Episode 202 - Mr. Ron Amram
Mr. Ron Amram is a multi-disciplined martial arts instructor and school owner from Australia with an excellent story.
Mr. Ron Amram - Episode 202
I don't have a dial, I have a switch it's on its off, you know there is no 30%, there is no 50%, there is no 70%, I do 100% right on. And with the martial arts at the moment, it's completely on.
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When I first learned of Mr. Ron Amram it was on his blog, which is part of his school's website. As I read through an article I found myself nodding along - feeling like he and I could have had the same upbringing. I was reading an article written by someone who understood not only the traditions we hold dear in martial arts, but also made space for improving on those traditions where it made sense.Which is why I am so pleased to have him on the show today. Mr. Amram is kind, open and funny. I enjoyed my time with him and I hope you do as well.
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Show Notes
Movies - The Raid, The Raid 2, UndisputedActor - Scott AdkinsBooks - Zen in the Martial Arts, The Book of Five RingsYou can find Mr. Amram at his school's website and on Facebook.On today's episode, we mentioned the previous guest Gershon Ben Keren. The article from Mr. Amram's blog I mentioned is here.
Ron Amram
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.
Welcome to Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, and you're about to hear episode 202. It’s a good one. Today, we’re joined by Mr. Ron Amram. You're going to like this one.
At Whistlekick, we make the world’s best sparring gear, and here on Martial Arts Radio, we bring you the best podcast on traditional martial arts two times every week. Welcome. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, and I'm the founder of Whistlekick Sparring Gear and Apparel. Thank you to all of you returning listeners, and welcome to the new listeners out there.
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When I first learned of Mr. Ron Amram, it was on his blog, which is part of his school’s website. As I read through an article, I found myself nodding along, feeling like he and I could have had the same upbringing. I was reading an article written by someone who understood not only the traditions we hold dear in martial arts, but also made some space for improving on those traditions where it made sense, which is why I'm so pleased to have him on the show today. Mr. Amram is kind, open, funny. I enjoyed my time with him, and I hope you do, as well.
Mr. Amram? Welcome to Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio.
Mr. Ron Amram
Great to be here, Jeremy. Thanks so much. I'm a big fan.
Jeremy Lesniak
Well, thanks. Obviously you mean a fan of the show and not me, because I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy with a microphone who people have continued to listen to. I don't know why. I have to assume it’s because we get great guests, like yourself, that come on and are willing to give up their evening, in this case, because listeners, if you can't tell, there's a bit of an accent there. Our guest today is not from within the continental United States, which is … Lately, we've had a fair amount of international guests, which is cool. I'm really digging that, so thanks for giving up part of your evening and making the time to do this.
Mr. Ron Amram
Oh, my pleasure, and you know, I think part of the reason that people continue to listen is because you do really great work, I think, with getting people who are happy to talk about martial arts regardless of style, or organization, or affiliation. There's no politics. It’s all just about the arts, which is what it should be.
Jeremy Lesniak
Well, thank you, and that is the goal. There's enough politics being discussed in everyone’s daily lives, regardless of where you are. We don't need to bring any of that in here. We’re just … I think we’re a large community of people that love what they do, and I’m glad to see that as the show grows, people are realizing that we are far more the same than we are different, which was one of the goals at the onset.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely. 100% right.
Jeremy Lesniak
Cool. Of course, we’re here to talk about martial arts. We’re here to talk about you and your martial arts journey, hear some stories, and I’d love to get started by knowing where your story originated. What’s your martial arts superhero origin story, if you will?
Mr. Ron Amram
Alright, so, I grew up in Israel, and I’ve always been a fan of martial arts from when I was really young, so I grew up watching Van Damme, and Chuck Norris, and Bruce Lee, and those kinds of movies, and always been fascinated with it. In fact, one of my very first memories as a kid is of my older brother teaching me and my sister how to do the crane kick - you know, the infamous crane kick from Karate Kid - in the kitchen, and I remember going to school the next day and telling everybody that I know karate.
Yeah, I did a bunch of martial arts growing up. I did fencing for a while. I don't know if that classifies as a martial art or a combat sport, but I did it for a while and really enjoyed it, competed in it for a little while and did well. I did Shotokan Karate when I was really young, just at the local community center, for a little while. I did Aikido with … One of my best friend’s dads was a Third Dan in Aikido, and he’d let us get together and train in his garage every week, so I did a whole bunch of this stuff, and then this was growing up probably up until about ... About until I was 14 or so, and then my dad got really unwell. He had cancer, and he passed away, and I just became a pretty angry and rebellious teen, and started getting into a lot of trouble in school and stuff like that.
A couple of the … You know, it’s funny. Now that I'm thinking back about it, I was thinking about telling this story and telling about a couple of the things that happened, and it’s only now 20 years later that I'm connecting some of this stuff to the stuff that I'm learning now, but essentially I got into a couple of fights in school and found that the stuff that I was taught wasn't working for me, and it could be … It was probably a lot of it had to do with my own learning. I was immature, and I was young, and probably not advanced enough to actually apply any of those techniques or the skill in a real-life context, or maybe it was the system, or maybe it was the teacher, I don't know. Probably a little bit of all of it, but I found that, yeah, I essentially got beat up pretty good, and that stuff I thought was going to work didn't work, and that didn't click for me until very recently, connecting that to a lot of stories that you hear about … Stories and discussions, I guess, about what is combative, and what is self defense, which I think there is a lot of discussion about that going on at the moment in martial arts communities.
Jeremy Lesniak
Sure.
Mr. Ron Amram
I saw a really discussion the other day about is Aikido still a martial art? It was a really interesting podcast with some high level Aikido experts discussing it.
[Inaudible 6:26]one part of it was that I felt that the art that I had learned up to that point, although not to a high level, but relatively consistently over a period of time, let me down. One of the other things that clicked, I remember another incident when I got beat up by a kid, and then he stood up and was bragging to his mates. I stood up and I tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned around, I hit him with a really hard straight right and ran away. I think [inaudible 7:10]I was 13 or 14, and one of the things I realized then was that sometimes being sneaky is better than learning any technique.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah, so after that point, it felt like I didn't really … I was let down. I didn't really train anymore. Yeah, I stopped training in the martial arts. Then we moved to Australia when I was about 16. I say I stopped training, but I was still watching a lot of movies, and I was still really fascinated by it. I just didn't have any inclination to train anymore. I had a very sedentary lifestyle at that point. I became really overweight, and I was drinking tons of soft drinks, and eating junk food all day. I actually weight a lot less now than I did 20 years ago.
