Episode 887 - Building Community Through Advanced Training

In today's episode Andrew sits down with Victor and Karen Guarino to talk about the advanced training sessions they have all started and how they are going. 

Building Community Through Advanced Training - Episode 887

In this episode, Andrew is joined by Victor and Karen to discuss building community through advanced training in martial arts. They share their experiences of opening a new martial arts school and the importance of collaboration over competition. They all talk about the inspiration they gained from Martial Summit and the decision to focus on advanced students for their monthly events. They also discuss the planning process and the goal of creating a workshop-like environment. The first half concludes with their expectations for the first event and their hopes for building a strong martial arts community.

TAKEAWAYS
Collaboration and communication among martial arts schools can help build a stronger community.
Focusing on advanced students for monthly events can create a unique learning experience.
Creating a workshop-like environment allows for the sharing of knowledge and techniques.
Building a strong martial arts community requires a mindset of collaboration over competition.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
01:15 Introducing the Topic: Building Community through Advanced Training
02:00 Opening a New Martial Arts School
04:19 Emphasizing Collaboration over Competition
05:47 Inspiration from a Martial Arts Summit
06:53 The Importance of Communication and Collaboration
08:25 Addressing Concerns and Mitigating Competition
13:08 The Decision to Focus on Advanced Students
15:25 Planning the Monthly Events
19:10 Creating a Workshop-like Environment
23:09 The Growth of the Community
25:08 Expectations for the First Event
28:37 Closing Remarks

Second half discusses how Victor and Karens first monthly training went, what they all got from it, and how they will proceed for the future.

Show Transcript

Andrew Adams (00:04.466)
Hello and welcome. You are listening or watching to an episode of Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And today I'm joined by good friends of the show, Victor and his wife, Karen. Hi guys, how's it going?

Vic & Karen (00:17.778)
Hello. It's going good.

Andrew Adams (00:20.338)
And the three of us are here to chat about building community through advanced training. And you're probably wondering, well, what is it they're talking about? Well, just hang on, because we're going to talk about it and you'll find out. But I just want to make sure everyone knows that you can go to whistlekick.com to get all sorts of stuff. Check out all the stuff that we're doing. You can purchase items like the really cool dragon hoodie that Victor is sporting, the new

Andrew Adams (00:50.542)
Uh, Dragon Hoodie's got Kathy's name on the inside there. It's pretty cool. Uh, uh, you can't purchase my Dragon Hoodie cause this is a unique one of a kind, but you can still go and purchase all kinds of stuff. Uh, Oh, look at that. He's got the pants. He's no hat though.

Vic & Karen (00:55.035)
Mm-hmm.

Vic & Karen (01:03.164)
I'm also wearing whistle kick pants. Yeah. No hat, no. No, my cousin has the whistle kick hat that I bought the same time I bought these pants.

Andrew Adams (01:10.854)
That's right.

Andrew Adams (01:15.622)
Gotcha. Well, you know, maybe next time you have another one. And if you do go to whistlecake.com to purchase things, you can use the code podcast one five and save yourself a little bit of money there. And you can also go to whistlekick martial arts radio.com. That's kind of the home for the show. You can see all kinds of, um, extra photos from all of our guests and transcripts and everything, uh, there, but we are here to discuss building community through advanced training.

Vic & Karen (01:18.626)
Yeah.

Andrew Adams (01:46.706)
That's kind of a long title for a very simple idea. Victor, go ahead and chat a little bit about what it is you're doing out there in Kansas.

Vic & Karen (02:00.118)
Yeah, so one of the things that we talk about and in the circles of martial arts schools, I've talked about it probably with you, definitely talked about with Jeremy at Nauseum, we've talked about it is, I've, Karen and I opened our school, our new location here in a strip mall back in October.

And we have a lot of conversations. We try to sit at the desk, which is right in front of the window as often as we can. And as people are passing by, we just talk to them about our school. And sometimes we get the answer of, Oh, well, I already train. I'm not at that point where like, Oh, well, you should come train with us. Cause

One of the things that we talk about is other martial arts schools aren't our competition. They're not, they're, if someone else trains, my normal reaction is, oh, where do you train? Oh, that's great. What do you like about, you know, your style? What do you enjoy about class? You know, and I'll see, sometimes I'll see the same kids walk by and.

You know, I ask them how their training is going because as long as someone's training, that's awesome. I don't, I'm not intimidated by another martial arts school. We have one, right? That's right across the street from us, right?

