Episode 964- Master Nick Acri

In today's episode Jeremy sits down in person and chats with Master Nick Acri, after Free Training Day Mid Atlantic 2024.

Master Nick Acri - Episode 964

SUMMARY
In this conversation, Jeremy Lesniak and Nick Acri explore the multifaceted world of martial arts, emphasizing the importance of community, personal growth, and the integration of diverse practices. They discuss the role of Qigong in enhancing martial arts training, the evolution of styles, and the significance of consistency and commitment in achieving progress. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by martial artists today, including the impact of technology and the importance of reflection in one's journey. Ultimately, they encourage newcomers to embrace martial arts and highlight the benefits it offers for individuals of all ages.

TAKEAWAYS
* Martial arts is a fusion of various methodologies and practices.
*Community plays a crucial role in the martial arts experience.
*Qigong serves as a vital component for recovery and mental clarity.
*Tradition in martial arts should evolve with time and personal growth.
*Consistency and commitment are key to progress in training.
*Martial arts can benefit individuals of all ages and backgrounds.
*Reflection on progress is essential for continued growth.
*Technology can both hinder and enhance martial arts engagement.
*Encouragement is vital for newcomers to join martial arts.
*The journey of a martial artist is unique and personal.

CHAPTERS
00:00 The Fusion of Martial Arts and Personal Growth
02:54 The Importance of Community in Martial Arts
06:05 Exploring Diverse Martial Arts Practices
09:05 The Role of Qigong in Martial Arts
12:05 Evolving Martial Arts: Tradition vs. Innovation
15:02 The Journey of a Martial Artist: From Beginner to Instructor
18:13 The Value of Consistency and Commitment in Training
20:55 Understanding the Benefits of Martial Arts for All Ages
23:59 Navigating Challenges in Martial Arts Training
26:51 The Impact of Technology on Martial Arts Engagement
30:08 Encouraging Newcomers to Join Martial Arts
33:10 The Importance of Reflection in Martial Arts Progress
35:55 Closing Thoughts: Embracing the Martial Arts Journey

Show Notes

This episode is sponsored by Kataaro. Please check out their site at Kataaro Custom Martial Arts Products - Kataaro. And use the code WK10 to save 10% off your first order. And be sure to ask them about a wholesale account for school owners!

✅Subscribe to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio on the following platforms:

🎧Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3mVnZmf

🎧Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yHVdHQ

🎧Google: https://bit.ly/3kLSpo8

✅You can find whistlekick on all social media platforms using the handle @whistlekick or visit our website at https://www.whistlekick.com or https://www.whistlekickmartialartsradio.com

Show Transcript

Jeremy Lesniak (00:00.014)

think it's by nature, you're gonna add what you've learned from somebody else into your own thing, just becomes your own, the Malgoon Play-Doh ball of whatever, as you mold it into what's yours eventually. I'm just interested in a lot of different things in martial arts, and I think the key of it is I like the movement of it all, and the more I train, the more I realize all the arts just have different methodologies to get to the same thing.

Jeremy Lesniak (00:29.382)

What's happening everybody? Welcome. It's another episode of whistle kick martial arts radio and today I'm talking to Nick Akron. Thanks for being here. How you doing? I'm great. I'm glad we get to do this. I've been wanting to do this for a while and we get to do it in person. That's so great. Well, hopefully it hasn't happened yet. Might not be awesome. We might be terrible. I doubt that. I might be terrible. You haven't had a terrible one that I've listened to to date.

Hopefully I'm not the stop to that. We have different opinions on some of my episodes, especially the early ones.

This is how this episode is going to go. really excited. If you're new to the show, make sure you check out all the things that we do at Whistlekick. Whistlekick.com is the place to go for all the things. Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio is the place to go for all the things related to the show. All the episodes we've ever done. 900 and whatever. I don't know what number this is yet. Andrew knows. He's in the other room. But why do we do this? We do this to connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world.

bring people together. saw some of that yesterday, free training day Mid-Atlantic. And one of the companies that is on board with this mission is Kataro. And if you're watching, you can see I've got this belt bag, which I'm really digging putting my belt in a bag. There's something that just feels very nice ceremonial about this. And they sell these bags and you know, they're not expensive and you can use the code WK10CAPK10.

to save 10 % on your first order of anything. But we've also got the Whistlekick belt, which they helped us put together. It's a fun bit. Do you know the story on this belt? Like, have I told you what this belt? No. So black on one side, white on the other. The black wears through to white, the white wears through to black. Cool. And you can get that. can, you know.

Jeremy Lesniak (02:25.048)

Put your name on it or the bars on it, right? They do free rank stripes for life. They do some cool stuff. Kataro's a great company. K-A-T-A-A-R-O.com. Thank you to Kataro for sponsoring this episode and all the other great stuff that they do. They're an awesome company. I'm glad we get to work with them. So Nick, you're here. I am. We are chatting. Right. We met face to face for the first time at Mid-Atlantic last year. Correct. Yeah. Which was, it's always weird for me.

when I get to meet someone in person when I've known them for a while and talk to them a lot, because in one sense, it's very exciting to kind of close the loop on, hey, now we're in the same place. But it's also a bit anticlimactic because usually when you meet a person, you don't know the person. Right. And I felt like I know you and I've gotten to know you even better over the last year. Like we spent very little time together last year. Right. And

When I get somebody in the chair, don't usually know as much about them as I know about you. We've worked together in a number of ways.

Jeremy Lesniak (03:36.864)

interesting to see how this goes. But let's...

I'm gonna have you start in way that we don't usually start. You came to free training to mid-Atlantic this year because you had a good time last year. Absolutely. Why did you come last year? Well, because there's, right, there's there's risk in attending an event. You kind of knew me. You kind of knew what Whistlekick stood for. It was kind of local. Right. You didn't have a lot of relationship with other people. So there it's it's scary to

It was scary and it's even now, I think maybe it's because I'm in the station of like, should be doing more scary things to expand myself. It's kind what we do as martial arts, we do scary things to get better. there was the initial invitation from you and how great it was and then Jenny reached out, never met her, acted like she was my best friend in the world, which is great. That's kind of Hey, I want you to come We love you, Jenny!

come here and do this and, by the way, think it would, Jeremy said it would be great if you would teach. like, really? It was one of those scary, but like I felt like honored to be even asked to do that on upon my first time being there. And normally to go to any event for the first time, I would not offer up to teach. And we usually don't invite people to, the word we use is present. We do that.

You know, this isn't a Mid-Atlantic commercial, so we don't need to into that. But we don't usually do that, but we had enough time in that I had a sense of who you were. Right. Not, because to me it was less about, does Nick know his stuff? It was more, is Nick going to treat this in the right way? Right? Because if somebody has a good attitude, they'll convey information.

Jeremy Lesniak (05:37.738)

Because if they're a good instructor, they'll put in the time they need to. If they're a bad instructor, they'll put in the time they need to. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. it was a different group. think it was the opportunity to show them something and it was almost a test for me to see like, I convey this to people I don't know? get it across to them that I thought was a great opportunity to do that, which is why I'm here.

