Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Jimmy Pedro,
00:00:02 a legendary judo competitor and coach.
00:00:05 He represented the United States at four Olympics
00:00:08 in 92, 96, 2000, and 2004,
00:00:12 winning a bronze medal at two of them.
00:00:14 He medaled in three world championships,
00:00:17 winning gold in 1999.
00:00:20 He has coached many of the elite level American judoka,
00:00:23 including Kayla Harrison, Ronda Rousey,
00:00:26 Travis Stevens, and many others.
00:00:28 Plus, he’s now my judo coach, along with Travis Stevens.
00:00:32 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
00:00:34 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:00:36 in the description.
00:00:38 And now, here’s my conversation with Jimmy Pedro.
00:00:43 What is the most beautiful throw in judo to you?
00:00:47 I think Uchi Mata.
00:00:49 You know, it’s the one that seems
00:00:51 to have the most amplitude.
00:00:52 That person goes the highest,
00:00:54 you see a leg swing through the middle,
00:00:57 the person doing the throw, there’s a leg swinging
00:00:59 through the middle, the other person definitely goes,
00:01:01 you know, head over heels, flat on their back.
00:01:04 It’s probably the most dynamic, pretty judo throw there is.
00:01:08 Okay, so it’s a single, you’re standing on a single foot
00:01:11 and you’re raising your other foot in the air
00:01:13 and it’s a forward throw, which means the,
00:01:16 your back is facing the opponent,
00:01:19 but they kind of both fly through the air
00:01:23 and twist through the air.
00:01:24 Correct.
00:01:25 Yeah, so how does that throw work?
00:01:28 What are the principles behind that throw?
00:01:30 Is one of those throws that, you know,
00:01:33 people can kind of understand how to pick up
00:01:35 another human being in sort of trivial ways,
00:01:38 but the Uchi Mata to me never quite made sense,
00:01:42 like why it works.
00:01:43 There’s a cork, there’s a twisting motion,
00:01:47 there’s some involvement of the hip,
00:01:49 but not, it’s not really a hip throw
00:01:52 because the hip is not all the way over,
00:01:55 so it’s not, it’s a very confusing throw to me.
00:01:58 So I’m trying to say, can you say something through words?
00:02:00 It’s probably one of the most difficult throws
00:02:02 to learn as well, because it is so complex.
00:02:04 You do have to stand on one leg, balance on one leg,
00:02:07 you know, swing your other leg through the middle,
00:02:10 hold your opponent up in the air,
00:02:12 and it’s hard to, it’s hard to make that contact
00:02:16 with upper body to your back.
00:02:18 You know, you have to turn your back on the throw as well.
00:02:20 So how does it work?
00:02:22 It’s definitely sort of a throw
00:02:24 where you need to start pulling your opponent’s upper body
00:02:28 towards you, right?
00:02:30 So their upper body starts coming towards you.
00:02:32 Your legs go towards them
00:02:35 as your body starts to go into the throw.
00:02:38 So your head is gonna go left, let’s say,
00:02:40 your body, your legs are gonna go to the right,
00:02:43 your body’s, your partner’s gonna start to lean towards you.
00:02:47 And just as you start to get there,
00:02:48 momentum coming forward,
00:02:50 your leg is gonna sweep up underneath theirs,
00:02:53 pick them up onto your hip, right,
00:02:55 and then the finish of the throw is a twist.
00:02:57 And a lot of times, the good judoka
00:02:59 will leave their feet when they do the throw,
00:03:01 so both bodies are in the air together,
00:03:04 and then the thrower comes down
00:03:05 on top of the person being thrown.
00:03:07 So all four feet are in the air.
00:03:09 Correct.
00:03:10 So there’s just this unstoppable force that’s,
00:03:12 so you’re all in the air.
00:03:13 You’re basically doing a roll together.
00:03:15 Correct.
00:03:17 Okay, so who, to you, is the best uchimata,
00:03:21 who has, besides yourself, the…
00:03:23 I’m not gonna lie, there’s plenty of guys
00:03:27 that do uchimata a lot better than I do.
00:03:29 You do have a nice video about the uchimata online,
00:03:31 but who is a great practitioner of the uchimata to you?
00:03:36 Right now, Shohei Ono, who’s two time Olympic gold medalist,
00:03:39 that’s his favorite throw,
00:03:40 and there’s tons of highlight videos on the IGF
00:03:44 and judo fanatics showing how he does his uchimata,
00:03:47 and it is quite different than everybody else’s,
00:03:50 but it’s unstoppable.
00:03:51 When he comes in, nobody stops it.
00:03:53 He’s won two golds in a row at the Olympics.
00:03:55 I think maybe in the last eight years,
00:03:57 the guy’s lost two matches.
00:03:59 He’s just incredible.
00:04:00 At a very competitive division, I guess 73 kilos?
00:04:05 Okay, and then three time world champ too.
00:04:08 Is he the greatest of all time to you?
00:04:10 The only reason why he’s not is because Nomura
00:04:14 is a 60 kilo player.
00:04:15 He was three time Olympic champion,
00:04:18 so Nomura, I mean, unless Ono’s gonna stick around
00:04:21 for another three years and win again here in Paris,
00:04:26 then he’d match what Nomura did,
00:04:28 but three time gold medalist in judo
00:04:30 in a lightweight division, that’s pretty spectacular.
00:04:34 So to you, being able to win a championship,
00:04:38 world championship, or Olympic medal
00:04:41 is a measure of greatness.
00:04:43 It’s not like you have some people
00:04:46 who are not as accomplished like Koga or something like that,
00:04:49 but just the beauty, the moments of magic,
00:04:55 the number of moments of magic is the highest,
00:04:57 even if it’s not championships.
00:04:59 I think you have to go by that
00:05:00 because there’s so many phenomenal judo players
00:05:04 that have come through the system of spectacular judo.
00:05:07 You have won countless major events,
00:05:11 but the ability to pull it together,
00:05:14 those magical moments, the pinnacle of the sport,
00:05:16 the world championships, the Olympic games,
00:05:18 and proving that you can do it time and time again
00:05:21 makes you unstoppable, it makes you the best.
00:05:24 There was a guy back in the 70s and 80s by the name of Fuji
00:05:28 and he won four world championships back to back.
00:05:32 And back then, the Worlds was every two years.
00:05:35 So here he was, a four time world champion.
00:05:37 That’s eight years the top of the sport.
00:05:39 He never won an Olympic medal.
00:05:43 He never went to the Olympics.
00:05:45 So there’s a guy who missed out on Olympic greatness,
00:05:48 but was arguably the best competitor back in that period.
00:05:52 By the way, same Fuji as Fuji?
00:05:55 Right.
00:05:57 Really, okay.
00:05:58 Wow, I didn’t know there was an actual guy, Fuji.
00:06:00 Our brand is named after the mountain, Mount Fuji.
00:06:03 But this is a different guy, his name was Fuji.
00:06:05 All right, well, history rhymes.
00:06:10 What about Teddy Renier?
00:06:13 10 time world champ, I think,
00:06:15 two time gold medalist at the Olympics,
00:06:17 two times bronze medalist at the Olympics.
00:06:22 Probably the most dominant judoka ever.
00:06:26 Is he in the running?
00:06:27 What do you think about that guy?
00:06:29 I think he’s a freak of nature, Teddy.
00:06:32 If you look at the size, just how tall he is,
00:06:35 how big he is, how physical he is of a specimen.
00:06:38 I sat next to him on a bus,
00:06:40 and his legs are literally the size of my waist.
00:06:45 When you sit next to him and just look at the size,
00:06:48 he’s a big man.
00:06:49 So obviously to win 10 world titles in the sport of judo,
00:06:54 I mean, that’s almost an incomprehensible feat,
00:06:58 two time Olympic champion, again, that puts him in one
00:07:03 of the maybe 10 or 12 people to ever do that
00:07:06 in the history of the sport.
00:07:08 So he’s definitely got to be in the running for the best.
00:07:11 But technically, I don’t think he’s as technical
00:07:15 as some of the other, in terms of pure judo finesse technique.
00:07:21 He’s powerful, he’s explosive, he’s dominant, he’s strong.
00:07:26 Teddy also grips really, really well,
00:07:29 which makes him that much tougher to beat.
00:07:32 Because a lot of times heavyweights,
00:07:34 especially in the heavyweight division,
00:07:35 a lot of them just grab the gi and they go man to man
00:07:38 and judo to judo and take shots at each other.
00:07:41 And that’s why a lot of them end up getting beat.
00:07:43 But Teddy’s in control, like positionally,
00:07:45 he stays in really good position
00:07:47 and he controls his opponent the whole fight.
00:07:49 So they really don’t have a chance against them.
00:07:52 He doesn’t give them a chance to beat him,
00:07:54 which is why he’s been so dominant.
00:07:55 But he’s not really stalling.
00:07:57 So I mean, he does have a really nice Osorogari,
00:08:01 this backward trip, outside trip, in case people don’t know.
00:08:07 And he has just like technically pretty good throws
00:08:11 for heavyweight.
00:08:12 Heavyweights can be sometimes messy with their judo.
00:08:16 He’s pretty technical and clean
00:08:21 in the execution of his big throws.
00:08:24 But a lot of that probably has to do
00:08:26 with the dominant gripping that he does.
00:08:28 It’s not defensive gripping, it’s offensive gripping,
00:08:30 but the dominant gripping.
00:08:32 100%.
00:08:33 He controls the grips, he controls the movement
00:08:36 of the match as a result of that,
00:08:37 and then he creates his own openings.
00:08:39 So I mean, for a heavyweight, phenomenal technique, yes.
00:08:43 And what you said, messy, I’d like to call it sloppy, right?
00:08:46 A lot of the heavyweights tend to be sloppy.
00:08:49 They’re falling on the ground a lot.
00:08:51 It’s hard to move somebody that weighs 350 pounds.
00:08:54 It’s hard to get that body moving
00:08:56 and just with a simple pull motion.
00:08:58 So he’s definitely found a way to do it.
00:09:00 But he’s also, I don’t know, six foot eight.
00:09:03 He probably weighs 140 kilos.
00:09:06 He’s a big boy.
00:09:07 But he had this winning streak of just,
00:09:10 I don’t know how long, but like over 100 matches.
00:09:13 And he lost at this Olympics that we just went through,
00:09:17 the 20, I don’t even know what to call it, 2021 Olympics.
00:09:20 I don’t know the proper terminology.
00:09:22 Tokyo 2020 is what they call it.
00:09:24 Tokyo 2020, all right.
00:09:26 So he lost to Tamerlan Bashev.
00:09:31 I mean, it’s always sad to see a sort of greatness
00:09:34 come to an end.
00:09:35 It’s like Karelin in wrestling and Greco Roman.
00:09:39 Did you shed a bit of a tear to see greatness go?
00:09:42 Or is it just the way of life?
00:09:46 I mean, what did you think about sort of this dominance,
00:09:50 this run of dominance being stopped?
00:09:53 I think, I mean, it’s obviously sad to see LFC
00:09:56 and champions succeed, especially people
00:09:59 that are good people.
00:10:00 And I think Teddy’s a good person.
00:10:02 I mean, I think there’s some arrogant champions
00:10:04 that everybody would like to see lose
00:10:06 just because they don’t wanna deal with their personality.
00:10:10 But I think Teddy’s a very humble champion.
00:10:14 He’s a people’s champion.
00:10:15 You know, I think he’s been privileged
00:10:17 and he makes good money from the sport of judo
00:10:19 and the French Federation has taken care of him well.
00:10:21 So he’s a lifelong judo icon.
00:10:25 So it’s sad to see somebody like that get beat,
00:10:27 especially when this could have been his third Olympic title
00:10:30 and just put him in infamy.
00:10:36 So it was sad to see, but I think, you know,
00:10:39 every athlete goes through it, right?
00:10:42 I mean, it’s just, that’s what the Olympics is all about.
00:10:45 The great ones fall sometimes and.
00:10:48 Especially in judo, it’s like so, like the margin of error.
00:10:53 I mean, I guess the other question I wanna ask here is,
00:10:56 in your sense, how difficult it is to not lose for so long?
00:11:02 It seems like in judo, like a little mistake and it’s over.
00:11:06 There’s no coming back and Ippon means it’s over.
00:11:10 So how difficult is that?
00:11:13 It’s hard to stay that dominant without question.
00:11:15 First of all, when you are the entire world
00:11:18 is training against you just to beat you.
00:11:20 They’re studying every single movement.
00:11:22 They’re studying patterns.
00:11:24 They’re trying to break it down
00:11:25 and find a flaw in your game.
00:11:27 So everybody’s hunting for you
00:11:29 when you’re the best in the world,
00:11:30 especially at the Olympics.
00:11:31 That’s the one to beat you at.
00:11:32 So everybody’s focused on you.
00:11:35 And then there’s an incredible amount of pressure
00:11:37 on that athlete to perform.
00:11:38 You carry the flag for your country
00:11:41 when you’re at opening ceremonies sometimes.
00:11:43 There’s all spotlight is on you.
00:11:46 And it’s particularly hard when things don’t go well early.
00:11:50 In other words, when you’re expected to win
00:11:53 and then all of a sudden now you’re in a hard fight
00:11:55 and it’s not going the way you want,
00:11:57 that pressure, the one who’s the favorite
00:11:59 feels the pressure the most at the Olympics.
00:12:01 And that’s why I think the other ones are able to win it.
00:12:03 I’ve actually never gotten a chance
00:12:05 to listen to Teddy Renner sort of explain ideas
00:12:10 behind his Judo.
00:12:11 Like I wonder what his mental game is like
00:12:13 because I think his English is pretty, not very good.
00:12:16 And so, and I just haven’t seen good interviews,
00:12:19 but it’s always fascinating to,
00:12:22 there’s certain great athletes
00:12:25 that are also great thinkers and speakers,
00:12:28 like the Satya brothers in wrestling.
00:12:32 Again, not meaning, that’s on my to do list,
00:12:34 100%, I’m going to Dagestan and talking to them
00:12:38 because they’re brilliant.
00:12:39 But to be able to sort of, maybe after retirement,
00:12:43 to think back, what were the systems involved?
00:12:46 Both on the technical, the training side,
00:12:50 and then the mental side.
00:12:53 Because to stay that dominant, just like you’re saying,
00:12:56 everybody’s studying to beat you.
00:13:00 And the heavyweights are just these powerful dudes.
00:13:03 So to be able to control them with your game
00:13:06 and the game that everybody knows is coming is,
00:13:09 I don’t know, I don’t know what’s behind that,
00:13:11 but there’s got to be, it feels like the mental game
00:13:15 is exceptionally important.
00:13:17 I think a lot of people underestimate
00:13:19 just how important that side is.
00:13:22 Being mentally prepared for victory,
00:13:24 mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best.
00:13:29 There’s no way that’s weak minded
00:13:30 that they can accomplish that.
00:13:33 It’s 100% confidence and belief in yourself.
00:13:36 If we take a big picture view then,
00:13:38 not necessarily Taylor Renner,
00:13:39 but if you want to go from the very beginning,
00:13:42 from day one of judo class to Olympic champion
00:13:47 or Olympic medalist, what does it take
00:13:52 to become an Olympic medalist in judo from start to finish?
00:13:56 Like how many different trajectories do you see?
00:13:58 Or is there some unifying principles?
00:14:01 I think a lot of it has to,
00:14:03 your journey is gonna depend a lot by where you’re from.
00:14:07 So a path that an American might take
00:14:09 versus somebody who’s from Japan
00:14:10 or somebody who’s from Europe.
00:14:12 There’s two very, three very distinct paths, right?
00:14:16 Because in Japan, it’s part of the culture.
00:14:20 There’s a system of excellence.
00:14:22 There’s elementary school judo, there’s junior high school,
00:14:25 there’s high school, there’s collegiate,
00:14:27 there’s Olympic and much like our wrestling is here
00:14:32 in the United States, right?
00:14:34 It’s very similar, there’s youth wrestling,
00:14:36 there’s high school, there’s NCAA
00:14:39 and then there’s Olympic wrestling.
00:14:40 And when your country is a factory
00:14:44 of producing athletes at the highest level,
00:14:47 then all of those top athletes typically go back
00:14:50 into the sport and there’s professions for them.
00:14:52 They have an opportunity to coach
00:14:53 at all those different levels.
00:14:55 And just the level of their game and the expertise
00:14:58 that all of them have, even down at the elementary level,
00:15:01 make their skill so solid.
00:15:04 And as a coach, in that situation,
00:15:06 you can just sit back and watch who stands out
00:15:09 as opposed to, I think in America, I guess,
00:15:12 you would need to craft.
00:15:15 You don’t get to choose from a thousand people,
00:15:17 a few people that naturally stand out at the age of nine.
00:15:21 You have to actually, whatever the natural resources
00:15:25 you’re given, craft them into a champion.
00:15:30 So if we look at that, the American way,
00:15:34 where you just have a person with a smile
00:15:36 show up to your dojo, says I want to be an Olympic medalist,
00:15:41 what process do you take them through?
00:15:43 The odds are really insurmountable.
00:15:45 It’s a very, very high hill to climb.
00:15:47 And there’s only a few, there’s only a few people
00:15:50 and there’s only a few coaches in this entire country
00:15:52 that really understand that process
00:15:55 and that can help people reach that level,
00:15:58 as it’s been proven, right?
00:16:00 Yeah.
00:16:01 Number one, you certainly have to have a solid base,
00:16:05 a fundamental base of an expectation
00:16:08 of what the training is gonna be.
00:16:10 And it has to be a level of professionalism
00:16:12 very, very early, where you’re teaching
00:16:14 all the basic judo moves, all the basic fundamental
00:16:16 movements, posture, gripping.
00:16:20 Well, maybe gripping doesn’t come in so early in the game,
00:16:23 but throwing methodology, movements,
00:16:26 niwaza position, standing fundamental throws.
00:16:30 And I think most importantly is really the work ethic,
00:16:33 just the way you’re gonna train,
00:16:35 the intensity you’re gonna train with,
00:16:37 the ability to, mindset of going to tournaments constantly.
00:16:42 In order to compete with the rest of the world,
00:16:44 our young kids need to be tested a lot when they’re young.
00:16:49 They have to be put through adversity
00:16:51 because they don’t get put through adversity in training
00:16:53 because you don’t have that many good training partners.
00:16:55 So you get put through adversity in competition
00:16:57 and then we see what your weaknesses are
00:16:59 and we continue to make improvements on those.
00:17:02 But the journey is, it’s long.
00:17:05 And until they’re kind of at the teenage years,
00:17:08 they’re gonna have to pretty much stay domestic, right?
00:17:10 Cause they gotta go through life as a normal kid,
00:17:12 but they’ve gotta be training in the dojo at least,
00:17:15 five days a week.
00:17:17 Sometimes they might wanna get an extra technical workout in
00:17:20 or doing some base conditioning in addition to that.
00:17:23 And then really at the teenage years,
00:17:24 that’s where we really, we’ve struggled in America
00:17:28 of keeping teens in the sport of Judo
00:17:31 as well as developing them properly.
00:17:34 Cause up until around the teenage years,
00:17:36 I think the Americans are on par with the rest of the world
00:17:39 in terms of technique and in terms of skill
00:17:41 and we’ve proven we can compete with the rest of the world
00:17:45 up until that age.
00:17:46 But that’s where Japan and that’s where the Europeans
00:17:50 and the countries that are strong in Judo,
00:17:52 that’s where they put a lot of time, energy and effort
00:17:55 is it to the teens where they have a great coaching staff,
00:17:59 they have good training camps with 800,
00:18:02 a thousand people going to them every single weekend.
00:18:05 When you say teens, what do you mean?
00:18:07 Do you mean literally like 13?
00:18:09 Yeah, age 13 to 17, 13 to 19.
00:18:12 And that’s where you really accelerate your development.
00:18:15 So you’re saying like in America, when you’re young,
00:18:19 like before nine, 10, 11, 12, you stick in Judo,
00:18:24 you can progress quite a bit.
00:18:26 But then I guess the other competition there,
00:18:28 if you’re into two people doing stuff to each other
00:18:33 in a combative way, the other competitor
00:18:39 in America is wrestling.
00:18:41 So Judo almost primes you, like it teaches you
00:18:45 how to be a great wrestler as well.
00:18:47 And so then you have to have a hard decision
00:18:51 because you can probably be a collegiate wrestler.
