The Black Belt Podcast
Episodes
59 episodes
#1: Mike Lee Kanarek – Those Who Constantly Evolve, See the Future First.
“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 li...
#2: John Little – Be Yourself - Bruce Lee’s Path to Self-Mastery
"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...
#3: Alan Baker - The Endless Path of Mastery: Exploring Martial Arts, Mindset, and the Journey Within.
"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 poi...
#4: Budo Brothers – Joy Jitsu – The Art of Living a Joyful Life
"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 sword...
#5: Mike Stone – The Martial Path: Mastery of Mind, Spirit, and the Moment
"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 fut...
#6: Herb Perez - How to Think, Train & Win Like an Olympic Champion
“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,...
#7: Stephan Kesting – Survive First, Win Later
"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."
#8: Scott Coker: The Spirit of the Fight: Martial Arts, Mastery, and Building Champions
“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.”...
#9: Karel “Silver Fox” Pravec – Fluid Jiu-Jitsu & the Art of Efficiency over Force
“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, ...
#10: KC Jones - Never Quit: The True Meaning of a Black Belt
“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, n...
#11: “The Legend of Daniel Duby de Lavergne: Fearless, Fluid, Free.” With special guest Burton Richardson
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 p...
#1: Big John McCarthy – “Let’s Get It On”
“The ability to relax under pressure is the trait that all the greats share. Panic is the most useless emotion that humans can have in any situation. Fear is a good thing, it tells you , you have a problem, the question is ho...
#2: Michael Jai White – The Ego is The Enemy
“Don’t take yourself too seriously, if you do it is about your ego. If I get my ass kicked, I will brag about it, because then it means I am learning something. We go into these things as insecure beings, I was no different.&...
#3: Erik Paulson - "The Creative Act of Martial Arts"
“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, t...
#4: Billy Blanks – "Heart of a Champion (Transformation Begins from the Inside Out)"
“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 peo...
#5: Val Mijailovic – Karate is Harmony
“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 eas...
#6: Graciela Casillas - Trailblaze Your Own Style
“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 ...
#7: James Hundon – Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast
“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, ...
#8: Willie “The Bam” Johnson – The Art of Honest Self Expression
“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 t...
#9: Chip Townsend – Breaking Through Barriers
“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 ...
#10: Alexandre “Xande” Ribeiro – The Iron Mind of a Champion
“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...
#11: Harinder Singh – Master Your Center and Flow in Chaos
“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 b...
#12: Tom Callos – The Martial Art of Kindness
“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 lif...
#13: Fariborz Azhakh – How To Be A Master Teacher
“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...
#14: Nicolas Saignac – Express Yourself and Be Free
“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 ...
