Episode 772 - Shihan Victor Guarino

Shihan Victor Guarino is a martial arts practitioner and instructor at Seigido Ryu Karate & Jujitsu.

There are very few people who I consider Martial Artists. The way I make that distinction is they’re the people whose martial arts principles permeate their life.

Shihan Victor Guarino - Episode 772

Shihan Victor Guarino is a martial arts practitioner and instructor at Seigido Ryu Karate & Jujitsu and podcast host at the Realm of Logres podcast.

In this episode, Shihan Victor Guarino talks about the benefits of training and practicing martial arts, and why everyone should. Listen to learn more!

Show notes

You may check out Shihan Victor Guarino’s Twitter and Instagram

Show Transcript

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome! This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, episode 772 with my guest today, Shihan Victor Guarino. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. I'm your host here for the show, founder of whistlekick where everything we do is in support of traditional martial arts. Go to whistlekick.com, that's our online host, the place you're gonna find all the stuff that we're doing in support of the traditional arts and in support of traditional artists like yourself. The show gets its own website, whistllekickmartialartsradio.com , two episodes each and every week with the goal of connecting, educating, and entertaining all of you out there. If you wanna show your appreciation for the work that we do, you can do a whole bunch of things. You can follow us on social media. We're @whistlekick everywhere you might imagine. You could grab a book on Amazon or you could join our Patreon. We rarely have people leave our Patreon, which should be all you need to know. It's about how much we give back. It's about the value that we provide to those of you who are willing to provide some value to us, and you can get in for as little as $2 a month. Now, if you want the entire list, all the things you can do to help us in our mission to derive more value from what we do here at whistlekick, with this show, go to the family page, whistlekick.com/family. You gotta type it in. We do that intentionally. If you're willing to type it in, you're probably gonna find some stuff that you find value. We update it once a week. Now my guest today, Victor, I've been getting to know him over the last few months. Great guy, really like what this man stands for and well, it was time. It was time for me to get to know him a bit better, time for all of you to get to know him, and that's why he's here today. So enjoy today's episode.

Victor Guarino:

What's up?

Jeremy Lesniak:

How'd the move go?

Victor Guarino:

It went well. Things are going, you know, they're settling in.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Ok.

Victor Guarino:

For lack of every any other way of explaining it. We tried to introduce the dogs the other day.

Jeremy Lesniak:

How'd that go?

Victor Guarino:

Not well.

Jeremy Lesniak:

No? No?

Victor Guarino:

Apparently, even though my dog is three times smaller than her pure blooded German Shepherd, my dog is from the streets of Florida and does not like being barked at and had no issue saying,"I'm gonna saunter right on over there and prove that I'm not a small dog." They both were on drugs. They both were, we gave them both CBD treats a lot for their sizes. Like we gave it a half an hour. Let them all, you know, kick in. And we had 'em all on leashes and we were walking them just around the yard.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

And then we were sitting and normally, like my dog Echo, very passive. Not passive, but like if the dog is ignoring her, that's what she wants and she'll stay away from it. So Karen had her dog on leash and she's like, "Why don't you just let Echo go and we'll just let Echo wander around and I'll get Classy to lay down." We did. And Echo was calm, she wasn't like loaded, she didn't have any anxiety. She just got up, walked in a straight line just casually across the yard, and as soon as she started getting closer to the bigger dog, like Classy started barking so Echo did the most martial arts thing I've ever seen any animal do. She just stopped, made the perfectly around circle, and then immediately just sprung in and grabbed at the bigger dog's like rear hind quarters.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow!

Victor Guarino:

And then as soon as Classy twisted, Echo just like she strayed sideways, right out of reach...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh, what a riot!

Victor Guarino:

Took three steps in her continued circle, jumped back in, snapped again, and she just kept dodging like in and out. I was like, "I've taught my dog too well." I taught my dog too well how to fight...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh, he's a ninja.

Victor Guarino:

On how to stay at a reach. So then, obviously I grabbed her. I took my dog inside. She let Classy just run around off leash in the backyard and we're like...

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'm sorry.

Victor Guarino:

"You know what? It's gonna be a little bit longer." We just need to get them to the point where they ignore each other.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

If they can be in the same room and ignore each other, that's fine. Karen said that she's introduced her dog to other dogs before and her dog doesn't like dogs.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hmm.

Victor Guarino:

But she's never come across another dog that had just as big of a dominant attitude as her. Every other dog has just been very submissive, so Classy will just pin him to the ground. The dog will like submit and then it's done. It's over. Echo is not that. Echo is very much thinks that she's a large dog. Her best friend, when I was in Florida, was a full blooded, almost 200 pound pit bull. And she would fight...

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's a big dog.

Victor Guarino:

And she would fight him like they would scrap just for kicks and giggles.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow!

Victor Guarino:

And so that's what Echo is used to. And she's smart. Like I watched her, so the pit bulls name's Noah, playing in Noah's backyard. I watched her bite this pit bulls butt to get him to chase her. And she's got little hotdog legs. So she's really fast. And when she got the bigger dog to chase her, she ran beelines straight for a tree and she can corner on a dime. She knew the pit bull couldn't , so she would run straight at the tree and then banked. And when the pit bull tried to bank, it tripped over itself and ran and smashed into that tree.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh!

Victor Guarino:

Bounced off the ground, shook off, everything was fine. But she's a smart and intuitive fighter for a dog who's never been in a fight.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That's such a riot.

Victor Guarino:

So other than that, little excitement, everything else with the move.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I kinda want video of all this.

Victor Guarino:

Ah, yeah. We did make the wise choice to not have Karen's kids in the backyard with us.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Mm-hmm. Good call.

Victor Guarino:

Would've been bad. No blood, like nothing. No one clamped down on anything. But it just, they wouldn't have liked it. They would've been...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah, it's scary. It's scary as adults, it's really scary as kids.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. So it was all right though. You know, well back to the drawing board, I guess.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. Gotta do it. Gotta do it. What's training looking like for you? Have you had a chance or are you still in the midst of the unpack and the finding the routine?

Victor Guarino:

We finally dropped into it. Last week was a week where nothing went the way that it was supposed to go. I've been using Google Calendar to kind of keep myself on track for myself, cause I only go in and move dog food three times a week in the morning. And so when I'm here, I have, you know, set times when I'm doing stuff and so that I actually sit and do things and don't waste time. And last week was a week where like everything in my Google calendar, I had to go in, edit it, and move it to a different day. But with the exception of last week, Karen and I have been training pretty consistently, twice a week. And I have her through. What she's trying to do is she's trying to gain what she feels is adequacy in the style that I teach so that she can assist me in teaching it, which it just basically involves me bringing her through the testing requirements of all the ranks. So last night, we just started the yellow belt testing [00:08:00] requirements. And we started the day by having her do all of what would be the first test, her senior white belt testing requirements. And I ran, you know, the last two to three times that we've gotten together to like set time to work out. I told her, you know, "I'll do it like a test. This is what I want you to show me. How do you want me to attack you?"

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

You know, just to see how she retains. And she has most of it, some of the other like escapes and stuff that we do, my system does from bear hug, chokehold, headlock and stuff, she feels a little un... like she can do it, but she doesn't feel like she can do it quickly. And that's fine. That stuff is really all introductory stuff anyway, cause I know, I'm not sure if I've ever talked to you about like what the Seigido Ryu testing requirements look like, but in essence...

Jeremy Lesniak:

I don't think so.

Victor Guarino:

It’s tricking. It's tricking you into earning a rank in two different styles.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Ah.

Victor Guarino:

So there's a lot of stuff that we call generically escaping in the first few ranks that seems very like you do it and then you come to this place where you have the thought of that's it. Like it feels very incomplete because it is very incomplete. It's really the first part of how to get out of something to enter back into a jiu jitsu lock.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah, I get it.

