00:00:00.03 Randy William Yeah. 00:00:00.00 nextlevelguypodcast the usual it's about yourself your journey teaching jujitsu and then at the very end there'll be two questions one will be about um what you want people to take from this and the other one is just what you want people to follow like your social media if you're going to put pull a website all that kind of all the fun stuff 00:00:04.03 Randy William Yeah. sir 00:00:17.65 Randy William Yeah. 00:00:21.10 nextlevelguypodcast But thank you so much for coming on the show. it's It's a dream because I generally have followed you for so long now. 00:00:24.66 Randy William yeah 00:00:28.41 nextlevelguypodcast But your ah your bio proudly states BJJ isn't that hard. In a world of where people make it hard, what do we do? How how do we overcomplicate jiu-jitsu? 00:00:41.03 Randy William um Excuse me. I think most of the overcomplication comes from two main things. The instructor wanting to be needed. so to keep getting paid, you see it in the fitness industry all the time. 00:00:53.82 Randy William You could just deadlift, bench, and other basic shit. But now we got to do some crazy ass jumpy flippy shit. 00:00:58.56 nextlevelguypodcast Hmm. 00:01:02.40 Randy William And the other is insecurity and lack of confidence on the athlete's part. When you've never played a sport and you come into a gym that you see a bunch of shredded dudes, let's just say we have a bunch of shredded dudes, it can be intimidating. And I do understand that. 00:01:18.50 Randy William But it really comes down to just, do you think you can do it? And is your instructor making it simple enough so you believe you can do it? 00:01:28.63 nextlevelguypodcast It makes a lot of sense because when you first start, it's all this kind of, you see people doing this fancy flips and transition and you're like, what, how did, what, I have no idea what I'm doing because it's so out of the norm of what we normally do in life. 00:01:43.63 nextlevelguypodcast To suddenly haveb your personal like space invaded by this big sweaty guy in pajamas on top of you, you're like, oh, how did you get into jujitsu? 00:01:49.29 Randy William yeah. next 00:01:53.27 nextlevelguypodcast Was there a defining moment that kind of made you think, I need to try this sport? 00:01:57.71 Randy William So, no, actually. i was a high school lacrosse and soccer goalkeeper. I was highly aggressive, as it was. i was I was the goalie that would just attack the ball. 00:02:08.09 Randy William I had no fear of my own safety. It was ridiculous. 00:02:10.77 nextlevelguypodcast You're a traditional goalie then. 00:02:12.46 Randy William Yeah, that was nuts, dude. 00:02:12.49 nextlevelguypodcast ah 00:02:14.31 Randy William yeah That was nuts. But i was i was really good. i was All-American after a year of playing it. 00:02:21.73 nextlevelguypodcast Hmm. 00:02:22.90 Randy William I ah got to a point where my aggression got the best of me. I got red carded a couple of times and I was in in the US, there's a truancy court for athletics in school and school and I got in a lot of trouble because I was just an asshole. 00:02:38.73 Randy William I'm not gonna lie there. And I started dating this girl, my son's mother, and I was going to her house for this, i think it was like the second or third time. 00:02:49.80 Randy William And her dad was like, hey, you wanna help? You make some money? like Yeah, of course I want to make some money. So we're like moving stones in his backyard for like a border around his pool. So it wasn't really fun, but money. 00:03:03.65 Randy William And then he was like, do you wrestle? 00:03:04.49 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 00:03:05.97 Randy William I'm like, no. Want wrestle? Like, sure, I guess. And I was like, I'm athletic. I thought I thought i was athletic. I was 125 pounds and he was just a 45 year old dude. 00:03:19.34 Randy William So I shot and tried to take him down. And then he pulled guard and triangle choked to me and sprained my thumb cause because my hand was in there. And I was like, that was fucking I need to know how to do that so that shit never happens again. 00:03:33.39 Randy William ah was so mad. And then I started in his basement. He had old Craig Ku Klux tapes. He was a blue belt under Henzo. And that was the beginning of the end for me about Jiu-Jitsu. 00:03:45.21 nextlevelguypodcast Why, once it sacks you in, you've got no chance. You're stuck, Clout. 00:03:48.54 Randy William Oh, dude, I had, I knew that I make the joke, ah the darker my belt got, the more egotistical I got. and Because it's like, what are gonna Beat me up now. 00:03:59.91 Randy William Come on, old man. 00:04:01.92 nextlevelguypodcast Because i I heard you say in an interview that you were you played three sports. So it was lacrosse, football, and the other one? 00:04:07.82 Randy William Basketball. 00:04:10.05 nextlevelguypodcast So you were up pretty much an all-rounder when you were All-American. So do you think that's what made... 00:04:13.82 Randy William Yeah, well, not in basketball. wasn't very good at that one. 00:04:16.55 nextlevelguypodcast but know but We don't need to talk about that. We need to just give yeah yeah the top two. 00:04:18.81 Randy William Yeah. yeah 00:04:20.84 nextlevelguypodcast late you know So do you think the fact that you train so in a lot of that sports, it gave you that cross training and that way it made you a better teacher because you could actually understand the mechanics rather than just the techniques? 00:04:33.43 Randy William i I think so completely. I don't know how much you know, well, you call it football, you probably know more soccer than I do. I don't even watch it. But if you watch the way they do lunges and the way they pass and use their feet, that's how my passing is in Jiu Jitsu. It's no different. 00:04:49.75 Randy William I do a lot of footwork, the same things, right? because all sports in this end are just hip movement, all of them. There's, I don't think there's an exception to that rule, honestly. 00:05:00.76 Randy William It's just learning how to open and close your hips hip extension, hip compression, and with jujitsu just add some front rollers and call it a day. But um 00:05:09.34 nextlevelguypodcast It sounds like a every warm-up I've ever done in jiu-jitsu at the minute. like 00:05:13.83 Randy William exactly, it's unfortunate no one does warm ups anymore. They think it's boring. 00:05:18.73 nextlevelguypodcast um Unless you're now, is it, in the Globetrotter ones? Or no, the oh the one where it's like you have to levitate and all that kind of stuff. And it's like yeah you see some of these affiliates and you're like, what the hell is happening? 00:05:28.52 Randy William Ah, shit. 00:05:33.14 nextlevelguypodcast but and and I started in Gracie Baja and you had to like bow to the Gracie as you stepped off on and off the mat. 00:05:33.38 Randy William Yeah, 00:05:41.26 nextlevelguypodcast You had to call each other pro professor and they were you were the like a pupil and you had to sign a card if you were a bad boy and all this kind of nonsense. so I just thought, was that why you moved originally? 00:05:49.75 Randy William yeah there's a lot of it. 00:05:54.63 nextlevelguypodcast You just found out restrictions and from your your initial teaching at the Gracies to moving across or was there something else? Because your wife's in the military, tree so you moved, wasn't it? 00:06:03.41 Randy William so yeah so let's go back a half a step here i started jujitsu in more of an american style anyway i never at first like first year we were under like a pedro sour affiliate but it's not like you ever went there it was just it was just is what it was at that time and um 00:06:24.32 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 00:06:26.10 Randy William we We didn't bow and do all that stuff. we just There wasn't even jiu-jitsu. It was just MMA when I started. And then that gym went under my current professor, and he was a little more traditional, but he was still – his traditionalism was more about safety. 00:06:43.87 Randy William Like he picked up partners for us. We lined up by rank. We bowed to each other. Bowed to the mat. That was important. It's still important to me. Bow to your training situation. But we never bowed to pictures on the wall or anything like that. 00:06:56.03 Randy William Everything was about mutual respect with my professor. And he's an old school Brazilian guy. 00:07:02.60 nextlevelguypodcast I've got a guy like that just now. and a He's used he come into his place and he's just like, call me Marcus. know just like He doesn't want any pumps or anything. 00:07:10.36 Randy William Yeah. 00:07:11.83 nextlevelguypodcast It's like we're all here to learn. We're all here to have fun. We're not better. i think We're just learning a sport. and It's actually... 00:07:19.52 Randy William Exactly. 00:07:20.57 nextlevelguypodcast and and an amazing place to learn but um how did you find because you've talked in another interview um probably with the name of the podcast but you talked about growing up in foster care that you had some anger you had some ego um you know that you stayed you lived in the gym for a while and but you said that the sport really helped you you find yourself how do you think that helped you channel your like your pangs of growing up into becoming the man the awesome guy that you are now 00:07:31.22 Randy William Yeah. 00:07:48.89 Randy William A lot of it was, i heard, a I live a lot of my life by like stupid quotes that somebody told me, like do it right or do it twice, kind of things like that. Right. And I always internalize those things. And one of them that really stuck with me is you learn from your father whether to be like him or not like him. 00:08:06.82 Randy William So I made it a point to take the good of him but also get rid of the bad. Because my dad wasn't a terrible human. He just didn't know what the fuck he was doing. He was by himself with three kids. I can't fault him completely. 00:08:19.93 Randy William I'm also older a little wiser now. so I can't be mad at him. 00:08:22.87 nextlevelguypodcast Ah, that's that's the most important part. and it's 00:08:26.71 Randy William Like I was an angry little bastard for a while, man. Even up until – shit, I would argue until it was like a brown belt, new black belt. I just had to always win. Everything had to be proving a point. 00:08:39.04 Randy William And now I just don't care. I do care, but I don't care about certain things anymore. 00:08:46.01 nextlevelguypodcast And do you think that it helps you cut through the bullshit in it that, you know, there you now see the sport for enjoyment of it. It's not about the ego winning. It's about the taking part. 00:09:00.54 nextlevelguypodcast And is that why you've discovered like so the simplicity of it was best rather than overcomplicating it? 00:09:07.49 Randy William Well, the simplicity thing was always what I was, right? Even in my other sports, when I was a soccer player, I didn't get good at anything but diving. If I knew how to cut off angles, it didn't fucking matter how athletic I was if I was smarter than you and more aggressive than you. 00:09:23.79 Randy William It didn't matter. I was not the best goalkeeper. 00:09:25.09 nextlevelguypodcast I love that. 00:09:26.68 Randy William Like I really wasn't the best keeper, but I was an all American keeper. 00:09:26.69 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:09:30.82 Randy William I have the state record in Delaware for saves in a game. That's also because my team sucks. Don't get me wrong. But, but we only won like two games, dude, but I would average it like 30 saves a game. it was ridiculous. 00:09:42.96 nextlevelguypodcast That's awesome. 00:09:44.23 Randy William Yeah. Because I wasn't afraid and ah the, sorry, sorry, I messed myself up there. Um, I didn't care about bodily harm because I cared more about losing, unfortunately. 00:09:58.44 Randy William So that's kind of how that all went. And then with jiu-jitsu, it was the same thing for a while. I didn't care about getting broken. I have a couple injuries because I'm an idiot, but I cared more about winning. And the older I got in the sport, the more people I started to teach and realize this isn't ah this isn't a way of life for everybody. 00:10:17.08 Randy William That's when I started to calm down a little bit. and make it just simple so everyone can understand. I don't need to be smarter than everybody else just because I am. In the jujitsu context, that is. 00:10:28.94 nextlevelguypodcast I mean, i love like the persona that is in your videos as the same guy that you are day-to- day to day. And I can't imagine you even crazier getting sent off at football and stuff. So I can... 00:10:39.57 Randy William Oh, dude. That was so much worse. 00:10:41.62 nextlevelguypodcast ah 00:10:43.77 Randy William I've broken my hand on several core posts, man. Yeah. 00:10:47.62 nextlevelguypodcast Okay, that but I can understand it now. Yeah. 00:10:50.58 Randy William I hated losing. 00:10:52.94 nextlevelguypodcast you And do you think that's like a lot of people are overcomplicating it now that they're because lot of your videos are like on the mechanics, the principles of the techniques. You seem to say like, if we can understand the mechanics, we don't need to worry about the flashy technique or what they're going to do because you know they're what they're going to do, almost like a Jedi trick. 00:11:11.73 nextlevelguypodcast How do you, is that where we overcomplicate it? 00:11:12.06 Randy William yeah. 00:11:14.80 nextlevelguypodcast We worry about the flashy shit rather than just the the DNA of the sport. 00:11:20.23 Randy William The thing is, the flashy shit is just different applied principles. If you look at a bolo, it's mechanically the same in my mind as an armbar. That's why I'm relatively good at bolos. 00:11:31.02 Randy William I never actually drill around bolos. I could just do them because it's a leg but it's a limb between my legs and a focal. Excuse me. So once you start looking at things that way, it's a lot easier to put things in a a broader context, right? 00:11:46.49 Randy William So if every single submission, that's a limb anyway, is just something between your legs, the goal should always be get something between your legs, be a man. That's always the goal, right? But 00:11:57.26 nextlevelguypodcast um I've been trying that for years, mate. Never happening. ah 00:12:00.43 Randy William I got lucky. I married way up. 00:12:02.58 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 00:12:04.07 Randy William But once you know the most basic shit, it all funnels into each other. And then the fancy shit just comes naturally. Like, if you watch me roll, I'll spend the first couple minutes just being an asshole, just flipping and doing all kinds of dumb shit. 00:12:18.87 Randy William And then the last half, I'm like, okay, time to be disciplined now and actually practice. Because everything ends up just being the same. 00:12:28.03 Randy William I know that was an oversimplification, but I don't know how'd explain it much better than that. 00:12:32.01 nextlevelguypodcast No, it makes a lot of sense because once you start seeing the mechanics or the core core principles of it, you see that pretty much every move involves a hip you know a hippi and change or ah momentum i am like finding your base or a transfer of pressure. 00:12:46.31 Randy William me 00:12:51.31 nextlevelguypodcast or you know there's There's so many things that you can kind of go, oh, that's the same as that, even though it looks like a completely different position. 00:12:53.01 Randy William Oh, yeah. 00:12:59.51 nextlevelguypodcast its And what's the current setup? Is it your wife that's in the military and you were a former police officer? or 00:13:06.26 Randy William Oh, no, I've always been kind of a, I guess, a loser, essentially. I never had a real job. I've always just done jujitsu and part-time gigs. My wife is a military officer. 00:13:17.91 nextlevelguypodcast And has any of that sort of rubbed? Because I was quite interested in how, because you've traveled around with her. Has any of the military side of things passed over to you? Like, ah do you see any of the habits that she instills? Or would that defeat the black belt, Randy-ness of your job? 00:13:36.60 Randy William So my wife loves what I do. She thinks it's more just hilarious, but, um, Because she doesn't like the idea of grappling me. She she just doesn't. That's not her deal. She's not a fan of the actual sport. 00:13:49.25 Randy William She's more of... She works HR. She's like a singer. She's very gentle. 00:13:57.28 Randy William But the military stuff, the habits, she's not... She's not as disciplined as I am at all. That's fine a day and dandy. She doesn't have to be because I do everything for her. 00:14:08.41 Randy William I cook all her food. I do everything I can because that's how i keep myself sane, dude. Like, I got always be doing something. But she comes home and is just a wife and a mom. That's her job. 00:14:20.16 Randy William And make money, I guess. Yeah, that too, but... 00:14:22.99 nextlevelguypodcast I love that. I love that you've got your principles to that. You know, it's, I know I treat my partner right. i'm I'm a good father. I'm doing this. I'm giving out to the jiu-jitsu community, but you're also loving husband, a loving, you know, loving husband, and father. 