It took a little him and Hong with me to get over that initial fear of like, I don't these people. mean, almost everything we've talked about, there's been him and Hong. Yeah. Nothing that we've talked about, have you given in easily? I'm an analyst, I might add clearly. don't know when I say pessimism, spiced in there. Skepticism, cynicism. cynicism. your personality. I have the isms.

that tend to work out is not the terrible ones, but like the skepticism and the cynicism. They keep me a little guarded, a lot guarded if the people that are listening now are going, yeah, right. But I knew it was like I had to try it. So I decided to do it. I signed up for it and I had a great time and also had a great time with all the other presenters and going to classes. What I liked about it was I wasn't there to present all day.

It was one thing and then you got to train afterwards. It was a really nice experience and I had to come to this one again because it was such a great one last year. The whole reason I wanted you to talk about that, the reason I wanted to set this up is because you are a very interesting martial artist to me in terms of the things that you find interesting. Last year, you are a Tonsudo practitioner.

Last year, you taught a session on Qigong. Yes. Which, by the way, if I'm remembering my numbers correctly, was the best attended session of the day. wow. And this year, you taught a session on hand axe or hatchet or whatever, right? Like a small single-handed axe as a weapon with a curriculum that you developed kind of in a vacuum. In a way.

Jeremy Lesniak (08:00.844)

Yeah, yeah, which you know as an aside mark Warner who's been on the show a number of times he and I had a quick chat about that and Mark paid you One of the highest compliments I've ever heard which was he's doing things. He doesn't even realize he's doing You know as a guy as a guy who is expert level in in Filipino martial arts Just he was blown away at what you would come up with and I'm not I'm not bringing this up to blow smoke right, but that here you are

a Korean practitioner teaching a, you know, when you're, teaching a

be considered Qigong Chinese? Yes. That's the Korean pronunciation of Qigong. And it's all the practices. Yeah. Okay. So, know, with a strong passion for something of Chinese derivation, and then going after something that, we could, depending on how you look at it, it's, you know, it's Filipino or maybe it's kind of

You know, you could even slot in with like the HEMA, the Historical European Martial Arts folks on that. And that's, that is eclectic. I mean, that, is the, to me, the definition of eclectic. But I've watched you in teaching those things. You are incredibly passionate about these other two things that I know that you're passionate about Tonsudo as well. So how does that happen?

It's fusion, right? It could be my own version of ADHD. I just liked a lot of different things. You put it that way. I can relate to it for sure.

Jeremy Lesniak (09:45.282)

I've had a lot of expo, like, so we belong to a large organization and there's a lot of people with lot of different backgrounds. So there are people that have Filipino martial arts background that might have presented something that I might have just, you know, absorbed as a snippet as going through or like Jiu-Jitsu and like everybody's, so like when we go to our clinics, like you can go to different ones, just like free training day. And to use the marks terms, I guess sometimes I'm just, you I go to them, I absorb and I'm just.

I think it's by nature, it's like you're gonna add what you've learned from somebody else into your own thing, it just kinda comes your own. The Malcom Plato ball of whatever as you mold it into what's yours eventually. So I'm just interested in allotted from things martial arts and I think like the key of it is I like the movement of it all and the more I train, the more I realize like all the arts just have different methodologies to get to the same thing. And the purpose behind what

why people do the martial arts is individual and purpose-driven, like, with an individual, individual-wise. But as far as the training methods, I think once we get to a certain level, we all start doing the same things, and then the light bulbs go on, like, with Mark. He's like, I'm doing this. I'm like, yeah, there's only so many ways I can move my body in relation to, like, everybody else. So, you know, when I put a weapon in my hand...

go from a stick that has a certain weight to it to an axe that has like the heft at the end to a little bit of extra gravity at the end of it. like, I just have to this adjustment to what I already do. In a sense, the axe is even more limited because you're probably not going to hit someone with flat of it unless you're... Unless, yeah, unless I don't want to lay into them with it. Yeah, right. There's some interesting stuff there. The sword cuts are very similar to a lot of the blocking and movements that we do and staff movements.

So all these movements that we're constantly doing as martial artists in our individual styles, I think if you keep training them, we all tend to merge, which is I think why these free training days work out so well, where it doesn't matter what style you are, we all have this base level understanding, and then now we'd get to integrate in and then add that flavor of everybody else's thing and grow that way. I think more of these types of events are necessary where we all get together and share. I was having the conversation with Jenny, think I'm...

Jeremy Lesniak (12:05.422)

For me, the tradition of martial arts, traditional martial arts, traditional martial arts isn't just you do the same thing forever because this is what the instructor did that invented it. I don't think that was their intention because as times change, the reason you're doing that thing might change. So that's going to influence the method in which you teach it. And I feel like we're constantly streamlining in these other influences to evolve our arts.

And I think as these arts start to evolve, styles are important in a way to preserve history, but I styles are starting to kind of, and I've heard you say this in a different way, style really isn't, nobody cares that they do Tung Sado at the school when they first come in the doors. They think they're have a bit of background. just, I mean, looks like, some people that have seen it before, like, you're doing Shodo, kind of like, doing Tung Sado, it looks a lot the same, but sometimes it doesn't.

That's where I was going with this point. You made me think of something around art. I've sat on the show many times and people get bent out of shape. Not so much our audience because most of the ones that want to argue with me don't hang around anymore. Not that I don't invite criticism and feedback. I enjoy good conversation. I enjoy a good debate. We had plenty of that at the Airbnb.

the last couple nights. But if you think about art, right, and it's a martial art, so it is primarily an art that is of the type martial. Every other art I can think of, whether I'm talking about music or painting, the artist...

gets really bored when they have to do the same thing over and over again, right? Like it is cliche for long standing musicians, like, my God, we don't just want to play our first album or our second album. We don't just want to play these few hits. Like we want to play some of the new stuff we made for you. And the crowd, you know, depending on the band, you know, maybe they make a deal with the crowd. I've been in crowds where they've said, all right, we're going to play a couple of things off our new album. If you're good, we will also play.

Jeremy Lesniak (14:16.494)

this old stuff you like. You know what? We're a little sick of playing it. Like, let's be real, but we know you're here to hear it. You haven't heard us play it live 400,000 times, but we have. right? Like, I think we could all empathize with that.

And so what's the analog within martial arts? It's, am I going to do the same form or the same techniques exactly the same over and over and over again for the next 20 years? They should change because I'm going to change. Hopefully my understanding of the material changes. My goals change where I'm at in life change, right? Like, you can't have that applicability to your life. Forget about evolution. Maybe it's a lateral move, but it's still going to change.

if you're honest with yourself about how it incorporates in your life. Right. And I think the regiment to learn the basics are necessary that we go through. So like those color ball stages, as we would call them, like a musician is just like, they've got to learn the notes and how to play them properly and go through those things. like those foundations are important to get like how to stand and how you're balanced. And it like those types of qualities or characteristics of certain things are necessary to

to stabilize and get that good foundation first until you start adding your bit of flare into it and how it works. But I mean, I'm not going to apply a move from a form the same way as somebody that's two feet taller than me. Like I'm a short guy. So I learn how to use speed a little bit more often and leverage that a little bit more versus somebody who's got a longer reach than me. applications tend to go different, but it doesn't mean I'm not interested in finding out what that person's reach is and how they apply that.

because I might be able to be like, It helps you understand what you're doing. what they're doing. And maybe you have a tall student that you want to help because, you know, right, you're we are we are not.

