Episode 726 - Dr. Jerry Beasley

Dr. Jerry Beasley is a retired martial arts practitioner, instructor, and founder of Beasley Martial Arts in Virginia.

It’s not how many skills you know, it’s how many ways you can use your skills. The secret of fighting is each person is going to come at you a certain way, you have to know, through experience, how are you going to approach him with a few techniques. You don’t need 12, 15, or 20 techniques.

Dr. Jerry Beasley - Episode 726

Bruce Lee, Joe Lewis, and Bill Wallace are some of the people important to our guest today. Dr. Jerry Beasly learned what Joe Lewis learned from Bruce Lee. Dr. Beasly, aside from being a martial arts academic, was the director of the renowned Karate College summer camp.

In this episode, Dr. Jerry Beasly talks about his journey through the martial arts, his time with Joe Lewis, as well as his time studying at Virginia Tech. Listen to learn more!

Show Notes

We mentioned Bruce Lee, Joe Lewis, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, and Chuck Norris.

For more information, check out Beasley Martial Arts.

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hello, everyone, what's happening? Welcome to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, Episode 726. With today's guest, Dr. Jerry Beasley. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, I'm your host for the show, I founded whistlekick. Well, why, because I love martial arts, I love traditional martial arts. And that's why we do all the things that we do. If you want to know what else we do besides the show, please go check out whistlekick.com, you're gonna find a bunch of stuff over there, including our store, which is one of the ways that we pay the bills. And if you find something that you like in the store, you can use the code PODCAST15, to save 15% everything for the show was on a different website, the links, the photos, all that good stuff, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. We bring the show twice a week. 

And our goal here at whistlekick is to connect, educate and entertain traditional martial artists worldwide. If you want to show your appreciation for what we do, you can do a lot of different things, including making a purchase, you could share this episode with somebody, or maybe join our Patreon. If you think the show's worth 63 cents, each episode, you might consider supporting us at the $5 month tier and there's even a $2 a month tier, go to patreon.com/whistlekick, patreon.com/whistlekick, and you can sign up there. And if you do, you're gonna get exclusive behind the scenes, bonus content, lots of good stuff that we do over there to extend the value and make sure that you stick around. And I think we do a good job because people do stick around. 

And if you want the entire list of all the ways you can help us in our mission, as well as a shifting rotating mix of behind the scenes and other fun and exclusive content. Go type in you won't find a link for it. Whistlekick.com/family. Today's episode is with an interesting guest, someone who has approached the martial arts in their career in a way that, to my knowledge no one else has. Dr. Beasley is actually an academic in the world of martial arts as well as having a deep knowledge on how things actually work. 

He's been around, he's been training, he's trained with some of the absolute best. In fact, we've got some name drops going on in here that I think are going to impress you as they impressed me and not named drops simply for the sake of dropping names. But because this man has been connected to some of the absolute best that have existed. It's a wonderful conversation. I had a great time. I'm sure you will, too. So here we are. Hello, sir. How are you?

Jerry Beasley:

How are you doing?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'm doing great. Good. Thanks for doing that. Thanks for coming on.

Jerry Beasley:

It's my pleasure.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You have been on a list, you probably didn't know you were on a list. But the list for a number of years, people that I really want to make this happen. So yeah, very thankful to Andrew. And of course even more so thankful for you.

Jerry Beasley:

Well, it's my pleasure. What would you like to talk about today?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I want to talk about wherever our conversation is going to take us. And if you're okay, I kind of just want to just want to go? Yeah, let's try then. You've been doing what you do for a while. You've connected with, to my mind, just about everybody worth connecting with. But from what I can tell. You're still incredibly passionate about martial arts and training. Is that a fair statement?

Jerry Beasley:

No, it's not. I retired. I just retired from Radford University. And it's like any other job when the job is over. Like let's say that you're a mechanic for your whole life. When it's over. You're ready to say it's over and move on to something else. I'm enjoying loving retirement. I loved my position as a professor at Radford University. I loved every day of it. But when it was over, it was over and I didn't want to go back.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Okay. Tell us about that position then.

Jerry Beasley:

Interesting story. So no college or university in America in the US has a bachelor's degree in martial arts, Asian martial arts. Okay. Is there interest in it? But no college prepares professors to become college professors in that particular career. Okay, so in other words, you could go to any college you want. And you might be able to get a few courses here or there in martial arts, mostly technical, mostly basic karate or basic kung fu or something like that. I think there's one other college, Los Angeles City College, maybe Hayward Nishioka comes to mind. I believe he is an Asian martial arts program. 

Minor, it's a minor at that college. That's the only one that I know of. I know, there are some private colleges that are online and things like that, that offer degrees, it would not be much value out of it. In other words, if you were to get a degree online, and then go to a Brick-and Mortar College, and say, kind of get a job, your chances of being accepted are pretty low, maybe zero. 

So there's no real training to get into colleges to become a college professor. It's something a lot of people like to do. I mean, everyone would like to be a college professor, teaching martial arts. Wow. And that'd be great. Yeah, it's incredible. Okay, but so how did I get it?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Is it like Highlander? Do I have to take it from you?

Jerry Beasley:

They didn't replace the position because they decided, well, we can't really replace you. It caused a lot of money to go the route of interviewing and stuff like that. We've got other things. Let's let it go. And so it's almost 50 years, almost 50 years that I invested in University. Like I said, love every day of it. As Bill Wallace would say, it was a blast. And it was fantastic. So I was a senior at Virginia Tech, a wonderful college, wonderful university. They have about 30, some 1000 students. 

Now when I was a student there, there may have been 12 or 15,000. So I go to Virginia Tech, and I'm majoring in philosophy. I entered college in 1970. And I finished in 73 6970, finished 73. Okay, and I really liked the Asian martial arts. And so I majored in philosophy, because I love that philosophy. Okay, I was also reading some Bruce Lee information where he says, I haven't created you art. But my art can be all arts and is bound by none. It's like water. So as a philosophy major, I thought, oh, wait a minute. 

Now, how can you be all arts but bound by none. So that really intrigued me. And so I started writing my papers and philosophy classes, they'd say, write a paper about this or that. And I tried to focus on martial arts. The war in Vietnam was on at the time. I think I didn't. ‘73 the year I graduated. I expected to go into the military when I graduated, but the war ended, fortunately. And so I decided there, it was right at the Jimmy Carter era. And there were no jobs, per se, it was a low economy. The oil embargo was started probably the very next year. And so it was tough. So I went back to graduate school and got a master's degree in sociology. Well, every course that I took, if I had to write a paper and you have to write papers for everything, I would study martial arts. I looked at role playing, I looked at social psychology. I looked at the work ethic of martial arts. My master's thesis was, I believe, I spent 30-40 years in the occupation role of the sensei. 

