How to get better at judo: Step two

Out of about a million and in random order

Focus on your weak points. I was talking to Allen Wrench tonight and he coined a new term I am going to steal, "counter-intuitive judo". According to Allen, much of what I say at the West Coast Judo Center is the opposite of what most people do, but it works.

When I was on the world team we had a number of people from different fields brought into work with us, none of whom knew anything about judo, but all of whom were helpful. One was a group of athletic trainers. We were at a mandatory camp in New York City, arranged by Rusty Kanokogi and these trainers worked with both the Yankees baseball team and the New York Ballet. They told us that the baseball players would come into the gym and immediately hit the weights. The ballet dancers, on the other hand, would come in and start stretching. The baseball players were great at lifting weights, but what they really needed to work on was their flexibility. The ballet dancers were amazingly flexible, but they needed to be stronger.

You see the exact same thing in judo. My nine-year-old daughter is much better at matwork than standing techniques. If we are doing throws, uchikomi or standing randori, about every ten minutes or less she will say,

"Not that I am complaining or anything, because I'm not like whining, but how much longer until practice is over."

However, once matwork starts, she is a happy little camper, dives right in and never asks how much time is left again. I cannot criticize her for that because I was the exact same way as a competitor. I looked at all the throws, uchikomi and standing randori as what you suffered through to get to matwork.

Once Ronda finally got a good uchimata, when she was about 13 years old, she threw everyone with it. Finally, we made uchimata a banned throw during club tournaments, to force her to do something else. So, if I was so good at matwork, why did I start Ronda off focusing on standing technique, including uchimata, which I never did in a tournament in my life? Because the same advice of focusing on what you are not good at applies to coaches as well. I knew it would be a piece of cake to teach her matwork. Frankly, I am very good at it, I love it and am very enthusiastic about teaching it. That's another important point about coaching, too. Don't try to make your students into younger versions of you. Ronda is left-handed, six inches taller than me, forty pounds heavier and, unlike me, she has ligaments and cartilage in both her knees. It would be silly for her to fight just like me. So, when she started judo, I took her to Tony Mojica's club, where Tony and Blinky focused on teaching her to throw with uchimata and tai otoshi, then took her to Venice where Trace focused on seoi nage. When she was already winning with throws, I started to teach her matwork. If I had started off with matwork, it would have been very hard to get her away from a reliance on winning just on the mat.

No one wants to focus on their weak points. You want to throw with uchimata, if that is your best throw, because you look cool doing it. You don't want to try throwing people with foot sweeps and miss because you suck at them. That is why most people's development stalls around their teenage years and their first-degree black belt, both of which usually come during the same time period. You can't try a new throw in practice and gets slammed because ... because... because what? The I-got-thrown-in-randori ogre will come and beat you with a club?

Here is one of the things I did right as a competitor and do to this day - I got my ass kicked a lot. I got slammed in randori plenty of times. I say that was right because every time I took a chance and tried something new, I learned a way that someone might beat me. Then I tried it differently the next time, and probably got slammed again. I tried from a higher grip, a lower one,left-handed - and eventually, it worked. It has always amazed me the number of people who are confused about the fact that randori is practice. You see, it occurs during an activity they call "practice" which is held at times listed next to the word PRACTICE on a sign on the door, and the sensei will call out, "Okay, now it's time for free practice - randori!" What more do you need? A little thought-balloon over someone's head like in a cartoon?

All over the world at this very moment, there are people acting like, if they get thrown or pinned at practice, their mother and first-born child will be sold into slavery and then boiled and eaten. What do you people need to catch on - an engraved clue delivered by a monkey in a Captain Obvious suit? What? The really stupid thing is when you beat these morons in an actual tournament and they come up to you and, as someone actually said to me once,

"I don't understand how you beat me in the tournament today. You have to admit that I always won at practice."

I looked at her in disbelief for a moment and then said,

"There's no such thing as winning at practice. That's like saying you got an A in recess or you flunked field trip."

She blinked and replied,

"You can't fail recess. They don't give you grades for that."

I walked away thinking, how sad, you lost to me in the tournament AND you're stupid. Sucks to be you.

You should constantly be evaluating where you are weakest in every area. Even though I love matwork, I am weaker in some positions than others. Supposedly, one of the better positions to defend from in matwork is the position we now call "The Guard" either due to Brazilian jiu jitsu influence or because that sounds so much cooler than "sitting on your butt". That is my weakest position. I became known for my matwork and if I sat like that and tried to get someone to come toward me, they would usually try to get up and run away. People practice defending against someone in the guard position. Actually, I had a lot higher percentage of attacks from all fours, even from my stomach as shown above. There is less expectation of an attack from that position, so people are less prepared to defend from there. Lately, in matwork, I have to keep forcing myself to get back into the guard position to fight. When I do standing randori, it is much easier for me to throw people backward than forward because my knees are so bad it is hard for me to bend. I make a really conscious effort to try two or three forward throws for every backward one.

