Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Jimmy Pedro,

00:00:02.720 | a legendary judo competitor and coach.

00:00:05.160 | He represented the United States at four Olympics

00:00:08.580 | in '92, '96, 2000, and 2004,

00:00:12.140 | winning a bronze medal at two of them.

00:00:14.680 | He medaled in three world championships,

00:00:17.480 | winning gold in 1999.

00:00:20.120 | He has coached many of the elite-level American judoka,

00:00:23.640 | including Kayla Harrison, Ronda Rousey,

00:00:26.100 | Travis Stevens, and many others.

00:00:28.460 | Plus, he's now my judo coach, along with Travis Stevens.

00:00:32.880 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:34.920 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:00:36.920 | in the description.

00:00:38.320 | And now, here's my conversation with Jimmy Pedro.

00:00:42.240 | What is the most beautiful throw in judo to you?

00:00:46.600 | - I think Uchimata.

00:00:49.320 | You know, it's the one that seems

00:00:51.080 | to have the most amplitude.

00:00:52.560 | That person goes the highest.

00:00:54.440 | You see a leg swing through the middle,

00:00:57.220 | the person doing the throw,

00:00:58.400 | there's a leg swinging through the middle.

00:00:59.600 | The other person definitely goes, you know,

00:01:02.040 | head over heels, flat on their back.

00:01:04.680 | It's probably the most dynamic, pretty judo throw there is.

00:01:08.080 | - Okay, so it's a single, you're standing on a single foot,

00:01:11.080 | and you're raising your other foot in the air,

00:01:13.160 | and it's a forward throw,

00:01:14.760 | which means your back is facing the opponent,

00:01:19.520 | but they kind of both fly through the air

00:01:23.040 | and twist through the air.

00:01:24.480 | - Correct.

00:01:25.520 | - Yeah, so how does that throw work?

00:01:28.380 | What are the principles behind that throw?

00:01:30.380 | It's one of those throws that, you know,

00:01:33.460 | people can kind of understand how to pick up

00:01:35.900 | another human being in sort of trivial ways,

00:01:38.700 | but the Uchimata to me never quite made sense,

00:01:42.060 | like why it works.

00:01:43.820 | There's a cork, there's a twisting motion,

00:01:47.380 | there's some involvement of the hip,

00:01:49.740 | but it's not really a hip throw,

00:01:52.920 | because the hip is not all the way over,

00:01:55.620 | so it's not, it's a very confusing throw.

00:01:58.220 | (laughing)

00:01:59.060 | That's what I'm trying to say.

00:01:59.900 | Can you say something for once?

00:02:00.720 | - It's probably one of the most difficult throws

00:02:02.660 | to learn as well, because it is so complex.

00:02:04.980 | You do have to stand on one leg, balance on one leg,

00:02:07.860 | you know, swing your other leg through the middle,

00:02:10.020 | hold your opponent up in the air,

00:02:12.020 | and it's hard to make that contact

00:02:16.100 | with upper body to your back, you know,

00:02:18.740 | you have to turn your back on the throw as well.

00:02:20.460 | So how does it work?

00:02:22.640 | It's definitely sort of a throw where you need

00:02:25.860 | to start pulling your opponent's upper body toward you,

00:02:30.060 | right, so their upper body starts coming toward you.

00:02:32.620 | Your legs go towards them as your body

00:02:36.060 | starts to go into the throw.

00:02:38.380 | So your head is gonna go left, let's say,

00:02:40.900 | your legs are gonna go to the right,

00:02:43.620 | your partner's gonna start to lean toward you,

00:02:47.340 | and just as you start to get there,

00:02:48.940 | moment of coming forward,

00:02:50.500 | your leg is gonna sweep up underneath theirs,

00:02:53.360 | pick them up onto your hip, right,

00:02:55.260 | and then the finish of the throw is a twist,

00:02:57.260 | and a lot of times the good judoka

00:02:59.240 | will leave their feet when they do the throw,

00:03:01.580 | so both bodies are in the air together,

00:03:04.040 | and then the thrower comes down

00:03:05.600 | on top of the person being thrown.

00:03:07.540 | - So all four feet are in the air.

00:03:09.260 | - Correct.

00:03:10.100 | - So there's just this unstoppable force,

00:03:12.300 | so you're all in the air,

00:03:13.700 | you're basically doing a roll together.

00:03:15.820 | - Correct.

00:03:17.420 | - Okay, so who to you is the best uchimata,

00:03:21.700 | who has, besides yourself?

00:03:23.540 | (laughing)

00:03:25.220 | - I'm not gonna lie, there's plenty of guys

00:03:27.660 | that do uchimata a lot better than I do.

00:03:29.820 | - You do have a nice video about the uchimata online,

00:03:31.820 | but who's a great practitioner of the uchimata to you?

00:03:36.140 | - Right now, Shohei Ono,

00:03:37.820 | who's two-time Olympic gold medalist,

00:03:39.760 | that's his favorite throw,

00:03:40.940 | and there's tons of highlight videos on the IJF

00:03:44.380 | and Judo Fanatic showing how he does his uchimata,

00:03:47.740 | and it is quite different than everybody else's,

00:03:50.580 | but it's unstoppable.

00:03:51.740 | When he comes in, nobody stops it.

00:03:53.380 | He's won two golds in a row at the Olympics.

00:03:56.000 | I think maybe in the last eight years,

00:03:57.500 | the guy's lost two matches.

00:03:58.980 | You know, he's just incredible.

00:04:00.900 | - At a very competitive division,

00:04:02.740 | I guess 73 kilos?

00:04:05.100 | Okay, and then three-time world champ too.

00:04:08.700 | Is he the greatest of all time to you?

00:04:12.220 | - The only reason why he's not is because Nomura

00:04:14.580 | is a 60-kilo player.

00:04:15.860 | He was three-time Olympic champion.

00:04:18.380 | So Nomura, I mean,

00:04:19.860 | unless Ono's gonna stick around for another three years

00:04:22.580 | and win again here in Paris,

00:04:26.620 | then he'd match what Nomura did.

00:04:28.220 | But three-time gold medalist in Judo

00:04:30.400 | in a lightweight division, that's pretty spectacular.

00:04:34.260 | - So to you, being able to win a championship,

00:04:38.740 | world championship or Olympic medal,

00:04:41.880 | is a measure of greatness.

00:04:43.940 | It's not like you have some people

00:04:46.980 | who are not as accomplished like Koga or something like that

00:04:49.940 | but just the beauty, the moments of magic,

00:04:54.940 | the number of moments of magic is the highest,

00:04:57.620 | even if it's not championships.

00:04:59.500 | - I think you have to go by that

00:05:00.980 | because there's so many phenomenal Judo players

00:05:04.040 | that have come through the system of spectacular Judo.

00:05:07.240 | You have won countless major events,

00:05:11.560 | but the ability to pull it together, right,

00:05:13.940 | at those magical moments, the pinnacle of the sport,

00:05:16.500 | the world championships, the Olympic games,

00:05:18.740 | and proving that you can do it time and time again

00:05:21.580 | makes you unstoppable, it makes you the best.

00:05:24.460 | There was a guy back in the '70s and '80s

00:05:27.140 | by the name of Fuji,

00:05:28.460 | and he won four world championships back-to-back.

00:05:32.300 | And back then, the world's was every two years.

00:05:35.060 | So here he was, a four-time world champion.

00:05:37.660 | That's eight years at the top of the sport.

00:05:39.980 | He never won an Olympic medal.

00:05:43.720 | He never went to the Olympics.

00:05:45.560 | So there's a guy who missed out on Olympic greatness

00:05:48.840 | but was arguably the best competitor back in that period.

00:05:52.520 | - By the way, same Fuji as Fuji?

00:05:56.300 | - Right.

00:05:57.140 | - Really, okay.

00:05:58.040 | Wow, I didn't know there was an actual guy, Fuji.

00:06:00.600 | - Our brand is named after the mountain, Mount Fuji.

00:06:03.560 | But this is a different guy, his name was Fuji.

00:06:05.600 | - All right, well, history rhymes.

00:06:10.360 | What about Teddy Renner, 10-time world champ, I think,

00:06:15.360 | two-time gold medalist at the Olympics,

00:06:17.600 | two-times bronze medalist at the Olympics,

00:06:20.520 | probably the most dominant judoka ever.

00:06:26.360 | Is he in the running?

00:06:27.280 | What do you think about that guy?

00:06:29.000 | - I think he's a freak of nature, Teddy.

00:06:32.160 | If you look at the size, just how big, how tall he is,

00:06:35.580 | how big he is, how physical he is of a specimen.

00:06:38.720 | I sat next to him on a bus

00:06:40.680 | and his legs are literally the size of my waist.

00:06:45.680 | When you sit next to him and just look at the size,

00:06:48.120 | he's a big man.

