Episode 895 - Martial Arts Word Association 11: Winter Edition

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 11: Winter Edition - Episode 895

Another episode of “Martial Arts Word Association” where Andrew gives Jeremy a random word that he could connect to martial arts. All of today’s words are winter themed! 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

Jeremy (00:00.066)

How's it going everybody? Welcome to another great episode of Whistlecake Martial Arts Radio. I'm Jeremy Lesniak joined by Andrew Adams and today's episode is a word association. And I hope you enjoy these. And you know what? If you don't, that's fine. Because we do.

Jeremy (00:30.102)

Uh, thanks for being here. Thank you for your continued support of Whistlekick and our mission to connect, educate, and entertain traditional martial artists of the world. How are we doing that? We're doing it with all sorts of things from this show to Whistlekick Alliance, our offering for martial arts schools, to the bonus content we put out on our Patreon and products in the store. Use the code podcast15. It'll save you 15% on some sparring gear or a hoodie or a t-shirt. I have a t-shirt on.

You have a Whistlekick t-shirt on, but you can't buy that one. You can't buy this one. That's a free training day. You could also come to one of our events, but instead of turning this into a big commercial about Whistlekick, just go to whistlekick.com, see all the things that we've got there, and find a way to engage that brings more meaning to your life as a martial artist. Yeah. Whistlekick, mart at Whistlekick on social media.

I think that's it. That's all we gotta tell them. Cool. All right, word association. So this is number? 72. 11. 11? Word association number 11. Okay. And I'm pulling my phone out because I have the words on my phone. Checking the mic. Say more words. More words. We had some issues with the mic before we were actually, our first attempt at recording this, so I'm a little nervous. Okay. Well now you have me nervous. Is this still recording? Okay.

Here we go. So this word association. Who got this is our first recording for today. That's true. It's from uphill from here. Has another theme. Okay. The theme is we are currently recording in Vermont. We are. Beautiful Vermont. It's currently as of this recording, February. It is cold. It's cold. It's snowy. It's, you know, that's kind of, we signed up for this, this is where we live. So today's word association is the winter edition.

Winter Edition Word Association. So all of these words that I have on my list have to do with nowish. Nowish. Okay. And for those of you who live in warmer climes. Lucky. Yeah, right now. Yeah, I woke up and I was like, why is it so cold in my house? Because it was in the 50s in my house. And I looked outside and it was because it was 10 degrees outside. I woke up this morning and realized, oh shoot, last night I left a...

Jeremy (02:54.006)

thing of soda in my car last night and this morning I was like oh whoa is it gonna go up there and it wasn't luckily it was really yeah well that's awesome well I also live two hours south of you so it's a little warmer and I got home at midnight last night so it was only in my car for like six hours okay all right I'm glad you didn't have to deal with frozen slushie of soda that wouldn't be so bad soda slushies are good yeah they're in a cup all right ready first

Snow. Word association, snow. Snow is one of the most controversial things in New England. For those of you who don't live around here, you might not realize that there are a lot of people who live in New England who dislike snow. And I imagine that people in other Northern climates also, some of them at least, don't like snow. And I find that fascinating because why would you live somewhere where such a large portion of the air is...

full of something that you absolutely hate. Unless you're a child and have no... Well, sure. We can't fix that, sure.

Jeremy (04:01.11)

But there are things like that within our training that are divisive and are part of being in that sort of an ecosystem. And I'm not gonna say which ones you should think of is this way, but for some people it's sparring or it's formed or it's basics or it's competition, right? That wherever it is you train,

There's some aspect of your training that you really don't love that you love the rest of it. And you see that part of your training as something you have to live with or get through. But just as. Snow. Creates this environment. Those aspects of your training that you don't enjoy also create your training.

and to try to cherry pick and say, oh, I can just remove this from the equation and have a better environment. What would happen if we instantly got rid of snow and let's say the temperature's cold enough to create snow here? We would be overrun with ticks. Yep. Because ticks die down over the winter. Mosquitoes, we would have all these things that snow and the cold have become the natural predator too. Yeah.

