The Judo Quiz: AnnMaria Version

This is an actual quiz someone found on a website and posted on the judoinfo site. I couldn't resist responding to it, and since I am super-busy with work, I just edited my post from judo info a bit and pasted it here.

JUDO QUIZ Test your judo knowledge!


How long have you practiced judo? Since God was a baby.

How successful are you in competition? As a young person -- more successful than you. Now --- more successful than my guinea pig, Edward. (Yes, I do have a guinea pig named Edward, what of it? His actual name is Edward G. Robinson and he belonged to my daughter, Jenn, who lives in San Francisco. Why he now lives in my house I am still not sure.)

QUIZ

1. Americans normally do very well in other Olympic combat sports such as wrestling and boxing. Why do Americans normally place near the bottom of world rankings in judo?
Your answer: Since most international medals in the last decade have come from our two kids, I believe the correct answer is because Jimmy Pedro Sr. and I quit having children. (ooh, not like together or anything - yuck.) I am way too old and tired. If someone was rich and good-looking, they might be able to talk Jimmy into it, though.

2. There are many different throwing skills. What determines which ones you should use?
Your answer: The ones that people fall down when you do them, duh!!!

3. Can you name 5 safety rules for judo?
Your answer:

• Don't fight Ronda.


• No biting.


• No poking in the eye unless the referee and side judges are the Three Stooges.


• Don't eat an entire cheesecake right before you compete.


• If someone is about to break your arm, tap.

4. How do you properly decide how good a judo instructor is?
Your answer: (In no particular order) I try what the instructor tells me and the other person loses, or at least, the entire audience does not fall on the floor rolling with laughter.

5. Do you think any judo coach today could be a better coach than Jigoro Kano?
Your answer: Of course. I mean, with all due respect, he's dead. Were you not aware of that? Dead people are generally not very effective as coaches. Although I can think of some coaches where their students would be better off coached by a dead person, or by my guinea pig, Edward.

6. To get better at judo, is it best to practice with someone more skilled than yourself, about the same skill level, or less skilled?
Your answer: To improve, it is better to practice with someone more skilled than yourself. To impress potential dates, it is better to practice with someone less skilled and do very fancy moves. I actually did this (honest) married him and he named our daughter after himself.

7. What is the very first skill taught in your judo club? Why?
Your answer: In commercial clubs, it is signing the check. I believe the answer to why is obvious.

8. Is it important to do uchi-komis?
Your answer: Important to whom? To me, yes. To Edward, no.

9. Is off-balancing your opponent important and necessary when doing a throw?
Your answer: Physically off-balancing is recommended, but one could also try mentally off-balancing, such as springing questions upon the opponent immediately after bowing, as in "Where were you on the night of June 31, 2008 and is it true that the woman you were with was not your wife?"

10. Is it important to develop a "favorite throw"?
Your answer: Yes. My favorite throw is the one where the referee shouts ippon at the end. My second favorite throw is the one in Star Trek where Spock waves his hand and the 300 lb guy goes flying in a circle and then lands on his back knocked out.

11. Is it important to learn nage-no-kata?
Your answer: Nage no kata is very useful for punishing smart-mouth teenagers. Coincidentally (and this is really true) BOTH my daughter and I learned nage no kata as punishment for talking back to our mothers.

12. Is there such a thing as a perfect throw?
Your answer: Not when I do it, as anyone who has ever seen me at tachiwaza can attest.

13. When entering into a throw, what determines what methods of entry you use?
Your answer:Whether or not I have a crowbar and the laws against breaking and entering in that state.

14. Why do you throw to the left or right?
Your answer: It depends on the direction the wind is blowing, I am trying to take advantage of the air currents to increase elevation.

15. Is there such a thing as an "ideal build" for judo?
Your answer: Yes. It is exactly 5 feet one inch tall and 56 kg.

16. Do you see anything wrong in bowing to a picture of Jigoro Kano, the dead founder of judo?
Your answer: No, but if it bowed back to me, I would get extremely nervous.

17. Do you normally bow to people you respect, such as your parents or your boss, or their pictures?
Your answer: I bow to some people I respect. I called my grandmother ma'am out of respect. Lots of times, I ran from her, especially when she was chasing me with an umbrella (I didn't make this up, either.)

