Episode 10: Sara McMann

As I planned this limited series podcast, it was important for me to highlight a diverse panel of guests. Some of you may have picked up on the fact that I alternated between male and female each week, which I deliberately planned because my world is filled with phenomenal men and women. The women that I had the privilege of speaking with are also each in their own way - trailblazers. They are carving out new spaces, pushing on existing limits, making history and demonstrating greatness by doing the work and not making excuses.

In my final interview, I was humbled by the insights and words of the incredible Sara McMann. She is the first woman in American history to win a Silver medal at the Olympics. She’s also a multiple time medalist at the World Championships and impressively fights women in the UFC who are easily 10-15 years her junior. In many ways she is an anomaly, yet she is so relatable, rational and human. I am delighted to say that I have a few things in common with her, as we are both 41, mothers,  entrepreneurs, teachers and athletes - early in our domains. I can easily say that I wish I was more like her and look up to what she’s accomplished thus far in her career. 

When I look back on all the stellar women I’ve spoken with, they all standout as supremely awesome individuals who’ve made huge contributions and strides within their respective fields. They’re women, but that’s not the thing that I think of first. I immediately think -  BADASS. People like Sara have never stepped off or away when things got too hard or when people didn’t know what to do with her. She simply logically thought through her setbacks and found reasonable solutions to overcome them. All of them. Her tenacity and grit is not easily found in people, period. She is a champion amongst champions and our discussion is a wealth of A+ tips for anyone looking to make a difference in their performance outcomes.

She makes greatness seem strangely achievable through what she relays about process, incremental breakthroughs and accountability. 

It is my honor to present Sara McMann: 

Full Transcript:

Emily Kwok:
Welcome to the master and the apprentice, where we explore the path from apprenticeship to mastery. Today, I'm super excited to have a guest, a fellow female, a fellow grappler, amongst many other things, and also a mother. Today, my guest is Sarah McMan, and she is noted as being one of the top 10 ranked UFC Bantamweights. And, I will note in time, it is 2021, but she's been a beast on the scene for a number of years. She's also an Olympic silver medalist in wrestling, and a brown belt under Marcelo Garcia. Interestingly, in our little pre-conversation, I also found out that she happens to be very highly educated as well, and she has a masters in mental health. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for your time.

Sara McMann:
Yeah. I'm glad you invited me.

Emily Kwok:
Yeah. And, I have to say that part of my reach out to you, is not only to be curious from being a performer in one respect of your career, which is grappling, but I also admittedly fan girl out on the fact that you've not only been extremely well accomplished and hardworking in one discipline, but in many. And, I thought it would be really awesome to have the opportunity to sit down and talk to you about your personal pursuits. And, in addition to that also later on, maybe we can talk a little bit about motherhood, and what life looks like for you these days. Because, I really admire the fact that you're juggling all of these roles, because I know it's not easy.

Sara McMann:
No, it definitely isn't easy. But, usually whenever I talk to people who are thinking about having children, and they have a athletic career, well one, you can manage. It's tough, you definitely will have to spread out your timeline, so you can accomplish the same things, but it just isn't going to happen quite as quickly. And, one baby is like a backpack that everybody loves. You can carry the baby everywhere, and most people will help out, because babies are adorable. The jujitsu community, the wrestling community, they adore them, so you get a lot of people that really just love to help care for your child, so that's great. That's great.

Emily Kwok:
It really takes a village, especially when you have more than one.

Sara McMann:
Yeah, absolutely. And, [inaudible 00:02:52] I would bring my daughter with me, and she was probably three or four at the time. And, she would sit with Hannah or Jen and color, while I was practicing. They would just play with her, and stuff like that, and she had a great time.

Emily Kwok:
That's amazing. I would love to actually start at the beginning of your career, maybe in your formative years, depending on where it all started, and just gain a deeper sense of perspective and understanding of how you ended up in this place, where you have not only taken your, I'm going to imagine hunger and focus, to perform at your best in one discipline, but in multiple disciplines, where did that all begin? And, what was your first love, and how did it all start?

Sara McMann:
My first time for wrestling, my brother, he wrestled since I was three years old. And, he got into a car accident when he was real young, and he couldn't continue wrestling. So, he stopped right about the time that I was starting, probably the year before I started. And, basically, I was 14 years old, and I was like, "I think I want to do sports." And, to be truthful, before that I was just being a little... I was just not a good kid. I was smoking cigarettes, I was smoking pot. I was going down a bad path. I was trying to be cool, so I was doing just foolish stuff. And, I was like, "I think I want to do a sport."

Sara McMann:
And, the only sport I'd remembered really growing up, was being around wrestling. For me, the natural sport to do was wrestling. I started in North Carolina, and I was the only girl in the entire state that wrestled. And, I got such pushback that girls couldn't wrestle. And, I'd also grown up in Pennsylvania, that's where I grew up when I was younger. And, I'd seen girl wrestlers at almost every tournament, or every other tournament, when my brother was competing in the little kid circuit, and I was like, "Man, of course girls can wrestle. I saw them wrestle all the time." It's just, there in Pennsylvania, only some girls wanted to wrestle, not all girls. In North Carolina, I looked at them like they were the ones that were crazy.

Sara McMann:
But, they weren't being malicious about it. They were confused that I wanted to wrestle, and they were like, "Girls can't do that." And, I was like, "Well, I have two arms and two legs, what do you mean I can't do that?" I went out for the wrestling team, and I was told, even by my friends, not even in a malicious way, just gently like, "Oh, well the coach is going to make you quit." And, I've learned this about my life, I may not be the most stubborn person in the world, but I'm probably like top two or three in the world.

Emily Kwok:
So, we should add that to your bio.

Sara McMann:
Yes. I'm definitely a good run for their money. As soon as they told me I couldn't do it, whether I liked wrestling or not, I had dug in my heels. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to wrestle. This is going to happen." I went from a girl who was, not only not in shape for any sport at all, but I smoked cigarettes, and I was like, "I'm going to wrestle." And, I joined easily, one of the hardest sports there is. And, our coaches had three hour practices. They had a ton of conditioning, he loved Dan Gable, so he was the son of a preacher, and a guy in the military, so he murdered us. But, I was so dead set that I would not quit, that I honestly outlasted... There was probably only a handful of guys that started my freshman year, and ended our senior year together.

Sara McMann:
And, so many other guys had quit, but I stuck it out. But, after the first year, I think I gritted out the first year, and then after that, I really fell in love with it. I actually could look at wrestling for itself, not just for my stubbornness. And, I was very accepted. Once they knew I was not just trying to get attention, or hook up with any of the boys. And, I assured them, I'm like, "Listen, I'm a female, if I wanted to hook up with guys, I would not go through grueling three hour practices to do it. This does not seem like the best method." Sweatpants, I wear two pairs of sweatpants sometimes, to hide my figure, and be one of the guys. I'm sweaty, and I'm trying to hurt you. I don't see that as the best way to attract a guy.