Just to emphasize, I would like to end with one of those quotes from Jim Pedro, Sr., shouted at the top of his lungs. I love my daughter and I am very fond of Jim, but if he ever dies of a heart attack on the mat, it will be her fault.

"RONDA!! YOU CAN ALREADY THROW EVERYONE IN THE DOJO WITH UCHIMATA, SO WHY THE HELL ARE YOU PRACTICING THAT?!!"

As I said, practice your weak points.

How to get better at judo: Step One

in no particular order and out of about a million

Read books. Watch videos. Watch your competitors, watch your teammates and watch your players work out. Does that sound like a stupid-a@@ way to get better at a combat sport? I didn't say do those things INSTEAD of practice.
This is one of those things I should have done more of in my competitive days.

What I did do right was to watch every match I possibly could of my competitors. On tape, not everything gets captured. You don't see that the person was behind by a yuko when she rushed the other competitor, or that look she had on her face after getting roughed up by her opponent on the mat. Any chance I had the opportunity to see my competition on tape, I watched it over and over. I was looking for weaknesses, any time I saw one of my competitors get scored on, I would stop the tape, back up and see what happened right before that and take a note if the person was right or left-handed, attacked right off the grip, and so on. I really studied my competition and was very prepared when I went out to fight. At practice, I would tell my teammates,

"Okay, this person I'll probably fight in the finals does left tai otoshi all of the time with a high grip. Grip me like this and try left tai o when we are doing randori."

What I did wrong was not study other people very much - I was smart enough to study my teammate, Miguel Tudela and learned a lot from watching him. I should have done more of this. It was our strength coach, who knew nothing about judo, who pointed it out after watching judo practice for one of the first times. Miguel fought in the men's open weight category. I fought in women's 56 kg. Both of us were physically stronger than almost anyone we would ever fight and short for our divisions, which meant people often took a high grip. We had similar fighting styles. I don't think either of us ever got a stalling penalty in our lives, and you could have hit us with a brick in the match and we would not have stopped coming. Miguel used that strength to his advantage. He did a lot of morote gari (double leg take downs) and leg picks. He also used his head a lot, literally. Miguel would block a throw with his face. He would hit someone with a pick-up literally head-on, slamming his face and chest into the person as he pulled their leg up. The way I do tani otoshi to this day was copied off Miguel twenty years ago back at Tenri Dojo. I should have studied other people fighting much more than I did and I am sure I would have learned a lot more.

Another mistake I made was not to watch more tapes of international competition, not just my competitors. Now I see a lot more set-ups because I watch matches of people doing drop seoi nage or ko soto gari and see how they got into it. I watch tapes more analytically now, not just cheering and saying what a great throw, but looking at how the person grips, how he got that grip and what happened before the throw. Did the opponent try a throw that didn't work and come out? For example, lately I have been having a harder time getting my right hand on the lapel. This is good because we have been working on grips a lot, and teaching one of the same techniques I always use of having my right foot back and punching in with my right hand. When everyone caught on to that, I would put my left foot back, cross grip my left hand to the lapel and then feed it to my right. That was the second technique we taught and now even our juniors block that. I was watching a video the other day from Fighting Films that had a lot of ippons from shoulder throws. What I noticed many of the players were doing was gripping the right lapel with their left hand, as if they were going to get a left grip. They then pulled the person toward them and got their right hand on the right lapel and switched their left hand down to the sleeve. Then they were able to pull the person closer yet and get the left lapel grip they wanted. For someone who hadn't seen this before, this would have been very helpful. I had seen it tons of times before and it was still helpful. I realized that I had gotten into a bad habit of doing the same gripping sequences over and over. Here was another I knew and had not used lately just because I had become lazy, doing whatever was working until it quit working. I'm not competing any more, so I am not as focused on staying at my peak as I was 20 years ago. As a coach, though, I cannot afford to get lazy, and neither can you as a player. If you are winning, it is easy to become lazy - until you lose! Try to see any time in practice someone is defeating anything you want, a grip, a turnover, and work on improving that.

My favorite DVDs and videos - for learning to gripfight - Get a Grip, by Hayward Nishioka. It has the basics and is a great start and a great reminder for coaches of what we should be teaching.

Fighting Films - Shoulder Throws, by Hal Sharp

For teaching beginners, Mike Swain's Basic Judo. It IS basic, but most of us teach basic judo most of the time. If I have a little kid having trouble with tai otoshi, I might watch this and see if Mike teaches it a little differently or what he emphasized.

Steve Scott's Coaching on the Mat is a book I highly recommend.

