In today’s episode, we explore the concept of practice vs pursuit with one of MY teachers and learn how the road to mastery has transformed his life.

Cody Christensen was an absolute lifesaver for me during COVID. When COVID hit, I had to stop training jiu-jitsu. Cody put together a small group of folks who all trained hard (and played it safe). We met once or twice a week, but it was enough to keep my mind and body grounded. When things finally opened up, we went our separate ways. I recently had the immense honor of witnessing Cody receive his black belt.

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Practice Vs Pursuit With Cody Christensen (BJJ Black Belt)

Discover How To PLAY On The Road To Mastery

I always say special guest, but this guest is pretty special to me. Before he introduces himself, I want to say that this is a guy who I reconnected with and met during COVID. If you know me at all or follow me anywhere, you know how much I love jiu-jitsu. COVID was a time when I wasn’t about to be rolling around with a bunch of people with our masks off.

Cody put together a small group of people, and this was when he was a brown belt. He gave us the gift of jiu-jitsu. It was 5 or 6, sometimes 1 or 3 of us, getting together once or twice a week. We can get into this, but it saved my mental health during a very difficult time. I want to thank you, acknowledge you, and welcome you to the show.

Thanks for having me, Mark. I’m excited to get the opportunity to chat with you. It’s like coming out of this few years post-pandemic. At this time, I can finally start to reflect on it in a positive sense. For a long time, it was like, I don’t even want to think about it. Thank God it’s gone but I also had my second son born on March 20, 2020, the thick of it.

There was a period of no jiu-jitsu at all. Then it was such an incredible time to get together with all of you guys. In jiu-jitsu, it’s tribal by nature, but that group of people holds a special place in my heart. I see you guys as my closest training partners even to this day, even if I don’t get to see you all that often some more than others. The last time I saw Mark, I achieved my black belt after years of training off and on. I was honored to have Mark there for that.

It was an amazing experience to watch that.

The amount of transformation I went through on that journey is incredible. As I started to think about this show, what it means, and what I’d like to speak about, that moment was monumental. I’m still riding the positive energy of that moment and allowing myself to do so.

It’s a huge achievement. Anyone who knows anything about martial arts or even if you don’t know that a black belt is a big deal. It represents so many years, so much dedication, and so much consistency. I bring up the COVID thing in part because you also mentioned you had a kid. Here’s a time when this thing that’s important to you, for reasons I’d love to get into, was taken away by circumstance by a pandemic. Yet, you found your way back to it in a new way. Then that evolved when things started to lift, and you were back at a regular gym.

Pursuit Of Mastery

You mentioned there were so many transformations along the way. I love thinking about how jiu-jitsu is a metaphor. Everything we do is such a metaphor for almost everything we do anywhere else. I’d love to hear about some of those transformations for you along the journey. We’re all on journeys, whether it’s jiu-jitsu, art, business, or whatever. Tell us about them. Start anywhere you like. I’d love to hear about some of these transformations.

I’m going to maybe start at the end and then work backward. The largest one is often quoted on the show I did about the crazy strongman act of steel bending and other old-school strength feats which is what I was doing when I couldn’t do jiu-jitsu. I was occupying myself in other ways. Given my punk rock DIY work ethic, I decided to start a podcast about steel bending. On that podcast, I would often quote Musashi from the Book of Five Rings, “If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything.”

For most of my jiu-jitsu career, I thought that meant or what it meant to me was to get good at something, you have to be utterly obsessed with it. It has to be almost the idea of thinking about stuff outside of that thing you are pursuing, you almost need to physically remove it from your brain. I’ve done this with weightlifting and strongman stuff, and back when I did it with skateboarding as a kid too. That is a surefire way to excel at things and to be so devoted and dialed in that you’re, quite literally, in my case, falling asleep watching jiu-jitsu videos and the whole thing.

Let’s talk about post-black belts now. As that belt got tied around my waist, my perspective did change. This is what I tell my son, who’s motivated and in love with soccer. I don’t think it needs to be an obsession. Obsession is tied to something negative. What I think it needs to be is something that is truly adored. I love jiu-jitsu. I love it so much, and it’s not because I can beat people up. It’s not about that. All that stuff gets thrown by the wayside. I love the people I’m around, and I get to play with my friends. That’s what it is. I’m healthy enough to do so.

