Are You Tough Enough?

Yesterday, I said that I was going to talk today about developing an individual athlete's matwork. Well, there has been a change of plans.

It is a cliché to say that winning at the elite level is 90% mental. If that is the case, how do we make athletes mentally tough?

The answer is that we push them out of their comfort zone. I have been told often that I am too rough and tough when I work out with young athletes. This is insane. I am 115 pounds and almost fifty years old. My first grandchild is due any day now. Are you SERIOUSLY complaining that a 115-pound grandmother is too tough for you to fight? And you want to go to the OLYMPICS? In what sport? Is petting bunnies an Olympic event now?

Yes, I was a world champion, but come on. Do you really think that someone's grandmother could go into a wrestling or football practice and make the athletes whine by working out with them, I don't care what she was back in the day. If that is the case, then your team needs a lot of work.

I want to point out that there are a whole lot of people I work out with who are not whiners and give as good as they get. Here is another point - I don't know how much longer I can do this. I am a little person. After I work out for several hours, the next day, I feel like I have been run over by a truck. Unlike a lot of people who seem to want to be running everything forever, Ronda can't move back home and pitch in soon enough to suit me. The reason I push these kids is because having to fight back, having their faced pushed into the mat when they lie on their stomach and hide in matwork will make them turn and fight. Now, when it happens in a real match, they won't expect the referee to save them from unnecessary roughness.

They will expect to save themselves!

This is what I want for the athletes I coach, both on the mat and in life.

This is the first step. We need to DRAMATICALLY increase the level of physical toughness we expect from our athletes. My youngest daughter came up to me at practice to complain one day that she had a small cut and something was bleeding. Before she finished, she turned away and walked back to her group for randori saying,

"Forget it. I know what you are going to say. You're going to say, 'Suck it up. You have lots of blood.' "

A good coach, as well as any honest athlete, knows the difference between the bumps and bruises that are a part of training and actual injury. You don't train through injury unless maybe it is your last shot at the Olympics or world championships. On the other hand, if someone stepped on your foot, accidentally bumped heads or ground your face into the mat, you don't whine, cry or sit out a round.

Good lessons for judo, good lessons for life

Here are some realizations that come with mental toughness.

1. No one is going to save you. We don't allow bullying at the training center, but we do allow people to get thrown hard, to have someone put all of their weight on them in matwork, to twist them into uncomfortable positions. If it hurts to be in that position, get out of there.

2. Accidents happen. Sometimes people bump heads, they try a foot sweep and accidentally kick you in the ankle. It doesn't make them evil people. The more rounds you go with hard people, the more likely one of them will come in hard and miss, accidentally smacking you in the eye or knocking you to a knee. You won't die. Unless it happens from the same person a lot, I probably won't even yell at him or her. Accidents happen, it's nobody's fault. Just move on.

3. Sometimes people are better than you. People will throw you, pin you, armbar you. It is not always a cheap shot, bad judo, they out-muscled you. Sometimes they are just better. Walking off the mat and trash-talking them gets you no sympathy. If they really are cheating, it has a way of catching up with you. They won't be around long.

4. No one has the right to beat anyone. "Better" is not a permanent condition. Athletes who want to get on top know this. Athletes who want to stay on top know this. Going to other clubs, to camps and to places like the West Coast Judo Training Center is good because in most dojos people have a comfortable hierarchy. It has been established who can beat who, we all kind of agree to get along. When you come to some place new, it's not like that and you have to earn your place all over again, sometimes every day. Hey, just like a tournament! You don't get to start every match with a koka just because you were last year's national champion.

How do you build mental toughness? Lots of rounds of randori with hard people who push athletes a little further than they think they can go. As I mentioned yesterday, development is gradual. I may go 85% with an athlete this week, 90% next month and 95% the month after that. When I am going 100% and still can't push that athlete then maybe he or she needs to go in a group of heavier players like with Tony Comfort or Eric Sanchez.

