Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 76 - Power hour from spring camp with Travis Davison and Matt Thornton

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

Power hour with two BJJ bad asses.  I just returned from the SBGI (Straight Blast Gym International) spring camp, an experience that can only be described as a shotgun blast of information to the face.  Matt Thornton is the founder of SBG, a lifelong martial arts participant, coach, and author.  Travis Davison is the VP of SBGI, a 20 year BJJ practitioner, and the owner of SBG Montana. I could not pass up the opportunity to sit down with these two to discuss the origins of SBG, the progression of BJJ, their thoughts on the past and future of the sport/activity, and the impact and importance it can have outside of the gym environment. 

What's happening, everybody? Episode 76. I'm a little bit late today in terms of getting the podcast out on time. Usually I schedule it to release in the early morning hours, but I was traveling in the early morning hours. But the calendar still says Monday, so we're going to be good. Before we get into the episode, a little bit of housekeeping, got some sponsors today for the podcast. This episode, episode 76, is brought to you by On It.

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And Murder Book, the Murder Book, the, true crime podcast. Be sure to check both of them out. Again, Murder Book Podcast. It's on Apple iTunes, wherever else you can find podcasts. Or you can go direct to their website, murderbookpodcast.com. Lastly, this episode is also brought to you by Duke Cannon, which is rapidly becoming my favorite brand, and not just because they sent me a box of stuff. I actually also had found this brand quite some time ago, and they described their product as a big-ass brick of soap. So obviously, you had me at Hello. And I bought some. and I've been using it, and then when they reached out, I was definitely fired up.

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If you're interested in checking them out, you're going to get 15% off your first order at duke cannon.com, D-U-K-E-C-A-N-N-N-O-N-N-Duk-C-C-A-N-O-N-D-C-C-A-N-O-N-O-N-C-O-N-O-N-O-N-C-O-N-O-C-P-C-E-C-R-E-C-H-E. And that's it for the business side of the house. plus you'll get free shipping on orders over $35. Dukecanon.com promo code cleared hot. And that's it for the business side of the house. My guest today, one of them is a repeat guest and has become a very good friend of mine. He is Travis Davison. He is very, very good at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

His coach is Matt Thornton. And Matt Thornton is actually the founder of SBG, which stands for Straight Blast Gym. And then there's an eye at the end of that international as well. So I got introduced to Jiu-Jitsu via a mutual friend at a gym that Travis owns here in the Flathead Valley. Travis got introduced to Jiu-Jitsu through his coach, Matt, and they have been close friends ever since. Over a 20-year relationship. Travis is also involved now on the SBGI side of the house as the vice president.

And I just recently attended a essentially, well, three and a half day. spring camp seminar in Beauford, Georgia. I had never been to one before. I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for six months, so my knowledge base is super low. Didn't know what to expect, and I will be going back every single year because it was amazing. Diversity of coaches, diversity of teaching, not necessarily methodology, but an approach to teaching the way they deliver the information. And what I was blown away by

was the realization of the intelligence level of the people operating at the highest levels, not only in that organization, but it seems just to be in Jiu-Jitsu in general. And I asked Matt specifically about that. I knew who Matt was. This was the first time that I had met him and had the opportunity to discuss with him why he wanted to start SBG, where it came from, how he structured his training, perhaps where he sees it going, and, you know, the balance between physical ability and intelligence and the overlay and impact that Jiu-Jitsu can have on your life outside of the activity in and of itself. And so I'm going to shut up and let them do the talking. So here we go. Clared Hot episode 76 with Travis Davison and Matt Thornton. Enjoy.

Okay, got the red smoke. Locker, gun runs north and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on winter, man. They give it to me. I need it. You cleared hot. To say I have a few questions about Jiu-Jitsu would be an understatement. Normally I get to harass Travis, but now I get to go directly to the source. So we should start at the source. Where did SBG come from?

I was always interested, for whatever reason, of martial arts, and I was interested in, and for me I was fascinated by what works and what doesn't work. The esoteric parts of the martial arts weren't interesting to me. were only interesting to me to the degree that I thought they might work. And when I decided to go into that, what looked like the most realistic thing to me, because I knew boxing worked, I've been in enough fights to know boxing worked, and I knew wrestling worked. And I knew you had to be able to fight on the ground as well as standing up, because I've been in enough fights where I've been taken down and beaten up on the ground. And what looked like the most

functional thing back in the 80s was Gikundo, which was Bruce Lee's fighting style. Okay. And he had kind of taken a utilitarian, actually taken it from Mount Saitung, but absorb what is useful, reject what is useless,

add what is specifically your own, learn to fight in all the different ranges. And even if you look back at the, like, entered the dragon, he was using, you know, boxing hands and kickboxing. And it's almost like a precursor, you know, it's cinematic,

but it's almost a precursor to MMA. Did he actually fight, not to hijack the story, because I've heard, I don't know if it's myth or legend or what, right? Because everybody holds Bruce Lee at a very high level. Yeah. Did he actually fight or? No, I think it's more myth and legend than reality, but he had, he said the right things. And I think he was interested in functional martial arts. He did box a little bit, I think, in high school when he was in Hong Kong.

And I think he's had a couple fight fights, like street fights with kung fu people. But, you know, if you look back at his notes, he was researching Muay Thai before his death. He had befriended judo Jean LaBelle and putting grappling in. So the things that I saw in the martial arts magazines that resonated with me as being something that would be functional was that. And so I pursued Gikudu and became an instructor in that and was doing Muay Thai and boxing. And I moved up to Portland, Oregon, the job I had in California, transferred me to Portland. And I started boxing in a pro-am boxing gym five days a week and teaching Jukundo in a school. And a guy put an ad in the newspaper, a man by the name of Fabio Santos.

And it was a classified ad asking for people. He said he'd pay 50 bucks if you could come beat him up. I like this guy. And I like that ad. That was the golden days. Yeah. And I thought to myself, I'm paying five bucks a week or whatever it was to get beat up at the boxing gym every single. single day I'm getting beat up. I might as well go make 50 bucks to get beat up.

It's a whole different thing. So showed up predictably what happened was, you know, take down. He was very nice, take down, mount, rear naked choke, finish. It's like Gracie Jiu-Jitsu 101. But he was also super nice and I immediately, you know, liked him and saw this is, this is awesome. This is the piece. I mean, I'm comfortable hitting people and being hit, but this is the piece for the ground and the grap I have no idea. Could you feel it as soon as he put his hand on me? 100%. 100%.