00:18:54 You have like a clear plan of where you’re going to go
00:19:00 if you wanna be a wrestler.
00:19:01 With Judo, that plan is less clear.
00:19:07 So you have to be on your own a bit with your coach,
00:19:10 that kind of thing.
00:19:11 Exactly.
00:19:12 Okay, so when you’re on your own with your coach,
00:19:14 to me, that’s just a fascinating journey
00:19:16 because then it’s just like the purity of it.
00:19:19 It’s the coach and the athlete and the dream.
00:19:22 It’s all about the dedication, the five, six,
00:19:25 seven days a week competing, what, once a month, twice a month.
00:19:33 Okay, but also, you probably don’t have that conversation.
00:19:36 I don’t know if you do.
00:19:37 Maybe you do, saying like, we’re gonna do this
00:19:40 for the next eight years.
00:19:41 Right.
00:19:44 Do you ever sit down?
00:19:45 Would you just take it the David Goggins way,
00:19:47 which is like, let’s just take it one step at a time.
00:19:52 Let’s hope we’re there in eight years.
00:19:54 Yeah, let’s hope we’re there.
00:19:55 Do you actually?
00:19:56 Like right now, you have to think about,
00:19:58 the Olympics is gonna be in Los Angeles in 2028.
00:20:02 So it’s really interesting.
00:20:03 Now would be the time, and now is the time,
00:20:06 to identify talent and get commitment out of students
00:20:11 that in seven years, you can make a US Olympic team
00:20:14 because we’re gonna have a full team.
00:20:17 America’s gonna have 14 athletes compete in those games,
00:20:20 one in every weight class.
00:20:21 So now’s the time, if you’re gonna go on a journey
00:20:23 to the Olympics and stay with the sport of judo,
00:20:25 now would be the time to do it, you know?
00:20:28 And so what, you show up to the Pedro Judo Center
00:20:33 and how much drilling, how much technique,
00:20:38 strategy discussions, how much randori,
00:20:41 or like live sparring, how much conditioning
00:20:44 and strength training, how much of all that?
00:20:49 How much of cross training to other gyms
00:20:51 or something like that, traveling abroad?
00:20:53 Is there something to be said about some aspects
00:20:56 of that system?
00:20:57 For sure.
00:20:58 You need it all.
00:20:59 What you just said, you need it all of it.
00:21:01 And we do do all of that.
00:21:02 Right now, we have a young group of kids at the Academy,
00:21:05 you’ll see tonight.
00:21:05 Some of them are 14, 13, 15, 17.
00:21:09 Are they good?
00:21:10 Yeah, really good.
00:21:10 Okay, can’t wait.
00:21:12 They’re right around your waist, so it’ll be perfect.
00:21:14 That’s nice.
00:21:15 They’re just young boys,
00:21:17 but they’ve been training hard through COVID.
00:21:20 We’ve been, Travis and myself have been training them.
00:21:23 We share responsibilities.
00:21:26 They’re doing randori like five nights a week.
00:21:28 We have them doing randori Tuesdays, Wednesdays,
00:21:33 Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays
00:21:35 is when they’re doing randori.
00:21:36 They’re coming to the dojo Friday night
00:21:37 and Sunday night to do training.
00:21:40 We also have technical sessions for them.
00:21:42 They’re in school now, so it’s a little bit challenging,
00:21:44 but they come five o clock in the afternoon
00:21:46 and they do a technical session.
00:21:48 Through COVID, they were coming every morning
00:21:50 doing technical sessions.
00:21:51 What’s a technical session?
00:21:53 It’s an hour of repetitive throwing
00:21:56 or repetitive drilling to reinforce movements
00:21:59 that we deem important to our successful system.
00:22:03 So, niwaza positions, groundwork positions,
00:22:06 where we want them to be put in this position
00:22:08 and they’re gonna drill it 50 times
00:22:10 with resistance in big groups,
00:22:12 doing drills over and over again,
00:22:15 picking apart the details of the technique
00:22:17 and what they’re doing wrong,
00:22:18 showing them how to fix it.
00:22:19 But now, we’ve done it so much
00:22:21 that now we can do a whole drill session with them
00:22:23 where they know all the different techniques
00:22:25 inside and out and they can move
00:22:27 from position to position really quickly.
00:22:29 Do they do it for a period of time,
00:22:31 like two minutes, five minutes,
00:22:33 or is it like one, two, they’re actually counting?
00:22:37 No, sometimes it’s both.
00:22:38 So sometimes we do it for reps,
00:22:40 sometimes we do it for time.
00:22:42 So sometimes it might be as many as they can do
00:22:44 in 60 seconds or as many as they can do in two minutes.
00:22:48 And sometimes it might just be,
00:22:49 I want you to do every position five times.
00:22:51 In terms of throws,
00:22:53 we’re not talking about it on a crash pad, right?
00:22:55 It’s just.
00:22:56 We’re talking about free moving around the mat.
00:22:58 And just dynamically and just throwing.
00:23:01 Correct.
00:23:02 How many, because as I was mentioning to you offline,
00:23:06 Travis threw me a few times,
00:23:09 a lot of times when he was visiting in Austin,
00:23:11 and I just remembered,
00:23:14 so there’s two things.
00:23:15 Fortunately or unfortunately in my life,
00:23:18 having gotten a chance to train with folks of that level,
00:23:22 with just cleanness of throw and the power,
00:23:25 and it was very nice.
00:23:26 I immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that.
00:23:31 To throw a little shade at Craig Jones
00:23:33 with his current mat situation,
00:23:36 is they’re very, they were quite thin.
00:23:39 And as Travis commented on,
00:23:41 and not just the thinness of the mats,
00:23:42 but they were laid on like concrete, right?
00:23:45 So I felt, it’s like soft until it’s not.
00:23:50 But being thrown very cleanly,
00:23:53 I just felt like there’s,
00:23:55 this is not gonna lead to injury, it was great.
00:23:57 It wasn’t injury prone.
00:23:59 But then as I mentioned to you,
00:24:00 when a day or two after,
00:24:02 my entire leg, one of them, I guess it’s the left leg,
00:24:08 was just black, a bruise.
00:24:11 It didn’t hurt too bad,
00:24:12 but it was just, the body’s gotten soft.
00:24:14 So I guess the question I have is,
00:24:17 does the body get used to just that number of throws?
00:24:21 Just over time, being thrown thousands of times a month?
00:24:26 Unquestionably.
00:24:27 Your body gets used to it.
00:24:28 So it hardens, it gets really hard.
00:24:30 Which is why judo is hard to come back to
00:24:33 after you’ve taken a long period of time off,
00:24:35 because your body is not used to that impact anymore.
00:24:39 I always found out that when I was training judo a lot,
00:24:42 it’s hard to shed weight and keep weight off,
00:24:46 because your body, it develops this layer of protection
00:24:50 on itself that it doesn’t wanna give up.
00:24:53 When you’re sucking a lot of weight,
00:24:54 that means you’re frail.
00:24:55 So I always seem to retain weight more
00:24:59 when you’re doing hard judo training,
00:25:00 as opposed to losing weight.
00:25:02 It’s easy when you go out for runs and things like that
00:25:05 to shed the water weight,
00:25:06 but to actually keep the pounds off was pretty hard.
00:25:09 Yeah, the body develops, like you said, a level of protection.
00:25:12 What about the randori?
00:25:14 Just out of curiosity, again,
00:25:15 I haven’t ever had the opportunity to train
00:25:18 with folks at a high level.
00:25:22 In jiu jitsu, there’s different gyms at different styles,
00:25:26 but I’ve noticed that at the highest levels,
00:25:29 people can go pretty hard in a certain kind of way
00:25:33 where it’s more technical,
00:25:35 and you’re moving at 100%,
00:25:39 but the power is not at 100%.
00:25:43 It’s a weird little dance.
00:25:46 You’re not really forcing stuff.
00:25:51 You’re more focused on the right timing,
00:25:53 the right positioning of hands and feet and body
00:25:58 and all those kinds of things.
00:25:59 You’re not forcing stuff in the way you would in competition,
00:26:02 like really the power.
00:26:04 Does that sound similar to you
00:26:05 for the way you try to do randori?
00:26:07 So there’s different styles of judo,
00:26:08 and I’d say the Japanese style,
00:26:10 the technical style of judo
00:26:12 is exactly what you just talked about.
00:26:14 It’s almost like two guys in pajamas, right?
00:26:18 We’re using minimal effort, maximum efficiency.
00:26:20 We’re moving around,
00:26:21 and we’re trying to feel that movement,
00:26:23 and it’s timing and finesse and technique
00:26:25 and fun and clean throws.
00:26:28 And when you train in Japan,
00:26:30 you can train 15 rounds of randori, five minute rounds.
00:26:34 That’s 75 minutes of straight sparring.
00:26:38 You can do that straight in Japan without a problem.
00:26:41 I mean, you’ll get tired, of course.
00:26:42 You’re gonna fall a lot, you’re gonna throw a lot,
00:26:45 but it’s very free feeling,
00:26:48 and it’s technical as you explained.
00:26:50 But then when you go to Europe
00:26:51 and you try to do rounds with the Europeans,
00:26:53 they are very physical.
00:26:55 They don’t have that same finesse in their training
00:26:58 that they do in Japan.
00:27:00 In Europe, you’d be hard pressed
00:27:02 to do eight rounds of randori in a night.
00:27:04 It’s so physically exhausting
00:27:06 because so much effort is going into just fighting
00:27:09 and fending off the gripping system
00:27:11 and the power of your opponent.
00:27:13 You’re physically drained after eight rounds of randori.
00:27:16 So it’s a much different feel.
00:27:18 When you say Europe,
00:27:19 do you mean Germany, France, Britain, Russia?
00:27:22 Is there a lot?
00:27:23 So there’s a kind of similarity
00:27:27 to all of those kinds of approaches.
00:27:28 The only difference would be Russia
00:27:30 that they do a lot more active drilling,
00:27:32 a lot more sequential movement training.
00:27:35 They don’t focus as much on randori.
00:27:37 You’ll do much fewer rounds in Russia during training camps
00:27:42 than you would in those other countries
00:27:44 we just talked about, France, Germany, et cetera.
00:27:46 What about in this kind of American system
00:27:48 where you have much less talent to work with?
00:27:55 Do you just select whatever works
00:27:58 for the particular athletes,
00:28:00 or do you have something you prefer in your system?
00:28:03 So you need a combination of all of it.
00:28:05 If you’re gonna win at the Olympic level,
00:28:06 you have to be able to deal with the finesse of the Japanese,
00:28:10 the physicality of the Europeans.
00:28:12 You have to focus on the ground,
00:28:14 niwaza aspect, because a lot of people are weak there
00:28:17 in the world of the sport of judo.
00:28:18 That’s a chance to win.
00:28:20 We’ve sort of developed our American system of judo,
00:28:22 at least for the last,
00:28:24 I’d say probably the last 20 years
00:28:26 it’d be the American system of judo,
00:28:27 which relies heavily on taking the individual
00:28:31 and whatever techniques they do,
00:28:34 perfecting those techniques and the combinations
00:28:37 and other throws that go with those throws,
00:28:40 but then implementing and overlaying an American system
00:28:43 of gripping, niwaza, conditioning, mentality,
00:28:47 training methodology, and game planning
00:28:51 to beat your opponents.
00:28:52 And I think that’s the secret sauce to success
00:28:55 for your Americans, because there’s no way,
00:28:58 if we don’t have eight partners to train with in a night
00:29:00 that are gonna give us good rounds, right?
00:29:02 We might have two, so we’re gonna have the same guy
00:29:05 four times, those two people four, two times each.
00:29:07 Now I have four good rounds.
00:29:09 The rest of the rounds, I’m not being pushed to the limit.
00:29:11 So we train differently.
00:29:14 And a lot of times we do a lot of stuff like shark bait.
00:29:17 When our athletes are preparing for competition,
00:29:19 for example, when Kayla or Travis
00:29:21 were preparing for competition,
00:29:23 we might only have 20 people in the whole gym
00:29:26 to work out with, those two Olympic medalists, right?
00:29:29 And of those 20 people,
00:29:30 maybe four of them are Travis’s size.
00:29:33 Maybe there’s only one girl in the room for Kayla,
00:29:36 she’s gotta train with guys.
00:29:37 And then the other ones are teenagers
00:29:38 that are too weak to train with either one of them.
00:29:41 So what we would do is just put together
00:29:43 four or five people that could give them a challenge
00:29:46 and we’d line them up and they would do a minute,
00:29:48 a minute, a minute, a minute,
00:29:49 and they’d do five minutes in a row as hard as they can.
00:29:52 That person can go hard for a minute with Travis or Kayla.
00:29:55 They can’t go five minutes hard,
00:29:56 but they can go one minute hard.
00:29:58 So it made their training much, much more intense,
00:30:01 much more physically demanding.
00:30:03 And then rinse and repeat that six times
00:30:06 or eight times in a night,
00:30:08 they just got 40 minutes of intense randori.
00:30:10 The person that was training with them that wasn’t as good
00:30:13 only had to do six or eight minutes
00:30:14 of training the whole night, you know, so.
00:30:16 It’s so, it’s so difficult because then you look
00:30:21 at like the Russian national team
00:30:25 and you have just the world champions and so,
00:30:33 or you even have like, what is it,
00:30:36 Tom Brands and Terry Brands in the wrestling system.
00:30:39 You have like these people, it’s a small group of people,
00:30:43 but they’re all some of the best people in the world
00:30:45 and they’re going head to head.
00:30:47 And yeah, you don’t necessarily get a good look
00:30:50 kind of a variety of styles, but just the quality is there.
00:30:55 And even that is missing for people your size in America,
00:30:58 because that is so difficult to work with,
00:31:02 which it makes Kayla’s and makes Travis’s story
00:31:05 that much more amazing.
00:31:08 You mentioned kind of picking whatever the set of techniques
00:31:11 the athlete is naturally good at or prefers or whatever.
00:31:16 How much specialization is there?
00:31:19 Maybe if I give you like two choices,
00:31:21 is it good to have like one throw
00:31:25 and try to become the best person in the world
00:31:27 at that throw, or do you want to have a bunch of stuff?
00:31:31 Like a variety of throws?
00:31:32 Well, for Travis, it was Ippon Seinagi,
00:31:34 that was his main throw, right?
00:31:36 But from that Ippon Seinagi, he had a variety
00:31:39 of other attacks he could do, you know,
00:31:41 that mixed it up so that you kept people guessing.
00:31:44 Maybe it wasn’t the Ippon Seinagi that was coming,
00:31:46 maybe it was the Koshi Gruma that he did,
00:31:48 or maybe it was the Ippon to Osoto
00:31:50 that he did in combination.
00:31:51 So you typically have one main throw that you do.
00:31:55 For me, it was Tai Otoshi.
00:31:56 For Kayla, it was her Ogoshi.
00:31:58 For Travis, it was his Ippon Seinagi.
00:32:01 But then you come up with a variety of other throws
00:32:04 that you do from the very same grip.
00:32:06 So whatever grip you take for your main throw,
00:32:08 you wanna develop, you know, an arsenal of attacks
00:32:11 that go in all different directions holding that same grip.
00:32:15 So you keep your opponent guessing as to what’s coming.
00:32:18 You know, because if they’re just sitting on one technique
00:32:20 at the highest level of sport,
00:32:22 with the exception of a few, right?
00:32:23 We talked about Ono’s Uchi Mata.
00:32:26 With the exception of a few,
00:32:27 most of the world catches on pretty quick
00:32:29 on how to beat you.
00:32:30 There is something to just sticking,
00:32:33 making sure you really dedicate to the main thing.
00:32:36 So for Travis, that would be like the main version
00:32:39 of his Seinagi.
00:32:41 Like really making sure you don’t forget
00:32:43 to really put in the time on that.
00:32:46 Because I mean, one way to say it is
00:32:51 that threat being dangerous opens up a lot of things.
00:32:55 Right.
00:32:57 But also, I don’t know.
00:33:00 I think I’m just, as a fan,
00:33:02 I think it’s sad when like elite level athletes
00:33:06 in all like combat sports,
00:33:09 kind of start taking their main thing for granted.
00:33:12 Like they think, okay, I’ve figured that part out.
00:33:16 Now I’ll be working on all this whole system
00:33:18 on variations, on different setups,
00:33:20 on lefty versus, some like weird variation
00:33:24 as opposed to, you know what?
00:33:27 If you look at some of the best people ever,
00:33:29 they seem to have not cared about variations at all.
00:33:32 They’re just like literally,
00:33:34 they are more like Jiro James of Sushi
00:33:37 and like fine tuning their ear,
00:33:42 their ability to detect the minute movements
00:33:45 that give you an opening on that main thing.
00:33:48 And so the whole time you’re just waiting for that throw,
00:33:52 you’re like dancing with the like little bit of pressure
00:33:55 and like releasing the pressure, putting the pressure,
00:33:58 maybe a little bit of off balance
00:34:00 and finding like the right moment to strike
00:34:03 and focusing on that.
00:34:05 Again, maybe that’s just like a romanticization
00:34:08 of like the simplicity of that.
00:34:10 Maybe it is kind of impossible to do that on a large scale,
00:34:13 but I just, yeah, I don’t know if you can comment on that,
00:34:19 whether there is some value in still putting in
00:34:22 like tens of thousands of reps on the main, main thing.
00:34:25 Well, unquestionably that has to happen.
00:34:27 You still have to drill your main throw
00:34:30 and you have to fine tune it
00:34:31 and continue to do repetition after repetition
00:34:34 and throws on the crash pad or throws on the mat,
00:34:37 moving around, just explosive movements
00:34:39 doing your main technique.
00:34:40 You’re never gonna forget that
00:34:41 and you’re not gonna put it to the side
00:34:43 and not practice it anymore.
00:34:44 It still has to be part of your repertoire
00:34:46 and part of your daily training, but you do have to evolve.
00:34:49 And I think that’s the sport of judo, makes you evolve.
00:34:54 When I look at, we talk about Koga from before, right?
00:34:56 And we talked about, he had a dynamic Ippon Seinagi
00:34:59 that nobody could stop for years and years and years.
00:35:01 But when people started to be unorthodox
00:35:05 and come down his back and cross grip him
00:35:07 and he couldn’t get to the lapel,
00:35:09 he had to come up with something else.
00:35:10 And all of a sudden you saw Koga doing, now he did a Sode
00:35:14 or now he did a Tomoe Nagi,
00:35:15 which so he can, he added to his arsenal
00:35:18 to keep people thinking, keep people guessing.
00:35:20 So it’s not, you’re not just that one trick pony.
00:35:22 They still couldn’t stop his Ippon Seinagi
00:35:25 once he got that grip.
00:35:26 But if they stopped them from getting that grip
00:35:28 or putting two hands on the gi,
00:35:30 he had to go to something else.
00:35:31 And that’s what he did.
00:35:32 Does Travis’s or Koga’s Seinagi make sense to you?
00:35:36 That weird, so when I,
00:35:38 Because split hip, split hip.
00:35:41 So I don’t know if you know this,
00:35:43 but like I got into judo because of Travis.
00:35:45 I watched him at 2008 Olympics and I was,
00:35:47 there’s something about like, just not the cockiness,
00:35:51 but the confidence and just the refusal to quit,
00:35:55 the refusal to just, that energy,
00:35:57 whatever it connected with me is like,
00:35:59 oh, that guy’s bad ass.
00:36:01 I want to be bad ass like that.
00:36:03 And then I also there happened to be in my university judo
00:36:06 and I got into it and just fell in love with the elegance
00:36:10 and the beauty and the power of the sport.
00:36:13 But also I started to mimic Travis’s game, his and Koga’s.
00:36:18 And then the instructors I worked with,
00:36:21 they said that’s the wrong way to do it.
00:36:24 And I always, I never found somebody that told me like,
00:36:28 no, that’s not the wrong way.
00:36:29 There’s a lot of ways to do it.
00:36:31 And there’s like the classic way
00:36:32 and you have to understand it and you have to learn it,
00:36:34 but this is not the wrong way.
00:36:36 Cause I was trying to find somebody
00:36:37 who understands this throw.
00:36:39 Cause it was so beautiful at the highest level,
00:36:42 especially with Koga, the way you’re able,
00:36:44 the quickness with which you can strike,
00:36:46 the fact that you can stand on the feet
00:36:48 and the elevation you can get and the power you can get
00:36:52 has certain throws, just like Uchimata
00:36:57 doesn’t look powerful.