I like Ron Angus' book, Competitive Judo, also, and Van der Walle's book on Pick-ups.

I feel guilty to admit the number of books I have not read yet and DVDs I haven't watched. I have yet to see Jimmy Pedro's Grip Like a World Champion, nor have I read Neil Ohlenkamp's Judo Unleashed nor Gene Lebelle's books. All are on my to-do list. Maybe that will be the NEXT rainy weekend.

I Have Decided Not to Quit Judo Today

Even though I have a black eye, third-degree mat burn and ache in muscles I had forgotten I had

Yesterday, I was ready to quit judo. As my friend, Jim Bregman, once said,

"I know that there is supposed to be a normal curve for intelligence, but I can't help but feel sometimes that the population involved in judo is skewed toward the stupid end."

Someone had made the comment that my opinion could not be trusted on who would be appropriate for a particular training camp. It was then suggested to me by someone who is supposedly my friend that it was understandable why the camp director would respect other coaches more than me, as he did not know me and perhaps I should take a week off work, go to this camp at my own expense and coach for free so he could get to know me. My friend was actually surprised to find I was very offended by this suggestion. I will omit some of the choicer words, but I told him, in short:

"In other areas of my life, people treat me with respect. They call me doctor and they pay me a decent amount of money, and you know why? Because I have earned it through hard work and accomplishments. Why on earth (well, I might have used some other words) should I fly thousands of miles to impress some little (word deleted) who never did anything? Winning the world championships wasn't enough to earn his respect? Why? Because it was in the "girl's division"? Bringing up one of the best competitors this country has seen in decades, probably ever, was not enough? Why? Because she didn't succeed until she got a 'male' coach? Actually, she was number one in the U.S. before she ever spent a week away from home. I intend to spend my spare time with people I enjoy and that does not include arrogant little (other word omitted) who think what I have done in judo is not worthy of respect."

Do I think that anyone would have taken that attitude if I was male? I am absolutely certain they would not. Sometimes the sexism in judo, which is far more rampant than in most other areas of life in this country, really irritates the hell out of me (maybe I originally used some other words there) and I wonder why I even bother.

Then, I spent the evening reviewing videos of judo matches, because I had practice at the West Coast Training Center today and I wanted to be sure that we were focusing on what would be most useful for our players. As usual, I like to be overprepared and have way more planned than we can cover in one day, even with five hours of practice. I also keep a record of what we cover each week so I can be sure we are not being to repetitive, but, on the other hand, make sure we have a coherent plan. At the very beginning of this training center, one of the key weaknesses we identified in American judo is a general lack of combinations and counters, both standing and on the mat. So, that was our focus today.

My original plan was to do mostly drills in the dojo. However, there were only seven people who came for the first practice, and it was a beautiful day outside, after several days of rain in a row. So, we ran half a mile to the park, played several games of toilet ball, which ended with us all being covered with mud and then ran (or in some cases, walked) the half mile back. Raffi, who is usually ahead of everyone, was coming in last. He had been sick in bed all week, but got up and came to judo this morning. All of our young players worked hard and another dozen came in the afternoon for the newaza and randori session.

I got matburn practically down to the bone (thanks a lot Crystal!), got punched in the eye by my own nine-year-old daughter, and bent back one of my finger nails fighting Harout. Watching these players, I had a real sense of pride. It is great to see people like Victor Ortiz, Gary Butts, Frankie and Eric Sanchez on the mat both fighting and helping our younger players develop. The level of judo of everyone in the place has risen noticeably in just the few months we have been running these practices.

We are building exactly what I had hoped. The intensity in randori today was exactly what people need to move them to the next level in judo. We are building a technical base and their judo is improving. This is our first year and my goal is for our players to all win golds at the California state championships.

My second goal is for all of them to win gold at the Golden State Open in August, and at the USJA Winter Nationals in December.

We have some who will be able to attend the USJA or USJF Junior Nationals but, financially,that is not in the cards for everyone this year. Fortunately, next year the USJA Junior Nationals are in San Diego, and will these kids ever be ready!

So, thanks, guys. I have been in judo since God was a baby. I was thinking about quitting judo, but because you all inspire me so much, I have decided not to quit judo today.

(The baby in the picture, by the way, is not actually God, but my daughter, Maria, who is going to give birth to her own baby soon. She is much older now than she was in that picture.)

We love marmots

I was irritated today, which made this just like nearly every other day. In particular, I was irritated because I found out that some arrogant jerk in judo had done something which I thought was out of line. Again, a pretty typical day.

As most of my days do, it ended on a good note, and here is my important advice and the relation to marmots, about which you are no doubt wondering by now.

