Episode 750 - Soke Tim Spiess
Soke Tim Spiess is a Martial Arts practitioner, instructor, and former US Secret Service Agent.
Comes a time in your Martial Art where you go to a next level and something pushes you there and 90% of the time what it is, it is self-discovery…
Soke Tim Spiess - Episode 750
October 1, 1984, was the time Soke Tim Spiess’ Martial Arts journey started, as he vividly remembers. Out of a misunderstanding on the road with another driver, Soke Tim Spiess, at that time, had enough of people bullying him and decided he should know how to fight and protect himself. After that, Soke Spiess developed a passion for Karate where he learned a couple of rare styles that are only known to a handful of people.
In this episode, Soke Tim Spiess shares his journey to the martial arts where he started at an unusual time in his life. Listen to learn more!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
How are you? What's going on? Thanks for coming by. This is whistlekickmartialartsradio, Episode 750. My guest today is Soke Tim Spiess. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, host for the show founder of whistlekick, where everything we do is in support of the traditional martial arts. I don't care if you do karate, Taekwondo, or kung fu or something else. If you train, and you love to train, that's why we're here. If you want to go deeper, find out more about what we're doing and why we're doing it. Well then go to whistlekick.com. It's where I post all the stuff that we've got all the links, so much good stuff that we're putting a ton of effort into. It's not just me, it's a whole bunch of people. With a lot of effort to support you in your journey as a traditional martial artist. One of the things you're gonna find on whistlekick.com is a store because we do make stuff. And you can use the discount code PODCAST15. Because we sponsor our own show, in a sense. The show gets its own website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com.
We bring you two episodes each week, and the entire purpose of all that wants to connect, educate and entertain traditional martial artists worldwide. If you want to support that work, there are so many things you can do. You can make a purchase. But you could also do free things like tell people about what we're doing, maybe share an episode, follow us on social media, we're at whistlekick everywhere you can think of, or think about joining our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. and get in as little as two bucks a month. And the more you're willing to spend, the more we're gonna give you back. We've even got a school owner's mastermind in some of the opportunities, and you can write off your Patreon contributions at that point.
You want the whole list of everything you can do to help us out. whistle kick.com/family had a good time talking to showcase peace. We had fun, you know, talking about a little bit. How do I put it? Not quite an unconventional entrance into the martial arts but not a common one. And yet, like so many others we've had on the show a very quick resonance into what traditional martial arts is. I'm not telling you anything that you all don't know, you've probably felt it too. But it was that feeling that kept him in despite being pulled away and moved around a few times. So here we go. How are you?
Tim Spiess:
Good. How are you doing?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm great. Thank you. Thanks for doing this.
Tim Spiess:
No problem.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, I like to start in a pretty basic way because it gives us a foundation for everything else we're going to talk about. When did you get started in martial arts?
Tim Spiess:
October 1, 1984.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, the day?
Tim Spiess:
Oh, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Wow. Okay.
Tim Spiess:
The paper I got I wrote up in the corner that day.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That’s so cool. Okay. And why?
Tim Spiess:
Why did I? Well, I was at the time I was 19. I was in my first year of community college. And my army buddy, my buddy, best friend at the time the army came home on leave. And we're going through the town of Bethlehem and we're just going in the old park down by Moravian College and driving up behind this guy. And he thought I was on his tail too much. He gets out. He comes over to my door. He was this skinny, scrawny long-haired guy. And at the time, I had been working out a lot. I was the assistant coach for a fitness team and did karate. And you know, I didn't know what this guy was going to do. So, I locked my door, and he just went off on me. And my buddy said, oh my god, he said you could have just destroyed him. I said because I was fit. I was strong. You know and natural Sparky and like, you know what, I stopped putting up with this. I find out years later that I probably did the right thing. Lock the door and just to be sure you go you know, so, but that's what sparked me, and I have just gotten tired of it. I got into it then.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay, so when you're saying you were tired of it, that suggests to me that wasn't the first occurrence where maybe you're like.
Tim Spiess:
I played in elementary school and was really put in a headlock on the basketball field. And I was bullied on the baseball team, in my ninth-grade year, and bullied a little bit in junior high and in fact, pretty much and so I just finally said one day. I really got to learn how to fight to take care of myself. So, it kind of stemmed for many years.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And what was the process like once you made that decision? Did you say I want to go do martial arts or do I want to go do karate? Did you know of schools in the area? What was that discovery process?
Tim Spiess:
I conferred with a friend of mine, Mark, and he was one year behind me in high school. And so, he was on a fitness team. So, I worked out and I just said something to him. He's like I'll tell you what, there's a good guy that this person his friend knew, that took karate, so you ought to go see him. So, I did Master Tim Hawk. And it was an email from USPA where I grew up. And I just happened to get lucky. He was a great teacher, very Eastern, with more Chinese influence. But he did take Sherwin's roof up until his fourth dawn. And he'd been doing martial arts at that time, probably for about 25 years. So, he was very good. And I just got lucky and got in with a good group of guys. And I’m still friends with them today.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, that's great. Okay, so talk about those early days. And I want to take the opportunity to point out, you started at an age that is quite uncommon. Yes, most people start when they're very young, maybe in their 30s, or mid-30s. Kids are kind of established. And quite often there, they're going back to something they used to do, or at the very least, I always wanted to do this. We've had some people that start in this age group come on the show, but it's, I bet I can count them on one hand. So, what was that like?
Tim Spiess:
Well, actually my school was at, I’m not sure what state you're in.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm in Vermont.
Tim Spiess:
You're where?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Vermont.
Tim Spiess:
Okay. So, in Pennsylvania, they have these volunteer fire departments. Some are volunteers and some more. But they always had a social hall, where they had weddings, and they had a bar and everything. Well, this karate class was in the basement. And it was a tile floor and very few windows. And so, when you are spared if you hit the ground, you're going to feel it. But surprisingly, most people in my class were, I would have to say 16 years or older, as old as 60.
