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Two Peas in a Podcast

Episode 87 - Rosie Miller (Jiu Jitsu, Value of Training Environment, and Instructional Videos)

Rosie Miller is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu brown belt under Andre Galvao with almost a decade of training experience who has won the IBJJF American Nationals at purple belt. After suffering a few concussions, Rosie was forced into finding a new way to train and created the SHIFT Coaching Systems. Her mission is to share education and knowledge of one of the most competitive gyms in the world with the community to make sure the next wave of female BJJ players are as great as possible.


To connect with Rosie please follow her on:

https://www.shiftcoachingsystems.com/strategcall

https://www.instagram.com/rosierollz/?hl=en

Broadcast on:
27 Aug 2024
Audio Format:
other
Rosie Miller, one of the coolest things about being even on a screen with you is knowing that if we ended up on a mat together, you would choke me out exactly 10 out of 10 times and there's something so, so comforting as a man to know that you're in the presence of a beautiful, stronger person and woman who can just beat the crap out of you. More than anything, thank you for being here and I'm so, so excited to talk with you today. Oh, thank you so much for having me. That has to be one of the coolest introductions I've had. Thank you for that. I love this because every single time I watch every one of your Jiu Jitsu videos, I just go, "Oh my God, I have absolutely no idea what the hell it is that I'm doing on a mat. How is this girl so dang good? Tell me how you got into Jiu Jitsu and how long you've been doing it." So I've been doing Jiu Jitsu for almost 10 years now and it started actually because I got into boxing first and I'm going to kind of reverse engineer this. So I got into Jiu Jitsu because I was boxing out of an MMA gym and I always saw Jiu Jitsu happening and I thought it was really cool, but I got into boxing because I grew up as a competitive dancer and I was always so curious about martial arts. I was so curious about fighting, it was so foreign to me because I was kind of raised in a more traditionally feminine sport. I was heavily invested in dance from the time I was three years old. I competed in dance, I thought it was going to be my career, but there was this other side of me that was just fascinated with fighting. So when I turned like 17, 18-ish, I kind of started to explore boxing and in my late teens or early 20s I met this guy, his name is Joab Corey, he's still one of my best friends to this day and we went to the same gym and there was this just mirrored room with wood floors where they did their aerobics classes and I would go up there and dance and practice on my own and he would be in the corner doing like karate or something. At the time I had no idea what he was doing and we didn't speak for like a year, we never spoke to each other, we just shared this space. And then finally, we kind of introduced each other. I think he started taking one of my bootcamp classes that I was teaching at the gym and I asked him about what he was doing in the corner and he told me he was practicing his katas and that he was a black belt and nokanawan karate and he also boxed. And I was like please teach me how to do that, like please teach me everything you know. And at first it was just for fitness but after our first session I just kind of fell in love with it. And so that was my first introduction to kind of martial arts and it just grew from there. I love that story so so much because there's a couple of like key ingredients here. First and foremost, as a background in feminine based sports, what was it like having that first conversation with your parents where you were like huh, I think I might want to explore boxing and fighting. I don't even think I had that conversation with them, I think I just kind of did it. I remember being a kid and my older brother had a friend who did karate and I would go to the karate academy on occasion and I would watch them practice. And in my head I remember thinking I want to do that, I want to wear the cool uniform, I want to punch through you know wooden blocks or whatever they were doing. But I grew up in a very big family so I have four siblings and I was very focused on dance and so I don't know, I don't remember exactly if it was because I was shy or because I didn't want to put anything else on my parents or because I thought that I wouldn't be allowed to. They were very open-minded, I'm sure they would have let me, so I'm not exactly sure what my hesitation was but I remember when I finally had that conversation with Joab kind of just went for it. I didn't have the conversation, it was just kind of like well this is what I'm doing now and my parents weren't surprised when they found out. Yeah, I like that. Now there's a lot of overlap between dancing and boxing in general and like famously Triple G is one of those guys who's dad forced him out of actual boxing to take dance lessons for a long time. I think it was like two years just to learn the footwork. Was it helpful to come in being so coordinated when you actually started boxing? To say I think so, it's hard for me to say because that's all I've ever known but I do think there's value in trusting your body and having kind of proprioception, where's my body in space, where's my body in relation to other people, having coordination, having rhythm, so I have to believe that it's helped me. And I think just growing up as a mover, you know, I didn't have to learn how to trust my body really. Yeah, I like that. Now walk me through this transition from boxing and karate into jiu jitsu, given that there is such different and like almost polar opposite ends of the spectrum. Yeah, so around the time that I found boxing was when Ronda Rousey was coming up in the UFC and so I was watching a lot of MMA at the time and I remember knowing what was happening when they were on their feet and then as soon as it hit the mat and everyone else was like stand them up, I never wanted them to stand up. I just wanted to know what was happening because I had no idea what was happening. And I had a couple small introductions to jiu jitsu, like I was in a, I