Episode 875 - Rapid Fire Q&A #26

In this episode, Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams take on a fun edition of the Rapid Fire Question and Answers.

Rapid Fire Q&A #26 - Episode 875

Jeremy and co-host Andrew Adams tackle a series of questions, comments, and reviews from you, the listeners, and some guests in the form of a Rapid Fire Q&A. Here are some of the questions they tried to answer:

• What non martial artist would you want to teach martial arts to?

• How do you handle a fellow student who is the incessant over-corrector?

• Listen to the episode for more questions!

After listening to the questions and answers, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section below!

Show Transcript

Jeremy (00:00.191)
Welcome. This is whistle kick martial arts radio and on today's episode Andrew and I we've got the 26th 26 26th installment of the question-answer format if you want to ask a question you shoot them over to Andrew whistle kick calm Don't send them to me. I'm not supposed to see them and We're gonna go through those and at least the I know

One of them, the one you asked me, because you're like, have I asked you these questions? How about this one? It's super fun and I'm really excited. And I'm saving it for the last one. Oh, you would do that. Okay, for those of you out there, if you're new to what we do, we do a whole bunch of stuff for traditional martial arts and traditional martial artists, schools, owners, instructors, students. We're gonna talk about some of that stuff today, little bits in between. But bottom line.

We're here to help you. If you think traditional martial arts is good for you and others, then you should be checking out all the things we do go to whistlekick.com use the code podcast one and five, save yourself 15% on something brand new stuff all the time, check out all the other things that we've got over there and thank you. All right. So I have four questions. Four cues. Uh, so.

you know, peeking behind the curtain as you mentioned earlier. I was like, oh shoot, I might have already asked you these. And you said, well, ask me one of them. And so I asked you one, you're like, I would remember that one. It was a good one. And we're gonna do that one last. So this question comes in from Victor. Hi, Victor. What is your solo training soundtrack?

Jeremy (02:34.754)
When I'm training solo, it's usually short periods of time. Right? And we've talked about this on the show before that most of my solo training are, you know, bits from 10 seconds to two or three minutes. It's often very, very short, but it's constant, right? It's closing cabinets with a kick. It's...

Can I hit that from here accurately with this kick? No? Okay, let me readjust my foot, right? Like I'm doing that a lot, or maybe I just need a mental break and I'm, you know, chewing on application for a certain form.

So I'm not usually turning on music while I do it. So the soundtrack is just life. It could be a TV show that's on in the background or music that's on in the background. Maybe an audio book. If I'm driving and I'm figuring things out because you know, I, hey, you know, you can brush grab strike your steering wheel. And you can steer with it. Yeah, yeah. Don't do that, you might die. I'm not responsible.

Good thing you don't teach drivers that. It is a good thing, a very good thing.

Uh, but I, I get why he asks this question. I love training with music. And if I am training, not that it happens often, but if I am training for longer durations solo, there's absolutely music on most of what I would be listening to in that context would be hip hop. That's most of what I listened to. You know, the audience can't see, but those binders up there, those are all CDs back from my DJing days and for the younger audience.

Jeremy (04:22.598)
CDs are compact discs that had they were circles that you would put into play or and hit play and music would come out They're like mini records, but they work with laser. Okay for the really young audience record note, just kidding Three-quarters of what's up there is hip-hop mostly 90s and 2000s Now Victor didn't ask this question, but I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of add on to it because I know that you had this When he Victor asked about your soundtrack for your solo training

What was your soundtrack like for competitions? Because if memory serves, you had specific stuff you would listen to before you were getting ready for a competition. There are, and there are still some songs that before I'm gonna step out, if I'm gonna compete. So right now, a hundred to one, not that I compete often, when did I last do that? 2016.

if I'm going to compete or if I'm going to be tested, like if I'm stepping out to a test, because for me, the two are roughly the same. I'm gonna put on a show, right? Like I wanna perform at my best. I want everyone to say there is no doubt that Jeremy is owning the space, you know, whatever. Run this town by, it's Jay-Z with Kanye and Rihanna.

