#16 Matt Guffey Victory Submission Strength

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Today's guest is someone who's mastered the art of movement on the ice, on the mats, and in life. Born in Sacramento and raised on the East coast. Matt found his passion for hockey at age 12. His journey took him across the country from playing junior hockey in Colorado and Texas to being recruited to playing in worcester Worcester, Worcester State University, but that was just the beginning. After college, Matt moved to the Bay Area to pursue coaching full time. Joining the Junior Sharks, and working alongside one of the top power skating coaches in the world. It was here that he also discovered Brazilian jiu jitsu And what started as a hobby, quickly turned into a deep transformative path. He trained for over eight years at CTA before transitioning to Odyssey jiu jitsu. Where he now runs a highly innovative training program with Josh Beam. Neither of us are with Odyssey anymore. Thank you, Greg Sirico, and now Victory Submission Grappling. Awesome. Okay, In 2020, Matt launched Victory Submission Strength, the Bay Area's only strength and conditioning facility dedicated to Grapplers. He's helped everyone from elite competitors to 45-year-old hobbyists, reach new levels of performance and longevity. Matt's story is about resilience, reinvention, and building something that lasts both on and off the mats. He's a coach, a creator, and a community builder, and today we're diving deep into what drives him Now, let's get into it. Yeah. You ready? Yep. So let's talk about your early life and your athletic roots. What was life growing up in North Carolina and Virginia? It was a blast. I had a great childhood. We moved to North Carolina when I was three months old, so I don't really remember Sacramento. My wife hates it when I say I'm from California'cause she's like, you don't remember, that doesn't count. So anyways, growing up in North Carolina, you know, I played a bunch of sports, soccer, t-ball, whatever. I was, there until I was seven and then moved to Virginia and I was in Virginia until I was 18. And there again, that's kinda where I fell in love with hockey. There's a little bit of a story behind that. When I first moved to Virginia, I was in Cub Scouts and I think I was at the local rink. Mm-hmm. Getting my ice skating badge. And I took one lap around the rink, I fell, I had a black eye, knocked a tooth out. I was crying. I was like, I will never, ever touch the ice again. And I think that's the last, any of us ever really thought about it until maybe five or six years later I was playing, street hockey with my friends just in front of our house and one of the neighborhood kids was like, let's go to the rink. He played hockey and so he was like, let's go to the rink. And I was like. Devastated inside. I was like, I don't wanna be the only one that doesn't go. And so I just sucked it up. And I went and I came back. I loved it. I had a blast and I came back and I was like, I wanna play hockey. And my parents were like, you're crazy. That's not what you do. And I was like, no, I wanna do it. And I guess doing their initial research realized that hockey is not a cheap sport to play. They weren't going to enroll me in something if I wasn't fully in it. And so we found a camp, like a hockey camp that summer, whatever it was a week long. Low barrier, right? Low, investment. And I loved it. I had fun and I fell in love with it right then and there. I was like, this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. So I started playing hockey and I just like playing it endlessly, any chance I could get, it was on the ice. I definitely skipped some school to play at certain times. And which came out much later when my dad had to get my transcript in order to send to Worcester State University, which I got eventually was recruited to play there. It did work out. It was fine and I did get really good grades, but, I would do literally anything to be on the ice. I started coaching just to make some extra money on the side. By the time I was 16 I was already starting to do private lessons and working with kids, trying to teach'em how to skate. And then eventually that grew into, coaching adult clinics. Mm-hmm. My dad was one of my, first adult students. So that was cool, getting to, make him go all over the ice and stuff. Then, moving forward, played junior hockey. First in DC for the junior capitals, then Colorado and then Texas. While I was there in Texas, got, recruited to play at Worcester State. I went to college and played a little bit there. And, um, it eventually ended up transferring to St. Michael's College. That's where I actually graduated from St. Michael's College was in Vermont. I did not play hockey there. That was where I realized that if I was going to be in hockey, I was gonna be as a coach. So I kind of pivoted to coaching and one thing led to another. I was originally going to teach French and coach hockey at a private school on the East Coast. And I realized in the middle of my, interview process that I really didn't want to be. I think when I realized it. Shout out to Leanne Beardsley. She was my 11th grade English teacher, and I was substitute teaching at my old high school. And I remember asking her, do you love it? And she said, yeah. I was like, you're, that wasn't very convincing. I was like, you're not selling it. And so that was when it really hit me. I was like, I don't wanna be in a classroom. I want to teach. It lights my heart on fire to see people do things that they couldn't do before. Mm-hmm. As a result of, you know, our interactions. But I don't wanna be in a classroom and I don't wanna be around people who don't really care to be there. I was a student that didn't care to be there. I was like, I would rather be playing hockey. Right. Yeah. And I realized then I didn't want to be in a classroom. I decided, I was like, I wanna go all in on hockey. I happened to be out here in the Bay Area and, I fell in love with it. I was out here visiting a friend And I was like, I can't believe people live like this. It was just cool. I was staying in the mission with him. I was like, this is not the East Coast. This is different. I was just trying to find any way that I could to come back and I stumbled upon the Junior Sharks, reached out to them, they interviewed me, hired me. The rest is history. Nice. So let's back up a little bit. Your early years mm-hmm. How you were raised and, did you grow up with a mom and dad? Did you have any siblings? Just give me some family dynamics. Yeah. My wife likes to joke. I. And I agree with her that I was a free range child. My parents not that they weren't present, they were definitely present and they definitely, helped shape who I am today, But they were very, they let me roam the neighborhood. Yeah. I played outside. I climbed trees, I fell, I got scraped. I did stuff that kids do. I don't know if they do it as much anymore. I feel like I was born at the right time. I'm old enough to remember what it was like before the internet, but I'm young enough to be able to adapt to the new things that are happening. So I would say, free range child. So was I. Yeah. Playing outside. Yeah. Having a good time. You learn so much that way. Out at dawn. Yep. Back after dark. Yep. And riding our bikes everywhere. Yes. And, I have a brother, he's three and a half years younger than me. I think my parents early on instilled the entrepreneurial spirit in me. One instance of this was, one day my dad came home and I was on the front porch and I was counting$10 bills. Like a lot of'em. And he was like, what the, how did you, what did you steal that? What are you doing? And I was like, no. We made a car wash. And he was like, what do you mean? We live in townhouses, right? So there's 300 houses neighborhood. And my bright idea was to procure some cleaning supplies and then go door to door and ask people if I could use their hose and wash their car. And it was just 10 bucks and I did it for every single house in the whole neighborhood. It took me all day. Wow. Not everybody did it, but enough of them did that. I made some serious cash. That's great. And it was enough to prompt a response like that from my parents, wondering if I had stolen it'cause they couldn't believe that a 10-year-old got his hands on that much money. So I think from an early age, I've always known I wanted to be my own boss. I've always known I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. And, we'll get into it later, but what we're sitting in right now is a manifestation of that. Awesome. That's amazing. Anything else in your childhood you'd like to talk about? No. I think I lived largely a normal one. I, there's some stuff that have, passed the statute of limitations that now I can talk to my parents about all the times I snuck out and played on the golf course in the middle of the night and, uh, you know's stupid stuff that stupid kids do, but, I'm fine. We made it out. Yeah. yeah. Okay. Let's move on. Let's go into your hockey career. Can you describe your experience playing junior hockey across different states? Yeah. junior hockey, so for anybody watching, most freshmen in college who play college hockey are 20 to 21 years old. So there's an intermediary step in between youth hockey and college hockey. And that's junior hockey, you