The Tim Ferriss Show - #196: Meet the Machine, Dave Camarillo

Episode Date: October 30, 2016

Dave Camarillo (@DaveCamarillo) was my long-time Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) coach (see him kicking my ass repeatedly here). Put simply, he is a machine. On the Mat once said: "It's funny that everybody in Judo is scared of David's ne waza and everybody in Jiu-Jitsu is scared of his stand up. (We) guess people, in general, are just scared of him." Dave is a very technical coach and an elite-level Jiu-Jitsu competitor. He dominated the lightweight and open weight classes at the 1998 Rickson Gracie American Jiu-Jitsu Association tournament; the legendary Rickson Gracie himself bestowed the honor of Most Technical American Jiu-Jitsu Fighter upon him. He has worked not only with people on the ground game, but many recognizable MMA (mixed martial arts) figures as a coach and as a corner man. We'll delve into: Tactical training Military training Hockey fights Defending yourself armed only with a flashlight How Dave's mom is the best sniping shot in the entire family And much, much more. Enjoy! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It' s that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy. This podcast is also brought to you by Vimeo Business. Vimeo Business has all of the prior benefits of Vimeo Pro, including VIP support. Whether you make videos for a living, run your own company, or simply want to amp up your video marketing, Vimeo Business is here to help. It has more than 280 million creators and viewers worldwide and makes it easier to share your videos with a global audience and connect with professional video makers to bring your stories to life. Vimeo Business allows you to upload up to five terabytes and store your videos in one secure place, add up to 10 team members to your account for easy collaboration, and gather feedback with seamless review tools. You can even add clickable calls to action and capture email addresses directly in the player, which can help you generate leads and drive conversion for whatever you're trying to optimize, such as a newsletter or a sales page. Check out vimeo.com/tim10 to save 10 percent on Vimeo Business. ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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hell does that mean? That means that I talk to people who are really good at what they do and try to tease out the routines, habits, philosophies, belief systems, et cetera, that you can apply to your own life and test yourself. This episode, we do not have an entertainer. We do not have, well, we do have an athlete. I was going to say we don't have an athlete, but we have a hell of an athlete who has now turned into one hell of a coach. Dave Camarillo, C-A-M-A-R-I-L-L-O. Dave Camarillo was for a long time, my Brazilian jujitsu coach, and he is a machine. In fact, there was a phrase, Dave against the machine, that was used for a while. And onthemath.com once said about him,

for instance, it's funny that everybody in judo is scared of David's newaza, that's his ground game, and everyone in jiu-jitsu is scared of his stand-up. Well, yes, people in general are just scared of him. And he is a very technical coach, was a very technical fighter. And there are many people who took note of this. He dominated the lightweight and openweight classes, for instance, at the 1998 Hickson Gracie American Jiu Jitsu Association Tournament. And the legendary Hickson Gracie himself bestowed the honor of most technical American Jiu Jitsu fighter upon David. He is an elite level judo competitor. He is an elite level jiu-jitsu competitor and has worked with not only

people in the ground game, but many recognizable MMA figures as a coach and as a corner man. And we will talk about both of those. We'll delve into his background. We'll delve into his teaching and learning style. And I think he is really unparalleled in many respects as an instructor. And we also have a fair amount of ball busting and sharing of old stories that many people, most people, perhaps all of you or none of you have heard. And you can find Dave, and I highly recommend you check him out, at GorillaJiuJitsu.com. That's gorilla like sniping from the trees, not gorilla like silverback. And you can Google Dave Camarillo BJJ to find the site very easily. You can find him on Instagram, on Twitter, at Dave Camarillo, and on Facebook.

I believe it's just Facebook.com forward slash Dave.Camarillo. But this is a fun one. We get into tactical training, military training, everything from fights in ice hockey and how to think about those, to using a flashlight in a hallway, to how his mom is the best sniping shot in the entire family. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with my old friend, Dave Camarillo. Dave, welcome to the show. Thanks, man.

That was a dramatic inhale. I'm just tripping out of your place. Well, you know. I feel like a little kid, like, what's that? What's that? Where was that come from? A lot of walnut. There's a lot of foliage on the wall. It's a museum. We do have a deficiency of wine, but it's a little kid like what's that Where was that come from There's a lot of foliage on the wall

It's a museum We do have a deficiency of wine but it's a little early for that And we have No We have quite the history And the history of wine But we've known each other for probably 12 years

It's gotta be It would have to be The earliest memory is us running away from mass hysteria at an mma show god the morocco where there was whatever it was like a stabbing and then swap police and me going like trying to protect your booth that you had or whatever it was it was complete chaos i remember this this was at uh casino god knows where and somewhere in california yeah but i recall driving there in my mom's shitty hand-me-down minivan which i needed so thanks mom but it was it was not impressing the ladies or anybody else

and we were not impressed dave was not impressed uh no romance ensued so i parked that outside and i had this i remember this booth it was again basically against the wall and there was a fighter there who was a member of a biker gang and all of his homies sat in one of the back rows i guess no they sat in the front rows and then some other drunk idiot got upset and threw like a double gulp or something towards the ring hit one of these bikers in the back of the head and the guy was like oh yeah turned around pulled out a knife and stabbed this guy in the chest and then all hell broke loose i remember this that was the craziest mma video and i've been to a lot and that's that was nuts yeah it was

it was complete pandemonium and i remember crawling up and basically rock climbing like bouldering up the side of the wall to get off of the floor because people were just trampling yeah the table and then you came by and saved my ass and grabbed me and pulled me back into i guess the one of the warm-up rooms or something. And at the end of that, I remember I went outside to go to my car a few hours later after everything had cooled off, and there was blood smeared on the side of my minivan. And I was like, okay. On your minivan? Yeah, on the side.

Like somebody had been bludgeoned or shot or stabbed. There was blood just smeared across the side of the van. Because there was an additional round two, round fight outside oh that's nice yeah it's always nice so uh yeah so we know each other from that let's see some other color for those people who'd like some context i have told a story many times that you're a part of but i've never mentioned you my name don't worry it's not too incriminating when i mentioned the story of me outsourcing my dating and the booking of dates, this was in Willow Glen when we were living together and we had a lot of wine one night and we were having a debate about what could be outsourced or not. And the bet was, I think, a case of wine from your

mom, I think it was. Yeah, she worked for gallo yeah exactly so for those people who are wondering the outsourcing your dating story that i've told a few times uh dave was the inspiration for that yeah that pops up like my i got word from gallo because they you know search for those key words and all that and they told my mom and my mom told me and like do you know a tim ferris yeah he's pretty cool dude i don't you know uh anyway and at the time uh you were living at my place and i'll give it just another another dave story that comes to mind when people are asking me about i remember uh i was being asked at one point because i went to iowa and got to watch the olympic trials with dan gable which was a dream come true hope to have him on the podcast at some point and someone was debating

someone else about headgear now i'm not saying you should or should not wear headgear but i remember one night at my house uh you had an ear infection and you couldn't get the q-tip into one ear and i was like man i got a lot of problems i don't need to add to that list i like to i should be able to screw up your modeling too you know what i mean the modeling your earring modeling career is out i can't wear those what you're wearing right now i can't wear the earbuds because i have it on the inside of the ear. Like normally it's really cool and you can see it from afar on the outside. But when you get it on the inside, it messes up the whole thing only on one side. That's my,

that's my dog. That's my self-defense system. We'll be talking a lot about self-defense. The, so for those people who are wondering what this is referring to, it is what is known as, or referred to as cauliflower ear in Japanese, tako. And you can check that out using the Google machine.

So Dave, what are you keeping busy with these days? I travel a lot. I'm doing a lot of traveling. I think... For what? What I'm trying to do is, what I've always tried to do is answer every question instead of just answer one question. And it's been good and bad in my life. And right now, I'm using martial arts as a kind of a framework to problem solve in many different areas. And right now, I'm working with my academy. So,

we have a guerrilla jiu-jitsu academyies in Pleasanton and San Jose. So that's kind of the base of what I'm doing right now. And when I'm traveling, I'm traveling to train military, law enforcement, and other affiliates and just people who are jiu-jitsu enthusiasts, self-defense enthusiasts, MMA enthusiasts. And at the same time, I'm still cornering fighters and just getting them prepared for, you know, kind you know and that's just kind of a there's so many different contexts there jiu-jitsu judo wrestling mma self-defense and i have to like quickly transition and problem solve depending on who's in front of me and what what they want so we're gonna we're gonna jump into an example of problem solving that we chatted about a little bit earlier when we were eating omelets and drinking coffee.

But MMA fighters, who are some MMA fighters people might recognize that you've cornered? I think the most famous would be Cain Velasquez, John Fitch, Josh Kosciuk, Mike Swick, Daniel Cormier, all of which who exceeded outside of MMA in other areas of fighting, like kickboxing, things like that, wrestling. That really added to my understanding of not just gi grappling, that's what I started with, judo and jiu-jitsu, but understanding how to increase pain thresholds by being punched in the face understanding the motivation for movement which is being punched in the face in the context of fighting fighting in self-defense but also mainly for mma competition so one of the things that has

always impressed me about for instance your your teaching I haven't been cornered by you because I'm not qualified remotely, and I need to keep the brain cells that I have. But when I visited at the time, a.k.a. where you were then, and took your class, what stunned me was how the baseline for your students seemed to be higher than other places. And what I mean by that is I've been to many different schools and good performers, meaning good competitors, aren't necessarily automatically good teachers, although they might think that they are.

And frequently the teaching method is kind of a technique du jour, right? The instructor's like, well, what should I do today? And they sort of roll a 20-sided die if they're Dungeons and Dragons nerd, which they probably aren't, but they come up with something and they sort of roll a 20-sided die if they're dutch and a dragon's nerd which they probably aren't but they come up with something and they teach and there isn't really a cohesive framework or progression or a foundation that they build very well and when i when i went to the first class and then repeated that and came back i noticed that everybody was kind of uniformly difficult to deal with and that was because you'd you'd used a logical progression to build a foundation that made them difficult to deal with uh like attacking at angles and just a handful of kind of first principles that made them very formidable you've also taught

am i making this up i might be sometimes i do but did you teach if it's good just keep just use it did you teach chess at a period of time i know you did you did yeah now uh do your approaches or have your approaches to both of those been similar in any way or has one informed the other chess and and fighting i think uh the overall like developing a framework is where you start like i need a framework is where you start. Like, I need a framework to understand how to achieve a set goal. Okay? And then you just, you know, switch between different situations. What's the context?

If it's MMA or Jiu-Jitsu or whatever it is. In chess, it was pretty simple. I'm like, how do I make this as simple as possible when I'm teaching kids who've never done chess in their lives? What I do is, you know, I got to get my pieces out so i understand that you know and then i would talk to people is that is that a thing you want you want to get your pieces all right you want to control the center okay i call it the bridge control the center and then you want to start formulating an attack very simple do those things those three things understand what each piece does, and go. So the technique is understanding what each piece does. To me, that's the simple part.