helped start a boxing club at Florida State University and some of our boxers would come in after they were at the jiu jitsu club and, you know, it's just a bunch of white and blue belts learning off YouTube at that point. Yeah. And they would come in and they'd be like, look at this cool move I learned. And then they'd show it to me and so I was kind of starting to not understand jiu jitsu, but I was being introduced to it in some way and I thought it was pretty cool. So I ended up moving out to San Diego in 2013 and I started boxing out of an MMA gym there. And so I would go to my boxing class, I would lead boxing and there was a jiu jitsu class going on right after. So I'd see all these guys on one girl training jiu jitsu and I would just watch because I had no idea what was happening. And I had all these kind of weird serendipitous encounters with jiu jitsu, like there was a Trader Joe's cashier who had cauliflower ear and I would see him every time I went grocery shopping and I would talk to him about jiu jitsu. And he was just like, well, you should just, you should just try it. You should just do it. And for some reason it seemed so difficult for me to like, take that leap. I made this huge leap from dance to boxing, but for some reason the jump from boxing to jiu jitsu just felt so much scarier to me. And so it took a couple of years of me just having these random encounters with jiu jitsu people. And then finally, the manager, owner at the gym that I was boxing at, he was like, Rose, you're going to take a class. You're going to take my jiu jitsu class. He doesn't even remember this. I still, I actually teach at that gym now, 10 years later, I teach there, which is crazy. He doesn't even remember, but I had no nothing. This was before people were rash guards and shorts and kits. I was literally just in my boxing clothes and I got on the mat and I was completely lost. I had no idea what was happening, but it was so like intriguing to me. And it was about six months to a year after that that I finally took the jump and joined a jiu jitsu academy. Yeah. Now, I love that story so much for a couple of reasons. First, now that you know, all you know about jiu jitsu and you're an actually high level player, how weird is it thinking about what UFC used to be like in 2015? And knowing that, holy wow, the level of jiu jitsu at the time was, I mean, so, so basic relative to the level that regular fighters are at today. It's crazy. And honestly, I still feel like the level of jiu jitsu in MMA is still fairly low compared to high level jiu jitsu. It's just crazy how many levels there are to this, but yeah, thinking back, I mean, just like anything, the greats of 10 years ago would probably get beat by the up and comers of today, potentially. And it's just a testament to how knowledge really builds and how how creative and constantly evolving this sport is. It's not like some sports where people aged out of it. It's really you have to stay up with the times and stay up with the meta to stay at that level. How terrifying was it for you knowing that this journey that you were about to embark on to was one where you did not see a lot of women around you and that it was mostly male at the time? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not sure that that ever really affected me. I thought it was cool. I was always a bit of a tomboy. I actually went through a phase in life. This is not something that I talk about much with everyone, but I grew up with a lot of brothers. And when I was like 10 or 11, I remember my mom took them to go get buzz cuts and they got maybe I was younger than 10 or 11. I might have been like eight or 10, but my mom took my brothers to go get buzz cuts and they got home and I was like, that is cool. I want a buzz cut too. And so I'd always just been fascinated kind of by what my brothers were doing by boy sports. And now my mom didn't let me get a buzz cut, but I did cut my hair very, very, very short. I was always kind of like wearing basketball shorts and bobby t-shirts and I was always wanting to hang with the boys and do boy things. So I actually think it was more comfortable for me to be in that environment than in almost like the hyper feminine world of dance. And there was a lot of things that were hard for me about the dance world. I had girlfriends, but I didn't feel like the most girly of them and dance is a very like blips and glam type of a thing. I hated doing my hair. I hated having my makeup done. I hated like having to be measured and feel like I needed to be a certain size. So I think for me, it was actually more freeing than anything. I didn't have to worry about being too rough because I was the only girl always thought strong women were really badass. And so I felt like it was the way for me to finally tap into that. I love that. I love that because like the cool thing about you get to is it's a sport for everyone. But there is something that draws people who are used to being competitive, used to playing a little rougher towards this arena of life. And what's also cool about it is it almost feels like when you're on the mat, you get pushed to your limits each and every day, your limits shift with the better that you get just the level of competition changes. You still always get your ass kicked at the end of the day and talk to me about the specific thing of growing up as a female being surrounded by brothers and the lessons that it helped you push you forward in a sport like Jiu Jitsu. Yeah. Oh man, so I can think of so many stories growing up specifically with my older brother. He and I are very close in age, so we're less than two years apart. And I grew up just wanting to be like him and his friends and they would make like wrestling movies. And I just always wanted to be a part and I kind of always felt like they would give me like side roles in their in their movies, right? So like if they were doing a wrestling movie like I was having to turn the scorecard or one time they made like a James Bond movie and I was the avalanche. They buried me in pillows and I just shook and that was my role in that movie. So I always felt like I didn't quite fit in and instead of discouraging me, it kind of made me want to find my own way and it made me want to do it even