He'd triangle me or he'd do this or he'd get on my back. There's nothing I could do. And he wasn't, he's not a, Fabio's not a particularly big guy. And even then I think he was, I don't want to age him, but I think he was probably right around 40. And I was, you know, 21, 22. So I started taking as many private lessons with him as I could. And then one of my friends in Eugene.

who was also Gekindow guy, brought in a guy that he, I thought his name was Rixon Garcia, but it was Hickson. And he brought him in for a seminar, and this was again before the UFC's. So there wasn't many people there. There was probably, I've told the story a bunch of times, but there was probably 20 or 30 guys on the mat. They were all judo guys, grapplers, and they were all wearing geese. And I walked in and I watched him rolling with one guy after another,

and I realized after a while, after sitting there watching him that he wasn't using his hands. He was tapping him out, but he wasn't actually using his hands. He was just using his feet. And then he called me out. And I remember he said, for you, my friend, you're a big guy, I'll take out one arm. He didn't need to, but he took one arm out. And I thought, you know, I'm just going to jump on him and try and squeeze his head as as hard as I can.

That's a good. That's a good idea. I leaped on top of him and grabbed his head and squeezed his heart. as I can and of course within a few seconds he had been an arm lock and I was it I mean I was completely hooked I liked Tixin I went back to the school that I was teaching Gekundo at and I told these guys about it and they obviously weren't motivated by the same thing and or didn't believe me you know back then again this was before the UFC but the whole thing with Gekundo was entering to trapping to grappling they have this like

sophisticated theory about how you would have to get close to some somebody, how you could get close to somebody through these ranges to do damage. And I knew, just from my own experience of having been in enough street fights, even in school, that the hard part wasn't getting close to people. The hard part's keeping people from getting close to you. Hard part's keeping somebody from just clinching you and taking you down to the ground. And that's what these guys had down to a science. But they still had in their mind, well, I'd throw my sidekick or he'd never get past my strike.

I'm like, trust me, they will. So I was immediately hooked. I thought that was the piece I was missing. I got maths. I had my own class. I did everything I could to try and learn it. After a short period of time, Fabio was hired by Horian right before the first UFC, so he moved down to Southern California to teach in his school

because Horian predicted the influx he would have after the results. and I just had a philosophical difference with the guy who was I partnered with at the martial arts academy and I said well I need to I need to do my own thing I had in my mind what I wanted for a school which in hindsight really was a kind of an MMA gym but I wanted to just put on equipment and find out what works in a fight and train this stuff and so I opened up a small school in Kaiser Oregon suburb of Salem and that was my first gym. Did you call it Straight Blast? I did. I came up with Straight Blast Jim and the idea was straight blast was one of the few movements from JKD that we still kind of used. I had modified it.

We modified it to more of a boxing version which you can see Vitor Belfort used back in the day. Some of the fighters still use it. But the idea was to take a name from that curriculum and then put the word gym on the end because at that time the schools were all academies or institutes. They had these very academic sounding names. And what they would do is they get together. And their idea of training was like exchanging drills and patterns and I'm writing them in the notebook and a lot of gossip, basically. And my idea was we're going to go in and we're going to work out and sweat and roll and spar and box.

So I put the name Jim on the end. Kind of set the expectation. Yes. And just as a coincidence, the first T-shirt I made for my school was a gorilla with wrestling headgear on. It was just a picture I'd found in the magazine. I thought, oh, this is a cool picture, right? I'll put this on the T-shirt. It looks good. And then after that, everybody started giving me gorillas, and that's basically how it... It's stuck? It's how it stuck, yeah. I was like, oh, okay.

So how did you continue your personal journey of learning Jiu-Jitsu when you, what belt were you when you opened that first straight last? I was still a white belt. God damn. Everybody was a white belt. Everyone starts there. A blue belt was... I mean, they don't start a gym there, though, I would assume. I mean, I had boxing and kickboxing and I had some clinch. But my ground was for sure. I was a white belt.

And a blue belt back then, I think Kav mentioned it the other day, kind of been half-joking Saturday, but he's like, I was a god when I was a blue belt. But you kind of were back then because nobody had that information. You know, if you could get a blue belt to come up and train with you, you'd bring that blue belt up for two weeks to get the information that blue belt had. There was no videos. There was no YouTube.

So you had to go direct to the source. You had to go direct to the source. And so we brought Hickson up. I trained with Fabio whenever I could. He came up a couple of times. We brought Hickson up for another seminar and event. And he stayed at that point, he stayed for, I think, 10 days. We did a big seminar, and then he did a bunch of privates.

He was booked for privates every day. This was after the first UFC. So the notoriety was on the upswing? Yeah. And at that point, he gave me a blue belt. and I said, well, you know, I'm teaching your stuff. I mean, I'm doing, we're boxing and we're fighting, and I'm getting guys ready for me to try this pancreation thing

they have in Washington. He said, but I'm teaching your stuff. I need to know, do you not want me? And he was very clear, and he said, you're welcome to teach it. You're a good blue belt. You just have to make sure that you call it jujitsu. I don't want you to say that this is Gekundo or anything else like that. And I said, you got it.

And then I went down. not too long after that competed in a tournament that he had as a blue belt and right about that time and after he became very hard to train with because he was fighting in Japan and he was just hard to access

and at that tournament while I was down there I ran into I was introduced to Chris Howder who was one of the first American black belts and he was very accessible you know obviously we were very he wasn't that far much older than I was

we like the same kind of music music. He was very open. There was no secrets. And back then there was a lot. There was some secrecy to it. And unlike even some of the other American black belts, he wasn't scared to come up and teach. A lot of them even back then, it sounds silly now to say because it's so ubiquitous. But back in the day, Horian did have kind of a control over what was going on and he would kick you out of the school and or sue you. and when the brothers broke up and started going to different, you know, teaching and the Machadoes went here and Hickson went here, their students weren't allowed to train with each other. Really?

Yeah. And if they found out that you were training, like if you were Hickson person, Horian person training with Hickson, there could be some problems. And Chris just really didn't care about any of that. And especially probably helped because I was in Oregon. But he would just come up and teach anything. Whatever I asked, he would show it. and it was very open. So from that point forward, he became my coach.

And he was, I think you've heard you call it before, part of the dirty dozen? Correct, yeah. The 12 black belts? Non-Brazilian, yeah. Non-Brazilian. Yeah, because pictures are up at the gym. I was asking that one day where the break went from Brazil. And Chris's picture was the one that was up there.

