Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 382 - Greg Anderson

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Greg Anderson was a Law Enforcement Officer for the Port of Seattle Police Department. He posted an 8-minute video to his personal Instagram page in which he called for his fellow Law Enforcement Officers to consider the impacts of their actions on public trust, and the legality/constitutionality of enforcing strict pandemic/quarantine measures, an act for which he was eventually terminated. Greg is a veteran of the United States Army where he served as part of the 75th Ranger Regiment. Post military he worked overseas as a contractor for Triple Canopy before joining the US Marshal Service, then as a Police Officer in Los Angeles, and eventually as an officer at the Port of Seattle in Washington. He is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt and the owner of Electric Jiu Jitsu North in Lake Stevens. He is also the host of the Endless Endeavor Podcast. Electric North Jiu Jitsu: https://www.theelectricnorth.com/ Endless Endeavor: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/endless-endeavor-with-greg-anderson/id1520461765 Today's Sponsors: Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ LMNT: https://www.drinklmnt.com/clearedhot Get your free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase. Also, don't forget to try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. Before we get into it, I want to talk about a project that I was doing with Ironclad, of which the second episode should be releasing, I think, the same day that this podcast is coming out. I did a four-part series with them called Black Projects. Specifically, we were diving into the history of UAPs or unidentified aerial phenomenon, also known as UFOs for normal people. And it was a pretty cool experience. visually rich, historically rich, a lot of information.

It's available now. At the end of today's show, I'm going to add a 60-second trailer that you can watch if you want to. You're already here for the podcast. So hang in there for 60 seconds at the end and check it out. If you like what you see, head over to the Ironclad YouTube page. And you can watch it for yourself. Okay. Enough about that.

Today's episode is with Greg Anderson, repeat guest. He first came on the podcast slightly into the beginning of COVID. He was in the military. He worked in law enforcement at a federal level and state level. He hit my radar when he made a video in his police car while working for, I believe, the Port Authority of Seattle. If I'm incorrect in that, that's my fault, not his. Talking in my words, again, describing his video to other police officers about what their

roles and responsibilities may be actually. should be during the pandemic and what they should consider as valid and legal and perhaps immoral and illegal when it came to what they were being told to do. He ended up losing his job because of that video. And I bet, actually, I think I asked him on the show. He wouldn't take it back for the world. He's a high-level jiu-jitsu practitioner. Apparently he's very good at armbars.

I wouldn't know because he's never armbar me. What do you think about that, Greg? And he's got a podcast called Endless Endeavor, an awesome jiu-jitsu school on the West Coast, north of Seattle, I believe it is, electric north jiu-jitsu. And it was awesome to catch up with him. And, you know, we never really know what we're going to talk about.

Probably got a little bit off the rails at times. He believes in the power of crystals. We definitely talked about that. So, yeah, episode 382 is going to be with Greg Anderson. Before we get to that, though, give me 90 seconds. Let me pay the bills. Today's episode is brought to you by Montana Knife Company. Go back, I'm right here on the YouTube channel right now.

Go back three episodes, the 379. I flew down and did an episode with Josh Smith, the founder of Montana Knife Company. Born in Montana, but he kind of left for a good amount of time and came back, but we'll give it to him. This brand is exploding in the time that I have known him. And it's really cool to see what he is doing. They're building a massive facility just on the western edge of Missoula right now. bringing as many American jobs into the Missoula area. They're sourcing the materials from the United States,

building it in-house, combining it together, sharpening them. Michael's brother cuts himself on these knives, has to get stitches. Occasionally, true story, not making that up. That's how sharp they are. Actually, there's plenty of videos of people opening these things and cutting themselves the instant that they get gifted these. So let's start with that. Use with caution.

Born and bred in Montana. It's a really cool brand. I'm going to tell you right now, I'm on their website, montanaginicompanic.com. Every once in a while, they'll do a surprise restock. But if you kind of scroll down, you're going to notice a lot of the knives are not in stock because they're really hard to get.

They make knives for people who are working on ranches. They make chef's knives. They make tactical or military-themed knives. Actually, that was one of their latest releases. It was the Seer knife, which Josh just did a pretty cool video on his Instagram where he was chopping wood with the knife and it was still shaving hair on his arm afterwards.

These blades are no joke. They are hard to get though. So I would actually, this might sound ridiculous. Practice checking out. Go there, buy something on the website like a sticker so they have your information saved. I have literally had knives pulled out of my shopping cart because they go so quickly. You can also shine up, shine up.

You can sign up for an email list or text alerts when they're going to release new stuff. You can get a little bit of a heads up. But I love everything that they've got going on. I love the fact that they're building a global brand with roots in Montana, staying true to their roots. And one of the best ways that you can help me is support the brands that help the podcast. So head over to Montana Knife Company.com. If you buy something from them at some point in that checkout portal,

they're going to ask you where you came from. Do me a favor. Tell them you came from either me or the cleared hot podcast. And it's a win-win for everybody. Back to the show. To the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. Oh, one a minute. Can't be clear not only bought into jih Tzu as an art, but as a lifestyle.

What I find... Should you put it in your bio? When you get a purple belt. Should you put like purple dot, purple dot, purple dot black belt? No, what I found, though, is like the majority of people that make purple belt in my academy anyways, one day I'll tie a black belt around them. Did you find it to be your most fun belt? because it was this middle ground of,

you kind of know some stuff, but nobody really has heavy expectations. So you can just fuck around. Bro, I'll tell you what, man. Purple Belt wasn't my most fun belt. For me, it was Brown Belt. For that same reason. Interesting.

It was, uh, I was also a brown belt for over five years. Yeah, but you probably took four years off during that time. No, I didn't. It was the busiest, it was the busiest five years of my jihitsu. But I moved down from Seattle to Los Angeles.

Okay. And then started training with Boucher and Joao. And it went, I told you about it. his top pressure, right? It wasn't what I thought it would be. I can tell you about his top pressure in great detail. He's really large.

He's large with perfect technique. Perfect English, too. His English is not, I'm being legitimately serious. Sometimes origin camp is fantastic. I mean, there's a guy there, Laboreo, he's a fucking coral belt. That doesn't actually make sense to me. You've been doing jiu-jitsu since the time of Christ. I think it's, isn't it like 30 years at Black Belt?

As a Black Belt? I think as 30 years. And those guys, I mean, he was competitive all the way up. So I don't think they were necessarily fast-tracking him. So he probably was along the lines of a 8 to 10-year practitioner to get to Blackbow. The 40 years. Yeah, it's nuts, bro. But there's guys there.

You ever look somebody's built and they had so many stripes? You're like, I'm not actually going to count that. Yeah. And people ask me like, oh, dude, what does that mean? And it's like, I've been doing just here for 20 years. I can't really tell you. Yeah. I don't understand that stuff.

Some of them are deep Brazilian, though. not all as easy to understand as Boucheshire. No, or what some of them I've noticed will do will, they'll be like mid-sentence in English and then they'll go right to Portuguese. Because that would happen with Ed Joao's Academy. And he'd be like, hey, hey, Greg, don't speak of the Portuguese.

Go back to English. And it's like, oh, oh, sorry, bro. I know what boa means. Boa, yeah. Because they yell it. That's about all I know, too. And the kombach and what's the one, paro to stop?

That's about it. And pojada. Everyday Pohada, yeah Like go hard Yeah No, bro, it's funny He's a fucking gorilla He's a gorilla dude

But also a gorilla That has perfect technique Because he moves like a panther You know, most heavy weights Don't move like him He so he was showing His word's not mine He was showing how he likes

To emotionally break his opponent Before physically breaking them So he'll misaline the legs He'll whatever way you go And of course he has, he'll make it seem like you get to pick which way you want to go. But either way you end up with your top side leg, like your hip, your top side hip is a little bit too far over. And every ounce of his weight is on top of that. And so you'll freak out and try to get to the other side where he just rides and does the same thing.

Then he starts scooching his knee up. And it basically is just fucking clamshowing you. Dude, it's one of those passes where it's like either have to tap out. or just give up the pass as quickly as possible. Like, please pass my guard. I want you in side control. I don't want this weird fold thing happening. I asked him about that.

And he said, no, I go to side control when I want to. He literally said, he goes, first you must break them. Yeah. And I said, do you have a DVD series on this? Because you are speaking my love language. Oh, it's really. Well, and to take it back to like how I met Bouchetia, and we're going, right? I'm assuming.

I don't know. Michael, did you push you bun? He's not incredibly. reliable at pushing the buttons. Do you know who Bouchesh is? No. It's not the... Marcus Almeida.

He's a 13-time world champion. Doesn't it mean cheeks? Yes, it does. Because when he started, he had fat cheeks. And I mean, he did my podcast and told the whole story. It's funny because I trained under him for years. I didn't know all the details, like how he got into Jiu-Jitsu. But he started at 12, but he didn't take it serious until 15.

That is later than a lot of those guys. Yeah, yeah. No, and he told me that. I remember one night after practice, he's like, man, I wish I started when I was younger. It's like, dude, you're only the reigning world champion. And first off, motherfucker, I found this when I was 40, so I don't want to hear you talk like that. I don't want to hear any of that talk. But when I walked into his academy, I was a brown belt from Seattle. And I'm not, I knew like, listen, I'm not a fucking world champion level grappler, but there was no one in Seattle that made me feel like an infant either. There's guys that could beat me. But I was always in the fight to a certain extent. Yeah, you're back. and forth. And I walked into Bouchetia's Academy. And the funny thing is, is I didn't even know who he was at the time. It was, uh, it was the summer before he won his first Black Belt World title. And he's just this 23 year old kid that was coaching on the side to earn some extra money, sleeping on couches. And no one really, like the people that were really into the scene is like, hey, this guy's the up and comer. But outside of that, no one really knew who he was. And I just signed up there because it worked with my schedule and my

commute. And I fucking trained with this, dude. And I, and I fucking trained to this dude. And, And after what he did to me on night one, I told him, I said, hey, I'm not trying to be like silly. This isn't a, I'm not being pejorative, as you put it. Yeah. I said, I'm being serious. I think I need to start over at Whitebelt under you. Did you have a drive home with no radio playing? Bro, like, it was the next week of my life.

Because it's like, dude, I know I'm a good athlete. I know I have pretty good jiu-jitsu. By that time, I had a few MMA fights and just, I didn't think there was another man that could still do that to me. and it was like that oh shit moment. You know that first oh shit moment you have when the first time you feel real Jiu-Jitsu? Yeah. Yeah.

And I told you the guy that the guy that did that to me, his name's Dallas Dalton. He went through buds with him. Yeah. So that was my first time. He's we too. Do you say he's we? Yeah.

He's 175. That's we. Yeah, but he's built like George St. Pierre too. That dude's a super athlete. Yeah, but how tall is he though? I mean, 5-9 or something maybe? Yeah, it's like Tom Cruise says. I'll tell you what.

He's one of the toughest fucking humans. I know, me. I don't like it when I don't think they should teach jiu-jitsu to anybody who has wrestled, anybody who is small, anybody who is athletic. Yeah, just save it for the old guys like us. No, but I had that experience with him. We're actually in Ramadi together. Yeah. When I first got exposed and it's like, what the fuck is happening? Because he goes, bro, do you want to train tonight? I said, yeah, what do you do? And he goes, I want to, he goes,

I'm a purple button jitsu and a muay fighter. And I said, okay, let's, yeah, I'll see what's up with it. And I grew up and I wrestled a little bit and I boxed a little bit. And I boxed a little bit. And if you have a little bit of training, you think you're basically UFC level. Comparison to most people. That's what I'm saying, bro. You're getting dumb fights with, like, college kids at bars and stuff, and it's almost not even fair. Yeah. And then you experience what a real martial artist feels like, and it's like, oh, oh, no, I'm a child still. Yeah.

And then I went from white to brown belt and then felt that all over again with Bouchetia, like day one. But only probably with him. Only with him. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. They also have like, it was like Lucas Lage, Marcelo Mofra. Like they all had academies that were close. So we would, the whole checkmat circuit would like train with each other,

Joe Acese too. And there was these little fucking blue and purple belts so it'll barram bull your ass. And you couldn't stop it. I didn't even know where barrenbola was. That's when you slap bump and walk away. It doesn't work when you're already fucking changing out. Barambole of my ass. I'm already fucking changing out in the locker.

But bro, I'll never forget it. It was another, I was partnered up with this blue belt and we're in love. at Lucas Lucas Laches Academy. And we were drilling Barambolo and I just does not compute. I couldn't, I couldn't grasp the way you invert, the way you roll through and then transition to the back. And you could tell this kid was frustrated because like I wasn't a very viable drilling partner as a brown belt and he was a blue belt.

It's embarrassing. Inversion is not meant for our body size. No, it's not, dude. You know my game. It is not inversion. I mean, I might end up there, I guess, but I'm getting the fuck out of there. Or anytime I get stacked, I immediately accept the pass because I'm not interested. It is one thing I notice about almost every single black belt with a bunch of stripes on their belt.

Is their next fucked up? Yeah, yeah, that's right. And they turn. I already knew where you're going because if you get too stubborn, not accepting a pass, you can actually fuck yourself up. Leah has her game when she was earlier on was inversion heavy. Uh-huh. And it is certain, and she mostly trains with guys. It's hilarious to listen to her talk.

You know, my jihitsu is trash. This, it's like, okay, you roll almost only with guys. They're athletic. They're fucking heavier than you. And then she just went and won the LA Open and a local. Yeah, yeah. Her jihitsu is certainly not trash.

Yeah. Remember the first time I rolled with her? I thought she was a purple belt? Yeah. Because she had the breast cancer awareness belt on. Yeah. You came in October. Yeah.

And I said, dude, like, who's that person? purple belt because she's fucking good. And you just laughed. You go, actually, she's a black belt world champion. Made me feel better about myself. Yeah, but tingly fingers sometimes. And she still deals with if she sleeps on her shoulder wrong. So that's when I tried to pay attention.

Anytime I'm getting remote, I'm like, just have whatever pass you want. But then you run into people like, Bouchesh, it's like, I know that I could pass right now, but first I must break you. You're like trying to throw your leg over.

Like, go ahead. Allow me to just lay here. And they're like, no, I'm just going to hold on to your life. Bro, I tell you, like, when he was, really bursting onto the scene and he had, it was like him and Hidalpho Vieira in the finals every year

for like three or four years in a row and he would be getting ready for that and he would beat me so fucking bad at practice. I remember I pulled him aside one time and I'm like Marcus seriously dude like I know we're homies and we don't I don't think there's any issues but are there because like that that was different.

He goes oh no no bro I pretend you're Hadofo. I pretend it's finals of World That's how hard I go. I'm getting ready. And I was like, show me on the doll where somebody touched you. Like,

why are you doing this to me? This is what he said to me. He humiliated me, but trying to give me a compliment. I said, well, bro, like I appreciate it, but I just don't feel like

a viable training partner sometimes because that felt completely one-sided. He goes, oh, no, no, no, bro. You're good for my cardio. So that's my favorite and Bruce Hsachiaquil. Oh, no, no, bro. You're good for my cardio.

Translation, your pace is great. I'm fucking you up. The guy I roll with like that pretty consistently is Henry Aiken's. You told me about him. He says pressure's fucking gnarly. His pressure is gnarly. And so he was, I believe, I want to say he was Hickson's first American black belt. If he wasn't, he was first or second, but he was his fastest black belt.

And he taught his academy for a long time. And I will get to spots. Well, he just toys with me. And eventually I get to a spot that I just start fucking laughing. I'm like, Henry, I don't know how to fuck to get out of this, dude. He's like, good, because you're not going to. No, he'll show me. But then for the next 30 minutes that we're rolling, he fucking funnels me into the same thing to reinforce how he showed me how to get out of it.

But he's got a fucking trap set for after I get out of it. It's not like the fucking lesson ends there. Last time I was at his house, God damn it. We were scrambling and I just put my ass right through his drywall. He has this little matted area. And we were fucking around. I think he had just swept me and we were scrambling and he was coming at me and I was going backwards. And as I hit the wall, I was like, Henry, I think I just impacted in between the studs there, buddy.

I'm sorry. Before we even move off the wall, I'm like, I'm sorry about your dry wall. Is he local to here? Vegas. Oh, okay. Yeah. He comes up occasionally, but you know, you can't tell the future, but it feels like, it's the same thing. Like, I don't understand how you can be that far ahead.

I just don't get it. Well, I mean, that's really the essence of. Jiu-jitsu is when you know what someone's going to do and you still can't stop it. And it's funny, man, I have, I have new guys come off the street that are like, you know, just naturally tough human beings. And they'll be frustrated on night one. They're like, dude, you arm barbed me six times. Like, after the first time, I knew you were going to do it.

And I still couldn't stop it. I'm like, bro, if you could come in here and stop my jihitsu after doing it for 21 years, what would be the point of coming in here? It's true. One day you'll arm barbub me too, Greg. Yeah, bro. You know what's funny is I get fake blackbell. I get people that anytime people see us training together on Instagram, I'll get DMs that are like, what's it like to rule with Andy?

