062 - Blue Belt | Undaunted.Life

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0:59 This is a Daunted Life of Man's podcast.

1:13 I'm your host Kyle Thompson.

1:14 Let's get into it.

1:15 All right, guys, before we get into today's subject matter, I did want to read off a review to you guys.

1:20 So I know at the end of the episode, hopefully you guys listen all the way to the end.

1:23 We always encourage you guys, if you like the content, go ahead and leave us a five-star review

1:28 if we feel or if you feel like we've earned that.

1:30 And then also leave us a sentence or two or three just to kind of let us know,

1:34 hey, what is it about the content that you're liking?

1:36 Because again, this isn't your normal men's ministry content, right?

1:40 This isn't your normal women's ministry with a male twist,

1:43 which is essentially what all men's ministries tend to be like.

1:46 It is different.

1:47 You know, we go into subject matters that are a little bit more controversial.

1:50 Some of the things that we say and how we say it might, you know, come off as being a little bit

1:54 something that you're not used to at the very least.

1:57 But as I was going through some of the reviews on iTunes here recently,

2:01 I came across one that was someone reviewed us last summer.

2:05 And the first thing they put their name down is Bacon with like 12 A's.

2:10 So hilarious.

2:11 But I didn't realize that this was on there.

2:14 This review, I was just kind of clicking through our channel.

2:17 And I wanted to read this review to you because this guy, and again,

2:21 I don't know his name.

2:21 So whoever is Bacon with like 12 A's, and hopefully if you're listening to this,

2:25 please reach out to us.

2:26 Hit us up at info@undaunted.life on an email info@undaunted.life.

2:30 We'd love to connect with you.

2:31 But I just wanted to read to you what the podcast and what our content has done for

2:35 this one guy in particular, because again, we want to encourage you guys.

2:38 If you like this content, this is how the content gets out to more people.

2:42 The algorithms don't like people that don't get five star reviews and don't get a lot of reviews.

2:47 So that's something that we want to make sure we keep popping up in people's feeds.

2:50 So let me go ahead and read this review to you.

2:51 And it's from June 30th of 2018.

2:53 I'm not one who typically takes the time to comment or write reviews,

2:57 but I believe this podcast deserves input.

3:00 Listening to this podcast has simultaneously helped to open my mind while at the same time

3:04 centralizing my focus as a Christian man.

3:06 Excuse me.

3:07 How Undaunted Life has opened my mind.

3:10 It is brought to the forefront of my conscious topics such as abortion,

3:15 a lack of leadership in the church, and the historicity of Jesus to say only a few.

3:20 These are topics that I admittedly should have been thinking about a lot more.

3:24 This podcast has also opened my mind to a myriad of books and other podcasts,

3:28 which have also helped me to open my mind in other ways.

3:30 How Undaunted Life has helped to centralize my focus.

3:33 It has solidified the idea that a Christian man has three main focuses in his life,

3:37 his spiritual resilience, his mental resilience, and his physical resilience.

3:41 By dividing my focus into these three categories, it has helped me to see my personal weaknesses

3:45 in those areas, which has helped me to work on those same weaknesses.

3:49 Since listening to this podcast and since applying what I have learned,

3:52 both from the podcast as well as the other sources I've been exposed to as a result of this podcast,

3:57 I've seen personal growth in all three areas.

3:59 My wife has seen it too, particularly in the area of leadership,

4:03 and it has benefited our marriage.

4:05 While there are a few certain ideas on this podcast, which I don't agree with,

4:08 that's okay. Having an open mind and having the willingness to listen to someone's opposing

4:12 opinion is part of what Kyle speaks about in this podcast.

4:15 It falls under the category of mental resilience and is a lesson in itself.

4:18 I highly recommend all Christian men both listen to this podcast

4:22 and read the devotional and new version.

4:23 You will find yourself challenged in a beneficial way.

4:26 So again, guys, as you can kind of tell there, even in that last paragraph,

4:30 you know, he doesn't always agree with everything that we talk about.

4:32 And that's the thing that people don't understand is I actually love that.

4:36 I love when people don't just automatically agree with the things that we say or how I

4:41 say things and how I go about what I what I'm doing.

4:44 Again, I encourage you guys all the times.

4:46 If you disagree with me on something and it's just your opinion, that's fine.

4:49 I'm okay to talk to you about your opinion as long as you understand

4:52 that there's no right or wrong because it's an opinion.

4:55 Blue is not definably and inextricably the greatest color ever, right?

5:00 You can argue that there are other colors that are better.

5:02 But when something is truth or false, whenever something can be determined as true or false,

5:08 those are things where we don't get to express our opinion on.

5:10 And so I love that this guy obviously alluded to the fact that he doesn't agree with everything

5:14 and he just put it out there and he says, hey, but overall, this is something that I really enjoy.

5:19 So I wanted to put that out there to you guys here just real quick.

5:21 Again, it means the world to us when you leave us reviews, especially if it's a five star review.

5:27 So guys, I mean, obviously, if you if you think we're a three or four star,

5:30 maybe just save your review, go put that review on someone else's podcast.

5:33 But if you think we deserve a five star review, please leave us one.

5:36 But let's go ahead and get into today's content.

5:39 So the episode that we're going to go through today is called Blue Belt.

5:42 And that is because you're truly Kyle Thompson has finally attained his blue belt in Brazilian

5:48 Jiu Jitsu. So I spent about a year in seven or eight months training at the Forge in Edmond,

5:54 Oklahoma, and just doing the normal things, going to practice.

5:57 I'm helping people with competitions, doing competitions in my own.

6:00 And I did get my blue belt a couple of Thursdays ago from the recording of this podcast.

6:06 And so I wanted to kind of describe to you guys what that experience was like.

6:10 But also for those of you guys who are maybe thinking about skipping this episode because

6:13 you're not a Jiu Jitsu guy and you just don't know anything about it,

6:16 there's a lot of content here that even if you've never done Jiu Jitsu before,

6:19 you're going to get some value out of some of the things because the lessons that I've learned

6:23 since the last time I talked about this, which was episode five of this podcast,

6:27 I've learned a lot since then because this is kind of a pseudo part two to episode five of this.

6:32 So if you would go back and listen to that one, maybe before you listen to this one,

6:35 there's been some additional lessons, life lessons, man lessons that I've learned using Jiu Jitsu

6:40 since that time. So definitely stick around. I think it'll be valuable for you.

6:43 But let's go ahead and get into the story of our blue belt promotion.

6:46 So every gym apparently does this differently. And I'm certainly not putting myself as an authority

6:51 in this area because, you know, I basically have experienced one gym for the most part.

6:56 And so if your gym's different or if I'm saying something wrong, you know,

6:59 it is what it is. Give me some grace. But the thing about our gym is at our gym,

7:04 we basically do a night where we do all of the promotions at one time. So if you're being promoted

7:10 to a new belt, which just to give you a reminder, it starts out a white belt and then goes to blue,

7:14 purple, brown and black, everyone is getting promoted on the same night. So some gyms,

7:19 you know, they'll they'll focus everything on one person or they'll have a little small

7:23 group of people one week and small group people. The next our gym tends to do it all at once.

7:27 So the last time we did this was about six months ago, we did another large group of people and a

7:31 lot of people got promoted. We basically had brown, purple and black or and blue belts that have

7:36 been promoted that night. And so basically it's a night where a lot of the guys come out of the

7:40 woodwork. So there's some guys that maybe don't come that consistently, maybe because of work or

7:44 their family or something like that. But this is a night where they definitely show up. But also

7:48 friends and family show up. If you feel like you're a person, if you feel like you're gonna get

7:53 promoted, you kind of want your people to be there. You want your maybe your spouse to be there or

7:57 something like that. Because when you walk in that night, you don't know for certain that you're

8:00 being promoted, right? Some people might have a pretty good idea based on their track record and

8:06 how much they've been training and how long since the last promotion, you might have an idea, but

8:10 you don't really know. But if you are getting promoted, you don't want, you know, nobody to be

8:14 there for you or something like that. So basically what we did at our gym is we did a little bit of

8:19 a flow role. So everybody kind of got out there and the mat was just absolutely completely packed.