He's actually a blue belt from Hickson, too. And his first coach was also Hickson. It just so happened that on the day they had their big argument, he had taken his last lesson. and they were all, Jiu-jitsu back then was all taught in private lessons out of Horriens garage. It wasn't group classes.

And his last private lesson had been with Higgin Machado. So when everybody went their own direction, he kind of became a Higgin guy. What caused them to go in their own direction? Money, family, family squabble. So they were trying, it seems like they were trying to control the information, perhaps because they saw the value down the road.

Yeah. That's a great question for Chris. And, uh, I've seen him in a few documentaries. He's like an interesting cat. He's a very unique. I don't know anyone who knows more about the history of that than he does. Yeah, well, he probably was just right in there living in it.

He was right there. But the way he described it, he's taken this class with Horian, and it was the first time he'd, first or second time he'd taken a private with Horian, and all of a sudden Hickson pulls up in a car, and then there's a lot of screaming and yelling in Portuguese, and then everybody goes their own way. But it was ultimately, I think it always came down to money. I can't imagine trying to learn only in the,

in a private lesson setting. Yeah. Like my favorite part is the Open mat afterwards and the diversity of what it feels like. I can't imagine going the opposite direction and not getting to feel that. Right. I feel like it would slow your learning curve substantially.

Yeah, you know, as a purple belt and brown belt especially, there was an attitude that I adopted that a lot of Americans adopted, I think, where we looked back and we thought, you know, these guys are often keeping secrets. And sometimes we would say what they were teaching us, those white guy jujitsu, they were keeping the true Brazilian spit to themselves. They'd show a pass where you'd go, if you pass that way, you're going to get triangled, right?

And you'd think that, so a part of me, and a part of all of us, I think, back then, felt that they were holding back. And now in hindsight, as I look back on it, there was certainly some of that, depending on which branch of the Gracie brothers you were training from, there was a little bit of that. But there was also a solid idea they had that I think was passed down from L.A. on of really learning the fundamentals and having a very incremental way of guiding people through. Some of that was also very valuable and got skipped over by me and by other Americans, I think, in our arrogance. And now we're going back, many of us and looking back at that curriculum and going, you know what, they really did show a lot of this stuff that you would see us teaching the seminars this weekend it was there

maybe we just weren't smart enough to you know to see it so there's part of that too and you know how much how much is our own arrogance and how much was them keeping secrets I think it depends on the instructor but I think

well I enjoyed the hell out of the seminar this weekend but I loved that constantly it was talked about longevity because I mean I feel like I'm 90 inside My driver's license says I'm 41. Emotionally, I think I'm about 12. But, you know, so those numbers, and I look at this, I'm like, okay, one, I'm a moron.

I found this 20 years too late. Like, can I go back in time? That would be a different experience. Yeah. But I do think I'm like, at 50, what does this look like? Right. Because I hear you guys talk about longevity, and then at OpenMatt, I see people smash each other on their head, which I'm going to say is awesome. Right.

But I think about what that would feel like to me at 41 and how that would impact what I'm going to feel at 50. Right. And I just don't know, like, rolling with Frankl as an example. First off, for me, not an awesome experience because he smothered me to death. But he goes at a pace where I think, like, you know what, I could do that for a really long time. Right. And I could talk and we were laugh. And that and then what he can do at that pace, though, I can only describe as infinitely frustrating.

Yeah. And then I hear stories, you got to tell some stories, Travis, of the early days training where it was, how would I describe it? From what you've said, I don't want to speak for you, but it was, let's say, perhaps the culture in the gym was just slightly different. Well, we didn't know any better. I mean, that's what I would say. We didn't know any better.

I do a little bit better. The dirty secret to the early part of the gym was, I didn't start martial arts. I didn't open up a school because I wanted to make a living teacher martial arts. Everybody around me at the time told me that what I wanted to do wouldn't work. That what people want to do is people want to click sticks together and learn patterns and collect certificates. Nobody wants to sweat. Nobody's going to want to roll. Nobody wants to get hit in the face.

You're going to have to have a second job for the rest of your life. And I thought, okay, I'll have a second job for the rest of my life. For whatever reason, all my other faults, I've never been able to lie to people about what I do for work about martial arts. I always have stuck true to, I just have to tell things as I think they are as it relates to that particular topic. And so I thought, okay, I'm always going to have a second job. So I started teaching to get training partners. And the first five or ten years that I ran my gym, my students were basically, I viewed them as just training partners. Unfortunately, that's true.

I don't know if you noticed there's a size difference. When did you come into this picture? I'm assuming you were one of these training partners? Early. early. There were Sundays I would show up, and it was Matt Thornton and Brian Strong. And that was it and me. And they were both 6-6, 250. You weigh what you weigh. People pick on me from my size. I'm trying to be nice with it, but sometimes I don't want to be.

Because there are people that are bigger than me, too, and then I need every ounce of it. But that for me really was the thing. didn't really even change until late 30s and then I started to view myself more as a coach than I did a my what I could do myself personally became less and less important to me I mean there's still a sense of there's always going to be a sense of that there's a there's a certain integrity that comes with that but that's not what it's about and then it became about creating better coaches and then when I look back I realize not so much with jujitsu too for sure there's a lot more injuries, but especially with the MMA and some of the head trauma.

It was so unnecessary and so dangerous in hindsight. We were, you know, full contact knees to the head and shin kicks. Yeah, I mean, people would get knocked unconscious, very, at least once a week. I was one of them. Yeah. Wow. And I wasn't alone. It's not an excuse, but I think most every place that you'd go to at that time that would say they were, MMA school. The training was very much like that. Yeah. And my only striking, my only functional martial arts training other than than Gracie Jiu-Jitsu come in a boxing gym. And there's no, when you go into a boxing

and you're boxing, you get hit in the head. A lot. Yeah, and there's nobody that's coddling you to that point. So for me, that was, okay, so we apply that, what we do in boxing to everything. Now that, you know, I look back on it, we know what we know about traumatic brain injury and everything else. I, you know, I regret that. that part of it. But the good news is it's changed so much the other way that I really feel like we could take anyone regardless of how far they want to go in the sport, even if they want to fight professionally and get them to the point as safely as you can. You can at least shepard them there without all that head trauma going into it.

Absolutely. Because they're going to get it there more than likely. Right. Which actually in that, when people who want to pursue that, the same thing as football players. you young and they want to play in the NFL and they know the risk. I'm more okay with that. And then willingly accepting it as opposed to oops. Right, right.

