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Do me a favor. Tell people who you want to do what you're doing here. My name is Rest in use. I am an above in the amputee and I compete in jujitsu and I also have a company called Be Bold and we help people of all abilities get into martial arts.
I love it. And now we, I'm going to, before I actually jump in, I'm just one of the people who have seen this podcast before and they watch it. A couple of things that I want to highlight. One, normally there's a whole bunch of shoes behind me that we can use for reference, but we just moved into this new office like a day ago and I don't even know where that box of shoes is.
So, grid wall, no shoes. Secondly, normally I have a microphone on the other side, but that's because there's a window over there that I never had before. It was leaving this crazy shadow, but that's not important, but just for the fun of people who are really OCD about things like that. Okay, so we got introduced because we have a number of people who are above and below the amputees who have been really hip to zero shoes.
What was your, let me, let's back up and do this. How did you become an above in the amputee? I had a massive blood clot in my artery of my thigh. Yeah, it was just, it was crazy.
Just out of nowhere? So I've been feeling like a pain in my leg, but being in martial arts, I always thought it was just an injury that I had. Honestly, what I thought that was like a pinched nerve. And then this particular day, it was a Sunday we were in Lakewood, Colorado at a farmer's market and I just physically could not move.
I was right stuck in the middle of this farmer's market and could not walk anymore. I would compare it to my leg felt like there was concrete in it. It was super heavy and it was just hard to walk. My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, she was like, I will, I'm going to take you to the emergency room.
And I was just like, no, I'm not taking me to the emergency room. They're just going to give me an aspirin and tell me I have a pinched nerve. She was like, if you want me to get the car, I'm taking you to the emergency room. So I'm a veteran and I have the VA.
So she took me to the Denver VA and I explained to them what was going on and they took me back and was running some tests. And then the doctor comes in and I'm just expecting him to tell me like, hey, you got a pinched nerve, blah, blah, blah. And he comes in and he's just listening. You've got a very big blood clot in your artery and we're taking you to ICU right now.
And you're probably going to have your leg amputated and you're going to be on blood thinners for the rest of your life. And at that moment, it was just like this huge wave hit me. And I had even like Google what amputation was because I was just like, he's got to be kidding me. There's no way this amputation still mean what I think it means.
Maybe there's some doctor version of that that I'm not aware of. Oh, I'm just like, you got to be kidding me. It was just so surreal. Just so.
And then no conversation, no debates. And we got to go and you're going to come back with that. And so it gets what they tried to do. They took me to ICU and they tried to.
I was a plumber by trade before. I relate to everything like plumber's terms. Like rotarooter. The artery.
Yeah. They tried to then put it. Yeah, they were going to say they had some drain over version. Yeah.
And so the first day they tried that there was no success. They were comparing the clot to concrete. Like they thought they thought the artery was pretty solid of this clot. So they came in the next day to be a little more aggressive with the same treatment rotarooter drain on the clot kind of thing and just nothing butged it.
I remember waking up from the second procedure and the doctors are all in there and they're just like, unfortunately, we cannot bust through this. And we're going to make you an appointment to see the vascular surgeon. And we're going to give you a big bottle of oxycodone and a big bottle of blood thinners is what I went home with. And I didn't have my appointment for another 30 plus days.
Oh my God. And so at that time, I really needed to figure out like what my decision was going to be. What I'm going to do after this. What choice did you have?
Because I'm a medical geek. When you saw the arterial guy, was there any possibility of arterial transplant? They were talking about a bypass. Yeah, doing a bypass.
But again, being a plumber, the length of that clot, there's no way that they're going to be able to bypass that and make it. And they had told me that the bypass failed. I'd become an above the knee amputee automatically. And then I had about 30 days to figure out some things.
I moved back in with my parents and the brass. Just to separate because my girlfriend and I, we had been dating about a year. And it's at that kind of point of what do we do? Yeah.
She has two daughters. And we just thought it would be best if I just separated myself so I could come up with this decision on my own. I just had one question for the doctors at some point in my life. Not now, but at some point, am I going to have my leg amputated?
And I don't even think I sat down. I think that I'm going to, I'm going to, I walk into the office and it was just like, listen, I don't want to take you guys' time. I just want to know one thing. I want to have my leg amputated.
Because if the way I was looking at it is if I have to, let's just do it right now. I could already see the road that I was going down with Oxycodone and it was not a good road. And I just wanted to get back into life again. It was just lost my first life to brain cancer.