When you find yourself getting too concerned about what is going on in the judo community, people boycotting tournaments, idiots telling you that your athletes aren't good enough to come to their camp and train with them, old fat guys promoting one another to forty-seventh degree black belt, which allows them to get on the mat in a velvet judo gi holding champagne flutes ... try one of my three sure-fire cures.

1. Get some exercise - actually go to judo and choke someone, which amazingly, is legal, or go run or ride a bike. Since it was pouring rain in Santa Monica, the last two choices were out, and the rain meant by the time I got anywhere in this traffic judo practice would be over. This sent me to my second option.

2. Surf the Internet. This is a great way to bring it into perspective. There are billions of pages that have nothing to do with judo. One of my favorites is slashdot, which bills itself as "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."

It is interesting. I cannot vouch for their claim that all of it matters. For example, they had a bit today on the history of domain names like eat.com (owned by the same food company that makes Ragu and a bunch of other stuff) and milk.com which is apparently owned by a guy who just happens to like milk and who registered it 14 years ago back when you tried to think of a name for your site and went, "Milk! Hey, I like milk. I bet no one has registered milk.com " - and guess, what, no one had. Underneath the title, it says, "We love marmots". It also says, at the bottom, under disclaimer, that if you think anything here might offend you, go away right now. Gee, I need a tattoo like that on my forehead! I followed a number of links on this site and I can safely say I learned nothing of use, but I laughed a lot. I'll bet the milk.com guy doesn't know anything about judo.

3. Go to your public library. I guess Borders or Barnes and Noble would do but I love the library. It is such an amazing concept that I can walk into a place and walk out with an armload of books, for free. The Los Angeles Main Library has this in common with museums - it is a great place for restoring your faith in humanity. You go into these places and they have great sculptures, reading rooms, beautiful buildings, thousands of books. We used some of our tax dollars for this instead of blowing up foreign countries. Rich people decided to give their money so that complete strangers could have access to great art and literature instead of spending it on another yacht for themselves or cheap women and expensive whiskey or expensive women and cheap whiskey. There are very few books in the library on judo. I probably have more in my house. There are lots of books on other cool stuff, though. One I checked out is called, It's not news, it's fark. It is hilarious and I cannot put some of the really funny lines here because I know some underage people read this blog. There is also a website www.fark.com , with such valuable news items as:

Texas' highest criminal court adopts a policy prohibiting filings covered in "corrosive or dangerous chemicals, blood, food, feces, urine or other bodily fluids."

So, you know that feces-and-blood-covered brief you just urinated on? Forgot about sending it in to the Texas court, buddy!

My husband said that it reminded him of me. I asked just how he figured a connection there, not having smeared blood, feces, urine or radioactive nuclear wastes on any court documents lately,

"You know, how you are always prefacing things you say to the kids with, I never thought I would have to say this but.... like, I never thought I would have to say this but, do NOT break plastic swords over your sister's ass."

I am sorry to relate that yes, I actually DID have to say that. I am sure Ogden Nash could have written some really good poems about our household.

My point, which by now you have given up hope that I might actually have one, is this... Don't let your blood pressure rise over anything that happens in judo. It is just one of a billion things that exist in the world, and if it bothers you then just turn you attention temporarily to other things. Marmots, for example.

------------------ REQUIRED JUDO TIP ---------------------------------
If you are in an area where you are training for competition but there is a limit of serious judo players, here are a few drills that may help.

Three-person uchikomi - have one partner in front and the other holding that person. Fit in as fast and hard as you can trying to throw both of them. For forward throws, it is probably best if the person in back has hold of the partner's belt and back of the collar. For backward throws, they may want to be a few inches behind with arms lightly around the partner's waste and just hold the person up when "thrown".

Crash pad drills - draft two to five people and ask them nicely if they would mind taking falls on the crash pad. Throw for two minutes and see how many you can do. Offer to take your turn in line, of course. Often your partners will want to do less than two minutes, or not worry about speed and just do it at their own pace. Be polite and grateful. They don't need to let you smash them 30 times in two minutes, so if they do, and they can only get off five throws in two minutes, how nice of them to be willing to take falls for you.

Get an inner tube, put it around a post at home or a stairway railing and fit in on o soto gari or uchi mata dozens of times each day. We had one of those in our hallway for years. No idea where it finally disappeared to. This doesn't substitute for practice, but every little bit helps.

Newaza uchikomis - whenever you get a willing person, go through every mat technique you know. Then do it again. If you can go throw every mat technique you know five or six times that is a pretty worthwhile exercise. Of course, if you only have three or four techniques, you'll be done pretty quickly, but then, that tells you something else you need to work on, doesn't it?

There isn't a book for this you know!

On parenting an elite athlete ...

