0:00 [Music] welcome back to JK news out the closet today we have Nick and we're talking about transitioning transition and most importantly transitioning away from fighting due to injuries that you suffered and kind of pivoting into coaching how what happened how do you get there so I started uh fighting more you know and I was like all right let's just keep doing this I started an MMA fight I had my first MMA fight prep for that once again didn't think I was ready coach was like you want to do this I was really bad at grappling I was getting choked out all the time in my head I'm like I'm a ████ kickboxer dude like going to the ground is gay it's for ████ I would never do that I'm not that kind of guy I'm a standup specialist I'm a stand up specialist right so I have my first MMA fight I
0:51 fight a kickboxer and this guy's throwing fight he's throwing hands at me and I'm like oh ████ it's different in MMA gloves cuz it's like oh ████ this is cuz most of my fights before were all boxing gloves so it's about like 14 o 16 o and then um when you fight amateur MMA they give you like 8 O MMA gloves but they're really dense but they're like when you get hit with them they just it feels harder than a fist like a bare knuckle damn so this dude's throwing punches at me and I'm like oh my God this guy is trying to kill me right it's every single time L that was what I thought and in my head I'm such a cocky piece of ████ I was like oh I'm going to show you what real cut kickboxing is that's I remember saying that in my head like oh I'm going to I'm going to kickbox ████ out of you this guy starts throwing hands at me I take him down immediately I try to take him down you
1:42 know I get punched in theing head I I miss the taked down completely I almost get submitted holy ████ I end up winning that fight the hell how does that work by points so he he jumped for a headlock a guillotine right and he locked his legs up but he was against the cage so when you get a gan you need a little bit of crunch and a little bit of extension so when he put me in the Gan I pushed him against the cage so he was just crunch so he can't pull back and I started punching him punched his gut he opened up and then I just started ground and pounding but like at the time in amateur it's like they stop it really quick because they don't want you especially early in that they don't let it play out they don't let it play out that if someone looks like they're getting overwhelm they just and if they're in a bad spot and he was kind of in a bad spot like his head is against a cage you know he took some hard shot but it was
2:32 still really early she just sitting on top of him just pounding to this day I watch the video I'm like dude this is nothing this is nothing yeah this is her would have stopped at 3 minutes her Dean would have let me kill him and so like so I you know I started getting more success and I was like okay I'm fighting now right I fight another guy um and I just get held down for like three rounds so I lost by decision I couldn't my wrestling sucked I couldn't do anything so then I was like man I can't you know so that's your first loss that that was my first loss in in MMA so I was I was one in one in my MMA that's when I I finished my my amateur career at one in one an MMA 500 500 baby um and I don't know what that means after that I was like okay I need to spend time grappling so I just took some time away and I was like I'm just going to Grapple grapple grapple and then during this time where I was just trying to rebuild my and I was like the goal is
3:23 to get back into cage to go back in cage I was sparring all the time and I caught a couple uh really bad head injuries like just concussions where at the time I didn't really know what it was like what it was right like I just kept oh yeah I started throwing up after practice one day and I was just like really nauseous I was really sensitive to light and like my head hurt for like hours you know until the next day and I just felt like brain fogy and it just kept happening over and over again cuz I was a ████ idiot and then one time I saw my coach my coach was like hey you should probably get a CT scan make sure your brain's not bleeding and I was like huh he's like yeah you could ████ you get too much brain trauma you might fall asleep in the mid night and die not wake up so I'm freaking the ████ out I'm like oh my God and like you know so I you know I go to the doctor I get a CT scan and just going through this whole process is like ████ like this is real right like when it's in the
4:15 gym it's fun but then when I got to get my mom to get my insurance card and take me to the ████ take me to the CT and she's like why are we doing these scans like what is karate's crazy mom yeah you know and at this time she already knew I was fighting right oh ████ and when I was getting ready for my first MMA fight I was cutting weight was I was had to cut like 16 lbs in like 2 weeks yeah and um and this kind of all adds to the reason why I eventually decided to move away from fighting but I remember the night before my fight cuz I had weigh in the next morning I had to cut weight so I'm in a bathtub they pour a bunch of alcohol and um EPs and salt so it pulls all the the water out of your body so then you weigh in cuz you're just hanging water weight out so I'm soaking in that tub once you get out you got to lay down put a bunch of towels on you and lay there let your body sweat everything out so you get a bunch more
5:06 pounds out right my dad wakes up at like 2: a.m. in the bathroom and he's just like he's like half awake his pants are off shirt on and he's like what the ████ are you doing he just sees me on the floor by my head on the like by the toilet and just all these towels on the floor of the bathroom yeah cuz that's how they do they put you in a little towel cocoon and you just let yourself s chill there so you do like 20 on 20 and all teammates are doing it for you so I was just by myself you're doing it to yourself I was doing myself which is not safe you're not supposed to do this by yourself cuz you can pass out it's not good blah blah blah especially when you're getting that close and you're you're not and I wasn't doing it properly by any means I wasn't doing it the right way sound like I was suffering like it was awful um so my dad comes in he's like what the ████ are you doing and I was like I'm G fight tomorrow you know think ████ type ████ you know and he's like what the ████ you're fighting
