The Grind-Cast “Special Guest Joe Bamboo Wissmann”

Count money, man.

Money, man.

Stacked gritts.

I told him, I'm a beast, bud.

What's up, gang?

Welcome to the Grandcast.

Stop it, areas here.

Get ready to do it.

New day.

New day.

All right.

Today, we're going to have a special guest on the Grandcast.

We got my man, Joe Bamboo Wiseman.

And so Bamboo is owner of Gracie Tampa West.

He is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, retired professional MMA fighter and one of the best human beings I've ever met on this planet.

And so I'll just start off and tell you how I met Bamboo years ago.

I was going to visit my mom in Tampa, Florida.

And this was right before I would move to Florida.

So I spent some time where I lived in Florida for six months of the year and I would live up north for the other six months of year.

And right before that, I went to visit my mom.

And my uncle, who back in the day was the state kickboxing champion in Florida, recommended Bamboo.

So he said, here I got a website for you.

Check this guy out.

I hear good things about him.

And my uncle doesn't really give praise a ton easily, especially when it comes to martial arts.

And so he recommended Bamboo.

And I went in to meet Bamboo at his gym.

And it looked like a real fighter's gym.

There was no air condition.

I remember seeing my man cam in there, all tatted up, head to toe.

And I ended up meeting one of my best friends in the world at that point.

I just didn't know it.

And what I was attracted to first was the humility and the personality of you, Bam.

So I would go on to start training a little bit that week.

And I ended up liking him so much as a person.

Not only did he have the best no-guide jujitsu that I had ever seen at that point.

And I've been doing this for nine years.

This was about six years ago.

So I was three years into jujitsu.

And I had never experienced somebody at that level before.

And no disrespect to the coach that I had that started me in jujitsu and Hadrigo, who trained me all in the gui.

And he's a beast and taught me a lot of the fundamentals and the basics and everything that I knew to start off in the game.

But I had never had the opportunity to roll with somebody at Bam Boo's level without the gui on before him in my life.

And it was to the point where I was getting good enough to start giving people with experience problems.

When I started to train with him, it made me feel like I was in my first week again.

And what I was most attracted to outside of the jujitsu game was the humility and the personality.

And so what I would do is I moved on the beach, which would traffic would be an hour, hour and a half drive sometimes.

And I would train for three days a week when I was down there.

And I would make the drive to and from just for the level of person that I became loyal to and committed to that I was well, you know, they say a church alive is worth the drive.

And so I believe that the person that I'm training with was worth the drive as well.

And so from there, the relationship would grow.

And so I think what I wanted to do, first of all, welcome Bam Boo to the grind cast.

I wanted to start off with your complete journey, which I know a little bit about it.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself in a little bit about how you got introduced to jujitsu martial arts in general and a little bit about, you know, from where you started to where you're at right now.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thank you for all those kind words as well.

So, you know, my story basically I was 20 years old working in a local center doing sales.

And just a guy hardly knew what started talking about this huge jujitsu gym in the area.

And I went to check it out.

And I don't know why I had the impression that I was at the beach at that time, it just beat anybody up.

But I was very mistaken.

And most 22 years away.

Yeah, it's amazing.

My perspective is quite different now, but yeah, I got completely modeled by somebody half my size.

And I was already pretty small.

And I just, you know, remember, leaving that first session with just like kind of a bullseye attitude, not really sure if I should bother going back.

And I kind of decided that I just wanted to be like that.

I wanted to get better and figure it out if, you know, I could do it if I just kept showing up.

And it was a rough or six months.

I did not win a single math, a single second, a single drill for six months against any.

Every single time I went in there four times a week for six months, everything I lost.

And I lost again and again and again.

And it was kind of hard to see if I was even learning anything because I felt like every time I got better, my training partners got better.

And I just could never catch them.

You know, and then one day somebody knew came in big, giant firefighter guy.

And I was able to catch him with a triangle.

And with his first cap I ever got to six months, which is a really long time.

I could never win.

I remember that process for myself, you know, very similar plate plate college football.

And, you know, I think I was 25 going on 26 years old.

And, you know, I was always a decent athlete.

And, you know, I had the same experience, you know, coming in there and, you know, talking myself.

