The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - How to Grow a Successful Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Gym and Culture with Andrew Smith and Daniel Frank | PPP #76

Episode Date: May 16, 2021

Have you ever wondered how best to apply a choke while "Man Eater" by Hall and Oates is playing in the background? Then this episode and the book 'The Wit and Wisdom of the Little Gym that Could' is for you!

Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we will get started with People Process Progress in 3, 2, 1. Hey everybody, thanks for coming back to the People Process Progress podcast. This is episode 76, The Wit and Wisdom of the Little Jim That Could with Andrew Smith and Daniel Frank. And if Andrew Smith's name sounds familiar, it should. He was on episode eight last February, where we talked about starting a jujitsu revolution and learned about Revolution BJJ, which we'll touch on again as well today. Andrew, thanks for coming back to the show. Kevin, thanks a ton for having me and for having Daniel as well. Absolutely. Yeah. And we have Daniel Frank. He's one of the other instructors there at

Revolution BJJ and a big part of what we'll talk about. And the name of this episode is Wit and Wisdom, and it has to do with a book about jiu-jitsu we'll get into. So, Daniel, thanks so much for coming on the podcast as well. Of course. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So, like I said, Andrew, if we can get a kind of a brief background, because I really want folks to go back and listen to that episode eight. We really get into your background and how revolution started. And we'll touch on that a little bit here. More from kind of how how you all and with Daniel adapted as you grew.

But can you kind of catch folks up kind of briefly your background and get going? And then we'll learn more about you as well, Daniel. Sure. So I'm a third degree black belt in jiu-jitsu. I've been training for, I guess, a little over 20 years, depending on how you count that, 20-something. I started doing judo before I started with jiu-jitsu, although the two sort of like blurred quickly together in my mind. And I also wrestled in high school. So I guess I've sort of been a grappler for a really long time. That's been a part of sort of who I am, who I identify with.

And Revolution BJJ was started in 2006. And it was a very small venture at first. And it just kind of blew up over the years and grew. So that's sort of where I'm coming from. You know, judo, jiu-jitsu, typically a grappling background, I think would be fair to say. And I've been running Revolution BJJ since 2006 with now with partners, with friends, it's become a more involved enterprise, to say the least. No doubt. And I'm, I'm super thankful for listeners. I know I've talked about it. And I

think we touched on it when we spoke last year. That's where I started jiu-jitsu in the intro program there. It's a great environment for folks that are listening in the Richmond area. Definitely get in touch with them and check it out. And I know a few years into starting Revolution, Daniel joined you. And Daniel, your kind of journey to Revolution, a bit different than Andrew's, both geographically, you know, with your international kind of start. Can you kind of let us know, let the listeners know where'd you grow up? I know you traveled internationally. That's where you started jujitsu and kind of walk us down that

path that got you to Revolution BJJ. Yeah, I actually, I started jujitsu when I was 24 years old. So I didn't have a background in wrestling in high school or anything like that. I was actually teaching English over in South Korea. And I answered an ad in the newspaper about taking jiu-jitsu classes. And since I was kind of bored, I went, checked it out, and then I stuck with it. And I was teaching jiu-jitsu over there by the time I was a purple belt. Got to brown belt over there and then decided to move back to the United States. And I kind of threw a dart at the board and it landed on Richmond.

And then once I got here, Revolution was in 2012, still kind of the biggest gym in the area, or at least the one that I checked out first. And then it just kind of all worked out. And I've been here since 2012, almost 10 years now. That's awesome. And just a reference for some of the younger listeners, a newspaper was a printed piece of paper where we used to get the news. Very different world today. That is cool. And you were a teacher of not just jujitsu. You taught, and this is again in the book too,

some good background. So you taught English in Korea, right? And then taught jujitsu. Did your English teaching skills help you and have they helped you in teaching jujitsu? Oh yeah, of course. When I was learning to become a teacher at university, there were a ton of classes that you must take to be a teacher, classroom management, all sorts of classes like that, which you might not actively think about it when you go into lesson planning for a jujitsu class,

but it definitely helps to keep on time, keep the class flowing, make sure everybody's learning. So everything I learned from teaching high school to teaching kindergarten and elementary has helped me teaching jujitsu classes. I would imagine it seems that process, you know, that we like to talk about here is, you know, looking at kind of like we did, we talked about before we got started the outline for this episode, I would imagine the outline for teaching, you know, a class of students in a school setting, similar to having an outline of, and I think I've seen you doing this, you know, when I was at Revolution for that class in that day, how do you choose to focus the lesson plan?

Is it something kind of between you and Andrew and other instructors that over the years you kind of know the building blocks you want to get to, you know, week to week for the group of students that are there and then kind of, I guess, a two-parter? And then do you ever change that on the fly depending on who shows up for class that day? Well, here at Revolution, we have different levels of classes. So the intro class that you had started with, Kevin, we have for gi and no-gi. And we do have a set curriculum for that, which when I started, Andrew walked me through the process of the curriculum we had in place, gave me pointers on things to improve upon. And it is a long internship process, but one that makes you a better teacher. And then when we leave the intro classes, we have our level two classes that are broken down into 20 minutes on the feet, 20 minutes on the ground, and 20 minutes rolling. And we do have themes of the month here so that with an abundance of instructors here, the students will still

get whatever the theme of the month is, and then they'll get to see different aspects. So maybe the instructor is a little more wrestling orientated, judo orientated, or ground orientated. And that way, all of our students can find what they like and continue to go with it. And then, of course, if you have somebody who is learning disabled, physically disabled, or somebody who just is a little slow in getting a technique I guess, to kind of rephrase that, so that outline or that internship Daniel mentioned for new instructors coming in or as you're bringing instructors up, is that something that you developed? You developed with other instructors like Trey or Rudy or other people at Revolution? Well, that's a good question. And it's definitely everything like that, every system that we put in place, every process, to use start organizing a process like that into, um, kind of what I think of as a sketch and then share the information with Daniel, share it with Trey, share it with whomever. Um, I would say, you know, Rudy really was, um, very, very, very helpful in his brief time with us because he had, um gym scale up, his gym, M3 in California that he had owned before he came and visited us. I don't know if a lot of people know that, but

we went from like, you know, I don't know, 50 to 100 people to like 300 people in a very, very short period of time. And when I visited Rudy, I was just like blown away by all that stuff. But also a lot of it was he had a really good sense of organization. And so that sort of controlled some of the chaos. And of course, you know, the idea was scaling up any kind of business, which I had some experience with, with U.S. Grappling, too. You know, I understood that organization was really, really important. So I guess my brain's been in that gear for a really long time, but it is definitely like a collaborative process because we're taking a look at what should the students

be learning at their, at its core, right? That's the question that we're asking is how can we help them learn? Like what methods should we use? What message do we want? These are all really like important cultural questions in addition to like a logistical challenge that we have to face. So we all tend to come together on bigger conversations. You know, it makes sense to have one person sort of take the lead with the organization. But then we all circle back up and take a look at it. So it's definitely always this kind of collaborative process. Yeah, and that process, as you mentioned, the growth and again, really the source content that's kind of cue in a lot of these one, just our conversation, but also is in that book.

So, again, folks that are listening, W know, 06 and a few years after that, having, you know, 30 students and then 100, 200, pushing 400, and then hearing this process of that structure and the community that you mentioned, which is so interesting, both, I think, as a member of the Jiu-Jitsu community, but even for other folks, I guess they won't really understand, but just the mix of people that show up daily, right? Mix of lifestyles, politics, religion, whatever. And everybody just really gets, there's not a lot of nonsense when you're in Jiu-Jitsu, probably not time for it. And for what you're focused on, what do you think helped build the community over those years and help it grow so quickly in addition

to that process and that structure um what do you think has helped revolution grow so much and be so really well respected and accepted and not just the richmond area but you know in that country i think daniel why don't you start with this because you have a different perspective from me coming in 2012 and i think we were kind of already gearing up toward hyper growth mode at that point. Right? And when we reached our peak, we were all very positive about jiu-jitsu. We're very professional about jiu-jitsu. And we really care about our students and what we want to teach them, how we would like them to go out and represent our academy vocally or nationally or internationally. And then also what we would like to do as instructors i really feel like having a professional jiu-jitsu gym rather than it being a hobby

like something we do after our normal job really helps us to to keep people interested in jujitsu and look at us as, uh, someone who is an authority on the subject and somebody who could definitely help them. Yeah, that's really well said, you know, the consistency is the thing that I think is the most important aspect. And,

and also like, um, you know, meaning setting and meeting expectations, I'll say is the thing that maybe differentiates us from what other gyms will do. Because I think a lot of the time you will look at a gym schedule and it sort of, you know, tells you we have a jiu-jitsu class during this time slot. It doesn't really tell you anything else. What we try to do is because we've scaled up and we've got the ability to do different types of classes at the same time you know we've got three different matted areas that we can use at any given time we try to

accommodate a much more specific subset of students each time rather than saying this is kind of a catch-all um you know this you know if you're um trying to uh screw it screw in something you know you want a screwdriver you don't really want like a swiss army knife with 500 different pieces that you have to kind of like hunt through and find a screwdriver right so sometimes for instance showing somebody a lot less stuff is is way better you know in the beginning if somebody's really new so that's kind of what our um maybe our intro program tries to do a little bit of that uh although we have a lot of material in the intro program you know we try to give little bite-sized pieces that people can digest and it's all around a central theme and everything but on the other hand you have you know a purple brown or a black belt coming into a class

to train they're going to obviously have very different needs so instead of just having a rubber stamp kind of catch-all class we're able to say okay well you know brand new beginners to jujitsu this is the class for you people who've been training for you know a year this is the class for you people have been training for 5 10 15 20 years this is what you would enjoy doing so there are other ways that we break it down too but experience is a pretty common one and it's a pretty transparent one that just about anybody will relate to if you've been in a gym where you're taking a class that isn't really the class for you but it's the class that you can take so i think that based on our experiences and this is something that trey and i have talked about for

a long long time we've always tried to make it the gym that we would want to train in. Right. So we're able to. It's just it's really simple. It's not not some mind blowing thing, but we put ourselves in the shoes of the students. You know, we say, what would they want? You know, what would make sense here? Based on our previous interactions as consumers of jujitsu. Right. And just flipping it around and saying what what would make it better that's what we're always trying to do now it's complicated and we always have to think about things beyond just um when you move one thing around we're actually working on our schedule

is constantly evolving because of the pandemic and just in general it's always kind of evolving but like that's one of the things that i'm working on right now and if we move one class around that means that probably 25 or 30 other classes might also have to move too for instance and we have to think about accommodating lots and lots of different types of people so this is getting into some of the the nuts and bolts of the logistics of what we have to do as the business grows. It becomes more and more complicated. We can serve more people, and that's a huge pro for both of us. But there are some challenges that arise that you just don't have when you run a gym with 30, 40, or 50 people.