The vast majority of the damage and brain trauma happens in sparring. Yeah, I've heard that. Because that's what you do most of the time. You fight maybe three, four times a year. Right. The majority of your time getting punched is practice. Well, I see the, I mean, I watch YouTube like anybody else. You'll see some of the camp videos like the MMA camp.

These guys are getting throttled. Yeah, that's a huge mistake. And the more they get those kind of concussions, as we all know, the more likely that is to happen in their fight as well. So you'll have athletes I've seen that have gone in and got knocked out in the UFC, and I know what their training was like just weeks before that, and I have no doubt that it led up to that knockout because it's cumulative and it builds up. But I think, you know, we're not alone in figuring that part of it out.

With Jiu-Jitsu, it's even more. even if you train jujitsu smart it never really has to be hard on the body MMA is different you have to take some punches and some knees but jiu jitsu you could you could really always train in a gentle way and still become very dangerous you know yeah Frankel was exerting I don't I don't even think he was approaching

sweating yeah and yeah dangerous is an accurate word yeah not for how I felt but certainly for how I think he felt right But you know who I left this seminar with? I was thinking about this on the last Oath Matt. I kept telling myself, Roll like Frankel.

Yeah, just roll like Frankl. Because I was watching, I'm like, why do I ever use energy? Why do I do anything that requires a group? It was baffling for me for about 20 minutes to sit there and watch it after having experienced it the day before ago. Got it. Right.

That's hard. That's one of the hardest things to do in Jiu-Jitsu, I think. It is probably the single hardest thing. You know, the advice everyone gets, it's the advice I got the first time I ever had a jiu-jitsu lesson with Fabio Santos. You've got to relax. It's very counterintuitive. It's very counterintuitive.

The first, so, you know, I was getting the roles you do before you go into cap. I was with Ryan, who's, of course, a savage. Yeah. After every role, he would say, maybe just do less. Yeah. It's hard. Well, for me at this phase, I think it's still, sometimes it's impossible. because if it gets to a point and I'm not using my strength,

but I kind of don't want to be in the position I'm at. What my first reaction is is maybe I'm going to use this just for a second. Not for a lot, though, just for a second. But it doesn't work out well when you're going with somebody who knows what you're getting ready to do and they anticipate that, and then the situation gets worse. When did the mentality shift inside of SBG from what you're talking about, kind of like the inception to what I would say, the modern,

how would you describe it now? And when was that shift made? Now I think my goal, and I think Travis and the other coaches share this goal, my goal is to offer the best, it's still to offer the best possible curriculum on planet Earth when it comes to fighting, any kind of fighting. And I think we do, hand-to-hand fighting, for everybody. So I want to have guys like Connor at the top in the sport, trained by some of my black belts and coaches and I want to have police officers trained by my

black belts and coaches and I want to have stay-at-home moms train my my coaches and kids and guys that are working 50-hour jobs I want jiu-jitsu especially jiu-jitsu for everybody because I think it's good for people and I take pride in that in the fact that I can walk on my Matt and I'm going to have competitive athletes. I have the best athletes in Oregon, for sure, as my black belts. But I also got, I have people there in their 60s, men and women, kids. I have many entire families just like Travis does. To me now that's important. When that shifted, I think it was gradual, but in particular probably about 10 years ago and I got remarried to almost 11 years ago. And Salome, my wife, my wife.

for you met. I knew she wanted to have kids again. And so I started thinking, okay, not only do I need to pay attention to being a good coach in the curriculum, which I've always obsessed about, but I'm also going to have to probably pay attention to some of the other aspects of the, of the business, which is in part what helps create an environment that allows those other people to come in, where they'll stay long enough to appreciate jiu-jitsu. And Steve Whittier was actually influential for me that way because he was ahead of us as far as importing best practices for business as well. Did he come from a business background? No.

He actually has, I think he has just shy of a PhD from Tufts and literature. But he's fascinated by. It's fascinating. Well, it was another thing to this weekend. The thing that stuck out to me was the intelligence level. of the people who are participating. Yeah. Because I was going to ask you, what percentage of judici

do you think is intelligence-based versus physical-based? I think the intellect is way more important. If they have a certain level of attributes, I mean, obviously if you have some kind of shortcoming where you're not able to achieve a certain level, but if you meet a minimum standard, everything after that to me is mental. And a lot of that, some of that is IQ related.

Some of it is horsepower, and some of it is more software-related and how people think about things. But you can see it. Look at someone, John Kavanaugh. I don't know if you've had a chance to roll with John yet. I think I mad dodged him. Okay. After he gave his class, I'm like, oh, you move really, really well. I get a tax appointment.

I could be over here. I just didn't have a chance, too. I would have loved to roll him. But if you look at him, he's not well built. He's a little lepricon. He's a little guy. Which I wouldn't say if he was here. I wouldn't recommend it.

He's in good shape, but I mean, he doesn't have broad shoulders. He's not particularly tall. He's not particularly strong. I don't think he's ever done a bench press in his life. I'd be surprised. He wouldn't, like if you're walking through the street, absent obviously the ears, you wouldn't, he'd be like, hey, what's up? Like, totally average normal.

I don't say the pejoratively at all. He's just, he'd be. The face in the crowd for sure. But I promise you he will run through a room full of 260-pound animals and choke every single one of them out very quickly with the same move using one hand. I've been on the receiving end. Yeah. More than once.

That's jujitsu. And that came as a result of him thinking about it, and obsessing about how jiu-jitsu work. works and how to best train that part of what works so that he systematized it in his head. He has an engineering back, right? He has a degree in engineering. And I think that process is far more important. I've never met anybody very, very good at jujitsu, what I would consider very, very good

at a higher level of jujitsu that didn't think about jujitsu that way. They systematized it? Yeah. Well, you talk about it, too, or funneling or not Frankel. of John's here, by the way. There is, yeah. Too many. Too many Johns. Yeah.

Nelson was like, yeah, John, I'm like, dude, which John are you talking? That's why I refer to him as Diggins, Kavanaugh, and Frankel. I never say John. Yeah. All the teaching styles were different, but I was, again, fascinated by their approach to it. That doesn't surprise me that they apply that structure

from their previous path or whatever they're associated with. Even the old job I used to have was completely tactics-based, but it's not something you're making up in your head. You have to believe in the tactic and you have to know the tactic, and then you can try to funnel other people into the maximum benefit of your tactic and disadvantage of theirs, even though they think, like, yeah, I got this.

