Episode 1101 - Evolving Reasons for Martial Arts Training
In this episode Jeremy and Andrew discuss some of the benefits and reasons for martial arts training.
Evolving Reasons for Martial Arts Training - Episode 1101
SUMMARY
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew discuss the evolving reasons for martial arts training, emphasizing the importance of soft skills, community, and emotional resilience. They explore how societal trends have shifted perceptions of martial arts, moving beyond self-defense to focus on personal growth and community building. The conversation highlights the value exchange in martial arts training and the necessity for schools to provide compelling reasons for students to engage in their programs. They explore the evolving landscape of martial arts, emphasizing the importance of redefining success beyond physical skills. They discuss the shift towards non-physical benefits, such as mindfulness and community, and how these elements can enhance the martial arts experience. The conversation highlights the need for instructors to communicate these benefits effectively to attract and retain students, ultimately fostering a more supportive and engaged martial arts community.
TAKEAWAYS
The reasons people train in martial arts have evolved over time.
Community and emotional resilience are key benefits of martial arts training.
Traditional martial arts offer more than just physical benefits.
Meditation can be a significant aspect of martial arts practice.
Youth programs teach discipline and focus that benefit adults too.
Performance anxiety is a common struggle that martial arts can help address.
Martial arts training provides a sense of belonging and community.
The value exchange in martial arts is crucial for student retention.
Schools must compete with various activities for students' time and money.
Success in martial arts is often misdefined by physical outcomes.
Non-physical benefits are becoming increasingly important in martial arts training.
Martial arts can serve as a healthier coping mechanism for stress.
Traditional martial arts can adapt to meet various personal needs.
Effective marketing should highlight the holistic benefits of martial arts.
Students should recognize the value of their training beyond physical skills.
Instructors must balance physical training with emotional and mental support.
Engaging students in mindfulness practices can improve retention and satisfaction.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:57 Changing Reasons for Martial Arts Training
04:51 The Benefits of Traditional Martial Arts
10:00 Community and Emotional Resilience in Martial Arts
15:07 The Value Exchange in Martial Arts Training
17:15 The Shift Towards Non-Physical Benefits
20:00 Meditation and Mindfulness in Training
22:51 Coping Mechanisms and Martial Arts
25:54 The Community Aspect of Martial Arts
27:51 The Versatility of Traditional Martial Arts
30:15 Marketing the True Value of Martial Arts
34:54 Finding Joy in Training
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Jeremy Lesniak (04:57.852)
What's happening everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And on today's episode, Andrew and I are going to talk about how societal trends in life and perception of martial arts have actually changed what people are looking for in their martial arts training. And if you are a school owner, you 100 % need to watch or listen to this episode.
and to the rest of you in the audience, you're at least gonna find it really interesting. We may challenge some of your opinions, some of your observations, and that's a good thing. As always, we don't tell you what to think, how to feel, we just want you to think and to feel, and if you wanna send us some feedback on that, we would love to hear it. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, founder here at Whistlekick, and on this show, can email me, jeremy at whistlekick.com.
Andrew Adams (05:33.484)
Mmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (05:54.114)
and I am joined by my great friend, show producer, co-host, event promoter, and...
Jeremy Lesniak (06:06.552)
several other hats. I was trying to make a joke at the end and I just lost it. So I'm just gonna roll forward. Andrew Adams. Andrew, thank you for being here with me.
Andrew Adams (06:08.366)
You
Andrew Adams (06:15.842)
it's always a pleasure. It's so great to be here. It's nice to have you on the other end. Yeah, it's always great to be here. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (06:19.254)
Always? Always? Always? Okay, all right. We've had some adventures over the years. We've been some places with some people and some of those have not always been a pleasure, but fortunately it's few and far between. you... Yeah, well, 100 % of what I'm thinking about right now is good.
Andrew Adams (06:38.326)
I choose not to think of those.
Jeremy Lesniak (06:45.718)
If you're new to the show and what we do here at Whistlekick, well, it's pretty simple. We love martial arts. We think everybody else should love martial arts and they should give it a try if they're not already doing it. And if you are doing it, which, course, is the majority of the people in the audience, we want you to keep doing it and get your friends to do it. And that's why we do the many, many, many things that we do. And if you want to find those many things, everything from event to events, training products, physical products, apparel, ways to help your school grow, ways to help you get more out of your training and so forth, go to Whistlekick.com.