Emily Kwok:
Wow. Actually, I'm super curious to know what gave you that fire, or that drive to all of a sudden, flip the switch, to come from the position that you were in, to decide that you were going to take this on? Was it simply that someone said no, or was there something else behind it?

Sara McMann:
Initially, I think part of it was the same fire that said, "I think I need to join a sport." I had grown up around drinking and drugs, and seeing that stuff, and I think I had just gotten to the age where I was going along. I was falling into that trap, and I was aware enough to be like, "I don't want this to be my life. I want to go to college." And, I think wrestling undeniably 100% saved my life. Wrestling was the best thing that ever happened to me, and it taught me all of the values that I really needed to learn, to be able to reach any goal. It instilled that in me, especially being able to persevere through all the odds being stacked against me. It gave me almost borderline, delusional, self-belief.

Sara McMann:
That was a wonderful thing. But, I think I already had a little bit... I was going to pick something, and I was going to run with it. Because, I saw where my life could lead, If I didn't get into something that had meaning, and purpose, and that I really cared about, and loved more than I loved doing nothing, or hanging out with my friends, or how good it felt to drink, or other just little... It was more harmless stuff, but I was already down that path, and it could have gotten so much worse.

Emily Kwok:
Wow, incredible that you had that insight at that early age, to see what path you were already starting to walk on.

Sara McMann:
I had enough bad examples, and I had an older brother and sister too, to be like, "I want to go to college." I knew that. Now it's funny, because college isn't the only way. But, for me growing up like that, college was the ultimate goal, to not live the life that I was seeing played out front of me with everybody else. College was my, in a way, at that time when I was younger, it was my Olympics like, "This is how I get out."

Sara McMann:
I didn't know how I was going to go to college, but I knew I had to. Wrestling, you have to have good grades in order to be able to participate in wrestling, so I cleaned up my grades. And, at the time I never knew I could get a wrestling scholarship, I just knew that it honed me in, and it focused me, and that was what was really important. But, I later did end up going to school for wrestling, and getting help, and scholarships, and things like that, but I never anticipated.

Emily Kwok:
Amazing. In listening to you speak about that, I wonder in some ways... I was speaking with a client earlier today about this idea that, sometimes when we walk into new spaces and we're in awe, and we want to grow, that having too much space can be really daunting, because you don't really know how to reach your goal, because you don't know what structures or ways in which you should go about doing things. And, in hearing you speak about how much wrestling resonated with you, but you had this end goal of wanting to be in college, it makes me wonder, was wrestling a tangible enough medium, that it gave you really measurable goals to see your own progress? Was that part of what drew you in? Was that one of the only vehicles, or the first vehicles, where you could start to see your growth as a person, and be like, "Hey, I want to get over there, and if I start here, I can see how I'm gaining ground, and I will get there eventually." Or, was it just, you were so immersed, you didn't even see how it was all unfolding.

Sara McMann:
I think the second one was definitely true, I think that I was just so immersed. And, truthfully with wrestling, it took me a good two years of doing the drills, and dedicating myself to it, before I really could execute the moves during a match. Wrestling, I know it seems extremely simple, but to make adjustments, it's actually a lot complicated than it looks. If you watch wrestling, it's like, "Oh, you grab the leg and they fall down." But, if you want to do that well, against very, very good people, it takes at least a decade, to be able to look like, "Oh, I grabbed the leg, and they fell down."

Emily Kwok:
When you know how to do something really, really well, you make it look so simple.

Sara McMann:
Yeah. That's true. It took me... This is the crazy part too, I'm a late bloomer when it comes to taking my capabilities from the practice room, and being able to apply them in competition. But, once I can, I got it, it's locked down. But, I found that in my wrestling career, and in my MMA career, I will start to get something and shine in the practice room, a little bit before I'm able to bring that same person to competition. And, I don't know why, I don't know why that happens, but there's always a little bit of a lag. Some people, it's the opposite. Some people, they're always practice room gods. They kill everybody in practice, and then they just don't do anything.

Sara McMann:
Mine was just a small lag, where I was just a little underperforming in certain areas. That is something that I always was trying to catch up with, I'm like, "I know I can do better than that." That's the self mastery that I was always chasing, being the true wrestler that I was, which was the one that was outside of pressure, outside of anybody watching, and everything like that, and being able to bring that athlete to the competition. And, I was close, but never quite [inaudible 00:14:16]. Honestly, I looked at the Olympics, was the first time, I watched my finals match after the Olympics was over. And, this was my quote, I looked at, it was my team leader, Art Martori, and I was like, "Man, somewhere along the way, I actually became a pretty decent wrestler." I've always been notoriously hard on myself.

Emily Kwok:
Well, I have so many questions, but when you were performing you mentioned, "Okay. There were people that I trained with, that trained really well, and didn't perform really well." I attribute a lot of this down to just your mental psychology around, how you get out there. And, I think for a lot of us, the pressure and the nerves, of being out in the open, makes us feel like have to result. And, we worry too much about the outcome, and we're not as focused on the present moment. And, when it comes to you, and the performances that you had, and as you've gotten out there, and been more comfortable with what it is that you do, how do you think about your match? When you're going out there, have you been focused on, "Hey, I want to get first place in this tournament," or was it more incremental for you? Because, I think that, that pressure that we put on ourselves can be so crippling. And, it sounded as if you had a little bit more of a graceful relationship with this.

Sara McMann:
I first started off having less pressure, because I had nothing to lose. I was a female competing against guys. While I had a tougher challenge, I did ultimately have less pressure, because nobody expected a girl to beat a guy. So if I lost, it was really just painful to me, but it just confirmed what everybody thought. I lost no skin there. I actually gained kudos for stepping out there against kids that were my same weight, but also had hit testosterone, their growth spurt, so they were undeniably stronger than me. They had all the pressure, but they had less of a challenge, because I was, being a female, I was slightly less strong, and slightly not as fast as them, just because of biology. But, anytime I did win, it was a huge deal, I felt a little bit bad for the guy.

Sara McMann:
I felt my first real taste of the pressure that everybody else feels, when I started competing against women. And, I had to accommodate to that, because I was like, "Wow, now I have no excuse." If I lose, I actually am on an even playing field here, so that person was just better than me. I really started to feel that pressure at that point, but I had a lot of practice not caring what people thought. Because, you have to have a large degree of not caring what people think, in order to pursue wrestling if you're the only girl in the state. Even at one of my world championships, I went to my first three world championships, we had these pool systems where if you didn't win your pool, you couldn't advance to a regular bracket.