And if you remove them, it doesn't work. And you could say the same thing about. Forms, you know, if you take forms out, there are things within your training that you get from forms that you don't get elsewhere and you really can't.

Jeremy (05:43.234)

I get unintended consequences. I think that's kind of the word that I'm going with. Okay So it'll be interesting to see how your definition of snow not definition you how you're relating snow to martial arts will affect The other words because the next word is snowblower

Jeremy (06:02.94)

You haven't lived until you've been out when it's 20 below zero and you've avoided the snow blower, the previous three storms because you can get through it. See, I don't do that. And you come home and you get stuck in four low in your large SUV in the driveway.

And now it's time and it's way colder than it was the other times when you should have done it. Yep. So what's a snowblower? It is an efficient, uh, self-sufficient way of dealing with things that maybe you don't want to. So if we look at, if we relate this back to the previous word, if snow represents a thing that is controversial.

or met with mixed reception within our training, a snowblower would be an efficient way of training those aspects so we can get rid of it. I'm sure there's somebody out there who enjoys shoveling snow. I don't know that person, but somebody out there probably does. And they would look at a snowblower and say, you know, this isn't as much fun. But for the people who don't like the snow,

They're saying, you know what? I gotta deal with this. I'm gonna deal with this as the tool I'm gonna use to deal with this. And that could be.

If it's forms, maybe it's I'm not gonna make myself do forms But I know I'll do it at class and I know that once in a while or every week or whatever I'm gonna do this thing that I don't really enjoy but I know it's good for me I don't want to run the snowblower, but I know that I've got to do it. Otherwise Getting in and out of my driveway becomes cumbersome And I think we can look at Those two kind of in that way. Okay. I don't know there's much more I want to say. All right, so living in

Jeremy (08:05.098)

Vermont or New England in the winter there is a huge difference between a snowblower and a snowplow So the next word is snowplow because you can't use the same definition because they are very different things

Jeremy (08:23.734)

Well, if a snowblower removes the snow efficiently, a snow plow.

is more efficient but a little less precise. Yeah. I have more control over where the snow goes with my snowblower than I do with a snow plow. Snow plow, the snow can only go in one direction that's forward. Snowblower, I can put it to the side, I can throw it up over things, and sometimes there's value there. In fact, actually, if you ran a snow plow at my house, there are very few places to put the snow. You'd have to back plow it.

You'd have to do some really funny things. Well, just where the snow would go, right? Cause can't go in front of the garage. Can't just dump it out into the road. There would be a huge snowbank between the house and the warehouse there.

So the snow blower is...

Jeremy (09:18.404)

Oh, this is good. I like this and I like the way you ordered this.

Jeremy (09:25.698)

You know what? A snow plow is when we cram for testing our competition. Okay, sure. There is an efficiency to it.

but maybe not the best way to get it done. If you've tested in a school that has a bunch of combinations what a lot of Kempo schools refer to as techniques, multifaceted techniques, or a school that has a bunch of forms, you're probably familiar with cramming and going back through and making sure you remember all the things about them.

Jeremy (10:03.146)

In my taekwondo school, I would start six weeks out. That was my target. And you can make the argument six weeks is not really cramming. I see cramming is like when you've got 20 and you'd only, and you don't know four of them is Hey, Jeremy, you're testing. All right. I guess I got to learn these forms. All right. Snowplow. And.

You get it done because you can move on to other things. Right? And that's not to say that I don't know people who are wizards with a snowplow and they can do a beautiful job and it looks great. But most people that run a snowplow, it's about rapidity. It's about, okay, I'm gonna snowplow these 27 driveways before lunch, right? You're getting in, there's...

There's a lot of horsepower, it beats up the truck.

