Episode 686 - Kyoshi CJ Mayo
Kyoshi CJ Mayo is a Martial Arts practitioner and instructor at the Shinzo Kaizen Dojo in Tacoma, Washington
For my son, he started his training consistently at 7 years old. Every whitebelts that I’ve ever taught at least is so awkward looking when they start but for my son, it was even more so. But being able to work on Martial Arts and get the motor skills down, there’s alot of things he can do now athletically.
Kyoshi CJ Mayo - Episode 686
How are the Vietnam War and Martial Arts related to each other? For our guest today, Kyoshi CJ Mayo, learned martial arts through his grandfather who had a friend from serving in Vietnam who could teach martial arts. Kyoshi Mayo, child of divorced parents, needed help with discipline as a kid so he was put into Martial Arts. Presently, he teaches kids at Shinzo Kaizen Dojo in Tacoma, Washington.
In this episode, Kyoshi CJ Mayo talks about how he started his journey into martial arts and teaching others, especially his kids. Listen and join the conversation!
Show Notes
You may check out Kyoshi CJ Mayo’s school at ShinzoKaizenDojo.com
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hello, everybody, welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio episode 686. With today's guest, Kyoshi CJ Mayo. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. I'm your host for the show, the founder here at whistlekick. We're everything we do well, it's to support traditional martial artists. What does that mean, Jeremy? Well, if you want to know what it means go to whistlekick.com because we don't have time in this intro for me to tell you all the stuff that we do. I will tell you that at whistlekick. com, you'll find a store where we have everything from apparel to training programs to protective equipment, and you can save 15% on the stuff over there with the code PODCAST15. The show gets its own website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com is a place to go for that. To check out all the show notes and transcripts and videos and links and all the good stuff that we drop over there for each and every episode.
Yeah, to a week is this episode worth 63 cents to you, if it is, consider supporting our Patreon patreon.com/whistlekick. Okay, at $5 A month, $5 a month is a little too rich for your blood, you could do $2 a month. Whatever you want. We will accept it and thank you and be very grateful. You could also you know check out whistlekick.com/family for the entire list of the things that we offer up for you to do to help us offer up isn't really the right word, but we'll run with it. There are a bunch of things you can do to help us in our mission. And we even throw some exclusive bonus content over there kind of like a mini Patreon and it's free. update it once a week. Check it out.
Today's guest is connected to some people that I really love dearly. And I've heard some good things and I was thankful that I finally had the chance to get to talk to him. I feel like Kyoshi Mayo and I are very similar people, similar in age, similar experiences, and very similar attitudes towards the martial arts and training today. And that made for a wonderful conversation. I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. Here we go. How are you?
Cj Mayo:
I'm good, sir. How are you?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm well, I'm well. Thanks for doing this on kind of short notice.
Cj Mayo:
No worries. I'm glad to help.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. You know, that's one of the nice things about what we've been doing for the last few years is, you know, we've built up some credibility and some capital with some folks. So when we say hey, help people say okay, right.
Cj Mayo:
Kind of nice. Absolutely. Have the interview go before me. You can just say good. Yeah, crazy. Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. It was not crazy. That's good. It was the opposite of that. It was just a great conversation.
Cj Mayo:
That's a long time ago. I've never met him in person. But a long time ago. We had chatted back and forth because he lived in Seattle for a little bit. You go up and visit him once and it just never panned out.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, bummer.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Interesting. Interesting, man, smart man. For sure. Well, a lot, a lot of controversy for sure. You know, this is going to come out after. So people we're probably going to, if you're okay with us just kind of roll in from the moment you jumped on. And we had your audio. There's folks who are gonna hear this and go oh, I know what you're talking about.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, that's your choice.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, well, if you're okay with that, because I think conversations go better than when we have a “formal start”. So, what I will say to the audience is that the reason CJ knows about this is because we bumped him you know, we've heard move things around to accommodate last week's guest. At this point is last week on the agenda. It may we move around Andrew and I are in conversation right now about that, but where to put it. But, you know, we've, we don't usually have to move things around. Usually things are just kind of as they are. But that's pretty important principles martial artists is to be flexible and adapt to what's presented to you. So, yeah, well, I'm glad we get the chance to chat. We've been looking forward to this. And let it happen. Does that mean? Does that mean? Are you? I think it was me.
Cj Mayo:
I don't know. I was sitting there talking to you and there was nothing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Ah, crazy. Well, it's still going so I don't know I think that was made well, fingers crossed. That doesn't happen again. My computer's ready. It's ready to be replaced. That's frustrating, but it has to happen. Do we have snow? Oh, we always have snow. It snows here.