And now I'm in this position where I'm sitting in this hospital bed. It was like the last place that I wanted to be at was in a hospital. And I was just like, I've had so many plans. I had just finished culinary school and I had all these plans of starting my own private chef business and looking into getting a food truck and all of these things.
And then I'm just like, you've got to be kidding me. So they decided to do, we decided to do a below the amputation, August 21st, 2014. I went in, I had the surgery, came out and I was in the hospital for about a week and my 40th birthday was the following weekend. And so my parents and my brother and sister and their families all came out and we went to Estes Park for my 40th birthday.
And looking back on that, it was not a good decision just because of the elevation game that we had. And I was in extreme pain probably the after the second day of being there just controlled pain that I could not touch with any of my pain meds, my oxycodone morphine. So we had to go to the emergency room and Estes Park and I still had stitches in my leg and they were just like, they gave me a shot of morphine to take care of the pain, but they're like, you need to get back to the VA. There's some issues that you have.
I went back to the following day and the doctor took one of those Q tips, one of those long Q tips that they had and he buried it in my incision that I had. I thought went through the roof. Oh my goodness, it hurts so bad. And he looks at me and he's just, we need to get you into surgery.
And unfortunately, like I was on blood thinners at the time, so they had to, there was a protocol. You have to be weaned off of your blood thinners for a week. And these were low-venaut shots I had to inject in my stomach myself and it was torture. Oh my God.
We go in the day of September 11, 2014, we go in and they were going to clean out the area and right before they put me under, they're like, hey, we may have to amputate above me. Do you want us to wake you up to let you know that's what we're doing? And I was just like, don't wake me up to tell me what we got under. And to be honest, like I was not bad.
I thought that they were just going to go in. There was an infection, but I didn't realize how bad the infection was, but I just thought they were going to clean it out, so I'm going to be on my way. I remember waking up from the surgery and those moments of what just happened. And then I remember I look underneath the sheets and my leg was gone and it was just, I would say that's probably the lowest point of my life at that moment.
And I was there. And I just thought that's the best. I could not believe that I had gone through two amputations in three weeks and the nurses after the first one, they were just like, Oh, you're so lucky, you're below the knee amputee. You still have that knee joint and let's just all of these things.
And then now I'm seeing the same nurses and now I'm above the knee amputee and they're looking at me like, you know, I just felt, I could not believe that's the position that I was in. I'm just laying in this hospital bed and just I'm super depressed. Didn't know what I just turned 40 years old like what the rest of my life was going to what am I going to do with the rest of my life. Yeah, there was a lot of just a lot of questions at that point.
I want to ask you a weird question and pardon me if I'm being mildly invasive, but I get really curious about all things medical as a vet. I can only imagine you new guys who had for different reasons been in similar situations where they had something amputated. Have you ever had any of this like ever crossed your mind in the past about what would happen if personally, because I'm a freak, I think about these things all the time. What would happen if I didn't have film the blank?
I'm like, this is a dumb variation that just popped in my head. Someone said, what would be like if you can't run anymore? And I was like, what? I was getting your copper, hand it.
But on the track, I meet these guys who are either above or below the amputees and they're doing their thing. They're out on the track. And so I think about that. And I hang out with them a lot.
In fact, there's one guy who's got the cheetah that carbon fiber blade for a foot. And I said, listen, do me a favor. If that thing ever breaks when you're in a race, just like roll on the ground and go, oh, I built a muffle and I built that idea. So I'm also that kind of geek where, you know, if I see somebody in a motorized wheelchair, my first question, how fast can you go on that thing?
What's the zero to 60 on that? And so it's all interesting to me. But at the same time, I can tell, look, if for no other reason having two surgeries in three weeks, normally like the three week mark after a major surgery is when people tend to get depressed anyway, just because all this stuff is changing in your body. So to compound that with the additional surgery, again, that was a long version of, had you ever contemplated this?
And if so, how different was it once it actually happened? What was like the difference between below and above in your mind? And I didn't really have a lot of time being below the knee amputees because they had me in a cast where I couldn't really bend my knee. They wanted everything to heal up first.
And I was in a wheelchair the whole entire time. So I didn't really get to experience a below the knee and what that was like. I had 30, I had over 30 days from when we decided to do the surgery till when I had the surgery. So I spent a lot of my time trying to figure out, I was doing all these one-legged exercises, trying to do one-legged squats and balance on one leg when I was doing my curls.
And I guess it's nothing the same from where I was then and to where I'm at now, just because it's so different, you don't have the counterbalance is different. But I think what it allowed me to do is just focus on something other than this negative amputation that was going to happen. I was able to focus on how am I going to rehab myself through this? I did a lot of body weight exercises.
