Judo: It beats vacuuming the cat

I have a confession to make. Almost every Saturday, I do NOT want to get up and go to practice at the West Coast Judo Training Center.

First of all, it involves getting up early in the morning, which is against my religion. It is because of people like me that the Catholic church instituted 6 p.m. mass. Secondly, there are always a thousand other things to do. For example, today I wanted to read a book on Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance and another on Cohort Analysis, neither of which I got to read. I wanted to watch a tape on gripping and read more of Ron Angus's book, Competitive Judo, neither of which I had time to do, either.

What I did do when I came home from judo 8 hours after I left home was take some aspirin because I have arthritis and when I work out, all of my joints are killing me shortly thereafter. After a nap to compensate for the getting up early thing, I spent the next few hours changing three guinea pig cages, cleaning the bird cage, doing the dishes and vacuuming up the cat hair which has filled the house. It occurred to me that I might be much more efficient to vacuum the cat directly, and hey, it was laying right there.

So, why am I doing this? I was just reading Jason's blog on quitting judo. He makes very sound arguments. He is busy with work and other obligations. He has injuries.

Someone like me must be crazy to devote so much time to something that interferes with other interests, pays no money and causes pain to boot.

Julia has been complaining she hurt her knee - she hit it on a tree playing on a rope swing. She then conveniently "forgot" her running shoes. I borrowed a pair from her friend, who lives right next door to the training center. Julia cried for the whole half-mile jog to the park. Then she cried a little during the first couple of sprints. By the water break she was in an animated discussion with Erin, the gist of which, I believe was, "Boys are stupid and Crystal is mean."

In the half-mile jog back to the training center at the end of conditioning, Julia beat most people by a good city block.

During the second practice, Erik's head hit Julia's shoulder and they both hit the mat. She sat on the couch with tears in her eyes, insisting her arm was broken. A few feet away, Erik told his father with absolute certainty that his skull was broken. At the end of the five minute break, both were out on the mat with a new partner.

Little incidents like these get replayed several times each day. Each one teaches an athlete that she is stronger than she thought.

There is also the plain judo part of it. Today we worked on harai goshi, gripping against left-handed players and breaking grips. Even though a bunch of our regular participants were in San Francisco we decided to have practice anyway, and 14 people came to put in 4 1/2 hours on the mat. In a previous post, I talked about the benefit coaches' kids get in terms of time and attention to developing their judo. These kids get all of that, the full package. They get tougher, they get conditioning and they get someone saying,
"

Eileen, don't collapse forward on your harai goshi, pull and turn."
"Harout, sweep with your leg."
"Julia, get that left leg back."
"Crystal, snap that hand straight down and pop it off your gi, like this."

At the end of each day, it is the sum of those little things that made me glad I went and which get me up at 8:30 am again the next Saturday.

Tomorrow, once I find my iPhone, I will post pictures of Tony teaching harai goshi.

Judo Wisdom

Two people who made a big difference in my life were Frank Fullerton, who died recently, and Bruce Toups,who claimed not to be dead when I talked to him today. Both men had a lot of wisdom.

During the years I competed, they helped me a lot both financially, through the support for my travel expenses and administratively, making sure that I got to tournaments and training camps that I wouldn't have known existed without their efforts. They gave me opportunities that I did not even realize I needed until looking back years later.

When Bruce was Director of Development and Frank was president of USJI Americans won two world gold medals, a couple of silver medals and several bronze. Over the years, they still were available to anyone in judo smart enough to seek their sound advice.

Bruce reminded me recently that at some point in our lives, we need to just look at what makes us happy. It occurred to me a big part of what makes me happy is the really good people I know, most of whom I met through judo.

Every time I talk to Bruce, I learn something about business, about judo, about life AND he makes me laugh. You can't get much better than that. Tonight, Julia was gone until late because she was hanging out with a friend she had met at judo a couple of years ago. Gina isn't doing judo these days but Julia still really enjoys spending time with her. They are both genuinely nice kids. Skye, who is a few months older than Julia, fights her at about half the tournaments. They go back and forth on which one wins, but they are always happy to see one another. Being almost fifth-graders, I believe their conversations can generally be summarized as,

"I like judo. Boys are stupid."