To me, technique is one of the most simple aspects of getting good. It's your framework. It's your understanding how to develop, how to desensitize, how to develop a strategy to implement what you know and channel it for green lights and avoid red lights so like in fights for example mma green lights are very like quick meaning like you punch and it lands on the guy's head you know a red light is if i punch he moves and he counters and punches me and so we're constantly finding these green lights. But if I'm trying to find these green lights in a situation where somebody's really, really good,

and especially like jiu-jitsu, because it's so convoluted, there's so many variables, and I don't have a strategy behind that, I don't have tactics, then I'm kind of reactionary. I'm just kind of like, when you do something, maybe I'll do it. And that's a skill in and of itself, is a very good skill to possess, to develop. But it can't be everything. Your initial is, what's the main principles to start controlling the mid-ground? Control that mid-ground, neutralize and control my opponent. Take them out of their game, provide these principles, execute these principles, and

neutralize. I think that's the key word is neutralize my opponent before they start gaining confidence and gaining ground on me. What are some of the differences in your, let's just say how you teach a novice in jujitsu compared to perhaps other schools? What are some of the things that you focus on or don't focus on in the beginning? So first, a lot of people talk about jujitsu and they talk about, I have this type of jujitsu game and a lot of them, I think, need to start at a fundamental framework for a game. What does a game mean? A game is essentially how you play the game. And everyone may be slightly different,

but you quickly identify i would say the most utilized positions for top and bottom so it's like mma on the ground like you have a top and you have a bottom and in jujitsu is very simple you have the attacking positions for top or side control mountain back for bottom those would be defending those advantageous positions and then there's guard, which is where most of the positional struggle comes from. It's hard to attack from top, trying to open the guard in this case. And on bottom, you can defend attacks. So on the bottom, you're trying to attack. But the idea is to see now how many guard systems are there. There's three main ones,

closed guard, open guard, and half guard. So that's six positions multiplied by top and bottom. That's 12. So if I find go-to moves out of 12 positions, I have a game. Because I'm set for no matter what happens. Even if I get swept, where are you getting swept to? What position are you ending up? It's one of those six. And then you immediately kind of just jumpstart your game by understanding, I have two moves from that position. That's how a beginner should take it. They should, I mean, you talk about it all the time, simplify.

Keep it really simple, but get good at being simple. So in the case of, say, guard, what are some principles that you underscore underscore and i'm associating two with you and i want you to tell me if these are right or wrong uh but one would be walking your shoulders in and getting sort of flush with your hips to the extent possible and the second is positioning your torso at an angle i don't't know why I associate that with early on training with you, but there were a handful of things like that that's similar to the three things you mentioned for chess. Yes.

I found if I weren't rolling for, say, 6 to 12 months, but I just kept those things in mind, the rest would come back. Right. It's control grips, stay busy with angle, and destroy your opponent's posture. And if you're doing those things, they're constantly having to adjust to what you're doing. We have a saying in self-defense, you're either behind the curve or you're ahead of the curve. And in this case, when you do things like that and disrupt base and constantly grip fight and get good at that

or constantly attack him because angles are an attack, then you're chasing your opponent down the alley he's not chasing you he's going to eventually stumble and you got him how has your so for people who aren't familiar i'll give a little bit of context and obviously uh they feel free to jump in at any time but those who don't have martial arts background you have judo let's just say and uh contrasted with jiu-jitsu so judo one could think of as primarily a standing game although there is a ground game but they get stood up very quickly so a lot of throws very dynamic it's an olympic sport

then jiu-jitsu you have a primary focus on the ground uh and that could be of course positional advantage but then you have submissions so chokes or joint locks and then there's point scoring systems and so on much like judo just so everyone's up to speed on vocab also you mentioned with a gi for those people who don't know that term

that means a uniform you could think of it as not the Cobra Kai type uniform from Karate Kid which are cool but they don't have sleeves so you need sleeves uniform you could think of it as uh not the cobra kai type uniform from karate kid because they didn't have really cool which are cool but they don't have sleeves see need sleeves and uh you use the uniform and that is uh when we're talking about grip that can apply to the use of the fabric itself or without that no gi practice then grabbing the wrists of the head and using sort of clinching positions similar to wrestling the last piece for those nerds out there who want to know what gi is in Japanese,

it's actually the same character as ki in kimono. So there you have it for the Japanophiles out there who want to nerd out. How has, because Dave, you're well known for coming from judo and competing at a high level and then developing a very high level jiu-jitsu game and combining those elements. So guys would be like, all right, I don't want to get triangled, so I'm going to stay standing. And then, uh-oh, flying armbar later, something you became pretty well known for. Then they would say, all right, I don't want to get flying armbar, and I'm going to go to the ground. And then they get say, all right, I don't want to get flying armbar, and I'm going to go to the ground, and then they get triangled. Are there elements of judo that you still apply in your jiu-jitsu or teach in your jiu-jitsu?

The sense of urgency that you have in judo that does not exist on that level in jiu-jitsu. It exists in MMA because you're getting hit in the head, but the idea is I need to move. I'm very obligated, very motivated to move because I don't have a lot of time, especially when you go on the ground. As you talked about, judo has tachiwaza and newaza. Tachiwaza is the standing technique where we throw each other. Newaza is the groundwork. We're vying for position. We're looking for osaikomi, which is the incapacitation of your opponent on the ground. And when I hit

the ground, I grew up in a culture of I don't have a lot of time. I really got to get something going because if you don't progress your position, the referee will just halt the match using mate, restart the match. You've lost your opportunity on the ground will just halt the match using mate, restart the match. You've lost your opportunity on the ground. And so rules dictate behavior. So you see a lot of judoka who don't focus on the ground because there's not a necessity to do that. Things are changing now, but Travis Stevens did an amazing job in the Olympics on the ground because he cross-trains. And I think I was maybe one of the first person to start cross training um and the reason why i cross trained is it it's something new like how many uchikomi can

you do in judo uchikomi is repetition of half throws we're doing this over and over in this and when i talk about the difference between judo and jujitsu like i've drilled you know a seonagi for example which is a judo throw or a ogoshi which is a hip throw where you're controlling the hip and you're throwing your opponent on his back i don't know a hundred thousand two hundred thousand times yeah because you can rack up a thousand of those in a workout or oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah and then five a day or five a week times two sometimes twice a day um so that whole 10,000 hours idea. But how many of those did I get in competition? Not even a fraction, it's like less than 1%. But the idea is my mind

is ready to commit and commit at the right time and not at the wrong times, find those green lights. But the second you hit the ground, if you're going to take advantage of another opportunity, you need to educate yourself. And back then, I just don't think judo had a structure that jiu-jitsu possesses on the ground. And so, part of it was my ego saying, you know, jiu-jitsu guys are not doing anything I don't know. The other part was, well, maybe they are. And I have to figure this out and find out. And I remember the first time I went to Half Gracie's Jiu-Jitsu Academy in Pleasant Hill, California. And he was submitting me with his hands behind my back, or his back, not my back, or hands behind his head, actually. And I was trying to pass his legs, which is his

guard. And he's on bottom, I'm on top. And I have all of this angst, and 19 years old, I was like a world-level competitor, and I was really, really fast and young and dumb, you know how it is, and I couldn't pass his legs. I'm still dumb, I'm just not fast anymore. And we're not young anymore. But I couldn't pass his legs, and next thing you know, he's like doing sankaku jime, the triangle choke position off his back, and I'm like tapping out you know he's like doing sankaku jime the the triangle choke position off his off his back and i'm like tapping out and he's not using his arms and i'm like

isn't failure awesome like that was a point in my life where i was just like man it's failure over and over again and i'm glad at that point that i had the ego to keep rebooting and driving forward and do the same stupid thing over and over again. It's like... Because then you knew it wasn't a fluke, right? Like if I put my hand in fire, you're probably not going to put your hand back in fire. But I'm glad I kept putting my hand back in this fire and getting burnt and burnt and burnt. And it really elevated me to like, there's something here that I don't understand and i need to do for the rest of my life and and i i've had that many aspects of my life and every time i come to a new corner

it's the same you know i do this mistake like we did combat when i started getting into combatives i remember the uh shock knife training have you ever done this do you remember this i i don't remember this you might not have done it but i've never used a shock knife it has scarred me both physically and emotionally so i'll never you should explain what it is okay so shock knife training we're kind of jumping all over the place shock knife training is essentially adding uh the motivation of pain to a supposed like real life situation so like a scenario knife attack a knife attack. A simulated role played knife situation. And we would have our hands,

and I would teach this in MACP. They call it MACP, Modern Army Combatives Program. I'm level four certified, which is the highest. But anyway, through that training, I put my hands on the wall.

MACP is pretty good. Rap. Stage name also. We're not there yet. It's coming. Don't worry, guys. We're gonna get to dave's freestyle continue my hands are on this wall and the instructor's like face forward and there's like six guys and we're all side by side hands on the wall like like a i don't know police line or

whatever i don't know and then he would throw the this shock knife and essentially what a shock knife is you can grab it it's got a blade part a handle part and it's got this really cool button on it when you press the button and it's cranked all the way up by the way because there's a level you can throttle you know this thing up you press the button and you see the sparks on the blade you hear it which is probably worse than seeing it and then feeling it which is even worse than that and essentially it's not going to scar you physically so much as it is like mentally like i've had best friends that i hated because we're doing this drill so they would throw the shock knife now by throw you mean just touch you with it no no they would throw it on the ground and we all had to fight for it

and it's turned on it's ready to go you'd have to press the button and stab people wow this is some so sci-fi lord of the rings and we already the first before the drill starts everyone gets shocked right so they're like you know what's coming we mean business so we're clawing fighting cursing to try to get this stupid, and I still have it, this shock knife, and stab each other with it. So it's basically like a taser in the shape of a knife? I mean, effectively, it's a sort of electrified... But it doesn't incapacitate you.

Right, got it, got it. Which is worse, because then you can be held down, which I was, and essentially shocked over and over again by john fitch who's my stupid partner hey i got it let's partner you up because normally you do it with just you should explain who john is for folks john fitch is one of the best fighters at welterweight in history so he was ranked number two for five years when i was training him pretty good gsp and ufc he's now the current world uh uh what's the the event he fights and i'm sorry i don't know the exact he just won a big world champion title and uh he was also uh was it wrestling captain at purdue at purdue

captain at the american kickboxing academy for the Mixed Martial Arts Program, which is probably the best in the world, in the entire world. And he was a guerrilla jiu-jitsu black belt. Is there anything else we could talk about? No, no, no. And he outweighed me by 20 pounds. And I've sparred with John.

Sweetheart of a guy. I mean, if we say. Super nice guy. But you put him in a shock knife drill. Yeah, you have a real task on your hands you could be blood brothers yeah and then ruined relationships like just throw a shock knife and train and then then the idea is like the second somebody got it and it's kind of a double-edged sword he becomes the enemy and you have to collectively work to take that shock knife away from him. There was different variations of the drill.