Sara McMann:
And, for three years in a row, my first match, I had the girl who was the reigning world champion, who ended up winning the tournament for three years in a row, the statistics are unbelievably small. But, I drew that person, it was a blind draw, and I drew the world champion three years in a row, and lost by a narrow margin. I was not even placing. I went from not even placing, to my fourth world championship, getting a silver medal. Because, I actually happened to meet the finalists, and I lost in overtime, in the finals.

Sara McMann:
A regular bracket system, I might have been able to come back and do better, but I was just knocked out and not even placing. It was super unfortunate. But, I think that when it comes to the pressure, one of the world championships, it was my second, no, it was my third world championships, and I was just trying to take the pressure off. Because, people were saying like, "Oh Sarah, she's a choke artist." No, I was losing to the number one person, and that's it. But, I knew that people were saying that, but then I knew before one of the matches, I had a really tough match, I was like... This is probably really bad that I'm saying this, but all I was trying to do was relieve pressure for myself.

Sara McMann:
But, I was like, "Sarah," because it was 2003, I was like, "Nobody cares about women's wrestling. You could go out there and do a pin, you could go out there and tech them, nobody even cares. Just go out, and wrestle the best that you can. Nobody's life is going to be altered by this, they're probably not going to write anything up." The fact that women's sports weren't as covered as men, I just chuckled to myself. I was just like, "Yeah, nobody gives a crap. Okay. I'm just going to go out there and wrestle." I used it to my advantage. That's one of the many ways I relieve pressure.

Emily Kwok:
Well, there is freedom in that. Even though I was coming up in jujitsu, I think very similarly, you probably see that there have been less opportunities for females, and any fight is a good fight. I'll take whatever comes my way. It's a way for me to continue practicing something that I love doing. And, every loss is still a win. And, I really, I relate to you saying, "It was when I started fighting women." When I started fighting women at the brown belt, black belt level, that was the first time that I was like, "Oh shit, okay. Maybe what I'm doing is not good enough."

Sara McMann:
Yeah. I've heard in different places too, they're like, "Oh, you don't have to be strong," or things like that, not encouraging, becoming a more complete athlete, like running in lifting, and doing that other stuff. And, I'm like, "Yes, yes you do." Because, if all things are even, but I'm a little stronger than you, or a little faster than you, or have a little better conditioning, those are the narrow margins that we're working with. Everybody knows how to do these moves, but it's your athleticism, it's your composure under pressure, it's your grit, and your will, and a lot of different factors. It's your timing, everything, that is going to separate two really good brown belts. And, you have to be a little more comfortable with winning by narrower margins, but you have to keep fighting to make those narrow margins go your way. I knew at the end of my wrestling career, I was doing hours of drills, to shave a millisecond off of my take down finish, which would be the difference between winning and losing.

Emily Kwok:
Crazy.

Sara McMann:
Yeah. But, it's awesome too, because you get that. And it's like, "Oh man, you know how much time you dedicated to that." And, that feeling is so good. And, for me, that's what I chase too, it's not always just exactly the wins, but those little victories, of having done something I didn't want to do, like drilling over, and over, and over, and over, and then going to my match, and having it work out how I drilled it. Those little victories, they're like heaven to me.

Emily Kwok:
Why were they so meaningful? Because, I think for a lot of people, those little victories are often taken for granted, or looked over, how was it that you came to understanding or acknowledging like, "Hey, this is meaningful. This is meaningful progress."

Sara McMann:
Well, fundamentally I think, as humans, it's very difficult to change yourself. It very difficult to change something like a bad habit, or something like that. And, athletically it is as well, you develop a bad habit, and maybe it works out against people who aren't quite as good, or maybe it works out inconsistently, so you get a little reward for honestly, a technique that you should have just not used. But, it won't work out against the best people. And, you have to then go back, and rewrite that technique selection, or how you finish something, you have to rewrite it. But, you have to rewrite it into being automatic, because things move so quickly in sports, you can't have that lag time of making the decision to do the right thing, it has to be automatic.

Sara McMann:
But, unfortunately I look at it like, some of your automatic things were getting you in trouble. For me, I appreciate, with mental health counseling, you grow in millimeters. Your growth of everything is so small, and you're constantly working at it. And, the same thing in sports, I heard Bobby Douglas, which was the coach at Iowa state. He's a phenomenal coach, and human being. And, he's like, "It takes at least 1000 reps, conscious reps, deliberate, conscious, focused reps, for you to correct one bad habit." And, I had a ton of bad habits. I was like, "Ugh," I had to roll up my sleeves, and really get the elbow grease out, for a lot of different things in my career. Dang it.

Emily Kwok:
Beautiful. I love that. I think part of the inspiration for me to have these conversations, is to unearth some of these nuanced, and small observations to some. But, as you know, they mean the world in terms of how much better, how much more deeply you know yourself, how much you know that you can push yourself. And, to see all these little finite moments in life, I think are sometimes the most beautiful. But, we sometimes don't give it the space or the air that it needs.

Sara McMann:
It definitely deserves it. I totally agree, because you need to celebrate the small things along the way, because otherwise... I've learned this too, if you don't give yourself at least a pat on the back with the work you put in, that means your sport becomes only criticism. You only criticize yourself when you don't do what you expected to do, and you expect yourself to do something, so you never say, "Hey, that was a good job." It took me a while, because I was the kind of person too that, the moment I met a goal, I immediately was resetting to another goal. I was like, "I want to be a college national champion." I got that, and without even patting myself on the back, because I was like, "Well, I expected to do that."

Sara McMann:
I was just such a little hard on myself. And, I was like, "Well, I want to be a senior national champ. Now I want to make the world team." But, it took me along the way that I was like, "Man, maybe after these tournaments, just for one day, I could be like, 'Good job,' or find a way to treat." I did eventually, I would... It's the most foolish thing now, I look back at it. But, I had these really soft, comfortable pants, and this shirt that I really liked, and I would only let myself wear it if I won the national championship. But, it was so small and personal. [inaudible 00:26:25] People would be like, "That? That's your outfit, what?" But, to me it had become my carrot.

Emily Kwok:
That's so cool.

Sara McMann:
It's no different than, sprinkles are for winners, obviously. I look at it now, it was such a small thing, but it was like, "I can't wear that. I can't wear that super comfortable, relaxed, this is my winter outfit." It wasn't flashy at all. Honestly, I wore it in a hotel. It was like I didn't deserve it until I won. I had all kinds of little, little line games. I played with myself, to incentivize myself. Because, I couldn't just... It's a sad part that I know about myself, is that I respond very well to the whip, but I'm not as incentivized by the carrot, so I had to create things. If you give me a medal at the end, I could have done just as well with a lollipop. I don't care about like trophies. I don't care about celebrations. I really am in it just for the accomplishment, for the win. And, if nobody else in the world acknowledged it, it would still be just as meaningful to me. I had to figure out different ways to reward myself, that I liked.