Judo has been part of making Julia happy, not so much the winning but the friends and the being a strong, healthy, confident kid. Those qualities all reinforce each other, as healthy, strong, popular people tend to be self-confident and more people want to be friends with someoen who is self-confident.

When I was talking to Jim Pedro, Sr. yesterday I could hear him and Ronda arguing, as usual. She could not understand the absolute illogic of someone who would have salsa but no chips in their house, suggesting that for lunch he was going to give them peanut butter and jelly that they would have to eat with their hands, because there would be no bread. Jim has her and several other girls working out all day long, running, lifting and doing judo, with jumping in the lake and jet-skiing thrown in but they both have the energy to argue about whether tortilla chips are a basic necessity of life.

Bruce said to me,

"He's doing what he loves helping those kids develop to their potential and instead of being anxious about whether she is training right, Ronda has the luxury of worrying about chips with her salsa."

In judo, sometimes we find people who are good for us in all sorts of ways, even if we seldom admit it. Even if they tell us that chips are bad for us and we need to run sprints at 5:30 in the morning.

Off the top of my head, I can think of people who would give me $5,000 to support judo camps, give me good legal advice, review a mortgage offer, write me a letter of recommendation for a job, explain university politics, make a house call when I have sick family members at home, teach a judo clinic for free a thousand miles away, pick up my youngest daughter from school, find my daughter a hotel room in Japan and talk me out of taking a job that looked good on paper but that I didn't really want to do. I know this because I have friends who HAVE done all of those things for me. That's just a start. The complete list is REALLY long. If you have been in judo any length of time, I'll bet you could come up with your own list in no time flat.

So, here is my judo wisdom for the day. So often we get caught up in annoyance about the petty politics, the people who are self-centered, arrogant or just plain bigoted and we forget that the VAST majority of people we meet in judo are smart, funny, generous and interesting. Enjoy those people and forget about the rest, because you only get one life. Spend it with people who make you laugh, who make you feel better about life, instead of worse.

Frank Fullerton and I were on the same flight back from Athens, after the last Olympics. He looked over his glasses at me, laughed and said,

"You know, AnnMaria, you were a lot of trouble, but I am glad to see you turned out worth it in the end."

What turns out to be worth it in the end? It's like that old poem by Emerson, the respect of honest men, the affection of children, the friendship of good people. I've never been interested in being on all these judo boards and committees, although oddly, I ended up president of California Judo, Inc. for two years and vice-president of the USJA for four years. It is odd because, as Lanny Clark pointed out, while other people have political allies, I just have friends.

Speaking of Lanny, a few years ago, a bunch of judo people went to dinner after the state championships. Someone came up to me the next day and started berating me,

"You're the President of California Judo, and I am on an important committee. You can't have a meeting without inviting me!"

Lanny stepped between us and interrupted,

"It was not a meeting, it was a group of friends. And we don't like you."

So, I may never get to be an Olympic coach or eighth-degree black belt or president of any more things, but that is okay. I have good friends, I get to laugh a lot and I am the world's only woohooshidan, all of which makes me happy.

Julia and AnnMaria's World: Learn Counters

It occurred to me that today it is Thursday, all day and all night and that I had promised that every Thursday we would do an edition of AnnMaria and Julia's videoblog, Sneakerdoodle Zebra Judo. On the off chance that anyone silly enough to actually pay attention to what I say and remember it would have nonetheless have mastered the concept of Thursday well enough to apply it, a new edition of the video blog is below.

This is the feature of this blog which caused my oldest daughters, Maria and Jennifer, to conclude with absolute certainty,

"The rest of the people in this family are complete dorks."

Of course, if you are getting this blog through an RSS feed that does not include the video, you have no idea what I am talking about. Your two options are to actually go to the blog at

http://drannmaria.blogspot.com


or read on....

1. It bugs me when people do lousy throws off balance and do not get countered.


2. Countering people who attack off-balance is sort of a Darwinism of judo. They will either learn to adapt and do their throws correctly or quit and take up badminton.


3. A tani otoshi counter is in that minority of techniques that you can do effectively if you have an outside grip and your opponent has an inside grip.