can play junior hockey from the age of 16 all the way to 20. In some leagues, you can be an overage and be 21 but for the vast majority of people there probably between the ages of 18 and 20. That was my first taste of life on my own. I was living with a host family. The first junior team I played for was in Virginia. First and second rather. And then the third one that I played for was in Colorado. So I lived with a host family there. Oh, nice. And they were great. They took me in, gave me a place to stay. It was very safe. Everything was great but I mean, for all intents and purposes, I was on my own, like my parents weren't there. I was like responsible for my own decisions. I drove across the country. Wow. My dad and my brother came with me and, they were there to accompany me to Colorado and then they flew back. But, by and large I was, you know, doing it myself. I take a couple classes at the community college. Stay current. Do some pre-reqs that I knew I was gonna have to do when I transferred into college. Right. And, yeah, other than that, I was an alternate captain on the team in Colorado, and when I moved to Texas, I was the captain of that team. That was interesting. Not just being in charge of myself, but also, helping be in charge of a whole team of other 16 to 20 year olds was Wow. Kind of wild. But I'm still friends with a lot of those guys. The bonds that were made in those seasons run really deep. Actually a, couple of the players that I played with in. Texas, we're groomsmen our wedding, just to give you an idea as to how close, we are. It was a blast. I loved it. It gave me a chance to, explore what it's like to be myself without my parents being there. Yeah. Um, and do it in a way that was safe and, I had a blast. there's nothing like junior hockey because you're basically a full-time athlete. with the exception of those college courses. But yeah, it was such a fun time. I really enjoyed it. What were those workouts like? I am very fortunate that even before junior hockey, I had a lot of really good strength coaches. Her name is Ruth Ennis. Shout out, Ruth, thank you for helping inspire me. There are so many more that I could list honestly, but, largely what we do here are things that I did when I was with them. They were definitely ahead of their time in a lot of ways. So, yeah, I mean, as far as the workouts go, you do some kind of dynamic warmup, some mobility stuff, some speed, power, strength. And as far as the strength stuff goes, push, pull, hinge, squat, lunge, carry, just basic movement patterns get really ruthlessly strong. In fundamental ways. Okay. How about on the ice? What kind of drills would you do on the ice? Oh my goodness. anything and everything from, flow drills, which are, following a set path. All the way to, small games where we're having to battle each other and, work in, different settings, smaller space or, instead of five on five, it's two on two and, different rules and things like that. And so, um, games, which we'll learn again later is the best way to learn, I would argue. It's unfortunate that wasn't, that didn't really start taking hold until much later in my career. I wish that it had been earlier. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. Onto the next question. What was the recruitment process like for Worcester. Worcester. Worcester. Yeah. There you go. A state. Yeah. Okay. I don't have that East coast accent. That's, that's okay. That's okay. Um, you know. Coaches from colleges, often assistant coaches do a lot of the recruiting, and so they'll go to watch people play. Sometimes at showcases, sometimes they'll go directly to the town or whatever. Showcases are nice because a lot of teams come together all at once. And they're easier to see. can see a lot of players from a lot of different teams without having to travel to all those different towns. I believe it was at one of the league showcases and when I say showcase, it's just a tournament, like a mini tournament, right. You play five games in. Three or four days and they count as like regular season games. And then, the coaches from various colleges will find players that they like, mark them down and then go talk to them afterwards and say, Hey, we'd like to talk to you about coming to school here. At the end of the day, you make a decision and Worcester State's where I landed. That's, one of my friends growing up, actually a teammate of mine when I was playing junior hockey in DC. He was there, at the time, and so he was the one who kinda helped shepherd me, into that space. Nice. Okay. Good. Getting cut during your second year, how did that moment impact your identity and future path? That sucked. But I bet it was for the best. Honestly. I'm happy. I'm happy where I'm at. Nobody likes to be told that they're not good enough. That's not fun. But it is the nature of the sport. And at a certain point, none of us are good enough to play at the level that we want to. Even pros, they age absolutely. Just like we do. And eventually their, their skills decline. And they drift off. You hope when you're playing like that, that you get to decide when that is and it's not somebody else. Having, getting cut, definitely. In my opinion, lit a fire under my ass. Not that there wasn't already a fire, I was already a hard worker. I had to be a hard worker to make it to that level. Absolutely you did. But even after starting at 12 years old versus three or four years old, like most of my teammates at Worcester, they started when they were little kids, right? So I had eight years to make up, right? I got there with, minus that eight years. Um, and that is, thanks in large part to a lot of the strength coaches that I had, that I mentioned earlier. So getting cut was not the most fun, but it definitely kicked me into what I believed to be a higher gear. And so I doubled down and kept working and then got out and got myself in front of other college coaches and tried to find a way on any team that I could. The coach that then recruited me to come to St. Mike's was fired a week before I got there. Oh no. And so a new coach comes in, has his. Preference. Has his people. Mm-hmm. Right. He brings in his own recruits and so it didn't work out again. And that was really when it was over'cause I can't transfer again. Like you only have so many times. I don't know how true this is, but part of what he told me was that because I was already in my third year of college hockey. Once your clock starts, it doesn't stop. So I played my first year, my freshman year, my sophomore year I was cut. I spent all year training all year trying to get recruited. Third year come in. And then again, it's a new coach who's got his own preferences And program and everything. You know, me being in my third of four, four years was not helping me. I would've had to have been head and shoulders better than the next guy for him to leave a younger person off the roster. So again, that was devastating. I cried. It was really terrible'cause You work hard, you train hard and Yeah. It is disappointing. You expect to be rewarded at some point. Yeah. And it just gets ripped away from you. That's the nature of the sport I guess. That was a challenge for sure. Had some long nights where I'm like, what do I do now? You know? Mm-hmm. Like my whole life since I was 12 years old, just every single day was this is the goal. This is the only thing, and then it's just gone. So what did you do? Just, um, focus on college, finish it up, and then you just, moved out to the Bay Area? Yeah. Well, I knew in my heart of hearts, I was like, if I don't play professionally, I want to coach, and if I don't coach, I'll be a GM. And if I am not a GM, I'll own a team. I don't know. Whatever, I'll do whatever I have to do to make it to the next level and make this part of my, make this profession or this way of life happen. And so that actually takes us back just a little bit because after I was cut the second time. I had to focus on school. So I, had a double major, in psychology and French, French was an afterthought. I didn't really think about that until my second year of college and the impetus for that was one of my coaches growing up in Virginia, Chris Borner. Sup, he's from Switzerland. He speaks seven languages. Wow. It's really impressive. It is. It's hard enough to think in two or three languages, let alone seven. The guy is an anomaly for sure. But he always, often would bring Swiss players over and the trade off was, they didn't speak any English, so they would learn English. But they were always a little more skilled than we were. And so we would get a chance to play hockey with really skilled players for the season. And so one of them became a very dear friend of mine, somebody that I gotta spend some time with in Switzerland when I was over in Europe. And, that was the inspiration for that. Okay. Like the French piece. I thought, okay, if I'm gonna coach, right? Psychology is one way. Learn how the human mind works. I'm gonna be working with people. So that would be wise. That makes sense. But then if I wanna make myself more marketable, it's helpful if I can speak to more people. And, Chris can speak to anyone he wants, basically, and he can go anywhere. He speaks English, Spanish, French, German, Romansh, which is like a Swiss dialect, and Italian I think, and maybe some Japanese