Bothering My Friends

Julia stayed home from school sick today. I wasn't feeling so hot myself, so I stayed home with her. After so many hours laying in bed, I got bored, so I called up Jimmy Pedro, Sr. and bothered him.

When someone whose competence I respect makes a different choice than I would have made, I wonder about it. One possibility is that they are just dumber than me, but the more interesting alternative is maybe they have an idea I haven't thought of. Jimmy had mentioned taking his team on a trip overseas and I was curious. It seemed to me like a repetition of the same failed strategy I have seen over and over, which is:

1. Young players win a couple of matches at U.S. Open or lower level tournament, placing third, fifth or not at all.


2. Coaches and parents are convinced that said player is the "next Jimmy Pedro", or now it is the "next Ronda Rousey"


3. Large quantities of money are spent to send the player to tournaments with athletes who have placed repeatedly in the world championships and Olympics, to whom player loses in the first round. Occasionally, player may beat one of these players but never places in the tournament.


4. Coaches and parents cite the fact that the player lasted the entire five minutes or beat one player in the top 10, 20 or 30 in the world, as evidence that player is "coming up".


5. This continues until the parents run out of money or the player runs out of interest. Then it starts all over with some new young players.

I asked Jimmy why he was doing this and what would be different. He said a couple of reasons, some made absolute sense. Some, I am skeptical. The first difference is that he said he would go with them to analyze what they did right and what they did wrong so they did not come back and make the same mistakes over and over. That's an excellent point. There are words for people who think they can coach themselves. "Stupid" and "arrogant" are two that come to mind. It's enormously difficult to compete at an international level against top players. When you do, you are on automatic pilot. This is when all of those thousands of repetitions pay off. The notion that you can compete with 100% of your attention and simultaneously analyze your performance with the remaining percent of your attention should be obviously blatantly ridiculous for those of you who passed third grade math.

Jimmy isn't just any coach. He has a proven track record and a game plan. I don't say this just because I like him, although I do. The fact is, if you have players on five Olympic teams, players who win gold, silver and bronze medals in the worlds and Olympics, then you do have some claim to knowing what you are doing. When he goes to these events, he has specific objectives for the players, what he wants them to do and what he wants to look for.

The second point he made, with which I agreed, was that those players would not just fly in, compete in the tournament and go home. They were going to stay and train for a week, working out with the players they fought in the tournaments. He also thought that the style of the competitors they would train with in practice was similar to the style his players would most need to learn to beat, especially given the new rule changes.

Where we disagreed, which is one place we always disagree, is that I think you shouldn't go to a tournament unless you have a solid chance to win it. Yes, anything is possible but if your possibility involves your entire division, minus you, taking the earlier bus to the venue, which is then commandeered by a crazed serial killer who mows them all down with a machine gun and then eats their livers - well, I would say that does not fit my definition of a solid chance to win.

Jimmy thinks it is important for people to get matches and to get experience fighting players at the top level. He says that the players he wants to take have all improved dramatically in the past two years (I agree there), that their judo has gotten significantly better recently (I haven't seen them recently, but if he says it, I am sure it is true), that he certainly doesn't think they are so far out of the running at these tournaments that they will be an embarrassment to the country (I also agree there).

I am still unconvinced. Definitely what he is planning is smarter and better than what we have been doing. He was too polite to ask me if I had a better idea. I am not sure. I might. I am hatching one.

Something one of my professors said thirty years ago, and I have never forgotten,

"Ladies and gentlemen, we must always remember that while Burroughs had all of its engineers at work inventing a better adding machine, Steve Wozniak was in his garage inventing the Apple computer."

Jimmy is an amazingly great coach. He's designed an adding machine better than anyone else. If I was an athlete, at this very moment, I would do whatever he said because it would be my best bet.

What we really need in this country, though, is a computer. Excuse me while I go out to the garage ...

