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"This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it."
1:16
"Alright guys, thanks so much for listening in today. I just wanted to go ahead and before we get into today's content."
1:20
"Just thank everyone for your responses to the previous podcast."
1:23
"I know that last week's podcast kind of struck some chords in some people."
1:28
"Got people a little bit sensitive. People didn't know what to make of the title of the podcast."
1:34
"And I completely understand that, but we just really appreciate all the people that responded to us."
1:39
"Whether it was positive or negative, even all the sensitive comments, even the dumb comments."
1:44
"We're fun for us to read at least, but we just really appreciate that people actually got the content that we were going for and understood."
1:50
"The concepts that we were trying to bring up and the fact that we were really trying to make sure that the podcast served as a wake up call."
1:56
"So we really appreciate all the positive things that people have said."
1:59
"But let's go ahead and get into what I'm going to be talking about today."
2:02
"Today I want to talk about my first six months of training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu."
2:08
"And so I know a lot of you out there actually train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or have done things that are kind of similar to that."
2:14
"Or done different martial arts, maybe judo, wrestling, karate, something like that."
2:18
"But I just want to really go through all the things that I've learned and the things that I've done so far really on my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu journey."
2:24
"And so I guess the best place to start would be just, I guess, talking a little bit about my athletic background."
2:29
"So I have played sports my entire life and it's all kinds of sports."
2:35
"So I mainly played baseball growing up, but I also played football a little bit."
2:39
"I did a bunch of pick up basketball. I did a little bit of wrestling in junior high. I was a collegiate soccer player for the University of Central Oklahoma."
2:47
"So we were in the same division as KU, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, OU, Arkansas, kind of those types of schools."
2:55
"But the thing that was interesting about my athletic background is I played everything. I experienced everything."
3:02
"But there's a different concept between how much fun you're having playing something and then how much fun you're having practicing something."
3:09
"Okay, so I enjoyed playing baseball more than any other sport growing up. A practice was kind of a drag. Baseball practice, you're not doing a whole lot of conditioning."
3:18
"That's kind of when people make fun of baseball players that they're not in great shape. It's usually because they're not."
3:22
"But baseball practices are just kind of boring to me. Just kind of going through the motions. You put down your two buns and then take your ten cuts."
3:29
"And then you go out and shag fly balls and then you basically run through all the different defensive positions."
3:36
"And there wasn't a whole lot there that I could get excited about, I guess. But growing up of all the practices of all the sports that I went through, I always enjoyed wrestling practice."
3:46
"For whatever reason, I don't know why I feel like I know why now. But at the time I didn't know why I enjoyed it so much."
3:52
"But it was just that feeling of being completely exhausted and your coach saying, 'Alright, well we got one more drill.'"
3:59
"And just having to really dig down and figure out how you were going to get through that next drill because your lungs are burning. You feel like your body's about to give out. You just have sweat pouring off your nose and you've got a big puddle near you where you were doing your drills and everything like that."
4:12
"And so it was always something that I really, really enjoyed. So that's one thing to just kind of establish a little bit of my background. But also from an early age, I had a pretty strong interest in mixed martial arts and just fighting in general."
4:27
"And so one of my earliest memories of my dad and I, my dad, we went to Hastings, which is a little video store in Lawton, Oklahoma, my hometown, and we rented a VHS tape of the first Ultimate Fighting Championship. So UFC 1. And so some of you got to experience it the same way that I did. Some of you don't even know what a VHS is. We'll work with you guys later.
4:50
But the thing is, it was such a cool thing to experience with my dad because it was a unique thing. It wasn't boxing. It wasn't, you know, just another NFL game or major league baseball game.
5:00
And so for those of you who weren't familiar with what the UFC looked like then, if you're familiar with it now, but then it was a tournament style type of thing.
5:09
So it was all in one night. And so if you ended up winning this tournament, you had to fight three times in one night and win them all, right?
5:16
But the big difference between then and now was at this first UFC, there were no weight classes, no rounds. There were no time outs. There was no time limit, really.
5:26
And so subsequently, there were no judges either. And there were only two rules at the time. There was no biting and no eye gouging.
5:32
And so, I mean, you could even do crotch shots. You could do a lot of different things that you couldn't even get away with, even close now.
5:39
And basically, you won by either knocking your opponent out, submitting them or your corner throws in the towel, you know, corner stoppage. And so the whole point of this, and really, when you go back to the beginning of the UFC, they were just trying to figure out what was the best fighting style, you know, because there's all these different fighting styles from around the world.
5:54
And so that was kind of the point of the first UFC was to figure that out. And so at the first UFC, these were the different things that were represented there.
6:02
So there was Taekwondo, there was American Kimpo, kickboxing, boxing, sumo, shoot fighting, savat, which is kind of like French, French style of boxing, striking.
6:12
And then something that's called Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And so again, I'm a kid. I don't remember how old I was and I was maybe seven or eight years old.
6:20
And, you know, you're thinking, you've seen your entire life, you've seen boxing, you've seen kickboxing, you've, you've heard of Taekwondo and those different things.
6:27
And you just didn't assume that some of those styles were going to necessarily translate, but the big favorite going into this tournament was a shoot fighter by the name of Ken Shamrock.
6:37
So a lot of, you know, that name out there, you know, he did a WWE career somewhere there in the middle, but he has spent most of his adult life fighting professionally.
6:45
So he was the heavy, heavy favorite.
6:48
So as the tournament starts, you're seeing all these, you know, you have this big sumo guy and you have these smaller guys fighting and it's, it's crazy. If you think about it now through the lens that we look at fighting now, it was just absolutely absurd and absolutely ridiculous.
7:01
But there was a semi final match between Ken Shamrock, again, the heavy favorite and some guy named Hoys Gracie.
7:09
But when you saw his name on the screen, it looked like Royce. But anyway, Hoys Gracie, I don't even know if the announcer's got his name right.
7:15
And Hoys won his first match by submission, but it didn't seem all that impressive.
7:20
It was just, you know, he kind of went out there, did his thing. No one really knew how he won. We just knew that he got his hand raised at the end.
7:25
But he was just kind of this weird, skinny, like wimpy looking guy that was just like wearing white pajamas and you're just like, you know, this guy weighs like a hunt.
7:34
I think he weighed in around 170, 175 pounds.
7:37
It's like this guy is going to get absolutely shellacked, especially since he's going up against Ken Shamrock. And obviously, if you know the history of the UFC, you know what happened.
7:47
Ken Shamrock got submitted in under one minute by Hoys Gracie.
7:51
And my dad and I are just kind of sitting there and like, what is the deal with this guy? Like, how is he getting over on these people?
7:57
I mean, really, my dad and I, we pretty much thought it was a fluke, right?
8:00
But then in the championship match, again, this is his third match of the night.
8:04
He beat a Savat fighter named Gerard Gordo and he did it in under two minutes.
8:10
So he went three and O in the very first UFC, I think it was like a $50,000 purse or something like that.
8:16
And he did it all using this thing called Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
8:20
And to be frank, my dad and I were [inaudible].
8:22
We were super angry. We were like, what in the world like this guy?
8:25
How's this guy getting over on all these other people? Like, we just didn't have any respect for the nuance of what he was doing.
8:32
And then he fast forward to UFC two. Okay, now this was a 16 man tournament.
8:36
So the first one was an eight man tournament. This was a 16 man tournament.
8:40
So it was the same rule set, but the only difference is they did add a referee.
8:44
So if you know the name Big John McCarthy, he actually just retired from refereeing.
8:49
He's going to go into the booth and do commentary for Bellator.
8:52
But, you know, the most famous referee in the history of the UFC, this was the very first time anyone had saw him in any major way.
8:58
And then the style is represented in the second UFC were these.
