Meditations on Getting Punched in the Head

I went to a Jewish high school, which was not explicitly pro-Israel, but every once in a while it would have an event pertaining to Israeli culture, history, or politics.

That's not, however, what this post is about.

One day, a teacher brought in their friend who was a Krav Maga instructor. Krav Maga is an Israeli martial art that is used in the military. It's not that different from most other modern, practical combat styles other than the fact that it deals with large weapons somewhat more effectively. However, every Krav Maga practitioner I've met is for some reason convinced that their style is the most practical, and all other styles are just for sport. This is a common sentiment among fighters from many different styles, but Krav Maga is by far the worst offender.

Also, just for the record: if you are ever shown a video of one martial artist from a specific style beating the shit out of practitioners from other styles, while that video may in fact be real, every martial art has That Video. I bet they record them all in the same studio. Winning fights has more to do with the fighter than the style, and most high-level fighters know multiple styles anyways.

That's not, however, what this post is about.

The instructor started by asking if anybody in the room did martial arts, I mentioned that I did mixed martial arts. She then said that in this class, we would learn the difference between a sport fight (at this she pointed to me) and a street fight. Sport fights were good, they made you tough, but a street fight was totally different, and it was brutal. What we were going to learn that day could save our lives.

I bristled at this at first, because I did think that what I was learning was practical, however my martial arts instructor at the time was Mike Valentine, who you will be hearing a lot about in this post. Mike was very clear that in any martial arts class we took, we should learn what we could from the instructor, because there was probably at least something we could get out of the class, even if the instructor wasn't great.

That's not, however, what this post is about.

The instructor taught us some basic punches, quite similar to what I already knew because punches are pretty similar in low level classes. It isn't until you start getting more advanced that the nuances that differentiate different styles become relevant. After about half an hour of very basic instruction, she paired us off to fist-fight each other with no padding, protection, or advice on how hard we should hit.

There is an old martial arts saying, "The most dangerous belt on the mat is a white belt." This is because if you don't know how to hurt people skillfully, you don't know how to prevent yourself from accidentally hurting people more than you want to. This type of terrible training would go badly in any context, and given the fact that I was getting bullied pretty badly at the time, it was a fucking disaster.

It wasn't long before a kid stepped on my shoelace which caused me to fall on the ground, and another stepped on my face, dislocating my jaw. I did not see the faces of those kids, so I don't know if they were kids who disliked me (in which case it was probably intentional) or if they were other kids, in which case it was likely an accident. The instructor asked me if I was okay, I said yes, and I continued fighting. Later that day I went to my actual martial arts class, where I had to take a break because my jaw hurt badly. I relayed this story to Mike who sent me home. He actually asked if the martial art was Krav Maga, because apparently it is notorious for doing this type of shit.

I went to the doctor, who told me that my jaw would probably never fully heal, and put me on a liquid diet for a week. To this day, my jaw will sometimes randomly hurt. It makes a slight clicking sound when I open it wide, which is of course, the inspiration for this site's name. I believe the medical term for this type of condition is TMJ. My mom didn't want to get too angry at the school for this incident, because kids get hurt sometimes, but my dad was upset.

My dad told the school, and my advisor spoke with me later and told me that this was all very against the rules and that I really should have told him about this earlier on. One of the deans of underclassmen spoke with me later when I was in the halls, asked if I was okay, and told me that it sounded like 'a very scary situation.' I wasn't angry at anybody, mostly I was embarassed that I had done so badly given the fact that I had training. I felt as though I had proven the instructor right about my style being impractical, and that I was representing my dojo badly.

The teacher who had been in the room alongside the Krav Maga instructor the whole time actually did not recall the incident when I joked with him about it later, and he told me I was too tough for my own good, so I guess he never got in trouble for this, or was even spoken to about it. I didn't really do anything about it because I had very low self-esteem at the time, and nobody else did anything further because... well that was probably part of the reason my self-esteem was so low. My parents cited this incident as part of the reason they sent my two younger siblings to a different high school after I had graduated and they were old enough.

At this point in my life, I know that this was all illegal. I'm not in therapy, but I probably should be. Yes, this is probably why I am [insert trait about me].

But that, of course, is not what this post is about.

This post is about how to learn and teach martial arts.

What makes a martial art practical?

