Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions | Lex Fridman Podcast #236

following is a conversation with jimmy pedro a legendary judo competitor and coach he represented the united states at four olympics in 92 96 2000 2004 winning a bronze medal at two of them he meddled in three world championships winning gold in 1999. he has coached many of the elite level american judoka including kayla harrison ronda rousey travis stevens and many others plus he's now my judo coach along with travis stevens this is the lex friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now here's my conversation with jimmy pedro what is the most beautiful throw in judo to you i think uchimara you know it's the it's the one that seems to have the most amplitude the person goes the highest you see a leg swing through the middle uh the person doing the throw there's a leg swinging through the middle the other person definitely goes you know head over heels flat on their back um it's probably the most dynamic pretty judo throw there is okay so it's a single you're standing on a single foot and you're raising your other foot in the air and it's a forward throw which means the uh your your back is facing the opponent but uh they kind of both fly through the air and twist through the air correct yeah so how does that throw work what are the principles behind that throw is one of those throws that um you know people can kind of understand how to pick up another human being in sort of trivial ways but the h mata to me never quite made sense like why it works there's there's a cork there's a twisting motion there's some involvement of the hip but not it's not really a hip throw because the hip is not all the way over so it's not it it's a very confusing throat can you say something probably one of the most difficult throws to learn as well because it is so complex you do have to stand on one leg balance on one leg you know swing your other leg through the middle hold your opponent up in the air and it's and it's hard to it's hard to make that contact with upper body to your to your back you know you have to turn your back on the throw as well so how does it work um it's definitely sort of a throw where you need to start pulling your opponent's upper body towards you right so their upper body starts coming towards you your legs go towards them as your body starts to go to into the throw so your head is going to go left let's say your body your legs are going to go to the right your body's your partner is going to start to lean towards you and just as you start to get their momentum coming forward your leg is going to sweep up underneath theirs pick them up onto your hip right and then the finish of the throw is a twist and a lot of times the good jadoka will leave their feet when they do the throw so both bodies are in the air together and then the thrower comes down on top of the person being thrown so all four feet are in the air correct so there's just this unstoppable forces twist so you're all in the air you're basically doing a roll together correct okay so who to you is the best uchimada who has the besides yourself i'm not gonna lie there's there's plenty of guys that do shimada a lot better than i do uh you do have a nice video about the chamada online but uh who who's a great practitioner of the ichimodo team right now shohei ono who's two-time olympic gold medalist that's his favorite throw and he there's a tons of highlight videos on the igf and judo fanatic showing how he does his uchimara and it is quite different than everybody else's um but it's unstoppable when when he comes in nobody stops it he's won two goals in a row at the olympics i think maybe in the last eight years the guy's lost two matches you know he's just incredible so at a very competitive division i guess 73 kilos okay and then three three-time world champ too is he the greatest of all time do you the only reason why he's not is because nomura is a 60 kilo player he was three-time olympic champion so no more i mean unless ono's gonna stick around for another three years and win again and uh win again here in paris that's you know then he'd match what nomura did but three-time gold medalist in judo in a lightweight division that's pretty spectacular so to you the the being able to win a championship world championship or olympic medal is a measure of greatness it's not like um you have some people who are not as accomplished like koga or something like that but just the the beauty uh the the moments of magic the number of moments of magic is the highest even if it's not championships i think you have to go by that because there's so many phenomenal judo players that have come through the system of spectacular judo um you have one you know countless major events but you know the ability to pull it together right at those magical moments the the pinnacle of the sport the world championships the olympic games and proving that you can do it time and time again makes you unstoppable it makes you the best um you know there was a guy back in the 70s and 80s by the name of fuji and he won four world championships back to back and back then the worlds was every two years so he was here he was a four-time world champion that's eight years the top of the sport he never uh won an olympic medal you know he never went to the olympics you know so there's a guy who missed out on on olympic greatness but was arguably the best competitor back in that that period by the way same fuji as as fuji right really okay wow i didn't know that was an actual guy fuji our brand is is named after the mountain mount fuji okay but you know this is a different guy his name was future all right well um history rhymes what about teddy renair ten-time world champ i think two-time gold medalist at the olympics two times bronze medalist at the olympics probably the most dominant judoka ever is he in the running what do you think about that guy i think he's a a freak of nature teddy you know if you look at the size just how big he how tall he is how big he is how physical he is of a specimen like i sat next to him on a bus and like his legs are literally the size of my waist yeah like when you sit next to him and just look at the side he's a big man you know so obviously to win 10 world titles in the sport of judo i mean it that's uh that's almost an incomprehensible feat uh two-time olympic champion again um but you know that puts him in one of the maybe 10 or 12 people that ever do that in the history of the sport so he's definitely got to be in the running for for the best but you know technically i don't think he's as technical as some of the other um in terms of pure judo finesse technique you know it's he's powerful he's explosive he's dominant he's strong um teddy also grips really really well which makes him that much tougher to beat because a lot of times heavyweights especially the heavyweight division a lot of them just grab the ghee and they go you know man to man and judo to judo and take shots at each other and that's why a lot of them end up getting beat but teddy's in control like positionally he stays in really good position and he controls his opponent the whole fight so they really don't have a chance against them he doesn't give them a chance to beat him which is why he's been so dominant but he's not really stalling so i mean he does have a really nice uh sort of gary this uh backward trip outside trip in case people don't know i mean he has just like technically pretty good throws and for heavyweight yes heavyweights can be sometimes messy with their uh judo he's pretty technical and uh clean in the execution of his big throws but a lot of that probably has to do with the dominant gripping that he does it's not defensive gripping it's offensive gripping but the dominant gripping 100 he he controls the grips he controls the movement of the match as a result of that and then he creates his own openings so i mean as a for a heavyweight phenomenal technique yes um and what you said messy i'd like to call it sloppy right a lot a lot of the uh heavyweights tend to be sloppy they've fallen on the ground a lot it's hard to move somebody that weighs 350 pounds you know it's hard to get that body moving and just with the simple uh pull motion so um he's definitely found a way to do it but he's also i don't know six foot eight yeah you know he's probably weighs 140 kilos he's a big boy and but he had this winning streak of just uh i don't know how long but like over 100 matches and he lost at this uh olympics that we just went through the 20 i don't even know what to call it 2021 olympics i don't know the proper terminology tokyo 2020 okay 2020. all right so he lost to uh tamerlan bashev i mean it's always sad to see a sort of greatness come to an end it's like uh corellon and wrestling and greco-roman did you shed a bit of a tear to see greatness go or um like or is it just the way of life um i mean what did you think about sort of this dominance this run of dominance being stopped i think i mean it's obviously sad to see i love seeing champions succeed um especially people that that are good people and i think teddy's a good person you know i mean i think there's some arrogant champions that everybody would like to see lose just because they don't want to deal with their um you know their personality or but and i think but i think teddy's a very humble champion you know he's a people's champion you know he's i think he's been privileged and he makes good money from the sport of judo and the french federation has taken care of him well so he's a he's a lifelong judo icon um so it's sad to see somebody like that get beat especially when this could have been you know his his third olympic title and um you know just beco put him in infamy you know so it was sad to see but i think you know every athlete goes through it right i mean you it's just that's what the olympics is all about the great ones fall sometimes and um especially in judo right it's like so like the margin of error i mean i guess the other question i want to ask here is in your sense how difficult it is to not lose for so long it seems like in judo like a little mistake and it's over there's no there's no coming back any pawn means it's over so how difficult is that is it's hard to stay that dominant without question first of all when you are when you are the entire world is is training against you just to be right they're studying every single movement they're they're studying patterns they're they're trying to break it down and find a flaw in your game so everybody's hunting for you when you're the best in the world especially at the olympics that's that's the that's the one to beat you at so everybody's focused on you and then there's an incredible amount of pressure on that athlete to perform you know you carry the flag for your country you know when you're in opening ceremonies sometimes you know there's all spotlight is on you um and it's particularly hard when things don't go well early you know in other words when you're expected to win and then all of a sudden now you're in a hard fight and it's not going the way you want that pressure the one who's the favorite feels the pressure the most at the olympics and that's why i think the other ones are able to win it i've actually never gotten a chance to listen to teddy renair sort of explain uh ideas behind his judo like i wonder what his mental game is like because i think his english is pretty not very good and so um and i just haven't seen good interviews but it's always fascinating to there's certain great athletes that are also great thinkers and speakers like um the satia brothers in wrestling again not meaning that that's on my to-do list 100 i'm going to afghanistan and talking to them because they're brilliant but to be able to sort of um maybe after retirement to to think back what were the systems involved both on the technical the training side and then the uh mental side because like to stay that dominant just like you're saying everybody's studying to beat you and and the heavyweights are just these powerful dudes so to be able to control them with your game and like the game that everybody knows is coming is i don't know i don't know what's behind that but there's got to be um it feels like the mental game is exceptionally important i think a lot of people underestimate just how important that that side is meant being mentally prepared for victory mentally prepared to be the best to stay the best um there's nobody that's weak minded that they can accomplish that you know it's it's a hundred percent confidence and belief in yourself if we take a big picture of you then not necessarily tater in there but if you want to go from the very beginning from day one of judo class to olympic champion or olympic medalist what does it take to become an olympic medalist in judo from start to finish like how many different trajectories do you see or is there some unifying principles i think a lot of it has to your journey is going to depend a lot by where you're from so a path that an american might take versus somebody who's from japan or somebody who's from europe there's two very just three very distinct paths right because you know in japan it's it's part of the culture it's there's a there's a system of excellence there's you know there's elementary school judo there's junior high school there's high school there's collegiate there's olympic and you know much like our wrestling is here in our in the united states right it's very similar there's youth wrestling there's high school this ncaa and then there's olympic wrestling and you know when you when you your country is a factory of producing athletes at the highest level then all of those top athletes typically go back into the sport and there's professions for them they have an opportunity to coach at all those different levels and just the level of their game and the expertise that all of them have even down at the elementary level make their skill so solid and as a coach in that situation you can just sit back and watch who stands out as opposed to i think in america i guess you need to craft you don't get to choose from a thousand people a few people that naturally stand out at the age of nine you get you have to actually uh whatever the natural resources you're given craft them into a champion um so if we look at that the american way where you just have a person with a smile show up show up to your dojo says i wanted to be an olympic medalist what process do you take them through well the odds are really insurmountable like it's it's a very very high hill to climb uh and there's only a few i think only a few people and there's only a few coaches in this entire country that really understand that process and they can that can help people reach that level as as it's been proven right yeah um number one you you certainly have to have a solid base a fundamental base of of an expectation of what the training is going to be and it has to be a level of professionalism very very early where you're teaching all the basic judo moves all the basic fundamental movements posture gripping well maybe gripping doesn't come in so early in the game but um throwing methodology movements nawaza position um standing fundamental throws and i think most importantly is really the work ethic just the way you're going to train the intensity you're going to train with the ability to the you know mindset of going to tournaments constantly you need you know in order to compete with the rest of the world our young kids need to be tested a lot when they're young they have to be put through adversity because they don't get put through adversity and training because you don't have that many good training partners so you get put through adversity in competition and then do we see what your weaknesses are and we continue to make improvements on those um but the journey is is it's long and and until they're kind of at the teenage years they're going to have to pretty much stay domestic right because they got to go through life as a normal kid but they've got to be training in the dojo at least you know five days a week you know sometimes they might want to get you know an extra technical workout in or doing some base conditioning in addition to that and then really at the teenage years that's where we really um we've struggled in america of of keeping teens in the sport of judo as well as developing them properly because up until around the teenage years i think the americans are on par with the rest of the world in terms of technique and in terms of skill and you know we've we've proven we can compete with the rest of the world up until that age but that's where japan and that's where the europeans and the countries that are strong in judo that's where they put a lot of time energy and effort is into the teens where they have a great coaching staff they have good training camps with with 800 a thousand people going to them every single weekend um when you say teens what do you mean do you mean