Victor Guarino:

So in essence, like we just had two black belts in our system test. I think number 38 and 37, who have made it to first degree. And technically, their rank is they have first degrees in karate. They are probably about a first or a second kyu brown belt in traditional Japanese jiu jitsu.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Okay.

Victor Guarino:

They don't know that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right.

Victor Guarino:

Because you basically, you get all the way through your ranks and then at your black belt test, you're handed two certificates and it's the first time you've ever handed two certificates. And I asked that question when I got a black belt because I was like, "Why am I getting two?" And my instructor said, "That's your jiu jitsu certification. That's your karate certification." So generally speaking, for the most part, you're roughly one to two ranks below the karate in the jiu jitsu just because it's a foundational building all in the first couple ranks. It's not like we're teaching you arm bars and leg locks and stuff like that at white belt.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That makes sense.

Victor Guarino:

So that was my project. I had a project for my fifth dan that was basically has to do something to give back to the system. And all of our jiu jitsu stuff's not written down, which is terrible. Like it's written down but it's written down in get armbar from five different attacks. Get Yanagi from five different attacks. That's all it is. So, my instructor Kyoshi gave me the project and he's like, "I want you to go through from white belt through black our testing requirements as if we didn't teach karate. As if we were just a pure Japanese jiu jitsu school. And I want you to write down curriculum as if, what would we expect a white belt jiu jitsu practitioner to learn."

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh, that's interesting. Did you like doing that?

Victor Guarino:

Okay. So I didn't like doing it because I don't like jiu jitsu.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh, okay.

Victor Guarino:

I liked doing it because I don't like jiu jitsu.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

It was one of those things where, and I even told them this,I was like, you're playing into... what I generally tend to do with my own personal training is I find the thing that I either don't like doing or that I'm not good at doing, and I will do that thing until I'm proficient. I very rarely train the things that I do well because I want the things that I don't do well to be so competent. That's why. So when I started, my first fighting instructor was my uncle Buddy who has a boxing gym in Philadelphia. So, my first experience fighting was boxing at ages eight or nine.

Jeremy Lesniak:

In Philadelphia?

Victor Guarino:

Yeah, yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Where boxing is like religion.

Victor Guarino:

Right, exactly. So, when I started training in my martial art of Seigido Ryu a couple years later and we started doing things on both sides. I trained southpaw a lot. At my dojo, it helped that my instructor is a lefty. So he does most things left-handed. And then when, after years of training in Seigido, I went back and started cross training like every week back with my uncle in Philly. So once a week I'd drive up to Philly from New Jersey and train to that. And the first night working on the bag, I sat with my hands like this and my uncle goes, "You're a lefty?" and I'm like, "No!" But that's because this had become so natural to me. So when my instructor told me that for my fifth degree project, cause we don't really have tests set that level, it's more time in with a huge emphasis on instruction.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure. A lot of schools are like that.

Victor Guarino:

It's a project to give back into the system. I like the fact that he gave me something that I don't use when I am in a situation that I need to rely on my Mushin, rely on my second nature stuff. Jiu jitsu's not coming out of me. So I liked the fact that I had to basically, I basically spent a year and a half, 18 ish months focusing very hardly on jiu jitsu's. And it showed because our jiu jitsuing increased...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. I'm sure...

Victor Guarino:

In it's proficiency.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'm sure that and that makes sense. What about your relationship to it? You said you didn't like it as much. Did your affinity for it change? Did you like it a little more?

Victor Guarino:

My affinity for it changed a little bit...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Okay.

Victor Guarino:

Because of that. But it changed even more so because I've also been cross training with a gentleman by the name of Mike Martin that I've met through an organization that we're a part of, and I've been trained. He teaches Baguazhang, which is one of the three primary Kung Fu arts taught in China, of the internal arts. There's Xing Yi, Tai Chi, and Baguazhang. Which is basically based around circle walking. What I did not know. Cause I care so much more about who I learned from than what I'm learning. That's why I've taken Tai Chi, because I met a guy that I really respected in Florida. He was a really cool guy. I liked his approach to the arts, and he was like, "I teach a class," and I was like, "I'd love to take it." He's like, "I teach Tai Chi." I'm like, "All right!" I'll be 25 to 30 years younger than every other person in the class. That's fine. So I wanted to learn from this other guy. And what I discovered, which I did not know about Kung Fu, is it's a lot of grappling. Like a lot of what Bagua is, is just how to, instead of like what my dog was doing, instead of retreating and coming back in, it's a lot of how to get out of the way of an attack while maintaining your forward motion. So it's a lot of, you're coming at me in a straight line, I'm gonna step off and move around you just out of reach so that my direction is moving forward at all times. And then once I found myself there, I'm like, oh, well this is the perfect position for this choke or for this arm lock, or for this. And it actually, I was just sharing this with him last Wednesday as we were talking, eating, it made my appreciation for jiu jitsu especially in a self-defense scenario. It made me appreciate it a lot more because it does a lot of, I'm gonna lock your arm up, wrench you in one direction, and then let you fall and hit the ground. As opposed to what a lot of people think of jiu jitsu, thanks to things like the UFC and pursuing jiu jitsu is I'm gonna hold you and pin you and lock you down. And that's the real thing that I was always uncomfortable with. I'm not a big guy. I'm not under any illusions that if I'm holding someone on the ground in a pin, that there isn't a world where someone who is big enough and strong enough can't just lift the hundred and thirty-five, thirty-seven pounds. That is me, right off the ground.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

Right? So I would rather not tangle myself up in that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Makes total sense. Especially when we remember that attackers are generally bigger. Right? Like it tends to work out that way and yeah.

Victor Guarino:

You're not attacked by someone smaller than you, generally speaking. Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's pretty rare unless they're, you know, multiple, multiple attacker scenario.

Victor Guarino:

So between those two things, I really enjoyed... my love for jiu jitsu kind of increased a little bit just because I've seen it from a different perspective in the sense of self-defense. I've never been big in competition and in tournament fighting. I've had a few tournament experiences right in the beginning of my training that have caused me to be like, "Ah, this isn't really for me." The simplest of which is I'm a big fan of the calf kick and, you know, just that quick roundhouse kick to the front leg to off balance them, to back fist someone in the head. I've probably lost more points in point sparring via warning of kicking too low or kicking to the knee than I've actually ever gotten. So that really kinda right away put me a bad taste in my mouth for tournament fighting. And I've always just been more into the lines of, "Okay, well how am I gonna use this to defend myself? How am I gonna use this to whatever?" And like I said before, I don't wanna be rolling on a ground on concrete. I don't even wanna be anywhere lower than hip level with my eyes. If I can help it, I want, you know...

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'm with you. I feel the same way.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. One of my instructors once said to me was, "When someone tells you every fight ends on the ground," absolutely right! When you're on the ground and I'm on my feet, that's when the fight ends.

Jeremy Lesniak:

 Right.

Victor Guarino:

You know, I'm not gonna end on the ground with you. That's if we're both on the ground, the fight's still on. So that's just, but through Bagua, through that thing, I discovered a lot of ways to use. What I refer to as combat jiu jitsu, which is less pins and more, once I have a lock, I'm gonna wrench it so that something either breaks, fractures, or tweaks in the wrong way, or I get your body moving. We have this one technique. Before I moved, my instructor, we, it was the only thing that we did martial related, and we did it specifically because he refers to it as the Victor. Because it is, I don't know how familiar you are with Sankajo. The wrist lock Sankajo. In essence, you get their hand or their palm is down and then you twist it up underneath. I like to do it from hook punch. So, basically someone throws a hook punch at my head and as my Bagua instructor has often said, "If someone throws a punch at you, that's a gift. Be your cheerful giver and take that arm. It's yours now, do with it what you want." And then you slip underneath the arm and then you hold their arm. Now, normally you lock it and pin it. I like to hold it and twist it completely underneath so that it breaks at the wrist, at the elbow, and probably dislocates the shoulder. And then I let it go and then the fight is over unless the person wants to continue to fight with a broken arm. But the whole thing is I would always do that for demos and competitions because the fight's over because I'm on my feet. He may be on his feet, but he has an unworkable arm. You know, and that's how I've always approached my traditional Japanese jiu jitsu when, you know, people always have always asked me when they say, "What is Seigido Ryu?" The basic answer is it's traditional Japanese karate mixed with traditional Japanese jiu jitsu and we fight from a kickboxer stance because that's what my instructor did. He was an American kickboxer who got injured two weeks before his first professional fight.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh.

