#6 Jessica Strole

Transcript

0:01

Hello.Today I'm joined by someone whose story is powerful testament to resilience and the transformative power of jiu jitsu. Jess Strole's journey has taken her from a small town in New Jersey to the military through some of life's darkest moments and ultimately to a place of strength as a competitor, coach and mentor. I'm honored to have Jess here to share her story Welcome. Hey, how are you? I'm good. Thank you for being here Tell me a little bit about your family, how you were raised? Sure. So I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, about 20 minutes outside of New York City called Dumont. We have a joke that New Yorkers and people from New Jersey like to hate each other, but really they're like the same thing. One is just a small town version of the other, right? I was raised in a probably like lower middle class family. I grew up, so when I was younger, my mom worked a lot as a nurse. And for the first I don't know, like seven years of my life, I was with my grandparents a lot and they were pretty much like my parents. We grew up in a house full of cousins and, my cousins were like my siblings growing up. That was a crowded house. So fun fact, also, my grandparents were, cat breeders. So we had about six or seven, giant, fluffy maine coons running around the house, too. It was, pretty wild. So your mom worked full time and then you were around your parents and cousins. So you had no siblings. So those came later on. So my mother and my father are not together. They never were. I was born out of wedlock. It was one of those something happened at a party and then my family back home is very super conservative Christian. So abortion and all that was not an option. So my mom was like, all right, guess I'm having a kid now. Later on my father and his, wife, my stepmother, did have, two boys, um, my half siblings. Unfortunately now, growing up, the relationship was not great there. I was kind of resented for my existence a little bit. Oh, wow. Yeah, he didn't want her to keep the baby. So, that was a very strained family relationship from the beginning there. There was a lot of I would call it emotional abuse. I'm estranged from them and I have been for many, many years, but I have siblings floating around out there somewhere, you know. But growing up with your grandparents, very stable. Yeah. Fun.Yeah. I'm around the cousins. I was going to say, yeah, my cousins were very much more so siblings to me than my actual siblings ever were. My mom was like a super good mom when she was around, but she was a single mom. She had to work. So grandparents got the kids. Unfortunately, when I was around eight or nine, my grandmother, who bear in mind was like my mother at the time. She started fighting cancer and this was a many year battle, right? But this was her final stretch of that. And it was just a, it was a very aggressive form of uterine cancer and, unfortunately the whole family just had to watch the decline of her. And it was, yeah, it was really bad. It was like losing my mom at a really young age. And unfortunately, too, because of that, my actual mom, went into a little bit of a spiral. And I know she suffered from some really bad depression. And so there was unfortunately, childhood neglect there. Because now she had me on her own, we moved out, and she was really too depressed to properly care for me. And now, I recognize she did the best she could with what she had at that point. But still leaves its marks. So with the maltreatment from my father on one end, and the neglect from my mother on the other end, It was a very lonely time in my life, up until I was going to say my late teens. I didn't have the easiest time growing up. Eventually I think my first like real experience with family after that period in my life was, I had an ex who was a terrible person, but I love his family. It usually happens like that. I know. to this day. I love his family. I don't talk to him. I can't say that. I don't like him I just don't mess with him but his family is still very near and dear to my heart because they took me in they saw lonely teenage kid and they were like, okay come have family dinner with us I ended up spending more days than not over with his family. That's awesome In your younger years right after your grandmother passed away what type of role did you take in the family? After my grandmother passed away, you remember how I said we all lived in the same house? Everybody kind of moved out and got their own life. I think the only person that was still living in that house was my grandfather and one of my older cousins. My mom and I moved out on our own. I was going to say, if you want to talk roles parentified child. That's my role. Yeah, that's what I thought. That's why I'm asking. Yeah, for sure. After that happened and you moved out with your mom, where did you guys move to? We moved to an apartment that actually wasn't too far away. It was in the same town. So we still had access. It was just, everybody was pretty distant from each other at that point. Like my mom just kind of shut down and I was a kid, so like I didn't know how to reach out to anybody. You had a couple of, challenges as a child? Neurodivergence Yeah. So I, even as a kid, I was considered what is, I don't know if they even use this word anymore. I was classified. Right. So that means essentially I was like a savant in English. I was reading like Gone with the Wind in like fifth grade. I was really talented in some areas, but I was very deficient in others. I had a super high IQ. But later in life, I actually recognize I have what's called dyscalculia, which is essentially, if you want to compare it to dyslexia, it's the math version with numbers. So I always did very poorly with math, which they struggled with, because I could figure out problems like in my head, no problem, but when it actually came to numbers on paper, it makes me want to throw up. It's to describe what dyscalculia and dyslexia are like. It's not. I know when they show it on TV, they show numbers or letters floating off the paper. It's less that and more. So it's like you're reading and you're you ever read a book and you read the same sentence over and over and over when you're really tired. Picture that. But it's all the time. You're just constantly losing your place. It's like your brain can't paint like nail down where the numbers are. Okay. Did you get help with that? No, I don't think anybody recognized that it was a thing back then. And then, for the ADHD, unfortunately, in women, it's very, very underdiagnosed. So they're like, oh, you just have ADD. I had pretty bad ADHD. And, because it presented the way it does in girls, not in boys. I took medication for a little while, but I didn't really get the treatment that I needed and it manifested the way that it does manifest with trouble with doing homework. I look back on all these things now, like back then I always just thought of myself as Oh, like I'm a shitty kid, but now I look back and I was like, damn, like I was a kid that just needed some help, you know, and not only that, but with the emotional abuse and neglect that I was going through, I look back now and I'm like, Oh my God, like none of that was my, like my poor performance in school. My, I was the kid in high school that like, I would ditch class and smoke weed. I look back at that and I'm like, Oh my God, like I just needed help. I needed structure. So then what helped you through your high school years? I was really big into music when I was in high school. I play guitar and I'm still not terrible at it. I still keep it as a hobby, but back then it was like my passion. I hate to say it, but in high school I dropped out in my sophomore year. Okay. Because traditional schooling it didn't work for me. It never had. So I was failing so bad in my sophomore year that I would have had to repeat two years of school. I failed so badly. Eventually they were like, even the school staff was like, just drop out and get your GED. Like you will be better off. Go to college early. And that's exactly what I did. I dropped out, I got my GED and I went to college two years early. From there, since college, I had more control over. I was learning. I was still not a great student, but I was way better off. I wasn't failing classes or anything like that. When I tried to drop out of school, it was a mess. The school board agreed it was the best idea for me. My mom did, but they had to get both parents permission. And my father was doing a little control thing where he was like, no, you're not going to do it just because I say no. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And even like we would record him and play the messages for the school board and they're like, Holy shit, this guy's crazy. And eventually they were like, there were a couple of teachers back then and the principal and the administration of the school was just like, they were just like, fuck it, like, we'll take whatever if he comes down on us, like, we're going to do what's best for you. So I'm super thankful for them back in the day. Cause they could have gotten in trouble. Right. My father didn't have the presence to sue them. He didn't care that much. He was just trying to be an asshole. Just to try and exert his will. He wasn't gonna waste his money. He did at one point try and sue my mother for custody. But, like I said, the dude, he's a nut job. In your younger days did you play any sports? So I actually, when I was very young, I did, the one thing I like gravitated towards was karate. Nice. And interestingly enough, I did Tiger Showman's karate. