Being Hyper-competitive is a mixed blessing

Few things are an unmixed blessing.

I’m a hyper-competitive person. That has helped me in many ways my whole life but it’s also cost me in ways I am just now coming to realize. I have beaten a lot of people who had superior technical skills because I trained harder and was willing to put up with more pain both in practice and in a match.

After seeing a demonstration at a clinic of a  technique that the coach said,

“This will be so painful, your opponent will turn over to avoid it,”

I went up to him and said,

“I’m sure that will work with a lot of people. For me, and for the people who really want to win, they won’t move to a position that’s a disadvantage for them. They’ll endure it and make you pay for it later. Those are the people you really need to figure out a way to beat.”

Being hyper-competitive has helped me in business, too.

I learned from sports that you don’t win long-term by cheating but rather by working harder and learning more than the competition. I’ve applied that to my career as well. That’s one reason I have four degrees. I always find time to learn new programming languages, new technologies, read up on the latest marketing trends, even if it’s only a few hours a week. I put in my hours on the job, travel more miles than our competition. My former teammates from judo know this because I only see them every year or so.

What could possibly be wrong with being hyper-competitive?

It took me a long time to learn this - if you are hyper-competitive, you look at almost everyone and everything through the lens of "Will this help me win or not?"

 I have far fewer friends in judo than most people who have been in the sport for almost 50 years. Whether it was for a spot on a team or as a member of a board promoting policies that I really believed would help grow the sport, I looked at most people as competitors or “team mates”. Competitors keep you from winning and team mates help you win. I never had a single friend who was in my division. There was one gold medal and I wanted it.

Now, there is nothing wrong with looking at a person as someone who helps you win, since it can go both ways. It’s the same as looking at someone as a customer. I get their money but they get software that helps them or their children learn and do better in school. They don’t have to fight about doing homework to learn fractions. The same with a team mate. I get a good work out, the other person gets a good work out and we both leave the gym better.

The point I missed is that I ONLY looked at most people as helping me win or keeping me from winning. If I met someone who knew a lot about teaching counters or organizing a tournament I tried to learn everything possible that would help me win. To be fair, I would make sure they got paid or show up at their next event or whatever I could do to pay them back. Hyper-competitive doesn’t mean you have to be a selfish jerk.

What I realized, sometimes years later, was that a lot of those people had qualities and life histories that were far more fascinating than just judo or business. Some of them had careers in special forces in the military (hello, Roy Hash) or had been doing stunts for decades (Gene Lebell) or where working in civil rights law (Karen Mackey).

I think it might be necessary when you are competing to only focus on winning if you really want to be number one. Some people are there for the experience and that is fine, but that was not me.

Confession:

That line about “In the Olympics, the important thing is not to win but taking part”

I never believed that for a minute. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed almost every minute of judo practice. I even liked the cross-training in running and weightlifting - except sprints. I hated sprints and I hated getting up in the morning to run them twice as much because morning was involved. Still, the important thing to me was winning.

When I was done competing, I had put so many other things on hold, I just switched from competing in judo to competing in my doctoral program, in my career.

If I hadn’t been so busy trying to be the smartest person in the room with the most degrees, most publications and highest salary, I probably would have made more friends in graduate school and early in my career, too.

Gradually, eventually, I learned that not everything was a competition. This may seem like I am a slow learner but I am writing this because I know plenty of people who are still competing every minute and need to hear this. They’re trying to be the one with the most money, most awards and frankly, it’s just silly.

You can have friends who are not fans or potential customers. They can just be interesting people who know things you don’t or who make you laugh until you fall out of your chair or who help the community in ways you admire . 

People can be customers or colleagues and still have  interesting lives outside of your business.

 I was going to go swimming in the hotel pool instead of walking in the game preserve because we all know that swimming is the best exercise.

I still work really hard. Recently, I’d been working so much that I forgot not what day or month it was but what season it was. I was driving through North Dakota and I thought, “That corn is really high for this time of year.” 

That’s when I realized that it was not late spring but early summer.

Going from a world championship run to a Ph.D. and starting businesses is kind a logical progression because if you don't know, academia is SUPER-competitive, especially the kind of grant-funded work I do.  Getting investor funds is a real marathon.

Here is something I learned, as my grandmother would say, "más tarde que nunca" or "better late than never".

Competition can be an important thing in your life without being the ONLY thing

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Getting ready for your first competitions

Someone asked me on Instagram my advice on how to be ready for her first competition and since it is a good question, I thought I'd post my suggestions here.