My perspective of this pursuit, as I rounded out this monumental goal, changed. When I think about it, the reasons why I skateboarded are the same. It’s because I love to do it. My expectations weren’t always to be the best skateboarder. I didn’t need to get to this level. It was a daily practice because I liked the way it made me feel. That’s where I’m at with jiu-jitsu now. If it feels good and it feels like it should feel. I roll up to training and I’m like, “Let’s train.” I’ve stopped all the negative voices in my head that say I’m the worst person on the mat and all that stuff. I feel free of that. I’m going into this new phase of jiu-jitsu, appreciating that I get to do it and all the connections I’ve made through it.

Focus on your training and stop listening to all the negative voices in your head.

Inner Critic And Goal Setting

Talking about that inner critic voice, talk about that a lot in the world of creativity, business, and entrepreneurship. Do you feel like you have to get that goal before you can start to quiet that voice, or is there another approach?

Maybe spending time in the trenches with that voice might have some utility, but I’m not sold on that necessarily. I’d have to run an experiment or something. What I’m thinking of is practice versus pursuit. That’s how I’m segmenting it in my mind. My dad is a musician and a songwriter. Music playing guitar, and other instruments, have been part of my life since I was young. I’ve had a guitar in my hands since I was born. It’s not something I talk about much, but it’s something I do every day.

I didn’t know that you play guitar.

This is what’s funny about it, it’s this daily practice that I do that I don’t have any expectations anymore. I’ve simply done it my whole life. It’s like if I was disciplined and stretched or something.

People ask me what advice I’d give a younger version or anybody at a younger age.  My answer is always stretching. I know you’re 25, and you’re made of rubber, and that’s fantastic but if you stretch now and do that consistently, you’re going to feel better than every other 48-year-old when you get there.

I have this funny retirement list and I put all the things. I’m a pretty disciplined guy but there are some things I push off and can’t be disciplined with, like my yoga practice. That’s on the retirement list.

Practice Mindset And Overcoming Fear

The things to do when things slow down. I love the idea of practice versus pursuit. I think about that a lot in terms of my practice too. It’s a place I’m constantly trying to be in, at least. Something that comes up a lot when I’m working with people who are about to start a new thing. There’s the idea of a beginner’s mind, which we can talk about, but something I’ve gotten to and I’m a straight purple belt talking here. I’ve to a point where I no longer feel. There’s always a little bit of fear, which is good. When you walk into the gym, there’s always a chance you could get hurt, or you could be going up against someone much better than you.

There’s always that edge of fear but at some point, the courage I needed to keep walking into the gym, the courage I needed to walk in with you guys when I didn’t know you well on day one in the middle of COVID. There’s fear of getting COVID. We were all vaccinated. Every day, there’s a little bit of that fear. You need a little bit of courage and over time, what you just described is that if you show up enough, there’s a feeling of pure confidence that comes, not arrogance not the kind of confidence where you think you can control the outcome but confidence that you can show up and that you will survive the experience in whatever way. You might be a complete train wreck on the guitar that day, but you’ve done it enough and been a train wreck enough that it doesn’t show up as fear anymore.

Comparing the two things guitar and jiu-jitsu in my life. I’ve done both for quite a long time, but guitar by an additional 22 years or something like that. I don’t remember a time I wasn’t playing. Somewhere along the lines, I realized it relaxes me to pick up a guitar and pluck some chords at the end of the night. It’s something I can do that my kids enjoy, and it’s part of the family culture. It was the same for me growing up.

My dad was always sitting around playing guitar, and I can remember being a little kid, covering up the strings while my sons did it too, getting a kick out of throwing the pick in the body of the guitar. It’s just practice. That’s how I’ve introduced jiu-jitsu to the kids as well, no pressure whatsoever. I just show them how much joy I’m having doing it, and they both have a lot of interest in it. That’s my Ebb and flow and that’s cool for me. The opportunity to train is always there. My little one trains at home, and my bigger one comes with me.

I’ve rolled with your older son a few times.

I don’t know if getting into a practice mindset like a daily practice mindset is aligned with mastery, but it’s an interesting thing to think about. You are no longer in pursuit of it. You’re in the serenity of being involved with it.

Getting to a practice mindset could be aligned with mastery of something. You are no longer in the pursuit of it. You’re just in the serenity of being involved with it.