literally like 13 yeah 13 to 17 13 to 19. and that's where sort of that's when you really accelerate your development so you're saying like in america when you're young like before you know 9 10 11 12 you stick in judo you can progress quite a bit right but then i guess the other competition there if you're into uh two people uh you know doing stuff to each other in a combative way uh the other competitor in america is wrestling so judo almost primes you like it teaches you uh how to be a great wrestler as well and so then you have to have a hard decision because you can probably be a collegiate wrestler you can you can you have like a a clear plan of where you're going to go if you want to be a wrestler with judo that plan is more um is less clear so yeah you have to be on your own a bit with your coach that kind of thing exactly okay so when you're on your own with your coach to me that's just a fascinating journey because then it's just like the purity of it it's the coach and the athlete and the dream it's all about the dedication the the five six seven days a week competing what once a month twice a month okay and just but also you probably don't have that conversation i don't know if you do maybe you do saying like we're gonna do this for the next eight years right do you ever sit down would you just do it take it to david goggins way which is like let's just take it one step at a time let's hope we're there in eight years yeah let's hope we're there do you actually like right now you have to think about the olympics is gonna be in in los angeles in 2028 so it's really interesting now now would be the time and now is the time to identify talent and get commitment out of students that in seven years you can make a u.s olympic team because we're going to have a full team america is going to have 14 athletes compete in those games one in every weight class so now is the time if you're going to go on a journey to the olympics and stay with the sport of judo now would be the time to do it you know and so what uh you show up to the pedro judo center and how much drilling how much techniques strategy discussions how much randori or like live sparring how much conditioning and strength training how much of all that how much of cross training to other gyms or something like that traveling abroad is there something to be said about us um some aspects of that system for sure um you need it all what you just said we needed all of it and we do do all of that right now we have a young group of kids at the academy you'll see tonight some of them are 14 13 15 17. are they good yeah really good okay so they're gonna get away they're right around your weight so it'll be perfect they're just young boys but they've been training hard through kovid yeah um we've been travis and myself have been training them we share responsibilities um they're doing randori like five nights a week you know we have them doing randori tuesdays wednesdays thursdays fridays and sundays is when they're doing randori they're coming to the dojo friday night and sunday night to do training we also have technical sessions for them and they're in school now so it's a little bit challenging but they come five o'clock in the afternoon and they do a technical session through covid they were coming every morning doing technical sessions what's the technical session you're it's an hour of um repetitive throwing or repetitive drilling to to reinforce movements that we deem important to our successful uh system so nawaza positions groundwork positions where we want them to be put in this position and they're going to drill it 50 times you know with resistance in big groups you know doing drills over and over again picking apart the details of the technique and what they're doing wrong showing them how to fix it but now we've done it so much that now we can do a whole drill session with them where they know all the different techniques inside and out and they can move from position to position really quickly do they do it for uh a period of time like two minutes five minutes or is it like one do they're actually counting no sometimes it's both so sometimes we do it for reps sometimes we do it for time yeah so sometimes it might be as many as they can do in in 60 seconds or as many as they can do in two minutes and sometimes it might just be i want you to do every position five times in terms of throws we're not talking about on a crash pad right it's it's just we're talking about free moving around the mat and just dynamically and just throwing correct how many uh because uh as i was mentioning to you offline uh travis threw me a few times a lot of times when he was visiting in austin and i just remembered uh so there's two things i fortunately or unfortunately in my life haven't gotten a chance to train with folks of that level without just cleanness of throw and the power and it was very nice i can i immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that to throw a little at craig jones with his current matt situation um is they're very they were quite thin uh and as travis commented on and not just the thinness of the mats but they were laid on like concrete right so i felt i felt it's like soft until it's not um but uh being thrown very cleanly i just felt like there's this is not gonna lead to injury it was great it wasn't injury prone but then as i mentioned to you when i a day or two after my entire leg one of them i guess it's the left leg um was just in just black bruise it didn't it didn't hurt too bad it was just the body's gotten soft so i guess the question is um does the body get used to just that number of throws just over time being thrown thousands of times a month unquestionably your body gets used to it so it hardens it gets really hard which is why judo is is hard to come back to after you've taken a long period of time off because your body is not used to that impact anymore um i always found out that you know when i was training judo a lot it's hard to it's hard to shed weight and keep weight off because your body like you know it it develops like this layer of protection on itself that it doesn't want to give up yeah you know when you're sucking a lot of weight that means you're frail and you know so i always seem to retain weight more you know when you're doing hard judo training as opposed to you know losing weight it's easy when you go for runs and things like that to shed the water weight but to actually keep the pounds off was yeah pretty hard yeah the body kind of develops like you said a level of protection what about the randori just out of curiosity again i i haven't ever had the opportunity to train with folks at a high level um it's you know in jiu jitsu the there's different gyms have different styles but i've noticed that at the highest levels people can go pretty hard in a certain kind of way where it's more technical and you're not you're moving at a hundred percent but the power is not at a hundred percent it's it's a weird little dance it's it's techn like you're not really um forcing stuff you're more focused on on the right timing the right uh positioning of hands and feet and body and all those kinds of things you're not like forcing stuff in the way you would in competition like really the power does that sound similar to you for the way you tried to durandori so there's different styles of judo and they say the japanese style the technical style of judo is exactly what you just talked about it's like it's almost like two guys in pajamas right we're not going we're not using it we're using minimal effort maximum efficiency we're moving around and we're trying to feel that movement and it's timing and finesse and technique and fun and clean throws and when you you know when you train in japan you can train 15 rounds of randori five minute rounds that's 75 minutes of of straight you know sparring you can do that straight in japan without a problem i mean you'll get tired of course you're going to fall a lot you're going to throw a lot but it's very like free feeling and it's technical as you explained but then when you go to europe and you try to do rounds with the europeans they are very physical they don't have that same finesse in their training that they do in japan and in europe you'd be hard-pressed to do eight rounds of randori in a night it's so physically exhausting because so much effort is going into just fighting and fending off the gripping system and the power of your opponent you're physically drained after eight rounds of randori so it's a much different feel when you say europe do you mean germany france britain russia is there a lot so there's a kind of similarity to all of those kinds of approaches the only difference would be russia that they do a lot more active drilling a lot more sequential movement training they don't focus as much on randori you'll do much fewer rounds in russia during training camps than you would in in those other countries we just talked about france germany etc what about in this kind of american system where you have much less talent uh to work with is did you uh just select whatever works for the particular athletes or do you have a something you prefer in your system so you need a combination of all of it if you're going to win at the olympic level you have to be able to deal with the finesse of the japanese the physicality of the europeans you have to focus on on the ground nawaza aspect because a lot of people are weak there in the world of the sport of judo that's a chance to win we've sort of developed our american system of judo at least for the last i say probably the last 20 years would be the american system of judo which relies heavily on taking the individual and whatever techniques they they do perfecting those techniques and the combinations and other throws that go with those throws but then implementing and overlaying an american system of gripping nawaza conditioning mentality training methodology like in in game planning you know to beat your opponents and i think that's the that's the secret sauce to success for the fair americans because there's no way if we don't have eight partners to train within the night that are going to give us good rounds right we might have two you know so we know the same guy four times those two people four you know two times each now i have four good rounds the rest of the rounds i'm not being pushed to the limit so we train differently um and a lot of times we do a lot of stuff like shark bait when our athletes are preparing for competition for example when kayla or travis were preparing for competition we might only have 20 people in the whole gym work to work out with those two olympic medalists right and of those 20 people maybe four of them are travis's size you know maybe there's only one girl in the room for kayla she's got to train with guys and then the other ones are teenagers that are too weak to train with either one of them so what we would do is just put together four or five people that could you know give them a challenge and we'd line them up and they would do a minute a minute a minute a minute and then do five minutes in a row as hard as they can that person can go hard for a minute with travis or kayla they can't go five minutes hard but they can go one minute hard so it made their training much much more intense much more physically demanding and then rinse and repeat that six times or eight times in a night you know they just got 40 minutes of intense randori the person that was training with them that wasn't as good only had to do six or eight minutes of training the whole night yeah you know so it's so it's so difficult because you then you look at like the russian national team and you have just world champions and so um or you even have like um what is the tom brands and terry brands in the in the wrestling system you have like these people it's a small group of people but they're all some of the best people in the world and they're going head to head and yeah you don't necessarily get a good look kind of a variety of styles but just the qualities there and even that is missing for people your size in america because and that is so difficult to work with we should make scales and makes travis's story that much more amazing is um you mentioned kind of picking whatever the set of techniques the athlete is naturally good at or prefers or whatever how much specialization is there maybe if i give you like two choices is it good to have like one throw and try to become the best person in the world at that throw or do you want to have a bunch of stuff uh like a a variety of throws well for travis it was he pulling saying aggie that was his main throw right but from that ipo and saying he had a variety of other attacks he could do you know that mixed it up so that you kept people guessing that maybe it wasn't the paul and say we was coming maybe it was the koshi grumma that he did or maybe it was the ipone to osoto that he did in combination so you typically have one main throw that you do for me it was tai otoshi for kayla it was her ogoshi for travis it was ipo and sanagi but then you come up with a variety of other throws that you do from the very same grip so whatever grip you take for your main throw you want to develop you know an arsenal of attacks that go in all different directions holding that same grip so you keep your opponent guessing as to what's coming you know because if they're just sitting on one technique at the highest level of sport with the exception of a few right we talked about ono's uchimada with the exception of a few most of the world catches on pretty quick on how to beat you there is something to just sticking making sure you really dedicate to the main thing so for travis that would be like the main version of his inagi like really making sure you don't forget to really put in the time on that because um i mean one one way to say it is that threat being dangerous opens up a lot of things right but also i don't know i think i'm just as a fan i think it it's sad when like elite level athletes in in all like combat sports kind of start taking their main thing for granted like um they think okay i've i figured that part out now i'll be working on all this whole system on variations on different setups on uh lefty versus some like weird variation as opposed to you know what if you look at some of the best people ever they seem to have not cared about variations at all they're just like literally they are more like jiro dreams of sushi and like like fine-tuning their ear their ability to detect the mine movements that give you an opening on that main thing and so the whole time you're just waiting for that throw you're like dancing with the like little bit of pressure and like releasing the pressure and putting the pressure maybe a little bit off off balance and finding like the right moment to strike and focusing on that again maybe that's just like a romanticization of like the simplicity of that maybe it is kind of impossible to do that on a large scale but i just um [Music] yeah i i don't know if you can comment on that whether there is some value and still putting in like tens of thousands of reps on the main main thing well unquestionably that has to happen you still have to drill your main throw and you have to fine tune it and continue to do you know repetition after repetition and throws on the crash pad you know or throws on the mat moving around just explosive movements doing your main technique you're never going to forget that and you're not going to put it to the side and not practice it anymore it still has to be part of your repertoire and part of your daily training but you do have to evolve and i think that's and i think that's the sport of judo makes you evolve you know when i look at we talk about koga from before right and we talked about he had a dynamic he pulling say in agi that nobody could stop for years and years and years but when people started to you know be unorthodox and come down his back and cross-grip him and he couldn't get to the lapel he had to come up with something else and all of a sudden you saw koga doing now he did a soda where now he did a tomo nagi which so he can he added to his arsenal you know to keep people thinking keep purple gas in so it's not you're not just that one trick pony they still couldn't stop his ipo and say once he got that grip but if they stop them from getting that grip or putting two hands on the ghee he had to go to something else and that's what he did does travis's or koga's say nagi make sense to you that weird uh so when i because split hip that's split hip so i don't know if you know this but like i got into judo because of travis i watched him with 2008 olympics and i was uh there's something about like uh just the not the cockiness but the confidence and just the refusal to quit the refusal to just some that energy whatever you connect to me is like oh that guy's badass i want to be badass like that and then i also there happened to be in my university judo and i um and