Mark Bell's Power Project - BJJ Fundamentals with Black Belt Toby Staley || MBPP Ep. 882

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Jiu Jitsu Black Belt Toby Staley under Cassio Werneck, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about early days of Jiu Jitsu and the fundamentals necessary for becoming a better BJJ Practitioner.  Follow Cassio's Jiu Jitsu on IG: https://www.instagram.com/cassiowerneckjiujitsu/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

What's going on with this hoodie from 1995? Oh, no. No, that's when it was established. That's the Casio Wernick. I was like, oh, man, you've been there forever. You've been there before I even started. No, no. I started with Casio in probably 2003.

How long have you been doing jiu-jitsu for? 22 years. So I started in 2000. Wow. How did you get into it? So I lived in Fresno at the time and I watched the, well, at the time I rented the UFCs back at the blockbusters, right? Because I was always a martial artist. And so I love where this is going, right? So my friends and I would go and

I was always into martial arts and I took karate when the first UFC happened when I was a kid. So I remember people talking about it at the time. You're like, a karate guy would kill a wrestler. Get the fuck out of here. No, I was telling them earlier. I remember we didn't have cable, or I didn't watch the pay-per-views at the time. But I just remember guys around the karate school like like yeah this mexican guy was beating up everybody like yeah no one could do anything against him like was he real big like no he was really skinny right what are you talking about right right so i was always

interested in in uh you know martial arts and then that, you know, jiu-jitsu was dominating those early days. And then, and so when I was old enough to like, you know, my friends and I, we'd go to Blockbuster, rent movies, and, you know, there was the UFCs. We'd look them up and bring them home and watched all the early UFCs back then. Do you kind of remember the first one you saw?

Do you remember like the first? I don't remember which video because it depended on what they had at the time i don't think i even started with one i think i think i had i started with um three which is actually the one where hoist gracie got injured before the end yeah so uh but it was still i mean that was uh he fought chemo in that one and beat Kimo and then couldn't continue on. Kimo came out with a cross on his back. He did. Yeah, yeah, right? Yeah, yeah.

It's unbelievable. So, yeah, pre-gloves, pre-rounds, pre-time limit. That was, it was something else. I remember seeing the big, almost like Samoan-looking guy. He was huge. And he went against a famous fighter. And the guy was kind of known for, like, striking and karate and stuff like that. And the guy just sidestepped him and kicked this big Samoan guy in the face.

And his tooth went flying out of the front row. I was like, I'm in. Whatever this is, this seems amazing. I may be wrong, but I think that's the very first, that was the very first fight in the very first UFC. You got the, yeah, a little pre-workout. Fucking cross carry. Well, and then Hoist used to come out in the Gracie train. You remember the Gracie train?

They'd have their, the entire family would have their hands on and they'd, you know, he'd have his head down. You know what's new? Yeah, that's how they used to, there, there, there's the Gracie train? The entire family would have their hands on it, and they'd have their head down. You know what's incredible about this is there were some guys that actually did pretty well against him. Considering they didn't know what jiu-jitsu was, there was a couple guys. Dan Severin comes to mind, but Dan Severin obviously had such a huge grappling background. And Dan Severin weighed like 9 million pounds compared to Royce Gracie. Yeah, Dan Severin did pretty well. Oleg Tiktarov.

I don't know if you remember him. Yeah, but I don't think they ever fought. I loved Oleg, man. Oleg was one of my favorites in the early days. Another grappler. I think Oleg and Royce, I think they fought for like an hour. They had some battles where they just didn't kill each other. I think Oleg and Hoyce, I think they fought for like an hour. They had some battles where they just didn't kill each other, I think.

I could be wrong. I don't think they ever did. I think, I remember Oleg. Oleg was a bleeder. He was a grappler. But when he lost, it was usually because he was cut and he was bleeding. What did you end up liking about the sport? What really gravitated you towards

jiu-jitsu, like when you first tried it? Was it just so different than other stuff that you tried? So, yeah, we were talking about that earlier too. Well, first off, I mean, what attracted me to what Hoyce was doing was just the fact that, you know, Hoyce was smaller. He was, I think, one of the smallest guys in the first UFCs. And he went in and you watched the other guys and it was like, they were all martial artists. And I took karate at the time.

And I remember, you know, it's like they walked in and their martial arts went out the window. They just started swinging at each other. Like they were in a bar fight. Right. And, and I remember thinking,

Oh man, that's what martial look like for real. I don't know. And then, and then Hoyes comes in and you could tell i mean like even though that wasn't what i was doing at the time you could tell that is what he trained right and and not only that but he took out these guys that were swinging like that and most of them walked out without a mark on them whereas when those two you know when two other guys went in they both

walked out, looked like they were lost. Right. It made it more clear that it was a skill set and a sport and not this like barbaric thing of like, let's just throw bombs at each other and see who can hurt the other guy more than the other guy. Right. Yeah.

You know, who can throw harder? Who's, you know, yeah. And also when you manage to nullify someone so efficiently. Yes. Right. When you make it actually look almost kind of easy once they touch the ground, that's kind of scary. Right. It is.

And so then that brings me to like kind of what my first experience when I finally got into train was being a martial artist as a kid. And I got into martial arts, you know, I was telling Nsema earlier that my dad and I would sit and watch like Kung Fu theater, black belt theater on TV, watch the old Kung Fu movies. And it was always like the little guy that was, you know, had trained for a long time was beating everyone. You're right. The little master guy. And it was, he was smaller.

It was like, but it was almost magic what he could do. Right. And taking karate, it wasn't really like that right because you know it was you know you could we weren't really hitting each other it was more of a point style karate but it wasn't really like that and there was always this question like at the end of a match especially like who would have really won if this was a real fight, right? Yeah. And so the first time there was only one jiu-jitsu school. I grew up in Fresno and there was only one jiu-jitsu school in all of Fresno at the time

and it was taught by blue belts. That's wild. Yeah, right? And there wasn't a black belt in the entire city, right? What gym was that? Who was that at the time? So I started at pacific martial arts in in fresno um and i trained there for a while they they had um at the time they were a

karate school they had aikido they had judo and then they had a jujitsu class um and so i went in and and to try it out and i you know a buddy of mine you know usually go in together it's hard to go into a place like that by yourself yeah and uh i mean i fell in love with it right away but it was just me and my buddy that very first class the very first class and then the instructor and um pacific martial arts at the time was under health gracie oh okay um and if you know anything about the early days of U.S. martial art or jiu-jitsu, Half Gracie, he still has a kind of a reputation. And Half Gracie schools had a reputation back then. Really?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Half Gracie schools, I mean, it was the only one to go to. But, yeah, jiu-jitsu was rough back then, first off. But they had a reputation for even being rougher than others. So when you say rough, because maybe it was kind of new in the U.S., when you say rough, was it like instructors would purposefully kind of really wreck people to show how useful it was? Oh, absolutely. I think all jujitsu was like that back then. If I can butt in for a moment.

So I was around a similar time. I was stomping around in like the Los Angeles area. And there was a lot of mixed martial arts going on. There was a lot of jujitsu. And people were just getting into jujitsu. Jujitsu was growing. And some of the gyms that I was at had some really high level people that were doing like UFC, MMA type stuff. What would happen is the people that would like sign up to come into these things, they weren't people that't people that heard about jiu-jitsu through

like joe rogan no no they weren't people who like heard like this would be a good idea this would be great for you to test your mind body and spirit these were people in this fashion these were people that that were bigger than me that were jacked up that were juiced up that usually were bouncers at like bars yeah and they're like yeah i wanted you know, and they wanted to like throw their weight around. And so the instructors were like, yeah, fucking sign up. I'll take your money and I'll fucking beat you around. And I would see these fights all the time because they used, we both shared the ring.

And I'd always watch and they're like, hey, do you want it? I'm like, no, I don't ever want to do, whatever that is. You guys have a real skill. I'm doing this like fake pro wrestling stuff. It was really, it was amazing to watch so yeah there was always a battle going on like someone like you would show up who's fucking yoked and be like yeah man i want to try this out and like the rest of the class would be like this is gonna be great we're gonna get this motherfucker so yeah well we'll get into that in a minute. But, yeah, there was – so the first school I went to, me and my buddy showed up and the instructor was a smaller guy. He was probably like maybe 150, 160 and I was skinnier at the time.

I was probably about 190, 200 pounds. And, yeah, he just wrecked me, all all right you know and it was just him me and my buddy so it was like he took turns just training with us and he was actually even though health Gracie schools have this reputation of being rough there um he was really cool yeah and I really liked the instructor there um I didn't end up staying at that school because um just the the payment structure at the time it was one of those situations where it was like you know i was working and i was barely paying you know for could afford to go there so i signed up for the lowest tier which was like at casio's it's like one you can sign up once a week, twice a week, whatever. This place had multiple martial arts.

And so you signed up by the hour. Wow. So I got one hour a week. And the problem was the jiu-jitsu class was a two-hour long class. So you had to pay for two hours. No. Well, see, I'd go. And then, like, I intended to leave because they're doing the water break.

But the instructor is like, don't go. Just hang out. Right. The instructors were super cool. And then the owner of the school every, you know, once a week or every month or so would come in and make this big announcement. All of you that are paying for one hour a week are supposed to be leaving right now. And the instructor would be like, just pretend like he's not talking to you. Yeah.

Right. Um, and so was it like inside of a different gym and stuff like that? They actually, it was actually a pretty school gym. Like they actually had about three different mat rooms. So it was like, they had like, you'd walk in and there'd be like a mat room here. And then there was a room with a window that was a separate room that had a big mat and then there was i think there was one more at the time and the jiu-jitsu guys would usually come train over here and there'd be a karate class over there and there'd be an aikido class or judo class over there

um and so you could do all of it but most of the people that showed up would just pick one martial art and they'd stick with it. So I trained there for about six months at one day a week. And then a guy moved into town and opened up a new school. And my buddy's like, we should go check this place out. It's a Hoist Gracie affiliate. Actually, at the time, it was before Hoist Gracie had his own affiliation. He was still affiliated with Hoist Gracie's Gracie Academy, also LA area. He run and Henner run now, but it was Horian at the time.

