Ep. 357: The Truth About Burnout, feat. Jeff Shaw

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 1: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 357. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach, and I'm back today with long-time friend of the show, fellow podcast buddy. I got Jeff Shaw on the line. Jeff, how's it going, man? Speaker 2: Doing wonderful, Steve. It's always great to talk to you. Thanks for having me back on. Speaker 1: Now, normally we do an introduction so everyone gets to know who you are, but I think people already know who you are because, you know, you've podcasted here many times with us. And of course, you are the greatest of all time. Speaker 2: I'm a legend in my mom's own mind. Speaker 1: Hey, it's not just me saying it. A lot of people are saying it. Sports Illustrated is saying it. Bleacher Report is saying it. Do you get the reference? Speaker 2: I honestly don't, unless you're talking about Jeff Shaw, the old Cleveland Indians pitcher. Speaker 1: If anyone gets that reference, shoot me an email at steve@bjjmentalmodels.com. I'll send you some free stuff. But, um, yeah. Anyway, I'm going to park that. That'll be my contest for the week if anyone wants to write in. But Jeff, maybe we should in seriousness, talk about who you are. It's been a while. So, tell everyone about the the lore of Jeff Shaw from Bellingham BJJ. Speaker 2: Yeah, what's up, everyone? My name is Jeff Shaw. I'm in training a long time. I'm a black belt, and I own a school called Bellingham BJJ in beautiful Bellingham, Washington, center of the known world. We make a lot of merchandise that has my basset hound, the American Dream Dusty Rhodes on it. That's uh, I think a lot of people know me from this show or maybe the podcast I used to do called Dirty White Belt Radio. We also put on an annual Jiu-Jitsu tourism event called Ghee to Sea, coming again soon in 2026. And always stoked to be part of the BJJ Mental Models community. Some folks might also know me because I'm the dude that put together the list of resources for people who are in rural areas or want to start their own programs or maybe just want some curriculum resources from people who've thought about that. I've made that offer for BJJ Mental Models listeners. I've sent it out to probably 120 people so far. So if you are interested in that stuff, just send me an email at jeff@bellinghambjj.com and I'd be happy to hook you up. Speaker 1: Amazing, man. And I would also say, follow Jeff on Instagram to if you want to learn about stuff like Ghee to Sea. You guys have a lot of cool stuff going on. So, anyone who's in the Washington area, Jeff's a good guy to know. I'll always put the links in the show notes, so don't worry about that if you missed it. But Jeff, you and I have been talking about something here that I think is a a much-needed discussion. Honestly, I don't even know if a single episode is enough because you could slice and dice and dissect this topic and do a whole documentary on it. There's so many different variants. But that topic is burnout in Jiu-Jitsu. I'll turn it over to you maybe because you were the one who suggested we cover this today. Tell me about what that means to you. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So, burnout and injury are the two main enemies in terms of you having a successful Jiu-Jitsu life. And the two things I want to get across right at the top are, Jiu-Jitsu should be improving your life. It's a tool to improve your life in all its aspects. We do this art because we love it and we want to keep it that way, which means we want to it to be sustainable and for us not to burn out. My philosophy about getting better at Jiu-Jitsu is pretty simple. If you're having fun, you're coming to class. If you're coming to class, you're getting better. And it really is not much more complicated than that. We can have all the pedagogical discussions we want, and we should, we should always try to get better at learning and teaching. But really, if you have happy people coming to class, those people are going to be improving. So the two worst things you can do are get injured or get burned out, which indicates that you're not feeling the love anymore, not feeling that passion to be on the mats. This is a subject of real interest to me because I'm someone that has been a student, a regular competitor, a super active competitor. I have almost 300 total competition matches. I've been an instructor at someone else's academy, and now I'm the owner and head instructor at my own academy, which I own, which is a whole different can of worms. And all of those things, if you're listening to this, you're probably at least one of those things, and maybe you've played one or more of those roles. And I think everybody in their Jiu-Jitsu journey at some point experiences some level of burnout. And I think you're right that you can slice it in a bunch of different areas because the issues that you face as a student who's just trying to learn this versus somebody who has to think of curriculum but also has to figure out how to pay the bills and and all that other stuff are different, even if there are a lot of overlapping issues with it. Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing about burnout, it's one of the only things in Jiu-Jitsu, one of the only problems that I think we can all say we will almost definitely encounter if you stick through this long enough. Everyone I know who's trained Jiu-Jitsu for long enough has had some sort of crisis of faith with Jiu-Jitsu where for some reason, they just lose the fire and the desire to keep training it. And I think also people quitting Jiu-Jitsu later on in their journey is more common than people think. We always talk about white belts or even blue belts quitting. There's a lot of brown and black belts who quit for various reasons too. And I definitely have had my moments in my journey where I lost the passion for Jiu-Jitsu, and I've talked on this podcast many times about what worked for me to help overcome that. A lot of that is just mental reframing. But maybe a good place to start, Jeff, here is the most common burnout problem, and that is student burnout, especially early on. Right? Would you agree that where a lot of people kind of lose their fire is after the the initial love, the passion of discovering this cool new sport dies down, say once they get to the end of their white belt or maybe sometime in blue belt? Speaker 2: I absolutely agree with that. And the numbers bear that out. I keep really robust data for our academy, and when I talk to my fellow academy owners, everybody kind of has the same story. Most people will quit before they earn a blue belt. And then everybody in Jiu-Jitsu has talked about the blue belt blues and the disappearances there. The structure of Jiu-Jitsu in most academies is kind of like a pyramid where you have many white belts, some of whom make it to blue belt. You have several blue belts, some of whom make it to purple belt, and then it kind of goes on from there. And as you mentioned, you know, you can people quit Jiu-Jitsu at all aspects or at all stages of the journey. And as you know, and anybody who's listening to me knows, Jiu-Jitsu is a consent-based sport. We should do this because we love it. We do it because we choose to do it. At my academy, we don't do contracts at all. We don't do sign-up fees or termination fees. I never try to recruit people and I never try to talk people out of leaving if they want to leave. Simply because I think that it's better for your life, as well as better for your Jiu-Jitsu, if this is a completely voluntary thing that you come to when you bring that passion and you bring that energy. And so I think that I'm glad to hear, you know, that you as a black belt who's been doing this a long time can confess to experiencing periods of burnout. I certainly can too. And we all have our different techniques and tactics for dealing with it. I do think that the most common thing, as you mentioned, are students that are that are newer in their journey. The reason I feel for that is very simple, which is Jiu-Jitsu can be overwhelming. You know, there are more potential moves in a game of chess than there are atoms in the known universe. And there are way more potential moves in Jiu-Jitsu than there are in chess because your body doesn't move like my body. My body doesn't move like Fion Davis's body or Gabi Garcia's body or Maísa Bastos's body or my student Kendall McNabb's body. A rook always moves like a rook, a knight always moves like a knight. And so whenever you're