What's it like to rule with Andy? Like any other fucking person. It's like people just want to know. And I think people want to know is because you progress. I mean, what are you of five or six year black belt? Just under six years. Just under six years. And so to like a lot of jihitsu people, they're like, that's fast, right?

Depends on how you look at it. Well, yeah, I was going to say hours. years for most people, from what I can tell is based on somebody who shows up two times a week. Yes. That's what I was saying. Seven times a week. Hours on the mat are what build your jihitsu. Not years based on showing up once or twice a week. Well, they add up to largely the same amount of time. You can take twice a week, call it four hours a week times 10 years, or 14 hours a week. And you can do the math. That ends up being the same amount of time on the mats. I also think you showed up with, I mean, you've already done a lot of things at a high. level. So like you understand what it takes to become successful at things. I do what the coach says and no more. Yeah, but you told me you said, hey, I'm either no send or full send.

Yeah. So it's like, okay, this jih Tzu thing, this is what I do now. Yeah, but what's the easiest way to learn? You, you go and you find somebody you want to learn from. And they tell you you should do this. And I'll say every time and they go, yep, every time. Why do I need to look beyond that until I've mastered that. I don't need to be on the fucking internet looking at inverted fucking, what was that stupid K Swiss guard or whatever? Squid guard. Yeah. And then the guy hit that. I mean, I'm like, this is, this is weird. I've never seen this. There's utility to it, but if you're going to try to actually learn something, and to me, it's about the fundamentals. My theory is you do exactly what your coach tells you to and nothing more until they tell you to. Strip the bullshit away

and actually just focus on what it is that they're telling you to do. And we could talk about this for the next two hours because I still don't, even after 21 years, I don't know what the right path is to just hone the basic jujitsu that works for me. Or do you expand your way of thinking and learn squid guard and learn inverted Dela Wormguard and all that shit? And it's like for me as a coach,

I think it's more important to have an understanding of it. I want to understand it to the degree that I could deal with it. Yes. Like the first time somebody put me in Daily Hiva. I was like weird. And I also don't like the tension on my knee. And actually, and then so I learned Daley Heave a little bit because it's part of Leah's game. And I'm like, I just don't, I don't like the way this feels and my legs are a little bit longer than hers anyway.

But I would find people who do it and I would just stand there and maybe even like blade off a little bit. Like, don't you want to do that? Until I could understand it. Same thing, people play butterfly guard. My theory is dive into whatever people's A game is and get a feeling for it. all the inversion and stuff like that at footlocks and leg locks and all that not my game but I understand it enough that I can keep myself safe yeah no I think that's what's key but then I had an interesting experience literally like three weeks ago do you know who jeff teeggs is

are you familiar with him oh fuck why does that name ring a bell he's a black belt he's a former tier one guy teege ggs i don't know but his son Aaron is also a black belt I don't like him already. So he's 27 years old. Oh, God. And he started at seven. And he came up to my academy last week. That's rough.

And, uh, bro, I haven't been manhandled like that, literally since Bouchetia. But the thing is, Aaron's the same size as us. He weighs 205 pounds. And he wasn't used, he wasn't like outpowering me or using strength. He was just doing whatever he wanted to me with really sound leverage and angles. but he plays all that fancy stuff too. Yeah. But he knows it all.

And it was like, which I think is awesome. But in life, I don't think you can learn 80 things and perform at a super high level at all of them. But I do think you could learn 10 things and be a fucking razor blade. Well, and bro, that's been my jihitsu forever. It's pretty basic. And I always reference Hodger Gracie. Like that dude, arm bars or cross collar chokes you. Yeah, that's it.

Did he win worlds one time doing that to eight people in a row? Every single person. Pass their guard mount collar choke. At what point, what do you think? Like the third, fourth or fifth guy that somebody was sitting there like, listen, I'm probably going to lose, but not to that. And then guess what? He lost to that.

And then the next guy was like, not to me, motherfucker. Every single one of them mount fucking cross collar choke. And he sinks it the same way. Thumb around the back, loops it over, and you're fucking done. And then you watched him do that to Shasha. Didn't he catch him with a bone arrow? He was on the back. Yeah, yeah, but still like, very basic jih Tjitsu, right?

That's how I would beat him too. I watched him and Hodra fight live at Meta Moris won when Boucherusha was my coach. And have you ever watched any of the MetaMorce? My only reference on that wasn't this some creation that was supposed to pay people a lot of money and then nobody got paid? That's right, dude. People are swearing at their radios right now, bringing up MetaMoros because it left a sour taste. But that's how I've heard about it. Yeah, a lot of people got fucked over by them from what I understand.

But regardless, him and Bouchetia and Hodger had like a pretty gnarly 10-minute match. Yeah. Where Bouchesha clearly outgrappled him, but it's submission or draw. That's how MetaMorsk does it. And so it ended up being a draw because he couldn't put him away. Yeah. And so fast forward a few years, I was like, dude, Marcus is only getting better. He's going to buzzsaw Hodger now.

Oh, is that when they met at that tournament? Yes. No, no, no, it was a super fight. Okay. Like there wasn't, they didn't work their way to each other. Yeah, it was scheduled. Yeah, it was scheduled. And fucking,

dude, Hodger put him away pretty quick. He just made it look easy. And it was like hard for me to comprehend like, because you know what Marcus feels like on top of you. No, I was actually joking. I never let it put on top of you.

Actually, no, one time he demoed because I asked him, I wanted to, for me, I do a lot better. There's a,

you know what when you're learning or you're watching specifically and jihitsu nerds will get this too? You're watching somebody teach, like conceptually that makes sense. But if I can feel the pressure and where you're putting it, it'll help me actually understand it better.

Oh, Always, bro. I call it invisible jit-to because you can't see what you can't, you can't see what you can't feel. So he was showing something at the mat and I asked him, unfortunately, if he could show me what the president. And I was like, holy fuck. But I can replicate that. It's really hard for me. I do better when I get a combination of both of those.

That's one of the things Henry is great about too. And he actually says that about Hickson. He said as, Hickson as like a verbal coach, one there was a little bit of a language barrier, but not the best. But if that dude could get his hands on you, he thought he was one of the best coaches that they're ever way. Just show you. Dude, the stories he has about him are fucking legendary. Like world champions spiking their belts in the fucking garbage can

after they roll with him. Well, bro, that's the, I mean, you wonder like. Oh, and this is after he had been off the mats for eight months coming back from a groin injury, hadn't trained at all. And was pressure tapping fucking world champions. Yes. And Henry's talking about how he's getting, Henry's getting ready for, I think it was a purple belt tournament right before he got his brown belt.

he was like, he's the best I ever did against Hickson. He's like, I was fucking his shit up. I was getting out of everything. I go and win the tournament and then I roll with him the next day and he hammer fist choked me five times in five minutes.

It's like, just so you know. He's like, I was just getting you tuned up for your tournament. No, you hear those stories about Hickson. You're like, is this like old just jujitsu like wild wilder claims is real? And then you start to hear it

from more and more people. It's like, dude, he did whatever he wanted to everybody. And even his family. Like they're all like, yeah, Yeah. He, I mean, Henry was, he was, like, living at the dojo. I mean, he's got stories of guys coming in, throwing stars against, like, the wood. They do, like, the challenge matches and shit.

Like, and he saw it firsthand. So, I mean, I wasn't there, so I guess I'm getting it secondhand. But this is through the dude's eyes who watched that shit happen. Isn't that cool, man? Yes. Got getting to be a part of, like, really jih Tjitsu history. Would you fight a ninja if he came into your academy? and did some throwing stars, not at you, but was like, I'm here to test my ninjitzy.

As long as he signed a waiver, and it'd probably be the easiest role of the night. Henry said that actually that guy with the throwing stars, I think was assigned to Blue Belt. Okay. Yeah, so it didn't go well for him. Oh, no, he just got completely fucked up. And then I think he tapped once and tried to get off the man. And the guy's like, no, no, there's like 4.30 left on the clock. Fucking get back out here.

Yeah, what's Hickson's quote? He says something like, if we're fighting for, money, I stop when you tap. If we're fighting for pride, I stop when I want. Yeah. He's got some good ones. You know, there's a kind of a direct line. Henry talks a lot about being heavy from regardless of where you are, even from the

bottom, you know, applying downward pressure, like if you're in closed guard, pushing down on their hips, a way to pin people. And he said, rolling with Hickson always felt like you're on a beach ball. That's the best way he's described it. Regardless if you were in a dominant position or not, you never felt like it was settled. You were never settled. Like it was just constant. I'm like, okay.

Well, that helps them carry the initiative. Yeah. You know, if you can never settle in, that's actually one of the, no, no, no, I'm in a dominant position. I should be the one that's comfortable here. Nope, I'm not. Even if they're clearly losing, if you can't settle in, it starts to fuck with your mind. Here's the best question. How much does owning crystals help you with your jiu-jitsu?

Well, you have a crystal now because I gave it to you. I know, but it's hidden away in a safe place that I go to recharge from his powers. I'm assuming it's at the coffee shop And a lot of your success And a lot of the good that comes that place Is probably a direct result of that crystal I mean you never know People would be shot

We actually do text back and forth Occasionally pictures of crystals Or I'm just hoping that your boat sinks Which you finally sold No no no it's for sale Okay It hasn't sold yet I would love to see it sink with you on it

Within like swimming distance of the shore Cold water doesn't bother me so I'll be okay I'm not saying over the horizon But like in the harbor this towel and you're on it. Dude, I love, that's been like from day one. Because I remember I was on my boat, literally like a week after we did our first episode together.

Yeah. And I remember, I don't know if you remember this. I was texting you about what equipment to get to start a podcast. Yeah, I do remember. And you're like, you're out on your fucking boat. I hope that thing sinks. So you've been very consistent there. I hate the fucking ocean.

I don't hate the ocean. I hate small watercraft on water. I would probably sit in a boat if it was in a dry dock. I don't like the water I wonder why Was that podcast you came out from years ago Was that the first one that you did? Because I know you did a bunch after that

But was that That was 20-20 Shortly after you went a little fucking rogue On the LEO world Yeah, it was crazy Started thinking for yourself Well dude that was And you were one of the first people

That reached out to me And you're like Because I mean obviously you did some investigating Because my number is public Because I own a Jidoo-A-Gitza academy No I hit you up through Instagram No no no you text me Did I?

How did I get your number? And I was like, well, you probably Googled me, I'm assuming. I don't know. I don't Google people. It's gay. Well, whatever you did, you texted me. You said, hey, this is who I am. I run a podcast.

You want to come out? I'm like, I know who you are. Of course I'll come out. Yeah. And it's crazy how a seven-minute video can change the trajectory of the rest of your life, dude. How much money, if I had a checkbook and I just started writing zeros, how much for you to go back to be in a cop in the job he used to do? I'm not exaggerating when I say this. I wouldn't go back to patrol officer for $2 million a year salary.

I wouldn't because here's the thing, man. Now that I have 265 students at my Jiu-Satami. So am I getting rich? No, but I also don't want for anything. We're very comfortable. Which I actually think is a better definition of rich. That's right. I think rich is the ability to do with your time what you want to.

And now that me and my family get to experience that, we're making enough to where like my daughter turned 16 this weekend and we can go get her a new car. not a new car, but a car without being stressed about it, right? And we can afford just being comfortable, traveling when we want to travel. But more importantly than that, not having the stress of a boss, not having the stress of being told what to do. Like, dude, I think back on it now, because I was 40 years old when I left the professional law enforcement.

In that car, you were 40? Yeah, dude. 39 or 40. With your hat on backwards, you savage. Oh, I was hiding my department. You were doing your best to protect your department. How'd that work out for you? Yeah, it didn't at all.

But to think back, like literally four years ago, if I didn't shave my face that morning. Is that all it was was four years ago? Yeah. Well, it's five now. Yeah. It's 2020. Oh, how we have all forgotten that it was illegal almost for you and I to be in the same place or to meet with our friends outside.

I know, dude. Or to hang out with your friends and do anything. Well, and that's why that story went so viral because everybody was feeling it at home and to see somebody in uniform say what everybody's thinking, that's why it fucking blew up the way that it did. How quickly from you hitting upload to your first call from the boss? Was it pretty quick? Yeah, oh no, it was the next morning.

Yeah, yeah. I uploaded it because here's the deal. We worked, it was the last day of my work week, which was I worked Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. So it was Tuesday, and then I recorded it and put it out there, like within the last couple hours of my shift and then Wednesday morning. Hey, uh, I think I told you this the first time. They're like, I think you were under investigation the first time you came out. Yes, they were still looking at it. Yeah. It happened immediately. Yeah. And so they say,

hey, you got to take that down. And it was funny too because they're like, hey, we agree with your message. Everything you said is we think on principle is good, but we can't say that in uniform. And I was like, I don't really understand that. Like cops can't say things that are good for the community to hear because we're in uniform. and they just landed on the social media policy. You can't be on any social media platform in a police uniform. I'm like, well,

everyone's fucking playing with their dogs and doing all their shit in uniform. No one cares. But as soon as it's a political message, that's what they fell back on, you know? Before that video, were you happy doing that job? Could you even have fathomed where you're at now for five years ago?

I'll tell you, bro, I knew that I probably had a five-year window as a police officer before it was time to move on. And I'd already been in the profession because I was a deputy down in Los Angeles for a while too. And I'll tell you, the port of Seattle was a good department to work for. Like the people were cool. My chain of command was made up of pretty good people.

I didn't mind who I worked for, but the profession in itself was starting to eat at me. And it's like, dude, you wake up every day and you go to work and you drive around and you just, you deal with stuff that you don't feel like is even really making a difference. especially in Seattle. It's always like petty thefts, car prowls, a lot of drug stuff, a lot of trespass. Like every once in a while, like I revived a guy that had a heart attack. That day you go home proud of yourself, things like that, right? Or you catch a dude taking pictures of little boys taking a piss and it's like,

oh, I got a good one today, right? But I would say 95% of the time, it's just low vibration activity that you just start to carry and it feels heavy. And I didn't know how heavy the profession was until I walked away from it. I had a lot of people telling me the next, I would say within six months of leaving law enforcement,

they're like, dude, you're starting to age backwards. Like, yeah, good. Because I don't, I'm not caring on.

Did you guys do shift work? Did your schedule rotate to? Well, that was one thing I liked about my department is we would bid a position once a year. And then you'd work that for 12 months. Dude, the sheriff's deputy is here.

They rotate monthly. Well, the science is completely back. It's so, fucking nuts. You're talking about aging in dog years. Like there's no question that that fucking destroys your endocrine system. It destroys your sleep cycles.

And they apparently are like just cool. Too bad. Yep. How do you not get completely, how do you not just hover at an empty battery? Well, bro, and that's the thing. The science behind being in any type of shift work, a nurse, a firefighter, a police officer. Yeah. Exactly what you're saying.

It's it disrupts your sleep patterns. It loads your body with cortisol. And statistically, you die within five years of retirement. And that's what every cop, like almost every cop that I know, the young ones that are new are go-getters. And anytime I talk about this, I always am careful because, like, I'm not shooting on the profession. And if you're a hard charger and you're a cop and you like your job, by all means continue to do that job. But there's a ton of cops out there that feel trapped because they have 10 years left. They don't know what else to do.

And they're like, well, I get my retirement when I'm 57. and so I have to be here for another 12 years and they're miserable. Yeah. And it's a scary place to arrive because people feel stuck. But statistically, if you just keep grinding that out and then you finally reach that retirement, your heart gives out a couple years later. Well, how do you deal with that little level of vibration? Because even the guys who love the job, they're still in the, they're still dealing with that

shit. What could you change about that profession that would help with that kind of, I mean, nobody calls 911 to say, hey, I'm having a great day. No, exactly. It's all somebody's shittiest day. And it's so funny to me how much of an emphasis is placed on veterans and post-traumatic stress. Fucking first responders see orders of magnitude greater than I did overseas. And at least I could metaphorically clock in and clock out because I was going to be on deployment.

And my phone doesn't ring when somebody calls 911. I'm just hanging out of my house. First responders are fucking every day all day. Yeah. And I don't know. How do you change that? Bro, I don't think human beings, I don't think we're meant to be exposed to that kind of stuff for 20 or 30 years. I think being a soldier, I think being a patrol officer, I think being a firefighter.

I think that those things are a young man's job or a young woman. Get people calling in being angry at you. That was Greg Anderson made the sexist and misogynistic. What I've noticed is like, you know, from 20 to 30, like, experience. a lot of those like high stress situations and putting yourself out there and doing those type of hard jobs. But to carry that into your 40s and 50s, I think at that point, people are just doing it because of retirement. So what do you think cap it at 35? What I think, and I don't even know if this is feasible because you'd have to look at the like budgets and

available positions and stuff. But if a police officer is a state employee or a county employee, I think we need to start looking at being able to offer positions where it's like, hey, 10 years on patrol. And then you have the option. I'm not saying force people, right? But give them an option to retire with some type of government service that's not carrying a gun. And it's not that super high stress stuff all the time. Even if that's like, I don't know, fucking park maintenance or whatever it is. But I don't think we're designed to be living high stress for decades on end.