00:06:49.200 | Obviously, to win 10 world titles in the sport of judo,

00:06:54.200 | I mean, that's almost an incomprehensible feat,

00:06:58.840 | two-time Olympic champion, again.

00:07:00.620 | That puts him in one of the maybe 10 or 12 people

00:07:06.080 | that ever do that in the history of the sport.

00:07:08.280 | So he's definitely got to be in the running for the best.

00:07:11.600 | But technically, I don't think he's as technical

00:07:15.680 | as some of the other in terms of pure judo finesse technique.

00:07:20.680 | He's powerful, he's explosive, he's dominant, he's strong.

00:07:26.120 | Teddy also grips really, really well,

00:07:29.080 | which makes him that much tougher to beat

00:07:32.460 | because a lot of times heavyweights,

00:07:34.240 | especially in the heavyweight division,

00:07:35.160 | a lot of them just grab the gi

00:07:36.800 | and they go man to man and judo to judo

00:07:39.960 | and take shots at each other.

00:07:41.280 | And that's why a lot of them end up getting beat.

00:07:43.640 | But Teddy's in control.

00:07:45.240 | Positionally, he stays in really good position

00:07:47.920 | and he controls his opponent the whole fight.

00:07:49.960 | So they really don't have a chance against him.

00:07:52.280 | He doesn't give them a chance to beat him,

00:07:54.160 | which is why he's been so dominant.

00:07:55.680 | - But he's not really stalling.

00:07:57.440 | So I mean, he does have a really nice,

00:07:59.680 | Osorogari, this backward trip, outside trip,

00:08:05.560 | in case people don't know.

00:08:07.120 | I mean, he has just like technically pretty good throws

00:08:11.000 | and for heavyweight.

00:08:12.480 | - Yes.

00:08:13.300 | - Heavyweights can be sometimes messy with their judo.

00:08:16.880 | He's pretty technical and clean

00:08:21.600 | in the execution of his big throws.

00:08:24.080 | But a lot of that probably has to do

00:08:26.280 | with the dominant gripping that he does.

00:08:28.360 | It's not defensive gripping, it's offensive gripping,

00:08:30.640 | but the dominant gripping.

00:08:32.280 | - 100%.

00:08:33.120 | - He controls the grips, he controls the movement

00:08:36.040 | of the match as a result of that.

00:08:37.920 | And then he creates his own openings.

00:08:39.720 | So I mean, for a heavyweight, phenomenal technique, yes.

00:08:43.320 | And what you said, messy, I'd like to call it sloppy.

00:08:46.160 | Right, a lot of the heavyweights tend to be sloppy.

00:08:49.480 | They fall on the ground a lot.

00:08:51.520 | It's hard to move somebody that weighs 350 pounds.

00:08:54.480 | It's hard to get that body moving

00:08:56.000 | and just with a simple pull motion.

00:08:58.400 | So he's definitely found a way to do it.

00:09:00.920 | But he's also, I don't know, six foot eight.

00:09:02.720 | - Yeah.

00:09:03.560 | - He probably weighs 140 kilos.

00:09:06.440 | He's a big boy.

00:09:07.800 | - But he had this winning streak of just,

00:09:10.200 | I don't know how long, but over 100 matches.

00:09:13.000 | And he lost at this Olympics that we just went through,

00:09:17.360 | the 20, I don't even know what to call it, 2021 Olympics.

00:09:20.280 | I don't know the proper terminology.

00:09:22.800 | - Tokyo 2020.

00:09:24.080 | - Tokyo 2020, all right.

00:09:26.200 | So he lost to Tamerlan Bashev.

00:09:31.160 | - I mean, it's always sad to see a sort of greatness

00:09:34.320 | come to an end.

00:09:35.160 | It's like Karellin in wrestling and Greco Roman.

00:09:39.040 | Did you shed a bit of a tear to see greatness go?

00:09:42.080 | Or is it just the way of life?

00:09:46.440 | I mean, what did you think about sort of this dominance,

00:09:50.520 | this run of dominance being stopped?

00:09:53.800 | - I think, I mean, it's obviously sad to see LFC

00:09:56.600 | and champions succeed, especially people

00:09:59.360 | that are good people.

00:10:00.440 | And I think Teddy's a good person.

00:10:02.360 | I mean, I think there's some arrogant champions

00:10:04.280 | that everybody would like to see lose

00:10:06.040 | just because they don't wanna deal with their personality.

00:10:09.880 | And I think Teddy's a very humble champion.

00:10:13.960 | He's a people's champion.

00:10:15.480 | I think he's been privileged and he makes good money

00:10:18.720 | from the sport of judo and the French Federation

00:10:20.680 | has taken care of him well.

00:10:21.840 | So he's a lifelong judo icon.

00:10:25.320 | So it's sad to see somebody like that get beat,

00:10:27.600 | especially when this could have been

00:10:29.160 | his third Olympic title and just put him in infamy.

00:10:34.160 | So it was sad to see, but I think every athlete

00:10:41.160 | goes through it, right?

00:10:42.080 | I mean, it's just, that's what the Olympics is all about.

00:10:45.840 | The great ones fall sometimes.

00:10:47.480 | - Especially in judo, it's like so,

00:10:51.520 | like the margin of error.

00:10:53.000 | I mean, I guess the other question I wanna ask here is,

00:10:56.360 | in your sense, how difficult it is to not lose for so long.

00:11:01.320 | It seems like in judo, like a little mistake and it's over.

00:11:06.840 | There's no coming back and Ippon means it's over.

00:11:10.440 | So how difficult is that?

00:11:12.960 | - It's hard to stay that dominant without question.

00:11:15.160 | First of all, when you are the entire world

00:11:18.000 | is training against you just to beat you.

00:11:20.240 | They're studying every single movement.

00:11:22.880 | They're studying patterns.

00:11:24.320 | They're trying to break it down

00:11:25.680 | and find a flaw in your game.

00:11:27.680 | So everybody's hunting for you

00:11:29.400 | when you're the best in the world,

00:11:30.400 | especially at the Olympics.

00:11:31.240 | That's the one to beat you at.

00:11:32.960 | So everybody's focused on you.

00:11:35.000 | And then there's an incredible amount of pressure

00:11:37.440 | on that athlete to perform.

00:11:39.040 | You carry the flag for your country.

00:11:41.040 | When you're in opening ceremonies, sometimes,

00:11:43.320 | there's all spotlight is on you.

00:11:45.880 | And it's particularly hard when things don't go well early.

00:11:50.320 | In other words, when you're expected to win

00:11:53.200 | and then all of a sudden now you're in a hard fight

00:11:55.640 | and it's not going the way you want,

00:11:57.200 | that pressure, the one who's the favorite

00:11:59.160 | feels the pressure the most at the Olympics.

00:12:01.000 | And that's why I think the other ones are able to win it.

00:12:03.880 | - I've actually never gotten a chance

00:12:05.640 | to listen to Teddy Renner sort of explain

00:12:08.480 | ideas behind his Judo.

00:12:11.920 | Like I wonder what his mental game is like

00:12:13.760 | 'cause I think his English is pretty not very good.

00:12:16.840 | And so, and I just haven't seen good interviews,

00:12:19.800 | but it's always fascinating to,

00:12:22.560 | there's certain great athletes

00:12:25.440 | that are also great thinkers and speakers,

00:12:28.600 | like the Satya brothers in wrestling.

00:12:32.160 | Again, not meaning, that's on my to-do list, 100%.

00:12:35.720 | I'm going to Dagestan and talking to them

00:12:38.200 | because they're brilliant.

00:12:39.640 | But to be able to sort of, maybe after retirement,

00:12:43.360 | to think back, what were the systems involved,

00:12:46.580 | both on the technical, the training side,

00:12:50.880 | and then the mental side.

00:12:53.520 | 'Cause to stay that dominant, just like you're saying,

00:12:56.600 | everybody's studying to beat you.

00:12:58.520 | And the heavyweights are just these powerful dudes.

00:13:03.240 | So to be able to control them with your game

00:13:06.320 | and the game that everybody knows is coming is,

00:13:09.640 | I don't know, I don't know what's behind that,

00:13:11.760 | but there's got to be,

00:13:13.080 | it feels like the mental game is exceptionally important.

00:13:17.920 | - I think a lot of people underestimate

00:13:19.560 | just how important that side is.

00:13:22.200 | Being mentally prepared for victory,

00:13:24.200 | mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best.

00:13:27.160 | There's nobody that's weak-minded

00:13:30.440 | that can accomplish that.

00:13:32.480 | It's 100% confidence and belief in yourself.