i got into and just fell in love with the elegance and the beauty and the power of the sport um but also i started to mimic travis's game uh his and koga's and i and then uh the instructors i worked with they said that's the wrong way to do it and i always i never found somebody that told me that like no that's not the wrong way to there's a lot of ways to do it and there's like the classic way and you have to understand and you have to learn it but this is not the wrong way because i was trying to find somebody who understands this throw because it's so beautiful at the highest level especially with koga the way you're able the quickness with which you can strike the fact that you could stand on the feet and the elevation you can get and the power you can get it has certain throws just like uchamata doesn't look powerful it it's just like it's it looks effortless but like the standing sanagi with a split hip it just looks powerful because there's a you're like you're stepping into them you're lifting the opponent and they still have they're not surprised they're now like helpless right their feet are fluttering and flattering so and then there's just this this pause and then just big slam with the ucha mata it's almost like you don't know what hit you that's like tayatoshi is the same it's almost like a surprise like oh i'm not on my back and um so i i just i just love that throw but like i it didn't make sense to me like when trying to explain it to others when trying to learn it didn't make sense to me uh how it works does it make sense to you it does yeah i'm i was born a judoka right so i i've lived this stuff since i was an infant and i've seen every style and every technique um the split hip saying aggie is is difficult to learn it's harder to learn than the the basic form but it is powerful and it does upon entry both your opponent's feet leave them out at the same time so you've got them once you enter you've got them you just got to finish right you just got to lock them and turn and go so it makes sense to me my dad did teach me how to do that when i was younger yeah he wanted me to do a split hip we have kids at the school today that we teach the split up say in aggie same way um because it is that dynamic right you don't drop to the ground and roll and turn it's not the classic form where you're giving way to your opponent it's actually you go pick the guy up in the air and then you slam them so okay uh beautiful so maybe on a small tangent so we're talking about elite level athletes in terms of randori in terms of rep like uh drilling for more recreational athletes like you know i have personally that situation going on but there's other people there just recreationally training judo how do you recommend they improve judo like if i wanted to compete a bunch and do reason reasonable with a particular set of throws say the split uh senagi how do you do you do the randori do you use a crash brad to get him reps do you like what do you recommend so i guess there's two recreational people that we're talking about one is somebody who wants to learn judo and become good at judo but don't doesn't necessarily want to compete but just wants to get better and i think that there's not enough emphasis in this country on just that on paying attention to that type of student everybody pushes them to competition but in reality there's a huge audience of people out there that would love to learn judo and be very proficient at judo and have the skills to go execute if they ever needed it and there's a class and there should be a program for that athlete and that athlete does not need to do randori like the sport of judo is physical enough when you're picking somebody up all the time and moving their body weight around the mat all the time where you can get very physically strong very physically fit technically you'll be better than somebody that does randori more than you because you're move if you learn good technique and you learn the movement and you learn the feel and you move the learn the timing you'll actually be a better athlete than the person that just focuses on randori who does ugly technique and wins with force so you know we have a recreational class at our school where they don't do any randori they have an option afterwards if they want to stay for 15 minutes or stay for 30 minutes where they can participate in randori but most of the adult students choose not to because they're already so tired from the other you know good workout right they're already dripping sweat they're already like if you if you you know work hard and drill hard it's an intense workout you're exhausted you know so that that's a specific set of of a program i should say at every academy and then if you want to get good and you want to compete then to me once you have your techniques it's learning how to implement a good gripping system to put yourself in a position where you can always you know dominate the grips control the movement initiate the reactions from your opponent and then have the opportunity to attack and score and and i think that when people train with or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo all of a sudden the first thing they say is i can't attack i don't know how to attack because positionally they don't know where to put their hands they don't know how to hold the ghee properly they don't understand that they're you know they have an inferior grip and and they don't know how to get into better position so they can attack and that's a big part of the game that not a lot of people really understand so you really even for recreational competitors you really need to have a gripping system you need to understand the gripping system if you want to win yeah i mean if the goal is to go and compete that's a different story you're going i don't have fun getting beat up or losing in competitions i enjoy the i don't even know if it's the winning or the losing i don't i i think this is what because i competed a lot in both judo and jiu jitsu and in judo it feels like because i didn't have a gripping system it feels like you're not even playing judo against the the good black belts you're they're just they're not they're not even trying because they have they get a certain kind of grip and you just can't do anything and i don't have a good answer for that i don't even know what i'm looking for and so it's not even fun it's not like even losing it's it's like um i don't know it's like you didn't even show up to play is what it feels like and it's unfortunate i i think that is a big gap in knowledge actually in um judo schools is is the gripping part when you first go out to to do judo right you the first thing you have to do is you have to grab your opponent right and a lot of times i hear coaches say get a grip just take a grip well sometimes if you take a grip you're in a worse position than not having a grip at all that's what a lot of people don't understand like if you hold the ghee in the wrong way your opponent can attack you but you can't attack him so why would you ever do that grip if it's only to your detriment right so that's and the way you grip does set up what attacks you can do as well so that is a huge part and i'm not saying that you have to be 100 disciplined and only always out grip your opponent and only be able to do throws when you have a superior grip i'm just saying that to be able to put the grips together with the throws and understand the movements is going to make you that much ahead of the game so if we take a step to uh our previous discussion of going from zero to hero so going from the the early days through the teenage years to winning an olympic medal so we mentioned a lot of training the dedication of the training the competing what other elements are there the mental side is uh visualization believing that you could perform at that level uh so what else can you say about it i think that comes at the highest level the the visualization the success that comes at the highest level i think in the teen years um there's the experience just plays a huge role in getting to train with other people like as americans we have to go train in europe we have to feel the european style of judo we have to understand that physicality they they grip very differently they put you in very unorthodox positions and if you when if you don't know how to deal with that you get thrown before you even have a chance to try your own throws you know so it takes a lot of it takes a lot of that experience and understanding what's going on and then you also need to get that physicality you need to be physically strong and hard i would say by doing all those rounds with the europeans and at the same time you need to go to asia and you need to train in in japan because you need to feel that free-flowing judo for your technical the technical side i think that's one of the things that i was able to benefit from my dad was a coach who said listen i've taken as far as i can take you i want you to go to the next level i want you know he sent me to to england with neil adams who was an olympic silver medalist and was a world champion had a great ground game and was good at gripping and actually did taotoshi which is the throw i did so my dad said i want you to go learn from neil and i ended up going to to england probably eight to ten times in my career and spending a good amount of time there training at the neil adams academy um he's now the voice of judo neil adams what do you make of that guy just a brief pause he's like the like uh morgan freeman is the voice of like march of the penguins and any other nature documentary and neil adams is uh there's very few sports that have a neil adams i would say because he's legitimately maybe like joe rogan is that from mixed martial arts it's just like an exceptionally recognizable voice he's really knowledgeable also the passion is conveyed so well like many times i'll watch just because he's talking right so who is he since he got the chance to train with him to learn from him who's neil adams he's a great friend of mine he is he's a mentor um i like i said i lived and trained at the neil adams club in coventry england since i was like 16 years old i went and visited him for the first time he's the one who originally taught me how to do juju gatami and the way that i do jujigatami i trained with him he was just retired he was in his early 30s when i first went out there and you know so i trained with him many times and over the years he's he was a mentor um great person you know cares that cares about people cares about you know the sport of judo had a good little club that was a fitness club and you know had it was it was judo it was fitness it it you know used to go there i'd show up at that place at like seven in the morning and the first thing we would do is we'd go for a run and we'd either be running mountains or we'd be doing a five mile run or we'd be doing something at the park we were doing sprints and buddy carries and all this stuff and then at nine a.m we'd have a technical session with neil adams where he would you know for an hour and a half we would drill techniques and learn positions and it was no randori it was that sequential drilling that we talked about before right where you're reinforcing your your two or three attacks to set up your main attack or if you're on the ground you're going through repetitions of certain movements um and then i'd spend all afternoon at the club have lunch i'd go do my weight training in the afternoon at that at that place and then in the evening we would either do randori training at the nail adams club or we would all get in a car and we'd drive to another another location you know and we'd go train in another club that might be an hour away and there'd be you know 50 bodies there to train with and each night we'd go to a different dojo and so it would be all day at the club and i'd do that for like three weeks straight you know all we did was try do you know how he became the voice of judo do you have an understanding of what he's thinking is around like how much he dedicates to himself to just uh commentating on jude i imagine the amount of research required but also just like psychologically just the excitement he has in his voice it it takes work to do that do you have an understanding of like what his vision is with that he's always been a very charismatic animated personnel you know very passionate and loud and you know funny and the brits are very funny to begin with so he's he's you know very charismatic but um i think after coaching he tried coaching he coached the country of wales for a while he tried coaching stints in other countries he didn't he didn't have a lot of success on the coaching side um developing an olympic champion i know that some that was a goal of his that he he was a world champion i think it was 1981 he won two silver medals in the olympic games um himself he went on to coach for a while and had some political issues with the the country of of england for a while and then left england and went to wales and i think he had a coaching somewhere else as well didn't have a lot of success coaching in the sport um with athletes not at the highest level had a great national team and things like that he was really good at at teaching his technique to others because he helped me a lot um but running a program i think was difficult for him you know the boy's not listening and not having that same kind of passion and intensity that he and that's why i bonded well with him because i was all in right i went there and whatever he said i did i didn't care how hard i didn't care how long i just wanted to get as good as i could and so that's why he was a good mentor for me but now in terms of a commentator he he's very cerebral he just he loves judo he he look researches it non-stop um he's got that great voice and he knows how to bring bring life to the you know to the game and that's what he's done and now this is who he is right he he does judo full-time this is his job can ask you uh a small before we return to the actual sport the coaching of the sport it's a bit of a political question i did a whole rant before travis episode uh i love neil adams's voice i love watching judo and it's really disappointing to me that the ioc and whoever is responsible i don't understand this that they don't make it easy for people to watch the olympics uh in replay for years after like i can't watch travis's matches i can't walk like it they make it very difficult to watch stuff online so what happened is i uploaded the travis stevens episode and we talked about his ole bishop 2012 match and it was like one minute of uh like a small overlay of the video as we're talking through it with like stepping through it and it got taken down immediately from youtube that the whole four-hour conversation because of that one minute little clip and the way got taken down automatically is because the ioc has that video uploaded it's set to private but it's uploaded so like they have the video and they choose not to show it it's not that they're asking for money or whatever they're just not showing it anywhere they're not showing it through their own service like an nbc olympics or so on there's just so many great human stories that the olympics reveals they're just not made easily accessible that's the olympics charter is you want to i think uh the actual line is to ensure the fullest coverage and the widest possible audience in the world for the olympic games and it seems like to me as a fan of the olympic games we're not getting any of that do you have an understanding of why that is like why we can't watch kayla's matches travis's matches super easily even if we're willing to pay money for it so you you can't go on the international judo federation website right now and watch any of the olympic footage no no no uh so the only thing they have is for certain for example teddy renair match he lost not available anywhere really and that's like a dramatic thing so the one thing they have is for certain sports at the highest level like gymnastics they'll have a highlight which is the most frustrating thing to me because this is what i can't i'm going to go like i'm going to try to prevent myself from going on the rant but you know people don't just want to see a two-minute highlight of a historic moment they want to see the build up where the athlete is standing the nerves the fear the confidence you see the build-up to the event say it's a gymnastic whatever floor routine like their name is announced they're walking the coat then they cut to the coach and the coach with anticipation and then go to the athlete you want the full 10 minute thing you don't want a two minute highlight of what happened like last second or whatever it it it's just like the magic of that full story like a lifetime building up to those 10 minutes right that that's the magic of the olympics the both the drama and the triumph that happens in those moments and the fact that you can't really relive that like travis had a bunch