Anyway, when I moved out of home, I was about 18 or 19. My cousins and I used to go to the video store every weekend and just get all the cheesiest old-school martial arts VHS tapes we could find, and it was some of the best times ever. We’d spend hours at the shop just going through all of them, and watching Kickboxer 4, or Bloodsport 3, all of the ones that even the people who like … The original actors had given up on and didn't want to do them anymore.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yes.
Mr. Ron Amram
So they were fantastic. We used to love it. I was just remembering, one of those we stumbled upon the very first UFC event on VHS, and took it home, watched it, and our jaws was on the floor going, “How did we not know about this all this time?” I think I went back the next day and rented everything they had, and just watched it incessantly, over and over again.
I went through a phase after that where I was a bit of a fitness junky. Still wasn't doing any martial arts, but I was going to the gym every day, and I was running, and I was swimming, and I was doing a lot of stuff. I think in terms of confidence of me being able to handle myself, of me being a 20- or 21-year old who was going out on a regular basis to nightclubs and stuff like that, I felt that because I was fit, I had the ability to defend myself. [Inaudible 9:48]you know, I think that's probably a misconception with a lot of guys. You see some dude who’s 6-foot-4, and he’s absolutely ripped, and he’s benching whatever he’s benching, or dead lifting whatever he’s dead lifting, you go, “Wow. I wouldn't want to mess with that guy,” and it’s got absolutely nothing to do with fighting abilities. It’s just they just look scary.
If I can backtrack a little bit …
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah, by all means.
Mr. Ron Amram
… and maybe tie that to what I was saying before about those arts feeling like they'd let me down when I was a bit younger, and then finding that maybe a cheap shot was the better way of doing things, is one of the, I guess, pillars that - two pillars, I suppose - that we have in training that one of my senseis, Dr. Gav Schneider, talks about a lot is the difference between attributes and skills. I can’t remember if maybe your interview with Gershon Ben Keren, I think he might have said something similar. In fact, Gershon was actually on the grading panel when I got my shodan in Krav.
Jeremy Lesniak
Oh, cool. Small world.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah, in fact I'm … Yeah, it is. Not only that, I'm going for my nidan in two weeks, and he’s going to be on the grading panel for that as well.
Jeremy Lesniak
That's funny. He lives just a few hours away. I haven't met him. You're the other side of the world, and you’ll have hung out with him twice.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah, that's right. He’s an awesome guy, and he’s a phenomenal instructor. He’s such a good teacher.
Yeah, so one of the things that Gav and Gershon talk about quite a lot is the difference between attributes and skills. When we look at stuff like attributes, you're looking at physical attributes, speed, strength, timing, ability to control range, chin, all that kind of stuff. When we look at attributes, we look primarily at the techniques that you know and how well you can apply them. One of the assumptions that we make when we deal with … I guess that I make when I teach Krav Maga or self defense is that everything else being equal, attributes trump skill. If you've got two combatants, they're both, let’s say, 30 years old, same height, same weight. One is an absolute beast. He’s super fit, he’s super strong, he can control timing, he’s got really good timing, he can control range really well, he can take a hit and he doesn't care, but his technique is God awful, can’t throw a punch to save his life. The other guy, when he’s shadow boxing, he looks amazing. Everything is super clean. Everything is exactly as it should be. It’s textbook, but he’s unfit, he’s scared, he can’t take a hit, he can't hit hard. So if you put those two in a fight, who would win? Most people would say, “Well, the first one,” and I agree.
I think that ties a lot to … I work a lot with personal trainers. I was a personal trainer for a while as well, and that common misconception that going to the gym is going to be able to make you be able to defend yourself because you're strong and you're fast, and I guess there is actually an element of truth to it, as much as a martial artist I’d hate to admit it, that it’s not all about skills a lot of the time. It is just about the attributes. If you get somebody like that … Some of the guys that I train with who are beginners and are not necessarily skilled, man, I don't want to fight them. They're horrible to fight.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
Anyways, I digressed a little bit.
Jeremy Lesniak
Digress all you want, all you choose to.
Mr. Ron Amram
Fantastic.
Jeremy Lesniak
We’re getting into good stuff.
Mr. Ron Amram
Awesome, yeah, so going back, I was about 21, and I was fairly confident. I was fit, I was going out a lot, and all was well and good, and then I was … I started to go to university to study music when I was … You know, I can't actually remember now. I would have been 24, maybe? 25? 24? This is actually something I haven't shared with a lot of people before, so it will be … Hopefully I can get through it without getting too emotional.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. Take your time.
Mr. Ron Amram
I was studying music, and part of going to a music academy, I think, is that you get exposed to a lot of the things that go behind the scenes with music, with playing live shows at clubs and stuff like that. I got into a lot of drugs, and I got into a lot of trouble, and the relationship I had at the time fell apart because I was pretty much off my chops. I don't know if that's an American term as well. It’s an Australian one.
Jeremy Lesniak
Not an American term, but I get what you're saying.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah, okay. Yeah, great. So, I was getting into a lot of trouble, and I was doing a lot of drugs, and in a really bad headspace for a few years, and then I found Sensei Noah Greenstone through a girl I was dating at the time. She had a great kid, and he was doing Jiu-jitsu. I ended up taking him to class a couple of times, and I thought to myself, “Wow, I really should get back into martial arts. This looks so cool.” I had a chat with Noah, and I started training, and that was the point for me where my life did a 180, where I went from when I was pretty young, just getting into trouble all the time, and getting into fights, and generally just not being a great guy, to finding something that I found gave me purpose, something that resonated with me, I guess, on a physical level, and on an emotional level, and on an intellectual level. Yeah, and then I went from not doing martial arts, or not having done martial arts in probably 10 years, to training two, three hours a night, six nights a week. I became completely obsessed.
Yeah, so I've been training with Noah for … This was in 2007, I think, so about 10 years now. Then we decided to open Combat Arts Institute about five years ago. Actually, it will be five years next week.