18. According to the International Judo Federation (IJF), what are the official languages of judo?
Your answer: Ow! and Yay!

19. When falling on the back and using the arm to help break the fall, which principle governs the striking of the arm on the mat?
Your answer: Gravity.

20. Should the arm strike the mat before the back hits the mat, as the back hits the mat, or just a little bit after the back hits the mat?
Your answer:Depends on who has your arm. If it is some people, you are lucky to get your arm back at all to hit anything. Just count your blessings and hush.

21. When you are at a tournament, are you required to bow at the edge of the contest area (often the edge of the red "danger area") before walking up to the line where you bow to your opponent?
Your answer: No, but I recommend it. If you are really good, it gives your opponent longer to have second thoughts and run away.

Important Lessons in Life

It was exactly a year ago, sitting in the Devils Lake Airport at 5:30 a.m, with a wind chill around 37 below outside that I decided,

"That's it. I am done traveling."

I waited a few hours, called my partner and told him that in 2008, I was going to be doing something else. My new company, The Julia Group, is doing unbelievably well for having started exactly two weeks ago today. We offered our first on-line course yesterday, Autism for Early Childhood.

In addition to the not insignificant benefit of not being in North Dakota in January and not being awake at 5:30 a.m. anywhere, my new position has a cooler-sounding title - President - and more time to spend with my daughter, Julia. Even though I am working more hours than ever, I am home more often and getting to discuss all of the mysteries of life with a fourth-grader.

Tonight, Julia had just watched a movie directed by Tim Burton called "The Big Fish". She has odd tastes for a nine-year-old. I blame her big sister, Jenn, who was discussing, 'symbolism', 'obvious metaphors, and 'cinematography' in the sixth grade. I used a lot of words my mother disapproved of in sixth-grade, too, but those were different words and my mom disapproved of them because the nuns would call her and say, "Do you know what your daughter called Sister Mary Joseph today?"

But I digress....

Anyway, walking back from Ben & Jerry's after eating more chocolate ice cream than human beings ever need, Julia asked me if I ever had any adventures, like in The Big Fish. I said,

"You mean like winning the world championships, or living in Japan for a year or living in Pakistan?"

And she said,

"No, blah blah blah. I mean did you ever have anything exciting happen?"

So, I told her about how her father and I had met on the Internet, back before MySpace or Google or any of those things even existed. He was the only person in Physics at the University of California who had a web page. I was on the faculty of a school in North Dakota and we got to emailing each other partly because email seemed a pretty cool new idea and no one either of us knew had it. It was supposed to be for people at universities to collaborate and we both were at universities. So, you could email random people and say, "Hey, I saw you have an email address and I am trying to find out..."

I was going to be in Washington, D.C. on business, and I asked him if he wanted to meet me for dinner. He bought a plane ticket and flew from Santa Monica to Washington to meet me in person. I asked her if she thought that sounded like an adventure. She said,

"Nope. It sounds to me like Daddy was desperate. Why would he do that? Why would you fly all the way across the country to meet someone?"

I told her that is a very important lesson in life - sometimes you have to take a chance. If you want to make your life much better, to have a change that is really great happen in your life - then sometimes you need to take a really big chance. She thought about this a minute and said,
"What if you had been really ugly and had a bad personality?"
I told her that was the chance he was taking. She thought about this for a moment and said,

"It still sounds to me like he was desperate."

So I chased her all the rest of the way home.

My point here about lessons, and this was just one of them on our walk, is that we need TIME to spend with our children to have these conversations, about the need to take chances, how you find a square root or why math is important. Both Al Franken and Margaret Mead, polar opposites on the comedy spectrum, said what benefits our children most isn't quality time. It's gobs of quantity time. Don't feel guilt if you have to work. I had to work - a lot - when my older girls were young. I may have had less time then but I was 20 years younger and had more patience. They turned out to be good people and I am proud of all of them. Still, I am feel very lucky to have the time to spend with Julia.

