440 - Training Methods and Cross Training in Jiu-Jitsu, with Josh Peters and Stephan Kesting

Right. I'm going to find a way to separate the arms. I pivot off keeping the arm between. My hips are a lever pulling it back and all that. I do believe it's good to show like just how you when you're learning to bicycle, this is how you stay on and do it. But as you do it, you're already learning a million things you couldn't explain, right? If you had to think about walking, you would you would die of old age before you move one leg because thousands of instructions had to go from your brain to your muscles. Hey there, I'm Stefan Kesting and this is the simplest life podcast. Josh, not only are you a third-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you also have a background in actual education and the theory of that and the practice of that. So, how do those two worlds intersect and what is Jiu-Jitsu doing right when it comes to teaching and what is Jiu-Jitsu doing wrong when it comes to teaching? It's a big question, I know, but the floor is yours. I started with Kung Fu in the '80s and then a Taekwondo studio opened up about a mile walk from my house and that was a lot easier to go to that than an hour and a half bus ride when you're 11, 12 years old to a questionable part of um downtown Silver Spring, Maryland. And when I was probably a purple or red belt in Taekwondo, I started helping teach the classes. And my grandmother, who was a kindergarten teacher for 29 years, she has her um her doctorate in that. She saw me teaching, she's like, you're going to be a school teacher one day. And I told her she's crazy. My grandmother then and now even then is much smarter than I am and she knew. And I um when I graduated high school, I was still very much involved in martial arts, but I didn't know what I really wanted to do. I actually loved to cook. And then in my genius, I saw how little chefs make for a while. I said, oh, you know what? I'm going to go be a teacher. After I was a um a teacher's aide and substitute. And that uh after I ended up graduating from American University with my bachelor's in elementary education and while there I had started I started Jiu-Jitsu in 2002 and started a club with my friend Nick Robinson who runs Beltway Martial Arts. And we would get together. First it was only on Thursday nights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight and just kind of do what we were being taught and then people are like, what are these people doing? And then it became two, then six, then 10, then 15, then 16 people. And we developed that as a club to become a feeder for my main instructor, Roberto Miguela. And then becoming a business and realizing like, oh, we have something here. Then after my 13th year teaching, I was teaching kindergarten. In the first month, I had to administer four standardized tests. And that's insane for babies. You know, I'm a big believer. This is kindergarten. Kindergarten. And it's not like, you know, third grader, they all have their tablet or computer or paper, whatever. You have to proctor each one and then set up little entertainment centers for them. And I am very much for, you must have a baseline so you understand about where your class is. Just like if you're an instructor and you're putting your lessons together, you have to be able to reach both ends of the spectrum. But I wasn't teaching and I talked to my grandmother and I'm telling what's going on. She goes, when do you teach? And I had no answer for her. And between that, um a panic attack going to work because I was in a pretty hostile work environment from the principal that I was under and also exhaustion. My day was 5:30 in the morning to midnight. Um I said something has to change. So I decided I'm going to hang up my teaching hat for a little bit and try to make a go of it full-time running a martial arts gym. Well, Yeah. Whoever whoever thought that opening a martial arts gym would reduce your total stress? It's questionable even now. But and one thing was interesting, you know, you come from a traditional martial arts background, right? We did forms, we did these things. It was very it was very strict in a sense of you I do, we do, you do, right? This that was kind of the method of instruction. We do this form and then you repeat the form and then theoretically you're supposed to learn how to fight through doing that, especially if the martial art you're engaging in doesn't have any real contact sparring. And once in a while, I'd get demonstrated, well, this move is actually a fireman's carry or this is to train how to the mechanics of a punch. And it's okay. But in some ways it's was the earlier American style of of learning Jiu-Jitsu. Like, you know, my instructor would come in, show one or two random techniques. And he was very good at what he showed, but there was no connect between one day to the next or even one technique to the next. And you you drilled that out for 15 minutes, 10 minutes and then you just beat each other up and figure it out on your own. And in Brazil, that was I think very much the same way. Like you did one or two things after some warm-ups and then you just sparred. And it's a very brute force method of getting better. So at my at my gym and club, which was originally um Capital Punishment MMA until I realized you can't run a kids program with a name like that. Um became College Park MMA and now Combat Principles MMA because I'm nowhere near College Park, Maryland. You know, at first, me and my friend like, we're we I got my blue belt in six months, but I was also training like 25 to 30 hours a week. I was a little over the top with it, but I I did that. I went to school and I went to work. And I realized, well, I'm not good. Like even when I got my blue belt, I went to Brazil two weeks after that and got the ever-living crap beat out of me. Realized I probably shouldn't have worn that belt there. Come out. I was like, you know, I'm not that good. But I know how to problem solve. So we started doing a lot of sort of situational sparring or like this is we're trying to hit the move of the day or we're trying to execute a certain pattern or something. Realizing that if it's not just say knowing how an arm bar works, but what are the the uh parameters needed for it to be executed successfully. And we were able to be successful with that and then also really leaning into conditioning. I'd read a lot of books on just combat sports conditioning and I'd watched the wrestlers at American University work out and pick up things from that and, you know, training videos for UFC fights. Say, all right, let's just also be much better shape than everyone. So even though they're better than us, we can just outwork them. You know, a bit of a brute force method there and then it evolved over time to just, well, when I had to have a lesson plan. I am very distracted. I am very ADD, ADHD. And being a classroom teacher, I could never teach in chaos. So I've you know, found, oh, I'm a much better teacher when I know ahead of time what I'm going to teach. I'm not just showing up for people paying me money and just showing some random thing that's at the top of my head or I saw in a YouTube video, which is absurd because that wouldn't fly in any other educational setting. And it just became more disciplined with having uh lesson plans and then having a curriculum and having sort of a general method to my uh delivery. It's amazing that that old school class structure of warm-up of some form, show a couple of random techniques and then spar, it's not efficient, but it did work. I mean, it was presumably it was an improvement on what the Gracie My understanding is that that approach, teach a couple of techniques and then just let the the the troops beat the crap out of each other and get better that way. That was a Carlson Gracie training method when he split off from the rest of the Gracie family. And prior to that, the the training methodology and the learning methodology was a whole bunch of private lessons, expensive private lessons and maybe a little bit of sparring with your instructor. And by opening it up and saying, hey, let's just create this uh survival of the fittest