Ep. 349: Overcoming Obstacles, feat. Edwin "Junny" Ocasio

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 bjjmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 349. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And I'm here today with friend of the show and world champion, Junny Ocasio. Junny, sir, how's it going, man? Speaker 2: How you doing, man? Thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it. It's definitely one of my my favorite podcasts. Speaker 1: Man, I'm glad to have you back on. And as we were saying before I hit the record button, I can't remember if the last time you were on here was before or after your big recent wins. I think it might have been before. So, I mean, maybe talk about that a bit because you have had a heck of a past few years. Speaker 2: Yeah, um, I think that we might have talked right before I won the World Championship. And uh, it's been very interesting. I mean, honestly, I'm probably in the the own, I'm probably in the best place of my life considering, like, the worst thing that happens to me is I have a bad training day, which is in the hindsight of like everything in my life that's happened, uh, it's very, very, very negligible. But yeah, I ended up winning that World Championship, which was my dream. So, fulfilling that really, really was beautiful, but it came with a double-edged sword or I kind of like got like, uh, something that happens to Olympians, like, uh, nothing really changed after and I got into like a a big depression for like three months. Speaker 1: Well, that's actually maybe a great topic that we can discuss here because we were figuring out what do we want to talk about this time around. And what had come up is overcoming challenges, overcoming roadblocks and obstacles, a relatable problem for people of all levels. And I know that as you mentioned, you've got some recent stuff that probably would be good examples that we could get into. So, maybe talk about that. Talk about some of the challenges that you've had recently and how you've been overcoming those. Speaker 2: Recently, it's been, I've been coming over the, I've been fighting the the more of the the obsessed amazing practitioner that is like used to winning all the time and maybe I either win and I don't give myself praise for that performance or I maybe fall short every now and again in one match and it kind of eats me up a little bit because, uh, I'm very competitive and and I want to be the best in the world and so like dealing with those and trying not to put on myself the pressure of what everyone will think if I lose. That's been pretty, I don't want to say difficult. I feel like it it's difficult at times, but just that seems to come up every now and again, every few months as I get ready to go into new places, uh, of competition. Speaker 1: Yeah, I got, I can understand. I mean, I am not a competitor myself, but I have a career that involves walking into a lot of high-pressure situations and it it is very easy to to get into your own head, especially when like you said, you're concerned about the perceptions of others around you. Maybe talk a little bit about that and what that's been like for you and how you also handle that problem too. Because learning to sort of overcome your fear of how other people might perceive you and focus on doing the things that you want to do anyway is just such a huge struggle for so many people. Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's one of those things that when I was going after those World Championships in the first 2023, I mean, I was always going after, but when I went after them and won them, I had this mindset that I didn't give, I, you know, I didn't care. I didn't care what anybody was thinking about me. I'm doing this for me. Nobody's paying me to do these championships and and that was a very good mindset to be in because it makes you dangerous, you know, and that at the time you're hungry. But what ends up happening is, you know, you get those titles and then all of a sudden you're the man. And I was already the guy like people always want to beat, but now I was the guy that people wanted to beat, you know, like you not only did you win one World Championship, you destroyed the whole playing field leading up to it. So then the next year you're have a big target on your back and I think the things that people don't really talk about is like, you know, one thing is getting the title and then one is continuing to perform at a high level after you obtained a title because for a second, your hunger diminishes a little bit, you know, you start to forget that, you know, what it's like to be very hungry again. And so dealing with that challenge is tough. And then also like while you're in that journey of like changing the goal and setting it higher, you're also worried about like, what will people think if now I lose? Am I one hit wonder? Am I this? Am I that? And it took, I'm always working on my mental side of things, always my mental mindset, always, always, always. And at my core, I know what's realistic and what's not. At the end of the day, you know, you could be the best in the world for three years and all of a sudden you lose like once and then people will like off-rate you. So, it really doesn't matter what they think. It matters what I do and what I love and know that my perception is that we just shake it off and and we get to the next one. But there is a part of you that is always like, no, like what, you know, like they're going to, you know, like, what do you think? You know, because you're worried about your legacy and and issues like this. Speaker 1: Yeah, you bring up an interesting example there of how depending on where you're at in your career, the hurdles that you have to overcome mentally can be different. So often when people haven't won the big one yet, their their biggest worry is that of self-worth and will I ever get there? Will I fail to achieve my goals? But then sometimes you hit those goals and then that problem can change and reshape to more a fear of losing what you have or a fear of not living up to your past success. And so these kinds of mental struggles and these feelings of inadequacy can sort of change and evolve depending on where you are. And that makes it so hard to kind of pin them down because just when you think, you know, you've got the handle on things, life changes and now you've got new problems to worry about. Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like 100% accurate. I feel like this is just in life. Uh, this has been like bigger than Jiu-Jitsu. It's just like your goal range and, you know, I made the mistake of hitting my dream and because I had insecurities at the time, I I maybe because I was a little older, I was like, oh, maybe I win this, I retire and that's it and like whatever. And then I quickly realized like after that was done that like that was just an insecurity that was I put on myself as an excuse or a scapegoat to be, you know, afraid to lose after I win. And so I did a couple things after that to awaken my hunger again and put myself in uncomfortable situations so that I would put everything on the line so that I would go back to a place where the titles don't matter. And that was very tough for me to do because I had to take some chances and, you know, so pretty much anytime I do an open or anytime I do anything that isn't a World Championship, or even a World Championship, you give, you take everything that you are, everything your titles, everything, you strip it away and you kind of go into fighting new people, putting everything on the line where they have everything to gain, they have nothing to lose