Episode 803 - Martial Arts Word Association 5
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew use a word association game to see if Jeremy can relate random words to martial arts!
Martial Arts Word Association 5 - Episode 803
Here at whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, we like to mix things up once in a while. We’re going to do “Martial Arts Word Association” where Andrew gives Jeremy a random word that he could connect to martial arts. In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew discuss randomly generated topics from dog food to ceiling fan. Find out how they relate it to martial arts!
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. You are tuned into another episode of whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, the podcast for traditional martial artists. My name's Jeremy Lesniak, joined by co-host Andrew Adams. You've got a fun episode today. It's another word association. You all seem to like these. Everyone loves trying to stump me, but I am unstumpable.
Andrew Adams:
We'll see.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, we will see. If you're new to this show, you might want to head on over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, check out the podcast website, check out all the episodes we've ever done. If you like this, we've got four others you could check out if you don't like this. Well, we've got a bunch of other episodes from guest interviews. We release every Monday to a variety of topics and conversations that come out on Thursdays. Usually, it's Andrew and I, but sometimes we have other people or we do some other things and we have a lot of fun with this show. We've been doing this for eight years now, and
Andrew Adams:
Over 800 episodes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Over 800 episodes they're all available to you for free, and if you appreciate that, if you want to do something to support that, here are the big three. We have a Patreon, starts at $2 a month, gets you access to behind-the-scenes and higher tiers. We also send you merch like stickers and hats and other cool stuff, give you additional content that you're not gonna find anywhere else. You can also buy something on the store @whistlekick.com using the code podcast15. Or you can check out the family page. If you've been around for a while, you are part of our family, whether you like it or not, you are part of this family.
Andrew Adams:
We've adopted you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes, you have. You have no say in the matter. And if you go to the website, whistlekick.com/family, yeah, you've gotta type it in we intentionally don't like it. We've got two sets of things over there. One, it's all the things you can do to help us out, direct links to leaving reviews, and stuff like that. Two bonus material, it's often my thoughts or pictures, its discount codes, it's a bunch of stuff that you're not gonna find literally anywhere else. It is completely exclusive and that's a thank you for those of you who are willing to check it out. I update it weekly. Okay, now I mentioned whistlekick.com. That's our online home. You're gonna find all the stuff that we're involved in, cause whistlekick is a lot more than this show. We do a ton of things. We have events, we support Martial Journal. What else do we do? We offer consulting. There's a ton of things around what we are, and if you check out whistlekick.com you're gonna find all of them sign up for the newsletter so you get notified. We've got an email going out later today about a big milestone for us. By the time you've heard this, we've let everybody know, Hey, episode 800s coming, and here's everything you need to know. We're not gonna spam you, we're not gonna go too crazy about that nd I think that's it…
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
For an intro. That's a good intro.
Andrew Adams:
Sounds good.
Jeremy Lesniak:
All right. Word association. And you wanna tell 'em how this works?
Andrew Adams:
So, I have a list of words when we do this on Zoom, I can hold it up to the camera, but I just have it on my phone. I don't think you'd see it really well. But I have a list of words here that Jeremy has not seen. They are random words. Random and his job is to try and in a concise way as possible, I'm not gonna say quick, like I'm not putting a time limit on it, but relate the word that I'm giving you. Somehow relate it to martial arts in a way that makes sense.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's gotta make sense. Crap.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay. Yep.
Andrew Adams:
So that's how it works. Are you ready for your first word?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I'm ready.
Andrew Adams:
I've got nine words today.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Nine words.
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Let's do it.
Andrew Adams:
First word, dog food.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What is dog food? Dog food is the stuff We put in a bowl and we give it to the dog and they don't have a choice. Dog food is another way of saying indoctrination. You are fed the dog food, you're eating the dog food. You are just, it is put in your face and because you have nothing better, you will consume it. A lot of martial arts schools, that is how they teach. There's no asking why, there's no cross-training, there's no experimentation, there's no ability to better. In fact, in some, there isn't even the opportunity to ask for clarification. If you don't understand the way it is being presented. You were expected to just go along and parrot and repeat until hopefully, you do. It's dog food. Now well, over the last few years, there have been advancements in what dogs are asked to eat. Cause let's remember, most of what we put in dog food is not actually food for dogs.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's quite well-documented. Dog food shouldn't, probably, shouldn't be crunchy, probably shouldn't have potatoes in it or rice just putting that out there. We can historically think about dog food as just, it's just kind of there and the dogs eat it because they don't know better. But just as we have better dog food available now we also have better information available now, and if you are at a school that teaches in this way, you do have a choice. And if you're watching or listening to this show, that's probably part of what you get out of this show is the recognition that there are other ways to think of things, that it is not a one size fits all, as with dog food.