And I think that's great. I think the more martial arts schools that are around, the better it is because as much as I hate it, Wolf martial arts is not for everyone. I would love it to be for everyone, but I know that it's not. I know that not everyone's gonna get what they need, martial arts speaking, from us. And so I wanted to come up with a way.

Vic & Karen (03:51.518)
to build and emphasize that perspective amongst the other martial arts school owners so that we could all get on the same page and realize that we're not competing with each other. We should be working with each other to better our community as a whole. Because I think there's, there's at least three to four schools in Lenexa alone, the city that we're in. Oh yeah, I think more, more than that.

Andrew Adams (04:05.156)
Mm-hmm.

Vic & Karen (04:19.65)
Probably, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of martial arts schools around. And, you know, once you get into BJJ schools, there's a lot of those, that's really popular around here. So there's a lot just in this little city that we're in. And if you look at the entire Kansas City Metro, they're everywhere.

Andrew Adams (04:36.306)
Okay.

Vic & Karen (04:42.302)
And there's a lot of people though in this little city, you know, so there's enough people for all of us to service, you know, without anybody really struggling.

Andrew Adams (04:54.278)
Yeah, and so you decided to start up a once a month class And you know you came both you and Karen you both came out here to New England for Marshall Summit back in November It was great to have you here and You know we had numbers of hours in the car to and from the airport because for the listeners, I'm the one that

Vic & Karen (05:09.834)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Vic & Karen (05:20.868)
Yeah. Thanks for the ride.

Andrew Adams (05:22.806)
That's right. I was there Uber for the weekend. And so, you know, it's a couple hour drive to the airport and back. So we chatted about an endeavor that I had started here in King, New Hampshire. And it really resonated with you guys. And you have decided to start it there once a month, correct?

Vic & Karen (05:47.126)
We're not sure. We're going to start in January. We're going to see how people come. And it might turn into a, it might turn into a once a month. If enough local people come, we would like it to be a once a month thing. But we might start with maybe every other month and just see. It'd be great. Once a month would be my preferable goal. But.

I think that is, that's something to shoot for. And I'm being very open about, I have no expectations for January.

Andrew Adams (06:23.998)
Sure. Yeah, yeah. So I'll talk a little bit about the event we had, what I started here, and kind of the impetus for it, and kind of what I've seen happen. And then we can kind of talk to you guys about what you know, if you think it might work there as well. So a year and a half ago, actually, I'll go back even further. A few years ago, my instructor was hosting a weekend seminar.

and he was having two other instructors, not from the area, they live about three to four hours away, come in and teach this weekend seminar. They're both eighth dons, and the whole weekend for like half a day Friday, all day Saturday, and then I think a little bit on Sunday, was like $80 for participants, so people that wanted to come, which is very reasonable, right? And...

I was shocked that only five people showed up. And of those five people, I think, well, no, there were more than five. There were, there were probably eight, but only three of them were not from our school. Like they were basically it was just our school. We were a very small school. And after the event was over, I was stunned that there weren't more people there. You know, in Keen, there are.

I think seven martial arts schools in Keene. And we had three people outside of our school show up to the event. And I was shocked and I was like, I don't understand why. And I did a little bit of soul search, not soul searching, but a little bit of thinking about, well, why? And part of the reason is, I felt, and I'm not going to put words into their mouths, but it's one of two things. They see us as competition, like you mentioned, Victor.

or they just don't know us. That they didn't hear about the event. Well, why didn't they hear about the event? Because there's no communication between the schools. And I, Victor, like you, do not feel like I am in competition with any other martial arts school in town because we all teach different things. And you know, you mentioned that your school isn't for everyone, so you may have a student come in that isn't the right fit. And so if you have good

Vic & Karen (08:44.148)
Mm.

Andrew Adams (08:53.118)
communication and collaboration with the other schools, you can send them off to somewhere else. So that's the problem. And so I went about trying to figure out how can I make this better? How can I fix it? And so that's why I came up with, well, let me do a once a month class and open and invite all of the other martial arts schools to come for free.

Vic & Karen (08:58.146)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (09:20.23)
And at least that way they'll get to know who I am and know who our school is. So if we host another event, they would hopefully come. And when we talked about this in the car, Karen, I believe you mentioned that's a really cool idea. Talk a little bit about how you're gonna try and make this happen in your neck of the woods.

Vic & Karen (09:24.771)
Mm-hmm.