and you have nothing to gain at all in this match at all. And I did that in 2024, I did that and in 2025, I did that again. I redid it again. So, I feel like you have to put yourself in that place and just remember what it's like to fight and to be hungry and to go against these new guys who are hungry, who haven't achieved what you have and and they're going to fight like their life depended on it. And uh, that's really important for me because I'm a very goal-oriented person, but I also get bored of doing the same thing over. So, if I've done it, I want to conquer something else. And so it's important to make sure that like I'm pushing my limits and I'm also not thinking about titles and holding myself to that that regard. Speaker 1: Understood. One of the interesting things about human psychology is how we tend to feel the pain of loss more than we feel the joy of gain. The, you know, it's a concept called loss aversion and it's an interesting challenge that many of us face. And in the context of competition, you bring up a great point here, which is that if you feel like you've got nothing to lose, it's easier to fight boldly and confidently because you feel like you have no table stakes, right? You have nothing to lose, everything to gain. It's easy to go out there and just give it your all. But if you feel like there is something on the line to lose, whether that be pride or reputation or ego, you can wind up being more reserved than maybe you should be. And this is why I've heard people advocate and say before that sometimes it can be a mental edge if you don't have a lot because you don't have anything to lose, right? You're free of the obligation of expectations or of loss. A friend of the show, Rafael Lovato Jr. has talked about how the key to his mindset is being a forever student and a forever white belt because keeping that mindset allows you to feel like, you know, hey, you're always just at the beginning of that journey wherever you are. That helps you detach from this fear of losing everything that you might have accomplished up to this point. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that Lovato is a very correct on this. Again, a perfect example of someone who continues to win at the highest level, but fights and is very humble and, you know, like you can tell that he's always learning new tricks and and new things. Something I hold myself to is been an interesting two years. My perspective in training and in life has greatly changed. One, becoming a champion and two, understanding what it really is to be a champion in life and in Jiu-Jitsu. It is not what I thought, what I originally thought being a champion was. It's it's much deeper than just, uh, winning titles. It's how you react when you lose. It's how you react when you fail. And I've always been a champion at life in my hindsight, you know, like I've always had to overcome, adapt. I've never looked at a obstacle and said, no, I'm not going to do it. I've always said, no, I'm going to go fix it again. But once you get all these accolades and you become, you know, everything you want, to be able to continue to achieve goals, you definitely need to be in a learning state. It's something that I have done, always looking to my students for help, answers, studying, asking questions, always refining and and getting new answers. For me, I think it's the hardest thing for me is I'm always learning and getting better and always trying to get new answers and get new stuff. But I think I'm just unbalancedly obsessed with being the absolute best at everything I do. And so that is a double-edged sword because it makes me how good I am, but it's also my biggest flaw, you know? Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to dig into this a little bit. And what you talked about just now where you said that being a champion is about more than just having a medal. You know, a medal is an extrinsic motivation. And there's, look, there's amazing grapplers who never won World Championships for reasons outside of their control, like just bad timing or injury or something happened. I mean, man, you know, there there are athletes who probably could have gone on to win the Olympics in their sport of choice, but due to like political world events, they weren't able to compete. But a lot of people carry that champion energy with them regardless. I'd love to hear more about that and what you mean when you say that being a champion is about more than just the extrinsic reward of winning the medal. And what you've learned since actually getting that medal, what specifically have you learned and discovered since that time and how has it evolved your mindset? Speaker 2: I think in your mind, um, you know, you become this champion and you have this montage in your head, right? Like you kind of, I think in the world, everyone has a montage in their head for everything they do. They have this thought process and like what the montage is going to be. And it's so easy between watching movies and highlight reels, like what the montage is. But the reality is it's not that. The reality is is that you become a champion and you do all the things that you're supposed to do and then nothing changes. Like what do you do when nothing changes in your life? There's no, I didn't really get financial gain. I didn't get anything out of winning that. Everything was the same and then you go out and you do it again. You know what I mean? Like, uh, that was hard for me. That was hard for me to just sit there and then know I'm so good, but then I hit this and and you know, like was then questions come up, are you going to be, am I only going to be able to win this World title once? Or am I going to be able to repeat? Or how do I raise the bar so that I separate myself even further? How do I do this and up my finishing rate? So I really dominate the competition. There is a thousand questions that came through and I chose to be humble. I chose to really work. I chose to not let my titles put me in a place of relaxation and chilling and stuff like this. Probably a little too much because I didn't really celebrate for sure the way I should have. But that showed me like leading into fights like when you win something, you're like, oh, all of a sudden like I'm the World Champion. I can't get scored on, right? Like I can't, I can't lose this round and oh like, I know this. And then that's not the truth. The truth is you're still going to lose rounds. You're still going to get beat up. You're still going to lose by advantages sometimes. Sometimes the round's going to backfire on you. Some even in some fights out of your control, something might happen, you might lose. And then knowing this and going through a one loss in the beginning of 2024, um, really, really put it in perspective for me to like, that's not what a champion is. A champion is someone who goes through the hard times and gets back up and doesn't let the physical things speak for itself. Like it doesn't mean like the medal is my well-being. It's who I am. So, it's how I do my bed in the morning and how I do my dishes and how I clean my apartment, how I take care of my dogs and how I take care of my girlfriend and how I hold myself from my class and how I choose to be a better person. Like that's championship qualities that it goes from the the world to the mat. In doing that, in doing those little things, like how you do everything is how you do anything, right? So, like in those little things, I realized that like being a champion was the little things done every day and showing up every day and doing your best effort every day, learning, being humble, not worrying about like, you know, just