But of course, this is a podcast. And the number one thing that we want you to do is sign up for podcast related emails. Why? Because that's where we send you the outtakes. That's where all the goofy silliness that happens before, after, or sometimes during the show that we cut out, that's where you're going to get to check it out. And what do we do for that? Well, you take a look at the show notes and you find the link to sign up for these emails. And if you can't remember or you forget or whatever,
go to whistlekickmarshortsradio.com, sign up there. We're gonna send you two emails a week and it's gonna have a link to the audio and a link to the video, super duper easy, as well as, like I said, in many of those emails, some outtake bonus material that is a lot of fun. To all of you who have signed up, thank you, we appreciate you, and yes, as that list grows, it gives us the opportunity to do even more things. So go ahead, check that out. Unsubscribe at any time.
Andrew Adams (08:14.712)
There you go.
Jeremy Lesniak (08:14.862)
Intro done. All right, Andrew.
Jeremy Lesniak (08:21.584)
We have both been training long enough that I think we can agree the reasons people train have changed.
Andrew Adams (08:28.622)
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak (08:31.194)
Now, when we make that statement, it is not to say that you as an individual in the audience, that your reasons may have changed. It is not to say that there is any one reason people have stopped caring about. For example, self-defense, the ability to physically defend yourself remains a reason that plenty of people train and are interested in training. However,
It is not the primary reason. And I would argue based on my observations and from conversation and doing this show and the events that we do and all that, it is less important to people than it was 40, 50, 60 years ago.
Andrew Adams (09:13.26)
Hmm. Yep. Yep. I would agree. And I think it's also important to recognize that it's okay that people's reason for training is different.
Jeremy Lesniak (09:22.02)
In fact, would say the very, our ability to make that statement, that it has changed and that martial arts has remained is part of what makes it so beautiful. That there are so many reasons to train. In fact, I would say there are more reasons, more good reasons to do traditional martial arts than there are good reasons to do anything else.
Andrew Adams (09:49.08)
Hmm, bold statement. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (09:51.226)
It is. I like both statements. Once you get beyond basic human needs, know, i.e. Maslow, you need to eat, you need a place to live, you need some clothing.
Some people would put community or purpose shortly after those three. You get those boxes checked. There's nothing else you're gonna do that does more for you than traditional martial arts. Here's my proof. Andrew, outside of sleep, what do most people spend most of their time doing?
Andrew Adams (10:33.198)
Hmmmm
Jeremy Lesniak (10:35.162)
if we count ours.
Andrew Adams (10:37.164)
I mean, for most adults, it's gonna be work.
Jeremy Lesniak (10:42.212)
what how many people that you know would change jobs to something dramatically different or quit their job all entirely if they suddenly hit the lottery.
Andrew Adams (10:56.002)
yeah, a lot. Yeah, a lot.
Jeremy Lesniak (10:58.844)
Most people work to provide the food, shelter, So that's not the thing that people are choosing to do. They're making the best of a bad situation. Now, if you love your job, like I do, you are a lucky person. And I hope everybody has the opportunity to do something that they love.
But know that that's not the truth of it. I'm getting a little sidetracked.
Jeremy Lesniak (11:33.424)
when we consider traditional martial arts training.
It checks a huge number of boxes. And I think we should rattle off some here. And especially if we can come up with some that are maybe less typically thought of, right? We've got the obvious ones, self-defense, physical training, flexibility, know, coordination, balance, cardio.
stuff you got.
Andrew Adams (11:59.362)
for a lot of people's community.
Jeremy Lesniak (12:03.534)
And yeah, let's start talking about those, Because once you get past self-defense and generalized physical benefit, which is how the industry has presented what we do most of the time for most of history, in the West anyway, unless we're talking about kids classes, which we'll get to in a minute, then we go on to things like community and what else?
Andrew Adams (12:34.005)
Andrew Adams (12:38.327)
I keep coming back to the stuff that we've already talked about. I'm trying to think of more obscure, not obscure, but less known things.
