I had the distinct pleasure to chat with Eladio Matos from Urban Warrior Fit NYC By Eladio Matos. What started as a conversation about how I got into martial arts gradually became a conversation about what decades of training have done to me. We talked about what drew me to martial arts when I was younger, competition, teaching, injury, and how my relationship with training has changed as I’ve gotten older. The conversation eventually moved beyond martial arts itself. We talked about knowing how hard to train, when to stop competing, how to adapt around injury, and how to balance training with marriage, family, work, and responsibility. We also spent time talking about self-defense and Steady When It Counts: awareness, judgment, creating space, and recognizing that sometimes the best use of your capability is knowing when you don’t need to prove it. Looking back, much of our conversation came down to a question I’ve been thinking about for a while: What happens to us when we train for long enough? When I was younger, much of martial arts was about discovering what I could do. These days, I find myself thinking much more about what I should do. Thank you Eladio for inviting me, I am honored to be your first guess and hope we can do another live soon. Below, you’ll find the different topics we discussed and the corresponding timestamps (generated by ChatGPT): 00:00 – IntroductionEladio introduces me as his first guest and as the writer behind Train · Adapt · Endure. 00:35 – How I got into martial artsI talk about being younger and smaller than my classmates after skipping a grade, being teased and bullied, and eventually discovering karate through coworkers at McDonald’s. I explain how I started Kyokushin, discovered that I had some natural ability, competed, and eventually had to decide how much of my life I was willing to dedicate to competition. 04:20 – From practitioner to teacherI talk about what martial arts looks like for me almost 30 years later: teaching through my virtual dojo, continuing to train with my teacher, refereeing, helping newer black belts learn to teach, reading, studying, and trying to better understand what martial arts does to us over time. 05:55 – Injury, recovery, and writingI discuss the back injury and surgery that kept me from training for roughly a year. Since I couldn’t practice physically, I spent more time reading, studying, and writing. That period eventually led me toward Substack and Train · Adapt · Endure. 06:40 – Why martial arts becomes more philosophical with ageWe talk about how my relationship with martial arts has changed. When I was younger, I was much more interested in the physical side: fighting, competition, toughness, and what I could do. With experience, the questions have shifted toward why we train and what all those years of practice actually mean. 08:15 – Aging changes how I trainWe discuss what happens when the body no longer responds as it did in our twenties. Some speed, athleticism, and recovery disappear, but experience starts compensating through timing, strategy, efficiency, and knowing when to act. 09:20 – “Kick me hard”I tell the story of a lower-belt student who repeatedly asked me to give him a real low kick. Eventually, I obliged—at around 50%. He spent the rest of the class struggling to walk. It leads us into a conversation about the macho mentality many of us had when we were younger and our need to prove that we could take punishment. 11:20 – Pain, maturity, and consequencesWe discuss whether martial artists become more cautious because we become wiser or simply because we’ve accumulated enough painful experiences. Probably both. As we get older, injuries also carry different consequences because recovery takes longer and we have responsibilities outside the dojo. 12:45 – Martial arts and professional responsibilityI talk about showing up at work after competition with a badly bruised eye. When you’re younger, that can feel like a badge of honor. When you have a professional career, a family, and people depending on you, the calculation changes. This was one of the reasons I eventually decided to stop competing. 14:45 – Balancing martial arts, marriage, and familyEladio asks me how I’ve balanced martial arts with almost twenty years of marriage. I talk about communication, boundaries, and accepting that martial arts is important to me without expecting my wife to share that passion. 16:00 – Making training fit into family lifeI give examples of how we make it work: seminar weekends, combining tournaments with family trips, scheduling my virtual dojo around family responsibilities, and being willing to cancel or move training when something more important requires my attention. 18:30 – My children don’t have to inherit my passionI talk about my son training karate and reaching green belt, but also about eventually deciding not to force martial arts on him. If he wants to train, great. If he doesn’t, that’s also fine. My family respects that martial arts matters to me, and I have to give them the same freedom with their own interests. ~20:00 – Our families and martial artsEladio shares his own experience with his fiancée training martial arts but not enjoying sparring. We discuss how different people can have very different relationships with training, even when they are close to someone deeply involved in martial arts. Later – From fighting to self-defenseThe conversation gradually shifts toward self-defense. I talk about how my thinking has moved beyond simply being able to fight toward awareness, judgment, positioning, and avoiding unnecessary involvement. Later – My subway storyI recount an incident where two men began moving closer to me on a nearly empty subway while I was traveling with luggage. I noticed what was happening, prepared my belongings, watched my exits, and eventually timed my departure so I slipped through the doors just before they closed. Nothing happened—which, from a self-defense perspective, was exactly the outcome I wanted. ~55:00 – Steady When It Counts and SPACEWe discuss my book Steady When It Counts and the framework I developed around SPACE: Scan, Position, Assess, Commit, Exit. I explain how I think about self-defense less as a collection of techniques and more as a process for making decisions, creating options, and getting yourself out of trouble. ~1:02:00 – Deciding whether to interveneI use the example of witnessing a situation and deciding to call security. Even that simple action means I’ve chosen to become involved. Once I’ve made that decision and handed the problem to someone responsible for dealing with it, I don’t need to stay around out of curiosity or because I want recognition. 1:02:55 – Create the spaceI return to one of the central ideas behind the book: create space. Distance gives us options. Once I’ve removed myself from the danger or passed the situation to security or police, my job is to continue with my life. 1:03:15 – ClosingEladio and I wrap up the conversation. He mentions wanting to do another Live in the future, and I thank him for inviting me as his first guest and for supporting the book. Keep moving, A. 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