Jocko Underground: Breaking Up With Your Significant Other out of Boredom | The Value of Instructors VS Training Partners
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This is the Jocko Underground podcast number 151. Sitting here with Echo Charles. Have some interesting topics for today. And I believe the first question has to do with the jiu-jitsu. Let's go. Okay. All right. First question, dear Jocko Echo. I started listening to your podcast a while ago.

And my life has changed drastically. I have two jujitsu gyms in my area to choose from. One is a small gym, 10 minutes from my house with a great teacher with great teaching style and lineage. But at this gym, there are mostly housewives and kids. In sparring, I'm not challenged at all, but great instruction. Just in there beating up the children. Sure. The sparring. Jack. The other gym.

25 minutes away with a champion black belt instructor and many very skilled and athletic students to crush me in sparring, which represents a big challenge. What is most important, the teacher or the student base in a jiu-jitsu gym? What would you consider in my case? What would you do? Unfortunately, I cannot pay both memberships and train at both places. Again, big thank you. Please keep up the pace with the Jocko Podcast Underground. Hope to see you one day on the mats of justice. Osu to both of you. All right.

So it's kind of a weird question. It says what's most important, the teacher or the student base at the gym? And really that's all that. That's a scale. There's not, it's not like, Hey, the teacher is more important than the students. And it's not like the students are more important than the teacher. It's a combination of those two things and it can flush out a bunch of different ways.

obviously you can have an instructor that's, you know, a solid instructor, maybe a purple belt, maybe a brown belt, but he's got just like the team is great. And you've got a bunch of savages in there. Well, that's going to be better than having a great, uh, what is it? Venerated instructor that doesn't have any students. Now what's cool is if you have a great instructor, a lot of times you end up with great students. And so you, that's generally speaking what happens. So he, he,

This question, the only thing that makes this question a little bit easier to answer is one gym is 10 minutes, the other one's 25 minutes away, right? If you start talking 10 minutes versus an hour and 15 minutes, I kind of lean towards, and depending on how busy your life is, hey man, you got to go where you're going to be able to go most often. Having a place that's proximate to your house is one of the biggest factors in choosing a jujitsu gym. Mm-hmm.

If you have a place that's 10 minutes away and you have a place that's an hour away, almost nine out of 10 times, most things considered, it's going to be like, yeah, train at the place that's 10 minutes away. You can go there every single day. There's no excuses. It's an hour away. Dude, that's two, three, four hours out of your day to go get your jiu-jitsu done. At the other place, it's an hour and 20 minutes. You know what I mean? Like out of your day, you can get it done. But since this gym is only 25 minutes away, it's only an additional 15 minutes and it's an additional half an hour.

because, you know, 15 minutes plus on the way there, 15 minutes plus on the way back. I lean towards the gym with the better team at it and the better students. That's what I lean towards. Yeah.

is, you know, if I went into that gym and it had a bad vibe, if the big gym had a bad vibe or the instructor was not there or whatever, you know, whatever the case may be, there could be problems with it. But in this pretty straightforward, you got a, you got a gym with a great black belt champion instructor and a bunch of kick-ass students versus, no offense to the small gym, look, because if we were talking about your kids, we'd be like 100% go to the kid's school. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about you wanting to get better at jujitsu. So,

That's my answer. Go to the gym that's 25 minutes away. That's where you should train. What do you think Echo Charles? - Same. - Same, same. - 100% - Given, I mean, if there is, and I'm trying to think if he indicated like his kind of personal stats, how old, what's his, I think, and if I remember correctly, he's like just a middle of the road person, like 30s something. - He doesn't even mention it. - Has some kids. Yeah, I think I shortened the question a little bit. - Oh, you did. - It could have been a different question, but either way, it doesn't matter. Here's the point.

Point is, yes, given certain circumstances, you go with the one with the kids in the house, quote unquote, good instructor, good, really super extra mellow environment. If you edited out part of the question that said he had kids, this is a totally different thing. No, he's talking about himself, though. I know, but check this out. If I have kids, what's my priority in life? Kids. Is it me getting better at jujitsu at the better school?

No, it's not. No, it's the kids getting better. Yeah. So in this case, unless they have a kid's program at the big gym, I would probably take my kids to the gym and I'd probably turn to that local gym because I'm more focused on my kids. Yes. I understand. I didn't know we were editing questions over there, bro.

You'd be surprised. Yes. Well, here's the thing. Pertinent information was removed. Well, yeah, fully. And maybe, maybe, I don't know. I'm saying maybe this was this question. Maybe it was another one. And here's the whole point by saying that is, yeah, you're right. If that is the case, then that's a different question. What are you looking for? Yeah, exactly. What are you looking for?