the medal itself. It was a lot of mental growth to understand that that it's not end all be all for winning a title or keeping or maintaining and I'm bigger than the titles itself and dissociating myself as Junny with I am Junny because of my Jiu-Jitsu world versus I'm Junny, the kid, the guy who works really hard in life and loves and gives back and is a nerd and loves collecting toys and is addicted to watching movies and learning. It took a lot of deep thought process to make sure that I'm very honest with myself and and always be kind to myself because I'm so obsessed with being the best that I forget sometimes that I'm a human being. Speaker 1: Yeah, this is such a common problem, especially with younger people who fall in love with Jiu-Jitsu and decide to make a career out of it, the tendency to make it your entire world. And that can be risky because if Jiu-Jitsu is the only thing that you've got in your life, if it is the entire source of how you identify as who you are, it's really easy to get emotionally swung by what happens on the mats, even though we all know it's it's not a good thing. Most people will tell you, you know, having children or getting into a relationship or having a career, really anything that you focus on in addition to Jiu-Jitsu that kind of broadens your understanding of who you are as a person, it can actually make it easier sometimes to do hard things like Jiu-Jitsu because there's still a lot left in your life, even if something goes wrong in Jiu-Jitsu. Whereas if you live an imbalanced life and Jiu-Jitsu is the only thing that you really do and care about, then anything that goes wrong or any bad days you have are going to have an outsized impact on you and you don't have an identity beyond Jiu-Jitsu as to who you are. You see this a lot with many athletes who look amazing on their good days, but they just mentally collapse on their bad days. And bad days always happen. So it's so important to have like that support network and that broader understanding of who you are as a person so that you realize, look, even if my matches or my Jiu-Jitsu career don't go the way I want them to go, I'm still a good person. I still have worth and value and there's a lot of things that I can be proud of in terms of the way that I've lived my life. It's not just about what ultimately is, you know, it's a sport, right? You know, there there are people who have professions where people live and die. We're lucky to be able to do something that we can do because it's fun. Speaker 2: 100%. In the middle and the midst of everything in this world, on the world, you really forget. Like I was just telling myself today that I got done and I just had like, I didn't have the greatest session today. And that you break that down like what makes a great session? Like the worst thing that happened to me today was that I had, I'm preparing for a match. They're helping me and my students are helping me and I was a little bit more tired today and I had a little less sharp today and I was, the worst thing that happened today was that I didn't have the rounds the way or I didn't perform the way I expected myself to perform. So, a couple things there. There's expectation. There's also that I train a lot. There's also that I came off, uh, I just came from back from Kazakhstan a week and I jumped right into another camp to get ready for this next fight. And so there's a lot of variables and I just remember coming out and I was just like, okay, it's like, okay, like it's not the end of the world. Like better to make mistakes right now than in the match. And it's so easy to get lost in that. And it's something that I personally like because I believe that you need to be obsessed to be, if you're really obsessed with your craft, you are going to become great. But if you are absolutely obsessed and don't have any other outlet in anything there, it's going to be hard to grow from any losses or any things that doesn't go your way. So, I'm in a very good place where I can understand that everything is not as bad as it seems. But I'm also that person who's so obsessed that I'm on it like every day. So, like my balance is through the middle, but it's just definitely not the bad worst thing in the day. You know what I mean? Like when I look at my life right now, everything in my life, there's not, I don't live a bad life. I live a great life. I worked very hard in my life to make to make a really good life for myself, especially where I came from and how how I was brought up and what age I started Jiu-Jitsu. You know, like I'm 36 years old, you know, and still on top of my game. But there are just insecurities that make that an issue. And so like when I separate all those things, like my life is good. My life is great. You know, like I'm about to fight at, I just came back from Kazakhstan. You believe that? Did you hear that sentence? You know, I remember talking to Emily before I was there. She's like, you're in Kazakhstan fighting for money, you know? And I was just like, yeah, I'm in Kazakhstan fighting for money. And she's just like, dude, you're in Kazakhstan fighting for money. Like that, did you ever think that you're like your life would be there at this point in your life? All the way across the world doing this. And I just remember like, no, I wouldn't have thought that. So, I am super lucky and super blessed. There's so many athletes and so many people that one that will never get those World titles, that will never be able to fight on the level I'm fighting at or being on the fields that I'm in. So, for me it's like, I have a great life. It's that's the worst thing that happened to me in a day is my training doesn't go too well. Um, it's at this point that's like nothing compared to what I was had in my life. Speaker 1: Yeah, well said, man, well said. That is an interesting story too about and it's not just you. I know that a friend of the show, one of our sponsored athletes, Chris Wojcik was over there in Kazakhstan too. Man, what a cool opportunity. It's like you said, even just a few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that Jiu-Jitsu would have this kind of reach. I had sort of just come to terms with the fact that look, this is always going to be this kind of weird sport that only a few total deviants like us actually care about, you know, the closest most people will get to caring about this stuff is caring about, you know, MMA and the UFC. And that's fine. But it's really been interesting to see the way that Jiu-Jitsu has grown and changed and the opportunities that's given to people. There's a lot of people, myself included, who never would have thought that they would have, you know, kind of done what they've done in Jiu-Jitsu and made a career or a business out of it. It's a great example like you talked about how when if you you reflect back on your journey, people tend to, again, they tend to be loss averse, they tend to feel the losses more painful than the wins. And so it's really easy to get super hyper-fixated on the things you don't have. Like, man, I really wanted to achieve this one thing and I never did and my friend Jimmy did and I'm so pissed off that he got something that I didn't. It's really easy to hyper-fixate on that. But if you look at your journey as a whole, most of the time, you're probably going to find that you picked up some big wins and some big achievements in places you never would have saw coming. You never would have expected. I mean, who would have thought that, you know, when you first stepped onto the mats to try this weird martial art that it would give you the opportunity to travel around the world, right? That is a super cool