I remember talking myself into going.

It was hot out.

I was in the geek and I knew I was going to get my ass beat.

And get smothered and smashed for an hour.

And I remember, you never know you're not going to process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I remember that process.

Yeah.

It was interesting because after that first six months, I changed.

I started actually winning sometimes and getting better and better.

And I went to a competition.

I mean, I didn't win the competition my first time.

But I had such a good time competing against people from another gym.

You know, it really elevated me.

And then, you know, fast forward to two years from then was about the time that Rob Khan came down to Florida and opened up his school.

And so it went from having one place to train and this whole side of Florida to two.

And just coincidentally, at that time, the place I was training and moved locations much further away from.

And, you know, at the time, I didn't really want to leave where I was at because I liked all those guys.

And also, there were only people that I do like that.

You know, there were my family for two years.

You know, it just didn't, I didn't really want to leave the competition models.

But you know, second thing is with my work, I had no choice.

So I went in to check out the new gym and made Rob the first time.

And at that time, it had been about two years of training.

I was pretty much the best boot belt at my gym.

I mean, I was just only losing to purple belts and the black belt.

And there weren't any other, you know, there weren't any brown belts.

There was only like three purple belts in Florida.

He was very new then.

So that was really good against everyone.

And I remember going into Rob's and it was like my first day all over again.

I just got murdered by everybody.

This was Rob Khan's gym.

Yeah.

And I actually rolled Rob.

I didn't even know who he was at the time because he was weird.

Nobody was in a G. Everyone just weren't short to the shirt.

And you know, I couldn't tell what level anyone was.

And I just, I thought I should be doing better, but they just destroyed me.

And I kind of made a decision right then.

I'm like, well, not only is this way more feasible to train here now,

but there's no question that even if it wasn't, this is where I want to be.

Because these guys are whole another level.

And the visibility to teach was so much better than Eduardo, my first instructor.

I mean, a lot of that is just the language barrier of the Eduardo barely spoke English.

You know, it's Portuguese.

So, you know, those guys are not the best communicators.

So what, what, what, what two things that stick out to me so far on, on, on your journey is,

you know, I think the first part, the first process of, of showing up for six months,

four days a week and knowing you're probably going to get smashed until you got your first sign of, of success.

And I think that mirrors life in, in business as well that, you know,

there's time for you start off in, in, in life or in business or whatever.

And you're looking at people that are good.

And you know, I think it's cool for people that know you to hear your story because, you know,

you've become so good at what you do for training, you know, for, what have you been training now, 15 years?

Yeah, just about that.

And people do talk to me a lot and they act like I always look good.

Exactly.

People just see somebody's at and think they're just, came out of the womb a superhero.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And so it's cool to hear the process.

What, what was it about, about Rob that you think was,

you know, you mentioned that it was, you liked his teaching style.

Anything you could remember that stuck out other than the English.

Oh, 100%.

Show, well, English was big.

But so everybody was so serious at a wardro that was like a very traditional,

business school.

And, you know, it was, I assume the way it isn't Brazil.

You know, you don't talk when he's your talks.

No one learns from anyone but to coach.

Not a lot to ask questions until the end.

So it was really constructed in a particular way.

And I went to Rob and he was just like a regular guy just relaxed.

He didn't, he didn't have a problem with you asking the question.

He would tell a joke here and there and he explained things in a way that made sense.

Not just like grab here, move here, push this way.

He would explain the why.

You're doing this because of this reaction is what you're looking for.

And he just made so much more sense.

It was very innovative.

And he allowed me to really take off.

I started coming in every single day, not just four days.

Any class I could possibly make it to.

I went in there and I was getting wrecked.

I was getting wrecked again for the next couple of years.

You know, it was about four years into my training.

So two years there.

And again, I had come.

So what is it that what is it that you think, you know, so you're talking about them four years in.

I'm still getting wrecked.

You know, I made progress.

I started over start getting wrecked again.

What is it that you that you saw or were thinking that made you to continue going.

Versus, you know, the amount of dead bodies, you know, that I'm sure that you've seen that have signed up for.

Jiu Jitsu and never come back.

You know what I mean?

What is it during that process?

