Episode 853 - Martial Arts Word Association 8
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 8 - Episode 853
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 to try and find out how they can relate 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 (00:01.525)
What's going on everybody? Welcome. This is Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And on today's episode, Andrew and I are doing a word association. It's been a little while since we've done one of these and they're a lot of fun. And if you stick around, you'll see Andrew plus other people submitting questions that are words, I guess, meant to either throw me or make me think or perhaps just be poignant. So
hang out. This is one of our most enjoyed formats. If you're new to the show, make sure you head on over to whistlecakemarshortzradio.com. That's where we have everything, all of our episodes with transcripts and so much more for you to get the most out of each episode. They're all there, 800 and whatever number this is, because we figure out the numbers later. They're all there. We don't hide them. We don't make you pay to get access to back stuff. You just get access to it forever. And if you want to check it out, maybe...
you know, oh, I remember this episode, I wanted to share that episode. Maybe you hear an episode with someone and they reference a past episode, you know, their instructor or something and you wanna check that out? Head on over and check it out, see all the cool stuff we got going. Now, whistlecake.com is our online home. It's the place to go for everything. We, of course, link out to whistlecakemarshallartsradio.com but also other websites like marshaljournal.com.
We have pages on there for things like the Never Settle Awards, Marshall Summit, Free Training Day, our training programs, apparel, protective gear, and so much more. I spent Friday, I think I launched 15 new items in the store on Friday. So if you haven't been over there in a while, check it out. And if you find something you like, use the code podcast15. That's going to save you 15% on that stuff.
And if you want to support us, yeah, you can make a purchase. But the number one thing I would ask of you join the Patreon p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com slash whistle kick. You can go for two bucks a month. And at the upper tiers, we give you even more. And yeah, so that's where we're at. OK, Andrew. Word association time.
Andrew (02:13.605)
We're an association this is number eight. Yeah this is number eight. Since June it's been a while.
Jeremy (02:15.445)
I'm a little nervous. Eight? How long has it been since we did one?
Jeremy (02:23.509)
So three months. Wow. OK.
Andrew (02:24.894)
Yeah. Um, and you know, it's, I, I listen, I was thinking of this today when I was coming up with some of these words, cause people have not sent me words. So I have to come up with my own. Um, but I was thinking of another podcast that I listened to, uh, in every episode, the two hosts come up with something that they like. It's just a nice, fun, pleasant conversation. And each, each episode, the husband will talk about something that he likes and that he enjoys. And
Jeremy (02:34.199)
Oh.
Andrew (02:55.122)
that brings him joy. And then the wife will do the same thing. And the show's been going for years. And so one of the listeners actually created a Wiki on their show that they reference when they're like, have I talked about this before? I don't remember. So I'm starting to get that way with these words. Like I've got my list of words on my phone here and I'm like, have we done that word before? I don't know. So if an audience member wants to...
Jeremy (02:55.133)
Mmm.
Jeremy (03:22.269)
Okay, so I'm gonna throw it out there. Yeah.
Andrew (03:24.31)
So I would say if an audience member wants to create a wiki for Whistlekick, so that I can reference it and find out what words I've done before, that would be great.
Jeremy (03:36.113)
If and you're laughing, but you're not joking, right? We actually, there are so many things that we could do in cross-referencing, tagging the content that we have. Right? If you take a look at our show notes, we've never really done timestamps on them. Our new, the new software that we're using does have some of that, but bottom line, like if you love this show, if you wanna get more involved in it,
Probably should have at least a little bit of a technical background, but we can do that.
Andrew (04:08.51)
Yeah, so, but my thought with this list is if there is a word on this list that you've done before, you might come at it in a different way. So, yeah. So, all right. In no particular order, I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. I've got 10 words here today. And the first word is scissors.
Jeremy (04:10.897)
Reach out.
Jeremy (04:16.253)
Hmm. There's a very good chance.
Jeremy (04:28.401)
Okay.
Jeremy (04:34.993)
I don't even have a pair of scissors nearby. That's interesting. I was gonna go. So here's the interesting thing about scissors. We take for granted how effective they are for being so simple. What's a pair of scissors? It's two one-sided knives that are bolted together and have really.
high tolerances in their production, so you can cut things. Now it's easy, most of us, what do we use scissors for? We're cutting paper, we're cutting things that are very simple. But if you are someone who maybe works in a machine shop, you've got scissors that will cut through steel, like full-on metal. If you are a hunter or a butcher, you have scissors that will go through flesh and bone.