I found a journal under my bed in one of my bi-annual attempts at cleaning. A few years ago, a couple of parents of children a bit younger than mine encouraged me to write a book. I got as far as two pages and then it fell behind the bed and things settled over it, kind of like what happened with those saber-toothed tigers that they now have on display at the La Brea tar pits. Here is what I had written years ago...

There is a great big hole in the picture of parents in sports. Between the Little League dad and the figure-skating mom living vicariously through their children are the thousands of parents I have met. These are the moms and dads who take their child to 5 a.m. swim practice or who sit in grid lock L.A. traffic for two hours to get their children to practice at 7 p.m. They have to work all day, they are tired and sitting in that car on the 405 or on that bleacher at 6 a.m. is hardly the one thing in the world they most want to be doing by a very, very long shot.

Here is how it happens to most parents that you become the mom or dad of an elite athlete ...

You are not the fanatic parent portrayed in the media. You have your own life and you are happy with it, or at least as happy as most people are, anyway. You have a job, you have friends, a husband or wife, maybe, and, of course, a child. You are pretty much like the rest of America.

Except ... somewhere along the line, something happens and your story changes. You take your child to the local class and she does well. You take her to the local meets and she wins. Everyone is having a nice time. Your house starts to fill up with trophies, your child starts to get invited to 'traveling teams' or out-of-state tournaments. You start to notice that your child is different. She does things other kids her age don't do. You probably notice it before anyone else does, because who knows your child better than you. Other people will chalk it up to you just being another "Little League parent", but you know. You see this sport becoming your child's life. Here is one of the first heartaches. You see your child lose, maybe for the first time, or the first time in a long time. I have never seen a world-class athlete who took losing well. You see your child walk out of the gym, sit down in the car next to you and burst into tears. You have the picture of your child standing on the podium trying bravely to smile, when her eyes are red from crying under the bleachers ever since the finals ended. Don't kid yourself that it is any easier if you have a son. At that moment, when you see your child's heart breaking, you resolve to do whatever you need to see that your child never, ever has to feel that way again. And so, here you are at the pool before dawn or on the freeway moving at 5 miles an hour.

Most people would think that having been a world champion would prepare you for being the parent of an elite athlete. Most people have no idea what the hell they are talking about.

Nothing prepares a parent to raise an elite athlete in any sport. There have been so many times when everyone else seemed to think they knew more about what my daughter needed than I did. There were a lot of days when five or six different people would call me up to tell me what I was doing wrong. Did I ask their opinions? No! And I just wanted to scream at them,

"There isn't a book for this, you know! I'm doing the best I can!"

One advantage I do have of being a former world champion is that I have been in this sport a very long time, long enough to realize that almost all parents will face the same challenges.

How do you tell if your child really is as gifted as you think? How can you know if you are letting a God-given talent slide or pushing a child to unreasonable limits. This is easier to see in timed events like swimming or track. If your child has broken his or her age group record every year since age six, you have a pretty good hint. What about Ronda? She came into a sport at age 11 and did not compete in her first junior nationals until 12. At 14 she qualified for her first junior international team, at 15 for her first junior worlds, at 16 for her first senior U.S. team.

There are probably 100 divisions in the junior nationals, by age group and weight, and three national events and one junior U.S. Open each year. Out of those 400 possible gold medalists, what set Ronda apart?

There are a couple of factors. One is the conditions under which she was winning. Many of the kids who win junior nationals at twelve have been in judo six or seven years. With all of that training, they should be coming out ahead. Ronda had been competing for one year and was beating kids who had six times as much experience. Some children mature early, physically and mentally. They are essentially adults competing in the junior divisions. Ronda was not like that. She matured late in every way. At 12, she was such a skinny little beanpole we called her Beanie. In fact, I still call her Bean. As the youngest child, and having lost her father at a young age, she was pretty much babied. When she first came to live with him, Jim Pedro, Sr. said to me one day,

"When my daughter, Tanya was 16, she was going on 21. Your daughter is 16 going on 13,"

then he added,

"but, God that kid hates to lose!"

If your child has not had every advantage in terms of private lessons, extra practices, starting years earlier than the competition, in fact quite the opposite...

If your child is not physically and emotionally more advanced than the other children, in fact, quite the opposite...

.... and your child is still winning, that is one sign.

The biggest sign I see, though, is that child who HATES to lose and doesn't think anyone on earth has the right to beat her. Years ago, I fought a 15-year-old girl in the senior nationals. I was supposed to win. I had been beating everyone. In fact, I never lost a match at 48 kg. This kid came out and tried to beat me. She didn't have a prayer. I was ungodly strong for that division, I just held her still, knocked her down and pinned her. That wasn't the point. The point was that she was the only person that day who really came after me trying to win. That kid, Darlene Anaya, from New Mexico, got a bronze medal in the 1984 World Championships at 48 kg (I grew. She didn't.)

