Episode 32 - Leading a Community; Building the Business

The BJJ Executive Podcast is sponsored by Eclipse BJJ and Grappling Academy, a gym in Crum, Texas. They offer programs for kids, men, and women, as well as skill-specific classes. The podcast is also partnered with The Map Mission, a non-profit organization spreading jiu-jitsu and providing mentorship to youth. The host, Dave Kroll, talks about his team and their plans for the future, including a wrestling program for kids. He faces opposition from parents and the lack of a wrestling program in the area, but remains determined to make a difference. He believes that wrestling can have a positive impact on kids' lives and wants to equip them with the skills and values that the sport offers. Despite the challenges, he is optimistic about the program's success. Welcome to the BJJ Executive Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Kroll. Today's episode is sponsored by Eclipse BJJ and Grappling Academy. Eclipse is located in the small North Texas community of Crum, K-R-U-M, but has quickly grown into a destination gym for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Eclipse offers programs for kids, men, women, and offers skill-specific classes for those focused on traditional gi training, no-gi jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and conditioning classes. Eclipse Grappling Academy is staffed with three full-time black belts and is owned by jiu-jitsu black belt, former Division I wrestler, and my personal friend, Anthony Krontz. Check them out at Facebook or Instagram at EclipseBJJ or online at EclipseBJJ.com. If you enjoyed the podcast and wish to support us, please do so by liking and sharing our content on social media and leave a review on whatever platform you're listening from. The BJJ Executive Podcast is proudly partnered with The Map Mission. It's a non-profit 501c3 organization charged with spreading jiu-jitsu through communities in need and providing mentorship and leadership to the youth in those communities. If you want to get involved in The Map Mission, follow the Instagram page, contact us on our website, or just message me directly. As always, thank you for listening and for making this a part of your jiu-jitsu journey. And as I always say, welcome to mine. Enjoy the episodes. So talk about your team a little bit, man. I mean, specifically Joao and Daisy. I mean, this has been, I remember Joao kind of came along with you. Daisy wasn't in the picture last time. I knew I always wanted a female as my second full-time coach just because I find that there's a lot of value that is often missed in female jiu-jitsu in general. I mean, I'm blessed to be around even some of the best. I mean, Daisy's clearly one of the best. I'm good friends with Wagner, right? Jasmine's crushing it right now. So there's so many people that, you know, if you don't want, if you turn the TV off when female jiu-jitsu comes on, you're missing half of jiu-jitsu, you know? Just put a period on it. That's all there is to it. What is, I mean, so what's next for you guys? Well, we got football season kind of ending here. So we're going to start developing. So that's one thing. We started a kids eight and up wrestling program at the school. Oh, cool. And that's coached by, like I'm actually going to be running out of here tonight to go open the doors for Open Mat and then I'll be coaching wrestling tonight. It's more of like a drills and skills. At Eclipse? Yep, at Eclipse. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we do that. Dude, that's cool. For an hour. What high school do you guys have up there? We don't have one wrestling program. Really? That's the whole point, man. I don't care. I don't care about what everybody else is doing. You know, I don't care what's around. I don't care who complains about whatever. I'm just going to do my best. And if people are going to support it, cool. And if it starts to become cumbersome, of course you've got to pivot, right? What kind of pitfalls could there be? I mean, is there any opposition to it or something? Well, I mean, in some ways, I've had some parents- Is it opposition to football or something? There's two things. One is, I've had people text me saying, it's kind of hard, like you said, it's kind of hard to compete with football and this and that. And when you're in those sports that are tied to the school, sometimes if you play football, you have to do tracker power lifting. So I have to kind of talk to the athletic, to the ADs or the coaches to be like, guys, you don't know the benefit of what this will do for your kids. I was a four-sport athlete until I was a junior in high school. Read a book. I mean, if anybody's going to, you know- Go look at the pro, all pro selections for football and look at the linemen and go look at the ones that used to wrestle in high school. And you go tell me that there's no benefit to it, even in drills and skills. Oh man, that's kind of crazy opposition. I would never have expected that. If that's the type of opposition you get, it's just not educated yet. I mean, hopefully- But I think, well, that's the thing. I need to do some legwork, I think, when it really comes to like, not explaining it, but I tell people this to me, just like, this