thing. Not just because you get the experience of traveling, but you get to act as an ambassador in a lot of ways and be part of the journey of how this martial art evolves and reaches new audience and grows and finds a new platform. That's super cool. And if you're hyper-fixated on the losses and the things that aren't going well, sometimes you forget about the things that really are are awesome that have come to you. Speaker 2: I mean, this is so important. Like, this is a very cool kind of shitty story. I had just, so my team won the Kazakhstan competition. I was part of team Kasai and we won and we went from a two years, right? Because we won the qualifiers last year and I ended up closing us out. I think I had three subs and the last round, you win four best out of seven. You win four and you win the thing and I won the, I closed us out for the qualifier and then we went to the competition. And everything was going great leading to Kazakhstan. Um, I normally compete at 136. Um, but for this competition it was 132, which I don't love making too much. But, you know, with money on the line and everything like that, it's no problem. And so I got ready, I had a nutritionist, I was practicing, I was ready all year round. I've been very active all year. I won so many matches in the beginning of the year. I've been very dedicated to being active in 2025, um, and being very competitive. And we head over to Kazakhstan. So far everything's great, make the weigh-in, everything's good. Then a couple things happened and this is going to, this is going to relate to what we were talking about. I did not have the best, look, I I did things when I got over there that wasn't normal for my hydration process. So like usually you hydrate and whatever. So I tried IVs for the first time, didn't know how it was going to affect me. That along with regular hydration and then also I didn't wasn't able to eat all the foods that I normally eat. Um, I would never eat a burger or pizza before I compete. And so I ended up eating like one or two of those things. Uh, didn't really feel myself. First night, first fight didn't, wasn't awake because we were waiting hours. We were waiting hours. Like I mean like, I love Igar. Igar was really fun, but it was also you're getting there to fight, you know, 8:00, didn't fight till like 2:00 in the morning, okay? And I'm waking up, waking down, waking up and I get on the mat and I'm rolling and the kid just jumps on my foot from like crazy angle and like there's no technique involved and just like goes and rips and pops my foot really, really, really bad. I ended up getting out, subbing him two seconds later, but understanding that my foot probably has about 48 hours before it swells up completely. So, I have maybe enough to finish the competition. So, I'm doing my best, I'm poker-facing it and everything's good. I have enough to keep my balance and everything. Same thing happens the next night. We get done with that first night, we get done so late in the morning. The only thing that's open to eat is restaurant food. So I end up eating a burger again and a pizza again, which I didn't want to do, but had no choice. And then the next day we get, so we finished with the last team to finish. The next day we're going to fight the semifinals and finals. We get there. I have a really good guy in the second round. Again, we are waiting hours and hours to fight. So I pull it together. I fight that second fight. I'm a little injured and I did my best, won the fight, but didn't fight the way I wanted to perform. Like I just couldn't pivot, I couldn't do certain things that I wanted to do. And by the time we got to the other fight, the final, it was almost 12 at night. Um, or 12 in the morning. And in that final, everyone's winning. Um, my team we we beat them 4-0. We do a celebration with them, but then we still have three three more matches, okay? I'm now carb-jelly myself up to get fuel. The both teams kind of don't want to fight. Then they have motions where they're don't really want to fight, then they're going to fight. Then on the other side, my uh, my fight wasn't going to happen, then was going to happen, then wasn't going to happen. And by the time I got out there, I was already stiff, injured, tired and my foot was off the gas. I go out, I do a match, I don't play my game. This is probably the worst match I've or not really in hindsight, it's the worst match, but it's the worst performance up to my standards that I've had in in years to come. I just was not sharp at all. I had no bounce on my toes, had no bounce on my feet, etc. I lose the match, right? But we win the competition. So what ends up happening is I lose this match and 30 seconds later there is a full-on Ewok Star Wars celebration for my team winning the Kasai tournament. Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on, hold on. An Ewok Star Wars celebration. Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you remember the Death Star and they bit the Death Star and all of a sudden all the worlds are are uh celebrating and they're they're having a eat like a celebration. It's a Star Wars epic celebration. I'm telling you that confetti was coming out the fucking the whole arena. And there's everyone's dancing, they're jumping around, they're they're it's it was like a tribal ceremony. It was wild. 30 seconds later after I had just lost my first match in I don't know, I don't know how many fights. It was my second loss in like two years, you know what I mean? And so I'm sitting there and everyone's doing this and I have no time to process any of this. So, I'm trying my best because I'm very passionate about what I do that I don't even know what happened and or not really like able to process it. And then everyone's celebrating, you know, got my girlfriend on the left side of me telling me I should enjoy this and then everyone's celebrating. It was the hardest thing for me was to celebrate in that moment. And I had to collect myself and then, you know, celebrate with them. And I was happy. I was everything. But man, that was like a big testament to like, we just won so much money and I'm it's going to better my life. It's going to better me in every area. Everything's like here. And at the end of the day, we'll shake this loss off and we'll come back. But in that moment, I'm like freaking out and I can only be myself while everyone else is happy. It's wild. Speaker 1: I thought when you said an Ewok style celebration that like people dressed up in furry costumes or something. Speaker 2: No, I mean like in the sense that like, you know, at the end of Star Wars, they have the crazy celebration that is like, uh, there with all the Ewoks and they're all like celebrating, they're all laughing, they're all jumping for joy to beat the Empire. Is essentially what happened when we were there, but it was even more like dancing and jumping around and stuff and it was just hard for me to collect myself and in hindsight is I wish I would have celebrated more. But also I was the only one that had to deal with that loss and then 30 seconds later had to celebrate. It's it was just hard and, you know, how do you judge that? Am I worse for not celebrating? I mean, did I should I have celebrated a little bit more? Sure, absolutely. But I was so upset about the loss that like it took a lot of thunder away from the celebration, you know, and then hindsight is like, everything went well as far as lead up to it and the two years we did like, you know, you're almost two years we did doing the competition to get there to win the prize money, spending with our team and winning and, you know, there was how good I did considering all the