Episode 1110 - Collin Lieberman

0:00The end is keep training, keep training, and there is no end, it's gonna keep going on. The older I get, I'm in that wonderful decade of my life called the 40s. And I really believe it's all about train smart, train smarter, not harder, rest smarter, and keep moving. And if you can do that and stay healthy, that you're gonna be a happier older person. What's going on, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the whistle kick, Marshall Arts Radio. Today, I'm joined by Colin Lieberman. Colin, thanks for being here. My pleasure. Yeah, we're gonna have a good time. We're gonna have a good time. We've had just enough conversation in the past. I know that this will be super fun. And for those of you out there in the audience, if you don't enjoy it, that's okay, because we will. And that is how we run this show. Oh, they're gonna enjoy it. I'm sure they'll enjoy it. Okay, well, setting the bar high right out of the gate,

1:02I like that. And like, it is gonna be the most enjoyable thing that you do today, or Colin will give you your money back. That's right, double your money back. Double your money back, because here at whistle kick, all the best stuff that we do is free. We have a bunch of great events that are free to attend in the simplest form. We have martial arts radio. We have martial journal. We do a lot of cool stuff for the martial arts industry, because we are martial artists who love martial arts, and we believe martial arts makes us better. Now, if you're watching or listening to this show, the podcast format probably resonates for you. And you should check out whistle kick martial arts radio.com, where we have transcripts and all the links and all that stuff. And while you're there, make sure you sign up for the email list. People are, they're not taking me serious on this. Sign up for the email list. Why? Because you're going to get an email every time we drop an episode, and you can go click video or click audio from your computer, from your phone, wherever it is, it is the simplest way to make sure you don't miss an episode.

2:03And if that wasn't enough, sometimes Andrew drops some bonus content in there that you're not gonna find anywhere else. And of course, that email list is free, unsubscribe anytime, but you won't, because it's weird. And with that, Colin, welcome to martial arts radio. Thank you, it's an honor to be here. Truly is, I appreciate you bringing me in. Yeah, thanks for being here, man. And if I may just say, speaking of the stuff that whistle kick does, I just, this week, you're kind of nervous now. I am a little nervous, because I'm, I don't know, where's you going with this one? I received my first piece of whistle kick kit or merchandise this week. Yeah, yeah, I ordered a t-shirt. Oh, nice. Which I ordered, the martial arts, because sometimes therapy is too slow. Do you mean the shirt? Get out of here, get out of here. Oh, no, there's a karate one, sorry. Sorry, it's just the karate one. That's great too. That's probably my second choice. I thought that's the one I had on.

3:05I love that you just went for it, and you're like, I got a 50% chance to get on. You know what? That's courage, my friend. That's courage. You know, if you can't be brave in your own house. With your clothes. With your own clothes. Like, what are you going to do? Yeah. Yeah, terrible angle. I look, people, after doing that, people likely think of 350 pounds. Can that be the thumbnail for my episode as you? Yes. Yes, we're me lifting up the hoodie and showing off that t-shirt. You know, those shirts were a lot of fun for us to make. And they represented a bit of a departure. And actually, I think this might be a good leading for you, because I know you train in a number of things. I do. When we started the company, I didn't, I wanted to make sure that we did, we're in a collection of verticals, right? That here's our karate line. Here's our Taikwondo line. Here's our judo line. Like, I wanted to make sure that wasn't us. And so we have worked really hard from day one

4:07to be a martial arts company. Right. Because the infighting, right? We've gotten, we've gotten, we've gotten better as an industry, but there's still a martial art club. It's still there. And so these shirts represent the first time we've done anything that was style specific. The karate shirt, you know, there's a karate shirt. There's a couple in our shirt. There's a judo shirt. And there is judo shirt, huh? Is there a judo shirt? Not yet. We did 12. We worked from the 12 most popular arts. I remember correctly. Says who? Says the extensive data research that I conducted, and summed up at wasokic.com. Because the data didn't exist. Like, I put quite a bit of time into it.

5:08It's estimates, because it's all estimates, but it's better estimates than I think anybody else has. Cool. And yeah, like one of the things, oh, what about a shirt or that shirt? What about this really weird derivative flavor of karate that, you know, 19 people practice? Okay, cool. Get all 19 people to commit to buying a shirt and we'll make one. Yes, or buying 10 or 20 shirts each. Yeah, yeah. Or you could buy 10 yourself. Yeah, that would be fine too. So are you making them continuously or in batches? Like, all of our gear like that is on demand. We have a partner that we work with, that prints and ships and everything for us, so we don't have to carry inventory. I mean, I'm not designing them, designing them in batches, or are you designing them in batches? We're designing them in batches, yeah. Okay. So if you have a great idea tonight, you're not going to like put it on the store tomorrow. Probably not. Probably not. I've got some notes for the next one. Cool. And they were inspired by,

6:08and this, I think this is the first time I'm sharing this publicly, maybe not. Do you remember the collet naked shirts? Those came out when I was in junior high. Yeah, yes, I do actually. Yeah, I was a series of people on Tondras and 13-year-olds should not have been wearing these shirts, but we all were at school. And... Can you give me an example of one just to jog the memory that's not too risky? The karate one, there were two versions of the karate one. Okay. And neither of them is over the top, but if you go back 30 years, it was a slightly different time. One of them was, you'll go far when you spar. Okay. And the other was, get your kicks below the belt. Okay, yeah, those are good. Those are good. They were fun. So that inspired your t-shirt endeavor. Yeah, it was meant to be, so we got some style specific stuff, but doing it in an irreverent way,