5:58 he's like an MMA what and he would just flipping out on me and I've never really se he doesn't really get mad at me my dad like one other time he got mad at me was cuz I was ditching school or whatever but that was it like he was like so horrified I was like Jesus Christ and this time was the other one where he's like what the ████ are you doing like yelling at me like cting the whole St waking everybody up in the house and everyone's like it's fine it's fine just let them do it whatever those are my sisters yeah those are my sister it's fine whatever you know fall in their pajamas Why why were you cutting weight at 2: a.m. you know this fight's tomorrow yeah could sleep why you do it why' you do it earlier I needed more time I needed more and you know when you're making weight it's like you're it's very anxiety cuz you're like I don't know if I'm going to do and you're you don't know what I didn't this is my first time doing it I didn't know what the ████ I was doing so anyway just trying to sweat out yeah so it's just like having that my dad like yelling at me about that ████ like you're a ████
6:48 idiot for doing this you know I kind of like was living in my head Run free and at the time I was like yeah my dad came I didn't care I'm still going to go out there and fight you know like I'm ████ that dude and then years later I'm like oh I think that did have an effect on me you know what and my decision- making so you know fast forward to me you know go to these doctor appointments keep getting these head injuries and it wasn't like I got knocked out it was just like I would Spar spar with these big dudes and you know my neck was like my neck's not that big but at the time it was even smaller so my head was just bouncing around my brain just not being ready and my I just wasn't strong I wasn't physically prepared for any of this and the training wasn't as supervised as it should have been and
7:38 you know I ████ paid the price for it and I there was one concussion I got the last one where I was like I can't do this ████ anymore and what it was was this is like the third one and everyone already knows that this has been happening in my family and I'm at home I'm sitting in bed and I'm just like thinking in my head like dude this is ████ it this is probably it I won't be able to I can't even get through my amateur career without having head injuries like there's no ████ way right this is what I was telling myself and then seeing all my family members being so worried about me looking at me like you know seeing like the worry in Tiff's eyes like that really ████ me up cuz I was like yo this is like an act of self-preservation I have to I have to make some changes cuz I was feeling the fir and it was the concussions got progressively worse right at least to the symptoms afterwards is it cuz Tiff was scared of losing you like that's how big the injuries were well it was just
8:28 like maybe not losing me but just seeing the state that I was in for that why are you doing this to yourself exactly yeah like I'm subjecting myself to this because I can't get out of my own way of my ego or my own Pride or maybe a dream or whatever but it was like at the time that's all I wanted to do and it was a really hard decision for me to make where like you know like I'm sitting there like watching my family look at me and I'm just crying like ████ dude like what am I going to do like this is it this is probably going to be it um and then having that conversation with my coach where I was like hey man like like I don't know if I'm going to fight for a little bit I think I'm going to take some time off and you know not stay away from head trauma for a little bit and he was like okay like he was kind of like taking back a little bit he kind of knew that you were done yeah maybe you know and at that time I was like ████ I don't know what else I'm going to do I spent all my time developing these
9:20 skills that in my head I'm not even that good at like I'm kind of just mediocre right clearly the evidence is showing I can't even defend myself but and then so check him out for coaching exactly uh and and my coach was like Hey you start coaching you start teaching the kids classes and and and that's what kind of sparked a lot more joy for me like even after I won a fight I'd feel like Oh and it was only you know obviously a couple but like after I would win I'd be like kind of flat you just I didn't really feel anything it was more neutral like it was just like like you didn't feel like a high every time it was just like I was really stressed out for a really long time and then I did it and I just feel a sense of relief and then it's like on to the next one and that's why it's really crazy in fighting where you see guys that can't
10:11 stay away from the sport because so much of their life has been that for 10 years where every major life event is almost like bookmarked by a big fight in their life or like oh I remember this time in my life was when I was fighting at this stage or I was fighting amateurs and I went to UFC or whatever so so it's just all you all you do and during all that training you do pick up a lot of injuries and residual damage right and for me I just picked up too much and so anyway so the coaches started saying hey start coaching start taking some time with kids and like being able to be productive and help somebody get from a beginner stage to like learn a couple more moves like at that time was like really addicting for me it was really it gave me a sense of joy and I was like oh this is really cool like this is really
