Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Discussions on improving your BJJ, navigating mat-politics and all aspects of the jiu jitsu lifestyle. Multiple weekly episodes for grapplers of any level. Hosted by JT and Joey - Australian jiu jitsu black belts, strength coaches, and creators of Bulletproof For BJJ App. Based out of Sydney, Australia
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Honoring Steve Cotter: A Trailblazer In Fitness & Life
This episode pays homage to a truly wonderful individual- Steve Cotter. Steve was a pioneer in kettlebell training and fitness as well as joining the jiu jitsu journey later in his life. He inspired many and his reach has seemingly no limit.
Check out the Steve Cotter Foundation website which is launching soon. https://stevecotterfoundation.org
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. Today we pay tribute to one of the greats, one of the most influential people, at least in my health, fitness and jiu-jitsu journey, and someone who cannot be denied in terms of impact on fitness, as well as some pretty influential people in jiu-jitsu. I'm talking about Steve Cotter. If you don't know who I'm talking about, we're about to blow your mind with one of the most impactful people of the last 20 years when it comes to fitness and also a little bit BJJ. Let's get into it now. Also, if you're out there in the world of the internet and you've seen one or two of these episodes and you're thinking, hey, these guys aren't bad, you know what would help us? It would help us if you like and subscribe. This does an amazing thing with the mystical dark arts of the algorithm to share it with more good people like yourself, and what that does is it helps us out immensely, even though it will only take you five seconds. So do the good thing. It helps us and it helps the world, and we appreciate that. Better. Listen very carefully. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point, the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready. It's one of those things. Ladies and gentlemen, there's people out there who you think of them and you think they'll live forever like celebrities, fitness people, what have you. And you only know them via the internet or by watching them on the screen. And then you might have met them and then you think, oh fuck, this person's a real person and they die. And even though it might seem very strange, I want to give a huge tribute and RIP to Steve Cotter, who is a legendary kettlebell practitioner, coach, teacher, like a real force and OG of the kind of kettlebell scene in America. But also he was a brown belt under um shunji and and had that connection through jujitsu as well, which he came to kind of up more later in his career. Yeah, he and shunji were close, close, yeah, like he was, because shunji's big into kettlebells. Did that come from steve? It came from steve, actually originally came from steve maxwell, right, but steve maxwell and steve codder actually quite closely linked, yeah, right, I mean naturally same name. What are you going to do? Well, I think it was probably more that they both trained under Pavel Satsulin. But leave that to the side, shout out Steve Maxwell.
Speaker 1:But it's interesting that I became aware of Steve Cotter before I started jujitsu, back when I first started kettlebell training, because my friends were sending me videos on YouTube. Have you seen this guy do this crazy stuff? And he was doing pistol hops up and down off tables, which is mental. He'd do like seven of them. He was doing super heavy Turkish get-ups. He could do a two handshands get-up with 232s, even though he was like a pretty lightweight guy, like in his prime I think, about 72, 74 kilos, super jacked, wow, just strong, yeah, and just doing some wild, wild shit. He likes a bit of kettlebell juggling and shit like that. Love kettlebell juggling. And then also I guess that's the thing he was one of the OGs under Pavel.
Speaker 1:So Pavel really was one of the guys who I would say he is the guy who helped make made kettlebell training popular in the United States. Yeah for sure. He brought it to the West, yeah, and as a result copped a little bit of hate from Mother Russia for sharing the secrets with the Americanos. But yeah, he had a dedicated group of people who kind of came up under him and Steve Cotter was one of those guys. Yeah, right, and yeah, yeah, I've always known. I've never, I never took too much like specific stuff from Cotter, but I always knew about him, like through the coaching game and like he was kind of one of those OG dudes that was always you would. I would have always have considered him an authority. Yeah, you know, yeah, and I had a bunch of his DVDs, books, like he, if you think of like in a lot of ways, the way BJ fanatics is always releasing a new thing. Cotter had endless amounts of of DVDs of like. Here's my 152 ways to fucking get super jacked and strong with kettlebells. Fuck yeah, here's my fucking 97 ways to get ultra fit and flexible with kettlebells. And it's like the level of techniques and moves like this he was doing weighted Cossacks. He was also doing Cossacks with a kettlebell attached to a rope and swinging it around his head while doing like he was doing. Charles Allen Price would have loved that shit.