When you have several hundred, it's just a completely different animal, and it requires a lot of different types of minds to work together that um and that fits into what made me think of that is you know the ripple effect knowing if i change this it's going to affect things downstream and maybe in a you know my my day job as a project manager knowing clearly like don't fall in love with your plan or when i did public safety and set management stuff, you know, as soon as you write the plan, it's out of date being comfortable with the dynamic nature of just life, I guess, but particularly for you all running a business of jujitsu, knowing if I change this, it affects all these different things. Um, you know, the, the, and then having the intent overall that, you know, we want to make this a place that I would want to train at um it's just i think a great

outline for success and clearly with the growth that that's a great you know for me to think of comparison you know when you plan new widgets or whatever but thinking about it in the aspect of you know jujitsu and in the gym and and you mentioned again and you know everyone's pretty familiar uh as far as covet happening um but to that point that was a huge impact particularly for fitness and particularly for martial arts and jiu-jitsu gyms um some to the detriment of gyms completely where they're not coming back unfortunately um how did you all manage that like i remember and that's also also uh some skills we can learn from the book too is you know sweeping and mopping and wiping things down.

That was just a constant. So it seemed your infection control was pretty on point already. But, of course, it goes, you know, to the nth degree with, you know, either being shut down for a little bit or bringing folks back. How was that process as gym owners and instructors there of trying to get the business back open. And it's kind of an open-ended question. So I guess, what were the decision points to start letting people come back in that you all processed? Daniel, you want to start with this one? Yeah. Well, I mean, we might as well start from the top. When uh march 2020 began let's say march 1st 2020 we were just kind of rolling along um doing our thing uh intro classes were going well 2020 was going well and

then by i believe march 14th is the day we shut down and we shut down pretty early compared to other gyms locally, regionally, or even in the country. And we didn't really have much expectations as to how long we'd be shut down. And we had to follow what we were hearing day to day. Luckily, we do a good job of getting together once a week to discussing what's happening in the gym, what our plans are and where we go. So we follow the guidance of the state, of the CDC. We are large proponents of following the science. And from that point on, we listened to what was happening, what was being suggested. And then by July or mid-July, we were able to open our doors to solo classes. And we started from there.

And Andrew, you can pick it up from there if you'd like. Sure. Yeah. So that's a really good summary obviously we were interested in the same challenges that most gym owners face which was to keep the students safe and through the pandemic but then and not only the students but also the community and that was a pretty big concern of ours to be sure that we weren't creating some kind of a super spreader event. And so that's why we operated essentially the way that we did with. But it wasn't an easy challenge for us at all. Right. Because we do have this need to sort of keep our doors open

if we can. But the safety came first for us in the discussions for sure. And it dominated the discussions, like how can we do this safely? So we put a great deal of energy into it over the last year. And, you know, especially Daniel, who's there physically for the classes right now. I'm still running online classes and staying at home, but I'll be back in the gym relatively soon here. But anyway, the, you know, the cleanliness, the hygiene culture that you touched on a little bit, Kevin, is something that I want to call attention to too, because I think that's just, this has been very deeply embedded in our culture for a long, long time. Um, before, you know, I, I've been a bit more cognizant of skin infections in jujitsu than most other, uh, gym owners, uh, used to be, you know, and this, this is important to understand that

jujitsu used to be really, really, really gross, like even way worse than it is now. And if you go back to like the 90s, I mean, you would find the best academies in the world were holes in the wall where there was just, it was just disgusting black mold growing or, you know, you look at the mats and they haven't been clean in a really, really long time. Dirt. Jiu-Jitsu was just gross and dirty. And you are a particular type of person if you did it. You were probably comfortable with skin infections. You just didn he was just gross and dirty and you are a particular type of person. If you did it, you were probably comfortable with skin infections.

You just didn't care about that kind of stuff. You were more like, you know, pig pen than any other peanuts character at that point. So you think part of that, part of that, not necessarily being comfortable, but,

but that skin infection awareness came from wrestling as well. Cause I know that's, you know, um, skin infections, very similar right is a concern there yeah you know i mean if you're a wrestler you know let's say you're a high school wrestler and you get a skin infection um it can keep you from being able to compete you know

rightfully so and it can keep you from being able to train and if you're obsessed with this stuff you know at an early age i think trey and i had that ingrained in us at a relatively early age trey also pre-wrestled more than i did when he was growing up and got a lot of experience with that, with that culture. I don't know if it's necessarily from that or if it's just kind of getting feedback over the years from our students, you know, because I've certainly evolved in my thinking a lot over the last, you know know 20 some years in terms of cleanliness and hygiene um but i think that for us it was just very obvious that like if we wanted to have a gym with more than 30 people um we had to really really really be on point about skin infections

i mean if you think about like if you have a very small club and you have a break an outbreak of something you're like okay well i mean you can talk to every individual who's in the club and they can decide if they want to keep doing this stuff or whatever if you have multitude of people participating you know it doesn't make any sense to be that way at all you have to be extremely vigilant so we've always been vigilant with regard to skin infections and that's never going to change. But it was just a natural extension moving into the pandemic. The only difference is that with ringworm, if you give it to somebody, they might get itchy and hate you.

But if you give somebody COVID, obviously the repercussions are considerably worse. So we had to do basically what we are already doing and just kind of amplify and modify it. So that's sort of, you know, it informed our decision making process every step of the way for sure. And I mean, you know, I think most business owners understand really well that this is a very, very difficult time for businesses. And our business was certainly no exception to it. We had very difficult decisions to make we're still making difficult decisions as we go along um you know just trying to really get the best of what we can in terms of accommodating the students while not jeopardizing uh safety and any more

than is normally uh acceptable in jiu-jitsu anyway because obviously we're all out there risking ourselves it's just that it's a little different when you're risking other people too and the community and that's that definitely amplifies our thought process a great deal and informs what kind of decisions we make yep yeah and you mentioned yeah uh jiu-jitsu not being any grosser than it already is and for folks that don't practice jiu-jitsu and even just in my short time comparatively um and again you all mentioned this the book you're you're sweating probably like you've never swept before all over each other um when you are sweeping after class uh it's pretty gross you know of what you sweep and comes up and then mop it which is cool which

kills everything so it's you know and that's the nature of grappling jiu-jitsu right you're you're going to be sweaty you're gonna be all over each other and so an industry that i guess you know should be completely on point and again from me having public health background i super appreciate it i was also in the navy so i was i appreciated the mopping phase i was like oh i can i can kind of keep honing my skills. And I know, Daniel, that's a judgment area that you have provided and ranked kind of folks can work toward a higher ranking in their sweeping and swabbing skills. Definitely. I put stripes on mops for skilled moppers. Nice. Nice. I didn't see the stripes. That's awesome, though. And on the hygiene thing, and some of this comes from kind of getting into sharing folks with the book and more of that discussion, some tips. And we'll get into these, too, and great guidance in a few different of the chapters or stories.

But in particular, what new folks need to know and folks that are listening to this episode or go back and listen to episode eight or any other ones where i you know getting already on jujitsu in a few episodes as well hygiene you know fingernails take a shower um you know wash your gi wash everything um i assume y'all are in the wash your belt you won't lose your jujitsu skills if you don't wash your belt club uh yeah we try to we try to focus uh that on people is there is no such thing as mojo wash the belt all right right on um what are some have you have you had many challenges with that with you know is that just the nature of again i've been practicing a couple years a little over two years you all much longer so in the time that you have seen have you seen that as much of a problem uh as far as you know constantly is that just the nature of jiu-jitsu there's always going to be the the

stinky person there's always going to be this other kind of hygiene don't cut their nails is that just the nature of the beast well that you know we've strived very very hard to have to not have the stinky person at all and i think we've been pretty successful. No system is ever perfect. But the thing that we've done, that we focus really hard on, that I think a lot of people sort of miss is that we would lay out a policy and then we would focus on making sure it was adopted. And then, you know, on the surface, that sounds super, super simple. But I think most people who do a policy, particularly small business owners, they kind of just put the policy out there. They're like, that's what we're doing. And then they get confused as to why people aren't actually doing it. We spend a great deal of time anytime we roll out a policy, just making sure that it

actually becomes a part of our culture. And when it does, you know, it's embedded and it kind of takes care of itself so you know man if you're running a jiu-jitsu school and you happen to be listening to this right now you know if you involve your students in the process of cleaning and you encourage them and you explain why it's such an important process the odds are pretty good that they're going to help you sort of police the culture yourself right so getting people to help with with the floor, it's something that is viewed positively. Like you get social points for volunteering to help with the mats and you get social points for wearing a clean gi. You don't get like negative a million if you smell bad when you come in, you know? I think that's important to have that self-policing culture

as the system continues to grow larger, just thinking in terms of how can we get the system to take care of itself. And when we have that, that's like the keys to grow larger, just thinking in terms of how can we get the system to take care of itself. And when we have that, that's like the keys to the castle, right? Being able to, you don't have to have people hovering over people's shoulder. If the culture is just so encouraging of the right kinds of behavior that

you're trying to get. Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. Yeah. And you all are great at that. And overall, in jiu-jitsu or other hard stuff, but obviously talking about jiu-jitsu, I think to me what I saw as your old student going through the hardship of a jiu-jitsu class, get your butt kicked or whatever, you're doing it together with the other students.