So if you go back to the 1970s, the Asians were identified as martial arts masters and the non Asians, the Americans, were considered. You can't be a master. You can only be good. Then we sort of haven't guessed like Chuck Norris and Joe Lewis and others get into martial arts movies. And they really kind of put a new face if you will, on martial arts. So they started, so non-Asians became accepted as martial arts leaders. I had a wonderful time studying about it, researching the masters and when I faced the Masters, I went back for the doctorate and I completed a Doctorate in Education Administration. 

So I studied how martial arts schools came over from Asia with a very much survival of the fittest. Get rid of students that can't make it and they change that into every student that can make it. I just have to find a way to help them do that. Of course, every student has a value and a martial arts school. So that was the doctorate. And then I started writing to John Corcora. I sent an article out to John Corcoran, who is one of the top writers, journalist. And he just was really excited about the master's thesis. And so he picked out a few articles out of that and said, Write these up. And so I got back in touch with him and started writing there. This was around 1980. And then the most wonderful thing happened. And I believe it was 82. It was in the winter, the spring of 1982, Joe Lewis, my martial arts hero, decided to relocate to North Carolina, he was from Knightdale, North Carolina. 

He had been in Hollywood as you, as you know, I'm sure doing movies and such. His mom developed cancer, I believe it was or some ailment, his dad had already passed away. She had a big farm there and Knightdale. So he elected to move back and take care of her. And when he did, his connections in Hollywood started closing out. And so all of a sudden, he was an outsider. He had lost the world title. And he thought, Well, gee, if I can get that back, I would like to get back into movies. And so that was always his time. So he made an idea. My ideal was maybe four or five hours from me, I immediately called him up, he was living with the YMCA. He had no money, he was living at the YMCA, kind of down on his luck. So I called him up. He said, “Yeah, of course”. 

I said, I'd like to do an article. He said, definitely come down. So myself and a friend go down. And our real interest was in working out with the great Joe Lewis. So the first my first meeting, we talked about sparring, he said, you bring it here, I said, of course. And so we put on the gear, and went down to the YMCA and started…

Jeremy Lesniak:

Let’s pause that story for just a moment. Can you talk about your just giving us enough experience with your training up till that point that we know what that we can we can get a sense as to what's about to happen. Sure what it looks like from your perspective.

Jerry Beasley:

Okay, so after I graduated from college, well, first of all, in college, when I started out, I had kind of low grades. Virginia Tech is a very challenging University. 3.7 GPA was what was required for a long time, but they would take students from the community I was from Christiansburg, 10 miles away, they would take students from the community and let us come in, and not be so concerned about the requirements, just as a community thing. Very few students survived it. But I was a martial artist. So I knew I was going to survive, I did have the skills. So I would go into classes, and I'd been in a rock band and we traveled around and I played lead guitar. There's so many martial artists who play lead guitar. And we were traveling and I didn't show up to class very often. And so by the end of the first semester, I had maybe a one five GPA. That was a D+ average. So I kept training in martial arts, so I dropped out of the band. And I was also told that my race and get back up, I was going to be in Vietnam. 

So my parents didn't want my dad to fight in World War II. And he said, when he went to war, they said, “This is the final war you're fighting now. So your kids will never have to fight”. So he discouraged me and I was ready to go myself. So he discouraged me from doing that. So I dug in and worked hard. I said, You're a martial artist. I was used to being a black belt. I was used to being in the front of the class. But in the Virginia Tech classrooms that I would take math in particular, oftentimes had the lower grades. I was in the back of the class. I said, this isn't right. I'm a martial artist. I'm a leader. I'm going to learn how to study because I didn't know how to. I knew there was a library. I knew there were books I didn't know. I knew you had to buy the books. I didn't know you had to read them. 

So I found that out and got into the library and started studying. My grades went from one five to three four Dean’s listed in no time at all. So the interview is that Virginia Tech must have seen that I had the ability. I just didn't have the skills necessary to work out, not work out but to study and make the grade. So I was quickly on the Dean's list. And because I was on the Dean's list and because I became one of the better students, then I felt it. That's why I went back to graduate school after that. 

So in 1971, already black belt in Taekwondo. They call it taekwondo. It was Korean karate Tang Soo Do, or what was actually shotokann. When I was in Virginia Tech, there was a guy that had a brown belt in shotokan. And we were comparing notes. Because I was a red belt, same thing at the time. And we were both doing the same system, same style, same kata. And I thought, “wait a minute, how can you be Japanese, and I'm Korean”. And at the time, it was like, pure Japanese, we don't want to associate with you. You're a Korean stylist, we don't get together. So I started working out with different people in different styles and things like that we put on martial arts shows, have little in house club tournaments. And so I was really inspiring, I was inspiring. Primarily because of [00:16:18-00:16:20], I created the safety equipment in 1973. And it wasn't available to me until about 1974. 

But the minute we put them on our hands and feet, and we started sparring, it occurred to me that all the things I learned were just too hard to do. You can't get in that stance and pull your hand back to your hip. So we started kind of experimenting and getting what was called at the time in the South. Now Virginia is considered in the south, but we're not Southern, I don't know.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I live in Vermont, I've lived in New England my whole life. To me pretty much everything south of Pennsylvania, even southern Pennsylvania is the south. 

Jerry Beasley:

I guess, historically, the southwest Virginia, West Virginia down and the North was anything above. So we had that scoring gear. And I found out that it's so hard to pull your hand back at your hip each time and throw that punch. Then when you have the gear on, you have to change the way you're doing these things. So after that it didn't do Kata, why just trained, just trained to get a better kick better punch, to move more. I really didn't get into tournaments, except for a couple of invitational tournaments, open tournaments because they didn't have to have I was in college. 

And I'd found out once before, when you traveled to be in a band, you have to give up something. So if you travel to do the circuit, you have to give up something and I wasn't willing to do that. Because I had already decided that teaching martial arts was incredible. That's what I wanted to do. I had opened the karate club and, and Radford University 10 miles away in 1973, and that's when I went to be the president of [00:18:07–00:18:09] University. And I made an appointment and I went and approached and I said, what we need here is a self defense class martial arts. 