Yeah. All right. So we hit snow, we have snow blower, we have snow plow. I've got two more snow words. I have a bunch more words, but two more snow words. You wanna take a guess what they are?

Jeremy (11:15.55)

Snow shoe that was the next one on the list snow shoes. I know you So if anybody's not been on a pair of snow shoes and just as a very rudimentary technology they're fascinating because you go from I'm falling through the snow to I'm walking on the snow and then you realize how old This understanding is that if I distribute my weight across the snow

I can perform better. Well, if snow is that thing that we're trying to remove or get around or deal with, and it's met with mixed response, snowshoes would be something that allow you to deal with that more easily. And so what is that in our training?

Jeremy (12:09.122)

gotta be something that's at least mildly enjoyable. Cause walking in snowshoes is kind of fun. Yeah, if you've ever done it, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I suppose if you were, you know, if it's 200 years ago and you're walking through the Canadian wilderness, cause it's your form of transportation, maybe less enjoyable, but certainly more enjoyable than not having them in that car.

Jeremy (12:36.098)

I'm not stumped, but I can see it from here.

Jeremy (12:49.19)

Music could be the snowshoes of training.

Because if I don't like sparring or I don't like forms or I don't like basics, and I've tested this when I've taught, putting some music on in the background completely changes the experience, changes the energy and the space. You can give people something to, when you're a drummer, you get how important following a beat can be in certain environments.

Yeah, I'm gonna go with that. The worst things I can imagine doing are better, regardless of what it is with music. All right, there's one more snow word on my list.

Jeremy (13:42.186)

You would have done snow shovel already. Yeah, I was too close to plow, so I didn't bother.

Jeremy (13:51.453)

Snowball.

Jeremy (13:55.85)

This is the last quote snow word. Yeah, so Snowballs are making a game out of snow whether you're making a snowball throwing it for yourself Can I hit that tree or you're throwing it at the dog or your family?

Jeremy (14:18.526)

Snowball fights don't have to be the only way you use snowballs, right? You can you can make a snowball and roll it make a snowman Mm-hmm. Sure. That's just what is a snowman three really big snowballs or more if you're getting weird Yeah, or two if you made the first You ran out of time could be

Jeremy (14:41.23)

Um, you're making me work this morning.

Jeremy (14:58.126)

two minutes later.

Jeremy (15:03.083)

Is that that? It's a spongebob. Yeah, that's what I thought you were going. Couldn't find the reference in my brain.

Jeremy (15:12.618)

It's turning things into a game. If you've ever taught kids, you know that just by calling something a game and just by applying different energy to it, it changes it. And a snowball is looking at a clump of snow in a different way and saying, you know what, I'm going to find some enjoyment out of this. I've never seen anyone make a snowball and hate doing so. I've seen people get...

angry and throw it in response to someone else throwing a snowball, but I've never seen someone just in and of itself make a snowball and say, I hate this. This sucks. Right.

Jeremy (15:52.394)

And games are fun. If you don't like forums, I can come up with half a dozen ways to make forums fun by turning it into a game, whether it's, you know, you're training by yourself or you're training with other people or, you know, group competitions.

Snowballs are games. Yeah, the only time I've ever picked up snow to make a snowball said this really sucks It's when it's bad snow for snowballs and those of you that live in climates where you don't have snow There is good snow for snowballs and there is bad snow. It's the moisture content versus the volume Yeah, so if you have bad snowball snow, you need to hold it in your bare hands long enough Yep, like this that it melts a little bit and then you can pack it. That's right

Alright, so that was the last official snow word, but I've some other words that are related to winter. And the next word is salt. And we're talking winter edition, so we're not talking table salt. We're talking road salt. Or driveway salt. Did you know a lot of places out west, even snowy places, don't use salt on the roads? Uh, I did. I did know that. I did hear that, yeah. But here in New England, it's salt. It's salt. A mixture of salt and sand. Salt and sand, or...

