Episode 521 - Martial Arts Radio LIVE (Episode 10)
In this episode, Jeremy brings us the tenth Episode of the Martial Arts Radio Live
Martial Arts Radio LIVE (Episode 10) - Episode 521
Today's episode is the tenth installment for the Martial Arts Radio Live. Jeremy answers questions and reads stories from the listeners as well as giving out some cool trivia about martial arts or anything under the sun. In this episode, we have a much-improved show, at least by our standards! Listen to find out a lot of surprise announcements, some Chuck Norris jokes, and more!
You can read the transcript below or download it here.
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome to episode 10 of Whistlekick live. Yes, this is the 10th month in a row that we have done this, which is completely ridiculous to me. I can't believe it's still going; I can't believe that we're still making this happen. Well, one of the things I want to let you know something different today, you will notice my hands are off. I am hands-off on the controls, this is an evolution of the show, we've got Gabe running the controls, yes, this is the big change. Now for those of you that don't know, Gabe has been the one putting together all the awesome content from the beginning, he's been killing it. Coming up with great stuff for me to talk about photos and videos for us to look at and react to and has been a lot of fun and we, after each episode we kind of debrief and say, how do we make it better? And I said, you know, we want to do next time, I want you to run the controls so I can just do this because that's been one of the problems it's been, not problem, that's been one of the challenges for me is having, is running the board so to speak and then dealing with the content and trying to be present for all of you and right now, Gabe is remoted into my computer. He can see all my deepest, darkest secrets and I can't do anything about it but I trust him, so I think we'll be good, I think we're all right there. And I want to shout out everybody that's … I'm not going to shout at everybody, I want to thank everybody that's watching, I appreciate it and so let's see how this show goes. Apparently, I'm looking at energy drinks, kicks energy is these energy … no, these are firecrackers, fireworks. Okay, that makes more sense. Caution, emits showers of sparks. Okay, so here is some sort of martial arts themed … yeah, I see a foot in the graphics, some sort of martial arts themed fireworks going on here and more martial arts themed fireworks. I mean, of course, you know, we just had the 4th of July Independence Day here in the U S I'm assuming everybody watching is in the US just given the time of day, but maybe not. Ninja caution, emits showers of sparks. So, you know, all these are doing are making me want to go outside and blow things up and that's not something I generally want to do. Now, there's a video of things blowing up. I don't know why, what is happening? What is blowing up? It's I mean, it's clearly … whatever it is, it's sitting on an old wire spool, I've moved enough of those in my day. More fireworks, maybe it's a UFO. Wait for it. Okay, I'm waiting, I'm waiting. How far did this thing launch? Okay, it's pretty colors. I'm not the biggest fan of fireworks, true story. I find them to be a lot of build-up with not a whole lot of actual substance cause think about it, growing up, I'm going to watch fireworks with something that my mother and I did every year and we'd go one town over and it would, I think from start to … from leaving the house to getting there to the fireworks, we would have to leave the house at like 5:30 because everybody would come from miles around for these fireworks. The fireworks would start at like 9, 9:30 so it's four hours and then it's maybe a 20, let's say, 30-minute-show and then you got to wait two hours to go to your car because everybody tries to leave at once and then you get in the car and you sit there for an hour trying to leave and by the time you're all done, it's like a six hour process for 30 minutes of fireworks. Now if I'm lighting the fireworks and blowing them up in my backyard, totally different story. Totally different story. In completely other news… so back on episode 499, we were kind of doing a recap of a lot of the things that have happened over the last five years of Martial Arts Radio and I offhandedly mentioned that one of the products that we've done that has been discontinuing were belts. And so, let's find out is anybody in this mix right now, anybody watching, do you have a belt? I actually got an email from somebody saying that they had heard that in the episode their black belt is a Whistlekick black belt and maybe there'll be a collector's item someday, I don't know. It's not signed or anything, how would you sign a black belt? I guess if I have a silver marker, I could sign that, but who knows if you've got one, save it. And we've got some comments coming through here. I'm going to read off some of this stuff if I can get this computer to cooperate. There we go, we're doing things, separate computers, it's like, it's like mission control in here right now, it's crazy. Go, Gabe, go. Oh, Gabe, they're already mocking us and our and our conversations, it's fine. Yeah, it sounds like what you hear in a bomb shelter during rocket attacks oh, that sounds like it's spoken from experience. Slow-mo videos of fireworks are awesome. “I agree I had to go from Glenside to Abington …” I don't