Congratulations.... I guess.... your child is amazing. Now what?
How do you get her the training she needs? How do you make sure she gets to enough practices, gets the cross-training in, gets the coaching she needs?

Are you thinking to yourself, "No problem. I would do whatever it takes for my child."

Then you, my friend, are probably one of those people who have perfect theories about raising children and no actual children. What if you have other kids? Ronda has three sisters. When Ronda won her first junior nationals, her youngest sister was a year old. How do you choose between paying for one child's college tuition or sending another to training camp in Europe or putting a third in preschool? Thank God I was helped by some very, generous wonderful people who helped with Ronda's expenses.

One year, some idiot who thought he was a great coach approached me and started telling me in a very pompous manner all of the things he was going to provide for Ronda that she needed. Then, he asked me, very condescendingly,

"What do you think you need from our organization to help you?"

I think he was very surprised by my reply, expecting I would say she needed a great coach like him. I said,

"You really want to help my daughter? What she needs is a car pool! She needs to go to practice seven days a week and I usually work six days a week to make money to cover her trips and everything her sisters need, too. She needs a car pool to get to practice."

No one ever helped get together a car pool. I did buy my oldest daughter a car for her 16th birthday on the condition she took her sister to practice twice a week. Ronda dubbed her "the chauffeur from hell". Maria often came straight from cheerleader practice to pick Ronda up, then drove to Hollywood and sat at Hayastan Dojo doing her biology homework while her sister practiced for two hours. It was a bit incongruous, Maria in her St. Monica's cheerleader outfit doing her AP homework while Ronda went head to head with several guys who grew up to be fighters in the UFC. They couldn't have been more gentlemen to my daughters, though and it all worked out.

Then there are those other decisions you are going to face later on.

What do you do when your child outgrows his or her first team or coach, or the second one after that?

What do you do when your child needs to move away from home? How do you decide where is the best place to go?

Ronda left home at 16 to train for the Olympics and there has never been a day go by that I haven't second-guessed that decision.


And that is the point at which the journal fell behind the bed....

Beijing - the cat, not the Olympics

or, How I almost got divorced, the cat almost died and then life returned to normal

Disclaimer: For those of you who read this blog for information on judo, there is not much of it in this post except for tangentially and, of course, the required judo tip at the end.

When you marry a man later in life, in my case, when he was 42 years old, and especially if you are his first wife, you need to realize that he is what he is and not go into the deal expecting to change him. My husband is a brilliant guy. He has his share of faults, primary among them being that most of life passes him by without notice. Think of Bill Gates with no ambition and you pretty much have Dennis. Even without ambition, he is brilliant, and he is no doubt much easier to get along with than Mr. Microsoft, plus we have cooler computers. Generally, life is calm in the DeMars household. Besides that, I believe that home should be calm. There is enough stress in the outside world that you need a place where, as Robert Frost said, when you go there, they have to take you in. All of this preface is to make you understand that it takes a lot for me to yell at my husband.

Well, Saturday we had six hours on the mat at the West Coast Judo Training Center. First, we had conditioning practice, then two hours of the Nanka Shorai Games, then another 2 1/2 hours of technical and randori practices. Then, since the trip to the training center in Tijuana was canceled and the kids were understandably disappointed, I took Julia and her friend from the training center, Denise, to race gokarts and play arcade games. By the time we got back to the house, I had been gone for twelve hours, stood out in the cold to get on the gokarts, and was cold,stiff and tired.

I walk into the kitchen and there is blood on the kitchen floor, blood on the kitchen chairs and blood on the cat's mouth. I go upstairs and the bathroom in the hallway has blood on the sink. In my bedroom, where my husband is sitting at his computer, there is blood on the sheets.

I yell,

"Dennis! The cat is bleeding all over the house and you sat here for twelve hours and left it for me to take care of when I got home! What the hell is wrong with you?"

He said (and I swear I am not making this up),

"I noticed the blood on the sheets but I figured the vet was closed on Saturday."

There are several things wrong with this picture:
1. We have had the same vet for 11 years and the vet IS, in fact, open on Saturdays and located less than two miles from our house, about 300 feet, incidentally, from the elementary school that Julia now attends and that Ronda and Jenn both attended. So, Dennis has driven by that vet several hundred times.
2. He didn't notice blood all over the house even though he had been home for the past twelve hours, when I noticed it in the first two minutes I walked in the door.
3. If an animal had bled on your sheets, wouldn't you CHANGE THEM????!!

I had some comments on this, which I will spare you, and the result was that Dennis looked on the Internet, found an animal hospital open on Sunday and promised to take the cat the next day.