situation in the training room. That was already an improvement on the previous training method. Yeah. But it doesn't mean it's the end of the evolution either. No, I mean, in some ways, and so we talk about efficiency, you know, we have the whole thing with like the ecological method and this method and that method. There is an efficiency to that because part of it isn't just developing muscle memory for recognizing certain um um trigger points. Say, I'm going for an arm bar though, the arm's extended. I have this grip, my hips are here. But it does make you be creative and recognize, you know, you talk about martial art. The way I've explained the way Jiu-Jitsu is to people that come in and sometimes even to my students who've been there who just sometimes, you know, you're like, I just need you to think a little more about what you're doing, not just randomly doing things. Is that you can think of Jiu-Jitsu as jazz. It uses the same notation as classical music. It uses the same, you know, breathing. Same instruments. Right? But what it does is within that, within this framework, you have your improvisation. Then any great jazz artist has, you listen to Miles Davis or yeah where they could riff in the middle. But it's still stuck to sound structure or the the rules of music to make something sound appealing to the ear. And that's what Jiu-Jitsu does. We have to learn the structure, but you also have to learn how to improvise. Yeah. So, so then how do you teach that? Or how do you help people get better at that? So, at least for me, and, you know, you've been in this, I believe even longer than I have. You know that sometimes we could both show an arm bar and they might just see the way you demonstrate it or the way you get to it, even though the end result is the same as a better way. Like I've been to a bunch of different seminars on the same exact moves. Just to see, all right, how is this person's approach or what are something different they do? I think you provide a, you know, we call it the laboratory. You you provide a laboratory-like experience. Um and what brought this forefront to my mind was I was talking to my dad. My dad has his PhD in um cryogenics. He did research on superconductors in the '70s. And he said, you know, a really good day in the laboratory would be almost a 70-hour run. My mom said it was a bad day if he if he came back when she was leaving in the morning. But he said, the good part was all the failures. Science is built on failure until you do not fail under all the conditions in which something needs to operate. So you develop a learning environment in which getting submitted or swept or losing isn't failure, but rather an opportunity for examination. I think that's the biggest thing and that can be some things for some people and not for others. Okay. So, so I agree with that in general. I think for most people that that's a good method. But then how do you achieve that? Because the bottom line is you put two meatheads in a gym and they're going to try and go all alpha dog on each other and it's going to end up being a brawl. And so how do you how do you get people to go to accept failure and almost embrace failure? So I think there's a few things. Um one I just I go to the sort of the language that people are becoming more familiar with. You have the constraints. That's how the ecological method likes to define things. Like you say, well, we're going to do this, but you're only allowed to access certain moves or certain grips or movements. So you put some some limitations on what they can do. The second is cultural. Like if you're going to be a meathead instructor and, oh, what does the instruct my coach do? He just smashes me all the time. Well, you want to be like your coach, so you're going to do the same thing. You know, I don't for my like, I'm 47 years old. I'm now 119 pounds, which is the heaviest I've ever been in my whole life. I think for a while, I was actually the lightest male black belt in North America. And maybe even some underfed parts of Cambodia. You know, they would see me lose. They see me win. They see me try things. They would see me ask my students, oh, how did you do that? And I try to be very present doing that. Oh, can you show me what you did? How you know, what were you thinking this? Why why'd you decide to go for that? And you make the so I try to model those discussions with my students and then, you know, I think we all do like that little speech beginning and after class. Try to say, you know, talk with your guys. Discuss with each other. You know, would you mind, oh, you're having trouble getting out of arm bars, you mind, could we start at this position and work through it? And then you have to communicate with each other. So you set that as part of the the your classroom culture. Which is in contrast to some schools that I've visited and some people I've trained with where they don't want the students talking with each other. Wisdom has to come from the source, which is the instructor, and it has to roll downhill. And it's perceived that if two students, if you and I are both white belts and we're talking with each other, we're only going to pollute each other. We're only going to that's that's the official version. The official version is we're going to make ourselves worse. The reality is it undermines the hierarchical structure where the instructor is the light, which illuminates all the land. Uh it drives me insane, but that still exists. That's how we're all we're originally taught. And I'm very lucky. I actually came up in uh I was diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, specific learning disabilities in my first year of kindergarten. I actually ended up going twice. I'm lucky because my parent, my mom was an educator, my grandmother, my dad was a professor for a little bit. Like all my all my grandparents taught at some point. Part of the special education, which I dislike the term because it really just to be high, it should be taught, was a lot of interactive talking and a lot of like team talk. I think that's what they called it back in the '80s. Like this team talk, while you talked with your classmate of why are you doing this or let's figure this problem out. And just just just because you might not have the data set that the instructor doesn't have, doesn't mean you're not smart. You know, doesn't mean that you're not capable of having a thought. Now you have to sometimes guide that and model it because some people it's not natural. You know, because it's not what they're used to experiencing in their life or just maybe their personality doesn't naturally take to it. But I believe if you model it and you teach that how to ask these questions, you know, and I do it with a little bit of sarcastic humor. Like, you know, everyone gets this. Any questions? Oh, everyone's a fucking expert now? No, then raise your hand. Exactly. Or annoying yapping dog. You build that in, you know, because who's to say that some white belt like, I have a I have a purple belt now, this guy Ryan. His very first day he comes in and he knows nothing about it. He doesn't even doesn't watch UFC. He just kind of walked by. He was like, what the hell is this? And I'm I go through and I get my students rolling on the very first day with certain students who I know will take care of them. So I'm going to roll with me. And he's like, what do I do in guard? I was like, you got to get out of my legs and get around. You know, guide him through getting to side control. And he gets me in side control. He's like, what do I do? He said, don't let me move. He squeezed me so hard, I had to tap. He almost broke my ribs. I was like, holy shit. First, I'm not going to let that happen again. But then he's like, what do I do? I'm like, you know, and I was like, oh, you know, you're just it was a really strong squeeze. I didn't he was like, oh man, I'm sorry. He goes, no, but I'm glad you asked the question. So I think it's that culture, you know, this is not the archdiocese where we only have one way to talk to God. You know, it's it's it should be a communal effort. Yeah. It's it's so easy for instructors who do have much more knowledge than their