Episode 778 - Sensei Dan Sanz

Sensei Dan Sanz is a Kempo Practitioner and Instructor. He’s the creator behind the Art of One Dojo Youtube channel.

That’s where I started to see where Ed Parker drew from a lot of influence. He put judo in there, he put boxing, there’s kungfu in there, it’s a mixture. I started to see these layers.

Sensei Dan Sanz- Episode 778

Some people who train may drift away from martial arts eventually. Sensei Dan Sanz made sure that he comes back to martial arts all the time. Sensei Sanz is the creator of Art of One Dojo Youtube channel which strives to be an informational resource for Martial Artists and enthusiasts.

In this episode, Sensei Dan Sanz talks about his YouTube channel and online community, Art of One Dojo. Sensei Sanz shares how different martial arts disciplines can be blended and turned into an effective system. Listen to learn more!

Show notes

You may check out Sensei Dan Sanz’s YouTube Channel at youtube.com/c/artofonedojo

Show Transcript

Jeremy Lesniak: 

What's happened to everybody? Welcome. You're listening to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, episode 778 with today's guest since a Daniel Sanz. I'm Jeremy Lesniak. I'm your host for this show. I founded whistlekick. Because I love traditional martial arts and I wanted more and better, and that's what we do here. Everything we do here at whistlekick is more and better for you the traditional martial artist and the traditional martial arts community as a whole. I love what this community is globally, locally, and I'm investing everything I have in everything I am into supporting it because it means that much to me. Now, if you wanna see all the things that we're doing in support of you, go to whistlekick.com. It's our online home. It's the place we've got all of our stuff linked or available, and there's stuff over there like our free flexibility program. Literally free, just completely free. If you buy something over there, you can use the code podcast15 to save 15% on apparel or protective equipment, or trading programs. There's a lot over there. We also run events, so go check out whistlekick.com. I think you'll be surprised at the full extent of everything that we do. Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, it's a place to go. If you wanna get more, go deeper on this show, every episode we've ever done is available. You can sign up for a newsletter over there. You can tip us if you want to do that via PayPal, but go check it out. It's where you're gonna get the full show notes. You can search stuff there. There's a a lot of great stuff over there. Now if you wanna support the work that we do for the show and for the company in general, there's so many things you can do to help us out. You can follow us on social media and get even more stuff for free @whistlekick everywhere you might think of. You could also tell friends about this show, maybe share this episode. Hey, you gotta check out this episode. This was a great conversation. It reminded me of you. Or you've been talking about this same challenge that you're having, this person had some insight in it. You could also join our Patreon, patreon.com, patreon.com/whistlekick, starts at $2 a month, and we're gonna give you behind the scenes stuff. We're gonna give you bonus episodes. We're gonna give you access to book drafts, training program drafts, get you in on the school owner's mastermind. Do you want me to train you personally? All of these things and more happen as part of the Patreon. There's a reason like everything else we do, it continues to grow because we deliver overwhelming value to those who are willing to contribute. Now, if you love what we do, maybe you're already in the Patreon, you're saying, Jeremy, what else can I do to help? I love what you guys are doing. Go to the family page, whistlekick.com/family. It's a not quite secret page. It's not linked in the navigation. We want you to type it in. We're not gonna make it too easy for you because that's where we give you the most authentic, most exclusive behind the scenes stuff, as well as a complete list of all the ways you can help support the mission. Because we are all in this together. We are all family. We are all connected. And the more you help, the more we can bring you great episodes and products and events and everything like the things that we already do. So I had a wonderful time talking to Dan in this episode. We wandered a bit. Not really a surprise is it? Guests tend to wander. I tend to wander with them, but we talked about a story. That I think could have been really different. A story of someone who through no choice of their own started over multiple times and they did it willingly. I talk to people all the time, I don't wanna start over, I don't wanna start over, I don't wanna go back to white belt. I didn't get any sense of that. Dan embraced these changes and it led to, as we'll hear, some absolutely wonderful stuff and a deeper understanding of his relation to the arts and his training, and his technique in a way that I think any of us would be fortunate to experience.

Daniel Sanz: 

Hey, how are you, sir?

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Great! How are you?

Daniel Sanz: 

Good. How are you doing?

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I'm well, yourself?

Daniel Sanz: 

No complaints.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

With your color-coordinated shirt and your background. I'm so jealous. Great! Nice stuff.

Daniel Sanz: 

Thank you, sir. How you doing today?

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I'm well, I'm well. It's cold. I just lit a fire in the stove cause I turn off the furnace while we record and...

Daniel Sanz: 

Oh, I'm jealous. Where are you?

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I'm in Vermont.

Daniel Sanz: 

Oh, Vermont. I'm in Florida. We're in the one state on the map where it's still orange.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

It was 80 degrees the other day.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I was in West Palm two weeks ago.

Daniel Sanz: 

Oh. So, you know.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

It was nice to be outside in a t-shirt. No, don't get me wrong, by the end of winter, we're outside in a t-shirt too, because it's like, oh, 35, 40 degrees. That feels great.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah. I'll take the winter weather there. It's that summer weather that kills me.

Daniel Sanz: 

Oh. Oh, the summer's bad. See, winter's nice cause you know, thirties, forties, fifties. It's comfortable. It's not like, oh my God, I'm gonna freeze to death. But lately we're not even getting that like it's supposed to hit maybe the forties this weekend. We'll see. They've been forecasting that, it hasn't really happened yet.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

What's the temperature when the iguanas fall out of the trees?

Daniel Sanz: 

Usually around forties.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Forties?

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah. A little bit. Fifties they start slowing down. Forties is when they just can't move and they just start dropping.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I think that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. I just, you know, we don't have anything like that. You know, the closest we get is, I don't know, squirrels throwing acorns at us or something, you know. But the idea of having to look up cause there might be lizards dropping on your head.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah. And they'll just be laying everywhere. But during the summer you see them by the dozens out on the side of the road anyway. So we didn't used to have 'em. About 20 years ago, they weren't around like this, but now they're, yeah, now they're here.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Oh, crazy.

Daniel Sanz: 

Pets. Pets that people released and they just bread and this is a good environment for them and they just took over.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Sure. Let's do it. So, what's on your shirt?

Daniel Sanz: 

My shirt, Art of One Dojo.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Okay, nice. Tell me about that. You're wearing that for a reason, you're on this show, so you chose that shirt. Let's do that. Let's start there.

Daniel Sanz: 

Okay. Well, Art of One Dojo is a YouTube project that myself and my close friend and partner Zach, Mr. Zach has been on the channel a few times. We started this project back in 2018. It was actually kind of a funny story how it started. It originally was a marketing platform. We run a small video production company in Florida, and we were looking into YouTube marketing and we're like, well, why don't we build some sort of a package where we could do a whole bunch of series of videos, short videos that we could put together for clients to market their local business and get them on the search engines. And we're like, okay, cool. So you know, we planned it out. We had like a whole bunch of topics planned. We're like, well, why don't we go to my instructor and do like a free campaign just to kind of see how it works. And we went to him, of course, he was all about it and we did it. And in two different days of shooting, we filmed 60 videos and they were like one minute, like really quick one minute videos. Yeah. And we kind of felt bad cause we just kind of hit him with questions and he just had to just answer off the top of his head. So they're just really quick, rough, round the edges marketing videos. And it brought in a little bit, you know, it brought his school a little bit of business. We're like, okay, this is cool. And we were working on doing another series when he announced that he was closing the school and moving to North Carolina. And we're like, hmm. So we stopped it and we actually got busy with other projects. We started working on other campaigns, but never really got back to that. But over the course of a couple years, we noticed that it was still gaining a little bit of momentum. People were still subscribing and asking for content and were like, well, this is weird. We haven't released anything for a while. And they were just short little bite sized videos. Zach's like, well, why don't we do it? Why don't we pick it up again and have you host it? And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, sure, why not? You know, it was one of those things like, well, why don't we do this? Why don't we do this? And in 2018, my father passed away and we kinda like stepped back a little bit. I started to restructure and I had been in and outta the martial arts for a little bit, like, not training so hardcore cause there's a lot going on. And I'm like, you know what? I need to get back to my center, back to my roots. And I thought about the project, I'm like, why don't we actually do this project? And we just kinda threw together some topics. We thought it would be along the lines of parents watching YouTube, like looking for schools for their kids, or like researching topics, you know, well, my kid get hurt when my kid become a bully. Those seem to be hot topics. And we threw together a handful of videos and we put 'em up there and they started catching. But the funny thing was the people watching were not parents. They were actual lifelong martial artists. People who were asking, oh, we could, can you cover this? Can you cover that? And we're like, oh, this is a very different audience than we thought we'd have. And we just kind of rolled with it. And five years later we're still doing it. We're still putting it together.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Nice.

