Professor Sal Spinelli, a musician and martial artist, started as a teenage Bruce Lee fan in Florida, until he tried to kick the hat off a bandmate's head and kicked him in the head instead. His band's manager steered him into Wing Chun and other Chinese and Filipino arts, trained in a garage with no mats, and a teacher he revered made him want to be that person for someone else. In California, a flyer on his windshield led him to Chris Brennan's school and his first real grappling, and a chance meeting in a parking lot years later brought him to the Carlson Gracie academy he now calls home.

Sal tells Pete that jiu-jitsu made him someone who moves forward when things get hard, because on the mat "you can't pretend you're doing better, you can only do better." He compares the nerves before a big gig with the nerves before a match, remembers cutting eight pounds in two days and running out of gas, and explains why he agrees with Bob Hope that the day you stop getting nervous is the day to quit. He closes with the moment he asked a kids class who had been bullied and watched the hands go up, and why a coach's smallest words can stay with a child for life.

In this episode

• 0:00 Welcome
• 1:05 Meet Professor Sal Spinelli
• 2:06 How jiu-jitsu moved him forward
• 4:15 A band and a bad kick
• 6:19 Wing Chun in a garage
• 9:30 A teacher worth becoming
• 13:41 Music and martial arts in parallel
• 16:53 The flyer that led to jiu-jitsu
• 20:02 Finding home at Carlson Gracie
• 22:13 Gig nerves and match nerves
• 23:19 Cutting eight pounds in two days
• 27:33 The day you stop getting nervous
• 29:44 The kids who raised their hands
• 35:58 Words that stay with kids

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