students to denigrate sort of their intelligence. You know, obviously, what they shouldn't do is they shouldn't confuse lack of knowledge. Don't overestimate the student's knowledge, but don't underestimate their intelligence. Yeah, because knowledge and intelligence are two very, there's my fingers, two very separate things. You can be very intelligent and know nothing. My grandfather died with 50 patents. He went to Cooper Union. He was brilliant, but he also knew enough to say, I know nothing about something. You know, and so, yeah, then who's to say I don't have a white belt come in, not even a white belt yet. He's on his trial and he just does something that's like completely genius I never saw before. And that's great. So I get to learn, you know, that's that's the fun for me right now. I my competition days are behind me. I've I've a broken neck. So I was like, I like to learn. So you if I think if you model that, and some people do need to be shown step by step. So you have those moments where you show hand here, foot here, hip here, do this, do that, because some people need that step by step. That's how they learn. But then you have to then I think then through pairing them up or how you structure subsequent classes where they have to ask questions, they have to get a little out of their comfort zone. Which is why we're we always are saying, oh, uncomfortable. How did you break your neck? Um, well, uh, 35 years of combat sports and 25 years of doing open weight competitions and fighting. It just uh about now 11, 12 years ago, I started getting numbness in my left arm. It was a little bit go away and my first instructor was like, you don't tap to neck cranks because they're not real and all sorts of other genius advice. You know, and it just got worse and worse and then um two years ago, I got an MRI done on my neck and I was like, okay. And then I talked I went to go see a neck surgeon and he said, you asking me about the surgery you had. He goes, oh, I didn't have surgery. I did this on its own. He goes, you're done. Um I'm unfortunately I'm friends with Rosie Sexton, who's an old school UFC fighter and so she actually I got into her um program to do some rehab. She's like, I can't promise this will change anything, but it's allowed me to still train and you know, selectively with safe partners. Rosie Sexton's been on the podcast. She's amazing. She's like a mathematician, a musician, a rock climber. Uh has been a a politician and of course was a UFC fighter and is an osteopath in England, which is different from being an osteopath elsewhere. And basically a a spinal doctor, not like a chiropractor doctor, but a spinal doctor. Yeah, like she's an actual MD or whatever it is over there. So, yeah, so it's very fortunate to have a friendship with her. And but yeah, and and that's also was part of it, you know, I wanted to compete until I was about 65. That was like the dream plan. But then realizing I had to change my mindset also led to me becoming a much better instructor. I had to much more embrace that and it's like, not about trying to beat your students or do this, but now it's great when I see them doing things I would have never have dreamt doing. And that's you know, both a very lucky that the community that's coming to my gym. I have I have one woman who studies black holes at at Goddard. I even asked her, I was like, why are you doing this? You actually use your brain. What does she do Jiu-Jitsu or does she do the striking programs? She does Judo. All right. Well, I mean, Judo's got a significant risk of concussion. There's absolutely is a risk. Um, you know, I got my cauliflower ear of three months into it. My friend Nick threw me in a headlock. I've got one ear drained nine times, the other seven and I just stopped. I was like, I don't have to learn it. I'm so whatever. Um, my mom wasn't happy, but I told her, the object of life is not to die with a pretty corpse. Uh, I was very lucky to learn I went to Georgetown's Judo club shortly after I got my blue belt in Jiu-Jitsu to cross train, realizing like, I really had to learn some good stand up. Also, I I fought mixed martial arts. I was like, you know, pulling guard is not exactly a thing you can do in that or is it smart? And we the first month there, your beginner's class was two hours of break falls. That was it. Over and over and over again. And so you do things like break falls and mitigate risk, but just like, you know, I actually had after talking at your, there you go, book out here. Um, Thank you for the plug. The check is in the mail. No, we're not getting. It's a fantastic it's a fantastic book. And you really there's nothing in life without risk. So, you know, you when you go even go to a Jiu-Jitsu tournament, you sign a waiver saying there's a possibility you might die. And I understand that and living in Maryland, if you ever come visit, there's a much greater possibility you'll be killed by a driver here because they're lunatics. It's like Mad Max. So, you know, there is that risk, but you can mitigate some of it. Kind of like a block doesn't eliminate the impact, but it mitigates. Yeah. When I think about risk, people always just think of the risk of dying. But I think a much more frightening risk actually is the risk of disability. And this is driven home to me. I I used to do a lot of pretty extreme white water kayaking. People will argue that the expeditions that I do now are are extreme as well, but they're extreme in a different way. And I remember listening to one guy who was a paraplegic or quadriplegic who had specialized in running waterfalls. And he said, you know, I always was okay with dying, but I was not okay with the idea of living the rest of my life in a chair. And that is in fact what happened. So we have to just think, so Yeah. That that's that's where the risk thing, the risk conversation gets hazy. Or that's one of the many areas in which the risk conversation gets hazy. What about the non-terminal events? I I can say, yeah, I'm willing to accept a 1% chance of death to achieve this goal. Sure. Yeah. But what about, you know, uh what about brain damage? Are you willing to, you know, have progressively shittier memory as the more you train? Are you willing to have a significantly higher chance of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's? Are you, you know, And that's terrifying to me. I'm not, you know, I've actually been on a plane that aborted a takeoff. Um, I've been on one that got that all the electronics failed. I've been held at knife point in two different countries and almost blown up by a suicide bomber. None of those scared me quite as much as Alzheimer's or dementia or like ALS. Those absolutely do terrify me. And as, you know, I I did a lot of kickboxing before I got into like Jiu-Jitsu and then MMA and I used to like to brawl until I realized that's really stupid. And I'm I boxed in college a little bit. And I also remember my coach, he goes, Josh, I'm going to give you a compliment, but it's not really a compliment. You got a really good chin. Your job is not to find out how good your chin is. So I changed a lot of my approach to fighting and then, you know, you read, I believe your brain shrinks between the ages of 30 and 40 by like 3 to 5% and you're much more susceptible to like CTE because of the bouncing around. And I realized, you know, for that, it's, you know, it's time for me to stop fighting and also like just being like my last fight, I felt like I was moving in molasses. As a rooster weight, your most important attribute is speed. And during I would always try to work takedowns when I was competing in Jiu-Jitsu, just like most of learning to learn how to defend myself and I'm not going to pull guard if someone tries to mug me or whatever. But as I kept competing, I was like, all right, you know, I could probably take down most normal people who have no idea what they're doing. I pull guard. And I let go of things. You know, I uh my last three Jiu-Jitsu competitions, when a guy went to throw me and I realized like, oh, this is I'm not going to stop it. I'll do everything I can to mitigate the damage. And to learn how to break fall properly. That's something I