Ep. 380: Women Grow Gyms, feat. Livia Giles

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I just want to let you know, we released a new mindset course featuring Rob Bernaki from Island Top Team and BJJ Concepts. It's called Mindset for Betas. It's an amazing resource that breaks down a new way to build a resilient jiu-jitsu mindset. It's part of BJJ Mental Models Premium. I will spare you the full sales pitch because you can try it for free. Just go to bjjmentalmodels.com/beta. I will give you a free month, you can check out the course and if you decide that it's not worth your money, you can cancel, you won't have to pay a cent. I've already been told by subscribers that this is the most valuable piece of jiu-jitsu content they've ever received, so I hope you like it too. Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 380. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach and I'm back again with a returning champion, both in jiu-jitsu and on this podcast. I've got Livia Giles on the line. Livia, how's it going? Speaker 2: It's going really good. Thanks for having me again. Speaker 1: Always happy to have you. I was actually just speaking to Lochlan a few weeks ago on the podcast. So, always love to have you on here too. Now, you had a great topic that I think is extraordinarily important to discuss, but in case anyone wants to know your biography and maybe hasn't heard our earlier episodes, why don't you tell everyone just a bit about your journey in your life in the sport of jiu-jitsu? Speaker 2: Sure. So, I mean, at the moment, I'm I'm pretty much a retired mom of two, but uh but I have I've come into the sport quite late for this sort of generation standard, but I started jiu-jitsu at about 25 on background of being a competitive or elite gymnast for about 10 years, and then I switched to track cycling on the velodrome for about six years, after which I decided to stop trying to be an elite athlete and actually get education and earn some money like a proper adult. And I started doing a bit of jiu-jitsu just for fun, uh just to keep fit while I was doing my physiotherapy degree, ended up competing three months later, and it became my life. So, I'm actually a deregistered physio now as of uh quite recent and a life has pretty much become submeta, a gym Absolute MMA and and jiu-jitsu. So, yeah, I haven't competed since, oh, when did I compete last? I did ADCC trials that I didn't win after I had Walter, so probably about three years ago, four years ago. Yeah. So, now I'm coaching and and running the gym and training every day with, you know, Adele and Nadia. So, I feel like the training is still world-class, but yeah, I am a mom of two, so life has changed significantly. Speaker 1: On that note, you actually appeared on an audio documentary we produced with Emily Kwok called Mat Mums, talking about the intersection of motherhood and jiu-jitsu. And I just listened to your interview there recently and it was fascinating. I kind of feel like I've got an idea of of what you're up to, you know, between motherhood, and of course, running the gym, um and running Submeta, you're in a pretty interesting and unique position to unpack this topic that we want to talk about here today. But I will leave it to you. Why don't you introduce your thesis here, what you want to discuss and we can kick this off. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think a really interesting topic. I mean, to me, it's always interesting, but just given the background of everything coming out in the sport at the moment and having numerous discussions with people on how to make it a or jiu-jitsu space a good place for women to come and train and also how to make it better for competitors to make money and, you know, actually exist in the sport without having to have to have a full-time job if you are a world champion, just like the men do. But I think it's something that's, you know, myself, Adele, like a lot of the like Brianna when she was here, top-tier black belts have been kind of discussing lately, you know, oh, nothing's ever happened to me, but something has happened to nearly every single woman that has been in the sport for a little while. And I mean, you know, whether it's like sexual innuendo, harassment, being put down because of being a female, any of that sort of stuff, you just learn how to coexist with it and it's kind of normal and it's been normalized. And I think it's time we change it and and I think it's really interesting to talk about how we can change it and how to make the culture better rather than just, you know, talking about all the bad stuff that has been happening. Speaker 1: Absolutely. I think that the sport gets stronger the more we can bring people into it and the more we can make it an inclusive place where everyone can be a part of it. I've always said that if for no other reason, it's important to get women into your gym because just from a purely selfish perspective, if you're a gym owner, you can theoretically double your clientele if you can get as many women there as men. So, why you wouldn't take this seriously is beyond me. And that doesn't even get into ethical and moral and social concerns as to why you should do this, which I think are um probably enough justification right there and and of themselves. But I will maybe hand this back to you to talk about the experience of women in the gym. Of course, as someone who is a long-time participant and athlete and coach and also gym owner, you've seen this probably from every lens that one can see this through. My perspective, of course, I mean, I'm a I'm a guy, right? So, I will never see this through the same lens that you would. For the people listening to this who maybe have never experienced kind of the dark side of jiu-jitsu or at least have not experienced it firsthand, maybe they they don't quite understand the seriousness of it and how prevalent it is. What are your findings and what do you see from all of the athletes and the coaches that you talk to? Speaker 2: So much. I don't even know where to start, but look, I'll probably start off from the start. So, when I started, when did I start jiu-jitsu? Probably 15 years ago. I mean, I think it's a sport where there'll always be, unfortunately, less women than men, just because it's a combat sport and it I think just by nature it attracts more men. But when I first started, there was essentially no women, or it was very rare, you know, and I had to stand in the like front of the class and ask people if you are not a female, please don't go into the female toilets, because I would like open the door to get changed and there would be someone peeing in my toilet and just kind of annoyed that I'm walking into my own space. And I think the, you know, number one thing is like give women space to exist and they will come. Like that's, you know, even teaching seminars all around the world and sometimes people would ask me like, how can we increase the female participation? I'm like, you literally don't have a change room. I was told to wait for all the men to get changed so that I could get changed and like Locky would have to like stand and guard the door just in case someone walked into the male change rooms or there was like places with no doors on the toilet cubicles. And I'm like, how do you expect women to exist here if there's no space for us to exist? So, that's kind of like how I started. I had to compete against men in competitions, the local competitions, of course, not not the big ones, because there's no other women. And, you know, like I think when I was younger, I grew up with an older brother. I've apart from gymnastics, which is extremely female-dominated sports, uh sport, I grew up in track cycling, which is even more male-dominated. And I I was kind of one of the boys and I don't get offended very easily. But, you know, it's a game that you get sick of playing it as a woman. You just want to be accepted of who you are and not trying to be one of the boys all of the time. And that's something I've been realizing lately. So, I think to start off with, you know, you have to if you want more women in the space, I think you have to make space for women, whether it's building an extra change room, building an extra bathroom or toilet or shower, they will come if they have space. We had to, you know, like 15 years ago and say, hey, guys, don't take your pants off on the mats because there might be women or children here, or other men who might not want to see that, you know. So, it's coming down from changing the culture. So, that's like on the smaller level when you're