Jeremy Lesniak (12:48.22)
I'll throw one in and I think and this is this is one that I think is gonna be a big chunk of our conversation today meditation and I don't necessarily mean meditation as I close my eyes and I stay still but what is meditation it's blocking out the rest of the world it's being super present on what you're doing and We've made the joke many times when someone's trying to punch you in the face. It's hard to think about anything else Most of us
find value in our training because it is a moving meditation. It allows us to set down the troubles of life, of the world, for an hour-ish and just stay focused on ourselves and our training.
Andrew Adams (13:25.816)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Andrew Adams (13:31.628)
Yeah. And a stress reliever. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak (13:35.664)
Both the meditative aspect and the physical aspect contribute to stress relief. Being around people that, let's face it, you generally like the people you train with because you're engaged in a thing that you have in common. Building that community, that is relieving. Relieving of stress, relieving of concern, there's a lot there.
when we think about youth programs and the way those are advertised. The benefits to kids don't magically disappear when someone reaches a certain age. Discipline, self-esteem, focus, emotional resilience, those all help adults too. And let's face it, more and more adults reach adulthood without having a good handle on those things.
Andrew Adams (14:09.934)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Andrew Adams (14:17.944)
Yep.
Andrew Adams (14:28.162)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, you know, the ability to deal with performance anxiety helps with that as well, right? Something that many adults often struggle with.
Jeremy Lesniak (14:39.164)
Yeah. Now, when I take a look around,
traditional martial arts schools.
And I have this opportunity through the work that we do. I get to spend a lot of time with a lot of martial artists.
Jeremy Lesniak (15:00.496)
when they talk about the benefits to them. And you can even look at this show, like take a look at the guests that come on the show. We don't have a whole lot of people that come on the show and they say, I used to be, and I'm gonna be intentionally kind of blunt about this. Because if it was all about the physical side, this is the story we would hear time and again in an interview on martial arts radio.
I was fat and out of shape and people were picking on me. And then I started doing martial arts and I lost weight and they stopped picking on me.
Now what we do here is, quite often, people were picking on me.
but we rarely hear anyone say, and then they stopped picking on me.
Sometimes we hear that, but why don't we hear that? Because it didn't happen, because they kept getting picked on, but what changed? The way they, how they responded to that, right? And when we take a look at the world and we are, know, we have a very strong policy of not getting into politics on the show. So we are not going to.
Andrew Adams (15:57.005)
Yeah, their perception. Yep, exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak (16:11.642)
So when I make this statement, know that it is not a political statement. The world is weird and screwy and concerning. It does not matter who you are, you probably have some concerns about some things going on in the world. Now, we can say that that's always been there because it has. If you take a look at polling information, the way people, when asked, how concerned are you about the world?
Here we are, and we don't usually date stamp these, but we're recording this on January 13th, 2026. Based on everything I'm seeing, people are more concerned than they have been historically, at least in the US. We have to go all the way back to, I think, the Cuban Missile Crisis to get as much concern as we have today.
Jeremy Lesniak (17:04.134)
but martial arts is still happening. People are still training. They're still finding new schools and we still have plenty of schools reporting that they're growing.
Jeremy Lesniak (17:21.338)
So what do we take from all of
Andrew Adams (17:25.122)
That it gives more benefits than not, obviously, because if it gave less benefits than good benefits, people wouldn't do it.
Jeremy Lesniak (17:39.118)
One of the things that we talk about within the various teams at Whistlekick is this, the ideas of providing value and opportunity costs, right? If I have martial arts classes for people to sign up for, they have to, we can look at it as they've got to spend their time and they've got to spend their money to come to those classes.
Jeremy Lesniak (18:04.464)
I know plenty of schools out there that charge next to nothing and they have classes all the time and it's super convenient, but they don't have 10,000 students, why not? Because they're not just competing with the idea of spending your time and money, they're competing with all of the other things that people can do. And that's where the opportunity cost comes in, right? You have to make what you're offering that much more appealing than every other choice. You have to make training better than...
soccer or lifting weights at that time, right? Of going to the bar, spending time with your kids, right? It has to be more valuable than all of those things. Otherwise people will not do it.
Andrew Adams (18:37.464)
Yeah. Yep.
Andrew Adams (18:46.766)
Yep. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak (18:51.446)
It sounded like you had more.
