it's not a clash, but you're taking two different worlds, putting them together. But I think it's great for the audience to see not only the similarities, but then the differences between the arts, but there's, you know, people don't realize there's a lot of overlap and sometimes you have to mix stuff like that to see it overlap. And people are like, okay, well, maybe, you know, martial arts are more in common because there's too much out there of which art is better. Yeah. And I hate that debate because it's like, well, yeah, there's so many different shared roots. But the thing is you always have to frame it like which martial art is the best. Let's compare Aikido versus karate or something like that, right? Of course. So on the surface, it looks like it's a conflict, but once you look under the surface, you realize, oh, they actually have more in common than I thought because after all, we all have the same tool to work with the human body, right? You know, the arm only bends this much, like there are only so many ways you can attack somebody with a joint lock, for instance, like that's why I always want to see karate or all martial arts like the mountain, right? And there are many paths that lead to the top. So meaning many different arts and when you stand at the bottom of the mountain, they look so different, right? Because they're so far apart, but obviously they converge at the top and essentially, you know, a master in one martial art will instantly recognize a master in another martial art because they're essentially the same because you move from technique to principle and principles are universal. That's why there are principles, right? So that's the way I like to view it. And and of course, there's also the whole idea behind cross training that sometimes you have to climb the mountain next to yours to see your own mountain better because it gives you perspective. So these are the kind of the metaphors that I love to use when talking about these things. Such an incredible way to see the journey. And I think it's important that we take multiple perspectives into account if we want to grow as martial artists. Now, I'd like to extend an extreme thank you to Jesse Sensei for his effort and time in this discussion. And if you guys haven't already, please be sure to check out and visit and subscribe to his channel and you can find a link to that in the description down below. There's a wealth of information over there. I'm sure you'll all enjoy it. Thank you so much for watching.