Episode 485 - Martial Arts Radio Live (Episode 6)
In this episode, Jeremy brings us the sixth Episode of the Martial Arts Radio Live.
Martial Arts Radio LIVE (Episode 6) - Episode 485
Today's episode is the sixth installment for the Martial Arts Radio Live. Jeremy answers questions and reads stories from the listeners as well as giving out some cool trivia. Listen to find out a lot of surprise announcements and more!
Show Notes
You can read the show notes below or download it here.Jeremy Lesniak:Alright, everybody, welcome to martial arts radio LIVE, this is episode 6. Yes, this is the 6th time that we’ve done this show. First Tuesday of the month, 8 PM Eastern, coming to you live on Facebook. I also am happy, am excited, I made a drink, it's over there and I’m going to have, it's fine, it's ok. I had a drink before. That drink was an alcoholic drink. Had one before the show but it's weak so we’re good. Everybody is saying video quality is decent so good. I'm happy. I fixed some things so we can do this. Why do we do this show?Because it's your opportunity to engage and to have some involvement in what we do with martial arts radio because otherwise, unless you're a guest I'm interviewing, you just get to listen and I like to turn the tables, I like turning you in charge. You're not entirely in charge but you have a say. You get to chat, you can chime in here. Hello to everyone who’s watching and thank you to everyone watching right now. As always, what needs to be said again, I want to give a special shout out to Gabe Siu for all of his help in putting together this and every other episode of martial arts radio live. I'm really happy to have his help and we have not 1, 2, 3 or 4 but 5 pages of material we can potentially go through and we got some fun stuff so I hope you enjoy it. Let’s get into it!As always, we review things from last episode so if you haven't watched the rest of that, you might want to go back and check it out. Notable quotes from Jeremy in Episode 5? I was deployed as a weapon against a goose once. That’s true. Self-defense usually involves bullies who weren’t checked. Yeah, I remember that part towards the end and we were getting some good conversation. A bully’s intent is to assert themselves over you using the minimal amount of force to feel better about themselves. That’s why standing up to a bully works. Andrew says Gabe is the man; yes, he is. I appreciate his help and if you're watching live which we got a handful of you, shout out where you are. I'm not going to name names. I'm going to name places, places of where you are and while you're all chiming into that, check your time. Gabe threw this in and I think this is going to work. I don’t know. There’d probably turn out more. I've used time because I get up early.Alright, you’ve probably seen this graphic. I got to wait until it shows up over here and center it, focus it, can you see it? Come on, Jeremy, from the past. Come on. Oh, the double AA kills me. There we go. It's one of those 6 panels, says nothing because it went blank. I can't do both. What my friends think I do? What's that one? It's somebody breaking. What my idiot friends think I do and it's a scene from Napoleon Dynamite. What white belts think I do? It's Yoda using the force. What brown belts think I do which is a drill instructor yelling. What I think I do and it looks like a group class from a temple, probably in, I don’t know enough about Asian architecture to make a judgment and what I really do and it's standing around yelling at children. It’s a good one.This one will be a little bit easier to zoom in. Martial arts problem #12: she gave you a romantic hug but your mind goes to the next logical step which is a shoulder throw. Any of you judoka out there will get this. This is a couple panels from the second Karate Kid, no, the remake of the Karate Kid and you’ve got Jaden at the top saying but I already learned that and then the instructor, Jackie Chan, at the bottom saying your learning needs more learning as he holds him up over the water and then the last one, you're probably familiar with Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a redneck if, years ago and this is early on in our social media, I went through, I think it was 10 and then 10 more, you might be a martial artist if and some of those have changed a little bit but this says you know you're a martial artist if and it's the sensei from Aikido, everyone you know avoids sneaking up behind you for fear of bodily harm. I mean, some of you out there had somebody come up behind you and tap you on the shoulder, you turn around and your hands are up or maybe you will punch them? Good stuff, good stuff. Keep that towel handy, you might need it. Who knows where the show is going to go? I don’t know.You know you're a martial artist when you imagine yourself defeating bad guys in movie fight scene style of brilliance. I do that all the time. I can be out at a restaurant or at the grocery store and just stop and think, what if it went down right now, what would I do? It usually involves, I think