Andrew Adams (18:51.694)
Sorry. It's funny because I thought the same thing like, no, I agree. And, you know, we've talked about this in the past that, you know, everything we do in life has to some degree is a value exchange. And if you're not providing something better than what someone else could be doing with their time, they're going to find something else to do. I mean, how many people lost a lot of students do in 2020 when they
The students went home and had nothing to do for a number of months and they got used to doing something else. So when classes started back up, if you weren't providing something better than what they were doing at home, they didn't come back.
Jeremy Lesniak (19:37.244)
They built a habit. They built a different habit. And so part of what I think is happening, and I'm putting some of these pieces together as we're talking, which is part of why I love doing the show, is it helps me reason some things out. When we think about the old reasons to train, physical health, self-defense skills, et cetera, what do most people see as the result
of those. When we think about day-to-day life, where is the average person seeing the implementation of the physical skills of martial arts training?
Andrew Adams (20:17.496)
I mean, I would make an argument that most of time they don't.
Jeremy Lesniak (20:22.928)
But where are they most likely to see it?
Andrew Adams (20:26.165)
in how they physically move their body.
Jeremy Lesniak (20:28.38)
MMA is what I was gonna say. The way most people see, if you're interested in martial arts and you're told this is a great way to get in shape and learn how to protect yourself, most people are not seeing people successfully defending themselves on the streets. They're not hanging out on YouTube looking for those videos, but they might be aware of what's happening in professional MMA.
Andrew Adams (20:31.778)
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak (20:58.672)
and they don't want to do that.
Andrew Adams (21:00.386)
Yeah. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak (21:01.956)
So when they say, okay, if I get good at this, it can lead to that, that breaks their definition of success. A successful outcome to most people, it has nothing to do with getting in a ring or an octagon and getting punched in the face repeatedly to figure out who the better face puncher is.
Jeremy Lesniak (21:25.156)
And the more we communicate that this is the priority skill set within what we offer as an industry, the less engaged people are about it.
Andrew Adams (21:39.308)
Yeah, mean, those physical skills are the things that are the easiest to observe and notice.
Jeremy Lesniak (21:39.484)
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (21:47.676)
Sure. So we should, I should mention, and if you've been around a while, you know that we do this. We have a program for martial arts schools called Alliance, and one of the many benefits in there, because we just added several more. It's a great program. If you have a martial arts school, if you haven't checked out Whistlekick Alliance, please go to whistlekick.com and check it out. It is unlike anything else out there. This is not a commercial for it. But one of the things that happens, because we run ads for schools, it's all part of the program, you don't pay any extra for it.
I get a lot of data coming back on how the ads perform. And I'm constantly creating new ads and throwing those out there and seeing what works and what doesn't. And we are in our...
Andrew Adams (22:19.086)
Mmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (22:30.246)
third year, fourth year of running this program.
Andrew Adams (22:32.034)
I think third year.
Jeremy Lesniak (22:36.538)
And so I've got data going back to the beginning. And when we started, I was featuring mostly physical skills. Keep yourself safe, keep your family safe, stay in shape, learn to love your body. know, a lot of the messaging that we see a lot of martial arts schools putting out. And those ads did well because I'm good at making ads. Then I started trying some things because...
I like to experiment and I want to, I always want to make things better. And I started generating ads that had to do with what we usually collectively call the soft skills. lot of things that you and I have talked about, Andrew. And most of those ads did better. I even ran a series of ads for a while that worked. worked for a little while that, you know, picture a wolf, a gorilla.
a lion, you know, trying to get people to feel better, but implying, you know, some physical superiority, physical benefit, you know, and those did okay for a little while and then they faded. And now the ads that are doing really well have nothing to do with the physical side of things.
Andrew Adams (23:56.558)
Hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak (23:58.608)
the ad that we're running right now that is killing it, put the rest of the world down for a little while.
That's that meditative spot, right? Like you come to class, you put on your whatever, you start class, and the rest of the world goes away for a period of time.
Andrew Adams (24:09.122)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew Adams (24:14.414)
Hmm.
Andrew Adams (24:18.508)
Yeah, yeah. And we talk about it all the time when you come to the dojo to leave your real world at the door, come in and train, it'll still be there when you're done.