of those right like he he had a bunch of times he faced like world champions right he won and lost and and just it's always close it's always dramatic right right right and none of those are available except like maybe uh the one would be uh armbard or what whatever the submission was i forgot the choke yeah the the georgia but most things are not uh usain bolt the full races not all of us races are available online um the the race with the italian winning the 100 meter uh the track race uh this this olympics is not only highlight is available from what i saw i didn't look too hard so like but that the fact that it's not super easily accessible if you're willing to pay money even but probably should be for free is it's heartbreaking to me because to me the olympics is like some of the best of humanity just like again the hardship they have to overcome so like the losses are really powerful sure because it's such heartbreak but it's also like the triumph we're losing history yeah you're losing history is what you are of of all the magical moments of your sport right it that's that's a it's a sin um i gotta blame it on television rights and in in money that's what it comes down to you talk on billions and billions of dollars of television rights paid by nbc here in the united states and globally whatever the main carriers are and all the other nations that are dictating what can be replayed and what can't and it's what it comes down to you know i i made it i made a uh dvd or you know video when i first retired from the sport it was called fury on the mat it was kind of my story right and i did it with a friend um who was a videographer and we grabbed a bunch of my old footage and olympic footage and somebody said to me you know you can't use that olympic footage and you know i was young and i had just retired i mean i can't use the olympic footage it's not it's not the television footage it's my buddy who filmed it with his own camera it's my footage yeah exactly you know and they said no if it has olympics in it or it's anything to do with the olympics the usoc owns it yeah i said okay well they said well you should get to send it to them and let them you know review it so i sent it to them and i got i got a bill back i got a thing back that said if you want to use this footage it's going to be like thirty thousand dollars and i said but it's only like three minutes i spliced it up as much as i could and i only have highlights in there and yeah and then i said come on i i i went back and i negotiated with them but at the end of the day i still have to pay like fifteen thousand dollars just to have a few minutes of footage in my own film this is and i'm thinking you wouldn't even have that film if i didn't compete in it you know like you can't you know so that was a it was a struggle this is the different like you have the same in uh jiu jitsu there's certain organizations ibbh ibj jf or like flow grappling and flow wrestling i understand i think when it's a business it might make sense first of all you should actually be good at being a business and making money which is why for me the ioc doesn't make sense like it should be accessible but it would cost money uh if if i can't buy it like i would would i would i have to email them for this footage and pay thirty thousand dollars yeah no but the the the the question is that like the way you run a business is you make that frictionalness you whatever the money is thirty thousand dollars or thirty dollars you make it frictionless and easy to pay that money but anyway i i understand why that might be the case will flow grappling but to me the olympics is a special thing for sure it's like like you said it is history like there's not even like the even the world championships don't compare i i understand they're they're really important but olympics is history and the the stories should certainly belong to the athletes if they want to do like fury on the mat to do their own story or like on a podcast to talk about the most uh tragic moment of their career it uh do you have a sense of how that could be fixed or no the only thing i could think of is you know you'd have you'd have to go to the olympic committee the us olympic committee is the place i would start because the us controls the worldwide market when it comes to television we pay the most for our television rights our sponsors pay the most for their uh rights to be associated with the best team in the world which is the united states right so so all the money starts here um i gotta believe there has to be a way to get that footage that should be accessible to the sports themselves i'm surprised it's not but if it's not then it's because of dollars you know it's because people aren't the sport itself is not willing to pay enough money to have it on its you know accessible to its audience yeah it's too cost prohibitive for them to do it no but i think it's also unfortunately might be some mixture of incompetence and just an old way of doing things because um there's a lot of money to be made on television rights where you like live show the event right but what's not being leveraged is the huge amount of money that could be made on the replay this is what people don't understand is do you know how many times just the tens of millions the the uh of times that people watch individual events years from now you watch like all the videos on youtube they're still getting plays hundreds of millions of views on stuff that happened 10 years ago 15 years ago that that's really powerful there's a lot of opportunity to make a ton of money sure so it's not that they're necessarily greedy they're also just not good at being greedy no i get what you're saying yeah it's not the tradition you know think about it though it's not traditional right for for television studios it's non-traditional to go to online streaming to you know online access to information it's not hard right because everybody's doing it now but it's it's not typical yeah so it's it requires for the ioc to operate outside their comfort zone well i definitely hope that's the case and i since travis's video got taken down it's obvious they have it they have it on their youtube channel so it's like um i'm i hope i hope that they will just release it and for money for whatever but release it and have um that's that uh history not be erased right it'd be wonderful if athletes would be could buy there you know even if you could buy your own footage you can't use it commercially you can't but you can you can buy your own matches and have them available for yourself or package the you know the the footage it would be to be awesome thank you for that that is uh quite heartbreaking for me so and i wanted to talk about it a little bit let's go to you as an athlete real quick sure you represented the united states at four olympics winning a bronze medal at two of them who or what was the toughest match or moment you had in those years maybe a moment that defined you that you remember as being particularly defining in your career i would say the the bronze medal match in atlanta in 96 because up to that moment the united states team had not won a medal had not fought for a medal in the games we were on our home turf it was my second olympic games right so i had competed in 92 and i had won two matches and and lost in the third round in barcelona um i didn't make the podium i lost to a japanese guy from japan um but the the gold silver and bronze medalist at that olympics in barcelona were all guys that i had beat in fact two of them i was undefeated against in my entire career the brazilian and the cuban i had never lost to so that's when i knew i was capable of being you know on the on the podium at the olympic games when 96 came around i was 25 years old i was fairly in my prime i had lived in japan for six months my technique was at a high level you know i was i was you know amongst the best in the world um i lost at that olympics to a guy from mongolia it was right before the match i was supposed to fight against japan so i was like anticipating the match against japan and i got beat by the mongolian so that was kind of a letdown but the match for the bronze you know in front of the hometown crowd all of my family all of my friends everybody who would ever help me in my in the sport were in the stands that day including all my teammates at brown university that were on the wrestling team and little my uncles my aunts everybody everybody was in the stands right so it was like the jimmy pedro day and uh i'm getting goosebumps right now talking about it um but it was a match against the brazilian for the bronze medal i had beaten the brazilian like two or three times before that um i found myself i found myself down in the match he actually countered me um i came in my taotoshi and he was waiting for it and he counted me and he scored a yuko against me so i was losing the fight came down to about the last minute in the match and i was just tucking in my ghee and fixing my thing and gathering my thoughts together and the whole crowd just started chanting usa usa usa and i like literally like got so much energy i walked out there i grabbed the guy i came in my talatosh again he stepped off the taotosh i threw him with uchimada free pone i won my first olympic medal in front of the hometown crowd everybody went bananas you know the united states judo team had our first medal from the olympics it ended up being the only olympic medal we won one at that games but it was like a magical moment that defined my career and solidified myself in like history where hey and now i get to step up on the olympic podium and i'm olympic medalist and to me that was my defining moment and after that i was sold like man i had to go back to the olympics again i want to win a gold medal i want to do i want this feeling all over again i don't care if i have to wait four years let's let's do it in your career the like moments like that do you think you love [Music] winning or hate losing more so do you live for those moments or are you more driven by just how much you hate losing so in order to be a champion my belief is that you have to hate losing more than you like winning but i live for those moments when you do win and what excited me the most in my career and my when i was competing was i loved being in the finals i love the spotlight being on me i can't think of too many times in my career of course there were a few but there weren't too many times where the chips were down like the lights were on and i didn't win like it was i might have lost early in the day and didn't make it to the finals or didn't make it to the metal rounds but like in my career i have a ton of golds i have a ton of bronzes which means the lights are on and i won and i have very few silvers and very few fifths so i either lost in the early rounds and didn't make to the metal rounds in my younger days or the spotlight came and i really shined because if you look i i don't know how many silvers but there wasn't very many silver medals in my career that i want you know what i mean so i just loved that moment i didn't feel pressure i loved the crowd i loved being in the spotlight i didn't have i wasn't nervous when it came to the finals or i knew i was getting a medal it didn't matter you know so it was just me against the other guy and that's how i always saw it and i just loved that moment so your dad was your coach um you gotta get to meet him tonight oh great um he's he's kind of a legend in the sport so how has your dad helped you as a coach as an athlete as a human being throughout the years one my dad is the most brutally honest person you will ever meet in your life brutally honest he will tell you a if if you are fat he will tell you you're fat right to your face he wants you to get better he wants you to be healthy yeah he doesn't want you to die of obesity right it's just the way he is if you didn't do well he will will not sugarcoat it he will let you know what you didn't do right and what he's so he's the ultimate litmus test yes right um second is he is the most passionate caring like deep like always thinking about very cerebral very like um studio a student of the game somebody who helped me immensely in divine defining my strategy um helping me improve and and always you know look for the what's next um in terms of training i think that he's probably the most brilliant human when it comes to preparing an athlete physically not to say mentally physically for success when all the chips are down that athlete will be ready that day and he has a system of of training and preparing and getting the right athlete to peak for performance you mean like conditioning like the whole thing yes okay because i remember like vaguely remember kayla harrison talking about her preparation being very difficult yeah that's it that's him yeah that's him at the same time you go back and ask ronda rousey about her career right my dad was her coach yeah my dad moved her to camp camp new hampshire in boston got her up ran her in the morning had her downstairs in the basement of his house training with the weights we brought a russian girl in she did throws on his cement outside with the little crash bag through the russian girl you know 100 times that morning and then every night came to boston you know to the training center in wakefield trains at night and went back and slept at my dad's house and three weeks straight before she went off to beijing and he did the same with kayla he did the same with me like he's just his passion is is producing athletes the highest level and he knows how to do it and then the one side of my dad's coaching where i think there's a flora weakness is on the mental preparation side of the game he wasn't somebody that was um i don't know if he he maybe because he wasn't an olympic champion himself and wasn't a world champion he lacked the confidence in helping others be more confident so he's more of a this is what you need to work on type of thing he doesn't know how to build the athletes up to make them feel invincible and i feel like that's something that i was able to give all of the athletes to to help them with that visualization belief in yourself knowing that you're going to win before you step out of the mat knowing that we've earned the right to victory you know seeing success in your mind having a positive uh mantra that you i'm the best in the world nobody's beating me today type of type of feeling so you go out there feeling like king kong when you step on the mat that nobody's going to stop you you know and so i think the combination of both of us as coaches i'm a a lot more technical my dad is good at letting identifying what they need to do for their techniques and what you know how in strategy how to beat how to beat opponents and putting game plans together um so combined the two of us made a an unbelievable team so he uh he's not going to let the athlete be soft when they uh when they enter the highest the most difficult uh uh competitions of their career so on the mental side what's mental preparation look like like how many years before the olympics do you start helping an athlete believe that they can win an olympic medal well i think it's got to be a seed in that athlete's brain something they want to do right nobody nobody can quickly get there right it's a long process but if your goal if you're a national champion or you've proven yourself to win it in some international tournaments and you think the olympics is a possibility for you then defining it as hey i want to be on the olympic team that would be the first step into you know into um getting ready and you know but you i always make them put it on paper you know if it really is your goal then you show me that it's your goal and put it on paper and commit to it i want to be olympic medalist i want to be olympic champion i want to go to the olympics world team member maybe junior world team member whatever it is we we walk before we go to the highest level but if the goal is to go to the olympics let's let's accomplish these other things first right because if we if we can accomplish these other things then we're on our way to getting to the ultimate goal which is the olympics for somebody like kayla for example you know she didn't she didn't say that she wanted to be olympic champion you know when she first came here in 2005. right we wanted to become national champion then we wanted to be on the world team then we wanted to be a world medalist then we our sites were set on the olympics or the olympic gold you know so it's having those clearly defined goals that are attainable like they should be a reach they should be a stretch but they have to be attainable they can't be just a pipe dream you know but once you put it to paper and if you think it's achievable then it's it's mapping the plan to get there is there a daily process of visualizing yourself as an olympic champion or national champion yes it is you should do it every either every night before you go to bed or every um before