Jeremy Lesniak
Oh, cool. Happy Anniversary.
Mr. Ron Amram
Thank you very much. Yeah, so I've been training with Noah, and that was primarily in Danzan Ryu Jiu-jitsu, and Krav Maga, and Filipino Martial Arts, all of which I still do and really love. Then, through Noah, I met a few other teachers that I still train with quite a lot. You know, it’s funny. A lot of the time, well at least to me, but I hear this discussion around martial arts quite regularly, in terms of the unification, or the harmony, or the balance of the body and the mind and the spirit, and I think different teachers resonate with maybe different aspects of those. For me, there's those particular three who have had the biggest influence on me as a martial artist are very much connected to each one of those. Dr. Gav Schneider, everything he does is technically … I dare use the word flawless, even though I know we shouldn't as martial artists because nothing is ever perfect. His technique is just phenomenal. Everything he does is picture-perfect in almost every aspect, whether it’s striking, or stand-up grappling, or ground fighting, or using weapons, or anything, he’s just phenomenal, and that’s the connection to the body for me.
There's a gentleman I train with by the name of Manny DeMatos, Master Manny DeMatos, and Manny is like a master strategist. I don't know anybody who can think faster on his feet. You know, a lot of time … I don't know if you've dabbled in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu at all, but one of the things they talk about in BJJ all the time is the ability to think three, four steps ahead of your opponent, and strategize your game, and really think about how to implement your own battle plan in a match, and I don't know anybody who can do that better than Manny, even though he’s primarily a boxer.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
He has this just absolutely phenomenal knack for strategy, and being able to read people, and reading tells. It’s fantastic. Every time you do a session with him, you come away going, “I can see myself getting better almost instantaneously,” which I think is the sign of a great teacher.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
Lastly is Noah, who is my sensei and my business partner who I've been training with for so long. I think Noah just exemplifies the spirit of budo and the values of bushido. He’s completely budo, budo personified. Yeah, so those three have had the body, the mind, and the spirit for me. I think the thing that’s really important with all three of them is they're all phenomenal teachers in their own way. They teach very differently, but they're all phenomenal teachers.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
I feel that for me, I think actually you mentioned in one of our previous chats, that on one of my blogs ... I have this blog that I write about a lot, and there's this article put up about why you should beat up your instructors in training.
Jeremy Lesniak
A wonderful article. I’ll make sure that one in particular gets into the show notes.
Mr. Ron Amram
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. That one actually came about after I was going against something that I've been told a lot growing up as a martial artist, which is you should not spar with students because if they beat you, or if you don't perform, then sometimes you can lose students, or your reputation gets hurt and all that kind of stuff, and I get it. Fair enough, but also, the environment that I train in I’d I like to think is very much not like that. One of the things that I talk about in this blog, or in this article, is everybody finds their own path in the martial arts in different things, and as much as I would have absolutely loved to, and I guess I'm answering another question now as well, to have done a lot of martial arts competition, I got into martial arts relatively later in life. I didn't start properly training until I was 26, and the last three years I've had a lot of injuries, and not a lot of luck with competition.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
I've found my vocation as a martial artist primarily as a teacher, which I absolutely love, and I think it’s super important. Martial arts is supposed to be taught.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yes.
Mr. Ron Amram
It’s supposed to be passed on from person to person, from sensei to student, from senpai to student, whatever it is, and that's part of the beautiful relationship that we have, that we transmit knowledge, and we adapt, and we grow, and we learn together. Yeah, I think that's very much where I end up, where people ask me what is it that you do, and I say, “Well, I'm martial artist and a teacher, and sometimes a teacher first and a martial artist second.”
Jeremy Lesniak
I want to roll back ...
Mr. Ron Amram
Please.
Jeremy Lesniak
… Because there were a couple pivots in your life that I want to dig into, because I think they're important to understanding who you are as a person, which of course who you are as a person changes, but that affects who you are as a martial artist.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak
So, here you are, you're a young kid, you're learning martial arts, and then your dad passes. Anybody that's lost a parent, anybody that's lost anyone important to them knows that that can be a very transformational time. Sometimes it’s a really good thing, sometimes it’s the opposite, and it sounds like losing your father set you in a very different direction. You mentioned you were angry, you were getting into fights, you weren't training.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely, so … Yeah, look, you're 100% right.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay. Alright.
Mr. Ron Amram
It was an event that, I think, for me … Look, my dad was a very powerful and almost imposing figure. He was ridiculously intelligent. I think he had an IQ of 190, or something like that. What he did for his day job was to run a school for gifted kids, so there was always this expectation at home to live up to a certain standard in terms of performance in school and stuff like that. Sometimes it was implicit, and sometimes it was explicit, but up until that point I was a straight A student, and I think when he passed, in a way I felt that I had to rebel against anything that was orderly, or structured, or … Yeah, relating to anything like that, anything that gives you structure, and part of that was training as well.
Jeremy Lesniak
Sure, and you went in the opposite direction.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak
You talked about moving from Israel to Australia, and not being physically active, and putting on weight, but what I found interesting though there is you still had some tie to martial arts. You were still watching a lot of movies, and then you pick up UFC1. What we didn't hear about was what changed your sedentary lifestyle. Was it watching UFC1? Did that click for you, or was there something else that got you off the couch?
Mr. Ron Amram
Actually, you know what? It was my cousins who I was living with at the time. They were both always very fit. They didn't play sports, like any group sports or anything like that, but they were always really active. They used to run a lot, used to go swimming a lot, they had a lot of mates in school who just ... They'd get together and play Aussie-rules football, or rugby, or tennis, or anything like that.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
So, when I moved out of home and I moved with them, they invited me a couple of times to go work out with them. They said, “Why don't you come with us? We’re going to the local pool. We’re just going to do laps.” “Awesome. No worries.” So, I came down. I think they did 20 laps each, and I got through, like, four. I wouldn't even call it swimming. It was like drowning with forward momentum. I think I got through maybe four laps before I was like, “Nah, this is … This is not happening.” Then, a couple of days later, they dragged me down there again, and this time I got through a little bit more, and then through a little bit more, and then through a little bit more. Within a few weeks, I was doing quite well, and maybe not technically as a swimmer, but persistent nonetheless.
