Episode 264 - Sifu Rick Spain
Sifu Rick Spain is a multi-disciplined martial arts practitioner based in Australia. He is the founder of Red Boat Kung Fu.
And so, if it wasn’t for my martial training and that kind of discipline and focus, I dont think I would have a shot. That was a pretty bad accident.
Sifu Rick Spain - Episode 264
It is a rare event when you can have a chance to train with someone you’ve read about in magazines. Sifu Rick Spain grabbed the opportunity to train with someone who held a legendary place for him. Sifu Spain’s martial arts lineage is nothing short of impressive. He has several black belts from kung fu to Brazilian jiu jitsu and has a school that primarily focuses on wing chun kung fu. If you don’t know Sifu Rick Spain, you’re about to learn a lot about this interesting and passionate martial artist.
Show Notes
On this episode, we mentioned:
Benny "the Jet" Urquidez
Gene LeBell
His Websites:www.redboatkungfu.comwww.redboatuniversity.comhttps://www.facebook.com/redboatwingchununiversity/https://www.facebook.com/wingchunkungfusydney/twitter.com/redboatkungfuhttp://youtube.com/wingchunkungfusydneySifu Spain was kind enough to offer a discount exclusively for whistlekick listeners. You receive 20% off his online programs with this link. As always, we receive NO financial benefit from your purchases of this, or any other items mentioned on the show. Except, of course, our own products. :)[gallery type="slideshow" size="large" ids="4617,4618,4619,4620,4621,4622"]
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey there, everyone! Thanks for tuning in! This is whistlekick Martial Arts radio episode 264 and today we're joined by Sifu Rick Spain. Thanks for coming by. As always, I'm Jeremy Lesniak, I'm the founder of whistlekick, I'm your host on the show and you can find every single we make at whistlekick.com. You can find all of our show notes for this or our other episodes at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Sign up for the newsletter while you're there. We're about to launch, revamp. In fact, by the time this drops, you might have already seen it. Brand new newsletter format, more great stuff in it. Just trying to keep you up-to-date on what's going on not only with whistlekick but with the martial arts world in general. Love the feedback that you all send in whether you're posting that over on the Martial Arts Radio website or you're getting to us in social media at whistlekick. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, are our primary outlets. And of course, you can always email us. You can email me directly if you'd like jeremy@whistlekick.com or if it’s a general message, just info at whistlekick.com will work fine. Let's talk about today's show.Today's guest has quite a list of accomplishments to his name. When we first started speaking about his appearance on the show, it was his accomplishments I thought I would find most impressive. But quickly into the episodes I realized it was more his manner, his candor, that I found impressive. Sifu Rick Spain has wonderful stories to share so let's hear them. Sifu Spain, welcome to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio.Sifu Spain:It's my great pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.Jeremy Lesniak:Oh, of course. It is my pleasure. As I say in quite a few episodes, I have the best job in the world. I get to talk to martial artists from different styles, different backgrounds, from all over the world. And of course, even though one of my personal goals is that we make this show as worldwide as possible, we are, you know, we're kind of a US-centric show and folks listening will pick up the fact that you have a bit of an accent. So why don't you tell us where you're from?Sifu Spain:I was actually born in New Zealand but I'm raised in Australia so I'm the Southern Hemisphere. So the Kiwis, which are the New Zealanders, when I got back, they can't understand me because now I have an Australian accent. I'm kind of 50/50, yeah. So I'm from the Southern Hemisphere, Australia, primarily.Jeremy Lesniak:Alright. Well, I'm sure to those of us from the... Well I shouldn’t speak for everyone. I've had friends from New Zealand, I've had friends from Australia, and I'm gonna be honest. I can't tell the difference. That's probably some cardinal sin that there might be some Aussie folks listening who are terribly offended but I'm not good at picking up accents, you know.Sifu Spain:Yeah, it's very different. They're very different to us. We can tell the difference from a mile away. But yeah, it all sounds probably very similar for someone from the Northern Hemisphere.Jeremy Lesniak:And before, people listening think that I'm, you know, just ignorant of accents in certain parts of the world. I get US accents messed up. I mean I can tell, generally speaking, if someone is from the North or from the South or from the Midwest but that's all I've got. I have friends that can get more specific, oh, you're from Georgia. I can't do that.Sifu Spain:Yeah. Look, I finally got this accent, that's it. I don't do any others. I'd mess it up.Jeremy Lesniak:Of course, we're not here to talk about accents or language or any of those subject which, actually, might be kinda fun to talk about. We are here, though, to talk about martial arts and your background and everything. Why don't you start by telling us how you found martial arts?Sifu Spain:Well, you know in New Zealand in the 60's, their martial arts wasn't very prevalent, you know. A lot, took a long time for this stuff to trickle down to the Southern Hemisphere. There's a little bit of Dojito around, I dabbled on that. But like, I'm talking when I was 9, 10 years old. I dabbled on a little bit of Dojito. It was literally just down the 04:12. And then when I was going to high school, I started on Kyokushin Karate and I trained in that for a little while. But unfortunately we moved away and I could no longer continue my study. So that started 1975. In 1977, in '76, actually, I heard about this gentleman in Melbourne, Australia called William Cheung, a friend of Bruce Lee's and a fellow student of Ip Man's. And I got so excited about that having, you know, we had no internet and so it would take months for any martial arts magazine to make it down to Australia or New Zealand. But you know, you just dive into this new age and to grab one and you'd read it from cover to cover. The more I read about Bruce Lee and Ip Man and that sort of stuff happening, the more excited I got about training with gentleman who is considered to be the world's leader in Wing Chun at that time. So I saved my pennies, got a job in a factory, saved up, and flew over to Australia in 1976, '77, and started training with him almost immediately. I lived in a really small, dingy, little 05:25 apartment for a very long time and, you know, was broke as a 05:29, whatever jobs I could to support my training habit. And eventually, my Sifu took pity on me because I was there all the time and obviously I must've looked pretty hungry. And he gave me the opportunity to move in to the school and I lived in this cycle for a few years. And that was the real turning point for me as I immersed myself into the martial arts culture. It was a brilliant school, it was the first of its kind in Victoria in New South Wales. Oh, sorry, Victoria in Melbourne. Because it was kind of full-time; it was a full-time facility. And that was pretty much unheard of in the 70's. and I had this great fortune to train with, what I still consider today to be pioneer of Wing Chun in the Southern Hemisphere and worldwide, he has a great follower in the United States. And we became very close, he became my surrogate father and I lived and trained with him. To this day, I'm still in tough with him. So that's been over 40 years that I've been with him. So that was my sort of beginning, middle, and on-going