You Need to Change Your Focus from "Not Losing" to Winning

I had a long talk with Jim Pedro, Sr. yesterday. Since I am working on the West Coast Judo Training Center website and drinking cognac, I am too busy to write much today, so I thought I would just repeat here one point he made that I thought is probably really important for a lot of players and their coaches.

(Too busy, not too drunk. I didn't have THAT much cognac. Dennis drank most of the bottle. He says he feels no guilt about it, either, since he was the one who went to the store to get it, he paid for it and he brought me the glass upstairs while I was sitting at my computer doing "judo crap" as he so lovingly puts it.)

Jim was talking about one of the players he used to coach, who was a very successful competitor around my age. Let's call him Bob, because that definitely was not his name. Also, because if you spell it backward, it's still Bob. He said,

"You know, Bob would win all the local tournaments, throw everyone in randori and when he was younger he just could not win the junior nationals to save his life."

I said,

"And when he was in competition would he attack all of the time but he often came in too far away and did not pull it off the way he did in competition?"

He said,

"Yes, you remember him that well?"

I said,

"Nope, not at all. He reminds me of someone I know. Go on - what did you do?"

Jim said,

"The light went on one day when he was fighting some kid in the finals, someone who was really good, and he came off the mat and said, 'I only lost by a koka.' I was a pretty young coach back then and a lot of this was new to me, not like now when I have spent thousands of hours watching matches, and I grabbed him and said, 'You're playing not to lose. It doesn't matter that you lost by a koka. You lost. You didn't throw him because you were bent over and trying not to get thrown.' Now here's the thing - my kid back then and your kid now are not attacking in the match to throw, they are attacking not to get thrown. That is smart defense and it will keep them from getting a penalty, which is what a lot of defensive players get, and it is certainly better than not attacking at all. However, it is just that , defense. He may not realize it but he is fighting not to lose. If he was fighting to win, he would be extending on his seoi nage, not just underneath with the person standing over him."

I asked,

"So, how did you fix it?"

He answered,

"Well, come on, AnnMaria, it's not like it is a one time fix. I didn't have a talk with him and he was suddenly better. Some people fight that way their whole lives. You have to tell him that it is not winning and losing to focus on when you are young, it is doing things right. Talk about extending on his throw, throwing for ippon, scoring on the opponent and that is what he needs to do. Tell him to forget winning and losing for now. If he is kind of a macho kid, saying he needs to not be afraid to lose will hurt his pride enough to make him go out and take more chances. That is what it is all about you know, a sense of pride, not wanting to let your parents down, your coaches down. Change the meaning for him, it's not about winning or losing it's about scoring on the guy. It is not once you need to tell a person this. It is over and over, before every tournament, maybe even before every match. The good news is that he has the technique, the conditioning and the heart. You just need to change his focus and he's there."

Future Olympic Greats: Why No One Appreciates You

Those adorable children on the right represent the next generation to grow up thinking I am a mean old woman.

Whether I actually am a mean old woman is a subject open to debate, but if I am, it is not for the reason that some of our "future Olympic greats" think me and my colleagues are grumpy old men (and women).

Have you heard these lines:

Talent like yours comes along once in a generation.

Your coaches don't appreciate you. They treat you like a kid. If I was your coach, I would treat you like an adult. I would respect your judo.

You train so hard and sacrifice so much, you shouldn't have to work for a living, these judo organizations should be supporting you so you could be competitive against those other countries.

It's a crime that you have to pay your own travel expenses! You should have a sponsor. Someone should go out and get funding from corporations for athletes like you!

I'll guarantee you didn't hear any of those lines from me. Why not?

Very likely, you hear that kind of stroking from people who are not at all objective. These aren't always evil people. Quite the contrary, they may include your girlfriend/ boyfriend, your good friends on your judo team - and yourself. Everyone likes to consider themselves in the best possible light. That's very normal.

On the other hand, there are people who are blowing smoke up your - uh - judo gi - because they have an ulterior motive. They want you to vote them into some judo office, change to their club and let them coach you or support them for a position coaching some national or international team.

