Ways and Whys of Warm-Ups

Dsimon, in the comments on this blog one day remarked that he does not do warm up exercises, that he thinks that doing push-ups during practice is a waste of time and he would rather have the kids practice a technique, even if they do it slowly.

I thought about his remark because I used to get irritated at some clubs where I would train when they would spend 30 minutes or more on exercises - jump rope, running sprints, push ups, sit-ups, squats, you name it.

Here are my thoughts on warm-ups.

If you are spending 20% or more of your practice on warm-ups it's a waste of time. Judo class is not gym. Let them get in shape at home.

For beginning students, spending 10-15% of the practice on warm-ups is not a bad idea, for two reasons.  One, most new students are not in very good condition. Very few schools have daily physical education classes and your students are a lot more likely to spend their after school hours playing video games than playing soccer. So, warm-ups are good to gradually get them in condition. Two, they don't really know anything yet, so it's not as if you can have them spend the whole time doing throws and pins if they only know one throw and one pin. That's going to get boring pretty fast.

You can use warm-up exercises even with advanced students to break up the monotony. No matter how dedicated they are, some days it's going to be hard for your players to get motivated. I remember one day at the West Coast Training Center, Coach Tony Comfort (the guy throwing there) was running the morning practice and took all of the team to the park and had them play football for over half an hour. I thought that was really odd and I asked him why he did that. He explained that, first of all ,it was a beautiful summer day after several days of rain, and he could tell how much people wanted to be outside. Secondly, we had been training very hard for a long time and he thought mentally, people just needed a break. And, finally, running to the park, running sprints after the football in the park, and running back was no, well, um walk in the park.

Your warm-ups shouldn't be one more bit of monotony. Some people don't mind push-ups, sit-ups and other calisthenics. Some hate those exercises. I try to mix up what we do for warm ups.

Warm-ups (and every game you play) should be targeted toward judo. I do push-ups and sit-ups because they build muscles you use in judo. We don't have ladders to do ladder drills, but we put belts on the mat, and they work just as well. (In case you don't know what ladder drills are, you can see a few examples here. I'll try to remember to video some tomorrow that have even more applicability to judo.)

There are judo alternatives to jumping jacks, suicides, etc. For example, you can have one player at each end of the mat and have a third player in the middle running back and forth and doing uchikomi. Yes, I have heard people say that doing uchikomi is bad and teaches you how to not follow through on a throw. I know plenty of people who have won world championship medals (including two in this family) who do uchikomi so I don't buy that it necessarily hampers your judo.

My whole point is that warm-ups should not take away time from judo instruction but rather lead into and supplement it.

Statistics on Why You are Single

Today is one of those days I randomly rant. I've been trying  to expand my horizons beyond statistics, programming and martial arts, so I have taken to reading books reviewed in the New York Times and LA Times and random novels checked out of the library.

I have reached two conclusions:

1. It was a very good choice on my part not to major in anything related to literature.
2. People younger than me sure are whiny.

There are a lot of books by single people, mostly women, on "the truth about single life" and how nearly impossible it is to have a relationship with anyone who is not a complete loser.

Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me? By age 38 I had been married three times, two of which (so far) are in the 'till death do us part' category, putting me way ahead of the odds for marriages. And look at me, I'm short, my only domestic quality is that I live in a house and I've never owned makeup in my life. In any women's magazine rating of how to get a man, I score below zero.

Today, I will give my advice to women. If you are interested in advice to men you can read something I wrote a long time ago on my statistics blog, A geek's guide to meeting women.  It actually applies to non-geek men also.

LADIES ... listen up - your problem is that you are completely, stupidly unrealistic. Jacob or Edward or whoever on that stupid ass show you watch is a fucking vampire or werewolf or something. No! And he's paid to give those smoldering looks. One of my graduate students is married to a celebrity. She laughed about the women who were so in love with him, saying,

"My husband is great, but it's not all listening to that dreamy voice. It's also listening to him snore and washing his underwear."

You get FIVE, no more than five points that are a deal breaker, cross him off your list, non-negotiable. I cannot believe the women who have a hundred reasons why they won't date a guy again from, "He's a Republican", to "I just couldn't get serious about a man named Ed, it reminds me of the talking horse" or ....

Let me give you my not-for-me points. These are just very personal for me. Not everything in the world can be crucial to you. For me, it is family, religion, employment and intelligence. Plus, I have never once been attracted to a younger man. You get your own five. 