stuff I was going through at the time. So, there's definitely there was definitely an interesting and very mental block and coming back and having to get over that really like, you know, if I didn't do my mental work all the time, I I would have not got over that. Speaker 1: Yeah. Man, that's an interesting story. Like how do you, how do you celebrate a win with your friends and your team if you don't feel like you were the one who carried your weight? And and this happens a lot. I've certainly been through this as well where, you know, you're part of a big project and it maybe it goes well and everyone else is happy, but inside you weren't satisfied with your performance. It can be really hard to kind of juggle those two competing emotions where you want to be happy for the people around you, even if you feel like you didn't deliver on your end of the bargain. That's a very natural experience that everyone will go through. And it touches on an interesting part about Jiu-Jitsu that gets under-discussed, which is the team sport nature of Jiu-Jitsu. We ultimately, we look at Jiu-Jitsu as a one-on-one individual sport, but there really is more to it than just that. I mean, yes, at the end of the day, there's going to be a winner and a loser unless you're in some crazy rule set where you got like a, you know, a five-on-five or something. But for the most part, you come in with a team. You you're part of a group that prepared you. You were just the tip of the spear as the competitor. And it can be hard to juggle those two conflicting emotions, right? Where maybe you feel like you let your team down or maybe the other way around, maybe you feel like your team let you down. I'd love to hear you talk about that. Speaker 2: This was the thing though, right? And this is the even crazier part. When I fought, right? So, you had three team bouts. In the first two bouts, I in the matches I fought, they counted for the team really hard. So, I won those. And when I lost, we had already won the competition. So, we had already won 4-0 for the other team and that's it. My match, even if I would have won, wouldn't have counted. So, I fought and won when it mattered. In the second round, if I didn't win that first round, we wouldn't have got to the third round, the final. So, I did my part. But for me, none of that mattered. It just mattered that one fight, which is wild, right? Like because you are, I held my weight, I did my end, I I fought when it mattered. And maybe if when if I would have fought that match and and it mattered, I would have, you know, pulled it together a little bit. But, um, it's just tough to go back into celebration mode when I feel like the whole competition, even the matches I won, and even though they counted and even though I held my own for the competition and did what I was supposed to do, I still felt like I did not perform at all. I felt like it was a really bad performance over that weekend. And I wanted to celebrate, but it was just really hard to do that 30 seconds after that happened. And then after that happened, I was just going through a lot of emotions and trying to deal with it. And I maybe some people like some of my teammates, they don't care. I think like one or two of our other teammates lost after and they their matches didn't count either. And they were still having fun. They were still like, whatever. But I guess for me, personally, like I care. And that's just who I am as a person. Like I care about everything I do because I do everything in my life with the same type of intensity or or same strive to be the best at everything I do. Like, you know, better husband, I'm better boyfriend, better competitor, better friend, better dog dad, better like, you know, taking care of the apartment, you know, everything. So it was very, very hard. But in hindsight, it still was one of the best experiences in the world. You know, you you're part of this team. We win the team. We win the whole money. We're going to be able to come back next year for the final straight and fight for the money again. And that's an amazing thing. The money, the amount of money we won was life-changing, you know, like for me it's life-changing. So, it's great. Everything's good. I go back to training, it's fine. I'm already getting ready for another fight. In hindsight, like, you know, you lose whatever, you just get better and learn. And hindsight, I learned after thinking about it logically, I learned a lot about like what happened, what some things right, some things wrong and how to fix certain things and also be present. But man, I tell you that was one of the hardest weekends in a while. Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, you said something interesting a while back. You talked about how when you're struggling and things aren't going as you expect, you rely on your students to help you through it. And I would love to hear you expand on that because I'm guessing that's a surprising take to a lot of people. How do your students help you in these situations and how do they help you push through? Speaker 2: Well, these days you would think that I just train with World Champions to get ready for fights. This is false. I have trained a lot of my students for like seven or eight years and I've turned them into really good, let's say, high-level hobbyists that if they wanted to compete, they could compete. And I made, I train on the weekends with a primarily group that is very dear to me. They're my friends and they all show up. They really do their try to do their best to help me prepare for everything. And they are good people. They're also my friends. You know, they help push me in moments I need them to push me and they help humanize me in moments that I need to be humanized. Where I'm my harshest critic, they will sit there and they will tell me not things I want to hear, just the truth. Like I'm human and I'm the best and some days are good, some days are bad and they really fall back on them and rely on them to not only get me to the next level, but also, you know, be there for me. You know, I used to think like I was super alone for a lot of things, but I realized I have a lot of people in my corner and these people are always in my corner and they always want to see me succeed. And that's just some old thing I tell myself of my old version of myself. And, um, I definitely rely on them to push and and they all come together and really hard to help me get to the next level. I would have not won. There's very so many people that have helped me, but there's I would have definitely not continuously won each time if they didn't come together to really push them push me and mimic all the things I needed them to do to get to the next level for sure. Speaker 1: Here's a take I often hear from people who aren't pro competitors. Maybe they're hobbyists or maybe when they compete, they're competing either casually or just not like an elite world-class level. They often feel like they're not worthy to share the mats with the people who are the pro competitors. They often feel like, man, I I feel like I'm just wasting everyone's time because I'm not good enough to be here. You hear this take a lot from junior belts or less experienced people. Also older grapplers, you know, who maybe got into the sport late and they do it recreationally. They often feel like they're just taking up everyone's time. And the funny thing is, from my experience, this is a perspective that often those people have, but the pro competitors that they're working with never have that perspective. In fact, often the pros and the world-class people say it is their crew of the regular folks around them, maybe