more honestly. So if if nothing else, it kind of just taught me not to accept feeling on the outside or feeling like I didn't belong and to keep finding a way and finding my place to do it. It almost made me just more determined, I guess, but it's really funny because none of my brothers are into combat sports, none of them. They like tennis, they like refurbishing old cars, they like dance, swing dance are phenomenal at that. And so I think maybe I'm the second oldest in my family, but I was treated like the only girl in my family, but I also kind of wasn't, I was very outspoken, I was very determined. I was kind of bossy probably. And so I'm not exactly sure how that dynamic, if I influenced the dynamic or if the dynamic influenced me. God, I appreciate that so much. I just appreciate that so much because it tells me that from an early age, you needed to learn how to take shit and talk shit because to be able to be heard at the house, you just had to stand your ground and be exactly who you were meant to be. Now what is that relationship with your brothers like now, given that you could beat their butts? We're all super close, we're all super, super close. Yeah, none of them have ever really tried jujitsu, I try to get them, I try to get them to try it out, but they think it's cool that I train, I was home a couple weeks ago visiting my family, I taught a seminar when I was home, they came and watched, my little niece, she's six years old, she came and watched, they completely support me, they think it's really cool, I don't really think they fully understand, you know, jujitsu. So I don't know, it's kind of like my thing now, you know, and they love it, they support me completely, but they have absolutely no interest in actually doing it. And what's awesome is exactly how far you've come in your journey because so few people actually get to the level where you are today. Talk me through the steps, some of the medium winds, some of the big winds along your journey from being a white belt all the way to brown bed belt today. Yeah, man, I think that I was really fortunate. I didn't recognize where I was when I got started. I didn't realize that San Diego is this huge hub for jujitsu, and I've been very fortunate to train with two very high level teams. So when I started jujitsu, I started at Gracie South Bay with Laticia Hibiro at the time, Bia Mesquita was on her team and was winning everything. She's like a 10 time world champion, she's an ADCC world champion, she's like a five time no key world champion. And also at that gym were other female world champions, Maxine Thailand, Anna Schmidt, Gabby McComb, and we had women coming in from all over to train there. And I didn't realize how fortunate I was to get started there. And so right off the bat, as a white belt, I was exposed to women succeeding in jujitsu, women having careers in jujitsu, and women leading in jujitsu. And I didn't realize even the level of skill that I was being exposed to. It's funny, people joke with me now, like, oh, Rose, like your back escapes, your clothes guard escapes, you're really hard to score on, your defense is so good. And I'm like, yeah, because when I was a white belt, Bia Mesquita was on my back every day, you know, and so I think that I didn't realize kind of the privilege that I had in that. And then about five or six years into training, I switched over to Atos and Atos is a world renowned gym as well, both with their men and their women's team. And it's, you know, led by Andre and Angelica Galval. And we constantly have the highest level grapplers coming through both for ghee and for no ghee. And so, you know, as much as I want to take credit for where I'm at, I'm also very fortunate to be where I am. So environment I think plays a huge role in it. Now in addition to the environment, I think actually kind of my failure and boxing pushed me to take more risks with jujitsu. So I mentioned that I had been a competitive dancer before, and I was very confident in dance. I'd been doing it my whole life. I didn't remember ever being bad at dance. I'd been doing it so long. There was no skill acquisition phase. I'm sure it was hard and I had to train a lot, but I had been doing it so long. I never really remembered learning how to dance. It's just something I've always done. And then I started boxing and I was not good at boxing when I first started. Well, I was a confident, I was confident in moving. I was not confident really getting hit. I was not confident competing. I was so scared of losing and boxing, so scared of losing that I never fully exposed myself. I did a couple small smokers, but I never really pushed myself to what I think I could have achieved in boxing. And so I distinctly remember when I started jujitsu, I was like, "I don't care if I fail. I'm going to find out." And so I started competing a month into training or something ridiculous like that. I had no idea what I was doing and I lost, horribly, my first tournament and I kept losing for like a year. Yeah. Which is very, very typical. That's the way that it should be. Right. Everyone is obviously just coming in with a lot more experience than you. And more than anything, I just want to take a moment to appreciate and talk about how awesome you admitting that is. Like a lot of people have this problem of not wanting to start a new hobby or not wanting to take on a new thing because they go, "Oh, I suck." It's normal. Every single time that you pick up something new, you are starting from the very bottom and you have to build your way up. Not everything you touch is going to be awesome. Not everything you touch happens overnight. But if you stick with it for eight years, a decade, all of a sudden, you can be a Rose Miller doing Jiu Jitsu instructionals and teaching other people, both the power of women and just the power of doing Jiu Jitsu the right way. And I think a huge thing with that too is everyone's like, "Oh, you know, I want to be good at Jiu Jitsu." But with Jiu Jitsu, where pros are training so close to like people with a nine to five job who do this three times a week, you know, it's like, "Okay, what is good for you?" You're probably never going to be world class, right? Like, unless you're doing this full time. But that's okay. That doesn't