7:09so no one could take themselves too seriously. Yeah, I appreciate that. I do. And so now with that, very extensively in, right? Which seems incredible, because you are a, what's that? Slash plug for your merchandise. Slash plug for the merchandise, which thank you for that handoff. You are a bit irreverent, based on our time together, and you are a multiple disciplined, multi-disciplined martial artist. Yep, I'm a multi-disciplined dude. Yeah. Yep. Would you like me to elaborate on that? I would love for you to do that. I would love for you to do that. All right, I should, I got it, I got it. All right, well, I started in 2000, the year 2000. The year it was all supposed to end, but it didn't, right? I started in the art of G. Kundo, which I think many listeners probably have heard of,

8:09and attribute to Bruce Lee, the way great Bruce Lee. If you haven't heard of Bruce Lee, then I am honored to be sharing with you that you should look into him for a short while. As a fan of a martial arts podcast, you gotta know about Bruce Lee. Yeah, so I got into the philosophy of martial arts through Bruce Lee's readings, through his books. I'm sure there's a lot of martial artists have, and it really connected with me, and are I connected with it? And I felt empowered by it, and also curious about the philosophy. It was probably my first serious dive into philosophical thought at that age, because I was in junior high at the time. So it could have been wearing a co-ed naked shirt when I got that book as a gift. And that's what started me on my path. And then I started training when I was 18, is when I joined my instructors at G. Kundo School.

9:13So I never trained as a kid. I started as an adult, a teen, late teen, I guess you would say. And that's how I kicked it off. So why? Yeah. The reason I asked it, obviously, why is the most important question? It always is. But the why of an 18 year old is very different from the why of just about anybody else. Yeah. Right, like, you're coming to the end, likely coming to the end of high school, and starting to figure out, I'm an adult now that's weird, and just like the less it is the period of time where we have the most opportunity and the least capacity for that opportunity. And so one of your choices at that point was, I'm gonna go do martial arts specifically G. Kundo. Yeah.

10:13That's an interesting way of framing being 18. I like that. That was kind of cool. Yeah, so I did have a lot of opportunity and I guess very little capacity to handle it, right? And I felt like, in a way, what Bruce was preaching through his writings was my guiding religion in that time of uncertainty. And it was giving me a sense of direction, it was giving me a sense of confidence. And it kind of planted a seed of like, Taoist thinking, which I really resonate with now. I'm very interested in. So it was like, oh, there's another way of seeing the world. And also as an 18 year old guy, I wanted to be able to protect myself and feel powerful. So at the time G. Kundo was like the most powerful martial art in my opinion, obviously that's why I feel like everybody thinks that about their own martial art naturally.

11:16So that attracts me to it as well. And the big thing was I, this wasn't before the internet, but it was before I was fluent in the internet, I guess, and before you could just look things up on your phone. And I remember discovering there was a G. Kundo school that was like 20 minutes away from me, which I think in the 90s was like a pretty rare situation to be in, especially if you find it personally very interesting, like that was the unicorn of martial art schools for me. So I was like, what? It's within driving distance. And I think my mom might have seen the sign and told me about it or something because it was an area I didn't drive through that often. And that was like, oh, wow, I can actually do this and pursue this interest that I have. So my parents, I'm very grateful. They gifted me a month of training at school.

12:19And I never left. And that's how it all got started. That's the why. Wow. Yeah. Cool. Now, how far back prior to starting training, does your awareness of Bruce Lee and his maybe writings movies go? So I started when I was 18 and started training formally. I would train informally. I'm sure as many, many young, young people who have an interest in martial arts and greatly overestimate my ability as many young people. Sure. I learned this one move from a book. I can beat anybody. That's right. Hands down. I haven't tried it, but I've seen the pictures and I know I can do it. And now here I am, you know, having trained for 26 years.

13:19Yeah, 26 years. And I'm like, I don't know if I can beat anybody. It's funny how that works. In any case, yeah, so I got gifted a book when I was in junior high school. So I was how old are kids then? 14, 15, was it good four or five years? Do you remember when I was building up? So there was this like pressure of like, I need to, I want to learn to you condo, but I don't know how I can find a teacher. And then when I found the school existed, that was like, I got to try it now. Yeah. So it was a four or five year lead-up. Yeah. Yeah. And okay, so the reason I ask is that there's a tension, right, that kind of comes, you know, because when we're teenagers and when we're interested in something, we tend to become a bit obsessive.

14:20You know, sometimes we carry that as we go forward, but when you're a kid and you're into something, you don't have the distractions of other things. You don't have to put down legos to go to work. You're just like, I'm, you know, I'm gonna build more. I'm gonna read this book and then all the books that come after it in a week and that obsessive quality can sometimes create unrealistic expectations. So here you are, I imagine at 14-ish, you're reading this book, you're building a, if not obsession, a passion for Bruce Lee, Bruce Lee's writings, philosophy, you use the word religion, which seems to support this, the physical look wins, and then you start doing the thing that you've wanted to do for years. Did it live up to your expectations?