know where that is. “And wait in line to find a spot, it was too much for the amount of time it took. Sadly, no silver marker, I'm a red black belt but belong to action karate.” Oh, well welcome. Yeah, we only released solid colors and the plan was we were going to do combinations and stripes and everything but the factory that did the belts didn’t … the ones that came out good were great, the ones that did not … they took ends of belts and sewed them together and it just, it was a whole scene. It was a mess. One of the things that we do here at Whistlekick, we've put a lot of effort into our social media and if you're not following us all over the place, you should be. Where are we? We're on Twitter where I interact with people when I remember to which is like twice a month. Instagram is where we're putting a lot of work in right now. Facebook of course, and if you're watching us, you're probably … if you're watching us live, you're definitely on Facebook and YouTube, where we will rebroadcast this tomorrow night as well but we're also on tumbler. I don't know if anything shows up there but recently, we've been putting some time into Pinterest so you might want to check out Pinterest. If you are a Pinner, which is what I understand the noun of people who use Pinterest to be, which is way cooler than saying a Facebooker or an Instagrammer Pinner at least has like, I don't know if there's some substance there, it's kind of neat. Eric's say’s nothing but love. Hey, you guys can pick and play all you want. Totally fine. I'm down for it. We fortunately, have not grown to the point where people are going to invest their time to come hate on what's going on. I hoped, I aspire to reach that point at some time. Pull that back up. So this one here, Stacy in the chat saying that she said this … I've said this, this was the initial inspiration I did to … this is back when I did the social media. I did to 10 … you know, you're a martial artist if sets, I think this was in the first one and this launched like a whole bunch of our social media and I actually have notes to do another block of 10, I don't know when that'll happen, if it's going to happen today and now it got pushed off till tomorrow, my calendar is a mess but it's fun, right? It's fun to poke fun at ourselves. What we do as martial artists is ridiculous and that's one of the things that we try to bring forward in our social media. “If you could tell your instructor how to give you critiques, how to give you criticism, what would you say?” I respond best to some balance, some positive and some constructive. I don't do well with negative. I don't like when my coaches, my instructors say, “Hey, that sucked.” If it was that bad, I'll probably know that it sucked and I don't need you to tell me. If you tell me, I'm probably just going to feel badly about myself and that's not how you get the best out of me. There are some people out there who I've worked with, who like being torn down. I don't know why, I don't empathize with that but hey, you know, different strokes for different folks. The first time I saw my teacher in his normal clothing, it was weird. This was very much my reality when I was a full-time instructor. Yeah. This one I identify with without a doubt, you do something perfectly a whole bunch, the moment the instructor watches, that's the one that falls apart. It goes out the window and I've even told my instructor can you turn around again a few times? And then, and then look when I'm not paying attention, cause I'll do it right when you see that. I think as an instructor, learning how to motivate people is one of the most important skillsets and it's one that is really difficult because it's not universal and it's not consistent. If you think about the ways you can motivate people, you've got positive, you've got negative, you've got constructive, you've got demonstrative, showing people things, you've got kinesthetic where you might actually like, “Hey, do this” And they're like, “Oh, okay now I get it.” Right? And so you've got that and more and different combinations work and I don't know about you but on different days I need different things. Sometimes on a good day, I don't need as much. If I've had a bad day, maybe I need a little bit more, I don't know, cuddling. Not really, I don't need coddling but I think you know what I mean. That sometimes we need different things and the best instructors can read what you need and deliver it even when you don't know what that is. I've had instructors that have pushed me. What I didn't know, that that's what I wanted. As people, we all like to be complimented and encouraged, but as martial artists, we also look to be critiqued so we can improve. “How do you find that balance as a student or instructor?” I think it depends on where the focus is. What's the priority? Is the priority on getting better or as an instructor, helping your students get better or is it on them leaving and feeling really good about themselves because the two are really different and it's okay, again, to play differently to different people because different students need different things. At the end of the day, what is the job of a student? To learn, to give their best, to show up and try to get better versus the day before. As an instructor, what's the job? The job is to help students do that is to foster their growth and if that's the priority for each side, the rest of it tends to fall into place in my experience. Eric