I was an MMA fighter before and I treated it like a fight camp and told myself every day on this date I'm going to have this surgery. And it kept my mind not focusing on the bad stuff and just focusing on the good stuff that I could focus on. I've got to ask you this question. Whether it was when you were below or above, first time you did a pull-up or a chin up, did you go, I asked about eating?
Yeah, you know, I kind of talking about the advantages of being a leg amputee. But I take my leg off and I lose 15 pounds on it. Exactly. I got to tell you where that came from.
I was at Junus days, I was at this gymnastics camp and there was a guy there who was above the amputee and pretty close was hip too. And it was amazing watching him fall. He'd hop down the runway and fall and doing things on floor was really cool. But when he's on rings, doing all the strength moves and everyone's going, he weighs 20 pounds less.
If I weigh 20 pounds less, I could do all that shit. And people got really mad at me. But he thought it was hysterical. My guys at my gym, they say I cheat.
Exactly. I tell them I compete at 145 pounds and I don't have to cut weight except for taking my leg off. I walk around and use about 160, but I take my leg off at 145 and I make weight pretty easy. Right afterwards, I doubled my socks instantly.
That was another positive. That's one thing. I try to look at this as like, how can I make this the best situation that it could be? I mean, I'm in a really crappy position and how do I make this better?
What's interesting to me is that people, when they typically imagine something like this, they imagine how bad it's going to be and they assume that's the way it's going to be. And I imagine, again, when you first look under the covers and I don't crap and we're depressed from that, I imagine there were some of that. But what people don't, I don't want to say this, people project in a really weird way and think, here, let me do this as a question. Do people come up to you and talk to you about how the way you're handling the situation is an inspiration?
Yeah. And in your head, are you going, no, this is what everyone would do? Yeah. I had no other choice.
I guess there are two choices because in my head, I had it where I was going to do one of two things and it was going to be 100%. I was going to continue on or I was going to give up. It was going to be 100%. And I just sat there and I was like, I can't.
There's no way I can give up. There's just no way that I'm going to give up. And then that's when a lot of things started to change 42. I found that they have a rec therapist at the VA and I had a meeting with this rec therapist.
And we, I don't even know really how this all came about, but I was going to ride a bike from the, from Denver to Omaha. And again, what it allowed me to do is just focus on something else. And I'm doing the logistics of like, where am I going to stop at? How far can I ride in a day?
All this thing, all these things. And it really, it was a therapy. I didn't even know that was possible. I got out of the hospital and I got it upright bicycle and I realized that I was not very good at riding an upright bicycle.
You mean, before or after the amputation? Oh, both. I don't think I ever rode a bike more than five miles. But then what I found out is that the VA will give veterans adaptive cycles.
And so I got a kind of cycle. And honestly, it was so therapeutic. I met another veteran, a combat wounded veteran that had an adaptive cycle himself. And he took me around Fort Collins.
There's lots of trails around here. And I remember when we did 10 miles. I thought that was awesome. I like, wow, I just went 10 miles on a bike.
And then we did 20, 25. All the way up we did. I did my first century ride back in Nebraska. And then we changed the route up a little bit.
We went from Fort Collins to Omaha. And we stopped. Let me pause there. Why Omaha of all places?
So my first wife, she did her brain cancer treatments at the University of Omaha, the Med Center there. And I just thought that would have been a good place to end the ride. We did 600 miles in six days of riding. I did multiple century rides back to back, which I'd never done before.
We were averaging about 25 miles an hour on these adaptive cycles, which was just, it was the whole ride was amazing. We had a sag that was helping escort us throughout the whole ride. And it was just, and we were able to fund the whole ride. And then it kicked off our nonprofit, Bebold.
We had just got our paperwork back. And then we were able to raise $4,000 and give it to another veteran that just lost his wife to bring cancer. Nice. Yeah.
So it was, it was one of the most, it was tough. It was, there was one day that we got rained on for six hours straight, but it was, again, it was like really therapeutic for me, just just physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, all those things. For most people doing anything that's that kind of a challenge is a big awakening. But I can only imagine that after what you've gone through and then overcome, or not overcoming, but completing that challenge would have just an extra bonus on it.
Yeah. And it was, when it was like one of those things where what's next? Yeah. What's next?
And that's where we really started doing our Bebold boxing. Boxing helped me out a lot. My good friend Ryan Schultz owns a gym here in Fort Collins called Childs MMA. And at this particular time, I didn't have my prosthetic leg all the time.
