Episode 669 - Rapid Fire Q&A #10
In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams take on another iteration of the Rapid Fire Question and Answers.
Rapid Fire Q&A #10 - Episode 653
Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams tackle a series of questions from you, the listeners, in the form of a Rapid Fire Q&A. Here are the questions they tried to answer:
Should we be vetting children to avoid potentially giving dangerous skills to future oppressors?
What are the tell-tale signs that new students have trained before and how do you handle students who say they haven’t?
more questions in the episode!
After listening and answering these questions, it would be exciting to know what are your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section below!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome to a live episode of whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. You might be listening later, maybe watching later. And to all of you, we say thank you. Thanks for joining us for our 10th installment of our Q&A episodes. If you're unfamiliar with the format, you all send in questions to Andrew, Andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com and I don't know about them ahead of time. And then Andrew could not quite try to stump, tries to stump me but we do these fun q&a shows. So, we'll be doing that, we'll be mixing in some other stuff with that. But we're now almost a minute and I haven't even welcomed you, Andrew. Welcome. Thank you. Hi. How are you? Man?
Andrew Adams:
It seems weird to welcome me since we've been chatting for a couple hours now.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, we've been chatting for a minute here doing some other episodes, always enjoy recording day with you. Thank you. And if you're new to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, well, you should check it out. We do some cool stuff. Hello to you also, Stacey. For those of you who are coming in who might be used to first cup, we're probably not going to have the same level of acknowledgement and engagement that we do on first cup, because we're not going to, we don't want to break the flow too much. But we hope that you all will continue to respond in the chat, we may feature some of your comments, depending on where things go as the show goes. So without further ado, Andrew, you want to kick it off with the first question. Am I being timed?
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely you're always being timed
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm always being timed. A lot of pressure.
Andrew Adams:
For those that maybe don't know, our format for our q&a's, these are rapid fire q&a. It's not just a question-answer. Jeremy has a tendency to, he's got the gift of Gab, as my mom would say.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Very diplomatically said.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yeah. So we're gonna put five minutes on the clock. And we're gonna ask aquestion, and Jeremy is gonna have five minutes, no more than five minutes to answer it. All right. Okay. And if you do happen to be watching right now, and you have a question that you want to rapidfire have Jeremy asked, go ahead and put it in the chat. And I'm watching the chat here as well. So alright Here's the first question. This question was sent in by John Franco Moresu. And the question is, if some bullies suffer from overconfidence, quote, confidence, should we be vetting children to make sure we are not potentially giving dangerous skills to future oppressors?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think that's a constant process. I'm assuming we're talking about in the context of a martial art school. I think that is the responsibility of everybody around that child. It's the responsibility of the parents. It's the responsibility of the instructor, the martial arts instructor, instructors. When I think of kids that the bullying tendency was strong enough that adding skill on top of it was going to be a detriment, at least for a time. That wasn't secret. That wasn't hard to pick out. You would know pretty pretty soon. You bring a kid to class, you give them any kind of opportunity to work with a partner, and they're going to be smashing that kid around. Oh, okay. So this is somebody we've got to watch out for. But this is somebody we have to engage with, and train with in a different way. And if they're not old enough to understand that this behavior is unacceptable, then it may be an example of a kid needing to either receive private instruction, or throw him in the adult class. I've seen that work really well not permanently, but just for a short period of time. And if you have to, it's not their time, when they have to step out of class until they can not be a detriment to everyone around them.
Andrew Adams:
Wow, that was quick,
Jeremy Lesniak:
Fast, keeping it fast. All right, I have a gift of gab. So I figured you know, I would hold some of that gift back for myself. You know want a bit of self care.