And I guess he looked at me like, wait a minute, you don't come and tell the president of a university what we need. But at the same time, like a bell one, light went off his head. This is mostly a girl's campus. That's what we need. This would be great for everyone. And physical education was required at the time, everyone had to take three credits of physical education. So he marched me right down the hallway to the Vice President for Academic Affairs, David Moore. And in life, everyone has that one person that pats me on the back and gives them the chance. And that was my one person, David Moore. Yeah, let's make this happen. And so he talked to the PE department, they weren't interested in it. But he said, “Yes, you are”. So they got interested in it. And he made it happen for me. 

So I was teaching martial arts. As an adjunct instructor. I didn't have the doctorate yet, so I couldn't go into professorship. But I was an adjunct instructor, teaching martial arts. I had a karate school where I taught different things. So it was that martial arts had taken over my life. And I was studying at the same time, so by the time I got to Joe Lewis, I was a fifth degree black belt. I had a lot of training and practice and kickboxing. I joined the tech boxing club for a while under a made request. It was a very small group then, and basically he beat us up on a daily basis. On occasion, we would get to spar whoever showed up and sometimes it'd be a Golden Glove to and sometimes it'd be a beginner. I liked the beginner days. And then you get better over time. But he wouldn't let us kick. 

One time, I sparred. And he let me kick them in the face, a hook, kick in the stomach. I was thinking, This is too easy. I thought this guy was good. He was Golden Gloves state champion. And he said, I said, Well, I'm just gonna punch my fingers. And so I punched him, and boom, he dropped down, left hook me lever shot went down. So I said, okay, I've got to learn this. He would never let me kick after that. So I had the training and the full context sparring. I was a fan of Joe Lewis. I know that he studied with Bruce Lee. I was a fan of Joe, Bruce Lee, primarily the philosophy part of it. And so when I found out that Joe Lewis was going to be located in Knightdale, North Carolina, I called him up on the phone, someone had given me his phone number. And I said, look like a bad workout with you. And I write articles and he apparently read one of them about the history of martial arts. And I had included him not knowing him at the time. 

So, I said, “Sure, come on down”. So I made an appointment, came down. We talked for a while. And then, we sparred. If you train with Joe Lewis, that means sparring. It's not like he says, Okay, get into class, he never did karate. We never did anything that resembled karate stances, or punches or kicks or anything like that, maybe the kicks. And sometimes we often wear a karate uniform for the visuals for the videos. And, photographs that we did for magazines. We wore a karate uniform, but we never did karate. It was always kickboxing, full contact. And so from day one, and so you're probably going to ask, Well, how did you do? 

I was surprised that I was able to kick him and get some punches in and things like them. But I'm sure now he said that he hadn't sparred in seven years at the time. I may have been the first person back and I think he was working with some local karate guy there. So he had not sparred and Hollywood, they told him, if you spar, he can, you know, break a nose or something and get hurt. So he didn't spar. He didn't do a lot of things. They're waiting on movie roles and things like that. I found out later, by the way, Joe was offered a contract. Universal Studios, I think it was to be a, you know, a group actor. $50,000 a year in probably 1971-72.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I've heard about this, but it was TV and he didn't want to do TV. Yeah, he felt the TV was a small screen. Yeah, we want to go to the big screen. 

Jerry Beasley:

TV actors seldom get to break into movies. It just wasn't happening at the time. So he was advised not to do that. The advisor I believe that he's spent a lot of time with was Al Tracy, Al Tracy had hired him. I was hauled around $100,000 a year to go to all of the karate schools, Crazy campus. And Joe didn't like tempo at all. But he went to all the bases, taught them sparring techniques, did seminars, and things like that. And he was the number one name in martial arts at the time. And so he had told him not to get in TVs, but to get movies. And also, some people know that Bruce Lee in 1971 concluded he wasn't going to get any major roles and an American TV and movies. 

So he went to Hong Kong, and they were really getting on when he got off the plane. There was a crowd there. He didn't know why. They were fans of the Kato show. What was it called Green Hornet? They've relabeled it as the Kato show. And so he immediately got contracts to be in movies. His movies were fantastic, because it wasn't the type of cinema they were used to. Instead of Bruce Lee coming out and doing the 123 kung fu cinema. He came out like American martial arts and sparred with his opponents. If you ever notice that. He comes out, he's moving, and gets to footwork. 

He's moving around, he's hitting, he's moving back and forth. He's swinging John Wayne type of punches. One of his private students had what was his name Wanted Dead or Alive. Ah, who is that guy number? He was the number one actor back in the 70s. I can't think of his name Wanted Dead or Alive. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'm gonna look it up because I'm Gene Simmons.

Jerry Beasley:

It was Steve McQueen. Yeah, he was one of Bruce Lee's private students, they traveled with him at a few movies as a personal trainer. They didn't use that term personal trainer, but he was a personal trainer. So he picked up Steve McQueen's mannerisms and things like that. And so if you notice, Bruce Lee's movies, all of his movies was an Asian, Steve McQueen. So he took the number one box office actor in the US and became that and China and all of Asia. And then that translated the popularity back into us. So at one point, Bruce Lee had contacted Joe, probably in 1970-72, I guess. I think Bruce went back to China in 1971 and started acting, his movies probably came out in ‘72. 

He started getting a lot of authority at the movies. So he caught contacted Joe, and asked Joe, if he would be interested in being part of one of his movies, it was returned to the dragon. And of course, most people understand it. He asked Joe to turn it down. And he got Chuck Norris. So that started Chuck Norris became legendary. So Joe did not take it because Al Tracy said, “No, don't go over there and be in a small time and get beat up and killed by an Asian actor. You got to be powerful. And so Joe turned it down. A lot of people don't know that. That was the real reason that he turned it down was because there was another Tracy there and it might have been the other guy. I don't think it was Al, I think there was another Tracy brother. So, I think it's right. Joe had missed that opportunity to be in the movies with Bruce Lee. So, here he was YMCA down in his luck could have been a top box office star had the chops as they say they had the looks. He had some acting skill.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You had the charisma.

Jerry Beasley:

He was a Hollywood movie star and everyone would guarantee it. And that's probably one of the reasons that he didn't take the TV roles. We mentioned he was offered to be in as a character actor for Universal, one of the one of the big companies there. And so turned that down, tried for a starring role. He got the one Jaguar lives on. They put it together, but then they didn't promote it. 

You know, usually the budget for promotion is certainly as big as the budget for producing it. And then they let it go. And they kind of dropped him out. So he never really got anything else. They had some TV roles and had some opportunities, but never really amounted to much. So here he is back in Knightdale. I was sparring all the time, so I felt pretty good about it. So how did I get to this? Well, Joe hadn't been spotted in seven years, as I mentioned, as he had been in Hollywood. So when he gets back, he decides to get in shape and try to get that heavyweight title back. But during those seven years, he would write an article here and there. And certainly after he won the PGA title in 1974, which is by the way, the perfect example of the Jeet Kune Do that Joe learned from Bruce's forehand, fighting lots of footwork, mobility, and ways of attack. That's the concept of Jeet Kune Do. So he was kind of, not in the best shape, he gained weight and things like that. 