It was still being worked on. And I could really only go as far as my wheelchair would take me. And that wasn't very far. And I would call them up and I said, Hey, is there any way that we could work something out?
And so he would pick me up on Tuesdays and Thursdays and take me to the gym and he would coach class and I would go over the heavy bags and figure out how I was going to do all this stuff. Yeah. Some days I didn't have my legs. So I was in my wheelchair.
Other days I did have my leg and I was trying to figure out like I'm I going to have my right leg forward. Am I going to have my left leg forward? Can I still throw kicks? Can I plan off my prosthetic and throw a kick?
And I realized like how beneficial that this was for me to figure all this stuff out and how much it was helping me and if it could help me, it can help a lot of other people as well. I think that we all need to hit something real hard every now and again, just bent out some frustration, but do it in a positive environment and do it in a positive way. And that's where we came up with kind of our people of boxing classes. And then from that, honestly, I think we've had pretty much any ability you could think of in our gym.
One of the coolest things that I had seen was I was doing a boxing clinic and we had two guys that were blind and they partnered up with each other and to watch those two. It was just it was amazing. Sorry, you're going to have to describe that a little differently than the very comedic version that's in my head, which is two guys wandering around the rain just throwing punches in the air, which and then somebody accidentally hit somebody and wins. So what was it actually?
I got back up though. We have a heavy bag in our office and one of the guys in our office said, God, if I'd known you're going to have that, you could have gotten me for free because it does come in handy. But yeah, describe two blind guys boxing because that is it just sounds hysterical. Clearly, that's not that way.
It actually played out. One of the guys I'd been working with for quite a while. And so he knew like the punches and where and he would listen to where the voice was and he knew where the voice was is where the head is. And he knew like you're one ones and twos are your straight punches.
You're three is a fours of your hooks and your fives and six is your uppercuts. And the other guy was from out of state and he had done a little bit of boxing before he lost his vision. And so he had a good he had a good understanding. And then what they were doing is just getting their distance right.
I knew when their distance was there, then they would call out they would call out the numbers and Trevor was the guy that I work with. He held pads first. And so once he understood where. Oh, so there was so to be clear, they were training not having a fight.
So it was just we're just going through some network. Yeah. Okay. So just for the people who are on tip of this and by the way, I had my first actual boxing lesson about it.
You're going, it was so much fun because the physics of it is a blast. And when you get when you really get your using your body well and it comes out through your hands well, it's so satisfying. There's just something incredible that once and do so, it's left and rights. One and two is a straight punch, three and four is a hook, five and six is an uppercut.
And you got the other guy on the other side who know who's either who's calling that out typically or pattern and he's got pads that you're aiming for basically. So that's and if you watch Brocky and he went, they know the gist of this, but didn't know that's how it actually goes down. All right. And then watching them like figure out all the distance and then where the punches are going to land.
I was just watching these two guys. Yeah, it was and I look at it as it doesn't matter what your physical ability is that you can do anything that you want to do, honestly. And I think that it's just figuring out the way to do it. And there's no, there's no like guidebook.
I found that there's no book that you can go check out and say, how do you box having one leg? And that's where I was like, I'm coming up with this stuff and it's my trial and error. Forgot what doesn't work. It's a punch line.
People use the idea of a one leg kickboxer as a joke. That's so I can only imagine someone has said that to you at some point. Oh yeah. All the time.
I got to give you this challenge. I was living in New York. I rode a recumbent bike, which is crazy enough doing that in New York. I never had a problem because when you're on a recumbent, people think you're crippled.
And so they give you a lot of leeway. But there was a bike messenger I used to ride with all the time who was an above the amputee and he wrote a fixie. No brakes. It was all just controlled with his foot.
And to say he was an inspiration that's not quite accurate. It was just like, holy crap, how did you figure this out? And he did a cross country trip to raise money for people and he's riding a fixie with one leg and this guy was fast. It was, and again, it's the same thing.
We don't anticipate that if for most people or everyone I talk to in this situation, let me say that way. One day you wake up and go, I got to just figure this out. And that's when everything changes. And for you, it sounds like it happened pretty quickly, which is not too surprising, frankly.
Yeah. And I think that it was, I was very frustrated and I needed to vent out a lot of stuff. And the only way that I knew how to do that in a positive way was to hit Abby back. Yeah.
Then realizing like, there's a lot of other people that are frustrated too. Yeah. And coming into this new demographic that I was a part of, I also had learned that people with disabilities are three times more likely to be attacked than able-bodied people in the United States. Wow.