And it's the lyrics, it's the beat, it's everything about that song. When I was younger, there were more options in there. There was a period of time where the music that I would use for Thorum's Grounds was the Mortal Kombat theme. Sure, which by the way, did you know that the Mortal Kombat theme was based on a hymn from Denmark?

I did not. Yep, it's a Finnish Hymn. Well, that's cool.

Jeremy (06:26.03)
Sometimes I hate you. Finish him. So beautifully done. You have this knack for not breaking too early. You had me so well. That was great. So I practiced in high school. We're going to go on a tangent here, guys. When I was in high school, I don't know if I created... I think I created this game, and it's called Ninja Face.

and you play it in a group of people and you don't ever tell anybody you're gonna play it. It just happens organically and can be in a group of people that's laughing or conversing, you could be having five different conversations because you're at a dinner table maybe. And then all it takes is one person to go, ninja face and you have to immediately, your face has to completely dead pan just and be totally silent. And I've gotten really good. So you've practiced. Oh yes, ninja face and just nothing.

And some people can't do it they start to they're like interface and they'll start to and then they just burst out laughing because it's funny So anyway, yeah the Mortal Kombat theme to finish him All right, let's jump back into it. Yeah, so you listen to Mortal Kombat theme Yep, and you know, they're a variety of other things, you know, think of your mid 90s Rap music, you know the stuff that you can think of it was probably that

It was Ice Cube, it was House of Pain, it was Tupac, it was, you know, gotcha. Cool.

Jeremy (08:05.462)
The music landscape has changed quite a bit. Yes. From then. I'd like to pretend it has not. Yeah. Uh. I tried. I'm open to new music. I just hate almost all of it. It's fine. And some things change.

But the base of it will stay the same. Much like this dragon hoodie. You didn't know where I was going with that. I did not. We, Whistlekick, are constantly coming out with new stuff. On our site, merchandise. Some stuff will stay the same. Spartan gear, stuff like that. The dragon hoodie, will the dragon hoodie ever go away? Don't know, I didn't expect it to last this long. We keep finding new ways to read life into it.

Because people love it. If you show up at a Whistlekick event now, you will see quite a few dragon hoodies. It's a lot of fun. Taryn at this last, at Marshall Summit was, no joke, was counting how many she was gonna see throughout the meeting. Yeah, there were quite a few. And for those listening, I'm wearing a brand new, I just received it yesterday in the mail, a brand new dragon hoodie. So just a brief history on the dragon hoodie. It was...

When we launched in 2021 for free training day Northeast, it was two color black and gray. And then for 2022, we rolled out some different color combinations and even gave people the option to customize their own. We do not do that anymore. That was frustrating. I had to keep doing that. Well, can you make the purple a little, no. A little more purple? Not anymore.

But for 2023, we made it a three color where the dragon and the whistle kick logo on the back are an additional color.

Jeremy (10:06.59)
when I was out at free training day Pacific Northwest.

was wearing a dragon hoodie as I generally am. As was I. Because it's become the unofficial whistle kick uniform. And Kathy Long remarked on the hoodie. She's like, oh, that's great. And I was like, well, I'll send you one. She's like, oh, that's really cool. And I was like, you want to pick the colors? And she's like, stop. Yeah, we'll figure this out. So fast forward, behind the scenes, Kathy Long and I.

work this out and if you are listening and not watching, it is a black and white hoodie, the dragon is blue, and those colors were chosen by Kathy. Now this one has something that none of our other releases have had and that's her signature in the hood. I don't know how well we can show that. Yeah, if you're watching you can tell like it's there and it's written well.

Jotted her signature down for me and sent it over and we put that in the hood. And what we're doing for the rest of the month. Which this episode we release on December 21st. Okay, so you will still have a little bit of time. Through the end of 2023, 100% of profits from this hoodie will be donated to charity. And there's no gimmick in there, right? I'm not calling myself a charity. Now we could decide right now, I could release this episode a week early.

a week earlier, I could push some stuff around to give people more time to buy the brand. That's up to you. Why don't we do that? So it'll be a week before the 21st. I'll do that. For you, the listening audience, it'll come out on the 14th. Yeah. Done. So it's pretty cool that we set up this partnership and thank you to Cathy for her.