Andrew Adams:
Easter eggs.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I wish I had a, well, I guess I could use the term application if we think Bunkai or Oyo as Japanese terms. That's what the application is in forms. As you get better learning forms and unpacking what they are doing. You know, you go through your first, you know, [5:38.1] hand Taikyoku, Chung-Gi, you know, low block punch, oh, I'm blocking a kick and I'm punching. Maybe you are, and that could be the first level of what the application is. But if you've been training a while, you know, there's so many more layers and levels to that just as what is an Easter egg? It's something that is hidden. It's something that you find. It's something that you find value in and it is of more value because you had to discover it just as the application in forms.
Andrew Adams:
Yarn.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Which way do I want to go with this? Okay. Yarn is a kind of a base material. We use it to make things, we can make a blanket out of yarn. We can make a sweater out of yarn. We can make just about anything of any size out of the same yarn. If I get enough yarn if the skein, skein…
Andrew Adams: Skein.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Skein of yarn is big enough, I can make anything, right? I could make a hundred-foot blanket if I wanted to. Maybe more correctly an Afghan.
Andrew Adams:
Wouldn't that be a scarf really?
Jeremy Lesniak:
A hundred be a very large scarf.
Andrew Adams:
Like Dr. Who.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Never watched Dr. Who.
Andrew Adams:
The fourth doctor is the best? He wore the old, he's Tom Baker. He wore the long scarf.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Okay.
Andrew Adams:
Anyway.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Anyway, you could say the same about some of our most basic movements. You know, you can make a lot of things into a blanket or a scarf, or a sweater, right? You can use varieties of yarn, you can use leather, you can use polyester. But they're really only, are only a handful. I could take plastic, there are companies doing this. I can take plastic water bottles, I can break them down. I can create a fiber out of them and I can make something still polyester. Polyester is really plastic, right? Poly Esther, right? Plastic. Our martial arts repertoire seems really broad. It's not. Most of what we throw is a variant of a kick to the front. A kick to the side. Kick to the back. What's a crescent kick? It's a front kick that has some hip movement. What's an ax kick? It's a front kick that has some hip movement. What's a sidekick? What's a round kick? Roundhouse kick. Sloppy sidekick. What's a hook?
Andrew Adams:
Sloppy sidekick.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sloppy sidekick, the one of Bill Wallace's favorite things right to say. I think often we are so focused on the end result and the variability of the end result that we forget the elegance of the input, and that as we spend more time crafting different yarn, we can dramatically impact the output. The sweater, the whatever it is.
Andrew Adams:
Candle.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When is a candle most valuable?
Andrew Adams:
When's dark out?
Jeremy Lesniak:
The value of a candle increases as the darkness increases, right?
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right now we could have a candle on this stool that we use as a table, and it might provide some nice ambiance. I was expecting, you looked like you were gonna say something, some nice ambiance. And if as it get dark later today, that same candle would provide some illumination. But if it's completely pitch black and there's nothing else, like when the power goes out here, seemingly frequently, that same candle is quite valuable. And if I didn't have flashlights be even more valuable, right? The same candle. In a different context goes from kind of nice to potentially lifesaving and we can say the same thing about our training. When I train in a martial arts school, I'm having fun. It's nice. Enjoying myself. I'm learning great. But if someone's trying to take my life that very same movement that I was doing for fun or for education or in competition, could now protect my life and that context is everything.
Andrew Adams:
Fish tanks.
Jeremy Lesniak:
One of my favorite sayings is that people are like goldfish. They grow to the size of the tank that they're in. And I think one of the major disservices that we do in modern society is that we have, for safety and for, a lot of positive reasons, artificially restricted the growth of people.