8:24 And then what we did is the guy who kind of runs our gym, Chris, he split guys up into groups. And

8:29 then basically your group would come out and then they had all the killers on one side of the gym.

8:34 So those are our, you know, our brown belts, our purple belts. And you know, one of our black belts

8:38 was out there. And basically you're there and then someone just walks out and it's your turn to

8:43 go against them. And so for about three or four minutes, you're going with an incredibly skilled

8:47 person who is fresh. And then they say time and immediately another person comes in. So you don't

8:52 get a break. You don't get a rest. But those people get to rotate out and they bring a new person right

8:58 in. And it's basically go time. And so I can't really remember because I was I was so in the zone

9:03 for this night that it just really, I really have no idea how long it lasted. I know at different

9:09 points, we took like little five minute breaks. And then we came back in and did it some more and

9:13 that type of a thing. But it was one of those things where that night is about survival,

9:17 really. I mean, because because you're not sitting there going through every last bit of the curriculum

9:21 and doing everything exactly precisely, this is about making it through. It's about being a good

9:25 training partner, but it's also about survival because these people typically on promotion nights,

9:29 they're rolling way harder than they would in a normal competition class or curriculum class or

9:34 something like that. They are making you earn it. They're going to make you pay if you make a mistake.

9:39 And so that's basically what we did. And I don't know, we did that for about an hour or so,

9:43 an hour and a half or so with a little breaks in between. And then we got to the end. But but the

9:47 really cool thing was is, you know, I we did a bunch of rounds in gi. And then we did a bunch

9:52 of rounds in no gi. And I got to roll with one of my main training partners, Tyler, a couple of

9:57 different times. And so he I think he tapped me about a dozen times in about five or six minutes,

10:01 because that's just kind of what happens when you go against him. But the cool thing was is there

10:06 was kind of this idea that there might be some black belts promoted that night. And that's an

10:12 incredible thing if you don't understand, because some people think, you know, Oh, I know a buddy,

10:15 he's like a karate black belt. Well, karate black, you can get your black belt in like three or four

10:19 years. And you don't even know you need to know how to fight necessarily, but you can still get

10:22 your black belt or guys that are do kung fu or wing chung or stuff like that, you get your

10:26 black belt super fast. But at this event, we had six of our guys get promoted to black belt.

10:34 Before then, we had two black belts in the gym. We had one guy who basically runs a gym, runs a

10:39 curriculum, and then another guy that had come from a different lineage, but is now a part of our

10:42 gym. So we had two that night, there were six guys that got promoted to black belt. But just to

10:48 give you guys a sense of how incredibly insane that was of those six guys, the one who had been

10:55 training the least amount of time had trained for 12 years before he got his black belt.

11:03 12 years. And the guy who'd been training the longest, I believe he was 19 years, 19 years of

11:11 training before he got his black belt. You can not even assume for one second that if you get a

11:16 legit black belt and jujitsu that you didn't earn it. I mean, there's a handful of guys, you know,

11:20 think of Mike Fowler or BJ pin or those guys, those guys got their black belts in like three or four

11:25 years, but those guys are like savants. Those guys are geniuses. Those guys, when it comes to jujitsu,

11:30 it just agreed with them. And nobody could, you know, they're like, Oh, you got your black belt in

11:34 three years, you're not any good. Okay, get on the mat and let's see how good you think they are at

11:38 that point. But it was an incredibly emotional evening for a lot of guys could and you could

11:43 see it, especially on the guys that got promoted to black belt. Because you think about all those

11:47 hours and all those practices and all those times you coached and were coached and competed and

11:52 won and lost and all those different things, the time away from family, the time where family was

11:57 a part of it. And one of our guys in particular is named Steve, uh, all of his family was there.

12:02 He had his daughters there, his son and his wife. And whenever they came on the mat afterwards,

12:06 it was such an an unbelievably beautiful moment watching him be embraced by his family because

12:12 they know how important jujitsu is to him because jujitsu becomes a lifestyle. And so I was so

12:17 ecstatic to have been a small part of that because, you know, I got my blue belt. I was in a long line

12:22 of people and we had maybe half a dozen people get their blue belts and a couple of purples,

12:26 a couple of brown belts and then six black belts. And so just being a part of that, it just re

12:31 infuses the level of family that you feel with these people. It feels very, very familial. And,

12:37 for those of you that have done jujitsu, been through promotions, been promoted yourselves,

12:41 you know exactly what I'm talking about. But the thing about it that I found interesting

12:45 is when you go through a big thing like that, you always look back and you wonder what changed,

12:50 like what changed immediately. So when you think about it, when you received your diploma in high

12:54 school, what did you feel like? What, what had changed in college? What did that feel like?

12:59 If you, you know, got accepted to be on the police force or something like that, or you were promoted

13:04 in the military, you know, what changed? And that's what I the feeling I was struck with when I was

13:09 driving home is, okay, now that I've got this blue belt, what has changed about myself?

13:15 And what I realized is that nothing had changed. When that blue belt was put around my waist,

13:22 nothing changed. I mean, to be honest, I still suck at jujitsu. I have a lot of problems that

13:28 I can't deal with in jujitsu and that I haven't learned how to do. I'm still, you know, like a

13:33 newly born giraffe trying to like figure out how to walk. I still have a long way to go.

13:37 And so the blue belt wasn't a symbol of anything other than, hey, you stuck it out,

13:44 you went through the practices, you learned what you needed to learn, and you've made it to this step.

13:50 But what I can tell you is I do have a new goal because when you're white belt, you don't really

13:55 know about anything again, go back to episode five of this podcast. But my first tournament,

14:00 I didn't know what my goal should have been. Should my goal be to get one takedown? Should my goal

14:04 be to win one match? Should it be to win gold medal or just get a medal? Like you don't really

14:09 know what to do. But the longer you train, you kind of get an idea of like, okay, this tournament,

14:13 you know, the ideas I want to go double gold or I want to make sure that, you know, I don't get

14:17 taken down or just whatever the thing might be, you can create the goals because you have more

14:20 knowledge. But my new goal now is to not get the blue belt blues. So for those of you who

14:27 understand you just, you know, exactly what I'm talking about, but for those of you that don't,

14:30 the blue belt blues is one of those things. And it's kind of a funny thing in the jiu-jitsu

14:34 community. You have guys that train for a year or two, they get their blue belt. And then you

14:39 like don't see, you don't see them anymore. Like they just disappeared. It's like, ah, where'd Jim

14:43 go? Ah, we have no idea where Jim's been, but he got his blue belt. And I guess that was good enough

14:47 because you get your blue belt and it shows that you know something, you know a little something

14:52 about jiu-jitsu. Now you don't know very much, but you know something, right? And so sometimes with

14:58 blue belt, you get to this point where you feel like, okay, you're starting to plateau, purple belt

15:03 seems like it's so far off in the distance that it's so hard to even, even like theorize how you

15:09 would even get there. And I think another part of it is within the transition from white belt to

15:14 black belt, the longest transition period, I believe is blue belt. That's a general gist I get from

15:21 from looking around. Because you know, you're a white belt for a year or two of consistent training.

15:25 And then, you know, at purple belt and brown belt, you're maybe a purple belt or brown belt for a

15:29 few years, and then you get your black belt, um, a few years each on on brown belt and purple belt.

15:34 But with blue belt, we, I've seen guys that have been blue belts for five or six years.

15:39 And these guys, they may train somewhat consistently. Maybe they take some time off

15:44 in between, but it's the longest runway until you get that next promotion. Because once you

15:49 get a purple belt, it just kind of makes sense for you to keep going. Because when you get your

15:53 purple belt, it's not exactly the midway point. It's a little bit over the midway point. And so

15:57 that's a new goal for me is just to make sure that I don't look at that blue belt is anything

16:02 different. You know, the belt's a little stiff. It doesn't fall is right as I'm and cleaned as much.