took from from uh from Judo. And that you're still taking the impact, but you learn how to mitigate it. And you have to be smart. Like at my first Jiu-Jitsu gym when we would spar, it was very it was it was common for people to get knocked out. And this is stupid. And then also like, even when at the the first boxing gym I went to after college, you definitely had the A side and the B side. And you were either a string of meat for the A side. And I also hated that. So I was like, you can learn to defend yourself and you can't eliminate all the risk because you never know if something's going to slip and smack you upside the head. But you can eliminate by regulating the intensity in the room and realizing that we're not here to beat each other. We are here to learn how to operate under duress. Now, if you're going to fight, I do think your first heavy pressure testing should be in the gym in a much more controlled environment where you can stop it. If we see that you, you know, you got your bell rung as opposed to in a fight where you're going to want to move through it. But you develop a culture and an appreciation that, you know, this is very real. I I describe the brain as a power bar in Street Fighter. And then um and in Street Fighter versus Capcom, you can regenerate if you swap your characters out, but not all the way. You might get hit. Every little blow to the head whittles away at that life bar. It might recuperate a little bit, but not completely. So be aware, you know, be aware of where your power bar is. And I definitely, I always stuttered a little bit or tripped over my words. I definitely do it a little bit more now. Now I have a horrible memory. Um, I have terrible eyesight. I have I got my eyesight got broken in my second amateur fight and then I fought through it happened in the second round. I ended up finishing the whole fight. And the doctor was like, you didn't know your vision go blurry. I said, yes. The moment these came off, I So, yeah, Well, it you you have you have a good chin. You have a good heart. Check. And now let's not rely on that anymore. I think that's a really good insight. Yeah, you know, because I do want to enjoy. Like I'd like to be able to to read books when I'm 90 and then go out and do things. Like, you know, I understand I won't be in the same physical condition, but hopefully willingly. Like my grandmother made to 107. The last seven years of her life, she was kind of floating in space, but she was still able to have discussions. And, you know, my dad, he retired from um Goddard when he was 76. He said, I've just not quite mentally fast enough to do it. But he still reads and stays abreast of scientific research and enjoys it. And that's where I'd like to be. You mentioned cross training. Yes. And uh, you know, we earlier we were talking about instructors trying to limit the transmission of information between students, right? The the truth has to come from the instructor and go down and they don't want you to learn from each other. I can only imagine this is amplified when you're now talking about training at different places. Now you're not only sharing information, you're sharing information and learning information from people outside the school. And that's even way worse. Now you're And your instructionals. Like they actually are big on my my um my initial sort of my fundamental game. You know, I was like, oh, here's another way of learning it. But did you tell your instructor about it? It was just so aggravating. I don't know why I stayed around with this guy. It was like having an abusive girlfriend. The sex might be great, but it wasn't worth any of the headaches before or afterwards. Brilliant at Jiu-Jitsu. You know, it was like, this isn't 1400s feudal Japan. No one's going to die on the battlefield because they know my omoplata setup. Absurd. This, you know, I started in 2002. There's, you know, the internet was just getting into its uh I guess you could say its adolescence. And he would throw fits. I remember I brought a couple books in and he was like, why do you need these books? Just take a private lesson with me. So I think part of it was these instructors of way they're threatening their income because, you know, private lessons were a big thing. And then just insecurity. And I'm like, I realized early on, I encourage all my students to cross train. I don't actually outside of just my diplomas, I don't have anything that indicates even what school I'm under at my gym because I want anyone to be able to come in and train. Like I don't charge a mat fee for anyone who's training at another gym already. I figure they're already supporting the ecosystem. And someone's information is more important to me than 20 bucks. And so, you know, he threw a fit the first time I brought a book in. It was like, this is strange to me. Make a pile. Burn all the books here. Yeah, like liberal conspiracy. Like it's it it it it was the beginning of the back of my mind of like, oh, this is not healthy. Because no one knows everything. I'll I'll admit in front of the all of my students, I don't know the answer to this. I'll try to find out. You know, and something that's actually helped me as I'm running for uh a local political office. I'm told people, I don't have the answer, but I'll try to find out or direct you towards someone who can assist you in what you're trying, you know, to do. And so I thankfully that culture has changed. But yeah, I mean, I had a I went to a friend's gym who was training at Evolve Gym, um Mike Moses, who's I think he's a fifth degree at this point or might even be sixth degree. He's old school. Like he started in the mid '90s. Um with uh the who the Kikuchi brothers or I'm going to butcher their names. I'm very bad with names. And I got yelled at. He goes, you're giving our secrets away. I'm like, what secrets? We're rolling and we all and Maryland's a very small state. So we all see each other's games anyway. I think a lot of this secrecy in that older generation comes from two things. Number one, you're right that private classes, privates were a huge source of income for these instructors. I remember going to one school when I was just beginning and asking how to stop an arm bar. And the answer was grow shorter arms, which is kind of funny. Yeah. But the the reality was, it was actually a sales pitch to go and take a private and pay the guy 100 bucks to learn how to defend arm bars. Man, I'm not currently paying for your school, but if I was training at your school, I would leave. Like, what am I paying dues for if you're just going to try and hit me up for a private class? And the other thing is, North Americans underestimate the importance or the the sort of central uh the central importance of how of team competition trophies, right? If you were it didn't matter if your individual fighters won or lost really as much as whether your team did well. So it was this Jiu-Jitsu team versus that other Jiu-Jitsu team. And anything you could do to make your team a little bit better and not let the other team have the slightest bit of an advantage was huge. And would not be answering your student's questions? Like it's it's bizarre. It was like one hand fighting the other when you're grip fighting. It it's it's it it is very strange. You know, I actually got to train with Carlson twice before he died. He did a, you know, and we asked about triangle chokes. So his solution was we started in a locked in triangle. The person on bottom could only try to finish the choke and the other person had to get out and you weren't allowed to tap. It was absolutely moronic. I got choked unconscious three times, which I probably should have completely stopped after the first, but you know, the instructors are you come from a traditional martial arts background. Your instructor is damn near a god. So you just did it. And we kind of figured it out, but like, could have saved us some time at least, all right, well, here's the things you need to look out for and not just be tough. And that, you know, that that tough guy attitude was such a huge uh aspect of early Jiu-Jitsu. Carlson Senior, Yeah. was a really pivotal figure in the history of Jiu-Jitsu. And the