pursuit of my martial arts training. I have delved into other disciplines since then. I got back to Kyokushin 10 years ago and managed to proceed forward to a black belt. About 20 years ago, I integrated Brazilian Jiu-jitsu into a discipline cause it’s seamless. Cause Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is all about tough reflexes as well as other many components to it but it sits on a perfect parallel with Wing Chun. So I integrated those two disciplines together seamlessly. And then now, just recently, I got a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. So I'm kinda, you know, I've been kinda continuing forward and kinda always trying to reinvent myself every year and trying to pursue martial excellence. It's a lifetime pursuit. But that's kinda how I got started and I’m still with my master after 40 odd years.Jeremy Lesniak:That's wonderful. Now I wanna roll back a little bit because the piece of what you just said, last couple of minutes, that's stuck with me the most was this almost... Once you found martial arts, there was no question that it was for you.Sifu Spain:Absolutely.Jeremy Lesniak:And I heard that in your voice. When we listen to folks come on the show, quite often, there's some kind of challenge. Either, you know, if they started younger, maybe it was parents, or if they started older, maybe it was money or it was time. But you expressed that so succinctly. I’m wondering if maybe you were different in that respect.Sifu Spain:Look, it’s funny that you ask that. And I appreciate what you just said, I really do. And I kinda knew right from the get-go this is what I want to do. It's all I've ever want to do. And it's all I've ever done. I thought, you know, I was a teenager I had all jobs here and there. When I took a break from competing, I went off and did some laboring for summer. But it's pretty much all I want to do. But there is a catalyst. There is a moment when I kind of realized I want a bit of that. Because, just if I can digress for a split second, my stepfather was quite... kind of, not really abusive in the sense physically or mentally, but he was just a really tough guy to get along with. And with me being a kid from another relationship, obviously, we rub each other the wrong way. And my uncle on my mother's side, was a Gojo-ryu black belt and a big strong man. And I didn’t really know him as a kid but one day he visited our home. And he started telling stories. He was one of the most feared doorman in London, Liverpool in the 70's - late 6-'s, early 70's. A beast of a man with, you know, many, many battles under his shield. And my stepfather was paying great attention to him and was deeply respectful. And I sat there in the background and watched how respectful he was. And the stories that this guy told were quite amazing, some of them quite horrific. And I went, I don't know what this guy's got. But I like the way my stepfather's paying him respect. Whatever he's got, I want some of that because I didn't get any respect from my stepfather, whatever. So there was a catalyst there, there was a moment. I'd always been interested if Bruce Lee was still alive, that sort of thing, you know? But that kind of made me go, wow. I want some of that. And I had a great fortune for him. He taught me, as a child, how to throw reverse punch and that was the beginning. That was it. I was hooked, I 10:05 off and running.Jeremy Lesniak:Certainly the hallmark of a goof Goju-ryu education, starting with the reverse punch. And of course, it sounds like you found what you hoped to fine because, as you've said a couple of times, 40 plus years later, you're still there. You're still training.Sifu Spain:Yeah. Absolutely. I train two, at least twice a day, and I train six to seven days a week. It's not uncommon when I'm teaching and doing privates, and doing my own training, that'll put in 20 plus sessions a week. I'm still doing that. I'm getting close to 60 now but I still have the same passion for it. I love teaching and I love training. I'm happiest when I’m teaching, I'm happiest when I’m training. So I'm always happy. I've always wanted to do this ever since I was a child and I've pursued it all my life. And so I've lived the dream life. I'm having the best time. I'm very fortunate that I have wonderful, wonderful students around me, wonderful support network. We have branches in Australia, and a couple overseas. And I get to travel and teach, and train these guys on their mat. And we share that mat culture, that family. And it's just the most amazing thing. So yeah, I'm very grateful. Trust me, I'm incredibly grateful for that.Jeremy Lesniak:Wonderful. And I'm curious, did you relationship with your stepfather changed at all?Sifu Spain:Well, it's funny. He said to me as I approached my mid- to late- teens, you know, 11:35. This is nothing, this is just a, it's just a bit of fluff, you'll never make it as a martial artists. There was no real... If I can point out back in the 70's, you didn’t really make a career out of it. It was just you either 11:50local, the 11:52 or the locals, 11:53. There weren’t really that many full-time schools. It didn’t really work that way. He thought it was just rubbish. But it’s funny when I came back in 1982 with the world championship. He really wanted to be invested in that publicity. Isn’t it funny how people's mindsets change? But no, he didn't really supported but that okay. When I proved to be successful in certain areas, he certainly changed his mind then.Jeremy Lesniak:And did that allow you some closure?Sifu Spain:Yeah, look. We became closer after that when he realized that you know, maybe I was a bit more driven than he gave me credit for as a kid. Yeah, it helped. It helped. It certainly gave us a little bit of our common ground, a little bit more balance in our relationship. So yeah. You know, I can attribute my 12:40 for finding a bit of balance in my personal life, as well. So, there you go.Jeremy Lesniak:And of course, by that time, by the time you'd earned some respect for him, you know, kinda checked that box that sparked some of your initial interest. You were into deep. You couldn't get out.Sifu Spain:Oh, no. Oh, yes. I'm 12:59 We say that about some of our own students, I've got students that have been with me for 30 plus years. And where we consider ourselves at what we call life is, you know, we're in it for life. We often joke, 13:11 that we'll die on the mat. It's not what I really wanted but I mean, it sounds like fun. You know,Jeremy Lesniak:There are worse ways to go.Sifu Spain:Yeah, I'm sure there are. You know if you're standing a long line between that and getting hit by a bus, I'd pick the mat every day.Jeremy Lesniak:Here on the show, we talk a lot about stories, you know. And you just kinda give us your introduction in the form of stories. I’m wondering if I was to, you know, hold the sword to your neck and say, tell us your favorite martial arts story. Which one would you tell us?Sifu Spain:Oh, wow. Well, you know, because I worked... When you’re a young martial artist and you're poor, and you're living from day from day hand-to-mouth, you put yourself out there as a bouncer, as a doorman, as bodyguard, whatever you can do to earn a living. And so, a lot of their stories, you know, they kinda have a fairly violent component to them and I 14:11 per-say. I'd rather talk about just the coincidence of finding my way to my master. If I may, it's an interesting story, no violence involved. It's just kind of a quirk of fate. In Auckland, New Zealand, which is not the capital of New Zealand but it's the biggest city in New Zealand, I was there for a little while, basically a leaf in the wind. Training on my own because there was no school that I could afford to train at and I was going out with a young lass. She was a waitress in a Chines restaurant. One afternoon, I was waiting for her to finish