16:07 But that's the thing is that is just a new belt color. So it doesn't, it shouldn't communicate

16:11 anything to anybody else other than the fact that I haven't been training for five minutes. I've

16:14 been training for a couple of years. That's what it should communicate. But you don't want to get

16:18 caught up in what do colors mean? Like what do the belt colors mean? And what should that

16:22 communicate about you? Because here's a deal I could go into my next tournament. I have less

16:26 than two years of training on my belt, and I could be competing against a blue belt that's

16:30 been training for six or seven years. Probably not terribly likely, but that's absolutely the case,

16:34 certainly four or five years. And so, and if they're just a better athlete and a better

16:38 wrestler to begin with, it may be a long day for me, right? But that I just wanted to kind of give

16:43 you guys an idea of what that night was like. I wanted to kind of bring it to you a little bit

16:47 because there was a lot of sweat. There was a lot of of struggling. And then there was a lot of

16:52 smiles. There were some tears. Guys had a really, really good time. My wife is a professional

16:56 photographer. She did a fantastic job of capturing the evening. And in all of its

17:01 terribleness, I mean, when I look at most of my pictures, I don't look great in most of my pictures

17:05 because I'm having, you know, large gorillas basically keeping me on the ground and doing whatever they

17:10 want to me. But it was just an incredible, incredible night. But I wanted to go ahead and talk a little

17:15 bit about some of the lessons that I learned. I alluded to this a little bit earlier. And again,

17:20 if you go back to episode five of this podcast, and again, for those of you who have been with

17:23 this podcast from the beginning, I have to give you guys a special thank you. Because for the first

17:28 dozen or so episodes, I'm kind of digress, I'll digress back here in just a second. But for the

17:32 first dozen or so episodes, I didn't really know how the microphone and the little like

17:37 screen thing that I'm like trying to, you know, figure out. I had no idea how that stuff worked.

17:42 And so if you endured those first dozen or so episodes, my face was like right on top of the

17:47 microphone. And so you could hear this like every time that I said something with a P word in it,

17:53 it had a huge pop. And I couldn't talk very loud because it would, you know, blow out the speakers

17:57 or whatever. So I didn't really figure out. I didn't need to hover right on top of this microphone

18:02 until, you know, 12, 13 episodes in. So again, if you listen to episode five of this podcast,

18:06 understand that there's gonna be some popping. And if you listen to it in your car, it might be a

18:10 little bit annoying, but I'll digress back to here. But I mentioned three lessons up to that point,

18:15 because that episode was after I had done six months of jujitsu. So this is six months of

18:20 gijujitsu at the forge in Edmond. And there were three big lessons that I pulled out. The first

18:24 lesson was humility, right? Because jujitsu is the ultimate ego killer. And I won't go into a long

18:30 explanations of these because I've already done that. But jujitsu is all about getting humble.

18:34 It doesn't matter how good of an athlete you are. It doesn't matter how long you've been training.

18:38 If someone's been training longer, and if they understand things more, you're going to be in

18:41 trouble. And you basically see humility in others. You see guys that are really, really, really good

18:46 that can absolutely destroy you. They'll get in a position, they'll get the the the lock of some

18:50 kind. And then they'll just let it go because they know they had you. There's no reason for

18:54 them to crank on something because you may not know when you need to tap. So that was the first

18:56 lesson is humility. The second lesson is just the power of jujitsu. The ability to control others

19:02 is so unbelievable. And when you learn different things in jujitsu, it's absolutely incredible

19:10 because you understand how quickly with just a little bit of training that you can control

19:15 someone entirely that is not trained. Like if they're, you know, generally the same size as you,

19:20 but they don't know how to do jujitsu, you can absolutely take them down and hold them there

19:23 until help comes. It absolutely happens that way. But also it's so easy to hurt people. I mean,

19:28 you get a drunk guy at a bar and he wants to get in a fight and you take him down. If you mount

19:32 him and you want to choke him or take his back and choke him or take his arm or something like that,

19:36 if you mean him ill will, he cannot stop you. Like you're breaking the arm, you're breaking the

19:41 shoulder, you're breaking, you know, the foot or the ankle or the knee, like you're putting him

19:45 out cold. It's just, it's just an HR that, but also you have to learn how to control yourself,

19:49 which I wasn't always good at and I'll get a little, get more into that here in just a little bit,

19:53 but yeah, that was the second lesson I had learned. It's just the power of jujitsu.

19:56 And at that six month mark, the third lesson I learned was jujitsu Brazilian jujitsu can be for

20:01 everyone. I mean, I hear about this all the times like, Oh man, I don't do all that MMA stuff. Like,

20:06 I don't want to necessarily do all that. But the thing is, is jujitsu is for all body types and

20:10 athletic abilities. I mean, you can't look at a guy like Gordon Ryan and compare him to a guy like,

20:16 you know, Matt Sarah, like Matt Sarah is basically a bowling ball with arms and legs, but he's in

20:21 an absolutely incredible jujitsu player. So there's not like a specific type. There's not like a

20:25 specific body type, right? And you know, basically it's just do you have the willingness to embrace

20:30 the suckiness and the pain of learning something that maybe doesn't come naturally to you, right?

20:34 And again, I talked about that quote that black belts are just white belts that never quit. That's

20:38 absolutely true. And for most people, they don't ever get to that point, because they may take a

20:43 few classes or go see some things here or there. It gets a little bit too hard. They're a little

20:46 bit too sore and then they never come back, right? It's way different than the blue belt blues.

20:50 Just people being pussies in there. They come in for a month and they're like, ah, this is too

20:53 hard. I want to do something else. I'm going to go back and golf or whatever the thing might be. So

20:57 those are the lessons again that I learned at that six month mark is humility, the power of

21:01 jujitsu in that jujitsu can be for everyone. But I've learned a lot of lessons since then.

21:06 And I want to frame these in a way that you guys understand whether you do jujitsu or not,

21:11 this is going to be helpful for you to kind of learn them in the different ways that I'm talking

21:15 about them. So since the last episode, since episode five, it's been about another year's worth

21:19 of training. And so I'm basically going to give it to you via story time. So I'm going to tell you

21:25 a bunch of different stories in that at the end of each one of these stories, we're going to be

21:28 able to give you basically a lesson, the big lesson that you should take away. So the first story is,

21:33 I'll just call it the mental quitter, the mental quitter. So this is a story of my third tournament

21:39 ever. So going into this tournament, the goal that I wanted was to win double gold. And for those

21:45 of you that don't realize whenever you apply or register for a tournament, you can register for

21:50 gi no gi, you can do your weight division. And that you know, you have your weight division,

21:54 your age, and your belt level. And then you can do another division called absolute. And absolute,

22:00 there's no weight restrictions. The only restrictions are they put people that are similar belts are

22:05 the same belt together. And also the same age brackets typically age, you know, you'll go from,

22:10 you know, 18 to 29, and then 30 to 39, 40 to 49, so on. So I wanted to get double gold. I wanted

22:16 to compete in the gi. I wanted to win my weight division. And then I wanted to win the absolute

22:20 division. Okay, so I had never done that before. But the thing about this tournament is about two

22:26 weeks before the tournament, I got a pretty serious neck injury, right? So just something just kind

22:33 of weird in practice, it just kind of popped, everything got got out of alignment. But for the

22:37 two weeks leading up to this tournament, I couldn't do anything. Like I could not, I certainly couldn't

22:43 do jujitsu. I couldn't lift weights, I couldn't run, because everything I did severely affected my

22:49 neck. And so leading up to it, I was needing to cut weight a little bit, because this tournament,

22:56 the weight classes were a little bit differently, done a little bit differently. So with most of them,

23:01 I could be at least 191 pounds and still be able to compete. And I hover it like 191, 192. So that

23:07 wasn't going to be a big deal. But for this tournament, I needed to weigh below 185, which five pounds

23:12 is not a big deal. But when you can't work out, and you still need to be able to get enough calories

23:17 into where you can operate, it was just one of those tough deals, like how am I going to lose

23:21 this weight? Because I wasn't just going to, I mean, I already spent the money, you can't get

23:24 your money back, I was going to compete in this tournament no matter what. So this was kind of

23:28 like the beginning of summer. And so what I would do is I would literally put on, you know,

23:32 shorts and sweatpants and long socks and, you know, sweatshirts and pull the hoods up and put on a

23:37 beanie. And I would just basically walk my neighborhood and try to walk as fast as I could without

23:42 affecting my neck, you know, take my dog for a little bit. I mean, the people in the neighborhood