I think you’re right. You know The 32 Principles of Jiu-Jitsu from the Gracie book. It’s 32 Principles of Jiu-Jitsu and Business and Life. I did post it for myself. The idea of mastery aligns with me. I don’t think the master is pursuing something. They are pursuing themselves. With the idea that the practice itself is the goal, the goal is to be in the practice. The goal is to be fully prepared, to show up, and to be in that playful state.

What this is making me think about is what happens when things get in the way. What happens when you get injured? What happens when COVID hits and you are not doing it? I imagine that being in the practice mindset would be beneficial for getting through those times as opposed to if you’re in the pursuit, suddenly all your expectations and timelines are derailed, and it can be very debilitating. What do you think being in the practice mindset does for getting through those times? Have you faced any obstacles other than the ones you mentioned?

Two different times come to mind. One is the pandemic, and that was straight-up pivoting. I was very much still in the pursuit mindset like, “I’m going to get as strong as humanly possible so I can beat up people who are better than me when I return to jiu-jitsu.” That’s all it was. It was like, “In a couple weeks when this all blows over, I’m going to be three weeks stronger,” which turned into a couple of years and so on.

For people who are reading, Cody, you have to send me at least one of the links to a video. When he’s talking strong, he’s talking about taking steel like Superman stuff. Taking steel bars and bending them. He taught me, which I now forget and need you to teach me again, how to rip a deck of cards in half or a phone book in half. That’s when you moved into a pursuit mindset, and I’m curious about how that aligned.

I was already in the pursuit mindset because I was a fresh brown belt. My dedication to the pursuit of the black belt was unwavering, let’s say. I would have died trying to achieve that goal. I was so intense about it, and I’m trying to lean into the easygoingness of it now to balance out the scale a little bit. My family was understanding of what I needed to do to achieve that goal, and I’m trying to reciprocate some of that now with a little less militant attitude about how much I need to train, let’s say.

Going back to one thing that got put on pause during the pandemic, I was very much in the pursuit mindset. When I started weight training and got into the strongman stuff, it was all with the agenda to return to the mat stronger and more efficient at jiu-jitsu. There were little glimpses of leaning into the practice mindset in there because I developed a true love and passion for lifting weights, and I still do it and get a lot of enjoyment out of it but all of that was goal and agenda-based. I pretty much got as strong as I could and started competing in grip contests at home, then graduated to competing in other strongman and powerlifting types of events.

I had success there, but it was all because I was, not training and I had a lot of energy, a lot of negative energy because I couldn’t do the thing I loved so much. I wasn’t playing around. I was taking what I thought was the way of being obsessed and funneling that into getting strong putting on muscle and stuff.

Balancing Obsession With Practical Realities

Would you do it any other way? Some people are probably reading and are like, “That’s great, but I don’t want to be obsessed or I can’t be obsessed.” I go to the gym every morning. There happens to be a lot of parents, dads, and moms in my gym because the 9:30 time is right after school drop-off. Not everyone can go as often as they want me to go to progress through to the pursuit as quickly as they want. I’m there every morning but not everybody is. Even that isn’t enough to get my black belt tomorrow or even in the next couple of years. Even if I’m going at what feels like a breakneck speed, there are folks who say, “No, I have other responsibilities. I can only do two days with my job,” or whatever it is. Can you take that obsession and shift your perspective over time? Does it have to be an obsession and fast?

That brings me to the second example where I pulled my hamstring badly. I’m back to normal training at a gym. I get all the competitive rounds.

You were close to a black belt at that time.

I already have a couple of years of the type of training that I want. Hard training and stuff. I hurt my hamstring. It hurt so bad. I was so surprised that it was only a strain because of how debilitating it was now. It hurt so bad that I couldn’t even do upper-body weightlifting. I was off the mat, but I couldn’t tense my body the way I needed to lift weights. I was left with physical things out the window. It was the middle of February, and I couldn’t even go outside because it was so dreary. The outside stuff was limited. I bought canvases and started painting a bunch. Painting was never a thing that I enjoyed as a kid. I have always drawn and the reason I like to draw is that I could sit down and draw a picture and it could be complete in the duration that I would like, and I didn’t have the patience to paint as a kid.