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say that's a throwback, right? They had a grappling class in the karate class and I don't know, I was super young and I loved the grappling class and I never thought anything of it. Eventually I stopped, kids grow out of karate, they don't want to do it anymore. I actually broke my tailbone, which was. Enough. Like they needed a waiver to get me out, to get me out of the contract. And, the doctor was like, yeah, broken tailbone. I'll do it. So I never thought anything about it until high school again. And then high school, I was like, man, and this was like one of the moments I look back on and I was like, mom, like, why the fuck did you say that? Because my uncle growing up was, always a wrestler and he'd always tell us his wrestling stories and blah, blah, blah. And at one point in high school, I thought to myself, so I was like, oh, maybe I want to join the wrestling team. And I talked to my mom about it and she's you don't want to be that girl on the wrestling team. And I was like, fuck. Like I look back on that now. I was like, fuck, that was the structure I needed. That was the structure. I would have been an athlete. I wouldn't have been smoking weed and fucking around. I would have cared about my grades because I had to stay on the wrestling team. I would have loved it back in the day, you know? So I look back on that and I was like, I understand that my mother was just trying to protect me, but man, those good old patriarchal Christian values really. It kind of fucked me over there. Yeah, it did. So you said you were in college and, you ended up getting your GED. So I, at one point when I was going to school, I had to maintain a certain amount of credit hours in order to stay on my father's health insurance under Obamacare. Then I was also working two jobs at that point. So I was going full time school, working two part time jobs. I was like, running around like a chicken with its head cut off every day. I was exhausted. Eventually, um, I had watched my ex, I had gone to see him in his Air Force graduation, and again, he was a terrible person, so don't take this as a fond remembrance. But I remember watching him at his Air Force graduation, and being like, And it's really cool. If you've ever been to any sort of military training graduation, it's really cool. It's like super ceremonial. They have all the new airmen march out. They get their airmen's coin. Their MTI gives them like a sendoff and their MTI, their military training instructor, who's been like really hard on them. This is like the first time they get to like interact with them like a person and the MTI like greets their families. It's a trip to have this person who's been like a hard ass on you, like all of a sudden be a person. And just seeing them and seeing them after all that hard work and like, to be honest with you, basic training is just, it's brainwashing. It's induced trauma for brainwashing. They sleep deprive you, they exhaust you, they break you down to build you back up. But it's really cool seeing them and I remember watching his big open field and watching them do their airman's run and everything. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm like, I need to do that. I was like, I watched and I was like, I want to do that. Like, It's cool for him, but like, I want to do it. Right At that point when I was working those two jobs, I was like, man, maybe join the military would be easier, because they pay for college, they give you health care, they da da da. So I went to the same recruiter. He did. The recruiter told me they're like, no way you're going to, I remember I was like, I got to get a job I can use in the civilian sector. And so I held out and I was like, I want to get a medical job. They're like, Oh, you're going to be waiting for nine months recruiter's lie. A month and a half later they call me, they're like, we got you one of the rarest medical jobs in the Air Force. I was like, damn, right. You did. That's when I decided to join. And you were 19 at the time, right? Yeah, about. About 19? About, I don't remember exactly. It was sometime in 2014 when I showed up. Actually, no. It was a Veterans Day, 2013, when I joined. One of the main reasons why I joined is because I still look back now and I see people that I went to high school with, they're still in the same town. And like, I. couldn't do that. I saw myself like stagnating and I think I probably would have I don't know, I don't think I could have made it out there and stayed out there. There was nothing for me. So the job I went into, was called a dental laboratory technician. Now, if anybody actually knows what that is, I will be very impressed. Because everybody thinks I say dental laboratory technician and everybody's Oh, you're the one that puts the pink stuff in my mouth and takes the impression. Right? Nope. No, it's not. So to give you an idea, we only get, I think there's only 200 or something dental laboratory technicians in our air force, which our air force is massive, right? Hundreds of thousands of people. And it's actually somewhat of a dying job now. So what a dental laboratory technician does, is anything that is not naturally in the mouth that a dentist puts there, a dental laboratory technician custom makes that for you. So, to give you an idea, back then, we did a lot of that by hand. Now it's a lot of, computer aided design and computer aided milling, uh, technology. So, a lot of the time the dentist can just do it by themselves or they'll send it out for a lab tech to do. But back then we did everything by hand. So to give you an idea of how like a gold tooth is made, right? A gold crown. The dentist will carve down an existing tooth. They'll take an impression of the area that they carve down. We'll then make a mold of your mouth off of that, and then we will wax a model of the gold tooth, and then we will, put that in a, almost like a cement like material. We'll put that in an oven, we'll burn out the wax, and then we'll use, a centrifugal force device to literally shoot molten gold into the mold. Then from there, we'll polish it and make it perfect, to give you an idea of the accuracy that you need to for this job. It's all done under a microscope. And if there's a grain of sand in your mouth, you feel it, right? So it's about eight to nine months of schooling. And in the civilian sector, it's about two years. So they really condense it down. It's super intensive. You're on for, eight hours a day. And it's, we only get 5 dental lab tech candidates every 2 or 3 months, and like, of those, three or four may make it through. So it's like a super, because not everybody has the hands or the attention to detail for that job. So they might stick somebody in this job and be like, okay, you can't hack it, you know? Right. But the awesome part about this job is that it's a very hands-on and it's very, it's almost like doing arts and crafts all day. It's like super, it's fun, So I was, a big fan of that. I was super stoked once I found out what the job actually was. Sounds fun. Tell me about, how did the military culture impact your mental health, both positively and negatively? Oh, God. That's a hell of a question. Okay. I would say, unfortunately, the impact of military culture on mental health, not just mine, but overall is terrible, because it's very much a, one size fits all type approach and it's, military culture is not, person focused, right? Literally, our core values are integrity, service before self, and excellence in all we do, right? And it's really cool to say that, but if you think about how toxic service before self can become, you can kind of get the idea of how people will literally run themselves into the ground. For the most minimal of approval or chance at recognition. I was going to say the military does like awards packages and all that. And people will literally just run themselves ragged volunteering outside of work. I'm trying to get in as many school hours, work hours, whatever. Like the military doesn't pay you extra. If you work extra, they're just like, good job. And they give you more work. Now you can do somebody else's job. Right. Yeah, it's, so for me, like not good. I eventually became a person who is very much like I'm doing the bare minimum and I'm going home. I started by wanting that excellence. I really did. And I, unfortunately I encountered good and bad leadership in the military. My first leadership that I had was very toxic, very misogynistic, very, I had one supervisor who would treat his female airmen like garbage, all while like hyping up his male airmen, and then his supervisor was actually caught, fraternizing with one of the youngest airmen in the shop. So he was, and this is to give you another insight. He was forced to retire instead of kicked out. And this is a lot of the sweeping under the rug. You'll see within the military, where the junior enlisted will get shafted for a lot, but you'll see the senior enlisted and the officers kind of like, okay, well, we still need you. So we're going to just put this under here and give you the minimal discipline and don't do it again. It very