What's up, guys? So today on the podcast, we have my buddy, Drew Phoenix. Drew is a guy that I met last year, or I guess this year, in January, and super cool guy. And, you know, from talking to him in and out of the gym, he's got a really cool story to share. He's a military veteran. He's a brown belt jih Tjitsu. He competes. We didn't, we got into talking and we didn't get to talk about the project that he has going on right now called Substars, which he's a part of, which is a cool submission-only organization. But again, we talk about a lot about his military experience, how he's working with kids, his Jitsu journey. And more than anything, I wanted to talk with him about some of the dark places that he's been personally and how he got up out of it because I think that all of us, whether you're a military veteran or not, everyone's been, you know, down at some point. We've all been down in a hole at some point. And for me personally, I always get some useful perspectives whenever I listen to how someone did something, you know, because it's one thing to see what the polished product looks like. It's one thing to see, like, someone say that they're okay and everything's great or whatever, but it's another thing to say, well, here's how that happened, going from A to B to C to D, whatever. That's for me, like that's why I end up liking a lot of biographies and like journals from stuff like that. So you can see the inner workings of people where they, you know, they don't just talk about, you don't see just the final end product. You see this journey from one point to the other. So I hope you guys enjoy this podcast. It was a great bringing them on. As always, if you guys dig the podcast, you can go to patreon.com slash the Jiu-Jitsu podcast. I'm getting ready to upload. If you guys are interested, I'm getting ready to upload some stuff from the Chicago Open. That'll be up there as a, just a thank you guys, who are Patreon subscribers. So that'll be up there later on this week. And then again, if you guys are interested in using some CBD oil, check out whatever CBD you want to. But if you want one, that a good quality and it's one that I stand by, it's the one that I actually use at home. I use Charlotte's Web, and you can go to charlotsweb.com and use the promo code Chiu-Jitsu 10 to save 10% on the order, and it supports a podcast as well. So with that said, guys let's jump into the podcast. Can you see him flexing? Yeah, I can see.

He flexes all the time. It's ridiculous. That was funny with you and Joe today that video. Oh yeah, yeah. He's like, we were sitting there and he didn't even think about it. was like uh because he was like lifting and he's

like yeah man he goes uh he's like you're gonna lift later i was like yeah i'm gonna do um i'm do some strict press and he's like okay i'll do some strict press with you if you want to share a bar i was like i don't want to share a bar with you he's like you live too much way he's like oh i'm just warming up or i'm just resting today so what are you doing you're in the car Yeah, so I just started work yesterday.

Work.

What do you mean work? What's work? Look at you. We're wearing a collared shirt, man. You know what I'm saying? What is that? What are you trying to do? What are you got going on, man, work-wise? I work with in the kids program. I'm a program director for a teen leadership program.

All right.

So six through eighth grade.

Oh, we talked about this, didn't we?

Before, is it the same thing?

No.

That program got shut down due to funding.

This program got a lot of fun.

And it's still serving the same type of neighborhood, which is underserved youth. Perfect. And I get to bring Jiu-Jitsu to this program, too. So that's all you're doing? Is your teaching kids Jiu-Jitsu? I mean, is that like the main, that's not the main thing, just one of the? No, no, no, it's the whole youth empowerment program. Oh, nice.

So we bring them in, we feed them. We have tutors there in case they need help with homework.

Then there's always some sort of class going on. So like they had this, yesterday was men from this

organization that teaches healthy masculinity. So they called all the boys in there and, you know, organization that teaches healthy masculinity so they called all the

boys in there and you know they talked about healthy masculinity i sat in there because i wanted to

make sure it wasn't that this was what toxic masculinity is right and no you know what i mean like

you shouldn't do this and like i was making sure it wasn't that you know I sat in there and they were

like you know um they were talking I forgot what exactly they were talking about but I agreed and

you know they were very engaged with the kids and they were getting their their perspective and

and I was like okay I approved so you know I hopped off the class because you know I'm program

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