The dojo I went to growing up was called "Practical Martial Arts." That was not the description, that was just the name of the dojo.

The style it taught was "Mixed Martial Arts" and is strongly based on the style UFC competitors use. Nowdays, the head instructor calls it 'blended martial arts' since some classes are for younger kids and he wants to ensure people that they are not putting children in UFC cages, but the actual combat style is still very MMA based. Every time there is a major UFC tournament, the instructors watch it and use what they learn to update their curriculum. The dojo offers belts, which isn't really a thing in UFC style MMA, but it very much goes with the vibe of the dojo. I'm a brown belt if you are curious, but I can't get promoted anymore because I'm not living there anymore.

When people first join, they are not allowed to do any contact fighting. Eventually you are allowed to grapple without chokeholds, and then after that you can spar. Sparring is conducted with shin guards, a head cage, and gloves. Small gloves if it's wrestling as well as sparring (which is called freestyle). If you can do all that without spazzing out and hurting anybody, you are then allowed to learn and use choke holds. This is generally an indicator that a dojo is both safe, because they won't allow any moron to walk in off the street and choke you out, and intense, because eventually they do allow pretty hard-core combat.

Is it practical? I couldn't really tell you. I haven't been in any real fights unless you count the creepy men that I shoved off me. I suppose I got the courage to shove them due to my training, but I didn't actually use any techniques I learned.

The thing is, it's really hard to evaluate whether a martial art is practical without getting into a lot of street fights, which I don't actually want to do. In addition, size and weight are absolutely a factor, which is why tournaments have weight classes. So if you are 5'2" (like me) and you lose a fight to a 6 foot tall person, does that make your style 'impractical?' I've had friendly wrestling matches, and in one case a sparring match, with my friends who are either self-trained fighters or not trained at all, and lost most of them. This is because in all of those cases, my friends were very large men and there wasn't much I could do. In one of the wrestling matches I was about to win, and then the guy stood up slightly and slammed into my ribcage with his shin, almost breaking my ribs. I tapped after that, because I didn't want him to kill me. I don't know what you are supposed to do in that situation if the fight is limited purely to non-striking? If you are wondering, we are still very good friends.

When I asked instructors at the dojo what to do if I got into a fight with a large man, I was told to take out their eyes and kick them in the balls. The kicking I knew how to do—people with nuts were encouraged to wear cups, and groin kicking was very much allowed in sparring. I actually had hurt my foot on cups before. Eye gouging is taught, but the problem is that eye tissue doesn't regrow, so we could only practice it in very controlled, non-competitive situations. We also had to stop doing the move before actually removing the eyeball. This meant that I was being instructed to use a technique that I had never actually done.

The reality of sparring is that you are not just training to use the moves properly. You are training to perform well when your body is in pain. Being hit fucking hurts, and people perform worse when they are in pain. The fear of being hit is also a factor.

I know I can fight well while being punched because I've been punched and fought well. I know I can fight well while being choked because I have been choked and fought well. I know I can fight well while exhausted, stressed, and winded because I have been exhausted, stressed, and winded all the while having a very large instructor yell at me and tell me my technique was shit and fought well. Mike was a big believer in very honest feedback. One time he rounded up a class of 13 year olds who had been training and said: 'Okay I'm going to be honest, what I just saw looked like doggie vomit.' I mean, he wasn't lying.

I genuinely could not tell you whether or not I could take somebody's eye out. I have never done it before. So, is my style not practical?

It is difficult to teach a martial art in a practical fashion, because if a style is practical, it should enable you to beat people physically larger than you, which is incredibly difficult to do. If the difference is great enough, it can be nearly impossible. It is also extremely difficult to train techniques that cause damage to your opponent without damaging your training partner.

So, what is practical? It's not an easy question to answer.

Self Defense Classes

If you look at the PMA website, you will find that Mike Valentine is the founder, co-owner, and sensei. His wife, Karen Valentine, is co-owner, program director, and self-defense instructor.

If the 'sensei' is the head martial arts instructor, and martial arts is self-defense, then what is the self-defense instructor? Shouldn't the sensei be in charge of self defense, if that is what martial arts is all about?

