Hey folks, welcome back to the Stronger Is Better podcast brought to you by Starting Strength Gyms. Today, very exciting day. I am joined by my good friend, John Valentine. We are not related, despite us both being ambiguously ethnic and extremely handsome. Your choice, whether you like hair or no hair on the top of the head, you get the best of both worlds here with us. Um, John is a man, I mean, a lot of things. So he is a BJJ black belt, um, combatives guy, just a whole bunch of things. We'll go through it probably, you know, in terms of, in terms of people you want to listen to who can provide value to someone outside of, uh, of his career field. Um, probably the most valuable government employee on the face of the earth, in my opinion. Um, that's not, I don't think I'm overstating that, but, um, I've known John for a while. We met, uh, God, seven, five, seven years ago, a long time ago, uh, at, at, uh, Shiv. works course, uh, with Craig Douglas, um, started talking about stuff and, uh, and here we are, we've been talking ever since. I am, uh, honored to be the strength training subject matter expert for the combatives association, uh, at least on Facebook. I don't know that anybody else really cares. It just says that on my profile on Facebook. And then, uh, I'm also lucky to have been a presenter at the combatives association summit, and I'm going to be presenting this year, uh, at the summit in October. So we'll talk about all that stuff. John, uh, you've been around with us for a while. You've been on a starting strength radio. Uh, you've done the lift shoot fight, uh, workshop with me. You've done the lift shoot fight, uh, and, uh, you've done the lift shoot fight, uh, may recognize you from those things, but aside from that, could you give us as much as you want about your history, background, training, and kind of what's going on with you? Yeah, sure. So I'm John Valentine. I'm active duty military. I work for, I was in the Army for about nearly a decade, got out of the Army, and I joined the Air Force in 2018, which I'm still. serving. I'm a full-time instructor, so I do pre-deployment training, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Combatives Black Belt. I run the Combatives Association group page and the organization itself, and my mission is really about bridging that gap between fighting and shooting, like bringing those worlds together and seeing what skills kind of hold up whenever you put the pressure on. Excellent, excellent, and you've done a hell of a job with that so far. How long have you been involved with the Facebook group, with the Combatives? Association group. It's been a while, right? Oh, wow. I think... So we opened the group or created the group, I think, in 2017. Actually, yeah, December 2017 is when we actually created the group. Made it kind of official. Making an LLC, I think, was in 2020. And then we had the first big event was the Combative Summit was in 2023. Okay, good. Yeah, and I think I stumbled on it in like 2019. It had to be like 2019 or something like that. So, yeah, I'd never heard of it. I found it after talking to you at the ShivWorks course. And our paths kind of converged accidentally. And, you know, from my perspective, the really cool thing about John and the organization that he's nurtured and helped create is it's just an excellent sort of distillation. Yeah, it's just an excellent sort of distillation. of everything you need to know for self-defense purposes. All of the best people that you should be listening to are involved in that organization with very few exceptions. You know, there's a couple of folks here and there that, you know, don't like the internet, don't like Facebook drama and stuff like that. So they kind of stay away from it. But in general, you know, everybody in that group is going to be super helpful, super useful and providing good information. And you should probably train with, if you're interested in self-defense, you should probably train with any of the folks that are involved in there. So yeah, I showed up at ShivWorks. John and I worked together a little bit, and he found out about some of the stuff that I was involved in. I don't know if we, I don't know if you knew, oh, you knew about starting strength. I think you, yeah, one of the things that happens is like whenever I go somewhere, people like comments from the haters, like it's the first thing they say. And I believe that's like the first thing you said to me. So we talked a little bit about starting strength and then sort of made a, And then, yeah, I had followed Craig for a while, and he was in the area within a couple of hours, and I decided to go check it out because the classes look super cool. It turns out Craig is one of the most impressive people in terms of teaching, instructing, coaching, and just being able to present very sort of deep material in a simple way and just distilling things down into important concepts and then actually putting those out in a teaching method, progression, process, whatever you want to call it, which appeals to me tremendously because that's exactly how I do it. I've approached things my entire life, and it's exactly how we approach things in Starting Strength. And it turns out that there's this whole sort of collective of folks that are kind of following the same path in a lot of different ways in the hand-to-hand fighting world and in the shooting world. And again, what John has done is… is, uh, sort of nurtured this community and this relationship of bringing all these people together and created some cool events. So, uh, so yeah, thank you to you, man, because I've been exposed to people I'd never heard of previously that I should have known about, um, and had. fantastic opportunities over the last five years or so to, to really like level up my coaching, my teaching and my skills, um, and met a lot of cool people, some of the best people I've ever met and, um, and, and really become a better coach, um, the better person really in all, like all these aspects of my life. So, um, anyway, I don't think I've ever told you that. So thank you for that, dude. No, man. I mean, thank, thank you for all your contribution. I mean, it's, it's definitely a group effort, you know, the association came just as a consequence of like scratching my own itch. I, I felt like, um, like people did a good job as far. as like explaining violence, but their prescription just didn't match. Right. So it was like, it's something that kind of caused a disparity between prescription and description. Like they're, they know exactly what the, the problems are, but then it's like, hey um this is how to solve it and it's kind of some weird kung fu thing that was going on and and it was a frustration that just kind of kept building and building and what i realized is that a lot of people were what happened was that they were really just trying to prescribe their bias that's it whatever skill that they knew and everything like that hey my thing solves this. problem even though the things i described don't mesh well there's no congruency with what i just said but i'm gonna sell you this thing and people are just like throwing a lot of money because i mean they they're really good at creating these compelling cases and and really inspiring these um emotional purchases out of people who are naive and i felt like i felt like that if you're not going to get victimized by a criminal then you're going to get victimized by this other guy right so yeah it's like so some people are trying like both sides are like taking advantage of and. there was no one really honest and um and i i was i was in the military at the time so i was like well i can keep my lights on so i'll just talk about this stuff for, Does it make a difference to me? And also, it was just things I felt were important. And through that effort, it was like all these people just kind of came together, and then they were like willing to put their bodies of work into this as well because they felt the same thing. So I really don't think it was so much me as much as it was just like – it was the first time that there was a place made that was like not about a brand and not about a system. And it was about how this works. So I think it – because of that, I feel like that's what made it to where we've got this amazing group of dudes together. Agreed. Yeah, and I think where the magic is actually that everybody – and the reason these guys are good instructors and good coaches and have great methods is because almost universally – I mean I can't really think of anybody who doesn't fall into this category. But they're all honest with themselves, honest with what they're doing. And kind of – Constantly, um, searching for some, some truth. And what I mean by that is this, like, is what I'm doing bullshit, you know, and I think that's the underlying, uh, driver of anybody you'll find within, uh, within this, this association generally, um, you know, and, and also with stepping outside of the association with anybody who's going to be a good coach and is going to have, uh, good methods and is going to be focused on. Like you said, you didn't say this directly, but kind of alluded to it where it's not about me. It's not about my method. It's not about my thing. It's about taking an individual, taking a group, taking, uh, an institution and really focusing on making that individual, that person or that group or that institution better, uh, and using whatever tools you have available, even if the tools that you're using at the moment don't end up being the best way to do it. Right. So what you'll, what you see is like a constant evolution. Um, of, you know, everybody started somewhere. Right. For me, it was in the self-defense world. It was Muay Thai. And then it was Krav Maga and a certain brand of Krav Maga. And then eventually, you know, because of this drive for doing better for my members, for the people that I was teaching, because it's kind of a serious thing. And the reality is, as you know, like that in the civilian world, people who are going to be able to pay $150 to $200 a month to do self-defense classes are not likely to be the ones that are going to be out fighting all the time. Right. So but but still, you know, they have an expectation that they're learning something useful and that's something that may one day solve a problem for them. And also there's all of this aspect of just improving themselves physically and mentally and emotionally and stuff like that. But I feel as a as a good coach