Revisiting this due to this injury was like, it was a really beautiful thing. As a family man stuff was like, “I’m going to set my little easel up in my office and I’m going to do a little bit and then I’m going to be pulled away for work or family stuff,” or whatever. We are talking like 5 to 10 minutes at a time and then maybe 20 minutes at night, and I’m going to do a little bit, and that gives me that positive escape that I need as a person, which has been fulfilled in negative ways when I was younger. I need these healthy escapes where I’m dialed into this thing.

I got into recording music at that time. These were things that I didn’t have an agenda with. This is how I matured post-pandemic near to a black belt. These were daily practice things. I had moved through the pursuit thing, and I approached these things in a more playful manner. Where I was like I wasn’t going to start trying to sell these paintings. It was like some form of expression that took me out of my crazy mind for 5 to 20 minutes at a clip, and then the recording was something. I had never learned how to use recording software. I taught myself GarageBand and started doing little home recordings with the kids and stuff and they got a kick out of it. It was like, “I have this time I can’t be physical,” which is like my go-to usually, like give myself that little mental break. I had to dial it into some other means of creativity.

I didn’t know that you had done that and it makes so much sense. I talked about this with my groups and my clients too. Creativity isn’t about I don’t think creativity is about making physical visual art, music, or dance, but it is all of these things. I think that Jiu-Jitsu is fundamentally an incredibly creative activity and so is creating a new business or creating your videos and you are an influencer. These are all acts of creation.

When you are in Jiu Jitsu, you are creating all the time. You are facing somebody or somebody who’s throwing whatever they are throwing at you and you have to create a response, all the time when you are rolling with someone. Interestingly, you replace these physical activities with creativity because the thing that they both get you to is a state of flow. That mental break, that moment where you are not thinking of it.

Replacing Physical Activity With Creative Pursuits

It’s one of the things that I say I love about Jiu-Jitsu. I don’t have my phone, no one can interrupt me, and I have to focus on what’s in front of me whether it’s the coach or my training partner. Whatever I come in with, whatever is coming at me, whether it’s my inner critic, or people needing me, or my family, or whatever, I get to put it down. If it’s for 5 or 10 minutes or 1 hour on the mat, it’s giving yourself. I love that you gave yourself that time and committed even to trying it out as a way of getting that mental space to almost let some of those things go. What were the results that you found in your life from replacing this physical activity with a more “creative one?”

I would say it scratched the itch but I didn’t take care of it entirely. It was enough to bridge the gap and then a couple weeks went by and then I could get into the lifting and stuff like that. The physical challenges are what gets me to a place that satisfies my addictive mind. The creative stuff helps to buffer it. I’m not like a psycho to be around.

We’ll see. I don’t know. Maybe with this newfound maturation coming off of the black belt, we’ll see the next injury on how I handle it. I’d like to think that I handled it a little better. As you are saying all these things are art. I think of it as skateboarding. You could try to cram it into a box and call it a sport, it’s like and the whole thing is so subjective, and like, why someone doing a kickflip is way cooler than another person doing a kickflip.?Scientifically, it’s the same move, but you can do it with so much style and make it look so good, and even someone that does a bad one. It can be cool because they are stylish.

That’s the way of Jiu-Jitsu. I have a tattoo on my arm now, it’s gentle art, which is like the dichotomy of that is like so funny because it’s so far from gentle. The more creative I can be on the mat, the better I do. The more playful I can be, the better I do. That’s me personally because I am an artistic person at heart. Other people have a lot of success being like true scientists or approaching it from a less creative, less playful way, but that’s how I have my most success on the mat when I can be playful and creative. That’s the throughline with all of this stuff we are talking about.

Other people have a lot of success being like true scientists, approaching it from a less creative and less playful way. But you can always have the most success by being playful and creative.

I like that you keep bringing up that sense of play. I know when you are starting Jiu Jitsu or anything. It’s hard to feel comfortable enough to feel playfulness. A good friend of mine joined our gym. He’s been talking about it for years. I finally got him to come in. He’s got his white belt. It’s like the starter gear. It’s funny because he’s a former high school wrestler. He’s hanging on for dear life. There’s not enough even knowing what to do that he can be comfortable enough.

If you are reading, buddy, I love you, and you know that this is coming from a good place. What’s interesting about him is that he is coming in with a remarkable sense of play. There are other white belts who come in who are like that hanging on for dear life type of thing. He’s got a great mindset about it and maybe it’s because he’s a dad and he is a painter among other things.