00:36:58 It’s just like, it looks effortless.
00:37:02 But like the standing Seinagi with a split hip,
00:37:06 it just looks powerful because there’s a,
00:37:10 you’re like, you’re stepping into them,
00:37:12 you’re lifting the opponent and they still have,
00:37:14 they’re not surprised, they’re now like helpless.
00:37:17 Right, their feet are fluttering in the air.
00:37:19 And then there’s just this pause
00:37:22 and then just big slam.
00:37:23 With the Uchimata, it’s almost like
00:37:25 you don’t know what hit you.
00:37:27 It’s like Taitoshi is the same.
00:37:29 It’s almost like a surprise.
00:37:30 Like, oh shit, I’m now on my back.
00:37:32 And so I just love that throw,
00:37:37 but like it didn’t make sense to me.
00:37:40 Like when trying to explain it to others,
00:37:42 when trying to learn, it didn’t make sense to me
00:37:45 how it works.
00:37:46 Does it make sense to you?
00:37:47 It does.
00:37:48 I was born a Judoka, right?
00:37:50 So I’ve lived this stuff since I was an infant
00:37:54 and I’ve seen every style and every technique.
00:37:58 The split hip Saiyan Aiki is difficult to learn.
00:38:00 It’s harder to learn than the basic form,
00:38:03 but it is powerful and it does, upon entry,
00:38:08 both of your opponent’s feet
00:38:09 leave the mat at the same time.
00:38:10 So you’ve got them.
00:38:11 Once you enter, you’ve got them.
00:38:12 You just gotta finish, right?
00:38:13 You just gotta lock them and turn and go.
00:38:15 So it makes sense to me.
00:38:17 My dad did teach me how to do that when I was younger.
00:38:20 Yeah, he wanted me to do a split hip.
00:38:21 We have kids at the school today
00:38:23 that we teach the split hip Saiyan Aiki, same way,
00:38:27 because it is that dynamic, right?
00:38:28 You don’t drop to the ground and roll and turn.
00:38:31 It’s not the classic form
00:38:32 where you’re giving way to your opponent.
00:38:34 It’s actually, you go pick the guy up in the air
00:38:36 and then you slam him, so.
00:38:39 Okay, beautiful.
00:38:41 So maybe on a small tangent,
00:38:43 so we’re talking about elite level athletes
00:38:46 in terms of Randori, in terms of like drilling.
00:38:49 For more recreational athletes,
00:38:53 like, you know, I have personally that situation going on,
00:38:56 but there’s other people
00:38:57 that are just recreationally training Judo.
00:39:00 How do you recommend they improve Judo?
00:39:03 Like if I wanted to compete a bunch
00:39:06 and do reasonable with a particular set of throws,
00:39:10 say the split Saiyan Aiki,
00:39:13 so how do you do the Randori?
00:39:16 Do you use a crash pad to get in reps?
00:39:18 Do you, like, what do you recommend?
00:39:20 So I guess there’s two recreational people
00:39:22 that we’re talking about.
00:39:23 One is somebody who wants to learn Judo
00:39:25 and become good at Judo,
00:39:27 but doesn’t necessarily want to compete,
00:39:29 but just wants to get better.
00:39:30 And I think that there’s not enough emphasis
00:39:33 in this country on paying attention
00:39:36 to that type of student.
00:39:37 Everybody pushes them to competition.
00:39:40 But in reality, there’s a huge audience of people out there
00:39:43 that would love to learn Judo
00:39:44 and be very proficient at Judo
00:39:46 and have the skills to go execute if they ever needed it.
00:39:50 And there’s a class
00:39:51 and there should be a program for that athlete.
00:39:53 And that athlete does not need to do Randori.
00:39:56 Like the sport of Judo is physical enough
00:39:59 where you’re picking somebody up all the time
00:40:01 and moving their body weight around the mat all the time,
00:40:03 where you can get very physically strong,
00:40:05 very physically fit.
00:40:07 Technically, you’ll be better than somebody
00:40:09 that does Randori more than you
00:40:11 because if you learn good technique
00:40:14 and you learn the movement and you learn the feel
00:40:16 and you learn the timing,
00:40:18 you’ll actually be a better athlete
00:40:20 than the person that just focuses on Randori
00:40:22 who does ugly technique and wins with force.
00:40:24 So we have a recreational class at our school
00:40:28 where they don’t do any Randori.
00:40:30 They have an option afterwards
00:40:31 if they want to stay for 15 minutes
00:40:33 or stay for 30 minutes
00:40:34 where they can participate in Randori.
00:40:36 But most of the adult students choose not to
00:40:39 because they’re already so tired from the other hour class.
00:40:42 It’s a good workout.
00:40:43 Right, they’re already dripping sweat.
00:40:44 They’re already like, if you work hard and drill hard,
00:40:48 it’s an intense workout, you’re exhausted.
00:40:51 So that’s a specific set of program,
00:40:55 I should say, at every academy.
00:40:57 And then if you want to get good and you want to compete,
00:41:01 then to me, once you have your techniques,
00:41:04 it’s learning how to implement a good gripping system
00:41:09 to put yourself in a position
00:41:11 where you can always dominate the grips,
00:41:16 control the movement, initiate the reactions
00:41:19 from your opponent,
00:41:20 and then have the opportunity to attack and score.
00:41:22 And I think that when people train with,
00:41:25 or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo,
00:41:29 all of a sudden the first thing they say is, I can’t attack.
00:41:32 I don’t know how to attack.
00:41:33 Because positionally, they don’t know
00:41:35 where to put their hands.
00:41:36 They don’t know how to hold the gi properly.
00:41:38 They don’t understand that they’re,
00:41:41 they have an inferior grip,
00:41:43 and they don’t know how to get into better positions
00:41:45 so they can’t attack.
00:41:46 And that’s a big part of the game
00:41:47 that not a lot of people really understand.
00:41:49 So you really, even for recreational competitors,
00:41:52 you really need to have a gripping system.
00:41:54 You need to understand the gripping system.
00:41:57 If you want to win.
00:41:58 I mean, if the goal is to go and compete,
00:42:00 that’s a different story.
00:42:01 You’re going, I don’t have fun getting beat up
00:42:03 or losing in competitions.
00:42:04 I enjoy the…
00:42:06 I don’t even know if it’s the winning or the losing.
00:42:09 I don’t think, I think this is what,
00:42:12 because I competed a lot in both Judo and Jiu Jitsu,
00:42:14 and in Judo, it feels like,
00:42:18 because I didn’t have a gripping system,
00:42:19 it feels like you’re not even playing Judo
00:42:21 against the good black belts.
00:42:24 You’re, they’re just, they’re not,
00:42:26 they’re not even trying because they have,
00:42:28 they get a certain kind of grip,
00:42:29 and you just can’t do anything.
00:42:31 And I don’t have a good answer for that.
00:42:33 I don’t even know what I’m looking for.
00:42:34 And so it’s not even fun.
00:42:36 It’s not like even losing.
00:42:37 It’s like, I don’t know.
00:42:40 It’s like you didn’t even show up to play
00:42:43 is what it feels like.
00:42:44 And it’s not, and I think that is a big gap
00:42:47 in knowledge, actually, in Judo schools,
00:42:52 is the gripping part.
00:42:55 When you first go out to do Judo, right?
00:42:59 You, the first thing you have to do
00:43:00 is you have to grab your opponent, right?
00:43:01 And a lot of times I hear coaches say, get a grip.
00:43:04 Just take a grip.
00:43:04 Well, sometimes if you take a grip,
00:43:07 you’re in a worse position than not having a grip at all.
00:43:10 And that’s what a lot of people don’t understand.
00:43:11 Like if you hold the gi in the wrong way,
00:43:14 your opponent can attack you, but you can’t attack him.
00:43:16 So why would you ever do that grip
00:43:20 if it’s only to your detriment, right?
00:43:22 So that’s, and the way you grip does set up
00:43:26 what attacks you can do as well.
00:43:28 So that is a huge part.
00:43:29 And I’m not saying that you have to be 100% disciplined
00:43:32 and only always outgrip your opponent
00:43:34 and only be able to do throws
00:43:36 when you have a superior grip.
00:43:37 I’m just saying that to be able to put the grips together
00:43:40 with the throws and understand the movements
00:43:42 is gonna make you that much ahead of the game.
00:43:45 So if we take a step to our previous discussion
00:43:48 of going from zero to hero.
00:43:51 So going from the early days through the teenage years
00:43:55 to winning an Olympic medal.
00:43:58 So we mentioned a lot of training,
00:44:00 the dedication of the training, the competing,
00:44:03 what other elements are there?
00:44:05 The mental side is visualization,
00:44:07 believing that you could perform at that level.
00:44:12 So what else can you say about that?
00:44:13 I think that comes at the highest level,
00:44:15 the visualization, the success,
00:44:17 that comes at the highest level.
00:44:18 I think in the teen years, there’s the experience,
00:44:23 just plays a huge role in getting to train
00:44:27 with other people.
00:44:28 Like as Americans, we have to go train in Europe.
00:44:30 We have to feel the European style of judo.
00:44:33 You have to understand that physicality.
00:44:35 They grip very differently.
00:44:38 They put you in very unorthodox positions.
00:44:41 And if you don’t know how to deal with that,
00:44:43 you get thrown before you even have a chance
00:44:45 to try your own throws.
00:44:47 So it takes a lot of that experience
00:44:50 and understanding what’s going on.
00:44:52 And then you also need to get that physicality.
00:44:55 You need to be strong and hard, I would say,
00:44:59 by doing all those rounds with the Europeans.
00:45:01 And at the same time, you need to go to Asia
00:45:03 and you need to train in Japan
00:45:05 because you need to feel that free flowing judo
00:45:08 for your technical side.
00:45:10 And I think that’s one of the things
00:45:12 that I was able to benefit from.
00:45:13 My dad was a coach who said,
00:45:15 ‘‘Listen, I’ve taken you as far as I can take you.
00:45:17 ‘‘I want you to go to the next level.’’
00:45:20 And he sent me to England with Neil Adams,
00:45:23 who was an Olympic silver medalist and was a world champion,
00:45:25 had a great ground game and was good at gripping
00:45:28 and actually did Tai Otoshi, which is the throw I did.
00:45:30 So my dad said, ‘‘I want you to go learn from Neil.’’
00:45:32 And I ended up going to England
00:45:34 probably eight to 10 times in my career
00:45:36 and spending a good amount of time there
00:45:38 training at the Neil Adams Academy.
00:45:40 He’s now the voice of judo, Neil Adams.
00:45:43 What do you make of that guy?
00:45:43 Just a brief pause.
00:45:44 He’s like the, like Morgan Freeman
00:45:47 is the voice of like March of the Penguins
00:45:50 and any other nature documentary.
00:45:52 And Neil Adams is, there’s very few sports
00:45:54 that have a Neil Adams, I would say,
00:45:56 because he’s legitimately, maybe like Joe Rogan
00:46:00 is that from mixed martial arts.
00:46:02 It’s just like an exceptionally recognizable voice.
00:46:06 He’s really knowledgeable.
00:46:07 Also the passion is conveyed so well.
00:46:10 Like many times I’ll watch just because he’s talking.
00:46:13 So who is he?
00:46:14 Since you’ve gotten a chance to train with him,
00:46:16 to learn from him, who is Neil Adams?
00:46:18 He’s a great friend of mine.
00:46:20 He is?
00:46:21 He’s a mentor.
00:46:23 Like I said, I lived and trained
00:46:24 at the Neil Adams Club in Coventry, England
00:46:27 since I was like 16 years old.
00:46:29 I went and visited him for the first time.
00:46:31 He’s the one who originally taught me
00:46:33 how to do jujigatami and the way that I do jujigatami.
00:46:37 I trained with him.
00:46:38 He was just retired.
00:46:39 He was in his early thirties when I first went out there.
00:46:41 And so I trained with him many times
00:46:43 and over the years he was a mentor.
00:46:48 Great person, cares about people,
00:46:51 cares about the sport of judo, had a good little club
00:46:56 that was a fitness club.
00:46:57 And it was judo, it was fitness.
00:47:00 It used to go there.
00:47:02 I’d show up at that place at like seven in the morning.
00:47:05 And the first thing we would do is we’d go for a run.
00:47:07 And we’d either be running mountains
00:47:09 or we’d be doing a five mile run
00:47:11 or we’d be doing something at the park.
00:47:13 We were doing sprints and buddy carries and all this stuff.
00:47:15 And then at 9 a.m. we’d have a technical session
00:47:18 with Neil Adams where he would, for an hour and a half,
00:47:21 we would drill techniques and learn positions.
00:47:23 And it was no randori.
00:47:25 It was that sequential drilling
00:47:26 that we talked about before, right?
00:47:28 Where you’re reinforcing your two or three attacks
00:47:31 to set up your main attack.
00:47:33 Or if you’re on the ground,
00:47:34 you’re going through repetitions of certain movements.
00:47:38 And then I’d spend all afternoon at the club, have lunch.
00:47:41 I’d go do my weight training in the afternoon at that place.
00:47:45 And then in the evening,
00:47:46 we would either do randori training at the Neil Adams Club
00:47:49 or we would all get in a car
00:47:50 and we’d drive to another location
00:47:53 and we’d go train at another club
00:47:55 that might be an hour away.
00:47:56 And there’d be 50 bodies there to train with.
00:47:58 And each night we’d go to a different dojo.
00:48:00 And so it would be all day at the club
00:48:02 and I’d do that for like three weeks straight.
00:48:04 All we’d do was train.
00:48:05 Do you know how he became the voice of judo?
00:48:08 Do you have an understanding of what he’s thinking is
00:48:12 around how much he dedicates to himself
00:48:15 to just commentating on judo?
00:48:17 I imagine the amount of research required,
00:48:21 but also just like psychologically,
00:48:23 just the excitement he has in his voice.
00:48:25 It takes work to do that.
00:48:28 Do you have an understanding
00:48:28 of like what his vision is with that?
00:48:30 He’s always been a very charismatic, animated person, Neil.
00:48:35 Very passionate and loud and funny.
00:48:38 And the Brits are very funny to begin with.
00:48:40 So he’s very charismatic.
00:48:42 But I think after coaching, he tried coaching.
00:48:46 He coached the country of Wales for a while.
00:48:48 He tried coaching stints in other countries.
00:48:51 He didn’t have a lot of success on the coaching side
00:48:54 developing an Olympic champion.
00:48:56 I know that was a goal of his that he was a world champion.
00:49:00 I think it was 1981.
00:49:01 He won two silver medals in the Olympic games himself.
00:49:05 He went on to coach for a while
00:49:07 and had some political issues
00:49:09 with the country of England for a while.
00:49:12 And then left England and went to Wales.
00:49:14 And I think he had a coaching stint
00:49:15 somewhere else as well.
00:49:17 Didn’t have a lot of success coaching in the sport
00:49:20 with athletes, not at the highest level.
00:49:22 Had a great national team and things like that.
00:49:24 He was really good at teaching his technique to others
00:49:27 because he helped me a lot.
00:49:30 But running a program, I think was difficult for him.
00:49:33 The boys not listening and not having that same kind
00:49:35 of passion and intensity that he…
00:49:37 And that’s why I bonded well with him
00:49:39 because I was all in, right?
00:49:41 I went there and whatever he said, I did.
00:49:43 I didn’t care how hard, I didn’t care how long.
00:49:45 I just wanted to get as good as I could.
00:49:47 And so that’s why he was a good mentor for me.
00:49:50 But now in terms of a commentator, he’s very cerebral.
00:49:54 He loves judo, he researches it nonstop.
00:50:00 He’s got that great voice
00:50:02 and he knows how to bring life to the game.
00:50:05 And that’s what he’s done.
00:50:06 And now this is who he is, right?
00:50:08 He does judo full time, this is his job.
00:50:11 Can I ask you a small, before we return to the actual sport,
00:50:15 the coaching and the sport,
00:50:17 it’s a bit of a political question.
00:50:18 I did a whole rant before Travis episode.
00:50:23 I love Neil Adams’s voice.
00:50:26 I love watching judo.
00:50:28 And it’s really disappointing to me that the IOC
00:50:33 and whoever is responsible, I don’t understand this,
00:50:36 that they don’t make it easy for people
00:50:39 to watch the Olympics in replay for years after.
00:50:44 Like I can’t watch Travis’s matches.
00:50:46 I can’t watch, like they make it very difficult
00:50:49 to watch stuff online.
00:50:51 So what happened is I uploaded the Travis Stevens episode
00:50:55 and we talked about his Ole Bischoff 2012 match.
00:50:59 And it was like one minute of like a small overlay
00:51:04 of the video as we’re talking through it,
00:51:06 like stepping through it.
00:51:08 And it got taken down immediately from YouTube,
00:51:11 the whole four hour conversation
00:51:14 because of that one minute little clip.
00:51:17 And the way it got taken down automatically
00:51:20 is because the IOC has that video uploaded.
00:51:24 It’s set to private, but it’s uploaded.
00:51:27 So like they have the video and they choose not to show it.
00:51:31 It’s not that they’re asking for money or whatever.
00:51:33 They’re just not showing it anywhere.
00:51:35 They’re not showing it through their own service.
00:51:37 Like an NBC Olympics or so on.
00:51:39 There’s just so many great human stories
00:51:42 that the Olympics reveals.
00:51:44 They’re just not made easily accessible.
00:51:46 That’s the Olympics charter is you want to,
00:51:50 I think the actual line is to ensure the fullest coverage
00:51:54 and the widest possible audience in the world
00:51:57 for the Olympic games.
00:51:58 And it seems like to me as a fan of the Olympic games,
00:52:02 we’re not getting any of that.
00:52:04 Do you have an understanding of why that is?
00:52:08 Like why we can’t watch Kayla’s matches,
00:52:10 Travis’s matches super easily,
00:52:12 even if we’re willing to pay money for it.
00:52:14 So you can’t go on the International Judo Federation
00:52:17 website right now and watch any of the Olympic footage?
00:52:20 No, no, no.
00:52:23 So the only thing they have is for certain,
00:52:26 for example, Teddy Rene match he lost.
00:52:30 Not available anywhere.
00:52:31 Really?
00:52:31 And that’s like a dramatic thing.
00:52:33 So the one thing they have is for certain sports
00:52:36 at the highest level, like gymnastics,
00:52:39 they’ll have a highlight,
00:52:40 which is the most frustrating thing to me.
00:52:43 Because this is what I can’t,
00:52:46 I’m going to try to prevent myself from going on a rant.
00:52:50 But people don’t just want to see a two minute highlight
00:52:56 of a historic moment.
00:52:58 They want to see the buildup where the athlete is standing,
00:53:01 the nerves, the fear, the confidence.
00:53:04 You see the buildup to the event,
00:53:06 say it’s a gymnastic, whatever, floor routine.
00:53:09 Like their name is announced, they’re walking,
00:53:11 the coat, then they cut to the coach,
00:53:13 and the coach with anticipation,
00:53:15 and then go to the athlete.
00:53:16 You want the full 10 minute thing.
00:53:18 You don’t want a two minute highlight
00:53:20 of what happened like last second or whatever.
00:53:23 It’s just like the magic of that full story.
00:53:28 Like a lifetime building up to those 10 minutes, right?
00:53:32 That’s the magic of the Olympics.
00:53:34 The both the drama and the triumph
00:53:36 that happens in those moments.
00:53:37 And the fact that you can’t relive that.
00:53:41 Like Travis had a bunch of those, right?
00:53:43 Like he had a bunch of times he faced like world champions,
00:53:46 he won and lost, and just, it’s always close,
00:53:49 it’s always dramatic.
00:53:51 And none of those are available except like
00:53:54 maybe the one where he beat Armbard,
00:53:59 or whatever the submission was, I forgot.
00:54:01 The choke, yeah, the Georgian.
00:54:04 But most things are not.
00:54:07 Usain Bolt, the full races,
00:54:09 not all of his races are available online.
00:54:13 The race with the Italian winning the 100 meter track race,
00:54:19 this Olympics is not only highlight is available
00:54:22 from what I saw, I didn’t look too hard.
00:54:24 So like, but the fact that it’s not super easily accessible
00:54:28 if you’re willing to pay money even,
00:54:29 but probably should be for free, is heartbreaking to me.
00:54:33 Because to me, the Olympics is like some of the best
00:54:38 of humanity.