every training session or after every training session one of those three times it should or first thing you wake up in the morning because it may be to help some people it motivates them to go do what it is they they're supposed to do in the day um but the process of visualization is is to me is closing your eyes for a few moments your brain works really really fast right and it's actually picturing the day in its entirety from start to finish you know from the moment you wake up and you step on the scale so the moment you have your breakfast and you go through your morning routine like live the day that you're going to have at the olympics so whatever it is you're trying to do let's say the olympic day for example picture yourself making weight picture yourself who you're around eating your breakfast you know having maybe saying a few jokes laughing this is a real day make it real yeah um going back and getting packing your judo bag for the day you know getting on the bus driving to the venue feel what it's like walking into the stadium you know for the first time going to the warm-up area seeing your drawer up on the you know on the sheet who you're going to fight that day watching yourself warm up go through your warm-up routine walking out of the chute you know into the venue going to do that first fight picture the moment of throwing your opponent coming off the mat high-fiving the coach getting ready for your second fight like live the day from start to finish and make it as real as possible you know where all the way to the moment where you've just won and you're raising your arms in celebration you're bowing you're hugging your opponent you come off the mat you hug your coach you're running around the stadium with the flag you know you you stepped up on the podium you heard your name olympic champion jimmy pedro like you heard the moment the the the metal being put around your neck picture the people coming up on the podium with you arms around them taking the pictures like the more real you can make it even before it ever happens right when you do that enough times i feel that like pathways get created for you so that when your your body gets to that moment and i've been here before this is it this is my moment this is what i've pictured my whole life i'm not nervous because i've seen this this is gonna happen i believe it's possible right and i believe the athletes that do that and make it real enough that when they get to that moment they go right through there's no hesitation yeah this is what this is meant to be this is my destiny this is why i did everything i did versus the ones that don't think about it ever but just kind of like hope yeah it's not real to them it doesn't feel attainable they don't believe it's possible they haven't committed to believing it was possible without that commitment in yourself and that belief it can't happen and one thing that uh i talked to travis a bit about this uh you probably worked with him on the details of what you're talking about but he said that you should really like focus on visualizing like the sensations you feel so like say if you're drinking coffee or something like that you're not thinking about like like observing yourself from a third person perspective drinking coffee like you're you're thinking of how your hand will feel when it touches something warm like you tried to replay the actual sensations you would feel right so it sounds uh kind of strange but meaning like you really want to put yourself in the body as you would experience those moments as opposed to like watching yourself on tv experience in those moments like really be inside and yeah so that means sensations like how does it feel when you grip a ghee how does it you know um the yeah the the sweating just the sensation of sweat like rolling down your forehead or whatever like all of those actual feelings when i explain it to you yeah like i guess my body has been through through it so many times both in my mind and in reality that it brings back all of those same emotions it i start to get goosebumps my my armpits start to sweat like i'm living it if it's real yeah i'm reliving it now but i in your when you're going through the visualization process it has to be that real the the smells the the the taping of the fingers like the more colorful and the more real you can make it the more believable it is so i've been doing this kind of thing just having listened to you enough for uh other stuff in life so let's see if it works uh but do you see this kind of visualization being useful for other things in career and all those kind of things all 100 100 because i just know with my own life my own my own experiences like i like my wife sometimes says to me she says well where do you see yourself in like you know five years from now and five years ago i had said to her you know i want to have my own business i want to have you know this is the amount of money that i'm hoping i can make in a given year like you have to have goals for yourself like is this if you put out there like okay i want to make a million dollars in a year that's a big number like like for me or for the normal person that like that's a really big number you know what i mean like it's not especially when you're not making that much at the time it's a super big number right so having those goals for yourself like it it won't happen and it's not possible unless you dream it's possible and think it that it's possible and then it doesn't magically happen and maybe it doesn't happen in five years maybe happens in 10 at least you're on the path to getting there you know what i mean and i said i want to own my own business i want to control my own destiny i want to be my own boss i want to make my own decisions like these are the things that i told her i wanted to do and and now i'm at that point you know where you know i work for myself i have my own company i have partners obviously but like if i want to pick up and go somewhere for a week i just do i have to ask permission to do it right that that's what life freedom right that's what i like yeah it's so and all of it starts with a dream in in the same with my dojo when i first opened so i ran a dojo for a long time and i only had 60 students always like 40 to 60 students had fluctuated and i sit there and say why can't i get more people in my door right so i hired consultants to come in and look at my business and say why right and they came in and said well this place is really intimidating like if i was coming in off the street the first thing i see is this big olympic champion on the wall and i see this training that's going on and these guys are flying through the air and landing hard and as a white belt you're telling me that's the class for me like no way i'm not going to do that so like i listened to these people i said you're right and you know the training was hour and a half two hours long people can't handle an hour and a half or two hours training when i first walked in the door so i had to restructure all my programming i had to look at the way i was offering my my curriculum at my school and i had to make levels for everybody right like here's my four to six year old class here's my six to 13 year old class there's my all my beginner classes they don't mix in with the advanced people and like you know and i had to learn how to make it accessible for everybody instead of just the the people that wanted to train hard and then the challenge was okay if you can have a lot of people in your dojo training it's a recreational school you can't produce champions at that same school that's what i was told so then i got all my black belts together and i said listen this is my vision this is what i want i want to have a club that has over 200 judo only athletes no jiu jitsu no karate nothing judo only i want over 200 people and in the inside of that dojo i want to have olympic champions and i want to have recreational like little kids five and six years old older guys in their 70s training i don't care but i want the spectrum of recreational and i want olympic champions the only way to do that is to take your instructors and say you're going to do this define the roles who's going to be the recreational coach who's going to be the competitive coach how do we separate these programs and lo and behold that was my vision that i shared with all of them and that was back in 2006 and by 2012 we've got olympic champion kayla harrison we have over 200 people at the school we have a successful thriving business but it doesn't happen without that vision a plan and believing that it's possible believing that it's possible i don't know but i personally have uh on top of that almost like very specific visions of of a future like uh um i don't know what an because i don't want to give actual examples because uh for several reasons one of which is just people will as they often have they often will in your life they'll just uh laugh at it a little bit like that seems silly and i don't i'm very hesitant to share certain things like that with people because they'll i mean um i'm with johnny ive who's the lead designer in apple like you want that dream that little flame to not people will put that flame out too easily even people that love you so i have very specific kind of visions like well maybe for travis it would be like a specific opponent or something like holy bishop like very specific very specific situation of what's going to happen not just like i want to be olympic champion but very specific like almost silly situations yeah like the dynamic between travis and ollie bishop or something like maybe visualize that for me that helps because it makes it all real even more real it's not like some big goal like a million dollars or something like that which is also really important to have because you can measure it and so on but the it's it's just like you belong in those situations just believing you belong right right right in there it's not that they could be you yeah it could be you and that for some reason that really helps me the the little details sure the like visualizing is most of them are almost a little bit funny like the the focusing on the funniness it's the the mundaneness of it uh helps me a lot and all the people that have done great things they're just human too correct and i think a lot of people overestimate who others are right and don't and and sell themselves too short yeah because at the end of the day everybody started like everybody else really i mean we did you know we were all infants we couldn't walk we couldn't talk we couldn't do anything we learned along the way but and i think that's the one thing that i realized is that and i tell this to to my athletes but i also tell it to my recreational students nobody is better than you are nobody unless you allow them to be right if you really want something to happen then like map the plan believe in yourself decide and no full out you're going to fail a lot you're going to get beat down you're going to have losses you're going to have struggles like and i think that's the one thing with social media today is that everybody sees everybody succeed nobody posts the picture when they're on the ground in failure losing like nobody nobody sees when you broke your arm and you had to go through rehab you know whatever it is like had your injuries and you're on your couch watching tv and you were suffering and you were like everybody has really really dark bad moments in their life and defeats and losses and suffrage and it's only at the end after they've recovered from all of that they've reclined up the mountain and they've gone to the pinnacle that you see them on social media with the metal right but everybody else like struggles and was human and failed many many times and you know convincing yourself that you're capable i think is the first start with everything do you need people in your life that believe in you or should most of it come from within yourself i think most of it has to come in from from it it certainly helps but it has to come from you first you have to be driven like other people can help you define where you want to go and help you get there and encourage you and can support you and you know whether it's resource wise or with connections and like they can help with that path but that that first part has to come from you it has to be your passion your desire your it's your commitment to yourself you're the one that's going to ultimately make all the sacrifices to do it so you ha it has to be your decision not your parents not your spouse's something that you're really motivated to do let me ask you about travis kayla and maybe a few of the other athletes you've been involved with so first travis travis stevens olympic silver medalist three-time olympian 2008 2012 2016. what makes travis stevens great what makes him so successful what makes him unique in your mind as an athlete through all the hardship he had to overcome [Music] through his uh weird looking say inagi that uh eventually worked out nicely to the the full richness of his personality in the context of all the other great athletes you've coached what makes him special his fight travis has fight and you know the first time i ever saw travis stevens was in like recognized him maybe i had seen him before as a younger boy or something but like actually recognized him as i brought a group of young kids to italy for a competition in a training camp and it was this program called u23 elite and i picked hand-picked 20 kids to go to this event and it was the first time i coached uh an international team and i had never seen travis fight before compete train anything and during this competition you know he's an 81 kilo player i think he was maybe like 18 years old um 17 18 years old and it was a really hard european event and i think travis won three matches and he lost two but what stood out the most to me was like the fight he had in him he was scrapping every fight like he scrapped hard like he wanted to win more than any of them right he didn't win but he wanted to win more and i and i noticed that right away and then i also noticed that after he lost his second match and he was eliminated from the tournament i saw how disappointed he was in himself like he actually thought he was supposed to beat those people even though he was like 17 right he's fighting against grown men that are you know a high level judo much higher than he was and i said to him i said hey son like don't worry man you got a long career ahead of you like i'm glad you're disappointed but there's so many things you don't know and so many skills you don't have the fact that you were able to hold your own and scrap like that like you've got a good future and i remember calling my friend jason morris after that tournament and i said hey man do you ever hear this kid travis stevens he says no why i said man that kid's got some fighting him right and i said that i said that to jason at the time i said that kid's got some fight in him man he's pretty talented you know and that's how it started um but so i saw that i meant when he was young but the other thing was travis like there's not there's no such thing as hard work to that guy if you tell him to put his head through the wall and help and that's how he wins he'll go put his head through the wall he'll do whatever it takes for him to do to achieve success and he hates failure more than he likes winning 100 he always has he punishes himself when he doesn't do well he makes himself work harder he goes and you know just abuses himself when he doesn't when he doesn't succeed because he's so heartbroken and disappointed in himself so that's a trait that i think all of the athletes that i work with like closely though they all had that same trait they hated losing more than anything they would they would break their arm they'd fall on their head you know they'd rather get hit by a car than lose a judo tournament yeah you know and then and as a result then they all had fight and they all were willing to train they were willing to listen and they would do anything for victory you know within you know within the rules i'm not talking about taking drugs or anything like that but they would they'd give a hundred percent of themselves for victory and you know travis was somebody that when he was down he found a way to do to get better doing something else if he couldn't do standing that's when he started jiu jitsu he couldn't go on his feet anymore he couldn't stand up and train i might as well go learn jiu jitsu and get good on the ground right because i can you know so he always found a way no matter what obstacle was in his way he just went around it so what about the interesting to get your perspective because i know travis's perspective is the just the number of injuries like what do you make of the perseverance through all the injuries he had to overcome specifically like you just observing this creature that you've coached i mean he seems to not see the injuries as a problem he's just like just like