Vic & Karen (09:45.162)
I mean, we, so we already started a Facebook event. So Victor made it a Facebook event and we've shared it.

with some of the martial artists that we know. There's actually some that around here in the Kansas City Metro that I have only interacted with online. So I'm hoping to meet some people in person that right now only, even though we're in the same Metro area, probably 30, less than 30 minutes away, hopefully they'll come and join us here

little space but

But yeah, like we had a little experience doing something like this with someone that he met through his new, his Kung Fu instructor. We went like an hour away from here for like a Kung Fu meetup. And that was my first experience with Kung Fu because so far I've really only trained in Japanese and Korean styles in Okinawan. So it was, it was kind of,

a little example for us of what we could do here. Um, and just, just to sharing, like we just want to do a sharing events that is free and just so we can all help support each other and grow. Yeah. Cause I'm one of the things that I think about is

Andrew Adams (11:18.417)
Yeah.

Vic & Karen (11:23.746)
Coming off of Marshall Summit, obviously the three of us had plenty of time to have conversations, but after you dropped us off at the airport, Karen and I had a couple hours sitting in the airport, a couple hours flight, we had one layover, we had an hour drive home. Like we had a lot of time to unpack a lot of the things and we were talking about, one thing that kept coming up is,

being the guy in your community. And I saw that a lot with you in Keene. People know you, even non-martial arts adjacent people. Like, oh, that's Andrew, right? And that's the type of thing that you only get when you're out doing things for your community. And the fact of the matter is, is that these other martial arts schools are a part of that community that we're trying to

Andrew Adams (12:10.447)
Mm-hmm.

Vic & Karen (12:22.802)
influence that we're trying to lift up. And I think sometimes because we get caught up in the weeds of the business side of things, we're like, well, we don't want to lift up someone that could take away our students, but we're not a Starbucks. We're not a Burger King, you know.

Andrew Adams (12:41.574)
No.

Vic & Karen (12:46.35)
But even those things like Burger King and McDonald's all exist within the same towns from each other. You know?

Andrew Adams (12:51.226)
Yep, absolutely. Yep, yep. So when I started here in Keen, this once a month series, I started putting myself in the other school owners' footprints. And I put myself in their shoes and I tried to determine what issues or what negative things they would have about this. And I tried to then mitigate those things.

Vic & Karen (13:08.302)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (13:21.19)
You know, one of the things that, and again, I'm not saying this is what they thought, I'm thinking in my head what they might think. And one of the concerns I could see someone saying with this type of event is, Oh, they're just trying to steal my students. So why am I going to send my students to, to Andrew's event? I'm not going to send my student, forget it. So I made the decision, um, you know, and there were, there was another reason as well, but the decision was my advanced, and I call it advanced training is only for.

advanced ranks for brown and black belts or in the Korean styles that use red belt instead of black, like red and black belts. Like you, you know, you can't show up to my event once a month as a white belt or a yellow belt or a green belt. You have to be an advanced rank student. And my rationale for that was, Victor, if you're in a martial arts school on the other side of town and you're a, you know, a brown belt or a black belt, you're pretty well

entrenched in your school and you are clearly you've been there a number of years. So the likelihood of you being quote-unquote stolen by me is pretty slim and so your instructor and this was my thought that your instructor would feel a little more comfortable about an advanced student coming to my training than a brand new student that's been there a month that doesn't you know isn't involved in their culture and so

You know, I made it very clear that this is for advanced students. The other rationale is that, you know, as a, I'm a huge fan of cross training, training and other things, other disciplines, but I'm not a huge fan of white belts training in six different martial arts, right? I mean, I, I feel that you should try one for a while and get really comfortable with it. And if you don't like it, switch, but training in multiple arts at once can be not all

but can be problematic. Are you doing the same sort of route where it's only for advanced students or is it open for anyone?

Vic & Karen (15:25.738)
just advance. So yeah, I think we've only invited black belts. Yes. I don't think we're expecting anyone below black belt for this first one. And I have a gentleman who called me from a school and he is funny. We were less than a month before we were even here. We were teaching less than a month across the street at the community center. And I guess our Google business page was doing really well.

a guy called us and was like, Hey, I'm hosting a tournament. Do you want to come? And I'm like, that's great. My students don't even know how to block yet. So like, keep us in mind, please. Next year. Um, I want to do it. So I'm, I have him on my list that I want to call cause I want to do a personal invite to him and I'm going to tell him if you have any brown belts or up that want to come.

Andrew Adams (16:05.766)
Yeah, yeah.