Daniel Sanz: 

And it's been a really fun journey and the one rule with the channel we've always had was we want to focus on the good that the martial arts can do. It doesn't matter the style, doesn't matter the practitioner, it's all about how can you improve your life through the martial arts whether it be culturally or for self-defense or you're rehabbing yourself, or it's a lifestyle change or a discipline, whatever. There's always good that can be taken from all the arts and that's kind of what we kinda niche ourself into.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Hmm. Well, we're certainly on the same page on just about everything that you said there a long time listeners know, you know. I don't care what you do, I care that you do it. I care that you enjoy. It works for you. And you know, I have no right to tell anybody else that they should train the way that they're training it. So to me that's the most arrogant thing you can do. You talked about in and out the martial arts, it's something that I think a lot of us experience. Most of us don't talk about it, you know, all of the answers are in your training. Well, not always. Sometimes they're better answers elsewhere. But at some point, you not only got started, but became really passionate. So, I wanna talk about those two points in time. Give us a bit about when, where, why you started, and then we'll come back and I'll ask you about when starting became something of real importance for.

Daniel Sanz: 

Okay. Well, my starter story is not that exciting. It's like a lot of people growing up watching martial arts films, mainly the Karate Kid, and then later Ninja Turtles. You know, as a 10 year old, I'm like, oh, I wanna learn karate because 10 years old.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

And I told my mom one day like, I would like to learn martial arts. And she's like, oh, oh, okay. And then we ended up moving, we were in Long Island at the time and we moved down here at the South Florida. And I guess she'd remembered I said that because she came up to me one day and she goes, we found this ad in the paper. It's a local karate school. You wanna try it out? I knew nothing about any styles. I just knew there was karate and kung fu. That's all I knew. I'm like, yeah, sure, why not? And I was 14 at the time. And I went to the school and did a first trial class. And it was very different than I expected. It was, you know, a lot of pad work, a lot of... I mean, first trial class, he introduced me to a couple blocks, first kick, a couple punches, and I got like a little taste, a little sampler of like what the curriculum was like. I'm like, ooh, this is cool. And I just kept going back and it was a Kenpo school. It was a Tracy Kenpo School, but at the time I didn't know what Kenpo was. We actually just called it karate in the school. And I didn't know the difference between one art from the other, but I just knew that I'd like this, this is what I wanted to learn, and I just kinda, that was my extracurricular. Like I'd go to school and then I'd hang out with friends and I would do karate, and that was pretty much it. That just became part of my lifestyle as I got older. And I never wanted to stop. Like, I just knew once I started like, yeah, this is where I wanna keep training. I never wanna stop this.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Nice.

Daniel Sanz: 

So it was just random, like the how and the when and where was just kind of like, hey, I wanna try this and it was just my, just literally an ad in the paper and then I just, it hooked me.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

So it's that transition that I find interesting from this is a thing that I'm trying out or I'm doing or I kind of enjoy to this is gonna be part of my life forever. And we hear a lot of those stories on this show and it's a part of the conversation that I think is under discussed. Because I think whether you're a school owner and you're trying to better understand how to retain students, or you're starting out and you're not quite sure where it's going to take you. Or maybe you've just been training for, you know, 40, 50, 60 years and you've been training so long and it's been such a big part of your life for so long that you kind of forget what it was like without it. And I think hearing those stories for those folks and a lot of others really can trigger some good stuff. So if you remember that transition from something I do to this is something I do, this is something I am, I'd like to hear about that.

Daniel Sanz: 

I would say the transition was definitely a slow burn. Because of course as a kid, you know, we got the curriculum and the syllabus and it's like, oh, here's what you learn, here's the game plan. I remember there was a line and it just said, if you train hard, if you come regularly, within four to five years, we give you a black belt. I'm thinking, oh wow. Like, that was so far on the horizon but like that's a cool goal to work towards. But as I took classes, I noticed that I became more comfortable with myself. My teacher definitely promoted, you know, being more assertive. I was an extremely, extremely shy kid. Like when I was young, I'd go to school and wouldn't talk for the first hour. I just was really shy and training with a group of students my age and engaging and eventually assisting with kids, I started to become a little bit more assertive and I became more comfortable with being myself. And also I became more comfortable with controlling my body. It wasn't just like flail like, you know, if you don't know how to fight, you just flail around. I started to learn coordination. I started to learn my body and space. And you know as a kid, one of the things that really terrified me was when a bigger kid would shove me, I felt completely, completely powerless. I'm like, this kid physically moved my body. I don't know how to stop this. It's just, even if it was psychological, the more I trained, the more comfortable I became in that asset of it. And just, I wanna say just kind of like collected myself and solidified myself into who I am. Like I felt more complete and more contained if that makes any sense.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

It does.

Daniel Sanz: 

And just as I kept in the more I did it, the more I felt that way and the stronger I felt and the healthier I felt and the more confidence I got, it was just something that became addictive honestly. Yeah, I've been in and out of it through different, I've always trained, but the intensity and the frequency has always changed, but depending on what's been going on in life. But I always knew in the back of my mind that I'm not going to stop this cuz this is some, almost like a lifeline. I need this and if I don't do this, I'm gonna lose that part of myself. 

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I completely relate to that and I suspect there are a lot of people, lot in the audience. Yeah. Yeah. That's me. That's certainly got it. What is it you've noticed when you have less intensity? Because if you have less intensity and then you have more intensity, I would imagine there's something you find I miss this, I miss this aspect, this element of intense training, what is it that helps you get back into that more intense side?

Daniel Sanz: 

A little bit of fear. I mean, there's, you know, I'm getting older too. I'm in my forties and sometimes I'm like, well, you know, I don't wanna become sedentary. I don't want to become this person who used to do the martial arts. But, you know, I look at my friends and my family, everyone's getting older and it kind of scares me. And sometimes the little kick at the butt saying, hey, keep moving. If you stop, you start to slow down, you know, the whole rolling stone gains no moss sort of thing. I'm like, I don't want to get stuck to the point where this is something I used to do. So a lot of health reasons and motivations just I want to stay active. And it's weird cause if I don't go for a while, my concentration changes. Like, I notice that if I'm working on a project, my focus isn't quite always as sharp as it should be, or I get distracted easily and I kind of feel like I'm in the lull. But when I am in periods of time where I am actively training and working out and exercising, I get more focused, I get more motivation, I get more energy, and I could just see. Overall itself, if I'm not training, I feel like I slow down and I don't like that feeling. So, that's the main thing I notice. I lose lack of focus. I get a little bit of laziness in there which I hate. I hate feeling that way. And I kind of feel like I'm starting to become on the sideline versus actively doing something. So when I do train and when I am in my burst of, you know, I'm being active, I feel much better overall, more focused and just more contained, like I said before, I just, I feel more complete.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Makes sense. Yeah. It's certainly something I can relate to. So, you talked about kenpo not knowing it was kenpo, you called it karate. Is that still where you're training now? Are you still in that art or have you moved around?

Daniel Sanz: 

I'm still in the art. I went through a lot of transitions. Our school went through a lot of changes. We were a Tracy Kenpo School for the first few years. And I didn't even know what that was until my instructor changed the name of the school because it was a franchise of East West Karate. Greg Silva has a Kenpo franchise and we were one of the schools and he changed it to Kenpo Karate. I was like, okay that's the first time he really started using the term kenpo in class. And we switched over. It was Parker Kenpo and we always knew who had Parker was. He always told us, we always had his picture up on the wall, but I didn't realize we weren't training his art for the first few years. So that was a weird interesting shift for me. I got stuck at that cause he kind of froze us at our belt levels. I was first-degree brown at the time, and he froze a couple of us there. He goes, we're gonna start the curriculum over. We're gonna do a whole new set of material. I'm like, okay. So my first reaction was, uh, okay, starting over, but whatever. But I love the new material right away. Like I love the Parker material. And we did that for several years and then he decided to go ahead and test this for black belt. Anyway, so he let us kind of dual-train for about a year. There was an overlap there where we were doing early Parker material, but we're finishing up the teens' portion of the Tracy system. And then he moved to another school and he started getting some personal issues. He had a relationship with a underage student which didn't end very well. And of course, there was a whole, you know, the school shut down for about a month and he had to bring in another instructor while they were going to, it was a mess. It was an ugly mess. And then finally he decided to bow out and he sold the school to one of his former assistant instructors who was a great teacher. And he took over so of course we started over again because that teacher had been moving around and training new stuff. So he came back, started again from white belt.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Back to the Tracy stuff?