And I have video of me using very colorful language, being held down, sweating. And my partner on top is John Fitch, where he could do that just punching me. But hey, let's give him a knife now let's talk about problem solving because i've always admired how methodically you can think through for instance as you mentioned earlier the 12 conceivable was it yeah 12 conceivable positions right so if you have your go-to and then your backup right i'm just thinking about say say, half guard is particularly a weak position for me that comes to mind where having a go-to and a backup and just having those two, it's like, no, you're not going to accumulate 27, work on getting really good at those two. And that saved my ass

in situations where I was caught in a relative position weakness because I had, I was able to act quickly also having those two defaults so the point being problem solving you're good at it and thinking through the different permutations of positions uh talk about or share what what you were explaining to me earlier we only got part way through it so flashlight hockey go go um so i tend to get random texts i would say problem solving texts and they could be jujitsu related judo related from different students uh my buddy who's a retired marine sent me a text he's like do you have a curriculum fighting with a flashlight i'm like no but give me five minutes and i say that

with confidence essentially because i've done so many different types of training with different people under different rule sets or no rules or whatever the situation in different environments and everything i say right now is just running down the stairs of variations and variables and and just to underscore something that people may be wondering you also are no stranger to weaponry and you know how to use firearms you know how to use these various tools and have a lot of experience it's not like you're uh combative naive going into it thinking about doing some type of gee choke as the only approach in some self-defense.

Right. So yeah, you're, you're somewhat creative understanding that you're increasing your, your, your spectrum of, you know, tool sets.

So I grew up with, with parents who hunt and I grew up killing my own meat and, and shooting. And, and, and then when I started training military, I did a lot of, you know,

firearms training with pistols. Who's the best shot in your family? M4s and stuff like that. My mom is the, hopefully my dad doesn't listen to this, but my mom is the best shot in the family. She's a different kind of shot or shooter than my father. My father can do it under stress very quickly. Like an instinctive shooter. Instinctive shooter he he shot a uh it was a i

think it was a a deer running 50 yards in the head and we i mean the bullet happened to hit the deer in the head but like like i said like he he can quickly bring that gun up and pull the trigger you know and get things going apply those those incremental, fundamental nuances quickly. Where my mom, if you give her a rest, she's like a sniper. Like, rest, just hang out, 400, 500 yard shots, no problem. Which, coincidentally, is not that uncommon. There are historically a lot of uber successful female snipers. Every time we go shooting, you you know if i take a student or

something and i can see the difference between men and women very very quickly and and you know there's it seems that there's so much more patient willing to accept failure go down the list right um so my mom has been an amazing i would say influence on on accepting failure to a crazy type a personality that i've developed probably since the womb but uh so you so you have this familiarity with weaponry which i just wanted to make clear to folks that we're not dealing with someone who's speculating uh did he give you any parameters on the flashlight so i said well i want a little bit more of the story like what's the situation well home invasion hallway you're surprised

um because i would i would think if you're if that's the case then you maybe have a gun or something but um in this case okay so i'm restricted to the flashlight i'm like okay so put that aside for a second and i remember recently putting together a fight camp for a hockey player plays in the nhl one of the top teams right um and he came down for a four-day fight camp and i'm starting to get good at like developing these fight camps that specifically cater to individuals that fight, but under different rules. It could be judo. It could be jujitsu. In this case, hockey, NHL. So, I talked to this guy. I forgot his name. I think it's like Scott McIntyre. You know,

excuse me if I'm wrong, but he's, you know, full on like Canadian accent. And I was doing research. Okay. So, I'm talking to this guy. I'm'm like you were a bruiser you know so give me some feedback he was an enforcer he was he's an enforcer and he's retired my buddy gave me his number so i'm like i'm trying to do research and i need to talk to somebody who's been in the field been in the hockey field but been in fights but why not talk to someone who's a bruiser who's really good at it right and the man i want put him, you should have him on the podcast. Just listen, just do that. You would do this.

You go explain hockey fights and then put the mic in front of him and he will just go. Sounds like a great episode. I've met one enforcer and I have to say, if the rest of them are like him, they are terrifying.

Yeah, so it's the same. It's the same. And like he goes back and forth between, yeah, you could get brain damage, but man, I like the way that things used to be, you know, and we would just fight and it was just about, you know, the guy, especially when I had kids, he would just try to take food off my kid's plate and all that. And I'm having a great time, but I'm also learning. It's an education because under those specific circumstances, the rules change and there's technique. Like these guys know how to fight. So how do you fight in a hockey match? Okay.

So since you have a jersey, which is very much like a gi, you know, we have that friction of grabbing. The best place to grab is inside the shoulder. Inside the right shoulder. Yeah. So if he moved forward on you, he's immediate, there's a backstop with your grip. There's a backstop with your grip if he moves in.

Okay, so if you grab, for instance, around the sort of where the pec meets the deltoid on their right side, you're basically blocking their dominant arm. So if you're right-handed, you're going to use your left. Yeah, got it. To control a few things, control his movement so you can move him up, down, left, right. You can off-balance him like the kuzushi we talked about.

So kuzushi, just so people understand, because we mentioned the uchikomi, but not kuzushi. Kuzushi is breaking of the balance in judo where you initiate the breaking of the balance of your opponent. And then, what is it? Is it kake no kake is when you i think kake is when you place your body then in the throwing position and then nage is when you're throwing so yeah kuzushi is throwing off balance right um so you're able to able to control movement but you're also able to defend against his right hand so if i'm using my left hand i'm defending against your right hand hopefully you if I'm using my left hand, I'm defending against your right hand.

Hopefully you're right-handed, but they'll make adjustments, right? But when the gloves go down, you have to know, I would assume you would have to know that player played against that team before. You can nerd out on this and go, I think he's a right-handed player,

but then you see a stance. Then you're like making these quick adjustments. You get your grip and you're also kind of shielding yourself with that grip. So you'll raise your elbow as his right hand comes across to try to connect with your head. You can use your helmet also like a shield. So we're nerding out on all these little details. That's the right, left side, sorry. Right hand, which is I'm right-handed. I'm punching you in the face or in the body. I'm clearing your grip because you're trying to do the same thing to me essentially

and i'm uh parrying and blocking and trying to make you go down before i go down and he'll explain all this this guy mcintyre guy he'll explain all this and then he goes but really you just got to be tough on the other guy and just keep punching him really violently until he goes down like he would go back and forth between here's the technique, but then in the end, just get out there and just beat the guy up. You know what I mean? Like it just became like, like detailed to totally like a bonfire of just recklessness.

You know what I mean? You know, it's so funny about that. It makes me think about at one point when I first started doing Muay Thai and I haven't trained in any any of this stuff in in ages so i mean a pomeranian could kick my ass right now but the uh it's true uh the when i first started training in muay thai i hadn't done any thai kickboxing that was legitimate up to that point i mean i i'd done kind of like mall ninja kickboxing, which was like, you know,

1980s flashy shit. And I remember going in, I'm hyper analytical and I'm taking a class with this incredible world champion dive fighter. And we're talking, he's talking to me or, you know, trying to talk to me about teaching mid sort of mid kicks, right? Like body kicks. I'm like, well, should it come up? And his English is not fantastic. And, uh, body kicks i'm like well should it come up and his english is not fantastic and uh i'm like well should come up this angle come straight in come down like you want to hit the ribs do you want to go for right under the armpit you're saying this yeah i'm asking all these questions and he understands the question he looks at me he goes he goes don't matter just kick harder and he had all the sound effects he used to try to illustrate and he's just like what are you talking about just fucking kick him really hard

that's all you have to do it's like oh okay he's like yeah it doesn't matter where you hit him it'll hurt just kick him really hard I was like oh okay that's awesome that's exactly how it was in the end you just gotta be tough so you're studying the you're thinking back to the

hockey parallels yes to the hockey parallels. Yes. To the flashlight assignment. So if I develop a curriculum where I'm using elements of the hockey kind of fight, I would say, you know, range, like you can call it hockey pocket, like because we call it the pocket in boxing. You're right there where he can hit you and you can hit him instead of fully clinched like if it's a home invasion i don't know who they're with and you get surprised you know what i mean like around the corner whatever that's the kind of situation that we're dealing with and and then you have a flashlight so that's that's the kind of like parameters i'm working with the first thing i would do is is get a grip to control

the threat you're controlling the person in front of you um and then utilize the flashlight and remember it it's it's going to sound violent for people but you're in your home and you're protecting your family situation kind of and so i even started nerding out on the grip on the flashlight like so i know mma has hammer fists i mean we can punch straight hammer fists is just like i have a hammer in my hand so i'm bringing my the blade of my wrist down on the body or the head not the back of the head because i don't want to break my hand but traditionally in the in the what we call the triangle of the head so the triangle of the

head is kind of like like third eye yeah all the way into the jaw line to where you can essentially either blind them by by creating uh fluid in the eye because you know you i can poke you in the eye and the fight can be over really is because you can't see me all that happens all the time um and just for people who are having trouble visualizing hammer fist imagine uh andre the giant in princess bride how he punches sort of smack such a good big guy on the top of the head or if you prefer uh blood sport the redneck his first fight i'm dating myself here but um yeah you make a fist and instead of hitting with the front of the fist you're hitting with the bottom of the fist effectively but if you haven't seen those movies come on you have to yeah to be culturally relevant and respected of hitting with the front of the fist you're hitting with the bottom of the fist effectively but if you haven't seen those movies come on you have to yeah it to be culturally

relevant and respected i think in the united states you need to watch both of those but uh continue so i'm forced to face you know this threat you know usually we'd have tactics to kind of get offline we do this in jujitsu we do this in everything we do so if i'm offline i'm outside of your radar meaning if you're facing forward and i, we'll just keep it easy, like I'm behind you, you're not punching me. But if you're coming up the stairway, or turning the corner and it's a narrow. Or if you're against the boards. I can't create angles.

Or I'm against the board, not hockey board. You mentioned something earlier, the creating the T position or going to T. Fighting to a T. Right. Like the letter T. No, no, no, understood. Yeah. So you're basically trying to get your shoulders, well, you want to a t like the letter t no no understood yeah so you're basically

trying to get your shoulders well you want to be standing at the side of your opponent because you can hit them but they can't hit you yeah and i mean that's that's good boxing so i get an angle punch you and as you correct i'm getting the angle because now we're both moving in the same direction so i pop out in the other side i can't do any of those. So I have to develop worst case scenario in the pocket, a savage situation where I have to quickly kind of escalate things. And so you grab the, yeah, you grab the flashlight, you blind them, you grab them, and you proceed to use the flashlight as a tool, we'll say.

On their triangle of pain. Right. Prefer pain right so the idea is you can develop these do you have a favorite flashlight for such a situation yeah there's a surefire there's a really good yeah it's like a 511 it's got that you can i carried it everywhere it's in my backpack right now but you can like break windows and stuff like but you know you know how they like market things like you can break windows like well i don't want to break windows and stuff like that. But you know how they like market things like, you can break windows. Like, well, I don't want to break windows. Like I would never break a window. But if I had to use it. But they can't say, I guess maybe their legal team's like,

no, you can't say we'll rip the iOrbit out of any assailant. So just say it'll break windows. Well, that's the idea though. But if it's like me or you, like I got to use my surroundings. That's the idea behind self-defense. It's not just my empty hand capabilities, not just all these principles that we talk about like getting angles and things like that we're just like I strip you of all that then what do you got well I got a pillow I got just you know I can use it as a distraction I can do all kinds of

things like that but uh we're surrounded by tools you know and that's one of the things that I've learned over the years is use your surroundings like Macgyver you know what i mean but in a self-defense context you know so a question for you then uh about and then i want to talk a little bit about cornering fighters uh self-defense what are the biggest misconceptions about self-defense or uh unhelpful or dangerous things that are commonly taught for self-defense i think let's start with what's i think the most important for somebody who doesn't have a lot of a lot of time to train i think that's a better start so i think understanding i would say uh a conceptual understanding of how do I avoid certain circumstances, certain situations.