11:03 fun this is and then trying to be really particular with like my coaching cues how can I express this better I found myself trying to get better at that craft naturally without having to have any like extra guidance like it just in my head I was such a hard learner growing up like I was slow at everything it took me till I was like 12 years old to learn how to ████ write a bike dude like so my head I'm like dude I'm a ████ idiot it took me to I didn't learn how to retails in like third grade like I was just behind on everything and you know I had to get tutors for everything so in my head anytime I had a teacher that I really enjoyed or really felt like could connect to me I would always remember that person I always be like man that made a really big impact on me so flip side me a couple years later having a little bit more experience having this identity of being a fighter and being able to pass that on to maybe some of the younger kids or
11:55 somebody else who just started the gym and I'm like oh I know what position you've been at hey just stay the course keep doing X Y and Z you'll get to where you want to be at like that was like really cool for me and that that gave me a new sense of purpose and um it it it made it a lot easier of a transition from doing all the fighting stuff because that was all I really wanted to do and so then ever since then I was just like coaching coaching coaching and then when one of the pros was like hey man you want to just hold some myths for me for my next Pro fight this is going be my first pro fight can you can you Corner me I was like you want me to Corner you what the ████ right so it it's just like you just feel like oh that's the next level that's that's cool and you you go you you go coach a guy for his first pro fight you know he paid you a couple a couple
12:46 hundred bucks like hey thanks for all the work that you I'm like whoa this is crazy and I'm like 21 22 right so I'm like man I just got to pay a couple hundred bucks for doing something I was going to do for free anyway like I would have helped this guy no matter what yeah so I was like man this is this is the life right like this is this is conning these fols yeah like these guys they have no idea and then you know then you get some people come in where they go hey man like one of my first clients he's actually a boxing coach now he's one of my good buddies but he was like Hey can you hold some Ms for me I'll pay you for an hour I was like what and at the time as a 22-year-old you tell somebody I'll pay you 70 bucks for an hour just a whole Miss for me and train me I was like you got paid I'm I'm getting paid 70 an hour yeah that's the standard R that's some ████ nurses like nurses make that I don't have to go to school for this legit like this is crazy right and it was something I love
13:38 to do I love training with people I love like and just seeing progression in people and like oh ████ like I helped them do that like that's pretty ████ pretty awesome so that that just kept me in the game that just kept me moving forward and um one thing led to another and but what what what really kept me in it was like just working with the kids man working with kids was really fun it was awesome and it kept me focused I think during that time because I once again it was another period where I just felt lost I just was like this was kind of not necessarily taken away from me but do you still work with the kids at linhardt yeah I'm starting to again because my schedule kind of opened up a little bit so I want to start spending more time with the the kids program so we're all trying to like kickboxing only Jitsu I'm only bringing this up because you wanted me to yeah say um no you you you kind of uh mentioned that moving on
14:28 from your dream of being an MMA fighter SL eventual Champion it was a tough pill for you to swallow and to this day you feel like a failure about it yeah part of me still feels like man like if I were to turn back to the time like clock like what would I do different like how would I change things right and I think it is an important exercise to do but it's also like in the grand schem of things it's like obviously you can't turn back time there's nothing you can do about it so it is what it is right so that's the one thing that keeps me like just moving forward and being okay with it and kind of swalling that pill but dude forever I just felt felt like a failure and I still kind of do in that way a little bit like because you gave up on your dream yeah cuz part of me feels like did I quit too early did I just turn my back on it and just say when when it got hard I just said I took my ball and went home like did I that's what I I think about you know but you don't know if that fourth concussion was going to be the last exactly exactly
15:18 exactly and some of these dudes coming out of Russia and ████ like that they got nothing else to live for brother I got fighting and and you had ████ you know what I mean and when I saw other Pro fighters who I looked up to and they came and trained with us and seeing how kind of like their life that they live now as like 4year olds or 30y olds like late 30s I was like I don't know if that's the life I want from him there life like no like at the time some of the pro Fighters were fighting at the highest level Champs and stuff one of them a couple of them came and trained with us and you get to meet some of these guys and you know a lot of these guys are solid down Earth dudes but like they were the man in the gym but outside of the gym they're rest of their life was kind of all over the place whether it was family life whether it was their career whether it was like their ability to move on from fighting it was like
16:08 that was their identity and they just stuck with it like I'm a fighter you know which is fine you know but I knew I couldn't do that for myself I was like I can't just say I had two I had four ████ amateur fights I can't move on my life saying like I'm a ████ fighter like I'm a seasoned vet yeah it's like me playing High School football and be like yeah Bundy I can coach in NFL it's like no it's not how that works right it's like um so I knew I had to I had a lot to prove for my own self like I had to I feel like I I didn't get to prove what I wanted to prove in my own knowledge of my own skill base on what I could have done maybe in MMA or whatever um but I had to like I go okay well maybe I could do that with coaching but going back to the whole failure thing like no matter what I feel like that'll always kind of be