is how I try to live my life. Don't tell me, show me. So that's what I'm doing. So I'm working on that. And then the other thing is, like, kind of the lack of having- a lot of parents, I even caught my dad saying this a couple weeks ago when we were talking about it, that parents have been interested in the program. And honestly, it's not expensive. It's $100 a month. I'm charging $100 a month and you get- it's me, Dylan, who was a college wrestler, Dylan Collins, and Amanda Alvarado, who was also a college wrestler. So I have a men's coach, a women's coach with college experience, just like Joao and Daisy, and then myself, who was a division one wrestler in black belt. And a facility. Right. And a nice, clean facility. And there's still people that say it's a hard sell. It's a hard sell because- We'll see. Well, but this is the part. It's a hard sell because there's nothing in it after high school to go get to college. What do you think the percentages are of your kid actually becoming a college athlete? Who said your kid wants to become a college athlete? How about you just equip them with the gifts and the skills that the sport's going to give them? That's right. Like outside of the room, outside of the field, off the field, off the pitch, whatever, off the court, whatever. Yeah. We spent 20 minutes talking about the intangibles that are clearly present in that sport. I mean, and prevalent. But if I listened to that, I would have just closed up shop a long time ago. So I believe that it's going to be successful. I believe that it's going to help change kids' lives. I think so too. So I'm going to do my thing. That's cool, man. So that's kind of the roadblocks. People didn't think that the jiu-jitsu thing was going to work out there either, but we're doing all right. We're doing okay. What's the age group for wrestling? Well, so at first we started, I just was more kind of with the teens group, but we've lowered the age a little bit because we knew we were going to have to tailor some things and figure out ages because that developmental, not barrier, but that line where you see like, and now we're starting to see it's not as much 10, more like eight and up, starts to really pick up on, like the more you bring them in. I didn't realize like those seven, eight, nine year olds that are really intentional, how much they can pick up really quickly. So just adjusting little things like that, but eight and up. And then like the same thing for some of our 14, actually even one of our 11 year olds because he's so tall, not even big, just like lanky. We have some of our 13, 14, 15 year olds. They do the teens class now as being the leader of that class, as an example, but they can train in the adults class now too, which I'm already seeing them. I was actually talking to one of the dads, I think it was yesterday or two days ago, about how much development I've seen in his son since he's been doing the adults class with us too. No kidding. Yeah. Dude, it could be, this could be the footing for a whole new era of wrestling in that area because it really is. I mean, having lived, when Kai went to high school, he went to a wrestling school. He was recruited to wrestle and he wrestled, man. And those guys were, I mean, you were all in and the expectation, and you can argue whether or not this was healthy or not, was that you were all in, right? I mean, and you're round. So, I mean, that's a whole different conversation, man. And you probably have a pretty strong opinion on that. I mean, you could burn out on it pretty quickly as well. I have a very strong opinion. So having seen that and then moving to Texas, like, I don't know if my younger son would have, I don't think he would have made it through it in Texas because the infrastructure is just not there, man. And I mean, like, just having skillful practices. I mean, like, that it isn't just play time and an extracurricular activity. I mean, to improve in wrestling, dude, you will figure out the people that have the exposure to that really quick. Go to a big tournament, you know, do the open meets and stuff like that. I mean, and that's a freaking, a bully fest a lot of times, you know, it's a lot of backyard type moves and everything like that. And it's strength and lack of technique and everything, which gets you part of the way there. But, you know, you go down to that, the tournament that I was telling you about where you've people that have committed the majority of their childhoods to it, dude, you are going to get your butt kicked, you know, really, really quick. Dude, that's so true. And you think the belt doesn't cover much, the singlet definitely does. Better words. Crazy, man. Well, I'm looking forward to this, man. I really am. I'm looking forward to seeing how this thing takes off. It's just nice that you could... The opportunity, you know. Well, I think it's one of the biggest, like, things that I have working for me is my job, right? So... In what way? Well, you can put money into something or you could put your energy into it. And thankfully, I put my energy into it just because, like, I can... I have four coaches. I have me and four coaches. Yeah. And we've been open. And I pay every single person that helps coach a class. Like, I want