00:14:40.61 nextlevelguypodcast And, you know, you know, you're not one of these people who just takes over the sport and thinks, yeah, that's it. I'm the best because I can do jiu-jitsu. You realize there's other facets of being a man. 00:14:51.14 Randy William Oh, it does. It took me a while to learn that, dude. I've had failed relationships. I've messed up a lot because I would... A specific one that still eats at me a little bit. I got over it, but every once in a while. 00:15:06.32 Randy William um There was a training class I wanted to go to. i had something on my mind i wanted to try, but it was the same night that Santa on the fire truck was coming to see all the kids in our town. i was like, yeah, gotta go to Jiu-Jitsu. 00:15:19.22 Randy William And That event, even though it's a yearly thing, it happens every year, didn't happen again because we moved. And it's one of those few things I kind of regret. 00:15:25.64 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, 00:15:27.81 Randy William I'm like, man, I have just missed Jiu Jitsu for a day. 00:15:32.25 nextlevelguypodcast well, they say hindsight's a bitch, you know, it's... 00:15:35.15 Randy William Yeah, it can be for sure. 00:15:37.67 nextlevelguypodcast And I think that's the thing, though, is if you learn from it and if you grow from it, then it's a win in a way because you're not that same person. And the fact that you can appreciate it, that, you know, you probably should have, but... 00:15:50.53 nextlevelguypodcast you can't change time, but you can do it again better the next time. It shows, it shows you the growth in you. Do you find that's what helps with jujitsu? 00:15:57.11 Randy William there's a 00:15:58.85 nextlevelguypodcast It shuts off that part of your brain, that thinking, the aggression, while you're kicking ass, you 00:16:04.54 Randy William So 00:16:08.70 Randy William it's interesting, because when I train, when I'm teaching, I'm more the way I am online and everything, but I roll. Everything is relatively the first. I give you two, three minutes to be fun and playful, but the other half is me just being disciplined and doing what I'm going to do because that's the only way I personally can get better. 00:16:29.64 Randy William So it has to be that balance of, yeah, let's have fun and roll, but I'm going to beat the shit out of you now. Cause I still want to progress. I still want to get better. And I will always believe the old Joe Rogan quote, beat the shit out of blue belts and you'll get really good at jujitsu. 00:16:46.56 nextlevelguypodcast I'm not going to say that I have my blue belt so that's quite scary because you started was going to say you started teaching as a blue belt and that's quite a hell of impressive I was a moron at blue belt I'm still a moron now but 00:16:49.31 Randy William yeah It's true, man. 00:16:56.63 Randy William Yeah. 00:17:01.64 Randy William Yeah, me too. That was an idiot too, but it's easy when everyone's a white belt. 00:17:04.99 nextlevelguypodcast but 00:17:07.90 nextlevelguypodcast So how did that work? I mean, did you find that the fact that you were closer to the beginner mindset helped you be a better coach because you could understand it rather than somebody who'd been a black belt for 10 years and has never really remembered what a beginner mindset or approach is? 00:17:23.75 Randy William that I think what helped me the most at that time was that I was already an athlete being coached. and other sports like soccer, and lacrosse, whatever. 00:17:34.98 Randy William So I just took the same methods in soccer and lacrosse. It's not like you learn two passes or two plays and then just play a game like the old school. Let's learn some technique and roll. 00:17:45.74 Randy William It was, hey, we're going to do line drills. We're going to this. We're going to this. And then at the end of the week, we're going to scrimmage. And that's how I treated it with jujitsu. I did a lot of line drills, a lot of situational. I would make up drills. 00:17:58.53 Randy William that I felt made sense at the time. Some of them are dumb, but some of them are still used today. and that's just kind of how I thought about it as an actual sport. And then the older I got, I started adding back in the self-defense stuff because of principles. 00:18:12.76 Randy William And that's important too. Okay. 00:18:14.83 nextlevelguypodcast So when you first started, was there a point where you maybe went the traditional route and you thought, oh, wait, no, that belief or that way of thinking is holding me back? 00:18:25.61 nextlevelguypodcast Or did you automatically just go in with your kind of style thinking and go, I'm not doing that because it's wrong? Did you go down the traditional path and then become the the guy that we all don't love? 00:18:38.04 Randy William I actually don't believe I ever did the typical teach three techniques and roll. I don't think I've ever done that. I might have. Don't get me wrong. Maybe in the first couple of classes, I don't honestly remember my first time teaching. 00:18:53.46 Randy William But um I was never, I would do what my professor does. He would teach a single technique and then be like, all right, see you next month. And you're like, wait, what? 00:19:04.62 Randy William But he was really about, you need to understand this for a long period of time. And I internalized that like I do with every kind of quote I get. And I would just do the same thing he taught me for a month and just make it work. 00:19:20.36 Randy William find ways to make it work. He was very, I was struggling with a technique once and he said, just keep forcing it until it flows. And that was the opposite of what everyone else always told us back then. 00:19:31.99 Randy William Oh, it's all about go with the flow. 00:19:32.29 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 00:19:33.51 Randy William man shut up. No, it's not. You can't flow until you understand what's going on. 00:19:39.71 nextlevelguypodcast No, it's a impressive a great point because how often do you see these other gyms where they'll go, we have a 16-week revolving program, and you think, oh, that sounds okay. And then you're only spending like one session on this particular movement, and you never see it again. 00:19:53.62 nextlevelguypodcast for And then they change the program later on, and you're like, so do we not do that again? And your brain kind goes, I was just getting hang of that. 00:20:01.27 Randy William Exactly. 00:20:02.29 nextlevelguypodcast And I'm like, what the 00:20:04.83 Randy William i tried to be in the middle of the old school guys and these fucking dumbasses of today because old school guys, three techniques, roll. Dumbasses, we're going do the same games for a month at a time. 00:20:19.76 Randy William That shit gets boring. So everything I've done was a lot of situationalists, but two-week periods. Like I have a rotating schedule. It's 10 weeks. But it's based on the five major positions, two weeks each one, one top, one bottom. 00:20:32.62 Randy William And I change the techniques on what I see fit for the room I'm in. right so it would be guard, passing, guard, retention. Or guard techniques, depending. Guard usually gets a little more time because there's a lot more to it. 00:20:45.04 Randy William And then side control top side control bottom, but every day is situational is of that. So you're getting to work both sides for two weeks at a time. 00:20:53.90 nextlevelguypodcast I actually really like that style of teaching. That moment of like, we're going to go round and around, but we're going to learn that the principle, but we're going to do it. And then we're going to expand like a computer game. 00:21:04.50 nextlevelguypodcast You know, like when you get a bit more of the map, it kind of opens up and you're like, ah, so I can write write it. 00:21:08.11 Randy William Exactly. 00:21:09.68 nextlevelguypodcast And then, you know, you work from there and then you feel fantastic till the coach teaches the transition to stop what you've just done. And you're like, okay, here we go again. And it's the next step. 00:21:19.55 Randy William That's why it's in a particular order. So that's why the order matters. You do guard first. So the next day or the next two weeks would be half guard because more often than not, when you recover your guard, you get to half. 00:21:32.92 nextlevelguypodcast you 00:21:33.02 Randy William When you're passing and you fuck up, you end up in half. And then we go to side control, and then mount, then back. Like there's method to my madness for sure. But it's very positional dominance based. 00:21:46.17 Randy William My guys may not be the best submission hunters at the moment, but they will hold you down until you fuck up and then you'll get submitted. 00:21:55.89 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's what love about your videos, because when you first see them, you're like, this guy's funny, he's got a bant out, and then you're kind of like, okay, that was deep. I understood that. And before you know it, you're like, shit, I've just learned a load more than i probably have in about five classes from a couple of your you you know your um Instagram shorts. 00:22:14.02 nextlevelguypodcast And you're like, so I don't get why we can't have more teachers like you, but then ah suppose that's the thing, isn't it? 00:22:21.83 Randy William Ego. It's just ego, honestly. 00:22:23.15 nextlevelguypodcast m 00:22:26.43 Randy William and There are a lot of good teachers one-on-one. Don't get me wrong. Some of the best guys I've ever rolled with are the worst fucking teachers, but they taught me a lot because of how we and how they could communicate in a situation. 00:22:41.76 Randy William But they can't communicate to an idiot. And... another one of those quotes, if you teach, treat everyone like a toddler, you'll never get impatient or mad because you know, they're stupid. 00:22:53.08 Randy William So you break it down in a way they can understand. 00:22:53.83 nextlevelguypodcast that 00:22:57.19 Randy William And it just is, and then they can understand. you can start to build on that because if there's nothing to build on, you might as well build off just the most basic positions. 00:23:07.17 nextlevelguypodcast Because that's what i said to a few people was like you know when they're learning to drive is assume the person in front you will do the most stupid thing possible. And you just wait for that moment and react. 00:23:14.91 Randy William Yeah. 00:23:16.55 nextlevelguypodcast And it's the same in jiu-jitsu. you know They always push off you they leave an arm out or whatever. 00:23:18.51 Randy William Yeah. 00:23:21.03 nextlevelguypodcast And it's almost like, okay. And it's only when you've been training for about a bit time, you start going, ah, so I'm grabbing that arm because they're leaving it out. Oh, that's what I did at the start. And it's like a full circle. You learn and go... 00:23:34.24 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, I was a moron back then myself. 00:23:34.46 Randy William yeah 00:23:36.01 nextlevelguypodcast Because you talk about is it organic jujitsu and fluid movements and things like that. was there Where did that kind of concepts come from, that kind of understanding of over you know how oversimplification of it, of kind of going, and these are the things we can actually make as better practitioners? 00:23:57.09 Randy William So when I moved to Mississippi, I had a lot of free time, right? Like I said, I'm even, I mean i don't have a part-time job. I was just teaching. And um i was just thinking, huh, stand up and bass is pretty cool. 00:24:12.12 Randy William And it was driven into my head by one of the first instructors I've ever had. He's an old school, like a balance, balance jujitsu guy. And he was like the OG black belt Delaware. His name is Alex. 00:24:23.43 Randy William And he would always say, you just stand up and bass all the time. And I just never got that. and then one day i was like, ha ha, I get it now. Cause he would just say, just stand up and bass, how you get off off the couch, stand up and bass, how you get off the floor with your kids, stand up and bass. 00:24:37.41 Randy William And so I just did that because he was my coach. Why would I not listen? 00:24:41.81 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 00:24:41.98 Randy William And I still do that. I guys still drill, stand up and base because everything in Jiu Jitsu is some form of stand up and base. A hip escape is a pivot on your shoulder and the far side foot. 00:24:55.18 Randy William A lot of sweeps are just stand up and base. My closed guard, put all my weight on my knee on your back and hip switch, that's standing up and base. It's all the same thing. And then I went down that rabbit hole of trying to find everything that's the same. 00:25:09.44 Randy William And Drove myself kind of mad with notes, but there's that. 00:25:14.09 nextlevelguypodcast I think a lot of people like me just now, my brain has literally gone, but I'm not picture. And then, you know, sort combining the two them and going, we not seen this before? And, oh God, that's that. not It's just two minutes in with you and you're like, Jesus, you you've completely revolutionized how we would view jujitsu. 00:25:35.13 nextlevelguypodcast You know, like I think a lot people, white belts should watch your stuff because you teach the stuff that we no longer get anymore because they're all talking about their branding. 00:25:42.78 Randy William right 00:25:44.47 nextlevelguypodcast they all All these gyms want to focus on, we're different, we're unique, we're special. 00:25:49.52 Randy William You just brought great point. Like, I don't want to be a hater, but Chris Bones saying, I didn't learn this my first 20 years. How? Because back then, this is how I was taught. 00:26:01.30 Randy William I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. 00:26:03.62 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:26:03.89 Randy William When I see instructors out of these old heads, which is great, I love the old school generation. I fit more in with them than I do the new one, I think. I think I'm a nice balance, per se. Anyway, sorry. 00:26:14.96 Randy William I don't understand how they don't know self-defense. How can you be doing jujitsu 20 years and not know the self-defense aspect? How can you not understand weight distribution? That's something that recently has been bugging me a little bit. 00:26:27.43 Randy William Because how? That's how we were taught. That's how, what I'm telling you, i was taught that. I didn't figure it out on my own entirely. I just simplified it to a degree and made it easier for everyone to access. 00:26:40.37 Randy William But I didn't invent anything. Maybe a couple of transitions I've never seen before, but I'm sure somebody's done it. Because all I do is combine the most basic techniques with hip switching. 00:26:46.52 nextlevelguypodcast ah 00:26:50.87 Randy William So instead of... arm by the triangle I do on by the omoplata because it's an easier, faster, quicker hip switch. And the shorter your transitions, the less places the technique can break down. 00:27:01.66 Randy William And omoplata is a cool. So that's kind of how I think about everything, efficiency, weight distribution principles, and find the best way to do it. 00:27:05.39 nextlevelguypodcast Cause mean, 00:27:12.67 Randy William And that's relative to you, because your best way is not going to be my best story with different bodies. 00:27:17.86 nextlevelguypodcast man I'm also a lot fatter. I do a lot of pressure passing. That wins the day for me. 00:27:22.38 Randy William So do Pressure is great, man. 00:27:23.61 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 00:27:26.55 Randy William But again, 00:27:26.54 nextlevelguypodcast Well, I've got no choice. There's just a lobby to go round. It's like Michelin, man. that like Just... 00:27:31.17 Randy William yeah that brings me up to the efficiency is relative and people don't wanna understand that. 00:27:32.96 nextlevelguypodcast but 00:27:38.30 Randy William Most professors will teach you their way and say it's the most efficient way and it's not. I cannot teach you my passing style because you will get exhausted. But you have weight on me. 00:27:48.69 Randy William It's efficient for you to just pin my fucking hips and hold me here until I blow my load and get tired. 00:27:55.26 nextlevelguypodcast age because i 00:27:55.84 Randy William And the... 00:27:57.04 nextlevelguypodcast That's how I actually started getting good at it because I was kind of like, oh, why am I doing what all these fit young guys who are doing cartwheels and standing on their head can do when i would like collapse the structural wall if I did it against the wall? 00:28:06.24 Randy William Mm-hmm. 00:28:10.45 nextlevelguypodcast you know so why why am i trying to be them and why not be myself? 00:28:11.90 Randy William Yeah. 00:28:14.33 nextlevelguypodcast and Because there's a lot of stuff I learned from your stuff going, why was I never showed that my last gym? And then I realized it maybe the coach didn't know him himself. Maybe he was only allowed to coach certain movements. 