Emily Kwok:
That's crazy. Dude, dudette, that's pretty deep, the whip and the carrot. I wonder how many athletes, not just athletes, how many performers, how many creatives, how many entrepreneurs, how many people can have the awareness to understand what they gravitate to more, the whip or the carrot, and also how false those things can be sometimes for us. I've met some athletes who probably think that they're oriented to the whip, but it's because they've never had anything else, and they've never experienced growth from the other direction. And, in some ways, I feel like with this individual, their orientation to the whip is harmful at a later stage, and almost masochist in some ways.

Sara McMann:
Yeah. They gravitate towards coaches that are unhealthy for them, and feel like that's how they bring out their best performance, but it isn't. And, in wrestling, we have a variety of different coaches, just by nature. I don't have to be disloyal, or leave any group, in order to experience a lot of coaches. When I was in high school, I had a high school coach. When I graduated high school, that coach, he stayed, and I moved on. Then I had college, I had several different college coaches on the staff, and I could look at each of their different coaching styles, and I was influenced differently by each of them. And, I moved onto the Olympic training center, and I just have been in a variety of different settings.

Sara McMann:
So, I've looked, and I've had time to see like, "Okay, how do I respond?" And, it turns out, I am not much of a person who needs the carrot, but I'm surrounded by a lot of people who are. I've learned, when I'm coaching people and helping people, I'm direct, but I try to have a very good balance of correction, which sometimes to people, even if you correct a technique, it feels like the whip. It feels like, "You're doing it wrong." When it's really like, "Hey, let's tweak this a little bit, and I think that you'll be a little faster, a smoother transition." Or, the carrot, I just make sure that I couple it with, when they do it right I'm like, "That is exactly what I want. Great job."

Sara McMann:
And then, I move on, and I don't make a big deal of either one. I'm not saying that my coaching style would be for everybody, because I'm super direct. But, I know where my strengths lie, in the coaches I need. And, I need somebody who is the whip, but in just a neutral, non excited way. I come back to the corner, and they say, "Okay, Sarah, I need you to get your left hand higher." They tell me the things I need to correct, and I view that as so valuable, because I'm like, "Man, if they didn't correct this, my opponents are going to exploit it." But, I've had the same kind of coaching with one of my friends. And, if they get corrections after a match, or even mid match, they were like, "Man, I wish they'd say something positive. It's always negative stuff. It's always criticism." And, to me personally, I was like, "Well, you know what worked out, you got points for it. It worked. You already know what things you did well."

Sara McMann:
In my mind I'm like, "They're trying to keep you from making a mistake that your opponents can capitalize on." But, it's just a different preference and coaching style. Because, I will take some of the girls that are younger, and I don't correct as much. I make sure I have several things that they do very, very well, and then I'm like, "Hey, let's just work on this one a little bit. I think it could be a little fat." But, I never say they were doing it wrong. The only other people that I can be a little bit more direct with, and harsher, are gymnast girls, because they're very much used to harsh coaching, which is nice.

Emily Kwok:
I relate to a lot of what you were saying, in my mind, the fear of feedback. And, so much of this goes around our orientation towards growth. I don't know if you've read Celia Dweck's book Mindset, but she breaks down growth mindset, versus entity mindset, or outcome oriented mindset. I'm half Japanese, and half Chinese, and I was very much raised to result. It was straight A's or nothing. Or, "If you don't do this, you don't get that." And, it wasn't good enough to do something incrementally or halfway, it had to be, "Hit the bar, or you just don't get it."

Sara McMann:
And, perfect the first time you've ever done it.

Emily Kwok:
Yes, exactly. And, this is how I was raised. And, in some ways, it was a blessing and a curse. It gave me a particular type of drive, and decisiveness, to get shit done at all costs. But, what it also made me do, is it made me, and you touched on this, it made me feel bad about not getting perfect all the time. I related to it as an athlete later on is like, I didn't understand this until maybe five, six years ago, I feared feedback. It had grown into a place in my mind, where if someone gave me feedback, it meant I did it wrong, and it meant that I wasn't good. And, I recently read an article, it was an academic article that I sourced for a group cohort that I ran on becoming, what I called, a conscious competitor.

Emily Kwok:
And, it broke feedback down into four buckets, which I thought was interesting. And, I just pulled the article up, because I thought maybe it would be interesting in this conversation, but it relates to a task level, so how well tasks are understood and performed, process level, the main process needed to understand or perform the task, self regulation level, self-monitoring, directing, and regulating of actions, and then self level, personal evaluations, and effect, usually positive about the learner. And, what I recognized from reading this article, and also reflecting on parts of my career, was that there was a time where, you've probably seen this, where if a coach, or if a teammate, or supervisor, if they're not really sure how to give you the feedback, or per perhaps they haven't figured out how to communicate directly to you, it'll be like, "Oh yeah, that was a pretty sloppy attempt, and you should try harder next time."

Emily Kwok:
And, in your mind you register that as like, "Oh, I messed that up. I didn't do that well. I'll just try a little bit harder, or I'll try to be more aggressive." And, that's a very different kind of feedback framework, than somebody that would say to you, "Hey, to make that shot a little bit tighter, I need you to drop a little faster. I need you to make sure that your hand, you feed the movement the right way. And, it might be helpful if you cut this angle, as opposed to going straight on." And, someone can actually do something with that feedback. Because you can go, "Oh, this is what I didn't do." And, then I can course correct. And, there's less room for assumptions of like, "Oh, I sucked at what I did."

Emily Kwok:
It was like, "Oh no, this is just measurable. This is where we are, and this is where we want to get to." And, when I started meeting and working with people who were better equipped, you could say, to give me more decisive feedback, I started noticing how much more growth I experienced as a person, because I wasn't swimming around in my own mess. And it sounds like you just had such a... Would you say you had really instrumental coaches on your way up, or how did you regulate this for yourself? Because, I think that, it's not easy for a lot of people to do.

Sara McMann:
Well, I think that part of what I understood from the beginning, was that it wasn't anything for me being the girl in the room or not, I was in a room with 35 other kids. And, we didn't have a feeder program for wrestling, so all of us started in ninth grade, and we all were just learning, "This is what wrestling is. These are the basic rules." And, we had to do that over and over each year, which was wonderful for me, because that means I got the fundamentals repeated every year. It was amazing. But, the first couple years, I saw my coach running around, basically putting fires out all the time. Because, he was one person coaching us, and he had to teach all these partners paired up, and we were freshmen going with other freshmen, so it was like the blind leading and the blind.