Speaking of time, and judo, when I did a special issue of Growing Judo a few months ago on the topic of Coaching Your Own Kid, I was surprised that every single person mentioned the time they spent with their child as being one of the great benefits. It's true. I think of all of the time I spent with Ronda, and now Julia, driving to practice, driving to tournaments, hanging out in hotel rooms watching movies. When Maria was in high school and in her "I know everything" phase, about the only time we spent together talking was the 45 minute drive to UCLA and back for her pole vault practice. Someone commented that they didn't know I cared about pole vaulting that much. I told them,

"I don't give a rat's ass about pole vaulting, but I care about Maria that much."

I figure I better spend all the time I can with them before they move to New York, San Francisco and Boston, get jobs, get married, have babies and the only contact we have is by reading each other's blogs.


--------------- REQUIRED JUDO TIP ---------------------------------
I can't believe I did not post this one before, because I say it all the time, but I looked and could not find it.

Gripping - far more than half the time, I estimate over 80%, the person with the inside grip wins. That is, if you have my lapel and sleeve in a right grip, for example, and my right hand is on the outside of your shoulder, you have a whole lot more opportunities to throw me than I do to throw you. You can stop me from coming in for uchimata, seoi nage and just about any other forward throw by blocking my right shoulder. You, on the other hand, can do all of those throws. If we both have a sleeve and lapel grip, we are even.

Get your grip! What exactly does that MEAN? If you are like most players, getting an advantage in gripping means getting an inside grip while not letting the other person have the same grip.

The lapel and sleeve are not the only way to get an inside grip. I am very short for my division, so that worked best for me. Ronda is about average size for 70kg. She sometimes gets a higher grip and crunches down on the person with her forearm on the inside and their sleeve. This is also an inside grip. What makes it an inside grip is that her arm is inside both of the other person's arms.

Dr. Demars has died but may be back later

When I was teaching college, there was always a long line of students always knocking at my door, asking if they could do an independent study, ask me a question about their research paper, apply for a job as research assistant, get a letter of recommendation and a thousand other things. I really loved teaching and I liked my students, but sometimes they just would not take no for an answer and I had a deadline for an article, grant or final grades that had to be met. At such times, I would hang a sign on my door:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK. DR. ROUSEY HAS DIED.
| TRY AGAIN ON TUESDAY.
| THERE IS A POSSIBILITY SHE WILL BE ALIVE BY THEN
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Students would knock anyway, but fewer of them. A few times, when one would walk in despite the sign and the closed door, I would loll over in my chair and feign death. That slowed them down a bit and occasionally they would back out the door from the crazy woman. More often they would just pause momentarily and ask, "Are you busy?"


DO I LOOK BUSY? ! These days, I am closing out the contracts on my old company and starting up a new company. I am hoping, as I said before, to be able to take a month off. In the meantime, I am very happy that the training center practices are only on the weekends as it allows me to work until 1 or 2 a.m. during the week without interruptions. I am also very happy that the training center practices are on the weekends because if it was not for having made a commitment to judo, I would truly have died at my desk by now. I am very excited about my new company and could be spending all of my time on it, except the existing contracts are taking half my life to finish out. Already spending 150% of my time on work, I am very lucky that I have judo to pull me away so that I have some balance in my life.

Of course, I may die at the training center. Last week, we were doing drills and were one person short, so Tony Comfort says, "Why don't you jump in? You're small and they need an extra person with the lightweights."

After a half-hour of running and trying to get my knees to bend (after six operations and missing all of my cartilage, are you kidding?) I finally pointed out to him that I will be fifty years old this year and a grandmother. This is another tip. Remember how old you are and that you have to be at work on Monday.

It's good to have work to take me away from judo, too.


--------------- REQUIRED JUDO TIP ------------------------
Despite the fact that Tony tried to kill me, his practice illustrated one of the many benefits of moving drills. I never realized how much my knees had degenerated until last weekend. I really am not capable of doing any throws where you have to bend and lift. What does that have to do with you? Well, if you do enough moving drills - forward, backward, right, left, to corners, etc. you will detect if you have a weakness. This will not be so obvious in randori because we all tend to do our stronger throws and position the other person where we are strongest. If your practices regularly involve forcing you to get into different positions, those weaknesses will be highlighted and you can't ignore them any more. In addition to including drills moving in different directions, include attacking or defending from different grips, e.g., when your opponent has a high grip, double-sleeve grip and so on. Just like with direction, you will find you are weaker on some grips than others. Look for your weak points. You know your opponent will. The game is for you to find them first and fix them, so when at the next tournament, she circles to your left think you are weak moving that direction, you footsweep her.