Get in better physical condition

We're not talking the Olympics here and since you are just starting to compete, I'm going to assume that you could improve your conditioning a bit. In this, I find the old saying to be true:

"The best is the enemy of the good. "

People say they can't work out because they can't get to a gym, don't have a partner, blah blah blah. Here is my suggestion for anyone who wants to be a little bit better. This is IN ADDITION TO GOING TO JUDO PRACTICE AS MANY DAYS A WEEK AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN.

1.  Every morning, first thing when you get up, do 10 push-ups and 10 sit-ups. If you can't do 10, just do as many as you can. Do it EVERY DAY. It will take you 30 seconds.
2. After a week, make it 12 push-ups and sit-ups. If you didn't start at 10, just add 1 to what you were doing.
3. Add 2 more every week until you get to 50, then just keep doing 50 every day. The point is to be stronger than you were, not the world push-up champion. You will find you get faster at doing them so eventually it will take you a couple of minutes to knock out your 50 push-ups.
4. Run. Get out and run around the block. If you live in the country, run to your mailbox or wherever is about a quarter mile. Do that every day for a week. Next week, do it twice without stopping. Keep increasing until you get to a mile. Now, do that every day and just try to get faster each time. Set a stopwatch when you take off and check it when you get back.
5. If you live somewhere it is not safe to run outside, do jumping jacks or jump rope for two minutes without stopping instead. Next week, make it four minutes. Keep it up until you are going for 10 minutes straight. Do that every day.

The three reasons why I recommend this

First, a lot of people in this country can't do 15 push-ups, much less 50. Most people can't run a mile without stopping. If you have this level of conditioning, you are going to be more fit than most new, recreational players. If you lose, it won't be because your arms got tired or you were winded.

Second, there are zero excuses not to do these exercises. You don't need a gym or any equipment. You don't need a ride anywhere. Because of that, if every day you get up and do them, you are telling yourself that you are serious about winning and improving.

Third, setting a goal and accomplishing it will make you more confident. When you go out to compete, along with training in judo, which your opponent did as well, you have the added benefit of knowing that you actually went above and beyond. You'll know that you are stronger and in better condition than you were a few months ago. You'll have thought about this competition daily, when you didn't want to run or do those push-ups but you did anyway, so you'll be less freaked out when that day comes.

The way to get anywhere is to start

I'm in North Dakota right now. We drove almost 2,000 miles through several states to get here. Sure, it would have been faster if we drove and there may have been a more optimal time of year or a better route. The point is, we got here and the way we got here is that we left our house and just started driving. Eventually, we arrived.

So .... start.  Now.

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My Dream is to Become a Zebra: Thoughts on the Olympics

Three times in the last week I have received an email or a link to an article asking me to give money to a player whose "dream" was to "win an Olympic gold medal". There is only one problem here. Each one of those people has exactly zero chance of winning an Olympic gold medal. If this post causes you to call me a mean, hard-hearted old lady, save your breath. Gary Butts calls me that every time he talks to me and I've known him for 11 years and it hasn't had a bit of an impact. Let me refer you to a wikipedia article on Olympic qualification for judo. While you're there, give them some money.

Qualification for Judo at the 2012 Summer Olympics will be based on the world ranking list prepared by the IJF on 1 May 2012. The top 22 men or 12 women from the world rankings in each division qualify, subject to a limit of 1 judoka per NOC per division. Further continental quotas (Europe 25, Africa 24, Pan-America 21, Asia 20 and Oceania 10 across both sexes and all divisions) also qualify subject to an overall limit of 1 per NOC.

(Interestingly, this other article by Burton and Fallon, who presumably know better than wikipedia, say it is 22 men and 14 women.) Let me clarify this. Each division will have the top 22 men in the world qualify, but only one per country. Let's say you are #99. You don't qualify. If two of the top 22 in your weight are from France and two are from Japan then the selection moves down and picks #23 and #24. You still don't qualify. The article by Burton and Fallon goes on further to state:

This list is used to add 25 more entrants from Europe, 24 from Africa, 21 from Pan-America, 20 from Asia and 10 from Oceania. However, in this phase, only one athlete per country can qualify across all weight categories and both genders. To take Europe as an example, where 50 countries could feasibly qualify an athlete, 25 different countries will end up filling those 25 continental places. This ensures a large number of countries get the chance to take part in the Games. In addition to this, there is a maximum of two athletes per continent, per category at this stage. (For example, Africa can only send a maximum of two athletes to the women's -48kg event using this method, regardless of which countries they come from.) There are 20 further invitational places on offer, which will be confirmed between May and July 2012.