you said head through the wall it's like what like when i when we were talking about injuries he kind of he doesn't even see the injuries themselves as the problem because he thinks that the injuries you know you heal back stronger i forget the exact quote but he said like my body is is now less injury prone than most of anyone else because i've already broken i've broken everything and it's just growing back stronger like because i asked them something like do you regret sort of pushing your body to all of those places that resulted in those injuries he was his response was like no i'm stronger now so i don't know if that's justification but that certainly describes a mindset that yeah head through the wall that doesn't uh it's almost not dramatic like look i got this injury it's so i'm so like brave and special for overcoming this injury he's just he's just that's part of the job and he gets the job done but like that job evolves a lot of injuries one of the talks i gave travis and that team at that at that particular tournament was at the very beginning of the camp after the tournament i said to them listen my vision i shared my vision with them i said my vision is you know in seven years because that was 2005. i said in seven years i want to have a u.s team that steps on the mat that is ready to kick ass and in order to get there all of you guys can be a part of this team and part of this process but in order to get there you guys have to be the first ones to practice you have to be the last ones to leave because we have to work harder than the rest of the world because we're up against all odds i said i am sick of america being a laughing stock of judo and being the first round easy match warm-up for everybody else i said if you get injured you're not going to be on the side with with you know with a ice bag on taking off rounds and then get back on the mat the next day and tell me you're okay if you can train the next day you can train today so there's no injury the only time you're leaving this dojo is if the ambulance has to take you out of here you know i and i do think subliminally travis bought into that message and heard that message then he said if i'm going to be a champion that's the way i'm going to do it and he did and he embodied it he lived it man there were many times in europe where i said dude just tape it up go go off to the side just take the day off like take the rest of the day off you're beat up you can't do it he says no i'm going to tape it up i'm going to tell you no you don't need to right now and he said no sensei i'm doing it i'm you know the ambulance isn't taking me out it's just just my wrist it's just my ankle it's just my it's just my ankle you know i love it yeah what about the so the other really big thing is you comment on a little bit is the weight cut so early in his career he was 81 kg and that was presumably not so difficult but later in his career his 81 kg and it's becoming more and more difficult so that's that's the other thing with him is uh so i've known a lot of really really tough people at the highest levels broken by the weight cut like that can break the toughest minds and it doesn't seem to have broken him and he's delivered on it often on like insane way cuts so um just as a coach what do you think about his particular his mind and the challenge of the way cut it was part of his process it was part of his way of getting ready for battle suffering yeah it really was and if i'm going to suffer this much then i'm going to make my opponents pay yeah for all the suffering that i went through to get here yeah that was his mindset um later on in his career you're right like a lot of times travis he would never step on a scale you know until he got to the tournament you know and even when he'd get to the tournament like he'd weigh like 90 kilos he'd show up at the tournament nine kilos over i'm like you have to but i never it was just an expectation of making weight not making weight was never an option for any of our athletes and travis knew it and he said as a professional my job is to make weight if i don't make weight he you know he he was never going to allow that to happen and he was never going to allow us to come to him and say hey i told you you know because he losing wasn't an option making a weight wasn't not making weight was not an option for him ever either but you know a lot of times he wouldn't even he'd be nine kilos over on the plane going over to the tournament and have to make weight three days later you know and he didn't break 86 kilos until the day before the tournament like he had five kilos over the day before that was his way but he would do three workouts you know wake up in the morning work out then he'd eat then he'd work out in the afternoon then he'd eat again then he'd work out again at night and then he'd reward himself hey i worked out three times today he'd go have a you know a mountain dew yeah you know or chocolate bar you know and then he's next morning he's uh you know back up to 87 and he would never touch weight until the morning of lance that that's a when he that he wasn't on weight for more than like five minutes his process would break a lot of people so the fact that he got the job done is not just the job done but every single time he got the job done and i made those athletes fight we would fight in paris we would do a camp for a week double session camp for a week he'd be seven kilos over have to fight the next weekend we're talking two or three days later you know so not only did he make the weight but he did a grueling training camp twice a day and and then cut weight and then fought again then did another camp for a week in double session training camp and then fought on the third weekend in a row and our athletes went through hell you know all of our athletes went through hell because on the tour around the world they fought in every event they did every camp they fought in every event whereas most of the other teams like japan comes in and fights in paris then they go home you know they maybe do a camp for three days then they go home they don't stay in europe for four or five weeks straight and fighting every tournament and when you get to germany the germans skip the french open they skip the camp in france they're just getting ready for germany our athletes already had two competitions two training camps two three weight cuts now and then so they're not a hundred percent when they fight in germany but that's all part of the experience they need the training that they need that they don't get here in the in in this country and all of those were just preparation for our world championships or our olympic games so by the time our athletes got to those tournaments they felt so strong so rested so like man this guy that felt like a monster in germany feels like nothing today because you're fully rested now you know but part of the challenge is because the american team is smaller and more i mean just smaller is um you know all the different places you go for to do the weight cut to do the diet to do the preparation or the recovery there's like that process changes every time so it's you're basically have to improvise a lot oh yeah you show up to a hotel and how you do the weight cut you don't know and this is the different weather conditions it's not it's like um so what is it rocky versus drago right right right so you don't have you have to just improvise and that that's also a fascinating part of the american judo story which is like you have to improvise more well i was funny because when i it was 1990 and it was at the goodwill games right and we were it was a u.s olympic committee type event and so we're on the bus with the the swim team and it was me and jason morris on the american team and we're going to the judo competition but we're on the bus with the swim team i'm sorry we're going to the venue where we're staying you know i remember being like by ourselves with no staff no no no manager no coach we'll just buy ourselves going to fight in russia right and uh and the swim team's on there with their full sweats and their staff and like their managers and i i heard the lady the girl go oh sorry this is 1994 because it was in st petersburg russia so i heard the little girl on the team she goes up the coast she goes coach um do you think you can send the massage therapist to my room at 10 a.m you know i'm feeling kind of jet-lagged i looked it i mean jason we looked at it like she yeah wouldn't even have a staff like what the hell is going on here you know what a difference in yeah sporting you know different sports within the same country you know and but that i mean not to romanticize things but that you do represent the spirit of the olympics when you're kind of the the improvisational nature of it because it it is just you you and sometimes you and the coach and just pure guts and you against the world with no money the warrior spirit the warrior spirit how did it feel like when he after being in two olympics beating some of the best people in the world facing some of the best people in the world and just barely losing what did it feel like to you as a coach to see travis stevens win the silver medal electric uh like first of all in 2012 in london it was like it it felt like somebody died i'm not gonna be i'm not gonna lie to you like the ole bishop match not no just seeing travis not finish on the podium period you know in the only bishop match i thought he won regardless of who won and who lost he just left everything he had on that mat right 10 minutes of probably a 20-something minute match but 10 minutes of fighting actually right he left everything he had he wanted to be in the olympic finals he wanted to be olympic champion and when he didn't get that opportunity he lost everything he he drained himself he cried for 45 minutes straight i couldn't regroup them i couldn't get them up i said travis you've got to stop you're crying you've got to get off the floor we've got a bronze medal fight like if you don't recover you're not going to perform well and he just didn't care like it was gold or nothing and so when he walked out against the canadian boy he had beaten the canadian i think at that time he had beaten that canadian every single time except for that bronze medal match but he just didn't have the fight in him anymore he left it all in the match in the bishop match so to see him come back with zero right we just had a team where his best friend marty malloy won a bronze medal right then the day after travis fights kayla harrison goes and wins her first gold medal right our first ever goal so we have a gold and a bronze he's his training partner wins a gold his best friend from growing up wins a bronze he has nothing right to see him for four years go through hell like literally like all of his injuries every training camp and then forget the humiliation because every time any reporter ever came to my dojo they want to talk to kayla she's the olympic champion yeah who's this travis guy yeah you know who is this guy you know so he didn't meddle you know he's not that important and you know up until right until you get to the right before the olympics now they talk about he's an olympian again and yeah but up until that point and then every little kid see kayla's medal oh travis yeah you went to the olympics where's your medal how did you do you know it was i took fifth i didn't place you know it's it's the lowest of low every day having that constant reminder so four years later when that guy i mean mentally he was ready physically he was ready that was the best and strongest travis stevens that i've ever seen and i've ever felt because i had to get on the mat and do some drills and stuff like that and like try to defend on bars and because we didn't have a lot of bodies in in rio and i was like my god he's i said after one of the practices was the strongest i've ever felt that guy right before the competition so physically was ready mentally the morning of competition i said to travis i i looked him in the eye and i said you know we're ready to go over to the venue i said are you ready today and he just looked at me like he goes i am going to shock the world today i'm going to shock the world today and i said all right great let's go right so we go to the venue and um every other athlete was just like nervously like doing repetitions of uchi comeys you could see like sweat coming out you could see like all this nervous energy going through their body and here comes travis stevens he's got these big goofy headphones on he's got a tank top that says usa on it he's got the swim trunks that say usa like that have shiny letters that glow in the dark yeah and and he's like and this is in the middle of the judo hall where all these athletes are warming up for their first match he's like dancing around like doing this loose warm-up like almost like a little kid at an amusement park whose dad said yeah go play you know and it was like he had waited four years for that moment he was so relaxed yeah so focused so relaxed and couldn't wait it was like a cage tiger like if you like coming out of the chute to go step on to the the mat was like this tiger that you were just letting out of the cage and he just go like now is your time to go fight and that's what he did that whole day and like when he beat turkish villain in the in the semis and choked them out and won that fight like there's nobody with the exception of maybe the guys in the america team there was nobody in that stadium that expected travis to beat him yeah nobody yeah like you know he had smashed travis i don't know how many times before that free phone like in the first minute even it wasn't even a fight right and and it was great game plan he's the world number one at the time too world number one at the time uh world champion carried the flag for the georgian federation walking into the games uh most dominant 90 81 kilo player in that weight class for you know quite some time and man we just had his number and travis was ready to go you know it was so cool it was so awesome we were i mean we had already won kayla had already won her second goal right the way the the the event went and travis winning that was like icing on the cake for our team that was the best performance we've ever had in history it's awesome so you mentioned kayla she is one of if not the greatest american judoka ever uh two-time gold medalist 2010 world champion 2010 first senior worlds senior worlds what makes kayla special what makes her so great what made this champion it's a combination of of a lot of things one was obviously kayla's mental toughness right to overcome what she overcame you know this is a girl who you know let let's i don't say forget about the sexual abuse but the the fact that she had to go through that in life and and learned how to compartmentalize that and keep that off as a separate part of her brain you know and forget about it and move on that took an incredible team to help her do that and my dad was a huge part of her accomplishing that so for people who don't know we should comment and say that kayla had to go through trauma in her earlier life through sexual abuse and had to overcome that through the whole process of of becoming a champion as well right because she had zero self-esteem zero self-worth she was the lowest of lows and and um you know didn't even want to be on this earth right so she she was traumatized obviously for and getting her the right help and surrounding her with the right people who could help her get through that and and be by her side as she's getting through that and letting her know and reaffirming that she's doing the right thing and she made the right decision and she should have zero guilt and you know this doesn't define her it happened to her but it doesn't define her what defines her is what she does from now on and then rebuilding that person to become who she became i think the mental toughness is is a big part of it her her mind um but then as an athlete you know she's a lot like travis you know she's she's a warrior she's a fighter you know my dad always jokes with her you know he says you're a workhorse you're not a thoroughbred we're not going to treat you like a thoroughbred right you're a workhorse so you're going to work and the way you're going to get bigger and stronger is you're going to work harder and you're going to keep you know and she came to us when she was only 15. so at that time we got her with a really good strength and conditioning coach we did all the core olympic style lifting like as her body was developing she was getting stronger every single day and then you know she had the luxury of being on the mat with at the time i was still young enough to train and be on the mat and i was around her weight class and travis was able to train with her and all we had all the top u.s athletes at the time training here at my school so she got the benefit of all the best guys to train within the country you know and and her doing all of those rounds