Ep. 340: Awkward Turtles, feat. Sonia Sillan

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 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 340. Speaker 1: I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach, and I've got a returning champion here with me today. From Combat Arts Academy in Seattle, I've got Sonia Sillin on the line. Sonia, how are you doing? Speaker 2: I am doing awesome, Steve. Happy to be here. Speaker 1: I am happy to have you here as well. I think last time you were on, I think you were pregnant, right? And now you've got a little one running around who is a full-grown Jujitero at this point, correct? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think last time I was, be like a year postpartum. My little one is four, almost four and a half, and she helps me coach some classes. She'll actually demonstrate how to shrimp properly. The last couple adult classes I've taught for the intro program, she has been my demo dummy. My okay. So she's a full-on mat baby. Speaker 1: It's really cool when kids grow up in Jiu-Jitsu and they kind of don't know anything else. They don't know any life without it because it's so natural to them. My kid too has been training Jiu-Jitsu since she was very young and it's just sort of been a staple of her life the whole time. Speaker 2: There was a moment, I want to say she was three, three and a half, and she loves to jump on the couches and there's this couch, decent height, bounce, bounce, bounce, and then she's jumping on, jumping off, jumping on, jumping off, and then she ate it. I think any other kid would have gone head first to the ground and she managed to go right into a shoulder roll and land in a Spider-Man pose. And I have it on video. And my heart's like, leaps into my chest and I was terrified for a second, but she was cackling afterwards. It was so funny. Speaker 1: So the rolls and the break falls are worth something. Speaker 2: That's awesome. That's awesome. Speaker 1: Well, hey, I'm glad to have you back here because you run a, you know, a pretty successful gym there in Seattle and you've got a lot of lessons that you've learned about how to operate a business at that scale and also how to build a culture around it. And in setting up this conversation, something that you talked about was how to extend an invite to the so-called awkward turtles, as you described it in our community. I love that way of describing things, first of all, because I love turtles, but also I think it really effectively describes how so many people in Jiu-Jitsu are very introverted, they don't find it easy to just jump into something new where they've got to socialize with a lot of people. Maybe it's unclear to them how to integrate with the culture. And I think that as gym owners and coaches, we need to be ready and willing and able to help draw those people into the culture and make them feel welcome. Many, many gyms, I think, fail to do this. But I will turn it over to you to maybe introduce the concept. So what do we mean here? What's the problem that we're solving for? And what have you seen in terms of places where gyms fail to be more welcoming and inviting to maybe the more introverted, more socially scared amongst us? Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, yes. So, awkward turtle. I'm one. I have always been one, but the last few years I've really kind of grown into myself and I own it. I know I'm awkward. I'm an awkward turtle. It's what it is. And a lot of gyms. So, let's actually take a step back and look at the types of gyms you see. If I have somebody walking in with experience and they're looking for a gym that's home, I suggest trying out other gyms and find a gym that fits you well. I'm not going to be like, hey, come sign up here because I want your business. You have experience. You know what home feels like, find a home. So, some gyms that are hobbyists, the ones that are just doing it for funsies, maybe they don't have any intense training practices. It's just a lot of technical work. Maybe they're all 9 to 5 engineers or computer programmers. Maybe you have a gym of a bunch of die-hard wrestlers that go hard all the time. Maybe you have a gym where they just spar all the time and there's no technique. And what you want is a gym that's diverse. And really it, it depends on the focus because some gyms are strictly competition gyms. And that's not a terrible thing if that's what your vision is. I think a lot of gym owners and coaches, they don't have a vision for what their gym is and so they just go with it and often get frustrated when people don't stay or when they don't sign up or there aren't any trials happening. We are very much a word-of-mouth gym and that's because of the way that we onboard people and make people feel welcome. I say that because it takes a lot of empathy to be able to connect to people and to see who they are and to see how you can help them. So, I've been to gyms where there's a newer woman who is like, oh my gosh, what do I do? I don't know what's happening. And the coach says partner up. Every single guy in the room ignores her and they go with each other. And then, maybe there's an odd number still. There's a group of three guys and that woman is still waiting for a partner. And the coach is like, uh, you go with that person. And now the woman feels unseen and like they're not wanted on the mats because nobody wants to go with them. Now they feel like a burden. Like, oh, I'm just going to hold them back. And that repetitive, oh, I'm not good enough. I feel like a burden. I'm just going to hold them back. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not good enough. That repetitive internal dialogue will make them quit and it will shatter their confidence and whatever interest they had in Jiu-Jitsu. So, when we have people come in, I am really big at looking at why. What are your goals? What brought you in here? Is it self-defense? Do you have a trauma? And in classes, I think I mentioned the last couple chats we've had, I still coach our intro classes. I can offload that to my other black belts and brown belts, my other coaches, because most gyms do that. I'm the head coach, the owner, like, why would I bother to coach the beginners? It's the opposite. I coach two out of the three intro classes in the evenings every week, including the ladies' intro, because I want to control the narrative and help them feel safe and secure on the mats. And I can talk about that all day, so if you have any two cents, feel free to like, toss it my way. Speaker 1: I think that's a really important insight that coaches need to think about. Maybe it's something they aren't really considering, but it definitely sends a message to their students. Many coaches do everything they can to offload the fundamental classes or the kids' classes or the women's classes. They try to delegate those to someone else because they want to focus on, you know, the competition classes or the advanced classes. And by doing that, you're very much sending the message that those other classes don't really matter because the head coach isn't even bothering to show up there. Speaker 2: Which actually though, if you think about it, that little like competition class and the whatever, whatever, it's there's the inner circle of people, right? There's the core group of people and anybody outside of that in most gyms, they feel excluded. So how do you make those people feel included? And that's I think where most gyms struggle is the inclusivity part of it and letting go of their favorites and their inner circle and, I mean, I can't tell you how many coaches I've seen at my own gym that have their favorites and they ignore the white belts. Like, that's just bullshit. Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's very common in Jiu-Jitsu. I mean, coming up, the joke amongst the colored belts was always that, ah, you don't even bother learning someone's name until they get past white belt because who knows if they're going to stick around. That is such a shitty attitude to have, especially if you want to retain your customers. Speaker 2: I was about to say that's an absolute fuck that shit. Like, no. So when I coach intro classes, I will oftentimes verbalize. So I repeat myself a lot in intro because we have an eight-week rotating curriculum. There's a revolving door of people as they move up into the next level. I will make it a game where a reminder, know your partner's name. If I ask you and you don't, you get like five or ten burpees because how can I trust my training partner if I don't know who they are, right? And with that, how can I even know that my coach cares about me as a student if they don't even know who I am? We once had, oh my gosh, so we had a former professor, coach, my sister and a friend of ours. They're both Indian and they were testing for their blue belts together. And this coach kept mixing up their names. And at the end of it, they didn't even know if he could tell them apart during their drilling and testing or whatever it was for their blue belt because he couldn't keep their name straight. Like, Speaker 1: That's awful. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: But it's also not that uncommon too, right? I mean, it is incredibly likely that in your Jiu-Jitsu gym, whoever is listening to this, the coach doesn't know everyone's name in the room. It takes work to try to get to know your students and your customers. And when you have dozens, if not hundreds of people, many gym owners will just kind of neglect to do that because all they really care about is the Jiu-Jitsu. And they think that, well, you know, that's my focus. Most gym owners that I know will try to get out of doing anything that is business-related or sales-related because the only thing they really care about is the Jiu-Jitsu. And that very much stunts the growth of their gym. It makes it a lot harder to grow a gym and get those people in the door so you can teach them Jiu-Jitsu if these kinds of signals are being given off on day one that people aren't even really, you know, if you're not even really super interested in having them there, they're going to take that as, hey, I'm not welcome here. Why should I train here when I can go somewhere else and be more respected? Speaker 2: And why open up a gym in the first place? Um, so this ties back into club versus versus business. If, and it also ties back in, there's been a lot of uh, Reddit discussions here and there and on Facebook about like, my gym charges like 200 bucks a month, is that normal? Oh, man, you're getting ripped off. Mine charges 50 and we get like 10 classes a week. When you're a professor, head coach, I go between the two because we use coach and I know a lot of people out there, it's all professor, professor. Anyway, they work a 9 to 5. They make six figures. They don't need the money from the gym. They're probably paying rent out of pocket and they don't care about it. They can charge 50 bucks a month because they just don't need it. Those clubs and gyms oftentimes don't care about the awkward turtles or anybody else who doesn't fit their mold because they don't need it. They don't care about it. They only want the people that want to compete or that are athletic or that fit their own vibe. When you're looking at the business portion of it, it is cheaper to keep a student than to sign new ones up. And so from that perspective, you want to look at what helps a student feel welcome and seen. But then on a different note, in terms of Jiu-Jitsu, because you hear the, well, hey guys, Jiu-Jitsu is for everybody. Everybody should train. From that perspective, as a coach, as even like a black belt in general, you don't have to be a coach or an owner, but if you're a black belt, don't you want the awkward white belts to sign up and stay? Like, don't you want people to learn Jiu-Jitsu and to love it the way that you do? And if that's the case, why ignore and shun the newbies and the awkward turtles and the white belts? And even then with the awkward turtles, I'm also referring to the people that don't have a community. I cannot tell you how many people we have that walk in that feel so nervous and so like, just they're already setting up for rejection because that's what they're used to. Like the people that might be autistic, they might have really weird hobbies. They might have a different perspective on how to do things. The people that just don't belong. So many of those people have like, oh my gosh, I found a community. You guys see me. I can be myself because we don't judge. And that ties back into respect and mutual consideration because we take the judgment out of things. Speaker 1: Something that I've noticed, we've started over the past few years running Jiu-Jitsu camps as an opportunity to get people in our community together locally to train together and to really create an opportunity to give them more direct instruction. The way that I like to run camps is on a more collaborative workshop-based approach. So rather than having one person standing at the top of the room and lecturing, you know, to a crowd of a hundred, we prefer to do smaller breakout groups and really make sure that we're providing instruction and help that is directly tailored to what someone needs. And what has really shocked me after doing a lot of these camps is realizing for how many of these people, this is actually probably the first time that they've ever had instructors take an interest in them. It's become abundantly clear that many of these people don't have community support even at their own gym. They go there and they train and they pay their dues and, you know, they'll probably get a few stripes over the years, but no one there really cares about them. They're basically a stranger at their own gym. And then when they come to a camp and people actually take the time to get to know them and socialize with them off the mats afterwards and joke around and take an interest in their Jiu-Jitsu game and actually help them solve problems directly. For some people, it can really be a bit of a system shock because that has never been their experience with Jiu-Jitsu before. And that I think is such a huge fail on the part of gym owners because you can be the best at Jiu-Jitsu in the whole world, but if nobody wants to train with you, you're never going to be the best coach. So, you really need to make sure that you're sending signals to the people in your group that they're welcome here. And that can be especially hard for the, you know, the awkward turtles amongst us who don't find it natural to be extroverted and to just integrate with a new strange community. You've got to really reach out to them and make an offering to them and bring them into the culture. And just so many gym owners fail to do that. Speaker 2: So, this ties into meeting people where they're at. That is so incredibly important. So, I also own a strength gym right next door and we have an onboarding process for new members. I recently had a mom, we had a whole conversation. She's had three kids and they're all C-section kids. She's two years post tummy tuck and there's no rehab involved. She's never done any PT, no rehab. Her core's a wreck. And her husband weightlifts and has been trying to get her to lift with him, but he doesn't get why she can't do certain things. So, I've had four sessions with her for one-on-ones and a couple of the times in talking, she was in tears because she felt so seen and so heard because she just couldn't do a thing. And I validated her. Like, I hear you. I feel you. I've been there. I've struggled too. I know exactly why that's happening and it's going to take time to get there, right? Similarly, on both sides of the gym, people that are hypermobile. This was me for years. I struggled with application because my brain would get it. I understood the move, but my body just couldn't do it. So, take shrimping for example, right? You're turning onto your hip, you're framing, you're doing a hip escape, you get back to your guard. Somebody who is hypermobile or even like a mom postpartum, they don't have a core to engage or it's not strong enough. And so oftentimes when that happens, your upper body and lower body are disconnected. Like, I have a student who I kind of guessed it, but has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. And when she first started when she was a pre-teen, she could barely bear crawl straight because her knees would cave in and her arms had no strength or stability. And she finally got diagnosed. Similar to me, she would be shrimping, but her legs would turn and her upper body would stay flat. And she couldn't figure out why she couldn't escape. I'm like, I've been there. I want you to work on bracing your core and being a ball. And those cues helped her to figure out, oh, I need to like do all of this stuff in a way that fits my body better, right? And so it's giving these cues to help people understand how to use their body. So I actually switched to teaching a lot of structure and a lot of progressive resistance-based training, like a mix of eco and not eco. But the specific constraints and specific like structure coaching helps people who are awkward turtles understand that their bodies aren't quite where they need to be and that it's okay. And then validation, like, hey, you know what? Like, I understand that you're having a hard time. Let's talk about how to make it better for you. Speaker 1: Let's talk about the difference between the, I guess you could call them the naturals and the rest of us. There are some people who just, they're just natural athletes, right? Whether they bring experience from other sports in or not, they just walk in and from day one, Jiu-Jitsu is just their thing. You know, just it's like they're bred for it, right? Some people are just amazing at it. They've got all of the genetic gifts to be an amazing athlete and for them, it's real easy to make that decision to just go all in on Jiu-Jitsu because they're getting great results. And good for them, but the problem that I observe, and I am sure you're going to want to expand on this, is that so many coaches just hyper-target