and as a as. An instructor, you have a responsibility to be providing the best way to do something that you are able to. And that's a big driver for me. And I see that in a lot of the folks that I've that I've been exposed to. Through the Combatives Association, right? So yeah, it's a group of people of similar thinking. And the most interesting thing to me, because even though I came into that, it still would have been pretty easy to really like the people and like their motivations and also separately evaluate what they're doing and say to myself, okay, that's good. That's not good. I'll use that. I'll think about that a little bit more. I'm not going to look at that stuff because it doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't make sense, right? But what you find, and tell me if you agree with this or your thoughts on this, but what you'll find is that, man, at the end of the day, and this is kind of, I think, going to sort of push us into where we're headed with this discussion, fighting is really simple, right? It's very simple. And it comes down to like, here's you, and here's an opponent. And that opponent could be another person, it could be a group of people, whatever. It could be two groups of people. It could be two opposing groups. So whatever the situation is, we have one group who has an objective, who has, who is trying to do something. And the other group is just doesn't want them to do it. Right. Or the other person doesn't want to do it. And in like a one-on-one situation, your job is to control the other individual and, and impose your will, like just do what you want to do to them without them being able to, uh, to, to oppose you effectively. Right. So it's, it's like controlling somebody and imposing your will. Right. And there's all kinds of ways that you can do that. And your, your point about martial arts throughout history, once people weren't like fighting each other daily, or there wasn't a threat of fighting each other daily commercialization safety, you know, all these things kind of come to come to a point. And what you get is like pieces of truth in terms of like, here's a knife, here's a spear, here's a method, like here's bot, here's striking, here's this joint manipulation art. And you have these, They kind of get developed around these preferences around these things. And then they just go further and further and further into this specialization. But man, and again, this is something that I never really thought about until I attended Craig's first first class. And he said, he says this in every course, but it's like, you know, you look at ancient or not ancient, but Middle Ages, you look at photos from our drawings from the Middle Ages of combat. And what do you see, man, you see a dude with a blade of some kind, or whatever, you know, it's some kind of a hand. Some kind of a blunt object. And he is entangled grappled up with somebody. And he's holding him down and trying to do something with that implement, right. And obviously, there's like, extensions of that where you're at more range, and you're more distance. And there's, you know, tactics among the groups, but fundamentally, one on one combat is up close, it's dirty, it's somebody that's, it's trying to hold on to each other, minimize damage to yourself and maximize damage to your opponent. So ultimately, what I'm saying is that, There's only a few ways that you can wrestle. There's only a few ways that you can hit people effectively. And there's only a few ways that you can shoot effectively. And that becomes more true the closer you are to somebody. So it makes sense to me at this point in my sort of coach development that it's like fighting universally is the stand-up clinch. It's some – mostly it's the stand-up clinch in terms of skill sets that people need to develop. It is striking. And it doesn't even have to be like specialized boxing or Muay Thai striking. It can just be some striking. And then you can layer on weapons on top of that. And then the whole kind of combatives thing, in my view at least, the way I think about it, it starts there and then expands out, right? It expands from the up close and personal, just fundamentally holding somebody down, not letting them move, and all the things that come with that. And then the next step removed is – And then you can just kind of circle out from there and do that, like from listening to Matt talk and it's, it's kind of just applies sort of universally that that's sort of the way it goes. So to get it, to get back to my point, um, that theme, that underlying current of thinking, uh, permeates everybody's approaches and, and you'll see people come in that have like a thing, right? It's like, and there's been really goofy, like really goofy guys have come in, but even people who kind of like are a little bit more sort of like, you know, like, you know. like specialized weapon. And then they, they're like trying to reverse engineer into like actual fighting and they just kind of don't stick around because they're not interested. They're not interested in, in really, really pressure testing. And when you really, really pressure test things, some fundamental truths emerge, right? And some fundamental ways of how to do things emerge. And that is the, um, out of a, out of a fairly large group of people. That's the, that's one of the fundamental aspects of, uh, the, the folks that we. We. You're lucky, lucky to be involved in. And it kind of holds true over and over again. Like, for example, when you go, when somebody attends the combatives association summit, you're going to see a lot of the same things presented in different ways, presented in different applications, but the skills that you learn are going to be at a, at a core principle level, about the same across the board. And it even, it even goes into the, like the shooting aspect of things. Right. So anyway, I know that was kind of long-winded, but you got any thoughts there to add, John? Yeah, I think it, I think you're exactly right. Especially the part about the fighting being simple. I mean, it's, it's really just kind of getting the, the most complicated thing is really getting to the position you want to be at, but ultimately fighting really comes down to, um, you want to do as much damage to them while minimizing all damage you receive. Right. And you do that really in a series of fighting positions. You have, um, a parallel fighting position, which is, uh, us standing in front of each other. And then we have a perpendicular fight. Now, that's going to be kind of a lot of people like like the pivot, like boxers, they like pivoting or jujitsu guys like pivoting. Some of the things that people see, we see like the the tilt grip that we'll do in wrestling or like the or they call like the Dagestani handcuff. A lot of people like that. But the other side of the perpendicular fighting position is being behind them. Yep. So really, it's so it's really just two lines, right? So you either have your perpendicular positions where you cut an angle or you have parallel, right? You don't want to be you don't want that parallel position to be in front of them, you'd rather have it behind them as the best spot. And I think it's, especially when you're doing things up close, and you can wrap the person up, like I don't necessarily have to teach you to be a world class striker, because if you can, at least bind up their arms to where they can't do anything to you, you can pretty much strike to your heart's content, and they can't really do anything. Right. Stop that. Yep. And it's also going to be in your benefit to take that kind of approach. Because even though you don't, know if the people you're fighting are armed number one you got to be able to maintain that ability to escalate and de-escalate force as needed right um so like if you need to go to a weapon you want that ability to go to one and you also like if they don't present a weapon if they're just they're just like a kind of a simple assault like you don't want to you don't want to bring a weapon in any way but if they out of desperation try to access a weapon especially something. within the environment that could be improvised um you want to make sure that you have the arms binded up yep so so it play it plays multiple purposes right like it's it's a simple thing to do but as far as like the utility of that simple thing i think um there's a lot of density to that that i think people kind of um lose in translation because exactly they don't really they don't really get outside of the of the sanitized environment of the dojo you know what i mean they don't really they don't and a lot of times coaches they they kind of learn how to coach from. some other person who coached them so they never really extrapolated, for um, Ballistics, right, overpenetration, what's it look like, I mean, overpenetration with a knife, accessing a knife, or how a knife, like, especially for knives, like, I've been stabbed twice, and both of those times, I thought I was being punched, and then if you, and Albuquerque is right up the road from me, that's, like, a third world country inside of the first world of America, so, like, I've never been more sure that I'm going to get, like, a stateside kill other than, like, being in Albuquerque a little bit, but, like, a lot of the guys from the United States, like, they're, like, they. Greg Jackson's, like, those guys go out in bars, they get in fights, and they got stabbed, and you hear the reports from those guys, like, yeah, I thought I was being punched, and all of a sudden, I realized I was leaking, so, so things like that, like, people, like, there's, there's, you got to combine the information that's available, and be able to still extrapolate it to, like, okay, what's possible, while also realizing what's possible may not necessarily apply in real world, and it's, it's a really fine balance, and it really requires a, you know, somebody who's active, In terms of participating in their own protection and also just being able to think about it in terms of like jiu-jitsu is really great. It's had its time in the sun, but it really solves – let's put a number. Let's say it solves 80% or 85% of your problems. There's 15%. That's a huge gap. There's a lot of things that can happen there, right? So I think that exploration that's agnostic to the system and more focused on like what's the goal in which I'm trying to utilize this system, right, using a martial art versus doing it, I think that's where – that's really where we