Daniel Sanz: 

No, no. We stayed with Parker, but he was at this point in time with just Speakman which was kind of now known as 4.0 Kenpo. So it was still Parker Kenpo, but the order was a little bit different. The techniques were a little bit different, so we just started over. And then, I was working my way back up the black belt again, and then he left and went to the military and just ditched the school. And we were like, oh, okay. So for two years I just trained on my own, I sought out, I talked to other instructors in the area and that was probably one of the most important transitional points for myself cause that's when I realized...

Jeremy Lesniak: 

How old are you at this point?

Daniel Sanz: 

At this point I was, that was 2005, so I was 26.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Okay. Keep going.

Daniel Sanz: 

I'd been training for, at that point in time, 13 years.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

And like I said, we'd start over a few times, but that's when I'm like, I was on my own and my first fear was, oh no, what'd I do? What'd I do? I can't, I knew I couldn't stop. I didn't wanna stop and I didn't wanna switch arts cause I was really getting into the kenpo and I was curious about other artists, but I'm like, well, lemme see what's around. There's a bunch of schools around and I talked to different instructors and the one thing I noticed was everyone taught completely different and that frustrated me. And I would go online, I would download manuals from this school. I'd go on the website of the school in Texas, and over here just, I compare it and then I realized that although all their curriculums were different, all their principals and the rules for the system were the same. And that's when I'm like, okay, that's what I realized there's different interpretations. And I just kept practicing and practicing the scene. And then when my instructor came back two years later, he reopened the school again and started teaching. So I'm like, okay, cool. And he had, at this point in time, he had Kenpo 5.0. He'd been training with Speakman some more. So start over again. But it was at this point in time, he started to teach me he's like, he goes, it's not about the formula. He goes, it's not about the techniques. He goes, don't worry about the memorization. He goes, it doesn't matter if you hit the guy 20 times super fast if you're not doing anything. So he started to slow everything down and break it apart. He taught me how to take the system apart and kind of like analyze the pieces and put it back together. Like, why are we doing this move? Why are we doing this stance? Why are they here together? And over the course of another, like. 10 years, no, like an eight years with him. He changed her curriculum almost daily. I'd come in and it would be different than last week. And it was like, okay, we're doing it this way today. But it was because it's like, cuz there's no set way to do it. So it was always evolving, always changing. And so at this point in time, I've had Tracy Kenpo, traditional Parker Kenpo, speaking of 4.0, speaking of 5.0, a hybrid Kenpo. And he started teaching MMA's classes and he trained his fighters. So he started bringing that into it. So it became this big hybrid and I just started kind of mish-mashing it together.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

But I would imagine at that point it's not phasing you anymore. You dub that kind of the, I would call it research is seeing, you know, it's all the principles are the same. It's just different ways of implementing it.

Daniel Sanz: 

Exactly.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I'm imagining you're just kind of rolling with those punches, pun not intended.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

As things are shifting around.

Daniel Sanz: 

Exactly. And it was weird like the last couple years felt weird because he was training me differently than the other students because, you know, new students would come in, they'd be on that curriculum. But I was still, and at this point in time, I'm training for my second degree, third degree. So he's teaching me the extensions and techniques from the previous stuff I was learning in addition to the new stuff. So I was kind of like on this parallel course with the class. And there were a lot of days where he would teach a class and I would participate and then we'd break off and he'd have me off the side working on my own material and he'd work with me for a little bit and he'd come over here to the class. So a lot of times I was training alongside the class, not always inside the class. And it was an interesting dynamic but yeah, I got used to it. I would literally walk in, he goes, hey Dan, instead of doing it this way, we're gonna do it this way from now on. I'm like, okay. Okay, cool. And by the time, his last year the school was open in 2015, I could tell he was burnt out. He'd been doing on his own teaching CrossFit classes, kids classes all day, teach adults classes at night and then training his fighters after that. And he'd go home at like 10, 11 o'clock, be back the next morning at five. You can only do that for so long.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

It's too much.

Daniel Sanz: 

And I could tell that the Kenpo classes were suffering at that point. They were starting to get really watered down. We went from the whole curriculum down to like three techniques per belt and then with other MMA stuff mixed in. But you could tell that the gas was running out. And finally, he burnt out and he decided he found a new opportunity and he moved to North Carolina and shut the school down for good. And I just kept training on my own. And right now, I'm training with another good friend. He's Alex, I've had him on the channel before. He's got a school. He invites me over a lot. I work with him in his group and also Master Sean Kelly's a good friend as well. Everybody kind of like walk me into their circle and it was very, I really appreciate that because my instructor didn't leave on the best of terms with everyone. He kind of ruffled a lot of feathers, but everyone kept that separate. They're like, even though I trained with him, they didn't group me in with that. So they all welcomed me in. So I've got a lot of people around here, a great support system. I trained independently, but with these close friends and I've learned probably more in the past couple of years and I did in 10 years before that because of the insight and breaking it down and I'm just loving the system more and more. And just to diversify a little bit, the same year I started this channel, I also wanted to try a different art. I'm like, let me try something new as well. I needed a change. And that's when I found a local jujutsu school that also teaches judo. And I fell in love with that and I found that it was so different than kenpo, but also similar enough where it meshed perfectly. So now I've been doing that as well and that's becoming something that I can't see myself not doing.

Jeremy Lesniak:

 Oh, cool. Nice. What do you think you would've done, of course was purely hypothetical, if you had not had all of those kind of iterations of what you were training when your instructor left? Because what you're talking about is a story that so many people have, and I hear this all the time, I get emails, I don't wanna say constantly, but frequently. I've been training at this school for 10, 15, 20 years. I love this system. It's all I know. My instructor just quit, retired, moved, passed away. I don't know what to do. And of course the answer is you find another place to train. But there's always this concern, this worry, fear that because it's different. Well, you know, I've been training in kenpo and there's a kenpo school nearby, but it's different kenpo and it's not the same and I don't wanna start over or I like what I did right for whatever reason. But it sounds to me, because you had this experience of just starting over, starting over, starting over, it became not about the curriculum, that body of material, but rather I get the sense you just wanna train and learn. That's kind of what's coming through for me. So big setup for the hypothetical, you hadn't had those transitions. What do you think you would've done with your training when your instructor left?

Daniel Sanz: 

The first time? When the school shut down the first time?

Jeremy Lesniak: 

When the school shut down in this most recent time because I think it's important there's kind of that bad taste, ruffling, feathers, you know, if it had been continuous up till that point, how do you think that would've gone?

Daniel Sanz: 

Oh, okay. So if I didn't have all those changes in curri... Oh, I see what you're saying. So, okay. Honestly, I probably would've just found another campus school.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Okay.

Daniel Sanz: 

Cause I would've been training 20 some years at that point, and I would've been, hopefully, comfortable in what I knew at that point. Like, I would've been probably very well versed in that particular curriculum set. And I honestly, I probably would've just joined another kenpo school or maybe another kenpo school and still gone to jujutsu route or another art altogether. If that was the first change, yeah, I probably, there's a couple schools that I had talked to, I probably would've just joined up with and been with now and so I would've probably had just done one transitional period versus the multiple. And I'm sure my outlook would be very different. I probably wouldn't be so used to looking at it from different angles. I might've had more of a struggle with that in terms of the change. Might've been more like, well, I've been doing it this way for 20 years now. It's hard for me to learn to do it this way. So it probably would've been a rougher transition but I see myself just joining up a different school at that point.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

And I would say that that's because, you know, your passion for training exceeds your passion for rank. Right. And that's, you know, and I'm not gonna dismiss rank, but for a lot of people that's the hangup. It's I don't wanna hear that. I don't wanna start over which is a shame because then they end up not doing anything.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing that changed too. The whole concept of what rank was. Like the rules for my very first instructor, he was gonna make me a secondary black belt once I went through my Parker material, because I had Tracy and it was so he was gonna do it that way. But when he changed and left the school and we had the new instructor come in, he started us over and we had to go through that material and then learn the extensions, the proper way to write the thesis the proper way. So I was like, okay. I mean, it took me 11 years to go from first degree to second degree black belt, just because of all the changes. And by that point to, you know, I did third degree under him and fourth degree and it, but it became at that point where I was like, it's just where I'm in the curriculum. Like it doesn't really matter. Like I have sparred people in over the years who were higher ranked than me that I dominated. But I've also had people that were lower ranked than me that dominated me. So it's like the rank doesn't really mean anything. And it just got to the point where, you know, I wear it in class or I wear it, you know, sometimes just teaching. But other than that though, I don't really care about the rank cause it doesn't really mean anything anymore because it's just another thing you wear. It's just to show where you are in the curriculum. It doesn't say what you know or what your experience really is. It's just when you're in class, okay, well this is what I've completed up to on this list. I still have this much to go. It's just about the material. And at a point now, I just wanna understand why it's written the way it is. How to recognize patterns, how to actually take what the material is teaching and actually apply it in real situations or how apply it in sparring. And it's really about the quality of the knowledge now and not the rank. I couldn't care less about the rank anymore, to be honest.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

How is the cross training in this other school changed either what you do, how you do, or how you see maybe your kenpo work?