training, like I said earlier, the training method that he introduced was light years beyond the training method that existed beforehand. And the guy was a very warm person. I met him a couple of times. And the guy was a legit fighter, both in Jiu-Jitsu and in MMA. He was arguably the most successful Gracie fighter ever. And he also wasn't a great instructor. It's funny this guy who formed this lineage, uh would he would teach, but he wasn't a gifted instructor. And I feel like I'm going to get a lot of hate there, but I I mean, all credit where credit's due. Jiu-Jitsu in North America would not be the same or in Brazil would not be the same without Carlson. But he wasn't a great instructor. At all. And, you know, and that's not necessarily a knock. What my impression, also reading Robert Drysdale's book, was that he was very good at putting the pieces together for people to be successful without him having to be the guide to it, which in some ways is almost a precursor to like what maybe the I'm someone's going to yell at me, the ecological method or like situational sparring, but like just but introducing or getting people together that are willing to put the hard work in. Like for as much as you have to do situational sparring and these other things and situation and positional work, at some point you do got to just start paddling. As you describe it, like when you're when you're tapters, like at some point you just got to get up the river. And he was very good at getting people together and motivating them to go up the river. Like, you know, you talk to everyone, they would have died for Carlson. Yeah. Up until they had their gigantic split and he lost his entire team. Yeah. And now they're finally, you know, they they in in, you know, after his death, you know, there was sort of a warming from from from from the split, but he knew then like how to get it together. And it's not saying he wasn't putting together fantastic lessons, but he put together an infrastructure for success to happen, which you could also be an excellent instructor, but if you also then don't put in the uh the scaffolding uh for people to advance their own abilities, then your instruction also then doesn't matter. So I I wouldn't take that as a knock and you know, I agree with you. Someone's going to have a conniption fit and they should probably go outside and touch some more grass. But yeah, I mean, but you know, on that note, you talk to any good instructor. I'll say it's an over generalization. All of them should want their students to be able to beat them at some point. So shouldn't you want your students to become better instructors than you were at some point? I sure as hell hope that I already all these two of my black belts, I think are better instructors than I. I love going to their classes. I sure as hell hope everyone who wants to teach from my lineage is much better than I am and whatever I could do to help facilitate that, that I feel that's my obligation. Yeah. Uh one of the very early proponents of cross training was Dan Inosanto, who was in the Bruce Lee lineage. He's one of the few people that Bruce Lee certified to teach. And uh Dan Inosanto has described a martial artist consisting of the techniques, the training methods, and then to some extent the training equipment and the training environment. And what we're talking about here is less the techniques and more the training methods and the training environment. And if you can create that, then especially in the internet era, the techniques, they don't take care of themselves, but what's the point of showing the perfect technique? The let's say there's the absolute perfect way to do the arm bar that works for everybody. It doesn't exist, but let's pretend. And you're going to show this, but you're not going to have sparring. What's the point of it? You might as well not teach it in the first place. Or what's the point of it if your training environment is, you know, a I don't know, on concrete or only consists of white belts. Now you're only ever because the training environment is so toxic that anyone above white belt takes off and goes trains in another school. You're not going to produce any champions even with your absolutely perfect arm bar technique. You won't produce anything. You know, you'll produce injuries and maybe medical bills. It's you know, and this is Medical bills, what are those? I'm Canadian. Can you explain? That's cute. Um, asking in two weeks when my health insurance might go up over 200%. Um, Really? It's called American. Um, so I mean, get on. So as part of the the Republican um CR bill that was passed uh 10 months ago, it pretty much defunds the ACA and gets rid of the health care subsidies. are not a good solution to the health care because we're we actually have regulation or we have a single payer system like Canada does. But all the the um the ACA supplemental payments are going away in what's today, the 15th, 14th. are going to go away in about 14 days. Which means Merry Christmas. Yeah, it's going to be fantastic. Um and so our health insurance could skyrocket. I could go from paying right now I'm paying uh 200 something bucks a month. It could be about a thousand. It's it depends. Maryland is fortunately we have some funds insulated, but yeah, so that that's that's its own can of worms. The health care in this country is a complete joke. But so, where is what I would say I differ from like say a very strict ecological approach or like figure it out approach. I I believe like say we'll take the arm bar example from mount. All right, I'm going to find a way to separate the arms. I pivot off keeping the arm between. My hips are a lever pulling it back and all that. I do believe it's good to show like just how you when you're learning to bicycle, this is how you stay on and do it. But as you do it, you're already learning a million things you couldn't explain, right? If you had to think about walking, you would you would die of old age before you move one leg because thousands of instructions had to go from your brain to your to your to your muscles. So you're still going to do some exploratory learning even as you're doing it step by step. But I think by showing people, this is where you're starting, this is where you're going to, this is what it looks like at the end. And here's a couple ways to do that. And then go say, all right, here's our situation. You make it increasingly more and more um uh dynamic. I guess it could be a good word for that. That's how you then build that curiosity or build that problem solving ability that's so necessary in a combat situation. Yeah, it's it's funny how ideological some people get and this is my way is the only way, whichever that way is, whether it's uh somebody you know, arguing that their magic curriculum is the best, whether it's somebody arguing that, you know, no curriculum is best and they're the only people who are right. It's this ideological certainty, which is which is But this sport does attract crazy people. There's good crazy and there's bad crazy, but I don't think that the cross section of people who've stayed who've spent any time in this sport is is very normal. There's a lot of neurodiversity in this sport. Oh, yeah, I combat sports attracts damaged people. Whether we are intellectually damaged, emotionally, like I'm present company included. I was in therapy from the time I was in first. Speak for yourself. I'm so alpha that any trauma just rolls off of me. You're you're you're you're in development then, which is excellent. It's good to be learning. So but, you know, for me, part of it, I was like, I guess maybe next to my ADD, I would be exceptionally bored if I was still teaching the way I was even two years ago, let alone 10 years ago. That to me, especially like, you know, at some point, a 20-year-old white belt, practically even if they're the same size as me, will just beat the brakes off of me. I'll be 65, 70 years old. There really won't be anything I could do about that. Reason old animals die in the wild. But I should be able to instruct them better. And, you know, that to me is sort of that that that cognitive curiosity that should be in any instructor. How