2020 was an interesting year for a variety of reasons.
I still haven't broken into the interplanetary audience. 100% of listeners are from the planet Earth.
Of those listening on Earth, the majority of those were listed as being in the United States. However, I saw a small increase in numbers in the UK, Canada, and Germany. Thank you to everyone who listens all over the world.
However, upon further investigation into the data there was a significant number of users who were being counted as listening from Silicon Valley. In fact, if the data is accurate this podcast is kind of a big deal in the heartland of Apple, Google, etc. Which is silly.
Right now my best guess is that when location data is otherwise unknown certain platforms simply list the location of their company.
Most of the listeners were of an adult age. Which fits with anecdotal accounts of martial arts populations with the obvious exception of kids classes who technically aren't allowed to have things like webmail or podcast accounts... which makes them hard to work into the statistics if there are any. (Shout out to two of my favorite listeners Olivia and Charlie who definitely fall into that category)
Of those listening the most obvious app used is Apple Podcasts by a long shot. I'm not sure how that "Other" category breaks down but I assume it's all the other apps such as the one I use "Podcast Republic" which don't account for enough to show up in the top 4.
Unsurprisingly then, there is a similar breakdown with iPhones representing a number close to that of listeners that use Apple Podcasts.
And finally we have the number of total listens. 2020 starts about in the middle of this graph.
What was interesting to me is that 2020 saw a big jump in consistent total listens per month. I'm not sure why but my suspicion is that it was a combination of quarantines occurring worldwide and a general withdrawal of people from public interaction.
My guess is that many podcasts saw an increase in listens this year. The other possibility is that this is representative of solely martial artists who were heavily impacted by pandemic responses. My own teacher has been unable to resume classes as the gym we were training out of, cancelled his program.
I have to wonder if a larger proportion of martial artists turned to alternative training methods to maintain their skills. I know I have.
One of the ways I've done this was initially through focused solo drills that simulated chaining together body motions into a "flow" that approximated body mechanics I would typically use out on the mats.
Another way was through starting a new practice of drills coming from shuai jiao. Specifically, I used Sonny Mannon's Guang Wu Shuai Jiao program and it has been excellent at helping me build a better "grappler's body."
In conjunction with both of these was establishing a "training pod" based on Stephen Kesting's model.
We then took solo drills that paired with partner drills so that our infrequent training sessions could be as efficient as we could make them. Over all, I feel that I've at least maintained my basic skill set. I'm not sure I've really advanced, except maybe in my understanding of the basics as I've been introducing BJJ to a couple of new people in my training pod and as we all know focusing on the fundamentals is the foundation of everything else.
So... 2020 was actually a pretty good year for the podcast. I know training hasn't been the best it could be for many of us, but I hope that in some small way you've been able to supplement your training with some of the thoughts and musings Walking With The Tengu has had this year.
I'd love to hear about how you've trained in less than ideal circumstances.
As always, thank you for listening!
Here's to a much better 2021
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