that type of customer to the exclusion of basically everyone else. They will try to focus on building their own little elite competition team and if someone walks in the door that they think they can make a champion out of, they will get all of the attention, all of the praise, all of the focus. But then the rest of the gym is filled up with regular people who aren't super athletic, who aren't super flexible, who can't just easily throw up triangles. And those people just basically get ignored because the coach thinks, well, I can't make a champion out of this person. They're basically just there, but they're kind of distracting me from what I really care about, which is the comp team or the people who I can, who I think are going to be good at this. What are your thoughts on that? Because you know that that happens at so many gyms. Speaker 2: I have so many thoughts. My sharpest shooters are awkward turtles. They all started off struggle by stake. Here's why. They've had to lose so much to find success because we cannot see success without failure, right? You have to lose to get better. The naturals that come in, I feel like oftentimes they burn out or they quit when you don't expect it because they're having a hard time in terms of, um, maybe winning, maybe they're like a wrestler who spent too much time on top and never got to develop their escape game. So by the time they got to blue belt, they'd compete and get smashed. Lots of things. Those people also tend to be the inner circle people, the favorites. And great on coach for developing the favorites, but that's neglecting 90% of the gym. So general coaching rule of thumb, you have your middle 80%. You have your upper 10% and then your lower 10%. And the idea is that you focus on the middle 80% without giving the upper 10 or the lower 10 any extra, extra time because what happens is if you give extra time to the upper 10, the other 90% feel neglected. If you give too much time to the lower 10, they also feel like they're taking away from the rest of class because coach is spending five minutes trying to figure out a technique with them while everybody else is waiting for the next move. And then on that note, I haven't really coached any world champs. I have people who I think are getting close, like we've had so much turnover that we're still, I think, a pretty baby gym with our program. Like our current cohort, we're maybe like three to four years in of consistency. With my kids, I am pretty confident that I could create a bunch of world champs from my kids. I have some really hard-working kids. But what I tell them is that I don't care if you win. I care that you're a good person. I care that you're respectful. I care that you have that you have humility, good sportsmanship, and I care that you help your teammates. And so I spend a lot of class time working on how to be good partners versus how to smash and win. Like, we do a lot of playing for sparring and the kids that go, hey, go in hard, the ones that do win gold, I make them turn it down and work on losing a little bit. Let your partner get to mount and then work on your escapes because your submissions are sharp, but your escapes suck, right? You're the athletic kids that gets on top all the time, but can you escape somebody's mount? So we had a teen who started helping in the kids' classes for community service. This teen's also a bit of a phenom and he was training at a second gym, which was okay with me. I have a very open-door policy. He took, I think, second at Jiu-Jitsu Con in the juvenile blue belt division. And the problem was that he had a bit of an attitude because he knows he's good. Like, he was very good. He's excellent. And so in kids' classes, he would have his group of like five or six favorite kids. And then I would be like, hey, go work with these two kids over here. Go help this group over here. And he'd get like half an eye roll. He'd maybe would help them for like five seconds and then walk away back to his favorites. It was a few weeks of this and then I had conversations with my other coaches who had worse experiences where they felt that they were being undermined. And we had a few different conversations and it finally came out where I'm like, dude, like, I need you to get on the same page or else it's not going to work. And he was like, um, I've earned this. I'm like, earned what? And his response was, um, that he's earned the right to do whatever he wants with the kids. There's that entitlement. And so what I've been trying to do was kind of to bring him down to be a little more humble and to like help the beginners because again, we were all beginners at some point. Somebody helped us get to where we are. And he didn't fit that mold and he chose to leave, which is okay with me because as soon as he left, the pressure that was kind of bearing down on the program, it lifted. Like, we had no idea that the pressure was even there until he left. And all of a sudden, coaching kids became way easier. It was fun again. So one thorn will cast a big shadow. And what happens too within, really it, it's everywhere, but I think on the mats specifically, there's a lot of, oh, that's just how they are. If that's how they are and it doesn't fit your culture or philosophy, because my philosophy is good people breeds good Jiu-Jitsu. So I'm good community first, which will help build the mat culture, right? And some people are like, well, good Jiu-Jitsu breeds good community. And so I think it's one of those things where you have to look at what you want out of your gym. If your goal is to be a competition-focused gym, you might have a separate class for your sharp shooters, like your, like for my kids, I have an intro, a level one, a level two. The level two class is for my sharp shooter kids that want to be serious, that want to learn, that want to go hard. In my intro classes, those are for the beginners and we focus on good listening and basic Jiu-Jitsu and a decent framework. The kids' level one is your typical kind of like kids' class, but I have my older kids or my higher belts help in terms of leadership. They will go with the new person. I had a gray belt, six-year-old who kind of eye-rolled every time he had to go with the new kid. And I was like, hey, bud, you're going to have to go with new kids until you can show me that you know how to help and be a teammate. Because what we're doing, it's an individual sport in a team environment. You can't learn without your partner. And this is where the respect and mutual consideration come into play. If we're rolling and I want to go playful and you want to go competitively, and you start to smash me and I ask you like, hey, can we go lighter? And you still keep smashing me. You're being an asshole. I'm not learning. You're not learning. If you sit on me and mount for five minutes because you're strong as heck, fantastic, but you haven't learned a single thing from the roll. So what's the point of rolling? We're not competing in the gym. So. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because in other martial arts, they have that concept. Judo has the notion of mutual benefit. You train not just for yourself, but also for the benefit of your partner. And I feel like sometimes in Jiu-Jitsu, we don't think in that regard and there is a focus on might makes right. I think that most people who listen to this podcast would probably agree with your philosophy that community and good people, that should be the foundation of everything that you do and good Jiu-Jitsu can emerge from that. But there are also still people in this community who just believe that, you know, Jiu-Jitsu is for the tough and the strong and if you're not winning, therefore that means you're not tough. I see comments like this quite often where people say things like, you know, Jiu-Jitsu is for the strong and some people are just too weak to cut it in the sport. And the problem with that kind of mentality then is you're basically passing judgment. You're saying that, look, if someone is not just immediately great at this, then there's some sort of defect with that person and why should I cater to them? I'm guessing that you probably hear this philosophy more than you would like also and I'm wondering how you counter that argument that, hey, Jiu-Jitsu is for the strong. How do we counter that? Speaker 2: Oh, lovely. Yes, what a great question and I have a great example. We also have a Muay Thai program. I've personally had 11 fights. I coach fighters. And I had a woman who was interested in fighting. And we had a coach who wasn't quite like, he wasn't a homegrown coach. He had a lot of prior experience. At the time, like, I felt inadequate in my Muay Thai. I had this guy coaching once a week and he's fantastic. He's great at Muay Thai. He's a great coach. And so once she told him that she wanted to fight, he's like, all right. And so the next class that they were in together, he proceeded to wreck her and beat the shit out of her. And she wanted to quit Muay Thai. And so I talked to the coach. I'm like, hey, what the heck, man? And it's not