So it seemed more apt to jump up and you already shared hardship. Let's share the cleanup. That builds the teamwork that then I think I feel like is related to your point. We're both in agreement with wanting to jump in because you all built the culture. I think that's one of the great attractions of any hard thing you do as a group, and particularly jiu-jitsu, it bonds folks that were just trying to choke and break things on each other to include the cleanup afterwards. It's pretty amazing. That's why you fit in with us pretty well, Kevin. You have a certain sense of responsibility, personal, and for other people as well. And I think that's really the end of the day. If we

get the right kinds of students in there who are interested in and understand what our goals are, then we're going to be much better off for it. But also like being able to inform people, communicate as to why we're doing certain things is incredibly important, because if you're just like, well, you can't you can't change your top, you know, you can't just take your top off if you're not wearing a rash guard underneath it out here at the gym right we have changing rooms for that if you don't explain well think about what it's going to look like if somebody pokes their head in and there's a dude walking around without his shirt on right which is interesting too because there's at least videos i've seen or other stuff a lot of people that grapple shirtless what or under their gi don't i'm a i'm a huge uh rash guard where obviously in no gi but but under my gi all the time um for that as well and just uh it's interesting that the different culture aspect had y'all ever been involved in that hello sorry say again kevin well that's right have um so you know that that i've seen a lot or

you know whether it's videos or matches or something and there are grapplers you know out there that often are shirtless is that kind of an old school kind of thing because i never thought to do that right you know like in matches and stuff it's just interesting when i see that i'm like why why are you doing that but yeah it was much more commonly accepted like when i would say that when daniel you first started doing jiu-jitsu there were probably people who were competing shirtless right still yeah i mean i started in 2002 or 3 and maybe by a year I was competing regularly. But I think back then, mid-2000s, there's still a lot of the macho mentality where it's like, well, I'm going to come out

and I'm going to show everybody my muscles. But we know with jujitsu, muscles are good, but they're not going to lead to a victory every time. So it would always bewildered me. Like, why are you going to show everybody you're the biggest muscle man in the world and then uh this small mikey musumechi type person will leg lock you and it's kind of embarrassing to show everybody that you're the strongest guy in the world and this tiny guy just ankle locked you um and then of course the hygiene comes into it i don't want to go out there and grapple with

a big sweaty guy who is covered in hair and and doesn't want to put a shirt on right right yeah the same age when you talk about muscles and fitness and fitness is another thing um we talk about in kind of the the tips to the new thing too as well daniel i know you've shared a lot particularly last year which is awesome uh workouts to keep new thing too as well, Daniel. And I know you've shared a lot, particularly last year, which is awesome. Workouts to keep folks in shape as they were off or the gym was closed. I see a lot, whether it's on Reddit and Andrew, thanks again for,

we chatted last year. I got a lot more involved in Reddit, which made a difference, I think, in the podcast. So thanks for that. I'd never really gotten into it a whole lot. But Daniel, for the fitness piece of it, you see a lot of posted questions, especially from newer folks like me.

Oh, I'm going to wait to get into jujitsu until I'm in better shape. Yeah, definitely. What should people do really? Well, there's a lot of fitness stuff that I like to do, but it's because I'm very into fitness. And I know a lot of fitness stuff that I like to do, but it's because I'm very into fitness. And I know a lot of people are, and then I also know that a lot of people are not. But I believe in one of the myths about jiu-jitsu, it's covered in the book, and Andrew put it, is a lot of people say,

well, I need to get into shape before I start jiu-jitsu, which is not necessary. Jiu-jitsu will do enough to get you into shape. Anything you do outside of that, be it push-ups by yourself at home, pull-ups. I like to work with a Bulgarian bag. Some people do CrossFit, swim. Those things are all great. And they might help with jiu-jitsu. They might make you be able to roll a little bit longer.

You might be able to complete a sweep because, uh, you have a little bit more in your tank, but if you are not as strong as the next opponent, you find a way to make it work. And so I really love fitness and I believe it helps, but for those people that do not find the time or fitness is not for them, jujitsu can still definitely be for them. That's a great point and good perspective from your experience. One thing, and this kind of speaks to your advice for blue belts and just generally being an older student. So I'm always kind of fatherly, mentoryly mentor so to speak of kind of reminding new folks that come in and just like i did use all their speed and strength or whatever they have and then

they're exhausted after like a minute and and and knowing hey there's just a reminder there's like you're in shape but then there's like jujitsu in shape which is which is complement each other to your point but it is amazing you You could go to your point, you can go run a mile and however long super fast, and then you come in and you're done within the first 30 seconds or a minute. Yeah, and we see that in our intro courses all the time is a lot of beginners rely on what they know,

be it speed or strength, and they could be the most fit person in the world doing CrossFit, and j and jujitsu is a different beast like uh you're gonna find yourself exhausted and you're gonna especially during white blue and even purple belt um things start to change over time where you're like oh this this was extremely difficult when i was a one one stripe white belt and now i find this extremely easy as a two stripe brown belt that's amazing and that both i guess your physical your mental and your kind of muscle memory at that point when when you hit brown belt which that's another thing to me that seeing the levels right

especially all the levels that just it's just amazing to me that muscle memory repetition separates so greatly the practitioners of jiu-jitsu based on their on their skill level um so thinking about i can't really fathom thinking about at the brown belt level how easy it is to do this stuff that's so hard for me now and and what especially when i'm rolling with a brown belt or a black belt i'm like i it just it's weird mentally to think about how easy it is for somebody else that's at higher of a level than me to do the things they are as if I know zero. And I know I'm still new, but it's just amazing to me every time I roll in the gym.

Well, Kevin, you should understand that that's how brand new white belts view you, right? So the whole thing is there's this relative expertise, which, you know, at Revolution BJJ, we have incredibly high standards for who gets to teach and daniel already alluded to the training process you know it's like one of the longest training processes i've ever heard of or anything um let me take that back it's not medical school but it's i mean we're talking like more than a year maybe up to two years on the programs but i mean it's I mean, we're talking like more than a year, maybe up to two years on the programs.

But I mean, it's like I've always kind of regarded that as like being the right way to go, though, because you take your time and you can really get legit experts. Having said that, you know, like a blue belt can help. Right. So that's one of the things that we're always cognizant of with the intro classes in particular is having more experienced people work with newer people insofar as they're comfortable. Now, I mean, these are things that we have to kind of think through now that the pandemic has taught us some lessons, right? Like going forward, people might regard switching partners more frequently as being something they don't especially want to do, right? And so these are the kind of micro decisions that we still have to kind of make going forward but we still want to utilize that expert kind of relative expert status

thing you know i mean even a white belt who's been around the block a couple times is going to be able to help another person out who's brand new so we try to do that with a variety of different partners at our gym yeah and that's that's another great perspective i think we touched on when we talked last year of the kind of immediacy of jiu-jitsu right where you're certainly not you know jumping up to winning a tournament after you've been there a couple months but it's a huge difference from day one like enormous difference and including one of the things and and you know the one thing that always stuck out to me uh especially when you see people's eyes get big when when you all would walk us through okay this is called the guard which is an instant icebreaker like i would imagine you see folks you know daniel and just

most of my intro time i think class time um we spent do you see a lot of folks where they get kind of deer in the headlights or that's kind of you can tell like, yeah, they're not going to stay because they're just not comfortable just being that close to folks? Well, I feel like we start our intro program, be it gi or no gi, with the guard position to start because you will spend a majority of your jiu-jitsu career either playing or passing guard and i think our instructors are pretty good at explaining uh to everybody that jiu-jitsu is different from other martial arts traditional martial arts you've seen where people are on the feet throwing punches and kicks we explain jiu-jitsu is uh mostly a ground martial art. You're going to find yourself on your back. It is not a disadvantageous position. And if you can close your legs around them,

this might feel awkward in your first day, but this is jujitsu. And I think that tends to break the ice a little bit. People get accustomed to it. And then I found the best way to get people accustomed to it is we just don't talk about it too much. We go right into what we're doing. And that kind of demonstrates to the students that as long as I'm paying attention to the moves that we are learning, then this isn't as awkward as it feels in the first seconds you're like okay well i understand this and they move right past it that's a that's a great point if if it's not an issue it's not an

issue because you're you know it's just like yep that's it here we go here's the next thing yeah and then i definitely feel like even though not everybody has seen the u or MMA, it has definitely become more mainstream that people can see something in jiu-jitsu. And even if they don't know jiu-jitsu, they'll say, oh, I've seen that. I've seen the UFC on TV. So they understand, oh, okay, this is a grappling or a fighting position. And they could work from there. That's a great point, which I didn't think about at all, just the exposure of that these days,

and including the one that just happened where there was a ton of grappling in it, which is pretty cool to see. But yeah, the influence of the UFC, do you all get that a lot as far as folks that show up for that intro class? That's where they found the interest? I think a lot of people uh if they do sign up and we ask them where their interest was a lot of people say that they've seen the ufc i know specifically and i've answered the question a lot or my peers have answered it a lot they love to say that

their interest in jujitsu started with watching hoist gracie win in 1993 right i didn't see that until maybe 2000 on uh on vhs's and that's not what got me into jujitsu but looking back on it i feel like a lot of jujitsu people jiu-jitsu watching ufc even though it was a jiu-jitsu practitioner uh doing mixed martial arts but then again the ufc was started by jiu-jitsu practitioners gotcha yeah i figured you uh heard that for me between joe organ podcast jaco podcast and then i also had the vhs player uh so so watch those which was pretty amazing i had zero idea what i was looking at and and uh which is is pretty amazing but it's it's interesting to hear your perspective on um folks that that was their inspiration but time wise uh but it's you

know it's the biggest call out i guess the kind of that that tipping point or seeing it and and uh you know that one art or you know jujitsu against strikers and in in just the seem kind of wild westy the first ones so it was interesting and i was noting this because i watched last night on uh just how much more structured in medical checks and all that kind of stuff they do now so it sounds like kind of the evolution of jujitsu getting you know cleanliness and all that kind of stuff they do now. So it sounds like kind of the evolution of jujitsu getting, you know, cleanliness and all that kind of stuff. And then the safety of mixed martial arts also is a good evolution. Yep. And you definitely see that there's a lot of people who come in very interested in MMA or UFC. What always got me about it is I could win a match without throwing a punch. That's fantastic.

I could win a match without hurting my opponent. I could put him into an arm lock and he decides to tap out. That's always interested me. I know Damian Maia said that while he was in the UFC, he won a couple matches without throwing a single punch, and he really emphasized like this is what it's all about that's a great great point and segue to on because a couple of things one you know one of the other and that whether it's you know someone that's sitting on the couch

or someone that actually trains that that is looking at it of oh that would never work in the street or you know the gym or the sport verse out in the street whereas to the point like we talked about well if you if you watch the ufc they're they're doing the core of even what i can recognize is the core moves that you all you know teach us right you're like oh they're just way better at it clearly um you know with that but also the recommendation that that you all do talk about is mixing it up, right? So whether it's to help get out of maybe a slump, you know, the, the, and particularly the timing that I'm at, I'm a blue belt, the blues, as they say,

if you're at a belt for a long time or you just burn out or whatever belt you're at, but mixing up and adding in some striking, have you all trained in that much? And I know you all do Muay Thai and, and, and have other things. And do you recommend that to other folks? Well, I've done, um,

I've done some Muay Thai, probably trained consistently about four years. Um, when I first started a Muay Thai program with some, some dudes like for revolution and I dabbled a little before that, but that I actually got some consistent training for a while with that. And when Trey and I first started looking at merging Revolution BJJ together with his gym and rebranding it as one entity, that was the time when I started getting involved with

the program that Trey had going on as well. So I was trying to be consistent and be a good student. But for me, it was always kind of a labor of love, I guess. Like I knew that it was good for me to do as a martial artist, to be well-rounded. But I never fell in love with it like I did with jiu-jitsu, you know. So I didn't really, as I got a little older, you know know your bandwidth tends to go down a little where maybe before training 11 12 13 times a week was well then i'll um i'll pick up where when i was a blue belt like andrew was saying i did some very amateur mma and some muay thai training to me prepare for that, which I loved at the time.

