An Honest Answer to How to Improve U.S. Judo

My answer to the question, "How can we improve the international competitiveness of U.S. judo?" is given in my latest attempt at a podcast.

"What is wrong with judo in the U.S. and what needs to be done about it?"

This is part one of however many I find time to do. In short, I think we need to start with an honest assessment, from top to bottom, of what our weaknesses are, and then we need to address those through major changes in our training and coaching. But hey, I took the time to record this, so you may as well listen to it.

In fact, I recorded it twice, because it was hard to hear the first time and I did it louder the second time. The amusing fact is, I am a small person with a soft voice. People just claim I am yelling at them because they don't want to hear what I have to say.

Back to Judo (It's All Will's Fault)

I received this email from Dr. Will Dampier today

I noticed you haven't posted to your judo blog in a while ... although I do enjoy your programming/stats blog as well.

If you're looking for an idea I have one for ya:

I remember you posted a while about teaching foot-sweep and remarking that nobody ever kicks hard enough ... especially for beginners.  I thought about the problem and came up with a fun idea.  I had all of the students bring in a pair of large bath towels which we wrapped around are ankles/shins.  Then we did all of the common foot-sweep drills but concentrated on kicking hard.

The last time we did this I had a few brand-new students who had no preconceptions about how foot-sweeps are "supposed" to work.  After only a few practices they've become some of the best ashi-waza players in the class.

You can see a video of it here: http://animoto.com/play/P0fz7RqsqUfsoneTQ1Ao1Q

So, now that I am back to posting and back to judo, you can all blame Will!

Actually, I have been extremely busy at my real job. Today was the second of two national conference calls on the Ticket to Work evaluation for social security. If you live in California, and get a survey in the mail - send it back!

I just finished the FIFTH paper for the Western Users of SAS Software conference. In case you are interested, they are on super-computing, data visualization, programming and functions, procedures and graphics application. Okay, I knew you weren't interested, who am I kidding. Fine! Then I won't tell you about the paper for the other conference on evaluation of ethics. Some of these judo people made for great case studies. Really, I'm kidding about that part - so far anyway, but I may work some examples in there.

SO-O-O  all that being done for now I have a chance to get back to judo. Remember that program that Ronda started up at Gompers Middle School? Well, it's starting up again on Friday, with me teaching the first session. She and I are going to trade off teaching, since both of us have pretty limited time. Urban schools face a lot of challenges and a lack of resources. It's been an education so far working with the teacher and principal to see how they overcome everything from (literal) fires at the school to (very real) concerns about the kids' safety walking home. I'm looking forward to this school year. I've been turned off by the true motivations of a lot of people in judo who want to work in the public schools. Despite the lip service you get, most of them just want more money in membership fees in their organizations or to run 100,000 kids through the mill so they can come up with a dozen who might have shots at an Olympic medal.

Christopher Jencks, who wrote the book Inequality, ended it with the statement that the reason he was for having playgrounds for eight-year-olds wasn't that it increased the probability of them earning a higher income as adults. It was because it increased the probability of them having a good time when they were eight. So, yeah, it's like that. These kids face an uphill climb in their lives and if they can be just a tiny bit healthier and happier because they have judo class on Friday afternoons, then we're down.

Whenever I say things like that, Jim Pedro, Sr. rolls his eyes and groans,
"There you go, being a yuppie liberal again!"

By the way, thanks a lot to the person from my old judo club who sent the bottles of water and power bars. As Ronda noted, these kids seem to overdose on the junk food, and there is no water fountain close to the practice room, so it was very appreciated. You can join my Yuppie Liberal Club.

Maximum Efficiency Drills: Ideas I stole from Steve Scott & Other people

My friend Steve Scott, of Welcome Mat Judo  has written several books, so I can't be expected to memorize all of them. My favorite is his book Coaching on the Mat, and I _think_ this idea was in that book. Or, it might have been from one of those times we were eating at that Italian restaurant in Kansas City and drinking beer. Whatever. It's still a good idea and Coaching on the Mat is still a good book.

Oh, my point, yeah, that. Steve had two, related ideas, actually.

