Ep. 336: Growing Your Academy, feat. Hillary Witt & Nelson Puentes

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models Premium community member has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models Premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJ Mental Models.com and check it out today. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 336. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And I'm here today with a really cool panel episode. I have not one, but both of the founders of one of my favorite Jiu-Jitsu brands, Inverted Gear. I got Nelson Puentes and Hillary Witt on the line. Nelson, Hillary, how's it going? Speaker 3: Wonderful. Speaker 2: It's going well. I am glad. Do we need to do any intro? I'm guessing most people are probably familiar with the brands, but why not do some free advertising, right? Do you guys want to plug what you work on? Speaker 3: Well, we have Inverted Gear the brand, which has been around since about 2012, and then we also have our academy located in Eastern Pennsylvania that's been open about three and a half years. Speaker 2: Amazing, amazing. And in the past, a few years ago, Nelson, you joined us on the podcast here to share some advice just for business owners, especially those getting started. You shared the story of Inverted Gear and how you guys kind of grew things to the point where it is today. I'll put a link in the show notes if people want to check the back catalog and listen to that episode. But today, I wanted to talk about your academy. I figured this would be a fantastic opportunity for you guys to maybe share some of the main lessons that you've learned over the last few years of building this up. Maybe we can talk about that. I guess the first question for the two of you is, tell me a little bit about the academy, how you started it, how it's grown, and also what led you to the decision to branch out from what's best known as an apparel brand into actually having a on the floor brick and mortar Jiu-Jitsu academy. Speaker 4: So, the academy has always been kind of in the background, and something we always thought about is like, hey, like, you know, one day we should do this thing. I like, there's this that talk about what is the best tomato sauce? Like how marketing agencies hired this one guy, I forget his name, and they want him to do like some research and figure out what was the best tomato sauce. How could they make the best tomato sauce that everyone would like? And then, you know, marketing guy did the research and they came back. The tomato sauce company, there's no one best tomato sauce. Some people like it chunky, some people like it a little thinner, some people like it spicy, some people like more vegetables on it. So, as you train Jiu-Jitsu for a long time, you kind of start to figure out what you want out of the academy you're training at. Where is the school culture? What are the grading requirements? How competitive are you? How much bowing are you doing? You know, how many pictures of Helio do we need on the wall? Speaker 3: What else? Speaker 4: That about. Speaker 3: There's a certain variety and certain things you're drawn to in a school and Speaker 4: What is the curriculum? You know? Are we doing 1996 Jiu-Jitsu or are we only doing the latest bolo variation? Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 4: So, that is something that we put a lot of thought into. And we were, you know, we have friends that had academies around the area and we're like, you know, dropping in and training other places, but it's just like those things were not lighting up. It wasn't on the sweet spot that we wanted to be at. Whether it was the grading requirements or the culture or how much Gi versus No-Gi. We figured like, you know, we have a pretty good idea of where we want those things to be and like, you know, how to make it happen. How to like foster a culture, how to put a good curriculum in place. We believe, both of us are pretty decent instructors. So, put our money where our mouth is and then we just opened a gym about three and a half years ago. Speaker 2: Now, we were talking about this beforehand. That's interesting timing, right? Because you opened the gym kind of during the pandemic, or I guess closer to the end of the pandemic, which in in retrospect was probably pretty good timing. I mean, a lot of gyms that I know, they just tried to open up right before the pandemic, which was about the worst timing you could possibly imagine. But opening up just as it's closing, there was of course a massive interest in people who do train wanting to get back to the mats, but also a lot of people who kind of had had it on their mind that they wanted to start Jiu-Jitsu or martial arts, they sort of were forced to put that on hold for a while. And I think that once things started to open up again, there was a big blast of interest, at least, you know, anecdotally, that's what I've perceived, of people wanting to get into the sport for the first time as well. So, that definitely worked out for you. I would love to know how things have evolved from day one up until you are today and what's kind of changed in your thinking along that time. Because this is a discussion very relevant probably to most of the people who are listening. Everyone who sticks around Jiu-Jitsu long enough, eventually at some point they at least have the thought that, hey, maybe I should start my own gym one day. You guys actually did it and you've learned along the way. So, where are you at today and what are some of the lessons that you've learned during that growth path? Speaker 4: So, one of the things we tried out, which is fascinating looking back now, is we realized early on that one of the mistakes that Jiu-Jitsu, like, you know, we've been around and seen this happen too many times, is people kind of get thrown in the fire right away and the lack of a beginner curriculum and then people just jumping into a regular class and regular sparring right away without really knowing what's going on. And how many people were lost that way. So, one of the things we try to do is having a fundamentals class and intermediate class. And then the fundamentals class, it was all drilling. So, you would come in, you would drill for an hour, do that for a few weeks, and then you would get to start going into the intermediate, which was more game-based. And had like, you know, we'll build you up to our rounds, and then the advanced class was regular, we're going to drill a little bit, and then we're going to do rounds. And one of the issues we're running into is the people that came in and only did drilling from the beginning, a lot of them did not want to leave that I only drill, like Jiu-Jitsu is me coming in and just drilling. And then they just wanted to do that and would not advance to the intermediate class when there was like intermediate class where there was games and more resistance and like, you know, we started introducing like more specific training and positional sparring. Speaker 3: Right. Like, I remember early in the fundamentals class, like, one thing that we did stick with is we have a theme for the week. So, we always try to keep at least the same lesson running all week, which I think helped people stick with it because they got to continuously review it as many times as they came to class anyway. But we did always have like a very specific action reaction in place for that, it would be like a loop, like a continuous loop, like, okay, we learn a sweep, and then an escape, or a pass, and a submission, like it would be like maybe three or four techniques woven together and it was very specific, which I think is what kept those people stuck there because it was, they knew what to expect and it could still like pick up the pace to maybe feel like sparring, but it never really was. Speaker 4: So, yeah, so then we would get these reaction moves that we would go to the intermediate class and then now there was games and it was alive, there was like live resistance. And then we would get these comments like, oh, like, I know, I know how to escape mount, like, I can drill the mount escape, but I can't do it with resistance. And, you know, we realized this kept happening. So, one of the first things we tried is we stopped calling the intermediate class intermediate and start calling it fundamentals two. Try to solve it like it was a marketing problem. And then we still run into the same issue. And then around this time, my friend Kivan from Bodega Jiu-Jitsu started talking to me about the constraints led approach, ecological dynamics. So, we went all in and we've been doing a constraints led approach, eco, whatever you want to call it, for about two years now, I guess, a little bit over a year and a half. And like the fundamentals class, it's all constraints led approach games, same with the advanced class. And we no longer have that problem. And we were like very nervous about the fundamentals class, changing it from like, you know, traditionally like, hey, I'm going to show you a basic sweep, I'm going to show you a mount escape, I'm going to show you a side control escape, to, hey, here's a game, I want you to find your own solution. And then we realized