That blew me away. But then I started to think about it is I don't really believe that's an ability issue. I believe it's a confidence issue. And unfortunately, a lot of people that have disabilities aren't very confident.
And that's what I was trying to instill into people is confidence. Interesting. So let's shifting slightly. I am curious back after once you were trying to figure out how to box or even just hit the heavy bag with and without your prosthetic.
What did you find technically? What did you find about? What you were planning? What you do off your prosthetic?
The physics of it is really fascinating to me. So I have a really nice knee. It's probably one of the best knees that are out on the market. It's the X3 from Auduboc and it has different modes on it.
And I created a boxing mode where it will bend at 16 degrees and then lock there so I can straighten it or bend it to that 16 degree mark. So I wouldn't fall. I was a Southpaw before having my right leg forward and I continued on doing that. I just found that I was more mobile with my good leg to the back.
Even to think about as a defense, if anyone wanted to kick my prosthetic leg, go ahead. I've had people accidentally kick me in the prosthetic leg and hurt themselves in the process. My God, that's brilliant. A good line of defense.
Exactly. Yeah, it was just this. I don't know. It was so therapeutic to go through all of that stuff.
And I still spar with our guys and ladies. I'm a gym. I mean, it's so cool to be able to still be in the middle of everything. I'm still working.
I'm a coach at our gym as well and I help the fight team out and I'm going to be able to still get in the mix with them. I also look, I'm 49 years old and I think that's another part of it too. I have a lot of friends that were the same age and they don't think that they can still do all the stuff that they were doing before. And I think that it's all between, honestly, I believe that I was more disabled when I had two legs.
And I think that a lot more that disability was between the ears. I think that I look at the loss of my leg is this blessing that happened to be honest. And all of these amazing things I've been able to do. And it's because I lost my leg.
When I look back on it and I remember laying in that bed and going, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? And then looking where I'm at now, it's just like, it's such a blessing that it happened. It seems weird to say that, but I've been able to meet so many incredible people, do so many different things. I just got back from the Middle East, I competed in a couple of World Para Jiu Jitsu competitions.
And it's weird to say that this is a blessing, but it totally has been. So no, I totally understand that. I don't want to die too deeply into this, but this is now November, about 10, 11 months ago, I'll do the shortest version possible. I was diagnosed with and then treated for and now over what I refer to as the best cancer ever.
And I couldn't be more serious when I say it, in part because it was a relatively easy to treat as things go. And I didn't have chemo, I didn't have chemo, the radiation was all localized. But in about eight weeks, I didn't know if I was going to live or die. And it was from the moment of my diagnosis, literally the second they said, you know, cancer, but that's not how it happened.
The way it happened was I was getting an exam and the physician's assistant said, your pharmacy, is it your address, is medication you're on, blah, blah. I said, yeah, and he goes, so do you have any questions about your tumor? I went, sorry, no, what? He goes, wait, he runs out of the room.
And the doctor comes in and he says, you have a malignant cancer and we don't know if it's metastasized yet. And I said, so this is going to kill me? He goes, we don't know yet. And he goes, what?
As I told my wife, if I was diagnosed with a terminal disease, I was going to go on an all chocolate cake and tie hooker diet. And she signed off on that and you're not going to be able to work with when I call her. But literally from the moment of my diagnosis, everything just seemed so unbelievably precious and special. And people would ask my wife, how are you doing?
And she'd say, we're going on a bit of a roller coaster ride, but it's hard to stay down because he is just so happy all the time. And after everything cleared out, it's not like I'm living in this perpetual state of bliss, but multiple times a day. I'm just so grateful and everything is so special yesterday morning, I'm walking the dog. Didn't the whole time, I'm thinking, I still don't know if I'm going to live or die.
And what would I do differently if I knew I was going to die? The answer was nothing. I'd walk my dog, I'd hang out with my wife, we'd watch a movie, I'd make some pizza, but it all seems just really precious. Now, I'm not suggesting anyone who has cancer should have that experience, but I've always thought knowing that you're going to die is a great gift because it really gets your stuff in order pretty quickly.
And it's a weird translation from that situation you're in, but I can only imagine and correct me if I'm full of it that you've got moments from what you just said, just like that. Oh, yeah. It's like you were saying that you start to look at things a lot differently. Yeah.
You're able to like put everything into a better perspective of what's important and what's not important. And that's one of the biggest things that I got from it. And a lot of the stuff that that's the petty stuff, it's easy just to get rid of that now because you don't have the time to worry about petty stuff. And even the stuff that you have no control over, there's a lot of stuff like I didn't know I didn't have control over a lot of stuff.