Sara McMann:
He'd run around, he'd be trying to help everybody, but I realized right away, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to have, to have some self-awareness, or I'm going to have to go to the seniors, or I'm going to have to ask people." I even remember in my junior year, I didn't have a video camera, I just grew up more poor. I asked my teammates that went before me, because they were done, I said, "Can you watch my matches, and could you tell me things that I did wrong?" Because, I couldn't feel it myself. To me it felt right, but I knew, they knew how to see if it looked right. But, I just couldn't expect my coach to be... He couldn't remember everything for everybody, and he couldn't constantly be watching me.

Sara McMann:
I knew I had to, if I wanted to grow, it was on me to self correct. And, when I went to college, during the season it was amazing, because I had really high level guys, like Pennsylvania wrestlers. And, my teammates had been doing it since they were five years old, they were phenomenal, so they could correct me during practice. But, the other half of the year, I actually didn't realize it until way later, that me and my teammate, Jenny Wong, we were on our own, and I had to design our practices. And, sometimes I could get the coaches... Because, they had to do a lot of recruiting trips, and they were busy doing work for their college, which was what they were paid to do. I could see if I could get some of them to come in and put us through a practice.

Sara McMann:
I could see if I could get the college guys to come in and help us out, and they did it frequently. But, then it was up to me. I'm like, "Okay, Jenny, let's look at our matches, and let's figure out what we're doing wrong. And then, we'll go to the coaches, and they'll tell us how to correct it, and then we'll go drill it, just you and I, because we can go through that practice." And, I just started learning quickly on, that if I wanted to correct my errors, I had to be very self-starter, I had to go out and seek it out. Because, I'd seen even very good guys, make the same mistake over and over, and fall through the cracks, just being on large teams. I knew it was up to me. If I had a really small team of five people, and that coach was like, "Okay, I can dedicate the right amount of time, and polish all of these stones," then I wouldn't have had to do that.

Sara McMann:
And, I think that would've been to my detriment. Because, when I first started out with MMA, it was like the wild west. Nobody knew how to train, people would come in and train, and just beat the crap out of each, in like small [inaudible 00:39:22]. This is dangerous. I brought my Olympic athlete training, and knowledge of concussions, to these places like, "You can't do that, or you're never even going to make it to the..." It started when I was young, and not even from a bad place like, "Oh, girl wrestlers, we get ignored in the room." And, some places, that absolutely was the case. In my instance, it was nothing personal, everybody got ignored in the room for periods of time, because one person could only do provide themselves to so many, in a three hour window. You got as much as he could give anyone.

Emily Kwok:
Oh god, I have so much respect for that, and I love that. I can't tell you as a instructor, sometimes... I think a lot of times, as individuals, when we don't have that much self-awareness, we come to situations, and it's very easy for us to externally blame the people, or the things around us, for why we're not seeing the gains that we want to see. And, I wonder sometimes, I don't want to make it too much about like, "Oh, it's because you're a girl," it's because I'm a girl. But, there are certain systems in place, to help us learn, and grasp, and grow. Right. And, to your point about big teams, I think sometimes when you are a woman, and you're a real minority in a sport, and people aren't quite sure what to do with you, because there haven't been that many of you, that sometimes it gives you the room to create your own bridges, or your own structures, while leaning on the supports that are there.

Emily Kwok:
But, I feel like it's made me more resourceful as a person, and as an athlete, to be like, "Okay, well you're not really sure what to do about this, well, how about this, how about that? Or, why don't I try this? And, I'll keep doing this until you tell me I can't." Versus, walking into something that's a finally oiled machine, or something that's already moving in a stable or predictable way, and your job is to just go in and be another number, or be in there. And, the expectation that, that system will then provide for you, or make you what you think you want to be, versus a lot of what you're describing as a person, and as an athlete, having the awareness to say, "Hey, it can't just be about what's provided for me, it has to be about what I'm seeking out. And, I need to be accountable and responsible for what I want. It's not up to everyone else. It's not up to the system, and it's not up to my teammates and coaches, it's about me."

Sara McMann:
I think also, especially the sports that we've... But, you get the nail on the head completely is that, even the best cookie cutter system, will not be right for every cookie. It's just, it isn't. You could take the best system, and you could plug somebody with a different temperament, a different body type, a different natural style, and if you try to cram that square peg into that round hole, you're going to be taking away from the athlete that they actually could be. There is no cookie cutter system, and it makes me frustrated that they think that the coach is supposed to do all the work. Like, "Man, this is your career. You have to take ownership of that." And, I even tell athletes, "There's a lot of different ways, a lot of different techniques, and I have a respect for... Some are a little more high percentage than others. But, if something is working for you, and it's working against the best people, you have to honor that, because that's a gift that is given to you, to be able to execute that."

Sara McMann:
And, maybe my body type, I have a very distinct body type, I'm squattier, I'm stronger, and I have shorter limbs, so some things I'm just never going to be as is great at. I will be okay at, but other things I'm going to flourish. If you take a group of so many people, then you put in that some of them are younger, and some of them are far older. And then you add in that, some of them are female, and some of them are male, you can't... Nobody can create a system that's perfect for everybody.

Sara McMann:
You can show them the most base level techniques of how to do things, but I think it's up to the athlete to try to seek out those gems, those diamonds in the rough, of what they do really well. And then, start sharpening that, and having a different understanding of their own weaknesses. But, for me, I always looked at it like, "It's not my coach and me going out there, it's me out there by myself. And, I have to make executive decisions, on the fly, immediately." I can't look to my coach and ask them what to do, because by then that opportunity's gone. By the time they recognize it, yell it out, then my brain recognizes it, and I try to execute it, everything happens so quickly. I think that even with the best of coaches, the best of coaches will help you try to understand yourself.

Sara McMann:
They won't just tell you what to do. They're not playing you like a video game, because that's too slow for real time. I think that everyone would benefit from being under a good coach, and then exploring themselves. And, maybe you like a little of the... You want to pull a couple tools from the 10th planet style, and you want to pull a couple tools from the submission only game, and see if you can implement some of that unorthodox stuff into the IBJJF competitions, just to have your own style, I think that's good. I think that, that's a healthy athlete, in my opinion.

Emily Kwok:
You're so fucking smart, Sarah, has anyone ever told that to you?

Sara McMann:
I try to tell Chad all the time, "Don't even argue with me, dude. I'm so smart." But, he just argues with me anyways.

Emily Kwok:
Oh man. I'm so sad. I'm like, fuck we got to do a 10 part series. I could take any of these questions and go so much deeper.

Sara McMann:
Oh, you have my permission. I really enjoy talking to you about this stuff, so you can do more with me. I love sports. I love analyzing it. I love all taking all of the... I have over 26 years of experience, are these two sports. If I can shortcut any of these things for another athlete, the way they think about it... That's the thing too is, how you think about criticism... I did this with my daughter. She was my first experiment. She is very tender hearted, and she's in gymnastics, which is constantly criticizing. But, I told her, I'm like, "Man, if your coaches are one, paying attention to you in a group of girls, two, they understand these judges are going to crucify you.