first getting into the sport. But then when we talk, so I'm not talking about competition yet, but when we're talking about your club culture and you look at who might want to start the sport, and there's generally two, I think it's the men, it's very similar, but women generally want to start for either self-defense or just to do a fun sport, you know. And I I think more women want to just do a fun sport and keep fit. And there's some that want to start it for self-defense and it's extremely intimidating to walk into a place when there's either no other women or they're not welcomed. And they're really less likely to stay. So, you know, that's something you have to be wary of. There's different personalities and they see even if the beginners, and I think it's with the men as well, right? They see a no-gi class and it's full of, you know, young 20-year-old guys with their muscles bulging under the rash guard. They have no idea if these are beginners or intro students. It just looks intimidating. And I think for us having women as coaches or even on reception in leadership roles, it's completely changed that. Like even I used to teach intro classes when I was pregnant and I could see sometimes some younger guys would be a little bit disappointed to walk into my class that I was the instructor, but I would just do things like, isn't it cool that I'm like pregnant and half your body size and you cannot escape my side control? Because it works, you know? Like if I went into a striking class, you could probably even with no technique, you could probably punch me in the head and and knock me out. But with jiu-jitsu, you know, I would say to them, stick at it for eight to nine months and you'll probably escape because you're 100 kilos and I'm 50. But right now, we're sparring and you can't beat me because you don't know the technique. And it's pretty cool. And they would be like, oh, yeah, actually it is. It's pretty badass, you know. So, I think like having women as coaches just makes it like I think at our gym anyway, at St. Kilda, I'm kind of like it's just kind of normal to see women coaching classes. I've never felt that I've had anyone go, oh, it's they might do it behind my back. I don't know. But, you know, if it's Adele or myself or any other women teaching a class, I don't think anyone's ever said, oh, no, you know, it's women teaching. I've never had that experience. And I think it's really, obviously, the person has to be qualified for the job, but I think it's a massive game changer if you have a student that is good enough or high level enough to teach mixed classes, not just kids and women. That is also important, but I think mixed classes is is the most important thing. Speaker 1: Something that you touched on there a few times is, you know, a concept that you could actually pull from another passion of mine, user experience design and human interaction studies. They talk a lot about the idea of affordances, which is a term that has a lot of meaning before all of the eco guys stole it and co-opted it for their purposes. But in the context of design, an affordance is a property of something that intuitively tells you how to engage with it and interact with it. And by carefully placing affordances, if you're trying to design something or even persuade someone, you can make your message resonate a lot clearer and you're more likely to steer people where you want them to go. Again, that's the whole purpose of affordances when you talk to eco people and CLA coaches. It's what are the the signals and cues that are intuitively obvious that will lead to people just going in the right direction. And many times when we talk about, okay, how do we bring in a different demographic into the gym? Where people think about is, okay, do I need to publish a manifesto or a code of conduct? I mean, all of that stuff can help. But sometimes it's the little things, it's the affordances. And one of them, for example, that I hear from so many people is, do you have a dedicated women's changing room? That might sound obvious, but if you don't, that's a huge problem. And there's a lot of little affordances like that, not even just related to women, but to making your gym a more diverse place. I had a a guest on quite a while ago, Adam Medlock. He's a special educator from the UK and a black belt in jiu-jitsu. And he specializes in working with students on the spectrum. And something that he talked about is, look, little things that you or I might just be able to overlook, like loud noises or that obnoxious light bulb that's flickering and you haven't bothered to replace it yet. To you or me, that's a nuisance. But if someone is on the spectrum, that might be so distracting that they just can't focus on the actual training. And so, it's all well and good to say, hey, we're welcoming to all demographics and to all different types of people and we love to have more people like you in the gym. Everyone says that. But what have you really done? What have you really signaled to the students in your room that there actually are going to be, you know, there is going to be welcoming to people like you when you come there. What has the gym done to show that it's accommodating? And one of the most obvious things is, do you have women's facilities? If you don't have a women's change room, your ability to get women training at the gym is going to be almost zero right out of the bat, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. I mean, you wouldn't, I don't know, I just don't understand. You wouldn't go into a lifting gym and have nowhere to get changed and expect to stay. Like it it's just such a basic thing. And I understand that there's limited space and it costs money. But, you know, even at our gym, of course, we've got less space in the women's change room and less showers and less toilets than men because there's less of us. So, you have to be strategic in how to use your space and make it work for you. So, you know, you have enough mat space and so on. But I think not having a space at all to exist, you're just not going to get the members or it would be extremely hard to anyway. Speaker 1: Now, something else that my coaches said, and in fact, she might have even said it on that chat that you had with her, Emily, she's always talked about how getting women into leadership roles at the gym is one of the easiest ways to get more women into the gym, which intuitively makes sense. If you have someone who represents you at the head of the class, it's going to show that you're not the first person to walk this trail. One of the most intimidating things about being a human being is being the first person to try something and worrying about, okay, is this a place for me? How am I going to be judged or perceived? But if someone else has already done it and succeeded, then that's a signal to you that, oh, I can do this because it's already been done. It's not that scary. It's clearly possible. It's clearly normal. So, I have a path that I can follow rather than having to forge it my own. And getting women to the front of the room is such a key factor there. How do you do that though? Because there is a bit of a chicken and an egg problem. You in order to make this happen, you need to cultivate an environment where women train and then elevate them up and let them get experience and evolve into those coaching roles. But that's hard to do if you don't have women in the gym at the first place. So, how do you tackle that problem if you're a gym owner and you want to really make a difference here? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, it is a hard one. We're lucky enough that we have so many black, brown belt women at our club to train with that are excellent technically. So, we don't have that issue, but obviously we started off, we started when I was, I think, a blue belt or a purple belt and everyone else was white belt. So, I used to coach classes as a purple belt. That's a little bit more difficult these days. It really depends where you are. You know, we usually don't, we wouldn't have many, if any, coaches in a permanent role, like not a fill-in role if you're a purple belt, just because we have abundance of very high-level brown and black belts. But I think, so, in the end, you do have to get the best person for the job, but in that case, I would probably start a women's-only class, which, look, I understand both ways. I had a period of when we first started, we had women's class and it was like a comp class and I just wanted everyone to cross-train, everyone was welcome, and it did open the door for women to start training. It turned into a little bit of a trap where there was a lot of women coming through and only coming once a week to the 45-minute women's class, which is not the outcome we wanted. We wanted women to, you know, it's a little bit easier to join up if there's just women teaching. We have between 5 and 20 women on the mats at any given class at night. So, I don't feel like it's something we need to do every day. I don't want to segregate women from men. I want the women to feel confident to be able to integrate and join in. And so, for a period of time, we would have all these like brown and black belt women come in to try to help out the newer girls, but the newer girls then wouldn't integrate. And I see that's that wasn't the purpose. So, for a time being, I actually stopped running the women's classes. I had babies and there was no one sort of that was available to take over. But when I came back, what I noticed is that we had lots of women, but they didn't really know each other. Everyone was like kind of training at different times. And what got really tricky is when I was a competitor, everyone else was competing. We all, this was before COVID, we had all these higher belts that we all traveled together. There was probably about five of us. We all traveled together, competed at Worlds, Abu Dhabi, everywhere together. And it really lifted all the white and blue belts coming through to do the same. And we were like a really big, strong female team. When COVID happened and everyone had babies, when we came back, there was no sort of leader that took over that role and there was not a lot of high-level competitors. And so, it made the women a little bit scattered, not knowing each other. I think also there's something a little bit strange that sometimes happens with women when they don't roll with women a lot, is that they're very, very competitive and the rolls can be very hard between the girls, which makes it a little bit unfun. So, my goal after coming back from having babies was to like, you know what? I'm going to start the women's class again, not necessarily as a competitive thing, but we have a space to exist. We then I teach the next class, which is a mixed class. We have open mat and we go out for dinner. We go and get wine, we go out for dinner and have that team feeling again that's not necessarily because I can't travel and compete anymore, at least all the time. But you don't have to have that to have a very cohesive and and strong team feeling. Because in the end, well, I think most people do jiu-jitsu because of that. Even if you're a world champion, if it's not fun and you're not earning money, I like, why would you do it? There's better ways to spend your time, right? Like if you're not having any fun. And I found that just like starting the women's class again, just once a week, just kind of keeps us all together a little bit more. Everyone's having a bit more fun. Everyone's welcomed and included to go out for dinner or drinks afterwards. It doesn't happen every week, but it does happen. And I think that's actually been a huge game changer for the culture for our club as well. And then the other side of it, during our pro sessions, we have a pretty, especially when Adele is in town, we have a pretty strong girls group that trains as well. And that's but they're the competitors. So, you know, they I think the motivations are slightly different. We we come in every day and train pretty hard to win world championships. So, but it is important that everyone gets along and has fun with that as well. But yeah, look, I think if your club is not in the position to have higher-ranked females, pay someone money external to come in and teach a class once a week. Spend the money, spend the whatever you pay them, 100, 150 dollars an hour to come in and teach a women's class or have a woman teach a mixed class. And I think that might pay like if, yeah, that might pay off in a yearly memberships or, you know, if it's a cost, I think it'll pay off in other ways from more people joining up. That's my thoughts. That's not proven, but I think that works. Speaker 1: Now, you talked about mixed classes, which is always an interesting discussion. It is likely the case that if you offer a mixed class, then it will create a degree of comfort that will make people who otherwise wouldn't be willing to try jiu-jitsu at least get their foot in the door. But at the end of the day, it's inherently a segregated approach. And I think for a variety of reasons, that shouldn't be the optimal case. I think though, that there are a lot of lessons we can learn here about how to get people in the door and understanding that the goals for someone who's just come in the door are very different from the goals of a person who has committed to making this a part of their life. And you've got to know your audience here. You also talked about fun. Way too many people in the sport treat jiu-jitsu like the most serious thing in the world and it only matters if you're doing it as a high-level competitor and everyone else is a joke. And I think that's such a dumb approach. I think the power of jiu-jitsu is that it is something pretty much everyone can get value out of. The problem is though, if you put jiu-jitsu in front of someone who really doesn't have that much exposure to it and they haven't already bought into the process and you really turn them off in the first few classes, you lose the ability then to show that person all of the benefits that they could get out of this if they stuck around. So, I think you need to have a different approach when you're bringing people in the door versus people who have already made that commitment to stay around. And I think that applies not just to to women to getting them into the door and maybe there is a benefit to having a women's-only class just as an intro or to get people past that initial comfort phase. I think the same thing applies to pretty much any type of white belt though. If you bring in people and your room is just a room full of killers and every round is a death match and you're subjecting day one white belts to that, I think that's wildly irresponsible and actually bad for the development of your business as well. Speaker 2: 100%. We've got, I mean, we've got an intro program for beginners and that's like designed for your first, I think, nine classes and it's literally, you know, first lesson is like double-leg takedown to side control to mount, mount to fast armbar. So, it's not a lot of detail, but we kind of run through every major position. So, once they go into a fundamentals class, they kind of have an idea of what they're doing. Like, why am I on the ground? What am I meant to be doing? Oh, I'm under mount. I should escape and not push someone off, you know. So, it's exactly the same. And it's it is extremely intimidating to walk into a class of 40 people where you're, you know, I think generally if you have brown, black belts helping, that's not the problem. But if you have newer white belts or blue belts trying to go for the kill, it it yeah, you get lost and you get lost in the system. No one knows your name. It's not necessarily fun to be beat up every day for for a year. So, yeah, 100% agree. You need an in if you are a bigger club. I think if you're a smaller club, it's it's a little bit easier. But then if you're a smaller club, you probably want to extend. I think that's the goal for most businesses. So, yeah, 100%. I think having some sort of an intro program or at least like a dedicated person to take care of new people starting and make them feel welcomed and tell them that it's, you know, normal to get beat up for a little while. I think it's hugely beneficial for a business. Speaker 1: This might be a slightly unfair question because it's it's really a generalization, but do you have an idea of what women look for when they come to a jiu-jitsu class? What do they really want to get out of it? And is it truly in line with the stereotypes? Again, I know this is a wildly unfair question because to ask what do all women want, there is no such thing. Everyone wants something different. But what I'm trying to get to the bottom of here with you is, if you listen to guys talk about jiu-jitsu and how it would benefit women, they will tell you it's all about self-defense and what if you get jumped in a dark alley and, you know, and I really wonder if that is actually the reason why a lot of women come to train. I think in in many ways, you're kind of misrepresenting the art if you sell that as the primary up-front reason to get involved. I think yes, a lot of people, men