00:54:40 Just like, again, the hardship they have to overcome.
00:54:43 So like the losses are really powerful.
00:54:45 Because it’s such heartbreak,
00:54:46 but it’s also like the triumph.
00:54:49 Where you’re losing history.
00:54:50 You’re losing history is what you are,
00:54:52 of all the magical moments of your sport, right?
00:54:55 It’s a sin.
00:54:58 I got to blame it on television rights and money.
00:55:03 That’s what it comes down to.
00:55:04 It’s like billions and billions of dollars
00:55:06 of television rights paid by NBC here in the United States
00:55:10 and globally, whatever the main carriers are
00:55:13 and all the other nations that are dictating
00:55:16 what can be replayed and what can’t.
00:55:17 And that’s what it comes down to.
00:55:20 I made a DVD or a video when I first retired
00:55:25 from the sport.
00:55:26 It was called Fury on the Mat.
00:55:27 It was kind of my story, right?
00:55:28 And I did it with a friend who was a videographer
00:55:32 and we grabbed a bunch of my old footage
00:55:34 and Olympic footage and somebody said to me,
00:55:38 you can’t use that Olympic footage.
00:55:39 And I was young and I had just retired.
00:55:41 I said, what do you mean I can’t use the Olympic footage?
00:55:43 It’s not the television footage.
00:55:45 It’s my buddy who filmed it with his own camera.
00:55:47 It’s my footage.
00:55:48 Yeah, exactly.
00:55:49 And then they said, no, if it has Olympics in it
00:55:51 or it’s anything to do with the Olympics,
00:55:52 the USOC owns it.
00:55:54 Yeah.
00:55:55 I said, okay, well, they said,
00:55:56 well, you should get to send it to them
00:55:57 and let them review it.
00:56:00 So I sent it to them and I got a bill back.
00:56:02 I got a thing back that said,
00:56:03 if you want to use this footage,
00:56:05 it’s going to be like $30,000.
00:56:06 And I said, man, it’s only like three minutes.
00:56:09 I spliced it up as much as I could
00:56:11 and I only have highlights in there.
00:56:13 And then I said, come on.
00:56:14 I went back and I negotiated with them.
00:56:17 But at the end of the day,
00:56:18 I still had to pay like $15,000
00:56:20 just to have a few minutes of footage in my own film.
00:56:23 This is…
00:56:25 And I’m thinking, you wouldn’t even have that film
00:56:27 if I didn’t compete in it.
00:56:28 You know, like you can’t, you know.
00:56:30 So it was a struggle.
00:56:31 This is the different,
00:56:32 like you have the same in Jiu Jitsu.
00:56:34 There’s certain organizations, IBJJF
00:56:37 or like Flow Grappling and Flow Wrestling.
00:56:40 I understand, I think when it’s a business,
00:56:43 it might make sense.
00:56:44 First of all, you should actually be good
00:56:46 at being a business and making money,
00:56:48 which is why for me, the IOC doesn’t make sense.
00:56:51 Like it should be accessible, but it would cost money.
00:56:56 I can’t buy it.
00:56:57 Like would I have to email them for this footage
00:57:00 and pay $30,000?
00:57:01 Yeah, yeah.
00:57:02 No, but the question is,
00:57:04 like the way you run a business
00:57:06 is you make that frictionless.
00:57:08 Whatever the money is, $30,000 or $30,
00:57:11 you make it frictionless and easy to pay that money.
00:57:13 But anyway, I understand why that might be the case
00:57:17 with Flow Grappling,
00:57:18 but to me, the Olympics is a special thing.
00:57:21 For sure.
00:57:21 It’s like, like you said, it is history.
00:57:23 Like there’s not even,
00:57:25 like even the world championships don’t compare.
00:57:27 I understand they’re really important,
00:57:30 but Olympics is history.
00:57:32 And the stories should certainly belong to the athletes
00:57:37 if they want to do like Fury on the Mat
00:57:39 to do their own story,
00:57:41 or like on a podcast to talk about the most tragic moment
00:57:46 of their career.
00:57:49 Do you have a sense of how that could be fixed or no?
00:57:54 The only thing I could think of is,
00:57:56 you’d have to go to the Olympic committee.
00:57:58 The US Olympic committee is the place I would start
00:58:00 because the US controls the worldwide market
00:58:02 when it comes to television.
00:58:04 We pay the most for our television rights.
00:58:06 Our sponsors pay the most for their rights
00:58:09 to be associated with the best team in the world,
00:58:12 which is the United States, right?
00:58:13 So all the money starts here.
00:58:16 I gotta believe there has to be a way to get that footage
00:58:18 that should be accessible to the sports themselves.
00:58:22 I’m surprised it’s not,
00:58:23 but if it’s not, then it’s because of dollars.
00:58:27 It’s because people aren’t,
00:58:28 the sport itself is not willing to pay enough money
00:58:31 to have it on its, accessible to its audience.
00:58:35 It’s too cost prohibitive for them to do it.
00:58:38 No, but I think it’s also, unfortunately,
00:58:40 might be some mixture of incompetence
00:58:43 and just an old way of doing things
00:58:45 because there’s a lot of money to be made
00:58:48 on television rights where you live show the event, right?
00:58:52 But what’s not being leveraged is the huge amount of money
00:58:56 that could be made on the replay.
00:58:58 This is what people don’t understand is,
00:59:00 do you know how many times, just the tens of millions
00:59:05 of times that people watch individual events years from now?
00:59:10 You watch like all the videos on YouTube,
00:59:12 they’re still getting plays.
00:59:14 Hundreds of millions of views on stuff
00:59:16 that happened 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
00:59:18 That’s really powerful and there’s a lot of opportunity
00:59:20 to make a ton of money.
00:59:22 So it’s not that they’re necessarily greedy.
00:59:25 They’re also just not good at being greedy.
00:59:28 I get what you’re saying.
00:59:28 Yeah, it’s not the tradition.
00:59:30 Think about it though, it’s not traditional, right?
00:59:32 For television studios, it’s nontraditional
00:59:35 to go to online streaming, to online access to information.
00:59:40 It’s not hard, right?
00:59:41 Because everybody’s doing it now, but it’s not typical.
00:59:45 Yeah, so it requires for the IOC
00:59:49 to operate outside their comfort zone.
00:59:51 Well, I definitely hope that’s the case.
00:59:53 And since Travis’s video got taken down,
00:59:59 it’s obvious they have it.
01:00:00 They have it on their YouTube channel.
01:00:02 So it’s like, I hope that they will just release it.
01:00:07 And for money, for whatever, but release it
01:00:10 and have that history not be erased, right?
01:00:16 It’d be wonderful if athletes could buy.
01:00:19 Even if you could buy your own footage,
01:00:20 you can’t use it commercially, you can’t,
01:00:22 but you can buy your own matches
01:00:24 and have them available for yourself
01:00:25 or package the footage, it’d be awesome.
01:00:31 Thank you for that.
01:00:32 That is quite heartbreaking for me,
01:00:34 so I wanted to talk about it a little bit.
01:00:37 Let’s go to you as an athlete real quick.
01:00:41 Sure.
01:00:42 You represented the United States at four Olympics,
01:00:45 winning a bronze medal at two of them.
01:00:49 Who or what was the toughest match or moment
01:00:53 you had in those years?
01:00:55 Maybe a moment that defined you,
01:00:58 that you remember as being
01:00:59 particularly defining in your career.
01:01:06 I would say the bronze medal match in Atlanta in 96,
01:01:11 because up to that moment,
01:01:13 the United States team had not won a medal,
01:01:15 had not fought for a medal in the games.
01:01:18 We were on our home turf.
01:01:20 It was my second Olympic games, right?
01:01:22 So I had competed in 92 and I had won two matches
01:01:25 and lost in the third round in Barcelona.
01:01:28 I didn’t make the podium.
01:01:29 I lost to a Japanese guy from Japan.
01:01:33 But the gold, silver, and bronze medalist
01:01:36 at that Olympics in Barcelona were all guys that I had beat.
01:01:39 In fact, two of them I was undefeated against
01:01:41 in my entire career,
01:01:42 the Brazilian and the Cuban I had never lost to.
01:01:45 So that’s when I knew I was capable of being
01:01:48 on the podium at the Olympic games.
01:01:50 When 96 came around, I was 25 years old.
01:01:53 I was fairly in my prime.
01:01:55 I had lived in Japan for six months.
01:01:56 My technique was at a high level.
01:01:59 I was amongst the best in the world.
01:02:04 I lost at that Olympics to a guy from Mongolia.
01:02:07 It was right before the match
01:02:09 I was supposed to fight against Japan.
01:02:10 So I was anticipating the match against Japan
01:02:13 and I got beat by the Mongolian.
01:02:15 So that was kind of a letdown.
01:02:16 But the match for the bronze in front of the hometown crowd,
01:02:21 all of my family, all of my friends,
01:02:24 everybody who had ever helped me in the sport
01:02:27 were in the stands that day,
01:02:29 including all my teammates at Brown University
01:02:31 that were on the wrestling team
01:02:32 and little, my uncles, my aunts,
01:02:35 everybody was in the stands, right?
01:02:37 So it was like the Jimmy Pedro day.
01:02:39 And I’m getting goosebumps right now talking about it.
01:02:44 But it was a match against the Brazilian
01:02:46 for the bronze medal.
01:02:47 I had beaten the Brazilian like two or three times
01:02:49 before that.
01:02:50 And I found myself down in the match.
01:02:54 He actually countered me.
01:02:56 I came in my Taiyo Toshi and he was waiting for it
01:02:58 and he counted me and he scored a yuko against me.
01:03:00 So I was losing the fight,
01:03:02 came down to about the last minute in the match
01:03:05 and I was just tucking in my gi
01:03:06 and fixing my thing and gathering my thoughts together.
01:03:09 And the whole crowd just started chanting,
01:03:12 USA, USA, USA.
01:03:16 And I like literally like got so much energy.
01:03:18 I walked out there, I grabbed the guy,
01:03:20 I came in my Taiyo Toshi again.
01:03:22 He stepped off the Taiyo Toshi.
01:03:24 I threw him with duchimada for Ippon.
01:03:26 I won my first Olympic medal
01:03:29 in front of the hometown crowd.
01:03:31 Everybody went bananas.
01:03:33 The United States judo team had our first medal
01:03:36 from the Olympics.
01:03:37 It ended up being the only Olympic medal
01:03:39 we won at that games.
01:03:41 But it was like a magical moment that defined my career
01:03:44 and solidified myself in like history where,
01:03:46 hey, now I get to step up on the Olympic podium
01:03:49 and I’m Olympic medalist.
01:03:50 And to me, that was my defining moment.
01:03:53 And after that, I was sold.
01:03:55 Like man, I had to go back to the Olympics again.
01:03:57 I wanna win a gold medal.
01:03:58 I want this feeling all over again.
01:04:01 I don’t care if I have to wait four years, let’s do it.
01:04:05 In your career, like moments like that,
01:04:08 do you think you love winning or hate losing more?
01:04:13 So do you live for those moments
01:04:17 or are you more driven by just how much you hate losing?
01:04:24 So in order to be a champion,
01:04:26 my belief is that you have to hate losing
01:04:29 more than you like winning.
01:04:31 Hate losing more than you like winning.
01:04:33 But I live for those moments when you do win.
01:04:36 And what excited me the most in my career
01:04:39 when I was competing was I loved being in the finals.
01:04:44 I loved the spotlight being on me.
01:04:46 I can’t think of too many times in my career,
01:04:48 of course there were a few,
01:04:50 but there weren’t too many times where the chips were down,
01:04:54 like the lights were on and I didn’t win.
01:04:56 Like it was, I might’ve lost early in the day
01:05:00 and didn’t make it to the finals
01:05:01 or didn’t make it to the medal rounds.
01:05:02 But like in my career, I have a ton of golds.
01:05:06 I have a ton of bronzes,
01:05:07 which means the lights are on and I won
01:05:11 and I have very few silvers and very few fifths.
01:05:15 So I either lost in the early rounds
01:05:16 and didn’t make it to the medal rounds in my younger days
01:05:18 or the spotlight came and I really shined.
01:05:21 Cause if you look, I don’t know how many silvers,
01:05:23 but there wasn’t very many silver medals in my career
01:05:25 that I won.
01:05:26 You know what I mean?
01:05:27 So I just loved that moment.
01:05:29 I didn’t feel pressure.
01:05:30 I loved the crowd.
01:05:31 I loved being in the spotlight.
01:05:33 I didn’t have, I wasn’t nervous when it came to the finals
01:05:36 or I knew I was getting a medal.
01:05:37 It didn’t matter.
01:05:38 You know, so it was just me against the other guy
01:05:40 and that’s how I always saw it.
01:05:42 And I just loved that moment.
01:05:44 So your dad was your coach.
01:05:45 Yeah.
01:05:48 You didn’t get to meet him tonight.
01:05:50 Oh, great.
01:05:54 He’s kind of a legend in the sport.
01:05:56 So how has your dad helped you as a coach,
01:05:59 as an athlete, as a human being throughout the years?
01:06:02 Number one, my dad is the most brutally honest person
01:06:06 you will ever meet in your life.
01:06:08 Brutally honest.
01:06:09 He will tell you, if you are fat,
01:06:12 he will tell you you’re fat, right, to your face.
01:06:14 He wants you to get better.
01:06:15 He wants you to be healthy.
01:06:16 Yeah.
01:06:17 Doesn’t want you to die of obesity.
01:06:18 It’s just the way he is.
01:06:20 If you didn’t do well, he will not sugarcoat it.
01:06:23 He will let you know what you didn’t do right.
01:06:26 So he’s the ultimate litmus test.
01:06:28 Yes.
01:06:28 Right?
01:06:29 Second is, he is the most passionate, caring, deep,
01:06:37 always thinking about, very cerebral,
01:06:41 very like a student of the game,
01:06:44 somebody who helped me immensely in defining my strategy,
01:06:49 helping me improve, and always look for what’s next.
01:06:53 Third, in terms of training,
01:06:58 I think that he’s probably the most brilliant human
01:07:02 when it comes to preparing an athlete physically,
01:07:06 not necessarily mentally, physically, for success.
01:07:10 When all the chips are down,
01:07:11 that athlete will be ready that day,
01:07:12 and he has a system of training and preparing
01:07:15 and getting the athlete to peak for performance.
01:07:18 You mean like conditioning, like the whole thing?
01:07:20 Yes.
01:07:21 Okay, because I vaguely remember Kayla Harrison
01:07:27 talking about her preparation being very difficult.
01:07:31 Yeah.
01:07:31 That’s it.
01:07:33 That’s him.
01:07:34 Yeah, that’s him.
01:07:35 At the same, you go back and ask Ronda Rousey
01:07:38 about her career, right?
01:07:39 My dad was her coach.
01:07:41 My dad moved her to Camp New Hampshire in Boston,
01:07:45 got her up, ran her in the morning,
01:07:48 had her downstairs in the basement of his house,
01:07:50 training with the weights.
01:07:51 We brought a Russian girl in.
01:07:52 She did throws on his cement outside
01:07:54 with the little crash pad.
01:07:55 Nice.
01:07:56 Threw the Russian girl a hundred times that morning,
01:07:59 and then every night came to Boston,
01:08:02 to the training center in Wakefield,
01:08:03 trained at night, and went back and slept at my dad’s house,
01:08:05 and three weeks straight before she went off to Beijing.
01:08:09 And he did the same with Kayla.
01:08:11 He did the same with me.
01:08:14 His passion is producing athletes at the highest level,
01:08:17 and he knows how to do it.
01:08:18 And then the one side of my dad’s
01:08:23 coaching where I think there’s a flaw or a weakness
01:08:26 is on the mental preparation side of the game.
01:08:28 He wasn’t somebody that was,
01:08:30 I don’t know if he,
01:08:32 maybe because he wasn’t an Olympic champion himself
01:08:34 and wasn’t a world champion,
01:08:36 he lacked the confidence in helping others be more confident.
01:08:39 So he’s more of a,
01:08:41 this is what you need to work on type of thing.
01:08:43 He doesn’t know how to build the athletes up
01:08:46 to make them feel invincible.
01:08:48 And I feel like that’s something
01:08:49 that I was able to give all of the athletes,
01:08:51 to help them with that visualization, belief in yourself,
01:08:55 knowing that you’re gonna win
01:08:56 before you step out of the mat,
01:08:57 knowing that we’ve earned the right to victory,
01:09:00 seeing success in your mind,
01:09:02 having a positive mantra that you,
01:09:05 I’m the best in the world, nobody’s beating me today,
01:09:07 type of feeling.
01:09:09 So you go out there feeling like King Kong
01:09:10 when you step on the mat,
01:09:12 that nobody’s gonna stop you.
01:09:14 And so I think the combination of both of us as coaches,
01:09:17 I’m a lot more technical.
01:09:20 My dad is good at letting,
01:09:21 identifying what they need to do for their techniques
01:09:24 and what, in strategy, how to beat opponents
01:09:28 and putting game plans together.
01:09:30 So combined, the two of us made an unbelievable team.
01:09:33 So he’s not gonna let the athlete be soft
01:09:36 when they enter the highest,
01:09:39 the most difficult competitions of their career.
01:09:43 So on the mental side, what’s mental preparation look like?
01:09:48 Like how many years before the Olympics
01:09:50 do you start helping an athlete believe
01:09:54 that they can win an Olympic medal?
01:09:57 Well, I think it’s gotta be a seed
01:09:58 in that athlete’s brain, something they wanna do, right?
01:10:02 Nobody can quickly get there, right?
01:10:05 It’s a long process.
01:10:06 But if your goal, if you’re national champion
01:10:09 or you’ve proven yourself to win
01:10:10 in some international tournaments,
01:10:13 and you think the Olympics is a possibility for you,
01:10:15 then defining it as, hey, I wanna be on the Olympic team,
01:10:19 that would be the first step into getting ready.
01:10:24 And I always make them put it on paper.
01:10:28 If it really is your goal,
01:10:29 then you show me that it’s your goal
01:10:30 and put it on paper and commit to it.
01:10:32 I wanna be Olympic medalist,
01:10:34 I wanna be Olympic champion,
01:10:35 I wanna go to the Olympics.
01:10:36 World team member, maybe junior world team member,
01:10:38 whatever it is, we walk before we go to the highest level.
01:10:41 But if the goal is to go to the Olympics,
01:10:44 let’s accomplish these other things first, right?
01:10:46 Because if we can accomplish these other things,
01:10:50 then we’re on our way to getting to the ultimate goal,
01:10:52 which is the Olympics.
01:10:54 For somebody like Kayla, for example,
01:10:58 she didn’t say that she wanted to be Olympic champion
01:11:02 when she first came here in 2005, right?
01:11:05 We wanted to become national champion,
01:11:07 then we wanted to be on the world team,
01:11:09 then we wanted to be a world medalist.
01:11:10 Then our sights were set on the Olympics
01:11:12 or the Olympic gold.
01:11:14 So it’s having those clearly defined goals
01:11:17 that are attainable.
01:11:18 Like they should be a reach, they should be a stretch,
01:11:20 but they have to be attainable.
01:11:22 They can’t be just a pipe dream.
01:11:25 But once you put it to paper and you think it’s achievable,
01:11:30 then it’s mapping the plan to get there.
01:11:33 Is there a daily process of visualizing yourself
01:11:36 as an Olympic champion or national champion?
01:11:40 Yes, it is, and you should do it
01:11:43 either every night before you go to bed
01:11:45 or before every training session
01:11:48 or after every training session.
01:11:50 One of those three times it should,
01:11:51 or first thing you wake up in the morning,
01:11:54 because it may be to help some people,
01:11:55 it motivates them to go do what it is
01:11:57 they’re supposed to do in the day.
01:12:00 But the process of visualization is, to me,
01:12:04 is closing your eyes for a few moments.
01:12:07 Your brain works really, really fast, right?
01:12:09 And it’s actually picturing the day in its entirety,
01:12:14 from start to finish,
01:12:16 from the moment you wake up and you step on the scale
01:12:19 to the moment you have your breakfast
01:12:20 and you go through your morning routine.
01:12:22 Like live the day that you’re gonna have at the Olympics.
01:12:24 So whatever it is you’re trying to do,
01:12:26 let’s say the Olympic day, for example.