The Product of the Choices We Make

Some really good people called me today and talked to me about serious concerns they have about the failure of some coaches to safeguard their junior competitors, especially females. They gave examples of tournaments where coaches were at parties drinking where players far under legal age were present, and the coach did nothing. They mentioned clubs where it was common knowledge that underage players were having sex and everyone turned a blind eye. These very good people very articulately stated their belief that these types of behaviors made it hard for us to retain female athletes in the sport and just in general caused problems all the way around. As one of them pointed out, if a high school teacher was at a party at the school, say for the Biology Club, and students were drinking and he/she didn't do anything, that teacher would be fired. As the president of the USJA, they thought I should do something. They did not have a good idea as to what that something was, but thought the issue should be brought up.

I agree it is an important point and I don't mean to abdicate responsibility. However, I do want to point something out, I told them. All of those parents chose the places they sent their children. Some may have made mistakes or been unaware of the situation. However, in some cases, the parents were fully aware. More than once, I have been very upfront with parents about why I thought their child should not go to a particular club. I do this largely because I wish people had been more forthright with me when Ronda was younger. Everyone was too afraid of offending someone to tell me the truth. Now, if I feel there is no way on God's earth I would send my child to a judo club, camp, clinic or tournament, I find it impossible to reconcile in good conscience standing by silently while you send your child there.

The same is true for athletes or students or anyone else. Over the years, I have known a number of athletes who drank regularly, some who smoked marijuana and some who used steroids. Now, I cannot claim to be Mother Teresa. In fact, I am sitting here writing this blog drinking a glass of red wine (very good red wine, too). However, the fact is that I am 50 years old and not competing in anything. As a competitor, I made the choices that would help me succeed. I didn't drink because judo is a sport with weight divisions and with the limited calories I could take in, there was no room for having six beers in a night. Athletes who do drink regularly have to cut those calories in other places or do drastic weight cutting, sitting in the sauna for seven hours before weigh-ins and other efforts that just make them that much less able to compete the next day. I only feel a little bad for them when they lose, because I actually felt bad for them weeks or months earlier when I saw them making those mistakes, when I knew they were going to lose.

Whether an athlete, a coach or a college student, the person who doesn't forego playing games on their Wii or computer, get up and go to class or practice and in general put a real, sincere effort into succeeding doesn't succeed. This doesn't take a Ph.D. in statistics to figure out. No one is going to check on you every night to make sure you studied or did your 100 matwork uchikomis, no one is going to poke you and make you get up in the morning to go to class or go out and run. If you don't do those things, you will likely fail, in school, in competition, in life.

My niece often accuses me of being judgmental. She'll ask me questions like,
"How can you say that person is a failure in life? Maybe he is happy working at a carwash at age 50 and sleeping under a bridge."

Maybe. Just like my children always accuse me of saying the same thing over and over (which I - usually - do on purpose), my grandmother used to tell me the same thing over and over - Every talent you have is a gift from God. Try to use it so he doesn't think he made a mistake in giving it to you.

If you have the ability to be a great athlete, a great writer, a great scientist, a great manager - or even relatively decent at one of those things - and you decide instead to spend your days playing video games, drinking beer and working out four times a week and leaving other people to, in Levinson's words, "Become a man and pay your dues to society and the species", then, in my judgment, yes, you are a failure at life. By the way, I looked up the meaning of the word judgment. It is the capacity of making decisions authoritatively, objectively and wisely. Engaging in judgment is not a bad thing, in my, um, judgment.

All of us, parents, coaches, athletes, students, need to take responsibility for the choices we make, because I guarantee you, those choices are what will shape the rest of your lives.
===== REQUIRED JUDO TIP ============
Along the lines of repeating myself over and over ... Ronda said that someone asked her at practice today why she always teaches the same thing. Her answer was that it was important they learn some specific gripping techniques and they had not learned them very well yet. She said that her goal as a coach was to make them better, not show how smart she was.

I am going to repeat myself because those of you I see at practices around the country don't seem to have been listening. I wonder about you people. I win a world championship gold medal. My daughter wins a world championship silver medal. I tell you, "Look, this is how we did it."

I would think you might at least try seriously following that advice. But no, people keep looking for the magic, easy shortcut. I will go to this club and Joe Cool will be my coach and I will live in Amsterdam for a year and I will win the Olympics.

It doesn't work that way.