00:13:36.560 | - If we take a big picture view then,

00:13:38.640 | not necessarily Tate Rene,

00:13:39.960 | but if you want to go from the very beginning,

00:13:42.600 | from day one of judo class to Olympic champion

00:13:47.760 | or Olympic medalist,

00:13:50.040 | what does it take to become an Olympic medalist in judo

00:13:54.160 | from start to finish?

00:13:56.000 | Like how many different trajectories do you see?

00:13:58.360 | Or is there some unifying principles?

00:14:01.720 | - I think a lot of it has to,

00:14:03.160 | your journey is going to depend a lot by where you're from.

00:14:07.000 | So a path that an American might take

00:14:09.120 | versus somebody who's from Japan

00:14:10.960 | or somebody who's from Europe.

00:14:12.800 | There's two very, three very distinct paths, right?

00:14:16.680 | 'Cause in Japan, it's part of the culture.

00:14:19.960 | There's a system of excellence.

00:14:22.280 | There's elementary school judo,

00:14:24.680 | there's junior high school,

00:14:25.960 | there's high school, there's collegiate,

00:14:27.640 | there's Olympic.

00:14:28.800 | And much like our wrestling is here in the United States,

00:14:33.800 | it's very similar.

00:14:35.320 | There's youth wrestling, there's high school,

00:14:37.880 | there's NCAA, and then there's Olympic wrestling.

00:14:40.240 | And when your country is a factory

00:14:44.000 | of producing athletes at the highest level,

00:14:47.120 | then all of those top athletes

00:14:49.640 | typically go back into the sport

00:14:51.280 | and there's professions for them.

00:14:52.560 | They have an opportunity to coach

00:14:53.880 | at all those different levels.

00:14:55.480 | And just the level of their game

00:14:57.360 | and the expertise that all of them have,

00:14:59.720 | even down at the elementary level,

00:15:01.600 | make their skill so solid.

00:15:04.200 | - And as a coach in that situation,

00:15:06.000 | you can just sit back and watch who stands out

00:15:09.640 | as opposed to, I think in America, I guess,

00:15:12.200 | you would need to craft.

00:15:15.240 | You don't get to choose from a thousand people,

00:15:17.440 | a few people that naturally stand out at the age of nine.

00:15:21.200 | You have to actually,

00:15:22.840 | whatever the natural resources you're given,

00:15:26.480 | craft them into a champion.

00:15:29.780 | So if we look at that, the American way,

00:15:34.200 | where you just have a person with a smile

00:15:36.240 | show up to your dojo,

00:15:38.320 | says I want to be an Olympic medalist.

00:15:41.120 | What process do you take them through?

00:15:43.040 | - The odds are really insurmountable.

00:15:45.360 | It's a very, very high hill to climb.

00:15:47.600 | And there's only a few people

00:15:50.040 | and there's only a few coaches in this entire country

00:15:52.680 | that really understand that process

00:15:55.120 | and that can help people reach that level,

00:15:58.280 | as it's been proven, right?

00:16:00.080 | Number one, you certainly have to have a solid base,

00:16:05.080 | a fundamental base of an expectation

00:16:08.240 | of what the training is going to be.

00:16:10.120 | And it has to be a level of professionalism

00:16:12.680 | very, very early,

00:16:13.760 | where you're teaching all the basic judo moves,

00:16:15.800 | all the basic fundamental movements,

00:16:17.800 | posture, gripping,

00:16:20.520 | well, maybe gripping doesn't come in so early in the game,

00:16:23.120 | but throwing methodology, movements,

00:16:26.600 | nawaza position, standing fundamental throws,

00:16:30.840 | and I think most importantly is really the work ethic.

00:16:33.920 | Just the way you're going to train,

00:16:35.760 | the intensity you're going to train with,

00:16:37.360 | the ability to, the mindset of going to tournaments

00:16:41.120 | constantly in order to compete with the rest of the world.

00:16:44.320 | Our young kids need to be tested a lot when they're young.

00:16:49.320 | They have to be put through adversity

00:16:51.400 | because they don't get put through adversity in training

00:16:53.240 | 'cause you don't have that many good training partners.

00:16:55.000 | So you get put through adversity in competition

00:16:57.760 | and then do we see what your weaknesses are

00:16:59.520 | and we continue to make improvements on those.

00:17:02.560 | But the journey is, it's long.

00:17:05.000 | And until they're kind of at the teenage years,

00:17:08.120 | they're going to have to pretty much stay domestic, right?

00:17:10.160 | 'Cause they got to go through life as a normal kid,

00:17:12.560 | but they've got to be training in the dojo

00:17:14.240 | at least five days a week.

00:17:17.040 | Sometimes they might want to get

00:17:18.800 | an extra technical workout in

00:17:20.360 | or doing some base conditioning in addition to that.

00:17:23.200 | And then really at the teenage years,

00:17:24.720 | that's where we really, we've struggled in America

00:17:28.760 | of keeping teens in the sport of judo

00:17:31.920 | as well as developing them properly.

00:17:34.520 | 'Cause up until around the teenage years,

00:17:36.280 | I think the Americans are on par with the rest of the world

00:17:39.280 | in terms of technique and in terms of skill.

00:17:41.800 | And we've proven we can compete

00:17:44.920 | with the rest of the world up until that age.

00:17:46.600 | But that's where Japan and that's where the Europeans

00:17:50.760 | and the countries that are strong in judo,

00:17:52.920 | that's where they put a lot of time, energy and effort

00:17:55.400 | is it to the teens where they have a great coaching staff,

00:17:59.120 | they have good training camps with 800,

00:18:01.960 | a thousand people going to them every single weekend.

00:18:04.680 | - When you say teens, what do you mean?

00:18:07.280 | Do you mean literally like 13?

00:18:09.000 | - Yeah, age 13 to 17, 13 to 19.

00:18:12.480 | - And that's where sort of,

00:18:13.560 | that's when you really accelerate your development.

00:18:15.680 | So you're saying like in America, when you're young,

00:18:19.160 | like before nine, 10, 11, 12, you stick in judo,

00:18:24.160 | you can progress quite a bit.

00:18:26.120 | But then I guess the other competition there,

00:18:28.880 | if you're into two people doing stuff to each other

00:18:33.880 | in a combative way,

00:18:39.000 | the other competitor in America is wrestling.

00:18:41.640 | So judo almost primes you,

00:18:43.800 | like it teaches you how to be a great wrestler as well.

00:18:47.560 | And so then you have to have a hard decision

00:18:50.760 | because you can probably be a collegiate wrestler.

00:18:55.640 | You have like a clear plan of where you're going to go

00:19:00.080 | if you wanna be a wrestler.

00:19:01.040 | With judo, that plan is less clear.

00:19:06.040 | So you have to be on your own a bit with your coach,

00:19:10.360 | that kind of thing.

00:19:11.200 | - Exactly.

00:19:12.120 | - Okay, so when you're on your own with your coach,

00:19:14.440 | to me, that's just a fascinating journey

00:19:16.200 | 'cause then it's just like the purity of it.

00:19:19.200 | It's the coach and the athlete and the dream.

00:19:22.560 | It's all about the dedication,

00:19:24.560 | the five, six, seven days a week competing,

00:19:28.480 | what, once a month?

00:19:30.100 | Twice a month?

00:19:32.360 | - Twice a month.

00:19:33.400 | - Okay, but also you probably don't have that conversation.

00:19:36.960 | I don't know if you do.

00:19:37.800 | Maybe you do, saying like,

00:19:39.440 | we're gonna do this for the next eight years.

00:19:41.840 | (laughing)

00:19:44.080 | - Right.

00:19:44.920 | - Do you ever sit down with Jesus

00:19:46.080 | to take it the David Goggins way,

00:19:48.040 | which is like, let's just take it one step at a time.

00:19:50.840 | (laughing)

00:19:52.760 | Let's hope we're there in eight years.

00:19:54.080 | - Yeah, let's hope we're there.

00:19:55.200 | Do you actually--

00:19:56.040 | - Well, no, like right now, you have to think about,

00:19:58.200 | the Olympics is gonna be in Los Angeles in 2028.

00:20:02.060 | So it's really interesting.

00:20:03.280 | Now would be the time, and now is the time,

00:20:06.640 | to identify talent and get commitment out of students

00:20:11.520 | that in seven years, you can make a US Olympic team

00:20:14.920 | because we're gonna have a full team.

00:20:17.320 | America's gonna have 14 athletes compete in those games,

00:20:20.200 | one in every weight class.

00:20:21.680 | So now's the time, if you're gonna go on a journey

00:20:23.760 | to the Olympics and stay with the sport of judo,

00:20:26.000 | now would be the time to do it.

00:20:27.560 | - And so what, you show up to the Pedro Judo Center

00:20:33.240 | and how much drilling,

00:20:36.600 | how much technique strategy discussions,

00:20:39.840 | how much randori or like live sparring,

00:20:43.080 | how much conditioning and strength training,

00:20:45.880 | how much of all that?