Jeremy (12:07.278)
Graciousness absolutely so in working three color black white blue. Did you know there is one four color dragon hoodie out there?

Jeremy (12:18.146)
He's now trying to figure out what the heck you're talking about. This is not a joke. There is one four color dragon hoodie out and about in the world.

Still the one for D? Yep. Yeah. Kind of cool. Yeah. So yeah there was something... Yeah we don't even get into that. But anyway it was kind of neat. Anyway. Alright are you ready for your next question? I'm ready for my next question. This question comes from Jared Wilson. Hi Jared! And his question is what non martial artist would you want to teach martial arts to?

Jeremy (13:02.626)
I would want it, it would probably be someone who already has an understanding of movement, but in a different way because I would get to learn while I'm teaching them. Interesting. So maybe we can call it selfish. Wouldn't necessarily need to be a celebrity.

Jeremy (13:23.35)
maybe like a really high level ballet dancer. Somebody who has incredible proprioception and body control and they can just, all right, I want you to do this and then this and I can just talk them through it and they know how to move their body and I could teach them some really cool advanced stuff right away and I think that would be fun. I also think it would be challenging because they would get.

bored quickly so I would have to find that fine line. Yeah, I could see that. How do I? Yeah. If I had to pick a second choice?

Jeremy (14:07.348)
it would, let's see, another movement discipline.

Um, it also depends on what aspect I'm teaching them, right? Because teaching them, uh, traditional class stuff versus competition stuff versus more fitness-y side of stuff.

Jeremy (14:29.674)
No, nothing else really sounds that interesting. You know, it could be other forms of dance, but you know, I think ballet probably exemplifies what I'm talking about most. I'm thinking like very high level gymnast, like a Niles Wilson. I follow him on YouTube. For similar reasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it would be really enjoyable. And then, I mean, then you could get into celebrities that you'd be, you would wanna teach them just cause you'd wanna hang out with them, right? I mean, but.

That's the more selfish as opposed to, I think that's the more selfish route than going a ballet dancer because they know movement. Yeah, and you know, this is, this is, I think we can call this the tangent episode. Yeah. I learned very, very early on, because remember, Bill Wallace was episode 14. Mm-hmm. Right? 14, 12. It was one of the two. Almost like we've had 870 episodes and you can't remember them all. Yeah.

That's pretty early on. I had to learn very, very quickly that if I treated celebrities differently, I did not.

get them to show up to things. Yeah. When I said, you're up here and I'm down here, they had to look down at me and they were less likely to engage with me on things. So now I worked really hard, not because I think I'm as good as them or better than them or on the same rate. Like it's not about that. It's that we're here to get something done together. Yeah. Right. So the idea of socializing with celebrities, yeah, that's fun.

But like you've probably never seen me take a selfie with a famous person simply because they're a famous person. I'll take it with them if we're friends. Yeah, Bill is a perfect example. I've got great selfies with Bill. There may or may not. Yeah, I just, I see it differently. So I don't think that there would be very many people that I would wanna just hang out with and I would wanna teach them.

Jeremy (16:42.71)
So I could say I taught them. Yeah, because you'd be there for a goal, for a purpose. That'd be about me and not them, and that'll... Yeah, no, I get it. Another example of having a goal, working towards something and having it be about them and not about you or us would be all of weekend. Which has become, and Whistlekick has done a really good job of...

doing this over here and then doing this over here and doing this over here. And then we have done a really good job of starting to combine those things. And there are a ton of examples. Free training day is a thing. And the martial art teacher training certification courses are a thing. And now there have been multiple instances where you can go to a free training day and take one of the Maddox.