I am telling you this for the last time (okay, well probably not), still, I am telling you this AGAIN.

Do matwork uchikomis. Do 50 of two different techniques, right and left-sided. that is 200 a night. Do these every night. Quit whining about not having enough partners, not having enough tough people, not living in an area with a lot of judo. Find a body. Find three or five bodies, nice people who will let you do 40 repetitions each on them. Pick a couple of techniques. If you have attentional problems and just cannot do 100 each of two different techniques, do 50 each of four techniques. Or vary, one night do two, another night do two others, the next night do all four. DO THIS.

That's the secret. There is no secret. It is work, repetition and sacrifice. Make the choice. Do it.

Madame President

To steal a favorite line of my daughter's ...

Well, I'll be damned!.


So, Jim Webb resigned today and according to the USJA by-laws, our corporate counsel and about 500 years of precedents, that makes me the president. I am not unaware of the fact that whenever I end up in a position like this it is definitely to the great gratification of some and the great dismay of others.

It is really funny because I know people who scheme, make deals, sell out friends so they can get elected to some position. Me, it usually happens because I just get really tired of seeing things not get done the way I think they should be, fume,

"Somebody should do something about this!"

and then some smart-alec like Hayward Nishioka or Martin Bregman steps up and whispers in my ear,

"You know, you're somebody."

On my list of 43 things, becoming USJA President is not even in the top 43. Actually, my list only has five things. Maybe I better make a longer list.

Actually, I think I'll probably be a better president because of that. Work is good, life is good, my kids are good, my husband still wants to be married to me after 11 years (I just verified this with him). I'll do the best I can for the next 15 months and, after that, if someone else gets elected, then I will learn to tap dance or something with the extra spare time.

Speaking of tap-dancing, I was in a meeting yesterday where the department bought lunch for our team for a job well done. We were asked what we would like as rewards for successful performance. I said I had always wanted a tap-dancing horse, but they did not give me one. So, why did they ask?

I suppose I should be serious and issue a letter about my ideas as president. (And I do have some.) So, here it is.

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It is gratifying to be given this opportunity to serve the USJA as President. We end the year with strong clubs, dynamic judo leaders throughout the country and a professional staff at our national office in Colorado Springs. I look forward to working with all of them to grow judo in the United States.

Our membership is over 8,000, our budget is balanced and we have active USJA organizers in every region. In Michigan, Deb Fergus, Bob Treat and co. are running the All-Women’s Tournament in November. The USJA will be supporting the coaching clinic and athlete clinic, with Olympic bronze medalist (and my little pumpkin) Ronda Rousey, long-time coach Vickie Daniels and other top female coaches from the Midwest.

[Ronda - Vickie and I have known each other since I was 13. We fought at Bill Horve's Decatur Dojo at a tournament every single month. Don't believe anything she says about me as a child. I was a perfect angel - just exactly like you. They were going to name the Good Behavior Award the AnnMaria Award but I was too modest and told them to name it after Mother Teresa instead.]


In Rhode Island, Serge Boussyou is already planning the next Great American Workout, an event that drew well over 100 coaches and players from New England, New York and throughout the northeast. In the south, James Wall and Jeff Miller continue to grow the USJA through clinics in every area from kata to referees to coaching. Roy Hash, in the southwest, is hosting camps, clinics and tournaments to grow judo in Texas. Heiko Rommelman and Jeff Giunta are teaching kata throughout the east coast, from the YMCA camp in New York to a clinic in Connecticut organized by our chair of regional coordinators, Joan Love. Four members of their club, along with USJA Board member Michelle Holtze and her partner all qualified for the IJF kata championships. Dr. James Lally may be moved up from Donor of the Year to Donor of the Decade.

The USJA leaders continue to work collaboratively with the USJF. Mark Hunter, in Ohio, hosts regular joint USJA-USJF workouts. Gary Goltz is hosting a joint USJA – USJF Winter Nationals in December, begun as a USJA event and now in its third year. The National Brown Belt Championships in San Francisco, hosted by Mitchell Palacio, was a USJA- USJF co-sponsored event. The USJA/ USJF West Coast Training Center continues to grow as a source for judo players and coaches from around the region to develop their skills. Several areas around the country are examining this model for possible replication in their area. Jesse Jones will be hosting the USJA Junior Nationals with strong support from USJF clubs throughout California.