we talked about this, I think that’s coming up, yeah. It's coming up, your homework. What could I grab? What would I have handy and glass wine bottle. That’s the one that you want to get assaulted on because you can get 2 of them. That’s the one. I think that’s a great discussion topic.What aisle of the grocery store contains the best defensive weapons? Is there something out there that’s better than a glass wine bottle? I don’t think there's anything in the produce aisle. Cereal, bags of rice maybe, hot sauce, spray it on somebody’s eyes. You can beat people with frozen meat. I think it's the glass wine bottle. I really do. Watching from Gresham, Oregon. Frank is saying frozen ham but how do you swing a frozen ham? You could throw it and run away and since, I did say defensive weapon, that would apply. I like something with a handle. Laura says once they attack you with a banana, I don’t know what you would do in that case. It depends. Is it a frozen banana? Because I don’t really feel like I would be that concerned of regular banana even if it's a green banana. If it's a really soft banana, that’s just gross. Andrew says most grocery stores now sell pots and pans and knives. That aisle doesn’t count. That aisle does not count. Oh, the cleaning supplies. Yeah, you could throw bleach on people. Frank says that the frozen ham comes with a handle and it's in a net. As someone who does not eat ham and hasn’t for a long time, I've forgotten that. I don’t remember there being a handle but that make sense.I wonder if this is a thing we could do. I wonder if we could rate the best impromptu weapons given the locations like grocery store or clothing store, shoe store. All shoes, variety of shoes but I thought we could rank that stuff. I thought that would be kind of fun. Maybe we’ll do that for next time. Brooms and mops, that’s a good one. Vinegar, I think there's a lot there. I think, yeah. Hardware store, that’s pretty easy. They got tons of stuff in there. You got machetes and rakes. I've said this before on air but I have this whole running list of kind of cliché jokes that I want to explore in competition. I want to do a weapons form with a rake. I want to, what's another one? I want to get up and do a 2-minute bao followed by a single striking technique and then bow out. Stuff like that. Frank said they have some sharp produce. Good times, guys.Questions that we held over from last time and we’re going to get into these now because this is good stuff and you got to have to bear with me, I’ll be yawning because this time of night talking a bunch, I don’t breathe in enough so how much can a person really learn from online instruction? This is a dicey subject. This is one that people get really intense over. Online instruction is the only thing I have the time and the ability to do. Online instruction is stupid and you can't actually learn anything. Well, what's the truth? The truth is in the middle and it's a combination.It is unlikely, given equal caliber of instruction, that online instruction will be better than in person instruction. If the student is the same, if the instructor is the same, if the subject matter is the same, I think it's fair to say that learning in person is always going to be better. However, it's not always an option and there are lots of things that can get in the way of that. Up until recently, online instruction meant you're watching or, I should say, video instruction, you're watching a VHS tape, a DVD, a YouTube video and someone’s trying to teach you something but now, you have the option for live instruction, Skype and whatnot. Is it going to be as good as being there in person with someone? No, I think we all know that but you can still get some things done.Have you ever watched doing a video of someone doing a form or sparring and thought I see things that they could improve? Of course, you have and if the answer to that is yes, then there is some value in recorded or live instruction. I see something beneficial there especially if the person participating has videoed themselves and sent that to the instructor which, if you go back to the old earn rank online or earn rank by mail, that’s what you have to do. You have to record yourself and send a tape.Now, where I think this stuff can be really beneficial is in 2 cases. One, you’ve already trained a bunch and you're looking to train something else that might be similar so let’s say, I've done Shotokan karate and I want to learn Shitō-ryū karate. They're different, they're different styles but I can relate what I am learning in one back to the other or you're looking to learn something very specific and I see this a lot in the BJJ space. Those Brazilian jiujitsu people, maybe some of you are watching, you guys are really good at putting out video content that is on very specific things. Here’s a whole video of arm bars and how arms bars are applied and you're defending against the arm bar and yeah, you may have a partner to work through that but it's a whole separate piece of discussion but if you want to get really niche on