Episode 883 - Martial Arts Word Association 10
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 10 - Episode 883
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!
Today’s word list was brought to us by listener Denise. Thanks Denise!
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
Jeremy (00:00.808)
What's happening, everybody? Welcome. You're tuned in to Whistlekick, a martial arts radio. And on today's episode, Andrew and I are going to be bringing you the 10th. Installment of the word associations. I am super excited. These are fun. Andrew didn't give me any of the words ahead of time, but he did. He did foreshadow a little bit, so this could get super weird. I'm pumped. I think you all know by now, I like weird.
But before we get there, just a couple of reminders to you. What do we do? We do a whole bunch of things here at Whistlekick to connect, educate and entertain those of you out there, the traditional martial artists of the world. Why do we do that? Because we believe that traditional martial arts brings out the best in people. We believe it makes us better versions of ourselves. And we also believe that if people train for even just six months, it makes a tremendous lifelong impact that really benefits the world. So we are.
mission driven hell bent if you want to say it that way on getting everybody in the world to train for just six months. That's why we do what we do. And if you go to whistlekick.com you're going to see all the things that we do. Use the code podcast one five to grab something in the store. And if you're a school owner and you have not checked out whistlekick Alliance you are missing out. It is going swimmingly. If you're not a school owner and you want to support us you could buy stuff share stuff.
Maybe join the Patreon. We still have that at patreon.com slash whistlekick, but it's all linked from whistlekick.com. If you want to go deeper on this or any other episode, it's whis That's the place to go. Show notes, transcripts, links, videos, photos, and more. Well Andrew, I was leaning into my radio voice. Can you hear it?
Welcome to Whistlekick commercial art. I found a new place to put the mic. Yeah, literally in front of me.
Andrew Adams (01:48.907)
I dig it.
Andrew Adams (01:53.705)
Oh, really?
Andrew Adams (01:57.478)
Oh, nice. See, mine is off to the side. If you're watching, you can see it's like just right over here. I've got it on like an extendable arm.
Jeremy (02:01.749)
Yeah.
Yeah, I took down the arm because the arm... Do you remember the days where I used to stand when I record? When I needed to do that, I don't need to do that anymore. I found other ways to keep myself more active and engaged in video as part of that. But after I did that, I took it off the stand, then it's on the mic stand here. It's this, right? But I would keep it over on the side.
Andrew Adams (02:11.502)
I do, yeah.
Andrew Adams (02:28.514)
Yep, yep.
Jeremy (02:32.528)
And as I would drift over here, you know, I would drift and it wasn't quite the same quality, but I found, okay, if I can keep this right here in front of me, it gets the full the full resonance of my of my voice. It sounds nice. It sounds good.
Andrew Adams (02:50.07)
I don't think you could be the judge of whether it sounds nice. If it sounds nice everybody, you're in.
Jeremy (02:52.816)
Oh, I can, because I can hear it in these headphones. I can hear it. I can hear my own voice.
Andrew Adams (02:56.066)
That's fair, okay.
But it's subjective, so audience, if it sounds nice, let us know.
Jeremy (03:01.756)
No.
Andrew Adams (03:05.294)
I'm sorry.
Jeremy (03:06.248)
There's... Okay. There are like two people out there who will get this. I don't think you will be one of them. They may not even hear this episode. But the continually hitting the nice, it sounds nice, reminds me of a hip hop song. And it is completely inappropriate. And I will say nothing more, because if you get it, you're laughing your tail off right now. And if you don't, well, no harm, no foul.
Andrew Adams (03:27.406)
Ha ha!
Andrew Adams (03:33.942)
Yeah, you're right. I don't get it. So today's word association, every single word comes to us from a listener. She wrote in, we'll give her a shout out. I didn't ask if I could shout her name out, but like she sent in like the full list. So Denise, not someone that I know, clearly it must be someone you know.
Jeremy (03:39.635)
Yeah.
Jeremy (03:52.672)
I think it's fine.
Jeremy (03:56.576)
Hey, Denise asked great questions. Yeah.
I do know Denise. Denise has been around for a while. Denise did the audio version for First Cup when we were doing that for a long time. Yeah, yeah. Denise has been a fan for a super long time.
Andrew Adams (04:09.391)
Oh, oh, okay, okay. I knew the name sounded familiar, but I didn't.
Andrew Adams (04:16.574)
Awesome. So she sent a full list of 10 words and it's the New York City edition of Word Association. So Word Association 10 New York City edition brought to you by Denise.