On Sunday, Julia fought in the Nanka Novice tournament (where she fought her heart out and won her division), so we got up really early and left. SEVEN HOURS LATER, after Dennis has called three times (Where is the cat carrier? Downstairs in the garage. I can't find it. Look in the closet under the stairs. I went to PetCo and bought a cat carrier but the cat won't go in it. Maybe I should wait until you guys get home. Beijing likes Julia better than she likes me.)

So.. we get home and Dennis has yet to defeat the cat and put her in the pet carrier. This is one of the things one learns from judo - sometimes you set your mind to something and make it happen. I don't give a damn if the cat likes me or not. She is sick, she has to go in the pet carrier and go to the vet. She is hiding underneath the guinea pig cage. Julia and I lift up the guinea pig cage, I throw a sweatshirt over the cat, lift her up and stick her in the pet carrier.

By now, I have not had enough sleep for days, because work is very, very busy, on top of judo. Dennis has spent zero time with Julia all weekend and the cat looks like it is going to die for sure. I call my daughter Jenn and complain and she asks me if I am going to tell Ronda or wait until she comes back from Europe, because we all know that Ronda is very stressed out training hard, missing home and trying her best to gear up for the Olympics. I don't think Ronda will forgive me very soon if I don't tell her that her cat died. About every minute she is home she has that cat on her lap. It was the ONLY thing she wanted for her 14th birthday and she named it "Beijing" after the Olympics that she said she was going to win.

The day is not improving. Dennis comes home and says that the cat needed a blood transfusion, a test for a blood disease caused by parasites, a test for feline AIDS, a test for feline leukemia, about a dozen other things - and the total bill was almost $1,200. He handed over his debit card to the vet and paid it. (This is the point where I am starting to have second thoughts about divorcing him, because I don't think I would have done it. He said, he thought about not paying it but he knew how fond the girls were of that cat.)

So... I call Ronda and tell her what is happening and she starts bawling. It does not help that her father had a blood disease, had a lot of transfusions and died when she was little. Then she starts babbling about coming home and offers to send us payments or half the money or something if we would just pay for it, but I tell her Dennis already paid for it and animals, and people, too, will get sick whether she is here or not.

Dennis, in his second step away from divorce court, takes me and Julia to The Fish Company, our favorite restaurant, where we have oysters, crab, Mojitos, and Shirley Temples until we don't even care that Julia's tooth came out in the free taffy they give away at the restaurant. I cannot believe I have seen so much blood today and none of it was at the judo tournament.

The rest of the story.... work is better, I met my deadline today so I should be getting up from my desk the same day I sat down at it for the next week or so. As for the cat, unbelievably, she recovered and I brought her home from the vet today. She is eating again for the second time since I brought her home four hours ago, and she was on the bookshelf in the girls' room, so she at least had enough energy to jump up there. They are not sure what was wrong with the cat but the tests for those things that kill you came back negative, so they gave us three kinds of medicine to give her for the other three things it might be and we are supposed to bring her back on Wednesday. She doesn't look like she is going to win the cat Olympics today,but since, yesterday the vet said that her blood level was so low it was not normally compatible with life, the fact that she is eating, jumping up on bookshelves and walking around the house is pretty amazing.

------------------REQUIRED JUDO TIP -------------------------------
Conditioning makes it possible for you to do more judo. This 'obvious after someone else said it' fact was brought up by Jason Uno of Valley Judo Institute in the Nanka Development meeting on Saturday. I asked why he thought Ronda had improved over the last several years when many others hadn't and he said,
"You know, when you are in condition, you don't have to worry about a lot of things. You don't have to worry about conserving your energy to last a five minute match or stalling on the mat to catch your breath, so you can just focus on your judo, and there are more things you can do."

This is contrary to what many of us have heard about, "Technique will beat strength."
I was watching a match from the Ontario Open (now called the Hatashita International) and I can hear the comment on the videotape from someone watching as Ronda throws for ippon with o soto gari, "That was just pure strength."
It's true, too, and I saw it again, in the same tournament. The other player came into o soto and Ronda countered with an o soto of her own and just slammed the woman. It was pure power. What Jason pointed out was, "And why not? That strength allows her to do those moves. When you both come in on o soto and one person is a lot stronger than the other, the stronger person wins." Of course, that assumes you have a decent o soto in the first place.

Get in the top physical condition you can BUT (and this is very important) don't do your conditioning instead of judo. Do it IN ADDITION to judo. I personally don't think there is a magic conditioning program. Get up in the morning and run sprints, do bench presses, curls, leg curls, squats, clean and jerk. Run distance to cut weight so you are not fighting a heavier division than you should. AND go to judo practice 10 or 15 hours a week. Doing that alone will pull you ahead of 90% of the competition and probably put you on the U.S. team. Keep a record. Otherwise, it is too easy to fool yourself into thinking you did conditioning every day when you just did it twice a week and thought about doing it the other days and watched the Today Show instead.