So for example, law enforcement will have on a board of different cities and then put tax on there on different crimes, like violent crime that tend to accumulate in certain areas. This is just the way I explain it. Well, don't go to those areas. So avoid these conflicts like it's it's very simple don't like you taught me one time you know if you don't want like eat chocolate if you love chocolate but you know it's bad for you don't have it in your house right you know what i'm saying like i learned that from you i'm like man so i don't have any chocolate in my house um but avoid like avoid like literally like

avoid don't being caught off guard for example like don't sit at the table right next to the entrance in the coffee shop with your four thousand dollar laptop yeah exactly exactly um but don't allow yourself to be distracted don't allow yourself to to look like a victim so i i teach people to like own their. The way you walk, the way you carry yourself, because the bad guys will just say, right? They're very much like animal predators. They look for weakness. They don't want an entanglement. They don't want to struggle, like a shark even. It's assessing fat content versus how much struggle will it be to end that life to consume it. I don't want to injure myself. And so the idea like, I don't know if you see like really strong, confident looking

people walking around not looking at their cell phone getting attacked. I mean, I'm sure it can happen, but you're lowering the ratio to which that you can become a victim. And I think that's the first part of avoidance. It's not what technique can i use right now it's not putting yourself in a situation where the likelihood of something bad happening it's lowering the likelihood the same reason that i've stopped in my advancing years uh staying out really late it's just like past 1 a.m. It's like the likelihood of something awesome happening is like 1 in 20. I mean, the likelihood of something- The freaks come out at night, bro.

It does. It's true. But also like otherwise normal people turn into complete idiots or savages when they have had three too many drinks. Oh, yeah. So understood the situational awareness from a technical standpoint if somebody

is let's just say someone's had a scary encounter they almost got mugged or they did get mugged they're like you know what i need to develop some repertoire i live in a bad neighborhood i can't move right now i just need to have the ability to defend myself uh without maybe maybe without weapons uh what would your advice to them be so you're walking out without weapons but you potentially could face someone with a weapon that that's the thing like how far like the question arises how far are you willing to go to actually defend yourself you know i mean that's that's the first question so what's your threshold what's your mental capacity to you know know, dig deep and make it happen? Make your family safe.

Make yourself get out of that situation. Sometimes it's assessing the situation for what it is. Then there's another part, desensitizing yourself to many things. That's what jiu-jitsu does. Getting grabbed, getting choked, getting punched. You know what I mean? If I get punched, we'll talk about that for a second. If I get punched and it rattles me, then I get punched again,

it rattles me again, and then it just continues. It spirals. An MMA fighter gets punched and they either smile or they move their head before you punch them. Or if you punch them, they're like, okay, cool. I'm going to fight, cool. Because they've been there so many times. Like getting lost or say traveling, I use this analogy. If you travel and have never been to a certain city and you tell me all about the city,

but I'm going to get lost. I've been there 10 times. The next time I go there, I'm like, okay, I know where I'm at no matter what. I'm barely paying attention to driving. It's just like, I got it. No problem. It's the sense of comfort that you develop under stress. So, like immediately when something happens, you know something's going down, what's your mind doing? If it's freaking out, then it doesn't matter what technique I teach you because the will to execute is going to be stagnant.

So, this makes me think of a conversation i had with a woman named whitney cummings on this podcast and she's a fantastic stand-up comic and i asked her if you had to prep someone to go do an open mic in i think i gave her four weeks how would you train them and she said night one and every night thereafter, I'd have them get up on stage for 10 minutes because stage being comfortable on stage is 80 or 90% of it and materials at most 10%. So you got to get comfortable on stage. Does that mean that if you're training someone in jujitsu, for instance, or combatives that you have them spar very quickly, how do you simulate that?

If you do just getting them comfortable with quickly. How do you simulate that if you do, just getting them comfortable with discomfort? Incrementally. And I look at the client, like I look at you and I'm like, what is this guy used to? So let's say he's like military, but has never sparred before. We can start kind of in the middle.

We'll do drills. We'll do specific drills where we face each other and we punch each other, but you're blocking, but it's light punching. And you, as a good coach, you control the intensity level so that there's no it's not getting out of control there's no emotions because during this training and i've seen it all at different levels but it gets emotional like you punch me like hey that was too hard what are you

doing i don't verbally do that yeah you know i come back at you right and then it's like that cartoon where like you know one little knife and then a gun and it just keeps escalating until you see the little world and they're big oh you know what i'm talking about like spirals out of control and emotions and people forget that we're human beings that we should be civilized and all that and that goes out the window see a good coach has to control the intensity level to which these drills are experienced but if i have somebody who's never done anything it's incremental and you you work on their pace but everyone has the i would say ability to push their envelopes escalate like move i would say upwards from where they're at it's just like you said you learn by doing like whitney cummings she said get out there yeah get on stage get out

there and and anticipate failure because you're going to fail right away. So if you were, let's just say, we're not talking about military, we're talking about civilian, non-military who maybe lives in a scary neighborhood. I mean, we're in San Francisco right now. There's some gnarly neighborhoods

where people have been shot, where people get robbed. I mean, there's certainly more than a handful of spots. And because it costs $4,000 a month to live in a broom closet here, maybe they're in one of those neighborhoods. And let's just say they are 35-year-old female, former high school athlete. So little athletics, non-college okay so it was like a competitive making this up soccer player and has maintained a decent semblance of shape but none is non-competitive uh and she's talking to her friends going online she's like okay well i don't think i'm gonna do any esoteric chinese kung fu or anything like that but i've narrowed it down to tai kickboxing uh judo jujitsu

krav maga and boxing what should i do? Okay, so I've seen at least all of those. So I've seen Krav Maga. I haven't trained it, but I've definitely studied it as a student. Not as a student, but like observing it from, I'm like, because I'm interested in everything. As a researcher. I think Krav Maga is excellent. The only thing is it, there's a spectrum for everything. So low intensity to high intensity, right?

It's very high intensity. A self-defense encounter also has a spectrum. So the number one goal of a self-defense encounter is to de-escalate the situation, to make things safe and calm. Now you can throttle up and throttle down to make that happen. If you're only used to throttling up, you're cutting out 80% or 60%, whatever. You're cutting out the lower end of that spectrum. So for example, I'll give you a perfect example.

Muay Thai too. Muay Thai is like dangerous stuff, man. But I was in my house and I had a friend who got intoxicated. And he was so intoxicated everyone handles their alcohol differently but he started becoming obnoxious and touchy and pushy well he pushed somebody i care very much about and i okay it's like red flag and i started getting in between them and he was thinking it was a joke And I remember the moment to which I had to go hands on. I'm like, okay,

I'm going hands on and I'm kicking this guy out of my house. I ha he has to go. I'm not mad at him. It just has to be resolved. He, this has to be resolved. Well, let's say I only did like Muay Thai.

I like Muay Thai. Am I going to clinch him and knee him? And you know what I mean? High kick him in the head. I'm not saying that's what you would do, but like you're're you're you're the palette with which you can paint is limited to things that are going to inflict and what you're serious damage yeah and so i use jujitsu in a standing position he was standing i'm not throwing him on the ground i'm just going to use jujitsu well i wrapped his arms up because i noticed he was also remember this is my friend and he's still my friend i don't care like just that's the way just no more tequila shots yeah exactly i'm trying to yeah uh so i wrapped up

his arms because i noticed he had a knife on him and i'm not saying that he's gonna use that knife but few things going on just my perspective i decided to go hands on which means i'm not turning back once i've decided i can't turn back because that invites him to continue the behavior which i don't want it's gotten out of hand and i'm desensitized enough to be composed to not throttle up and to see how the threat can spiral and get worse so if my end goal is to de-escalate the situation i don't want to give him an opportunity to escalate it any further right if you and so if i if you give him some kind of like push kick and then he whips out then he starts

or whatever you know because i don't know what's going on in his head maybe now it's like survival so he grabs the knife he doesn't maybe he doesn't maybe he's out of his head and i don't want to hurt my friend so i wrapped his arms up and put him against my my door and he couldn't even move so i i neutralized his ability to escalate by getting a knife or whatever it is, or even hitting me. And I was able to look at him face to face while wrapping him up and say, hey, man, you need to calm down right now. And then that tone comes in to totally tell him, physically, he knows he's under control.

Now it's verbal. Hey, I'm giving you an out right now. You need to calm down right now or it's going to get much worse like i'm not yelling and screaming but i'm very firm and like this is your only way out essentially is through my door so that we don't have to what happened anymore i got him out okay so he slowly calmed down and realized and literally you could see a switch go off like, okay, wow. First off, he didn't realize that it had gotten out of control. Yeah. And then he realized how much control I had of him, which I think helps him come to that first conclusion.

And that's how you deescalate a situation where not all self-defense confrontations are life-threatening. I mean, they could spiral like we talked about, but he's my buddy. I don't want to hurt my buddy. It's just one of those things. So when your system that you choose, in my opinion, and this is what we nerd out on and focus on, is understanding and giving you the tools that you need to be composed and also throttle it up if you need to and throttle it down. That starts with mental composure, but we have the technique to do that as well and control the elements that would give you the opportunity

to kind of spiral things out of control. And that's what law enforcement, same thing with law enforcement. Oh, even more so with law enforcement. You know, and that's why it's very tricky with law enforcement because they're dealing with life and death situations. I don't think I was, you know what I mean? But I'm prepared for it. But I don't think I was.

Would you therefore recommend jujitsu as step one for the 35-year-old former soccer player, female, living in the Tenderloin in San Francisco? 100%. This has no relation to me you know that being my business and like never ask a barber if you need a haircut lesson number one like that surgeon i asked him do i need surgery he's like yes you're like oh wait that's wait you're a surgeon paid for i had a torn bicep and i'm glad i did not get the surgery let's just say uh okay so i had this conversation on my podcast. I'm like, what is the greatest martial art?

What is it? And I'm always reluctant to say jiu-jitsu is the greatest martial art because I'm very big on, I need to get to a point where I can say that with extreme confidence. Because there's always this, like, I see a lot of people that, you know, you have a jiu-jitsu black belt who only did jujitsu. Say jujitsu is the greatest martial art in the world. I'm like, I agree with you.

But why? Like, why do you think it is? You know, I've sampled so many different, I've been so uncomfortable training, shock knifed, on the bottom of like Cain Velasquez punching me in the face, doing shooting drills. Big, big, strong unit for any, for those people who don't know who he is,

you should look him up getting, uh, yeah, grounded and pounded by Cain. Probably one of the best heavyweights in the history of UFC. Um, you know, that all the way to using very simple controlled techniques and movements to

corral someone out of my house you know that's the spectrum that i deal with but that's jujitsu it we offer it with our system and i see like in a lot of other arts it's not necessarily that capable without without saying like we're better than you you know i'm not saying that i'm saying there's something for everybody but if you're telling me 34 year old school teacher who's never done anything in their lives you have to check out jujitsu because a lot of the situation especially women that potentially could find themselves on the ground right because the motivations are often different right it's not someone trying to kill you it's someone trying to rape you right now if

you're 20 years old and or 15 years old or whatever it is and you just want to do mma and you want to fight professionally well then do go do mma that's great but you better have good jiu-jitsu anyway you know what i mean like that's such a component it's it's what i call a universal usage it has universal usage you can compete you can nerd out on the self-defense aspect. You can apply it to MMA context. You can use it in self-defense. Guys can use it going to war. You can do it forever.