Vic & Karen (16:19.29)
my Kung Fu brother, Reed, who is going to come and support us because we drove an hour to support him. He too is, he asked me, can I bring some of my other students, but he's not bringing anyone that's lower than Red Sash, which is, I think, there right before black. So we were the very same reasons that you said is, you know, I don't think it's good for a white belt.

Andrew Adams (16:36.006)
Yeah. Sure.

Vic & Karen (16:48.17)
to jump from one style to another. I think it gets confusing. It gets confusing for me to jump from one style to another. I just have to take, I just have the wherewithal to think it through a little bit. So we're just gonna do that and see how it goes.

Andrew Adams (16:53.645)
Mm.

Andrew Adams (16:56.99)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Andrew Adams (17:11.122)
So the other thing that I did is I made a conscious decision unless absolutely needed to not teach myself. So I started this, I started our series in June of 2022. So it's been a year and a half and I have not taught once. I've always had a different presenter and no one has presented more than once. So one month.

The very first month was a former instructor of mine who was a GoJiru instructor. So he came and taught some GoJiru and I'm gonna get the order wrong. But like then we had someone come in and teach some KEMPO. We had someone come in and teach some Judo. We had someone else come in and teach, some ground stuff. So every month it's been a different presenter, different person coming in and teaching this two hour class. And it's never been me because again,

putting myself in local instructors positions, I didn't want it to look like the Andrew show, that they're there for me to impress. It's not about me. In fact, I like that I have not had to be an instructor because it means I get to learn. And that's kind of how I present it to the locals. And it has worked. Of the seven martial arts schools in Keene, there are a couple that have not quite...

been involved yet, although because I have this, I have had much better communication with them. And I don't, I mean, again, I can't speak for them, but I don't think that they see us as competition anymore, but it has worked and it has helped build a community. And I have found, when I started it, I expected it to be the seven-ish schools in teen.

But what I've found is I have people driving two hours to come to this event. They're not even in the Keen area, but it's something that they enjoy and look forward to and every month it's something new. So have you, what are your plans for instructors? Are you gonna do the same sort of thing or what are your thoughts there?

Vic & Karen (19:10.359)
Nice.

Vic & Karen (19:30.87)
I think we are planning on treating it a little less like a mini seminar and more like a workshop or like a open lab. Yeah. So instead of just having a presenter that teaches everyone something, I think we're going to kind of...

Andrew Adams (19:41.898)
Nice.

Vic & Karen (19:47.686)
let everyone have a chance to show us something from their style. Like maybe like what Victor's talking about for this first one is a hook punch. Yeah yeah so I and I gave some people warning. I asked you to reach out to Miss Kim to maybe ask her to prepare but I was like hey if you're gonna come I want you to maybe think about like

with a hook punch. It's one of the most common punches that comes in. And we always joke that our system, we have a whole bunch of answers to a hook punch and none of them are actually a part of the curriculum for belt testing. They're in there, but none of them are actually written down. So I was like, it'll just be a fun day of playing. And I feel that if they come in expecting to learn,

I'm going to offer one, maybe two of ours first, so that it doesn't look like I'm looking for them. We're not just looking to steal from other people, but yeah. So I've been a little strategic in what you've been talking about with putting myself in the minds of the people coming into this where we've...

We have invited some people who are not necessarily in this area, who have expressed interest in coming, who we know already have the heart and the spirit of the community that we wanna build. And so their presence will.

Andrew Adams (21:17.062)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (21:26.778)
Mmm. Alright.

Vic & Karen (21:28.726)
their presence will be non-confrontational because this guy and his, this guy teaching Xing Yi is from St. Joe's, which is an hour away. His instructor who might come is St. Louis, right? Our friend Adelard, she does Taekwondo. She's from Nebraska. So they're not necessarily in town and I'm going to offer, and I'll be very open like, hey, listen.

sure, go ahead, take it, it works. Otherwise I wouldn't be teaching it. If you like part of it, sure, take it and adapt it to your system and then have some other people show and then ask maybe some of the other, does anyone else like have something that they wanna share? Well, share with how do you, so when we went to the thing in St. Joe's, Reed asked me a question about our curriculum and then they all started asking us questions and we're like, we came here to learn.

Andrew Adams (22:00.838)
Yeah, sure.

Vic & Karen (22:28.56)
We didn't, I didn't expect to present some things and they're like, oh, well show me that. And that's kind of, we have a loose plan and that's kind of what we're hoping to do. Here's something we're gonna give you freely and willingly. If you don't want to share back, great, but we wanna open the floor and just let the day go where it goes. You know, we have a start time.

Andrew Adams (22:52.22)
Yeah.