Cj Mayo:
Blame it on the snow.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. If we blamed everything on the snow that nothing would happen. I have a plow truck go by my house every day. Like literally. Yeah, it's just constant. It's either icy or snow on the ground or something. They're just either plowing snow or dropping sand.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, my wife is from the Pittsburgh area. And so her sister and dad live out there. And there's snow there. When we have 16 degree weather.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're in the Pacific Northwest, right?
Cj Mayo:
I am just south of Seattle.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But it rains all the time, right? It rains a lot more than what I would like to admit.
Cj Mayo:
When I was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and there's guys that would be like it rains all the time or nothing, it really doesn't rain that much. And then I moved back here and I was like, man, it rains all the time.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Trying to remember who the comedian does a bit about fear, fear of the sun coming up because it dries up. Oh, it's Bill Cosby. It's very old Bill Cosby. But that, you know, in the Pacific Northwest, you know, people are afraid of the sun because, you know, they see it so infrequently, and it'll dry out your sinuses. You know, it's, we get like, four, maybe four good months a year where it's sunny, not rainy, all the time. And it's weird because when the front first has come out, people forget how to dry and start training again. People forget how to drive. And then heaven forbid we get an inch and a half of snow around here the world shuts you forget how to drive in the sun. Yeah, it's like you have to create your driving on your seasons apparently around here. We do that here every year. The first snow doesn't matter how little it is. People are driving, you know, 40 miles an hour on the highway.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, normally it doesn't. Normally it doesn't snow here. Like we don't very rarely will we have a white Christmas. And we had two weeks before Christmas. It snowed something like that. And it snowed pretty good. I mean, I was eight inches out of my house. So that's a lot of where I was. And I mean, normally in a year, I'll get maybe four inches, so it was a lot for that timeframe. And everything shut down. Like I blew grocery stores were like, Hey, we're shutting down at 4pm today, so get in early. You know, it was crazy. You monitor.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You mentioned the time which you were stationed. I was stationed at Fort Bragg. Your martial arts goes back before that, though.
Cj Mayo:
Yep. I started martial arts at three years old.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Well, you're one of the rare people who started before me. That doesn't happen very often.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, I was a bad kid. My parents got divorced when I was one and a half years old. And I did not like my mom at all. I don't remember this obviously, it is too far away. But everyone, my grandparents, everybody. They've told me growing up that I used to kick holes in her wall. I used to spit out or if I'd see her face to hit, like to smack her. It was good for my dad and good for my dad. But it wasn't good for her once they divorced and once they split. So my parents as far as I know, because there's a lot I don't remember, but as far as I know, they take co-parenting very well. My dad had custody of us, but they still have my sister and I but they still co parented for the most part. And they agreed to put me in martial arts. Well, there was a guy that my grandfather was in Vietnam with, who taught martial arts and somehow my grandpa got convinced to just teach me a little bit and try to instill some discipline in me. And it worked for about a year and a half with him. And then I think it was just too much me being too little so that I went to a different school and started there. So that was the start of my martial experience.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's not uncommon for children of divorce certainly to perform for one parent over another, but I've never heard of it happening that early.
Cj Mayo:
Yes. It was weird because I don't know which parent it was, so I thought about it. I don't know if it was my grandfather, knowing this guy that they were in Vietnam together and just knowing each other. I don't know what the conversation was because I was too little. But they decided to try to give me some discipline and put me in martial arts to see if there was an outlet cuz I was apparently angry all the time.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And it worked.
Cj Mayo:
It did. It did. It was something that, you know, I don't know if this is your experience or not, but for me, I've had the experience of teaching kids and being around a lot of other people who have, you know, gone through four years in college. And, you know, one of my best friends and I met through martial arts, and he's a natural athlete. And he just stopped one day, just wanting to do it. And was super talented. But just was done. For me. It wasn't something that came. It was natural. But it didn't come naturally, if that makes sense. Like I had to work at it. And for me, I think because I had to work at it so much. I appreciate it. And my son, I have two kids, I have two boys. I'm 16 year old and six year old. My 16 year old is a natural athlete. He just gets it, picks it up, and does it well. And it bugs me because he will not practice something for like a month. And then I'll be like, “Hey, can you just show me this?”. And he'll pop it out? Like he has been practicing it forever. Yeah. And it just bugs me so bad. I get it all the time. And he's like, I'm okay, I got it. Hold on, let me and then when there is something he forgets like, oh, that's like my time to be like I told you to practice but he doesn't listen to me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Does that approach apply to other things for him, it was that he took his schoolwork like that.