1. We don't have a lot of partners in the U.S. to hone our skills through randori and good drill training can help overcome that disadvantage. If we did, we would regularly get in trouble in a variety of situations and figure out how to get out of them. We would have that guy who always gets us with seoi nage and have to figure out how to block that. We'd have the woman who always does sankaku and we'd learn to see it coming. And so on for 50 different scenarios. But we DON'T have that so instead we need to use drills to create those situations. We need to have a drill for counters and have our partner come in to a seoi nage and repeatedly practice countering that. We need another drill to practice stopping sankaku before we get stuck. And so on. This requires our coaches and players to be more analytical about their judo, to look at what all the different angles are from which we could get caught and how to defeat each one of them. From the other perspective, we also have to use drills to simulate the situations in which we intend to practice our own techniques. Certainly, Steve didn't invent this idea. Back in the day, Jimmy Martin, Steve Seck, Richard (Blinky) Elizalde and the rest of the old Tenri Dojo crowd did the exact same thing. "Hey, step forward like this with your left foot." "Get a high grip on my and go into o uchi gari" . However, since there have been a LOT of years since this days, I think Steve Scott has been thinking about this a lot, developing a wide variety of drills and I think he articulated it better than we did. His main point was that a really good coach will have considered a huge number of possible situations on the mat and had his or her athletes drill extensively for those long before they get caught in that situation in a tournament. As Jim Hrbek once said, "There are no stupid champions."  (There are some pretty f^^^ing annoying champions, but that's a different subject.)
2. Since we don't have a lot of time in the U.S. to practice judo, compared to the opportunities available in many other countries, we need to maximize the payoff from the time we do have. Every drill we do should hit at least two or three out of four purposes. These are to improve our judo technical skills, to improve conditioning, to build competitive spirit and to have fun. So, you might do a drill where players do as many of a matwork combination as they can in one minute. Then, they stand up and do one minute of combination drills, again, as many as they can in a minute. They repeat this three times without a break, each time using a different mat technique or combination. Now you have players who have worked for six minutes straight (conditioning), worked on six different techniques (technical skill) and tried to do as many as they could to beat the other people in the room (competitive spirit). Also, notice in this drill that the smallest person in the room can win by being fastest, so it pushes that bigger kid who would always win in randori. It also gives that smallest kid more of an incentive to push him or herself knowing that this is a chance to beat that bigger kid. 

I've actually thought about his ideas (and those of other people) on drill training a lot lately but haven't had a chance to write things down .  The way business has been, I have barely had time to breathe, much less get to practice as often as I would like or run down and watch people compete. (By the way,  congrats to Crystal and Erin on first place today. As for the rest of you people, would it be TOO MUCH TO ASK for you to send me a text message telling me how you did while I am stuck here slaving over a hot computer all day, huh?)

Let Your Child be a Flying Trapeze Zombie

One of the most common questions I get from coaches is how to deal with parents who want to live vicariously through their children.

I have found this problem to be bigger in degree than quantity. What I mean is that far more often parents have a better idea of the interests and abilities of a child than the coach does. Generally, parents bring their child to judo, or any other sport, to make friends, get a healthy amount of exercise and/or because they think they're taking karate because it's all the same.

MOST parents don't have Olympic dreams for their children, and in most cases they are right. They are more interested in sending their children to a good college so they can eventually move them the hell out of the house and quit depending on the Bank of Mom & Dad. More often it is the COACH who wants to invest huge amounts of (the parents') time and money into a child who may have talent but not the motivation. This isn't such a problem, because the parents can just refuse to go along.

When it is the parent, though, who wants it more than Johnny or Susie, who is trying to live vicariously through their children - I have never been able to get through to those parents.

Let me tell you, though --- talent without motivation is a road to nowhere.

I understand the difficulty of having a child with talent without the interest. Accept it. Your child is not you. That's a period at the end of that sentence.

Sometimes I watch Julia at judo practice and I think what a shame it is she doesn't have a passion for it. She doesn't mind judo. She hops in the car most weekends, especially when she knows Ronda is teaching (Ronda is funner, I have been told). Sometimes I watch her pull off a technique and think it's REALLY too bad this is not what she wants to do. But it isn't.

In addition to judo, Julia plays on her school basketball, soccer and volleyball teams. She is on the student council, plays saxophone and just started drum lessons. Watching her at her lesson, I was quite surprised at how well she could read music.

