Episode 333 - Trying New Things
On today's episode, Jeremy talks about trying new things and how it applies to the martial arts.
Trying New Things - Episode 333
Trying new things sounds like a cliche but it is necessary. Parents, friends, teachers and other people important to us tells us that we should explore and try new things whether in life, business, or martial arts. Trying new things means you have the willingness to experiment and you are open to committing mistakes. Speaking of new things, Jeremy talks about how he is constantly trying new things and how he started his new YouTube show, the first cup. If you are eager to know how trying new things applies to the martial arts, listen to learn more!
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.Jeremy Lesniak:Hey everyone what's up, whistlekickmartialartsradio episode 333. Kind of a fun number. My name is Jeremy Lesniak, I'm your host for the show and today were going to talk about trying new things. Man that's a cliché but we're gonna dig into it and I'm gonna give you some new thoughts on that idea, if you're new to the show you might want to head over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com to see all of her other episodes, our interview episodes, other topic episodes, and really discounting get some more context, some deeper understanding of the people that at bring on the show on the topics that we tackle. If you want to see the other stuff that we do stuff beyond the podcast you can find that it whistlekick.com. Whether that's our products, our other services everything from gear to oh what else do we have, I'm thinking carefully when this is going to air because of some the other stuff that's on the way that honestly by the time this airs, there will be other stuff. But just in case it doesn't work out I'm not gonna say it, so just go on over to whistlekick.com and check it out. Of course if you want the easiest way to know what's new, you can sign up for the newsletter. We do it one maybe two a month whistlekick.com, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com you can sign up for pretty much anywhere we do websites and just get a good idea of what's happening with us in front and behind the scenes.The title of the episode is trying new things and that's something that we've all heard from the time we were small right? Your parents told you to try new foods and try hanging out with new people and try new sports and try try try and why do we have to do that? We have to try new things because it's kind of hard to know what will benefit you whether it's enjoyment or health or any of the other positive outcomes come from experience unless you've experienced that thing. But when we talk about it in the context of martial arts, there's a lot more that we can talk about. Yeah sure we can talk about cross training we can talk about training with new people even within your own school we can talk about trying your techniques in a new way. But it's broader than that, to me it's more of an overall concept a willingness to experiment and so by trying new things I'm actually going to encourage you to experiment and I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna give you some of my thoughts, not just as a martial artist but as a business owner of where and how experimentation plays a part. Now if you follow us on social media you may be aware that we've been playing with a morning show concept, Monday through Friday and honestly in the early days it was seven days a week. I have rolled out of bed and on a 10-minute morning show, we started it entirely on YouTube and just yesterday released an episode on Facebook and I'm recording this on a Wednesday even though its gonna air on a Thursday and on Thursday's the plan, at least for now, is to try doing live on Instagram. Now why are we doing that? Why are we kind of bucking the D efforts that we've made and mixing the pot up again with a show that well it's certainly not huge and not even close to his big as the podcast is growing and has received some positive feedback. Because I don't know what I don't know. For all we know Facebook is the place at this live show should go, it could be Instagram and if not it's good to know that YouTube is the right spot. Whenever you do something, you should be learning from it. Whether that's you've learned this is the right way or this is the wrong way and that's the mindset. People go about their day and not recognize that the things that they do right are educational. We've all heard the cliché you know you learn more by messing stuff up than getting things right and that's absolutely true, I fully believe that. But if you approach that same mindset to getting things right, you'll look and you'll find hey, there is still opportunity for progress. There are still ways that we could experiment, there are still things that are wrong. Every time I record an episode for this show I get stuff wrong, I screw things up. Now some of those things you never experience because we edit them out. It might be the longer pauses that I wish I wasn't taking, it might be the times that I go back and record a section again and that's the beauty of this format is it we get to do that. You don’t always hear my mistakes. But to be honest, I been leaving more of them in. I think it's a little more authentic and it saves us a little bit of time. The more effective I am as I'm recording the last time it takes us on the backend to bring this episode out. What if I knocked it out of the park so well every time that we added a third episode. I don't know, were not planning on doing that but we would have the option as we would have the resources to do so. And when I look at this show, this morning show, which by the way we call first cup. Because I drink my 1st cup of coffee every morning live on the air. There are plenty people would say no no, just stay with YouTube just keep chugging along with that and see what comes from it. Well, I like to learn and to iterate to continue to improve as quickly as I can, that's how you get growth. We've got a stable foundation with what we’re doing with YouTube, were still in a do it three days a week. But by adding Facebook and Instagram one day a week each, I don't know what the results will be. Whether there are benefits or not, I will learn something.How does that apply to martial arts training? If you go to class or you teach class and you do the same things over and over you've got a pretty good idea what the results are going to be. If you're the instructor you got all kinds options, nearly an infinite number of options but not all of them are effective. And if you're the instructor you're probably looking at the students and saying, you know they're the ones that really have the opportunity try doing things differently because there are so many things you could focus on even within basics. You could prioritize your stances you could prioritize power, speed. You got the opportunity to experiment, but if you're the student, you're probably looking at the