The best people to push developing players are often those who have just retired from competition. They are fast enough, in good enough condition and skilled enough to make young players work hard just to keep on their feet or off their backs. At the same time, those who have just retired are not competing with up and coming players, and, I have found, they usually honestly want to pass on their knowledge and help the next generation.

I think I may just set up a recruiting station outside the Olympic Trials in Las Vegas, with a sign saying,

"Did you decide to retire from competition after this tournament? Sign up here to help us build a generation of champions."

We underestimate this MTV generation a lot, I think. They have a lot to offer and we need to put them to work developing the younger players coming up behind them into a generation of champions.

How do you get tough enough? People who care about you help you get that way. You never, never, never give up.

P.S. A note on crying: I've never been one for crying. Ronda, on the other hand, cries if it is Thursday and her uchimata doesn't work. Some people think crying is terrible and against the spirit of judo. Ronda says to think of it like a face leak. If you're one of those people who cries easily and can't help it, I wouldn't worry about it. When I was at Venice Dojo, I had a five-minute crying rule. Anyone could go off the mat and cry at any time for any reason - but no more than five minutes out of every practice. If you practice 85 minutes and cry for five - so what.

Can You Help Me Get Better? Yes.

Individual Development Plans for Athletes

An extraordinarily high percentage of people who were world and Olympic medalists from this country have been coached by their parents. These included Liliko Ogasawara (world silver medalist), Jimmy Pedro, Jr. (world gold medalist and two-time Olympic bronze medalist), Darlene Anaya (world bronze medalist)and Ronda Rousey (world silver medalist). This is probably one-fourth of all individuals to win medals at that level, and certainly not one-fourth of all judo players have their own mother or father as a coach.

What type of advantages do these athletes receive? If we wanted to extend these advantages to other athletes, what would we do?

1. Give the athlete instruction and challenges at the appropriate level. As a parent, you see your child daily in all sorts of contexts. You know if your child is physically and emotionally mature enough to be challenged more. Interestingly, of the three I know - Ronda, Darlene and Jimmy - none were fighting in the senior divisions at a very young age. However, when they did enter senior competition, they were ready to win and did well from the beginning.

2. Continually, but gradually, push athletes to a higher level of physical and mental strength. At each age, every six months or a year, at least, the bar should keep rising. The athlete who wins the junior nationals in the 13-14 division one year should win the junior nationals in the 13-14 and the 15-16 year old divisions the next. GRADUAL is a key word here. I have seen far too many kids who were good juniors be sent to Paris or Hungary to fight at 16 years old, or younger, "for the experience" and get put through a meat-grinder.

3. Top physical conditioning. There is no excuse for not being in peak physical condition. Young athletes (under 13) would be doing daily push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and other exercises at their level. Older athletes would be running and lifting weights every day, with times and weights recorded every day and increased gradually over the course of the year.

4. Individual analysis and correction of throwing techniques. Each player would be monitored in practice several times each week and errors in technique corrected nearly every time they occurred so that players were not practicing bad habits. Experts would be called in to work with individual players on their best techniques. These experts would really be experts, too, invited to work with the player because of their specialized knowledge and not as pay back for a favor because they voted for someone in the last election, slept with someone else or didn't rat on someone who was sleeping with someone else in the last election.

Then there is matwork .... I have a whole lot to say about that, not surprisingly, but since I now have what some of my friends refer to as "an actual job", as opposed to that whole telecommuting vice-president gig I had before, I need to actually get up in the morning. So... my thoughts on matwork will have to wait until tomorrow.

Money Intelligently Applied

It has often been said that the problem with judo in America is definitely NOT a lack of money. If the same people were given $10 million they would have the same lack of results.

If that is true, and I personally happen to believe it is, and what we lack is something money can't buy, what exactly IS it? On a more positive note, what would make a difference?

Three things.

1. Will


2. Knowledge


3. Implementation

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.