She took a lesson at the trapeze school on the pier and loved it. So, she did two weeks of trapeze camp. Last week she was in a show as a zombie on the flying trapeze.

Parents often come up with explanations to justify what THEY want. Judo will teach their child discipline, to overcome fears, to stick with something they started, make them friends they will have for life, give them skills they will have when they are old. I believe all of those things are true. BECAUSE Julia has been on judo, she has had a leg up on every sport she has ever started. When she wanted to learn the trapeze, she wasn't afraid to fall and she was physically strong, thanks to judo.

However, music also teaches discipline and sticking with something you started and she has stuck with that for years. She's been on the student council for three years (not bad considering she is twelve). Doing a back flip in the air 30 feet above the ground probably takes overcoming some fears.

As a parent, I believe it is your responsibility to help your child grow into a good person. It is, however, neither your responsibility nor your right to force your child to grow into the person that YOU wanted to be nor the you want him or her to be.

So, I say if your child wants to be a trapeze zombie, or dress up like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and fly through the air to be caught by Captain America, let them.

That MMMPH You Hear Is the Sound of Maternal Disapproval

So, in answer to the most common question I get these days, "What is Ronda doing?"

Followed by the second most common question, "What do YOU think about that?"

Ronda is teaching at the West Coast Judo Training Center every weekend, where she does a great job, along with fellow coaches Richard (Blinky) Elizalde, Gary Butts, Victor Ortiz, jiu-jitsu black belt Sam Garcia, and the occasional old lady (that would be me) putting in a guest appearance. 

MMMPPHH (That is my maternal disapproval sound.) She is also competing in grappling and MMA. Last weekend she competed at the tournament hosted by Gokor Chivichiyan and Gene LeBell's club, Hayastan, in the men's middleweight division. She "accidentally" left her phone off so I did not know she was competing, because I could have gone to Hollywood and watched her. This is EXACTLY like the last time she was in a tournament in Los Angeles, competing in the men's division, several years ago. My husband had taken her to the tournament because I had to pick someone up from the airport. When I called him to see if she had anyone to fight he told me she was competing in the men's 180 lb and under division and she had said that 

"Mom always lets me do it."

 I said, with my usual calm demeanor, 

"WHAT?!! Let me talk to her! Give the phone to that child!"

The conversation went like this.

"What? What? Mom, I can't hear you. Must be static on the phone. Bzzzz. Bye."

MMMMMPPPHHH.

(In case you are wondering, yes, she did win that tournament and the one on Sunday, too.)

So, now she has three MMA fights scheduled. Do I approve of it? Hell no. It involves someone trying to punch my baby girl in the face. Hell, no, I don't approve of it! The only way in which this would be even remotely acceptable to me is if the other person just lay down and let her pound on them, and it STILL wouldn't really be okay. I would be sitting there grumbling,

"Look at that person getting all their nasty blood all over Ronda. That's disgusting! I'll bet that won't wash out."

MMMMMMMMPHHHHH!

My only consolation in all of this is that some day, she will have children of her own. I am taking lots of pictures now so that when I rat her out to her own kids when she is making that MMMMPHHHH sound, I will have photographic evidence.

You Can't Sunbathe Your Way to Success

At practice this weekend, there was some complaining about the extra rounds of randori (yes, I heard you.  I 'm old, not deaf. )

MANY years ago, Rusty Kanokogi had a trainer meet with the women's world team. This was back when the whole idea of a strength and conditioning coach or a personal trainer was just a radically new concept. It was also back before everyone who couldn't get a real job was calling himself a personal trainer.

The people that met with us were the real deal. Their other clients included a professional ballet group and a major league baseball team. I don't remember what particular exercises we were supposed to do. I probably didn't do them. If Rusty was around, she would be the first to tell you that obedience was never one of my virtues. (Is obedience a virtue? I don't think it is.)

What I do remember is the trainer telling us that one day they brought both the baseball players and the ballet dancers to their gym at the same time. They looked out into the weight room and all the baseball players were lifting weights and all the ballet dancers were stretching!  Even before I started coaching, I got the point of this story - people were working on what they were already good at. The ballet dancers really needed to be stronger and the baseball players really needed to be more flexible.

YOU GET BETTER WHEN YOU GET OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE.  Read that last sentence seven or eight times. Have it tattooed upside down on your chest so you can see it every time you look down.