There's other stuff that they throw in, but we think of salt in that context as the stuff they put on the roads To help melt the snow give us traction, etc Or you have it in your house and you sprinkle it on your drive. Yeah, but the concept is the same. So that's the word It's a tool to mitigate the negative effects. Mm-hmm sparring gear. Hmm

A lot of people don't like sparring. They don't like contact. They don't like getting hit. They are afraid of getting hurt. And that is what sparring here is for. Best sparring here in the world at whistlekick.com. It's true.

Jeremy (17:50.142)

I had somebody write to me the other day, hey, can I drop off gear from so-and-so? He outgrew it and was like, just sell it on eBay. I know that this kid used that gear for years and it still looks not new, but yeah, we make great gear. Anyway.

Jeremy (18:10.758)

Yeah, I think it's protective equipment in general is where I would go with that. Because for some schools, wearing shoes could be protective equipment. Mats can be protective equipment, right? Anything that mitigates the risk of injury or death in the context of training is road salt. All right, I dig it, I dig it. All right, a frozen lake.

Jeremy (18:57.918)

Okay. Frozen lake.

Jeremy (19:12.398)

I've almost got it. I can see it. So a frozen lake is that thing that doesn't happen as often as you want it to. If you're a snowmobiler or an ice fisherman, ice fisher, or you want to play hockey out on the ice. If you don't know.

Jeremy (19:35.418)

Much of the time, the lakes are not frozen enough to go on them. And you need to be really careful. And there are every year people die. Uh, growing up, I knew people who lost their snowmobiles in lakes because they, they tried to skim over the open water or whatever, but it can be incredibly dangerous. Now, if it's a really, really cold winter, and that depends on where you are, you might drive a vehicle out there.

And you gotta be super duper careful. And people lose vehicles. Can you imagine losing your truck in a lake in the winter? Definitely happens. It happens.

Jeremy (20:17.75)

So when we look at a frozen lake, it's a thing that until it's happened to a certain amount, it's useless. A lake that's frozen over but, you know, a half an inch doesn't really do anything for anybody. Yep, true. A lake that's frozen over 12, 18 inches. You can drive on that. You can do something with that.

Jeremy (20:44.19)

and you could make the argument that most of our training is that way. If I teach you one technique...

You can't do a lot with that. If all I teach you to do is how to punch or I mean, you've, you've taught, you've taught first day students. Sure. There's a, um, I don't want to call it a rush, but there's an instinct to give them enough diversity of material that they can start to connect some dots for themselves. You know, if you start them out with high block and punch or low block and punch or any other block and punch.

they can put that together, but they're not gonna be able to spar with it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right? And so I think we're, there's a minimum threshold with ice, with frozen lakes, for it to be valuable. There is a minimum threshold in the number of techniques for us to be able to do something with it.

Jeremy (21:49.431)

Okay.

Here in Vermont, one of the big winter activities, skiing.

Jeremy (21:59.178)

whether it's cross country or downhill. Just- Can we throw snowboarding in with that? Yeah, sure, sure. All right.

Jeremy (22:12.842)

making lemons out of lemonade, right? There are a huge number of people who I have contact with here in Vermont that have said, you know, if it wasn't for skiing, I wouldn't be here. If it wasn't for snowboarding, if it wasn't for snowmobiling, right? Taking the snow and turning it into a recreation, they would not endure it because it allows them one, to spent to...

Do something with the time. Yeah. Yep. By the way, it can snow eight to nine months out of the year here Not heavily, but yeah, there are people who don't take snow tires off their car We actually don't have a law in vermont this as you do You can run snow tires year-round

Jeremy (23:02.753)

making lemons out of lemonade

Jeremy (23:06.92)

So what is that?

I think it's a mindset with our training. If the snow is the thing we don't like doing, whatever that thing is, it's saying, you know what? I'm gonna find some fun in that. I've known people who dislike sparring and they force themselves to compete in sparring at competitions because they're trying to find a way to enjoy it or they're trying to give themselves a goal, a target, a reason to do it.