kind of get caught up with, right? Well, that's the important place to start. Yeah, so 100%. So there's this idea that what is the problem? And this applies to all training, right? Whether it's strength training, you're learning. You're learning any new skill and especially when it's a complicated deal. You have to start. with what is the thing that's going to solve the most problems for me, right? And ideally, if self-defense is the thing that you're interested in, it's extraordinarily simple, but there's a ton of depth, right? So even if you take something simple like an underhook, there's a ton of depth with an underhook. And the thing that somebody can do is just say, like, show somebody here's an underhook and then do some drills with it and then call it done. And that's kind of the way martial arts has been done for a long time. It's like, here's, it's like show and tell, even Brazilian jiu-jitsu. It's like, here's a technique, drill it a few times, good luck, right? And an underhook isn't really a technique, it's a position, but I've seen instructors teach it as a technique and then just like, okay, let's move on and then nobody does it. again, right? My point is that it's simple in that, you know, there's some basic positioning, but then there's a lot of depth and that depth can only come through. Trial and error and pressure testing because. You could write a book or make a two-hour video on how to do fighting, but at the end of the day, you have to be in it. You have to have experience on the mats against the resisting opponent in order to truly grasp and be able to execute, right? So all that to say that ideally what people ask – so kind of getting to the meat of the question here because people will ask me all the time. It's like, okay, I want to learn self-defense, so what do I do? And pretty much any question, any answer I give them that doesn't involve them working with you directly, with me, somebody like Ben, somebody like Cecil directly is going to result in you having to enter from a different point, right? You're going to have to enter the situation from some other point because if I had somebody that needs to learn self-defense, like needs to learn how to fight. We're not going to spend – We're not going to spend time on the mat shrimping and learning the guard and learning sweeps and learning arm bars. We're clinch fighting from day one, and we're doing that every single day as much as we possibly can. And then once I've got a feel that they've got it down, at least in terms of the basic concepts of where they need to be, where their pressures need to be, where their positioning needs to be, then we start adding the hands, then we start adding striking, and then we start adding weapons. But all that doesn't happen until we have those fundamental concepts down, not only up here, but also just ingrained into the movement patterns and the central nervous system and then the feeling of the pressure. But that's not realistic because this doesn't exist across the board. It doesn't exist everywhere. There's only a handful of people approaching the problem that way. And that is actually the problem because in a self-defense situation, what are we trying to accomplish? We're trying to accomplish whatever it is. If you're trying to carry a gun, you need to get a gun. the gun out, all right? So if you can get the gun out without any resistance, then you don't need me, right? But as soon as you're within arm's reach, you're going to expect to have some resistance. And what does that look like? I don't know. And you don't know either, right? So you have to prepare with some fundamental abilities to be able to do that in the event that somebody is resisting the draw, somebody is fighting the draw and not letting you get the gun out, or you're tired, you're fatigued, whatever the situation is, right? So in other words, we're looking at the hardest problem, in my opinion, and yours too, probably, we're looking at the hardest problem, solving that, and what you find is that everything else becomes an easier problem to solve. If you're a good grappler, it's easier for you to layer in these concepts, of these self-defense or combatives concepts of being able to draw the gun under an entanglement. If you're a good striker, my opinion, again, it's easier for me to teach you how to strike because you understand the problem. range, you understand position, you understand pressure. And, and, and by the way, you're not afraid of contact either. If you're, if you're, if you wrestle or if you do jujitsu, you're not afraid of contact. So all of these things make for better, um, fighters overall. And it goes back hundreds, thousands of years, you know, wrestling is the base. Okay. So if the question is, what do I do for self-defense? The, the answer is work with somebody who understands combatives and can teach it to you. Well, good luck with that. Right. So the second best thing is go learn. how to wrestle. All right. So wrestling is pretty gatekept in the modern world, right? You're going to have to either be a kid or good luck going to like the local high school or college and like jumping in with the wrestlers. That's not going to be any fun. And on top of that, you know, it's, collegiate wrestling. And, um, at this point is, is pretty specialized into the, uh, into the, uh, competitive aspect of it, which still, I mean, there's a lot of transfer there, but you know, uh, you're going to be drilling. In a competitive environment, you're not going to have that, that application, right? So we're left with things like MMA, something like Muay Thai, boxing, or something like jujitsu in terms of things that are readily available for people, right? So if you've got boxing, or MMA of some kind, in most places, you're going to be jumping into some kind of like a conditioning based class, right? Where there's like a bunch of heavy bags or whatever, and people are moving around and hitting, even if it is a heavily fight oriented. school, how long, what's the learning curve? How long does it take you to be able to be truly pressure tested in an environment like that, where you're going to be able to jump in and start sparring? Like you can spar anytime, right? But how long is it going to take you to be any good, good enough that you're not going to suffer from a traumatic brain injury, or just leave or gets or gets so beat up that it's just not, it's just not worthwhile training anymore, right? So again, man, and I think you and I have had like discussions about this over text. For most people, most of the time, it's something like Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Whether you're learning self-defense. Brazilian jiu-jitsu or not is going to be the best place to learn some of these fundamental aspects of fighting on accident. Even if your jiu-jitsu instructor doesn't know what he's doing, what are you doing from day one in jiu-jitsu? You're pressure testing what you learned. And even if you have the worst coach, if there's another individual in your class and you're able to roll with them at full speed and full power, it's relatively safe and you're learning accidentally these fundamental concepts. And then you can go to the Combatives Association. Summit or go to a ShivWorks class or something and then plug in the necessary skills to shift the approach into a self-defense focus. And then after that, you go back to your jiu-jitsu training with a little bit more clear understanding of what you're doing. So what are your thoughts there, man? I think this happens all the time where it's like BJJ is not self-defense, which is true. But BJJ is not the best sport for self-defense. And you get all these people commenting like on the internet saying, do Muay Thai, do blah, do this other thing. That's like – like who are we talking to? We're talking to normal people, right, who need to do something twice a week, max, right, adults who can pay for shit. So it's like who are we talking to? I think if you want to be self-defense – you want to learn self-defense, you want to be more capable, the place to get some depth out of this stuff. Because depth is what we're talking about is the firearms world through dry fire primarily probably. And then BJJ is probably the two top things in my mind at least. Yeah, I mean I got a lot of thoughts on that. Yeah, I'm sure. Let's go. So here's the thing, right? Before I start, I need people to know. I recently wrote this thing about how basically Brazilian jiu-jitsu has surrendered the territory of self-defense to Krav Maga. Over the last 10 years, jiu-jitsu guys have been – Okay. record like stuff have been suffering from success okay they've been they've been doing really well against every other style versus style thing i mean that's that's proven that's not a. that's not up for debate it's not argument it is what it is it's proven that jiu-jitsu is far superior i mean you even had um marilla's boostamante who fought a silver medalist olympic wrestler and he got all the takedowns in that fight so that's proven that's not a that's not speculation that's not me trying to fly by the flag of bjj and saying that it's the greatest it just it it just it proved as far as its efficacy right but they have surrendered that territory why and it's because everything is driven by the pressures within the community. of like what is giving members of that community status so now you've got people like the denner down in her death squad you've got the gordon ryan's of the world you've got a lot of the the competition then you got joe rogan who is like, always talking about competition jiu-jitsu and everything like that how clean jiu-jitsu, is so so that's really where everything kind of just like that pressure that social pressure is like where everybody steered to like when i first started bjj advanced jujitsu was mma and before. john danaher was coaching gordon ryan he was coaching matt sarah george saint pierre yeah frankie edgar all these guys who are ufc world champions and that that was like and i you know i got my blue belt from the henzo gracie academy and that's really what the focus of the advanced jujitsu was adapting it for fight exactly yeah and and that's really what people forgot as far as like the martial arts can be doing like you're you're talking about like the shift in focus and it's just now you have to just that that's exactly what i mean as far as like the change of priority. and just adapting it using it for a specific purpose so and another way to say doing something for