that he was being malicious. It's that, oh, well, if she likes it, she'll stick with it. If she doesn't, she doesn't. And I'm sitting here like, you can't do that to anybody, especially women because we already, and this is generalizing, most women tend to have the internal dialogue of I'm not good enough. Like, we make ourselves small. Most women apologize all the time for no reason. I'm so sorry, can you help me? When I hear that, what I hear, especially from beginners, I'm so sorry that I'm fucking this up on the on my first try. And I need your help even though it's your job to help me, I'm still going to apologize. Like, we apologize for existing. And so what I told the coach, I was like, can you just set the expectations and monitor? Because if they're having a tough time, validate, like, yeah, this is shitty. You can quit if you want to or you can choose to push through. That validation, that verbalization of what is going on really helps to turn things around, right? Like, I had a kids' class once where I'm like, all right, comp kids, we're doing burpees. And I just start counting. We get to 50 and half the kids are like annoyed. And I'm like, you can quit at any time. By the time we got to 70, I had two or three kids in tears. And I was like, hey, if you guys want to stop, you can stop or if you want to push through, you can push through. It's your choice. You're welcome to sit criss-cross if you're done. But all the kids pushed through and I think they ended up with a hundred burpees within like a five-minute time span, which was insane. But yeah, no, it's how else do people get tough without having to push through the hard stuff? And how would they ever push through the hard stuff without support? And the people that have that mindset of, well, it's for the toughest, it they probably have, and this is how you know you're over 35 is if this is your answer to everything. They probably have a lot of unresolved trauma that they haven't faced, you know? Speaker 1: Yeah. Our mutual friend Jeff Shaw once said to me, I'm not interested in helping assholes get better at violence, which I thought is a great philosophy for a Jiu-Jitsu coach to have because not that I'm saying that athletes are like all assholes or anything, but when you're hyper-focused on taking people who are already good at something and just making them even better, are you really actually a martial arts instructor at that point? Because the point of a martial art is that you help people learn to defend themselves and become better versions of themselves. And if your martial arts instruction only works when your students are already super athletes and they're super focused, if you can't teach to regular people, I just don't think you're a very good martial arts instructor. So, to me, that's an indication. If someone is only teaching super, super athletic people, I mean, they may be able to convince themselves and maybe even the people around them that they're great coaches because they're racking up a lot of wins. But to me, if you want to show me you're a great instructor, take a bunch of regular people and help have them fall in love with Jiu-Jitsu. Help them succeed on this journey. That's how I know that someone is really a good instructor is that they can duplicate their success with anyone. Speaker 2: I believe you had Molly on on one of the other podcasts, Fighting Matters. Molly is a recent coach at Combat Arts Academy. She is incredible. She's a third-degree black belt. She is an amazing human. So, when she started coaching, what I had told her, I was like, I will never correct or coach your Jiu-Jitsu. Molly is so excellent, it's stupid. But I will coach you on how to coach if needed because I think what most people don't think about, it doesn't matter if you're good at Jiu-Jitsu, people are doing and teaching are two different things, right? Like, just because you're good at a sport or a thing, it doesn't make you a good teacher at it. And I think it's two different philosophies and that ties back into that kind of mindset of like it's for the tough. The people that just want to go hard all the time, they don't realize that their nervous system is heightened. Where the learning happens isn't in the fight mode at a hundred. The learning happens at all of the dials in between. Right? You have zero, you have a hundred, but then everything else in between where there's some play, that's where you get to see if technique actually works. When people come into the intro program, oftentimes you have the maybe really intense person that's really tense or the big strong dudes that just have the death grip. We talk a lot about our nervous system because we have fight and flight. And when we have a little bit of pressure, our body reacts. And so oftentimes, even if your brain thinks, okay, I have to go slow, I have to flow, your body reacts with just tension and fight mode, right? And so what we work with our students on, and this helps to kind of like integrate the awkward turtles into the mix, is controlling that intensity from the beginning. Like, let's play. Let's go at 5, 10%. Now let's go at 25%. And then we talk about communication. Oh my gosh, what a concept. In terms of if your partner is going too hard, let them know. And I'll set expectations. If you're doing eco-style drilling in intro, if when you're training, you feel your fighter flight kick in, I want you to communicate to your partner and go a little bit lighter because you can't remember the steps and and the details of what you're trying to do if you're panicking or freaking out or whatever it is. And so often times people that have trauma, when they come in, they will start to freeze. They don't know that it's okay to say, hey, stop or hey, I need a minute. Because then they're like, oh man, I'm going to be judged. I'm like, no, like, if you want to sit and watch, great. If you want to participate, great. If you want to switch partners, great. Like, in open mat and in rounds, I especially to the women, I let them know, I'm like, hey, if you don't trust the person you're going with, stop the round. If you ask them to go lighter, but they turn it up, maybe give them a reminder. But if they can't go at your pace, stop the round, right? If you're a smaller 110-pound female going with a 200-pound dude who can't control their strength, and it might not even be intentional. It's probably it's probably not intentional. You have every right to stop the round before you get hurt. And you can communicate that to your partner. And if they take it personally, that's on them. They're getting defensive. Instead of defensiveness, we should have a little bit of introspection. Like, oh, why is this person stopping the round? Am I actually going too hard? Like, what's happening? And when you have that curiosity, you start to reflect and really grow because maybe you're like, hey, coach, like, so and so stopped around, like, they said I was going too hard. I thought I was fine. Like, can you help me? And that's where the growth happens is when people have that perspective because now there's mutual consideration. Now, we're trying to empathize and connect with our partner and help them get better as we're also getting better. Because if there's a drill, let's say you're working bottom escapes and the top person's supposed to give just enough pressure for you to work your frames and get to your hip and then get back to your guard. But you can't get out at all because they're giving you too much pressure, right? That's a waste of time for training and the top partner is being a shitty partner if they can't help you train. Does that make sense? Speaker 1: 100%. And you touched on something there that I think is worth expanding on. You always need to trust your partner. And that's not a character judgment. I mean, if I'm training with you in Jiu-Jitsu and I I say, you know, I don't trust you. That doesn't mean I think you're a bad person or I think you're violent or anything. It could simply be that, look, you're new at this and you outweigh me by a hundred pounds. If you make the tiniest mistake, that could be 12 months on the shelf for me and a trip to the hospital, right? So, trust doesn't necessarily mean you think the other person is bad. It just means do we feel that we can play safe together here? Do we both have the requisite level of experience to do that? And is there enough of a size and a strength disadvantage one way or the other that someone needs to be concerned? You talked about the importance of communicating with your partner and I've come to think that so many of the issues that people bring up, you mentioned Reddit earlier. Reddit is hilarious because it feels sometimes like a good 90% of the problems that people post about on there could have been solved by just talking to someone for 30 seconds. But this is an area of Jiu-Jitsu that is very underdeveloped and undiscussed. The importance of that conversation with your partner to find out how can we make this roll productive and helpful for both of us? What are your goals? What are my goals? What's on the