have to be your goal. It can still benefit you and you can be good for you. You can share how this has helped you. So much of it is relative. And so even like when it comes to belts, the belt doesn't represent anything objective. It doesn't really say what you should be able to accomplish in competition or even like it says a little bit about your skill, but mostly it says how long is you've been training and where you are in relation to your own individual potential. And that's not going to be the same for everyone. And so that was, I think, coming up in such a competitive environment, that was a hard lesson for me to learn. Like, my background, okay, I turn this Sarah Galvall. She is like an up and coming. She's been doing this her whole life. Her dad is Andre Galvall. She's a phenom, you know, first of all, she's grown up around this. She's incredibly privileged in the sport. But she puts in the work, you know. And so like she is just freaking incredible and there's a couple of girls like that. I know my brown belt isn't the same as her brown belt, you know, where we have different journeys and that's okay. And so I think, you know, being able to not compare yourself and think that you're failing just because your journey doesn't look exactly like someone else's. I think that she's one of my favorite people to train with. I learn a lot from her. I hope she gets something out of training with me too. I like to think she does. You know, but just because your journey looks a little different from someone else's doesn't mean it's worse or that you're failing. Yeah. And I love the specific way that you talk about this. So like for whatever reason, this isn't a secret. But in Jiu Jitsu, the flavor of Jiu Jitsu like changes with time. For a long time, like, likes we're in a big part of the game, then it felt like like likes were like the biggest thing. And a lot of the black belts at the time were like, I don't know, just had this negative attitude towards new black belts being not as good at certain aspects of the game, but being incredible at black lives. I always talk about this in the exact same way that you do is like, Hey, this is a journey just for you. The belt doesn't matter. But what's awesome is seeing someone who's committed to something so long term, showing out every single day, and you have to appreciate the journey that they're on rather than like the destination where they're going. Talk to me. Talk to me about what it was like training with some of the best in the world, especially as you were coming up. I think that like I rationally knew that I was training with the best, but I don't think I realized how many level levels there there were to Jiu Jitsu. And I would approach every single round, no matter who it was, like I'm going to take off their head. I am going to win. And I actually think that's a really good mentality to have. I do wish I approached training slightly differently in terms of how I learned, how I studied, my intentions going into training. I think that's improved a lot over the last like three to five years. But as a white belt in blue belt coming up, I just wanted to scrap and give people a hard time. And I mean, even Professor Galvel now, he tells us no matter how old someone is, if they're 10 years older than you, if they're 10 years younger than you, you know, if they're a black belt world champion and you're not, no matter what, you have to approach that round. Like you are going to win. And so I never really let it get to me. And I started Jiu Jitsu older too. I started Jiu Jitsu when I was like 24. And it never occurred to me that that was quote unquote older ever. I just never let that affect what I thought my abilities were. What I thought my potential was it. I didn't even think about it until someone brought it to my attention. They made like a, I don't remember what the comment was, but I remember someone eluded to me being older. And I was like, what are you talking about? So it's kind of like that ignorance is bliss thing. So I think you just can't, like you can't get frustrated with yourself if these people are, you know, constantly getting the best of you, but also don't limit yourself. You can learn. You can acquire skills and Jiu Jitsu is this unique thing where there's knowledge and there's application and to be at the best, you need both. And so I don't know, I just think it's super fascinating to me because of that, because there's this, this nerdy intellectual side to it. And then there's this raw physical side to it and you can kind of lean into different aspects of it, depending on what your goals are and where you're at or your training. So I don't even know if I answered your question. I kind of went on a tangent there. You did. And I think that's exactly what makes Jiu Jitsu so, so special. It's this combination of knowing what you should be doing plus the mad time in order for you to get your body and sync to actually be able to achieve the movements that you need to go through the sequences. Talk to me about the value of a great training partner. Somebody who meets you wherever you are, will let's you play your game, but also puts up enough resistance to make sure you're consistently getting better. And I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having good training partners. I'm very fortunate where I train, I have a lot of diversity in training partners. I can go with people who are way better than me. I can go with people who are way better than me at certain things. I can go with people who were kind of tip for tat and I can't make any mistakes. And then I can go with people who give really, really great reactions, but I'm more skilled enough. I'm more experienced enough that I can try new things. I can even make some mistakes and find my way out. And I think having all those different levels of training are so important. One, to kind of, I like call it collecting data, collecting data on where the holes are in your game, what you need to improve, implementing new techniques, new strategies. And then, you know, also being able to, if you're interested in competing or even if you're not interested in competing and you want to know what it feels like to go with a fully resisting human, you know, I think that's a very, I think for people who are doing this for self defense, that's very important to know what that's like, to kind of build that kind of grit and mental strength and fortitude and the ability to not give up even when you do fail, it kind of pushed through those crucial moments knowing when to keep going and maybe you want to try something new. So I think that that diversity in training partners is extremely, extremely helpful. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And what I see a lot is a lot of people who start Jiu Jitsu with that intention of sticking with it forever and for whatever reason, choose to leave at some point. It's mostly before they even get to blue belt because it's just easier to quit. What has kept you going through all of these times through, you know, getting beat up by some of the best in the world, but still knowing that, hey, I can hang in here and I can definitely be as good as them one day. It's never really been a thought for me to quit if I'm being honest. It's like, I think I'm, I think I'm the best version of myself when I'm training. I think it's a form of self expression for me. So I think that it's been, I have had moments where I've wondered, can I keep training like this? Am I going to keep going about it like this in a way that it was just all consuming of my life? And I did have to change from that in order for it to continue to serve and be something positive in my life. I did change how I was training or how I thought about training. And so I think what has allowed me to keep going and really not experience frustration, really leaning into the learning and the process of it more than the outcomes of a specific day. Winning is not the goal of every training session. Obviously you want to, but if you don't win, you're not, it's not necessarily a failed session. And so being able to focus on these like small wins and micro victories and yeah, just really leaning into the process instead of the outcomes, not focusing on, but I was a blue belt for like five or six years, man, like if I was going to quit, that would have been the time. And more than anything, it just taught me not to care about that, you know? If I was going to quit competing, I probably would have quit competing within that first year where I was losing everything, but I knew that that's not what it was about. I wanted to be a good competitor. I wanted to figure it out. So every time I faced an obstacle, instead of seeing it as a set block back or a roadblock or an indication that I'm not good enough, I just saw it more as a roadmap of, okay, this is the next step I need to take if I want to improve and keep doing this. This is just giving me information on how to move forward. And so then instead of frustrated, I'm constantly engaged. I'm constantly curious to figure out, just to figure it out. Yeah. And I think this is genuinely what makes you just a special human being. It's this understanding of the process rather than the product. Here are the middle steps that I have to do. I have to keep showing up. I have to keep getting better each and every day because the reward is going to come over time. I just don't know when it's going to be. Now before we talk about the instructional videos and everything you're doing today, let's talk about two big things in the Jiu Jitsu world first. Tell me about the impact of Gordon Ryan for the Jiu Jitsu community first and foremost, because good and bad, obviously, he has brought a giant spotlight into Jiu Jitsu for a regular audience. And it cannot be overlooked the positive that that visibility has given to the community. Yes, so it's definitely I've mixed feelings on this for sure. He has brought a lot of eyes to the sport. I don't necessarily like that his message is the first thing people see if they're being introduced to Jiu Jitsu through him. My nickname is Holesome Hosey because in Portuguese, the R is an H and so I've been called Holesome Hosey in my life and I really like just, you know, I like the community of Jiu Jitsu. I like training hard. I like competing. I understand that kind of shit talking is a part of it. I do feel that he has said things and taking it to a certain place that I don't really want to be associated with it. If people think of Jiu Jitsu and they think of some of the things he's said, I don't want any part of that, right. So I can respect his Jiu Jitsu. I watch his instructional. I learn a lot from that. I wish that's what was bringing the attention in, right? Yeah. So the confidence and his level of skill has brought a lot of attention to the sport, but mostly for the people who are already in it and then kind of the more like controversial stuff is what brings new eyes in. So I have, I definitely have mixed feelings on it. But now with that, there are so many athletes who once people do get introduced, no matter how they get introduced, hopefully they see like the Keith Cricorians, the Adele for Noreenos, you know, like there's so many wholesome people in the sport too. So yeah, mixed feelings on it, understand what he's doing, but yeah, I just, I kind of want a different face of Jiu Jitsu, I'm being honest. I love it. I'm on the same page as you. It almost feels like it's a super strange combination of him with coach Donnerher because Donnerher is much closer to this wholesome idea of a guy who only cares about Jiu Jitsu and like putting out the good messaging and with it, his best student is this kind of crazy guy who is trying to be the next Connor McGregor, good or bad. It's a shit talking that drives a lot of people away. So I fully like respect the exact way that you think about it. Yeah. Second crazy person in the community, Craig Jones with the Craig Jones Invitational and everything going on with ADCC. Talk to me as someone who's competed, who is at a high enough level to where you have way more interesting thoughts than I do on the issue and what it is that you see with people who are high level. So I was at both events. I went to both CJI and ADCC. I was at both of them from an experience and I was, I've been at the last, the previous two ADCCs as well, so I have a lot of experience at these tournaments. Craig Jones, hilarious, obviously, like if you want to bring attention to the sport, I think that that's a much more like