For me, it was thinking about myself.

I knew at any point that if I were to meet myself from six months ago, that I would win without a doubt.

So your first progress versus anything else.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, other people say it's funny because it's consistent you are.

The more you can see, other people are not consistent.

When you're there every day, sometimes twice, you can tell who's there two times a week and who's there four times a week.

It's going to get so weird.

You know, when you're not there that often, you don't really see or know how much everyone else is putting in.

But when you're there all the time, you see it and it's easy to know.

And I started to just get greedy and really just want an extra session and extra hour.

A couple of more questions would rob one more role.

And first one on the mat last one off the mat every day made a huge difference.

You know, over the course of a couple of years, I passed everyone.

I was a purple belt getting black belts.

I was literally beating everyone except for a rock on, Natterrodo and this guy traps.

And how far along were you in at that point?

I want to say five or six years.

Probably about five years, five years, I think.

Yep.

You know, I was pretty much, I remember it's cool how that example works and everything.

You know, first and last night.

Squeeze it out for information, going twice as much as everybody else usually ends up with twice the results.

Yes, ask the question.

It was amazing to me how many times I thought it would go.

We're going to do Q&A today.

He's got a question.

Dead silent.

Nobody had a single thing to ask.

I would always have something to ask.

Like you guys are kidding me, right?

You have this wealth of knowledge sitting in front of you.

Like you know you can handle anyone here easily.

You have nothing to ask him.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

And this was before YouTube.

There weren't instructional internet.

Didn't really have much information.

I should get you back that.

Right.

So literally the only source you can get it from was your coach.

I mean, that's a little bit different now, which is even more of a reason why you should be able to excel if you want to put in the work as you could do your own research and get all the great instructions that people are putting out.

When did you transfer over into MMA?

Where you already.

I think you were a purple belt, right?

I was a purple belt and that was another one.

It was another time when the same thing happened.

Rob said one day, I think he should do it on a different day.

And I thought about it.

I said, okay, find me somebody and I'll try it.

So he started this guy.

And I put the guys picture out and I had never even been in like that.

Not much of a fight since I started training anyway.

Like anything before that didn't really count.

I was really nervous about it and we started doing some stand-up in the gym.

Rob got a bit of a boxing background.

Kind of built like a real muscular hob.

A little white Tyson built.

Yeah, big back.

And man, do you get like a truck?

And I remember like, I went into three times a week for this MMA session that you're some sparring and get ready.

And my goodness, I just got wrecked every single session again.

Like I couldn't do it.

you did to while getting pushed in the face.

And I couldn't stop them from punching me in the face.

They were just so much better at that.

I hadn't spent any time on it.

You know, so I kept telling myself, you know, when I get in the fight with this guy, I'm

just going to get him on the ground.

And to me just saying that, like, get him on the ground was just my plan.

I didn't actually know any rest of it.

I didn't really even know how to do that necessarily.

And I had figured out some practice that I was terrible at.

I didn't feel very ready for this fight at all.

And going up until the time I was fighting, I literally never won a single firing session

with any of my partners, not one.

So it was going to be confident that I was going to beat this guy.

But the way I kept looking at it was, this guy isn't my training partners.

My guys are way better than this guy.

And they're telling me I'm ready.

So I'm just going to trust the process and get everything I have.

And then, you know, first fight happened.

And I got super lucky.

The guy wanted to grapple with me more than strike with me.

And he had to get a hold of me right away as a result.

He got chained right away.

And got the first win in the book.

So I'd ever have it really to throw a punch.

And man, that was a weight off my shoulders.

And I spent quite a bit more time after that, getting the punching bag until I learned

that basically a whole other skill set.

So you go from this journey of, all right, I'm getting my ass beat for six months

in the beginning to, all right, now I'm one of the better ones.

To start over, I'm getting my ass beat again for a couple years.

And now I'm one of the better ones.

To now I'm starting to get my ass beat again, now sparring all over again.

And so that process continues.

And I like pointing out things that mirror, you know, this is one of the things

that I loved about the journey, you know, for me that continues in Jiu-Jitsu.

And outside of that is just the, how much it parallels life.

You know, you just start out getting your ass beat.