Victor Guarino:

And so then generally, I used to get with the UFC and MMA, I used to get the questions of, "Oh, so like Brazilian jiu jitsu guys," you know, stuff. You do a lot of that ground stuff and I'm like, "No, we do all of the stuff that they do on the ground, I like to do from my feet." Because I've fallen on concrete. I don't know if you have.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah, it's not pleasant. I've rolled on concrete and pavement and it's not enjoyable.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. I've executed, my instructor partially because a lot of the other black belts either have, they're construction guys and a lot of them are retired construction guys. So not only are they older, they were not kind to their bodies over the years. So when it came to teaching the lower ranks to the inner classes, break falling, I got the job. Also because I learned how to break fall by being thrown a lot. So I learned how to lower my body down, how to be in control of my body while I'm in mid-air, as best as you can. And so I would always start every one of those classes by saying, "Hey, I know you all are here to learn to punch and kick and fight. What I'm about to teach you, this is the most important thing that you're gonna learn in martial arts." I have used break falling more often in my life than any other aspect of my martial arts. I am a klutz, I'm a clumsy person. And I remember there was one time in high school where I was, you know, being a cool high school kid, walking backwards, trying to sweet talk a couple girls in that spot on the curb that bends down.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh!

Victor Guarino:

I stepped, fell straight backwards, did the most perfect break fall that you would expect you would want.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I love it!

Victor Guarino:

Like if you could record it. I did a beautiful breakfall back into a backwards shoulder roll, back up onto my feet. And they were all concerned. "Are you okay, Victor? Are you okay?" And I was! I was totally fine, but I hid my left arm from them because I was bleeding straight down cause I slapped concrete.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right.

Victor Guarino:

Slapped asphalt. Of course you're bleeding, but it's better this, back of your head, spine...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right, you gotta pick a spot.

Victor Guarino:

All that stuff, so.

Jeremy Lesniak:

How did it go with the girls? Were they [23:43.72]?

Victor Guarino:

I was a good friend to them.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Oh.

Victor Guarino:

And they wished that their boyfriends were, you know, like me, but that pretty much was all me in high school anyway, so.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I get that. Oh, I want to go back because we kinda moved over a piece that I think is really important for a few different layers. I mean, you've just moved in with your girlfriend, you had a long distance relationship, and so you've got the new dynamic of that. And on top of that, you are training together, not in a pure sense. Now this, to a lot of people is a recipe for disaster. And I suspect, just because we've had conversations about a variety of things in the time that I've known you. This is not something you've just casually decided would happen that there have likely been conversations between you and Karen about this and what the parameters are and anything. You want talk about that?

Victor Guarino:

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I'll talk about that cause it does have a lot to do with my perspective on training and the martial arts in general. And people always are surprised at things, and this last October was my 22nd year of officially training in traditional martial arts. Like I said, I had a few years boxing before that, it was just, I dunno, but it was my 22nd year being a traditional karate guy. And obviously in that time, my perspective on training has changed immensely. And I tend to hyper focus about some things. And it becomes like a whole part of my being outside of martial arts. Like I used to talk to my students and I've talked to other people about this, is that I think that everyone should do martial arts for at least three to six months of their life. Whatever it is, whatever style it is, I think that it's beneficial for everyone. I think, I can't remember if it was high school or if it was college, but I wrote a paper like a persuasive essay on why I think like in China, American schools should teach a form of martial arts and gym as opposed to baseball, soccer, you know, just generic climb this rope as fast as you can. I think it would highly be better to do martial arts. But I think that being said, a lot of people do martial arts. There are very few people who I consider martial artists. And the way that I make that distinction is it's the people who martial principles permeate their life. Every conversation that they have is in the context of, you know, the yin and yang of things or, you know, we'll balance, you know. I use the term Mushin all the time. I was teaching a personal training client of mine, and I said the word, I told him yame outta nowhere. He looks at me and he, I was like, "It means stop. I'm sorry." So now, you know, when I go and I talk to new clients and stuff like that, I have to tell him and be like, "Okay, here's a list of things that I might say in Japanese. I'm sorry, this is what they mean. It's just, it's habit." And because of that, everything that I've done... so I've worked with my instructor. And then this goes back and I'm getting back to the thing with training my girlfriend. I've worked with my instructor. I worked for him for one straight year through the summer, right after I got my black belt. And then again when I moved back to New Jersey, on and off on jobs. He has a construction renovation company. He's been frank to me, not just Kyoshi DeAngelo. I call him Kyoshi cause my brain has a disconnect where whatever you introduce yourself to me the first time I meet you, that's what you are, you know, so I can't disassociate that. But he's my friend and I've been able to with him in a way that a lot of the other black belts, especially the older black belts who started training when they were adults, have been able to do in the sense of when we bow each other and we walk off of the floor, he's not my master. He's not, like he's an older man. I'll still learn a lot from him about life and about things because he's got just a well of experience. But he's my friend and I grew up with two older sisters. I was friends with a lot of their friends before I had peers. So I'm used to that whole having friends who were different age groups of mine. I used to either have friends who were two to three years younger than me, or five to six years older than me. And so to me, to have a friend who started training in the martial arts many years before I was born, founded the school that I teach in pretty much the year before I was born, you know?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

That's the thing. And so like he would always tell me that he appreciated me because when he would try to have that relationship with a lot of other people that were trained under him, they would just tell him what they thought he wanted to hear because he's their instructor and not have a relationship with him. And I'm like, "Listen, we bowed off the mat. I respect you, but I completely disagree with this. If this is how you wanna run your dojo, that's fine. It's your business. You are the business owner. I'll support you in front of the students." And he knows that. But behind closed doors, myself, another one of our black belts who came up the ranks with me, Anthony, he has the same type of relationship. Him and I, so vocal with him about things that we think that he should do, things that we disagree with him, and because of that relationship. And it helps also a little bit that Karen has a black belt and I respect her as a black belt from another school system that the way that I view it is that she's not my student so much as she is working her way through the ranks.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Okay.

Victor Guarino:

And getting certified.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That makes sense.

Victor Guarino:

And to definitely make things clear cut, she's not on my list of students. She's on my instructor's list of students back home. Like we talked to him about this beforehand. I may be teaching her, but when she gets her certificate, my signature's gonna be three down. There's gonna be Kyoshi's, then a gentleman that...

Jeremy Lesniak:

It sounds more like a tutoring relationship. Like a T.A.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

An assistant professor. This is not her reporting to you. This is you sharing something in support of her pursuing something with him.

Victor Guarino:

Right.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That makes a lot of sense.

Victor Guarino:

Absolutely, and honestly, it's the best way. I had some people tell me when they found out that I was moving here and they're like, "Oh man!" They're like, you know, "You've already gotten assistant instructor in her." You know, "She may not know your stuff, but she's competent and you can slap a first on her, you know, in your system. You're a Shihan, you're a 5th, you can do that." And I'm like, "Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh." One, she would be extremely disrespected by that if I just handed her a rank.

Jeremy Lesniak:

As anyone should be.

Victor Guarino:

I would be extremely disrespected, disrespecting my instructor by doing that. And then when it came to like, if within this next year to 18 months, if we open a school, she gonna be teaching and you know, the students are gonna be looking at her, "Well, she does this technique completely different than you do this technique. Why?" You know, if I just hand her the rank and then we call it a day, you know. So, in a sense, yeah. I guess TA, a tutor would be a good way of putting it because right now I am her access to [00:32:00] the techniques, even though a buddy of mine, Anthony, are trying to put together a online teaching program for our instructor. He doesn't know about it yet.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So maybe he won't listen to this?

