Is Judo Just Pretending to Be a Life-long Sport?

While I was swimming this morning, it occurred to me - judo gives a false impression of a sport that is appropriate across all ages.

 The masters divisions - for age 35 and over - at the national championships are a major source of income, often keeping the tournament from losing money. The same can be said of the very young divisions at the junior nationals - in some tournaments, children as young as five years old are competing to be national champion.

I think this is a bad idea on both ends. First of all, I don't think there is any sense at all in spending lots of money and your entire family vacation traipsing around to one tournament after another for a child eight years old or younger.

Spare me the bullshit about "my kid really wants to do it".

1. Your kid, at a young age,  really wants to make his or her parents proud and happy. If you say the way to do that is to go knock down another kid, your child will do it, or at least try.
2. As the adult in the picture, you are supposed to decide what is best for your child and you continually refuse to go along with what your kid really wants to do. My youngest daughter really wanted to spend her entire vacation watching vampire shows on TV, occasionally punctuated by snowboarding or hanging out with her friends. We made her study Geometry and socialize with the family, too, because we're mean like that.

Secondly, I think we are fooling ourselves as adults in their 40s, 50s and 60s who really ought to know better pretending that winning the world masters championships is anything remotely similar to winning the actual world championships. Similarly, I have heard people refer to a child who won the 9-10 year-old division in the junior Olympics as "an Olympic champion". Not even close.

Like most people my age, I am kind of beat up. I'm just not in the shape that I used to be as a competitor. I weigh the same and thanks to a $50,000 knee replacement, I can do a lot of things I haven't been able to do, even when I was competing. I swim or bike almost every day. I teach judo once or twice a week. And all of that being said, the judo I can do now is qualitatively different from the judo I did in my twenties, just as much as an eight-year-old child's is. I'm not as fast and no amount of training will change that. I'll never have the strength I did in my twenties.

Anyone who believes that speed and strength don't matter in judo competition is deluded. On top of that, I have a real job and a family. I don't have time to adjust my techniques for the rule changes that seem to come down in judo every six months.

Yes, people my age can do "judo". They can do kata, they can practice throws or arm bars in the dojo. Still, it doesn't seem any more like the sport I did in my twenties than water aerobics old ladies do seems like swimming. That is, it's a perfectly fine thing to do to keep in shape, but it is NOT the same thing. Not accepting this fact is one reason you see so many older judo players end up injured. You're not a 'world champion' or 'national champion'. You're a weekend warrior who went to a tournament. Deal with it.

(The same applies to juniors at the other end of the scale but I wrote about that earlier.)

Don't Throw Up, Throw Down! Ronda Rousey Fights Eating Disorders

Here is how my parking in Ronda's garage led to raising funds for the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Clinic....

Her friend, Marina, was moving to LA from New York and had her boxes shipped to my house, since they were driving across country and no one was home at the new place in Venice. When I dropped the boxes off, Marina and I walked to the beach for coffee. That's when Ronda came back, found my van in her garage and had a bit of a panic attack, going off about how she couldn't park her new BMW on the street and how hard it is to find parking by the beach. In my usual sympathetic manner, I said,

Check yourself! Your biggest problem is that you temporarily can't park your $130,000 car that the UFC gave you in the garage at your house on the beach. You do realize that some people have real problems, don't you? Take one minute to think outside of yourself. You have some money and a bit of celebrity now. Is there any group of people you feel strongly about helping?

Instantly, Ronda answered,

Eating disorders. People with eating disorders. No one is doing anything for them. 

Her friend, Wetzel said,

Well, there has to be somebody. Let's think of a celebrity with an eating disorder.

I said,

There was Karen Carpenter, but she died - of anorexia

In fact, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. The cost of treatment is high and often not covered by insurance. Despite that, you don't see a lot of discussion or fund-raising. It's not an illness that has adorable babies tugging at your heart strings and pocketbook. Eating disorders are much higher among elite athletes than in the general population, and much higher among athletes in judged sports (like gymnastics) and sports that have weight categories (like wrestling and judo).