So it's like, oh, yeah, and this guy trained with Hoist Gracie and was training down with him. He was a blue belt too. Damn. Blue belt instructors. That's shit. Okay. So we moved over there and um i just like the atmosphere better number one i mean it was a little yeah it was a little bit easier to train

there um the other thing is i ended up paying less there and training unlimited yeah and so i was there all the time like i'd stay after class be before class. He had a little back room with the mats and like me and the other guys would – we're all white belts, right? Yeah. And learning from a blue belt. And so back then – and it was pre-YouTube. So it was like – You probably thought he was amazing though, right? The blue belt when he came in?

He was good. I think the – I mean – At the time you probably thought. He was. I mean blue belts were like – like, oh, look at that. That guy's a blue belt. Right, right. Like when I moved to Sacramento and I saw a purple belt for the first time, I'm just like, oh, wow.

Mythical purple belt. It's like a rare Pokemon. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah. No, it was really good. And training with him was great. And like I said, it was just a matter of, you know, I got the mat time. I didn't quite get the same level of instruction that like you'd get going to Casio's obviously

where you have multiple black belts on the mat at a time and they can all help you. It was like a lot of what we learned back then was trial and error. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh yeah, that guy injured his knee doing that. Don't do it like that anymore. Right.

And so there was a lot of that going on back then it was like oh i saw this i mean you know pre-youtube but yeah they had uh sites that would have like picture with explanation like like a still book like yeah sequential uh uh techniques and stuff and like i saw this online let's see if we can make it work and yeah we'd do it until someone would hurt you know hurt themselves and then like okay maybe we should do this stop doing that one and try something else or oh that worked really well let's keep you know i hope you guys are enjoying this episode now the podcast has brought value to your life mark told me to tell

you that if you don't give us a five-star rating on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to the podcast that I should choke you out, which I would never do. But he suggested that. So please, if you enjoy the podcast, we're trying to grow. Go ahead and give us a star rating on iTunes and Spotify. Enjoy the episode. How long was it until Casio came to town and you started working? So that was in Fresno. I lived in Fresno and I moved around 2002, 2003. I had just actually, I had gotten my blue belt still when I was in Fresno. I lived in Fresno and I moved around 2002, 2003. I had just actually, I had gotten my blue

belt still when I was in Fresno. I, um, training at that place, Hoist Gracie came in, um, and did seminars. Yeah. Basically in the year and a half that I was there, Hoist Gracie came twice. Wow. And, um, what was the name? Is it Holker? I think his brother Holker came once. And the second time Hoist came, he promoted me to Blue Belt. Um, and that was pretty cool. Um, yeah, I don't know. It must've been nice to be Hoist Gracie back in those days because when he came in, the place was packed at $70 a student yeah and basically he got 100 of the proceeds from the the seminars and the first time he came in he did three seminars three three hour seminars at 70 a pop and i think there was at least 60 or 70 people in each one yeah imagine if he did one

now right i know right i mean it would be crazy you'd need like a stadium right it'd be fucking wild how much family how's it going? You guys probably have watched a lot of Mark's lifting videos and some of my lifting videos. And you've probably noticed that our shorts never go past our knees. Nope. There's a reason for that. Y'all got to show those quads off, baby. And the shorts that we're always wearing are from a company called Viori. That's spelled V-U-O-R-I.

But Viori has amazing clothes for the gym that we wear, but also outside the gym. So you can wear them to dinner parties, dates, gatherings, all that good stuff. But all their clothes fit well, like fit amazing. This is a shirt from Viore, by the way. Look at that shoulder. Just look at this. It fits so well for people in fitness. And even if you're not, just check them out.

Andrew, how did they get it? Yeah, clothes that look good inside and outside of the gym and work just as well inside and outside of the gym. Head over to Viori.com slash Power Project. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash Power Project to receive 20% off your first order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. You know what's interesting? When I was a kid, even when I was like a teenager, when you'd see people who did martial arts, martial arts was cool. But then there was also a side where it's like, yeah, you may have this belt or whatever, but that's not going to actually work. Right.

Right. And it was interesting. For example, when I went into Casio school seven years ago, when my days rolling i was 260 265 at the time right like this black belt that was 155 is it the nate nate yeah you have that video online i've seen that nate nate is a monster though for his size he really is you have no idea yeah nate is yeah but that's like that's why i was like oh shit this is actually effective stuff. It's not just, it doesn't just like look like fighting. No.

You literally, there's nothing you can do. There's, despite how strong you are, there's nothing you can do if you don't have the skill. You can't, you can't strength your way out of that shit. No. And that's when I was like, oh God, there's really something cool here. Yeah. Absolutely. It's leverage and technique, but your strength and size can matter to a certain degree, right?

Oh, it absolutely does. It absolutely does matter. I mean, it's like any leverage. I mean, right? The amount of force that you use on the lever is just going to be multiplied. So strength does matter. I mean, yeah. For you, is it helpful, do you think, to fight people that are bigger or smaller?

As a bigger guy, yeah. I like both. What's easier for you to kill? I'm probably the guy that you want to roll with first because I'm nicer to the smaller guys. And I tend to try to, I mean, in SEMA coming up through the ranks too, it's like being one of the bigger upper belts, I always felt like it was my responsibility to go with the big guys too. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate that. especially jujitsu because if you don't know

what you're doing and you do something crazy the kind of damage you can do as a bigger guy doing something random is way more than so people tend to avoid those guys a lot. People love to kick your ass too probably right? There's probably some element of that

when you first walk in. Yeah I mean well yes I can say confidently I remember remember yeah i got this for today everybody else relax well no but also i mean when i also say responsibility i also feel like as a bigger upper belt it was my responsibility to kind of vet them in a way to make sure that they're not going to be the kind of guy that does do something crazy and injures one of my other training partners. Right. Um,

I like that. That sounds like an asshole. That sounds common amongst, uh, jujitsu academies, right? Where you're, you're trying to set the tone and teach the guy of like,

Hey, this is kind of how we act in this place. Right. That seems to be really important. What do you think makes a jujitsu that way? Cause not all sports are that way. Well, and it wasn't that way in the beginning. I mean, if we get back to the story of the early stuff, like, no, there was people that would come in.

And like Nsema said, it's like, no, it almost was people's responsibility to show them the power of jiu-jitsu. And just, you know, when I first started at the Halff-Gracie School, when I first went to a class that had more people, it felt less like I was in a martial arts school and more that I was in a tryout for a sports team and that they were trying to vet me to make sure that I was tough enough. Like they were trying to grind me into the mat as hard as they possibly could and see if I came back the next day. could and see if I came back the next day. That's how that, I think that the, the places that these, uh, the,

the spots that these places were owned, like the people that own these places were rough too. From what I remember. Um, I remember, uh, in Huntington beach, I believed it was associated with,

uh, Huntington beach, bad boy. What's, uh, his name doesn't come to mind of UFC. Oh, um,

it'll come to mind was that tito ortiz there you go i believe it was like partially owned by him uh but i found out all kinds of weird stuff about that place uh like they shot porn in there and all kinds of things so these you know these facilities like they were just doing whatever they could to like keep the lights on they had like kickboxing classes where they'd have moms in there doing the kickboxing shit like that. But they had tanning beds, and they just were trying to figure out whatever way we can use this space and make money with,

even if it is porn, we're going to figure that out. Yeah, the second school, well, it ended up being a Hoist Gracie affiliate, but they were a karate school first. And I think he opened up the karate school because he liked jujitsu and it gave him – he made his money by teaching karate and still was able to teach jujitsu. And the jujitsu was the secondary thing. And so I felt comfortable there. The other school had all the martial arts. That was kind of their thing.

It was like a buffet. You pay for the amount of hours a week and then you use your hours however you want. Do you guys ever feel like your training is ruined by some new people coming in sometimes? Do you kind of get a little frustrated where you're like, I was looking forward to doing X, Y, and z coming up because the next six weeks i got a contest to prep for and now i got these like three people that just came in and like this guy's like at this level and this other person's down at this other level so that ever kind of happened like hijack your workouts a little bit not really um i could see if you were really seriously training for worlds or something like that that that was a thing. But then I think that's part of where that – this idea of like not asking upper belts to roll thing.

We don't do that at Casio's but that gives them the ability to kind of control how they're training. Yeah. You show up at different times and stuff too, right? Like maybe the better guys are showing up at specific classes kind of thing? I haven't been training. I've been teaching. I haven't been training as much. It used to be the 11 a.m. class at Casio's was the killer's class. And it was mostly because – well, the way I looked at it was these are the people that either rearranged their work schedule to make sure they could make this class or they were the other people teaching jujitsu at their own schools. Yeah. So it was all the really tough, you know, guys, and it's not to say that the nine to fivers

that came to the evening classes weren't tough. Some of those guys are ridiculously tough too, but it was, uh, I think the 11 o'clock guys were the guys that were like so focused like basically their focus was jujitsu and they worked the rest of their lives to focus on that whereas the evening jujitsu was you know their recreation and whatever and that's one thing that that's cool about casio school because like there's so many people that come in but there's so many people to train with that are upper belts. Unlike back in the day where you had like you were probably lucky to have a purple or brown belt. But now there's so many upper belts to train with that like I can choose who I choose to roll with on that day.

And if somebody does want to, you know, get a roll in and show them some things that's a lower belt, cool. But like you can, there's so many people in there. It's not just like filled with white belts and you have like a few upper belts you have a lot of upper belts and new people so you can curate your training to whatever you want and i would argue too that um new people coming in are an opportunity if you're not training for um like a competition where you have to have that like killer mindset right if you're not training your mindset to just like wreck people new people coming in are an opportunity for you to teach which again is one of the best ways to learn yeah and we don't we don't see that in other sports that often i mean it happens you know in pro football and things like that sometimes they'll keep like a veteran quarterback on the team

to help the new rookie guy kind of come up and pass the torch and stuff. But it's just not that common. It's like in other sports, it seems like you don't want the other guy to get that good because he'll take your spot. Why do you think it's so common in jiu-jitsu? Is it just like baked into the culture a bit nowadays? And is it something that just really helps? Like if Nsema, even if he's not the instructor, if he helps me the first couple weeks that I go to jiu-jitsu, he's going to end up with maybe accelerated learning is part of the – Well, I think that's part of it. Yeah, for sure.