Jeremy Lesniak (16:15.79)

We are not vertically gifted. No. But we want to help our students as best we can. Right. And so, you we both have schools and I've got some taller guys and okay, yeah, the reach is different. The way they're going to move has to be different. I've got to step in this way to put this lock on or whatever and you've got to step differently because your stride is different and creates a different angle. Right.

I need to know that so I can best help them. So you stay open. And like with those instances, I try to speak in like, well, it should feel like it should feel like this and not tell them like, well, where should I step? Is it 45? Is it 25 degrees here? Like don't do the math. Do you feel stable in this position when you go? Let me get out of protracker. Let's measure the angles. Yeah. And like I have a friend that like people are talking about footwork. He's like, your feet problem where they have to be.

And I like that. So like I've adopted saying that to people like, where are my feet going? Like, do you feel stable? No. Well, your feet put them where they have to be and they fix it and they fix it naturally on their own because they find those points. It's like, you know, I'm not there to teach them how to walk. I'm teaching them how to move more efficiently in the context of what we're doing for whatever the practice is. My favorite correction. I don't know that we've ever talked about this on the show. I wouldn't be surprised if you do this too. When I'm having students work a front stance and

You know, we train in spaces that have hardwood floors and, you know, so you've got the board so I can have them count boards and we can talk about, you know, how wide are your shoulders and, you know, one and a half to two times longer than wide and all this. And intellectually, academically, they understand it, but implementing that's kind of hard. So what I'll do is I'll come up to them, you know, so if their feet are like this, right? Like, so my left hand is the front foot, my right.

hand is the back foot, they tend to stay a little narrow when they're new. So I will push them this way on their shoulder. I'll just give them a push. And as they fall, their foot goes to stabilize where it needs to be. That's funny because that's how we learned how to test which leg is supposed to be forward for snowboarding. The instructor trained us, just shove your student. And we're like, what? And they're like, well, and they asked, like, well, what leg do you use forward? like,

Jeremy Lesniak (18:43.394)

while I ride this way and he's like, okay, he pushes me. I stop that way, like, you're gonna stop with the leg that should be forward. So it's very similar and that's kind of funny because I'm trying to get back into snowboarding. did once last year, my goal was to go at least one more time this year as I get more back into it. But as I'm looking for different ways to keep up with my fitness, so to speak, to do that, keeping the flexibility in so I'm not aching when I'm done.

The exercises that the snowboarding community does are the same as the what martial artists are doing. And that's another thing I love about martial arts is all the connections. That instead of looking for why are all these martial arts different, which is interesting to me as well, but it's more interesting to me that it's seeing how they're all connected and how this one sprouted from this one and how this one kind of pushed the evolution of this one a little bit. That kind of stuff is really interesting. Maybe why it contributes to me doing so much.

things because I'll go and see like, this style does that too? And maybe they do it a little bit better than what this one did. I'll kind of like just watch and see where I can go and absorb from wherever it is.

Jeremy Lesniak (19:58.242)

Let's go in whole different direction. When, why, how did you get started? The origin story? Yeah, what's your issue number one? Episode zero I'm not unique as far as an origin story. Everybody's got the bully, wanted to do it. I've got them all. I was bullied in school. I love martial arts movies. Loved scrapping with my brother after the martial arts movies. It probably got us into too much trouble.

But it was just one of those things where I was begging my mom, can we do karate somewhere? And we moved around a lot when we were kids until we got to the area where Always in Pennsylvania? Always in Pennsylvania, but ended up in Northeast Pennsylvania. eventually, like, stable there. And I had friends that are like, yeah, we do this martial art. The first school that I went to look at was not the school that I ended up at. There was a weird

Cobra Kai vibe. I don't know. There was some guy that just came back from an injury that he got there. It was the sleeveless uniforms, wasn't it? No, but he had the ring. They taught Kenpo and we just got done watching The Perfect Weapon. My brother was like, when did we get our rings from that? I'm like, Matt, just calm down. Shout out to Jeff Speakman. I got chance to do an episode with Jeff Speakman. It was a great episode.

I I did watch that one. Yeah. He was such a good guy. so like that school just wasn't it's like one friend was there but I had two more friends at another studio shirt that we ended up in and that the instructor was totally different very welcoming and just kind of this is how it is and it was was was a Tung Sado studio so they were just there and the funny part about that is the people that I started with are no longer training. I don't think anybody from that original studio are training anymore.

which kind of stinks. You know what mean? Cause you hate to see people stop training, but it happens all the time. How old were you? I was 15 when I started. I'm 46 now. So this June would have like 31st year doing more

Jeremy Lesniak (22:13.966)

I guess I could take it as a compliment. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You have less weight in I mean, I've got some... And you have a far better beard. I've got a couple If you're only listening to this episode, don't... You're missing out on the effort. How long have you had your beard like that? It's been a while. It's a commitment. The story to that's kind of funny because we were at a rent fair and my girlfriend Alex, we were sitting there and somebody had a beard and they're dressed up in the getup and she looks at me, she's like, I wonder what you look like as a Viking.

Like you have such a solid know what, why not? And I just started growing the beard and like my hair came back and this is the exact hairstyle I had in high school, which is hilarious to me. Really? that it's popular again. Yeah, this is, I mean it needs a haircut, but this is the same, like I don't, I wasn't doing the man bun back then. So I'm like, it's not in the way, but that's funny to me for that. where were we going with this Viking thing?

Yeah, it was just one of those things, but it just fits. It's just, like my face better with a beard line, I guess. Yeah. If I... Two things happen if I shave my beard completely. I get a lot of...

angry messages from people. I don't know why angry. Not just, I liked your beard, but like, what are you doing? People that care about me, they don't get angry about anything else. They're like, you you do you. But when I shave my beard, they get angry. And I look like I am 25. There's something, I have just something about the shape of my face that if you take away the beard, you take away the white hair.

Because it's not gray in my beard, it's white.

Jeremy Lesniak (23:59.116)

I get carded like crazy if I want to get a beer or something. I'm like, hey, can we see your ID? Mr. Might still be in college. I'm like, thank you. That's amazing. So you start training at 15 and is it a fit immediately? Yeah. was a welcoming group. was a small group. mean, back in the 90s, know, it wasn't.