I am, of course, being obtuse. If somebody teaches a martial arts class from 12:00 to 1:30, and then a self defense class from 1:30 to 2:45, their 'martial arts class' is probably impractical bullshit. If a man teaches a martial arts class, and his wife teaches a self defense class, it's pretty clear what 'self defense' means in this context. In tournaments, you will be paired up with somebody in your weight class, of your gender (more on the gender thing later). On the street however, people are much more egalitarian, and they do not segregate like that. If you are a woman, it is probably worth it to take a class in how to deal with this unfortunate reality.

But the styles that they teach in self defense classes for women tend to be very different from what they teach in martial arts classes. In my experiance, self defense classes focus on teaching the basics as quickly as possible, rather than training their students to be the best fighter they can be. That's not a bad thing, that's the point. Their students don't need to be the best of the best, they just need to know how to prevent somebody twice their size from killing them or worse, but don't have time to make martial arts a hobby.

This means that self-defense classes, at least in my experience, don't typically focus on physical conditioning, which takes a long time to develop. I think this significantly limits their utility.

Another Mike Valentine story for you: he once trained with Carlos Gracie of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fame. Not one-on-one, more like one-on-500, but he supposedly learned quite a bit. He asked Carlos at one point what his greatest technique was, and he said his conditioning. Conditioning in this context typically means your physical fitness, but it can also be used to mean your mental toughness, and ability to take punches (or in this case chokes, Carlos was mostly a grappler) and keep going. It's basically your CON stat.

The reality of physical combat, as I have been informed by several fairly high ranking fighters, is that strength and size are a huge factor. Technique can absolutely help, but only if you are significantly more skilled than your opponent, and even then its hard. The most practical martial art style is getting big and strong.

The thing is, conditioning takes a lot of time to develop. If you are an 18 year old woman about to go to college, and you are feeling like maybe you want to learn some self defense (I cannot encourage this more, please do this), you really don't have time to get super buff, and learn how to take a punch and keep going.

So are self-defense classes for women 'practical' then? The most effective way to win a fight is to be physically large. If you can't do that, then you should be reasonably fit and know what it feels like to fight, take a punch, and just in general deal with the stress of combat. If you can't do that then maybe the techniques you can learn in a self-defense class are useful.

I am currently not training right now, and haven't for a year. This is the longest break I've taken from martial arts. Part of the reason is that I'm not enrolled in a school that has free classes, and I am broke. If you think the broke thing is an excuse, think back to when you were in your mid 20s. And if you were rich in your mid 20s... well fuck you then.

But another reason is because I'm currently on hrt, and I can't compete in tournaments right now due to sports rules. They aren't even unfair sports rules, the reality is somebody who has quasi-transitioned is really hard to categorize in a sport where strength and size matter. Serena Williams could probably beat nearly all men in tennis, but combat sports just don't work like that. The fact that most men are better at physical combat than most women is true to the point of being a societal ill.

I am not planning on fully transitioning, right now my testosterone levels are about what you may expect in a ~50 year old man. I don't really want to raise them much higher, but there is a noticable difference in my physical strength.

Before hrt, I could definitely beat men in fights sometimes. Actually one time I held a guy in side control, which is a ground wrestling position, for a 15 minute grappling session (that is a longer than normal session for context). He kept trying to escape by rotating the opposite direction that you are supposed to rotate so he couldn't get out. He was also just not a very strong person in general. Once the fight was over, he turned to the instructor and said 'wow she is a lot stronger than she looks.' Which like... okay I appreciate being called strong but do I look that weak??? But still, that is the exception to the norm.

I suspect this is part of the reason that every advanced male martial artist I have met has either been impresively feminist, or has said things that make me think they might be a domestic abuser, with no in between. I once left a dojo because the instructor said that 'you can't just hold the punching bag still and expect it not to move while hitting it, it's not your girlfriend.' Physical fighting is a very segregated sport, and that is continuously shoved in your face every day. You either decide that this is unfair and must be compensated for, or you decide that this is the natural way of things and should be accepted.

This makes it hard for me to answer women who ask me how to practically fight. To be clear: you absolutely can be stronger than many men, and you can definitely have the skills to make you better at fighting. But it's not really something you can learn in an hour long self-defense class.