Andrew Adams:
There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. You know one of the places that you get the opportunity to give your gift of gab and not have to worry about time constraints at all is on the videos that sometimes you give to your Patreon subscribers.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I like doing the videos for Patreon because it gives me the opportunity to explore stuff, you know, sometimes we'll do really focus things like when we came back from Comic Con, we did a video, I mean, we went was like 20-30 minutes, I just placed a bunch of footage together. Sometimes it's training stuff, you know, just, it's, it's on the video side, it's whatever we want to do. Really, that seems fun. Because I know that the people in the Patreon are going to be, they're gonna be game, they're going to be open to it. And I think that's cool. What we've done most recently, with Patreon, for those of you who don't know who are paying attention to our social media, we dropped another book. This one is not specifically a martial arts book, it's called 12 months to help 12 with the subtitle 12, simple, inexpensive, and even free habits to improve your life. Something along those lines, I should have this memorized, I don't. But not only do we let everyone know, hey, this book is out today. But we also for people in the right tier, they got the manuscript for free. Not a free printed copy of the book, but we gave them a Word document.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, just one of the many benefits you get of being a Patreon subscriber,
Jeremy Lesniak:
We try to stack value in there, we try to make it so overwhelmingly valuable that people don't leave and we seem to do a good job of that. If you want to join the Patreon patreon.com/whistlekick, it's the number one way that you can support what we do in our mission.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, and it doesn't take much you can literally for just two bucks a month. You get stuff like you will get, you know, exclusive content that you don't get anywhere else. You know, it's not going to be up on this live feed. It's not going to be posted anywhere else. So two bucks a month. What's that come out to like 43 cents an episode? 37 cents in episodes something like that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
25 cents an episode? Yeah, yeah. If you if you think this episodes worth a quarter,
Andrew Adams:
if you think I'm worth 12 and a half cents.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's the value of the the merch that they get? You don't even have to be worth 12 and a half cents. You could be worth like, I think six to seven cents and it's still a compelling value.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yeah. So people should for sure if they haven't done so, check it out.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah patreon. Boom. Alright, I have a banner I could put up.
Andrew Adams:
Oh cool. Is it multicolored with flashing lights?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I mean, granted this is the first cut banner, but
Andrew Adams:
that's as lame as this one.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, it's not. It's not that lame. Hey.
Andrew Adams:
Again, it's not multicolored or blinking lights
Jeremy Lesniak:
that it doesn't keep blinking lights.
Andrew Adams:
See now maybe if we had more Patreon subscribers, we could get better software.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Do we want blinking light software?
Andrew Adams:
Alright, fine. All right. Are you ready for question two?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Only if you don't want to add in Gabe or Jenny's follow up from the chat. You can see the chat right?
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, cuz I'm here on my iPad as well. Oh, do you think that Miyagi quote, I know, bad student only bad teacher? Oh, yeah. So there was a quote in the Karate Kid series of the Karate Kid franchise that no bad student only bad teacher? What are your thoughts on that?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I disagree. Because if we're looking at it in the context of that direct relationship, there are bad teachers for specific students. There are bad students for specific teachers. If you're assuming that the student is infinitely flexible, or the teacher is infinitely flexible, I'll agree. But that's not the case. If we take the example of the small child who is using the skills that they're developing potentially in a bad way, that kid's going to need a heck of a lot more time with that teacher, potentially more time than is available. Doesn't mean that it's not possible, but it may not be probable or realistic.
Andrew Adams:
Okay, yeah, I can see that. All right. Are you ready? Are you ready for question two?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Let's do question two.
Andrew Adams:
All right, question two. Alright, here we go Question #2, this one comes from Chris Rickard. And his question is, what are the telltale signs that a new student has trained before? And how would you handle a student who comes in and says they haven't?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Alright. telltale signs usually have to do with proprioception, especially in my experience, unilateral movement. Most people who play sports, typical high school sports, don't have as much experience moving their arms independently in repetitive ways. You know, like, think about like punching bam, bam, bam, right. Like, that's not a movement pattern that happens a lot in traditional sports, especially with kicking. If someone's able to pick their foot up and they're able to alternate kicks, that's, that's a really good sign, it could be indicative that they're just a natural athlete, they have a really good understanding of their body. But you can usually tell, not in the way they move, or in the way they respond to other people's movements. It's not a 100% but they usually give you a good idea. Now, that person says that they haven't trained. There are a couple of reasons that it could be, you know, it could be that they're embarrassed that they've had so little training, they don't want to admit it. Or it could be that they trained so long ago, and they forgotten so much that they consider themselves to be a brand new student, or they don't want you to know where they trained because the instructor that they had ended up becoming known as a not such a good person, right? There are so many reasons that we could point to and say, I understand why that person is trying to hide the fact that they've trained before. And I feel like there's kind of an unspoken, part three here, like, what do you do with that? Which is just the same thing you do with every other student, you give them a safe space to train, you know, maybe you pull them aside after their first class and say, you know, there might be some stuff you're not willing to share with me, that's totally okay. If you want to share with me at some point, I'm happy to listen. Based on what I've seen of you, here's what we need to keep in mind. Right? If that person, let's say has enough technique that they are stronger or faster than other students starting at the same time, you may need to point that out, hey, whether you realize it or not, whether you're hiding something from me or not, you're stronger than the other people who are our recent additions to this class, please do not use your strength or your speed or whatever. Without awareness. It's something we need to be aware of, for the safety of everyone, stuff like that. Other than that, like, I think you evaluate, you handle in the same way you handle everybody else, if you're not constantly evaluating your students to make sure that they're doing okay, that they're progressing, that they're not harming others or limiting other's progress. I think you're doing it wrong.