Wanting to find a credible organization, I contacted one of the staff members for the Didi Hirsch clinic, who happens to have lived on the same street as us since we moved to Santa Monica in 1997. She told us how hard it is to find the funds to give the therapy needed by teenagers (and even some younger kids) with eating disorders.

SO ..... Ronda decided to start the Ronda Rousey Fund. Any money raised between now and March, she'll match with a check of her own, up to a total of $5,000. One way to make sure that at least $5,000 gets raised is that she'll be doing a clinic shortly after her fight.  The facility will be donated as will Ronda's time. All the money from the clinic will be donated to the Didi Hirsch fund for youth with eating disorders. This is only the second clinic Ronda will have done since she started MMA and there are not any plans for her to do another one any time soon. It will be in Los Angeles. I'm pretty sure I know where it is going to be held but since it is 1:30 a.m. in LA and I am out of town, I'm not going to call Ronda now and ask her. I don't really know a lot of the details, but I will post them here as they get hammered out in the next few days. I think the clinic will be limited to 50 people or less and the cost will be $100 or more. I also expect a few spaces will be raffled off.

If you can't make it to the clinic but want to help, you can send a check with the note "Don't throw up, throw down" to

Joel Safranek
Vice President, Development
4760 Sepulveda Boulevard
Culver City, CA 90230




You can also donate online here. In the menu where it says "I am giving in response to" pick OTHER and type Ronda Rousey Fund in the box below it.

If you don't have any money but would like to help another charity, there is also the free rice group, you can join and donate rice. I'd think a good prize for the top donor could be a space at the clinic - but I don't know so don't count on that. It definitely would not be transferable.

As I said, details are being hammered out now - just thought it was interesting and I would post a heads up. Anyone with fundraising suggestions, please chime in.

Another way to start matwork

Here is another drill that is perhaps not as useful in the development of kinesthetic sense but is a variation of how to start matwork. The players sit up three times on my count and on the third sit-up they both start attacking.

What both of these drills try to do is instill the habit of attacking suddenly. Almost always, one person will be a little quicker out of the metaphorical starting block than the other. You want that quicker person to be you.

Free Rice Prizes Because Just Feeding the Hungry Isn't Enough

Just to summarize, because I know how annoying it is to read something where you have to go to a link to find out what it is about, and some of you already linked here from twitter ...


In case you don't know, Ronda Rousey - also known in our house as "Darling Daughter Number 3" and "MOM! Make her quit punching me!" is going to be fighting for the UFC on February 23, in Anaheim, California. You can buy tickets here or watch it on pay-per-view.

Before each title fight, Ronda runs a contest to raise food for the hungry since she is cutting weight and hungry.  As of now, enough rice has been donated by Ronda-fans to serve 10,000 meals to people in refugee camps and other places the World Food Program works.

I have been asked about prizes and we have picked up a few more. So far we have:

• T-shirts and sweatshirts from Fightchix (thank you!)
• A t-shirt from Down2scrap. (There was a long-sleeved shirt but the youngest sister swiped it. She says she did not swipe it, "it was eminent domain". Someone is studying for SATs.)
• A copy of the armbar encyclopedia by Steve Scott
• A Gene Lebell gift pack complete with Gene Lebell NSFW really bad joke book, bronze cast of Gene's cauliflower ear lapel pin and Gene patch
• Ronda Rousey patches

Ronda will autograph all the prizes. Last time the top two got signed Topps cards but those were from a pack made especially for her and I'm sure she's keeping the rest.

She's donating her fight gloves to the school auction for her sister's school,  and she gave two other pairs to the MMAClothes4Homeless and West Coast Training Center fund raisers so those are out. (She needs the rest of her gloves to train.)

She is also doing a clinic fundraiser - but NOT for the free rice group, but for her OTHER charity project to benefit low-income children and teens with eating disorders, "Don't Throw Up, Throw Down!" Of course, the person who started her first free rice group with "Because it sucks to be hungry ..." would come up with that.

Anyway, more about that later,   go here to join the free rice group. where you answer questions on topics like math, Spanish, English vocabulary, science - the questions are pretty easy in some categories. For every question you answer, the advertisers on the site donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program.