Victor Guarino:

No, no, no. It's fine. Well, so, the reason why it started is because one of the black belts moved to, I wanna say Connecticut. Ran a school there for a little bit. One of his former students got to about purple belt, stopped training because he went and joined the military. That guy found me and was like, "Hey, I see that you teach online." And I was like, "I do teach online," but it's more like, I teach cardio kickboxing online and I teach personal training online. Teaching jiu jitsu online, super difficult. But it just so happened that Anthony, whose wife is in the Coast Guard, was stationed in the same base that that guy worked out of at that time. So I connected them. Stuff happened. He didn't get to train with my martial arts brother before he got to ship out, but he still wants to earn his black belt in our style. He got more than halfway there. So we just started making videos and then Anthony was like, "Well, why don't we just make videos and we can just build a website where students have access to certain videos depending on what rank they are, pre-recorded with the testing requirements." So it was kind of this accidental thing that we started working on and it's not complete yet. I gotta work, I gotta film some videos, which I have Karen to help me with that he wasn't able to do because he doesn't have a partner right now to demonstrate technique on. But this purple belt in the military is gonna be kind of like our test dummy for this project. And if it turns out to be well, then it's just another avenue in which we can bring money back into our homeschool. We can make a little bit of money on the side as well. And honestly, it'll probably end up being his 5th dan helping the system project.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right on.

Victor Guarino:

So that's kind of where that stands. He's done a lot of work on it. I've done very little but that's just...

Jeremy Lesniak:

What are your thoughts on online training, you know? And let me preface that question. Let me contextualize that question with pre pandemic, it was almost universally hated. The idea of training online, go to a school, don't do that. And you know, I'd kind of chime in and say, "Look, you know, everybody's coming from a different place. Sometimes circumstances are different." You know me well enough to know that.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You know, I create space. But now, I think people have realized, "Oh! There are some upsides to this." The idea of being able to pause, stop, rewind, watch in detail, watch in slow mo are really, really cool." And no, you're not gonna figure out the mechanics of an armbar solo unless you're, I don't know, you're like, "Ah! You know, I'm gonna put my wrist in this vice crank down." But there is still some value and it seems like as an industry, we've come to maybe not accept, but acknowledge that there is some legitimacy there.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. And it's interesting. About probably, I wanna say 2012 ish, 2013 ish, somewhere in, in that area, I moved to Florida. and I was there for 10 years. I went into a taekwando school for about six months. Got a guy that I met when I worked at a Chick-fil-A, came through the drive-through. He knew I trained. We got into a conversation with him. He goes, come, you know, try out and like, I had no interest in earning rank in taekwando, but I wanted to continue training. I wanted to continue my skill and stuff, and that was my avenue. I only did it for a little bit because I wasn't learning anything new. I was, shouldn't say that I was learning taekwondo. But I was already a third in my style. I had been exposed to other taekwondo based schools before within my training. So all of the things that I was learning wasn't increasing my abilities. So, time and whatever made me stop being able to train there. Pandemic rolls around and my instructor had to close his doors. But what he started doing, and now this is a guy I love, love him to death, but he's just not technology friendly. You know, he's not on Facebook. The school has a Facebook, but he's not on it. He had his daughter set it up. Myself and another couple other gentlemen, we admin it for him just because, you know, he's not on it. And he'll ask us, how's this doing? How's that doing? Like, that's it! And so for the first time, he's closed, students aren't allowed to go in to this commercial space that we have. And I call it that because he has access to it seven days a week, even though the school's not open seven days a week. So during the pandemic, him and a couple other black belts, which just go there and just work out with each other, you know. They felt comfortable enough with each other and that they were okay and they were the only ones that they were seeing. Them and their parents or in their, not parents, their spouses and families and stuff. And so what he started doing, because some of the students we're continuing to pay him during the three month shutdown, just out of goodwill. Never asked for it, nothing. And so he wanted to give back to them. So they were already at the dojo working out. They just started recording technique and from his really, really jank smartphone, I started getting text messages of him and some of these other guys that I had trained with of just technique. And I was like, wow! These were better quality. I could put them on my computer. We could create an archive, which he does have, but they're all terrible quality. Then he got a better phone. He started...

Jeremy Lesniak:

It's kind of a rule, right? Like all the videos we go back and watch, you know, whether it's, Nekoshi or Shima Koku, any of the videos I've ever seen, you're always like, okay, what's you gotta, you're squinting.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And you're enlarging and you're like, you're doing this and you're like...

Victor Guarino:

Right.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Uh, I think he's doing it like this?

Victor Guarino: R

ight. And because of the pandemic, I actually from Florida administered Seigido Ryu's, or helped administer Seigido Ryu's first digital black belt test at all. There was this one girl, she was getting ready to go, I wanna say either into the Air Force or off to college, and she was trying to get her black belt before she left, and then the pandemic happened. So she recorded herself doing the testing requirements and sent the videos to my instructor, who then sent them to two other black belts and myself and said, "Hey, just give me notes." It changed my perspective on a lot of things because I was like, well, one, this is really hard because normally when I administer a test, especially black belt test, I wanna make 'em sweat. I wanna ask 'em questions. I wanna be like, well, what are you doing there? Do this, do it from the other side. Like I wanna walk them through and throw them off their game a little bit. But you can't do that because it's all prerecorded. But the other thing that it showed me was there's something here. And when I was in Florida, I had looked into online training a lot. There's a guy, DKU who does a type of martial art that I was looking into. He has a nice online program as well. There's a place called Rising Sun Karate. Which is, has a school in New Jersey based outta Texas. They did online training. So I was looking at a lot of these online programs. I think that there's a place to it. I think that there is this space for it, but it can't just be like... back when I was homeschooled, my mom got tired of, well, I should say, I got tired of my mother's version of gym class, which was exercise videos from the eighties.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'm sorry.

Victor Guarino:

It is really funny. We even did a record, an exercise record from the seventies.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow!

Victor Guarino:

Which I still can hear it in my mind cause the descriptions of reach for the pizza was one of the moves, you know, to get you to lunge and whatnot. So my mom went to the library, she's like, we gotta get something that Victor likes. So she found this like Karate for Kids video. And that became my gym class for, you know, a month.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And this is before you started training?

Victor Guarino:

This is before I started training, absolutely. And now here's the thing, it's just a video and you know, it was cardio kickboxing. It was karate, but cardio kickboxing. Yes, I learned generically like where my hands go, where my feet go, this is what a front stance is, this is a horseback stance or a horse stance, but I wasn't like gaining a depth of knowledge that you'd get from in person. So I came across this, found one school that did it this way and this is something that I thought, and since the pandemic as a lot of martial arts are probably looking at, how do we do an online course? Because I've got, I mean, I have a personal training certification through ACE, the American Council for Exercise. I've got a bunch of friends. A friend of mine in St. Petersburg is a Pilates instructor. She built her whole business that she now teaches just full-time Pilates, mainly off of teaching digital classes.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow!

Victor Guarino:

And she started pre-pandemic. Two of my friends were personal trainer. 2020 happened, I reconnected with them like, "How did you guys fare? Because I know that you guys, man, how did you fare during the shutdown?" They're like, "Shut down? We got more business during the shutdown." Like one of them, him and his husband, they got stimulus checks during the shutdown, but he was still working. So they used that money to start a business. . You know, so I kind of started surrounding myself with these people who they do their stuff lives online. And how does your stuff live online and still maintain the sanctity of traditional martial arts? Cause one of the things that you'll never get just training online, because I was teaching my mom and I and my sisters were doing Tai Chi classes. I was teaching them Tai Chi over zoom during the pandemic.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Cool!