The poet Robert Burns (yes, I have read poetry once or twice, usually against my will) wrote

"O would some power the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us"

Here is my gift to you ... how I see the "Future Olympic Greats" in judo who get pointed out to me at every junior national, regional and senior national tournament. I think I speak for a lot of the "uncaring old people" out there.

Unlike your mom, the person who wants to get with you after the tournament or that guy that wants to be your next coach, I have zero motivation to be anything but objective. I have been around a very long time. Talent like yours probably comes along on a fairly regular basis. Have you set any track records? How about in the bench press? Is there any data to support your belief that you are a great athletic talent? You won the junior national championships? Three times? That's very nice. There are about 100 divisions in the junior nationals. There are five or more junior national events each year. Even if you consider that some people win two or three of them, that means that you have 300 or so junior national champions EVERY YEAR, often in divisions of less than ten people. Are you really talented beyond all others? Here is a simple quiz:

1. How many times have you come in first in a division larger than 20? That would put you in the top 5%.


2. How many DIFFERENT people did you beat this year? Again, if you won the junior nationals three times and beat a total of ten different people, that places you in the top 10%. Not bad, but not once-in-a-lifetime greatness, either.


3. Have you won any international tournaments? If so, how many people did you beat? At some junior Panamerican tournaments it is possible to win two matches and be the gold medalist. Since these tournaments are self-funded, being first out of the people who could afford to fly to Brazil is a good experience, but, again, it does not mean you are a once-in-a-lifetime talent.


4. On how many different continents have you won gold medals?


5. Have you placed in world or Olympic competition?

You're probably a reasonably nice, intelligent, hard-working person. That doesn't make you one of the greatest talents of our age. An enormous amount of effort and sacrifice does that, on your part and from those that care about you.

How much do you really sacrifice? How many times a day do you work out? How many tournaments do you compete in each year? How many training camps do you attend? Do you own a car? Have you taken a vacation in the last two years?

Here's the deal -- I have seen a thousand people like you come and go. I am a little sad for each one that doesn't make it. However, if you can't find a way to train twice a day, you can't compete in local, regional, national and international tournaments, you can't make it to training camps - then why do you expect other people to sacrifice to give their money to you?

A mother yelled at me once,
"You have no right to talk to these kids like that! You have no idea how hard they train."

On the contrary, I know exactly how hard people train. It is evident watching them at practice and watching them compete. If you are dying out on the mat after 10 minutes of randori, it is quite obvious how hard you train. If you can't take it if someone who is flat better than you throws you over and over or turns you every way but loose and you give up in a fight, it is evident how hard you train.

I know how hard you train and how hard you need to train to win at the world level. The gap is evident.

Jim Bregman - world and Olympic bronze medalist - laughed as he said to me,
"All of these young people say they cannot win because they don't have the money to train, unlike the briefcases full of money you and I had when we were competing."

Jim's family saved up for one plane ticket to Japan. He stayed there for years and supported himself teaching English. I went to Japan as part of a Study Abroad program with my university.

One of the annoying things about my husband is that he has every Simpsons episode ever and has played them until he has memorized every word. The Simpsons are unavoidable in our house and every possible incident from the birth of our child to the death of a pet reminds him of a Simpsons episode.

It has worn off on me, for which I will never forgive him. The Simpsons episode you bring to mind, my young future Olympian was on the topic "Let someone else do it."

A few years ago, two young men accused me of being a bad person because I would not write grants to get money for them to travel. At the time, I was doing fairly good business as a grant writer. I was speechless. Now that I have recovered my speech, let me give a brief explanation of how things look to my generation.

