Episode 41 - Reclaiming Body: Ninja them to Death

In this episode, Scott discusses recent experiences joining a MMA gym in pursuit of further leveling up capabilities around the ability to be a dangerous man with the ability to keep it under control.

Transcript

Scott: 0:07

Bow! Bow! Bow! Bow! Bow! Wow! Wow! Dudes, I'm in a good mood tonight, man. Had a good time at MMA class tonight. Although I was straddled by a man more times tonight than I've ever been straddled in my life by a man. So, that's going to take a little getting used to. And the guy I'm rolling with is, he's probably got 40 pounds on me, and so he's got a belly. I've obviously got a smaller belly, but a belly. I can't even like, m the term is mount him, so have fun with your gigglies. No, that's So he's laying on his back, and I'm straddling him, essentially at his waist, while I can't get my legs. To touch on both sides of the guy, which is not, I don't mean that as a pejorative, it's not like he's in horrible shape. It's just like, you realize when you, yeah, when you watch these fucking light heavyweights at one 80 that are chiseled and ripped, it's like, it's a different ball game, but yes. A super fun. Can I tell you guys a story? I think I told it to you, but I want to share it with the world. Yeah. Super cool experience. Like. In terms of I've never been more proud of my son than I was last night when we went to class together. It was So cool. And, maybe I'll, even puff myself up a little bit by saying I actually had my first sparring match yesterday and I won and it was fucking cool and it wasn't so cool that I won. It was cool that all the things I've been telling my kid to do and like trying, like being aggressive and that it would, it's better to like go for it and lose than to be passive and draw or even potentially win or, but especially lose. And so I just did all the things I told my kid to do, but I want to talk about my side of it in a second because there's some interesting second order effects of that. But my son has been going to MMA class now. This is probably his 12th time or so. And depending on what we're doing that day, if we're doing striking we, typically just strike till the end of class. But when we grapple the last 15 minutes of the hour long class are typically reserved for the kids to grapple each other, right. To have an actual like sparring match or grapple match. And my son so desperately wants to win. And the first few times that he grappled, he was going against kids that were older than him. They don't have belts here. They have patches on your shorts, but kids that have three, four, five, even six belts, which you can only earn a belt every quarter. So at a minimum, they've been going there for a year. So they're all more experienced than him. A lot of them are bigger than him and he's lost every match or drawn a few. So losing a match there means you tap out. Or the instructor stops it in advance of what was going to be a submission. Someone getting fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. There's a kid who's actually pretty advanced and he was really shook up yesterday because the instructor stopped it, but it's because if he didn't, there was a risk that the kid was gonna have his arm broken. And so it's like, yeah, I saw it coming. Even if you would've gotten out of it, like the risk isn't worth the reward. This isn't a real match. Yeah. But yeah, so he hasn't won a match yet. And he didn't win his match yesterday, but he was rolling against a kid who has at least 15 or 20 pounds on him. And Finn only weighs 50 pounds. So that's a lot. Right. He's older than him. And later the kid that Finn was rolling with, he has a twin brother. And during Finn's match, I was so focused on his match. I didn't hear the dad of these twins, but when the other twin rolled, it was very clear, listening to the dad talk that these kids like study with their dad. Right. They're talking about things that we haven't learned in class yet. Right. Like. giving them advice and tips and tricks and do this and do that. And like, So it's clear that they practice at home and they have the advantage of, they're both nine and apparently, I've talked with their mom they scrap all day long every day, right? So they're basically doing MMA with each other all day long and have been for nine years. Where Finn, when he rolls with his brothers, are four. So he dominates them, right? Yeah. So these kids are more advanced. This kid is stronger. He, or at least. More experienced. He outweighs him by 20 pounds and Finn and I have been talking a lot. Like his aggression has been like somewhere between 25 and 50%. In, the ring, he's been kind of passive, not sure what to do. And I've been trying to educate him, like the faster you go, like be strong and