That doesn't mean those classes are a waste of time. The only actually altercations I've had with creepy men were over the moment I demonstrated that I was willing to fight. A lot of realistic self-defense is in the spirit of not needing to outrun the bear, just outrunning the other guy. If you show a predator that you are not easy prey, they will... well I guess go after somebody else, which is an awful thought. What a fucking world. But in a sense, that confidence and understanding that yes, you can just shove the dude off of you, that's not against the rules, are one of the main benefits of those self defense classes. You spend your life being told 'don't hit people' then you go through puberty and now everybody is saying 'okay well there is one context where you REALLY REALLY gotta hit the dude.' That isn't just a switch you flip in your brain, you need to actually simulate it to an extent.

But what if they don't leave you alone after you shove them? Then I guess, have a weapon. Does that just invalidate the practicality of all combat sports? Maybe, I'm not sure. But at the end of the day it demonstrates something very important which is that to a certain extent, martial arts are not really about winning physical fights. If all that martial artists trained for was to be safe on the streets, they could just carry weapons. I live in the fucking US, you can carry a gun to the grocery store if you feel like it. That isn't why people study martial arts.

McDojos

When I was in Indiana for a year researching at Purdue, I took a karate class for students. We basically ran through obstacle courses and lightly punched a mitt that a person was holding. I asked at the end if they did sparring or any hard contact, and they said that karate was combat inspired, but it wasn't really a combat focused style. That was the last time I showed up to that class. I don't begrudge anybody their sport of choice, I'm sure lots of people enjoy it and are skilled at it, but that wasn't what I wanted from a martial arts class.

There is a phenomenon that many martial art instructors bitch about, known as 'McDojos'. Typically they bitch about it while justifying their hardass behavior. I once trained with an instructor who was displaying pretty clear symptoms of some nasty head damage (he spoke fully stream-of-concounsess, couldn't keep his head and shoulders still, modulated his volume a whole lot, and accidentally gave me 2 first months free isntead of first month), and he used to make jokes like "If the instructor says 'good job' to you more than once per class, you are at a McDojo!"

A McDojo is a place where, according to its denigrators, people 'pay money for a fake belt' and don't actually learn anything practical. They typically teach Karate or Tai-Quan-Do, and are usually centered around training younger kids. The hallmark of a McDojo is that they don't allow head contact but still teach a striking style. If you don't know how to train a class of students to use head contact safely, then I honestly don't trust your ability as a combat sports instructor at all.

Sometimes, the anti-McDojo rhetoric gets really weird. I have heard many times that if you tell somebody that your combat style is practical, but it actually isn't, then you may have a woman training in your style who thinks they can fight off an assailant and then they really can't, and then they may be sexually assaulted.

Could we not go there right away? You could just say that claiming you are teaching somebody an effective skill and not actually teaching an effective skill is scummy behavior. You don't have to bring out the sexual assault hypothetical to claim that McDojos are morally wrong.

I used to have a huge issue with the existence of McDojos, but now my feelings are more neutral. It bothers me when people think that elegant punches and flying kicks are the best way to fight, but it doesn't bother me that much. And to be fair, you can kill a person with one thumb so long as you touch the secret 'death spot.' I am technically not supposed to divulge this well-kept secret, but I will because this blog is somewhat anonymous.

The 'death spot' is the eyeball. You jab your finger in there and the person will probably bleed to death.

The reality is that people fight for a number of different reasons, and many of those reasons are not to learn a practical fighting style. That's why they don't just carry weapons. People might train for the exercise, because it's fun, because they like punching people in the face, or for any number of other reasons, and all are valid! The world is shit. If doing a thing gives you happiness and fulfillment, do it as much as you possibly can!

The issue with McDojos is that for many people, myself included, the biggest benefit of training is the development of willpower and an outlet for mental intensity, which I have far too much of. McDojos don't do that, and that is why what they are teaching isn't really martial arts in a meaninful sense. Getting hit sucks. It's supposed to suck. That's why you prove you can do it and hit back harder. That's the whole point of martial arts.

Some styles are firmly in the 'sport' side of combat styles, and yet are still generally respected. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is an interesting example of this. It started out very practically focused, despite being only grappling without any striking. It was founded by a man who went to Vale Tudo fights, which were fights in Brazil where anything was allowed except eye gouging and groin kicking. However over the years, it became very tournament focused. The tournaments are very regulated with many techniques being illegal. A common first move in a Jiu Jitsu fight is called 'pulling guard', where you lie on your back and try to wrap your legs around the other person's waist. In a street fight, they would stomp on your face.