says, “Positive reinforcing is great, but not when you're really wanting to push past the black belt plateau.” I think that can depend on the individual. I think a lot of black belts know they need to be pushed and a lot of black belts want to be pushed. I've known martial arts students who are so focused on getting better that they don't want to even hear what they've done right. “Okay, great. I did that right. I don't care. Tell me what I did wrong. Tell me how to get better. Where where's the progress. Help me move things forward.” I think the big thing is if it's constructive or destructive, basically if you listen and say, “Okay, this is what I need you to do better.” Yes. I would agree with that. Bubbles. If anybody hasn't watched the Trailer Park Boys, you might not get where this meme comes from, but that's where that's coming from. When everyone in class understands the technique and you're all sitting there like, yeah, I've been there, I've definitely been there. I won't say I've been there a lot, but I've been there enough that I can certainly relate to this. There are times where maybe it's been a long day, just I'm not firing on all cylinders and I take a look at something and say, “What is this? I don't … I know this forum, are you sure I know this forum? Are you sure I've done this before? I don't know.” Maybe I disagree. Let's talk about Zero Gravity. In honor of the successful SpaceX launch, those of you who didn't follow, that got delayed like what? Three times, four times? And finally, a private group put a rocket up with people on it. Let's suppose humans make it to another planet someday, what would the martial arts look like with less gravity? Grappling, throwingis … oh, people sending me messages. Throwing and honestly what, let me even pull that back from there. Everything we do in martial arts comes with our relationship to the ground. If you're kicking, the better you're grounded, the more powerful your kick. If you jump, you're probably not going to kick as high. Why? Because you don't have as much ground to push off. If you're looking for the most powerful kick possible, unless you're just throwing your body at it and you have weak legs, a jumping kick is not as powerful. If you're trying to throw someone, you have to be stable to get that throw. So if you have less gravity, you have less of a relationship with the ground but you could do cool things, right? You could jump, you could fly around. Instead of doing a jump spinning hook kick, you might be able to do a jump six times around spinning hook kick. Extreme martial arts, I think we'd take off. We would get broadcasts of people doing martial arts on the moon and they would step in and they would bow and they would start their opening technique in their form and the extreme division and they would still be going when the clock ran out. Kind of like this, kind of like this scene from Crouching Tiger II? Pretty sure? I'm looking to Gabe to see if it is II, he doesn't know. Okay for those of you that don't know, Gabe and I also have a real time video chat going to my left so we can just kind of touch base and make sure everything's going okay. The reason I'm saying this is Crouching Tiger II is that the cinematography from the first of the second one was pretty different stylistically, the first one was a lot greener and darker and this looks grayer and brighter. Maybe I'm wrong but that's what I'm going with. First one probably is still my favorite martial arts movie, so good. Imagine you're choreographing a fight scene in a space station. Now there's less gravity so you've got all the physics you've got to deal with if you want to make it look realistic. What would be your approach? Now this was a question that I think you posed, Gabe. I post? I did it. Apparently, I post this. I don't remember doing this. Apparently, I asked this question in the Martial Arts Fun and Friends group, if you're not part of that group, you should join that group. Super good time. And the responses were pretty good, there were a lot of people really had some fun with it, talking about weapons and using environments and things like that. And I think it's a good mental exercise. If you train at a school where you practice choreography, where you make up routines or even if you don't, this would be a fun one. What does martial arts look like without gravity? Play with it. If you have rafters that you can hang things from not going to be super specific on this, because I don't want someone to sue me, but there are ways that you could suspend someone and they could train while hovering. You could figure that out, that'd be kind of cool. And if you do that, I would like to see it. Now, this next question we got this one was submitted by Andrew Adams who just popped into the chat. So hello Andrew, what did you miss? You missed the first 22 minutes of fun stuff. Oh, great question. Now I'm going to make some word substitution here, what makes a dojo a dojo? What makes a martial arts school different from a club? Hmm. I think a lot of people are going to have different answers on this one and those of you in the chat, I would love to hear your opinions. You know, what makes a dojo, a dojang, an academy, what makes that different from a club? And I think my difference could be summed up as a dojo or other terminology for the same environment that space is dedicated to the purpose of martial arts growth. A club exists solely because there are groups of people who