Mom advice on judo and life

Don't expect appreciation. Whether it is helping out at a tournament or teaching someone how to do an arm bar, do things either because you want to do them or because you think it is the right thing to do.

Most people have an egocentric view of the world. Of course you will help them because they are so awesome/ talented/ fun to be around. They may just consider the fact that THEY enjoy running a tournament proof that it's enjoyable and expect you to enjoy it, too.

If you go around expecting appreciation for the things you do, you'll end up bitter. Do what you think is right and forget about it.

I teach judo because when I was young people taught judo to me - for free. It made a huge difference in my life and so I try to pass that on when I can.

Don't lie about your achievements. I know people who claim to have competed in the Olympic Trials or won national championships earned a PhD when I know they did not. The irony is that these are all really accomplished people and if they just stood on their own honest achievements they'd be admirable enough. Lies are like interest on money, they accumulate. Once you have told someone you were in the Olympics/ earned a PhD, then you end up having to repeat that lie because it gets brought up again. Inevitably, someone will ask me about the time I was in graduate school with Dr. Joe Blow and I happen to remember Joe Blow dropped out and never finished.

Try to be empathetic. No, I do NOT say that in front of Joe to the person who brings it up. I'm not an investigative reporter from the New York Times. Personally, I think having your lie exposed regularly in front of people you (I hope) respect is punishment enough. Now, if Joe is claiming to be a surgeon and might do harm to someone, I will certainly speak up, but if he is a retired teacher who claims to have earned a PhD and competed in the Los Angeles Olympics, I'm going to keep my mouth shut. I really have no idea why people would claim such things, but I do believe everyone has a back story and there must be some reason he says those things. It would embarrass him, his family to out him and I don't see what good it would do. If it takes a lie to make people feel good about themselves, that's sad.

Don't exaggerate your accomplishments. I just looked at the last national championships results. In some divisions there were only 4 or 5 competitors. In some there were as many as twenty. That's smaller than the number of teams in a regional elementary school girls soccer tournament. If you won, good for you. Seriously, good for you. Judo is not an easy activity and you were best of the people who showed up. However, if you equate it with winning an NCAA championships in track, you are seriously deluded. There aren't more than a couple of dozen clubs in the country that care about winning national championships. A couple dozen is probably being generous. You accomplished a difficult task as a result of your own talent, discipline and effort. That is an admirable achievement. All over the country, every day, people accomplish difficult tasks through the same combination. All of them have achieved an admirable thing. My point is not to confuse being brilliant with being "brilliant above all others". This is very good advice for life as well as judo.

Speaking of which, I have to run because I'm teaching at 2 this afternoon in Bellflower, whether you all appreciate me or not!

Choosing Freedom looks at sports behind the iron curtain

For those of you younger than me, that phrase "the iron curtain" may not mean much. Back when I was competing there was a  Cold War going on with the U.S. and its allies on one side and Russia and its allies on the other. It was a stand-off , of sorts, since neither country risked launching nuclear bombs at the other and get nuked in return, but we all wondered if that might happen some day when some people crazy enough got into power.

As a proxy, there were all kinds of other crazy things - wars in Vietnam, Cambodia - and, of course, the Olympics. In 1980, the US boycotted the Olympics in Russia to protest the invasion of Afghanistan (isn't it ironic?). In 1984, the Soviet bloc boycotted the Olympics in the US. In all of the other Olympics, there was continuous moaning when the U.S. lost to Eastern European athletes.

We were told that they trained harder, had better sports science, more dedicated athletes.

One of those athletes, Leo Frincu, recently published a GREAT book called Choosing Freedom.

To be honest, I originally bought the book simply because he is Ronda's strength and conditioning coach and I wanted to support him. The book is only 3.99 for the Kindle. I figured it would probably be some lame new age feel good-y thing about follow your dreams, blah blah blah.

I was wrong.  It started out with Leo's early years in a kindergarten where all Roumanian children were sent during the week while both parents worked. He talked about being beaten and constantly hungry. Well - I don't want to give away how he went from there to world wrestling champion to American citizen and entrepreneur.

When we watch the Olympics in the US we almost never hear the stories of athletes from any of the other countries. Read Leo's book. For those like me who grew up being told that the medals won by people like Leo were vindication of the Soviet way of life and that we should all train and live like the Eastern Europeans, the book will prove especially fascinating.