9:02
So there was ninjutsu karate, taekwondo kung fu, sambou, sansu kung fu, moi tai, wrestling judo kickboxing.
9:10
And of course, you guessed it Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
9:12
So Royce was back for the second UFC. Okay, so he did it the first time.
9:16
I guess a lot of people thought it was a fluke and Royce was just going to come back and do it his way again.
9:22
And so obviously, if you know what happened, it's not going to be that much of a surprise to you.
9:26
But he won his first match by by sub.
9:29
He won his quarter, quarter final match by arm lock.
9:32
And that was in just on or just over a minute.
9:34
He won a semi final match by a lapel choke in about 90 seconds.
9:38
And then he won the final by submission.
9:40
It was actually submission via strikes because he added a guy in such a bad spot that he ended up submitting because he was getting really beaten all the hell.
9:47
And I was in just over a minute.
9:49
So in his first seven fights in the UFC, he went seven and 0 and he beat all of his guys via submission.
9:57
And it was all using this thing that no one had really heard about the time, which was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
10:03
Okay, so that was kind of my first intrigue and interest into Jiu Jitsu was after he did it a second time and did it so impressively.
10:12
And it just seemed like he didn't have to put very much effort forth.
10:15
It really kind of piqued my interest at a very young age.
10:18
So kind of going back to my athleticism and the things I did, I played sports well into adulthood.
10:23
So I played a lot of baseball and then what happens to most baseball players, you end up playing beer league, softball, stuff like that, right?
10:30
Played a lot of pickup basketball, played some flag football with some friends.
10:34
But you know, at a certain point, you know, as I got into my later 20s, I was kind of just getting bored with normal sports or sports that I had played all the time because I kind of have a forever goal for my life.
10:45
And that's that I want to be athletically active for my entire life.
10:49
Like I want to be that dude that's playing pickup games, a basketball in the YMCA at like 65 years old and running up and down the floor, you know, outpacing the young guys.
10:59
Like that's just always a goal that I've wanted to do because obviously if you do that, you have to cultivate physical resilience big time.
11:05
Like you can't take six months off a year off, five years off and let your body just kind of fester.
11:10
You have to just continually be active. You have to continue continually strength train work on your flexibility and cardio.
11:16
So that's always been something that I wanted to do. But again, I just kind of so tired of these normal sports.
11:22
I had just done enough of them. I'm not a golfer. So there just wasn't something that I could do.
11:26
And so I started to kind of look around for things that were of interest to me that would challenge myself athletically and challenge my body in a different way.
11:34
And so about a year and a half ago, I ran into some guys that had this group that met every Sunday night at this MMA school in the town I live in in Edmond, Oklahoma.
11:43
And they invited me to come out. And so basically it's like a men's book club.
11:47
They go over some really, really interesting comment. And you know, a lot of these books ended up on our 100 books that every modern Christian man should read list that's on our website.
11:55
But you know, they would go over these books and talk about these really kind of high flute and topics on a myriad of different areas. And then there would be a little metcon training or interval workout that we would do.
12:06
And then there was a guy who's a purple belt. He would just teach everybody something.
12:12
And the room was, you know, you had a few guys that were fairly experienced and fairly accomplished wrestlers and grapplers.
12:17
But most of the room was people that didn't have any experience in that. So it was just really basic moves in different areas.
12:23
And it was all no ghee. So we had no ghee on. And so guys are just in t-shirt and athletic shorts.
12:29
And so I just started doing that once a week. And it was so much fun because you could use the things that you were doing physically.
12:37
So me specifically, all the lifting I was doing, all the cardio, and you could use it in a different way.
12:43
And so it was just different than hitting a baseball or catching a football or shooting a jump shot.
12:48
It was just, you were using different parts of your body. And it kind of took me back to whenever I used to wrestle.
12:53
And those, when you would leave for practice, absolutely spent, but in such a good mood.
12:57
And so that really helped me get this growing desire to really get into Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
13:04
Because some guys will do what we do on Sunday nights and that's fine. And that's all the, you know, working out they may even get in their week.
13:10
But for me, I was like, I really wanted to get into it because, you know, I've been a fan of the UFC literally since the beginning.
13:17
And so I've seen the continued dominance of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the UFC.
13:23
And at the highest levels, if you don't have some Jiu Jitsu in some ground game, it's really going to stunt your ability to get to the top of any division.
13:32
And I have a bunch of guys that are friends of mine that are pretty advanced in Jiu Jitsu, some guys that, you know, are purple belts and brown belts.
13:39
I'm a big fan of Jocko Willink in his podcast. So I've suggested his podcast for if you're not listening to the Jocko podcast, you need to get after it and do that.
13:49
And again, I just still had that desire to attain and tackle something new.
13:54
And so when you look back on everything that I've said, so UFC and having all the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in there, all of my buddies that have been doing Jiu Jitsu, the Jocko podcast, plus my desire to do something different.
14:05
I finally made made the choice, made the decision that I was going to start my official Brazilian Jiu Jitsu journey.
14:11
And so I picked a school here in Edmund School called the Forge.
14:15
And the Forge has a lot of really, really good guys that have come from other backgrounds and other schools, some guys that have done some fighting in a lot of other different areas.
14:24
It's a very relaxed school. It's not super regimented.
14:28
And there's just really a lot of good guys, a lot of different body types in there.
14:31
And so basically what I started doing is I was doing three or four G-Classes a week.
14:36
So again, if you're not familiar with Jiu Jitsu, you normally would look at a G and you would think a karate guy, but it's that, you know, white kind of pajama looking thing.
14:44
And so that's the G and there's no G-Classes where you basically just wear athletic shorts and, you know, like a tight, like neoprene t-shirt or something like, I don't think that's the right word.
14:54
But you just wear a top and then, you know, you can basically do the wrestling and grappling that way.
14:59
And the classes that I was taking were really, really interesting to me and they were very diverse.
15:05
So it was everything from just straight up curriculum classes, which is basically like, look, you're a dumb white belt.
15:11
Here are some basic moves so you don't hurt yourself and here's some basic positions.
15:15
So basic, basic classes like that, all the way up to competition classes.
15:19
So these are, you know, higher level guys, brown belts, purple belts that are, you know, training for tournaments or training for events or fights that they have coming up.
15:27
And so you got to roll with all kinds of guys at all different belt levels.
15:32
And again, I keep mentioning the belts, but the belts go from the bottom to top.
15:36
It goes white belt, blue belt, purple belt, brown belt and black belt.
15:40
And we have guys in every belt level and every experience level in these classes.
15:44
And so you got to feel the differences between how certain guys move, how certain guys use their weight, how certain guys use pressure.
15:52
Everyone's got different styles, different things that they like and they prefer to do.
15:57
And so it was just a really, really good mixture from the very, very beginning.
16:01
And there were three things that really stood out to me from the very beginning of my jujitsu journey.
16:07
And so there were like three lessons that I feel like I learned almost immediately.
16:11
And so the first lesson was just humility and humility in a lot of different ways.
16:17
But jujitsu and guys that have done this before know this to be true, it is like the ultimate ego killer.
16:23
I mean, if you come in with this big, bad ego, it is going to be such an embarrassing fall and painful fall.
16:30
Whenever you fall off your high horse, when you come into a jujitsu gym.
16:33
And the thing is, is you get humbled every day, especially when you're just starting out.
16:39
And it doesn't matter how strong you are, it doesn't matter how big you are, it doesn't matter how athletic you are.
16:44
I have some, some friends that are really, really big, strong athletic guys.
16:47
And if they came into our school, I could find someone that weighs, you know, maybe 100 pounds less than them.
16:52
They'll just roll them up and there's nothing they can do about it, right?
16:55
But so, so you're getting humbled on a daily basis because you see these people that you don't feel like
17:01
should be able to do any damage to you, just controlling you completely.