I don't think it happens as much in martial arts, but it does happen in martial arts and it happens everywhere where we give people all this safety, all these boundaries, and they don't grow very big. That same goldfish that you drop in your fish tank gets huge when you put it in a backyard pond. And in fact, there are plenty of examples. You can find videos on YouTube of people catching goldfish that were released in the lakes and somehow grew large enough that they were no longer, you know, like little guppies. And now you've got these goldfish that you're like, this thing is huge and weird and kind of fugly looking. People are the same way. And martial arts are the same. If you expect these hard-line boundaries, or worse, if you're an instructor that draws these hard-line boundaries and won't share information with people that you know are ready, you're restricting their growth. And it's really a shame you end up with smaller, figuratively smaller students, smaller people than you would have other have otherwise. And I think that that's a shame.
Andrew Adams:
Wine Cork.
Jeremy Lesniak:
A wine cork is a barrier. It prevents you from getting to the good stuff, right? Nobody's buying wine for the bottle and the cork, they're buying it for the contents. And you could draw an analogy, it's, it's a weak one, but I'm gonna make it cause the best I've got. You could draw that analogy to various styles of martial arts. I prefer. This kind of wine or that kind of wine. I prefer this kind of martial art or this martial art. And they all have a bottle. Some bottles are really fancy and quite often the wine inside doesn't live up to the fanciness of the bottle. Might be a very simple label on the bottle and you properly decant the wine. If it's a red and, you know, drink that wine at the right time, maybe with the right meal or the right people, it's an absolutely amazing, maybe even life-changing experience. The cork is a very simple thing. It's the simplest part, right? Like the cork. It's just a chunk of wood and while not all quarts are actually made of cork now.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Historically they were. It's a very simple thing. But what happens without that simple thing? You can't do anything. The one falls out, right? Yeah. Like…
Andrew Adams:
Or it spoils.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Both, right? Bugs will get in there. It's just, it's not a good scene. So what is the cork in the context of martial arts? It is almost in contrast to the last comment I made. It can be the artificial restriction of information because if you take it all at once, it's too much. Why don't we, most of us drink our wine straight from the bottle because it's too much at once. We pour it into a glass, maybe we pour some and we put a stopper in it. It's essentially a replacement cork, and it goes back in the fridge or back on the counter, and we have another glass tomorrow because we recognize that. Yes, we really enjoy wine, but having it all at once might be a little bit too much. I might wake up tomorrow not feeling well about how much I took, right? Just because you can train 6, 8, 12 hours a day doesn't mean that that's what's best for you. Maybe you need to train an hour or two a day instead of 12 hours in one.
Andrew Adams:
Grill tongs.
Jeremy Lesniak:
They keep you from getting burned. They're a way for you to safely push something past your limits. I think that's why we like movies, martial arts movies. Most of us don't want to get into those fights.
Andrew Adams:
I mean, you don't like martial arts movies.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Just the bad ones, but I think it's commonplace enough that martial artists watch movies, martial arts movies, and critique the fight scenes from a place of correct or incorrect experience. Because we're putting ourselves in the place of those movies. Oh, that. I can't believe he, that's a great tech. Oh, that makes, oh, I'm gonna try that. Or, oh, that would never work. I can't believe they did that. The choreography here is stupid, right? Whatever it is, it's a way for us to feel like we're part of that without interacting with it. Grill tongs are sort of the same. You grill something, you get it hotter than you could personally handle, just like the fight scene in the movie and then it cools back off. Now you can eat it.
Andrew Adams:
All right. I dig it.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's the weakest one. Yeah, I will fight fully acknowledge.
Andrew Adams:
That's right. Ceiling fan.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You just walked around your basement.
Andrew Adams:
I don't have a ceiling fan in my house. No. Like I thought of this. I forgot that we can both look up.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You're a ceiling fan.
Andrew Adams:
See a ceiling fan. It had nothing to do with what was on my list before I got here.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Ceiling fan. Ceiling fans are efficient ways of moving air. Where does that take me? Now you're getting behind the scenes of Jeremy's brain. They move air, they create movement. They are simpler. They work because they're simple. I don't know how long ceiling fans have been around. Probably shortly after electricity. Probably long before air conditioning.