Getting to that sense of play. I feel like that’s something that I’m constantly working towards. I want it to be fun. I see people come in with a lot of intensity. There are a few folks I have trained with in the past who where you can tell they want to win. That’s the thing that they want to get and I’m like, “There’s 1,000 things that happen in this room, and winning is one of them.” Learning is another. Finding all these different paths, making connections with other people. There’s so much that can happen here.

This is back to practice and pursuit. If I’m focused on, “I got to get my hours in and I got to learn these moves.” You are almost not in the present moment and you are almost robbing yourself of that experience of being in the flow. Not to critique at all, but if you are obsessed in that way where you are unable to be in the experience. I also know you and I got to train with you. I always felt that sense of play with you.

Advice For Beginners In Jiu-Jitsu Or Other Pursuits

When you were showing us all the stuff that you showed us during the time that we trained together, there was always a sense of like, “This can be fun. Let’s try this fun thing. Let’s play around with it. Let’s bring in boxing gloves and see what that does.” You always brought in interesting stuff for us to work with. I admire that sense of play and I’m glad to hear that, that’s more of a focus. What would you say to somebody who’s considering starting, whether it’s Jiu Jitsu or any pursuit because you’ve got so many different creative pursuits? As you go along the way, what advice would you want to give to somebody who is maybe struggling to find that consistency?

The battle is like if you take kids and you and you are looking at them while they play, do you think they have an inner voice that’s like, “You are so bad at this.?” They don’t.

At a certain age, they start to get that voice.

It’s like the more you can shift and this is a spectrum and I have always felt like my inner voice is on the severe end of some type of evil being that’s looking to punish me or something.

Why don’t you make a painting of your voice?

I might have a tattoo on me. Some scary reapers and stuff. Learning to shift that. It’s not like being hypercritical all the time so you can flow and play a little more and then allow yourself to be not good at it and have that be 100% okay. As I mentioned in the speech, when I got my black belt, I was so grateful for that ability. It’s like sometimes you learn a move and even all the years I have. It’s like I will learn something and it does not feel right to me.

When I executed it, it looked insane. At this point, I laugh. There’s certain drop seoi-nage like a judo throw where you drop the knees and you are turning backward and you throw them over your shoulder. I could have such a fail highlight of me trying to attempt that move. It would be hilarious and have one million views on YouTube because it would be so pitiful.

I’m not caught up in how poorly I do drop seoi-nage.  I laugh it off. If you can both build confidence by allowing yourself to be bad at something when you start and then all trying to shift that inner voice to be less critical, to instead something that changed along with was like, “If someone beats me up, on the mat. Instead of me driving home being like, “You are so bad at this. Why do you even do this? You are so bad.” Somewhere along the line and thank goodness, it switched to be like, “That person is good at JJiu-Jitsu” That would be validated by other people that I respect and think are good beings like, “That person is tough.” It’s like instead of me being all about myself, do you ever hear that thing? That’s like, “I don’t think much of myself but I’m all I think about?”

I have not heard that. That’s interesting. Raf teaches in Kingston. I had a private lesson with him and we were talking about something. I forget exactly how it came up, but he says something to me that I may never forget. There’s another one. I think he has his brown right now. He said to me, “Brian’is better than you at Jiu Jitsu and he’s going to be better than you for a long time, and I was like, “That’s interesting. If he’s better than me now, we are both training consistently, he’s going to stay better than me.”

This inner critic is like, “You are not as good as him.” It’s like, “That’s fine. I’m on my journey right now. He started years before me or whatever it was, it has made him better. That’s where he is and this is where I get to be, and again, it’s about not driving home being like, “That was that was crappy.” It’s like driving home and examining what you want to do next.

Advice for The Next Year

This is a new question that I’m asking guests, but what advice do you want to give yourself for the next year, in your Jiu-Jitsu journey or your life journey?

The advice I would give myself is to keep up with what I’m doing now, which is keeping that nasty inner voice out of my head. Allowing me to lean into the accomplishment of getting the black belt. Not getting sucked up into what that means via comparison and continuing to lean into the play aspect of it. Also, it honestly took the pandemic for me to realize how much I appreciate the camaraderie of JJiu-Jitsu Pre-pandemic, I was like, “I got my friends from childhood from skateboarding, from punk and hardcore shows, and whatever else. I don’t need any new friends from this thing.”

