Episode 779 - Rapid Fire Q&A #22
In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams take on a special edition of the Rapid Fire Question and Answers.
Rapid Fire Q&A #22 - Episode 779
Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams tackle a series of questions, comments, and reviews from you, the listeners, and some guests in the form of a Rapid Fire Q&A. Here are some of the questions they tried to answer:
Who are your favorite fictional Martial Arts character and why?
Which would be the best training program from whistlekick to start the New Year with?
Listen to the episode for more questions!
After listening to the questions and answers, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section below!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak: What's going on everybody? Welcome. This is an episode of whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. Today we're doing another q and a episode, in fact, the 22nd installment of our q and a series. Questions and answers. These questions for supplied by you. And if you had the chance, if you have joined us live for this episode. Thank you. I appreciate you. That's super cool. If you're watching or listening later and maybe you're thinking, you know, I'd really love to get in on one of these live episodes, but I don't know when they are.
We don't either. We don't plan these ahead very often because what Andrew and I do by necessity because of our schedule has to be pretty dynamic. And, if you're lucky enough to catch it, cool. Normally there are Tuesdays, sometimes they're not like now it's Thursday, late afternoon. It's just what happening.
Andrew Adams: Stacy brought up that this is the 22nd, q and a episode on the 22nd.
Jeremy Lesniak: It, it means, I don't know. It's part of a puzzle. I'll let you figure it out. Goodbye. Hang up. You have to follow us to the next step.
Andrew Adams: Somebody got a puzzle at free training day?
Jeremy Lesniak: They did. They did. That was, remember that episode? The episode where you did a puzzle and I stood there?
Andrew Adams: Yeah. I don't know who got the puzzle though.
Jeremy Lesniak: I don't. I don't either. Maybe they're watching maybe. If you are new to what we do, I'll buckle up. This is a fun one for you to start on. We do a podcast, it's called Martial Arts Radio, and we do it twice a week. whistlekick does a bunch of stuff for traditional martial arts and traditional martial artists Under the heading Connect, educate, and Entertain. It is what we do. It is our mantra, our motto, it is our mission and we make a lot of things to that end. We make this podcast. We have the morning show, First Cup. We do books. We do events. We have our social media, we do newsletters. We make training programs. We make training apparel. We make, protective equipment.
There's a ton of stuff. And where do you go to see that and all the other things that we do. whistlekick.com. Simple enough, go to whistlekick.com and if you wanna support us, tell people about what we do. Truly, it's the best thing you can do. It's the easiest thing you can do. It's free. Help us spread the word, help us grow and I'll give you a big hug.
Andrew Adams: Are you ready for a question?
Jeremy Lesniak: Sure.
Andrew Adams: All right. Okay. This first question is from, a buddy of mine named Braden Fisher and question for you is, who are your favorite fictional martial arts characters and why? Craig's in the house too, by the way.
Jeremy Lesniak: Hi, Craig.
Hello to everyone else, whether I know you or not. I'm running through like a Rolodex. = The ones that are coming to mind are very similar. It's Mr. Miyagi and it's master splinter. And it's who, who else fits that dynamic? Right. Like, I appreciate the quiet, wise, compassionate instructor, archetype. It's something that I really, I really like. I also, kind of the exact opposite of that is the brash, passionate, not quite anti-hero. You know, not, you know, when I think of anti-hero, to me the best example is like the Punisher, right? Like he's doing, he's doing the wrong stuff for the right reason.
But you think of like, maybe in the karate kid, Daniel's not always a good guy. But he's trying, he wants to be, he's just, he's so passionate that he, sometimes he can't get it done. If we think of Ninja Turtles, like that's kind of Raphael, right? Like he, he wants to do the right thing, but he just, he gets so wrapped up in emotion. And that's something I don't identify with that so much now, but I used to, and so I have a soft spot for characters like that. I'm trying to think of other, other martial arts movies that I really like and the characters that are involved there. I like the kind of the underdog, Tony Jah and Ong Bak. Right. Yeah. Like he just, he's like, I don't, I don't care. Like this is important to me. I'm just gonna do it. They stole the, the statue from, from my town's temple. I'm gonna go get it back. I don't care how many people shoot at me, I'm just gonna make it. So it's harder for me to answer specific characters because when I watch martial arts movies, let's face it, there's not a tremendous amount of character development most of the time.