and women, get into jiu-jitsu because of self-defense, but do you feel that that as a sales pitch is overdone sometimes or is that really the reason why most women seem to come into the gym to train? Speaker 2: Look, I I don't think it is. I think it's a reason some women come into train and there's we've had, you know, a fair share of women that have come out of domestic violence or, you know, any past traumatic events and they want to get more confidence, they want to learn how to fight or fight back. I have to say that and this is again generalizing, it can be a pretty traumatic experience too to start. You know, you've just been in a domestic violence situation, you come in and we're doing chokes from mount. It's not an easy thing to just jump into for men and women that have been in those situations. But I would say that's a minority. I mean, look, I don't ask every single member why they want to do something, why they want to do jiu-jitsu, but I think for the most part, it's people who want to learn a skill, learn a sport, have some fun and, you know, maybe like come from CrossFit or come because they were recommended because it's fun. Rarely we have someone in the 20s come and say, I want to be a world champion. And rarely we have someone say, I want to learn all the self-defense. If you want to learn pure self-defense, I actually think the best thing you can do is MMA. Not to undersell jiu-jitsu, I think it's extremely important, but I do think you want to do like street fighting and learn you've got to learn striking and how to protect yourself from striking. And I think MMA is the answer for that. We have quite a big crossover from like people wanting to do, you know, UFC, MMA, that go, oh, I don't like getting punched in the face, I'm going to do jiu-jitsu. And some people just don't like jiu-jitsu. Some people just don't like the proximity and the kind of, you know, initially it all feels weird and some women just and men don't like that, so they don't come. But I think, yeah, I think you're right. I think it's very overestimated how many women start purely for self-defense. And if they do, they don't often last. I've even like done some collabs and taught, you know, self-defense seminars, which honestly, I don't enjoy because I think if you want to learn self-defense, doing one seminar once a year is not going to keep you safe and might teach you, I think it's better than nothing, but I also don't want to teach anyone something that they don't practice and they think they know and it's a false sense of security. But from, you know, I would have 40 people in the self-defense seminar and I don't think we got one person to come back and actually start jiu-jitsu or MMA after said many times, if you want to be good at self-defense and fighting, you need to train three times a week and be put in those extreme situations in real life sparring. Otherwise, it's it's not really realistic. So, that tells me that most people come because they want to do a fun sport, learn a skill, meet a community, get fit, and, as a result, also learn how to fight. Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's an interesting example of a kind of a self-defense myth that jiu-jitsu has always tried to bust. This idea that you can just go to a weekend self-defense seminar and you're going to have everything you need. And of course, we as jiu-jitsu people always tell people is, no, no, no, you have to actually come and train. It's not that you need one or two secret eye gouges or groin strikes to get out of an altercation. You need to actually train against resistance repeatedly for a long time if you want to learn how to fight off and win against a bigger, stronger opponent. That's and I think sometimes that if, you know, we've all said this, if you send someone to a self-defense seminar for a weekend, the concern is, are you giving them false confidence now? Because they've taken this seminar, do they think that they could defend themselves even if they barely know anything? So, I wonder sometimes when we talk about jiu-jitsu, if we have our own myths that need to be busted as well in the sport. Our own things that maybe we advertise that are not entirely true. So, an example that comes up a lot is the myth of the attacker in the dark alley. When people talk about jiu-jitsu and why you need to learn it, they talk about it like one day you might get jumped by a stranger who wants your wallet. But if you're really good at shooting a double and passing their guard and armbarring them, then you're good to go. You have everything you need. And from a just kind of like a romantic Hollywood understanding of martial arts, that's very appealing. It's part of why I got into this. But what I have observed, as I train and I have made friends with many women across the world over the years in the sport, and I've been lucky enough that some of them have confided in me about their personal experiences, I've learned a lot from them about the traumas that they've been through. And the big recurring theme that comes up all of the time is, look, a lot of the time, you know, when you get attacked by someone, it's not going to be a stranger in a dark alley. It's going to be a friend or a family member or someone you trust. And if it's your cousin and, you know, you've never had an interaction with them like this in in the past and then all of a sudden out of nowhere they assault you, psychologically, are you going to be in a place where you can actually just whip out an armbar and break their arm? Would you even do that? And I worry sometimes that again, by continuously selling jiu-jitsu as this self-defense tool against strangers in the dark alley, are we giving people a full perspective of what they of what they have to deal with and where the threats truly come from? And I specifically worry about this because I've been training this for 20 years now and I have seen so many instructors that I trusted who betrayed that trust by assaulting one of their students, whether it be sexually or physically or, you know, so at some point, you know, this self-defense lesson doesn't cover that. It doesn't cover what to do when your abuser is the black belt coach. Do you think that that's a misconception that maybe makes it harder for women to get into the sport or prevents them from getting the full value out of it? Speaker 2: I do think knowing some jiu-jitsu is better self-defense than knowing no jiu-jitsu. I do 100% believe that. But I don't know if it's, you know, when you first start, I guess I hope you don't know about any of the stuff that has been happening. But yeah, it does definitely doesn't teach you how to recognize, you know, grooming and the power struggle and like um all of that. Whether it's a deterrent, I don't know. I obviously I honestly have no idea. Uh but I do think, I don't know, for me, like we've had a black belt at our club who's obviously very good and he got jumped by four guys in a dark alley and he got beat up. I mean, what are you going to do about against four guys with a knife, you know? You kind of have to like just give them your stuff and hope for the best. Like it's I used to teach, I'm diverging a bit, but I used to teach occupational health and safety sort of violence prevention stuff with ex-special forces guys to doctors, pilots, nurses and cops and paramedics. And, you know, I I always asked them, I was like, if I'm walking, like if you're deployed somewhere in war and you're walking in a dark alley to a car, like what is your best self-defense? You know, is it the keys in your knuckle? Is it? And they're like, no, have a torch and if someone comes near you, you actually shine a torch in their eyes and you might have two seconds to run away because you kick someone in the groin. Some people don't care about pain. Adrenaline kicks in, you know, some guy might drop to the ground, the others won't. So, I actually started getting I had a little torch for a while, especially when I was pregnant and I had to park my car away from the gym. So, my self-defense because I was like, I can't run or fight. So, I would have a guy walk me to my car. To me, that's self-defense. I think what jiu-jitsu teaches you also is being aware of your limitations and what you can handle and what you can't. So, I know if I'm in a sketchy place, I'm not on my phone, I'm looking around. I give myself permission to, you know, if I feel like I'm being followed or I'm not comfortable, I'll go up to people and ask them like, hey, can I be your friend for five minutes? I don't like the look of this person. And to me, that's self-defense. Like I have