aggressive and assertive in your moves and kids I'm trying to explain to him that kids at seven, eight, nine years old, they haven't gone through the reps and they're not developed mentally enough yet to like recognize what's happening in advance and be able to prepare for it. Right. So if you just move quickly, they'll you'll win. And I also bought a dummy stuffed with like 40 pounds of fucking foam. That he's been working, like he's done dozens of arm bars a day. Right. So he immediately goes after the kid and he tries to shoot and take him down. I was take down was terrible. His form was terrible. And so he immediately got into a headlock and like within the first 30 seconds, there were like three submission attempts against him. And he gets out of them. He eventually gets in Mount on the kid and he tries an arm bar. This is the first arm bar he's ever tried in any of his matches. He never won a match because he'd never tried to submit anybody because he didn't really know how, right. But he actually like immediately launched into an arm bar. He almost got it. It was super cool to see. So I was just proud of him for getting in there and scrapping. Then you fast forward like another 30 seconds, another couple of submissions. The kid mounts Finn like four times, five times, six times, because he's so much bigger than Finn. And when you're in mount, right, that means the guy's on top of you. In front, like on your chest. And so in a true MMA fight, right, that's where they're raining down fucking hammer fists and destroying you. Right. Cause they have all the leverage, all the position he keeps getting out. He keeps getting out. And finally he gets stuck in a, guillotine choke and I can see his face that he's about to tap out. And like, at this point it's, we're a couple minutes into the match and these matches aren't, it's not like they're five minute rounds, right? Like every kid might get a couple of minutes if they, if nobody taps out and then they try to cycle through, so everyone gets a chance. So Finn's nearing the end of it. And so him tapping out at that point, like, Hey man, that was a great fight. Like you, get, you went in there, you fought through, you got out of a bunch of stuff. He tried a bunch of stuff. Like he definitely showed his skill has gone up. So he's in this case I'm like, Oh man, bummer. Like, he's going to be pretty pissed that he lost this kid again. Cause he's already lost him twice. So right when I think he's gonna tap out, he just unleashes this like, guttural, I think is the right word, scream, Like this yell from his soul, and I'm not even kidding, like, I've never heard him sound like this, And he just goes, Roaring in fear Like just his, I'm not going to fucking lose this match was like palpable in the air and he fights his way out of it and they keep going kind of back and forth and back and forth. And Finn gets them in Mount a couple more times. And the instructors are like they're, there's four of them that are circling the match and like trying to provide tips and tricks. And Finn again, when he's in Mount, he kind of leaves himself exposed to the other kid or not Mount when he's in his guard. So in his guard means Finn is between the guy's legs on top of the guy. But the guy has his legs between Finn's body and his body, right? So you can use those as weapons and attack. They're better for defense. And so they're trying to get this kid that's on the bottom to use his legs to like, choke Finn out with his legs. And so they keep, he, they keep trying to get him to do that. Finn keeps getting out of it. Finn keeps rolling him back over and getting on top again. And then finally they stopped the match and they're like, Hey, this is what we wanted this other kid to do, which is like, put your legs up here. Here's how you get him a choke hold. And boom you can actually do an arm bar from the bottom, which is what they have to do. And the match ended and it was a draw, which first of all, Finnegan never drawn this kid. So drawing a kid that's 20 pounds. Heavier, more experienced, and older, pretty rad. Just that alone was a win. But yeah, just like, there's a thing like, If he had tapped out there, I would have still been proud of him. Because he worked so damn hard. But like, seeing your 8 year old come out of that, And like say, no, I'm not fucking losing. I don't know if you're born with that, or if you have to be taught that. I can't say I've taught him that, but like, The heart he showed there to say, I'm not fucking losing. In that moment, like in the moment, I teared up watching that fight with him and then talking to him about it afterwards, I was pretty choked up, like it was, really cool and it was such a good experience, like this whole process with him has been amazing and then I want to quickly