Yeah, I just became a bit of a fitness junkie from there. All of a sudden, I found that I started losing weight, and I got a bit more confident, meeting girls was easier, talking to people was easier. I think that that reflected in a lot of other things in my life at the time, which I think, you know, just like martial arts does. Even though it wasn't directly that, once you start being a bit more active, and you lose that first pound, or you get that first stripe on your belt, or you do something like that, all of a sudden you ask yourself, “Wow. I wonder what else I can do that I always thought I couldn't?” For me, that was the point where all of a sudden, I've gone from failing everything in high school, and barely scraping through, to doing really well at university. I got top scores for a lot of the units, I got invited back to teach as a lecturer pretty much as soon as I graduated, and I actually worked at university for about 10 years after that.
It all had to do with that, and I think it’s one of the most empowering things about martial arts, is … I think it was one of your guests, was it Phil Knight perhaps, who said that the hardest thing that you're ever going to do is step on the mats for the first time and put on that white belt.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
I can’t remember who said it, but it was one of …
Jeremy Lesniak
No, I think you're right. I think it was him. That definitely was a recent episode.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak
They blur a bit for me because they don't always come out in order, and yeah. Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
Sure. No worries, but no, it’s 100% right. I think the beautiful thing about it is that once you do that, all of a sudden you go, “Wow. That's something I thought I could never do. I wonder what else I can do that I always told myself I couldn't, or somebody that else told me I couldn't?”
Jeremy Lesniak
It’s certainly a powerful realization to know that what we are capable of is so much broader than what we believe. One of the things I've found is that that continues to be true. There's no one wall that we break down to say, “Oh, I thought I couldn't do that, but now I can do that, but this is all I can do.” There are no boundaries. There are no walls. We can just keep pushing forward. You don't have to watch too much sports on television to see how the human body is evolving, whether that's weight lifting, or martial arts, or professional basketball, or anything. People continue to push those boundaries, and the human body, the human mind, is pretty exceptional.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely, 100%, but you know, I think the thing that's interesting is that I find that those changes almost always start with a physical change first, like you go for a run, or you take a class, or you do something that's almost always … At least that's what my experience has been, and with people that I teach as well. It almost always comes from achieving something on a physical level first, but then, once you think about it and give it a bit of time to sink in, it then translates into something more.
Jeremy Lesniak
Right. Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
And I think a lot of it - I could be wrong - could also be my understanding of how you learn martial arts. Just start with … You learn technique before you learn everything else, and the better you get the more you think about that technique in context, how to apply it, where can you apply it, how can you apply it, who against, in what situations. It’s one of these beautiful things that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don't know.
Jeremy Lesniak
Sure.
Mr. Ron Amram
Breaking it down into even smaller and smaller components. I draw back to music. It’s like looking at the subdivisions of rhythm. You start with whole notes, and then you go to semiquavers, and then you go to eighth notes, and sixteenth notes, and thirty-twos, and sixty-fours, and so on, so forth, and the better you are, the deeper your understanding is of the art, the more you can see those small, tiny, miniscule gaps, or pauses, or facets of everything, and that's also something you can then apply to life, but again, I think it always starts as a physical manifestation first.
Jeremy Lesniak
We’ve heard a lot about you within the last time, however long it’s been now.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak
We got a little bit more than your origin, right? We've got a lot of who you are, and you did a great job of connecting a lot of the dots, and I'm crossing out some of the questions on my list because you've already answered them.
Mr. Ron Amram
Cool.
Jeremy Lesniak
We’ve got a good sense of your path, and I want to thank you for being so open in sharing the things that you shared because some of that stuff is difficult and very private, so it means a lot to me that you're willing to do that.
Mr. Ron Amram
Oh, my absolute pleasure, and I think it’s … My journey has been that, and I think it’s been a great one. If I can … Like I said, I always think of myself as a teacher first, and if I can help people through my experience to either learn from my mistakes, or to help them through something that they're going through, then that's what it’s about. If sharing that helps, then happy.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. We’ve heard a bit about some of the non-martial arts things that you were into at various times in your life, but how about now? Now that you are a very different person, and I hope it’s okay to say that, but …
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak
… It sounds like you've transformed quite a bit, in physical ways, and in likely emotional ways, what does your life look like outside of martial arts? Are you still involved in music? Do you still play sports? Do you still go to the gym? Are there other things? What are you passionate about that isn't martial arts?
Mr. Ron Amram
I was dreading you getting to that question, for the sole reason that … Not a lot. My life revolves around training at the moment. I run a dojo. Most of my mates are from training, and I am … I think part of the reason that I've had a lot of the experience that I've had is that I'm a very, I guess, obsessed maybe is the right word, individual. When I find something I like, I'm like a dog with a bone. As Noah usually says, my sensei, he says, “I don't have a dial. I have a switch. It’s on or it’s off. There’s no 30%, there's no 50%, there's no 70%. I do it 100% or I don't.” With martial arts at the moment, it’s completely all-encompassing for now. Even if I sit at home, and I've had a long training session, I'm tired, I’ll be watching TV, and without thinking about it, my hands will start running Filipino stick patterns or something like that. The good thing is I have a very forgiving wife, very understanding. She’s … Yeah, she’s happy to let me do my thing.
What other things? I've always been a very keen learner. Other than martial arts, I'm always reading, I'm always writing. I spent a lot of time in university. I've got degrees in finance, and music, and fitness, and security, and education, a whole bunch of stuff. In fact, I was just recently looking at re-enrolling in university again for a masters in criminology, just for, you know, a bit of fun.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
So, I'm always reading and writing. I like to spend a lot of time with my cats. I'm kind of a bit of a crazy cat person.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay, that I would not have expected. Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah. Huge fan of comic books and anime, so again it comes back to reading a lot.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
I think that’s … Again, I might be preempting here, but I know one of the questions that you often ask is about books, and I read incessantly. I usually have two or three books on the go at any time, and I go through them quickly. Always keen to learn and absorb as much as I can.
Jeremy Lesniak
Have you always been a big reader?