Daniel Sanz: 

Well, that's actually a great question cause the first thing was it was incredibly uncomfortable. And it's the first time I had experienced something so different. Like, you know, I'd looked at other artists, you know, karate's very similar. Tong still is very similar in terms of, you know, the stances are comparable and, you know, they use the same type of punches. But with judo and jujutsu, our stances are very different, mechanics are very different. In kenpo we don't do a lot of throws. Like the shoulder throws, the hip throws. There's a few takedowns, but they're different. So I had a really hard time getting used to doing the shoulder throw by turning my back. I hated doing the whole thing of turning my back. It was so unnatural. I fought against it and because I fought against it, I wasn't placing my feet correctly, I wasn't doing it correctly, mechanically for a long time until I had to take a step back. And I'm listened to my instructor and he's teaching me and I've seen him teach other students and then it slowly sink in. And eventually I got out of that hold up and I started to relax a little bit and realize, well, you know, I'm not gonna just go up the person and just turn my back to them. It's usually, you know, you already have 'em off balance or you're in the middle of a fight and you've got that leverage and you're in the position for it. I noticed a lot of overlap too. There were a lot of techniques he shows us, I'm like, oh wait, we have that exact same technique in Kenpo, that same take down, that same grab, that same counter grab. And that's where I started to see where Ed Parker drew from a lot of influence. Cause kenpo's got a lot of, he put judo in there, he put boxing there, there's kung fu in there, it's a mixture and I started to see these layers come in. And I would say what the biggest mesh is right now, where I think the two really married together very well is doing a kenpo technique. And instead of doing our one of our classic extensions, I will finish off with a judo technique. I find that judo techniques are very good for transitions from one position to another or to finish off something or you added, I could add the take down in here. They just started blending incredibly well. And now in my head you know, if I'm bored or if I'm daydreaming, I'll just practice like techniques in my head. I'll try to visualize, oh, if I do the first few steps from here, that puts me in a position for this wrist lock and then I can do this take down. And I just started to really open my eyes that a lot of concepts transcend multiple arts. And that if you can look for those similarities, that they can actually mesh together extremely well and become very powerful combinations. But it also opened my eyes a lot to, wow, this is a very different system. Culturally, mechanically, philosophically, everything is such a different system and it made me realize that, you know, not all arts are the same. That there really is a wide, wide world. And that's part of the influence on our channel is that we started to explore other arts, their history and the origins of arts. Cause now I got fascinated and, well, wow, if this is so different, well what else is so different? And I would say the clash of culture was extremely eye-opening for myself.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Hmm. Have you bumped into anything, what's the word I'm looking for? Skeptical, resistant as you're because I get the sense that you're pretty open. You strike me as someone who's pretty open with their training and probably philosophically in life in general. And that means you're gonna experience and find a lot of different stuff if we call it all cross-training. If you're cross-training in these different things, you're talking to these different people, have you had situations where you've got, uh, and you're resistant to it? Saying no. Whether that's from yourself or past training?

Daniel Sanz: 

Yes. There's a lot of kenpo techniques I don't like. I'm not a fan of our weapons techniques. I don't think the weapon defense is there. I am starting to learn out with the group I'm learning with right now. They are showing me, this is interesting because I've always had a list of techniques I've hated. I do them to get through em in class historically, but then, like I just kinda skip past them. But training with Sensei Alex and his group and his instructor, they'll ask, well, what's the trouble technique? So I'll bring up this one. Oh, I don't like this technique. They break it apart and they get it to a form like, oh, okay. Now I see why. And it's not always meant for a self-defense situation, but it's teaching a particular concept either it's related to something else we learned earlier, or it's even showing you an alternative way of doing something, or it's something that we've already done before, but a different application. And I've got to the point of, okay, well now I can appreciate why it is the way it is. I don't always like them. But the weapons techniques, I don't, they're not my favorite. Kenpo lacks a lot in ground fighting, which is why I went to the grappling side, judo, jujutsu. But no, there are techniques that a lot of times both in judo and in kenpo, and I'll see people teach off. I go, mm, okay, I'm gonna do it this way in class, but I'm not gonna act. I don't like that. I'm not going to, I don't feel comfortable doing it. Or maybe I, in my mind I think it should be done a different way. I come across a lot of arts doing research where I go, hmm not my favorite. I wouldn't do that. And you know, I visited the school once they had me in. It was a wonderful experience, great bunch of guys. I wasn't that impressed with the art itself, and I don't wanna name what it is.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Sure.

Daniel Sanz: 

But they had some techniques in the demos that's like, oh, okay, well that was pretty cool. Ooh, well that hurt. Okay. That, that, wow, that was impressive. But as a whole, I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't train in this. But when I hit those points, I get that gut reaction, eh, no, I don't like that. And then I try to step back and like, okay, but who would like that? Or, you know, they're making it work they like that. It's just not for me. Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Well, why don't you like that?

Daniel Sanz: 

A lot of times, I don't agree with it. Sometimes I'm like, there are times I'm like, I don't think that's gonna work. Or I don't see that being practical, or I don't think I can move that way. Like I tend to shy away from the love of the Chinese arts, mainly because I don't think my body can move that way. And I've never felt comfortable, which is ironic cause kenpo was Chinese. It's more food than anything, but it's got a lot of karate characteristics. But a lot of that like Wing Chun I struggle with, I've got a lot of friends who do Wing Chun and I have a high respect for the art. I don't think I'd be good at it. I don't think I could move that way. I don't think my body, and maybe that's just my self cycling myself out, but there's a lot of arts I look at, I'm like, that's cool, but I don't think I could be physically capable of doing it. Or other arts I look at, I'm like, that's cool, but I don't necessarily like it the way they approach XYZ. So sometimes it's just down to whether I think it's practical versus whether it appeals to me or whether or not I think I could do it myself.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I think the important part, the part I was trying to get out of that from you was that you're thinking about it. And I think that that's the most important part is when you bump up to something, you're resistant against it. It begs a question, why don't I like this? Why doesn't this work for me? And I think more important than learning the technique or suffering through it or what changing your mind or whatever, I think far more important than that is understanding what it is in yourself. It makes you say, I disagree with this. I don't like this. Because there's insight there and I find it myself, you know? I think we've all, well, I suspect everyone, but I'm fairly certain both you and I have had the experience of training with someone regardless of rank or setting, where just from the first moment you're like, I don't like this person. I don't think they know anything. And now I'm gonna suffer through this seminar or whatever, and I'm not gonna get anything out of it. And when I was younger, I would just kind of, I'd be watching the clock, or if there was no clock, imagining the clock, how soon can I get outta here [00:34:00] and do something that, you know, that works, that matters, that's good. It makes me better. And now, I've come to realize that sometimes what makes me better is what not to do.

Daniel Sanz: 

Absolutely.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I can observe, you know, what is it about this person that they're a terrible teacher? Or what is it about the material they've selected that just so philosophically doesn't work for me? And you said, you know, will it work for somebody else, you know, and observe, what's going on? Are other people having a better experience? Is there something I can learn from that?

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Cause I was gonna say, if I'm in a seminar now, fortunately liked most seminars I've been to, but yeah, couple times there's been times I'm like, eh, I'm not really liking this. But if I'm in that situation, I tend to look around the room and I do watch how others are responding to it. Because sometimes, and it's actually happened a couple times, maybe I'm not, I don't like what's being taught or the instructor themselves, but the person I'm partnered up with, know something more than I do. And I like working with them because, okay, well they're making XYZ work and they're teaching me something different. Or I just like working with the person, or I start looking around the room, well, they're smiling, they're doing it this way. So I do try to read other people's reactions to see how they're taking in the material. Because like you said, it's right, because are they getting something out of it? And if they're just going along, you could tell if someone's just going along with it or if they're breaking it down and trying to digest it. And I try to separate that. Okay, well, they're just doing what he says versus, oh, well, he's doing something a little bit different or doing something that he's making it work. What's he doing right that I'm not seeing? Or that he's maybe not getting across in the instruction. And I try to take away at least one thing from a seminar if possible. And like you said, even if it's too, well, that's not the way I'm gonna do it, or that's an example of how not to do it. That's still a positive. You can still come away, walk away with something new that you didn't have going in.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Right. Right. We've talked a little bit about kind of the real world applicability and I find with any martial artist the stuff that they know and the stuff that they will use, right? It's always a, we've got the big toolbox and we've got the little toolbox. How do you determine what goes in your little toolbox?