00:20:49.000 | How much of cross training to other gyms

00:20:51.320 | or something like that, traveling abroad?

00:20:53.760 | Is there something to be said about us,

00:20:56.240 | some aspects of that system?

00:20:57.560 | - For sure.

00:20:58.720 | You need it all, what you just said, you need all of it.

00:21:01.160 | And we do do all of that.

00:21:02.260 | Right now, we have a young group of kids at the academy,

00:21:05.120 | you'll see tonight.

00:21:06.020 | Some of them are 14, 13, 15, 17.

00:21:09.400 | - Are they good?

00:21:10.240 | - Yeah, really good.

00:21:11.080 | - Okay, can't wait.

00:21:12.640 | - And they're right around your weight,

00:21:13.640 | so it'll be perfect.

00:21:14.480 | (laughing)

00:21:16.920 | They're just young boys,

00:21:17.840 | but they've been training hard through COVID.

00:21:20.560 | We've been, Travis and myself have been training them.

00:21:23.800 | We share responsibilities.

00:21:26.240 | They're doing randori like five nights a week.

00:21:28.920 | We have them doing randori Tuesdays, Wednesdays,

00:21:33.000 | Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays

00:21:35.520 | is when they're doing randori.

00:21:36.520 | They're coming to the dojo Friday night

00:21:37.840 | and Sunday night to do training.

00:21:39.400 | We also have technical sessions for them.

00:21:42.600 | They're in school now, so it's a little bit challenging,

00:21:44.660 | but they come five o'clock in the afternoon

00:21:46.520 | and they do a technical session.

00:21:48.240 | Through COVID, they were coming every morning

00:21:50.360 | doing technical sessions.

00:21:51.760 | - What's a technical session?

00:21:53.160 | - It's an hour of repetitive throwing

00:21:56.240 | or repetitive drilling to reinforce movements

00:21:59.260 | that we deem important to our successful system.

00:22:03.120 | So, nawaza positions, groundwork positions

00:22:06.080 | where we want them to be in this position

00:22:08.240 | and they're gonna drill it 50 times

00:22:10.400 | with resistance, in big groups,

00:22:12.960 | doing drills over and over again,

00:22:15.080 | picking apart the details of the technique

00:22:17.320 | and what they're doing wrong,

00:22:18.360 | showing them how to fix it.

00:22:19.920 | But now we've done it so much

00:22:21.320 | that now we can do a whole drill session with them

00:22:23.640 | where they know all the different techniques

00:22:25.600 | inside and out and they can move

00:22:27.200 | from position to position really quickly.

00:22:29.000 | - Do they do it for a period of time,

00:22:31.760 | like two minutes, five minutes,

00:22:33.920 | or is it like one, two, they're actually counting?

00:22:37.040 | - No, sometimes it's both.

00:22:38.720 | So, sometimes we do it for reps,

00:22:40.200 | sometimes we do it for time.

00:22:42.040 | Yeah, so sometimes it might be as many as they can do

00:22:44.640 | in 60 seconds or as many as they can do in two minutes.

00:22:48.000 | And sometimes it might just be,

00:22:49.320 | I want you to do every position five times.

00:22:51.840 | - In terms of throws,

00:22:53.680 | we're not talking about on a crash pad, right?

00:22:55.640 | It's just--

00:22:56.480 | - We're talking about free moving around the mat.

00:22:58.600 | - And just dynamically and just throwing.

00:23:01.520 | - Correct.

00:23:02.360 | - How many, because as I was mentioning to you offline,

00:23:06.840 | Travis threw me a few times,

00:23:08.280 | a lot of times when he was visiting in Austin.

00:23:11.760 | And I just remembered,

00:23:14.040 | so there's two things,

00:23:15.920 | fortunately or unfortunately in my life,

00:23:18.440 | having gotten a chance to train with folks of that level,

00:23:22.360 | with just cleanness of throw and the power.

00:23:25.240 | And it was very nice.

00:23:26.640 | I immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that.

00:23:30.040 | To throw a little shade at Craig Jones

00:23:33.160 | with his current mat situation,

00:23:34.840 | is they're very, they were quite thin.

00:23:38.400 | And as Travis commented on,

00:23:41.200 | and not just the thinness of the mats,

00:23:42.800 | but they were laid on like concrete.

00:23:44.960 | - Right.

00:23:45.800 | - So I felt, it's like soft until it's not.

00:23:49.280 | But being thrown very cleanly,

00:23:53.840 | I just felt like there's,

00:23:55.080 | this is not gonna lead to injury, it was great.

00:23:57.120 | It wasn't injury prone.

00:23:59.040 | But then as I mentioned to you,

00:24:00.920 | when I, day or two after,

00:24:02.960 | my entire leg, one of them,

00:24:05.240 | I guess it's the left leg,

00:24:06.600 | was just black, a bruise.

00:24:11.360 | - It didn't hurt too bad,

00:24:12.680 | but it was just the body's gotten soft.

00:24:14.480 | So I guess the question I have is,

00:24:17.080 | does the body get used to just that number of throws?

00:24:21.440 | Just over time, being thrown thousands of times a month?

00:24:26.280 | - Unquestionably.

00:24:27.320 | Your body gets used to it.

00:24:28.760 | So it hardens, it gets really hard.

00:24:30.880 | Which is why judo is hard to come back to

00:24:33.920 | after you've taken a long period of time off,

00:24:35.760 | because your body is not used to that impact anymore.

00:24:38.880 | And I always found out that when I was training judo a lot,

00:24:42.240 | it's hard to shed weight and keep weight off,

00:24:46.120 | because your body, it develops this layer of protection

00:24:50.680 | on itself that it doesn't wanna give up.

00:24:53.040 | When you're sucking a lot of weight,

00:24:54.120 | that means you're frail.

00:24:55.560 | So I always seem to retain weight more

00:24:59.160 | when you're doing hard judo training,

00:25:00.560 | as opposed to losing weight.

00:25:02.920 | It's easy when you go out for runs and things like that

00:25:05.320 | to shed the water weight,

00:25:06.580 | but to actually keep the pounds off was--

00:25:08.580 | - Yeah. - Pretty hard.

00:25:09.480 | - Yeah, the body kinda develops, like you said,

00:25:11.560 | a level of protection.

00:25:12.780 | What about, Duran, Dory, just out of curiosity,

00:25:15.440 | again, I haven't ever had the opportunity

00:25:18.360 | to train with folks at a high level.

00:25:20.380 | In jiu-jitsu, there's different gyms at different styles,

00:25:26.600 | but I've noticed that at the highest levels,

00:25:29.200 | people can go pretty hard in a certain kind of way

00:25:33.200 | where it's more technical,

00:25:35.620 | and you're moving at 100%,

00:25:39.580 | but the power is not at 100%.

00:25:43.620 | It's a weird little dance.

00:25:45.660 | You're not really forcing stuff.

00:25:51.080 | You're more focused on the right timing,

00:25:53.860 | the right positioning of hands and feet and body

00:25:58.140 | and all those kinds of things.

00:25:59.120 | You're not forcing stuff in

00:26:01.220 | the way you would in competition, really the power.

00:26:04.140 | Does that sound similar to you

00:26:05.560 | for the way you try to do Randori?

00:26:07.240 | - So there's different styles of judo,

00:26:08.920 | and I'd say the Japanese style,

00:26:10.760 | the technical style of judo

00:26:12.160 | is exactly what you just talked about.

00:26:13.800 | It's almost like two guys in pajamas, right?

00:26:16.320 | We're not using minimal effort, maximum efficiency.

00:26:20.720 | We're moving around, and we're trying to feel that movement,

00:26:23.680 | and it's timing and finesse and technique

00:26:25.960 | and fun and clean throws.

00:26:28.080 | And when you train in Japan,

00:26:30.840 | you can train 15 rounds of Randori,

00:26:33.720 | five-minute rounds, that's 75 minutes of straight sparring.

00:26:38.640 | You can do that straight in Japan without a problem.

00:26:41.480 | I mean, you'll get tired, of course.

00:26:42.840 | You're gonna fall a lot.

00:26:43.960 | You're gonna throw a lot,

00:26:45.760 | but it's very free-feeling,

00:26:48.120 | and it's technical, as you explained.

00:26:50.360 | But then when you go to Europe

00:26:51.880 | and you try to do rounds with the Europeans,

00:26:53.900 | they are very physical.

00:26:55.200 | They don't have that same finesse in their training

00:26:58.960 | that they do in Japan.

00:27:00.360 | And in Europe, you'd be hard-pressed

00:27:02.200 | to do eight rounds of Randori in a night.