17:05
But the other part of humility is that you're seeing such humility in the other guys.
17:10
Because when you look at martial arts or fighting, there's kind of this stigma into a large degree, it's probably been earned.
17:18
But there's a stigma that is these, these Neanderthal type guys that are just like going up, trying to start bar fights and all that other crap.
17:24
And of course, there's some of that.
17:26
But no one in our schools like that.
17:28
And no one in most of the other schools of people that I know that go to other schools, there's no one in there like that.
17:34
It's like a self-regulating community that if someone comes in and tries to hurt somebody and is trying to start fights, like, I mean, the community will, will expel that person.
17:43
And so you just see this extreme amount of humility in the people that do jujitsu and they're always willing to help and kind of take care of everybody that's in the room at any time.
17:53
And so the first lesson, again, is just humility.
17:55
And the second lesson was the power of Brazilian jujitsu.
17:59
And you hear a lot of people talk about this with different martial arts, but especially within jujitsu, you really learn the power of controlling yourself, right?
18:08
So you're controlling your body, you're controlling your weight, you're controlling your pressure, you're controlling your movement.
18:13
And so you really end self-control because sometimes you get into positions that are really uncomfortable, positions that you've never been in before.
18:20
You don't know exactly how to get out.
18:22
Your technique is garbage, especially when you first start.
18:25
So you really have to control your emotions. And, you know, I've been up and down on that.
18:30
There's been days where I feel like I got a really good practice in and then other days where I feel like it's just why the hell am I even doing this?
18:36
But you have to be able to control yourself if you're going to keep your journey going forward.
18:40
And the second part is you really see the power of jujitsu through how you can control others.
18:46
And especially how easy it is to really do damage to somebody, to hurt somebody.
18:51
Because again, if you know anything about jujitsu, think of it in terms of it is like submission wrestling.
18:56
It's like submission grappling. So you're learning how to choke people.
18:59
You're learning how to bend limbs and directions that they don't bend and manipulate joints in ways that shouldn't be done.
19:07
And you realize if something were to pop off, you know, you have that bar fight or something goes down in the community and you step in, you realize how easily you could hurt somebody.
19:18
And I mean, almost from, almost from square one. I mean, you get 30 days of jujitsu under your belt.
19:23
If you're going up against somebody that's untrained and not nearly as physical as you are, you could do really, really permanent damage to people.
19:30
I mean, if you're passing someone out, not, and not waiting for them to tap, but you're just trying to choke them out cold, there's a problem there.
19:38
Same thing, if you've got an arm lock or an ankle lock or something like that on somebody, you could really do damage to somebody.
19:43
So you really understand from the very, very beginning that jujitsu is a very, very powerful tool.
19:48
And the third lesson was that Brazilian jujitsu can be for everyone.
19:53
Like literally for everyone. I mean, there's been people that have said this before, but it's like, if your body works, you can do jujitsu.
19:59
Because again, there are certain physical limitations that people may have that would preclude them from even being able to get on the mat.
20:05
But that describes a very small portion of the population because in jujitsu, you have all body types, all athletic ability levels.
20:13
It just kind of comes down to you have to be willing to embrace the suck and embrace the pain and embrace the ambiguity of this game because it's going to be frustrating.
20:24
And you're constantly going to be failing and screwing things up, but it's just about not quitting.
20:29
When you talk to any person that has a higher belt level, they just talk about how you just can't quit.
20:35
You just have to keep going, just keep going on down the road in your journey.
20:38
And there's a quote that gets passed around a lot and jujitsu circles.
20:41
It's that black belts are just white belts that never quit.
20:44
I mean, seems simplistic, but it's true.
20:46
I mean, those black belts did not operate that way when they first started.
20:50
Like it's just not possible that they would have been that good that early.
20:54
So again, from almost jump, the very, very jump of this, I felt like I was learning lessons about myself, about manhood, about athleticism, about life.
21:03
And that was just really in the early, early stages.
21:06
But then as you do jujitsu for any length of time, there's always this thing that kind of pops in and that's competing.
21:13
And so at my school, there is no required competing.
21:17
So at some schools, they won't let you advance to other belts and get promoted unless you compete.
21:22
My school doesn't have any such restriction.
21:25
But it became very clear in, you know, basically from most of the people I was talking to that the best way to figure out if what you're drilling and the technique that you're building is working is to actually go and compete.
21:37
Because you do compete in class, you know, at the end of class, you're rolling with other guys, but guys kind of know your tendencies and they were in the class that you were in as well so that they know the move that you're trying to try to do on them and those types of things.
21:49
And the thing is, is every time I would ask the upper belts, which I did often, I asked them about competing, all of them said it was basically integral, like you had to do it.
21:58
You basically had to do it if you wanted to have a really robust jujitsu journey.
22:04
And so the thing about it is when I finally decided to compete, my nerves, like my nervousness really went to an all time high.
22:13
And again, like I said, I played all kinds of sports and I've been in all kinds of high pressure situations where, you know, the games on the line type thing.
22:20
And I don't really feel like I had ever experienced something like just even making the commitment to compete in my first jujitsu tournament.
22:29
And, you know, I thought about that.
22:30
I was like, why am I so nervous?
22:31
Like, is it just because I haven't played, you know, anything that important in a long time or something like that?
22:36
But what I eventually figured out is that there was just this looming reality out there.
22:41
And that it was just going to be me on the mat.
22:45
Because again, I did wrestle, but you're wrestling in a team environment.
22:49
Yeah, you're the only guy out there in the mat and you're wrestling is basically like an individual team sport.
22:54
But it's just way different.
22:56
Like it was just going to be me and the other guy in the referee on the mat.
23:00
And that was just going to be it.
23:02
Like my teammates can't come out there and help me out.
23:04
And that was it.
23:06
It was just way different than sitting at the plate because, I mean, because you know how it is if you played baseball,
23:11
you could go up there and strike out like hilariously bad, like swinging three pitches and miss by like three or four feet.
23:18
But there's a guy coming up after you.
23:20
I mean, aside from, you know, having the last at bat of the game, there's somebody behind you that's going to come and potentially clean up your mess.
23:25
There's no such thing in jujitsu.
23:27
So, but I had made the decision that that's what I wanted to do.
23:30
I wanted to compete.
23:31
And so I started my preparations for the tournament. So as you might expect being, you know, six to eight weeks out from the tournament that I had put on my calendar.
23:40
There was heavy physical and mental training that I had to do.
23:43
Okay. So from the physical side, I did lots of lifting.
23:46
I did lots of cardio and I did lots of jujitsu classes.
23:49
So I got a lot of rolling in. I got a lot of rounds in.
23:52
So I was picking up extra practices.
23:54
I got a lot of advice from guys that had way, way more skill and experience than I did.
24:00
Just basically asking them, you know, how do I prepare? You know, what should I do? You know, should I stop lifting? Should I do more lifting? You know, just different things that I just wasn't sure of.
24:08
But I had one guy in particular. He's one of our purple belts in our school named Tyler.
24:13
He's like, Kyle, one tournament is like six months of training.
24:17
And I mean, I thought he was just kind of messing with me, but I mean, that was, he was dead serious about that.
24:23
And so, I mean, and I couldn't say he was wrong because I didn't have any, any way of knowing that.
24:27
So the big problem that I ran into, though, whenever I was preparing for my tournament because I'm such a type a achiever, you know, commitment type person, is I really had no idea what to expect.
24:41
Like, I had no clue what to expect going on into this first tournament. And like we talked about a few podcasts ago, I'm a goal-setter, right?
24:49
So I want to set goals in just about every important area of my life. But I was struggling, like, what should my goal be for my first tournament?
24:57
I mean, should it be to just get one takedown, to win one match, you know, actually get a submission?
25:04
I mean, not get choked unconscious or not get my arm broken. Like, I had no idea.
