No Apologies: Three Champions Take on Taekwondo's Hard Truths

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here we come Perez Moreno, jennings, the triple
threat.
Olympic gold, no doubt, noregrets.
Warehouse 15, the truth weunpack.
No sugar coat, no holding back,Sorry, not sorry for the words
we choose.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's the truth.
Things that's on you, not us,to lose Taekwondo's raw.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
We lay it bare.
Your feelings might bruise, butwe just don't care.
We speak our minds.
No apologies sent.
This ain't no therapy session.
This commentary heaven sent.
You think your hot stuff ablack belt elite?
We've seen it all, from thehead to the feet the politics,
the favoritism, the fake, thegrandstanders, the ones who just
take we bled and we train reachthe top of the game.

(00:43):
So don't lecture us it's acrying shame.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Sorry, not sorry for the words we choose.
Welcome, we are back.
It is the Warehouse 15, not the16, not the 14, and you are
here with the Grandmaster ofDisaster and Olympic coach,
Olympic athlete, Olympiceverything, Coach Juan Moreno
and TJ, the most importantperson in the world, at least to
himself.
How are we doing today, CoachTJ?

(01:14):
He's so ridiculous.
The disrespect I get forgetting an Olympic bronze?
No, no, it's good, it's allgood.
No, no, I was just.
I'm loving those picturesbehind you.
You've changed the Joker intothe Lions and I love these.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
It's all good.
No, no, I was just.
I'm loving those pictures.
Behind you, you've changed theJoker into the lions and I love
these positions Is this us Like?

Speaker 3 (01:30):
is this the three of us up here Like which one's me?
If it's the three of us, it'sgotta be the one doing the most
talking in the middle.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
It's gotta be that, bob.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Exactly turning sideways.
Well, actually that might beyou on the side, because it's
turned sideways like a mugshot.
I mean probably nothingunfamiliar to you All right,
coach Moreno?
How are you doing, sir?

Speaker 5 (01:55):
I'm good.
I'm good, I'm getting ready forcrazy trips.
I'm heading to Marylandtomorrow to see one of my
coaches, coach Thomas Jenkins,some folks out there and come
back from that on Sunday.
Then I'll see TJ out inCharlotte for the Grand Prix
Challenge that starts next week.
I'm going to arrive on Tuesdaynight.
I got to make a little detourin the middle there.

(02:16):
One of my children aregraduating from high school.
My third child is graduatingfrom high school, so I got to
make a West Coast trip and thencome back and then go to the
Grand Prix and then we got thereally cool camp that I'm super
excited about.
I know we've mentioned it a fewdifferent times, but I'm really
happy to bring a bunch ofpeople together and you know
we're going to be at CoachJennings' new facility, so

(02:36):
that's going to be awesome and,yeah, it's going to be a long,
long trip, a long time away fromhome.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
But you got to do what you got to do Got to do
what you got to do.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
I'm excited about the training.
Yeah, excellence only happenswhen excellent people get
together, and I wish I could bethere to see Coach TJ's new
place.
I know that it's stellar.
How is membership going, coach?

Speaker 4 (02:58):
It's good.
We're just pushing advertisingand doing all that thing.
It's like a new learning curve.
You, you know it's like a wholedifferent twist on things.
I I have a lot of help, a lotof support.
A lot of people have reachedout to me, you know, gave me
their advice on how they've donethings and put me in good, good
direction.
So we're doing it, I'm building.
I'm just super excited, likeyou said, about the camp coming
up soon to have all those people.
That'll be a good pulling point, you know, to have all the

(03:19):
international coaches and havethe international athletes just
trade in the gym and get a goodfeel.
For me it's exciting becauseit'll be the first time to have
that many people in a room.
So get a good idea of what itfeels like on a 35 plus person
hot day in the room, you know.
So I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, I'm going to give you.
I'm going to give you twopieces of advice, and I used
both of them when I they came tome.
Number one was get with franksilverman.
I'm going to get you his numberand I'll have Frank have his
people reach out to you.
I think Frank is handling moreof the wealth management from
Maya now, but Maya was justinstrumental in my success when
I first opened up.
You know, he gave me greatadvice, taught me how to do

(03:55):
everything that I know how to dotoday with regard to marketing.
And then the second thing, theother piece of advice I'd give
you, is um Spark.
Spark has been instrumental inus managing our website and our
payables.
And Chung Park and Rob and RonSell they are just doing a great
job and I know they're they'redown that way as well, and those

(04:17):
are two guys, um that I don't.
They don't sponsor us if I wishthey would now that we've
mentioned them on the podcast.
But the um really just great,great stuff.
And I I think you do thosethings.
It'll accelerate your growth inyour school more quickly than
anything else that I could thinkof tj.

Speaker 5 (04:36):
You know um you know?
Do you remember logan from uhnew mexico?
yes, I do and I remember, uhyeah, blackman, mr blackman,
blackman and his wife, they'rereally big into Maya and their
consultants and he said the samething.
There's a couple of people inthe Maya Listen Maya and you
know Spark.
They're the giants of themartial art.
You know community world as itcomes to business.

(04:59):
You know help and support.
So I mean it's something tolook into.
But I was actually going to askyou before you.
You said you gave your advice.
You know, young, like TJ, likeyour, your vision of of your
peak performance center there isa little bit more towards
competitive high performanceversus.
I mean, of course you'd love tohave a thousand of people,

(05:24):
right, but like you're, you'reyou're more focused on.

Speaker 4 (05:26):
You know, athletic development, am, am, I, am I
right there?
Yeah, absolutely, I thinkthat's that's the direction I
want to go with everything andwe do a little bit of um, uh,
strength and conditioning kindof personal training, kind of
like um, adult program stuff,but also, yeah, just the
development of the sport,development of the kids,
development of the athletes froma, from a younger age, older
age, wherever.
Wherever you get in, you fit in, you know, but just definitely
I want it to be a higher level,higher level technical center,

(05:49):
hopefully one day getting it tothe point where we can be a
full-time sponsored like a club,like the European club or Asian
club, whatever it is, where Ihave full-blown sponsors and
have people paying for the teamto travel and all that stuff
like that.
I just want to make itaccessible for the people that
want to do it to the highestlevels.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
You know Well we had built a model when I first
opened the first facility.
I did the Olympic Committeescholarship me into a master's
program in Lausanne called Memos, and Bob Gambardello did it.
I did it and a few others havedone it, and Bob Gambardello did
it, I did it and a few othershave done it, and my thesis was

(06:27):
on how do you do elite-levelsport and how do you still build
grassroots development.
And so I came up with a modelfor grassroots development that
I'll speak with you aboutoffline and how it funds high
performance.
And we started that way and wehad 850 guys in my school and
probably back then a hundred ofthem competing, which is a lot.

(06:49):
Now I've changed my modelbecause I'm old and lazy, but
there is a way to build agrassroot because you want to
fill that pipeline.
Well, actually it's a topicwe'll talk about later.
But, um, you can do it therefor sure.
And then I was was a littleconfused because you can get a
sponsor, I mean for a guy.
You get your art at Walmart andI'm sure you can get Walmart to

(07:10):
sponsor your training center.
You know the lion paintings.
But and I was slightly a littlemore confused because when Juan
started talking about MrBlackman.
I thought he was speaking about.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
All right.
And then we're moving on.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I got my haircut.
I got no, no hold on, I got my.

Speaker 4 (07:27):
I don't want any letters.
I got my.
I got, I got my am I going toget canceled?

Speaker 3 (07:33):
I got my haircut by a Brazilian guy who didn't speak
English and this is what I endedup with.
So I want to talk.
I know we've got the BrazilianOpen coming up.

Speaker 5 (07:42):
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We got to go back.
We talked about that last time,yeah, but what we need to talk
about is the damn shirt you'rewearing, because, honestly, I'm
Brazilian, so are your sleevesCalm?

Speaker 3 (07:52):
down, here it comes, you asked for it.
You asked for it, oh my God.
You know, don just got off.

Speaker 5 (08:05):
I'm like 64 and a half.
There you go.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
That's enough.
Listen, I got the one day ofsunshine here in beautiful
Northern California, where weget three days of something that
resembles spring or summer andthe rest is what it is.
So I was on my bike today today, but it actually was cold out.
I had this under my um blackand gold jacket that I wore

(08:30):
hiding all my loveliness so thatI don't get attacked by various
and sundried people becausethis is northern california yeah
, all right.

Speaker 5 (08:40):
Hey, let's talk a little, just get a quick no no,
no, what is this?

Speaker 3 (08:46):
what is this?
Turmeric, orange and turmericjuice from Trader Joe's?
Trader Joe's is, if you'relistening, you know.
Sorry, not sorry, and I didhave my cup of espresso right
before this.
That looks delicious.
And then, tj, I see you got MD4040, what is it called?
Or what do you got?
What are you drinking overthere?

Speaker 5 (09:05):
let's go.
You're getting very stereotypicright now.
Man, I see you got.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
MD 4040.
What is it called?
You're getting very stereotypicright now, man.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
No, no, no, no, no, not stereotypical, you're in the
border of racism right there,man, that's border you might be
sliding off, man, I'm not quitesure.
I didn't mention it.
It's cut off.
For real.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
This is good that went south quickly, but that's a
lot of foam in that coffee.
Go ahead.
What do we got?

Speaker 5 (09:31):
let's go, it's empty.
No, no, I'm just gonna give aquick recap about the brazilian
open, or the real open.
I thought uh, I thought it waskind of cool because I wanted to
check this out the on the men'sside they won five out of eight
gold medals and on the women'sside they won three out of eight
, but in every single final theyhad a Brazil athlete and

(09:51):
actually I think I could throwit.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Guy and girl side, both sides, boys and girls, both
sides, both sides Were there alot of other people there,
though, as far as countries andall that stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (10:08):
Listen, countries and all stuff like that, listen,
listen.
I mean it's a little.
Of course there was.
Of course there's morebrazilians, you know, but
there's some spanish dudes there, there's chile, there was costa
rica, there was mexico, therewas a few, you know, a handful
of americans.
I mean, I expected, obviously,the brazilians to do a little
bit better, but I thoughtsomebody would trip somebody up
and it went a little bit morefinals, because it always
happens, you know, we I meanthere's way more americans at
the us open than anybody else,but that doesn't stop the, the
gold medals from gettingdispersed to all those other

(10:29):
people.
So I thought it was pretty cool.
You know that.
That.
I mean, maybe that's the modelyou want, right, you want to,
you want to have your open andyou want your people to win your
open, so that, I mean so youcan get the olympic ranking
points.
So, and many of them, we hadbrazil and brazil finals and we
had some interesting, likenational team athletes, I think,

(10:51):
if I let me count, I know for afact, we had one, two, three
national team athletes what Iwould consider very good lose to
other brazilians, like andagain, that's another good for
me, another good, I don't thinkthat's a bad thing for them.
I take it as a good thing thatwe have other people pushing,
you know, and even a couple ofthe national team guys they had.

(11:13):
You know, they got pushed inthree rounds and it was.
It's pretty interesting to havethat domestic, that domestic
depth that we've talked about TJfor so long.
I think it was probably missingover here.
I mean, I could be wrong, butyeah, in Brazil I think we saw
that a lot.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
So yeah, it was always from a competitive
standpoint.
As far as in the U S it wasalways.
It was a little bit tougherthan this as far as the field
was a little bit more packedwith people and then younger
people were coming up quick andthey had shot.
I think they it's crazy.
We People were coming up quickand they had shot.
I think they it's crazy.
We didn't do as manytournaments, but I feel like
they had shots at the older guys.
They had shots to, to be better, to get in front of them, to to
, you know, to force a win andchange the direction of things.