encountering something that is vast, like Jiu-Jitsu or some kind of complex scientific discipline, if you're a brand new person staring into the great abyss, it's pretty easy to be like, I will never get this. And that's where I think the mental reframing tool that you mentioned is is really useful for people that are in that situation because you can either take that as something that is daunting or you can take that as something that is amazing, that you can be doing this extremely intensely for almost 20 years like me and still not know anywhere near there is to know about it. But getting to that piece of mental reframing is much easier when you've been in Jiu-Jitsu for a while, formed relationships, gotten good at the fundamentals. It's much easier than when you're trying to figure out how to get out of mount and you just can't figure out how to get out of mount. And so I think it's incumbent on all of us in Jiu-Jitsu, but particularly the upper belts, particularly the academy owners, particularly the instructors, to make sure that the white belts are not having that that experience. That they're experiencing the daily victories, the daily progress, the daily affirmations that kind of make this art awesome. Everybody has a first day of Jiu-Jitsu, and it's everybody else's job to make sure that's not their last day of Jiu-Jitsu. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Well said, man. I think when many people start Jiu-Jitsu, they have this honeymoon period where, you know, it's like being in an exciting new relationship. You've discovered this cool, super awesome thing that just at first glance, you absolutely love and very quickly it assumes your entire identity, and before you know it, you're walking around wearing Jiu-Jitsu shirts and you've added BJJ to your Instagram handle. And that's all great. I love the enthusiasm that new people bring to the sport, but that enthusiasm will wane. Very few people at black belt still have the same kind of childish glee about Jiu-Jitsu that they brought when they were a white belt. It's just a different level of enthusiasm and a different type of enthusiasm that sustains over time. So you've got to be ready for that. There's going to come a time early in your journey where the novelty of Jiu-Jitsu wears off, and it kind of becomes a bit more of a routine for you. And then you start encountering challenges and obstacles that you didn't really notice before. Often in Jiu-Jitsu, people will talk about things like plateaus, but I think also when you get to blue belt and you start realizing how deep the ocean is and how long this journey really is, I think a lot of people get discouraged there. And then there's also people who really, they didn't come to Jiu-Jitsu because they wanted it to redefine their whole life. They just wanted to get marginally okay at self-defense and try something new. So for them, getting to blue belt is good enough, right? And I don't know if you would really call that burnout. I think you would just call that like a pivot. But there are a lot of reasons why people can lose their passion for Jiu-Jitsu. And I think a big part of that attrition is because coaches don't really prepare their students and say, hey, look, you're you're not always going to be as excited about Jiu-Jitsu as you are right now. When I was a white belt and a blue belt, like I was literally training seven days a week, multiple hours a day. Jiu-Jitsu had assumed my entire identity. I was consuming as much Jiu-Jitsu content and media as I could. I was basically only listening to Jiu-Jitsu podcasts. But, you know, by the time you get to purple, brown, and black belt, you just don't have that kind of enthusiasm to sustain anymore. There's other stuff going on in your life. You still might like Jiu-Jitsu, but you don't love it so much that it needs to occupy every waking moment of your attention. So, that is a a journey that people in my opinion are not really ready for, which is where the their love of Jiu-Jitsu goes from this white-hot flame down to kind of a a burning ember. Speaker 2: I think you made several really important points there, and I want to lift up one of them specifically, which is go into it with open eyes. I am a person that is on the higher end of the Jiu-Jitsu geek spectrum. I was that guy who listened to all the podcasts, literally every Jiu-Jitsu podcast. I read all the books. I consumed all the media. I was on the mat 20 hours a week for most of the first 10 years I trained. I could not get enough of it, and I'm kind of still that guy, at least most days. My body and my responsibilities have caused that to tail off a little bit, but I'm still a high-energy person who is completely passionate about Jiu-Jitsu every minute of every day. To me, Jiu-Jitsu is the closest thing to sacred in the world. This is a beautiful art. It is a passion project. It is pure physical poetry. But it's also a job. And I think it's really important for us to recognize that, those of us that do this for a living. And I think that that mental reframing, that preparing ourselves for it can help people. And for people that aren't going to do this for work, for people that are those students who are incredibly fired up and gung-ho, I think framing that for them early on is something that I've gotten better at doing. And I don't frame it in terms of burnout, even though that's what I'm talking about. I tell them that I want them to take it slow and avoid overcommitting and avoid ramping up too quickly to avoid injuries, which are all true things. But most of the instructors that I know that I'm dear friends with, that I compare notes with, will tell you the same thing I'm about to tell you, which is if somebody in the first two months is incredibly fired up and talks to you all the time about how, oh, this is their life and I'm going to make this my whole identity, I'm going to make this my whole personality, it's about 50/50 on whether that person is a lifer or whether you won't see them again in two weeks. And there are various reasons for that, right? Sometimes you don't love a thing the way you thought you would. Sometimes you just kind of overconsume and you're like, maybe I didn't like this as much as I thought I would, even if that wouldn't have been true if you were a little bit more sustainable about it. But also, I think in Jiu-Jitsu, we don't do as good a job of communicating using our words as we often ought to. And so I want to my black belts, I want when he was a brown belt, was struggling with burnout, and he came to me almost like secretively, and he was like, man, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I feel like I'm getting burned out. Does this happen to other people? And I'm like, yes, it does. And I gave him some of the techniques. I'm happy to say that dude has rediscovered his love for the art and is is fired up as he ever has been now. But it just kind of shows there's peaks and valleys to everything. And so if we go into anything, you mentioned the example of a new relationship, right? If you expect everything to be like your first date at 16 years old, you're setting yourself up for failure, expectations-wise. But if Jiu-Jitsu is like a marriage for you, you're going to have peaks and valleys. You're going to have highs, you're going to have lows. And just like marriage, the ride's going to be totally worth it. Speaker 1: Absolutely, man. Well said. I think there's another reason why people can get burned out too, and that is because they may lie to themselves about how much they actually love Jiu-Jitsu because they feel pressured to do so, either from external pressure or internal pressure. I mean, when you walk into a new environment like Jiu-Jitsu and you kind of fall in love with the idea of the sport, it's really easy to kind of feel like you want to be a chameleon and alter your personality so you fit in and blend in, right? Like, how can I come across as one of these people so they'll like me and so that I'll kind of blend with the culture? It's just a very common human thing. When we enter a new tribe, we try to figure out how can we fit in in that tribe. And in Jiu-Jitsu, there is a lot of pressure to make it your whole life. There's a lot of pressure to escalate your commitment and do things like compete. And if you're competing, well, maybe you're not competing enough. Maybe you're not putting enough effort in. Coaches can get really judgy about this too. They coaches often don't seem to have the perspective that for a lot of people, the extent they want to commit to Jiu-Jitsu is one or two hours a week. And that's