like, wow, like, it's a lot easier for a brand new person to just find a solution if you set up the game correctly, than it is for them to mimic whatever you tried to show them. Speaker 2: So, let me ask a question here because I think I understand where you're coming from here. Are you saying that now you only do the ecological approach or do you still use that approach you talked about earlier where for the beginners, they're basically just doing drills until they establish a comfort level? Speaker 4: Eco from day one. Speaker 2: Got it, got it. And I love this of course because it sets me up for a whole bunch of really awesome eco jokes, which you know is why I get up in the morning, right? Is to make eco jokes. Speaker 4: You're for that. You're for that. But yeah, it's been working really well. Like the current batch of white belts we have is probably the best white belts I've ever had. We have one 21-year-old overachiever that is has been training a little bit over a year, has medal in Gi, has medal in No-Gi, has medal in Judo tournaments, has medal, he just medal at a folk style wrestling tournament. And a year ago, a little bit over a year ago, had no grappling experience whatsoever. And now he can do Judo, he can wrestle, he can play guard, he can pass the guard, he has a pretty good submissions, has no idea what drilling is, has no idea what formal warm-ups are. So, whenever he sees warm-up memes, he asks questions about like, why are they saying this? Speaker 2: It makes me so happy that there's a whole generation now of people who have grown up in Jiu-Jitsu that don't realize that back in the day we all had to do all of these bullshit static warm-ups. That is actually awesome to hear. Maybe we should, you know, take a second to explain this though, because I'm mindful of the fact that a lot of people, they miss an episode here or there and there's always people who are kind of stragglers and might have not heard us talk about eco before. Not that I'm expecting you to give a scientific answer, but maybe do you want to just give a quick explanation of how this manifests in your gym? You know, what would that old drilling approach look like versus what you do now? How does that kind of manifest for the student and how is their experience different under this new approach? Speaker 4: So, the old way, we would pick four or five techniques, maybe, to show in an hour class. And then I would show the technique and explain, okay, like, you know, this is what we're trying to do. This is where my leg usually goes here, my hand usually goes here. This is what I'm trying to accomplish. This is what it looks like, right? I would try to give as much context as possible whenever we're doing these things. Not just show the technique, but like, you know, what I'm thinking, where my weight is, like that those kind of pointers. But with the ecological approach, for example, this week we're working on tripod passing because everybody's been watching Joseph Chen and everybody wants to pass like Joseph, okay? And the way we set up the games this week is we're starting from a flat and out half guard, so top player has half guard. He has a cross face and an underhook. And all I'm telling them is I want you to free your legs and get to side control or mount. And the constraints you have is you have to hold on to the head. So, you have to hold on to your underhook cross face, so your shoulders stay low. And you have to accomplish this by getting your hips high. Bottom person, you're trying to roll him over, you're trying to get back to closed guard, so both legs go on the outside, or get back to butterfly, both legs go on the inside. Go. And you'll be amazed how good these guys look after half an hour playing these kind of games. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a big fan of that approach of just getting people more live experience. Of course, the pushback to this that people will often have is, and you kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, there's always this fear that if you give beginners more live experience that something could go wrong. They could either get injured, which is very possible, or they could develop bad habits. And these are arguments that are sometimes used against getting beginners into a live training environment. What is your feeling on that? Because it sounds like you've kind of come around from this idea of let's kind of isolate the beginners and give them more of a a drill-based framework until they're comfortable. And now you just get them in there, which of course is very in line with the eco approach. But what are your thoughts just on how to keep that safe for students, how to prevent them from getting too intimidated, the kind of concerns that often come up around beginners in Jiu-Jitsu? Speaker 4: So, one of the things I realized is what it kept happening and would happen over and over again is people will learn things without resistance, and then whenever they have to do it with resistance, we have to spend time and figure things out how to make him learn it with resistance again. So, we're running this thing where we were drilling for the sake of looking good drilling, and then running a separate thing to make him good at live resistance Jiu-Jitsu. So, I had to have all these training interventions to teach him how to do Jiu-Jitsu when we were actually doing Jiu-Jitsu. So, we just got rid of the drilling part and then just concentrated on, okay, we're going to learn with resistance. Now, how do we keep beginners safe? We talk a lot about, hey, like, how much effort are we putting in here? I know we like, you know, you're telling people, oh, go 50%, doesn't work because nobody knows what the percentages are, right? So, we talk a lot about working with your teammates instead of against them, and thinking about, I stole this shamelessly from Chris Paines, thinking about being a game designer, and you're designing a video game level for your training partner. So, if he's a brand new person, you want to put it at like the first world of Super Mario. You don't want to drop him straight into Bowser's Castle right away. And like the Bowser's Castle thing has resonated in the gym and then people will call each other out, it's like, dude, you're Bowser's Castle-ing me right now. When somebody like turns it up way too high doing games. Speaker 2: That is hilarious. Bowser's Castle. Now, I guess this also depends though, you know, which Bowser's Castle are we talking about? Presumably we're not talking about level one. Speaker 4: True Bowser, not not one of the Key Koopas. You know what I'm saying, Steve? Speaker 2: Okay, got it, got it. Okay, so this is like level, I can't even remember, it's like level 8-4 or something in the original Mario. Okay, understood. That's interesting. Now, in terms of how you actually design your curriculum, you mentioned in the beginning that you were using kind of the more classic approach of the instructor comes to class with a handful of techniques that they've got planned out. Now, of course, in a much more free form environment, you're providing less direct instruction to students but setting goal posts and guidelines and rails to kind of direct them in that zone so that they achieve the result without you having to expressly tell them or teach it to them. How do you actually structure that from a class perspective? So, now, if I were to wander into your your gym and train there for a few months, what would my experience be like from a curriculum design perspective? Speaker 4: So, again, I stole a lot of this from guys like Priit, Chris Paines. And Chris Paines, he's been to our gym a few times now. I know he's a repeat offender. Speaker 2: I called him a repeat offender. Speaker 4: Chris Paines is also a repeat offender at Inverted Gear Academy. And one of his trips, like, you know, kind of like an afterthought, he's like, yeah, you know, if you think about guards, all guards are either inside guards, outside, like, you know, foot position wise, like, your feet are going to be in the inside, they're going to be in the outside, or one inside and one outside, let's say like half guard. And then let's think and then there's a function of your opponent being kneeling or standing. So, a standing opponent, feet inside will be all the X-guards. Now, that same opponent is kneeling, my feet are on the inside, now we have butterfly. My feet are on the outside, he's kneeling, we have closed guard. If he's standing, we could call that De La Riva if you will. I'm just controlling by attaching myself to the outside. So, we kind of structure the curriculum that way. Inside, outside, one in, one out, so either half guard or sit-up guard. And then we'll put an emphasis every week on either passing, the games are more towards the passer, or the games are more towards the bottom person who's trying to sweep off balance. So, every class starts with a guard versus passing kind of games, like that half guard example I just gave you. And then we'll spend about 30, 40 minutes on those kind of games and then we'll switch gears and go more into like a more submission-based game. So, for example, this week we're doing like straight armbar. So, it's controlling how do we enter that position