turn to my fight, it didn't last very long, the guy doesn't have the cardio that I do, which is hilarious for me to say because I've never had cardio and now apparently I do. So ultimately hell yeah. You do. I think I won more because he got exhausted. But like I can tell you high level, the sequence of the fight was they had to start on our knees because we didn't have mouth guards. And so without mouth guards, they don't want you necessarily going the same level of impact you'd have on your feet. But I immediately took the guy down, like I, I went in super hard, super fast, took the guy down, we rolled around a bit, I tried to get him in a an armbar and couldn't he eventually got me in, kind of a side headlock guillotine attempt, and I, was pretty close at that point, like he, had it pretty deep, but not quite deep enough, and I was able to sneak out of it. And I kind of remember the only thing I remember hearing from the instructors. And of course this probably lasted 60 seconds. They're yelling at you the whole time. The only thing I remember was when I was in that choke that hearing one of them say, like, turn into him. And then after that, I eventually got out of it. I get him to the ground. I put him in a guillotine, he taps out. Half of that was because he was exhausted and he was out of energy. But like the two things I will remember from this, the most were not that I won. Like it's, you don't win anything, but one of them was. When I got done and Finn ran up to me, the look on his face, like that was the coolest feeling I've ever had as a dad. I was like, well, how I felt, the pride I felt for him was the coolest, but the second coolest all happened within like eight minutes of each other was the, like the look on his face of like, my dad just won a match, like that was so cool. But then the second one, which gets to wanting to get punched in the face, right? Like the whole idea behind that is. When I train with a gun, for example, like I'm training and my heart rate is 70, right? If I ever pulled a gun in a real situation, my heart rate is 190, right? And so there's actually like, one of the ways you can train for that is to all out sprint for like 300 yards and then at a range. And then like they have courses where you do this to max your heart rate so that you can at least get a sense of what that is like. But that's part of when I talk about wanting to get punched in the face is like, just to know, like, when you get that, tunnel vision, right, and what that feels like, and your adrenaline is spiking and what that feels like, like the five minutes after that fight, my hands are going like this. And when I think back on it, I sit there and watch Finn again, I'm yelling at him constantly do this, oh, look out for that, roll in there and do that, whatever. I heard one fucking thing that was said in that one minute. Oh, everything else was total blackout, right? Like it was so wild to experience what that actually is like when your adrenaline spikes, you're in flight, fight or flight. And that to me, that was the whole point of wanting to get punched in the face. It wasn't about getting punched in the face, although I probably will end up. They now have the gear there. So I will end up sparring with either Jason or Mark Marco, the two, two heavyweights that I would, roll with. And I don't want to get punched by either of them cause I've seen them against dummies and Jason in particular, like that dude fucking destroys like humans with fists. Savage. Yeah, he is a savage. It was really a cool experience. And I know this is not at all what we want to talk about, but, like to actually get in the ring and, feel what that is like and. Hopefully the more I do it, the less, I'm going to actually rephrase that. The more I do it, the more I'll be able to maintain my awareness of what's going on around me. Yeah. Sure. And I think ultimately, right, like what this is. Is this just, it's just a continuation of, wanting to become more of a savage. And, a lot of times I think people would think of savage as like a negative connotation. And it's not savage in like, in a derogatory sense at all. It's a savage in like, in the event that I ever actually need to react to a situation where my family or myself is in danger. Like, do you want to be rolling over and wetting on yourself and pissing your pants in fear? Or do you want to be a fucking savage and, protect your family? And, that's what I mean by savage. And that's why, when, I go out and do a four mile ruck, right? And you guys have heard me talk about this a lot. Like, the persona of who I'm becoming in all areas of my life, it's not just my fitness. It's like I'm looking to become a savage everywhere in my life. And to me, I think what is the quote by Jordan Peterson where he said