At the time, there was one mix in the class. And so, as years went by, I noticed the huge revolution with little kids, it seemed that it became the thing and people from I would say, 18 to like 40. Just they weren't interested. And it surprised me because I was, and I don't think the world's gotten any safer. So, that was the one thing I noticed over the years how that evolved and changed. But the class was great. I mean, everybody was positive. We worked out hard. During the summer you leave there, and your GI was just ringing wet with sweat. So, you got a good workout? I remember those days.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, you said I came in anyway, from a fitness background. To me, that means, weightlifting and things like that. And there's a discipline that comes from that, especially, since you said you were on a team with it. Some people would draw quite the similarity between martial arts training and being in a conventional gym. Others are going to point to the dramatic nuance between the two, you can't just charge forward and expect progress in martial arts where you can just kind of keep putting up weight and see some progress. Maybe it's not the most efficient way, but it's an option. Was that an asset to you? Or was that a liability?
Tim Spiess:
No, I would have to say that. First, the fitness team I was on, as you may have participated in this high school. This was called the Marine Corps, physical fitness and training course sponsored. And what it was a competition that you were in your high school years, and he usually started in February and went to May, the Nationals in May. And there were five exercises: push-ups, pull-ups, setups, broad jump, and a 300-yard shuttle run, which were like 60 yards apart. So, I got into that in 10th grade. And what we did was we did a lot of pull-ups, a lot of push-ups, a lot of sit-ups, not a lot of weights. It was almost like a pseudo gymnastic song. So, what I found interesting was that when I went into karate, with that strength, it was great because I had pretty much started my centering, started my balancing. I've always said if you want to become really strong, just do those three exercises, push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups. It's raining and it's great. Years later, in 2009, I met up with a guy, you may have heard of him, his name is Dan Millman.
Jeremy Lesniak:
He's been on the show. He has. He is a great guy.
Tim Spiess:
Well, he and I agree that we are good friends and I met him at one of his peaceful warrior things. And we started talking and he and he said to me, he goes, I can pretty much guarantee you that the reason why you stuck with karate was so long because of that fitness training that I did was very similar to what I mean, not to the length of him. Dan is just a powerful guy. 75 I think so I found that that helped me. And it really made a difference in my training.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's great. Okay, so here you are. You're, I think you said 19. You're mixed with a group. I'm gonna guess it's mostly guys.
Tim Spiess:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Old school training said, tile floor. I remember the cause when I was younger, but I remember the culture training in the 80s. And you're still going so there's, we can't even call it foreshadowing. We're in retrospect, here. Was there a point in your early days where you said, I think this is my thing?
Tim Spiess:
Yeah, I think what happened was, that the syllabus that my teacher had was unique. It was very, very heavy in kata. And he just had a great system, it was called Senlin Tshwane, meaning Shaolin Fist. He took Shorin- Ryu, and Goju-Ryu. And he mixed it with a little bit of Aikido, a few judo throws, and then some white crane, Chinese kung fu. And what was interesting was, from the brown belt, the third cue to the black belt, I had to learn 14 Kodons.
All 12 were overhand and had two weapons. So, and his thinking was that, well, once you get your black belt, he always said to me, 5% of the people that take karate end up getting their black belt, which is about true. And then they stop, they don't go any further, they don't go. So, he thought, well, if I can get you to black belt, a real good black belt, and you go off on your own, that's good because I have always said the student always reflects the teacher. So, I took it for two and a half years, and then I made the decision to go into the Air Force. And I needed to pop smoke, get out of town, leave the house, that kind of thing.
And now with a third Q Brownville when I travel in the Air Force, and then after college, I started visiting some other schools. And I noticed that they just didn't even compare to what I had learned at a 3rd Kyu Brown. I was like a second-degree black belt out there. Go to seminars and I'd go to training sessions and guys would be like, why do you say, why do you say Sono Go or have Kusum Kyu, that's a black belt card. I'd like well it's what my teacher taught. And they always gave me that laboratory retriever that looks like this you know? Like, that doesn't make sense. So, what they didn't understand was I didn't come from a pure traditional folk and now and style so yeah that's that was pretty much it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Did you enjoy Kata?
Tim Spiess:
Oh, I still like it. I think it's the foundation of karate. I think that you can get all your application and all your oil out of it. I believe that it's let's put it this way. All Okinawa karate is a habit, the master asset and it is truly the foundation of Okinawa karate.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think it's the foundation of martial arts, we can pull anything from forms you want from technical applications to calisthenics. It’s all in there. And that's, I get defensive when people push back on forums as being irrelevant. So, well imagine you took all the things that you would ever want to train in martial arts and put them together in a nice, neat package that you could work on by yourself. That's great. Okay. So, you left home. How far did you go?
Tim Spiess:
I just went too well, it was an Air Force. I went to Santa. And then there I went to LaGuardia.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So far enough that you're not going back to the original school to train on a consistent basis.
Tim Spiess:
Right, exactly. So, because I only lived about 90 minutes from my hometown, being stationed in McGuire, when I would get some time off, I would go back, and I would train with. And it was pretty much just maintenance not really learning anything. And then after about, I think it was two or three years my master’s instructor left, and he moved to Virginia. But the one guy that I was training with that I was even Steven and belts with his name is Dennis herring. He and I and another gentleman, Barry Parr, just trained together and didn't really, I really didn't go there to learn more. I was just trying to maintain, and I talked about me going to other schools and walking in and trying to literally talk to the instructors. And they are just. I would start to talk to them.
And I would ask them questions about their belt system and their information. I said, well, they wanted me to pay them like at the time, I think it was like $80, maybe $85- $90 a month. And I'm like, well, can you show me a syllabus page that I'll be learning? They just looked at me like I was crazy. And they were like, no, we don't really do that. Here I go, well, I go, honestly, I said, I am not a novice karate person. I said I have a lot of knowledge and a lot of Kata and technique. I said I want to know what I'm going to be learning from your school. And they basically just said, well, we'll tell you as we go. And that was a little apprehensive. I was like, I don't know about this. And it's time to change in four to four or five years. And I just didn't feel comfortable with it. So, I just stuck with my martial art. And I just continued to train by myself and with some of my friends.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. Now at some point that changed, I'm sure.
Tim Spiess:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So where was the line? But did you get stationed somewhere? Or did they move away? Or what was it?