Jeremy Lesniak (24:30.788)
And I think this is really important and based on the way we talked about the timing of these episodes, if you watched State of the Martial Arts that we did a couple of weeks ago or the re-airing of it across our channels last week, this is a big piece of what I'm talking about. It is the biggest shift I've seen in the industry over the last few years. And it really happened, it was a big shift.
in 2025. And I think if you have a martial arts school, if you are not talking about the benefits, the non-physical benefits, and if you're not prioritizing the non-physical benefits, I think you're missing out. Now, if you have a school, I'm going to give you one thing you can do right now that will take 60 seconds in your class and it will change your students' lives if you're not already doing it.
It is 30 seconds of closed-eye meditation at the beginning and end of class.
that simple, I close, try to get them to breathe, give them some, you know, maybe cue them, maybe you're talking them through it. For some of them, it will be the most powerful minute in your class.
And yes, we're seeing benefit on that with kids, right? If people want and are coming to class for non-physical benefits and you are not taking a step back and looking at what those non-physical benefits are and how you can better support that valuation, I think you're missing out. Because if the world is scary and the data shows that people find it scary and think it's getting scarier,
Andrew Adams (26:00.114)
sure.
Jeremy Lesniak (26:26.636)
Where else are they going to get this relief? Most people are finding relief in food or alcohol or drugs. And you could consider all of them drugs in that way. As an aside, data point that most people may not have. The average millennial male through that 2020-2021 period gained 45 pounds. That's a lot. That's a lot of weight, right? Why? Because they were coping.
Andrew Adams (26:37.058)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Adams (26:52.93)
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak (26:56.26)
What we offer in our training is also an opportunity for coping, but it's a lot healthier.
Andrew Adams (27:02.602)
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak (27:05.788)
One of the major differences, I think, in a traditional martial arts class versus a lot of the other coping mechanisms is that for most of us, getting there is a lot of work, emotionally, mentally, sometimes physically, can be a lot of work. But once we get there, we don't have to make the decisions unless you're teaching a class, right? Like I have to make the decisions on what's going on in my classes. But as a student, when I attend other people's classes,
Andrew Adams (27:22.936)
sometimes.
Andrew Adams (27:29.452)
Yeah, that's different.
Jeremy Lesniak (27:35.852)
I just get to put on my belt and train. I don't have to make choices. I already made my choice. I'm there. And there aren't a lot of other things that we have available to us in the world where we just show up and we don't have to make the choices.
Andrew Adams (27:51.471)
Exactly. Yeah. And I actually know a lot of martial artists who got to a, I don't know. Okay. Back up, Andrew. I don't know a lot of martial artists. I know some martial artists who got to a high level and were expected to do more being in charge of and running things in the school. And they stopped training because of it. Because for them, they're in charge of
every other aspect of like when they're outside of the school, they were running HR at their company. They were in charge of this other thing. And when they came to the school, it was the one time where they didn't have to make all those decisions and they got to just be a student. And when they got to a certain level and were expected to then be in charge in the dojo, they lost something for them. It was no longer the same escape that they needed in their life.
Jeremy Lesniak (28:50.844)
We talk about martial arts as a community. There's the broad macro community that we are as a realm, sphere, industry, whatever you wanna use there. But there's a community within your school. Your school might be part of a bigger community. If you come to Whistlekick events, you know that we are also a community at events. And a lot of people don't have community. We've seen the data on friendships.
change a lot. People have more but lower quality friendships today versus 20, 30, 40 years ago. We have far too much stimulation, right? This is one of the worst things we've ever done for our mental health. think as much as we're all using our phones and find it valuable and choose not to give it up, there's a chunk of us that's, I wish I didn't have this, right?
If it wasn't for Whistlekick, I'd probably have a flip phone. Right? People can get a hold of me. That's all I need. But some of the things we do, I need a little more than that. But you don't bring your phone onto the floor. Hopefully you don't bring your phone onto the floor. Sometimes the teenagers sneak it on the floor in their pockets. I'm like, also take off your watch. Right?
Andrew Adams (29:49.806)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Adams (30:00.911)
You shouldn't bring your phone on the floor.
You
Jeremy Lesniak (30:10.556)
Like there's nothing going, you are 13, nothing that important is happening. If it's that important, your parents will come and open the door. You will need to leave. you're, you're not solving any crisis right now. You're an adolescent.
