Hello, friends, and welcome to the Nugget Climbing podcast. This is Stephen Dimmett, and today we're

shaking things up and branching outside of the world of performance rock climbing and talking to a

martial artist. My guest today is Jeff Patterson. Jeff is a martial arts instructor and expert. He is a black belt or the equivalent of a black belt

in six different martial arts, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, and Tai Chi, to name a few,

and has practiced martial arts for close to 40 years training undermasters from seven

different countries. He founded Northwest Fighting Arts

and Portland Tai Chi Academy in Portland, Oregon and has taught more than 26,000 students. And he joins us

today to tell us what rock climbers can learn from the world of martial arts and how we can

benefit from practicing the meditative

arts. I thought it was really interesting and there are at least a few nuggets that stood out to me,

especially in the second half of this interview. We tried to give you guys some tangible tips

for performance anxiety and for grounding into a more present state so you can get the most out of your

climbing practice, a thought-provoking interview all around. Please enjoy Jeff Patterson, welcome to me much for having me. Like we do it. Like we do it.

Like we do it.

Like we do it.

Jeff Patterson, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you very much for having me.

I'm really excited to talk to you.

I've never interviewed a martial artist before.

And I suspect there's a lot that climbers can learn from martial arts that we can apply to our performance, our training, mental game, emotional regulation, etc.

And in this conversation, I want to spend a little time on your background and hear how you got into all of this.

And then I want to jump into actionable advice and dig for some nuggets that climbers can apply from martial arts to

...