Latest / The Ageless Warrior Lab / Felicia Oh: Started BJJ at 33, Became a Black Belt Under TWO Legends | EP 51

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Felicia Oh: Started BJJ at 33, Became a Black Belt Under TWO Legends | EP 51 · The Ageless Warrior Lab

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I can't keep doing this.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start a new life.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna quit teaching at the gym and I'm gonna do something completely different because I can't train the way I used to and be happy.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I came back in the next week I felt good, and it was a week and a half to Masters World 2014.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided I feel good enough.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go compete.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I won it.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Agels Warrior Lab.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'm BJJ Coral Belt and Dirty Design member Dave Meyer, here to draw wisdom from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the martial arts and explore how it applies to success in business, relationships, your long-term health, and making the most out of your life.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: What you're about to hear is a conversation I had with my longtime friend Felicia O.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: Felicia didn't step onto a jiu-jitsu man until she was 33 years old.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: She trained under Jean-Jacques Machado, becoming his first female black belt and making her one of the first American women ever to earn a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, part of the women's dirty dozen.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: She began competing, and two years after that, she made the finals of the ADCC World Championship, the toughest grappling event on the planet at the time, and became the first woman to win Pan M Gold in both the Ghee and no Ghee divisions at the black belt level in the same year.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: Felicia is an artist.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: She has been a podcast host.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: She was recently awarded her black belt in the 10th planet system by Eddie Bravo.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: She is still training, still evolving, and has forged a career at first as a professional MMA inspector and now a professional MMA judge.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much in this conversation about resilience, reinvention, and what it really means to be ageless.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this is a lab, and I value your input, so I may pop in and ask what you think, and you can respond in the comments on the YouTube video.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: And if you are watching on YouTube, be sure to subscribe and hit that bell for notifications of when new episodes drop.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: Now sit back and enjoy my conversation with the remarkable Felicia O.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Felicia, thank you so much for making the time and coming down here to do this.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dave, I'm so glad you called me.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: I really appreciate it.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we would see each other sometimes at world championships and stuff, and we haven't really had a chance, maybe ever, to actually sit down and talk together because we always knew each other on the mats.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and on the mats, I don't know if we rolled that much because we were at different academies, but then we would come together, and then you were like, you know, the upperclassmen, and I was like the little freshman.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you were, you were.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: But an upperclassman of woman, we'll talk about that too, a trailblazer on the woman's side for sure.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: But yes, that's right.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: You started training with Jean-Jacques at a time when I had moved largely to training over at the Academy in Redondo Beach with Higgin and John and stuff like that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: So you started, this is Ageless Warrior Lab, right?
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: And you started at 33, I think you said, age 33, yeah, as a woman of very small stature.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what if for people who are watching on YouTube they can see, but you're not a a big person, right?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_03: You're a small person.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: Coming into this world of jujitsu, which e at that time was very rough, yeah, and lots of tough athletes, and in about, I don't know, six years, seven years, you are winning championships, you are in the finals at ADCC.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: What is your history?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: How did you get why did you start doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: How did you get into this?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I I think I must say, you know, I see this pattern in life and it replicates and I don't know if it goes video games now, but video games where, you know, you have your little character and you basically go out and have your adventures and you collect tools and tricks and spells and different things and you come back to slay the dragon.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that kind of repeating pattern I think has presented it itself in my life over and over.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as a young child I got into sports and I got very immersed in sports.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jiu-jitsu uh jujitsu gymnastics was my thing, and I can tell you I was not a good gymnast.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I was very focused and I was I was a kid, I was like ten, but yet I was practicing in my house.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I put the couch cushions down, and so I was very focused on just drilling and working without ever there being a carrot or some payoff at the end.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was just to get better.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then I feel like those kinds of things have kind of repeated themselves in my life because I was very into multiple different sports again, nothing I was very good at, like maybe I was JV or the bottom leg of varsity in different sports.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then years later, somehow I think I found the right sport that made sense to my mind and body.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I used to- That's jujitsu?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was jujitsu.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So at 33 I went on a hike, a very bad hike, to Mount Whitney with a friend of mine who I used to rock climb with at a gym here in West LA.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then her husband, they they had a another couple that was supposed to go with them, and then something happened, they couldn't go, so they called me and they said, We're going to Mount Whitney in a couple weeks.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know anyone who's in near enough shape to go.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Are you interested in going?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is already paid for.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Yes.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I started trying to get in shape for that.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: We went on this horrible trip where a storm came in, and by three in the afternoon we were at the high camp in our tents waiting for the storm to pass.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like the s snow's piling up.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm gonna die up there.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was bad, many hours, and the the the time slows down.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think Matt Whitney's the tallest mountain in California.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Continental United States.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we never went to the top.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I haven't been there.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't have any need to go there.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: We were just got to the high camp.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember on the way up, I didn't know her husband very well, and he starts telling me about jujitsu, and he's like in his fifties, and he's a shorter, smaller guy.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: And this is around what year?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: This was 2000.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, whatever.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's like super excited because you know he's a blue belt, so you know, bluebelts get really excited.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: They want to share jujitsu with everyone.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, back then, all the time, you get so excited about the sport.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was telling me about it, and I just kind of whatever.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we go on this hike, it turns into a disaster.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're driving off the mountain as fast as we can, pissed off, unhappy, just it was so horrible.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, Mike, what was that thing you were telling me about?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly because it was indoors.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because mind you, earlier this that same year I did the LA Marathon, and that was a nightmare.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was like lightning, thundering, storms under the guise that I wanted to get a medal that said 2000 because of the whole Y2K scare.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So earlier that year I had done that with some other friends at Rock Climb, and then now I would go to Mount Whitney and this disaster happens.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking maybe indoors sounds kind of like a a better thing.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the next weekday that it was available, I went in and he was in the valley at Jean Jacques, and I was living in West LA at the time, so I drove over there and I watched it one day, and I was like, okay, I'll try it tomorrow.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I came back the next day, filled out the form.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: On the form it says, Would you like to earn your black belt?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, Well, yeah.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, who wouldn't?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who puts no?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't know anything about jujitsu though.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had taken karate for three weeks when I was in graduate school once.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the extent of my martial arts experience up to that point.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that I go in the next day, I take the class, my friend stayed for the beginner class.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_03: No, I just gotta ask, was there any other women on the mat?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: Of course not.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: But did I notice it?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not really, because I had worked in computers and that was pretty male dominated, and it it just didn't really phase me.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So he stayed for the class and then he was my partner.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I forgot.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like to tell you, so we we're going on the trip up to Mount Whitney the night before.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a little motel at Lone Pine, and I have my own room, and I, you know, go we're in their room and we're talking.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so he starts starts showing me the positions of jujitsu on the bed.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm kind of like, This is a little weird.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is the guard.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And his wife, who I knew better, was just standing there kind of with a smirk on her face.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because she had they had gone on the Gracie cruise, and then after that, she was like, I'm done with jujitsu, I'm not interested.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's still totally into it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he's showing me, and so I find it awkward.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that so then a couple days later, I was a little more prepared for it, and so he was my partner, didn't feel awkward, and then I signed up and I started going.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I went twice a week, and Silverado was my main teacher.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's nothing I ever really thought of, and I attribute that to the other people that were in the class with me.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were a great group that really took me in and kind of a couple of them were very protective of me.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one time a guy came in and started making comments in the locker room and they were like, Hey, shut up.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like she's here training.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: After that, I started competing, started training more, and there weren't a lot of competitors from our academy.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so I remember one day in the in the line for the water, one of the guys was like, I heard there's someone here that's been competing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Who's that?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Me?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then he just came on, it it's it didn't phase me.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I just do my stuff.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just show up and do what I do, and I'm not doing it for anyone else.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So what other people thought didn't ever bother me.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: Kudos to you for being brave and taking on a whole new thing like that.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it sounds like you did have, you know, you you had some awareness of your body.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: If you're a rock climber, there are some sports that tend to mesh quite well with jujitsu.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think rock climbing is one of them.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and with women, a lot of times gymnastics comes up.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Gymnastics, exactly.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: Moving your body around, your position in space, right?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: Gymnastics, rock climbing, some tenacious strength, not trying to use too much strength, you know what I mean?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_03: B balance shifting.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: Surfing is another one.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of the Brazilian guys are surfers.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm not a surfer either.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: But again, balance, shoulder strength never hurts in jujitsu, you know, breath control, swimming, that kind of stuff.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: So it's interesting that you came from rock climbing.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: I have a good friend who's also a jiu-jitsu black belt, Arvang Gupta, who also was a very skilled rock climber, then came into jujitsu, also a smaller guy.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's interesting that when I did gymnastics, my body awareness, that kinesthetic awareness was terrible.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mentally, I felt like I understood it, but physically it didn't happen.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And for it's very weird because I I watched it happen like at 33, coming onto the mat and learning all the movements and the drills, and then somewhere in there after repeating it and training for so many times, that it becomes, you know, I I tell students like it goes into your body before it goes into your brain.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if you keep trying to think about it, stop.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just let your body do it and trust your body has learned the movements after all the drilling, after all the repetitions.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow in my 30s, that all merged in a way that it had never done before.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't like I could do that back then at all.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: So you got good and started competing, and I of course I knew you at that time, but I was doing most of my training down in the other school.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: Eddie, Bravo, was there at that time.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_03: And I know you just you were so you must have been the first woman black belt from Jean-Jacques.