Since then, I've taken judo classes, wrestling classes, which I think really round out the game. But by the time I was halfway through blue belt, I really wanted to focus on getting my black belt in jiu-jitsu. And I think when I was a white belt, I was training two, possibly three times a week. And by the time I got my blue belt, like I really decided this is what I want to do with my life. So I need to train as much as possible every single day. And I had the ambition of being a world champ and I've gone to the world championships the Pan Americans and all that. Wow so so really your drive when you got into it not just to get better jiu-jitsu and advance to the next thing but to make it your profession uh kicked in as you started started to progress what what was the

tempo when you were two to three times a week and then as you moved up and built your skill, how often were you training? Well, at White Belt, that two to three times a week was mostly due to the fact that I didn't have a lot of time to do it. And then as I got my blue belt, I was able to start changing my schedule around to accommodate my jiu-jitsu. And then if I was preparing for the world championships, I would definitely think about training all day. And there were certain points where I would put a pause on my job, getting ready for the world championships, and I would be working out or training jiu-jitsu a majority of the day where I would just come home, go to sleep to wake up and do it the next day. Um, obviously you can't do that forever, but if I had an eight week training camp for the worlds, it is definitely, uh, hard to do, but it is, it is rewarding. No doubt that, um, you know, and that's,

that's a good thing you guys talk about too. And I've heard as well, just kind of the life factor affecting your jujitsu. And do you find that most folks that train as much as you did that volume, um, are like you, right? They were younger, they may not have a family yet. Um, and so they're, they're just really focused into that. Um, have you seen that a lot with the students that have come through revolution or other folks you've trained with like you that were shooting for titles and really just up in their game like that? Yeah, definitely for the casual jujitsu practitioner all the way to the professional, life happens. So you get older, more things start to happen in your life. You have another job, you have a family, you have children, you have responsibilities, which might take away the selfish with my time. It was all about my training and my goals. And now I don't have the luxury to be selfish with my time.

I have to help run this business. I have to take care of others. I have to make sure that all of our students are learning jiu-jitsu. So I can't just take a week off and go to the anaheim open or something like that yeah and i'll say as you know a former student there of yours i we definitely felt it and felt it at tournaments too where you make sure and that's another great thing um that that you've done you did for me and and i think i see in general with the other revolution instructors of being there at the edge of the mat for their students um and even the last time when I already moved, but that's such a great thing. So you can really get that feel of the interest in that, you know, what I call leaders intent

or intent is for you all to be successful. And you're doing that by making sure that one of that there's a mentor for your students. And it seems at every level. And that seemed kind of like a standard that you all did at i've only been to the u.s grappling tournaments but is that something that you do for anyone that competes out of revolution as you make sure they have an instructor or a mentor that can help kind of talk them or be there to coach them we try to um i know that one of our students dylan martin uh just competed today at the nogi pan americans we weren't able to send a coach with him but dylan has competed for a long time

and has always been a great competitor to the point where uh he doesn't really need a coach he knows what he's doing he knows uh the training that he's gone under and some people really thrive with coaches and some don't i know that i've competed before where andrew was in my corner and i told him hey please go help somebody else like i don't i don't really respond to coaching well because i have my game plan and i know when to to make changes and when to improvise but then some people are very good and and need a coach to tell them what to do when to make changes and when to improvise. But then some people are very good and need a coach to tell them what to do, when to do it. So it varies a lot. That makes sense.

And for both of you and Andrew, you both competed a whole lot. And we'd be interested to hear from each of you, you know, and sticking with you, Daniel, first. Is that something, to your point, when you're competing that regularly and, you know, and sticking with you, Daniel, first, is that something to your point when you're competing that regularly and, and, you know, at every level, can you, how's the challenge to kind of hear guidance from the coach, um, and then actually process it and then actually do it right. And, and do you see that when you're trying to coach other folks too? Uh, well, I've seen a lot where I've been a referee and I've

been a coach and I've been a competitor and I've seen it from different points of view. And there's some coaches that will go out there and they will just scream their head off at, uh, children, at, uh, adults, anybody who is their student. Uh, and it doesn't seem to change. That is their coaching style, and it doesn't seem to matter if it works or not. They are just screaming instructions out, and I don't feel that that is the best way to help your students. A lot of the students that I have worked with, if they could hear a nice, calm voice telling them to control their breathing, be calm, look for openings, that really helps them out rather than specifically saying, grab the wrist, now sit up and go for a Kimura. Because the other participant is listening to them too. So if I just feed them a move, the other person's going to block it. But if I tell them to be patient, be calm, and look for opportunities, then I feel like I kind of rein my students' fight or flight in, and they can now calm down and start looking for the openings that they know they can do. But on the other side, I know that I competed at a super fight once where John Bagels

Telford was in my corner. And in overtime with a minute to go, I needed a sweep. And he wasn't exactly telling me what to do. But his motivation and telling me to go go go kind of allowed me to get that sweep. It was the extra like motivation I needed to get there. So, uh, there's a, there's a variety of ways to coach. Uh, sometimes you need to be out there and like forceful and yelling at a person to get them motivated. But I feel like most of the times you just have to rely on what you've taught them beforehand and find a way for them to be calm and listen and do what they've been trained to do. That's a great perspective. And the first example you gave of the yelling

always reminds me of, and I have four boys, my oldest is a teenager and they play sports of the parent, whichever one it is, just screaming as if they're trying to build a professional sports player and their child's like six playing soccer like it's it's it's amazing do you see that from parents in jiu-jitsu tournaments something is it essentially a thing in the sports world but also happens in jiu-jitsu yeah unfortunately it's a big thing in the jiu-jitsu world where um i've had parents who might be the nicest people in the world, but something clicks when their son or daughter is out there and they're just screaming. And it might not be negative. It might be that they are just very excited that their son or daughter is out there competing.

But then I've also had parents yell at me for tapping for their child, which has always irked me because I'm out there trying to protect their child and they're upset that I stopped their child from getting hurt. Is that usually parents that don't also train? Or is it a mix? I'd say it would be a healthy mix. Some parents that do train have that competitive nature and they understand the desire to win. But then we've also, the referees and I have talked about parents who see their child under mount and they're just yelling at their child,

get up, get up. And you want to go put that child or the parent under mount and be like, how about you get up? Show me how you'd get up. It's just, it's just so easy in their mind. I mean, I get it in perspective.

And that's one of the things too for new fucks and from looking at the book and reminders of things y'all taught is there's an expectation that people have that they can do things that they really can't, especially somebody that's got more training than them or just, again, that training in muscle memory. So it so it's interesting to hear, you know, parents yelling that thinking, Oh, well I would just get up or I would do this, which probably also is like, and we've all seen tons of memes, right? When somebody is watching the UFC fight and they're, I wouldn't do that. I would just do this. Like having no idea. Like I understand someone that's better than me,

whether it's a lower belt or higher or whatever, um, how hard that is but thinking about like a a high level competitors like your your level or like watching the ufc having an appreciation for how high of a skill set they have compared to the average person walking on the street and i think a lot of people walk on the street think they can just snap to that high skill set like flip a switch yeah a little little perspective there um you know and i think to that is for folks going into you know the intro program revolution or you know wherever they may train um of just you know and you all talk about this as well of being comfortable not knowing things and knowing you're going to lose

a lot uh yeah i think uh that is also very important um sometimes a white belt will go out there in a tournament and you as a coach you'd love to see your students win all the time and sometimes you're like well i think this person needs to lose a match here or there just to understand the other side of the coin like you're not gonna be 400 and oh you you're gonna win some you're gonna lose some and what really matters is how you take your wins and how you take your losses what you learn from them and medals are great but at the end of the day like all my medals are in a shoebox so uh i feel like some people really take competitions or accomplishments a little too seriously uh i think my greatest accomplishment in jujitsu was getting getting my belt and being a good teacher and that's what i enjoy uh striving and continuing to do that's a a great perspective uh you know to your point and having you know

moved a couple years ago and just you know when you go through your house and you clean things up and you have like a a medal from um your scrabbling tournament like runs you do and everything and to your point like the the physical things you get from a, you know, from a tournament or event or whatever, end up in a box or, you know, they're not critical things,

but it seems that, you know, people do get so attached to that, both in Jiu Jitsu and other, other places. It's interesting to hear your perspective on that. And the belt focus is something else that you all talk about. And I've read about and has happened certainly to me of also accepting that it's totally part of the deal that a lower belt is going to tap a higher belt at some point or like regularly.

Yeah. Andrew, I believe in one of his early articles mentions that as a myth, like a higher belt will never tap to a lower belt. Yep. And it happens. And I mean, it happens all the time when you might have a high level competitor who comes in and maybe because of work, he hasn't slept well in two days. And he's just flow rolling and some really amped up blue belt is like, I'm training hard today. And luckily, a lot of people, if you get tapped out, you're like, you got me, good job. And then unfortunately, some people get real upset about that.

At our gym here, we try to curb that pretty quickly and keep it all in perspective as, hey, we are all learning here. We're all getting better. And fortunately, a lot of our students do a great job of following that. Have you ever heard the term, Matt Justice, Kevin? Yeah, I have. Yes. It's not exactly a healthy term. I think people tend to think in terms of the way to correct bad behavior is to beat people up and i'm like does that work well with children you know let's look at scientific studies on it doesn't work well with adults it doesn't really work well with anybody to have just a punitive thing especially if you don't even explain why you're pissed at somebody

you know and so you'll see like um if you're visiting a gym in particular you'll see a black belt beating the crap out of or a purple belt whatever the mat enforcer beating up a white belt and it's like that white belt doesn't have any clue why they're being beat up right now right you know there's this assumption that everybody knows what you're thinking and what's in your head and sees things the same way that you do and they're just kind of being um you know they're just being a dick but that's just not head and sees things the same way that you do. And they're just kind of being, you know, they're just being a dick, but that's just not, that's not usually the case. Usually there's something else going on.