Tim Spiess:
Oh, what time was I? I basically was in the military. I did my time and then stayed in the reserves. And I got called up for 10 months for the Gulf War and then I stayed in the reserves for another two years. And I was going to college. And then I decided to get out of the reserves because he was just being too much. And so, when I graduated college, I got a job back in central Pennsylvania. And then I started looking for some schools and I found one where it was opened by Alan Tay. He was under what's his name? John is blank. Oh, yadda. Tyco? Yeah. And so, I would go training at his school in fact, I taught for him a couple of times. He was a karate teacher at a college and he could make some classes. So, he asked me to film, and I did, I think, like four or five times.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That I want to poke at that for a second because that's not something that happens later. This is not like public school in the US where somebody's out sick, and they call up. Literally, anyone who's willing to come in that has whatever these minimum credentials are. Follow the lesson plan, and you'll be fine. There's a lot of trusts, and a lot of, I would assume he had seen you training and thought highly of you. How did you smile?
Tim Spiess:
So, what was interesting was, I met him right after I received my black belt. I received my black belt in 2006, March of 2006. So, what happened was, I got out of college, and was working for several years, and went through a divorce. And when that happened, I got heavily back into martial arts. I started getting an hour to where my teacher lived, my original teacher, and picked up where we left off. And he just wanted to make sure I knew everything. So, he didn't tell me at first, but we kind of started not a white belt, but I would say like an orange. But again, he didn't tell me and so we're moving along, we're moving along and all I did was take privates. And so, after being with him for about two years and being refreshed, I received my show done.
And it was literally let's see here literally 20 years later after I got my brown belt 32. So, when I tell that story to people they are like, wow, you know like, not a lot of people do that. Oh, so when that happened when I got my black belt, I had run into Robert Taylor, who was in zone school. You, as I said, actually went to a school and I noticed all of the histories of Okinawa, and I'd been reading up on it. And so, I went in, I talked to him, he was just, he was impressed because not a lot of people knew it. All. The other thing I told him was that my teacher learned from a secondary blackbelt that was in the Air Force from 60 to 63, over in Okinawa. And since they tell her to look at me, the first thing he said was, I want to see you do a Kata. So, I did a car, I think I did one Su and I think I did on a coup. And those are all old-style cars, we put our feet together instead of on a 45.
And I did the cottage and he didn't know, negatively. He said that's the old Shorinji rule. I said you’re right, Sensei, he goes, they don't teach that anymore. and I noticed, I said, I was fortunate to get the old card. What was his name or shoot? It'll come to me. My teacher’s name was also Robert. And so, in Okinawa, at that time, it was rare for someone to get a secondary Black Belt and come back to the States. So, Bob must have done very well when he was over there. My teacher told me that he was very hard on him when he got his black belt. So, he knew it. So, I did some training and teaching for them.
And then what happened was because of my job that I was in the Secret Service, I traveled a great deal. So, when I would go to a town, I would be there for a couple of days and look for a karate school. And I would just go overtake my gear and say, hey, you guys, mind if I might if I come in and train and I give my business card? And they'd be like, yeah, sure. They thought I was going to teach them all this new, fancy stuff, but not really. I did show them my style of karate, which was different because now you're in the 2000s. And he says karate had changed from the 70s. In the 80s, it went mortar tournament-style karate. And then it changed again, I think in the 19, the late 1990s. So, I would go in and I would do kata and they would look at me and they'd be like, we've never seen that before. And I'm like, and it never really surprised me.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now I'm curious, being in the Secret Service. I'm sure there were some complementary skills and things that you were able to pull in from your training. But I'm just hypothesizing here that there was a tremendous amount of training on the evaluation of potential threats at a level that most of us don't get. Is that me? Am I reading that? Right?
Tim Spiess:
Yeah, I mean, we would go into assessments, and we would do vulnerability assessments, and we would adjust, we would make our plan as for as for the close one-on-one. We handle things a little bit differently than a martial artist would have to if you have to stay in this frame of mind. When you're a Secret Service agent, I'm sure you see it all the time with the President or Vice President. There are always agents around them wherever they go -rope lines, stages. So, the difference between us and the Secret Service, and a martial artist is we're there solely to be there for the safety of what we call the protecting, we're not there to fight the fight. Okay, so when a lot of martial artists are training, they would be like, well, what would you do in a case like this, they said, a case like this, depending on what, where my position, I would most likely defend, protect, de-tuck, grab and go. And they would look at me and they'd be like, so you wouldn't fight I go, no, that's not what we're there for. That's not what we're there for. Now, we have this rule, and I teach the same karate. It's called the 90%-10% rule. 90% of your attention goes to protecting and 10% goes to the problem. So, you can apply that in martial arts. Suppose you're at a mall, which is, I know, rare these days. But let's say you're at a mall, and you walk into your car. And you see two guys just standing in the front of your car that absolutely have no reason there and you get that funny feeling in your stomach. Well, you got two kids with your little ones. So now your mind starts thinking really fast. Wow, this is not good. So, what you need to do is you need to apply the 90% -10% rule. 90% of all your energy goes toward those two kids, and you're going to do an about face back to the mall, you’re gonna go get a security guard and say I need you to walk me to the car. Now, instead of just two on one, there are two on two.
In another sense, you're out of the car, you didn't see anybody come up. But now someone comes up from your back. So, what do you do, you take the kid, you shove him in the car, and you close the door. 10% is in the car, the 90% is right here in your face, and now you're dealing with it. So, see, those are two scenarios. As a martial artist, start to think in those terms of it is it split second is deciding, what you need to take care of. So, like, if we're on a rope line, and someone which rarely ever happens, if someone would pull something out of their jacket. And they would make a feverish move towards one or two of us and just grab that person in, grab whatever they have, and just take it right to the ground.
Because it goes to the ground, nobody gets hurt, you have to remember, we're still liable for all those civilians there. So, it is a different frame of mind of thinking. But I remember we went to India one time and I was with George when he was former, and we were at dinner. And people were just coming up, it was an outside dinner, people just coming up, and they wanted to shake his hand. And they really liked him over there. And it just got to the point where they were starting to shove us a little bit and looking at the detailed leader, and I'm like, we need to let these people know. So, what I started doing was I learned from one of my colleagues, instructors in martial arts are hips and shoulders, hips, and shoulders. So, I started literally just pushing people's shoulders, and I would use my knee to tap their hips. And they would lose balance. And they would look at me and I'd be like back up, just get back up. So, there are a lot of martial arts that aren't necessarily punching and kicking.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think all my quote, knowledge about what the Secret Service is, and how those details are different from conventional law enforcement and security comes from movies, right? So, I don't pretend that anything that's in here is real. But the focus, I mean, you articulated it well, and I understand it now. Being so different, there's a bit of willingness for self-sacrifice in there.