Vic & Karen (22:53.826)
We're gonna break for lunch. I'm open to people if they want to come back to the dojo after we all go out somewhere local to eat.

to kind of keep working. We purposefully planned it on a day. We don't have anything else to do. Yeah, that we were free.

Andrew Adams (23:09.126)
Yeah, that's great. So and our model is very much the same. You know, our class is from 10 in the morning until noon. It's a two hour class. And, you know, I basically when I started, I knew who was going to be the first presenter. But after that, I didn't know. And my plan was and still has been to this day, for the most part. I started out just looked at the people that were there the first month and.

when it was over, I said, hey, you want to do next month? Yeah, sure. And so it just kind of organically grew. And again, my intention was it was going to be locals learning from each other. The seven-ish schools in the area, we would all just swap. And if six of the seven schools got involved, we each did one month twice a year, that covers a whole year. And it ended up not being that. But...

Vic & Karen (23:50.167)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (24:07.774)
It has been really nice growing the community to, you know, when we started out our first month, I think I'd have to go back through because we also have a Facebook page and I post, I post photos every month at the event. I'll take a picture so I can A, push the event, but also I have a document, documented who was there each month. But you know, we've had some months where there were only two, I mean, there was one month that were only two or three people there.

Vic & Karen (24:30.775)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (24:37.062)
But then we've had months now that it's grown to like 15 to 18 people. Um, and you're, so we're recording this right now, the end of December. Uh, and I think we're going to, your first event is January 13th. Yep. And actually, coincidentally, that's the second Saturday of the month, which is when ours is as well. So we'll be training, we'll be training together, but separately. Um, and we should get together.

Vic & Karen (24:59.76)
Nice.

Vic & Karen (25:03.662)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (25:06.326)
after your event and chat about how it went, what do you envision? What do you think is gonna happen? We're recording this before it's gonna happen, so you don't have to be right, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts and ideas on how things are gonna go.

Vic & Karen (25:08.846)
Yeah.

Vic & Karen (25:28.754)
I mean, I hope people show up, but I think it'll be an eye-opening experience for people that haven't gone to like a free training day. Like, if people are only used to getting together with other martial arts schools to compete or you know have paid seminars, I think this will be refreshing, I hope. Yeah.

Yeah, that's I'm hoping for it. Even if I know no one, even if it's just me and you, you know, we'll have a good day. We'll have a good time working out. But I know it's not going to be. I know that there's going to at least be those few other people that show up. I'm hoping for at least one of the other local schools to show up because I just want to start.

start that idea, you said it great, Karen, with the most people are only used to getting together when they're in competition. And I asked this question recently in the Whistlekick Resources Facebook group to the other school owners. I was like, how do you best like to expose your students to other styles and systems? And a lot of them said competition. I've never been a tournament guy. I just.

I have personal feelings about how modern karate tournaments are run. I don't like what they emphasize. For me, I've always loved either having a black belt from another system come in and teach a seminar or working out. When I first got my Shodan...

I had keys to the dojo and me and my training buddies and some of them that trained in Philly when we were in New Jersey, whenever they were over, we'd be like, oh, hey, let's all go to the dojo and it would turn into like an informal bettering of each other by working out with each other among styles. And I've always preferred that to, I'm gonna put my students against your students to try to win this shiny piece of plastic to put in the window.

Andrew Adams (27:26.887)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (27:37.134)
And in a nutshell, that's what this advanced training that we both are doing is. It's having another instructor come in and present their material. I made it a point to not tell or ask any presenter coming in what to teach. And when it first started out, people would comment on the Facebook group. I would say, Victor, Greeno is coming to teach next month. Let's all show up. And people would say,

Vic & Karen (27:56.491)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Adams (28:06.426)
What's he going to be teaching? And my response is always, I don't know. I have no idea. I'm not going to tell you what to teach. You come in and teach what you want to teach. And so it's a bit of a mystery sometimes, but it's a great mystery because then we show up and the person presenting gets to show whatever it is they want to show, which is really cool, really cool. So we should get, we'll get together after your next, after your first event.

So for the listeners, it'll be like that, but you know, I'll see you we'll get together in a month or so Any other thoughts before your first event?

Vic & Karen (28:37.804)
Mm-hmm.

Vic & Karen (28:53.922)
I don't have any.

Andrew Adams (28:55.738)
No, all right. So listeners, we'll see you back as Chuck Woolery would say. I'll see you in two and two, but it won't really be that long because it'll be quick. It'll happen just like this.