want to get better at martial arts and they will train elsewhere, so the dojo or dojang or whatever, right? I try to be style agnostic. The space is the difference. A club exists within a dojo, right? It's a group of people who want to train, but when they're within a dojo, they have the added benefit of a dedicated training space. Does that mean … here's the counter. Does that mean that if you run a martial arts school and you were training in a church basement that you are not training in a dojo? Yes or no? While you are training, that is a dojo, the moment you stop training, it's no longer a dojo. That's the difference. If I … well, It's Andrew's question so I'm going to use Andrew as the example. Andrew converted a shed in his backyard to a dojo. Once he did that conversion, I didn't see any lawn mowers hanging out ready to go back in there. It is a dojo. It is always a dojo and it will remain a dojo until it is no longer a dojo. It doesn't flip back and forth between dojo and high school gymnasium. So Andrew is saying, “So a school that teaches in a VFW or Veterans of Foreign Wars once or twice a week would be a club because the space isn't dedicated to only martial arts.” So I'm using the terminology to define the space. You may have posed a question about the group of people and I'm not going to make a difference in the group of people, I'm simply talking about the space. Is there a benefit to having a dedicated training space? Yes. Does that mean that real true quality martial arts cannot exist without being in a dedicated space? No. In fact, I have seen the exact opposite at far too many places to say that it is a necessity. Stacy says, “It has learning and spirit at its heart. It does not matter location. A club sounds more like a group for fun to me, it does not have to have a higher purpose or a poker club.” This is a deep conversation and this is one that we could probably spend a lot of time on. I think this … did this end up in Fun and Friends? Gabe? Did this question end up in Fun and Friends? If it didn't … it did? Okay. I missed this one. I missed how this one came through then. I need to go back and look and see what everybody else said cause it's a great question. What's next? Now of course, you've all seen this format from time to time, martial arts instructor, what my friends think I do, we've got a picture of me I'll give it the chopsticks. What my students think I do, it's a drill sergeant. What instructors of other arts think I do, is it Steve Martin playing the ukulele? What my white belts think I do, it's someone breaking rocks. What I think I do, it's people training at a Shaolin Temple, and what I really do, it's a kid kicking the instructor in the groin. Good times. Very good times. You know what I love about this format of meme? The reality that's in there. I've seen so many of them. I've seen them for every martial art style you can imagine, I've seen them for boxing and wrestling for teaching you know, non-martial arts, just everything. It's so true. They're all so true and I think it's really important that we learn how to laugh at ourselves so I love when we have these pop through cause they're funny. Good times. “Is your favorite aspect of martial arts training also your favorite to watch? If not, what is it and why? No. You know my favorite thing to train it consistently is? You're gonna think I'm lying, it's basics but it's not single punches down and back on the floor, it's combinations of basics. It's you take a movement and you do it five times and then the instructor adds another movement and you do the combination of those two a few more times and then you do another movement and you take it. How far can you get before people can't remember it? And depending on the group and the movements you pick, you can get … I've had people get 10, 15 movements in. That's really fun because it makes you think, it makes the instructor think it's a great way to do basics and I just, I love basics because I love being able to just focus on what I'm doing. My favorite thing to watch is either forms or sparring depending on who's doing it. If I have been sitting in a chair for three hours and I'm going to watch another orange belt, do Pinan [0:25:02] for the 74th time that day, I don't want to watch that, but if I'm watching someone who's really gifted at forums and they do a wonderful performance, I will watch that all day. That is the best. Anybody else have a comment in here? Look, we got more people coming in. I appreciate everybody joining us in the chat. If you've got something to say, say it and I'll do my best to catch it and bring it back in. This is one of the places where the time delay kind of stinks but we work with what we have, right? “How do you find motivation for something that doesn't excite you?” You have to look at what you're doing. You have to look at why you're doing it. So let's say, here's a great example, tomorrow morning I'm going to have to do the books for Whistlekick, the financial books. I do them every week, because if I don't do them every week, I do them like once a month and it takes way too long. I don't like doing the books. It is not fun to me. I don't like looking at how much money we don't have, just flat out. So why do I do it? Because I need to know how much money we don't have. There are lots of things that we have to do and I'll bring this back to martial arts in a moment, there are lots of things that we have to do in life that we don't want