 Hi, in today's video, I want to try something a little bit different. In the past couple of weeks, I've seen some tremendous growth of this channel, seen a lot of great input from viewers, a lot of feedback, and I've also gotten a lot of questions. So in the same effort to build our community of martial artists and provide a resource for people, I kind of wanted to take a moment to actually answer some of our viewer questions, at least our most common questions. A lot of people have weighed in with a lot of expert knowledge, which I think is fantastic. There's been a high volume of quality comments and feedback, and I think that really contributes to the nature of what we're trying to accomplish here. And I thank you so much for that, because that just helps make this channel better. I also want to apologize if I mispronounce any names. One thing I never really was exposed to was a lot of Japanese terminology. In my training in the American Kempo, the Japanese terms really aren't as common, so I wasn't exposed to that until just recently. So I do apologize ahead of time if I mispronounce names or any particular words. I hope you'll be forgiven on that. I appreciate your patience. So I've been actually getting a lot of questions about my training, my history, my background, also any topics that I can cover, or I will be covering in the future of this channel. So I'm going to go through my bio, because a lot of people are asking me about that, but I'm going to put that in the second half of the video. First I'm going to address some of the more common questions that I've been getting. The first question I get all the time is, what kind of Kempo did I train in? The short story of that is, basically I've trained into quite a few variations of Kempo. I started in 1993 learning the variation of Tracy Kempo, which is an offshoot of Ed Parker Kempo. The Tracy brothers were Ed Parker students. They earned their black bills under him, then they went and formed their own school, and they adjusted the system quite a bit. So I did that for about three of the four years. After that I studied traditional Ed Parker Kempo, both more modern curriculums and also the original 24s. For those of you who know what that is, it was Ed Parker's original curriculum broken up into 24 techniques or technique blocks. I've also have a few years experience in Jeff Speekman's Kempo 5.0. And I found that one really interesting because it's kind of new in its formation. It's a newer version of Kempo, but what I like is he actually addresses a lot of the system's weaknesses, particularly ground fighting. Kempo was a stand-up street fighting art, but when it was formed, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and a lot of grappling that you see today wasn't around. So a lot of Kempo systems kind of had that vulnerability, which is why I think that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a great add-on. But Jeff Speekman took the system and he implemented a lot of more modern-day street fighting concepts, tried to revamp the curriculum, expanded it a little bit, and he also addresses quite a bit of the ground fighting techniques. So that was a really unique approach. And after the Jeff Speekman 5.0 system, my instructor started to make his own hybrid and he implemented even more MMA tactics, Muay Thai techniques, a lot more Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He kind of created a hybrid program for our school. So for several years we did that. So my Kempo is actually kind of ranged in various different versions. And I actually feel fortunate in that because I have a lot of different samples of different flavors of Kempo and put it together. It gives me a much wider picture. So I'm not just stuck in one discipline. I've actually seen a bunch of different versions and I'm very, very fortunate that I've had that experience. I also get the question often, why do I not train in MMA? Technically speaking, MMA simply means mixed martial arts. And that can be a mixture of any art. Technically, Kajukumbo is mixed martial arts. So I do have a mixture of arts. I've got various versions of Kempo mixed with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And I'm now training in Sanyama Bushiru, Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. So I do have a mixture. Now as far as the common usage of MMA as in the UFC style, what you see a lot of times now, I did a little bit of it, not formally. But like I said, my instructor brought in a lot of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He brought in a lot of Muay Thai concepts. So we did that for a while and I got a really good sense of it. And we did that for a few years. I'm not formally trained in it. I haven't gone to a particular school for it, but I have gotten a good taste of it. Now another question, or actually more of a comment I'm getting a lot is, and this one's a little bit more of a personal issue, is some people have comments on my weight. You know what, it's a legitimate question. I have put on a few pounds. I'm not so huge that I can't move or I can't practice, but I have put on a few pounds and I am actually working to correct that. Past few years have been very tough. As I mentioned in one of my previous videos, the hardest part about getting a black belt, it's sometimes life throws you some curve balls. Your training can get interrupted by forces that are out of your control. You know, several years ago I had some surgeries on my foot and my knee. Each surgery, while I'd made a full recovery, knocked me out of training for a good six to eight months, anything serious at least for sure. So that was a lot of downtime. Also additionally on a personal note, two years ago my father got sick. He was diagnosed with cancer and that put a tremendous strain on the family. I spent a lot of time being his advocate, fighting hospitals and his medical system and trying to take care of him, as well as working double, triple time just to make ends meet. So unfortunately for a couple of years my training took it back seat. I still taught, you know, I teach part time at a local campus school. I think it's great, I work with young children. And while that kept me kind of in touch with my martial arts, working with children is not the same as my own personal training with martial arts, you know, their stuff is very basic, mostly. You know, we work with a lot of young children, five, six, seven year olds, but at that point, you know, they're still learning coordination. They're still learning discipline. They're still learning the grass root foundation of the system. So that's not the same as me training. Earlier this year in February, my father passed away. And I'll say this right now, this kind of