a specific purpose is tactics right taking the taking this tactical approach and i i feel like um people watch a training method, And they forget that those things can be transposed to other things, that there's borrowed skills in other areas. So I think it's pretty funny that people will say stuff like that, like, oh, go do Muay Thai. And it's just like, okay, what's the standard plan of any striking martial art, which is bludgeon with strikes until they can no longer fight back effectively? And what does jiu-jitsu do? It clinches you and puts you on the ground. So now you have no ability to generate power, and you're also – if you have no understanding as far as the positional hierarchy, as far as where you can position yourself to where the strikes will be effective, then it doesn't even matter. So you can have somebody who's done six months of jiu-jitsu, and you've been boxing 20 years, and they get you down on the ground. That's it. You're done. That's the truth. But the truth is about this too, right? As far as like what martial arts should I train? I mean, no – I mean, now that I look at it now, I don't think any martial art – is really training for self-defense i think they're kind of working they've all got their own training methods and areas that they want to focus on and and so for jujitsu they've chosen that their focus is going to be live ground grappling as a primary the secondary is going. to be a clinch fight with the intent of getting people down to the ground right yeah okay and and the striking i mean their whole thing is to basically keep you at range to where they can hit you where the strikes have the most effect and they're going to clinch with an intention of a secondary strategy of clinching to strike you so that way they can break or break the clinch and hit you from at the range that that they feel comfortable where exactly the strikes do you know what i mean so there's still that intermediate range of the clinch the clinch is in all those. arts it's just like how what are you going to do once you get there right and and so you i think and it's like, Is the answer this or that? And it's like it's never A versus B. It's always yes, right? And then it's like, all right, well, what about weapons get involved? I mean, and you got to know how to adapt it for that side. And if you have a gun on you, how do you deal with this problem? How do you fight this person so that way you don't use the gun unnecessarily or they don't take it from you and then use it on you? Yep. So those are things that – those are questions that grappling has a lot of really good answers to, but they're not – They're not complete. There are no perfect answers, right? There's no complete system. Right. Right, because if like – let's say you're a jiu-jitsu black belt and fighting is rock, paper, scissors, and somebody is a D1 wrestler, and they decide I'm going to use my wrestling in reverse. I mean – You might have the world's best rock, but if they – Right. Yeah. Like anybody who's lived in a city has, has been around panhandlers and like, especially like, like rude panhandlers, right? People that are cursing and they're talking crazy and stuff like that. How do you, how do you navigate that? How do you sit, how to decide like this person is hostile or just being aggressive or they're just yelling and everything like that. Like, can I, can I burn that person down? Can I, can I strike them? And a lot of times it might not be that you can do anything. It might be the best thing might be walk away. Yep. So, and. And if every martial artist is talking about like all the things to do when things go kinetic and you have the equal initiative and you just use that plug and play or copy and paste based on what you're doing in the gym, that may not work out for you in a legal situation. Right. So there's things that – there's the fight itself, which martial arts – almost any modern martial arts will do a good job of approaching. But then you have the circumstances that lead up to it, which almost no martial art has the time to address. Because if you're paying me to teach you a skill, like you want me to teach you that skill. You don't want me to talk to you about like other things that are like I'm not necessarily an expert in, right? And then you also have the legal aftermath, which another thing most martial arts are not getting ready or have any understanding of that – about how that goes. Because you don't – what's the credential for martial arts expertise, right? Like you showed up for 20 years and you got a belt. Basically, yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like there's a – and I'm not – I'm not trying to knock anybody. Who's a martial artist or anything like that? It's just these things are objectively true, and these are the problems that real people face every day or in the things that people are not thinking about when they're saying, hey, I want to work on self-defense and everything like that. And I think being able to defend yourself is a fundamental aspect of existence. I mean it doesn't matter if you're – look, Mark Zuckerberg is doing MMA right now. Like you can't tell me that that guy can't afford the highest-end security team possible. And if that guy is taking his personal protection into his own hands, that is a sign that you should too. Right. Just saying. Yeah. I mean if this is a thing – so there's two aspects of this, right? There's multiple aspects, but the two I want to talk about is people who are interested and want to have this self-defense thing as a skill that they're building and just a part of their lives. And there's also the people who – who will buy a gun or buy some other kind of weapon or tool, and their entry point might be, okay, so I've got this gun, and a lot of times they don't realize it, but I've got this gun, I've got to learn how to use it. Part of learning how to use it doesn't mean just, lining up the sights and pressing the trigger. Learning how to use it is accessing it in all conditions and being effective with it. So 100%, man, I think what you're giving us is kind of. like the overarching, at least the way I see it, you're giving us like the overarching sort of like conceptual understanding of self-defense and how it's taught and applied. And there are a lot of schools, organizations, coaches calling what they do a good workout. You just go to their website, right? It's a good workout. It teaches you self-defense. And those are, I mean, one of those is true and the other one is not, right? It is a good workout, but you're not learning self-defense. But you, are learning some fundamental skills that can be easily applied in a self-defense context, especially if you're thinking about the problem the right way and you have the proper exposure to what you need in order to make that happen. The way I look at the problem, and we're talking about the same thing, I just want to provide a little bit of a counterpoint here, because you made a comment that Brazilian jiu-jitsu has let Krav Maga or anybody really take sort of the. self-defense aspect and run with it. In other words, BJJ has allowed that to just to not matter, right? And there are plenty of schools out there that say they're more self-defense focused. Usually it's because they don't like going to competitions and stuff, but whatever, you know, that's all good. So you're absolutely right. Now here's the problem though, okay? Because people could take what you just said and said, all right, well, I'm going to go learn Krav Maga instead. I don't think, and I hope that that's not what you're saying, because the truth is... If you look at it from the coaching aspect, in other words, let me put it to you like this. If you remove the coach from the situation, so let's equalize all coaching BJJ versus Krav Maga and just say they're all the same. BJJ on accident will make you a better fighter than Krav Maga will because the method and the approach with which those things are taught, even though Krav Maga is a self-defense system, it's not taught in a way that makes it seem like it's a self-defense system or even as applicable as a self-defense system in most cases. Now would be a good time to give a shout out to a couple people I know really well like Ryan Hoover and Sam Sade and guys like that. They think about fighting. Ryan has an incredibly good, really integrated way of thinking about things. He's a very smart guy and starts in the same way. I learned a lot from Ryan just from his YouTube videos and then being affiliated with him. It starts with, And then everything builds off of wrestling. And that's exactly the right approach. But most Krav Maga is not taught that way. It's taught as a striking art. It's taught as a striking method. And it's taught as basically a cardio class. You don't meet any resistance until you're at the very highest levels, like you're an instructor or you've been around for a long time. So you never actually learn how to fight. You learn how to hit things and you learn how to yell and scream and get really tired. Um, but it's still not, it's still not self-defense. My point is that the, the mentality or the, the approach, you know, you're learning gun defenses and stuff, but even those aren't very good. Like you can learn all that just through learning how to clinch. Um, so the difference being that even the worst Brazilian jujitsu school on earth, as long as they're rolling every day on accident, you're going to get better at self-defense because you have to perform under pressure. Even if you guys both. Like, even if you and your opponent are terrible and you learn, like, two or three little things, like you learn how to do a guard, you learn how to pass a guard, and then you learn, like, you learn an Americana, right? So, I mean, this describes every white belt class on the face of the earth, right? So, even with those three things, a guard, the idea that I have to get out of this guard and into a dominant position and some kind of a finish, whether it's a choke or an arm lock, those three things give you all the pieces you need to learn fundamental fighting skills because, and here's the important part, because the other guy doesn't want to let you do it. And he's going to do everything he can and not let you do it. So, like, anybody can teach those three techniques and anybody can put a timer on and tell you what to do. Tell those guys to go and on accident, they're going to get better at fighting. And that, when I say, like, jujitsu is the way to go, it always