her shift. I just happened to be standing near the alley way behind the restaurant. And there were two guys behind the restaurant south right further down into the alley way. And they were doing something unusual and I kinda recognized it because every now and then, a magazine would filter down from America or the United Kingdom and you'd see a picture of Bruce Lee and Ip Man doing Chi Sao and stuff like that. I know, I recognized that. I know what that is. And so I thought, you know, I shouldn’t interrupt them but I was little bit too curious. So I walked down and I said, look guys, can I just interrupt you for a second? Is that what I think it is? Is that Chi Sao? And they said, yes, it is. They were very polite and they were very generous. And they told me a little bit about who was training them, his name was Sunny, he was the instructor in Auckland, New Zealand. And I said, where is he? Who is he? Can I find him? And they gave me some details and I asked Sunny 15:38 the first time I met him, who taught you? That's when William Cheung's name came up. And of course, you know, we're all a little bit biased, and he said, look. William Cheung's the foremost authority of Wing Chun on the planet. And I went, okay, so now I'm gonna have to save up to go to Hong Kong, I'm gonna have to find a way to get there. And he said, no. He's actually just across what we call the Ditch, which is the... to get between Australia and New Zealand, we call that the Ditch, the ocean. He said, no, he's actually just in Melbourne. And I was like, oh, yey. So I immediately got a crappy job, saved my pennies and flew to Melbourne with the, you know, with the intent to go and train with this guy. And it's funny, sometimes you gotta be careful of what you wish for. I end up becoming full-time live-in student and we became very, very close. And it was just by that quirk of fate. I just happened to be waiting for my girlfriend to finish her shift, I happened to see two guys doing what I thought was Chi Sao from a distance, walked up, broke the ice. Within six months, I was in Australia, training with William Cheung. So if you're gonna say, there're lots and lots of stories. Some of them I can't retell but if there's one that's relatively innocent but kind of interesting and a quirk of fate. That's one of my favorites because without that, if I looked left, I wouldn't have seen them. But I looked right; I looked right and I saw what I saw and the rest is history.Jeremy Lesniak:From most of us, there are various points in our lives that set the course. But usually there are one or two that seems that statistically should've never happened. And despite that near insignificance in mathematics and the numbers, they prove to be so fundamental in how we move forward. And I love those anecdotes and here you are, sharing one of them.Sifu Spain:That's very profound, well said.Jeremy Lesniak:It shouldn’t have happened! But yet it did. And I'm sure, in the old version of our questions, I used to ask what would your life be like without martial arts? And I suspect if I was to ask you that question, you'd have a similar answer to everyone else. The reason we stopped asking it because, I'm gonna guess, you'd say, I don't know.Sifu Spain:Yeah. Well, there's a movie, I think, on Bugsy Siegel 18:06 stuff where an actress asked a question about what you would do in this circumstance. It' kind of like a test and he says, I refuse the question. And I just, that's a question I won’t answer because it's not that I don't know, I just kinda don’t... It doesn't exist in my head. Yeah, it's like I don't know, I have no idea what life would have been like without martial arts. It's almost like I refuse the question because this was the path I was born for. So I've just followed that path, I've never actually ever thought of anything else. I’ve never thought, I wonder if. I'm so happy doing what I'm doing. I'd be the other guy, probably, sitting in a desk somewhere, miserable. Thinking, why didn't I keep it up? Why didn’t I keep training? What my life could’ve been if I had kept training in martial arts? Maybe I opened a school, I had a bit of talent. You know, I was told I had a bit of talent. I felt good when I was doing it but now I gave it up. And yet, maybe sometimes there's a guy sitting somewhere, miserable in his job, asking that question. I'm so happy in mine, I never ask it.Jeremy Lesniak:Beautiful. Obviously, your martial arts, your instruction, your training, takes a lot of time. I kinda did the math as you were talking about how much time you spend on the mat. But are there other things outside of training and teaching, outside of martial arts, that you're passionate about?Sifu Spain:Yeah. Look, I tried to keep it balanced. I mean, I used to be an avid reader but not so much anymore because there's the internet. But for me, it's something a little bit more, sort of, basic like cars and bikes. Pretty simple, I like to restore cars, I like to restore bikes. So that's it, I like to get my hands dirty from time to time. And I love motorbikes, I love cars, I like classics, you know. I have a friend who's a qualified Harley mechanic. We've just, at the moment, stripping down an FX-RS. I went out and had a look at it yesterday, got the parts to get them ceramic coated. You know, it's a process. We'll put it back together over the next few weeks and it'll be like a brand new bike. And then once we've done that, we'll move on to another project. So I've got four bikes in various stages of restoration at the moment. Yeah. We got a lot of ball up in the air when it comes to motorbikes. I've taken a break from cars and I'm just enjoying playing with motorbikes at the moment. So that's kind of, it's my thing away from the mat. My life and especially my martial training, 20:33 is obviously very healthy, but when we train, we have a very strong thing. We talk about precision, it's, yeah the 20:41 important, of course. Repetition, repetition, but there's gotta be precision, repetition. So when you're rebooting something like a motorbike, you have to be very precise about what you're doing. There a lot of precision involved. You can’t just go close enough as good enough. Everything has to be aligned correctly, every nut and bolt has to be put in correctly. Everything has to be balanced correctly. So it's kind of like parallel to what I do but it's a world away in my mind. So yeah, at the moment it's motorbikes.Jeremy Lesniak:And I love how you tied the two together. I was going to ask that as a follow-up question because I saw some similarities, some overlap between martial arts training and working on something that is that detail-oriented.Sifu Spain:I think I read 21:23 in the mid 70's, I don't know what that did to me. But, you know, it seems to be coming back. It's coming out now.Jeremy Lesniak:It's a great book, classic book.Sifu Spain:It is a great book, yeah. It's a classic.Jeremy Lesniak:Here on the show, I like to talk to people about not only the good times but the bad times. Martial artists just have this brilliant way of making it through life's challenges in a way that when I talk to my non-martial arts friends, they're dumbfounded. I'd love for you to tell us about a time where you were facing a challenge and how you were able to reflect on your martial arts to move passed it.Sifu Spain:Wow. Okay, well there's a bit of story there. I know I keep bringing it up but it's kind of a pivotal point my life. When I came back from Hong Kong with the world championship, I took a bit of a break from training because, you know, I broke my hand and my toes in that tournament and so I was a bit banged up. So I took a break and I went to Queensland, it means nothing to people who don't know Australia but it's like kind of Florida. It's sunny, it's beautiful. You know, beaches, and girls, and it's a wonderful break from training, training, and training