25:09
And so obviously, if I don't know, I'm assuming there are guys in my school that I've had similar thoughts before.
25:15
So I just went and asked them, I went and asked some of our more experienced guys.
25:19
And it did not matter who I asked, guys that were inside my school, guys that were at other schools, it was the exact same answer.
25:27
It was almost like they had rehearsed it. Like they had sent around, like a group text, like, "Hey, Kyle's about to ask us, let's give them the same answer."
25:33
But by everyone on their own gave me the same answer, and this was their answer. Just have fun.
25:39
That was it. Just have fun. Which, for a guy like me, is infuriating.
25:47
I have never been, and anyone that knows me, knows this to be true, and this may be true about you as well.
25:53
The just have fun thing when it comes to sports has never made sense to me.
25:58
Like, when people are like, "Ah, you know, just go out there and have a good time."
26:01
I'm like, "Why? Why not go out there and try to win?"
26:04
So, I was always the guy that if I won, if my team won, I was having a good time.
26:09
But if I lost or my team lost, screw that. Sign me up for something else.
26:14
And that was always kind of my thing. I was only having fun if I was winning.
26:18
And so, here are some of these guys that have won tournaments.
26:22
They've won belts, and they've gone around and done some pretty amazing things in Jiu Jitsu, and all they're telling me to do is just have fun.
26:29
And so, I was, again, humility, trying to have some humility and kill that ego.
26:34
I was like, "Alright, I'm going to try to do that. I'm going to try to get in the mindset of just have fun."
26:40
Because that would probably help with the nerves, and, you know, all these guys seem to think that that's good advice.
26:45
Got a few guys that I let know, kind of my thoughts on, quote unquote, "having fun."
26:50
And so, I got them to, you know, kind of keep me accountable, especially at practice, like, "Man, if I start getting down, just, hey, just remind me."
26:56
And so, basically, what I did is I set four things up in my brain that I just kept repeating to myself.
27:03
And I have a little Jiu Jitsu journal, so after every class, I would write notes down about the things that we learned.
27:08
And I just kept writing these four things down, and I just kept repeating them in my head all the time over and over, leading up to the tournament.
27:15
And they were these things.
27:16
"Be first, be mean, have fun, and good."
27:22
Okay, so the thing with "be first" was most of the time in tournaments, especially if you're nervous, you just freeze up.
27:29
You don't want to be the first guy to make a mistake, right?
27:31
You don't want to shoot in, but it's kind of like a halfway shot, and the guy sprawls on you, and then he takes your back or something like that.
27:37
So, I just didn't want to give other guys any opportunities to get off a move on me.
27:43
I wanted to be first.
27:44
I wanted to be the first one to initiate action.
27:46
And then with "be mean," that was the thing as I had to remind myself, "In this tournament, these are not my teammates."
27:52
So, yes, they are made in the image of God.
27:54
They hold the "omago" day.
27:56
They are good people, but these are not my friends.
27:59
And for that five minute round, or however long the match lasted, these are not my friends.
28:04
So, everything that I did needed to be with basically bad intentions.
28:09
Not with the intention of hurting anybody, because nobody in this community really sets out to do that.
28:14
But I just didn't want to go slowly in certain moves, because in practice room, you're not trying to hurt anybody.
28:21
You're not trying to go too rough.
28:22
You want everybody to be able to leave and train the next day, right?
28:24
So, but I just had to keep reminding myself that once I got on the mat that the people I was competing against, I needed to be as mean as possible in my mindset.
28:33
The third thing, obviously, which we talked about, was have fun.
28:36
Just had to keep repeating that to myself.
28:38
And the last thing was good.
28:40
So, if you go back to our best books of 2017, I actually read the entire chapter from Jocko Willing's book, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, about his concept of good.
28:51
Which is basically like, something didn't go your way.
28:54
You need to have the mindset of good, okay?
28:57
Good, it didn't go my way, but I can get better, or I can learn, or I can figure this out.
29:01
I've got a new opportunity, whatever that ends up looking like.
29:04
So, that concept I just carried around, because what if I lost my first match?
29:09
You know, you pay your 60, 65 bucks and you get blown out in your first match and you're basically done for the day.
29:14
Good, just figure out a way to make that seem good in your brain.
29:19
So, let's fast forward to the actual first tournament.
29:23
So, this was the American Grappling Federation National Tournament in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
29:28
We'll just call it AGF, that's what everyone calls it.
29:31
Before the tournament, I signed up for two divisions, because obviously they break out different divisions based on your belt level, your age, your weight, all that kind of stuff.
29:39
So, the first division was white belt, and I forget what they called the division, but it was basically between the ages of 30 and 39, which I'm 31, so I was at the low end of the age bracket.
29:49
And then I was in middleweight, so that's 175 to 190, and I weighed in around 186, so that was fully hydrated, fully fed, 186, good to go.
29:58
And then I signed up for the white belt absolute division, so the absolute division basically means there's no weight classes.
30:04
So, depending upon who signs up for it, you can have a bunch of little guys, a bunch of, you know, average sized guys or a bunch of mongo's.
30:11
And so, the nerves that I experienced walking into this gym, it was at the U-Mac on the Tulsa Union High School campus, were just incredible.
30:22
Just the amount of pressure that I was feeling was something that I just wasn't really ready for. I tried to prepare myself as much as possible, but there was a ton of pressure.
30:31
I mean, my wife was there, she knows I've been doing all this training, you don't want to look like a punk in front of your wife, but also, your coaches are there.
30:38
The people who are supposed to be teaching you on a regular basis, here's how not to get your butt kicked, and here's some things that you can do to make it bad for the other guy, right?
30:47
But again, the pressure in the nerves is really coming from pride and ego, right? I didn't want to look like a punk in front of my wife, I didn't want to embarrass my coaches or embarrass my school.
30:55
You know, I wanted to get out there and do well. So, I weigh in in the morning, I take care of everything that I do in the meantime, get fed, get hydrated, but we'll just fast forward all the way to the first match.
31:07
So, the first match I had was against a guy that we knew was a judo guy, so I went over to one of our purple belts and just asked him, you know, "Hey, what should I do against a judo guy?" and he's just like, "How?"
31:19
As soon as the ref says grapple, you just shoot, shoot immediately, get a takedown and go from there.
31:25
So, that's exactly what I did. I was like, "I'm not going to question this guy, he knows way more than I do."
31:28
Referee says grapple, it's my first tournament ever and a second later I've shot, I got a single leg and I finished a shot. And so, in the white belt division, all of the rounds or all the matches are five minute matches or until someone submits, right?
31:42
And so, for that first match, I get him in a side control and I control, but basically I win this first match like 12 to nothing.
31:49
I'm not going to go into all the scoring and everything. If you know Jiu Jitsu, we can talk about it later, but if not, just know that I pretty much handled this guy.
31:57
The entire way. And so, I'm feeling pretty good, but I experienced something that I've never experienced before, but something that you've probably heard of and that was an adrenaline dump.
32:08
I had a major adrenaline dump. If you don't know what that means, that's where you get yourself so hyped up for something and then you go and do it and then as soon as it's over, you just are just gassed.
32:20
Like mentally, physically, you feel like you can't control anything. You can't control your breath. You can't control your brain. And so I had a very big adrenaline dump after that first match.
32:31
And also, it just had to do with the fact that this was a way different intensity. I put forth a way different intensity there, even than what I do in practice and I tend to keep a pretty, pretty big intensity even in practice.
32:43
And so, that was one thing I had to adjust to as I went in through my bracket was, "Hey, this is something that's going to be something I'm going to have to deal with. I've got to control this adrenaline. I have to control my mind and just kind of go on from there."
32:55
So, I have my second match against the guy. And he was a guy that was bigger. He was, I think, a little bit bigger than I was.