Yeah. You know, with what you just said, Andrew, and then Daniel, what you mentioned too, it seems like, you know,

often when you're on the mats, when you're in a class, that's all you, you focus on that mostly right because you have to because it's pretty pretty intense but the factors of the outside world particularly when you get have more responsibility and things like that um absolutely affect the outcome of a roll or a drill session or or whatever it seems um and do you see because because there's a lot of folks at revolution that compete as well and and when you get into the color belts and the time at each belt, do you see that variation between, you know, and especially kind of, you know, lower belt to upper belt or just in general how that goes, the variation between those who compete and those who don't? And do you think kind of the, because of the time you're at each, particularly from blue to purple and then beyond that, that being a factor on just the variation you could have

within each belt color seems, you know, is like the variation of people, I guess, right? So you see kind of a, you know, a whole melting pot of people within each belts that has a factor, it seems on, you know, who taps who on a given day. Daniel, do you want to start this one? I have some thoughts there, too. Go ahead, Andrew. I'll just follow up. All right. Well, so, you know, we've talked a lot about this over the years. You know, the first thing to think about is just kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier, tying together, you know, the tap, the submission at the gym isn't the goal, right? The goal is to become better as a student and to learn.

And in a similar way, the belt is not the goal. Like for us, you know, the belt is, we do a good job, I think, of differentiating between what's a blue belt and what's a purple belt. And our standards, it's kind of a rising tide of standards to where a few years from now this it will probably be tougher or at least you'll probably have to be better let's just say more effective um in order to get x belt right and that's just kind of the nature of the way things go you know when i was starting out training like blue belts were like gods they were like heroes and they were so much worse than blue belts today you know i got you not all the belts with some right you know and so the the some blue belts thing um you've got this competitor you mentioned this as well the competitor versus the not competitor types right and i mean i think a certain point, the knowledge is the thing that you really have to measure,

like effectiveness. We talk about whether somebody is a good cultural fit, and that is actually very important as to whether they're going to progress because if somebody just is not good for the gym, then they don't belong. The second thing is, you know, whether they're actually using good technique when they roll, like whether they're, you know, flowing and stuff like that or whether it's just

them bullying people. You can get so far with just you. I think we lost you again. Once Andrew comes back, I feel like what he's trying to say, and I've noticed this when I

visited Access Academy in Tokyo, Japan a a lot was there are some i'd say a purple belt there we go yeah sorry can you hear me okay yep i can now yep uh but yeah you know between white and purple belt there's a big gulf at our academy because of the way that we've sort of set things up we also have a lot longer time than many other gyms will have you know before you get say your blue belt i think a lot of places will give you a blue belt in a year right um for us it's much much higher than that we just think that there's more that kind of goes into it and it's just i mean it's more arbitrary

for us but it goes back to that sort of rising tide thing which is i very much believe way that it should be. The skill level on average should continue to rise up over time as we get more and more information, just like you can do more stuff now on a computer than you could 20 years ago, right? Much, much more effectively. We have this other kind of technology that's continuing to evolve and its information is able to spread much more rapidly now is that kind of evolution in the higher standard and you haven't mentioned it before where you know blue belts from a while ago i guess either weren't as good or didn't have the knowledge as they do today so to speak is that just the evolution of trial and error through the moves and and innovators and bringing more you know stuff into jiu-jitsu that's that's kind of you know had jiu-jitsu mature over the few decades yeah i think that's a big part of it part of it is also

like from our perspective from revolution bjj in particular is we understand a lot better uh how to teach people and how to give them what what what they need to get better so i think that's you know like example, understanding that you have to sort of, your class has to be fun, right? It can't just be, you can't, you, if you're, if you're a dictator and you're saying, well, how do I get these people from white to black belt in the relatively shortest amount of time I can, you know, you would say, well, I've got them under my purview, under my thumb. So day one is like, okay, we're going to do breakfalls. You know, guess what day 10 is? It's still breakfall. You know what I mean? Like you would go a very different route.

But so understanding that there's some, a certain degree of enthusiasm and excitement. And if you can get the students excited and enthusiastic, then they're going to want to learn on their own. That's been something that's, that's also been something that's helped us out. I don't know if it's, I wouldn't say it's secret sauce for us in particular. I think a lot of other instructors understand that and other gyms understand it, but it's definitely something that we've tried to deeply embed in the way that we design classes and the way that we teach them and run them. That's interesting. And Daniel, have you seen similar with, you know, kind of the higher standards and helping people kind of achieve the higher skill set and then the

variation that you've seen within the belts, even let alone between the belt levels? Yeah, definitely. Like I was saying, in Japan, I remember going there and seeing middle-aged men and women who were purple belts who were not like the active purple belt competitors. And there's a wide gap between both practitioners, but they both might be three-stripe purple belts. And I think it comes down to knowledge of what you're doing as your your specific body type as your specific uh jujitsu personality like you might not be a competitor but you know just as much as you come in and train and then it does make it difficult because every gym and every uh owner instructor of a gym is different so everybody has different standards it would definitely help to have some sort of unification of standards but it's very difficult to do that at a national or even an international scale and i'm not one for tests or anything like that

i feel like it should come down to the instructors knowing like, hey, this person is learning well, doing well, is a great part of the academy and is helping all the other students. I feel like that has a lot to do with it also. Yeah, I would imagine there's and, you know, as a new guy Googling, how do I get to the next level? You find out there that there are pretty formal tests. You have to do these techniques. We do like a, you know, I forget what they call it. You know, you go against a bunch of people. But then also, folks, like I think that sounds like what you described, where it's really totally the instructor's discretion of looking at, OK, is this person at the level where they should be for X belt?

Or they can apply these, whether it's a new person or it's experience or something like that. Has that variation been in jujitsu? And I guess at other martial arts, I did take when I was way younger, so I have no perspective from then, but have you seen that where, um, that's just been part of kind of jujitsu for as long as you all have been part of it, the variation and how instructors, um, kind of judge and grade and, and,

you know, whether they use a list or not. Uh, it's been that way for me the whole time. Definitely. Yeah. I feel like for different gyms, there's a different standards,

but, uh, luckily at our Academy here, uh, Andrew Trey, myself will always talk about different students and the progress we've seen and where we see them going. a blue belt, I'm being a purple belt, I'm being a brown belt, where I gave my perspective of if you're that belt, or at least when I was there, like the things that I felt were very important and were necessary. Yeah, and those, again, encourage folks to go to Averzone, check that out, and check those out. I, in particular, of course, called out the blue belt stuff, being proud and humble, competing, being a leader to y'all's point.

I think that we touched on a little bit before. Even though you're new, you're not as new as someone else. Learn, learn, learn. And then not being afraid to lose, which one thing that I have found is the tapping out to someone because it hurts you, not getting choked out or whatever, is different than my own mental that I quit on myself, not because I got caught, but did I prep for that class? Like we talked about before, were you tired because you worked too long or whatever? More of the things that I could control that I didn't prep well for, knowing I'm going for an hour, an hour and a half to something extremely hard. And I think that point that you had on being a blue belt, don't be afraid to lose, like we talked about earlier, is just I think it's a mindset you just have to keep.

Right. And a difference between losing in the gym with folks that are your teammates that you're trying to get better with and with your instructor that's going to help you is different than giving up. Like if you unfortunately did get an altercation with somebody right it's a very different mindset so i wanted to touch on uh we talked about the belts and then really get into as well you know the the book and and y'all's vision for the book that the um the intent and and really what you want folks to take away from this so maybe uh before we get

because i want to get recommendations from each of you on each kind of for each belt but uh andrew first and then we'll come to you daniel what was your thought for this book and what do you want folks to take away from it well um we definitely initially set out to put together a book that collected sort of these stories, narratives, advice, whatever that we had before. And that was initially what we were thinking. But along the editing process, it was brought to my attention by somebody who helped edit the book that it might be a really good idea to hyperlink stuff to BJJ path to make it more of an interactive experience. So when I sort of realized that we could do that, I sort of threw myself into this a little bit. I really enjoyed, um,

referencing whenever there was some technique, uh, like, so you're going through, going through the book, you're reading about a certain thing that Daniel went through in his life, let's say. And it's like, it mentions, uh, spider guard or something. And you want it, you're not really familiar with what spider guard is. You could click on the link to spider garden. It'll take you to a page where there's video of Daniel or me or somebody that we know doing that.

So I think that, that adds a layer to it that maybe isn't there. I don't think we lost you again. Well, Andrew did a fantastic job of those hyperlinks. Because when we did start the book, it was articles that we had written and we organized them into different chapters. You with us, Andrew? Yeah, just to interject really quick while I have a moment of talking through the interactive nature of the book where you can click on a technique that's outlined in the book that's mentioned.

Like what's a triangle? And it'll take you to BJJ Path where you can actually watch videos of me or Daniel doing the technique or somebody like us showing it. I think that's the thing that I really want to call attention to as much as I can on this. Absolutely. Yeah, like I was saying, Andrew spent a lot of time on this. He spent a lot of time on BJJ Path and I feel like it is a great resource and it is something different where you can get a book on Kindle and then you could have links. So you could read about the spider guard and then you could go watch videos on it. You could read a tutorial. I think it's a great addition to the book.

It is definitely because it's helpful to read the articles and things. But then to to you know which i would imagine is kind of a teaching technique right where you see one kind of do one teach one but you can you can read about it then you can see it done then you can you know if you're going to class the next day or later or whenever go oh you know what i'm gonna try that move or that escape um i know i did that with one of the other BGZ Path videos before the book. I think it was a Runeke Chogescape. And I was like, oh, that's pretty awesome.