"You are not my child. I have children, who I dearly love who I intend to put through college, send to summer camp or buy a new computer. I have friends. I have a job at which I make the money you think I should spend on sending you to France rather than going to the Bahamas with my family. You don't live in my state. You will probably never contribute to judo in any way that affects me personally as far as opening a club in my area, holding a clinic to teach kids or helping out in anyway. I am not sure why you think individuals around the country or corporate sponsors should give you money.Your attitude about sacrifice seems to be, -Let someone else do it. You should give up the money you made and give it to me. From your point of view, if I cared about judo in the U.S. I would give you money so you can compete internationally. Since you haven't placed at the last five international tournaments, in fact, since you haven't gone past the second round, I think I will spend the money I have set aside to help judo teaching transition to newaza at a camp in Rhode Island. It's my opinion that activities like that might increase the number of people in judo so that eventually you have to beat 50 people to win your division at the junior nationals."

I care about judo. I just don't care about you. I have seen a thousand people like you come and go. After a while, you quit getting attached to them, out of sheer self-defense.

You know who does care about you, though? Those mean coaches who are yelling at you to train harder. You should listen to them. And maybe, just maybe, you will become that one-in-a-lifetime talent. When you do, look me up.

Next Time, Ask the Guinea Pig for Judo Advice

Have you ever heard anyone use the expression, "She's smart as a guinea pig" ?

No? You know why? Because guinea pigs are only slightly less dumb than a box of hair. In fact, come to think of it, they somewhat resemble a box of hair, both in general shape and, well, hairiness.

Still, there are certain people who ask my advice on judo who I think would be better off asking a guinea pig. This would be preferable because the advice would do them just as much good and the guinea pig would have much more free time and probably not much on its schedule, so it would be far less wasteful to ask it than me.

Here is an example that has happened - and I am making a rough approximation here - 12,437 times, most of them from the same four or five people.

"How can I/ my child get better at judo?"

My answer:

"Practice more matwork. From what I see your matwork is limited to one or two techniques that are not very reflexive which makes it clear to me that you don't work on them very often. How many times a week do you do your best technique on the mat? Maybe 20 at the most? How many times do you do your second-best technique? Fifteen? With that number of repetitions, you are not going to be very good at matwork. Your defense is mainly wrapping the person's leg or waist and hoping the referee calls matte. We have practice at the training center every Saturday and some Sundays."

"Well, I can't make it because my club has practice on Saturday morning."

"I completely agree that you should go to your club's practice. We also have practice on Saturday afternoon."

"After my club's practice I am too tired to come."

"We have practice some Sundays."

"But, you see, Sundays are my only day to study/ visit the family/ talk to my guinea pig."

One of my favorite people in judo I only had this conversation with once. It went like this:

"How could I get better at judo?"
"You could come to the training center on Saturdays for more practices."
"Yeah, but my club practices on Saturday."
"Of course you don't want to skip your club's practices on Saturday afternoon. It's only right to have loyalty to your club and I totally respect that. But we have practice on Saturday mornings, too."
"All right, I'm not going to lie. On Saturday mornings, I'm too hung over from Friday nights."
"Uh, the getting drunk on Fridays is probably not helping your judo too much."
"Yeah, you're probably right about that, huh? You know what though, I love judo and it has been great for me, but I really don't want to be as good as Ronda bad enough give up partying at my age."

Now there is a person smarter than a guinea pig. The way he sees it, he gets a lot of positive things out of judo. He has a job, he has friends and a nice life. His goal isn't to win the Olympics. It is to get the physical, social and mental benefits of judo and he has done that. He is also very honest with himself.

On the other hand are the fingers I want to slap the other people with ....

I have been told very self-righteously by some people that,

"You tell young people you don't think they can win the Olympics! That is terrible! This is their dream, how dare you try to take it from them."

PARENTAL ADVISORY WARNING FOR THOSE WHO HAVE THE EMOTIONAL STRENGTH OF A THREE-YEAR-OLD. WHAT I SAY NEXT WILL HURT YOUR FEELINGS.

There is a whole world of difference between dreams and delusions.

Ronda has dreams. What those people who don't come to practice have is delusions. I don't know a lot of things in this world that are unconditional. In fact, I can only think of two.