do I continue to improve my way of relaying information? Because otherwise, I might as well just go back to doing forms and doing something without thinking. Because then eventually you're just teaching without thinking. And there's no like, when I was a a classroom teacher, I had to do reflections on every single lesson. Like what went right, what went wrong, how can I improve it? So one of the first things I started doing when I started coaching fighters, as soon as we got off the mats or the cage or the ring, what are three things that went right, one thing to fix. I really wouldn't care if they got leveled or they knocked the guy out in 10 seconds. Maybe you could have done a better mental warm-up in the back. Maybe you But to always have that reflective piece put in and I learned a lot from that. Sometimes it was like, you know what? You rushed me through this or this was really good. I appreciate what you did here. And having enough ego or enough loss of ego to accept that. You know, like it says this this sport attracts a lot of people who get threatened if there's and I don't like the word challenge because it's not like I'm going to fight you over your idea, but anything that gives resistance to their way of doing things. Yeah. Uh I don't know, that to me has always been crazy. Like, don't you just want to get better? I suppose there's also the aspect of financial threat, right? If if if some blue belt is busy telling the students a better way to drill finishing the arm bar, then what's your role here as the instructor? I facilitate that. You know, Right, right. But but there is a financial threat element there unless you flip the script, which it sounds like you're doing, and you become your role is partially to teach, but partially to create to this curated environment in which you're facilitating more than one person teaching the material. Yeah, because I don't know everything. I have I have one of my um very good friends, he's injured. He's a Pedro Sauer black belt who's now under me. I gave him his very first Jiu-Jitsu lesson and he has a very different approach to teaching than I do. He's much more of a bit of a traditionalist and just the way he explained things and that really works well for people. Like I've got my guy Teddy is an amazing instructor. And I like to think I'm pretty decent and it's fantastic. I give him like what I have is a curriculum. And I have timelines. Like this month is our theme. This is what we do. But I tell all my instructors, as long as it's within the theme of what we're teaching, you have carte blanche to how you teach your classes. Give me an example of a theme. So this month is self-defense. So like I do like as goofy as it is, you know, anytime someone throws a headlock on you, you can really get hurt because you're your neck. So headlock defense, getting out of there. How do I block punches? Um, I do um conflict de-escalation. I was trained in the MAN system when I I worked in mental health for five and a half years. So sometimes we'd have to restrain kids. And it was always first to try to de-escalate, get people calm down. So we teach that like body language. This is very different than this. Like how you present yourself. So we do that. This up versus hands up. And I give once a week my my lecture on knives. Hand over whatever it is. You can't be replaced. If they ask for something and have a weapon, throw it and run. You know, there's there's my self-defense. Learn how to sprint for 100 yards. Because, you know, I studied knife fighting for three years with a first generation Filipino family. And we're doing like some knife disarms and the guy goes, okay, okay, we're going to be very clear here. Someone's going to die here. Someone's going to die to the hospital. These things are for show. And this is what this guy makes his living on. He's like, you know, so we do that like how do you like not just mount escape, all right, now we either slap at each other, we put the gloves on and we, you know, some control like again, I'm not trying to concuss anyone. No one should be going home with headaches. But all right, what does it feel like to do this when someone's trying to hit you? What does it feel like trying to get away when someone's trying to hit you or take them down and control you? And, you know, my at least my personal hierarchy is like if I'm on bottom, get up. If I can't do that, sweep and then get up. And the third is to go for a submission because I'm just physically attached to your body in a chaotic situation. That's not necessarily the best thing. Um, one of my students is an Army Ranger. He goes, 90% of their Jiu-Jitsu is just how to access their handgun and make space. They, you know, he's like, if we I'm not rolling around with all this gear on trying to throw a triangle up. It's not going to happen. And he happens my um my my friend Austin happens to be a ridiculously good grappler. But he's like, in a combat situation, I'm not doing all that. I'm getting out and I'm going to shoot you or get up and my friend's going to shoot you. Like, just tactical awareness and I go on to like, you know, I was a uh a volunteer coach at the Naval Academy for 12 years and also at University of Maryland. They have a Jiu-Jitsu club. I was there for about 10 years and six years, six, seven years ago, a girl there died because someone roofied her drink. You know, self-defense. If you're especially a woman, you're out, you're drinking is not in sight and is not physically being held by someone you know, that's not your drink when you get back from the bathroom. You know, so we that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, and it's funny all these self-defense techniques that are taught with total disregard to the legal implications. Like, okay, I sure, somebody comes at you with a knife and is trying to kill you and you kill them. Okay, cool. You deal with the legal implications after. Yep. But the legal implications of you and me getting in a fist fight and me, quote, winning the fist fight by cold cocking you, but then your head hitting the pavement and the pavement's a lot harder than my fist. And the planet's a lot bigger than Stefan Kesting. You know, that's me going to jail for 17 years. Yeah, and knowing that like self-defense in Maryland, the law is equal or lesser force. Now, because I I actually took a law course in high school. It was really and the guys was 1993. This is right when Tyson just got out of jail and he actually lived in in Potomac, Maryland for a little bit. Fun fact, played against him in Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat at the local arcade. No one ever beat him. Really? Who in their right mind was going to beat Mike Tyson at an arcade game? But all right, we get into a fist fight. He punches me and I die, which is a distinct possibility. He's probably is going to face risk because of who he and why he is. You know, a knife and a gun are are lethal modifiers. But that's also why I teach like self-defense is going home and being safe, not going to the hospital or the morgue. It's not winning a fight. Winning is going home to your family or your dog. You know, that that's not, you know, getting home safe. Because yeah, people go, I'm going to do this. I'm going to gouge his eyes out and chop his throat and stomp in his spine. I'm like, maybe you just get the guy off of you and tell him, hey, you need to calm down. Maybe you don't want to gouge out your uncle's eyes. But people talk about, you know, and I talk about and I've been very vocal about the pathologies within the Jiu-Jitsu ecosystem. And they exist. But then you start looking up at some other martial arts, uh I mean, the Filipino martial arts, which I have an instructorship in and I've spent a lot of time in and I've done full contact stick fighting and I've done, you know, knife sparring and I've trained with live knives. And some of the people in there are downright psychotic. Like they're giggling as they're talking about the anatomy of how you're going to dismember your opponent like Jack the Ripper. Uh and like the so the ethical component of cutting a human being into pieces is completely and utterly glossed over. Let alone the legal