too. He did say the guy, he's, if you've ever seen the most interesting man in the world, the commercials, the Dos Equis ones Uhhuh, that's Chris Borner. So. that was the inspiration behind that. So I started studying French. I went to my advisor. I had taken enough psychology credits that I could have graduated with this psychology degree right then and there, but I needed a couple more years left. I needed like a certain amount of time. It's this whole logistical nightmare. But they were like, you could double major and you could do this whole French track or whatever and, that would put you on track to graduate on time and all that stuff. And I was like, okay, let's do it. And they're like, you gotta go to France. And I was like, twist my arm. And spent some time there. And actually before I went to France, I'm the kind of person who like I over prepare, so if something's coming up, I go way overboard in my preparation for it, right? I was so nervous that I wasn't going to score highly enough on the placement test when I got to France. Uhhuh, mind you. I had never got anything below a 99 out of a hundred on any test that I had taken at You're an over achiever. Right. And so, but I was still like, I was in my head about it and I was like, I have to get into this like higher bracket or whatever. So I got myself a job. I can't say if it was legal or illegal in French Canada. And so I was there in Quebec City working as a coach. At one of the universities there as a translator. I had searched for ways that I could mix the two things, and I stumbled upon. This school, and I was watching the testimonial and it was all in French. And then there was one kid, he was like, I love this camp. And there's like little French subtitles at the bottom and I was like, okay, there's at least one English speaker here, but if the whole camp is in French, like it would be helpful to have somebody who like, can facilitate that. Mm-hmm. So I reached out to them, they were very accommodating. They were like, yep, let's do it. And I was like, sweet. So I showed up. And the first day I was there, they put me on the ice with 20 kids and I was like, wow, 20 English speakers. that's a lot. And he was like, no, there's no English speakers in this group. I was like. What, like they don't teach you hockey French in school, okay. I had to learn on the fly and I would highly recommend if anybody's learning another language out there to go work with kids because they don't care about your feelings. They will tell you if you're fucking it up. Can I say fucking up? Okay. Yeah. You can say anything you want here, uh, they will tell you if you're fucking it up. And it's very fortunate to have a platform like that where I could practice. And they would be like, no, no, no. Don't say it like that. Say it like this. And they'd teach you and Yeah. You know,'cause adults like you and I, if you make a mistake, I'm not gonna correct you. That's right. That's rude. So the kids don't care. They'll tell you when you're wrong and, that was really helpful in my development as a French speaker. And, the turning point for me when I realized that I really had it, have always, I guess I've had an ear for accents and things like that. And at the very beginning when I first got there, my accent at the time was like from France. Most of my teachers had learned like kind of the Parisian dialect and or were from Paris or France. And so when I got to Quebec City, the kids were like, you know, they weren't quite sure how to pin it on me. They were like, is he from France? Or where is he from? Because I would say some things that didn't quite make any sense to them. But by the end, like the last, I don't know, the last week or so, somebody was like, where are you from? And I was like, where do you think? And he was like. I don't know, somewhere outside Montreal. And I was like, sweet. I did it. I'm like, if I could trick you into thinking that I'm from here, then I got this. So I really ran with it. And, I just speaking endlessly since then. And, when I got to France, actually, everybody was like, he's from Quebec. Like that's how they talked there. And then when I got back to Quebec the next summer. They were like, I don't get it. You spent four months in France, but you sound like you're from here still. I'm like, yeah, I'm, I really studied it. So I was listening to the radio and watching French Canadian TV and French Canadian comedy is really funny for any French speakers out there who are looking for a good laugh. So, it's just, it's become like a really huge part of, I guess who I am. And, being able to speak another language has definitely opened some doors for me. We have a member here actually, 10 years later, after, I worked with his kid. They just moved here from Montreal. His kid didn't speak any English. Wow. They get on the ice. They're like, who does anybody here speak French? And I was like, I'll do it. And I was his like little personal translator for several months. That's great. Kid starts working with me on the ice. Dad comes in here to the gym, next thing we're still very good buddies, so that's awesome. It's definitely opened some doors for me and, even though I'm not coaching hockey anymore, I'm still very thankful that I have that skill, right on. So do me a favor. Say something in French to our listeners, like quelque chose en français. All right. Awesome. pour les auditeurs. So tell us what you said, just something in French for the listeners. That's very cool. Okay, so let's go into the Bay Area. And coaching evolution. So what led you to your decision to move to the Bay Area? Like we talked about, my time in the mission was really fun. I just, I couldn't believe anybody lived like this. Um, and so I was finding any ways that I could to get back here. And then when I realized I didn't wanna be in the classroom. I literally just typed in Hockey Bay area and the Junior Sharks are the first thing that came up. I found their contact info, I emailed them and I said, Hey, I wanna come out here, I wanna coach. And it's not every day that they get a kid from Virginia saying that. So somebody called me, I say somebody, he's my best friend now. He's at my wedding. he called me and he is Mike Janda. What's up Mike? He was like, please explain what are you doing? And I was like, I want to coach. I wanna make a living out of this. And he, encouraged me to come down, interview with him. I was in San Francisco. I like took it was like a, zip car or whatever. Yeah, they do you just like walk up to a car and press a button and it opens up and you can drive it for the day. Which is pretty sweet. So I grab a zip car, which did not exist on the east coast at the time. I was like, this is so foreign to me. Um, so I drove down to San Jose, interview with Mike. He was very clear about how expensive it was here. He was like, you're probably gonna have to get another job, and if that's like teaching private lessons or whatever. And I was like, I literally don't care. I'll do whatever it takes to come here and coach. I joined the Junior Sharks as an assistant coach with the 12 AAA, 15 AAA and 16 AAA team that year. Okay. So I was coaching a lot of different teams, Uhhuh, and then I had started to build, a little bit of a side business. And then, I started to notice, kinda certain faces around the rink and that kind of brings us to Kathy Andre, who was a really, she played a prominent role in my development as a coach and Right. as did Mike. Mike and I coached for, the entire time I was with the Junior Sharks. But, as far as from a business perspective Kathy's like one of the top power skating coaches in the world. When I was on the East coast, I worked with Wendy Marco. Wendy Marco is another one of the best power skating coaches in the world. They happened to run in the same circle. Talking to Kathy, she found out I was from the East coast. She asked if I knew Wendy. They had worked together, in some capacity many years ago. And so there was a connection there. And we had like very similar philosophies as far as like how to teach and what to teach. And, what was important when coaching somebody. And so, I kind of came to Kathy and I was like, I need help growing a business. You've got a wait list. I'm, teach me how to coach and I'll coach your people and we came to an agreement and she was very helpful in, filling my roster and getting me to a place where I could afford to live here. Because coaching teams is not what pays the bills. It's the private stuff that that does that. Yeah. So tell me about, um, What was it like working with Kathy? It was fantastic. Kathy is a phenomenal human being. She's a great coach. She just commands respect everywhere she goes. is been in the game for a long time and she's seen everything and she's worked with the kid who's just learning, they've just put skates on for the first time. All the way to NHLs and, she's currently the skating coach for the Barracuda, the a HL team here. And she does some of consulting stuff for, for the pro club. And she's fantastic. We're still very close. You know, her whole family. I'm very close with them, Good. All right. Let's go on to the next question. How did your coaching style begin to evolve during this time? That's a great question. Um, so the Junior Sharks are what's called an ADM Club. ADM just stands for American Development