Victor Guarino:

And it was great! It was awesome. But you miss out on that camaraderie. You don't build the same relationships.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right.

Victor Guarino:

So when my buddy was looking into, well, how do we run an online program? I was like, listen, I've seen other schools do it this way. I think this is a great idea for us. In the Seigido Ryu sense cause that's really the only system that I've seen, that I've actually walked through all the ranks of. I say you can get through. We build a system where you can get to green, which is about halfway through the ranks, is right after you stop doing the intermediate. It's right when you enter into that intermediate level of training. All online, all digital. Here are your testing requirements. I think he even talked about costs this a month that gives you access to all of the pre-recorded videos of your rank and below. And then you get a once a week for one hour, a one-on-one with an instructor in that so that you can check in with them, ask them any questions, you know. If you want more one-on-one training, then we talk about, you know, then we're talking about private lesson area. But that's what you get, whatever. And when it comes time to testing, you have it written down. These are your requirements for your rank. Record yourself doing the requirements. Send them in with your testing fee. If you pass, we send you rank, we send you your belt, you now get access to the next thing, all the way up to green belt. In our system, especially because green belt starts where you have to do jiu jitsu stuff. That's where it gets murky. Now, another school, I think at the first school that I came across, it was this Rising Sun Karate place that I discovered. Cause they had places in Texas, they had places along the East Coast. They had a similar structure. And then their idea was, when you want to go higher than this intermediate level, or this beginner level, you can keep training online. You have to come and test in person. So whether or not you go and test in person at the school in Texas, or you go and test at one of the schools in the Northeast, you have to come because now the person, it's costing them something. And I'm a person who believes that in order to learn something, especially as a skill with a depth of knowledge, like a traditional martial art, it has to cost you something.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It has to be an investment.

Victor Guarino:

Right. And so for you to have to travel, to invest, that is something. And you can do that up through brown belt. Then I said, for black belt, our organization or our school is involved in another organization known as the CBBA, it's the Christian Black Belt Association which is part of the Shino Karano Kai International, which one of my instructors is an organization that he started. They hold a once a year conference where all the schools in the organization come together. We beat on each other for a weekend.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sounds awesome!

Victor Guarino:

It's great! And honestly, the seminars, you know, cause there's generally four or five seminars going on every 45 minutes to an hour and 15 or so Friday, Saturday into Sunday. That's not even the best part. The best part is, you know, three-ish, two-ish of my friends of like my core circle of guys that I talk to are from that organization, not from my school. So they're from different styles and systems that I've met over the years. I met my current Kung Fu instructor through that organization, you know. And so, you get a taste of something different. It's an opportunity to interact with different styles and systems just beyond your own. So our whole idea was if this person wants to get their black belt, cause if the reason why the instructor, my instructor's instructor, Sokay Reedner, put this whole thing together. One of the main reasons was he met a lot of guys running schools who no longer had people in above them. So they had petered out. They couldn't gain any more rank within their own systems and styles. But he'd say, I know an eighth in taekwondo, I should hook you up with them. They haven't done it in a while, but so what the CBBA started doing at our annual conference was holding belt tests where they would put together boards from different schools.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That's cool.

Victor Guarino:

And give people opportunities. Like give a third an opportunity to get his fourth. Maybe not under his original instructor, but he's not under him anymore.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. It's a problem. It's a problem that exists all over the place.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And I've seen a lot of solutions and I don't like some of them, you know, and I'm not gonna go any more specific than that, but some of the solutions out there I don't like. I like that because it's an attempt to continue the values that we're inherent up through, right? Like there's a trajectory, whatever school you're in, whatever system style, there's a trajectory. And I think trying to continue that is of value.

Victor Guarino:

One of the coolest experiences actually that I've ever had martially was at one of these conferences. I was a brown belt and I don't know if you are familiar with the term sokai rene.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hmm.

Victor Guarino:

Okay. So it's a Japanese term. It basically just means a board of tenths. Okay. So it's basically a bunch of tenth degree black belts from different styles and systems, and they sit on a board and it's generally something that happens. My instructor did it because Seigido Ryu is his system. He founded it and he presented his entire system and curriculum in one three to five hour session to this board of tenth degree black belts who were masters and the Sokai or the master instructors of their own system. Then those four guys sign a certification that says we certify this as an effective martial art. When I was a brown belt at one of these conferences when it was back in New Jersey, cause it moves around to different places to make it equally convenient and inconvenient for people depending on where it is, there was this gentleman by the name of Dave Scroll who was putting together a system. So, Sokai Reedner who passed away just recently, but back then he was like, we're having the conference, I'm gonna have all of these masters here from all of these different Japanese, Korean, Chinese systems, will put together a board and you'll stand before us during free time, present us your entire curriculum and we can get you certified so that your system is legitimate and backed, not just by the organization of the Christian Black Belt Association, but by all of these different already certified arts that exist.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right.

Victor Guarino:

My instructor was one of those guys that sat on the sokai rene and he came up to myself and this other guy, John, that I trained with and was like, "Hey, Mr. Scroll needs someone to beat on for the next four hours. Both of you come with me." So as punk brown belt who is 16, 17 years old, I got to sit in and watch an entire process of how a Board of Masters goes about certifying a brand new, not art, because there's nothing new under the sun, everything has been done or stolen by someone else, but a brand new system in the way in which it is taught. I got to sit in and watch, which was really cool.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That's really neat.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. So, going back to the training online thing, one of the things that I said to my buddy was, I would say that if this person would be serious about wanting to train and get their black belt, you gotta make a requirement, in my opinion, that they spend x amount of hours in-person training with a Seigido Ryu school. And just leave it vague. Cause again, there has to be a cost in order for something to have value. And leave it in that person's hand. I mean, if they are a white belt and they find themselves close to a school that teaches the style, let 'em drive. Let 'em drive and spend a few hours, "Hey listen, I'm gonna need to do this eventually for my black belt. I was wondering if I could put in some time training under you." Let 'em make the journey once a year to wherever the conference is that we have. Because my instructor, he always teaches at least two to three seminars. A lot of times if I'm there or if Anthony's there, they have us teach a seminar which we teach what we know. I mean, we've both cross-trained in other things, but we have the most time in our art, and that's just what we default to. So that's what we teach.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I got it. Makes sense. So, given the change, I mean, we kinda skipped over the Florida through New Jersey...

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Out, out west. You know, we don't have time to talk about everything.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

But what I'm finding interesting in what you're saying, I haven't heard any reluctance in any of this. I haven't heard any regret, any disappointment, any sorrow that you are now physically distant from your home martial arts school?

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. No, I mean, obviously, I think I learned more in the last 18 months. Maybe not technically speaking, but martially speaking, at my home dojo in New Jersey than I had in the previous 20 some odd years.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow.

Victor Guarino:

Because I was there all the time and the jiu jitsu thing is the least of things that I helped my instructor with in that time. We solidified a weapons program. Weapons used to be something that our school just taught on occasion because you know, back in the 70's when my instructor was trying to find a school to train in when he was, you know, his own punk kid, him and his friends would just spar with weapons. They would spar with bokken, they would spar with sai. That was the only traditional weapons training that he did and so that's kinda what he brought in to our school. And I'm like, I've got time. We have access to this school. I'll run a nunchuck class a couple times, which I did. And that helped us solidify, okay, well what do we want a weapons program to look like? You're teaching, you know, traditional sword, I'm teaching weapons. He had a little thing scribbled on paper so that he could figure out who had taken what, how many times. You know, we developed that. But as far as regret, regret is pointless. It truly is. I am a young guy, but I don't feel young. I've had a lot of stuff happen to me. I've moved a lot and I'd say besides when people ask me, what's your favorite movie? My least favorite question is, if you could live anywhere, where would you wanna live? Like, I don't care. I don't know. I don't really care where I live. I care more about the people and the why's in which I'm there. What has brought me there. Life is an adventure and I'm on it. And so if that means that, you know, I'm in Florida for 10 years, then that's where I am. Would I ever willingly move back there? No. I had a lot of stuff happen to me in Florida. My move from New Jersey to Florida left me very isolated from my support system, my dojo, my family, my friends. A lot of inner lapping, overlapping in that when I was in Florida and I separated myself from that, and I paid very dearly for it. I had a lot of hurt that went on during that. My move from New Jersey, because that's what led me back there, but my move from New Jersey to Kansas, immensely different. Immensely different in just my attitude in which I've seen now what terribly doesn't work. I don't regret any of those things because I wouldn't know now. I wouldn't know how not to be, you know. My friend Anthony, who was a big part of that support system when I first left and moved to Florida, he's not in New Jersey anymore. His wife's in the Coast Guard. They moved every four years. He was in Texas and now that he's got, I think three years-ish left in Virginia before he has to get up and move again. That's why he's not looking to open a school because what does even a school look like where he's gonna have to leave, you know? But here's the thing, this is a blessing that came out of Covid. Oh, we don't have to be in the same room. We don't have to be in the same state in order to be in relationship with each other. Anthony and I talk to each other every single week. Two of our other friends, Noah and Leroy, who are guys that we know through the CBBA, one of them lives in the Midwest. One of them lives in Philly or just outside of Philly. The four of us get together and we talk. We try to talk once a month, once every other month, because we can, you know. So, we're each on these individual adventures in our lives as young men taking whatever the day comes before us, you know, and we're just being smart about it. I remember, I'm an avid reader, as you probably can see from behind me and this shelf goes the entire length of the room, all the way down in that direction.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Nice.

Victor Guarino:

And so it is full. And this is what's left of my library. I sold a lot of it. But one of my favorite book series is the Chronicles of Narnia. And there's a time where Lucy, one of the main characters, they don't do something and something really bad happens, and a bunch of people die because they didn't turn left when they should have turned left. You know, they went right and later on she meets Azlan, the, you know, the lion, the powerful talking lion. And she's like, what [00:58:00] would've happened if I had just listened to you in the beginning? Would all those people still be alive? And he says something to her, to the extent of hours is not to know what would've happened, had we done this. But to do with what is it before us, to do what we can with what we have. And I always took that to heart. And there's another time in that series where someone gets up and they're about to go into battle and they say that make the statement of, let's go to sleep and tomorrow let's just take whatever adventures before us. And I'm like, that's such a martial arts mindset. And it always resonated with me is that if I'm in Kansas, I'm in Kansas. If two years from now we corporately decide, you know what, this isn't working out and we have opportunity to move to California, this is the last place on Earth I'd ever thought I would ever be willing to move, I'd move.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino: If something draws me there, I would move. Is there sadness? Yeah. In the perfect world, I'd be able to walk out the front door tonight and teleport back to my home dojo and teach my, you know, adults only beginner's class that I helped start, that my instructor had to take over for me, but I can't. So my only hope now is to look ahead and what looking ahead right now looks like is I want to get Karen to the place where she feels comfortable, at least with the beginner stuff. And then, we have our ear to the ground for opportunity to start teaching. I personally believe that myself, you know, my dad said this once to me when I graduated from college. He goes, if a doctor has no patience, they're no less a doctor. I am a teacher. Martial arts has given me so much. I love it. I said it before, I think I've heard you say something along the same lines, everyone should train in martial arts. It is benefit beyond, beyond learning how to fight and defend yourself. I think there's a place for... I just listened to your episode about, when you and Andrew were talking about whether or not martial arts instructors make bad self-defense instructors. And I agree with a lot of stuff that you were saying because I have witnessed us teaching a technique in self-defense that to me makes perfect sense because the movement that it was using is a movement that I personally have been practicing for 20 years. Not a movement that some of the other people in the class have. They learned it five minutes ago. So for them, I'm like, they're not gonna do that in this event. But I've been given so much more than just an ability to fight from martial arts. I had some acquaintance of mine just stopped training halfway through the ranks at his traditional Okinawa and karate school because it wasn't giving him what he needed. And I struggled and I kinda stayed silent for it cause he posted a TikTok about it and a lot of people gave him, Hey, you didn't give it enough time. You're really a disappointment. His instructor, basically, he called his instructor to tell them vocally, this month is gonna be my last month. I'm gonna finish out the month, but I'm gonna go elsewhere, you know. He really wanted to go to an MMA school. Basically he wanted to learn kickboxing and grappling cause he wants to learn how to fight. And his instructor had a very negative response to that and said, don't even bother coming in the rest of the month and removed him. And like I think that there's wrong in both those things, in all those things, but I understand the hurt that it comes from. And I struggled for a while cause he posted a lot of videos. This is not a decision that he came to lightly. But if he was just in that school to learn how to fight, he was missing out on an aspect of other things that he was getting...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure.

Victor Guarino:

For his life. And I think that there's so much more involved in, you know, martial arts that isn't done even in my home instructor school. Again, I love him to death. I owe Kiyoshi DeAngelo so much, so much. But like I told you, I've disagreed with some things. But when it comes to our public face and being in front of students, it's his school. It's his system. The answer is we always say us. Yes, I understand. I agree. Right? But then there are other things that he's told me. You know, when I ran a school in Florida, he goes, that's your school. I don't care about that. Do what you want. He's like, as long as your technique is taught the way I want it to taught, because that's the part that belongs to me and you are representing me in what you're teaching, how you teach it.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. He cared about the whatnot, the why, or the how or the when.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. You can go about doing it and that's why I'm a teacher. I don't care even when like I worked in a church for a while as an associate youth pastor. I've worked for an organization called Young Life, running after school programs for teens in high schools and middle schools and stuff. I don't like to preach at people. My favorite moment and I used it to cause I was one of the only substitute teachers who hated when I was given busy work. I was like, just let me teach. Gimme something that you want me to teach cause I like it when I can bring a student or anybody into the moment where they are either understand something enough because they've come to the conclusion themselves, or I can ask them the right question that makes them want to find out more on their own. I've always taught like that. Because I think if you just say, throw a kick this way, that person may throw that kick that way, but they're not gonna understand why they throw the kick this way. They're not gonna understand, well, better is a bad word but I'm gonna use it, why throwing it your way is better. It might not be better. It might be better for me, it might not be better for them because their body's different. So there are things that I've always wanted to do in a school, and even when I taught in Florida, I taught out of the church gymnasium, I taught out of a bodybuilder athletic facility. So I didn't have a space that was my own. I wasn't allowed to be there five days, seven days a week. So there are things that like, I always wanted to implement within a school that I wanted to teach that I'm excited to get the opportunity to do. And one of those things has to do with the, how are you teaching your girlfriend when she's technically a lower rank than you? I am super uncomfortable with the term Shihan. Immensely uncomfortable with it. I loved when I was a Renshi. I mean, I didn't love it because I didn't feel deserving of that promotion cause it came outta nowhere. My instructor came to see how my students were doing in Florida for the first time. He was visiting his family there. He came to visit. I was excited cause I fear my students are gonna get to learn from him. I was a third at the time. And so he's like, ah, I didn't bring my Gi. I'd still like to come to class which terrified me cause I know what that meant. He sat behind my students and watched me teach for an hour and 15 minutes.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I'm cringing just hearing this like...

Victor Guarino:

And then like the worst thing was halfway through it, halfway through my lesson, he gets up and without a word, walks out of the room. [01:06:00] Didn't know that he walked to his truck to get my certificate and to get a belt because he promoted me at the end of that class in front of my students, which was a high honor for me. But that terrified me.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Because you didn't know why?