Cj Mayo:
So, certain subjects he does, if he's good at a subject in school, it's the same thing. If he's not so good at a subject, he will study and work at it. So, like he struggles in math. My wife was not a math person either. But he will work in math and stuff like that. My oldest son got a virus when he was born called Congenital Cytomegalovirus, CMV. I forget exactly how to pronounce it. But he is deaf. And he's got bilateral cochlear implants. So he's got processors to help me and stuff. And I'm gonna screw this up, if my wife listens to that she's gonna be mad. But essentially, he had frontal lobe, brain bleeds, when he was younger.
And so some things come easy to him and some things don't. And then his brain has, is like, I don't know how to really medically turn this, but it's like rewired, like a route to understand things and grasp things. So his journey through school was to grow and be where he's at age appropriate school and everything else now, but there's a lot of therapies leading up to that, that my wife is just an amazing individual to help him through all of that. She's got patients for days.
So it's very much a cool thing to watch him excel at something, whether it be his martial arts, whether it be at schools work, whether it be other sports, or whatever it is, it's just really cool to see in Excel, because there's a lot of people with the same type of see congenital CMV that he has that don't get to do that stuff. So it's really cool.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No, I can imagine that regardless of loving a child, regardless of expectation, preparation, strength of the family, that what you're describing, especially in the early days, is probably very challenging. And one of my recurring beliefs, nobody's blown up this theory or been an outlier on this, at least yet. I strongly believe that martial artists have a deeper toolkit for coping with and managing stress crises. difficulties in life, etc. You know, I don't want to pick a label for how you might turn the circumstance. Can you talk about what that was like, and how your martial arts played a role.
Cj Mayo:
So for him, but for me, that started for me, you know, I don't have any of the physical or internal stresses or fresh or medical issues that my son has. But for me, it was a very big year, right in the toolbox of learning how to meditate and learning how to take a breath and relax. And, you know, just the problem solving aspect of it, you know, helped me throughout my life, but for my son, he started his training consistently, at about seven years old. Every white belt, or every new martial artist that I've ever taught, at least, is so awkward looking, when they start. The fundamentals, the movements, the smoothness of your techniques, and stuff just isn't there, they're still learning. But for him, it was even more so. Because he was still like, has mixed muscle tones. He has, you know, just a lot of stuff going on.
So for him to learn how to do this stuff just took a little bit longer. And, but being able to work on this stuff, and get the motor skills down and get help from him now he plays soccer, you know, in the high school level, he does, you know, a bunch of different athletes, basketball, stuff like that. So there's a lot of things that he can do now that I think martial arts taught, helped him grasp motor skills, you know, how to your arm and leg landing at the same time, you know, when you're blocking and stepping into a stance, or whatever it is. I think the motor skills of that stuff just helped him.
The repetition of that just helped him and helped his brain connect with the movements of things. Because I don't know if that makes sense. Or if that was the answer. You're looking for anything like that. But I think it did help him a lot on just being able to put things together to make the puzzle work, if that makes sense. Yeah. And now, I mean, like I said, he just turned 16 on New Year's Day. And he is excelling, and he's a good kid.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We are starting it... Go ahead.
Cj Mayo:
We have a mutual friend in New Jersey and gifts him. And I love when they get to work with my oldest son, Caden, but I love when they get to work with him and see him and, and talk to him and stuff. Because they are some of the kindest people. And whenever they get together, they all get to talk and just share experiences and stuff like that. So, it's really cool.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice. Starting at three, gives you plenty of opportunities to just stop, like you talked about others. Just stop, but you didn't. Or maybe you didn't, you came back. But if nothing else, I think it's fair to say that you are currently training, because you're on the show. And don't think I know anybody would want to come on the show if they didn't want to train. Right. So the question is why? You know, this thing that you started doing back before? I mean, you probably don't remember your first class. This thing that's been part of your life for at least a huge portion. From the very beginning. You've continued in martial arts. You had a point in time where it wasn't your choice, it is currently your choice and you choose to train. Why?