So we're starting to like merge these things together different aspects of what we do. Let's chat about that for a little bit. This is the only way I know how to start, how to do a business, right, is to do different things. I've never been, whether it's a personal failing of mine or just difference philosophically, I've never been one who says, let's just do this really tight, narrow thing.

and be the best in the world at that tight and narrow little thing. And only that. And only that, right? We're only going to make pretzels.

Jeremy (18:19.534)
Okay. All right. I might start making pretzels, and then I'm gonna make tortilla chips, and then I'm gonna make all these other things that probably use a number of the same ingredients. How many ways can we combine these ingredients and get different things? Then you're gonna be making tortilla shells from pretzels. Yes. And that wasn't a joke. That's how you're gonna look at converging stuff. Yeah, yeah. And...

So you brought up the example of all in weekend for 2024, for the third instance of all in weekend, we have a leadership track, which if you've been through Matic level one or higher, if you've been through higher, you've been through level one, but if you've been through them past level one, you're eligible for that track. And so we don't need to go into the specifics of that, but what you're going to start to see from Whistlekick now is we have all the ingredients. We have the various content ingredients. We have the team.

We have the events, we have the trainings, we have all of these pieces. Alliance is a good example of how we put these pieces together. The core four webinars, advertising, uh, peer support and online challenges. None of these are, are dramatic deviations from things that we already do. Yeah. So it was just.

Oh, well, let's put these together in this way. And you could look at that and say, well, you know, that's, that's lame, but what's the difference between a really great loaf of bread and a bad loaf of bread, right? Like just messing up a couple of the ingredients or even just one. Yeah. If you don't get the recipe right, it doesn't work. And so this is, you know, we, we spent, we've spent a decade building the ingredients and the next decade is.

building the recipes. Awesome, awesome. Cool, if you wanna learn more about the leadership track for All In Weekend or All In Weekend in general, everything is at whistlecake.com. All right, you ready for your third question? Ready. Okay, this one came in this morning actually from Josh Blum. Hi Josh. And I'm just gonna read it, I don't wanna.

Jeremy (20:39.35)
I don't want to, censor's not the right word. I don't want to censor him, that's not the right word. I don't want to paraphrase what he's gonna say. I'll read you this whole thing. In every school, there's usually at least one, the fellow student who is the incessant over-corrector. Instead of focusing on their own training, they make it a habit to give unsolicited advice to whomever they work with or happen to observe. Sometimes it's good advice, sometimes not. Harmless, helpful, ignore, feed into it.

How much ego feeding does one permit? I'm assuming this question is being asked of the instructor in that dynamic. That's what's coming across. Yep. So, step one, we recognize why that's going on. It is ego, but is ego as defense mechanism. That person is doing that because they are unsure of where they are in their own training at that time.

They, it is rarely the senior student. It's usually one or two below that. The person who wants to be the senior student, the person who, um, maybe is not often given the responsibility and opportunity of teaching lower ranks, but they want to, because they feel like they've worked really hard and they're being unrecognized. So as the instructor.

there are a couple of things you gotta do. One, you gotta solve that problem. Why do they feel that way? Do they feel that way because you don't like them so that you don't give them the opportunities? Or did they train elsewhere and, you know, they feel like they've started over and, you know, there's something, you gotta solve that. There's too many options there. But then secondly, much of the time I see, and it sounds like the tone of this question, it's happening at inopportune times.

Yeah. So maybe it's floor drills and they catch, hey, fix your back foot.

Jeremy (22:43.03)
the if it is a lower rank, when that's happening, I'll say, hey, don't worry about it. My job's to worry about all of you, your job's to worry about yourself. If it's a higher rank, I can't quite do that. It's a higher rank, it's in the ear. It's, hey, I appreciate you trying to help, but let me do this. But what we're hearing is that this is a consistent problem. I've probably already done that. And it's gonna take a...

Sit down. Yeah. I don't like that happening in most environments. Because.

Jeremy (23:26.082)
there's a good chance that the student is missing something. Right? Like why is that student doing that? Here's a great example. I once had someone, I was having some knee issues. It was very beginning of my knee issues in college. I was training in a, basically a Shotokan karate derivative, long deep stances. And I was not able to keep my knee where in that style it should be.