Jeremy (04:18.149)
I appreciate her.
Jeremy (04:24.492)
Okay.
Jeremy (04:31.424)
Thanks Denise.
Andrew Adams (04:32.494)
Okay, are you ready for your first word? So remember, New York City, pizza.
Jeremy (04:34.555)
I am.
Jeremy (04:44.704)
Pizza is a great example of something being better than its ingredients. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And I think when people train forms for a long time and they really, really dig into it, forms are also that way. If we take the first form that exists in many martial arts schools, right? Low blocks and punches might have some other things in there, but it's a lot of low blocks and punches.
If you've been training for more than a few months, you probably know how to do low blocks and punches with some at least mild competency. But, and I know Andrew, you've trained long enough and I suspect a lot of the audience out there has trained long enough. You can train for 30, 40 years, and I'm not gonna say more because that's as far as I've gone. And I can go back to that first form that I learned, pinion showed up. And I can still find new things in it.
I can still find reason to do it. I can still get value out of it in the same way that I can find value in pizza when I really have no interest in a little bit of bread and a little bit of cheese and a little bit of sauce. Something about putting those together is amazing. And if we want to further this analogy.
pineapple on pizzas just as controversial as forms is in general.
Andrew Adams (06:12.866)
Good call, good call. All right, next word, subway.
Jeremy (06:17.792)
Mmm.
Jeremy (06:28.16)
To me, when I think about the subway, I'm thinking about efficiency. I think about the way something is done, right? A subway is really efficient. It uses space that otherwise wouldn't be used. People aren't clamoring to build tunnels for other reasons. I don't see people arguing about underground land rights. I guess, yeah.
Andrew Adams (06:46.638)
unless they're bank robberies.
Jeremy (06:54.834)
Every movie heist of a bank, right? Like they go underground. Like, I don't know. Anyway. And I look at that and as someone who lives in the woods, you know, I live in rural Vermont, the idea of that efficiency of a subway really fascinates me because we don't have anything. We barely have public transit here.
And when we look at martial arts, I think we can make a similar argument that we would make in starting a subway. If, you know, Andrew, you've spent just enough time in Burlington that the culture, one would imagine, yeah, people, public transportation, let's build a subway. Put the economics aside for a moment. People don't even take the buses. We can't get our, we don't get trains running around here.
barely have taxis. Uber doesn't go most places. What we have is fine. Everybody has a car, it's fine. You don't need this, it's fine. It's a resistance to make change for the sake of tradition. This is what we've done, it's worked fine. Well, you can't have progress without change. You can't have improvement. How does your system of martial arts get better if you don't change it?
Andrew Adams (08:04.994)
Hmm.
Jeremy (08:14.364)
It can't. We've talked about that on the show. And that's what I think when I think of a cell.
Andrew Adams (08:16.055)
Yep.
Andrew Adams (08:20.19)
Interesting. All right. Some of these, depending on the direction you go, might be easier than others. The next word is rat.
Jeremy (08:34.896)
Rat rats. OK. The only people I've ever talked to in the United States that were more or less indifferent to the rats are people from New York City. Everywhere else, if you have rats around, it's a problem, and you feel like it's a problem. And when you're in New York, it's like it's rat, you know, if the subway is not running, I'll get four or five of them and I'll hitch them to a wagon and turn them into a sled team.
You know, just the willingness to embrace, maybe not embrace, but accept something as inevitable that other people resist. The direction that you all probably think I'm going, I'm gonna go the exact opposite. There are times when in our training, you kind of have to embrace the suck because there are other things that are more important. You know, getting bruised and banged up has value towards the goal.
Rats are a consequence of that many people living in an area with that much density. It's going to be pretty darn hard to prevent that. So you accept it as this is part of the cost of entry. When we train, most schools would accept, you know what, getting a little banged up, getting a bruise, getting scratched, having a limp for a couple days.
Andrew Adams (09:58.094)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (10:01.312)
is part of the cost of entry, it's part of training. And maybe we do try to mitigate it. People are probably not out there feeding rats as pets, maybe some crazy people are.
Andrew Adams (10:12.578)
Hehehe
Jeremy (10:15.064)
You mitigate it where you can, but you accept that, you know what? This system that we've built that works pretty well, it's going to have some
some outliers, some rounding off, some consequences. But overall, it's still worth it.
Andrew Adams (10:33.922)
All right, I thought you were gonna go Master Splinter.