15:21I would hope so, because I've stuck with it for 26 years. Well, sometimes, I'm glad you're there, but it doesn't, doesn't mean you can't put it on as you go. I did pivot, yeah, for sure. I was 100% a Bruce Lee fanboy, you know, throughout high school and college. And I would say, and the training did live up to my expectations, which were, I had very little expectation of the physical training besides that it would involve trapping and punching and kicking, you know? So, and it had all of those things, which was great. So, it did live up to those expectations, but as the training went on, I sort of shed the fanboy element of it, and was like, oh, this is its own, this is its own thing, and it's more about my own self-discovery than about, you know, unlocking the treasure that Bruce Lee, you know, hid away in this cave, or however you want to, however you want to see it,

16:22which is exactly what Bruce was preaching was your own self-discovery. So, I appreciate that, and I guess the more I learned, the less like the myth of it became of importance to me. I still appreciate it, but it doesn't affect me in the same way, or it doesn't like, obsess me in the same way, yeah. And I think you've answered my question indirectly, so I'm gonna guess that the school you were attending was one that allowed Jeet Kundo to continue to evolve rather than one of the schools that teaches Jeet Kundo. This is what Bruce made, this is what we do, it is codified in almost a historical reference way. Yes. Yeah, so generally there's the Jeet Kundo Concept School, and then there's the classical Jeet Kundo,

17:22which is not the word they use, but that is essentially what it is. That's a much more articulate way of... Right, old school Jeet Kundo, or however you want to put it, which ironically, Jeet Kundo is about breaking free from the classical mold, and then there are schools that try to make it essentially crystallize, which is another way of saying classical. And I don't disagree with what they're doing. I think they're both right. I think they both need to exist. But yeah, the school that I trained at was the Concepts lineage, so it was more of like find your own way. You're the guiding principles, you're the concepts, and then it's up to you to like take them into your, embody them as a martial artist, and make them your own, which was great, because I'm a creative person. I love reinventing the wheel. I'm passionate about inventing and designing things,

18:23so that's part of why this was the perfect martial art for me, because it didn't have that like confining structure. That being said, there are pros and cons, because structure is what gets you from point A to point B. It's hard to get up a ladder if there's no rigid pieces in that ladder, right, to climb. So that can be challenging, especially for certain type of people who really crave or require structure to advance. So I feel like you can know as a bit of a paradox and a conundrum in that way, because you do need to honor the teachings of what Bruce was doing. And so there's a value to that, sort of historical preservation aspect, but you also need to value his philosophy, which was one of self-discovery and removing limitations and boundaries and kind of finding your own way.

19:25So in that way, it totally makes sense that there are these two factions that disagree, and I think they're both necessary, and it's just the way that the chips fell. And there's no other way it could have happened, really. The first time I heard, and honestly, it probably was those terms, the concept and classical division within Gikundo. It got me thinking, kind of interesting this idea, what if we go learn this martial art, the classical as a bit of a historical exploration, right? In the same way that you might read a middle English novel, right, you have to take it, you have to contextualize it for the time, you can infer some things about the person, the people that are there, and I think that that's really, really kind of neat. And that led me to, okay, but what if other martial arts are like that? There are some other, certainly not as strong or well-known,

20:28but there are some other martial arts that are, even today, practiced in a bit of a classical sense with kind of a cult of personality. This is what so-and-so, and I'm intentionally not naming styles or names. This is what so-and-so said should be done, so this is how we do it, we don't change it, we don't touch it. Yeah, I think that's a smart idea, is to not be averse to checking it out from that perspective of trying to gain some historical perspective and understanding, and the problem with like find your own way, right? And like a lack of structure, anything goes, is that you might get it totally wrong, right? Or your truth might not help your students, and it might not help the legacy of the art. So they're in lies, the problem.

21:28Follow your truth and hope that it aligns with your students and hope that it enhances the legacy of the art and serves the preservation of the art. And if it doesn't, well, there was no doctrine telling you that was a bad idea. Yeah, so that's sort of, I try to step back from that drama, for the lack of a better word, and that debate, and just be like, yep, I see both sides, and I don't really have a solution for you. I'm just kind of doing my own thing. I'm personally, I'm trying to serve my students. That's like my motivation. So I think every G. Krundo practitioner should assess their own motivation for why they're training or why they're teaching, depending. And that should, I think that should really shape your art.

22:31If you're interested in the preservation of the techniques that Bruce was doing and the way it was taught, then maybe you should be on the more classical side of the spectrum. And I'm sorry that I'm using that word. I know I'm offending some people. What's right? I'm not here. They'll never hear this. And that's fine. But if you're more into furthering like the path that Bruce might have gone down of studying, like further study, further development, the thought experiment that I enjoy is what, what would G. Krundo look like if Bruce had lived to 80 years old? Do you think it would have stayed the same for like the 40 years after he passed, or would it have kept evolving? And I think, I don't think anyone with a straight face

23:32could say it would have stayed the same. Like it had reached the pinnacle. It couldn't have, and I'm trying to remember who it was and my apologies to this past guest. We've had one person on who trained at the original Oakland school, not under Bruce because at the time they were training their Bruce was off doing a lot of movies and things. But he was still actively developing G. Krundo. And so that's where, who was the other gentleman, the one that was teaching classes at that time? Is that Eric Lee? And in Oakland, James Lee, I think you're thinking James Lee. James Lee, thank you. And so this gentleman who was on the show, it was training directly under James Lee. And he said that from week to week things were changing because Bruce was calling in or writing in or maybe he was back and he would be upending things. So even at that time, towards the end of, this was not the very beginning, this was towards the end of his time, it was changing.