01:12:29 Picture yourself making weight,
01:12:31 picture yourself, who you’re around, eating your breakfast,
01:12:33 having maybe saying a few jokes, laughing.
01:12:35 This is a real day, make it real.
01:12:38 Going back and packing your judo bag for the day,
01:12:42 getting on the bus, driving to the venue,
01:12:45 feel what it’s like walking into the stadium
01:12:49 for the first time, going to the warmup area,
01:12:52 seeing your drawer up on the sheet,
01:12:54 who you’re gonna fight that day,
01:12:56 watching yourself warm up, go through your warmup routine,
01:13:00 walking out of the shoot, into the venue,
01:13:03 going to do that first fight.
01:13:05 Picture the moment of throwing your opponent,
01:13:07 coming off the mat, high fiving the coach,
01:13:10 getting ready for your second fight.
01:13:12 Like live the day from start to finish
01:13:15 and make it as real as possible.
01:13:18 We’re all the way to the moment where you’ve just won
01:13:20 and you’re raising your arms in celebration,
01:13:23 you’re bowing, you’re hugging your opponent,
01:13:25 you come off the mat, you hug your coach,
01:13:28 you’re running around the stadium with the flag,
01:13:31 you stepped up on the podium, you heard your name,
01:13:34 Olympic champion, Jimmy Pedro,
01:13:36 like you heard the moment,
01:13:39 the medal being put around your neck,
01:13:41 picture the people coming up on the podium with you,
01:13:44 arms around them, taking the pictures.
01:13:47 Like the more real you can make it,
01:13:50 even before it ever happens, right?
01:13:54 When you do that enough times,
01:13:57 I feel that like pathways get created for you
01:14:01 so that when your body gets to that moment,
01:14:04 and I’ve been here before, this is it,
01:14:06 this is my moment, this is what I pictured my whole life,
01:14:08 I’m not nervous, because I’ve seen this,
01:14:11 this is gonna happen, I believe it’s possible, right?
01:14:13 And I believe the athletes that do that
01:14:15 and make it real enough that when they get to that moment,
01:14:19 they go right through, there’s no hesitation.
01:14:22 This is what this is meant to be, this is my destiny,
01:14:25 this is why I did everything I did,
01:14:27 versus the ones that don’t think about it ever,
01:14:29 but just kind of like hope, it’s not real to them,
01:14:34 it doesn’t feel attainable,
01:14:35 they don’t believe it’s possible,
01:14:36 they haven’t committed to believing it was possible.
01:14:39 Without that commitment in yourself and that belief,
01:14:42 it can’t happen.
01:14:43 And one thing that, I talked to Travis a bit about this,
01:14:48 you probably worked with him on the details
01:14:51 of what you’re talking about,
01:14:52 but he said that you should really
01:14:56 focus on visualizing the sensations you feel.
01:15:01 So say if you’re drinking coffee or something like that,
01:15:04 you’re not thinking about like observing yourself
01:15:08 from a third person perspective drinking coffee,
01:15:11 like you’re thinking of how your hand will feel
01:15:15 when it touches something warm.
01:15:17 Like you try to replay the actual sensations
01:15:20 you would feel, right?
01:15:21 So it sounds kind of strange,
01:15:24 but meaning like you really wanna put yourself in the body
01:15:27 as you would experience those moments,
01:15:30 as opposed to like watching yourself on TV
01:15:33 experience in those moments, like really be inside.
01:15:36 And yeah, so that means sensations,
01:15:38 like how does it feel when you grip a gi?
01:15:40 How does it, yeah, the sweating,
01:15:45 just the sensation of sweat,
01:15:47 like rolling down your forehead or whatever,
01:15:50 like all of those actual feelings.
01:15:52 When I explain it to you,
01:15:54 like I guess my body has been through it so many times,
01:15:57 both in my mind and in reality
01:15:59 that it brings back all of those same emotions.
01:16:03 I start to get goosebumps, my armpits start to sweat,
01:16:06 like I’m living it if it’s real.
01:16:09 I’m reliving it now.
01:16:10 But when you’re going through the visualization process,
01:16:14 it has to be that real, the smells,
01:16:16 the taping of the fingers,
01:16:18 like the more colorful and the more real you can make it,
01:16:23 the more believable it is.
01:16:25 So I’ve been doing this kind of thing,
01:16:27 just having listened to you enough
01:16:30 for other stuff in life, so let’s see if it works.
01:16:35 But do you see this kind of visualization
01:16:37 being useful for other things in career
01:16:40 and all those kinds of things?
01:16:40 100%, 100%, because I just know with my own life,
01:16:46 my own experiences, like my wife sometimes says to me,
01:16:50 she says, well, where do you see yourself
01:16:52 in like five years from now?
01:16:55 And five years ago, I had said to her,
01:16:58 I wanna have my own business.
01:17:00 I wanna have, this is the amount of money
01:17:03 that I’m hoping I can make in a given year.
01:17:05 Like you have to have goals for yourself.
01:17:06 Like is this, if you put out there like,
01:17:08 okay, I wanna make a million dollars in a year.
01:17:11 That’s a big number.
01:17:13 Like for me or for the normal person,
01:17:15 like that’s a really big number.
01:17:16 You know what I mean?
01:17:17 Like it’s not, especially when you’re not making
01:17:19 that much at the time, it’s a super big number, right?
01:17:22 So having those goals for yourself,
01:17:24 like it won’t happen and it’s not possible
01:17:27 unless you dream it’s possible
01:17:30 and think that it’s possible.
01:17:31 And then it doesn’t magically happen.
01:17:34 And maybe it doesn’t happen in five years,
01:17:35 maybe it happens in 10,
01:17:37 but at least you’re on the path to getting there.
01:17:39 You know what I mean?
01:17:40 And I said, I wanna own my own business.
01:17:41 I wanna control my own destiny.
01:17:44 I wanna be my own boss.
01:17:46 I wanna make my own decisions.
01:17:47 Like these are the things that I told her I wanted to do.
01:17:49 And now I’m at that point,
01:17:53 where I work for myself,
01:17:55 I have my own company, I have partners obviously,
01:17:57 but like if I wanna pick up and go somewhere for a week,
01:18:00 I just do, I don’t have to ask permission to do it, right?
01:18:03 That’s what life, freedom, right?
01:18:05 That’s what I’d like.
01:18:06 And all of it starts with a dream.
01:18:09 In the same with my dojo, when I first opened.
01:18:12 So I ran a dojo for a long time
01:18:14 and I only had 60 students always,
01:18:16 like 40 to 60 students had fluctuated.
01:18:19 And I sit there and say,
01:18:20 why can’t I get more people in my door, right?
01:18:23 So I hired consultants to come in
01:18:25 and look at my business and say why, right?
01:18:27 And they came in and said,
01:18:29 well, this place is really intimidating.
01:18:31 Like if I was coming in off the street,
01:18:33 the first thing I see is this big Olympic champion
01:18:35 on the wall and I see this training that’s going on
01:18:37 and these guys are flying through the air and landing hard.
01:18:40 And as a white belt, you’re telling me
01:18:41 that’s the class for me?
01:18:42 Like no way, I’m not gonna do that.
01:18:44 So like I listened to these people and I said, you’re right.
01:18:47 And the training was hour and a half, two hours long.
01:18:51 People can’t handle an hour and a half or two hours training
01:18:53 when they’re first walking in the door.
01:18:54 So I had to restructure all my programming.
01:18:56 I had to look at the way I was offering my school
01:19:00 and I had to make levels for everybody, right?
01:19:02 Like here’s my four to six year old class.
01:19:05 Here’s my six to 13 year old class.
01:19:07 There’s all my beginner classes.
01:19:09 They don’t mix in with the advanced people.
01:19:11 And I had to learn how to make it accessible for everybody
01:19:16 instead of just the people that wanted to train hard.
01:19:19 And then the challenge was, okay,
01:19:22 if you can have a lot of people in your dojo training,
01:19:25 it’s a recreational school.
01:19:26 You can’t produce champions at that same school.
01:19:28 That’s what I was told.
01:19:29 So then I got all my black belts together
01:19:31 and I said, listen, this is my vision.
01:19:33 This is what I want.
01:19:34 I wanna have a club that has over 200 judo only athletes,
01:19:38 no jujitsu, no karate, nothing, judo only.
01:19:41 I want over 200 people.
01:19:43 And in the inside of that dojo, I wanna have Olympic
01:19:46 champions and I wanna have recreational,
01:19:49 like little kids, five and six years old,
01:19:51 older guys in their seventies train, I don’t care,
01:19:53 but I want the spectrum of recreational
01:19:55 and I want Olympic champions.
01:19:57 The only way to do that is to take your instructors
01:20:00 and say, you’re gonna do this, define the roles,
01:20:03 who’s gonna be the recreational coach,
01:20:04 who’s gonna be the competitive coach.
01:20:06 How do we separate these programs?
01:20:08 And lo and behold, that was my vision that I shared
01:20:10 with all of them and that was back in 2006.
01:20:15 And by 2012, we’ve got Olympic champion Kayla Harrison,
01:20:19 we have over 200 people at the school,
01:20:21 we have a successful thriving business,
01:20:24 but it doesn’t happen without that vision,
01:20:26 a plan and believing that it’s possible.
01:20:30 Believing that it’s possible.
01:20:32 I don’t know, but I personally have on top of that
01:20:36 almost like very specific visions of a future.
01:20:41 Like, I don’t know what,
01:20:44 cause I don’t wanna give actual examples.
01:20:46 Cause for several reasons, one of which is just people
01:20:51 will, as they often have, they often will in your life,
01:20:56 they’ll just laugh at it a little bit,
01:20:59 like that seems silly.
01:21:02 And I don’t, I’m very hesitant to share certain things
01:21:05 like that with people because they’ll,
01:21:08 I mean, I’m with Johnny Ive, who’s the lead designer
01:21:12 in Apple, like you want that dream, that little flame
01:21:16 to not, people will put that flame out too easily,
01:21:19 even people that love you.
01:21:21 So I have very specific kind of visions,
01:21:26 like maybe for Travis, it would be like a specific opponent
01:21:30 or something like Ole Bischoff, like very specific,
01:21:34 very specific situation of what’s going to happen.
01:21:36 Not just like, I wanna be an Olympic champion,
01:21:39 but very specific, like almost silly situations.
01:21:43 Yeah, like the dynamic between Travis
01:21:45 and Ole Bischoff or something, like maybe visualize that.
01:21:47 For me, that helps because it makes it all real,
01:21:50 even more real.
01:21:52 It’s not like some big goal, like a million dollars
01:21:55 or something like that, which is also really important
01:21:58 to have because you can measure it and so on.
01:22:00 But it’s just like you belong in those situations.
01:22:05 Just believing you belong there.
01:22:08 It’s not the default.
01:22:09 It can be you.
01:22:10 Yeah, it could be you.
01:22:11 And for some reason, that really helps me,
01:22:13 the little details.
01:22:15 Sure.
01:22:15 Like visualizing, most of them are almost
01:22:18 a little bit funny, like focusing on the funniness.
01:22:23 It’s the mundaneness of it helps me a lot.
01:22:28 And all the people that have done great things,
01:22:30 they’re just human too.
01:22:31 Correct, and I think a lot of people overestimate
01:22:36 who others are and sell themselves too short.
01:22:42 Because at the end of the day, everybody started
01:22:45 like everybody else, really.
01:22:47 I mean, we did.
01:22:49 We’re all infants.
01:22:50 We couldn’t walk, we couldn’t talk,
01:22:51 we couldn’t do anything.
01:22:52 We learned along the way.
01:22:54 And I think that’s the one thing that I realized is that,
01:22:57 and I tell this to my athletes,
01:23:00 but I also tell it to my recreational students,
01:23:03 nobody is better than you are, nobody,
01:23:06 unless you allow them to be.
01:23:09 If you really want something to happen,
01:23:11 then like map the plan, believe in yourself,
01:23:16 decide, and know full out, you’re gonna fail a lot.
01:23:20 You’re gonna get beat down.
01:23:22 You’re gonna have losses.
01:23:23 You’re gonna have struggles.
01:23:25 And I think that’s the one thing with social media today
01:23:27 is that everybody sees everybody succeed.
01:23:30 Nobody posts the picture when they’re on the ground
01:23:32 and fail, you’re losing.
01:23:33 Like nobody sees when you broke your arm
01:23:36 and you had to go through rehab,
01:23:37 whatever it is, like had your injuries
01:23:39 and you were on your couch watching TV
01:23:41 and you were suffering and you were like,
01:23:43 everybody has really, really dark, bad moments in their life
01:23:47 and defeats and losses and suffrage.
01:23:50 And it’s only at the end after they’ve recovered
01:23:53 from all of that, they’ve reclimbed up the mountain
01:23:55 and they’ve gone to the pinnacle
01:23:56 that you see them on social media with the medal, right?
01:23:59 But everybody else like struggles and was human
01:24:03 and failed many, many times.
01:24:05 And convincing yourself that you’re capable,
01:24:10 I think is the first start of everything.
01:24:12 Do you need people in your life that believe in you
01:24:15 or should most of it come from within yourself?
01:24:19 I think most of it has to come in from,
01:24:21 it certainly helps, but it has to come from you first.
01:24:25 You have to be driven, like other people can help you
01:24:28 define where you wanna go and help you get there
01:24:31 and encourage you and can support you
01:24:33 and whether it’s resource wise or with connections
01:24:37 and like they can help with that path,
01:24:39 but that first part has to come from you.
01:24:42 It has to be your passion, your desire,
01:24:45 your commitment to yourself.
01:24:48 You’re the one that’s gonna ultimately make
01:24:49 all the sacrifices to do it.
01:24:51 So it has to be your decision, not your parents,
01:24:54 not your spouses, something that you’re
01:24:56 really motivated to do.
01:24:59 Let me ask you about Travis, Kayla,
01:25:01 and maybe a few of the other athletes
01:25:03 you’ve been involved with.
01:25:04 So first, Travis.
01:25:06 Travis Stevens, Olympic silver medalist,
01:25:11 three time Olympian, 2008, 2012, 2016.
01:25:17 What makes Travis Stevens great?
01:25:20 What makes him so successful?
01:25:23 What makes him unique in your mind as an athlete?
01:25:26 Through all the hardship he had to overcome,
01:25:29 through his weird looking sayonagi
01:25:32 that eventually worked out nicely,
01:25:36 through the full richness of his personality,
01:25:39 in the context of all the other great athletes
01:25:41 you’ve coached, what makes him special?
01:25:45 His fight, Travis has fight.
01:25:48 And you know, the first time I ever saw Travis Stevens
01:25:50 was in, like recognized him, maybe I had seen him before
01:25:54 as a younger boy or something,
01:25:55 but like actually recognized him as,
01:25:57 I brought a group of young kids to Italy
01:26:00 for a competition in a training camp.
01:26:03 And it was this program called U23 Elite.
01:26:06 And I picked, handpicked 20 kids to go to this event.
01:26:10 And it was the first time I coached an international team.
01:26:15 And I had never seen Travis fight before,
01:26:17 compete, train, anything.
01:26:18 And during this competition, you know,
01:26:21 he’s an 81 kilo player.
01:26:22 I think he was maybe like 18 years old, 17, 18 years old.
01:26:28 And it was a really hard European event.
01:26:31 And I think Travis won three matches and he lost two.
01:26:34 But what stood out the most to me was like,
01:26:37 the fight he had in him.
01:26:39 He was scrapping every fight.
01:26:41 Like he scrapped hard.
01:26:42 Like he wanted to win more than any of them, right?
01:26:45 He didn’t win, but he wanted to win more.
01:26:47 And I noticed that right away.
01:26:49 And then I also noticed that after he lost his second match
01:26:52 and he was eliminated from the tournament,
01:26:54 I saw how disappointed he was in himself.
01:26:57 Like he actually thought he was supposed
01:26:58 to beat those people.
01:26:59 Even though he was like 17, right?
01:27:01 And he’s fighting against grown men that are,
01:27:03 you know, a high level judo, much higher than he was.
01:27:06 And I said to him, I said,
01:27:07 hey son, like, don’t worry, man.
01:27:09 You got a long career ahead of you.
01:27:11 Like, I’m glad you’re disappointed,
01:27:13 but there’s so many things you don’t know
01:27:15 and so many skills you don’t have.
01:27:17 The fact that you were able to hold your own
01:27:19 and scrap like that, like you’ve got a good future.
01:27:21 And I remember calling my friend, Jason Morris,
01:27:24 after that tournament.
01:27:26 And I said, hey man,
01:27:27 did you ever hear of this kid, Travis Stevens?
01:27:29 He says, no, why?
01:27:30 I said, man, that kid’s got some fight in him, right?
01:27:33 And I said that, I said that to Jason at the time.
01:27:35 I said, that kid’s got some fight in him, man.
01:27:37 He’s pretty talented, you know?
01:27:38 And that’s how it started.
01:27:41 But so I saw that in him when he was young.
01:27:43 But the other thing was, Travis,
01:27:46 like, there’s no such thing as hard work to that guy.
01:27:50 If you tell him to put his head through the wall
01:27:52 and that’s how he wins,
01:27:53 he’ll go put his head through the wall.
01:27:55 He’ll do whatever it takes for him to do to achieve success.
01:28:00 And he hates failure more than he likes winning, 100%.
01:28:08 He always has.
01:28:08 He punishes himself when he doesn’t do well.
01:28:11 He makes himself work harder.
01:28:12 He goes and just abuses himself when he doesn’t succeed
01:28:19 because he’s so heartbroken and disappointed in himself.
01:28:22 So that’s a trait that I think all of the athletes
01:28:24 that I work with closely, they all had that same trait.
01:28:28 They hated losing more than anything.
01:28:30 They would break their arm.
01:28:31 They’d fall on their head.
01:28:33 They’d rather get hit by a car than lose a judo tournament.
01:28:36 And as a result, then they all had fight
01:28:39 and they all were willing to train.
01:28:40 They were willing to listen.
01:28:42 They would do anything for victory.
01:28:44 Within the rules, I’m not talking about taking drugs
01:28:47 or anything like that,
01:28:48 but they’d give 100% of themselves for victory.
01:28:52 And Travis was somebody that when he was down,
01:28:56 he found a way to get better doing something else.
01:28:58 If he couldn’t do standing, that’s when he started jujitsu.
01:29:01 He couldn’t go on his feet anymore.
01:29:03 He couldn’t stand up and train.
01:29:04 Might as well go learn jujitsu
01:29:06 and get good on the ground because I can.
01:29:09 So he always found a way no matter what obstacle
01:29:11 was in his way, he just went around it.
01:29:14 So what about, it’d be interesting to get your perspective
01:29:18 because I know Travis’s perspective
01:29:19 is just the number of injuries.
01:29:24 Like what do you make of the perseverance
01:29:26 through all the injuries he had to overcome?
01:29:28 Specifically like you just observing this creature
01:29:31 that you’ve coached.
01:29:33 I mean, he seems to not see the injuries as a problem.
01:29:37 He just like, just like you said, head through the wall.
01:29:40 It’s like what, like when we were talking about injuries,
01:29:44 he kinda, he doesn’t even see the injuries themselves
01:29:48 as the problem because he thinks that the injuries,
01:29:51 you know, you heal back stronger.
01:29:54 I forget the exact quote, but he said like,
01:29:57 my body is now less injury prone than most of anyone else.
01:30:02 Because I’ve already broken everything.
01:30:03 I’ve broken everything and it’s just grown back stronger.
01:30:07 Like, cause I asked him something like,
01:30:08 do you regret sort of pushing your body
01:30:10 to all of those places that resulted in those injuries?
01:30:15 He was, his response was like, no, I’m stronger now.
01:30:19 So I don’t know if that’s justification,
01:30:21 but that certainly describes a mindset that,
01:30:24 yeah, head through the wall.
01:30:26 That doesn’t, it’s almost not dramatic.
01:30:30 Like, look, I got this injury.
01:30:32 It’s so, I’m so like brave and special
01:30:35 for overcoming this injury.
01:30:36 He’s just, he’s just, that’s part of the job
01:30:39 and he gets the job done.
01:30:41 But like that job involves a lot of injuries.
01:30:44 One of the talks I gave Travis and that team
01:30:46 at that particular tournament was at the very beginning
01:30:49 of the camp after the tournament, I said to them, listen,
01:30:52 my vision, I shared my vision with them.