I mean I think teaching people is one of the best ways to accelerate your own learning. But I – when I started and we go back to that school and I would say the average person to come in, you know, and you were getting ground into the mat would last two weeks and then they were gone. Well, that was a potential training partner. Everybody has something to offer. Right. And, and I learn as much from, you know, people learning it's jujitsu is one of those crazy things where there is no one way to do it right and so somebody can like you know do something crazy and i can get something out of that yeah even if it didn't work i can be like that was actually pretty cool you're like put your leg over there and they put their leg in a completely wrong spot but then you're like wait oh that wasn't

that bad right and that's the thing and you know jiu-jitsu that's other another thing about jiu-jitsu that like is it's not doesn't fit into like a box when i did karate it was like you have to do this form and this form and you have to do punches this way and that way um when you learn a technique in jiu-jitsu you try to do it as close to the way that your instructor teaches you but then you train yeah and it changes it's like it you try to do it that way and it almost never works the way that you learned it what happens is i may go for something and then they do something unexpected and so i have to in the moment change change what I'm doing based on what they did. Right? And then sometimes they change and it goes back to the – so it's like my technique might have been interrupted and I might still end up with the same technique.

You can't stop the guy and say, hey, I didn't learn it this way. Right, right, right, right. The old Jim Carrey skit with the knife, right? You're still bending your elbow. That's why it didn't work. That's great. But, you know, that is one thing that's actually, like, really cool about it. And it's really wild about the way you started because, you know, we were just talking earlier about how jiu-jitsu doesn't make sense year one.

No, it doesn't. It, like, made no fucking sense, right? No, no, no. And then certain things started to click, but then it still didn't make sense for a while. But at least I was understanding a little bit after the first year. Right, it's like magic, right?

It's like magic. But then I imagine back in your day where like now you have some people that are just grinding the shit out of you every single day you go in. Things aren't making sense. It's just like, you would almost be like,

why the fuck do I want to come back to a place where i'm not understanding this martial art and i'm getting my ass beat it makes it really tough well absolutely i you look at those first generation of american black belts and they're all nuts because i mean like like i like to think that i started and i'm not one of them but to keep going back for that kind of abuse over and over again, you kind of had to be. Do you feel kind of mad? Like are you like – do you look at people now and you're like, you all are so soft. No.

You have it so easy. No. To me, it's the opposite. I look at it in the sense it's like, damn, I wish I could have started in an era like this, right? I wish – and it goes back to like I look at my – these new people coming in as potential training partners, as somebody that's going to eventually give back and challenge me. And even if they don't challenge me, I can still learn by – with them, right? Yeah, it's easier to – I want to know this, Toby.

I'm curious because I've heard like stories a little bit here and there. Now, I've heard like Casio, early Casio when he came and he was teaching. Was it a little bit more hardcore Casio than – Oh, yeah. I'm curious about that because I've heard a little bit from Dr. Robago. I'm like, wow, training was like that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was it like?

the ribago i'm like wow training was like that oh yeah yeah well so especially um when cassio was competing at um adult level yeah um so when i first started 2003 2004 um he won the worlds in He took silver in 2004. And then 2005, I would say that it changed, and it changed because he got injured. Oh, okay. And he got injured. So it used to be, I remember times like after class, like so he's training, and it would be like he'd grab anyone that he, you know, all the toughest guys, right? Yeah. And he'd line us up and we'd, you know, rotate in, you know, two minutes on and just start from wherever and go. Yeah.

And I remember times, dude, Casio's a monster. As much as he is now, like back then, I remember after a hard training session, right? All of us, we've been rotating in on Casio. And I remember we're all sweating and breathing hard. And Casio at the end lectured us because he said that we didn't work hard enough. We didn't do enough to make him you know he's like you guys are just letting me get stuff and we're all just we're like okay yeah yeah you know and casio you've met casio yeah oh yeah he was here that's right i forgot i was yeah but casio has this thing man and it's like he's not much older than me but uh

he feels has that father figure. Like if he says something, you just – you're just like, oh. Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah. Like if he doesn't – and he never – he doesn't yell. He doesn't – it's just like I'm disappointed with you. I could picture you guys kind of like looking at each other and like talking to each other afterwards and you're like were you letting him

it's so great because he's so uh he's so kind yeah so uh respectful i'm sure he's probably always been that way but it was probably a little different back then we had that uh just kind of killer instinct and you could see in the pictures yeah I mean, he's still in great shape, but you kind of see his neck back then and just the development of his body. You're like, oh, shit, that guy trains a lot. No, no, yeah. Yeah, Cassio was. Just imagine if other schools work this way. Imagine if regular school worked this way.

Right. You know, someone comes in and the black belt of the class works with the white belt of the class and says, Hey man, let me walk you through some of this and show you how it's going to work. I almost thought, you know, like, okay. So when I was in high school, I hated homework. Right. And I was good at math, but I hated the homework and homework was a big portion of my math score. Right. But my instructor saw that and was like well if you stay after and tutor other people in math uh you you don't have to do any more homework it's like great i ended up doing way more homework that way but still i mean i think that there yeah there's definitely

something to that i like go back to the one room schoolhouse days right the upper students can help the lower students and vice versa. That'd be incredible. And you progress based on the metrics of what you're actually learning, right? As opposed to I'm this age, so I need to move up to the next grade. How long have you been instructing now? How many years? Well, so I was telling you earlier. I think it's hard.

I don't remember exactly the date I started. I started teaching the kids class at Casio's when I was a brown belt and I taught one day a week and Dan taught the other days. And so that's more than 12 years since you've been a black belt for 12 years. I've been a black belt for 12 years. And so, yeah, and then I was a brown belt for three years. So I would say probably between 14 and 15 years. Have you figured out how to shoot a fireball yet not yet probably close next three years the no touch knockout stuff right oh my god did you play other sports when you're growing up uh i tried out for basketball when i was younger, and I just didn't have – like I liked basketball recreationally. I didn't really have the drive to be competitive in that way.

I liked my summer vacations too much to go to all the basketball camps that all the people on the team had to go to to learn enough to be on the team. So yeah, I mean that, I swam. I wasn't a competitive swimmer, but I was a good swimmer. I don't know. It wasn't really ever sport-specific. It was usually – well, I mean, it was sport, but it was like I always enjoyed the teaching. I enjoyed the doing, not the recreational part of it so yeah um i think that's a really cool thing though like how you've been instructing for 15 years now but that's not

something that you thought you would do when you were a kid be like be a jujitsu instructor right and be extremely good at it by i went when i graduated high school i went to uh i went to uh uc santa barbara for engineering of all things yeah and wow what is uh jujitsu done for you like mentally and and things like that what do you think it's done for you oh uh it's just i don't know it's i think it it helps with just i think losing on a regular basis and just learning from it, I think has helped. So mentally, I think it's just one of those things that you learn that you have to put things out there sometimes and fail and then figure out where you failed and do it again.

And just over and over again. Yeah, in a very literal sense of somebody choking you out or getting you in a hole that you can't get out of, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, sometimes it's not your fault at all hole that you can't get out of, right? Yeah, absolutely. And then sometimes it's not your fault at all. They're just too good for you, right? And that happens in life too. So you just have to move on and try to get better.

You don't have enough experience yet, but at some point you can learn and you can maybe catch the other guy. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. What you got brewing over there, Andrew? andrew sure you got a bunch of questions yeah um i mean i it's very general and there's no way to answer it but like we've been going back and forth and we've done some privates and it's freaking incredible but like when does this shit start to make sense because um you know it's funny um i was also talking to graham the barefoot sprinter and it's like we will do something completely different and still get caught in an arm bar.

And then we're like, all right, I'm going to do the exact opposite and just go a totally different direction and get caught in the exact same arm bar. So like, what is like, is it just as simple as consistency and like going, you know, a couple of times a week? Is it doing stuff off the mat as well? Like when does this shit start to click um it's it's i would say i would say you you just before you get your blue belt you start to really like get it but you can't do it

right so so yeah um it's it's one of those things yeah you did it's uh i was saying So it's one of those things. Yeah. It's – I was saying earlier. It's like total immersion language, right? As a white belt, you don't understand what's going on and really all you're supposed to be taking in is starting to make the sounds of the language, right? So little by little, you're learning a little bit of the movement that's going to be required for technique. You can't even really do the technique right yet. You're just learning the little movements little by little.

By blue belt, you're starting to understand what other people are saying. But you – and you can start to make yourself understood with one-word type sentences, but – You still can't speak it. But you still can't speak fluently, right? Yeah. But you can get understood and you can't still can't speak fluently right yeah and but you can you get understood and you can get things done and especially if you're going against a white belt you can you can make yourself heard right um i think by purple belt you're starting to to put your sentences

together you're starting to put techniques together you understand way more so when someone teaches it's you get way more out of the instruction oh yeah my purple belt level i think still at blue belt you miss probably 80 of what your instructor is saying when they teach and that's okay again total immersion language is not like it's not structured in the same way as like you you know, learning your verbs and all that. You're just, you're absorbing it, right? And so you get as much out of the instruction as you can. You do things as close to the way as you can understand it. Yeah. And if you're lucky enough to be partnered with an upper belt, they can help you.