23:45 were like, what is wrong with this guy? I mean, these, I had several people stop to ask me what

23:49 in the world I was doing. But I was just basically trying to keep my weight down. But long story short,

23:53 I was able to get to the tournament, I was able to weigh in, I weighed in under my weight. And it

23:58 was it worked out just fine. But the thing about it was is it wasn't the easiest tournament. The

24:05 tournament before that I just competed in my weight division. And I submitted all three of my opponents

24:10 in, you know, each one of them in less than two or three minutes, I did really, really well in that

24:14 tournament. But let's talk about just my weight bracket first. So in my weight bracket, it was a

24:18 small bracket. So I only had two matches in order to win. But the first guy, I went up against the

24:23 thing that was funny about him is when I walked into the tournament room, I saw this guy warming

24:27 up. And I literally had the start in the back of my head, I was like, man, that guy is jacked. I'm

24:32 so glad I'm not in his weight division. And then they call his name, and then call my name. And I

24:37 was like, Oh, crap. How is this Mongoloid dude less than 185 pounds? He was like former army ranger

24:45 jacked like super super jacked. And so I was like, all right, this is gonna be interesting. But

24:50 I wasn't gonna change my game plan. My game plan is to always get the takedown. And typically,

24:55 I try to get the takedown early. I don't want to get let them get settled in and get moving around

24:59 and get a good feel for my movement. I want to try to get the takedown immediately. So with this

25:02 first guy, I tried this takedown that up to that point had never been stopped in a tournament.

25:07 It was just an outside single to where, you know, basically, if I don't get it, my neck's not in

25:11 any type of trouble or anything like that. And so I go out there to get it, and he stuffs it,

25:16 and he stuffed it hard. And I was like, okay, it didn't really feel like a wrestler, though,

25:20 didn't really feel like he had the hips to be a wrestler, but you know, whatever. So I kind of

25:23 get out and I reset, but I didn't want to reset too long. I shoot again, stuffs me again for a

25:27 second time. I was like, okay, I didn't really think about any, any other takedowns that I was

25:33 gonna be doing because these have just worked for me over and over. But then the third time,

25:37 I try the same takedown, I hit a trip on him, but then I end up in a guillotine problem, right?

25:44 This is a big, strong mongoloid guy that got me in a guillotine and he had his legs wrapped around

25:50 me. So it was a problem for your boy. So it was just a problem at that moment. So I'm starting to go

25:55 out. This guy is squeezing. I can't really get his hands apart. And so I could feel myself starting

26:00 to go unconscious. I was very, very close to tapping. And for whatever inexplicable reason,

26:05 he just kind of lets up a little bit. He just kind of like, just for a second, just doesn't start

26:10 squeezing as hard. I was able to get my head out. And so long story short, we had a couple of different,

26:14 one thing I didn't mention about this tournament, it was a submission only tournament. So you couldn't

26:18 win via points. There was just basically this big time limit. And you had to try to submit your

26:22 opponent in that time period. So getting position wasn't really a great idea. And so as I'm going

26:27 through, I end up getting mounted on this guy. But I knew being mounted on him, he was, he was

26:31 really, really strong. So I probably wasn't going to stay there for very long. I was about to put

26:35 in what's called an Ezekiel choke. I was sneaking my, I basically am choking him with my shirt sleeve,

26:39 my jacket sleeve. And I'm sneaking my, my arm underneath his head. And my coach who was there

26:45 with me that day, he goes Ezekiel, Ezekiel, like, like he was telling me to do it. But as soon as he

26:50 said it out loud, then my opponent realized that that's what I was trying to do. So I was like,

26:55 coach, come on, what the heck? Why did you tell him what I was trying to do? But you know, he made up

26:59 for literally about five seconds later, because like I said, this guy was really strong. He pushes

27:03 me off him out. And then he left his arm exposed though. But I didn't see it. And so my coach really

27:09 calmly goes arm bar. And I was like, Oh yeah, so I grab his arm, throw my leg over and I kind of

27:14 did a belly down arm bar. He flipped over right on top and then tap pretty quick. So I ended up

27:19 taking out this really, really, really tough opponent in the first round. And the championship

27:23 match isn't nearly as exciting as that one was. It was against a younger kid, he'd kind of been

27:27 bumped up into our bracket, wasn't, you know, physically strong or anything like that. So I was

27:31 able to take him down pretty easily, take his back and then when he scrambled out, I got an arm

27:35 bar on him as well. So I had won my division. But again, winning your division isn't nearly as

27:40 difficult as winning the absolute division. Because like I've talked about before, and like you may

27:43 already know, in the absolute division, you might be the smallest guy in there. And again, I weighed

27:47 in about 184 pounds that day. And you know, every guy I went against was a lot bigger than that. So

27:51 I had about a 15 minute break. And then I went over to do the, and this is kind of where we get

27:57 into the part of the story, why I call it the mental quitters. So I get over to the absolute

28:00 division. I go against the first guy. He's probably 20 pounds heavier than me. But take him down,

28:05 get mounted and I get him in a Americana and tap him out pretty quick. And then just a championship

28:10 match again, this one, I only had to win two matches to win the absolute as well. The guy

28:15 going against me in the championship match was 270 pounds, 270. Remember, I weighed in at 185,

28:24 184 actually, right? I had a one pound allowance like I'd gotten under the 185 limit. And so I go

28:29 to my coach. And I'm like, um, what do I do with this? He is huge. And you know, he wasn't in like

28:40 great shape. But when you're that size, you can just get away with doing some things pretty terrible,

28:45 right? And he literally goes, all right, Kyle, you have really, you're in really good shape. You

28:49 have good cardio, just move a lot. Like he's just going to get tired from trying to like chase you

28:53 down. But I didn't have the heart to tell my coach though, is those two weeks where I couldn't

28:58 really work out my gas tank was like blown. Like I didn't have my normal gas tank. Like I normally

29:04 have a really, really good gas tank. But if you guys ever understand about cardio, cardio can

29:08 leave you super fast, right? It takes a long time to lose your your strength, but you can lose your

29:13 cardio super quick. So I was like, okay, all right, I just kind of like nodded like, yeah, that was

29:17 going to be the plan. And so I started moving around match starts and, um, you know, I'm trying to get

29:22 grips. But here's the problem. I tried to do a face plant take down for a guy. I forgot to block

29:30 his outside leg. And so what I ended up doing is that I ended up pulling somebody who weighs

29:35 approximately the same, uh, poundage as the moon. I pulled him right on top of me and right into

29:41 side control. So for those guys who don't know it, he's passed both of my legs. I don't mind my

29:45 legs wrapped around him. He is completely inside control laying on me with all of his frame.

29:50 And this is the point. This is kind of the big part of the story. In that exact moment where I

29:56 pulled him, I made a huge mistake, pulled him into side control. I thought to myself, this match is

30:01 over. I've lost. And it was that split second where I quit in my head. I quit. Match is over.

30:10 No reason to keep flopping around. No reason trying to push him off me. This is it. This

30:14 is a 270 pound man who's got bad intentions and he's in my side control. And I'm the one that got

30:19 him here. But one of my teammates actually saved the day for me. And my teammate doesn't really know

30:27 this. I never told this to him. But one of my teammates named Jason, he had been watching all

30:32 the matches that day. He wasn't just watching my matches. He was watching all these people's

30:36 matches. He had seen this guy compete in all his matches and he had been undefeated that day.

30:41 And when he got into side control, all he wanted to do was this thing called a bread cutter choke.

30:46 And I'm not going to get into the intricacies of the choke. But essentially, he's just basically

30:51 choking you with your own, your own jacket in his forearm, right? And this was just how he was

30:56 finishing people and people were tapping apparently really quickly. So I remembered that I thought

31:01 to myself, this match is over. I might as well just quit. But then I felt this guy reach across

31:07 from my outside lapel. And I'm like, Oh, he's trying to get the bread cutter choke. I remembered

31:12 what my buddy Jason had said. And immediately in that instant, it was like I had that ray of hope

31:18 that I knew what this guy was doing. And I could do something to thwart his attack,

31:23 because I didn't know if this guy was any good. I didn't know if he was just going to move from

31:26 the bread cutter, I block and then he just moves to something else, tries to go to Neil and Belly

31:30 Mount like I had no idea. But I blocked the bread cutter immediately. And it was almost as if this

31:35 guy wasn't sure what to do. Because all day long, that's all you'd been doing to people, right?