Daniel Sanz: 

It's a great question. That's actually something I've been trying to think about because as everyone who criticizes kenpo knows, we have like a million and a half techniques. It's interesting because there's a lot of basics. Like when you first start out, every belt level has this list of punches. This is the blocks, this list of stances, this list of kicks. And by the time you get to black belt, you've pretty much at least seen every kick of every art. But it's not in our techniques. There's a lot of technique, a lot of stuff in our techniques or I'm sorry, on our basics list that don't make into techniques. And I've observed that it seems to be that we're introduced to a lot of stuff, and I've talked to other instructors, and the whole concept is, well, we're gonna show you all the tools there are in the world, and you're gonna pick your favorite based on, you know, what you take to, and the way I like to look at it is, okay, so you're learning about tools, so you're gonna learn about how hammers work, how wrenches work and saws and power tools and all that. But then you asked yourself, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna be a plumber? Am I gonna be an electrician? Am I gonna be a carpenter? And you kind of find like, so am I gonna compete if I'm doing this for self-defense, if I'm doing this for tournament co-divisions, am I doing this just for health or rehab? And then I start to find the tools of that toolbox that fit that niche. And then I fine tune and focus on those as my core. And the other stuff is good. You recognize it when you see it. But if your goal is just tournament fighting, okay, well, you're gonna swing away from this set of techniques and tools and focus more on this. And that's where I've been trying to look at arts certain ways and categorize how, because there's so many people who are like, well, that would never work for self-defense. And then my question is, well, why wouldn't it work for something else? Or maybe it could work for self-defense in a different context, or maybe it would work and maybe someone else is using that in competition. I try to look at the specific tool and see where a person would apply it. And in my own experience, like I said, I will look at what's my purpose? And I take my tools and I kind of group them based on my desire which is I wanna be self-defense, or I wanna have self-defense and I wanna be stronger and healthier and be able to move. I'm not looking at the competition. I'm not looking to get into the ring, you know, and I'm not doing it just for our kata division. I wanna make stuff work for self-defense. So I tend to analyze everything based on that perspective.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Hmm. Makes sense. And, and I think it's an important conversation that one has with themselves, because whether you realize it or not, it's a process that we all do, right? We all learn, you know, all these moves, 108, 109 combinations or whatever maybe and more. If you start putting 'em together yourself and say, okay, well I like this. This works well for me. And one of the things I find interesting, and I won't quite say it drives me nuts, but it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck, not that I have very much anymore. When I see someone who they're working some self-defense, you know, from, you know, this attack or this attack, this attack, and they end up defending in a fairly similar way each time. And I see the instructor say, all right, but do something different. But it works. But why? They've got something that's dialed in and it works for them in these 17 different ways. Isn't that a good thing? What do you think?

Daniel Sanz: 

No, I think this is a good thing. And that comes down to the instructor and okay. I had an experience recently. I really enjoyed this a few months ago, our jujutsu school held a black belt test and it was my first time actually witnessing a black belt test in this art. And we had a guest instructor from New York come down from a sister's school. And it was just really interesting to watch cause this is a material that's way above me. I mean, I'm seeing 'em do this combination stuff. I'm like, I haven't even seen that in class yet. But there was one drill in particular that I found extremely intimidating yet motivating at the same time. They had to, with his partner, basically, the instructor would be like, okay, so he's gonna grab your wrists, defend it, do a combination, do something. And he had to do whatever came to his mind. But the only rule was you couldn't do the same combination twice. And he didn't just happen to do it a couple times. He goes, okay. He asked like 30 times. Okay, defend yourself, defend yourself. Defend yourself. And if you repeated the same combination, he was done. But you know, maybe he started off with a wrist turn or the particular lock. Okay, that's fine. He could use that lock again if it was later down the sequence. So the person in his mind, he had to like remember the order of what he had already done and he had to try to anticipate what he was gonna do next. And he had about four seconds to make these decisions.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Wow.

Daniel Sanz: 

nd it was really cool.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

That's so cool.

Daniel Sanz: Yeah, it was fascinating. And there was so many times like, well, he did the same thing and they actually stopped it. And he is like, wait, how? What did you just do? And he had to explain it well the body position was slightly different or his foot position was different. So the mechanically was different, but at face value, it looked exactly the same. And I just sat there in awe. I'm like, how is he pulling out 30 combinations off the top of his head like that without repeating. But he's keeping track of what he's done and what he's gonna do and the grouping some categories while doing it on the fly. And I thought that was such a fascinating drill to watch. And it was really enjoyable to see a test done in this way cause I hadn't seen that before.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

And then they did the same thing. Okay, now he's grabbing you by the collar. Now he's grabbing you around the neck and they had to do it over and over and it's just that spontaneity. And yeah, you start to see that people do rely on specific moves. That's like, people get their favorites. Because either it's something you're good at or it's something that makes sense, or it's something that's just so universally applicable that you're gonna rely on that. But to see it done in such a spontaneous way in combinations and make it different each time was extremely eye-opening. But yeah, my thought on that is I think that we do resort to our favorites. And if it works, if it works for you, there's no reason to change it. Just as long as you're honest with yourself about why is it working? It's just because I'm used to it, or is it actually mechanically good for me and how can I improve it? If you always keep the open mind about how you could add to it and improve it, I think that's healthy. But we're gonna resort to what works for us. And if it works for you, stick with it. I spar a guy, he handed my butt to me this weekend. He's in the sixties. He's still very, very active. He competes, but he fights like a 20-year-old, no joke. He is incredibly quick.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Love it.

Daniel Sanz: 

But he does like four moves and he doesn't even change the size. He's always in one stance and he does like four moves, but they get in it and they work for him, and they work for him beautifully. So he, why change it if it works?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right. When I think that, I think, you know, the example of Bill Wallace.

Daniel Sanz: 

Exactly.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Three kicks, four punches, and he's very open about that. I got seven techniques, but he's got a million in-one ways to implement them which remind me as you're talking about this testing. Well, the move might look the same on the surface, but now we're applying it at a different angle where the foot positioning is different, balance is different. And I think that that comes from doing those moves 1,000,001 times and really understanding them and where to apply them because yeah, I mean, you're, you're gonna use your hammer in a bunch of different ways. Sometimes you're putting, you're straightening a nail. Sometimes you're driving a nail, sometimes you're pulling a nail. But the hammer's valid for all of those things. And the more practice you have with that, the more you realize, you know, here's the situation I could use the hammer. Maybe I could also use this or maybe I could also use that. Maybe the crowbar is a better tool here, but I've got the hammer with me. I know it'll work. Might take me, you know, 10% extra effort, but let's do it.

Daniel Sanz: 

Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Right on. So when, when you think about your training now, where self-directed is what I'm gonna call it, sounds like you're spending plenty of time with other people, but you are driving, you're deciding what, when, where, how, and of course, why you train. When you think about your philosophy now, because you've been exposed to so many different things if we let's pretend we were gonna make a school out of what you're doing, you know, and certainly you're aware of the marketing elements of martial arts. So how might we brand this? How might we codify it? How would you describe your curriculum, your training methodology?

Daniel Sanz: 

Interesting question. That's something I've been, I don't wanna use the word wrestling with, but something I've been actually trying to work out for myself for the past couple of years. I've redrafted myself, my own curriculum about two, three times in the past couple of years cause I'm trying to answer that question.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

That's great.

Daniel Sanz: 

And that's, who I'm living with now. Mr. Alex and this instructor, they're teaching me such root-level concepts. Like I'm learning why a technique was written a specific way, why is it here in the curriculum. What does it relate to? And I'm trying to take that and kind of use that as my basis. And I'm going through my Tracy techniques. I've pretty much stopped with the Tracy techniques, but there's a handful I liked. So I'm keeping those. I've learned the Parker techniques. I've learned probably each technique three, four different ways. So I asked myself, well, which way do I prefer? Or does it even matter which way I prefer it, but I'm gonna keep this technique for this reason. And there's Kenpo 5.0 stuff I love and I will take a lot of their concepts. So I'm trying to, I guess, piecemeal my own curriculum together, but I'm trying to sort out, I don't wanna say what replaces what, cause I don't want to get stuck in that whole thing because I see, I'm trying to write it out for myself. So I'm trying to decide.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Sure.