where we have like a shoulder crunch, how do we control the shoulder crunch? How do we then, okay, we're going to start the shoulder crunch, you know how to get there. They're starting the shoulder crunch, can you finish a straight armbar from here? Person getting straight armbar, can you free your arm? Then what else can we do from here? Can we go from the shoulder crunch into another submission? Can we go into a triangle or an armbar using our legs? That's what we're doing this week. And then we'll for the advanced class, that will be your fundamentals class. Then the advanced class is more wrestling-based. So, we're either doing Judo, some kind of Judo game, whether it's grip fighting, foot sweeps, some kind of wrestling game, singles, doubles, mat returns, that kind of stuff. Speaker 2: Got it. And how far ahead do you have to plan this stuff out? Because if you ask someone who follows a more traditional class structure, they'll show up with, you know, a guide for what the next four months are going to look like at training for their students. Do you find that you have to do this under this approach or is it more kind of ad hoc and something that you can just invent on the fly? Speaker 4: We do have a spreadsheet and we try to think about this like, we follow that, we'll try to follow the first part, the passing and sweeping. You end up with like 12 weeks if you take that approach I gave you. If you go inside, outside, one in, one out, top on bottom, standing and kneeling. You can kind of give you like 12 themes if you will. And then we have a rotating list of like, hey, like, you know, submissions. So, let's say like, you know, one 12-week chunk, maybe we worked on when we did head and arm chokes, maybe we did the head and arm triangle from mount. The next time we came around, instead of doing that, we did the north south choke. Very similar finishing mechanics, but the body position is completely inverted. Speaker 2: Got it, got it. Makes sense, makes sense. And how have you found the student response to these changes? And also at what point in the journey did you decide to make this change? Was this something that really became apparently needed after, you know, a few years in, once you had a few dozen people, or did you realize much sooner than this that you wanted to change the approach? Speaker 3: Yeah, this was about a year and a half in, I believe. Speaker 2: I remember specifically when Kivan came for our, we do a celebration to celebrate every year we're open. So, in December, we usually have a lot of Speaker 4: It was our one-year anniversary. Speaker 3: So, it was our first year anniversary when he was here. Okay. So, he was here and that was like the first time we really just experienced playing those games and it was just, it was almost like like the kid game you play like you have to like retrieve the sock. And it was just like, I just remember it was like so much fun. Everyone got the hang of it really quick. It was kind of funny even to get out of the constraints sometime, like how easily you're sucked in to just like your A game instead of really trying something new and when you do try something new within those constraints, it's still more fun, less frustrating. So, I remember after that like gradually we'd bounce ideas off of like Kivan, Priit, Chris, just how to start incorporating it more and more. And we noticed our students were having a lot more fun too. New students coming through the door seem to be a lot more engaged, like have a quicker understanding of how to play Jiu-Jitsu instead of just getting frustrated and hung up on the specific lesson and doing it perfectly. Speaker 2: That makes a ton of sense and this is one of my big complaints about Jiu-Jitsu coming up in the sport, being trained under I guess the more traditional approach where there was a lot of drilling and verbal instruction and a lot of copy what the instructor is doing. It was very frustrating to me that I couldn't easily duplicate the things as they were being shown to me and I thought this meant I was doing something wrong. I didn't realize at the time that that's very much a normal Jiu-Jitsu experience to not be able to duplicate things exactly as they're shown and more that every time you do a technique, every time you try something, it's going to come up a little bit different just because of your body dimensions, their body dimensions, their reactions, which can be very unpredictable. So, as soon as I learned to let go of that need to make things look the way they were taught, it really opened up my Jiu-Jitsu and also helped me enjoy it a lot more, which is one of the things that I hear people talk about a lot with a game-based or an eco-based approach, right? The the flexibility allows people to to self-express a lot better than if they're just trying to copy what the instructor is doing in that space. I would love to know were there any resources, I mean, of course, you talked about Priit Mikhelson and Chris Paines, people, those are two guys who are pretty into the eco approach and so they're always good sounding boards if you've got questions about how to apply this. But are there any resources or other things that you use which kind of informed your journey down this road? Speaker 4: Kivan was a great resource from Bodega. He has a Patreon now that he posts games every week. Kabir Bath, his YouTube channel has some like some really cool stuff. Like all the all the Greg Soder podcasts where people get him really angry asking the same questions over and over again. I read all the books I could get my hands on, listen to all the podcasts I could. Speaker 2: Now, did you find that adopting this approach was particularly challenging? Because this is kind of the pushback that a lot of people have on bringing eco and the constraints led approach into their gym is the perception sometimes is that you need to do a whole boatload of studying first. Or did you find that you were able to apply this relatively quickly into the training? Speaker 4: So, what I tell people is you kind of you have to give it a chance. If you're going to do it, just do it. And your game design is going to be terrible for a few months. Like the first few months, like I would design games and then they'll like be broken by my students. They'll just like game theory things out where they would do a certain movement that was not what we intended in order for them to win. And then we're like, okay, that's not like, you know, if we're trying to work on this one thing, that's not what we're looking for. Not necessarily like, I'm just looking for one specific technique, it's just they were kind of just breaking the game by being doing something silly. That being said, is your game design will get better, right? And also it kind of challenges your understanding of Jiu-Jitsu because when we try to teach now, we're like, we're just looking for like, what's important thing? What's important? We're looking for a certain functional, like certain style of passing, for example. Like, what is the most important things here? Like, what are we looking for? How can we encourage people to look for this? Like, how can I word the game so this is what comes out, right? This is what emerges if you want to get fancy with the eco terms. So, that takes some practice, but once you figure out and like, you know, you get in the group of the groove of things, it's pretty good. Like, you know, there was some pushback from a few students, but the majority loved it. The majority will like, you know, they'll tell you that, I'll think I can go back to the old way, the drilling. Speaker 3: It was interesting even those who are maybe, it seemed to be a certain group, just a little older, maybe just a little more rigid about needing to hear the answer instead of allowing themselves to figure it out. Just but still them giving it a shot and still showing up and then like you said, like letting themselves go and being a little more free and how much more either they did enjoy it or maybe a little bit more frustrated. And I feel like we're always available to answer questions, but we try to help more like provoke their thinking with our answers. So, not always having the answers or not always feeling like we need to give a specific answer, it's still a struggle for me, but it's been getting easier just giving it, putting the time into it, if that makes sense. Speaker 2: That makes a ton of sense, Hillary, and that actually brings up something that I want to maybe reflect on a bit. Something that has really bugged me for a while about the way that a lot of, I guess, traditional martial arts instruction is done is that it really discourages people from taking risks and trying new things. And as a parent myself, I mean, I know that you guys are parents as well, but this is something especially as my kid gets older that I try to be really mindful of. I want her to be comfortable taking, you know, intelligent risks. I want her to be bold and I want her to be confident and be willing to try new things. And I hear so many martial artists push back on things like eco saying, this is going to teach people bad habits because if you don't tell them exactly what to do, they're going to make mistakes, right? And