-- Peter Drucker

In judo, I have met many people with wishes. They wish that an American could win an Olympic gold medal. They wish that they could coach a winning team at an international tournament. There is an enormous gap between wishes and plans and the bridge between that gap is commitment.

Our athletes, coaches, parents and administrators need the will to make life better. They need the commitment to change and the faith that they can.

The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

-- Vince Lombardi

Finding the unwavering will to be excellent is not easy and most people never accomplish it.

Let's assume for a moment that you really, truly have the will to create an excellent program. What would you do?

• You would establish judo programs all around the country, in all types of areas, urban, rural, suburban, affluent, low-income. You would do this by implementing an effective coach/instructor certification program that would allow the reasonably intelligent teenager or adult to teach a basic course after three or four months of well-designed training.


• You would create an informational program aimed at getting your certified instructors in community centers, YMCAs and other facilities around the country. The easiest way to do this in many cases would be to train their existing staff.


• You would develop a coach program for black belts that would allow them to work with the beginning instructors as mentors and also to take a group of yellow belts and move them up to the brown or black belt level.


• These programs would include QUALITY audio, video, print and web-based information that instructors could afford.


• You would write for grant-funded programs to provide uniforms, entry fees and travel expenses for low-income programs and for children at risk. Judo has a great deal to offer these children.


• For youth who show promise, defined as exceptional performance and motivation, you would provide individualized development plans. These would include an assessment of the person's strengths and weaknesses and matching them with the coaches who could best meet their needs. Coaching would be a team approach. Those who are experts in matwork would work with youth who need further development in that area. If an athlete needed help with harai goshi or seoi nage or fighting left-handed players, the coach who could best help would be asked to step in. And guess what, that is not always the same person!

These are just a few steps to start. We can do this. Guess what? We are doing it. Hayward Nishioka has developed an assistant instructor program. Jim Pedro, Sr. has developed a coach education program. We have a USJA/USJF West Coast Judo Training Center. Gary Goltz and I have solicited grants from non-profits, corporations and donations from individuals.


Do you have the will to work to make things better? Email me at DrAnnmaria@fractaldomains.com . We'll put you to work. Don't have any time? Send your donation to USJA Development Fund, 21 North Union Blvd., Colorado Springs, CO USA 80909. We'll put your money to work - intelligently.

Juggling

Reports of the death of the job market seem to have been greatly exaggerated

In my prelude to retirement, I actually applied for four jobs. In each case, it was something I was really interested in doing, enough that I would even consider going back to work. Well, I got invited to interview for five jobs. Yes, the math is a little off there. One of the jobs was advertised by an employment service and apparently, when they found out I did not take the first job, they sent my resume on to someone else.

I started work at one university today as a statistical consultant, and, at the same time, received an email inviting me to teach a statistics course at another university. The people could not have been nicer. The campus is beautiful and they have all the geek, tech-y stuff I love. So, for the next few weeks I get to install new software, check out documentation for new features and just generally play around, if that was my definition of playing around, which it is. It doesn't get much better than that.

There were a few things that made me go, "Hmmmm." However, having moved very often when we were children, my mother had standard advice when we came to a new place,

"It's amazing how much you can learn with an open mind and a closed mouth. Too bad most people approach new places just the opposite."

Sometimes, mother really does know best.

It is pretty strange for me, though. Unlike most people, I have been able to telecommute for the past several years. My mornings involve pulling on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and walking three steps to my desk. Getting (more) dressed up, driving to an office are things I haven't done in years. On the plus side, it doesn't involve being in an airport and changing time zones two or three times every month. When you are filling out a form and under "time zone" you honestly don't know which to put, your life is a little hectic for sure.

This week, I have a webcast on culturally appropriate outreach, so I need to prepare for that. I am also working on an evaluation of a National Science Foundation Project and writing an article on effective computer-based training. Yeah, and there is some judo stuff in there. Growing Judo is due by next Saturday to Adam Stevenson, our proof-reader/editor/graphic designer. I want to get Julia to judo more often and I have a development plan that is SO overdue it is not funny.