You get better in a minute.

You think you're getting better here.

Come something else.

There's always something more to learn.

There's always somebody a little bit better.

But you realize if you just keep showing up that no person, you know,

these people are just human beings that kept showing up, kept putting in the work,

kept putting in the hours.

And if you keep showing up, keep putting in the work, keep putting in the hours,

you're going to get beat.

But every time you transition to the next level, there's going to be some form of ass

weapon, you know, involved.

You know what I mean?

And I've been telling people that you got to get beat into this gang.

When they started asking me about business success, I'm like, you got to get beat into

this gang that when you, when I know that you've made it to a certain level, you just took

a bunch of ass weapons.

There's no way out of it.

You have to be able to survive some beat downs in business and in life in order to take

it to the next level.

So, you know, it's already sticking out to me that that transformation that we're in

the midst of talking about is that at every transition, you start out getting your ass

beat, you survive and then level up and go to the next level.

And then you continue to force yourself into not being comfortable, you know, I'm uncomfortable.

I'm nervous, but I'm going to do it anyways.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, for me, you know, as I started getting better at striking and practicing more for

MMA, I also was taking every transition class.

And I was also starting to teach a little bit at Rob's request.

So I was basically, I had my own little spot.

I caught a few times a week.

I still went and trained with him as much as I could.

And I have all this new pressure on me, you know, to, I don't want anyone to come in

and roll with me in right, not be impressed, you know, or beat me in my own spot.

So I put in as much effort as I possibly could.

And I made sure that, you know, I studied while they just showed up and talked all class.

A lot of people waste a lot of time.

They'll show up to the gym and not do anything for an hour.

Basically, they spent five minutes doing anything productive.

You know, I never wanted that to be how I spent my time.

You know, and now for a long time now I've been teaching and I've been really focusing

on developing other people.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of helping other people become good, you know, and kind of

grow.

And I know you do as well, actually.

One of the things I was attracted to about you a lot was just the way you lift everybody

around you up all the time without even making an effort to do so.

You just can't help yourself.

It's just like a just walking positivity and it's awesome to be around more people like

that.

So I try to be like that for my community and all the people that I need.

So.

So tell me about tell me about this.

So you, you know, you transition into that.

You start doing MMA.

You're successful at that.

You know, you had a bunch of wins there.

I know you've won a bunch of tournaments.

You start training other fighters that had success.

You know, I remember, you know, when I was down there going to the fights, it seemed

like, you know, you guys were 80, 80, 90% of the time winning everything, no matter where

you, no matter where you were at.

But in your journey of transitioning into coaching and leading and mentoring, others,

is there some things that you could say stick out to you about people that you see

that progress quickly or better on the journey versus, you know, what things stick out about

them and what things stick out about other people that don't.

Well, I would say that it was interesting because a whole net of different people there were

a lot of people that had a bunch of talent and they started out so much further along than

I started out.

They would just be able to instantly learn stuff.

Now, as soon as I showed them something, they could do it well.

And that was not the case for me or most people.

You know, but those people would rely so much on that that they wouldn't be in shape,

they wouldn't want to do the extra work to be, you know, have better cardio when it mattered

or when they got pushed.

So there were people that just, they were super strong and athletic and they were so good

in the beginning and they never got past the black hole.

And then there were other people that, you know, I would have thought we're never going

to be able to have an actual one.

And that's why this is so bad at learning.

But they kept showing up and a lot of those guys ended up having, you know, five or six

of them in a fight didn't really well.

And it's just, even though the same thing keeps repeating, it never stops surprising me.

You know, how much anyone can do anything if they actually try and devote their time

and effort to it.

You know, they have to be told, well, they have to listen to me.

It is amazing.

There's so many people that will come in and just do nothing that I said.

I'm yelling at them what to do when they're sparring or fighting and they would not

listen to me at all.

And they're crazy.

And they're scratching my brain.

They're like, why are you here?

Why are you coming here, ask it to be coached if you don't want to listen to anything

that we're telling you to do.

It makes no sense.

The pain of the money is showing up to learn from me and they're refusing to do what

I'm telling them.

And as a result, they're losing.

You know, so, you're such a fricking, Neandrathal.