everyone to understand that if they're a leader of a class, that they're appreciated by me. Yeah. You know, just like my students, right? And, like, those are the types of things that just, I feel that it's important. I never made a dollar until I was 20 and I taught a private for the first time. And I've been wrestling since I was five. You know? Yeah. So, I want people to understand that there is a future in this. My mom used to call me crazy when I told her I wanted to do this. When I was 18, I almost quit. I think I said it on the last podcast that I did. I almost quit college. Like, we had a very, very interesting conversation when I was, I think it was three or four years into school. I think I was called a pre-junior because I was on a five-year program. A pre-junior. Well, it was a co-op program. So, I was at Drexel for five years, but I had three six-month internships in my program. Oh, that's cool. Like during the summer, spring and summer. So, it's a longer program, but also you come out with a year and a half of professional experience for your career, if you actually know what you want to do. I'm going through that right now. I was one in college, so I get it. But to equip, and that's kind of why one of the things that I love having Joelle and Daisy, we're not there yet, but one day I'll be able to kind of help. They understand the morals of it, but helping them understand budget and these things that I learned it at school, but I learned way more when my money was on paying for the things. I pay a lot more attention now of what works and what doesn't than in a book with some computer program that tells you how to sell lemonade or whatever. Yeah, 100%. I mean, you do need baseline skills and competencies and whatnot, which clearly you've developed, whether it was through college or through intuition, in order to run the business successfully. Just trying things. Just trying different things. You're in for a cheat. Yeah. Tab 48. Owning a home, understanding interest rates, like why interest rates are, you know, why you would, you know this. You know finance, right? Why would you have the loan? Why that paying down to the principal $10,000 in the first year versus the 30th year is more intelligent because it takes those steps out in the first year, right? Yeah. Sorry if I lost some people there, but I'm sure you're following what I'm saying. I don't have any PTSD. But I mean, I had a five-year college degree and I didn't understand it until I owned my first home. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That was funny you say that because like I remember going back to, I mean, I rushed through undergrad and just honestly just wanted to check in the box, you know, but when I did my MBA, I really slowed things down. And I remember my dad giving me some advice. He's like, you can read every book in the world, you know, and this is kind of what I did, you know, as an undergrad, I just wanted to get through it. You know, I need to tell people I got a degree because somehow for some reason it's important, you know, but he's like, focus on learning things to do, you know what I mean? So that you can tell people like, I know how to do fill in the blank. I know I can do this. I will demonstrate to you that I can calculate an interest rate change in a loan or whatever. I still can't do that though. Make the life stuff, you know? I still can't do that. That's because like when we learn, we learn how to take tests and how to get through it and how to calculate it on paper and then use a calculator you'll throw away after college and all this other stuff as opposed to the tools, right? I mean, so it's like, you know, that's anyway, man, we went way off track on that one, but it's a, you know, prac app in life too. I mean, I suppose that's the type of stuff that you want to expose your team to as well. Exactly. Like I'm not just trying to, I'm not just focused on my students. I'm focused on like, I mean, they're already leaders, but focus on them being able to lead their own. I mean, we're all leading this team, but have their own vision of their own thing one day. And of course I always have their buy-in to like our vision. Of course I get the final say of it, right? Because somebody does have to be, it's not a big enough business where you need a board of directors. You know, there needs to be somebody that makes calls because if you get paralysis by analysis on a jiu-jitsu gym, you're wasting a lot of time. Yeah. A lot of times it seems like, I mean, that is the hard part, man. And like in small business is that, you know, there's a lot of ideas. There's a lot of people with cheap seats that have, you know, a lot of voices. But at the end of the day, man, it's all about executing. If it takes me a week to like think about it, I kind of just write out the options and pick one and that's it. Like, what are you doing here? You know, none of these things are usually going to make, it's not a moral thing. It's just a, none of it's going to make or break you. Yeah. Not, I mean, we touched on this the last time you came on the podcast, I think. But I mean, you've, now that you've been into it for so much longer, I mean, do you, do you have any advice for folks? I mean, like there's a lot of