Model and is based on, a lot of the ecological dynamic stuff that is very popular in jiu jitsu right now. Correct. And I didn't know this at the time. I was unaware of the terminology. I didn't know what was happening. They were just like. If you wanna teach skills, play games and get people to do it in a live scenario. Where there's pressure and they have to figure stuff out. They're gonna figure out a lot more than you just telling them exactly what to do or make them skate around cones like I was saying earlier, like that's, some of the practices were like that, skate up here and turn this way and do that. But like games aren't played that way. The game of hockey is dynamic. And it's never the same twice. True. that was the underlying principle that was driven home at that time was building skills through games. And I was very fortunate to be able to go work with USA hockey, in Colorado Springs at their headquarters for the Rocky Mountain High performance camp. Alright. so it's the top 200,15 year olds from Alaska to Texas basically. Come together and they do this camp and it's not only a camp for the players, it's a big showcase for them. There are a lot of NHL scouts there, a lot of college scouts there. Prep school scout scouts there, junior scouts there, who are looking to see kinda the next generation. But also, referee development. So there was like a big referee program that was going on at the same time. And a coaching development program. So, you know, coaches from all over the country would come there. And then you have like your head USA hockey guys who are teaching the newest stuff and then also giving you, the freedom to experiment and go out there and try a game and then have somebody comment on whether or not that works or why it works, or how they change it, or how can we get better, right? And so all of that to say like that coaching philosophy. That I didn't know was even really happening at the time. Is the reason that USA hockey now is as good as it is? I can't explain the change that's happened amongst those players and coaches because 15, 20 years ago, American born players were not known for being skilled. They were known for just being bruisers. They go out there, they hit, they fight, they do the low, for lack of a better term, the low skill work, right? And USA hockey making this shift to, the ecological dynamic stuff is directly responsible for the skill level that's coming out of places like Phoenix and places in Texas and Florida. And now you've got some really world class athletes, American born athletes. Who have come up in that system Wow. training under that philosophy. and now we are one A with Canada. From a skill perspective. as far as my coaching philosophy and how it was shaped and developed that played a huge role. That's very interesting. Thanks. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, of course. Okay. How did you first get exposed to MMA and BJJ in Virginia? I was training in the off season, with one of my friends, Sean Shields and Sean, I can't remember if he wrestled in high school or what his connection to this place was, but he was like, you should come to Gold Medal Grappling. And it was, close to my house and I was like, okay, yeah. In past summers I had gone to a boxing gym and they were like, this is wiley kid. Like this hockey player comes in here and wants to like box. Now that I know what I know. I would never recommend that anybody do that. I think that was really not the best way to go about it. Right. But I'm thankful for it having happened.'Cause I wouldn't be here if I didn't have that experience. So he invited me to gold Medal grappling. Elijah Harshbarger is the head coach there. And then the pro, it was Chris McCray and Chris McCray if anybody's an ultimate fighter fan. Yes. Chris McCray was on the Ultimate Fighter. He lost his first fight, but it was such a close fight that they invited him to fight again. And then he fought his way back into the house and he won five or six in a row. He made it the finals and then he lost and correct. But he did get himself a few UFC fights and as far as Virginia grappling goes, is one of the big names. So it was really cool to get to train with him and Elijah they were influential in my, I suppose I didn't know it at the time I was like, I'm just at this MMA gym. I remember Elijah teaching me like my first arm bar or whatever we didn't do a lot of jiu jitsu, but there was enough there that it, stuck in my head. More like ground and pound. Yeah. And it was mostly boxing. Boxing and wrestling were probably the two, biggest things at the gym. And then jiu jitsu was like an extra thing. Okay. Hopefully if Elijah's watching this, I'm doing that justice. I don't know if that was really his method but that's what I remember, at least. And so that kind of stuck in my head. And then I didn't really do anything with it. I didn't think about it. I went about my business. I played hockey. I went to Worcester, went to St. Mike's, and after St. Mike's, when I came out here. I wasn't playing anymore. I was already, coaching hockey, seven or eight hours a day. I was in skates. Oh, that's long on a, sheet of ice. It was just cold and I didn't wanna play. The times for adult league in hockey are not good. They're like 10:00 PM 11:00 PM Sometimes later than 11:00 PM start times. It's not fun and so anyways, after being on my feet for seven or eight hours, the last thing I wanted to do was lace up my skates again and play for another hour. I was like, I wanna stay active, I wanna play a sport. I wanna do something where I'm learning, but I don't, what am I gonna do? I'm not gonna box, I am gonna get hit in the head. I'm too old for that. I say that I was 25. That's not even old. But like too old to be getting hit in the head. True. For not for money. Anytime getting hit in the head for no money. For no money is not worth it. Not worth it. Sometimes getting hit in the head for money is not worth it. Correct. And I just kinda went down the list. I was like, if I didn't box, I do Muay Thai. No, I don't really wanna get kicked either. I was like, jiu jitsu seems like in the MMA world, you have to know it, right? If you don't know it, you're in trouble. Mm-hmm. See Conor McGregor versus Nate Diaz. And, so I started looking up jiu jitsu. I was like, what about jiu jitsu here? I didn't know anything about the scene. I didn't know anything about who was here, all the skilled grapplers who live and train here. I didn't know anything about AKA or anything. I didn't know anything. So what'd you do? Some research? Yeah, just like Google jiu jitsu and it was like, do you want to use your precise location? And I was like, just this time, No. So anyways, Caio's came up and you start to notice. That these schools, a lot of'em have names attached to them, right? Correct. And you see Ralph Gracie, and Caio Terra and you see all these, you know all these names. And so you like, who is this person? And you look'em up and you're like, oh, that guy's won 12 World Championships. Correct. And this isn't just school with his name on it. It's like he's here. I'd be stupid not to go. It was like down the street from my house, so I walked in one day and I was like, Hey, I wanna try it. I didn't have a, gi, I didn't have anything. Actually Kim Terra was one of my first coaches, Caio's brother, love him to death. He was so great. Right on. I remember one of my future teammates, John Kaharian, he was like, I got an extra GI in my car if you want to use it. And so I put it on and then proceeded to like, bleed all over it because my knees were not ready for all the up and down and the mats and you know, my burns. Yeah. And so I was just like bleeding, profusely from my knees and afterwards he was like, you could just keep it, it's fine. I don't need it back. And I wore that GI until it ripped. Dang! It got some mileage for sure. So, that was how I found it. Okay. Yeah. So what kept you going during those early days at CTA? I think it's just a thirst to learn. Maybe it's a cliche thing to say, I'm a lifelong learner. I don't feel right if I'm not trying to push the limits of what I know. Mm-hmm. And that's a true athlete. Yeah. And I think it's common for, jiu jitsu people especially are just, there's no end to this thing. Correct. There's no way you could learn it all. You could never, you know, you could train until you died and you wouldn't know everything. So that's attractive to me as somebody who like wants to keep pushing it. I think that's why I took to it so well. That's really what keeps any of us in it. I think especially as a white belt, when you're getting smashed constantly, you just get bludgeoned over and over. And not that it was like a bad experience or anything Right. But you know, you get beat, you do a lot. And you have to be okay with sucking for a long time. True. So yeah, I think that's probably the main thing that kept me going. Okay. Good. Any moments when you felt in over your head or totally hooked. In over my head. There was a time when I think Kim was trying to see if I was in over my head, and that was my second week. He saw something in me,'cause he was like, you should come to the advanced class on Friday. And I was like. Okay. I don't know what you're talking about, but sure. I'll show up on Friday. And it was me and Yuri Samoise who I didn't know was