And I can't dwell on it on the stuff I have no control over. I will admit though, people driving 10 miles under the speed limit in front of me still gets to me. There's nothing I can do about that one. That's one thing that I've been trying to lock my mouth a little bit more and not cause as much.
But as soon as I get into my truck and go to the gym, it's the test for sure. I used to use that as a sign of my eventual awakening that I'd be able to drive without getting bothered by people doing stupid things in front of me. And of course it reminds me, I think it was a George Carolina line. You ever noticed that people who drive too slowly in front of you were more on some people who drive too fast around you were maniacs?
Pretty much there's no way of winning that one. That's the problem. What do you discover? So once you got back into doing Jiu Jitsu with missing a good chunk of a leg, what do you discover from that and what's it like for the people who were competing against you?
So that was, I remember like going to my coach and saying, hey, do you think that I could do Jiu Jitsu again? And he looked at me and he was just like, I don't know, but you're going to have to take your disability and make it your advantage. And as soon as he said that, like this light bulb goes off into my head and I was finding all these ways to submit people that they'd never been in these situations before because I've never grappled with a guy with one leg before. And again, it was allowed me to think outside the box and figure out how I was going to do all this stuff.
And it was community too. I had a bunch of guys that were helping me try to figure this stuff out and they would come back like the next day and say, oh, I was thinking about this position or this move since you don't have the leg that you could probably do this. And it was again, it was this therapy that I didn't even realize that like how therapeutic that was for me to figure this stuff out. And then I did a competition.
I can't remember when it was 2017, I think. And after the I got second place in that competition and the guy got ahold of me and he was like, Hey, we're going to form a United States parajoujitsu team and we have a competition in LA. Do you want to join us? And I was like, sure, I would love to.
So we all met up in LA and we did it was parajoujitsu is what they were calling. I didn't know what they were even going to call it. So it's parajoujitsu. And there were people from all over the world that were there.
I competed against a guy from Costa Rica. The Brazilian's had a huge team. There were, I believe seven or eight Americans that were there. And it was just, it was so cool to meet all these other people that had similar stories and how they've been able to overcome it.
From that I traveled to London, Abu Dhabi, Sweden. And I just got back from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago competing in two world tournaments. And it was awesome. I got second place in Saudi Arabia and I got first place in Abu Dhabi.
Congratulations, that's sweet. It was this, it was just, I can't even explain how amazing that it was. Meeting all these people. I think there were 24 different countries that were in Abu Dhabi that were representing parajoujitsu.
And people of all abilities that you could think of. And then just seeing how they've adapted their techniques, their submissions with their body type. I call my style nubjitsu. It's something that we started from the very beginning.
And it's really cool to see how I've been able to, how it's just evolved from, and I started out as a white belt and I'm a brown belt now about ready to get my black belt. Nice. Nice. Not, not, not easy.
My niece and nephew were quote black belts in karate when they were 12 or something. All different game in the jiu jitsu world. You got to work that problem. Yeah.
And again, it's been this therapeutic, it's been so therapeutic for me to go through this whole process and try to figure all of this out. And then like lately, since I've been back, I've had a lot of people reach out to me. They've lost their legs at some point in their life and they had done martial arts before and they didn't think they could get back into it. And they're like, now seeing you do this, man, I'm going to get back into the gym or I had a kid get a hold of me.
He's 19 or 20 and he was in an accident and he lost his leg. And there's just all these people that have been reaching out to me after me coming back from the Middle East and how they can get involved in this. And my goal now is I want to start a team USA. I was the only person from the United States that went to both tournaments and I was like, we need to represent.
We need to bring in as many people as we can because I know how much it's helped me. I think that it can help out so many other people as well. And I look at it. It's the community.
There's this huge community that's a part of that you're a part of. And honestly, I think that regardless of whatever, whoever you are, whatever you're going through, community is huge. That's been the biggest. I don't know where I would be as it wasn't for my gym.
And they've helped me so much throughout all this. This is a weird thing thinking about Jiu-Jitsu with amputees. Do you find, I mean, how to ask this question. Does it make a difference if you're grappling with someone who is missing the same side leg as you versus the other side?
It definitely changes the way you do things. That's something that I've learned. I've got certain things I can do if we marry each other. I'm missing my right leg if he's missing his left leg and we marry each other.