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and one of the first American black belts in the female version of the Dirty Design, of which outside of Brazil.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: Outside of Brazil, yes, exactly.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's a term that John Will coined.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_03: Did you ever meet John in Australia?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I've met him unless I might have passed crossed paths when he was here visiting at some point.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: He might have, because he did come and visit me.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_03: We actually took a private from Eddie, which is an interesting story once.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: We were black belts and Eddie was a brown belt, and I told him you gotta meet this guy.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_03: And but anyway, so you got your black belt, what, 2005 or something from Jean-Jacques?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: From Jean-Jacques.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing, but you just got a black belt in Eddie's system, 10th Planet.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I always thought of you as a no-gi kind of fighter, because maybe that's where or maybe that's how I remembered ADCC or whatever.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: So a lot of people who watch and listen to this are not necessarily jujitsu people, but they're gonna they're gonna have to bear with me for a second.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: Just gi versus no-gi, preference, thoughts, what do you think?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because you've won major championships in both.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have a preference?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I do not have a preference.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: There are times where I've liked one more than the other, but because of where I trained, I trained with Eddie and Jean-Jacques at different times or the same times.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And even at Jean-Jacques, there's you know, he does no gi.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jean Jacques's another one, he's a gi guy that is well known for no-gi.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_03: And he won, he's in the ADCC Hall of Fame, yeah, of course.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: But he came up doing all gi.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So back in our time coming up, that was a huge that was the war.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, now the arguments are different, right?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's eco and this whole self-defense, all this other stuff.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Back then it was gi versus no-gi.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in my experience, a lot of the tournaments would be the first day was gi and the second day was no-gi.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought I can compete twice in a weekend instead of once.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't seem that different.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think also because of Eddie and Jean-Jacques, it wasn't that different.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like you adjust things to what you need to do, but it was never a big difference in my brain.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the same as if you're competing under different rule sets, you just go, okay, don't do this, don't do this, just adjust.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you start to figure out how to do things.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, like right now, I'm primarily no gi because I train at a tenth planet, which is closest to where I am.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: But some they go, bring your ghee in, let's do some gi.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have another school that we're really friendly with, and we can go there and do ghee.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, it's just part of being well-rounded, part of taking advantage and playing more games, you know.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_03: I have no preference.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: I've been competitively more successful in nogi.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I think there's some reasons for that.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think one of the main reasons for that is I've never been a professional jujitsu instructor.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm not getting the time on the mat, constantly reviewing every technique that's there, because when you're an instructor, you have to teach.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_03: So in the course of a year, you will have probably reminded yourself about every technique there is because you taught your beginners.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: If you're only ever just training, you only see the techniques that you use or the ones that people throw at you.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_03: So when I go into a ghee tournament, I might be a little bit more in danger of getting caught by something because I just haven't seen that joke in two years.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't taught it, I haven't seen it.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I also trained with Gil Melinda's and in the whole MMA thing for a long time, so I got very good with the no-gi.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_03: But I enjoy them both.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: They're different slightly different speeds.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: I think I would say if someone asked me what should I start with, I would say with a gi, because I think it's like training wheels.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to agree.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think it gives a little bit broader and deeper foundation in general, just learning basics for sure.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if you don't have that, I mean I'd rather someone do it do anything rather than nothing, of course, right?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: I do tend to think that no gi to gi kind of gives you some training wheels, some parameters that are a little bit different, and it's it can be a little bit more focused and on the fundamentals in a different way, and then opening it up, and that's kind of similar.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like I learned all my gi stuff, and then oh, just take off your top.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like the first tournament I did, it was gi and no gi.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a week, the whole week in not knowing what I was doing, and I was just trying to shop for a rash guard, because back then there were only real rash guards.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had to go to Valsurf.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you had to actually get a real rash guard, not a fight shirt.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like there were no shorts or shirts to wear.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to go shopping for that.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that was and then I started f doing nogi and it's kind of like, oh, okay.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just such a different world.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it is.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and and things are kind of splitting.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you've got the whole submission grappling thing, and there's the leg game stuff.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: We can maybe talk about that a little bit too.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I actually these days I train at Black Sheep, which is a great jujitsu academy up in the San Francisco area.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: And they have some discrete no-gi classes, but it's also just like, well, you're in the gi class, but take your gi like you said, take your gi top off.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: So what I do is I'm I'm almost always training wearing a gi.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: If I feel like training no-gi, I just don't grab the other guy's gi.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_03: I don't have to grab it.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: So there's still friction going on, but I don't have to grab it.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: And then it to me it's just like a a weight on my around my neck that they can literally, that they can grab me and hold me, but I can't grab and hold them.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there's ways to make it work.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think another thing right now, you're gonna go through different phases, and I'm older, have a lot of injuries, and I've gotten more selective with my training partners finally after enough injuries.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: But my main training partner is John Boteo, who's the owner at 10th Planet Phoenix, and he's old school from the early 10th planet days as well.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the time I roll with him, and in a sense, it's freer because we're both trying not to get hurt, we're both trying to play the technical game and we know each other's game, so then it's like this chess game.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, I gotta do something different, I gotta switch it up this time, I'm gonna like fake him this way, like it becomes this whole other game.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: But it also feels more like swimming because there's a lot of fluid movement because neither of us is gonna be in like a try and hold a ghee battle with pressure in that way.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So in that situation, no gi is a little bit more fluid, but then on the other hand, like with other partners, it can be a little more aggressive and a little more athletic, which may or may not be good.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I think you just have to figure out what the right thing is for you at the right time and what life gives you, you know, like life's gonna give you different situations and there are times.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I didn't train with Eddie for many years because life threw a bunch of stuff at me.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And at one point I did have the idea that it would be really cool to get a black belt under Eddie, because there's only a couple of people in the world that have done both Jean Jacques and Eddie.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And at one point I thought, oh, it's not gonna happen, and then life brings you stuff, and then what just recently happened.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that was pretty amazing.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Well, congratulations on that.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, that is not an easy neither of those are easy belts to earn.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: Most people will never get to that point.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: So kudos to you for doing it.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: So let's talk just for a couple of minutes being a woman in jujitsu.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: What challenges did you face as a woman in jiu-jitsu?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I can guess, but but tell me what was the specific to being a woman, also specific to being a very small person, because that's its own challenge, but did you ever encounter anything like that?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like the challenges were more of being small.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think when big people were smashing you or doing stupid things, they were doing that to the small guys as well.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't specific to me being female.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think there were times where someone because of whatever issue they had or their religious issue or something, didn't want to roll with me.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I have no problem with that because I'm cool not rolling with you.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're a big aggressive, strong guy and you just want to collect scalps, like there's no point in us going because I don't need to go through that and can't collecting my scalp is nothing.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And but I found throughout most of my experience, like I was friends with a lot of those guys.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: We can be friends hanging out on the mat, talking between rounds, and over the years you become connected to them and catch up on each other's lives.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: You see them two, three times a week, every week the clockwork, and it's like, how you doing?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we can be great friends, we just don't roll together.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: I I think there's always that preference.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Aside from that, I also connected with the group of women down at Hegan's and have become good friends with some of them and remain really good friends with my fellow dirty dozen members, Cindy Omatsu, number one, and uh Chris Shaw and Jocelyn Chang.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've all stayed connected over the years, and it's been great to have this history with people and this shared experience.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And once in a while, like we've gone to Hawaii and done these uh seminars down there, which has been awesome.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: COVID kind of shut that down a little bit.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think we we had actually a trip planned and then COVID kind of we were like, we we better cancel it.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like old family and old friends.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: You just get together and pick up where you left off.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: We'll try to get together and have lunch and connect or roll around on the mat once in a while when I'm in town.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there is even when you see like us or other people that came from the early days, there's this shared past.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of a camaraderie.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: So, well, that's good.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad to hear that you didn't feel that you were, you know, treated any differently just because you were necessarily a woman.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: I know in the early, early days, I mean there were so few women training, and my observation was there were guys who just didn't like to get tapped by a woman, and so they would go overly aggressive to make sure that didn't happen, or they would be overly kind of patronizing to a woman, like you're dealing with a child, like going just because they felt so much stronger.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: And I think you're saying, hey, it's not really about man or woman, it's about bigger, smaller, and that's an interesting point.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and I I think I started to understand varying things when I started to teach.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So coming up as a small person, and I think guys go through this too, it's like I just go balls out all the time.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like I'm a little person and I can go as hard as I want.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to really worry about hurting the other guy because even if they're not as skilled, they're just a lot bigger than me.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Until I started teaching, and then I started teaching, of course, women and children, especially with the children, I started to understand.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, with the women, I was like, I don't want any of them ever to get hurt.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: If I get hurt or I lose position or I get caught, that's better than me hurting them because I want them to have this good experience of jujitsu and I never want to be the one to make that a bad thing for them.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so then I started learning to roll lighter and to create situations and to be active, an active partner in that role so that we can both get something out of it.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about surviving or trying to get after someone, which coming up was kind of what it was.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so then I started to understand that more.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I sometimes, if they're caught between balls out or patronizing, they just don't understand how to vary that.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: If we talk about the gas pedal, it's not either not pressing the gas or 100%.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's this area in between where you're nudging and adjusting all the time.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I I when I would teach, when I had classes that I would teach, I would try to get them to understand that like a new person would come in and I tell the other person, okay, you know, you just have to sweep and get on top, but go like 50%.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they started to be able to gauge what energy they were putting into it, which I thought was a way for them to be conscious of that for their future development.