to do, right? I mean, we all know that. I assume everybody watching is an adult. But in order to do things that are important to you, you find that motivation. Everything we do is a choice and sometimes people will push back on that. “No I don't pay my taxes by choice.” You absolutely do. You have a choice. You could go to jail. You could not pay your taxes and go to jail. You could not go to work and get evicted. There's choice, and once you recognize that there's choice, you can see that you have motivation to do something versus something else. Now, when we're talking about martial arts, let's say you're not motivated to do forums, plenty of people in … I know many of you because you write to me and say, “Can you give me some reasons why forms are dumb and I can tell my instructor so we can stop doing them.” And I say, “No, because they're not.” But let's say forms don't motivate you. You've got a number of reasons that could be that you might find some motivation. First, the more you work on the things you are worst at the better you get as a martial artist. Yes, if you stink at forms, as you get better at forms, it will make everything else you do better. Two, if you care about rank promotion, you probably need to work on your forms. Three, you could take it as a personal challenge. How do I find something in this that I really enjoy? There was a point in time where I absolutely hated fighting as many of you know, I am not a tall man. I am five foot seven, I've been five foot seven for a long time. When I was a kid, I was very short so I would get crushed sparring because my legs were shorter than lots of people's arms. That's not terribly motivating but I found some ways to have fun because the standard became not winning but maybe I can get a point on this person or maybe I can just take longer to lose. You have to find something, and if you're not willing to find something, it just means that it's not important to you. When you feel like quitting, think about why you started. Probably the most important advice you can get. And what's funny is, I almost wore the Whistlekick shirt that has this on the back. I almost wore that for the show. We got to make some new shirts. Most of my shirts have been retired and they're in the archive in the warehouse. Hmmm boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, yeah. I'm watching people responding to some of this stuff in the chat they're talking among themselves and I really liked that, it's cool. I always feel like you can talk among yourselves, you don't have to, it doesn't have to just be addressed to me. You can comment. I'm going to watch, it's cool. Now this is something I've seen this pop up in a number of news articles and I've had several people write to me and say, “Hey, are you going to get this person on the show?” Uh, maybe. But I think one of the challenges is that I don't know if this person speaks English, Japan. I don't think I read that yet Gabe, can you go back? Japan has produced its first graduate, its first Ninja studies graduate. Now first off, I am disappointed that that person is not me and secondly, that I was not invited to participate not like as an instructor, but I want to go to a Ninja school. Who doesn't want to go to Ninja school? That's way better than any other kind of school. Come on. And I think I'm assuming this is an image of this Ninja studies program that we've got coming up? Yes. All right. So what we see are a handful of people with bows. I see a guy on the left with … I don't know what it's retracted, this is a long bow, it's longer than typical. And then you've got these two people on the right that have bent bows? I'm not really sure what's going on there. I don't know what's happening. I don't at all know what's happening. They just, they look bent. Why are they bent? And that, hold on, go back, go back one second. Everybody's barefoot except for, except for this person … I'm stealing the mouse … except for this person right here, he’s got like these really colorful shoes going on. What's happening in there? Why is this guy got colorful shoes? And then this guy has got a black Vulcan? I don’t know, some kind of stick. All right you can have a mouse. I don't know what's going on there. I don't know who graduated but I would talk to them, I would like to talk to them. CJ says, “I will go with you to Ninja school.” Cool. We can room together. I really want to buy, again with my negative dollars, I want to buy one of these smaller colleges that have gone out of business and just turn it into a residential martial art school. I really, really want to do this. Andrew's asking if that's a naginata on the right hand side of the image, it might be, it might be the wooden equivalent of a naginata which for those of you who may be unfamiliar as a large bladed … think of like a short butter knife but sword-like on the end of a stick, that's a naginata. Jason agrees it looks like a naginata. So much for being a secret. Yeah. The guy in the middle is the graduate, his name is Kenichi Matsuhashi. It's a two-year degree. So it's not a certificate program, it's like an associates. He has an associate’s degree in being a Ninja. What are the prerequisites? What does that entitle him to do? What is his certificate look like? How well can he fight? Was there a class on smoke bombs? These are the questions I have and I want to ask these questions and many more of these gentlemen. If you know me, if you spend any time with