Like, oh, no, you don't. You don't have anything. There's an aspect of it, too, that is a kind of a love, but you have to be competitive enough to want to win, to be obsessed enough to continually improve your own game. I mean, that does require a kind of. of unnatural level of competitiveness. But that has to be matched equally with a love of the art itself so that you care more

about learning about how you just tapped or how Jiu-Jitsu works than you do winning. And so somebody like John or Franco, for example, I took him to, he was with me in Ireland a couple years ago and they were rolling and he got caught with a particular move I was talking about from Kavanaugh. he wants to beat that move. He for sure doesn't want John Kavanaugh to guillotine him. Oh, is that his jam? That's his jam.

I'm super happy I didn't roll with him. But what does he do about that? He rolls with him over and over and over and over and over and over and then he's thinking about it, applying all his intellect to try and figure it out. And he's as happy doing that, there's a level of curiosity and joy that comes with him engaged in that process that matches at least matches his desire to win. And if that is a skew in any way goes too far one way or the other, you don't get those kind of athletes. What percentage of people do you think make it there? I mean, you guys obviously see a lot of people come through the doors.

I mean, the churn rate's probably pretty high. I've heard many people say blue belts are the black belts acquiters. Like that seems to be the point where they eject, which I don't understand why that is. They just, do they not realize that the tunnel is longer? It's a failure to reset goals. It takes a long time to get a blue belt. Yeah. And they get it. Their coach doesn't talk about the next one or the next one.

And they're satisfied. So they quit. They achieved something. And the journey is not over, but they think it is. What percentage of people you think make it to black belt? What do you think? It would depend on how you, measure what percentage of people who start

Jiu-Jitsu make it to black belt tiny, tiny fraction, because most people quit. Most people quit before they ever get to Blue Belt. You think that's from frustration more than anything? Or they can't get past that desire to win, so therefore they can't learn, so they keep getting the same thing over and over and over again? There's so much, it's hard for me to relate to,

because there's so much value in Jiu-Jitsu, and I immediately fell in love with it. I mean, I remember my first, to this day, I remember my first lesson with Fabio Santos. And he knew I immediately fell in love with it. He looked at me. He's like, you have, I forget how I put it. You're hooked now, he said, right? He knew that I had that, so it's difficult for me to relate to people who don't.

But for some people, it's just not their thing. For other people, it takes longer, but then they realize, wow, this has so many things I didn't, I didn't think. So much more than what I thought it was. but it takes them longer to realize that, and sometimes they don't stick with the process long enough to get there. So part of what we do in the business is and at the gym is to try and keep them long enough so that they can see that value.

Is that a little bit of the idea behind the separating the foundations out, the controlled doses exposure? 100%. 100%. It makes sense. Even though I heard people bitch about it, not at the gym, but they're like,

they actually bitched about the opposite experience. I went to this freaking jujitsu place because I heard it was. awesome and I went into a lesson I got smashed and nobody talked to me. Right. And jujitsu sucks. I'm like that actually does sound like it sucks. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how it used to be

for us too. But I think now we've made it possible for more people to experience it in a way that you know, someone like Matt or myself or my brother or the original guys we were the day one

lovers. Right. But there's a lot of people that aren't. And I think that method that you're referring to where you come in and just get smashed on day one, that's going to ruin it for a lot of people who might have stuck with it if it was handled better up front. The biggest thing I've noticed when I've walked around in those gyms is the lack of participation from women. Yeah.

It's not a good sign if you walk into it because people will email me all the time. There's no SBG in my area. What should I look for when I go to a gym? And I always tell them to look to see the demographics on the mat. If all you see is young, strong guys, if that's who you are or what you want to do. That's your gym. That's good. But in a good gym, you're going to walk on and you're going to see older people, younger people, women, men.

My gym's probably, I don't know for sure, but it's probably 35, 40% female. It's about the same. Yeah. It's about the same in Montana, yeah. Yeah, and in any given class, you know, out of 20 people, there'll be six or seven women, and three or four people that might be over 50, and a whole bunch of people in their 40s, and some young athletes, and they're all on the same mat.

And my, but the way I particularly teach and want my coaches to teach, and I want the curriculum to work, it doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter what belt they are. We're going to take the same class. Yeah. So to me that's important. That's an indication of coaches that kind of know what they're doing in the right environment. How did you approach jujitsu with your own kids?

Did they have a choice, or did you let them find? So I have five kids, and I have two boys, older boys from previous marriage. And with my boys, I felt like if I pushed them into doing it, then they're going to rebel against me. Yeah, I'm selfishly asking this question because Travis gets to experience my son is in class. It's been a challenge sometimes. And I suspect I know where the problem wise, and it might look like me. Well, in hindsight, I can tell you, I think that was a mistake.

Because what I did was I let them not take Jiu-Jitsu. That was a mistake. Kids don't know what the hell is good for them. So I think that was me being a little bit selfish of not, because you can go too far either way, right? Yeah, of course. And I was just like, well, I'm not going to deal with a hassle. Plus, I didn't have a kid's class.

I didn't personally want to teach kids. I always thought I'd just scare kids. And he does. It's a giant dad. By the way, for people, since you can't see, that's really tall. But it just, I never really had a kid's class until the last few years. And so I didn't put my boys in it. My son now who's here, I think you met Liam, he loves it, and he's fortunately come back to it.

Now, the good part about that is he came back to it completely on his own. I think he does love it, but he came to that completely on his own. Keep to his own conclusion. 100% his own conclusion. Never any pressure from me. So now it's great. But it's interesting because when we went to dinner tonight, we were walking to the car and some student came over to him from the seminar and they're like, oh, you're Matt Thornton's son.

That's awesome. Yeah, how old are you? And he's like, I'm 23. And then the person goes, wow, you should be a black belt by now. Yes. A knife cuts deep. Yeah. Yeah, and so the funny thing is, is, so I knew Liam when he was like three.

Yeah. You know, actually younger than that. Yeah. But anyways, my family's kind of the opposite. You know, I kind of, my kids have been in it since they were four or five. Your kids are savages. They are. And I mean that in the best possible way.

They are, but I also didn't, I tried not to push, right? And, you know, Joe, he's not on this trip. He's at home. He's doing his music in his basement, whatever. I think that's fine. But I agree with Matt that at a young age, kids kind of need a little structure, a little direction. And fortunately, two, my kids fell in love with it. And now they're, I mean, I couldn't be prouder.