Tim Spiess:
There is. We plan so that we don't have to take a bullet electronically, and we do wear vests. So, our ideology and our system of doing things are geared to a lot of its pre-d not to say that by the seat of your pants vacation is their fun, but again, you may not get the complete quality out of it. So, there is no pre-planning for martial artists when they go out on the street. The only pre-planning they have is training. That's the only thing they have is training and whether they're good or not. Because of planning. It's like you go on a vacation, your vacation is going to be great if you pre-plan it, because when you have a plan in place, and you hit a hiccup, or you're traveling down the vacation highway and an exit is closed, you can adjust more quickly. You've already cleaned a pre-planned pushing fight that can go real south with a knife, you know, or a gun or two people. Whereas with us, we always pre-planned everything and we kind of always made sure that that plan would work. So
Jeremy Lesniak:
Was there ever a situation where you thought you know I'm glad I had my martial arts background what I learned in the Secret Service wasn't wouldn't have been quite enough?
Tim Spiess:
Yeah, 2014 October 23. There was a fence jumper at the White House, and I was working at dawn. There on temporary duty there and it was like 7:23 at night, I think I was at post for a for it is the post in front of the White House where all the press goes in to get their equipment mag. They walked through a magnetometer. At the time. I was just helping, there was a bunch of stuff so augmenting, and I was in a full suit, and wingtip shoes, the UD officers were there, and suddenly, the alarm goes off and the whole booth lit up. every booth lights up around, and we had a fence jumper. And the guy jumped over the fence literally 25 feet from me. But it was dark. And it was hard to see. And there was a big window to my right here. And I looked out, it's when that happens. These big, like NFL football lights, come on in the White House lawn and it lights it up like a stadium. I look out there. I see this guy out there. I'm like, whoa, how did he get there? And so, I literally went my head one, two, I'm out of here. I turned around and went out the door. And I deployed my gun. I had a beat on him. I was just waiting for this guy to see what he was getting to get through. Remember, this is the second front fence jumper in five weeks. And the first one got into the house of two agents and remember that,
Jeremy Lesniak:
Remember that? Yes.
Tim Spiess:
So, I went out and you know, I got closer, and I got closer, and I noticed the guys ERT had their long guns. So, I put my gun away. At that point, the guy picked up one of the canines and threw them down. Well, now I'm like, that's an assault on an officer. Because the dogs were badges. I deployed my gun again. He was doing some funky stuff with his shirt. He turned it looked like he was going to try to run to me because I was in a very dark spot. I wasn't lit up. And so, I kept going out after him. And then I got closer suddenly ERT just homed in on him, and let the dogs go. They took him down by each arm. And by the time I got up there, I just put my gun away because I didn't need it out. I just got my cuffs out. So, then it started happening real fast. They call the dogs off and Chase Clauser, who I was in Pittsburgh at the time. And Chase was from Pittsburgh, he was an offensive lineman for Pitt University. He was 6’5, 290, a huge guy. So, he gets the guy to figure four on the ground with his left arm underneath him. And he was trying to get his arm out. I said, standby. And I reached under my grabbed the wrist, I got him in a hard wrist lock. He just gave his arm right up. And I brought it up, I put a cuff on, I pass it to Chase, and he put a cuff on it. He picked them up, we did a quick search, and we took them off campus. And I think that you know me knowing some joint locks, and some other things from martial arts, I think that helped us really, really apprehend him quickly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I would imagine the comfort with adrenaline. Right? Because whether it's something that we experience in martial arts, extensively or even just a little bit, most people don't have a lot of experience with how to function under an adrenalized state.
Tim Spiess:
Yeah, it's well, you have to look at it this way when you're doing that job. You got the President or the Vice President standing there or another high-ranking official from another country. You can’t be let down, you can't let people down, and more importantly, you can't let your teammates down. That's the thing. We're only as good as the weakest link. So, you have to make sure your agent bugs to your left and right are doing just as well. And if they're having a little bit of trouble, say with one of the people on the rope line, you need to fill that hole and you need to make it solid for everybody. So, it's kind of a unity thing with us, and but I mean, I can tell you, I was with John Kerry when he was running. And we were somewhere in Colorado, I think, or Idaho. And we did a rally there and I think there are 20,000 people so we walked out with him. I was a site agent, meaning they follow me because I know everywhere to go. And so, we walked out there and we hit the rope line afterward. You could just when you hit the road, you could feel the energy go like this. It's and after a while, you become a junkie that you do look forward to it. And it just gets you there so
Jeremy Lesniak:
Now, what’re your martial arts looking like through this time? Are you training, or are you not training? Is it a catch as catch can?
Tim Spiess:
I'm right now actually, I was training up until about maybe a month ago because we're trying to move. Now just a short distance maybe 20 minutes away from here. So, I've been kind of involved in that. It's also August. So, when I first moved down to North Carolina from Pittsburgh, I tried opening a school, but the area wasn't conducive to karate, it's more BJJ up there. And I like taekwondo. So, I decided to put it on the back burner but I'm still willing to go out and teach at schools, I did that for a good bit of time, just because of my busy schedule and the Secret Service. So, I knew of people that had schools, and I trained with them. So, they would ask me to come back at certain times, and I would go train different aspects, you know, whether it was self-defense or kata, or just do drills with them, because schools don't do the 25 basics that they say back in the day. And they're very good. There, they really show the instructor if the students got that kick or punch down.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So nice. Okay. So, we've talked about a lot of differences, I guess we can call them phases. Relationships to martial arts are their common threads. I'm hearing some things but I'm curious. When you look at your life as a martial artist, or career, or whatever word you use there. Can you pull out? Let me ask you a different way. If you were to write an autobiography, about your time as a martial artist, what would you call it?
Tim Spiess:
Well, I've thought about this, because I've thought about writing a book.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, really? Oh, cool.