Or to set a good example for others. Or to set a good example, right? And you could, it could be the same thing. I've known plenty of people to do the same thing with forums in competition or weapons forums in competition. That to find a different way to look at it can be really important. We did an episode a long time ago. It was probably one of the most impactful episodes we've done for me. And it's the notion of martial arts as service.

The idea that if we flip our mindset to make it not just about us and our personal growth through our training that everything changes when we look at it. And so you could kind of bring an aspect of that in as well. All right. You jump ahead a word because you related it to the last one, studded tires. Which I have in my car right now.

If you don't know, it's kind of like putting screws into tires so there's something more solid to bite into the ice. Doesn't do a lot on snow, but it does a lot when it's icy.

Jeremy (24:46.878)

more risk mitigation. So if we did, if salt is sparring gear.

We call it protective equipment. We brought it into that. If salt is protective equipment, then Studded tires are your warmup routine. It's your flexibility, your mobility. It's getting your heart rate up. It's knowing how your body is that day. You know, as, as an aside, if you've been through any of the training programs we have, you know, that one of the things I talk about in the warmup portion is you've got to check in with your body. You've got to know, Hey,

I guess I did strain my hamstring at class last night because I didn't warm up well enough and we were kicking high or whatever it is. And if you just assume that your body's good and you go instantly into things, you are much more likely to create an injury. You could say the same thing about driving a car without studded tires. You don't, you don't need studded tires, but they help. You don't need to warm up, but it helps. Makes a difference.

and you're more likely to get more value out of your training when you warm up. You're more likely to get to your destination and safer with less damage to your car and faster if you want to study snow tires. Alright, two more words. Okay. Ice scraper.

This is the most depressing episode we've ever done. It's the next one. Long Johns. Oh, being cold. Do you like that? I got in the shower while you're on the road here and. It was cold enough in my house that my hands had to fall a little bit in the shower and it was uncomfortable. Oh, yeah. All right. Ice scraper.

Jeremy (26:43.038)

It is necessary. It is a necessary tool. They cost like two dollars. Your credit card or driver's license is not a suitable ice scraper. But it works in a pinch. It works in a pinch. But you know what? If you live in New England and you don't have two ice scrapers in your car at all times, I think you're wrong.

Jeremy (27:09.198)

Hmm. My favorite and most underrated training tool is a cell phone because it gives you the ability to see what you're doing. That's what an ice scraper does in the most literal form. It allows you to see out of your car. And if you cannot see out of your car, and by the way, if you travel to places with snow and you scrape out like a little window like this to see out of.

Don't do that. Please don't. In fact, I'm fairly certain that's illegal. Also in many states now, you have to clear all of the snow from the top of your vehicle. So just a heads up.

Jeremy (27:53.106)

It takes a few seconds to set up a phone or to have somebody hold your phone, filming your form or your sparring match, but it's so incredibly valuable. And it's a tool that I've used in a lot of different ways. I've used it myself to train for competition because I know what I need to do. Oh, okay. I'm going to watch that. Okay. Let's do it again. Nope. I didn't get it. Okay. I got it that time. Let's do it one more. Yep. I got it that time again. And it dramatically.

improves the rapidity at which you can progress. If you have a tiny little window in your car that you're seeing out of or none at all, you're probably going to drive a little tentatively. You're probably not going to go very fast. Yep. Not going to make a lot of progress. But when you clear everything, all your windows, all of them, you can see what's going on. Yeah. You can not only be safe, you can understand your place in the driving landscape.