me, you know, I love dogs. And just over the weekend I got out of my car and there was a dog looking at me and the family was kind of looking at the dog and so I said, “Can I say hi to your dog?” I didn't introduce myself, I just went over and started petting the dog. But what if dogs could do martial arts. Ever wondered if dogs could practice martial arts? My dog growing up was pretty good at grabbing the foam nunchaku, I had several pairs of foam nunchucks. I will not call them numb chucks, I will call them nunchucks. And if I was swinging them … and this happened the first time, like just completely out of the blue I was just swinging them around pretending, you know, that I had gone a Ninja school and I'm probably 10 at the time, maybe 11? And the dog just grabs an end and pulls it out of my hand and runs away. So she's got foam nunchucks. I get out of her mouth and she would do stuff like that and then as I got older, you know, we would sort of spar, you know, I kick it her and she jumped around and you know, it was fun. Now, I will practice punching at the cat and she is far less engaged with that. If I do particularly fast movements, she'll bite at my hand. She really, she's not, she's not game for it. Classes on poison. “How would you get deliveries if it's meant to be secret class on smoke bombs?” That's sounds tricky. Yes. Tommy says he practices with his dog all the time. He roots really, really well. Ninja hounds. It sounds like this could be a … It sounds like it could be a Ninja turtle spinoff. Hmm. There's something going on. I've got to keep talking. I was told Gabe is doing something here on the other screen and I'm pretending that I'm not watching but I'm watching and … what do we got? Oh, okay. There's more … bring that back up, it looks like you have more information about the martial arts, about the Ninja studies. Yeah, let me read that. Japan has produced its first Ninja studies graduate after Kenichi Mitsuhashi spent two years honing his martial arts skills and absorbing the finer traditions of the feudal martial arts agents at Mie university in central Japan. The region considered the home of the Ninja. This is a quote, “I read that ninjas worked as farmers in the morning and trained in martial arts in the afternoon.” End quote. He said so Mitsuhashi grew vegetables and worked on his martial arts techniques in addition to copious Ninja study in the classroom. He also practices Shorinji Kempo, teaches Ninja skills at his own dojo and runs a local in while pursuing his PhD. Okay. This sounds very much like what my life is. I wake up, I do first cup, I go out and I tend the gardens, I come back in, I do Whistlekick stuff and in between there I train and do other things. Now, none of it is Ninja-like. I'm not poisoning people, I'm not taking classes on smoke bombs, but now I really want to. See that ties back to the fireworks. “What would a Ninja fireworks display look like?” Oh, I feel like there's a joke there somewhere. It would be one smoke bomb and then everybody waiting for an hour for the rest of the show. Oh, poison was a major tool of Ninja, a Katana. Ah, a cat wielding a sword, that would be great. Ever wonder if dogs could practice martial arts, the sport of Switzerland might be the closest we'll get. According to Wikipedia, schutzhund is a dog sport that was developed in Germany in the early 1900’s as a breed suitability test for the German shepherd. Today it is used as a sport where many breeds can compete but it's such a demanding test a few dogs can pass. One trainer described it like teaching a dog martial arts. Okay. So first off, this thing for dogs is older than just about every martial art we practice so that's funny and Oh, you got to put that up on screen. How's this guy barefoot? Look at this. He's wearing a ton of protective gear and no shoes. Anybody who's had a dog has had their dog step on their foot and the claws gone right in between the bones on the top of your foot and it hurts like heck and how has that guy not had that happen cause this is insane to me. The dogs … to me it looks more like dog parkour. What's he carrying? Is that like a, like a dumbbell? Is that like a 10, 12-pound dumbbell the dog's carrying as he's jumping over this A-frame? That’s insane. We need more pictures. Is this part of Switzerland? Because that just looks like teasing the dog, which is exactly what I would do. Oh, there's another dog with a dumbbell, this one looks like it's wooden. The other one's probably wooden too. And what's the purpose of this? Why did they do this? Just to make dogs work out? The art of perfection. Okay. It's agility, it's defense, more defense. Okay, so, and it's a German shepherd in all of these images so I'm guessing it was some program developed to make German shepherds good working in defense dogs. Tommy says, “That hurts like hell.” Yeah. Yeah, dogs stepping on your feet sucks. In describing the variety in training and other trainers said their dogs could take a man down in a minute or go to a playground and hang out with all the kids. I mean, that's kind of what you want a dog. That's the dream to have a dog that knows how to fight when fighting is appropriate and play when playing is appropriate. I mean, that's kind of martial arts too, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, that leads into the … we've had a lot of conversation about what a warrior is and isn't over probably the last six months and that's the equivalency of dog warriors.