fine. And so I think many people in their desire to fit into this new community, they will put on this mask of overcommitment. Like, oh yeah, I'm I absolutely love this. I want to make it my job. I want to make it my life. I'm going to train like crazy. But a lot of that is, as my friend Rosie Miller would say, is maybe just being a bit of a try-hard. You're you're trying to overcompensate, and if your level of enthusiasm is not genuine, if it's a performance you're putting on for other people, then you're never going to be able to sustain that for the long term. And so I think that is a a possible reason why people may burn out. They come in and they say all of the things that their coach wants to hear about how much they love the sport and how committed they are and how they're going to compete and take this seriously and do it for a living, but they're kind of just lying to themselves and eventually you can't keep up that lie forever. I think that is a part of it too. Speaker 2: Let's drill down on two aspects of that because I think you're absolutely right. That kind of external pressure, that that implied pressure comes without even people meaning to put it on themselves because Jiu-Jitsu's full of intense people that are really passionate about this niche pursuit we've taken up, and that gives off, that emanates, even if you don't try to pressure on the new white belt, if they see how fired up you are, well, maybe I should be that fired up too. And these are once again things we should talk about and like clarify expectations for people. There's a second aspect of it though that I think is is something that I don't like in Jiu-Jitsu pedagogical culture, which is I do think a lot of school owners, and I'm not going to mention any names, but I've been around a lot of instructors that do put a lot of pressure on people, even people who are hobbyists, not competitors, people who are, you know, just in it for for whatever reason they're in it, be that self-defense, fitness, whatever. And like I remember one instructor coming to me and he was worried a couple of of folks were going to quit. And he was like, you got to give them the speech. I'm like, what do you mean the speech? He's like, you know, we're a family and we're family. We always stick together here. And that kind of rhetoric never sat right with me because people have families, their own families. And families can be chosen, families can also be birth families. And look, I'm as close to my Jiu-Jitsu friends as I am to anybody in my family or my life, but that's not an expectation that I would ever put on someone else, let alone someone else that is a part of a business, right? And so I think that's going away as we sort of transition from a lot of the more toxic aspects of old school culture, but it's still there, right? Where school owners and instructors will pressure people to do things that maybe they're not ready for or maybe they don't want to do. And for me, without judgment on any other style of doing things, what I always encourage people to think about is, what's your Jiu-Jitsu for, right? Because if you're listening to this and you've been doing Jiu-Jitsu a while, you probably know somebody that's a hardcore competitor. And you probably know somebody that'll never compete. And you probably know somebody that rolls every round of every class. And you probably know somebody that rolls once in a while or maybe somebody that just shows up to drill or maybe the person that just takes the class and leaves before the positional sparring. Maybe you know somebody that only takes the self-defense classes. I think all of these are legit ways to be in the world. Like Jiu-Jitsu is a tool to improve your life, and you should use that tool for how you want it to improve your life. And everything I just mentioned is legitimate, right? And I've been many of those people. I've been the dude that competed literally every round at every tournament. And now I'm not that guy anymore. I'm older. I've I've more responsibilities. I have people at my academy that are only for self-defense, couldn't care less about competing. I have people that are fired up about competing. I have people that aspire to be Jiu-Jitsu teachers. I have people for whom the concept of teaching a Jiu-Jitsu class just sets off their anxiety. All of those things are totally valid. You should take positive things from Jiu-Jitsu where you can get them. And I think that that is the attitude that we need to inculcate in people that are in our Jiu-Jitsu academies. And those of us that are instructors need to not put pressure on people to fit Jiu-Jitsu into our particular box or for other people's Jiu-Jitsu not fit into other people's boxes, right? So I think having that sort of a healthy attitude and expectation can help avoid burnout as well. Speaker 1: I love that. That's extremely well said. I would also add too that sometimes coaches do pressure their students to escalate their commitment. You hear this a lot where people will say, well, you need to compete. No, you don't. You don't need to compete. Or, well, you're you're competing, but you're not taking it seriously enough. No, that's not true. You you put in as much time and effort into this as you want to. It's not up to anyone else to tell you what your Jiu-Jitsu journey needs to look like. However, there are a lot of situations where the pressure is not external. It's not your coach or your teammates, but it's internal. It is your desire to fit in and to become one of the people of the tribe, and so you overcompensate. And that's not a Jiu-Jitsu only thing. I mean, man, when I, you know, when I graduated from university and I became a professional software engineer, I did a lot of stuff because I wanted to blend in with like the other software engineers. I wanted them to think that like I was one of the smart, clever, awesome, like 10x amazing engineers. And so a lot of what I would do was performative. You know, I would read the right books, not because I was particularly interested in them, but because I wanted to come across as the kind of person who knew that stuff. You know, a lot of what I was doing was very performative, not because someone else was telling me I needed to do it, but because I didn't feel like I was good enough. And so I needed to put on this performance to make myself look better than I was. And I in retrospect, I wound up doing a lot of stuff that just didn't really interest me, but I did it because I felt like everyone else in my group here is doing this and I got to follow the herd. So I think that probably young people especially, and even more so young people who fall in love with Jiu-Jitsu because it maybe it's their first real social community that they're part of and they feel included in. They can feel tremendously pressured from themselves to try to conform. And that could be dangerous because a lot of the time, the people around you aren't telling you to conform. You're telling yourself. You're feeding yourself this fiction, and you can wind up overcompensating and overinvesting, right? So, I mean, yeah, if you're that guy who's training twice a day, seven days a week, and you're spending thousands of dollars on instructionals and every waking moment of your life is watching those, it's worth asking, are you doing that because this truly is your life's passion, or are you doing this because you feel like that's what you're supposed to do when you start Jiu-Jitsu? Speaker 2: Good coaching is a dialogue, and you're absolutely right that a lot of this pressure is internal. People put pressure on themselves. And that's not all bad either, right? That's what drives people to achieve sometimes. But I think that the dialogue comes in where when students come into our academies, we have to like onboard them in a way that sets them up for success. And so one of the things that I tell people early on is, I want you to train Jiu-Jitsu as if you are going to be training the rest of your life, even if you know for a fact you won't be training for the rest of your life. There's two reasons for that. First is, if you are training like, oh, I have to train as if I'm going to be doing this for the next 40 years if you're 30 years old, for example, then you are not going to train in a way that's reckless on your body, in a way that takes unnecessary risks with your training partners, which builds a more sustainable and hospitable training environment, right? And if you have that mental frame when you go into rounds, you're going to approach that in a certain way that's more productive to learning for you and to