00:27:04.320 | It's so physically exhausting

00:27:06.400 | because so much effort is going into just fighting

00:27:09.480 | and fending off the gripping system

00:27:11.480 | and the power of your opponent.

00:27:13.560 | You're physically drained after eight rounds of Randori.

00:27:16.280 | So it's a much different feel.

00:27:18.320 | - When you say Europe, do you mean Germany,

00:27:20.720 | France, Britain, Russia?

00:27:22.960 | Is there a lot?

00:27:23.800 | So there's a kind of similarity

00:27:27.040 | to all of those kinds of approaches.

00:27:28.840 | - The only difference would be Russia,

00:27:30.600 | they do a lot more active drilling,

00:27:32.840 | a lot more sequential movement training.

00:27:35.460 | They don't focus as much on Randori.

00:27:37.960 | You'll do much fewer rounds in Russia during training camps

00:27:42.480 | than you would in those other countries

00:27:44.080 | we just talked about, France, Germany, et cetera.

00:27:46.780 | - What about in this kind of American system

00:27:48.920 | where you have much less talent to work with?

00:27:53.440 | Just select whatever works for the particular athletes

00:28:00.040 | or do you have something you prefer in your system?

00:28:03.600 | - So you need a combination of all of it.

00:28:05.520 | If you're gonna win at the Olympic level,

00:28:06.960 | you have to be able to deal with the finesse

00:28:09.200 | of the Japanese, the physicality of the Europeans.

00:28:12.340 | You have to focus on the ground,

00:28:14.560 | the waza aspect because a lot of people are weak there

00:28:17.240 | in the world of the sport of judo.

00:28:18.760 | That's a chance to win.

00:28:20.400 | We've sort of developed our American system of judo,

00:28:22.880 | at least for the last, I'd say probably the last 20 years,

00:28:26.360 | it'd be the American system of judo,

00:28:27.960 | which relies heavily on taking the individual

00:28:31.640 | and whatever techniques they do,

00:28:34.080 | perfecting those techniques and the combinations

00:28:37.760 | and other throws that go with those throws,

00:28:40.060 | but then implementing and overlaying an American system

00:28:43.200 | of gripping, nawaza, conditioning, mentality,

00:28:47.680 | training methodology, like in game planning,

00:28:51.560 | to beat your opponents.

00:28:52.600 | And I think that's the secret sauce to success

00:28:55.620 | for Americans 'cause there's no way,

00:28:58.380 | if we don't have eight partners to train with in a night

00:29:00.980 | that are gonna give us good rounds, right?

00:29:02.720 | We might have two, so we gotta have the same guy

00:29:05.300 | four times, those two people, two times each.

00:29:07.920 | Now I have four good rounds.

00:29:09.100 | The rest of the rounds, I'm not being pushed to the limit.

00:29:11.540 | So we train differently.

00:29:12.860 | And a lot of times we do a lot of stuff like shark bait.

00:29:17.180 | When our athletes are preparing for competition,

00:29:19.220 | for example, when Kayla or Travis

00:29:21.000 | were preparing for competition,

00:29:23.620 | we might only have 20 people in the whole gym

00:29:26.340 | to work out with, those two Olympic medalists, right?

00:29:29.260 | And of those 20 people, maybe four of them are Travis' size.

00:29:33.880 | Maybe there's only one girl in the room for Kayla.

00:29:36.300 | She's gotta train with guys.

00:29:37.480 | And then the other ones are teenagers that are too weak

00:29:39.900 | to train with either one of them.

00:29:41.460 | So what we would do is just put together four or five people

00:29:44.120 | that could give them a challenge and we'd line them up

00:29:47.460 | and they would do a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute,

00:29:49.740 | and they'd do five minutes in a row as hard as they can.

00:29:52.560 | That person can go hard for a minute with Travis or Kayla.

00:29:55.460 | They can't go five minutes hard,

00:29:56.800 | but they can go one minute hard.

00:29:58.260 | So it made their training much, much more intense,

00:30:01.700 | much more physically demanding.

00:30:03.340 | And then rinse and repeat that six times

00:30:06.180 | or eight times in a night.

00:30:07.980 | You know, they just got 40 minutes of intense randori.

00:30:10.700 | The person that was training with them that wasn't as good

00:30:13.300 | only had to do six or eight minutes of training

00:30:15.020 | the whole night.

00:30:15.860 | - Yeah.

00:30:16.680 | - You know, so.

00:30:17.820 | - It's so, it's so difficult.

00:30:20.500 | 'Cause then you look at like the Russian national team

00:30:24.100 | and you have just the world champions and so,

00:30:30.020 | or you even have like, what is it,

00:30:36.580 | Tom Brands and Terry Brands in the wrestling system.

00:30:39.680 | You have like these people, it's a small group of people,

00:30:43.080 | but they're all some of the best people in the world

00:30:45.740 | and they're going head to head.

00:30:47.540 | And yeah, you don't necessarily get a good look

00:30:50.000 | at a variety of styles, but just the qualities there.

00:30:55.000 | And even that is missing for people your size in America.

00:30:58.660 | 'Cause that is so difficult to work with,

00:31:02.340 | which it makes scale as it makes Travis's story

00:31:05.500 | that much more amazing.

00:31:07.260 | Is, you mentioned kind of picking whatever the set

00:31:10.900 | of techniques the athlete is naturally good at

00:31:14.660 | or prefers or whatever.

00:31:15.900 | How much specialization is there?

00:31:19.700 | Maybe if I give you like two choices,

00:31:21.600 | is it good to have like one throw

00:31:24.200 | and try to become the best person in the world

00:31:27.000 | at that throw?

00:31:27.920 | Or do you want to have a bunch of stuff?

00:31:30.020 | Like a variety of throws?

00:31:32.960 | - Well, for Travis, it was Ippon Seinagi.

00:31:34.720 | That was his main throw, right?

00:31:36.440 | But from that Ippon Seinagi,

00:31:38.360 | he had a variety of other attacks he could do,

00:31:41.120 | you know, that mixed it up so that you kept people guessing.

00:31:44.320 | Maybe it wasn't the Ippon Seiwa's come

00:31:46.120 | and maybe it was the Koshi Groomer that he did.

00:31:48.440 | Or maybe it was the Ippon to Osoto

00:31:50.260 | that he did in combination.

00:31:51.460 | So you typically have one main throw that you do.

00:31:55.100 | For me, it was Tai Otoshi.

00:31:56.860 | For Kayla, it was her Ogoshi.

00:31:58.860 | For Travis, it was his Ippon Seinagi.

00:32:01.220 | But then you come up with a variety of other throws

00:32:04.140 | that you do from the very same grip.

00:32:06.420 | So whatever grip you take for your main throw,

00:32:08.380 | you want to develop, you know, an arsenal of attacks

00:32:11.660 | that go in all different directions,

00:32:13.380 | holding that same grip.

00:32:15.100 | So you keep your opponent guessing as to what's coming.

00:32:18.300 | You know, because if they're just sitting on one technique

00:32:20.900 | at the highest level of sport,

00:32:22.320 | with the exception of a few, right?

00:32:23.780 | We talked about Ono's Uchimata.

00:32:26.180 | With the exception of a few,

00:32:27.460 | most of the world catches on pretty quick

00:32:29.500 | on how to beat you.

00:32:30.860 | - There is something to just sticking,

00:32:33.020 | making sure you really dedicate to the main thing.

00:32:36.240 | So for Travis, that would be like the main version

00:32:39.700 | of his Seinagi.

00:32:41.420 | Like really making sure you don't forget

00:32:43.900 | to really put in the time on that.

00:32:46.200 | Because, I mean, one way to say it is

00:32:51.200 | that threat being dangerous opens up a lot of things.

00:32:55.960 | - Right.

00:32:57.180 | - But also, I don't know.

00:32:59.280 | I think I'm just, as a fan, I think it's sad

00:33:04.340 | when like elite level athletes in all like combat sports

00:33:09.280 | kind of start taking their main thing for granted.

00:33:12.520 | Like they think, okay, I've figured that part out.

00:33:16.540 | Now I'll be working on this whole system on variations,

00:33:19.720 | on different setups, on lefty versus lefty,

00:33:23.220 | some like weird variation, as opposed to, you know what?

00:33:27.160 | If you look at some of the best people ever,

00:33:29.380 | they seem to have not cared about variations at all.

00:33:32.840 | They're just like literally,

00:33:34.580 | they are more like Giro Dreams of Sushi

00:33:37.740 | and like fine tuning their ear,

00:33:42.480 | their ability to detect the minute movements

00:33:45.620 | that give you an opening on that main thing.

00:33:48.240 | And so the whole time you're just waiting for that throw.

00:33:52.700 | You're like dancing with a little bit of pressure

00:33:55.880 | and like releasing the pressure and putting the pressure,

00:33:58.600 | maybe a little bit off balance

00:34:00.600 | and finding like the right moment to strike

00:34:03.920 | and focusing on that.