There's things that I can do differently than if it would be opposite. And you really have to think about who you're going against and what kind of techniques that you're going to use. And to be honest, I had it rolled with another amputee since this competition for a long time. I used to have a couple guys that would come in to the gym and it's completely different when there's not that limb that's there.
Just trying to understand that difference, it takes a while to do it. Look, Jiu-Jitsu is already four dimensional chest to begin with. Now you add this other component. I don't want to use the word intellectual incorrectly, but it is because you really got to work that problem in a way that's just never been done before.
And I can imagine it's simultaneously interesting, frustrating, awesome, confusing, satisfying, but like everything you can think of because you're figuring this out on the fly. There's no recipe manual for this. No, and that's what's cool about it is I tell people like we're pioneering something in 2023. When it's pretty rare to think about pioneering something, but it's like there was no one.
I couldn't go and get an instructional video on how to grapple with one leg. Wait, hold on. Are you making videos like this? Actually, I just did.
I'm going to do a video about the B.J. Fanatics. I put out my first instructional video and I really made it for the amputee, but I also wanted to make it for the coaches. A lot of the times I think when these individuals will come into the gym, they don't know what to do with them.
I remember coming into the gym and the coaches like, all right, we're going to do double eight takedowns today. And it was just like, what? What do you want? I was like, that's good because no one can hit a double.
Just throw your press that again. So it was one of these things where I wanted the coaches to feel comfortable on coaching the people with different abilities and you have to think outside the box. And a lot of it is an experiment. We'll see if this works.
If it doesn't work, we'll move on to something else. If it does work, we'll focus a little bit more on this. And that's one thing that was really, again, I say that it was so therapeutic for me to figure this out, what works, what doesn't work. I had a kid that came in and was paralyzed and he was from the waist down and to figure out different ways that he could use his, I call it a superpower, like my missing of my leg is my superpower.
How can he use his ability and form a superpower from it? And we experimented a lot with it. And it was cool to see how he was able to come and find these different ways to get into submissions. The only way that he could get there is if he had the body that he has.
Right. Of course, the joke there is you can't feel anything from waist down and go lock your foot. It's like, you can do whatever you want, man. I can't feel that.
It breaks whatever. So that's I've had some other people that I've known that are paralyzed and they've actually dislocated their hips going for submissions. And like you're saying, they can't feel it. It doesn't matter.
They're just waiting for the tap. And when they're done, they realize that they just look. Oh, man. But that's that's I love it.
They love what they're doing so much. Yeah. Unfortunately, they go through a little bit of an injury for it, but something that. Yeah.
No, again, the thing that I want to emphasize, I'm not trying to minimize what you're saying at all, but it's one of these things again that people they misintercented. There's actually interesting research on loss where people are asked to imagine what would happen, how they feel two years after some loss, like a loss of a child, for example. And what they imagine is so much worse than the reality for people. And because just wearing brain works for whatever reason.
And not to say that two years later, you're fine, but it's amazing how much you get back to mostly normal, which is bursts of grief or whatever you're going to go through. And people imagine you're just going to be devastated forever. So the just the resilience of humans in general is the part it's such a natural thing to be that resilient is I guess where I'm going with that. And that's the part that I like to just put your mind on me.
I had a joke with my wife. I said, if I ever have locked in syndrome, where all I can do is bat one eyelid, here's the list of people that you can call that will put me on the national speaking circuit and we will become billionaires. So it's like just roll with it pun intended for Jiu Jitsu. And I love the story.
And I hope people are taking it more as just a invitation to investigate how this could apply to their life. And they ever have any problem or not, because it's just we tend to, what's the word I'm looking for? We tend to, inspiration is a really weird word is the best way to say it. We tend to look at people and we just want to go, oh my God, that's incredible.
I imagine we can't do that. And I would argue and please tell me if I'm completely full of it that it's a different thing. It's no you'd be like this too. That's what I've said before.
Inspiration, I'm a 61 year old sprinter. Now the 30 year olds call me an inspiration. And of course I give them the finger when they say that and then I get my hug. But because it's just a way of distancing instead of meeting somebody and kind of finding out what's going on.
And anyway, that's just my take on these things. Yeah, I did a speaking engagement last week and I got to speak to there's about 300 middle schoolers and teachers and counselors. And the way that I ended it was whatever you find to be inspirational in me, just know that you have it in yourself as well. There you go.
Yeah. It's, and it takes this whatever to bring it out. Yes. You know, and whatever that it is, I believe that we have it instilled into every single person has it instilled into them.