4. If the other person has an inside grip and you have an outside grip, you are at a disadvantage. If they are stupid enough to use that disadvantage to attack on a not very good seoi nage then you must counter them. Otherwise, you are voting in favor of stupidity and we should all be against that.

For those of you who have written me to tell me that these videos are shot in my living room (I knew that) or that these are not of the professional quality of some other videos that you have purchased let me point out a few facts, Captain Obvious. Professional videos most likely:

A. Do not co-star a ten-year-old wearing a bike helmet, and
B. Do not have a studio audience made up of 8 stuffed animals being walked over back and forth by a cat.

Furthermore,
C. Tani otoshi is still a good counter for seoi nage

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

Why have a very disproportionate number of American international medals come from people who are coached by their parents?

Consider these records:
World Gold Medalist: Jimmy Pedro, Jr. - Jim Pedro, Sr's son
World Silver Medalist : Liliko Ogasawara - Nagayasu Ogasawara's daughter
World Bronze Medalist : Darlene Anaya - Tony Anaya's daughter
World Silver Medalist : Ronda Rousey - my (usually) lovely young daughter

What advantages do these players have? Yes, they all had pretty good coaches, but there are other really good coaches in this country - Yonezuka (okay, well he did have Mike Swain who won a world gold medal and Olympic bronze), Nishioka, Legros, Cahill, Doug Tono, Maurice Allen, Evelio Garcia, Israel Hernandez. Besides, these same coaches had other players. Ogasawara coached Celita Schutz, who did well, but not as well as his daughter. Jim Pedro, Sr. had a lot of other people who made world and Olympic teams, but none as successful as his son.

I would suggest that one advantage these players have is the luxury of TIME. Today, I glanced over at Julia at Sawtelle. She was doing matwork with Saki Watanabe, who is 11. They both competed in junior nationals in the last week and both were, not surprisingly, a bit flat at practice after that. Normally I would yell at Julia to train harder, but I let it pass because I knew that this was just one random practice and I would have plenty of time at the training center to work with her this weekend. Time is an advantage not to be underestimated. Because I know I can take her to other practices to make up slack time if I deem it necessary, I can relax and let her be a kid sometimes. If I notice that she needs to work on her conditioning, I can take her to the Ugly Pink Building Hill and make her run sprints uphill.

(Thanks very much to Jerry Hays for the video below of Ronda winning the finals of the Olympic Trials.)


The other big, related advantage that coaches' kids get is ATTENTION. Look at the words I just used. I glanced over at Julia. If I notice she needs conditioning..

There is a great line in the movie, "The opposite of sex," one character is explaining to his fiancee that he is hurt she did not think of him first when she needed help, instead of trying to solve the problem herself, he said,

"In a crowded room, you look for me first, and I'll do the same for you."

There is a whole area of research in psychology called "attachment theory", beginning with the attachment of infants to their mothers, and then later, to their fathers. Attachment is often defined as,

"The recognition of one person as unique among all others. "

Coaches are human, too, and they love their kids. Any coach who claims to treat his/her children just like all of the other kids in the dojo is a liar. Even if it is only subconsciously, we NOTICE our children more. We notice if they have trouble fighting left-handed players, if they are not as physically strong as the other kids, if they are off-balance doing tai otoshi. Yes, you may treat them all strictly the same during practice - although, in my experience, most coaches' kids are expected to do more and get less slack - but when you get home, or on the way home, you inevitably start in on,

"I saw you fighting Anthony and he kept countering your harai goshi. Never get a high grip on a person taller than you. It throws you off balance and you are more likely to get countered."

There are the subtle things you do because you have paid more attention to this child you love and so you are more tuned into the things they need. Last week, I was doing randori with Julia at Sawtelle and I was fighting her left-handed. She stopped and said,

"I know what you are doing. You are fighting me like that because I had trouble with that one girl at the tournament that fought left-handed."

She was right, too. Would I have noticed if Sarah Crosby had trouble with left-handed players? Well, she didn't particularly, but I did notice some other things. However, unlike Julia, I didn't see Sarah the next practice because she was practicing at her own club. I am at EVERY practice with Julia, because I drive her home. There it is again, the element of time, blended with attention.