a particular topic, that’s great. By the same token, Iain Abernathy does a lot with his kata bunkai series in video. Great stuff! Am I going to suggest that’s the way you learn that form? No but if you know that form and you want to go deeper on it, that’s a great way to do it and I love that as an option.Gabe says there's a bō program, staff program out there that’s like that now. I'm sure there's a ton of stuff but you know what really excites me? Virtual reality with this. I don’t think we’re even 10 years out before you can take a class with other people and your instructor can watch you. VR coupled with holograms. I don’t think we’re that far off. 10 years and imagine being able to take a class with anybody. Imagine that Sensei Fumio Demura offers 2 or 3 slots in all of his classes or even some of his classes and imagine it's kind of an auctioned off thing where it's 50 bucks, maybe put on your goggles and he’s got somebody sitting there managing it and you get, you're not going to get one on one but you get to be there. You get to take a class with Fumio Demura or insert the name of person you want to train with. Bill Wallace, maybe Chuck Norris starts teaching. I think it's an amazing thing and I'm really excited for it to happen and I think it's going to completely revolutionize the way we train. If you have thoughts on online instruction, I’d like to hear about them and I want to point out, one of the things that we do not do and have no plans to do is video on technique. Here’s how you do this, here’s how you do this form, here’s how you punch because whistlekick is about bringing people together and saying this is the right way, this is the wrong way doesn’t bring people together. What will we do? We will and are doing some programming, and the first one should be coming out soon, that helps you get the most out of your training, whatever that may be.Alright, next one, do public demonstrations really help spread the message of the martial arts? Is there a better way to attract students? I can't say that they necessarily help spread the message. I don’t think it hurts. I don’t think too many people out there are running demos simply to benefit the martial arts in a broader sense. Every demo that I've ever seen or have been a part of has been related to a martial arts school and that school has been looking for new students, even if they're not saying hey, we want you to come train with us. It’s an awareness tool. You're getting out there, you're doing things that are cool and maybe getting some people involved and saying hey, come train with us. It’s great. You should do that because the more people in martial arts, the better off we all are. I think we all know my feelings on that and it's great.Is there a better way to do that? I don’t think there's any one right way or best way to get people in as new students. I think it's a lot of things and for those of you out there that are a part of martial arts schools that we’re working with right now in a consulting sense, you know that that’s what I tell you. Your website has to be decent, you have to have ongoing social media, you have to have a newsletter, you should be getting out in the community. There are a lot of ways that you can do this and you should be doing as many of them as you can because it's not just from one thing that people pay attention. Let me put on my marketing hat for a moment. Different theories say different things but the one that sticks to my head the most, it takes the average person 13 impressions, 13 times seeing a message before they take action.The 1st time you say a commercial on TV, you probably didn’t run out and buy the thing. It was some number, some multiple of times and it's the same thing that people, even if they are interested in martial arts, they want to see what's going on, they want to hear from their friends, they want to see your social media. They want to see you in a demo. They want to see all these things before they decide hey, yeah, let’s do this. This is the place I want to go. Think of it as a net that we’re trying to connect all these things. Social media can connect to your website, like trying to catch a fish. You want more things connected up to the net so you can catch more fish.Stacy says no, public demonstrations are fun but that’s not the core of what martial arts are. Hard to demonstrate community support and personal growth, think students talking to friends and co-workers, posting about their classes and what they learned. It's about relationships, not flashy style. I agree and the best thing that you can do if you have a martial arts school and you're looking for ways to bring in new students, do things that get your students, your existing students talking about what's going on. If they're excited about what they're doing and what's going on, they're going to talk about it. If they're not, they won’t.Alright, more questions. I'm embarrassed, always yawning. Let me get that drink that I poured. Maybe that will help. We’re back, I'm right here, I'm coming back! What kind of amateur