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned you as a smaller person could pretty much go hard because you weren't going to abuse your strength on anybody.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I just got to say, and I mentioned this to John McCarthy when I was talking to him recently.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: We were talking about you, that my recollection on the mat was you are a killer.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're just a killer.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: You're so you I just I want people to understand what it was to wrestle you.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like I was a lot bigger than you, but I had to be careful.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_03: You could get my back, you could choke me out, possibly easier than some other people because you have a I don't know a thinner wrist or something.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: It's the arms.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, so we'll talk about possible benefits of being a small person too, because anything could be used to your advantage, obviously.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: But your point about the gas pedal, as a, you know, on a bigger side guy, six foot, one eighty, whatever, when I'm training with smaller people in general or just women in general, if I feel like I have a lot of strength, my go-to thing is I'll just play guard.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: That way I'm not gonna have to worry about putting too much pressure or too much crush or too much weight.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: And I can modulate based upon how hard are they trying to pass my guard and or let someone pass my guard if I want to do that and then work getting out.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I still get a good workout and they're not in a they're in a position where they get to work something that is not gonna, I don't run the risk of hurting them.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I don't have to control the gas pedal, they're controlling the gas pedal.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'll just respond to what they're giving to me, and that works out really well for me.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a lot easier because when I started teaching the kids, then I started to realize how labor-intensive it is to hold your weight off of someone.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of work to not put your weight on.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to try to take care of them.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I I think it's a good exercise too, though, in as you progress and get better at jujitsu, then you're leading the game and creating situations as opposed to just being reactionary in the earlier days.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: So being a smaller person, what is your advice?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: How does a smaller person beat a bigger person?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: How do you approach that?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: I should mention I have a I would say he's a student, but he's basically m a teacher for me now because he's so much better than me.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_03: But Brian Johnson, who is, I guess he's lightweight, rooster weight, I don't know what weight he is, that he's up in Seattle, but he wins like open weight class against guys 100 pounds bigger than him.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: And just for again, just acknowledging the situation, what I think about it like I'm 180 pounds, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: So, and I think of, oh, if I have to fight someone that's 250, that's a lot bigger than me.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's like way out of balance, right?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: But that ratio is like you fighting, I don't know, a 140-pound guy or 140, like, so I don't even know what it's like for you to fight someone who's 200, and you've certainly done that.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, to me, it's just people need to understand just how big the difference is.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: And yet you do it and you do it successfully.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_03: So, what are your thoughts on pointers on how to a small person could fight a bigger person?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think you should choose your partners wisely.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't mean not to go with big people, and that doesn't mean not to get beat up.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think, especially as you're coming up, I think you need to suffer a little bit and feel that because I think part of this is becoming comfortable, being uncomfortable.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And especially for women, you need to feel what that feels like so you're a little more prepared in the real world.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And just because you're a blue belt and tapping guys out, that doesn't mean that's gonna happen in the real world.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think people and it's the journey for everyone, men and women coming in.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: The white belts don't realize that people are being nice to them and helping them, and then once they get their blue belt, people go a little bit harder, and that's part of the blue belt blues, right?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, I was doing so good until I got my blue belt, now I'm just getting smashed all the time.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, no one's gonna give you anything as easily as they did before, right?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: As we get better in anything and we overcome challenges, the next challenge becomes bigger and bigger and feels overwhelming, and then you start shipping away at that.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always gonna happen.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, if someone seems unsafe, if they're putting too much weight, if they're getting too aggressive, or you see them too aggressive with other people, maybe that's not the person to challenge yourself with.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think that you have to have tough roles where you're getting smashed to improve your resiliency, to improve your body's ability to take that pressure because our that's how we get stronger.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: But uh doing it with people that you trust.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_03: To pick your partner as well, that's always a good thing, especially also with age.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: You were mentioning that with your partner now.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's totally different now.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think in the old days, like I would go with anybody, and then sure enough, I would get hurt.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember Jean Jacques multiple times would tell me you should be more careful who you train with.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Even though he had just got done giving the speech about you should train with everyone.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it took me a while to realize like that speech wasn't directed at me.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was directed at the guys who are ducking the tough guys.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or duck, you know, we know all the shenanigans that go on with any academy.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was me because I didn't think I was different.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I would just I'll train with anybody.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: But then over time I started to get a little wiser.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then as I've gotten older and injuries and come back, retired, come back, retired, come back, had health problems, I try to be really careful now because to me it's all different now.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I I think as I got as I aged into the sport and started having more injuries, I realized I had to change how I roll.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to be very aggressive.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's just how I rolled, as they say.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: As I got older and came back from different injuries and illnesses, I realized I was getting hurt because of my aggressiveness.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't because of the other person.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've lost a significant amount of strength and bulk that I used to maintain as a younger person.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized I needed to play the game differently, and then it became about even more about transitioning and getting ahead of the other person.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to concede a position, but I would be one or two steps ahead instead of a half a step ahead from before, you know.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it just became about the mind and the technical part preventing the other situations.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_03: When you mentioned that you would get injured, I'm sure that had to do with the fact that you were small, right?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: But you were also aggressive and really good.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're gonna threat if you you are threatening to anybody, right, you could choke out a black even really throughout your career.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: So that sets you in a situation where I think people have to respond, and if they don't have the right technique, they're just gonna respond with their strength or their size because they just don't want this woman getting their back and choking them out, and then you pay the price for that.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I understand that now.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's interesting you're saying that you kind of brought that energy that caused the person to have to do that.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: I was actually just talking to someone yesterday on the mat.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_03: I was rolling yesterday over at Black Sheep, and there's a white belt in there who's a real big guy.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, I would guess, you know, 240 or whatever.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I was telling him that you got to be careful sometimes, as a big guy, when you train with people, people will get intimidated and throw on arm bars as hard as they can because they just are scared.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I've seen sometimes big guys also have a problem in training because they're getting injured because people are not recognizing, yeah, he's big, but he's a white belt.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like cut him some slack.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's not trying to maul you, but people get scared and intimidated, and so they crank things on big guys.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: So my advice to him, which is the same advice I would give to anybody to dial things down at the beginning, it's what I do now, is I always start a match by saying, How's your body today?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: Anything I need to watch out for?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_03: And that question just immediately says to the other person, oh, this person is actually caring for me.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna take care of me.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: And almost always they will say, How's your body?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: And then I give my joke answer, I'm 100% of my 20%, right?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: No, but I find that that little interaction just like indicates, hey guys, we're taking care of each other, right?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that that's really works well for me to modulate things.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I do a similar thing with new people.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Usually they are aware of my reputation or whatever, and I'll say, okay, don't hurt me.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they laugh, me hurt you, but it just draws a little attention to their body awareness of what they're doing as opposed to it's on like I'm gonna, you know, it's just like, okay, don't hurt me.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I do start out very passive.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: It takes several roles with me till I start to get to a good pace or flow of energy that I feel because I don't want that muscle, that stress response where they go, ah, you know, and I get hurt, I get hurt.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's a building of the relationship and the trust in the relationship with your training partners, you know, that you roll with them one, two, three, four, maybe five, six times till you kind of go, Okay, we have a good energy vibe going back and forth, and we're not trying to kill each other.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or we know what level of kill to go at, right?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_03: We're in agreement.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: You want to be on the same wavelength.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you don't want to be the person who says, Let's go light, and then tries to take their head off.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: We all know people like that.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: I go very soft when I start with people, then we build it from there because I think if I came in hard, then and I, you know, I'm so injured, I can't come in that hard, but even with the feeling of the tension on the body, like they start responding and it's like unpleasant.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Just jumping in here to ask you in the audience, have you ever dealt with someone who was just too aggressive and out of control on the mat if you trained BGJ?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: And how did you deal with that?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: Worse is if they say, hey, let's go light, and then they don't.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Do you ever tell the person to lighten up?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_03: Do you avoid training with them next time?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: And at what point would you actually mention it to your instructor?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: Let me know your experience and how you've dealt with that.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: Leave a comment for me on the YouTube video.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: And now, back to the conversation.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_03: Let's just commiserate for a second to old school people.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: I used to be so much better than I am now.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's frustrating for me.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm used to it, it's the flow of life.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: I get it.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm as good as I am in this moment, and that's all I've ever been.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: But every day on the mat, I let things slide that you would have never been able to do that for me before.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: I would have recovered from that sweep attempt and tapped you out.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: But right now I have to protect my hip.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm protecting my shoulder and my neck.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: So you get the sweep or you get the guard pass because I'm not even defending the guard because I just don't want to have my rib twisted that way, you know?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm still good on the mat, I'm still pretty good and stuff like that.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: But it is frustrating to have to witness the body I'm in now and know that the people who I'm training with, they don't know who I used to be.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: They don't understand.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: Which isn't to say I if if my if the well for me it would have been I started when I was 30, right?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I would say my best was maybe 37.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: I was a black belt, not too injured or anything like that.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: So if I could bring my 37-year-old David, not the 64-year-old David, to the mat now, I think some of the guys I train with would still beat me because the the level has come up and they're great.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_03: But they would have so much more of a difficult and interesting role.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: They'll just never know that.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just frustrating.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I would at agree completely.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like I was saying before, for with the example like, oh, I'm just gonna let them pass my guard, I would be like two steps, like I want to work on my next move.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've been working on whatever from there, and just taking that as the opportunity.