Speaker 5 (11:52):
But it's Well, listen , we're right now they're having
a.
We have a junior camp Going onin Rio and two of our Olympic
athletes went there on twodifferent days just for sparring
.
Like you know what I'm saying.
Like they, you know, nacinowent, milena went, so we got one
guy, one girl and they're justthey're out there fighting with
all the juniors.
You know what I mean.
Think about that.

(12:13):
They're getting a shot atOlympic level athletes, world
championship medal athletes,both Pan American Games
champions.
I mean that's pretty cool.
I think that they're highly yeah, they're highly regarded in
Brazil, but yet they make timeto go over to those training
camps.
Think about this this is ajunior training camp and they go
there to work out with them,but that's.
We keep talking about this,giving back.

(12:36):
We talk about building thefuture.
I think that's how you do itright.
I mean, why not have some ofour top-level athletes go to the
Cadet World Championships or goto a training camp?
Well, because we don't havetraining camps.
That's why.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
Yeah, didn't work out , I think when I was on the
junior team, I think we trainedwith the senior team at one
point like crossover at the OTC,or it was the Olympic Training
Center team, not the nationalteam itself.
It was the Olympic TrainingCenter residence team that the
junior team went out there forour um, our prep camps.
We used to train with them andstuff that was interesting.
We used to have that littledynamic.
I mean we split the roomsometime.
You'd have the junior team guyscheering for the junior team

(13:11):
person against, like this OTCteam.
They created this like it wascool.
You know, and you're in it.
When I was in a room with likethe they were, these guys were
you know medalists and you knowthe world championships.
There were big guys in the roomwith us.

Speaker 5 (13:23):
It was cool well, they're men, men, men and women.
You guys were kids.
I mean, to be honest with you,I was herb.
You were talking about, I meana couple podcasts ago, about the
first generation olympictraining center athletes, which
I totally agree with you.
I think there was, I don't know95 percent of them didn't
deserve to be there, but theywere there because of theiration
.
I think it kind of got a littlebit better for a while.

(13:46):
But when I was there, I wouldsay that I was the second
generation and I remember everyjunior camp that came 200, 300
kids, 300 kids and we had to becoaches.
So the Olympic Training Centercoach, dave Sung Lee, would lead
the camp and each one of usathletes had 20, 30, 40 kids and

(14:07):
that was our team and it waslike our team is going to line
up first, our team is going tobe ready, our team is going to
do drills, our team is going totrain afterwards.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
This was for the.
It was just a junior trainingcamp.

Speaker 5 (14:18):
Yeah, just junior training camp.
So we always were integratedwith them.
No-transcript.
I just feel like there was alittle bit more cohesion, you
know.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
You're building a culture.
So what you're talking about ishow do you build a culture and
how do you build continuity andhow do you build throughput?
So, like, philosophically, Iultimately believe that the
senior athletes, to the best oftheir ability, should learn how
to teach, coach and and becomesympathetic and empathetic with

(15:00):
the younger athletes.
So you, when you do that,that's what happens.
So when you take the olderathletes and you have them coach
the junior team athletes,you're building a culture where
the younger athletes over timelearn to respect their seniors,
as opposed to telling them torespect them, because they
coached them and they taughtthem.
So now, when they idolize youguys, so when they see you and
you teach them, they'll rememberthat for a lifetime and then

(15:22):
they'll also build a culturethemselves to give back.
You know, as we talk every weeknot we me, because I'm obsessed
, obviously my son I make himactually coach younger athletes
for free.
So any kid that likes soccer inmy orbit, you know I'll offer
my son up and he goes out for anhour or two with the kid and
and he helps the kid in soccer.

(15:43):
The kid might be nine or tenyears old and my son's just
turned 17, but he's learning afirst of all to give back, be
learning how to teach and orcoach and transfer information.
See, he's remembering and beingreminded that he couldn't have
gotten to the places that he'sgotten to.
Had somebody older and betternot done that with him in his

(16:04):
situation.
You know, he had a player,professional player, two, two
professional players from theearthquakes helping him, and
then he had Jason Hahn Dr Hahn,good friend of all of ours and
teammate.
He was kind enough to hook meup with one of his guys from the
LAFC, strength and agilityright.
So I made a phone call andJason and I have a good

(16:26):
relationship and so he hooked meup with this guy and coach, dan
and Guzman, who runs a actuallya program kind of like you
coach, and he does it down inSouthern California.
Now he's gone into, like, thehealth and wellness space as
well.
But that was was like.
Imagine a kid, nico's age three, four years ago, working with a

(16:48):
guy from a professional team.
Forget about whether theinformation is good or not,
which it was, the allure of it,how it boosts his confidence.
Because when you get thatopportunity, those kids who come
to the junior camps that youguys used to be involved in.
They are like dude.
I train with the national teamguy, so when they go in there
and they try something, they'relike he taught me to do it, it's

(17:09):
going to work, and sure enoughit does.
Why?
In part because it's goodinformation.
The other part is because hebelieves it's going to work.
He has confidence.
And one of the downfalls of thecurrent administration in USA
Taekwondo is the lack of givingback.
It's become exclusionary asopposed to inclusive, and when

(17:32):
you make exclusionary things youraise things to a level where
people don't believe they haveaccess to it, don't have access
to it and don't want to be partof it.
So how many people do you knowpersonally, each of you that
have exited the sport, that justsay you know what, I don't, I
don't want?
I mean, I could name off thetop of my head four, five, six

(17:54):
high level coaches, high levelathletes that did the sport of
the high level.
Let's say I'm not showing upwhat, for what?
For what reason?
You know so and I think that'sthe.
That's a cultural issue.
You know that um we need totalk about at some point.
And then it's a pipeline issueand, tj, as you build your

(18:14):
facility.
You know you need to thinkabout the, the pipeline.
You are a conduit to excellence.
You are an athlete who has swamat the deepest levels of our
sport in virtually everyincarnation of it.
You were in the Army, you werepart of that program.

(18:37):
You were in USA Taekwondo, bothas an athlete and as a coach.
You've been to the Olympics.
You are, and Coach Moreno tootoo.
You guys are in the mix and, bythe way, still in it.
You're still in the day-to-dayof it.
You've gone through what Iwould consider to be the hardest
part, which was the old schoolmethod, to the new part, which

(18:58):
is arguably as hard.
Um, although I tease about itall the time, you guys have seen
it all.
So you have the mostinformation.
You have the most.
So you have the mostinformation, you have the most
experience, you have the mostknowledge.
Yet in a large part you'residelined domestically.
You know, and I think that's ashame too.

Speaker 5 (19:17):
Real fast, I'll go ahead.

Speaker 4 (19:19):
Yeah, I think, disconnecting to the culture
thing and talk about the new gymand everything, I think that's
the biggest thing for me.
I want it to be a place wherepeople can come in, you know,
train for real.
We, we have the idea, you know,like back in the day when I
came to Miami coaches, becausethe room was so heavy, everybody
there wanted to win.
They wanted to win at whateverlevel they were at, from the
kids all the way through.

(19:40):
It was just that place and wedidn't have to, we didn't have
to pretend to be supertraditional and if I Chedi
Apkunye and all that stuff, youknow, obviously we were
respectful to the people we needto be respectful to, but we're
allowed to focus on training and, like, be ourselves in training
and compete with each other,you know, and that's that.
That in itself is important.
I think sometimes creatingthose rooms are tough, obviously

(20:02):
, but I said I get anopportunity to teach Taekwondo
the way that I think I want togive it to them at what levels
and you know how to progressthrough the belts.
I want it to feel like, evenmaybe a little closer to like a
boxing gym, feel a little bit,you know that like kind of
roughness a little bit, thatacceptance of let's come here
work together from the littleguys all the way through.
So I'm excited.

Speaker 5 (20:24):
I think listen I mean , you know it's kind of fun for
you, tj is.
We talk since we started thispodcast we've talked about lack
of culture, building culture,giving back development, world
class, all this stuff.
And so here you are, you gotyour new place and you have your
chance to kind of moldeverybody that comes.
And it's going to be like this.
But Herb told me one time Idon't know if you remember this,

(20:46):
I actually told this story thismorning to my kid, michael and
I learned from Magic Johnson andArlene Lemus the same thing.
They were both obviouslyamazing in their own disciplines
, but they weren't very good atcoaching and it was because they

(21:06):
were so great at what they did.
They couldn't understand whyother people didn't think like
them and want it like them andgive it like them.
And I remember Young, you toldme, you said you said, juan,
your challenge is going to beteaching and giving what you
know inherently, what you knowinstinctively.
How do you verbalize it?
How do you systematicallyprogram it?
And I think TJ is a little bitfurther on along than me when I

(21:29):
first started.
But that is going to be nowthat you have your own place,
people every single day, peoplecoming in, going through,
leaving some staying longer thanothers.
You have a chance to really putyour stamp on people and take
all this knowledge and all thisum, expertise and experience and
I mean different than even me,because when I started, like I

(21:52):
was making it up as I was going,you know I'm saying like, think
about that.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
like there wasn't a program like you're talking
about, at that time it was justdo my best and um, um, but you
but you say, you say somethingthat matters right, and, and
what you said was you know, youtook it upon yourself, right,
there's, and we talk about thisall the time, and Gambardello
used to talk about it, um, cause, we learned it in that memos

(22:18):
program.
It was folk artist.
Are you a folk artist?
And you remember when wedeveloped the coaching program,
folk artist?
you and I?
If you're a folk artist, thatmeans that you can.
You can make this thing right,you can carve it, you can do it.
You have no idea how to teachsomebody to do it, but you
yourself did it for yourself.
It's only at the moment whereyou try to transfer information

(22:42):
to someone else that you canmake sense of it in the sense of
I try to teach and I neverwanted to teach, by the way,
because I thought I was terribleat taekwondo.
I thought I sucked at taekwondo.
I thought I was just good atdoing my version of taekwondo.
My round kick wasn't thetraditional Korean one.
None of of my kicks were mykicks were my kicks.

(23:04):
I tried, but I never tried tobe like them.
So when it came time to teach.
I had the imposter syndromewhere I didn't feel that I had
anything to teach.
And then I realized, as Istarted to decide to teach,
because I had athletes I wantedto help.
My method is what I had toteach, not what I did athletes I

(23:27):
wanted to help.
My method is what I had toteach, not what I did, how I did
it, but, more importantly, howI trained and how I systematized
myself.
My success came through that.
So it wasn't until I started toteach that I truly understood.
And I remember and you may notremember, coach, but you and I
sat in the room with anothercoach and we had to, because we
were writing a manual.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
We had to describe in words how to do these kicks,
how to do these concepts, andthat's when you truly know, if
you know something right that'swhat I was gonna go with tj,
like I mean, you know, like howmany times you run a training
camp or a seminar or just aregular class and you, just you

(24:08):
come up with something andyou're like that was fricking
pretty good.
You know, I got to rememberthat for the marriage.
I think the same thing goeswith athletes.
You know, like, think about youbeat things into people, but
like if I were you, I would takesome of my better kids and be
like, hey, go work with Johnnyover there for 30 minutes, 20
minutes.
You know, make sure his cut isgood or what, because they will

(24:29):
grow from that.
I know it sucks, you know, butit's a Mr Miyagi training tool,
right?
Well, I got to do this.
But just by them verbalizingwhatever, they will get it so
much better.
I mean, you can't do that with10 and 11, 12 year olds probably
, but I'm telling you, with someof your older guys they would.
They probably benefit from that.

(24:49):
So I don't know, it's kind of alittle advice I'd give there,
you know, for your school, but Idon't know.
I wanted to ask both of youguys, cause something like this
popped up for me when is it tooearly to specialize.
Specialize meaning home school18 years old.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
So the Olympic Committee did a study on this
and a good friend of mine, MikeLeonard, who was vice president
of the Olympic Committee.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
Are you saying 18 is too early?