33:02
And so, I was able to get a takedown on him as well. I ended up getting in the mount position. And I actually submitted him with what's called an X-Choke. But it was a horrible X-Choke. Like, "Good Lord, you would never want to look at a video of my X-Choke and show anyone that and say, "Hey, go and do this."
33:19
But it was just basically just a big, I'm just going to grunt and just try to finish this guy. And it was more of a pain choke than anything. But that was kind of a big match for me. Because if I won that match, I was guaranteed either first or second place.
33:32
Because there was a buy in the bracket. So, I got a buy. And so, basically, I was going to have to win three matches to win my division. So, I won my semi-final match and then it was all into the championship match.
33:43
Now, going into my championship match, I'll be 100% honest with you. I'm not even going to play. I was a little intimidated by the guy I was going against because I watched his other two matches before me.
33:52
So, two matches. And so, in his quarter-final match, he passed his guy out with a try, or he submitted him with a triangle. But in the match right before me, he passed a guy completely out cold with what's called a baseball choke, or baseball bat choke.
34:06
And so, I think the guy that got passed out just had never been in that position before. He's all jacked up. He's got the adrenaline. And he just, I don't know, he forgot to tap or something.
34:14
And so, I was like, "Holy crap. Like, this guy is not just winning these matches. He's really doing damage to these guys." And he just passed a dude out.
34:23
So, I go in and talk with our Blackbell, one of our coaches, and get ready for this championship match. And so, I get in there. I get to take down just so I got gotten in the other two matches before that.
34:35
But the great thing about my championship match is I felt like my brain was fried, and I kept forgetting to do things that were very, very basic.
34:43
And the two things that I kept forgetting is when I was in his guard, I kept forgetting to keep my posture up, and I kept forgetting to fight his grips off of my ghee.
34:51
So, what was cool about my championship match is my Blackbell coach was in one corner of the mat, and then one of our purple belts, who was also competing that day, was on the other side.
35:00
So, my Blackbell guy, every time the guy was competing against got a grip on my wrist, he would tell me, "Break the grip." And I was like, "Oh, yeah, dummy. All right, break the grip off."
35:10
But then I would let my posture go, and then the other guy, our purple belt, would be like, "Poster, posture, posture, posture."
35:16
And so, I had them the entire time really helping me through that. And so, you know, we're getting down to the very end, and there's maybe 10 or 15 seconds left in this match.
35:26
And I've got this guy in a very controllable position, and I'm just trying to hang on. And so, I ended up hanging on, and I think I beat him 12 or 13 to nothing.
35:34
And so, here we go. I had won my first Jiu Jitsu tournament, and it was the AGF Nationals in Tulsa. And I am just absolutely elated.
35:44
As you can imagine, I mean, going in and not knowing what I should do in terms of expectations, you just couldn't have asked for a better result.
35:52
So, I didn't get a single point score on me. I did submit one guy, and it just felt amazing.
35:57
I felt so proud, and I knew my coaches were proud. I knew my wife was proud. And that was all good, right?
36:03
But again, I told you, I signed up for two divisions. So, I had the absolute division coming up, so it was like, "Hey, go do the podium thing."
36:10
And then it's time to get in there and get refocused. And again, if you'll remember, I talked about the absolute division being no weight classes.
36:18
So, you just had no idea what was going to be in there. And again, I'm about 5'10", 190 normally, and I was the smallest guy in the absolute division.
36:28
It was a bunch of dang Mongoloid dudes in there, and I'm like, "Alright, well, I signed up for it. Got to get in there and go after it and just see what I can do."
36:36
And so, here's a couple things that were very interesting about the absolute division.
36:41
So, I have my first match, and it had been about two or three hours since my other division had ended. So, you know, kind of had to get refocused, get re-warmed up, all those different things.
36:50
Long story short, I get this guy in what's called an Americana where I'm basically bending his arm backwards, and basically bending his shoulder joint the opposite way.
36:59
But the dude would not tap. I mean, I had to really go way far and hyper-extend his shoulder and bend it way, way, way back before he would tap.
37:08
So, that was an interesting thing to kind of feel a guy like that who would, you know, in the room, in the gym, you would feel somebody tapping way, way, way sooner.
37:17
So, that was interesting. But the second match in the absolute division, that was the most important match for me that day, because it's the only match that I actually lost.
37:27
And so, the guy went up against, he was about 6'2", 6'3", about 240 pounds, and just, you know, obviously, huge, huge guy.
37:35
And so, I lost this match. I think it was like 14-4, so it wasn't especially close.
37:41
But, around the beginning of the match, I decided I was going to try a particular takedown.
37:46
I didn't get the takedown that I wanted, so I was kind of stuck for the first couple of minutes, because I had failed the takedown that I tried to go.
37:54
But I was able to kind of squeak out of there. I took the guy's back, and then, once I got to his back, I heard my coach is screaming, "Armbar, armbar!"
38:02
And so, I'll kind of explain, you know, the significance of that here in a second.
38:06
So, I had seen enough armbars from watching UFC and being in class, and trying it out a couple of times.
38:12
So, I step over to the armbar position, and for whatever reason, it's not going how I thought it would, or how it looked in my brain.
38:19
A few seconds go by, the guy turns me over, he stacks me, he gets out, and, you know, basically, he controlled me for the majority of the rest of the match.
38:27
So, I snuck out at the very end of the round, but he was already up by way too much at that point.
38:32
But, basically, what I had done is, I didn't properly finish the armbar.
38:37
I kind of went full brain fart, I hadn't planned to be in the armbar position, so I didn't drill it very much.
38:44
And so, essentially, I was pulling on the wrong side, or the wrong part of his arm, trying to hyperextend his arm, he had gotten a gable grip.
38:51
And so, I was pulling on his elbow, and not pulling on his wrist, for those of you who know what I'm talking about and know that position.
38:57
So, it was just a complete brain fart.
38:59
Again, I had won four matches so far up to that point, but I lose this one.
39:03
And it was a semi-final match, so here I am, I'm in the bronze medal match.
39:07
And so, again, you got to refocus, you got to think about what you need to do, because the guy I'm going up against, you know, he's bigger than me as well, he was probably about 220 pounds.
39:16
And so, I had to just refocus, had to get in there, had to bounce back, and I did.
39:21
I ended up landing a good takedown on that fight, controlling this guy, getting his back, and then I got a rear naked choke for the finish, so I got a bronze medal.
39:27
So, in my first tournament, I was able to get a gold medal and a bronze medal, went five and one, and things were great.
39:35
I was literally on cloud nine as I was leaving Tulsa that night.
39:38
But it was the first time in my life that the winner learned concept really came full circle in my brain.
39:45
So, if you've done any type of martial arts, especially in jujitsu, you hear the concept of winner learned.
39:50
You're either going to win or you're going to learn, right?
39:53
And the thing about it was, is no matter what I thought about, for that tournament, a lot of good things happened, I could not get past the armbar that I didn't finish, right?
40:01
I was just completely obsessed with that.
40:04
Now, it didn't sully the entire experience for me, but it has created, I've been like a madman for the last several weeks, just drilling the armbar.
40:13
And I showed the video of my failed armbar to like, you know, seven or eight different really, really good jujitsu guys.
40:19
And they all gave me kind of different pointers about what I did wrong.
40:23
And so, I kind of put that all in my brain so I have that mentally as I go forward.
40:27
And so, going out of my first tournament, of course, very happy with how I performed, but more than anything, I was really happy with how much I had learned.
40:35
And it really came back to what my buddies and other teammates had said in terms of how one tournament is worth six months worth of matches.
40:42
So that one tournament did not replace those six months worth of not matches, but practices, it didn't replace those.
40:48
But good Lord, I feel like I learned more about myself and more about what I could do physically and mentally in that little stretch of time than I had done even in those previous months.