hour show is this? What is this one guy in his kitchen sitting on a barstool with black and white printouts? Yes, it is. This is soda water and lime juice. That’s it. Alright, new questions, new topics. Your homework from last month’s episode, stop periodically or you set an alarm every 2 hours throughout your day to see what was within reach to defend yourself if you were attacked at that very moment. Gabe says that he’s often on his forklift at work, I assumed at work, which would make for an interesting standoff. Also, within reach are brooms, shovels or straps, a clipboard and various tools. Andrew says I currently have a box cutter and drumsticks, not like chicken but like the drummer among a few other things but that’s what I grab. Carla says makeshift swords, a mop handle and a steak knife.Stacy is observing the spider plants behind me, well, I guess it's up there too so yeah, I like to grow plants and spider plants are really easy to grow so there is one there and one over there. I don’t even see that one but I was attempting a little bit of a between 2 ferns thing but I'm not a fan of that show. Andrew says that he did the homework and many times that when the alarm went off, he was driving. He says that’s a pretty good way.I would agree. I think it's important for us to take note of what's around. Not just because the things around us make good weapons but just to be observant, what's there. I get wherever you are right now, you take a hard look at what's around and you'll see things that you forgot were there. Things that, if you brought someone else in, they might notice it but because you’ve been around that thing for so long, you’ve become desensitized and it's important to be aware, to be present of everything. It can be tiring but I think it can also be rewarding as you get to see on a deeper level. I get it, Stacy, I get it. Stacy was singing [00:23:25] she was singing the Spiderman theme but adapt it for spider plants because spider plants were what was on the screen because I love them.As tournament season approaches, or it's already here, I guess it depends where you are, what divisions or events are you looking forward to most? The competition season in the northeast here has a little bit of a weather bent. We don’t have too many competitions in December. Most competitions are finished up by early November and start back up late January so we get about 2 to 2 ½ months not quite a break and then, July and most of August, where usually it’s not a thing because it's summer break and it's hot and if you have tournaments in July, people don’t go. Not up here anyway.Stacy’s got 2 sleeping cats and a TV remote as a weapon. Not sure if I’d want to use a cat as a weapon but if you threw the cat at someone’s face, that might work because cats always land on their feet so the cat will be fine. I mean, it would probably work.I wish there were more diversity in divisions. When I go to competitions, actually, let me say that differently because some competitions have tremendous diversity in their divisions. The NASTA circuit tends to have a lot of diversity in their division and I really like that but it also means you have a multi-day event. I like when, even a smaller tournament, have their core divisions. It might be forms and sparring and weapons and/or breaking but they add one other thing, I was at an event over the weekend and there was a scored self-defense division. I haven't even seen that at a tournament in ages. I've seen flag sparring.I think having something different is really important. I like when competitions do that. They bring in different stuff and for me, I like watching all of it. I enjoy watching someone who has competency with what they're doing and they're able to showcase that. It doesn’t matter if it's a form that I know, it doesn’t matter if it's 2 9-year olds sparring. If they're good at what they do, I enjoy watching that. That kind of relates back to the term Kung Fu, right? We’ve heard on the show from a number of Chinese martial arts practitioners that Kung Fu doesn’t mean martial arts in any way. It's the notion of mastery of something that you're doing and I really dig that and it's a great way to look at it.If you were given, and I would love to hear answers from those watching. If you were given incredibly valuable martial arts thing, say, a uniform or a belt or a weapon, would you use it or display it?I think it would depend on what it was but I think I’d be more inclined to display it. if it's a valuable uniform, it's probably valuable because somebody wore it and if I had it, it would be because that person meant something to me whether that be someone with some celebrity or someone that I looked up to. Same with the belt. The weapon, it's valuable, it's probably either special in the way that it's made and I'm afraid of damaging it or special because it's older then I would be afraid of damaging it. I'm not one to not use things. I'm not one to not use things. I'm not one to say, so if I found a bottle of wine sitting there, let’s say 2006, that one. I know