depends, right? If you have a fit to fight. That's Hoover's organization. If you have an Alpha Krav Maga affiliate in your area, go to them. They will teach you how to fight, and they will teach you self-defense. I can't say the same for almost anybody else out there unless I know the guy there personally. That's just the truth. So does that make sense, John? So when I say like— I'm picking up exactly what you're putting down, right? It's just like does that mean that they don't focus on self-defense or that it can't help you to fight? Yeah. Like, no, they don't mean the same thing. Right. My contention is that you do have people like—I mean, Brian Hoover is a good example, and so is somebody like Aaron Gennetti. Yeah. A lot of like these Krav Maga guys, they're not even necessarily Krav Maga guys. They're not. They're not Israeli. They're not Jewish. They're not—you know what I mean? They're just kind of American guys who kind of like this idea of this open top, open bottom, where nuance— ideas and everything come in and we kind of change what's inside and we let out the old ideas exactly right like a lot of jujitsu like their their self-defense programs i mean they're they're still bowing to helio gracie and whatnot you know what i mean and not that not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily it's just that that shows that they're focused more on the traditional traditionalism aspect right than they are as far as solving the problem and what happens. is that they they don't have any kind of program at all that addresses the real world application side that most clients are looking for exactly so so like the thing that makes like a good idea for a beginner to come to the combative summit is that they will most likely sign up for a martial art but because they've been exposed to these things is that they'll have like a frame of reference that is going to be anchored with them throughout that journey exactly that is not. going to be a good idea for them to come to the combative summit because they're not going to, be uh tainted by like oh well let me let me. Right, yeah. is that they made winning the game the end, and everybody came to jiu-jitsu with an understanding of, like, I need to be able to win fights, I need to be able to defend myself if somebody, you know, tries to hurt me or something like that. Right. And so the whole, the real-world application side, Krav Maga never really abandoned that. What happened is that they've adapted, and they became, I like to think of them more as hybrid guys. You know, like, they've gone to shooting classes, they're learning to. A lot of them have gotten jiu-jitsu black belts, legitimately, right? And Aaron Gennetti, he's competing as a black belt. So you can't really say that that guy doesn't know what he's doing necessarily in the jiu-jitsu sense because we're watching him do it, right? Some people have gotten jiu-jitsu black belts based off of attendance, and you've never seen them compete, and they'll do some kind of weird martial art, and they use that BJJ as an anchor. So there's definitely that too. But the idea as far as meeting people where they're at and what they want, I feel like jiu-jitsu doesn't really do a good job in terms of laying a career path for somebody. Yep. They want you to be most of the time at the end. At the end of 10 years, they want you to open a school and be an affiliate, and now you get to pay your instructor forever. Right, yeah. So. Yeah. And I mean, it's a good model. It's a successful model. But at the same time, it's just like, are where you at and where you started, are those two things in line? Like, are the goals from then, are those two things, did you meet them or did they change? And if they change, why? And most guys don't stop to think about that. I mean, you've been in the fitness business a long time, and this is kind of something that you see. Like, who really would CrossFit, right? Nobody ever challenged this idea of preparing for the unknowable, doing unknown, constantly varied. Like, how are you getting good at fucking anything if it's constantly varied? Well, Ripita did, and they ran him off. But yeah, but like… But nobody, like, but because somebody wearing, you know, some authority figure in that space said this stuff, people just like bought it. You know, you have people that are just like, because they're… They're doing – they're following the same problem a lot of like martial arts are following, that they're focused on preserving this system instead of like making it the best thing possible. Like you have people that are judo students that are doing the same – Akano said we got to do 1,000 push-ups a day, so make sure you get your 1,000 push-ups. As if we haven't learned anything about strength and conditioning the last 150 years. You know what I mean? So like most training – I say all that just to say or to illuminate that most training is really an anti-intellectual process, and the coach has – you can't be just an instructor. You have to be a coach, and you have to be the type of coach that is going to be pushing your people to be able to develop themselves within your absence. Now, that doesn't sound like a very profitable model. It's just like, well, if I'm not there to give them all the answers, how am I going to do it? How are they going to continue to pay me? I see starting strength as a good example. Like they, you guys have not had a problem. I think you guys have a demand problem that you guys can't meet, to be honest. Well, yeah, that doesn't just apply to strength training. It applies to anything. The more information you give out. Yeah, you and I have talked about this. I think I've said this specifically to you. The more information you give out, the more people want to work with you. Because it's not, it's never, it's never an information problem. There's guys, I mean, there's guys that I know. There's guys that both of us know that are scared to put their stuff out because they think somebody's going to steal it. Oh, yeah. Let them steal it. They can't, they can't do it. They can't do it at the level that you can. And it's, so it's, and by the way, the information's already out there, right? So it's about how the information is presented. It's how deep you understand it. And most important is, can you implement it with another individual who comes with their own shit, right? Can you make it work for them? That's where the skill set lies. So it's, in... In today's world, it's never an information problem. The information is all out there. And by the way, people will just gravitate to whatever appeals to them anyway. So it's about coaching. It's about having tools, methods at your disposal that you believe in and that work from a fundamental first principles perspective. And it's the coach's job to integrate those to solve the problem that the individual you're working with comes in, whether that's a fitness problem. You know, I need to lose weight, gain weight, get healthier, get stronger, you know, whatever. Or it's the self-defense problem. I need to be a better shooter. I need to be a better fighter. I need to protect my family. And by the way, this is the amount of time I have to devote to this. So how do I get that done? That's where the coach fits in and that's where the methods fits in. You typically won't find coaches who are very good coaches who haven't discovered this and are not generous with their knowledge and generous with their time and aren't worried that somebody is going to come take it from them. Because, dude, they can't. People aren't good at implementing. It's always execution, it's always implementation, and people aren't good at implementing things on their own, especially when they view it as even a little bit complicated, right? One thing I want to address too about the people out there just kind of ripping material from – now, if you're talking about, I don't know, like a metabolic conditioning modality and you're ripping that from somebody, that might not do no harm. But if you go ahead and repurpose and repackage tactical information that you find online and just start distributing it as your own IP, that's incredibly dangerous. It's borderline negligent, and I think you should really reconsider that because the way those instructors or these instructors have discovered these things is through a constant pressure test. Right. Making sure – and the problem is that… When it breaks, you won't understand what built it, and because you did not understand what built it, you're going to get somebody seriously hurt. Yeah, you don't have the depth. Yeah, so I would caution against that. If you really care about the people you're serving, I would say do the work. I mean go and – like the whole point on like we credit sources is so that way if something doesn't work for them – I mean not only is it the right thing to do, honestly, but if something doesn't work for them, those people, they have that source material that they can find. They can talk to that person and figure this stuff out. It's not to, I guess, kiss the ring the way people like to make a thing. It's like, no, it's just it's important that people know where things come from so that way if something doesn't work, if something breaks, they can fix it. And if you try to – like when something breaks in our line of work, that means somebody did it. Well, yeah, it's the integrity issue, but it's also the check and balance, right? So, yeah, aside from the dishonesty, right? So anytime somebody presents something as them having developed it or just implicitly states that by not crediting where the information came from, that's an integrity issue and you have bigger problems, right? But yes, in the realm of strength and conditioning, if I give somebody or a coach gives somebody just bad information, the truth is that it might actually work. Is it sustainable? There's a lot more leeway here. But again, if talking to the coaches out there, the instructors out there, if you are tasked with teaching people how to protect themselves and how to be more self-reliant. You should absolutely hold yourself to a higher standard, meaning that you need to really understand what it is that you're doing. And you need to really, uh, have put yourself through enough training and situations that you can, uh, you can at least teach authoritatively. And then you also need to, um, need to, the way I approach it is like, I'll tell people like where, where this came from. So they know where to look exactly. Like you said, like, there's