Man on video:
Perfect.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That was good times. Nothing like a Mortal Kombat as dog and cat fight. There we go. Now I can see what's happening. Yeah. You know what's really interesting? Is dogs and cats are presented as these mortal enemies and they just … I see far more examples of cats, you know, sitting on dogs’ heads and dogs just not caring, not really sure how often that happens. Mike had had no interest in dogs and … but she also has no interest in anyone. She kind of hates everything. She's very nihilistic in that way. You may have seen this; this made the rounds on social media. “Coronavirus claims a Blackbelt. Chuck Norris dead at 77. Carlos Rey, Chuck Norris, famous actor, and fighter died yesterday afternoon at his home in Northwood Hills Texas at the age of 77. Chuck’s star in dozens of movies and TV series which have and continue to entertain millions of people. He was also a master of martial arts which was the cause of his initial fame in the movie industry. However, after his minor inconvenience of death, Chuck has made a full recovery and is reported to be doing quite well.” I think he's older than 77 though. I thought he just turned 80. He's still in, he's in pretty good shape. Look at that. Look at that face, that is the face of a man that would put his fist through your skull in a moment. “Chuck Norris kicks the horses chin once we called their descendants giraffes.” Chuck Norris jokes are the best. If you don't know the history on Chuck Norris jokes, you should look it up because initially, he tried to suppress them and what's ironic is had they not become what they are, he wouldn't be relevant anymore. Are you trying to get me to end on a yelling streak? “What are your thoughts on participation trophies?” Oh, I think they're stupid. Next, no. I think I've done an episode of martial arts radio on this. Here's the thing on the one side you have people who need to have … we tackled this on First cup, didn't we? We talked about this on First cup, yeah. For those of you that don't know, we do a morning show weekdays at 6:30 Eastern where people write in and I respond to stuff and few weeks ago to the subject of participation trophies came up again. And I had some ideas that I hadn't had in the past, because here's the thing with participation trophies, you've got two sides. On one the one side you have wanting to incentivize people to come to an event and to have a good time and leave with good memories and for young children to find some value in their day and we all know kids like toys and prizes and presents. And then on the other side, you have real life and the fact that people don't just hand you things for participating and the notion that maybe a participation award sets a false expectation for how the world works. My suggestion is that, instead of it being a participation award or a participation trophy, it's something commemorative, you hand out a commemorative patch or a pin or something that doesn't say you earn a place or you even competed, but that you were there and that gives you the option of doing a lot more stuff and putting a much more positive spin on it. If you're a promoter, maybe people want to collect patches from each year. And we've got a couple of comments from people. Laura says, “For the youngest kids, like six or under… Sure. … they don't know a last place for a first place in most situations they are just super happy to get anything. Over that, nope … kids know how they did and last place is still the last place even if you walk away with a medal.” CJ says, “Not a fan. I believe you need to earn what you receive.” Leslie says, “I don't mind something like a certificate or something small as a souvenir especially for younger kids, but there should be a proper trophy for winning and placing. I personally find it annoying when I'm in a tiny division and ended up taking home a trophy when I know I wasn't at my best but there just weren't any other people in my group. This has happened to my kids before and they don't enjoy it either. Taking second place in a division of three isn't as much fun is taking third in a division of 10.” Yes. People that have kids get it. That's just been my experience and here we have my definitive thoughts on the subject that will exist in perpetuity. The idea of participation awards is a paradox and award are given when you do something exceptional. Participating by definition is the minimum you can do. And what I find interesting about this is, when we've posted this on social media, people have pushed back on it. Well, what if it's really hard for someone to participate? I didn't say there isn't value in participation. I didn't say that it's not hard for some people to do stuff. I said that you shouldn't give people awards for participating, there's a whole difference there. Tommy says, “At Parker's tournament, the long beach in …” Long beach invitational? I think that's the official title. “…gives out a patch.” Yeah. Participation awards, man. I don't jive with them, never going to. This is from Gabe. “I was talking to a friend who doesn't train in the martial arts and he told me that he didn't think training with so-called ancient weapons, like swords and stabs was effective so I picked up a forefoot paint roller extension handle and hit him with it.” What did he say when you did that? Did he ever response? Did he change his mind?Oh, there's a cat. Hi cat. He's trying to type, he subsequently agreed with me. All right, right on. Generally, if you hit somebody with a stick, they'll, they'll get it. I keep joking and I've said this enough times that I really just needed, I just needed to do it, that I'm just going to show up with like a plastic rake at a tournament and compete, you know, just bring in the most ridiculous weapons, you know, like … well we play this game like every time, like what do I have nearby? I mean, I have a knife but I've also got a keyboard or you know, murder somebody with a thumb drive. You