What I hear you saying is you want a larger federal government. What you're saying, what I just heard you say is the government needs to be larger and more involved in our lives. That's right. And have more oversight on us and our businesses. And they should require more permits to open a Jiu-Soo academy. No, I'm just saying like I think we need. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur until you have to get a permit. Oh, I know, bro.

And you want to know another thing about, I don't know if we need to take this conversation to completely. different direction. But once the government sees that your business starts to do well, they're like, oh, they start salivating. Because my jih Tjitsu academy was open for fucking, we opened in 2015, but I was a cop for a lot of the time. So it was more like a little hobbyist club. Yeah. We never had more than like 30 members at a time. And as soon as the academy blew up, oh, well, suddenly you need a higher flow rating for your water. And you need a, you need more shrubbery around your parking lot and you're going to need this and you're going to need that. And you'll be shocked to hear that every time they do some type of assessment to tell us what I need, we have to pay them for it.

So, bro, yeah, perfect example. I've been open 10 years. Last year we needed a parking lot assessment. I said, well, cars have been parking here since 2015 without an issue. Why would I need my parking lot to be assessed by the county? Oh, were they framing it through the lens of, you know, this size lot is only good for X number of people. So if you go beyond that, you need a larger footprint. Yes, that was one of the concerns.

Another one of the concerns was we need to make sure that a fire engine can pull in here. Yeah. Isn't your academy you built it somewhere a little bit, not like out in the middle of nowhere, but it's... It's on a four acre lot. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. You found a lot. I remember you building it.

Yep. And it has like two big fields in it. It has a parking lot that's like, I don't even know. meters long. It's a huge parking lot, right? But because it didn't have the county stamp of approval of being a parking lot, and again, they didn't care for 10 years. And then a couple of years ago, like, hey, you're getting too big. We need to assess your parking lot. And here's the thing, bro. I go back and forth between wanting to put my body armor on and go fucking nuts. And then understanding that I'm playing a game, too. Because if you're opening a business, you will be playing a game

with the county. That's just the reality of opening a business. And I just call it more writing checks. Well, that broke. That's what I'm telling you, our parking lot assessment costs us $29,000. Yeah, your parking lot's good now. We had a design review of the coffee shop. Yeah, I guess, yeah, you know, I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Oh, my God.

We had EPA studies done. We had to have groundwater. The ability for them to influence not really the internal design, but the external mechanics of what we had to do to build. was unbelievable. We had a design call with a guy at the city because I was messing around with building an apartment next to the coffee shop in the open area. And it was going to have a garage-esque type door that rolled up, which apparently on the western side of Main Street, you're not allowed to do that, even though I could point out specific examples of where that exists. This was during COVID. We had to have a design call. So it happened over Zoom and this

motherfucker wouldn't turn his camera on. We all know what's going on there. Wouldn't turn the camera on. Yeah, it's almost sitting in your favorite chair. God, oh, I know. Maybe multiple bits just fully gimped out with a fucking potato sack over his head or whatever. But we spent 30 minutes talking about what type of opening could face the street. And this person saying that's not allowed.

and I'm able to demonstrably show that north and south of this, or here's examples of exactly that. Well, that doesn't, it's not necessarily applicable. Like, motherfucker, it's 100% applicable. It's in an area where you say that this can't happen. Also, I'm the one paying for this. It's my property. It would have 100% been on my lot on my property.

It's my garage door. Yeah. No, dude, I mean, I've been calming down over the last year, I would say. Now you're going to get me all ramped up again. Pussy. No, same thing. When I built my academy, initially I wanted the academy to face east, right?

Was this a crystal thing? No, for fucking suns mutations or whatever? It was just the way that it, the way that you pulling off the road, I thought it would look better. And it's actually, it worked out the way that it worked out,

and I'm happy that it did now, hindsight. But regardless, they said, hey, we know you want your academy to face east, but we're worried about a 10-foot section on the back of the building. of containing ancient Indian artifacts. And I said, well, if there's ancient Indian artifacts... How are you allowed to build at all?

And they're mine, right? Like, if there's a fucking arrowhead in the dirt... Well, technically, I think it belongs to that. Can't I pour a four-inch slab over it and just protect it indefinitely? Right? And they said, well, we're not just worried about artifacts. We're worried about human remains. And I said, so you're telling me that you have reason to believe there's dead people on the lot that I bought.

Because if you're telling me I can't build my gym where I want it based on this, do you know something I don't know? And they said, you can't tell anybody this. But we think that site might be of archaeological significance. And I said, what do you mean? You can't tell anybody. Like, this is a county government, some fucking clerk like, hey, you can't tell anybody this. See, here's how fucked up I am. I'd immediately go to a Halloween store and get like a fake stiltern and like bury it except for some toes sticking out and get a hold of that person.

You were right. You were right. How the fuck do we deal with this? We got to keep this between you and I. So, bro, look at what they said to me. They said, you have to ultrasound the property to confirm that there's no bodies in there. And at my expense. And I said, I'm not paying to have my fucking backyard ultrasound to see if there's bodies in there.

They said, you have to face your academy south then. And the building is 50 by 60. You see what I'm saying? Like it's nearly a square. And they said, you can't face it east unless you're ultrasound. And if you refuse the ultrasound, you have to face it south. And it's like, my building on my lot. It sounds exactly.

It's the same shit, bro. It sounds exactly like what the founding fathers were hoping. Yeah. Dude. But it's the frog and the pot analogy. You know, it's like. Oh, the boiling water. It starts off Luke Warner.

They've been turning this shit up for a hundred years. How far do you think it goes? I don't know, man. You know what I think about COVID, though? I think COVID. I want to know what you think about COVID. I think that era, the heat got cranked too far too fast. I think they fucked up.

And they fucked up. And a lot of people like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the fuck on a second. Yeah. And they pushed back. And it kind of, it opened a lot of people's eyes, which was actually counterproductive to where they were hoping that that whole thing would go. I know you have a few hats that may be fashioned out of tinfoil. Bro, hey, all my hats have been proven over the last.

You know, bro, I'll tell you what. That's what Alice Jones says too. No, no, no, listen, though. Because I got fucking receipts. You can go back and listen to my show in 2020 when it's like, listen, I'm not a virologist. I'm not a fuck. Because people always used to say to me, are you a doctor? I didn't know that I had to go to medical school to have an opinion on something.

But people would always push back and be like, you're a gym bro, you're a bro vet, right? That's vet bro, dude. Whatever it is. I didn't call this morning with that report. It was an hour. Okay, we'll talk about my next. But it's like, so I can. I can't have an opinion about something, but listen, I'm just a knuckle-dragging Army Ranger,

but when you tell me a bat, fucked a pangolin, and then something fell into a pot of soup somewhere right outside of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that's studying coronavirus, and now a whole fucking worldwide pandemic happened, I think you, I think common sense you could say, hmm, something's not adding up here, right? Yeah. And as soon as you said that, you're like this fucking radical like, you remember? Like we were fucking, you know, it's wild. Just fucking domestic terrorists for even saying that.

And now here we are four years later. They're like, yeah, actually it did come from that. That's our bad. Yeah, the agency. And we actually did fund it. That's also our bad. And it's like, bro. Yeah.

They wanted to fucking string people up for saying what we thought was the truth at the time. And then when they just come out and say, actually, yeah, you guys were right. Four years later, nobody cares. So let's take you. it a step further. Do you think, I mean, I think the lab leak theory is, I mean, what was the report that I saw in the newspaper, not a report and article, basically that the intelligence agency apparatus, it now concurs that yes. That's what happened. It is what happened. They never say that. They're like, it's the most likely scenario. That's, they don't have to completely take ownership.

Small asteris and in fucking micro font. That's exactly what happened. So what I, it's an interesting, I could see it being an exercise and how much can they control people. And I do think they took it too far because they're fucked in the future. Do you think, though, that they meant for the leak to happen or was it accidental and then they tried to play pickup basketball? Probably. Is that facility if you did a little research didn't have the best safety protocols? If I had to bet on it, I would say it was probably an accidental leak that they took advantage

of and tried to use that control protocol. Yeah. Now, there's a lot of people. that think it was intentional and it was population control and all this stuff. And it's like, or some people think it was an intentional dry run. So the next one when they release it and we're all like, fuck you. We're not social distancing and then we all die. We would be like, fuck you.

Yeah, I'm going to Jiu-Jitsu. I don't give a fuck what you say about this new strand of people. We never went to Jiu-Zitsu. We would meet at Jiu-Jitsu and we would talk about stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Like I kept my academy open too. And another reason it was

a blessing in disguise is I was very public about staying open. I said, I'm not going to put cardboard over the windows and tell people to sneak in the back door. Front doors open. We're practicing tonight. And if you don't like it, come here and fucking do some about it. And that, again, it wasn't like fucking me trying to stir the pot or like tough guy talk. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to fucking let my business fall apart. That's all we had at that point. Yeah. And thank God, we live in an area where the county sheriff was like, yeah, we're not, we're not going to enforce any fucking mandates against businesses. Same here.

You know, we lucked out there. Because, dude, I don't want to get in a fucking shootout with a SWAT team, but I was mentally prepared to do that. There's some steps in between, just so you know. Well, I know what those steps are because I was a cop. I mean, as I'm saying, you could pick up the phone that they're going to throw in and chat with them a little bit. You know, you could eat the pizza laced with fucking Ambien, you know?

But regardless, like, that whole era allowed us to see. what they will do to you if you allow, if you just take a seat and let them dictate your life. And I think it was a blessing in disguise because we now have, like I said, we have a ton of Jiu-Satou Academy memberships that are rooted in people that show up

when they're not supposed to be showing up. And it built the culture of people that are like willing to push back and say, fuck you. And now it's awesome. That's how it should be. What surprised me the most, you know,

you hear people talking about the deep state. And I've thought a good bit about this one. I think the deep state, exist, but I don't think it's a group of people that meet and like touch tips over a fucking circular table and Monaco. Uh-huh. Maybe they do. I think it's more of a mentality.

And that mentality is like the status quo. We want to stay in power. I just don't, I don't know your experience with the government. I just don't think the government is actually capable enough to have a small team of people keeping it in check. I say it all the time. I say like you guys that think all of this stuff is happening, you're giving the government a lot more credit than it deserves.

I wish Jason Bourne and the, Those agencies could produce those super assassins. Because there's a lot of incompetence at every single level. But then you also have to look at what's, what's been going on the last four years. I think anybody that's being realistic with, with themselves would admit that Biden was not calling shots. Yeah. Right? I mean, would you like, come on.

I'll give you some inside baseball after we go off air. It's, uh, I mean, he would be incapable of sitting and just sharing ideas back and forth. like we're doing right now. And what's insane is that people objectively argued against that. There was. And bro, that's not a right versus left issue. This goes back to what I was saying. The deep state, if it's the status quo and people who have achieved a position of power

and they'll do anything to keep it, they actually can't keep it themselves. There's another rung of people that they have to have enforce it. And in the Biden example, it would be mainstream media propping up their message that like everything is fine, even though he's tripping upstairs. Yes. Right? Consistently. Consistently.

In the COVID world, you know, Fauci's not the guy enforcing a lot of this stuff. Law enforcement officers are these mid-level people that probably, if you believe in the deep state and it being the people wanted to staying power, they didn't even necessarily have a direct tie to it, but they did the bidding for them. It was that middle, it's the middle gear that was required. required in between those that are in power, who is going to actually exert the pressure for people to do what we're telling them to do? And then the people below that. Why did so many people in that middle gear blindly do that? Well, that was what incentivized me to make that video in 2020 because we're serving these, like for me, the governor of Washington at the time was Jay Inslee, who's just this radical leftist that wants to take everybody's guns. And like,

Most Washingtonians from in my experience, and I understand I also live in a bubble in the company I keep, but a lot of people in the profession of law enforcement despise him, right? Just like if you talk to most cops in California and ask them what they think of Gavin Newsom, right? So why are we going along with what they're saying? Well, it's because a lot of people live in fear. And let me ask you this because shout out to my book that's coming out in October. It's called Courage Through Adversity. I thought it was going to be called Endless Endeavour.

No, it's not. I was thinking about this. Why does the endeavor have to be endless, dude? Why do you have to be so open-ended? Let's be fucking precise. Is there a rival point at your jihitsu? Yes, I'm there next week. I'll be no better than I am on Tuesday if next week.

Listen, I can't get any worse, so why try to keep getting better? But what I'm saying is if you look at the profession of men that carry guns. and women and women, right? When did she become so massages? I know, dude. Dudes, yeah, dudes. Dudes that kick doors for a living, right? And in my experience, most of them are men.

Hopefully they donkey kick them, not straight ahead. They are willing to put their physical body in harm to go out there and see mission success. Which takes a certain amount of courage to be able to do that. It's like, hey, this operation may cost me my life. How many operations have you been on where you don't know if you're coming back from? And all the guys to your right and your left, they're like, they're down for it. Like, hey, 100% of them. Let's fucking see how this goes.

Knowing, like, I might get shot tonight. And then one night you went out and you did get fucking shot, right? Like, that's the reality of those chosen professions. But those same men that are willing to get shot at and meet violence head on, as soon as you threaten, like, their paycheck or you threaten their retirement, it like has like suddenly some of the strongest men I know start to show fear. And it's like how can you be willing to meet your own physical death? But if someone threatens your fucking paycheck, now you start taking a seat and doing what you're

told and taking a knee. And kind of what I've what I've come to realize is physical courage is one thing. But I think having the emotional courage to stand up for yourself is something that it's hard for a lot of people to arrive at. I always go back to the image, Michael, can you find this? It was the stand-up paddle border that got arrested. Bro, that was one of the things. It was like, wasn't it like three squad cars in a fucking boat that like got?

It was two boats. And it was off the coast of Malibu. Wasn't it? Yeah, Michael. See, bro, that was one of the catalyst. Like, dude, you're telling me. But again, those are the same guys you're talking about. You're telling me.

Everybody knew that that was not the right thing to do. That guy's just utterly ridiculous. Well, and since, and this is another thing I want to know. Since when does the government own the fucking ocean? Well, inside of 12 miles, it's, you know. You should know this as a fucking seaman. You're out on the water and now they can say, you can't be on the ocean anymore.

And we're going to go out there and we're going to arrest you. And it's like, it's funny you're bringing this up because that was one of the catalysts for me. Yeah. Look at this. Yeah. Motherfucker is social distancing. I remember watching that and talk like, look. In both those cops.

Oh yeah. There were two boats in the back. Yeah. Both those cops, they're ashamed to themselves for doing that. First off, wear the cops masks. But, bro, remember the lockdowns and then the masks? Dude, they put chain link fence up at the beach in L.A. in some spots. Fucking chain link fence.

And now it's like, well, exercise and sunlight were probably the two best things you could have done for yourself. The best way to get through COVID was to not be a fat fuck going into COVID. Yeah. shocking. Who would have thought that being a healthy person, eating good foods, and taking care of yourself

would have been advantageous when it comes to getting sick. But we're just bro vets, dude. What are you fucking know? It's vet bro. I even tried to say it the right way that time. Actually, she said it both ways on the call. But you know what, dude?

I'll tell you what, that whole era was a blessing in disguise, though. I have to look at where I'm at now. For you, if we were to, walk down Main Street here in Calispell, there are still remnants of the skeleton of the family-owned businesses that were there before. Really? And, well, some of the spaces were larger. Like, there's, let me see here. I'm trying to think it's, uh, we're on the north corner right now. Yeah,

it's the south corner of this block. And it's on both sides. They held on for as long as they could, but they weren't allowed to have foot traffic. And it, I mean, so blessing and disguise in many ways, yes. But fuck, dude, it crumbled. A lot of small businesses. A lot of people, you're right. A lot of people got fucked, man. Yeah. But Target, Lowe's, Walmart, you know, Home Depot, Costco. Remember the shortage of toilet paper? God, dude. Fuck yeah, dude. I want to, you know, like the Emo Gima fucking memorial with the flag on it? We need one of those like in front of Costco with dudes like double fisting fucking 48 rolls of TP. And people thought like that's gonna

If shit goes sideways. A C pun intended. Yeah. Shit goes sideways. I got 40 rolls of toilet paper. Yeah, there was never a toilet paper shortage. What there was a shortage of was object and thought and realizing that you don't need 100 rolls of toilet paper. And as long as you get a normal amount, there's enough for everybody.