I asked David Matsumoto once about how he got along coaching his daughter, Sayaka. He told me that they left judo strictly at the dojo and didn't talk about it again once they left. If so, he is an exception. Most coaches' kids, I believe, get an enormous amount of "teaching on the fly" (a phrase I stole from the Harvard Preschool Project study of children who develop exceptionally well). That is, I don't sit down for hours on end and lecture Julia on the finer points of judo, nor did I do that with Ronda. However, I have dozens of judo videos and DVDs around the house and I watch TV less than an hour a week. During that hour, more likely than not, Julia will wander through the room while I watch Hayward's video on gripping or advanced judo tactics, Jimmy Pedro's Grip Like a World Champion, a DVD of Ronda at the Olympic Trials, the World Championships or something else. She may watch for 15 minutes, say "That's boring," and get up and go do something else. During that 15 minutes every week, she is likely to learn something.

On the way to judo and on the way home, which adds up to about 3 1/2 hours each week for Julia at age 10, and was probably 15 hours a week for Ronda at age 15, we talk about judo. We talk about why Julia/ Ronda had trouble with a particular player at practice, things that concern me that I think she should watch out for, what I think she should do to train more. And we also talk about other things, like how Julia wants to get her hair cut this weekend. A regular coach maybe has 5 or 10 minutes at the end of practice to discuss strengths, weaknesses and training methods with a player, and certainly not with every player. Don't fool yourself. Judo is a mental game and there are no stupid champions.

Resources. People always ask me when I knew Ronda was exceptional. There were two incidents that stood out. One was when she was about 12 years old. My friend, Jake Flores, Sr. said to her,
"So, I hear you've started judo. I know a little bit about judo myself. Ask me anything."
Ronda regarded him very seriously, with all of her scrawny 80-pound self and said,

"You've seen me fight, right? If you were coaching another girl to beat me, what would you tell her to do?"

Jake and I were both blown away by the insightfulness of that question from a 12-year-old green belt.

The second time was when I was sitting at my desk one day, Ronda was about 15 years old and fighting 57 kg. I heard Ronda yelling, "Mom! Mom!"
I ran into her room expecting a fire (it wouldn't be the first one in the house, although Ronda was not responsible on the last occasion). Ronda had a video from the Olympics on pause, was pointing at the Cuban and said,

"That's how I'm going to beat her. When she gets that grip, I'm going to do this, watch!"

and she grabbed me and demonstrated how she was going to beat the current Olympic gold medalist.

While both of these examples demonstrate some motivation and interest on Ronda's part, there is also the fact that she had resources. She had access to Jake Flores, Sr. who had coached three people who made it to the U.S. Open finals recently, and had two players in the Olympic Trials. She just happened to have a video of the last Olympics on a shelf in her room.

Time. Attention. Teaching on the Fly. Resources. These are advantages coaches' kids have.

What if you are not a coach? A couple of things you can do are provide the resources. You can get DVDs from Hatashita Sports or Fighting Films. Neither of which give me a cut, by the way. If you buy them at Golden Tiger Martial Arts, the USJA does get a cut and you get a 10% discount. Still no love for the AnnMaria Retirement in the Bahamas Fund, though.

Attention and Time: Let's face it, no matter how amazingly awesome your kid is, the coach is going to love his/ her own more. However, one way to get more attention and time is to take your child to camps and clinics. When Ronda was younger and I would take her to a camp or clinic with Hayward Nishioka or Pat Burris or Mike Swain and not that many kids showed up,the clinician might have felt a little depressed but I LOVED it. Come on, if there were only 15 kids there all day, mine got more attention. I have never understood the reasoning of people who spend thousands of dollars to go to all of the point tournaments so their child can make some junior team and then don't have money to send them to camp. Ronda made at least two junior Panamerican teams and one junior world team when she did not attend. However, she did go to training camp at San Jose State University twice, two Daiheigen Yudanshakai Camps, just about every Nanka clinic and practice from the day she started judo until she moved away, every camp after the U.S. Open except for one year when she was injured - in fact, this was the only age waiver I ever requested, was to get her into the camp when she was 14 and the minimum age was 15. The "elite" players couldn't be bothered with her so she went a lot of rounds with Pat Burris and Maurice Allen as the same elite players often couldn't be bothered with them, either. If the coaches see your kids more than the 20 minutes on the mat at a tournament they will have more time with them and likely begin to notice them more.