No pain, no gain, not exactly

Let's talk sports injuries, one of the more depressing topics I could cover on this blog. Most seriously competitive athletes have been told to shake it off, fight through the pain, pain is temporary, glory is forever and 100 other clichés . I've probably repeated every one of those myself and there is a certain amount of truth to them. If you're going to compete on the world stage, you need to train under conditions where other people would give up. If you have a headache, a tooth ache, you train any way. If you had knee surgery, you do bench presses or run through mat work drills or perfect your sacrifice techniques - that's how Ronda learned sumi gaeshi and how I developed a really good ko uchi makikomi and tani o toshi.

Random irrelevant question - why do you see people in mixed martial arts do ko uchi gari and not ko uchi makikomi? Well, actually, the only person I've seen do ko uchi gari is Ronda, but the question still stands.

ANYWAY .... to get to the point ... that attitude is necessary to winning, but it can be overdone in two ways. The first is when you are ignoring something that will get worse if you ignore it. It took me several years to learn that when I get bronchitis, pneumonia or the flu and keep working and working out, I end up getting sicker until I absolutely cannot do anything.

The second way is more insidious. Almost every elite athlete ends his or her competitive years with some injuries and those get worse as you get older, particularly if you "fought through it" when you were young.

I had several knee surgeries and finally had my knee replaced when I just could not accept the number of things I couldn't do. I hadn't been able to run for over a year by then, couldn't really do any judo except matwork and even walking around all day, like at Disneyland, would leave me aching at the end of the day. Even bending my knee to get something out of a bottom drawer was out of the question. When Julia was young, we never went hiking or climbed out on rocks in the ocean as far as  I did with the other kids when they were little because I never went further with a child than I was sure I could carry her back if necessary. Now, every day when I just do the simple things - hike in the mountains or even bend down to pick something up, I wonder why the hell I waited so long.

I've been running around with my lovely grandchildren this week and it's very obvious that my arm is messed up.

It's been that way for a while.  Last month, my elbow was bothering me to the point that I tried to really cut back on typing, thinking it was repetitive motion injury. When that didn't help, I took the drastic step - for me - of actually taking two days away, staying in a cottage and going wine tasting - although I admit I took my iPad, a notebook and several books of technical documentation.

That helped a little with the pain - but 14 years competing gave me a pretty good foundation for ignoring pain. It's the obvious inability to do simple things - I can't do more than ten push-ups - I mean the real Marine-style push-ups, not the half-ass fake push-ups kids do at practice - I can still do 50 of those.  When I'm carrying my granddaughter who probably weighs 20 pounds, if I have to push off with one arm, say to climb up on a jungle gym, I make sure I put her in my right arm because I can only do a one-handed push-up with my left arm.

I was chasing my other granddaughter across the monkey bars and I couldn't get all the way across because, again, I couldn't pull up all of my weight with just my right arm.

My excuse for not going to the doctor about it was I could ignore the pain, I'd just get better if I went on with life, I don't have time to bother - hell, I'll have to get an appointment between trips to San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, North Dakota and Florida.

The problem with old sports injuries is that even though, like with illness, ignoring them causes more problems in the long run, unlike illness they worsen gradually. A second problem is ageism. There is the old joke:

A 93-year-old man complained to his doctor that he couldn't bend his right knee. When the doctor told him that at his age he needed to learn to accept that he would have some disability, the man retorted that his left knee was the same age and it worked fine.

It will be interesting to see if my doctor tells me that it is perfectly normal for a woman my age to not be able to do a one-handed push-up holding a 20-lb weight, or not whip off 50 push-ups and what the hell is a grandmother doing standing on top of the monkey bars with a five-year-old. (Fortunately, Maria did not post those pictures because, as Eva reminded her, "I don't think Grandpa would approve of this.")

The point is, that it is normal for ME. If we don't get those sports injuries taken care of we'll have a much more restricted old age, and after having a pretty damn full youth, that would be a shame, wouldn't it?

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Know When to Fold 'Em and When to Hold 'Em

The day Justin Flores barely missed the Olympic team, it broke my heart.  Dr. Jake Flores, Justin's father, and I have been friends since before he was born. When my husband passed away, Jake arranged an interview with UCSD to help me move back to California. Instead, I ended up in Santa Monica, driving to Vista on the weekends, where my little Ronda, at 11 or 12 years old, would be working out with Justin, who was still in high school.

So ... by a twist of fate and an injured neck, Justin didn't make the Olympic team. Unlike many of his cohort that day, he did not decide to try for one Olympic team after another. He had been on a couple of world teams, won medals in the U.S. Open, Panamerican championships and more. He'd had a scholarship to wrestle at a major wrestling powerhouse. He decided to end his judo career and go back to finish school.