01:30:54 I said, my vision is, you know, in seven years,
01:30:57 cause that was 2005, I said in seven years,
01:31:00 I wanna have a US team that steps on the mat
01:31:04 that is ready to kick ass.
01:31:06 And in order to get there,
01:31:07 all of you guys can be a part of this team
01:31:09 and part of this process.
01:31:10 But in order to get there,
01:31:12 you guys have to be the first ones to practice.
01:31:14 You have to be the last ones to leave
01:31:15 cause we have to work harder than the rest of the world
01:31:18 because we’re up against all odds.
01:31:20 I said, I am sick of America being a laughing stock of judo
01:31:24 and being the first round, easy match,
01:31:26 warmup for everybody else.
01:31:28 I said, if you get injured,
01:31:30 you’re not gonna be on the side with, you know,
01:31:33 with a ice bag on taking off rounds.
01:31:36 And then get back on the mat the next day
01:31:37 and tell me you’re okay.
01:31:39 If you can train the next day, you can train today.
01:31:41 So there’s no injury.
01:31:42 The only time you’ll leave in this dojo
01:31:44 is if the ambulance has to take you out of here.
01:31:46 You know, and I do think subliminally,
01:31:48 Travis bought into that message and heard that message then,
01:31:53 said, if I’m gonna be a champion,
01:31:54 that’s the way I’m gonna do it.
01:31:55 And he did, and he embodied it, he lived it.
01:31:58 Man, do it many times in Europe where I said,
01:32:02 dude, just tape it up, go off to the side,
01:32:05 just take the day off, like, take the rest of the day off,
01:32:07 you’re beat up, you can’t do it.
01:32:08 He said, no, no, I’m gonna tape it up, I’m gonna tape it up.
01:32:10 I said, no, you don’t need to right now.
01:32:12 And he said, no, sensei, I’m doing it.
01:32:14 You know, the ambulance isn’t taking me out,
01:32:17 it’s just my wrist, it’s just my ankle, it’s just my wrist.
01:32:20 It’s just my ankle, yeah, I love it.
01:32:23 Yeah, what about the, so the other really big thing
01:32:27 is you comment on a little bit is the weight cut.
01:32:30 So early in his career, he was 81 kg,
01:32:33 and that was presumably not so difficult.
01:32:37 But later in his career, he is 81 kg,
01:32:40 and it’s becoming more and more difficult.
01:32:42 So that’s the other thing with him is,
01:32:47 so I’ve known a lot of really, really tough people
01:32:50 at the highest levels broken by the weight cut.
01:32:53 Like that can break the toughest minds.
01:32:55 And it doesn’t seem to have broken him.
01:32:58 And he’s delivered on it often, on like insane weight cuts.
01:33:03 So just as a coach, what do you think about his,
01:33:06 particularly his mind and the challenge of the weight cut?
01:33:10 It was part of his process.
01:33:12 It was part of his way of getting ready for battle.
01:33:15 Suffering?
01:33:16 Yeah, it really was.
01:33:17 And if I’m gonna suffer this much,
01:33:20 then I’m gonna make my opponents pay
01:33:22 for all the suffering that I went through to get here.
01:33:24 That was his mindset.
01:33:27 Later on in his career, you’re right,
01:33:29 like a lot of times, Travis,
01:33:31 he would never step on a scale
01:33:33 until he got to the tournament.
01:33:35 And even when he get to the tournament,
01:33:37 like he’d weigh like 90 kilos.
01:33:39 He’d show up at the tournament nine kilos over.
01:33:42 I’m like, you have to, but I never,
01:33:44 it was just an expectation of making weight.
01:33:47 Not making weight was never an option
01:33:49 for any of our athletes.
01:33:50 And Travis knew it.
01:33:52 And he said, as a professional, my job is to make weight.
01:33:56 If I don’t make weight,
01:33:57 he was never gonna allow that to happen.
01:34:00 And he was never gonna allow us to come to him and say,
01:34:02 hey, I told you.
01:34:04 Cause losing wasn’t an option,
01:34:07 making weight wasn’t,
01:34:08 not making weight was not an option for him ever either.
01:34:11 But a lot of times he wouldn’t even,
01:34:14 he’d be nine kilos over on the plane
01:34:16 going over to the tournament
01:34:17 and have to make weight three days later.
01:34:20 And he didn’t break 86 kilos
01:34:23 until the day before the tournament.
01:34:24 Like he had five kilos over the day before.
01:34:26 That was his way.
01:34:27 But he would do three workouts
01:34:30 to wake up in the morning and work out.
01:34:31 Then he’d eat.
01:34:32 Then he’d work out in the afternoon.
01:34:33 Then he’d eat again.
01:34:34 Then he’d work out again at night.
01:34:36 And then he’d reward himself.
01:34:37 Hey, I worked out three times today.
01:34:38 He’d go have a, you know, a Mountain Dew.
01:34:41 Yeah.
01:34:42 You know, or a chocolate bar.
01:34:43 You know?
01:34:44 And then his next morning, he’s back up to 87
01:34:47 and he would never touch weight
01:34:49 until the morning of weigh ins.
01:34:51 That’s a, when he,
01:34:54 he wasn’t on weight for more than like five minutes.
01:34:57 His process would break a lot of people.
01:35:00 So the fact that he got the job done is…
01:35:03 Not just the job done, but every single time
01:35:06 he got the job done.
01:35:07 And I made those athletes fight.
01:35:10 We would fight in Paris.
01:35:11 We would do a camp for a week,
01:35:13 double session camp for a week.
01:35:15 He’d be seven kilos over,
01:35:17 have to fight the next weekend.
01:35:19 We’re talking two or three days later.
01:35:21 You know, so not only did he make the weight,
01:35:23 but he did a grueling training camp twice a day.
01:35:26 And then cut weight and then fought again.
01:35:29 Then did another camp for a week
01:35:31 in double session training camp,
01:35:32 and then fought on a third weekend in a row.
01:35:34 And our athletes went through hell.
01:35:37 You know, all of our athletes went through hell
01:35:38 because on the tour around the world,
01:35:42 they fought in every event.
01:35:43 They did every camp.
01:35:45 They fought in every event.
01:35:46 Whereas most of the other teams,
01:35:48 like Japan comes in and fights in Paris,
01:35:50 then they go home.
01:35:51 You know, they maybe do a camp for three days,
01:35:52 then they go home.
01:35:53 They don’t stay in Europe for four or five weeks straight
01:35:56 and fight in every tournament.
01:35:57 And when you get to Germany,
01:35:59 the Germans skip the French Open.
01:36:01 They skip the camp in France.
01:36:02 They’re just getting ready for Germany.
01:36:04 Our athletes already had two competitions,
01:36:06 two training camps, three weight cuts now.
01:36:09 And then, so they’re not 100% when they fight in Germany,
01:36:12 but that’s all part of the experience they need,
01:36:14 the training that they need
01:36:15 that they don’t get here in this country.
01:36:18 And all of those were just preparation
01:36:20 for our world championships or our Olympic games.
01:36:23 So by the time our athletes got to those tournaments,
01:36:26 they felt so strong, so rested, so like,
01:36:29 man, this guy that felt like a monster in Germany
01:36:32 feels like nothing today
01:36:34 because you’re fully rested now, you know?
01:36:37 But part of the challenge
01:36:38 is because the American team is smaller and more,
01:36:42 I mean, just smaller,
01:36:44 is all the different places you go to do the weight cut,
01:36:49 to do the diet, to do the preparation or the recovery,
01:36:54 there’s, like that process changes every time.
01:36:59 So you basically have to improvise a lot.
01:37:01 So you show up to a hotel
01:37:03 and how you do the weight cut, you don’t know.
01:37:05 And this is the different weather conditions.
01:37:07 It’s not, it’s like, what is it?
01:37:11 Rocky versus Drago, right?
01:37:12 That’s it.
01:37:13 So you don’t have, you have to just improvise.
01:37:15 And that’s also a fascinating part
01:37:16 of the American judo story,
01:37:18 which is like, you have to improvise more.
01:37:19 Well, it was funny because when I, it was 1990,
01:37:22 and it was at the Goodwill Games, right?
01:37:25 And we were, it was a US Olympic committee type event.
01:37:28 And so we’re on the bus with the swim team.
01:37:31 And it was me and Jason Morris on the American team,
01:37:34 and we’re going to the judo competition,
01:37:36 but we’re on the bus with the swim team.
01:37:38 I’m sorry, we’re going to the venue where we’re staying.
01:37:40 You know, I remember being like by ourselves
01:37:42 with no staff, no manager, no coach,
01:37:45 we’re just by ourselves going to fight in Russia, right?
01:37:48 And the swim team’s on there with their full sweats
01:37:52 and their staff and like their managers.
01:37:54 And I heard the lady, the girl go,
01:37:57 I’m sorry, this was 1994,
01:37:58 because it was in St. Petersburg, Russia.
01:38:00 So I heard the little girl on the team,
01:38:02 she goes up to the coach, she goes,
01:38:03 coach, do you think you can send the massage therapist
01:38:06 to my room at 10 a.m.?
01:38:08 You know, I’m feeling kind of jet lag.
01:38:10 I looked at, me and Jason looked at each other like,
01:38:13 oh, she’s scheduling a massage?
01:38:17 We don’t even have a staff.
01:38:18 Like what the hell is going on here?
01:38:20 You know, what a difference in sporting,
01:38:23 you know, different sports within the same country,
01:38:26 you know, and.
01:38:27 But that, I mean, not to romanticize things,
01:38:29 but that you do represent the spirit of the Olympics
01:38:32 when you’re kind of the improvisational nature of it.
01:38:37 Cause it is just you, you and sometimes you and the coach
01:38:41 and just pure guts and you against the world with no money.
01:38:47 The warrior spirit.
01:38:48 The warrior spirit.
01:38:51 How did it feel like when he,
01:38:53 after being in two Olympics,
01:38:56 beating some of the best people in the world,
01:38:59 facing some of the best people in the world
01:39:01 and just barely losing,
01:39:04 what did it feel like to you as a coach
01:39:06 to see Travis Stevens win the silver medal?
01:39:10 Electric.
01:39:11 I like, first of all, in 2012 in London,
01:39:16 it was like, it felt like somebody died.
01:39:20 I’m not going to be, I’m not going to lie to you.
01:39:21 Like.
01:39:22 The Ole Bischoff match?
01:39:23 Not, no, just seeing Travis not finish on the podium period.
01:39:27 You know, in the Ole Bischoff match,
01:39:30 I thought he won regardless of who won and who lost.
01:39:33 He just left everything he had on that mat, right?
01:39:35 10 minutes of probably it was a 20 something minute match,
01:39:38 but 10 minutes of fighting actually, right?
01:39:41 He left everything he had.
01:39:43 He wanted to be in the Olympic finals.
01:39:44 He wanted to be Olympic champion.
01:39:46 And when he didn’t get that opportunity,
01:39:47 he lost everything.
01:39:49 He drained himself.
01:39:50 He cried for 45 minutes straight.
01:39:52 I couldn’t regroup him.
01:39:53 I couldn’t get him up.
01:39:54 I said, Travis, you’ve got to stop your crying.
01:39:56 You’ve got to get off the floor.
01:39:58 We’ve got a bronze medal fight.
01:40:00 Like if you don’t recover, you’re not going to perform well.
01:40:03 And he just didn’t care.
01:40:04 Like it was gold or nothing.
01:40:06 And so when he walked out against the Canadian boy,
01:40:09 he had beaten the Canadian.
01:40:10 I think at that time,
01:40:11 he had beaten that Canadian every single time,
01:40:14 except for that bronze medal match.
01:40:16 But he just didn’t have the fight in him anymore.
01:40:18 You know, he’d left it all in the match,
01:40:19 in the Bischoff match.
01:40:20 So to see him come back with zero, right?
01:40:23 We just had a team where his best friend, Marty Malloy,
01:40:26 won a bronze medal, right?
01:40:29 Then the day after Travis fights,
01:40:31 Kayla Harrison goes and wins her first gold medal, right?
01:40:34 Our first ever gold.
01:40:35 So we have a gold and a bronze.
01:40:36 His training partner wins a gold.
01:40:38 His best friend from growing up wins a bronze.
01:40:41 He has nothing, right?
01:40:42 To see him for four years go through hell,
01:40:46 like literally like all of his injuries,
01:40:49 every training camp,
01:40:50 and then forget the humiliation,
01:40:52 because every time any reporter ever came to my dojo,
01:40:56 they want to talk to Kayla.
01:40:57 She’s the Olympic champion.
01:40:59 Who’s this Travis guy?
01:41:00 Who is this guy?
01:41:01 So he didn’t medal.
01:41:04 He’s not that important.
01:41:05 And up until you get to right before the Olympics,
01:41:08 now they talk about he’s an Olympian again.
01:41:11 But up until that point,
01:41:12 and then every little kid sees Kayla’s medal.
01:41:16 Oh, Travis, yeah, you went to the Olympics.
01:41:18 Where’s your medal?
01:41:19 How did you do?
01:41:20 You know, I took fifth, I didn’t place.
01:41:22 You know, it’s the lowest of low,
01:41:25 every day having that constant reminder.
01:41:27 So four years later, when that guy,
01:41:31 I mean, mentally, he was ready.
01:41:35 Physically, he was ready.
01:41:37 That was the best and strongest Travis Stevens
01:41:41 that I’ve ever seen and I’ve ever felt.
01:41:43 Like, cause I had to get on the mat
01:41:45 and do some drills and stuff like that,
01:41:47 and like try to defend armbars,
01:41:48 and cause we didn’t have a lot of bodies in Rio.
01:41:51 And I was like, my God, he’s,
01:41:53 I said after one of the prizes,
01:41:54 those are the strongest I’ve ever felt that guy, right?
01:41:56 Before the competition, so physically he was ready.
01:41:59 Mentally, the morning of competition,
01:42:00 I said to Travis, I looked him in the eye,
01:42:03 and I said, you know, we’re ready to go over to the venue.
01:42:06 I said, are you ready today?
01:42:07 And he just looked at me like he goes,
01:42:10 I am gonna shock the world today.
01:42:12 That’s what he told me, I’m gonna shock the world today.
01:42:14 And I said, all right, great, let’s go, right?
01:42:16 So we go to the venue,
01:42:18 and every other athlete was just like nervously,
01:42:23 like doing repetitions of Uchi Komis.
01:42:25 You could see like sweat coming out.
01:42:27 You could see like all this nervous energy
01:42:29 going through their body.
01:42:31 And here comes Travis Stevens.
01:42:32 He’s got these big goofy headphones on.
01:42:35 He’s got a tank top that says USA on it.
01:42:38 He’s got the swim trunks that say USA,
01:42:41 like that have shiny letters that glow in the dark.
01:42:44 And he’s like, and this is in the middle of the judo hall
01:42:47 where all these athletes are warming up
01:42:48 for their first match.
01:42:50 He’s like dancing around, like doing this loose warmup,
01:42:53 like almost like a little kid at an amusement park
01:42:56 whose dad said, yeah, go play, you know?
01:42:59 And it was like, he had waited four years for that moment,
01:43:01 and he was so relaxed, so focused, so relaxed,
01:43:05 and couldn’t wait.
01:43:07 It was like a caged tiger.
01:43:08 Like if you like coming out of the chute
01:43:10 to go step on to the mat was like this tiger
01:43:14 that you were just letting out of the cage,
01:43:16 and he just go, like now’s your time to go fight.
01:43:18 And that’s what he did that whole day.
01:43:20 And like when he beat Chirikishvili in the semis
01:43:25 and choked him out and won that fight,
01:43:27 like there’s nobody with the exception
01:43:30 of maybe the guys in the American team,
01:43:33 there was nobody in that stadium
01:43:35 that expected Travis to beat him, nobody.
01:43:38 Like, you know, he had smashed Travis,
01:43:41 I don’t know how many times before that free poem,
01:43:43 like in the first minute even.
01:43:44 It wasn’t even a fight, right?
01:43:46 And it was great game plan.
01:43:49 He’s the world number one at the time too.
01:43:52 World number one at the time, world champion,
01:43:56 carried the flag for the Georgian Federation
01:43:59 walking into the games,
01:44:02 most dominant 81 kilo player in that weight class
01:44:06 for quite some time.
01:44:08 And man, we just had his number and Travis was ready to go.
01:44:13 It was so cool.
01:44:14 It was so awesome.
01:44:15 I mean, we had already won,
01:44:17 Kayla had already won her second gold, right?
01:44:20 The way the event went and Travis winning that
01:44:24 was like icing on the cake for our team.
01:44:26 That was the best performance we’ve ever had in history.
01:44:29 It’s awesome.
01:44:30 So you mentioned Kayla.
01:44:31 She is one of, if not the greatest American Jidoka ever.
01:44:36 Two time gold medalist.
01:44:39 2010 world champion.
01:44:41 2010.
01:44:42 First senior worlds.
01:44:43 Senior worlds.
01:44:45 What makes Kayla special?
01:44:49 What makes her so great?
01:44:51 What made this champion?
01:44:53 It’s a combination of a lot of things.
01:44:57 One was obviously Kayla’s mental toughness, right?
01:45:01 To overcome what she overcame.
01:45:03 You know, this is a girl who,
01:45:06 you know, let’s not say forget about the sexual abuse,
01:45:10 but the fact that she had to go through that in life
01:45:13 and learned how to compartmentalize that
01:45:15 and keep that off as a separate part of her brain,
01:45:18 you know, and forget about it and move on.
01:45:21 That took an incredible team to help her do that,
01:45:23 and my dad was a huge part of her accomplishing that.
01:45:28 So for people who don’t know, we should comment
01:45:30 and say that Kayla had to go through trauma
01:45:33 in her earlier life through sexual abuse
01:45:37 and had to overcome that through the whole process
01:45:39 of becoming a champion as well.
01:45:43 Because she had zero self esteem, zero self worth.
01:45:45 She was at the lowest of lows
01:45:47 and didn’t even want to be on this earth, right?
01:45:51 So she was traumatized obviously
01:45:56 and getting her the right help
01:45:57 and surrounding her with the right people
01:45:59 who could help her get through that
01:46:01 and be by her side as she’s getting through that
01:46:05 and letting her know and reaffirming
01:46:06 that she’s doing the right thing
01:46:08 and she made the right decision
01:46:09 and she should have zero guilt.
01:46:11 And you know, this doesn’t define her.
01:46:14 It happened to her, but it doesn’t define her.
01:46:15 What defines her is what she does from now on.
01:46:18 And then rebuilding that person to become who she became.
01:46:21 I think the mental toughness is a big part of it, her mind.
01:46:26 But then as an athlete, she’s a lot like Travis.
01:46:32 She’s a warrior.
01:46:34 She’s a fighter.
01:46:35 My dad always jokes with her.
01:46:37 He says, you’re a workhorse.
01:46:39 You’re not a thoroughbred.
01:46:40 We’re not gonna treat you like a thoroughbred, right?
01:46:42 You’re a workhorse, so you’re gonna work.
01:46:45 And the way you’re gonna get bigger and stronger
01:46:46 is you’re gonna work harder and you’re gonna keep, you know.
01:46:48 And she came to us when she was only 15.
01:46:50 So at that time we got her
01:46:53 with a really good strength and conditioning coach.
01:46:55 We did all the core Olympic style lifting.
01:46:57 Like as her body was developing,
01:47:00 she was getting stronger every single day.
01:47:02 And then, you know, she had the luxury
01:47:04 of being on the mat with,
01:47:06 at the time I was still young enough to train
01:47:08 and be on the mat and I was around her weight class
01:47:10 and Travis was able to train with her
01:47:12 and we had all the top US athletes at the time
01:47:15 training here at my school.
01:47:16 So she got the benefit of all the best guys
01:47:19 to train within the country, you know.
01:47:21 And her doing all of those rounds,
01:47:24 you know, night in, week, night,
01:47:26 every night, every week, every year,
01:47:28 compiled with the best, you know,
01:47:30 highest level she could as a girl.
01:47:32 She got the strength, she got the technique,
01:47:34 she got the, and then she had the coaching on top of it
01:47:36 with my dad being on her as, you know,
01:47:38 working her out and, you know, having the wherewithal
01:47:42 to develop a strategy and a plan for her.
01:47:44 Because when she first came here,
01:47:46 she competed at 63 kilos, which is 138 pounds.
01:47:51 At the time, Rhonda Rousey was also training here
01:47:55 and she was 70 kilos.