people who would buy really nice bottles of wine and they never open them. I inherited from my grandfather, when he passed away, a couple prohibition era bottles of whiskey and I brought one of them to a reunion and we all had some and it was great. That bottle was worth hundreds of dollars. Quite a price but I wanted to share it with people. I like doing this. I like sharing things with people. I like being able to say here’s this special occasion and so, if I had a, let’s say, somebody dropped a pair of boxing gloves in the mail and Chuck Norris signed them or something, I’d use them. Maybe not all the time, but I’d use them. I have no problem with using, they would probably punch through walls. I’d be like The Hulk. Chuck Norris signed them.Frank’s writing in, in the last episode, I mentioned in Muay Thai that we don’t use belts. I asked tonight at class. Turns out, we use arm sashes. I believe Gabe inquired about that. That makes sense. When I think about the Muay Thai fighters I've seen, they do have ties on their arms. I think I've seen them at the elbow and they're not generally wearing enough that a belt would make sense. A belt is to hold your uniform close. If you're not wearing a uniform, you wouldn’t need that.Stacy says the Northeast Open, shout out to Master Adam Brogan. Did self-defense division, choreographing demos but really like, we got people writing in, but I really like the paired synchronized breaking. Yeah, I enjoy watching anything synchronized. Synchronized forms is great and the more people the better because you can really tell who spends some time practicing.If you don’t use it, from the more recent question, it's just a thing. My day to day China plates were from her grandparents’ wedding in China from the 30s. That’s pretty cool. Gabe says that their league in the north west is introducing kata for the first time this year. That’s awesome! Laura’s replying to Stacy, USVA, WVA events are always different. The last one, I competed in 10 different events. Expensive but fun. Yeah, you got to mix it up. You got to mix up your training. You got to mix up all of it because it just gets stale. Why do you think we’re doing this? We’re mixing it up! Can't do the same thing over and over and over. You can't, you need to. Where was that graphic from the beginning? Looks like your learning needs more learning doesn’t mean that you replace all the repetition but you do have to sprinkle some variety in there. It's the syrup on the pancakes. Pancakes are good, the syrup makes them better.Hello, Matthew! Alright. We all have our favorite uniforms and of course, it's always fun to get new ones but how long have you had your oldest uniform? Oh man, I got a couple uniform stories for you. When I was getting ready for my black belt, there's a few months ahead I started really practicing and there was a joke that I was in. My mother would ask are you going to do anything to celebrate if you pass your black belt test or my mother was saying I’d like to get you something special because you have been training for 11, 12 years at that point. Yeah, I said I want a blue gi in Karate and it was a joke because we wore white gis and when you are a brown belt, you could have a black gi and that was it and I wanted a blue gi and I didn’t think anything of it because it's a blue gi. I passed my black belt test and during the presentation at class the next day, I was presented with a blue gi and I still have that. I think my test was in April so coming up on 24 years.The other really old one I have was my competition uniform so that goes back, even a year prior and both pieces of it were used when it was given to me. Somebody else who was training in school coming into our school and we just happened to fit me very well and other than one, I think, one competition 2 years ago, I’ve worn that uniform every time I competed because it still fits because I haven't grown. So, I want to know from you guys, what's your oldest uniform? I still wear the same black belt. I kind of think my uniform closet over there and I'm running through it and thinking what else is in there. I got some stuff that I've saved. I've got my first jiujitsu gi. It's the pants. I think I tossed the top. That’s 12 years old now. I like old uniforms. They're fun. I've got uniforms, I've got samples, things that some have sent in, things I've tried. I've got a whole cataloging system of old stuff out in the warehouse. It's fun. I hope to take some of those ideas to new uniforms somewhere in the future.If you had an hour to kill and you were going to do something martial arts-related, would you watch something, pick up a book, train by yourself or do horse stance while reading or watching? And every time I see horse stance, especially with that graphic, it sounds like your horse stance needs more horse stance. We’ll come back to that in a second.Jenny said she still has the 2nd pants she ever bought from when she was 13 and I'm not going to ask how old Jenny was but she’s been on the show and doing a little bit of rough math, I know that it's been