way more than I, than we've just, cause we can't cover it all. There's way more. And here's where you find it. Right. Um, the, uh, a hundred percent. And I, once again, in, in the, in a, in a self-defense situation, somebody who's, who's teaching and coaching, um, self-defense, it's so, it's so easy to, because people don't know what they don't know. So it's so easy to put yourself out there to the public and make yourself an authority and, um, and really just be teaching, uh, unsafe and, um, but, and unsafe, dangerous and, uh, and, and, and, That is actually like a serious problem. Yeah, I mean, think about this, right? Like I teach you a technique and it works, right? But then there's that area where it doesn't work. Yep. And then it's like, then it breaks. And then it's like, oh, well, I found this answer. Let's try this some more. So it's almost like being wrong is better than being right for the wrong reason. That's right. A hundred percent. Yeah. And just don't step too far out of your lane. I mean, you have to push, right? You have to push. Somebody comes to you with a problem. You know, I mean, if you're good and somebody's asked you for help, you should try to figure out how to help them. And there's resources who can support you. And like, if it's a little bit out of your realm of experience, right? And that's all good. That's fine. That's valuable. You should do that because that's how you get better. But at the same time, you shouldn't stretch too far, right? You shouldn't, like, I'm not teaching anybody CQB. I'll go do it and I'll, I'll, I'll do classes and stuff cause it's fun, but I'm not teaching. anybody that any, anybody, cause I've, I've never been in a pressure situation with that particular skillset. Um, I'm actually teaching CQB a lot now. I used to say the same thing, but now I'm teaching it like, but you're in the middle of it. You're, you're in the middle of it and you're working with people and you are, even though you're not, you may not be pressure testing it yourself as an instructor, but you're still pressure testing it through your students. And it's, you know, I don't know if you agree with that or not, but it's like, No, but it, but most people, their skills are not even good enough to even start worrying about CQB either. That's what I mean. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? So it's a, it's, it's a problem of people wanting to, they're wanting an outcome with, without the process. And it's like, you cannot skip the process. If you do that, that's, that's how, that's how you're going to get hurt. That's, or, or even worse, somebody counting on you gets hurt. Yep. And, um, so like a lot, a lot of what happens, what we see in the, in the self-defense world, the fitness world, the firearms world, they. They try to promise you this result of like, all right, well, I'm going to teach you a set of core moves and everything like that. Like right now, the big rage in the jiu-jitsu community is this whole idea of this constraints learning or ecological learning, like no more drilling. But drilling was never supposed to be this idea of this static kata. Like pummeling is a form of drilling, and you can do that cooperatively, and you can do it competitively. And that's really what happened a lot of what we see with jiu-jitsu is like they're drilling just their – like that's not drilling. That's repetitions, right? Right. Like working on movement patterns so that way you can do it competitively or execute them competitively or under pressure better. That is going to be drilling. And then constraints. I mean everything has constraints. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me in terms of like how the framing has been presented. I'm sure like the people push. I'm sure they're excellent practitioners and whatnot, but I haven't been able to see that explained to me in a way that's with brevity. It just makes sense to me as far as what it is that they're actually doing. Usually, the question gets presented with another question, and it's just like, do you know what you're doing or not? Well, consider who's telling you these things and where it's coming from, because fundamentally, the concepts make very good sense. If you read How We Learn to Move, this is where all this comes from. If you read it and you read the core material, it is true, and it makes a lot of sense. What happens is people take the label, like take the brand, which is not a brand, but they take the label, and then they start to assign it to things that don't make any sense. And make it their entire personality and their entire approach. All good coaching, if you're a good coach. You have figured out the ecological approach, and you have figured out constraints-based coaching. You brought up pummeling. Pummeling is a constraints-based drill or a constraints-based practice because you're starting in a defined position. You have a defined endpoint. If you're just drilling back and forth, that's just a movement thing. But if you start in a position and you say, okay, your job is both of you to get underhooks. Once one of you gets underhooked, stop, reset, and go again. That's a constraints-based drill. That is an ecological drill because within that, you are, without having to define the things that people are learning, they are learning things automatically. And so what happens is – and that's a really simple example, right? But you can do that with anything movement-related, especially in the fighting world. And it works really, really well because what it gives people is context. When you drill – so traditionally… Traditionally, jiu-jitsu – I'm not – you know, I'm – obviously john you know this because you've you've seen it for years but the way jujitsu is taught. um is the black belt drives to school to the school on the way there he's may or may not think about what he's going to teach that night he walks in and then teaches whatever and uh maybe depending on who the students are if he's like good but likely he's just doing whatever he feels like right and then um and then you do whatever for 15 minutes after having like run around the room and done some push-ups or whatever um and then you drill it back and forth maybe he sets a timer and then like goes and like checks his phone and stuff while you're while you're drilling this. technique and not getting any coaching during except for like some random like put your leg here put your foot here i don't know why you're doing that like stop doing that type of thing and then and then um okay cool good job any questions and then three people will ask questions and then maybe some more drilling happens and then you go roll and what you actually learn is in the rolling because the rolling has, constraints and the rolling has, context. The drilling during that session of BJJ had no context. They may have given you some context verbally and said, so what happened was blah, blah. And then we got into. this position and then we're going to do these, these things in this order. Right. But they're physically, physically for the two people working, there is no context. So how do you apply that then in a live situation, in a live role? Good luck. You may be able to get it against somebody who's like really bad, who's new. You may be able to get it five years from now. Right. Um, or if you have a good coach, they may give you the advice to say, okay, here's the technique we learned today. Everybody like try to get this on everybody in the room and you will, you won't be successful. But again, what you've done is now you have given that individual a constraints based approach to learning jujitsu. You've said, here is an arm bar from the guard. Try to get this on everybody in the room. Guess what? That's ecological. That's the ecological approach. You've, um, so, so that, and then that's where people actually start learning. Right. So, That's what I mean, like why does it make sense to me. It's super simple, man. All training has degrees of artificiality because if we didn't, then only the most athletic guy would probably go home at the end of the night. Right. Because we have to introduce at least at a minimum safety constraints. Yeah. So there's always constraints. So that's what I mean. It just doesn't make a ton of sense. I see what you're saying. Well, let me tell you – let me give you the counterpoint. The reason it's good is because it forces these assholes to think about how they're coaching. Rather than sitting there and like having them drill the same thing for 10 minutes with no context, it forces them to maybe think about, okay, maybe if I tell them to start here and then do this and then do it under pressure and then do it under pressure with a little bit more pressure, right? Maybe it makes them a little bit better. I agree with you, man. It's gotten really, really silly. I know guys who are very, very good at it. I don't call it this. I don't use the labels. This is how I've always coached because it works. Yeah. But people take it, like with anything, they take it too far, you know, and they turn it into their personality and they make it this whole philosophy. It's just good coaching, you know, and I think part of the problem is like people who are good, you know, and I think hopefully you see it this way. But like thinking about coaching is like my thing, like thinking about how people teach things is my thing. And the thing that I see universally out of the folks that we're associated with is that they already do this. So to have somebody come in and start acting like they invented a new thing is very annoying and very frustrating. But it is – I think it's a good evolution generally for the vast majority of people running and teaching jiu-jitsu or anything movement related because they haven't thought about coaching. They have not thought about how coaching is done, right? Right. What you get typically is very good practitioners or mediocre – either way. Like, they're good. They're better than anybody in their town, right? But then you plug them into a teaching situation, and they don't know what the fuck they're doing. And it's taught really, really badly, right? So I want to say I agree with you, man. But I want to give, like, a little bit of a counterpoint where it shouldn't be dismissed. Like, if you don't know what you're doing, go read the books, man. Go get, like, the videos from – what's the guy's name? From, like, Kit Dale. And, you know, like, games. And it'll open your eyes. You'll be like, oh, this is, like, actually really