Ronda Rousey's Before After-Party

November 9th, Ronda will be having an after party before she fights to raise money for Community Outreach Medical Services.

The Party

Ronda doesn't have after parties. In all of the fights she's had, there has been exactly one after party and that was when she fought in Anaheim in the first women's UFC fight. She had a party to thank all of the people from home who had supported her in getting there - the West Coast Judo Training Center people, training partners, family and friends. That was her one party.

People are always asking me and I tell them the same thing. Ronda doesn't do "after parties".  After a fight, she eats chicken wings with her family and coaches.

When we were trying to come up with a good idea for a fundraiser for COMS we hit on the "Before After Party", that is, an after party but before the fight. (Either that, or you could think of it as a WAY after party for the last fight.)

So, here is what I know: One hundred tickets. A club in LA.  November 9th. 100% of proceeds to charity.

Here is what I think I know. I'm pretty sure that the tickets will cost either $150 or $200 and that a couple of them will be raffled off. I'm pretty sure that everyone will get a gift bag with an autographed picture and maybe some other stuff. I'm pretty sure everyone will get a chance to take a picture with Ronda.

The Charity

Money raised will go to a COMS Entertainer Fund. The fact is that southern California is home to a large number of people trying to make it in the entertainment industry - musicians, actors, even professional mixed martial artists. A few of them make it big and the vast majority of them are barely scraping by.

What do you skimp on when you haven't much money? Primary and preventive care, for one thing. People without much money don't get regular physicals, screenings for HIV, cancer or diabetes. They put off seeing a doctor until they are really sick, while people who are more financially secure get access to medical care sooner and are thus treated earlier in the course of acute and chronic illnesses.

There are so many times that I have heard a person complain about a sore elbow, hurt shoulder or cough that won't go away and when I urge them to go the doctor they say,

"I just don't have the money for that."

Eventually, they end up in surgery or in the emergency room. The COMS Entertainer Fund provides people in the industry that ounce of prevention so they won't have to pay for a pound of cure later.

Ok, so that's what I know. I will give more details as I find them out.

DISCLAIMER: I am chair of the board of Community Outreach Medical Services, which is a 501 c 3 non-profit corporation. This is an unpaid position for which I receive diddly-squat in compensation or expenses.

Better Judo in One Word

Someone on twitter asked me for advice on how to make his judo better. I told him one word - attack.

My students at Gompers Middle School may not have perfect technique but one thing people in Kansas City commented on over and over is that they are not afraid to get out on the mat and try to throw.

Too many people in judo are afraid to even try to throw their opponent. They are afraid they will get countered. They are afraid that they will look stupid. They are afraid that it won't work.

My students at Gompers may not be perfect and they may not have learned everything, but they have learned not to be afraid.

I love these kids!

And if you have been one of the donors that helped them, I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart.

What Was Learned in Kansas City: Part 1

We went to the Midwest Freestyle Judo Championships and it was another great experience.

My Gompers Judo students learned a lot, including:

• You can try things that scare you, like flying on a plane for the first time, leaving your parents for the first time, competing in a judo tournament away from home for the first time, and surprise yourself by how well you handle it.
• People who look nothing like you and seemingly have very little in common can still turn out to be really nice.

 You don't have to act tough all of the time. It's totally okay to just be a kid sometimes and play around.

There's a really big world outside of south Los Angeles.

There are people who believe that every judo coach wants to be the Olympic coach and all those who don't coach at the international level are failures.

I'm the opposite of that. I ended up coaching at some international events because my daughter needed me to be there, but truly, the only kind of coaching I ever really wanted to do was this team.

It's funny, too, because Ronda and I ended up teaching at Gompers because my daughter, Jenn, had done her student teaching there. Jennifer said from the very beginning,

"Teaching in an urban school wasn't my fall back plan because I couldn't do what I really wanted to do. This was my plan."

Hopefully, I'll be as good of a teacher as Jenn.

Sticking a landing: Getting the most out of practice

I had the privilege today of working with a group of young people in a West Coast Judo Training Center practice held in Long Beach.

We did a lot of matwork drills and one of the points I tried to make is that there is little benefit in rushing through your matwork moves in a half-ass fashion. If you're doing your drills at less than full speed or less than perfectly, you are missing the point.