implications of fully butchering somebody. So it Ethically. Holy shit, does everything We don't have to turn this into like something that's going to go before the Geneva Convention. Yeah. Well, most people are nuts and also some of the traditional I'm going to just 20 just start stomping the crap out of the guy. Like, and also one thing that also changed my mind was an old video on LiveLeak. A guy got attacked in a garage and the guy who got attacked was a Jiu-Jitsu guy. Throws the guy, goes right for an arm bar. While he's getting his arm broken, the guy takes a knife out and just guts him. You know, it's like, the more you get into a violent confrontation, the more chance it is that you're going to die there or in jail. You know, I I train with this Krav guy and we're going through this thing and his friends come up. So my friend Chris O'Connor, who's a really good fighter, he's actually got introduced me to Stephen Kofler. He goes, why don't I have friends? Maybe we should talk about this. Why am I always the person alone? Why is it always a group of friends coming at me? Maybe you need to work on your social skills before you worry about fighting. Or maybe you should go to that absolutely insane team MMA competition that they have in in Europe. Oh, god. Which Which I mean, that's I mean, that's cool. I think it's cool. MMA is a guilty pleasure for me at this point. And that European or Eastern European, Russian stuff, like, holy shit, it's informative, but man, oh man, that's that's next level of insanity. Yeah, that's a bit more I've done some crazy stuff in my life. That's like I'm fascinated to watch because it's a like you quickly see like the moment it's goes from from three on three to three on two. Oh, yeah. This is why running is always a good option. Yeah. Yeah, remember the first martial artist who was talking to me about running being part of martial arts training. And I I thought he was talking about conditioning, but he wasn't talking about conditioning. He was talking about the 100-yard sprint to be able to get the hell out of a situation. Worth training. No, it's I I so I do the same warm-ups. I don't do a I don't do like, you know, you probably when you first started Jiu-Jitsu, it was like these 30-minute warm-ups and you're absolutely blasted at the end. I quickly realized I can't learn when I'm that tired. So, you know, I prefer doing drills or movements, something that reinforces a movement or a motion. But my warm-ups for for self-defense month are all break falls and running. Know how to fall. Like I literally how to fall has literally saved my life once from almost falling off a mountain when I was skiing. And I was able to stop myself from going off a 5,000-foot drop. And one of my friends got thrown off a motorcycle at 30 miles an hour. He tucked, rolled, needed stitches, but no broken bones. You know, knowing how to that's also part of self-defense. That's the most important thing you'll ever learn from me. Even if you're with me for 20 years, is how to fall. And I hope that's the most important thing you ever learn. That's not going to be like how to fight. How do you modify your break falls for concrete? Because the standard Judo method of distributing the force across as wide a body area as possible, slapping with an outstretched arm, I'm not convinced, like obviously the rolling, forward roll, back rolls, yes, 100%. Your friend from the motorcycle with the motorcycle is a good illustration of that. There's lots of other examples of that. But in terms of your your your about to hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Yeah, so, um, oh god, so this was now maybe I think I was I was a blue belt, but I um I got a little drunk with some of my friends. We decided we were going to like play fight in the back and I did a break fall on gravel. I ended up spending two hours in the ER with them picking it out of my arms. I don't teach the slap anymore. I was like, what are the most important parts of a break fall? Distribution of force and stopping your head from smacking the ground. So, for all the like the back break fall, I just teach to hug yourself. And you tuck and it might suck, but I'm I am not and again for the internet world, it is just me. I am not going to say I know better than Jacare, Kano or anyone else, but to be slapping on the ground just seems as a easier way to hurt yourself, especially with all the small bones in your wrist and your fingers. Like, there's some stuff like if I'm going to fall forward, I need my I'd rather have my arms hit than my face. Still sucks. Or a side fall, I'd rather like hug and not have to slap the ground. So I've for the kids, I was found a lot easier because kids instinctively want to, you know, people we want to stick our hands out because we're stupid apes. I teach them not to do any of that, just to hug themselves because now they don't post. And you know, we saw what's the last weekend, um in the the the main event or co-main event of the UFC, a guy got his shoulder torn because he posted. Yeah. Yeah, I one thing I've been meaning to do, but haven't done yet, is take a look at skateboarders. If anybody falls on concrete a lot, it's skateboarders. And as a collective group, the amount of experience that they would have about falling on pavement. Now, falling on the sides of the bowl is would be a little bit different. But but I still wonder how much of that could be brought into self-defense. So that's an idle project for when I find myself with a spare week with nothing to do, which will probably be in 50 years. Fascinating. Yeah, because I guess one wear a helmet. Um, but you know, they I was but yeah, because they it'd be very interesting to get some slow motion video. Like to really see what the reactions are. Kind of like, you know, Oh, look, his forearms folding in half here. Oh, the bones are coming out. Oh. Because you watch a squirrel. Like, um, you know Mark Rober is? No. So, he um he worked on one of the Mars uh rovers. And then after he quit, he during the COVID quarantine here, he made an obstacle course. He's an engineer. He made an obstacle course for his squirrels that they could get like a you saw that. So, and he had the slow motion watching them how they would spin and orientate themselves. They could fall from almost any height and just live. So, it'd be interesting to see if they But that's that's also a a cross-sectional area to body weight ratio. Yes. Right? They don't have big cats are the same way. They, you know, they don't punch through the air the same way that that humans and elephants do. You you can have the elephant with the best spatial awareness in the world, drop them out of a cargo airplane and he's he's going to go splat. Sorry. You know, that actually talking to Kofler would be great about this because I, you know, as a stunt performer, you have to fall on irregular surfaces. You cannot do the slap because that looks ridiculous in a movie. Yeah. And also that maybe also a WWE people. Because they, I mean, for as scripted as it is, gravity's real regardless of the situation. And those are thin rings. Well, that's one opinion, uh Josh, gravity and science. I bet I bet you're also a round earth guy too. Yeah, I have two teachers at my gym who are kids have asked them if the world if the earth like high schoolers, if the earth is round. That's So, here's a fun story. I had uh Renato Laranja out for a seminar. Um, I actually still good friends with him. He's really funny and he's actually a really good instructor. Like he taught for about four and a half hours. And he knew that my dad was a physicist. He goes, I really want to beat your dad. I want I want to beat your dad. So I was like, oh, I don't like to my he's from New York. My parents are from New York. Like come over. So I brought him over for um brunch the day after the seminar and he's sitting there like just almost fidgeting. And finally, how do I convince my friend that satellites are real and the earth is round? My dad's not part of any of this shit. He doesn't never flat earth theory. He goes, what? He goes, yeah, my friend, you know, Eddie Bravo doesn't think it's real. He goes, if he thinks that, you probably can't convince