Tim Spiess:
I thought about writing a book. In fact, I had a counterfeit case, that was one of the best ones and the Secret Service. It involved an American over in Uganda. I went over there three times from 2014 to 2015. He was making millions of dollars. And he did it by offset printing. I went to school for printing, offset, and screen printing. So, when I interviewed this guy, and you went to jail, and asked him what kind of printing press they used he went, I really don't know. And I bought it on my phone. I said it looked like this. He goes, yeah, he goes a lot like that. And I said, I'm a prepper by trade, and he's just, he was like, oh, so now he couldn't eat any. You couldn't pull the wool over the sheep's eyes. So anyway, let me refresh my memory on the different phases. Okay. The question. There was relevance to that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, I restructured the question into what you might call your autobiography, and just as an aside, you never have to answer the question. And the goal here is just to keep you talking. right. Now, most of the time, if you listen, and most episodes, about half the questions I asked, don't get answered. It's totally fine.
Tim Spiess:
That's okay. No, I haven't had a chat about what I thought about. I know, it's kind of generic, but my journey from martial arts, through the Air Force and Secret Service. And I guess the one thing I could always say is, what stayed consistent was I stayed with it. Ops didn't deter me from taking it. In some cases, it got me back into it. So, I would say, something like my journey through karate, I would incorporate karate in the book along with my Air Force time in my time. When I travel in the Secret Service. I made it over to Hawaii a couple of times, and I got to train with a guy over there. John Key, he's Hawaiian, and he does go to Rue was neat. I would, I would go to a different state or a different place. And I would be able to just take my gear and go train. It was a lot of fun.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's awesome. That's awesome. You talked about it; you didn't use this word. But the way you described being in the Secret Service made me think of a team. And anybody that I've ever talked to who has served in the military would use similar words. Again, they might not call it a team, but a similar dynamic. And I got a little bit of the sense that that might have been the attitude of that early training. When you were young, talking about a younger group, going hard, and then the way you talked about maintenance training with those other two gentlemen. It sounded very team-like, am I reading that?
Tim Spiess:
No, because our teacher was so different. He was very, very soft-spoken. He had a very little ego. As I said, he took more of the East. Like, he's a vegetarian. He's been since 16. He's very much into Buddhism. He taught me a good bit about Buddhism and how it's parallel with Catholicism. Because we hate him and me, we’re both brought up Catholics. But what he did was he took the eastern side of it more so rather than the hardcore Japanese or Okinawan, he always said, it's better to stay softer, not weaker, but softer and more pliable through your martial arts career as to get brittle and hard, brittle, and hard breaks. softer and, and limber are pliable. They tend to bend, and they tend to go and that's what you really want to do. You want to stay pliable. And I mean, he just had a different mentality. And so, Barry Plar and Dennis shared the two guys that I consistently hung around with, they kept the same thoughts. And what was interesting was, I then started training with a guy from Allentown, Tim Hoover. And he does a podcast with Steve Mittman. I don't know if you ever heard of Steve.
Jeremy Lesniak:
No.
Tim Spiess:
They're in there and might check it out. Theirs is based on karate, its attacks life, not others. It's weekly on Thursdays. But anyway, I started training at his school because he also took karate from my master Tim Hawk, also, any to fifth Dawn, as I did. And so, he would invite me over specifically to teach kata to his students. So, Hoover had more of an ad style, karate, like k one back in the day. So, he was really into it, working out, kicking the bag, punching a bag, doing burpees, and doing some push-ups. And I would go, and I would teach kata, and I would do the application. And seriously, the students would be in awe, it would come up, and they'd ask me, oh my God, I've been doing this kata for five years. And I never saw this. I know, it's because you were just going through the motions. I said, there comes a time in your martial art when you go to the next level. And something pushes you there. And what 90% of the time is self-discovery. Someone doesn't teach it to you, it's self-discovery. You're doing something one day and suddenly you have this epiphany, and you're like, oh, now I get it. Now I know. So, I would go back, and I would yukata for Tim Hoover. And I would get done.
And he would say, you look exactly like Tim. So, there's a compliment there. But then there's also as you get older, you start to master copying, kind of sheds, and now you become part of the kata, that to me is where you're going deeper, and you actually are being successful at it. I always said this to the students there. And I always said to him, don't take this negatively. But I said it's just another perspective to take and for you to decide what you want to do with your martial art. I said you must understand that you own your karate. You know whether it's Tim hawks, Tim Hoover's, or mine, you must own your karate because nobody does it for you. You do it. And I said so maybe what you should do is instead of kicking the bag so much because the bag won't kick back. Maybe you should start to look at your Kata from two different directions. A defensive and an offensive because I brought to their mind, I said, how many people think Kata is defensive? And just about everybody raises their hand. And I said, I personally think there's no defensiveness and Kata. I think it's all offensive. But we teach defense because it is the Yin way.
So, what I did when I was in Texas for four years, I would practice on my patio for like four to five days. One day I would do nothing but defend then subside and do Bunkai and then the next day, I would do offensive, I would kind of jump over the other side and see what that other person was doing. And it opened a new world to me, it really did. I think that's where I made my leap.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Really cool. Can you see more about kata as offensive versus defensive? I think I need a little more and I suspect listeners do too.
Tim Spiess:
Okay. So, in. And I don't know if you can see us but like in my opinion, too. We start off and we bow, and we turn, and we do this. Okay, well, everybody thinks what you're doing is and you probably are. But I have another application for when you go on like this, you're blocking something over here. Not sure what this is.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because this will likely be an audio episode. And at least most of our people will listen to it even as a video. So, folks demonstrating what most of us would call Pinion 1, neat on with the king of the double block at the beginning.
Tim Spiess:
And then you're striking, and then you're punching. Well, I look at it as completely offensive in terms of you standing there, and someone comes up from behind you and grabs your arms, your wrists. So, what you're doing is you're turning on a 45, now your hip is not you're not centered with them. Now you're off center, up like this, and they're probably holding on. And now you have their left arm and your left hand and you're bringing their right arm down and you're taking your leftover. And they're basically being tied up like that. In that position, they're helpless, they can't do anything because one, their hands and their weapons are taken, and their back is now bent over. So, if you get them bent over, that's no good. If you get their back to bend backward in a lock, it's either. So, with Kata, I think you must look at it from a body mechanic stance. You always want to be on a 45 when you're doing your technique because you're slicing through their energy. And you don't want to focus so much on their weapons, you want to go for their core. Because if I get your center, I get a hold of your center, and I manipulate it no matter what your hands or feet are doing.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That way you're saying reminds me very much of the bits that I've heard from Chinese martial arts practitioners more so than Okinawan and Japanese or Korean practitioners.