And so I felt like I did sports. I went down there once a month for a year or so. Sometimes more often, and I will see him on the road a lot. But so I would go down and spar with him. And probably the second or third time, it was like a world of difference. He started training again. And he was just a phenomenal fighter. And all the things came back to him. And I could come touching them. I'd be lucky to get a kick. So that's how it went with that. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

That's a lot of fun. And clearly in that time you established enough of a relationship that you and Joe Bill Wallace put together karate college. 

Jerry Beasley:

Yes.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Can you talk about the origins of that? Because let's face it, a lot of people, myself included have tried to put together events similar to that. Are you putting that event together? Because this year? 50 years? 40 years? 35 year? Yes. Still not not nothing, right.

Jerry Beasley:

Phenomenal.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Can you talk about the origins and what made it work at a time when? My understanding because I wasn't. I was quite young and I didn't know what was going on. But my understanding of that time was that cross training and mixing wasn't terribly popular.

Jerry Beasley:

No, it wasn't at all. So some would say it was lucky stars I count, consider it a blessing that Joe Lewis would be there, and then I would have what it takes. It was the publicity skills that I had that he was so attracted to. I'm sure it wasn't my skill. But he had worked with John Corcoran and had been roommates with John Corcoran for two years there in Hollywood. In fact, John was let go of his position at [0:31:21-00:31:23]. At the same time, Joe decided, and so John Corcoran moved back to Pennsylvania, where he was from. And so Joe was left without a roommate. His mom was sick. 

Hey, let's go home. So that's why that happened. That was 1982. So I knew him for about a year. I go there every, every month, and also, I had an organization called AKIA-American Independent Karate Instructors Association. And we had quite a few schools. And so I tried to book seminars with Joe and everybody wanted a seminar with Joe. And at the time, he would do a seminar for $250. So he could do two or three in an area and move on to the next one. And he knew everybody and everybody knew him. So say he was in Scranton, Pennsylvania, or is it Scranton, New Jersey. It's a brand new jersey, I think he was just called by the people around the area. 

And they will say, sure, we want a seminar. And what surprised 250. 300 anyone? 500, 700. I think he finished around 1500. When he was doing seminars here a few years ago, 10 years ago. In fact, Joe passed away 10 years ago, March, about 10 years ago, as of August this August 2022. So that would have been 2012, August. End of August, August 30. So he could get seminars anywhere, everyone wanted him to stay at their house and things like that. So I traveled around and would meet up with Joe would, and in one state or another and we trained all the time. And I was taking out all these notes and writing stuff. And it was getting in articles and that was making him more popular. 

And then we do another article, and then he gets more popular and more jobs. And so it was a symbiotic relationship that we worked together. We were really good together. His dad had been a college professor, so he sort of had an admiration for education and things like that. So we're really working, Joe, and I just hit it off really well. And we were good partners for all the things that we did there everything we're so how did karate college happen? Well, once my name got out as being associated with Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace, Jeff Smith, the three world champions and at the time when they won the World title in 1974, they were the first and the biggest, and the most important, and they became legends in 1974. 

So everyone wanted to find out about Bill Wallace and Jeff Smith and Joe Lewis. They were the big names. So an entrepreneur in the Poconos of Pennsylvania put together a camp, and he contacted me and he had Jeff Smith just method worked with him before. He said how to get Bill Wallace. Again, going off his phone number he got Bill Wallace. So wait, man, you need to get Joe Lewis. Bill was Jeff Smith. You gotta get Joe Lewis. So he contacted Joe Lewis. Then he called me back. So when I don't know these guys, will you come up and do an article? I said, Yeah, you have to pay the way you know. So I went up there with him. And coming back, Jeff Smith and I were on a plane. And I said to Jeff, I said, because we're both from Virginia. I said, Jeff, I could do a better camp than that. So what do you mean? I said, I've got a college, Radford University. I've got access to summer camp, dormitories of buildings, everything I work there. 

He said, Well, um, let's think about it. You think you could get Joe? I said, “Yeah, Joe Oh, definitely. I sent a bill to you. I didn't know Bill as well at the time. I know Bill really well now, because we've been partners for 37 years. 30/35/36 years, same as karate college, so I said, well, I'm not gonna pay you guys. We're gonna go in as partners. Each one promotes it. Each one gets the information out and each one teaches it. And so, we showed up at the camp and I had like 250 people the first year unheard of. But what made the camp was we had karate kung fu illustrated, karate, there was a magazine out of Florida at the time John Corcoran was with we have Blackbell magazine, but inside Kung Fu, every martial arts magazine, five or six had editors or representatives there. 

So this was in June. So by June, July, August, August, September, every martial arts magazine had a big blow up, a big write up on the martial arts camp. So everybody knew about it. The next year, we got bigger and bigger bears. We started having some actual luck, loss of attendance. After year three, when people got tired of doing the same thing. You got three champions who are going to teach you the same thing. And you know, mix it up a little bit. What else did you get there? So I started hiring Judo guys and Kung Fu guys and things like that. So the big thing on the camp was all the editors said for the first time, masters of Kung Fu, karate, judo, subvod, and etc, are coming together. 

There was no fighting, no infighting, everyone got along, everyone respected everyone. And so that changed the way people started looking at it. So once we started grappling in 1991-92, I started having the grapplers come in. Then we really became a mixed martial arts camp, and we started growing considerably. Now the UFC didn't come about until 1993. It was called no holds barred. It wasn't until 1995 that Jeff, a wrestler and a commentator for the UFC, was watching the fighters and he said, that guy's got the kicks, the punches. He's got the grappling skills. He's a real mixed martial artist, coined the word right there. That's where it came about. 1995. Jeff black, believe that it was in Wyoming. You can tell the history professor is gonna have these little individual things that stuck out. 

So we had the first real cross training, mixed martial arts type of camp, everyone got along. Once the reputation got out. We got guys like hens. Oh, Gracie got involved in it. And Jean rebels guys got involved in it. We had the top fighters, the top grapplers. It bombed the 1990s by 1993. We consistently had 350. By 1994-95. We had 400. A one year we had a total of 500 on these different camps. And it just grew and grew until about the year 2000. And then it started. Everyone was doing it. They came, they saw it, this is how you do it. Well, we're gonna do our own thing. 