00:28:26.86 nextlevelguypodcast Maybe he hadn't been uming a beginner for so long that just showing move A to move B to move C to sub D, you're maybe not subbing to D. um you know You get to that point where people are going, okay, but what do we do in between? 00:28:41.99 nextlevelguypodcast And they've they've forgotten how to be a coach because they've never really thought about it. 00:28:45.24 Randy William And 00:28:46.92 nextlevelguypodcast They've gone through the motions so often. So, i mean, there's thousands of 00:28:49.81 Randy William that's a big thing of it. Going through the motions, man. Everyone loses discipline. I have moments of losing discipline. But I say the biggest quitters in jiu-jitsu are blue belts and black belts. 00:29:02.60 Randy William Blue belts physically quit. Black belts mentally check out. They're like, ah fuck it. I made it. I'm the leader of the room now. I can do whatever. And that's fine and dandy if you don't really care about getting better, but you won't get better. 00:29:16.15 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:29:16.47 Randy William And that coasting is a detriment to your students. And I think that goes back to, I've been teaching basically my whole adult life, beginners, white and blue belts. I rarely have had high level training partners. 00:29:32.35 Randy William I just would stay disciplined because I can i could submit a blue belt 30 times if I really wanted to, but that's a waste of time for both of us. 00:29:40.04 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 00:29:40.39 Randy William truly controlling that person's movement, that's that's the art form I want to chase now. Because anybody can submit anybody on any day, but to truly control somebody to the point of they give up is pretty cool. 00:29:47.31 nextlevelguypodcast so 00:29:55.53 Randy William I think that takes far more skill. 00:29:58.29 nextlevelguypodcast it certainly does you know like it's anybody could get an armbar if they know roughly what you know how to do it but when you have somebody defending because they know you're looking for an armbar and then they suddenly go but what do i do now and they're like oh we haven't learned that bit yet well, you're not going to win that role or you're going to get tapped out or whatever, you know. 00:30:14.01 Randy William Yeah. yeah. 00:30:17.55 nextlevelguypodcast So, mean, there are thousands of different positions, attacks, transitions, pass. No wonder people get overcomplicated. 00:30:24.55 Randy William yeah 00:30:26.15 nextlevelguypodcast So when they're doing it like you know from side control, from guard, from standing up, is there basic principles you say to anybody? Like, if you're sitting down and they're standing up, get up again. 00:30:41.01 nextlevelguypodcast if they're and If you're in side control, immediately get connections. Do you have things where, does it depend on the situation? Or there are things you say immediately re-grip, reconnect? 00:30:51.12 Randy William There are I have immediate things for immediate people. So if I knew you and your style, I would have rules for you to follow based on you. 00:31:02.76 Randy William But I don't have any absolutes, no. I think the closest thing to an absolute I have is stay on your fucking toes. Like, dude, if you can't stay on your toes, it's a problem. But... 00:31:14.54 nextlevelguypodcast Oh yeah, what's it called? Dead feet when they go floppy and... 00:31:17.04 Randy William Yeah, I did... Yeah, dead feet means you can't stand up at any given moment. When you on your toes, if someone drives into you just rock back and you can stand up. You should always have live toes. 00:31:28.56 nextlevelguypodcast So it' ah it's that is that the sort of thing that you see that is hurting a lot of students? 00:31:29.18 Randy William The ability to... Oops, sorry. 00:31:35.33 nextlevelguypodcast They don't even get basic information like keep on your toes, you know, that they just allow them to just try the movements without correcting the like the nuances. 00:31:38.33 Randy William Uh-huh. 00:31:44.33 Randy William Exactly, it's going through the motions. So, again, the new age guys want to say drilling is outdated and it sucks. It does when you do it wrong. Yeah, when you just go through the motions. 00:31:55.98 Randy William When the teacher shows you something, you go with your partner, fuck off, and just kind of, ha yeah, it's not going to work. But when you go and drill a movement with intention, why am I turning my hand this way? Why am I locking my elbow down? 00:32:09.87 Randy William And do it properly, slowly, with control and over your own movement patterns. Drilling is highly valuable when you take your time. But nobody takes their time at that. Everyone fucks off it. Even I fuck off when that happens because i we've done it a couple of times. you know But if you can stay disciplined in that part and then get to the situational, so you'll have far more success. 00:32:35.18 nextlevelguypodcast Because how many times do you hear somebody saying, oh, I don't go, I don't drill to my left. I always go to my right. and you're thinking, well, you're screwed then if you can only go to the left. 00:32:44.88 Randy William Yeah, you are. 00:32:44.98 nextlevelguypodcast And I don't understand that logic. 00:32:47.88 Randy William So I do have a left and a right game based on previous injuries. Like I have a torn PCL in one knee and a torn ACL in the other. So I can only butterfly hook with one of them properly. 00:32:59.24 Randy William So I have a butterfly game that's that side. But if someone forces me on the other side, i have a game for that. 00:33:05.55 nextlevelguypodcast So 00:33:05.69 Randy William I don't think the techniques need to be the same, but I do think and believe you need to have a game for both sides. 00:33:14.00 nextlevelguypodcast how do we 00:33:14.34 Randy William like I can all have my website, like I can do a lot of things on both sides. But there's certain things that I'm like, I do one way on one way and one way or the other way. 00:33:25.20 nextlevelguypodcast i but see the fact that you've got a black belt also helps. You know you can you could figure it out as we go. 00:33:29.35 Randy William Oh, yes. 00:33:32.16 nextlevelguypodcast I tend to just sit there and go, what the hell do you do again? that's You go from here. 00:33:36.07 Randy William That's 00:33:37.48 nextlevelguypodcast it's Because we were always taught move move B, move C. No one taught us how to actually go from that to that or what to do if they they stop that bit or how to they transition from this. 00:33:49.39 nextlevelguypodcast It was always, here's the fancy stuff. Here's the thing that the flavor of the day. And, you know, the jujitsu culture has got a lot of fluff, a lot of bullshit. 00:33:55.34 Randy William yeah 00:33:59.03 nextlevelguypodcast how do you How do we work out between the ah fluff and you know the the fancy stuff to actually look it and going, that's what we need to focus on? 00:33:59.58 Randy William Yeah. It does. 00:34:11.49 nextlevelguypodcast Is there a way we can gauge if we're looking on YouTube or instructional what's valid to take? 00:34:18.25 Randy William um That's an interesting one. i give Give me a second here. I would watch competition and what actually works at the highest levels. 00:34:31.58 Randy William And if you notice, the greatest grapplers, Marcelo, Hajo, Gordon, I would even put Adam Wojciechki up there at the moment, are surprisingly simple grapplers. 00:34:43.81 Randy William They're all systemized. And that's why they win. It's consistent, simple effort over long periods of time. And that's all it really is. 00:34:55.39 Randy William When you watch people like them, they all follow the same old school Gracie approach of make your opponent tired, capitalize on it. Wear them out, capitalize on it. Adam, like he was 35 in the adult division. That's pretty old. 00:35:11.61 Randy William And people were faster. He just wear them out. But they would try to take his back, get his cool sit-up suites, butterfly suites, wear them out on top, submit them for mail. 00:35:22.98 Randy William That's what Hadjo did. That's what Gordon does with his camping. Everyone does that, that are really good. 00:35:28.67 nextlevelguypodcast um oh 00:35:29.17 Randy William They follow the, no matter who you are, the goal in the end is the same. Make the other person tired enough that you can submit them. And if nobody gets tired, generally the person on top is going to win. 00:35:43.36 Randy William And that's, that rule doesn't really change no matter what format you're doing. 00:35:50.79 nextlevelguypodcast Well, had Hodger and yeah Bernardo Ferrara, and and that's they said similar, was, you know, why would I play ah to defend their strengths? I'm just going to focus on the moves I know, transition, they're going to get connection, you know, and they're going to slowly just build their way through. 00:36:07.08 nextlevelguypodcast They're not going to overcomplicate it They're just going to cook the person to the point where they just have to go. 00:36:11.42 Randy William Exactly. 00:36:12.72 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. and for but bernardo i think he said something like he practices over underpass thousands thousands of times and now he knows it's once he gets somebody there he can dictate what happens from there because he's just so good at it is there is it a move that you learned like that that you you know was it to say don't fear the guy that has a thousand different kicks fear the guy that's practiced the one kick a thousand times 00:36:25.85 Randy William Oh yeah. 00:36:37.41 Randy William I'm like the guy that's done 500 things 500 times. There's a lot of places I feel really comfortable in because I understand everything fails in predictable manners. 00:36:41.62 nextlevelguypodcast yes 00:36:47.91 Randy William Every sweep fails if they post. So I just triangle the fuck out of here. It doesn't have to be that deep. I just make, again, everything the same concept. I find the failure point of the original techniques that i learned, like the scissor sweep, hip bump sweep, butterfly sweeps, these basic things, they all fail the same way. 00:37:06.99 Randy William And then I just do the same attacks off of them. So a lot of Kimuras, Armbaras, Triangles, Elmoplatas, because they're all mechanically the exact same thing. 00:37:16.50 nextlevelguypodcast I like that. And how do you think the, what do they call it now, the celebrity effect? Because you've got like Aston Kutcher, Keanu Reeves, obviously with John Wick, but I knew he was training before. 00:37:30.05 nextlevelguypodcast You've got Tom Hardy, Demi Lovato, think who else has been big, to Henry Cavill, all these sorts of people who are talking at Jiu-Jitsu about it changing their lives and helping them with the movies and all this sort stuff. 00:37:32.17 Randy William Yeah. Yeah. 00:37:44.61 nextlevelguypodcast How do we avoid falling into the trap of, I'm going to do jujitsu because of so-and-so, but how can we learn from them? you know Do you see any of them, like habits that they utilize that makes them good, that maybe doing their job, you know, is there is that helping the sport, them talking it up, or is it bringing in too many people who just want to do it until they see the reality of it? 00:38:10.65 Randy William It's always been the same for me. If somebody comes to Jiu-Jitsu, whether this was 15 years ago or today, they will quit if they're not in it for the right reasons. It doesn't matter. 00:38:22.26 Randy William The amount of quitters now is no more, no less than it was back then. It's just proportionally more because there's a lot more people, right? It's never a bad thing to bring attention to the sport, right? 00:38:34.85 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:38:35.30 Randy William Well... yeah There's bad attention with the weird pedophile-y shit, but other than that weird shit, people bringing to light, no matter if they're famous, whether they're legit or not, like who cares if Demi Lovato is a real powerful belt in I don't care. 00:38:43.35 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:38:53.67 Randy William But what matters is she pushes the sport out, and that's always important. That's always useful because if it could help one person, she did something right. 00:39:03.70 nextlevelguypodcast no 00:39:03.89 Randy William It's not always about... winning You can make a difference and not win. You can lose and make a huge difference. 00:39:11.92 nextlevelguypodcast Because there's a video of Tom Hardy, um don't know, he after like a training session or something, and he's literally just saying, I do it. I know I'm not going to win every role, but I do it because it makes me happy. 00:39:22.95 nextlevelguypodcast It keeps me calm, but also lets me de-stress after being in all the movies and all that kind of stuff. 00:39:26.74 Randy William Uh-huh. 00:39:28.16 nextlevelguypodcast And he said it kind of keeps him just – it keeps him him. And the same with Henry Cavill. He said he needed something that was his kind of time, his – like a physical thing like he builds computers but he also said he needed the physical side of that kind of activity and that was jiu-jitsu and I love the fact that they're doing it but doing it for the right reason they're not just doing it because it's cool but for anybody who is struggling 00:39:52.22 Randy William Yeah. Mm-hmm. 00:39:56.64 nextlevelguypodcast you know You've seen hundreds of students come and go. 00:39:59.56 Randy William Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 00:39:59.74 nextlevelguypodcast What separates those that leave? Is it, like you're saying, the the wrong reasons? How can can they find their way back? I mean, I've been off with a shoulder injury, like I've got shoulder impingement just now, and I'm feeling a bit kind of, shit, I don't know how to go back. I don't know how to train again. 00:40:15.78 nextlevelguypodcast you know how how If we're feeling lost or we are wanting to start but do it rightly, how can we re-find the passion for the sport? 00:40:26.24 Randy William So that's an interesting question because I get it a lot. How do you stay the way you are? I not once ever thought I was going to quit. I never stopped. 00:40:37.04 Randy William No matter how injured I was, I at least was in the gym. And maybe that's because I'm crazy. I don't really know. But I never once thought this wasn't for me. And I was not the most supportive person. 00:40:48.46 Randy William My original community did not like me. I was an asshole. I rolled hard. I was spazzy. it It is what it is. But not once ah have I wanted to quit. 00:41:00.38 Randy William But what I've noticed, the people who stick around the longest are the people who need a purpose in life. or the opposite, they have nothing else better to do. Like the older guys who are doctors and shit, they have to like, ah, crap. 00:41:18.66 Randy William They need to still feel manly. I don't know simple a simpler way to put that. Every nerd at some point needs to feel like a man. 00:41:22.64 nextlevelguypodcast No. 00:41:25.89 Randy William And what's more manly than controlling somebody? but I don't know if that's politically correct to say or not, but you look at the biggest nerds in the world who do this sport, they're confident, happy, but you take that same person, that magic playing nerd and take away jujitsu and he's a loser. 00:41:46.71 Randy William It's more of a self-confidence thing than anything. I think everyone should learn how to find something that makes them feel like they are awesome. And jujitsu just does that for me and a lot of other people. 00:41:58.98 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, I suppose because if you think of it but back in the day as a kid, some of the best days you had were rough and tumble with your friends and rolling and throwing each other about, but you never cared about who won or who lost in the end. 00:42:06.10 Randy William Exactly. 00:42:10.27 nextlevelguypodcast It was just about the physicalness of it, the the connection, the like you know the physical exertion of it. And I think as that's been taken out of modern day life. 00:42:18.71 Randy William Yeah. 00:42:20.94 nextlevelguypodcast You barely get to sit next to each other on a bus and somebody's, up oh, you're invading my personal space and all this kind shite. 00:42:27.91 Randy William Exactly. 00:42:27.90 nextlevelguypodcast And you're like, it's sad the way society's gone now do you think that's would you want more people doing jiu-jitsu for that reason 00:42:33.67 Randy William It's interesting. It's very 00:42:41.17 Randy William It's hard to say for that reason. I just think everyone should do something physical. I don't even care if you do CrossFit, dude. ah Something. How can you, I'm just going to use me and you as examples, be a man and not do something physical to take care of yourself so you can take care of others? 00:42:59.87 Randy William I just don't understand. 