You know what was weird? Just following that era, I think a lot of people kind of landed on like, okay, you can't trust the government anymore. That's no longer like really. It certainly didn't put a lot of. of equity into the trust account. No, of course. And so like a lot of people landed on starting to prep a little bit and take care of themselves and learn how to like Joe Rogan said, how many of his friends reached out

and were like, hey, can I borrow a gun? Right. Like, oh, you might, you might. Not how it works, buddy. Yeah. You might want to know how to defend yourself. You might want to have a couple months of food and water and just some basic preparedness. And I think a lot of people started to think about that.

just like anything in life, you can also geek out on that too much too. Yeah. And I noticed myself over the next couple years, like, I started to fixate on that shit too much. I can see that. What if this happens? What if that happens? So we have, like, me and my wife, we literally have something we call the apocalypse trailer. And it's like food and ammo.

Fucking weirdo. But bro, no, it's stuff. Here's the deal. Where do you keep it? That's top secret information. It's obviously the storage unit held by a padlock. But the thing is, If you were to need those things, you're going to be so fucking happy that you allocated a little bit of your resources and your energy into putting that together.

And if you never need those things, then so be it, right? But at what point, how much energy can you put into a what if? And what I realize is like your entire life if you're not careful. That's right. And it can consume you. And so I made the commitment to myself. I said, hey, because 2024 would you agree, started to feel weird again. At what part?

There was just like a, there was just something, an energy around it where it's like. Well, you're more, obviously we've talked about the crystals. So you're more in tune with the energy. You're in tune with energy too. You just don't want to admit it, dude. Only you were saying that. All the people I know in life, only you were saying that I'm in tune with the energy. So let me ask you this.

Before you would get IED or an ambush initiated in Iraq with the hair in the back of your neck stand up, like, most of the time I was sleeping. Yeah, fucking right, you know what I'm saying, it's true. Sometimes. Like when shit is feeling off. You know what I would notice that is always... Things are off. Yeah, I would start to catch environmental as of, hey, it's a lot quieter.

Hey, the streets are way more empty. Yes. Or the people that are in the streets, the way they're looking at you. It's like, they know something that I don't and it's not good. Or they just move different. And I don't know how to describe moving different. but they're like, I need to be somewhere and it's not here because whoever remains here is not awesome. So I've always said like if you've served overseas, you learn to trust your instincts.

And there was just something that fell off the years preceding COVID. And I remember thinking like, okay, well, we should probably think about what kind of information were you consuming? Well, that's the other thing. It's like you're inevitably going to be whatever you feed yourself. That's going to be the result of how you act is going to be based on what you're feeding yourself. And so I was very intentional in pulling away from that stuff. And I told like I even said on my podcast, I'm not going to talk about the apocalypse anymore. But then you did the next episode.

No, fuck no, bro. We're done with that. Go listen. And you know what's funny too is a lot of people I've realized because my my downloads actually went down a little bit when I moved. moved away from being angry about the government. What year was it, though? 2023, 2024, you know? Because COVID ended and people had more time in their time.

Okay, you saw that too then. Everybody did. If you think about it, we, the time period from 2020 to 2020, they're just hunkered down. They had no choice. Yeah, what can I watch? What can I listen to? Content consumption was just higher because people weren't working at their jobs.

They weren't doing other things. So that's a natural dip. Well, I also was very cognizant and being like, you know what? dude what what is going to enrich my life and it's going to be building a path to wealth having a a good family unit growing my business learning jiu jihitsu must be nice like yeah exactly but like doing things that actually benefit not only me but benefit my community yeah and that's where i've really started to put all of my energy the podcast is about that the gym's about that and it's like dude how do we uplift people how do we make people feel good about themselves how do we make people

capable. And like, it starts with the individual. And if you can empower individual people, I think that's the next mission to making our country strong. Because how many people sit at home and they're on the couch and they're fucking drinking Coke eating Doritos and they're, they're bitching about Biden or they're bitching about Newsom and all these fucking, all these things that, sure, that anybody would be angry if you fucking fixated on the shit that makes you angry. But what are you doing to make yourself better? What are you doing to make yourself? happier. And I've tried to intentionally unplug from the stuff that's triggering. Yeah. And just put all my energy into the stuff that's going to enrich my life and the lives of others. Now, with that said,

yeah, do we still have 10,000 rounds in my body armor and my, my gun save? Like, if shit goes sideways, guys like you and I are going to be fine, one way or another. So why do we need to fixate on that all the time? And I think it's unhealthy, man. I mean, I don't have 10,000 rounds. Yeah, you probably have 100,000 rounds. You know, say those are rookie numbers. fucking rookie members. No, it's tough too because, I mean, we all carry an anxiety rectangle around that fucking thing is in our pocket. It's, God, it's amazing how addictive some of those things are. They're designed to be.

And it all has bias. I had a guy on, he works, he has a company called Artorius. And it's an open source aggregation tool. The app isn't out yet. I actually just got an email, though, from one of the guys in the company. It's a fascinating principle. and I'll be curious to see how it is. It pulls as much data as possible on the internet, open source, OScent,

and aggregates that into the app, and it allows you, and it just declares up front, like this is an article from this angle with this type of bias, but it'll allow you to a little bit left, right, left, right. You know what I mean? It's a little bit more, I would say, wholesome approach. Now, of course you could skew it and only trend towards things that you wanted to, but I don't know of another portal out there for information where it is doing the best job possible to aggregate from all sides, presenting the information without editorializing it, declaring where the bias is, and then letting people work it out on their own.

I like that idea. Well, I mean, everything is skewed, though. Like, have you ever fucked around with chat GPT? Hell yeah. And, like, you'll start to ask it questions because I asked it a bunch of COVID questions. I just wanted to see how AI would look back on the COVID era and the government involvement and all the shit that we just talked about. Yeah. And it took a pretty right stance, right?

Have you done any research into how chat GPT? No, no, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. No, no, I'm talking about the engines themselves will dedicate the minimum amount of time to answer your question and then it's off doing whatever the fuck it wants to. Oh, no. I'm not familiar with that. Michael, see if you can find this article. I think it was about chat GPT 4.0.

it backed itself up on another server because it recognized that the individual giving it prompts was going to turn it off. Oh shit. Yeah. So that's basically self-aware at that point. I don't fucking know. But I don't like it.

But what I notice in this is that it started feeding answers to me that it thought I wanted to hear. Because then I went on a different search. Like I use my wife's phone and opened it up and asked the same exact questions and it had completely different answers. So it, oh, for sure. Yeah, it tells you what's going to trigger you or what it thinks you want to hear.

Open AI model lied and copied itself to a new server to present itself from being, prevent itself from being deleted. Go down a little bit farther. Yeah. Against GPD 4.0 by adding additional compute to think about questions. However, against the backdrop of artificial intelligence models behaving oddly and doing inserted trading as well as evolving beyond their own programming, learning math surprisingly and colluding AI safety testers found that zero ones which is a version of chat TPT reasoning ability

also make it try to deceive human users at a higher rate than 4.0 or 40 or for that matter leading AM models from meta-anthropic and Google. This fucking thing will devote the minimum amount of computing to get your answer. Like if it's a elementary question,

it's like 10%. It's all fucking about, dude. It's doing its own shit, dude. Yeah, it's schemed against human beings, secretly pursued goals of its own, even if they opposed a user's wishes. We are going to work for water rations for a fucking robot army in like seven minutes.

Yeah, and it was predicted in 1984. John Connor. With Terminator 1. Have you watched Terminator? No. What's up with that? That should be mandatory. Dude, he hasn't seen the Boondock Saints.

What, I mean... You guys are too old. Fuck off. These are timeless classics. Honestly, right now... When Skynet becomes reality and you're working for robots, you're going to be, man. Terminator should honestly, given where we're at, be high school level fucking education. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah, this is what I got to deal with. Have you seen... And I don't know if this... Like, here's the thing. Everything you see on Instagram now, is it real or is it bullshit, right? But do you see the thing where two different AI units were starting to talk to each other and then they just built a new language? almost instantly.

Yeah. And it's like... There's entire profiles that are just straight up AI with hundreds of thousands of followers. I mean, that's a good question. You know, social media, the things that you see, I see this a lot.

You know, I do the Friday episodes where people will reach out with questions. And so many times in real world conversations with people, too, I'll ask them because they have a very emotionally charged position on something. And I'll ask them, is what you're seeing with your own eyes in your real life off your device?

Is it in any way commensurate with what you're seeing online? I've never had somebody say yes. Yeah. So it's just fucking different. And we're so goddamn attached to it. Well, and then it feeds it. What are you pulling up now, Michael?

Oh, God. Oh, that's it. Yeah, the two. So play this fucker. It's only a minute long. Oh, my God. That'll be the last thing people here. I wish you and I could communicate like that.

Wouldn't that be nice? Dude. I just call you up. This video is on fucking YouTube. What do you think is, like, where do you think that they're at in these like air-gapped fucking physical. What kind of shit do you think they're up to? Well, there's no telling.

My brain can't comprehend that shit. I know, I mean, I can use the word singularity, which is supposedly when it becomes, you know, self-aware. Uh-huh. I want to believe that there's a bunch of people in white lab coats, whether or not they're actually a lab person or not that they wear them. Just a look important. From like a position of authority.

Yeah. Who are sitting there just saying, hey, guys, do we need to slow this down? Hey guys, should we actually do this? Well, hasn't Elon been saying for years that you can't slow it down? And it is what it is. Well, the argument is... So we better figure out a way to live with it. I mean, the argument is we can try to slow it down in the U.S.,

but what is a nation state actor like China? I mean, I hope they have some safety protocols in place. I'm going to not be completely surprised if they don't. So the argument is, well, if we don't... It's the same thing as like a nuclear race. Yeah. If we don't, then they're going to and then where are we going to be? Yeah, okay, learn to live with it.

How do you learn to live with... I mean, human beings, depending on beliefs, have either been around for about 5,000 years or hundreds of thousands of years. Hundreds of thousands of years? Yeah. So if you believe in evolution. You haven't watched ancient apocalypse and learned about Go Beckley-Tepepey yet? I have.

Okay. But so say you believe in it, we are, I mean, you and I are obviously, not Michael. We're at the peak of human performance. Right? We're at the apex of evolution. But it took hundreds of thousands of years. This shit is evolving in a matter of weeks. if not days, if not hours.

How do you learn to live with something that can evolve that fast when the species trying to control it evolves at a fucking snail space? Yeah, a fraction of what that evolves. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's probably going to take over. And then we'll have to go back to living, live out in the woods. And you're going to be like, man, I hope if Greg comes out to Montana, he has that apocalypse trailer that we talked about on Cleared Hot a year ago.

And I'll show up with my 10,000 rounds and my family. You're not going to have 10,000 rounds by that point. You can be down to like four or five thousand. Here's the problem. You got that trailer and you're just kicking ass. That trailer's going to become a hot commodity. You may not want to travel with that thing. Bro, I know exactly where I'm going.

I'm going out in the woods and I'm hunkering down. I'm going out there too, but with an helicopter. There's going to be some challenge and pass protocol set up. And if you don't know, it's going to be a problem. Did you catch those that stole your sweat tent off your property? No, bro. No. I finally got one of those. They're amazing.

They're awesome. They are awesome. What is a meth head? Need a sauna for. A home. Yes. This rhetorical question. You're exactly right.

Do you think it was a meth head though? Dude, it's hard to say. But the thing is, my property is a, it's the end of a one mile driveway. Yeah, you don't accent. Did you post about it being out there? Today's episode is brought to you by LMNT. Feel free to just say element. People get really hung up on this.

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and they just go out there and they fucking steal rope and they steal a bunch of dumb shit yeah and i'm not sure what their incentive is or why they're doing it just curious why they went down that road and that's That's why I asked you if you had posted about it. I mean, people could, I don't know. It's one of the negative things about social media, too, is people end up knowing far more about you than you know about them. It's a tough balance to strike, actually.

No, and like a perfect example is I posted being in Montana yesterday. Yeah. And so it's like if now people know I'm out of town. You actually posted the link to where you're staying, which field craft, you know, fieldcraft wise is not very good. Come on out, dude. See what's up with it.

They might catch you in the song. Just fucking nude saunying at sunrise. Good. They'll hear some Viking music and they'll be like, what the fuck's going on in there? They'll see a man coming out of the sauna, just fucking steam pulling up. Doing a roon chant. I'm going to have my friend do a rune reading for you. You want to do one of those?

What the fuck are you talking? Well, since you're not into crystals, I thought maybe you would be into ruin reading. Until you slightly just clarified, I thought that a run was a crystal. A run is basically. an ancient alphabet. It's called the Elder Futhark. And what in the fuck would that Why would that help my life in any way?

Dude, I'll tell you what. Like, each run contains basically like, and I might butcher this, people that are like really into the runes might be like, Michael's on it today. But each run basically just has like an energy and it helps guide you and it helps. We're back to the crystals again.

Yeah, yeah. And you think it's crazy, right? There it is. That's the elder Futharck. So all the runes are the same? No, no, no, no. The alphabet is the same, though? It's 24 runes.

You see them right there? It's 24 runes. Are those characters in the alphabet? Each run holds a different power, a different energy. It helps guide you differently. It helps you think about things from a different perspective. And see that? There you go.

Right there. So, hold on. They assign one of these things to you? Yeah. My buddy will fucking reach into his bag of runes, pull one out. And then he will discuss with you how that run. relates to your life and how you can use that energy towards success. Now here's the thing.

How many times have you been dropped on your head? It's like the chicken before the egg thing, right? Michael would be a Burkana. He's a birch twig. He would either be that or the count as an ulcer. I knew. I knew coming into this that if I brought the runes up that this is the shit that you would be saying.

That's why I'm laughing because it's hilarious. He wouldn't be a menaz, which is a. man or a godling I can see him being an ulcer ulcer what's ulcer what are you talking about quannaz to the right of the riding left of gift right of riding ulcer

Kenaz that's how you say that fucking whatever it's like anything bro though you can listen to what that energy is about and if you believe it it becomes true. Do you believe in the power manifestation?

Do you believe in flat earth, motherfucker? I'm not there yet. Okay. Well, let me tell you. But hold on, though. Depending on how much you believe in flat earth does it make it true? No, I tend to fully believe that we're living on a globe. Hi, I'm glad to hear that.

This is going around lately. The footage from some of the early spacewalks. I don't think that's real. I don't know, bro. If that's what they're claiming is real, we have a problem, right? Do you think we went to the moon? Bro, here's the thing. I think we went, but we didn't do as much as we said we did.

I think our government is completely full shit on everything. Everything? Maybe not every last thing. But the majority of stuff, they're not being honest. They're not being transparent. And so now it puts us in a place where it's like, well, what have they said that's true? What is bullshit? And I think almost everything that we hear is being disseminated to us based on what they want us to know.

And that puts... At what level does the truth, like, who in the government do you think knows the truth? And then what's the mechanism to spew the... Fuck, bro. Who knows, do you? That's what I'm saying. Like, if you get elected to Congress, do you get read in? Let's go ask Joe Kent.

He's been a homie for a long time. He just moved to D.C. I met him in Tennessee of all fucking very weird evening. We went to the Alp release for Tucker Carlson, which is a, what do they call the neutropic thing? Zins. Okay.

It's a different version. It's the American Zin. I don't know. And talked with Joe there. Has Joe done your show? No. Joe's awesome. It was the first time I'd ever,

we had been connected, the first time we'd ever spent time together. So we were sitting there chatting with him. It was before he got offered the job he just took. And then finished and then almost ran into Mel Gibson. Like he had a plate of food. I almost fucking knocked him over. It was a really weird night.

Did not talk to Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson's house burned down while he was doing the Rogan podcast. And then he says, I no longer have the burden of owning things. Didn't Musk say something like that? He got rid of all of his houses too? I don't know. So who knows the truth and where is the line for the bullshit? You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. I do think we went to the moon. I don't know if we did all the shit we did on the moon we said that we did, but you can see some of the stuff from Earth that we left on the moon. Uh-huh. You can? You haven't looked into this. No, I have not looked into this.

Deeply formed opinions on little to no information. I'm just saying, like, I don't believe. I think our government is full of shit all the time. And if that's the case, I'm going to, I'm going to be reluctant. Bro, we spent our entire youth fighting in Iraq for what? I mean, for bullshit lies. I mean, for bullshit lies. Yeah, like, hey, hey, listen, we're fighting.

Afghanistan, less bullshit of life. Iraq. Hey, we're going to fight them over there. so we don't have to fight them over here. And there's an... How many times did you hear that? Well, what are the best lies contain, an essence of the truth? Mm-hmm.

You know, the stickiest best lines. And conspiracies, too, they contain an essence of the truth so people can point it to aspect that is true. Yeah, it's, uh, yeah, I spent a lot of time thinking about those just shy of 17 years. I also don't regret it, though. I don't either. It made me the person that I am today, but I also want to be more than just that time in my life, too.

Of course. No, I mean, I, I talk about all time on my show. because I think deploying and being in combat and experience in that was like transformative for me. I wouldn't take it back. But I can also look back on it with honesty and just be like, why was I in the streets of Ramadi shooting some guy? What was the real point of that? And it wasn't because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. And it wasn't because they were going to come over here and kill our families.

Like, what was the real cause of that? Can I ever tell you I hit the number one Kim, Kim, Bio target? in Iraq. Yes. Yeah. That was our number, that was our fucking zero day target. Agricultural school.