enough calmness in a really stressful situation to kind of judge the situation and go, well, I could try to choke you and I probably would, but also, you know, being on concrete with my head, like what if he slams me on the back? I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how high he is. I don't know what drugs he's on. So, to me, having enough calmness and reason in a really stressful situation, which I got from jiu-jitsu, to push him away and to go, I'm not going to engage in this, is what self-defense is. So, did I learn that in a jiu-jitsu class? No. Did I learn it through years of sparring with bigger men? Yep, I did. Yeah, I don't know. It's a very interesting subject, but I don't coming back to it, I don't think most women start jiu-jitsu to learn that, to learn self-defense. Speaker 1: Yeah. It's an interesting disconnect where I think maybe men tend to have a way that they perceive jiu-jitsu for women and they think this is a I just actually had this in comments on one of the videos that we put up where we were talking about this and, you know, some guy jumped in and said like, no, all women should train jiu-jitsu because what if it goes to the ground and the guy sitting on top of you? And I'm just thinking like, man, this is very much from the male Hollywood perspective of what a self-defense situation might look like and it's kind of ignoring a lot of the broad realities of what it might really look like. Speaker 2: And just like, yeah, you like stating your boundaries and and also, you know, why why aren't people commenting saying like, let's not get women on the ground where they have to fight. Like, don't rape and don't hit women and don't groom them. Like, I I hate that that's, you know, that's our reality. The comment is always like, how do we defend ourselves and stop this instead of why don't I mean, I know someone's always going to do it, whether it's to men or women, but like that should be the focus on conversations, not how are we going to stay alive and not get assaulted. Speaker 1: Yeah. This has been a challenge that I have when I see people have these kinds of conversations. It often tends to deflect back to, well, how do we know that the accusations were completely true or maybe we should give this person the benefit of the doubt or they're entitled to due process. And I mean, like, look, at the end of the day, that's all well and good, but if you are a woman in that gym or if you're someone who cares about the women in your gym, you got to use your common sense to some degree. And I do feel like there's a lot of that reframing going around where when people hear about these stories, their first instinct is to cast some doubt on the accusations or to remind everyone about due process. And I really don't know what that achieves. Like, we're not not all of us are lawyers here, you know, we're not adjudicating this. That's somebody else's job. For the rest of us who have to live in the real world as civilians, we have to use our common sense about who we want to associate with and and who we don't. And it always bothers me when you see accusations pop up and especially when there's repeated, multiple accusations against the same person and the defense is always, well, they weren't found guilty in the court of law, so we need to treat them as if nothing happened. And I think at some point there's got to be a degree of common sense in the middle there where we understand that, look, if there's enough smoke, you probably wouldn't want your kid or your sister to train at a place like that, you know, regardless of what the law says happens to that person, from the perspective of you and your family and your friends, it makes sense to withdraw from that dangerous situation. Much of self-defense, as you touched on, it's not just about learning to fight. The most important tools for self-defense are situational awareness and de-escalation and avoiding those situations in the first place. And so, if there's a coach who has some smoke around them in terms of what they've been accused of or about their conduct, I can't imagine people would be willing to give those coaches the benefit of the doubt if the victims were people within their own family or circle of friends. Speaker 2: Yeah, this is actually a really, I mean, it's an interesting question because I see things not differently, but like having a very well-rounded view as a female in the sport, but also the business owner and dealing with some of the complaints we get. So, I think the biggest thing is like as a woman, I want to know that I can go and tell someone about it in a safe space if something did happen to me. I want to know that I'll be taken seriously and that it will be investigated. Because a lot of the times, exactly like you're saying, you have, you know, oh, someone did something that you're not comfortable with and it's like, oh, it's just the boys or it's just a joke or it's just and it's not taken seriously, it's not being investigated, right? I'm going to go also and say, it's a really hard middle ground to find where you want to come into a gym and have healthy banter and laugh and not watch every single word you say because that's part of the enjoyment. You know, like especially Australian sense of humor, we are very sarcastic and we, you know, we have a I guess we say we give each other shit where we razz each other up a little bit as a team, but it's like knowing where the boundary and where the line is and where you can stop. That's a constant thing we have to remind people. Like that's crossed the line. You can't make that joke. You have to be sensitive about people, you know. But I think knowing who you can talk to at the gym, where to make a complaint, and then as business owners, we have to be also extremely careful to investigate whatever evidence we are given fairly. And, you know, like if we're playing the men, women thing, like we've had a I think we are maybe outliers where some complaint might look terrible and then we investigate it and it's actually, you know, we might have not been given all the pieces of the puzzle from the woman. And it's a it's a very tricky thing to do where gym owners are not we're not equipped to deal with this. Like we're literally gym owners, you know. So, we we kind of go, if it needs to be taken further, we encourage people to make a police report and take it further or have like an external HR term where things can be thoroughly investigated because either way, of course, I'm not talking about the cases like, you know, if multiple people come out and say this guy touched me or raped me or whatever, that is like in a separate category. But I think everyone should be heard and everyone should be given a chance to present their bit of evidence and we try to be, you know, look at like we have three or four different people look at something separately and try not to be influenced or biased is the word. But it gets to the point where it's so beyond jurisdiction and skill set to investigate some pretty, you know, full-on things that we have to encourage people to either make a police report if it's something that's not very clear. Of course, if someone, you know, touched someone or I don't know, sexually assaulted them and it's like the evidence is there, that's very different. But it can put you in a pretty tricky situation. But I think the biggest thing is that you need to take the complaints and you need to take women seriously when they sometimes it's like a feeling you get or, you know, like there's been so many times I've had my, probably not recently, but when I first started, I've had my butt grabbed. I've been trying to be kissed on the mats by random men. I've had comments about my body. I've had, yeah, inappropriate touching where that just wouldn't fly these days. So, but I think biggest thing is that each club should have a escalation process where people know exactly where to turn to and who they can complain to or talk to or write an email or anonymous email, whatever it is, that they will be heard and investigated fairly and they will be, you know, talked to or written to and actually listened to and then try to do things as fairly as possible. But I think it's a recipe for disaster if you ignore that or you ignore the little red flags on the mats, you know, where someone's making jokes where maybe it's an in-joke, but it's really vulgar and other people don't quite get it and it seems like it changes the culture. But yeah, it's a it's a very interesting topic, but I also agree if there's numerous accusations coming against especially against a coaching power and