40:57
I wouldn't trade in the training, obviously, because that's what you needed to get there, but it was an incredible amount of experience.
41:03
So, obviously, I've shared a lot of memories up to this point in terms of what I've loved about jujitsu. But real quick, I would like to share my favorite memory that I've had so far doing Brazilian jujitsu.
41:16
And it was actually recently, it was only here a couple of weeks ago.
41:19
So at the Forge in Edmond, they do a fantastic job, Chris Cunningham is a guy that runs a lot of the business side of our gym.
41:26
And he coordinates bringing in some of the best jujitsu guys on the planet to come in and do seminars.
41:32
So these are, you know, two to three hour seminars where you may focus on certain positions and do some highly advanced type things.
41:39
So we've had guys that have come in, guys like Guy Mendez and Marillo Santana, Chris Hader, Greg Jackson.
41:45
If you're familiar with him, he's a big time MMA coach, Riley Bodycomb, J.T. Torres, just, I mean, if you're a jujitsu guy, those names are some of the best of the best.
41:54
But here a couple of weeks ago, he brought in Andre Galval. So I'm assuming most of you here, that name doesn't mean anything to you.
42:02
But he is one of the greatest jujitsu players of all time.
42:07
I mean, he is literally, when you talk to people, he's in everyone's like top three to five.
42:12
But to be completely honest with you, I didn't know that.
42:15
Like going in and when I saw his name come up on our Jim's website as an upcoming event, I had to really kind of go and do some research
42:23
and ask some people who this guy was, just because again, I'm so new to jujitsu to jujitsu.
42:29
But after research and just kind of getting to know this guy, I mean, he's a third degree black belt jujitsu.
42:34
He's an absolute killer. He runs his runs a school out in San Diego, which is now the mecca of jujitsu in the United or really in the world.
42:42
And, you know, he's an 11 time world champion, 11 time Pan American champion.
42:46
He's 180 CC. That's a submission wrestling world championship. He's won that four times. He's the World Cup champion three times in jujitsu.
42:54
So the dude is pretty much accomplished everything in jujitsu that you could possibly ever want to accomplish.
43:00
So we did this seminar and it was all about passing the guard.
43:04
And so this was a three hour seminar and he just went three hours straight.
43:08
Like we had no water breaks, no, hey, get a breather type thing.
43:12
It was just here's all these different positions that you could find yourself in where you are still in the guy's guard and this is how you can get passed.
43:20
Okay. So it was every position that you could possibly imagine the first two hours.
43:24
I took so many notes because it was just money. It was positions. I kept finding myself in and he was given us really practical ways of getting out of it.
43:32
But the last hour, my note taking went down considerably because there were a lot of super advanced positions that I'd never even heard of. So I was just like, I don't even know how I'm going to write down the starting position, much less what he does after it.
43:44
But the cool thing is what you'll find at some of these seminars, sometimes the professor, you know, the person that is doing the seminar will actually roll with some some of the students there at the end of class.
43:55
Sometimes it's just, you know, kind of, it's normally really light and really fun. And so Andre Galval actually did that. So he just, you know, tightens his belt and he basically just starts pointing at people in the class and saying, come on out here to the center and it was like little two minute rounds.
44:11
And, you know, it was just a lot of fun. It was lighthearted. People weren't trying to, you know, go hard because it's some sort of world champion. It was just fun. But here he is.
44:19
This world champion. And he is just destroying all of our best guys. Like some of our best purple and brown belts. He is just mopping them up. And he's like smiling while he's doing it and everyone's laughing like it wasn't an embarrassing thing. It was just like, it just kind of shows you how big of a difference there is between different people.
44:38
But, you know, he's pointed out. He's pointing at blue belts. He's pointing at white belts. And here I am the entire time. I'm taking video on my iPhone of him rolling with all these people really for two reasons. One, I wanted to go back later and see if I can break down the video and see what he did because he was obviously
44:52
doing some pretty high level amazing stuff. But also I wanted all these people to have video of themselves getting to roll with, you know, this crazy insane world champion, right?
45:01
So he had rolled with about seven or eight people. And then he just, as he's fixing his belt and fixing his gear, he just points at me and goes, you know, I was like, okay, here we go.
45:12
I guess this is about to happen. So white belt with six months of experience is about to roll with one of the greatest black belt champions ever. That's probably going to be awesome.
45:20
And so I just hand my phone to somebody for them to take video. And as I'm walking out to the center of the mat, he just points at me and he goes, oh, Viking.
45:30
And so he was obviously saying that I looked like a Viking because my hair was kind of long and a little bit all over the place and I had this big beard going.
45:39
And he kind of gets me in a, I kind of get a takedown, but not really. And he sweeps me and he puts me in a triangle, but then lets me go, and he puts me in an Alma Plata and then lets me go. And we just kind of mess around for a while.
45:59
And it was just a lot of fun. And then the two minute buzzer went off and everybody clapped and you know, you kind of went on to the next guy, right?
46:05
So I'm, I'm gassed, right? Because it was, it was so much fun and I was so, I had so much adrenaline going. I'm trying to catch my breath. But afterwards, everyone's kind of coming up to me and they're just kind of, you know, tongue and cheek a little bit like, hey, what's up Viking?
46:19
How you doing Viking? And so I kind of realize again, this wasn't like a super serious thing. It's not like there were a bunch of, you know, the lights were down and a bunch of torches around and this world champion comes up to me.
46:30
Forever, you are now going to be called Viking. Like it wasn't one of those types of things, but it became a realization to me that Galval actually gave me by Brazilian Jiu Jitsu nickname.
46:41
Like as goofy as that is, and I mean, I'm not going to go and do these world, world championships where these guys have like real nicknames, but it was a really, really fun experience.
46:50
And it was really unique just because he could have called me anything. He called me, could have called me something embarrassing, something that was like, oh great, now I'm going to have this name for the rest of my life.
46:58
I mean, some of y'all have had that experience with some nicknames that you wish you could get rid of, but, you know, it was a cool nickname, called me Viking, you know, had a good role, took pictures afterwards and it was, it was really a lot of fun.
47:08
And that was just a super fun experience. And so now I got my nickname. So that's kind of my funny story about that. But as I was leaving the seminar and I was kind of thinking about the things that I learned that day.
47:18
I mean, this is a guy that is so physically gifted, but he also works really, really hard on his physique and making sure he's in shape mentally. He's just just killer.
47:28
But even at the end of class, he was talking about how important it was to have a relationship with God. And so he had a very spiritual aspect to the things that he was talking about.
47:37
But there was a concept that kind of came up to me afterwards and that Jiu Jitsu a lot of times feels like it's all about the gap.
47:45
Right? And when we think about Jiu Jitsu, you're always thinking about, you know, there's a gap between me and the other guys that are at my belt level, right?
47:54
And maybe there's there's a gap between me and all the higher belts like I mean, am I ever going to get there? And then there's a gap even between, you know, black belts.
48:01
So there's obviously black belts and then there's world champion black belts like Andre Galval, but the one thing that really Professor Galval helped me understand that day and I even posted this on social media after
48:13
was just, we don't need to focus on the gap as much, but we just really need to focus on the process of doing.
48:21
So there's a process of doing the thing and not always the reality of the outcome, right? Focus on what it is that you need to do to get better and don't always focus on where you end up, right?
48:31
Just get in the room, get on the mat, you know, have a good time, have fun and just get better. That's really what you need to accomplish.
48:38
And that really just comes all the way back to the fact that, you know, Jiu Jitsu, it is a big family. It's a big brotherhood.
48:46
And that's really something that I'm going to talk about really at length in a future podcast.
48:50
You're surrounded by what I'm going to call foxhole guys. So these are guys that you want in your foxhole with you when things are going wrong.