people who only compete recreationally or at at a, you know, regional levels or maybe they don't compete at all, but often their support is necessary for that pro competitor to succeed at the high levels. And so I find this to be a very interesting paradox here where the students often feel like they're unworthy, whereas the reality is the pro that they are supporting feels that the students are essential. Maybe talk a bit about that and if that aligns with your expectations. Speaker 2: Yeah, um, listen, I put so much effort into my class. I run my own class for the morning class curriculum. I make my own curriculum since I started there, Unity, um, in the beginning. I went from one student to having like 40 or 50 on the mat. And so I've really built that class up and then COVID it broke back down again and then I had to rebuild it. So, I put effort and I continuously grow to make sure that my students get the full version of me. So, like I don't do an hour class, I do about a two-hour class. They get about a half hour to 45 minutes of technique and then we do like a mini pro training session, which is a hybrid between a class and a pro training session. And so that's is four days a week. My students are pretty much like little pro athletes, uh, regardless if they want to be or not or don't want to be. And if you stay there and you show up long enough, they become so, so good. And I think that me showing up and putting all my efforts in day in day out kind of rubs off on them and they show up and they put their efforts on me day in day out and they really try to push me to the next level. And in so many ways, we grow together and I just think it really is essential. Like, yeah, it's great to I've I've been through camps where I just had World Champions around me and that's great too. And that's always fun. That's its own type of fun. And I still do my pro trainings with my professor. So, I still get to roll with a lot of high-class guys. But also at this point, I've turned my students into very high-class hobbyists. And so they are very essential in me not just in performing, but just showing up, overall vibe, having fun, being able to be yourself. You know, when I'm in pro training, usually I'm like more serious. I'm always the serious person working, trying to get better. But like when I'm around them, I can be a little bit more goofy sometimes or I can be myself and it just really feels like that support pushes me to the next level. And and it's and I know that if I come back from a loss, they're going to be right there ready ready to to build me up. You know, like I remember like, you know, winning every single title, man, like you're just working with these students day in day out and they just really believe in you and they're welcoming you back and it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. And and it's so essential to have a group of students who support you, but also who really believe in you beyond like just like just oh because you teach them. Like they see how much effort you go for them and they they truly believe in you and you work your hardest to to be there for them. And and I do believe that I would have not been there every day. I always tell my students, this is the camp, you know what I mean? Like this is the camp. Like, yeah, I train pro training and stuff like this, but this this is the camp. And so that becomes like a really huge part of me for every single competition. And it's it's so crazy that I have to that I say that it's like, you know, this is the camp. Like we worked on all these things. This is what we worked on and it ends up translating to competition. I mean, right now I'm in the middle of a camp and my students are helping me again for everything. You know, I'm getting ready for this next fight and it's it's very apparent that they want to see me win and they want me to succeed and so they're pushing me really hard. Speaker 1: Now, something that you talked about earlier was how after winning it big, there's a different set of mental obstacles and challenges that come up very different from when you were on the way up. Do you feel it's it's easier or harder mentally to succeed at a high level before your big win, before you hit your dream goal or afterward? Speaker 2: They're equally the same, but they're completely different. So, they're both hard. Winning there and getting there is very hard. Even getting one black belt title or whatever you need in your life is is very hard. And then a level of maintenance is very hard. Because when you set a standard for yourself and you become this standard or you win all these things and and do it in the world and you show your dominance in whatever you're doing. Now your standard is there. Like that's your standard. And you can't fall below that standard. And so upholding that standard is really important. How do you do this without losing yourself completely or just being embedded in some like, I'm going to do this 24/7 and but I'm not going to like enjoy life. How do you enjoy life? Know that you're human, but know that you're capable of fighting at this high level all at once. It's a very big balance that you have to do and it's a different type of playing field. When you are the person, and this is different in certain fields. Like in certain fields, you can be the person who's the man and it's not direct physical contact. So it's a little bit different. When it's direct physical contact, your ego comes into play a lot and also your limitations and your skills and all this stuff come into play. And then you also have to know that like every time you come out in a row, right? You are the guy that's looked at as a standard and now they know that even if they get a win on you, even if it's not in a championship, man, that's that makes their day. Like when people win against me, they pin, they pin the win to their Instagram and they, you know, go of and that comes with the territory. But in order to be at the highest level day in day out, in order to win consistently at a high level, you must be immersed in your craft. You must be doing all the work day in day out. Yeah, you can still have fun. Yeah, you can still live your life and you can do a lot of stuff, but you must sacrifice a lot to stay at that level. It cannot be where you win and then you just kind of like, okay, I'm going to relax now and then do this and then I think I'm going to win those World titles because then you'll forget what got you to those World titles. But what got you to those World titles won't necessarily get you to the next set of titles if you don't stay ahead, evolve, change little things, be mindful, be humble, things like this. And throughout the time for the last two years, where I've been on the top of my my top of my game, I felt that a lot winning my second European title, second Pan title. They were very hard to do. It was just a different style. It was just me having to dig deep and having some gritty matches, not my favorite matches, but just being gritty and just being okay with it being sloppy and having to remember that I got to stay with that day in day out work, but I can still have time to recover. So like now I understand like, okay, every couple weeks I need to take like a week where I just train once a day and not worry about Jiu-Jitsu the rest of the day. That's like kind of like a vacation for me from my mind and brain versus like staying in camp all the time. So like there's times you got to learn and adapt so that you can stay at that high level. So you don't burn yourself out. And then there's times you got to to lock down and really like remember like, hey, I'm here to win. There's a couple