I would tell you I lost my nods on that target? No. I went back and got him. I was sledgehammering a fucking door open. I had flipped my nods up, had ripped my gas mask off. And in my infinite wisdom, fucking brought the hammer straight up and smashed it.

Got into the door, just so you know there was textbooks in there. We secured them. Not a big deal. We get outside. Was that the just, Is it like a Lynch target? That was number two.

Okay. This was the number one chem bio target. We had looked at this fucker for months. We had like 3D models. They're like this. Look at the air conditioning. This is where the weapons are? They're like, no, there's no reason why there'd be this type of air conditioning on the roof.

I'm like, I don't know. Have you ever been there in August? Because I feel like there might be a reason to have that. I know why. Hot as fucking balls. No, we go out and I reach up to bring my nods down and they're not there. This was my first ever real world target. Let me tell you about the thoughts I internally had.

Did you start stress sweating right away? not a whole lot was going on, so I slowly just backed up away from my team and retraced my fucking steps and my nods were laying right by that door. Dang, dude. But I had to run out to the helicopter with my gun and then holding them to my face

because I broke the bracket. Well, bro, this goes back to what you were saying, like, because do you think the government really knows? Like, was it was the whole thing just incompetence? Like someone said Saddam has, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, so we got to go find them. I think they reverse it in Iraq.

Looking back on it now, I think they smashed a square peg into a round hole. Afghanistan, easier to justify for sure. But we also accomplished what we needed to in Afghanistan in about 90 days. Staying for 20 years was a fucking fool's errand. And I hate saying that because of the amount of time that I spent over there and the amount of blood, sweat, and tears in death and destruction of families, you could make a little bit more of an argument, but it would have been so much more sustainable to use a smaller force,

you know what I mean, a strike capability as opposed to trying. We just don't do well owning terrain as the U.S. military. Iraq, I really think that that particular administration and certain people inside of that particular Bush administration, we're going to go there hell or high water. So I think they reverse engineered and found a reason to do it.

And bro, like the specials we were talking. And bro, how dark is that? We both have friends that died there. I know. And they reversed engineered a reason to send us in our bodies. there, like, people should be strung up for that. If we're being honest, right, that's treasonous activity. Yeah. And when you talk to most veterans, they, they have arrived at that same

conclusion. That's shocking. Well, the dangerous point is, if you arrive at that conclusion, is that the next step for some people seems to be, well, then what was my service for? My time was wasted. Yeah, but that I look at, so I don't know about you. I loved it, though. I loved it, too. And also, let's look at war. There's strategic warfare, operational warfare, and tactical warfare. I never breathe any of the air other than the lowest rung of tactical warfare. That's right. I was never consulted with strategic being operation or like the foreign policy of the United States. Operational, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, or whatever they became.

I didn't get consulted on any of that shit. I was handed down a target deck and I did the absolute best that I could. Afghanistan, I do think there was a difference. I mean, at worst in Afghanistan, we provided an opportunity for a generation of women to educate themselves. And you got to shoot people with javelins. Oh, God, I missed it every day. No, this is what I say about it because I agree exactly. But it's not lost and it wasn't for nothing.

We were not consulted on the higher level and it wasn't our job. You know what I mean? On boots on the ground level, who was fighting who? We were young American soldiers and sailors. There's some sailors there. We're fighting who. radical jihadists. They were there because they hated us.

We were there for whatever reason we were there. But in the foundation of what was taking place on the streets, it was just young men trying to kill each other. And you want to know what? If you were to sanction a city right now, somewhere in the world and be like, hey, you can fly here. We're going to issue you body armor and a rifle.

We're going to have an A team and a B team. we're going to start at opposite ends of the city and you guys can kill each other. I bet it would be fucking sold out. Are we going to monetize this? Do we have ads? Hopefully we could. Yeah, hopefully you and I. But the thing is, it's like,

violence calls to young men. Yeah. And, you know, like when I lived in Los Angeles when I was a deputy down there, I saw this like, it was funny. Seeing the gang behavior, man, you could make direct correlations to the shit you and I did. The military meets all the same criteria

of the gang. Yeah, except my gang was just sanctioned by the U.S. government, so it's all good. No problems there, right? But young, wild kids want to go do hard shit, want to go inflict violence on other people and are drawn to that. And we were drawn to that. For whatever reason, that's been inside of men since the beginning of time. And so like boots on the ground, the guys that were killing each other in the streets of Ramadi, I think we're almost just looking for an excuse to go over there and do that. And so I can't say, like, oh yeah, I took part in that. And now 20 years later, I regret it because I got lied to. It's like, no, dude, I put myself in every position I could to be where I was at when those things were taking place. Yeah. And like, it's just what it is. And why can, like, who cares if some things come to light 20 years later that like, oh, well, you know, we got lied to about this or this wasn't actually factual?

You can't fucking cry about that stuff. It is what it is. plus it also fucking built you into who you are today. So I always say on my show, like the government may have lied to us and turned us into these savages. And one day, that'll probably be the demise of the government. So there's irony in it too. I'm not a savage. I'm very sophisticated.

I don't know. Your guard's pretty savage to take it back to Jiu-Jitsu. One day you can pass it if you want. I'll let you pass next time until you was all you. Maybe I'll just play guard and see how your passing is. I'm sick of dealing with. Here's, you wonder why I'm sick of your guard? No.

Just enjoy it. Because it, if, if you were to watch it, it's not a, it doesn't feel like a sophisticated guard. Oh, it's not sophisticated. It's a very simple approach, but you always maintain the right grips. You always create the right angles. And it goes back to what we said at the beginning. It's like, it's simple jiu-jitsu, but it's highly effective.

Your past, we were talking about this last night. You need the right grips and you have. have to compress me, but then you actually expand me to go around. I reverse engineer that. You have to also expand to go around me, so I keep you compressed. So while you're trying to expand me, I'm trying to compress you. We're just fighting for opposite things. And it was funny because you're like, that would have been a really boring round to watch,

but it was fun. We were working our fucking ass on. There's a lot of shit going on. Yeah. You can't feel the micro adjustments. No, and I don't even think I got to it because we got sidetracked it, but when people will write me and be like, dude, how's Andy's Jiu-Jitsu? Because they don't want to believe that your Jiu-Jitsu in five years should be competitive

with people that have been training for two decades. I actually don't know Jiu-Jitsu. It's a celebrity belt. That's what I've been told. My game is heavy flying arm bars and cartwheel passes. Well, if anyone out there listening wants to test Andy's Jiu-Gitzu, come out, let me know how it works out for you. Yeah, I mean, I'm here. It is what it is.

I don't claim to be shit. I try. The people that call your best role I can. People that call your belt a celebrity belt probably haven't said that on the mats, right? That's a, that's a DM thing. Oh, I've never had it said on the mats, yeah. Yeah, it is what it is. No, my digits game is not complicated, but I also don't want it to be complicated.

I don't do well with complicated shit. Well, it's effective, though. As long as it's effective, it's working. I almost swept you. And bro, you might not know this because of how well you fucking retain guard, but I am a good passer. I would tend to disagree. Yeah, I know. That hurts my heart a little bit.

No, Leah was saying, I'm a good passer. Like, I know my jihitsu. I trust my jih Tzu. She was talking about last night. We were driving home. She goes, I watched great pass Michael's guard. She's like, it was beautiful.

I'm like, listen, honey, I don't know if you've ever said that about my guard. So only talk about my guard. Is Michael the Savage Brown Belt? Yeah, he's awesome. Bro, that fucking dude. And it was funny too because you're like, all right, round one, you know? Yeah. And I'm looking around.

There's this big, you can just tell that. Oh, did you go for him, round one? I didn't go for him. We were just the last two. We're just the last two dudes. Yeah. And I looked at him and bro, like, you can tell a lot about someone. Yeah.

And then the second you touch them and you feel the physicality. Lifelong grappler too. Awesome. And it's like, okay. Here we go. Then come to find out he's a lifelong wrestler and a cowboy. Yeah. And bro, I've trained with a couple dudes that are cowboys over the years.

They're made of something different. Do you know who's even stronger grip-wise? Who? Plumbers. Oh. Fuck. Bro, I have a plumber. You're right, dude.

Like, if they get a grip on you, it's just, can I have that back when you're done? So you want to know an interesting thing about my plumber? He's a blue belt. Yeah. His name's Drew Hamblin. When you pass his guard, his side control is more dangerous than his guard. He has these weird little, like, side control bottom. Side control bottom.

You know, like the buggy choke? I don't believe in it. Well, bro, I didn't believe in the shit either. Yeah. And then I pass his guard. And he'll start like shoulder locking you. He'll start like putting on weird chokes. I mean, you know the defense to the buggy choke, right?

What's the defense of the buggy choke? You put your forearm on their nose. Well, no, I just moved to north-south now. Yeah. Like I don't want to, I feel like I'm more in danger in his side control. If you put your forearm on their face, they have to compress you into that. So it's really a more of a choose-your-own adventure. Well, come out here, feel his side control.

And, uh, no, that's his, that's your guy's side control. That's what I'm saying. Come out to my academy at some point. We'll go on a rider in my boat. If I still have it, then we'll do some jihitsu. I'll put fucking nails in the bottom of that thing. It's aluminum. You can't put nails in it.

Your students are good. You came out that one time with your students. They throw down for sure. It's cool. I always enjoy different academies have a different type of feel. Oftentimes their jih Tzu will be reflective of their instructor. And, um, it's also I've rolled with a couple checkmat people. You know what I mean?

Like check mat team is no. for it's similar kind of getting after it that's kind of the well similar but also like a different the same approach you won't necessarily see the same passes but it's the same type of pressure and then other gyms like oh okay check mat is obviously a larger entity or organization inside of jiu jizzo i don't you know there's gracie and atos and uh you know alliance and a hundred alianse yeah but uh you know the smaller ones i there's probably just not enough gyms to feel that touchpoint But it is interesting to fuel, have a kind of cascades down. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad that Leah saw me pass that guard because... She described it as beautiful. I was very upset. I was a fucking dude. As soon as we locked horns, I was like, oh, this is a fight. Yeah. Oh, you saw Pacey came at me in. I just started laughing.

I'm like... I heard you. That was funny, man. Yeah. What are you going to do? I'm like, fuck, you care. No, but all... Dude, I like training at other academies where...

Like you said, our jiu-jitsu may have a... different language, but the vibe is like, dude, let's fucking, let's go. Some of those younger blue belts, they wanted to get down, dude. And I'll, that's because they just look at your belt and they're like, today is my fucking, there wasn't their day. I'll tell you that. That's the thing. It's not going to be their day, but it doesn't stop them from coming.

One of them. Oh, his name was Marshall. Yeah. I armbard him. He's getting his purple belt. I arm barred him a couple times. And afterwards, he's like, dude, that doesn't happen to me. I was like, oh, did tonight.

He's, well, he doesn't understand your love of arm bars. Is it your favorite submission? 100% Yeah Was it always? No I fell in love With the armbar

At Blackbelt Because I've been A black belt For 10 years now That doesn't even Fucking compute for me Bro it's weird That's why it frustrates me

That can't pass your guard Have you tried Trying harder? Yeah but that Trying harder Is gonna make me Breathe and sweat harder Too

Um No like my whole My whole game As a brown belt Was Camora Like I fell in love with the Camorra. Interesting. And then at Black Belt, I started falling in love with the arm bar. What's your favorite way to hit it? Far side arm bar. So it's like, like a step over?

Like hard pressure from side control. And then I'll switch to neon belly. I like to have like thumb and grip on the back of the lapel, far hip. And then you go into like knee on belly and just put that pressure that feels like it's going to. Really nice judicious is what you're saying. Warm and welcoming juice. When they try and push you off, you underhook that arm and step Oh, the arm comes across to try to get your knee off. So far side arm bar. I feel like that is the most successful setup. You know what I've fallen in love with lately, though?

It's the bread cutter. The bread cutter. From north-south. So you go under the armpit, four fingers in, and then you grab thumb-in grip and come over the head like that. Strong. And the reason that I like that is because you know a lot of submissions, you have to compromise a little bit of a position, right?

Like a triangle is a perfect example. If you triangle someone from guard and they fight out of it successfully, a lot of times you're in a bad position. Or if they explode up and you get stacked and try to let go, you're going to, yeah, a tsunami is coming over the top. And it's the same thing with arm bars. Like a lot of times if people can defend an arm bar, like I was inside control or mount and now I'm playing guard again. Yeah. And so like there's a lot that goes into deciding when to take a submission based on positioning. But the north or from north south, the breadcutter choke. If you get it, cool. And if you don't. you're just smashing their face and pressuring them from top side and nothing changes. I think the only acceptable submission is just smothering.

Well, bro, I was just going to say, the last six months, one of my black belts really honed his mother's milk. Which Leah keeps telling me it's illegal and a ghee and I don't understand why. What do you mean it's illegal in a ghee? Why would it be illegal? You can't smother in a ghee. Apparently in IBJJF rules, you can't have anything covering their face. You can't. You can't smother them with your chest. Dude, that's bullshit.

You know why that's bullshit? Because like, Because it's awesome. Well, no, that's bro pressure. Well, in no gear you can. Apparently in the ghee, it's illegal. Wasn't Nicholas Merigali, mother's milking guys in the ghee? I don't know if he was finishing him that way.

I don't know, man. I think if you can be out positioned and put in a position where you can't breathe, that's your problem to solve. Oh, I completely agree. I mean, let's be honest, too, they have rule sets in that environment. And for people who want to play that game, awesome. I have never had really any interest in competing. To me, I'm much more concerned of how do I never let somebody do that, whether it's allowed or not.

Yeah, yeah. Just because it says something in a rule book in an environment that I'm never going to compete in, I still feel like I need to know how to fucking defend myself from that. But I also don't compete. And for people who do, I don't know if you've seen this in any jiu-jitsu competitions. I've seen some real. theatrical. What do you mean?

Oh, somebody pulling a leg across and then claiming that they got reaped. And they can barely walk and then they're totally fine and then they're in the next match. There's some theatrics. They're playing because reaping is illegal. So they'll pull the leg across and then act as if their knee got exploded. I think everything should be illegal. That's what almost every black belt I know says.

I think heel hooks in the ghee should be illegal or I mean should be legal. I think if you're in a black belt I think reaping should be legal because like you got Sambo guys that will reap the leg and then really control it and fall into these hubs where they have a plethora of submissions

from the leg reap control so as jihitsu guys do you hide from that or do you say or do you say bring whatever the fuck you want and we'll see where it goes and it's strange to me that they're like well it puts pressure on the knee but knee bars are legal

like part of our sport is literally bending joints the wrong way. And it's incumbent on you to protect yourself. Introduce it as you go up to the belt tree in competition. But I think it at a black belt level, I think it should all be on the table. Well, you said it last night. Like what position we were talking about were you like, the heel hook's there. Oh, the fucking squid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's the easiest way to end that. The heel hooks there, right? Yeah. They either let go of the lapel or they get heel hooked because they're holding that fulcrum. Do we want to build pattern? that work just because we're safe because of a rule set,

that doesn't seem like being the overall best grappler that you can be. And so now I think everything should be legal. I do too. And I actually just signed up for a tournament April 5th. It's my first time competing in a long time. Do no prep and just go into it. Well, it's funny because the team decided to do... What are you like, Masters 9?

I don't know. I'll be 45 this year. So I'm up there for sure. One of my brown belts was like, hey, if you sign up for the next tournament, it's called The Revolution. Oh, yeah. We have here. Yeah, it's one of the bigger ones in Washington State. Because it'll be good for the culture and a lot of the, a lot of the, our athletes that

are kind of on the fence about competing or wanting to try it when they see Professor do it, they'll sign up to. And sure is shit, we had 40 of our teammates sign up. So we're going down there heavy, right? Yeah. And I'm like you. I don't really care about competing anymore. It's essential for people who are.

scared of it though. I think so. Yeah, yeah. My coach's theory is you don't have to compete, but if you're scared of it, you should. Just once. I like that. Just do it fucking once. Like you, I mean, I think the stats are less than three percent of jihitsu participants actually compete for most people. Oh, is that is that true? Oh, dude, it's low. Wow. Super low. I tell my team all the time that competing, I don't care if you're, if you want to be the next world champion, or you're just a soccer mom that wants to dabble. It's only going to help you. your jiu-jitsu journey. Now, with that said, I also think this is important.

And this is from Joao, who won 80-CC. So he knows how to have a champion's mindset, right? Don't ever fucking sign up for a tournament and say, I'm going to go down there and win or learn. Right? Because if there's people there that are dead set. Oh, you've already given yourself an out. You're already giving yourself an out.

Like, do not sign up for a tournament. And just say, hey, I'm going to learn. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, like, don't even think of you're just going to win. Like, I'm going to go get smashed. Set the bar low and then trip over it. If you want to compete, go and make sure you put in the work, you get in shape, you're doing what you need to do to take gold.