all day long. You know, I fell in love with Queensland and I went, okay I'm gonna open a school here. So I went down with my very first pupil to see my master in Melbourne and asked permission to open a school. I got that permission. On the drive back, it's about a day and a half's drive back to Queensland, my student was very tired. He was a DJ and he'd finish the night and then we took off at about midnight. And unfortunately, about 23:10 fell asleep at the wheel. And we went off the road and plowed into a ditch and I shattered my left ankle. It kind of imploded, the floor-pan of the car 23:24 floor-pan kinda smashed up underneath the car. My knee was under the dash so my foot just got imploded and my face bounced off the dash and into the windscreen. And so, I was pretty banged up. I was in and out of consciousness for days. I lost my memory for quite a while, you know, we're talking a week or two, not months. But every time they'd come and ask me my name, I couldn't tell them. They told me my name and then I couldn't remember it two seconds later. So I was pretty bad and I spent a few weeks in hospital and then they flew me back to Queensland where I was living. And I went through a pretty heavy rehabilitation process. Back in those days, there weren't a lot of physio happening - this is '82, '83. So I was, I'm a kind of optimistic kind of person, I think, yeah I'll be alright. So I was on crutches for quite a while and I thought, well I can't just sit around doing nothing. So I started training straight away but the only I could was, I could do push-ups, I could do sit-ups. I could go around the block on my crutches to kind of get a bit of workout happening. And I always thought that my ankle would heal and I'd be fine to continue on. But unfortunately, the damage was pretty severe. There was a tremendous amount of bones shrapnel in the ankle and it took them 14 years to pull out all that. And finally, fuse the ankle together. And by that time, 24:48 long since gone. Long since shut and my career as a fighter was pretty much over. I just didn’t know it at that time. And because of the bang I had on my head, my memory was a bit fuzzy and I'd been training in Wing Chun for quite some time. I had to kind of teach myself Wing Chun again. Not from scratch, I could remember chunks but the details, the 25:11, I had to kind of go through that and just kind of put it all back together and rebuild it. And so, if it wasn't for my martial training and that kind of discipline and focus, I don’t think I would have had a shot. That was a pretty bad accident and I think if you hadn’t trained and you went through that, you'd pretty much say that's my life, it's over. But I managed to reboot my body and my legs as best I could and continue teaching and training, and I went on after that. A few years later, cause my idols as a kid, Bill Wallace, Benny "The Jet", you know, as a young adult, they were the guys I always dreamt to meet. And a few years later, I got to fight Benny in an exhibition battle and a couple of years later, Bill Wallace in and exhibition battle here in Australia. So it was like, yeah, I didn’t get to compete against Bill, that he's retired just a little bit before I started really fighting internationally. But I got to get in the ring with these guys after all of that. And it was, you know, it was kind of like a little bit of... again, kind of finding that balance and finding a bit of closure. So yeah, that was a pretty tough time for me. 14 years to fix it but I got back on the horse pretty much straight away but yeah, it was tough. You know, I'd go for a run after we thought I had healed, go for a run 26:32 sometime. Yeah, that was a tough time.Jeremy Lesniak:Quite often, when someone lays a story out like that, all 26:44 my take away from it. But if you had to boil that story down into a quick 26:51, what would that be?Sifu Spain:Never give up. Never say die. You need resilience.Jeremy Lesniak:It's quite clear that the gentleman that you traveled to Melbourne to train with, you know, it's quite clear how fundamental he's been in your training, in your life. So I'm gonna take him off the list because we've already heard about him. If there is somebody who was also fundamental in your martial arts or influential or important, whatever word you wanna throw in there, who would that be?Sifu Spain:Well, I'm from the era with Bruce Lee, he was this shining light that took martial arts into a completely new level. Look, my uncle Gary 27:48 a genius martial artist in his own right. Unfortunately, he's passed away now but he was, you know... I met two guys that worked with him in the 70's. I know that this seems like it's exaggerating but I met these guys and I know their history. And I know what it was like from talking to them, what it was like in the 70's in the clubs. Liverpool, I think, had the biggest concentration of nightclubs in the United Kingdom in the 70's and every single one of them was prone to, you know, incredible violence at that time. And my uncle had over a thousand fights. Now, you'd kinda think that's just imaginary, you can’t do that. But you know, I challenge anyone to look up his history and have a look at everything. He did a very extensive interview with Terry O'Neil, international arts Magazine in the mid 80's, I think. And it's just this amazing story about a guy who's way ahead of his time. He incorporated wrestling in his fighting skills really early, this is in the 60's and 70's, way ahead of us at that time. He incorporated Judo for take downs, wrestling for take downs. You know, he just, and he kind broke the mold. And then you got someone like Bruce Lee who's kind of amazing figure that we have. He's imaginary figure now because he's gone, but he broke the mold. He incorporated fencing, he incorporated various skill sets, Gene LaBell taught him how to wrestle, and all that sort of stuff. And I go, this guy's broke the mold and all were reality-based martial artists, they were incredibly intelligent, they kept it real, and they influenced my generation. Bruce Lee influenced my generation of martial artists. We don’t think, we haven’t forgotten him but you know, there are so many amazing characters and figures and larger than life people out there at the moment. It's easy to forget where these all kind of really came from because all the world championships at that time, Bruce was around 29:52 champion that would come up with theoretical techniques against various attacks. And go, yes that could be a kill, that would be not a kill, blah, blah, blah. But he was the first one to go, no, we need this power. We need to know exactly what's really gonna happen once we kick off. And you know, we owe a lot to that guy. And so, you know, if anyone was going to say who influenced me? It's definitely Bruce Lee.Jeremy Lesniak:It's incredible to me that the person that shows up in nearly every episode, whether we're talking about influence, we're talking about entertainment, you know he... There are episodes that he's named under movies, actors, books, people that folks wanna train with, this amazing figure has been gone over 40 years.Sifu Spain:Yeah.Jeremy Lesniak:And he's still the most prominent martial arts figure that we have. Still the most influential, I would say, overall.Sifu Spain:Yeah, I agree totally.Jeremy Lesniak:And I don't there will ever be another. I don't think there can be.Sifu Spain:No. Not quite like that. You know, someone has to start this. Someone has to be at the beginning and he broke the mold. And we'll all be indebted to him for that, if we really understand what he really did. You know, Wing Chun and all its various forms, and all its various 31:19, you know, he looked at the Wing Chun he's doing, he's going, no we need more. I need more. Maybe not we need more but I need more. He's a very curious mind. And I remember my master telling