told me two things. One, it's a reminder of our mortality, time is limited, our life is a gift. So if I want to train and get back into shape, I have to make the time to do it. So that was the first lesson. The second lesson is, I have never seen anyone put up a fight stronger than my father did. So that's a huge, huge sense of motivation for me. I saw how hard he fought for the past two years. He cheated death a couple of times. Even up to his last breath, he fought. So I feel I owe it to him to put up the same kind of fight. So I have made myself the promise that I'm making the time to get back in the training. I joined a new school. I'm working out as much as I can. I'm working out of my free time. I've already lost quite a bit of weight. So that's a good goal I'm starting on. And I just wanted to address that, not so much that I'm offended, but I do see it mentioned. And I think it is worth talking about. My goal is to be transparent and honest and open with my viewers. If that is a concern, well, I'm addressing that concern right now. Yes, I'm on a goal to improve myself. This channel has helped me improve myself. And in turn, I'm trying to bring resources and knowledge to help improve everyone else too. I get a lot of questions and requests for covering different arts. And honestly, the answer is yes, I intend to. There's quite a bit out there. I've gotten people ask me to cover Shotokan, cover Kiyokushin Karate, a lot of Kung Fu requests, Krav Maga, a whole bunch of requests. And my answer to you is yes, our goal is to go in depth to a bunch of different arts. We did the different types of jujitsu. I want to expand on that. And right now we're in the process of scripting them out, doing the research, because I want to make sure we bring you the proper information and I want to just throw something together. And we're also talking to a bunch of local schools for instructors and even more in depth and even some demonstrations. So yes, all that is coming. We are working on that. The goal is to bring a whole bunch of different arts to you and a different mixture. And even on a more fun note, we're going to try to bring you some arts that maybe you aren't familiar with, historical arts. Every art that's around today has an ancestral art. And it's kind of fascinating to see which art shares which roots. So I would like to go into depth of that as well. A lot of great viewers on here. And I actually really appreciate everyone's input. So if you have any questions, if you have any arts you want to see me do, please by all means suggest it and we're going to add it to the list. It's all coming. So those are a lot of some of the quicker questions I get quite a bit of. More in depth. People have asked me to talk about my own training, my experience, my kind of biography, if you will. I've touched upon it in a few videos. But for those of you who are still interested, I'll give you another brief overview right now. Basically, I started training in 1993 at the age of 14. I joined the local karate school. That was part of a franchise just for the sake of privacy. I'm going to call him Mr. Richard. He eventually had to close the school due to personal issues, which I'm not going to get into here to respect this privacy. But the school went through quite a few changes. Originally, it was a Tracy Kempo school and it was part of a franchise. There were a few different satellite schools in the same banner. And after having done the mcdojo video, I look back now and kind of like, OK, the school had a few signs of it. But once he broke away from the franchise, he kind of revamped the school. He converted it from Tracy Kempo over to traditional Ed Parker Kempo. And I saw an immediate increase in quality. And the mcdojo aspects of it kind of went wayside. So I'm kind of glad he made that change. So we did a Parker Kempo for a few years. Now, when he switched, I was almost to my black bit level in Tracy Kempo. I was about maybe six months away from it. So when you switch over to Parker, for those of you who aren't aware, it's a completely different system, a completely different curriculum. We started from White Belt again and worked our way up. And eventually, though, he decided that we were close enough to our previous belt that he will train us for the next year. So we got to finish up our Tracy curriculum as well as starting the Ed Parker curriculum. And in 1997, I was able to test and receive my first degree black belt. It was a fantastic experience. It gave me a sense of pride. And I also started teaching at the school. So from that point on, I kept working in the Parker curriculum, trained for a few more years to work up towards my second degree. 2003, my instructor closed the school due to personal reasons. And I was crushed. One, because I was so close to finishing this Parker curriculum, but two, the school was my second home. You know, I was 10 years into my training and I was loving the material. It was a family. And it's kind of like really kind of threw me for a loop. I didn't know what I was going to do. I knew for one thing I wasn't going to quit, but I didn't know what I was going to do. But before I could give it too much thought, a previous instructor, Fred Murgon had come back to the school and he actually purchased it and reopened it as his own school. Now, one thing I really want to say about Fred Murgon is his teaching is a bit unorthodox, but he is one of the best teachers I have ever seen. He taught me so much how to look at the art, how to dissect an art, how to take it apart, look at the working pieces, choose what works, find out what doesn't work and whatever doesn't work, how to adjust to so it does. So he really taught me how to dissect the art and how to understand it. At this point, you know, I had the speed. I had the techniques. I had the philosophies. I had all of that, but he actually took that and he taught me how to really apply it. So, you know, he told me one day he was, OK, he had me do a technique. I did it. And he goes, looks great. That was fast because he hit the guy 10 times. He goes, but why hit him 10 times when you can hit him once or twice and do the same damage? He had a good point. So he took me back to the beginning and we started again from Wipeout, each technique and he broke it down. He taught me how to analyze his technique, how to make it work, how to apply it effectively and what needs to be changed. You know, nothing set in stone. You know, Kemple's got a lot of pre-choreographed techniques. They're not meant to be performed exactly as it is every time. There are examples of ideas. There's little nuggets of information. There's principles, there's concepts. Once you understand that, you can see everything is