fun way to do it. I feel like there's this difference and this is just kind of like a personal value thing for me. Am I trying to bring attention to me or am I trying to bring attention to this sport or this mission? And I feel like Craig is much more mission driven where Gordon is perhaps more me driven. And I feel like you will always go further when you're also trying to bring others up with you. So I think that's the first distinction. Now that doesn't mean that I agree with everything that Craig is doing, but I can't appreciate a lot of it. So CJI was an absolutely incredible event. A place was packed. The energy there was one of the best environments that I've ever watched live Jiu Jitsu in. It was so much fun. It was funny. It was a little rowdy. And the fact that only one match was going on at a time did take a long time to get through the first day. Maybe they'll make some adjustments for next year. It also allowed the audience to be the most engaged I've ever seen at a tournament. So overall, incredible event. There's my dog. Now we do. Should I mute? No, you're all good. Now, we do have this issue of kind of, OK, ADCC does have women's brackets. It's not the same as men's. I wish that there was more opportunity for women, both in ADCC and in CJI, Craig has alluded to the idea that there will be a women's bracket one day, four million, right? Which I love. But let's talk about women's Jiu Jitsu at this event. There is a super fight between Fiona Mackenzie, historical super fight, right? I was super excited for that. But what kind of tarnished it for me is that this incredible moment in women's Jiu Jitsu, Fiona Mackenzie, having this match, I'm not exactly sure what they got paid for the super fight. But my understanding is that it was more than they would have made at ADCC, you know, and then it's kind of juxtaposed by this super fight between Gabby and Craig that I have mixed feelings about it, right? Because it goes along with God's personality. If you watch their YouTube channel, you know, he's very like kind of demeaning to even the guys in the gym. But if our point is to uplift women's Jiu Jitsu, I'm not sure that the way they went about that did it. Yeah. It was kind of cringy. They were like over sexualizing Gabby a lot. And within the match, they were doing the same thing. She seemed to be playing along with it and having fun, but I don't know. I have like, it almost, I'll be honest, it almost ruined the event for me. It almost ruined the event for me. And so it was hard for me to see like such an awesome moment for Jiu Jitsu, such an awesome event juxtaposed with like, was that the way to go about this? I don't know. So it's hard for me to say that because it did seem like Gabby was like going along and having fun. And so I can't speak to her. I don't know what her expectations were for that whole thing. She very much supports Craig and CJI, but that's the only thing that brought it down a point for me. I would say. Yeah. At the end of the day, I have a lot of the same feelings that you do about how everything is about it. Sucks it. It was the same weekend sucks that like as part of the promotion, you are picking this fight against something that is already in the community, trying to make the community better. To me, it was always kind of awesome to see more people trying to do more things just to uplift other people. And regardless of the outcome, yes, good, bad, and sometimes a little bit messy, I'm just happy that there are more people who are trying to do things just like this. I absolutely agree with that. And I actually love that ADCC and CJI were the same weekend because we got to see a lot more diversity in athletes because of that, because athletes couldn't do both. We got to see people compete who we ordinarily wouldn't see compete, and we got to see under two different rules sets. So we have CJI, three, five minute rounds, finals is five, five minute rounds. You have to be super active. There's pros and cons to that rule set as well, but I actually really loved the rule set of CJI. Now, then we have ADCC, athletes have a little bit more time to finish the stuff, the progressions that they start. They're both 15 minutes, but the way it's split up allows us to see very different expressions of jujitsu, which I really appreciated and thought was super cool. We got to see a lot of athletes that we wouldn't ordinarily see. CJI, we had some wrestlers in the mix, which kind of is an homage to the starts of MMA, where we have different fighters from different backgrounds coming and competing with each other, CJI. And ADCC is really supposed to be the same thing, where we're pulling the best type of grappling sports together and seeing who wins. And so I really liked that they put an emphasis on that. And I think the more we encourage that, the more crossover we're going to see between things like wrestling and jujitsu, and it's just going to help keep pushing the level up. Yeah. And at the end of the day, you're fully right about that. It is nice to see new faces. It is nice to see more people compete. And it just speaks to the growth of the sport as a whole. Now as a part of that sport growth, you also have Rose Miller, the actual trainer, and jujitsu, instruction, and coach, and everything in between. Talk to me about how you started coaching and how you got into this idea of putting together videos to help people along their journey. Yeah. So I have been in fitness, I've been in some sort of coaching role for my entire career. So it's funny, I actually studied philosophy and English with a focus in poetry as my undergrad. And I had no idea what I wanted to do with that. When I was studying it, I just found it fascinating. I've always been a bit of a nerd. And when I graduated from my undergrad, I realized, I didn't think about a career path. And now I did all of this super young. I started college when I was 16. I had a double bachelor's by the time I was 20 or 21. And so I hadn't really put all the pieces together yet, but I had always been an athlete. I had always been a competitor. And so after I graduated, one of my friends suggested, Hey, what if you just get your personal trainer certification, spend a few years doing that while you figure it out? And I immediately fell in love