So what I find that I resonate with is more kind of surface level. But if we use Ninja Turtles as examples at various times in my life, I have identified with all four of them. As a kid, I was Donatello, right? And then I was Raphael and I wanted to be Michaelangelo. But I'm more comfortable as a hopefully less annoying version of Leonardo
Andrew Adams: Stacy, brought up for fictional martial arts instructor, Yoda.
Jeremy Lesniak: Love it. Brilliant. Yep. Yoda, Splinter, Mr. Miyagi. Right? Very similar. .
Andrew Adams: Dennis, Campos also in the chat here, he says, happy Thursday Afternoon. Party peeps. Nice. Yeah, and you know, we, we keep mentioning these people that, that are, that are in the chat. You know, Craig, Stacy, Dennis, mark, right. They're all, they're all kind of family.
Jeremy Lesniak: They're family. They're people that have been around and participating and helping correct for years.
Andrew Adams: And you listeners or watchers, if you're watching this live listening later, you can be part of the family too. In fact, you can go to whistlekick.com/family.
Jeremy Lesniak: Honestly, you probably are already part of the family, whether you realize it or not. You may be, you know, a distant cousin at this point, but here's why we did this. And I get some pushback from this. Jeremy, you should make it easier. No, I don't wanna make it easier. The whole point of this, Paige, was not to make it easy, because we're trying to incentivize and we're trying to create a little bit of a filter. If I'm gonna put up the most authentic behind the scenes, words, photos, videos, stuff on a page. In exchange for, Hey, here's all the list of the things that you can do to help us out, as well as some, you know, periodically, some, some exclusive discounts, things like that. I'm not gonna cram it down people's throats. I only want the best stuff to go to the people who are the most engaged. It's a way of rewarding them. Now, I'm not gonna decide who gets to go. I want you to decide whether or not you're going. And that's why it's not linked in the navigation.
That's why you have to go and type in whistlekick.com/family. Now, I don't think we could make it any easier than that and still make you do a little bit of work, but that's where we're at. So if you're family, go to the family page. We update it weekly. Are you gonna go there and go, oh my God, look at all this stuff. No, that's, but that's not what family is. Family is, Hey, here's something cool going on. Could you help me out with something? And there's no, there's no requirement. You don't have to, I just hope that, you know, if you go there periodically and you see all the cool stuff we're doing, you might say, have I done all this stuff?
Oh, you know, I haven't left a review here. Here's a link. Click. Right? Like, that's, that's why we do it that way. Yep.
Andrew Adams: Yep. Love it. Craig's also, in the chat and he's, apparently Craig is watching with some crew.
Jeremy Lesniak: Hello Crew from, I'm assuming Karate International probably.
Andrew Adams: He said, the crew watching with me said Scorpion and Master Ugwe from Kung Fu Panda.
And Stacy's curious, does he mean the Casamassa Scorpion?
Jeremy Lesniak: To me, there's no other. I know I, I'm with you. To me, there's no other. We saw it was, I believe, only in the latest installment of Moral Combat that we saw Chris Cassamasa had not reprised his role as Scorpion. And from what I understand, that was not his choice
and that bums me out. Chris, you will always be scorpion for me.
Andrew Adams: Amen. Ready for the next question.
Jeremy Lesniak: Always ready.
Andrew Adams: Okay. This question is from an active listener of the show, Mark Warner. Hey Mark. And his question is, of all the training programs at whistlekick, which would be the best one to start the new year off with?
Jeremy Lesniak: The one that I'm making tomorrow. Oh, I'm dead serious. I'm dead serious. Give me 60 seconds to tell you about the four programs we have, and then I'll spend the rest of the time releasing for the... this was not planned right? I, I need everyone to know this. We do, I do not know these questions ahead of time. I also don't tell Andrew a hundred percent of what's going on in, in, in my job because he has better things to do.