It was only certain type of people that went there. was, I mean, I there was like one kid in class, like little kid that would like train with the rest of us. was no separate kids class. were retiring? Maybe 10. Wow. Yeah. I don't think she lasted very long. And not to anything. was just, it was just a different tone. He didn't have like a separate kids class. It was just the one class three nights a week that I came to. How many other teenagers?

were in there? Us. So it was like a handful, like five or six of us, seven, maybe seven. But my intro was with this very tall gentleman with a very deep voice, deep grumbly growly voice. That was a little nerve wracking for me. was like, okay, we're going to stand here. And he was like, now you got to do this and yell. And it's like, what are you talking about? Like I was the one that took forever to key up. that piece helped me give my students grace and like, yes, you should be doing

the yell and this is why and I wasn't explained why other than it's just your spirit. My spin on that now is like you need to breathe properly in order to make this more effective. So like if I can't hear you breathing that it means you're not breathing, do that please. So that's kind how I get them to start getting over that aspect before. But you know I'm sure you were taught in the same environment. I say you do and that's it. It's only so effective to a certain point. Especially if you are a

bit of a contrarian skeptic, right? And I have that aspect of my personality too. As a teenager, you want to know why you're trying to figure out your place in the world. You are doubtful of things. You want to do them, but you want to, okay, well, you kind of got to prove this to me a little bit and saying, do as I say, because I say you'll understand later. it. And I think what's nice about the martial arts is if you give your instructor that trust to do what they say to do.

Jeremy Lesniak (26:25.344)

I think a lot of that contributes to the confidence, because then you realize that if you do this, it's going to have a better output. And then you're like, wow, look at this thing I did. And I think that helped me really become one of those people. I'm going to get things done. I it might not always be the best way right away, and I might fumble through the process. But if I'm determined to do something, I'm going to do it.

That's what the training has helped me with a lot throughout just martial arts training in general is just realizing that if I put in the work, that there's gonna be a payoff eventually. It might not be right away. then we all have our human instances where we go, when is this gonna happen? But the satisfaction of just feeling better from it and doing it and just training is just, I don't know, it's undescribable. And the payoff might not be what you want it to be or expect it to be. Right.

Sometimes people have the point on that payoff and yes, absolutely that happens too. Which is good having that community of a good school and a good group of martial artists that you train with because sometimes frequently expecting your own achievements needs a little bit of help from somebody else from the outside. It's like when you're a little like, what's going on here? Somebody else from the outside will look at all these other things you did. And that's good to have a good instructor of peers who do that too.

We tend to normalize in and out of martial arts, whatever we are doing, wherever we are at, that's where we are. I don't know how many people I know that, you know, they get really excited for the new whatever, the new car, the new job, the new romantic relationship. And in a relatively short period of time, as they normalize that now, they're complaining about it. You know, how much of our lives, of all of our lives, of all of you out there, how many of our lives, in how many ways,

would, even just a few years ago, we would have done anything to be where we are, right? And we have this tendency to want more, and that's great, but I think we need to balance it out with gratitude for the work that we've put in. And I think this is something that we're kind of talking about within Alliance, I know your school's an Alliance member, and we're talking about how can we get better as an industry

Jeremy Lesniak (28:43.286)

helping students understand the progress they've made. I I don't think it was you. was telling maybe Andrew and Tommy yesterday, I got an email after about six weeks of not seeing someone that I, you know, a student and this gentleman, older gentleman, mid seventies came in, couldn't stand on one foot to throw a front kick to the ankle and you know, using the wall, using balance points and.

He was one of the first students at the first location just over a year ago. And he got to this point where he's kicking to the waist unassisted, you know, for a 75 year old man. And granted he's active, he skis pretty much every day through the winter. But this was just a type of balance and a type of proprioception he didn't have. And he came so far.

And he wrote me, like, I'm going to take August off. I was like, I see it I see it coming. It's going to happen. He's done. Yep. Because he's going to normalize to where he was and he forgets how far he's come and how, how much better his body is now with this training. And so I got the email, the sad email, the, know, I've got a couple of new grandkids on the way and I'm going to spend more time with my family and I had a really good time and maybe I'll.

Jeremy Lesniak (30:08.78)

It's an hour.

Jeremy Lesniak (30:16.63)

But we need to find a way to help them understand that. And that's, you know, that's a conversation. And just as an aside, if any of you out there have good ways of doing that, that you're doing that, I want to hear them, right? Jeremy at wholesomehit.com, tell me. Cause that's something that I want to see the industry get better at. Yeah. Yeah. We have a, an older gentleman, he's in his seventies also, and he's, he's there every night of the week.

he puts all his effort in and sometimes we have conversations where he feels like other students might have gone and surpassed like where he has a good rank and I think that's the downside of Frank is like it's great for goal setting but like we get caught up in getting the next belt so much we don't look at the progress we've made within the belt yeah if that's the only goal right yeah so so we're constantly reminded like no like look at how far you come in his whites constantly telling like she likes me here because

balance has gotten so much better and this and that and it gives me something to like to do besides like bother her any jokes and then things like that so it's good for people and I think my other in addition to you like helping find students like that to show them like like their progress within like while they're there is getting more people to realize that I don't feel like martial arts and like Chi-Hong involved in all that stuff like that that

that whole umbrella might encompass is like an extra kind of like we treat it over like here in general in the United States. I feel like it's a necessary thing. And like you've mentioned like the puzzle piece thing. It's got physical fitness. It's got the mental health well-being. It's got the aspect of community, right? The more things we like, the people feel better because of it. Their sleep gets better. Their stress is relieved. we can go on, we've all done these lists of things like.

why we should all be doing something like this. And to me, that sounds like a need. It doesn't sound like a, you know, I need, it doesn't sound like a Starbucks coffee, no offense. It sounds like something that somebody should be doing something of every This episode is not sponsored by It's not Starbucks by Starbucks. It's just what he's got there. But to me, sounds, to me, when you start listing all of those benefits to the martial arts, it's a need. It's not a should do. It's not a maybe I'll do it. It's like, you should do this because it's going to make your life

Jeremy Lesniak (32:36.529)

There are few things that have...

a guaranteed return on your investment in life. Right? You could, you could invest money and lose it all. You can invest in friendships and maybe you come out of it a better person, but the friend, the romantic partner that can end, you can invest in a technical skillset that doesn't serve you in the marketplace. But if you show up,

to your training, whether that's, you you're going somewhere or you're doing it at home, right? A few minutes a day or even a week, you get back in. And I've said this many times, you get back exactly and only what you put in, but it comes back, right? And it,

All I have to do is try, which yeah, sometimes that's really difficult, but all I have to do is try. Does it mean I'm going to necessarily get better at the things I want to get better at at that moment? No, but I will progress at something, right? If you're trying to get better at, you know, some difficult technique or learning a form, maybe I have, I'm taking way longer and my body's not responding, but I'm disciplined enough to keep working on it.

like discipline is increasing and it's easier to apply that discipline to other things. There's the return, right? And so I wonder, I don't know this, but I wonder, and I think this is where you were going. I wonder if in the early days of martial arts, as we think about, you know, the cliche Okinawan, you know, family lineage, which who knows how accurate that is, but you know, as it's being handed down,

Jeremy Lesniak (34:30.732)

How much of this was the old equivalent of the way a lot of parents give children chores? We're kind of, hey, I'll give you a few bucks a week as your allowance if you do your chores. What are the chores teaching them? If the kid's doing dishes, it's literally teaching them how to do dishes. It's teaching them responsibility. It's these things so that when they go off into life, they're better prepared.