And so just the technology, I think, is absolutely fascinating. There are things that we have in the martial arts like that, things that are bizarrely simple and so incredibly effective that we often kind of overlook that interesting juxtaposition. We've talked about it on the show before. A simple punch, a jab, a back fist, whatever you call that forward hand extension into some kind of attack.
It could also be used defensively. It can be used moving forward. It can be used moving backwards. And there's a reason that front leg straight hand exists in, to my knowledge, every combat sport that has punching, right? I've never seen a martial art that has punching that doesn't have a lead hand jab, lead hand punch.
Jeremy (06:23.973)
And because of that, I think a lot of martial arts schools undertrain it. Because it is simple, because it is effective, but it's also not sexy. Scissors are not sexy. Scissors are just kind of there. But when you need a pair of scissors, what else works?
Have you ever needed a pair of scissors and used a knife? Does it work very well? Does it work well, does it? You're like, ah, I'm gonna score the paper 16 times. And an incredibly skilled person with a very sharp knife pales in comparison to a small child using a decent pair of scissors in the effectiveness of the cut, right? And you could make the same claim about.
Andrew (06:48.194)
have. It doesn't work well, you're right, but it can.
Jeremy (07:09.825)
Okay, maybe a jab, a punch here would be most effective, but I'm gonna try to do something else. Or maybe that hand has to be kept behind your back and now you're forced to do something else. It's not gonna work nearly as well. And we have other techniques that we could argue are the scissors of martial arts. I'll leave it there.
Andrew (07:30.775)
can.
Jeremy (07:35.505)
Garbage is an interesting thing.
So I was actually thinking about garbage the other day, believe it or not. And would we actually have garbage if we didn't have plastic?
Andrew (07:49.758)
Yes, we would.
Jeremy (07:52.497)
far less than we do now. I think it would so dramatically change the way we handle society that we might not actually have commercial landfills. But that's a whole separate thing. What is a garbage can? Garbage can is a place you put something when you are done with it and hopefully never need it again. Once in a while you throw something out you're like, oh, uh-oh, uh-oh.
Andrew (07:53.746)
You are, you're not wrong, you're correct. We would have far less.
Andrew (08:20.554)
Hahaha
Jeremy (08:22.457)
and you're picking through the trash and you hope nobody sees and you're hoping that it doesn't end up under the scraps of the whatever that you made for dinner two nights ago, yeah.
Jeremy (08:35.113)
There is very little that goes in the garbage can in martial arts. Once in a while somebody will say, you know, I'm done with this. I'm done with this technique. I'm done with doing forms. I'm done with these other things.
but there still might be a chance that they go back.
And in fact, I would argue that it is the things that you most feel the instinct to put in the garbage can that you should be most resistant to putting in the garbage can because that is where the progress comes from, right? It's the things that you don't want to do, the things that you don't like to do. We've talked about that on the show quite a bit. So the next time you're thinking, I'm never going to do this technique again. It's time to work on that technique.
Andrew (09:21.218)
All right, Clorox wipes.
Jeremy (09:35.953)
But I'm-
Jeremy (09:41.545)
good one. Yeah, you could... If you're listening, Andrew's doing, you know, circular open-handed, you know, sort of Karate Kid-esque blocking motion. Yeah. We could go there with it, but...
Andrew (09:45.78)
That's where my mind went.
Andrew (09:52.29)
Wax on, wax off. Yeah.
Jeremy (10:03.993)
I guess that's where we're gonna have to go. There's a half-formed thought in the back of my head that I can't quite bring forward about cleaning and such.
Jeremy (10:14.553)
when you use a Clorox wipe, the irony is you don't actually really wipe, you tend to move in circles, right? We have this instinctive pattern that when we clean things, we tend to move in circles.
Jeremy (10:28.261)
You know, if you look under the right lighting at most people's bathroom mirror, you're probably going to see swirls from how they cleaned it.
It's something we tend to do. We tend to move in circles, right? Because if I go linearly here, right? Like there's not a lot of strength here. I'm not gonna block here, am I? I'm gonna move in a circle. There's something instinctive. This is how my shoulder remains stable through that action. And we bring it into life. So, yeah, the next time you're cleaning, notice that. Notice how you're.
you feel instinctively drawn to move at the shoulder and tell me that it doesn't have something to do with the core philosophies around blocking.
Andrew (11:14.654)
It is interesting. I would say I am the opposite. I do tend to clean in straight lines. I don't know why. No. It could be due to the things that I tend to clean. Being straighter. So I mean even glass mirrors like or glass or mirrors. I go like either up or down or straight across. I don't typically
Jeremy (11:22.349)
Where does that come from? Was that trained?