Often, I hear friends say they wish they could just do judo for a living, but I have never felt that way for a minute. Someone once told me,

"Jugglers don't get paid very well and sometimes the balls hit them in the head."

Maybe, but I have seen a lot more people who looked bored when they were knitting than I have seen bored jugglers. So, I don't think I will learn to knit just yet.
==========REQUIRED JUDO TIP =========================================

When really good coaches make blanket statements,
"Don't do one-handed judo. It is inferior."

They don't really mean it.

All absolute statements are wrong. Even this one.

When you are first learning judo, and even when you are a mid-level player (I consider a first-degree black belt - a shodan - a mid-level player) your coach may say such things to you as, "You should only focus on one side. Don't switch to a left grip if you are a right-handed player."

Does this mean you should NEVER fight left-handed? No. What it means, usually, is that your coach sees a weakness, such as you allow the other player to force you to change your grip. Similarly, if an opponent wants to fight you one-handed (which I always liked to do), then you better believe that person feels that he or she is at an advantage playing one-handed judo.

START OFF learning the basics. Do two-handed judo (by which I mean you have two hands on the opponent's gi.) Get a few good throws on your dominant side. Learn a turnover from your back, the opponent's back, your hands and knees.

Drill the basics. When you have a solid base, THEN you can go off and be the exception, fighting one-handed, switching from right to left . No one starts out as the exception, although sometimes they end there.

Regional Training Center: I Know Why We Are Doing This Now!

Whenever a person becomes a champion, all sorts of interesting stories surface about their early years, with one common thread, none of them are true.

For example, Ronda was NOT one of the "elite" local players when she was younger. Yesterday, a visitor to the training center commented that he had heard about her when she was 16, but this was five years after she started competing and right before she made her first U.S. team. Until that time, the only people who could pick her out of a crowd were our family friends and the people in her division she was beating.

When Ronda started judo, she was a skinny little kid who was far behind all of the other 11 and 12-year-olds who had been in judo five or six years already. She would lose in the tournaments and people would say comfortingly,

"Don't feel bad, that girl has been the national champion five times. You just started."

The picture above is Ronda at 13, holding her eight-year-old cousin, who was almost the same size. When future Olympic hopefuls were mentioned in our local development meetings, Ronda's name was never one of those brought up. Not only was she not placing in the senior nationals at age 13, I didn't even ask for an age waiver for her to compete in them.

What does this have to do with the training center? When I look at the advantages Ronda did have it was that she had me, a former world champion, training her every day. (If your response is, "You think you are so great. You are so conceited!" - go back and read the previous post on ducks. Having a world champion help you every day is a good thing. ) She also had as resources a whole group of my friends. There were terrific people like Hayward Nishioka who helped her with tactics, gripping and videotape analysis, who was always giving me DVDs and videos so I could be a better coach for her. Blinky Elizalde and Willy Pena taught her uchimata. Later, Wayne Yoshimura, gold medalist in the Police and Firemans Olympics and Brian Marks, world medalist in kata, helped her with it more. Tony Mojica taught her how to train for competition. Trace Nishiyama taught her drop seoi nage. There is a very long list. At the beginning, all of them helped her for a simple reason - I knew them and I asked them. One example really stands out. We were at a camp before the Junior U.S. Open. Ronda was a 12-year-old green belt and I saw Irwin Cohen standing by the side of the mat. I pulled her toward him and said,

"My daughter could really use some work on her grips and that's what you are really known for. Would you mind working with her on them, please?"

As I stood by the side watching, someone came up to me and said,

"I thought you didn't like Irwin. Why did you ask him to help your daughter?"

That's got to be one of the dumbest questions I was ever asked. I replied,

"She needs to work on her grips. He's one of the best people in the country for that. What the hell difference does it make whether I like him or not?!"