especially to do with kids, I think you would be silly to try to hide that or take it seriously or it's illegal as well. So, I don't know why it keeps happening, but it does, it has been previously in our sport. Speaker 1: Well, I one thing that has been heartening is that it feels like although this has always been a problem, it feels like things are moving in perhaps a positive direction. And that is maybe me just coping here. I don't know. But especially with some of the more recent scandals, it really does feel like they were taken much more seriously than they would have been in the past. That's not to say that they were taken as seriously as maybe we would like, but it does feel like the journey of history here is moving towards a positive direction. And maybe those of us who have, you know, roles of leadership or are coaches in the sport, we can use that influence to help push things further in that direction. And I think as you talked about, that's that's where people who are not even just coaches, but senior students on the mat can use the influence they have to impact the culture of the gym from the top down and set the tone for what's acceptable there and what isn't. And as as you talked about, it is a fine line because we do want to encourage a degree of psychological safety in the gym. We don't want people to feel like they have to always be on guard for fear of offending someone, but there should be some degree of common sense understanding of what's okay and what's not. And if someone crosses that line inadvertently, maybe in good faith, we can, you know, correct that behavior without making it too much of a serious reprimand. But there has to be some sort of common sense approach to make sure that we're steering the culture and and saying what's not acceptable, making sure that that's absolutely clear and there's consequences. Speaker 2: Exactly. And you can call people out kindly, you know. If you've given them a chance and they keep doing something that's not that doesn't align with your culture, then it's time to let them go. But I think, you know, treating people with kindness, possibly giving them a second chance, depending on the offense, of course. If it's like just someone said a word and you say, hey, I don't like this, please don't do it again. I think that's very different than, yeah, someone got assaulted and they shouldn't be given a second chance. But definitely changing the culture, making sure everyone's happy, everyone feels included, they can exist, but they can also, you don't want to be walking around on eggshells in your gym either, you know. So, 100% agree with that. I think also like the other big distinction is if it's a coach and, you know, like relationships on the mats, I think for us or in Australia anyway, it's pretty much illegal to have relationships in the workforce. So, for us, it's part of the contract that you don't date or sleep with your students. That should be self-explanatory, positions of power, you know. So, we are fairly strict about that. If it's relationships on the mats with students or higher belts, you know, that gets very blurred. That's kind of not us as long as that's not coming onto the mats and there's no abuse and if there's always going to be drama in relationships and and it's we have to manage that the best we can. But, you know, where I guess as a gym owner, where legalities lie, yeah, coaches and employees very different to members at the gym as well. But of course, as an owner, you still have to mediate that and mitigate any things that might arise. Speaker 1: Absolutely. I actually want to ask you here while we're talking about this, an under-discussed area of this space is men as victims as well. And not necessarily when it comes to sexual abuse, but even physical abuse. I mean, there's a lot of unhinged lunatics in jiu-jitsu and I am sure that you have seen many dudes get assaulted, right? And my observation has been often the people who are, you know, sexually abusive towards women, these people also sometimes go on to be physically abusive towards men. So, I feel sometimes like guys look at this and say like, I'm not going to get involved in this, which I think is a shitty thing to think. But even beyond that, often times men will eventually get victimized by these people too. If you've got someone in the gym who's willing to hurt people, eventually they're going to find ways to hurt more people. It's not just going to be divided along gender lines. So, this kind of adds another layer on top of this too. And this is why I often encourage men to be more actively involved in this. To look at this as a problem that is someone else's and isn't your issue, detracts from the fact that these people will likely go on to be more violent towards others, especially if they get away with it. I have seen this before where people who were accused of sexual abuse in the gym and then went on to assault other people afterwards physically in like a combat sense, not in a sexual sense. And so, I think it is the case that this is not just a women's issue and we have to stop thinking of it as that. Men are can be victims as well. And so, it is the responsibility of men, I think, to stand up and do something about this as well. Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think you're right. I mean, I don't know of like, you know, profiles of men that sexually assault women versus other things, but I do find that you can tell, you get the vibes, the creepy vibes of people that are just not, there's something not quite right about them. And every single time in the past where we've had men that were, you know, maybe they got triggered and they were violent in a roll or saying some weird stuff in the change rooms. Every time we've given them a second chance, it has never ended up well. My advice is, if you get the vibes from any men, just saying something wrong, being too violent in a roll or change room, they're probably not going to change. So, when it's red flags, you end up saving more people and more members if you just let them go to save the culture, save the members and avoid any physical stuff. Because yeah, that 100%. But yeah, I don't know the, you know, I guess evidence-based correlation between sexual assault and and like male violence, but you definitely get those vibes and they do, in my mind, they do correlate as well. Speaker 1: I also want to ask you, while I have you here, what can men do to help? I know that sometimes for guys, it feels intimidating to jump into these kinds of conversations because often they will be accused of being performative or something to that degree and, you know, that doesn't feel good. How do you suggest men who care about uplifting women in the sport, which from my experience, to be fair, has been the vast, vast majority of men in the sport. I mean, yes, the there are abusers in the sport and obviously they get a ton of attention because of what they did. But my experience has been that most people want to see women succeed in jiu-jitsu, whether they're male or female. They might just not know how or they might not think they're in a position to do it. What do you think guys can do if they want to support women or even any other minority demographic in the sport to make the sport more friendly and welcoming? Speaker 2: Yeah, well, don't assault and don't rape would be pretty pretty easy one. Just be normal. Just, you know, I think don't slide into women's DMs. You don't need to thank your female training partner for a roll. You don't need to say great training in the DMs. Like you wouldn't to a normal male training partner on the mats. Let them just train and be normal, just like you would your male training partners. You know, when you're rolling with them, like don't don't be weird. Don't avoid putting your hands in or changing your technique. Like just roll normally without hurting them because most women will be smaller than you. You know, and just have a think about like if that was your mom or your daughter, like what are you if you're making sexual jokes on the mat that have gone too far. Like how would that make them feel? Would you want your daughter in this environment that you're creating? I think that's like a good, it's hard to imagine when you if you don't have a child, but I think since becoming a parent, you just think about it so much more, you know. I think just respecting women as well. Like if if they ask a question on the mats or maybe a woman is really high level and they're better than you and listen to them, listen to their technique. Um that creates a really good good culture of just