people that want to do these types of things with their life. And it's, it's part of it is because of the popularity of jiu-jitsu and it's ignited a spark inside of people that they probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to realize in a previous life. And then some of it is because there is a FOMO and a Me Too clause that goes along with anything that's popular. And, and I mean, separating those two out for the folks that actually do have a shot at making it because they care about it and want it. You know, now that you've been in this and had a chance to grow and execute on multiple different initiatives and growing your business, I mean, any, any, any lovingly given affectionate tips you could give to somebody that. But like you just, you just actually said the word, you said opportunity. I think you need to make sure that if you, whatever it is, if you want to own a business, my whole thing is consistency, right? I just want to show up. If I only have 40% that, that day, I'm going to give a hundred percent of that 40%, right? I think, especially cause jiu-jitsu is an emotional thing with, it's easy to fall in love with it, right? Especially if you enjoy doing it. You need to really make sure that even on the hard days that you're in love with all of it, you know, and there's, I have hard days as well, but it's problem solving that go back to that cliche where anything difficult, you're going to have problems to overcome, right? And that's injuries. It's funny cause like Joe out now, he's like, man, I think about tapping a lot faster because I got to be back teaching on Monday or, you know, things like that. Of course things happen. But yeah, word of advice, make sure you truly love it first. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but like I said, I've been training since I was five years old till 28 and like paying to do it in college. I wasn't some crazy scholarship athlete or anything like that. I wasn't the most talented, but I'm 37 now and I do it every day. And it's a part of my life. That is something that I've grown to appreciate and at a different level. And I think that like, obviously, I mean, it's America, dude, do anything you want. You're going to start a business, start a business, go for it, you know? But like there is this, I think you need to internship that for a while, man, like live that life because you got to remember, like, let's say that I want to start a school and I've been mentored by Anthony at Eclipse. I'm going to walk in and I'm going to, this is the favorite part of my day, dude. I love it. And guess who represents the favorite part of my day? It's you, you know? And so like this idea of like, I want that life, I want that life. But I mean, you got to do it every day. You got to get on the mat every single day, man. I mean, no matter what, there's no sick day because the gym's got to open, you know, and people need to be able to see that version of you that, you know, made it worth them coming all the way there. I think that is so easy to underestimate. And I've been trying that, man. Like I have been very aggressive at trying, and I've been blessed with people that have helped mentor me as an instructor and whatnot. And that is the one thing that I realized that I underestimated is, dude, it's one thing to show up and pinch hit on a Tuesday. It's another thing to do it on a week while somebody's out. It's another thing to do it full time, non-negotiable, and the best version of yourself showing up. But you need to be real. It's hard for me to say because like, I love this stuff. Nothing makes me feel better. I think you need to. For myself, that when people say, they come in and say, man, you look tired today, but you trained awesome. Because realistically, I probably was tired or I was having a rough day for something else. But I love this. And I believe that this could help a lot of people. And I love helping those people. And of course, I'm compensated for it. My coaches are compensated for it. But at the end of the day, I did it for free for two and a half decades with my body. I mean, the toll it takes on your body and then the toll it takes on your time as well. And then when you start teaching, which you just kind of touched on, it's a whole other thing of like how to touch other people and like explain to them in a way that they understand the technique that you're trying to get to them. Yeah. You might have to backtrack sometimes and say, put your foot towards the door or something. It's like, they're not understanding that I have to explain this in a different way and pivot to, oh, they don't think this way. I actually have to grab their hand and put it on the lapel. Yeah. So it's a whole other thing when you're trying to pass it on to somebody else versus do it yourself. Oh, for sure, man. It's a skill set. I think I said it on the last podcast too, but it always cracks me up. I see somebody who's been training for three or four years. I love this. I want to make this my life. And I appreciate that. But man, you got to go through some stuff. You got to go through and everybody goes through stuff, but there's times that have questioned if I want to continue doing that every day. You know what I mean? But through those, you