The fact is, I don't have a thing against Irwin personally, I like him as much as I like anyone else, but that is completely beside the point. The first time I asked for an age waiver (for those of you who don't know - this is a form asking the national governing body to waive the minimum age requirement for a specific athlete), Ronda was 14 years old and it was for her to attend the U.S. Open training camp with Pat Burris, Neil Adams and Maurice Allen. I knew each of them could help her in specific areas. If it had been someone else, Pat may have said,

"This is a fourteen-year-old purple belt who has never competed in seniors and been in judo only three years. I am sorry, this is far too much above her level."

Instead, he trusted my judgment and let her come. Much of the camp, he and Maurice Allen worked with her themselves because our "elite" national players couldn't be bothered.



What does this have to do with the training center?
If special advantages could be provided for Ronda, why not for other kids? Why could we not create a training center where athletes who really wanted to get better could come and learn, where on a weekend a kid could learn seoi nage from Joey Nawa or uchimata from Blinky Elizalde or a half-nelson from Gary Butts or juji gatame from me or tai otoshi from Carlos Mendez or sumi gaeshi from Ronda Rousey.... Why not?

I know why I am doing this. It is to give kids who want to get better another opportunity IN ADDITION to the ones they already have. It is not to take them away from their clubs and coaches but to add to what their clubs and coaches are already doing. I believe in this. See that sign when you come into the training center? It says on it,

"BELIEF IS STRENGTH."

There are people who said it could never happen. There are people who said that the USJA and USJF could never work together. But enough of us believed in it that it DID happen. There are still people every week that run down what we do. They say our facilities don't look as nice as some others (I priced the space Frank is letting us use for free - the same amount in that area rents for $1,600 a month). They say our athletes are not all brown and black belts so they are a waste of time.

Those people used to bother me. Interestingly, they never bothered Tony, Ronda or Gary, proving that my fellow coaches are all smarter than me. They don't bother me any more. I know this program will survive, be strong and grow. Because belief IS strength and we believe in this. Children shouldn't have to have a mother who was a world champion or a father who was a world team coach to have a shot at achieving their best. They shouldn't have to meet someone's definition of "good enough" to train or train with. They are good enough because they have the heart to come in and train extra days. They are good enough because they weren't willing to accept someone else's definition of them as not worth the time and effort, not one of those who are going to make it. I believe in those kids and I believe in what we are doing.

My friend, Lanny Clark, now chair of senior development for USJA, who has known me long enough to have seen both Ronda and I compete once commented,
"You know what you and your little girl have in common? When you attack, both of you have wicked intentions. You are just determined the other person is going to lose and even if you haven't the best technique or the best angle of attack you overpower them by sheer determination."

This time, we both have good intentions. We intend to keep pulling and pushing until we have the best coaches available to work with ALL of our kids and can offer opportunities to ALL athletes and coaches who want to make judo better.

If you are saying to yourself that good intentions are not enough, then you really don't know me very well.

Believe it!

As for those of you who would like to see the training center fail, who would like to see the USJA fail or other bad intentions (and before you say, "Oh no, that's not it", take a good look. Why are you tearing things down instead of helping?)

I am reminded of the lines from Harry Potter:
Harry Potter: That even though we've got a fight ahead of us, we've got one thing that Voldemort doesn't have.
Ron Weasley: Yeah?
Harry Potter: Something worth fighting for.



And you? What are you fighting for?

Are you kind of a duck?

"I felt like a wolf being bitten to death by ducks."

The comment was made by a friend of mine, a former great competitor, about his experiences with administration of judo programs. This sentiment has been echoed around the country, and I have sometimes felt the same way myself.

The situation repeats over and over. Someone organizes what he (or she) hopes to be a great judo experience. They find instructors with outstanding credentials; hard-working, motivated players attend; generous, kind-hearted people donate mats, money and facilities to make the event possible. Then the ducks start.