00:34:05.420 | Again, maybe that's just like a romanticization

00:34:08.160 | of like the simplicity of that.

00:34:10.940 | Maybe it is kind of impossible to do that

00:34:13.120 | on the large scale, but I just,

00:34:15.300 | yeah, I don't know if you can comment on that,

00:34:19.960 | whether there is some value in still putting in like

00:34:22.480 | tens of thousands of reps on the main, main thing.

00:34:25.440 | - Well, unquestionably that has to happen.

00:34:27.840 | You still have to drill your main throw

00:34:30.080 | and you have to fine tune it and continue to do,

00:34:32.540 | you know, repetition after repetition

00:34:34.280 | and throws on the crash pad, you know,

00:34:36.040 | or throws on the mat, moving around,

00:34:37.740 | just explosive movements doing your main technique.

00:34:40.120 | You're never gonna forget that

00:34:41.280 | and you're not gonna put it to the side

00:34:43.040 | and not practice it anymore.

00:34:44.120 | It still has to be part of your repertoire

00:34:46.120 | and part of your daily training, but you do have to evolve.

00:34:49.680 | And I think that's,

00:34:50.520 | and I think that's the sport of judo makes you evolve.

00:34:54.120 | You know, when I look at,

00:34:54.960 | we talk about Koga from before, right?

00:34:56.880 | And we talked about he had a dynamic,

00:34:58.400 | he pulled on say an Aggie that nobody could stop

00:35:00.800 | for years and years and years.

00:35:01.880 | But when people started to, you know,

00:35:04.000 | be unorthodox and come down his back and cross grip him

00:35:07.480 | and he couldn't get to the lapel,

00:35:09.520 | he had to come up with something else.

00:35:10.880 | And all of a sudden you saw Koga doing,

00:35:12.800 | now he did a Sode, or now he did a Tomoe Nagi,

00:35:15.680 | which so he can, he added to his arsenal, you know,

00:35:18.440 | to keep people thinking, keep people guessing.

00:35:20.440 | So it's not, you're not just that one trick pony.

00:35:22.720 | They still couldn't stop his Ippon Seinagi

00:35:25.200 | once he got that grip.

00:35:26.760 | But if they stopped him from getting that grip

00:35:28.680 | or putting two hands on the gi,

00:35:30.400 | he had to go to something else.

00:35:31.700 | And that's what he did.

00:35:32.960 | - Does Travis's or Koga's Seinagi make sense to you?

00:35:36.680 | That weird, so when I--

00:35:38.960 | - Split hip.

00:35:39.800 | - Split hip, split hip.

00:35:41.280 | So I don't know if you know this,

00:35:43.740 | but like I got into Judo 'cause of Travis.

00:35:45.660 | I watched him at 2008 Olympics.

00:35:47.320 | And I was, there's something about like,

00:35:49.440 | just not the cockiness, but the confidence

00:35:53.160 | and just the refusal to quit, the refusal to,

00:35:56.480 | just that energy, whatever it connected with me,

00:35:59.000 | it's like, oh, that guy's bad-ass.

00:36:01.120 | I wanna be bad-ass like that.

00:36:03.160 | And then I also there happened to be

00:36:04.840 | in my university Judo and I got into it

00:36:08.720 | and just fell in love with the elegance

00:36:10.120 | and the beauty and the power of the sport.

00:36:12.160 | But also I started to mimic Travis's game, his and Koga's.

00:36:18.560 | And then the instructors I worked with,

00:36:21.880 | they said, that's the wrong way to do it.

00:36:24.320 | And I always, I never found somebody that told me like,

00:36:28.440 | no, that's not the wrong way to,

00:36:29.720 | there's a lot of ways to do it.

00:36:31.160 | And there's like the classic way and you have to understand

00:36:33.640 | and you have to learn it, but this is not the wrong way.

00:36:36.040 | 'Cause I was trying to find somebody

00:36:37.560 | who understands this throw.

00:36:39.120 | 'Cause it was so beautiful at the highest level,

00:36:42.440 | especially with Koga, the way you're able,

00:36:45.280 | the quickness with which you can strike,

00:36:47.000 | the fact that you can stand on the feet

00:36:48.720 | and the elevation you can get and the power you can get.

00:36:52.200 | It has certain throws, just like Uchimata

00:36:57.160 | doesn't look powerful.

00:36:59.000 | It just like, it looks effortless.

00:37:02.440 | But like the standing Senagi with a split hip,

00:37:06.800 | it just looks powerful because there's a,

00:37:10.280 | you're like, you're stepping into them,

00:37:12.640 | you're lifting the opponent and they still have,

00:37:14.800 | they're not surprised, they're now like helpless.

00:37:17.240 | - Right, their feet are fluttering in the air.

00:37:18.720 | - Fluttering.

00:37:19.840 | And then there's just this pause and then just big slam.

00:37:23.920 | With Uchimata, it's almost like you don't know what hit you.

00:37:27.640 | It's like Taito, she's the same.

00:37:29.040 | It's almost like a surprise, like, oh shit,

00:37:30.880 | I'm now on my back.

00:37:32.200 | And so I just love that throw,

00:37:37.200 | but like it didn't make sense to me.

00:37:40.420 | Like when trying to explain it to others,

00:37:42.920 | when trying to learn, it didn't make sense to me

00:37:45.400 | how it works.

00:37:46.240 | Does it make sense to you?

00:37:47.480 | - It does.

00:37:48.320 | I was born a Judoka, right?

00:37:50.160 | So I've lived this stuff since I was an infant.

00:37:54.520 | And I've seen every style and every technique.

00:37:57.340 | The split hip seoi nage is difficult to learn.

00:38:01.040 | It's harder to learn than the basic form,

00:38:03.960 | but it is powerful and it does, upon entry,

00:38:08.120 | both your opponent's feet leave the mat at the same time.

00:38:10.480 | So you've got them.

00:38:11.320 | Once you enter, you've got them.

00:38:12.680 | You just got to finish, right?

00:38:13.840 | You just got to lock them and turn and go.

00:38:15.400 | So it makes sense to me.

00:38:17.200 | My dad did teach me how to do that when I was younger.

00:38:20.080 | Yeah, he wanted me to do a split hip.

00:38:21.460 | We have kids at the school today

00:38:23.380 | that we teach the split hip seoi nage, same way,

00:38:26.100 | because it is that dynamic, right?

00:38:28.580 | You don't drop to the ground and roll and turn.

00:38:31.440 | It's not the classic form

00:38:32.960 | where you're giving way to your opponent.

00:38:34.280 | It's actually, you go pick the guy up in the air

00:38:36.680 | and then you slam him.

00:38:37.780 | - Okay.

00:38:39.960 | Beautiful.

00:38:42.200 | So maybe on a small tangent,

00:38:44.040 | so we're talking about elite level athletes

00:38:46.420 | in terms of randori, in terms of like drilling,

00:38:50.240 | for more recreational athletes,

00:38:53.020 | like I have personally that situation going on,

00:38:56.440 | but there's other people

00:38:57.440 | that are just recreationally training judo.

00:39:00.100 | How do you recommend they improve judo?

00:39:03.000 | If I wanted to compete a bunch

00:39:06.480 | and do reasonable with a particular set of throws,

00:39:10.160 | say the split seoi nage,

00:39:13.600 | so how do you, do you do the randori?

00:39:16.360 | Do you use a crash pad to get in reps?

00:39:18.640 | Do you, like, what do you recommend?

00:39:20.340 | - So I guess there's two recreational people

00:39:22.920 | that we're talking about.

00:39:23.760 | One is somebody who wants to learn judo

00:39:25.880 | and become good at judo,

00:39:27.440 | but doesn't necessarily want to compete,

00:39:29.680 | but just wants to get better.

00:39:30.680 | And I think that there's not enough emphasis

00:39:33.480 | in this country on paying attention

00:39:36.800 | to that type of student.

00:39:37.960 | Everybody pushes them to competition,

00:39:40.120 | but in reality, there's a huge audience of people out there

00:39:43.400 | that would love to learn judo

00:39:44.880 | and be very proficient at judo

00:39:46.800 | and have the skills to go execute if they ever needed it.

00:39:50.120 | And there's a class and there should be a program

00:39:52.840 | for that athlete.

00:39:53.760 | And that athlete does not need to do randori.

00:39:56.560 | Like, the sport of judo is physical enough

00:39:59.080 | where you're picking somebody up all the time

00:40:00.960 | and moving their body weight around the mat all the time,

00:40:03.720 | where you can get very physically strong,

00:40:05.800 | very physically fit.