quickly becomes a culture of work yourself to the bone, they're allowed to do that, but you're not, it's not a great space and it, for a woman too, it's very much a good old boys club. One of the more positive impacts that the military had on me was, I don't know if this is, necessarily the best way to deal with things, but, I, as somebody who struggles with depression, There were a lot of, consequences in the military, you can't just not get up and go to work, you're legally, they'll put you in jail if you don't go to work. I learned that there, some days, you just gotta power through it, and, again, that's not some advice that I would actually give to somebody with depression, but, sometimes there's just shit that needs to get done. And you gotta just do the shit you need to do. and I think probably the structure, it really honestly teach, taught me how to be an adult. Like I had to figure out a lot for myself. It's a great, some positives I will say. It's a great financial stepping stone for a young adult, because they literally, they give you a housing allowance. Or they, actually when you're first active duty, they stick you in dorms. So you don't even have to worry about rent. You just have to worry about food, taking care of yourself, that like, your money, you can just save it. and then they start as you, you're like two, three years in, then they start, giving you the option to move off base. And they give you, a housing allowance, and so they really walk you into being an adult. As somebody who is, a little bit, I was pretty young, But I felt a little bit older than some of the other folks there. So it was a little frustrating when I'm like, I know how to be an adult. You almost feel like they give you, they put on the kid gloves for you a little bit. For any, young adult, it is a great way to learn adult responsibilities because they make you responsible for everything. For example, if you get a credit card in the military, they can call your supervisor if you don't pay it. Okay. They can literally call your boss and you'll get in trouble. So in the military, you're not just responsible for representing the Air Force. When you have the uniform on, you're responsible all the time. So if you get a DUI when you're off duty, your career will very much suffer because of that. And that's like a very large difference between that and the civilian sector where it's like your employer doesn't give a crap if you get a DUI as long as you get to work. But in the military, like you'll get demoted, your pay will suffer. Everything has consequences in the military and you are 100 percent responsible for representing the Air Force or military, whatever branch you're in at all times. You also mentioned about discovering weight lifting and running during this time. What role did that play in your life? Well, a very large one. So I needed something productive. Okay, so tech school for me was like my party time. That was like my college and I needed something like outside of just getting smashed every weekend. In tech school, they make you do, like a three mile road run every morning. They force you to stay in shape to some extent. And you have to pass a physical exam, so you have to do push ups, sit ups, running, all that. The old test, I know they changed it recently, but the old test was not a great measure of physical fitness. As a trainer, I can tell you I'm not going to measure how fit somebody is by how fast they can run two miles. How many sit ups and how many push ups they can do. That's ridiculous. They also did a waist circumference measurement, which I think, I pray that's out the door now. One of the coolest things was seeing myself in basic training go from not being able to run for anything, to actually being able to, keep up and, noticing how my body changed and my endurance increased. And that was hugely an influence. So I would go to the gym and I would just do the same machines over and over and I noticed myself getting stronger, which was really cool. Obviously now I look back and I like cringe a little bit. I'm like, Oh God, there were so much better ways to do what you were trying to do, but it was really cool. Like seeing myself get stronger and I really, got a love for that feeling. You want to talk about active duty? When I was active duty, so my first couple of months, I was still doing the whole weightlifting thing, figuring out, to give you an idea, basic training you have no freedom, tech school you have a little bit more freedom, and then active duty they're like, you have all the freedom, of a normal person, you just gotta make sure you make it to your job on time. And you can imagine that people go a little crazy after having their freedom restricted for so long, right? I did my normal gym routine, I weightlifted, and, most bases have a base gym. And one day, I was doing my thing, lifting after work, and I saw a guy walk by in a jiu jitsu gi. And I was like, That's weird. Like he was just walking through the gym I know now he was like using the bathroom or something. And so I was like, followed him because I know this sounds creepy now, but I was I wonder where this is going, and so they had the whole, I don't know if you know what a wally ball court is, but they mat them. They matted out the wally ball court and they were training jiu jitsu in there. And I was like, I went up to him. I was like, Do you offer classes on base? He's like, Yes. And he gave me an old, torn up loaner gi, and he's like, You wanna train right now? And I was like, Fuck yeah. In my head I remember those grappling classes from karate when I was like, ten. And I was like, Fuck yeah, this is fun. Right? So he puts me and I know now he probably did this on purpose. He puts me with the tiniest little Filipino lady, right? She's probably like a light feather or a featherweight. And she choked me out in a triangle choke in all of about 30 seconds. Wow. And I was like What the fuck just happened? I need to learn this sorcery, right? From that moment on, I was hooked. I was like, yup, got to do that. Whatever that was, need to learn it. Cool. Yeah, and from there, it was a super, so this guy, still a good friend of mine. He was, he's a brown belt and he was just a veteran going on base and offering jiu jitsu classes like out of the goodness of his heart. Like he just wanted to offer active duty people a chance to train jiu jitsu for free. That's amazing. Yeah. No. Super, super good guy. And it was, the setup was a little ghetto. So we would. Get one of those, little narrow walleyball courts, and we would, sometimes it would be, like, the volleyball court with the net on the top, and we would take those, you know those, shitty blue gym mats, that you had back in, middle school? We would take, a bunch of those, we would mat out the whole court, try to leave no space so they wouldn't move, right, like a puzzle. And then he would teach and then we would just beat the shit out of each other. And that was Travis Air Force Base Jiu Jitsu. Nice. And, yeah, it was a, those were some really fond memories. I think that was probably one of the things, I've told you that I've went through some like super dark times in the military, which we will get to, but I think that was probably one of the things that, truly saved me from some dark shit. It was, that was like a life changing moment, just, it was like a unicorn, dude. Like, seeing this guy walk past in a gi. And then just like I went into Narnia from then, you know, how fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Let's get into some of the, dark times in the military. So, anybody that's watching, trigger warning for, sexual assault, romantic, relational abuse. If that stuff bothers you, please, limit your listening if you feel yourself starting to get triggered. to preface this my, I was medically retired from the military and my disqualifying condition was post traumatic stress disorder. The first time that I was sexually assaulted in the military was in tech school and it wasn't It was something that I look back and even with all of the education that military, the military gives on sexual assault, I realized that I was still sexually assaulted. I was drinking and I was super drunk and somebody took advantage of the moment to, how do I put this? They took advantage of the moment to do some stuff with me that I later looked back on and I was like, man, I really wish that wasn't, wouldn't have happened. But I was far too drunk to consent. Was it a peer? It was actually a peer, in the same program for dental lab that I was in. And I didn't report it. And then later on, I had another I had another incident where I went out on a date with a guy, who I had met through the gym. And I was, this time I was raped. He, I, we had been drinking, but I wasn't very drunk. And I told him that night, I don't want to have sex with you, and he. Still, it happened. That was, yeah, I was gonna say, that was one of the really bad, moments, in the military. And then later on from there, it all kind of compounds into wanting to, uh, each other. So after that, around a year after that, I got into a really abusive relationship. Things got, It was super emotionally abusive and controlling. And, eventually it progressed to being physical. and at one point I, I said something to him during one of our many arguments. We had been arguing about something, I don't even fucking remember