Andrew Adams: No, and, and, and Mark sent me this question at 1 56 this afternoon,
Jeremy Lesniak: so that was an hour and ago
Andrew Adams: he's like. You just posted asking for questions. Here's one. So go ahead.
Jeremy Lesniak: So we've got the flex program, which is all, all of our, all four programs are rooted in a tremendous amount of science and practical research application.
And for those of you who know past elements of my life, need testing things on people and saying, let's see if that works, if that works, if that works. And so we've got the Flex program, which is completely free. It's a mobility program. It works amazingly well. If you want to become more flexible and you do anything other than get this free program and do it, I think you're ridiculous. We've got the Force Program, which is our strength development program, is the first program I made, and it is based on appropriate periodization, requires no equipment. Actually designed for martial artist by a martial artist and accounts for accommodates your training, your class training, regardless of how much it is, there's a, the most difficult part of that program was me figuring out how to allocate that dynamically.
The speed development program will definitively make you faster. It is rooted in all the latest science. How speed develops. Here's a hint. If you say, I'm gonna do this technique 20 times as fast as I can, you're training yourself to get slower, because you're actually only faster the first few. By the end, you're slower. It's not gonna work that way. This program accounts for that. And then fuel is the cardiovascular conditioning program because going out and running miles and then expecting that to translate to the intense periods of 15 to 20 seconds that occur, actually usually 10 to 12 within a combative scenario, be it competition, point sparring, class sparring, it doesn't translate. It's a different energy pathway. So those are the four.
Now here's the thing that we're rolling out. I have committed to getting it done tomorrow. So those of you watching live, you will get first crack at this. We're rolling out a 30 day challenge. It will be free. You will receive a daily email, assuming you sign up for them. It says, here's what you're doing today. It will require no equipment. You'll be able to do it at home. There will be demonstration videos for the movements that maybe are a little less obvious. It will involve elements of all of these programs at various times, and. It's probably in the 10 to 15 minute a day. It's not gonna be an hour a day, it's not gonna be five. I'm pretty sure it's, I have to decide 10, 15, probably not 20, but could go as high as 20. I have to lay this out and that's what I'm doing tomorrow. So I'm pumped about this because I hope that as a free entry point to my training methodologies, people will see and go, okay, let me give this shot.
And at the end, if you finish it, you'll get a discount on your next program. So there we go. Cool.
Andrew Adams: That's cool. So that's really interesting.
Jeremy Lesniak: It's also not gonna be, here's how to lose a whole bunch of weight for January. Because I'm sick of those programs because they're dumb and they don't work and they they ruin you. Yeah. And I will argue with anyone who disagrees rapid fat loss is unhealthy.
Andrew Adams: We have a bunch of, new people watching. In the chat right now, Jenny is watching my friend Tom Hogan is watching. Not sure if he's sticking around, but if you are, we are doing, this is a q and a. This is a rapid fire question and answer, which for Jeremy Rapid Fire means he only has five minutes to answer.
But if you, that's pretty rapid. For me. It's pretty rapid. So if you have a question that you would like me to ask Jeremy, Or, or if you have a question for me, like, I mean, I would answer a question too, but Yeah. Go ahead and put it in the chat and,
Jeremy Lesniak: why do you keep doing this with me?
Andrew Adams: I don't know. I wonder that all the time.
Jeremy Lesniak: It's because we have fun. If we do have fun and audience, if you can't tell that we have fun, I, I don't, I don't know. You're,
Andrew Adams: you're blind. And you know, one of the things that allows us to continue to do this, The people that share this with their friends and the people that help support this on patreon.
Jeremy Lesniak: There are a million and one ways that you can support and, and we talked about the family page. The whole list is there. But let's highlight the Patreon because like everything else we do, the Patreon is based on value exchange. My principles of business are very clearly laid out there. There are books, I've written books about this stuff. They're very short, they're very simple. You can find 'em on Amazon. Well, if you think about value exchange, what does that mean to me? If you're gonna give us a few dollars, $2 is the lowest entry. But no matter what level you're in, if you give us some money, we're gonna give you stuff back. And I am hell bent on making sure you get more out of it then you put in. So, every time we release a book, for example, people in the $25 a month tier, They get that book free. I also have thrown all the programs out there for free. And if you think about the retail value on just those programs, those people have done pretty well. Whether or not they value them the same way, I don't know, but we're just constantly looking for it.