Victor Guarino:

Because I didn't know why, but I liked the term Renshi in Japanese means polished instructor, which I prefer that term. I actually still have a student who refers to me in a set because my school shut down and that's what she knew me as. I'm not gonna correct it. I'm okay with it because that's what I feel like I am. And so when I got promoted to Shihan, which everyone will say means master, it's fifth in our system, is the first master rank. Oh! I hate that! I'm so grossly uncomfortable with being taught of being a master and what that entails. But because I'm me and I'm hyper obsessed with things, I started breaking down the actual Japanese term and I found that master, like most Japanese to English translations is terrible. It's a terrible translation. And even like the word do at the end of Seigido, karatedo, do meaning way, not accurate. It's more accurately the way a man goes or the path or journey like it has so much deeper meaning than just the word. So I looked it up and I got okay with the term Shihan because a more literal translation of the word means masterful instructor, or basically in implying that your instruction is at a masterful level. You're beginning to master the art of passing on what you know to someone else. I'm way more okay with that because off the mat,  I'm no one's master. My instructor is my friend off of my mat. I respect him because I think every person is due respect. One of the tattoos that I thought very long and hard about getting is on the inside of my arm, it's the Japanese word ronin, a master list wanderer is kind of what it means. And I got it because my instructor and my, in essence my kung fu instructor, they're people I'm learning from and I respect them immensely. I respect their martial art. Otherwise I wouldn't be learning from them. But I respect them as humans so much more. That's why I want to learn from them. Their word is not law to me. There isn't a man alive, legality, politics, stuff aside that could look me in the eye and say, you have to do this because I said so that I would listen to it. Like each person is their own man, you know. I have no control or say over anyone. No one has any control or say over anyone else. I am tempered by the fact that every human being that I interact with, I believe, has value based solely on the fact that they are a human being and I have to respect that value. How much more or less respect they get after that is up to them. And so when I have students, yeah, I'm gonna be your Shihan, I'm gonna be, if they wanna call me sensei, I still have an instructor's shirt that has sensei embroidered on it. I'm totally fine with wearing that and not gonna go and get it reembroidered. They wanna call me... I had students who knew me just as a, because I ran in after a Saturday morning boxing program in Florida for youth out of the church. That's how I started before I even started my martial arts program. Some of those students, some of those boxers came and became students of mine. They still struggled with calling me Vic when we were in Gis. I didn't correct them because I am that person. I am Vic. I know that they don't mean disrespect if someone calls me Shihan.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I think that's the key right there is take a why.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. I've also known other instructors who you don't call them master or you don't call them what their rank is. They get super disrespected.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Even off the mats.

Victor Guarino:

Right. Even off the mat. And I'm like, you're not. Like, I've had bosses. I've worked a lot of different jobs in my life. I think I'm at 38, I think.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow!

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That's a lot of jobs.

Victor Guarino:

And it's generally the reaction that I get from a lot of people, and I don't think that it's a long thing. My record is I've held five at the same time. I did that for six months.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I've done that. I've done four.

Victor Guarino:

Highly unrecommended!

Jeremy Lesniak:

No, it's not a good idea.

Victor Guarino:

I can do two, maybe three if one of those is like a freelance consulting thing where I can do my own hours is doable. But anyway, I used to have bosses guilt trip me all the time. We really need you. Listen, you need to, well, why? Why can't you come in? Well, one, it's my day off. Right, but why can't you come in? I don't need to tell you that. Well, yeah, you do. And it's like, well, no. See cause when I'm on the clock, I'm your employee. When I'm off the clock, we have no relationship. Therefore, I really don't owe you why I'm not coming in on my day off. And I recently had one of our students, he's 17, he got his black belt, got his first job. And I was like, listen, I was like, I'm gonna tell you something that I wish that someone had told me when I was a kid. One, if someone's yelling at you and arguing at you, not with you, but yelling at you and belittling you, you don't owe that person the respect to stand there and be their verbal punching pack. You have every right to just say, this is not constructive. Excuse me. And walk away. You're not held captive there. The second thing is that your bosses authority ends at the door when you're clocked in and out. And whenever I get a new job, what I tell them is, when I'm clocked in and I'm in this building, I'm 100% yours. I will break my back and bend over backwards for you doing the best that I can do for you. But if you make a schedule and I'm supposed to be out by two, I have other priorities, other pursuits, I'm going to clock out and I'm gonna walk out that door and not even think about work because that's the level that I'm at. Right? And obviously this is for like hourly positions where you do clock in and out and where I'm just at a low level position and I draw that line. Now, the last place that I drew that line was when I worked at a Wawa Pumping Gas. Did my boss call me in on days that I wasn't working and ask if I could come in? Yes. Did I go in? Yes. Did I try to go above and beyond? Did I stay late when I could? Yes. But people have this tendency to give them an inch expect. It's an old cliche, but it's true. Give them an inch, they'll take a mile. If you set the precedent of people that you are their servant, they have to listen to you no matter what you say, that's what they're gonna do. And I've been used and abused by many people that I've worked for because I tried to always go in when they called me, always be available. And I got no result except I made other people richer. And I gave bosses the ability to stay home. Now, when I'm given a project and I have authority, when I've been a manager of places, well now all of a sudden, my level of responsibility changes. Now I am more responsible when I'm not in the building. Now I do have to think about, well, when I clock in or when I clock out, I'm also responsible. I gotta be there, you know. Because if one of the employees gets sick and an emergency happens, that then falls on me and I take that responsibility understanding that it's not just a pay raise.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

I view martial arts instruction as that as well. If I get a student, a student gets in a fight outside of school, I'm responsible for them, right? We had a hard fast rule. If you use anything that we teach you outside of this dojo, you were immediately expelled from this dojo. I've only seen one person get expelled for the dojo and it was not for fighting, but we make that hard fast rule so that people understand that when I do this to someone outside, this is a serious matter. This is last result. It's another thing that I heard. I think it was you or Jeremy who said, or maybe it was one of your other guests, I don't know. I heard it on the whistlekick podcast that we trained so hard every day that there's a 5% chance that what we train is going to come into play in our given day to day life. But if it does come into play, it's gonna be the most important thing that we do that day.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right.

Victor Guarino:

And that's insane when you think about it. But on the flip side, that's where it comes in that I used to be an angry kid. Martial arts helped me not be as angry anymore. And that has nothing to do with the fact that I now can punch my fist through a bag and I can throw someone twice my size. You know, I've always used martial arts to center myself. It's the place where I can go and be completely present in the moment. Not thinking about past, not thinking about future, not worrying about any of that stuff. But what I'm doing is right here.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I love it. It's a great place to start to wind down.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

We've only had like three, maybe four subject we've covered today. And I liked how they threaded together. You have a podcast of your own?

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Talk about that for a moment.

Victor Guarino:

So it's called the Tangents Podcast, cause my cousin loves math humor. It's called Tangents, but we refer to it as Tan X as if you're finding the tangent line when you're making a graph. Because the definition of a tangent is two point or a point that branches off of another point and never yet finds its way back to the main point. You know me as much as you do. My cousin is me 10 years ago. There's a 10 year difference between pretty much everything actually. He's 10 years younger than me. He started training 10 year the same time that I did, but 10 years he's been in the arts 10 years less than I have. We've had some branches and delineations in it. He is six foot four, I am not. But we are both Guarino's through and through. And when we sit and talk, we sometimes apologize to the people who have to bear witness to it. Because some of the stuff that we get off on is insane.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I've listened to your show a bit.

Victor Guarino:

Yeah. So, one day I was driving, when Karen and I were still long distance, I was driving back to the airport and on the highway, like for about 5 to 10 miles, all of the electricity just went out on the highway. Traffic lights, businesses that line in the highway. This is the freakiest thing, one of the freakiest things that ever happened to me. And it happened three times in a two month period of time.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Wow.

Victor Guarino:

It was right the year after, it was 2021. It's after the shutdown. And I think the grid just was not used to the strain of power again. And they kept having to cycle stuff off in order to do repairs. And so I was talking to him and I've been wanting to do a podcast for a while, and then that happened and he goes, dude, don't tell me anymore. Just call me on Discord when you get home. So we just called on Discord and he recorded it and we just talked for like three hours. It was some weird conversation. So then we just started getting together every week and talking about it, and it turned into this thing called the Tangents podcast, where we stream live on Twitch. And then probably a week later on Spotify and Apple Podcast and Google Podcast and Anchor, you can find us on all those places.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. What are the relevant usernames for any of that?