But yeah, I would say that usually blue belt, you understand, you just are not able to, you know, make it. It's also when most people disappear. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Can you accelerate the process just by being around it a lot? I know like in some other sports, if you really submerge yourself in it and you're, you know,

hanging out on the mats a lot and watching a lot of video. Oh, I mean, it's just like anything else. Repetition. Right. Um, I learned to play guitar when I was, well well about the same time i started jujitsu i started playing guitar and i wasn't very structured in the way i learned it i'm a decent guitarist now because i kept doing it and it's just repetition repetition now if i had uh structured my training in a way where i you know did drills same thing with jujitsu and you drill

things and you, you're very, you know, strategic about what you're working on and when I probably could have been a much better guitarist a lot faster, but I might've, you wouldn't have enjoyed that. Exactly. That's what I was going to say. So I might not have enjoyed it as much for me. It was just, if I picked up my guitar for a couple minutes every day I was fine yeah there's a good lesson in there I think you know when you're trying some quote-unquote trying something new that you probably shouldn't even really try hopefully it's just something that's in your interest level and hopefully you're just trying to be open-minded to absorbing this new thing but the harder that you try and the quicker that you try and the quicker that you

try to understand stuff probably in some ways almost the worst in some ways it might just take you longer and that's what i was talking about teaching the kids class and for me it's not really about how good they get how fast it's more about um instilling the love of the sport over time and if they love it and they keep coming back and they keep doing, they're going to be good someday. Right. And, and I was saying the challenging thing right now is now I have some kids that

want to compete. So I have to be a little more technical with them and I have to find the balance of, of keeping the class fun for the kids that I want to just keep going and also giving the challenge for the competitors that they want to just keep going and also giving the challenge for the competitors that they need to grow. But yeah, it's, it's always a balancing thing. I mean, if you want to get really good at jujitsu really fast, you very strategically like, okay, I need, if I teach a private lesson, I tell people to list all the positions they can think of and any techniques they know from each one of those positions.

And then how well, you know, if looking at your list, how well do you know those? And if there's any of them that you're not very good at, you need to drill them. Because, I mean, the main thing with jiu-jitsu is you shouldn't have to think about what you're doing, really. People talk about black belts, thinking multiple moves ahead. And it's just, it's not like that. I don't think about five moves ahead. I've just been in that situation so many times that if they do this, I already have, it's, my body knows what to do at that point. It's like driving on the freeway.

Right. There's a lot of cars and a lot of distractions. Absolutely. But you've been doing it enough to where you don't really have to think a lot about it. Right. And then, or, you know, I mean, having kids, I'm watching them learn to walk when they were kids, right? You don't think about how many intricate physical movements it takes to actually walk and not fall on your face. Yeah.

Right? Like, you have to flex your toes at the right time to take a step forward so you don't trip. And you watch the toddlers learn and you're like, you can see it. But jujitsu is like that, right? There's all these small movements. And that's where it's like as a white belt when you were talking, Andrew, about learning and understanding. At a certain point, you just have to learn the large movements. The details will come every time you fall on your face.

You know what's the interesting thing about watching a kid walk and watching them get their balance? I mean, their head takes up a large portion of their body, right? It's a large percentage of their body weight. And so their head's all wobbly. Super top heavy. But they'll start to walk and then they, without even really, you can tell that they weren't thinking about it because now they're in the middle of like the living room and they'll stop and they'll sit down because they're like, whoa, that was too much.

They're like, Paul, have you ever seen that before, Andrew? Your son ever done that before? Like he'll just be like, whoa, like I got far away from everything. There's nothing to hold on to. When he's not paying attention, like, cause he started like walking backwards and then he would like bump into something and be like, what the fuck? Who put that there?

Like that's the wall. It's been there forever. Yeah. They'll sometimes like walk and they'll kind of hold on to stuff and they'll get their balance. And the next thing you know, cause they went for a toy or something. They're like,

Oh my God, I got all the way over here. I'm out in the deep end. And then he just squat down. Yeah. That's where it goes back to having good training partners who can be that, you know, if they're holding onto the couch while they're learning to walk, your good training partner can kind of not wreck you while you're learning to walk.

Yeah. Yeah. How about competing? Because you said you had some students that are interested in competing. Some of the kids, yeah. Yeah. For myself, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to compete but now i i am sure i want to yeah i'm never gonna know when the fuck is the right time but it's never the right time you just have to do it you yeah i mean you make it the right time right you you

start training for it you you you become focused on it you you uh pick a contest and go yeah talk to your instructor first yeah absolutely talk to cassia first before my first gordon derrick your cares derrick or whoever yeah derrick mono like i remember before i wanted to do my first competition i talked to cassio about that before and he was like i think i was like six or seven months in and at that point he's like yeah yeah you're good to compete at this point but yeah like your instructor is going to be able to see your trajectory and how you're doing and how much things make sense because one thing is like when going into a white belt competition man they're all white belts and they're all raring to compete so when you're competing against another white belt who knows

let's just be real who knows as little as you do they're going to resort to if there's a physical motherfucker in there they're going to be like i'm off they'll they'll resort to that so yeah you at least need to be able to do enough to be able to prove like just to be able to be safe i was gonna say i actually felt safer in competition when i was a purple belt yeah absolutely yeah that makes a lot of sense yeah i am concerned about that because like i went to a competition not too long ago and yeah i could see some spazzy white belts and i'm like damn they're competing like i in my head i'm thinking like oh if they're competing then they've already had enough experience and but from what i've been told it's like well as soon as you know the like competition lights are on like a lot of that stuff goes out the window and people start spazzing left

and right and like everything just they just kind of revert back to like i just need to survive yeah yeah no no it's true i mean and then you'll get the guy that so that's where preparation is important right you prep right so that you don't become that guy and so that you also know how to deal with that guy right um and if when it comes to competition the way that i look at it is your best mindset is to be first and make them do or play the game that you want to play. If they are, like Encima was saying, super physical and just trying to throw you around, the sooner you, like if you're a guard puller, the sooner you can pull guard and put them in the guard that you want, the more control over the situation you're going to have from then on out. Yeah. And the harder it's going to be for them.

over the situation you're going to have from then on out yeah and and the harder it's going to be for them do you guys see that like yeah especially at white belt is there more guard pulling just i'm assuming because most i mean in my opinion because i'm just trying to survive so i'm usually the guy that's on the bottom trying to get them back in my guard and no i really i would say um as somebody that refereed for a while um i see guard pulling there's more of a correlation to size than there is to oh to skill level heavier guys never pull guard right but but but i mean if you if you think about it um heavier guys in class don't have to pull guard exactly because all their training partners are smaller than them so they can just shove them over that right though oh it is and i hated refereeing the heavyweights white belts because they didn't know how to do a takedown and they were used to muscling people down

and when their opponent didn't fall they didn't know how to play off the bottom so they didn't pull guard so i ended up refereeing a lot of matches where guys shoved each other around the mat and nobody scored any points and then as the referee it's the referee's decision and i have to pick one of these guys oh no like they're both horrible i i posted something online and i must have said it before because like i i guess it must have said it during one of my kids classes back in the day because i posted something online a video of me teaching and then uh someone on the uh it was on reddit or something came back like i remember you you used to teach our kids i remember one time two kids were going against each other and neither one of them were really doing anything and when the time ran out they you know they asked who won and i said and you told them they both lost you both lost

because they didn't, neither one tried I just picture them with that South Park stare and there's a little eye blinking they like blink twice, like didn't understand it's not even a tie you didn't even try that's incredible but you know that's one reason I think

one reason why Casual doesn't let white belts roll with white belts. That's something that I've been to other schools and it's not like it's a bad thing. But I don't see other schools do that. Like white belts do roll with white belts. I guess sometimes they can be safe. But I can see why he doesn't because a white belt rolling with a white belt, you're just learning each other's bad habits. Well, I think also being at Casio's is kind of a privilege to have such a high percentage of upper belts to train with. Oh, yeah, that's true.

Up until Casio's and even after I was training at Casio's when I'd visit other schools, it's like the ratio is opposite. It's like you have 80 percent white belts and like 20 percent colored belts. And then it's like how are white belts not supposed to train together? Right. I get it. And so it's in, yes, I think there's a huge advantage to training with upper belts as a white

belt. Now the other end is it's like, Oh, I never win. Well, yeah, it's not real. I think a lot of people think of it as winning,

losing, but it's training, right? Yeah. I think go to the competition for that. That's one of the really cool, like things about, I guess, doing jujitsu as an adult, because I remember, you know, playing soccer as a kid, um, and playing basketball as a kid, but I, I don't remember the beginning stages of that. You know what I mean?

Like I remember when I got good and I was playing competitively and all that, like, okay, things were, I understood the soccer language at that point. Right. But starting jujitsu as a 23 year old and being put back in a position where it's like, again, learning a new language where you're, you're like, you're a kid being toyed around by an adult. That's you're like a 260 pound child being toyed around by 150 pound adult. Multiple, like that was so mind-boggling to me

at the time because i haven't been put in a position physically where i truly had no way and no understanding of what the fuck to do you're like no i'm actually strong i'm actually i'm athletic i'm strong no you're not why he has his knee on my fucking belly that's your video with nate, this is the video with Nate. And I think that's something that as an adult, if you start jujitsu as an adult, you shouldn't look at it as like, oh, I wish I started as a kid. It's another way to just teach yourself that it is good to learn new shit. It is. And it's not just from jujitsu, but from teaching swim lessons to adults that adults overthink everything and they can't have fun sometimes.

They can't have fun. And that's the thing. You know, like I had adult swim lessons where they're just like, look at these kids are learning how to swim so fast and whatnot. I'm like, but those kids, there's no pressure on them. Yeah. I'm like, but those kids, there's no pressure on them. I mean, some of the kids do, but most of them were just like in regular swim lessons, not in competitive swimming. There was no pressure on them. It was just like, you go to this class, there's a reward if they like pass the class.

They get, you know, whatever. A lollipop. Or the pollywog, you know, I'm a pollywog. I'm an eel. I'm a shark or whatever. I get a certificate and all of that. And there's, there's that reward for their progression.

But we put that pressure on ourselves. Right. Right. Adults tend to do that a lot more often. And, and they, you know, if in situations like it's crazy,

it's in swim lessons. It's really obvious. Like I, I've helped people learn how to swim some adults and they're tense they're they're scared um and it's amazing all of a sudden like there is a moment when they just let it go and all of a sudden they're learning just shoots through the roof once it's i think adults tend tend to compare themselves to other people. So if they're in a class or they're in something, they'll be like, oh, so-and-so was only coming

for three weeks and they already know how to do this and that. And I'm not that good and I'll never learn. You know, they continue to have a lot of negative self-talk. How do you work your way through that in jujitsu, especially considering that, you know, we're trying not to compare ourselves to other people because sometimes that can be dangerous. But sometimes also necessary. And if we're going to go against each other, then I do have to compare my skill against yours. And I need to learn more so I can figure out ways to negate some of the skill that you have or try to get on par with you in some way. I think that's less about trying to be better and winning and more about strategizing and figuring out.