mean to tell me from five to 30, what am I, 36, 37? You mean to tell me there weren't times where I'm like, why am I doing all this? Yeah. Yeah. It's like that in any career too, man. I mean, anybody can find the little golden nuggets and the little, you know- The trophies? Yeah. The gold medals? And you just chase them, man. I mean, you said this to me before, comparisons to Diva Joy. Straight up is, man. And like that cannot be underestimated because it will be. That's why I freaking hate social media. Did you ever read the book Relentless by Tim Grover? No. It's like one of the best things because he was, I mean, he's coached all sorts of, especially NBA basketball. He was Kobe Bryant's mental coach. Okay. No, I do. He was a big mamba, right? And like one of the biggest things I think he has this, what is it? The 13 rules. And it's funny because all of them are number one. And one of the biggest ones to me as a competitor just in my life that really helped me as a business person, as heck even a dad is this is my game, right? My goal is to respect your game. We'll just keep competition in the mind, right? For me, he's really good at butterfly guard. If I'm just afraid about his butterfly guard all the time, how am I ever going to pass it versus like, no, I have to instill my technique onto them. I have to put them in. So I'm just going to do what I'm going to do anyway. I'm going to respect the skills of the rules of the game, right? But at the same time, I have things that I'm good at too. And you need to keep that versus comparing yourself to, oh, well, I'm not as good as him at this or that. Then you're chasing something versus pursuing something. If you're chasing people, you're like, oh, I want to be as good as that person. But you're not even thinking about yourself introspectively of like, I just want to be better. Once you start going internal and just saying, I want to be better, you're going to improve. But if you're going to just compare your thing, how many people are there in the world? I don't even know. If you're comparing yourself to one person out of billions of people in the world, how short-sighted are you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's no question about that at all. Right? Yeah. So just make yourself better and keep showing up. You'll be okay if you're being intentional. You brought up a really good point. Everybody's got a game. I mean, there's things that people draw on. I mean, there's obviously people that are really well-rounded and are just kind of good at everything. But like, have you developed as an instructor? Let me tee this up a little bit better. I mean, one of the things that I noticed, right, is that it's one thing to go in and teach a class on things that like you're really good at. You know, like some of my OpenGuard stuff I'm really comfortable with, right? So to go teach somebody in a class setting that, that's one thing. Another thing is to carry on a curriculum where not all of these things I have that same level of expertise in and then transfer that knowledge. How has that been for you? I mean, you have such a dominant stand-up presence. You're, you know, known as a pressure passer. I mean, like all of these things that, I mean, maybe I'm mischaracterizing it a little bit, but I mean, like those are, those are clearly strengths regardless. How has it been to be an instructor as a Jiu-Jitsu black belt all across the board, you know, to students that are not going to all, I mean, not all of your students are going to be Anthony Krontz, man. Some of them are going to be, you know, different. Prefer to pull guard. No, I'm kidding. I'm raising both of my hands. I think it just comes down to preparation and like, just like your own training, this is the, maybe this is the behind the curtain thing that people don't think about when they want to make their life, whatever it is. When you're, when people trust you to guide them, you also have to be intentional in your preparation to communicate whatever you're trying to, to them. Okay. So before class, I know what I'm teaching. I know the bullet points that I'm going to touch on. And so I, whatever the technique is, I have, I'm considered a black belt. So I should know the details of whatever it is, even, you know, maybe like, I don't play much lasso guard competitively, but I could explain a lasso sweep and the strengths and the weaknesses of a position. Pretty good detail. And do it. And yeah. Yeah. And there's something like understanding the strengths and the weaknesses of, of the guard to also how to nullify the path. That's true. There's a reciprocal. Yeah, exactly. So if you understand the strengths and the weaknesses on bottom, then you can also, it helps you break it down on top. Right. So understanding the concepts more so than just the move is extremely important. And if you just prepare, it's different to be intentional about like, okay, my training today versus, okay, this is what I'm going to teach today. And you might have to even adjust that depending on the audience that day. If you're showing some, even just like a basic pass that has like some stuff, like a lot of people have a hard time, even upper belts. It took me until even black belt really to understand like