we can't have that. We can never have a student make mistakes. And so, I think a lot of the traditional way that people coach, where the instructor dictates exactly what must be done and students must copy it exactly, that's done from the fear of students making mistakes. And the perspective is, well, the worst thing that could happen in the gym is the student does something wrong. If they learn a bad habit, they'll never unlearn it, it'll take forever, it's a waste of time. But all of that is kind of very avoidant behavior. You're focusing less on helping people get good at Jiu-Jitsu and you're focusing more on preventing them from doing something obviously dumb. And the problem is if you get too defensive in that capacity where we just we can't allow anyone to make any mistakes, you wind up creating a structure where people are afraid to try new things because they're trained and they're taught to only duplicate what the instructor does exactly. And the end result is you can wind up with people who, if they grow up under that method, they're very rigid in their thinking because they were always taught that there is this like trickle-down approach where the instructor gives you the ideas and you like a little baby bird, you eat them, right? And and and you just copy and learn directly. Whereas eco is much more free form and it encourages you to make mistakes, which is really the interesting thing about it. As um Scott Siveright would say, mistakes are a feature and they're not a bug under a gamified ecological approach like this. You want people to be experimenting, knowing they will make mistakes, but it is through that process of trying new things that you really learn. You don't actually learn things well by just trying to copy someone else. You have to actually do things, get new looks, be willing to make mistakes and learn from them. Mistakes are ultimately one of the best teachers. So, if your instruction is structured in such a way that you're trying to prevent mistakes, you're actually preventing some of the best learning opportunities. I'd love to hear you guys maybe riff on that. I'd like to know if that's an assessment that you generally agree with and if it's something you've observed in the academy too. Speaker 4: So, before I dropped out of school, I took a year off to finish my degree and I was working towards an exercise science degree. So, I did take a motor learning when I was in college. And it's probably my favorite college class I ever took. And one of the things we got to do is the college I went to had a daycare. So, when we're taking this motor learning class, once a week, we got to borrow kids from the daycare and try to teach them skills. Speaker 3: I didn't know you guys could do that. That's fun. Speaker 4: And one of the things we did is like the last day of class, we took the kids to a pool and we tried like, you know, work on their swimming. So, we got to like try to teach like, you know, this like daycare age kid, like four, five-year-old kid how to swim. So, you know, when you're teaching a kid how to swim, you can't expect you to show them, hey, this is how Michael Phelps swims. I need you to swim just like this. But when we teach Jiu-Jitsu a lot of times, we go, hey, this is how Gordon Ryan leg locks. This is how I want you to leg lock every time from now on. There needs to be a process to get there. And sometimes as an instructor, you're just looking for this optimized solution if you will. We get lost on like, it's not going to look like that at the beginning. And that's okay. And it's not necessarily wrong or a bad habit, it's just that's where the person is. Like, you know, their motor control is not there, their flexibility maybe is not there, maybe there's a strength issue, mobility issue. It will get better over time, the more they practice that skill and the better they get at Jiu-Jitsu. But having somebody like, you know, you make somebody feel bad that they can't emulate exactly what you're trying to do, doesn't get us anywhere. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's definitely something that I've observed too over the years is you need to give people a lesson that is relevant to where they are. Many black belts, and I have been guilty of this myself, when you sit down and you try to teach a white belt, you expect them to just follow your instructions and do everything perfectly. But you lose the context that, look, you might have been doing this for decades, they've been doing it for maybe a few weeks, and it's just not realistic, nor is it really effective or productive to expect them to know and figure out everything and get it perfect the first time. So, many instructors focus too much on making the reps look perfect. You know, they'll sit there and they'll watch a student and they'll make sure that if there's any mistake whatsoever, that you correct them on the spot. And the end result is it just it gets very bureaucratic and administrative. You as the coach wind up just sitting there spending all day just correcting little tiny, you know, mistakes, so to speak, in terms of how it looks and whether you think the technique looks right. Meanwhile, that has very little to do with whether the technique is actually effective and the person can do it properly. And it also stresses students out like crazy if the instructor is sitting there and just constantly nagging them about how, you know, their hand is a half inch too far to the left. So, I think being willing to loosen up and and let go on that is a really important lesson for a lot of coaches. Something that I've observed myself as a parent as well. You know, sometimes my natural inclination is to sit there and micromanage my kid and make sure she doesn't do anything wrong. Speaker 1: By wrong, I don't mean bad, I just mean, you know, not as the instructions dictate. Speaker 2: But that isn't really the type of person I want her to become. I want her to be someone who's willing to go out and try new things and be unafraid to try new things, even if that means failing because that's how you learn. And I think if you build a culture where failure is unacceptable, whether it be, you know, a competition result or even just getting the technique wrong, you encourage avoidant behavior where people then won't be willing to try new things and they get entrenched. So, all of this is to say, I really like the approach that you guys are deploying there. How is the gym looking now? I mean, you're a few years in, again, obviously an interesting time to start things up during the pandemic. But how are things structured now? How big is the gym and how's the culture down there? Speaker 4: So, the gym, it's fluctuates right underneath 150 members. Like, you know, it gets a little bit bigger, then we lose kids for the summer or parents are too busy to come in, like, you know, typical Jiu-Jitsu things. We don't have contracts, so we'll always fluctuate a little bit. I am having some of the best training I've ever had and probably last year I had the best competition results of my career. So, I think we're doing something right. Speaker 3: I can agree. I like how it seems like we've created a really nice family environment. Like a lot of parents that come through, their kids get involved or or kids are involved and their parents get more and more curious. Like it just it shows the community likes what it sees and they're happy to stick around. So, we've made some really good friends through the gym too. Speaker 4: That and we've been putting a big emphasis on skill acquisition since the beginning. So, we train with a bunch of Jiu-Jitsu nerds and over the last year and a half, we've been putting a bigger emphasis on wrestling games and Judo games. And the Judo and wrestling level at the gym, I think is fairly high for a Jiu-Jitsu gym. We have guys competing in Judo tournaments, we have guys competing in folk style wrestling tournaments. A lot of guys doing Jiu-Jitsu World League, doing IBJJF events now. So, we have a little bit of a competition team, which is not really an emphasis, but we have a lot of guys that enjoy it, so they do it. And they see me and Hillary jumping in on big tournaments, so they want to start doing that too. So, it's it's been a fun little experiment. Speaker 2: Nice, nice. And you talked about culture there and the kind of culture that you want to have, targeting a family gym. Tell me a little bit about that. Was that the intent originally to focus on a family-oriented gym or is that an identity that emerged after doing this for a while? Speaker 3: We did picture it, even though we didn't start out with a kids program right away. We wanted to build a core group of guys between some upper belts that filtered over from whether they moved or just other schools looking for something new. And also really build up like our white belts because they're going to be our first colored belts if they stick with it, you know? But yeah, the curiosity really grew with kids. We knew we wanted training partners for our little ones too because they were like we had just had Lucio, right? When we opened, so and Leo was three. So, we knew that they were going to be growing up at the gym too. So, we knew it was coming. We just weren't