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like when you said I was a killer, I'm like, I'm not really a killer today.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm like Yoda or Obi-Wan, like I'm in a cave.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: But you but you adapt.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: I think jujitsu is about adapting.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that brings me so much joy.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And being on the mat and being at a place in my life in the past where I had to give it up, and when I got to come back, like it means so much and it's just so joyful to move around that it's not that war, but it's not about winning.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, but I miss the old days and I miss a bit of the brutality and the survival aspect of it.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, I've seen kids come up now that I'm not trying to start anything, but let's say they play a very competition-oriented game, and it's like, oh, that's not gonna be good on self-defense in the street.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think having the awareness of that i is good.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we definitely had that in the old days.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was definitely more brutal.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the toughness I think makes you tougher.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I do miss some of that.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a little a little soft now, but I think that's part of the sport growing and getting more people.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there is room for everybody.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not saying I'm not talking crap on that.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying I missed what I had to go through.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: I missed the gauntlet of energy and people that I had to train with every day and the fear going in.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you know, I definitely the anxiety of going to class all the time.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know if that ever leaves you.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like you take a little time off, you're like, oh, who's gonna be there today trying to chop my head off?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, that's part of I think the character that builds in us to keep submitting and putting ourselves in those situations.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I gotta go back.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've been away for X amount of time, it's like I'm gonna take my beatings, or whatever the case is.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think for you to keep going back, you get your ass beat, and the next day you go back and you get your ass beat, and you feel like you're getting better, but you're getting beat up worse and worse every day.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what's going on?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody's getting better.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just causes so many challenges that you go through mentally, spiritually, emotionally that you're not necessarily aware of that you're going through at the time, but it changes who you are.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_03: At the risk of sounding like the old guy who's like, these young guys don't know what we had to go through or whatever.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_03: It does sound like that, but it is true.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: I miss that toughness as well, too.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, we had camaraderie.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it wasn't we weren't trying to kill each other, but we were at war with each other to make each other better.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_03: And also taking care of each other.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, like Bob Bass and Chris and the guys, Chris Howder, the people I trained with, we took care of each other, but we fought hard.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: I well, I would say like I think that's a very male thing that I learned to understand as well.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Guys can go play basketball, pick up game, they can be almost at blows with each other and then go have a beer together after.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I experienced that before.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: And through jujitsu, I felt like I kind of had um this fly in the wall of a lot men's locker room.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it helped me to understand a lot of that.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can fight hard and try to be killing each other and almost coming to blows, and then you're cool after that.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or it might take a little coaxing sometimes, like you guys, you know, it's like family.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you can have your differences, and you but tomorrow everyone's gonna be back here at the family reunion, so you don't get to get rid of them.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to learn to coexist.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes if you may become friends, sometimes you just coexist in the same room, but there's something to be learned in all of that.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, we need each other, right?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: We need our partners to make us better, and we want our partners to get better so that we can get better.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's just an important thing.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, when you mentioned like nervousness before class, that's a really funny thing because that's nothing I felt in a long time, but I absolutely remember that.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh no, what's gonna happen now?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: And what's the teacher gonna be doing to us?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like what horrible test are we gonna be going through?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: And there's still schools that train very, very hard, absolutely.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: But you mentioned self-defense.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: This has been an issue I've been thinking about a lot recently.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: And just in a lot of contexts, just in terms of the UFC, I talked to Horian Gracie when the original UFC was really style against style, not exactly no rules, but very, very, very few rules, right?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: And the UFC now has evolved into MMA, where there's pretty much an agreement as to this is a merging of various styles and everybody's coming in together and they have things that they're better of worse at.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: But it is more of a seems like more of a a fighting sport than an actual fight.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_03: And just curious, you because you mentioned we were talking before about conceal carry.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_03: Your point of view uh for jujitsu as self-defense now, from a woman's point of view, do you think it's an important component of self-defense?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think it's losing its edge as a self-defense sport because of the movement, as a self-defense art, because of the movement towards sport and points and people maybe not paying attention to strikes and things like that?
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: What's your take on BJJ self-defense, especially for a woman?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think uh doing anything is better than nothing.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you're doing a different martial art than jujitsu or no gi or any of that, I think anything is better.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think there is a certain amount of self-defense that can be learned with jujitsu, but even when they would uh talk about doing self-defense classes, I think if you're not practicing those things on a regular basis, it it's not very helpful.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: What I think is helpful is awareness.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh even when they say that in jiu-jitsu, it's like, how do I get out of this?
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like don't get there.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't prevent everything, but having more awareness in your life, your surroundings, uh t taking as many precautions as you can that's feasible for your lifestyle, I think is uh where we have to get to.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Having no awareness is probably not the best place to be.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think jujitsu helps bring that awareness.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, if you're just doing a one-day self-defense class, I mean that might help you a little bit, but I think most of what you can get from that is just being aware and preventative stuff as opposed to actual combat.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then of course if people sign up and do jujitsu or any any other boxing, whatever, like I think that's all gonna be helpful.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I think uh also being realistic of what you're learning and what you can do.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: So even if I'm 5'1, black belt in jujitsu, you know, like I I remember w one of the other students at one point was like it was the conversation about getting robbed or something or some altercation.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, You're a black belt, and I was like, Yeah, but they have a gun.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: What do you expect me to do?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm also like a little person.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like like there's reality.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I I have jujitsu, but you have a gun.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the reality, you know, of trying to deal with a person bigger than you and stronger than you.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always kind of assessing.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think maybe more awareness, like not putting yourself in a situation, like making sure your doors are locked, things like that.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like being aware of your surroundings, getting someone to walk with you to your car, all those kind of things that are just little things, but I think it I think jujitsu helps you become more aware of that.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I think jujitsu, like or any martial art, if it depending upon the martial art, can help you build your personal toughness, which is important.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_03: You're not going to be stunned if someone slaps you in the face, you've been hit worse before.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: That's very helpful to not have that stunned feeling.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the certainly the grappling moves for women in jiu-jitsu, the ability to do an arm bar if someone's in between your legs, all that kind of stuff is very important, very good.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_03: But I do think you need to be training that with y i in a controlled way, sometimes with more aggression.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: I was just talking to John Will, and I was remembering my first class, which was at the original Machado school in the valley, not the one that you started at, not in Tarzana.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: This was before Jacques and Jacques even moved to the United States.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: Soon after I first met John Jacques, and he didn't speak a word of English, his skinny kid.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was that was a fun meeting.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: But but John Will taught it because it was really raining and the brothers couldn't make it out when it was too far of a drive.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_03: But there was a purple belt, a female purple belt named Daniela, who was very good, who was on the mat then.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I was a black belt in another style of jujitsu, so I could choke, I could arm bar.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_03: I just had not experienced Brazilian jujitsu yet.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: So John took me apart.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: He was a purple belt and he just tapped me out 16 times.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: So then I wrestled with Daniela.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was bigger than her, but she was tough and strong a purple belt.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: She pulled me into her closed guard, right?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: Wrapped her legs around me.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_03: I take a look at her lapel.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, there's a collar.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: I reach in and I choked her from her closed guard.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: Which for those of you who don't do jujitsu, like you shouldn't be able to do that because when someone is between your legs, you should be able to maneuver into a sweeping them over or an armbar or whatever.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: And she was a good purple belt.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: But why did I that succeed?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because no one had ever tried to choke her from the guard, because everyone knows you're not supposed to choke from inside the guard, right?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: So that I think is a really good example of you can have the skills, but you do need to occasionally remind yourself of like the situation that you might deal with.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_03: So even as we're doing jujitsu and getting tougher, let's every once in a while play with some light smacks, I don't know, strikes, or I'm gonna grab your throat.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: I would never grab your throat for real, but I'm actually gonna grab your throat now and you better peel my hands off, right?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's little ways to add in like call it salt or some spices or even training.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or even just rolling with a guy who's never trained before.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, especially in the formative years like blue brown and I mean blue and purple belt, like going with the brand new bigger guy.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_03: Or with a white belt.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: That hasn't they memo.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: Duck duck the elbows, that elbow's coming at you.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think that unpredictability uh is great.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, if you to test that.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_03: But you have to pick your partners now.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, I still do.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: I grab white belts exactly for that reason.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: Bring on the craziness because I just want to remind myself what kind of weird, insane things someone might try to do.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: And it reminds me, basic jujitsu is kind of all you need, like to win i in a fight, in terms of the of what from jujitsu you need, just the basics.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: You should also have some striking, you should also have some weapons, other things that you want, but from jujitsu, you don't need the barambola to win in a fight.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: You just need basic positional control to out of jujitsu to win in a fight, in my opinion.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually I was just talking about this with some people the other day, you know, because they in the past he's like, you're never gonna pull guard on a in a street fight.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a new argument for pulling guard in a street fight, is that I can control my landing and where my head hits or doesn't hit if I pull guard, as opposed to getting picked up by someone and taken down.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's an argument for pulling guard, so I'm in a good position, and now I can attack the other person.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, okay, so we could go on forever, but okay, I'm going to do a podcast, I've marked my words, I'm going to come up with sort of a rubric of David's point of view on if you're training jujitsu, here's what I think you should also be doing to shore that up to keep your actual fighting self-defense skills good.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it's going to involve some ways of doing jujitsu now and again with a friend and some other things like that.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I think because we talk about like scooting, right?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_03: Like people sitting down and fighting scooting because they're just going for leg attacks, and that seems like something you wouldn't do on the street.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: I've thought, like, well, it just depends.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like if it's really one person, right?