Cj Mayo:
So to start that, why did I not stop or anything else? There was a timeframe. I think I was like 11, maybe 12 where I was playing football, basketball, baseball. And I did stop, I stopped for about two months. And I know that's not that big of a deal, I get it. But at the time, I never thought I'd go back. But I realized I was missing something during that time frame. And my dad was never one to push me to do any sport to do any activity or anything else. I wanted to do it, he would support me if I didn't, he wouldn't. He wouldn't make me do it. But I got to a spot. I got to a spot where it can become a normal thing for me, it became a normal part of my life. And it was just routine for me. Where the classes were different. I was learning something new and everything. But if I wasn't going to class, then I felt like I was missing something like my day wasn't complete. And so I went back and I continued training, and I just kept going. What keeps me going now is watching my students accomplish their goals. I love traveling, I love getting in a room with martial artists. I love being able to do seminars, I think seminars, especially from not only the same art, but different arts are the most amazing things ever. Because there's always something you can learn from somebody.\
And if you just have an open mind to it. And I love doing that, and then taking it back to my students. One of my instructors back in the day, I would do competitions. And we were not allowed to talk to students from other schools. Our instructors would all talk but we weren't allowed to talk. And when that was going on. I was wondering why. And so now that I'm older, and I've talked to some of those people that I used to compete against, and there are schools, and we've all talked and we're all friends. They were all scared that we're going to leave each other's schools and go to another school, and that the instructors were scared of us. And now one of the guys that I used to compete with, he has a school. It's weird, because my dojo is closer to his house, and his dojo is closer to my house. We, our students do things together, we go to their school, they come to our school, we do things together. And we were talking and we're like, listen, for my students. If you go over here, and you learn something, just come back and teach me what you learned.
That way we can share it with each other. And that's something I think that was missing when I was younger, in the martial arts. And so now when I see that the accomplishment of my students is what keeps me going. I love the training aspect. Like I said, I like being able to learn something new. The smile on my students faces when they accomplish their goals, the excitement that they have, you know, I have a student right now he's getting ready to test for his black, showed on his first green black belt in February next month. And he is 62. I think it is and his wife was telling me, he's been training with me for about seven years. And his wife was telling me that he has never, she has never seen him work at something like this. He joined originally to do an activity with a son. And now he has made it his own. And that's what I like I like seeing the accomplishment of others. You know, I think I think for any kid and me, I'm no exception. It was I won't do what I have to do to get my next belt on to do what I have to do get my next book. And I have come to a place nowhere for me, it doesn't matter. But if my students, me to see that recognition that they've accomplished that goal, then I want to help them get there. And that's why I still do what I do. I love it. I like going to tournaments. I like seeing the accomplishment at tournaments. I like seeing the accomplishment of training. It's just something that I enjoy helping people reach goals.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So you talked about your youth and not being able to cross train the fear that the instructors around you had about it. What do you think would be different in who you are, if anything, as a martial artist? Now, if you'd had those opportunities as a kid, anything would have been different from my training.
Cj Mayo:
I don't know how to explain this, but I'm loyal to my instructors unless they've done something to lose that trust and lose that loyalty. But I, I don't think that I would have changed, what would have changed is, I would have been able to have conversations of different training tips to help me improve my, my skill was my art I never would have left, the dojo that I was going to was a perfect location. For me, it was the right stock system at the, at the time, everything else. So I don't think it would have changed, where I trained or anything like that. It would have changed the conversations that I had, and maybe, you know, training tips like the gentleman, I was mentioning earlier that we have schools near each other. He's a different Japanese style martial artist than I am. And he is extremely good at fighting.
\That is one of the sparring that is one of his. He's amazing. He's one of the best instructors for everything. And then I liked forms and weapons more, not saying we didn't cross in both because I had to do all of it. But I just like learning the application behind it, how it applies to things and stuff like that. And his instructor never taught him that stuff. His instructor was very much a fighter, my instructor was very much application. This is how we're gonna do this, stuff like that. So now when we get together, we teach each other the opposite. And so those types of training tips would have helped me when I was younger, compared to having to relearn all that stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You mentioned that you were stationed at Fort Bragg. And if I remember correctly, that was an army base. Okay, so you get into the army at some point after high school, presumably close to right after high school. Right after high school. And I'm always fascinated with people who have a long time training, you know, we're talking 15-ish years. And then they step into the military where they have their own philosophy on combatives. Was that challenging for you?
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, it's really challenging. In fact, I had a drill sergeant who wasn't in, in basic and stuff who he was the king of combatives for the drill sergeants, and he was challenging people left and right. And there were so many holes in his tactics early. And I don't mean that disrespectfully. But there's things that because I trained for so long that I could see that he could counter what you're doing. And I learned it very quickly. Basically, you don't show up to the drill.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sergeant, did you learn that the hard way?