00:40:07.360 | Technically, you'll be better than somebody

00:40:09.240 | that does randori more than you,

00:40:11.920 | because if you learn good technique

00:40:14.320 | and you learn the movement and you learn the feel

00:40:16.400 | and you learn the timing,

00:40:18.720 | you'll actually be a better athlete

00:40:20.220 | than the person that just focuses on randori,

00:40:22.240 | who does ugly technique and wins with force.

00:40:24.760 | So, we have a recreational class at our school

00:40:28.700 | where they don't do any randori.

00:40:30.200 | They have an option afterwards

00:40:31.640 | if they wanna stay for 15 minutes or stay for 30 minutes

00:40:34.120 | where they can participate in randori,

00:40:36.200 | but most of the adult students choose not to,

00:40:39.120 | because they're already so tired from the other hour class.

00:40:42.240 | - It's a good workout.

00:40:43.080 | - Right, they're already dripping sweat.

00:40:44.520 | They're already like, if you work hard and drill hard,

00:40:48.520 | it's an intense workout, you're exhausted.

00:40:51.400 | So, that's a specific set of program,

00:40:55.840 | I should say, at every academy.

00:40:57.200 | And then, if you wanna get good and you wanna compete,

00:41:01.720 | then to me, once you have your techniques,

00:41:04.520 | it's learning how to implement a good gripping system

00:41:09.320 | to put yourself in a position

00:41:11.320 | where you can always dominate the grips,

00:41:14.660 | control the movement,

00:41:17.840 | initiate the reactions from your opponent,

00:41:20.120 | and then have the opportunity to attack and score.

00:41:22.560 | And I think that when people train with,

00:41:25.440 | or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo,

00:41:29.080 | all of a sudden, the first thing they say is, I can't attack.

00:41:32.360 | I don't know how to attack,

00:41:33.400 | 'cause positionally, they don't know where

00:41:35.560 | to put their hands,

00:41:36.440 | they don't know how to hold the gi properly,

00:41:38.820 | they don't understand that they have an inferior grip,

00:41:43.040 | and they don't know how to get into better position

00:41:45.480 | so they can attack.

00:41:46.360 | And that's a big part of the game

00:41:47.560 | that not a lot of people really understand.

00:41:49.720 | So you really, even for recreational competitors,

00:41:52.720 | you really need to have a gripping system.

00:41:54.880 | You need to understand the gripping system.

00:41:57.180 | - If you want to win.

00:41:58.520 | - Yeah.

00:41:59.360 | - I mean, if the goal is to go and compete,

00:42:00.640 | that's a different story.

00:42:01.880 | I don't have fun getting beat up or losing in competitions.

00:42:04.800 | I enjoy the--

00:42:06.920 | - I don't even know if it's the winning or the losing.

00:42:10.200 | I think this is what, 'cause I competed a lot

00:42:13.200 | in both judo and jiu-jitsu,

00:42:14.280 | and in judo, it feels like,

00:42:18.080 | 'cause I didn't have a gripping system,

00:42:19.960 | it feels like you're not even playing judo

00:42:21.840 | against the good black belts.

00:42:24.260 | They're not even trying

00:42:27.320 | because they get a certain kind of grip

00:42:29.800 | and you just can't do anything.

00:42:31.320 | And I don't have a good answer for that.

00:42:33.080 | I don't even know what I'm looking for.

00:42:34.880 | And so it's not even fun.

00:42:36.120 | It's not like even losing.

00:42:37.760 | It's like, I don't know,

00:42:40.680 | it's like you didn't even show up to play,

00:42:43.480 | is what it feels like.

00:42:44.640 | And it's not for, and I think that is a big gap

00:42:47.980 | in knowledge actually in judo schools,

00:42:52.980 | is the gripping part.

00:42:55.720 | - When you first go out to do judo,

00:42:59.440 | the first thing you have to do

00:43:00.320 | is you have to grab your opponent.

00:43:01.880 | And a lot of times I hear coaches say,

00:43:03.160 | "Get a grip, just take a grip."

00:43:04.800 | Well, sometimes if you take a grip,

00:43:07.280 | you're in a worse position than not having a grip at all.

00:43:10.480 | That's what a lot of people don't understand.

00:43:12.160 | If you hold the gi in the wrong way,

00:43:14.360 | your opponent can attack you, but you can't attack him.

00:43:16.920 | So why would you ever do that grip

00:43:19.260 | if it's only to your detriment?

00:43:22.000 | And the way you grip does set up

00:43:26.860 | what attacks you can do as well.

00:43:28.380 | So that is a huge part.

00:43:29.660 | And I'm not saying that you have to be 100% disciplined

00:43:32.740 | and always outgrip your opponent

00:43:34.460 | and only be able to do throws

00:43:36.140 | when you have a superior grip.

00:43:37.180 | I'm just saying that to be able to put the grips together

00:43:40.380 | with the throws and understand the movements

00:43:42.140 | is going to make you that much ahead of the game.

00:43:45.020 | - So if we take a step to our previous discussion

00:43:48.440 | of going from zero to hero.

00:43:51.800 | So going from the early days through the teenage years

00:43:55.800 | to winning an Olympic medal.

00:43:58.520 | So we mentioned a lot of training,

00:44:00.880 | the dedication of the training, the competing.

00:44:03.880 | What other elements are there?

00:44:05.120 | The mental side is visualization,

00:44:07.920 | believing that you could perform at that level.

00:44:12.640 | So what else can you say about that?

00:44:13.480 | - I think that comes at the highest level.

00:44:15.480 | The visualization, the success,

00:44:17.280 | that comes at the highest level.

00:44:18.480 | I think in the teen years,

00:44:20.600 | there's the experience just plays a huge role

00:44:24.880 | in getting to train with other people.

00:44:28.240 | Like as Americans, we have to go train in Europe.

00:44:30.940 | We have to feel the European style of judo.

00:44:33.200 | We have to understand that physicality.

00:44:35.740 | They grip very differently.

00:44:38.040 | They put you in very unorthodox positions.

00:44:41.120 | And if you don't know how to deal with that,

00:44:43.760 | you get thrown before you even have a chance

00:44:45.440 | to try your own throws.

00:44:47.200 | So it takes a lot of that experience

00:44:50.480 | and understanding what's going on.

00:44:52.760 | And then you also need to get that physicality.

00:44:55.120 | You need to be strong and hard, I would say,

00:44:59.240 | by doing all those rounds with the Europeans.

00:45:01.640 | And at the same time, you need to go to Asia

00:45:03.520 | and you need to train in Japan

00:45:05.240 | because you need to feel that free flowing judo

00:45:08.720 | for your technical, the technical side.

00:45:10.720 | And I think that's one of the things

00:45:12.560 | that I was able to benefit from.

00:45:13.840 | My dad was a coach who said,

00:45:15.040 | "Listen, I've taken you as far as I can take you.

00:45:17.880 | I want you to go to the next level."

00:45:19.680 | I want, and he sent me to England with Neil Adams,

00:45:23.000 | who was an Olympic silver medalist

00:45:24.560 | and was a world champion, had a great ground game

00:45:27.040 | and was good at gripping and actually did tai otoshi,

00:45:29.480 | which is the throw I did.

00:45:30.440 | So my dad said, "Why don't you go learn from Neil?"

00:45:32.480 | And I ended up going to England

00:45:34.760 | probably eight to 10 times in my career

00:45:36.620 | and spending a good amount of time there

00:45:38.240 | training at the Neil Adams Academy.

00:45:40.680 | He's now the voice of judo, Neil Adams.

00:45:43.000 | - What do you make of that guy?

00:45:43.920 | Just a brief pause.

00:45:44.880 | He's like the, like Morgan Freeman is the voice

00:45:48.480 | of like "March of the Penguins"

00:45:50.160 | and any other nature documentary.

00:45:52.200 | And Neil Adams is, there's very few sports

00:45:54.840 | that have a Neil Adams, I would say,

00:45:56.360 | because he's legitimately, maybe like Joe Rogan

00:46:00.880 | is that from mixed martial arts.

00:46:02.800 | It's just like an exceptionally recognizable voice.

00:46:06.320 | He's really knowledgeable.

00:46:07.960 | Also the passion is conveyed so well.

00:46:10.520 | Like many times I'll watch just because he's talking.

00:46:13.560 | So who is he, since you've gotten the chance

00:46:15.920 | to train with him, to learn from him, who's Neil Adams?

00:46:18.760 | - He's a great friend of mine.

00:46:20.240 | - He is?

00:46:21.080 | - He's a mentor.

00:46:21.900 | Like I said, I lived and trained

00:46:24.960 | at the Neil Adams Club in Coventry, England

00:46:27.680 | since I was like 16 years old.

00:46:29.880 | I went and visited him for the first time.

00:46:31.880 | He's the one who originally taught me how to do jujitsu

00:46:34.680 | and the way that I do jujitsu.