It's the one sparring I would say art that you can do forever. Hey, Tim, right now, I'm going to ask you a question. You ready? I'm ready. Do you want to do Randori, like Judo Randori? No. Right now, hard 100 now hard 100 no i do not no what's randori randori is free sparring and uh yeah you're gonna you're gonna catch some

hard corners no matter what so just imagine for those people don't understand we have that gi on and and we're grabbing each other and we're trying to lift each other off the ground with technique off balance you lift you off the ground apply our're trying to lift each other off the ground with technique. Off balance you, lift you off the ground, apply our technique. And then once you're off the ground, essentially I have total control of you. So I will slam you on the ground as hard as I can. And the harder and the more on your back you land,

the more pure it is and the more chance the match is over. The more points you're going to receive. And that's essentially the goal. Go. Yeah. When you're 40 years old, you don't want to do randor

but we can still me and you get our geese on or nogi it doesn't matter and actually grapple in jiu-jitsu and do it pretty much for the rest of our lives like we talked about with a good partner so the longevity aspect of it it's it's outmatched in the sparring arts. You can spar. We can go back and forth and have resistance and have a set goal of you choking me, me choking you. A couple of just random, they're not really random, they're related to this. But I'm so curious, because I don't know if I've actually asked you this. What is your go-to technique?

This is called Tokui Waza in Judo. It's kind of your specialty for throws throws what was your tokui waza tomonagi tomoy nage so it's a beautiful throw so for those people who are wondering what the hell this is it's it's kind of like the captain kirk throw he did this in star trek once where you pull the guy put your foot on his stomach and then kick him over the top but there are a million and one variations to that um just one recommendation for people if you want to see a guy who used this at a super high level hard name to spell kashiwazaki this guy named kashiwazaki yeah kashiwazaki was not only exactly not only a tomoy Nage specialist, but a ground specialist. He was one of the greatest of all time.

One of the greatest. And he would use Tomoe Nage to throw people into a mount, he would be in the mounted position. So he is one of the, he was one of the, I don't know if you knew this, he was one of the very first

Japanese high-level judo competitors to cross-train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He cross trained? Yeah. Oh yeah. I did not know that. Yeah. I picked up a Japanese magazine maybe 10 years ago and it was,

it was Kashiwazaki and some Brazilian guys he'd been training with for ages. So not during his competition. I don't know. Or during the early years. It was. So all I saw was the, it was the headline in an article in this magazine that i used to love when i was in japan from 15 to 16 called uh kakutogi tsuushin long

story kakutogi is martial arts basically kakutogi um yeah kakutogi tsuushin so i used to always buy that magazine and then i'd i'd skip all the professional wrestling bullshit and go straight to the mma stuff which at the time was called uh i guess it was sogo kakutogi something like that back in like the pancreas days and all that before ufc and when ken shamrock was known as wayne shamrock in japan for some reason i have no idea why and he had long hair this is way way back i remember man yeah way back in the day wow and uh so kashiwazaki if uh k-a-s-h-i w-a-z-a-k-i it's worth looking up but so tomoyanagi was your your go-to another guy flavio canto flavio canto canto where's he from brazil and he spells last name c-a-n-t-o okay flavio canto friend of mine he's he had good newaza as well and i think that's i mean it's pretty simple like i like the ground

i like the tachi waza what's your favorite throw a throw that i can kind of do both that gets me into a great it puts me in a position if i don't get ipong yeah uh okay so tomoy nage that's a great one akashi was i could do this amazing thing but it's not a universal throw what do you mean by that it's not a good self-defense throw right and i and i make that point because a lot of people go down these like rabbit holes and they do things that have nothing there's nothing very little relation to sure a universal sense so i can do it in judo i can do it in jiu-jitsu i can do it no gi so no uniform i can do it in mma i can do it in self-defense what are your favorite so my favorite standing techniques in judo i would have to say are foot sweeps

because they're just so beautiful yeah when they're done properly do you have any favorite foot sweeps oh yeah uh sasai it's like sasai tsurikomi Ashi. Yes. So that's the long one. S-A-S-A-E. I encourage people to look this up. It's a beautiful throw. It's so beautiful. And wrestlers can do this also. Yes.

From an underhook position. You see that... It's universal. Even at... Exactly. At the high NCAA levels, you see people... I don't know what they call it

in English in wrestling, but from underhooks, you'll see people do this. It's a beautiful throw. So for people who, like a foot sweep is essentially taking somebody, sweeping their foot out like it says, but you can have their feet go above their head,

their head go down, and them land on their back. Yeah. I think it's the quickest way to embarrass somebody. And it looks like a magic trick when it's done properly because you'll you'll see these x i mean people are masters in this they'll time it they'll get the person and and you see this type of practice a lot and you know they'll entrance the person almost into walking and shuffling the way they want them to walk and shuffle and they'll time the steps with sort of unweighting of one

foot and in that millisecond like that nanosecond it's kind of like the instant that all of the feet of a horse are off the ground when they're racing tiny little motion with the foot and this person just levitates they go completely horizontal moves like that and and understanding how you elevate yourself as a martial artist like mixed martial arts, and just being young, being physically able and fast and athletic, I've realized all of the movies we've seen that have martial arts and fighting people, they're more accurate now than in the beginning. I'm going to try to make sense of this, but in the beginning of the mma revolution what do you mean by that because the beginning of the mma revolution was essentially seeing two people actually fight like that hasn't been done before the the revolution on on a large scale horian gracie made this thing called the ufc and then you know put these styles against each other right and then it started people started realizing like

wow so all that we've been lied to yeah and and you can hear a lot of the in the beginning they're like you can't do any of these other those are flashy you know uh i'm not going to mention systems but like that's not going to work the the movies lie to us and the reality like now that we've seen it progress and move on you can do anything yeah you can make it work and and and the and the foot sweep is one of those techniques that you're like no this is impossible to someone who doesn't understand it you know it's in movies alone but i can do it and i've done it on many times on untrained people who go hey dave like you do martial arts right i go yeah my cut I used to do this on my cousins

when I was younger. But anyway, and I would throw them all over the place. And they would just be like, their minds couldn't wrap around, you know, like you said, it's like magic. Like how do you get the timing down? How do you do this? Well, you do it over and over again. You can accomplish anything. Rocket science is not

rocket science if you're a rocket scientist. You know what I mean? If you've done it over and over and over again but i've seen guys you know that street fighter 2 spin move where the guy lowers his level and then spins and kicks sure yeah i've seen guys do that in sparring and knock each other down and then go over and punch him in the head in mm in high level mma in in high MMA. Well, I mean, you see that in the early, early UFC. We're talking, I guess, what, 92, 93? No, it would have been after that. It would have been probably around.

92, I think is when it was. It was around that time. Yeah. For a few years, if you got mounted, you just tapped. Over. Oh, no, it's over. Checkmate. Over.

I'm done. I mean, that doesn't exist anymore, i mean that's that's the the idea i mean your your manager would kill you you know if you were just like he mattered me i had to tap that doesn't happen now and then you have people doing i'm blanking on his name uh anthony pettis was it no i don't know if it was pettis who did like the matrix kick off the side of the octagon who was the first might have been Jose Aldo I don't know

and I think he has was it Taekwondo back there? Might have been Pettis yeah yeah Pettis who did the matrix kick you can do anything you want you can run up the wall jump off of it and punch someone in the head and knock them out and it's happened that's what's amazing about fighting

even if you're not a fan. What can the human body do if you give them this set of rules and inspiration to be a champion and then go? Incentive too, right? I mean, you see a direct correlation in any sport with the amount of money that comes in and the amount of talent that comes out because you have people now who have since they were five years old in the united states been training in jujitsu and then shortly thereafter mma you know i remember i was talking to we were chatting about jaco right jaco willink former navy steel commander who's been on this podcast and he was showing me at one point a video of his son sparring in jujitsu and jaco himself is a black belt and trains mma competitors in his spare time

and i said oh that's amazing how old your son 12 how long has he been doing jujitsu 12 years and he's 12 it's like wow throw that fetus throw that fetus on the mats uh and uh the so the the level and the incentives are there right right? To fuel rapid evolution in the sport. What has been, what is your job in a corner? When you're cornering a professional fighter in a fight? It's to be simple. We don't, you know, he's, and generally you can have three corners, but like, generally the fighter is going to hear one guy and it depends on the guy like they are very accustomed to one they have that channel so even though there's three people one guy generally will

talk during the fight that's during the fight so they make that connection that verbal connection they they because that tend to be the person who has spoken to them during sparring yes and there's other variables like sometimes it's just their voice their voice is easy to pick up because you have all the noise and just like bob cook you know bob crazy bob cook oh yeah he's one of my biggest mentors in the mma uh field probably one of the best corners in the world. You can hear him no matter what. He's got a distinct voice where you're going to hear it. If it's like a rougher voice, it kind of just, it's like white noise.

Just gets lost. You know? So, that's one variable. The other variable is who are they comfortable with? Like, you know, you can build this camarader um with somebody who's maybe not even there in in training camp very often but you have this trust and you want them in your in your corner kind of thing what do you think contributes to that i think it could have been past training sessions it could have been um they they met on a they just connected naturally through their relationship it could be their brother you know like nick diaz nate diaz you know what i mean like they have that kind of

connection side note just to further encourage youtube shenanigans uh what is the best video that people could find of you sparring with your brother uh there's a video i don't even remember the name of it but it's camereo brothers sparring demo something i mean you can find it we were just way back but uh but your brother just as some context he's a martial artist yeah he's well you just you gotta understand my like my background i was forced into martial arts like i was pretty much programmed to be who i am today like my parents i think were brilliant um in that they put us in martial arts and it became like brushing our teeth like you're not going to get out of brushing your teeth you're not going to get out

of going to school right as a kid you're not going to get out of doing judo is your brother older or younger he's older and so we grew up with that like we were each other's best training partners four years apart which is totally unfair because the physical advantages are just too far away for me to match which is how mean the younger brother tends to be which is how it is um but he's a phenomenal judoka does jujitsu black belt like he does those foot sweeps throws people just destroys people he he's a vigilante like he went after a fugitive that crashed and in front of his academy do you hear about this it was all over national news i saw i saw a photo of it on your instagram it's absolutely but i didn't get the story there's another photo where he's posing like he's a superhero in his gi, just joking, but it's like he just finished.