Several steps are underway to support and expand the USJA efforts to provide services to all members. The USJA was never intended to be an organization run for a few members of its board of directors. It is for everyone. This means an expansion of electronic services, our website, USJA Headlines, USJA Forum, USJA Development Resources site and our two electronic magazines. Not only is the number of Americans on-line increasing annually, but the younger players, coaches and parents, the future of judo, is disproportionately on the net. I will be working with some young volunteers to bring more of the USJA on-line. If you are interested in volunteering, please email me at
DrAnnMaria@fractaldomains.com . Exciting times are ahead.

Jim Pedro, Sr. and his coach education committee will be working to increase the number of coaching clinics around the country to assist our USJA leaders in sharing their expertise with one another

I will be hosting a conference call with our regional coordinators in the near future. To find your local regional coordinator, please check here

Let him or her know what you would like to see happening in the USJA.

If you would like to be a regional coordinator – VOLUNTEER! All it takes is a willingness to work to develop judo, a good idea or two and a couple of folks to work with you. Ask Willie Williams, that’s how he started the Judo League.

I am sorry there is not enough space here to mention all of the outstanding judo leaders, instructors, players and parents throughout the USJA. Please do know that your contributions are appreciated.

Feel free to email me your comments or suggestions at any time. Together we can grow judo in the U.S.A.

Thank you for supporting the USJA!

Sneakerdoodle Zebra Interview

Julia interviews Ronda on being a vegan and other important points.



and a follow-up ending to the interview with details on the surprise tastes of fellow training center athlete, Megan

Not Quite as Perfect as Generally Believed

Very often, people say to me,

"Your children are such wonderful, accomplished people. You did a great job as a parent."

Thanks. Just to give a word of support to all of you who are dealing with less than perfect children now, let me give you a little story I remembered today.

One day, Maria was supposed to be watching her younger sisters, aged ten and eleven, but had instead gone out to do something more interesting, leaving them home alone. As I open the door, coming home from a business trip after a twelve-hour flight, I see this scene:

Ronda is at the bottom of the stairs. At the top, is her sister Jennifer with an office chair lifted over her head, poised to throw it down at her younger sister. Interrupting this domestic scene, I yell in my loudest maternal voice
"JENNIFER!!"

Jennifer glares down at me very indignantly and yells back in her most you-are-yelling-at-me-for-no-reason, what's-your-problem tone

"What?"

My chair-wielding daughter, nicknamed "The Perfect Jennifer", graduated from San Francisco State University at 21 and is now teaching school. Ronda has been on two Olympic teams and Maria was Emerging Journalist of the Year for the National Hispanic Journalists Association.

So, all of you who are dealing with problem children now, hang in there, there's hope. I do have to warn you though, that there is a lot of truth to that bumper sticker:

By the time your children are fit to live with, they are living some place else.

Why I Make My Daughter Do Judo

My daughter Julia has the kind of life that would have seemed to me, when I was ten years old, as something out of a fairy tale.
All of her life, she has attended the same private school, for the first ten years, she had the same nanny, she has lived in the same neighborhood in Santa Monica with her days filled with catered birthday parties with magicians, puppet shows and plays. Today was just another day for her when she went to the county fair with her best friend, got all-you-can-ride wristbands and rode the skyway, ran through the fun house and went up and down giant slides for 7 1/2 hours.

Why do I make her do judo? Here are several reasons:

In Julia's life, judo is probably the only time she doesn't get what she wants just by wanting it. No one can buy her a trophy at a tournament. She has to work for it. Learning to work for something is a lesson that will put her ahead of a lot of people for her whole life. I have given my daughter a lot of material things that she routinely loses interest in and that I box up and give to charity. We are drowning in THINGS in our house. What I want to give her through judo is a work ethic that will help her as a teenager, as an adult - which I am pretty sure that Hannah Montana video will not do.