instructor in single there setting out the class, what happens in the class, the tone of the class, they're the ones that really get to experiment. And the issue with that is it's really easy to forget how much control we have because we tend to be so focused on the bigger stuff, the macro level. When you consider the nuance, there's a lot of options. Let's say you're to school that does kiais or key ups or spirit yells or whatever you might call it in your school. I've been to schools that practice those on every movement, I’ve been to some that practice it only on certain movements that are designated or sometimes on the 10th repetition. I don't know too many people who put thought into deconstructing and experimenting with, I grew up with calling it a kiai so I'm gonna call it a kiai, with their kiais. I could focus on volume, I could focus on trying to scare the person next to me with it, I could focus on the way it makes me feel as I project that sound during my technique. That's a pretty small thing and there are three ways that I could experiment see what the results are. Now, to be honest I'm pretty sure that if I experimented with volume, the outcome would be I would be able to speak well for the next couple days. But is that something I could train would that get better over time I don't know, I could try it. And you could apply that same mindset to absolutely everything you do in your training.Some of you out there know that in 2016 we held a tournament martial arts tournament we called it the whistlekick Martial Arts Showdown. It was a big event what well, I learned a lot and the result of it was a book called how not to hold a martial arts competition. And it's actually available is only a book but a full online course because I learned a lot. I learned a lot from the successes but also the failures and one of the major themes through the book and through the course and I’ll give this one away and if you want to find more out about it you can go to karatetournamentbook.com, I think we even release, if you sign up for that for that newsletter which never goes out you can get a few chapters. At some point I’ll go back and work on version 2, but I got other stuff going on right now. Anyway that's a tangent, back to being on point, one of the recurring themes through the book is to constantly iterate and the way I think that is making things 15% different every time. If you've got something that works really well and it's tried-and-true and you know what the results are going to be, change it up 15% or so. Because if that 15% that's different is a complete bomb, if there is no benefit to it you still have 85% of what you are doing. But more than likely, at least some of what you do will be beneficial and it's entirely possible that it will be much better. By making those 15% changes and taking the good and integrating that and continually approaching what you do, honestly in and out of martial arts, with that 15% adjustment you will advance whatever you're doing at a very rapid rate. The majority of people seems so afraid to fail that they're not willing to budge from something that they find it works for them. Well that flies in the face of our slogan, never settle. Settling is to believe that you can't do better about either your settling because you're scared or you're settling because your arrogant, and you believe there is no improvement. I think both are BS. One of the reasons we do so many different things at whistlekick is I'm always trying new stuff. 85% of what we do is steady. We make sparring gear, we have a few other products, we have some other projects like this podcast and those things work well. But if I'm not consciously throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, I'm missing out. And not only am I missing out we are missing out you are missing out so whether it's your martial arts training or your job or your relationships romantically none, if you're not always trying to test the waters and see what else is going on, what's new, what could be done differently, you're missing out. And it doesn't mean you can't have open conversations with people about how you want to do this, go to your martial arts instructor and say you know, I love your classes and hopefully you do. And I'm not saying that I want to do anything differently, I don't want to go elsewhere, but I want you to know that I'm to start experimenting with in the parameters, within the rules that you set for me as your student. I'm in a try doing my forms a little bit faster sometimes, a little bit slower sometimes, I'm gonna focus on power sometimes and speed others, my breathing other times .and I want you to know that I'm not doing this because I'm attempting to be disrespectful or I’m being lazy but because I know I can be better and one of the best ways I feel I can get better is to try taking the information that you've given me and applying it in different ways. I'll bet all but a very small percentage of martial arts instructors will be thrilled to hear that you're taking such intelligent, such a cerebral approach to your training and I know that you're going to have amazing success if you do that. Maybe you even keep a journal with it, maybe you have to sit down and really take a look at what's going on around you to know what you could do differently. This is not something I expect would come easy to everyone but I believe that if you spend some time practicing the skill of understanding what you could do differently, you'll find it. You'll find that skill set that practice of creating these 15% changes and will be blown away with the results.I'd love to hear your thoughts I want to know is this something that you do? Is this something you've tried and it's worked? Or maybe I'm way off base, maybe it doesn't work for you. Either way give me some feedback email me jeremy@whistlekick.com or head on over the website whistlekickmartialartsradio.com drop a comment in the show notes for this episode 333, of course you can follow us on social media, you can leave some feedback there. We are @whistlekick Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, those are our main channels, of course you can find our episodes on YouTube you can find stuff at the website you can find us in any podcast feed and you can imagine and maybe you'd be willing to share this show or make a purchase or leave a review somewhere, iTunes is kind of the standard for leaving podcast reviews and I would appreciate it. Because hey, I love doing this as you might imagine there's a lot of expense going into this show as I record this. You may have heard different audio quality, I'm on my portable recorder because this is just what I could get to this today. This recorder cost a few hundred dollars, because I care about the audio. Alright, I will stop stop. Alright, that's it I got some stuff I gotta go take care of, I want you to go take care of some stuff in your world and make it 15% different and see how it's better or worse until next time train hard and smile and have a great day.