We can't send a group this year, because we're doing ours. And then the Martial Arts Teachers Association started coming out saying don't go to camp. Have your own camp? Well, I mean, that would be good business for a school if you had a school for what? Yeah. So that's how it was working out there. And the camp is still in existence. Of course, we lost Joe in 2012. Joe had brain cancer. And most of the people close to him. Notice that probably four years earlier, 2008. Bill Wallace and I were talking about this, we noticed Joe was just getting mad for no reason. He just got extremely upset and mad. He got mad at a person that had not done anything to him. He would confuse the name and the face with a person. And he was on the internet at the time. And he would write the most terrible things about people and I mean, just guys trying to get ahead trying to get their name on a Hall of Fame thing. And he cut them down and slandered them. And we thought this isn't Joe, he sounds like this. So then he again and I remember in 2009 or something like that. 

He told him myself and another blackbelt. Jerry, if I started repeating myself or drooling. Well, you pointed that out to me once and we said sure, Joe. So he knew something was wrong. So this was a couple years beforehand, he had these headaches and vision problems and things like that. So by the time he finally went in and 2011 to a doctor's office, it had grown. They had no recourse. They did the chemo and things. And the last few pictures of him at his conference and things. He's all ballooned up because of the prednisone and cancer treatments and things didn't even look like himself. 

So it was pitiful there. But now he's still leaving an incredible legacy. So what made karate college great, no luck. We were the first one out. We had the most interesting people, we had all the publicity coming in on it. And it was all free. The publicity was and we never dropped the ball. We kept going from there again, the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, one thing I never did was a Hall of Fame. We never know we have a chronic College Hall of Fame for our own instructors that have been there five to 10 years. But we never opened it up and let people come in and put them in a hall of fame. And that's what some people have said, you need to do that, to keep your enrollments up.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Is that something you talked about internally? Do you talk about that with Bill and Joe? And yeah, ultimately, hence…

Jerry Beasley:

They were in favor of it. They're not paper tigers. They're real deal people. And so it just hurts so much to give a piece of paper or a word certificate or something that somebody you know, didn't deserve. They just paid the price. And that's what so many of the Hall of Fame's had become. You probably had been nominated for dozens of them. I used to get them all the time, but I would never respond to them. It's a money making proposition. Do the people deserve it? It's their Hall of Fame. And if they feel like they deserve it, yes, they do. But it's not on the level of, you know, like a black belt Hall of Fame or something like that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

When you think about what you've seen over the course of your time involved in the martial arts. Quite often people will tend towards the negative, they bring a cynical point of view, I don't want to do that. I want to go the other way. Because you've been around so many people because you've watched so much of what is going on now in the martial arts world, however you want to define it, whatever corners you want to look at, that you wish had been going on at some point in the past.

Jerry Beasley:

When I first met Joe Lewis, I had read his articles that he wrote for a professional karate magazine in 1973. And it detailed what he learned from Bruce Lee five ways of attack, footwork, lead hand lead foot, all the things he learned from Bruce Lee Jo practice with Bruce Lee for roughly 18 months. During that time, he won 11 straight national and world champion titles. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

It changed, not by coincidence.

Jerry Beasley:

Probably not. What most people don't know at all. I learned this. recently in the last couple of years. I started contacting guys like Jerry Pennington, Jerry Smith, Darnell Garcia. Guys like this that were on the scene at the time and were the champions and they let me know that Bruce used to go with Joe to the weekly sparring sessions. Bruce never sparred. But everyone except for Bruce, he was in shaping youth things charismatic. So they're all happy to have him come in. And he would coach Joe, and he would train Joe, do this and do this and, and, okay, now, so and so he'll come right at you. 

So you want to step and move, don't you hit him before he hits you, you know intercepting. So he had all that training with Bruce and was able to write these outstanding articles and professional karate magazines. John Corcoran was the author but John and I both agreed when we talked about it. Joe starts talking if you got a tape recorder at the time. Joe starts talking. All you say anything you do is if there's a dangling participle or, something like that, Joe just talks about an article out just comes out string. 

So what I said to Joe was Joe, I want to learn what you learned from Bruce Lee. That's what I'm here for. That's why I wanted this 1983 and ‘82. So when he would come up and see me we'd spent a week just going through the material that Bruce had shown him. Now Joe was never really identified with Bruce Lee. He never called himself a Jeet Kune Do instructor or practitioner. But everyone you knew that worked with Bruce Lee. And Joe felt that he'd given all new names and things like that and updated a lot of it. But the whole system of Jeet Kune Do, the five ways of attack, the lead handling foot, the incredible footwork, the testing, you have to test your material, you can't just accept that it worked for someone in some country at some year, you have to get out there and tested pressure test testing the cop. He did all that. And Bruce and Linda Lee, Bruce's wife at the time, knew Joe. 

Well, I mean, they hung out. Joe was at Bruce's house all the time. They met up at different places like that. So she knew that they had worked together and that he wasn't necessarily a student, but a co partner. I mean, Joe was the world champion. So Bruce would chisel away all the things that Joe had, and get just this refined product. People used to talk about Joe Lewis. Joe, you only use a bag knuckle, it was a lead hand, a lead hand and a sidekick. That's all you ever use? Well, yeah, well, I went to every tournament. So that was because it's not how many skills you know, it's how many ways you can use your skills. 

So when a technique didn't work, Joe would not change techniques and go to some other system or some other technique, he would change the angle, the way he was presenting it. A good bass fisherman will tell you that. If he's using a bait cane, it's not working, he'll change the way he's presenting it, he'll change it, get a different lower, or change position. So that's the secret of the finding is, each person is going to come at you a certain way. You have to know through experience, how you're going to approach them with a few techniques, you don't need a dozen 15 or 20 techniques. Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis only concentrated on basics for sidekick. Some variations of those, jab, cross hook, some variations of those, Joe won the 1974 world title, forward and technique which was sidekick. And he threw a rock kick or two. But that was when I hit my right cross as well. He fought off the right side and fell off the left side, he was equally gifted on either side. So it wasn't that he had a dominant side. So that's what I was interested in, the Jeet Kune Do. And I have no idea where we went from there, how we got there. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

But that's okay. One of the most interesting things I ever heard because of the show got me ultimately trained with and here are a number of things from Bill Wallace was the way he talks about Joe Lewis, a psychic. You know, most people look at Bill's fighting career and what he was able to do with a sidekick. And so to me, and I think for so many others, to hear him as a man with an impeccable human sidekick. So Joe Lewis had the best sidekick I ever saw. I can't think of a better compliment.