48:57
It's not just, you know, physical altercation, you know, something going wrong, but just when things are going wrong in your life, you want strong dudes around you that you've, you've gone to battle with them for most people that haven't been in the military, you know, doing Jiu Jitsu and things like that.
49:09
Maybe the closest that you've gotten. So I really want to talk specifically here about the spiritual mental and physical connection because obviously, you know, we're really big on cultivating spiritual mental and physical resilience and toughness.
49:23
And so I want to kind of break what Jiu Jitsu has done down in those different areas. So I'll start with physical. So one thing about Jiu Jitsu is that your physical training starts to revolve around Jiu Jitsu.
49:37
So maybe you're one of those gym guys that just likes to lift and you just want to be really, really strong. Well, if you're not really flexible and don't have cardio, it's going to be, it's going to be hard for you to do Jiu Jitsu, or maybe you're just like a triathlete person that you've got incredible cardio, but you don't have very good strength.
49:52
That's something that's going to cause you some issues once you get onto the mat. And so your physical training is really going to start to revolve around the things that you want to be able to accomplish on the mat.
50:02
And then there was a really interesting article that I saw, and this was a blog that was really put out by a guy named Charlie Hone. I think it's how you pronounce his name, H-O-E-H-M.
50:12
But it was right after the Las Vegas shooting, and actually one of our professors at the gym actually posted this on our Jiu Jitsu school's website or on our little Facebook group.
50:22
This guy, this Charlie Hone, he's an author of a book called "Play It Away." He was a TEDx speaker, and he was basically talking about why this mass shooting happened, like why do these things keep happening? Why do men keep doing it?
50:34
And so he came up with three things, and the first two reasons, the first is that men are chronically lonely, which is something that we'll likely talk about in a future podcast, how lonely men are, how they don't have friends.
50:45
The second is that men are experiencing extreme ridicule, rejection, humiliation, and how that kind of affects their psyche and their brains.
50:53
But the third thing, and the thing that really connects to the physical issue with us, is that men are deprived of play opportunities really in their everyday life.
51:04
They just don't have opportunities to play. And so he talked about in the article how there's a strong correlation with play deprivation and mental illness.
51:12
And specifically, I'm just going to quote this, so I didn't want to try to memorize it, but I'm just going to quote this article, or this part from the article, that kind of went into that a little bit further.
51:23
So it says, "In 1966, Charles Whitman shot his wife and mother.
51:28
Then he climbed up the tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot 46 people.
51:33
In total, he murdered 16 people.
51:35
At the time, this was the biggest mass shooting of its kind in U.S. history.
51:39
Dr. Stewart Brown and his team of researchers were commissioned to find out what the Texas sniper had in common with other mass murderers.
51:47
They gained a key insight when they examined their childhoods.
51:50
Brown recalls, quote, "None of them engaged in healthy, rough and tumble play.
51:56
The linkages that lead to Charles Whitman producing this crime was an unbelievable suppression of play behavior throughout his life by a very overbearing, very disturbed father."
52:07
Unquote.
52:09
And so you look at this guy, and again, it's kind of a big jump to go from, "Hey, this person did get to rough house enough as a child to, hey, they murdered dozens and dozens of people."
52:20
But I mean, these doctors weren't messing around when they were doing this study, and that's the correlation that they found.
52:24
And so really, for the physical side of Jiu Jitsu, it's a chance for men to grow physically by rough housing with other men, especially if you're like me.
52:32
I grew up with no brothers, I grew up with a sister, and I didn't get to have that kind of day in, day out rough housing like most people do.
52:39
Now on the mental side, when you start doing Jiu Jitsu, it's like you can't stop thinking about it.
52:46
I've had dreams about Jiu Jitsu, I've had dreams about certain moves.
52:50
I daydream about different things that I did the night before at practice or things I did in rolling.
52:56
I think about that arm bar all the time that I missed in the tournament, and so you can't stop thinking about it.
53:02
It really starts to dominate some of the things in your brain because you're having so much fun.
53:06
But the other thing about it is that you become way sharper.
53:09
I feel like I'm way sharper mentally now than I was six months ago.
53:13
I'm better at taking instruction, kind of that step-by-step, "This is how you do it, this is how you don't screw it up."
53:19
I feel like my memory's better.
53:21
When you get into the brain science of it, you're creating new neural pathways because your brain is trying to recall steps of a move
53:29
while your body's needing to move, while you're feeling the stimuli coming from the other person and feeling the other person's pressure.
53:34
So it's a really interesting thing going on that just really helps you create that and cultivate that mental resilience that you need.
53:42
On the spiritual side, there is a spiritual component to what I feel like is happening, especially if you go on this type of jujitsu journey.
53:52
So I thought back to one of the days of the 21-day devotional that we put out there on the U version app.
53:58
So actually on day 16 of our devotional called "Undaunted Life, a Man's Devotional," I talk about physicality and kind of how it manifests itself spiritually.
54:09
And so as opposed to just summarizing this, I do want to just go ahead and read the devotional portion that we wrote from that day
54:15
so you can kind of get the totality of the argument that we're making.
54:18
So here is from day 16 the devotional portion of our 21-day men's devotional. So here we go.
54:24
The Bible is full of characters that men can identify with.
54:28
There are some that we would like to avoid becoming like, and there are some that provide us with something to aspire towards.
54:33
Yet, it is the men of action and results that usually grab our attention.
54:38
The author of the book of Hebrews mentions four of these men in chapter 11, Gideon, Barack, Samson, and Jephthah.
54:45
Now, all these men had their faults and downfalls, but it was their faith that defined them as great men.
54:51
The interesting thing to note here is that all of these Old Testament saints showed tremendous amounts of faith, but it was their faith-propelled actions that make them so memorable.
55:01
In today's reading, we see the author describe these men as those, quote, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
55:13
quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, but foreign armies to flight, unquote.
55:22
So that's verses 33 and 34 from that day's reading.
55:26
What do you notice about the things listed here?
55:30
Is there a common thread that you see through all of them?
55:33
The commonality between those listed actions is the requisite physicality it would take to see them through.
55:39
It was the faith these men had in God that allowed them to conquer kingdoms, but they could not have completed these actions without physical strength.
55:47
Their faith pushed them towards certain glorious outcomes, but they could not have followed through without physical might and readiness.
55:55
The point here is that some of the things that God may call you to do in your life will require some form of physicality.
56:01
Does that mean that you need to be able to bench press over 300 pounds or God can't use you?
56:05
Absolutely not.
56:06
Does that mean that if you can't complete an ultramarathon that you're somehow unworthy of God's tasks?
56:12
Not at all.
56:13
However, we have to look at the men described in today's reading to see how their physical strength ended up increasing their ability to serve God.
56:21
Yes, all of the men listed were men of faith. Yes, all four were men of action.
56:26
However, without their physical capacity, God may have needed to task other men for the purposes of his glory.
56:34
So that was what we wrote for Day 16 of that devotional.
56:37
And so you see how there's linkages between physical, mental, spiritual, right, especially here.
56:42
You see the linkage between a physical readiness and capability and your spiritual adeptness at being able to actually follow through and do certain things at stake.
56:50
That God would require of you because think about it.
56:53
God said, I need you to go out tomorrow and do this thing.
56:56
And this thing required a lot of physicality, but you're a couch potato and you're not ready for it.
57:00
You're probably not going to be able to follow through on what God's needing you to do, right?
57:04
Because if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready.
57:06
You've heard that said a million times.
57:08
So I know that was a little bit lengthy on the spiritual side, but also just one quick thing I wanted to throw out there as well.
57:14
And this was Colossians 3 17, a lot of you will be familiar with this, but this is Colossians 3 17.
57:20
And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, through Him.
57:28
So for me, one thing that I try to do is everything in life I try to do for the glory of God.