a long step path. I'm glad it's reassuring to hear that. But it's so hard to teach the kids a long step path. Is it? Oh yeah. Or like knee slice. You learned that almost, it's one of the first passes you learn as an adult, right? Kids have such a hard time with the knee slice. So you have to think about, okay, how, again, how you have to be prepared to say, how can I explain this a different way that I just, I didn't learn a knee slice when I was five. I learned it when I was 29. So how can I communicate this in a different way? I need to be ready to pivot in that moment if they're not getting it. So just that preparation. I don't know what you're teaching. Don't show up and be like, what am I doing today? Yeah. That's what I was going to say. I think that adds a, there's a, there's a new era of professionalism that is mandated now, you know? And it's funny cause like, dude, I'm sure you experienced this coming up. I know, I know I did. I mean, I just, I trained at so many different places and moved so many times. You know, I've been at basically a hermit crab, you know, for the last 20 years. And it would be, it would be shocking to me like in this day and age where there's so much of a competitive source of, dude, you just do this out there for anybody that's willing to go get it to end up in a place where, you know, like, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, it wouldn't be uncommon to show up to a class and it's like, Hey, I'm John. I'm teaching the class tonight. I'm in for the owner and you know, he's somewhere else. And, and what do you guys want to learn tonight? You know, anybody want to work some half guard? It's okay if you don't, cause we'll do something else. You know, like it's, it's crazy. I mean, that would be just, I don't know, sacrilegious, you know, cause there's just, there's another level, man. I mean, and I know I drive, I know I drive probably drawn Daisy crazy about this sometimes. And even like, so at the origin camp I was the same way as an instructor. Uh, I'll say, Hey Joelle, what are we doing this week? What are we doing today? Before, you know, before class even starts or during, uh, during training at noon to make sure that they're thinking about it. So that's like, so that's something for accountability to, but to also help them understand, like it makes your instruction better and easier. If you just think about it a little bit before you have to just show up and like during warmups, what am I teaching? I would think that would be really, uh, but people as a standard, I'm, I'm sure that happens at a lot of schools or you don't have an intention if you're just following like this written down curriculum like, Oh, today we're doing a butterfly pass or a butterfly sweep. I know how to do that and you just mindlessly, all of a sudden you're in front of the whole class. Oh crap, I got to teach a butterfly sweep. Yeah. Instead of thinking about it an hour before class, you don't even much time. It doesn't take much. It just takes a little bit of discipline to think about it. Yeah. So I found that just like teach, like the, the, if, if you can figure out how to teach it to a kid, then they don't class becomes super easy and it's great. It's handy to have the kids class before the adult class. And I know I've taught a few kids classes where we'll break it down. Like step one, what am I doing? I'm grabbing college leave, you know, step two, what am I doing? I'm, you know, you know, and then it's, and then it's kind of like, all right, now that I've broken it down kind of Barney style, you know, like to, to be able to step up your intellectual game a little bit to the adult level, it's just like, okay, cool. Like I'm transitioning back into a comfortable area. You know, we've broken it down into five steps. We show, we show very, we try and I think keep a lot of our stuff the same in that way. Unless it's, for example, a submission that kids aren't allowed to do or something. It is kind of fun where that's what, what that, our development process, I think with eclipse, we try and keep things the same through like for the technique of the, that day. So if that seven, eight or nine year old is in the kids class and then we allow him to go to the teens class cause he's very intentional and it's trained during the kids class. Now he's learning the same thing with more repetition and detail. He's done, he's, he's kind of gone from, or he or she has gone from riding the bike with the training wheels and the kids class. And then literally in the next class we're going to throw a couple more details at you. So you've done the training wheels. Now you, now you got to start pedaling on your own, you know? And so we kind of try and intentionally do stuff that way to, it helps with the repetition, but then also kind of challenged. And that's why I always say like it challenges the kids to just pick up, try and sponge up another detail or two to the teens class and the teens to the adults. The adults, I let them have it. You know, I give them all the details sometimes and I let them pick and choose what they want to remember that day. And then the next time we show it, hopefully they remember a couple more. Cause I'm not going to teach the same thing different. If the