Mr. Ron Amram
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
Very much so, and I think that's something I got from my parents. You walk into my mom’s house and it looks like a library. It’s just books everywhere, and both my mom and my dad, and both my brothers and my sister are all the same.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay. Alright. The picture of you is becoming clearer, isn't it? We’re starting to plug in more holes.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak
I want to talk about stories now, because you gave us a bit of surface stuff, went a little deeper on some things, and I know a lot of the stuff that you hinted at can go deeper. I'm not going to pretend to decide which one is the best one to share, but if I asked you to share your best martial arts story, what would that be?
Mr. Ron Amram
Sure. I had a list of a couple, and if you don't mind, if I can go through one or two, maybe then you can decide which one is worth sharing, or share both, or whatever it is that you reckon?
Jeremy Lesniak
If you're struggling to decide, give us both.
Mr. Ron Amram
Fantastic. One of the things that I think a martial artist has to ask themselves at some point in their career is, and I hinted at that with me being a teacher, but the other thing is what is it that you are training for? Is it for the sake of the art? Is it for competition? Is it for self defense? What are you doing this for? For me, it was always self defense comes first, and that's something that I still hold true to very much. When I train, I cross train a lot. My main martial arts is obviously Krav Maga, but I've got a shodan in Danzan Ryu Jiu-jitsu, and I've been doing Filipino martial arts. I've never graded in it, but I've been doing it for seven or eight, nine years. The last few years I've been obsessed with boxing, and I've been doing BJJ. I cross train a lot, but for me, whenever I train in a new style, or I go back to visiting something I haven't done, the focus is always how can I apply that in if I had to fight for my life?
An intense story that … It was when I was working bars. I was working doors for a little while as a bouncer, and being not a big guy - I'm 6 foot … Sorry, 5 foot 8 … I was going to say 6’8”.
Jeremy Lesniak
I was going to disagree with you being not a big guy, then.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah. So, I’m 5’8”, and I'm about 75 kilos, and I'm not an imposing figure in any shape, way, or form, and working doors for me was really more of a professional development experiment, I guess. I'd been training in Krav Maga and martial arts for a while, and the hard thing about learning self defense is that you don't have a place where you can test it. You can't go into a competition and go, “Okay, I’ll see if I can win, or I lose, or how well I win, or how badly I lose, and then I adjust and I try again.” You can do pressure drills, and you can do simulations and all that kind of stuff, but it’s never going to be exactly the same.
So, at that point, when I decided to go work doors, I was actually a lecturer at university. I was teaching finance. I already had … I was still teaching music part time in the evening and stuff, so I had a career, and I was earning good enough money, and I didn't need it, but one of my instructors was saying, “Well, if you're learning self defense, you should probably get some front-line experience.” So, I went out and did a security course, and I ended up working as a bouncer just to put myself out there and see if … if something happened …
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
... if I could deal with it. And that's not to say that I was the kind of bouncer who would go and just beat people up. In fact, I hardly ever had to put my hands on somebody because I like to think I'm pretty good at talking to people. Sorry, I'm digressing again.
Jeremy Lesniak
No, by all means, please.
Mr. Ron Amram
Long story short, there’s one particular incident which really was etched in my mind where I was working at a nightclub where we had lock-out at a particular time, so after that time, you're not allowed to let people in, even if they’ve … Sorry, new people in unless they’ve already been inside. So, if they had a stamp, they could go in and out. Otherwise, not allowed in because the bar is about to close.
Jeremy Lesniak
Sure.
Mr. Ron Amram
It was passed that time, and one of the guys who was working at the bar went out and brought some girl back with him. He obviously could get in. She looked like she was very well intoxicated, and looked like she had been taking drugs all night, was definitely not all there. She wanted to get in, and she started acting up when I told her that she couldn't. She ended up taking her shoes off and throwing them at a couple of bystanders, and then she found a can of Red Bull that somebody had thrown on the ground. It was empty. She picked it up, and she tore it in half, and then she jammed one of those halves in her wrist and split her forearm completely open. There's blood gushing everywhere, and she's running, and she’s smearing it on the side of the building, and she’s shouting at people, and then she looks at me, and she goes, “You didn't let me in. This is all your fault.” The scariest incident I have ever had in my martial arts and security career was not fighting big dudes. It was this little, 5-foot-5 girl in a dress, running at me with a bloody can, going, “I'm going to kill you! I'm going to murder you!”
You know, we dealt with it. We managed to restrain her, and call the police, and sort it all out, but I got home, and just the absurdity, I guess, of the situation dawned on me once I had a chance to calm down and think about it a little bit. It’s interesting the kind of things that get a response out of you. The thing that scares you the most is not what you thought it was going to be. Because, going to work in security or going to work doors, you're going, “Oh, man. What if there's some dude who’s huge, and he’s going to get aggressive, and I have to throw him out?” Totally was not the case, and those ones are always relatively easy to deal with. Yeah, so that was one story which was pretty intense.
Jeremy Lesniak
That's heavy. That's some heavy stuff there, and I'm wondering about the psychological impact for you. Was it hard to go back the next day, or your next shift? How did you handle that?
Mr. Ron Amram
Well, it was. There was a few things that were difficult about it. I think on a personal level, having gone through, like I said, going through a period of going through addiction, seeing somebody else in that state of mind where you’d have to try and restrain them, that's confronting in its own right. You kind of ask, “Wow, was I ever like that?” I don't think I was, but on an emotional level, that hit me quite hard.
The other thing was that some of the things she was shouting, which you get sometimes when you throw people out, is, “You don't know who my friends are. You don't know who my family is. You better watch your back walking to your car tonight. We’ll find out where you live,” that kind of stuff. Yeah, that night, definitely, when my shift was over and I was walking to my car, I was looking around, and I got into my car, and I drove off quickly. I think it was not long after that that I decided that I was … I'd been doing it for long enough, I think I'd gotten what I was going to get out of it, and I can go back to just focusing on teaching martial arts and get back to my day job without thinking about it too much. Yeah, so it wasn't long after that that I think I reached that point where I don't want to deal with violence on a regular basis.
Jeremy Lesniak
I don't blame you. And what's your other story?
Mr. Ron Amram
So, the other story is, I guess, not so much a martial arts story, per se, but a story that I feel has a lot to do with budo, you know, with warrior spirit, or the values of martial arts, bushido. About a year and a half ago - this was the end of 2015 - my wife and I went to Japan for the first time - one and only time, but I'm sure we will go back - and we absolutely fell in love with the place. It felt like home almost immediately. We spent a lot of time walking around, as I think you do in Japan, and Kyoto specifically. There's a lot of temples and a lot of things to see. You can get a bicycle, or you can get a [inaudible 46:02]so it’s a lot easier to do, but we just liked walking, so we walked everywhere. We walked probably a dozen Ks a day, and it’s fantastic.