Speaker 1:Man, cotter was doing circus level. It had nothing to do with jiu-jitsu, he was just. He was like Fuckery, here's some next level hard shit. And you're like, wow, the guy's lean, he's flexible, he's strong, the guy's like he's a machine, yeah, and I always wanted to. I was like I was inspired by one. He also he did kung fu and he had like a like a martial arts background, so he was really good at body weight shit, but then he was really good with fucking heavy ass kettlebells, yeah. And so I I found that I would say that definitely early in my training career, kind of early in the jujitsu journey, I modeled myself on him. I was like I want to be as strong as that guy. Oh, that's cool. And he was a huge Bruce Lee fan as well. Like he, he was a martial artist before, he was a kettlebell guy and then he just really took the kettlebell thing to the nth degree, like really pushed it and got into like gear of voice sport, like the marathon running aspect of um kettlebells, which is very fucking hard, very miserable, but he pushed it.
Speaker 1:Give us a, just because people like gear of what is gear of life sport? Brief, so gear of life sport is like clean and jerk and snatch. It's many other things too, but it's basically you have a time limit With a kettlebell, with a kettlebell, it's the sport of kettlebell, it's the kettlebell sport, yeah. So in the same way you have Olympic lifting. It is the endurance version. So instead of being one maximum weight for one movement, you got five minutes.
Speaker 1:How many times can you snatch 32 kilos in one hand? How many times can you snatch in the other hand? Five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, five. It's brutal. Non-stop. 10 minute round, yeah, and what's the deal? You can't put the kettlebell down, can't at all, and you can't. I think your feet have to stay in position or some shit. Yeah, more or less like you can lift your heels and move, but you can't be like stepping, not at all. No, no, no. And the turnaround is very short with like long cycle, short cycle, like clean and jerking, or just jerk, jerk, like. It's a shout out to GS Science, james Ross, who is basically the best at gear voice sport in Australia and one of the best in the world.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, like Cotter, heavily influenced, and my OG coach Efim, so this came to my attention. Late the other night, cameron Elder messaged me shout, shout out Sacred Blades, because both he and I were fans of Cotter and that's kind of what got us chatting when we're at Jiu. Jitsu started talking about kettlebell shit and his dad was into it and his dad's like hardcore Scotsman old school, you know strong man shit and they love kettlebells and yeah, man, we bonded over that and he's like bro, you hear, steve Cotter died of a heart attack. I was like what? He wasn't even that old, like it was the eve of his birthday, I believe, and he's 55 years old. It was 54, 54, about to be 55, and this is the. Yeah, it's young. This is the thing that we just do not know what time we have right now. That's, that's uh, it sounds cliche to say that, but I would never anticipate I was imagining this guy dominating the masters categories. Just, you know, you, some, some person's gotten in jiu-jitsu late in life. They show up and they have to roll with steve cotter, one of the strongest, fittest guys ever, who happens to be a complete fucking savage. Yeah, and and now he's gone and I feel like we actually have lost a significant portion of experience and knowledge with him out the game.
Speaker 1:You know Kashi, yeah, he had an online dispute with Steve Cotter. How interesting. Yeah, it was quite good. Actually, I think Steve Cotter's wife had posted her doing a pistol squat on the shenna. On the shenna, which is just like a piece of timber that sits on two feet that you would use for like the push-up kind of thing, and there's this whole bunch of movements that go with it, and it was quite funny. Well, it was quite cool actually, because it was a classic online dispute.
Speaker 1:She posted the thing and then Kashi basically was like yeah, that is super disrespectful to the Shena and to the culture of Persian, you know. Blah, blah, blah. And then Steve Cotter chimed in and was like hey, man, you know she paid for the like we paid for this. She wants to do a pistol. She can do a pistol squad on it.