24:36I cannot fathom anyone who truly knows the history saying, no, no, there was going to be a point he put a bit bow on it and said, that's it, it's done. Yes, absolutely, you're right about that. And you brought up a good point as well, which is that Bruce had a lot of things going on for him. Right, he had a lot of things going on in his life. He had a lot of talents to share and gifts to share. He was not a full-time school owner. He was not a full-time curriculum designer. He was not a full-time teacher. So you could imagine if he was 100% focused on teaching and developing a school and a system of teaching, how that would have affected things as well. As somebody who has been a full-time school director

25:39for the last decade, plus one of the lessons I've learned, not to say that other people couldn't do this better than I am doing it, but one of the lessons I've learned is that it is usually not effective to change things on your students when the epiphany comes to me that it needs to be changed, there needs to be like a buffer. And there needs to be some sort of like schedule. So I used to do that where I was like, oh my God, this can be better if I change X to Y if we change this to this or something, right? And I was like, oh, why am I students getting annoyed? And it's like, don't they just want what's best? Don't they just want the latest update to their operating system? But it doesn't quite work that way when you've invested a lot of time in learning something and then somebody changes it.

26:40For example, if someone changes your operating system on your phone and it's like, where's the button that used to be there? And it's not there anymore, it can be frustrating and it's the same with martial arts. Now, that's a great metaphor, the operating system because my prior life was in IT and so the new thing would come out and you'd have the early adopters, people, I want the new thing, I want the upgrade, I want to get the latest and greatest. And but you had most people would say, this does what I need it to do, I am competent with it. I want to continue working with this until it no longer serves my needs. Yes, exactly. And if we look at training through that lens, you at some point found you needed new or additional programs or modules or whatever to plug into your Jeep Kundo and I'm curious about what that thought process was like.

27:44So let's keep on the IT route here. Well, we'll keep on that thread. So I'm like a power user if I'm the instructor, I'm the black sash, I'm asking more of my martial art and I don't mean I'm going out fighting people and using it and it's like, oh, I didn't block that punch so I need to change it, I just don't live that kind of life but for it to like satisfy my conceptual understanding of how the martial arts work and also how it should plug into sparring effectively, right? I need it to be at a certain level. And for a student who's been training for a year, that might not affect them in the same way, right? It's like they're not a power user yet. So like you were just saying, it's adequate for them for their needs, whereas for me, it might not be adequate anymore, I need a little bit more out of it. So I've got to optimize it or change it.

28:47But is it smart for me to force that upon them as soon as I realize it, right? As soon as I change it in my own training. And personally, I don't think that's the case. I don't think that is the best way to run a school. So it doesn't mean that I've stopped the evolution of my art and curriculum because that's one of the nice things about what I study and what I teach is that it's always evolving and it's designed to be a living curriculum that grows. But it needs to be looked at through two different lenses. One is my understanding and satisfaction with it. And then the other lenses, the value to my students and their understanding of it. So I try to look at it through both lenses and as a sort of a safeguard for myself,

29:50I have like a yearly buffer. It's like, okay, we'll do a yearly update, right? And we're not gonna change too much. We're gonna change like maybe a handful of things at most, at the yearly update. And then the students come to expect, oh, there's a yearly update. So it's not like suddenly I pulled out the rug from under them and like, surprise. What's the reaction to that? Do they look forward to it? Does it depend on the personality type? It depends, yeah, it definitely depends. There are some students who may have been jaded from my previous willy nilly changing of things that they're like, oh, here's another change. And I can't fault them for that at all because I've scarred them and my apologies. But that was a part of my own evolution and growth was to learn that the hard way and unfortunately, they got kind of annoyed by it. But in the end, it was for the greater good. And I think for the most part,

30:51the students just are like, oh, that's the way it is. I don't particularly care too much. Some of them are excited because they're like, oh, I like this, this feels better. And I'm like, yeah, that's why I changed it. So it depends on the student. Can you give us an example of a recent change? Sure, yeah. So about maybe a year and a half ago, we use a rotating curriculum, which is an efficient way of teaching a large group of students, I would say. So the probably the most debated aspect of martial arts schools today. Yeah, I think there's like not necessarily agreed upon understanding of what it is. And yeah, that's an interesting topic unto itself. But basically around COVID time,

31:51when I had to go virtual, so I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent here. And hopefully you remember the original question because I'll forget. We did before COVID, we did 90% like partner training. That's one of the hallmarks of Jekundo class is that it's mostly hands on with another person. It's very little like, you know, to this form, Kata. So suddenly we're virtual. And it's like, okay, I got to figure this out to keep the students training. So we went to a lot of practice sets, basically like Kata's for what we're doing. So instead of blocking your partner's punches, you'll do this sequence of blocks in the air. And there is some of that in a lot of Jekundo anyways, which is called a practice set instead of a form because form is a naughty word. And Jekundo lore.

32:53So we did a lot of that. And I was kind of struggling with how to teach that because I have no classical background. You know, Kata's are kind of a mystery to me. And having a curriculum with that stuff, also a mystery to me. So I ended up doing some coaching with somebody who does like consulting, about curriculum and specifically rotating curriculum. And they have, they successfully implemented with a large number of students. And I was like, oh, this makes total sense to me. You know, I am going to, I'm going to dive into this. And this is, this is how we're going to pivot and survive this like COVID shift. So we went into the rotating curriculum, basically modeled after this school that I was studying under the instructor's system. And I learned a lot, but it wasn't the right fit for my school and my students.

33:53Partly because it's designed for like, having a school of 300 to 500 students, which means you have a staff of, you know, a dozen instructors and you have a few classrooms and you have all the staffing and money. And that didn't describe my school at the time. So I was like, okay, I see the value in this, but it's not the right fit. So I changed it. I got to, you know, scratch that edge of reinventing the wheel and designing stuff that I like. And I was like, I'm going to hybridize this and kind of keep, keep what I think works for us and discard what is useless. That's like the tagline G condo, by the way. So I, G condoified the rotating curriculum for our school, essentially. And that's where we are now. So it's kind of a half and half, I guess you might say. And we've been doing that for a couple of years and it's working.