31:40 And so I blocked that. And I'm able to kind of work my hips out a little bit.

31:44 And after maybe about 30 seconds or so, I get out, right? So we're both standing. And he is

31:50 exhausted. I don't know if this was just an amalgamation of, of all the things he had, he had done that

31:56 day or, or kind of what had gone on that match. But he is taking big, deep breaths. And so my coach

32:02 is yelling at me, he's like, shoot, shoot, go, go now, go now. But again, remember, I don't

32:07 have a gas tank either. So I'm gassed. And I'm like kind of going through the emotion of,

32:11 Oh, crap. Okay. I thought I was over. I thought I was over. But man, I blocked that bread cutter.

32:15 Thanks, Jason. But now I'm up. What do I do now? And so I shot on this guy. And I shot on him and

32:22 basically drove him halfway on to another mat. I thought the referee was going to stop the match

32:27 because we were so far off the mat. Referee didn't stop it. So I stopped driving, which was my fault.

32:31 And then the guy just lands on top of me. I was like, okay, now I'm stuck again. But I was able to

32:35 make my way out. But what ended up happening at the end of this match is I was able to

32:40 get in a position where I was, I was mounted on him and then I was doing the Ezekiel choke.

32:46 And my coach didn't yell out that I was doing the Ezekiel choke this time. But the thing was,

32:50 is I didn't have the grip correct. So basically I was trying to choke the guy, but I hadn't sunk

32:55 it in yet. But this guy being as big as he was, he just thought, okay, I'm just going to turn

33:01 myself over because I was a little bit high. My hips weren't as heavy. And so what happened was,

33:05 is he flips me over. But in doing so, he actually sunk in the choke for me. So I had a little bit

33:12 of a gap between my wrists. And then as soon as he flipped me over, my wrist kind of connected in

33:17 and boom, I had him in the Ezekiel choke. And I just squeeze and pulled as hard as I could.

33:22 He hesitated for a second. And then he taps. And I was so elated and so excited. I had one double

33:28 gold. No, it wasn't the ADCCs or, you know, IBJ, JF, you know, world championships or anything like

33:33 that. But it was a big deal. I'd won the first double gold. But again, the big thing I remember

33:38 from that tournament was I quit. I mentally quit. But here's the lesson. Again, I had told you in

33:44 the rest of these stories aren't going to be nearly as long as this one, but I wanted to get

33:47 the longest one out of the way at the beginning. Here's the lesson from this one. Mental resilience

33:51 can be fostered while in the fight. So I was literally in the middle of this fighter, this match,

33:58 whatever you want to say. And I had quit. I had let my mental resilience or let my mental strength

34:04 wane, right? Because remember, we talk about the difference between strength and resilience,

34:07 strength is, you know, you can build a build it up, but it can wane from time to time. But resilience,

34:11 that's just your ability to bounce back. You can do that at any point. But for most of you guys

34:16 that are in the middle of something right now, whether it's relational, whether it's physical,

34:20 whether it's, you know, something going on with the kids, whatever the thing might be,

34:24 you can cultivate mental resilience while in the middle of that fight. So I don't want to get to

34:28 two other worldly and existential and all that kind of stuff. But that's the thing. That was the

34:32 big lesson I wanted to get through to you guys on the middle quitter is I quit and then bounce back

34:36 almost in the same second, right? And you can do the same. You kind of have that inner voice that's

34:41 telling you what you need to do. And that's usually telling you to quit. You don't have to do that.

34:45 Okay. So that's one of the lessons I wanted to get through to you guys. So that was story number one.

34:48 Now story number two. And like I said, there's four more stories, but these are going to be much,

34:51 much shorter. So let's go rapid fire. Story number two is called Tyler takes Kyle to school. Okay.

34:58 So here's the thing. Every Thursday night we have competition class. That's typically when

35:02 most of the killers come out because these are the people that like to compete and are competing

35:06 the most often. So we get a lot of rounds in. It's typically a really, really difficult class.

35:11 And again, this probably happened maybe five, six months ago. I had an especially bad class,

35:17 right? I made a bunch of mistakes. There was a bunch of positions that I thought I could get

35:22 into that I couldn't get into. I got submitted a lot. I got tweaked in a couple of different ways

35:27 that, you know, the hurt a little bit. And I was just like, man, it was one of those bad classes.

35:32 Okay. So I go back to the locker room afterwards and I'm getting changed. And my main training

35:36 partner and my main coach has a guy named Tyler. And so I was just, you know, Tyler's like, you know,

35:41 how was class? You know, how'd you feel? And I was like, man, I just feel like I'm getting worse.

35:45 I feel like I'm getting worse at jujitsu. Like, and that's exactly that's all I could think

35:49 about that moment is not like, Oh, I plateaued because I'm so good. No, it's like, man, I feel

35:53 like I'm going backwards. Like I'm training and training and training, but I feel like I'm getting

35:56 worse. And Tyler isn't one to be very, very poetic with his words, right? He's a little bit

36:04 introverted. And he just, he's not one to just basically just talk and talk and talk and yeah,

36:08 that's just not his style. But he said something that was so profound to me. And I've remembered

36:13 it to this moment. And I was like, okay, all right, I need to just shut up and keep training. But

36:16 this is what he said. He asked me a question. He goes, Kyle, what would you do if you competed

36:22 against Kyle from six months ago? And I immediately knew what he meant. And I was just like, Oh,

36:29 man, I would kill that guy. And he was like, all right, then shut up, keep training. I was like,

36:34 Oh, okay. All right, that makes perfect sense. And so the lesson here from Tyler takes Kyle to

36:41 school is compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

36:46 If that sounds familiar, it's because it's rule number four from Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for

36:51 life. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today. Again,

36:55 if you let your ego get involved with jujitsu, it could end up taking you down more than it'll

37:00 take anybody else down. Because that was a thing is I was basically thinking to myself, man, I'm

37:04 getting beat by all my my teammates. And again, it was it was ridiculous. Because all these teammates

37:08 have been training much longer than I had some of them were just, you know, clearly better athletes

37:12 than I was. I was just being hard on myself. But Tyler was just like, dude, like just what?

37:16 Compare yourself to who you were. You are better than jujitsu today than you even were a week ago.

37:20 Shut up. So I thought that was a really, really good lesson. So shout out to Tyler Murrow. Thank

37:24 you so much for that. All right. Story number three, this one's called my first bull in the ring.

37:29 Okay. So if you don't know a bull in the ring is, and I know some people call it a gauntlet,

37:33 some people call it this or that, but bull in the ring is basically where you have one person in the

37:37 middle, and then every minute or every two minutes or so, you bring a new fresh guy in and that person,

37:42 that person basically tries to survive grappling against the entirety of the class.

37:47 So before my first tournament, there's a group of guys that I've talked about a lot on here.

37:51 They get together on Sunday night. It's not an official class with the forge or any particular

37:54 gym that we've trained at, but they wanted to prepare me for my first tournament. So this is a

37:58 Sunday before my first tournament. And so they're like, all right, Kyle, you're going to be bull in

38:02 the ring. And so let's just say the first bull in the ring experience I had was not good,

38:08 and it was completely because of me. So again, you're not supposed to do well on bull in the ring.

38:13 The whole point is to put you out of disadvantage every single time they bring a fresh person out.

38:16 And here's the thing is if someone has your back and the minute timer is up, that next person just

38:21 runs in and hops on your back. Like the other person hops off and they hop on. So it's not like

38:24 a reset type of thing whenever we do it. But let's just say I got submitted by a guy who had never

38:32 submitted me before that I thought I was much, much better than and I just flip out. I'm like

38:36 punching the mat and like screaming and I'm cussing, I'm acting like an idiot. And I get all the way

38:41 to the end, right? I went all the way through the thing. And then I'm done and I'm over in the

38:45 corner and I'm pouting and I'm so mad at myself and I should have done better blah, blah, blah.