Speaker 1:And then Kashi was like, okay, basically it was like through your Western lens of like capitalism, yes, you paid for it, you can. But through my Eastern lens of like culture and tradition and respect for the lineage of a thing, this implement is not designed to be used for that. And he just went on this whole and he articulated that really well, yeah, and it kind of was like oh, was like oh, yeah, like it kind of just reduced us, like in the west, to like consumers, dogs, yeah. And um, steve was like kind of like, yeah, fair call, buddy, I saw you. You know you were having to go on my missus so I had to chime in, but like respect, it was like it was good. I was like that was it? That was a very good online dispute, nice, you know, it resolved. Everyone learned some shit. You know, we cried, we laughed, it changed our lives, um.
Speaker 1:But the reason why I wanted to say this is, you know, steve cotter went into, um, he went into gear of voice sport, but I think for him he was not able to like become necessarily. I don't think he was a master of sport. I have to check that. But I know that he did compete because at that same time I was looking at gear of voice sport and I was like is there some shit to this? Like could I get into that? And then I did it for five minutes and I was like no, no, I don't want to borrow that, that is misery. Uh, count me out please.
Speaker 1:But he got into jujitsu because I remember seeing an early video of him as a white belt with like no technique, just mauling some. I think I saw that too and he's kind of choking, but he's just shoving the back of the guy's neck, he's got one lapel and he's just going like just give up. And eventually the guy's like yeah, okay, and Shanji's like technique over strength, well done, amazing. And I was like goddamn, imagine Steve Cotter in jujitsu. And he just kind of went down the journey and the last photo I saw was him in a brown belt. I think maybe his son is a blue belt, right, yeah, I saw that picture.
Speaker 1:But this conversation came up later, when I first met shanji, and he was like oh, I love kettlebells, steve maxwell. He introduced me to it, he was mad for it. And then I, um and steve's all about it and steve cotter he's my student and I was like oh wow, amazing, right and and he like like Shungy's, like yeah, I fucking love kettlebells and so I was able to, you know, connect with him over that and Steve Cotter was actually pretty instrumental in keeping, I guess, like Shungy in that as well. Yeah, like the love of the Turkish, get up and just those movements for strength as well as like fitness and things like that, yeah. But yeah, steve steve cotter, in his profile it has a sorry ikff which was like the, the federation of your voice sport he was associated with and there was a very famous um russian champion, I think it was uh denisov, who is like the head of that federation, who isn't complete weapon. But yeah, man, to see this guy's evolution like martial artist, kettlebell guy, jujitsu guy Came to jujitsu later in life too, right, yeah, and I fucking that resonates with me.
Speaker 1:And I'm not not that I knew him personally. I only met him one time. He was a philosophical guy, met him actually at a fitness expo in Sydney and he was doing seminars. And a good friend of mine, old business partner, bill Mewling, shout out, bilbo Bill actually did a tour with him, his seminar tour, and so came to know him pretty well, but he always had this kind of philosophical bent to him which I found interesting, different and yeah, man just Because he came along with that mystical strength tool from the East he did. There was a little bit of that in there.
Speaker 1:There was a little bit of that, and I think that for many of you out there, if you've never heard of Steve Cotter, you just fucking Google that guy, you look at what he was able to do with himself, at least just through kettlebell training. It was pretty remarkable. You know what, if you look at him on Instagram like if you're a bit of a young'un, and you look at him on Instagram, you'll be like this is all a bit corny, because he's an OG guy who came up without social media and so with those guys, it's kind of like when your mum or dad posts on Instagram or or on facebook and you're like, oh guys, please, that's a terrible. Why are you smiling like that? Yeah, can you just fucking find a more synthetic angle? Um, I think you know, respectfully, steve had a bit of that, right, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, don't, don't, don't judge him based on his instagram. You know someone. But, yeah, if you get, if you're interested to look back at what he's done, a guy achieved a lot and it is interesting those people that were able to achieve some kind of notoriety in the world before social media or instagram yeah, it's interesting. It's like books and dvds and fucking videos and tours, shit that really doesn't like carry much weight anymore, no, but is ultimately kind of more groundwork, yeah, required, like I can notice. It's a lot of uh, a lot of time and energy, yeah, which just cannot be uh scaled. And so he did that, and so I definitely would not be where I am now if it wasn't, uh for steotter. So I wanted to give a shout out to his family, his son, all the people around him, because, yeah, going to miss having that guy in the world for sure.
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