Sara McMann:
They are looking for the tiniest error. You can't feel it. And, you don't have a mirror or a video camera, so you can't see it. Every time a coach tells you a correction, they are helping you to win these meets, or do the best you can at these meets, those are gifts. When your coach starts ignoring you, that is when it's bad. If they ignore you and don't give you criticism, they either don't care, or they've given up trying to help you on that technique, that is the worst.

Sara McMann:
Always listen to them, take the feedback, and try the best that you can to execute that. Because, I told her, I said, "In wrestling, the ugliest take down in the world, where I land on top of them, is still two points." I don't have to be, I try to be a technician. If I trip and fall into their legs, and I land on top of them, they give me two points for that. She's going into a sport that, millimeters separate it like that, and those are valuable. Be able to take the criticism, and see it as help, not harm.

Emily Kwok:
Yeah. Oh my God, so true. And, our relationship is so backwards, to how we receive criticism. Okay. I could keep talking about this forever, but I just want to be conscious of the time that we have, and actually pivot a little bit to your next loves or disciplines, of MMA, and also Brazilian jujitsu. Partially, I'm just curious to know how you ended up in that state. And, I fought MMA in Japan and Korea in 2004, 2005, when it was still largely not palatable, or acceptable in north America, so I'm very interested in hearing your journey into MMA. And also, thematically, what's allowed you to take some of the successes that you've had from, or what you've learned about yourself through wrestling, and how that may have benefited you in pursuing other disciplines.

Emily Kwok:
Granted, MMA and jujitsu are somewhat related, they're complimentary skill sets, but that's a really interesting space. Because, I get to work really closely with Josh Wadeskin, and he's done similar things, in that he has taken his deep love and passion of playing a game like chess, and used a lot of the principles to then, in some ways fast track, or open up the access to learning if you will, in other disciplines. And, he was able to become a national world champion in Push Hands, Tai Chi, and he was pursuing the jujitsu competitive track before he got injured. And, now he's really deeply invested in the sport of foiling and standup paddle surfing. And, I am myself trying to learn something new, and I'm trying to learn how to surf, and it's not easy. But, something that I'm really excited about is, I've seen my orientation towards learning shift a little bit. And, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you've pivoted, and what it is about your experience in wrestling that is now also helping you and other disciplines.

Sara McMann:
I think that, aside from obviously, take downs are super valuable in jujitsu and in MMA, but really what I carried over a lot more from wrestling, that has served me so much better, is learning when to dog fight, and use my will to keep something, and learning when to transition to something new. Learning when you have to let go, and do something else, or even let go and start over. Because, in wrestling, and in every, you can dig yourself into holes and same thing in MMA. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I learned, is that everybody thinks that with wrestling that we just dog fight, and we never let go. And, that's a bad habit it to keep in wrestling, so it gave me that perception of the pivot point, of when a technique, when I've gotten too far into where the other person could start to use this against me, and I have to back up, instead of always pressing and going forward.

Sara McMann:
I've used that in MMA as like, "Okay, when do I use this for something else?" When do I, in a way, it's abandon a certain technique in favor of another, even if that technique is my favorite, or I love doing that, when to realize it might get me in trouble, or it's not working. And, realizing that, was a big point in my career. Because, I used to get into a shot, and I would hang on, and I would never let go, and I'd get taken down off of it. And, that was one of the bigger humps for me to get over with. But, I have to backtrack a second, because in the beginning what you asked about, was how I got into it. I stumbled into MMA, and jujitsu.

Sara McMann:
I had decided I wanted to retire from wrestling after I lost. I got second place at the Olympic trials in 2008. And I was like, "I'm just done with wrestling." There was a lot of political stuff going on with USA wrestling, and the coaches, that was starting to rob my joy out of doing this sport. And, I thought, "Before this completely kills my love for wrestling, I'm just going to end it on my own terms, and I'm going to be okay with that. I'm not going to let them ruin it completely," which I saw they had done for some of my teammates. Where a long time, they could not even come back and coach, or do wrestling for years. I was like, I'm going to say, "I'm going to bow out on my own terms, and I'm going to have a baby," because I really, really wanted to be a mom.

Sara McMann:
While I was pregnant, I was like, "Oh shit, I'm not done with that drive to compete. I want to compete." Then I was like, "What do I do with this, wrestle?" And, then I learned about jujitsu, and I was like, "Oh, jujitsu, this is wrestling's second cousin." There's just enough crossover, to have a little bit of success. I'm not starting from scratch like I did with wrestling, and having no athletic base. But, it's so different, the techniques are so different, that it will very much feel like a new sport. But, there's a little bit of crossover, a little bit of similarities, so it won't feel like totally new. I started doing some stuff with Jujitsu.

Sara McMann:
Even while I was pregnant, I started playing around with stuff, and what they did, and I was totally in heaven, because I was illegal. This is all the stuff that's illegal in wrestling. I was grabbing clothes, I was like, "Gotcha." It was stifled athleticism a little bit, which that's exactly how boys would beat me. Grabbing their clothes, I have good grip strength from wrestling, so I was like, "This is great." And, then somebody was like, "You should do MMA. I think you would be good." And, even when I was younger, even when I was in college, I had contemplated doing... We had a boxing team at Lock Haven University where I went to school, and I was like, "I think I want to try boxing." And I did it, and my mom was like, "No, no. Don't do it."

Sara McMann:
She didn't want me to get injured. I was like, "I do wrestling." But, my coach finally did, he talked to me, and he's like, "Listen Sarah," It was my first time winning the national championship. He was like, "If you are really talented in wrestling. If you do another sport, that sport could injure you enough, to where you don't reach your full potential in wrestling." I had to conceive that with the intelligent route. I already had a little bit of desire for the striking. And, when I first started doing it, oh my god, I was so terrible. I think that the more terrible I am at a sport when I start, the deeper it hooks me.

Sara McMann:
"That's unacceptable. I want to do this more. I can't go out like that." Wrestling, you think jujitsu would've sucked me in more, but it didn't. I found a little bit of early success with it, transferring from my wrestling, minus different mistakes of leaving my neck open. But, the striking, oh, I was just awful. I was so awful. But, that really sucked me in, the challenge got me. I'm like, "No, I can do better than this. I'm an elite, I can train my body to do this." Then I got sucked into trying to improve that. If you add all those together, you are an MMA fighter. That's what started me on that path.

Emily Kwok:
I admittedly, when I started fighting, or training for MMA, I had a saying from years ago, that I would try almost anything once. And, when I was approached to try MMA, I was living in Tokyo, I had done very well in jujitsu competitions there. And, I was physically very large for a woman in Japan. I'm half Japanese, but I'm about 5'4, and I'm around 150 pounds, give or take.