And magically it worked. So for me, magically meaning because I remembered it or anything. But yeah, that interactive nature, especially now, so many people online. And I think two varying degrees of comfort in getting back into the gym or not getting back into the gym, having a book that has great history, great advice. And to me, it's jujitsu specific, but it's not really just jujitsu. Right. There's great leadership advice, stuff you get from the benefits, the confidence, cardio character type, all in there and being able to link that to BGJ Path. And we touched on this a bit, I think, last year where we spoke too, but BGJ Path being a huge online encyclopedia of videos. And you all have been very active in the putting videos out,

on YouTube of techniques, which is excellent. You've been doing that for a while. So to have them pulled together in BGJ Path and then connected to this book, the wit and wisdom of the little Jim that could, is amazing. And folks, again, can get real-time feedback from it, using those techniques and things like that. It's pretty awesome. And for the folks, since we're talking about it, it's bgjpath.com, right? That folks can go to, to, to check out

the path. That's right. Yeah. It's free. BGJ Path is a hundred percent free. If people want to, you know, pay a monthly subscription fee, they're welcome to do it just sort of similar to what Patreon does, but, but it's not necessary we're just looking to get more people involved and to use bj path as a platform for the book too that's excellent that's excellent how was that process um and daniel was an english teacher former english teacher um did you have to do a lot of editing uh well luckily andrew and i did a quite a bit of editing with the uh articles to begin with and then when we put them together um like right now i have a bunch of the materials

in front of me where we went through uh countless edits uh had a bunch of different people uh editing for us and then um uh as one of us got busy another one picked it up and we just kind of worked as a team until uh the finished product came out so andrew put a ton of work into it i put a ton of work into it everybody who helped us put a ton of work into it and now we're pretty satisfied that we put out a great product and people can now uh not only read about jujitsu learn about jujitsu like you said there's other things in this book if you want to find out the best hall and oats songs to roll to definitely you can definitely do that with this book that um my wife and i were making dinner yesterday in the hall it was somebody covered the song so

unfortunately it wasn't them but it was um one of their songs they came on yesterday i was like oh that's in that's in the book uh you know i haven't looked at it again uh so it's amazing how did you how did you get into uh hollow notes uh and uh jujitsu to pair those up well i think it comes from uh the culture like andrew said that we have here some gyms you'll go in that is just blaring heavy metal all the time not that heavy metal is uh bad to listen to while doing jujitsu but if it is just uh constant aggressive music then the then the practitioners are going to start to feel that and roll that way. If a lot of times we'll put yacht rock on, which is nice and smooth, and you'll notice that in the movements and how people are rolling. I always personally, reggae is my favorite type of music,

and I'll listen to that a majority of the time that I'm teaching classes and I feel it is very calming and it makes people roll while nice and calm and thinking about what they're doing. And Hall & Oates, I mean, I could listen to Hall & Oates all day and do great jiu-jitsu. Nice. It is interesting seeing the tempo and expressions on faces and the tempo of and uh you know expressions on faces the tempo changes the music changes uh it kind of makes me think of you know we're conditioned like pavlov's dogs a little bit but i guess it's just some music gets your adrenaline going and some

chills you out so you're more flowy yeah definitely have uh reggae in my head and the orange mat memories from uh from all of their revolution. We touched on earlier us grappling and you all, you know, and the great tournament that was, and, and, or I didn't say that before. I'll say that. And I've definitely talked to other folks as well. And this year y'all made a pretty big decision to not do that. Clearly COVID a factor in that decision and discussion, right? In people's comfort, I would imagine on tournaments or how did you all come to that

decision about U.S. Grappling? Well, so it was a very difficult and uncertain decision to be sure. And absolutely the pandemic was a major factor in it you know the the tournament business is tough though i think a lot of people look out there and they say man these people are making a killing because they're they do some mental math in their heads but they're almost always going to underestimate how much everything costs and overestimate how much money we're actually getting. Because I can say it was a very, very thankless and difficult job. I was delighted to be able to do it because I got to do jujitsu and travel around. And that was amazing to me.

Even if it was just doing something like in the service of jujitsu, like an administrative thing. But I mean, a like promoter or whatever i would still jump out there and compete which might might or might not be the right decision to make but i did and i felt comfortable enough with the like unbiased nature of u.s grappling to be able to do that i mean like you know u.s grappling for folks that never got to compete it was an amazing organization i don't say that because i was involved in creating it i mean i say because there were some just terrific people that were very thoughtful and caring about the community and wanted to make it such a great experience for people. Unfortunately, that's not necessarily

always rewarded by a free market, you know, especially in a pandemic, right? And so that was just something that we couldn't really foresee coming along it was rough it was devastating without question it meant a lot for me to be able to um be a part of that organization for so long and to get to reconnect with a lot of people that i had known for a long time and also to just establish new relationships with a new generation of people yeah it, it was awesome. And I appreciate the opportunity to have been part of it to see you all. And that was a big thing.

So for students that competed at that regularly, is the focus now look at kind of organizations that are still doing that? Because, yeah, you're right. The logistics of thinking of what venues will or won't allow X number of people in them. You know, what areas are open. So in addition to,

you know, you all having to make that tough decision for the reasons that you said, all the folks that attended that, right. As, as competitors and folks that went to watch, you know, now have you had folks that want to redirect or meaning that,

you know, they're just ready to look for where should I go now? And a lot of questions about, you know, other organizations or folks kind of still stepping in. And this kind of speaks to, I guess, kind of the reopening, right, as we're seeing kind of the door open a bit more, a lot more, really. How's the tempo of former competitors or competitors now looking from folks that you all teach at your gym? Well, I feel there's some competitors that would like to train at or compete at the highest levels, which right now means IBJJF or if they really wanted to go to ADCC or anything like that. And they could definitely do that. And they've probably been doing that for a while.

The more local regional, there's some organizations out there. Some are good. Some are not so good. Those tend to be a kind of hit or miss you're going to have to go there experience it and find uh the ones that you like and the ones that you don't like uh and then know that maybe uh when you go to one tournament you might have a bad experience but that might not be every experience you have there um at least that's what i found competing myself uh with us grappling i don't think i ever had a bad experience as a competitor uh as a referee uh overall uh and like andrew said i i loved uh everybody that i got to work with there uh people working behind the tables, people

taking care of brackets and everything, all the referees I worked with and all the competitors that I competed against were great. So I feel like the desire is still out there. There's still super fights like Toro Cup that are going to be open. We've thought about the possibilities of having in-house tournaments here. So the future is wide open. It's a tough business to go into and continue to do well at because I do see some organizations cutting a lot of corners in order to either save money or do A, B, or C. And unfortunately, sometimes that isn't the right thing for the competitors, and I think you've both written about this in the book and different articles, where competition and Revolution in particular seems to always have folks at tournaments and competing regularly. Is that something that you recommend for practitioners to do at least one or two times in their whole jiu-jitsu career? Or should you try and compete at at each belt level to kind of

as like a gauge or an experience what are your thoughts on that that's a good one kevin that's a tough tough one to answer right yeah because you got different types of people and i think probably that i'm gonna definitely let daniel answer this one but i think it probably that it's gonna some of the answer if i had to guess will involve that that very thing that sometimes it's sort of not that easy of a thing to answer and everybody has different priorities and stuff like that true uh i feel that it's not necessary for everybody to compete but a lot of times competing does make you understand the techniques or when to use those techniques a lot better, which techniques work really well for you and which ones do not. Because some people while competing might be great with their triangle game while other people might be great with their takedowns. found the most valuable thing i feel that a competition gave a competitor was overcoming the anxiety and nervousness of of competition because that's the first major hurdle that you

have to do actually second i think the first major hurdle is signing up and committing to doing a tournament and then when you do that, overcoming those nerves of, oh, my gosh, what have I gotten myself into? And then daytime when you're like, oh, my match is up in like 20 minutes. And then some people that's tough. Some people thrive on it. So it is definitely a personal choice. There are folks who might get that experience of going out there and competing and overcoming the anxiety, the stress, all those things. And that benefits them every bit as much as if they, you know, competed 100 times, right? Because maybe they

can draw on that for kind of inspiration in life. That's a really good thing to bring up, Daniel. Like when people compete, it's not, you know, did my jujitsu work is nice to know. Testing it out is good to know. But like overcoming the fundamental human challenge that you're facing of this is very strange and my body is saying don't do this. And then your mind has to kind of overcome that. I think that is a really huge thing that people can walk away with.

Perhaps, I mean, perhaps people will not compete at all. They train at our gym, plenty of people who train with us. That's always been the case. But I would say more than half want to at least go out there once and just kind of see what it's about. And of course, as you mentioned, Kevin, we've fostered a pretty strong encouragement of competitions if people want to go out and compete. You know, like Daniel said, it's tougher now because U.S. Grappling was such an easy home for the students to just commend it. So that's part of the reason why we're looking at like an in-house tournament that might be safe if we can do it. You know, is the biggest thing biggest consideration for us but we want the experience also to be very encouraging and

positive for people so that's um that's sort of really good to kind of call out and to say that the lessons that you get from jiu-jitsu aren't always jiu-jitsu lessons they can actually help you out in life yeah yeah absolutely it's you know for from my experience and i've only done two tournaments but i've so i've driven a fire engine like i've done some stuff that you know would get you amped up and and the adrenaline dump you get when you step onto the mat at the turn of it is you know i you all told me about it other folks bagels told me about i was like okay and then you're like whoa where did all that energy go that i just had two minutes ago uh it's pretty amazing uh but is helpful right because that perspective too on the speed aspect of it the you know folks are amped up to get those medals that

they may put in the box down the road but it's way different than just hanging out with your pal that you see two three four five times a week right right? In the gym, which is also, I think, a good reality that seems to be related to perhaps the intensity if someone really got into it on the street, so to speak. But maybe you're not both wearing geese on the street, but you know what I mean? But it's amazing because folks really want to win when they're in the tournament setting.

It's a totally different level, but I think well worth it. Cause in that perspective of, okay, this is, this is how you do it. Don't handle it. Right.

This is what I did. I didn't do to prep and, and you know, to touch on it again, it has to do with both on the mat and off the mat kind of stuff. Um, and I, I want to,

which is, which is cool and pick your brain. Uh, cool to have you your brain, uh, cool to have you all here, uh, is to get a piece of advice from each of you for folks at each belt level. And for folks listening, there's way more than these, um, kind of quick hits in the book. So again, check it out.

It's, it's on Amazon. Uh, again, it's the, the wit and wisdom of the little gym that could it's interactive but I wanted to from each of you and maybe as we go to each belt maybe Daniel go and then Andrew go what what one piece of advice kind of a quick elevator tip would you give white belts Daniel I think white belts it's a be open-minded. Try to be a blank slate. So even if you have previous experience in wrestling or taekwondo or whatever martial art, come in like you're brand new. Well, that's really good. Relax and have fun is maybe another way to put a similar thing. Hopefully, if you're relaxed, you're more receptive to the information that's coming in. You're not fighting it.