16:58 there but that's okay mhm you know and for a while it took me a while it took me a while to to to to be okay with it do you think cuz it was always hanging over my head yeah so like you're you're what you're like 32 right yeah so like I feel like you have so much more time cuz like almost almost almost 10 years older than you but then like I think you're looking at it at such a small time frame cuz your story actually reminds me of Freddy roaches you know you know like he wanted to be a fighter it didn't really pan out for him and then he went to like alcoholism and all that and then he came back but what he does now overshadowed his being a fighter so you might make this pivot where Nick the coach or something else overshadows and
17:48 you become a legend in like this other thing that can happen too mhm well also you remember that WWE guy who got into MMA real quick got his ass absolutely beat and now everyone just sees him as a huge joke oh see him Punk yeah I mean there's a level of that too where it's like man good thing you just said you know what this ain't for me in that way no for sure because like at the time everything in my life was fighting right that was it that's all I had that's all I would look forward to that's all I cared about so you know it had I had to to pull away from it like there was just there was nothing I could do outside of that cuz once probably not a good thing cuz also too you you see guys who just had like okay careers yeah yeah and at that time they had nothing to show for and then like you get a pro fight you get paid like, bucks to show up maybe a thousand to win
18:38 on a local show and I was like dude ████ that like I don't want to do that if I coach like ████ 10 clients throughout the week I can make that money in a week with no CTE yeah cuz you're also dedicating it's it's almost opportunity cost that you you're giving up time commitment that you have to put into it and then it may not pan out like I could you know ████ get a det a couple of our guys now a couple of some amateur guys from the same team that we're fighting at some of them were on their way to go pro they had the first pro fight and his first pro fight detach retina oh no second time oh Jesus can't fight anymore right yeah and luckily he was able to Pivot he's able to he's doing his other Media company and he's moving he's he he's doing his thing but he he's a hustler he's he's that kind of guy um and for some guys they just stick around and
19:29 they just don't know when to to turn their back on it and when to pick up their ████ and go if uh at your time that you were fighting yeah if you were to like kind of rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 and then in whatever you consider I'm assuming now as a coach rate yourself where you're at on a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate yourself I was probably like a five back then five so seven seven now seven seven now that's how he rates himself exactly but I've seen him fight maybe like a six and a half seven now as far as like where I'm at skill-wise as a coach as a coach yeah cuz you know there's always like in my head I know there's there's almost there there's always more I could do like yeah so you think you were a Five Fighter back then so like a seven but and a six and a half coach now so like a eight maybe sick I don't know i' I've
20:20 been through a lot of coaches and he's probably one of the more patient ones it's different cuz like most coaches I think they were themselves phenoms or they were like quick to learn and they were great athletes and then they just like well I need money so I'm going to be a coach or a teacher and they have no patience cuz they were so good at it it's a skill to teach it's a and then they look at you like you're a ████ idiot you can't get it quick enough well Tom Brady said he would never want to be a coach because he doesn't know how to like do that yeah but Nick was the one of the first coaches where I felt like oh not only am I learning like I'm not being rushed to learn like it was weird it's cuz I taught the kids man like the kids really help me because it's like the kids listen better than the adults honestly like when you get them at a certain age like if they could focus for a little bit and you know how to like keep control of the room keep control of the environment like you you could teach
21:11 a kid a lot and they could do some really cool stuff and techniques that are really complex and really complicated that some adults can't learn and do just because of like their brain and they're constantly like ████ with themselves but the kids are so free that you can kind of like as long as you give them the right cue the right like progression for their skill that you're trying to teach them they could ████ pick up anything and that was that gave me a really good foundation cuz I could if I could teach a 5-year-old how to kickbox or do Jiu-Jitsu or wrestle and do all three I could do that for any adult anybody anybody that walks in it's funny cuz I think that's where it comes out for you is that like if I were to ask you hey are you a good coach you'd be like no I suck but then like if I were to say hey could you have helped Jason chenny win that fight you would absolutely say yes and I think like when you put the subject in your face you're like you're so confident that like you
22:02 are the best person for this job but then it's funny when you just if it's just you yourself from one if you're alone you're like I suck he's like I can teach the kids you you got to stay humble you know what I mean yeah but I like I like that when it comes down to the task that that's when it comes out that so we're going to move away from talking about grooming kids and we're going to talk about talk going solo and starting his own personal training Fitness business on the next one so stay bye see you there bye Nick love the kids
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