And the assist and I went to the instructor and I said, Hey, before class, I've got some stuff going on with my knee. Just want you to know. And she's like, totally fine. I get it. It makes sense. Assistant instructor comes over, kicks the back of my knee, which is a perfectly acceptable thing if you don't have problems with your knee. Yep. And I looked at him and I said, I have knee problems. I told sensei so-and-so, Oh, I didn't know it was my last class because I could no longer trust them to communicate. And they're.

they assume the worst of me. Yeah. Right. Now, as you get better, as you know more, as you have a better understanding of your students, you collect knowledge about them and how they need to be corrected. If you have someone who is making those corrections, they have less of that information. They probably have less time instructing. They have less context. They are less able to help. They are, it is possible that they are harming.

Jeremy (24:57.01)
So I'm really going to sit them down and hopefully help them understand. And if I can't get them to understand, it's going to be, then you need to trust me. My responsibility at the front of the room is to guide everyone in their journey. And every aspect of energy and time that you invest in someone else's training. When I have not asked you to is compromising your own training.

Jeremy (25:25.142)
Yeah, I mean that makes sense and that collecting of information is what you need, right? To figure out what the right course of action is. I totally get it. It's a difficult job to guide the educational process of 10, 20, 50, 200 individuals, especially in environments where you have, well, in every environment, whether you're...

you know, it's a teen advanced class or, you know, you know, like my school, your school, where you've got a variety of ages and ranks on the floor. It's all, there's always that disparity. It's always complicated. And to add in the complication of now everybody has the opportunity to correct everybody else. Cause yeah, if you let it go, everybody thinks it's their responsibility and, or their right to do so.

Jeremy (26:21.25)
What I think is better is creating a culture where people are modeling good behavior and everyone understands that observing what everyone else is doing and trying to correlate how they all look versus they themselves. I think it's a healthier way to do it. Yep. And you collect that information and you make decisions based on that, which is what we did with Quick Hits. You're doing a great job with these segues, man. So if you go back...

As of this recording, it was maybe a month ago that the last Quick Hit aired.

Quick Hits were our way of putting out information that was a little more timely. Hey, in two weeks, this thing is going on. Because if you notice, we don't do that with our episodes. We create what we call evergreen content. It is meant to be as relevant now as 10 years into the future. With rare exceptions. Sometimes if we launch a thing, we launch this thing, but we're talking about the thing and the origin of the thing, we're trying to get context.

And so we worked really hard for that because we want to make sure that as much of what we produce is as valuable for as long as possible to as many people. Yeah. And it is as relevant as it could be. Yeah, sure. And the quick hits were an effort to use our reach to our audience for things that did not fit that. What we have found over time is that not only are fewer people listening to the quick hits, cause they were only in audio format.

but it seemed like it was having a negative impact on the show overall.

Jeremy (28:02.774)
run that occurrence through our mantra, connect, educate, and entertain. If...

Fewer people are connected, educated, and entertained, but they are the ones that are, are more connected, educated, and entertained. Does that fit our model? No, because we're trying to grow, right? We're trying to reach as many people as possible. And there comes a point where, yeah, diluting a little bit of what we do so it reaches more people makes more sense. If we go back to our example before about recipe, right?

I really like spicy food. I really don't. If I make a dish that's really, really spicy and you don't enjoy it, only one of us enjoys it, but if I make it less spicy, now we can both enjoy it. Do I enjoy it necessarily as much as I would if it was spicier? No. But I'll compromise a little bit of my enjoyment for you to also receive some enjoyment. Yeah.

It's much the same philosophy with jokes and pranks. Like if it's not fun for everyone, it's not fun at all. Right. So, I get it. So that's where we're at. What might happen in the future is we may drop quick hits once in a while. If there's something that seems to make sense, we would use it in the same way we might do like an email newsletter, just to reach some of you.