1. The love mothers have for their children. I love my daughters no matter what. (This in no way precludes me from smacking them upside the head if they deserve it.)


2. The commitment it takes to be number one on the planet. That means practicing the hardest you can every day of your life. No matter what.

If you want to be the best in the world there are really only two reasons for missing practice:

• Death. Your own or an immediate family member and no, the guinea pig and the cockatiel do not count as immediate family members, nor does anything else that is going to get buried in a shoebox nor anyone you cannot tell their birthdate and middle name without looking it up.


• Birth. Either giving birth or the birth of a child who you had a part in conceiving. (No further details are necessary, thank you, I am old and conservative.

Other than that, you need to be at practice.

RANDOM JUDO THOUGHTS OF THE DAY

Check out this great video of matwork. I loved it. I am DEFINITELY way too old for the music, though! It kind of made me sad watching it to realize that I actually used to be that fast. My advice - people who want to win should watch it several times. This is the speed and intensity with which matwork is done at international levels.

Favorite quote from the training center this week:
"I wasn't crying. I was breathing. What? Why do all of you people always say I remind you of Ronda?" -- My daughter, Julia.

Continuation of people in judo for whom we should be grateful, because Illegitimi Non Carborundum is some of the most useful advice passed down from the classics. (Since, as an actual Ph.D. it is my obligation to provide information which could not possibly be useful in any situation imaginable, I should point out that how one actually says "Don't let the bastards get you down," in Latin is Noli nothis permittere te terere. )

Tony Comfort- works as an engineer at Raytheon, is the parent of a young daughter, runs the MORNING practice at the training center every Saturday. He is going to Mississippi for a clinic as part of the state games. He is coaching our players in Las Vegas, at the state championships and wherever else we can hit him up.

Lanny Clark - who I have known forever and a day - is the senior development chair for the USJA, organizing our junior team going to Toronto in July, went as Manager to the Korean Open. Actually he did way more than that. Ronda made her first U.S. team at 16. At the time, the U.S. players would go to international events with no uniforms, no coach and no manager. There was no way I was letting Ronda go to Korea alone at 16! Lanny called his lovely wife, Laura, back in San Francisco and asked if she would mind terribly if he bought a plane ticket and flew to Korea as team manager. Then, my other wonderful friend Jake Flores, Terry Kunihiro and several others each put $100 on the table and told me to call Jim Pedro, Sr. and ask him if he would go as a coach for Ronda, Jimmy Pedro, Jr. and the rest of the U.S. players since I already had the money for his plane ticket and they were not going to take it back. Lanny made the hotel arrangements, found transportation from the airport to the Eastern Korea Nowhere tournament site and along with his own luggage, took the boxes team jackets (my other wonderful friend, Frank Sanchez got them all winter jackets with USA on the back so they could look like a team and not freeze in Korea.)

People Who Are Growing Judo

Happy Easter! If you are Jewish, have a nice Passover (or whatever it is next month). If you are an atheist, have fun biting the head off of a naked mole rat (or whatever it is that atheists do).

In my effort to appreciate the wonderful people who are doing a good job growing judo, I thought I would just start by mentioning the people we often don't thank or think about, in more or less alphabetical order.

Maurice Allen - member of the USJA coaching staff, 2006 keynote at the USJA Summit, head instructor at Sport Judo in Virginia, interviewed for the special issue of Growing Judo on coaching your own kid and working with us on setting up an exchange program to take a team to Scotland.

Aaron Kunihiro who has never once in 50 times said "no" when asked to help with a camp, teach at a clinic or anything else, up to and including driving Ronda from Boston to Rhode Island for the Ocean State International so she could coach our West Coast Training Center Team. At 18, Aaron is one of the nicest people I know and is proving the prediction I made three years ago that he was going to be the next one after Ronda to rise to the cream of the crop. (You people who ignored me about Ronda and Aaron might want to think about NOT mocking my predictions in the future.)