table? What's off the table? Let's figure out how we can make this a mutual win. And whenever I hear a horror story about, you know, a roll that went totally wrong, most of the time, it's because both of those parties failed to get on the same page about what they wanted to do. One person thought they were coming in for a lazy Saturday roll, the other person thought they were coming in for competition training and someone got injured, right? Something that could have been easily fixed by a quick conversation. Speaker 2: Let's talk about escalation in a roll. My first time really coming to terms with this concept was actually sparring in Muay Thai. I had a partner who, um, I mean, he was good. He was taller. He was good at Muay Thai and I would spar and then he would keep tagging me and then I would go harder. And he had matched my intensity. And then I'd go harder. And then he'd match my intensity until I got frustrated. But what I didn't realize was he started off at a playful pace. And because he hit me and tagged me, it made my fighter flight kick in and I turned up my strength. And so he matched that with technique. And then I turned up my strength until we were in kind of a fight mode and then I got real pissed off about it. So in Jiu-Jitsu, if I start off a playful round, like, I want a flow roll. You're like, all right. And then I get a sweep and then you're like, oh shit, it's on. And then you turn up a little bit. And then I'm like, oh shit, what's happening? And then I match that intensity, but then maybe I have more technique and experience and I catch you in something and then you ramp up your intensity again until we're in that fight mode. Now we're both fighting hard in a competitive round that should have been flowy. So, I have a couple stories to go with that. First story, maybe three or four months ago, I was rolling with one of our white belts. He had about 50 pounds on me, maybe a little more. And I was like, hey, like, I'm just getting back into rolling. Let's go light and playful. Normally, I don't roll with people who are bigger than me if I'm injured. And we shake hands and we go and the very first grip was tense. And I'm like, hey, do you feel how you're grabbing me and do you feel my pace? Like, you're on top. You don't need to go that hard with me. And so we went again. And it took me three and a half to four minutes out of a six-minute round to get him to calm down and have a more playful round. So I was teaching him how to roll in that moment, right? But if I get that moment once every three months and everybody else is trying to beat the crap out of him because he's bigger, he never learns how to have control. So I've been working with my coaches and I gave my blue belt an up a challenge. I was like, every time you roll with the white belt, try to bring the intensity down and flow with them and be playful and give them a chance to explore. And it's something I'm still trying to work on because it's a new concept that I'm trying to like figure out how to integrate into the coaching. But it teaches them how to actually train and be respectful on the mats. And it's a really difficult thing to teach because the 240-pound white belt can roll with me, the black belt, and get to mount and sit there for five minutes. And again, I can work really hard to escape, but I'm not learning anything. What's the point? I'm probably going to end up injured. If I want to feed my ego because again, I'm the black belt, I shouldn't be getting smashed on bottom by a bigger white belt, then yeah, I'm going to fight. But personally, I don't have anything to prove. I've been there, I've done that and I've been injured because of it. Left and right, every freaking joint in my body has been messed up. I've torn ligaments, I've strained shoulders, I've separated shoulders, my back's gone out so many times, my knees have been jacked up. I don't need to fight against a bigger person. If I'm training competitively because I'm competing, I will seek out five or six different people that I want to go hard with and ask them if they will help me comp prep. But I'm not going to comp prep against a 250-pound white belt, against a 110-pound white belt, like it's not productive for me in my learning process. But on that note, the second story, we had a white belt years ago who was he had a bit of a Judo background. Rolling with a purple belt, they got to their feet and the white belt hit a beautiful soto, took the purple down. In that moment, the purple's mindset, it wasn't, holy shit, that was sweet. Like, oh yeah, you want to go? Let's go. That white belt was maybe four to six months into Jiu-Jitsu. And so the purple gets an arm bar and just cranks it and pops the dude's elbow. And then I was talking to him. I'm like, what the heck, man? He's like, what, was I supposed to let it go? Yes, you're the upper belt. You know how to control. Like, you know what to do. You don't need to finish that submission to prove a point. And that's the problem with a lot of training right now is that everybody has a point to prove when they roll, right? And that's what I'm trying to change a little bit in terms of how I run my gym and program. Speaker 1: Yeah. You talked earlier about how it can be hard to coach beginners away from things that happen instinctively. And one example of that is people breathing too hard or people being too tense is another example. That's something that I I think it's really important for beginners to learn quickly how to control their breathing and how to avoid being overly tense when they roll. In fact, if I were starting someone from day zero and I wanted to teach them Jiu-Jitsu, what I would do is focus on teaching them how to control your breathing and how to stay relaxed in a roll. Because one of the most important things at that level, it's not any individual technique that you could use. It's learning how to overcome your fight, flight or freeze response. It's making sure that if you're doing something in a roll, it's because you actually want to be the person doing it and it's not just your body going on autopilot. Escalation of commitment, like you talked about is a real thing. If the other person is going real hard, sometimes you wind up matching their intensity without even realizing that. And that is a trap for a variety of reasons. First of all, because, you know, that's how injuries can happen. But beyond that, if you're talking about a competition, it's a strategy. If my whole game is speed, if I am an expert at, you know, keeping the pace really, really high, if I can try to force you into my game where you feel like you need to match me, if I'm better at that game than you, then I'm probably going to win. So, it's important for people in Jiu-Jitsu to learn, and ideally sooner rather than later, that you want to stay calm, you want to stay relaxed, you want to control your breathing. Generally, you want to be in control. If you're doing something in Jiu-Jitsu, it should be because you want to be doing it, not because your lizard brain took over and now all of a sudden you're going way harder than you should without realizing it. This was a big game changer for me learning to play off of the bottom. I used to be very reactive and if my training partner was going real hard and real fast, I would try to match them. And I realized at some point, okay, first of all, that's not really safe. But second, I'm playing into their game now. I'm reacting to them and I'm doing something because they want me to be doing it. Whereas if I can stay calm, and you see this in MMA a lot where people talk about how composed someone is in a fight and under pressure. If you can stay calm, it's easier to stick to your game plan, which also, you know, it's going to be easier to stick to your game plan, it's easier to avoid injury. So, those are things that I think instructors should focus on teaching new people even before any particular technique. Teach them how to manage their breathing, how to stay relaxed and loose in a roll, and how to not get reactive to that fight, flight or freeze response. Speaker 2: 100%, yeah. I will actually oftentimes make people sing or hum or talk while they roll because if you can have a conversation, if you can hum, if you can sing a song, you can't go hard. And so depending on what's playing on the speaker, maybe I'm on mount top. I'm singing a song while I'm also like rolling with you and you're on bottom huffing and puffing and I'm like, hey, like, let's try to like turn it down a little bit. Let's work on being playful. Or like, I'd be stuck on bottom, mount or side or back taken and I'm sitting there singing a song while working my defense, watching everybody else, being fully present in that moment, right? And that's it's difficult to teach and I think a lot of people don't know how to teach it because the consensus that I see is that, well, people will figure it out. But again, teaching people how to communicate, that's a skill set that doesn't get taught. And it's something that I emphasize really, really, really strongly in all of my intro classes. Like, you