what it was. I had been training at this point, and he, I had never truly believed in blacking out in anger. But this was the first time that I saw that, that happen. And he, put his hands around my throat and pinned me to the bed and proceeded to choke me. And it was this moment that I actually used jiu jitsu to save my life, presumably. I don't know if he would have let go or not. I don't know what would have happened from there. And I was like a two stripe white belt. I managed to put him in close guard and overhook both of his arms and just hold him there. And he was, trying to hit me, trying to do stuff, but I just, I don't even, I don't remember how long we stayed like that for, but eventually he, tripped or I swept him or something, and then I, he fell and I went out of the room, and I managed to get myself out of there, and it was, yeah, that was, I think a very, I think the only reason that wasn't the most traumatizing moment of my time in the military was because I had control over it. Right. I had control and I was able to save myself. The last really traumatic thing that happened to me was, during this time, during this abusive relationship, I was seeing a therapist who, spent six months, essentially grooming me. So while I was seeking help for the rape, while I was seeking help for my abusive relationship, he used those traumatic experiences to put himself in a place where he could essentially do the same thing. Now I, he did not manage to do it to me. I think it, it might have gotten to that point if he had more time. But he all of a sudden just disappeared. There was no transfer of care, nothing. He just disappeared, which. Is extremely traumatic for somebody in therapy to have, even though he was doing all this shady shit, you don't know that at the time, you just know that this person who had been building this trust and intimacy and emotional vulnerability with you just disappeared off the face of the earth. No contact. The military handled the transfer of care like garbage, of course. Was he in the military? He was a contractor. Okay. I didn't know what had happened there. I was super, I was a little traumatized by that too. Then I went through it. I got a new therapist. I ended up, going for around a year and a half after that. Just bouncing from therapist to therapist. And eventually I got a call from a local district attorney. And it was like, hey, have you ever had therapy with, this person. And I was like, yes. And they're like, oh, he's on trial for multiple accounts of rape of his patients. And in that moment, it was like a bomb went off in my head. It was like, I don't know how to describe it. I went, I was sitting at work. I went to the bathroom and I broke down and I was like, oh my God, everything makes sense now. Everything makes sense. That was so like why it felt so weird. So inappropriate. So this that the other, because a patient you have no idea you're trusting the expert, you know? Right. And it was going to the court. I sat through a couple of the cases. It was the same exact. He did the same thing to everybody. And it wasn't just me. There were multiple women who he did this to who he groomed using traumatic experiences in order to take advantage of them. I think that was probably the most traumatic experience and is probably a big part of the reason why I got my disability through the military because there was a clear paper trail. It was like one of those where it's like, Oh my God, we can't like not, you know, right? Yeah, I mean, that was, those were some truly, truly dark times. And I genuinely think that like having that community through jiu jitsu and then later, my jui jitsu club actually ended up like closing down because the base was very stingy about letting us train there. Okay. Then later through Muay Thai and. essentially the physical release of that and the sense of community. I really think that's what helped me get through those times. After I found out that the, the therapist had, I sat through the court case and everything. They actually sent me away for therapy for a month because I told my new therapist about that. I made like an emergency mental health appointment. They're like, My new therapist didn't even know what to do with that. She was like, Oh my God, like you need to go and process this somewhere. She's like, I don't even know what to do with this. Every therapist I've ever told that it was just like, Jesus fucking, you know what I mean? Cause it is such a, it's like a sacred relationship between you and your client, you know? Um, That month I spent away in therapy was actually probably one of the most transformative experiences of my life. I went to a place called The Meadows. I had a wonderful therapist and a wonderful group of ladies that I went through this therapy through and spent an entire month processing all that trauma and kind of digging out some of that garbage in there and it was very healing and it gave me the tools that I needed to continue forward. And after I got out, I had actually stopped jiu jitsu for a while, I'd been doing Muay Thai. And when I got out of that month of therapy, I decided, I was like, I want to do something good for myself. And like, I kind of like, my mind went back to those good times in jiu jitsu. I'm like, man, I wonder if I could find that again. Because that was like my family. So I had seen, an athlete that I had been following for a while. I joined the gym that my old coach went to. I joined that jiu jitsu gym. And it was super far away. It was like 40 minutes away. Well worth it. Yes, well worth it. Cause they had that same sort of family vibe, right? And I actually saw that an athlete that I had been following for a while was doing private lessons out there. And I was like, okay, like super cool. Like I was a big fan, you know? And so I hit her up on Instagram as one is want to do for jiu jitsu private lessons. I was like, Hey, she's like, she offers like three packs. She was doing her advertising thing. I was like, I'll buy a pack of three. Like we'll do three weeks consecutively. And, what she was showing me. It was so like immediately effective, you get that dopamine hit when you hit a technique from jiu jitsu, right? It was so immediately effective that I was like, I need to do this all the time. Right. I had the funds to do that. So I started doing weekly private lessons with her. Very nice. That was Kristina Barlaan? Yes. I was gonna say, so this all, it's like a really long path to lead me exactly where I am now. So I started doing these weekly private lessons with her while I was still in the military. And then after everything I went through, I eventually got medically retired from the military and that allowed me to focus on jiu jitsu a little bit more. Over the course of spending every weekend together, we kind of just started to hang out. Right. So naturally we become great friends over the course of that. She mentored me in the ways of being a jiu jitsu athlete. I had, I actually encountered like a little bit of my old gym that I had joined after, getting out of that mental health facility and getting out of the military became not the greatest environment for me in particular anymore. Just drama and, nothing bad against any of the people there. I just, it wasn't the best spot for me anymore. So I talked to, Kristina, who had been a very strong mentor and coach to me at this point, and I'm like, what do you think about me joining CTA? And she's like, Yeah. I was like, where else would I go, you know? Then she was a little worried about the drive for me because I would commute an hour and 20 minutes every day out there to train, there and then an hour and 20 back, right? What city was this? I was in Vacaville and Caio Terra was in San Jose. Okay. So my schedule would look like this. I would, wake up in the morning. I would drive out to Caio Terra for the competition class and then I would, chill out until the evening classes for maybe two hours. And then I would do the one evening class, the fundamentals class. And then I would do the advanced class after that. So all in all, it was about like six hours of training. And this was back when comp class was every day. Now it's only Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So this was five days a week, I would train like five or six hours a day. And from there, once I joined her gym, it allowed Kristina to become like a very strong mentor to me. So I would help her out with seminars, private lessons. I would take every opportunity I could because like when I do her private lessons with other people and be her uke, it's like a free private lesson for me. Right. So I just, I sucked up as much knowledge as I could. And, in return, she would really help me when we were drilling in comp class, she would help me with technique. I gave a lot, but I got way more, you know what I mean? So yeah, that was a very strong and on top of that too, not just a jiu jitsu mentor, but I originally was a fan of her because of how candid she was about her mental health struggles. That was something that was actually when I got out of that mental health facility and we became friends, I had all these new tools, but I was a white belt with using them. She had those tools and she had experience with using them for her mental health, right? So she became kind of a mentor in that respect for me as well. So it was, it was very, I think