Jim Pedro, Sr. explained it to me this way once when Julia was eight years old and I was worried about her competing in a tournament where I knew she would lose. That sounds terrible to say, but because she is big, I knew she would fight ten-year-olds, and that is a huge age gap. He said,

"Your children are going to fail at some point in life. Wouldn't you rather have it be now while you are there to help them deal with it instead of failing for the first time at 18 and falling apart?"

I have seen that with teenagers and young adults. Once they get to college on their own and fail an


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When I'm not rambling on about judo and other sports, I'm making games. Please check them out. You can learn math, social studies, build your vocabulary.  Here are some free games and demos for you just because I am so nice.

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exam for the first time, some of them drop out of school and go home.

Through a lot of hard work and more than my share of luck, I have been able to raise my child in a safe, secure home in a neighborhood where nothing ever happens. (If you live in a big city, you realize that this is a good thing.) As a professor, I have worked with students who were afraid to go to cities to present at conferences, or who were afraid of certain types of people.

As my favorite t-shirt said,

"There are lessons to be learned from competition, but fear is not one of them."

(I haven't seen that t-shirt in years. I wonder which of my kids swiped it? )

Yes, my daughter would prefer to sit on the couch and watch "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" rather than compete in a tournament. I make her do it because:

1. She learns that hard work is correlated to getting what you want


2. She learns to deal with failure.


3. I learn to deal with her failure. That is a lesson a lot of yuppie parents find hard to accept.


4. She learns to overcome her fears.

I make her work out in judo at least four or five hours a week because:

1. Judo is not a bull---- sport like a lot of the other activities I see kids do. I see kids who supposedly do karate, tae kwon do, cardio kick boxing, softball or other activities supposedly "hours a week" and they look like pudgy little kids. Julia used to be a pudgy little kid until a year ago when I began to take her to judo regularly. The obesity epidemic in America worries me. I see kids with high blood pressure, diabetes and all the other risks associated with being overweight. This may be the first generation in America that has a lower life expectancy than the parents. We are pampering our childre to death, literally.


2. Getting the habit of exercise, real exercise, not some phony, well-paid personal trainer telling you that you are working hard when you are not, is another benefit that will help your child for life. I am 50. I have had four children, I have one grandchild and this is how I look. I have never had liposuction or plastic surgery, all the parts I have are the original ones I was born with and I don't own any make-up. With all of the self-esteem and body image issues girls have, even more so girls in affluent families, it is very good for them to look in the mirror, say to themselves, "I look fine" and go on with life.


3. In judo, both competition and practices, your children will meet a really diverse group of people if they stay in for any length of time. At 10, Julia knows children who speak Armenian, "a language I didn't even know existed," she said, after her first visit to Hayastan. From kindergarten through fifth grade, there has never been an African-American girl in Julia's class at school, but she has known Erin Butts since she was four years old. One of her deciding factors in going to a tournament or camp is if Erin is going to be there. They eat lunch together at the training center every Saturday. Through judo, she has met kids from every race, social class, religion and ethnic group. This has made her a better person.

Winning the world championships is an amazing thing. There is nothing in the world better than standing on the podium, watching the American flag go up and hearing the Star-Spangled Banner play.

When you get so good at judo that you know what your opponent is going to do before she does it, when everything just works - it is a feeling that is hard to describe if you haven't experienced. Being best in the world at something worth being the best at - that is a great memory.

As an instructor, you cannot promise those experiences for every student. What you can promise is that all of those who make a commitment will gain in strength, courage, tolerance and perseverance. And that will last your child a whole lot longer than an American Girl doll or a Nintendo DS.


=== REQUIRED JUDO TIP =============
1. Be a moving target. If you always throw people with harai goshi, work on o soto gari.
2. Related to the above, try to make your judo an integrated product. If your best throw is harai goshi, you want to work on o soto or some other throw that is a natural result when people block that throw.
3. Your matwork transition should include BOTH transition from standing to matwork and transition from your first mat technique to your second. If was was really good at seoi nage, my first mat technique would probably be kesa gatame, because it follows naturally from seoi, but my second would be ude garame or yoko shiho, because both of those follow pretty naturally from kesa gatame.

