Episode 389 - Q&A #7
Episode 389 - Question and Answer #7
On today's episode, Jeremy answers all your questions for the seventh edition of whistlekick Martial Arts Radio's Question and Answer.
Q&A #7 - Episode 389
The questions for today are:
What motivations draw you to train in different schools and styles rather than staying with your original style?
Why do I like training in different schools
How long have you studied martial arts and what kind?
What's good for hand speed?
Do you work with special needs children?
Do you still practice forms?
What is your favorite form?
How many years have you Ben training?
What’s your favorite combination or technique to use?
What sort of questions are you looking for?
Episode 389 - Question and Answer #7
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download here.
Hey what's happening everybody! Welcome, this is whistlekickmartialartsradio episode 389. We've got another installment of our question and answer series. Gonna answer some questions that you all wrote in. Who's answering these questions I am! My name is Jeremy, I am the founder here at whistlekick, I'm your host on the show and the martial arts well, I love martial arts so, that's what you get, you get me twice a week, talking to somebody on Thursdays, sometimes get me talking to somebody but quite often it's just me rambling on maybe him answering some questions were talking about a specific topic and the goal here is to make you think to make you consider how martial arts is more than just the time you spend within a certain four walls doing certain movements. The whole idea is to make you a better person and hopefully in some small way the show and the things that we do at whistlekick help you with that. What are the things we do well you can find them all at whistlekick.com, we link out to all the different projects that were affiliated with or running everything from Martialjournal.com where we have wonderful original contributions from martial artists all for free. It's a great content website. Wonderful things to read, articles going up every day. So, if you have a check that will do so, please. And at whistlekick.com you can save 15% if you choose to buy one of our uniforms or protective equipment, use the code podcast 15 and if you don't want to buy from us directly well, buy from Amazon. All our stuff is available with free prime shipping check that out. Of course show notes with transcripts and all that jazz are at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com and you should check that out if you haven't done that in a while yourself.So let's get to it. I love answering question so if you couple months ago, it might be at the point that I put this out, I asked for questions for people for Q&A episode and we got a bunch of stuff back. Now, I’ve answered some of those questions on 1st cup for those of you that forgot or don't know, 1st cup is the morning show that we do every weekday morning 6:30 AM Eastern on YouTube. You get to watch me wake up and drink a cup of coffee and answer questions and talk about life in martial arts and the show is actually growing it's kind of interesting. Of course you can check that out as a podcast if you want to. But I have a bunch of questions left here that I'm to go through and I'm going to answer. I'll try to be fast because there are quite a few questions and I love questions, don't be afraid to write them in Jeremy@whistlekick.com and in another month or two will do another Facebook live where I get you to solicit or I solicit questions, man my words not happen today hope they get better. Let's do this.What motivations draw you to train in different schools and styles rather than staying with your original style? Well logistically I moved away. I started training when I was very young, I was a kid growing up in Maine and I left mean go to college. Kinda had to leave. The instructors sold the school. So if nothing else it would've been at least a little different because there were different people running it. I trained a few things while I was in college, moved to Vermont so of course that I had to change again, started my own school, closed that, started training in tae kwon do found some other people like Sensei Earl Smith who's been on the show and trained with him. And then because life tends to come in full circles, my original instructors reached out to me last year, I'm recording this in 2019, so mid-2018 they reached out and said hey, you want to train? So I get the opportunity to hang out with those folks again even though it's been over, it had been 20 years since I trained with him which was just so much fun.Why do I like training in different schools though, let's asked that question. Because I think being a diverse martial artist is being a better martial artist. The more stuff you do the more different ways you do things the more you tend to hone in on what works, what works for you, what works with your own philosophies and if you're only ever exposed one thing, you don't know whether that thing is best for you were not best for you. It's like food you can eat an amazing meal all the time and even if you get bored with it, variety can help you enhance that meal, to help put that meal into context and say hey this is a really good meal. Or you know what I’ve been eating chicken all this time, I really prefer fish.How long have you studied martial arts and what kind? I started when I was four, I'm turning 40 in a couple months, so at this point it's 35 years, a few styles of karate, tae kwon do, kempo, some jujitsu, what else we got in there, kickboxing some capoeira and I’ve done very, very small amounts dabbled in, I don’t event know that I can say I’ve really trained in but have an appreciation for I would like to do more judo, sword work whether that’s kendo or aido can or anything that and judo. I love to train, if you've been listening to show you know I love train and if I had my way, I would set up more of like a university style environment and people would come for you know several weeks to several months at a time and we would run class structure you know for specific things and just that would be cool, I would love to do that.What's good for hand speed? The best thing that I know of to work on speed whether it's hands or feet or anything is learning how to relax and at learning how to initiate motion without creating too much tension in the rest of the body. Here's an example, people that are very fast with their hands tend to be very relaxed and it doesn't matter so much how fast the motion itself is if there is a significant delay between the desire to move and the initiation of that motion. To say it in another way if you've ever done a drill in your training where someone is randomly calling out when to do something and you tense up in you're waiting for it, you're slow. But if you can relax and just react to whatever's happening without anticipation, you can be a heck of a lot faster. So practicing that comfort in reaction, is a huge part speedDo I work with special needs children. I have. It's not something I