that's probably been one of the most healing relationships I've ever had in my life. And then there was another mentor by the name of Erin. Yes. These are my two best friends in the whole wide world now, who I actually was a fan of beforehand. Erin, once I was good friends with Kristina and we were running around tournaments together and doing all that. Erin was somebody I was still a fan of and, eventually it was like Pan Am's one year where Kristina was like, Oh, Erin's here. You want to meet her? I'm like, yeah. Right. And so we just ended up hanging out. Erin is probably I say this with love. Erin is the most shameless person that I know. And I say that because she is so open with everything that it makes you so comfortable to be yourself around her. And that is one of the things that I love about her the most. So the moment I met her, there was no, Oh, she's an experienced black belt. I'm just a blue belt. It was just like, no, dude, my name's Erin. What's up? You know? And it was to the point where we had hung out like a couple of times. And, when I won my first gold medal in IBJJF as a blue belt. she posted about it on her Instagram and she was like, Oh, I remember this. This was so cool. It was a picture of me in the middle with my gold medal and her and Kristina, they had just coached me through the finals. So I was like over the fucking moon. Right. I remember I went up to her afterwards and I was like, wow, thank you so much. Like I'm, I'm fangirling so hard right now. She looked at me and literally went, shut the fuck up. You're not my fan. You're my friend. And to this day I was like heard, you know, and to this day that has stuck with me, it'll stick for with me for the rest of my life. But now, she's one of the best friends, like her and Kristina are like my two confidants. I recognize on my particular jiu jitsu journey that I have been very privileged from the people that I have had to mentor me and teach me. I was Kristina's main training partner. She's, very accomplished black belt. I've had Erin for mental health. She's a, sports psych, so she gets to help me with the mental part of it. I've had the opportunity to train with the best of the best in the world and learn from them. Caio was my professor, you know, like, I'm, I'm super, super privileged. What was your experience like competing as a blue belt and adjusting to the life in a new gym? So I started competing at my old gym and I started, I was not one of those people that was like immediately successful. I like, climbed the ladder. I started by losing badly, and then I would win one match, and then I'd win two matches. And then I won a local tournament, and then I won double gold at a local tournament, and then I won an IBJJF. It was so very, just climbing the ladder. Competing as a blue belt was grueling, because I was competing a lot. I was competing maybe like once a month or twice a month at one point. It was a lot. I think my big, so the most I ever accomplished as a blue belt, I think my best title is, I won the Nogi Absolutes, in American Nationals as an adult. And funny enough, I actually, I fought Kendall Ruzen's sister. And I like, followed Kendall at that point. I was like, Hey! You know, afterwards. And, actually, I saw her at a seminar after that, too, and she was like, It's fucking you! Because I wrist locked her sister, and she was like, you fucking dirty wrist locker. No, I'm kidding. She was super, super nice. Yeah, it was frustrating. Blue belt's a really hard belt. At any age bracket, but especially at adult, because your division is just so deep. No matter what, if you're especially to, I'm right in those middle weight categories. So I'll generally, I competed either light or middle. And those are like the most packed divisions cause they're the most like average weight for a woman to be right. Right. And, so the talent pool there is deep and I would be fighting these kids who had been training since they were like 10 years old, so it was hard and, I didn't really see a whole lot of success at blue belt. I did get third at Nogi worlds too. But ironically, all Nogi stuff. I won a bunch of like IBJJF state opens and like local tournaments and stuff like that. But no, no majors really American Nationals was like a semi major, but nothing like, no worlds, no pans, nothing like that. I had a really good shot at it, but it was, I just didn't see any success at blue belt. Blue belt's a hard belt. One story from your blue belt days on a competition that you were really proud of? Okay, so American Nationals, when I did it, I got triple bronze. So, two bronze in the Gi and Gi Absolute. Bronze in my weight division in Nogi. And, gold in the Absolute division. And so I had competed two days in a row. I competed in the Gi divisions. I got double bronze. I was pissed. It's not bad, but I was also like, I was like, man, I wish I had done better. I trained so hard for this, da, da, da, da, da. That same day I was competing Nogi, I got bronze in my weight division. I was like, fuck, and it was all just mistakes that I was making that I had to learn from, but I was still frustrated and so I was sitting there, I was crying in the stands because I had gotten triple bronze. I had just fought, 10 fights, you know, over the past two days. And it was like, I was exhausted and I had one more division left and I was like, I don't even want to fucking do this. And so my, one of my friends slash, she was actually my strength and nutrition coach at this time. Her name was Cassia. She was competing too. She comes over and she's a successful competitor, black belt competitor herself. She comes over, she's the sweetest woman in the world, she's like, yeah, it's okay, it's okay, like, comforting me, and then she looks at me and she goes, wait, do you still have to fight? And I was like, yeah, I have one more division left. And she looked at me, she grabbed me by the shoulder, she's like, you don't have time to cry right now. You need to go out there, you need to fight, and then you can cry after your division, okay? But right now? And I was like, okay. And that was exactly, for whatever reason. That was exactly the pep talk that I needed. I, like, put on some, to give you an idea, when I listen to music before I compete, it's always, bopping around, grooving, stuff I'm having fun. Yes. I put on some, heavy metal, and I was like, I'm gonna fuck everybody up who gets in my way. I was like, I turned on, angry, which, I don't really compete well like that, but it's what I needed to do to survive there. Right. And, you know, by some miracle, I managed to win and I literally won the division. I was up by, I was up by two points. And I won, but she had an advantage. And I won the finals match. By literally hopping on one leg to avoid a takedown and ended the match by like falling down sat up looked at the scoreboard and I was like Uhh! There's a picture out there before my finals match at Nationals there's a picture of cause my whole team to came out to support me. Like they were like watching me in the finals, and there's them like, there's a picture of like two people working on my forearms cause my body was shot the medic working on my foot, somebody on my back with a massage gun, like pit crewing me before the finals. Dude, it was, that was, yeah, I think that was my favorite tournament blue belt experience for sure. Awesome. Why don't you, send me that picture and I'll share it with our listeners, right? Let's do that. For sure. No. And there's also another picture of Kristina and Cassia and I'll share, I'll share this one with you too. There's a picture of them like watching and then as I win, they're both like, You have a great support team, honestly too. And it was, who was it? It was Giselle Filsignore, who like. Photographed my entire journey through the finals too. It was absolutely, it was the perfect competition experience. You know, failure, comeback, drama, defeat, victory, you know. Can you share any lessons you've learned during that transitional period that still guides you today Yes. If somewhere is Okay. So if you start ever feeling like you're dreading going to train, if you feel like you're not enjoying classes anymore, if you feel like you're stagnating technique wise. The whole old school mentality of Creonte, loyalty, It's all bullshit. You go where it is best for your growth. At the end of the day, and I say this as somebody who now runs a Jiu Jitsu business, At the end of the day, Jiu Jitsu, and a gym, It's a business. You are a customer. If you are not getting what is best for you out of that environment, you need to go somewhere where you are going to get what's best for you. Okay, good. Now let's go into your ACL tear and your rebound. Oh boy, my ACL arc. Okay, I think it was shortly after I took third at Nogi Worlds. I was a blue belt for four years. For a long time. Because I was a white belt for only a year. A blue belt for four years. And then after I got my purple belt, I saw some like mild success. I was doing the same crazy competing and training schedule. And I, I competed at I did the craziest thing in the world. I competed at, what was it, ADCC trials one week and then a couple of days later I flew out and competed at PANS and it was a mess. I had to cut seven pounds in two days. It was, it was a bad time. And I didn't, I did better at trials and I did terribly at PANS, but, I, that was my lesson