Could martial arts have not been that? It's like, haha, I'm gonna teach you how to defend yourself, but I'm also going to teach you all of these other things. And we don't even have to talk about it, because the more I talk about it, the less you're gonna trust it. Right. And it's almost like, to equate it to chores, it's like the self-care chores. Yeah. Where you're teaching them how to keep their environment clean and orderly and functioning and healthy.

martial arts is your self-care chores. You're keeping it exercised and mentally stable with your metadata. No matter what your practices are and how deep you go, but with the time aspect, it's as much time as you're willing to put into it. And I've told students, I want you to do your best every time you show up. I want you to do your best every time you train. I said, your best is not going to be the same every single day, though, to say it like what you said earlier. As long as you're giving your best that day.

then you've done your best and you're making progress. And you've probably seen this. No one's going to tell you that your best isn't the best. You know, you only know that. Right. Right. You've probably seen the graphic that I've seen, you know, what, what people talk about their best being. And it's, it's a series of bar. It's a bar graph series. And it says a hundred percent. Right. And then what it really is. And it's different height bar graphs that all say 100%. Right. Because

I'm tired. I did not sleep well. Strange, strange place, strange sounds, exciting day, some things I'm concerned about too much caffeine did not sleep well. I'm not at a hundred percent here for the most capacity as this role I've ever brought to a conversation, but I've done everything I can do to set this up to be the best I can today. Right. Cause one.

Jeremy Lesniak (36:51.328)

what I think I should do and two, what else am I gonna do? Sit here and complain about it and say, know, Nick, I'm really sorry. This interview is gonna suck because I'm sleepy and I didn't sleep well and yesterday was a really fun day and maybe we should reschedule, right? Like I couldn't approach it in that way.

Why? Why not do our best to knock it out of the park? And the worst case scenario would be, that sucked. Let's do it again. Right? Like, that's always an option.

And I think...

I'm fascinated by very successful people. However we define success, And money's often an easy way for us to kind of agree, yeah, that person has put in some work, they are successful. But regardless of whether it's financial success or not, successful people, when they are asked, why are you successful? Whatever iteration of that question, they all have the same answer. I showed up, I kept showing up, I didn't stop showing up, I didn't...

They might say it a different way, that's all they're ever said. It's all I ever hear them say. Maybe they'll throw in, know, I got some help. There was some gratitude. I got lucky. But they have to persist along those lines. know, in Taekwondo persistence being one of the tenants. Tongs who have have the tenants in the way that. Yeah. OK. So in a lot of martial arts schools, even even non-Korean schools have something like that. We have some.

Jeremy Lesniak (38:34.368)

have someone in my school and this idea of just, I'm going to keep showing up. I'm going to keep giving whatever my best is on that day. Right. How do you talk about that with your students?

Jeremy Lesniak (38:48.62)

Because you've got a bunch of teenagers. I've got teenagers. So they need that guidance. They show I'm sure you've got enough time in with it. At least some of them that you can see walking in the door. Their 100 % today is not what their 100 % yesterday. And yeah. then sometimes you...

Jeremy Lesniak (39:10.544)

I think I've had a couple conversations recently with the classes where we just had a recent bell testing and some were having trouble with practice time and stuff like that. And it's kind of where the last conversation, like doing your best and came up. But I also kind of told them, and to the other side of this, said, I'm the last person I gripe to about time being an issue because when I started, I was a teenager with a part-time job, full-time school.

and then I trained my tung-sod-oh and I got through it. And I said, if you want something bad enough, you're gonna fit in the effort and the time to do your best. So like if you guys wanna progress, then you're gonna put in that time in spite of those things because you can't change the reality of like you have these other responsibilities. And if you're gonna add on other things you like to do, you're gonna have to find a way.

and we'll help you do that. And that's when I offer up like, I'm here for extra private lessons. I'm here to pull me aside after class for a couple minutes if we have the time. There's other instructors in the building that are more than happy to guide you through anything that you might be, ask a peer that might have had the same issue and then they got through it. So you offered them just other solutions to if they're having issues or with that. opportunity is there. The opportunity is there. There's somebody here

And there's that community again, like somebody here might've been dealing with some of your same struggles or similar. Talk to us, let us know, get us involved so that we can help you and we can all move forward. I suspect you'll agree with me that with this, this is probably the opinion that I have that receives the most pushback. I don't know that I've mentioned this on the show before. I post this on social media once in a while just because I enjoy seeing the mental gymnastics that people go through to try to refute this statement.

We all have the same 24 hours. How we spend that time is a direct reflection of our priorities. And so people will push back and they'll say, well, but I have kids. Well, your kids are a priority. Yes. And they should be. I'm not going to argue that. Right. Or, know, I have a job. Well, if you didn't have that job and you don't have the money to not have the job, then other things would probably fall apart. So it's good that you have a job that reflects

Jeremy Lesniak (41:32.862)

your priorities and when I have students when you have students when any of us have students that leave or they don't invest the extra time or whatever it is right they they they don't slot martial arts in maybe in the rank order that we do or the rank order we wish they would because we see the benefits that they would reap from that

It's a reflection of their priorities. don't prioritize it. They find something else to be more important because they see more value in that other thing. And I think quite often it's because much of the value in martial arts requires reflection, not person. You can't see it coming. It's, look where I am now. Yeah. And I think my challenge for me personally is

I expect me out of people on regular basis. Which gets me in fights. How dare you not be exactly like me? Well, mean, my standards for myself are very high. then, unfortunately, I put that upon other people that may or may not. I don't know if that's necessarily unfortunate. it's natural. Sometimes it causes pressure. And within the studio, not everybody's there for the same reasons I am, with the same drive.

but they're there and they're working and they're enjoying and they're still doing it. the challenge is to expect the standards to meet the next level whilst also not putting on the pressure of that, I tested every three months and I put in the work to do this and I got here and every testing cycle I hit that one because that was my goal. Not everybody's there. And I think that's one of my challenges where I kind of get grumbly as an instructor.

and didn't show up this week and blah blah blah and I know they want on vacation they didn't practice one damn time and it is like and I do get in those grumble fest words I have to get reined in by my non-marshmallow like yo, we're not all not jobs like you and then sometimes that's like I kind of make a joke I'm like yes I was a crazy person with the martial arts I was highly driven that because that was my one thing right I didn't do like I didn't do football I didn't do organized sports

Jeremy Lesniak (43:54.176)

You know, like I did snowboard, I was a snowboard instructor at a point and I dabbled in skateboarding, but it was nothing that was like a career like thing. I've been doing martial arts longer than any job I've ever done. I've been doing martial arts longer than any person has done at some jobs. It's crazy how long I've been doing this, but part of my challenge is reminding myself that that's not the same path everybody else is intended on.

they're having like their martial arts journey. Like they're not a career martial artist. This is maybe an enhancement to their life or an extra hobby for them. And I have to remind myself a lot, like just happy they're there and they're learning, but also they still need to do it in order to maintain a certain level of standard of persistency to pass it on what I would consider the right way. And my way is not the end all be all, but we all have instructors have a certain way that we want to see things done in order.

to move to the next concept so that they can continue to grow. So I think that's where my biggest challenge as an instructor is not expecting master acry out of all the students as they come up through because they're not me. But by definition they're not you because if they... This is something that I try to get the clients that I work with to understand whether it's a martial arts school or something or not. By definition, you are not your target demographic. You can't You told me this.