Sara McMann:
Oh, I know. I've been to Japan several times for wrestling competition, and that entire country is so fit. I'm not joking. I saw people that had to have been 80 years old, they were moving so slow, playing a game of tennis, a husband and a wife. And I was like, "They have to be the most fit country on the planet stopped." They just never stopped doing, and moving. And, I'm like, "This is amazing." And then I came back to the US, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we are like three times the three times the size of the Japanese," widthwise, not just height wise.

Emily Kwok:
Well, it's really interesting, there was this funny moment where I would go to jujitsu training with some of my foreign teacher friends, and after training, we would sometimes try to get a quick bite before heading back on the train. It was late at night. And, every time we went to this one restaurant, they would come out with water for us. And, they would initially come out with these four cups, and they would pour water in each of our cups, but I kid you not, by American standards, the cups that they would bring for us, and it was me, and three strapping men, American men, the cups were like shot glasses.

Emily Kwok:
After one or two rounds of giving us more water, they would just bring three jugs, because they couldn't keep our water glasses filled enough. I always have fond memories of how Americans, or how westerners behave, versus the Japanese. But, they had asked me, "Hey, nobody really wants to fight you anymore in tournaments." In jujitsu tournaments, if I signed up, and I was a blue belt, people would avoid signing up, because they're like, "Emily's so big." I was the big girl. And, I was like, "Well, what do I do?" And, one of my friends said, "Oh, well, you should try fighting MMA." And, at the time, I don't know if this was before your time, but there was a promotion in Japan called Smack Girl.

Emily Kwok:
And, it was the only all female card in existence. And, it was the female card that any MMA fighter would try to get on, if they could. And, I fought one amateur fight, and one pro fight in MMA, not knowing that by fighting a pro fight, that I was then considered pro, and I couldn't go back to amateur. And, it actually screwed me, because I came back to North America in 2005, and I thought about pursuing MMA. And, this was pre Ronda Rousey, pre Gina Carano. And, it was just not acceptable. A lot of people, you were really on the fringe if you were doing that kind of stuff. And, I didn't do MMA, because it was so hard to get a fair fight. And, when I would get fights lined up, training for MMA was not fun.

Sara McMann:
That's an understatement.

Emily Kwok:
It was just not fun. And, I was like, "Why am I?" And, there were no girls for me to train with, so I was training with full grown men, and getting punched in the head, and I would punch them in the stomach. And, they would take me down, and I would take them down again. And, it was just so brutal, that at some point I was just like, "Oh, I just don't think that this is a good way for me to spend my time, and I eventually just said, "I'm just going to focus on jujitsu, I'll do something else."

Emily Kwok:
It's interesting to see, when it was that you entered into MMA, and that it seemed like it's been a decent growth platform for you, because now there is an industry, and women are accepted as fighters, and I'd love to know how you feel about that, the age that we're in, and what you're able to do with your presence in the female MMA scene. Where do you think it's going, and what do you hope for yourself, and how do you see your legacy and involvement in this?

Sara McMann:
To give credit to you, you were fighting in an era where people did not know how to train for sports in MMA. People were in there, and they were wearing small gloves, they were hitting each other way too hard. You can't train, the way that you fight, and people thought that they could do that. In all likelihood, you saved yourself, maybe brain damage, from training that way. Because, all the old school, tough ways... I'm serious. They come in an era that, they didn't know how to train. And, some boxers would train pretty hard, but they also had 16 ounce gloves. They didn't have head kicks. They didn't have knees to the head. They didn't have elbows. It's just a different sport.

Sara McMann:
You were before the time where people started to do this as an athletic sport, you were with people who just wanted to fight. And, I don't think that I would've wanted to survive in that era either, being a female, and being one of the smaller people in the room. It's just a different battle. If I was a guy, and I'd have enough partners, that I could just be larger and stronger than that, I wouldn't be the nail all the time, I could be the hammer as well. But, it's not the case, a female going into a male's room. But, I think that I was on the... I just came around in 2009, 2010, where people were seeing that you could do this, and they were treating it, where I was even from, they treated a little bit more like a sport.

Sara McMann:
And, I just had guys who... I was in the south, and they were just a little bit more respectful to women. It was harder for them to hit me hard, because of that southern hospitality, southern gentlemen, which ended up having them pull their punches a lot more, and which was great for me. Because, I learned where I was doing stuff wrong, and I wasn't getting creamed. And, they also, because of my wrestling, and I taught them stuff with wrestling, they really took to me right away. Because, most gyms, they don't have a strong wrestling background, so I offered a really valuable addition to their stuff, and I would do privates with people, and help people out. I ended up finding a really good gym, pretty quickly.

Sara McMann:
And, that was something that, if that had not gone right, if I had gone to a different gym, and just been, just beat on, and treated like a training partner, I might have been like, "This sport isn't for me." Because, I gave myself, when I first started MMA, I said, "Okay, I'm going to train for a year, and I'm going to give myself one year. And, if I truly don't like this sport, if it's just not for me, for whatever reason, I'm going to say, 'No thanks. It's just not for me.' And, I'm not going to make myself do it, because I said I was going to do it." I don't know this sport. I can't even make an educated decision about it. That's something that, I gave myself that one year, I could take a pass. But, the way that the sport has grown now... When I was a pro fighter, Dana White was still saying, "Females will never be in the UFC," until Rhonda came around.

Sara McMann:
Love her or hate her, she did female fighters, a huge favor, by chasing fame and everything with that. And, she elevated the water level, and so all of our boat floated a little higher because of it. And, even if she was doing it, we all benefited from it, that still deserves a thank you. And, where it is now, I think that there's always going to be some people who don't really respect female sports, us competing against each other. That's just never going to change, because I think that in some way, some males, when it comes to combat sports, some males still want to compare males and females against each other. And, majority of the time, being honest, you'll find that if you put two of the same belt level, and same weight class, a lot of the times the guys, because of strength or just biology, the guys will get the better.

Sara McMann:
Sometimes they won't, but those are factors when it comes to combative athletes. But, it's so strange to me, because if I look tennis, or track, or other things, I see these female athletes playing against each other, and nobody really bats an eye. Those female athletes, like Serena Williams, will beat another extremely high level female, but nobody really is like, "Wow, against Andre Agassi." They're not competing against their male counterparts. And, I really, I can't wait for the day that happens in the combat sports. Just because we train with those guys like, "No, I want to compete against females. I only competed against males, because I had no other choice." But, I don't want to be compared. And, as far as, if some people think like, "Oh, well I don't think females should be fighting," or something to that.