So, you know, relax, have a good time. Remember that this is supposed to be fun. I think that maybe is helpful for any belt level, but especially at weight belt. Yeah, definitely, because it's easy to not relax when you're struggling and always catching a beat down, so to speak. So for the folks that stick it out and make it to their first color belt for those blue belts, what piece of advice would you give them, Daniel? I'd say for blue belt, learn everything. You're basically the jujitsu sponge. You don't have to be perfect at it and you probably won't be. But as long as you go out there and you learn or at least see it, the newest squid guard or worm guard or closed guard that you could say, OK, I know what this is, because then later on you'll have time to perfect it.

So kind of go out there, see everything. How about you, Andrew, for Blue Belt? I would just add you are responsible for your own training. So at Blue Belt, it's really important that you sort of take responsibility and you start to say, I should make the time for these classes, things of that nature. I think when you first start out at White Belt, we try to sort of give people something like a template for a schedule.

You know, like our intro program, for example, we'll do a couple of days a week. It might be Tuesday, Thursday at 530 p.m. And so people get into that habit of training two times a week at 530 p.m. as a minimum baseline. Sometimes they add more classes, but they're almost always available for that. So being responsibility for your own improvement, your own training, keeping track of it. You know, Daniel talks about a lot of this kind of stuff in the book, methods to do this with

journaling and taking notes and things of that nature. But that's the end of the day. You're responsible for your own improvement and at Blue Belt is the right time, I think, to start really thinking about that. Yeah, journaling it and Daniel mentioned that when I was there. Tim Manning, who I train under here, same thing.

It is great. Just in general, I actually now have a podcast journal, a jiu-jitsu journal, and then my personal one, a mix of that. But that and Daniel that shared, map out your kind of strategy. I'm going to go from this move to these two moves or something like that Daniel that shared, like map out your kind of strategy, right? Like I'm going to go from this move to these two moves or, you know, something like that has been really helpful to get that. It's interesting. And I talked to Deborah Vogue, who's a crisis navigation person,

a few episodes back and journaling has come up, I think, probably in almost everyone I've spoken with, just it seems to be that mental to hand to paper connection, right? And mapping through that seems to be helpful in so many different aspects of life. So it's interesting to, again, and great to hear that, uh, reinforced. So the, the purple belt, right. For you all. And in general is what you could start to consider advanced belt, right. Is that, is that accurate for the purple belt? Uh, I'd say so say so uh purple belt is so wide open like a lot of times i've considered purple belts to be the teenagers of jujitsu where they can go out and they could do the fanciest moves in the world and they could screw them up and there's not a lot of

like uh repercussions to it so purple belts love to go out flying into barambolos and not really have any direction uh but eventually towards the end of purple belt you'd like to see some direction so um i think for purple belt i'd say the most important advice I would give them is start to be a leader in your academy. And through mentoring and teaching classes, do you start to bring Purple Belts in to help like assistant teach? Well, Purple Belts, we will let them here start the intern process. We'll have them helping with the kids program. But not just that, maybe they don't want to be teachers, but maybe they can definitely be great partners and help others. So I feel like Purple Belt is the time where a lot of students can be of great assistance

helping others. Thoughts for the Purple Belt, Andrew? Well, I think the gym leadership is amazing and important. And of course, Daniel and I are on the same wavelength with that. So that's really good to get that out of the way and say that. But I would also say, don't forget fundamentals. I think that people, when they get Purple Belt, they tend to be excited about, as Daniel kind of alluded to the different kinds of new hotness, new, exciting stuff. But, you know, at the end of the day, like if I can, if I'm sitting on my butt and I grab my grab your foot and push you over, I get on top the same way as if I do a super slick barambola type type setup i'm you know scrambling it up on top fundamentals are

super duper important and they're very um effective and and understanding the fundamentals is going to help a lot so purple well is a great time to refocus on the fundamentals too people tend to it's so easy to go the other way with it. You don't really have to encourage people that much to explore their games or try to find a style or anything like that, in my view. But you do have to encourage them to recenter on the fundamentals and just not neglect them because it's going to help them out so much in the next few years. Did you find that in your competitions and success or even just your growth, you, you just kind of, cause in jujitsu and I think in other things in project management, what are these core things you can do? These, for me, these foundational, basically from all the different processes I've learned of, you know, response or projects or whatever,

there's like five things you can break down. And you mentioned that Andrew, the fundamentals in jujitsu, have you found yourself coming back to those, like, you know, in the the in the heat of a match or or something like that uh where that's really what helps kind of drive success at the higher levels or you know you're at all levels i guess yeah well so i haven't competed since 2015 or so right so for me um i mean when i was competing all the time, fundamentals made a dramatic difference. Right. Whoever understood it. But you also had to be plugged into a modern jujitsu game. And so, like, you know, of course, when I say Purple Belt should study basics, I don't mean they should only study basics or at the exclusion of the other stuff at all.

Just to be 100 percent clear. But, you know, the longer I do-jitsu, the more I appreciate really, really simple stuff that is effective. I alluded to grabbing somebody's foot and pushing them over. That's literally my favorite way to sweep somebody. It has quite some time. If they're leaning backward and I just push them over, I use no energy to get on top or very little energy. I probably grabbed onto them as they were falling and I used that energy to get to come up on top you know like what what's more what's better if I spend a hundred hours

doing getting you my job is to go downstairs and bring up pieces of mail to you well there's only one in there and I wait until the last minute I go and I get it I bring it up to you or if I go back and forth and I spend a hundred hours trying to do the same thing I mean I think that using less energy to do do a thing is better generally speaking is more desirable and it's absolutely what we point to with jiu-jitsu even though my example there was terrible but you can imagine just yeah it doesn't make it it's something like spending way more energy doing it isn't really the goal right spending less energy needs to be our goal so thinking about that effectiveness and and just simplicity is a way

that you become more effective i think rather than trying to think in terms of extremely complex stuff yeah i feel like being very efficient is very important is that something you see you know as we get to kind of brown belts where that efficiency you've, to your point, learn, learn, learn, soak stuff in, but you've reached out to new things, you've made it to purple? Sorry, I think we had lost you for a second. Sorry about that. I'm done. I've talked enough. I'll get carried away. well at brown belt i feel like uh like blue and purple you've done a good job of trying to learn

everything and and seeing uh the possibilities and then at brown belt you have to really start to laser focus on your timing when when you should be doing these things to make your jujitsu more efficient um and that's very important when you get up to black belt is because black belt is going to be a wide range. Like my first year at black belt, I would compete and then I'd go against someone like a knock upon who has had a black belt longer than I've been doing jujitsu. So if I am not as efficient and precise with my jujitsu,

I'm just going to get murdered out there. And so I feel like at Brown Belt, it's about starting to rein everything in and focusing on the things that are important. And then the other aspect at Brown Belt is to be patient. Because when I got my Brown Belt maybe a year in, I thought I was ready for black belt. And fortunately, I moved to the States, did quite a bit of learning here. And even though I thought I may have been ready for a black belt earlier, I feel like the longer I spent at brown belt, the better it was for me in the long run. That's something too, I think we may have touched on earlier, but that thought of, do a lot of students have the thought when they're at a certain belt that they think they're ready for the next belt? I imagine that's an interesting question for you all as instructors, right?

You know, like for us, it's almost like a KPI, you know, a key performance indicator. We don't want lots and lots of students to come up with those questions. It's not that we're not opposed to talking to students about belt progression or anything like that. But what we want is for people not to be utterly perplexed by it and definitely not to think that they should be the next belt up. So I think it takes a lot of humility and self-awareness in order to not ask those questions. Although everybody asks them internally at a point. But we don't want it to spread to the culture of like, well, I think I'm ready for this next belt. And what's going on? Why am I not promoted?

And we certainly we've lost students over the years because of that exact question. And it happens, right? People have anxiety and nervousness and self-doubt and all that kind of stuff. We're not here to contribute to the self-doubt at all. That's not our goal. We want to help make you a better martial artist, make you, you know, accomplish your goals and stuff like that. So for for us that's the fewer people who are you know openly confused at least let's say the best i feel like uh a lot of people you trust us with your jiu-jitsu training trust us with um with your promotions too like like we we're gonna know when to promote you yeah yeah it's almost kind of it's kind of i wouldn't necessarily say insulting because we understand where the questions are coming from

but insulting is not a bad word to use either to describe it where i mean if you you know if your doctor says man you got to eat less cholesterol well yeah i know you're going to try to drop your cholesterol values and we're're telling you, well, you need a little more time at Blue Belt. It doesn't mean that we think you suck or something. It's just, there's, there's a little more that's needed, a little more time to put in and we're the actual experts that you presumably pay money to learn from, you know, so not, not allowing us to be the mentors, um, I think is a big mistake that we'd like for students to avoid over time. That's a great point. And something you all mentioned too, in the, in the book is, you know, you, you can only be that color belt once, once it changes, like you can't go back and the expectation changes when your belt changes both for all

the students around you right and yourself so it sounds like really baking in the skills the basics the you know whatever you need to know before you are deemed to move up as opposed to which is interesting dynamic right if you were at you know your day job in the business world are you going to ask your boss every day so i'm sure it's just like jujitsu some folks do what am i getting a raise when we get raised when we get a promotion when we get a promotion uh and at some point it's like well you're i don't know whether they choose to leave on their own or not it just becomes counterproductive uh but i like that that um and found it helpful to read the you're only at this belt once so you know take advantage of it while you're there because it seems when you do move the expectation shifts you know for you and those around you

yeah so we've made it um to the black belt um what do you all uh how do you all guide your fellow black belts? I would say the most important thing that I feel now for black belt is don't rest on your laurels. I feel like a lot of black belts that I've seen over time will stop being involved or just stop being motivated to teach what they love like i love teaching jiu-jitsu and i'm always going to love teaching jiu-jitsu and that motivation and that desire to continue to do that i feel like it's going to be with me every day for the rest of my life but i feel like sometimes i've seen some black belts that just go through the motions of teaching or running a gym or even competing. And it's always bewildered me. So I feel like black belts should continue to have that desire and enthusiasm for jujitsu that they had at white belt. And that that's interesting for me,

you know, being new to think about at that level of black belt of what's the evolution and, and generally having understanding and having read about like it, it's kind of never ending. You're always evolving, but is when you make it to black belt and folks that don't rest, is that when you hone both, you know, your own jujitsu, which I'd imagine even for you all is still evolving, but also have read and heard that's kind of when you really also are building on your instruction and your teaching. So that's part of your growth, too, to not kind of, you know, to your point, like you said, you know, rest on your laurels. And so you developing your game, even though you've, you know,

you're a black belt and also how you can share that knowledge with others. Is that part of your growth as well? Yeah, I believe so. I've heard some people say, oh, well, I'm not getting the training I need to get better because I'm, I'm busy teaching or interning or doing doing this and it's they are getting better they just don't they don't feel that if they're not out there like grinding every single day on the mat that they're not getting better but as you get better as an

instructor uh as a black belt as a an owner of a gym, you are getting better at black belt. And you might not have competed in a while. Andrew said he retired in 2015. That doesn't mean Andrew's not as good as he was in 2015. He's probably a lot better than he was. He's just not out on the competition circuit anymore. And I feel like, um, that happens even when you start to, uh, let's say our, some of our 50 year old plus black belts who might not be on the mats as

much as they were when they were 30 are definitely better than they were back then, just because, um, they've learned when to, uh, when to learn things and how to be more efficient with their learning and then also with their teaching.