There was this one day we had both … We didn't have a good day. You know, it happens sometimes. I had hurt my ankle in a competition just before we went over, and it was giving me a lot of grief walking, and my wife wasn't feeling well. We had walked into a store just to get a cup of coffee while we were gathering our thoughts before we continued walking. This was at a bottom of a hill, quite a large hill. This old Japanese man who was … I don't know, he would have been … My guess would have been his late 70s or early 80s, who was walking down that hill. He was walking very slowly and taking his time, and he comes into the shop. My wife and I are sitting there, and we’re not talking. We both look a little bit sad, and just drinking our coffee, and he comes and sits there and looks at us for a few minutes. Then, he opens his bag, and just takes out a couple of biscuits, and just gives it to us. He didn't speak any English, and he just gives it to us. He said something in Japanese which I didn't understand, and I just said, “Arigato,” because in my mind I was like, “Thank you very much.” He just smiled at me, and then he got up and he started walking back up the hill, really, really slowly.
My wife and I just sat there and looked at each other, and we both just completely burst into tears. It was the most beautiful display of just spontaneous kindness to somebody who just looked like they needed it. Not necessarily a martial arts story, but something that to me stuck, like that's a story I'm going to remember for the rest of my life, as my wife says as well.
Jeremy Lesniak
Sure. Sure.
Mr. Ron Amram
But I felt that, to me, completely encompassed what training is about. It’s about doing those small things to help people, even when maybe you don't have much and you've been going through something hard yourself. Yeah, I think that that, for me, encompassed budo completely.
Jeremy Lesniak
That's a great story, and depending on how you define martial arts, that either is the heart of martial arts, or maybe it’s not. Either way, it’s a great story, and it’s clear that it’s had an impact on you.
Mr. Ron Amram
For sure.
Jeremy Lesniak
You can just hear it in your voice. I've had a couple incidents like that in my life, where you just have to look around, and say, “You know, was that just that person taking some pity, or offering me some kindness, or did this incident have a broader connection?” Whether you term it spirit, God, the universe, however you want to look at it. I look at situations like that and think, “Maybe this is about more than a biscuit right now.”
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah. I think you just nailed a great quote there. Yeah, I'm sorry, if I can back-track again, because …
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. By all means.
Mr. Ron Amram
So, going back to the other story that I had before … I actually had this in my notes, but I seem to have skipped over it. One of the other implications of the crazy Red Bull can-wielding lady, was the connection, I guess, that had to my understanding of what self defense training is. I had experienced violence before, but I think that was the first time there was literally somebody who was going to kill me had they had the opportunity. First and last, thankfully. Again, one of the thoughts that I had when I got home - you asked about it before - was would my training … My training did actually prove useful, but if I had not trained the way I trained, would I have been able to deal with the situation and get home safely? Like I said, for me, the focus on training had always been self defense comes first, so whenever I'm learning a new technique, I'm always thinking about street application, or self defense application.
The other thing that is really important with that is that when you look at that incident as a whole, not necessarily the girl grabbed a knife and slashed at the #1 angle on that side of me, I have to do a block, and trap and restrain it, and whatever. It’s what happened before and after. I think, again, Sensei Gershon Ben Keren talked about it quite extensively, about how do you identify the signs that something is about to happen, and how do you include, incorporate the escalation and verbal diffusion techniques in your training? How do you deal with the after-effects of adrenal dump, or the legal aspects of being in a fight and having to hurt somebody to defend yourself? I think that that's something that's often neglected. I think with Krav Maga specifically, and I'm going to go on yet another detour here …
Jeremy Lesniak
Please.
Mr. Ron Amram
I'm first and foremost a Krav Maga practitioner, which, I think, is a controversial martial art, I dare say. Some people don't classify it as a martial art at all. They say it is a self defense system, which is totally fair. I think it has gotten a bit of a bad rep with having a lot of bogus practitioners, and charging hefty fees for joining associations and stuff like that. A lot of time when I go and cross-train, and people say, “What do you do?” I’ll say, “Well, primarily I train Krav Maga,” and they'll go, “Oh, so you just kick guys in the balls?” I'm like, “Yeah, no, there's a little bit more to it than that.”
Jeremy Lesniak
Sometimes you punch them in the balls.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah, that's right. It’s a little bit more complex than that, but I think that’s one of the main points about learning a martial art or learning self defense - and they can be the same, and sometimes they're not - is dealing with those things that happen before and after. It’s not just the person throws a hook, and you block and counter, and implement your gain, so to speak. A lot of times, it’s how do you avoid being there in the first place, and how do you talk your way out of it, what do you do before, during, and after, not just that? Not everybody teaches that, and not everybody claims that they know how to, and not everybody thinks it's important, and they're all totally valid, but I think that also means … It also brings really important point about whether you know what it is that you're training for, and whether you know where you should be training to get that.
One of the things that I thought was important, and then I've got a block about this as well, which was about finding the right martial arts school for you, because I went through a period where I trained through quite a few places, and some places I loved, and some places I didn't like as much. It wasn't until a few years later that I'd sat down and really wrote down why that was, now that I had a little bit more experience, and that I was getting new students as a teacher, and trying to give them an accurate and honest portrayal or description of what it is that I can offer them. Most of the time, when you go … When people start with a martial art, almost every martial art advertises, “Come and get fit, and learn self defense, and learn a cool art, and meet people.” Not every place does all of that, and that's fine, providing that you know what you're doing, you're providing the right service.
That, I think, gets compounded by the fact that the first time that you are starting with martial arts, and you're going to find a new place, you don't really know what it is that you should be looking for. You know? Most of the understanding, I think, that people have of martial arts and of violence comes through dramatized violence on TV, so we see choreographed fight scenes, but if you've never really seen a fight, you assume that's how it happens. Or you watch combat sports, and you decide that you want to go and compete. I think especially now with UFC and BJJ being as prominent as they are, there's a lot of people who come in and say, “You know, I want to compete. I really, really look up to this fighter. I love what they do, and I want to be that one day.” Fantastic, but what you see when you see on TV is you see that fighter going in, and they have a fight, and they win or they lose, and even if they get knocked out, the ref will wake them up and it will be okay, and you touch gloves, and everybody’s fine. But you don't see the three months of camp leading up to it, and you don't see the brain scans you have to get if you get knocked out after it, and all that stuff.