need to communicate to stay safe. Speaking of the injuries and intensity, that's actually where a lot of re-injuries happen and the nagging injuries because maybe you had a shoulder tweak, you're you're out for like four weeks, you're back on the mats, you're rolling and you're like, no, it's fine. I'm just going to like 10%. I'll go light, it's okay. But then you go with somebody that you trust, but you start to escalate and like go harder and all of a sudden your shoulder's out again. I've been there many times and it took me all of my time postpartum to learn how to train well around injury, to keep my body safe. That's part of why I weightlift like four to six days right now and I roll maybe once a week because I'm trying to rebuild my stability so I can stay safe on the mats. And then two, like people always focus on the winning and that's not a negative thing. It's human instinct. A lot of what happens on the mats is human instinct because we have that primal kind of internal fight or flight. And winning, it's natural. My four-year-old hates to lose. She knows that it's okay to lose. She gets it, but she hates losing, especially to mom. And so I think one of the bigger messages for people to take home is that there is no winning happening in the gym. It's just learning. Like, I don't look at getting tapped as a loss every time I get tapped. It makes me better at that defense. I my first three matches at at a black belt were actually all against Liz Mickevic. She's amazing. I love her. She's wonderful. And the first two were I think a month after I got my black belt at Santa Cruz. She caught me in a bow and arrow choke both matches and I'm like, holy shit, this black belt pressure is real. And then two months later at at Vegas for Master Worlds. Like, I put on a better fight. I felt really good about it, but she still caught me. And so I spent the next six months letting people get that grip and start the bow and arrow and then I'd work my escape. And where I am now, I would feel very confident in saying that if somebody caught that bow and arrow grip on me, I would feel 100% safe in my defense. But it's because I quote-unquote lost on the mats all the time. Speaker 1: Yeah. Escalation of commitment is a real thing. When someone else turns up the dial, our natural inclination is to also try to turn up the dial. It's not just a Jiu-Jitsu thing. You see this in current events and in politics, right? I mean, if two countries are having a dispute, they keep ratcheting up tensions. It is natural to feel like when one person raises the intensity, you have to match them. But that can be a trap, like in the context of Jiu-Jitsu because often if they're doing that, if it's a conscious thing they're doing, they're doing it because it's part of a game plan. They're trying to lure you into their area of strength. If it's an unconscious thing they're doing, then someone's probably going to get injured and it's probably going to be for no good reason. Something that's been helpful to me, if I feel like I'm in that mindset where I'm taking things too seriously and I feel this need to win when it doesn't matter. One thing that I've done that can be, at least I find helpful is I'll intentionally take a dive. So if I feel like my ego is going to get in the way of this roll, I'll just lose the first roll. Just get it over with because once that's happened, then it's a lot easier to roll without ego because the scary bad thing has already happened. So, I would tell people to try that if you're the type of person who really struggles to turn down the dial because just ego and intensity get in the way, try just throwing the first round. Just lose, let it happen and then get it over with because after that's already happened, it's not as scary to lose again a second time, right? You've already let that happen, the embarrassing thing has taken place and you can just move on. Speaker 2: Is it really embarrassing though? Because that's I think another thing where people feel obligated to perform because they don't want to look silly in front of their teammates. Like, people that compete, they don't want to compete because, oh my gosh, like, I'm going to look like an idiot in front of my teammates or my coach is going to think less of me because I lost the match, right? So that embarrassing part, I think a lot of it, it's that self-confidence. It's okay if I lose, my teammates are are here to support me. On the flip side, if you're at a gym where you can compete and you lose and your teammates shun you, I would find a different gym. So. Speaker 1: Yeah. Often though it comes from yourself. It's not that someone else has ever told you that losing is bad. In fact, you can be in an environment where they fully explain that it's good to lose on the mats. This is part of the learning process. Yeah. But it's one thing to know that that's true and it's another thing to be able to live that while you're actually rolling. It can be pretty hard. I mean, it took me quite a while to get to the point where I could really just let the round happen and not really care if I quote-unquote won or lost. It takes some doing to develop that kind of mindset. So, I think that especially when people are getting started out, it's important to really deliberately try to overcome that feeling of high tension that can happen in a casual roll. If you can do that, if you can get on the same page with someone, man, it makes it so much easier to have fun while you're training Jiu-Jitsu, but also to learn better because it's like you said, it's easier to learn when you're not in that hyper-aroused survival mode state. And I think that that is a skill that does require some cultivation and some training. Speaker 2: I think, and for me, a lot of that internal pressure came from my upbringing because failure wasn't really an option for me. And so I had a really hard time losing on the mats for a while. Like, it took a minute for me to get that out of my system. Question for you, how do you feel about mat enforcements? Speaker 1: Mat enforcement. Well, first, maybe we should explain what that is. My definition of a mat enforcer, this is kind of a legacy concept in Jiu-Jitsu. Basically, you have someone who tries to physically enforce the desired behavior. And usually this comes down to punishing people during a roll somehow. So if some white belt is going too hard, then the idea would be that the quote-unquote mat enforcer, who is usually a really good upper belt, will step in and basically just, you know, physically handle the person who was doing the wrong thing. I think that that is at best irresponsible, at worst arguably criminal in some cases. I am not a fan of mat enforcers. And most of the coaches that I know and respect would agree with this stance. But they this does still happen in a lot of gyms. They will have people who either explicitly or implicitly are the mat enforcers and whenever someone gets too intense in a roll, the mat enforcer steps in and basically puts them in their place. For a variety of reasons, I think that's terrible. But the one of the main reasons is basically you're perpetuating a cycle of violence. This is the same kind of cycle that abusers get caught in where you see generational trauma because one generation learns from the prior generation that you solve your problems with violence. I really don't think it's an effective learning mechanism to have someone come in and beat you up every time you do something wrong. So I am not an advocate of mat enforcers. In fact, I think that's really one of the elements of the sport that I would like most people to agree, it needs to go. Speaker 2: I agree. So I want to tie that back to the awkward turtles because let's talk about intention. When somebody is rolling, their intention probably isn't to hurt their partner. Their intention is to Jiu-Jitsu, right? But let's say the 200-pound white belt is rolling with the 110-pound white belt and the 200-pound white belt is getting side control and cross-facing and wrenching the person's head and then that person walks off the mat with a sore neck and so the upper belts are like, oh man, that dude, fine, I'm going to beat the shit out of him. That dude now thinks that, oh, cool, it's okay to go this hard because the upper belt beat the crap out of them. Like, oh hell yeah, that was fun. Or, oh man, that sucked, but I'm going to get better, so I'm going to go that hard. They don't actually ever learn why people are going hard with them. So maybe they end up with a popped shoulder, elbow, knee, something because they kept getting mat enforced. But what that does is that now puts that person in this corner where they are the bad guy because they keep going harder and they keep fucking people up. But a simple conversation of like, hey, dude, like, when you go with smaller people, you can't go that hard. You have to have control and use technique. And if you can't trust yourself to do that, don't go with smaller people. And then to the smaller person, like, hey, just because you're tough and you can hang, doesn't mean you should