Yeah. So what's more important? The basically the sparring versus the instruction and where it's like inverse where the sparring and the instruction, maybe it doesn't make the impact that I, that I maybe expect or whatever, for lack of a better way of putting it. But the sparring is fricking challenging. Awesome. Fricking I'm going to be pushed. Right. Or the exact opposite instructor is fricking awesome. But the sparring, no challenge, you know, I am not pushed at all. What's more important.

kind of black and white scenario. And I agree with you. Yes. Because as a, as a male, unless you're super old and like not super old, but you know, if you're in the old round 65 plus, you know, yeah, exactly right. Or you're super young child, a kid, um,

Now, aside from those two, getting better at jujitsu is going to take certain things, you know, certain experiences. For example, if you're just rolling, just basically doing drills with housewives, you know, an instructor that's just doing drills.

I don't know how effective your jiu-jitsu is going to wind up being over time. You see what I'm saying? As opposed to the opposite. If it's like, even if you're not getting freaking Donna her level, freaking going deep instruction, at least you have that experience. You know, of course there's not, I mean, unless the instructor really sucks, which I doubt, you know, if there's good guys in here, the instructor is going to be good. He's a world champion. He said a world champion. Yeah. So he's in there. Good. Easy.

but he's getting that hardcore sparring experience, that's gonna add an element to Jiu-Jitsu that's more important given who he is, I think too, as well. And the 20, oh, and, but that's 25 minutes. I think the difference between 10 minutes and 25 minutes over time is more significant, I feel like, than the numbers may impress upon you. - It also depends on traffic.

Yeah. Like what's your traffic situation? Yeah. Cause if it's like, if you live in the middle of nowhere and it's 25 minutes, regardless of what time of day and all that stuff, cause in California or New York or Boston, what takes 25 minutes at noon at five o'clock at night can take an hour. Yeah. So that's a big difference. Yeah. So that depends too. Depends on the status there. But if you're cool with the 25 minutes just in life, cause like,

you're probably in the same boat i'm not cool with 25 minutes if i got to do it a lot like think about from your house how far north could you get in 25 minutes you're kind of up in freaking carlsbad at 25 minutes maybe even further but there's traffic oh yeah yeah traffic let's say no traffic right you want to go five minutes far away yeah you want to travel that far forward yeah so yeah it does depend on it but it depends too like if you're used to it it's cool yeah it depends on what the area of operations is

Because there's some places, 25 minutes in a car is kind of nice. Some places. Get on the little back roads. You know what I mean? That's fine. There's no traffic on the two lane highway or whatever. We're all good. Yeah. It'll probably come down to your life. You know, like if you live in LA and you're used to that fucking just gut check going everywhere and it's only 25 minutes, you're going, yeah, worth it. 25 minutes. It's down the block. Either way, I agree. Yes. All right. Next question. Hello, gentlemen.

I broke up with my girlfriend last year after being together for three years. I'm 28. The reason being that I was getting a little bored with the relationship and felt the need to be alone for a while. I was also dealing with a few things. I lost my driver's license for using my mobile phone, which hindered my previous role. I had just bought my first investment property

and was figuring out my finances. Fast forward to present after going to Europe for three weeks solo trip and spending some time alone focusing on work, my fitness goals and music production hobby. It seems as if I threw a good thing away. She was and still is on my mind a lot. I dated another woman briefly for almost six months, but my ex was and still is on the forefront of my mind.

She was very supportive, caring, and understanding when we were together. We never really argued, and if we did, it was mostly my fault for blowing things out of proportion. As I mentioned above, there were times when I was getting bored. After speaking to many people I know that are happily married or in long-term relationships, being quote-unquote bored is a normal phase of their relationship. This was also my first serious relationship. When people ask me about her, I only have good things to say.

We've spoken a few times since breaking up and I told her how I feel. She acknowledged and respected how open I was about my feelings. We ended up catching up the other week and things, for the most part, went well. I'd like to get back with her, but understand that things won't be the same. Any advice on how to handle this situation moving forward? Thanks for everything. Well, one thing that comes to mind here, you know, the whole boredom thing, like what is that? I'm not 100% sure what that is.

you know what what did that mean right for this particular dude right because bored you know if you eat prime rib every night every night look dude i so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the jocko underground podcast so if you want to continue to listen go to jaco underground.com and subscribe and we're doing this we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms

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