have a lot of experience with, it's something that I’ve watched some people have amazing success with an as a population, it's a group that I think benefits a lot from martial arts more from what I hear from others because again I don't have a lot of experience with it. There's something kinda special about martial arts and that it connects a lot of the different ways that people learn physical, audible, visual and so for people who have trouble learning or for people who have trouble focusing, martial arts can be pretty special. I do think that if a school wants to start a program specifically targeted to special needs in whatever way you define that, I think there are a lot of great resources out there and don't be afraid to ask for help. Especially, well. I'll say what I would do. If I had a school in I was going to create a special needs program, I would want to touch base with and get some expertise from people who are teaching martial to the special needs folks as well as people just work with special needs. Students, because there's a lot there that I don't know and I'd rather not figure it out on the fly because I don't want to set anybody up for failure.Do I still practice forms? Absolutely all the time. I will say every day, definitely weekly, sometimes in my head. I love forms. I consider forms to be the pinnacle of martial arts. The crown jewel the thing that has the most value ultimately and if you check out, it's funny that that this is in this list of questions I hadn't looked at this and in a couple weeks. On today's episode of 1st cup, this is April 10, 2019 recording this I spent the good seven or eight minutes talking about why I feel that way about forms so you could check that out.What's my favorite form. That's a good question, it depends. It depends on how I'm feeling the day right so the form that I spent the most time in competition with is kusan ku and it’s the isshinryu version. I did make some small changes if you don't know isshinryu tends to be a pretty naturally stanced form and that doesn’t do well in competition so to I changed the stances a little bit but I’ve also spent a lot of time with empi and I'm honestly not sure when did that version of Empi comes from. Because I grew up in a little bit of the mixed environment with my two different instructors who had two different instructors themselves actually one of them had more than one and so our collection of forms was a bit varied. But I’ll be honest, I have a greater appreciation for pinyan shodan or sometimes called peyon shodan then I ever did as a child. Because it's so simple and allows you to work on a lot of really complex, difficult concepts like generating power through the hips and staying grounded. The simpler the form the more you can dig deep into the fundamentals and work on those things.How long have been training as I said 35 years and it doesn't feel like it's been that long 'cause in my head I'm still 25 so how's that possible?What's my favorite combination or technique? Hands down favorite technique has always been a side kick. Lead leg sidekick from a fighting stance turned sideways and lo and behold who do I get the train with Super Foot Wallace. Well guess what? He didn't have to convince me, that's always been my bread-and-butter and come to find out that was his bread-and-butter too so that's pretty cool.If I have a favorite combination definitely some form of multiple kick, two kick combo before my foot comes down. For those of you don't know me I'm small, I’m 5'7 but I have good hip flexibilities so I'm able to kick fairly high so my feet have always been my tool in sparring and that's allowed me to stay kind of outside most people's punching range anyway which is where I feel comfortable. So to throw one kick and then to throw a second kick as I kinda back out that became a staple of mine through you know, all the different varieties of sparring have done over the years.And then the last question which sets us up beautifully for next time, what sort of questions are you looking for? I'm looking for questions and allow me to talk about my experiences about who I am is a martial artist. Let's be honest I don't mind talking about myself it's not my favorite subject but I’ve been training for a while, I’ve done a bunch of stuff and it doesn't mean it what I’ve done or what I feel is better than anything else, I'm certainly not that arrogant but here we are four years in the show and many of you find what I say and the experiences that I’ve had to be interesting and I don't mind indulging that. I don't like talking about my experiences but rather than just ramble on which does feel a little arrogant, I'd rather answer the questions that you will have for me about my time whether it's a specific experience or how I would handle a situation I’ve actually done quite a few phone consultations with people about how they would handle certain situations in their school or with their instructor and I'm happy to do that. So if someone has a problem I challenge that their facing I don't mind speaking to that as well. If you want to ask a question, couple places you can do that so you can answer in the comments under this episode episode 389 at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com or you can email me Jeremy@whistlekick.com. Now if you do reach out with a problem some kind of personal challenge you're having, I'm not gonna put you on blast, I'm not gonna share your name out with everyone, unless you want me to and if I'm unsure I won't do it. I won't just name names. I have a list of names next to every question that was asked to name those names because I didn't ask people if they wanted me to mention their name. That's fine those of you that asked the questions you know if it was your question and to all of you who did ask questions thank you I appreciate you taking the time to do that. And I appreciate you the listener thanks for doing this, thanks for supporting the show even if it's only by listening and open your ear balls to my words. As I’ve said many times, I’ll say again, if it wasn't for you I would just be a crazy guy talking to himself in a microphone.Head over to whistlekick.com for all the stuff they were doing with the discounts podcast15 15% off, sign up for the newsletter sometimes we do some specials on specific products so you can check that out and whistlekickmartialartsradio.com is where you get the transcript and other episodes, none of our episodes are behind a pay wall we never take them down there all there, 388 other episodes for you to check out, enjoy, share, learn from or even revisit. We're on social media it's @whistlekick, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram those are the main ones and if you wanna asked question, I told you about that. If you want to help us out without making a purchase give us a share or give us a review somewhere. You show us some love. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you for being here and thank you for giving me the opportunity to do what I do. Until next time. Train hard, smile, and have a great day.