Judo in Chile and the World Judo Federation

Not that anyone asked me, but since that has never stopped me before, I’m going to give you my opinion on judo in Chile and the World Judo Federation. Keep in mind that this is based on one tournament - the Chilean national championships, which I watched today .

First, the good impressions:

1.The competitors get major points from me for attitude. I saw lots of attacks, lots of ippons both throws and pins and only saw 2 stalling penalties out of all of the matches.

2. There were a lot more counters than you'd normally see in tournaments in the U.S. You don't see a lot of counters at U.S. tournaments and at this one in Chile I saw a few successful counters and quite a few more attempts.

3. There were quite a few throws for ippon.

4. People were generally quite nice, both competitors and referees. I was just some random old lady off the street who didn't speak terribly good Spanish and they didn't know me from Adam. Still, everyone I asked was perfectly polite and willing to take their time to answer my questions.

What I think could be improved

I saw no grip fighting, literally, zero.  

Nobody blocks a high grip- which might be related to the counters, since if you have a high grip and come in off balance you are more likely to be countered. However, if you have a high grip and can bend your opponent that prevents him or her entering a lot of throws.

Matwork is rudimentary.

Not only didn’t I see a single choke or arm bar, I didn't even see a single attempt. I actually asked one of the black belts waiting to compete if chokes and arm bars were not allowed at this tournament. He said, no, they were allowed and maybe I would see some. I didn't.

While there were some turnovers, and more turnover attempts into pins, they were not very deliberate. If you've read Winning on the Ground (what do you mean, you haven't?) , you know I'm usually the one for hitting hard and fast when the situation presents itself, as opposed to Jimmy's 47-step moves, so for me to say the matwork needs more deliberation is really saying something.

There were no matwork combinations. I didn't see anyone try a half-nelson. No one tried to do matwork from the guard, either as offense or defense.  The only defense was to pancake out.

On the other hand, generally both players tried to attack when on the ground, instead of one just laying there and trying to wait it out until the referee stood them up, so that was good.

World Judo Federation

As for the World Judo Federation, I don't know exactly what their rules are but there certainly were far less penalties called than in the typical judo tournament. That's a good thing. They let the players compete without stopping the match a lot to tell them they couldn't grab here or don't touch the leg.

I did see one player grab the leg and nothing happened. I asked a competitor who told me that was legal.

From watching, it reminded me of Freestyle Judo. I went to the freestyle nationals a few times and there were very few penalties called and the players were a lot more aggressive, in a good way, with less vying for grips and more attacking than the typical judo tournament. I'm not being a hypocrite here when I just criticized the Chilean players for not grip fighting. I think you can overdo it.

My recommendation would be if you are into freestyle judo you might want to check out their Panamerican Judo Championships next year and give it a go. Probably USA Judo would have a cow but if you are doing freestyle judo, USA Judo obviously isn't dictating your life.

You know what would help you if you went to South America? Spanish! AzTech Games can help you brush up on that high school Spanish you forgot.

Truth: Our games were developed for teaching kids math and some are bilingual to so kids who English is their second language can play, too, but about 10% of our users are people wanting to improve their Spanish - including me.

Positive Lessons from Judo Con

I learned a lot at Judo Con in Kansas City last week. It was a really positive event, with 54 people from 12 states and Chile (me) in attendance. The limit was supposed to be 50 attendees, with a focus on club leaders interested in improving technical skills, growing their martial arts programs in both size and quality (shameless plug, for example, by focusing on academics as well as athletics). However, there were a few young blue and purple belts who wanted to come and how can you say no to kids who want to do judo, so they slipped in for the technical sessions.

I learned a lot about marketing and social media from the sessions James Wall and Lester Martell did on how to recruit martial arts students. One lesson that really stuck with me was this quote from James,

"Every new white belt I get is a precious little nugget. I take care of them, polish them up like gold. Do you know how much time, effort and money it takes me to get a new student into my school? Take care of those new students! Don't take them for granted."

He's really correct, not just for judo, but for business in general. How much do we take care of our new customers versus just going back out there looking for more? I could go on quite a bit but you could listen to the Judo Chop Suey podcast for a lot of detail.

The biggest takeaway for me, though, was a personal one. Several times during the weekend and thought,

"I am surrounded by good people."

Usually, when I go to a judo event there are mostly good people there but some who are complete assholes or plain out frauds. We all know them, the people who have an eighth-degree black belt and flat don't know much judo.

At this event, every single person was either someone I had known for many years and knew was a hard-working, intelligent, honest person doing the very best he or she could to make the world a better place in their own way.

This is your reward for being a good, honest person - you get to be around people like yourself.