learning for the academy. And second is because it avoids burnout. If you imagine like, hey, this round, you know, this is easier to say than to do, right? Because as you mentioned, you know, we sometimes put a lot of internal pressure on ourselves, especially younger people and especially competitors. But if we try to go back to that North Star of, hey, is this going to serve the Jeff of 40 years from now, then it's going to be hard to stray too far from the path. And when I say dialogue, I really mean that it has to be like a process of constantly reevaluating what must be changed and how. One of the cool, fascinating, and frustrating things about both Jiu-Jitsu and coaching is that it will never be a solved game because no solution is going to work in all situations at all time periods for all people. And so like I think setting healthy expectations, making sure that people have a realistic understanding of what they're doing this for and why they're doing this and how to be the best at getting what they want out of it is a great start, but we're always going to have to be revisiting that North Star with folks, especially because, you know, students have different goals. Speaker 1: So, something that I always tell people is to prioritize your consistency in Jiu-Jitsu. Consistency is the key to a lot of long-term success in really anything, but Jiu-Jitsu is an amazing example of this. And there are some some guidelines you can give if you want to help people achieve greater consistency. One of the things that I often tell people is if you want to be consistent, avoid the things that will impact your consistency. Try to avoid those situations. And you already brought up one of the number one consistency killers, and that is injury. The thing about injury, it's not just that you're getting hurt and that you might have to take time off, but it's that it because it disrupts your habits potentially for a long period of time, it makes it hard to reestablish those habits when you come back, especially if you've only been doing Jiu-Jitsu for a year or two. I mean, if you've got a a long-term injury, there's a good chance that by the time you come back, you will have found something else that occupies your life and and moves on. So, this is a piece of advice that I often give to people. One of the most important things when you start out is avoid stupid things that could impact your consistency, especially injury. I don't have data to prove this, but I suspect that a lot of the really dumb, excessive injuries happen at white belt because at that point, people don't know how to roll safely. So, they will just be going way too intense without having the experience to control themselves, and then as a result of that is they can be more likely to either injure themselves or their training partner. And especially if you've only been training Jiu-Jitsu for, you know, a month or two. Man, if you get a long-term injury that takes you off the mats for longer than you've actually been on them, the odds of you coming back are pretty minimal. That doesn't even get into the harm that you've caused yourself by, you know, injuring yourself in a way that could impact you for the rest of your life outside of Jiu-Jitsu. So, I really think that people need to think about consistency. How can I eliminate the things that will reduce my ability to be consistent? And injury is one of the most common problems there that can lead to that. Speaker 2: I think that is probably the single most important insight that new folks need, and I completely agree with you about consistency. I would rather have you have 10 really good, worthwhile training sessions than two absolutely amazing training sessions where you go incredibly hard and put yourself and your training partner at risk. And, you know, we all get there eventually. And so I think consistency is probably the most important thing. The counterpoint to that, and I have a lot of people who, you know, sometimes folks are like, yeah, but I just I don't want to just show up and do the same things. And so a tip that I have that I think applies to everyone is you can freshen up your training by taking ownership of your own learning in certain ways. So, for example, like if you're not feeling it on a particular day, right? And you're you're like, oh, we've done this move over and over. I've seen this or this this material is not something that's resonating with me. Give yourself specific challenges, especially during the sparring portions, right? If you are larger or stronger, only play bottom. If you are more experienced, concede dominated positions. Try stuff you wouldn't ordinarily try. And give yourself a very specific challenge for that day. And this is this is good for avoiding burnout, but it's also just good, I think, training practice as well. If you have like, you have one challenge for the day, right? I'm working on this new side control escape. Or, hey, you know, that last time I rolled with that person, I kind of dominated them and they didn't get off a lot of offense. This time I'm not doing any offense. I am only defending. And I think like opening up those different neural pathways, I think helps to freshen up training because it can otherwise it can just be rote. We show up, we do the warm-up, we drill the moves, we spar, right? And of course, as instructors, you have a responsibility for making sure every class does not fit that same A plus B plus C mode. But if you're finding that that is happening, you can freshen up your own training by giving yourself specific challenges or reaching out to different training partners than you typically have. We all sort of gravitate to a lot of our favorite training partners. Maybe it's our friends or people that are roughly the same size as us or just people that we know. But like especially if you have an academy that's a healthy training environment, reaching out to people that are not typically your training partners are ways to give your training a different look, give your yourself a different challenge, and give you the opportunity to try certain moves that uh maybe have stopped working on the people that you've done them 10 times on. So, just a couple of ideas as well for how to be consistent but also keep it fresh. Speaker 1: That's a great point. Being consistent doesn't necessarily mean you're still being novel. It's possible to get into this trap where you're just doing the same thing over and over again. And honestly, as someone who has fallen into that trap before, it gets really boring. You know, when you get to brown or black belt and you get to the point where basically every single one of your rolls is just going exactly the same and you're doing the same moves and strategies every time, it gets really boring, and that can lead to burnout. So, it helps to consciously think about how you can freshen up your training, not just because it keeps things more interesting, but it's also better for your skill development. Our mutual friend Margot Ciccarelli once told me about how she was training with a coach who forbade her from playing guard for a month because she's a notorious guard player and it became a thing that she does, right? And by taking that out of her game, it forced her to work on other stuff. And this is a tool I have employed for myself where if I find I am always getting into the same position and I am always using the same techniques, I might say, you know what, for this class, I'm banning that technique. I'm not going to use it. And if that means that I lose the roll because I gave up my best tool, then so be it. I'll figure something else out. Speaker 2: Yeah, I like I think that's a tremendous idea and like we have our judo coach who's been doing judo forever. I banned him from being on top for six months. I was like, you know, you can work here, you can work your throws, but when you hit the mat, when you're doing Nawaza, you don't get to be on top for six months. And I think it freshened things up for him as well as like helped some of the folks that were stuck in getting caught in Kesa Gatame on the bottom. Another thing I wanted to mention about that is that and this may this is kind of taboo a lot of times for talking about in Jiu-Jitsu. Don't be afraid to take breaks. The mats will be here when you get back, I promise. Every time somebody feels like they're burned out. And look, burnout can occur for non-Jiu-Jitsu reasons too, we need to acknowledge. Sometimes work kicks up. Sometimes you have stressful family health issues or, you know, one of the women at my academy just had a baby and took some time off and she was like, I hate that I'm missing this time. And I was like, the mats will be here. And Nikki just came back this week. Welcome back, Nikki. I was right, the mats are still here. We're going to keep doing Jiu-Jitsu. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and consider it a long game. So if you are feeling and if burnout can also be physical, it can as well as as mental. And if you're not feeling it, I promise the mats will be here if you take a week, a month, a year and come back to it. One last thing I wanted to mention, and some of the best advice I got was from my coach Jake Whitfield. I came up in a really old school environment, very traditional Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and we drilled all the time, and it was hard training all the time, and we did striking, and we did all the, you know, standing self-defense, throws, takedowns, but really intense training. And I was training between five and seven days a week, usually at least one and often two sessions a day. And uh I loved early on, I started to love sport Jiu-Jitsu. And I you know, I love all aspects of Jiu-Jitsu. Jack Kerouac said that his subject in writing was America and so he had to learn everything about it. My subject is Jiu-Jitsu. I want to learn everything about it. I want to learn the sport, the self-defense, all the old school, the new school, the ghee, the no-ghee, the strikes, the no-strikes. If it's Jiu-Jitsu, I want to know it, period. But in the training environment I was in, although I was doing sport Jiu-Jitsu, and at the time, this was in around 2010 to 2012, the Berimbolo had really started to dominate the meta. And so I was having a ton of fun with it and still love the Bolo. But at an old school, primarily self-defense, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu school, the Berimbolo was not encouraged, right? And so I would take a lot of flak for it, and, you know, I would get beat up sometimes for doing it. And I asked Jake, you know, who's still one of my my closest friends and Jiu-Jitsu mentors. And this is advice he gave me at white belt or maybe blue belt, I forget, but like I still use this advice. I'm like, Jake, you know, because he would always give me a ton of hard time for focusing on the Bolo because he was very much old school, get on top, stay on top, pressure, smash. Stuff that I'm really grateful for. But at the time, I was like, man, I'm having a lot of fun doing this other thing. And Jake said, well, you train like five days a week? I was like, yeah, at least. He's like, okay, if you train five days a week, give yourself one day to just do whatever fun stuff you want. And that's your fun stuff day. And I promise I won't give you a hard time if I look over and you're not doing the traditional stack pass or you're not, you know, doing the double unders or you're not like do, you know, getting in side control and butcher choking the guy. And just give yourself that day to work on whatever fun, goofy stuff you want because I meant what I said at the top of the show. If you're having fun, you come train. If you come train, you get better. And that that's really it. There are a million great coaches in the world. No great coaches do everything exactly alike. And so yeah, we should talk about how to optimize our classes. We should talk about how to increase our pedagogy, how to like improve our our motor learning skills and our understanding of all that. All that stuff's really important. But at the end of the day, if people aren't having fun, they're not going to be consistent. And if they're not consistent, no matter how good your pedagogy is, you could have the best classes in the world if nobody's at them, nobody's getting better. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, very, very well said. Um, I've talked about the problem of trying to min-max your Jiu-Jitsu before, and I've noticed other people have started using that language too. And I am taking credit for that. Speaker 2: You should be very proud of that, for real. Speaker 1: I had Rob Bernacki on our podcast. We did a mindset course with him and he was talking about min-maxing. And that's a term from like video game worlds. And I'm pretty sure Rob Bernacki doesn't even know how to turn on a computer. So, I thought it was really funny that him of all people was lecturing me about don't min-max your Jiu-Jitsu. But for people who don't know what this means, in like the world of video games, min-maxing is when you try to create the perfect optimal build for whatever you're doing. So, imagine you're playing, I don't know, World of Warcraft or Diablo or something. Like you're trying to figure out what is the statistically best way to create the absolute perfect character here. So, how do I get the absolute perfect stats? Like literally, how do I max them out so that this is the statistically best possible, strongest possible character I could make? And that sounds like a good thing. And maybe it is if you're like ultra competitive or obsessive about this stuff. But the problem with min-maxing is you're taking all the fun out of what you're doing. You're basically turning this game into a spreadsheet, into a job. It is now no longer about play and exploration and having fun. It is about trying to get the numbers on the spreadsheet as high as you possibly can. And there is a time and a place for that, right? I mean, if you are a competitive gamer, maybe you really need to do this. That's kind of the idea of trying to moneyball something. How do I get my stats as high as I possibly can? But as much as we talk about like the best pedagogy methods and how to min-max your Jiu-Jitsu and squeeze out every second of skill development training. At the end of the day, we are all human beings. And if you're not having fun, it doesn't matter how good your pedagogy is because you're not going to stay, right? And one of the quickest ways to kill your enjoyment of anything is to try to min-max it and turn it into a job where it has to be perfect or it's not good enough. And so I often hear people, especially at white belt and blue belt, who are saying things like, you know, if I want to be really good at this, do I need to quit my job and move across country and train with Greg Souders at Standard Jiu-Jitsu? Is that the only way I'm going to get good? It's like, no, you know, at the end of the day, you have to be having fun. If if you're trying to get things so perfect and squeeze out every last drop of value and skill development, it stops being fun really quick because you're focusing on things that don't really have to do with your enjoyment of the sport. And so for all of our talk about how our human brains work and how motor learning works, we are human beings, and our emotional states dictate pretty much everything else at the end of the day because if we can't will ourselves to do something, it doesn't matter how good our methods are. Speaker 2: Yeah, most definitely, most definitely. So if I could break this down into two other categories because I think we've covered a lot of really important general topics. We do have to recognize like, it's different being a student than it is being an academy owner. And from participating in the Discord, I know that a lot of people who listen to the show are in very different roles in the Jiu-Jitsu community. So one thing I wanted to acknowledge is, I was really nervous when I started Bellingham BJJ. The thing I was most nervous about was, I was nervous about taking my passion and turning it into a job, you know? Because Jiu-Jitsu has always been something that I deeply want to do, that I'm driven to do, that I'm compelled to do, that I don't feel right if I'm not doing. And I worried that making it something that I had to do would take some of the joy out of it. And I'll lead with the good news, which is, by and large, I am still the most enthusiastic Jiu-Jitsu person that you'll ever be around. I love being at the academy all the time. It's awesome, it's super fun. But academy owners and people that are thinking about owning an academy, it does sap some of your energy, like just by virtue of hours in the day. The stuff that if you are thinking about becoming a head instructor, opening your own academy, like the type of energy and attention that you have to give to things that are either not Jiu-Jitsu at all or are merely Jiu-Jitsu adjacent will increase. And it will become more difficult to both carve out the training time that you need and also do the stuff that is sort of the fun stuff. Like doing Jiu-Jitsu is my dessert now. It used to be my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But now it's sort of, you know, and this is part of a function of the particular academy I'm at. Not every academy is like this. But, you know, we have a ton of instructors and a lot of classes. And so I have responsibilities that have to be taken care of before I can get my own training in. And I think there are different and this is where I think you're right, Steve, about you could do multiple shows about different slices of avoiding burnout. And so I don't know if you want to talk more about that or if you just want to leave that as a we could talk about this more later, but I didn't want to do this show without telling anybody who's maybe a black belt thinking about hanging out their own shingle or somebody who's a brown belt who's working hard that knows they want to own their own school one day. I just do want to make sure that, you know, we talked a lot about walking in with open eyes. It really is a risk. It really is a risk that it will sap some of the energy for the thing that you're passionate about. Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, I sometimes think people overblow that concern because you hear people say things like, well, if you really love something, don't make it your job because then you'll lose your passion for it. And sometimes that's true, sometimes it's not, but there is no denying that if you decide to do Jiu-Jitsu professionally, especially if you decide to become a gym owner or business owner, you are adding a lot of stuff into your Jiu-Jitsu life that you really might not enjoy. I see this a lot, right? I mean, we've started doing a lot of pro services to help people out with their marketing and their promotion for their gyms. And a big part of the reason we're doing this is because so many Jiu-Jitsu gym owners, they love the Jiu-Jitsu side of things, but they hate the business owner side of things. They're not interested in the the marketing or whatever. That's not why they got into this, but they understand it has to be done. And so the challenge is, if you rescope your Jiu-Jitsu identity from, hey, I just do this for fun to this is now how I make a living, you're adding a lot of other stuff into that bucket, into that cauldron, and it could wind up changing Jiu-Jitsu for the negative for you, right? I mean, you, I know have had this experience and pretty much every instructor I know has. I mean, when you become an instructor, you are now responsible for a room full of people, and some of those people could be difficult or crazy or who knows what, right? Like the amount of interpersonal stuff you have to deal with as a coach, it's huge. It's often bigger than the Jiu-Jitsu itself. And a lot of coaches, they get into Jiu-Jitsu and they just burn right out as soon as they have they feel like they're having to babysit people or they're having to deal with all of this interpersonal conflict that they feel is taking them away from the sport. So, it is very true that whenever you redefine your relationship with the sport, there could be other things that you're adding in or taking out that could change how much you enjoy what you're doing. Speaker 2: Yeah, most definitely. And like I will say two other things about this. The first is just, just like everybody's Jiu-Jitsu journey is different, everybody's school is different, right? And so if you're at a school like one of the ones I was at in North Carolina where you there's one head instructor and there's like 20 to 30 regulars, the those concerns are still valid, but it's way different if you have, for example, we have 15 instructors, we have 40 classes a week. And so there's a lot of management that goes into that. And so sort of the bigger that you get, the more those concerns come to the the forefront. And so the one piece of advice that that I would give to anybody who is going to find themselves in that position at a at a larger school is if you're an academy owner, don't be afraid to delegate. In Jiu-Jitsu, particularly if you were if you came up in the old school way, it was very top-down and very hierarchical. And there were some negative aspects about that. There were some positive aspects about that too. But when I came up, the head instructor was expected to be all things to all people. You know, he is the person that you ask about all Jiu-Jitsu curriculum stuff, all Jiu-Jitsu teaching advice, and that is the guy and you go to the guy. And I think it is a healthier model to view Jiu-Jitsu as a sort of collaboration, right? Where even if there is a head instructor, as as there I think there has to be, you know, just to have one person you can go to for all sort of general concerns, to acknowledge that there are people that have overlapping strengths. And recognizing that delegating both avoids burning yourself out and also helps lift others up. Like anybody out there who's an instructor, how did you get good at being an instructor? You probably taught class, right? And so if you don't give people the opportunity to grow and lead and spread their wings and teach class, even if they're classes that you really like teaching, that's not going to be the thing that's going to grow your academy in the long run. It's not going to be the best things for the people that are under your care for the long run because how do you get good at a thing if people won't let you do that thing? And so a couple quick anecdotes about that. And like and it was hard for me. I will say, as my academy grew, it was because I I was used to the model where we have one head instructor, that head instructor teaches all the classes. If you have a question, you go to the head instructor. If you ask anyone else, it's almost disrespectful. And I think that was bad. But that's how how I came up. And so it was at first, you know, the first year or two of Bellingham BJJ as we were growing, it was more difficult for me to let go. But, you know, as you build trust with your friends and your team and your folks, and I'm very lucky in that I have a great bunch of folks, which I'll I'll end on in just a second talking about that, that um understanding that no one of us is as smart as all of us is really important. And that truly diversity is strength. You don't have to be an expert at the Estima lock. You need to know it and be conversant in it, but if you have a guy for that, amazing, right? And so if you have people because everybody has their love and their specialization. And so rather than I think trying to be all things to all people, which I think can lead to instructor burnout, like if you feel like you have to be teched up on all the latest aspects of the meta as the head instructor, that's overwhelming, right? And so having multiple folks that can have multiple areas of interest and specialization, I think is really healthy, it's really fun, particularly because a lot of us gravitate to particular things anyway. And uh just today, I was having a conversation that made me feel as good as I've felt as a head instructor. And we were talking about we have two intro to BJJ sessions. We run an introductory cohort for all of our new students. And we have two that start next week. I was talking with one of our instructors who's an amazing dude, black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, Judo. He's been teaching for probably 40 years. Uh sort of a local legend in the area. His name is JT Taylor. I was talking to JT and I was like, yeah, JT, he wanted to help with one of the classes. I was like, oh, have you talked to Jesse or Pat to see if they want to do it? Jamie could also do it. And JT said, this really like mental lot to me where he he just said, it must be a great feeling having such a qualified instructor staff that any of those guys would be a great choice. And I was like, yeah, it really does. I feel really amazing about that. And I would not have been able to say that five years ago, not just because we've obviously developed a lot of folks, but also because like I felt a little too possessive, I think, of wanting to teach all the classes myself. And so that's I don't know if anybody out there is in a similar position to me, but if you are, just know that that's a journey that I kind of had to go on where I was like, oh man, I got to teach all these classes. No, you don't, you know? You have good people. You have, you know, and and and those good people will only become better if you empower them to teach the things they know. Speaker 1: We're actually recording a Jiu-Jitsu business course right now with Elliott Marshall. He's been on the podcast before. He's