Cj Mayo:
Oh, here's the story. So well, it actually has to do with combatives if they were showing some combative moves. And the drill sergeants, you know, they show it on each other. And then you have a partner and you're working on it and stuff. And they were doing it. I was doing the counters the way that I would do them compared to the way the drill sergeants showed us to do it. And the drill sergeant came over, he's like I told you to do this. And I said yes to certain things, but this is more effective. And I believe this is more effective. And he said, well show me. And so when the drills weren't done, I did it my way. And I ended up hitting him in the face on accident. And I proceeded to do push ups until my art did. So after that, that was on day one, it was day long that I learned about combatives. So after that, I learned that I will not say one word, and I'll do it exactly the way that they show it and everything else. I just didn't need to do more push ups, my arms already hurt. And it's one of those things where you're basically if one person does push ups everywhere and so that night, going back to the barracks was very uncomfortable for the looks I was getting from everybody. So he was not a team player.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, no. I would imagine that this was fairly early through basic, you know, probably not day one, but certainly not you know, the last week.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, no, it was Like, little before midweek.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, at some point through that, you know, as you resign yourself to say, You know what, I'm just gonna do it their way. In your willingness to do that you probably open your mind at least a little bit. And was there anything you found it you're like, you know what this is kind of neat. I like this part of this or this over here was kind of cool that you brought back and made your own?
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, I mean they do. There’s some things in the combatives manual and stuff like that. But when I went through, they didn't have the army combatives program like they do. Now, they didn't have that until towards the end of my time in the military. And learning that actually applied a lot more, because it was more of a…And people who are studying army combatives are gonna hate me for saying this. But it's like a cross between your stand up fighting and your ground game. You know, it's what happens in between those two and stuff like that. And they have jiu jitsu tournaments, and they have stuff like that, or they call them combatants, but they're very similar to BJJ tournaments. And that helped me come back because I was not a BJJ guy before. But it helped me make the parallel between what happens from my stand up to the ground. So that did help a lot. And now when I'm working with my students, I make sure that we discuss the transition stuff and what happens if this happens and stuff like that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Interesting. Now, one of the things that I've noticed in a lot of martial arts circles that are in their thinking of things in terms of ranges, right, like you didn't use that word, but it sounds like that's kind of where your mind is going, you know, the transitions between kicking and punching, and wrestling and grappling different philosophies approach them differently. But, you know, we're probably on more or less the same page. Right, one of the other elements that comes through in military training is firearms.
Cj Mayo:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did you grow up with guns?
Cj Mayo:
I did. My dad and my grandfather were all hunters. My grandfather before he passed away was a gun collector. So yeah, I grew up. I grew up around, though, with firearms and everything else. So that was not new to me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm going to guess that before the military? Because if we're roughly the same age, right, I'm 42.
Cj Mayo:
Yup, we're around…
Jeremy Lesniak:
When I was coming up. Guns were a separate subject. I'm guessing the military had at least some elements in the combatives instruction you received that at least blurred the lines?
Cj Mayo:
Oh, absolutely.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did you bring any of that back when you teach your students now when you're talking about self defense? Are you talking about firearms in a dramatically different way than when you were raised?
Cj Mayo:
Yes, and no, we do discuss, and I don't know. I don't know how to work. We discuss what to do if you are approached with that. But I tell people all the time, if someone points a gun at you, and they say they're gonna shoot, you give me a wallet, that's replaceable, you're not? And everything and they're like, well, what happens if I can do this? Well, okay, let's we can discuss this, but I do, discuss, like, kind of what the Army has gone through and shown me and stuff like that when it comes to, you know, close range with firearms close, right in stuff like that, you know, but I try to stay away from firearm self defense or firearm stuff. We talked about the awareness of it and everything, but I try to stay away from it because I just know this, people are gonna argue this, oh, yes, you can. But I really believe that someone's pointing a firearm at you, and they're saying they're going to shoot you unless you give them your watch or whatever it is. Just give it to them. risk versus reward.
And yeah, like, I mean, it would be really cool if you did some sort of striker and knocked the gun out of their hand or whatever. But what happens if you miss and I don't want to be responsible for them missing or have that feeling like I didn't train them properly for that situation. So it's, it's a very, and maybe it's because I was raised around firearms my entire life, and I just, I feel a certain way. But I just, yeah, I don't like being in the middle of that conversation and I've got friends of mine who are 100%. You can definitely do this. Yes, you probably can. But I'm sure anybody knows that has been in a situation that's been kind of hairy in their life. Adrenaline sometimes just takes over. Sometimes your brain freezes. You know. I've spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I've had some of the biggest guys in the world talk to most of the world, that when the firefight starts happening, they're the ones hiding. And so you don't know how you're going to react unless you've been in those situations. So I don't want to say, if this happens, you need to do this. Because what is their mind?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Like a flowchart?