The exact same advice goes for matwork. Do drills from the bottom, top, guard, flat on your stomach, in a turtle, after being thrown for a koka and every other possible situation.

Well, That Explains Just About Everything

I started out stupid, but I have been getting smarter one piece at a time.

Years ago, my business partner, Dr. Erich Longie made a comment that cleared up a great deal of confusion for me. I could not understand why people would use political means to get jobs for which they were not within sight of qualified and why other people did their jobs half-ass when, with effort, they were perfectly capable of learning to be competent. I would go out of my way to try to help people do their job better and be frustrated when some of them seemed to show no interest in improving, in excelling.

He said,

"I wanted to be a college president because there were certain things I wanted to accomplish. I wanted ... to give students the chance to begin their college education in an environment where they could succeed and that gave them the skills to go on to succeed again in a four-year university program. ... not every college president was like that. Some want the image of being a college president. They want the respect when they walk into the room, the invitations to the conferences at the finest hotels ..... Whether it is being a general in the Marine Corps or a professor, an elementary school teacher, in every profession, you find two types of people. Some are driven to excel at their work because it satisfies their passion and goals, and there are others who want to be seen as a caring teacher, a strong leader. They want the trappings that go with it and whether they are any good or not doesn't really matter to them. "

It wasn't until I applied his words from years ago that I finally understood judo politics. It dawned on me that NOT everyone wants to be on a board or a committee because they want to "help people" or "give back to judo". They all say that because that is what you are supposed to say. As my friend Lanny Clark pointed out,

"We like to think all the people who are in judo are just like us, but that's just not true. Some people are in judo so they can make themselves feel more important. They want to be called sensei or turn people down for promotions because it makes them feel powerful. Maybe they do a lot of work, referee at tournaments at their own expense, run a judo club, but it is all for their own benefit. They aren't doing this for the same reason we do it and they aren't like us at all."

Now I understood professionals and volunteers, but I was still confused about life. I was president of California Judo, Inc. and frustrated by all the programs and opportunities we offered that athletes would not drive twenty miles to attend.

This time it was Chuck Jefferson (shown teaching) who explained,

"
I don't think you realize that there are people who don't really care if they win or not. They want to be part of a team, go to senior nationals and see how they do, but it is not important enough to them to put out that extra effort. You seem to think that anyone who goes to senior nationals goes because they want to win it. I can tell you that is just not the case. It was true for you and it's true for me but not for everyone."

Okay, here is the part where as Ogden Nash wrote, it became clear that in the race of life I was off to a slow start. I had always thought that maybe if I opened my own club, said things a different way, taught at more camps or maybe if I had been born male or was Japanese then people would pay attention to the things that I was trying to teach them about training to win. The light bulb went off when I realized that it wasn't they didn't believe me, respect me or understand me. Winning was not the reason they went to national tournaments, it was just a nice perk if it happened.

I am not the only one who has been stunned this way. One day, Jim Pedro, Sr. asked ,

"Why would people not train after they had moved away from home, taken off from school? How can you say they don't want to win the Olympics or at least make the Olympic team? How does that make any sense?"

Finally, I had figured that part out. I told him,

"Saying, 'I am training for the Olympics' makes you sound like something special. If you leave that part out of it, all those people can say is, 'I don't have a job, I am living off of my parents, dropped out of school and have no real goals. Oh, yeah, and my parents are working two jobs or took a second mortgage out on their house so I can travel around the world, get drunk and post drunken pictures of myself on MySpace and Facebook.'"

He said,

"When you say it like that, it makes them sound like real losers, huh? So I guess they need to keep saying they are training for the Olympic team."