You know why so many people want to do throws instead of randori? Because just like the baseball players and the ballet dancers, they look good doing it.

A lot of people don't want to fight. They talk a good game. They lift hard in the gym. But when it comes to standing on that line and showing what they're made of, they have a million excuses.

"I did that yesterday."

"One more round of randori isn't going to help me win."

"I could get injured and not be able to compete in the real match that counts."

 (I have NEVER understood how you can be too injured to train but not too injured to compete, no matter how many times I hear that stupid line.)

Most people, deep down, don't want to fight that often. They're afraid. They're afraid to lose, afraid to get hurt, afraid that people will look at them and think they look stupid.

You can't get better by just doing what's fun or whatever you feel most like doing on that particular day. Okay, maybe you weren't sunbathing. I'll bet those baseball players were lifting really heavy weights and were probably sore after practice. It wasn't what they needed. What they needed was to get pushed out of where they felt comfortable and to work on whatever it was they really didn't want to do.

Guess what? As a coach, your job is to push your athletes outside of that comfort zone.  If you're just going to help people be comfortable and agree with them, you may as well be that guy by the pool bringing the drinks with the little umbrellas in them. I mean, that guy is cool and all. But he's not a coach.

Business, Judo, Life

This was on my voice mail recently:

"Are you dead? Did you quit judo? Do you hate me? Why haven't I heard from you?"

I am not dead, I haven't quit judo and I don't hate my friend who left the message. I have been working an enormous amount lately. I am a consultant on staff at the university. Just for the heck of it I am taking a graduate course in data mining. I'm doing consulting work for my clients. On top of all of that, to prove that I am clinically insane, recently I put in bids on two contracts. If you've never bid on a federal contract, you have had a charmed life. The most recent document we submitted was about 200 pages and it has to be 200 pages of research design, analysis, qualifications - not just s#@t you made up. We won't  know if we got it for a while but, win or lose, I am enormously proud of the work we did and of my team that put it together. Of course, I would prefer to win, since it will mean a fair amount of money for us.

So... this all got me to thinking about the very different attitude I have taken about winning and losing in business and in judo. As part of one contract we needed a section on "past performance". This is a summary of the similar work you have done. Putting this together, I came up with a list of 22 contracts we had completed, and I know this wasn't the full list but it was most of them over the past 20 years. Most of our contracts are from 2- 5 years, so that is a good amount of work. I recalled as I went through the list a few we had bid on and did not get. The really odd thing is, every loss I had in judo took me years to get over. I would go lock myself in a room and cry for hours. Sometimes days. I would be upset about it every time I thought about it. 

Oddly, I never cried over any work we lost out on. In fact, once, when we had a grant that was not funded and I asked the first author for the reviews and he admitted he had been mad we didn't get it and thrown the reviews away, I was shocked. To me, those reviews are my chance to see what I did wrong and correct it for the next time. This is really odd because, unlike judo, when I don't get the contract or grant, I lose money and, if I can't get enough funded, people lose their jobs. 

Why are losses in sports so much more personal? 

I'm not sure, but two reasons I can think of are:

Opportunities in business are continuous.  I have an idea of how much work is reasonable for our company to do, the rate we want to grow, and we are often booked a year or two in advance. There isn't a week that goes by that some possibility doesn't come up where we can submit a proposal. When we are looking for more work, we'll usually let two or three pass by before we find the right one. Sometimes we'll even start on a bid only to drop it a week later when something more promising comes across my desk. Just imagine if the Olympics came every week.

There is more of a time lag between when you put out all of the effort and when you find out the decision. In competition, yes, you have trained for years, but the real time of competition, you fight your hardest and right then are told if you win or lose. Usually, I will put in a proposal and not find out if we won it or not for another two to three months, sometimes as much as seven months later. By then I've done a lot of other work, been paid for a lot of the work I did in the past. Imagine if judo was like that - if you competed, and then you went home. A few weeks later, you'd get a letter telling you not that you won that tournament, but that you won one two months earlier. The next month, your medal would come in the mail.

That disconnect takes some of the emotion out of it. Maybe that is why people were interested in watching me fight but no one is interested in coming to my office and watching me create diagrams of a designs for a data warehouse. Okay, well, maybe that's not the ONLY reason.