two time ADCC champion and Joe Herrity, who I just had lunch with yesterday we've become dear friends and I'm happy to have met him and I'm glad that he really gave me the business that day. It was me, Yuri Joe, and Andrew. Andrew was a, I think a purple belt at the time and Joe was a blue belt at the time and I was just two weeks old in jiu jitsu. And it was back takes or something, or back attacks and we just, for an hour and a half, they just crushed me. Ouch. I remember just getting choked for the 20th time, and I look over at Kim, and Kim is just sitting there is he gonna quit or is he gonna show up tomorrow? I was like, I'm gonna fucking show up tomorrow, man. I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna learn this. And that was a moment where I was like, all right. That sounds like it. Yeah. That was actually my hooked moment. I was like, what the hell is this? But I want to know how to do it. Nice. So, yeah. Anything else in jiu jitsu you would like to talk about or any stories or anything that stands out in your mind? Man, I would be remiss if I didn't, just thank my coaches up to this point. Vitor Pasquale has played a huge role in my development, and he was the morning coach there at CTA. I absolutely loved my time spent with him. He was also in my wedding. I built a lot of really good relationships and, I have a lot of very dear friends that I've spent a lot of time with on the mats, and I'm thankful for that. Okay, so now let's make a shift. Coaching philosophy. Okay. Yeah, this is good. So wait, now we can tie the two together. Absolutely. Because, you know, we talked about the coaching philosophy at USA hockey and, the shift into jiu jitsu and all that. And so I guess for context, Josh Beam, who's a good friend of mine, and, he is been my main training partner, for the past five years or so, and he had left CTA and was competing quite a bit. Right. And ended up getting injured. And I think this was the, sequence of events. I could be wrong, but a black belt, I think it was Ally Agira from Want versus Need, and I think he has his, academy by any means, jiu jitsu in Modesto or Manteca or somewhere in the Central Valley. And I think he's the one who reached out to Josh and was like, Hey, if you're wondering how you're gonna learn jiu jitsu, you're not outta school. Um, you know, he was representing Odyssey jiu jitsu. But Odyssey is in Atlanta. Sending Greg video of competition of training and then getting direction based on that. And then going to open mat and just trying it. Trying to figure out, what to do. And but then he got injured and I think Al was the one who reached out to him and was like, Hey, you should check this out. If you want know how to learn jiu jitsu. But you don't have a place you should read. I believe it was how we learned to Move by Rob Gray. So how we learned to move by Rob Gray is we'll call it the Eco Bible. And he talks about all the science behind movement how we learn it. And so Josh started as he was reading that he would like, read or send me excerpts and he like, what do you think of this? And I was like, dude, that's like word for word. USA hockey, that's what they taught us. And you'd go a little bit further and you'd be like, what about this? I'm like. Verbatim what they told us when I was at USA hockey and then, we go on a little bit more and I'm like, am I. Doing this wrong. Like what? Like I've seen how it works in hockey. I've seen the results of it. I, I USA hockey's 15 years ahead of jiu jitsu in this respect. Right, I've watched it from end to end. I did drills where I'm just skating in a line basically and I've also played the games. And I've realized how much more I get out of the games. And then as a coach, being coached to coach that way, was obviously, it was obviously huge. And so as we're talking about it, I'm like, fuck, we gotta try this. And so we, we go to open mats and we just try to play some games. We like create our own little games. Like, this is the outcome that we're looking for. Right. What rules can we place around it so that we're forced to do it that way? Or forced to do, forced to get that outcome, but by any means necessary. And then it clicked and I was like, oh shit, I gotta do this. And I realized, you know, I would listen. I tell everybody I would be more, I'm not usually an early adopter. I would be more hesitant to adopt something like this. It seems nebulous, it's not really concrete, it's not necessarily a curriculum and step-by-step instructions on how to do jiu jitsu. So I'm not typically an early adopter, but having seen it done in other sports. Made me realize, I was like, oh, this is actually not new. It's just new in jiu jitsu. It's just new in jiu jitsu and I need to get on this right now. And so that's really, that's where the philosophy shifted and now like I have to be very careful about where I drop in'cause I like cannot be bothered to drill. I haven't drilled in a year almost. I know that's gonna ruffle some feathers, I'm sure, but, whatever, you're doing it your way. Yeah. And come train with us, honestly, like I feel like I learn more in one hour doing it that way than I do in a month. Right. I've, I've experienced, um. the type of coaching I've been to Baem with Oh yeah. Denny. Yeah. And it's great. Yeah. Fun. Yeah. Monday nights. It's so fun and that's part of it, right? The more fun it is, the more likely people are to adhere to it. Absolutely. And the more likely they're to adhere, the longer they're gonna stay in it, and the better they're gonna get. Yeah. Yeah. What have you and Josh Beam learned by experimenting with this model? I mean, there are several things. Obviously there's like the technical aspect of things. So I didn't really, I didn't really train Nogi until six or seven months ago. In preparation for Nogi Worlds. I was like, on a whim. Josh asked me to do it and I was like, yeah, I'll do it. Let's do it. And so I just went all nogi and I fell in love with it. And now I like can't be bothered to put the gi on. But like I didn't really learn leg locks. As a brown belt, you get hit with those. You do. And if you look at like competition results, most of my losses are from toeholds, knee bars, heel hooks, just all leg lock stuff, right? And I personally have really, dove headfirst into the whole leg entanglement world and been doing it almost exclusively through this method. Because I needed experience in the moment, I needed to go to the space. And this is actually something that Vitor drilled into my head, was like, we all have patterns that we like and that we are comfortable with. And when we roll with the same people, we figure out what I can do here and what I can't do there. And you just find those grooves you almost stifle your own growth because you just do what works and you don't do what's actually best for your jiu jitsu, which is actually to like experiment and be okay with getting tapped and all those things. True. And Vitor would tell me all the time, he'd be like, you need to play other positions. You can't just like invert and berimbolo everybody. You gotta do something else. And then, it wasn't until much later that I actually took that to heart and was like willfully putting myself in positions where I had to like, figure stuff out and learn what works and what doesn't. And so this is a, I think, a great framework for that. Where you know, we can build rules, we can build games, that force certain behaviors. So that would be the first thing, right? Is the technical aspect of things, right? Just learning new skills in the sport. The second thing is, the second thing that I think both of us have learned, I don't wanna speak for Josh, but I think this is, I would be hard pressed to believe if he disagree with me, is that, you don't need to know all the answers to be a coach. In fact, it's probably healthy to admit you don't know all the answers and I don't think that it's healthy to look at any sport for that matter, not just jiu jitsu as this person knows everything and I have to get this information from this source. And that's it. Because everybody's gonna have their own way. We all have different body types, different skill levels, different world experiences that shape our thought processes and correct. there's just so many different. Ways to do this. The best example I can give of that is the buggy choke, right? Right.'cause I ask people, I'm like, is bottom side control a good position or a bad position? And most people are like, bad position. I'm like, unless you can buggy choke somebody. And then it becomes an advantage. There are more than one ways to do it. And there was a time when the buggy choke did not exist and then a certain set of conditions emerged that were, you know, that it made the soil ripe or fertile for, that submission to show up. That's the other biggest thing I think that we've learned is that. I don't have to have all the answers to be able to guide somebody toward an answer of their own. Yeah, just leading them to their water, that's the job of the coach, right? Is to guide, I'm not a fountain of knowledge. I'm literally just lighting the path and trying to get people to go down the path that works for them. So how does your coaching style now compare to when you first started? I think it's changing all the time, but, I would say as a coach now, I am much more open to