=======================================
DO BE CAREFUL where you send your children. Not all camps take the care of your kids that you would and there have been coaches who have molested children. If at all possible, go with your child. If you can't go, find another parent you really trust and trade off going with your children.

Promote Yourself - Judo's Latest Trend

I am busy with work so I apologize to those who look here for serious judo advice. Tomorrow I should have time to actually write a post I have been thinking about a long time, i.e., what are the advantages children have when their parent is their coach and why Ronda and Jimmy, Jr. have won most of the international medals over the last decade. (Did you know i.e. is the abbreviation for the Latin id est, which translates as "that is"? See, now you learned something from this blog.)

Tonight, I was talking to Serge Boussyou who I think is a really cool guy in part because he talks to me despite all of those who warn him that hanging out with AnnMaria is bad political ju-ju. We concluded that, because of his recalcitrant behavior he will probably never make it to the lofty ranks of buttkisse-dan . This led to our further conclusion that we should just make ranks up and award them to ourselves.

This method is illustrated below.


There are several advantages to this method over the current means of garnering ridiculous ranks. First of all, it can be done in your living room, greatly reducing travel costs. Secondly, having the vote by stuffed animals or actual puppets requires the same degree of thought of many puppet boards but saves oxygen which could be used by trees - no, I guess trees produce oxygen. Well, oxygen is a good thing to have, anyway, and we shouldn't waste it. Third, you can make up your ranks so be far more creative. I have previously suggested a belt with hooks or pouches where you can have your snacks, like pretzels, and attach your beer. Honestly, if you look at some of these guys who have these seventh and eighth-degree black belts, they have stomachs bigger than I did when I was nine months pregnant. So, I think the addition of a cup-holder on the belt would be practical. Here are a few of the titles I have awarded myself this week.

Woo-hoo shidan
Judo Empress
Mistress of all of the Known Martial Arts and Their Devoted Followers
Bob (when you spell it backwards, it's still Bob, so that is a hard title to beat)

The other thing I have noticed people who are busy promoting one another like to do is get themselves inducted into Halls of Fame, which have as their primary requirement paying a large fee for famousness. We ALMOST had a Mayo Quanchi Hall of Fame. The conversation went like this:

"I think I'll have a Mayo Quanchi Hall of Fame."
"That'd be great! Induct me. I'll fly out there."
"I could induct you, and Ronda ..."
"And we could have a Hall of Fame Dinner and Party at your house."
"... and Jim Pedro, Sr."
"And we could drink vodka and shots of whatever else you have in your house."
"We could charge a large fee to be inducted in the Hall of Fame and use it to support my kids' travel fund."
"Fee? I said I'd fly out there to party and do judo. I'm not paying you ---- ! "

Safe to say that the Mayo Quanchi Hall of Fame and Raising Money for Serge's Kids has yet to be established.

Everything is different now - oh, wait, no it isn't

On a regular basis, I get told that judo is completely different now than when I was competing, that I may have been hard-core in my day but I know nothing about today's judo, etc. etc.

I get this from everyone from my older daughter (the little cute one is too young to know everything yet) to random people I have never met. This amuses me greatly since it is essentially people who were not born in "my day" telling me with authority what things were like back when I was competing. Unlike them, I was there when it happened. Jim Pedro, Sr. thinks I get offended or upset about this and he doesn't believe me when I tell him he is wrong. Of course, Jim NEVER believes he is wrong, but that is a different subject. Actually, I find it funny as hell, just like the time my oldest daughter (Ronda is the third daughter), was upset after a track meet and when I tried to talk to her she said,

"What do you know about winning and losing?"

Nothing. I know nothing.

So, what has changed and what hasn't? What still works and what doesn't?