Speaker 3 (25:19):
You're saying 18 is too early to specialize.
No 18 is before 18.
So here's the mistake and it'shappening across the country.
So the US Olympic Committeelooked at athletic development
in countries and they realizedthat athletes are best not to
specialize in a sport tillthey're roughly 18 years old.
And the reason for that is theyburn out and all the muscle

(25:42):
development.
You're better off to do avariety of sports and with
athleticism you're better to dolearning how to run incredibly
fast.
Stop and turn.
Those three attributes in anysport explosiveness, stopping
and turning, whether it'staekwondo, whatever, soccer,

(26:03):
basketball, those athleticagility, speed development you
specialize after 18.
The problem is that the systemin the United States and in some
other countries has specializedto such a degree that athletes
get injuries prone to sportbecause they don't cross train
enough and they don't fullydevelop.

(26:23):
And so the United States andits AAU program, for example, in
basketball, if you don'tspecialize, you can't compete at
that 12 to 13, 14.
Yeah, and so you're forced tospecialize.
Yeah, but you're killing yourathletic development.

Speaker 5 (26:41):
But it's not even that.
Nowadays the coaches don'tallow that.
They're like if you're playinglike really good football, you
know, and you're on one of theseteams, they're like you gotta,
if you want to play basketball,then then we're not gonna.
We're not gonna consider youfor our football team or soccer.

Speaker 6 (26:54):
Same thing, soccer you can't play soccer that
happened to my son like oh, I'mgonna go play basketball.

Speaker 5 (26:59):
No coach, they'd be like hell.
No, I mean, that's fine play,we're going to get somebody else
.
So I just was, I don't know.
I mean, what do you think, tj?
Let's go from our gut, our gut,taekwondo.
Let's keep it taekwondo.
I didn't care less about soccerman.
Quit talking about soccer man.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
I think 11, at this age, at this point, 11 and 12
years old.
I, at this, at this age, atthis point, 11 and 12 years old
I'm going to say 11 and 12, youmade a decision.
I mean, I started, I startedTaekwondo when I was 11, but I
started Olympic style, likegoing in that direction, at 12.
So a year in I was doing justsport, Taekwondo.
So I think 11.

Speaker 5 (27:34):
Well now I agree to say, because then cadets is
right there at 12.
Right, but let me ask you thisOkay, specializing, this is what
you're doing.
Let me just make it moreextreme Homeschooling, strength
conditioning, special classes,that kind of specialization.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
No, that's crazy.
I mean that's not crazy.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
Yeah, I think it's, that's where I was going with it
.

Speaker 4 (27:54):
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's a lot at that age.
I don't even.
I mean, they should just beworking on like we were talking
about earlier, like bodymovements and basic movements as
far as, like, maybe that's astrength and conditioning and
all this stuff, but I feel likethat's stuff you get from your,
your normal coach.
I don't think you're allinvolved to the point of your
career where you need aspecialized strength and
conditioning coach at 10, 11years old.
You know, 12 years old, I don'tI think so it's.

Speaker 5 (28:19):
I mean a couple things because I know like a lot
of parents want that you know.
And then what happened?
Here's what I'm going to say.
Like, I see the pros and consright.
You got homeschooling, you cantravel more to events and you
have to worry about missingschool we know that's a big
issue.
You do have more time to train,get some extra classes, so
you're going to have a probablyan advantage or a bump up in
your level because you're doingmore reps and you're probably

(28:42):
going to improve a littlequicker.
But at what?
Where's the payoff?
At what?
When all of a sudden they wakeup a year down the road and
they're like I'm tired becausethey literally doubled their,
their output, right Fromtraining five days a week at
night maybe a couple to you knowtraining in the morning, monday
, Tuesday, wednesday, thursday,friday, and they do that for a
month or two months or threemonths or four months or six

(29:03):
months or eight months a yearand they're like they have no
more interest, no more passion,no more fire.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
Yeah, I also think at that age too, I mean they're
hearing it from too many peopleat that point.
I think if you're just tryingto teach them Taekwondo, motion
or basic body movements, or I'mtalking like developing this
sport, having strength andconditioning, I think they're
just hearing it from too manypeople at that point.
Like I said, I think it shouldjust be coming from maybe the
Taekwondo side, because that'swhat happens.
Right, there's no way at 12 or13, I had a strength and

(29:33):
conditioning coach.

Speaker 5 (29:33):
It was even thought about that way you just learn
Taekwondo, you learn how to gofast, you learn how to keep your
balance that those things wereimportant and then all the
strength and conditioning for mecame like way later and it
packaged me and gave me extraworkouts, different ways to do
the same things we're alreadydoing.
You know it's so funny, herb.
You know I'm not an educatedperson.

(29:54):
I love telling people I'm not aformally educated person, I
didn't go to university, butit's funny how many things that
I did, kind of again intuitively.
So my three levels, you knowwhere, obviously at the
beginning, is to learn Taekwondo.
Make sure you kick well, youmove well, you block well, you
can do combinations.
Your Taekwondo level was notspecific to herb or to want.

(30:17):
It was good across the board.
You had good fundamentals,everything.
Then as you reach an age oflike four, 15, because at the
time that's when juniors was 15,16, 17.
This is when we start toincorporate strength
conditioning, bounding, jumping.
Once they have body control,then they can lift some weights.
And then mastery is when you'rein the senior 19, 20, 21, to

(30:43):
make sure that you're trying tofocus on winning matches.
So you have a good skill levelthat needs to be to win.
You have a good physicalconditioning level that you need
to win.
And now you're into mastery.
Now you're like how can Irefine my Herperez-style kick,
not at 9 years old or 10 yearsold or 11 years old.
I'm trying to trick the systemand I'm flexible so I can just

(31:11):
touch everybody in the head andI'm come away.
So I did this 25 years ago.
So it's interesting I did.
I love to have thisconversation and I do say I was
talking to a kid today.
You know my instinct to say waslike oh, it's your upbringing.
Who can, who can take what?
Who's got the mindset, who'sgot the heart?
Who's got the will?
But who's got the heart?
Who's got the will?
But you know, I mean I think,in Germany speaking, it does
come from the family, but thenthere's some exceptions to that
rule, right, you know?

(31:32):
I mean, this kid told me onetime he said he goes.
One time in my life I thoughtabout, you know, maybe quitting
the sport when I was 11.
I told my dad, yeah, I think Iwant to stop and he goes.
My dad went, laughed at him andjust kind of walked away and he
went back to train that night.
And here he is, how many yearslater?
Yeah, I told him the story.
You know, I'll never forget 1988.

(31:52):
I go to the nationalchampionships and I get there
and I look on the draw and therewas no.
Dae Sung Lee became my coachlater on, but he's my adversary
and when he went, when there wasno, no day son Lee on the draw,
my dad was like, ooh they.
Suddenly he's not here.
And I looked at him.
I took that as a sign ofdisrespect for my dad, like well

(32:13):
, you don't think I could beathim and that's not what he meant
, but that's what I heard.
You know what I'm saying.
So it's kind of funny.
Even if it's well-intended,sometimes it's, it's interpreted
the wrong way.
So I could be hard on my sonand it could be like you're a
jerk, you're a jerk.
Even though it's well-intended.
I can be soft on my son.
Man, my dad doesn't care.
You know what I'm saying.
It's a weird balance that we'reseeing with these kids nowadays

(32:38):
and I would tend to say thatmost of them are way softer, way
more controlling of theirfamilies.
I want to do this, I don't wantto do this, and there's less of
parents going.
As a parent, I know this isgood for you.
This is what you're doing.
I know that vegetables are goodfor you.
Fruit loops aren't good for you.
If I gave you what you want.

(32:59):
You'd eat fruit loops all thegoddamn day, you know.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
So I mean it's just a thing.
Right now.
You raised another goodquestion, right?
So here's, here's the reality.
So when you're you're competingin Taekwondo, we're a little
bit different, because there areno, to the best of my knowledge
, uh, national training programswhere they're taking,

(33:23):
privatizing it and taking kidsin at 11 or 12 and then doing
online school.
But if you go to Europe and Ithink that's nationwide, I think
that's worldwide If you go toEurope, in certain sports there
are kids that go to sportacademies.
Most, starting with China.
They identify kids as early asfive or six, they give them a

(33:43):
battery of tests and then,certainly in middle school, they
do it in australia.
I looked at the australianmodel and they say based on this
, you're going to be this, thisand this in china, because
they're communist countries,they can do what they want.
They identify the kids and theyput these guys in sport
academies and they do school atthe sport academy.
They eat and they live together.
In taekwondo we don't have that,but I'll give you a western

(34:05):
country that does it and they doit for a different sport which
you don't.
Let me talk about goal the,that sport, the kids.
If they're not in an academy at12.
Then they say that kid's nevergoing to become a premier league
player.
So unless you're beenidentified as a kid who's a good
player at that age and you'rein man man city, whatever,

(34:28):
whatever you man united or oneof these academies or in other
countries they do it in europethen you're not going to be you
said they do it here, they dohere, they do it.
They do do it here now and thisis what they're trying to do.
So you take the academies herewe have a local academy here,
right for our team and the localacademies.

(34:50):
They have two levels.
They're academies for MLS.
Next those kids go to regularschool.
They don't do anything.
Hi, sweetheart, oh my gosh,what a beautiful girl, how
beautiful, how nice.
Good, well, she can tell, wait,tell her to look tell her to
look, I got something for her.
Oh, tell him what's your look.
He wants to look what's your?
Look here come get ready nice.

(35:16):
No, it might doesn't work that's, that's because you have a
black heart, it's true, it'strue.
So the um, so here, but nowhere they do it.
So now, when they get to highschool, high school freshman
year, they start to do it.
So, if you get invited to aprofessional academy attached to

(35:38):
a professional team, you go toonline school.
Now, meanwhile, these kids whogo to online school, they get
recruited by the best collegesin the country.
So, even though they're inonline school, these kids are
doing online school, they'redoing soccer and they're doing
rehab, they're doing whatever,and yeah, and they're in a
training environment and it's a.
You know, nico just got in Opena charter school real quick.

(36:00):
What's?

Speaker 4 (36:02):
that Just open a charter school real quick.
Let's make a tech windowcharter school real quick.
Let's make a tech windowcharter school.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Well, I thought about no, no, I thought about this
model a long time ago, yeah, andI was like, let me go.
And I I was like I want to goto a ski school.
And everybody thought it wascrazy and I was like, no, no, I
will put a charter school in aski academy, because they ski,
they're out on the slopes, we'lluse the indoor space.
They already have the schooland the facilities and I still

(36:28):
think it's a valuable idea.
So the guys train indoors right, they have all the facilities
you need and you're justdoubling up on the school,
because the hardest part aboutthis is the kids who can afford
to go to ski school.
You know and and actually careenough about skiing to do it.
There aren't that many.
But imagine if you did thatskiing taekwondo, basketball,
whatever you you revitalize theschool part of it and you'd be

(36:54):
using different facilities.
So I actually thought it was agood idea.
I wanted to do it and I still,if I weren't so old, I think
about doing it because I thinkyou could make it work.
You, you're down in Florida,let's say.
You parted with IMG.
You said to IMG I'm going todevelop Olympic athletes.

Speaker 5 (37:11):
They almost did it.
They almost did it they should.
They talked about having amartial arts program there and
Coach Russell taught at it.
Coach was one of my peak guys.
He went up there and did aprogram there.
Coach Russell taught at it.
Coach, you know one of my peakguys.
He went up there and did aprogram there.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
And I think what was that thing a while back where
they were trying to do something?
They tried to get USA Taekwondoinvolved in it.
You don't remember this thingwhere it was like In Miami.
It was in Florida somewhere.
It was a bunch of schools, itwas a big thing.