Jerry Beasley:

Okay, so if you're doing Jeet Kune Do, the way Bruce and Joe set it up. It's not just a technique, it's not just a sidekick, you have to train until you can throw the most powerful sidekick possible. The fastest sidekick possible, and the most deceptive. Sidekick possible. Okay, you also have to be accurate. So Joe would train hour after hour throwing the sidekick, sidekick, sidekick, sidekick. All these techniques. Same with Bruce. They would train a few techniques, but when they did it, it was better than anybody else. Okay, Bill Wallace. Bill Wallace throws around a kick, sidekick, hook kick, backfist, crossover hook and hook. Sometimes you know he'll throw the right cross. 

That's what he throws, but he is the fastest possible. He's a little muscular. He was a wrestler, he was built and strong. Okay, he can take he got the tenacity. One thing I can say about Joe and Bill. I've seen people who are really, really mad and you don't want to be around them. They've got just focus and they've got an intensity about that, it's tough. I mean, so Joe Lewis, his sidekick. People would question it. I mean, he stomps the floor and the hitch, but it's how he hits you people would run when they saw this sidekick coming out. They would run out of the rain. Look at Bill Wallace, Joe Lewis category trying to get his technique and then always out there. So, it's that kind of stuff.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's when you first started talking about it, it reminds me of the probably the second most famous Bruce Lee quote, If you're not the man who knows 10,000 kicks, right? Yeah, man has practiced 110 1000 times. Yeah. And they really sound to be the implementation of that. Do you think I have this wondering as you're talking about the relationship between the two of them? It almost sounds like Bruce was working out some of what he was trying to figure out through Joe.

Jerry Beasley:

Oh, yeah. Joe was the test to Ted Wong, who trained with both of them at the same time. And you, Joe well, and you, Bruce. Well, he said, Bruce always considered Joe the best team. He was the guy that went out. And I mean, they would go to the Jaguars studios there in Southern California. I'm not definitely with the towns, but there were four or five of them that had the chip in our schools. And they would train on Thursday, as I recall, was a sparring night. And Joe would always take Bruce to them. 

And they would train, everyone watched him train. Bruce was kind of the coach. And they would go out and Joe would spar with everyone. I mean, they would spar 20 3040 rounds on a given night. So it was that kind of intensity and training like that. Yeah, it's very much Joe was very much Jeet Kune Do. Later on, Joe turned more to sport and kickboxing, sport kickboxing, and out of the self defense aspects. But Joe, that's probably because Joe never really had to defend himself much. Who's going to fight Joe Lewis? I mean, the intensity in his eyes, it does not make her the other way. Yeah. Now, Bill Wallace has basic Jeet Kune Do. On The Bright side, he's got Bill to do it.

And the ability to do it, say it's a strategy and attributes, the strategy is, here's how I'm going to do it. I'm gonna throw around the kick side, kick them and move in. But you have to have attributes, Bill's got that he said that muscle development, he's got speed power deceptiveness, he sees probably, if Joe was named the greatest fighter of all time, and Bill may well have been, may well be the greatest of all time. I mean, they admired each other. They were such good friends. They would have arguments every now and then. But good friends have argued that Joe got mad at me from time to time. But good friends have arguments.

Jeremy Lesniak:

To challenge each other was my understanding. They made each other better. They did. They did. So that's the question I had asked, and I want to go back to it. Because, you know, I asked the question, and we got some wonderful stories. So ask your question again. And maybe we will become more wonderful. Because the martial arts landscape has changed. Because things are done differently now than they used to be. Are there things that you see being done today? That you say I'm glad that changed. I'm glad this is different. Now, this is a better way to do whatever.

Jerry Beasley:

Yes, it's a better martial arts world and environment out there now. And the MMA had a lot to do with it. The MMA had a lot. It was the testing ground. It showed these techniques work, those techniques don't work. The Karate started off strong and powerful. And everyone understood because we only knew a few techniques, side kick, back kick. We learned some basic techniques. And we would work for hours, my first class and martial arts as a Korean karate. Karate was the name you didn't have anything else. You could call it Korean or Chinese, or Japanese, but it was our American. But it was karate. 

When our first class was two hours, we would do every technique we knew 30 times, right, sad. 30 times less sad. The training was incredible. It was a survival of the fittest. Start off with 30 people. Within a few practice sessions, you're down to 15. And then you're down to 10 out of the 30 or 40 that started with me, myself and one other guy. I'm a black belt. So that was the expectation back then. So it was simple and direct. And then we got all these shysters coming in with the death touches and the fake techniques and stuff like that and and the public didn't buy into it. 

They didn't agree yeah, you can kill me in 10 different ways they then agree to that. And then the kickboxers came along and they tried their best to get Joe Lewis when he started kickbox thinking it was not 71 to quit, then no one would fight him because he beat everybody who showed up in front of him, knocking them out in the first and second round. So they thought that no one wanted the competition from the other arts. So looking back on it, if the karate people had not become such showboats and not allowed people that didn't earn a black belt to be black belts, it would be very powerful but they didn't do it that way. It became the McDojo's and all those things and you have people like getting black belts that don't deserve it, they don't have the skill to serve. 

And so when MMA came along, it kind of overcame karate. It has a bad name, like being ineffective by a lot of people in the general public. If you go to a college campus, no one wants to join a karate club anymore. They want to join the MMA or the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu club, okay? Or the symbol that kickboxing hurts. So that's what we're looking at right now. It's all fantastic. But my recommendation would be simple and direct. You know Bruce Lee had a great idea, simple and direct. Okay, learn to adjust like if you're presented with one type of energy move around it other type of energy move around a lot of people now even she could do it has its growing pains. One school of thought felt that she could do a research technique where you learn different martial arts systems, Filipino, Indonesian, anything that involves karate and you mix those together so you can flow from one art to another art and they call that Jeet Kune Do concept. 

Another school of thought is really Wing Chun. You know, the Wing Chun skill, she just learned the Wing Chun skills and you change the footwork, and then you got chickened out. So, it's obvious not that if you have to say that your art, give it a name other than. No, it's probably not you who can do the Joe Lewis, Jeet Kune Do, was simply fighting. It was taking a few techniques and testing them and refining them, so that it worked in every situation. If a guy goes to war, and they issue him a rifle, that rifle has to help him stay balanced, it has to fight off the enemy. It has to be able to shoot fast and slow, it has to be accurate, issues long and short. He's got one weapon, he's got to use it. So that was the whole idea. And it's like they missed this point. A lot of it was pulled from fencing. Fencing has one weapon, they don't get to put that weapon down and say, Well, I think I need an ax for this. And the next guy comes. I think I need a samurai sword for this guy. It's one weapon you got one weapon, you use it for every situation. 