If you're all about pretending to be a ninth-degree black belt, you aren't going to get on the mat and actually roll around doing arm bars with us. No one on the mat was there to impress people. We were having fun. I grabbed Caitlyn, Madelyn, Sandi and Julie at various times and said, "Hey, let me try this move on you."

It's not often that I've been in a group of this size and thought to myself, "I can see being friends with every single person in here. These are the people that help their neighbor with a flat tire, take the time to talk to a kid who is having a bad day. They are also people who, regardless of age, keep learning."

I felt very privileged to be there.

This is my day job. I make games that teach math, history and English. Get it for under two bucks!

Conversation with Yoda

Okay, I confess, I wasn't really talking to Yoda, from Star Wars but my old friend, Steve Scott, who is married to my even older friend  (in how long I've known her, not in years) Becky Scott. Steve has written a dozen books on judo, sambo, conditioning, combat sports and everything related. You can buy most of them from Turtle Press. They're all good.

Becky was a teammate of mine on the U.S. judo team. She and I both went to the Panamerican Games and won gold medals, and both went to the world championships and won gold medals. I won mine in judo and she won hers in sambo wrestling.

Steve and I got to reminiscing about old times for over an hour and I made him late for dinner. I'm sure Becky will forgive me. In that time we ran over a whole host of subjects but here are a few I thought were particularly interesting:

• Hypocrite much? The lack of respect for judo matwork. I've talked about this in other posts and it is true that MOST judo players do not have matwork as their strong point. That doesn't mean that judo players who are excellent mat technicians don't have very, very good matwork. Steve mentioned some judo coach who was complaining when commentators said that Ronda's armbars were "jiu-jitsu skills". I told him that was the most hypocritical statement I'd heard this year because that exact same coach criticized me when I taught matwork at a jiu-jitsu school saying that judo people should leave matwork to "the experts". So, let me get this straight, I'm a world judo champion who won 99% of her matches with groundwork and good enough to teach my daughter who is an Olympic & world medalist in JUDO but not good enough to teach white through brown belts in jiu-jitsu? And then you criticize that judo matwork doesn't get much respect?
• The short memory for when judo in the U.S. didn't suck. Sad, but true, when I was competing we were at our peak, which is sad because I thought we would be going up from there. Women I competed with who also won world and Olympic medals for the U.S.  - Darlene Anaya (world bronze), Margie Castro Gomez (world silver and bronze, Olympic bronze), Lynn Roethke (world and Olympic silver), Mary Lewis (world bronze), Eve Aronoff (world and Olympic bronze) and Christine Pennick Lincoln (two world bronze). These are women who were my TEAMMATES. How awesome is that?
• How people helped one another. Diane Pierce Tudela, who was my HERO when I was a kid, armbarred me in the finals of the U.S. Open when I was 17. Several years later, I moved to Los Angeles and when I saw her at Tenri Dojo the first thing I did was ask her to teach me that armbar - and she spent countless hours doing just that. I won more matches with that armbar than I can remember. You can see some variations of it in my last post.
• Ronda's decision to move from judo to mixed martial arts. I have mixed feelings about this (no pun intended). I love judo and it would be nice to see Ronda win another Olympic medal for the U.S. On the other hand, she is an adult and has to make her own choices in life. In MMA, she has her expenses paid, she gets paid when she wins, sponsors pay her to wear their gear while judo players are begging people to donate a dollar so they can go to tournaments to qualify for the Olympics. Obviously, I made different choices than her, but I can understand why she made the choice she did and I support her.
• Freestyle judo is starting to take off. There are competitions in several states and there will be freestyle judo in a world martial arts competition this year. I'm hoping I can take some players to the freestyle nationals next year. It really is a fun tournament. Some people don't approve of the lack of formality at freestyle tournaments, but that's one of the things I like about it. The referees stay out of the way and let the players decide who wins. If you want to wear a red gi with a pink shirt underneath, you don't get thrown out of the tournament. (Although Steve, Becky and I all reserve the right to laugh at you for looking like a complete dork.) In freestyle judo, if you pick the other person up and slam him/ her on the back, you win, you don't lose because you touched their legs without saying "Mother, may I?" 
• Some people want to be the coach they never had. When Steve said that one of his players commented that "All your life you've wanted to be the coach you never had," Steve said that he felt that described him perfectly and it described Jim Pedro, Sr., too. Some people have a real dedication to coaching and I think it probably does stem in part from feeling that they didn't reach their own athletic potential due to lack of a coach.  I love judo and I like coaching but I don't have the same passion for it that I did for competing. Personally, I was really lucky to have some very good coaches. On the other hand, I do try to give my children the family I never had.  We try to be that which we never had - I thought it was an interesting idea that explained a lot.