How to win, what to win, when to win details can be found here if you need them. First of all, join the group and donate rice.
Make sure when you are playing that it shows rondaUFC as your group at the top right if you want the group to get credit.

If you have ideas on prizes or stuff to donate for prizes, tweet me at @drannmaria or post in the comments below.

Free Rice - Help Hungry People, Win Stuff

The free rice contest begins again now.  Free rice is a website where Ronda Rousey (a.k.a. daughter number 3) has a group. where you answer questions on topics like math, Spanish, English vocabulary, science - the questions are pretty easy in some categories. For every question you answer, the advertisers on the site donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program.

In case you don't know, Ronda is going to be fighting for the UFC on February 23, in Anaheim, California. You can buy tickets here or watch it on pay-per-view.

Before each title fight, Ronda runs a contest to raise food for the hungry since she is cutting weight and hungry. Between the last two fights, the group has raised over 30,000,000 grains of rice. Since one bowl of rice is about 3,400 grains and comes out to about 3 cups of cooked rice, that is enough to feed approximately 8,850 people.

How to win, what to win, when to win details below. First of all, join the group and donate rice. How it works is if you click on the link to join the group, you answer questions and for every correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated by the ad sponsor. (The ads vary.) 
Here is how to win stuff:

1. Be in the top five donors OR donate a million grains of rice (easier than it sounds - four people have done it so far).

By the way, if you are in this group and will be at the fight LET ME KNOW. We will try to catch up and give you your winnings in person.

Here is some of the stuff the nice people at Fight Chix donated. Ronda will autograph it all.

2. Be lucky.  Out of all of the rest of the people who have donated, we will pull three people out at sort of random. We'll weight your chances by the amount of rice donated. I'm a statistical programmer so I can do that sort of thing. If you have donated 300,000 grains of rice you have 30,000 times the chance of the person who donated 10 grains - but they DO still have a chance. Hey, people buy lottery tickets, right? Those people will also get prizes.

When: As of weigh-ins on February 22nd.

Thank you for feeding hungry people, by the way. To quote Ronda, "It sucks to be hungry".


Make sure when you are playing that it shows rondaUFC as your group at the top right if you want the group to get credit.

(Even though I said this, there will be at least 40 times when people don't do it and then write me to complain they did not get credit. I know because I have done this and I am estimating at least 10% of the population is as dumb as me.)

Notice this is a new group. We could not get the old one re-set to zero, and since this is her first UFC fight, it seemed only fitting to start a new group.


P.S. We have gotten organized. In the past we had some problem with people getting their stuff. Some of it seemed to have disappeared en route and then we had to send them something again. Or we'd think it got mailed out with the last bunch of stuff and it was still sitting in the supply closet in my office. So, this time we will be sending everything out in one fell swoop after the fight, and keeping tracking numbers.

Yet another reason not to start matwork back to back

Maybe I should call this series of videos 101 to start matwork other than back to back, but I have reports for clients to finish before the end of the year, so I will save that rant for another day. I keep harping on about kinesthetic sense. One example of that (or lack thereof) that is demonstrated at the very beginning of this video occurs when they start close to the fence. A person with better developed kinesthetic sense would realize that as soon as they started moving and spinning they would likely run into the fence. In addition to the not running into the fence, both the person on the top and bottom should learn to react immediately regardless of position.

 

These drills make players comfortable reacting on the mat because they have been put in all sorts of situations and had to respond immediately. Well, they were a little less than immediate in this drill, but it was the last practice of the year and everyone was a bit distracted.

Besides, that's why we call it practice.

Simple matwork start for kinesthetic sense development

Ooh, does that title sound impressively academic or what? So many people start matwork back to back. That's neither very realistic nor creative.

Here is another way to start matwork. Players start at opposite walls. They do a forward roll, and when they meet in the middle of the mat, they start matwork.


As I say in the video, this drill develops your kinesthetic sense.
As our dear friends at wikipedia can tell you,

Proprioception, the kinesthetic sense, provides the parietal cortex of the brain with information on the relative positions of the parts of the body.

Hopefully, you can see how a well-developed kinesthetic sense can be a good thing for a judo player to have.