everyone being equal, you know. You don't need to coach a woman through a roll. You don't need to be the savior. You don't need to teach a bunch of we've had like situations where like a guy was teaching women some technique on the side, but just women and you're like, we don't need saving. We're just here to do a sport just like anyone else. What else? I think also calling out your friends, you know, if they I don't know, if they're saying stuff in the showers or in the change rooms, they're showing you photos of a teammate. Like just call them out and just be like, hey, I don't like this or I don't think of this person like this or I think that like that is so powerful. If your friends call you out on inappropriate behavior. And I also think definitely it has to come through the coach. Like the top-down approach where, yes, all the teammates have to contribute, but, you know, if the head coach is joining in and and laughing at someone else's expense or whatever, that that obviously trickles down and creates a culture. So, I think it's all together at once. But in the end, like, I don't know, just be normal. Like you would in a workplace where you don't have to touch people. Just don't make it awkward. Be a normal person. Don't make things sexual. Don't message women if they don't want to be messaged. I think I think that's it. I don't know. What do you think? Speaker 1: The advice that I give to people these days because especially online, I get people asking like, how, you know, how should I conduct myself in this community? And what I often say is, look, if it would get you kicked out of a Starbucks, it's probably going to get you kicked out of here. So, don't do something that in the rest of the real world, we would consider to be uncouth and something that would get you in trouble. I mean, use your common sense. If you're in a public space, act accordingly, right? And um I think that's the simplest advice that I would give to people about how to conduct and comport themselves in these situations. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too. And look, I think like it's we're getting to the territory where I also understand where men are coming from with this, but a lot of them are very scared to roll with women just in case, you know, something will happen and and they're being inappropriate without knowing. I think it's hard to be inappropriate without knowing. Like it's you know if you're inappropriate, you know. But I don't want the sport to go in the way where people are segregated and women stay over here and men stay over here. I hardly ever roll with guys now just because I have so many female training partners that are my size. So, for me, it's about body size and not about being realistic as well that I don't have to do it, but it's not because I don't want to roll with men. It's because my body hurts because I'm old and women tend to be smaller than men or at least less strong. But I think, you know, be very careful. I think we don't want to segregate women away from men. I don't think that that will solve anything. Speaker 1: Yeah, in the public discourse, whenever one of these scandals comes up, there will always be people who suggest and say, well, to solve this problem, we have to segregate the genders. And I think that's a that's a really terrible idea. I mean, when in human history has segregation ever been the right answer? I don't think it's a good idea to segregate and it also in many ways punishes women again because now in addition to whatever abuse happened initially, now all women are getting punished because of conduct that they had no responsibility for. It was nothing to do with them. But someone else took advantage of them and as a result, now they get punished again and they're denied higher quality training because they lose a bunch of their training partners because they're segregated. It just seems like a dumb idea. And it just from a community and social standpoint, I would hope most people would agree that that's not the the direction we want to take the sport in where we segregate like that. Speaker 2: Yeah, we just want to like exist in a space that's fun and fair for everyone, you know, that's yeah, that's that's the biggest thing. But I think you do, you know, like yeah, you either give people a second chance, but when the offense is too big, second chances like it's hardly ever that people change when they're already there's red flags everywhere. So, I would just be very wary with that. Speaker 1: Yeah. And also, you know, as a gym owner, it's not your job to save everyone. I know that sometimes gym owners feel like this, like they get some, you know, some new broken toy who comes in and they're like, I can save him. I can use the power of martial arts to make him a better man. It's not your job to do that, right? And at some point, you have to do a cost-benefit risk-reward analysis. If this person could be causing harm to other people in the gym, you've got to take that seriously. And it's not your personal mission to save all of these people and make them non-violent versions of themselves, right? Sometimes a person is just beyond your ability to redeem and for the safety of the others in the gym, you have to remove them. And that's one of the hardest things that I know coaches struggle with because it's hard to do. Not only is it uncomfortable, but people want to believe that you can save people. But man, the risk to getting that wrong is so huge. Speaker 2: No, I I don't think you should be going to save any anyone really. You should what you should be saving and protecting at all costs is the culture of the gym and your own sanity. I think that's that's so much more important, you know. It's yeah, it's not up to us to teach someone, I don't know, how to be a warrior and and, you know, save their soul. They can do that outside of the mats, I think. Like, we're as jiu-jitsu coaches, we're good at teaching jiu-jitsu. That's pretty much about it. Stay in your lane, I think. Speaker 1: Well, let's end this on a positive note, Liv. There's a lot of really interesting developments in the sport recently that I think have the possibility of taking things to a better place. I mean, as an example, Adele has made a lot of really great statements, I think, on how to uplift and elevate women in the sport recently. But beyond that, what are you seeing coming out of jiu-jitsu that makes you hopeful for the future of the sport and the direction it's going in? Speaker 2: I think like uh just this movement. I was actually talking recently to the better Dale brother, Scott Dale, he's a director. He's a pretty well-known movie director and he was saying the whole Me Too movement, it did actually change the culture in the film industry and it took a little while and people criticized it and everyone was like, oh, I don't know if it makes any difference. What are we actually doing? It did change the culture and made it for the better and safer for everyone, for men and women. So, I think what we're doing right now, even though it's it's hard to see exactly where it's going, I think it's being talked about, it's being tolerated less. People are being called out. And I think, you know, even like what Craig is doing because he's got the platform to do it. Adele, yeah, my absolute hero, she was so brave and so loud, you know, to say things very eloquently on a really big platform. And I think it takes people like that to actually put their themselves on the line and speak out because you always cop criticism and it's not nice, you know. Every time I make a post like for Locky or whether it's like calling out steroid users, I have to think about what headspace am I in and can I handle their pushback and their criticism from Reddit or wherever it might be? Because it is it does get to you, you know. So, you have to it it's can be extremely hard to speak out and to stand your truth. So, I'm so proud of like Alexa, she's actually training with us right now and and Adele and so many other people coming out with their stories and and actually saying their truths. So, I think it does, I feel like this is like a really big pushback and I think it will if we can filter it down of people being called out, they're not like, don't invite people to shows. If you're if you've got a guy who's been violent or rapey or just don't invite them to a show, you know. And especially if they have a criminal conviction, maybe they haven't been to court yet or done the time. Like just there's so many other jiu-jitsu fighters out there that are better choices. Don't employ people that have, uh, you know, don't