00:43:03.62 Randy William That's always been kind of ingrained into me, just I guess by life. No one really told me to be that way. Just I noticed it throughout life that people who didn't have good father figures or good men in their life or stronger men tended to fail and what they were trying to do. 00:43:20.65 Randy William So why not surround yourself by those type of people? I needed that when I was growing up. Jiu-jitsu was that. I had a lot of good father figures in jiu-jitsu. But I also got to be aggressive and physical, 00:43:34.18 nextlevelguypodcast much help kids because you you can let that part of you out can't you you know that day you've had a shit day and stuff and you know you can go there and it's what people want to do suppose it's the same when I was powerlifting you knew you could throw the weights around 00:43:35.75 Randy William which helps a lot. Yes, it helps a lot. 00:43:48.22 Randy William That's why that's why i've like lifting. That is why I like lifting more now than ever because I can't go to jiu-jitsu and be an asshole anymore. I'm better than everyone in that room. I'd actually hurt somebody. Now I lift weights to get my anger and frustrations out and jiu-jitsu is just the easiest part of my day. 00:44:06.90 Randy William But that's also easy for me to say. 00:44:06.98 nextlevelguypodcast ah love it. 00:44:08.90 Randy William It's easy for me to say. 00:44:10.36 nextlevelguypodcast I wish it was the easiest part of my day at times. I'm there coming out going, what the fuck just happened there? I'm sure I was meant to be winning here, but I go, and do you think that's the thing is too many people are worried about their ego. 00:44:16.86 Randy William yeah 00:44:23.75 nextlevelguypodcast They're worried about how who won that, who won that round, who we judge each other. 00:44:27.86 Randy William Oh, for sure. 00:44:29.28 nextlevelguypodcast How do we stop that? 00:44:31.74 Randy William You don't. You just got to not give a fuck. yeah can't I can't stop you right now from thinking this guy's nuts or man, this was terrible idea. 00:44:42.31 Randy William But I cannot care and it doesn't affect my sanity whatsoever. 00:44:47.81 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. And was that always ingrained? 00:44:49.33 Randy William ah yeah And I know... 00:44:53.01 Randy William I'm not entirely sure. cared a lot about certain things until my one of my main coaches, Alberto, he said, the only people's opinions who matter are the ones who matter. 00:45:04.24 Randy William And then, again, I internalized that and realized 99% of people don't fucking matter. So why the fuck should think about what they think, care about what they think? 00:45:13.68 nextlevelguypodcast I love the way you do that. Like you take the, it's like the Bruce Lee thing. You absorb what's good and you just pump out the the bad stuff and then you just have fun with life. And I really like that approach that you do that, where you kind of just go, ah internalize that because it helped me. 00:45:30.53 nextlevelguypodcast The bad stuff. Yeah, that's it. I roll it away. Literally in this case. 00:45:36.19 Randy William Yeah. 00:45:37.45 nextlevelguypodcast And what do you do now? 00:45:37.91 Randy William Like, what am I going to do about it? essential 00:45:39.74 nextlevelguypodcast What do you do with like weights? and Are you doing more weights now as you get older? Are you incorporating yoga and stuff like that? 00:45:44.77 Randy William Oh, shit ton. All weights. I don't do any stretching, mobility, nothing. I use weights to do it for me. Weights push me down into a deeper squat. 00:45:52.81 nextlevelguypodcast So... 00:45:54.42 Randy William I put something behind my back. Weights push down a deeper bench. Don't make it hard. 00:46:00.39 nextlevelguypodcast suppose that's the principle of it. It's like, why add 50, 60 things and you can just do, like you're saying, why oversimpl why overcomplicate it? 00:46:02.42 Randy William Everything. 00:46:06.60 Randy William to 00:46:08.02 nextlevelguypodcast like 00:46:09.13 Randy William All I do is bench, deadlift, squat, overhead press. That's it. And then like two accessories for each of those. 00:46:17.80 nextlevelguypodcast Are you still doing it? it the 5-3-1 you were doing? 00:46:20.81 Randy William Yes and no, I'll use that rep range, but I'm doing more of a push-pull legs now just because why not? It's easier it's just simpler for me to remember what day I'm on because it's not a weak thing. It's a do push, do pull, do legs, repeat. 00:46:37.38 nextlevelguypodcast suppose there's only three parts you know you can't go wrong there like because I like i loved 5.3.1 but I found it was very Jim centric at this time when it first came out you had to really have the equipment 00:46:39.86 Randy William Yeah, yeah, exactly. 00:46:49.61 Randy William Oh, it's awesome. 00:46:51.22 nextlevelguypodcast um 00:46:51.48 Randy William I love 531 because you could literally do just those four lifts and improve the way it was set up. 00:46:59.63 nextlevelguypodcast was it Jim Wendler that created that? 00:47:00.01 Randy William But, weirdly, yeah. 00:47:03.89 nextlevelguypodcast ah 00:47:05.14 Randy William I never actually read his book. 00:47:05.15 nextlevelguypodcast it's 00:47:06.26 Randy William I just, again, and that looks That guy is shredded. I guess I should listen to him. 00:47:12.97 nextlevelguypodcast Because ah that's what I do. like ah've I've now started watching a lot more sort of, I want to call them YouTube coaches. you know like something And I kind of go, ah and i if I start seeing little bits from each person, and then they'll see something, and I kind go... 00:47:21.47 Randy William Yeah. 00:47:27.90 nextlevelguypodcast but the hell and then two minutes in with you i was like jeez like i've learned more this than i pay in a 60 pound a month bloody class and i i just got let's but you're notorious for cutting through the fluff and just talking like a pal you know sometimes you say stuff and you're like fuck how's he get away with that but you said in another interview 00:47:38.88 Randy William It's good to know 00:47:51.04 Randy William to know. 00:47:52.00 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 00:47:52.12 Randy William Yeah, no. So I learned that you can be the biggest asshole if you help people after the fact. I used to work in a kitchen and one of the head chefs, that was one that was one of my first jobs, he said, you can be the biggest dick you want as long as you're good at your job. 00:48:09.41 Randy William was like, fuck yeah, all right. So I became the best dishwasher ever. 00:48:14.48 nextlevelguypodcast what is it to say you make yourself irreplaceable and you can do or say whatever you want like 00:48:19.36 Randy William Exactly. But a lot of it isn't just because, this is truly how I talk. I'm not, I'm not, act like this ah everyone thinks it's an accent, it's just a speech impediment, I'm like stupid with my voice, but it helps me stand out, and i I've always used it for that. 00:48:35.34 Randy William And same with the way I talk. f Like, we all love John Donner, but he's boring as shit. So if I can take that information, because he's correct on everything, I'm a systemizer myself, he seems to be more systematic as well, obviously, enter the fucking system. 00:48:44.92 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 00:48:53.81 Randy William And um If I tell you, hey, stupid, grab the fucking collar here, you're going to listen. Or at least you'll remember it, even though you'll be pissed off for a second. 00:49:05.14 Randy William Versus, now, let's pronate your hand, enter your four digits into his lapel, and then say some Japanese shit. But no, it's just too fucking much. Just four words or less should be all you need. 00:49:18.36 nextlevelguypodcast I was trying remember which video it was. I found your stuff and I'd literally gone through a few jujitsu videos and it was like, do this and we're going to move into Habdi Haruagara and all this kind of stuff. And was like, and then literally I came to your video and it was, you're overcomplicating this, fuckheads, just do this. 00:49:35.01 nextlevelguypodcast Or, you know, you're you're doing this like a stupid, it was just kind of like, okay, I'll watch this. 00:49:36.57 Randy William Yeah. 00:49:40.04 nextlevelguypodcast And two minutes in, I was looking to your next video, to your next one. 00:49:40.72 Randy William Yeah. 00:49:43.07 nextlevelguypodcast And I love that how you just, teach as you are you you don't try to be the characters that some of these other coaches are you're the same guy who's behind the mic as you are in front of the mic but where do we go wrong because i think you've got a quote i had to write it down where it was a stop drilling technique start drilling movement why are things like that so important 00:49:53.22 Randy William as 00:50:06.94 Randy William Yeah, yeah. 00:50:10.36 Randy William It's always been important. It's just all these new age guys don't do line drills anymore. No one wants to shrimp up and down the mat. And I'm not saying you need to do that forever. Like, a purple belt, skipping warm-ups makes sense because you have those basic movements down. 00:50:25.68 Randy William But those purple belts are not the motherfuckers teaching. They're not doing warm-ups at all and wonder why people struggle learning when they're teaching a technique. And I, when I teach the first, let's just go with a sample week here. We're doing the armbar from guard. 00:50:42.77 Randy William I teach you how to literally just bring your hips up first. We spend a whole day. Monday is just on movements. And then the rest of the week, we build off those movements. I teach the same technique system for a week at a time, but a technique is automatically a system to me. Like the closed guard, armbar, that transition between it. 00:51:04.57 Randy William That's what I'll go over for a week, sometimes two at a time, depending on the room I'm in. And when you spend the time to go over the fundamental movements in the close guard, how to just hold somebody there, it's really easy to move on to the arm bar. 00:51:20.62 Randy William But most people this day suck at the close guard arm bar. People think it's hard. Most people just are not good at it because it's a big transition. It just doesn't have to be if you understand it. 00:51:32.58 nextlevelguypodcast So what are the, you know, if you had somebody starting just now, like a complete white belt, what would be a mechanic, a principle? 00:51:43.27 Randy William stand up and base stand up this that 00:51:46.69 nextlevelguypodcast Is that the thing that would knock off, say, six months of their learning curve? 00:51:51.69 Randy William yep if not more no joke i've had when i taught at the dover air force base i we were very tournament heavy we all competed then I had white belts who trained three weeks winning golds at white and blue because I would just teach them close guard, arm drag, collar choke, and then the mechanics behind it, and that was it. 00:52:13.62 Randy William Now they would lose if somebody passed their guard. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't like foolproof, but it would set their confidence up. 00:52:18.13 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 00:52:21.13 Randy William Like I said, confidence is almost everything in this sport. If you think you can, you can. And they thought and knew they could beat people in a tournament setting. So why couldn't they pass the guard? Why couldn't they learn other things? 00:52:32.72 Randy William So I found the simplest way in my mind to win a tournament. That was pool guard, doing a fucking arm drag, and a bow and arrow choke. I learned that when I was a blue belt. I've won tons of matches with it. So that's what I did. And then we built a system off that. What if they defend the choke? 00:52:47.42 Randy William Pull it, do a triangle. Their hands are up, they're fucking dumb. Cool, you win. It's predictable. And that, I would teach concept through system versus the other way around. A lot of people teach concepts first. 00:52:58.45 Randy William And if you have nothing to relate concept to, you're not gonna fucking understand it. So I would teach a system and then the concepts through the system. And then we'd add techniques once you understood what a technique was. Sorry, that was a long-winded one. 00:53:11.48 nextlevelguypodcast for You need oxygen. to It's like jujitsu. You need oxygen to survive. 00:53:15.55 Randy William I was like, oh shit. I do rant a lot, I'm so sorry. 00:53:21.32 nextlevelguypodcast I mean, it is that why we get to the point where I could be, true you know, drilling with somebody and they could go, okay, I pulled my leg up here and I sit here and, you know, but they don't know the nuances of how to actually grip or pull in that because they don't get taught. 00:53:37.14 nextlevelguypodcast Like you're saying, they don't get taught the concepts. They just get taught the move. So they don't know how to piece it together. 00:53:41.30 Randy William Yeah, exactly. I agree. They just don't. And that's not entirely their fault. I had to figure a lot of this out on my own. Don't get me wrong. Like I said, I only got to study with my professor once a month and even so even less sometimes. 00:53:57.53 Randy William And I was on my own teaching for the most part since late blue belt. So until I was a black belt, I didn't have another black belt to train with. Like moving here was the first time I had a black belt to consistently train and nitpick me because Jay, the guy I trained with is a Rob Kahn black belt. 00:54:14.47 Randy William He's very conceptual to a point of annoyance. Like he talks a lot. We're similar. So we butt heads a lot and it's fun. 00:54:23.44 nextlevelguypodcast I've had Rob. Is it Rob Beranaki? 00:54:27.21 Randy William Rob Kahn. 00:54:28.54 nextlevelguypodcast Oh, Rob Cohen. 00:54:28.94 Randy William He is Hoist Gracie's first American black belt. He might be Hoist Gracie's first black belt. 00:54:32.49 nextlevelguypodcast Okay. 00:54:33.80 Randy William I'm pretty sure first black belt. 00:54:37.77 nextlevelguypodcast it's I think that's amazing because it like I remember gyms where I would come out and I it was rolling with a blue belt from standing and he said to me, how'd you pull guard? 00:54:48.24 nextlevelguypodcast He had never pulled guard. And I thought, how how was he a blue belt? 00:54:52.03 Randy William Uh-huh. 00:54:52.15 nextlevelguypodcast like And like I was thinking he he didn't know how to go from his feet. He'd only ever rolled from his knees. He'd never had the like to been allowed to figure that out or be shown how to do it And I thought... 00:54:58.53 Randy William Yep. 00:55:03.32 nextlevelguypodcast This is scary because there's a whole part of that game then that he's not been taught or allowed to... 00:55:08.79 Randy William Exactly. its I think a lot of it comes down to mistranslation of the old school guys, right? Because the old school guys came here not really speaking English. They would over-exaggerate movements so you could see or what they thought would help you see the technique since they couldn't speak it properly. 00:55:26.63 Randy William So if you look at a lot of old school Americans and their technique, it's very exaggerated, right? It's not very tight and technical and pretty. And the same goes with that. We don't train on our knees at my gym. We always start standing, but there's nothing wrong with sitting guard in the gym anyway. 00:55:43.85 Randy William If you sit guard and turn around, we'd be really upset with you. 00:55:43.97 nextlevelguypodcast no 00:55:47.18 Randy William But pulling guard is acceptable. Sitting guard is not. Now, I think, again, mistranslation, we did it for safety. When my professor, we always started on our knees, but we did start standing at times, but it wasn't all the time. 00:56:02.10 Randy William So we knew how to pull guard, but he also taught us how to pull guard on our knees so it would apply it to standing. So I think, again, it comes to that, hey, they didn't understand how to explain we're doing this for safety. This isn't how you should do it every day. 00:56:17.57 Randy William if that I hope that came out right. 00:56:19.64 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah, because I think that's the thing, isn't it? It's like you learn by going, here's a move from here. b But a lot of people don't learn how to get to that position or how to or what to do if they fail from that position. 00:56:31.53 Randy William Yep. 00:56:34.76 nextlevelguypodcast You can see their thing and go, wait, this is how was shown. That's not what they were to do. They were meant to go left and they've actually rolled on to turtle. 00:56:39.52 Randy William Mm-hmm. 00:56:41.79 nextlevelguypodcast And I'm like, what i do do now? And you can see people sitting stumped going, ah because they know six moves, but they don't know jujitsu from that position. 00:56:53.46 nextlevelguypodcast And I think that's where you are doing so well because you talk about drilling the mechanics and the principles of it. So it doesn't really matter where you're going from or which which position. 