Andrew Adams:
Perhaps. Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Maybe not ceiling fans, but fans in general. They really haven't changed. There's an angled blade. The number of blades can change. I've seen as few as two. Those ones weird me out. Most of them seem to have four or five. They come in all sizes. But they do a really important job. They help circulate air. I have a ceiling fan there next to the wood stove that runs most of the year because otherwise, the air in the house gets a little stale. And I like having that air circulated. In martial arts, we have a lot of things that are very simple that have not changed very much, that are incredibly effective, and provide much more utility than I think we recognize. A simple punch, punch, reverse punch, cross what, whatever you would call it. It's a punch. It's pretty much the same everywhere. People take punches for granted unless we're talking about boxing.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you talk to most martial artists, you watch most martial arts conversations around self-defense, street application, even competition. You rarely see people. Spending much time talking about or even acknowledging punches. And yet, if you watch combat sports, obviously boxing, but everything, if you watch any fight, if you get into a fight, punches will be thrown. They are somehow unchanging, incredible, utilitarian, and ignored.
Andrew Adams:
All right.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Much like ceiling fans.
Andrew Adams:
All right, last one. KitKats.
Jeremy Lesniak:
My first instinct is to go for the slogan. Gimme a break.
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right. I'm reminded of Mitch Hedberg joke. KitKats are great unless I'm with four or more people. Because they're only four pieces.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, depending on if you get the mini minis.
Jeremy Lesniak:
This is the hardest one. All right. There we go. This is the hardest one yet.
Andrew Adams:
It wasn't the last one on my list. I purpose. I did like…
Jeremy Lesniak:
You rearrange.
Andrew Adams:
Go around. It's like I'm gonna ask this one last.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think the best thing I can go to on this is more on the physics of the structure of a KitKat, right? If you think about it, I'm assuming everybody out there knows what a KitKat looks like, right? Like you've got those kind of, for essentially long pyramids, but with the top, taken out so it's flat. I don't know how many Kitkats high you could stack before the weight at the top affects the bottom, but it'd be quite a few. They're quite rigid, quite strong. In fact, unless they've been in a hot car breaking off a KitKat always feels like more, requires more effort than it should, right? They're durable. And that makes me think of stances.
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If I were to get you into a good front stance, maybe add a little bit of, you know, toes in a little bit of, I dunno what the term would be in other martial arts crowded sumption, right? Like the toe in position. At almost every angle, I could lean my entire body weight on you. Or maybe a better illustration, vice versa. If I'm in that stance, you could lean your whole body weight on me at almost any angle.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And I would not fall over. There might be a couple, maybe if you came in on this angle, I would move backwards, but most of it I'd be pretty darn solid. The toes in help that, right? It's we often underestimate how small decisions in our technique, in our stance, in our training can have tremendous impact. And not just repeated over time, but that little detail, that nuance. And it's something that as advanced practitioners, we bump into once in a while somebody will say, try doing this and you do it your own.
Andrew Adams:
Try relaxing this.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Whoa.
Andrew Adams:
Sure.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Man, I wish I'd known that 20 years ago, right? Like those little things can have a huge impact on everything. What if a KitKat was not broken into those four pieces? What if it was one big piece with that same design? I would imagine it would dent that you would have in the center. Given less force than our silly example of stacking a whole bunch of Kitkats high or them getting tossed around because let's face it, candy isn't handled with, you know, gentle hands.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, just, it can't be, you'd have damage to it. And when people open seemingly damaged candy, they become nervous that something has happened to it and they don't want to eat it, and that becomes problematic for the company. So turn your toes in sometimes.
Andrew Adams:
I thought when you mentioned structure, I thought you were gonna go where I was gonna go, would've gone, which was Kitkat that's made up of layers. And when we learn things often, we'll learn the first part and then we'll learn the,
Jeremy Lesniak:
I like that one a lot better.
Andrew Adams:
That's where I would've gone.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That's a lot better.
Andrew Adams:
That's my last question. That one was my last word.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I like Kitkats. I like those. If you wanna throw a word to Andrew, please do.
Andrew Adams:
Help me stump Jeremy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Unstumpable. I'm not saying they're all good, but I have not been stumped. You can email him andrew@whistlekickmartialsartsradio.com. I am jeremy@whistlekick.com. Our social media is @whistlekick. If you like what we do, please consider supporting us. No, just support us. Please support us.
Andrew Adams:
Please do.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Consider it.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Consider it and then do it. patreon.com/whistlekick, podcast15 at whistlekick.com. You can make a donation, one-time donation at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. And you can check out the family, whistlekick.com/family weekly updates, exclusives, discounts, and all the ways you can help us in our mission to connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world. I appreciate you coming by. Thank you. Thank you and we'll see you next time. Until then, train hard, smile and have a great day.