you know night in week night every night every week every year compiled with the best you know highest level she could as a girl she got the strength she got the technique she got the and then she had the coaching on top of it with my dad being on her as you know working her out and you know having the the wherewithal to develop a strategy and a plan for her because when she first came here she competed at 63 kilos which is 138 pounds at the time ronda was ronda rousey was also training here and she was 70 kilos so if kayla was struggling making 63 so the only way to obviously the only way to still compete is to move up but my dad said well if you move up then you're in rhonda's weight so let's skip that weight and you're going to go to 78 kilos and he told her listen you're gonna go up two eight classes she looked at him and was like that's 172 pounds and he goes well i don't care like you're already struggling making 138 you weigh 150 what's the difference we put 20 pounds on go to 170. so that's why she jumped two weights because she passed rhonda she went to the weight above so she could make the national team and she had a chance to go to the olympics and and all that because we envisioned ronda staying around until 2012. and that's also like a long-term vision because you kind of grow into that body then over time correct so you can dominate you can learn what it's like in that weight class you can learn to dominate that weight classic excel and then dominate people that cut weight too hard too long they forget about technique because they're only worried about losing weight they're always tired in training they don't give 100 effort they're not getting better she now is just focused on getting better at judo you know and getting bigger getting stronger getting more powerful so i think giving her that purpose and that that was a great call what are some memorable or maybe the most memorable moment kayla harrison moment to you as her coach not the most perhaps let's say what are some memorable moments everybody hears the good ones right so everybody knows she won the war she won the world championships in tokyo in 2012 in 2010 she was our two-time olympic champion in 2012 2016. i'll never forget those moments right because they're historic one of the biggest moments that i like sharing this story with everybody is that in 2010 in january kayla was still a developing athlete and we had a local tournament in new york it was in brooklyn new york was called the starrett cup and i knew that at that tournament that two of the canadian girls they were like ranked 15th or 20th in the world they weren't superstars but they were tough players both of them i knew were going to be at that tournament so i said kayla we're going to go to this tournament you're going to compete against the canadian girls get some good experience you know figure out what you need to work on and then we'll go home and work on some stuff well she went to the tournament there was only three girls in the weight her and the two canadians at that tournament she lost both fights right so this is january 2010. she lost both matches you know she was competitive but certainly things she needed to work on it was good you know development thing for her and for us it also opened her mind to say oh man you know because she was already a a junior world champion at the time but so now there's another level this is a senior level right you got to go up another level and here's two girls that aren't even medalists that are beating you so now there's more work to be done and so i like telling that story because everybody sees the champions and the greatest moments they don't see them when they have bad days and could you imagine being you know oh and two you feel like you feel like a failure right but ten months later it was tokyo 2010. she went from owen to at starrett new york to world champion 2010 in the motherland in japan yeah i mean that's an amazing turnaround and that's only possible if you put the losses in their proper context you don't let it destroy you mentally you just keep moving forward correct this is so funny uh so you were there 2010 at the stair cup was travis there yeah i made all those we fought at every loc like the mentality of our team was no tournament is beneath us if our goal is to go to the olympics in the worlds and win there's no tournament that's beneath us we're going to get experience we're going to fight we're going to learn we're going to compete we're going to get better you know i actually just as a funny little con side i was there i competed really this is one of the earlier tournaments like the beginner division oh no i actually did black belt division too that was one of the actual yeah i remember that that's when it was so early that i thought like i was also really strong at that time just like physically like powerlifting stuff so i thought like it would be good experience uh to also do uh black belt division and remember it must have been actually travis's division which is funny uh uh there's legere brothers harry and gary they are super they're super good and they're super dominant but i think travis faced one of them and beat them um i i don't know i just remembered uh it's funny how there's just like these little roads that later reconnect right uh but yeah there's some incredible people there and it i saw obviously the positive things and it's interesting that kayla's story was also intersecting there and that was one of the lower points for her another story i like to to share is that you have to know your athletes right and you have to you know really get to know their psychological what they're thinking psychologically mentally what's going through their head another story was in in tokyo it was 2015 the tokyo grand slam so we had had kayla face off against almost all the top girls in her in her division she had beaten everybody going into the 2016 olympics but at the 2015 tokyo grand slam there was a girl from japan that she hadn't fought in a long time and she lost to the girl last time she she fought her so it was something we wanted her to beat this girl going into the olympics so that she knew she could beat everybody and it was a first-round match and it was gonna be tough for kayla right it was gonna be a really hard fight and um she had won a bunch of tournaments in a row leading up to that so her confidence was really high but at the same time she didn't think she needed this fight and she showed up to the tournament and she said i don't think i can fight today i've got a stinger in my neck you know i've got a stinger coming down my neck and i'm kind of sore and she didn't tell us she went and told the trainer she walked around she's holding her neck and me and my dad were like what's up with her i don't know and then so like maybe she doesn't want to fight today i don't know right so all of a sudden the trainer comes up to us and she didn't come to us the trainer came to us you know i really don't think it's a good idea that kayla fight today i mean we looked at him and like well your opinion doesn't really matter does it okay what's up with her yeah oh she has this thing in her neck it's like a pinched nerve and there's this and then we talked i said is there a risk of her getting injured like is this pain or is this risk that she's going to get injured and she's going to set her back like long time in her career she says no she's not going to get injured it's just a pinched nerve a little pain she's going to have to deal with like okay well can you fix the pain he says yeah i can do this and that and i can give her a shot and the pain will go away okay then do that and so kayla kayla comes up she goes didn't the trainer talk to you he said yeah he talked to us well he said i can't fight i know but we already talked to the trainer and i love it he said you're good to go yeah she looked at us like and then we had to talk to her and say listen you're not injured you're in pain because we just came from a camp i said you're in pain but here's the deal we want you to fight this girl why don't you go out there and beat this girl period i don't care i want to know that you can beat this girl this is why we came this is our last hard tournament before the olympic games this is what you what we want from you and lo and behold she understood she they gave her a quick shot the rest of the world thought we were crazy making her compete yeah and then she went out there she fought didn't even know she was injured no you know what i mean she just went out there she fought the tournament she beat the japanese girl she ended up going through the whole tournament she took a gold medal she won the event it turned out to be a great confidence builder and it it yeah uh and that kind of sets you up for all the chaos that can happen at the olympic games and it tells you if you can beat these girls when you're not 100 yeah and you're not at your best you're physically beat mentally beat imagine what you're going to do when you're fresh well when she was going to the olympic games there's a lot she had the mental game down down down there wasn't a girl in that division that thought that could be kayla going into those games not a one they just looked at her and went no not happening yeah that's great i mean she's a great olympic champion two-time olympic champion but there is uh there is something that she's commented on which is she's suffered or went through depression after winning her second olympic gold why do you think this happens you often hear stories of great champions becoming depressed after the olympics there's a lack of purpose afterwards right because you've done in life what you set out to do you've had a goal every day you woke up you knew what your purpose was you knew what your you know what your day looked like you knew why you were doing that and all of a sudden you won and you got all the fame and you're all happy and it but then you wake up and you go now what i don't have a next and and also because there was nothing for her there was no there was no path set out for kayla that said okay we're gonna you know you're gonna become an ambassador a global ambassador of judo you know the ijf is going to help pay a salary the the usa judo is going to give you a salary here's what we want you to go teach children we want you to go be an ambassador for women we're going to fly around and you know whatever it is we're going to give you a job and here's what you're going to do you know if you'd like to take it there was nothing for her like i remember doing the interview at the olympics with her and they said are you going to compete in the next olympics and i said no like why she already two-time gold medalist what does three-time gold medalist do for her nothing right it doesn't motivate her to do it again they said are you doing mma i said no why would she do on me that's ridiculous like she doesn't need mma she should be able to make a living off of what she's accomplished in this sport for the rest of her life yes but what happens is and what most people don't understand is once you say i'm retired i'm no longer competing in the in the sport of judo you don't get a salary from usa judo anymore which she was getting i think she got like 72 000 a year from from usa judo at the time you don't get a stipend from the olympic committee anymore goes away your sponsor like the new york athletic club was a great sponsor for her for all those years in fact she could have never been the athlete she became without the support of the nyc because i talked to them when she was 15 i said hey i got a girl that's really good someday like if you invest in her now i promise you she'll pay back for you and they said and i remember the day she won the olympic gold i called the guy up and said hey i told you so but you know they can no longer give you stipends because you're not competing and representing them anymore so that goes away um all of your sponsorships and all of your money that you would make from your tv commercials or whatever that didn't happen for her after the olympics because judo is an obscure sport right so she didn't have any opportunities for that at the end of the day she has no no revenue coming in how do you live you get a bonus of 25 grand from the olympic committee or whatever for for winning a gold but aside from that you're not going to live on that money so no purpose no goal right what am i going to wake up and do tomorrow i don't know so she has no direction and at the same then at the same time she has no money coming in so everything shuts off so now it's like where do you turn what do you do you know and that leads to being depressed because yeah even though i've accomplished all this stuff i'm kind of lost in life like what's next for me and i guess you just have to ride that out because when you're a great human being great champion life has a way of helping you find a way right i mean she she's in mixed martial arts now but she has a lot of stuff going on right well her kids she she adopted her her sister's kids so she's their legal guardian now so that is her purpose right raising raising these kids and making them part of her family and um she's fortunate enough that she has enough money that she can do that and she can give them a good life you know i'm going to ask you to start some trouble but i heard that she said somewhere that she can beat khabib nurmagomedov in judo what do you think to be honest with you i mean i don't know what level of judoka yeah i don't know i don't know what level he's but i do know that that russian system respects judo immensely what i will tell you is this i trained with kayla and i was an olympic medalist and a world champion in judo and granted i was older when i trained with her but you have to go as a man you have to go 100 or she will smash you yeah as a man and i could tell you that if khabib doesn't do a lot of just judo it doesn't like you know gripping and doesn't understand like if he's you know if he can throw that's one thing but if he doesn't really understand you at a high level she will throw him she would beat him in a match in a judo contest not in a mixed martial arts contest not in a wrestling contest not in a submission contest in a pure judo match where he cannot grab legs and he has to grip up and just throw i'd put my money on kayla unless he's you know and if he could go placed in the nationals in russia he would beat her but if he's not at that level of judo he's more like a brown belt or he's not he's not a high level judo player she will win i saw her take some of our best juniors in this country some of the some of the um guys that went and won our meddled in our senior nationals i've seen her smash all of them in judo now she's not going to do that to a travis stevens she's not going to do that you know to a to a senior national champion you know or olympian in our sport but she will go toe-to-toe with every other male if black belts are not speaking of khabib and russia um vladimir putin i don't know if you have heard of him he's the president of russia but he's also judoka yes have you gotten a chance to uh see him do judo what do you think about his judo if you were to and so i i'm actually really good friends with the the russian federation uh the the guy in charge is izio gamba he's an italian he's a mastermind behind their success of the 2012 and 2016 olympic teams 2020 he suffered from leukemia blood cancer so he wasn't part of their 2020 program but he was part of 2012 2016. that whole national the olympic team in 2012 came to our studio and lived here for a month in boston they went to school in boston i brought them to my house they had three olympic champions um they oh my god they all came and lived here in boston for a month they wanted to be part of like experience america type program so i've seen all of them with putin in russia at their national training center working out with them and taking falls and doing judo with him so um you know it's hard when you're older to move in judo i mean i was at a high level and i'm you know now 51. it's hard for me to move like i used to so at his age he's got to be what 60 between 62 65-ish i mean it moves really well for somebody that's that age you know and probably hasn't done very much judo for the last however many years right so that tells you he at one point he had to be a really good year player yeah he put in a lot of work at some point to develop the technique you can tell when a great judo player even if they haven't practiced it even if they're up there in age like just the way they move right the way they're going for sayanagi the way they go for a particular throw the way they do foot sweeps and all that kind of stuff you could just tell he's uh he's good at judo and that's kind of fascinating um it's fascinating to see political leaders i've gotten to interact with quite a few for whom judo was a formative experience in their life and that's so interesting that for a lot of people judo was played a big part in their life