Michael: 13:15

yeah, he says a good man is a very dangerous man who has that under control. And that's right. I 100 percent agree because that's what savages it's being dangerous. It's having the skills you hope you don't have to use them is what it comes down to. But the reality is. We have a world where the unexpected happens all the time and an increasing rate of dangerous situations that people are put into and not equipped to deal with. And so I just want to say I'm proud of you for putting yourself into that type of situation willingly. It also is. A good kind of segue from the comfort crisis book putting yourself in a position where that cortisol and adrenaline is, pumping, right? You're in that fight or flight mode and you're conditioning your body to get used to it. So that's really cool, man. And proud of your son

Scott: 14:11

too. Yeah, man, I am too. But I, definitely encourage everybody, we don't talk a lot about shit going on in Ukraine or Israel or insert all the other places that America has inserted themselves into other countries. And we don't talk about that a lot on the show, but like. There's a lot of people who feel like we're closer to really bad shit happening than at any point. Maybe that's the doom and gloom, because there's fucking doom and gloom everywhere on any subject you want to

scott-silvi-michael-the-southern-canuck_scott_silvi, michae (1): 14:43

pick.

Michael: 14:43

No, I don't think it is. I don't think it is. Red Dahlio has us at stage 5 of stage 6 when it comes to the collapse of an empire, where stage 5 is the precursor to civil war, where it degenerates into Violence and very tribal behavior that, I mean, there's a lot of the, I'm not a doomsday type of, met mentality or mindset generally, but looking at the facts is important and recognizing the patterns that so many other large company or companies, countries, empires went through in the past and finding ourselves in a really similar position, especially when it comes to. How our finances are, how our position is with more of the geopolitical and. It's,

Preston: 15:37

it can't be ignored. Yeah.

Michael: 15:38

Yeah. It's not to say that it's, out of our reach to correct some of this and to let it be a correction as opposed to a collapse if you have the right people that are working towards those goals. And. In positions of leadership and power, unfortunately. But anyways, that's a big tangent

Scott: 16:00

for another but, ultimately kind of, yeah, kind of pulling it back into, to this topic. It's learning how to, well, just making the commitment to fitness and health. Serves every area of your life, including a doomsday scenario. Yeah, becoming dangerous as part of it. Right. And you don't need to be a hardcore prepper with backups to backups to also just make smart decisions about things. And to me, that's really about resilience and self sufficiency. It doesn't, like having a couple weeks even at a minimum of food. That doesn't mean that you're a crazy tinfoil hat wearing person. Like, we've seen natural disasters hit all over the country. Fires, floods, hurricanes, whatever, blizzards, tornadoes that wipe shit out for a few days. And like most of the country, if their grocery store shut down for a few days would run out of food. Like that's a fact. That's not just a random statistic I made up that Abraham Lincoln made up on the internet. Right? That's a real statistic. So I, think there's just some, to me this, all rolls up under this idea of. Of taking responsibility for myself and my family whether that's in a bad guy situation or a mother nature situation or a bad actor, international world, global situation, right? Like it's just being responsible and ensuring that, you're, consistently leveling up in areas that will. serve you today and, as importantly perhaps, will really serve you. Say you have, say you own a firearm and you have 40 rounds at home. How fucking dumb are you gonna feel if shit hits the fan? And those 40 rounds are gone in the first day because you your, fight or flight kicks in and a bird startles you outside and you unleash a clip into it, right? And you're out of ammo, right? Like, that's a real situation for some people. I know, yeah. It's so

Preston: 18:09

funny, but it's like, yeah, you're so right. It's like, especially if it's a Cardinal.

Scott: 18:15

Oh, shut your damn mouth. You shut the hell up. There's a big one right there. Oh, there's a raccoon. There's another raccoon. I got a Cardinal up there. I don't know. I'm not sure those stories with the world. Oh, I got this from my

Preston: 18:31

kids. Scott's got a thing for Cardinals apparently. And

Scott: 18:35

raccoons.

Michael: 18:35

Yes.

Scott: 18:36

Yeah. My kids made for me. Oh yeah. Hand Cardinals. Yep. So yes, Cardinals are mythological creatures that don't exist. In the poor part of Burnsville, Minnesota, where I grew up. That's really the moral of the story. I drove by a

Preston: 18:52

yard the other day, somewhere out in Manchester, and there was like, probably a two and a half foot cardinal in the middle of the yard, like a decorative one. I wanted to take a picture and send it to you, but it was like almost, I don't even know why they had it there, like it was very bizarre. But it made me think of you. Yeah. I just want to conclude. Are you going to see your son in the morning, Scott?