Which is valuable. Yeah. All right, last word. Okay. And it is a game, but I want you to try and steer away from, well, martial art games, okay? And the Winter Games, one that I think gets not enough coverage, I really enjoy it to watch it, but everyone watches it at the Olympics and no one ever watches it at any other time. And the game is, you know, Curling? Correct. Yeah. Okay.

before I talk about curling, do you know how incredibly resentful I am that it is easier to find curling on television than it is martial arts? Yeah, I get that. Do you know curling stones are made in New Hampshire and Vermont? I didn't, all of them, pretty much all of them? I don't know that all of them, but I know it's a big, which makes sense when you think of our landscape. Curling is one of those games, it's really simple to understand, right?

It's the winter version of.

Jeremy (29:58.218)

It's shuffleboard. Yeah, that's what I was looking for. Thank you.

My brain is not firing well today. It's winter shuffleboard. I get it. I was listening to a podcast recently that was talking about curling. It's not a curling podcast, but the subject came up and they were trying to describe it as the winter version of bocce ball. And I'm like, no, it's not. It's not bocce ball. Cause bocce you throw it, no bocce you throw your things to get close to a thing. I see where they're going. Definitely shuffleboard. Shuffleboard is a better analog for sure.

But there's more to it than that.

Jeremy (30:45.902)

Perling is...

Jeremy (30:52.637)

The...

Jeremy (31:03.786)

hours late there breaking of martial arts the breaking because it's a thing most people don't do much of if at all but it's easy to understand how successful someone is it doing it and both catch a lot of flak and it's also something that most when people that don't do it do it they're like oh this is fun yeah so if you've never done breaking

Jeremy (31:35.65)

You break the board or the brick or the block or you didn't. And you learn a heck of a lot very quickly about how to do it. And people who don't do it, make fun of it. And they find reasons to hate on it. Oh, you baked your boards. That doesn't do any board. Boards don't hit back. Yes, they do understand physics.

Um...

Jeremy (32:06.554)

I've never... curled? Mm-hmm. Curling? Curled. Curled? Mm-hmm. Okay. You've never been curling. I've never played curling?

I played Shuffleboard once, I was like eight.

Jeremy (32:26.399)

It seemed fun.

But I've done a fair amount of breaking and it is fun. I do dig it. And I think it has a place. And it's something that actually came up just in my mind last week, that at some point I want to incorporate that into my curriculum for my students. You know, it's because there's enough value there. Are we gonna do it frequently or on a routine basis? Probably not, but you know, maybe once or twice a year to help them understand their techniques.

Sure. Because I'm watching some of them do some funny stuff and even just a single board would make a big difference for them in how they're applying for us. So yeah, curling is breaking. All right. There you go. You heard it here first. Curling is breaking.

That's it. Those are my words for Winter Association. I like that. I like the theme on this. Winter Edition Word Association. Yeah. Well, if people want to contribute words or a theme or work with you for the next one, what would they do? Contact me, andrew at whistlekick.com I'm jeremy at whistlekick.com Convenient. Yeah, we make it easy. We try to, anyway. Our social media is at whistlekick. whis for transcripts and other stuff.

on the episodes, you know, you know what we should start doing? I know you drop bonus content at the end of some of the episodes. Sometimes, yep. Which if you don't listen or watch past these outros, you're missing out on those. We should drop some other bonus content on the website. Sure, all right. I don't know how we do that or what we do, but let's talk about that. Why do we want you to come to the website? Because we want you to stick around. And if you come to the website, there are things that are gonna happen.

Jeremy (34:14.506)

You'll probably sign up for the newsletter. You'll probably check out other episodes. You'll Probably get more out of the episode by looking at the photos and the transcript and You'll probably remember an episode that you say, you know, what was that episode where they were talking about this that you remember a few words, maybe even a sentence a phrase and you can search for it and When you search on the website you find things All right

I appreciate you being here. Thank you for your support in our mission to get everyone in the world to train for just six months. If you want to help us out with that, do anything, anything that makes sense. Do it. Join Whistlekick Alliance. Contribute to the Patreon with as little as $2 a month. Buy something, tell somebody, read something, share something. Thank you for being here. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.

Yay!