1. Does not want children - since I have always wanted children, anyone who I was going to get seriously involved with better want them, too.
2. Is not really intelligent - as in, can look at the beginning of a simulation application and say, "That's going to be a normal distribution", or in the first 30 seconds of a match can say, "She is going to lose if she doesn't switch grips."
3. Doesn't work.
4. Objects to raising the children Catholic.
5. Younger than me.

Okay, I'll give you the obvious ones as extras- he can't be abusive - by that I mean physically abusive or verbally abusive. Calls you names, deliberately insults you. I don't mean he forgot to bring you flowers on your one-month anniversary. And seriously - a one-month anniversary? What is WRONG with you people? He also can't be insane - thinking the guinea pigs are plotting against him. He has to be legal age, can't show up at your first date drunk and have good hygiene - I mean bathe and wear clean clothes, not require a specific cologne. My point is, that is all you get. Who the hell brought you up to think the world has to deliver a person designed to your expectations?

You know what kind of women men like? It's not all that crap about the right beauty products to buy - Men like women who like them.

Get over yourself.

Now, it has been said, with some justification, that I have a pretty high opinion of myself. I do. Yet, I am continually surprised when single women make comments about my husband like,

"He hates to exercise? There's no way I could settle for that. Look at you, you're in such good shape..."

Here is the answer to all of those questions and why you are still single. My husband is a really brilliant man, a good father to the children, the calmest person you'd ever meet (which comes in handy being married to me). He likes math, programming, computers, museums, good restaurants and the occasional happy hour. Me, too. He wants to live in southern California. In 17 years, I've never heard him tell a lie.

It never occurred to me that because I liked sports he must also, or that he had to be certain height or within a two-year age range.

Here is where my statistician background comes in. If you are 40 years old and haven't found any man who suits you, I suspect you have 50 different qualities you think a man should have - height, weight, age, income, location, job, personality, etc. etc. etc. and if he doesn't meet every one of those 50 check-off lists, then you cross him off. Of course, the odds of him meeting with your approval are
1 in 1,125,899,906,842,624    (or 1 in 2 to the 50th power).

This is why you are single.

I, on the other hand, look at it as a maximum likelihood function. If he is good on more of those 50 traits than bad, and maybe REALLY good on some of them, like being the smartest person I ever met, then he reaches the cut off score for husband material.

Want to have a good relationship? Quit focusing on what is wrong with him and how he doesn't measure up to what you have to have.  Look at what is good about him. If you like him, odds are, he'll like you. If not, there are 3 billion more men on this planet.

There's more to an arm bar than an arm bar

Photo courtesy of Hans Gutknecht

Every time I read someone on an internet forum call Ronda a "one trick pony", I silently say a prayer of thanks that you can't catch stupidity through the internet.

Jim and I just finished writing an article on an arm bar as counter and combination. Here are three points we made.

First is that you should always practice both sides, so we showed the same move from two different angles and done on both the right side and the left.

The second is that an arm bar is not just an offensive move but a move in defense as well. The arm bar Ronda is doing here is in the MIDDLE of the sequence. It is a counter to a move Manny attempted.

The third is that an arm bar isn't necessarily the end. It can also be part of a combination. The photo below is a pin that is done after your partner escapes the arm bar by doing a forward roll.

There is another pin after this, too.

The point we make in the article is that an arm bar is not an isolated move. If you really are an expert, you can do it from both sides, multiple positions and multiple points in a sequence, at the beginning, at the end or, as shown here, in the middle. It is not just a finishing move. That is particularly so in judo where you can win by a pin just as easily as an arm bar. In fact, more easily. (Remind me to explain that some time.)

Jim says this same move works in wrestling as well, that even though arm bars are not legal you are allowed to put pressure on the arm and when the person rolls over you can pin him and win the match. I don't know as much about wrestling as he does but he sounded very believable when he said it, so I am going  to believe it.

Why You Are Not Winning: What I Learned from a Nobel Prize Winner

There is only one winner in a tournament. There is only one number one person in a division, so the odds are great that it is not you. The reason you don't win is that you don't train hard enough and when you and your mama are telling you that you do, you're both lying.

Do I believe that the race always goes to the swift or the battle to the strong? Not always, but that is sure as hell the way to place your bets.

Here's another way - on the person who trains the hardest, who is very, very, very often the one who ends up strongest and swiftest.