of quality over quantity, right? I won, like a Fight to Win Superfight, I think I won maybe an Open at that point at Purple belt, I'm not sure. I didn't really have too much competitive success, but I didn't really compete a lot. So I only did PANS and the Superfight and ADCC trials before I tore my ACLs. So I was super, super overtrained, right? I was training six hours a day. I was beating the crap out of myself. I was preparing for Worlds and it was like the week before Worlds, or maybe two weeks before Worlds. And we were training takedowns. And they had a start from standing, and I had kind of, um, it was, it was combination of me being super over trained, and it being like a freak accident and I don't want to ascribe any malicious intent or carelessness because that doesn't do anything for me now. But, somebody with a collar dragged me and I stepped and essentially all the, I landed in a way where all the pressure put like a lateral force on my knee. And if this is my knee joint, right, it went like this. It sheared my ACL right off. I tore my ACL. You know, it's weird. I didn't hear a pop or anything cause it just cut. I tore my ACL, my MCL, my meniscus, now I learned later that they actually have a name for this specific injury because these things tend to tear all together. It's called the unhappy triad. I would have been pissed if I had known that, not only did I get a catastrophic knee injury, I got one with a fucking stage name. You know, So I, being a stubborn jiu jitsu athlete, I was like, I'm fine, I'm fine. But I went to somebody who I know who was an athletic trainer and I was like, Hey man, would you mind just like testing me out and super good guy. He was like, he did like the drawer test and this guy, super, super talented. He was like, I think you might've did. And he was like, I can't really tell, but he's I think you might've torn your ACL and maybe your MCL. And I was like, fuck. Cause you hear ACL tear, right? An athlete, and you're like, man, like that's, that could be the end. Especially me is I'm not, I wasn't 18, I was like 27 or 28. So I, I was again, very privileged. He got me in with, a friend of mine or a friend of his, Dr. Dino Del Mastro, who is a hero amongst us jiu jitsu athletes in this area. Dr. Dino got me in, with somebody he knew for an MRI and he, essentially the confirmed everything and my insurance paid for it. And I was able to take that to a doctor and be like, I need to go to an ortho. And again, Dr Dino also recommended me to Dr Mazzi Reynolds, my orthopedic surgeon who will forever be a part of my team. I will never see another ortho. Because I received a standard for care from him that I don't think I have ever seen in my life. From there it was like, yep, your ACL is torn, here's what we got to do. Dr. Mazzi got me in as soon as possible for the surgery. They repaired everything. And I actually had to get two separate surgeries. One to get the actual ACL repair. And then the other one to actually clear out scar tissue. And ACL tear is really challenging because you cannot return to sport, in a full capacity for at least nine months. And it's not necessarily, that's not a fixed timeline. You have to listen to your body. You have to really, you have to really be extra cognizant of like how your knees feeling because there are some times where I would train and my knee would like blow up and I'd be like, Oh, Oh, nope, not ready yet. You know? Even in the very beginning, where I would like move it a little too much or I'd step a little too hard and you're, you learn really quickly. The physical therapy for ACL rehab is grueling. There were many hours of, man, like, trying to push my leg towards my butt and, just gritting my teeth trying to get results and range of motion back. And, he did a really good job. I got all my range of motion back. But, man, there were times where I walked out of there, actually crying. And then the strengthening aspect, you're super, super weak. So I actually went to, I just left the job actually, but I went to Matt Guffey at Victory Submission Strength. And I went to him and I said, Hey, here's where I'm at. I'm recovering from this surgery. When I get back, I want to do it right. I want to be strong. I want to pass for a turn to sport testing. And he was so dedicated. He actually went, he got, put him in contact with Dr. Mozzie and, he went to watch an ACL surgery so he could better understand what I was going through. And from there, if I know Matt, he spent a lot of time doing research to sure that he's rehabbing, like helping me correctly. So on top of the physical therapy, I had a strength trainer. I would, communicate between the two, make sure that everything was kosher between the two. Right. And because I had the strength training and somebody handling that aspect of it, they could focus more on the mobility aspect in physical therapy. I told Matt, if you get me back to the mats, if you get me back competing, I will go and I'll sing your praises, to the masses and I did and I eventually ended up, going to seminars for him and his gym and they do a strength and mobility seminar and I would talk for him and eventually it ended up, with him, asking me if I wanted a job there as a strength trainer, he's I'll get you certified. I'll give you an internship. I'll teach you how to be a trainer. And from there I worked for them for a long time and then I found a even bigger passion for lifting. I actually just recently left. We'll get into that later, but it's all for good reasons. So from there, if you're kind of seeing a trend here, I developed a team to help me get me through this ACL mess. Cause I was, you really feel alone when you're recovering from things like this, because you're not at the gym. You're not training with your friends. You're not, doing all the things you would normally do. I got myself a dietitian. I got myself a strength trainer. My best friend, Erin was going through mental performance, training. She works in sports psych. So, there's a whole field of sports psychology just for injury recovery, but she helped a lot, right? And so we kind of worked together as far as me giving her the inside perspective, and her giving me what she was learning. And, I developed a whole team that actually served me really well when I went back to competition. So as I started feeling my knee get better, I would start by just light drilling, very controlled with the giant metal brace that they gave me. Right. I do remember that. It was a sports race. Yeah. And then I would go to controlled positional training and then light flow rolls with very small people and to my credit, up until this point, I had been very cautious with my smaller training partners. I always ask for feedback as far as what's the roll good, like what can I do to cater to your size better. I'm talking to little light featherweight people, right. Or rooster weights. And so when it was time for me to come back from my knee surgery, they were all like, Oh, like, fuck yeah, we'll train with you. That warmed my heart a little bit. They're like, yeah, we want to help you. You know? I rolled with them and then I started rolling, with other people. And then, eventually I got back to a point. So it, and it was like two steps forward, one step back, right? Cause I would train and I went, I'd go a little too hard. My knee would blow up and then I have to take a couple of days off and then I'd go back and then I'd train later and I'd be fine. I trained later. I'd be fine. And. Then I would push even harder and then my knee would blow up again. So it was really just very much listening to my body. After the nine month mark, that's when I started taking the brace off again and being very careful. That was a terrifying experience, taking that brace off. But I had done everything right. I passed, returned to sport testing. I did everything super by the book and at around 11 months, I did my first competition back. That was, an IBJJF open and I took triple gold. I submitted everybody and, after that, it was actually, Mason Fowler that pushed me. He's like, you have to do worlds. Like you have to, like, who cares if you lose, you're just going to do it. He's like, there's a chance you could do something. Who knows? And so I was like, all right, fine. So two weeks later, after that, after my first competition back, I did IBJJF adult gi Worlds. I remember I was in the bullpen and I was sitting there and I was thinking about those moments where I was sitting on the couch crying after my surgery and I was like, man, I was thinking, my career is over, cause you're, you never feel like you're going to be normal again when you're going through that. I was thinking about that in the bullpen. I'm like, man. I'm back here in the bullpen at Worlds, and I was so stoked to be there, and I'm like, I wonder if I can win a match, right? Because a match at Worlds is still a match at Worlds. So I won a match. And I'm like, wow, I wonder if I can win another one, right? And I did. I won another one. And I'm like, oh my God, I just medaled at Worlds. And I was like, I wonder if I can win another match. And I won, another match and all of a sudden, I'm in the finals at Gi Worlds at Purple Belt at Adult and I was so unprepared to be there, like mentally. Man, it sucks that the video, for some reason my finals match didn't record, It sucks that the video got lost, but my friend