Speaker 5 (37:41):
No, I Listen.
They were going to do atraining center like an Olympic
training center, and it wascrazy.
I went there on behalf of USAT.
They gave me I forgot it waslike 10,000 square feet.
I got to divide it or build ithow I wanted.
I talked treadmills, electric,all whatever you needed.
It was crazy and we were allworking.

(38:01):
Judo was there, wrestling wasthere.
It was going to be in Hialeah.
Tj you needed.
It was crazy and we were allworking.
Judo was there, wrestling wasthere.
It was gonna be.
It was gonna be in Hialeah, uh,tj.
I went to like so many meetings.
It was like it was done.
They took us and showed us theland, the location, um, and I
mean, they were gonna hire acoach.
It was crazy.
It just it never came tofruition.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
I don't know if it was a governmental thing or
whatever so here here's themodel, and I'll give you the
model because I had thoughtabout it and the guy I learned
it from wasn't, he had no ideawhat it was.
So jp che, who was greg baker'sum, greg baker's um coach, and
I really liked him a lot went toa summer camp.
He was a smart guy.
What he would do is he would gobuy land.

(38:39):
He would then build a mole-usedevelopment.
He had a basement.
In the basement he would putTaekwondo, First floor retail
stores, Second floorprofessional offices and he
would build these things andthey were crazy successful and
profitable because the economicsof it worked.
So I looked at it.
I said I've got the model.

(39:00):
Here it is.
Do the same thing.
He did Basement Taekwondo,First floor stores, Second floor
dormitories and kitchen.
Forget about the professionaloffices.
In the dormitories and kitchens.
You put elite athletes and theelite athletes go to public
schools and they train and atnight they teach.

Speaker 5 (39:25):
Come on money bags come on, mr money bags.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Now you do it think about it now, these elite
athletes.
I come to your trainingfacility.
So instead of calling it liontaekwondo, we call it tj's
olympic training centertaekwondo, and in it you know
that if you go there, not onlywill you get a three portraits
for your room of lions, you willget lion-like training by
Olympians and by Olympichopefuls.

(39:48):
So now, when Johnny comes toclass, mary comes to class.
They're learning from top levelathletes who are training
currently to go to a worldchampionship Olympic game and
they're training.
So these guys to earn their way, they're working in the school
an hour a night, two hours anight.
The rest of it they're training.
So these guys to earn their way, they're working in the school
an hour a night, two hours anight.
The rest of it they're traininggoing to school and you have a

(40:09):
chef on staff that cooks forthem and they're studying in
local schools, and so it's agreat model, right, and I know
you've got that rich friend ofyours that you do all the
seminars for.
You guys are like real estatebarons.
What's the Vietnamese guy?
What's his name?
Us team member?
No, your other friend, the guywho always comes down.

(40:30):
You guys, whatever, oi, oi Lee.

Speaker 5 (40:34):
Yeah, you and Oi, he's Korean man.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Oh, he's Korean.
Oh jeez, Can we stop thepodcast and go back?

Speaker 5 (40:43):
Nothing but love, baby, Nothing but love.
He's always like six foot threeman, he ain't.
No, come on man.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Oh now, oh, that's talk about racist.
Right there Some racist stuff.
But anyway so but uh, so he is.
So did you just say it again?
You doubled down.
So the with Oi, you and Oishould do it.
You guys are real estate barons.
Grab a spot in Florida Justmake sure it's not on a sinkhole
and dig a basement and put ataekwondo school in it and then

(41:13):
run out and get chased byalligators.

Speaker 5 (41:16):
You don't want to be in the ocean.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
Oh, you can't put a basement in Florida.

Speaker 5 (41:21):
I can't put a basement, but anyway, I mean, I
think we kind of went long there.
Something else I want to talk.
I talked to someone today, herb.
Do you know where TJ?
Do you know what the process isfor the WT to change rules?
Where do the rules?
What group comes up with therule?

Speaker 3 (41:42):
The original process was back in the day I was vice
chairman of the technicalcommittee and I was chairman of
the education committee.
So any rule changes wereproposed by the technical
committee.
They then would be voted on bythe technical committee and then
they would be brought to theboard for, brought to the
executive committee forendorsement and then brought to

(42:03):
the board as a whole.
So the original change inscoring came from when I was on
the technical committee andcapen was on the technical dr
cape.
So we came up with themulti-tiered scoring of one, two
, three, four points and they,they, they.
They were uh moon from, uhdavid moon from mexico, who was

(42:25):
the chairman of the committee.
After we voted on it and got itpassed in our committee, he
didn't bring it to the wholecommittee and I had to walk out
of the meeting to get it back onthe agenda.
Get it passed.

Speaker 5 (42:39):
This is my problem and, td, you'll see where I'm
going with this is.
Maybe that was good, but theproblem is that, think, take
whoever's on that committee isnot.
Don't you think that theyshould be able to give it to the
math Like cause I, I know whatpaper sounds like.
This group comes together, they, they, they come up with a plan

(43:02):
, they give it to executivecommittee.
The committee says yes,together they come up with a
plan, they give it to theexecutive committee.
The executive committee saysyes, they take it to the board.
Everybody votes on it.
But at that board meeting, atthe junior world championships
or senior world championships, acouple of days before, all the
people say aye, aye, they voteon it.
Nobody knows what's going on.
My question is don't you thinkthat whatever proposals that

(43:25):
they come up with, it needs tobe dispersed to more people
outside that room, because weknow that something that sounds
good even us three we can comeup with something and there
might be someone that comes onthe outside and go, yeah, but
what about this, this and this?
Oh, yeah, you're right, becauseyou know, tj, we've been
talking about this.
I mean possible, impossible.
I heard that those rules thatthey just posted might not have

(43:48):
been accurate, may not have beenpassed.
And my question was wait aminute, why don't more of us
even know about this?
Like, who knows about this?
First these people and thereferees, and then the coaches
and then the athletes?
Like how do we, the last onesthat know, like it has to be
passed, it's got to be lookedover by more than this committee
, I don't care how brilliantthey are.

(44:08):
There's five, six, seven, eight, nine of them.
There's got to be more yeah,historically historic.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Historically the rules and everybody knows this
historically the rules come fromthe kta.
So the kta is the tail thatwags the dog.
They change the rules in theKTA.
Once they're changed in the KTA, they get six months head start
on everybody else and thenthose rules come to the WT and
that's just historically howit's always happened.

(44:36):
The problem is when you get amoron running the KTA like Yang
Zhenban, this moron who didn'tdo taekwondo at a high level at
all but thinks he's matters hewas the guy that came up with
the pushing and grabbing rulebecause he just didn't like
pushing.
You know like.
And when you get allow somebodywho doesn't like something,
hasn't done the sport at a highlevel, doesn't have the

(44:58):
intellect sport intellect atleast to understand the sport
then he that becomes endemic andyou've seen the.
When that happens, what happens?
The best way to do this andthere was a point where it was
happening is you come up with aset of proposed rules, you roll
it out to countries that havethe ability to hold events with

(45:19):
numerous athletes using the newrules and see what happens.

Speaker 5 (45:23):
So let's say you want to, but even that, but even
that, even that young, I agreethat sounds like a good test
beta model.
Yeah.
But, for example, nfl, whenthere's a proposal it goes to
all the teams.
All the teams get it and theyget to listen to it and they and
it's work so like.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
Oh, can I ask you a question?
Can I ask you a question?
What's your last name?
What's your last name Kim?
If it's Kim, Park or Lee, itmatters.
They don't care what Morenothinks and they don't care what
TJ no, no, let's be frank, theydon't care what like.
There's a recent note that wentout.
They're looking for board ofdirectors.
Board of directors don't applyunless your name's Kim, Lee or

(46:01):
Park.
That's just the way it is.
And, by the way, the Kim Leesand the Parks that apply haven't
done taekwondo, haven'tcompeted in taekwondo when they
did, if they ever did taekwondo.
The Kim Lees and Parks thatapply are the guys that used to
do it with bamboo chestprotectors and they were doing
karate that they learned fromthe Japanese, to be frank.

(46:22):
So, like you know, when you'reasking, when you're asking that
particular group of individualswho are nepotistic, xenophobic,
to name a few things, you'regoing to have a kerfuffle, as
we've said before, and you'regoing to have a swampalampalus,
and that's what we have rightnow.

Speaker 5 (46:36):
I think I was just saying don't you think it'd be
interesting, like to make a okay, that committee comes up with
the meat and potatoes of it, andthen there's some subcommittees
I don't care if it's by region,you know where you get out
there or maybe you mix it up soit's like because they might
just go ah, we don't listen tothat guy.
Yeah, but what?

Speaker 3 (46:51):
okay.
So, in fairness, one of thegreatest Taekwondo athletes ever
is involved now, jungkook Young.
And what's happening?
This guy's sitting in the backdrinking tea, eating bulgogi and
kalbi and soju, and he's notmaking.
He's in the room he could bestanding up for.
This guy did taekwondo highestlevel, best athlete ever.

(47:12):
He's sitting in the roomsigning off on this nonsense by
the way he doesn't watch thetournaments.
He doesn't watch thetournaments.

Speaker 5 (47:20):
Don't you think that it's gotten so bureaucratic
where it's almost like even ifhe did say something, he just
gets rubber stamped by otherpeople?

Speaker 3 (47:27):
That's what I'm saying.
What if?
What if Martin Luther King saidthat?
What if Mahatma Gandhi saidthat?
What if Herb?

Speaker 5 (47:34):
Perez said that how many?
How many Martin Luther Kingsare there?
How many Gandhi's are?

Speaker 3 (47:39):
there.

Speaker 5 (47:39):
Somebody's got to start.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
Somebody's got to start.

Speaker 4 (47:43):
I think, with all the proposed rule changes, it
definitely should be sent out toeveryone.
I mean, you have all thenational team contacts from
around the world.
Maybe it should be kind of putout there and let them know this
is what we're thinking aboutdoing, this is what we're going
to go in this direction of.
What do you guys think aboutthis?
Something of the sort.

(48:04):
I mean, like you said, we'rejust making up more rules, like
I think the last ones whetherit's true or not true, is
irrelevant, but where youcouldn't, they wouldn't score
front-hand punches.
Like what are we talking about?
Now?
We're dictating how people canpunch someone.
Like that's just crazy.
That's just now.
We're going further and further.

Speaker 5 (48:20):
It should be listen, I know they can't do.
Every coach it could.
Maybe they could do with allthe WT level two coaches.
You get, you get the proposedlist and you vote yes, no, yes,
no and literally put it in adocument.
It could be in a Google,whatever, and we could see every
single person.
So if some idiot votes for thisthat we're like like you voted

(48:42):
for that.
You know that they don't wantto do that.
Okay, how many nations do youhave?
You have 104.
Whatever they have, send to allthe head coaches and let the
head coaches be responsible forthat, the country that they
represent.
So again, if some country youknow votes for 3 000 degree
spinning kickers worth 20 points, you can be like.

(49:02):
You voted for that.
You voted for that.

Speaker 4 (49:04):
Now we know yeah, but out of all the things they
could be focused on fixing,we're worried about front hand
punches and and making sure thethe coaches let me, let me, let
me, let me finish let me finish.
Let me finish.
Don't let the referee, thecoaches, uh, interfere with the
referees and the matches, likewe're just picking things that
someone, like he just said,doesn't like at the top, I guess
, and going past the issue, wedon't like this.