I was visiting a club once after a major tournament and the instructor was telling the players how proud he was of them, that they had done so well and they trained harder than any other club in the country. That was a lie on two fronts. First, as I heard another visitor mutter under her breath,

"They couldn't have done all that damn good. None of them won."

Second, if they really trained harder than every other club in the country, then WHY did none of them win? What were those other players doing that they weren't? Did they just all have naturally gifted athletes walk into their clubs?

Let me tell you a few things the winners do that you don't.

1. They train every fucking day. They don't take off because it's Tuesday, they have a cold, their hand hurts, they have a test tomorrow, it's their grandmother's birthday. They might take off Christmas, the day after a major tournament. They might even take off one day a week, if they worked out at least twice a day the other six days. They train twelve times a week and you don't.

2. When they are at practice for an hour and a half, they fight for an hour. You don't. You tell me you train really, really hard. Yet, you show up to practice late, spend 20 minutes getting dressed and taped, talk to your friends, your coach, the parents of other players. You spend another 20 minutes doing warm-up exercises. You go a few rounds "really hard", and that's it.

3.  You don't even know what really hard is. There are a million people who can suck it up for a round or two at practice. Fighting round after round against people who can give you a really hard match is a start. Fighting round after round with people who can kick your ass is way better.


If you find yourself the toughest person in the room, then you need to find a different room.

HOW NOT TO TRAIN

Let me give you an example that I see all of the time - someone comes into a club late and spends fifteen minutes warming up then grabs a player who is smaller, younger or old and out of shape. They throw that player around or maul them on the mat. They do that a couple of rounds. Then, they go with someone about their size who is in good condition who has already done several rounds of hard randori, having actually gotten to practice on time. They fight this person like it is a tournament except for any rules that might be inconvenient, being as defensive as possible to keep from getting thrown or pinned, ignoring it if they are about to go off the mat, if there is a rule against holding on one side the entire match. If you have ever once said,

"Well, I beat Person X at randori."

Then YOU are an idiot (or, hopefully, a recovering idiot).

You can't beat people in practice any more than you can get an A in field trip. You have missed the point.

Where did the Nobel Prize come in? In an article on advice to young scientists, James Watson said,

"Never be the smartest person in the room."

His point was that if you aren't the smartest person there, then you can learn a lot from the other people.

When Ronda was 13 and 14 years old, we used to go down and visit my friend, Dr. Jake Flores, quite often. His son, Justin, was probably 18 years old, three-time state wrestling champion, national judo champion and about 25 pounds heavier than Ronda. He was definitely the toughest person in the room. One day he said to me, mostly joking,

"AnnMaria, what is wrong with your daughter? Everywhere I go, half the guys in the room don't want to train with me, and here she is every round in my face, asking me if I want to go again, I can't get her off of me. She's like a little tick."

Could she beat him? Hell, no! She was a skinny kid, barely a teenager. He threw her, pinned her, choked her and arm barred her at will. She wasn't much of a match for him at all - then.

Never be the toughest person in the room.

Falling Really Isn't That Important to Me

First of all, in response to some of the comments in the blog I wrote recently on What Do You Teach First, I never said that I DON'T teach falling.  In fact, I said that I spend 10 or 15 minutes on it the first day of class and 5 minutes or so every class after that. So, I do teach how to fall and reinforce that teaching almost every practice. For someone to be a good judo player, he or she cannot be afraid of falling and everyone is going to get thrown at some point, probably at several points in every practice.

What I DON'T agree with is the old-fashioned way of spending two or three weeks or more just having people learn falling. I have heard various justifications for this,

"We want to make sure the students were serious about learning before we waste any time teaching them."

"If you don't know how to fall, you can get seriously injured, so we don't start the students on throws until we are satisfied with falling."

"Falling is the most important part of judo and the most difficult to teach."

I think all of those are wrong. Students shouldn't have to PROVE to you their worthiness to learn judo, or anything. If a person comes to me and wants to learn statistics or judo or any other class I had agreed to teach I think it is being an arrogant jerk to first make them go through some ritual to prove they are worth my time.

The second justification is true in some cases. If you don't use a crash pad and students are going to be thrown hard from a standing position in free practice, then yes, you probably have to teach them to fall well first. Personally, I have them do throws from their knees when they are doing matwork in the first practice. I also have them do throws on the crash pad.

So, although we do throws the first day, we don't have anyone getting thrown hard on the mat for a few weeks, just like my friends who teach falling for weeks. The difference is that my students get to do some throws the first day.