And that they would do the same exact thing that I'm doing. Maybe not martial arts, but they would find their passion and just do what they're passionate about. I look at myself before I lost the leg and I think that we all have a disability. Every single one of us has a disability and there's something that disables every single one of us and some of us are where it's easier to hide it.
But I think that we all have something that disables us. Yeah. We're able to use that thing that disables us to be like our superpower and to focus on whatever it is. And then we can turn that around and to make our, to make our lives more meaningful, more beautiful.
Because I think we were supposed to raise the bar. We were supposed to continuously raise the bar and that's what I'm trying to do with this. I love it. Now, if I was a better man, I would end things right there because that was wonderful, but I'm not a better man.
I'm the guy who's the CEO of zero shoes. So I've got to do this part. So you've got one leg that can't feel anything from the wherever the amputation is down. So you're not feeling anything with your nonfoot there.
And then when you started to do whatever in a regular shoe big padded motion control shoe, what was it like just trying to walk where you for all practical purposes couldn't feel anything with either leg or either foot. It was like wearing on my prosthetic side. It was like wearing a shoe box and it was heavy. It was so heavy.
I remember I was trying to wear like the same shoes that I had before the amputation and it was I was so tired. It was like two o'clock in the afternoon and I'm exhausted. And I started to realize that above the amputees have to exert 60% more energy just to walk. And then when you add on, ounces mean a lot.
And when you add on whatever much that shoe weighed and it was it just felt really bulky. And even the way that my gate was off, it was exhausting is what it was mentally and physically exhausting because I'm just like, I shouldn't be so tired. Yeah. And then switching over to these zero shoes, it's a whole other ball game.
It is I'm in my, I wear my leg 18 hours a day where before I was in at maybe six hours and I have to take it off and rest. Oh, wow. And it's yeah, I have the speed force twos. I love those are my favorite shoes.
So what I'm wearing right now, I love them. There are sometimes you don't even know that you're wearing shoes. Yeah. No, we have people accidentally go to bed still wearing your shoes because they forgot that I'm on.
This is one of those things where there are so many applications for what we're doing that I wasn't even thinking of when we started the company but very quickly started getting hit to. And this is one where for whatever reason, I've always been fascinated again by prosthetics and whatever kind of things that people need for adaptive technology to get around. And so this is a community that I've been interested in for a long time. And I was so thrilled to get introduced to you and a couple of other people who are also local and single-leg amputees because this is something I really want to be part of because I know the benefit it can provide.
So I'm super, super grateful for your help in this and really looking forward to seeing what we do to spread the word because it's so underappreciated because people don't know there's an option. And that's always a problem. If they don't know, then they just try to live with it and then you find out there's an option called a different game. No, totally.
I mean, it's crazy how I was able to do more. I mean, that's huge. And because if I wasn't wearing my prosthetic leg, I'm in my wheelchair or crutches and that changes everything up. It just changes what would be a 20-minute task is now an hour and a half task.
And just to be able to wear my prosthetic leg the whole day is huge. I get way more done. I'm not tired. And it allows me just to do more in my life.
I love it. Speaking of doing more in your life, we're not too far away from each other. We're going to find time to eventually hook up and figure out what we can do to help change the world in a number of ways. It's been a total pleasure to actually have this time to chat.
So people want to find out more about what you're doing. How do they do that? I'm on Facebook and Instagram under Rustin Hughes on Facebook and Rustin underscore Nubjitsu on Instagram. I have a website beboldadaptiveliving.com.
They can check me out there. Any questions that they have regarding the boxing or jiu-jitsu, please get ahold of me. I would love to talk more about those things and how I can help with anyone who wants to get involved. Much, much appreciated.
I do hope people take you up on that. And frankly, even if they're, I would say it would be an interesting conversation to chat, even if you're not dealing with some sort of disability, there's a lot to be learned no matter what. And so I look forward to hearing what happens when people reach out. Oh, for real.
Anybody, I don't care if you're an amputee or not. I want anyone to get ahold of me. We do a lot of work with Parkinson's patients at our gym. We do rock steady boxing for Parkinson's.
And just that, it's just amazing to see what martial arts can do for people. Yeah, awesome. Rustin, aye, thank you so much. More to come.
And for everybody else, thank you as well. And just a reminder, head over to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find all the other episodes where you're going to engage with us. If you have any questions or comments or recommendations, people, you should be on the show, people, especially if someone who thinks of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, that'd be a fun conversation. You can also email on at movemoviethe at jointhemovementmovement.com.
And most importantly, between now and whatever is next, go out, have fun, and live life-free first.