interchangeable and you adapt to the situation to defend yourself. So we did that for a few years. I started again, started to work my way back up. I'm like, I'm going to earn this second degree black belt and it's going to mean a lot more to me this time. 2005, right before I got to that point, school closed again. Fred Murgin went and joined the military, which much credit to him. But I found myself in the same position. I have no school. So I actually took some time off and did a lot of independent study. I talked to other Kemple instructors, both locally and around the country. I took the time to get familiar with a lot of the more academic side of the art and I actually spent two years in my garage working out of my own. So I kept training and this gave me a much different insight. Primarily, I learned that every school in Kemple teaches very differently and it exposed me to a lot of different ideas and a lot of different ways of teaching and only reinforced what Fred Murgin taught me that there's no one right way to do it. You have to take it apart and make it work for you. Kemple was meant to be tailored towards his practitioner and adapted for your experience and your needs. And that was definitely an eye-opening experience. In 2007, Fred Murgin came back, reopened to school. It was fantastic. But this time, once again, we had a new curriculum. He was now teaching under the Just Speakman 5.0 banner, which, again, was an incredible experience. With it came a whole new curriculum or at least a revamped version of the previous curriculum, but it addressed a lot more stuff. It included a lot more ground fighting. It put some Muay Thai concepts in there. It was overall, in my opinion, a much better rounded system in terms of ideas. So that was a great experience. So once again, I started from Wipe Out and we worked all the way back up. In 2008, 11 years after receiving my first degree black belt, I finally tested and earned my second degree black belt. It was a major relief and it was a major milestone to know that I persevered for all that time and was able to reach this goal. The goal wasn't the belt itself, but it was the fact I didn't want to stop. So we did that for a few years. I kept on training late 2009. I tested for my third degree black belt. It was a little bit of an abbreviated period between second and third. But that was because of the 11 years I had prior and also around this point in time. That's when Fred Mergan started to bring in a lot of MMA concepts. He really trained hard in MMA and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He trained his own set of fighters. They fought in local circus. They did fantastic. So we had a lot of that coming to the school. So the curriculum was reborn again. So now we had a hybrid system. We had parts of traditional campo, parts of speaking 5.0. And we had a good chunk of Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu all mixed together. And what was really interesting was and it was probably frustrating for new students. But every time I came in the class, techniques were different. It was always fun walking in the class and saying, we're going to be like, I can see him in deep thought. And he'd be like, we're going to try this technique this way this day. And he would take one of our basic techs and he would totally modify it. And instead of doing, you know, a bunch of the traditional strikes, he did the first two strikes and went to a double leg takedown. And it was so smooth. And the way he implemented it, I was like, well, that's really cool. So like I said, I thank Fred Morgan so much for the art and the knowledge he brought into our system and how to think and how to apply and how to change it. The martial arts are a very, very dynamic thing. There's no set rule. There's no one thing that works for everyone. So it's part of being the artist and part of the discipline is what works for you. And he really helped me identify that and how to how to make it my own. So I thank him very much for that. Unfortunately, in 2015, my instructor closed the school and he decided he wanted to move on with his life and he moved to, he moved out of state. Before he left, he awarded me my fifth degree black belt. He pulled me aside. He said, Dan, he goes, you've been through the thick of it with me for the last 20 some years that I have never given up, that I have constantly persevered through all different styles and that I have taken what he's given me and I've made it my own. So he felt that I had reached level. And from there, you know, I kind of embarked on my new path. Right now, like I said, with this channel, I'm trying to absorb as much martial arts as possible. I'm trying to build a community. I'm trying to learn as much as possible. I am now training in Japanese jiu-jitsu. I want to add that I'm loving it. So many different ideas that I didn't have before. It's meshing well with what I've already learned. And I feel very fortunate to be part of this great new dojo. So I thank you, She-Hand-Wood, for that experience. I'm also looking into Shotokan. I want to kind of train informally in that as well. So as we go, as this channel grows, I want to continue to add to my arts. There's so much to learn. It's impossible to learn at all because it doesn't matter what system you know, how long you've trained in it, how good you are in it, what you expand your knowledge to. There's always a lot more out there that you don't know. There's always a better fighter. There's always a better martial artist. There's always a better way. So the only way you can improve yourself and be the best martial artist you can be is to constantly keep learning. Stay humble, keep an open mind. Always go back to your roots, start fresh. There's nothing wrong with that. Just build. You know, if you learn in your system, it doesn't have to replace what you're learning or what you've already done. Add to it. Build upon it. That makes you unique and that makes your art as strong as it possibly can be. So I hope this answers a lot of questions. Like I said, I wanted to do this video a little bit more informally, kind of in an interest of being transparent and open and honest with all of you. You guys have been fantastic with me. I want to give back to you. So please, by all means, if you want to see any specific topics, if you've got suggestions for different arts, if you don't like types of video I'm doing and you would prefer something else, please leave your feedback below, share this channel, help us grow. The bigger this channel gets, the more we can do with it. I have a lot of aspirations for this channel. I love you guys for the support you've shown me and just keep this thing going from here on out. Thank you very much.