 Hi, this is Marylee Johnson with the 21 Convention, and we're here with Ed Akin. Your topic is not only interesting, but also useful, and those two things garner a lot of questions. So my first one was, if someone is just starting out, do you have a suggested first step? Well, yes, get clear on your intent as to why you want to train, if you want to train in martial arts. Some people want to compete, some people want to do it just for exercise. Some people find out they really fall in love with the whole aspect of it, so really get clear on your intent. If you want to, and you may not know that, sometimes you might just need to jump into a class and find, because we have a lot of choices, and it's very difficult without knowing what area they're in and which styles, which instructors are there. Sometimes you just got to try it, see if you like it. Is there a better set of techniques for people of different sizes? Like obviously, if maybe you were to train in a different style, then it would be better for me to train in a different style, and a guy who's 5'5", might... Yeah, definitely. Body structure is always something that we have to consider, and you should always consider that first, especially as you get older, sometimes injuries, you'll have to modify things. But you can generally look at somebody who's not very flexible, who's bigger, is probably not going to want to do a lot of kicking, if you have bad hips or something like that. And there's certain things that, depending on your strength, that you will avoid like in wrestling is a really strong, hard art on the body. And so if you're not really built like that, my wife is an athlete, I'm really not. So I tend to do more Brazilian jiu-jitsu with my wrestling, where she can come in and bowl me over. It's kind of a weird thing, but she was an athlete in high school. And so my style is a little more fluid, and hopefully that answers a little bit of the question. But as far as avoiding certain things, I really think you should once again try something, and if it doesn't feel right, if you're forcing yourself to do something that just seems unnatural, your body type probably isn't for that. And ask the instructor, ask him or her if they think that should I do it this way, or is there a better way for me to do it? A good instructor will modify it for you. So you just got done with doing your talk, and this is going to be a little preview of that. Did you want to tell the audience maybe a little bit about the high points of your talk? I thought there were a lot. But give us a little overview on what you are talking about and what they're going to be seeing. Yeah, so basically I wanted to talk about the three reasons why I think every man needs to train for extreme violence. And it's something that we start with a basic reason, which we go over, and that's pretty much a no-brainer. But my belief is that through the type of training that I've discovered, and I didn't develop it, but I was put through the furnace, and it changes you in a certain way. And so you get these pretty amazing benefits from preparing yourself for really bad things to happen. And that's really what the talk was about. And I think that my idea of getting universal concepts that even though we're talking about fighting, that you can take those and plug those into other areas of your life, I was excited that I could see a few of the guys really getting it. And they're like, oh man, I can do this in my work or my job or my relationship. And because they are universal principles, and that's what we're dealing with when we're, unfortunately violence is a part of life. But it's a really good, the training is a really good feedback mechanism to supercharge your neurology and to discover the cause of your own ignorance, right? And if you think things are gonna work in a certain way and you get punched in the face, then you're pretty sure that your understanding was faulty. So is there a way to get more adaptable more quickly? You talk about adaptability in your talk and it's really important, obviously, for all of life, but especially for fighting situations. Yeah, you can do, you can pick different ranges. We talked about today of picking scenarios and ranges. So if you wanna prepare a specific scenario, then break those ranges down and you can create a live drills where you have a lot of movement. So maybe you start in long range and you're moving that slowly progresses into a punching match to a clinch, then you go on the ground. And you don't have to do this hard, but you have to do it with movement. And so you can even do a 20 to 80 where you start at 20%, going slow, moving with your partner because it's a spatial relationship that makes you spontaneous. And it's the movement that really trains that type of focus. And so if you're not getting stuck where you're just, you know, you both freeze and he throws a kick, you throw a kick, but you're moving, you kick, you close the gap, you go to the ground, you wrestle in a way that's kind of, you know, two kittens playing. And then you get back up and so, but you have that playful. It's not, you're not going hard right away, but you are moving and it's more realistic that way. Do you have any advice for somebody who's a little bit uncoordinated? Yeah, I was uncoordinated. So I didn't get coordinated till I was 19. I got coordinated through the martial arts. So doing a lot of different footwork drills really helped. And actually, Kali, which is a stick and knife art, it's like the mother art. There's a lot of different systems. But the moving the sticks and knives, Kali, yeah. Like the border Kali, like a dog? Kind of, but it's Kali, like the goddess, right? And so, but Kali is from the Philippines and it's a stick and knife art. And what that does is it coordinates your hands, because you're creating all these patterns and using your hands independently. So that helps to really understand line familiarization, body position, and then your footwork as well. And I would recommend probably isolating footwork because footwork seems to be guys who are uncoordinated just haven't developed that. Their feet are clumsy. Or girls, too. Yeah. The last thing that I really wanted to ask is, is there a biggest mistake that people make in life? That's that's a much bigger question. Don't do drugs. More so with martial arts and getting hurt. Oh, yeah. Well, getting hurt is a big one. That's not that's usually a mistake in their training method and in proper preparation, although as you get into combat, our injuries are par for the course. I think the biggest mistake that people will make is getting stuck in their paradigm, getting stuck in their system and thinking that that they have the answers to everything or thinking that they're prepared for a situation when they're not. And, you know, the idea is to look to all sources, look to, you know, different teachers, different systems, different styles, but try to recognize the universal truths, the reoccurring techniques that happen throughout those styles. That's because they work. And so, but if your style doesn't have this, if your style has an improper way of doing things, you may, you may be, you may not even be aware that it's, it's your caught in a paradigm. And so that's, that's great for life, too, is just to keep an open mind and to look to many different sources for truth. Well, thank you so much for your time, Ed. Thank you. Thank you guys for watching. This is Mary Lee Johnson with the 21 convention.