34:55It's working very well. Anyway, back to your question, which I do remember, you can just cut this part out. So we had been doing, we're going to keep this, by the way, because this is, this is what we do in the show, right? Conversation wonders as it should. Beautiful. You should have a katana sound when you cut, when you make a cut in the show. Shing. So that people thought? I think the, the sound that we drop at the very front of the episode has something like a, yes, yes, yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. So one of the hallmarks of rotating curriculum back to the question is, you got these different lesson focuses that you rotate through. So we might have two weeks or a month that is focused on blocking, two weeks or a month that is focused on kicking, punching, et cetera. So with our, and we call those at our school stripes,

35:56which are essentially lessons, right? And you earn, earn the stripe if you complete the lesson. So we had the blocking stripe, which for us is stripe six and it's red. And it was a lot of remembering, remembering a choreography, a practice set, a form. And that was kind of a holdover from our COVID iteration of the curriculum. But then I'm like, you know what? People aren't resonating with this as much. They're not practicing it as much as I would like them to because they want to practice with a person again. So when we made that pivot, it was right at the time, but it's not serving what they want to do now, which is more hands-on with a partner. So I basically retooled that lesson and de-emphasized the practice set. I keep it in the lesson, but it's there as home practice. And now the part they're going to be tested on

36:56is what they do with a partner. So we call it a June fan application, which is versus the jab, you're going to do this block, this strike, this strike, this strike. And you're going to do it against a punch with a partner. So more partner training, I think it's more fun. I think it's more applicable to self-defense, which is at the heart of T. Cundo. So it's just been an evolution, kind of a seesaw as the needs of the students change and also the culture changes and pandemics and all that good stuff. It makes sense. And I think school should be changing. It should be evolving because the instructor should be getting better. And they should be recognizing that students are learning differently. The way people learn today is not the same as they learned 20, 30, 40 years ago. We have different theories on education and people's lives are different

37:57and so all that needs to change. So thought to those of you out there who are setting curriculum and running schools, if you're doing things the same way you were or even five years ago, I think your students are missing out, there's more of you to give. But I want to roll back to our metaphor, our operating system metaphor. So I think what we've got now is we have a good idea of your update routines. We want to really belabor the nerdy IT side of things, which I'll do that all day. But we need more information about the checks going on and maybe we get a little lazy. We could call it the error checks and you're finding, oh, there's a gap here. We want to plug in some additional information and that's where you've got off and done some other things and brought some other things in. And I'd like you to talk about that.

38:59I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. On the form you submitted, you're like, ju-kun-do, and then you added other styles that, now maybe I have a misunderstanding of the role those play, but I thought those were significant. For example, Tai Chi, I thought Tai Chi was significant in your martial equation. It is, but it's separate from that curriculum. So they're different programs. All right, so then that is also interesting to me because there are people who all goes in the same bucket and they teach it to their students then there are others who have rigid boundaries and maybe you could speak to the boundaries. Yeah, so we have different programs at our school, which are ju-kun-do, which is our core program. That's the one I've spent the most time in. It's the one I've been certified to teach at the highest level.

39:59It's the one with the curriculum and the, it's the one with the curriculum. So if students like curriculum and they want to get from point A to point B and they want to rank up, that's the one that's the one at our school. We also offer Tai Chi, which does not have a curriculum, so to speak. However, it has a long choreography that you learn called the form, ironically called the short form, just to mess with you a little bit. It takes 20 minutes to do the short form. Don't ask about the long form. So that is the curriculum, I guess you would say for that class, but there's no rank, there's no testing. It's just how far you are on that choreography. We also have a Kuntow Salot program, which is also curriculum free at this moment.

41:02I would like it to have a curriculum, but it doesn't at this point. It does have forms, which are called jurus and lancas, which are hand forms and leg forms. And so those, those basically serve as the curriculum as well. And we also have a Filipino Kali program, which does have a curriculum, but we don't do enough of it to use the curriculum, because we don't have enough time in the week spent on that program to really make it make sense at this point. I would hope to do it someday, but our schedule is packed full at the moment, so there is a curriculum for my instructor, but we're not really using it. So if you show up to Tai Chi or Cilott or Kali class, you show up just to train and level up as a martial artist, not having a sense of like, I'm on this clear path. I can see the pagoda on top of the mountain, and I've got to get there, you know,

42:03and I know there's a checkpoint in a month and another checkpoint in a month. And in Cilott, Kali, Tai Chi, it's like you're doing it for the love of the training and the love of the class and the love of the art. What percentage of your students that are doing those programs are not doing Jeet Kundo? Are they all doing Jeet Kundo? And then those are all, you know, bonuses to them? For the most part, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So Jeet Kundo, people love the curriculum. People love a curriculum. They do. They do. People like to know what's expected. They like to know what success looks like. And they like to know where they're going, and how far they have come, and how far they have left to go. I think at some point, you can speak to this as a black belt. You shed that, at least, mostly, if not completely, right? Because when you're a black belt, you're actually, you know, that's when you start learning martial arts and, you know,

43:06you're no longer like, I'm sure some schools are different, where there's like second degree, third degree, and you have your whole life plotted out ahead of you. But I do believe for a lot of us at black belt level, it really opens up, and you're not as preoccupied by the path of the curriculum. Do you agree with that person? Yeah, I do. I do. And I think it comes down to the scope of the curriculum. You know, I grew up, the original school I came up in. There was no new material after black belt. There was just refinement of that material. But I've also trained in schools where there's a new material up to fifth. It's more... It's more spread out, I guess. Whereas, honestly, the first school I started in, there were minimums, but nothing was gate kept.