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: And if you've got good leg attacks, they can't hit you in the head.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's funny, people say, well, people will kick at you.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: You kick at me, I will catch your leg, and now we're into a leg attack game.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I wouldn't say it's necessarily crazy to sit down, like you said, to control position, to bring it into a ground game.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: I just wouldn't do that if there were a bunch of people standing around me because I'd rather be on my feet if I can stay on my feet, and I know how to fight on my feet a bit.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_03: But it's easy to just say, do this, don't do that.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's there's shades and everything.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can pull guard and sweep them, you're on top, and then yeah, exactly.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, guard is great.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think it's also funny because people look at MMA and they think, of course, you'd rather be the person on top when there's strikes involved.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: But it is possible to shut someone down inside your closed guard, like talk to Eddie.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how you can absolutely shut somebody down when they're on top and wreck them from the guard.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: You just need to know what you're doing.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_03: You need to know how to do it.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: You know, rubber bottles.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's trained versus untrained people that you're dealing with.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: Who are we talking about?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, just before I leave the aging thing, I just want to also note that because I want to talk to you about what took you out for a while.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: You've mentioned a couple times some health challenges, and if you'd be willing to share them and ask you about that in a minute.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_03: But I know that you had this great competition success, then you did go out of the sport for a while, and then you came back and had more competition success.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that was at Masters Divisions, right?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_03: So when I started back in 90 or something like that, there was no competitions in the United States at all.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_03: There was a competition like a Brazilian championship.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_03: Higin was the running reigning champion at that time in Brazil.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: But then we started eventually after a few years, started to have a couple of competitions.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: And the first competition we had was the first Pan Americans, but they now call the Pans.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that was right as I was purple belt about to become brown belt, and I lost to a Brazilian guy.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: And the second competition I did, I was brown belt, and that was like an inner school us against Hickson, and that was just interesting fights went on there, and I did well brown belt.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then like my third or fourth competition fight was black belt against Brazilian black belt.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: I lost at a sweep in the last second, we were zero-zero.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: So I did well, and then I eventually, so my whole competition experience in life has been black belt, basically.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's where all my hundreds of matches have been.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: But at that time, even when those started, there was no masters.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: There was just you competed.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: And then the first thing they brought in was if you were over 30, which of course you and I both were the day we began, right?
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_03: They would call that senior or something like that.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was master seniors.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: We called it affectionately or non-affectionately old man's words.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: Old people, right.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_03: But even then it wasn't broken into five-year increments.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: It was just like you're over 30, you're not over 30.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_03: Or you're over 35, you're not over 35.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: Did you do that?
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: No, because at that time it just seemed like it wasn't.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: No one did it.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, that's just old man words.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the real thing.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: But then, so similar to you, then I was always doing jujitsu.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: I never took a break from jujitsu, but I wasn't competing for a while.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think part of that was I moved up to Northern California and there's some things going on.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: But then at some point I looked up and I thought, whoa, Master One, Master Two, Master Three, like, oh, I think I'll jump back in.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think by that time I was maybe Master Three.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I have been competing and actually still competing, as you know, all the way up to now Master Seven, where my main technique is to steal the guy's heart medication.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_03: But um no, but so it has been nice to have this format where you can compete against people your age going if if you choose to do it.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: I've actually liked that.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_03: I feel a little weird about world champion, because I hold a lot of world champions, like world champion in this very narrow thing of guys, you know, 60 to 65, like, come on.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of world champions walking around when you think of all those divisions.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_03: But I do think it's been a it was it's been a good thing for me.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_03: The one thing I note is I feel like, and forgive me if you're one of the guys that competed against you, but I feel like I'm technically better, like if with pretty much everyone I trained with, I compete with, if we just met on the mat, no problem for me.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, five minutes, compressed time, strength counts.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of guys are on testosterone on on the side, which I am not, and less injuries.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: They've got a black belt, they've been doing it for 10 years, I've been doing it for 30 years.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_03: So it keeps it interesting for me.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: Just wondering your thoughts and your experience coming back and competing and winning world championships in the master division.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I feel similar to you in I really appreciate the divisions and the growth, and that's the biggest tournament of the year for IBJ JF.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel a little awkward, you know, world champion.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_03: I always say in my age division.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_03: I just say in my age division.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's an awesome opportunity for anyone in the sport, especially because the way the sport has grown so much, and a lot of people are coming to it at a later age.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the other cool thing is we have kids growing up in jiu-jitsu now, which we didn't have.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: But now we have people coming at all ages.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel very similar.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I feel like I like getting in there to compete when I did, but you are competing against people that know you by reputation, that are to coming to take you out, and they don't have the miles, they don't have the injuries, and you have to try to console yourself and say, Trust my jujitsu, trust my technique.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: But they're they're coming to it with a different energy.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is their time.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're hungry.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're hungry.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're hungry, and we're kind of doing it as a just to stay sharp, like an encore performance, right?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: And a thing to keep you motivated to keep training to get you back in there because it's been so many years, you're like, uh Because you have to you have to vary the motivations to keep going every day and going back in there.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I've always competed, so that was always part of my process of motivations.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a different energy from the younger in jujitsu years people or they're like, oh no, I have so and so.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, Yeah, but I'm so broken.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's different, but you know, I like that there's the option to do it and it's there.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I I like it too.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: And you make a good point about like our motivation for training changes over years.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: John Will talks about this a lot.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what gets you into the sport is not what's gonna keep you there for 30 years, right?
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, it was always self-defense, and that will always be the primary thing for me, is self-defense just is.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: But it's the fun, it's the camaraderie, and you kind of change the victory parameters.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like we were talking about how we can't do the things that we used to do, or like my frustration with letting someone get away with something because I'm just not gonna punish them for it.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: But and so my victory condition now is might just be hey, I made it through the mat, and I didn't tap.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: You couldn't tap out a 64-year-old, you 30-year-old young buck.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_03: That's my new victory condition.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'll just let the other stuff slide, or something like that.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, all the things we were told are true, you know, like with he hearing about Helio, it's like they couldn't tap him, you know, he just defended, and that was the victory, like you couldn't hurt me.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, you change appropriate to whatever is we're at different places in life.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: Like Chris Howder says, you gotta fight with the body that you have now.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_03: Not the body you want, you've got the body that you have, and we could walk away.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: And if it's too much, not if it's too frustrating, you walk away.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, one thing I've always noted is that we perceive the loss, right?
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: That's the frustrating part, right?
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know how tough you were, you know how functional you were.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: I could adapt to so many to it.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_03: I look at people like that and say, I would have spread you across the mat like butter in the day, right?
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, like even now, I'll get into a situation where I'm about to finish someone, I'm like, I don't have the energy to fight for the submission, just let it go and keep rolling.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't need this isometric hold.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_03: And they don't know that you just let them out, right?
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little I don't have the energy now.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta set your ego aside.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but it's hard because we perceive that loss.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_03: But we always were deficient.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_03: We just did like you were never a big person, right?
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: So you never were 10 times stronger than you were, right?
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_03: So, like we look at our coach Jean-Jacques, right?
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_03: Missing fingers on one hand.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_03: He never had those fingers.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: He doesn't walk around saying, damn it, if I had my fingers again, I would have been able to choke you.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_03: He never had his fingers.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: So I think if we look at, we've always been compromised in whatever situation we had.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: When I was that 37-year-old best Dave, I could have been faster, I could have been stronger, I could have been more flexible, right?
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_03: Could have been bigger.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't, I didn't perceive that.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: So now that I was that and I'm not it, I don't perceive it, but I should have the same attitude, which is I brought what I had and I did the best with what I have.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_03: So that's what I'm trying to do now.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's literally I went in and trained.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: I w I got on the mat today.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: Did it joy?