Andrew Adams (10:40.302)
Okay, but you can't go back. Next word, culture.
Jeremy (10:42.205)
I can't go back.
culture. It's what everything's about, right? It's what binds us. Have you ever been to a martial arts school that doesn't have a culture? I have. It's terrible. And I don't mean a culture of, you know, what they're training. I mean the culture being the communal construct of the participants, right? There's a different restaurants have different cultures, different schools have different cultures, different
martial arts events have different cultures. If you've been to a whistle kick event, you know there's a very unique culture that we have cultivated, that we have put tremendous time into cultivating. When I launched my school, one of the things that was critical was I wanna build the right culture, cause I knew if I got that in at the base layer, everything else would ride on top of it and it would work better, and it is.
Many people still see New York as the cultural focal point of the world. And I'm not going to argue that. There's a lot of great stuff that happens there.
Andrew Adams (11:51.892)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (11:53.968)
And not just rats. And not just rats eating pizza.
Andrew Adams (11:58.618)
Skyscraper!
Jeremy (12:14.204)
If you want to get to the top of a skyscraper, it takes at least time. In the days before, you know, elevators took a lot of climbing. I have no idea of the history of skyscrapers. I have no idea how popular they were before elevators, but I would imagine, because I've climbed stairs before, that even five or six flights of stairs is a lot of work.
Jeremy (12:40.032)
to climb stairs, to put in the time, to get to the top of that building, you generally don't have a windowed view. You don't usually see yourself moving up. In fact, it's only from your ability to notice small changes. I went from this step to this step, this step to this step, feeling a little bit of pressure under your feet in an elevator that you know you are making progress. But when you step out, when you get to the top, when you look out,
Oh, look how much progress I've made. And it doesn't necessarily mean that you've gone to the top for you to recognize that progress. You can get off at the third floor and look out and go, hey, this is a completely different perspective than I had when I started, when I was there at the ground floor. And I think for a lot of people, when they join martial arts, they climb a bunch of stairs and they get to the landing and they don't open the door.
They never take that opportunity to step out because the stairs are the training, right? You're stepping up, you're running up, you're climbing, crawling up. You're so invested in the training that you don't see the output, the result of that effort. And if you don't see that result, it becomes really difficult to remain persistent with the effort.
So as an aside, and we're recording this in January, who knows when you'll be watching or listening, if you haven't recently, take a step back, take a step outside, take a look at where you are and how far you've come and notice from the top or the second floor of the skyscraper, it doesn't matter, there's still a lot of room to grow.
Andrew Adams (14:24.83)
Perfect. All right. Stock market.
Jeremy (14:28.544)
Hmm.
Andrew Adams (14:43.918)
Good job, Denise.
Jeremy (14:47.754)
I'm choosing my words.
Jeremy (14:52.5)
The stock market.
Jeremy (14:57.148)
is like that old school martial arts organization that's a bit closed off.
that.
Jeremy (15:16.36)
Maybe...
Jeremy (15:21.212)
has some questionable ethics at times.
It's not a judgment of the curriculum or the students or the teachers in terms of martial arts, but it doesn't take long for us to realize that the push for money, the fact that only score within Wall Street is money for most, can lead to some poor decisions. What happens in a school when the only scoring system, the only value system is rank?
some rough things happen.
And I think there's a lot of similarity there. Now I think we're also seeing.
Jeremy (16:06.104)
in this contemporary era that both are shifting. We're seeing that a lot of businesses are starting, running, successful, that have a mission, that it's not just about dollars, that it's about making an impact. You know, B Corp, the B Corp designation, if you're familiar with that. If you're not, you might wanna go look it up. Whistlekick is not a B Corp, but we're pretty public with our mission. It's pretty clear what we're here for.
And I think there are a lot of martial arts schools that are doing something similar. You know, you, you see more and more martial arts schools launching that have a mission, whether it's to support a certain population or a certain community or to make people safer. We're seeing more and more say, you know what? It's not just about rank. It's not just about title. And I think that's a good.
Andrew Adams (17:02.139)
Hmm. All right. Next one. Dun dun
Jeremy (17:13.376)
Hmm
Andrew Adams (17:16.942)
America's pastime.
Jeremy (17:19.12)
Yeah, so I don't know where the numbers are now, but for a period of time, I think the Yankees were the most valuable sports franchise in the US behind the Cowboys. If not, you know, they're still up there quite a bit. The Yankees logo is incredibly iconic. If you're a Mets fan, I'm sorry on several levels.