57:34
I try to do for the glory of Jesus, okay?
57:36
Because if I'm going to do it, I might as well do it exceptionally well.
57:40
And so that is manifested itself in what has become my favorite hobby now, which is jujitsu.
57:46
Because I'm trying to make sure that every practice I do exceptionally well.
57:51
And that doesn't mean that I'm dominating people.
57:54
That doesn't mean that I'm hurting people or winning every time.
57:57
It just means I did the most I could do that day.
58:00
I did the absolute most I could do physically and mentally that day, and I'm serving God.
58:05
I'm spiritually serving my Savior in that way, okay?
58:09
So that's really when I think about jujitsu is it's not just a sport to me now.
58:13
It has really become a new way of doing life.
58:16
One of my good buddies, Sean, he's a white belt like me.
58:18
We started around the same time.
58:20
He really said that jujitsu for him has become a cornerstone habit.
58:25
So, you know, whether he loses tournaments or wins tournaments or gets injured or has to take some time off,
58:31
jujitsu is a cornerstone habit for him now.
58:34
Because spiritually, mentally and physically, it is making him a better man.
58:37
So as we wrap up here, I want to talk about something that happened on Jocko Williams.
58:42
Actually, his last episode here, he did a kind of a Q&A episode on his podcast this week.
58:47
And so he's talking with his co-host, Echo Charles.
58:50
And there was a guy that asked a question, which was basically like, "Hey, I'm not enjoying jujitsu.
58:54
I've been going, but I just, I hate it.
58:56
I'm freaking miserable.
58:57
I don't want to do it."
58:58
And so, you know, they gave him some different advice of different things.
59:01
And to a certain degree, if you don't like doing something, you probably shouldn't do it.
59:06
But the thing that they said to this guy is they're like, "You need to train as long as you can
59:10
to get to the point to where you can submit somebody that's similar to you."
59:15
So if you're, you know, six foot four, 250 pounds of like, mango strength and you come in the first day
59:21
and you submit a guy who's 150 pounds and it's his first day too, that's not really that impressive.
59:26
But train to where you can submit somebody who's similar to you physically and athletically and strength wise
59:32
and has similar technique and similar skill and you submit that person.
59:36
And if you get to that point and you still aren't enjoying it, then yeah, go find something else
59:40
that is beneficial for you, something that you feel like you can, you can dominate.
59:44
So they got me thinking about, you know, how to end this podcast because again, you know,
59:48
I've talked a lot about jujitsu and, you know, I'm not, I would never claim to be an expert
59:52
because, you know, I've only been doing it for six months.
59:54
But I do have a challenge that I would like to put out there to everyone that's listening to this podcast.
59:59
Okay. And my challenge to every single one of you is to do 100 days of Brazilian jujitsu.
1:00:07
That is the challenge from undaunted life to you is to do 100 days of Brazilian jujitsu
1:00:14
because my contention and my thought is, is that there is a 0% chance that it won't change you for the better.
1:00:21
And I realize that not every one of you is wired like me, not everyone of you is going to have that same level of interest.
1:00:26
But I can just see it doing so many good things for so many of you that if you are physically capable,
1:00:33
if there are not anything in your life that is limiting you physically, any type of disability
1:00:39
where you may not be able to partake in this type of thing, if your body works, even if you're not an incredible shape,
1:00:45
go and do 100 days of jujitsu because let's say you're a little bit overweight.
1:00:49
Just so you can do better on the mats, I feel like you're going to want to start losing weight.
1:00:53
You're going to get your diet ready to go and you're going to get your workouts ready to go, right?
1:00:57
Because if you don't have anything to work out for and you're just not a workout junkie,
1:01:01
you know what you're going to do? You're probably going to avoid working out.
1:01:04
So that's something that could really, really help you.
1:01:07
If you've identified that mentally, that you're struggling to get better and that you're not as mentally astute as you used to be,
1:01:14
try doing jujitsu. It's going to make you better.
1:01:17
So, again, I know that it's not something that everybody is going to necessarily want to do, but I would really, really like it
1:01:23
if you guys would go forward, kind of forge a plan together and to go and do 100 days of jujitsu.
1:01:29
So if you're listening to this and you are in my area, if you're in the Oklahoma City area, hit me up.
1:01:34
Hit me up, send me an email info at undaunted.life. I'd love to have you at my gym.
1:01:39
I'd love to have you come by and try it out and get you started on that journey there.
1:01:43
If that's too far away from you, there's other good gyms in our area, but I would really highly recommend hours.
1:01:49
And if you're listening to this and you're nowhere near me, you know, it is such a ubiquitous thing now.
1:01:55
Jujitsu is like you can find schools in most communities.
1:01:58
Now, it doesn't mean that there are going to be world-class schools, obviously, but you can find someone that can teach you something
1:02:04
that can kind of put you into your jujitsu journey, okay?
1:02:08
And then if you live literally out in the middle of the sticks and there's not anywhere near you,
1:02:13
kind of the last thing I would maybe suggest for you to do, there are some good online schools.
1:02:17
I know Andre Galval has some online teachings that he does.
1:02:20
There's some other really good schools that do online teaching, so I would urge you to use the supercomputer that's in your pocket
1:02:26
and use the power of Google to kind of help you down that road.
1:02:29
So before I let you go, we're going to do our quick resilience boost.
1:02:32
So as a reminder, we are immense ministry and our mission is cultivate manly resilience, and specifically we do that by providing content
1:02:39
that forges spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
1:02:42
So today, obviously, I told you about how jujitsu can take care of you spiritually, mentally, and physically.
1:02:47
So I want to give you two things to do, two things for you to view.
1:02:51
And there's two documentaries that you can find on YouTube.
1:02:54
So the first one is Choke.
1:02:56
It follows really the Michael Jordan of Jujitsu, Hicks and Gracie.
1:02:59
It follows him through some valetudo fighting and some of the things that he did in preparation.
1:03:04
And so he's one of the OGs of Brazilian Jujitsu.
1:03:07
And again, he's basically like the Michael Jordan of it.
1:03:09
So that's a documentary called Choke.
1:03:11
And then there's another documentary about Andre Galval called Believe in Yourself.
1:03:15
And so both of the links to those documentaries are actually going to be in the show notes.
1:03:19
And if for whatever reason you can't go to those, for whatever reason, just go to YouTube, type in Choke and you can find the first one
1:03:25
and type in Andre Galval, believe in yourself to do the last one.
1:03:30
I want to thank everybody so much for listening to this.
1:03:32
And obviously if you listen to the first episode, I mentioned that these were going to be more short form podcasts, you know, 15 to 20 minutes.
1:03:39
But as we've gotten into this and as we've kind of looked at some of the content that we want to put out there for the future,
1:03:45
we're just going to go and throw that out the window.
1:03:47
So we're just going to make these podcasts as long as they need to be.
1:03:50
So one might be 15 or 20 minutes, one might be over an hour, kind of like this one is, but we're just going to kind of do whatever needs to be done to make it good for everybody else out there.
1:03:59
So obviously as always, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media.
1:04:07
If we deserve a five star review, that is how this podcast is going to continue to grow.
1:04:11
So please leave a five star review and let us know what you think.
1:04:14
Our website is www.undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @UndauntedLife and on Facebook.com/UndauntedLife.
1:04:23
Check out our free devotionals on the YouVersion Bible app. Just search Undaunted Life under plans.
1:04:28
And we also want to thank the band August Burns Red for allowing us to use their music library for our content.
1:04:33
The intro outro track on this podcast is their song, King of Sorrow, which is off their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem.
1:04:40
And the links to that are in the description.
1:04:42
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:04:44
Remember, keep cultivating, mainly resilience, keep forging, spiritual, mental and physical toughness.
1:04:51
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.