cool. Like, it's a good idea, a good way to do things. Don't listen to the guys that every sentence they have to say ecological approach. That's not who you want. Like, that's the wrong guy, right? Yeah, that's – I get – yeah, that's a valid – that is a valid counterpoint. It is making people think about coaching, and most people don't ever think about how they present material and how what they're saying is being digested. Or even, like, the subtleties as far as – Yeah, absolutely. How I won this street fight. Who's to say you're going to get into a fight like that? That looks the same as that. Yeah, right. So even then – and you can take the most – it doesn't even matter if you've got the UFC world champion. Most of what they're going to be able to do is provide you some anecdotal, circumstantial insight into what they did within a specific situation. Yeah. And once you kind of – make that realization then you start realizing like the only thing that really matters is like. what they came to see me for and i developed their skill in that area exactly right and also like if you're you know if you're training full-time like you should be able to see videos and content of the person that you've paid a lot of money you should be able to see them training yep like it's it's it doesn't make sense to me that you have guys that like well let me take that back there are guys out there that they're they just get in high demand they got to go make get the bag got it but they put in the work that's not most people but you know that they've already put in. the work correct right and you can you can find documentation and a lot of those dudes are very focused as far as like what they do they don't they don't kind of branch off into other areas you know so so totally understand that but most guys are mostly most most instructors i see they're mostly local guys um and and they're not necessarily, um, Putting themselves in situations that are going to force them to grow and whether that is like public speaking, maybe they need to get stronger, maybe they need to do these things. And I get it. I got a family and a full-time job and all that stuff too. I get it. It's a lot of work, but it's a commitment, man, because people are counting on you. They're paying you a lot of money to do these things or you're demanding a lot of money to do these things. So like you have to – you've got to use that and invest it in yourself into being the kind of person that they expect you to be. Yeah. Yeah, have standards. Yeah. And constantly improve. Yeah, man. Okay. Let's – so look, I guess the answer to the question, if you want to be more self-sufficient, if you want to learn self-defense, let me give you my suggested path and then, John, maybe you could do the same. All right. So first things first. You have to be in shape. And when I say – in shape. You don't have to be ripped. You don't have to be jacked. You don't have to be super strong. What I mean is that fitness and through our definition of fitness, strength primarily, has to be a part of your life and it has to be a part of your training. So you have to focus on your physical capability because when it comes down to it, outside of having a tool in your hand. that's going to allow you to project violence at a distance, you have to be able to handle yourself, physically and you have to be resilient and you have to be able to deal with some level of. adversity from a physical standpoint, whether it was like you had to run away or you had to move quickly or whatever. So if those pieces aren't there, you are not as capable as you should be. And again, that's not like a high benchmark to reach. It's like you have to be paying attention. You have to be going to the gym twice a week, whatever, once a week, just. you have to be paying attention. You have to be going to the gym twice a week, whatever, once a week, have to be improving your physical capability at some level. Barbells are a extremely efficient and useful way to do that. Barbells cover almost all of your needs, uh, all of the time. All right. So that's thing number one, let's not even talk about self-defense. If you like, you know, if you're soft and weak and you can't, you can't like hold your, you know, it's a, it's not even a thing. Number two, you should get some grappling experience. The best vehicle to do that. Um, that's the most accessible for most people. Most of the time is going to be Brazilian jujitsu. Um, if you have a fit to fight affiliate, if you have an alpha Krav Maga affiliate, which is my friend Sam's organization, um, go see them. And that's it. They will also have jujitsu programs, because they understand fighting. So they will also have jujitsu programs in their school and you should take all the classes you can from them. Uh, go see them. Otherwise I would probably advise you to do Brazilian jujitsu. If there's a Krav Maga school in your area, go check it out. It serves as a great entry point, but understand that if you're, at full resistance, like in a grappling situation with people from fairly early on, you might. want to get some grappling experience somehow. And then third thing is two times a year, one time a year, go see somebody who is involved with the combatives association, come to lift, shoot, fight, go to the combative summit, go to Shiv works, go to immediate action combatives. If you're in Florida, go see Ben, go see one of these people that's in the combative association and take one of their courses. And that will give you context for lack of a better term, right? It'll give you context. It'll give you a framework for how to approach your training for the next year before you. get, get to the next one. And then on top of that, join the combatives association, Facebook group, um, and, uh, and learn, you know, and start tuning your bullshit meter because that's probably the best, uh, way to use that, that group. Right. Uh, all right. What about you, John? If somebody gives you, ask you, and we're talking regular person, right? So, um, yeah, I mean, I would love it if everybody kind of like went through a novice linear program before they – or novice linear progression before they started. But most people, they're – like they have convinced themselves that they are strapped for time. So I'm going to go ahead and just say, all right, a person who they don't – I'm going to assume this person doesn't work out. They've never trained before or anything like that. They're just what Cliff Byerly would call a NARP, a non-athletic regular person. So I would say that you have to find – you have to focus on – like consistency is great, but you need to have something – you need sustainable consistency. Exactly, yeah. I think – so start – yeah, just – I mean if you want to learn how to fight, just start with any type of modern martial art. I mean for most people, boxing is going to be really hard on the body. I would say, yeah, jiu-jitsu is going to give you the best bang for your buck. Yeah, jiu-jitsu is going to give you the best bang for your buck. hierarchy of position also um inherently has a schema for like what's going to be effective for you like right what this is you want to be in and almost everything you do on the ground you can do standing um in a clinch and you use a wall so it it has a lot of adaptation uh capability there right so i so yeah i would say jujitsu would be the place and and just start with the place that's. closest to you um the thing about it is this shit's going to replace your entire like social life so get a feel for the culture of the gym make sure that you like to hang out with these people and they're good good folks um they're not going to hurt you or anything like that um a big deal for me these days when i'm looking at jujitsu schools is what size walls do they have so if they got three foot walls i know they're very very competition focused that's not necessarily wrong but it's not necessarily wrong but it's not necessarily wrong. it's just what it is right you're not going to do a whole lot of stand-up and, If they have six-foot walls, at least I know, like, all right, we'll do some wall work periodically. Or I can at least grab a friend and do that in here, right? The next thing is that do they have a kid's program? I mean because if it's all adults, it's probably going to go out of business within the next five years. And you don't want to go to school and not get a degree if that makes sense, right? So you want to be a place that has – that's going to be around for a while, that's reasonably close. So something with sustainable consistency with jiu-jitsu. The next thing is that you could also just watch things online and learn – or I should say think about your own – like what is your vulnerabilities? What are the circumstances that create vulnerabilities for you that have inspired you to want to learn self-defense? Is it kind of a one-on-one confrontation? Is it a kind of – Being seen – because if you're worried about being ambushed or anything like that, a lot of that is just – it's just that you've got to start paying attention to your surroundings and just seeing what's going on. You already – especially if it's an area you live in, you already have what's kind of what's called an environmental awareness. You understand what normal looks like and what that is. The situational awareness piece that kind of a lot of people just use and throw out there as like a catch-all term is that when you notice there's a change in the environment or something that is sticking out to you. And all of that implies that you're actually focused and you actually have some wide field of focus and you're paying attention to what's happening around you. If you're walking to the car looking at your phone the whole time, then that's going to be a problem. Like that's – most crimes are crimes of opportunity. So do your best to not give any opportunities. It's a lot simpler than what people think. And, of course, I would always recommend that at a minimum you get a concealed carry permit and you – For whether you are going to carry or not, you want to at least get comfortable with the idea of sitting in a classroom and diving into the legal aspects as far as like using force. And you'll never really get that from a martial arts place. You'll learn it from concealed carry, but those laws definitely apply to whether you're using a gun, a knife, feet, hands, whatever it is, right? Right. So and the other side of that, too, is that you want to get comfortable with going to a professional