01:47:56 So if Kayla was struggling making 63,
01:48:00 so the only way to, obviously,
01:48:01 the only way to still compete is to move up.
01:48:04 But my dad said, well, if you move up,
01:48:05 then you’re in Rhonda’s weight.
01:48:06 So let’s skip that weight and you’re gonna go to 78 kilos.
01:48:09 And he told her, listen, you’re gonna go up two weight classes.
01:48:12 She looked at him and was like, that’s 172 pounds.
01:48:15 And he goes, well, I don’t care.
01:48:17 Like, you’re already struggling making 138,
01:48:19 you weigh 150, what’s the difference?
01:48:20 We put 20 pounds on, go to 170.
01:48:23 So that’s why she jumped two weights,
01:48:24 because she passed Rhonda, she went to the weight above
01:48:27 so she could make the national team
01:48:29 and she had a chance to go to the Olympics
01:48:30 and all that, because we envisioned Rhonda
01:48:33 staying around till 2012.
01:48:34 And that’s also like a longterm vision
01:48:37 because you kind of grow into that body then over time.
01:48:40 Correct.
01:48:41 So you can dominate, you can learn
01:48:42 what it’s like in that weight class.
01:48:43 You can learn to dominate that weight class,
01:48:46 excel and then dominate.
01:48:47 People that cut weight too hard, too long,
01:48:49 they forget about technique
01:48:51 because they’re only worried about losing weight.
01:48:52 They’re always tired in training.
01:48:54 They don’t give 100% effort, they’re not getting better.
01:48:57 She now is just focused on getting better at judo,
01:49:00 getting bigger, getting stronger, getting more powerful.
01:49:02 So I think giving her that purpose and that,
01:49:05 that was a great call.
01:49:07 What are some memorable or maybe the most memorable moment,
01:49:11 Kayla Harrison moment to you as her coach?
01:49:16 Not the most perhaps, let’s say,
01:49:19 what are some memorable moments?
01:49:22 Everybody hears the good ones, right?
01:49:23 So everybody knows she won the world championships
01:49:26 in Tokyo in 2010.
01:49:28 She was our two time Olympic champion in 2012, 2016.
01:49:31 I’ll never forget those moments, right?
01:49:34 Cause they’re historic.
01:49:36 One of the biggest moments that I liked sharing this story
01:49:40 with everybody is that in 2010 in January,
01:49:45 Kayla was still a developing athlete
01:49:48 and we had a local tournament in New York.
01:49:50 It was in Brooklyn, New York, it was called the Starrett Cup.
01:49:53 And I knew that at that tournament
01:49:55 that two of the Canadian girls,
01:49:57 they were like ranked 15th or 20th in the world.
01:49:59 They weren’t superstars, but they were tough players.
01:50:02 Both of them, I knew were gonna be at that tournament.
01:50:04 So I said, Kayla, we’re gonna go to this tournament,
01:50:07 you’re gonna compete against the Canadian girls,
01:50:08 get some good experience,
01:50:10 figure out what you need to work on
01:50:11 and then we’ll go home and work on some stuff.
01:50:13 Well, she went to the tournament,
01:50:14 there was only three girls in the weight,
01:50:16 her and the two Canadians.
01:50:18 At that tournament, she lost both fights, right?
01:50:22 So this is January, 2010, she lost both matches.
01:50:26 She was competitive,
01:50:27 but certainly things she needed to work on,
01:50:29 it was good development thing for her and for us.
01:50:32 It also opened her mind to say, oh man,
01:50:34 cause she was already a junior world champion at the time.
01:50:39 But so now there’s another level,
01:50:40 this is a senior level, right?
01:50:42 You gotta go up another level.
01:50:43 Here’s two girls that aren’t even medalists
01:50:45 that are beating you.
01:50:46 So now there’s more work to be done.
01:50:48 And so I like telling that story
01:50:49 because everybody sees the champions in the greatest moments,
01:50:53 they don’t see them when they have bad days.
01:50:55 And could you imagine being, oh and two,
01:50:58 you feel like a failure, right?
01:51:01 But 10 months later, it was Tokyo 2010,
01:51:06 she went from oh and two at Starret, New York
01:51:10 to world champion 2010 in the motherland in Japan.
01:51:16 I mean, that’s an amazing turnaround.
01:51:19 And that’s only possible if you put the losses
01:51:22 in their proper context,
01:51:24 you don’t let it destroy you mentally
01:51:26 and just keep moving forward.
01:51:28 Correct.
01:51:29 This is so funny.
01:51:31 So you were there 2010 at the Starret Cup?
01:51:34 Was Travis there?
01:51:35 Yeah.
01:51:36 I made all those, we fought at every,
01:51:38 like the mentality of our team was
01:51:41 no tournament is beneath us.
01:51:43 If our goal is to go to the Olympics in the world and win,
01:51:47 there’s no tournament that’s beneath us.
01:51:49 We’re gonna get experience, we’re gonna fight,
01:51:51 we’re gonna learn, we’re gonna compete,
01:51:54 we’re gonna get better, you know?
01:51:56 I actually, just as a funny little side,
01:51:59 I was there, I competed.
01:52:01 Really?
01:52:02 This is one of the earlier tournaments,
01:52:04 like the beginner division.
01:52:05 Oh no, I actually did black belt division too.
01:52:07 That was one of the, actually yeah, I remember that.
01:52:11 That’s when it was so early that I thought,
01:52:16 like I was also really strong at that time,
01:52:18 just like physically like power lifting stuff.
01:52:21 So I thought like it’ll be good experience
01:52:24 to also do black belt division.
01:52:26 And remember, it must have been actually
01:52:28 Travis’s division, which is funny.
01:52:32 Is Legere Brothers?
01:52:33 Yeah, Harry and Gary.
01:52:35 They are super, they’re super good
01:52:37 and they’re super dominant,
01:52:38 but I think Travis faced one of them and beat them.
01:52:43 I don’t know, I just remembered,
01:52:46 it’s funny how there’s just like these little roads
01:52:48 that later reconnect.
01:52:51 But yeah, there’s some incredible people there.
01:52:54 And I saw obviously the positive things
01:52:57 and it’s interesting that Kayla’s story
01:52:59 was also intersecting there
01:53:01 and that was one of the lower points for her.
01:53:04 Another story I like to share is that
01:53:08 you have to know your athletes, right?
01:53:09 And you have to really get to know their,
01:53:13 what they’re thinking psychologically, mentally,
01:53:15 what’s going through their head.
01:53:16 Another story was in Tokyo.
01:53:20 It was 2015, the Tokyo Grand Slam.
01:53:25 So we had had Kayla face off
01:53:28 against almost all the top girls in her division.
01:53:30 She had beaten everybody going into the 2016 Olympics.
01:53:34 But at the 2015 Tokyo Grand Slam,
01:53:39 there was a girl from Japan
01:53:40 that she hadn’t fought in a long time
01:53:42 and she lost to the girl last time she fought her.
01:53:44 So it was something we wanted her
01:53:46 to beat this girl going into the Olympics
01:53:48 so that she knew she could beat everybody.
01:53:52 And it was a first round match
01:53:54 and it was gonna be tough for Kayla, right?
01:53:57 It was gonna be a really hard fight.
01:53:59 And she had won a bunch of tournaments in a row
01:54:02 leading up to that.
01:54:03 So her confidence was really high, but at the same time,
01:54:06 she didn’t think she needed this fight.
01:54:10 And she showed up to the tournament and she said,
01:54:13 I don’t think I can fight today.
01:54:15 I’ve got a stinger in my neck.
01:54:17 I’ve got a stinger coming down my neck and I’m kind of sore.
01:54:19 And she didn’t tell us.
01:54:21 She went and told the trainer.
01:54:23 She walked around, she’s holding her neck.
01:54:25 And me and my dad were like, what’s up with her?
01:54:27 I don’t know.
01:54:28 And then, so maybe she doesn’t wanna fight today.
01:54:32 I don’t know, right?
01:54:33 So all of a sudden the trainer comes up to us
01:54:35 and she didn’t come to us.
01:54:37 The trainer came to us and says,
01:54:37 you know, I really don’t think it’s a good idea
01:54:39 that Kayla fight today.
01:54:41 And we looked at him and we’re like,
01:54:43 well, your opinion doesn’t really matter, does it?
01:54:45 Right?
01:54:46 Yeah.
01:54:47 What’s up with her?
01:54:48 Yeah.
01:54:49 Well, she has this thing in her neck.
01:54:49 It’s like a pinched nerve and there’s this and that.
01:54:53 We talked, I said, is there a risk of her getting injured?
01:54:56 Like, is this pain or is this risk
01:54:58 that she’s gonna get injured and she’s gonna set her back
01:55:00 like long time in her career?
01:55:02 Says, no, she’s not gonna get injured.
01:55:04 It’s just a pinched nerve.
01:55:05 It’s a little pain she’s gonna have to deal with.
01:55:06 I go, okay, well, can you fix the pain?
01:55:09 Says, yeah, I can do this and that
01:55:11 and I can give her a shot and the pain will go away.
01:55:13 I said, okay, then do that.
01:55:15 And so Kayla comes up, she goes,
01:55:17 didn’t the trainer talk to you?
01:55:18 I said, yeah, he talked to us.
01:55:20 Well, he said, I can’t fight.
01:55:22 I know, but we already talked to the trainer and.
01:55:24 I love it.
01:55:26 He said, you’re good to go.
01:55:27 She looked at us like.
01:55:29 And then we had to talk to her and say, listen,
01:55:31 you’re not injured, you’re in pain
01:55:34 because we just came from a camp.
01:55:35 I said, you’re in pain, but here’s the deal.
01:55:38 We want you to fight this girl.
01:55:39 We want you to go out there and beat this girl, period.
01:55:41 I don’t care.
01:55:42 I want to know that you can beat this girl.
01:55:43 This is why we came.
01:55:44 This is our last hard tournament before the Olympic games.
01:55:48 This is what we want from you.
01:55:50 And lo and behold, she understood.
01:55:53 They gave her a quick shot.
01:55:54 The rest of the world thought we were crazy
01:55:56 making her compete.
01:55:58 And then she went out there, she fought,
01:56:01 didn’t even know she was injured.
01:56:03 No, you know what I mean?
01:56:04 She just went out there, she fought the tournament.
01:56:06 She beat the Japanese girl.
01:56:07 She ended up going through the whole tournament.
01:56:09 She took a gold medal.
01:56:11 She won the event.
01:56:12 Mm hmm.
01:56:13 That turned out to be a great confidence builder, yeah.
01:56:18 And that kind of sets you up for all the chaos
01:56:21 that can happen at the Olympic games.
01:56:23 And it tells you if you can beat these girls
01:56:25 when you’re not 100% and you’re not at your best,
01:56:28 you’re physically beat, mentally beat,
01:56:31 imagine what you’re gonna do when you’re fresh.
01:56:33 Well, when she was going to the Olympic games,
01:56:35 there’s a lot.
01:56:35 She had the mental game down.
01:56:38 Down.
01:56:39 Down.
01:56:39 There wasn’t a girl in that division
01:56:40 that thought they could beat Kayla
01:56:41 going into those games.
01:56:43 Not a one.
01:56:44 They just looked at her and went, no, not happening.
01:56:46 Yeah, that’s great.
01:56:48 I mean, she’s a great Olympic champion,
01:56:50 two time Olympic champion.
01:56:51 But there is something that she’s commented on,
01:56:55 which is she’s suffered or went through depression
01:57:00 after winning her second Olympic gold.
01:57:02 Why do you think this happens?
01:57:04 You often hear stories of great champions
01:57:07 becoming depressed after the Olympics.
01:57:11 There’s a lack of purpose afterwards, right?
01:57:14 Because you’ve done in life what you set out to do.
01:57:18 You’ve had a goal every day you woke up.
01:57:20 You knew what your purpose was.
01:57:21 You knew what your day looked like.
01:57:25 You knew why you were doing that.
01:57:27 And all of a sudden you won and you got all the fame
01:57:31 and you’re all happy.
01:57:33 But then you wake up and you go, now what?
01:57:37 I don’t have a next.
01:57:39 And also because there was nothing for her,
01:57:42 there was no path set out for Kayla that said,
01:57:46 okay, you’re gonna become an ambassador,
01:57:49 a global ambassador of judo.
01:57:51 The IJF is gonna help pay a salary.
01:57:54 The USA judo is gonna give you a salary.
01:57:56 Here’s what we want you to go teach children.
01:57:58 We want you to go be an ambassador for women.
01:58:01 We’re gonna fly you around and whatever it is.
01:58:03 We’re gonna give you a job and here’s what you’re gonna do
01:58:06 if you’d like to take it.
01:58:07 There was nothing for her.
01:58:08 Like I remember doing the interview at the Olympics
01:58:11 with her and they said, are you gonna compete
01:58:13 in the next Olympics?
01:58:14 And I said, no.
01:58:15 Like why?
01:58:16 She already two time gold medalist.
01:58:17 What does three time gold medalist do for her?
01:58:19 Nothing, right?
01:58:21 Doesn’t motivate her to do it again.
01:58:23 They said, are you doing MMA?
01:58:25 I said, no, why would she do MMA?
01:58:26 That’s ridiculous.
01:58:27 Like she doesn’t need MMA.
01:58:29 She should be able to make a living off of what she’s
01:58:32 accomplished in this sport for the rest of her life.
01:58:36 But what happens is, and what most people don’t understand
01:58:39 is once you say I’m retired, I’m no longer competing
01:58:43 in the sport of judo, you don’t get a salary
01:58:46 from USA Judo anymore, which she was getting.
01:58:51 I think she got like $72,000 a year
01:58:53 from USA Judo at the time.
01:58:56 You don’t get a stipend from the Olympic committee anymore.
01:58:59 Goes away.
01:59:01 Your sponsor, like the New York Athletic Club
01:59:03 was a great sponsor for her for all those years.
01:59:05 In fact, she could have never been the athlete she became
01:59:08 without the support of the NYC.
01:59:10 Cause I talked to them when she was 15, I said,
01:59:12 hey, I got a girl that’s really good someday.
01:59:16 Like if you invest in her now,
01:59:17 I promise you she’ll pay back for you.
01:59:20 And I remember the day she won the Olympic gold,
01:59:22 I called the guy up, I said, hey, I told you so.
01:59:25 But they can no longer give you stipends
01:59:28 because you’re not competing and representing them anymore.
01:59:30 So that goes away.
01:59:32 All of your sponsorships and all of your money
01:59:35 that you would make from your TV commercials or whatever,
01:59:37 that didn’t happen for her after the Olympics
01:59:39 cause Judo’s a obscure sport, right?
01:59:41 So she didn’t have any opportunities for that.
01:59:44 At the end of the day, she has no revenue coming in.
01:59:47 How do you live?
01:59:48 You get a bonus of 25 grand from the Olympic committee
01:59:51 or whatever for winning a gold.
01:59:53 But aside from that, you’re not gonna live on that money.
01:59:55 So no purpose, no goal, right?
01:59:59 What am I gonna wake up and do tomorrow?
02:00:00 I don’t know, so she has no direction.
02:00:02 And then at the same time, she has no money coming in.
02:00:05 So everything shuts off.
02:00:06 So now it’s like, wait till you turn, what do you do?
02:00:10 And that leads to being depressed because yeah,
02:00:14 even though I’ve accomplished all this stuff,
02:00:16 I’m kind of lost in life.
02:00:17 Like what’s next for me?
02:00:20 And I guess you just have to ride that out
02:00:22 because when you’re a great human being, great champion,
02:00:27 life has a way of helping you find a way.
02:00:31 I mean, she’s in mixed martial arts now,
02:00:33 but she has a lot of stuff going on.
02:00:35 Right, well, her kids, she adopted her sister’s kids.
02:00:40 So she’s their legal guardian now.
02:00:41 So that is her purpose, right?
02:00:43 Raising these kids and making them part of her family.
02:00:46 And she’s fortunate enough that she has enough money
02:00:49 that she can do that and she can give them a good life.
02:00:52 Mm hmm, I’m gonna ask you to start some trouble.
02:00:55 But I heard that she said somewhere
02:00:57 that she can be Khabib Nurmagomedov in judo.
02:01:00 What do you think?
02:01:01 To be honest with you, I mean,
02:01:03 I don’t know what level of judoka.
02:01:05 Yeah, I don’t know.
02:01:06 I don’t know what level he is.
02:01:07 But I do know that that Russian system
02:01:09 respects judo immensely.
02:01:12 What I will tell you is this, I trained with Kayla
02:01:15 and I was an Olympic medalist and a world champion in judo.
02:01:18 And granted, I was older when I trained with her.
02:01:21 But you have to go as a man.
02:01:23 You have to go 100% or she will smash you as a man.
02:01:28 And I could tell you that if Khabib
02:01:30 doesn’t do a lot of just judo, doesn’t like gripping
02:01:34 and doesn’t understand, if he can throw, that’s one thing.
02:01:38 But if he doesn’t really understand judo at a high level,
02:01:42 she will throw him.
02:01:43 She would beat him in a match, in a judo contest.
02:01:46 Not in a mixed martial arts contest,
02:01:47 not in a wrestling contest, not in a submission contest.
02:01:50 In a pure judo match.
02:01:52 Where he cannot grab legs and he has to grip up
02:01:56 and just throw.
02:01:58 I’d put my money on Kayla.
02:02:01 Unless he’s, you know, if he could go place
02:02:03 in the nationals in Russia, he would beat her.
02:02:05 But if he’s not at that level of judo,
02:02:07 he’s more like a brown belt or he’s not,
02:02:09 he’s not a high level judo player, she will win.
02:02:11 I saw her take some of our best juniors in this country.
02:02:16 Some of the guys that went and won our,
02:02:20 medaled in our senior nationals.
02:02:22 I’ve seen her smash all of them in judo.
02:02:25 Now, she’s not gonna do that to a Travis Stevens.
02:02:28 She’s not gonna do that to a senior national champion
02:02:33 or an Olympian in our sport.
02:02:35 But she will go toe to toe with every other male,
02:02:39 black belts or not.
02:02:42 Speaking of Khabib in Russia,
02:02:46 Vladimir Putin, I don’t know if you have heard of him,
02:02:50 he’s the president of Russia, but he’s also a judoka.
02:02:54 Have you gotten a chance to see him do judo?
02:02:57 What do you think about his judo, if you were to analyze it?
02:03:00 So I’m actually really good friends
02:03:02 with the Russian Federation.
02:03:05 The guy in charge is Ezio Gamba.
02:03:07 He’s an Italian, he’s a mastermind behind their success
02:03:10 of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic teams.
02:03:14 2020, he suffered from leukemia, blood cancer,
02:03:17 so he wasn’t part of their 2020 program.
02:03:19 But he was part of 2012, 2016.
02:03:22 That whole national, the Olympic team in 2012
02:03:24 came to our studio and lived here for a month in Boston.
02:03:29 They went to school in Boston.
02:03:31 I brought them to my house.
02:03:32 They had three Olympic champions.
02:03:33 Three Olympic champions.
02:03:36 Oh my God, what a team.
02:03:38 They all came and lived here in Boston for a month.
02:03:40 They wanted to be part of experience America type program.
02:03:44 So I’ve seen all of them with Putin in Russia
02:03:48 at their national training center,
02:03:50 working out with them and taking falls
02:03:52 and doing judo with him.
02:03:53 So it’s hard when you’re older to move in judo.
02:03:58 I mean, I was at a high level and I’m now 51.
02:04:01 It’s hard for me to move like I used to.
02:04:03 So at his age, he’s gotta be what, 60,
02:04:06 between 62, 65ish?
02:04:09 I mean, it moves really well for somebody
02:04:11 that’s that age and probably hasn’t done very much judo
02:04:16 for the last however many years, right?
02:04:17 So that tells you he, at one point,
02:04:19 he had to be a really good judo player.
02:04:21 Yeah, he put in a lot of work at some point
02:04:23 to develop the technique.
02:04:25 You could tell when a great judo player,
02:04:27 even if they haven’t practiced it,
02:04:30 even if they’re up there in age,
02:04:32 like just the way they move,
02:04:34 the way they go in for a Seinage,
02:04:35 the way they go for a particular throw,
02:04:38 the way they do foot sweeps and all that kind of stuff,
02:04:40 you could just tell he’s good at judo.
02:04:42 And that’s kind of fascinating.
02:04:43 So it’s fascinating to see political leaders.