So he has an academy in Bakersfield, downtown Bakersfield. He just finished his class and he walks outside just to get a breath of fresh air, whatever it is. And boom, this car runs into, at the light, runs into this other car. The guy jumps out, who initiated the accident, starts running down the street. The lady in the other car yells and screams, he's getting away. There's a helicopter there with a spotlight down. So he's like in his head, he's like, okay, this is,

I don't know, a fugitive. Like this is a, I got to go after this guy. So he assessed, like he even talked about, like I assessed like, does he have a weapon? And you know, because that's dangerous when you go hands-on situations like that runs after the guy turns the corner throws him on the ground wraps him up cops come in and take care of the rest he's all over the news talking about like i do jujitsu and judo because you never know when you're gonna need it you know

what i mean like it is gee you know what i mean like how ridiculous is that now i not to point out the obvious but to those would-be vigilantes out there this is not without its risks huge risk now just to provide a concrete example so we mentioned muay thai so the first gym where i got my lecture on like doesn't matter just kick harder was fairtex. And this was on Clementina at the time in San Francisco. Coincidentally, when I flew to San Francisco to have my first job interview after college, I couldn't avoid, I couldn't afford, excuse me, a hotel. So I paid for a fly-in camp at Fairtex, which was cheaper. And I slept upstairs. So above the gym in a really bad

neighborhood at the time clementina which is in a nasty nasty it's basically between fulsom and harrod between fifth and sixth really bad neighborhood i slept on a bunk bed with some of the other thai guys uh and wash my clothing in the sink so i have a long history with fair tax but the point being not a great area and alex gong i don't know if you remember this who owned the school at the time car crashed into into i think it was his car or another car in front of his gym the guy takes off without stopping alex chases him to a stoplight and the guy pulled out and he and he uh smashes the window out of the car because he's pissed at this guy, Alex, out of temper. And the guy pulled a gun and shot him

in the chest and killed him on the street. I remember the day that happened. And as do I. He was a good guy. He was amazing too. He was an amazing fighter, an amazing guy. Very hot temper though. If you want to talk about the

spectrum that we discussed, he was on. If there's an altercation it was going to be at defcon nine or yeah that's that's part of what i was talking about you have to assess the situation for what it is and what it could be and that escalated outside of his control you know you brought you know a fist to a gunfight yeah i mean that that's that's essentially what happened oh you're just outgunned yeah so so i took us off i took us totally off the rails um i don't even know where we're at now i don't know this is this is the state of my podcast it's just like watch it's like watching memento but with with like 15 different script writers uh i think we

were talking about what the hell are we I think we were talking about, what the hell were we talking about? We were talking about cornering. Yes, what do I do in a corner? And simple. And somehow your brother came up. And could you give me an example? Oh, and camaraderie.

I think this is how we got onto it. So when you're in a corner, what would an example of simple be? Because these guys have massive technical experience. They've put in a ton of training time what are the types of things that you've seen prove very useful uh just an example of you know get in boxing range i mean this is kind of a little technical but like if if our if the fighter our opponent is using a lot of kicks you don't want to be in kicking range which is essentially a little bit further away from boxing range because your legs are longer than your arms generally, right? So get in boxing range.

And sometimes you have to remind them to get in that range because that's where you're most effective because we're seeing who's effective, who's not, why. And so everything we say is very simple. Boxing range, get in boxing range and they'll make those adjustments or they don't you know sometimes you know depending on the fighter some are i would say quicker to adjust than others we'll just say right not that they're big-headed they just i think it comes more naturally um keep your hands up keep your hands up they're tending to fall you know um just keeping it real simple you know just reminding them of kind of what's going on the story and how to react to it um i i say this a lot also like if i

like how things are going stay on it stay on it it's working stay it. Because you're getting hit no matter what. If you go first round, second round, if you do MMA, you're getting hit. And sometimes when you get hit, you don't realize how much you're hitting them. Right. You change your tactic even though percentage-wise you're beating the living hell out of them. Right. Because there's this, in the back of your head,

I mean, it's a four-ounce glove, right? So in the back of your head, like anyone can knock anyone out. You know what I mean? Like you can take the greatest striker in the world and a guy who struggles with striking and if he's first simple math and you get hit good you can go down um so we just kind of just assess the situation for what it is and just throw tidbits out of here's my advice you know what i mean hopefully you take it maybe you don't and then if things go bad we adjust now when the round ends and we get into the corner and start talking we depends on how the round went if it was close we say hey you lost that round so even if we think we won the round but it was really really close we tell them it's close or

you lost so you need to go in the second round going okay i'm down one already and it's generally a three round fight if they show tendencies and everyone has a breaking point every fighter has a breaking point some are just you know they can they can handle more than others maybe it's genetic i don't know um but if they start nearing their breaking point you calm them down you. You tell them how great that last round, you're doing good. No, you weathered the storm. Yeah, by breaking point, is this physical breaking point or just psychological breaking They go hand in hand. Yeah, sure. You know what I mean?

Like physical could be I'm getting tired or I didn't get a good warmup on the first round or I'm starting to get to the third round and now I'm exhausted or whatever it is. Or it's like, man, that shin kick really hurt or that liver punch really really hurt and it's poker face constantly because it's like shark it's like uh blood in the water to a shark if you show that you've been uh if you've been hurt yeah you're showing your hand well it reminds me of uh i remember i was watching the world cup soccer and i was getting just infuriated by all these slow motion replays of fake injuries. And this rugby player from New Zealand piped up on Twitter and he said, rugby is 90 minutes of pretending you're not hurt and soccer is 90 minutes of

pretending you are hurt. You know what? I like your side note because it's hard for me to justify sometimes because I used to be a soccer fan. And I'm like, man, they fall, they play the rules so much. They fall so much. It's hard for me to justify it. I'm traveling to New Zealand and meeting, you know, a legend from the All Blacks. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm like, what do I say?

Like, I'm a soccer fan. They're like, well, that's cool. That's cute. You know, whatever. I don't know what it is. It's the only team sport where you can have cauliflower ear. You know, rugby. That's true.

So, if they're nearing their breaking point, you have to calm them down. You have to calm them down, man. You have to distract them like a baby. How do you do it? Okay, so how does a baby learn pain? By how their parents react when they fall down. So your parents go over there and go, you're all right, get up, let's go, come on, you're good, man. It's kind of like that. You're distracting them or you're just, hey, man, you're good, man, you're good.

Now, here's what I want. Right. So you're transitioning to that you're okay and here's what i want right so you're kind of you're transitioning to that you're okay and here's what i want out of this next round because you have to remind them they're invincible and that's whether they are or not yeah you know and everyone's different like you can have world champions in mma and they're not very tough relatively on the big scale of all of the fighters that exist. Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, there's the laziest, you know, what's a, like a military guy, like you think of the high elite military guys, there's a spectrum for everything. There's the Jocko Willink and then there's like someone who may not be that, you know, on it, whatever that means.

Sure. And so, you have to know that going in and understand his strengths and weaknesses and understand how he'll react to the way you talk to him. And then you got to hit that note. And you're stressed out. Because it's a weird thing. You have to like, I go to this guy's weddings and I play with his kids and then I got to go see him get almost knocked out in front of thousands of people.

You know what I mean? I mean, it's not war, but it's in your face and it's not table tennis either. You know what I mean? You know? Yeah, it would be a particularly vicious form of table tennis. I'm not sure what that would look like. Right. form of table tennis i'm not sure what that would look like but right uh how has that influenced or how how have all of these experiences impacted your thoughts on parenting if at all yeah maybe

the answer is not much but when you say all all of these experiences i mean i i grew up like i said with no choice do martial arts like and i see the extreme value in it i mean i i grew up like i said with no choice do martial arts like and i see the extreme value in it i mean obviously i'm biased i'm a car salesman and you come in with a you know a dented fender you know you need a new car you know what i mean like um i i i call it like this when we talk about like kids who go through training hardcore training like i have physically on a physical realm and many times on a mental realm they are so beyond their peers you know like try to bully one of my students it's it's just it's not going to happen like you're not going to be able to um so when we talk about parenting, it's like, I'm trying to find the balance between

the pressure that I experienced as a child and as a child of my parents and as a child of my parents who wanted me to compete and my dad wanted me to be an Olympian with the variables that exist today that didn't then. What do you mean by that? Do you think the crop of individuals trying to get a job today are different than they were 40 years ago? With different thresholds and different,

I would say, tendencies. I would have to imagine, yes. But I don't know. I mean, it's hard to know anything like that. But all I know is i know the difference between someone who's trained through an extended period of time and where they were when they walked in my door and so i know that training is going to be a part of my son's life for example uh i don't think that should be an option you mean you mean the it shouldn't be an option to opt out of that right like it's not an option

for me for for a child to go to school it's the same with training in my household right because we understand the importance of it and so i think the the single most though experience though that i've that has helped me you know i'm a new father what do i know i'm a white belt right now but is teaching kids and seeing the differences and seeing multiple kids come in starting from zero and even seeing that line of zero being totally different and scaling and them having different strengths and weaknesses at the start. And it started reminding me like, this isn't just nature or nurture. It's a combination of the two. I sincerely believe all kids are different genetically.

And if they're different genetically, then they're different physically as well. I mean, emotionally and physically. They have to be. Yeah. So I look at these little kids that just start and some of them are animals super fast very prone to do things that are athletic and then i see other kids that are

on the other side of the spectrum there is a spectrum and so with my son and me being a parent i don't know what i i've got to work with yet the materials yet how old is it's gonna he's uh eight months i'm a white like i said yeah my first stripe is coming pretty soon right about first right so when uh when we were chatting earlier uh having coffee you were talking about how there's there's always another level right who is the most uh impressive person or who has impressed you the most in Jiu Jitsu when you've sparred with them? Well, the GOAT. It's Marcelo Garcia.

And all of my experiences, I say that with confidence because I train with Rafa Mendez as well. Who is Rafa? Who is Rafa Mendez? Rafa Mendez is, I don't know, 13, 14 time world champion. I don't know. He's, I think, a six-time Gi, which is the uniform IBJJF,

International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation world champion, which is the biggest stage in Jiu-Jitsu. They don't have Olympics. If there was an Olympics, he'd be six-time gold medalist in the Olympics or whatever it is. But then again, that's every four years.

So he'd be like 42 right now. But anyway, you know, they both tied me in knots. But like, I just think Marcelo, because he can do what he does almost regardless of how much you weigh and your size. And, you know, whereas Rafa tends to stick to his size, you know, Marcelo Garcia's like, and this is why I admire him so much, I don't care who's on the other side.

I don't care who's walking in. I don't care if the lights are on in the arena. I got to my spot, and then here comes thud, thud, like Jurassic Park. He's so big making, you know what I mean? Totally. Doors open, and here's this behemoth with horns and drooling, and he's going to go in there.