early development it's similar to like uh if you served in the military there's just something about judo it's the um as a martial art it's not just the technique so yes there's something about gaining confidence through becoming aware of what like your body can do the sort of uh the artistry and the skill of it also the power being able to dominate another human being with technique but also like the um i don't know the formality the discipline of just uh honoring the tradition of it so all of that mixed together somehow creates memories it creates memories that kind of define you as a human being and you carry that forward throughout your life and i've just been surprised to know how many powerful people internationally have uh like in their heart in their who they are judo for sure it makes you the human being that you are it really does like it it becomes a fabric of if peop the people that stick with it right that stay with it and it because it i i mean it teaches you so many lessons it's so memorable because of what you talked about the tradition um but it's also you grow with other people you know and you learn from other people and you experience things with other people it's it's such a hands-on sport that um it's very memorable and people love it so much like right now at my dojo we have like four generations like somebody that judo with my dad you know had a kid who who trained with me who loved you know judo so much had a kid that kid was you know now in his 20s who did judo and now has a kid who's two or three or four that's coming to my toddler program at my school like we're talking four generations and they all loved the experience so much and what it did for them in their lives that they wanted the next generation to also experience the same thing this is a tricky question but if if people are interested in judo and want to start learning it in the united states there's thousands of jiu-jitsu schools for example is there advice you can give to people interested in judo or maybe to jiu jitsu uh gym owners like how how how do you get judo as part of your life in america well i'm if you're fortunate to live near another dojo right a place that has judo locally then that's your best opportunity to learn is to go learn from another school um unfor unfortunately sometimes the nearest dojo might not be for two hours or three hours away from where you're at which is an obstacle you're not going to do that so i mean travis and i did start the american judo system online it's at usajudo.com and we've broken down every single judo technique to the very very basic elements of just movement so we teach every technique of how you do it mechanically with just your feet then how you incorporate your hands and your feet together how you do it in all directions moving forward sideways backwards how to then introduce a partner into the into the movement how to do basic uchi komi or repetitions with a partner then moving with a partner then how to throw your opponent static how to throw your opponent so basically from the very foundation of the movement all the way to the most advanced level we've documented this uh through separate videos and we've taken now i think 12 to 15 of standing techniques combined with a whole bunch of groundwork techniques and our goal is just to continue to build this platform out so that anybody anywhere can learn online and can ask questions we have a live training class every couple weeks every two weeks he or i answer questions online for our our members ideally what we'd like to do is have a standing curriculum for jiu jitsu instructors that want to learn and become black belts in judo here's how these are the techniques you need to know this is how many reps you need to do this is how efficient you need to get at that at those techniques to become certified as an instructor or become a black belt and eventually have an online promotion system where anybody anywhere can just submit videos and show us that they can do those techniques and obviously we'll have people review them and this is a dream and a vision but we've already started the platform we're about to do a collaborative effort with usa judo where all of their members will start to get access to this platform as well and if we can get that uh influx of of money and people on the platform it'll allow us to to hire and grow it faster so you also want to do like certification there it's not just instruction correct that would be amazing yeah um i mean for me personally sort of i mean mostly in austin texas now right and there's a few judo schools but it's not not really right there's not uh and it's just one of those cities that doesn't quite have i mean there's a few it's basically just like a few random judo people that kind of kind of gather together a couple of times a week but it's not a system a dojo uh an instructor or integrated into a jiu jitsu school or not the problem with most judo dojos right now is that most of them cater towards the competitive side also a lot of them do it recreationally meaning this isn't how they make a living so they're there three nights a week or they're there five even if they're there five nights a week it's still only one junior class and one senior class and that's it and it's one size fits all doesn't matter what level you're at it's one size fits all so you can't get out of the training what you're looking to get out of the training it's whatever the instructor's teaching you know and you can't learn because it's not at the appropriate level for you and usually you're pushed into doing randori where you have no choice but to do the randori part of the training um so it's it's a challenge to go learn and then a lot of times the the schools are old school so they go make you do falls for a half hour they make you do thing you know make you do things maybe you're a jiu jitsu person who knows how to fall already but you haven't proven it to the judo instructor and they don't break the norm i say you still have to fall for six months which turns a lot of people away as well so it's you know it's like any business if you don't deliver on your customers expectations you're not going to have very many customers which is the way it is now so a lot of people who listen to this but in general in the united states practice brazilian jiu jitsu which has a lot of similarities to judo as obviously its origins in judo how would you compare the two arts from the perspective of people just interested about both arts do you recommend people who do jiu jitsu get into judo how can enrich their jiu jitsu how do you compare the two arts the actual practice of it and why it might be useful to you i mean i think that judo is a hard sport for adults to do um it just is you know especially people that are haven't fallen in a long time haven't you know aren't very athletic you know haven't i think i think about my own experience right outs other than judo when did i ever do like a forward somersault maybe when i was in grade school right that's the last time i've left my feet was in grade school most people haven't got off of a chair or a couch they spend eight to ten hours a day either working behind a computer or sitting on a college watching tv right and they're not that athletic and they haven't done anything athletic at least probably since high school yeah right that's their last athletic endeavor most of them so you're talking about as an adult that's 35 or 40 wanting to start a sport judo is a really hard sport to start especially in today's dojos that don't have a recreational adult program or you know when it's one size fits all it's hard so for those people jiu-jitsu makes a heck of a lot of sense good self-defense it's cerebral where you got to use your brain you're a smaller person you have to use technique and you know it teaches all the same things as judo but it's a safe way to do it and because of the validation it has with the ufc and mma today right everybody knows jujitsu so now they can be part of mainstream society and talk intelligently about what they see on television or what's going on on espn today right they have some knowledge so they they have an identity and also there's a good culture in jiu jitsu where it's becoming a family you know the dojo is the family place you go to feel good you go to see your friends you go to get fit and you have a good time right so it makes a lot of sense why it's growing judo on the other hand i think is a better sport for children to do it's more i would say fun and interactive it's a little easier to teach the kids how to do the throwing skills and for safety and things like that their body can handle more than the adults can they're less likely to get injured you know they can it makes them better athletes because it's a lot more three-dimensional in my opinion you know um so i think there's a good fit between judo can thrive from kids till you know whatever high school college jiu jitsu thrives from that 18 year old up right right now that's kind of where it is so as a dojo you have to kind of focus on the the teens and the college like early 20s that kind of or you need to have if you're going to be a successful judo dojo you have to have that recreational fundamental adult program in your school where people actually come to judo learn the moves but aren't pushed into randori training and pushed into things where they're uncomfortable and they can't control the situation because there's too many unknowns you uh got an education of browns you're somebody is amazing because as an olympian and an olympic coach you always emphasize kind of balance and educational all of that side of life so developing your brain too so you are an olympic medalist a coach of olympic medalists your business owner so successful in all these domains so i have to ask what advice would you give to young people today high school judo age high school college undergrad how to be successful in their career or just in life in general how to live a life they can be proud of i think you have to be true to yourself you have to decide what it is you really want to do with your life like and it's hard because when i grew up i didn't know i was going to be successful when i was you know when i was young i didn't know i was going to be an olympic medalist i certainly did envision myself owning a couple of companies that that makes their living exclusively for martial arts or judo because that wasn't really an opportunity when i was a kid but i've created that opportunity i would just say that like pick something that you're passionate about you know i was stuck in a career before where i wasn't passionate about it and it was my wife who said you know jimmy if you can figure out how to make your living exclusively from martial arts you know where your brain and your heart and your passion is all towards one thing that you really like then you'll be successful and i left the job i had three kids i was working for um monster.com i was in internet marketing and i was working for that company great company nothing wrong with the company but sitting behind the desk from eight till five and then i get to go to judo from six until nine at night you know my whole day is tied up doing something that i'm really not passionate about she said if you know if you can figure out how to make money from your dojo and other things judo related then i think you'll be successful and so she's the one that my wife marie gave me that advice and i would give that to others find something that you love doing where it doesn't feel like work something you're passionate about and if the opportunity doesn't exist how to make money on it you can create the opportunity be resourceful figure it out don't let anybody tell you you can't do it right i i didn't know that i could have a 200 person judo school that only taught judo because that really didn't exist in this country you know that it actually charges money like jiu jitsu charges right we're talking not there's plenty of clubs out there that charge 10 bucks a month that might have 100 people but there's not many that you know with the tuition is 150 a month having 200 people so that's a successful business um but it wasn't done before but be passionate about it understand you're going to fail understand you're going to get knocked down beat up right there's going to be dark days but you got to persevere you got to believe in yourself you got to have a plan you have to be willing to learn from other people and that's what i did i i if i didn't know it i brought somebody in to tell me what am i doing wrong like look from the outside what do you see okay great then you got to be willing to change you're going to be willing to adapt you know and i think listening believing in myself and you know creating opportunity and the other thing is helping others something i always did in my in my judo life and in my business life if somebody came to me and asked for help with hey man is there something you can do to help me i'm trying to get this thing started you know i'm trying to get this this this dojo off the ground or i'm trying to run this event series or you know i was creative and trying to figure out a way to help them make it work because if that really was their dream and i could help them do their dream i felt like that person would then give nothing but good good comments about us good good like they'll remember it forever they become like family and they've been the best advocates for your business ever and so the kids that i taught at my dojo were treated that way the people that worked for me get treated that way the people that my customers that i work with and building their dojos get treated that way people that ran tournaments whether it was grappler's quest years ago and helping that guy with a full set of mats for his brian simmons with his his thing or you know any of the gracies like it just it just became like family and then i just work hard and deliver on what i say i'm gonna do if i say i'm gonna do it i do it you know and i think it goes a long way well and i gotta comment so in a small way i've uh people may not know i think it's still on youtube we previously talked many years ago and i remember it uh you were so kind to me and you didn't really know who i was you just took me as a human being you welcomed me into your dojo and we just had a conversation on a podcast or whatever the heck you call that thing and you were just very kind and and you were also just it was the last conversation i had when i showed up to mit and it stayed with me so i've resumed doing this podcast but it stayed with me because you said you said that i did a good job at this and people especially at that time didn't tell me that you know didn't and just that that little act of kindness is probably just a regular part of your day you had a busy day it was the end of the day just saying that that was powerful and and that pays off somehow um so thank you for that yeah but i was sincere right it was genuine i felt like i had been to so many interviews when it's around the olympic time there's lots of beat reporters that come out and they're trying to get your time and they're just they're there because they have to get the story yeah for their newspaper or their television show and a lot of times those people show up right and they pronounce my name wrong or they get something wrong about the background or they offend me because they call me five minutes before that they're supposed to be there and say oh sorry we're running late we'll be there an hour and a half well i'm a busy guy too and you know like yeah you were somebody that showed up was so prepared with your notes knew everything about like the history of what i had done the questions you asked were intelligent questions they were well thought out and at the end of that that interview i was really genuinely impressed and i wanted to let you know you did a great job because you stood out from the rest thank you yeah i mean for me it was like showing up to like the mecca like the track i mean i didn't you know you don't always want to just tell that to people but you show up you know of obviously you're the legend of judo in the united states and so that was like boston is the mecca i think that's where you travel uh to talk to the great so um the the fact that you were kind to me just stuck with me for a long time so it pays off to to to be kind to others to give them uh to give them uh to give them a chance jimmy thank you so much for giving me another chance and spending your valuable time and you've also were kind enough to invite me to train with you today at your dojo so i can't wait let's go let's go do some judo yeah awesome thank you alex thanks for listening to this conversation with jimmy pedro to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you some words from bruce lee i fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once but i fear the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times thank you for listening and hope to see you next time you