Daniel Sanz: 

Okay. What list am I gonna work off of? I'm trying to make a master list with the concept of it's gonna be fluent. So where I am right now is just I'm trying to stick to traditional Ed Parker karate, Kenpo, and take everything I'm learning with that. And now I'm reaching out to, okay, well now I like XYZ from Speakman 5.0. I'm bringing it in, I'm gonna now put it here. I like these techniques from Tracy, I'm gonna put it here. But now I've got all this jujutsu and judo stuff. Well, I'm gonna add this here. So like what I've been working on, I've got like a sheet for each belt level so if I were to start a school or I'm trying to approach myself as a student. So here's my syllabus for white belt. So I'm putting in there, okay, with kenpo techniques 1 through 10, there's a couple 5.0 techniques, here's my basics and these couple of throws and I'm trying to group it that way. So if I were to brand this, as you would say, I would do kind of more back to the kenpo jujutsu where it's more of a standup grappling mix with the kenpo techniques that I'm learning now like the traditional Ed Parker kenpo with a handful of 5.0 sprinkled in.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Okay. I like it. And it sounds like you're being really intentional with this. I find interesting. Most people don't do this, they don't take it to that degree. But which kind of begs the question, do you think you'll open your own school?

Daniel Sanz: 

No, I really never had.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Interesting.

Daniel Sanz: 

It's interesting like I taught children mainly. It was actually my first shop I ever had. And it's a funny story cause I was in high school, you know, I wanted to apply for a job and I'm like, okay, well let me ask my instructor. In the back of my head, I thought I was applying for the front desk like the reception area. And you know, I interviewed and I'm like, okay, cool. Like, hey, you start on Monday. I'm like, cool. So I came in and they put me on the floor.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Wait, what?

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah, I was 16, 17. I was 17 at the time. I hadn't taught kids yet. And then next thing I knew, I'm like, ah, I'm on the floor next to my instructor and he has me a group of students to go work with. And I'm like, oh, I guess I'm teaching now. But it was a great experience because teaching is a great way to learn. Explaining stuff back to the kids, even though they're kids, just the act of explaining it helped me understand it better. And he always told me too, he goes, if you can't teach it to somebody else and you don't know it. So I taught for a few years with him and he wanted to branch out before he got into his problems. He was gonna open up a second school and he asked me if I was interested in running it. And I turned it down because one, I was in college at the time. I was already working two part-time jobs and I didn't really wanna teach as a profession. Teaching as a profession is hard. I know people who've done it and my friends who do it, they do a great job at it, but it's a full commitment. And I love, martial arts is a good chunk of my life. It's my passion for me to do, but it's not necessarily a profession for me to run a school. I have considered, and I am considering doing like online programs, you know, or doing like some like video seminars. And I do like teaching seminars, so I don't mind teaching. I like teaching, but I don't necessarily want to hunker down and actually open up a brick-and-mortar school and, you know, do kids' birthday classes or day camp. It's just not what my passion is. My passion is video production, it's creative writing, and it's martial arts and Art of One Dojo meshes it all together. And like I said, I do like teaching, so seminars are good, videos would be good. I would like to do some of those and possibly online courses but as far as opening the school, I don't see myself doing that just because I don't think I would do very well with it, honestly. Cause it's not where my passion lies in terms of a business sense of running the school. I don't think I could do it.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I get that. I get that. Now, of course, vast majority of our audience are martial artists and there is a decent cross-section of those who run a school. Video is becoming a much bigger element in today's marketing, whether it's social media, whether it's on websites, whether you know, YouTube, Vimeo are recruitment techniques. And even over the last couple years, there's a lot of content, a lot of curriculum went online which a lot of schools discovered. There's a retention element here too. What quick things without, you know, tons of gear, tons of time, tons of money, what quick tips might you have for those schools to elevate the quality of their videos?

Daniel Sanz: 

Number one thing is make sure your audio is clean. There's nothing more off-putting than bad sounds. And as far as film production goes, audio quality is better than visual quality. So like, you could watch a bad video, but like if it's grainy or poorly lit, but if it sounds good, you can still be engaged. But if you're watching something that's perfectly polished and beautiful and looks fantastic, but it's got horrible room echo, you're gonna be pulled out of it. So I think if you're gonna do an online class program, make sure it's the audio quality is very clean. Wear a microphone. Don't just do that camera mic across the room. It sounds terrible. It's harder for the students to understand and it breaks that engagement. If the sound is clear and clean, you have someone who can hear your instruction clearly, there's no mistakes being made and it just helps with that immersion. Framing is another big thing too. Don't just set a laptop and have it on the floor tilt upwards. It's uncomplimentary. It's harder for students.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

This angle?

Daniel Sanz: 

Yes, exactly. That's not a good angle to teach from. So you wanna have a good shot where, you know, you want the student to be able to see what you're doing. So make sure the shot is framed up. Make sure you got plenty of room to do it. Make sure it sounds good. I mean, lighting, yeah. I mean, you can make it pretty if you want, but that's not what people are gonna care about. If someone's watching, they want to see what you're doing. They wanna be able to repeat and get that information. So make sure the camera can see your whole body and it's not some weird angle or, you know and don't use like a little standard definition low res webcam that you can't see anything anyway and have a good sound. And I think that's a really big part of it. The schools are doing it well. Do it well, but there's a lot of instruction I've seen online. I'm like, I couldn't watch a class that way because it pulls, I'm so distracted by not being able to follow that. It pulls me out of the lesson.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I think everything you're talking about and some things that I'm gonna add fall under the heading of you're trying to simulate the class experience. And if you think about how people learn, they need to be able to hear you. They need to be able to see you more or less. They need to be able to see all of you, you know, just because you're demonstrating a hand technique or a kick doesn't mean that they don't need to see the planted foot or the stance. They want it, you know, you need to show it from different angles. Otherwise, they're gonna watch it. And there's a beautiful thing that happens with video. They can pause, they can rewind, they can watch it again. But if you do it poorly, there's also the ability to skip ahead. If you're creating skippable video, that's not serving you in any way. You want video that makes them go, I wanna see that again. I wanna see that again. I wanna pause that. Okay. Okay. And now I'm gonna show you from the other way and they turn around and they're talking you through it now. Okay. Alright, now I get it. Cause you can't turn around and then see what they're doing, right? Like it's...

Daniel Sanz: 

Right.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Gotta put yourself in somebody's shoes.

Daniel Sanz: 

I'm glad that you brought that up. That you just, yeah, you hit it nailing the head right there. Doing it different angles, different perspectives, because I don't know how, I can't speak for other people, but when I'm watching the video, I try and, like you said, I can't face this way and watch the video that's over there. But what I will try to do is I do try to orient myself at least somewhat to kind of mirror it so I can maybe watch out the corner of my eye. But seeing things from a different perspective can totally change whether or not a student gets the concept or not.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

And I'll bring this up in jujutsu. That's how I finally got the shoulder throw working. My instructor showed me over and over and over and over again. He explained it. I got the concept of it, but something was wrong, something was wrong. And he kept correcting me and I didn't see it until I watched him do it on video. It was a different angle. I stopped just from the perspective I went, oh, his feet are different. His feet are there. When I started doing that, it started working better. But he'd been trying to tell me I couldn't see it until I saw it from another angle. So I think you're absolutely correct. Being able to do it from different angles so that the student can see. And there's also the question too is are you talking about a video that's pre-recorded and played back or a live instruction? A live instruction, there's a question in the back and forth. They can move and highlight certain things, but if it's pre-recorded, I think you're absolutely right. Show it from multiple different angles cause you don't know what the person on the other end's gonna see from one angle versus the other. They might not even know what to look for until they see it.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yep. Some of the best stuff I've ever seen in demonstrating physical movement, actually it doesn't come from the martial arts. It's, you remember the Beachbody programs when they were super big deal, you know, P90X and everything? They would have different people standing in slightly different ways. Sometimes one would face the camera, one would face away, and you watch those fitness videos and there's always someone that you can okay, no, no. Okay, now I get it, right? So you get four to six examples in real-time, and that's something that I have not seen happening with this current crop of transition to online. I would love to see, I'm gonna face you students gonna be here facing the other way. Maybe we've even got someone facing 90 degrees over here so you can just quickly look. And I think that it's such a valuable element because as you said, those angles are so critical. And if you don't have the real-time feedback of someone, switch your feet. No, no. It's the other hand. You could get, you know, four hours in several weeks of classes and then go, okay, now I gotta go back. And it's disheartening.

