This isn’t a story about opening a gym - it’s a story about building a community through chaos.

When the Monash City Council shut down his new gym just a week after opening, Vinh Le, founder of Honour Martial Arts in Melbourne, faced the toughest fight of his career - one that had nothing to do with the ring.

For nine months, his doors stayed closed while he battled permits, panic attacks, and the fear of losing everything he’d built. But through that chaos, Vinh discovered a different kind of strength: faith, resilience, and the power of community.

In this episode, Vinh shares how he rebuilt from the ground up, turning setback into purpose and building a gym that’s become a family. We talk about what it means to lead with empathy, to hold your values when everything’s falling apart, and why the soul of martial arts lies in the people, not the punches.

Listen for:

What if training isn’t about becoming your best self, but making sure your worst self can still win?

That’s the philosophy of Luke Howard: a judo black belt, jiu-jitsu brown belt, and former pro MMA fighter who’s competed across nearly every discipline. By the time he was 18, he had qualified for the judo world championships. After breaking his back and enduring shoulder reconstructions, Luke shifted into MMA, fighting professionally from his very first bout.

Today, he’s grown to be one of the most respected coaches both in Bali and beyond, cornering fighters from around the world and building an online community of nearly half a million followers.

In this conversation, Luke opens up about:

• The mental toughness behind stress drills designed to make you lose
• How to shorten the feedback loop so fighters actually improve-
• What nerves really mean - and how to harness them on fight night

This episode dives deep into the mindset shifts that every fighter faces - lessons that reshape how you approach both training and competition.

What does it really mean to be “in the zone”? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Sue Jackson, co-author of Flow in Sports with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and creator of the Flow State Scale and Dispositional Flow Scale - the tools researchers still use to study peak performance.

Together, we explore:

• What flow is, and why it matters in sport and life.
• The nine dimensions of flow and how athletes can access them.
• How tools like the Flow State Scale help fighters and coaches reflect and improve.
• Why anxiety, pressure, and distraction can kill flow, and how to manage them.
• Practical strategies to find flow more often, whether you’re a fighter, runner, or weekend athlete.

Dr. Jackson shares insights from decades of research, showing how flow isn’t just a lucky state - it’s something you can learn to invite, train, and apply far beyond sport.

Olympic boxer Tony Jeffries - a 7-time British national champion and Olympic bronze medalist at the 2008 Beijing Games - shares the fight of his life: what happens when boxing ends.

In this episode, Tony opens up about:

- Competing on the Olympic stage while battling fear and self-doubt

- The depression, drinking, and identity crisis after his forced retirement

- Moving to Los Angeles, being rejected from his first gym job, and building Box ’N Burn, later named California’s #1 gym

- How he turned his fighter’s obsession into one of the biggest boxing fitness brands on YouTube, with millions learning boxing drills, workouts, and techniques in nine different languages

- His philosophy of “Do hard things for an easy life”,  and how boxing shaped him as a man, husband, and father

Watch more from Tony Jeffries on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TonyJeffries 

This conversation touches on depression, mindset, and the mental battles fighters face outside the ring. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a trusted friend, family member, or professional. If you’re in crisis, please seek local support services in your country. You don’t have to go through it alone.

0:00 - Intro
3:28 - Fear as Fuel
10:20 - Forced Retirement
13:00 - Climbing Out
15:30 - Beverly Hills Rejection
20:30 - Building Box ’N Burn
24:00 - Boxing for Fitness
27:50 - The COVID Pivot
31:15 - Global Reach
35:40 - Obsession & Craft
46:00 - Impact Beyond Numbers
47:50 - What’s Next
51:40 - Advice for Fighters (Plan B)
54:15 - How Boxing Shaped Me
55:30 - Jiu-Jitsu & Family
59:50 - Do Hard Things, Easy Life
1:03:45 - Final Reflections

In the vrss podcast, we dive into the psychology, science, and soul of combat sports.

We bring you conversations with people at the top of their fields: from world champions and legends of the game, to the doctors, neuroscientists, psychologists, and coaches pushing performance to new levels.

At its heart, vrss means two things:
You versus the fight, whatever form that takes.
And the verses that get written through it.

We’re here to go deeper into those stories.
Into the internal fight, the philosophies, the truths.
Into what fighting really teaches us.
How it rewires the brain, the body, the mind.
And what strength really means - on the mats, and far beyond them.
Because the outside never tells the whole story.

The real strength is from within.

Coming, this September.