Next thing you know, he had graduated with an art degree, done an internship, illustrated some children's books , formed a company that has produced some outstanding artwork for our companies (7 Generation Games and The Julia Group) - certainly he would not have accomplished all of this by now if he had kept training and tried to make the 2012 Olympic Team.

In his book, The Dip, Seth Godin talks about knowing when to quit and when not to. He says that we are told quitters never win and never to quit, but that is not correct, that really successful people know when to quit and when to keep going. As the gamblers say, know when to fold 'em and when to hold 'em.

It's really difficult to have the courage to face up to a dream you had and say, "This is not meant to be", and then go on to something else. I feel sorry for the judo players and other athletes I meet who are far past their prime and still telling themselves and other people, "I'm training for the Olympics." Even if they make the Olympic team, even if they win the Olympics, what are they going to be? A thirty-six-year old with no education,  no work experience and no family? Is that REALLY your dream?

About the same time as he missed out on the Olympic team he broke up with his girlfriend. It was a hard time.

Let me just say that Justin was - ahem - fit the stereotype of a male athlete when it comes to women. I was somewhat taken aback then when about six years ago, I had flown to middle of nowhere Texas to coach Ronda in a tournament and Justin said to me,

"I want you to meet this girl, Shirley. I'm not kidding you, I think she could be THE ONE."

So, here we are years later, with a college degree, a successful business and the love of his life. I was thinking back to the Olympic trials when Steve MacBaisey said one of the most insightful things I have ever heard in person.

This is a day when some people's dreams come true and other's dreams are crushed.

The real winners find another dream and make it come true.

Congratulations Justin (and Shirley). I am so happy for you.

How I Pick Winners

I have been wrong about people but only in one direction. That is, sometimes I have underestimated people and they have turned out, years later, to be far more than I would have predicted. Olympic and world silver medalist Lynn Roethke springs to mind. When I first met Lynn she was one of those people that was so damned nice that you wished she'd win but I just saw no chance of it. Her first problem was that she was too small for her division. She faced up to facts, dropped two weight divisions and started winning. She needed to move out of her comfort zone in Wisconsin and she did that, too, training in Colorado Springs at camps (where we first met) and then moving to New York and later California. I will say that in the cases where I was wrong, they were always people like Lynn who made massive changes in their training and choices.

I have not been wrong in the opposite direction. People I expected to win international medals always did. Often, these were not the same people everyone else expected. For example, when my lovely daughter, Ronda, was young, she never was selected for those programs for "high potential juniors", but I expected her to win.

Darlene Anaya, who won a bronze medal in the world championships, surprised a lot of people by her performance but not me.

If I was going to select a team I would look at this:

• When in a match and down by a score, pinned or in other disadvantageous situation, does the person fight out? I don't mean put up a good fight, I mean escape and turn the tables. Being able to shake it off when the fight isn't going your way both shows mental strength and the ability to adjust.
• In training, when no one is watching, is this person going their hardest? Being a small person is a big advantage to me, because I can slip into a corner of the gym, climb up on the bleachers and watch without people noticing me. A lot of those who other people rated highly dialed it down when they didn't have an audience.
• How do they react to a loss? Particularly if a young player lost to someone who was supposed to have beaten them, say the current Olympic team member, I'd watch what that person did afterward. Was the kid barely holding it together because he was so devastated or was he happy to get a silver medal in the U.S. Open at 17. (I got a silver medal in the U.S. Open at 17, lost to one of the best women in the world - and I'm STILL upset about it!) No one has the right to beat you, ever.
• Does this person have the best coaches, best training partners - if not, I mentally add on points. If you are in the running with no advantages then when, like Lynn, you make a change and get better coaches, better training partners and a better situation for training, then you have the possibility to make a big leap in comparison to your competitor who is already in the best possible scenario.

Why did I expect Darlene to win a world medal one day? When I was 19, I won the U.S. Open, collegiate nationals and senior nationals. (There was no women's world championships or Olympics back then.) This little fifteen-year-old brat came out in the semi-finals of the nationals and tried to beat me. No, of course she didn't beat me. She was 15! But she expected to, she came out swinging (not literally, this was judo, after all) and when she lost she was heart-broken. She wasn't happy to be fighting for a medal in the national championships when she was barely out of middle school. She was from somewhere in (I think) New Mexico and she trained with her dad, her little brother and her little sister.

For those of you would would point out that Darlene didn't get out of the pin that day and thus refutes my first point - no. My other point is that you don't judge people on a single match or tournament. Everyone has good days and bad days, or when they are young and small, can get hopelessly outmatched.