When I looked through this blog to find an example, I found a lot of them, which just goes to show that I practice what I preach. If you look at the picture above at the end of one of a zillion times I have done the same drill, my partner is flat on his back and I am pushing off on my toes to put all of my weight on him.

I do this EVERY time I do a drill.

Here is another picture with another person and another pin. Again, my body is on top of hers, my feet are under her hips, my hands are locked tight.

Here is yet another picture, on yet another day on yet another person. Notice that I have both hands on his arm, my hips are pretty much "sitting" on his shoulder, I have his arm locked against my chest.

I explain this as being similar to when a gymnast does a technique and "sticks the landing". After they flip off the bars, horse or whatever, they try to hit the ground and be as on balance as possible.

Now, when they are practicing, they could just kind of drop off the uneven bars or hop off the balance beam, but they don't because they are practicing to do it as they want to execute the move in competition and the landing is a key part. If they flip around on the bars, then dismount and fall over, they'll lose points and probably lose in the event.

The same with judo - if you do a turnover but don't really tighten up on the pin, or do an armbar and don't really have it locked in, then your opponent will probably get away.

Fast, hard and stick the landing. Do every one of your matwork repetitions that way every day. It's not just how much you practice that matters but how.

Will it matter in 2026?

I doubt I'll ever do this but it's an interesting thought ....

You hear about people writing letters to their younger selves giving advice, or finding a diary from 15 or 20 years ago and marveling about how much their lives have changed. I was thinking the next time I get really upset about something, I should write a letter to myself to be opened 12 years from now.

The reason I'm pretty sure I will never do this is that every time I think of it, I realize how stupid it is to think that whatever I'm stressing about today will matter in 2026.

Here is a picture from 2001 or so. Okay, it's 13 years, but whatever.

I have no idea what I was worried about that day, but I'm sure it was something. Maybe I was worried about paying for New York University, where Maria was in her first year. Didn't do the least bit of good to worry and I paid off the last of the parent loans last year.

Maybe I was worried about Ronda winning some tournament - in fact, I'm pretty sure that we were at Legoland that day because Ronda was competing in a tournament in San Diego.

Maybe I was worried about how Jennifer was doing academically, since it looked as if she might not even graduate high school - and she didn't. She quit high school, went into college early and ended up with a masters from USC.

This isn't to say there haven't been some bumps in the road over the past 13 years, or the past 30, for that matter. My point is simply that the things I really worried about some days - whether I got a particular contract, a specific client whose name I have completely forgotten acted like an ass, some mother of some kid I will never see again said something rude about one of my children - the exact type of stuff most people worry about most of the time - would have me shaking my head today.

On May 20, 2001, I was worried about THAT ?

So, that is my brilliant advice today to me and to you. When you find yourself all bent out of shape about something, think about sitting down and writing a letter to yourself 12 years in the future explaining how you are beating yourself up today because you were worried that you didn't get the XQD contract - which you ended up getting - or that you ran into the CEO the one day you decided to take advantage of casual Friday and wear jeans to the office. 

I'll bet you don't do it because as soon as you sit down to take pen to paper you'll realize how stupid this will sound to yourself in 2026 and you'll quit worrying about it.

You're welcome.

You Reap What You Sow: Thoughts on Parenting

My friend stopped by to ask if our family was going to enter a team in the Didi Hirsch Alive and Running Walk/Run for Suicide Prevention. It's the sort of thing we would do, except that I'm in Kansas City that weekend with the kids from Gompers and Ronda is in Brazil right now so I don't know what her plans are. Maria is busy being pregnant.

It's possible that Jenn, Julia and Jessica might enter. I will have to ask them. Then, my friend said,

"You are such a good mother. Your children turned out so well. You should write a parenting book."

There are a couple of reasons not to do that. The main one is that I am really busy working on building another company right now. My day job is making games to teach math, and I really like doing it.

Then there is the fact that Julia is only 16. Although she looks like a winner so far, who knows, maybe she will ride a motorcycle through the school gym tomorrow wearing nothing but a shit-eating grin. All indications are to the opposite, but one thing I know for sure is that there are no guarantees in life.  [Julia: If you are reading this - don't even think about it. I will skin you alive and tack your hide over the front door as a reminder to your nieces not to be so stupid. - Love, Mom]

That being said, to a large extent, whether it is parenting, sports or business, you sow what you reap. My children aren't perfect, I'm not perfect and there have been times when I wanted to smack them upside the head.