My dude throws his wife in the cage.

You know what I mean?

My dude throws Robin out there.

And I'm going on a three and one streak.

My dude throws his wife out there.

He don't care.

Oh, man, I didn't want nothing to do with that.

But you know, when I happen, my wife, my mother didn't even train at all.

And you know, like everyone else, she's tried to do it too and started doing kickbox

hand.

Enjoyed it for the workout and met a lot of good people.

And it came a point where I'm like, you know, if you can beat, you're really good and

you need to believe that and roll with people that you don't know.

And she went to a 250 ton of that and, you know, smashed and did really well, of course,

and got into her business.

And she had never got to see me fight.

You know, yeah, I've not done fighting when I met her.

And she said, she wanted to do another MMA fight.

So I decided I was going to do one more just so that she could be there essentially.

After I trained for two months and got put on the main event at this card, is that the

one where you were hurt?

Is that the one where you hit the messed up?

Yeah, I dislocated my hips five days before my fight.

I couldn't even rip my leg.

But I refused to not do it anyway, which was really stupid.

And I would never run to meet anyone else do that.

But I just felt like the guy was so bad.

I was sure I could beat him, even in my weakened state.

If I could just get past the doctors and the medical staff of clearing me to fight.

So, you know, went out there and I had a really hard fight with the guy, mostly because I was not 100%.

But I did get the win in the third round, choking out.

And, you know, after that, Robin wanted to fight, you know?

And thankfully, I had a lot of other fighters around the gym that liked working with her

and we're going to kind of help with that because I certainly didn't want to have to be the one

trying to get her ready and go on and be nice to working out.

I got you know, I tried that out before.

I tried to be Natalie, you know, my wife, Nat.

I tried to be her personal trainer in the gym.

And, you know, I can't even imagine training her for a fight.

We were fighting.

We had been fighting before to fight.

We were fighting.

Yeah, so she'd listen to anybody but me.

It's exactly what happened.

She'd listen to a perm, no.

Work her out before she listened to me.

I know, I was the same way.

He's still that way.

She's still just somehow, she just doesn't want to listen to me.

So thankfully, other people took her under her wing and I just played the role of her cheerleader.

And, you know, tried to make her do what she wanted.

And she said four times, thankfully, she didn't want to do any more.

She's trying to know.

But that was a lot of stress for me that I just don't need it my way.

We're perfectly on the beach.

She not have my life ever being out of fight.

Right.

I don't want to bring up bad, you know, bad memories, man.

If you don't feel like talking about what I'm going to bring up next, just we'll pass.

But I think you can help people with this, man.

You know, we've had conversations in the past about, you know, your mom passing away.

And, you know, I see the pictures of you guys.

That's one of the biggest fears of my life and I can't even imagine what that moment was like for you.

Well, can you tell me a little bit about what?

I would have been specifically.

Yeah, how old were you?

Yeah.

What happened?

I know again, mom quickly.

But how did you deal with that?

Because I know, you know, people, you can help a lot of people out there.

Because I've watched you.

I'm sure you never really move on.

You just kind of find a way to move forward.

But I've watched you, you find a way.

So for me, you know, prior to my mom passing,

I hadn't really dealt with anything that I felt like the panel.

Like, you know, because of your G2 and how brutal it was to learn from me,

you know, I pretty much it overcome so much.

Consistent with so long, I was used to that.

And I was just already on my grind with, you know, teaching and competing and training fighters.

And I was doing my thing.

And I was flying out and visiting my mom about five or six times a year in Tennessee.

And we would go out there and go to an A-Fights together.

I had a connection up there at a gym.

And, you know, she was really big in my life.

And I went up there, you know, one time and she had a little bit of a cost.

And she said she'd go to the doctor, you know, when our trip was up.

So I went back home.

She went to the doctor.

They said she had lung cancer all through her chest.

Like, super bad.

And she had like a month to live.

And that was brutal for me to hear because I didn't understand how she could be essentially what I thought was fine.

And then you have a month to live and there's nothing we can do about it.

You know, she wasn't that old.

She was walking every day.

She seemed healthy.

I mean, she used to smoke back in the day, but she hadn't smoked in years.