Speaker 5 (49:26):
What did I tell you, tj?
What's that?
What did I tell you?
What did I say in that commentthat you, when you put on, I
think on Facebook I said howabout someone that's a black
belt in taekwondo understandswhat a good punch looks like,

(49:47):
and if it's with a front hand orthe back hand, it's a problem
because you guys can't score it.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
You can't punch, you can't punch, no, it's not that
it's not that it's like they'rescoring when people are going
like this.

Speaker 5 (49:57):
If a guy went like this and hit him, okay, but it's
the referee's fault, they'rethe ones scoring it.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Listen, go back to the original problems.
It started with the refs andcontinues to be the refs, and
you got to go back.
I'm going to take you back towhat the original conversation
was and still, or the 99% miss.

Speaker 4 (50:14):
Like you know, when they go one, uh, the referee
center goes.
One person points, the otherperson stands up and agrees like
that's 99.9.
They're always going to agreewith each other, like these guys
, nobody it, no one pressed itin time and now it's like oh
okay, yeah one.
And we watch it happen over andover again.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
So here's the problem .

Speaker 5 (50:31):
If you press the wrong button.
That's different.
That should be different.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
But here's the problem.
This started because thereferees were inept or cheated.
That's it, let's be clear.
Second, we've lost our way inthe in trying to fix what was
malfeasance on the part ofgovernments and and and, and, to
be honest, koreans in korea andreferees.
So, as a response to that, welost our way, because then we

(50:57):
lost the essence of taekwondo.
You have to go backfundamentally to what taekwondo
was or thought it wasFundamentally taekwondo, thought
it was a full contact martialart.
It thought it was, and in factit was for a very long time.
The idea that you wouldn'tscore punches over kicks was so
that you could allow kicks todevelop as a kicking art as

(51:19):
opposed to a punching art,because once you enter punches
in, it thwarts the ability ofpeople to do certain
combinations of kicks thatmatter, and that's where cover
punch came in.
The problem is you've got to goback to either A trusting the
referee or changing the scoringsystem to a power-based system
that reflects more of whatoriginal taekwondo was.

(51:41):
The difference betweentaekwondo and karate was karate
was point fighting and one punchkill.
And we couldn't really do,because if we did I would kill
you.
Well, we know that's not true,all right.
So Taekwondo came up with afull contact martial art which
was much more like Kyoko Shinkaiwho, by the way, was created
not by Masayama.
It was created by a Korean guywho named himself Masayama.

(52:05):
So full contact Kyoko Shinkaiis actually created by,
ironically, a Korean that was inJapan.
Now, with that said, isTaekwondo fundamental,
existential question?
Is Taekwondo, just like I wouldask you if I asked you, are you
Mexican, are you black?
Am I?
Whatever I am?
That's a fundamental question.

(52:26):
If I believe in my heart thatI'm this, then that's what I am.
If you believe taekwondo is afull contact martial art and
that's what should be reflectedin its aesthetic and in its
scoring system, then you comeout with different outcomes.
Now, now is a front-hand punch.
I can guarantee you, if I do afront-hand punch on you, you'll

(52:48):
know I punched you.
Now, is that a legitimatetechnique?
But it is because, if you don'tscore it, if you say we can't
do it and the reason we're notscoring it it would be
interesting to know what theirrationale is you can no longer
score a front-hand punch.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (53:03):
I can't wait to ask to be honest with you.
Listen again.
I know the referees should knowhow to score, to take it away
just because it's bad, that'syour guys' fault, not our fault.
That's your guys' fault.
You don't know how to score it.
Let's be honest.
But my original thing was I justthink that the think tank has
to be bigger, because we alwayssay this who made this rule?

(53:23):
Think has to be bigger, becausewe always say this who made
this rule?
Who came up with this?
It just doesn't seem to makeany sense, and immediately after
we hear something, there's fivedifferent reasons not to do
whatever it is.
And that was just in literallya couple seconds.
So my point is I think it needsto be these rule changes or

(53:44):
these rule addendments.
I would like to blame badreferees, I would like to blame
people that don't know the sport, like you mentioned, young.
But regardless of that, come upwith an idea and give it to us
and let us shoot holes and thenthey go.
Okay, that makes sense, we'llgo back to the drawing board.
That's all I'm saying.
I just think it's got to befixed from that standpoint

(54:04):
because if not, we don't haveall the answers.
It just changes too much.

Speaker 4 (54:08):
It's always changing.
It's forever changing.
It's forever being redirectedor retold.
I still want just one system.
I don't care which one, I justwant one system and let's just
leave it at that.
I don't like the two systems.
I don't like.

Speaker 5 (54:28):
I mean in a lot of sports, I mean soccer, they got
some small fields, they gotregulations right.
It could be between baseball,basketball.
I mean there's been a lot.
There's a lot of differentsports that you know.
Tennis has different type ofcourts, golf does I mean.
I get what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Do you know where most rule changes come from in
Olympic sport?
Do you know why?
Do you know what the why is?

Speaker 5 (54:57):
Yeah, because they're more spectator friendly.
They want more scoring.
That's it More scoring.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
They look at it and they go.
We got to sell sponsorships, soif you can't watch, it hasn't
worked in.
Taekwondo.
It doesn't worked in Taekwondoit doesn't work in.

Speaker 5 (55:10):
Taekwondo, by the way , it doesn't work in any sport.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Yeah, Judo did it too .
And judo, you talk to anybodywho does judo.

Speaker 5 (55:16):
there's this thing now A thousand points.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
Yeah, a thousand points.
You can't like grab.
You can't grab in a certain wayanymore because it frustrates
the game.
So they just made the rule werelegal and and the thing was
like guys who really do judo,like mike swain, they're like
it's the dumbest rule in theworld because if you do judo you
know that's essential to theart of judo.

Speaker 5 (55:37):
um, and when you think about when you think about
making it almost impossible, uh, tj, to like score a point.
Like put the level up so highthat I wouldn't be adverse to
like trying something to gettapped into something Like a
trap, back kick, a step forward,back kick, I'm going to switch,
you're going to round, scramble, back kick and you, you know
right now you go like that, youscore me.

(55:58):
But you might go like that, butI ain't going to score.
Maybe my back kick doesn'tscore, but you know what I'm
saying.
Like make it harder.

Speaker 4 (56:05):
Make it harder to score, heavier to score.

Speaker 5 (56:07):
Yeah, and you might get a three to one, you know,
but there's a lot of exchanging,a lot of contact a lot of shots
, right, You're going to have tochange it.
You're going to have to changethe deductions because I might
fall.
Then people will try to win ondeduction, you know.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
But I don't know.
Steven Lopez made a career onded deductions.

Speaker 4 (56:26):
I would just go back to 10, go back to 10 over over
the span of the match and justlet people live or die what 10?

Speaker 3 (56:32):
I don't like.
Yeah, the 10 point must.

Speaker 4 (56:34):
No, no, I'm talking about the five deductions in one
round thing, like give me 10,like I don't let me.
Let me take risks and be incontrol of it.
As opposed to being, and forthe three rounds like one round
yeah, change the score.
Yeah, yeah, just leave your gumdrums remain the same, just you
.
You get 10, I like I like that.

Speaker 5 (56:53):
I like that.
But I don't trust that becausethere's some bad freaking calls.
You lose your card, tj.
They call and all kind of crapon your holding, pushing leg
block.
I also don't like that.

Speaker 4 (57:05):
I don't know, I don't know what you do.
I don't, I think you should.
I mean, when you come to theyou talk about card stuff.
I think you gotta always have aheadshot card.
I think they gotta do.
I don't know, I don't know whatyou do.
I don't, I think you should.
I mean, when you come to theyou talk about card stuff.
I think you got to always havea headshot card.
I think they got to do.
I don't think you should beable to like lose your card for
that, especially in the thirdround.
Now you just see someone helmetget hit.
You can do nothing about it.

Speaker 5 (57:34):
If the referee doesn't count for headshots, for
shit.
And if you win you get anotherone bonus card.
Oh, you gotta.
Yeah, five, six cards at theend.
You keep winning.
That's the system's fault.
Yeah, but I, I actually I.

Speaker 3 (57:40):
I designed the system for bad refereeing a long time
ago.
I said if you have a matchwhere the referee you believe
the referee made a bad decisionor a bad call, the referee has
to fight the athlete at thatmoment to win a point.
And if he wins the point thenhe gets to continue.
If not, otherwise, the pointgoes up.

(58:01):
So let's say you raise aheadshot, call, referee called
it the wrong way or whatever.
The referee has to go in andbattle the athlete and this way
referees will be a lot morecareful about cheating.
So if he makes a bad decision,yeah, be afraid to raise that
finger, baby, so I'll give you.
I got your come, john, righthere, so you know I got a
question for you.

Speaker 5 (58:21):
You fighting in the masters uh, masters uh division
competition.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
I've thought about over the years I've thought
about it, I don't know.
Over the years I've thoughtabout over the years I've
thought about it, I don't know.
Over the years I've thoughtabout it.
And the reason I don't fight init is that old country song
that says I'm not as good as Iused to be, but I might be as
good as I used to be.
One more, you know, one moresecond, and that's all I got.
I got, maybe I, I was.
I was telling the story aboutpracticing for my ninth Don,

(58:51):
practicing for my ninth on.
And when I'm practicing, I'm,you know, I want to be able to
kick.
And all this not because I,because really all they test you
on is this you know forms.
But I'm like, oh dude, I feelgood, you know.
So I'm axe kicking, I'm roundkicking, I'm doing all this
stuff.
And then I'm I'm like, yeah,man, I haven't done back hook
kick in a while.
Maybe I should do some backhook kicks.
So I'm feeling good, I'mtwisting, I'm, you know, winding
myself up, and then I throw abunch of pretty good Right, and
then all of a sudden I go and Ipull every, every muscle

(59:14):
available, which I never used topull muscles.
I pull every muscle availableto me in anywhere that has
anything to do with any part ofmy body and I'm like, yeah.
So, although I'd like tobelieve, nothing is more sad for
me than to watch a highly elite, competitive athlete.
Um, I watched jungkook youngspar.

Speaker 5 (59:37):
I'm gonna talk tj off the ledge man.
Yeah, tj about to jump in thering man.
No, no, my guy I have my guy,my guy that works for me.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
He's like oh, he's watching the kids sparring.
He goes oh, dude, I want toenter a tournament.
I looked at him and I go lopez,stay in the gym, man, you're a
teacher spar.
I spar the five-year-olds, I'mworking my way up to the
six-year-old girls and thenmaybe I'll spar the
seven-year-old boys.
That's it, this guy.
Of course he's moving around,what's he do?
Hurts his knee, which is why hehad to retire in the first

(01:00:06):
place.
So I'm like okay, all okay, allright, chuck Norris, get in
there, give it your best, right?
Like this he's.
This is a, this is a.
My Jimmy hurts himself, right?

Speaker 5 (01:00:15):
So I'm like you know, you gotta know, enjoy your
glory.
I think if you're listen, theyhave these new.
I don't know I got to get that,but I just think for guys like
you, I don't know 65, if youcould find another 65-year-old

(01:00:40):
Olympic gold medalist that wantsto fight.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
I'm in.

Speaker 4 (01:00:44):
If I decided to fight again, I'd have to just go
ahead and just go ahead and dothe regular division.
I would have to no, I'd fightyou.

Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
If I really, really wanted to.
I'd have to do the regulardivision.
I think we should have awarehouse 15.
Yeah, you would be up for today.
I wouldn't even train, Iwouldn't even train, I would
drop, I would drop, I would drop.
All I'd have to do, I'd dropthe right hand on you.
That's it, the right hand.
I'm coming.
Where's your training?

Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
camp you better and then the winner fights.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
Moreno, the winner, I'm out, I'm good.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Oh, you're out, you're out.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
All right, tj, it's me and you so yeah, me and you.