00:57:03.50 Randy William yeah yeah 00:57:04.18 nextlevelguypodcast If you use the principles and the mechanics, you're going to be successful. How do you want a student to learn this? Is it that, you know, because you said, ah'm trying to get another interview, you said you want the people who just shut up and do it are the best students. 00:57:21.21 Randy William yeah and it's not oh of course 00:57:22.70 nextlevelguypodcast Do you still think that 00:57:26.15 Randy William If you just do what the fuck you're told... straight Well, the thing is, I have grown a smidgen. If you do what the fuck you're told with the right people, you'll go for But if you do what fuck you're told with the wrong people, you're going to build bad habits. 00:57:39.47 Randy William So, yeah, I do preach that to my students because I think I'm doing things somewhat correctly. But... I get... and me get Let me think here. I'm sorry. You need to do what you're told in the beginning, no matter what. 00:57:53.24 Randy William You need to know how to do the most basic positions, hold the basic positions, and why are you paying me if you don't want to listen to me? That's what it kind of boils down Why you going to pay somebody you don't want listen to? 00:58:05.63 Randy William Why do you think you know better than me? And if you do, then prove it. That's fine. I'm okay with that. I'm a man of science. If you can prove me wrong, I gladly change. I changed my technique tons of times because it's been proven wrong. 00:58:19.71 Randy William But when you're a white belt in a sport that I spent my entire life doing, what makes you think that I'm going to lead you astray? Why would I do that? it's It's one of those things that always, 00:58:30.49 nextlevelguypodcast You're wanting people to succeed. Yeah. 00:58:32.66 Randy William Yeah. And like, I understand that back in the day, black belts didn't want their students to ever catch them. Dude, i have blue belts who can catch me now because they're just principle-based. 00:58:45.22 Randy William And they just hold me down and I'm an impatient little fucker and I try to squiggle my way out because I fucking hate losing and then i get caught. 00:58:54.33 nextlevelguypodcast but um You said just now that one of the most important things I've probably heard somebody say was like, you are actually willing to change. If you've been taught wrong, you will change it. You know, you will go, okay, I'm going to revamp it. 00:59:04.98 Randy William Oh yeah. 00:59:06.90 nextlevelguypodcast How many coaches? There's probably quite a few who would say, no no, I'm never wrong. No, no, they just didn't understand it. No, no, they're wrong. 00:59:16.41 Randy William And they might actually be right in context to themselves, right? My professor loves the underhook farsight armbar and he's very, very good at it. I know he's going to do it and he would rip my arm off 10 times around and it would just be infuriating. 00:59:32.42 Randy William I don't like the underhook. I like cross body control. I don't like side control at all, actually. I don't like the typical of this. I think it's outdated, but it works really, really well for him, and he's really good at it, and his students are really good at it because that's what they work on. 00:59:49.18 Randy William So I'm a firm believer, and whatever you drill and do a ton will be successful. Look at Eddie Bravo. Like, that he's a great example of that. The 10th planet system is a great example of you do it enough, it'll fucking work. 01:00:02.16 Randy William Even though it's silly. 01:00:02.48 nextlevelguypodcast I 01:00:04.12 Randy William Is it the most efficient path to victory? Probably not. But, you do it enough and enjoy it enough, if it'll work. 01:00:12.10 nextlevelguypodcast and remember looking at the 10th planet stuff I think that was the one I was thinking of earlier and I can remember going what the foot the you know their warm-ups I could barely understand never mind the I was like surely this is just silly the stuff they were doing 01:00:25.06 Randy William I took... It is silly until you are good enough to understand it, which is interesting because he's a systemizer too. Eddie's a systemizer and um his warmups were always just systems. 01:00:38.28 Randy William Now, the difference between his warmups and my warmups are his are really long, what if chains like this to that, to this, to that, to this, this, to this, to that. Whereas I only chain two things. I never go more than two chains because the second system, 01:00:53.87 Randy William Part of that is a whole new system now. And now it's A to B, now it's B to C, with different separate entities. That way, I always have an option. I never have to pre-plan anything. 01:01:09.69 nextlevelguypodcast I think there was a video you did where you so talked about learn A to B to C to then do the submission. But then you make a system learning off the failure point of that move so that if it is going wrong, have a backdoor to that and then have a fall to that point. 01:01:23.63 Randy William Mm-hmm. 01:01:29.15 Randy William yep Yeah. 01:01:29.46 nextlevelguypodcast And I love that because no one had ever said that. It was always just, here's the move to do. Stick it into a roll. And you knew what everybody was going to try to do because you just spent an hour practicing it. 01:01:40.01 Randy William Yeah. 01:01:40.55 nextlevelguypodcast But at no point had anybody said, what do you do if they turn here? What do you do if they flip you over? What happens if they block it or they block the pass? How do you then, what can you do from there? And it's like that video game thing of the map opens up a bit more, you know, ah and graze because you you go into the new area and you see people panic. 01:01:59.48 nextlevelguypodcast how how do you How do we get to that point then? 01:01:59.90 Randy William Oh, yeah. 01:02:02.57 nextlevelguypodcast How do we learn to build that system off the failures of what the opponents do and ourselves? 01:02:07.44 Randy William First, you have to recognize major positions, mount, back, side control, all of those. You know what those are because everything will front it to them naturally by default. It's not really a choice. 01:02:20.09 Randy William And then, you like an armbar is a position to me. the trial Like submissions are positions, all right? Once you put that in that terms, it makes it a lot easier to see in your mind. 01:02:31.27 Randy William And you have to learn the failure points in the transition because that's where things fail. When you're just holding somebody in inside control, you usually don't fail. It's when you're going to mount. 01:02:42.81 Randy William They catch you in half guard, right? Now, if I'm going to mount and I know going to catch me half guard, I could just do a front roll and take his back, right? Like there's that cool little G-roll shit. 01:02:52.16 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 01:02:54.41 Randy William That's what I mean by the failure points. You start to know where they are because you've failed so many times. And then you pick the ones that are the most common. Like, yeah, sometimes you might fail in some crazy-ass way where they're somehow on your back. 01:03:09.53 Randy William I don't drill for those situations because it's like the 0.1% chance. I drill for the guy who's going to catch my foot in half guard because that's what 99.9% of people will do. 01:03:21.08 Randy William Now, do I get caught stupid shit? Of course, because of that mentality. But I don't get caught very often because of that mentality. 01:03:31.81 Randy William If you're just disciplined and just like that, 01:03:32.41 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. I love your way looking at this. It's like, you know, you kind of pull the different parts of you. you know It's the fun, the abrasive, so and then the kind of like, I'm going to be controlled. not And then you merge them together into a system that works for you. 01:03:49.09 nextlevelguypodcast Because you talked in another video about how you don't drill the the movement. You drill, where is have to write it You drill the mechanics that apply to the techniques. 01:03:59.69 nextlevelguypodcast Can you go into little bit about that, about how that's different than the traditional way of doing it? 01:04:06.17 Randy William ah Most people learn a technique in isolation and, or they learn a system in isolation. So when they go to roll, they don't have the coordination to actually do it. 01:04:17.74 Randy William And I thought when we used to play soccer, anybody can kick a fucking ball, but it's the people who practiced the same step and the same mechanics over and over that could place ah ball. 01:04:29.99 Randy William And that's just what I do. I saw that an arm bar is just a sit out, like the far side arm bar is just a sit out. So I went home and learned how to get coordinated in that movement. I would practice it over and over and over until I couldn't mess up. 01:04:43.67 Randy William And then I would keep practicing it until I could do it in slow-mo. And then I would keep doing it until I could do it forward, backwards, and inverted. And then when I would go to learn a technique that had that mechanic, it was just really easy to fucking learn because all I have to do is add a g grip or two and then I could just do it. 01:04:59.09 Randy William I spent a lot of time solo drilling because it was the only option I had. i didn't have training partners at 01:05:05.37 nextlevelguypodcast And is that why you talk about we need to know the why to a move rather than just the how to do the move? 01:05:08.07 Randy William home. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 01:05:10.98 nextlevelguypodcast You need to understand the why because it lets you understand it and be able to p apply it from the different principles and the different mechanics. 01:05:17.97 Randy William Mm-hmm. 01:05:18.71 nextlevelguypodcast So doesn't matter where you are, you know... if they're pushing or they're connecting or, you know, I think you had a great video where you, you're talking to a wrestler who would, and they said, you're just coming in to get connections and you're not blocking their feet and their feet are there to connect and their hands are only being used to defend their feet to get until the opponent it gets connections. 01:05:43.00 nextlevelguypodcast And you explained it beautifully about how, 01:05:43.62 Randy William Yeah. 01:05:46.38 nextlevelguypodcast actually, will you take the feet away? Why would you go in and let them get connections? Why would you not you know elevate their feet? Why would you not do... And it was that moment of, huh. 01:05:57.65 nextlevelguypodcast ah but you know It's this like light bulb after light bulb of your videos. We pick up so many nuances and go... You know, you can see people going, fuck, why are we doing that? And it's because we're always taught the same way because everybody goes the same way. 01:06:08.62 Randy William yeah 01:06:12.45 nextlevelguypodcast And that's why I think you're an awesome coach. how but How do you teach people that? How do you simplify complex information down to that? Here's the the ground, the DNA, the the balls to the wall stuff that you need. 01:06:26.89 Randy William You let them fail. Just let them fuck up. And then when they're like, why the fuck isn't this working? Then I call them an idiot and show them how to do it. You have to let people fail. 01:06:38.94 Randy William a lot of coaches will try to teach a technique, even if it's really well done with all the details, in a way that prevents failure, right? They'll teach this most immaculate detailed armbar from God and all the would-ifs while they're teaching which one you should never answer what if questions while you're teaching a technique ever. 01:06:59.40 Randy William That's just a waste of time because they haven't experienced anything yet. But, and then they let them drill and roll. The issue comes is they're getting this failure when you say, this shouldn't fail here because you did this, this, and this. 01:07:15.83 Randy William Well, it's going to because you suck. It's going to fail and you need to know how to feel and understand that failure and build off of it. 01:07:26.12 Randy William A lot of people don't teach how to fail properly. 01:07:30.85 nextlevelguypodcast i' think I've ever been... yeah i can't think of any kind of times where we're really taught maybe a lip service to, if this happens, then pull guard. 01:07:41.16 nextlevelguypodcast you know it was always just a kind of get hold of the person and hope for the best kind of thing. It wasn't really... ah suppose that's the thing in Jiu-Jitsu, isn't It's that ego thing of, I'll never fail. 01:07:52.66 nextlevelguypodcast No one's willing to admit they're going to screw up. 01:07:53.10 Randy William No. 01:07:55.99 Randy William Even if you if you listen to the best guys talk on interviews, most of them talk about how much they fail in class. Like even Craig Jones, you look at, um damn, who's the other one? He's like, I get tapped into class every day. 01:08:09.28 Randy William I'm like, that's awesome. That's what you should be doing because you're not learning unless you're getting caught. 01:08:15.64 nextlevelguypodcast Oh, is that ah Rodriguez? 01:08:18.32 Randy William It might've been, yeah, it might've been. 01:08:19.70 nextlevelguypodcast Oh. Because 01:08:21.01 Randy William I don't know all the names. I actually don't keep up like I'm supposed to. 01:08:24.00 nextlevelguypodcast what is it they say? 01:08:24.34 Randy William I kind of stay in my and bubble ah stay my own bubble most of the 01:08:26.12 nextlevelguypodcast if you If you're not getting tapped, no, if you're the best in the room, you're in the wrong room. I suppose it's not if you're the coach, but... 01:08:35.02 Randy William time. you It's just like lifting, right? When certain lift gets when a certain lift gets too heavy, right? That you're not getting stimulus in your biceps, then you just isolate the bicep and then use a lighter weight so you don't break your arm off. 01:08:51.73 Randy William I do the same thing all the time. I just make it harder on myself with isolation. So I let people get chest to chest side control on me all of the time because I think side control is hilarious to escape. 01:09:04.07 Randy William So I just go there all the time. And that's how I get better. 01:09:07.17 nextlevelguypodcast yeah 01:09:08.31 Randy William You can make a white belt feel like a purple belt real quick. If you teach them positional dominance and put yourself in those positions, that's how I grew as a coach and athlete. but Like I told you before, i never had more than a blue belt in my classes until recently. And I got my black belt in eight and a half years. 01:09:27.33 Randy William You don't need fucking purple belts, brown, black belts to train with. You just need good guidance, discipline, and, Mostly discipline, like yeah, I could submit a white belt to any more time I wanted at that time, but it didn't make you better. 01:09:40.30 Randy William So I would teach them how to hold me down and then have them hold me down. and I would teach them how to counter my arm locks and then i would arm lock them anyway. I would give them all the answers to my problems I would teach the opposite of what I was working on and situational. So yeah, some of my earlier students got abused. 01:09:59.54 Randy William It just is what it is at the time. They're still my students, thankfully, but they're upset. 01:10:04.63 nextlevelguypodcast no 01:10:05.23 Randy William I'm a lot nicer to my students now. Yeah, 01:10:07.75 nextlevelguypodcast probably it probably helped them more than you'll ever know because i think rob barenaki said that because they only had a few people up in his gym so he said they learned together and he would teach them to be able to give him like we have what for and then he would learn from them and then because they were seeing stuff they would never normally get they kind of opened up this whole new genre of jiu-jitsu for them 01:10:10.09 Randy William hi 01:10:20.54 Randy William yeah. 01:10:29.54 Randy William Yeah. 01:10:29.57 nextlevelguypodcast I don't think I ever said that before. I don't think I'll ever say genre of jujitsu again. um how So how do you approach training then? You know, because are you putting yourself into these uncomfortable positions to learn? 01:10:41.49 nextlevelguypodcast Because you've said you're adding principles to tech m two your techniques. 01:10:44.69 Randy William yeah 01:10:46.47 nextlevelguypodcast Is that what you're doing? Putting yourself in the worst situations and finding how to get out of it? 01:10:52.10 Randy William I do that often with positions, but not submissions. I don't believe in submission escapes. That means you fucked up a long time ago. like And it's also a longevity thing. like I'm not going to let some white belt practices on by. Sorry, dude. 01:11:06.18 Randy William But you can practice your mount and your chokes, I guess. But 01:11:13.14 Randy William when it comes to escapes, you get a lot of reps of that in the beginning of your journey. And that's a good thing. But your offense ends up being lacking, so you need to just beat the shit out of blue belts to have a good offense. 