a little while. She’s had those pants for a little while. If I have time to kill, it's rare that I'm going to spend an hour training on my own. In fact, I’ll be honest, I don’t know the last time I spent an hour training on my own. I do better with small blocks of time if I'm training on my own because I'm in this environment here where there's always other stuff to do and I’ll admit, I feel guilty if I'm not working. I feel guilty if I'm not cleaning, I feel guilty if I'm not spending time with the cat because she’s little annoyed I'm always working so if I have a few minutes, I'm kicking things. I don’t think there's a surface in this house I haven't kicked. I'm constantly kicking and playing with distance and playing with angles and it's the only thing that keeps me sane, that keeps my skills up because of the frequency.Gabe says Jenny bought those pants a while ago. He’s not going to say how long, good man. Laura says if she has now, she’ll smash boards and have a bonfire afterwards. Great idea and what would you do if you only have 10 minutes? What if you don’t have an hour? What if you had 10 minutes? 10 minutes is great for running through a form a handful of times or practicing some kicks. We’ve got, it's no secret we’re working on the strength and conditioning program and then there are other programs coming out and while the strength and conditioning program is primarily based on having an hour to work out, these others that I've got playing around in my head, they're not strength-related. You'll be able to do a lot in 10 minutes, stay tuned. Frank says he has a more physically demanding job so he has no problem resting around the house. For 10 minutes, Laura says she’d smash board and save some wood for a bonfire later.Hello, Kevin. Alright. I spent some time, this is Gabe, I spent some time in the country that had compulsory military service and said members carried their weapon everywhere constantly. The crime rate was rather low. We’re not going into conversation about guns, don’t worry. Do you think wearing martial arts uniform or clothing would deter, incite or have no effect on violence?Let’s imagine everybody who does martial arts is walking around in uniform. Let’s assume they're also wearing their belts. Let’s say they wear belts. It's an interesting mental exercise because obviously, it's never going to happen. Would there be more less or the same violence? I don’t know if it would lead to more violence. It would definitely lead to more harassment and my gut instinct is that harassment would most likely lead to violence. There might be a portion of the population that would stay away from people because they look weird wearing that stuff out in public. By the way, I’d definitely wear those bloom gi pants to high school twice and I would have worn them more but they didn’t have pockets. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I'm going to have to think about this one because I can, I think it would have, I think it would increase violence but I'm not so stuck to that idea. I want to consider it so Gabe, let’s make a note. We can talk about that more next time.Stacy says I think it will lead to more Show me what you can do, Karate Kid. Yeah, that’s kind of where I'm at. I don’t think there would be an overwhelming difference. I don’t think people would be targeted for violence but I think bullies, right? And I don’t think that the deterrent from others would be enough to offset. Laura agrees to my comment on harassment and comments on the are you registered as a legal weapon comment. Let’s move off from that one.I know someone with multiple black belts. One with someone which is in Japanese Kobudō but when he told me about it, he added if that counts as a black belt. Just wondering if some don’t consider weapons-only styles complete systems. What do you think? I don’t know anyone who has rank in Kobudō that did not start with an empty hand style and I think that that’s where it comes from. Most of the people I know, in fact, everyone I know who has tested a rank in a weapons style has started with some kind of, let’s say more conventional martial art and that became a secondary thing that they're training.There's an organization I'm familiar with in the northeast and I know quite a few people from different schools who have rank and train with these people and I tried to get them on the show and really want to have them but hopefully, someday and yeah, to my knowledge because I've not trained in it, so forgive me if I'm completely off base here, it's not a complete style. It is exclusively around weapons but I kind of see that as even though we might apply the same ranking terminology to it, I see it more as an academic kind of like certificate program.A bachelor’s degree is broad. You might take a vocation or a certificate program to specialize in something. It doesn’t mean that that education is less than. It doesn’t mean that your qualifications are not the same, it just means that the body of knowledge is different and intentionally so and