in a rush for it. It just kind of came on its own. Speaker 4: Um Baby Leo kept asking to go to the gym because he wanted to go teach. Because every time we would talk to him, he's like, I'm going to go to the gym and teach. Speaker 3: Yeah, because now he wants to be the one to help the other kids, you know, be comfortable and have a good partner and it's it's a really nice reflection of now the core group that has stuck with us from the beginning, the coaches we've had from the beginning and um just how Nelson and I have grown as well. Speaker 4: That and uh it's I trick the parents, I tell them it's a Jiu-Jitsu class, but we do like wrestling and Judo with their kids for 45 minutes. And I love watching kids classes. Their takedowns, their pin escapes are getting so good. We're starting to introduce like more guard principles, but a lot of the games are stand-up based. I tell the parents all the time, like, you know, at this age, when they're little ones, falling is for free. So, we're trying to get as much takedown training in there as we can. And yeah, the culture aspect is just building a community first. It's like, you know, I do this because I enjoy it, so I want people that I enjoy being around to be at the gym. And there's like no room for toxicity, so a few people have been asked to leave over the years. And then like the core group of people are there, you know, they take care of each other. The upper belts are always willing to help, the lower belts are always asking good questions and you just picking the brain of like, you know, the instructors of the upper belts or whatever. And it's nice, man. I really enjoy like what we have built. Speaker 3: It's funny, I remember just sometimes now that like some of our white belts are blue belts, purple belts, reminding them to adopt a white belt because someone adopted them at one point and now just pay it forward has been I think just a really good reminder just to not, you're not competing with your teammates. This is the room that's safe to make mistakes, it's the room to learn and then if you want to want to test that, like we support competition or we support just bringing your spouse if they want to try a class sometime. Speaker 2: That's a really interesting idea though about adopting a white belt. I really love that. And this I think is a great hack for people who want to build community fast. One of the things that I've realized doing mental models for a long time is with Jiu-Jitsu, often the Jiu-Jitsu itself is not really the benefit. The benefit is the community that can be built around that and it can really kind of fill a void in a lot of people's lives when you can provide them with a social outlet, especially for people who are struggling or maybe being social isn't something that comes natural to them. And I love the idea of pairing people up with a buddy, kind of like a a buddy system. This is something we've been doing a little bit within the premium community on BJJ Mental Models and I want to really expand upon this more. The idea of kind of pairing you up with a mentor or even just an accountability friend, someone that you can be mutually accountable with and you can look after each other and help each other succeed. I think that's such a great way to onboard people into a community. I mean, I remember starting Jiu-Jitsu and it being really awkward because first of all, Jiu-Jitsu by itself is super intimidating, but then you show up and you're in a room full of people you don't know and it's not exactly a cocktail mixer, right? It's not like you can sit around and take some time to have a few drinks and ask everyone what they do for a living to get to know them and break the ice. You drop right in there and you're immediately sparring or practicing Jiu-Jitsu. There's not a lot of room for socialization. So, having a structure where people are explicitly given a friend, so to speak, that they can bond with. I can see that being a really cool approach to helping get a culture off the ground and also increasing retention. I presume that what you'll tell me is, by doing this, it makes people kind of get into the culture and access the culture a lot faster than if you just drop them into the room and have them start training live right away. Speaker 4: Absolutely. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's something that I would like to see more gyms kind of steal and copy as well. I would also want to know from you guys, Nelson, you touched on something there about kind of preserving the culture and having to remove negative elements. This is one of the most unfortunate jobs of a gym owner or coach or someone else who has to kind of guard the culture at the gym, but it's also one of the most important jobs. If you don't do this, then you don't really have a culture. So, tell me a little bit about about this practice because in your other business, right, selling merchandise, not as urgent to have to fire bad customers. But when you have someone who comes into the gym and um they're dangerous or otherwise they're a negative element on the culture, you need to take action quickly. I'd love to hear a bit about what that looks like and what the thought process is like and also how you just learned that skill set to get comfortable with those difficult conversations. Speaker 4: So, we have a do's and don'ts poster in the gym and I think one of the things that comes out too is like, you know, be clean, your gear and yourself, be respectful to everyone. And then roll in a way where everybody around you is safe, right? And be respectful of the women in the gym. We want everybody to be able to train with everybody and don't treat the gym like your dating pool. I think those are like the biggest issues you run into as a gym owner. Speaker 3: Right. Like we've had some guests come through the door and maybe just like an upper belt looking for a new place and they would just kind of whoop on some like the smaller people. Like you wouldn't even feel safe putting them with another girl. So, it was already a red flag. So, we have pretty much like Nelson and I and some of our upper belts who are already like a good filter from the door. And if they're getting beat up by one of us and they don't like it, they pretty much decide not to come back without even having a conversation. And then we've had people like that we allow a little closer to us and they end up as like part of staff. And then you end up hearing like at least we have a culture where people talk to each other and they know that they can talk to us or one of us. So, I found like things don't linger too long. Speaker 4: Yeah. So, when somebody goes too hard, like you mean, you're not mean like I'm forcing, but you just have a conversation. You say, hey, like, you know, you can't go that hard with a brand new white belt or somebody half your size. If you want a harder round, like talk to like the competition guys, talk to me, talk to Hillary. Like, you know, we can have a round or like a higher pace if you want. Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 4: But you can't do that, you can't use, you know, the father of three that has a mortgage and trains twice a week is not here for that. Speaker 3: Exactly. So, being able to have that conversation like to let them know. Speaker 4: And then if they keep doing that, that's when they're shown the door. Speaker 2: Yeah, really important thing to point up there. And I mean, this is something that I can definitely relate to as well. You know, the the saying is always that Jiu-Jitsu saved my life, it's this great amazing thing. But as as Craig Jones kind of facetiously once said, Jiu-Jitsu has ruined a lot more lives than it's saved. Again, I don't know if that's true or not, I'm not sure I co-sign on that, but I do agree that many gyms that are too loose with the culture really give people a bad, negative experience of Jiu-Jitsu as they get started. I mean, there's a lot of people who were curious about Jiu-Jitsu, they tried it, they immediately suffered an awful injury and they never come back. And we don't talk a lot about those people in Jiu-Jitsu because their presence is so fleeting, right? They're only with us for a while, then they get injured, they have a terrible experience and they peace out. So, when we talk about how wonderful Jiu-Jitsu is for improving your health and your fitness and your life, we're really kind of adopting a survivorship bias there where we're talking about the people who have stayed around. Of course, they're going to tell you that they love it. They wouldn't stay around if they didn't. But there's a lot of people who after, you know, a very short time training, when they didn't know how to protect themselves, when they were making dumb mistakes, they got badly injured and they left and, you know, not only was that a bad experience at Jiu-Jitsu, but if it's a bad enough injury, it can be something that they carry through the rest of their life. And I think it's very important for coaches to to make sure that that doesn't happen. Our mutual friend Matt Curley has talked about this before and he once told me that one of his big regrets with Jiu-Jitsu was racking up way too many pointless injuries when he was a white belt, back when it didn't even really matter. I mean, there were no stakes, right? You're not even really good at Jiu-Jitsu at that point. It doesn't matter if you win, but still racking up a ton of injuries because you took it too seriously and because you didn't have a culture that encouraged safety. So, I think it is important in the first year or however long it takes people to get acclimatized. I think it's important to focus less on, okay, how good is their Jiu-Jitsu and more on, is this something that they can consistently do, have fun doing and do safely, right? Because I I think that's the big habit you want to instill in people in the early days is instill the habit of consistency and consistency is a product of fun and safety. So, that to me has always been something that gyms really need to focus on in the beginning. And I love that you guys have kind of clued in on that because I think that is such a a key to culture is having no patience for people who are kind of a dangerous role, whether they intend to be or not. Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, also like culturally just having the conversation, he's like, hey, if you want to start around standing, you have to be responsible. You know, you can't be doing flying submissions, I don't want you jumping guard. We have this rule in place where if you go on for anything that you do where your hip touches the ground first, it's a no-no. So, like a Tani Otoshi or like a scissor takedown, anything you're going to go flying and you're you're all the way is going to go down and your hips are going to touch first. If that goes wrong, that goes catastrophically wrong. Not for you, for the other person. If their knee gets like, you know, it gets stuck and then all your your falling body weight goes on that knee sideways. So, you just explain to people is like, hey, we can train takedowns, this is how we train takedowns safely. If you're going for like, you know, we're doing Judo throws, I don't want you landing on top of the other person. I want you to like, you know, try to take, especially if there's a skill differential, like say you're a brown belt, a purple belt and you're throwing you're throwing a a newer guy. If you're going to, let's say, Hiza Guruma, like we take some sauce off. Like, don't you just launch him and land on top of his ribs. Same thing with like singles and doubles is like, you know, we can finish singles and doubles safely without like having a huge lift and then putting the guy down. And just talking about that safely and then building our falling skills by playing the constraint games, CLA games. We're working off balancing every day in the fundamentals class. If we're playing, we're doing sweeps. So, we work from whatever position we're working and then we're just trying to we have a standing opponent, we're trying to off balance and then put him on their hips or their hands. So, people are falling a ton in our classes all the time. So, you just like letting people, get people acclimated with like, okay, it's safe to fall, but as you're falling, like, you know, you can't post behind you. We can like, you know, you have to be aware of where you're posting your hands, you have to be aware like, you know, if you're going forward, you have to roll through, put your hands out. This is how you land safely. And you just letting people learn that in a sweep scenario has been a very useful tool to get them acclimated to falling before we actually start doing takedowns with them. Speaker 2: Right, right. Nelson, I I really love what you said there about how a good rule for beginners is don't do any technique where your hip hits the ground first. I've never heard anyone explain it that way, but now that I'm thinking about it, that's a really good way to kind of isolate a lot of the problem techniques that we have to be wary of. I mean, if you think of guard jumping or Kani Basami or a lot of the high impact Judo throws, many of them will lead to you going ass to the ground first. And the challenge with saying things like don't jump guard, don't do Kani Basami is that assumes that your student has the knowledge of what those things are. And for a beginner, they're not going to understand all of those individual specifics. Whereas if you just tell them, don't do something where your butt hits the ground first, you're basically giving them the guideline without having to get into the specifics. And it's very easy then for even a beginner to understand, oh, I got to avoid this move. They don't necessarily know that, hey, this is because this is a falling body weight technique and there's danger. You've just given them one really simple thing that they can keep in their head for their own safety and the safety of their partner, which I think is super cool. Speaker 4: Yeah, I stole that from Francesco Ponte. He's a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu globetrotter. Priit and Francesco run a camp in Europe once or twice a year. I went to the first one in Florence last year and Francesco had that rule in place when doing one of his sessions and I was like, oh man, I am 100% stealing this. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've had a lot of people tell me I got to reach out to this Francesco guy and and get him on the podcast. Apparently he is uh quite the mind for Jiu-Jitsu. Speaker 4: He's a brilliant man. Speaker 2: Nice, nice. Something I'd love to get your feedback on. So, my coach Emily Kwok, something that she once told me was, if she had to choose a gym to train at, one of the things that she would look for as like the best possible indicator that this is probably a good gym is a gym run by a couple, like a husband and wife or really anyone in their partner. And her thought was, okay, look, if the gym is run by one person, whether it's a man or a woman, who knows. But if it's a couple, there's going to be an element of a family gym there. Clearly the owners are in favor of a collaborative shared ownership structure if there's more than one person there kind of running things. And that's often a good sign of culture because in Jiu-Jitsu, you know, we generally want to avoid some like top-down, you know, the teacher is the guru culture. And so, if you have many people kind of sharing and running the community, especially a family, her Emily's feeling has always been that that's a really good sign of the gym. And of course, you guys are a couple, you're parents, you run a gym. I'd love to know what lessons you have for people who want to make gyms more inclusive and family-friendly. You know, most Jiu-Jitsu instructors and gym owners, if you talk to them, they'll tell you, we want everyone in this gym, right? But most of the time what they find is their gym winds up reflecting kind of the obvious Jiu-Jitsu demographic. So, you're going to get like a lot of young men. And that leaves a lot of money on the table because you're losing a lot of potential customers if that's your almost your entire business. But also you don't really get much of a diverse or balanced culture if everyone is just exactly the same. So, I'd love your thoughts on any lessons or tips that you've learned about how to kind of broaden that net and make sure that your gym is is truly an inclusive place where anyone can wander in and they think, hey, this might be somewhere that I would be comfortable training. Speaker 4: What has worked really well for us is having a little bit of a lounge area, so like couches, TV. So, keeping we we usually play like lo-fi music, like very calming music during the fundamentals class. We'll turn up some a bit more upbeat during rounds. But there's a lot of parents that bring their kids for the 5:00 p.m. kids class and then when the class is over, the kids will go on like the little lounge area, read a book, work on their homework, watch TV, play on their tablet. We have a chessboard, some of the kids play chess now. Speaker 3: So, pretty much having a space for people to still hang out. So, if they're interchanging classes like an adult and a child or maybe a co-ed class versus a women's class or whatever, like there's plenty of comfy places where even if you're not doing Jiu-Jitsu, you can still hang out, socialize, get work done. And um so I think just whoever wants to run a gym and maybe they don't have a partner that they can go in together with, at least having that vibe, like we have men's and women's changing rooms, like like separate stalls in the bathrooms, just having something for everybody so they can feel comfortable. We have our posters on the board pretty much so you know like this is an all-inclusive gym, stay clean, respect your gym, respect your partners, respect other people that come through the door and um we'll give you that same respect in return. Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of good pointers there. The one thing to expand on, I really like that idea of having a lounge area because that opens up the door to people who maybe Jiu-Jitsu isn't their whole life. You know, I've always thought, man, it would be cool to kind of hang out at the gym and, you know, get some other stuff done. I mean, a lot of the work that I do is Jiu-Jitsu related, obviously. It would be nice to just go and sit there with a laptop and work. But so many gyms basically their entire space is dedicated to mat space, which is very understandable, especially if you live in a place with very high rent and high cost for property. But it does take away that option of having your gym be a place where people can just lounge and hang out and that is a very important aspect to the culture. I know that this is just a a moonshot for a lot of people, but I always hear gym owners tell me that, you know, if money were no issue, they would love to have a coffee shop or a juice bar or something built right into their gym because that would be a cool way for people to kind of continue the experience even when they're not on the mats. So, I really love that suggestion. And something else Nelson, you mentioned which I don't think gets discussed enough is music selection, right? Look, playing lo-fi music, for example. That's a very interesting and deliberate choice and it's a choice that I very much agree with because there are a lot of things that you as the coach might be doing that is signaling the culture to people without even realizing it. Um common example, Hillary, you brought this up. A lot of coaches will say, you know, we want to have women train here. How come we don't have more women train here? And then you go and you check out their gym and you discover, okay, well, you guys don't even really have like a legitimate women's change room. You know, if you're lucky, maybe you've got one stall or something or but it's much smaller than the men's. If they're unlucky, maybe they have to change in the bathroom. Well, right there, you've already signaled to women that this is not a place that really caters to them. And another more subtle way that gyms signal the kind of person they want is through music selection, right? If you go to a gym and they play nothing but gangster rap and heavy metal, I'm not saying that's bad, but you're tapping into a very specific mindset and culture. And I got to imagine, you're not likely to get a lot of older, casual moms and dads who just want to dabble in the martial arts if you're playing heavy gangster rap every time someone walks into the door, right? So, these little things are they seem small and most coaches probably don't even think about it, but it's it's a very important cue for potential customers. Just as much as the things you say, how do you decorate and facilitate the gym, things like music, even things like lighting can be tremendously important. So, I think that's a really interesting insight, Nelson. Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, the the lighting was funny. We sublet the basement of a PT clinic, so it is a little bit of a dungeon and at one point the landlord came in and actually took lights out from our gym. So, like it was like, it was weird. Speaker 3: But yeah, so if it wasn't already a little dark from some of the lights dimming, it got real dark one day when some lights were missing. Speaker 4: So, we had to like scramble and like, you know, one of the guys at the gym is an electrician, so we went and got like, you know, we were like saving up to put LED panels up. So, we had to like scramble and get at least a few going because out of nowhere like, you know, there was like a dark corner on the mat. Speaker 3: Because we, I mean, we try to take pictures or film. We're always trying to get that content up, you know, and all of a sudden it looks really bad. Speaker 4: But yeah, now we have a beautifully lit gym now. Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 2: Well, lighting is another interesting problem too and something that very few people think about. I had someone on the podcast a while back, I think it might have been Adam Medlock, who's a black belt and a an educator out of the UK. And I think it was him, mentioned that for many people, harsh lighting conditions can be a serious problem, especially if you've got like some old busted light that's flickering, right? I mean, if people have epilepsy or some other medical condition, that can be a hard no. But it doesn't even have to be something that serious. I mean, I just realized something from you guys talking that I never noticed before. One of the gyms that I train at, one of my big criticisms is they've got really harsh, bright fluorescent lights that are unshielded. So, basically they're constantly blasting like high light into the room, which isn't that big a deal when you're just walking into the room and looking around. But as soon as you have to fight off of your back, especially the guard, it's fucking obnoxious. So, you know, when you pull guard, you look up at your opponent and suddenly you're getting like high beam LED fluorescent light or whatever right into your eyeballs, it's very uncomfortable. And I'm start now that you got me thinking about this, I'm starting to wonder, I wonder if that's dictated my preferences in Jiu-Jitsu because notoriously, I tend not to play much guard. I kind of go right to turtle. Part of that is because I like the position, but I'm wondering, is this something I started doing without even realizing it because I didn't want to go back to the mat because then I get fluorescent lights in my eyes? Has has this like environmental factor Speaker 4: You're going to go blind. Speaker 3: Oh no. Speaker 2: Yeah. Has this like environmental factor Speaker 3: That was like one of our considerations too, like where we were shopping for lights. We're like, okay, if we're on our back, can we tolerate this? Speaker 4: Yes. I remember like we we got like a test panel and then they were way too many lumens and I would put it up, we're like, no, no, no. Speaker 2: I mean, it's a very valid concern and it makes me wonder, you know, first of all, how much of my Jiu-Jitsu journey was silently steered by, I guess you could call it ergonomic factors like this, you know, factors in the environment that I didn't even realize, but they were bothering me and so they changed my behavior. Maybe that's why I I'm such a turtle player because then I don't have to look right up into the lights to to play it. And these are things that are not always obvious. You know, there's a lot of other problems that can come up, just for example, I mean, if you're if you have bad luck or you're you're not careful with what you're buying, a lot of the time you can buy low quality mats that just slip a lot and that can be a problem too. I've been to gyms where the mats just don't have enough friction to the point where it's hard to do anything, even something like playing top side control is hard because you can't base off the floor without your feet moving. So, these kinds of things, they matter and people might not complain about them, but their behavior can be silently guided. And as a business owner, you always have to have an eye open for these things. Is there anything at my gym that I'm doing that is turning people off even if I don't realize and even if they don't realize it's happening? Is there something I'm doing that is turning people away? And that's always an important thing for people to think about when it comes to culture. Anything else that you guys have noticed, just observations, having done this now for several years. Any other things you've noticed from a kind of like a cultural or a presentation standpoint that you think are good lessons for new people starting off with the gym? Speaker 4: I think as a leader or as a gym owner, you really got to be aware of your own behaviors because whatever you do is going to be emulated. So, if you spend a lot of your time sitting out and not rolling, bullshitting and talking over people when they're trying to teach, then that becomes commonplace at your gym. But if you behave the same way you expect your students to behave and like, you know, do what you're supposed to be doing when you're on the mat, if we are playing a half guard game, I'm doing my half guard game. If we're doing rounds, I'm doing my rounds. If we're working on grip fighting, I'm working on my grip fighting. And you kind of like, you know, the culture starts with you. And I think Hillary and I have done a pretty good job about that and because we've been around like bad examples of this and like we're like very cognizant of that. So, I think that's very important. Speaker 2: Right, right. I guess the last question I have for you guys, having built up this gym for a while now, I'm sure there are things that, you know, you kind of have learned now that you really wish you knew from day one. Anything that you would want to share here that, you know, with the benefit of hindsight and experience, you would have done differently, especially in the context of is there any advice we can give to people who are earlier on in the process of building out their gym? Any lessons that you've learned over the years that you kind of wish you knew at the beginning? Speaker 4: Don't feel pressure to do things a certain way because that's how they always have been done. That's a terrible way to look at things. So, like, you know, very early on, we decided no warm-ups. A year into the process, we completely changed the way we're doing things and we're like, you know, into the CLA. Josh Bogle was on