44:10How so? If you were a blue belt and they felt like, look, you know your forms, you're not ready for your green belt, but you know your forms, you want to learn the next form, which you don't need to learn yet, but you're around people who are working on it, that was okay. See, I like that personally. And we do that sort of as well, but I used to do a lot more gate keeping, especially as I was like, dipping my toes in the whole, like, curriculum rotating curriculum scene, and the whole, like, kata practice set scene, and it's like, you can't do this until you do this, because it didn't used to be that way as much. And I find that letting people try things out, that's above their pay grade, it just helps them, and it helps the school. I don't, I don't see a lot of students like getting mad with power, like, I've done this blue belt form before I'm supposed to,

45:13and they're using it irresponsibly, or something, and we have our entire curriculum on video for our students. They can access it from day one. They can access the black, black sash. Oh, wow. Lessons. They don't, they hit, like, because I have enough difficulty getting students to watch their video for their lesson, because everyone is so busy and so distracted, right? And it's like, if you want to look ahead, bless you. Thank you. That's great. I appreciate that. It's just not a problem in the culture now, at least in my school. I think it's a hard press to say, you know, I've let this person learn too much, and it went badly, and now they're behind, and they quit, right? Like, that doesn't, I don't see that happening.

46:14I can see people saying, whoa, okay, so this feels like I'm not ready for this. And if that happens, there's really only one of two responses that most people are going to have. I'm going to, I'm going to shed the new, more difficult thing, and go work on the other thing, which feels more appropriate for where I'm at in my journey. Or they're going to ignore the easier thing, and do the harder thing, which is probably going to take longer to reach competency, because they don't have the foundation. But if they're more engaged on that, if you're curriculum set up, well, they're probably going to learn the same lessons. Yeah, that's a good way. Where's the problem? I think it's a holdover from an earlier time. I think so too. Before the mass information age and social media, now you can get any technique you want, just by looking on YouTube or social media, right? So the gates have been breached,

47:14and it used to be a guarded knowledge, and it used to be protected. And I think part of that was just out of a sense of tradition and fear. This is dangerous, right? And we can't let this get out to other schools. Or if I let this out too early, you're not going to pay me to learn it when the time comes. I think that was a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But interestingly enough, now that it's all available, the value of it hasn't declined, which I think is awesome. I think that's really cool. Like you can get pretty much all the moves, but people aren't paying less for martial arts classes than they used to. Because I'm sure there's a lot of reasons, but one of them, like I mentioned, is that people only have so much time and attention, and they would love an expert to tell them what to focus on, because it's very hard to distill all of this information into like a path, right?

48:15That's not just like garbled and confusing. Well, think about every other skill, right? We could look at yoga or dance or cooking or let's just take those three instead of throwing more on the pile. I want seven. All right, I'll have to get back to you on the other floor. It's not about the knowledge. Like I can go, I can buy all the cookbooks I want, I can learn all the principles of cooking, I can have all the recipes I want, and I could teach myself, but if I want to go become a really, really good cook or even a chef, I'm probably going to school to help me implement that knowledge and have some checks and balances, not because I couldn't do it the other way, but it's more efficient. I could do the same thing with dance, I could do the same thing with yoga.

49:15People don't, I mean, when the internet really hit and crushed, people didn't stop going to yoga because they could find a yoga video online. In fact, you did for them, but for the most part, you're right. But it's more popular than ever. Yes, yeah, exactly. It's like that whole bunch of car dealerships next to each other with the car sales. They don't. Wise and tide lifts all ships. Where is every burger cake next to a McDonald's? Why? Because it's not really competition. It's about awareness. Yes. And this is why I get on some martial art schools for being mad that somebody else opened a martial art school in your town. I say, shut up, go talk to them and see if you can collaborate on marketing. Because it's going to be more cost-effective. Make out a quarter-page ad in each of you take the eighth. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's hard to do as a martial artist

50:17because we're we're built for this, right? Yeah, but it doesn't, it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't, it doesn't, but a lot of these are in yoga culture, I think. Like, that's more common because it's about how you know that that's cool. I do not, I do, I think based on, of course, I have much more time and awareness of what happens in martial arts. But from my limited, but not tiny awareness of yoga, there is, there is a significant amount of competition. Cut through. There is, it happens in CrossFit. It's like, no, no, our implementation of this methodology is better than their implementation of that methodology. And you should come here and do that thing with us. Yep. I think it happens more in martial arts just because it's based on conflicts, right? And competition, whereas competition creeps into yoga, for sure.

51:23But it's not the core value is my understanding. I would agree. I would agree. It is a core value with CrossFit, so that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, the parallels between CrossFit and martial arts are absolutely fascinating. CrossFit is awesome. I've been doing CrossFit. Oh, really? Yeah. For like, three, three years, I think, maybe four years. And it's been, it's been my buffer against aging. And it's been, it's been very helpful. Has your time in CrossFit changed the way you look at martial arts class structure? Not a lot, actually. That's an interesting question. But not a lot for me, dramatically. Okay. Yeah, I'm curious to hear how, but I guess just first answer your question. I sometimes I'll be a little more talkative during the warm-up or have people circle up for a warm-up and just sort of change the whole, like,

52:24I am in front of you and you're a lion of students, and you must not speak. So, you know, martial arts vibe breaking that up a bit. But I've been interested in the whole, like, competition fuels class structure for a while. I used to have a CrossFit style martial arts program that I developed. Which I still think is awesome. I just don't have, like, the time and the interest to produce it at this point. But I do think they worked really well together. They do. They absolutely do. And in my dream gym, because we all have our dream gym, right? Like, here's the school that I want to have. And it's, you know, 40,000 square feet and six floors. And, you know, there's a secret flight club in the sub-basement and, you know, whatever, whatever yours is. In mine, there are CrossFit style fitness classes.