How do we give you more, how do we give you more? How do we give you more? And then you're also getting stickers and t-shirts and, and I don't even know what else is in the merch that that shows up. There's just a bunch of stuff. If you love what we do and you think our episodes are worth a quarter, you could support us for $2 a month.
Andrew Adams: All right, you ready for your next question?
Jeremy Lesniak: Always ready.
Andrew Adams: Okay, next question comes from Stacy.
Jeremy Lesniak: Hi Stacy.
Andrew Adams: And Stacy's question is, what's the most exciting thing you've done related to martial arts this year? Oh, stacy, you broke Jeremy.
Jeremy Lesniak: It was all in weekend. It was all in weekend because it was there. There were a few things involved. For those of you who don't know. All in Weekend was an event that we held for the first time in April. Andrew and I put it on 48 hours, completely immersive. We took care of the space, the food, the training. You just had to show up. We have eight, nine something slots left for next year's event. Find it at whistlekick.com. You will not find a better training deal, I promise you that. It was exciting for several reasons. One, you and I got to work on that together, like really closely, and it was the manifestation of the best of both of us, and that was really fun.
Two, it was a concept that I had tried to pull off in 2016. Some of you know this, we've talked about this. It was a concept I tried to pull off in 2016 and we didn't have the reach then to make it happen. So knowing that, you know, six years later we got to do it was incredible. And then three, it was something that was, we did such a good job. Laying out and promoting that. People I had never even heard of, people I'd never even seen on our social media showed up. They're like, oh, I heard about this thing. It seemed awesome. So I paid for it and I came. Cool. Yep. Some of those people have become friends and I think the world of them, and then when I take a step back, the development that I saw among a number of people at all, we all in weekend, you know, including yourself, right?
As an instructor, you took a huge step forward as an instructor that weekend. I watched it happen. I watched several of the attendees go from, I mean I would say that maybe not so much in terms of specific techniques, because that's not what it's about. But in terms of emotional martial arts maturity, the average person progressed a belt rank in that weekend. If you think about the way they approach their martial arts from start to finish, Right. And that knowing that I had a role in that was incredible.
Andrew Adams: Yeah. Yep. I, I, I could totally see that.
Yeah. I dig it. I dig it. I'm just,
Jeremy Lesniak: I see the wheels turning.
Andrew Adams: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I, I totally see it. I could have seen you go a couple of different ways with an answer, but I see that makes sense as to that, as to why that is. The answer you gave
Jeremy Lesniak: Runner up was going to the other free training days because it was the first time we had a free training day that was not
Andrew Adams: Yeah. Cool. All right. Stacy, when you know, Stacy said that, she does break you frequently. Your, my team meetings break him regularly. She says.
Jeremy Lesniak: It's true. For those of who don't know, Stacy is the one that head headed up the awards committee. If you saw the fun stuff that we did with the Never Settle awards this year, Stacy is the one that shepherded that to the finish line. She did a greatjob.
Andrew Adams: All right. So are you ready for the last question?
Jeremy Lesniak: I'm ready.
Andrew Adams: Okay. This question also comes from Stacy. Hopefully this one doesn't break you...
Jeremy Lesniak: Or maybe it does. Maybe that's what we're going for. So
Andrew Adams: her last question was about what was the biggest, you know, most exciting thing you did this past year. We are jumping into 2023. What are you most looking forward to next year for whistlekick?
Jeremy Lesniak: I wish this question was coming tomorrow. We have a team meeting tonight. I suspect it's something I'm not thinking of yet, right. There are additional free training days being discussed. There are more books coming. We'll reprise all in weekend. There are other things happening. I mean, I just, I, I'm, I'm, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. In the last 48 hours, I've had seven people offered to come on and help with our mission, right? Some of these people are, are in volunteer positions. Some are paid very little, because we're not a company that makes a lot of money cause we make negative money. And some of those things are in, with profit sharing in mind as the thing that they work on grows.