Scott: 19:17

For sure. I mean, I hope so. Well, I

Preston: 19:20

just don't know. I mean, as far as you can tell, because I told Jackson tonight, because I took Jackson to like the local Shelbyville MMA place tonight because I got off work early. Yeah. Because we wanted to get into that as well. My schedule is just. Nightmare and I got off early today. So I was like, let's go check it out and see what it's all about and see What times they do it and of course we get there like at the adult class and Jackson's like it's fucking terrifying You're not gonna have to like fight these big guys He's like it's I just don't want to go to a class where like Finn's not at and I was like dude like Finn went to a class without you like how about you talk to him? tomorrow And ask him, like, how his first day was, and see what he thought of

Scott: 20:03

it. He's got friends there now.

Preston: 20:04

That's what I told Jackson, I was like, you're gonna make friends with the kids there. Yeah. So encourage Finn tomorrow. Alright. To tell Jackson, like, hey, my first class was frickin awesome, and for him to, like, not.

Scott: 20:18

My first class. So the thing that, the class I go to, right, it's an all ages, all family kind of thing. So there's kids that are four and then up to, I think the oldest guy there is, 52 or something like that. Cool. That's awesome. My very first class, so one of the things you do, right, is you, do roll. You learn how to roll, right? So if there's a guy coming at you, you want, you turn around, roll away. How do you roll correctly? And then also then turn around, defend yourself, et cetera. Yeah. So I roll and This little kid who, I think he's five, and he's actually pretty experienced, maybe he's six, but he's a, smaller kid. He runs right in front of where I'm rolling. And I, like, blast him. And he starts, like, crying, and I'm just like, I can just imagine it. Like, worst nightmare, right? Like, worst nightmare. I felt so bad. He turned out to be okay. But, he calls Finn a butthole, and Finn doesn't like it, so. But anyway, yes, I will definitely let them know the rivalry begins. We are rapidly approaching a time where all our kids are going to just want to get together and they won't play Minecraft anymore. They'll just roll around on. Yeah, We'll get the lights out. We'll have to go to hospital for, random armbar breakages.

Preston: 21:35

Well, that, and that's, I was trying to explain that to him too. I was like, like a jujitsu class. It's like, you're not showing up your first day and everyone's going to beat you up to see how tough you are. It's like, everyone's there to like, they're there to learn and coach. And it's one of the best martial arts because the tapping that's involved, like you don't have to, it's not like if you go to a boxing class, it's like. You're going to get hit. There's no way to learn how to box without getting punched in the face a thousand fucking times. Yeah, Jiu

Scott: 22:02

Jitsu in particular is, I was actually reading about this recently because I was, Finn was asking about it and. Even MMA in general, like most of like the blood you see is like surface level cuts, right? Like, sure, you might actually get choked out if you don't tap out. Right. But like Or break a bone or break a leg. Yeah, that could happen. But a lot of times, it's not Like, you watch it on TV and yes, sure, if you get cold clocked to the jaw, that fucking hurts. But if you're in Jiu Jitsu in particular, right, like These guys aren't breaking each other's arms even in real matches, right? Because you tap out. That's just

Preston: 22:40

what it is. Yeah. That's the whole point. You can go, it's neat because you can go, full speed in training in a sense. Like as if you're actually fighting because the tap out factor is there for if you get yourself into a shitty situation, it's like, all right, well, oops, don't break that arm, please. Right. So. What was it like smell wise? How's that? Everyone pretty showered up. That's the one thing I was like, I wonder if it's gonna be like Cuz I was talking to him too about cuz I want to get into it as well. I'm just worried about my knees because you're rolling around and just