Victor Guarino:

So this is where it all comes under Realm, R E A L M of Logres, L O G R E S is all of the relevant usernames for that. And that's because there's other things in other projects that we're working on in the background of the Tangents Podcast, that the Tangents Podcast is just underneath that. So that's what the Instagram is. It's all one word. It's all lowercase. And there's a link in the Instagram, one of those handy linktree's that you can...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah, we're gonna drop that link in here...

Victor Guarino:

That you can find all of the stuff on.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Awesome.

Victor Guarino:

But we refer to that first season as season zero, which you will not find. He still has it somewhere and it is awful. There riddled with technical issues, so unfocused. But now we've settled into a good three week pattern, which was completely by accident. His sister made our logo for us, and she's made three different colors. And she's like, yeah, I picked the one that you like, pink, green, and blue. And we're like, I like 'em all but we both like the blue one. And when we started, what was referred to as season one, we did it on the topic of body dysmorphic disorder. Just something that I happen to be reading about. I've dealt with it myself personally. I tell people all the time, like, I'm a personal trainer, fitness is a huge part of my life. Martial arts is a huge part of my life. I grew up with people in love and compassion telling me, you know, Victor, you need to eat more. So when I tell you and other people, the version of me that you see is not the version of myself that I have in my own brain. It's taken years, years of having to study the body, another martial arts thing. For me to understand that I'm not a small person. I'm not weak and inadequate.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Nope.

Victor Guarino:

And so that was a topic that was near and dear to my heart and I was like, I don't wanna just talk about it. So we took three weeks and him and I studied hard, like we had medical papers. So we talked for like 40 minutes, not giving our opinions, just basically reading research and reading through paper and being someone's Wikipedia.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Kinda understand the subject. Yeah.

Victor Guarino:

And then we spent the second half of that episode talking about it. And then the very following week we're like, we just need a break. So we decided that we were just gonna, every three weeks we were gonna research a thing.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I love it.

Victor Guarino:

And so basically what we call the blue episodes are mind episodes where we do a heavy research episode. And you're gonna talk about something like, I know this week it's gonna be on the topic of tea. So my cousin was given a book by his grandmother called The Story of Tea and it is exactly that. It is how tea and the process of tea making started and how it permeated the world. And so it's gonna be basically me interviewing him on the topic of tea. And then we will generally have a green episode after that. Which are generally chaotic because we're coming off of a heavily scripted focused episode. But we try to focus on what we refer to as our body goals. Things that we're trying to do better for ourselves body. And that could be, like for me, you know, one week I was like, I wanna work out more. I wanna make sure that I'm at least working out or I'm doing my Kung Fu training and my Seigido Ryu training consistently enough that I am at least maintaining my level. For him, that same week it was, I need to drink less coffee. Just things that will better ourselves on the physical aspect. Then the pink episodes, which we just posted, one that was just called Tired Souls because we both had had a week from hell, are just more practices of meditative nature for our spirits, for our souls, what we can do better for our emotional center. Cause regardless of what an individual's religious or faith-based beliefs are, I have very strong ones. I've studied others outside of my own. All of the main ones have the same imagery of body, mind, and spirit. They all agree that the human has at least these three aspects of their life. So we've kinda built a structure of the Tangents Podcast to every three weeks, we're talking about the mind. Every three weeks we're talking about the body, every three weeks we're talking about the soul. And completely happenstance, it just so happens that it takes about 90 days to build a habit. Right? And so, in talking about things and setting goals for ourselves, him not to drink as much coffee for the next three weeks, you know. Me to spend five minutes a day, you know, in just quiet meditation with nothing. Nothing but maybe like background white noise. If I can focus and spend three weeks doing that, my soul's gonna be in a better place than it was three days.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure.

Victor Guarino:

If you can spend three weeks working out on a consistent schedule, your body's gonna be in a better place than it was three weeks ago. If you can spend three weeks studying a topic, so we're like, he's doing the tea. I'm already preparing for episode one of season two, which is gonna be the 16th of January. I'm reading a book called Becoming a Supple Leopard.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Kelly Starrett?

Victor Guarino:

Yep. It's all about movement. And so...

Jeremy Lesniak:

Great book.

Victor Guarino:

It's gonna be opposite. He's gonna be interviewing me on what I've learned from it.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Nice!

Victor Guarino:

One of my fellow students and my Bagua instructor highly recommended the book from me, and it gels so perfectly with all of the other stuff that I'm doing in my life.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right on.

Victor Guarino:

And I love it. So that's kind of the cycle that we fell into happily.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Cool! I love it. I hope people do check it out. It is good stuff. And from that username, people can get ahold of you and find you...

Victor Guarino:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And see all the things that you've got going on. You know the show, so you know how we close up. And I'm gonna turn it over to you and say, you know, what do you wanna leave everybody with today? How do you wanna close?

Victor Guarino:

I don't think I'll close the way that we've been starting to close our show, because it is such a martial principle and it's a quote that has haunted me. I think you could relate to this, there are quotes that are like, good and meaningful and resonate with you. Then there are things that people say that haunt you your entire life. Meaning no matter what you do, they stay with you. It's kinda like when one of your students, I don't know, says something that you've always said to them, back to you, which I've had happen to me, you know, spit your own advice back into you. But it's a quote by, I think Aristotle quoting Socrates is supposedly something that he said at his final trial before he was put to death, is that "The unexamined life isn't worth living." It is the perfect martial principle because if you just go, if you enter a traditional martial art and you just punch and kick, and you can hit the bag with some monochrome of force, and you say, that's good. You have done martial arts, you're not a martial artist. You haven't approached that kick from a martial arts mindset in the sense of how am I generating power. Examine that kick. Is there a way that I'm telegraphing? Can I make it faster? Can I make it sneakier? Can I make it more powerful? Can I make it more proficient in my movement? And then if you take that aspect out of the martial arts, what am I eating? Do I need four zebra cakes today? Could I eat more vegetables, right? Because there are definitely people who just, you can exist in life or you can live your life. And I think that if you don't examine your life, then you're just, you're living a life that's not worth living. Not saying that that person's not worth living, but they're not living up to their potential. That's my goal as a martial arts instructor, is my goal in life with what I believe in most personally and spiritually, is I just want people to be the best version of themselves. And I think that's what Martial Arts gives them the opportunity to learn. Right now, you are a version of yourself and that's great. We are all in process. I want to help you in whatever little or large way, be the best version. And if everybody did that, if everybody was just about helping the people around them be the best version of themselves, be a crazy world that we would live in. And that's kinda what I would love to build towards.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I really enjoyed getting to know Victor better through this conversation. I've gotten to know him a bit over the last few months and really enjoy talking to him. Of course, here on Martial Arts Radio, we get to talk at length and so we did. We had a good talk and I learned a lot about him and I learned a lot in general. I always learn from our guests and today was no exception. Victor, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you, appreciate you willing to come on and share your time and just go wherever the conversation took us. Listeners, go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com for photos, links, videos, all the good stuff, anything we talked about in today's episode, you will find link there. Some of it makes it into the show notes of your podcast app, but the full experience is only available at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Do you have a martial arts school? Are you responsible for a martial arts school? Would you like some help with your martial arts school? We have a consulting offering and I'm not gonna be modest. We crush it. And if you would like some help growing your school, increasing revenue, increasing profit, increasing student count, solving particular challenges, we can help you with all that and so much more. Go to whistlekick.com, go to the school section and find consulting under that heading. You wanna bring me in for a seminar? We can do that too. Constantly booking seminars into the future cause we can't book them into the past. Email me jeremy@whistlekick.com. Our social media is @whistlekick everywhere you might think of. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.