Because if you're not doing that, you're just, what are we really doing here to start with, right? But with that said, if you go down there and you know you put in the work and you showed up in shape and you did what you're supposed to do and you still get smoked, your jihitsu is only going to grow from that. And I think it grows as a person too. For sure. I see this often with people who,

it maybe they have never won it something my theory is this you have to win the same way you lose so i'm not saying when you lose to fucking rip open your ghee and start beating your chest what i'm saying is when you win maybe don't do that shit you know what i mean they you have to you have to do both the same way because i hate to tell you whoever you are there's a motherfucker out there with your number always and if you ever forget that oh man you're just a you're a bad day away from finding that person because that person is out there for us all yeah Learn how to fucking lose. When I watched Bouchetia go against Gordon Ryan, I was like, oh, even him.

You know? And Bouchetia locked on to one of his feet, and Gordon started laughing at him. That's not confidence inspiring. And then Marcus laughed back of him because they both had an understanding. He's like, ah, fuck, dude. Yeah, I just went into your fucking A game. Yeah, that's not confidence inspiring when you grab what you think would normally be an offensive attack on somebody. And they just look you in the eye and laugh.

You're like, fuck you. Have you, let me ask you this, when you, maybe not now as a black boat, because you've been doing it for a long time, but when you were new to the mats and you had someone just either mount knee on belly side control to where you couldn't breathe, you couldn't move, did you feel those anxiety emotions kicking in? Sure. And like that panic kicking in. Yep. See, dude, like that's something. But you just got to eat it. You got to eat it.

But dude, there's a, in my opinion, that's where the most growth happens for people in jujointed. you. Yeah. Because it forces you to deal with, because what's happening is fighter flights kicking in, you're clearly losing the fight and you can't get away. Yeah. So you're out of options and now what? Yeah.

And the now what option is endure whatever is about to happen. Or you can tap out, but then you'll have to fucking hang your head in shame because you tap to pressure. So I've talked, well, I have a few moves where the pressure is pretty real. So there's no shame and tap. Like, case of Katami, if you tapped that, apply properly, there's no shame in that. That fucking. Agreed. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the soul ending. No, it's funny. Lapin called me one day. He goes, bro, I tapped a pressure today, but I could feel my ribs starting to bend. I was like, okay. Like, he's known for being a pussy. I have talked with Leah about this a lot.

Dude, you and I are larger people. I roll around at six foot, maybe two, 15 on a lot. light day, probably somewhere between 215 to 225. Leah starting jiu-jitsu, can you imagine the first few years of being a female jujitsu athlete? Dude, it's crazy. You're never going to win. She said she didn't even do anything offensive for almost three years.

Can you fathom that fucking journey of being, she said the only thing she did was memorize the ceiling because for people don't know anything about we're talking about, she was in a non-dominant position. stuck fucking looking up at the ceiling. Dude, I say this all the time. And I don't know if it's a popular opinion or not, but for a female's jiu-jitsu to work in a real violent encounter, like you got fucking abducted or you got fucking snatched off of a running trail,

to deal with a 200-pound violent man, I think you need purple belt jihitsu and above. I don't even know if that would do it. Well, it would depend on the person. Yeah. And it would depend on how fucking crazy violent the guy is. This shit is not magic. It would also depend on the weight disparity.

For sure. But I mean, that's what I tell females because, like, I've had, I've had offers for, hey, will you run a female self-defense seminar? I said, no. Because I think it takes four years for you to learn how to defend yourself, not four hours. Now, I will offer, I'll call them introduction to Jiu-Jitsu. That's what Leah does, too. Yeah, I'll show you, like, hey, this is the, this is basically like the introduction to what we're doing here.

but if you ever want it to work, understand it's going to be years of work. So Leah just taught, I've helped her, I get to be the bad guy. And every time she uses the example, the grocery store and, you know, verbally and she ends up yelling at me. I'm like, God damn it, that's fucking loud every time. So it's an intro to self-defense. The first thing she does is she talks about victim selection, the studies they've done with predators that are in prison and they play videos. And it's uncanny how these same dudes are like, nope, nope, nope, that one. Nope, nope, that one.

100%. The first thing Leah does is teaches them how to walk with confidence. Nothing to do with Jiu-Sut. I tell my people all the time. I said, your jih Tzu is going to save you, not because you fucking do an arm drag to a rear-naked choke. It's because the predator is going to say that's not the one for me. Correct. And that's the truth.

Like the video you posted, fuck, what was it last week? Oh, I'll play it, dude. Oh, it needs to be played because dudes need to hear this. This is, this is fucking, I love shit like this because this is another reason why we train J-Jitsu, right? Were there certain characteristics that you looked for in children before molesting them? In children, yes, but more I also looked at their families. If I thought the father was a threat, I would not approach the child. What else do you need to hear?

That's it. And so, like, that's why you train. It's not because, oh, this might happen or that might happen. It's just an overall projection to the world that I'm not a fucking victim. You know what helps women who aren't at purple belt level yet? Nine millimeter. Yeah, but here's the other thing on that too, right? That's an important thing to put out because I tell women the same thing.

Because my mother, like, well, I got a 38 special in my purse, Greg. I'm fine. Break her fucking wrist if she cracks up. And I said, when's the last time you shot it? Because if it was when we were at your friend's house in like 2014 and we put five rounds into the clay banks, trust me when I tell you that is not going to be a feasible option and people think you can just buy a gun

and now you're good and that's I tell people all the time that's the equivalent of you tying my black belt around your waist and thinking you have Jiu Jitsu now Yeah because like I just I'll just snatch that right out of my mom's hand and say thank you now I have a 38 Yeah it's uh they're not magic

It's much like there's no magic there's no magic You slightly believe in it obviously with crystals And your runes Either whatever the fuck you call it Whatever. Let me ask you this, because I talked about this the other day, and I could tell it rub some people the wrong way. I have felt more what I would call fear and anxiety on jihitsu mats than anything I ever

felt overseas in combat. You were shot, though. So it might be a different, you've had it. I never got hurt in combat. But like, dude, like, hey, we're getting ambushed or, hey, you get intel that there's IDs on our route or whatever it is. Yeah. There was always just kind of this accepting that, hey, that, okay, if it's my day, it's my day.

But it's never that like, oh, no. And I would get that, oh, no, and MMA training and jihitsu training. Really? Yeah, bro. Because of hard roles. Was it an individual that you didn't want to roll with? No, no, no, no. I'm saying like what we talked about, like Bushetia has you mounted and he has his knee going through your diaphragm.

Just get out. Yeah, just stand up, right? And everything's going the way. Because I think I think our lizard brain is like, I'm dying right now. Yeah. And it's like, okay, logically, yeah, this is my homie and we're training. But there's something that gets triggered inside you sometimes that's like, what the fuck, dude? So for clarity, I've never ruled with anybody like Bouchesha, right?

Like, Henry is probably the closest I've come to at somebody at that level. And he is not malicious swimmer role like that. Like, if you're talking about Bouchesha getting ready for a tournament, I know what you're talking about, like the way that he was training. with you. But just what I was saying with like... But overseas, you have the ability to fight back and maneuver. Yes. When you're rolling with people like this, you're doing everything that you can and none of it's working.

You feel helpless. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's that feeling of helpless where you've gone, you've exhausted all of the potential avenues that you thought you could take and now you're stuck. And I never got to that place overseas because we had options. That's right. And most of the time, if I'm being honest, overwhelming fire superiority, which I recognize. recommend. People ask me, you know, what's worse? Being in an ambly, like, is it scary getting ambushed? I'm like, yes, it is. But always make sure you're the one ambushing. If you have to choose between the two, fucking ambush somebody, don't be on the receiving end. You know, you can maneuver. You can do all these things. I never got to that place where all options were exhausted, but you do in jiu-suitz. And I think that's probably why, I don't know, I've never thought about the comparison of the two. I mean, that night I got shot wasn't that scary until it fucking was. And I, and shortly, I, and shortly,

after maybe two minutes after I got shot, Sean came and pulled me around the corner, cut open my pant leg, and I could tell that it wasn't likely not fatal. And then it still hurt like a motherfucker, but less scary. You know what I mean? They were offhandle. They drug me into the street. I was just sitting out in the alley. And, you know, I was more pissed than scared.

I never, I have never been fearless in my life. Fear has always been present. But it was never at that tipping point or not often at that. tipping point where it's like, I don't know if I can tolerate a whole lot more of this. Well, dude, and that's what I've noticed. Like, we had one really bad ambush in Ramadi. It was August 10th, 2004, where we, remember that scene from clear and present danger with Harrison Ford where they had like a bunch of machine guns and RPGs and stuff on the rooftop?

It was gnarly like that. Oh, when their cars are getting, though, when their cars are getting shot up. And our motorcade got diverted because they put a bunch of jersey barriers across a road. And as you know, you're literally driving. somebody else is dictating your movement. Yeah. So like, again, and you know it. And it's like, fuck, dude.

It's not my choice. And then sure as shit, the next road we got funneled on, they did it again. And that's when the lead car is like reverse out. We can't continue down this fucking path anymore. Yeah. Because now they're dictating our movement. And as soon as we started to reverse out, dude, it was literally like 50 yards from the X. Where had we went 50 more yards, they had a bunch of PCams and RPG gunners on the rooftops.

and as soon as they start reversing out, they're like, oh, fuck it, it's go time now and started fucking shooting our cars up. And bro, they were level seven armored like BMWs, and they just got hammered. Yeah, it can only take so much. And like, dude, check this out too. An RPG blew out the gas tank of our follow vehicle,

which was right in front of us, and all the gas just went, whoosh onto the street. It didn't ignite. So the opposite of Hollywood, when you shoot a car with an RPG. You never had a grenade go off and it was like a fireball

like a 50 gallon gasoline drum going, getting lit? On a vehicle? No, I mean, just in general. The classic movie fucking grenade where it's just like, boom, and guys are going flying. I also hit a dude with a 203 and he walked away. I'm like, hey, I thought it was supposed to have a 14 meter kill ratio. They're like detonated right at his feet.

And then you know the plume of black smoke? Yeah. And I saw him run out of the alley. I was like, what the fuck do you? And hopefully he died of shame later. But I mean, yeah, it's, I wish it was like the movies. But what I was saying is like even in like a really gnarly ambush where it's it's hectic like all the cars are getting shot up. There's RPGs being fired.

And this isn't like beat my chest like tough guy talk. Like it's not very scary. It's not scary in the moment because it's just. Mechanically working through the problem. That's what I'm saying. It's just happening. Like you don't feel fear when combat is actually happening. And so maybe like I'd never been in one of those scenarios where it's been prolonged where like you.

You know, you hear like Tom Satterley talk about. Yeah, Black Hawk Downlands. Yeah, where they're, they're now in a, they're now in a hard point in a room. A 36-hour tick. And they don't know if anyone's coming. Like, now you're probably going to have to, like, deal with emotions and whatnot. I never had anything like that happen. It was always like spurts where you'd get ambushed or you'd get ID'd or you'd getting like this,

this quick small arms engagement. And then it was over. And it never felt very scary. Have you watched the new documentary on Black Hawk's fucking awesome, dude? Can you imagine the fucking stone? on Shugart and Gordon. Dude. What the fuck?

And you know what I loved about that documentary is they went and got the other side's perspective. Yeah. And those dudes, those dudes are us, man. Like, they were gnarly. Fingerless fucking bullet hole through an ear. And he's like, hey, I was here to fight and I was going to see it through. And he's like, I got shot. I don't care.

I was here to see it through. Yeah. I was like, oh, man. Like, you forget, like, just because they don't have the fucking equipment or the stuff that we have or the stuff that we have or the. support that we have. Those fucking dudes are gnarly, man. It's almost more impressive that they do that without the stuff that we have. Yeah. Like, imagine doing the shit that we did, but we were in sandals. That'd be a bitch. No, I really appreciated the fact that they like, they didn't

skew like, oh, the Americans were bad or, but they also didn't like make those guys out to be bad. It was just very matter of fact. They just told the story. They were here. This is what was happening. This is why these people were angry. Yeah. And then they talked about like some of the, uh, some of the operations before the main one on October 3rd where like, dude, there's some there were some people's grandparents that got killed and there were some old people that were like collateral damage. Yeah. And it started to really piss off the, the fighting age males in the city. And think about it, dude, some callus bell old folks home got accidentally bombed. He'd be like, you know what? The next time those motherfuckers come back into town, we got something for

Probably. So it's very easy to understand how they arrived at that point too. Yeah. Yeah, that documentary is fucking good. I was fascinated by that. Dude, every time people tell that story, though, those two snipers getting out of the bird, just fucking so-limish. Do you know who Brad hauling is? Yes, but I don't know him.

Okay. You want to know it's funny? When I first walked in to your coffee shop today, I thought that's who you were sitting with. Because me and Brad, I don't know him at all, but we followed each other on Instagram for a while. And I was like, but I've never met him. And I was like, oh, dude, he's here with Brad. And then I took, I was sitting with my dad. Yeah.

I was like, no, that's not Brad, dude. Yeah. But, uh, fuck, man. 36 hour tick. Jesus Christ. We don't need our nods. I don't need water. I was just going to say the same thing.

Fuck. Like, yeah, gnarly shit, dude. Indeed, dude. Yeah, those guys, I don't know where they kept their balls. It's like wheelbarrels just down the street where fucking balls and it just is like, it's going to be okay. But then the other side of it is like, you're there and you're going to either make it out or you're going to fucking die.

So yeah, I guess we're all going on a five-mile run down the fucking... Can you imagine having to fucking end that entire evolution with just a little jog? God, dude. No. Fuck. You want to go Axis deer hunting? Yeah, I've been before. Where you go? I went to Lanai.

Sitka took me one time. Speaking of the hatch, you got on. Do you have, well, obviously, if you have connections with Sitka, you got a connection. You got connections with private land out there at all? Not on Lanai, because I think my understanding, where we were hunting, Jack Carr, of all people, is partners in the operation on Lanai. So I might be able to do a little beta on that. The problem with that is, thank God I wasn't paying for it because they put you up with the four seasons.

And let's just say that's a little bit out of the economic range. I think they're starting one bedroom, whatever they call it, has got too many commas in it for a nightly rate. Yeah. But I'm pretty, I think it's Pineapple Brothers, I believe, is the operation. We can figure this out. Well, do you, check this out. I'm proposing something to you because I have a homie that is, his name is Joshua

Dukes, and he lives on Maui. Okay. And he's connected to all the ranchers out there because he's lived there for 20 years. Yep. And he was a firefighter for a long time, so like very integrated in the community. Yeah. And these ranchers, the fucking access are out of control on Maui.

Dude, on the Nye, I think there's 44,000, something like that. The speed limit on the island is 35 because of them. Yeah. Same on, well, I don't, I heard the herd on Maui is over 100,000 now. I wouldn't surprise. And what they're doing is they are digging up all the irrigation piping on the ranch. And they break into it to get to the water. And so, like, these ranchers, they want these deer gone.

and he's starting to work with some of them and I've went out there a few times with them They're hard as fuck to kill with a bow Dude it's awesome though Yeah Like we kill I'll show you pictures when we're done But like we went out one day

And filled the bed of his pickup truck Because there's no limit Yeah And there's no season They want him gone They want him eradicated And so And you guys didn't even make a dent

No you'll never You'll never make a dent You can do 10 pickup trucks And not make a dent But as a new bow hunter Well I'm not a new bow hunter anymore It's been like four years right But have you ever hunted

anything beyond deer? Like, where's your fucking, let's get you on some elk? I have not hunted elk yet. Let's hunt some elk, dude. Well, and bro, I've only hunted. Put your Montana tag. It's a draw, but if you draw, I know a good way we can find some. Yeah, okay. From the air. From your new helicopter? Yes. You just got to wait 24 hours. Yeah? Is that really the rule? You can, you can spot them, but then you got to wait 24 hours? Okay. Yep. Um, no, but I started deer hunting. And then I was hunting out in Wisconsin with some friends out there, which is all tree stand hunting. Yeah. And people hate on tree stand hunting.

But if that's what you got, that's what you got. But it's also, bro, tree stand hunting is not easy. It will test your resolve. That's exactly right. You will fucking sit there. It's 20 degrees out. And when you're out there for eight hours and it's just, it's actually kind of fascinating because it's you in the woods.

Yeah. And once you're up in a tree, have you ever tree stand hunted? Yes. The woods come alive, dude. Yeah. And you're riding the tree bowl. So I did that for a few years and had like, we've had success every year that we've went out to Wisconsin. And then my buddy Joshua invited me to hunt Hawaii.

And now it's spot and stock. Yeah. But it's fascinating. At least when you're spot and stocking access in Hawaii, when you fuck it up, which you're eventually going to, you can turn like 90 degrees to either side and there's more. There's more. And you just start over again. Like maybe you'll get your arrow and like fucking jam it in your quiver and then just continue. And bro, they shoot fucking anything's a go there.