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):
What do you?
How long are the rounds?
Let's go 5 minute rounds.

Speaker 3 (01:01:32):
I'm going to have to hit you early.
I'm going to hit you early.
I'm going to use my MMA, myoriginal ultimate fighting.
I said I'm going to try mything and if it fails I'm going
to tap out.
Can we tap out if I get tired?

Speaker 5 (01:01:44):
can I tap out?
You can do whatever you got todo, if he wears that or that
gold uniform that he used towear, run.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
I got it.
I got it.
I'm gonna sweat on you.
I'm gonna grab you and sweat onyou.
That's what I'm gonna do, tj,I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure if we foughtright now, you probably beat me,
there's no doubt, especially ifyou do that, sissy electronic
body protector stuff no doubtyou probably beat me, whatever,
but I'm I'm not sure.

(01:02:12):
I'm not sure.
20 years ago that would be thesame I don't know.
Oh, you're going oh all rightnow now, if you're gonna throw
that at gauntlet, we're gonna gocoach, you're gonna, moreno,
you're gonna have to ref it,you're gonna have to ref it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
So I, but I don't want to hear anything when I hit
you in the planet well, howmuch do you weigh now?

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
How much do you weigh TJ?

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Me Probably like 185, 186.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
Oh, so all right.
Well, lee, you're bigger.
Now You're bigger.
What did you weigh back in theday?

Speaker 4 (01:02:38):
149 is when I fought.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
All right, you lose 40 pounds and we'll fight.
You lose 40 pounds and we'llfight.
All right, okay, bye-bye.
Oh, we all like to believe.
I like to believe.
You know, only thing I wrestlewith now is my conscience.
So you know, I'm not fightinganything except my conscience
and seven-year-old kids.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
Okay, okay, okay.
Three five-minute rounds.
I'll go down for you.
Let's do three five-minuterounds.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
We'll start there all right, and speedos, let's keep
it real.

Speaker 5 (01:03:05):
Let's keep it real, it's speedos you've got weird
and bring that bring, bring thatbring that lion Bring.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
All right, I'll fight you for all your trophies and
medals and the lion posters andyour guitars and bring your
guitars.
Oh no no, no, those are worthmoney.
That's why I don't show themanymore.
All right, I think.
I think I think we have beatenthis horse to death.
This has been the Warehouse 15,and you heard it first here.
Tj, my Olympic brother, wantsto have a challenge match, so

(01:03:36):
we're going to put it on aGoFundMe for the hospital bill
for him after the match.
It'll be a GoFundMe and don'tworry, I'll visit you in the
hospital after I pull my handout of your.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
I think we should film it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
Dude, we don't have to film it, it's not going to be
that long.
Make sure the camera's on,because this I'm not going to
kick.
I'm going to save my one goodkick.
If I hit you with my left leg,you're dead.
But I'm going to start withthis.
I'm going to work on this.
I'm going to work on this65-year-old TJ 65 year old TJ.

(01:04:11):
Move around for 25, 30 seconds.
Oh yeah, yeah, just move around.
Y'all be breathing for sure,unless can we fight on a bicycle
?
I do a lot of cycling whateveryou want oh, I gotta come to the
gym.
Oh, slap box and I'll kill you.
You see the length of my arms.
My arms go down to my knees.
My arms are 6 foot 2 man.
My body is only five, nine on agood day.

(01:04:34):
All right, this has been thewarehouse with all the silliness
.
It's been the warehouse 15 andwe are out.
Face you guys.
You guys, welcome, we are back.
It is the warehouse 15, not the16, not the 14, and you are
here with the grandmaster ofdisaster and olympic coach,

(01:04:55):
olympic athlete, olympiceverything, coach juan moreno
and tj, the most importantperson in the world, at least to
himself.
How are we doing today, coach TJ?
No, no, it's good, it's allgood.
No, no, I was just.
I'm loving those picturesbehind you.

(01:05:17):
You've changed the Joker intothe Lions and I love these.
Is this us Like?
Is this the three of us up here?
Which one's me?
If it's the three of us,exactly, turned it sideways.

(01:05:37):
Well, actually, that might beyou on the side, because it's
turned sideways like a mugshot.
I mean probably nothingunfamiliar to you.
All right, coach Moreno?
How you doing, sir?
Oh, congratulations, well,nothing.

(01:06:38):
Yeah, excellence only happenswhen excellent people get
together, and I wish I could bethere to see Coach TJ's new
place.
I know that it's stellar.
How is membership going, coach?

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
I'm going to give you two pieces of advice, and I
used both of them when they cameto me.
Number one was get with FrankSilverman.
I'm going to get you his numberand I'll have Frank, have his
people reach out to you.
I think Frank is handling moreof the wealth management for
Maya now, but Maya was justinstrumental in my success when
I first opened up.
You know, he gave me greatadvice, taught me how to do

(01:07:49):
everything that I know how to dotoday with regard to marketing.
And then the second thing, theother piece of advice I'd give
you, is Spark.
Spark has been instrumental inus managing our website and our
payables, and Chung Park and RonSell.
They are just doing a great joband I know they're down that

(01:08:09):
way as well, and those are twoguys that I don't.
They don't sponsor us.
I wish they would now thatwe've Mentioned them on the
podcast, but the really justgreat Stuff and I think you do
those Things.
It'll accelerate your growth Inyour school more quickly Than
anything else that I could thinkof.
Black men, black men, thank you.

(01:10:07):
But we had built.
We had built a, we had built amodel.
When I first opened the firstfacility, I did the olympic
committee, uh, scholarship meinto a master's program in
Lausanne called Memos, and BobGambardello did it.
I did it and a few others havedone it, and my thesis was on
how do you do elite level sportand how do you still build
grassroots development.
And so I came up with a modelfor grassroots development that

(01:10:28):
I'll speak with you aboutoffline and how it funds high
performance.
And we started that way and wehad 850 guys in my school and
probably back then a hundred ofthem competing, which is a lot.
Now I've changed my modelbecause I'm old and lazy, but
there is a way to build agrassroots because you want to
fill that pipeline.

(01:10:49):
Actually it's a topic we'lltalk about later, but, um, you
can do it there for sure.
And then I was a littleconfused because, um, you can
get a sponsor, I mean for a guy.
You get your art at walmart andI'm sure you can get walmart to
sponsor your training center.
You know the lion paintings.
But and I was slightly a littlemore confused because when juan

(01:11:09):
started talking about Blackman,I thought he was speaking about
never mind.
All right, anyway, we're movingon.
I got my haircut.
I got no.
No, hold on, I got my.
I don't want any letters.
I got my.
I got.
I got my.
Am I going to get canceled?
I got my hair cut by a Brazilianguy who didn't speak English

(01:11:30):
and this is what I ended up with.
So I want to talk.
I know we got the Brazilianopen coming up.
Oh no, we got to go back.
Calm down, here it comes.
You asked for it, you asked forit.
You know, don't be jelly, don'tjelly.

(01:11:52):
This is what 65 looks like,baby.
This is what 65 looks like.
Well, I just got off there.
You go Enough.
Listen.
I got the one day of sunshinehere in beautiful Northern
California, where we get threedays of something that resembles
spring or summer, and the restis what it is.

(01:12:14):
So I was on my bike today, butit actually was cold out.
I had this under my um blackand gold jacket that I wore
hiding all my loveliness so thatI don't get attacked by various
and sundried people becausethis is Northern California

(01:12:40):
Turmeric, orange and turmericjuice from Trader Joe's.
Trader Joe's is, if you'relistening, you know, sorry, not
sorry, and I did have my cup ofespresso right before this.
That looks delicious.
And then, tj, I see you gotMD4040.
What is it called?
Let's go, no, no, no, no, no,not stereotypical.

(01:13:11):
I didn't mention what he saidalright, this is good, that went
south quickly, but that's a lotof foam in that coffee.
Go ahead.
What do we got?
Let's go.
Hmm, wow, thank you, hmm, thankyou, thank you, thank you.

(01:18:35):
You're building a culture.
So what you're talking, whatyou're talking about is um, how
do you build a culture and howdo you build continuity and how
do you build throughput?
So, like, philosophically, Iultimately believe that the
senior athletes, to the best oftheir ability, should learn how
to teach, coach and and becomesympathetic and empathetic with
the younger athletes.
So you, when you do that,that's what happens.

(01:18:56):
So when you take the olderathletes and you have them coach
the junior team athletes,you're building a culture where
the younger athletes, over time,learn to respect their seniors,
as opposed to telling them torespect them, because they
coached them and they taughtthem.
So now, when they idolize youguys, when they see you and you
teach them, they'll rememberthat for a lifetime and then
they'll also build a culturethemselves to give back.

(01:19:17):
You know, as we talk every weeknot we me, because I'm obsessed
, obviously my son I make himactually coach younger athletes
for free.
So any kid that likes soccer inmy orbit, you know, I'll offer
my son up and he goes out for anhour or two with the kid and he
helps the kid in soccer.
The kid might be nine or 10years old and my son's just

(01:19:39):
turned 17, but he's learning, afirst of all, to give back.
B learning how to teach and orcoach and transfer information.
C he's remembering and beingreminded that he couldn't have
gotten to the places that he'sgotten to, had somebody older
and better not done that withhim in his situation.
You know he had a player,professional player two, two

(01:20:02):
professional players from theearthquakes helping him and then
he had jason han, dr han, goodfriend of all of ours and
teammate.
He was kind enough to hook meup with one of his guys from the
LAFC, strength and Agility.
So I made a phone call andJason and I have a good
relationship and so he hooked meup with this guy and Coach, dan

(01:20:24):
and Guzman, who runs actually aprogram kind of like you coach,
and he does it down in southerncalifornia.
Now he's gone into, like, thehealth and wellness space as
well.
Um, but that was like imagine akid nico's age three, four
years ago working with a guyfrom a professional team.
Forget about whether theinformation is good or not,

(01:20:45):
which it was the allure of it,how it boosts his confidence.
Because when you get thatopportunity, those kids who come
to the junior camps that youguys used to be involved in,
they are like dude, I train withthe national team guy, so when
they go in there and they trysomething, they're like he
taught me to do it, it's goingto work.
And sure enough it does.

(01:21:05):
Why?
In part because it's goodinformation.
The other part is because hebelieves it's going to work.
He has confidence.
And one of the downfalls of thecurrent administration in usa
taekwondo is the lack of givingback.
It's become exclusionary asopposed to inclusive, and when

(01:21:25):
you make exclusionary things,you raise things to a level
where people don't believe theyhave access to it, don't have
access to it and don't want tobe part of it.
So how many people do you knowpersonally, each of you that
have exited the sport that justsay you know what?
I don't, I don't want?
I mean, I could name off thetop of my head four, five, six

(01:21:47):
high level coaches, high levelathletes that did the sport of
the high level.
Let's say I'm not showing upwhat, for what?
For what reason?
You know so and I think that'sthe.
That's a cultural issue.
You know that um we need totalk about at some point.
And then it's a pipeline issueand tj, as you build your

(01:22:08):
facility, you know you need tothink about the pipeline.
You are a conduit to excellence.
You are an athlete who has swamat the deepest levels of our
sport in virtually everyincarnation of it.
You were in the army, you werepart of that program, you were

(01:22:31):
in USA Taekwondo, both as anathlete, as a coach.
You've been to the Olympics,you are, and Coach Moreno too.
You guys are in the mix and, bythe way, still in it.
You're still in the day-to-dayof it.
You've gone through what Iwould consider to be the hardest
part, which was the old schoolmethod, to the new part, which
is arguably as hard.