Andrew Adams:
Cool. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, like you said, there, there may be a multitude of reasons why someone might not want to divulge. I think, you know, obviously, the most harmful one is that, you know, the back in the 70s people come in and test other schools. And, you know, like, that sort of thing doesn't, to my knowledge really happen much anymore.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But there are schools that think it happens. And there are individuals that think it happens when I started my most recent school, which I wasn't there very long. I went in and intentionally downplayed the experience that I had. Because, when you've trained a long time, I don't mean five years, but when you've trade for decades, and you know that you're going to step into a class where the majority of the instruction is coming from someone who's trained for a small fraction of that time, doesn't mean there isn't anything to learn doesn't mean I'm not willing to learn from them. Yep. But it does mean, and I've had this happen a number of times, where people start to treat you differently. They get nervous, they're teaching, and then they're looking to see like, how are you responding to this thing that I'm teaching? Yeah. And I didn't want that. You know, so I kind of sandbagged it a little bit.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. And I get that. I mean we were talking earlier last night, I went to a taekwondo class at a school that I had never been to before. I have a very good friend who trains at this particular school, and she said I'm more than welcome to come anytime. So I went last night and I brought my white belt Because in in the dojo that I currently trained in, that's the etiquette that when you go to a new school, you don't bring your black belt. Sure. And I know the instructor at this taekwondo school, I've met him a couple of times. And my friend, let them know that I was coming. And when I walked in, you know, he came right up. And you know, I spoke with him. And he asked me if I had my black belt. I said, I didn't I didn't even bring it. He said, No, you're welcome to wear it. But I didn't have it with me, which was fine. And there was no announcement to the school to the rest of the class who I was, which is fine. I didn't expect an announcement like I was kind of there just to work out and try something new and different, because I don't currently train in Taekwondo. But at the end of class, one of the newer students came up and said, You've trained before, haven't you? And I said, Yes, I have. And she said, Well, it was obvious, you know, we had just, you know, we were doing some some techniques and things and it's hard to not show that, you know, unless I was gonna pretend to be bad, which would is a totally different discussion. But yeah, you know, I was just there was a white belt, but I wasn't really white belt.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I get it. Cool.
Andrew Adams:
We should talk about giving away some stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Review time.
Andrew Adams:
Who doesn't love free stuff?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, so one of the things we're doing with these q&a episodes as we're reading a review, and we're encouraging people to leave reviews, and the two best places, Apple podcasts, and Facebook facebook.com/whistlekick, if you go to the Apple podcast app, from your iPad, or your iPhone, those are the easiest ways to get to it. You cannot do it from a computer without iTunes. iTunes is a pain in the butt. I'm not expecting anyone's going to download iTunes, just leave a review if you're an Android person, but if you choose to thank you, I appreciate it. We have been mentioning Google reviews in the past, but those actually doesn't look like unless I'm missing something. Google doesn't break out podcast reviews separately from just standard brand reviews. So you know, we're not gonna lean on that at this point. We'll ask for those in the future. This is a review that goes back to earlier this year.
Andrew Adams:
Hang on. It's not Daniel Ham, is it?
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's not? It's not.
Andrew Adams:
Okay. Okay. Just checking. In
Jeremy Lesniak:
Unless he's leaving reviews under other names now. which we do not condone.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, no, but congratulations, Daniel, on winning the last one.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Two in a row. Yeah, cuz we didn't have a good system for tracking this. And we really still don't, but we'll figure it out. Alright, so this comes from the wordman92. So whoever wordman92 is, email me Jeremy@whistlekickcom and we're gonna send you a code for a gift, essentially, a gift certificate to the whistlekick store. Great martial arts podcast, I've been interested in involved off and on with the martial arts since I was five. This podcast not only deals with the mechanics, but also the martial arts as a lifestyle. I've not always trained, but the way of life has never left me. This podcast offers much broadly to the listener, I highly recommend it. Well, thank you, wordman92. And let's face it, if you have not left reviews, and you'd like free whistlekick stuff, now's the time. Now's the time to leave reviews, because we're not getting hit with a bunch of them. And as more and more start coming in, you know, we're not going to give discounts to everyone, but we will maintain a percentage. So if we're getting, you know, five reviews, we'll give out probably one or two. But if we're getting 50 reviews, yeah, I have no problem giving up 10. Because they help us that much. We hadn't put it out on it.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah absolutely. So if if you are wordman92 get in touch
Jeremy Lesniak:
Thank you, when thank you to everyone who's left reviews in the past.