What hasn't changed

Matwork has changed very little. I was watching a DVD tonight and I was very amused to see that the first drill was an armbar drill I had done about a zillion times and taught to Ronda when she was 15 years old. The next drill was another armbar drill I had done 30 years ago. I am NOT, by the way, saying you shouldn't watch training DVDs. That would be pretty hypocritical since I just said I was watching one. Actually, I wrote down on the training plan for tomorrow to do both of those drills.

There were a couple of other drills on the DVD that I never did to save my life. It wasn't that they did not exist back then - in fact, one of them was one of my coach, Jimmy Martin's, signature moves. I just didn't happen to do them. Rhadi Ferguson never does o soto gari, but it would be a mistake for judo players 20 years from now to use that as evidence that we didn't know o soto gari existed.

There are still two types of matwork and there is still no one I have seen who is equally outstanding at both types. Eventually, Ronda may be the first. Most people don't realize there are two types, or, if they do, believe that whatever type they do is superior. All of those people are wrong.

Most people are not very good at matwork, in large part because they don't spend much time on it and it is not taught very deliberately in most places. If you don't believe me, ask most black belts to name and demonstrate three escapes from pins, an escape from an armbar, two matwork counters and two matwork combinations.

The traditional throws still work if you are very good at them. People are still winning the world championships and Olympics with seoi nage, uchi mata and o soto gari just like people did 25 years ago. Not me, but other people.

The successful international competitors are superb athletes. They spend hours every day on conditioning, from randori to weight-lifting to sprints. Forty years ago, Hayward Nishioka was DRAGGING A CAR around Los Angeles to develop strength. Read Black Belt Magazine from when he was their Man of the Year.

What hss changed

Gripfighting is definitely different. We never did grip-fighting drills. I used to practice a lot of attacks right off the grip and that was considered kind of cheating, even though there was no rule against it. How un-judo-like, to attack before your opponent had her grip. The types of specific gripping drills people do now are new.

Some of the throws are new. Sode tsurikomi goshi is something I probably learned for my green belt test, but people do it differently now, twisting into it. There were far fewer leg picks. Vanderalle got famous for doing them but he was an exception.

People did not play tactically then nearly as much as they do now. Of course, the fatc that when I started competing it was only ippon and waza ari might have had something to do with it.

Bottom-line: There are people who believe that everything is like it was in the old days and they don't need to learn anything new. There is another group of people who believe that judo is completely different now and no one over 40 - and 40 is pushing it - has anything to teach them. Both of those groups are wrong. A key to being a champion is not having the arrogance to think that you are too good to learn. Thinking you are too good to learn except from your friends or people like you in age, location or attitude is just another type of arrogance.

Just Judo

Having veered off into other topics somewhat lately, I decided to focus just on judo in the next few posts. Tuesday night, we were going to do a video blog showing the most common mistakes at the USJA Junior Nationals, but Julia had the opportunity to have a sleepover with Kiah and Lucy, and being 10 years old, she wisely decided to do that instead, so I lost my tori. Today, we had the opportunity to do three episodes of what is now going to become a weekly feature, every Thursday: AnnMaria & Julia's Judo Video Blog Sneakerdoodle Zebra Judo. There are actual judo points in here but it is not wholly serious. I mean, come on, my partner is going into the fifth grade and our studio audience is comprised of stuffed animals.



Big mistake number 1: GET AN INSIDE GRIP!!! Hello??? If your opponent has an inside grip, say, on your lapel and sleeve or both lapels, and you have an outside grip say on their shoulder or back, there are more options for them to throw you than for you to throw them. When your coach is yelling at you to get your grip, he or she most likely means to get an inside grip.




Big mistake number 2. COUNTER! I don't know how many times I saw one person go in off-balance on seoi or harai goshi and the other person did NOT counter when it was staring them in the face. The reason for this is obvious. Counters are pretty much a reflex to do B when A happens. They need to be practiced a lot in the dojo.


Big mistake number 3. LEARN TO FIGHT LEFT-HANDED PLAYERS: Notice, I did not say "learn to fight left-handed", which is a completely different thing.

That's it for now. Next Thursday, we will have another post on Sneakerdoodle Zebra Judo. (Julia came up with the name, if you can't guess.)