And, you know, that was kind of tough.

And so we really had a move in her down here with my aunt for that final month.

And she could hear you to people quickly.

It was super bad.

It was super hard to watch.

And I remember I was actually at the gym teaching a plan of lesson when I got to the phone call.

You know, that she had passed.

And you know, there's just nothing you can do.

There's nothing that's going to make that better.

You know, so I tried to just, you know, make sure that I continued to put my focus on the person in front of me at that moment

who I was working with.

And then just one thing at a time, the next class, you know, I thought about her when I was by myself.

But when I was doing something else, I wasn't trying to let

outside things kind of affect.

You know, I didn't want to be a big depressivusal for everyone else to have to deal with.

You know, I felt like it's a natural part of life.

I knew she was going to die obviously.

Hope to not get any point that you, you know, you never ready.

But, you know, what could I do?

I kind of do anything about it.

So I think the best I could, you know, my other family was very supportive.

And they were, you know, super sad as well.

But, you know, I don't know.

I didn't let it, it didn't say as much as I would have expected it to.

I mean, it hurts when I think about it.

But for the most part, you should be looking forward not backwards, no matter what is behind you.

You know, something as brutal as your mom passing that's bad.

But, you know, no matter what it is, it's behind you.

You know, what are you doing tomorrow?

You got to try and make the best of your life and impact the most people you can.

For me, that's what helped.

It was focusing on other people that needed.

And, you know, when people are grateful around you for your help,

it makes you want to keep giving it.

And that, that's the use where my focus went.

And I just, I poured almost more into all my guys when that happened.

That makes any sense.

Yep. Yep.

So you focused that energy on, you know, what you could control versus what you could not control.

Focussed on positivity and keeping yourself busy.

It sounds like.

And we're encouraged by pouring into other people and putting your focus on,

on other people and on things that you could control and not wanting to bring those people down.

And, you know, excited about pouring into other people and just found a way to keep moving forward.

Yeah, I just had to.

I was only telling myself that, you know, for years before that,

when people would have their problems, they came up.

Usually it would be something like an injury.

Can't train for six months, you know, what am I supposed to do?

You can't, you can't do anything about that, you know,

you can't, whatever has already happened has happened.

All you can do is, you know, you should be planning for the students who are

used to be moving each day, you know, and looking forward.

And, you know, as best.

how this thing's all of things are going to happen.

Everyone's going to go through that.

Hopefully everybody has their parents died at some point.

Because the alternative is your son died or your daughter died.

And that's much worse.

Right.

So I, uh, we got about another 10 minutes left.

I think the last two things I would say is, is, uh, one, uh, speaking of death.

Maybe you could tell the story in, uh, five minutes or less of, uh,

we could tell it together on when you tried to kill me, uh, when,

remember when you tried to kill me.

And, uh, I don't know how you entrusted in you and, uh, let you set me up like that.

And, um, but, and then I think maybe we can end off on some tips for, uh,

for people that are starting their journey in, uh, in, in martial arts or in

jujitsu and maybe a couple of things that stand on, on, on how they can progress

quicker, uh, absolutely.

And stuff like that.

So why don't you go ahead and tell them how you tried to kill me, Bam?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let me take it away with that awesome experience.

I forced you to ask, you know, yeah.

So, uh, I've been a big fan of snowboarding for the last few years.

And I was trying to get my dog's assignment, you know, to come with me.

And it's not, it really has cup of tea.

I didn't really want to be on a giant mountain.

It's snow on a board.

But he did it for me.

And we went out there and, uh, yeah,

I was just a little bit of me kind of haze them and a little bit of him making

a wrong turn, but he ended up on a black diamond on his very first step on the

mountain.

So for the people that don't know, like I didn't know, you know, the colors,

I was passing colors.

I remember green and blue and, and you know, I figured when I got to black,

you know, black usually symbolizes like either really good or really bad.

And, uh, that when I saw double black things and how high we were, and I realized,

you know, we were, we were riding up on this incline thing.

And there was no way like back to lift.

Once I was off, yeah, I was like, there was, there was only one way down for me.

And, uh, at that point, I realized that, you know, I had got bamboozled.