The last piece of the puzzle was provided by Ronda and by my good friend, Dr. Jake Flores. I totally could not understand why some people who were doing well in judo would not go the extra mile to become great. These were people who COULD win. They had the God-given talent, the technique, everything. When they practiced, they went all out, they looked great. Maybe they even won the nationals. Yet, when the camps and clinics came around, they only went to about half or less. When outstanding international players were in town, they didn't stalk them, as you would expect, to get the best possible workout. If the visitor came to the person's home club, they would probably show up and go a few rounds with him or her. But they wouldn't go out of their way.

Ronda said,

"They don't want to win so much as to get the recognition. They want people to look up at them in the dojo. They want it to be announced at the end of practice their results. It's not the winning that matters."

Jake concurred,

"I call them the dojo darlings. They are the best technicians, the most successful in the dojo and everyone makes special exceptions for them if they skip practice. No one yells at them to work harder. There aren't other people slamming them into the mat. The really sad thing is, those athletes, and their parents, will skip camps, skip extra practices and avoid going anywhere they are not treated like special to protect that image, and in the end, it's nothing. I mean, compared to winning the Olympics, what is it to be the best, most respected judo player at Such and Such Dojo. But people give up the chance at the one to keep the other."

So, that explains everything. Even among winners, there are those for whom winning is a passion. As a competitor, if you had asked me why did I want to win, you could have just as easily asked me why did I want to breathe. When Ronda wins a major tournament, her feet don't touch the ground for three days, she is walking on a cloud. And then there are those who just want the image of being a winner.

Now I have explained everything. If you would like to show your immense gratitude for having all of life explained, you can send a tax-deductible check made out to the USJA to support our program at the West Coast Training Center where we are trying to produce people who really want to be winners, not just look and sound like one.

Why Judo is Better than Karate

Since my niece did not clean her room (see photo of non-cleaning karate niece at right on phone instead of cleaning her room) I have decided to make good on my threat of listing all of the reasons why judo is better than karate.

1. Judo is not done to music, thus making it something done by tough people and athletes (some of whom are the same people). Judo has kata and I have had the privilege to meet some very well-respected people in kata. Yet, not once have I seen Greg Fernandez, Brian Marks or even Eiko Shepard (who is a lady) break out into nage no kata to the tune of "Walk Like a Lady." I actually have seen this in karate.
2. Seriously, related to number one, how intimidating are you to someone who attacks you if your best response is

"Back off, buddy or I will kick around to the tune of All the Colors of the Wind!?"

3. Nothing in judo is done with fans. We have tournaments. They involve throwing, chokes, pins and armbars. We have katas. Some of them include knives and guns. No fans. I don't care if you say they are supposed to be metal-tipped or what. They are fans. Imagine if you are in that movie Sky High and the teen super-heroes meet.

"What's your name?"
"I am Throwing-Choking-Armbar Woman. Who are you?"
"I'm Fan Girl."
"Ri--i- ight. Look, maybe you can fan us when we get back from defeating the super villains. Catch you later."

Guess who is NOT going to be voted coolest in the teen super-hero class.

4. Every third person in karate I meet claims to be a world champion or the Korean national champion. They must have world championships in karate every day and twice on Sunday. As for Korea, I can only assume their national championships is by date of birth, so there is a division for people whose birth date was July 11, 1986 and so on. People in judo lie too, but they lie smarter. They all say they were seventh in the world championships (because the first five names get published). If they are really creative they say they were in the Olympics representing the country of their ancestors which is always some island nation you never heard of like Paprika or Cayenne.

5. Only in karate do you receive a trophy which is larger than the combined mass of the people you defeated. That is just plain wrong.

6. No one in judo is called Grand Master Katydid of the Owa Canal or other weird titles. This is a dojo, not the set of Lord of the Rings for crying out loud.

7. Judo throws do not have names that sound like today's special at a Chinese restaurant. In judo, one of the most common techniques is called a shoulder throw because you - I know you would not guess this - throw the person over the shoulder. The side hold is done by holding someone down from the side. Karate moves have names like "The crane of a thousand sidewinders" and "The constipated dragon." What's that all about?