It's just puzzles. Jiu-jitsu is a puzzle. And that's, I guess, why I've always loved it. It's like it's a puzzle. You're still continuing to focus on getting yourself better right absolutely i'm gonna go and get my shit together and then i'll come back and try again but yeah i don't look at it as beating the person i'm looking at beating the situation oh right as opposed to like trying to win against a person, it's like that person might have a great guard. I may not still beat him, but if I can figure that guard out, that's a puzzle. And that's a win.

That's a personal win. That's a win. Whether I beat the guy or not, that's a step forward for me. And now the thing is, is we're both in flux. We're both learning, right? So the minute I start beating his guard, his game is upping too. So it's not like I can ever really catch up unless I train more or just keep going. And some people are more talented, but I always try to tell my students, it's like it doesn't matter how talented you are as long as you keep coming.

I was never the least talented person, but I was never the most talented person of all the people that I trained with. The most talented people typically burnt themselves out though. Why do you think that is? You know, I think it's when they're're good at it it's fun at first i think there's there's a there's a thing about having somewhere where you like seeing where you can go right when you're beating everyone you start beating everybody pretty quick it's fun for a little while but after a while it's like where's the challenge anymore i didn't do jujitsu start jujitsu because i could beat everybody from the beginning right i kept doing jujitsu because i kept getting beat and i wanted

to and i wanted to figure out the puzzles i wanted to figure out how to okay this is what keeps happening to me how do i fix that and then there's always another puzzle there's always somewhere else to go and so like what you said there about beating the situation. That's, that's incredible. And then you can kind of like, maybe you get in a particular situations with somebody and you just did better than last time.

That's a W, you know, that's, that's a win whether you actually won the match or not. It's a different story, but you can relate that to anything else in life. You can relate that to weights. You life you can relate that to weights you can i did that many times i had uh one training partner that was way ahead of me on bench and one training partner was way ahead of me on squats right and uh my victory

what my situational victory was to be within 90 pounds of the guy that was beating me on the squats and anytime i did that when i got to 80 pounds or 70 pounds, I was like, I fucking won, even though I got my ass kicked. Right, right, right. And in a way, if you're behind, you have more motivation than they do. Right? That's another win. Yeah.

And that's the thing with jiu-jitsu is they're constantly growing too. So the minute I started beating this guy's guard that had a great guard, his guard's either getting guard, he's now, his guards either getting better or he's learned to do something else based on beating my puzzle that, okay, he's beating my guard. Now that's a puzzle for him to learn from.

For anyone that's new, like that's, that's a way you should be gauging your progress as a white belt. It's not like, Oh, I finally tapped this person. It's like, Oh wow.

He only tapped me two times this round versus last time he tapped me four. Or I actually managed to get out of a – I actually managed to escape that position from him. That's a win. I was going to say a lot of people say, oh, I only got tapped so many times. But you never know what they are working on. So I don't like gauging my growth on how many times I get tapped or how many times they tap me. I like gauging my growth based on the specific situations that I am working on. I think it's always good to have something in the back of your mind.

And sometimes the situation never arises, right? Like I want to get good at cross chokes. There's rounds where I never get in the position I need to be in to get good at cross jokes i'm there's rounds where i never get in the position i need to be in to work on my cross joke but it's always in the back of my mind like if i am in this situation what do i need to do to get this work yeah right and that that might you know so i have my personal puzzles too right for everybody but you know then there's individuals that are good at things and you learn to puzzle out what they're doing and how to work through that. What about some of your expectations for practice that you might have where you're

going against certain individuals? Have those things ever worked out really well in your favor where you thought a certain way and it was that you were able to actually kind of make it go that way? Or has it been kind of quite the opposite? Like if you think about your expectations too much of how you're going to perform against somebody? I think it depends on how you're training at the time. I think there's two ways to train. I think one of them is you're working on what you want to work on,

no matter who you're training with. And sometimes you're working on like the puzzles like on a specific person, right? to work on no matter who you're training with and sometimes you're working on like the puzzles like on a specific person right um and in general like if you're training to compete you should be working on your thing you shouldn't worry at all about what other people are doing you should control this try to control the situation from the beginning and if you lose control try to find a way back to control um if you're learning to just kind of grow, then that's when it's like playing with other people's strengths is fun and rewarding, right? But you don't want to play into their strengths if you're trying to create a coming up and you just want to grow working into somebody else's

strength is a wonderful way of losing and learning and trying to figure out a new puzzle to to deal with yeah oh this is which match is this it's one of your fights yeah no that's a submission pro tour i think have you ever like before any of your competition matches is there for uh how do you generally feel when you're preparing oh and even right before the match um preparation wise i probably i'm not as serious as cassio probably wants me to be most of the time and i you know yeah um i do try to work as hard and and for like my last few of them i'm starting to get into a better mindset of like training and then I hurt my knee and I haven't competed in a while. But yeah, no, like mindset wise, I'm very – since I'm still teaching class, I still have to help people. But when it comes time for me to roll, I'm not focusing on them anymore. If I'm sitting out and watching them, I will help them.

I'm not focusing on them anymore. If I'm sitting out and watching them, I will help them. But like, I think if I'm training to compete, it's about, again, like I was saying, trying to play the game that I want to play during my competition. Right. Yeah. I want to pull guard. I want to do this. I want to get a sweep. I want to attack this way.

If I get on top, I want to maintain control. And I'm doing that to my training partners. And it's probably not as much fun to train with somebody training for competition as it is just to train on a regular basis. Um, and then when it comes time to the competition, when I'm there, I just try to warm, warm my body up a little bit and just try to stay calm. You know, I think the waiting part is the most nerve wracking to me once you're out on the mat um the other thing i try to do is as i think um i try to look at it as almost like training in class like yes when i'm out there it's i'm i try to have fun because all the hard work should have been done previous you can't add pressure onto yourself right like if you like if you're looking at a competition like it's something different then you're gonna roll

differently right and it might not be you're rolling in a natural way where you're letting yourself do what your body knows how to do right now you're thinking like oh god if i lose and then you just don't do your thing yeah yeah yeah you know and and i've been there right i mean i wasn't always good at comp preparing and competing. It was just like, oh, I'm out here and I'm reacting to him rather than just like, just do jujitsu. I've been, I train it all the time. Why is it, why am I not doing it when I'm out here? Why is it all of a sudden a fight?

What are some things that have been helpful for jujitsu? Have you noticed a change? If you made some changes to your diet, have you noticed changes if you work on lifting or running? Oh. Have you noticed anything in particular that made a big difference for you? So for me, I think the best prep that I had always done for jujitsu when I was – back when I was lifeguarding and i haven't had the up you know access was swimming i loved i love swimming i used to do like rounds where i'd just swim i'd sprint a lap get out do push-ups and sprint a lap get out do squats and just like kill your body that way and and i think body weight exercises basically yeah yeah or like push out of the pool like like

almost like pool dips type thing yeah push outs and things like that um i used to do that a lot when i had access to the pool more you know it was part of my job and it was easy yeah um and and i think that was one of the best for jujitsu i think also just the the rhythmic breathing that comes with swimming is more similar to what when people are putting pressure on you than, than most other. Yeah. Other kinds of. It'd be hard to not have your breathing be erratic.

Right. Especially, I hear some of the guys talk about feeling like suffocated, you know. Oh, yeah. Claustrophobic. Yeah. Yeah. The claustrophobia. That's gotta be tough.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah, the claustrophobia. That's got to be tough. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, honestly, like I— Have you gotten into lifting? I didn't do that much of it, no. Mostly body weight, swimming, and training. Yeah. What about nowadays? Have you considered doing a little bit of strength training for a while to see what it might do on the mats?

Yeah, I've thought about it. I wouldn't mind doing it. In fact, I mean, before Casio moved and the weights were in the back, I was like, oh, I'm just going to start doing that. But of course, then family life is getting crazier too. And so it's like, okay, well, and like I was telling Andrew lately, it's like, okay, I do want to get into other things. But right now my focus is I haven't been going to other people's classes enough. So for me, that's going to take priority. And then once I can get in a rhythm there, then add more.

Yeah. You know what's kind of cool about, and there's obviously going to be all this bias towards jujitsu since we do jujitsu. But boxing is an effective martial art and it's good to learn how to strike. Like Mark, you're going to be showing me ways that I can use the heavy bag for exercise, right? So I do that stuff correctly. But if someone were to start boxing, it would be a real far out goal to be like I'm going to do a boxing match. Like I'm going to – you don't just find a boxing tournament and do a match because like, that's like,

there are punches to the face. Like that is a different type of thing. You lose, you get knocked out. Most likely you lose, you get knocked out. And when you're training, you can't spar at a hundred percent.

That's just not a safe thing to do. No, but jujitsu, not only is it an extremely effective martial art for the street or for actually learned fighting, but then if you're just somebody who's been doing it for a few years and you've been going a few times a week, you can actually go find a tournament, train more, find a tournament. And go compete with people and come out of it not getting hurt, like not actually being hurt because of the nature of the martial art. Yeah, there's not many sports. I mean, I know there's rec leagues and stuff like that for baseball and soccer and basketball and all that. But like, I don't know.

You don't have like the thing about jujitsu, too, is it's almost like a step above those rec leagues because you got audience there watching. You got people up in the stands. You're out in the mat in front of everybody. watching you got people up in the stands you're out in the mat in front of everybody there's other you know um and so it it becomes you know it becomes something a little bit more i've i've always thought though that it would be cool to have a more rec league like we compete every saturday okay kind of a for for the everyday person because because it takes a lot to prep and get ready for the kind of tournament that we have

in Jiu-Jitsu, which is awesome. I like that there's that level, but I almost think that it would be really cool to have a Like a Sunday rec league? Yeah. Like a Jiu-Jitsu club. Right, because there's a lot of guys that most tournaments we have to travel, you have to do all this stuff, you've got to get a hotel,

you've got to pay to enter. If you had something that was local, that was just kind of a rec link thing that you did like every Saturday or every other Saturday for a couple of months, that would be – And that's something that actually could be – that could be organized by the community. Yeah. community yeah especially since i wonder since there are so many schools in an area like so many schools in sacramento so many schools in other cities like that could be something that is done if everybody's cool enough with each other to plan and do that and that can be a problem because there's a lot of um yeah politics jiu-jitsu yeah people also might get a little too hyped right and want to beat the shit out of each other.