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: I did it, joy, we had fun.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and didn't get hurt.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: And didn't get hurt, hopefully.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_03: So let's talk for a second about some of the challenges you've had because a lot of us go through various life challenges, physical, psychological, all kinds of stuff.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_03: What was it that took you out and how did that change you?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: So 2006 I did the trials for ADCC, and 2007 I competed at ADCC.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_00: I did the Fila Worlds, did a lot of stuff that year.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty stressful year.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: I did ADCC.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: Three days later I got separated from my husband.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it was kind of like the high point and low point, and also that same weekend, you know, I wasn't close to him or but like Jeremy Williams also committed suicide that weekend.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: So it was kind of this very heavy, it was kind of yay, heavy time.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty intense.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then I I think that was like August.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then later that year, I went to Turkey to compete for the Fila Worlds.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was the first time they did that, and that was a incredible experience.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you won.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I won that one.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then I came back.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was teaching at Big John McCarthy's at the time.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a CrossFit certification at our gym.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I don't know what they do now, but CrossFit certifications where they teach you a few things and then they run you through multiple workouts on multiple days.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I did two or three different CrossFit workouts and two.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of hard work.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: And after that, I kind of felt like I had a cold and it never went away.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: My neck was a little inflamed.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of had a sore throat, kind of sniffly.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I finally went to the doctor and they tested me and they said you have Epstein Barr virus, which if most people now remember as a kid there was a disease called mono, and you got really tired for a few months.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: You had to rest and then you came back.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I started researching it.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, the doctor said there's nothing we can do about it, have a great life.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Okay, and I was having fatigue crashes where I would feel like all the energy and life was sucked out of me within 30 minutes, and then I had to go lay in bed for a day.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: My voice was always hoarse because I think my neck was inflamed and put putting pressure.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I tried to uh do different things, change my diet, change my workout.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: So then I started I started training MMA.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I was at my Big Johns, we had jujitsu, we had everything, and then we also had an MMA fight team.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I was helping coach that and then I was starting to learn boxing, striking, r more wrestling, everything to do MMA because after ADCC I needed a new challenge.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: I needed to be a white belt again at something.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I started learning you know, it's like I think you get I don't know if addicted is the word, it's like addicted to the struggle.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_00: And once you become comfortable with things, it becomes uncomfortable being comfortable, I've noticed.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so then I go to something where I'm uncomfortable again.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so training MMA, and then we had the fight team helping coach, and then I tried out for the fight team, and so I started doing that, but I would try to vary my workout, so I would go hard two days and then take a day off and see if that would affect the fatigue crashes.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried all these different patterns, took all these notes on everything I was trying.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't affect it in any way.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tried all the different diets, it didn't change.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I was teaching also at the time, and I kind of felt like I I can't keep trying to do jujitsu and all this stuff because I don't know if I should keep teaching.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I can't keep teaching it if I can't do it.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: So for four or five years I think I was teaching, but I wasn't training at all.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, I can't keep doing this.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna start a new life.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'm gonna quit tre teaching at the gym and I'm gonna do something completely different because I can't train the way I used to and be happy.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had made up my mind to quit jujitsu and start a new life.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had a private student, and I took her to Hawaii and a friend of mine that was on one of the world teams was in Hawaii and uh Stephanie Murata, and she said, Oh, start taking red marine algae, start taking this supplement.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I took it for a couple days and I started feeling better.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I came back, and at this point I hadn't been trained at Jean-Jacques because I had moved up to Santa Clarita at that time.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I I came back and the next week I felt good, and it was a week and a half to Masters World 2014.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I decided I feel good enough, I'm gonna go compete.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back to Jean-Jacques and I said, Can I come back?
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yeah, get on the mat.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then I said, Oh, then that night I think I signed up for Masters Worlds again.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of it was just starting to change a little bit to be a a little more respectable, I guess, at Master's Worlds.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I signed up and then Wednesday I went back to train.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Jean-Jacques, like someone else signed up to fight me.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, should I should I qu drop out?
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he laughs at me and he's like, No, go fight.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: You signed up.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that the whole point?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, get back on the mat.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: 20 minutes, you'll be fine.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went and then I went back.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had one fight and I won it.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did a few more, and then I think I retired again.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as it happens, you're there coaching, other you go and you have friends going, or you see results, and you go, I could beat that person.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you get the you know, this itch starts to nag at you again.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back again, I don't remember, is that 2018 maybe, and then I think I missed a little bit, and then I went back in 21 or 20, something like that.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I pretty much retired three times because the itch kept coming back.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: And finally the last time it stopped, it softened and silenced itself.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm good.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it took that many times.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and that's great that you came back.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_03: And how's the Epstein Bar thing doing now?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I changed a lot in my life.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had to change a lot of the stresses and my mindset, my approach.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: I struggle a little bit because I was one of those people that because of I I came up in the world of gymnastics and my mindset, I was always pushing harder and harder.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: I would go out and do all my conditioning, strength, all that stuff on my own.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like people go, Oh, John Jack's not telling me what to do.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like his job is to teach you jujitsu when you're on the mat.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: His job isn't to be your strength and conditioning coach and take care of you.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's something else.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm maybe there are other gyms or academies where people do that.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at that time, I realized it was my own uh my own responsibility.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'd go do conditioning before class, I'd go run the stairs at Pierce College and do all that stuff before class.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and they're like, I know he would tell people like you need to work out before class so that when you come to class you're only using s your technique.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like already the smallest person, but I'm doing that before, so I'm exhausted coming to class, and then it's even harder for me just to survive and to try to do what I can do.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: But that I think I attribute a lot of that to my success in competition because I don't think at that time a lot of people were training as athletes.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: But because I'd learned that as a kid, I could just transfer that into what I was doing.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only way I knew how to do it, and so I think that really benefited me.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: But then you had to back off of that as part of your adjusting to the Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: So then I had to really r learn how to manage it in a different way.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: And after I got sick, I I can never really train the way I want to train.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: I can never push and I had to really adjust my brain.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: So every day you see posts on Instagram about how you had to push yourself and get uncomfortable and push your past your limits.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I've already done that and I know I can do that mentally and physically, and I had to learn how to get on the other side of that.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, like people, sometimes parents or people would say, I want to be a world champion.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I can help you go in that direction, but I don't know that that necessarily makes a sound functional human being because you get so focused in that world, and even people would say, Hey, are you gonna do this competition?
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, No, because the minute I see I'm gonna do something, everything in the world is gone, and that's all I'm focused on.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: Which has served me in many ways.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's served me in various careers I've had.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's served me progress very quickly in jujitsu.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I I came up in the art world, right?
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: I went to art school and at the time it was uh the part that I gravitated to was about bringing life and art together and that it was kind of the same thing.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess I kind of that's the only way I knew how to be.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever I did, I kind of did it a hundred percent, and it was kind of my life and my lifestyle, and not just specifically jujitsu, but other things that I've done.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I don't find I'm a balanced person.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at one time I attained balance in my life.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was my early days of jujitsu, I had a balanced life.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: As they say, you have your homework life and your home and your hobbies and your dog, and and I was on antidepressants because my dog had just died, but I just felt rather numb.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then as jiu-jitsu grew, I started to feel what that was.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like I have to have something in my life that I'm feeling intensely focused on.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_00: And And I just have come to accept that.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: So after I had a hard time with jujitsu, you know, then you have times where you're trying to find that next step.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was an inspector for the state athletic commission.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that was part of that transition.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I was at Big John's, the Athletic Commission used to come and use the gym for their meetings.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: And working there, sometimes it was on a Saturday or Sunday when the gym closed.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I lived right by the gym, so they're just, can you just stay and close up when they're done?
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I would sit through the meetings, and so I started learning a little bit about the commission.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and then they were looking for inspectors.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: So having been a corner person, having been a competitor in jujitsu, now I'm become part of the regulatory side.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so inspectors are there to ensure the health and safety and fairness of the fights.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we make sure the rules are being followed.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: We make sure no one's cheating the rules, no one's taping in an appropriate in a inappropriate way.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard sometimes, but they're like, that's a stupid rule.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, it's just like laws.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the laws and rules are in place because someone has broken them and cheated and been a problem before.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: So now we started to institute all these rules in the sport of MMA as it evolved, going back to our previous thing.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's like a legitimate sport.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_00: So there are rules to follow, and they are literally based for the health and safety and fairness.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're not doing it, you're you know your opponent's not doing it either.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you get to walk the fight, you're in the locker room making sure everything's done correctly, that they're prepared properly, and then you walk them out in between rounds, you make sure, you know, that they get in, get their stuff done, and you kick them out of the ri the cage, ring, whatever, usually a cage.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: The other one's like, get out, seconds out.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what you're sitting in there in the corner to make sure, and then if there's a knockout or a finish, you're the first one in there to make sure that they're safe and that the doctor comes in and checks them.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then after the fights, you make sure they get to the medicals for the doctor to make sure that they're okay, and then you pay them.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_03: So how many inspectors are at a show?
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_03: Do you need the same amount of inspectors as fights, or could it be one inspector running the whole show?
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: It depends how big the show is and how many how many events are going on that day.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: But not you like at amateur lower level shows, sometimes like all the fighters will be in a room, so they're all together, so you'll have two or three inspectors back there, and then you have one that walks them up and brings them back.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe five to eight, and then at bigger shows you'll get assigned specific fights throughout the night, and at bigger venues they'll be in different rooms and stuff.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_03: And this is distinct from being a referee and distinct from being a judge.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_03: So one thing so I was gonna ask you how you made that transition, and you started talking about this because you said this was part of your transitioning because of your health issue that made you not to be able to train as hard as you want.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_03: You had to kind of recreate yourself and find ways to be involved, and this sort of has opened up as a path, right, for you to be involved and build on this immense knowledge that you already have because you were already a competitor.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_03: You were already in.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did the little game, the little video game when I went around and got all my tools, tools, and I didn't know.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was a time I was at Big John's and I was like, what am I doing here?