me when he was training with Bruce, he couldn’t tell him some things Ip Man had given to him in secrecy, but he encouraged him to ask questions. Ask the right questions and the answers should appear. So when they were training together, he would encourage him to be curious. I’m not saying he influenced Bruce to be that curious person that was. I think he's probably just born that way. But what an amazing individual to have the courage to break the mold, to go against martial society, marital status quo, and do things that we considered verboten. Anyway, and just basically, break the rules. And be confident enough in himself to take the, carry the load and carry the criticism. Because now, what we consider, what they would have considered to be, you know, wrong back then, is just considered normal now. It's called the UFC.Jeremy Lesniak:Right. Now I suspect that if I was to let you, you might offer the same answer, it might be Bruce Lee again, so I'm gonna say no. If you could train with someone that you haven't, anywhere in the world, anywhere in time, who would you train with?Sifu Spain:Gene LeBell. I just think, you know he's getting on now but he influenced so many prominent martial artists in this era to take wrestling on board. And he is just this wrestling encyclopedia and what a character. I know he did stunt work and I know he's just this crazy character. He, you know, he's basically Bruce Lee owes him a debt for all the wrestling skills and drills. You know, what we have to realize if we look at Enter The Dragon, the first scene of Bruce Lee finishes with the cutting armbar, I'm pretty confident that 33:22 taught him that. You know, I can't say for sure but this is a character that I would love to... Yeah, exactly. It was a guy I would like to have been in a room with more than once and just go in right, and just be fly on the wall or be a student and listen to that guy. Because he is, to me, he's a genius.Jeremy Lesniak:He's had quite had the impact and is still spoken of so highly -Sifu Spain:Yeah, yeah.Jeremy Lesniak:- today. Absolutely. I'm still hoping to have him on the show.Sifu Spain:Wow, that would be -Jeremy Lesniak:Yeah, hoping, hoping. If there's anybody out there, because... just to put it out there directly, I've been in contact with his folks and he's not doing interviews. So if anybody out there has any sway, they can help me make that happen, I would love it.Sifu Spain:I'd be listening to that one. Wow, that would be awesome.Jeremy Lesniak:Think we all would. That would be one of the ones I would go back and listen as well.Sifu Spain:Yeah, many times.Jeremy Lesniak:Let's talk about competition. You've mentioned competition and that it had a role in your life. You've mentioned world championships. I wanna know first a bit more about your competitive life, that part of your life. But then I want to know about why. So let's start with the what.Sifu Spain:Okay. Well, I started, as I say, Kyokushin in the 70's and Kyokushin is a very competitive discipline. And the original Kyokushin guy, tryna make a name for himself worldwide, Mas Oyama, the founder and creator of Kyokushin. Kyokushin is one of the strongest organization in the world. And you know, they test you every class with sparring and then 35:08. Then they'll have competitions and I fought in 35:13 and all that sort of stuff, you know. So you get used to the challenge of competition and the challenge of winning and losing and you know, being a competitor. When I came to Australia, my master was tryna make a name for Wing Chun and so we entered every tournament that we could. They even had what we used to call Friday Night Fight Night, so there were a lot of Karate school. And I would go in and they'll weigh you and even someone who is remotely close to a weight, that'll be the guy you'll fought. And sometimes it was a five and ten kilo gap but you'd fight anyway because we just wanted the experience. And I honestly, as a kid, I didn't like conflict. I didn't like it at all. But I found competition gave me more confidence, it gave me a purpose, it gave me a reason to keep training hard when everyone else was kind of slacking off. So I used it as a catalyst. I fought many, many times, I won the Australian championship, the Australian was selection for the world titles in Honk Kong in 1982 and that was an international tournament that concluded kickboxing, Muay Thai, you name it, everyone was there, everyone at that time. It was an amateur tournament but every that was anyone that was in that amateur field at that time was there and I was only 21, hang on, I was 22, sorry, and I prepared a year for that. And it was one of the toughest, I've been in many tournaments before. Tournaments are tough because you know, you can break a toe or break a finger in the first fight and you got a fight maybe another four times or five times every two days, depending on the draw. And so by the end of it, you just bag your bones. But this was the Worlds and I broke my toes on the second battle and then, unfortunately on the third bell, I broke my right hand. Well, I broke my knuckle but it snapped and sort of rolled down underneath into my palm, somewhere it's still there today 37:25. And I thought, well that's my tournament over. But I spoke to my master and he took me to an herbalist in Hong Kong and we soaked it in this very special formula for a day and the funny thing is it went through the full spectrum of bruising and swelling within 24 hours. And just lucky, the very next night when I was supposed to fight, I got a 37:48. The guy that I was about to fight, pulled out. So I got a rest night and I got to fight the next time in the finals. That was the semi-finals battle and he pulled out so I went in straight into the finals from my previous battle, and with the hand like it was. But once the bell goes, it sounds really heroic but once the bell goes, you can't really feel anything. Your adrenaline so high, there's so much 38:12 on it, so much resting on that moment that you can’t feel a thing. You know it’s gonna hurt later on but you don't really care. So that was my last fight because I had my car accident a year later. I was hoping to come to the United States, maybe pick up some professional fights in the next year, but none of that eventually because of, unfortunately, because of that car accident. But that was my very final fight, it was in November 1982 at the finals of the Worlds.Jeremy Lesniak:As you're sharing this, I don't hear a lot of... regret's not there. I guess that's the right word, regret. It doesn't sound like you're looking at your life since then, thinking that you've missed out on something.Sifu Spain:No, not at all. I'd be probably a bit more regretful if I hadn't had that car accident a year before I went to the worlds. But I kinda ticked that box and I thought, yeah, I'll defend it. I'll go again, so on and so forth, I was okay with that. And I thought, yeah, okay. I'll fight in the United States if they'll have me. But when I had the accident, I went 39:19. And that's when my life got kind of very interesting, you know. After I could kinda walk again, I couldn't train properly but I kept training. I kinda went, what is a guy with a certain set of skills and no outlet for it? What do I do? So unfortunately, I had to kinda hide myself out for a few guys' jobs, working as a driver for a guy who worked for a 39:42, and then another guy who was a bit of 39:45 figure here in Australia. And I also did that for a few years, and you kinda see some stuff that you never want to see again. But that was an interesting period in my life. I've got to find my way back to the way, I've got to find a way, a path, back to the way of martial arts. And just coincidentally, I was working out at a gym and a couple of guys saw me training and said, who are you, what are you doing? You know, I was stretching and they