Andrew Adams (17:36.13)
That's true.
Jeremy (17:40.98)
But the Yankees are two sports in the world in the same way that we could say Bruce Lee is. It's very recognizable. You can go around the world, I've done it, and seen people who are not from the US wearing a Yankees cap.
You see people the world over still watching Bruce Lee films, writing, reading Bruce Lee books, talking about him. We've talked about this on the show. 50 years after his passing, he's still the most recognizable figure in martial arts. Yankee Stadium could burn to the ground. The entire Steinbrenner family could be drawn up into alien spaceships and taken off world. The logo could change.
Everything could change and they would still be recognizable. In the same way that I could show you a silhouette of Bruce Lee and you go, is that Bruce Lee?
Andrew Adams (18:41.407)
Hmm.
All right, museum.
Jeremy (18:49.596)
Museums are where we go to celebrate.
Jeremy (18:56.34)
things that have happened, that have been created. Even a history museum. We are learning about history, but we're kind of celebrating what has happened.
Jeremy (19:12.328)
we find value in it. If we didn't find value in it, we wouldn't go, right? So even a mineral museum, there's a cool museum in Maine that I've been to and in. Shout out to the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum.
that I'm going back to soon because it's cool. Because you can hold moon rocks. I didn't make the moon rock. They didn't make the moon rock. They picked up the moon rock. Somebody picked up the moon rock. We're celebrating maybe not the person who picked up the moon rock, but we're celebrating.
the fact that happened and we get to engage with it and that that's really cool. And I think that's what we do when we watch martial arts movies. When a martial artist watches a martial arts movie, we are often critical, but we're engaged. We see some reflection of something that we do or did or want to do or recognize we would never be able to do on screen and we say.
It gives me some context for my training, for how my training impacts me, for who I am, my why, in the same way that me going to an art museum or a gem museum or a history museum.
helps me understand the world around me and my place in it.
Andrew Adams (20:37.102)
All right. Second to last question. Second to last word is empire. I'm assuming for the empire state building.
Jeremy (20:45.205)
Hmm.
Jeremy (20:59.484)
I should have saved Bruce Lee for this one. Because the Empire State Building, right, it's iconic, it's recognizable. Maybe everyone doesn't recognize what it looks like, but everybody knows the name. When it went up, it was the tallest building, right? It's not anymore. I don't know where it fits on the list, but it's not. And...
Andrew Adams (21:14.495)
Hmm?
Jeremy (21:21.044)
There are a number of people, I'm not gonna name names here, but there are a number of people, we've had quite a few of them on the show, who were celebrated as the best in their era and in the same way that they age and they no longer do the things that made them the best, whether that's competition or movies or something. They're still iconic, they're still great. And especially when we recognize the place that they occupy historically, it's really, it's...
It's easy and even I would say fun to celebrate them. Here we go, museum again. And I don't think we do that enough. I don't think we look back to say, hey, that was really cool for the time. I think the closest we get on this show is you and I go back and forth about best of the best. Right? I know you like the film, but you like the film as that period.
Andrew Adams (22:10.552)
Yeah, it's true
Andrew Adams (22:20.204)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (22:20.724)
you in that time, right? I didn't watch it then. So I don't have that perspective on it. So I can't look at it in the same way, but I have other movies that I can watch in that same way.
And I think sometimes when we have something that has come before, we need to recognize that it is what it is when it is. And it doesn't necessarily need to be, make sense in the now in order to have value. We can still celebrate it for what it was. Like the Empire State.
Andrew Adams (22:56.302)
Okay, last word. New York City is often called the big.
Andrew Adams (23:06.52)
The big apple. Yeah.
Jeremy (23:08.694)
I was toying with the idea of bagel or something ridiculous.
Andrew Adams (23:14.166)
So the word is apple.
Jeremy (23:20.072)
When I think about apples lately, I've actually been thinking about.
Jeremy (23:26.828)
What's the kind of cliche that we all heard when we were kids, right? And it predates us being kids, but an apple a day keeps your doctor away, right? Like, I don't know if people today have heard that, but Andrew, I mean, we all heard that when we were kids, right? Like that was folk wisdom. And as we got older, you know, if you ever thought about that, like, why? Why would I? Shut up, it's an apple, right? Like, but as we come to understand.
digestion and metabolism a bit better, we realize, okay, fiber's pretty important.