And, um, yeah, you ever see somebody trying to, you know, talk somebody out of

not jumping, you know, like don't jump.

Don't he was trying to talk me into killing myself.

I feel like, come on, Simon, you're going to be fine.

And I'm just falling down this mountain, like five feet at a time.

Yeah, just like stuck on the side of the cliff.

And, uh, yeah.

And those of you that, you know, I know you can't picture it if you weren't there,

but just have to see him for you.

He really was on like the steepest, most brutal run that they had at Park City

right up to a cliff, where if you don't turn right, you're going off the cliff.

He really made a rough turn at the top and just got stuck in the worst possible spot.

And it was rough.

Don't down for him.

But he did make it as you may have noticed.

He's alive and well.

Why would you do something like like that to me?

You know what I mean?

What, what, what, what, I get you back too.

I can't wait.

I'm saving up for the right time in the right thing.

But basically I fell three hours down this mountain.

He would continue to lap me and come by and check and make sure I was alive.

You know, every half hour.

Any other kids.

And, uh, and so the next, the next day we just decided it was best for me to take a class.

Uh, so I took a class and, uh, the good news is by the end of the class,

I was able to function and, uh, actually ride down the, the, the hill and have a good time

and not really fall that much.

Um, I'm going to be honest with you, I way overestimated my ability to teach someone how to

snowboard at that time.

The class was a great idea.

We probably should have done that first.

And, and, and so I'm in the class and the good news is I learned the bad news was it was

very humbling because there was all these little kids and not that I'm, uh, a tall man by any means.

But I mean, all these kids that are, that are way smaller to me.

And I'm falling and they're asking me, you know, that I remember being down.

Are you, are you okay, sir?

I mean, that was like the epitome of that, that was the tip of the iceberg for me for humility.

Where I'm sitting there thinking like, why did I do this to myself?

What was I thinking?

How did I let this man talk me into this?

Uh, but we ended up having a good time.

I remember stretching, you know, for an hour like I got ran over, uh, the next morning, I popped a

couple of leaves and stretched out.

You were killing it though.

After you had a ball, we did great.

We killed it.

Yeah.

We killed it the last day.

Unbelievable.

So thank you for that.

We're still here.

I owe you one.

Stay tuned.

I'll, I'll, I'll take you something creative.

Uh, I have to do it now.

Why don't you drop, uh, drop maybe three, three, three to five tips for somebody out there that I think all of this will mirror life.

But, you know, maybe somebody on their journey in, uh, Jiu Jitsu or martial arts, how they could expedite it and, uh, be, you know, basically reach their best.

So, and what I, there's a few things I'll go over for that, but probably the most important is for each for you to think about what you're looking to get out of your time.

Okay.

A lot of times people get focused on the short term.

So they'll be rolling on a Tuesday.

And they're only concerned on Tuesday is how many paths they got on Tuesday.

How many times they get caught by the higher belts?

So, so, so, so for somebody that doesn't really, you know, maybe they're just listening.

They don't really know.

So rolling means

grapple, doing Jiu Jitsu on the ground.

Yeah.

I do want you to do.

Yeah.

Russ Lange trying to get a submission.

You know, people get focused on the short term and not the long term.

The way to get better is to make sure you're training in a way that allows you to be much better, you know, in six months.

Not the same person in six months.

It's no better.

You know, so for me, it's more about being being okay with losing right now.

As long as you're getting the practice and the reps and you're getting a little bit better each time.

So that down the road, you're going to be a piece of love it.

Because you're focusing on the on the technique and just the process right now, which will make you better thinking about,

how can this make me better six months from today versus just winning in the moment?

I know that was something hard for me.

It's still hard for me.

You know, for me to just, you know, focus on, you know, not using all my energy and strength and relaxing.

And maybe by being more relaxed and I'll grow more and being some positions, I ultimately wouldn't be in or allow myself in.

If I was using it all my energy and all my strength, they're for forcing yourself to grow.

So you would say just the first one was just thinking long term and doing the things in the moment that'll make you better six months from today.

Yeah, don't worry about the short term growth.

Worry about the long term success.

I would say it would be the first thing.

Second thing is gotta be relaxed, you know, you have to be able to think through what's happening in the moment.