The entire Butts family, from Gary Butts who coaches at the West Coast Training Center after having put in 10-12 hours for the LAPD, his three gifted daughters who NEVER miss practice and his lovely wife who drives the girls when Gary has to work overtime.

Serge Bouyssou who does everything for his judo club from having 20 kids stay at his house for a camp, to running an international tournament to, when I called him at 11 p.m. to say, "I need your club for two days to host the Great American Workout in April" responded not "What the hell?" but "Sure, no problem."

Jim Bregman, who I may never forgive for coming to see me every few months when I was in Washington and talking to me for hours on end until I finally gave up and agreed to run for the USJA Board. Still, he has taught me a lot about judo, been a good friend and watched my back every minute. He also came back to the USJA in its darkest hour, after a great athletic and professional career, when it needed him and he didn't need a damn thing from any judo organization. He is a judo player, a scholar and a gentleman.

Martin Bregman who is a great referee, a good judo teacher, willing to share his knowledge with anyone at any time and another good friend. Not only has he been willing to pull me aside at tournaments and give me advice ever since I was twelve years old (yes, he is that old!) but since both of us had a spouse we loved very much die and leave behind young children, he understands a lot that most people never will (and for that, they should be grateful).

Patrick Burris - who has never hesitated to do me a favor, from granting an age waiver for Ronda two years in a row to attend training camp at the U.S. Open, starting when she was a "nobody" green belt, to flying in from Oklahoma at the last minute to fill in for a judo clinic to being my hero when I was a teenager watching from the balcony at the Kodokan. (He did kind of look like Elvis back then.)He has always been a good friend despite those who advise him that it is politically unwise. He is living proof that there are really only two groups - those who know judo and those who don't.
============REQUIRED JUDO TIP ============================
Do matwork uchikomis every practice.
Do matwork uchikomis every practice.
Do matwork uchikomis every practice.

I said it three times because I really meant it and I am prevented from coming over to everyone's house and personally slapping you with a kendo stick for not doing it.

Seriously, most people practice their best matwork technique maybe 25 times a month and their secondary or tertiary ones 5 or 6 times a month. This is less often than they practice their favorite standing technique in a singe practice. And you wonder why your matwork isn't as good as your standing technique? THINK! And if you don't know what "tertiary" means you can look it up here. And no, it is not related to syphilis in this case. Few people get rich doing judo so you better become articulate and well-educated.

THE REPORTS OF THE DEATH OF JUDO HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED

Or Pay attention if you don’t want to miss something good

Among certain crowds, it is a hobby to get together and talk about how judo is going downhill, this new generation has no work ethic, parents can’t be bothered to drive their kids to practice, etc. etc. Stop right there. As much as I hate to distract someone in mid-rant by throwing in facts, it seems that every picture we received for this month's issue of Growing Judo had a large group of judo players, from the training center practice on the front cover to the West Point team traveling to Japan to the clinic in Denver with USJA mini-camp coordinator Paul Nogaki. This month isn’t the first time I had to leave out some of the many events on which we received notification. Not wanting to send you all a 64-page magazine to download, I had to restrict what was included to only events that would draw a regional or national audience. I apologize if your event was left out.
Stop again. Think about the really great people you get to know in judo. I must admit to being as guilty as anyone as focusing on the people who seem to do all the wrong things for the wrong reasons. We have to stop that and remember the terrific people we meet in judo, like Willie Williams, one of the founders of the Connecticut Judo League, who I finally got to meet in person at the Ocean State. Like Ronda, who even though she is training for the Olympics took two days out to come coach our team from the West Coast Judo Training Center and another two days to help with the training camp afterwards, along with her teammate, Kayla Harrison (anyone who took pictures, please send for the next issue).
In this issue you will find an invitation to apply for a junior training camp in Toronto, Canada. You will have the opportunity to train for five days with 300 athletes from the U.S. and Canada. There is an announcement of a camp overlooking the ocean in Carlsbad, California, another with Doug Tono in Chicago. Doug is one of the most modest guys I know. Before he settled down and became the director of the USJF Nationals and a kata judge he was winning international gold medals including in the Dutch Open and U.S. Open. He’d never tell you that, so I just did. Serge Bouyssou is running a three-week camp in Rhode Island. The camp in North Carolina has European stand-outs Nick Lowe and Neil Adams, former world champion. The Liberty Bell is coming up – always a huge tournament. Reserve June 29-30 for judo. Jimmy Pedro, Jr., tournament director of our own USJA Junior Nationals, held June 29-30 in Boston, will also be running a camp in the week after that tournament. Mitchell Palacio and the folks in northern California are bringing back the national brown belt championships and this time they have added a novice division. It is ages 15 and up, also on June 29-30 in San Francisco. READ THIS MONTH’S ISSUE CAREFULLY. Not only will you get some great ideas about coaching, teaching and competing, not only will you learn what clubs are doing around the country, but you will also see a LOT of opportunities for you to learn, compete and generally have a good time.
Oh, speaking of people to remember – THANK YOU to Bob Treat of Southside Dojo who donated $700 to the USJA Development Fund this month! Through the generosity of our wonderful donors like Bob, we can afford our outreach program that includes: Tony Comfort, who represented the U.S. in the 2004 Paris World Cup and was in the 2004 Olympic Trials will be doing a clinic in Mississippi in June, part of the re-introduction of judo in the Mississippi State Games. Thanks so much to Keith Worshaim for making this happen. We are also providing our regional coordinators with issues of Koka Kids magazine to help with their events. Roy Hash, Grass Roots Development Chair. is doing a judo demonstration in Texas and giving the magazines to the junior players as a “thank you” for helping with the demonstration. Joan Love, New England coordinator is giving these as door prizes to junior players who attend the Great American Workout in Rhode Island. The USJA office has a limited number of editions left. If you have an idea for an outreach event, contact your regional coordinator. Don’t know who that is? Look here:
http://www.usja-judo.org/committees/development/regional.html

In case you are wondering, yes, this IS my editorial for the March issue of Growing Judo, which is now in the hands of the ever-wonderful Adam Stevenson of Wisconsin who proof-reads, spell-checks, edits, lays out, revises and generally keeps the magazine from looking like it was put together by mentally-challenged monkeys. Even better, if it doesn't get out by March it will now be his fault and not mine! You can't ask more than that from a person.

There really are so many people who are helping the USJA and judo in general, I think my next blog will be on all of the people, by name, in alphabetical order, who have helped out the USJA, the development program and me or my daughters as individuals. I may write one after that devoted to the people who piss me off, but I might need to drink some more cognac first.

Matside Coaching: Blatant Plagiarism

The post below is copied verbatim from Jimmy Pedro, Sr.'s column in Growing Judo this month.

(Note: You might think appropriating someone else's column for your blog is a new low in laziness. Not exactly. If the March issue of Growing Judo is to get out while it is still March, I need to spend my time on that. I really liked his column this month, so I thought I would reproduce part of it here.)

Matside coaching
by James Pedro, Sr., USJA Coaching Chair

I don’t think matside coaching is calling scores that aren’t there or calling stalling on opponents just to win a match. I never say anything to a referee that I don’t believe to be true. I may not always be right, but I believe I am at the time.

Having said that, you need to be a student of the sport so what you are saying matside can help your players. Know the rules, know tactics, really study judo matches at tournaments, on DVDs. Take every opportunity to learn how and why people win contests so that when you are in the coach’s chair you can speak with authority.

The next thing to keep in mind is that you have to teach your students at every “matte” to look at you so that you can relay the information they need. The hardest thing is to program the students to do what you are telling them to do whether they agree or not with what you are saying. That comes with confidence in you. The hardest part is for them to commit 100%. The technical part is easier. Once one or two students commit to following your direction and start to win consistently, it is easier to get the rest of the students to follow.

...... read the rest of this article in the March issue of Growing Judo which, I promise, will be out while it is still March.