Jeremy (24:05.316)
Apples for most parts of the country are the cheapest, most readily available source of fiber. No, I'm not talking about grains because they require a tremendous amount of processing. If you go back, if you go back, the simplest way that an average person could get fiber would be to grab an apple off a tree and eat it.
Jeremy (24:31.456)
There's wisdom in these old folk sayings or remedies. And what we are finding now within traditional martial arts is that a lot of stuff that was kind of poo-pooed, pushed back on from a hundred, 150 years ago, people are coming, you know, they're digging in and they're going, oh, I guess there was some value.
And the best example that I'll give, and I was talking to my students about this last night, low block, downward block.
Jeremy (25:04.536)
Most of us learn a downward block pretty early in our martial arts career. And then we learn very quickly when we spar that it is almost useless. That if someone tries to kick you and you do a downward block, it's probably not gonna work. Just flat out, it's probably not gonna work. And you can make it work, but it's not really the best way to do it. Now in a lot of schools, that's kind of the be all end all. But.
Andrew Adams (25:19.811)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (25:33.86)
in what I see as a growing number of schools, people are saying, but why, why do we have that then? Why do we do this? And you start to unpack, oh, there's a lot in there. There's a lot of value. In fact, I know, Andrew, you've taught multiple sessions at free training days about using a down block and the versatility of that in pretty much every way, but defending against a low kick. Right.
Andrew Adams (25:43.05)
Yeah.
Andrew Adams (25:48.547)
Hmm.
Andrew Adams (26:01.716)
Yes.
Jeremy (26:02.494)
Like it's pretty much the only way I don't want to use it.
And I think that that's really cool. And so when people make the argument for holding onto some tradition, to me that's the reason, because we don't necessarily know what we're discounting.
Jeremy (26:20.112)
in the same way that, you know, yeah, an apple is not a fun, sexy food. You can go to the grocery store and get darn near anything these days. There's probably always apples. You probably have half a dozen or more to choose from. And they're relatively inexpensive. But if you come to understand how the body works and everything, then apple is not a bad choice.
Andrew Adams (26:42.37)
Cool. I was thinking the apple, apple a day keeps the doctor away. The cliche being that, you know, eat healthier, you will be better, right? No one is suggesting eating an apple a day is going to make you healthy. But on that same token, training every day keeps the doctor away.
I'm not saying if you train martial arts every day, you are not going to get sick. And I'm not going to say that if you are overweight, that training every day is going to make you not overweight, but it's going to make you healthier. Apple a day keeps the doctor away training every day. It's a good motto for life.
Jeremy (27:15.837)
Yes.
Jeremy (27:21.092)
Everyone can afford an apple. Everyone has time to eat an apple.
Andrew Adams (27:24.974)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (27:26.812)
Everyone has a few minutes a day. And if you're watching or listening to this, you do.
Andrew Adams (27:32.504)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (27:35.232)
And it's those small actions compounded over time. It's not an apple keeps the doctor away. It's an apple a day. It's building the habit. So I'm glad you tack that on. Thank you.
Andrew Adams (27:44.414)
Yep, exactly. Awesome. That's what we got. Denise, thank you so much. That was cool.
Jeremy (27:50.972)
Awesome. Yeah, thanks Denise, that's great.
Andrew Adams (27:52.534)
Hopefully others will take this prompt and maybe send me your list of 10 words.
Jeremy (28:00.368)
Yeah, yeah, that would be great. All right, so if you want to send in some words for the 11th installment or whatever one we're on at that time, reach out to Andrew, Andrew at whistlekick.com. You can reach out to me, Jeremy at whistlekick.com. If you want to support us, if you're a school owner, check out Whistlekick Alliance. If you are not a school owner, please check out Whistlekick Alliance and then tell your school about it. It is.
I am so proud of what we're doing there. But of course we've got plenty of other things from events to training programs, to books, to apparel, sparring gear, and everything is available for you to look at whistlekick.com. Thank you for being here. I appreciate all of you out there. We're closing in on episode 900, which is absolutely insane to me, and I'm so excited. We've got something cool planned for you.
Andrew Adams (28:43.874)
Thank you.
Jeremy (28:57.725)
Anything I should add, Andrew?
Andrew Adams (28:59.423)
No, I think we're good.
Jeremy (29:00.916)
All right, until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day. Woo, high five.
Andrew Adams (29:03.278)
Train hard, smile, and have a great day.