Bruce and Joe understood that you have a few weapons, what are the universal weapons, a jab cross hook, every art has a job of some type, a hook of some type. 

Every art has a front kick of some type, a sidekick of some type around Bruce hook kick of some type. So my art could be all arts, but not bound by any art. So it starts making sense that it takes me a few years to do that yet two decades to figure it out. constantly testing, constantly searching, constantly talking. Okay, but that's what you know, was intended to be. That's why Joe Lewis never changed it. He always says Jeet Kune Do. He again adapted more into kickboxing in the last 20 years of life as he was teaching. And then toward the end, it was kind of a mixed martial art. But in the beginning, if you look at the 74 world titles, and beyond that, he was doing straight Jeet Kune Do.

He was in a karate tournament. All that it can't be she could no, yes, it was strange. He could have Bruce Lee's you can know right there for everyone to see. So simplicity is the key to them. So if I look at the landscape of martial arts, I applaud everyone, even the McDojo's I mean this. I'm not against anyone. Again, I'm 71. I've had a wonderful career for 50 some years, I did everything that I wanted to do. I met some of the best people I know that Bruce Lee was still alive, I would be working with him personally. So I've just seen incredible opportunities. It was a blessing but do I want to go back and do it anymore? No, I'll probably be in karate College. COVID kicked us out for one year. 

And then the second year people were afraid to come back and get that close contact. And it sounds like this year. The gas prices are going to be so high. A lot of people that would like to do it are going to be unable to do it because it costs too much just to get here from out of state. So, I will probably retire it this year 2022, although I'll maintain the name, and we might just have a Bill Wallace seminar every year, and call it karate college, but it won't have all the promotion and all the good. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, what you're saying is 2022, maybe the last year, you're doing it this year?

Jerry Beasley:

Last year, it's still used to karate College. As far as a camp is concerned, this would be the last big production with all the different people. But after this, I'll continue having Joe, Bill Wallace, and a number of dedicated people, they just like to come back and do it. And both have the same intensity of things. But to be a smaller camp, we're not trying for a couple hundreds anymore. 50-100 people, that's their main camp. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

And if people want more information on karate College, where do they go?

Jerry Beasley:

It's called thekaratecollege.com and gives you all the information on who's here and things like that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And is there anything else people should have websites, social media, email, anything else that would be relevant to them as they..

Jerry Beasley:

I'm not trying to sell anything? So I don't have a lot to do. I'm working on a book on the real Jeet Kune Do.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And where are you pulling that information from like this? It doesn't, it does not surprise me. Yeah. Especially after hearing what you've said today, because you've talked about things related to Jeet Kune Do. Have I ever heard of it? But there is a strong group out there that thinks everything never said about Jeet Kune Do. has been said, well, if there's anyone who has the aptitude to pursue something historically, in an academic sense, kind of the intersection of all your skill sets and passions, right? Where's this stuff coming from?

Jerry Beasley:

I go back to being that student sitting in philosophy class and absorbing different philosophers and different religious aspects to martial arts. And I think Bruce Lee intrigued me, he said, using no way, what does that mean? And it took 50 years to figure it out. You might say, well, why didn't you just go to the guys that were in the Chinatown school that were working? Well, I did. Each one, I had a different view. It's like the blind men and the elephant. Three blind men go into a room, there's an elephant. They each get to touch him. They asked that one blind man, what is it? What is an elephant? What's like a roof, a ceiling. It sits just all over the place there. He obviously touched the stomach. In other words, it's like a big hose. It moves around, and an air comes out of the water. He was on the truck. And the third guy said, it's like a whip. It's a fam. And it's just fast. He was at the tail. So the people that work with Bruce Lee, just about everyone came out with a different opinion of what they learned. 

Because Bruce approached each person differently. It's like a conversation. You've talked to a lot of people. And you talked about martial arts with each person. Each person has a little different take on what they learned. Absolutely. So that's why it was first, are any of them wrong? No, they're all correct that they worked with Bruce Lee. And they're telling you, this is what Bruce Lee taught me. This is what I feel like I learned from Bruce Lee. So, I'm going to talk about what Joe Lewis learned from Bruce Lee. And what I learned from Joe Lewis, and much of what I learned from Joe Lewis was not what Joe would say. But what he would constantly do. Oh, over and over, he would go back to the same principles, the same ideas. Joe didn't really talk about Jeet Kune Do. He didn't really do seminars on Jeet Kune Do. He wasn't really interested in being affiliated with Chicano, because it was identified with these other things, and he couldn't if Wing Chun was not something he had any interest in. 

He said, Bruce taught him my extended Chuck Norris, that, you know, some Wing Chun and they would go to parties and they would, you know, trap pants and things like that. Party failures, they call them. They didn't take it seriously. Because they didn't need to, they had something else that was better that worked for them. And that's part of it right there. Finding out what you do best. Wouldn't be terrible. If you were a short little person, maybe a 5’5 220 pound person, you went into a taekwondo school and they tried to teach you the jump spinning kicks when working. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wouldn't probably have a very fun day one.

Jerry Beasley:

Now to find out or if you're a very mild intimidate you went to a boxing club and the hit, you probably wouldn't work, or you just didn't feel good about hanging on to another man getting on the floor and tossing around. And so Brazilian Jiu Jitsu might not be your cup of tea. That doesn't mean you can't capitalize on your attributes and find a strategy that works best for you. And that's what you could do is, and this, the real strategy is simplicity. Now, I don't consider myself to be a Jeet Kune Do instructor. I've never had a cheat code, no school and try to teach people to code up. 

Occasionally a seminar promoter will say, can you talk about Jeet Kune Do? Or an interviewer would say, can you talk about Jeet Kune Do, or a martial arts editor would say, hey, we sent me an article on. I'll do that. But Jenna was just all over the place. You know, you talk to 10 people, and you get 10 views of what Jeet Kune Do is now. So this is what Joe learned. But he didn't really say he learned this. He would do it over and over. And he would say this word, Bruce, Tommy. But he didn't call it Jeet Kune Do. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

Is there a timeline for that book?