Like, what was it, yesterday, to have them teaching at camp. And they're 17. Like, that was cool when you brought Stella up today, too, when you were teaching your section. I brought her up because she was the best. person in the room. She moves very fast. She's phenomenal. So with my girls who are seven and nine, they don't have a choice.

They have to take Jiu-Jitsu. My daughter doesn't have a choice either. To me, and I've told Travis about this, I was trying to play chess. First off, what I was actually trying to do is get Nelson to shut up. That was the true beginning of the story, because he wouldn't. And he is the best SPG marketer ever. How old is he? Nelson.

Nelson's upstairs. Oh, that, Nelson. I thought you were talking about your son. And by the way, he is the best marketer we have. Oh, he's great, yeah. For two months, and I finally told him one night, if you will shut up, if you will physically shut your mouth and not say jujitsu the next time we hang out, I'll go. And then I went, I was like, God damn it, this is awesome.

He's like, how was? I'm like, it was okay, whatever, Nelson, like, maybe you're right. And then so I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, I'm like, all right, this is awesome for me. I'm an idiot. I should have done this years ago, but I have the opportunity to correct that for my kids. But I wanted to play

chess with them instead of checkers. Because I do, like with my boys, I mean, if I let them choose what they wanted to do, they would play video games all day and not go to school. So I totally agree that you have to put them on the path,

and I'll let them bounce around the gutters a little bit, but they're staying on the path. But I didn't make them start right away. I waited until they started asking to wrestle with me. And then, They were, like, getting frustrated.

But we were sweating, and then finally in my middle son was like, Dad, I think I want to try this. I'm like, yes. And I got him, and they're like, I want to go to class today. And then I think Travis actually saw the light switch with Riley because he gets to start rolling. And I'm embarrassed with the level of aggression that he uses

because he loses his goddamn mind. And I enjoy it. Yeah. Because I'm impressed. I like that. I figured you would, but as a parent watching on the TV, I'm just like, they're like, whose kid is that? I'm like, my son, I'll talk to him later.

He's not going to listen to me, but I'm like, every day in the car, I'm like, Riley, you've got to be a good training partner. But they're all in there now, and I don't know, I can't speak for them to say that they're in love with it, but they're hanging their geese up, they're ready to go. They're asking, hey, I don't know why they can't remember the days of the week in which day they have class, because they're always asking me is, do we have class today? I'm like, it's the same day every week. but it's awesome. And for my daughter, I can't think of anything more powerful because it's a matter of time, not a matter of if.

She's going to have something happen to her in her life. Yeah. No, for sure. Yeah, if I don't prepare her for that, then I would be absolutely failing as a father for sure. We homeschool the girls. So they have their blocks of different things they have to do, and one of them is jujitsu.

I like it. And they can do it with it. Do they get credit for it? Yeah, they can credit. That's awesome. And we do it. I do most of it. I do most of their trainings just with me at home, but I take them to the gym.

Then they get a little checkmark, and that's how they earn their screen time. It's amazing how valuable screen time is to the kids. Very important. If I want to unravel my children, I just start taking things that plug into the wall. If I need to tighten up behavior, go get that Xbox controller and put on my desk. Dad, did you need me to steam clean the house? I did actually, but still put the controller over there. Yeah.

So what do you see the future, both of SBG and Jiu-Jitsu? I mean, what does it look like in 10 years? Because it seems like the last 10 years saw a rapid evolution. When was the first UFC? 1996, four. Oh, no, it was earlier than that. Three? I don't know.

It was 92, I believe. So closer to 30 than 20 years ago, and it seems like it's evolved quite a bit since then. What do you guys see it in 10 years? I've never been good at predicting that. To be honest with you, I never saw the growth of MMA. I remember when it, you know, I was there at the very beginning. I was training with the guys that were in some of those early U.S.s. And at that time, Senator McCain was calling it human cockfighting, and they were trying to outlaw.

I remember that. There wasn't very many states where you could even hold the fight. And it was more like a spectacle than a sport. and I actually didn't have the vision to see it growing the way it has. So I don't know that I have any good hindsight ability to answer those questions. Yeah, as far as MMA goes, I'm not sure where that's headed. I'm not that interested. Jiu-jitsu, I would like to believe that it won't end up like karate

or kung fu or ikeido or hot kido or we talked about this with frankle about if it gets in the olympics how to potentially change the way people that could but i also think that those other martial arts that i just mentioned weren't always goofy i i have to believe that at some point those martial arts were martial and why why would they exist otherwise you know at some point i think that's a fallacy you think so yeah because i think things don't because people often say well if it if it's not if it doesn't work or it didn't work at some point why has it been around for so long but things aren't around for so long because they're necessarily beneficial they're around so long because they're good at

replication and if you look at the traditional martial arts that have been that replicate well they're exactly like religion but do you think that uh like for example like with karate at some point they trained in a way that was effective? I think it's all myth. If you go back, they'll say, well, the flying sidekick was to knock guys off horses. And they had to use this because the farmers had, there was no farmers that were coming out and fighting samurai. That was a really quick fight.

Yeah, there's a warrior class. Was just coming in and cutting them down. So, I mean, if you look, take something like Wing Chun as an example. It'll have a origin story. In this case, a blind nun who had some kind of power that was unachievable by us but was there in the past. Is this the actual story? Oh, yeah. They all have some.

Oh, I'd have, okay. There's always an origin story to those arts. And then it's codified, and dogma is created, which is in the form of the sclerotic patterns, which is their cottis. And it gets passed down generation to generation. And there's always this theory, well, at some point it must have. It's like, really, if it was effective at some point, it looked like what we do now. The Greeks, yes, the warrior cultures all had grappling arts. They had to.

They had to. But so much of the Asian martial arts really are a giant bubble of make-believe, which was also brought to light during the Boxer Rebellion when they all thought they could use their kung fu to defeat the bullets. And we know how well that went for them historically. It's an interesting and controversial approach. Yeah. The Western martial arts, there is truth to that.