said, that was pretty cool, blah, blah, blah, and blah. Could we do some training with you? And I said, look I can't because I can't start something that I can't continue with. I'm kind of a bit of a leaf in the wind, I'm kinda coming and going. I'm passing through. But I happened to stay longer than I anticipated and they pestered me so much that I just kinda relinquished and gave in and said, I would do a class tomorrow night at 7 o'clock. Lo and behold, here we are, 30 years later on and I'm still teaching. And those guys are still my friends and students so it's funny. But I don’t have any regrets, no. It was a great career as a competitor and I've had a very colorful career afterwards but my true passion is teaching and training. And coincidentally, those guys who didn't know they were pestering me, well they knew they were pestering but didn’t realize how pivotal that was to find my way back to the way. So, I have a debt that I owe them for kind of snapping me out of where I was and getting back on the path.Jeremy Lesniak:Cool. And so there's the what. And we danced into some of the why space. But why did you compete?Sifu Spain:Okay, to be totally honest, I could say oh, it's cause I have a competitive nature. Yeah, I'm competitive. I think everyone's got a bit of competitive nature. To go to that level, you've got to be kind of hyper-competitive or ultra-competitive. But to be honest, I wanted to make my Sifu happy. He was my father figure; like I said my stepfather was a bit of a-hole and my master was very generous, took me in, shared me a great deal of kindness, gave me direction, gave me purpose. I'm owe him a huge debt. And I didn't feel like... when I say a huge debt. I didn't feel obligated but I felt compelled to do as much as I could for him because I loved him as a father. And when he said we need build a competitive team, and we need to put Wing Chun on the map, we need to do things other Wing Chun systems aren't prepared to do, we're gonna compete. We'll go Karate, we got Kyokushin, we'll go boxing, we'll do anything! We'll fight on any platform. I said, right. I'm in. I didn’t hesitate. Admittingly, I was scared, I was like you know, it's a big thing. Anyone who says they don't have a level of intrepidation when they get on to these things as a kid, you know I was only 18, 19, would be 42:43 I think. Sure, there's a rush, there's a great sense of anticipation. But there’s little bit of intrepidation, as well. But I did it and it kinda helped me get over those nerves and all that sort of stuff. But I primarily did it for him. He was my driving force. He wants me to help, he wants a competitive team, I'm in.Jeremy Lesniak:As you were talking about your reasons, you know, I could hear, even before you used the word, I could hear the love that you had for you Sifu.Sifu Spain:Absolutely.Jeremy Lesniak:And that just struck me, you know. Not to say that people don’t generally have love or, very the least, respect for their instructors but I don’t think there are a whole lot of people who are going to put themselves so physically on-the-line to help advance their instructor's goals. And you know, I've spoken with a lot of people in this show and at least as many outside of this show and when we talk about the things that motivate them to compete, it's usually very personal. And I don't want to say selfish, some of them may have selfish reasons but it's usually very much for them. They're trying to work something out, they’re trying to test themselves. And those are all absolutely wonderful reasons but I think you're the first person that I've heard tell me that you competed at that level for someone else.Sifu Spain:Yeah. I don’t know if it's weird or not but it's just what I did. It's like you'd do anything for your family. You'd do anything for your father, your mother, your brother, your sister. You'll do anything for them. He wanted to do that, it meant a great deal to him, and I thought well that's okay. I'm with you, whatever you want, I'll do it.Jeremy Lesniak:Cool.Sifu Spain:That was it.Jeremy Lesniak:We've talked about Bruce Lee a bit today. You mentioned Enter the Dragon. Is that your favorite martial arts movie?Sifu Spain:It probably is. I've got a copy lying around here somewhere, you know what I mean?Jeremy Lesniak:I think most of us do.Sifu Spain:Yeah, absolutely. But like, you know, there's great martial arts movies out there. You look at some of the Samurai movies, 45:02 they're fantastic. I absolutely love them. And you know, Van Damme, when he came to the scene, my gosh, what a force to be reckoned with. He just took over the world. But when it comes to just some of the most 45:14 moments and some of the most very, very best fight scenes, it just doesn't get better than that. And so, yeah. You could probably, in your mind's eye, run the movie in your head and just be spot-on. But every now and then I'd put it on and I go, yep, it's just as good as I remember. And all of these movies are great. Well, there's one scene that I think is just hilarious. I think it's the Big Boss where he punches a guy through a wall and there's this silhouette of the guy's body through the wall. I think that is just absolutely so cartoon-ish and so funny and so weird. But nevertheless, that aside, yeah, Enter The Dragon was just the work of art. And you know, people kinda don't get the timelines right. He was working, I think he was working, on a Game of Death when he was called to that movie. So things are kind of about alignment. People think one is after the other but he was working on one before the other. That was really last movie.Jeremy Lesniak:Right. And you know, the thing for me about Bruce Lee's movies is that if you sit down and if watched them objectively and you look at the time table, so much of what is cliché now started in his films. And I just think that that's so cool. I mean, we can... you know, if we were to show them to people now, you know they almost seem, it almost seems like when you show someone a Bruce Lee film for the first time, there's no magic in it for them because all of the things that folks grew up seeing has become deluded with time. Cause so many others are doing the same things yet they're doing them with more CGI or you know, at some kind of higher, more impact-ful level. Like yeah, where did they come from.Sifu Spain:That's right. I mean, I didn't like CGI when I first heard it. I tell them I can tell the difference, it's a bit rubbish. But now, really, it's an amazing thing. And you know, the wires in that, and that all that kicking, and the 47:19 that sort of stuff. I get it, I get it. And it makes for a wonderful visual feast. But when you see the old original stuff and you got like Sonny Chiba, Street Fighter, it's old, it's outdated, but there's some hardcore skills in that movie, you know. And anyone who knows it will agree that 47:37 so when you see these guys that are just relying on their skills, who are probably just up doing a bunch of their own stunts, you know that's the way it was and you gotta respect that. And there're some great guys out there, for sure. But they don't have creative influence, they're probably gonna be forced to use a bunch of special effects to enhance what they can already do so well, anyway. I wanna see what they can really do. I don't want to see all of the other stuff. I'm a bit old school about that.Jeremy Lesniak:Yeah. My favorite when we talk about folks who are living, who you just see their raw skill as 48:16Sifu Spain:Yeah, yeah. You know if you look at him in the beginning of Enter The Dragon 48:22, who is this guy? He shouldn't be able to move so well.Jeremy Lesniak:No, he should not.Sifu Spain:You know, that guy likes his poor pants, he's a little bit... But he's fantastic and he has kept up. And he's now a living legend on the screen. I got nothing but the utmost respect for that guy. I agree, he's