Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios
Welcome to Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios! Get ready to dive into a world where safety meets storytelling! Drawing from his rich background as a former firefighter, EMT and safety expert, Jimmy brings you straight into the heart of safety and emergency preparedness. Episodes feature easy-to-understand tips, real-life stories, and interviews with experts, all designed to help you protect yourself, your business, and those you care about.
Whether it's advice on navigating everyday safety challenges or insights into the latest in health and safety trends, let this podcast educate and entertain you. Join Jimmy and level-up your safety knowledge with engaging discussions that could one day save a life.
Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios
Don’t Kick the Instructor. He Kicks Back.
What happens when you mix martial arts, a little peer pressure, and three people who should definitely not be sparring at work?
You get a wild, hilarious, and surprisingly insightful podcast episode on self-defense, teamwork, and knowing your limits.
Jimmy is sharing stories from his many many years of martial arts training... from the moves he’s mastered to the injuries he’s racked up along the way (including one unfortunate groin incident that’s hard to forget). Then Megan and Miguel share what it felt like to step into their very first kickboxing class and how a few simple tips made them feel stronger, safer, and more prepared to handle themselves in the real world.
But don't get us wrong, this episode isn’t about how to win a fight... it’s about how to avoid one, how protect yourself, and how to get the confidence to maybe throw an elbow or two if it comes to that. Whether you’ve got martial arts experience or even if you’ve never stepped foot in a gym, you’ll come finish out this episode with a new appreciation for confidence, distance, and the power of staying calm under pressure.
Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.
What's happening? Welcome to another Life and Safety Podcast. It's Jimmy with your girl, megs.
Megan:Hello.
Jimmy:And we got special guest Miguelito Miguel with us today and we're going to talk about some of our off-duty shenanigans, things that we do here. Not a lot of people know this about me and you can't tell by the way I look. You know, pretty flabby, that I do like to work out and one of the things that I like to do is I like to do lots of martial arts. I used to do a lot of jujitsu and lately I've been doing kickboxing, specifically Muay Thai kickboxing, and I like to say Muayai that way because it's fun, so you can make fun of me later. But you know it's had some challenges and we're gonna talk about some of that stuff and then we're gonna kind of lead into some other things with that. So, man, you had a question about some injuries. Is that what you said?
Megan:Yeah, what are some injuries that you've either seen or caused on the mat, so to speak?
Jimmy:So just in my martial arts experience I've definitely seen lots of different things. Fun fact I actually broke my hand in what I call a boxer's break, which is basically my ring finger and my pinky finger and the hand bones right behind there doing jujitsu, not punching anything. Somebody fell on my hand and broke my bones so I had bones. Those three bones basically in my middle finger were all broken and it hurt really bad. And I was actually helping a family friend put their ski rack on, oh no, and I pulled on it and my hand went click, click.
Jimmy:And I went huh, yeah, she didn't do that, and that hurt really bad so that's what triggered.
Miguel:That's a common Jimmy reaction, right? Huh, I was like cool cool.
Megan:Maybe not the best.
Jimmy:So I went and got checked out and had a break, so that was fun. And then my brother decided to write hola on my hand. Because every time I lifted my hand up to wave at somebody you couldn't see anything. So he wrote hola on my hand. Because every time I lifted my hand up to like wave at somebody you couldn't see anything. So you wrote hola on there. So that was fun. Then that turned into an hola smack, so I'd say hello to people and smack them with it.
Megan:That sounds very Jimmy like Right.
Jimmy:And I ended up having a little girl ask me how I hurt myself in the grocery store. It was really fun because I got to tell her I was doing ninja training. So that was fun. And actually if you look at a past sports injuries and walk it off newsletter, the picture of me is with a cast on and that's how I got that cast and that picture is doing jujitsu and I walked it off and then hurt myself again helping somebody and I think the story you want me to tell is about the exploded testicle. Yes, I think that's what you really wanted me to tell that story.
Jimmy:That's what we're waiting for. That's what you're waiting for. Yeah, not my exploding testicle, so to speak, but we were doing a kicking drill drill and it's in martial arts. You know, you have to have a respect for your opponent and like your training partner right. Never. I always tell people don't break your toys, don't break your training partner, um, because they have to go to work tomorrow and nobody usually is training for a professional fight or anything like that. And, and you know you shouldn't have an ego, you should just have fun with it.