Andrew Adams (30:17.366)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (30:26.972)
Well, we start stacking all these things together and it leads to, and I don't have the best language for this yet. I think you and I talked about this maybe yesterday as we were prepping for some other things. To me, traditional martial arts is a magic puzzle piece. It fits whatever that gap is. like, know, it kind of fits. traditional martial arts fits all those gaps. It's a corner, it's a middle piece, it's an edge. It doesn't matter what's missing in your life because it's all there.
Andrew Adams (30:54.806)
It's like water. It flows. Be like water.
Jeremy Lesniak (30:57.628)
It is infinitely variable because what you prioritize is where the value comes back. If you want more community, you can focus on making friendships in your classes and come early and stay late and go to events with these other people and competitions or seminars or whatever.
If you need the physical components, those are all there. I don't know of an instructor in the world that hasn't, that has ever told a student, you want me to help you physically more, you want more of that physical challenge? No. Every instructor I know will go, are you sure? Right? But then when you've got the discipline stuff,
Andrew Adams (31:42.445)
Hahaha.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (31:52.964)
You have a choice, right? You're doing the hard thing. No, I can grind this out for another second, another two seconds, another three seconds. You want the self-esteem thing? Take a look in the mirror after class and say, I did it, right? It's all there. And there's nothing else I know that has all of it.
Andrew Adams (32:17.112)
Yeah, it really can fit whatever it is you're looking for or whatever it is you need.
Jeremy Lesniak (32:24.804)
And so my recommendation to all of you out there, if you are a student, I would encourage you to be aware of what martial arts is providing to you. Because there will be days when you say, I don't want to go. It's tough to go. I'm sad. My foot hurts. I have a hangnail. We made a shirt with all kinds of excuses on it. And was one of them. The one people laughed at the most. a hangnail.
Jeremy Lesniak (32:51.63)
If you're aware, if you spend some time, and the drive home from class is the best time to do this. How did class go? How do I feel right now? I've had plenty of days I didn't want to go. I've never had a day that I regretted going. Never.
And if you check in with yourself and you're able to correlate, well, you know, I've never had a day that I regretted going. I've been doing this a long time. I would have happened by now.
Andrew Adams (33:20.718)
Good point. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (33:22.234)
Right? So I can say with as close to 100 % certainty as possible, I will be glad that I go. So I go.
If you're an instructor, if you know these things and you know your teaching style, you know what benefits your students are getting from your classes, that's what you feature in your marketing. That's what you're talking about. That's what you highlight in your intros or your phone calls or your emails. That's what your website talks about.
It is easy for us to, especially if you've been training a long time, to get wrapped around the axle on our students' physical skills and want them to be the best competitors. We want them to never have to even question their self-defense skills, that they will come out of any altercation somehow better off than they went into it. We want all that for them.
Andrew Adams (34:19.606)
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (34:23.47)
And sometimes we want that so badly that we forget about the other parts, the parts that keep them there.
But when we're willing to let go of that, we can build better schools, stronger schools, better serve our students' needs. Because if the only thing you're providing to them is physical training...
you're gonna lose them to better physical training. If they decide that what is most important to them is strength and cardiovascular ability, well, they're gonna go join a gym. They're gonna go join Planet Fitness for $10, $15 a month. If what they want is self-defense skills, then all it takes is somebody coming in, making a compelling argument that they'll learn self-defense faster than at your school, and they're gonna go.
Andrew Adams (35:15.276)
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak (35:17.168)
But if what you offer to them is those things plus all of the other things, plus their community, their friendships, plus you build relationships with them and you help them recognize that they are better off in terms of their discipline and their focus. If you give them 30 seconds at the beginning and end of class to close their eyes and just...
breathe real breathing right most of us are taking terribly shallow breaths right now because we're overwhelmed you'll keep them around
Andrew Adams (35:48.238)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Adams (35:57.795)
Yeah, truly can make a difference in their life.
Jeremy Lesniak (36:01.942)
be that magic puzzle piece.
And the reason that we need to shout this from the rooftops is because they don't know. They have an idea, but they don't know. And people do not have so many choices these days that they do not engage in something unless they have a clear idea of what success looks like and a belief that they can achieve it. Because you know what is very successful? Staying home and eating hot pockets. You know exactly what's gonna happen. Not all of it's good, but you know it's gonna happen.