a retired UFC fighter. He's also the co-owner of Easton Training Center in Colorado, which is a large academy network that they have there. And something that he said was that learning to delegate was really key for what he did. And, man, he mentioned in our recording that he realized at one point that he was no longer really qualified to teach one of the classes at his gym, which makes sense, right? Because if you're focusing on the business side of things, then eventually it gets to the point where your skill set probably is going to morph more towards the business end of things and less to the actual Jiu-Jitsu stuff. And when you've got people who are focused entirely on training a certain aspect of Jiu-Jitsu, they're going to be better at it than you. And a big part of how he grew his family of academies was learning to let go and to understand that it doesn't have to all be about you. Delegating and finding people who are better at those areas or giving people opportunities to grow so they can be better at those areas than you. That is huge to not just being successful at business, but also to general strategy. There's a concept sometimes called the zone of genius, which tells us that look, all of us have things that we are just really, really good at. And sometimes when it comes to building a strategy, we focus on our weaknesses. Like, how can we fix all of our weaknesses so that we don't have any, so that we're good at everything? And the problem is if you do that, if you focus entirely on your weaknesses, then at best, you will be mediocre at everything, right? You will be that jack of all trades, master of none. Sometimes if you really want to get good at something, you need to focus on that thing. That one thing that you're just exceptional at, you're passionate at, you're getting results at. You focus on that, and for everything else, you either delegate them off or maybe you patch them up to the point where they're not a glaring weakness, but then you don't focus on them so much anymore, right? And this can impact how we train in Jiu-Jitsu as well. If you are exceptionally good at one thing, it makes sense to really develop that one thing and to to use that as an advantage over everyone else. I mean, as long as you don't have glaring weaknesses to the point they're getting exploited, it probably makes sense to focus on whatever you're strong at. And the same thing comes up in business. I mean, if you are not passionate about the marketing side of running your gym or the sales side or any of that, delegate that. Get that off your plate because if you force yourself to be the one who does it, it will kill your passion for what you're doing. And that is hard to do because we feel, you know, there's trust issues. We always worry that people won't be able to do it the way that we want. Um, there's control issues, especially Jiu-Jitsu people like to feel like they're in control at the time. And there's also this human feeling of being needed, right? We want to feel like we're needed. And sometimes people stick to jobs that they're not the best fit for because they like the fact that they're the only person who can do this. I mean, again, going back to the job world, you hear people talk about job security where maybe they're not doing something in the way that is best or optimal, but they're doing something in a way that is protectionist so that nobody else can take that job from them. And the problem is that kind of scarcity mindset can prevent growth for both other people and for yourself as well. So, really, if you are looking to do this professionally, one of the first things you got to figure out how to do is how do I offload all of the stuff I don't enjoy and I'm not good at to people who do enjoy it and who are good at it. Speaker 2: Yes, so much yes. You've threaded so many needles there. I just have two things to pull out out of that. First of all, Easton's is an amazing school. I used to train there a lot. I spent a lot of time in Denver. So I'm really excited to listen to that series when it comes out. We have a couple of folks training with us that used to train at Easton. So I'm sure that's going to be a super valuable series and I'm excited to listen to it. The second thing is that my personal philosophy is Jiu-Jitsu is about getting you to where you want to go in terms of not just on the mats, but in life. And that's what I think about when I think about my folks, my instructors, my the the staff at the gym because they all have different goals. Some of them want to own their own schools one day. Some of them have no interest in that but do want to teach. Others just want to teach here and but maybe get better at competing. And like I think that thinking about, you know, Jiu-Jitsu is different things to different folks. And as I mentioned, the question for all of us is what's your Jiu-Jitsu for? At this stage of my life, my Jiu-Jitsu is for helping other people get to to where they want to go. And I think framing that in my mind has helped me deal with some of my own burnout issues because you're right that we all want to be useful. You know, there's a great Marge Piercy poem called To Be of Use that's hanging on my in front of my desk right now, and it is something that I personally crave. And so, you know, part of the way that I find value these days is figuring out like, oh, this person who is a blue belt that has several stripes has a goal to teach one day. How do I get that person there? This person wants to own their own academy. Okay, what's the best advice that I can give them? What's the best way that I can get them up to speed on some of the skills that they need? And this I think is I'm speaking about myself individually as an individual and hopefully it's useful for some of y'all who are listening. Hopefully that resonates with some of you. But even if you're nowhere near my position, I think for me the core insight is this. There are many ways to participate in Jiu-Jitsu. And if you are feeling burnout in one of those ways, like maybe you're not feeling the passion for being on the mats rolling hard, right? You need to listen to your body as well as your mind and honor that impulse in yourself. But if you're feeling burned out, you can still be around the gym watching class. You can still hang out with the folks that you train with and like nurture those relationships. You can still offer to help with the white belts, offer to help with the kids, bring that sort of knowledge to bear. There are a lot of ways that you can use your talents to help other people around the academy. Now, I'm presupposing that that's something that you would find value in and that that would make you feel good. If it doesn't, that's fine, you know, take a break, do something else. That's perfectly valid. But for me, I've found when I'm struggling with burnout, I always ask myself, how can I help, you know? And I remember that participation in Jiu-Jitsu doesn't just mean Pohada, right? It doesn't and you know, and of course, mat time is a critical component, particularly for those of us that are that are on the earlier stages of the journey. But it's not everything. There are many ways to participate in an academy even if you're feeling burned out of being on the mats. Speaker 1: Very well said, my friend. One last closing thought I would throw in here and then I'll turn it back to you to tie this one up, but there's a difference between consistency and intensity. And over the long run, consistency will almost always beat intensity. That's important to understand because a lot of people get really hung up on the intensity side of things. But these are two dials that you can control in terms of your relationship with anything like Jiu-Jitsu. And you don't have to have them maxed out at all times. In fact, maxing out your intensity is usually not a great idea over the long run because if you do that too much, you know, you can get injured. There's a lot of things that that can go wrong. I think also there's an argument to be made that being too intense can impact the quality of your training as well, and that doesn't even get into the injury risk. But consistency can be achieved even with very low intensity. Rafael Lovato Jr. once told me a piece of advice. Now, granted, he's the greatest American of all time. He's not the greatest of all time like you. So, you know, take this for what it's worth, listener. But the greatest American grappler of all time, Rafael Lovato Jr. had told me that his advice was do something every day for your Jiu-Jitsu, even if it's small. And I at first when he said