In other words, if you are an American/ Canadian/ Mexican or any other Panamerican NOT in the top 22 men you have exactly ONE spot for your country that can be given to you or any of the other 13 weight divisions. You better be the number one non-qualified person out there. If you are ranked number 99, you are not that person. Even after that, you could conceivably get one of those 20 "invitational" places based on God knows what. While the means of determining those invitations is undefined, as far as I know, you had better believe the competition is going to be fierce to get them and I don't even want to think of the political trading, in-fighting and back-biting that will ensue. If it was me, I would NOT want one of those invitational spots.

It's like the old joke about the two guys who went hunting in a forest known to have grizzly bears. One hunter asked the other wasn't he afraid that he wouldn't be able to outrun a bear. The other replied,

I don't need to be able to outrun a bear. I just need to be able to outrun you.

If you are not in the top 22 in the world and not the top-rated in your country across all weights and both genders, then your chance of going to the Olympics is limited to one of the 20 invitational spots. I think it extraordinarily unlikely that more than one of those is going to a single country, although stranger things have happened. To this point, I'm questioning the probability of these people even GETTING to the Olympics. Now, let's say you manage to somehow obtain one of those invitational spots. Let's overlook the fact that your odds of doing that are only slightly better than me winning the 2010 Olympics in luge, which, need I point out, are already over and I did not win.

If you have not managed to crack the top 22 (really more likely the top 24 or 25 since some countries inevitably have more than one in the ranking) over a four-year qualification period, by what miracle are you suddenly going to become best on the planet on a day when ALL of the best players are expected to show up and bring their A-game? What would I suggest that you do, other than quit trying to raise money? Take an honest look at your life. When I retired from competition, I was very, very fortunate that I had the man of my dreams waiting to marry me and a good-paying job from which I was on leave. I also had a very definite idea of what I had been giving up the past decade and what I wanted to move on to - having more children, raising a family, moving up in my career. Think about what else do you want to do? WHY are you number 99 or 47 in the world anyway? Did you not train enough, did you not train in the right places, were you injured? WHY do you want to go to the Olympics anyway? I won the world championships then I went back to work, got married and had more children. When the first opportunity for women to compete in the Olympics came up, I took a pass on it and have never one day in my life regretted that decision. A few weeks ago, my niece asked me if I thought a person with a masters degree from a state university would make as much money as a person with a bachelors degree from an Ivy league school. I told her, other things being equal ,no. A lot more people have masters from state schools than bachelors degrees from the Ivies. She said,

Thank you for crushing my dream.

I told her,

I didn't crush your dream. Reality did. Find a different dream.

Matwork Bottom Line: You Do Too Few Techniques & You Are Too Slow

In statistics, we learn that, if you don't know anything else about a person, your best prediction is that he or she is average because, by definition, most people ARE average.

The average person's matwork can be described by three sentences.

1. You do too few techniques.


2. You are too slow.


3. You have taken the phrase "unnecessary roughness" far too much too heart.

Let me reiterate here that I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all model of coaching. What I am referring to here is people who aspire to be successful competitive judo players at the national or international level.
Let's start with number three. Judo is a combat sport where people are allowed to hurt each other, within a fairly broad range of legal limits. Every time I make a statement like this I am deluged with hate mail from people who tell me that I am ruining judo, that I am the reason judo is not more popular in this country, because people are marshmallows and afraid of being hurt, etc. etc.

Let us now pause while I congratulate myself on being powerful enough to single-handedly ruin a 125-year-old world-wide sport, being personally responsible for causing judo to be less popular than other more dainty sports, such as football, say, or wrestling, boxing or MMA. Judo at the highest levels, if that is where you are aiming, is a rough sport and the sooner you accept that fact, the better your chances will be. The world is what it is and you can't make it into some alternative reality just by sniping at people. Otherwise, I could have avoided living through forty-below winters in North Dakota just by saying nasty things about the weatherman. I tried that, by the way, it doesn't work.



The fact is that judo is the only Olympic sport in which a person is allowed to choke you unconscious or dislocate your elbow on purpose. To expect someone to feel bad for you is like expecting the spectators to say,

"Oh, look at that poor boxer. He is getting hit. How terrible!"