53:25Yeah. Because I, one of the challenges in most hour-long martial arts classes is the Strength and Conditioning component. You know, we all know stronger people are hard to peel, jumping jacks, and we get kind of old. And gets kind of old. But I think the big thing it changed for me was, okay, we're doing this skill piece. Is there also an opportunity to practice the skill piece in a way that is building endurance or building flexibility or building strength or building accuracy, right? The 10 principles. And that awareness changed some things for me. And it's something I try to bake into my lesson plans now. That is really cool. I like that. I think I've had a bit of an advantage in that area because our original conception was center-line fitness and martial arts. And we were two pillars. We were basically martial arts plus fitness classes.

54:29I was a personal trainer at the same time and I was teaching martial arts. I was a certified strength and conditioning coach and I was a group fitness instructor. So I had those two pillars sort of, you know, holding up my school, this entire time. And so the fitness would always leak into the martial arts and the martial arts would always influence the fitness. And it's good. It's hard to do multiple things at the same time well. So there are pros and cons to that. But it's been nice having that. It's been really nice. So there's always been a high level of fitness, I think, in our training. And that's also a part of the G Kundo culture. So it does reinforce that and it fits pretty well. I also, I think the other thing, and we can move on from here. I don't love the, let's do 10 push-ups. Because for some people, 10 push-ups is not enough.

55:33For others, 10 is a horrendous number and they shouldn't get anywhere close to that. It doesn't give people the ability to get better. If you're going to do 10, if what if 20 is the number you're supposed to be doing and now we're doing 10, you're regressive. Right. Yeah, that's good. But we bring in more time-based stuff. We do Tabata's, for example, which for those of you who don't know, 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds of rest. So we might do two, three, four Tabata chunks. So you've got 20 seconds. Do 20 seconds of push-ups. For some people, that's four push-ups. Right, we push-ups. For some people, that's 15, 17, 19, 25 push-ups, whatever they can do. Now they're challenging themselves. And that's been a big, a big and positive adjustment for us. That's good. I like that a lot. Yeah, that's smart. We do a little bit of both, or we do do X number of push-ups for your rank. We're also going to

56:35see how many you can do in a minute when you're done with that X number of push-ups. So it does, I don't know, maybe it has advantages of both of those. Nothing special. Yeah, that's it. That's good. When was the last time you did a Tabata on an assault bike, or echo bike? It's probably been six years. Yeah, I don't blame you. This is not fun. They're not fun, but it's... I'm a big believer. Maybe this is a place we go as kind of our last chunk. I'm a big believer in sprints, because if you look at the hormone response on sprinting, and that's what changed this for me, and I actually wrote a whole endurance training program around this concept. Show me a fight. Show me any combat sport where they are operating

57:35at their highest intensity for more than 20 seconds. Yeah, it doesn't exist. I can't find it. Counterpoint to that. Okay. I think there are elite athletes, like top MMA fighters, where their 80% output is your 190%. I'm not disagreeing with that, but I'm talking about their sustained 95%. It's just human physiology, yeah. Right. And so working from that, when we understand that that 22nd time domain, for those of you who haven't spent time in CrossFit, like this is a core thing that's discussed in a lot of CrossFit schools. I'm going to forget the three primary pathways. But once I connected those dots, I went, oh, this changes things. This changes how I want my students to train for an altercation. Yeah. That's such a good reminder.

58:39I'm going to write that down in fact, because I want to do more sprints in class in the upcoming classes. There's something about that 20 seconds of all-out work, whether it's shadows, sparring, shadow boxing, kicking, burpees, push-ups. There's something that happens in there that is pretty darn cool physiologically. But when you tell people instead of saying, I need you to do this number. I need you to go as hard as you possibly can for this short period. 20 seconds is a very approachable period of time for people. I just need to bang my face against this figurative wall. We're halfway five seconds left. Three, two, one, right. I give them a copy. They can keep working. They know it's there. To clarify for your listeners, by sprint, you don't necessarily

59:42mean running. No. It's a metabolic sprint. Any movement done at a really high intensity, right? And the place that I most frequently saw this growing up was kicking. You might step up to the shield, right? Somebody's holding a shield in the front of the line. How many kicks can you do in 10 seconds go? Right? And people are cranking through. And your leg falls off when you're done. Yeah, that's great. That's so good. I like that you're taking notes during our podcast. That makes me, that makes me feel like I'm doing a good job. Yeah, I was like, I gotta, this is a class like anything else. I'm going to get some lessons here and I don't want to forget them. Yeah, and I'm, I'm, I got, I got notes, I got notes on yours too. But this is how you approach things, isn't it? You're, you're a very methodical kind of process oriented. You take a lot of notes, you observe.

1:00:43Yeah, yeah, I was before, before this iteration of my life, I was an engineer, a mechanical engineer. And so it made me methodical and it made me calculated, made me a better problem solver. And I try to take that into what I do now. And I think it's helped me to be more successful. Yes. Yeah, going back to what we were talking about earlier, you know, what you were describing with like, I think you were talking about dance, was it? It's, you're, you're describing come food, which is the process of getting better at something, you know, and learning how to, learning how to unlock a skill set. And it doesn't have to be martial arts, it doesn't have to be fighting. And it's really about learning the process, like why go to a class versus just watching videos online, because you're, you're practicing doing it under the guidance of an expert.