Throughout their lives, though, I have tried my best to always put my children first. Sometimes it might not have seemed that way to them, if I was flying to Washington instead of helping them with a science project, but I sincerely believed that the money I made for private schools, universities, was more important. I also thought having a role model of a mother who had a career would be a benefit to them.

I suspect that when Ronda was young she resented the fact that I did not fly around the world and coach her, nor did I take out loans to pay for her competition around the world or a lot of other things some other parents did. There was a reason behind that. With three other children, I was not willing to sacrifice all of the time with  them and the amount of money we would lose from me not working.

I had seen families where everyone focused on one child who was supposed to be gifted - and maybe was - to the detriment of the others. It never seemed to turn out well for anyone. The "gifted" child felt pressured but also entitled and the other children felt cheated. The parents are resentful the favored child doesn't appreciate it. I could go on - it's just a hot mess.

Maybe my book would be very short if I ever wrote it - Do what you believe is best for your children, even if it's a lot of work, even if you really would rather do something else at the time.

Actually, that would be pretty much my same advice whether it is winning in judo or building a business. Do what you think is most likely to achieve that goal - even when you're tired, even when you don't feel like it.

If you are right even most of the time that this drill, tournament, proposal or design is what you should be doing, then in the end all of that sowing will pay off.

It was a good day for uchi mata

 Judo at Gompers renewed a little of my faith in humanity.

"Every day is a good day when I'm on the mat."

It's beginning to feel that way. Today, 1980 Olympic team member Steve Seck dropped in unannounced for a visit.

Not only is Steve a terrific judo coach and an Olympic athlete, he also teaches at King Drew Medical Magnet High School. A major goal of our program at Gompers Middle School is to help students succeed personally and academically. Part of that is encouraging them to apply to the best high schools they can attend. Steve came last year to talk to our students and encourage them to apply to his school. Two of them did and were accepted.

He came again today and taught uchi mata because, being a former teammate of mine, he knows well that matwork is my strong point.  (Uchi mata is Japanese for inner thigh throw. You can see why in the pictures below where Steve's right leg catches Ain about on the inside of his thigh.)

When Ronda was young, I took her to Steve and Blinky to learn uchi mata and now both of them have come to teach the students at Gompers.

He told the students he told Ronda when she was 11 years old,

Anyone who can hop backward in a circle can do uchimata.

Another point he made, and see it illustrated in the photo above, is that you are generally going to be more effective with uchi mata using a high grip on the collar than a traditional lapel grip.

You can also see Steve's head going down toward the mat and his body turning as he pulls Ain into him with BOTH his right hand on the collar and his left hand on the lapel.

 Although Steve said he was too old to throw any more, you can clearly see that is not true. He's only letting go with his right hand at this point so as not to fall on Ain.

Speaking of good people - the good people of Orange County Judo Training Center had donated money to buy the kids water all year, since there is only one water fountain for 17-20 people, and that is on a different floor.  Every kid running down to get a drink would take half an hour.

I thought the water came from the check they gave us. Today, I found that I'd had that check in my gi bag all along. José Gonzalez, the same teacher who has been volunteering his  time after school for six years, also had been buying the water. I gave him the check for the Woodcraft Rangers so, from now on, that will be one less out of pocket expense for him!

We received a donation from a kind gentleman from Italy that will allow us to buy judo uniforms for the kids going to Kansas City and Gompers Judo t-shirts for everyone else. We desperately need more mats as the class is growing, so that is next on my list.

Everything is improving in every way all the time.  I had fun teaching. Steve was a great help because his strengths in throwing match up perfectly with my weakest points. I injured my knee when I was a teenager, so during my competitive years, I couldn't do a left uchi mata to save my life. Also, every time he comes, it is one more bit of encouragement for students to consider King Drew Medical Magnet.

To even further sweeten the pot, a couple of our kids that I was really concerned about academically are doing much better.

It was a good day. 

--------------- Black Belt likes me to remind you 
occasionally that I wrote this book on matwork with Jim Pedro, Sr. and it would be nice if you bought it. It's about winning on the ground. That's why it's in the title.