Jimmy:And this guy was kicking me really, really hard and I kept warning him and you were a guy and then he kicked me in the groin and I walked it off after a while and you know, because I didn't have a cup on, because I didn't think we're going to be getting kick there and because we weren't even supposed to be in that area, he was supposed to be kicking me in my calf, um, fun fact, he should have been kicking me in the other leg. So it was just really, really messed up. And I, I'm, I'm a little mean, um, and I can be a little bit vindictive. I'll have to say that's the probably the best word for this. So when I had a chance I kicked him back really hard in the lake and he complained and had a lot of choice words for me and then he kicked me again in the no-no square and he did it on purpose.
Jimmy:That time I was ready for it. I was able to kind of take a glancing blow. It still really hurt really bad. That time I was ready for it. I was able to kind of take a glancing blow. It still really hurt really bad. So it's a thing called receipts, right, if you?
Jimmy:get hit you give a receipt and he hit me. So I decided to hit him a little bit harder and I was like, all right, well, you want to kick people on the no-no square, I'm going to kick you back in your no-no square. Then I kicked him in his no-no square and his testicle ended up exploding. Um, and, yeah, it sucks to be you. Moral of the story is don't mess with jimmy. No, no, no, no, no, no, don't no.
Megan:The moral of the story is don't mess with Jimmy.
Jimmy:No, no, no, no, no, no, don't, no. The moral of the story is be nice, be nice, don't, you know, don't do things that you don't want done to you. And to be nice.
Megan:The golden rule.
Jimmy:The golden rule.
Megan:Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. F around to find out.
Jimmy:There's a lot of phrases for this, there's a lot of phrases for this, and there's a reason for that. It's because you should just be nice to people, be nice. So, with that being said, something that Miguel and I have in common is he also enjoys working out, and he just recently started going to Kickboxing. Right, yeah, not because of me, right, yeah, yeah, not because of me, right, no?
Miguel:no, it wasn't because of you, something I always wanted to do. So when I heard you did it too, that's when I was like, oh cool, but it wasn't an actual full influence per se.
Megan:Yeah, it's just a little extra push of inspiration.
Miguel:Yeah, basically Because I've always wanted to but never thought of it until, like Jimmy mentioned it and I was like oh sick, and then I started looking into it, but it was mostly just because the idea itself just came back.
Jimmy:Yeah, that's right, we go to different gyms, so it's not weird I had to make that rule. I said I see too much of you already. You can't come to my, my private spot.
Miguel:No, no, especially if I mess up, I don't want to be the one getting whacked so we, um, yeah.
Jimmy:So then megan, also a little toughy, a little baddie in her past. She was on the wrestling team at her high school and enjoys, uh, working out and doing fun stuff like that. So miguel and megan had both asked me separately and then together I don't know if you knew that or not if we can do like a little kickboxing jujitsu thing here at the office. And I was like, no, not the office, we're getting trouble. What if you get hurt workman's comp and all kinds of stuff happening? They asked again and we did it and now we're on a podcast.
Jimmy:Yes, they are very persuasive.
Megan:I don't know persuasive so much as just constant nagging Relentless is more accurate.
Miguel:Yeah, constant nagging nicely. Yes.
Megan:Maybe on your part I don't know that I was so nice about it, but I also get away with some more. True, but I also get away with some more.
Jimmy:True.
Megan:And to be clear, was not life safety sanctioned just occurred at the office not a part of life safety?
Jimmy:Right, I was just going to say the same thing. The disclaimer here is this was not a life safety sanctioned event Outside of work hours. It was outside of work hours. It was all the things, and I had fun. What did you two think?
Megan:Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. That was my first sort of foray into the kickboxing world. Like you said, I had done the wrestling team in high school for a year but I had never done anything kickboxing-like. I feel more prepared going out in the world. I can throw an elbow or a knee, yes, and I get the. You're like what? Okay?
Miguel:That is the truth. I walked out that day feeling a lot better. I would look at people and go all right, don't get too close.
Megan:And you also, I think you taught like good life skills, especially like as a smaller female human in the world. Um, like you know, you explain the concept of sort of what type of move you would throw depending on how close or far they are, like kicking distance versus knee distance or punching distance versus elbow distance. And, like you know, having that sort of awareness, um was good. And, like you taught me how to like break out of holds. If somebody tried to grab me which hopefully I never use, but I feel a lot more confident I would say like if I have to walk to my car alone at night, I'm like, hang on, does jimmy taught me how to handle?
Jimmy:this awesome. That's great that great.
Miguel:I think what you were mainly teaching us in reality was not to go looking for a fight, but what to do if we ever find ourselves in one. Basically, we want to handle ourselves and protect ourselves. Basically all the basics you were teaching us.
Megan:Yeah, I would say the biggest overarching message, so to speak, of the class was like here's how to not fight like the most of the best way to win a fight is to have it not start okay so um and then you know, if it does have to start, show them that you know you're not somebody to be messed with. And then so they're like.