know, there's options. This is so completely accurate. It's two side by sides … and for anybody who's watching and you're wondering why I'm describing this is cause some people listen to this in audio form later. It's two side by sides of the Ninja turtle Donatello and the left is captioned “Four-year-old me with an empty wrapping paper tube.” And for those of you who are not Ninja Turtle aficionados, you may not know that Donatello's weapon was a bow. And then the right side is “34-year-old me with an empty wrapping paper tube.” Yes. And what's funny was I used to do this with my dog and this was another time where we would fight and she would inevitably bite the tube and rip it away from me and then that would become two so it was well … take that back. It went from staff to they were attached so then they were nunchaku so then I was swinging wrapping paper tube or yeah, nunchaku at the dog and then she grabbed one end and pull it so then I had two separate pieces so then it was kind of like a eskrima and I would bop her with it and we had a good time and she's been gone a long time and I still miss her, she is a great dog. Ooh, I like this one. “Should the etiquette we show in class be exercised outside of class?” It depends on what you mean by etiquette. If etiquette is sentiment, yes. If etiquette is also action, no. I will always default to using someone's title if I know them via a martial arts circumstance outside of training. If I know Hanshi Bob Herten through martial arts and I call them Hanshi while we're training, when I'm outside of training, I'm not just going to walk up and call him Bob, because I also … cause I'm just not going to do that, I'm not going to do that to anybody. I will default to calling people sir or ma'am in life because I think that's inappropriate thing to do, you let people pull formality back, you don't start informal but I think that some people take it too far. I am always and forever Jeremy, sometimes I'm Sensei Jeremy. Sometimes depending on where I'm training, I'm Mr. Lesniak. Those are fine but I don't need to hold onto those titles outside. All right. I'm going to go on record with this. Insisting on people using titles to refer to you outside of a training environment is the same as you wearing your belt everywhere. Someone calling you, insisting someone at the grocery store or call you Shihan is the same as you wearing your belt to the grocery store. We had a couple of responses here. Where did that question go? Here we go. Okay. Thank you. Matt says, “Absolutely, although I'm guilty of not often showing the etiquette outside.” Stacy says, “Yes, indeed.” So again, it depends on how you define etiquette. Is etiquette sentiment or is etiquette also action? If it's action, maybe not. I'm doing a live show. I can't feed you now, you have to wait. I put food in your dish before I started. “From the perspective of someone who has never trained in the martial arts but only been exposed to movies and video games, what would they think the martial arts is all about?” They're going to think it's about fighting and being the best fighter and probably, doing this with your nose, this. And you know what? There are people who … I mean, I'm sure there are people that do that with their nose, but there are people who think that martial arts is about fighting and that that is the heart of it and I can't explain it any better than I have many, many times, it's not, and if people want to continue to think it is, that's their choice. “Michigan State University used to have a tournament with the ridiculous weapons category. I will never forget a gentleman took first place and his weapons were three-foot-long salad fork and spoon.” That's amazing. Jason, if you can find photos or video of that performance, I would love to show it on the next episode, that would be phenomenal. See, this is the kind of stuff that I want from the folks in the chat. I want you to add value and I want you to email me this stuff so we can add it in on the next episode. And look at this, the hour's almost gone already. This has gone much better. Gabe’s killing it. Gabe is killing it in the control room. Thumbs up. I had to mute this, so we can't talk over here obviously cause I'm talking to you but we worked out some hand signals and none of them are inappropriate, I just want you to know. What do we got to end on? What are we doing? Okay, yes. So we've got a couple of responses there. Stacy says, “For people who have never trained, they're going to think it's about making strange sounds.” Pete says, nice to hear from Pete, I haven't talked to him in ages. “Heaven only knows, but try a class and you'll have a much better understanding.” Beautiful response. Oh, where did that go? All right. Let's save that, let's save that for next time. I want to thank everybody for coming by. I want to thank you for watching, I want to thank those of you in the chat who contributed. I hope you enjoyed your time. Remember we do this show every month, first Tuesday of the month, 8:00 PM Eastern and it'll go live on YouTube tomorrow night and it'll go on the podcast feed so you can catch it as an audio later on. If you're someone who's listening to the audio or someone who's watching the rebroadcast on YouTube, come join us live. It's a lot of fun and as you can tell, we're putting a lot of work into it. Gabe is doing a great, great job, thank you, my friend I appreciate this. And we keep finding new ways to make it a little bit better each time, 15%, we're going 15% better each time so thank you for that, and that's it. So I hope you all had a good time. I hope you learned something and if you didn't learn something, you at least smiled or laughed and if you didn't have either of those things, I hope it was better than whatever other miserable thing you were going to do was if it was less terrible. Thank you so much. I will see you back here in a month. maybe I'll see some of you tomorrow morning for First Cup, 6:30 AM on YouTube. Take care everybody.