Japanese Judo Isn't Quite as Japanese as Generally Believed

When people complain about judo players in America that "don't follow the traditions of judo as taught in Japan", I wonder to which Japan they are referring. Last night, I watched the 70 kg matches from the 2004 Olympics. Easily, the most physical, aggressive player in the tournament was Masae Ueno, the eventual gold medalist. She ripped out of grips, dragged her opponents around and when she knocked an opponent down, she JUMPED on her. Watching these matches just reinforced for me that the biggest weakness in the workouts of most Americans is a lack of intensity.I am happy to see that many people, at least around southern California, are starting to take that to heart. Not only are more people coming to the training center, but they are also going to other clubs like Tenri, Mojica's or Hayastan to get in extra practices with more challenging players.

Some of the same people who will argue against teaching gripping or matwork because, "I believe in a more traditional Japanese judo" don't seem to believe in the part about training every day and doing an hour of randori every practice.

The truth is that the stereotype of "Japanese judo players" doesn't fit every judo player in Japan any better than any stereotype ever describes a whole group.

Here is one accurate perception of Japan, though. There are more people doing judo and, on the average, their competitors train more hours a week than ours do. Even the people on the Waseda University team who were not the most gung ho trained at least five days a week AT JUDO.

A second positive trend I see around the country is people seeking out not just more intensive practices, but simply more hours of practice as well. It is finally starting to sink in with more and more people that you can't be an international competitor training four hours a week. Over the next few years, we may see a change in perception of who "the good clubs" are. Until recently, if you trained five or six days a week, that in itself brought your players above the crowd. Now that more competitors are going that route, even if they need to practice at two or three clubs, expect to see players from a lot more clubs placing at the national level. And that is a good thing.

Not everyone will come to the training center. Some people don't like our style of coaching and some people plain don't like us. (It is a false rumor that I asked a member of the LAPD to be on our coaching staff just in case someone decides to come in and shoot me in the back. Actually, I asked him because I believe he is a good coach, but, hey, if you have to have somebody watch your back, having someone armed with a deadly weapon is not a bad first choice.)

Wherever people get in their extra practices, whatever pushes them harder, it is a good thing. Enough of that and we may start seeing American players beat the Masae Uenos of the world. It just might happen sooner than you think.

---------- REQUIRED JUDO TIP -----------------------
I stole this one from Gerry Lafon. Don't imitate how the champions train. Imitate how they trained when they were your age or at your level. The most extreme example of this is people who begin judo and want to randori all the time because "that is what the champions do". I guarantee you that those people you are imitating spent years learning technique, doing drills AND randori to get to the level where they are now.

Have patience. I often get asked how my daughter Julia, who turned 10 today, compares to her big sister, Ronda, at the same age. I always tell them that Julia is way better, since Ronda hadn't even started judo at that age. Right now, I am trying to teach Julia to get her feet in the right place when she does a throw, when to pull up on an entry, to follow up into matwork and to not become another statistic in the epidemic of childhood obesity.

Build a solid base of techniques. Maybe if you build a base of technique and don't drive your ten-year-old to compete every weekend of the year, you won't take home first place from every local tournament. Maybe if you drill and drill your youngster on drop seoi or a running leg pick, you will coach the national champion in the 7-8 year old division this year. However, what usually happens is that within a couple of years, the other children have learned to avoid your player's one technique and without having developed the kind of work ethic one gets from doing a difficult task without an immediate payback, your player is ill-prepared to begin building a broader repertoire. There were a half-dozen girls that beat Ronda her first couple of years in judo. All of them quit a long time ago.

Maybe Julia will become a national champion some day and maybe she won't. I don't know. What I do know is that, whatever happens, she will look back on the time she spent on the mat as a generally good part of her childhood. Eventually, she will learn a substantial amount of judo. After watching me work with my daughter last month, another coach suggested helpfully,

"You know, harai goshi really isn't that easy of a throw for little kids."

I told him,

"That's okay, she's not going to be a little kid her whole life."

Train for the long-term, because that's where you're going to spend most of your life.