38:49 And you would think at this point, you know, someone came over and you said, Hey, Kyle,

38:53 you know, you shouldn't act that way or you know, it's going to be okay. You did a good job. They

38:56 didn't do that, right? They let me soak and they let me go over there and be an idiot and all those

39:00 different things. But I've thought about that night a lot, right? It's like, and I did have one

39:04 guy reach out to me later. He's like, man, you're better than that. Why'd you do that? And it wasn't

39:08 like you're better at jujitsu than that. He's like, you're just a better dude than that. Like,

39:10 why'd you freak out? And so I just remember thinking how how stupid that was, how immature

39:17 that was and how just ego centric that was that I flipped out. Again, the whole point is survival

39:21 and all these people are your friends. These are your teammates. And I just acted like a fool,

39:25 right? But since that time I've been bull in the ring in a couple of different instances,

39:30 right? You know, usually when someone's, you know, about to have their first kid or it's their

39:33 birthday or maybe they're leaving town for a long time, you'll be bull in the ring. That's just kind

39:36 of how it goes. You know, as I'm recording this later on this evening, I've got a bull in the ring

39:39 to look forward to for another buddy because it was his birthday. Conveniently, he wasn't in

39:44 attendance the week of his birthday, but he thought we forget, we did not forget. So he's gonna get

39:49 his tonight. But in my subsequent bull in the ring experiences, I've thought to myself, okay,

39:54 control yourself, control your emotions, make it through and try to be offensive with every

39:59 single person because it could be really easy when you get tired to just try to be defensive

40:03 and just fight hands. But I wanted to be offensive with every single person. And so long story short

40:08 on that, the lesson that I've learned is that your ego can and will ruin you if you allow it to.

40:13 And guys, this is a lesson for all of life, right? This certainly isn't just a lesson for, you know,

40:19 what I'm talking about right now. This is a lesson for your entire life because ego is what drove the

40:24 freak out when I did my first bull in the ring about six months into training jujitsu. It was,

40:29 it was absurd. I keep thinking back on that moment and my man, that is so, so embarrassing. And it's

40:34 like, that wasn't that long ago. And I would like to say that's gonna be my last freak out in terms

40:40 of jujitsu, but I just, I know myself a little bit better than that. I hope that's the case. But

40:44 it's just kind of one of those things where the lesson is that you got to get your ego and check

40:49 and jujitsu is a great way to do that. All right, guys, story number four, I'm gonna call it my

40:54 poor face. And basically, the thing is, is I was training on a Sunday afternoon, I was doing this

41:00 face plant takedown. And it was something I had kind of been working on. And I'm training with

41:04 somebody. And let's just say, in the middle of the takedown, something went wrong. And I broke my

41:11 nose, like bad. My nose kind of looked like a question mark. It was, it was just a bad, bad deal.

41:19 The buddy of mine that I was training with, he felt so horrible, because it was his elbow that

41:23 went into my nose that ended up breaking my nose. And I tried to explain it to him. I was like, buddy,

41:28 that could have been anybody. You didn't do anything. I literally dragged your arm into my face during

41:34 this takedown and broke my nose using your arm. But it was just, it was a tough deal, right? You

41:39 know, I come home and, you know, my wife's like, Oh, crap. Like, what are we gonna do? And, you know,

41:43 we didn't want to spend all this money going with the doctor and they're, you know, you can't

41:46 really do much for a broken nose. There's no reason to go the emergency room. But my big thing is,

41:50 I just wanted to get it reset. And I didn't want it to be like this ordeal, right? I didn't

41:54 want to be put out be put under anesthesia, have someone drive me home, miss a half a day's worth

41:58 of appointments or whatever the thing might be. And I also didn't want to be, you know, shuffled

42:01 around a three or four different offices so that they could all get paid. This person looks at it

42:05 and goes, yeah, it's definitely broken. That'll be a billion dollars. Next person's like, Oh,

42:08 let's take, take an x-ray. Yep, definitely broken. That'll be $2 billion. Like I didn't want to mess

42:11 with all that. And so I actually did get my nose reset, but I was able to find an ENT and ear nose

42:17 and throat doctor here in Oakland City that reset it without anesthesia, which if you watch the movies,

42:22 it's like the easiest process ever, right? The guy just grabs it and says, all right, just, you know,

42:26 bear down and then you just crack it over and you're done. That's not exactly how it goes,

42:31 right? Without getting into the long drawn out story, it took this doctor about five minutes

42:36 of cranking on my nose again, no anesthesia, cranking on it, cranking on it and pushing it,

42:41 grown man with two thumbs on one side of your nose, pushing as hard as he can. But after

42:46 about five minutes of pushing, it went right back down into the center. It was horrible. I don't

42:51 suggest that anybody do that. If I break my nose again, I'm probably not going to do it that way

42:55 again. But anyway, so the lesson here, you might be thinking to yourself, why in the world is he

43:00 talking about this? This is the lesson. And here's the thing guys, it is a very, very important lesson.

43:04 And it's don't use your teammates elbows to break your face. That's really the lesson. Don't do it.

43:12 The thing is, a broken nose is not a common injury in jujitsu, but somehow yours truly found a way

43:19 to break his face using his teammates arm. Don't do it. Highly suggest that you not do that. And

43:25 the last lesson here is something and I think this is a really unique title of this story. And I made

43:30 it up myself. It's called band of brothers, right? No one's ever heard that before, right? Anyway,

43:35 band of brothers, it's all I can think of. I know you guys have heard of band of brothers before,

43:38 but band of brothers, this isn't as much of a story as it is a description of reality.

43:43 There's a brotherhood within jujitsu. And when you train with people for any length of time,

43:49 and you guys know this, if you used to be athlete, high school or collegiate,

43:53 if used to be in the military, police force, you know, a firehouse, anything like that,

43:57 you get that brotherhood just by being around people and you see what people are made of when

44:01 they're put into difficult situations that require them to really dig down and dig deep.

44:05 And I've talked about this before. The group of guys that get together on Sunday nights,

44:10 where we're reading books and talking to one another, I think I've mentioned this on the podcast

44:13 before, but if you haven't heard that episode, the last quarter of last year, that would be 2018

44:18 out of the dozen to 15 or so guys that come to that group about four of them were having major

44:24 issues with their marriages, like huge, huge issues. You know, sometimes it was, you know,

44:30 the guy, you know, was drinking too much or the girl cheated on the guy or the guy cheated on

44:36 the girl. Like, whatever thing was just all kinds of crazy, crazy issues that were all over the place.

44:40 And these guys didn't have anyone else to talk to about it. There's no one at work they could

44:46 talk to their families wouldn't understand. And they didn't necessarily want to talk to their

44:49 families because it would make, you know, their spouse look really, really bad. But the thing

44:53 about it is guys, is they could come talk to us because they knew every Sunday at seven,

44:58 we were going to be there. And if they had something and they wanted to bring it up,

45:02 they could, they could bring it up to us. And we'd be there to listen to them. And they needed us to

45:07 come over and intercede in anything. They knew we'd be there immediately, right? But it's only because

45:13 we were able to, it was after all this training had happened. It's what I talk about all the time.