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what am I doing up here?
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I'm learning everything.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting to do everything and learn everything, I'm getting to coach, I'm getting to teach kids, I'm getting to coach kids, I'm getting to work with fighters and train with fighters and be a fighter and do all those things.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's still at some point, it's like then I'm sick and I'm like, You're saying, what's the point if I can't be a fighter?
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: What am I doing?
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it just all comes full circle.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like it's never apparent to us at the time.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are these moments in life where you go, oh, this is how it all makes sense.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I became an inspector and had thought about becoming a judge.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Big John has his courses where he teaches judging and refereeing.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for the early ones, I was the dummy.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I sat through a lot of those courses, but I had never had the mind that I wanted to be a judge or a ref.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I never had any interest in officiating.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I'm working and teaching at the most famous officials gym, the first gym of its kind at that time.
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I have no interest in it.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when he would do the courses, I would be the dummy that was being demoed, all the all the grappling stuff.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I saw, I knew what it was about, but I never learned what judging or roughing really was about.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just happy being an inspector, being a demo dog, being an UK for someone.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And a few years later, right before COVID, I was thinking, you know, I was getting a little burned out and being I was an inspector for seven years.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like you're running around.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: You really you are working so hard as an inspector.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're everything that keeps the show running.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: That keeps everything on time.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is making, I mean, they're these cogs in the machine that people never see or understand or appreciate, but they make it happen.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they're making sure the fighters are out there.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like everything is the inspectors, and they get so little recognition.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're on your feet five to ten hours running around, standing on the concrete, stressing out, trying to get everything to be at the right place at the right time.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was getting a little bit older, and the only time I ever stood on my feet, because I was like on my butt the whole time, or on my back or in jujitsu, would be during the events, and my legs and back were starting to really take a toll, even though I really enjoyed the job.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I thought, like, started thinking about judging, and I was signed up and I was gonna take Herb's course because John wasn't doing courses at this time.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: He had retired and gone to Tennessee at that time.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Herb, Dean, started doing courses, and I was about to go take the next course, and then COVID shut everything down.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And around I think it was uh April 2022, he was starting up a course again.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I went and took his course, and I passed and I became a judge.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I started working for the amateur organization, Camo, and I did a bunch of shows there.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so you're one of the people sitting on a table deciding who won the round, or yes.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so okay, so there's three judges in an MMA fight, and they're in a triangle shape.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: In the early days, they put them on a table, but what the thing is in judging, you can only judge what you can see.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what they were separated, so everyone has a different view.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you might not see something you can't judge, but the other two judges see it.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you're the only judge that saw it, and the other two don't see it.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we're spread out and we're kind of lurking in the shadows on the side.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really see us unless you know to look for us, and you're judging the fight.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: The referee is the person inside the cage, and they don't wear a black and white striped shirt like a regular referee.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're usually all in black, and they're there to start, stop the fight, assess fouls, health and safety, making sure that nothing bad happens.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times they're the face of the regulatory side.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: People call me a judge, referee, whatever, but I mostly just judge.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really want a referee because I've already been hit too many times.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've already had enough broken.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because you have to be in there, and I'm a smaller person.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So at first I was like, I just want to focus and do one thing well, so I don't want to have to worry about refereeing and learning that, those skills.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I just really focused on learning judging.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And later I've done some I so I actually help out at Herb's course because I just kept going back and to refresh and to keep learning, and then eventually I help run part of his course, the the practical side.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned to me before we started talking here that you sometimes get a little before a fight similar to when you were actually going to compete.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_03: And what I would think is I would be more nervous to be a judge because I am responsible for my performance when I go in and fight.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_03: If I don't fight well, I lose, it's my fault.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to be responsible for maybe missing something or misjudging something and making somebody else lose because I made a mistake or something.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_03: Same would be true for a referee, you know.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_03: So to me, that's like a lot of responsibility.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_03: These guys are putting their life on their line, and like you better be doing your job right, or they're not gonna get their just dessert.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think when you're a competitor, you have the experience of the stress, the nerves, all that stuff.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then people know, like if you become a coach, teacher, instructor, you're coaching someone, especially like your friend, sometimes that's more stressful because you have no control of what they do.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you're like, oh, ev every aspect of it has it its share of stress.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, judging is very similar to competing.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I try to make sure I get enough sleep, I prepare, I usually eat the same meal so I don't have to worry about having any issues with my stomach, so I can completely focus on the job that I'm doing.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And people don't always realize that.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like they think, oh, these judges don't care.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's like no, we absolutely care because we have been in that situation and we don't want to get it wrong.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the same with roughing, even though I don't rough, it's like no one wants to get it wrong.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_00: We all want to get it right.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And especially in the state of California, you know, like Andy Foster is the head of, he's a former fighter.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: He came up as a fighter, a pro fighter, and he's the head of the regulatory body of California.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: He wants everyone to get it right too, obviously.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you look at most of the judges and referees in the state of California are either and or former pro fighters and or black belts, or at least black belts, for the most part.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think the idea is to have people that come from these sports being regulators of the sport.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we have amazing Hall of Fame MMA fighters that are now officials.
• 1:16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's awesome.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it's great when people can come with that experience.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, one thing John was saying was that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be a good official, right?
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_03: Someone could have been a good fighter, but they don't necessarily have the but it's good if they can have that, if you can find someone who does have what's needed to be a good official and has that experience.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean that's the other thing.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_00: You but bring up such a great point.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like every job, every position has a different lens that they have to look through.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So as an inspector, am I watching the fight?
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm watching the fight enough to know that if it's stopped, I need to run in.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm watching what's going on with the corner and different things.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get to watch the fight.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as a judge, I'm paying attention to what's going on in the fight.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get to pay attention to other things.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_00: The referee's paying attention to what's going on and their safety and legal things, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they'll say, well, who won that fight?
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're a judge who won that fight.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I wasn't scoring the fight.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not looking at through that lens.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_00: The same as when I became from going from judging to inspecting, I'm sitting in the corner.
• 1:17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have to turn off the judging voice.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like I can't get caught in the fight going, why isn't he getting the underhood?
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why is he doing that?
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have to turn that off and pay attention to what I'm supposed to my job is.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: The same as as a judge, I'm looking at what's happening, not what I know is gonna happen or what I think could happen or the possibility or anything else, or what the judge core as someone else is yelling.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have to focus on what is actually happening.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to change your lens to do your job.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's very, very interesting.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_03: I can see why you enjoy it, and I can see why you move to it.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, kudos to you for finding this for this period of your life for what you're doing, making that transition.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I still compete in jujitsu and I'm gonna stop soon because I've got enough injuries.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_03: And for me, I I might get back to teaching because then I'll get my fulfillment that way.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'll always train if I can.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_03: But to for so for you to have found this thing like the video game where you put together all these pieces so you can do this now, it'll be fun to see what your next step is.
• 1:18:47
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to ask you about some of your other because you have been through many different things in your life.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like you've been you mentioned your art training, uh, a lecture, you know, at Otis School of Art and Design, of course, your martial arts stuff, you've been coached.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_03: I know you've coached wrestling, been a competitor.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_03: You did the Grapple TV podcast.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_03: That was really, really good.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_03: We were talking about that a little bit before.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_03: So you've been a media person, you've done graphics, like you just you got a lot of stuff.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_03: I interviewed J.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_03: Flo.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if you know who JFLO is.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_03: I know who is Justin Flores.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and he he's great.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_03: And but I had noticed that he was a graphic designer, and I asked him about that.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you don't really hear about that.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Does that like impact your judo and stuff?
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Oh, he went, Yes.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like how he's so I'm curious, your art, your art training, how do you think or does that impact your view of MMA, your view of BJ?
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_03: How do you look at it?
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_03: I like I can tell you I'm a musician, I you probably don't know that, but I was a professional musician, played in rock and roll bands, and for me, timing, timing, jujitsu, like music musical, it's about timing, timing.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_03: I've never really thought about it, maybe a little bit about volume.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_03: But as an artist, how does that impact how you look at MMA and jujitsu?
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I was making art, it was very process-oriented, and it was dealing with creating situations and dealing with what happened.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And very much so as opposed to replicating reality.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wasn't a painter that painted pictures, I kind of made stuff and created situations or chemicals or whatever it was to say.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_03: So you were doing art pieces?
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, or and or installations or all sorts of stuff.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it was very process-oriented.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the same with life and with jujitsu, where you wait to see you have a general idea of where you're going, maybe, and then what opportunities present themselves.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I call intuitive living.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the same as jujitsu because as a smaller person, too, I can't control where the fight goes.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have to see what opportunities I'm presented and take them.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so when the opportunity happens, you go.
• 1:20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's the practice of just working hard and everything you're doing in life showing up.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when opportunities show up, you step up and you say yes, and you keep going.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've never really had an idea of what I would be doing.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they always go, like, what do you see yourself in five years?
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or what are your plans?
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I've never really had plans because pretty much everything I've done is not something that existed before.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like I ended up at ADCC, they didn't have women doing it.
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they had just started men when I started jujitsu.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was just the second year, I think, that they had ADCC.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's like, How do you plan doing things in your life that you don't know existed?