I think, as a new person going to study, you don't really know what to ask necessarily, or what it is that every style can offer, or what's involved in training. Again, as a teacher, I think that’s one of the most important things is to really be able to provide what are your strengths and your weaknesses as a martial artist and within your martial art, and make sure that your students are aware of that.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. Very good points. Very good points, and folks that … The writing that Mr. Amram has on his blog, there are a lot of martial arts blogs out there, and quite often, when I'm evaluating somebody for the show, whether I'm reaching out to them, or they've reached out to us, I’ll do some research just to get a sense as to who we’re talking about, whether or not they should come on, and I'm a busy guy. I think everyone understands that, but the blog posts that you have up, I read, and I enjoyed reading, and I read them to the end. I don't usually do that. I usually get a sense as to what's going on, “Okay, I’ll skip to the next thing,” but I found them really interesting because of what you're saying and the way you're representing it. That was why I was so happy to have you on, so thank you.
Mr. Ron Amram
Oh, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. When I first started writing a few years ago, one of my teachers who I mentioned before, Manny DeMarcos, who’s, like I said, the master strategist, he does a lot of seminars around the world, and he writes for magazines on a regular basis. One of the things that he encouraged me to do when I started writing was make sure that you write stuff that will get a response, because on one hand, you don't want to say anything that will make people angry, and you don't want to rock the boat, and you don't want to say, “You know, I don't want to offend anybody,” or anything like that, but on the other hand, sometimes you have to say things that will get a response for people to read it. For me, it’s about trying to find that balance between the two of saying what I feel that I need to say, while walking that tightrope of making sure that the message gets across, even if you don't like it, but without it being too abrasive.
Jeremy Lesniak
And sometimes, saying something controversial is good, even if you know that your opinion is in the minority. There are times, not so much with this show or with any of the writing I do related to Whistlekick, but there are times when I teach when I will teach things intentionally wrong, trying to get people to think. As far as I'm concerned, any time you can get people, whether they're training or reading, to consider, to argue for their position, they're thinking, they're developing their skills, and maybe they're considering the other point of view, but to get them to look at what they believe and why, and question it even for a second, I think, leads to better development. As much time as you've spent in a university, I'm sure you can appreciate that mindset, that thought is important.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. I think that … Sorry if I step away for a sec. Feel free to cut me off if I'm talking too much, yeah?
Jeremy Lesniak
No worries. You're doing great.
Mr. Ron Amram
Thanks, buddy. Yeah, I think, especially now, when people … Maybe it’s to the point where you've got to differentiate between information and knowledge. Thinking about what you're doing is a crucial part to learning. Critical reflection is, I find, the difference between people, especially in martial arts, between students who will get better and students who will not, or students who will get better quickly and students who will take a long time. I always encourage my students to ask me as many questions as they can, especially the ones the ones that most instructors don't like, which are the what-ifs. “Yeah, but what if the guy does this when I do it? And what if the guy does that?” Great. It means you've thought about it. Perfect.
I think especially now it seems like the differentiation between information and knowledge is that knowledge is instantaneously available. We've all got smart phones, and if you need to know something, you Google it, or you find it on Wikipedia, or you look up a YouTube video. The assumption is that once you've done it, you know it, but you don't really have to retain any of it because it’s so accessible.
I think that I saw in my time teaching at university, I could definitely see a shift over 10 years in the way that students were approaching the university studies, but I've also seen the same thing sometimes with young people in martial arts, where the focus is on instant gratification rather than … Sorry, let me rephrase. It’s more about breadth than depth. It’s about, “How many techniques am I going to learn today,” rather than get one technique and do 1,000 repetitions until you've nailed it.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
The assumption is that once I've been taught it, if I forget it, I’ll go on YouTube and look it up again.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah, and that kind of forgets some of the important non-physical aspects of martial arts, right? It’s in the 10,000 repetitions that you start to develop the personality, the mental, the emotional, spiritual even, traits.
Mr. Ron Amram
For sure. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak
You don't develop those when you practice a particular move 10 times.
Mr. Ron Amram
100%. 100%, and you know they say the pen is mightier than the sword for a reason. When you look at, I think, at a lot of the great martial artists - and I think one of the perfect examples of that is Miyamoto Musashi, who is obviously a phenomenal samurai and fighter, but also a very accomplished writer and artist - is that the greats are the people who do that, are the people who not only train, but think about why they train, how they train, make notes, and develop that way.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. Let’s move forward. Let’s bring it back almost full circle. Early on we talked about movies and actors, and how influential they were, not just in your martial arts, but in your life. Even though you didn't say it, I'm going to guess that that connecting thread through your time of not doing any training, of still being interested in martial arts movies, I think there was something more to it on some level than just entertainment.
Mr. Ron Amram
Oh, absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak
I think when someone starts training, I think martial arts becomes a part of who they are, and the fact that you ended up training again, to me, is no accident.
Mr. Ron Amram
For sure.
Jeremy Lesniak
When you think back on all those martial arts movies that you've seen, do you have favorites? I mean, it sounds like you've probably seen all of them.
Mr. Ron Amram
I've seen a fair few. Yeah, there's a couple. I think one of my absolute favorites is The Raid, both the first one and the second one. Have you seen those?
Jeremy Lesniak
I've seen the first one.
Mr. Ron Amram
Okay, so yeah, the first time I saw it, I was absolutely gobsmacked. It was such … Other than the fact that I really enjoyed the film itself, I thought it was by far the best fight choreography I've seen in a very, very, very long time. It was fairly graphic, but I thought it was absolutely spectacular. The other thing that I really enjoyed about it was they did a lot of stuff which was obviously cinematic, techniques that are really flashy and cool, but every so often, they'd just throw something in there and you're going, “Wow. You know what? That would actually really work in real life,” which is really cool. They do all these flying, spinning kicks, and cool throws, and block flows, and this and that, and every so often they'd just do like, “Okay, now I'm just going to block, and crack the guy a couple of hard ones, and move on.” Every time I saw it, I just had to smile and go, “Yeah, okay. Sweet.”