If you feel that way, and some people do, then boxing is not your sport. Sell your punching bag and buy a clue. Similarly, if the things I say next offend you, competing at a national level is not your role in judo. You can have a great time in your local club, teach children or adults in a recreational program. Don't quit judo. Just know that the discussion below does not apply to you. BUT DON'T FOOL YOURSELF! If you really do want to succeed at high-level competition, get that saying, "No pain, no gain," tattooed backward on your forehead. (So you can read it when you look in the mirror!)

When you do matwork, try to make your opponent as uncomfortable as possible. The entire time you are doing matwork, if your opponent is on the bottom, she should be feeling ALL of your weight on her, preferably in such a way it makes it difficult to breathe.

When you want a grip in matwork, MAKE the opponent give it to you. If she is on all fours and you want that lapel, grab her collar and YANK her up, SHOVE your hand in where you want it. FORCE a reaction. If the person is rolled up in a ball, you could try working a hand in. You could try getting a sankaku (triangle choke for you ju-jitsu or MMA types). This probably won't work and the referee will, rightly, call matte.

In such situations, my preference is one of two things. I might grab the opponent's opposite shoulder and near leg and shove her towards her face. Or, I might push her head down, reach between her legs and grab her belt or the skirt of her gi and try to literally pull her head over heels - HARD.

Neither of those two work, usually. What both do is force a reaction where the person puts out an arm to stop being pinned or stop having her face shoved into the mat. Then I jump on that arm and armbar it. I will underhook it or overhook it, turn toward their head for an armbar, throw myself back for an armbar, turn toward their hips for an armbar or crank their head in a half-nelson for a pin.

This gets to my next point. Most people don't know what they're doing. I overheard someone at a clinic where we were both teaching comment under his breath to someone else,

"That turnover she does will never work."

He was wrong, on two counts. The purpose wasn't really to turn people over. It was to get them to THINK they were going to be turned over, so that they would be kind enough to put out an arm instead of staying curled up into a tight little armadillo shape. I had considered the alternative of whispering to my opponent,

"Hey, would you mind putting your arm out there so I could armbar it?"

But I discarded that strategy in favor of my failed turnover attempt. Sometimes, the turnover actually worked, not because it was such a difficult turnover to prevent, but because the person on the bottom realized sticking an arm out to stop it would leave her open for an armbar. However, if she did not take the simple move of sticking an arm out, she got rolled and I did pin a number of people that way. I have noticed that once a person gets a reputation for armbarring people, he or she ends up pinning a lot of people. Sounds strange, but when your opponent is focused on protecting her arms, she often leaves herself open to pins.

You do too few techniques. I harp on this a lot. I talked about my pet peeve at the training center on Saturday and I saw it (with other kids) at the tournament on Sunday. That is, people whose immediate reaction in matwork is to go to their backs and try to scissor the other person's leg. I see a couple of players that this seems to be their ONLY matwork move. The fact that your only move on the mat is a defensive one, hoping the referee will call "matte" is a bad sign already. Here is a list of suggestions, in no particular order.

• Have a PLAN from every possible position on the mat. For example, if I am on my back, my first move will be to try to push your opposite leg out and do juji gatame. If you are too close for that to work, my next option will be to go over your arm, grab the far lapel, trapping your arm, and try to use a scissors with my leg to turn you.


• Understand that having a plan and having a technique are two different things. Sankaku is a technique. One I don't personally like much, by the way. Underhooking an arm as a first resort whenever a person is on her stomach is a plan.


• Of that dozen or more moves that you supposedly have, do matwork uchikomis for your five favorite ones at least 100 times A DAY. People often find themselves in a situation where, at least two or three days each week, they don't have very tough players with whom to train. On those days they are at smaller, more recreational club where a 45-year-old CPA named Joe comes over after work and is not at all interested in being made into mincemeat by you. If you ask nicely and are not a jerk, Joe will probably let you run through 100 each of that armbar from the top, turnover from the back, choke from the front,armbar from the bottom and turnover from all fours. Speaking of not being a jerk, when you are overseas representing the U.S. and trading pins with teams from other countries, be sure to get a couple to give to Joe from accounting when you get back. And tell him thank you for all those days he let you do 500 matwork uchikomis on him.


• On days when you have more time, do matwork uchikomis for seven or eight different moves.


• Time yourself every week or two. See how many uchikomis you can do in a minute for each move. See how long it takes you to go through 100 each of your five moves. Write this number down and see if you are improving from week to week.

It's late and I have to get up and go to work in the morning - after years of telecommuting, that still seems strange - so, more discussion of how to improve your matwork will have to wait. While you're waiting, do 100 matwork uchikomis. FAST!