8. Judo has a technique called the naked strangle, which could actually be used for strangling naked people. One might wonder, if one were me, why you would have let them get naked with you in the first place if you feel like strangling them. I can only speculate that they did something after the naked part occurred that precipitated the strangle urge. Still, I can comprehend the theoretical need for strangling naked people so judo gets extra points for both foresight and logical naming convention.

---------- REQUIRED JUDO TIP OF THE DAY --------------
Don't take karate. Take judo instead. Also, don't forget that practice is at 10- 11:30 a.m. and 1-4 at the USJA/ USJF West Coast Judo Training Center

New Year's Resolutions - A Day (make that two days) Late

The new year is a time for reflection on life, both one's own and life in general.

Life is good - but busy - which is why I am getting to my New Year's resolutions on January 2nd (uh - make that the 3rd now).

I usually try to take things one day at a time, but lately several days have attacked me at once.

I feel like that these past two weeks. It was lovely to see my family at Christmas, encouraging to meet all the dedicated coaches and parents in Springfield, Mo and Granite City, IL. Last New Year's Eve I was in Las Vegas watching fireworks at midnight. This year, I was on the Santa Monica Pier. Both times, I had worked until past 11 p.m. on one report or another that needed to get done. Last year it was for a project on training staff how to care for people with disabilities and chronic illness. This year it was an on-line course for ethics training for tribal leaders. Still, I did managed to unchain myself from my desk long enough to get out and see something besides my computer as the new year rolled in.

My New Year's Resolutions

1. Focus on the USJA/ USJF West Coast Training Center. This is not only a joint project between USJA and USJF but we have also recently been working with California Judo, Inc. Above is a picture from a camp we had last weekend. It was great. I can't wait to do it again. The players we have coming are the kind of people who make everyone glad they are involved in judo, whether it is as athletes, coaches, parents or donors. This is worth my time.
2. Start my new business. Actually, I already did. Within one hour of the new year, I had registered The Julia Group with Dun and Bradstreet. I am now in the Central Contract Registry, registered on e-grants and mid-way through the ORCA process. (This is a database for government contractors and, despite the name, has no relationship whatsoever to whales.)
3. Quit stressing. I have been worried about how successful my new business will be - I am going to offer on-line courses for people who aren't well-served by traditional offerings - high school dropouts, people entering college with skills below college level and just generally people with an attitude not appreciated in education. As you might imagine, I can empathize well with the latter. I already have three paying clients and I have started a successful business on nothing but a handshake and built up a million dollars in contracts once before, which explains why no one is worrying but me. As Ronda commented, "You're married to a rocket scientist. I don't think anybody in this family is going to be eating out of a dumpster any time soon."
4. Schedule time to enjoy life. I know that scheduled spontaneity sounds like an oxymoron, but knowing myself, that is the only way I am going to go to museums, the beach or Ben & Jerry's. Thank God for my kids. If it wasn't for Julia dragging me out to play baseball and buy ice cream from the ice cream truck, I'd probably never leave my desk. I really intend to do this, just like sales people have a quota of the number of calls they made, I am going to monitor the hours I just screw off and do nothing - read a book, watch TV or ... well that's the problem, I have done it so little there is not much in the "or" category.
5. Disentangle myself from the commitments I don't enjoy. While this sounds selfish, there are enough options to work for pay, for the community, that I do enjoy that it makes sense to select those I enjoy that most and which benefit the most people. I get so tired of that idiotic refrain from people chanting at former (and current) athletes as a justification for why a person MUST do something for them, "You need to give back to your sport." While that is true, there are many choices in ways to give back. I think the camp this weekend, the clinic in Springfield, the training center, Growing Judo e-magazine, are all ways I give back. Someone else may have a different way of giving back, like hosting a judo website or organizing a tournament. That doesn't make them scum and me a saint, or vice versa.
   
6. Learn to reflect. Over the holidays, I was lucky to visit Laura, my friend for the past thirty-four years and we got to discussing our lives in general. I have never been one of those people to keep a journal, a diary or reflect on anything really private because - well, the reason is private and I am not going to put it on the Internet. I know it all goes back to working 12 hours a day and doing judo on the weekends. It all fits together for a reason I am not going to tell anyone.
7. Learn more about judo. Come hell or high water, I am going to watch more judo DVDs, read more books and attend more clinics - clinics by other people, not me.