go with people that go that hard with you because you will walk out of here with neck and back problems for life. Like, that's that was me. And so that communication needs to be there because if that person's intention was malicious, maybe they're dropping in for an open mat and they're trying to like fuck people up because they don't have any ties to that gym. That's bad intentions. That does need mat enforcement. That needs a consequence of like, here, sit your ass out. Hey, go ahead and leave. You're not welcome back. But usually, so the way that I look at that type of coaching or thought process, like, hey, let's have a conversation. You're going too hard. I need you to keep my students safe and not crank submissions and go with the flow or whatever, whatever. If it happens again, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. Now, back to the trust. Let's say it's two teammates and they just always have a hard time rolling together. One person hurts the other. They just, you know, keep butting heads. And so they have almost like a, um, like a fight type of roll where they're just trying to like beat the crap out of each other. Sometimes it's really productive because, you know, it's cathartic, you you let things go, you you let the mats work it out. But sometimes it turns into a fight fight where you're maliciously trying to crank the arm bar. Like, you want to pop the elbow. That's bad intention. That requires a timeout. And I mean that in kids' terms because what do we do with kids that hurt other people? They have consequences. Adults in Jiu-Jitsu go without consequences when they fuck people up and they just keep rolling, right? And that's a really big problem too because again, how are people going to stay if they keep getting injured? How will awkward turtles keep rolling if every time they roll, they just get fucked up? There's no guidance or help or hand to teach them what to do. Speaker 1: So, back onto the topic of awkward turtles, I think that many people who look at Jiu-Jitsu as this highly competitive endeavor and that maybe they're worried about, you know, watering down or softening the sport. They might think that a conversation like this is counter to where we want to take Jiu-Jitsu. We want to make people tough. We don't want to cater to the people who can't cut it. I would point out to those people though that a lot of the time the people who wind up being amazing at the sport are the people who at some point were an awkward turtle, right? Once you fall in love with the sport, that's when you start to really see what people are capable of in Jiu-Jitsu. When people are just starting out Jiu-Jitsu and they don't even know what they're doing and maybe they don't even have any sports background, it can be really hard at that level to know where they're going to fit in because they don't necessarily buy into the sport yet. You have to get them to buy in first. And if their early experiences are a bunch of unnecessary injuries, it's unlikely they're going to buy in. So, I think sometimes when people talk about, hey, oh, we don't want to water down the sport. I think what they're actually doing is making excuses for the fact that they can't retain students. Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, yes. So, let me tell you why awkward turtles tend to be the people. It's because they have to develop resiliency. There's no way they got to where they are without being resilient, right? Like, I'm going to talk about Delaney for a minute. She's actually 20. If you're hearing this, I'm so sorry. I got your age mixed up. She started when she was 11. She lost her first nine tournaments. And I mean, every single match for nine tournaments back to back to back. And I believe she did both Gi and No-Gi. So, you're looking at at least 36 losses back to back. And not once did she consider quitting. She was the type of student that I don't think would have thrived elsewhere. I think she would have gone for a month and then quit because she just wasn't good at it. She wasn't getting the support she needed. Delaney started helping me coach when she was 14. When she was 15, she did a No-Gi cage match against an adult and arm-barred her in less than a minute. Then she started competing in the adult division as a teenager and won matches. She started wrestling for high school and now she's wrestling at college. Like, she is the definition of an awkward turtle becoming a freaking star. Like, I am so proud of her and I'm so amazed at her resiliency because she fell in love with the sport and she felt supported and she thrived. Anywhere else, I think she would have canceled. For gym owners, just a food for thought, retention rate, your attrition should be no more than 3.5% every month for your students. Most gyms, I believe, have an attrition rate of 10 to 15% for Jiu-Jitsu. That's really high. We're at roughly 2.5 to 3% a month for attrition. So those numbers are really important in terms of looking at if you're doing a good job, building a culture and building a supportive environment where people want to stay and be there. I think what happens is a lot of people just don't know how to coach your atypical person, the awkward one, who's hypermobile, the shy one, the introverted, the doesn't want to speak up. Like, and that takes a lot of empathy and connection and just like seeing them. Like, hey, I see you. Like, I know this is hard. I know this is awkward. It does feel awkward to put pressure on somebody when you're brand new. Like, I know it's scary to put somebody in a choke. It does suck. But if you can figure this out, like, this is going to be great long-term. It does take time to build up. Like, you're going to feel moments where you want to quit. I almost quit at blue belt like five times. I literally threw my belt in the trash at least once. Like, that vulnerability is what gets people to stick around because they know that it's not just them. It was once me. Speaker 1: I guess as we tie this up, Sonia, one last thing I'd like to ask you. Much of what we've talked about today is from the perspective of the gym owner and the importance of creating this culture from the top down. But there's going to be a lot of people listening to this who are students. They're not the gym owner. They are the awkward turtle. And what advice would you have to someone in that situation, especially someone who is maybe still early on in their Jiu-Jitsu journey. If they feel like they're kind of the the black sheep of their gym. If they feel like it's not as easy for them to just pick up the sport and fit in with the community. What would your advice be to those people? Because they are such a large part of the community. Speaker 2: Um, yes. For the gyms that maybe don't quite have a supportive leadership where you can ask questions, find an upper belt to mentor you because a lot of what happens too is things that become unsaid, like rules or just the etiquette. Beginners don't know. So, we verbalize all of our like rules and things. Like, hey, this is how we tie our belt. This is how we do these things. This is what happens here. So, having an upper belt to help guide you is really important. Recognizing how to advocate for yourself. Speaking up is so important to keep you safe because most people that quit in the beginning tend to get injured. And the injuries happen because they don't know how to go slower and how to not bridge that technical gap with strength because if you're a beginner, like, if you start off rolling on day one, you don't have any knowledge. And so when you get tossed into a round and and your fighter flight kicks in, you bridge it all with strength and that's the intensity that got you known and you can't ever turn your dial down. So, start to roll with dials and to start to recognize if you are going so hard that that you're going to get hurt. And with that, start to look at your techniques and see if you understand the concepts because oftentimes too, we learn like, I remember I learned arm bars like a dozen times. And then every time I'd roll, I would just it didn't make sense to me. Like, I didn't know how to apply the arm bar. And so within the classes, we work on breaking down the concepts. And if you can understand the concept, it's now easier to apply. Ask questions. I know some gyms don't quite have a question culture, which is a small flag. It's not always a red flag, but to me, like, it's a reddish flag. But asking questions about the technique, asking questions about your roll, and asking for feedback. Like, hey, what felt good about that roll? What could be better? Because your teammate, your training partner is your best sounding board. As a coach, I can see what's happening, but I can't feel the pressure. I can't feel the grips. I can't feel the tension, right? And so asking your partner for feedback is always important. Yeah, that was a whole dump of random stuff, but I mean, I'm pretty sure that made sense, yeah. Speaker 1: Well, I think it's good advice too and it really circles back to the big message that we're trying to get through here, which