Andrew Adams (36:34.339)
You're gonna burn your mouth.
Jeremy Lesniak (36:36.674)
It wasn't the one I was thinking of, but yes. Yes, you will also burn your mouth.
Jeremy Lesniak (36:45.742)
The more we can communicate this, not just for the kids, but for the adults, I would say especially for the adults, we've got a pretty good idea how to communicate this stuff to kids. The better your school gets, your local community gets, the world gets, and that is worthwhile.
Andrew Adams (37:02.806)
Absolutely
Jeremy Lesniak (37:04.315)
What did I miss?
Andrew Adams (37:06.099)
nothing. think the thing, so there's three things that you're going to learn at a martial arts school. In most cases, you're going to learn some physical skills, right? You're going to get, you're going to, you know, get healthier and blah, blah, blah, blah. Then one of the things you can learn are what a lot of people call the soft skills, like learning how to deescalate talking people out of altercations, things like that. Those are things that you have to learn and work on.
But then there's this subset of things that you don't necessarily work on, they just happen. I think the, correct, and I think that's what we're talking about here.
Jeremy Lesniak (37:39.568)
they're consequential of working the other two.
Yeah, for sure. there are ways, you as an instructor think about it, there are ways to build all of those.
You want to build resilience in your students. Have them do something difficult and don't tell them how long they're going to do it for, how many reps or whatever it is. All right, everybody, push-ups. And you don't tell them how many. that'll build some mental stamina. How many of these do I have to do? Shut up and do more. We're going to keep going until I'm tired. And that's when you get the best question.
Andrew Adams (38:15.119)
He
Andrew Adams (38:20.27)
Hahaha
Jeremy Lesniak (38:28.134)
from the instructor, is anybody tired yet? It's a trap. Don't answer it. There's no good answer. The only answer is to not say anything. At least that's always been my strategy.
Andrew Adams (38:34.488)
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak (38:46.224)
We love what we do. We love teaching. We love training. We love doing this show.
And hopefully, thinking about these things in this way helps remind you that even on the hard days, you love it too. And if you don't, really, I'm going to make this genuine offer. And this is not a sales pitch, though it could end up being, this is what you needed. If you do not love your training, I want you to email me and I want to help you find out why. And I want to help you find the love for your training again.
Jeremy at Whistlekick.com. If you have a school and you're not loving what you do, here. Here's the first bit for free because I cannot help anybody in their school unless they love their own training. If you're not also training, ideally under someone else, you're going to have a really hard time running a school indefinitely that you love. It always comes back to training.
Jeremy Lesniak (39:54.714)
You can also email andrew at whistlekick.com. You guys can talk about me. If you want to talk about the white balance. You and I are about the same complexion and somehow I look like I am one of the paint samples from the white palette at Home Depot. And you look like you were from a much more southern state than I do, given where we are right
Andrew Adams (40:15.214)
Ha
Jeremy Lesniak (40:22.788)
So you could complain to Andrew about that or any of the other things that happen. But look how white my teeth are.
Andrew Adams (40:26.37)
Yep. For me, it's definitely, it's definitely the lighting that I have and the shirt I'm wearing.
Andrew Adams (40:34.54)
It's because you're wearing a black sweatshirt.
Jeremy Lesniak (40:37.409)
Yes, we're gonna go with that. We appreciate you being here. Thank you for bearing with us. Thank you. Hopefully you enjoy this show. If you made it this far, I'm sure that you do. And as always, we're not asking you what to think, what to believe. We just want you to think. So if you disagree, let's hear it. We have a group, Martial Arts Radio, rather a page, sorry, join that page, share feedback, talk to other audience members, and...
contribute to the great conversation. And if you have not yet, sign up for the emails, bonus material, behind the scenes, all that good stuff, as well as a direct convenient way to watch or listen to every single episode that we put out.
whistlekickmarshworksradio.com to sign up. It's the easiest place to sign up for that. And that's it. Until next time, train hard, smile, have a great day. We'll see how synced to that one is. We never know. I think that went well. When's my next roll?
Andrew Adams (41:28.782)
Train hard, smile, and have a great day.