Cj Mayo:
Right, so I'll teach it, but I will always use the caveat of, if someone's holding a firearm to you. Give them what they're asking for. That's replaceable.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, it's such an interesting subject, because it gets so polar polarizing. And what I find fascinating is when people train firearm defense, very rarely, are they taking it beyond a piece of wood, or a rubber, you know, training firearm, you know, that there, there are plenty of options. So, grab a squirt gun, grab an airsoft gun, grab a pellet gun, doesn't it have to be, you know, an actual firearm with around in the chamber to test your theories? And right, absolutely. You know, I look at it the other way, where I look at it a similar way. Would I for what's in my wallet, if someone was going to give me that if I successfully defended against a fire? Right? Would I take that bet? No. See the exact same thing. You know, it's opportunity cost is okay.
Cj Mayo:
Right? No, absolutely. And that is exactly worth it, you know, the squirt gun. And airsoft is a perfect example of, a lot of times when you train with a rubber gun, or a plastic one or whatever, you know, the person says, bang, you know, and that's supposed to simulate the shot. But that's not really accurate. You know, work with a squirt gun or an airsoft you might get hit, then you'll know if that bang really worked, you know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And, more importantly, people forget this part. I do some firearms training a little bit. Having that gun go off without your protection, a couple feet from you. inches from you. If you have not experienced that many, many times, as I'm sure you remember from your army training. Most people freeze up. It hits your nervous system level. So you don't just have to defend that first shot. You've got to get control of that gun. Despite what's going on there. And I think for most people not going to happen, they're going to freeze up. Maybe they that first round misses them, but the person with the gun is now panicked. They're gonna fire twice. Right? No, absolutely.
Cj Mayo:
And that's just and that's you hit it on the head if you can do everything right, but that you don't know how the other person's gonna react either. There's a very good martial artist in the area here that teaches a self defense style program. And he tells his students on day one, the most dangerous thing your opponent has is their mind. Yeah. Because you don't know how they can react, you can see a punch coming, you can see a kick coming, but you don't know what's going through their mind. And it's if you really sit down and think about that it is completely accurate if you can guess everything that doesn't mean you're right on we're guessing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, you know, especially when it comes to this stuff, I think people like rules, and they like statistics and like well, you know, if if this then you know 87.5% And then they try to construct this perfect scenario, this perfect approach to a circumstance and it doesn't work that way. Life is complex and murky. And that's why I like when martial arts training gets into concepts, rather than just if this, then, that. Right. No, I'm with you. So you teach students, where did that decision come from? Was that something that, you know, you assumed was always on your path.
Cj Mayo:
So, I started teaching at my instructor school as an assistant instructor and stuff when I made brown belt and stuff like that, and then I just always thought the decision to open my own school was actually my wife's idea. I was teaching at my instructor school, when I moved back. And I was there, there were a lot of things that weren't good about it. I was just, I wasn't comfortable feeling comfortable about teaching there. There's a lot of animosity, I guess, because I was always getting certain students that would want me to teach them and some of the other instructors weren't. So my wife said, you know, he's done this long enough, you have the ability to in the resume to why don't you go teach on your own, you know, open your own. So that's, you know, we took about a year to really plan everything out, and then we did it. And my wife is not a martial artist at all. She will not do martial arts at all. She, I think she would if I was not her instructor. She has. I don't know, honestly. She says it's because she wouldn't want something like that to happen in class, and she comes home and is mad at me or anything like that. But I was like, “Well, why don't you go train with blah, blah, blah, you know, whoever it is?” And no, it's okay. It's your thing. It's up to you and our kids. So I don't know if she supports it. And she does, you know, help out. But everything's behind the scenes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Interesting. Interesting.
Cj Mayo:
My wife's a photographer, by trade, and so she does a lot of the pictures that we have and stuff like that. And if they're bad pictures, she did not take my promise for myself.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Is teaching your full time job?
Cj Mayo:
No, it's not. I actually don't, I do not. So my full time job is in sales, I do sales for mechanical insulation. And I kind of fell into place in that that was not a life goal, or any I don't think anybody grows up wanting to be in sales. To be insane.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've never met never met a kid who was like, Yeah, I want to be in sales.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, yeah. No, I don't. If they are, I would like to get him out of there. But I enjoy it, I enjoy my job. I enjoyed it. This team I work with. So. So that's what I do full time. And then I teach in the evenings and then go to tournaments on the weekends and all that other stuff.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice. Nice. Would you ever teach full time? Is that a goal?