Any warrior, Western warrior culture, you're going to find a grappling art. And there's truth to that in places like Mongolia where they have Mongolian wrestling, things like that. But when it comes to kung fu and when it comes to karate and many of those martial arts, it really is just, I think, myth. Okay, let me rephrase my answer then. My only fear would be that somehow Jiu-Jitsu would train in a way that would make it more like karate or kung fu in the sense that to make it more appealing to the masses

they would take the sparring away, the aliveness away, the actual the work, the gym part of straight blast gym, the sweat. because part of what makes jiu-jitsu work is that you actually have to work does that make sense it does you it's a liveness

yes and when you take aliveness out it becomes a dead pattern and it's inevitable that it'll there will be aspects of it that go that way for sure what do you think will cause them to go that will be the root cause behind that instructors will come up and they'll say exactly what Travis just said, we need to bring more people into it.

To do that, we have to do this, and or, and you see it happening now with the IBJF, they'll be very anti, that rule system. And they will, under the guise of, well, we're going to train for Street, quote unquote, try and codify it into some set of forms, ritualized movement where these hidden secrets can be kept to be passed down generation to generation.

What gives me hope that that won't happen, which is different in our generation from any generation previous, and for sure that's what happened in the generation's previous is video. Right? We have the UFCs. We have video. We have the tournament. So back in the day, they didn't have that.

You're just hearing a story or reading a book, having to take somebody's word for it. Now you can go on the Internet. You know, you can see all this. So I think there'll be branches of it that will certainly become less functional, but we're not going to become less functional. still going to be doing that and that just gives us more market share. Yeah. What do you think about people trying to learn after class on YouTube?

The internet coach, if you will. I like the curiosity part of that. I like the fact that they're so hungry about Jiu-Jitsu that when they go home, they're watching YouTube about Jiu-Jitsu or they want to watch a competition. That part I like. and that's something we all had in common. The downside of that is if you're not at a level where you're capable of discerning what you're watching

and seeing it, am I watching something that's a core fundamental or just something that somebody was able to pull off that looks cool, and when you can't distinguish between those two things, and then they latch on to that and spend their time doing that instead of what their coach told them to do. And then try it open mat. And then tried it open mat. That can be problematic.

But again, if they're in a good culture like you have in Montana or wherever, they're going to come in and they're going to pay the price for that. And it sorts itself out that way. Yeah. What are your thoughts on the Internet coach, Travis? I'm pretty much in line with my coach on that one. I think it's great. I encourage people to watch competition. Especially competition.

Because that's real. Yeah. It's real. I say that all the time in class with you. The problem with instruction. is the other guy's cooperating. Sometimes less obvious than others. Sometimes you're like, wow, you are a thespian.

Yeah. No, so you're supposed to make me look good. Yeah. But if you're watching the worlds or Pan Ams, that's two guys that don't want to lose, that know what they're doing. And if it works there, that's real. So video in that sense I like.

I like the curiosity as well, and I like the hunger, the passion of I'm going to spend my time watching jiu-sitsu videos, but in terms of actual progress. There's a part, too, that's kind of natural in that when you're a white belt, especially if you've had no grappling previous, you could be beat by another white belt, and then your coach shows you the counter or movement, and it completely changes the game. Yeah. Yeah. And so at that stage in the jiu-jitsu,

process technique really is the king and learning more technique really can make all the difference between this guy that tapped you out yesterday and now he can't that changes once you get to purple belt brown belt that stops becoming the case and really it becomes more a question of the fundamentals and connection and timing and those kind of things so it's natural i think for blue belts and white belts to go searching for techniques if i were to see a higher level purple belt or brown belt looking at some of those especially the more silly the possibility parts of it as opposed to that that would be problematic because it would point to them not understanding how jiu-jitsu works yet which would probably be a bad indication of the color of the belt they're wearing

yeah i was going to say by that point they probably can yeah they know what they need to focus on i would hope i mean what i want from somebody that's a good purple belt or brown belt is to ask the kind of questions that tell me that they're thinking about things like base and posture and connection, and they're not thinking about counter for counter up in somebody else's tree. So, yeah. I like your analogy of the tree. I was thinking about that today. Well, I'll let you describe it.

I think I understand it. The base is the roots of the tree. Poster is the trunk. And then from the sprouting off the trunk, there's going to be two to five different main branches because that's all it can fit on the trunk. And that's directions of force. And then from that flows all these possibilities,

your sweeps, your submissions, your counter submissions. And the way people often teach Jiu-Jitsu is technique for technique or chains of technique. You do this, they do this, you do this. And that's playing in the tree. But the interesting part, the, important part I believe for Jiu-Jitsu is the roots, the trunk, and those main branches, which is the base, the posture, the connection, and the pressure. And then from that flows everything

else. And it's also, not only is it much easier to learn that way, and not only do you, it's much easier to teach that way, I think, and not only can people learn faster that way, but it's also more effective to break down somebody else's game. So if you use somebody, for example, like his brother, who's a black belt at my gym, you know Ricky, right? Yeah, he came to Montana. So he's very good at a butterfly hook sweep. He's been doing the butterfly hook guard for 20 years. So if you get in his guard or I get in his guard and he starts to sweep you with a butterfly

hook and you decide to counter a particular way, maybe something somebody showed on YouTube, guaranteed he's felt it. Because he's rolled with all kinds of different people and he's put him in that that and you're now playing on a branch counter for counter that's his tree. But if you can take away his posture or his base, the platform he needs to execute that delivery system, if you can adjust that the space and manage the distance that alters that platform, you shut down his game. And he can't even begin playing back in that counter for counter thing until he adjusts

and gets back to that platform. Yeah. And so by learning to destroy the base and the posture of your opponent, or to take it away or to adjust it, you can avoid all that mess, you know, and you can, and the way that gets described is as pressure and boring. And I got like, oh, he just shut me down. It didn't really seem like they did anything. It was like all this pressure. But that's what jiu-jitsu looks like when it's done well. Yeah.

They're not allowing you to build a base and then you start your sweep and then they do their, counter and then you it's not how it works yeah the goal is you had to not allow the other person to do what they want to do right it doesn't matter what it looks like yeah which is controlling distance managing distance and you manage distance in a in grappling with base posture base posture and connection so at somebody at my experience level six seven months in i think all of my time should be focused around the base yes and focusing on that and the like the shiny objects that are on the YouTube fill in the, how do you do a BJJ fill in the blank?

And then, I'm assuming later on, your allocation of your time will change. Not really, really, no. If anything, you're, the, the, the, the, the, here's the irony, the people who appreciate white belt jujitsu the most, like, real just, I could fill in the blank here. Are higher level black belts, or, really? Or let's just say that's where that was going.

