The Black Belt Podcast

“Don’t take the fight where you’re best. Take it where the gap in skill is the greatest.”

“There are laws of physics even BJJ cannot overcome.”

“Fluid BJJ is a play on words. It’s about movement, adapt…

“This journey didn’t begin with fight promotion—it began with the love of the arts, and it continues because of it.”

“Mastery is when you’re unconsciously competent—your body knows before your mind ca…

 "Survive first, win later. The goal is to stay in the fight." 

 "Martial arts training can be the crucible for developing life skills beyond fighting—mental toughness, social intelligence, and adapta…

“If you define success by achieving specific things on a rigid path, then you set yourself up for disappointment. True success is process-oriented, goal-focused.”

"In a finite game, the purpose is to …

"Fear is not my enemy; it is a friend. Fear is only allowing me to see an aspect of myself I was not willing to look at."

"The only moment you can truly live or die is now. So why waste time on the pa…

"Joy is a trainable skill, and like any martial art, it requires practice, especially in the face of discomfort and chaos." 

 "Your obstacles are your greatest teachers. Like the samurai seeking out t…

"We know we can't make it; we don’t have the lifespan to know it all. But that’s what makes us warriors—we still choose to walk the path, even knowing we’ll never reach the end.”

“The breath is the br…

"To always be yourself. Have faith in yourself. Don’t look for a successful personality and duplicate it. These are very strong pointers to truth, but they’re dismissed by a lot of people. If you und…

“Train like a fighter, think like a soldier, fight like a warrior.  I believe confidence has to be done with inoculation.  In martial arts we have stress and aggression drills that inoculate us to pa…

“When you go into a Hostage Rescue you have to see it as if you are protecting or trying to save your own child, your own mother, your own brother.  If you can’t put yourself in a situation to see it…

“Jeet Kune Do to me is not about the perpetuation of an art, it is about the personal cultivation of an individual.  To me Jeet Kune Do is a state of being.  It’s a dynamic way of thinking and acting…

“You want to find this place with the person that you are working with, sparring is working with people, it’s not working against people, you are going to receive what you give.  If it’s too hard, an…

“I never wanted to be the greatest martial artist ever, I always saw myself as a teacher.  I want to influence people, I don’t want them to be impressed by what I do, I want to be a vehicle for them …

“The real goal is not to be a great martial artist, but to be a great human being.  A Black Belt is a good human being that is constantly working on themselves, it is somebody of a high level of skil…

“Spiritual Growth is not necessarily found on a yoga mat, in the dojo, or in a meditation room, it’s found in the space between your thoughts, it’s found in the space between your decisions, it’s fou…

“Champions have a very strong spiritual understanding of when is the right moment to throw a perfect technique, using time and timing to understand the right moment.  It’s impossible to put into the …

“When pushing the boundaries of the human body, either I’m going to break, or it is.  Can I pull the trigger and go?  It can be this way in self-defense, life, and everything else that we do.

A great …

“The Jail that I was in was easy.  The Jail that most people are in today without being incarcerated in a Jail Cell, is the Jail cell of the mind and the heart.  It wasn’t till I learned to love me i…

“Everyone has a gift, but not everyone seeks to find it, or has the patience to go within themselves to find it.  It’s passion, what are you passionate about? What part of you gives you the drive to …

“My goal in training is to build a student’s reflexes not just memorizing a technique.  Building reflexes by discarding the drills, and eventually being able to free flow, so you can react to any ang…