Jeremy (11:33.219)
Hmm.
Jeremy (11:39.377)
Hmm.
Andrew (11:42.974)
Anyway, it's just interesting. With Clorox wipes, I was thinking cleaning and polishing and using polishing techniques and things like that. That's where my mind went. But.
Jeremy (11:45.116)
Interesting.
Jeremy (11:53.518)
Yeah, I did not move from clean to polish. That's probably where my brain was trying to go.
Andrew (11:57.894)
Yeah, that's okay. All right, next one. Zoo.
Jeremy (12:05.789)
So first let me say I have this bizarre ethical dilemma with zoos. In that animals should be kept in the wild, but we as a species also really stink at valuing things that we have no connection to. So it's like, ah, so I'm 12.
Jeremy (12:28.581)
But what is a zoo at its heart? It's a place where we can go and get exposed to a whole bunch of different animals. What if there was a zoo for martial arts? Not where the martial artists are in cages, but where you could go and take a bunch of different classes with a bunch of different people. You saw where I'm going. It's free training day, right? Like...
Free Trading Day is like a martial arts zoo. You go and there's a bunch of stuff that you're checking out and it's really safe and it's a lot of fun and...
I don't know, maybe there's some place nearby you can get a corn dog. I don't know what zoo food would be for people. Is it corn dogs? I don't know.
Andrew (13:16.63)
Maybe, I don't know. And occasionally a bear like Tommy will run up and give you a big bear hug.
Jeremy (13:21.181)
Yeah, you know, it's a fun environment for people. And the upside to free training day slash martial summit for free training day Northeast is that it's a fun environment for the animals too. The people presenting are happy to be presenting.
Andrew (13:38.443)
Yeah.
Andrew (13:42.535)
I get your ethical dilemma with zoos. I feel very much the same way, but I also feel that there are zoos that do it better than others. For sure.
Jeremy (13:53.093)
Yes, and there are, my favorite facilities are more rehabilitative. Like you probably, you know, here in Vermont we have Vins, which is a bird of prey sanctuary. And growing up in Maine, we had what is now called the Maine Wildlife Park. I grew up calling it the, I think it was like the Grey Game Farm or something. And it's animals that can't be released back into the wild, you know, they're either injured and rehabilitating or...
Andrew (13:56.961)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (14:21.089)
Maybe they lost their parents when they were really young and so they didn't learn how to fend for themselves or whatever, but that's a really, really cool spot. Everything from moose to mountain lions to bears, hanging out.
Andrew (14:36.308)
Hmm. Fun fact, my wife does not believe moose exist. Because she's never seen one.
Jeremy (14:42.667)
Okay, okay, hold on, hold on, we can't, we can't, what?
Andrew (14:46.87)
She's never seen one, so she doesn't think they exist.
Jeremy (14:50.405)
So if I send her pictures from my kitchen window of a moose that walked through on my birthday a few years ago, what will she say?
Andrew (14:58.096)
You could have faked that.
Jeremy (15:00.593)
But how?
Andrew (15:03.95)
I don't know. It's just, it's a funny, interesting thing. I mean, obviously she's 46 years old. She knows that Moose exists, but the joke is she has never in her 46 years of living seen a Moose. She was at her kickboxing class a few years ago and there was one in Keene that like was going down the street by the kickboxing gym and everyone ran and saw it. And as she got there, had just gotten out of sight. She's the only one that didn't see it.
Jeremy (15:34.542)
Alright, we'll have to remedy this.
Andrew (15:37.419)
All right, I put them on before we started. Headphones.
Jeremy (15:43.485)
Headphone. Ahem.
Headphones help you focus.
and they keep other people from picking up what you're listening to. In this case, you're using headphones. I asked you to put on headphones because there was a little bit of an echo with the speakers and that was throwing me off. That was a focus issue. And in martial arts, we've gotta be focused. If I'm training in a class setting and you're training next to me.
Every bit of energy I spend noticing what you're doing is energy I'm not spending on my own training. And so we don't have headphones or really the equivalent in that case. We have discipline. We have literal focus. We're paying attention to what's going on with us. One of my common phrases if I'm teaching a kids class, you worry about you, they worry about them, it's my job to worry about all of you. You don't have to worry about them. I've got this. Right? And we've all, I think
been in situations, whether or not it's in a martial arts setting, where we have, our efforts have suffered due to devoting energy to what somebody else is working on. So the next time you're training in a class setting and someone is distracting you, take it as an opportunity, take it as practice for your focus, and put on those...