People who've trained jiu-jitsu for 25 years or more. They're the ones that get it. So if you, a coach who I admire a lot, Henry Aikens. Yep, I know he is. He puts out, there's not a lot of instructionals that I like. And it does not to say that they're not great jujitsu players. I just don't like what they're teaching. I like most everything I've ever seen Henry put out.

He puts out solid material. But if you go to one of his videos and click on the comments, It's actually really funny. I mean, John Frankel and I've talked about this before, but you'll see guys go, oh, yeah, I learned that. I learned that my first day. Oh, I've seen that like five or six times. Is this on YouTube?

Oh, yeah. Because that's the lowest, well, Twitter is the lowest portion of humanity. YouTube comments are just one step above it. It is. But even on some of Jiu-Jitsu forums or places where he'll post it, but it's indicative of the fact that they don't even know what to look for yet. They may have been, they might be a purple belt. They might be a gold medal winning brown belt,

but they can't distinguish between the real gold that's somebody like Hickson or Henry or some of John Frankel today, Glenn earlier, the coaches that we're teaching here at the camp, they can't distinguish between that and another just movement. And so actually I think the longer somebody does jiu-jitsu, the more obsessed they become with the kind of stuff that I'm obsessed with, which is that structural stuff. It makes sense and applying it,

even I was doing a role with Gus. And surprisingly enough, you guys won't believe this, but he swept me. And he stopped. He's like, what just happened? I'm like, you know what just happened? He just swept me.

He's like, yeah, but why? He's like, your base is all jacked up. Get back. So I did it. And then he swept me again. We discussed it a little bit more. And then I lowered my base because I was up too high

and leaning forward because I thought it would be a good idea to dive on Gus. That's also not a good strategy. And it got harder for him to do it. He obviously was still able to do it. But as soon as... And then I forget who was doing the demo.

I watched somebody have their base lean forward. And then watching it from a distance, I'm like, okay. Not that I can necessarily apply it immediately, but I understand what that issue that I'm having is at that point because I'm just leaning too far forward. I'm 100% confident that if you teach Jiu-Jitsu that way and you have people who can learn jujitsu that way or who appreciate jujitsu that way,

you can go from white belt to black belt. And the belt doesn't matter when I say black belt, I mean using that as a physical representation of a measurable skill, somebody that can roll with other black belts. You can go from white belt to black belt in five or six years. There's no reason why it should take 12 or 15 years. I think so often it takes 12 or 15 years because there's all these diversions.

but if you really just focus on those core fundamentals, you can get to that. Even quicker, depending on really just how many hours people can train per week. Most people have jobs and things like that. What's that all about? Tell me about your book,

because we're almost at the end of the power hour. Awesome. Yeah, I've been working on that for about five or six years. The title is amazing. Thank you very much. What is the title? 100 lessons in violence. That is amazing.

Yes. I initially wanted to write a book about training methods and mythology in the martial arts because those are topics I've been obsessed with forever. And I had lunch with one time, this was probably six years ago. Actually, we were together in Los Angeles with an author that I admire a lot named Sam Harris. I was there. That was awesome. Yeah.

And he was complimentary towards some things I'd written which blew me away because I had so much respect for him as an author, but he also said to me at that lunch, you should write, he's like, what section do you want the book to be in? And I'm thinking, I'm not writing really a jiu-jitsu book that's going to go next to somebody like Sala Rivera.

So he said you should write it about violence. It's a fascinating topic that most people only experience on the periphery. Yeah. So when he said that, I thought that, not all violence, of course, such a huge topic, but as it applies to martial arts, myth and martial arts,

he's 100% right, and that's perfect, but I wanted to make sure, I wanted to do my research and make sure that I wasn't writing something that had been written before, so I spent a couple years doing a lot of research and going back to basically raw data as it applies, especially to crime statistics

here in the United States, because I'm not focused so much on warfare, but personal self-defense. Yep. And then I started to write and rewrite and I finally got finished a few months ago so we're

yeah I'm looking forward to seeing about getting it published. When does it come out? Good question so I have my agent Paul who's actually here at this camp as well he's shopping it around a different publisher so we don't actually have a publisher yet we're looking for it but I'm excited

yeah I look forward to reading it man it's going to be great yeah it is going to be great that's one power hour about awesome. All I can say is thank you guys for your time. This summer of this weekend. When did we start?

I feel like I've been in Georgia for like six weeks. We started Thursday at Open Matt. Friday. No, Thursday. We were here Thursday night. I never missed it at Open Matt. Andy does not miss a good open mat. That has been awesome.

Thank you guys for everything. Thanks very much. Thank you. That's all I have for this week. Thank you again to Murder Book. A new True Crime podcast host by Best Selling Authors Michael Connolly. It's available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you may choose to listen to your podcast. Also be sure to check out his newest number one bestseller, Dark Sacred Night,

featuring detectives Harry Bosch and Renee Ballard. So thank you, Murder Book for support the podcast. And also thank you to Duke Cannon for supporting Cleared Hot this episode of cleared hot. You're going to get 15% off your first order and free shipping on orders over $35 at Duke Cannon.com with the promo code, cleared hot. If you don't know where to start, I'm going to say get one of their big ass bricks of soap, or maybe two. They got some really cool packaging and marketing on the side, and the stuff is awesome. I've been using it for a while. And that's all I got.

Like I said, I was a little bit late getting this one up today because I was on the road, but it still counts. It's Monday. Thank you, as always, to everybody who is taking the time to listen, taking the time to reach out, feedback suggestions. I take it all on board, as much as I possibly can. And I take the negative on board, just like I take on the positive. I don't ignore the negative and only focus on the positive because I don't think you get better if you do that. So if you have a question, reach out, question, comments, concerns. They're all welcome.

If you get spare a moment and you haven't done it before, do me favor, go to iTunes. Give me a review on the podcast of whatever level you think is appropriate. If you think it's a one-star and I'm the worst podcast host ever, you should do exactly that. And if you think the opposite, to do exactly that. If you don't want to do anything, then, you know, don't do anything. I'm not going to tell you what to do. What else do we have? Tactical assholes is coming.

Most of the time they're hiding in plain sight, so it's more a matter of me taking the time to aggregate some information before we come out of the gates hot. I'm thinking mid-April group setting Navy SEALs. It's going to be amazing. So stand by for that. And what else? The Clared Hot Podcast Merchandise is for sale. Clearthodepodepodcast.com.

Click on shop. Get a shirt if you want to. It's the best advertising there is. And that is all. I will see everybody. I won't actually see anybody. But I'll be back next week.