I truly hate being wrong

- but sometimes it happens

Today was one of those days. Since our trip to Mexico with the team from the USJA/ USJF Training Center was canceled at the last minute, I found some time after work to watch videotapes of judo, something I have been meaning to do for months. I have a whole shelf full of videos, gathering dust. I couldn't find the one I wanted so I pulled the first one off the shelf and watched it. It happened to be from the high school and collegiate nationals from when Ronda was a freshman in high school. Ironically, there were none of Ronda's matches on the tape. Someone had taped the kids from Nanka who competed in the high school and collegiate nationals. Who would tape a skinny little freshman from Venice Dojo? Ronda did win that year, by all ippons, but by the time her matches came up, the person had come to the end of the tape.

The interesting part is that, at that tournament, Hayward Nishioka commented that the judo was really not very good at all, and I was offended. My daughter was in that tournament. She was good, right?

About two years later, I was at the U.S. Open and Jim Pedro, Sr. commented that the judo was so bad it was boring. Again, I was offended. My daughter was in that tournament. Yes, she only got a silver medal, but she was only sixteen so that wasn't too terrible. I told him as much and he said,

"Your daughter could be a good judo player, but she isn't a good judo player yet."

I almost smacked him, but I was brought up to be polite to old people, even rude old people, so I didn't. I did tell him that I didn't appreciate his attitude and he looked genuinely surprised and replied,

"But it's the truth!"

Today, watching a video of the high school and collegiate nationals, the very same tournament, I realized Hayward and Jim were absolutely right. Even the national champions in this country really aren't very good. The difference in perspective came about because, in the last seven years, I have traveled more and seen a lot more judo internationally. For years, I taught little kids because I had a little kid so that was my main interest. As my little kid got big, I started watching videos of the people she would compete against in the Worlds and Olympics. I acquired a different standard for comparison, and I started analyzing more. In a sense, I became more educated about judo.

Looking for something else, I came across a DVD by accident. I was about a dozen matches Ronda fought in 2005, when she was 18. She was better than she was at 16, but she is considerably better now.

Everything I saw on these tapes convinced me that what we are doing at the USJA/JF Training Center is on the right track.
Conditioning - even many of our junior, high school and collegiate national champions are not in very good condition. Many of these kids who start judo at five or six years old are the sensei's kid. They get a lot of individual attention, they learn one or two techniques really well and throw a lot of kids for ippon right away in local tournaments, sometimes even in the junior nationals. If they have to fight all out for a whole match, they are dead by the end of it. This is one of the key changes we tried to make with the training center, to offer a level of intensity that is not possible in most dojos, because you only have one or a few people who seriously want to train. I don't blame them. I'm almost 50. I don't want to have to go ten minutes with some teenager in top shape. Unfortunately, most of those teenagers can't go ten minutes all out either. Ronda was in better shape than most when she was 16. She was even stronger at 18. She is much stronger now.

Gripping - most of the matches I watched, at most one of the players, and often, neither, had any idea of gripping. If one of them had a general idea, it was to get a grip that had the other player at a disadvantage, such as pinning down the right hand of a right-handed player and controlling her left shoulder. Then, the other player had no real method for breaking that grip. The smarter ones realized they were at a disadvantage, tried some kind of ineffective attack and ended up on the mat, if they were lucky, and got countered if they were not lucky. Then, when they started again, the player had no idea how to block the grip that was a disadvantage. In fact, more often than not, they didn't seem to understand that the other person's grip was the problem. They would come off the mat, shaking their heads and just say, "My throws didn't work."

I looked at Ronda's gripping and even at 18 it was noticeably different. It was purposeful. She had a specific grip she was trying to get, she got that and she attacked. If she wasn't comfortable with her grip, she did what she needed to find that comfort zone. Her gripping is better now. There are ways she could improve.

Speaking of matwork -- most people didn't have a clue. They used matwork to look good, eat up the clock and if they happened to fall on top of the person when they threw him or her, well, good. Matwork is one of those things I can say I know a little bit about and some of it was so bad it was laughable. If you really paid attention, even when a person got an armbar it wasn't usually that the person getting it was so good as that the person who should have escaped was completely lost in the fog. Hadn't any of these people heard of practicing escapes from armbars?

Here is something to really make you think --- most of those players in the first video are still competing, and almost none of them fight any differently than they did seven years ago. That means, of course, none of them are any better. If you said something to them, or to their coach, they might respond,

"Well, he must be doing something right. He did win the high school nationals."

At that point, I would be tempted to tell them that their players really were not very good, but I'd be afraid that, if they hadn't been brought up to be polite to old people, even very rude ones, they just might smack me.