Yeah, but that happens in all the rec leagues. I used to work parks and rec basketball. Parks and rec basketball. Oh, yeah. Basketball gets real serious real quick. Dog, I think I told you I went out to play some outdoor soccer a few, like, back in 2021 or something. Some guy invited me out. It's been years.

I go out there. These people are kind of going kind of hard. A guy ends up getting taken in an ambulance because someone's slide tackled him and he hit his head on the fucking you know turf people get a little bit too crazy sometimes absolutely i remember i fouled somebody really hard oh no and then the guy started yelling he's like i'm gonna go pop my trunk i'm like i was about to say something my friend's like he means he's gonna get a fucking gun i was about to say i don't give a fuck i have no idea what he's talking about what are you gonna get a spare tire i was like dude we're cool we're cool we're good we're good man i yeah i didn't mean to

hit you that hard it's like man over a rec rec league basketball but in general i mean like even on the bigger stage like i think the jujitsu people oh did you go out to sleep yeah oh see you had a tap almost just minutes are you on a like a stage in this uh yeah that was a that's kind of neat a couple of the guys from aries jujitsu put on this one and i don't they i don't know if they've done one in a while but it was like there he goes yeah it was like a fight-to-win style tournament except with EBI rules, with the overtime rules. So that was in the overtime. I got to start on his back and, yeah.

And that was that. That was that, yeah. What's your guys' thoughts on Nogi getting really popular lately? I love it. Again, I haven't been watching as much as i would like to i need to subscribe to flow grappling or you know find somebody to watch with but um to me it's all jiu-jitsu i you know i come from the general and a lot of people now are like oh no gi and gi they're two different sports now kind of but they're all jiu-jitsu. I mean, like when I started, nogi was we took our top off and we just rolled without a shirt.

That's what it was, right? Then that, you know, we talk about women coming into the sport. There was a reason why women weren't coming to the jiu-jitsu schools back then. A bunch of old sweaty guys taking off. Yeah. How do we get more women involved in jiu-jitsu do you think? Like are we seeing more or like – Yes, definitely, definitely.

And Sima and I were just talking about that. It's all about the – in my opinion, it's about the culture of your school. I think – and if anybody is looking's looking for a jujitsu school, yeah, take note of how many women are on the mat. Um, if there's a number of women on the mat, you were probably at a good school. Um, cause they're not going to put up with as much shit as, as some of us do. Right. You know? And so, um, I think, you know, hygiene, clean mats, wearing. That's a big fucking deal. No matter what.

That's a big deal. It is. Dirty fucking schools. Oh, no. Trust me. I have to. I used to always wear white geese and I'd come out of some schools. I'd be like, oh, man.

Oh, there's some stuff. Yeah. But. And everyone gets that, right? Everyone gets some of that shit like ringworm. I never have, and I am proud of that shit. So I used to get ringworm all the time. And Casio has always been clean.

Oh, yeah. I mean, he's even more clean since the pandemic, but he has always been clean. I think it comes back to the fact that I was in the swimming pool teaching swim lessons all the time and the chlorine stripped my microbiome. Oh, wow. And I used to get it

all the time. And since I've stopped teaching swim lessons, I don't think I've got it. Wow. That's wild. I didn't expect that. It's tough to keep everything clean all the time i mean it takes a takes a lot right yeah and i mean and then you got to remember that like you know the ringworm is just a fungus so that it can be on anything i mean it could it can be skin to skin it could be skin to mat i mean it's so to get it is just a matter of yeah i mean yeah it's kind of

a bad luck situation yeah and i mean of all the things at least i you know staff is way worse if i get a ringworm i can stay off the mats and and put you know lamisil or whatever on it and it goes away but you know it's some of the other stuff but you were mentioning if if like let's say a woman's wanting to start jiu-jitsu because there's a lot of people in our audience like since andrew started jiu-jitsu right i'm talking about it more a lot of people want to get involved what should like women take into account when they're finding a school because like that it's it's harder for a woman to go into jiu-jitsu than a guy just because in most schools you're not like it's going to be a majority guys if not some places like maybe in the mid, it's only guys, right? Right, right. So I think there almost has to be like an inviting entry point.

So like some schools have women-only classes that the women can start with. Yeah. And then they can learn. I mean you don't know until you've been at a school long enough to like what is the culture like? What is it like to train here? until you've been at a school long enough to like, what is the culture like? What is it like to train here?

So they can train in a women's only class and then transition into the larger class if they choose to or stay. It gives them a lot of options that way. I think teaching kids, I've seen a number of parents start to join. Yeah. With their kids? Yeah.

Well, you know, they're sitting in there watching jiu-jitsu and they're getting to know the people at the school. I, you know, I think that's going to be, it's, it's, it's,

it's, it's a interpersonal thing, right? The women are going to go place where they feel comfortable and they're going to feel comfortable when people make them comfortable. And I think, um, and you know,

I think you got to find a way to do that. And I, I don't really have the answers. I think that there's lots of possible ways yeah and we should be trying right you know to make it as open and as easy as possible and and be able to let them control the scale and the what they yeah andrew and i were talking about this a little bit ago but jiu jitsu is very interesting in the fact that number one it's grappling right so you're grappling one-on-one with another human being but i've played sports

all my life and i've never been in a sport where i've been that close with a woman because like i played soccer with with girls and boys i played basketball with girls and boys like i've done all these different sports rec leagues or whatever and like it cannot be denied that as a woman and as a man, it is very odd to be grappling that close with one another. Right? So it's a very different sport in that sense. Yeah. You know? Well, and then that comes to the other part.

It's not just the school, but it's going to be the entire culture. So like are all of the students clean are there are they i talked about taking off the gi top and you know going shirtless i used to not wear a rash guard underneath the gi i think that that is a turnoff to a lot of women right having a hairy chest on top of their face of some guy they don't know yeah so um that kind of thing you know and that's going to come from you know and and basic the attitude and how you train and you know is it are they you know getting beat up on are they but on the other end are they are you taking it too easy on them right it's you have to find a

balance and and that's going to come from teaching your students to treat you know to train in a certain way with everybody yeah that's true who are some of your favorite people to watch jujitsu wise because it sounds like you've studied jujitsu for a long time yeah i did and we were talking about this i haven't been watching the latest generation i've been like oh man i'm still stuck back in the mid-2000s when i used to watch all the time. Glory days. Yeah, Hodger Gracie. Who are some of your favorites? Okay. Yeah, Hodger Gracie and Braulio Estima were like,

they were longer, lankier guys, and so they were the guys that I was like watching. I'm like, oh, I want to be like that, right? So those guys were always good. I always loved watching Marcelo Garcia, even though he's built completely different than me. Yeah. But, I mean, you know know he's one of the legends um

ted today back in the day was one of the best of you yeah i always say casio competing so yeah casio compete so i always say i think casio you know he won the worlds at adult once yeah but he his peak was in the era of so he was he won it medium heavy, but I think he was more of a middleweight, right? And his peak of competition was right in the crossover of not just two of the best middleweights of all time, but two of the best jiu-jitsu guys of all time were both middleweights in his era. Ted Aday was the king of the middleweight division and then marcelo garcia became the king and yeah uh cassio's peak was when they overlapped yeah they were cassio competed against both of them that's sick right and so i i think if it

wasn't for those two probably cassio would have been a multiple-time world champion that's my opinion but yeah i think i think you know and i mean i've i've competed against um high level guys guys i i fought um back at a like an old gracie tournament i fought um a guy named gabriel vella who was a three-time ultra heavyheavyweight world champion. It was a submission only, and I went 20 minutes before he tapped me. Wow. I think it was 20 minutes, but yeah, I had a long match. Yeah, yeah.

And he caught me, but it was like, I remember thinking, this guy is ultra-heavyweight, and he doesn't feel half as heavy as casio sometimes feels on me casio has like this pressure like you wouldn't believe for his size and you know he's smaller now but like you're talking about back in the day when when he was like competing at adult you know he was probably walking around at you know mid 190s 200 pounds and then cutting down before you know losing a little bit of weight before and uh yeah no but that wasn't when he was that yeah that was bigger than yeah he was even bigger than that it's harder to find those pictures but yeah it's fucking biceps bro like yeah it's hard to find anything that's like of like, you know, more than like two megapixels. Right. No, no, no.

For sure. But yeah, no. Casio was. And so, yeah, the Ted today and Marcelo Garcia both at the same time. And he fought both of them. I think there was. So 2004, I believe he had he was he went to the Worlds in 2004 and he ended up losing against Marcelo Garcia in the finals of the middleweight.

That was the first year Marcelo won gold at black belt. And he got silver in that one. And Casio got silver. He was the guy that Casio fought in the finals. Goddamn. That's sick. But I think it was even a week before that, he fought Ted Ade. Okay?

So just to give you— T-E-R-E-R-E. Yeah. Just to give you an idea of like how crazy ted today was how good he was like he fought cassio at middleweight and he lost cassio lost in the finals against ted today the week before and then lost in the finals against marcelo the next week ted today did enter the world's at year but he entered um he kept hearing about this heavyweight that everyone was saying is the next greatest jiu-jitsu guy. And so he entered the ultra-heavy division.

So he was middleweight the week before. And he's a skinny guy. He's a real skinny middleweight. Yeah. And he entered the ultra-heavy. Wow. Ted A. ended up taking silver in the worlds that year and lost to Fabrizio Verdum.

Oh, in the finals of the ultra heavyweight division. Not, not this, not the absolute, but the ultra heavyweight division, all big guys. Do they still let people do that?