Jeremy (17:13.558)
observational headphones.
Andrew (17:15.298)
Hmm, interesting. Nails, not fingernails, nails like a hammer. Ooh.
Jeremy (17:24.537)
Nails are another thing like scissors in that they are super simple and bizarrely effective. And some of that has to do with what you hammer nails into, right? If you tried to attach two pieces of metal with nails, it's not gonna work very well, but wood, when the nail goes through, compresses, and then it expands and creates pressure, and now the pieces of wood are held together.
Jeremy (17:53.339)
And there's.
There's something so fundamental about nails, you know, as soon as human beings made metal, we had nails, and tell me that there isn't anybody watching, excuse me, anybody in the audience who saw Karate Kid and saw Daniel practicing driving a nail with a single blow from a hammer and has not tried it at some point and does not still try it from time to time.
Andrew (18:24.883)
Oh yeah, for sure.
Jeremy (18:28.577)
Never works. Almost never works.
Andrew (18:31.442)
Okay, next word, screws.
Jeremy (18:37.125)
because nails didn't work in metal.
Jeremy (18:42.109)
Um...
Jeremy (18:47.533)
A screw is a great example of applying.
persistence to an action that initially is useless. Take a screw, start, especially if you're trying to drive screws into something that doesn't have pre-drilled holes. You might get five, 10 turns, and the screw hasn't actually bit into whatever you're screwing into. And you pause and the screw falls over, you go to adjust, you know, you're losing balance with the drill.
You know, the screw's not actually set in. But eventually, given enough time, the screw will set and you'll be able to drive the screw. And that's darn near everything we do in our training. Is this gonna work? I don't know what I'm doing. Why is this happening this way? Just keep going. You've gotta trust that it's going to work out. Now, have there been times when I've driven screws and thought I really should have pre-drilled a hole? Yes.
That's an example of maybe a shortcut or a better application of technique, given experience.
There are lots of those. You know, oh, instead of...
Jeremy (20:06.877)
Throwing single techniques and then backing off and sparring, I can throw two techniques, three techniques. It ends up being less work. Maybe it's less dramatic. Maybe it's not the way the person I'm sparring is conducting themselves.
Andrew (20:23.918)
Okay, soda.
Jeremy (20:27.921)
soda.
Jeremy (20:41.105)
some tar.
Andrew (20:53.006)
Are you no longer unstoppable?
Jeremy (20:53.905)
Soda is the pressure points of food. Pressure points are the soda of martial arts.
Andrew (20:57.399)
Soda?
pressure points are the soda of martial arts. Say more.
Jeremy (21:09.437)
They're fun. They taste good.
Jeremy (21:16.177)
Once in a while they're not bad. But if all you eat, all you drink, is pressure points, if it's the entirety of your training and your curriculum, you're probably going to get diabetes.
Andrew (21:32.142)
Hmm, interesting.
Jeremy (21:34.205)
I don't know what martial arts diabetes would be. I'll let the audience determine what the, what martial arts diabetes looks like or is. But, you know, pressure points are one of those things that if you spend any time training, you know they exist, they're real. Somebody blocks you in a certain way, you're like, oh, that hurts so much more than it, I feel like it should have.
And because of that, there are people who spend a lot of time training on those things, looking for those pressure points, getting really good at identifying and applying technique to them. But like anything, it can go too far. If I, and don't think I'm just picking on pressure points here. If we think about competition, if the only training you do is for competition, you're probably missing out on some things. If the only training you do is forms,
you're probably missing out on things or, you know, high level, let's say, you know, realistic self-defense training. Martial arts is best when it's a multi ingredient recipe, when it's a multi-course meal. So, pressure points, soda.
Andrew (22:47.798)
No, I dig it.
Andrew (22:54.218)
No, that's great. All right, couple words left. Drum.
Jeremy (23:01.945)
I always think of you when I think of drums now.
Jeremy (23:15.413)
Drums give context to the other instruments.
Jeremy (23:22.085)
Right? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's the most basic use of drumming, is to set the timing for others.
Andrew (23:27.49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I'm not gonna disagree with that. Yep.
Jeremy (23:32.677)
And there's something interesting that happens if you've ever done forms in a group that knows each other well.
that same.
Jeremy (23:48.505)
synchronization occurs naturally. And I really like it. It's actually something I truly enjoy when I'm doing forums with a group of people that I know. We all know the forum, we learned it in the same way. And whether it's...