Okay, cool. I'm going to take his back and choke him out yeah and then he goes and does that what did it so i've spent some time with marcello because he co-owns his school with very close friend of mine josh waitzkin waitzkin i've listened to your your talks with him yeah brilliant guy he's he's amazing really good dad too i can help him with chess if you want if you uh if you got his number or anything yeah so for those who don't know josh uh he's been on the podcast twice he was the inspiration for searching for bobby fisher both the book and the movie considered a chess prodigy but very skilled uh jujitsu black belt dedicated yeah black belt under marcello and uh world champion and tai chi push hands as well among many other skills but marcello just to your point

i remember chatting with him at some point nicest guy ever i mean super nice guy no attitude whatsoever no ego i mean like to the just the friendliest guy i'll ever meet and uh he was saying or maybe josh was telling me that marcello never practices anything that won't work on a 300 pound black belt he just that's it it's like if the technique if it's something he's going to practice and put time into on the mat it has to work against someone who's twice his size and extremely technical that's a universal mentality yeah that's outstanding and uh so what is it what does it feel like to spar with because i mean i have no i i can't if sparring like him sparring with me is like a polar bear versus uh

a shih tzu i mean it just doesn't make any sense um so what many black belts will say the same thing yeah uh many black belts will say the same thing about about marcella garcia training with marcella they might as well be a white belt wow and so like i think one of your guests i was listening to talked about like there are people that just jump on the mat they're just super talented and they're they're made for it bj pen yeah marcella garcia rafa mendez and so it gets difficult to track like when you're a new student like who should you listen to because it's growing so much because your idols are these freaks of nature you know you know i know firsthand yeah but how is it rolling with him it's a situation because i i'm genetically i would say prone to speed like i'm pretty fast and in judo i got very fast and i remember one of the first times we

engaged i was in a good position and my mind's like wow you're doing pretty good and then he's on my back and so it's like it's that split second where you're like you're i'm doing good everything is going great and then like i'm like am i gonna tap now or am i gonna fight this stupid grip that he has on my neck and then he taps me so it's one of those things where you have to be aggressive but not aggressive because it doesn't seem like

you can get a foothold on what mode and tempo is gonna work for this individual in front of you but we had some good battles like we had a lot of fun like the no-gi I had a lot of fun rolling with him but and I was younger i was like 31 at the time so i was like getting ready for my last match in competition so i was in good shape and so that's why it was important me to be in good shape to train with him on that level but uh yeah i mean it's it's amazing it's

it's amazing to be able to that's what one of the things about jiu-jitsu is like, if you're into soccer or football or basketball, you know, you can't meet Michael Jordan just because you want to. Right. You can't just call him on the phone and go take a seminar or go face-to-face with him. That's not going to happen. But you can go take a lesson from this guy. Yeah, it's incredible. Who's the GOAT the the greatest of all time i was wondering what the hell you meant by that the goat go yeah greatest of all time greatest

of all time yeah yeah he i'd have looked that up too yeah people people consider him like the wayne gretzky michael jordan mike tyson the you know fill in the blank icon of any sport combined i mean he's uh heard a funny story about marcello that you'll appreciate just the given the freak of nature comment he went to a rock climbing gym he's not a rock climber he went to a rock climbing gym with a friend and uh they had a diet what's called a dynamometer there it measures grip strength and these guys are like straining faces red and they're these these are beasts i mean these guys are incredibly strong and Marcel, they give to Marcel.

He's like, Hmm, pop and just breaks it. And they're like, uh, that's not supposed to happen. Never touched one before in his life. And they're like,

Whoa. Okay. Yeah. This guy's different. Yeah. It's ridiculous. And that, that will translate to other things,

you know? Yeah. And, uh, he, one thing that really impressed me about marcello and i haven't spent a ton of time with him just watching him teach and watching him move his you know one of his nicknames is the master of the scramble but he thinks about the

in-between spaces as much as he thinks about the positions which is really interesting like he thinks of the transition between two positions as a position. And thinks a lot about how to exploit that space. It's a trip. Yeah. It's a trip. That's what we talk about with being a step ahead, planning. But that stuff's not thought.

Yeah. It's reaction. That's locked and loaded for him. Yeah. There's no really delay. Oh, no no delay whatsoever uh let me ask a couple of i guess you call these rapid fire questions they're gonna seem like non-sec orders the answers don't need to be short rather they can be as long as they need to but are there any particular books that you've gifted the most to other people besides uh your own i mean besides the three that you you put me on the magic of thinking big the 80 20 principle the e-myth the e-myth was huge i mean particularly for my cheating but you're the one that yeah because i was starting my business at the time

you're like hey dave read this book yeah um and even after reading the book, essentially the E is the entrepreneur who's trying to do everything. And then sales fall because you're- The bottleneck. Yeah, your bottleneck. You're having difficulties doing everything with efficiency. And it's hard to, type A personality is hard to let go.

Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? It's hard to relinquish control, but now I'm much better at like i don't want to do anything it's weird sometimes um well you were asking me about you know the magic or you noted the magic thinking big which is sitting on my shelf here in my living room face out and then you asked about tribe which is also faced out by sebastian younger and i made the comment that I've organized, and I think it's functional OCD, maybe it's not technical OCD, but all of my books are very particularly ordered on my bookshelf and they're facing out. And so I have the books that are facing

outermost are intended to elicit certain thoughts or remind me of certain things so for those people curious i have tribe sebastian junger gratitude by oliver sacks less is more which is a it's an anthology of stoic quotes and thoughts on minimalism bird by bird by ann lamott a japanese book about tsume tsume sh, which is a long story, Japanese chess book. The Magic of Thinking Big, Dune by Frank Herbert, and then Zorba the Greek. So you mentioned The Magic of Thinking Big, you mentioned The E-Myth, and then... The 80-20 Principle.

80-20, which I also have up there at the very end. Which can be applied to anything. But I would say The Art of Wars is another one I have to mention. I have one of your books here, by the way. It's a book by Klausowitz on the art of warfare. I've had it since you were

at my house in Willow Glen. You left it there. And I've traveled with it now for 12 years. Good book. I try to find like something that will, like if I got to work out,

I listen to Slayer. Which album? The newest, the latest one work out, I listen to Slayer. Which album? The newest, the latest one. Oh, I haven't heard that. It's, you can always count on them.

Them and Tool. Yeah, Slayer's got some longevity. But the thing is, is like, it's a mood creator. It creates a mood. Like,

if I got to lift heavy things up and down again, which is, seems ridiculous and redundant, but you know, I get strong and all that, but I got to go in with an attitude of like, I need to smash this. So I got again, which is, seems ridiculous and redundant, but you know, I get strong and all that, but I got to go in with an attitude of like, I need to smash this. So I got to,

that's, that's one of the things I use day to day. I try to, I try to use a mode altering something, you know, if I need to smash something, it's Slayer. If I need to relax and calm down i'll

listen to uh 80s pop something like that you know what i mean we're talking mj what are we what are we talking about prince what's your go-to prince is great i just go random go so you're listening to pandora or how do you pandora yeah what's what's your station the album um i'm sorry so it's 80s pop? 80s pop. That's the station? 80s pop. That's what it is. Yeah. Every morning. I try every morning. It's hard to be upset when you're listening to Prince. Yeah.

When I first started meditating, and this isn't that long ago. That was probably, whatever, three years ago, let's say. The way I started is a friend recommended I listen to one song in the morning and just lean against the wall and focus on my breathing for the length of the song so i listened to it's time to party like it's 1999 it's hard to be upset with the world or depressed if you're listening to that song it's impossible that whole batman soundtrack was prince oh that's true that was the best thing

about the movie oh i liked it too uh do you have any favorite? Oh, you know what? I should thank you. So you mentioned a couple of books that I introduced you to. I'll thank you for two movies that you introduced me to. One I've mentioned before, still one of my favorites, Shaun of the Dead. Great movie. Must have. And then there was another one that I saw at, I want to say it was a birthday party for you. Is it Just Friends?

Is that what it is? Great movie. Oh my God. You haven't seen just so great christmas family wholesome movie i'm busy too you dick sorry you need to see the movie uh hot went to the premiere oh that's right we went to the premiere of hot fuzz after sean of the dead uh had already embedded itself in my brain. So do you have any other favorite movies or documentaries?

John Carpenter's a thing without even skipping a beat or hesitating. Really? Yeah. I think 84? Yeah, that's a movie that if my memory serves me right, took a while to become sort of a cult

classic, right? I don't think it was a cult classic right it wasn't i don't think it was a hit off the bat to me it's probably top three in the world that you know of all genres it's the sense of paranoia you don't really know what's going on and you can nerd out there's some people that i like really nerd out on step to step what's happening different clothing moved and just you know when the nerds get a hold of something oh it's just amazing that movie is amazing and it's i mean you shouldn't see when you're eight years old which is when i saw it but i think i turned out fine uh and then uh the other john carpenter movie um big trouble in little china that's a great movie yeah i love that movie that's why my wife is chinese that has nothing to do with it so uh from taiwan

and yes you or taiwanese i should say and you enjoy spending time in taiwan one of my favorite places taipei uh specifically but yeah taiwan i love taiwan i love being out of the country just to be out of the country um butpei is like Japan but the Chinese version of Shinjuku maybe you know it's so much fun I mean I haven't been back in probably ten years and I'm dying to go back because you have for those people who haven't been a lot of the culture that was in mainland China prior to the Cultural Revolution was effectively shuttled down to Taiwan. And then you had the Japanese influence, of course. So you have this very unique combination

of rich cultural heritage, incredible food, tropical climate, and etiquette. It's just a politeness. It's such a wonderful combination. And maybe this is common in other parts of china although i haven't experienced it myself it's like argentina in the sense that people go late there they have the night markets and i remember going into restaurants at like 11 12 1 o'clock and families would just roll up with their strollers. And I'm like, wow, all right, these people know how to party.

You can live and die in a single block area because it has everything you need. Doctor, optometrist, you can give birth, grocery store, everything in one little block. Good old Taipei. Taipei. Do you have any quotes or mantras that you think of often or live your life by? Or favorite quotes? Yes. From a friend of mine, I was training just a bunch of military guys, right?

In a room. And I was kind of new to this, so I was a little nervous. But teaching my class, doing my thing. And they were doing like a guard pastoral. So, they're all actively fighting each other, one on top, one on bottom. And it's my job to kind of reinforce like excitement in people and let them know they're doing well when they're doing well and be positively critical when I need them to adjust to behavior. So, I'm walking around doing my thing and i uh get to a group and i go we'll call him johnny and i go johnny that was the best guard passing i've seen all day that was awesome let's keep it going and i start walking and he stops the fight stands up turns to me and says i don't need any fucking positive reinforcement.

Turns back and jumps in and fights the guy again without missing a beat. And I remember being stunned and I'm normally not stunned. You can say anything. And when I teach a class and I stopped and I'm like, my mind's like keep walking you know and i remember dwelling on it and i'm like the first thing that came to my head is like where

the hell am i right now like i've never heard that in my life i don't need positive reinforcement what are you an alien uh and that has just stuck with me and and i don't mean to curse but you can't say it without cursing like you know you can't this is not disney program you know what i mean like you can you can you can't that's how it was said and that's the power and that's how i remember it and that's how it influences me and literally like i get charged just thinking about it and how does it influence you because it reminds me i'm not as good as I need to be. You mean just mentally? I think mentally, everything.