But knowing that that many people are stepping up. Tells me that there are so many big things coming. If what if, if we look at involvement in an engagement as the best metric of what we're doing, the fact that the people who come on to help remain helping and more people want to come on to help, that tells me we're doing everything right. It is a better metric to me than, revenue or profit. Because you can, you can skew those numbers. You can alter those. And if you didn't know that, go watch the news. And what's going on in the crypto space right now? Pretty, pretty easy to screw those numbers up. Oh, he is a multi-billionaire. No, he is not. Right. But if what we're doing, what we're turning out makes people say, I love what's happening here so much. I love this mission. I will give of myself to you. I will give of my time. Yeah, maybe some money, that's great. I appreciate that. Don't get me wrong. Like we, we need money. Like things cost money. But when someone says, I will volunteer my time, I will contribute to this effort that tells me that we have laid something out in such a way that they are willing to be attached to it. If I buy a product, that doesn't necessarily mean I believe in the company. Sure. But if I go work in that company, or even more so if I volunteer at that company mm-hmm.
that says a lot more. Yeah. Good point. So I'm calling a little bit of an audible in the way that I'm answering this question, Stacy, but it's the way I've gotta. I'm excited about that and I'm excited about the things that I don't know about yet, because I'm sure they're coming.
Andrew Adams: Yeah. Love it. Before we finish up, yeah. People that are watching will notice that I'm wearing my, my Dragon hoodie.
Jeremy Lesniak: Dragon hoodie. You've got, if you're watching live. You've got nine days left to order yours. If you're watching later, you've already missed the deadline.
Andrew Adams: Yep. Yeah, just a little reminder for those out there that, we have products in the store that are not there all the time, so if you see something that you're like, oh, that looks really cool, maybe, maybe I'll get that. I'll, I'll wait. I'll get it next month.
Jeremy Lesniak: Don't wait too long. Most items do have the availability listed. Not all of them. Sometimes it comes out quickly and then I put it back. Sometimes it comes out and then it goes away. There are plenty of things that we've put out that are like this shirt, I believe is back for a limited time. This is the Sunset Tee. I like this graphic. I made it
Andrew Adams: so I'll be ordering a new whistlekick dragon hoodie here this week.
Jeremy Lesniak: So custom colors?
Andrew Adams: Yep. I'm gonna do custom colors
Jeremy Lesniak: what colors you gonna do.
Andrew Adams: I don't know yet. No clue.
Jeremy Lesniak: They're great hoodies, aren't they?
Andrew Adams: Yeah. Yeah. They're, those are all the questions we have.
Jeremy Lesniak: All right, cool. Well, then I did my job and I asked them, I did my job. You did your job. Audience. You watched or listened. You did your job. High five. Good job. All right. Thank you for coming by. Thank you for watching. For listening. Whether you're live or perhaps later, we appreciate. If you wanna support us, we've given you so many things that you can do today. Please don't make me say them again. Just, honestly, if you just, if, if you pick one, if you pick one once in a while, that's, that really would make a big difference. And it's, it's not just the financial support, it's the emotional support that really means a lot when I see that people share our stuff that I, I don't know when people that I don't know show up to our events when I get emails from people.
I listen to your show or I'm, I, I bought this and I really love it. Like, it just, it's what keeps me going. If you don't know, I work like a whole separate job to bring the money in to keep this going until it, it's, it's time, until it's really fully working. And it's not that I dislike that work, it's that it, it has to happen because I believe I, I am the biggest supporter of whistlekick. whistlekick is not me. whistlekick is far bigger than me, so I hope you. Recognize that. If you wanna get a hold of me, jeremy@whistlekick.com or social media's, whistlekick Andrews Andrew whistlekick martial arts radio.com. If you've got a question for the next q and a for the 23rd installment, we'll do some time in 2023.
You can email him that way I don't see them ahead of time and start thinking about them. Ooh, how would I answer that question? That's kind of what makes it fun for me and hopefully for all of you. And that brings us to the end. So until next. Train hard smile and have a great day.