Episode 379 - Question & Answer #6
This is another Question & Answer episode and Jeremy answers some of the questions sent through Facebook and YouTube.
Question & Answer #6 - Episode 379
How many years have I been training?
Which of the styles or schools that I’ve trained in has been the most impactful?
Which kick do I think is my least favorite?
What's been the biggest failure from whistlekick or to come out of whistlekick?
Question & Answer
Show Transcript:
You can read the transcript below or download here.
Hey what's up everybody, welcome this is whistlekick martial arts radio episode 379. I've got a Q&A for you today. If you don't know my name, I'm Jeremy, I'm your host for the show, I'm the founder at whistlekick. I love the martial arts, I love talking about martial arts, I love doing martial arts, I love making martial arts products for martial artists and you can find all them at whistlekick.com you can use the code, pdcast15 that'll get you 15% off everything whether it's a shirt or a hat or a uniform or sparring gear or... So much stuff, so much stuff. I'm not gonna run through the whole catalog right here. But if you're looking for things related to this show you can find that whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. We do the show twice a week all for free and hopefully you will support us in any of the multitude of ways that you can do that, I feel that I use that word a lot: multitude, in any of the ways that you may want to show your appreciation. Even if that's just leaving us a review or telling somebody else about this show, means a lot.So, I attempted to do something new in sourcing questions that we can use for Q&A because it's something I’ve always struggled with is getting the audience to ask questions. It would make my life so much easier if I was getting more questions and honestly it's a lot more fun for me. I enjoy the conversational aspect of the interview shows but I don't get to do that on Thursdays terribly often so if you asked some questions I got more. I got more that I can work with so what I did is I went on our Facebook page, Facebook.com/whistlekick were @whistlekick everywhere in case you didn’t know and so I went live and I said, hey ask me questions that I can use for the show, and like 15 or 20 people came on most of them are on for minutes and they didn't and asked many questions and it made me sad. But I got one from somebody named Tommy, so I'm just going to run with this and see if I can take it in a few different directions and see what happens. So, the question came in was how many years have I been training? There are couple different ways to answer that. So, I am 39 I started training when I was four so we've got like 35 1/2 years if you want to look at the calendar. But my martial arts training has taken some some very, it's been the different stages I grew up I had karate school I went to and then went to college and I did a few different things and there were some small gaps in between there might be a month or two in between as I tried one school and you know like I’m thinking of one school in particular where I just didn't like the people teaching so I stopped until I found something else. Now, so there might be a month or two gaps in there over those four years and then when I moved to Vermont I started teaching and then after a couple years doing that and trying to grow a business, that didn’t work so I stopped teaching and I had a couple years where I didn't have any formal training. So, do you want to call that 35 years or 33 years or maybe I’ve to round down to 30 years? I don't know. I say I'm a martial artist and I’ve always been a martial artist whether or not the number of years matters, I don't know. Doesn't matter so much to me other than when I think about it it reminds me that I’ve been training for a while. I just love training, I just love getting better at different stuff, I love trying different martial arts and you know right now I'm training in tae kwon do and kempo, in karate and kickboxing and I'm not training multiple times a week in any of those because I’m busy and because some of the instructors live farther away and I’ve got other things going on like this, like they show, like whistlekick. And you know, you want to find a good way to get less martial arts training, it's to start a martial arts business. You would think it would be the opposite, it's not it's not even close to the opposite. It is not even close to supportive of your training, it should be because I’ve got people all around the world who've invited me to come train with them and I would love to, but its busy, things are busy, things are busy and you know it let's be real if I was to go train all these people, it's expensive. So yeah. So, I do seminar sometimes. It allows me to train other people and the flip the bill, it’s great, that's the best way to do it. So, if anybody wants me to come out due to seminar, let me know reach out.Now what other questions can I spin out of this question? How many years have I been training? Well I could ask myself about which of the styles are schools that I’ve trained in has been the most impactful? I would say my answer is pretty much the same is almost everyone it's been on the show, it's the first school I trained in for a significant period of time. Well, in my case is the first school I trained in because I started when I was four and I left, when I went to college at 18. So, there's 14 years at one school and that's the one that set the most tone for who I am as a martial artist and because I was so young who I am as a person. That was a school where I learned about competition and the importance of fundamentals and I learned a bit about weapons and it's where I learned to enjoy martial arts. So, I learned how transformative it could be and it's amazing that here we are 20 years later, and so many of the lessons that I learned out of that school are still things I think about almost daily. There's a good chance that one or both of those instructors might be listening right now so, hello! They will hopefully be coming on the show soon, we've talked about hopefully we get that to happen.One of the questions it popped up from 1st cup and if you are not watching 1st cup, it's the morning video show I do on YouTube at 630 Eastern on, I said YouTube, on weekdays and there's even an audio feed podcast feed for it, if you want check that out. But one of the questions that someone asked there, was around my favorite techniques, my favorite kicks and I answered that there but I’ll answer a slightly different question in a slightly different way here and maybe I’ll irritate some people with this one but I don’t mind doing that and that's going to be which kick do I think is my least favorite. I can even say the least useful and I'm going to say the twist kick that kind of inside roundhouse kick that requires a tremendous amount of flexibility and it's not because I can't do it, I can do it, I can't do it head height. I have been able to in the past, but because you've got to be so darn close to someone to kick them with that, that there are almost every other option is better. So, it requires a lot of skill and it's not really practical and it hurts my hips and I think it's silly. I think it’s just a goofy technique. Now if you like it that's cool, but not a technique that I even find myself practicing unless we are expected to in taekwondo unless it comes up and then I’ll do it. Now if you bring that kick below the knee, I can see some application there as a sweep, as taking somebody's leg out, that I can say some value.And I’ll give you one more question that I'm going to answer and here it is, what's been the biggest failure from whistlekick or to come out of whistlekick? And as much as I don't like the word failure, I think there's some good stuff in asking myself this question, so I'm going to answer it for you. And that all has to do with me trusting other people's motivations a bit too much. In the early days of whistlekick as I was trying to figure out how to get things going, everyone promised the world. Oh, for just you know a thousand dollars or $5000 or $10,000 we can get you to this and help you do this and with this and oh, I spent so much money on so little in a few of these cases. People that or even in the martial arts industry, there people that I could but never will call out publicly because that's not who I am, that have such a lack of integrity. I don't know that I would shake their hand if I met them and so the thing I’ve learned out of that is it just because someone is a martial artist, just because they're a black belt or they hold some kind of certain title doesn't mean they're a good person, hopefully they are. And I still think that statistically, there's a better chance of them being a good person but they're not always going to be that. Some people are jerks and you can be a jerk with or without martial arts training. Sometimes you're just a jerk who can kick really well. So, when you think about those things that happened, are they failures? In a sense but at the same time you better believe that I learned those lessons very well because of the amount of money I spent to learn them. So, there we go.I would love for people to send me more questions you can comment whistlekickmartialartsradio.com in the comments, you can comment on the YouTube post of this episode in the comments, you can write me jeremy@whistlekick.com, just send me some questions and I would love to answer them in Q&a's. I would love for Q&A to be once a month. I really do enjoy this format and you know, I don’t know if anybody else does, maybe that's the issue, maybe guys don't enjoy this format. Maybe that's why people don't ask questions but tough can't one of the eight episodes a month be for me? Alright, I'm a wind down here, don't forget podcast15 gets you 15% whistlekick.com we do have product at amazon, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com is the spot for this and all the other episodes. You can find us on social media @whistlekick we are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram and as I mentioned jeremy@whistlekick.com is my personal email address that's it for today, until next time. Train hard, smile, and have a great day.