Daniel Sanz: 

Absolutely. No, I think that's a fantastic idea. That would be great to see that in the background cause then you could see someone like you said, you could see it in real-time, people doing it on each other in different body types. That would be a great example. I do wanna bring up, I was looking at an online program a couple years ago and I started it. I haven't got back to it. I do want to go back to it, just for sake of completing it. But I ran into an issue right off, right at the beginning with one of the stances. The way he was teaching the stances and it was traditional karate. My feet were out, was like the front stance, but my feet were out wide, like past my shoulder, outside my shoulder room and I felt very unstable. It was very uncomfortable. I'm like, this doesn't feel right. I'm like, I feel like I'm way too wide. And I emailed him and asked him and he goes, oh no. He goes, your feet should be within your shoulder line. I'm like, but your video has it out here. And he's like...

Jeremy Lesniak: 

That's not what you demonstrated.

Daniel Sanz: 

Exactly. And I don't know if it was a legitimate answer, but his answer to me was, oh, well I do it exaggerated cause I see that people don't tend to actually go the full distance or no, people tend to, what was his answer? He said he did it exaggerated cause people don't always go the full range of what he teaches. So if he does it over and bigger and people are gonna shrink it down. I'm thinking, no, I think you just...

Jeremy Lesniak: 

What about the people who are trying to do it just as you demonstrated?

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Like you. Like I would do.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah, exactly. But the problem though was had I not asked him, this is a core basic stance and the white belt level of the material. You have someone do this and do this for a couple years, you have completely destabilized their whole training because that is foundational. And that's where I think a lot of the live instruction needs to come into play because you could have someone correct you but that kind of freaked me out. I'm like, I'm glad I asked them. It felt wrong. It didn't feel right and I don't quite accept the answer. I think it just wasn't demonstrated right on camera and that's a scary thing is how many videos out there are like that?

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Biomechanically, a front stance outside your shoulders is not gonna be great for your hips long term.

Daniel Sanz: 

No, it hurts to do it.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

From what I'm feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Not to mention you're not gonna be able to move.

Daniel Sanz: 

No, but I hadn't. I was like completely off balance too. I'm like, this just something's not right with this. And he's like, oh no, no. It should definitely be within your shoulder stance. I'm thinking, you might wanna change that video out then. 

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, you know, there is a crop of instructors and you've probably experienced them. I've certainly experienced them where they'll demonstrate, and instead of acknowledging, you know what, I'm not the best at this. I don't do great at this. Here's how I do it. You overhear younger, older, lower, higher rank, whatever, show me how you do. Yeah. That's closer to what I want you to do. Don't, fault. It's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to be fallible. As an instructor, you don't have to be perfect. And your sense is kind of what I think mine would be of, yeah, I didn't realize I was doing it that way. I don't wanna go back and refilm all those videos so I'm gonna give kind of a dodgy answer as to why it's like that and it's unfortunate. Because it could have been an opportunity for the instructor to say, you know what, thank you.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I haven't had anybody supervising my material in a long time. You just gave me something to work on. I'm gonna go back and refilm those videos. Let me give you a free month or whatever as a thank you, right? Because then you would've been like, whoa, I like this person, you know?

Daniel Sanz: 

Right.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Clearly they're still learning. It continues to blow my mind that there are instructors in the world who think they have to be and remain perfect indefinitely in order to be worthy of teaching.

Daniel Sanz: 

An instructor does not have to be a superhero. Like, you know, you wanna be relatable to a student too. And like you said, it's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to be thank you for pointing it out, or that's just not something I do as well. Like you said, it's okay to be vulnerable. I agree with that a hundred percent.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

And more importantly, it gives your students permission to be imperfect. And it's something that I see, cause I get the opportunity to travel around and teach. And when I see schools where the culture from the upper ranks is that, you know, we're perfect, don't question us. If there's something I don't do well, I'm never gonna demonstrate it. I'm gonna make somebody else demonstrate it. There's so much pressure. There's so much tension in the student ranks and you can feel it. And you can feel that as they get, you know, they get their first degree, second, third, and you know, usually around fourth or fifth they stop doing anything. They just teach and they teach verbally and they make other people demonstrate because maybe they're not as good as they once were and they're terrified. And then the other schools where the instructors like, I'm showing you guys the wrong thing. Whoops! Hold on. Forget everything we did in the last five minutes. You'll learn that in another two years. Here's how we're doing. And everybody laughs about it and they're like, wow, we messed up. Everybody messes up. It's okay to mess up because how do you learn? By messing up.

Daniel Sanz: 

Exactly. There's other variable to that too. There's also instructors who maybe do things a certain way because it works better for them. And I'll bring this up as an example. During this jujutsu test, there are another instructor that they knew who rotates on his heels and are like, you're not supposed to do that. Like the balance is not there, but for this one guy, it works for him. He makes it strong. He makes techniques work, but biomechanically doesn't work for most people. And like generally rotated on your heels, you don't have the ability to balance, but he does.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

And there could be exceptions out there where instructor might do something a specific way because they made it work for them specifically even though it might be technically an anatomically incorrect. If they had it work, it's valid for them. But then they need to be upfront about that, hey, this is the way I'm gonna do it. I don't want you guys to do it this way, but this is the way it works for me. I think that's another way to approach it, honestly. But I think that needs to be clarified so that students understand, oh, well that's not the way I'm supposed to do it. So if this guy had told me, well, you're right, it should be here, but this is the way I do it for this reason, I'd be a little bit more inclined to be like, all right, but you should say something then about it. But sometimes people can modify techniques that might not be correct, but it works better for them that way.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yep. I think that's the beauty as you get into upper ranks is starting to compare those really fine details of, okay, you do this way, I do this, you do this way. We've talked about on the show before, you've probably seen it. Examples of different styles doing the same form in real-time and you can watch and go, oh, oh. And I find that fascinating. And it doesn't just have to be forums. It can be any technique. That's how you do a front kick. That's how you do a front kick. Oh, this is how you do this entry. Oh, that's really cool. Because it's nuanced and once you've been training for decades, all you really have left is nuance. That's really good stuff is as far as I'm coming.

Daniel Sanz: 

I love seeing that oh, oh, comparing stuff because nobody does it exactly the same way. No one does anything exactly the same way. So those differences...

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Even in the same school with the same instruction and same curriculum because we're all built just a little bit differently.

Daniel Sanz: 

Mm-hmm. And psychologically too, motivation's always different too. So I love, that's really all the juicy details are. Totally agree. Just.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

So what's coming? What's next? If we were to sync back up [01:01:00] in five years or so, you know, what do you think you'd be telling me about your training?

Daniel Sanz: 

That's a good question. Well, hopefully by then I figured out my own curriculum, so I'm still, I'm still working on that cause, cause one of the problems I have is I've start, even now, I'm still starting over. Like I'll review my first few belt levels and I'll go and study those techniques and then, you know, I'll do these classes with Mr. Alex and his instructor. And I stop, I'm like, okay. So I take the information and I keep going back to the white belt material and like one day I'll get past like the yellow, orange belt again. I've been doing those same techniques for years, but I'm hoping it gets to the point where I finally see the core fundamental aspects of it where I can apply it throughout the whole system. So five years from now, hopefully, I'm finally where I wanna be with Kenpo again. Hopefully, proficient with judo and hopefully, I'd like to throw in another art. I'm not sure what that would be yet. I kind of like the idea of Muay Thai, a little bit of boxing. Maybe another traditional karate style. I'm kind of keeping my eye out, but hopefully, in five years, I'm engaged in the third art. Like, at least to some degree and just trying to mold my own training even more. Cause I try to look, see where I feel weak cause like, the reason I went to judo jujutsu was, well, I don't, well, Kenpo doesn't have the throws I've always wanted to learn and there's not really much ground stuff. Now speaking of, 5.0 did ground materials, so that's really more BJJ so that's really cool stuff. I did that a little bit, but I really wanna do stand-up, so that's why I went to that. I think boxing supplements pretty much anything. It's a fantastic striking art. I don't think there's really much out there better than boxing to learn striking. So I wouldn't mind actually doing some formal boxing. Muay Thai, it'd be good for some conditioning kicks. I'm trying to see, maybe Krav Maga like a really, really good school for weapons defense. So I'm hoping five years from now, I've got another attitude and I'm actively training in. I hope the channel has expanded more. Like there's so much more I wanna explore. There's so much more history we wanna get into.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Cool.

Daniel Sanz: 

We wanna start visiting schools, I mean, we're in an area where Palm Beach, Broward County, and Dade County, there are tons of martial arts schools.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

So many schools, yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

So many varieties.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Very, very good martial arts down there.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yes. It's a mixing pot. It's not like it's a hundred karate schools. There is kung fu, karate, there's Indian arts, everything's here. So I think we have the opportunity to go and start visiting schools. We were gonna do it. We were planning it in 2020. We were gonna call it Day in the Art and I started contacting schools. Then the pandemic hit and everything shut down. I'm like, all right, we're not visiting schools for a while. But that's something we wanna get back to. So we're trying to kinda pick that back up, hopefully, sooner rather than later. And we're also trying to, you know, we're just launching our own new website. We're trying to get a blog going. Hopefully, eventually...