1:01:48And so you're learning kung fu, because kung fu means cultivated human skill. And it's helpful to have a good teacher in that, in that respect. And you're in an environment where other people are also cultivating their skill. Yes, that's, that's, it's easily forgotten how important that is to be in that supportive environment. I realize, and I'm embarrassed it took so long to realize this. This is only a realization in the last probably three years for me. I can't make someone learn. I cannot force them to learn. I cannot, in any circumstance, forcibly apply knowledge, such that they develop from it. All I can do is create an environment where they are able to and hopefully want to. And once I had that observation, that changed everything for me in the way I run my school.

1:02:53Oh, it's got to be fun, because otherwise they don't come back. They have to have, they have to enjoy themselves. Yes, I had a similar realization. And 100% agree with you. Engagement is, is the top priority. And then skill development. And then curriculum. And that, that's been like distilling that hierarchy has been key for me. And I understand in that that might be an advantage to a school like mine where we're not teaching a traditional art, where you might be bound by your curriculum. It's like some schools are like, okay, we can't violate the curriculum because it is sacred. And beyond that, I want the students to have a good time and I want them to be able to break a board or whatever. Everyone's going to have their own hierarchy. And it took a while to really understand that, like you were just saying, like the top

1:03:55priority is student engagement. Otherwise, they're not going to show up to train tomorrow. And it doesn't matter how good your curriculum is and how much skill they get if they don't show up to class. If they're not there, they can't learn. Exactly. So it is so, it's so valuable. And it's, it's often under understated how important it is that the students have a good time. And I do say engagement, not fun because if you go to CrossFit, you will see a lot of people in extreme pain that are highly engaged and come back to the next class because they love they're alive in that moment of pain. And martial arts can be the same way. I would speculate that most martial arts instructors would benefit from some manner of group exercise class, whether that be dance, yoga, CrossFit, one of the CrossFit knockoffs that have popped up, right? Something where you were in that group environment. You're not in charge.

1:04:59You're learning new skill and be able to observe how people are learning and what's got them coming back. You know, I've always said and you came to Marshall Summit, so I'm sure you agree. We should all keep learning. Every instructor should be a student. We should value that part of what we do. But I think sometimes the lessons are easier to see when they're not coming from martial arts. Yeah, it's helpful to get in a new environment where you're not on a pedestal and you're not in you're not in your element, right? And anytime I go travel somewhere and like if I'm on a trip, I try to take a class, maybe drop into like a title boxing class or something like that. And for weeks afterwards, I'm an inspired person and I just bring so much from that into my own classes, even though they might just be doing jabs for an hour. But something about it being

1:06:02new in a different environment where I am a student and it just opens up your pores to like receiving information that you might already have, but a slightly different perspective, so you're going to get something out of it as well as inspiration. Where are you again? You're New York. I'm in Ithaca, New York. And unfortunately, this is what it looks like here. Sorry if you're listening on the radio, but this is what it looks like here just about every every day from November to April. You don't have any snow. Gray and cold. Where's the snow? There was snow yesterday and now it's rainy and icy. So it kind of fluctuates between those two wonderful things for about six months. Yeah, here it's about eight. Eight degrees? Eight. Well, it was five degrees when I when I drove here this morning, but eight months.

1:07:03Eight months. We have more and more sun there. No, definitely not. No. We're like the third or fourth cloudiest state. It's it's bad. You're in Montpelier, is that right? Yeah, okay. Is that because you're on a lake that you get like more clouds? It just just it's roll the dice. I think some of it is that we are, I mean, there's a couple mountain ranges between you and I and just the way the wet sometimes the clouds, they just kind of sell. Yeah, it's it's interesting. Yeah, you got it. That's why you get a glass and light the fire inside of you. Right. And keep it keep that fire burn, baby. Right. Now if anybody wants to get a hold of you, maybe they're somewhere in the vicinity of of Ithaca or they're traveling or they just want to reach out, you know, web social email, phone, what, what stuff do we want to give them? Yeah, so I'm in I'm in I'm in Ithaca, New York.

1:08:05My school is called centerline martial arts. Our website is centerlinestrong.com. All one word centerline strong. You can find us on Instagram and Facebook centerline martial arts. I think there's a centerline martial arts and somewhere on the west coast, but we're the one in Ithaca, New York. We do it. We would be happy to I'd be happy to meet anybody. Have you take a class at my school? We also have still we have a virtual option for training. I do have several students that are training in the G condo program that are in other states. So we have a zoom option. So if you want to check out a class, you could reach out to me and do that virtually as well. It's not just G condo actually, all of our programs currently for adults are offered virtually. So that's Tai Chi, Cilai and Kali, and kickboxing. We have a very robust

1:09:08fitness kickboxing program. For that one, I would say that you probably want to have a heavy bag at home because it's heavy bag based, but it is we got our iPad and we got our our zoom setup for all those classes. Oh, rock on. Yeah. Well, this is this has been fun as as I knew it would be. Totally. If anybody disagrees, they're wrong. Yeah, they can just reach out big and play to you. Don't complain to me. I won't listen. But how do we how do we close? How do we close such a great conversation? What are what's the end here? The end is keep training. Keep training and there is no end. It's going to keep going on. And know that the older I get, I'm in that wonderful decade of my life called the 40s. And it's I really believe it's all about train smart,

1:10:12train smarter, not harder, rest smarter and keep moving. And if you if you can do that and stay healthy, you're going to be you're going to be a happier older person. And that's that's where I am aiming my ship. I would love to be there. So martial arts is one of the ways to do that for sure.