"There was no web page for the event."
"The start time/ date/ location wasn't listed on the flyers."
"It started half an hour late (or more)."
"The email was not sent out until three days in advance."
"People came in the back door/ late/ early and did not get charged."

There are three responses to the ducks.

1. Feel very depressed because all of these are valid points. Events should start on time, everyone should pay the same amount, flyers should have start times, dates and locations.


2. Get angry at the lack of appreciation for the great judo opportunities, funding provided and best efforts put out by the judo players on the mat.


3. Get angry and then get depressed.

I tend to fall into the "none of the above" category because a few of the ducks are among my friends. In life in general, it is best to sincerely try to understand the other person's point of view. When I listened to a couple of "ducks",they did not think they were being unreasonably harsh.

"After all, how hard is it to get a flyer together, get a sanction and put something up on a website?"

This made me laugh, and I replied,
"Well, it is not very hard, for you. However, do you ever stop to think that those same judo coaches who you are criticizing don't understand why you cannot watch a video and immediately see that the reason blue lost is that he let white get an inside grip while he took an outside grip and that made blue vulnerable to a leg pick? Wasn't that obvious? We all think the things that are easy for us are easy for everyone."

If you are a duck , are you a good duck? Are you the kind of person who criticizes administrative failures (of which there are indeed many) because it seems so easy to you? If so, please email me at drannmaria@yahoo.com. The USJA could desperately use the services of people like you. If you would rather work for the USJF , your local yudanshakai or the state governing body, believe me, they ALL need people who can organize a clinic, create flyers, get a sanction, handle pre-registration and the thousand other tasks of putting on an event. To most people, it is NOT easy.

If you are the kind of person who criticizes others because you get some pleasure out of putting down the efforts of others, because it makes you feel better about your own lack of accomplishments, then I feel sorry for you. At least all those wolves are out there trying their best to hunt down opportunities to make judo better, while you are just pecking at them. You are a very bad duck!

What if you are a wolf? (Sorry I don't have any pictures of wolves. This was the closest I could come and if your immediate comment is a sarcastic, "Well, that isn't very close," then you obviously fall in the bad duck category and should not be reading this paragraph anyway because it does not apply to you.)

Here is what has worked for me and kept me from quitting 1,000 times. Hang out with other wolves. Get support from people who are positive, encouraging and have the same goals you do. When people criticize the West Coast Judo Training Center, my fellow coaches, Tony Comfort, Gary Butts and Ronda Rousey, are always the first to come to the support of our players and our program.

"We believe in these young people and their potential. It doesn't matter what other people think. I see how hard they train."

"If someone doesn't want to be trained by me, I don't want to train them. I'll pour everything I have into the players we have right here."

Today, Carlos Mendez, who represented both the U.S. and Puerto Rico in international competition, just happened to drop by the training center. He was a great inspiration to all of the players and a great help to everyone from teaching sankaku to players having trouble to helping with harai goshi to jumping in during randori. I had not seen him compete in years and it finally dawned on me it was the same person, who had just moved to L.A. He didn't come in and say, "I won this and this and this."I had to ask him, "Have I gone crazy or are you the same Carlos Mendez who..?"

Stick with the wolves. If you can find some nice ducks to help you out, be nice to them and count your blessings.

As for the rest - ignore them. They're just big ducks and you're still a wolf.

So Much for Doing Nothing

Contrary to the predictions of my family and friends, retirement has not found me with so much excess time on my hands that I have been blogging three times a day and taken to cleaning the bathroom floors with a toothbrush in a new-found role as compulsively neat housewife. Quite the opposite, this is the longest I have gone without posting in a very long time, and, as far as the bathrooms go, well, I am wondering if it is illegal to use cleaning solution to kill the fungus on the ceiling if it has evolved enough to have its own duly elected government.