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
I thought it was just a nice balance of that. Obviously, the guys were fantastic martial artists.
The other ones that I've recently really enjoyed was the Undisputed series with Scott Adkins. I think there's four of them, and it’s interesting. The movies progressively get worse, but the fight scenes progressively get better.
Jeremy Lesniak
That happens quite often, it seems.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely. I think those movies stay true to the old school feel of proper martial arts movies back in the 80s and 90s, where you’d pick people based on their martial arts and athletic prowess rather than acting.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah, so those are … Yeah, I think they're great.
Jeremy Lesniak
Awesome. Favorite actors?
Mr. Ron Amram
Scott Adkins, at the moment, as I was saying before.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
To me, he feels like the new Van Damme, you know? He does a lot of those kind of movies. That's his niche. He’s obviously a phenomenal athlete. He does some really, really cool stuff, and most of the stuff he’s been in I've really enjoyed.
Jeremy Lesniak
Nice. Let’s talk about books. I'm sure the listeners are guessing that you've probably got quite the library yourself. You're a writer, you enjoy writing about martial arts, you've been a big reader your whole life, and martial arts is a passion.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak
You've got quite the martial arts book library, I'm guessing?
Mr. Ron Amram
I do. I have quite a few.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
A library in general, and martial arts specifically, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak
Sure. Well, if you had to pick a couple to recommend to the listeners, what would those be?
Mr. Ron Amram
Okay, so my absolute favorite is Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah.
Mr. Ron Amram
I think it’s an absolute gem. It’s the way he captures really complex concepts, and is able to explain them and share them in a way that it’s almost instantaneously applicable to your own life, is … I've never read anything like that. Yeah, it’s something else. It instantaneously takes you in, and it’s got a really warm tone to the writing. It feels like he’s your friend from the second he starts writing. Yeah, you can read anything in that book, all these little anecdotes, and you can take years to think about each one of those, but it’s stuff that, to me, I could say that, “Wow, I can apply that to this and this and this, now.”
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. It’s an incredible book, one of my favorites, and we even did an episode on it. 146, for anybody that might be newer to the show.
Mr. Ron Amram
Yeah. Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. There's a brilliant simplicity, I think for me, in that book, in that there's a tremendous amount of content, but it’s easily digestible.
Mr. Ron Amram
Absolutely, and I think one of the things that Sensei Noah often says, and I think that it’s true, is the simple techniques are always the hardest. From learning how to throw a proper punch, or how to do a proper cut with a sword, is something that can take a lifetime to master. I think that's exactly what he’s done there. He’s taken that one punch and that one cut and just said, “Here it is.”
Jeremy Lesniak
Simple doesn't mean easy.
Mr. Ron Amram
Exactly right, and that's in fact pretty much my favorite saying of all time. Just because something is simple, doesn't mean it’s going to be easy to do, and visa versa.
Jeremy Lesniak
Right. Okay, and another book?
Mr. Ron Amram
The Book of Five Rings by Musashi.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. Classic book.
Mr. Ron Amram
That one I don't think is an easy one to digest.
Jeremy Lesniak
No. No, it’s not.
Mr. Ron Amram
Not at all. That's the kind of thing for me that I've read it several times over a decade or so, and usually I’ll read a little bit of it every night or every few days. It’s something that you can read a passage and leave it for a few weeks, and think about it, think about it some more, read it again and think about it some more. yeah, it’s amazing, but it’s not easy reading.
Jeremy Lesniak
What's keeping you going? Why are you still training? What's in the future for you?
Mr. Ron Amram
The immediate future is I've got my second dan grading in two weeks, so I'm actually trying to get myself in the right mindset for that. The long run, for me, it’s just to keep training. It’s to keep learning. I think that's really what it is. I love training. There's no happier place for me, especially when I'm boxing. It’s been my passion the last couple of years. Just get me to put on some gloves and have at it, and I'm as happy as can be.
To keep learning, really. That's all it is. Just to find out what it is that I don't know, how much more I don't know, because there's heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps. Then, try and scratch the surface of that. Hopefully I can do that in a lifetime.
Jeremy Lesniak
Yeah. There's a lot out there. If people want to get a hold of you, if they want to find your website, your blog, find you on social media maybe, how would they do that?
Mr. Ron Amram
The easiest way to do it is to go to our website at Combat Arts Institute of Australia, which is www.CAIA.com.au. Pretty much everything is up there. Some of my blog is up there, our contact details are up there, and everything that we do at Combat Arts is there.
Jeremy Lesniak
Okay.
Mr. Ron Amram
On social media, just look up Ron Amram, come down, and say hi.
Jeremy Lesniak
Nice. Alright. I want to thank you for your time here today. This has been great. You went deep, you were open, and things that I always enjoy in our guests, so thank you for that. I'm hoping I might get you to indulge us with just one last little bit, some parting words of wisdom.
Mr. Ron Amram
Sure. First of all, thanks very much for having me. It was an absolute pleasure, and if anybody who’s listening got something out of it, then it’s an honor and a privilege. I guess the most important message is to never stop learning. Every time you step onto the mat, or step out onto the street in life, there’s something for you to learn. I think if you focus on that, and just at the end of everyday just go, “What did I learn today?” However small and insignificant it may seem at the time, as long as you're doing that, you're growing.
Jeremy Lesniak
I love talking to our international guests, because while they do bring some different elements to the table, they reinforce that as martial artists, we have far more in common than we do separate. Thank you, Mr. Amram, for coming on the show.
Over at WhistlekickMartialArtsRadio.com, you can find the show notes with a number of great photos, links to his blog, which you really do need to check out, as well as links to his school’s website and their Facebook page.
You can find us on social media, @Whistlekick on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and everything else that you can probably think of. You can also check out the show’s Facebook group, Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio Behind the Scenes. Just do a quick search in Facebook. It’s going to come right up.
If you're ready to upgrade your sparring gloves, now’s the time. Check out Whistlekick.com. Free shipping on everything in the domestic US, and reasonable shipping - we don't mark it up - everywhere across the globe.
Thanks for joining me today. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.