45:17 You have all these ministries, especially these so-called men's ministries, the only one to do is

45:21 get men in circles and have them talk to one another. But the thing is, is they haven't accomplished

45:25 anything yet. They haven't gone to battle as it were. This isn't, you know, this isn't war,

45:30 but it's the closest thing you may, maybe have in your suburban lifestyle to war, to a fight of any

45:36 kind. And so because of those things, because we've learned a lot about each other and we've

45:41 competed with one another and we've seen each other get hurt and get frustrated and pop back

45:45 and come back the next day or the next week or whatever thing might be, it creates this deep,

45:49 deep brotherhood within people. And so the lesson here, guys, is your teammates will become your

45:54 brothers and treat them accordingly. Because whether this is my little Sunday night crew or any of the

46:00 other forge classes, though, those are my brothers, man, like, absolutely. And it becomes one of those

46:05 things where you start to evaluate some of the friendships in your life. And you think to yourself,

46:09 man, there's no way I could leave the gym. You know, if budgets get tied or if timing gets tied or

46:14 your schedule gets tied, whatever the thing might be, you try to find a way to still make it to

46:18 jujitsu. And this kind of takes me back to the beginning when I was talking about the night where

46:22 all these guys got promoted. That's why you're seeing all this emotion on some of these guys'

46:26 faces because of all the sacrifice and all of the excitement. And then you have a room full of

46:32 people that are genuinely, genuinely happy for you. They couldn't be happier for you. And so guys,

46:39 those are the five stories that went to kind of bring out there to you. And again, I'll run down

46:42 those lessons just real quick again, just so you know, again, the first lesson is mental resilience

46:47 can be fostered while in the fight. The second lesson is compare yourself to who you were yesterday,

46:53 not to who someone else is today. The third lesson is your ego can and will ruin you. The fourth lesson

46:58 is don't use your teammates elbows to break your face. And then the last lesson is your teammates

47:03 will become your brothers, treat them accordingly. So real quick here, I wanted to kind of talk a

47:07 little bit more about, you know, even just me personally, my personal jujitsu game, because I know a lot of

47:12 you guys out there that maybe have done sports before, you will kind of look at yourself. And

47:16 you'll look at the things that you're good at or not good at. I just want to kind of take a real

47:19 quick second to kind of just put this out there to you if for nothing else to make myself accountable.

47:23 So here's some things that I need to get better at in jujitsu. And so guys, if you have any pointers

47:28 and you know what you're talking about, please shoot them over my way. And then some things that

47:31 that I'd like to continue getting better at because these are things that I'm okay. I'll probably

47:36 start with those. So here are the three things that I need to make even better about my jujitsu

47:40 game. So these are things that I would say I'm pretty good at now, but I want to get really,

47:44 really good at. And the first thing is I want to feel even heavier in top position. And so one

47:49 thing I've been told several times I've been complimented on is I have a very heavy top pressure

47:53 feel and a top game. But there are still certain players and there are certain guys that I compete

47:57 against where I don't feel as heavy. And so I want to get to where I can feel much heavier on top.

48:02 The second is keep getting the takedown. So I would not consider myself to be a good wrestler.

48:07 I would feel like I am an adequate wrestler. I wrestled for a little bit in high school.

48:12 But it wasn't my main sport. I mainly played baseball. But the thing about it is is I am able

48:17 to get a lot of takedowns. But there are certain people that I really, really struggle getting

48:20 takedowns on. And so I want to be able to continue to learn different ways to clean up my technique

48:26 so I can get more of those takedowns. And the last thing is keep that dog hungry. And for those

48:31 of you who don't know what I'm talking about, there are some guys in jujitsu that just have that dog

48:37 in them where you get him in a bad spot and it doesn't matter. You are not getting this. You're

48:42 not getting the tap. And it's not just because they're being stubborn and they're going to hurt

48:45 themselves. You're just not going to get the tap. And so I just want it for myself. I know there's

48:51 been a lot of times even competing in the room with my teammates where I've been able to get the

48:55 jump on somebody just because I had a little bit more of an aggressive aggressive nature to the role.

49:01 A little bit more of a focus on kind of what I was doing and just refusing to just give it up

49:07 easily. Right. And so it's just it's just that kind of that internal dog and that internal dog can

49:12 can hurt you if you don't take it seriously and if you don't control yourself. But I do want to

49:16 do want to make sure I continue to cultivate that and a lot of that has to do with being in good shape

49:19 because when you're in good shape, you can push a little bit harder. But now I want to talk about

49:22 the three things that I really need to fix. So these are three things in my jujitsu game that

49:26 I've talked to my coaches about, talked to other people about, you know, research myself. These

49:29 are just things that I currently really, really, really struggle with. The first thing is being

49:33 comfortable on my back. Sorry. I told you guys I didn't wrestle for very long, but I wrestled for

49:38 long enough to where I realized I'd never want my shoulders on the back or on the mat because if

49:42 your shoulders are on the mat, then the match is over in wrestling, right? But in jujitsu for a lot

49:46 of guys, you play off your back, right? You're very comfortable there. I'm currently not very

49:50 comfortable there, right? And that leads really into the second thing is if I need to get better

49:55 at being comfortable on my back, the second thing I need to get be dangerous from my back.

50:00 I need to really get to the point where I'm dangerous off my back. My guard, when I'm on my

50:04 back, I get passed way too easily. I need to get that fixed up, right? I don't get enough sweeps

50:10 from bottom position. And you know, aside from, you know, the occasional triangle, I'm not getting

50:15 submissions from from the bottom either. And so those are both connected. But then the last thing

50:19 is not getting stuck in bottom side control. For whatever reason, that is when it's been one

50:25 of the biggest bugaboos. And on day one, they teach you how to buck yourself out of side control

50:29 and shrimp out and do all those different things. It is never computed to me. I will get these guys

50:34 and they'll be in side control and I just cannot move them. And but whenever I get in

50:38 someone else's side control, they're able to get that bottom knee in and they kind of create space

50:42 and do all those different things. So again, those are the three things I'm working on. So

50:45 being comfortable on my back, being dangerous from my back, making sure I'm throwing up subs and

50:49 sweeps and stuff like that. And then also not getting stuck in bottom side control. So guys,

50:53 this last segment here are the podcasts. This is meant for any one of you guys.

50:58 That is not quite yet committed to trying jujitsu, okay? Because if you live

51:04 in any place that's fairly populated, there's going to be a jujitsu academy there. There just

51:09 will be, right? So I've been thinking about, you know, this was part of the podcast that took me

51:13 the longest to prepare is how am I going to sell this to you guys? Because that's what it feels like

51:17 for a lot of guys, I'm having to sell them on it. Like the virtues of trying to do jujitsu and

51:22 all those things. Because maybe they like to golf or read or, you know, play pickup basketball once

51:27 or twice a month or something like that. And I'm not saying those things are bad. But this is just

51:30 something that creates a little bit of that different feel. So for those of you that are familiar with

51:34 story brand, so building a story brand, Donald Miller, that type of thing, this is kind of a

51:38 marketing strategy. But the thing about this is there's a, there's kind of a cadence and a narrative

51:44 direction with most stories that you're going to see, most movies, most books, most everything.

51:50 And so the story brand framework is this. There's a character

51:55 with a problem that meets a guide who understands their fear

51:59 and gives them a plan that calls them to action that results in either failure or success.

52:07 So I pause there, not for dramatic effect, but because those are each one of the different

52:12 sections, right? And so I want to walk you through why you should do jujitsu and I'm going to use

52:17 the story brand framework. So again, it's a character with a problem that meets a guide who

52:21 understands their fear and gives them a plan that calls them to action that results in either

52:26 failure or success. So the first thing, let's get into a character. The character is you.

52:30 That's pretty simple. Talking to you, buddy, the guy on the other end of this podcast. I'm talking

52:34 to you. All right. With a problem. Here's a bunch of different problems. This is not a complete list,

52:39 but this is a pretty damn good one. Here's the problem. You don't know how to fight.

52:45 You aren't physically confident. You're physically weak. Your workouts that you're doing right now

52:52 aren't hard enough. You have nothing to be in shape for, right? Not since you graduated

52:57 high school or whatever. You have nothing to be in shape for. You don't know how to connect

53:02 your physicality with your mentality. You are over other physical endeavors. Like you've

53:08 played enough golf, you've played enough, you know, softball, or you don't have male community.

53:14 And again, guys, that's not an exhaustive list, but those are the problems. So you, the character,

53:19 you have a problem. Those are a lot of them there. I'm sure some of those really hit you square

53:23 between the eyes. So let's go to the next part. You meet a guide who understands your fear.

53:27 Brazilian Jiu Jitsu understands that fear. That is the guide. But if you need it to be less

53:34 nebulous than that, the guide can be undaunted life. I mean, it could be me. But it's your Jiu Jitsu

53:40 coaches. Those are your guides. Those are the guys that are going to get you over those problems,

53:44 right? And the next step is and gives them a plan. The plan is to train Jiu Jitsu. It's

53:52 pretty simple. Like this is not one of those super, super technical suggestions. The plan

53:58 is train Jiu Jitsu. And the next part, that calls them to action. So I'm going to give you three

54:05 different suggestions. That's going to be a call to action for you. So you can't be like, I don't

54:10 really like that one. I'm giving you three. All right. So the first one is the same one that we

54:14 echoed on episode five of this podcast, which is a hundred days of Jiu Jitsu,

54:18 do Jiu Jitsu for a hundred days. That's your call to action. And you can, you can take that

54:24 any way you want. That can be a hundred days that you actually do Jiu Jitsu in that day.