----------- REQUIRED JUDO TIP ---------------------------------------
Have a plan, for crying out loud! On the long list of things that drive me crazy are people who want to win the Olympics or give up school, work, their love life or anything else for judo and then their plan is

"I think I'll look up a judo club in the Yellow Pages."

Okay, well maybe that is a slight exaggeration but the truth is that ...the path to least resistance is NOT the road to success. ..Have that tattooed on your butt if you need to but figure it out!

Here are some questions for those of you who want to improve your judo in 2008.

1. Have a GOAL. A specific goal. NOT , "I want to improve my technique," but something you can measure, like I want to win the USJA Winter Nationals or throw someone with harai goshi. I would suggest not having a goal that relates to points, because those aren't that correlated with being good unless you have twenty times as many as your next closest competitors. You can place in a point tournament if only one other person shows up and he/ she isn't very good.
2. Break your goal into short term and long term. If your goal is to win the USJA Nationals in December, 2008 your short term goal might be to win a local tournament by March. Your next goal might be to win the state championships.
3. Focus on a goal that is not too far off. If you are 14, winning the Olympics is a decade in the future. It's too easy to fool yourself that you are making progress when you are not.
4. Relate your training plan to your goal. If your goal is to win a local tournament it is - what is that word I am searching for - yes, stupid - to move to Japan to get better. All kinds of people win local tournaments training right here in L.A. If you are failing at your goal, admit the fact honestly. Don't say, "I have better judo than him but he keeps beating me." If you SAID your goal was to beat him, not to get better technique than him, then you are failing at it and need to face facts.
5. If your goal is to win the Olympic Trials and you are training at the club around the corner because it is a five-minute walk from your house and you can only train three times a week because you have to work 40 hours at Taco Bell to make your car payments and tuition - you are -what is that word - yes, stupid - to think that is the right choice. I bought my first car after my first two college degrees and winning the senior nationals and U.S. Open.
   

I would say more but my niece asserts that I cannot possibly have more to say about judo that I have not said thirteen times already and she wants me to take her to karate (I have promised not to diss karate and she has promised to clean her room so no more will be said on the topic today). However, if there are still El Pollo Loco wrappers in her room tomorrow, look back here for a major litany of all of the ways in which I think judo is better than karate.

Best Christmas Present Ever

Merry Christmas!

If I was more predictable, normal and maybe just a better person, I would say that the best Christmas present was spending time with my beautiful family.

But that wasn't it, beautiful as they are. I even have photographic evidence of their beauty in the form of the picture of Jenn, at right.

If I was more curmudgeonly (oh, wait, I am!) I would say that my best Christmas present was that Jenn graduated from college so my monthly bills have been cut in half.

That wasn't it, either, nor was it my first grandchild on the way, the many medals Ronda won this year or the fact that I finally finished the first draft of that final report on the Disability Access project that I have been working on the past two weeks. Give up?

On Christmas Eve, my husband walked into the room and said the last thing in the world I expected to come out of his mouth. No, smart-ass, it wasn't,

"I want a divorce."

In fact, as outspoken as I am in life in general, Dennis and I almost never argue, due primarily to the fact that he is one of the most laid-back people on the planet. It's fortunate that we are married because if he lived alone, he could probably be dead for three or four days before anyone noticed. They would just think he was quieter than usual. No, he came into the room where I was working on Christmas Eve and said,

"Would you by any chance want to not work and be a housewife?"

He went on to explain that he had been looking at our expenses now that Jenn has graduated from college and he figured that we could get by on just one income. I laughed and said,

"You're joking, right?"

He shrugged and said he thought as much, but he just thought he would bring it up as an option. No, this is not the blog where I announce I am going to ditch the whole corporate thing and have the cleanest floors in Santa Monica. Still, I have to say I was really touched. I left home 34 years ago when I was fifteen, have been married three times and never for a day in my life have I ever had anyone else support me while I didn't work.

The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I was by the idea. Well, right now, I have two more reports to finish and a grant to write, but in February, here is my Christmas present - I am going to take a month off for the first time in my entire life.