Keep that nasty inner voice out of your head.

It’s not that I would be nasty, but it was like, “I didn’t value the short little conversations or I wasn’t in tune with how much I did value it. Then coming out of the pandemic and going back was like, “I love talking to all these people.” Sometimes I don’t even know their first name. I feel bad, but I feel like I know them because we do this thing that requires so much trust, and I realized like, “That does so much for me.” It’s like checking in with all these people. “Hey, how are you doing?”

Continuing to lean into the fellowship of Jiu Jitsu, and being as creative and as playful as I can. In the near future, when I opened my own space to foster that. For your friend who’s new and not able to maybe tap into the play aspect of it, structure the training in a way where they almost have no choice but to be silly. If they have tunnel vision in the pursuit, we are going to mix it up in a way that it’s fun. When I was injured, I was painting. As soon as I got into a mindset where I was like, “This is not the way I wanted to look.” I try to be as punk rock as I could and I would take it in a whole different direction and I would make myself, like, I would not let myself fall into that weird expectation like inner critic crap.

A lot of the work I do around clients is around the inner critic and I will offer this in response this was something that my coach gave me and helped me shift my view on the inner critic. Maybe this is helpful, which is that the inner critic is you. If you are hearing voices that you don’t feel like you are. You should see someone and that’s dangerous.

I don’t say that lightly, but the inner critic is this thing that we all have and fundamentally it has a good intention. It wants you to be safe. The problem is it operates out of fear. Fear of looking bad, of looking like an idiot. The inner critic is the one that’s always like, “No. Stay home. Do the comfortable thing. You don’t have to go again this week?” It’s trying to be your friend in a way, which is weird to think about because it’s giving you all this advice, it’s holding you back, and it’s telling you, “You look so stupid and you are an idiot.

When I realized that this voice was afraid of me and wanted to help me. It was a little bit easier to notice and acknowledge when it was there and going, “This is an indicator. I will tell you where you need to go.” The inner critic also doesn’t want me to walk into traffic. I’m going to listen in certain cases. Should I go to jiu-jitsu?” I’m like, “I have facts to back up that this is going to be okay. I’m going to make sure of the voice and try to move through with some courage.”

It’s almost like reframing. It’s like a maturation of your relationship with it because I’m at this place where now it’s like, “I have identified that as trying to sabotage me,” and so I have to balance it out with sweetness. If I change my perspective on it I think of it as something that’s trying to look out for me like a helicopter parent or something. That’s an interesting way to view it. It’s trying to keep you so safe that it doesn’t want you to step out and do these things where there could be a little bit of potential rejection or something.

Your inner voice is like a helicopter parent, trying to keep you so safe that it does not want you to step out and face potential rejection.

There’s a lot there. I hate to end things because I know we could talk for hours. I know you are talking about opening up your place at some point. If people are looking for you on social media to follow your journey, where is the best place for them to find you?

I’m CodyC518 on Instagram. If you want to check me out there. I train in Gambit Submission Fighting in New Paltz. If you want to check out there what we have going on. I also trained at Midtown Jiu Jitsu and Kingston with my friend Malachy Silva, who opened up a gym there. That’s a new gym that everybody should check out in the Hudson Valley. If you want to check out any of the old strongman episodes I did, that was called Beyond the Bend Podcast where I did nearly 100 episodes of interviewing many super strong people and got deep into life stuff as well. There are some episodes there that people could get a lot out of even if they have no interest in bending steel or anything like that.

Cody, I appreciate you taking the time. It’s always great to reconnect with you. I will talk soon and for everybody who’s reading, we’ll see you in the next episode.

Thanks so much.

Important Links

• Book of Five Rings
• The 32 Principles of Jiu-Jitsu
• Cody Christensen’s Instagram
• Beyond the Bend Podcast
• Gambit Submission Fighting Instagram
• Midtown Jiu Jitsu Instagram

About Cody Christensen

Cody Christensen is a life long musician and martial artist. He has spent most of his life being involved with skateboarding, music, and jiu-jitsu. These 3 thing shaped his entire life, the way he approaches living his life and the way he views the world. He recently earned his black belt in jiu-jitsu after 16 years of training. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and two sons.