solutions that I wouldn't, maybe I wouldn't think of or I wouldn't recommend. I can give an example like in hockey. There were some of the kids that I worked with are so skilled, they could do stuff I could never dream of, right? I could never think to do what they're thinking to do. Who am I to tell them that's the wrong way to do it. In jiu jitsu, same thing, right? Like we just talked about the buggy choke who says that's wrong?'Cause at the end of the day, it gets the job done, right? It's working for somebody, right? The thing that I keep falling back on is there is no right or wrong, there's only effective or ineffective. If it's effective, keep doing it. And if it's not, do something else. So I think that's probably, the biggest, shift. In the thought process. As far as coaching goes, it doesn't have to just be the way that I think it needs to be. As long as it gets done. Okay. So now that we talked about coaching, let's talk about your business, Victory Submission Strength. What inspired you to open up a gym specifically for grapplers? And you also launched it during the pandemic? Yeah. So two in one question. Okay. Again, I'd like to shout out just all of the great strength coaches that I had growing up. Ruth Ennis, Beatle Bailey, RJ Gubo, Emily Morris, Brian Thely. I'm sure I'm missing some. Mike Craven, a lot of people who really contributed to my love for the weight room. When I was growing up, I wasn't the most skilled hockey player, so I needed to do something to separate myself, as an athlete. And that came in the gym. If I wasn't gonna be the most skilled, I had to be faster. I had to be stronger. I had to be more resilient. I had to be available. And if I was stronger than most, then chances of me getting injured were far lower and then I'd have more opportunities to play. They all played a huge role in inspiring me to do that. I always. thought if I wasn't gonna play, I was gonna coach. And if I wasn't gonna be in hockey, then I'd love to be in the gym because that's where I really, I feel like I grew up there. I started training. with a trainer when I was 14 years old, and I've always had a coach since then. I'm very fortunate again to have, both the time, the resources and the right people, in my corner. I would say that's like the root inspiration, starts with all of them and then COVID happened, and as we all know, the world shut down and it was weird. And, the rink closed when that happened, and so I was already feeling burnt out, on the ice and I didn't know if I loved it anymore. The rink shut down. We all had to pivot. If you could imagine, I was, I can't believe I'm saying this, giving hockey lessons on Zoom. And so I'm very thankful for the families who entrusted me with, helping their kids get better even though we couldn't be on the ice and we couldn't be in the same place. I credit that time with helping make me a better coach in that. It's you, computer screen, kid, puck, and net. Maybe some of'em didn't even have that. And you've gotta find a way to not only direct them in a way that's gonna be helpful but also provide value in a short period of time. You know, we've got 30 minutes together, how am I gonna make this as valuable as I can because these people are still paying me money and I've gotta find a way to make it worth it for'em. You gotta be Pretty creative. You gotta get creative and you gotta be very precise with your words because you can't just move somebody where you need to move'em like you can in person. You gotta be very sharp. That was definitely an experience that while I would never want to do again, would credit with helping me as a coach. And so what I started to do was because we had limited resources, I was like, I need to make this valuable. So for the last 10, maybe 15 minutes of the lesson we're gonna do some of the strength work that I've been recommending people do for a long time. But then they never did because they would go home and they'd be like, I forgot. Or I can't, or I'm a kid and I just don't remember, and now I'm basically in your living room and I'm gonna make you do it. Like, we're gonna do these things good. And you're gonna get stronger whether you like it or not. And I started to hear things a couple months in and they were like, I couldn't do this before, but now I can. And I was like, great. That's it. that's when the light bulb went off. I was like, this is what I do now I can do that. And so my then girlfriend, now wife, her roommate Leah Levin, she helped me. Gave me the resources I needed to get certified as a personal trainer. Once I got certified, I started programming remote for one of my former players who was looking to play in college. Perfect. And then that turned into a couple of remote gigs where I was like, programming for these people. And they'd send me video and I'd watch and critique and send it back and do the whole thing. And then. That turned into, you know, things started to open up a little bit. Great. And I had found a performance gym close by. Shout out to Steven Ross. Nice. He's the one who helped me get into a place where I could start working with people. Working with people one-on-one, and obviously we were doing everything we could to minimize risk and people wear masks and we were outside and doing all the stuff that we had to do here in California. But he really gave me a platform and he had gym and gym equipment, everything that I could use. Steven and I are still very close. We operate businesses in different sectors. He works with gen pop people and I work with grapplers So we still, we still chat. That was the start of the gym. Was at the movement hub, which is maybe two miles away. I started working with just hockey players because that's what I knew. I realized really quickly that was not going to be a sustainable business model because they all, as we talked about off camera before leave after three or four months, right? They do their off season training and then they go to their respective corners of the world and go play for their teams, right? And so people started to leave and I was like, What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? Need to fill that gap, right? Yeah. I can't do this. And my business coach at the time. Alan Cosgrove. He told me, he was like, where do you spend most of your time? What do you like to do? And, who could you help that also does that? And I was like, no brainer. Oh my goodness. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Duh. And at that time I had been in jiu jitsu for, five years, almost four years. And he knew it. Yeah. and I was like, man, like I hear people all the time, my knees hurt, my back hurts, my shoulder hurts. Like all these things are so true breaking down and I gotta get stronger and I'm not flexible enough to do this. I can fix those problems. Good. And started working with people that I was training with. And that was really how we made the shift from primarily hockey to primarily jiu jitsu. And now we still work with a lot of hockey players, but they just come back for the summer. And then jiu jitsu is like the thing that keeps us going. Right on. Throughout the year. So, yeah. Cool. Very cool. Okay. Let's see. Can you share a moment when you realized Victory was really making a difference? Oh, the times are honestly countless at this point. Like the number of people come to us. I mean, if you're watching this, go read our 116 or something, five star reviews. They're all very positive. Uh, but somebody that really stands out in your mind. Yeah. It's funnily enough, she's not a grappler, but Antonella Facherri, she was one of my first clients and she came to me, she's a, piano teacher. She was a friend of my wife, and was like, I'm gonna hate this. But I know I need to do it. And I was like, I got it. Don't worry. I'll take care of you. We'll get you where you're going. And she was like, oh, I wanna do a chin up. I've never been able to do a chin up in my life. And I was like, okay. And just for context, she's from Eastern Europe, so she's got that Eastern European negativity about her. She would laugh at that, I think if she was watching. She knows, it's a different lifestyle over there. Anyways, we worked for a whole year and she got her chin up by the end of the year and the first time she did it, I don't think she believed she did it. She was like, what the hell? I'm like, yeah, that shit works. And then, two days a week with her. Became three and then four. And then, the thing that really got me was, before she moved to North Carolina, she got a bull tattooed on her. Yeah. A victory bull. Yeah. It wasn't, it was not this bull. It was like, it's a little more tasteful Yeah. Not that this wouldn't be tasteful, but like it's a logo of a brand. Right. I guess Harley Davidson people do that, but, anyways, yeah, she got a bull tattooed on her and I was like, holy shit. Like if this impacted this woman this much that she felt the need to tattoo. an image in homage to our brand. that one really got me and every time I, she posts on Instagram all the time, now she's like still doing her thing. She'll hit us up and ask questions and, she's such a great sport and, just seeing her excel and gets stronger and do the things, has been really cool. That one definitely sticks out for me. Really rewarding, huh? Yeah. It makes all of the crap that comes along with business ownership worth it, for that story alone, honestly. Cool. Yeah. And I say crap, but I do love being a business owner, those of you out there who are watching know that there are some things that you gotta deal with, and so. Absolutely. Yeah. How do you balance coaching grapplers of all levels. You just meet them where they're at. That's the key I think, with any coaching, regardless of whether it's in the gym or on the mats or on the ice, your goal as a coach is to meet somebody where they're at and push them just enough. To get better, right? Mm-hmm. You don't wanna push them so hard that they can't handle it, and you don't wanna not push them enough because then the growth doesn't happen. Correct. So it doesn't matter the level. We have people who are brand new, they just started jiu jitsu and we've got seasoned professionals who train here. But the philosophy doesn't change. Find out where they're at, what can they do, what can't they do? Bridge the gap accordingly and, try to stretch their limitations versus break them. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. So if there's anything for victory submission, strength that you wanted to talk about and promote. If those of you who are watching we're located here in San Jose and, we work with Grapplers, we work with people, regardless of the sport. Some people are here, that don't play any sports, they just want to kick at life. And, we work with grapplers, jiu jitsu athletes, judoka, wrestlers, whoever. That's probably the main, demographic that we work with. I'll talk about this we're running a grapplers combine in September where we've got a series of exercises we're gonna put people through and try to gather some data, give some comparative data, back to them so they can see where they stack up against other people, their skill level, their size, their age, their sex, all that stuff. So that they have, training recommendations, actionable steps that they can take to better themselves off the mats so that they can last longer on the mats. Okay, cool. So that's something that we're working on right now. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, of course. Let's go into your support system and personal milestones. What role has your jiu jitsu circle played in your journey? Oh my. That's a tough one. I mean, it's not tough. It's so many examples, but I think there is I guess as a broad answer to that question, to start an inherent trust that comes with not only the physical contact that you're in with your training partners and opponents, but also the fact that if they don't respect the tap you like, are broken. Correct. Or maybe dead. I think you build trust really quickly. Mm-hmm. And in building that trust really quickly, I've been very fortunate to, meet a lot of really cool people. Become very good friends with, a lot of my training partners and spend time with them outside of the mats. Mm-hmm. Obviously I met my wife on the mats and that's probably the biggest win Nice. That I've met as far as my support system. For sure. Goes. Uh, proposed to her on the mats. We got married, our little cake toppers we're in GI. I feel my support system is so far wide and deep as a result of jiu jitsu and who I've been able to meet and spend time with. Good. Yeah. Can you tell me the story of how you met your wife and how you proposed on the mat? Yeah. she showed up one day and I thought to myself, I would like to talk to her. And then she was gone for a month. She went to Europe with her family, like on vacation. And I was like, damn, I missed my shot. And then when she came back I was like, I'm not gonna miss it this time. I am gonna talk to her. And we got paired up to roll or whatever and in between, during the rest period, I just started asking her questions, how was your weekend? What'd you do? and, came out that she's a, piano teacher. Oh. And I grew up playing piano. I didn't stick with it and I, like many adults wish that I did, now that I'm old enough to appreciate how cool it is to be able to play Nice. I mentioned that. I was like, I played as a kid, I'd love to, you know learn some more and she was like, ah, it's never too late. Her canned response to all the adults who say that. At the time I was actually, living in a van, I was doing the van life thing, I was, building out a little tiny home in a van. I wasn't like destitute or anything. I had a full sink and electrical system in there. It was very nice. Yeah. Uh, for what it was, I was in a van, and I was like, I'd love to learn, but I don't really have a place to play'cause I'm in a van and she was like, I've got some like portable keyboards that I could lend you if you wanted. And I was like, let me get your numbers so we can coordinate this. And she gave it to me. And then, we texted back and forth and next thing you know, we're going on a not date. And she says that it was not a date. And then when she got back home and she's talking to her roommate, she was like, ah, fuck. I think it was a date. And then we got married. So it worked out from the date to the wedding. Quick. Oh man. We just have so much fun together. Good. We laugh every day. I can't think of a day that I've lived since I met her that I didn't laugh and that I appreciate that so much. She's very bright, very witty, very quick. just such a bright soul. And I am forever grateful. The universe or whatever, uh, that, you know, we crossed paths found each other again. it feels like I've known her for thousands of years. Which is really special. my wife is, half Greek so the wedding was a big fat Greek wedding. If anybody has seen that movie, it is so true. Wow. I'm glad to hear that you have somebody very special in your life Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Great. How do you stay grounded and supported while juggling so much? Selena plays a huge role in that. My wife plays a huge role in that. If I'm ever too high or too low, she's the first one to like, she should never like take the wind outta my sails, but it's hey keep in mind. We talk about being grounded and, she does such a good job with that. I think I do that for her too. I think we, feed off each other in that way. So, um, she plays a huge role in that. Jiu jitsu itself is a grounding mechanism, right? It is because everybody goes against a 16-year-old who just absolutely pretzels you. And, that's grounding knowing that, no matter how much you do this, like somebody's always gonna be there to put you in your place and check you. I guess as an aside, jiu jitsu to me is a meditative experience. It's the only thing I can do where I cannot focus on anything else other than the task at hand, because if I lose concentration for a second, somebody's passing your guard or trying to choke you or do something that you know you otherwise wouldn't want them to do. You know that, that is helpful and if I cannot train for, an extended period of time, I like many of you are going nuts. Yeah. it's really, it's a challenge. I do have to, like, when we're on vacation, I'm looking around, I'm like, where can I go train? Like I gonna need to get on the mats here. Yeah. Because I'm gonna go nuts if I don't. Yes. Ditto. Yeah. All right. Matt, let's talk about reflection and future vision. Where do you see victory submission strength in five years? Well, I think, I mean, I hope that the idea eventually is to merge jiu jitsu and strength training under one roof, if possible. The vision for this place would be to obviously have the mat space and have the ability to train and then also have the strength and conditioning part. It'd be two separate businesses that are. allowed to, and, encouraged to cross pollinate. Right.'Cause the goal of victory submission strength is to get people grapplers specifically stronger, faster, more mobile so they can spend more time on the mats. Then obviously just having the space to train is an added bonus. And then on the flip side of things, people who are interested in learning jiu jitsu, we want to give them, the resources needed to get stronger, faster, more mobile in a safe way, right. Are available to them. it's very, accessible. So to have them in one building would be ideal. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. What do you want your long-term impact to be in the BJJ or hockey? This answers both, it goes with both of those sports. Mm-hmm. Or any sport for that matter. But, I tell this to people whenever we do seminars at jiu jitsu academies around here in the bay. If one person, whether at the seminar or somebody who comes and trains with us Learns one thing that they can use to get better, to get faster, stronger, more mobile or whatever. And it keeps them out of harm's way, even just one time. If it keeps them from getting injured, or if it allows them to bounce back after injury quicker. Let's just say for example, they, would've twisted their ankle or, torn their meniscus or something. And in avoiding that situation, because they've built the physical qualities needed to stay away from it or to absorb the demands of the sport. If they're able to stay on the mats for that much longer, right? Weeks, months sometimes. And certain injuries could take you out for several months. Correct. An ACL tear takes you out for nine months minimum. And in that time spent on the mats versus injured. Not only are you getting better, the athlete. But your training partners are getting better'cause you're pushing them. Their training partners are getting better'cause they're pushing them, right? And so that one thing that you did or learned or got better at that helped you avoid the catastrophic injury that could otherwise keep you away from jiu jitsu? Is our way, of helping improve the overall wellbeing of the jiu jitsu community, right? True. Yeah. And hockey community for that matter. Same thing, right? When the hockey guys come back, our goal is to like, fortify them as best we can so that they can go to a kind of a long, grueling season and not get hurt. I'm confident that we can help. Any athlete for any sport, even if you don't play a sport, it's worth coming and training and getting better. But yeah, All of our marketing materials and everything goes to toward jiu jitsu, athletes or grapplers. Right I was talking to Jessica, on my podcasts. And she praised, your ability to train people even in uh, situations as she was in. She tore her ACL and MCL and meniscus. Correct. So anyway, she was talking about how you studied and talked to her doctors and reached out, and just the knowledge you had to help rehabilitate her, and you did an amazing job. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you Jess, for the shout out. Just to, to touch on that briefly, I think you'd be hard pressed to find, many strength coaches who will go the lengths that I will, I've been in the operating room now probably a dozen times. Mossy Reynolds, Dr. Mossy Reynolds, he's a homie. He's kind enough to let me come in and study and ask questions and learn and, get to see how things work on the inside. I spent a lot of time with Mossy and his team, and they're all top-notch. They do such a good job. And so now I've seen, several acls and several MCLs and a couple of shoulders and some elbows and all kinds of stuff I didn't expect that I would be seeing. But, here we are. I think I'd pass out. Yeah, it's some people do. You know, uh, lucky enough that I've got a, I guess a strong constitution, so, yeah. There you go. We're gonna go into, a fun closeout. Where do you feel most at home ice rink or jiu jitsu mat. jiu jitsu mat. I haven't touched the ice in probably five years and I'm okay with it. I've laid that part of me to rest. There's some people who have been trying to get me to coach, come out of, retirement and coach a youth team here or there, but I just, there's no way I won't touch the ice again. Selena asked me to go to, to take her ice skating and I just, I can't bear to put skates on my feet again. Yeah. I won't do it. It feels like work to me. And jiu jitsu doesn't feel like work to me. Not yet. At least. I'm just gonna keep doing the fun stuff, not the work stuff. Okay. That makes sense. I'm with you. Favorite BJJ submission in the gi bow and arrow choke, Nogi, man. Historically. My game has centered around taking backs and choking people. Nice. So I'd be remiss if I didn't say the rear naked choke, but I've been on a big leg lock kick and I've been only searching for he hooks lately. I'm just like, how can I find a way to expose that, that one part? And so I think maybe currently heel hook, uh, and any inside, outside, whatever uhhuh, but maybe long-term rear naked joke. All right, for the nogi peeps. I like that. Rear naked choke. Okay. Your most intense hockey memory. Winning state finals with my high school team was really cool. That was such an incredible experience. The high school season in Virginia is interesting because everybody plays on a few different junior or high level youth teams, and then they also play on different high school teams. So, you might be on the ice with somebody on Tuesday at, your club practice. And then on Friday be playing against them in high school. And then, the season is only 10 games long. So you play one game a week. There were probably, a couple dozen teams in that area. Maybe four of them are really good, and then the rest of them are average or really terrible. Depending on, those 10 games you might draw the four best teams in the league out of those 10 games. And then now you're looking at maybe a 500 season, right? Maybe five and five. Maybe six and four, right? Or you may draw 10 terrible teams. And now you're 10 and 0. But regardless, when you get to the playoffs and you get to the last four teams, typically the best ones are still left. And those ones get really intense because most of the players are playing at a really high level outside of high school. So super fun we beat Broad Run in the final Broad Run. Hadn't lost a game. In maybe two years. And so it was really kind of a David Goliath thing. Yeah. Where we, were the, underdogs for sure. they had just blown through everybody. They went 10 and o both the last two seasons and actually I think they may have lost the finals the year before, so maybe they only lost one game in two years. But regardless, they were a juggernaut to be on the ice and to be a part of that team, to take them out win the championship there that was really cool. Right on. Yeah. Cool. One thing people would be surprised to know about you. I gave away the French thing earlier. Yeah. I haven't played the piano since I originally hit on my now wife. Uh, but she does tell me. And she's a music teacher, so you can take her word for it, that I am a musical human being. I can do music. That's great. She and I are really kind of sing songy, we're just bopping around having a good time all day. And we got a lot of little, scripts and songs that we'll like sing throughout the day. And so, yeah. I don't know. You're in sync with her. Yeah. Yeah. What motivates you to push every day? I hate to be cliche, but I just, I wanna be the best version of myself I can. And whether that's as a business owner, whether that's as a jiu jitsu practitioner, whether it's, as a coach, as a husband, that's really what drives me is I just, I feel like there's another level and it's almost my human responsibility to try to get there. And if I do reach that level, then just keep going. yeah. yeah. Okay. we're gonna close out with that. But I want you to give everybody some information on how to get ahold of you, where you're located, and, come and give you a shot. Yeah, we're, Victory Submission Strength is at the corner of race in the Alameda in San Jose. And, as we talked about, we're primarily with grapplers, but we're open to any sports or any walk of life is totally welcome here. We're happy to help. We are planning on running the Grapplers Combine in September. As far as I know, it'll be the first of its kind. You'll see more information coming out on Instagram and email. We've got a ton of resources on both our Instagram and our website. So our Instagram is just at Victory Submission Strength website, victorysubmissionstrength.com. You can find there's a free resources tab and everything there. We're always trying to put out as much free content as we possibly can because we know that not everybody is going to be able to work with us. If we can provide some value for the masses. We're happy to do that. If you do wanna work with us, if you're curious about, strength training for jiu jitsu or for grappling, any grappling sport, you can book a strategy session. We sit down on Google Meet, it's maybe a thirty, forty five minute call and we go over, goals, medical injury history, any obstacles that you come up against. We go through all the logistics and then we get a movement assessment schedule. People come in, we do a full diagnostic, go through mobility screen, strength screen, stuff like that and then we build a custom program, and then you've got a coach who's there to help you get from A to Z without getting hurt, so that you can do more of the things that you love. Really, that's the goal. And then also you do seminars. We've got three different seminars that we run. we've got Bulletproof, your Body, win more matches. That's kind of the broad strokes version. We talk about the three pillars that, play a really big role in keeping it healthy on the mats strength, power, mobility, and we do a little practical for each of those so that people can feel what it's like to progress something in a safe way, something that they can do if they're gonna do it on their own. This is how you do it so that you don't get hurt. We've also got better mobility for BJJ, so that one's just purely mobility. We go down just one of those paths and we do, so it's just a full hour of like hip mobility stuff, which tends to be a real trouble spot for jiu jitsu athletes. We also have a more explosive for BJJ, which we actually just did one today at 10th Planet San Jose. Shout out Alan Sanchez, for hosting us. They're, fantastic group over there. And so that one, again, we're just going down the speed power rabbit hole a little bit and talking a little bit more in depth, about how people can go about getting more explosives so that they can win more scrambles, finish more, take downs, do the things that they wanna do on the mats. Great. Awesome. Sounds like fun. It's so fun. Yeah, we had a blast. Okay. Matt, thank you for being here. Yes, I appreciate it. Um, I learned a lot and, look forward to putting this one out. Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's a blast chat about this stuff, so Good. Good. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Bye. Bye.