Megan:You know, they try to come at you, throw a punch and they're like you know they try to come at you, throw a punch and they're like okay, nope, I don't want to do this anymore.
Jimmy:Bye, yeah, good, no, I'm glad that you both got that message, you know, because that's what I wanted you to both walk away with. It was a little bit of knowledge how to protect yourself, and you know manage the distance and do those things and you know be aware of your surroundings. So I'm really glad that. That makes me happy. That makes me I'm I'm pretty pumped, you know, proud dad moment right there, so to speak. Um, so it's rad. It's rad Um team out there in the life safety world. That was probably a one-time thing, um, and and don't ask. One-time thing, um and and don't ask oh yeah, that was a in-house private thing. Only, um, if you want to have a conversation about that stuff off of uh, um, outside of class time you know I have time I'd love to have a conversation with you about it.
Megan:I love that stuff I'm sure he'd be happy to give recommendations of good gyms in the area.
Jimmy:Absolutely. Actually, on Wednesday I found out one of our students does jiu-jitsu. We were actually talking about cars. We were parked next to each other. It was really just random and he opened up his hatchback and I saw his jiu-jitsu gi, his uniform. I was like, oh dude, you do jiu-jitsu and I was able to like, ramble off. I'm a nerd, I rambled off like his type of gi it was and what it was made out of and all this stuff, nerd.
Jimmy:Such a nerd. Just a jiu-jitsu head. They call it a jet head, so that was fun.
Jimmy:I like the guy from the class anyways but now I met like a new Jiu-Jitsu buddy, so to speak. So that was really cool. So if you want to come up and talk about that, awesome After class, awesome Before class, not during class, Fair, fair. And one more injury you can always ask about, if you remember, is my forearm. If you ever see me, I have two distinct injuries on my arms. On my left arm you can't see it because I'm pretty tan now and the scar is gone. Well, it's not gone, but it's just really dark. It's from a football helmet. When I was a freshman year, a football helmet actually cut me to the bone Rough.
Megan:Yeah.
Jimmy:Fun fact, I showed myself up because I knew the emergency room doctor. I grew up with his son. His son was on the football team too. So he, let me do like two stitches Probably should have done it, because I took four in and two of them popped out Arguably my two, I think, one of each and I lost a lot of blood Story for a different time, though. And then on my other arm, if I take a fist and kind of turn it the right way, when I was doing jujitsu again, somebody did an arm bar and ripped all of my forearm muscles and it held back weird. So I have a bump and a little valley there in my arm.
Miguel:Dang, you see it, you wouldn't tap out. Huh, I didn't get a chance. It was crack crack, crack, crack I was like oh my arm. Not sportsmanship.
Jimmy:No, it was. You know on white belt crime. Somebody was just drilling and they did it wrong, and that's what happens, you know Well. Thanks for I don't know.
Megan:Do you guys have any other questions or comments about our class or just in general sports things? Do you have a favorite? I know that you like to watch fights in Jiu Jitsu fights. Do you have a favorite one that you recommend everybody watches? That's a weird question.
Jimmy:No either, An actual favorite fight.
Megan:A favorite fight or a favorite fighter to watch a fight of theirs.
Jimmy:Great question Kickboxing one championship Rotang versus Superlek Amazing kickboxing fight. I like to watch Mighty Mouse Johnson. He was in the UFC champion and then he was a one UFC champion. Mighty Mouse also has a really cool YouTube video where actually where he started doing Gi Jiu Jitsu, and there's a really cool video of him going in the open division, which means there's no weight class and he's like a 125-pound human and he wrestles against like almost a 300-pound Jiu-Jitsu guy and he actually picks him up and spins him around. What it's wild. But Mighty Mouse ended up winning because that's what Jiu-Jitsu is about.
Jimmy:I love watching the Gracie breakdowns on youtube, uh, and then instagram. I love the woman empowerment. I think it's so cool that simple jujitsu you know really are effective. Um, so that's henner and eve, uh, gracie, so it's just really cool. Uh, they do a lot of that. And there's a fun video where eve is simulated, uh, being attacked by henner, her husband, and she chokes him and it's such a deeply effective choke he actually goes unconscious. Oh my god. So it actually shows you, like how effective it. So that's really fun. I think it's really good.
Megan:And then for children.
Jimmy:I think look up the Gracie Bullyproof Program, because they really talk about kids not fighting but de-escalating and then protecting yourself, which I think is really cool, and it used to be a really fun conversation starter when my son used to walk around with a bully-proof T-shirt on, so that was really fun. All right, yeah, there you go. There's some recommendations, peace.