Fun fact: I am terrible at Jiu Jitsu. Like persistently terrible. I have been training for a while, but whenever I train with somebody who doesn't know me, they assume I am brand new. One time I grappled with somebody and afterwards they said, 'wow, you are a new new white belt!' even though I had been training for like 5 years. I feel like I should be good because it's a technical martial art and I'm a software engineer? Guess not.

Regardless of my skill, or lack therof, in ground-based combat, Jiu Jitsu is really fucking difficult. Wrestling is intense and exhausting, and being choked out is excruciating, not only because you can't breathe, but also because your throat hurts. Jiu Jitsu champions have clearly demonstrated their willpower and mental toughness, so even if its not practical, the people are clearly fighters on a spirtitual level. They have demonstrated that they have willpower and are very intense people. Mike says that he can tell after a few minutes talking with somebody if they do martial arts. I normally dislike claims like this, where somebody says 'ooooh I can look into your SOUL and verify whether you are a cool person like me or a lame normal person' but I actually do believe him with this particular statement. Fighting a lot changes a person.

Also if we are talking about McDojos, I know I warned you about the problem with videos showing 'my cool martial art beating up your dumbass style', but if we are talking about the fancy shmancy arts that look all elegant being ineffictive, I have to show you this one video from China about a Tai Chi guy and an MMA guy fighting.

Much of who wins a fight is determined by the individual practitioner, their strength and size, their training, and their willpower. But some martial arts are clearly better than others.

Fucking Yourself Up in the Head

One time during a conditioning class, I asked the instructor if the weights were made of lead. He looked confused and asked if I was allergic to lead. I tried to explain to him that lead was a neurotoxin, but he did not get it. I think in the future if somebody asks me this, I will just say 'yes.'

I work in a biotech lab where everybody is obsessed with their intellect and brain health. None of them would dream of doing anything that may hurt their head. I don't drink or do any drugs (I've never smoked weed, although I've done shrooms twice) because of how worried I am about my brain health.

I am fine with fucking up most of my body for the sake of the sport I like. But I'm a scientist, and I really don't want to fuck up my brain. This is a somewhat unsolvable problem. You cannot study a striking martial art without head contact. Where are you going to hit? The stomach? To throw a good punch you have to throw the punch roughly at your head height. You can do a slip jab, but those are less powerful. Head hits are 80% of the sport, you would have to intentionally fight badly if you didn't punch your opponent in the head.

I've had two concussions in my life. The first time was when I was 15 and we were doing a takedown line. This basically means that you all stand in a line, and try to knock the other person on their ass without striking. It's typically by some combo of shoving and tripping. There was one man in the line, and he was winning against all the other women. This made me really mad. At the risk of sounding like a McDojo instructor, anger is actually a very bad thing to feel while fighting, and so one moment I was fighting and the next moment I was opening my eyes up while on my back on the ground.

The instructor filed an injury report, and asked me what the takedown was. I paused, because I didn't remember, and they looked alarmed and wrote down 'concussion' on the report.

The second time, I was 23 and trying to find a way to train while at Purdue, since Purdue treats its students like babies, and whenever we would try to do Muay Thai or Jiu Jitsu, they would send in people to break up the class. So, me and a friend would spar together. I was stupid and didn't know you needed a mouth guard because at my old dojo, people didn't hit as hard as she was hitting. I went home after the session feeling fine, and the next day I got up, went to shower, and vomited up water and stomach acid while washing my hair.

Head cages don't really prevent concussions, they mostly protect the eyes, nose, and teeth. If you get hit while wearing a head cage, your head will move back rapidly just as much as if you were cageless, and it's mostly the rapid movement that causes your brain to rattle around in the skull and develop a bruise, which is basically what a concussion is.

What is more useful is a mouth guard. It sits in your mouth and protects your upper row of teeth, and is soft enough to ensure that if your lower jaw snaps shut, you will feel less impact upstairs. You can absolutely get concussed with a mouth guard, but it is harder.

Okay, here is my final Mike story of this post. Mike qualified for one of his previous MMA teams by showing up to a mat and training full contact for 5 hours. No padding, no breaks, no water. The majority of the potential team members quit, and some people went into the bathroom and started vomiting from heat exhaustion. The windows fogged up due to sweat and heat after a few hours. At the end, he and a few others of the remaining contestants were selected.