01:11:25.25 Randy William But then you become so offensive-minded, you figure out what it's like to be on your back. So I try to balance those two things. like I pay a lot of attention to the clock when I'm rolling. I give usually them a good half the round of me escaping and doing whatever I need to do to practice. 01:11:42.38 Randy William And then my second half, I beat the shit out of them. I pass the guard, let them re-guard, pass the guard, let them re-guard. That's how I drill now, personally. I just keep doing what I'm going to do if I say I'm going to do it. And I tell them what I'm doing because it makes it a ah little more honest because then they feel they feel less bad that they got their guard passed 30 times in four minutes. 01:12:04.80 Randy William But they know I'm just practicing. I don't want them to feel any type of way because again, whether I care about feelings or not doesn't mean other people don't. Like I don't care how I feel. 01:12:15.98 Randy William I just do what I need to do to get better. But that's how I approach training. Now i pick a goal for a while. Like right now it's been strictly passing like high passing because I don't want no one to touch my neck and just keep doing it until I get bored, which doesn't really happen. 01:12:34.71 Randy William Unfortunately. 01:12:36.57 nextlevelguypodcast So say you had somebody like like myself. Say I'm going to class and they have a particular way of doing it, like um teach couple movements from this thing after the warm-ups. 01:12:40.50 Randy William Yeah. 01:12:48.39 nextlevelguypodcast Then they have a little maybe a little game of something, and then they have the rolling sessions. And that's pretty much the concept. You know, a couple of two or three things to learn. roll at the end ah they for of the class and they kind of go through different positions. 01:13:03.07 nextlevelguypodcast How could I take a concept like um the mechanics and stuff like we've discussed and implement it into our training in a gym that's not allowed the freedom that you give your students? 01:13:15.96 Randy William Do it at home. I don't know, honestly, what to tell you on that, dude. i am a big believer of take your learning in your own hands. And granted, that was a lot easier for me coming up because I honestly didn't have a teacher in the room with me. I could do whatever I wanted. 01:13:32.15 Randy William I was always the teacher. But I had a friend named Austin, and he went to Gracie, like a CTC, but he wanted to get really good at leg locks, and he is very good at leg locks. 01:13:46.04 Randy William They obviously don't teach that there. He took his learning in his own hands. He would just do it anyway. He just wouldn't finish. He would just get to positions and let people out so no one would get offended. But during rolling, he would just spam the same thing over and over and over and let them out and do it again. 01:14:03.20 Randy William Kind of like what I do, but he wasn't allowed to. You just have to you have to take your learning in your own hands at some point. 01:14:07.35 nextlevelguypodcast I do... 01:14:10.67 Randy William Because after blue, generally speaking, your teacher can't teach you much more. Right. And it's not because they're not good enough. It's not because you're not paying them enough or whatever common reason there'll be. 01:14:23.93 Randy William It's because they have to cater to the masses. And when you cater to the masses, you're probably going to be teaching the same six things for 10 years. And if you don't take your learning in your own hands, you're going to stagnate unless you pay for privates, which I don't mind ever doing. Like I find them very valuable, but. 01:14:43.36 Randy William That's why I don't teach big classes. Everything I do is very 10 or less people. i don't I'm not very good at ah teaching humongous rooms yet. I'm working on it. But when I teach big classes, it's always a system. And then I walk around a lot and just change. 01:14:57.99 Randy William Sometimes I sound like a hypocrite. I'm like, I teach something the way I would do it or the way I've seen it done. And then walk up as an ad, just don't do that part. It's okay. That part sucks for some people. Like if you're fat and slow, you're not going to be able to do a fucking flying arm by a man. It just is what it is. 01:15:13.30 nextlevelguypodcast I dread to think if I did that to somebody, I'd probably fucking break break the floor landing or something. 01:15:19.07 Randy William Yeah, but the principles of a flying armbar still apply to you for falling armbars and closed guard armbars. 01:15:19.35 nextlevelguypodcast Because... Hmm. 01:15:25.58 Randy William The principles the same, just we now add or subtract attributes that we have. So the principles don't change, but the attributes Mm-hmm. 01:15:35.52 nextlevelguypodcast ah so really ah I don't really like that concept. how So how would you adapt that? So say you had an older person, a fatter person, and i don't know, maybe a young pap who's just started Jiu Jitsu. 01:15:48.99 nextlevelguypodcast How would you get them to use that idea of the principles don't change, the the attributes do? 01:15:54.81 Randy William like each other 01:15:55.34 nextlevelguypodcast do 01:15:56.44 Randy William I teach them the exact same thing and watch them both fail in different ways. For example, if you're tall and long, you're gonna have a hard time getting your knee back through to get to close guard from half guard. 01:16:07.78 Randy William But if you're short and stumpy, it's not so much every big deal. So I teach both the same thing. Watch the tall guy fail and be like, look, you ended up in a butterfly hook. Look what you can do because you are tall. 01:16:20.08 Randy William And the fat guy, he's not gonna be able to, he's not gonna be able to crunch up into a little ball very well, but he can play a pretty, he's gonna be able to play a pretty good deep half guard, a coyote guard. 01:16:30.28 nextlevelguypodcast I'd 01:16:31.41 Randy William So if you teach the base position, which is traditional shitty ass half guard, I don't like crossing my feet. I don't like being super connected, but again, that's a me thing. 01:16:42.03 Randy William Then you take that and adjust it, right? Like it's half guard and then I'll adjust it down for a fat guy, i adjust it up for an athletic guy. There's nothing wrong with using your attributes as long as it's efficient for you. 01:16:52.73 Randy William Because efficiency again is relative. 01:16:54.17 nextlevelguypodcast huddle 01:16:56.87 nextlevelguypodcast I need to see you do videos of that. 01:16:57.67 Randy William I could, I'm, 01:16:59.10 nextlevelguypodcast I think that's ah an amazing idea. like 01:17:01.02 Randy William So the thing is I'm trying. It's just difficult to – a lot of my reels I put a lot of time into thinking throughout the day how I'm going fucking say that in less than a minute. And even still, there's a lot of stuff I want to add. 01:17:11.28 nextlevelguypodcast Hmm. 01:17:13.65 Randy William So I think I'll start using YouTube a little bit. 01:17:16.68 nextlevelguypodcast I notice you do tend to use a lot more IG reels and you know shorts and stuff. Do you prefer doing these like little short things because it lets you just continually like do more and more? 01:17:30.98 Randy William Uh, yes, but I get to interact with people more and I'm a stay at home like husband, man. I got nothing to do but gossip all day. So I get to just fuck off on the internet and Instagram lets me do that a lot more than YouTube does. 01:17:47.97 nextlevelguypodcast So how do you think that's changed you You know, since if you look back at the Randy you were before, the fun, loving, crazy guy to the fun, loving, crazy guy you are now, how do you think it's changed You you know, how has becoming a father changed you? 01:17:58.18 Randy William Uh, 01:18:01.95 nextlevelguypodcast How has becoming the house husband, the the coach? yeah how How do you think you've changed when you look back now? And would you change any of it? 01:18:11.97 Randy William I wouldn't change anything for sure, but the concepts are not different. I'm not much different than I was at 21 in terms of like, I had my first son at 21. 01:18:22.96 Randy William i was already coaching at 21, but how I approach people is different. I'm a lot, I try to approach people a little bit better. instead of just saying, bro, that fucking sucks immediately. I'm like, hey, hey. 01:18:37.48 Randy William Like it was, again, Austin, I'll use him because he's one of my best friends. I was a purple girl and I just met this guy. Like I just met him and just rolled with him and he was like the top dog at his gym and i just beat the shit of him. was like, bro, you fucking suck and just walked away and he was like, that lit a fire under me. I'm glad you did that but Jesus Christ. yeah You could have came about a little better than that, dude. 01:19:02.93 Randy William Yeah. 01:19:04.48 nextlevelguypodcast i've I've heard you say... 01:19:04.84 Randy William That's just how i was. That's just how it was. 01:19:08.59 nextlevelguypodcast I've heard you say in another interview where you said something like, that we say stuff that should be highly offensive, but we all know it's a joke. you know We all, like, it we'll insult each other to our faces, but we know we love each other when it's said with love. 01:19:19.22 Randy William Oh, yeah. 01:19:23.50 Randy William Oh, yeah. 01:19:24.83 nextlevelguypodcast And I was like, I think you said something like, oh yeah, if I call you a fuckhead or a dick or whatever, no, it's with love. or you I was just laughing because was thinking... 01:19:32.85 Randy William yeah 01:19:34.89 nextlevelguypodcast I think there is that bond, that jiu-jitsu bond. how How do you develop it? 01:19:38.40 Randy William Oh yeah. 01:19:39.23 nextlevelguypodcast How do you make friends through jiu-jitsu? Because I think that's something people struggle with. 01:19:44.16 Randy William Um, that's funny. You bring that up. We were talking about this the other day. I find you just to the easiest place to make friends because it's the one place. It's not fucking weird to be like, Hey, want to go get a beer? Cause as a man, it's weird to walk up to another man and it'd be like, want to hang out when you're an adult. 01:20:00.57 Randy William It's just kind of odd when you don't have anything in common with somebody. But Jiu Jitsu, the one common thing everyone has, whether it's self-defense, whether they're idiot, whether they're good, bad, comment it doesn't matter. 01:20:12.14 Randy William They all care about self-improvement. right Almost all of them. but Of course, there's exceptions who just show up, I guess. I don't know. I don't have any of those right now. But everyone wants the same thing. They all want to get better. 01:20:25.35 Randy William And Including myself. I just want to get better. By default, make you better. It makes me better. It's almost selfish. If you're good, that means I can get better. 01:20:35.46 Randy William That makes it really easy to make friends when you know you have the same goals. It also makes it really easy to talk shit. Like it's fun. 01:20:45.08 nextlevelguypodcast And do you think that's where people struggle? It's because we're so in today's society, we're now at the point of we all have a private space. You keep yourself to yourself. You don't tell anybody. 01:20:56.93 nextlevelguypodcast You can send dates to your to your house with your phone. You can order food to your house. 01:21:01.10 Randy William Yeah. 01:21:02.05 nextlevelguypodcast We've forgotten how just to be a tribe, a 01:21:04.02 Randy William People. Oh my god. So people may think I'm an asshole because I'll say to your face, you fucking suck. But I'll also walk up to you and tell you how much I care about you. I have never been afraid to express my emotions to another man, woman, person. 01:21:18.21 Randy William It didn't fucking matter to me. Because I find that important self expression very important. And letting people know how you feel about them is important, whether good or bad. 01:21:29.60 Randy William If I don't like you, I'm going tell you I don't like you so you can decide what to do with that. 01:21:29.78 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 01:21:33.35 Randy William I'm not going to pretend we're friends. I don't teach people I don't like. We kind of run them out the door. And it's not personal. They just don't fit in. And I have a culture I want to uphold. 01:21:43.80 Randy William and it's not that one I'm welcoming. We have all kinds of different backgrounds. We have people who've never done a sport. We have people who played sports their whole life. We have all kinds of people. we have military. We have non-military. 01:21:54.54 Randy William mostly military. And, but no matter where you come from, you should still want that self improvement. And if you don't have that, you probably aren't going work in our gym. 01:22:06.74 nextlevelguypodcast Makes a lot of sense. You know, that you're there because you're all wanting to learn the same sport and you're wanting to improve yourself. 01:22:11.74 Randy William here 01:22:12.99 nextlevelguypodcast So why would you not try to find the people who are, well, it's almost like a very, why overcomplicate Why not go to a place that you all like the same stuff and try and just go, well, we like this. 01:22:20.08 Randy William Exactly. 01:22:25.30 nextlevelguypodcast How about we like each other and do something else? 01:22:28.62 Randy William Yeah, and there's 15 other gyms in my area, dude. It's ridiculous here. i will I always tell people when they walk in the door, you have options. It's not personal. I understand. 01:22:40.35 Randy William you want to go check other places out, go for it because I'm not for everybody. I am painfully aware of that. But at the same time, I'm for a lot of people who miss the realism of the game, life, 01:22:56.48 Randy William Seems like that niche is starting to get filled a little more. 01:23:01.40 nextlevelguypodcast I love how you serve open and kind of just bigger of a viewpoint you have than a lot of coaches who you only hear them talk about jujitsu. 01:23:12.14 nextlevelguypodcast You incorporate a lot of life stuff into your videos as well. And you know you're very, you're very in depth that you've got a lot of depth to it. And it's something that's missing a lot of jujitsu. 01:23:24.22 nextlevelguypodcast We don't see that anymore. 01:23:24.56 Randy William missing in everything. It's missing in everything, man. Nobody fucking looks at the deeper picture of anything anymore. And I'm not old. I don't want to pretend to be some wise old sage. I'm only, I'm a 33 dude. I've just been through a lot. 01:23:39.72 Randy William And I would take those shitty situations and just try to learn from them versus let it define me. I don't understand the people who have something bad happen to them and then let it just ruin their fucking life, dude. 01:23:55.12 Randy William I don't get it. 01:23:55.55 nextlevelguypodcast yeah they yeah make a personality personality out of that 01:23:57.41 Randy William i just don't to exactly like the whole victim mentality. I just don't get it. I understand even I had moments where I just want to vent versus have my problem solved. 01:24:08.51 Randy William But that's what my wife's for. I'm not gonna fucking talk to you about it. It's not your place. Yeah, 01:24:13.85 nextlevelguypodcast no ah I always say that to people what's it they're saying I'd rather listen to you moan than go to your funeral and I think we've we' 01:24:21.35 Randy William yeah exactly. That's People don't want to talk anymore about their problems, which is frustrating. But at the same time, if you're going to talk about your problems, be willing to help solve them. 01:24:34.35 Randy William There has to be that middle ground. You can't just complain forever. But I also don't want you to go fucking off yourself. Like, don't get me wrong. There's a middle ground there that needs to be explored a little more often than not. 01:24:50.71 nextlevelguypodcast um So what other ways, because originally when I had this question, it was, what what's mental frameworks and habits do you use to, you know, to kind of, to view life, you know, to, that makes you you and you can view that kind of, like at this kind of level, but that's probably overcomplicating it and after, you know, now i need to get to get to the simplification of it. 01:25:11.64 Randy William No, yeah 01:25:15.04 Randy William no, it's okay. I'm pretty good at breaking it down. 01:25:18.72 nextlevelguypodcast So what but so what's what makes you you then? Do you have things like that you will only stand for this, this and this? Do you have a viewpoint where this is the most important thing or I need more of this to survive? you know like Is there things that the non-negotiables in your life 01:25:37.29 Randy William There is no absolutes for the most part, I don't think. and me think here. Generally speaking, I try to be balanced in as many things as possible without hurting anyone else. 01:25:49.33 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 01:25:50.19 Randy William You know, if I, for example, I might have an opportunity to go overseas and teach at the end of November, but that's Thanksgiving and my wife wants family time. So I have to balance those things. 