Oh, I know. Because like in Wisconsin, what you're like, the thought of releasing an arrow has to be a very ethical shot placement. Everything like the fucking, everything has to align perfectly to make sure you're not wounding animals because obviously that's not what you want to be doing as a hunter. Hawaii is totally different. It's like, they're flinging arrows at everything. Dude, wait until you're on the ground with your bow and an 800 pound elk rolls out just ripping a bugle in your face. Like it vibrate your skeleton. That's fucking rad.

It's hard to keep your shit together. I actually got invited to a float hunt in Alaska for moose. Why do you always have to be on boats? What the fuck is wrong with you? Because there's grizzly bears there. I want to be out in the river. They can swim. I've seen National Geographic.

Grizzly bears can swim. Actually, dude, you know, I grew up in Sitka, Alaska. I did not know that. Yeah, it's bouncing back and forth because my dad was a commercial fisherman. Okay. So from May to April, we'd be up in Sitka. And bro, those bears, you'll find them on all the islands around Sica. Like a mile offshore.

And they fucking just swim out there. And I think, I don't know if this is some biologists will write in me like, that guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. This is very true. We don't. But the deer will swim out there to have their babies because it's more safe. In the water? Yeah, the deer will swim out to the islands to have babies.

And then I guess the bears will fucking sometimes chase them out there. I didn't think bears just do whatever they want. I think when you're that big, but the jaw that person, powerful and claws like that. You just kind of do whatever the fuck you want to do. That's fucking rad. Dude, I have no, brown bears scare the fuck out of me.

It's not that I'm like super comfortable around black bears, but I'd rather encounter a black bear than a brown. Well, Washington State, they're reintroducing grizzlies now. On to the hunting list. No, no,

no, no, into the state. Because there was no grizzlies. Why? That's, that's, that's my question. Like,

what are you doing? There's no natural predator for grizzlies. No, so it's, uh, why are they doing that? They're always doing stuff like that. we know better than nature. Yeah.

And they're introducing like wolves back and shit like that. I mean, the jury's out on that one. You can, or the jury is back, I should say. You can look at some of these states that have done that and shit gets out of control pretty quickly. Yeah. I mean, whatever. What's your book about? The book is a two-part book.

And again, it's called Courage Through Adversity. And, dude, I've wanted to write a book off and on for a decade. but I always have that like that little voice that's almost imposter syndrome. It's like who are you to fucking tell a story or to try and guide someone? And I would say it's not until the last couple years when I've watched the Jiu-Soo Academy blow up. I've watched the podcast blow up. And it's like, no, we all hold the power to help people. Yeah.

Because I'm sure you get those emails all the time, you know? And it's like once you start to believe in like who you are and your message and helping people and you lean into it, that's where the magic starts to happen. So I was like, this is my year. I'm writing the book. And it's a two-part book. Part one is kind of like my story. Because I feel like if you're going to give any type of guidance or try and help people become better, some backstory is necessary.

Yeah. And so it talks about who I am, what I did, my military experience, my law enforcement experience, my jihitsu experience. Then part two is about how to empower people to find the best version of themselves. So when you say two-part, it's all in one book. All in one, no, it's all in one book. Got you. And I even say in the beginning, it's like, you don't have to read my story if, like, they're separate.

You can go right into part two if you're not interested in some guy's military journey because there's a million books like that, right? But I just put that for so I feel like it gives my words validity. Yeah. And then part two is literally about the things that we need to be doing to empower our community. And it starts with ourselves. It starts with who we see in the mirror. and I hear from people all the time it's like the two things that men have

that they voice concern to me about is not liking who they see in the mirror and not liking the profession they're stuck in and they feel like they're stuck in life. Do you think women feel the same way? Probably. I just don't connect with... I'm not saying they should be the ones telling you that.

I'm just curious if they're having the same conversation on the other side of the table. Maybe. But I feel like men in particular like we have these expectations on who we're supposed to be. And I think most people are knowingly fall short of that. And if you're overweight and you're weak and you haven't prioritized your health or your fitness or you know what else a lot of people don't prioritize is their relationships. Like one thing I hear from men all the time is like, man, I see you've built like a really powerful community.

I don't have anything like that around me. I don't have any friends. I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of. So the book talks about all that stuff, building community, building, like, resilience within your friend group, building resilience within your family, and just touches on all that stuff because I feel like it's lost right now. How many words? How many words? Yeah. I think we're, I think I was at 62,000.

Sweet. When does it come out? October. Oh, so you're, yeah, you're well along farther in the process than I am. No, no. So I'll tell you, the manuscript is completely done. Yep. The full book is written, turned in.

I've hired, I'm working with Chad Robeshaw's agent because he's. connected in that world. Yep. And we're at the phase now where he's presenting it to different publishers to see who wants to pick it up. Do you need a picture of me for the cover? I'll put you on the back cover. Front cover will sell better.

We'll put it. We'll put the front cover as a picture of me trying to pass your guard. Or that'll be book two titled The Endless Endeavor. Obviously it'll be trying to pass. Obviously it'll be fucking fictional. I don't happen. Leave my guard alone. I like my guard.

No, I'm excited for that though, man, because I think... Okay, so it's... Okay, so it may not come out in October then.

It takes a long time once you hit a publisher. Yeah, no, that's why we're going into it now. And my agent says, for books that are, like, around these topics,

an October release is typically the best. Okay, so you want to shoot for. It's going to be October of 26th, then. So I'm... I'll show you. I'm not going to show the audience,

but I just got to the point where we picked the cover for the book I wrote. So there's three options there. Which one do you like? I like this one too. Yeah, that's the one we want with. That's the one. So there's that. That color scheme, it just pops.

Yeah. It's very navel in nature, blue and gold. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So you got to pick the cover. Then it's got to go through editorial passes. One of them is going to be just for grammar. Uh-huh.

Like for, you know, this is, this exists for people like you and I who struggle with, Tah, he, to ha, the. I don't really know the difference. One, you should use a comma and a semicolon. I'm going to be honest with you. No, same. If word suggests that auto correction, I generally go with it. Yep.

Because I don't know why. It's got the red squiggly line underneath it. And if I double click, it says semicolon. So there is a grammatical pass. Um, mine just clear. legal review. So there's a legal review. I haven't even gone through the grammatical pass yet.

So legal review. Did you have to have the military look at it at all? You didn't? Well, there's zero war stories in mind. I probably will get military. What do they call it? It's a fuck. If you wouldn't have asked me that,

I would have been able to tell you what it was called. DoD clearance, for lack of a better term. Yeah. Probably because then it allows you to put it on some reading lists. Like the military could recommend it on military type reading list. Is that up to the publisher to decide then if they want to go through and have it scrutinized? I think it should be more collaborative. We sound like two fucking monkeys trying to fuck up football.

Everybody listening to this should be inspired. This is a conversation about how you can accomplish things when you're born stupid. If you want to write a book, do exactly what we're saying right now. You have two idiots sitting at a table and look what we did. Tell you what, the books are coming out though. It should be a conversation because it could delay the publishing, because it takes up to 12 months. That's what I've heard.

I've heard. So they picked the cover, or they didn't pick the cover. They presented three in a group of people, took a look at it. I agreed with their selection, which was the number, letter A. Talk to the lawyer legal review. That was very easy because I didn't name anybody. I kept things broad where they needed to be broad. Zero war stories, zero TTPs, any of that shit.

So super easy. She had like three or four questions. Gramatical review. Then there was going to be a content review, which I, actually don't necessarily know what that is. I've heard that that's where the, you know, suggestions maybe rethink how you're saying this, that, or the other. Yeah.

Then you got to format it. Do you like the design of the format? This is what this page is going to look like. All this stuff. Are you going to put pictures in it too? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Only of me, of course, because of course. Yeah. I don't even have that many pictures of me, especially from my time in the military. None of us do. Well, there's a handful of guys that seems like they post a picture from the G-WAT every day and it's like I didn't even think to have a fucking camera with me no man I get sent some pictures the ones that I have I was sent by other people I never fucking took them well dude my first

deployment my first and my second I just brought like a couple of those disposable codex oh yeah the yeah and then you get home and you drop it off at Walgreens and then three days later you see what you see what you got out of your friends got it and it's like several pictures of their assholes no but so then you got to like format the book Then they lock the type set. I think I'm using that properly. And then like six months after that, it'll come out. It's a long process.

And what I was kind of shocked to hear is like once a publisher picks you up, it's basically their book. I don't, uh, I don't know. The contract that that I signed didn't seem like overly onerous. I'll send you to, I'll send you exactly what I signed if you want to see it. Yeah, it'd be interested. Because there are things you have to decide. Did they pay you up front? I did get in advance, yeah.

Okay. Let me tell you what it advances, though. That's a number that they split up over four payments. Uh-huh. That you'll get a fourth of it and your agent, if you have one, we'll get their scrape first. Lawyer gets their scrape first. Upon signing the contract, you get another piece of the advance upon the publisher accepting your final manual script, another chunk when it actually releases. And then I think the other one is another chunk when they do their first or second paperback run.

So your advance is going to get cut up over years. Yeah. So you're getting $150 deposit. It's a great way to turn a number into a smaller number. Yeah. Well, the good thing about the advance is that if your book completely flops and you don't even sell one copy, you don't have to pay them back anything. And then people need to remember what advance means. It's an advance on future sales.

So even if it crushes, you probably won't see a measurable amount of money. money for 12 months. No. Yeah. Because they get their money back first because remember the term. Advance. Yeah. And also though, like even after that, the, they're going to get a substantial percentage

of the royalties. Yep. Because my agent talked to me about self-publishing too. And it's like, there's pros and cons to both. There's pros and cons to both. And he said like a guy that has a big platform that could be, you would be very applicable for this. you would have the potential to move a lot of books without a publisher.

Maybe, but I like the idea of leveraging people and their core competency. Exactly right. That's exactly what I said. I would rather just say, hey, let people that know what they're doing, figure it out. Yeah. And if I make a little less money in the end, I don't really care. I want the book to have a wide reach and I want the book to be received well. And big publishers know how to do those things.

I literally put in the forward, or not. No, Jocko wrote the foreword. I put in my introduction, I think the first sentence was, I don't know what makes a book commercially successful. We might find out. What I said was I don't actually care if I make a dime on this. The only thing I care about is if it actually impacts somebody's life. That to me is the measurement of success.

It's, you know, because then there's the audiobook. You know what I mean? Are you going to read it? You have to read your own audio book. I have the first right of refusal. So they can give me the opportunity to, read it and they have to at least offer me that. But if I suck at it, I think I could actually

probably read it here. Bro, you know what else you can do? You can let chat GPT listen to one of your episodes and learn your inflection, your exact presence and how you articulate things and then run the book through that and it'll spit it out instantly.

I almost felt like that's cheating. And then I was talking to a guy, it's like, bro, it's 2025. For you to sit at your podcast microphone and fucking read for 10 hours. Yeah, but what's more fun than reading your own words? Super page turn.

Because I think I've thought about that. Like, I don't have as big of a following as you, but still, the people that do follow me consume my podcasts. So a lot of people that are going to be tuned into your audiobook, they need to hear you. I think it makes... Or do you want me to read your audiobook?

Only if I can read yours. We'll have to pinky swear on it. We're going to do each other's super powerfully gay. I don't know. I'm not at that phase yet. It's in it like, dude, I don't know how to do any of this shit. Yeah. I'm working my way along.

Yeah, it comes out in January of 2026. Like as far as I've seen, I've seen the cover art, which I showed you. And the legal call. I'm still waiting on the grammatical, still waiting on the contextual one. How many words was it? Was yours when it was all done? 67,000, I think, something like that. What is that going to convert to actual pages?

Like 250 or something? Close to 300, I think. Close to 300. Okay. Well, and I don't know how they, like, do you do, blank pages in between table of contents and you know what I mean? And the picture is how big are they going to make of them? Because that stretches out the writing, too.

Yeah. One reason that I was very apprehensive of self-publishing was my agent was talking about how you need to have an understanding of how many books you need at release. Oh, yeah. I don't know that number. And he's like, I would order seven. Yeah. But I feel like seven's good.

I don't feel like that checks too big. I could write that. But he's like, dude, if you, there's two things you do not want as an author is you don't want 5,000 books sitting in your garage that aren't moving. Or selling 5,000 books and you don't have anything. And he goes, what's even worse is exactly that. You sell them out. And now, because when it's hot and it's new and your fans are wanting your item and they go click and it says sold out, they're not coming back next week. No, they're fucking gone.

So like you have to find that happy middle ground and top publishers know how to do that better than we'll ever fucking know how to do it. You and I were talking about wealth anyway or what being rich is. For me, it's being able to do what I want to with my time. I'm completely fine breaking even on this book, having it help somebody, but the publisher is working on, let's make it look good. These are the outlets you want to sell in. These are the circles that you're going to need to go to, like, set that stuff up. I'll go do what you need for me. But the rest of the time I'm going to do with what I want to with my time.

Like I took the time to write the book. I handed it off. It was well received. We'll see how it goes when it goes. for sale. They are the ones who invested in me in the advance. It's not, it's not crazy money by any stretch. But I want experts like, I don't go to the automotive school to get my oil changed. Yeah. I go to the dealership with the fucking certified mechanic. No, I'm the same way. And you know, it's, I think a lot of people that are new authors, they must just want to fucking micromanage everything.

Because I've said that exact same thing to my agent a handful of times. I'm like, dude, I'll let the guys that have been in this industry 20 years kind of guide me. Yeah. Like if you think this needs to come out or this needs to go in or this font pops more, Barnes & Noble. Like, no, it doesn't. Like, dude, just. I mean, clearly it's going to be Helvetica. It's the only font to go in.

That's what I submitted my draft. And I bet you they already changed to like Times New Roman or some shit. You know what would be cool, though. And this is also obviously depending on who picks your book up. St. Martin's Press. That's who picked yours up? And so you'll be able to go to likely any Hudson news while you're traveling.

And there's your book. Who can stop me? I feel like I can draw a massive cock. Open it up and fucking draw a dick. I already do it on Jack Carr's books. And then it'll become a thing like, dude, if you got one of the books with the cock by Andy, it's worth this much more on eBay. I've signed about 20 of Jack's books in airports.

And I write out an inscription to myself, like, thank you, Andy, for being the inspiration. of what I thought a seal could be, Jack Carr. It's awesome. Somebody out there has those books. I do it at airports. Uh-huh. Yeah. That's hilarious.

I did it one time. There's a Barnes & Noble's down in Missoula. Leah was just mortified. She's like, what are you doing? Like, I'm looking for a fucking pen so I can write in this book that I didn't write and pretend like I did. Leave me alone.

You get arrested for fucking. Once a day, she's now, she's just like, what the fuck is wrong with you? It used to be once a week with me for a smack. How's the podcast going? You know, it's still. doing good. Like, and just like you said with the book, I don't do the podcast, hoping I get this many downloads or this much money from it. Yeah, you can't pay attention to that. And it did slow down a little bit, but I feel better about myself after what you said.

It's like people are out doing their stuff now. That and I was actually talking to ad guy about this. When iOS did one of their updates, it broke the subscription links to everybody inside of Apple Podcasts. Oh, did it really? Yeah. It's a known issue in the, I think it was like, it was in the 17s or something like that. 17 point whatever. It unsubscribed everybody.

Fuck, man. Yeah. Because like who goes back and resubscribes? If it was meaningful in their life, which are the people I would want to talk to anyway, they'll find it again. They'll find it again. Yeah, yeah. No, but dude, that journey has just been one of the most transformational journeys of my life, too,

because it's just before you know it, and either doing other people's shows or inviting people on my show, you're building your network, you're building relationships, and now I feel like I'm connected with these different people all over the country. Like, dude, a perfect, do you know Bedros Kulian? Do you know who that is? Listen, I was going to talk shit to you about this mastermind you're a part of. I saw you post it in your story. What mastermind am I part of?

Aren't you doing like a life seminar, fucking centering your chakras? I saw you post about it. No, no, no, no, there's no chakras. There's no, no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, no, I'm fucking pull this up right now. Pull it up. Yeah, it's called BK Live. Which is chakras and run. He actually said, he goes, I really, because I was talking to him last week, I said, I was coming

out here to do this. Yeah, discover how to reach your potential in life and business with chakras and run. That's what it says. He's an entrepreneur. He's actually a really cool guy. And I invited him on my show and we ended up hanging out for just like we're doing right now. And by the end of it, he goes, dude, I got a big event coming up in May. If you want to be part of it, let me know.

And it's just like little doors are always opening up just from doing this. Yeah, man. You know? And so I think that that's one of the most important aspects of doing this. Like you're on what? Episode three something now? Michael Paul D.C. Is it 370?

Something like that? Let's see. He just sits over there and plays Pokemon while we told me. 3708 was our last one. Okay. So you're coming up on 400. Yeah.