Tim Spiess:
They tend to hit hard. So, my teacher taught me they're soft, soft, soft, hard, hard, soft, and then hard-hard. Being that soft, soft would-be Tai Chi. And then your hard-hard would be like you, your tongue pseudos’ your taekwondo goes you know, 90% kicks, a lot of knife hand strikes hard. And then you're okay now and your Akito, they fall is 1, torn apart soft, so
Jeremy Lesniak:
Interesting.
Tim Spiess:
All right, Kata is very good for balance. It's very good for centering. Teaching, especially young students, how to do the half-moon walk is difficult. They just, it's almost like they can't do two things at one time. But what I learned though, is with the half-moon walk, means your feet are in your normal forward position, your toes in your right foot, and if your left foot is forward, your toes are 45 from the heel of your left foot. And as you move, your feet never really leave the ground, they just slide, and they do half-moon. Well, if you do half-moon steps, you can always turn in either direction and still be well-balanced and centered.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You got my wheels turning stuff that I've been thinking about. But, you know, obviously hearing it with even different words. This is one of my favorite things about what I personally get to do with this show. Now I'm going to go, and my brain is just going to keep running away. And of course, I've got more conversations I'm having with people today. So, I'm going to push the pause button on my brain, but I take this stuff. What about the future? Do you say you're moving the way you talked about the efforts to open a school? Sounded like you weren't done with that effort that maybe post-move. That's something you're going to explore again.
Tim Spiess:
Yeah, I want to try to get a friend, Mark Barlow, he has the BK moral Karate Association up in Ohio. And he's got a couple of Senseis under him. And we've been friends for like, I think 15 years now. And he's just like he goes, you should just open the schools, maybe someplace where you could pay a little rent just 16 years and older, pay cash and just have old school credit. So yes, what I'd like to do, so I did teach at a community center. It was two years ago, almost three in December, and January. And it's unfortunate that when you teach at a place like that, you must go through all of the red tapes.
I mean, back in the day, when you and I took karate in the 80s, you went in there, and you signed a waiver for the teacher, which was just a one-sheet page. And like, that was it, and your parents dropped you off, and they came back whenever, or I just showed up and that was that. And now, if you're younger than 18 years old, you're going to police checks, you have to have insurance, especially when I teach it, like a government facility like a borough or Township, or something like that. And I understand why they do it, but it's just like, it really, has taken some of the fun out of it, it really has. And I always laugh because it's 20 years of Secret Service, and you just don't let anybody in there. So, I missed the old school type, I'm really hoping that I can find a place, like a yoga studio that only has class three times a week, and maybe two days go in because that's all I really want to do is teach for two days. I think today, it's about how much time people have.
And then there is another issue, there's an issue in room school down about 20 minutes from my house, where I hopefully will be living and he's a good guy. He's a retired cop. So, we have the same wavelength pattern if you put it and I'd like to try to hook up with him and maybe do something just because of another black belt, or he's having a different perception. And, and I know that it would be a good plus, the great thing is, his style already does, all Kata is that I do except for one. And they, of course, vary a little bit. But this technique compared to that one is not a big deal. You just teach the kids to like, well, they replaced it with this, but it's still the same motion. It's still the same idea. So, I think once, especially young kids, I think once they understand that they're going to be like, okay so it's not like a way off, not trying to teach me something totally new. So, I would still like to do it. Because I mean, I think you look at all the karate guys and, and Tai Chi, and look how long they're living or living longer.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's good stuff. And I hope you do because I'm hearing in your words that it's something that you miss. It is sharing just the word choice you have in talking to me. You're sharing I mean; I have no doubt that we could run for hours especially. There are questions I'm intentionally not asking you because I know you would just go and but given a different context, those would be a lot of fun. And you might be one of maybe three people who pushed the chair back, got up, and demonstrated something ever on the show. So that's yeah, to me.
Tim Spiess:
My one buddy, Dennis, hears the other black male. He's like, he used to tell me you're a visual person to me. He's learned by visual, and he goes, you most likely will teach by visual but I can tell you this. Here's another interesting thing. So, my master Tim hawk. We did not test for Kyu belts. He gave you a syllabus, and a sheet of paper and explained to you what you're going to learn, and you learned it and then probably a week or maybe two or depending on you know how weak or strong you were.
After you had taught all that information. He would come up to you after class one night, he would just say, hey, everybody, we're going to promote Tim to Green Belt. He's been working hard and so everybody gathered around and he would just present it to me and then everybody would shake my hand, and that was it. That was kind of cool. However, for the black belt, and because when you get your black belt, the one thing I don't like about martial arts is that the average person thinks that you get a black belt If you're an expert, I throw I harp on that I let people know, no, you're not an expert by any means what you are is you're a certified individual in that style, you have learned everything up to that point that was given to you. And you've passed it with a successful grade.
Now, there will be other information, there will be other information, but probably not basics, because you don't need the basics anymore. You have the basics, and you're supposed to train with them, explore them, and try to discover new things by going deeper. So, when you took your black belt you showed up with Tim, you would start at white belt. And you would start to explain everything to him, including stretches. You'd go through your cause, and you would do it three times. One for application, meaning how you were doing. Two, you would describe it as if you're on the phone talking to a person they couldn't. And then three, you would do it for great form.
Jeremy Lesniak:
This was a long test.
Tim Spiess:
What's that?
Jeremy Lesniak:
This was a long test.
Tim Spiess:
Yes, you had to take lessons. And it lasted about five, six months. Want to? So, I had asked him one time I said so. You don't think sparring is important? He goes no, I don't not for a test. He said sparring is just one of those things that you do. It's to kind of keep your mind fresh. See how things work? Because when you spar, you never go full bore. I mean, you only sparred with no protection, because when you're out in the street, you're not going to have it. Sure, said, I just did not feel that was poor. He goes, I felt what was very important was what you were doing. Are you doing it correctly? And I'm like, it makes a lot of sense. So, and to be honest with you, I think we all have enough stressful situations in our life that we can kind of figure it out. But what he did for your second degree, is he made you start at the white belt again, for the time. So, I know he had some reasoning behind it.