Erin told me she was like, you were running, greeting the side refs, because, for finals match they'll usually have the side refs as well as the center ref. She's like, you running, you ran and greeted those side refs with the biggest fucking smile on your face. And, I, I remember looking right before my match, looking at them and being like, You know? Caio was just sitting there being like, fucking hell. I lost that match. I did. What happened was she jumped guard in the first two seconds of the match and she landed with my knee that I had just spent 11 months rehabbing in like a hyperextended position and I just managed to turn my leg and I fought really well for the rest of that match but like I just I couldn't get back that momentum after that. Like my brain was too, I was too, I was gone after that. I fought as well as I could while having a, like a panic attack. I walked off and I was like, fuck, like I just, I'm purple belt vice world champion after having this like life altering. Knee injury, and shortly after that, I got promoted to Brown Belt. Wow, what an accomplishment. Honestly, if I ever do, if I never do anything else in Jiu Jitsu, I'll have done that. What did you learn about yourself through this challenging period? Man, I really think that I'm just I'm really stubborn. I'm really, really stubborn. And like, I don't, if I really, really fucking want something, like I'm going to make it happen if I can. And if not, I'm gonna, I'm going to shoot and I'm going to land among the stars, you know, like, I just, I don't know. I have to want it though. And for that nine months I switched my mindset from, I'm not an athlete. My job is not being an athlete. My job is to recover. Honestly, I learned so much about better ways to train, better ways to strength train, better ways to think about training, not to over train, not to respect my body to. It was really taking that like step back from jiu jitsu and step back from being a competitor was probably one of the most transformative parts about my jiu jitsu career because I had people when I first got the injury, who would tell me like, you're going to come back better. And when you're laying there with your knee butchered, you're like, no way, but I see now. That taking that step back allowed me to fine tune every single detail about my training to make it perfect for me. The physical, the mental, the diet, the everything. I wouldn't be the athlete I was today. I'll never say I was, I'm thankful for my knee injury, but I'm thankful for what it gave me. Okay, that's fair. What does life look like now as a head coach and competitor? Okay, So, Brown belt is when I really started actually stepping outside of my comfort zone for jiu jitsu. It was actually late purple belt to brown belt. I was training with Tamara Fajera, and she actually helped me a lot to learn to start passing. I was purely a guard player up until this point. And that's when I started stepping outside of my comfort zone and kind of learning, more about jiu jitsu as a whole, and I became a much more well rounded, competitor. And so, as a brown belt, now getting older, I have, I've won quite a few things at adult at brown belt, but I've also competed at Masters. I think my probably most impressive tournament run so far has been PANS, where I had six total matches. I got double gold and I submitted everybody. I won master's world and so now I can like I realized that all of my experience as an athlete, as a strength coach, as, I've been coaching jiu jitsu since I was a blue belt. All of that has compounded to make me a really, really good coach. And as an athlete, I had, I've always struggled with confidence, but as a coach, never, not once. Mainly because I know. What I'm teaching is directly coming from the people I've learned from. Where as an athlete, it's more, I feel like, I feel like it's more like individual performance, you know? Brown Belt's been really good to me. I think I've had something, I can't give you the exact numbers. I think I've had something like maybe opponents and I've submitted like 23 or, 24 of them. You know what I mean? Like it's been really good to me. What is your favorite submission? Whatever they give me honestly. Yeah, no, no, no. Like if I have to, honestly, I don't even pick right. Like my motivation when I compete is to submit them as fast as possible. So I don't have to work as hard. I see that seriously. I love like being lazy. I don't like, fighting really hard. So if I can find a way to submit somebody really fucking fast, like, I'll do that, right? If I have to fight, I can obviously bring out the dog, but man, I don't want to, you know? Work smarter, not harder. Exactly, right? There's a quote from Caio that he says, he's like, jiu jitsu is really, really easy, but until it's really, really easy, it's really, really hard. Okay, that's funny. Jiu jitsu has given you the opportunity to become a business partner. Tell us about that. I'm over at Flow Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai over in, the east side of San Jose. We're right over by the Aborn Square Mall. We're small, but we have a really solid group of coaches. The owners are super business savvy and for a while I coached for them. And, it really warms my heart that this is the way I got the job. The reviews from my students. Were so good, they kept on going to the owners and that the owners decided to offer me partnership and, like membership percentage. I'm very blessed with that and I'm super, super happy for the opportunity. It's definitely a new role for me, right? Like I have a lot of experience as a coach, but, running a gym and being responsible for other coaches. Definitely new, but so far, I've learned a lot from the other places I've worked and, it's going really well. We actually have 12 new members this month. Nice. We offer a week free trial. So if you want to just come and learn from me. I teach on Monday and Wednesday nights at six o'clock. Sounds good. How do you approach coaching and what kind of environment do you aim to create for your students? This is a good question, so a lot of how I approach coaching, it's a combination of what I've learned from three separate people. One is Kristina, two is Erin, who I get the sports psych advice from, and three is Matt Guffey, who taught me how to be a good strength trainer and overall good coach. So what I take from Kristina the most is how, the quality of instruction and essentially how to teach, right? Coaching is It is a blend of science beats art, right? There are certain things and certain cues that work for people, but at the end of the day, whatever you got to say to make them understand the thing is what you got to say, right? And it's learning how to speak each individual person's particular language, right? Whether that be audio, visual, kinesthetic, if they prefer internal cues, external cues, whatever works best for that person, right? The thing I take most from Kristina though is how cared about I felt as an athlete. There was never a point where I felt like, I did this to myself over time and I had to fix it, but there was never a point where I felt like my worth to her was determined by my athletic results. Okay. And that is something that I make sure to drive home to every single one of my athletes. Okay. You can squeeze short term performance out of people. If you say you ain't shit, if you don't win, right, that'll give them a big boost of like, Oh, I got to win this, but it's not sustainable. And eventually it will destroy their relationship with the sport. That's also, speaking of this is, stuff that I've learned from Erin over the years, right? Our worth as athletes cannot be determined by our performance. If you think this way, you will perform well for a little while. But you will end up hating your sport. And I firmly believe that there's a more positive way to do this than to tell people you ain't shit if you don't win. I make sure one of the spiels I give people before a competition is listen, you can't control whether or not you can win. You can only control how hard you try. There are three things that everybody's afraid of before they compete. One is getting injured. You're not going to allow that if you can't help it, right? Two is making a mistake or your opponent asks you a question with their jiu jitsu that you don't know the answer to, right? That's like something you can't control, right? You can't go back and study real quick in the middle of a match. You don't know the answer, so it's not your fault. You just have to go, it's your responsibility to go and study that afterwards. The third one is the one that everybody's the most afraid of, is the I knew better, right? Like somebody does something and you know the response. You do it all the time in training, this, that, the other. That is still something that is outside of your control. And we have to figure out why that happened, right? That's a job for you and me as your coach. So whether it be maybe you're not getting enough pressure or intensity in your roles in the gym to mimic that. Or maybe you're too nervous. So how can we address that nervousness? Maybe you're I don't know. Maybe you need to drill it more. Who knows? But that's up to the individual. So all of those three things are like literally the only things that are going to go wrong during your match. And all three of those things are something that