one of those guys you just go at, he should not be that good but he is, you know. He's got that innate skill, it's just amazing. Yeah I'm a real fan.Jeremy Lesniak:Undeniable skill, yeah. So what's keeping you going? You have some goals? You have some things you're looking towards? It sounds like you've got a great life. You sound thoroughly satisfied with where you are at.Sifu Spain:Absolutely. Getting that BJJ black belt in October last year was really one of the last boxes I wanted to tick as a martial artist as far as belts are concerned. I didn't go after them like they're trophies. I wanted... My philosophy is very simple when it comes to bringing new skill set to your mat. You can bring in a BJJ guy, you can bring in a wrestling guy, I found that out from my experience with my friends who have schools that that can be 49:30 because sometimes you bring in a wrestling guy, and I'm not having against... I have wrestling friends so I'm not 49:38 wrestlers. I love wrestling. And I love BJJ, it's a beautiful art but you've gotta be very careful who you bring on to your mat because sometimes there's too many cooks spoil the broth and you know, if they create a 49:49 versus them and 49:50 with the BJJ guy 49:53 they take a chunk of the school with them. And so, my philosophy has always been very simple. I started BJJ 18, 19 years ago. I want that discipline to be integrated into mine discipline so I'm gonna go out and learn it from scratch. So I went out and did BJJ as a white belt. And the humbling experience that was, you know, I, at that time, I had over 20 years martial arts experience, you know. And I was getting tapped out by a guys that had done 10 hours more BJJ than me but nothing else. They hadn't done 20 years of anything else and I go wow, okay. This stuff really is good. It's humbling, it bashes your ego in a little bit. But my philosophy is simple: go out, learn the discipline, and bring it back. What most people, we'd joke about this on my mat, I would go out on a Friday morning, go and get a private lesson on BJJ from my coach, I would drive back quickly as I could to get to the lunch time class on a Friday and teach that class. I teach that private lesson on the mat. Then on Sunday, at the BJJ class, I'd teach in again. And on Tuesday at the BJJ class, I'd teach a third time. So I really kinda got a big bite of that information. And then the following Friday, I'd do it all over again. Everyone go, you're a genius. Where are you getting this stuff from? You're amazing. They didn't realize I was only one hour ahead. And the funny thing is this one of my very dear friends and students, is a black belt now, also. He was the only one that knew. He goes, they don't know you're one hour ahead, do they? I said, no. Let's just keep it quiet for now. It was a bit of a joke, but I was only ever an hour ahead. But I brought the discipline in because I felt that was the best way to integrate it rather than have someone come in who didn't understand the discipline we were doing, because it'd be impossible for them to integrate it. And then I found a way. So my goal is just to continue, trying to expand and foster and develop our version of Wing Chun. Build it strong, keep the BJJ program strong, and keep integrating those two disciplines seamlessly. As BJJ evolves, becomes more sophisticated, we must keep up with that; become more sophisticated selves. So my goal is very simple, just keep moving forward and keep reinventing myself. I try to be a better version of myself every year than I was last year on as many different levels as I can, in and outside the mat. I really don't have any major goals. I don’t... Trust me, I don’t need any more belts, you know. I've got a Kyokushin black belt, a Wing Chun red belt, and a BJJ black belt - that's enough, you know. That's kind of enough. I'm so deeply immersed in those disciplines. It's gonna take the rest of my life to figure out a whole bunch of stuff, anyway. So I'm happy with that. My immediate goals: stay healthy, fit, and strong, be a better version of myself, as a martial artist, to kind of foster and develop the system as best I can, and to, you know, keep looking after my students as best I can. I've got some amazing people around me. It's not just talented, it's not just about the talent, that's a good thing, but you know, the world's full of unsuccessful people with talent. This is more about developing a culture the people can immerse themselves into and finding something, becoming something bigger than themselves, and immersing themselves into a culture that’s really like a gigantic family. And as they say, friends of the family you get to choose, and so these people foster friendship that lasted 35 plus years. It's quite rare in today's society, you know. My goal is just to keep that thing rolling long.Jeremy Lesniak:And I’m sure that if we were to talk to your students, they would say similar reverent things for you that you said about your Sifu, your first instructor. Because you know, it seems... I have a saying and, pardon me all, I'll share a little bit of myself on here, I don't typically do that, but I've mentioned it couple of times on the show; I believe that if you break all motivation down, we do things for one of two reasons: love or fear. And it's just so clear to me that your teaching, your instruction, the entire life you've built around martial arts is because of love. Love of the arts, love of your students, love of yourself. And I don't mean that in any kind of derogatory way. It is clear that you value where you're at in life and it's...Sifu Spain:I'd take that as a great compliment. I have no problems... See, I'm glad you've mentioned it because another thing that I detest, I have a pet peeve in martial arts. It's about instructors getting god-complexes cause someone's bowing to you, calling you Sensei, Master, Sifu, Professor, whatever, you know. And these guys get this complex and they start to kinda believe in their own prayers and they start to act like demigods and they start throwing the weight around. I kinda abide by that, 55:02 it’s to me, and they start bullying the students. These are things that we will not accept on our mat. We're all equal, we're just some of the 55:11 down the path and now this. You know, that's all it is. And I have many, I love all my students but I have many students that I really admire for who they are on and off the mat. And you're allowed to do that as a coach. You're allowed to admire your 55:29 you’re allowed to admire your students. It’s not something you can’t do because you’re bigger than them, you're greater than them, I don’t believe in that. It's rubbish. I have the best time on my mat because there are people on my mat that I just so, I'm so glad to there with. It doesn’t get any better than that. I can teach a tough class just like the other guy. You know they say pain's a great teacher but no one wants to get his class. You know, we did tough classes where I work them out but we have a lot of laughs, we have a lot of fun, there's a lot of love in the room. It's all good and yet, at the same time, just as an example, I had a guy going for a gold belt. At Christmas, he had to do, I did a level 10 technical with him a few days before and that's like three hours of just technical stuff. He had to recite every technique in the system. And then on the day, he had to spar 10 real quality fighters, real quality martial artists, men and women, all the way through, none stop, very little rest. And he got a bit banged up but man, he had that belt. And you know what, the funny thing is, I said something on Facebook afterwards. I said, you know, what a gift Damion is. He's a guy who's prepared to put himself on the line in front of all of us and he went, okay, I know you guys are gonna hurt me but I trust you. And I'm gonna go for it, anyway. And so he did it. He placed his