your podcast not too long ago. We know Josh for years. I know he likes, we stole his idea of project-based Jiu-Jitsu. And we incorporated 30-day projects into the curriculum. So, the advanced class starts with 10 minutes of a 30-day project. People work, you pick a partner, five minutes, I'm working on my project, five minutes, I'm working on your project, whether it is a game or several games that we've seen before from the curriculum, or maybe it's a new position we haven't worked on at all and you want to gamify it and like, you know, try to like figure out how to work on this CLA style. We've been working on that. A lot of the guys have been doing wrestling tournaments or Judo tournaments, we'll use this time to work on their Judo or wrestling skills. And I wish we started doing that earlier. It's been working really well. Speaker 2: Nice, nice. Hillary, anything on your side, any lessons that you've learned that you'd want to share for new people? Speaker 3: I learned to give in to having a ladies class. I'm very like Emily Kwok is also one of my mentors and just having a woman at the front of the room, so that would be myself at my school. But coming up seeing that with some of my own heroes, just you didn't always need a women's class. Like if you have a woman leader, it's like it brings women to the class. But listening to my students, listening to my families, understanding the need, I think especially for moms, like not everyone is a college student like I was when I started and they care a little bit more about their longevity, well-being, just their time is much more precious when it gets spread so thin. So, giving them that hour of time like just for themself has been very rewarding since I started it a few months ago. So, yeah. Speaker 4: Your ladies class on Saturday. Speaker 3: Right. So, having having the women's class on Saturdays now for for some of them who can't always go to fundamentals during the week. Speaker 4: And then that has led to a lot of the moms from the kids program jumping in on the women's class and then eventually filtering through the fundamentals class after. Speaker 3: So, yeah, just making sure I'm helping out that community of women. Um we have just always checking in on them, making sure I'm always available even in my travels, like they can always reach me no matter what, talk to me, checking in to make sure they always have a friend in class, a safe training partner in class, like just staying on top of that. Learning I need to stay on top of that or you might lose some people, you might lose touch with some people. So, just making sure I'm always aware of what's going on with my students so I can stay in front of problems before they get worse. Speaker 2: Got it. Good advice, good advice. Now, a very common problem that people bring to my attention, this comes up all the time is people will say to me, well, I want to start a women's class, but I just can't get enough women to attend to justify it. And so, I've heard so many stories of people who with the best of intentions, they'll start a women's program, they just won't get a lot of turnout and then within a, you know, a few months to a year, they'll have shelved the program and just told women, go back to train with the general group. We can't get enough people who are interested. What kind of lessons do you have or suggestions for people who are in that situation where they want to do a women's program, but they're just really struggling to get women to show up and attend? Speaker 3: So, yeah, I think making sure like not just me, but I'm bringing other women instructors to the school. Like we have a workshop every month usually. We have a guest instructor or maybe one of like our friends are traveling and they're actually there for a week. But making sure we're bringing other women into the room, making sure we're staying on top of like not only have a women's open mats at my gym. I try to have them at least twice a year, if not three times a year, but also traveling to other gyms for those open mats, being supportive of like the greater community. So, you can meet those other women, so you can or even doing tournaments, you know, making sure you're going as a group and you can meet other other women that way. So, it's not always like you're recruiting, but just they have a home base, but they're part of a larger community too. Like if you're trying to grow that program, like, hey, we're here too. Speaker 4: Can I interject something? Can I interject? Speaker 3: Sure. Speaker 4: Uh something I've noticed is that you actually talk to the ladies a lot about times and dates. So, you actually checked before you started the women's class, you figured out a day and time that actually worked for your community. I see a lot of gyms that have women's class like during the week, but it's like some awful time, like, you know, 8:00 p.m. when the moms are usually putting kids to bed or even later. So, making sure if you have a women's class, it's actually a women's class at a time that most women can attend, especially if they're they have a home of their own. Speaker 2: That is absolutely huge. I'm glad you brought that up. People dramatically underestimate the importance of convenience when it comes to training. I mean, most normal people will not restructure their entire lives to make time for a Jiu-Jitsu class, especially if they're older or they have kids. And this is an observation that's often lost on on younger people who are willing to drive one hour each way just to get to Jiu-Jitsu class, right? So, that is a very important distinction to really make sure that your class is truly catered to and customized to the people who will be attending. Ultimately, you're making it for them and so their convenience has to be a bigger priority than the instructor's personal convenience if you really want it to grow. Well, thanks a lot, guys. Anything else that we wanted to touch on here? Any other closing thoughts, Hillary, Nelson, that we should discuss or did we cover everything that you guys wanted to get into? Speaker 4: So, Steve, I finally talked to you into having gear available year round. Speaker 2: That is true. I guess that's a news update. I mean, we can maybe use that to plug your stuff. I mean, people will probably know the brand Inverted Gear even if they've never trained at the academy. Inverted Gear has been a long-time brand in the Jiu-Jitsu space. And, you know, we've kind of jumped in and through our mutual friend Beatrice Jin, we now have a pretty sweet BJJ Mental Models rash guard. You guys want to talk about that? Speaker 4: So, yeah, so that is actually on pre-order again because I think the second batch sold out again. So, we have another pre-order running and we're going to open up your logo gear. So, straight out BJJ Mental Models, big old logo on the chest for rash guards, a little little logo on the leg for the shorts. You can represent your favorite podcast on the mats and tournaments. Speaker 2: Amazing. And I definitely recommend people check out the super sweet Moodang rash guard we did with Beatrice Jin. Speaker 4: It's definitely that thing sells like hotcakes. Speaker 3: We'll go with that little the bow. Speaker 2: If you are a fan of BJJ Mental Models and belligerent baby hippos, I definitely recommend checking that out. Also a great way to support good people. I mean, of course, it supports Beatrice Jin and you guys if people buy it. So, I'll put links in the show notes to all of that and there you go. We have merch again. So, if people want BJJ Mental Models merch, go to Inverted Gear and check that out. Again, I'll put links to that in the show notes. But Nelson, Hillary, if people want to buy your stuff or if they want to come train with you at the academy, how can they go about doing that? Speaker 4: So, InvertedGear.com has everything you need gear wise and InvertedGearAcademy.com has all the information about the academy. There's an advanced section. We always have guest workshops. We also have a camp in Mexico every year. So, now I know there's a BJJ Mental Models camps popping up all over the world. So, maybe we'll get you down to Pennsylvania in uh 2026. Speaker 2: I would absolutely love to collab with you guys on a camp. Now that we're doing those more, I am so gutted, man. There actually as of this recording, there is a camp going on like right now. It just wrapped up yesterday in Kentucky and I couldn't make it because I had shoulder surgery. I'd been waiting for a while to get there and they they suddenly booked me in. So, the arm's in a sling, so I couldn't go down and do my own camp and I was very salty about that, but I heard it was a great time. So, yeah, I would absolutely love to do one in Pennsylvania with you guys at some point. Speaker 4: Sounds good, man. Thank you for your time. Speaker 2: Amazing. Nelson, Hillary, thank you as always. It was a pleasure and of course, thank you for making one of my favorite Jiu-Jitsu brands. Thank you for this this conversation. Always love to have both of you here. Speaker 3: Thank you, Steve. Speaker 4: Thank you. Speaker 2: Thanks, guys. And thanks to the listeners too. Appreciate you as well and we will talk to you in the next episode. See you then.