Jerry Beasley:

I have 80% of it down. I have to find a publisher, the first thing you want to do is get a publisher for a short time because otherwise, they may say. Well, we'd like to have more of this and less of that. So that cuts down on your writing time. But I've written my whole life, so it's easy to do. And I can snap on that pretty, pretty easy. COVID killed a lot of things. printed material is not something anybody wants in a book. Now you have to shop from one to another to find an artist. Yang's Martial Arts Academy. They're out in a lot of bookstores, they do a good job of publishing. So, I have talked to them, but COVID shit and we didn't do anything for a while. So I'm gonna start back. I just retired, I've been getting used to the freedom. If people say, well, don't you get lonely? Can you find anything to do? And I say, remember, when you were working, you got a day off. The rest of my life is like a day off. Every day, something new, something different. I'm just, I love working, teaching. I don't want to do the martial arts anymore. I just like doing what I like to do. And a lot of that is going back to what made you happy as a kid and doing those things. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

So keep in mind, we've got a bunch of martial artists listening all over the world, different levels of experience, different styles, ages, goals. What would you say to them? As we close up here.

Jerry Beasley:

Be honest with yourself and train hard. I mean, the guys that I've worked with, Joe Lewis, such, these guys are super athletes. I used to spar 15 rounds, three times a week. I mean, we were hardcore, we would pad arms, legs and head, anything you wanted to hit with. You had to pad it, and we would just go out and try to knock each other down. There's that sense of when you're sparring, you go full force, you want to take the guy out. But when you have that opportunity, you pull back. And it's hard to do because that's where you build what's often called the killer instinct. 

Killer Instinct comes about not something you can just turn on. You can't turn on Killer Instinct. Killer Instinct comes about when you're out and you're hitting you. And you're hitting and bam, you can feel the content and you're back. And you know, you've got the guy and you've got you've overpowered him. That's the killer instinct, you want to finish it, you want to finish the fight. If a dog captures a cat and bites him, you would think well, the biting tells him to get away. But once he takes that blood or once he gets that feeling of pain, Killer Instinct comes in, he's got to tear him up. So that's what Killer Instinct is. It's not something you can just turn on. I know there was a popular video on how to turn on your team. 

You can't do that. You can watch you get to it. Killer Instinct is gonna come about what you gotta do is turn it off. You have to be able to turn it off to save your partner. And there's a certain amount of trust you know, all the times I spar with Joe and we sport how hard I had the sense that he's not going to kill me. You know, not because I could stop him but because he wouldn't take advantage he seldom hit me in the head. It was always that he did body shots. He'll have a liver shot, see here down he can't get up, he can't breathe.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, that's this person. I've heard that from this wildlife and he was like that. 

Jerry Beasley:

So, my word to other people would be to be trained, be honest, train hard, sweat, you know and test the pressure testing. So, what I refer to as evidence based, don't just say, well, this technique works because Matsuyama used it, and is killable. Well, he didn't really kill the ball, if you go back and look at that, he broke the horn off and the bull bled to death over a period of an hour or several hours. So there was no killing the bull. So just because someone says that this works, or it was this, this, this army defeated this army because they had this skill, that doesn't mean you have the skill. You know, if you have a grandfather who was a mathematician, that doesn't mean you get the mathematician notation mentality, okay, people are going to be different. So you train the skills, fewer techniques, a lot fewer techniques performed a lot of different ways, is always going to be better than a lot of techniques performed a few ways. We, in martial arts, become too specialized. 

We want to have somebody tag, I got a technique for this, I got a technique for that, what's your technique for that. And we just like to get together and exchange techniques. Now that in itself is artistic and wonderful and great, nothing wrong with that. But it's not realistic, it doesn't make you walk down the street. And now that you can handle a technique, it doesn't make you feel like, gee, if I get hit, I'm not going to die. And that's the big thing you have to get over. And that's getting over. And that's why it's so important to spar with someone on your own level with protective gear. And Bruce Lee said over and over again, the highest level of training is full contact sparring with equipment, or he called it freestyle sparring with equipment, put on the gear, and you go to it. 

I mean, we did takedowns, we did everything when you stand up, we didn't really didn't do ground fighting. It wasn't popular at the time. And we would have done it if it was something we knew to do at the time. But, anything that you could throw spinning elbows, anything we did on and we drilled them till we got them down. So it was a wonderful way to train. Is everyone interested in that? Obviously not. And there's nothing wrong with being caught by a person or just wanting to be a library of vocabulary, learn everything you can and just keep it up. Dan Inosanto is what people call a library. I mean, he is skilled at every martial art system. I mean, yeah, that he's still learning. But it's for self defense skills. 

Being skilled and performing a technique doesn't mean you can use it. Say, I mean, he said before, no one would expect him to be able to defend himself against a big, rough attack, attacker. So you have to keep those things in mind. When you get older, and train, you have to do the basics of weightlifting and the walking or probably not running, but walking, keeping the cardio up, keeping the muscle tone in there. That's what you have to work on more. I know all the techniques, but what I have to work on is just the basic muscle toning and the cardio. And that's what I try to do. Nutrition becomes more important to you then. 

That's why when I see martial arts movies I'm just not interested in. I think you guys had asked me to be on the show once before and I said, I got some other things to do. You know, like there's a movie coming on or something. So I'm not that interested in the martial arts anymore. I like talking to people and this has been a good show, you've done a wonderful job getting stuff out. 

Jeremy Lesniak:

And like I said up at the top. This was an episode where we talked about not only Dr. Beasley but the wonderful people he got to meet and train with and the way that they engage with each other. Something that I appreciate about him is the academic approach that he takes not just to martial arts, but how martial arts exists, how it connects us, right and I'm using that word intentionally to connect, educate and entertain if you've been around for a while with this show. And it's something that I think he and I have in common. I've always admired him for the work that he has done, and the approach that he has taken to martial arts. So having him on the show has been an absolute honor. Dr. Beasley. 

Thank you for your kindness, for your openness. I appreciate it. Listeners go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Check out the show notes. Every episode has a page all to itself with photos, transcripts and even more. while you're over there. You can sign up for the newsletter so you can get notified on the cool things that we're doing. And if you want to support us in the work that we've got happening, you've got a number of options. You could leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Facebook, Google, you could buy a book on Amazon. We've got a bunch of books over there, where you can help with our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. If you want me to come into your school, teach a seminar, I'd love to do that for you. 

We're still booking throughout the year, we just added a few more dates. And let's make it happen. Let me know. If you want to get a hold of me the best way is email Jeremy at whistlekick.com. Don't forget that. We've got the code PODCAST15 at whistlekick.com on anything in the store, from shirts, pants, uniforms, protective equipment, lots of good stuff there. If you've got guest suggestions, we want to hear it. Our social media everywhere you can think of is at whistlekick. Until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day.