for when you need outside advice. Yeah. So to say all that is like above all is that you want to hire a coach. You want to get somebody who's like a recognized professional in what it is that you're doing, because it's going to save you lots of time. And at least if you want to train yourself, you at least want somebody to give you the right things to focus on. Like I use I use coaches, too. Like I go to Nick. When I when I have questions about strength training, I have. a shooting coach who is Tim Herron. I've got friends I bounce ideas off of. And yeah, at my jiu-jitsu school, I will teach classes. But for the most part, I do what the school owner does. You know what I mean? I follow him. I use him as my coach, as John Moser. So yeah, I mean, even me as somebody that people kind of consider have expectations, I go and get a coach. So I think you should definitely do the same. Yep. Very well said, man. Thank you. Anything else we should talk about? So there's the Combatives Association Facebook group. Combativesummit.com is the website for the Combative Summit, obviously. That is October. What's the exact date? Is it the 24th through the 26th? The 24th to the 26th is the actual summit. It's in Diberville, Mississippi, which is a beautiful town in the Gulfport area. It's kind of got like the Vegas meet your beach vibes. It's really, really cool. I mean, I know people hear Mississippi and they think weird things, but I'll tell you, like, this place is a very well-kept secret. You definitely want to go check this out. It's a great family vacation spot, which is something, like, I train to defend my family. So if I'm going to go and take a trip, I want them to come with me. So it's not like your typical tactical class where it's going to be kind of, like, very Spartan in the middle of nowhere. This is going to be a real town, real city, lots of great foods, great venues. If you guys are into casinos and all that, that's there. Yeah, so Diverville, Mississippi. Now, if you want to participate, we're having an instructor development. It's going to be Craig Douglas, Kelly McCann, and Matt Larson. They're going to collaborate. It's going to be a one-day instructor development. You're going to learn retention shooting from Craig Douglas. And you're going to learn some as far as how to. Effectively develop a program for an organization from Matt. And then you're going to learn – Kelly's got a surprise that he's going to be talking about. So this is probably going to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing because Kelly, he's 67 now. So I don't think he's going to be doing this much longer. So I highly recommend if you're interested in that. I mean Kelly is legitimately the first guy on the road with a shingle out teaching this stuff professionally. And then you got Matt Larson and Craig Douglas, which is like if you know anything about Kabat, it's like I don't really need to say much about them. Yeah, it's a hell of an opportunity, guys. The value out of that weekend, if you – even though you're only getting a couple of hours from each presenter or each coach, what you get in that time is kind of like – I don't want to say it's their best material, but it's a really good distillation of their material. And especially – Especially the stuff that they're currently thinking about and working on. So another – When you go to that, it's like, okay, so I have two hours to present to this group of people surrounded by my peer coaches and instructors. What am I going to present? It's pretty damn good. So the value is tremendous because it's around $1,000, I believe, John. And then you get to see all these people who run courses throughout the year. And then it's kind of like a menu. You pick who you want to go see again through that year. And that's probably the best way to do it because they're all excellent, all very, very good. Okay. And then we've got – you want to talk briefly about the coaching platform and the coaching portal? Yeah. So we're going to be moving – well, I'm going to be keeping the Facebook group just because there's… It's always utility, right? Everybody's on Facebook. So it would be silly to just leave it and not have a place to bring people. But we want to migrate to a professional platform. We're building now a professional community. And then it'll be… some, some type of, there's going to be some free stuff there. Like I'm going to put my coursework on there for free. Um, I already have, um, got Matt, uh, Matt prank is permission to put on his, uh, engagement speed clinic, uh, which is a dry fire. So that's already out there. So, um, whether. you want to get on the email list, uh, for that or the summit, you can go ahead and go to that. Like that's already out there. So it's really easy. Just put your email in there. Um, and you'll have access to that. That's kind of, that's like, that's the block he presented last year. So you're going to have two courses for free on there. Um, and, and that'll be just an area where we can focus on this and, and, and really talk like adults, like instead of saying things like unalive them and, and kind of using like, um, I mean, we're going to be respectful and professional, of course, but like a lot of it is like, you can't really have meaningful discussion online because, um, you know, the, the moderators almost expect, um, you know, you can't really have, adults to infantilize it. So it's really hard to talk about something as, I guess, vulgar as the things that happen in self-defense online. So without getting flagged or taken down or having your community shut down. So again, that whole sustainable consistency piece. So that's one of the things that we're building now. And we're going to have some exclusive collaborations out there. I've been looking at getting Cole Miller and Kelly McCann to put on a class for a while. So some exclusive two-day classes that'll be only available to that community. And yeah, man, that's pretty much what we've got going on there, along with everybody wants swag and gear. I don't really... I don't really produce it as much as find the stuff that I feel is going to be most beneficial. So we're looking at getting other people and sponsors on board, like Tentacore. and Vertex. They've already been supporting us and they've been amazing at supporting the Combative Summit, so, they're probably going to be on board with that too. Very good. Yeah, Tentacore and Vertex are things I carry every day. They make excellent equipment, and just like a good instructor gets pressure tested on the coaching side and on the physical side, Tentacore and Vertex pressure. test their stuff, man. It works. Stuff's awesome. They didn't pay me for that either. I still have to buy their holsters. Except for I did get one last year. That was awesome. I got the Velo 5 at the Summit. That was awesome. The Summit, everybody signs up. They're getting one. They're getting a free holster. They're getting a bunch of swag. Battlecat Company, they're bringing swag. I've seen the designs. I don't want to share it, but they're, pretty sick. Battlecat's making us stuff. We're getting coffee from. FRCC, from First Responders Coffee Company. A lot of really great support. Hairless Ape Conspiracies, He's been producing the swag from us for the last couple years. Yeah, and then also if you sign up, Softly, they've decided to support us. So they're going to be given like a year of free access to their stuff. Nice. So yeah, and then you'll get to hang out with a group of really, really good people. And I'm not talking about just the instructors but like – Everybody, yeah. Yeah, the attendance, the student base, all the community. It's just like – it's just really cool people. And I always – like I look forward to this weekend the whole year because like Nick was saying earlier, like everybody there is just like they're all pursuing some – just trying to excel in their own ways. And it's just – to be around a group like that, it's not normal. But then you get everybody together and it's – everybody is like that. So it just makes you excited for the rest of the year. So I walk away with a lot to work on that entire year. So. Thank you. yeah i know it's biased but you guys don't want to miss it it's going to be it's going to be awesome no it's a great way to wrap this up too because i think fundamentally and i've said this before um on this podcast and other places but um doing hard physical things makes you a better person um barbell training is the is the most accessible uh you know you can have kids all the way up to 80 year olds and 90 year olds 100 year olds in some instances doing barbell training and improving their physical existence and thereby also improving their emotional and mental existence. as well the uh if you want to accelerate that process learning how to fight is uh is is a is an accelerator for that as well people who actually learn how to fight are testing themselves constantly against resisting opponents are generally better people almost universally i mean there's always assholes right but um and especially at this level at the people who are who are exposing themselves from a coaching standpoint and from a physical standpoint you know you get you get bjj black belts who are coming out and you know you get bjj black belts who are coming out and. have never done any clinch work before, and they're just kind of being tossed around by somebody who's less experienced than them. That's a humbling experience and most people won't put themselves through that. So it's a higher quality of individuals that come to this stuff. Um, and, uh, and that's accessible, you know, to, um, to everybody, right? So you can, you can go to a jujitsu school and, uh, and really enhance your life in a lot of different ways. Um, so yeah. Um, anything else, John, we good? No, brother. I'm good, man. Thanks for having me on. And, uh, yeah, guys, if you guys want to, I'm, I'm easy to get ahold of if. you guys want to get in touch with me, man, but, uh, yeah, I hope to see y'all at the summit. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Thanks again, man. Thank you very much for joining me and, uh, folks, thank you for joining us on starting. Oh God, wrong podcast. Thank you for joining us on the stronger is better podcast brought to you by starting strength gyms as usual. I'm, I'm like, so famous now. I'm on multiple podcasts, not even, not even, um, if you, If you have any questions or comments, send them to podcast at ssgyms.com and I will see you next time. Later.