Cj Mayo:
It's not a goal. I would do it if the situation was right, if it's everything lined up. And that's just what needed to happen. I would do it. The gentleman I told you about that I competed against as a kid and stuff and he is close to me. He teaches full time. And so we've weighed the pros and cons against what I do compared to what he does stuff like that. And there's a lot of cool things that he gets to do, because he does it full time that I don't get to do. But there's a lot of stress and headaches that he has that I don't have. So I don't know. I don't know if I would. It's not something that's on my agenda right now to become that. But if everything lined up, it would not be I would not be a guest.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's an interesting answer. And it's one that I think far more people who start part time would likely echo because there is a dramatic difference between a martial arts school being I don't mean this word disparagingly a hobby. Because I think that hobbies are things you enjoy doing that make you some money. And then for a huge percentage of martial arts instructors. That's something they love to do. They share their knowledge. They put a few dollars in their pocket, everybody wins. But the moment it becomes time, the way you approach the school has to change. Because you got to make rent, you don't have that core financial income from sales or being a mechanic or whatever else. It is what you do. I know so many people who teach and they all have different jobs. We've heard from so many of them on the show.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah. You know, I don't know what it's like, for everybody. But there's a stigma, at least around here, that if you don't teach martial arts full time, you're not a true martial artist.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Interesting, I haven't heard that.
Cj Mayo:
And it's not like people outright say it, but the stigma is there. And in conversation, you'll get it in passing and stuff like that. And I was watching a YouTube documentary about some instructors in Okinawa. And they all have part time jobs and stuff like that. And they were discussing why they have it. And they said, because I don't do martial arts to make a living. I do martial arts because I love it. And it's just one of those things that just comes up, you know, that the stigma just is there around here. So it's kind of interesting to find the people who believe that and then rebuttal their responses with what you actually lived here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Here's what I would tell them, you're welcome to send any or all of those people to me, and here's what I will, I will ask them. So as someone who is a brown belt, someone who's been training for three, four years, who would most would suggest is not qualified to open a school? Are they not martial artists? Are they not real martial artists? And of course, they'll say, Well, sure they are. Okay. So we're, we're in their progression of rank. If they choose not to teach, do they stop being a martial artist? Well, they, you know, they can be okay. But being full time makes them not a martial artist or less of a martial artist. And of course, you catch them in that trap, and they will try to talk their way out of it and probably just walk away. But I don't. Yeah, I think that's an absolutely ridiculous thing to assert. I think anyone who is engaged in sharing and spreading martial arts is doing a really good thing for the world.
Cj Mayo:
Yeah, that's a good point. You know? So takes all kinds. It really does. And some of those kinds are kinds of people that I just don't understand. And that's all right. Yeah, well, and I think that goes to a lot of the schools that can. There's nothing wrong with these schools, but there are some schools that are just for money, and will charge whatever they can to make sure they get the next dollar.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So you grew up competing towns like bringing your students to competitions? Do you compete? Still?
Cj Mayo:
I do not. I competed a couple years ago, just because some of my students asked if I would. But I do not actively compete. Like I was saying earlier, there were no big tournament leagues up here anymore. And [00:48:47-0:48:49], none of that. So, a couple of people around here have started a league. It's called the [00:48:54-0:48:55] League, and I arbitrate those tournaments. So I personally don't compete anymore. It makes it hard to arbitrate if you're also doing it. Yeah. And there's a lot of metal rods in my foot and plates and stuff like that. So it just makes it a little bit more difficult to be as solid as I would like to have it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But army stuff, martial arts stuff or other from the military. Does it impact your training?
Cj Mayo:
It does, it does. But I don't know if that makes sense. So there's a lot of times where we'll do something on one leg, for example, my toes on my right foot don't touch the ground. Because the way the plates are, they lift them up well, can't be really rooted without your toes digging in. So it's harder for me to do some balance stuff on that side. I can still do it just takes me a little bit more so that I do not compete. I like tournaments. I like going to tournaments. I like watching tournaments. I think people learn from tournaments, even if you just go watch, I think you can learn from tournaments. I agree. And that's one of the reasons why I encourage I don't make my students but I encourage them to go compete. Go watch go. Whether it's a big sport martial arts tournament, whether it's a you know, little in house friendship tournament, whether it's a world Karate Federation style, USA [00:50:51-0:50:56] tournament, I think you learn to go and have an open mind to things.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I agree. Completely agree. So what's coming? What's what's down the pipe? What are you looking at, you know, over the next whenever we get back together, and I'll let you decide what the timetable is. And I said, “Hey, CJ, what's going on?” Since we last talked in 2022? What would you hope you were reporting back? I would do this.