Scott: 23:22

yeah, I mean you will find where you're weak pretty quickly Yeah, like I can tell you already like if I were to hold them up on the camera, but The tops of my foot like where my like big toe last knuckle would be or whatever you call your toe knuckles There I've got some Multiple scabs from kicking. Oh, just like rug burn that you don't notice while you're Yeah, just from, kicking bags. My, both of my knees right now are a little sore because we were doing a lot of mat work today. I know, but like, in addition to just the general soreness from like rolling around doing shit that you don't normally do. Like my knuckles when we did two days in a row last week of, striking work. So my, hands were really sore. So yeah, but you'll find that whatever's weak, it's going to get exposed when you're doing it. Cause it's you're using your full body. Hell yeah. But at the same time, you're strengthening everything too. So

Preston: 24:21

it sounds

Scott: 24:21

so fun, dude. Anyone who hasn't done it, like if you go to a particular to Jiu Jitsu, like even MMA, right? Yeah. If you're going to go in there, you're not going to it's not like you're going into a cage, like you said, on day one and I can break your nose. Like when you go in, even if you were to get into a cage, like it's not a match, you're sparring, and so you're going to have headgear, rib gear, shin guards. forearm guards, like you're going to have a lot of protection. It doesn't mean that it's not gonna hurt, but it's not quite as extreme. But if you're just grappling, like the biggest pain you're going to get, the biggest pain we, that Marco and I saw today is we were working on, it's called trapping and rolling, and there's different techniques depending on if you're grappling versus MMA, because one technique for grappling is going to expose you to a hammer fist if you're an MMA, so you don't use that particular technique if you're in an actual MMA fight. But it's called a trap and roll. So if you're on the bottom, it's one of the ways that you can essentially roll the person over and get on top. Right. So it's how you escape from that. Oh, well in the process of trapping and rolling over on top of Marco he, phrased it as a, an inadvertent butterfly stretch. Oh, gosh. And that didn't feel too good. So, it's more likely that your old, creaky body is gonna be the limiting factor than anything else. You're

Preston: 25:51

gonna tap yourself out rolling into like a move where you're like, Oh, I'm

Scott: 25:55

done! And at one point He like did this running jump, like, we were, getting into these positions, right? So it's, a mount position. So he did this like flying jump into the mount position. And now I've, worked with the guy enough to know that like. He doesn't have hours and hours of stamina. Yeah. So, I wasn't sure that old boy had the brakes to stop himself from killing me. Yeah. And so everyone was making fun of me because I was like, Whoa! Like, basically, Bunny the, so this Bunny's MMA is where I go. Bunny was like, dude, you were tapping out before he even landed. I was like, well, yeah, because he wasn't going to stop himself. That's my life flash, man. Yeah. That's so cool. But yeah, it's super fun. It's a it's a great workout. And again, it's, it doubles as like having gone now, this is maybe my fifth class. I already feel much more confident that I, I won't. I'm not gonna say I'm gonna win a fight if I got into one, but I'm at I at least have, like, some framework of an idea of what the fuck to do, rather than just like

Preston: 27:06

I think the way I see what you're going through, to me, in a real life situation, if something were to happen to you and your family while you're out and about, I don't think any Once realistically, like, what's the point of like engaging in a fight with another man while your family's there. But what I think what you're going through does is if that situation happens, since you've had all this, experience with chaos, you're going to slow it all down in your brain in the moment and be able to either just slowly back away with everybody. Or pull your gun and kill the guy who's about to like, you know what I mean? It's like you'll, be able to just slow everything. You won't be freaking out and be like, right. Holy shit. What's going on? It's like, I'm prepared for this, or, I don't know. Maybe you'll just ninja him to death and break his ninja him to death.

Scott: 28:00

Well, I mean, that's a wrap. Yeah. Nja m to death

Preston: 28:05

Why don't we just make this 41? I mean, I don't know what this episode is. It's like this episode is just a fricking good father son.

Michael: 28:14

Ninja them to death. Yeah. Ninja them to death. Reclaiming body. Ninja them

Preston: 28:19

to death. Ninja them to death.

Scott: 28:22

Love it. I'm happy with

Preston: 28:23

that. Ninja them to death. Yeah,

Scott: 28:27

He comes. 41, of the Reclaiming Man podcast. Where in this episode we talked about ninja ing people to death.