technique's the technique, of course there's adjustments you have to make when you're sparring, but fundamentally like it's body positioning. Yeah. It's body mechanics. It's not something that your arm bends the same way every time. Yeah. Unless you break it, but wouldn't be the first person to do it. And I do know people that have different ranges, you know, for sure. Yeah. But conceptually though, yeah, conceptually, right. It's, it's nice to kind of have that process of, of development. So it's been a lot of fun. I like, I like that, man. I like the way that, um, one of the things that happens to me, oh gosh, I went to quite a bit, but I would say easily is I will become, oh gosh, I hate to say overwhelmed. That sounds so negative. Um, it makes me seem so weak, but, uh, like I can go into informational overload really quick. Like I'm a mental midget in that regard, especially on something that I want to retain. I can retain the beginning really well. You start throwing plan B, C, D and E at me. I don't even know what A was or why I was there in the first, you know what I mean? Like it could really fall apart. That's why I like the way that we'll kind of structure the classes with a technique. Cause I'm like, boom, like I can get that man. Now it's time to roll. Cool. Good. That's what I wanted to do anyway. You know, start throwing two, three things at me, man. I mean, and I've always been that way. I don't know if that's normal or, or what, but I mean, some people are different, I'm sure. And prefer to like, just get it all at once and then sort it out over time. And I can't, I can't process that stuff. Like, I just don't remember the beginning well enough to move on to the next step. You know, it's kind of zones, I guess. I've noticed too, I think we're going to switch a couple of things up. I'm always kind of, I'm always, I'm always kind of just looking. I'm, I'm, it's funny cause people always think I'm just big and strong and athletic sometimes. And it's, that's just through consistency and like being an athlete my whole life. But the realistic, I like the nerdy part more than I do the, the strength part. Yeah. You know, understanding the details. Yeah. That's the hard part, right? I mean, that's, that's why it's fun to watch some of the really, really small folks. Like I saw that in Japan where guys are just really, really technical because it's out of necessity. Or even me and Chaz trained on Wednesday. There's a good example right there. He actually said today that he's been working on his passing a lot and he put some pressure on me on Wednesday where it was a funny position where he's making fun of himself. But like, I was like the entire time he was on top of me trying to pass, I could tell where his center of gravity was right on my chest and I was getting uncomfortable. And Chaz is light featherweight, he's 150 pounds and I'm 190 plus, right? And I was getting stressed but stuck on bottom trying to sweep him, unable to find that fulcrum to be able to kind of dump him the way I was trying to. And that's the fun part, right? Those smaller guys that really pay attention to the details and I'm not just trying to hug them and throw them on bottom, you know, so. We can all be honest with our training, right? And we know, and you brought this up today when we were closing class out, like you want to freaking push or not, you know? I mean, don't tell me you're a part of this life and then freaking chill, you know? I mean, you're in or out. And on top of that, you know, including being honest while you're training and do you really got another one in the tank or not? Probably yes. You know the level of effort you're putting out behind the scenes as well. And when I think about somebody like a Chaz, I think about Jed in this category as well, our purple belt friend. Like they're real, real students. And like when I look at myself in the mirror, like I don't have that level of studious discipline where I will sit down and actually study, you know? I don't either though. I'm getting lazy. I don't either. I'm going to be honest. There's parts that you might not need, you know? But I'm intentionally watching. Even when I'll sit there on the side after training sometimes, and of course I'll get my social hour in too, but sometimes I'll just watch the way people are moving when they're drilling stuff just to see that. I'm not even listening to their words. I just want to see their body positioning where they're doing things, especially the people that are very technical, that aren't, you know, necessarily always the biggest and strongest. Because I got the strong part and big part down. Everybody tells me how chubby I look. I'd love to. I'd love to challenge, go through my challenge flag out on that one. I just don't get it. Some days I'm 192, the next I'm 198. I don't know. The pizza. It must be, man. That crumb diet. No, it's corn fed. We're out there corn fed. Corn fed diet. Watch out. Thank you for listening to the BJJ Executive Podcast. As a reminder, if you enjoyed the contents of this episode and other episodes, then please do us a favor and spread the word to others in the community. As always, thank you for making this a part of your journey. And we are out. Transcribed by https://otter.ai