I've spent my share of time in the martial-arts world, and there's a funny-sad phenomenon I've noticed. 

There are a zillion 'styles' of each martial art.

I've often wondered why that was until a few years ago I figured it out.  I was visiting an old dojo where I used to work out and asked why the head sensei, a great guy named Vernon Owens who I can't seem to track down any more, had changed the name of his studio from "Enshin Karate" to something else..."Ko Ken" Karate or some such.  The answer, it would seem, was that he was tired of paying a kind of fealty to his old teacher, Kancho Joko Ninomiya.  He didn't want to be a branch of a different style, he wanted to be doing his own thing.

Funny thing was that Ninomiya, maybe ten years before, had made a similar break from his old teacher, a guy named Ashihara.  Ninomiya rechristened what he was teaching from "Ashihara" Karate to "Enshin" Karate.  He, too, had become tired of being a wing on the Ashihara mansion, and decided that he wanted to be a master himself.

It's all completely understandable...a version of adolescent rebellion manifesting later in adulthood.  "I've worked hard, too, I've made a contribution, why should I continue to pay homage to this old, almost dead guy?" 

I don't know.  I've never been a master of a martial art, so I can't really fully understand the kind of commitment and sacrifice that it takes to really master a style.  It's a lifetime, truth be told, and I suspect after a lifetime one does want some recognition.  You're certainly not likely to get much financial remuneration for being a 'master,' so I understand why someone would at least want a wee bit o' respect.  I also have never fully been a part of the Eastern system of near-despotic rule of the elder, which permeates most martial arts systems.

On the other hand, I also think, in a way, that there's nothing cooler when someone with the credentials of an Eric Cressey makes a nod to his teacher in print:  "I learned this from this or that coach."  It's just--good manners, especially in the world of fitness, which as we can see, is an ever-shifting universe.  It's not like most traditional martial arts at all: if anything, there's a tendency in the fitness world to reject past ideas and to jump on the latest bandwagon of the latest technique or idea.

There's a balance to be struck here, I think, between reverence for what's come before and the impulse to make your own contribution and have your own voice.  You can't really patent or copyright a movement; for that reason it's polite to say, "Hey, I got this from so-and-so."  On the other hand, you don't want to wind up like David Brent in the original "Office" series, saying "I made up the term 'Exsqueeze Me?' (you know, for 'excuse me'?) and I think it's time I was acknowledged for that."