Sara McMann:
And, there are ignorant people out there, to that degree. But, I think about it like this, I don't prefer golf. I don't like watching golf. I don't like doing golf, it's just not my thing. But, I would never then turn around and say, "I think nobody should be playing golf, because I don't like it." Like, "What? No, other people like it. Other people want to see it" I just would never take that next logical step. I'd say, "Oh, so I'm not going to watch it on TV, or I'm not going to go to a golf course and do it." If you don't like women fighting, or women doing jujitsu, go watch what you do like, and that's okay. And, leave the people who like to watch it, and like to do it, leave us to that. I just don't see... Oh, go ahead.

Emily Kwok:
Oh no. I was just going to say, I agree with you. And, I wonder sometimes, if it's just still such early days in jujitsu, and because we didn't have a choice, because we were all mashed together, if we just haven't walked far enough down the path for us to, as a whole, gain more perspective on how to treat each other, and how this all looks in the grand scheme. Because, it is funny, in what other sport, you have such physicality, where your strength and size often does matter. It almost seems illogical to compare men and women together, but yet we do. And, I wonder if it's just a matter of time, and distance, before we're able to bring more sensibility to how we review these sorts of things.

Sara McMann:
Yeah. Because, if you take somebody... It's like males have a natural biological performance enhancing drug, and if you take it two really great athletes, and you put one of them on performance enhancing drugs, you would think, "Oh, well logically that person's probably going to perform better than the person who is all natural." So, you wouldn't really think about that. But, I think that if they made that very easy leap, that as soon as guys hit puberty, it's no longer the same thing. But, I don't know, some people, I still think that they have a hard time acknowledging that, without diminishing female athletes. Like, "You didn't do anything to earn that, biology just happened to you." That's just the way it is.

Emily Kwok:
Oh Sarah, I have to write that down, biology.

Sara McMann:
It didn't. There's no, how girls develop. We didn't do anything. There's nothing we can do to enhance that or diminish that, it happens to us. And, we're just sitting around, seeing how everything plays out.

Emily Kwok:
I have to say Sarah, it's been so refreshing talking to you, because there's such a grounded-ness to your insight, and your words, that I really appreciate. And, it's something that I've grown to really seek out in other athletes, and other people's, just the depth in which you have to know yourself, and the way that you have to engage with the world around you. I think, pursuing something deeply in athletics, or even in creative fields, I think it helps us form a much healthier relationship to ourselves. I hope that it helps keep us humble, and be able to gain a little bit more insight into your window, into your reality, has really been beautiful. I've learned so much, just speaking to you over this last hour, and we didn't even touch what it's like to be...

Emily Kwok:
I thought to maybe start talking a little bit more about what it was like for you, as a female coming up in some of these male dominated cultures, although that could also be a different conversation, and motherhood, and your desires to do other things, and how that relates to your career. Maybe that warrants part two, but this has been a really potent discussion. And, in the field that I work in outside of jujitsu, which came about because of jujitsu, and it sounds like you do some work in mental health. But, in being able to work with people in peak performance, or mindset coaching, it's really about taking so many of these lessons that we've learned, doing something that we love so deeply, and taking the lessons, the principles, out of what it is that we've done with ourselves, and apply them to other areas of our life.

Emily Kwok:
And, that's something that's kept my fire burning, for why I still train jujitsu, and why I want to learn surfing, and do other things, is because that expression self has given back to me 20 million times in my life, and what I hope to be, is a successful human being. I just want to say thank you, because your experience, and the words that you've had to share, the way in which you articulate yourself as well, is so tangible, and it's beautiful, so thank you.

Sara McMann:
No, thank you. I really appreciate being on, and I think it's super cool that you're pursuing surfing. That's awesome.

Emily Kwok:
Why not be really bad at something?

Sara McMann:
It just sucks you right in. You're like, "No, I am high level athlete. I will conquer this."

Emily Kwok:
I'm also like the 40 year old, crazy mom of three, and people are like, "What?" Other moms are like, "What are you doing?" And, I was like, "I'm going to go surf in 45 degree water, if that's okay."

Sara McMann:
I love it. I'm 40, about to be 41, still doing MMA, so you get full approval from me.

Emily Kwok:
I so dig it. And, I said this to you before, that I want to find some way to work with you one day, but I would love one day to be able to connect, and learn some wrestling from you. You sound like an incredibly awesome instructor. Listening to you talk about how you work with people, I was just like, "Man, that's the good shit right there." And, I've said often before, that just because you become a high level performer in something that you do, that doesn't necessarily translate to you will automatically become an incredible instructor, and a great business owner, and a great manager. These are all separate things. And, to see that you can translate your depth, and your nuance, and your purpose, in more than one medium, and also in more than one dimension, I think is so powerful.

Sara McMann:
It took a while to get there, because when I was younger, I had no interest in coaching. Because I knew myself, and I was like, "If I coach, especially right now, I will have five people on my team, and they be killers. They'll be world champions, and nobody else will. I'm just way too harsh. It took me growing, learning, and understanding people, and why different people do sport. I had to grow up a little bit, but you're absolutely right. There's some people who can do, and cannot coach, and vice versa. But, if you only judge a coach by their accolades, you don't understand the value that, that person can bring. Because, coaching is a very separate thing, and some people are not cut out for it, and some people thrive.

Emily Kwok:
Yes, so true. Sarah, if people want to get in touch with you, be a fan girl or boy, or just learn what you're doing, what are the best ways to get ahold of you?

Sara McMann:
I try to check my Instagram, my other inbox, I try to breeze through there, but that's probably one of the only ways that I leave open, just because I'm in MMA, and that can get really ugly, very quickly. I've definitely gotten unsolicited dick pics. Yes. Proposals for marriage, they're cute, but the pictures are a little too much. I breeze through it, but I really make many other avenues, that people could contact me. Just because of the creeps out there. That's something though, I have had people message me on Instagram, and ask questions, especially about athletics, or before their first fight, or female.

Sara McMann:
No offense to dudes at all, because I definitely answer the questions, but I have a little bit of bias, and preference, towards my young, female combative athletes, so I'm more likely to respond to that. I do. I just have a little bit more of a connection or bond to other females doing combative athletes, or athletics. That's probably the best way, but just be understanding that I don't check it all the time, that it might take a little bit for me to respond, but I will.

Emily Kwok:
Love it. Sarah, you've been such a gracious guest, and so wise. And, I'm just so impressed. I've always been impressed by you as an athlete, and today I got the opportunity to be impressed by you as a holistic person. Thank you so much for your time, and all of the work that you've done to hold the candle, pass the baton, keep running with it, for female athletes in male dominated sports. Thank you so much.

Sara McMann:
Thank you. And, the respect is mutual.

Emily Kwok:
Thank you. I'll talk to you another time out. Peace out.

Sara McMann:
Okay. Bye.