01:26:03.24 Randy William But I also believe you should make yourself happy, but not at the expense of your wife, for example. like i would never do anything to make myself happy if it hurt my wife, but At the same time, she would never stop me from being happy because that she's my wife, which is how it is. 01:26:19.06 Randy William And that's a thing people don't do is balance their life. 01:26:19.83 nextlevelguypodcast Thank you. 01:26:22.79 Randy William pickup Pick a person, and it doesn't matter who, it does, but it doesn't have to be a wife per se. It could be a friend. I don't know. I've always picked my person and made them the center of my universe. 01:26:36.31 Randy William because she really is the center of my universe. She is the reason I can do what I do. I get to stay home. I get to take care of all these people on the internet and teach them and help everybody. 01:26:48.80 Randy William But that's probably the only thing that you have to pick somebody. know I'm getting off topic. I'm trying to think of how i would word this. and i didn't I wasn't playing prepared for that one. I'm sorry. 01:26:59.35 nextlevelguypodcast no but i mean how how How would we find that? 01:27:02.72 Randy William It's really... 01:27:04.63 nextlevelguypodcast you know like Because you seem to have a lot from the relationship where you she lets you be you, you let her be her and you kind of find a balance between it that works well for both of yeah you. 01:27:15.76 nextlevelguypodcast know You let both sides you out 01:27:16.16 Randy William So this might make it easier to understand. I, when my first wife passed away, i knew I wanted to have a family. and I was like, that's not that that's important to me. 01:27:28.94 Randy William And I was 28. And that's, that's too young to be thinking I'll be alone forever. All things considered, you know, and I know what I want and everything. 01:27:40.20 Randy William Like I know exactly what I want, how to do it. I just have to actually go fucking do it. You know, it's nothing. Everything you could want is already Google-able. You can just Google it and just do the fucking work. And I knew what I wanted in a relationship and i just didn't deviate. I didn't let other parts of me do the thinking for me. 01:27:59.11 Randy William And when I was doing all my dating, I got tired of it because no one was what I wanted. i spent like 10 grand going on dates in a month, dude, it was absurd. And I tried to accelerate the process and what you can do with money, obviously, if you go on a lot of dates and meet a lot of people, you can accelerate it. 01:28:18.32 Randy William And I realized everyone's pretty much the same. They're all at my age group are very similar. There's nothing wrong with that. just wasn't for me. And then I met her and I knew her. 01:28:29.64 Randy William we we had We went bowling and just had just talked for like six hours. was like, yep, that's the one. I knew that day. I told her that night. was like, yep, we're going to married now. 01:28:42.15 Randy William And then we got married. 01:28:42.22 nextlevelguypodcast What did you say? 01:28:43.81 Randy William She was like, are you nuts? was like, well, yes, but I know. We wanted the exact same 01:28:48.34 nextlevelguypodcast that's for you to find out soon, Mike. 01:28:52.50 Randy William Yeah, so I was always very upfront and very honest with everything I've ever done for then or been or... I just don't see a point in hiding anything about myself anymore. 01:29:05.27 Randy William And that made it really easy to find a partner I actually wanted. When you're completely honest and know exactly what you want, they can decide if you are what, excuse me, you are what they want and the other way around. 01:29:16.47 Randy William And that's how I took that with concept with everything. Jiu-jitsu is exactly what I want. I know exactly what I get out of it. I know exactly what my goals are. But yes, my goals changed throughout time. I used to want to be a world champion, and I realized I wasn't that good. 01:29:30.73 Randy William I was like, yeah, those who can't do, teach. and then i And then I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. I can't just be a teacher because then I'll look like a pussy online. So I need to actually be able compete. So I competed. and So I tried to balance both. I competed, i taught, and i was a student. I tried to do all three. 01:29:48.43 Randy William I'd rather in the top 90% than the top 90%. ninety percent then the top One percent, you know, I'd rather be in the top 10 percent. So I'd rather be that top 10 percent in as many things as possible, like lifting, fitness, every major position in Jiu Jitsu, then be that one percent because it's not worth it to me to put all the effort into one thing when I could be really good at lots of things by just being conceptual and applying it to all over the place. 01:30:16.29 nextlevelguypodcast So then what success to you? Like, you know, you've got the wife, if you've got the family now that, um you know, you've got the YouTube, you've got a lot of great friends through the thing. 01:30:27.63 nextlevelguypodcast I'm sure you've made a lot of funds. 01:30:27.95 Randy William I don't know, dude. 01:30:29.88 nextlevelguypodcast how What is it for you now? 01:30:32.75 Randy William I have no idea because there's always something in me that wants to keep dry trying to do more. I had another podcast and they're like, you have all these little avenues, side hustles, things you do. 01:30:45.11 Randy William And ah used to be really poor and had nothing. And now I have everything I could possibly want and still have nothing because I just don't want anything. So I don't know why I do what I do often. Like I don't have the best answer for you, unfortunately. 01:30:58.62 Randy William I just can't help but keep moving, keep trying to better myself. go I guess the biggest thing you would say is I try to better people around me a lot. Well, I'm a little less selfish for sure. 01:31:10.72 Randy William But um that's what Instagram at first, I didn't start it to fucking help people. I started it to build a name for myself. So when we kept moving, i would to be able to find a job, but then it turned into what it is now. I'm like, this is great. Everyone thinks this is helpful. All right. This is, it felt, it feels a lot better to help a lot of people than just get a follower account. 01:31:32.05 nextlevelguypodcast I love that because so many people do it for the wrong reason. They do it for the ego. They do it for the money. Whereas you were just doing it just to kind of get your stuff out there. And it's, I think you sort of appreciate just how your level of depth and honesty is is so refreshing and it's so inspiring. It's kind of like, fuck, wow. You know, it really hits home and it makes you kind of want to be a better man as much as um a better jujitsu practitioner by watching your stuff, especially some of the stuff you've said tonight. 01:32:01.87 nextlevelguypodcast Is there a transition that you've seen ah ah student make that has really inspired you? You know, has there been feedback you've gotten about how you've really changed somebody or something that you could think of where they've, you've been blown away by the transformation in that person? 01:32:19.58 Randy William one of my I have two students, and both of them are the godparents to one of or the other of my kids right now. One is Gabby, and she runs a gym in Delaware, where I'm from. 01:32:30.42 Randy William And the other is Chase. And Chase in particular... 01:32:33.30 nextlevelguypodcast Was Gabby the one that you did the video about how to roll with a woman? 01:32:37.51 Randy William Yeah. Gabby's one of my first two She's the first person to ever pay me, right? So she's been just with me the whole time, and I just constantly beat the shit out of her. 01:32:48.92 Randy William I'm a lot nicer to her now, but Gabby's gone through it, man. She is a tough cookie. And I think that's why she's so talented because I never treated her like a flower. I just treated her like a smaller dude. 01:33:03.81 Randy William But oh yeah, back to that question. oh 01:33:05.50 nextlevelguypodcast Bye. 01:33:05.67 Randy William So Chase, i always have I was having a hard time. I was always on my phone. I was fucking off in class because I was going through just life problems, relationship problems. And he was like, dude, 01:33:18.11 Randy William you're kind of fucking up because we're all here to learn and you're just sitting there being an asshole. And I think I was a brown belt at the time and it was really important that he told me that because i was like getting sucked into the wrong things and focused on the wrong things. Like, yeah, I cared about my relationship but at the same time I was in this space so I needed to focus on this space. 01:33:41.07 Randy William And I saved that message for years. i I deleted that when I got married because I didn't need it anymore. But I saved that message for a very long time and would reference it because it helped me a lot. 01:33:52.65 Randy William Put it a perspective that I just need to focus on what I'm doing instead of the bad things at that point in time. And Chase, oh, sorry. 01:34:00.22 nextlevelguypodcast that 01:34:02.81 nextlevelguypodcast ah you say and Was that how you like you don't read, you don't do visualization, meditation? stuff do You seem to take a lot of things that other people say and absorb it and utilize the teachings. Is that what happened with Chase? 01:34:16.09 Randy William Yeah, so Chase, um he went to like Catholic boarding school, so he's pretty he's a smart guy. He has his flaws, just like we all do. I have to tell to clean his fucking room when he was in the military. 01:34:28.44 Randy William We always fuck off. But one time we were hanging out with my older son, because he's my older son's godfather. 01:34:39.23 Randy William And we dropped him off back to his mom's, and we were just hanging out. He wass like, dude, I wish my dad did all the shit you guys do together. And they're like, that was like, that's when I really realized I was making a difference to people, not just in the game. 01:34:51.47 Randy William And it was really, that was really humbling in a way. Cause like, I never got humbled getting beat up in jujitsu. I expected that to happen, but all the people who tell me they help them in some way that's not jujitsu related is pretty humbling because I just think I'm some regular dude with a little bit of discipline autism and that's it. but I don't think I'm special. 01:35:12.32 Randy William I just do what I feel like I need to do. I'm not afraid of any, like, I'm not afraid to fail. It just is going to happen. Why be afraid of what's going to happen? 01:35:22.68 nextlevelguypodcast But that's a beautiful thing to say. i mean, so so many guys always go, no, no, they don't want to talk about anything about loneliness, depth, and loss. you know they no No one wants to think of themselves as not the best. 01:35:38.56 nextlevelguypodcast And the fact that you can just say, I expected it. 01:35:39.17 Randy William Like that, especially men. 01:35:42.43 nextlevelguypodcast How do you find that with your guys in your class? How do you see that change in them as you kind of talk to them and work with them and sort befriend them? 01:35:49.98 Randy William I have one of my students who just came back and I'll leave his his name out of it's a little personal. He had a lot of issues with women. He was a big playboy, he's 22, he's handsome. 01:36:01.88 Randy William and had some previous life situations happen and he was gone for a couple weeks and I was just like, bro, what the fuck, where you at? And he's just being an idiot. You gotta get back here, dude. 01:36:17.22 Randy William Because ultimately the sport is just a vessel. Like my lacrosse coach always said, it's not about lacrosse, it's about life. And all sport is, is a place to fail in a controlled environment to learn. 01:36:29.40 Randy William And i do that with Jiu-Jitsu. I don't, I kind of get sad that it's so sportified and it's almost a red flag if your instructor kind of tries to help you in life or gives you life advice now. 01:36:43.64 Randy William But I tried to balance that too. I don't give anyone advice unless they ask now. Or unless they're obviously fucking up something. But I try not to intrude because it's again, it's ultimately not my place. 01:36:57.17 Randy William But to have people like Chase and Gabby who would seek out it and listen and then apply it the way I applied it or similar, it's really... 01:37:11.54 Randy William I don't know how explain entirely. It's really helpful. I'm glad I could help them fix certain things in their life through a sport that ultimately doesn't fucking matter. Like we're just grappling a bunch of dudes. It it doesn't matter in the end. 01:37:23.20 nextlevelguypodcast I love that concept of sport being ah ah an organized way to fail. You know, give it it's and a chance to fail, to learn to fail, to grow. 01:37:29.02 Randy William It is. 01:37:31.43 nextlevelguypodcast And, you know, love that you seem to have grown and developed yourself through helping the others. 01:37:31.94 Randy William Mm-hmm. 01:37:37.76 nextlevelguypodcast What was the change that you saw in Gabby? how did she How has she sort of blossomed when when you're not beating her up? 01:37:44.81 Randy William hi So Gabby is just quite impressive. She's a full-time nurse. She's a mom. and she rents the gymer She owns the gym, runs a gym. 01:37:56.19 Randy William She teaches gymnastics. She was a gymnast first. She is quite impressive with all she does and all she has to balance. And I honestly think the biggest thing I helped her with was just trying to balance everything. 01:38:11.54 Randy William and not take it so seriously, because she puts 100% into everything, and you just physically can't do that when you have that much going on. It was probably a couple weeks ago, I was take ah take a few weeks of just coasting in jiu-jitsu, be an eco-coach. 01:38:26.77 Randy William That's an easy job. Just make them play games and sit on your phone for a couple of days. Like, chill. Because she's the only teacher, so she can't not be there, but you can still benefit your students while relaxing. 01:38:39.48 Randy William You don't always have to grow. Sometimes maintaining is good enough. 01:38:44.03 nextlevelguypodcast And how did you do that with Gabby? How did you get to see it for fun and enjoyment? Because I'm notoriously bad at I get obsessed. 01:38:51.78 Randy William and I stopped beating her up. I was actually, i would like roll for fun. 01:38:55.58 nextlevelguypodcast Like I 01:38:57.46 Randy William The last couple of times I go back to Delaware, it's always fun. i i don't roll hard when I visit anymore unless somebody pisses me off. Then I'm like, all motherfucker, let's go. 01:39:08.21 Randy William But other than that, I try to keep it a little more fun and only serious when it needs to be. Like, I find people learn life lessons faster in a laughing environment versus serious one. 01:39:21.24 nextlevelguypodcast So what do you want from this then? Like if you were on your deathbed now, what would you want people to say about you now that when you look back at jujitsu, when you look back at your life, because you've, you've done amazing things, you know, you're helping so many people, but, 01:39:37.14 Randy William Um... I would want people to just realize no matter how I come across, the goal in the end was the same, just to help people. Because even when I was a blue belt, being kind of a jerk, all I ever did was teach and help people the best I knew how at the time. 01:39:54.08 Randy William And i am still not liked in my home state because of just the way I came across. And I've come to terms with that. It took a while. yeah Some people, first impressions last a lifetime, and I had to understand that. 01:40:06.73 Randy William But It is what it is, just that the goal was always the same. The methods changed, but the goal never changed. 01:40:16.29 nextlevelguypodcast And do you utilize anything? Do you try journaling? Do you do meditation? Do you did you discuss it with friends and stuff and try to make sense of it through your head? 01:40:27.59 Randy William A lot of it's just, I think, and I don't know. I don't really actively meditate per se. but I left or what I'm driving, I think things like that. I just I think a lot. 01:40:40.52 Randy William But I don't like sit there and do the kind of thing. But I Hmm. 01:40:44.98 nextlevelguypodcast I tried the Headspace, you know, the one that is like a guided 10-minute thing, and I thought, this is shite. Two minutes in, I was kind of like, okay, I can see the point of this, because it wasn't that, like, I'm the day shite. You know, it was just the sit down and try to let your thoughts go, get any your and you're like, oh, okay, I can see the point on this. 01:41:02.92 nextlevelguypodcast and But I've used up so much your time. I'd love to have you back on, because... 01:41:06.82 Randy William Oh, now you Oh, of course. 