At Gompers Middle School, I pretty much start each year with a fresh class of beginners. At other programs where I have taught, if I have more advanced students, I would let them new students work out with them and have the advanced player just defend. Either way, a new student gets to throw and pin someone on day one, that's why they are there.

The whole most important, most difficult to teach part I don't really get. Sylver and Chad both made a great point in the comments on the last post, though, that LOTS of people never get in a fight where they need to throw or arm bar someone but everyone falls down. I've fallen down ice-skating, biking (when some idiot ran across the bike path), roller-blading and who knows when else. So, they do have a point. If you define important as "likely to use outside of judo", then okay.

The most difficult to teach? I still don't get that part.

Mean Mother Matwork Advice to Marina (You know we love you)

I watched Marina Shafir's second MMA fight on youtube and posted a comment on it. It was a nice arm bar at the end but the fight should have ended in the first minute.

Marina was on top and her opponent had Marina's leg hooked between her own. There are two different arm bars I can think of from there right off the top of my head. These aren't those demonstration type arm bars either, you know the ones that some idiot does in a demonstration that you could only get if the person was half your size or had the IQ of a slow-developing giraffe. Nope, these are actual arm bars I have done to resisting opponents many times.

Why am I such a mean person? Why can't I just say that it was a good fight, she won in the first round and I am happy for her?

Because there are only two times you can learn. You can learn when you win and you can learn when you lose. If you learn when you win, you'll lose a lot less often.

I can't stand those people who counter any suggestion with,

"I must be doing something right. I won."

You know what the definition of "perfect" is? It's NOT, "doing something right", it's "doing nothing wrong".

Winning means that you did one fewer things wrong, or one more thing right than the other person. That's good. Now, if you can learn at the same time one or two things you did wrong and correct them, you'll not only have won, but you'll have improved. At the same time, you want to focus on what you did right, too, and practice it so that you can repeat that.

Watching this match, I immediately see a couple of things Marina did wrong. Since not only is she Ronda's friend but I also genuinely like her a lot, I'm certainly not going to point them out here, but I definitely will mention them the next time I see her.

In case you are wondering, my niece Samantha got a 3.0 her first semester in college. Both Dennis and I told her that was good but she is smart and we knew she could do better. Turns out that was the best GPA Sam had gotten in years. Frustrated she demanded,

"Isn't anything good enough for you people? Is there ever a point when you WON'T expect someone to do better?"

From the living room, Ronda called out,

"Hey, I know the answer to that question. No."

P.S. Samantha made the Dean's List many times after that semester so I just wanted to end this post by pointing out that I was right.

No Hesitation Drills

In thinking about what the players at the West Coast Judo Training Center needed to work on this weekend, it occurred to me that they had the same need I see everywhere, all the way up through the international level.

That is, players need to overcome their hesitation. They wait for the perfect opportunity to attack and miss all of the "okay" or "possibly okay" opportunities that face them every few seconds.

When Ronda started judo, I told her that if you did not attack every three seconds, you got a penalty. She want along thinking that her first three years of competition until Tawny Uemura (I'm STILL pissed at you for this, Tawny) told her that it wasn't true.

Of course, by then, the pattern had been laid down and she continues to attack pretty relentlessly to this day.

Yesterday, we did several drills with the purpose of reducing hesitation. In one, players randori and if they don't attack every three seconds, they get whacked with a belt. As you can see, you need a few assistants to make this happen. As you can also see, the players are attacking with much greater frequency than in the usual randori session.

Attacks on the mat count, too. So do non-attacks. Lay and pray, get whacked with a belt.

This is one of several drills we did to reduce hesitation.

On the way back, I was thinking about how I would really like a book on drills. I called Jimmy and said,

"Hey, now that we're done this one, what do you say we write another book?"

and he said,

"NO!"

But I told him that I really would like to have a book on drills, and I had a lot of matwork drills that did not get in this book and I was sure he had a lot of drills, too. At which point, he said, he would think about it after this one came out which either means he might do it or that he just wanted to get back to watching the Patriots.

As to why this book is taking so long to be published, I have no idea except that it is apparently always this way with books. Supposedly it is because the publishers have to do all kinds of marketing for months to convince people to buy it, so lots of three-martini lunches with buyers from Barnes & Noble have to happen first. Seems sketchy to me, but that's what the New York Times Sunday Book Review says.

A few months from now, when I meet some of the deadlines for my day job, I think I may start on a second book. By the time I get around to it, hopefully our first book will be out and I will be able to talk Jim into doing half of it.