Hey folks, I hope you're having a good day, week, month, year, and life.  Today I'd like to talk to you a little about what you can do to keep that going or reach that goal if you're not there yet.     

If you want to have a positive, healthy life please be mindful of who you choose to include in it.  Please choose the physical activities you engage in and the people you engage in them with very carefully.  You only have this one body, this one mind and this one life to enjoy.    

I made Carnie as a gift for my son who almost quit martial arts numerous times due to the toxicity and bad behavior in the grappling community.   

Carnie is meant to be a safe space where he'll be free to have fun and roll the way he wants with the people he chooses to include there, forever. 

That's what I hope you get from it as well.

My goal is to deliver on what I'm offering you, a solid foundation for grappling and a quick overview of where Carnie came from.  That's it.  I have no authority or control over you.  I don't own you for the rest of your life.

Please be cautious of anyone who does want to normalize this relationship with you in your study of martial arts and in your life, they are wrong.  If you go to a school to learn a martial art, the teacher is your employee.  They are doing a job for you.  They do not instantly become your life coach, your master, your abuser, or your spiritual guru.  They are your carpenter, your chef, your landscaper.  That's it.  They are performing a service for you.  Please treat them accordingly. 

I like to think the answer will be "Yes."  What I'm seeing more often these days in martial arts is a blurring of what the object or goal of your training is.  And I don't like it.  The more clear you can be with your goals the better job you can do meeting them.  

If your goal is to learn to grapple quickly and effectively, I think these videos are a pretty good start.  This is the exact program I used to successfully train someone with zero martial arts background for an MMA fight in three weeks, one hour a day.  That's it.  That's all it took for her to reach that goal.

There's a movement underway to normalize this idea that it should take you 20 years to get your 'black belt,' whatever that is nowadays.  A teacher I'm currently studying with started wrestling in 6th grade and became state champion in 8th grade.  How bad of a job is your wrestling coach doing if it's going to take you 20 years to learn to wrestle successfully?  If someone started amateur wrestling in kindergarten and then continued through high school and 4 years of college that would be 17 years of wrestling.  Would you consider that person a 'black belt,' or would you tell them they aren't there yet?

When I trained in the Philippines it confirmed a theory I've had for a while.  If you want someone to get good at something, make it free, fun, relatively safe and competitive to a degree of your choosing.  If an art has all those aspects and someone can practice it for decades, they'll achieve a high degree of skill and proficiency.  The men I met in the Philippines who'd been training that way for 50 or 60 years were blindingly fast, accurate and skillful.  

If your teacher wants you to be good at something they will follow a similar train of thought.  They won't strictly limit and control your practice time, impose restrictions on who and where you can roll with, and force you to sign contracts including these provisions.  They'll tell you to practice as much as you can with as many partners as you can and get as good as you can.  That's it.  Avoid anyone who tries to impose these limitations on you. 

Catch wrestling in America was trained and taught in barns, backyards, basements, and hard scrabble depression era gyms.  The wrestlers who made their living on the carnival circuit or in big time advertised matches literally earned their living with their skills.  They didn't have fancy health clubs to practice in, they just trained every day wherever they were at, as much as possible.  That's the secret to getting good at wrestling. 

After Mitsuyo Maeda spent a year teaching Judo to a family in Brazil, they would stretch a tarp out on the lawn and practice Judo ne waza (mat work) all day at family gatherings.  The result was that they got very good at rolling.  They had fun, they practiced safely and competitively, and they developed a community that made them all better at their art.  That's how you get good at something, by facilitating a way to make everyone better.  This was the goal of Jigoro Kano when he created Judo.  Jita Kyoei - you and I shining brightly together.

That's the choice you have after you rent or buy these Carnie videos, deciding how you want your community, your Carnie Club to look.  Make it a good one.  Make it a fun place to be and you'll keep getting better.  Make it what you want because it's yours, not mine. 

I don't own Carnie.  You do. 

If you liked this article, please share, and let your friends know this will all be covered in my upcoming Carnie book, which is the companion to this video series.