Whether if you're talking about being a martial arts instructor trying to reach prospective students or a veterinarian trying to convey your availability of veterinary services to pet owners. Your clients and potential clients, students, aren't you. They're never going to be you. So you can't reach out to them like you. It would be really easy if there were...

500 Nick Acreys out there in your local area that wanted to do martial arts because they need to be like, hey, come here. Yep. And they'd be like, this is awesome. And they'd never leave. They'd just be like, sweet.

Jeremy Lesniak (46:01.718)

But that's not how it works, right? All we can do is change our behavior, right? So we're coming back to this idea again, how do we better convey the value? And I think it's something that the industry is working on because we're seeing more and more people pulled in more and more directions, whether it's, where's my phone? My phone's over there. We were talking about phones last night and the challenges of parenting children today with phones and.

you the good and the bad and how do you try to maintain as much of the good with the phone as the bad and while removing the bad and you know we as adults are not immune to the downsides of phones and social media but we want the good out of it right so so trying to navigate that and

Orchestrate the things that we do that benefit people this magic puzzle piece and I and I do the more I use that metaphor the more I like It's that there's no one answer right we're hunting here where we've all got pieces and we're getting better as we as we share Yeah, like how many instructors have like in my case have their parents had had parents bring kids and like one of the reasons I want my kid here is because I need to get them off the screen right and it is a

common statement. And so like, mean, we're, and as instructors, we're combating with that too, to try to get them to, you know, told students this, you're not going to get any better just by coming here the nights we have classes, one or two nights a week, whenever you come and then also not kind of filling in those gaps with a little bit of like your own self reflective practice and trying to impart that upon them. But what am I in competition with on that end? It's, you know,

phone time, video game time, you know, and I'm, I can beat myself with those things, you know, like I like my video game time. And I don't know what the answer is in order to pull or integrate that. I I have, I mean, I personally for the studio have an app on the phone. So at least if they're going to use their phone, like, Hey, open your app every once in a while, look at one of the forms of practice that and then go back to doing whatever you're doing. So like, tried to like spice it in there and like, or on the YouTube.

Jeremy Lesniak (48:14.848)

Don't skip the ad anymore. Do a form or practice something you did or get some exercise and do some jumping jacks so you're not just sitting the whole time staring at whatever reels or whatever they're called on whatever you're scrolling through. So I don't think fighting it, it's just gonna be here. So just trying to figure out a way to also integrate it in with that to get them to get off the screens and maybe do some extra.

mental health stuff rather than Yeah, it's I think I think there's a there's a pivot coming in this whole thing because if we watch the trajectory of it, right We see what's okay. It's more it's more it's more There's a tipping point and we're seeing more and more people pushing back now saying Something's not right here. We're trying to navigate that but I think like so many other things I observed a long time ago that Most new technology the pendulum swings out

and it reaches a crescendo and it comes back. And I think we're close to, if not already at that crescendo, I think it's going to start coming back soon if it hasn't started already. And we're going to find more and more that people are saying, eh, maybe I don't need that. Maybe, maybe I don't need seven social media platforms. Right. Maybe I don't need to post on all of them all the time. Right. Right. This is something that we talk about internally as whistle kick is something I talk about with schools. How, how do we, how do we balance that time?

you know, we want the benefit of using social media to recruit and retain students.

but I've got to find an amount of time and how it. And we mentioned this last, it's a lot of work to be an influencer. You know what mean? Like posting schedules and making sure you're out in front of the public that are scrolling through to break the attention. there are already being advertised every time they scroll. Sometimes you can go through and count, how many do I get to before I an advertisement? But the average today is 50,000 advertising messages per day is what people receive. And that's nuts. And then like, you know, what's the most recent one that came out?

Jeremy Lesniak (50:14.7)

threads when I heard about threads and went great there's another one I'm not even even signing up for that just because just added like no way it's not as toxic yet that's that's the one upside I'm using in the way that I would use Twitter X right but less toxicity yeah and so that has been enjoyable okay but it's just one more thing but I don't want one more thing on my phone I'd like to get rid of most of the things on my phone I want to get rid of all of the things on there's that

I want to get rid of my phone. want to... Even myself. I find myself in scrolling death traps and then now I start door dashing for a couple bucks and now I feel like I'm one of the other zombies walking around with my phone in my hand staring and walking up streets because I'm looking for addresses. It's nuts. You need You got to go and do more martial arts. There's got to be some way to...

to reach and like, yeah, we can do like there's YouTube videos and give them sign up for courses that way. like, I'd like to maybe see numbers like who's actually doing those. Like who buys those courses and does them on a regular basis? Well, you have courses. You know how hard it is to get people to sign up. Absolutely 100%. We know how hard it is. We've got the MADC courses, the martial arts teaching, training and certification. We are bringing that to the level one at least online. We're working through that right now. And it's such a

tough thing. It's, it's the number of people who could have attended yesterday's event, right? How many martial artists were within simple proximity and knew about it. And it's free. So you just have to show up. We set the bar really low, you know, you should probably be 12 or up for a free training day. You should probably been training for like six months, maybe 12. There's a lot of schools that are

very close proximity to this very area that like, place should have been rocking. Not that it wasn't, it was rocking in its own way, right? But we should have been mosh pit for the amount of people that lost out on the opportunity to get some training in. The capacity on that gym, was a sign outside, was 450. If it had been, so I live in Vermont and who's the hot musician at moment? Noah Cahan?

Jeremy Lesniak (52:39.213)

No, but some of you out there know that name and You should have seen what happened When he announced that he was playing a local show as a benefit at our fairgrounds Crazy, we're a tiny state. We're six hundred thirty thousand people and people lost their minds so

The willingness to do some things is out there, but getting our community to things is not always easy. I think, you know, it's interesting, we keep coming back to this theme of, don't know, right? We're not doing a great job of communicating the value to them, other than, look at what happened in hindsight, which we agreed, we don't even do a good job of that much of the time.