with coaching and I became very interested in kind of the psychology piece of it, the performance piece of it. And I ended up pursuing my masters out here in San Diego in exercise physiology and nutrition. So that's kind of how my whole interest in strength training and nutrition developed. Then when I started Jiu Jitsu, I realized people don't know what they're doing as far as nutrition goes, happens with a lot of kind of these, these sports that blow up, you find an identity in the sport. And then the sport kind of has its opinion on how you should be eating and recovering and training and people are very, very interested in it. And so I was able to kind of transition from, you know, a research focus in nutrition to more of an application focus for athletes, for recreational athletes, for people who care about their health, for people who want to feel better, for people who want to perform better. And I also dealt with polycystic ovarian syndrome and my own hormonal issues. And it's frustrating for active women who are experiencing that. And so I wanted to be able to help people who are going through that, to really just be able to keep doing cool stuff for a long time. And then when, so that's how I got into like kind of coaching nutrition and strength. Yeah. And before you go on and tell me about that Jiu Jitsu angle, I just want to say that I'm so happy people like you are out there in the world talking to people about just that. Hey, a lot of the time it feels like for whatever reason people don't necessarily think of it this way, but they wake up and they go, I just feel sluggish today. Hey, dummy, it's because you had a bunch of candy and sugar last night. You had a hard workout and you didn't take the proper time to recover. If you're able to combine your diet with recovery, you will feel better. That's just the nature of the game. Absolutely. And I think a lot of people put an overemphasis on like what we see on social media, like 16 week deficit, 20 week deficit, and they don't fully embrace. There actually has to be a lifestyle change, right? There actually has to be a lifestyle change if you want to keep feeling good for a long time and it won't always feel hard, but it's about understanding what a healthy relationship with working out looks like, but a healthy relationship with food looks like. Freedom around food does not mean a free for all around food. And we kind of have this really skewed perception. I think that on both ends, right? Some people are overly restrictive. Some people are afraid of being overly restrictive because of what they see on social media and they don't have any boundaries and then they wonder why they yo-yo and they can't, you know, maintain a healthy lifestyle, maintain feeling good, maintain a normal weight. And it's absolutely possible, but you just have to have a deep understanding of what your values are like as far as food goes. What does your social life look like? What role does alcohol play in your life? All of these things. And then set realistic expectations based off of what those values are. So I'm very much values driven. I'm not, I don't coach according to a rule book of what is right and wrong and what you should do. I will educate on what different types of foods do for us. But I really dig into each of my clients values for their life, you know? I want my clients to be able to have date night. I want my clients to be able to have vacation, you know? I want my clients to have to confidently know when they can have more flexibility and not worry that they just ruined all of their progress or whatever that means, right? I want to see this as a long term thing where if I keep living like this over time, I'm going to, it's not going to be a linear trajectory. I'm going to have peaks and valleys and there's going to be fluctuations, small fluctuations. But over time, when I look back 10 years, I'm not going to be thinking and really let myself go. I'm going to realize how all these tiny decisions and kind of like just taking the pressure off of myself and just sticking with certain habits over the long run, how much it compounds and pays off. That's what I'm coaching for. I do the 16 week deficit thing with some clients who are already fairly healthy and just kind of want to, you know, maybe lose the last five to 10 pounds. But most people don't need that. Most people just need a better lifestyle overall. I love that message just because it's too unsexy to fit into a 45 second Instagram reel. But it just says this, hey, in order for you to change your life, you're not going to be able to do it in a week, you're not going to do it two weeks before a wedding when you need to fit into a dress. If you just make consistent good decisions for a long period of time, you will look better. You will feel better and your life will continuously get better as long as you stick with it. Absolutely. And you're right. It's not sexy. It's not catchy. But it's the truth, you know, and I have, I've worked for other coaching companies before I started my own, and the reason that I left was because I didn't want to bait people in with the message that they want to hear and then switch it. Yep. You know, I wanted to be real from the front. My coaching company is called Shift because you do have to make a shift. If you're not happy with where you are and how things are going, most likely you're going to need to shift your paradigm. And that's, and so it's kind of funny because like that's very philosophical as well. So that goes back to my undergrad degree, but I, it's what's helped me the most. I got sick of doing like a deficit, a building phase, a deficit, a building phase. And I think there is still a purpose and a point for that. But most people, most people just need to do fewer things better. Yeah. I love that. And it's such a good message. All right. Tell me about these instructional videos. Tell me about why they are so, so powerful because what I found is your messages are so simple and easy to digest that it feels like I just can't get enough of you because every time I watch a video, it just makes me a better player. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for that feedback. Yeah. So I always been obsessed with jujitsu and I feel like around purple belt, I started to make this evolution of really wanting to understand in a deeper way what I was trying to do with jujitsu. And I realized that I didn't know as much as I thought I did, it kind of at purple belt, I kind of made this jump where I was starting to really understand the mindset of competition. I was really starting to build a lot of confidence with performing. I was consistently winning and performing well in tournaments at this point. And I was so excited to take my jujitsu to the next level and then got a couple concussions. Yeah. Talking about concussions, the more you have, the easier they are to get. If you don't let it recover fully and you get recinkussed again, it's going to take you a long time to get over it. And when I was younger, I had had a couple concussions, not knowing anything about concussions. And I think I let them heal. I don't know. I had no guidance. Then I'm a blue belt and I get my first concussion from jujitsu. I took a knee to like the eye and I have these pictures where I have like snarly black eye. And again, I didn't know anything about concussions. I'm not sure that I stopped training for very long. Not sure that I let it recover, but it didn't really affect me that much. So in my head, I'm thinking concussion, no big deal. I'm a little bit woozy, but next week, I'll be fine. And then purple belt. I get my first significant concussion where it was clear something was wrong with me. I still did not take it seriously and I actually competed the following week and I made it to finals. And I remember being in my finals match. I remember being in all my matches and I remember being like something is not right and just still feeling nauseous after a dizzy sounds just were like they sounded so loud and lights seemed so bright and I was having trouble focusing and I was exhausted all the time. And I finally got it checked out, but I got it checked out after two weeks of training while concussed and I had to go through a whole rehab process to try to get back and it took me almost a year to fully recover from that. And so my training looked a lot different and I had to bring intensity way, way, way down and I had to completely revamp my approach to Jiu Jitsu. Now this was good for me for a lot of reasons because it absolutely helped me level up my depth of knowledge for Jiu Jitsu, but I wanted to be able to contribute to Jiu Jitsu. So I wanted to be able to do something in Jiu Jitsu, if I couldn't compete anymore and I couldn't give back that way, then like I wanted to do something and my friends were making Instagram videos at the time and I was, I was a blue belt when they started doing these videos and I was ookying, ookying for them a lot. And then by the time I was a purple belt, they were just like, Rose, you've been doing this with us for so long, you should make your own videos. And I thought, okay, well, maybe that could be something fun I can do right now while I can't compete. But then I thought, who's going to want to learn from a purple belt? And they're like, well, Rose, you're a purple belt at Otos and I said, I said, okay. So I have, I was like, I have this cool experience of training at these really high level gyms and being exposed to really high level people, which a lot of people don't get that experience. So I could share what that's like and I'm close enough. My friends were brown and black belts at the time. And so I was thinking, you know, I've been training a long time at this point. I've been training six, seven years, but I still very much remember what it was like to be a white belt. Yeah. So I thought, huh, I'll share what I wish I knew at white belt. That's something I feel confident sharing. I'm not, I'm just feeling like I'm getting to the point in my jujitsu where I'm really understanding it at a deep level. So what I was most confident sharing was just my personal experience, my personal perspective. And I kind of used it to help me learn what I was trying to learn, to help me learn how to break down techniques because I knew one day I wanted to teach, but mostly as a fun way for me to participate in jujitsu, express myself in jujitsu when I couldn't train like I had always trained and it just kind of took off from there. I love that this story of concussion, not having the best experience turns into you doing a very, very meaningful thing. And as a final question of today, let me ask you a really important question. How good does it feel today knowing that you found a way to give back to a community by making other people around you better and the reach that it has had since then? It's incredibly humbling. I never really expected to be able to do this. And you know, before we started recording, I mentioned to you that I wanted a career in jujitsu. I had like always worked up at the gyms that I was training at. I lived in a van for a period of time just so I could train as much as possible. And when I started getting concussed, I was kind of like, okay, maybe I have to start looking, maybe jujitsu is going to be something different for me than I thought. And jujitsu is definitely something different for me than I thought, but it's so much better. And I'm able to express myself in all the ways I want to while hopefully helping other people. I've never wanted my page to be about me. I've always wanted it to be about the community. I've always wanted to use it as a way to, you know, bring people together. And now I'm hoping that I can even use my platform to help athletes. A lot of times athletes don't care about promoting themselves on social media. They just want to train and compete, you know? And so I want to use it as a way to kind of bridge that gap as well. So it's just been really cool to see the evolution and still know that it's just the beginning. And there's still so much more to come from here. Yeah. Rosie, you are an amazing human being. Outside of that, you're an incredible athlete. You're an incredible teacher. And I value so, so much exactly what you bring to the table and what you share with our audience. Thank you so, so much for making the time to have this conversation today. And we really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great. We cannot wait to hear from you next time. And thank you guys for listening.