trust in their hands and even though he got a bit banged up, no one tried to kill him. No one tried to hurt him, it's just a 57:00 he spot 10 guys in a row, you're gonna get banged up. But at the end of it, there was no 57:06 house. Everyone was just so happy for him. And he just stepped into this new space. That's what we do. We beat up on each other a little bit but in the nicest possible way. There's always a lot of love in the room. It can be done. You can have that culture and still have hard training and lots of discipline, and at the same time you get lots of fun. You can temper it.Jeremy Lesniak:If folks out there wanna check out what you're doing, you know, your online presence or maybe there are people close to you that wanna see what's going on with what you teach, how do they find you? How do they get a hold of your unique brand?Sifu Spain:Okay. Well we're Red Boat Kung Fu which 57:51 Wing Chun, cause if anyone knows the Wing Chun history, you know, it's the red boat. It's a red opera, the red 57:58 used to take their troops around China and that's how Wing Chun kinda propagated. So we've taken on the name Red Boat Kung Fu. And so that's our main tool, so you can find us on redboatkungfu.com.au. Plus, you know, I've got a YouTube presence but to be honest, I don't have a big YouTube presence. I kinda put it out there for in-house people. We've got an online university, which is an online way of training anywhere in the world. We've got students training in Europe, got a few on the United States, we've only launched about three months ago. That's kinda something we're rebuilding on over the next few years. It can be done. You can train. I've graded students all over the world successfully and I've had them coming, visit us, and they've held their own with every single other student on the mat because they've done it right. You can do it anywhere in the world. So you know, we've got an online university that's proven to be successful. We've got our website, it's got everything, what we're up to and what we're doing. So, yeah. Just look up Red Boat University or Red Boat Wing Chun Kung Fu and you'll find us. And in there will be messages, video message, I send out a video message once a week. Some will end up in the university's, some will end up on the website, some will end up on YouTube. So we're out there.Jeremy Lesniak:And of course, folks, we do drop all of these links, for everything we just talked about today. Links to past episodes that we talked about, you know, one to at least two, three people that we have previous episodes about. So head on over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. You can find the show notes, we're gonna have some photos. Sifu has already sent me some photos that we'll drop in there and just, all kinds of good stuff.Well, Sifu, I appreciate your time today and I'd love for you to send us out with some parting words.Sifu Spain:Firstly, thank you for having me because you've asked some really insightful questions and it's been a great pleasure. And I look forward to more correspondents with you because it's been really great fun for me. You know, if I was gonna say anything, I think martial arts is a metaphor for life. I think when we train on a mat, it's got a healthy environment. Regardless, what we find, that we face the challenges, you know, sometimes it comes the day will throw you a curved ball and you can come onto the mat feeling pretty down or maybe you're stressed, whatever. Then you start 1:00:33 workout, you start working out with your friends, you start training with your buddies, you know. You feel inspired and you're hanging out with people that are like-minded. I think, you know, maybe you spar and sparring's an issue for you, but you're sparring in a controlled environment so yeah, it's challenging but it's controlled. You get to face your fears a little bit. You get to overcome some of your anxieties. I think martial arts, to me, is a metaphor for life. And I guess that's why I’m so happy because all of the fears and anxieties that I've experienced in my life, I've overcome through martial arts. And I know that in the future, if I ever experienced any fears and anxieties, that martial arts will assist me in overcoming them. And I think it was a great quote or maybe it's a poem or something along those lines about courage, and it's neither the absence of fear or despair but the strength to conquer them. To conquer them is so much more important because you know... and it's not the absence of that. We all experienced fear and anxiety; that's just life. But the strength to conquer them is key. And I think martial arts is incredibly powerful for that to overcome our fears and anxiety. Because we all want to live a peaceful life. We all want to be happy and I find martial arts makes me happy and I find it makes a great deal of people that I know, and makes everyone I know, on the mat, happy. And so, get into it. It doesn't matter what discipline you do. Find a healthy mat. Find somewhere where the right things are being said, and there's a good culture and the people are the like-minded. There's no bullies, you don't want any bullies or thugs. You know, you just wanna make sure you’re going in an environment where you feel safe but at the same time, there's a challenge there somewhere for you to overcome.Jeremy Lesniak:Thank you, Sifu Spain for coming on the show today. It's an honor to have you here. You're a wonderful guest and I love your stories. I'm sure that the listeners took some inspirations from them, as well. If you want to check out the show notes with photos and videos and links to websites and social media for Sifu Spain or for other guests, the best place: whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. If you haven't been there, if you haven’t checked out all the amazing stuff that we have over there, you really should transcript. We put literally ours into the show notes for every episode, trying to make them as robust as we can to give you as much value to help you enjoy these episodes. Get to know the guests and, you know, support them. Because a lot of them have schools and books and video series. And we want you to be able to know about all of that stuff so you can decide if you want to reach out to people; if you want to check out what they're doing. All of our guests are wonderful people and these show notes give you the opportunity to get to know them in more depth than the conversation that I get to have with them that you get to listen to. If you have someone that you want to recommend as a guest, we have a form over on the website. Go ahead, fill that out, suggest people. We love getting recommendations from listeners about who they think would be best for the show. Honestly, that makes our job easier and it lets us know that you already know something about the show and the people that you want to see on the show. That allows us to bring on the best guests. Cause I don't know these folks, you do. Don't forget to check out whistlekick.com for all the wonderful products. We've got some new apparel up over there, we've actually revamped some things and we're doing new stuff. If you haven't checked that out recently, you should. And for those of you that are users of the style of protective gear we are making now, don't worry. We have other styles in development right now. It's coming but we just added some new colors recently. Check those out too. Find us on social media at whistlekick. Email me, jeremy@whistlekick.com, sign up for the newsletter, subscribe, leave us reviews, all that good stuff. I appreciate the support. The support continues to grow, the show continues to grow. And in any way I slice the numbers, however I look at the show and the growth, it blows me away. Makes my day... You have no idea. That's all I've for you. Until next time. Train hard, smile, and have a great day.