Because he had his master's degree in psychology. So, he had a psychological side to teaching his martial arts. But that's all he did teach. So, I kind of think that with his black belt students, he knew that they were there, they were going to stick around. I'm thinking that it probably made some money off it, too. So, to each his own, that's fine. But like, one principle, he taught me being a psychology major is that he said, if you want to learn something in martial arts, you do it five times.
And this is where I thought that this was interesting because he really thought about this. He says, when you do a Kata five times, it gets embedded in your subconscious. So that when you meditate, now you can focus on that Kata. And you'll do it better down the road because they've done studies where it took three basketball teams, they took one team, and they practiced. And that's all they did. Then there was a team that didn't practice, and they played poorly. It's the team that practiced but meditated about winning, they were the best. So that's why I think martial arts is different from lifting weights or running laps or because I was a cross-country runner in high school in college. And there's a certain level of, you're at peace at some point, and you can just go forever. Well, that is still a different feeling that when you get done with a karate workout, a good karate workout, you just feel completely like you feel like that glowing ball, you feel very complete, and you're centered, and you're balanced. You don't always feel that way. When you get out of the weight room or off offer run on a real hot day, you know.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's true. Good stuff. What's next? What's next for you? And let me ask in a different way. Let's pretend we come back. It's five years from now and I say Hey, Tim, what have you been up to? Martial arts wise? What would you hope you were telling me?
Tim Spiess:
I hope to be telling you that I'm still involved in it and that I'm still going to some schools, or I even have my own school. And you know what I'm looking at? I don't want a real big school. Okay, I've been in the Air Force, had been in government. I've been all around teaching different schools and bigger is not better, more is not better, okay. It's just, it's more work. And so, what I would be happy with is I'd be happy with like, say eight students, eight solid students just so that they could pair up and I wouldn't get beat up. But no, I mean guys and gals that really are dedicated really want to learn and they really want to go deep.
And they take them, their karate serious, like their kicks are hard snapped, their punches are good, they're solid, they do the kata with a lot of unfun and feeling and juts, like, they can imagine that that opponent fun, and they're really trying to take them out. I'd like to get to that point with a school. And I would really, really enjoy teaching the students about the history of karate, and the Okinawan way. In 2010. I was on GWS detail, and my mother had passed the year before and I got some money. And so, she always said, you should go to Okinawa, you should go because you like it so much. So, I took the money, and I went, and I took two other guys with me. They're martial artists. And I used to teach it at the guy School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Coopersburg, Coopersburg. And so, I took them over there. And he was 50. Some of the time I was like 44. And so that was like there was like 13 years ago, I just turned texture 57 on Sunday.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So happy birthday.
Tim Spiess:
Thanks. And so, a younger gentleman, also went with us. And he was a black belt. But when I took these guys over there, I organized the whole thing. It was because of traveling because I traveled so much. So, we get over there. And we train with this one guy, he does Shotokan over there. And we got a chance to meet up with Tosei TC on his birthday.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cool.
Tim Spiess:
But we also went and saw the cultural side of it. And you could just tell that these two guys were like, they'll never do that again in their life. And I think what I brought to them was basically a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Because I just think people are a little hesitant to, I always say pull the trigger on something. Because they're afraid of failing or they're good at it, I get it, I get it. But again, if you go back to pre-planning, it pretty much works, you can always adjust. But now I had a big time over there. And now I want to take my wife over the last couple of years. But with the current situation and flying and all that it's just not doable right now. So, we'll have to wait and see.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But hopefully that opens soon.
Tim Spiess:
Why I bring that up is I would like to get a group of students and take them over there and expose them to feel okay now and karate schools. And I was just telling my wife the other day, Bob Taylor, the gentleman I mentioned before, he said he was in the Air Force too. And he would work the midnight shift. And he said what he would do when he was done with his midnight shift, he would be a medic, and he would go to the dojo where he was training with. He didn't train with one master, but he trained with like, I think eight or nine. So, he got a good mix. And he said, the Dojo would open at like 6 am in the morning, and it would stay up until like 10 at night. And you would go over there, you would walk in. And no matter what they were doing, you would just bow to the teacher. And you jump in, and you would just start training for as long as you could. And then you back out, you'd bow out and you saw there was it's not like we do with the states here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, fascinating.
Tim Spiess:
So I thought that was really cool. Because on any given day, you really didn't know what you were gonna learn or what you were gonna practice. It was kind of like a smorgasbord, So I kind of think that's cool. So, the way I'd run my school is, I think, like, if I had a Tuesday, Thursday, I think Tuesdays, I would do a formal class so that they learn the formal way they learn all the procedures and protocols. And then on Thursday, I'd be like, hey, when you show up, you bow in with me and it just is a quick ballot and what we're doing is what we're doing jumped in and or if you want to go and do work on kata, I will never tell a person no don't do kata. I would just say I want that. I would have an area set up for just kata and say you go over and train with that.
And the other principle I want to bring up to you is that I think this is important for any instructors out there. I think when a new student comes into school, and this applies to that student all the way through their belts, I think the head sensei should teach the kata first out of Greenville, not a brown belt, I mean, not even a Yudansha. Okay, the master needs to teach the kata the first time, and maybe the second display to the student, then the others can help. I'll tell you, it's the Xerox copy principle. So, you have a piece of paper that's printed off the computer, it's called a first-generation print.
Okay? You take that, and you put that copy on the copier, and you hit 100. So, it goes in there, right? Now typically, what people do is they take that one that you just made a copy. And they put that on top, and they take the number 100 copy, and they put it in the drawer. Now you go to make more copies. You take that one out, you put it on the plate, and you do another 100. Now those 100 are second generation? No, they're third generation, because that first 100 is the second generation. Now you've got 100 of the third generation. So that last one that's third generation goes in the drawer. So, you know what happens after about six, seven times,
Jeremy Lesniak:
It starts to degrade, you can see ways it's not the same, and it's not accurate.