Failing to Appease the Judo Gods

I am a hypocrite. I admit it.

For years, I would sigh and explain the less than stellar performance of one of my students to fellow coaches this way,

"Yes, Little Joey (Joanna) has a lot of talent and could be junior national champion. The parents are that type - have the kid in a million different activities, always missing practice. You know that saying - they are going to end up with a person who is mediocre in a lot of areas instead of excellent in one."

Sigh again. Now I have gone from being self-righteous to being a hypocrite, because, you see, I am now that type of parent. I told Jim Pedro today that I felt bad about Julia missing judo practice at Sawtelle the last two weeks. I have had to give a couple of lectures at work that went until past 7 p.m. and had other commitments that just interfered with getting her to practice. He asked me how often she went to judo and I explained that, in a normal week, she has six hours of judo a week - one and a half at Sawtelle and four and a half on Saturday. Then I rattled off the other things she was doing - Monday she has gymnastics, Tuesday is volleyball, Wednesday is volleyball and judo, Thursday and Friday are volleyball. Saturday she has two judo practices and on some Sundays there is a judo practice or a tournament. She is also on the student council at school and in the debate club. Then, there is homework, cleaning her room and she is an altar server.

As I listened to myself talk, I thought, "Gee, that sure is a lot of stuff for a kid."

I said that I felt guilty that she had missed practice during the week but we still were going to skip the second practice on Saturday to go to the L.A. County Fair, since it only comes once a year.

Jim was quiet for a long time. We have known each other for a while now, enough for me to recognize his reaction when he thinks I have said something really stupid.

"Six hours a week is plenty for a ten-year-old. The few months before the junior nationals, have her work out more."

Ronda pointed out to me,

"You know, mom, I started judo around that age and I was only going to judo two or three times a week. You didn't even take me to the junior nationals until I was twelve. It didn't seem to hold me back."

(You can look at the video below of her during a grip-fighting drill and judge whether she turned out okay.)



So, why do I worry if I only get her to judo for four or five hours a week? We go to judo at least twice every week, religiously. Hell, if I got Julia to MASS twice a week the priest would be so pleased he would thank God even more often than he does.

Insanely, the more involved I have gotten with judo, the more I feel bad about not doing enough. If I miss a practice to take Julia to the county fair I feel bad (and speaking of thanking God, thank God I have Tony Comfort, Ronda, Gary Butts and occasionally Crystal Butts or Jake Flores to cover when I need to be two places at the same time, like the junior nationals and practice).

I think it comes from the number of people who are constantly asking for things. I don't blame them, usually they don't have anyone else to ask. Still, after I called Deb about the coaches clinic and athlete clinic at the All-Women's Tournament, called Bill Caldwell about the West Coast Judo Weekend Camp in San Diego, called Serge to talk about having Ronda help with the Great American Workout in Rhode Island and paid for Ronda and Julia's tickets to fly to Kalamazoo, Michigan for one clinic and then turn around and fly to Seattle for another - I decided I had done enough for one day.

Jim Pedro, Sr., probably the best coach in this country, was not at the U.S. Open this weekend. Since he was at home, I asked if I could call him over the weekend for the article for his coaching column. Much belatedly, I am going to be getting out another issue of Growing Judo.

He said,

"Call me Sunday. Saturday I am going to watch my grandchildren play Pop Warner football."

In the Bible there is a quote,

"My God is a jealous god."

Well, if the judo gods are like that, they'll just have to get over it.

JUDO QUESTION AND ANSWER

In her blog one day, Ronda asked why coaches need to yell and can't just say something once, is it because they think all athletes are deaf. This video shows the answer.


Fly on the Wall at the West Coast Judo Training Center


In this video you will see...
Crystal doing a credible job of grip-fighting, attacking with a nice ko uchi, and then forgetting the entire concept of transition to newaza despite the fact that we mention it every day. You will also notice Sarah not attacking at all until she gets thrown, at which point she remembers that in judo you are allowed to do matwork when given the subtle hint of Tony yelling at her three times,
"Matwork! Matwork! Matwork!"