Jeremy (24:07.745)
you know, forums that have more methodical timing, you know, more like a simple drum beat, you know, the Taekwondo forums I learned were like that. Or maybe it's the karate forums I grew up with where the timing is all over the place, but you hold that beat together and you become part of it. It's, it's, it...
I don't know that I'm doing a great job explaining it, because I don't know that I can, but if you've experienced it, you probably know what I'm talking about.
Andrew (24:39.949)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (24:41.326)
It's a cool experience.
Andrew (24:43.366)
Yeah, nice. Letter. Not the letter A, but a letter that you put in the mail and you mail to someone.
Jeremy (24:52.507)
Hmm.
Jeremy (25:01.633)
If you want to stand out, here we are in 2023, if you want to stand out for any purpose whatsoever in a communication to someone else, write them a letter.
Periodically I write letters. Just because. You know, send them to people. Hey, I was thinking about you, hope this thing is going well. You know, usually I don't put it on quite a letter, but a note card. You know, if you buy things from the Whistlekick store, you probably get a card, a short letter from me.
And they're powerful because they're rare. They're powerful because they're unexpected.
And there are a whole bunch of things in martial arts that are powerful because they're unexpected.
In fact, that's kind of the heart of most combat sports, right? If we once we get rules into it, it's effective, it's powerful. Because the other person didn't see it coming. If they see it coming, it's not going to work.
Jeremy (26:06.417)
So the next time you're sparring, what's the letter you're gonna send? If you're a puncher, maybe you put a kick in there. If you're a kicker, maybe you're moving your hands more.
Andrew (26:20.342)
All right, last one. Cordless drill.
Jeremy (26:27.741)
Hmm. Are these all things from your basement?
Andrew (26:31.006)
No, I was driving around this morning and just thinking of like fun words.
Jeremy (26:38.749)
So we kind of did a lot of what I would have said about a cordless drill when we talked about screws.
Jeremy (26:48.453)
I think a cordless drill is a great example of something that has been, that most of us have had for so long, that if we had to go back the other way, it would just be agonizing.
Go grab a couple boards and a screwdriver.
And put a screw, even a screw that's got a good bite at the end. You drive that screw in by hand and tell me that your forearms aren't smoked by the time one screw is in there. Or even worse, you've got to use a hand drill, as in a hand drill, yes I have one, to set the drill hole, the pilot hole, for your screw. You're going to be very, very judicious with
Andrew (27:25.858)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Jeremy (27:39.973)
how many screws go in and where they go and are they properly placed. And I think there are a lot of things that we have today, not a ton in martial arts, but we have some in martial arts where because they're quote cheap in terms of time or energy, we don't value them as much. When we have guests come on the show and they talk about what they had to do in the 60s or 70s to find a martial arts school.
or when we hear about people who come on the show and they started training at nine, 10, 12, and they were the only person under 16 or 18 or 20 training.
I think a lot of us take that for granted. I was lucky enough, I started in a kids' class. But would I be here today talking to you if there hadn't been a kids' class? No. I don't think I would.
So sometimes I think it's valuable for us to take a step back and look at what we have and be grateful and recognize that there are things that through the collective effort of a lot of people before us have been kind of impactful. They've made things better for us. You know, most of us take roads for granted. We complain about potholes in roads, and yet go to, I don't know, go to Costa Rica.
Andrew (29:01.71)
Hahaha
Jeremy (29:03.157)
drive outside of San Jose and, you know, see these dirt roads that make my dirt road, Andrew, you've been to my house, I'm a few miles up a dirt road. It's like a highway in comparison, because you can do more than 15 miles an hour without destroying your car.
Andrew (29:24.355)
Yep. All right. That that takes care of our words.
Jeremy (29:27.837)
All right, good words. Thanks, man. Hey, to all of you out there, if you want to get Andrew some words, Andrew at whistlekick.com, hit him up. Give him some words for next time. And thank you in advance. I have fun with these. If you wanna reach out to me for some reason, Jeremy at whistlekick.com, our social media, everywhere you can think of it, at Whistlekick. And if you appreciate what we do, our mission here to connect, educate, and entertain.
The number one thing you can do is spread word about this show and about our company, about our events, all the things that we've got. Tell your friends, tell your training partners, tell your instructor, tell your students, we would really appreciate it. Until next time, train hard.
Andrew (30:10.754)
Smile.
Jeremy (30:12.27)
and have a great day.