do something every day for your Jiu-Jitsu, I I said like, look, bro, you know, you do this for a living. You're the American goat here. I'm just a guy who does this for fun. Like I'm never going to train as much as you. So, but then what he said was, look, consistency is not about intensity. Consistency is about doing something every day. That could be you go to your class. That could be you do hard competition rounds. Or it could be you watch a five-minute YouTube video. Or it could be you talk about Jiu-Jitsu with your friends. Or it could be you just close your eyes and you kind of mentally drill a technique for a bit. Or it could be you work on your conditioning. It doesn't that doesn't even have to be crazy. You can go for a walk, right? But do something because it's not about the intensity. It's about the consistency. The consistency is what keeps the habit alive. When you pause the habit, it becomes way harder to restart that habit later. And the longer you pause, the harder it is to restart it. So, as a personal example, I've taken a lot of long layoffs from Jiu-Jitsu over the the lengthy time I've been doing this. I've taken layoffs where I literally just shut Jiu-Jitsu out of my mind and did something else. And when I came back, that was pretty tough, honestly, right? It was like starting from almost fresh again. I had lost so much. But I've also taken layoffs where maybe I wasn't physically training, but I did other stuff. I did this podcast. I I did research, I studied. I just even if I wasn't watching instructionals, I was staying actively involved in the Jiu-Jitsu community. And I was really shocked by how when I came back after that layoff, it didn't feel like I'd missed a beat. Even though I had been technically off the mats for a long time, the fact that I had stayed mentally engaged made a huge difference. It kind of made me feel like the habit was alive. So, that's just one last thing I would tell people is if you're worried about burnout, you can always turn down the intensity. But try to keep the consistency going, even if that consistency is small, right? Even if it's the simplest, tiniest thing, the act of keeping the habit alive makes a big difference. Speaker 2: Most definitely, and like I completely agree and like look, you know, if you're going to take advice, taking advice from Rafael Lovato Jr. is generally going to get you in the right direction. If you're half as good as he is, you're you're still two IBJJF Hall of Famers. Speaker 1: That is true, man. Well, awesome chat here. I want to turn this over to you to close this out. Any closing thoughts or things you want to share on this topic of burnout which we didn't get to? Like you mentioned, it's a big topic. I'm sure we could expand on this if the listeners want, but I'll let you tie this one up here for us. Speaker 2: There's no right or wrong way to do Jiu-Jitsu. There's only a right or wrong way for you. And if the way you're doing Jiu-Jitsu isn't making you happy, you need to change the way you do Jiu-Jitsu. And nobody gets to tell you that you're doing that wrong, you know? If you are in a school where they don't support your goals, find another school. Or if you are in an environment where you feel for whatever reason you're not, you know, you're not getting what you need. Maybe you're a competitor and they're not interested in competing. You you really want to learn self-defense, but they just want to do sport Jiu-Jitsu. There is no reason you don't have to justify it to anybody. People go where they belong. And if you're feeling like you're burned out on Jiu-Jitsu, try one of the strategies we talked about, right? Like uh be consistent, change up your training regimen a little bit. Try and keep it fun. But remember that this journey is yours and nobody gets to tell you what your journey is for. And so as long as you keep in mind like, here's what I want Jiu-Jitsu to do for my life, and you keep your eyes on that prize, you can't go too far wrong. Speaker 1: Well said, my friend. Well, if people are in the Bellingham, Washington area and they want to train with you, how do they do that? Speaker 2: You can check out our schedule online at bellinghambjj.com/schedule. Just send me an email at jeff@bellinghambjj.com. We would love to hang out with you. You can also follow us on Instagram at Bellingham BJJ or me at Jeff Shaw BJJ. I check all that stuff pretty regularly and I'm pretty quick to respond to messages. Uh we love new training partners and um I would love your thoughts. If I've said anything that you agree with, anything you disagree with, or anything you just want me to know, I always love hearing from people. Speaker 1: Do you want to talk about any of the cool projects you got coming up or is it too early for that? Speaker 2: No, we can talk about that. So a lot of y'all know I'm a I'm a passionate student of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu history and martial arts history generally. I have a new class that I'm teaching at my local university, Western Washington University, uh called This Is Why We Fight, a modern history of martial arts from 1600 to the present. That's going to start in June. That class will be available online for anybody who wants to take it. We're working out details about how to present that online right now, but if you are interested, just send me an email and I can get you on a list where we can notify you when the that stuff becomes live. It's going to have video lectures, it's going to have documentation, all sorts of historical documents that I think will be pretty interesting for folks. I just had a new paper come out about Theodore Roosevelt's role in early Jiu-Jitsu in America, and you can find that online by Googling it, but if you're if your Google Fu is weak, I'm happy to send you a PDF. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, I will put links to all of your stuff in the show notes, and if people don't want to take the time to read the whole paper, although you should, we also did an interview on that. So I sat down with Jeff and we talked about the history of Teddy Roosevelt and how he was a Jiu-Jitsu badass. It was a really interesting conversation. So I will put links to that stuff in the show notes. Speaker 2: Yeah, we always try to make sure that we have stuff for our readers, stuff for our audio listeners and folks who consume media through video, and I appreciate your help doing all that stuff, Steve. Speaker 1: You're most welcome, buddy. And thank you to the listeners as well for hanging out. I really do appreciate it. All of our stuff is at bjjmentalmodels.com. The thing we do differently, every episode of our podcast is intended to be timeless and educational and always useful, except for the ones we do on April 1st, which are just a complete disaster. So always check the date before you believe what we say too much. As Jeff would know, he has uh he has engaged in April Tom Foolery with me before. But everything we make is at bjjmentalmodels.com. The full-length episodes like this, again, they're all intended to be things you can crack open at any time and get value out of. If you don't want to listen to me prattle on for hours, we've also got great mini episodes that get to the the meat of the concepts much quicker, which are all in the main feed. We've got a whole database of the concepts we talk about if you want a reference. And I always suggest take a look at BJJ Mental Models Premium if you haven't already. It's how we keep this thing ad-free. It's got uh 600 subscribers now and growing. And the reason you might want to join that, we already kind of implied some of the stuff that's coming there soon, but it's the world's biggest library of Jiu-Jitsu audio courses on all manner of topics from technique to concepts, to strategy, right down to things like business and mindset. We're also getting into Jiu-Jitsu educational long-form audio documentaries, which I'm really excited about. We're in the process of launching a new one with Emily Kwok talking about Jiu-Jitsu and motherhood. Uh we've already got the first two parts published on there and I am super excited to get more of that done. So all of that is at bjjmentalmodels.com. Please do check it out if you haven't already. Link in the show notes. But Jeff, my friend, thank you for doing this. This was a lot of fun. Speaker 2: It was a lot of fun for me too, Steve. And as a proud and happy pro subscriber, I can assure you there's value in every in all that content. Speaker 1: Appreciated, man. And thanks to the listeners too. We will talk to you soon. Have a good one.