Cj Mayo:
Okay. I would like to report that my students have accomplished their goals and have branched out in our teaching other people. I would like to report that the tournament league we're part of has actually grown to be in a good solid tournament league that competes with the [00:51:52-0:51:54]. I don't even know getting deals around anymore. [00:51:55-0:51:56] and stuff like that, you know, I would like to report that my training has continued. And that I have continued to grow as a martial artist, and have become more well rounded. I think those are, I don't have major, like, accomplishment goals, except for to continue to improve. And whether learning from my students, you know, learning from other people, just doing stuff like that, I would like to travel to other places to learn things, you know, do seminars in other places, not just from the people that I always work with.
I think that's what my accomplishments would be, my goals would be, how far out are we from some of your students being ready to step out on their own. Um, I've got a couple that could do it. Within the next two, three years, probably, maybe, maybe one that could do it within the next year, year and a half. But, you know, probably the next two, three years, I foresee, some branching out. And some different things. I know, one of my students has already talked about putting a plan together and stuff like that. So it's definitely in the window. One of the things that I would like to do is to get all of my senior belts, my brown belts, and above, and I'd like to go to Oakland with them. I've been fortunate enough to train in Okinawa for a short time. And I would like to go with them to train there as well, just to see a different culture. You know, there's, to me a different culture and training from the West Coast to the East Coast, the United States.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I have heard that I've done very little training on the West Coast. Right? Come on over. If things go right, that's happening.
Cj Mayo:
That's the rumor. And then, but then also going to other countries. You know, I trained a little bit in Germany when I was over there, and stuff like that. So I've been to different countries to be able to train and I'd like them to see the difference and the different ways of doing things. Like I said before, I think seminars from different arts are some of the greatest ways to learn your own style because they will intensify what you've already been working on. Yeah, I'm right there with you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I completely agree. If people want to get a hold of your website or email or social media or anything like that?
Cj Mayo:
So I've got my website, I've got Facebook. I don't have an Instagram. I don't know how to use all that stuff. That's okay. I've got Facebook, my dojo Facebook page, I've got a dojo website. My Dojo is named ShinzoKaizenDojo.com. A loose translation of that is improving one's heart, continually improving one's heart. I believe martial arts if you're in it for the right reasons, not only the physical health aspects of it, but it improves your heart, your soul, you know, it brings balance to your life. And so yeah, that's how you get a hold of me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nice. Awesome. We'll have that stuff linked. At whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. I appreciate you coming on.
Cj Mayo:
Thanks. My pleasure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. And before I let you go, because I know you know this part. You know, what are you? What are your final words? You've given some great stuff today? And anybody listening is like, yeah, this is awesome. So how do you want to leave it? What are your final words to the folks listening.
Cj Mayo:
So, something I tell a lot of my students at the end of my classes is be better today than what you were yesterday and be better tomorrow than what you are today.And the reason that I say that is because I think if we just take a second to learn from each day, we'll be better the world better. And that's, that's something that I would like to see as not only as martial artists, but as our world that we are just better humans.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you've been listening for a long time, you know that I love my job. Whether I'm talking to someone who has a very different opinion of things, or a very similar opinion, I pull out a value from it. But they lead to very different conversations. When I talk to someone that I don't have a lot in common with, we spend our time looking for that common ground, and trying to build on that. But with a guest like Yoshi mayo, I didn't have to spend any time building that common ground. And we were able to go deeper and I was able to learn so much more about him. And what makes him tick. Then I'm able to be with most guests, and that as someone who's done several 100 interviews is something that I really appreciate. So, Kyoshi, thanks for coming on. If all goes well, we'll get to meet in person soon.
Hey, all of you listening. Did you love this episode? Do you appreciate what we do? Maybe you should tell someone about it. Maybe you should share this stuff with your friends, share it on social media, share it in an email. Next time you're training and punching somebody in the face and they're like, oh, what's going on? Don't apologize. Just say, “Hey, do you listen to martial arts radio?” Heck, you could do it any way you want. I don't care. I just hope that you value what we do enough to support us in some way. Whether it's a freeway like sharing the episode, or it's something like the Patreon patreon.com/whistlekick, buying something at whistlekick.com with the code PODCAST15, like a training program. Don't forget the flexibility program is free. You want to bring me to your school, do a seminar. Let's do it. Email me. Guess suggestions and feedback. Email me. What's my email address? Jeremy@whistlekick.com. What's our social media? It's @whistlekick. What's the website for the company? Whistlekick.com. What's the website for the show? Whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. You are noticing a pattern here. We make it easy because it should be. I want to thank you for joining today. I appreciate your time. And I appreciate all of your support. So until next time, train hard, smile. And have a great day.