Mike probably took some head damage from that experience. Or, maybe not, some degree of concussion susceptibility is genetic. But when my dad, who is also more academically oriented, and is probably the reason I'm so paranoid about lead in the water and such, asked him about the head contact situation, he told him that he was very careful about it in his school. He actually commented, interestingly, that his son was not going to do some of the boxing stuff he did when he was his sons age.

This is an interesting perspective to have, and is similar to perspectives I've heard before. Is it ensuring that your children have a better life than yourself, all the while sacrificing your own wellbeing to develop the skills that will allow you to become a good provider, or is it babying your kids and not allowing them to do the fun things that you got to do growing up? The distinction largely lies in whether you ask the parent or the kid.

There is value in being tough, but it takes a lot of suffering to get to that level and there are often consequences to that. People often want their children to have to go through somewhat less suffering than they did, and thus the balance between toughness and happiness is different between themselves their children. But that begs the question: is he worthy of less care than his children? Is it possible that he is just coping, and regrets the boxing that he did as a kid and if he could go back wouldn't do it again?

You can't cure head damage. It can sorta heal, over time, and neurons do indeed regenerate, but they don't regenerate particularly quickly and heavy intensive sparring is a different beast. A boxer's brain under a brain scan is like a smoker's lung. To be clear, I do not think Mike is quite at that level—he has been in 22 full contact matches, but he is well spoken and seems sharp and emotionally stable. I have trained under people who are clearly fucked in the head from contact and Mike is not one of them. But unless you could get him to do advanced math before and after he started training, you can't really claim that he has taken on no damage.

But like... Mike is really fucking cool. Genuinely one of the coolest people I've ever met. I could regale you with various things he has advised me about or helped me with, but I think the best way to sum it up is that he is the opposite of the asshole MAGA people who talk about how other people need to toughen up, but are actually the most hypersensitive people you've ever met. He is one of the toughest individuals I've encountered, but is incredibly kind to people who aren't at that level.

And here is the question. Is he that amazing because of what he went through, or was he always that amazing, and as a result was able to do what he did?

If you spar with full head contact, you will get really good at sparring, and in general become a tougher person because of how much you will have to push through difficulty. But you will also take on head damage, which will eventually make you worse at sparring, and give you a harder time in life because brain health is important.

If the primary benefit of martial arts is willpower, which also is a huge factor in the quality of your life, then what is the solution to this optimization problem? How much suffering do you need to go through to get the ideal life? And does suffering even improve your toughness or does it just reveal who was tough in the first place?

And at what point does putting yourself through situations which are harmful to your brain stop making you suffer and just starts increasing the amount of damage you have taken on?

In martial arts, you can typically control what happens If you want to move the needle forward on the tough-o-meter at the expense of the brain-health-o-meter, you can spar more, with more contact. If it isn't worth it, you can choose not to. But in the real world, you can't actually control the damage you are taking on, you just have to hope it's worth it somehow.

Here are five stories

A person is weak. This weakness makes them sad because they cannot face the world. Bad things happen to them, and they become tough enough to create a good life for themselves.

A person is weak. This weakness makes them sad because of an inherent flaw in the mind of a weak person. Bad things happen to them, and they become tough access the happiness that naturally occurs when your mind is strong.

Several people are weak, but one is strong. Nobody knows who is who. Bad things happen to them, and most of them die except one person who was strong, and because they are already tough, they have a better life because of their innate thoughness. They tell themselves that the bad things made them tough even though they were that way already.

A person is weak, and happy. Bad things happen to them, now they are tough and sad.

A person is strong and happy. Bad things happen to them and they are now traumatized, weak and sad. But to cope they tell themselves that it makes them stronger.

I genuinely couldn't tell you which of these stories is true, and to what extent. They are probably all true and probably all copes. Fighting always comes with a cost, and maybe there is a real benefit, but maybe its exagerated. It's not like I can go back in time and undo the damage.

Parting Thoughts

Okay, that was really depressing, so let's end this on a funny note.

I've never understood why people are so worried about not choking from the front of the neck in... lets call them 'non-combat situations'. Jiu Jitsu people get their wholeass throat crushed on a regular basis and they are fine. Unless you are literally Gomez Addams, you aren't getting choked out more than those dudes.