honestly, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing more of that instead of having these grand esoteric, vague ranks. You are a 6th degree black belt.Ok, great, what's that mean? I’ve completed this 400-hour certificate in eskrima and I've completed this 5-year apprenticeship in jiujitsu and this and this, ok, now we can actually dig in what is it you’ve done to achieve that rank. I don’t think we can continue the rate that we’re going with rank because we’re going to have people, I mean, there are people right now younger than me that I know that are 7th degree black belts. And you're going to keep training the next 20 years? You're going to spend 30 years, 20 years as a 10thdegree black belt and not progress? Some people might do that but this is where people started with the stripes. It's going to get crazy. It's going to get deluded.Stacy says six sigma black belts are not black belts. That’s a weird thing. I don’t like that they co-opted our methodology there and she says that as someone who is working for certification in lean six sigma for health care. I don’t really fully understand what that means. At one point, I looked it up but I forgot.They're the stuff of movies, myths, legends and masters: challenge fights! Did they really happen? Should they happen today? What are your thoughts? Matt says I think it would depend on the situation. At one point, I was running a school in the inner city and outside people would come in to start a fight or a challenge. Happened a few times a week so I wrote up a special waiver, charges them whatever special I was running and allowed them to spar on the mats. Very few went for it. Had a downside too but I enjoyed having it. You say a lot by saying nothing there.Gabe says that he thinks the delusion of rank will motivate some to preserve the traditional and I hope he is right.A famous example of a challenge fight. Most of you have probably heard of this one and you may have heard different interpretations because, of course, the person accounting this was not there, at least to my knowledge. An excerpt taken from an interview posted on YouTube with Linda Lee Cadwell, Bruce Lee’s wife, her words on a challenge fight Bruce Lee accepted with Wong Jack Man in Oakland in 1964. The martial artist in San Francisco, Chinatown wanted to challenge Bruce to a fight. When they came over, there was no bowing. They just faced off and went at it. Bruce threw the first punch and it did hit Wong Jack Man around his eye. Bruce started to use a series of straight punches and Wong could not retaliate. Wong turned and he started to run and Bruce was just after him. Wong went down on the ground and Bruce was instantly over him with a fist raised and said in Chinese, Do you give up? And he said yes and that was the end. According to other witnesses, that fight lasted 10 to 25 minutes and ended only because Bruce Lee was terribly winded.The reason for the fight is also debatable. According to Linda and Bruce’s family, the fight happened as a result of threats that came from those who disapproved about Bruce teaching Kung Fu to non-Chinese practitioners and wanted him shut down. I can totally assume while it is true that others disapprove to Bruce teaching anyone that would come to him, according to others, the fight took place as a result of the challenge that Bruce gave that he could beat anyone after a failed one-inch punch demonstration.I think, like most things, this stuff gets romanticized. I've heard stories. We’ve heard plenty of stories on martial arts radio. Plenty of people attacked but it rarely stems from a challenge because the majority of martial artists, at least to my observation and I've talked to quite a few of them, aren’t so keen to get into a fight. Does this stuff happen? Sure. Does this happen more than we probably talk about? Probably.Got you. Got you, Stacy. Six sigma is business efficiency is in systems that were developed in Japanese business.If you’ve ever learned another language, you know you're getting proficient when you dream in that language. Has anyone ever trained or fought in their dreams? Stacy says she has tested in her dreams. I have. I have had huge battles in my dream. I won’t go into the details because I don’t know how to tell the story without getting a little personal stuff but let’s just say, I was winning. I don’t care if I lose. It’s funny, I just had a conversation today about dreams and how infrequently I have them and remembering and most of the time, if I have a dream and even if I remember them when I wake up, I don’t remember it more than a couple hours later. This dream that I'm thinking of, I remember very vividly and that was years ago. Sometimes I wonder if that one was a dream.If you had to boil it down, what are the three most important aspects to being a good or successful martial artist? I like that one. Humility, persistence, passion. Not sure passion is the right word but I'm looking for, you can be persistent at something and just not put in a lot of effort. Effort? Humility for sure. Persistence, for sure because you got to, you have to