invite them for seminars that have either a bad rep or red flags or they've been accused of sexual assault. Just don't bring them in. There's so many better people that you can be involved with. And I think if we can like stick with it together, men and women and make it a better place for everyone to exist. Like it's I think it'll make a difference and I think it is making a difference. Speaker 1: I agree completely. When people speak up, often times there will be pushback and they'll be called performative or, you know, you're just trying to score internet karma points. And I always find that pessimistic approach and that pessimistic mindset to be really frustrating because most of the people who speak up, they're putting significant reputational risk on themselves to do what they feel is the right thing. They're really trying to make a difference. And maybe they're a bit clumsy or sometimes than we would like them to be, but at the end of the day, if someone is trying to speak up and do the right thing and they're trying to stand up for what's right, I think trying to, you know, accusing them of being performative or questioning their motives, I think that's just that's kind of shitty, right? I mean, when people are trying to do good things, support that. Let them do good things. Help them do good things. Don't try to shut it down, right? Whenever I see someone trying to do good and then other people on the internet try to criticize or jump on them for trying to do good, that's just that's a bad look for the people who are being critical. Speaker 2: It is. And I look, most of the time, I know there's exceptions to every rule, but most of the time, women coming out and speaking out publicly on a big stage against a well-known person, they have really not much to gain by that. They have an enormous amount to lose. And I think they should be believed, you know, at least investigated, given the chance to be properly investigated and it is extremely hard to come out when you always get told that you don't have proof or you don't have, I don't know, why should we believe you, you know. So, I think if women do come out with some pretty big allegations against big names, what have they got to gain by that? Apart from, you know, not be harassed, not much. And it's extremely hard to do and they should be given a fair hearing or investigation or, yeah, they should be believed. Speaker 1: Well, well said as always, Liv. If people are in Australia and they want to train with you, sounds like you've got a great culture down there. Talk about Absolute MMA and where you guys are and how people can find you if they want to come by and train. Speaker 2: Yeah, so Locky and I are based in St. Kilda. We actually, we've got a new gym coming. It'll be ready in about a month. It'll be an amazing space. So, we're renovating that right now. But yeah, come and visit us. We also have gyms in the city and in Collingwood. But I'd say the biggest women's crew is in St. Kilda. So, we've got, you know, the likes of Adele training every day, Nadia Franklin, myself, and then obviously a men's group with under Locky's extremely talented as well. Everyone's always welcome. We have gi, no-gi, kids classes, pro classes, intro classes, beginner classes. So, so everyone's always welcome to drop in or join or whatever it might be. CrossFit, we don't care about any of that. Speaker 1: But Liv, I don't live in Australia. How can I learn from you online and on the internet if I can't make it to see you in person? Speaker 2: Well, lucky you asked. Uh so, we own Submeta, which is an instructional platform, subscription platform. It has I don't even know how many courses now, maybe about 300 courses. It's got videos of troubleshooting, classes, video rolls, lots of features on the website, infinite amount of study hours. We film instructionals on average twice a week. There's a lot more coming. Pretty much, I think Locky wants to cover all of jiu-jitsu. We've got Adele has quite a bit of content on the side as well. We just had a Tarikoplata course by Tarik Hopstock. So, there's just so much content out there that you should absolutely check out. It's a lot of work goes into it and we're very, very proud of the work we do. Speaker 1: It's so funny that you said that Locky's trying to put all of jiu-jitsu on there because when I had him on the podcast just a few weeks ago, the thing I said was, Submeta to me feels like the Wikipedia of jiu-jitsu, or at least the closest thing there is. And it's about as close as a universal recommendation that I can make. I mean, there's a ton of amazing jiu-jitsu content out there. There's really an embarrassment of riches these days. But if there were one essential membership for pretty much everyone, I look at Submeta as kind of like the Wikipedia of jiu-jitsu. In this day and age, trying to live without Wikipedia would be pretty tough. I think for most grapplers, Submeta is the same and I really think everyone should give it a try. I also think that I mean, I use the same model, a subscription model. It tends to be way more cost-effective for the majority of people because if you pay a small amount monthly, look, you can cancel anytime, right? I mean, if you get laid off, you can cancel this thing and that's no more money out of your pocket. That's much better than dropping, you know, 200 bucks for an instructional, watching 10 minutes of it and then realizing you hate it or there's no value, you know. Subscriptions, I think, are great and they also create stability for the people running the service, which I have always said, you and Locky are two of my favorite people in the sport and I like to buy on character when it comes to what I suggest. So, if people want to support a positive vision of the sport, buy Submeta. Livia has not paid me anything to say that. I just genuinely think it's the best, probably the best overall subscription service on the internet and it has been for the past few years. So, I will drop a link in the show notes. If people want our stuff, everything is at bjjmentalmodels.com. Podcast is completely free, both full episodes like this and our mini concept episodes and our newsletter, all definitely worth checking out. And the next level up with us is BJJ Mental Models Premium. Like I told Locky, if Submeta is the Wikipedia of jiu-jitsu, I like to think of BJJ Mental Models Premium is the Audible or the MasterClass. We focus more on long-form discussion and strategy, tactics, mindset conversations. It's a very different approach from what you get through most jiu-jitsu instructional and technique. The first week is free. It's how we support this and keep doing it ad-free. So, please do check it out if you haven't already. That plus the free stuff is at bjjmentalmodels.com. So, I will link that and Submeta in the show notes, which again, I really think everyone should at least check out Submeta. Like what's the worst that can happen? You sign up, you don't like it, you cancel after a month, you're out what? What is it a month, Liv? Speaker 2: 25 a month. Speaker 1: You're out 25 bucks a month. Speaker 2: Yeah, we truly believe in the product. Even like, you know, I'm Locky's wife, but when I coach, I'm his black belt and it's still like the amount of knowledge he has in his head and that the amount of work he puts into like making sure that every move works, he tries it in training and coaching. But the awesome thing about Submeta is it comes in pretty small bite-size pieces. So, if I'm teaching a class and I don't have any ideas or I want to check if I'm right, like I literally log on to Submeta, pick a course and like you can just watch it for 15 minutes and get two main reactions and courses and and then go back and dig in after training if something didn't work out. So, you don't have to watch, you know, a 10 or a 15-hour instructional. It's like one to two-hour courses where you get just the the most out of it, I think. So, I think it's a great resource for coaches as well. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I will link that in the show notes. Again, strong unpaid recommendation for me. But thanks, Liv, for coming by. I really appreciate this chat. Speaker 2: Thank you very much and thanks for opening up a chat about, yeah, something that's really close to my heart, women in jiu-jitsu. Speaker 1: Most welcome. I love hitting this topic up. It's also near and dear to me as well. And of course, for people who've listened all the way through, I presume it is for them too. So, thank you to the listeners. I appreciate you as well and we will talk to you in the next episode. See you then.