him otherwise. Yeah. Well, that becomes when that becomes somebody part of somebody's core identity. And it really is. Like we're talking about Bravo or whoever. That is so much part of their core identity that to change that, I think intrinsically feels like like their life is threatened. Because if it's, you know, I'll change my opinions about some things. I'll change my opinion about, I don't know, whether chocolate ice cream is healthier than than vanilla ice cream. Because I don't really care. Yeah. But try and convince me, Stefan Kesting, that the earth isn't round and that all of science is a lie. That's core to my identity. That science as a overall process is real and worthwhile and brings us closer to the truth. Uh I would resist that. Well, anything. Like my instructor is the way. This is the way. This is my political affiliation. Like tribalism in human beings in general. Like it was a survival thing. Like and I get that to an extent. You know, we if we all get together, believe the same thing and we can support each other. We can defend each other when another tribe comes and raids us. But it is, you know, so horribly destructive. Now, like in Jiu-Jitsu, like thankfully Jiu-Jitsu has, I at least I feel begun to move a little away from the tribalism of like learning from other people. But when it comes to other aspects of life, it is so dangerous. Like you look at the left, we're talking before the show, like this purity test that some people have to have. If you don't believe every single one of these boxes, you're you might as well be a child rapist. You know, it's it's crazy how absorbed we get with that. And it's it's scary too because it's what leads to violence and what leads to like just animosity amongst people that would otherwise be able to just, you don't have to be friends, but at least get along and work towards common common solutions to things. I do try to model a couple of things. I try to model like you, saying, I don't know in situations when I don't know. And I try to be honest when I change my opinion on something. And I try whether it's dealing with my kids and trying to illustrate that, yeah, although I might know more than them, you know, I used to think this, but then I these facts came along and now I've changed my opinion. Or I don't know the answer to that or I was wrong. Whether it's dealing with my kids or dealing with, you know, firefighters at my hall or dealing with people that I train Jiu-Jitsu with. I think that's a really important thing to model. It's not easy because if you if you were wrong, you want to kind of cover that up so that nobody can ever find that out. And you get older too. Like I find myself, I'm not quite as mentally flexible as I was 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. But you know that and presumably you're having identified that as a potential issue, you can now try to course correct for it, which is better than not correcting for it. Yeah, I I try and I'm I'm sure I fail at it at times and because it's like one of those things that sometimes it's only apparent after the fact. Like, oh man, I really just discounted this idea or thing. Like, for example, I have a student who has 20 wins in competition with no Gi Ezekiel chokes. It's absolutely absurd. And I'm like, eventually, is it working? I mean, why do I care about it? Is he being an effective grappler? Evidently. He might be a one or two trick pony, but those tricks are working. So, I had to stop criticizing him for for going for those moves. I tell you, you know, you might want to learn how to do an arm bar or something to learn how to control someone. But hey, I I can't tell you no if it's working, you know, a great deal more than half the time. Well, and that's a sign of your maturity as a teacher that you're willing to accept data that's coming in. Like the no Gi Ezekiel choke is working. And that against people who are presumably doing everything in their power to stop it. Yeah, to stop it. Yeah, competition. Like he all as a blue belt, he almost got a black belt. Now the guy knew enough how to get out of it. He was like, he said, at the end, he goes, I almost had to tap to that crap. And I was like, god, I'm glad you didn't tap to that. At least it shows him that you might have to learn a bit more, but yeah, it was like, I even had to catch myself. I'm like, for a guy who has 10 times the experience, he gave him a run for his money. Just believing in himself and his, you know, you believe in your own bullshit sometimes. When you have an example like a blue belt who's making the no Gi Ezekiel choke work in competition to get in again and again and again. It is data. It does say that this is working. The dangerous, I suppose, is that that's a local maxima. This idea of you have a mountain range, you might have a little mountain beside a big mountain. And if you, you know, a technique like the no Gi Ezekiel, it's conceivable that gets you to the top of that little mountain. And to get to the taller mountain, you'd actually need to come down the slope between the two mountains. You'd need to train something else. You need to train arm locks or chokes or triangle chokes or heel hooks or whatever. And in that interim, your skill level's going to go down. You're going to actually descend in altitude before you climb the bigger peak. So that's there's possible that there are techniques or strategies that work for you in the short term that are actually impeding your progress in the long term. And that's why I try to present them. I was like, at some point, if everyone knows your trick, they're going to know how to they're going to won't even need to stop it. They're going to stop it before it becomes a thing. And, you know, he agreed with that. He's like, yeah, I'm going to try to learn it. Yeah, I'll tell you, to this guy's credit, he um tore his ACL two months ago. He had to have surgery. He still came in like two or three times a week and just watched classes. He's like, oh. And he would actually watch people doing things. No one really does what this guy does. But he's like watching things that are very different from his game to try to pick things up. I made an example of that in class. Like, you know, he couldn't train, he couldn't be on the mats, but he's still training. He's still still learning. Still learning. Cognitively engaged in Jiu-Jitsu. Amazing. Well, if people want to positively engage in Jiu-Jitsu with you, despite the fact that apparently you don't know everything that there is to know. How do they do that? I don't know a goddamn thing. I don't know what people are talking about. Um, so you can um at JPCPMMA is my Instagram page. Um, I should probably even know off the top of my head more of my social media handles. I'm I'm terrible at that. Um, you can reach out to me there. Um, JD Peters at Gmail. If you want to just email me, I will try to respond. I I try to get back to people. And if I don't know the answer, I'll make something up that sounds convincing. Um, those are probably the two best ways. And my school is Combat Principles in Maryland. Yes, my academy, Combat Principles MMA is in um Burtonsville, Maryland. And anyone's always welcome. Um, one thing that actually I was just talking to Kofler about yesterday. We're we're looking initially to start putting together a um a tournament and training session for trans athletes because they really tend to get demonized. And so we are going to look to put something together hopefully by this summer and hopefully with people within that community heading it up and we can help support them for something um later this summer. Amazing. Well, keep me posted about that. I'll help share it. Absolutely. And yeah, thank you thank you for having me on. It's been a fantastic discussion. It's been my pleasure. I'm a little side track. You're like, it's it's so cool like to actually just getting sit and pick the brain and talk to someone who was formative in my own Jiu-Jitsu journey. So, thank you. And well, thank you for pointing out that I'm old. Get the hell off my podcast. Go buy the book. Even though it's upside down. All right, I've never finished a podcast, but get the hell off my podcast, but let's