Tim Spiess:
It's the same principle. As you start at the beginning of the class, you whisper something to students here, and they start to do it. And by the time it gets to the end, it's just like the same thing happens with teaching kata, the same exact thing because everybody's going to do something a little different. And after a while, you're going to deteriorate the cost. It's not going to be that, not that it's pure, but it's not going to be the same from the master. So, I think that's important and really do.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Like I think that we're at a time where head instructors, especially those who have been training for a while, know that they look at themselves, oh, I can't go quite as fast or quite as hard as I used to. And they forget that you know, there's all this nuance to what they do. Sometimes they don't even realize they're doing it by setting that example, like you're talking about, I think it's so important. I completely agree.
Tim Spiess:
I think also, what's interesting is I'll watch old footage, black and white footage of keys of Hong Sik and doing Kata. And it looks like nothing I do well when he's doing the Kata, he's like 78 or 79. And I'm like, of course, he's not going to do it the same. It's like when he did it when he was 28. I think a lot of people forget that. But the one thing in martial arts that really surprises me is you'll get a lot of people that they lose the concept of what it's about. It's about losing your ego. It’s about not embellishing things, and not here's your thing, not humbling everything, to the point of the humblest position. So, that is one thing I really don't like to hear from high-ranking black belts. Oh, I have so much more to learn really? Now, I mean, yes, there are always areas to learn. But really, you have been doing it like. Okay, I will have been doing these for 38 years. You can only throw a kick and a punch so many ways, right, and may not be a punch. It may be a strike because it's an art, it's an art form. So, that's what my teacher taught me. He said a punch is from point A to point B. Well, if you do a hammer fist, it's going to be a circle. Now that's a strike. That's not a punch. So, there's a difference. It's if you can recognize it and articulate it. So, I just think that and I'm talking like seven degrees in hires. I think when they say in front of a group when they're teaching Oh, I have so much more to learn. I'm like really?
Well, like, honestly, it's like you're at the head of your organization or your school. That would be like we go into A doctor's office, and we start talk to a cardiologist. And he's, like, 55 years old. And he said, yeah, he goes, this is your situation. But man, I have a lot to learn. I'd be like, what? right? It's like this, I think Chuck Norris said one time, he said, you can never take an education away from somebody, once you get it, you have it, and once you've learned it, you can forget it.
But if you maintain it, they can't take it away from you. So, I look at that the same way with karate, I look at it as you're going through your belts, when you get your black belt, it's sort of like getting your bachelor's degree. I mean, there's a lot of information there. And you have basics. So, when you have your bachelor's degree, you have all the basics for your curriculum. So now you move on to your masters. Well, I say your master’s would be second to fifth degree. And then I would say, from sixth, seventh, and possibly eighth would be your doctorate of martial arts.
Because the reason why is there's only 1/10 on the IT system. And there's typically only one or two nice dots, because that's all you need. And then the rest are eighth and lower. So, if you if you put it in perspective of, of education and titles, because I think we tend to, we cannot always think like that, but we can recognize that so I think, you know, as definitely as a seventh degree, if you're a Shi Han, and you're and you're teaching at a school, or you're running the school, I'm gonna say you have to know pretty much you really do. And again, it's like being a lieutenant colonel in the squadron, you're running that thing. You got an operations officer who's also a lieutenant colonel. But he takes care of the personnel and the operations while you're taking care of the whole organization. Well, I look the same way, and it's like, I would hate for my lieutenant colonel to say, Yeah, I'm in the squadron. Boy, I have a lot to learn really? like, okay, you're a professional. You see where I'm going with that?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Tim Spiess:
I do. So, I think sometimes people can be a little too humbling in that, you don't have to say I need to learn a whole lot. I have a lot to learn. No, I think that a better way to say it is, I still need to refine what I have.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So, if people want to get a hold of you, are you willing to share any? Any code? Oh, email or anything like that?
Tim Spiess:
Yeah. I mean, I can tell you over the phone, or I can email it to you, or?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Well, if you wouldn't mind letting people know, here if you're willing to put yourself out to them?
Tim Spiess:
I would, I mean, you can reach me at retssa4912@gmail.com. And I would just say this if they email me, then I can pass my other information on to them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Perfect.
Tim Spiess:
And then, we’ll be good. I mean, like I said, I do seminars. I also do talks and, I've got a program set up for it's basically my career in the secret service that has highlights, and I was able to do a lot of really neat stuff. And, like, spur of the moment things, let's put it that way. So, it was a good time. It was fun. Awesome.
Jeremy Lesniak:
This is where we wind up. So, I'll let you have the final word. What do you want to leave everybody listening with?
Tim Spiess:
Well, I think the one thing with karate, and specifically Okinawan karate, I think that it is a personal art, you need to take responsibility for it in terms of that. It's your art, you're the one that's going to do it. When you go to take a test, someone's not going to do that test for you. I would also say with regards to people doing their karate when they go to tournaments, and they perform Kata, or they spar whatever. Take the judges with a grain of salt when they test your kata because your master is really the only one that should really critique you on your Kata because like I said, in the beginning, he taught you and now you reflect Him. And so, what I would hope that judges do, and this is what I always do because I've sat in a lot of black belt tests over the years. I would always look for the basic principles and philosophies like okay, is that person’s stance good? Are they stepping properly when they throw their punch, and I watched their transitions always ask my students this? What's the difference between a basic Kata and an intermediate? And what would you call it advanced? They have the toughest time I tell them, it's always the transition, whether you do an eye pattern and each pattern, you go off on 45. That's the difference between an advanced Kata and a basic Kata. Because you're going to do a head block ahead block every time no matter what color you're doing, you're going to do a front snap kit. So again, it's a transition, it's not so much you're throwing techniques out there that are just secretive and spiritual. And they’re going to take the person by surprise. So, I would just say keep your karate years and try to do the best you can for your sensei, but don't let others put you down and just walk away from someone that starts to say, well, that martial arts is no good. No open mind there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think the biggest takeaway from my conversation was despite progress, rank advancements, titles, etc. There was no point in our conversation, where I got the sense that, okay, Tim, changed his value in training. He was still dedicated and still seems to see martial arts with the same, let's call it wide eye enjoyment that he did when he was younger. And I think that is amazing. And it's something that as I consider it, something I see in myself, something that I see in so many of the guests that we've had, you might call it a white belt mentality. But I think it's more than that. It's love for the arts, love for training, and love for bettering ourselves. And I can't imagine anything better than that. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for chatting with me. I really appreciated our time.
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