things that that equally make them hard, but I definitely feel like it is a little harder to stay on top and win consistently for years on end here and there. And I'm not talking about you get a loss here and there. That happens. You know, the best champions I know in the world always have a loss here and there, right? But I mean, consistently winning off the board is what I consider a great champion. And there are only a very few amount of people that can do that. And I hold myself among them in that area. You know, so it's definitely a lot harder and you just got to remind yourself to be hungry. This is why I'm way more active this year and a little bit more active last year, but this year I was very active and have been active this whole time frame. Speaker 1: So, you bring up a few interesting points here. And the funny thing about when we talk about like the mindset and the drive to win at hard things, it's funny because sometimes it sounds like we're giving conflicting advice. On one hand, you need to be driven and you need to be attached to the idea of winning this thing, right? If you don't care enough, you're never going to win unless you just completely stumble into it. You if you want to be good at something and succeed at high levels, you have to be attached to the idea of winning. But on the other hand, like we talked about earlier, if you're too attached to winning, then one bad day and you just the wheels fall off. How do you juggle that? Speaker 2: I don't think it's the winning part. I think it's the expectation part or the control part. I think that because I do all this all the time, I expect a match to go like this and I expect the result to be this. And it's true. I, listen, when you win a lot and you're won most of your career and you win so many whatever titles and you're, you expect to win. It's just period, you expect to win. But you don't control the outcome. And so you have to give up the outcome. Anytime I've given up the outcome is the best experiences of my life. I just like, whatever. Anytime I've like tried to like really think about that outcome, man, sometimes that backfires on me. And so I feel like the work needs to be done. Like I need the work to be done. You you can't achieve something without the work, right? You can't be inspirational about the work. But if your work is done, then you don't control the outcome and you can only control your effort. And if you focus on your effort and you've done the work, usually the results will follow from there. And this is the difference that separates people who get the titles and people who don't get the titles is because some people will feel like they're amazing and they don't get like, uh, upset about winning or losing and stuff like this, but they don't do the same type of work day in day out for long periods of time where somebody will sacrifice to do all that. And as long as they can understand that they don't control the results and they have to give up their expectations of the match, most more likely than not, they're going to do very well when they fight or eventually it'll come through. I've never met someone for the most part, give or take, maybe like one or two people, but I've never, the majority of people I've met who have become World Champions have sacrificed a lot to become a World Champion. And it's a big difference between somebody who thinks they want to become a World Champion versus the real work that goes into it. So, when I say you need to not, you need to be obsessed with your thing, it has to cost you, but you've got to have your balance for it. So, for me, balance is different for everybody. So like for me, I train like seven days a week. I train really hard four days a week, but I have balance on the weekend. Like I don't train after two hours on the weekend. Like after two hours, I'm not training. I'm just focused on just trying to live my life and relax and do this. Some people, they like two days off. They like a full day off. They like, whatever it is. But all these people I know, they put the work in day in day out. And they do it for long periods of time and this is a big thing that separates the champions and people who want to be champion. And then there's the next level where there's a person who had one good day, everything aligned for them and then they think off that one good day that the work no longer needs to be done the same and then they cannot repeat that result because they got comfortable and they forgot what it's like to be hungry. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you bring up some great points there. Anyone can be intense for a short period of time, but consistency over a long period of time is almost always more important than intensity over a short period of time. Because if you can, you know, give it your best in spurts for here or there, a day or two, in an unsustainable way, you're unlikely to be able to hang around long enough to actually see those compound gains and get enough time to take the shots to actually win the big one. And that that's not to say it's impossible. I mean, the example I always bring up is that if you remember, the guy who won UFC 3 back in the day was a ninja. He was a fucking ninja. And he won just by luck, right? And so this guy got a buy into the last match and he was able to take out an already beat up opponent. So, it is possible to gamble and roll the dice and still win the big one. Speaker 2: Yeah, I forgot, I don't mean to cut you off, but I forgot the race car driver who was like neck and neck with this other race car driver. And one race car was really disciplined and the other one was very wild and loves to party. And one won the championship already and then on this one night, on this one day, he won the World Championship. And he didn't get back to work and he ended up never winning another title again. Where the other guy that was neck and neck with him, he went back to work and he won multiple championships day in day out. And this comes down to a bunch of things. It comes down to like preference, your philosophy, like what what's the point of winning the title if you don't enjoy it? And then there's the other part of like, okay, we won the title, we enjoy it, but we get back to work so that we can, you know, build legacy. This is all preference and also different individual sports. But across the board, to win consistently, especially in a sport where you compete a lot and people watch you and they study you and do this, you must be evolving, you must be putting the work in, but you also must let go of your control. And that for me is the hardest part. When I let go of the control, everything just falls into place. And when you can do that, you can enter flow state and that's just a different place to be. But you're absolutely correct. Any person can have one good day, things could align for them. They would have trained hard for that one camp and it just aligned for them. But I've never seen someone win multiple things like that all the time. Never. It's always one or or here and there and they fall off. Or maybe they do this, this and they fall off. The people who I know who stay in it for long term, they end up winning everything that they touch. Like look at Adam Wardzinski for for instance, he's a perfect example. I'm a perfect example for that. Staying power is its own power. And it's very, very, very, very hard to do this at black belt because it is so hard. You know, like it's very, very hard. It's draining. People don't understand the amount I have to sacrifice day in day out, the energy I have to put in day in day out for a very long time. You're talking about, I'm 36 years old, I'm an