So, what exactly have I been doing? First, we took a team of six athletes from the West Coast Judo Training Center to the Ocean State International. These events this year are always a bit nerve-wracking for me because we are just getting started. None of us have a lot of experience working with these particular athletes as coaches, and some of the athletes themselves don't have years of experience in judo. However, they go above and beyond every weekend. With a program barely six months old, I wasn't sure how things would go against clubs that had been around for five, ten years or more. For some of our players, this was their first trip away from home.

So.... how did it go? Six players, nine medals. One gold in the junior division, one gold in seniors, three silver medals in juniors and three bronze in the junior divisions and one bronze in seniors. Considering our oldest player was 17, it was a pretty amazing performance. The training center is off to a great start.


After the tournament

Because I am old, I would go straight to talking about the camp, which was on Monday and Tuesday, but I guess I should mention the party on Sunday night which, according to many young people, all of whom dance WAY better than me, was a great time. Gary Butts and I were there keeping an eagle-eye on our young athletes who stayed on the dance floor as far out of our sight as they could so that they could actually have as much of a good time as possible without leaving the room. We did get the chance to discuss plans for the training center which include the camp by the sea in June and, hopefully, hosting Serge's club (Mayo Quanchi) and others from the east coast at the USJA Winter Nationals in December to repay their hospitality.

Although we have been known on numerous occasions to embarrass young athletes and our own children, who are sometimes the same people, neither Gary nor I danced nor took incriminating pictures. This may be due either to our new-found maturity or to Crystal and Amber's threats to kill us in our sleep if we did.

The camp was interesting. The first day we had practice from 4 to 9 pm and there were 55-60 people, including a large team from China, a few from Ecuador, one from England, a few more from Poland and players from California, Massachusetts and, of course, Rhode Island. Although Serge doesn't usually do games at his club, he was asleep with exhaustion after all of the work of the tournament, so I abandoned my new-found maturity and we played a bunch of games that involved chasing people around the mat until you were too tired to breathe. No small children were killed although a couple of adults appeared near heart failure. Ronda, taught arm bars and gripping, while I was relegated to the under 12 group as I was judged to match them in both maturity and height. We worked on combinations, both standing combinations and combinations from standing to matwork. If you can't visualize the latter, then you should have come to camp.

The second day, we had sixteen people, one each from England, Ecuador and California, two from Massachusetts and the rest from Rhode Island. Ronda Rousey and Kayla Harrison both did a terrific job teaching their variations of o uchi gari. Ronda and I taught matwork combinations. Maturity is greatly overrated. In the test of who is most immature today, Kayla came up with a new game I hadn't seen before and Ronda and Malinda Bridges tried to tie a net over Serge while he slept. To the great disappointment of all (except maybe Serge) he woke up and caught them in the act.

Both days, Sensei Jim Hirai was in town from Seattle and graciously helped at every turn, from teaching matwork to the black belts in a special early session to helping the five-year-olds with tani otoshi and everything else in between.

A question I get asked a lot ....was I disappointed that there were only 16 the second day?

No.

Pat Burris told me years ago that if you wanted to know who is going to win, go to a camp or clinic and at the end of the last practice, see who is still there, who went the extra mile, came to every session, didn't leave early. All of the people who come to camps and clinics show dedication above average. All of them will benefit.

Those who are at those sessions where it is dark, rainy, cold, late and a hundred other reasons not to be there after fighting two days over the weekend and working out five hours yesterday --- that group is where your gold medals are found and no minute working with them is ever wasted.

It was a great time.

The Great American Workout is at Mayo Quanchi April 26-27, with Ronda, Kayla, me, Jim Pedro, Sr., Serge Bouyssou, Garry St. Leger, Harry St. Leger, Parnel Legros and Bill Montgomery as clinicians. Show up. It will be a great time.

Oh, yeah, and when I wasn't doing judo, I wrote a presentation for a national webcast I am doing next week on culturally appropriate outreach. So much for doing nothing in retirement.