Andrew Adams:
Alright, so question number three. This comes from, from a good friend of the show, Francis Cordon.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Francis!
Andrew Adams:
This question is, if someone was to approach you have to learn self defense purely with no preconceptions of what that means, what would your advice be? What type of resources would you recommend?
Jeremy Lesniak:
It depends dramatically on how much time they're going to put in. Do they want to learn self defense in a day a week? Or do they want to train at a traditional martial arts school indefinitely, but their "why" is the first reason on their list of self defense. What I advise is so dramatically different If someone's coming, and they want to learn a few things as quickly as possible, that's seeking out a decent instructor and doing some private training, you know, an hour or two, I can teach someone an hour to a handful of things that are more likely to be helpful than not having them. The other end of the spectrum, if somebody wants to train, but they're their primary, why is self defense, then we can unpack what they might look for in a school? Can you read the question again?
Andrew Adams:
Absolutely. The question is, if someone was to approach you to learn self defense purely with no preconceptions of what that means, what would your advice be? And what type of resources would you recommend?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. So they're probably not gonna end up at a standard traditional school with the word purely. So I'll retract all that stuff. It still does come down to time, but the tone of the question suggested something that they want to work on, as they move forward. There are schools out there, though, they're not common, that they're more combatives schools that will teach self-defense elements think more like a Krav Maga style. They'll blend in tool usage like like firearms. Because these all may be part of the equation depending on the specific implementation. And the reason somebody wants to train self defense, you know, if, if you're someone who has to learn self defense, because of your job, for example, you know, there are reasons why this is important. But if they have no preconceived notions, I think the place to start them is understanding violence. You know, whether you're reading some of the works from Rory Miller, whether you're reading some of the specific episodes we've had, where we talk about or have guests on, talking about violence and the realities of violence. I think, if you don't know the landscape, it becomes very difficult to identify and select what it is you want to take from it. So an exposure is critical. You know, I might make them watch all the John Wick movies a few times. You know, maybe they're watching The Raid on repeat and, you know, I'm being playful here, but there's something to that, right. These are these are films that are closer to the reality of violence than Karate Kid or Ninja Turtles or a lot of other you know, any Chuck Norris film. And so the more exposure someone has to material that is closer to realistic, the better they can choose what it is, that is important to them. Not specifically related to this, but somebody posted a question in a martial arts group this morning. Hey, I want to do this. They wanted to open a martial arts school. Should I open it in the local YMCA? And everybody came through from their own understanding of their own situations. Nobody but myself. And last I looked at the thread still, nobody else said why don't you tell us more about your goals and how you want to teach and why you want to teach because those are all very relevant. You don't understand the "why" you're never going to get, you're less likely to get the best solution shooting blind.
Andrew Adams:
Okay, good.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How's my time on that one? Whoo. 4:11 Nice.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Alright. Let's talk about some programs whistlekick has. You should put the banner back up. So people watching know what they're looking at.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I missed that. I missed that banner where did it go?
Andrew Adams:
If people you know, there's four or five people watching. If you've got any questions that you want me to ask Jeremy. Feel free to send them along. They can be fun, they can be silly, they can be serious, doesn't matter.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now or later. you know if it's not now we can roll it into Episode 11 for this. So we've got four training programs we've got a strength and conditioning program. We've got a speed development program. We have an endurance program. We've got a flexibility program. And many of you know that I have had the good fortune to train with and earn rank with Bill Wallace. I've a testing promotion coming up. If you know anything about Bill Wallace, you know that flexibility is kind of important to him. So what am I doing to prepare my flexibility? Oh, like, I literally wrote a program. So I'm following my program and my following to the letter. No, because I understand the principles and it well enough that I can take aspects. And that's I think the key to any of the programs that we do is if you've gone through them a few times, you can make modifications that get you where you need to go better, you understand you. I understand these programs, that's why I wrote them. So if you take the two and you combine it, you're good to go. Oh, and the flexibility programs completely free.
Andrew Adams:
I was just about to ask him, I was just about to ask it cost a lot of money right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
$0. It's negative $0.
Andrew Adams:
So if someone doesn't like it, you'll refund them their money back?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I will give them double their money back. That is a guarantee the flexibility program, I actually will if somebody is unhappy with any of the programs that we do, I'll refund you. Not six years later, but yeah, if you if you do it, if you show me that you went through the program, and you didn't get more flexible or stronger or faster, or your cardio isn't amazingly improved. Prove to me that you did that? Yeah, not only will I give you your money back, we'll go back to the drawing board. I'll figure out why. I'll probably end up giving you a free program that I custom designed for you to figure it out. But guess what? We've refunded zero, because they work.