you can't control. But you can always control going out there and fucking trying your heart out. Even nerves are something that can be worked on beforehand. I've done Submit the stigma. It's a have you heard of submit the stigma? No, it's an organization within jiu jitsu, for mental health. Essentially saying submit the stigma of mental health, right? They have what do they call it? Like a mentally safe coach, something like that. Essentially, they give you a course on how to be a mentally safe coach for your athletes and they give you scenarios to test you out at the end. If your athlete comes up to you and they're like, I'm too nervous, like I can't do this, like I can't do this. The answer to that is, okay, that's fine. You don't have to do this. I don't want you to regret not doing this, but you have my support and we can go back and we can work on this anxiety or you don't have to compete. The third person that I take things from is, from Matt, who he taught me how to be loud. So a quick little anecdote when I was learning to coach for his gym, he's heard me coach at tournaments before. And I'm actually known for being super, super loud because I learned how to project in the military. And, I would coach and I'd be quiet. And so he'd take the speaker and he'd follow me around with it while I was coaching to teach me how to like, be louder as a habit. He taught me overall just how to communicate to people better. How to make people supported and how to hype them up. And that's so underrated. People need positive reinforcement. They do. Right. Like I said, you can squeeze short term performance out of people buy like you're a piece of shit if you lose but if you hype, I guarantee you more people respond well to let's fucking go like you got this you can do it You can do it. You can do it. Let's go. You got this. You got this. How bad do you want it? Yeah, I mean we need my main philosophy as a coach is we need intrinsically motivated athletes. You cannot make somebody want it. You know what I mean? They have to want it. And then you have to cater to that. You can't make them want it by offering your approval or whatever have you as a bargaining chip. Yeah. Yeah. That's that sounds about right. If he could go back in time. What would you tell your younger self during the most difficult moments? I'm proud of you. You're doing so well for having such a hard hand dealt to you. Um, yeah, I mean, looking back now, man, as a kid, I was a fucking rock star. I struggled in everything that society or people would tell me that my worth depends on, but man, like I survived, you know, so yeah, that would be it. I'm proud of you. You're doing great. You're doing so well for everything you have. Keep going. Awesome. That's great. Jess, I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you on your recent marriage. That's such an incredible milestone, and I'm really happy for you Wishing you and your wife a lifetime of love, growth and adventure together. Can you share how you and your wife met? So we actually met on Tinder. My last guess, they met on Hinge. I know, yeah, seriously, no, like Tinder's even worse, right? We met on Tinder, and I was like, I'm gonna be 100 percent real. I was swiping through Tinder for just gratification, like people message you and be like, Oh, you're pretty. And then, you know, just like, okay, thanks. I don't really want to talk to you, you know? But I swiped, I swiped right on her and then she messaged me and I was like, okay, like she's cute. Maybe I'll talk to her, you know? And then, so you know how people on Tinder are like, or maybe, you know, I don't know, most, I was going to say most people would know people on tinder is very flaky, but she just kept on talking to me. And I was like, that's like my first criteria is like consistent communication. So we were texting for maybe a week or two. Because she lived in Sacramento, so I was like, I'm not driving all the way down there. If there's not like some good communication. So eventually I was like, all right, the communication's good. I was like, so I was like, can I meet you this weekend? She was like, yeah, she's like, we can meet somewhere in the middle or whatever. I'm like, no, I kind of liked the idea. I liked it. Let's spend the day in Sacramento. Show me around, show me all your favorite spots. She was like, great, cool. So when I pulled up and I was like, okay, I'm here. And she opens the door and she's like. Hi, and like turns around and like runs back into because she was like, she's like, Oh, we'll stop in my apartment first. She's like, Oh, you can meet my cats, whatever. I was like, cool. So she turns out, she's like, Hi, and then instantly like about faces into the other room. I'm like, Oh, my God, she thinks I'm hideous, right? So, We were walking down and later she told me, she's like, Oh my God, no. She was like, I thought you were so beautiful that I just didn't know what to do. How I sold her was immediately when I walked into her apartment, her two cats run up and, like I immediately sat down on the floor with the cats and she was like, that's it. She was like, okay, I'm interested now, so we went out, we had a super cute date. It was really hard because at the time, her English wasn't super, super great. But man, she's learned so fast, she's so smart. But it was like a lot of Google translate and just talking about life and whatever. And it was a little awkward because of that. Right. Right. As, you know, LGBTQ or, lesbian dates or want to go, I ended up like spending the next, it was like a 24 hour date, right? I was going to say, yep, stereotype all the way. Just wait, it gets even better. A couple of weeks of us going back and forth on the weekends and eventually you know, didn't take long before the, I love you's were there. I got her, I actually got her a little like matchbox U Haul car as a joke. And then after two and a half months, she was like, Oh my God, my lease is going to be up. And she was going to move in with her friend, but it wasn't like a great arrangement. She was just going to do it. I'm like, why don't you just come stay with me? You know? And she was like, I could and we're like, we both were like, this is crazy. Right? And so she did and she just ended up staying. Great. And then after that, I don't want to say that we rushed things because of we are very much a real marriage. Like we are very much like, um, Like I married for love. We had a beautiful ceremony. We definitely moved the date up a little bit. We talked about it because of the current administration and like we see right now Obergefell is in the Supreme Court and we saw it coming from a mile away and I thought to myself, I'm like, listen, I would rather have problems with getting divorced later than getting married than never be able to get married. I'm very much an air on the side of caution, but we're going to have a celebration with our family and friends later down the line. We had a beautiful beach wedding. It was just very small. We moved the timeline up and now we've just been, adjusting to married life and it's been wonderful. I knew regardless, like we talked about it, I'm like, listen, regardless of whatever we decide to do, like I'm a marry anyways. It's been wonderful. So now we are like an absolute 100%. Gay woman stereotype of like us and our three cats and after you hauling and then getting married after six months. That's beautiful. Has being married changed your perspective on competition coaching or life in general? Well, my life is different. My perspective on life has definitely changed. I think I, let's see on coaching. No, I think I'm pretty much the same, but on, on competing, I think I feel I have my future goals for competition. I have some stuff that I'd like to achieve at Black Belt whenever that happens. But after that, I think I'm okay. I think after that, I'll be done competing for, the want or the need to achieve something. And then I think I'll just compete for fun. Yeah. What's been one of the most meaningful moments in your marriage so far? Okay, I can't just pick one. You're going to get, you have to get to, I'll give you the most cliche answer. So we read our wedding vows to each other, as a surprise, right? One of the lines from hers was, she said, I came from far away just to find you. And I almost started bawling immediately. And my mom was like, just a wreck, almost a wreck after that, too. Like, she read that and she was like, uh. Um, the other one is, it's every, I was gonna say, here's the, gushiest answer you've ever heard in your life. I'm a totally, unashamed, disgusting romantic. It's every morning I get to wake up to her and see her face. Beautiful. If you had to describe your marriage in one word, what would it be and why? Tenderness. Um, because at the end of the day, whatever we fight about, Just like every married couple does. Whatever's going on, at the end of the day, all both of us want is just to come home, and be with the other one, and know that they're okay. And, that's it. Yeah. Awesome. Jess, it was an honor to have you on this podcast. I want to thank you for being here, and I would definitely want you to come back with a group of your friends so we can have a good time. I was going to say we got all the serious stuff today. Now I'll get you the comic relief later. Yes, that'll be fun. Thanks again for coming for sure. Okay, guys. Thank you. Bye.