I think Mikey Musumechi, did he do that a few years ago? I think you can always, as long as you are below the weight class that you sign up for, when you weigh in, you're fine. That's awesome. That's fucking awesome. Yeah. But yeah ten of a is a legend he had some mental breakdown issues yeah so he kind of disappeared from the sport but power project family quality sleep can make

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And if you head to hostage tape dot com slash power project, you'll be able to get the power project annual deal, which is a year's supply of hostage shape for 55 cents a day. You'll be saving $150 on the typical yearly deal. You're going to get two free tins and a blindfold. It's a no- brainer. So head there right now and get yourself some hostage tape. Links in the description along with a podcast show notes. Shut your mouth when you sleep. Enjoy the show. I'm curious about your insight on this Toby B as number one, you are an ultra heavyweight, but one thing that I notice and has been mentioned

about, and I know a few people who are in this boat right now who are white belts. But if you come into jujitsu and you're heavier than everybody else and maybe you're stronger than everybody else, it doesn't surprise me that like you kind of see most people's techniques fall down and get worse the heavier they are. Because it seems that they're able to get away with a lot of things that the lighter individuals don't get away with. So these lighter individuals develop such amazing technique. They have to. They have to. These heavier guys, it's like they can't get past the barrier of using their natural talent.

So how should a heavy, strong person, because there's a lot that are getting into jiu-jitsu now, how can they progress at jiu-jitsu and be technical? It's hard. I was just listening to your interview with Casio, and he was talking about how Haley was like, oh, the big strong guys and the smart guys. Yeah. But it's hard. But you've got to remember that little guys have challenges and the big guys have challenges.

The big guys challenge is exactly that, is that you get away with using lesser technique because you can make up for the lack of technique with muscle and strength and size um the little guys have to make up for their lack of strength and size with technique okay so but they're also more likely to accidentally get injured. And so they have to be very careful. And so for the big guys, if you – knowing that you have to make up for the fact that you can get away with stuff, I always say that a lot of jiu-jitsu is about, about technique is about training your body. It's like programming, right?

Yeah. And you program through repetition. Okay. If you are only getting your repetition through training with other people that are smaller than you, that you can muscle, you are programming your body to do it with bad technique. Um,

and so you have to be very conscious and possibly drill and make sure that you have somebody that can look at your technique and say you're doing this wrong this is you need to fix this so that you don't do repetition is that uh this is actually yeah so mason fowler from uh kyle terra he had this one match uh against this ultra heavy at europe europeans and this guy was ahead until like the last 15 seconds of the match and then he managed to sweep him and win but it was crazy but but what you were saying about ultra heavies yeah so so i think that um what you have to do is you have to actually drill because you're going to – if you're always fighting and it's hard to get out of that – if you can get out of that mind space for sparring and you can do it with being relaxed and not using muscle, that's great. But that is not easy to do. OK?

And so in order to get better technique, you have to rep good technique. And so you're going to probably have to drill more with somebody else, like an external source, to be like, you're doing that wrong. Yeah. That's not good technique. Rep it like this. Fix that. Do it more. And I think that if you want to be technical, you're going to have to find a way to do that where you're not trying to win.

And learn how – I think learn how to play guard. Oh, i tell big guys well so strategy wise when it comes to competition we talked about that big guys don't know how to do takedowns because they're used to just shoving people down and they're used to always being on top yeah so when i try to prep someone big for their first tournament i tell them it's like if you actually want jiu-jitsu and go to the mat, you're probably going to have to pull guard. Or you're just going to have to get really good at wrestling between now and the competition, which is less likely. Just learn guard.

Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, but so it's, I mean, if you want to go against a big guy and you want to play bottom, it's easy to get on bottom. It's not easy to get on top with another big guy yeah this guy supposedly like 400 plus pounds or something right i wish i could find let me see if i can find his actual weight so yeah this there's an there's an amazing picture of on the internet of mikey

moose yeah he's against that same guy yeah he's against this guy where it's like mikey's this 130 pound whatever like he's tiny and then he beat this dude who's like maybe 380 or some shit. So you can't wrap your feet together when you're in. You cannot play close guard against him. He's so wide that you can't play close guard against him. It's incredible. I think, you know, incredible that he's that high level of an athlete being that big. Like, that's tough.

I mean, it's causing wreaking havoc on the other guys. But it's got to cost him a lot of energy to be out there i mean it's yeah there's mikey versus him jesus when i i first showed my wife that picture and she's just like is that photoshop it's not mikey's tiny oh my god that's a big that's a big boy so you've probably gone against 300-pounders and stuff like that. So actually I competed mostly at heavy. I competed at the 208 weight class. 208 and then super heavy 220 were kind of the two that I competed the most at. But I have. Like I said, I've competed against some big guys and it's never fun.

But it's all about making them play the game i i'm a guard puller so like i said with big guys it's always easy to end up on the bottom yeah i'll say the same thing like when i went to worlds as a blue belt and i think my match one of my matches literally or actually it was a white belt which made me transition to playing guard one of the matches literally with the ultra other ultra heavyweight because i didn't have a guard was just us going like this yeah he took me down we stand up or whatever he won by an advantage i was like i came back and cassio's like hey you should probably learn how to play a guard because no ultra heavyweights fucking play guard right well and that's the thing that's and that's why i said

it's especially early on unless you get really good at takedowns and we were saying earlier like um when it comes to guard pulling versus takedowns you usually see it size-wise and i think middleweight is about where it starts to flip right i think you see about maybe middleweights or at least from my experience can do either yeah yeah but then once you start to get over middle those guys like to go for takedowns they like being on top they're used to being on top when they train. Yeah. And then vice versa, the little guys are used to being put on the bottom all the time, so they like

pulling guard. And so you see double guard pulls against the smallest guys. Both of them jump and pull guard on each other. Andrew, go to the last minute of this match, because that's when you'll see Mason's behind on points. That's the end end okay i figured there we go here we go so like this is actually really interesting at this point this guy mason's losing right mason's losing by three

points and one advantage and there's 50 seconds left i think this is the semi-finals match so like he needs to pull out some fucking wild shit to be able to come out on top of this. Again, 40 seconds left. This guy's still playing on top. Right? But just wait. It gets really interesting. I thought he was going to lose this shit too.

I really did. What a weird match. Yep. And you just. Ref just come on way ref 19 seconds oh man this shit was good yep and then oh well okay so he tries to go for footlock here but you have that you have to get to the other side too that gargantuan foot you ain't gonna lock that shit seven seconds seconds. Six seconds. Takes the bat, gets the hooks in. Nice.

And then because he got those hooks in at like five seconds. Going out of bounds with the time running out, he gets the points for that. He got the two points for the sweep they gave him too. So now the ref is going to decide and they're actually going to end up giving him those points. But that's wild, dude. That is crazy. And what's interesting is the other guy, like, I don't know, did he give up? Like, I don't understand what's going on there.

He was definitely tired. So he kind of, he saw the time running out. So he's like, oh, I don't really have to do much here. He's probably just tired and didn't think that, you know, Mason would be able to actually manage that. They were also on the edge of the mat. So he probably figured that, okay, even if they do something, it's not going to give him points. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So you train some kids as well. Like what ages? I start the youngest four and one class is from four to about seven or eight. Oh, that's awesome. And then the other class is eight and up until they're old enough to go to the or size wise big enough to go to the adult class. That must do a lot for some of the kids confidence. And, you know, they've talked a lot in school about bullying and some of the things that are going on, even like cyber bullying. But this must give kids some good strength within themselves to feel better about themselves.

Right. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think just like any sport, right? Any sport where, you know, I think all sports give them, you know, confidence in themselves and teach them that they can, you know, accomplish things, right? I think the advantage of jujitsu is that it's also a martial art that they could actually use if they're being bullied, you know? And I like jujitsu for kids better than boxing or whatever, which they could also use, but I think jujitsu is better in the sense that if, like, my daughter who's eight, you know, there was a boy that was bothering her. Like, well, I'm going to teach you how to do a takedown, get to mountain, just hold him, you know?

Right? And I know she could because she's been training with all the other kids in class, right? And she's, you know, and she's comfortable in those positions. She's comfortable to get to those positions and she's had kids try to get away. So it's like, you know, if she can get them to the mat or get in this case to the grass or wherever and get on top, she doesn't have to hit him. She doesn't have to do anything. That was one of the other things that when it comes to self-defense, I like jujitsu a lot because if you really think about it, the situations where you're going to have to use that kind of force a lot of times are not even in a fight. You don't want your buddy to drive home drunk. You don't want to kickbox him, right?

Take away his keys. If I can hold him down and take his keys, I like that. I like – it's way easier to scale force with grappling. If I want to take someone down, get mount, and if I want to hit them, I can't. Yeah. And I can choose not to as well, I can't. Yeah. Um, and I can choose not to as well. I can choose to hold them. I can choose to do, you know, a number. My options are way greater than, you know, if somebody is attacking me and just putting them on the ground.

Right. Literally like someone like you've been a bouncer too, but this is actually a very interesting thing because you don't have to go and take somebody down you could slowly get up to them and literally just boom and then transition to their back and just you just have the ability to be able to clench someone so that they cannot get away then if you need to slowly take them to the ground safely right you can so so the interesting thing about like sport jujitsu and the rule set was it's originally designed to give points for positions in which you can do damage to your opponent and they have less likely to be able to do damage to you yeah and in that sense like fighting to get to mount if i can mount you i can punch you and you can't really i mean you could possibly punch me but you can't do it with power from the ground on your back on the ground, right?

Same thing with like getting to their back. I can get there and I can choose to hurt you or I can choose to hold you. I can choose to put you unconscious. I can choose a number of things and it's very difficult for you to do anything to me when I'm there. You have to escape that position first. It's all about jiu-jitsu. When we're talking martial art-wise, it's about putting someone in a position where you can do damage and they can't. And that's basically what it is.

And learning to control those positions gives you a lot of power in a lot of situations. Yeah, I've seen it to the point where it's so powerful that in a street fight, you'll see people tap out now. I know. With MMA and stuff, yeah. Yeah, or the guy's like, yeah, I had enough, or the buddy steps in, he's like, this guy's going to break your arm. And he's like, okay, I'm good.