02:04:48 I’ve gotten to interact with quite a few
02:04:50 for whom judo was a formative experience in their life.
02:04:54 And that’s so interesting that for a lot of people,
02:04:57 judo played a big part in their life, early development.
02:05:00 It’s similar to like if you served in the military.
02:05:04 There’s just something about judo.
02:05:05 It’s the, as a martial art, it’s not just the technique.
02:05:09 So yes, there’s something about gaining confidence
02:05:13 through becoming aware of what like your body can do,
02:05:17 the sort of the artistry and the skill of it,
02:05:20 also the power of being able to dominate
02:05:22 another human being with technique,
02:05:24 but also like the, I don’t know, the formality,
02:05:28 the discipline of just honoring the tradition of it.
02:05:33 So all of that mixed together somehow creates.
02:05:36 Memories.
02:05:37 It creates memories that kind of define you
02:05:40 as a human being and that you carry that forward
02:05:42 throughout your life.
02:05:43 And I’ve just been surprised to know
02:05:45 how many powerful people internationally
02:05:48 have like in their heart, in their, who they are, judo.
02:05:53 For sure.
02:05:54 At the core of it.
02:05:55 It makes you the human being that you are.
02:05:57 It really does.
02:05:58 Like it becomes a fabric of,
02:06:01 the people that stick with it, right?
02:06:02 That stay with it.
02:06:03 Because it, I mean, it teaches you so many lessons.
02:06:07 It’s so memorable because of what you talked about,
02:06:09 the tradition.
02:06:10 But it’s also, you grow with other people,
02:06:14 and you learn from other people
02:06:16 and you experience things with other people.
02:06:18 It’s such a hands on sport that it’s very memorable.
02:06:24 And people love it so much.
02:06:25 Like right now at my dojo, we have like four generations.
02:06:30 Like somebody that did judo with my dad,
02:06:33 had a kid who trained with me,
02:06:36 who loved judo so much, had a kid.
02:06:39 That kid was now in his 20s who did judo.
02:06:43 And now has a kid who’s two or three or four
02:06:45 that’s coming to my toddler program at my school.
02:06:48 Like we’re talking four generations.
02:06:49 And they all love the experience so much
02:06:52 and what it did for them and their lives
02:06:54 that they wanted the next generation
02:06:56 to also experience the same thing.
02:06:59 This is a tricky question,
02:07:00 but if people are interested in judo
02:07:03 and want to start learning it,
02:07:04 in the United States there’s thousands of jiu jitsu schools,
02:07:08 for example, is there advice you can give
02:07:11 to people interested in judo
02:07:13 or maybe to jiu jitsu gym owners?
02:07:19 Like how do you get judo as part of your life in America?
02:07:25 Well, I mean, if you’re fortunate
02:07:26 to live near another dojo, right?
02:07:28 A place that has judo locally,
02:07:30 then that’s your best opportunity to learn
02:07:32 is to go learn from another school.
02:07:35 Unfortunately, sometimes the nearest dojo
02:07:39 might not be for two hours or three hours
02:07:41 away from where you’re at, which is an obstacle.
02:07:44 You’re not gonna do that.
02:07:45 So, I mean, Travis and I did start
02:07:47 the American Judo System online.
02:07:50 It’s at usajudo.com.
02:07:52 And we’ve broken down every single judo technique
02:07:57 to the very, very basic elements of just movement.
02:08:00 So we teach every technique of how you do it mechanically
02:08:04 with just your feet,
02:08:05 then how you incorporate your hands and your feet together,
02:08:09 how you do it in all directions,
02:08:11 moving forward, sideways, backwards,
02:08:13 how to then introduce a partner into the movement,
02:08:18 how to do basic uchi komi or repetitions with a partner,
02:08:23 then moving with a partner,
02:08:24 then how to throw your opponent static,
02:08:26 how to throw your opponent.
02:08:27 So basically from the very foundation of the movement
02:08:30 all the way to the most advanced level,
02:08:33 we’ve documented this through separate videos.
02:08:36 And we’ve taken now, I think 12 to 15 of standing techniques
02:08:41 combined with a whole bunch of groundwork techniques.
02:08:44 And our goal is just to continue to build this platform out
02:08:48 so that anybody anywhere can learn online
02:08:51 and can ask questions.
02:08:52 We have a live training class every couple of weeks,
02:08:54 every two weeks, he or I answer questions online
02:08:58 for our members.
02:09:00 Ideally, what we’d like to do is have a standing curriculum
02:09:04 for jujitsu instructors that want to learn
02:09:07 and become black belts in judo.
02:09:09 Here’s how, these are the techniques you need to know.
02:09:11 This is how many reps you need to do.
02:09:13 This is how efficient you need to get at those techniques
02:09:16 to become certified as an instructor
02:09:18 or become a black belt.
02:09:20 And eventually have an online promotion system
02:09:23 where anybody anywhere can just submit videos
02:09:26 and show us that they can do those techniques.
02:09:29 And obviously we’ll have people review them.
02:09:31 And this is a dream and a vision,
02:09:33 but we’ve already started the platform.
02:09:35 We’re about to do a collaborative effort with USA Judo
02:09:39 where all of their members will start to get access
02:09:41 to this platform as well.
02:09:42 And if we can get that influx of money
02:09:45 and people on the platform, it’ll allow us to hire
02:09:49 and grow it faster.
02:09:51 So you also want to do certification there.
02:09:54 It’s not just instruction.
02:09:56 Correct.
02:09:58 That would be amazing.
02:09:59 Yeah.
02:10:01 I mean, for me personally, sort of,
02:10:02 I mean, mostly in Austin, Texas now.
02:10:04 Right.
02:10:05 And there’s a few judo schools, but it’s not really.
02:10:10 Right.
02:10:11 There’s not, and it’s just one of those cities
02:10:13 that doesn’t quite have, I mean, there’s a few,
02:10:15 it’s basically just like a few random judo people
02:10:18 that kind of kind of gather together
02:10:20 a couple of times a week, but it’s not a system,
02:10:23 a dojo, an instructor, integrated into a jiu jitsu school
02:10:29 or not.
02:10:30 The problem with most judo dojos right now
02:10:33 is that most of them cater towards the competitive side.
02:10:39 Also, a lot of them do it recreationally,
02:10:41 meaning this isn’t how they make a living.
02:10:43 So they’re there three nights a week,
02:10:44 or they’re there five,
02:10:45 even if they’re there five nights a week,
02:10:47 it’s still only one junior class and one senior class,
02:10:50 and that’s it.
02:10:51 And it’s one size fits all.
02:10:53 Doesn’t matter what level you’re at,
02:10:54 it’s one size fits all.
02:10:55 So you can’t get out of the training
02:10:58 what you’re looking to get out of the training.
02:10:59 It’s whatever the instructor’s teaching.
02:11:03 And you can’t learn because it’s not
02:11:04 at the appropriate level for you.
02:11:06 And usually you’re pushed into doing randori
02:11:08 where you have no choice
02:11:09 but to do the randori part of the training.
02:11:13 So it’s a challenge to go learn.
02:11:14 And then a lot of times the schools are old school,
02:11:18 so they go make you do falls for a half hour.
02:11:20 They make you do things,
02:11:22 maybe you’re a jujitsu person
02:11:23 who knows how to fall already,
02:11:25 but you haven’t proven it to the judo instructor
02:11:27 and they don’t break the norm
02:11:28 and say you still have to fall for six months,
02:11:30 which turns a lot of people away as well.
02:11:32 So it’s like any business.
02:11:36 If you don’t deliver on your customer’s expectations,
02:11:40 you’re not gonna have very many customers,
02:11:42 which is the way it is now.
02:11:44 So a lot of people who listen to this,
02:11:47 but in general in the United States
02:11:49 practice Brazilian jujitsu,
02:11:51 which has a lot of similarities to judo
02:11:54 as obviously its origins in judo.
02:11:57 How would you compare the two arts
02:11:59 from the perspective of people
02:12:00 just interested about both arts?
02:12:04 Do you recommend people who do jujitsu get into judo?
02:12:08 How can it enrich their jujitsu?
02:12:10 How do you compare the two arts,
02:12:11 the actual practice of it and why it might be useful to you?
02:12:15 I mean, I think that judo is a hard sport for adults to do.
02:12:19 It just is.
02:12:20 Especially people that haven’t fallen in a long time,
02:12:24 aren’t very athletic, haven’t…
02:12:27 I think about my own experience, right?
02:12:29 Other than judo,
02:12:30 when did I ever do like a forward somersault?
02:12:33 Maybe when I was in grade school, right?
02:12:35 That’s the last time I’ve left my feet was in grade school.
02:12:39 Most people haven’t got off of a chair or a couch.
02:12:42 They spend eight to 10 hours a day
02:12:45 either working behind a computer
02:12:46 or sitting on their couch watching TV, right?
02:12:48 And they’re not that athletic.
02:12:50 And they haven’t done anything athletic
02:12:51 at least probably since high school, right?
02:12:55 That’s their last athletic endeavor, most of them.
02:12:57 So you’re talking about as an adult,
02:12:59 that’s 35 or 40 wanting to start a sport.
02:13:01 Judo is a really hard sport to start,
02:13:04 especially in today’s dojos
02:13:06 that don’t have a recreational adult program.
02:13:09 You know, when it’s one size fits all, it’s hard.
02:13:11 So for those people,
02:13:13 jujitsu makes a heck of a lot of sense.
02:13:15 Good self defense, it’s cerebral,
02:13:18 where you got to use your brain, you’re a smaller person,
02:13:21 you have to use technique, you know,
02:13:23 it teaches all the same things as judo,
02:13:25 but it’s a safe way to do it.
02:13:27 And because of the validation it has
02:13:30 with the UFC and MMA today, right?
02:13:33 Everybody knows jujitsu.
02:13:34 So now they can be part of mainstream society
02:13:37 and talk intelligently about what they see on television
02:13:40 or what’s going on on ESPN today, right?
02:13:42 They have some knowledge.
02:13:43 So they have an identity.
02:13:45 And also there’s a good culture in jujitsu
02:13:47 where it’s becoming a family.
02:13:49 You know, the dojo is the family place.
02:13:51 You go to feel good, you go to see your friends,
02:13:54 you go to get fit and you have a good time, right?
02:13:57 So it makes a lot of sense why it’s growing.
02:13:59 Judo on the other hand,
02:14:01 I think is a better sport for children to do.
02:14:04 It’s more, I would say fun and interactive.
02:14:08 It’s a little easier to teach the kids
02:14:10 how to do the throwing skills
02:14:12 and for safety and things like that.
02:14:14 Their body can handle more than the adults can.
02:14:16 They’re less likely to get injured.
02:14:20 It makes them better athletes
02:14:21 because it’s a lot more three dimensional in my opinion.
02:14:25 So I think there’s a good fit
02:14:27 between judo can thrive from kids till whatever,
02:14:32 high school, college.
02:14:34 Jujitsu thrives from that 18 year old up, right?
02:14:37 Right now, that’s kind of where it is.
02:14:40 So as a dojo, you have to kind of focus on the teens
02:14:43 and the college, like early 20s, that kind of.
02:14:46 Or you need to have,
02:14:48 if you’re gonna be a successful judo dojo,
02:14:50 you have to have that recreational
02:14:53 fundamental adult program in your school
02:14:56 where people actually come to judo, learn the moves,
02:15:00 but aren’t pushed into randori training
02:15:03 and pushed into things where they’re uncomfortable
02:15:05 and they can’t control the situation
02:15:07 because there’s too many unknowns.
02:15:09 You got an education at Browns.
02:15:12 You’re somebody, it’s amazing because as an Olympian
02:15:15 and an Olympic coach, you always emphasize
02:15:17 kind of balance and education, all of that side of life.
02:15:22 So developing your brain too.
02:15:24 So you are an Olympic medalist,
02:15:27 a coach of Olympic medalists, you’re a business owner.
02:15:31 So successful in all these domains.
02:15:33 So I have to ask, what advice would you give
02:15:36 to young people today, high school, judo age,
02:15:40 high school, college, undergrad,
02:15:44 how to be successful in their career
02:15:47 or just in life in general,
02:15:48 how to live a life they can be proud of?
02:15:53 I think you have to be true to yourself.
02:15:56 You have to decide what it is you really wanna do
02:15:58 with your life.
02:15:59 Like, and it’s hard because when I grew up,
02:16:02 I didn’t know I was gonna be successful.
02:16:04 When I was young, I didn’t know I was gonna be
02:16:06 an Olympic medalist.
02:16:07 I certainly did envision myself owning a couple of companies
02:16:10 that makes their living exclusively from martial arts
02:16:14 or judo, cause that wasn’t really an opportunity
02:16:16 when I was a kid, but I’ve created that opportunity.
02:16:19 I would just say that, pick something
02:16:21 that you’re passionate about.
02:16:23 I was stuck in a career before
02:16:24 where I wasn’t passionate about it.
02:16:26 And it was my wife who said, Jimmy,
02:16:28 if you can figure out how to make your living
02:16:32 exclusively from martial arts,
02:16:35 where your brain and your heart and your passion
02:16:37 is all towards one thing that you really like,
02:16:40 then you’ll be successful.
02:16:41 And I left the job.
02:16:42 I had three kids.
02:16:43 I was working for monster.com.
02:16:46 I was in internet marketing
02:16:48 and I was working for that great company,
02:16:50 nothing wrong with the company,
02:16:51 but sitting behind the desk from eight till five.
02:16:55 And then I get to go to judo from six till nine at night.
02:16:59 My whole day is tied up doing something
02:17:00 that I’m really not passionate about.
02:17:02 She said, if you can figure out how to make money
02:17:05 from your dojo and other things judo related,
02:17:08 then I think you’ll be successful.
02:17:10 And so she’s the one that my wife, Marie,
02:17:11 gave me that advice and I would give that to others.
02:17:13 Find something that you love doing
02:17:15 where it doesn’t feel like work,
02:17:17 something you’re passionate about.
02:17:18 And if the opportunity doesn’t exist
02:17:20 how to make money on it, you can create the opportunity.
02:17:23 Be resourceful, figure it out.
02:17:25 Don’t let anybody tell you you can’t do it.
02:17:28 I didn’t know that I could have a 200 person judo school
02:17:31 that only taught judo
02:17:33 because that really didn’t exist in this country.
02:17:35 That actually charges money like jujitsu charges.
02:17:38 We’re talking not, there’s plenty of clubs out there
02:17:41 that charge 10 bucks a month that might have 100 people,
02:17:43 but there’s not many that,
02:17:45 where the tuition is $150 a month having 200 people.
02:17:48 So that’s a successful business, but it wasn’t done before.
02:17:52 But be passionate about it, understand you’re gonna fail,
02:17:55 understand you’re gonna get knocked down, beat up, right?
02:17:58 There’s gonna be dark days, but you gotta persevere.
02:18:01 You gotta believe in yourself.
02:18:03 You gotta have a plan.
02:18:04 You have to be willing to learn from other people.
02:18:07 And that’s what I did.
02:18:09 If I didn’t know it, I brought somebody in to tell me,
02:18:12 what am I doing wrong?
02:18:13 Like, look from the outside, what do you see?
02:18:15 Okay, great.
02:18:16 Then you gotta be willing to change.
02:18:17 You gotta be willing to adapt.
02:18:20 And I think listening, believing in myself,
02:18:24 and creating opportunity.
02:18:26 And the other thing is helping others.
02:18:28 Something I always did in my judo life
02:18:33 and in my business life.
02:18:35 If somebody came to me and asked for help with,
02:18:38 hey man, is there something you can do to help me?
02:18:40 I’m trying to get this thing started.
02:18:42 I’m trying to get this dojo off the ground,
02:18:44 or I’m trying to run this event series,
02:18:47 or I was creative and trying to figure out a way
02:18:51 to help them make it work.
02:18:52 Because if that really was their dream,
02:18:54 and I could help them do their dream,
02:18:56 I felt like that person would then give nothing
02:19:00 but good, good comments about us.
02:19:02 Good, good, like they’ll remember it forever.
02:19:05 They become like family.
02:19:06 And they’ll be the best advocates for your business ever.
02:19:09 And so the kids that I taught at my dojo
02:19:12 were treated that way.
02:19:13 The people that worked for me get treated that way.
02:19:15 The people that, my customers that I work with
02:19:18 and building their dojos,
02:19:20 get treated that way.
02:19:22 People that ran tournaments,
02:19:23 whether it was Grappler’s Quest years ago,
02:19:26 and helping that guy with a full set of mats
02:19:28 for his, Brian Simmons with his thing,
02:19:31 or any of the Gracie’s.
02:19:34 It just became like family.
02:19:36 And then I just work hard and deliver
02:19:38 on what I say I’m gonna do.
02:19:39 If I say I’m gonna do it, I do it.
02:19:41 And I think it goes a long way.
02:19:43 Well, and I got a comment.
02:19:44 So in a small way, people may not know.
02:19:48 I think it’s still on YouTube.
02:19:49 We previously talked many years ago.
02:19:52 And I remember it, you were so kind to me.
02:19:56 And you didn’t really know who I was.
02:19:58 You just took me as a human being.
02:20:00 You welcomed me into your dojo.
02:20:01 And we just had a conversation on a podcast
02:20:04 or whatever the heck you call that thing.
02:20:06 And you were just very kind.
02:20:08 And you were also just,
02:20:12 it was the last conversation I had
02:20:15 when I showed up to MIT,
02:20:17 and it stayed with me.
02:20:20 So I’ve resumed doing this podcast.
02:20:23 But it stayed with me because you said
02:20:26 that I did a good job at this.
02:20:28 And people, especially at that time,
02:20:30 didn’t tell me that.
02:20:33 And just that little act of kindness
02:20:36 is probably just a regular part of your day.
02:20:38 You had a busy day, it was the end of the day.
02:20:40 Just saying that, that was powerful.
02:20:42 And that pays off somehow.
02:20:45 So thank you for that.
02:20:47 Yeah, but it was sincere, right?
02:20:49 It was genuine.
02:20:50 I felt like I had been to so many interviews.
02:20:53 When it’s around the Olympic time,
02:20:54 there’s lots of beat reporters that come out
02:20:56 and they’re trying to get your time.
02:20:58 And they’re there because they have to get the story
02:21:01 for their newspaper or their television show.
02:21:03 And a lot of times those people show up, right?
02:21:06 And they pronounce my name wrong.
02:21:08 Or they get something wrong about the background.
02:21:10 Or they offend me because they call me for the wrong reason.
02:21:14 Or they call me five minutes before
02:21:16 that they’re supposed to be there and say,
02:21:18 oh, sorry, we’re running late.
02:21:19 We’ll be there in an hour and a half.
02:21:20 Well, I’m a busy guy too.
02:21:22 But you were somebody that showed up,
02:21:25 was so prepared with your notes,
02:21:27 knew everything about the history of what I had done.
02:21:32 The questions you asked were intelligent questions.
02:21:34 They were well thought out.
02:21:36 And at the end of that interview,
02:21:38 I was really genuinely impressed.
02:21:41 And I wanted to let you know you did a great job
02:21:43 and you stood out from the rest.
02:21:45 Thank you.
02:21:46 Yeah.
02:21:46 I mean, for me, it was like showing up to like the Mecca,
02:21:48 like the track.
02:21:49 I mean, I didn’t, you know,
02:21:51 you don’t always want to just tell that to people,
02:21:53 but you show up, you know,
02:21:55 obviously you’re the legend of judo in the United States.
02:21:58 And so that was like, Boston is the Mecca.
02:22:01 Right.
02:22:02 I think that’s where you travel to talk to the great.
02:22:06 So the fact that you were kind to me
02:22:09 just stuck with me for a long time.
02:22:11 So it pays off to be kind to others,
02:22:14 to give them a chance.
02:22:20 Jimmy, thank you so much for giving me another chance
02:22:23 and spending your valuable time.
02:22:24 And you’ve also were kind enough to invite me
02:22:27 to train with you today at your dojo.
02:22:30 So I can’t wait.
02:22:31 Let’s go.
02:22:32 Let’s go do some judo.
02:22:33 Yeah, awesome.
02:22:33 Thank you, Lex.
02:22:35 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jimmy Pedro.
02:22:38 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors
02:22:41 in the description.
02:22:43 And now let me leave you some words from Bruce Lee.
02:22:46 I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,
02:22:50 but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
02:22:55 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.