54:27 Or you look at your calendar from today, and you mark out a hundred days from now,

54:32 and you train Jiu Jitsu as many times as you can during that hundred day period. I don't care.

54:36 Train three or four times a week for a hundred days or train, you know, a hundred times. That's

54:40 the first suggestion. The second is the Jocko willing suggestion. So maybe I've heard of this

54:45 before, but he said, basically, train Jiu Jitsu until you can legitimately submit someone that's

54:50 similar to you. So someone that similar size, similar skill level, similar athleticism,

54:56 get to the point where you can control the position and you can define, you can define exactly how

55:02 you got into that position and that you actually got the submission. Okay. That's the Jocko willing

55:08 suggestion. And then we're going to get into the last suggestion, which is the Joe Rogan

55:11 suggestion, which is a little bit less nuanced, but just as effective. And here's the thing. This

55:15 is a quote from one of his podcast episodes from way back in the day. It's good for you to get

55:19 your butt kicked. I changed the word a little bit there, but it's good for you to get your butt

55:23 kicked. It's good for you to know how easy it is for a man to kick your butt. So those are the

55:29 calls to action, either a hundred days of Jiu Jitsu, train as long as it takes for you to legitimately

55:34 submit someone that's very, very similar to you, or just train because it's good for you to know

55:39 that you can get your butt kicked that easily. And so we go to the next step that results in

55:45 either failure or success. Because here's the reality guys, there's not a whole lot of nuance here.

55:51 If you don't change Jiu Jitsu, this is basically what life will look like. And I'm going to go back

55:55 to those problems I described earlier. You still won't know how to fight. You still

56:01 won't be physically confident. You will still be physically weak, presumably. Your workouts will

56:08 still be not they still won't be that hard. You still have nothing to be in shape four. You still

56:13 don't know how to connect your physicality and your mentality. You still are over all those other

56:18 physical endeavors. And you still don't have male community. If you're not training Jiu Jitsu,

56:24 those are going to be your realities for the most part. But if you do train Jiu Jitsu,

56:29 you will learn and know how to fight. You will develop physical confidence. You will become

56:37 physically strong. Your other workouts won't be hard enough. And you'll be able to define that.

56:44 I mean, you have something to be in shape for if you train. You discover how to connect your

56:48 physicality and your mentality. You further yourself from other useless physical endeavors.

56:54 You're not going to be hitting the driving range as much. And the last thing is you will create

56:57 male community. I mean, these things are so important guys. Because again, here's the thing.

57:03 You are the character and you have a problem and you will have to meet a guide that understands

57:09 that fear who will give you a plan that will call the action that will result in success.

57:13 And that's what I'm doing here. So this isn't like, oh, this is Kyle's favorite hobby.

57:19 So you should do it too. So Kyle seems cool and Daco talks about it and Joe talks about it.

57:24 And I watch it on TV sometimes. No, it's way deeper than all that. And I hope in two podcasts,

57:29 so about two hours of worth of me talking about this. I hope this makes sense to you guys because

57:34 it's so, so important. And you should just see the guys that come in and train with us on Sunday

57:39 nights that have never wrestled before, never grappled before, never worked out without shoes

57:43 on before, whatever thing might be. And you see these light bulbs go off. I had a guy literally

57:47 come up to me yesterday. This is a guy that is not in very good shape. But this is a guy that's

57:51 taken a lot of time off of taking care of his body. And it was Jiu Jitsu. That was the catalyst for

57:56 him to be healthy so that he doesn't die. Right? So it doesn't die early. So he can spend a lot of

58:01 time with his grandkids, hopefully, one day, assuming all things are equal. But he was even

58:05 telling me yesterday, he's like, man, Kyle, I was like on YouTube for a long time last night,

58:09 just looking at the Jiu Jitsu videos. This guy's been training for like two months. And he's already

58:14 like getting obsessed with, you know, figuring out moves. And it's just in his head all day,

58:17 because he's watching bodies move. He's watching people move. And he's like, Oh, well, I could

58:21 have probably isolated that arm there and got him taken down or something like that. It's just how

58:24 it goes. But again, it's because he's a part of this community. And that may be the biggest thing

58:28 out of all this. Yeah, it's good to have physical confidence. It's good to know if a fight pops off

58:32 near you that you're going to be okay, that you can hold someone down until the cops show up or

58:35 whatever thing might be. But the male community part, again, since we we'd lack that so much

58:41 in modernity, I think that might be the biggest, biggest thing. And so guys, this is not my

58:45 Hail Mary on Jiu Jitsu. This is probably not the last episode that we're just going to exclusively

58:50 talk about Jiu Jitsu. But again, combine episode five of this podcast and this one. And I think

58:54 it gives you a really good idea of why you should train. Okay. So guys, before we let you go, we're

58:58 going to do a quick resilience boost. As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry on our mission

59:02 is to cultivate mainly resilience. And specifically, we do that by providing content that for just

59:07 spiritual, mental and physical toughness. So today we're going to be talking about physical

59:11 resilience. And so the first one, the first link for you guys is www.google.com. Why am I

59:19 giving you a link to the most popular website on the earth? Because if you plug your zip code

59:25 into Google and type in the words Jiu Jitsu gyms near me, you can find a Jiu Jitsu gym. I'm just

59:31 telling you, I know there's some guys out here that live in small towns. And you might have to

59:35 travel a little bit for most of you guys that live in cities or suburban areas. There are

59:39 gyms around you. There are tons of gyms around you. So find a gym and start training at it.

59:45 The next link I have for you is to atos online Academy. So atos is one of the best, if not the best

59:51 Jiu Jitsu academies in the world. So this is Andre Galval school. You might remember him

59:55 from the story about how he gave me my Jiu Jitsu nickname Viking from episode five of this podcast.

1:00:00 But he has an online Academy. That is fantastic. I know, I know a lot of people that have subscriptions

1:00:05 to it. It's kind of a, it's one of those things that if you don't have a gym that's really, really,

1:00:09 really close by. Maybe you have to drive an hour, hour and a half every week to, you know, go to one

1:00:14 class where you're actually rolling with people live. This is one of those things that if you pay

1:00:18 the monthly fee, you'll be able to get a really, really good idea of some different moves that

1:00:23 you should do and some different progressions. Maybe you can get a mat in your garage and maybe

1:00:27 you and one of your kids can roll around or maybe you and your wife or your neighbor or

1:00:30 something like that. But you can learn, you can get some friends together and you can learn those

1:00:33 different things. In the last video link I have for you is Joe Rogan. It's a clip of him talking

1:00:38 about Marcelo Garcia and it's called Why We Train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And so it's just really,

1:00:43 really good video to hear from another person's perspective. That's not me about why Jiu Jitsu

1:00:48 is so important. So I've got those three things there for you guys. So guys, thank you so much.

1:00:52 We really appreciate you listening to the podcast. As always, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud

1:00:56 or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media. Guys, like I said

1:00:59 from the top, if we deserve a five star review, leave us one. It really, really helps. I'm currently

1:01:03 booking speaking engagements for the entirety of 2019. So if you want me to come speak on your

1:01:07 podcast, come speak to your men's group, to your church, to your team, hit me up info at undaunted

1:01:12 dot life emails info at undaunted dot life. Our website is www dot undaunted dot life.

1:01:18 And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undaunted life or Facebook.com backslash undaunted

1:01:22 life. Check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app. Just search undaunted life

1:01:26 under plans. And as always, we don't think the band August Burns read that I am seeing in concert

1:01:30 on Thursday of this week. So excited for that for allowing us to use their music library for our

1:01:35 content. The intro out to a track on this podcast is our song king of sorrow, which is off their

1:01:39 latest record entitled phantom anthem. The links to all of this are in the description.

1:01:43 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience. Keep forging spiritual,

1:01:50 mental and physical toughness. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

1:02:05 [Music]