We keep working to solve that. And I hate to say, but some of my thought on... I feel like there's still lot of division within the industry of martial arts. Of course. I don't even like engaging in lot of conversations on Facebook, especially in the martial arts world. Even if it starts out with a great question or an insight or whatever, there's...

tons of keyboard warriors that will tell you why it's wrong or why you're an idiot or it's like it's very unconstructive. Like we don't like, we don't support, there's not a whole lot of support and I don't know what the function is and why it is and then some of it I think there's that old school mentality like if you go to this school like you're disloyal and you might leave me and I don't understand why that is anymore because if you're doing a good job as an instructor I feel like your students aren't just gonna jump ship for no reason. I've got my speculations on.

I think a lot of it's fear and then I think, you if we talk about the online piece, you know, just as you're saying, I don't want to spend more time online than I have to. So that kind of pushes people into being as simplistic as possible. And you can't have an intelligent conversation without nuance. takes time and energy. And so people are going, you're dumb. Because that's quick.

Jeremy Lesniak (54:51.262)

It's quick to call someone dumb and then you can dismiss their opinion. You don't have to open your mind. You don't have to learn. You don't have to consider that what you're doing could be done better. And now you've saved yourself a lot of time and energy because they're dumb. Yeah. And I mean, think about even some of the videos get posted. The fact that there is a whole site to vote in. I'm not going to say the name so we don't shout out to Rob. He's been on the show, but we're talking about McDojo life. OK, that's the one.

I don't know, I have issue with that because it's devoted just to show, mean, and we all know there's trash martial arts out there. We all know those ridiculous things that people are doing, whether it's lack of understanding or they're just, you know, whatever reason it is that us in the little bit more educated side of it go, come on, dude. But it's why I don't understand. Why are we making the spectacle? Why is it necessary? Because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

when you use another form of bullying. It is exactly what it And I think that's why it bothers me so much. even like, even when it is ridiculous, it's a ridiculous video, some guy yelling 16 times before he breaks a board. Why is it necessary to even put on the internet and have bunch of people make out of it? If he gets something out of it, then... But if he posted it for it, but the fact that we post it in a negative way, I just really bother people. Because I've dealt with that.

Yeah, not necessarily on the I've criticized some of the stuff that Rob's put up and you know, if you go back, if you go back and you know, I'm not saying Rob Ingram shouldn't do what he's doing. I'm not saying Dojo Life shouldn't exist. If people enjoy watching those videos and hate watching them by all means, right? I'm not criticizing that in the slightest. If I'm remembering our timeline correctly, we were the really one of the first

that I reached out to Rob. was like, what you're doing is interesting to me. I don't always like and agree with what you're doing, but I find it interesting. And I know a portion of our community finds that worthwhile. So come on the show. And we had a good chat and he's a good dude. like Rob. But there have been some videos that went up. like, why is this up? Like, don't understand. Even if I'm looking at things through your lens, what's going on here? And we've gone back and forth on a couple of things.

Jeremy Lesniak (57:13.46)

still like him, support him doing what he's doing. We don't have to agree. And I think that that's an important piece. We don't have to agree. And there are things we've talked about, we don't quite agree. We were having some interesting philosophical conversations this morning around, we don't even have to get into it, non-martial arts subjects. And it took some time and some energy. There was some nuance. And being able to look each other

in the eye there was

Jeremy Lesniak (57:48.001)

I'm thinking about a tangential example and I don't think I want to put it on record. But let's just say that as Whistlekick has grown, we receive criticism. And personally, I receive criticism. And I try to hear it and I try to respect it because I want people to feel... I never want us to be in a position or for me personally to be in a position where...

You can't reach us, you can't reach me, and you can't make a critique. I wanna hear that. Because how else do we get better, right? The very nature of what we do as martial artists requires us back and forth, challenging, testing, bettering each other. And I think that's incredibly valuable, and I wanna maintain that. But it's gotta be done in the right way. It's gotta be done with an eye towards mutual benefit. If you and I spar, right? We might push each other.

I might not have the best control and maybe pop you and you're like, hey, I don't like that. Right. And so maybe there's some tension there, but the effort is still respectable. Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak (59:01.472)

No, I agree. It's, it's, quite the detour, right? was a big detour. Most of our conversations are all detour. That's, that's, that's kind of how they go. Yeah. I'm good with that. I'm not really sure. That's okay. let's, let's do this. I to make sure that we talk about the courses that you have, because I want people to know that those are available. I'm like, this is the humble me is like, I don't talk about like, this is, and this whole thing for me, that the, the, the interview process is weird.

I'm not the one that talks about myself. I'm aware. I know you're very aware. It almost makes me uncomfortable. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable. that's why, you know, I don't know that I've said it for a while, but the whole premise of the show originally was I was around these great martial artists that told these great stories. And when I would ask them to talk about them again in a more formal setting or in front of others, they got really shy. I was like, so

It requires us being at a martial arts summer camp and you get two or three beers in you and then you'll tell the great stories, but you won't tell them, you know, in front of a class. I was like, that's so weird. These are great stories. You're talking about these people that you've trained with that we, you know, we know their names, we've bought their books and they've passed away and let's like, pass on this, this knowledge. So you're not alone. You're not, you're certainly not. I forgot to mention.

Two things, I want to say them now before I forget. The first is Kataro has a special gift for you. We're going connect you with them. That's something they're doing as part of their sponsorship and I'm really thankful for that. I also want to thank Matt and Jenny Nathre for the use of their space here. yeah, very much. Jenny's out there, Matt's with the kids. They're just such wonderful supporters of what we do. Jenny takes care of all the books.

Matt drove to free training day Midwest, like just drove from Pennsylvania to Kansas because he wanted to help that event succeed. I mean, just, you know, so dedicated, the two of them, and I appreciate them and this and everything. all right. So you have two online courses. Yes. You've got the Keegong course and you've got the Axe course. Where do people find them and what would they find? They can find them on my website. Okay.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:01:31.35)

which we'll have linked but it is it's jaynamtraining.com j-a-e-n-a-m training.com no funny hyphens or anything like that click the menu button hit courses or more I think it goes to take you to the courses page you can sign up through that so yeah like the key going it's a basic basic course just kind of

Intro zero experience required. What is, is Keegong for anybody that doesn't know? We actually, I thought we were going to get deeper into that and we just, didn't get there. So.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:02:06.604)

The key gong is, people think that the key is the force. I feel like people that not really into it, or they look from the outside, they're the key is the force. That's how people describe it a lot. There's this energy that's Do teach people to force choke people? No, actually I don't. Can you imagine how many, if you told people you did? Watch my website go crazy. No, so the key also references breathing.

and just energy movement in general and gong just means work so you're just you're doing energy work or breath work so when I tell people we're going to do kigong like we're gonna move and we're gonna breathe and we're gonna we're gonna connect our body to our mind using the coordinated breathing with the movement and and for me when I I I mean it was it was funny because it's one of those things like Grandmaster Shinny started he's like it's it's at a clinic you're doing it cool I didn't like to run so I was all for it anyway because I hated jogging hurts my knees and I'm

I thought it was cool. It felt nice. I always felt good when I was done. I felt relaxed. And then as that grew, I spent more time getting into it. And then I realized that if I did a Qigong set, I can actually sit and meditate and let the thoughts do what they're supposed to do rather than being my usual ferret brain and just like, I spent 10 minutes just sitting with my eyes closed and don't feel any better. But at least with the movement piece in the beginning, I'm not...