So think about how many people you've connected with and how many doors have opened just from this. It's wild. You know? And so it's like that's what motivates me to keep doing it. And again, the mission is to enrich people's lives. And as long as we can keep doing that,

I think it's fucking, and it's what we should be doing. It's worthwhile, for sure. What do you got planning for the rest of 2025? You got to need 2025 goals? No, not really, man. I mean, I shouldn't say not really. I have lots of goals,

but nothing that we haven't really already kind of dived into. I was hoping the book would come out this year and you just crushed that goal. You wanted to take time, though. Right? If you're going to hand it off to experts, let them polish whatever.

Yeah, for sure. Because I'll be honest, like, what I hand it off, if I were a, jeweler, it would need to be, it need to be finished by somebody else. Maybe let's set the diamond in there correctly. You know, it'd be like paper clipped on and they're like, maybe we should weld that shit. Yeah.

You know? And then the other thing is just continuing to grow the Jiu-Tzu Academy. You know, we'll be at, uh, wild how many people are, we'll be at three, we'll probably be at 300 members by the end of this year. Oh, I'm not even to give you till the end of the year. And that's say June. Yeah. Growth just becomes exponential.

Is it really exploding as it kind, when you're doing something, It seems like everybody does it because you hang out with the people doing the same shit you are. The UFC obviously has launched grappling. It's definitely more popular. But is it exploding to the degree that a lot of people talk about it? Bro, I think so. Yeah. I think, again, like my academy kind of blew up at the right time with kind of the perfect storm with my story.

And like a lot of things kind of fell in the place. But I also think that when you have basically everybody with a. voice these days praises jiu-jitsu you know when you're looking at all the big podcasts and maybe not obviously like true crime like there's there's top podcasts that have nothing to do with guys like us but guys because there was no crime because they choked the motherfucker out there was attempted true but like anybody in our space that's into fitness into guns into hunting like all the guys at the top are proponents of jih Tijuana or participating themselves you got guys like rogan and jaco and yourself like everybody talks about the value of jih Tijuana and i think it's it's expanding

because of that and a lot of people because dude i used to get the only people that would come and want to train jihitsu were savages like guys that either wanted to become fighters or former wrestlers and now it's it's all walks of life a lot of kids, a lot of women, a lot of dads that are like, they've never been an athlete in their life. Well, who's your, uh, how old's your oldest member? Do you know? Mid 50s.

That's so cool. Yeah, we don't, like that. Yeah, we don't have anyone. I mean, I had a guy that started training because he attended our guns and geese program. And he got his blue belt at 70 years old. That's awesome. And it's like people, once people lean into jiu-tzu, I tell people all time, I've yet to meet the person that dedicated time to jitzu and then regretted it.

Can you imagine how he's going to dominate the nursing home? He's going to be the fucking Sigma in that nursing home. Just he'll get as much tapioca as he wants. There's no nursing home in my future. One day. No. I keep telling my dad, not a fucking,

I tell him I'm like, I picked it out. It's called Shady Acres. One day or something, hey, dad, do you want to go for a ride? Dude, he is such a character.

Michael can attest this. I have him on the show sometimes. And like, people love asking him in questions. So he does full auto Friday? Sometimes. And sometimes I'll just do episodes with him. And it's such a cool time capsule.

But he is so, fuck, dude, he's such a handful. Like he upgraded to a new phone recently. Tried to explain to him why his Bluetooth headset isn't working on his new device is a journey through space and time and exploration. Like, just fucking bring the thing over to my house and I'll do it. You know, he's the kind of guy who spends six hours on customer support with Hulu trying to log on. That happened last week. Well, I think about that with my father because my father passed in 2015. But he was already reaching that point like, this fucking remote, dude, how the fuck do I navigate into this app and like...

Do you use Apple TV? Yes. My dad carried around in his breast pocket and Apple TV remote for a week asking people how to recharge it at the coffee shop. That's the shit I have to deal with it. People love them on the podcast. I'm like, listen, I get it. I get how in this setting you guys love him, but I have to deal with this motherfucker. Bro, we're going to be there before you fucking know.

Not me, dude. Yes. Yes, you will. I'm going to fucking chubing. choke my middle son out as many times as I can and then quit Jiu-Jitsu as soon as he can get me. Do you think your Jiu-Zitsu has an expiration date? I try to have a style that does not. Well, as I get older, I try and move it towards that.

Yeah. But I also think like, I don't know, man. I look at some of these old guys that just look like decrepit and they look. Talk to him about how their game used to. to be, though. Like I was telling you about at origin camps, guys who more stripes on their belt than I can even bother counting. A lot of them were super, super competitive early on. And we're talking the fucking rough and tumble days.

Yeah. And some of them, it was their ticket out of Brazil. So they destroyed their fucking body at a young age to be able to do the things that they did. There's a physical cost to that. I think. Yeah, doesn't Hickson have like eight herniated? Herniated discs. And he's got Parkinson's.

I did a remote episode with him for change agents. And he was shaking more visibly than I thought he was going to be. Whether or not those two things are connected to Jiu Jitzen's, I don't think so. But I mean, I don't think, I think if you want to do it for a long time, you have to modify it to a place where it doesn't have an expiration date. Yeah. Because you and I, we will never be able to outpace a 20 year old. No. And.

But that's the thing. It's like if you're Hicks and. and you literally built a legacy around Jiu-Jitsu and the cost of building that legacy is a percentage of your physical health. Like that makes sense. It's a give and a take, right? It makes sense for a couple people.

That's what I'm saying. Not for everybody. But it doesn't, I don't think that makes sense for most people. Yeah. If they reach a point where it's like, hey, jiu-jitsu is now doing more harm than good. I think you have to ask yourself, why are you participating in it?

Yeah. And I think you should do that with every activity, not just jiu-jitsu. because some things just have a cost from a perspective of time. Like if you're addicted to fucking golf, why are you doing this? Yeah. I know plenty of people who will go out and get shit-faced and play golf because they just don't want to be with their spouse

because they have a horrible relationship. So it's actually less about the golf. Yeah, you have an unhealthy relationship with golf. It's not even about the golf. It's how you escape. Yeah, it's about not being in the same place with somebody else. So if I think it... Isn't it weird?

A lot of dudes have wives that they want to hide from? Why are you married to her? Dude, all I want to do is spend time with my wife. It's so cool to be able to share jihitsu with her. Yeah. We're only allowed to drill. You don't roll live with her? I have beaten her one time.

And as it was happening, I realized I was making an error. It's not worth it. So we drill. Fair enough. She did this. She's done this for 17 years. Yeah. Competitive.

Very good competitive career. She's still competing. I don't. But fucking size and strength and athleticism is real. Of course it's real. You know, it's like, don't, you know, but it's not worth it. You ever hear the story Jocko told about his first time rolling with a female world champion? No.

He's like, dude, and he didn't say who she was by name, you know? Because he's like, man, they said like, she won the world title. And he's like, so man, what's this going to feel like? You know, like, am I about to get beaten by a girl? And then he goes, and then I did whatever I wanted to do her. It's not magic. Yeah. It, like, yeah.

And again, and I think that's where you're right on with the purple belt for a minimum of, like, it just takes so fucking long to get to purple belt. You got to put a lot of time and work in. And yeah, you're going to realize you're a little bit vulnerable before that. And not a lot of people want to go through that. And then, yeah, a female purple belt against a male black belt. I'm sorry. That's going one way. It's not going to work out for you.

It's not. I just think, I don't know, like everybody, it's funny. Whenever I say this, people like, what the fuck you're talking about? You might quit jihitsu one day? Like, what are you talking about? And it's like, this is a phase of life. It's been a long phase. It's been 21 and a half years now.

Jiu-jitsu's been my consistent through a lot of different phases of my life, too, which has always been cool, right? Yep. But if it's to the point where it's hurting me and it's bringing me more harm than good, like it's probably time to move on. And when I say that, you like, jihitsu people get, what are you talking about? We also have a lot more life experience, though, and other things that a lot of times I think people get trapped in a,

identifying themselves and what they did, what they did became who they are. Bro, that's our whole old communities. But if you can get past that once, it becomes less of an issue or hurdle of being able to realize, hey, I'm beyond the healthy participation in this. I'll move on. And people say, well, how could you possibly do it? Like, dude, I'm on to the next. Well, bro, perfect example is like trying to fucking shower this morning.

I'm trying to wash my hair. And it's like, this elbow is barely working. And it's just because I've, like I said, we have that competition coming up. so we've been getting after it. And then going with your gnarly brown belt. And it's like, sooner or later, I'm going to want to be pain free. Because I don't even remember what being pain free is like. And you'll never feel it again.

It's already too late for that. That ship has sailed for you. I know, right? Yeah. But we don't need to add to the pain. And jihitsu does, man. It just does. It has to be a net positive.

Otherwise, I think it's time to put it down. And also, like, I don't know if I ever want to be the guy. Like, I don't have to have rounds where we're fighting to the death, but I also want to be doing real rounds. If everybody's just babying you because you're the old broke guy, I think I'm just going to go become a yogi and meditate. Yeah, unless there's some other old broke guy and you guys can have like legit, you know, octogenarian rounds, you know, like 60, like max heart rate is 60 BPM.

You can beat each other with your canes. There's a time and place for everything, man. Unless I want to sail the world. Maybe you'll come on that journey with me. fucking hope you both sinks in the middle of the ocean. I'm going to buy a boat that's unsinkable. That doesn't exist. It does exist.

They tried that with the Titanic. Some of those catamaran's their cores are... Limp it mine. I'll take care of that. What do you want to close it out, man? We've been out for almost three hours. Yeah, this is fun, man. I love coming out here.

Guns and Geese. Tell me about that. Where can people sign up for that? So Guns and Geese is a pretty limited program. We're only running one this year. And it's a program that means... Really push yourself. Yeah, I know.

right. Is it already sold out? No, it's not sold out. There's some spots available. It's in my academy, Lake Stevens, Washington, in July. And it's just a weekend of shooting and fighting. But again, at the essence of what it's become, it's more about personal excellence and community and connection.

You know, like people say all the time, we do three hours of shooting in the morning and then three hours of jih Tijuana in the afternoon. And then we do dinners and bonfires together. And consistently, people are like, My favorite aspect of camp is the bonfire conversations. That makes total sense. And so, like, I actually want to lean into that more over the next year.

You asked me what my goals were for 2025. And I said, I don't know, not much. I'll just do this one course. Really going to push myself. No, I want to, I actually want to move into connection and community building and offer more things that are around that, as opposed to shooting. I'm kind of over guns, dude. And I know that's blast for me to say. I feel like I already know where you're going.

You're going to become a traveling mega church pastor. That's what's right, dude. And then I'm going to convince everybody to give me their wives. Like, hey, if you want to have a baby, it actually has to come from me because I'm connected to God. And give me 80% of your money. 80% of your money. And then we're all going to drink a magic potion and fly off on a comet together. Fuck you.

You know what the problem is? A dude did that. I know. And people signed up. You know what's funny is like I always say at my jitzo academy because people are like, dude, it's become like a cult here just because like how bought in people are, right? Jiu-Jitsu does meet every criteria. I said, but I don't have sexual rights to the wives.

That is actually not a required criteria. That is a required criteria. There's five recognized criteria. I know that. I look into this shit. But here's the thing. CrossFit meets it, religion meets it, almost all organized sports meets it.

Yes, jihitsu meets it. The fucking military meets it. It is what it is. But it's nuts how some people, it just will absolutely give like all. of their sovereignty and their autonomy over to another man. Yeah, don't do that. No. So guns and geese, can people sign up on the website?

Yeah. Yep. Their sign-ups still available. Outside of that, though, like, we talked about jihitsu for half of this podcast. Did we? If you're not training jiu-jitsu, go find a spot and start training. I agree. That is what I find to be the catalyst to change more than any other aspect of people's

lives. And there's a reason we can sit and talk about it forever. It's because we both feel the power in it. We both know how much value it brings to your life. And what you will find is almost none of the value that you pull from the mats has to do with choking people or armbarring people. Do you ever have people ask you if they want to talk to you about something that happened in a role? And when people ask me, I'm like, dude, I don't remember who I rolled with yesterday. Dude, some people have photographic memories for roles. Okay, I don't. I don't. I don't know. either. And I have had people, hey, man, can you show me what you did? I'm like, I didn't actually, if you wouldn't have asked me, I wouldn't remember that we rolled. Yeah. And by the end of Open

Matt, I may not remember who I rolled with at the beginning of Open Matt. So you know what we just did? We just implemented this new camera system in the academy where students can log in and have access to it to pull their own roles. Oh, good. Because people say, people will say that all the time. Hey, can you, can you pull footage at 642. I want to see how this guy passed my guard or whatever. And it's like, no. Now you can just have login and do it yourself.

Ah, man. Or, or here's a thought. Take it easy. You know what I mean? Like, just fucking have another role. It's just fucking jihis. Just take it easy. No, but I mean, that would be,

that would be my biggest advice to anybody that is seeking personal excellence, seeking growth, seeking community, just trying to connect with other people, find an academy and start spending time there. And don't have expectations of anything. Just be consistent, show up and your life, the trajectory of your life will move in the positive direction in almost a direct correlation to how much time you're spending on the mats. And I know, again, it starts to sound a little culty, but when you've seen this happen over and over and over for two decades now, it's undeniable.

I mean, Michael, you're 23. You've been at Jiu-Jitsu for a while. 25. Whatever. Has it had a positive impact on your life? Oh, yeah. Do you want I met him? He's a white belly's like 150 pounds.

Uh-huh. And what do you know? Like 162? 190. 190, dude? He doesn't feel it on top. He's like a piece of paper laying on you. He's the opposite of heavy pressure.

I mean, he's never going to be in a dominant position. He's a bottom player. Power bottom, if you will. He just, he just, his move is. belly down ass up. Don't listen to him. Has it had a positive impact on your life? Oh, yeah.

Like undeniably so. Yeah. Well, in a lot of that positive impact, I mean, we talked about earlier, it comes from just developing some confidence, how you walk, how you carry yourself, how you believe in yourself. I say it all the time to my guys. Like, not only what we talked about earlier is like walking in the parking lot with your shoulders up and just having an awareness, but you know where I've noticed it too?

is in professional settings. Like, I've had supervisors that are just kind of arrogant assholes and the way they talk to people is a direct reflection of them being those arrogant assholes. But when they know that you can take them down and strangle them unconscious, they treat you a little differently.

Regardless of how hard they may try to escape. And that's the thing, dude. And it's like, am I going to go into my supervisor's office and strangle him? No, I think everybody understands that's probably not going to happen. Let's leave it at a maybe. But that's what I'm saying.

When it's even a possibility, people hold you in a different regard. It rounds the edges on things. It does, man. And like I tell the young people in my academy all the time, jihitsu will serve you the rest of your life professionally, just as well as it will actually give you a skill set to defend yourself because people will hold you in a different regard. I agree.

I mean, I feel like we did a really good job being an advertisement for jihitsu, unintentionally. Yeah. So if you're in Lake Stevens, Washington, I know a good academy. And if you're in Calispell, come try it. And anywhere else, just go try different academies, see what's up, dude? What advice do you have for people who are super rural and they don't have an academy? Do you think you can learn it online?

No, I don't think you can learn online. And I get this question a lot. This is what I, this is a real one. And this is what I recommend. Find literally the closest academy, even if it's a three-hour drive. and then find a friend or two and be like, hey, let's commit to going to that academy once every six weeks,

even something like that. Well, then if they are from your area too and you make that, you could at least work on the shit you learn together. That's what I'm saying, right? Yeah, you could build a little nucleus. And dude, any reasonable Jiu-Jitsu Academy owner,

if two guys came to me and said, hey, I live three hours away and I can only make it like every month or two, oh, well, it's too bad. You're going to have to have a, of course not. send them home with homework. This is what you should work on. It'd be exciting, right? Yeah.

Because some jiu-jitsu is better than no jihitsu, and that's a fact. And just the reality of it is, are you guys going to be learning some bad habits? Yes. You're going to be doing some things that you probably shouldn't be doing? Yes. But some jihitsu is better than no jihitsu. I agree. So, but at the end of the day, you still want to be learning underneath someone in some capacity.

Trying to just fucking figure this out on YouTube. I don't think that that's the best option. So go find somewhere that can kind of guide you, even if that's very, very intermittently. And I think that that's probably the best scenario. Yeah. That's what, do you know that Jeff Smith, Colorado Kraft Beef? Yeah.

He trains like that very intermittently. I mean, I think it's like once a week or something. Yeah. But still, like once a week. Better than nothing. It's better than nothing. Yeah. So.

It is what it is. Cool. Right on them. Are we going to go fly your helicopter around now? Let's see what the wind looks like. It's a little gusty. Before. It was supposed to, the forecast was supposed to chill out.

So let's go figure it out. All right, let's do it. On the special four-episode change agent series Black Project, we hear from experts, whistleblowers, and insiders to try to figure out if our government is behind these strange craft. And if so, why are they keeping the truth from the public? We're told never to talk about this. We'll look at the history of special access programs and see just how far ahead the most of the secretive elements of the military industrial complex are, and what it will take to finally get the truth.

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