I really think that I shouldn't need positive reinforcement. I should do a task because I like the task. It's creative for me, so it's intellectually stimulating, and it's my job job and i'm moving forward i'm helping people and then i move on to another task once i once i complete that task i need to move on to another task and not sit there and wait around for the treat you know what i mean like it's not halloween every day like i'm not you know what i mean like i don't need but when i heard that i'm like i don't have the experiences this guy has and that's fine

i understand that but i'm gonna draw upon that and in my times of weakness i'm gonna say it as loud as i can and remind myself uh how great you can be as a human being i like that that's a good that's a good one i remember I'm gonna make a shirt I gotta make sure give it to your students I I remember at one point I was talking to my first my my first direct report I really developed a relationship first job out of college the VP of sales so I was trying to sell mass data storage to companies like DreamWorks and American Airlines and stuff. These storage area networks as they were called at the time, Fiber Channel. And I prepared for my first, he was known as a ball buster and he'd just been hired, brought into the company and people were kind of walking on eggshells because they're like,

yes, guy's temper. He's really good at what he does. He's been through three IPOs. He's incredible but like we don't know what to make of him and i'm like oh fuck so i spent all this time preparing because i had a handful of accounts to report to him and you know i came out of princeton so i'm really wordy and verbose and just over complicating everything so i bring in this just massive stack of stuff that i'm basically intending to read to him and i remember i'm like i'm like in extremely on edge and i sit down and being weirdly formal and then i i start reading this crap and uh i get about two minutes into it and he goes tim tim and i'm like yeah yeah

yeah uh yes sir or whatever and he goes he goes i don't need the story i just need the next steps and another thing he would say he's like i don't need the good news the good news takes care of itself what's going wrong and i was so awesome uh i like just to kind of go back to these these are similar stories like the idea where you're wasting my time with compliments and the weather is good like maybe it's my personality your personality maybe let's get to the point like and the other thing is whatever i say you're not going to be butter right you know like i've been environments where i was even like called out in front of a bunch of people and i'm like okay cool yeah because wait wait wait i want to hear i want to don't i want to hear about this we don't get butter

by the way that's an expression that a lot of engineers here have started using and they don't is that just engineers i don't know no it's not just engineers but for whatever reason it's become really popular and one of my buddies runs this huge company and you have to like have a he's like look i'm not really political correctness guy but like if you walk in to give a presentation like 50 people who are not part of your little like cave clan of five hardcore engineers like you can't say butthurt to everybody guys is that is that bad no seriously like i don't even what does that mean like someone kicked you in the butt or something no no i'm making hand signals but the uh so so this is this is a light bulb going off but uh so what you wait you said you were dressed down i didn't i know it

no no you're good you're good so it's just an environment you know when you train no no but what happened can you talk about it you were like called out or dressed down or something yeah so i was just i was advising on a specific path of training you know like this is in the military context military contracts let's do some training with this let's do it with in this situation and let's do it with this gear on and this and whatever and he's like no we don't do that it's bad you'll get hurt and then it was like same guy by the way and then just moving on like all right and then i just went to the next thing yeah because it's like and i may not have been there if i hadn't been surrounded in that environment it has really

changed me yeah well so you became the average of the five people you associate with most i i was listening to your drunk dialing last night and that's exactly what you said the first guy's like how do i raise my kids you're like okay make sure they're surrounding themselves with people um sometimes you have to check yourself and do you know but that's that's so true you you become who you're surrounded by and these experiences have just motivated me and just blown i was telling you this morning i'm like i'm happier now than i've ever been why the stars are becoming aligned like for the first time like i'm learning like yes i do have control over this this and this and i need to make this change and and adopt this and um carry that residue of awesomeness and you know to avoid the earlier comment uh

sensitivity that i think could cloud your judgment did i do a good job on that that was good that was a good recovery nice nice recovery thank you thank you i have a book for you by the way i'm gonna give you a copy i have a stack of these copies about face so we'll take it by uh it is hackworth yeah david hackworth that is jaco's favorite book beautiful uh okay if you had a billboard and you could put anything on it gigantic billboard so in other words if you have a message but like a short message you want to get out to the world what would you put on it aside from you do not need positive reinforcement man that's gotta be the best um it could be that i think it would just be you know i can't wait for christmas

you do love christmas it's my favorite time of year right now the trifecta do you listen wait halloween thanksgiving christmas rapid fire like spikes and like smiles you know from coming my way like do you listen to okay this is a this is an important question uh do you only listen to christmas carols very close to christmas okay so what's your policy it depends i think i start mid-november mid-november which is early it'smber. Which is early. It's early. But it's not super early. I still rock the same way. I picked up finally because I have a Christmas cup for coffee and I used it today.

And I'm like... So you retire... I like preserving things. So you retire that cup for the rest of the year. Oh yeah. What does the Christmas cup look like? It's just got like a reindeer and like a Christmas tree on it and it's beautiful. It's my favorite coffee cup. And like,

so when we talk about like, like those biohacks that really elevate your mood and all that, when I have that and it's, you can smell the cold, you know what I'm talking about? Sure, I get it. The new cold coming in, you know,

the change of weather and you know, families around. And now I have my son and my family. It's just like the greatest thing in the world. Winds around like you just yeah it's just i want to hug everybody yeah and then choke them hug them and then choke them it's it's it's a it's a fine line you can go from you can go from hugging to choking really quickly my mom growing up was like trying to throw her on the ground you know like she was so tough i mean like there was no real hugs it was hug to gain proper hand position and did you was your mom a judoka as? Like she was so tough. You know what I mean? Like there was no real hugs. It was hug to gain proper hand position.

So wait, was your mom a judoka as well? No, she was just super tough. She was just a sniper. She was a snipe L400. And that was dinner. Can't wait for Christmas. That's a good one. I can't wait for Christmas.

It's true. What are you doing for Christmas? What do you do normally? I've taken my parents, you know, my parents are getting older and I took a hard look. I read a book

and it's one of those books where you learn kind of 50% of what you need to know from the title, but it's still powerful and I want to say it was something like,

this is not it, but it's happier spending and it was written by, I think it was it was it was written by i think it was two social scientists or two sociologists and not very hard science but looking at how you can spend money more effectively to improve the quality of your life looking at the categories investing the types of experiences and purchases that based on studies however um flimsy uh based on the data that is available that are available for those nerds uh what type of purchases are going to improve your quality of life and i read a piece by tim urban i think is his name pretty sure

on a site called wait but Why, which is brilliant. And I want to say it was called The Tail End. And it had a huge impact on me. It was recommended to me by another person who's been on the podcast, Matt Mullenweg, really impressive guy. And it effectively said by the time, and I'm paraphrasing here, by the time you're 18, you have already passed something like 90% of the total hours you will ever spend with your parents before they die. It was something like that. And it shows you in both graphics and prose and math, how little time you have left with your parents on the planet in terms of total hours. And so for the last few years, I've taken my parents on trips for Christmas to places that

they might not, well, that they otherwise wouldn't visit or couldn't visit. So we took a trip to Eleuthera in the Bahamas where my parents used to spend a lot of time, long, long time ago, and my grandparents were still around, but hadn't been back in whatever it was, 20, 30 years. And spent another Christmas in Iceland. My mom had always wanted to see the Northern Lights for her entire life. And I just looked at my expenditures. And I was like, even if I had to dial back in other areas, yes, it's going to be expensive, manageably so, but not inexpensive. But so what? I mean, what am I saving for?

And I tend to spend, I don't spend a whole lot of money. I don't have an exorbitant lifestyle. I don't own a car. I don't have extremely expensive habits. So for the last two years, we've done that, but I'm really eager to have a Christmas at home, meaning at my parents' place. And so we're going to stay home this year. So that's what I'm doing for Christmas this year. But if you, let's see, how old are you now? 40. 40.

So what advice would you give to your 30-year-old self, if anything? And what are you doing at 30? what was i doing at 30 yeah like where where were you what were you up to i think i was realizing and taking i would say listening to some really close people good advice to create my own small little empire essentially you know my guerrilla jiu-jitsu have you know create academies and just really really you're no longer a competitor be the best instructor you can be kind of thing um i i think the best advice i would give myself is just when i say like like enjoy yourself more, not have fun more, but enjoy yourself more. And I think there's a difference.

I've had so much fun in my life. Fun to me are like quick spikes of parties or whatever, whatever it is, celebrating this or whatever. But enjoying it is, I would say, more sustainable and like i had you know i've had issues of just focusing too much on what i'm not in control of what i'm not doing what i should be doing um instead of and i learned this through the years but instead of uh just dialing in what will make me sustainably happy so to get there quicker i think that's the best way i would say it is man enjoy yourself like you have a lot going on not that you know that whole thing like oh things could be worse no no you have a lot of greatness going on a lot of good stuff surrounding

you a lot of good people an amazing family um like you talk about being more mindful you know of of of the goodness in your life and i think uh enjoying life like enjoy bro enjoy life man yeah appreciating it no appreciating it and i think i've learned that now i wish i had learned it when i was 30 or maybe 20 but uh that's number one you know you know that's gotta be it you gotta savor it uh when you can and i think for it's particularly hard for type a personalities like you or like me to do that because we're so kind of target focused objective focused next next next uh i think that uh it's something you have to train like anything else Dave

we could go for hours and hours and I think we might do round two at some point that was fun man it's good seeing you though it's been so long I miss you bro I miss you too man before we cut out

favorite this is not a good question but I'm going to ask it anyway Missy too, man. Before we cut out, favorite, this is going to be such a, this is not a good question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Both Gi and no Gi, favorite guard pass. Favorite guard pass,

just random jujitsu stuff. Gi and no Gi. Gi, stack pass. Stack pass. And that's where you stack the lower part of their body on top of their upper part of their body and you drive it down towards their spine which is not healthy for your spine right i call it the pass that makes your opponent hate jujitsu right the nogi pass

is flying kimura flying kimura yeah nogi tends to get really slippery or mma and so like i i said my book i said create chaos now which book is this for people this is the one you were in i think it was the one you were in yeah yep what's the title uh submit everyone everyone if you want to see photos of me getting armbarred and choked in various positions and doing some weird shit with my legs one of my fans pointed out. I don't know why I'm like trying to figure for, you'll see, it doesn't make any sense what I'm doing, but I'm getting my ass kicked anyway. So submit everyone. Yeah, it's a flying submission.

So traditionally, like you control the legs to get to the side control to score points. That's what you're talking about referring to passing. Instead of passing, because that's what they think I'm going to do, I'm going to jump either to a guillotine or kimura my kimura is my favorite my buddy jared invented this flying kimura from guard and i'm like flying what what yeah i gotta do it i like jumping and then submitting people um so i think like if things are like headed in a certain direction and people are like this is what's gonna happen you do something totally off the wall. Ridiculous. And they're not going to expect it.

What's Jared's last name? Fearbend. He's a guerrilla jiu-jitsu black belt. Fearbend. He's a beast. He's a really good dude. Minnesota. He's got a great academy.

I mean, kind of same experiences, but Black Arrow Martial Arts named after, I think, a movie, like one of the Hobbit movies or something. But he's just really into like... What is it with all the nerds converging on jiu-jitsu? martial arts named after, I think, a movie, like one of the Hobbit movies or something. But he's just really into like... What is it with all the nerds converging on jiu-jitsu? I only hang out with brilliant people. Let me just say that.

He's one of the guys I love to nerd out with. And where can people find you online or elsewhere? Where can they get more from you? Social media, you can go Twitter and instagram at dave camarillo.com or at dave camarillo the dot com is gorilla jujitsu.com g-u-e-r-r-i-l-l-a jujitsu jujitsu j-i-u j-i--S-U. The gorilla is more like an orthodox crazy method of doing something. Right. Less

hairy back, more ghillie suit. Right. Very cool, man. Thanks, dude. This is awesome. Thanks so much. And to everybody listening, you can find links to everything we've talked about, Dave's books, Instagram, social,

probably videos of he and his brother beating the living shit out of each other, and much more in the show notes, which you can find at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. So spell it out, 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And as always, and until next time, thank you everybody for listening to the different show. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just a few more things before you take off. Number one,

this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's

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