Andrew Adams:
That says something. All right. So we've got one more question which actually Gabe dropped in the chat just now, which is our rates do it? Okay. So I want you to, we're going to use your mind's eye. Right now. You ready? You are Jeremy Lesniak you're a brown belt. Okay. You're you've been competing at tournaments all through the spring, it's now the middle of the summer, you get your black belt. You have a competition next week, you are and you've got more competitions coming up for the rest of the season, you have been given the option to continue to finish the season as a brown belt, or compete in the black belt division, which you now are, what do you what would your suggestion be to that person?
Jeremy Lesniak:
It depends on how that tournament season is implemented. If we're talking about something where there's points being earned. Those ratings organizations usually have a way of handling this because it's not like it's uncommon. People rarely earn their black belt over, you know, Christmas break. So if there's a way to handle it, given the ruleset, you do whatever that says, if there is not, or there are no points, I think the right thing to do is to compete as a black belt. Because if you're a black belt, you are a black belt, you shouldn't compete as a black belt. It's the same reason that if I start over at a new school, and I'm a blue belt, I'm not stepping in the ring, I'm not steppinmg into the competition ring as a blue belt. It's unfair, I have earned a black belt, and to represent myself as something otherwise is, you know, it's not ideal. This is why more and more I'm pulling back on the idea of rank and competition. There are competitions out there shout out to Adam Grogan, his crew, the Northeast open, where they have guidelines based more on time than ont rank. If you've been doing it you know, for five, I think five years is the top tier. If you've been training for five years or more, you're in the black belt division, regardless of what's around your waist. Interesting. And I think that there's some there's a lot of logic in there. I had something similar. In terms of age, when I was competing, there was an age split that I went from one group to the next. I think it was like 14 to 15 when I was competing, and my birthday is in June depending on the competition, because there were multiple ratings organizations at the time, one of them wanted you to keep your age for the whole calendar year. The other wanted you to move up and bring your points with you. So it created some confusion we had to talk to people to get that all figured out. But again, unless you're stalking points, it doesn't really matter. I believe firmly whether you want to call it iron sharpens iron or whatever, that by being around better people you're going to get better. If you've earned a black belt and your goal in competition is to improve by stepping up into the black belt division even though you're probably going to get spanked. You're going to progress much faster than Being at the top of the brown belt division.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. I would agree. You know, again, points were standing. What would be your rationale for staying in the brown belt division to win get a trophy? Is that why you're competing? Like, if it is maybe rethink why you're competing?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, and there are people for whom that is important. And I'm not going to take that away from them. My "why" and what I would recommend is your WHY does not eliminate the relevance. There are some people, you know, what if somebody starts the year and they say, You know what, I've been a brown belt for three years. And I've gotten trounced the last two years, three years. And my goal for the year is to earn my first ever trophy for the competing through the year. And, you know, now they're halfway through the year. And they're like, that goal was the thing that was motivating me.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. I could make a case for that at that point.
Andrew Adams:
All right. I guess I do see that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's not something that should be done in the dark, though. You know, and it sounds like given Gabe's question here. It wasn't, it was done with some understanding. But I'll be honest, I've known people that had certain rank competed as lower rank because of certain reasons. This is something that actually gets thrown around as criticism in some of the BJJ community that people will hold off on being promoted, because they have a competition coming up and they don't want to get bumped up to compete with the next group. Iron sharpens iron.
Andrew Adams:
Yep. Yep. I'm with you, wholeheartedly. So that was our last question for the day.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Awesome. Well, thanks, everybody. Thanks for for tuning in. We had some folks join us live makes it a lot of fun. And I appreciate all of you. If you have questions for the next one. We do these once a month. Email Andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Don't send them to me. So I'm not supposed to read them ahead of time.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I don't want Jeremy to
Jeremy Lesniak:
They're secret. If you love what we do, if you want to support us in what we do, you've got a number of ways to do it. The best one, the one we ask for the most Patreon patreon.com/whistlekick where you can be a bunch of stuff back. Of course, you can also use the code PODCAST15 to buy anything at whistlekick.com. We bring you two shows a week. Hopefully you find some value in them. And if you do, well, great, share it with other people help us grow, help us support and grow and sustain the traditional martial arts community. It's why we do what we do. Thank you all of you. Live later. Audio video doesn't matter to me. The fact that you engage makes me happy. So Andrew, until next time, train hard, smile, and have a, great day.