Jeremy Lesniak: 

We'll plug all this stuff. Make sure everybody knows where to find this stuff.

Daniel Sanz: 

Artofonedojo.com, we just launched it. We've got t-shirts up there. We just released our forefather t-shirts, so we've got 12 of them. So it's like Chojun Miyagi, Jigoro Kano. So basically the whole idea was we took a public domain, old photo of them. My wife up rest it and re-enhanced it and restored it. And we made a portrait out of it with a quote. We're trying to honor these guys because there's so much history. I mean, these men have put so much foundational material down where martial arts have built off of, you know, we wanted to honor them and kind of give back with that. So we have 12 of those shirts up now, and hopefully, throughout this year, we're gonna add a bunch more. We wanna add rash guards of different styles. We're gonna do bags. So basically we have, you know, we're trying to support the channel. Be a little bit more self-sufficient. So we have our store up, we're gonna work on a blog, we're gonna work on a podcast, eventually. Possibly a spinoff channel. We're still kind of working out details on that. So doing this project, the more I do it, the more I love it. The more I learn, the more I wanna learn more. So hopefully we can just keep branching out and make it more of a bigger, interactive community. You know, get more of an online chat message board going. Just try to get as many people from different arts as possible in one discussion. And to one plane where we can talk constructively, be like, okay, well I do this, but I appreciate what you do because of XYZ. It's not what I'm gonna do, but I like that you, you know your approach. And just try to get people away from the toxic. Well, that's never gonna work in the ring. I hate that response. Oh, it'll never work in this situation. Well, how do you know it'll never work? Maybe it won't work for you. It worked for somebody somewhere.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I got so sick of that. I think I only posted this on TikTok. I said, all right, if that's your lens under the world, you know what technique works the most and still doesn't even work close to 50%? A jab.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

It's the most reliable technique anybody has in any combat sport. And it doesn't work most of the time.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

You need a new standard to determine what you should be working on than that.

Daniel Sanz: 

And I love the answer too. People will be like, oh, how come if that's so good, how come if there's like taekwondo so good, how come I've never seen MMA?, I'm like, Why don't you see it?

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Because you're not looking. It's all over the place.

Daniel Sanz: 

Yeah. Do you know what to look for? Cause you know, person's not gonna break out a curriculum sequence all the time but there's principles in there. There's parts of it. They're gonna use, stanzas, transitions. Look at Lyoto Machida, he used to show the con all the time in the ring. So yes, karate is an MMA all the time. These people have their mix from something. It's there if you look for it.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yep.

Daniel Sanz: 

But they're doing the same thing. They're taking this toolbox and they're taking, well I want these three tools and that's what they're doing because this is the purpose they're using it for.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah. But how good would those three tools have been if they hadn't had all of the other tools that help them refine them into what they are? Because as we already talked about, we'll start to wind down as we bring it full circle, it's all about the nuance and everybody does it a little bit differently, but their unique experiences and all their training are what got them to those three things that they're now known for and can pull out whenever they need.

Daniel Sanz: 

Absolutely. Everyone's got their own experience. Everyone's got their own reasons. It's just... It's really just a matter of finding. You have to identify what you want. What do you wanna get outta the martial arts? Do you wanna be a fighter? Do you wanna be a competitor? Do you wanna learn how to walk again? What is your goal? And find an art that that works towards that goal specifically. There's people I know who trained because literally they had brain injuries and they just couldn't walk anymore, and they wanted to do something, and that martial art got them to do it. It worked.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Yeah.

Daniel Sanz: 

I mean, okay. Maybe they didn't go into a fight, but they saved themselves with it. So there's always value somewhere. So find that value and line it up with what your motivation is, and then you'll be fine.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

Totally agree. So as we wind down here, you know, we'll make sure that we link your stuff in the show notes. Really appreciate you coming on. But this where I give you the opportunity to say goodbye. Sounds final but I guess in a sense it is. How do you wanna close out? What words do you wanna leave the audience with today?

Daniel Sanz: 

I will leave with what I'm trying to do more of myself is don't let the small things bother you. People are gonna say what they're gonna say. There's so much bad out there. There's so many people who are negative and focus on the wrong things of the arts. Don't waste strategy on that. Just if you're gonna put energy at all into training, just look for stuff that makes you feel good, that makes you happy, and that, like I said, and it matches your goals. You're training for a very specific reason, or you're researching for a very specific reason, don't let others negativity derail you from that because you don't know where they're coming from either. They might have had a bad experience or went to a bad school or they might have some even valid reasons, but their reasons don't have to be your reasons. So I would say, and it's hard cause running the YouTube channel, there's negativity. I mean, there's comments sometimes that come in, you know, there's days you get a comment and it ruins your day. But you gotta learn to just...

Jeremy Lesniak: 

If you feel, I'm gonna jump in.

Daniel Sanz: 

No. Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

If you feel really good about yourself, and humanity, and the world, I'll read some YouTube comments and it'll bring you back down a notch.

Daniel Sanz: 

Exactly. And I wanna say no, on that note, I do have to say I'm actually very thankful for our YouTube audience. We have a pretty, pretty good audience. Like, I mean…

Jeremy Lesniak: 

That's great.

Daniel Sanz: 

I would say 99% of the comments are constructive and honest and upfront. We get the nasty ones but compared to what I've seen in a lot of other channels, I consider ourselves very, very lucky that we've got a very, I don't wanna say pure group, like people who are actually invested in the content. So I'm very, very thankful for that. But there are negative people out there. I've had people out there who tried to tell me what my own experience was. I'm like, okay, you can argue an art doesn't work, but you can't tell me that I didn't know someone or that I didn't do this. You can't tell me my life experience. Or people who just wanna get a nasty jab in there to say some horrible things but you gotta, and that's something I've had to learn during the channel is you can't let other people derail you from what you're doing when they're coming from their own negativity. Cause then you gotta ask, well, where are they coming from? Why do they feel the way they do? Because their experience is probably very, very different than yours. So find that goal and then find whatever art or whatever method you feel is appropriate towards that goal and don't let others derail you from that because they're just another obstacle. You know, you're training for self-defense. You're training to make yourself stronger. Well, that's an exercise right there. That's an element. Defend yourself against that negativity.

Jeremy Lesniak: 

I hope you enjoyed that episode. I really felt like this was someone that I could relate to. Not because of the starting over, although I have started over quite a few times, but the relationship to the martial arts and the recognition that it just kind of has to be there in some way. It's not always gonna be fully intense. It's not always gonna be distant, but there will always be a relationship for me with martial arts. And that was something that Dan talked about that I dug, I related to. I hope you found some things in this episode that you also related to. Now, if you love what we do, if you wanna support what we do, remember all the things you can do. You can do things as free and easy as following us and checking out the things that we make. You can also tell people about the things that we do. You can join the Patreon. But you could also consider helping us reach martial arts schools via our consulting work. We have a 100% success rate with helping martial arts schools grow in ways that exceed the financial commitment they have made to us. 100% of the time we've done this, we have succeeded. So if we look at things in that way, if you have a school, why would you not wanna talk to us? I lead this team of consultants, but I am not the only one. There are a bunch of people who help out in various ways, and I'm not gonna let that a hundred percent number drop. I will promise you. We will help your school reach the goals that you have. Whether they're financial, whether they're student count, whether they're improving culture, there's so many things that you might wanna improve in the school that you run or own. Reach out. Go to whistlekick.com, go to the school tab. You'll see other things that we do for schools. But you can sign up for a free call. I'll give you an hour and we'll chat and we'll see if it's a fit. It's not always a fit because sometimes people don't wanna do the work. It's not something we can do on our own. We do it in collaboration and we do it with respect and integrity to what is important to you. But assuming that we cross that hurdle, which 90 the vast majority of schools do, I can promise you, we can help you out. Why would you not? Why would you not talk to me? If you wanna talk to me in other ways, you can email me, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Maybe you wanna have me into your school, maybe you wanna have me come teach a seminar. Maybe you want me to bring some of the other folks in the whistlekick family with me. Maybe you want me to bring Andrew and we'll co-teach a seminar. These are things that we can and do. And it's fun stuff. Don't forget the Patreon. Don't forget to share episodes. I don't know. I'm winding up. I thank you for coming by. Thank you for all of your support, and until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.