I'm still thinking my thoughts, but it's hard to think your thoughts and be like, breathe in, breathe out. Okay, the next, so like you're kind of distracting your mind in a way that it's good for it. breathing in that way is super healthy and it settles. So then when I go and do like a tent or whatever meditation that I do afterwards, it's easier to get that actual meditation in to do that and settle that. that's cool. mean, it literally translates to energy movement.

breath or energy worker breath work. And there's so many ways to do it that like the kind of the saying within within our key gone organization is like the key, the best key gone for you is the one you do. And again, it's just like martial arts. Everybody should be doing it. It's like, it's the softer side. It's the healing side. It's the side that I feel like doesn't get highlighted in the, in the conditioning. It's less sexy. It is because you know, it looks really cool to, to kick the bamboo tree.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:04:30.688)

but it doesn't look as cool to do the stretching exercises and the meditation and the rest afterwards to make sure your leg heals the right way so you can do it again. Can you imagine a meditation video on YouTube? are just like, I'm meditating. Right? You're meditating wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's, that's why I got in. I got even more into it like during the time of, we don't like to talk about anymore, right? because you we were all, the year that should not be named. Right. Yeah. That one.

Because we were you know it was it was stressful for everyone and different weird reasons and like you know as a small business owner it was scary especially one where like People come to it. I online thing wasn't the best way to go about it Especially when they're used to come into a place and get out of their house and now they're locked in too And I have to give my students a lot of credit They helped keep me afloat by like you know sticking with me the whole time and couple of them

did like weekly private lessons over Zoom and I would do live, we all did our part to try to keep our, and I have to give the members of the studio that stuck through with the whole Amalata credit for pushing through with me, because they're the reason why this whole state of work for that period of time. But yeah, so that's why I got into Kikong so much, it became a very important piece and Grandmaster Shin said it's one of those things that like we should.

It should be included in our martial art because it's the other side. It's the healing side. It's the more gentle, it's the stretching, it's the recuperation, it's the longevity aspect. the balance. You can't smash and smash and smash forever without doing something on the other end to make sure that your knees and your hips and your heart and all that stuff is gonna be in shape along with it. There's gotta be yin to the yang. Yeah, for sure. All right, so there's the kigong. What about the axe? Is it the stuff that...

sort of stuff that we worked on. It's the stuff that we worked on. the course is basically set up into two pieces where there's the solo practice piece and then it shows some of the partner practice as well. yeah, it'll teach you how to do the basic swings and strikes and then it'll take you through a little form where you can practice on yourself. It'll practice those. Is that the form we did? Actually, no. I liked that form. is brand new. That form was really solid. It's on... It's cool.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:06:51.84)

video like unofficially on like me on Instagram doing different things and practicing it and that and I like that one better. The one that's actually on the website is another beginner form that I just kind of adapted from another beginner form within our art and then I just kind of changed it up and put the axe strikes in there instead so it just became the axe form one but you know things progress and as I started practicing more and more with I'm like wait I mean

This had to be how the old masters made up forms. They were doing these motions all the time. How do I practice them without a partner? Okay, I put the spirit in, but I just do the movements in a pattern so I can not get bored doing the same thing over and over. Hence, now you have a form. like, that's kind of how I created the new one that we did at the, yesterday was where I'm like, well, okay, these are the movements that we're doing. How do I put these together in a pattern where we can get some repetition in with them? And then now we can imagine our opponent as we get better with the pattern. And that one evolved into what it is. And I like that one better.

because it makes more sense for me to utilize. But yeah, that course is on there also. yeah, social media, I've got them all. I mean, I've got the Facebook, Instagram, And I think that's all the ones. We'll make sure we all that stuff. the one for the studio. Follow me if you want to. You get pet pictures every once in a while. Pictures of birds on my personal one, but it'll look into my personal.

I like animals and outdoors so you get to see the martial arts like in the outdoors. anybody follows my personal social media you'd see it's like 80 % martial arts and 20 %... Yeah. There's some some helped head tilt going on for sure. over. Yeah.

This has been great. This has been a lot of fun and I feel like this weekend I got to know you so much better and really enjoyed that. How do you want to close? Right? So we've got people out there and they've been on this ride with us. We've gone all over the place as we always do. But what do you want them to take away? I think a couple things. When you had those conversations with people about like, we all come across as people like, yeah, I was thinking of doing a martial arts one. So I've always thought about doing it.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:09:07.444)

If you're one of those people, just do it. Find a place and go to a couple if you're nervous. Because you're not going to, you can get lucky and find the place for you right away or it might take a couple. But stop just saying, yeah, I was thinking about it or I should have done that or it's not too late. Go try it. Go try it and give it an actual chance.

And for me in an actual chance is about three months like it takes about three months to really kind of acclimate you because there's gonna be frustrations in the beginning side There's gonna be the excitement of it being a new student sure I feel like your actual chances through is a good solid three months of dedicated I'm gonna do this right so like that's that's the instructor in me telling me like if you've ever thought about it just just do it but It's important because I feel like this is this is

Like you said, the puzzle piece. I feel like that's kind of the theme of the whole weekend is, cause it helps with so many things with like physical fitness, mental fitness, community. Name a problem. There's a way that martial arts is going to, doesn't maybe solve it completely, it helps it. Right. It's definitely going to help. so I think my advice to anybody should get involved in some sort of, some sort of martial art that, and it doesn't.

doesn't have to be any kind of hard system. could be Qigong, I mean, if you want to consider that a martial art under that umbrella. But I feel like everybody should at least try it. And especially if you're one of those people that have been like, yeah, I thought about doing it one time. And then the other side of it, if you're one of those people that were like, yeah, got my, I used to do it, or I got my black belt back in the day and you don't do it anymore, go back.

I guarantee you if there's a party they miss it and then once you step on the floor you're gonna like it. The longer we stay away the harder it is to go back but the more important, right? The only one who's gonna judge you harshly for you not going back is you, right? Right, your instructor is gonna be happy to see you come back or if it's a new instructor, you know, I've had the chance to start over a number of times and it's awesome, it's the best. But how about, you know, the majority of our audience are people who are actively training. What do you want to say to them? Actively training martial artists.

Jeremy Lesniak (01:11:32.844)

Something that I personally just constantly is, you know, like we talked about tenants and codes and we have like 14 attitude requirements also that are in our manual, right? And one of them is frequently expect your own achievements. that one for me is extremely important, especially when you get in that ball. Because another one of those attitude requirements that we have is when you begin to feel idle, try to overcome this.

I struggled with this recently for a long time. And I kept asking people, how do you do this? Like I might. I'm training, but I might. Like I don't know. Like I feel stalled. And I got a couple of different pieces of advice, but I think what I kind of settled on was if I don't look back and see where I was versus where I am, that's what I need to do.