Some of you may be skeptical. Specifically, those of you who are aware that I went to the Bahamas three times to try retirement and my record of time without working was 72 hours may wonder about my ability to take a month off work.

Those of you who think that I am going to just quadruple the time I donate to the USJA and other judo organizations, think again. I am not sure what all I am going to do but I am very excited and looking forward to it. Here is my list, for now:

1. Write articles for publication in scientific journals using the data that has been collected and analyzed on the projects on which I have been principal investigator over the past two years.
2. Learn more about HTML, CSS and PHP. I already use HTML pretty well but CSS I am far below proficient and PHP I should know more than I do, which is almost nothing.
3. Listen to all those podcasts I have downloaded on wikis, moodle and other tech topics and never got around to listening to.
4. Finally watch some of those judo DVDs that I have had around the house forever.
5. Read a book a day, including books on web design, education and just general books with no socially redeeming value like Agatha Christie or Harry Potter (actually, I have read al the Agatha Christie books but my niece informs me that there have been two Harry Potter books published since the last time I actually had the leisure to read a book for fun).
6. Update the Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc. website and move the disability section to my new company, The Julia Group .
7. Walk to the beach every day the weather is nice.
8. Play baseball with Julia (the child, not the company).
9. Read other people's blogs, not for information on technology or even judo but just for the hell of it.
10. Get rid of 90% of the stuff in the closets, in the drawers and under the beds which was just shoved there because nobody had the time to figure out what to do with it.
11. Go riding on the bike path through Venice and back.
12. Take Julia to San Diego to the museums.
    

What would YOU do if you had a month off just to do whatever you wanted?
----------------------- REQUIRED JUDO TIP -----------------------------------------
Background: When Ronda was 12, the local black belt association (Nanka) started a program for high school and college students, one of those perennial efforts around the country to help our young people move "to the next level". Hayward Nishioka was running the program, and, although Ronda was just a skinny little green belt in the eighth grade and not old enough or a high enough rank, I brought her any way. They let her stay, not because she had shown any amazing promise at that point but rather because I am a rather difficult person to say, "No," to. Let's just leave it at that.

The first day they met in the classroom instead of on the mat. Hayward had all the players watch videotapes of matches and discussed analyzing why one person won and another lost. He talked about gripping, false attacks, strategies when you are ahead or behind, and how those differ at different points in the match. I told him afterward that I thought it was way too much for Ronda at her age, but Hayward urged me to try it anyway. Since Ronda won almost all of her matches, even at that age, and like all kids, she liked to watch herself winning, I didn't see the harm in it. My view on judo for young kids is that anything that makes them enjoy it is good. The other day, Ronda says to me:

I think I really benefited from you and Hayward having me analyze films of myself and my competitors from the very beginning. I see a lot of U.S. players who will lose the same way over and over. Because you drilled it in my head from the very beginning, whenever I get a chance, I watch my matches and try to analyze every mistake I made. I also look at myself and think, if I were the other player, what would I be doing to beat me. I don't see other people doing that. They say things like , "I beat myself," or "My judo is better but he won."
I think that is just stupid and arrogant. Obviously, your judo isn't better because you lost. I know other people are studying me looking for my weaknesses, so I am studying myself and trying to find those weak points first. I want to be like trying to hit a moving target. At the same time, I am trying to see weak points in other people that I can take advantage of.

I admitted that, although I was all in favor of her doing videotape analysis when she was 15 and on, it was Hayward's idea to start so young. She must have been feeling in an unusually sweet and complimentary mood that day because she went on,

"You know, Mom, I think the thing that you did - that we did - right was to always be looking at what I needed to work on and who could help me with what I needed next. Like, you took me to those practices with Hayward. Then, when I was 16, do people really think we shut our eyes, put a finger on the map and came up with Boston? Remember how much we talked about what I needed to improve and how well Pedros was just the right fit for that? I think that is what I learned first from you and later from Hayward, to really analyze my judo. I don't see many other U.S. players doing that and I think that is one reason more of them don't win."

Ronda: Living proof that not all blondes are dumb.
P.S. For those of you who now think you are going to watch videos and become great judo players, I want to throw in the reminder that Ronda trains her ass off, too.

Merry Christmas