01:41:08.15 nextlevelguypodcast because 01:41:08.87 Randy William Anytime. I don't really do anything. 01:41:10.10 nextlevelguypodcast I know you have got... I was say that because there's still so many rabbit holes I'm trying avoid going into because I was thinking we could talk about these things for days, but until I can have you on again, I'd love... I honestly you were be good, but the depth of answers has blown me away. 01:41:27.63 nextlevelguypodcast like i love how you open and honest and vulnerable you've been about everything. 01:41:28.66 Randy William Oh. 01:41:32.42 nextlevelguypodcast What do you want people to remember from this? you know Because we've covered so many amazing things from jiu-jitsu to life, to beating up your urge students, to how you may you know how you met your partner and made a beautiful family. 01:41:37.15 Randy William and 01:41:47.81 nextlevelguypodcast What do you want people to take from this? 01:41:50.43 Randy William Bro, just be okay with failing. Men should already be okay with it. 99% of times you walk up to a chick, you're getting rejected. Just take that mentality into everything. Like, you can't take it personally. 01:42:02.67 Randy William And again, i've wasn't always good at that. like yeah There were times I was like, man, I know I'm better than you, but I lost. It doesn't fucking matter. I lost. It doesn't matter if I'm better. 01:42:12.37 nextlevelguypodcast Mm-hmm. 01:42:13.20 Randy William But being okay with failing over and over again, and the only way to get comfortable with it is to just keep failing over and over again, and eventually you'll be all right. 01:42:24.56 Randy William And again, it's a controlled environment. Jiu-jitsu is the easiest fucking sport because you can tap at any moment and it resets. I tell my guys, just tap to reset. It's not losing, it's resetting. 01:42:36.70 Randy William Whereas other sports, you can't tap in the middle of a football tackle. like You're getting blasted, dude. It's just the way it is. But you got to be really okay with failure and knowing when you failed. 01:42:49.10 Randy William Again, tap on time. know when you when Know when it's time to go, man. You just you fucked up. It's okay. Just move on. Have amnesia. 01:42:58.35 nextlevelguypodcast Is that the best thing to do? Is that just see it, admit and then just go on? No one's remembering the taps. 01:43:05.02 Randy William Yeah. 01:43:06.31 nextlevelguypodcast We're only remembering the fun. 01:43:06.94 Randy William No. Exactly. When I played soccer, one of my coaches was like, you can't get mad at every ball that goes in. You gotta have amnesia and pretend it didn't happen so you can continue the game. 01:43:19.40 Randy William And that again, took me a while to understand. But because if you let that goal bother you, another goal is going to follow it. And the day learned just to not give a fuck and learned that people um cheer more for saves than goals, that put it in a perspective for me. 01:43:41.00 nextlevelguypodcast beautifully put I and I can remember i would think about tap I could have a brief but brilliant training session and the one thing I tapped would be the thing I'd be pissed off about the whole weekend because I had been tapping rather than just going actually that was quite good 01:43:41.27 Randy William Just. 01:43:52.89 Randy William Exactly. 01:43:58.37 Randy William And then that's also a healthy, it can be healthy to focus on the failure, but not be negative. But that's that balance. I don't focus on the things I did well in class. 01:44:10.23 Randy William I focus on the places I messed up and how to fix it. But I'm not mad at myself for fucking failing. I'm not angry anymore. And again, I was. One of my coaches said in soccer, again, i hated this one because it fucked up my mind for a while, but it made sense. 01:44:26.50 Randy William The goalie is the only person on the field whose mistakes show up. My mistake shows up on the scoreboard. And that messed with me for a while off because it's true, but it also is very negative. 01:44:41.99 Randy William So it took a while to get over that one too. man 01:44:47.02 nextlevelguypodcast I love that approach you have of kind of okay, affected me but I don't let it beat me I then learn from it, I take what's a good part of it and then I use that to grow and yeah know it's like 01:44:58.40 Randy William That's a concept I deal with literally everything, big and small. Like soccer goal, my wife died. I did the exact same fucking thing. Same thing. 01:45:10.40 nextlevelguypodcast And how do you do that? 01:45:10.79 Randy William Didn't change. 01:45:12.18 nextlevelguypodcast how How do you learn? like to Was that always part of you? Or have you learned to do that? 01:45:17.98 Randy William It was always part of me since high school. So I don't really remember before that because I had awesome high school lacrosse and soccer coaches. who mentored me a lot because i I fucking needed it. I was again, very explosive and angry all the time. 01:45:34.39 Randy William And since then I just, again, internalized it and tried to make that who I was. And so nothing really bothers me. Like I've had somebody rob my car, like, ah, fuck, I should have locked my door, i guess. Like, yeah, well, it just, everything's within your own control when it's in your head, like your own emotions you control. 01:45:56.04 nextlevelguypodcast And do you think that they were the father figure that you needed at that point and you're doing the same now to the future generation of jiu-jitsu people? 01:45:59.94 Randy William um 01:46:04.66 Randy William I'm trying, but yeah, like, for sure. 01:46:06.02 nextlevelguypodcast but 01:46:10.12 Randy William my dad, the older I get, the more i realize I am a lot like that guy. He was very meticulous. He's very organized. He's very systematic. He's really good at, if he can see it, he can do it. 01:46:22.28 Randy William Uh, with engines, he likes dirt bikes, cars, that kind of thing. I, I don't know anything about those, but he was very good at that. And the older I get, the more i realize I'm the same way. I just took a different path. 01:46:37.07 nextlevelguypodcast No, you're, I mean, you're doing amazing. And the fact that you've found route to who you want it to be, you've achieved the things and it's fucking inspiring, man. 01:46:48.44 nextlevelguypodcast It's, don't think you're giving yourself enough credit for the amazing transformation you've done, but you're also now giving that back and you're making jujitsu fun again, which is, which is bloody hard. 01:46:48.78 Randy William thank you 01:46:58.11 Randy William I try. it is fun, man. 01:47:00.08 nextlevelguypodcast Like it's, 01:47:01.68 Randy William Jujutsu is fun. Even the bad parts are hilarious. Like, getting muffled to tap is hilarious. Whether you're doing it or getting it done to you. Either way, it's just the funniest fucking thing to me. 01:47:14.72 Randy William Like, yeah, you suck bad enough, you got muffled. 01:47:18.71 nextlevelguypodcast I think what the one when they, was it mother's milk? When you basically just rub your tits in their face and you're kind of like, can can we do this? 01:47:22.30 Randy William Yeah. 01:47:27.57 nextlevelguypodcast um I remember there was, I did the over underpass to a girl and she didn't realize that was an actual pass. And she thought I was just like, was thinking, what do you think I was doing? Dry hamping you? 01:47:38.48 nextlevelguypodcast It was that moment of... 01:47:38.75 Randy William Oh my God, I got one of those stories. Oh man, that that'd be a quick one. Let me tell you this one. This is hilarious. So I learned the rear naked choke by breathing all my air out, compressing, and then using my back and chest to finish the choke with my breath. 01:47:54.75 Randy William So I grappling this pretty Brazilian chick and I breathed all my air out, got her back in, breathe in. and choke the fuck out of it, right? And I get a message from her, and she's like, why were you sniffing my hair? 01:48:08.85 Randy William And I'm like, oh, God, no. I promise I was just doing the choke. 01:48:13.61 nextlevelguypodcast just ever 01:48:14.20 Randy William I'm not creepy. 01:48:14.47 nextlevelguypodcast Timothy! 01:48:14.92 Randy William I promise. I'm not creepy yet. I promise. I'm not old enough to be creepy, I don't think. Not yet. 01:48:22.26 nextlevelguypodcast That's maybe an actual... 01:48:22.69 Randy William That show was so funny. 01:48:24.52 nextlevelguypodcast That's maybe an area we should cover. How do guys avoid being creepy cunts? Because there's a lot of jiu-jitsu guys who... 01:48:30.83 Randy William Dude, honestly, just don't be. Like, there's a stupid trope, but it's also true. It's only creepy if you're ugly. Like, I know that that's a thing, too, and it's unfortunate for some gentlemen who are just different looking. 01:48:46.50 Randy William But don't make it more than it is. Like, if you accidentally grab a tit, say, oops, sorry, move on. Don't make it a big deal either direction. Don't be nonchalant like you don't care, but also... 01:48:59.29 Randy William Don't over-apologize 7,000 times, just move on. Like if you look at Gabby, she's pretty. It's grappling, it is what it is. I'm going to grab her, I'm going to choke her. i'm going She wears fucking short shorts, what do you expect? 01:49:10.38 Randy William You to not touch her legs and grappling? 01:49:12.33 nextlevelguypodcast no 01:49:13.31 Randy William It just is what it is, just don't make it more than it is. 01:49:17.48 nextlevelguypodcast and usually the 115 pound girl the one that's kicked your arse the whole way through the road 01:49:22.82 Randy William ah dude They're the only ones who kick in the dick too, because they don't have one. Fuck man, Gabby's hit me in the dick so many times, I'm like, motherfucker. 01:49:27.95 nextlevelguypodcast I remember... 01:49:32.52 nextlevelguypodcast I trained with a girl and she came to me after the round and said, oh, that guy's creepy as fuck. was like, what do you mean? And I have a younger sister, so I'm used to getting told I'm a cunt and all this to my face. And, you know, like she's she's not shy, you know. 01:49:42.63 Randy William Yeah, yeah, 01:49:44.47 nextlevelguypodcast But this girl, and I've always learned to treat people the way you want to be treated. And this girl came to me and she was saying about this guy who had felt her up, basically. 01:49:49.31 Randy William yeah. Exactly what we expect. 01:49:53.42 nextlevelguypodcast She said, the first time I let it go because it was role. Second time, okay. And she said, by the third time, I'm thinking you're doing this deliberately. And I just thought, really? Is this what you're going to do? Go to a sport to feel up people? 01:50:08.54 nextlevelguypodcast yeah It's like people who buy OnlyFans rather than learn to speak to women. 01:50:14.21 Randy William Oh, dude, I don't get it. 01:50:14.48 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 01:50:16.26 Randy William I don't understand. But it's ultimately a contact sport and it may be a male dominated sport. 01:50:20.21 nextlevelguypodcast Yeah. 01:50:25.87 Randy William And I love that a women joining it. It's very awesome. But they also have to understand that this is a contact sport. Your tits and ass are going to get touched just is what it is. 01:50:37.97 nextlevelguypodcast i pick I pay good money for mine to get touched. 01:50:38.10 Randy William But you can't take it personally. 01:50:42.10 Randy William Exactly. 01:50:42.13 nextlevelguypodcast it's a 01:50:43.55 Randy William Exactly. That's why all these middle-aged dudes are doing it. They're lonely. This is the new form of IPA, man. 01:50:47.18 nextlevelguypodcast up 01:50:49.47 Randy William Instead of joining a beer IPA club, they start jiu-jitsu. 01:50:53.60 nextlevelguypodcast I've had some of the worst injuries from jiu-jitsu. Girls knee me in the throat, in the back of the head. ah theyre They're like, yeah, you're you're a guy. 01:51:01.07 Randy William Man, women are ferocious. Women are ferocious, man. They think they can't hurt us, but at the same time, they are a smaller, and weaker individual. So, it's that... 01:51:12.08 nextlevelguypodcast I wish they would let wish they would learn teach themselves that because the first class I got, I had a girl growling at me because she couldn't get my arm free for an armbar. And I was kind like, oh, so we're in this part of women are we now? 01:51:25.33 Randy William Yeah. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You really can't. 01:51:30.15 nextlevelguypodcast She was actually growling. 01:51:30.88 Randy William That's 01:51:32.17 nextlevelguypodcast And I was just like, this is strange. I don't know. 01:51:37.23 Randy William I treat women like smaller guys. That's all I do. I don't treat them any differently because it's a lose-lose. If I treat you like a girl or the typical girliness and gentle, you think I'm patronizing you. 01:51:50.17 Randy William And if I'm too hard, you think I'm an asshole. So I just roll with everyone the fucking same. I don't care if you're a girl. I don't care if you're 110 pounds, 185 pounds, whatever you are. I'm going to beat you up the same way I beat up the skinny white dude over there. i I don't care. 01:52:05.95 Randy William Now, don't usually use neon chest with women because that's just not nice. But I do that dudes all the time. So that's probably the one exception I'll make is like I try not to be put pressure on their chest and that's about it. 01:52:22.25 Randy William Everything else is fair game. 01:52:24.30 nextlevelguypodcast No, that sounds a good way to do it. And is there any like accessories you think we should all have? you know our air You know, because we have people who have taped up knee sleeves, elbow pads, bloody, you name it. 01:52:39.57 nextlevelguypodcast Apart from caps, and are there anything that you think any good supplements, any accessories we should all have? 01:52:50.13 Randy William i If you don't need it, no. I believe a braced knee is a weak knee. You shouldn't wear braces, tape on your fingers, nothing unless you need to use it. 01:53:01.31 Randy William um Maybe need pads for like if you're doing wrestling or something for preventative, but I don't really use i don't use a mouth guard. I don't use ah use tape for grip. 01:53:12.82 Randy William like I don't use tape to protect my fingers. I use enogi more than gi to grip people. But 01:53:20.76 Randy William When it comes to like safety accessories, no. But when it comes to like, you should have some Tiger Bomb and you should have some antimicrobial shit. You should have some, you should have decent gear. You shouldn't have the cheapest, but you don't need the most expensive. 01:53:37.26 nextlevelguypodcast and shouldn't have ringworm. 01:53:39.50 Randy William Yeah, well. 01:53:39.50 nextlevelguypodcast You know, that the number of people who sit there and they don't wash their gi and you're just like, it shouldn't be able to walk in on its own for fuck's sake. But you've been an absolute star. I can't believe how easy it is to talk to you. 01:53:52.27 nextlevelguypodcast I could feel like we could chat for hours yet, but I know you've got stuff to do, but 01:53:52.90 Randy William Oh, thank you. Oh, 01:53:57.08 nextlevelguypodcast What would you want people to take from this and going forward to keep it in touch with you? How do we follow this journey? Because you should be bringing out instructionals, websites. 01:54:05.43 Randy William ah yeah. 01:54:07.74 nextlevelguypodcast you should you but How can we connect with you and see what you're doing from there? 01:54:13.49 Randy William ah Instagram, really, because I have that little group chat setting on there, so I post everything on there, but I also post if I'm, like, selling something or Because I also have friends and family, so I'll post on there too. 01:54:26.12 Randy William And I don't really have instructionals per se. I have these little clinics I've made for people that I sell on Gumroad like 20 bucks or less. but I never really cared about making a ton of money with it. 01:54:38.52 Randy William I plan on doing more with it, but again, i don't plan on making full length, three hour instructionals on anything because I think that's ridiculous. so I think you should just learn a technique at its deepest levels and the transition between the two techniques or positions at its deepest level and build a system off of it. 01:54:57.81 Randy William And I could do that. And if you already know the basic techniques, I could do that in 20 minutes. You just have to actually apply it. 01:55:05.24 nextlevelguypodcast why overcomplicate it jiu-jitsu is not that hard 01:55:07.08 Randy William Yeah, exactly. It's just, it is what it is. Make it simple. Dude, it sucked a knot. I never thought it was hard. i just sucked. There's a difference. 01:55:17.18 nextlevelguypodcast ah but i will not say but i was definitely that as well well and what's your instagram handle for those listening 01:55:17.85 Randy William I under... Dude, I sucked ass, but I knew what I needed to do. I just wasn't coordinated enough to do it yet. 01:55:32.37 Randy William It's blackbeltrandy with underscores. So black underscore belt underscore randy. 01:55:38.90 nextlevelguypodcast so Well,