older athlete. I'm talking about like a 20 years. And I haven't been training for 20 years, but the idea of doing this for 20 years, sacrificing everything just to now get some real financial gain in my life or get my titles in the last two years. You know, so like it's a lot. Speaker 1: Yeah, well said, man. And you know, as you bring up, look, anyone can win the lottery once, right? Your odds aren't good, but it's possible. Anyone can win the lottery once, but nobody wins the lottery five times. If you want to be great at something consistently, you have to be doing more than just gambling. You have to be putting in the work. So I think that was very well said on your part. Speaker 2: Yeah, and I also think that in that same standard that you said about the other part is that you do have to have individuality. If you only have, and this is something I suffer with now, like if you only have your identity to be for those titles or Jiu-Jitsu, when those are gone, you're not going to have anything left. You're not going to know who you are. So, working on that early on is very, very important too because that will make your ability to work hard and do what you do that much better. And I'm learning this a lot more in the last couple years, especially this last two years. Even now that like I am Junny Ocasio the person and Jiu-Jitsu is something I chose to do. And they're two separate entities. And they're one together, but they're but the Jiu-Jitsu titles, that's not where my value is held. As a person, I have more value than that. Speaker 1: Extremely well said, man. Well, my last question for you, as someone who has made it through to the other side here, if you could go back in time and give advice to people earlier on in their journey, maybe Junny from 15 years ago, what would you say to them? Things that you wish you had done different that you encourage people to really pick up and start doing right now. Speaker 2: I would say if you don't have all the resources, be resourceful. There's always a way to get what you want by being resourceful. You don't always need to have the resources. I'd say if we live in today's age, you can learn a lot by taking the time to study, which a lot of people don't do. Study. I would say work very hard, but also work smart. Don't overwork and just, you know, train to train hard and and go crazy the whole time. There you need that, but you also need to train hard. I I train smart. And I would say a little bit more self-love throughout the journey so that you can go through this long term and have success. And I would say don't rush. Um, rushing is one of the worst things you can do. Even if you're really, really good and you're amazing black belt level. Once you get to black belt, there's nothing more to gain but just skill. So essentially if you just focus on your skills and not so much about colors and rushing the process, you're probably going to get better a lot faster. Speaker 1: Well, there's some great advice and each of those would be amazing topics to explore another day. I could do a whole episode on self-love or the importance of not rushing. Speaker 2: You're my favorite, uh, you're my favorite podcast. We we talk about things that's not it's like Jiu-Jitsu related, but it's not Jiu-Jitsu related. It's also like life related. So like I I really enjoy doing that. So, I'm solely down to do, you know, more and more throughout the future if you'll have me back. Speaker 1: Absolutely, my friend. Well, in the meantime, if people can't get enough Junny, if they want to train with you or maybe learn from you online or follow you, how do they go about doing that? Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you want to train with me, I'm always at Unity Jiu-Jitsu. If you want to reach me, you can primarily reach me through my Instagram or my email, which is both located on my Instagram, which is uh Junny_BJJ. If you want uh content that's free, it's on YouTube, on my YouTube channel. Just have to put Junny Ocasio and it'll pop right up. If you want my instructionals, you would go to Submeta or BJJ Fanatics. BJJ Fanatics has about 15, maybe actually 17 instructionals now and Submeta has the exclusive Junny lock on there. And I always answer my messages, so you can always reach me through there. I also have TikTok, but I don't run my TikTok. So if you if you are going through my TikTok, you're almost definitely talking to my girlfriend. Speaker 1: Oh, you know what? I didn't even get to bring this up on the podcast. You are the only person I know who has won a Jiu-Jitsu match with a fucking gotch toe hold. That is amazing. For people who don't know, this is like a 100-year-old catch wrestling move that it works, but it's very rare to get and you got it in competition, man. That was incredible. Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. I'm always trying to hit things, innovate and do new stuff and be good and gifting new ideas to the community. And so I'm just always trying to push that boundary instead of being a not a boring fighter, you know? Speaker 1: Amazing, man. Well, I will put links to all of your stuff in the show notes. And again, I I always tell people, you know, we want to we want to support people in this sport. It's still a growing sport and I mean, most of the people who work in this, they're not making investment banker money, right? And so I always tell people, do your best to buy instructionals, to support the athletes. It makes a way bigger difference than you would think. So I'll put a link to all of Junny's stuff in the show notes to make it easy for people to find. I'll also put a link to all of our stuff. We're also pretty easy to find. It's all at bjjmentalmodels.com. I always tell people at the bare minimum, you want to check out the podcast like this. If it's too much for you because we've got hundreds of hours of content, we've got quick hit mini episodes to break down key concepts. They're also there on the website, completely free. And I always tell people sign up for our newsletter. Definitely worth the time investment on that as well. If you want to kick it up to the next level with us, that's what BJJ Mental Models Premium is for. We've built out the world's largest library of Jiu-Jitsu audio courses on strategy, tactics, concepts, mindset. So very different stuff from what you get from a lot of other more video-based instructionals. Think of us kind of like Audible or MasterClass, but we focus on improving your Jiu-Jitsu and the way that you think about Jiu-Jitsu. With that said, you can also get access to amazing ongoing professional Jiu-Jitsu podcasts from folks like Emily Kwok and Rob Bernacki. If you're fans of them, their podcasts are exclusive to Premium. And if you go up to our coaching tier or our business tier, at the pro tier, we can also help you with direct rolling review coaching. So you can send in your clips and we can get you some feedback from some of the best black belts in the world. And we can also leverage our platform to help you grow your Jiu-Jitsu business. So if you are a gym owner or running some other cool novel Jiu-Jitsu business and you're just really not a marketing or a product person and you don't know how where to even start, contact us because we've got solutions for that. But you can learn more about all of that at bjjmentalmodels.com. Again, I'll put a link in the show notes, but Junny, my friend, thank you for doing this as always. I really enjoyed this one. Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much. I look forward to becoming back on the show. Speaker 1: Absolutely, my friend. Thank you to the listeners too, and we will talk to you then. See you soon.