The Black Belt Podcast

I want to invite you into one of the most meaningful, emotional, and important conversations I’ve ever had the honor to record. This episode is a tribute , a celebration , and a deep bow of respect to a man whose very presence influenced the direction of my path, who shaped an entire island’s martial culture, and who quietly—but powerfully—influenced some of the biggest names in Jeet Kune Do and m...

“A black belt means I never quit.”  “We may not speak the same language, but we can all speak martial arts.”  “BKF wasn’t Kenpo — it was the first real MMA school.”  “Fear is natural. The trick is to understand it, not run from it.”  “Relaxation under pressure — that’s the highest skill.”  “We started with 30 students. Only two made it. That’s what being a black belt means.”  “Martial arts begins...

“Don’t take the fight where you’re best. Take it where the gap in skill is the greatest.” “There are laws of physics even BJJ cannot overcome.” “Fluid BJJ is a play on words. It’s about movement, adaptability, and training every day—especially in the water.” “Before you can be a good teacher or businessman, you must be a good student of martial arts.” Karel “Silver Fox” Pravec Welcome to the Black...

“This journey didn’t begin with fight promotion—it began with the love of the arts, and it continues because of it.” “Mastery is when you’re unconsciously competent—your body knows before your mind can think.” “We didn’t just build champions—we built humans. And you can feel the difference when they walk into the room.” – Scott Coker Welcome to a very special episode of the Black Belt Podcast. I’m...

  "Survive first, win later. The goal is to stay in the fight."     "Martial arts training can be the crucible for developing life skills beyond fighting—mental toughness, social intelligence, and adaptability."     "If your goal is longevity, your #1 priority should be injury prevention."     "You can’t define someone else’s success—choose your own path in marti...

“If you define success by achieving specific things on a rigid path, then you set yourself up for disappointment. True success is process-oriented, goal-focused.” "In a finite game, the purpose is to win. In an infinite game, the purpose is to keep playing.” "Winning isn’t always the best indicator of success. Performing at your highest level is." -- Herb Perez "Welcome to The...

"Fear is not my enemy; it is a friend. Fear is only allowing me to see an aspect of myself I was not willing to look at." "The only moment you can truly live or die is now. So why waste time on the past or worry about the future?" "When you remember who you are, you don’t need to discover yourself; you just need to align with your spiritual origin." "Teaching is...

"Joy is a trainable skill, and like any martial art, it requires practice, especially in the face of discomfort and chaos."     "Your obstacles are your greatest teachers. Like the samurai seeking out the master swordsman, life’s challenges are here to test and refine you."     "Gratitude cuts through the noise and brings you into the present moment—because the present is...

"We know we can't make it; we don’t have the lifespan to know it all. But that’s what makes us warriors—we still choose to walk the path, even knowing we’ll never reach the end.” “The breath is the bridge—it’s the control point for your body, your spirit, and your mind. Mastering it gives you the reins to navigate any challenge, on or off the mat." "One of the major speed bumps...

"To always be yourself. Have faith in yourself. Don’t look for a successful personality and duplicate it. These are very strong pointers to truth, but they’re dismissed by a lot of people. If you understand this, it makes your life way more exciting and open to learning." – John Little Welcome to another enlightening episode of The Black Belt Podcast, where we explore the bridge between...

“Train like a fighter, think like a soldier, fight like a warrior.  I believe confidence has to be done with inoculation.  In martial arts we have stress and aggression drills that inoculate us to pain, it’s like they give us a little bit of poison, and the next night a little more poison, then a year and a half later, when we are in the arena with real fighting, we can perform.  In sparring you h...

“When you go into a Hostage Rescue you have to see it as if you are protecting or trying to save your own child, your own mother, your own brother.  If you can’t put yourself in a situation to see it that way you can’t do that job.  And that’s the way Miami Dade SWAT SRT, that is what our perspective was.  The Job that we do is real, and you are going to have to perform.  You are going to be put i...