Jeremy (29:31.818)
But what had happened is we were running to a week and it was about things that I really wanted people to hear and yeah, we were repeating them. I was plugging them in like commercials. We were using it like commercial time and now I know that's not what you all want. So they're gone. They're gone. See, we listen to you. Even when you don't speak. All right, the last question you've been waiting the whole episode for comes in from unsurprisingly Mark Warner.

The question is, as a martial artist, which zombie apocalypse are you most looking forward to? So I'm not looking forward to any of the zombie apocalypses.

That would be the plural of apocalypse, right? Apocalypse. Apocalypses. I don't know. You're not looking forward to any zombie apocalypse. Yeah, none of them. Because none of them will go well.

Jeremy (30:34.014)
I'm less interested in the 28 days later version, which unfortunately is, I believe, the more likely version, right? So if we take a look at zombies overall, and then I'll explain to you why, and then I will find a way to answer the question in an interesting way. You've got slow zombies and fast zombies. Yep. Right, those are really the ways. Now, if you take the walking dead version of zombies, physiologically impossible. It is logically impossible for that to occur, because

In order for limbs to move, calories have to be burned. There has to be a metabolic process.

Unless there is some weird virus that has learned to metabolize air and turn it into calories, could happen. It's not going to work. But that also means that virus would have evolved a better way to spread than to inhabiting bodies. Right. We could nitpick that. So the slow way where

Jeremy (31:38.954)
I think is less likely. Now, 28 days later, where essentially people are still alive and some of the functions of the body are suppressed, others are exaggerated to create faster movement, aggression, violence. That's the way it would happen if it's going to happen. I don't want that to happen. Now what about the iZombie?

where they're just regular, they're living among us and just doing jobs and... Watched the first few seasons of that. It was a good show. I don't see that as being...

logical, it doesn't seem to add up with the biology. Okay, just curious. Now, of the various forms, as a martial artist, which would I be most excited for if I had to be excited for one of them? It would be the slow ones, because I would have a better chance of surviving. And if we take...

you know, more or less slow viruses transmitted through blood and or saliva. We have, some of us with some of our skill sets have some options with, you know, sweeps and leg kicks and avoidance that would work better. That's another thing that I don't like about the Walking Dead Zombies is that somehow

getting the blood when they stabbed one of them in their eye doesn't train it doesn't do it. Yeah. But saliva does, right? Like it just, there are too many holes in that.

Jeremy (33:34.926)
But if I had to mess with the fast ones, I would want a spear. In fact, a spear is probably is like the zombie survival weapon because it's you know, it gives you range and allows you to pierce.

assuming that stabbing the brain is where you need to go for defense.

Jeremy (33:56.306)
Yeah, I would go slow zombies too because they would be easier to defend yourself. Not easy, no. Because they're zombies, I mean come on. Right. But easier. Also, I just want to make sure we're all on the same page. If we end up in a world where there are zombies. If you're watching this and there are zombies. If you are watching this and there are zombies, you should probably turn this off now. Because you have other things that are more important. But if we end up in a world with zombies.

It is everyone's collective effort to stop the spread of the zombie virus. That if you are, I have to avoid and yeah, that's job one. But if we are not all on the same page, then it just continues to grow and humanity goes to pot and we're all screwed. Right? Leaving more zombies out there to join a horde of zombies is irresponsible. And you should not do that. Yeah.

I would agree. Come together. Right now. Over zombies. All right. There we go. That was fun. That was fun. Thanks Mark. Thanks Mark. Thank you to all of you out there for watching or listening. If you have questions, again, send them to Andrew. Andrew at Whistlekick.com. You've got comments or feedback for me, stuff you want to talk about. Jeremy at Whistlekick.com. I will write you back unless it's a, unless you're mean. If you're mean, I won't write you back. Once in a while I get something mean that's pretty rare.

If you want to engage with this or any of the other content that we do, we're all over the place. Go to whistlekick.com. See all the places that we are. And while you're over there, pick something up or sign up for something or tell somebody about something, help us continue to do what we are doing. We appreciate you, Andrew. I appreciate you. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day. High five. That was good. That was good.