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of hard.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I think when you're open to opportunities and you are always giving your hundred, hundred, ten percent, other opportunities happen and you just go with the flow.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_00: You just like, oh, I was looking for a triangle, but I'll take the armbar instead.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_00: That seems like a cooler way to go, and that'll get the job done.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting because I'm sure there are artists who, like you say, they know what they want to do, they're gonna paint it and they do that.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_03: And there's more of the creative side, like uh there's a block and I'm going to shape it into something, or I'm gonna pour this and I'm gonna create.
• 1:22:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so that that is, I think, a bit more like jujitsu, like you're saying.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_03: We're just gonna see what evolves and make it interesting.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's really cool.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_03: Do you still do art at all?
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_03: Do you still have your brand?
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I didn't make art for about 20 something years through the whole jiu-jitsu thing, and then very at the end when I had my studio, like I started going back and making art.
• 1:22:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was all jujitsu-related art, but I haven't been doing that.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm very good at it.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: What was the name of your brand?
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was Flow F-L-A-U.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Which stands for For Love Art Utility.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_03: And the utility there is for things that are functional.
• 1:22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was making jewelry and different things.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it was, it was and well, my initials are F L O, so it's a pun on that too.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, yes, of course.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: But you're not.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I like to be like clever, you know, but you are too.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Try, try.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_03: But not currently doing that now.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_03: No is there a website with any of it that people can find?
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like underground now.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_03: I thought I saw something on Instagram.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_03: There might be something that's still living that you're not aware of out there.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I might have the account, but it doesn't do anything.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_03: I see.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like I make a lot of things and then like they're like my children, so I never want to get rid of them, and then they just pile up.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_03: So you are talking to that 33-year-old woman who walked into John Jock's Academy.
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_03: What do you say to her that would help her along now?
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_03: What what do you what could you do to help yourself along if you knew what you knew now?
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh enjoy the ride.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think you get so foc I it still happens to me now, I get so focused that it's hard to take it all in.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I look back at the different experiences and even just recently I was at the White House, but I'm always so focused on what I'm supposed to be doing that Were you part of the UFC show?
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was a timer, yeah.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh really?
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that was like how jujitsu got me there.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this this whole road, it's like insane how it's changed my life and brought me to things I never could have imagined.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you know, would I change anything?
• 1:24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think there are things that well it would have been nice not to have certain injuries and sicknesses and things, but I mean without those things you don't get to where you are, so it would have changed the trajectory.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would just say try to enjoy the struggle while it's happening more.
• 1:24:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to do that now in my life.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I try to appreciate the struggle a little more, but it's hard because you're struggling.
• 1:24:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's no, of course.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I have I try to remind myself that these are the good old days, you know that saying?
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_03: But I mean, if you're in the middle of a really bad thing, okay, these are not the good old days, like you're dealing with a cancer or a dying relative or something like that.
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_03: But frequently, I don't care, whine the clock forward 15, 20 years, you are gonna be dealing with some cancer or some something, and you will look back on this day and say, Boy, I'd give anything to be so to appreciate that.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_03: And of course, when I look back at the early days of jujitsu, we knew we were having fun, but I didn't realize just what was happening in the world, what we were part of, right?
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_03: And now to look back at that and say, wow, that was so amazing, the training that we did and the experiences that we had, and the people, you know, like the people that we've met and the people you continue to meet, right?
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you've had just what has connected you to people.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_03: Jiu Jitsu has done an amazing thing.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and like all the officials, most of the officials I work with that are out there in especially in California, are people I've known forever since way before officiating.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we well, there really is a family that you get.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_03: When it comes to being grateful for what you have, you know, we forget to do that, right?
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_03: We just kind of as you say, we make it through the day or like you're dealing with the grind, but to take a moment and just recognize, like, hey, this is this is pretty cool what's going on.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Life is an amazing ride.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_03: One of my earliest episodes, so in this podcast, I do what I call life lessons, which is a little presumptuous, that's what the producer wanted to call it.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_03: But like, I'm just talking about a topic and I'm sharing some experiences and how jujitsu informed that, you know.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_03: Or then we do these interviews.
• 1:26:10
  SPEAKER_03: But one of my earliest life lessons was about what did I call that show?
• 1:26:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think it was the alchemy of outcomes, meaning something objectively bad can be happening, like your diagnosis, right, of the Epstein Bar.
• 1:26:24
  SPEAKER_03: But what you do with it is under your control, right?
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the example I give is like you losing a leg, objectively bad.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_03: It could lead you to realize to pick up the guitar and become like the world's best guitar player.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_03: Or winning the lottery, objectively good.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_03: It could cause all your friends to act weird and you develop drugs.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're like so.
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_03: What we do with experiences is under control.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the story isn't over.
• 1:26:48
  SPEAKER_03: You get to write the next chapter.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_03: A big example from my life was Hurricane Katrina.
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_03: I was already working in the animal space, I was already working on the Adopt a Pet website, that kind of thing happened.
• 1:26:57
  SPEAKER_03: This hurricane comes through, floods the whole city, people dying, they evacuated, they pull the people out, the pets are all there, remaining, like tens of thousands of pets starving in homes.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_03: How are we going to deal with that?
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it was this terrible thing.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I went down there, and all this terrible stuff happened.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_03: But that was the thing that got me, first of all, I was already kind of leaving animal stuff, got me back in and led to our first sponsorships.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_03: So when I look back at the arc of my life and the things that I'm doing and all the good stuff that's happened, that was an important it just was an important piece.
• 1:27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not to say, oh, we want to have another Hurricane Katrina or something, but I think we get to choose how we react to things, just like you were also saying in jujitsu, how you get to react to a situation, learning how to suffer, you know, being comfortable with discomfort, I think you had said.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_03: You choose your reactions to it.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_03: So I just want to congratulate you for taking what was objectively a bad situation and look how you've invented yourself.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_03: That's great jujitsu in action.
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jiu Jitsu, it's been a wild ride.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just have immense gratitude.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And just all all the people.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: that you meet along the way are pretty amazing and like you said it's like I mean I used to struggle with depression and stuff like that before Jiu Jitsu and it's like there's still some days where you wake up kind of a little unmotivated.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like I'm guns blazing every day, but you have different chapters of your life and your different responsibilities and some days aren't as good as others but it's like I'm in a much better situation than say so and so.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not like comparing but it's also comparing and being like they have a lot more to deal with.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is nothing compared to what they have to deal with in their life.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: So why are you being so pissy?
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know it's like just get on with it, you know or there are days where something bad happens and you're like oh no it's gonna be one like in the old day I'd be like it's one of those days and then it'll start snowballing and it's like you know what shake it off change it.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't have to have that attitude about it.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like things just smile and say hi to someone you go to the grocery store compliment someone changes them it changes you.
• 1:28:59
  SPEAKER_03: No that is absolutely true.
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_03: When I think of like jujitsu I feel like where you live physically is the canvas on which you paint your life.
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't mean you're gonna be happy doesn't mean you're gonna be sad.
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_03: But if you live in a place that you like there's a tree you really enjoy I happen to live in a beautiful area northern you know it you can have a bad day there but it's not gonna be as bad of a day because you just you you you've got a nicer canvas that you're starting on.
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_03: And when jujitsu is part of my day doesn't mean I'm gonna have a great day.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't mean I'm gonna have a great training but it's not how bad could it be because we got to roll yeah you know what I mean and for me one thing I notice is jujitsu is like a river like you say you can attack it or you know depending on how how you're feeling that day or we can't train as hard.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_03: But it's just get there.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Just get to the mat and jump in the river.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_03: I could be like tired, achy, not in the mood, but I'm on the mat and here you are and we're gonna train and we and we start rolling and the river is going to take me and by the end of the class I am in such a better mood and I didn't have to do anything.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_03: Just get to the mat.
• 1:30:11
  SPEAKER_03: The the river will pick the rolling will take you forward the river and I love that.
• 1:30:15
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I would say that even sometimes not even rolling but just get getting there and getting on the mat, even if you don't roll like changes be in the environment.
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_00: In the environment yeah especially if you've been in a place for a long time just get around those people that you are comfortable around you're like oh yeah that feels like it's a it's like a grounding a resetting and then it's like okay I feel better now I can go back out.
• 1:30:37
  SPEAKER_03: Well if I make it out to Arizona I'll be sure to pop in and train with you and if you find yourself in Northern California let me know and it'll be great to see you and I'm so appreciative of you taking all this time to chat with old Dave.
• 1:30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well thanks for asking me it was fun to get to hang out.
• 1:30:53
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you enjoyed my talk with Felicia O.
• 1:30:56
  SPEAKER_03: You'll find links in the show notes to everything we talked about including the referee courses.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks to my team Robbie, Phil, Kyle, Angela, David, and to Ryan Peach Turner, my producer and chief editor for your help.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_03: And thanks also to the show sponsors and supporters and you can see them on our supporters page at AgelesswarriorLab.com slash supporters.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_03: And to hear my interview with Melissa Will perhaps the longest training woman in BJJ outside of Brazil check out episode 19.
• 1:31:27
  SPEAKER_03: I will be back next week with more lessons from the lab and until then keep developing your strength your wisdom go out and do good in the world