That's a great point too. And for me, I'm, I'm 47. So I'm in the older club and, and still just a blue up level, but, but feeling and learning like what I should push on, what I can do, what I can't do. And I would imagine for, for those folks, the older black belts, they're at that point in that efficiency where they can adjust their game to fit whoever they're rolling with because considerations are different. Injuries can be more frequent, more impactful,

depending on what their careers are and stuff like that. So it's interesting to hear that aspect, the age factor too, because there's no getting around it. It a it's a tough tough sport tough martial art injury for me i'm sorry i just wanted to interject really quickly like everything that daniel said about black belt i agree with i think that another way to put it is that you hear this it's almost like um trite but that black belt is starting over right and unless you've been a black belt for several years i think you don't really recognize how much of starting over it really is you know jujitsu from white to brown is building vocabulary at the end of the day it's describing it's

getting tools together and understanding how to use individual tools to To me, black belt is you've got a vocabulary. Now it's time to actually write a book, let's say, right? Or at least write some decent magazine articles or something. Absolutely. Yeah. And that was a great analogy we talked about when you were on episode eight of the whole progression of kind of letters to words to sentences, which, again, I think is a great, great comparison. It is interesting to hear you say that, too, of kind of starting over as a black belt,

you know, for someone that's such a high level practitioner is very interesting to say. Is that due to just the breadth and depth of jujitsu and then now the expectations and that there's you know other black belts so now you're kind of their equivalent and still kind of you know I guess measuring I don't know if it's measuring yourself against them but with yourself and others so that blank slate is kind of how

do you keep building you up as a kind of start over a black belt yeah that's definitely true it's psychologically helpful I think to look out there and say okay well you know um it takes you you're a black belt for the rest of your life right i mean maybe you get a red belt eventually or whatever a corral belt but it's like you're a black belt for the rest of your life you know that's there's no upper limit when you get a blue belt you're like okay cool i'll probably be a blue belt for a few years you know i'll work on some things i'll get better i'll get improved when you get a blue belt, you're like, okay, cool, I'll probably be a blue belt for a few years. I'll work on some things. I'll get better. I'll get

improved. When you're a black belt, that's it. That's all you get. So I think for me, it's sort of, oh, okay, this is where everything kind of begins, kind of starts here. Everything leading up to this point was just preparing, and now I have to actually learn. On the

other hand, it's definitely a continuum, you know? But I think that people who regard black belt as the end or pools, you know, it's just silly to me unless that's just kind of like they can check off the, I did jujitsu and box in their, you know, personal bucket list or something. Yeah, it is interesting. And for the black belts, what do they say the average is 10, 10 years or so, right? It's kind of the standard answer that I've heard. Sorry, I think we lost you for a segment there. I hate that. Sorry.

That's all right. I bet it was an outstanding answer to that discussion. Whatever you're thinking at home was the best answer to that question. That was exactly what I said. That's right. That's awesome. So we made it to Black Belt. We're talking about the future coming up in a couple hours, which is awesome. I think I'm always amazed when having a good discussion with good people how fast it goes.

But also thinking about the the future of for revolution so you mentioned you know the the kind of post-use grappling of having in-house tournaments depending on comfort and safety and those kind of things what are some unless there's you know any any kind of secret sauce to give away what's what is is each of your vision um i guess i'll ask kind of twofold one for revolution itself and then two for Jiu Jitsu kind of as a whole what are y'all's thoughts if you have some on Revolution I would imagine but for

Jiu Jitsu as well Daniel you want to well I'll start with for Revolution we would I mean from day one I was always interested in making this obviously the best jiu-jitsu academy in the city, in the area, regionally, and hopefully on the East Coast. I mean, ambitious, because we would love to open more Revolution Academies and similar to the

Gracie Baja idea of having gyms around the country and becoming a great gym but that would be the long term goal for Revolution right now it's about making this academy and our academy

in Ashland and all future academies as great as possible. For jiu-jitsu in the long run, I would love to just increase people participating in jiu-jitsu. It's a great sport. I still feel like it is very niche. I do see a lot more people starting jiu-jitsu classesitsu classes and learning jujitsu, which is great. I don't think it's to the point where it'll be an Olympic sport, uh, in the future, but I do believe it'll be something that, uh, can be as big as Taekwondo was at its, uh, at its Zenith.

And hopefully it'll, it'll stand the test of time. That's a, um, a great thing talking about that. It's that it's niche, right? Um, because I think to those of us that practice it, it's not at all, but I forget sometimes, you know, one being a nerd and trying to weld it into conversations when it, when it comes up or something, or I'll have a sweatshirt on. It was like, Oh, you do this. Um, but how, when you're into something, particularly jujitsu, it seems like everyone knows about it. Uh, and then surprisingly, a lot of people do not, uh, which is, which is cool. So that, that would be, that would be pretty awesome to see revolution clubs all over the country, if not maybe overseas someday.

And then, um, yeah, to see folks in, and when you mentioned more folks, um, practicing and doing the art in particular, it made me think about,

uh, law enforcement and the benefit of that and the control of it. Um, which I know there's various programs of, of different instructors doing those kinds of things. But yeah, if it seems like if more folks would kind of choke each other and do joint locks, probably the rest of the day would be a lot easier.

Yeah, or just the enjoyment you have doing jiu-jitsu. You always go into jiu-jitsu having a good time, and then you leave jiu-jitsu having an even better time. Or even if you go into a jujitsu class and you've been stressed out because of anything that's happened in life you usually don't leave the academy in that same level of stress you usually have have gotten rid of that and you feel good that's a great point great point i would imagine andrew in line with you know with with dana talking about the future. Again, it'd be awesome to see a lot of those. What are your I've seen is the story of technology as

technology improves and gets integrated into our lives so does jiu-jitsu to a degree you know and this involves stuff like streaming video services you know where you can just get a la carte you can actually purchase stuff you can look up stuff for free on YouTube you know you can use BJJ path right you can look up stuff for free on youtube you know you can use bjj path right there wasn't a bjj path 25 years ago there were there was black belt magazine you know and you would have like a black and white article with terrible pictures of judo pen and that would be all you get grappling wise for that month you know and then you wait until next month and you get something from um a jiu jitsu article like that was very difficult to see what was going on but it was like at least you had something that you could work on and man everybody worked on

whatever that was too you know now it's like think about how quickly information itself spreads yeah and then think about how quickly information about jiu-jitsu can spread. And I think that's what we're seeing. So I think for me, jiu-jitsu going forward involves a lot when jiu-jitsu became on everybody's radar in the very beginning or at least on some people's radar here in the u.s yeah that the internet the streaming service videos like y'all put out has definitely definitely expanded i would imagine helped with that growth that we talked about the beginning of the exponential kind of 30 to 100 to 200 to 400 students which is pretty pretty awesome and then until the UFC was on cable tv with the ultimate fighter and we've seen these little jumps up and every time there's a jump up there's like 10 times

as many people doing it as they were before so whatever the next great great jump up is if there is such a jump up um you know it's going to be enormous imagine 10 times as many people doing jiu-jitsu in another decade as they're doing it today and we've got you know tens of millions of people in the u.s doing this stuff i think that's realistic because of kids first all right we're seeing kids that their parents only want them to do brazilian jiu-jitsu you know we didn't see that so so much 20 years ago or even 15 years ago. But now you've seen kids that grew up, like showing their kids the UFC, right? Or they grew up watching UFC or they grew up watching the Ultimate Fighter on cable TV. You know,

the Ultimate Fighter was a breakthrough for exposure to mma and as a result of course of an exposure to jiu-jitsu so anyway i see deep integration with technology i see a learning experience it's going to be a lot more robust for people you can learn from like anywhere in the world we already experimented a great deal with that during the pandemic you know video instruction has a long way to go i think before it's the same as in-person instruction. Well, definitely on Andrew's point there, if there was only a book that would express the thoughts of jiu-jitsu black belts that was interactive with techniques, that would be great. It would be. Daniel, do you know of such a book? And if you do, where could people find it?

And I believe they could find it on kindle uh and then pretty simple the wit and wisdom of the little the little gym that could and also get bjj path for free so that you could link between both of them that is an outstanding resource um that i highly recommend uh it's super interactive comprehensive it. It's got great information. And for the folks that read that book, that go to bjjpath.com and say, you know what, I'm going to give this a shot. What is the best way for them to get in touch with you all at Revolution?

The best way would go to our website, revolutionbjj.com. You'll find out a lot of information about us there. There's a lot of links to videos, to merchandise, to our schedule, to our classes, our bios. You can personally always contact me, Daniel, at RevolutionBJJ.com for any students who are interested in starting with us. And then a lot of times if you'd like to contact Andrew, the best way is to go to BJJ Path because it's very simple. He's very interactive

with the students there. You can also email me directly at andrew at revolutionbjj.com if you're not on there already. That's awesome. We'll share. We'll put up the links when I do the posts

for the episode, both where folks can get the book, go to the Revolution website, go to the path, email you all. Thank you all both so much for sharing your knowledge, one in the book, with me personally, with the folks listening to this. I really value your perspectives. I know the other folks that listening do too. And it's been a good couple hours of us chatting and you all sharing your knowledge from the decades of experience that you all have with Jiu-Jitsu. Great. Well, thank you, Kevin.

Absolutely. And thank you everybody for listening to this show. Again, we'll link to this episode. If you want to see more episodes or listen to more episodes, go to peopleprocessprogress.com, peopleprocessprogress on Instagram, Facebook, that's the socials, but go to the website. We have links where you can subscribe and follow as well. So thanks again, Dano and Andrew. And for everybody out there listening, we appreciate every listen, every download. Stay safe, wash your hands, and God be with you.