(01:22:52):
Although I tease about it allthe time, you guys have seen it
all.
So you have the mostinformation, you have the most
experience, you have the mostknowledge, yet in a large part
you're sidelined domestically.
You know, and I think that's avery important time.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
I'm very excited to be here, because all of us are

(01:23:32):
here.
I'm honored to be here.
I'm so happy to be here.
In fact, I'm very excited to behere.

(01:24:20):
I'm so happy.
Go ahead and start um, I don'tknow.
Thank you, I hope you enjoyedthis video.
I hope you enjoyed this video.

(01:25:33):

Speaker 3 (01:25:56):
Yeah, but you, but you.
But you say you say somethingthat matters, right, and, and
what you said was you know, youtook it upon yourself.
Right, there's, and we talkabout this all the time, and
gamber delo used to talk aboutit.
Um, because we learned it inthat memos program.
It was folk artist.

(01:26:16):
you and I?
If you're a folk artist, thatmeans that you can make this
thing right.
You can carve it, you can do it.
You have no idea how to teachsomebody to do it, but you
yourself did it for yourself.
It's only at the moment whereyou try to transfer information
to someone else that you canmake sense of it, in the sense

(01:26:41):
of I try to teach and I neverwanted to teach, by the way,
because I thought I was terribleat Taekwondo.
I thought I sucked at Taekwondo.
I thought I was just good atdoing my version of taekwondo.
My round kick wasn't thetraditional Korean one.
None of my kicks were my kickswere my kicks.
I tried, but I never tried tobe like them.
So when it came time to teach,I had the imposter syndrome

(01:27:04):
where I didn't feel that I hadanything to teach.
And then I realized, as Istarted to decide to teach
because I had athletes I wantedto help my method is what I had
to teach, not what I did, how Idid it, but more importantly,
how I trained and how Isystematized myself.

(01:27:24):
My success came through that.
So it wasn't until I started toteach that I truly understood.
And I remember and you may notremember, coach, but you and I
sat in the room with anothercoach and we had to, because we
were writing a manual we had todescribe in words how to do
these kicks, how to do theseconcepts, and that's when you

(01:27:47):
truly know, if you knowsomething Right, right, right,
right, right, right, right Right.

Speaker 6 (01:28:01):
Right, right, right, right, right, right, right,
right, right, right, right,right Right.

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):
Right, right, right, right, right, right Right, thank
you.
The first time I saw him I waslike, oh my gosh, he's so
handsome.
And I was like, oh my gosh,he's so handsome.

(01:28:31):

Speaker 3 (01:28:51):
And I was like, oh my , 18 years old.
So the Olympic Committee did astudy on this and so a good
friend of mine, mike Leonard,who was vice president of the
Olympic Committee, no 18 is 18before 18.

(01:29:15):
So here's the mistake, and it'shappening across the country.
So the US Olympic Committeelooked at athletic development
in countries and they realizedthat athletes are best not to
specialize in a sport till aroughly 18 years old, not to
specialize in a sport till aroughly 18 years old, and the
reason for that is they burn outand all the muscle development.

(01:29:36):
You're better off to do avariety of sports and with
athleticism you're better to dolearning how to run incredibly
fast, stop and turn.
Those three attributes in anysport explosiveness, stopping
and turning, whether it'staekwondo, whatever, soccer,

(01:29:56):
basketball, those athleticagility, speed, development you
specialize after 18.
The problem is that the systemin the United States and in some
other countries has specializedto such a degree that athletes
get injuries prone to sportbecause they don't cross train
enough and they don't fullydevelop.

(01:30:17):
And so the united states andits aau program, for example, in
basketball, if you don'tspecialize you can't compete at
that.
12 to 13, 14, yeah, and so you.
And so you know you're forcedto specialize, yeah, and, but
you're killing your athleticdevelopment.
Yeah.

(01:30:48):
Yeah, that happened to my son.

Speaker 6 (01:30:52):
Yeah, yeah, nope, nope, yeah Thank you um, thank
you, um, um, um, look Amen,thank you, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:36:56):
Thank you, so you got .
So you, you, you, you.
You raised another goodquestion, right?
So here's, here's the reality.
So when you're you're competingin taekwondo, we're a little
bit different, because there areno, to the best of my knowledge
, uh, national training programswhere they're taking,
privatizing it and taking kidsin at 11 or 12 and then doing

(01:37:20):
online school.
But if you go to Europe and Ithink that's nationwide, I think
that's worldwide If you go toEurope in certain sports there
are kids that go to sportacademies, most, starting with
China.
They identify kids as early asfive or six, they give them a
battery of tests and then,certainly in middle school, they
do it in Australia.
I looked at the Australianmodel and they say based on this

(01:37:43):
, you're going to be this, thisand this In China, because
they're communist countries,they can do what they want.
They identify the kids and theyput these guys in sport
academies and they do school atthe sport academy.
They and they live together.
In taekwondo we don't have that, but I'll give you a western
country that does it and they doit for a different sport, which
you don't let me talk aboutgoal the, that sport, the kids.

(01:38:07):
If they're not in an academy at12, then they say that kid's
never going to become a premierleague player.
So unless you're beenidentified as a kid who's a good
player at that age and you'rein man man city, whatever
whatever you man united or oneof these academies or in other
countries, they do it in europethen you're not going to be a

(01:38:28):
high level.
Here they do it.
They do do it here now and thisis what they're trying to do.
So you take um, you take theacademies here.
We have a local academy here,right for our team, and, uh, the
local academies.
They have two levels theiracademies for mls.
Next, those kids go to regularschool.

(01:38:49):
They don't do anything.
Hi, sweetheart, oh my gosh,what a beautiful girl, how
beautiful, how nice, good.
Well, she can tell wait, tellher to look, tell her to look, I
got something for her.
Hello, tell him, come back here, come get ready.
Nice, that's, that's becauseyou have a black heart.

(01:39:13):
So the um, so here, but nowhere, they do it.
So now, when they get to highschool, high school freshman
year, they start to do it.
So if you get invited to aprofessional academy, attached
to a professional team, you goto online school.

(01:39:34):
Meanwhile, these kids who go toonline school, they get
recruited by the best collegesin the country.
So, even though they're inonline school, these kids are
doing online school, they'redoing soccer and they're doing
rehab, they're doing whateverand, yeah, and they're in a
training environment and it's a.
You know, nico just got in.
What's that?

(01:40:01):
Well, I thought about no, no, Ithought about this model a long
time ago, yeah, and I was like,let me go.
And I.
I was like I want to go to aski school.
And everybody thought it wascrazy.
And I was like, no, no, I willput a charter school in a ski
Academy, cause they ski, they'reout on the slopes, we'll use
the indoor space.
They already have the schooland the facilities and I still

(01:40:22):
think it's a valuable idea.
So the guys train indoors,right, they have all the
facilities you need, and you'rejust doubling up on the school,
because the hardest part aboutthis is the kids who can afford
to go to ski school.
You know and and actually careenough about skiing to do it.
There aren't that many.
But imagine if you did thatskiing, taekwondo, basket,
whatever you you revitalize theschool part of it and you'd be

(01:40:47):
using different facilities.
So I actually thought it was agood idea.
I wanted to do it and I still,if I weren't so old, I think
about doing it because I thinkyou could make it work.
You're down in florida, let'ssay.
You parted with img.
You said to img I'm going todevelop olympic athletes, they
should, they should.

(01:41:07):
Well, what was that?
What was that thing a whileback where they were trying to
do something.
They tried to get usa taekwondoinvolved in it.
You don't remember this thingwhere it was like um, it was in

(01:41:30):
florida somewhere.
It was a bunch of school, itwas a big thing yeah so, so, so.

(01:42:14):
So here here's the model, andI'll give you the model because
I had thought about it and theguy I learned it from wasn't.
He had no idea what it was.
So jp che, who was greg baker'sum, greg baker's um coach, and
I really liked him a lot went toa summer camp.
He was a smart guy.
What he would do is he would gobuy land.
He would then then build amixed-use development.

(01:42:37):
He had a basement.
In the basement he would putTaekwondo, first floor retail
stores, second floorprofessional offices and he
would build these things.
And they were crazy successfuland profitable because the
economics of it worked.
So I looked at it.
I said I've got the model.
Here it is.
Do the same thing.
He did basement, taekwondo,first floor stores, second floor

(01:43:02):
dormitories and kitchen.
Forget about the professionaloffices.
In the dormitories and kitchensyou put elite athletes and the
elite athletes go to publicschools and they train and at
night they teach, they teach.
Now you do it.
Think about it.

(01:43:23):
Now, these elite athletes, Icome to your training facility.
So instead of calling it liontaekwondo, we call it TJ's
Olympic Training CenterTaekwondo, and in it you know
that if you go there, not onlywill you get a three portraits
for your room of lions, you willget lion-like training by
Olympians and by Olympichopefuls.
So now, when Johnny comes toclass, mary comes to class.

(01:43:45):
They're learning from top levelathletes who are training
currently to go to a worldchampionship Olympic game and
they're training so these guysto earn their their way.
They're working in the schoolan hour a night, two hours a
night.
The rest of it they're traininggoing to school and you have a
chef on staff that cooks forthem and they're studying in

(01:44:06):
local schools, and so it's agreat model, right, um, um, and
I know you got that rich friendof yours that you do all the
seminars, for you guys are likereal estate barons.
What's the vietnamese guy?
What's his name?
Us team member?
No, your other friend, the guy,always come down, you guys,
whatever.
Um, oi, oi, lee, yeah, you andoi, oh, he's korean.

(01:44:31):
Oh, geez, I gotta have to.
Can we stop the podcast and goback?
Oi, nothing but love, baby,nothing but love.
Oh, now, oh, that's talk aboutracist, right, there's some
racist stuff, but anyway, so,but uh, so he is.
So did you just say it again?

(01:44:52):
You doubled down.
So the with oi, you and oishould do it.
You guys are real estate barons.
Grab a, grab a spot in florida,just make sure it's not on a
sinkhole.
And uh, dig a basement and puta taekwondo school in it and
then run out and get chased byalligators.
Oh, you can't put a basin floor.

(01:45:35):
Well, the original process wasback in the day I was vice
chairman of the technicalcommittee and I was chairman of
the education committee.
So any rule changes wereproposed by the technical
committee.
They then would be voted on bythe technical committee and then
they would be brought to theboard for, brought to the
executive committee forendorsement and then brought to

(01:45:56):
the board as a whole.
So the original change inscoring came from when I was on
the technical committee andKaepernick was on the technical,
dr Kaepernick.
So we came up with themulti-tiered scoring of one, two
, three, four points.
David Moon from Mexico, who wasthe chairman of the committee,

(01:46:20):
after we voted on it and got itpassed in our committee.
He didn't bring it to the wholecommittee and I had to walk out
of the meeting to get it backon the agenda.

(01:48:07):
Get it passed, thank you.
Historically, the rules andeverybody knows this
historically the rules come fromthe KTA.
So the KTA is the tail thatwags the dog.
They, the rules, come from theKTA, so the KTA is the tail that
wags the dog.
They change the rules in theKTA.
Once they're changed in the KTA, they get six months head start
on everybody else and thenthose rules come to the WT and
that's just historically howit's always happened.

(01:48:29):
The problem is, when you get amoron running the KTA like Yang
Chenban, this moron who didn'tdo taekwondo at a high level at
all but thinks he's matters hewas the guy that came up with
the pushing and grabbing rulebecause he just didn't like
pushing.
You know like.
And when you get allow somebodywho doesn't like something,
hasn't done the sport at a highlevel, doesn't have the

(01:48:52):
intellect sport intellect atleast to understand the sport
then then that becomes endemicand you've seen when that
happens, what happens.
The best way to do this andthere was a point where it was
happening is you come up with aset of proposed rules, you roll
it out to countries that havethe ability to hold events with

(01:49:12):
numerous athletes using the newrules and see what happens.
So let's say you want to, yeahyeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah well.