Because the guy sometimes doesn't understand, you're in a hold hold and this guy makes one more move and your arm is done right yeah the difference between yeah broken arm and not is a couple inches yeah that one uh fight on the basketball court that i saw that was like going around on instagram for a little while i think the one guy got the other guy on ankle lock and he just looked at the guy he said i'm gonna break your ankle and the guy's like i don't remember i think i heard it's a heel hook or something yeah something like that yeah and the guy's just like okay he still was mad and he uh was still pissed at the guy and i think he said like f you or something

afterwards i remember yeah they just got into like a little scrap and the guy's like i'm going to break your ankle but that's where like i like, I like the scalability of force, right? Like, with kickboxing, I can either knock you out or I can, you're still dangerous. Yeah, yeah, I saw this one. I've never seen this. Oh, you haven't seen this one yet? It's a short one. Yeah, it's not very long.

Again, recreational basketball. A lot more violent than jiu-jitsu. Oh, God. But there's one that's definitely the more instigator and then half guard going to the back looking for the choke and again controlling from a position where he can't there he's right back so the guy's buddy is verbally telling him like dude he knows jujitsu he knows jujitsu. Dude, he knows jujitsu. And, hey, the other guy is doing pretty good, right?

I mean, that guy maybe doesn't know a lot of these moves, right? He's not doing bad. And now he's telling him, I'm going to break your ankle. You're done. And his buddy is like, dude, come on. You don't want your ankle shattered for life, right? That's great. And, look, no one got got hurt they both got to get all

their energy out whatever they were arguing about interesting thing too was the uh the guy that was maybe a little less aggressive the guy in the green could see his hands were open where the other guy's hands were clenched yes and that's something i remember like as like a bouncer you'd always look for because i i never wanted to see anybody fight i always thought i always thought i was there to like make sure a fight didn't happen yeah yeah for sure you know rather than like being the guy that comes in like just throws punches we always had those guys too like you'd get everything calm and then some idiot would come over and just put you in somebody and he'd be like what are you doing everything was good we were in a good spot right come over overly aggressive tackle everybody my gosh yeah here we go yeah you know one thing that's really interesting too for

kids and jujitsu like i was someone who always played team sports yes the only time maybe i was doing something on my own was maybe a fucking clarinet solo or some shit like it was i was it was always me and team and although it's team sports are great for learning how to be like compete with other people and be in that setting with a group of people where you know camaraderie you never put any under any under any singular pressure like because there's always maybe somebody on the team that like if you're not doing well this game like somebody else can step in for you they can step in for you or they can shot like there's always that. They can help you out. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Whereas if it's something like tennis, if it's something like jujitsu, if it's these one-on-one things, you go into a match or you go into a sparring session and the pressure's on you to perform. Yeah. If you don't perform, you can't put that pressure on anybody else you need to learn how to like as a kid i feel like it's such a strong thing to understand how to handle singular pressure oh sure and how to like like if you're going to compete in jujitsu as a kid you need to you need to be able to deal with the jitters that come with that because i know that i've never felt

those type of jitters going into a soccer oh no you can almost like you know there's certain members of the team that, like, if they're not quite up to par yet, they can kind of hide. Exactly. They can hide. Right? You can't hide when you're the only one out there. Exactly.

And that's different. So I think it's a great thing to have a kid. If you want it, like, you know, team sports are great, but also something where they can compete on their own. Oh, sure. That's huge. Yeah. Yeah.

Go head to head against somebody else. Right. And there's no, you know, it's harder to play the blame game. It's not your, this person's on the team's fault. It's not that person's on the team's fault. It's like, you know, no, it's like you didn't prep enough or you, you know, you were just beaten. Sometimes you prepped a lot.

Yeah. And you know, that just happens. How do you,, that just happens. How do you advise parents on encouraging their kids to get into jiu-jitsu? I know you have kids and you coach kids. So maybe, yeah, how can we encourage them? Because I want my son to do it. That's why I got into it initially. But what else could we be doing?

Just bring them to class. You know, let them watch. Let them meet the other kids. Honestly, jiu-jitsu is, even though, like you were saying, it's a singular type sport when you actually compete, it is still a social situation. And it comes back to what you were saying earlier about new people coming in. And depending on how you look at them, you teach them to look at new kids coming in as teammates. look at them you teach them to look at new kids coming in as teammates as you know it's it's you know even though when you compete you're by yourself when you train it's a it's a like family it's a it's a team right opportunity to get better right and so and so the best way is they need to

you know make social connections i think i mean i think for the adults too i mean like you know i go to a certain some schools and you don't feel that social connection, right? I think, and that's work. We're really lucky at Casio's. It's a really big family and super cool place to train. And there's those social connections. And, and so, you know, um, I've, my daughter right now is not that into jujitsu.

She did it for a while. But she still loves coming to jiu-jitsu even though she's not training. She'll play with other kids, siblings of the kids that are on the mat. You know, you create that social situation. You bring them. You let them watch. You don't put pressure on them. You ask them if they want to.

The instructor tries to encourage them you know i try to make a point that if i see a kid that's like their first time in and they're like nervous or there are times when they come on the mat and then they freak out and they have to get off the mat yeah i'm not gonna force them out there but at the same time i will say like how about you sit on the edge for a while i mean just proximity keep them coming have them show up don't force them to do it but you know what about this well look at this or you know and then having kids in the class that can kind of take them under the wing and just introduce them to the social situation again it's like i said it's a social situation in training even if you do

compete individually yeah how do you how do you keep it fun um especially if they start to progress i'm just thinking like i don't know if my son gets like his first stripe you know i'm i might throw like a full-on party for that right but i also don't i don't want to overdo it to where he thinks like oh because i got this i did a good job but then if he doesn't get the second one he's like i'm not doing a good job this isn't fun anymore uh how do you keep things fun no celebration until a black belt yeah no birthday parties either until you just don't even celebrate you just say yeah you did good that's it yeah let's keep hopefully i beat him to it it's about maintaining their enthusiasm i think rewards are great and it's a big thing you know everyone talks about rewards for the kids and rewards for this,

but honestly, it's about being like, that was super cool what you did in class today. Or, oh, look at, you're getting so much closer to, you know, we go back to those situational puzzles. It's like not beating the other kid, but, oh, they did that to you, and this time it didn't work. You can help remind them of their little victories as well. I think that that's

going to be a big thing as well um and then yeah kids do like rewards i mean full-on parties maybe not necessarily for jujitsu but uh you know oh wow you did such a great day you know good job today you know you help the other kids like i encourage you know that kind of behavior let's let's celebrate that rather than stripes and have some videos of daddy getting beat up as a white belt because like when aurelius starts like you know he'll get beat up and then you'll be like hey let's put in this dvd and then the other thing is with with kids is every kid is different like it was crazy like noah had been training for a while before he'd had his first competition

and he was off and on and he liked jujitsu, but he didn't really know. It's Casio. Yeah. Yeah. Casio son, Noah, but he,

he, uh, he didn't stick with it. He would take breaks and then come back. And then it was like, I was saying that some of my kids in my kids' class were interested in competition. And so there was one that I picked out.

I'm like, it's local. I'll have some of them do that. And I made a point to invite everyone to come watch. And Noah went and watched, and he got so excited. I think just seeing the other kids and just, you know, and then, and he hasn't stopped since then. He got the bug. Yeah. He's done so many competitions.

No, I know. Jesus Christ. I feel like he's competing every weekend. He just competed on, on Saturday in Stockton. Like it was a super fight, like a,

like a kid's fight to win type thing. It was, it was a super fight. Yeah. I was like, I was like, dang. And it was like,

but it was like, yeah, he just needed to see that. So like for him, he's excited about the competition. He's excited about training. And now he's coming to like, from what I understand, classes with Casio and meeting up with other kids and, you know, practicing everything and watching videos all the time. But other kids, that won't be the motivation. Right.

So you almost have to find what motivates them. For my daughter, it's the social aspect. She loves the other kids in the class. She loves just being there. And I think that's a big thing for all of them. But that's, you know, and so right now I'm not forcing her to come in or to train, but she's still coming to every kid's class. And those are her friends if they keep training jujitsu eventually she'll be probably be back in you know and that's that's going to be a big part of it um my youngest the he's four he's going to be five um he was the

opposite well he would he liked to put on the gi and then before class, he'd come on the mat and they'd all play tag and run around and whatever. And then once I started class, he's like, I want to go play. And he'd take his gi off. But recently, he's been – because he's been coming and he's been there every class and he sees his friends on the mat, he's like, I want to do jiu-jitsu. So about more and more, he's starting to train yeah and so so if you're training bring them let them watch you bring them you know early if the kids classes if you can go at a time when there's a kid's class before your class bring them early let them watch the kids train let them meet some of the kids um let them try a class without any pressure to actually join.

You just want to try the class today? Go ahead. Step on the mat. Let's play. How are you liking smashing your feet over there during the podcast? It's nice. Yeah. I saw you actually using it and pushing in those spots on your feet.

Andrew, you got anything else? That's all I got right now. All right. Take us on out of here. Ooh, caught me there. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode uh please drop those comments down below uh we've asked you guys before if you guys are interested in jiu-jitsu uh it'd be cool to see if like how many of you followed through and actually started and if not let us know what's that last block that

last blockage so we guys can get to rolling on the mats because i'm telling you it's freaking life-altering i absolutely love it and i don't plan on ever stopping uh make sure you guys hit that like button subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already, follow the podcast at MB Power Project on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram is at I am Andrew Z and powerproject.live for everything podcast related and SEMA.

Discords are down below at and see my ending on Instagram, YouTube, and see my union on TikTok and Twitter. Toby, where can people find you? Good luck finding me. You can find me on the mats at Casio. The other place I, I have a YouTube channel.

I don't have a lot of videos up yet. I've been recording my classes, but they're not listed. So if you send me a message on there or whatever, I might be willing to send you the links. Anyway, other than that, my YouTube channel would be flowtimebjj or flowtime what's Casio's Instagram or the Casio Wernick Jiu Jitsu I'm at Mark Smelly Bell strength is never

weakness weakness is never strength catch you guys later bye