empty your cup and you have to keep going but you have to make sure you're trying hard. I think if you do those 3 things, I think you're good to go.That look like an ice storm out there or something. Frank’s saying self-control. I think humility accounts for that, maybe not. The more time I spend training, the more I talk to people on the show, the more I believe humility is absolutely critical and it's something that I don’t know if we’re always good about teaching. It's something, I think, a lot of martial artists figure out. You get 30 years in and you realize there are people who are way better than you. You can't really help that you're humbled. I've been humbled a lot of times. Yeah, you got to keep going.Gabe suggesting determination. I think it's on the list. I think it's a big list. I mean, boiling it down doesn’t mean…when we use the term boiling it down, we’re assuming that we’ve got everything but if we had to only pick 3, I think those are the 3 I would pick but there are plenty of other things. Taekwondo’s got it's 5 tenets and other martial arts has some of these things codified and I think that that’s there for a reason. I think that these things are important and if we know what's important, we can work to better those skills. Laura says self-control is something that you learn at the martial arts and often not something that you have when you start. I like that.If there's something you don’t agree with about how your martial arts school or firm is being run, do you leave or stay and try to fix it? How long do you stay until it's not worth it anymore? Like anything else, it's a value proposition. What are the consequences of leaving? Now, I have been experience where I have wholeheartedly disagreed with things that were happening but it would have been incredibly disrespectful to have done anything about it on a bigger scale and the fallout from that was not worth it. I have no problem speaking to a referee that I think is in over their head or just phoning it in that day and I have. They don’t like that but I try to do it respectfully. I do it respectfully.When it comes to a school, how do I deal with it? Is there any person out there who does everything the way that you would do it? Probably not but hopefully, the big things are being handled in an appropriate way that you can get behind and it's the little stuff that you disagree with, then let it go. I would imagine anybody out there with a business partner or a romantic partner never agree on everything. You find a way to work through the little stuff or you let it go. Same thing with this. It's not all going to be a complete overlap in ideas.A couple quotes as we head out because it's been nearly an hour. The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them, Miyamoto Musashi. How would you explain this to someone who doesn’t train or doesn’t understand why it's important to do the martial arts? I bring this back to my definition of martial arts. If you look at the grammatical construct, martial arts, the noun is art. So, what is my definition of martial arts? Personal development from the perspective of combat. There we go. It's not about fighting. It's never been about fighting. Fighting is about fighting. Being a warrior is about fighting. Being a martial artist is about using fighting concepts to become a better person, to grow and we’ve had a couple episodes that are coming out that talk about this warrior ideal and the fact that, a warrior goes to war but what does the warrior do when there's no war? Continues to help the people.I'm proud of a lot of things from my time training. The thing I'm most proud of is the fact that I have never had to be in, what I would call, a real fight and I hope I can always say that. I never want to use my skills in that way and it's not because I…I just don’t want to get hurt and I don’t want to hurt anybody else. Nobody wins. The only way you can win a fight is by avoiding it.This is the last quote, this one from Gichin Funakoshi. Spirit first, technique second. I agree. I feel like this is pretty to understand when it comes to self-defense, even sparring but how do you apply this to forms, basics or other aspects in the martial arts? You know what? Let’s unpack that next time because that, I want to spend more time on that than we have now. I don’t want to dig into a possibly 10-minute topic and rush it because it's 9 o’clock. No one gets along all the time. Stacy’s going to bed so there we go!The 6th installment of martial arts radio live. Thanks for coming by. Thanks for watching! If you're listening later on, maybe joining us next month, 1st Tuesday of the month, 8 PM eastern on Facebook. If you like this stuff, join us on YouTube weekday mornings, 6:30 AM eastern for First Cup where I have my first cup of coffee. Not dissimilar to and there's a bug in it! There's no bugs in my coffee hopefully but not dissimilar to that. It's kind of anything goes Q&A format, shorter so we’ll be doing that tomorrow. Have a good night and I’ll talk to you soon. Train hard, smile, have a great night!