“Jeet Kune Do to me is not about the perpetuation of an art, it is about the personal cultivation of an individual.  To me Jeet Kune Do is a state of being.  It’s a dynamic way of thinking and acting that encompasses the same fluid operating principles you use in dealing with opponents that you would use every day in the arena of life. I would like to see Jeet Kune Do resume its place in the Panth...

“You want to find this place with the person that you are working with, sparring is working with people, it’s not working against people, you are going to receive what you give.  If it’s too hard, and you do not respect the parameters that are set, something is not going to go right.  Work with people in the gym, don’t work against them.  You express your skills and give them a chance to express t...

“I never wanted to be the greatest martial artist ever, I always saw myself as a teacher.  I want to influence people, I don’t want them to be impressed by what I do, I want to be a vehicle for them to learn. To me integrity is a moment by moment choice.  My work is to challenge myself to choose the way I respond to situations.  Who we are is more important than what we do.” My guest this episode...

“The real goal is not to be a great martial artist, but to be a great human being.  A Black Belt is a good human being that is constantly working on themselves, it is somebody of a high level of skill, that brings their practice to life in ways that makes other people stop and look and listen.  It’s about the Artist that brings the practice to life.” – Tom Callos   My guest this episode is Tom Cal...

“Spiritual Growth is not necessarily found on a yoga mat, in the dojo, or in a meditation room, it’s found in the space between your thoughts, it’s found in the space between your decisions, it’s found in the still point in the transition between stimulus and response.  If I can pause and master those transitions and come to center in those moments and choose something other than what I would have...

“Champions have a very strong spiritual understanding of when is the right moment to throw a perfect technique, using time and timing to understand the right moment.  It’s impossible to put into the an equation how it feels, because if you stop to think, you are late, flow is not a motion, flow is a state, it’s a congruence, it’s a rhythm that you acquire and then control, and this allows you to c...

“When pushing the boundaries of the human body, either I’m going to break, or it is.  Can I pull the trigger and go?  It can be this way in self-defense, life, and everything else that we do. A great question is to ask what is the absolute worst that could happen in this situation, when you can wrap your mind around that worst-case scenario, I know that I can digest that and we can move forward. ...

“The Jail that I was in was easy.  The Jail that most people are in today without being incarcerated in a Jail Cell, is the Jail cell of the mind and the heart.  It wasn’t till I learned to love me in Jail, it wasn’t until I learned to express me in jail, that I was able to look at myself in the mirror, and say, Let’s Go Bam.” My guest this episode is Willie “The Bam” Johnson, who is a seven-time...

“Everyone has a gift, but not everyone seeks to find it, or has the patience to go within themselves to find it.  It’s passion, what are you passionate about? What part of you gives you the drive to work hard to get good at something, no matter what it is.  We can be mediocre or we can be average, but what makes a person driven to become extra ordinary.  You are being driven to do something; we ne...

“My goal in training is to build a student’s reflexes not just memorizing a technique.  Building reflexes by discarding the drills, and eventually being able to free flow, so you can react to any angle of attack, if you train that way you will never be caught off guard because you are prepared for any line of attack, it doesn’t matter the trajectory of the weapon because you have already trained i...

“When I was coming up, we didn’t look at anybody else, we didn’t glorify anybody else, instead we learned by discovering what we could do.  Everybody was different.  Now days there is so much information out there and it is so easily available.  So now we try to become like others, and this takes away from that spiritual and physical muscle memory experience, that one needs to discover themselves....

“Tae Bo sold 115 million copies and revolutionized the fitness world.  It changed the way people talked about fitness, I was the first person that talked about inside out.  Most people didn’t really talk about the inside, most people talked about changing your hips, your legs, your bum, and your arms, but nobody talked about the heart.  I was the only one talking about the heart.  If you really wa...

“It doesn’t matter where it comes from as long as it works, and you don’t know if it works unless you experiment with it.  In order to get good at everything you got to break it all up and pull it apart.  Find the common thread, that’s how the styles will merge.”  -- Erik Paulson My guest on this episode is Erik Paulson who is an Encyclopedia of Martial Arts and the first American to win the World...