You can't do that on your breath being super tense.

So you need to make sure you have your head about you.

It's easy to get tunnel vision or super focused on something and miss everything around you.

It's also way more likely you'll get injured if you're super tense.

So relaxing and remembering that your mind is your best weapon when you're training or doing anything.

It's probably my next thing and you're going to need to be told that a bunch of times.

I mean, I used to make all my passwords, the word relax in some form or another for years.

Because people were always telling me to relax and I wanted it to be into my head.

So I made sure I had to type it on a daily basis.

I might need to change my passwords.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, that was what I had to do because I just could not help.

I could feel I was tense.

People were telling me to relax.

I'm like, I hear you, but I just forget one second later.

But you did it.

It's not easy to do when somebody else is trying to kill you.

You know what I mean?

No, but I've gotten it.

Remember, remember, remember I was telling you at the, you know, you saw it the last time I was here when I ripped my bicep off.

You were, you were here.

Just not only did you try to keep me on the thing, but you know, when I blew my bicep out five weeks ago.

But, you know, I'm sure you could tell the difference then versus, you know, a year ago when I was just kind of getting started with the, you know,

a couple of years ago with the boxing a little bit and how tense and tired I would get to be more, more relaxed.

Yeah.

I think in any saying tend to be more tense and nervous in the beginning when it's new.

But once you're able to relax, there's always a better funnel.

Everything goes better for you, you know, and for me, like now I'm very relaxed.

So I do anything and it's hard for a lot of people to think that I ever was that way.

But I'm not sure if I was exact enough that how I am now that's been.

It's learned behavior and it's just changed from practice.

And what was the third thing?

So third things.

I would say for the little person you need to have a good trained partner.

You get to use one of the rare things and you can't really practice by yourself.

So and you know, kickboxing any combat sports kind of that way, you need a good partner.

You know, you need to make sure that your partner selection in class is helpful to both of you.

You know, you can't get better when you got always a brand new partner or always someone twice your size or half your size.

So for me, I was kind of like the middle size of everybody in class all the time.

I had usually a pretty good source of partners, but I can tell you it would have been a lot harder for me to get better at anything.

Every time I rolled like this Marcus Jones is my partner who was just gigantic football player was training with us.

Like we got to have with torrents as big ass over there.

Yeah, so my man, yeah, so clearly.

Yeah, I will for sure.

Yeah, I mean, you got to have the right partner.

So for me and for everyone, I really think that it's important for you not just as focused on.

You know, who you're training with, but you know, or how you're training with who you're training with.

You know, and as far as in life and in business that can kind of equate to making sure you have good people around you.

Not bad people around you because if you got the wrong people around you, you're not going to be able to do well.

You know, you got to have the same like minded squad around you all the time.

Truth, man, truth.

Well, I just want to thank you for for for being a guest on the grind cast and thank you for not only what you do for me, but for so many other people, man, I've been a witness to how selfless that you are to people in giving of your time.

You know, being in positions where you give so much of yourself that at points, you're taking advantage of or, you know, people will kind of not always give back the amount of loyalty that you've given out.

But it doesn't change you.

Your heart stays the same.

You don't walk like you're as good.

I know people in the world and the martial arts world that walk like they're a whole lot better than they are.

You know, when I trained, what I'm like, damn, bro, I thought you were going to be a killer by the way you carry yourself.

And then, you know, and you exemplify the word humility, man, you're such a beast and you never walk like you are.

You don't act like you are nobody would ever know.

And I love that about you, man, the way that you treat random people, just like your friend, you know, what's the lady I just met when I was out there.

The one that moved from Seattle.

Oh, yeah, you're a Jen.

Jen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm doing good.

He just, you know, just me turn and, you know, friends with him and his wife and just, you know, helps her out and takes her in and they become good friends.

I mean, it's just the way you treat people all over the place.

And every walk of life, no matter where they're at in their life, is something that I admire about you, man, and your loyalty and commitment to the people around you, brother.

So keep being you, keep being you, no matter what, man, and I see you soon.

All right, homie.

Thanks for having me.

I'm running peace.

Count money, man.

That grits is fine, fine, told him, I'm a beast, but