EXCEPT - my other other point - anyone I see give up in a match, I mean just decide it's too hard and quit fighting, I know will never win in that sport. It doesn't mean they may not go on and be wildly successful in some other area of life but if you don't care enough to fight NO MATTER WHAT then this particular discipline is not your passion. Go find something else that is.

I could ramble on more, but I have to get back to work.

How do YOU spot winners?

(Also, sorry I didn't approve the comments on the last post for days. I was in San Francisco and just got back.)

So you think you're tough?

I was driving to San Diego today and remembering all of the times I drove from San Diego to Los Angeles for practice. I thought, we really ought to appreciate the sacrifices these competitors in judo and other martial arts make. They have to drive all over the place to get to practice. I remembered how hard those practices were, and thought again, yes, an average person wouldn't do it. Probably I don't appreciate how tough these young people are and the effort they put out to get better.

Then I got to the luncheon I was driving down to attend. It was a reunion of a lot of the judo people who trained and competed together over the past thirty or forty years. Since I worked out at the Naval Training Center for years (before September 11, it was a lot easier for civilians to work out on the base) there were a lot of Navy guys there. There were also several guys who had been in the Marines and at least one Army and one Air Force officer.

They had served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Joe Ciokon and another of the Navy guys talked about a young man - I think they said he was 19 - who had locked himself in the boiler room of a ship that was under fire and damaged so that he could repair it enough that it would stay afloat while the rest of the sailors had a chance to evacuate. He died there and they later recovered his body.

At the other end of the table, they were discussing the assault on a cliff during World War II, guys climbing up ropes to attack the enemy from the rear - an enemy that thought they were not going to be attacked from the back because it was a sheer cliff.

Other people were talking about their service in Korea and Vietnam.

It occurred to me that, maybe, just maybe, this is one reason that people aren't so impressed with people in jiu-jitsu, judo and other martial arts. Don't get me wrong, it's really good you are doing what you're doing instead of laying on the couch eating potato chips and playing Donkey Kong. It just may be, though, that old guy who you think ought to appreciate your sacrifice more, when he was several years younger than you was in a jungle, in the boiler room of a ship or patrolling the streets in a country on the other side of the world where for all he knew, around the next corner someone might shoot him. And there was no referee to stop him from getting hurt too badly.

Just something to think about.

Why Do Some Judo Programs Have Students and Others Don't?

Look closely in the picture above. See the kids in the background? See the one against the wall? All of those kids, the one walking towards me, too, and more  you can't see outside of the picture are waiting outside for the gym to open when I get to Gompers Middle School. They're waiting for judo class.

Why do some programs have trouble getting five kids on the mat and others have students literally lined up outside the door?

There are probably lots of reasons but I can tell you three things that I do that I think make a difference.

1. I have a plan for the day. I don't wing it. Every day, when I come in I know what we are going to do first, second, middle and last. I might change my mind during the class, for example, if it seems as if students are having a hard time learning a technique we will work longer on it, instead of introducing a second new technique.

2. I have an overall plan. In general, we start with conditioning. Jim Pedro, Sr. gave me this idea about circuits at the beginning of the year and we have been doing these, on the average, three out of four practices. We've gone from two minutes of circuits to seven. The reason I like this is it is measurable and noticeable. Every kid has gotten better. It's like Jim said, if they do it, they WILL get stronger. Kids who couldn't do five push-ups in October can now do 60. Not only do I want them to get in better physical shape, my number one concern, but I also want them to learn standing technique, mat technique, get over any fears they might have about falling or attacking, learn conditioning, be aggressive without being mean, develop coordination and learn transition. I also want them to have fun. Everything we do is aimed at one of those objectives. My plan also calls for people getting better technically, so we begin the year learning basic throws and gradually move to combinations, for example.

3. I try to have a combination of predictability and variety. Predictability can be good. People like to feel like they know what is going on. Plus, if you have been coming to class regularly and I say we are going to do circuits, or we are going to do that exercise with the medicine ball where everyone is running, the students who get set to do it can see that they have learned something because the new students are just looking around. We do some of the same throws or mat techniques most practices and then I will teach a new one. I think most judo instructors, most of whom never had any other teaching experience, either try to teach too much in one day or are too repetitive and teach the same thing over and over. While I really like matwork and try to teach about 50% matwork each practice, it seemed to me that the students were somewhat better in matwork than standing, so we did all standing instruction today, although they each did about six rounds of mat work, as well as four rounds of free practice.
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