(01:49:33):
Can I ask you?
What's your last name?
What's your last name, kim?
If it's kim parker lee, itmatters.
They don't care what morenothinks and they don't care what
tj no, no, let's be frank, theydon't care what like.
There's a recent note that wentout.
They're looking for board ofdirectors.
Board of directors don't applyunless your name's kim leah park

(01:49:55):
.
That's just the way it is.
And and, by the way, the KimLee's and the Parks that apply
haven't done taekwondo, haven'tcompeted in taekwondo when they
did.
If they ever did taekwondo, theKim Lee's and Parks that apply
are the guys that used to do itwith bamboo chest protectors and
they were doing karate thatthey learned from the Japanese,
to be frank.
So, like you know, when you'reasking that particular group of

(01:50:18):
individuals who are nepotistic,xenophobic, to name a few things
, you're going to have akerfuffle, as we've said before,
and you're going to have aswampalampalus, and that's what
we have right now.

(01:50:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but what?
Okay, so in fairness, infairness, one of the greatest
taekwondo athletes ever isinvolved now john john jungkook,
young.
And what's happening?
This guy's sitting in the backdrinking tea, eating bulgogi and
kalbi and soju, and he's notmaking.

(01:51:00):
He's in the room he could bestanding up for.
This guy did taekwondo highestlevel, best athlete ever.
He's sitting in the roomsigning off on this nonsense.
By the way, he doesn't watchthe tournaments.
He doesn't watch thetournaments.
What if Martin Luther King saidthat?

(01:51:24):
What if Mahatma Gandhi saidthat?
What if Herb Perez said that?
Somebody's got to start,somebody's got to start,
somebody's got to start.
Thank you, I guess yes, yeah,well, let me help, well, let me.

(01:53:06):
Right right so but if you want,if you can't, you can't punch,

(01:53:43):
you can't punch.
Listen, yeah, yeah yeah referee.
Listen, go back to the originalproblems.
It started with the refs andcontinues to be the refs, and
you got to go back.
I'm going to take you back towhat the original conversation

(01:54:05):
was and still should be, I thinkyeah so yeah, yeah, so yeah, no
.
So here's the problem.
Yeah, but here's the problem.

(01:54:28):
This started because thereferees were inept or cheated.
That's it, let's be clear.
Second, we've lost our way intrying to fix what was
malfeasance on the part ofgovernments and, to be honest,
koreans in Korea and referees.
So as a response to that, welost our way, because then we

(01:54:51):
lost the essence of taekwondo.
You have to go backfundamentally to what taekwondo
was or thought it was.
Fundamentally, taekwondothought it was a full contact
martial art.
It thought it was, and in factit was for a very long time.
The idea that you wouldn'tscore punches over kicks was so
that you could allow kicks todevelop as a kicking art as

(01:55:13):
opposed to a punching art,because once you enter punches
in, it thwarts the ability ofpeople to do certain
combinations of kicks thatmatter, and that's where cover
punch came in.
The problem is you've got to goback to either A trusting the
referee or changing the scoringsystem to a power-based system
that reflects more of whatoriginal taekwondo was.

(01:55:35):
The difference betweentaekwondo and Karate was Karate
was point fighting and one punchkill.
And we couldn't really do,because if we did it I would
kill you.
Well, we know that's not true,all right.
So Taekwondo came up with afull contact martial art which
was much more like Kyoko Shinkai, who, by the way, was created
not by Masayama.
It was created by a Korean guywho named himself Masayama.

(01:55:58):
So full contact Kyoko Shinkaiis actually created by,
ironically, a Korean that was inJapan.
Now, with that said, isTaekwondo fundamental
existential question?
Is Taekwondo, just like I wouldask you if I asked you, are you
Mexican, are you black?
Am I?
Whatever I am?
That's a fundamental question.

(01:56:20):
If I believe in my heart thatI'm this, then that's what I am.
If you believe taekwondo is afull contact martial art and
that's what should be reflectedin its aesthetic and in its
scoring system, then you comeout with different outcomes.
Now is a front hand punch.
I can guarantee you, if I do afront hand punch on you, you'll

(01:56:41):
know I punched you.
Now is that a legitimatetechnique?
But it is because, if you don'tscore it, if you say we can't
do it and the reason we're notscoring it, it would be
interesting to know what thatrationale is.
You can no longer score afront-hand punch.

(01:58:43):
Yeah, silence, thank you.
Well, so do you, do you guys?
Do you guys know what?
Do you know where most rulechanges come for, come from in
olympic sport?
Do you know why?
You know what the why is?
That's it, that's it morescoring.
They want they, they look at itand they go.
We got to sell sponsorships.
So if you can't watch thissport doesn't work in taekwondo,
by the way, doesn't work in anysport.

(01:59:05):
Yeah, judo did it too, and judo, you talk to anybody who does
judo.
There's this thing now yeah,you can't, you can't like grab,
you can't grab in a certain wayanymore because it frustrates
the game.
So they just made the ruleillegal.
And the thing was, guys whoreally do judo, like Mike Swain,
they're like it's the dumbestrule in the world, because if

(01:59:26):
you do judo, you know that'sessential to the art of judo.
And Thank you.

(02:00:17):
Stephen Lopez made a career ondeductions.
He scored, he.
What 10?
Yeah, the 10-point must system.

Speaker 2 (02:00:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:01:25):
Are you Thank you oh yeah, but I, I, I, actually I.
I designed the system for badrefereeing a long time ago.
I said if you have a matchwhere you believe the referee
made a bad decision or a badcall, the referee has to fight

(02:01:47):
the athlete at that moment towin a point.
And if he wins the point thenhe gets to continue.
If not, otherwise the pointgoes up.
So let's say, you raise aheadshot call, referee called it
the wrong way, or whatever.
The referee has to go in andbattle the athlete and the
athlete, and this way refereeswill be a lot more careful about
cheating.
So if he makes a bad decision,yeah, be afraid to raise that

(02:02:08):
finger, baby.
So I'll give you.
I got your kam jong right here.
So you know, I've thought aboutover the years, I've thought
about it, I don't know, over theyears I've thought about it.

(02:02:29):
And the reason I don't fight init is that old country song
that says I'm not as good as Iused to be, but I might be as
good as I used to be.
One more, you know, one moresecond, and that's all I I got.
Maybe I, I was.
I was telling the story aboutpracticing for my ninth Don, and
when I'm practicing, I'm, youknow, I want to be able to kick,
and all this not because I,because really all they test you
on is this you know forms.
But I'm like, oh, dude, I feelgood, you know.

(02:02:50):
So I'm axe kicking, I'm roundkicking, I'm doing all this
stuff.
And then I'm like, yeah, man, Ihaven't done back hook kick in
a while.
Maybe I should do some backhook kicks.
So I'm feeling good, I'mtwisting, I'm, you know, winding
myself up, and then I throw abunch pretty good right.
And then all of a sudden I goand I pull every, every muscle
available, which I never used topull muscles.
I pull every muscle availableto me in anywhere that has

(02:03:14):
anything to do with any part ofmy body.
And I'm like, yeah, so,although I'd like to believe,
nothing is more sad for me thanto watch a highly elite,
competitive athlete.
Um, I watched jungkook, youngspar, matin sahin.
Yeah, oh, no, no, my guy, Ihave my guy that, my guy that

(02:03:38):
works for me.
He's like, oh, he's watchingthe kids spar.
And he goes oh, dude, I want toenter a tournament.
I looked at him and I go lopez,stay in the gym, man, you're a
teacher, spar, I spar thefive-year-olds, I'm working my
way up to the six-year-old girlsand then maybe I'll spar the
seven-year-old boys.
That's it, this guy.
Of course, he's moving around,what's he do?
Hurts his knee, which is why hehad to retire in the first

(02:03:59):
place.
So I'm like, okay, all right,chuck Norris, get in there, give
it your best, right, like thishe's.
He's, this is a, this is my gym.
He hurts himself, right.
So I'm like, you know, yougotta know, enjoy your glory at
this glory.

(02:04:20):
It does.
Never competed, never competed.
Yeah, 65.
If you can find another 65 yearold oold Olympic gold medalist
that wants to fight, I'm in.
I'm in Another 60.
Yeah, no, I'd fight you.

(02:04:44):
I'd fight you for sure.
No, no, I'd fight you.
I think we should have awarehouse 15.
Yeah, you would be up for today.
I wouldn't even train.
I wouldn't even train.
I would drop the, I would drop,I would drop.
All I'd have to do.
I'd drop the right hand on you.
That's it, the right hand.
Where's your training camp?

(02:05:05):
I'm coming.
And then the winner fightsMoreno.
The winner fights Moreno.
Oh, you're out, you're out.
Alright, tj, it's me and you, meand you.
Oh, I'm going to have to hityou early.

(02:05:27):
I'm going to hit you early.
I'm going to use my MMA, myoriginal ultimate fighting.
I said I'm going to try my thingand if it fails I'm tap out.
Can we tap out?
If I get tired, can I tap out?
I got it, I got it.
I'm gonna sweat on you.
I'm gonna grab you and sweat onyou.

(02:05:48):
That's what I'm gonna do.
Tj, I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure.
If we fought right now, youprobably beat me.
There's no doubt, especially ifyou do that sissy electronic
body protector stuff.
No doubt, and you probably beatme.
Whatever, but I'm I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
20 years ago that would be thesame result.

(02:06:09):
Oh, you're good.
Oh, all right now.
Now, if you're gonna throw thatat gauntlet, we're gonna go
coach.
You're gonna, moreno, you'regonna have to ref it.
You're going to throw thatgauntlet, we're going to go
Coach, you're going to have toref it.
You're going to have to ref it.
But I don't want to hearanything when I hit you.
How much do you weigh now?
How much do you weigh, tj?
Yeah, how much do you weigh?
Oh, all right, you're biggernow.

(02:06:29):
You're bigger.
What did you weigh back in theday.
All right, you lose 40 poundsand we'll fight.
You lose 40 pounds and we'llfight.
Oh, we all like to believe.
I like to believe, you know.
Only thing I wrestle with nowis my conscience.
So you know, I'm not fightinganything except my conscience
and seven-year-old kids.

(02:06:49):
All right, and it's in speedos.
Let's keep it real.
Let's keep it real.
It's speedos and bring that,bring that, bring that, lion,
bring.
All right, I'll fight you forall your trophies and medals and
the lion posters.
Oh no, no, those are worthmoney, baby.

(02:07:13):
That's why I don't show themanymore.
All right, I think we havebeaten this horse to death.
This has been the Warehouse 15,and you heard it first here.
Tj, my Olympic brother, wants tohave a challenge match, so
we're going to put a GoFundMefor the hospital bill for him

(02:07:33):
after the match.
So it'll be a go fund me anddon't worry, I'll visit you in
the hospital after I pull myhand out of your dude.
We don't have to, it's notgonna be that long.
Make sure the camera's on,because this I'm not gonna kick.
I'm gonna save my one good kick.
I, if I hit you, if I hit youwith my left leg, you're dead,

(02:07:54):
but I'm going to, I'm going tostart with this, I'm going to,
I'm going to work on this, thatI'm going to work on this.
65 year old, oh, yeah, yeah,just move around.
Y'all be breathing for sure,unless can we fight on a bicycle
?
I do a lot of cycling.
Oh, I got to come to the gymthough.

(02:08:16):
Oh, slap box and I'll kill you.
You see the length of my arms.
My arms go down to my knees.
My arms are six foot two man.
My body's only five, nine on agood day.
All right, this has been thewarehouse With all the silliness
.
This has been the warehouse 15.
And we are out.
You guys, you guys.

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