is that you need to talk to people. It's the key to having productive rolls. It's the key to rolling safely and creating positive experiences while training. And it's also the key to getting people integrated with your community so that they aren't just the awkward turtle sitting on the sidelines, but so that you embrace them and make them part of the crew. That is so important from a business perspective in terms of building up a community and a culture that people want to be a part of. A lot of young guys who maybe they get into Jiu-Jitsu have trouble empathizing with this standpoint because when they're in Jiu-Jitsu, they're in a place where they are the most common demographic. So they tend not to feel like they're the odd person out. I always ask Jiu-Jitsu people, you know, how would you feel if you walked into a gym and maybe you're a 20-year-old male, but how would you feel if you walked into a gym and instead of it being filled with other 20-year-old males, it was filled with a bunch of 60-year-old women who train Jiu-Jitsu casually and you're the only 20-year-old male in the gym, right? There's a signal being sent to you one way or the other, whether you realize it or not, that like, oh, this place, there's nobody like me here. And you're going to be the awkward turtle in that situation whether you want to or not, whether you've ever been in that situation in your life or not. And many people who walk into a Jiu-Jitsu academy for the first time, they're going to have that experience, especially if they're that awkward turtle, right? Maybe there's someone outside of that most common demographic. I always encourage people to think about how it would feel in that situation. If you walked into a gym and you were the only person like you there, because for so many people who walk into Jiu-Jitsu gyms, that is their experience. And if you ever want to bring in more people like them and ultimately expand your community, you need to welcome those people. You need to make them feel at home and that takes effort. Speaker 2: Absolutely, yes. And it is top-down. So, I had a 12-year-old girl who all of a sudden just hated class. She was crying one day, didn't want to train. I talked to her and I was like, what's happening? And it turns out the boys that she partners with because she's tall, and they just go too hard. She's awkward. She's hypermobile. She loves training though. And she'd always get hurt. And I was like, hey, I feel you. Have you told them this? No. And so what happened, instead of like just ignoring her, I was like, hey, how about we get back into class? I'll help you pick your partners and I'll help you talk to them to make sure that you feel safe when you're training because that's really important. Like, you should always feel safe on the mats. And after a few minutes, she got back into class. I helped her with her partners. I talked to them. Hey, we are going too hard. I need you guys to make sure that she stays safe. Sometimes we just forget how strong we are. And then I told the girl, I was like, I need for you to speak up if they do go too hard because how else will they know that they're too intense? And she ended up rolling with the boys and had the best time that class and felt so much better about it. Because what happens when we don't communicate, we start to create a narrative in our heads. Like, man, that person always tries to go hard with me. Oh, they're a terrible partner. They just suck at. And then they have their own narrative of, man, this person's just really hard to train with. They just don't want to train. They just have a bad attitude. We're spiraling the story. And now there's this like gigantic gap of what the truth actually is, right? And so that's how resentment happens. I resent that person for being a shitty partner and they resent me for being a shitty partner. In reality, if we could communicate and talk about it, oh my gosh, everything's great. We're great. We're on the same page. We're good training partners. We can adjust to the other person's intensity or goals and that just comes from basic basic communication. Speaker 1: Awesome, Sonia. Thanks a lot. Before we go further and tie this one up, any other closing thoughts or things you wanted to chat about? Speaker 2: Yes. So, as a coach, I'm really big on respect on all fronts. So, I live by the treat other people the way that they want to be treated. And so I've seen a lot of nonsense on social media and just friends' pages and things about, well, politics, right? Two trans people in the sport. And the way that I operate and the way that I feel is the most inclusive and safest for everybody is treating them as people because they are people with their own shit that they're dealing with who want to learn Jiu-Jitsu. A lot of them don't feel safe. We in the art of Jiu-Jitsu, we are here to help others. It's not just about us. And so as a gym, we focus on again, treating everybody with respect, right? There's no judgment. People are who they are. I do not care who you are or what you do as long as you treat me with respect. And the same goes the other way. And I think that's one of the best ways to breed a healthy gym culture is to look at it from that perspective because what I do on my own time and who I am as a person, should not affect you unless I'm doing something absolutely illegal, right? And I think that's a really important thing to consider as a topic. Speaker 1: Yeah, I can co-sign on that for sure. I am a big believer in the golden rule that we should treat other people the way that we want to be treated and unfortunately sometimes in the Jiu-Jitsu community, I just don't see that. I think that we need to be able to be accepting of people in our gym and if our culture is defined by who we exclude, I think that's a real red flag in the gym culture, right? I mean, if a gym is taking a hard line about, you know, this whole group of people, we don't cater to them or we don't want them here, that should really be setting off alarm bells. Speaker 2: Um, absolutely, yes. And the same goes for just, um, leadership in general because again, the gym owners that sleep with their students, like the gym owners giving out dating advice when their life is in shambles or mental health advice. Like, we're not experts, we're not professionals. We can relate, we can listen, we can talk, but we're not going to tell you what to do because that is not what our expertise is. Our expertise is Jiu-Jitsu and building a healthy strong culture, right? Yeah. Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Sonia. If people want to train with you or learn about your academy, how do they go about doing that? Speaker 2: I am out of Seattle. I'm at Combat Arts Academy. We have an open-door policy. If you're a woman who trains in the area, we have ladies' classes every Sunday, level one and two, with no drop-in fee as long as you have a home gym. So you can come visit me at Combat Arts Academy. And also if you need some strength and conditioning, we do have Dollar Strength right next door. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, I will put links to your gyms in the show notes to make it easy for people to find you. I'll also put links to our stuff. Everything we make lives at bjjmentalmodels.com. The podcast, both the full-length episodes like this and the mini episodes, and our newsletter are completely free. So I always recommend people take advantage of those. For those who really want to level up their Jiu-Jitsu with us, that's what BJJ Mental Models Premium is for. It's how we fund this. It's how we keep things ad-free. Um, it's really important that if there are people out there who want to support us and want to learn more with us, BJJ Mental Models Premium, please do consider checking that out. You'll get access to the big world's biggest library of audio courses on Jiu-Jitsu concepts, strategy, tactics, philosophy, mindset, the kind of things that are hard to teach through traditional video instructionals. We've got a a very specific angle to attack that through audio that I think you'll get value out of. Um, plus there's a bunch of other reasons why you'd sign up some amazing premium-only podcasts hosted by some of the best in the sport. Plus if you go up to our coaching tier, we will even do rolling reviews for you as well. I also encourage black belts and gym owners especially to think about becoming a member because we do a lot in there to help promote the success of each other's gyms. Really, especially right now with so much volatility in the market. I think it's important that gym owners work together to try to help each other and we want to help you out as well. So if you're not already a premium subscriber, please do consider that. bjjmentalmodels.com is where you go to get all of that. Link in the show notes. But Sonia, thanks a lot. This is a great one. I always enjoy having you come by here. Speaker 2: Awesome, Steve. Thanks for having me. It's always a blast chatting. Speaker 1: Most welcome. And thanks to the listeners as well. We'll talk to you in the next one. See you then.