00:46:37.320 | I trained with him.

00:46:38.140 | He was just retired.

00:46:39.480 | He was in his early 30s when I first went out there.

00:46:41.800 | And so I trained with him many times.

00:46:43.920 | And over the years, he was a mentor, great person.

00:46:48.920 | Cares about people, cares about the sport of judo.

00:46:53.380 | Had a good little club that was a fitness club.

00:46:57.920 | It was judo, it was fitness.

00:47:01.680 | Used to go there.

00:47:02.960 | I'd show up at that place at like seven in the morning.

00:47:05.280 | And the first thing we would do is we'd go for a run.

00:47:07.280 | And we'd either be running mountains

00:47:09.320 | or we'd be doing a five mile run

00:47:11.280 | or we'd be doing something at the park

00:47:13.120 | where we're doing sprints and buddy carries

00:47:14.760 | and all this stuff.

00:47:15.600 | And then at 9 a.m. we'd have a technical session

00:47:18.200 | with Neil Adams where he would, for an hour and a half,

00:47:21.000 | we would drill techniques and learn positions.

00:47:23.320 | And it was no randori.

00:47:25.020 | It was that sequential drilling

00:47:26.600 | that we talked about before, right?

00:47:28.080 | Where you're reinforcing your two or three attacks

00:47:31.840 | to set up your main attack.

00:47:33.000 | Or if you're on the ground,

00:47:34.200 | you're going through repetitions of certain movements.

00:47:38.200 | And then I'd spend all afternoon at the club, have lunch.

00:47:41.880 | I'd go do my weight training in the afternoon at that place.

00:47:45.280 | And then in the evening,

00:47:46.240 | we would either do randori training at the Neil Adams club

00:47:49.400 | or we would all get in a car

00:47:50.640 | and we'd drive to another location

00:47:53.800 | and we'd go train at another club

00:47:55.140 | that might be an hour away.

00:47:56.240 | And there'd be 50 bodies there to train with.

00:47:58.320 | And each night we'd go to a different dojo.

00:48:00.440 | And so it would be all day at the club.

00:48:02.380 | And I'd do that for like three weeks straight.

00:48:04.680 | All we'd do was train.

00:48:05.800 | - Do you know how he became the voice of judo?

00:48:08.160 | Do you have an understanding of what his thinking is

00:48:12.720 | around like how much he dedicates himself

00:48:15.720 | to just commentating on judo?

00:48:17.920 | I imagine the amount of research required,

00:48:21.280 | but also just like psychologically,

00:48:23.020 | just the excitement he has in his voice.

00:48:25.920 | It takes work to do that.

00:48:28.020 | Do you have an understanding

00:48:28.920 | of like what his vision is with that?

00:48:30.960 | - He's always been a very charismatic, animated person, Neil.

00:48:35.080 | Very passionate and loud and funny.

00:48:38.400 | And the Brits are very funny to begin with.

00:48:40.080 | So he's very charismatic.

00:48:42.880 | But I think after coaching, he tried coaching.

00:48:46.600 | He coached the country of Wales for a while.

00:48:48.960 | He tried coaching stints in other countries.

00:48:51.120 | He didn't have a lot of success on the coaching side

00:48:54.800 | developing an Olympic champion.

00:48:56.320 | I know that was a goal of his that he was a world champion.

00:49:00.200 | I think it was 1981.

00:49:01.520 | He won two silver medals in the Olympic games himself.

00:49:05.600 | He went on to coach for a while

00:49:07.920 | and had some political issues

00:49:09.800 | with the country of England for a while.

00:49:12.680 | And then left England and went to Wales.

00:49:14.440 | And I think he had a coaching stint somewhere else as well.

00:49:17.520 | Didn't have a lot of success coaching in the sport

00:49:20.400 | with athletes, not at the highest level.

00:49:22.120 | Had a great national team and things like that.

00:49:24.280 | And he was really good at teaching his technique to others

00:49:27.400 | 'cause he helped me a lot.

00:49:30.640 | But running a program, I think, was difficult for him.

00:49:33.320 | The boy's not listening and not having

00:49:34.920 | that same kind of passion and intensity that he.

00:49:37.800 | And that's why I bonded well with him

00:49:39.800 | because I was all in.

00:49:41.080 | I went there and whatever he said, I did.

00:49:43.160 | I didn't care how hard, I didn't care how long.

00:49:45.640 | I just wanted to get as good as I could.

00:49:47.160 | And so that's why he was a good mentor for me.

00:49:50.240 | But now in terms of a commentator, he's very cerebral.

00:49:54.680 | He just, he loves judo.

00:49:56.680 | He researches it nonstop.

00:50:00.400 | He's got that great voice and he knows how to bring life

00:50:03.680 | to the game and that's what he's done.

00:50:06.360 | And now this is who he is, right?

00:50:08.000 | He does judo full-time.

00:50:09.720 | This is his job.

00:50:11.040 | - Can I ask you a small, before we return

00:50:13.440 | to the actual sport, the coaching of the sport.

00:50:17.200 | It's a bit of a political question.

00:50:18.860 | I did a whole rant before Travis episode.

00:50:21.080 | I love Neil Adams' voice.

00:50:26.200 | I love watching judo.

00:50:28.000 | And it's really disappointing to me that the IOC

00:50:33.000 | and whoever's responsible, I don't understand this,

00:50:36.680 | that they don't make it easy for people to watch

00:50:39.880 | the Olympics in replay for years after.

00:50:44.080 | Like I can't watch Travis's matches.

00:50:46.360 | I can't watch, like they make it very difficult

00:50:49.000 | to watch stuff online.

00:50:50.500 | So what happened is I uploaded the Travis Stevens episode

00:50:55.880 | and we talked about his Ole Bischoff 2012 match.

00:50:59.200 | And it was like one minute of like a small overlay

00:51:04.080 | of the videos, we're talking through it,

00:51:06.480 | we're like stepping through it.

00:51:08.100 | And it got taken down immediately from YouTube,

00:51:11.800 | the whole four hour conversation

00:51:14.320 | because of that one minute little clip.

00:51:16.580 | And the way it got taken down automatically

00:51:20.660 | is because the IOC has that video uploaded.

00:51:25.000 | It's set to private, but it's uploaded.

00:51:27.400 | So like they have the video and they choose not to show it.

00:51:31.160 | It's not that they're asking for money or whatever,

00:51:33.320 | they're just not showing it anywhere.

00:51:35.400 | They're not showing it through their own service

00:51:37.600 | like NBC Olympics or so on.

00:51:39.760 | There's just so many great human stories

00:51:42.180 | that the Olympics reveals.

00:51:44.160 | They're just not made easily accessible.

00:51:46.800 | That's the Olympics charter is you want to,

00:51:50.480 | I think the actual line is to ensure the fullest coverage

00:51:54.880 | and the widest possible audience in the world

00:51:57.320 | for the Olympic Games.

00:51:58.960 | And it seems like to me as a fan of the Olympic Games,

00:52:02.480 | we're not getting any of that.

00:52:04.200 | Do you have an understanding of why that is?

00:52:08.080 | Like why we can't watch Kayla's matches,

00:52:10.680 | Travis's matches super easily,

00:52:12.560 | even if we're willing to pay money for it.

00:52:14.960 | - So you can't go on the International Judo Federation

00:52:17.800 | website right now and watch any of the Olympic footage?

00:52:20.560 | - No, no, no.

00:52:23.980 | So the only thing they have is for certain,

00:52:27.040 | for example, Teddy Rene match he lost.

00:52:30.080 | Not available anywhere.

00:52:31.200 | - Really?

00:52:32.040 | - And that's like a dramatic thing.

00:52:33.640 | So the one thing they have is for certain sports

00:52:36.840 | at the highest level like gymnastics,

00:52:39.220 | they'll have a highlight,

00:52:40.600 | which is the most frustrating thing to me.

00:52:43.680 | Because this is what I can't,

00:52:46.160 | I'm going to try to prevent myself from going on a rant.

00:52:50.160 | But people don't just want to see a two minute highlight

00:52:55.160 | of a historic moment.

00:52:58.620 | They want to see the buildup where the athlete is standing,

00:53:01.440 | the nerves, the fear, the confidence.

00:53:04.140 | You see the buildup to the event,

00:53:06.100 | say it's a gymnastic, whatever floor routine.

00:53:09.220 | Like their name is announced, they're walking,

00:53:11.840 | the coat, then they cut to the coach

00:53:13.900 | and the coach with anticipation,

00:53:15.660 | and then go to the athlete.

00:53:16.820 | You want the full 10 minute thing.

00:53:18.780 | You don't want a two minute highlight

00:53:20.820 | of what happened like last second or whatever.

00:53:23.380 | It's just like the magic of that full story,

00:53:28.260 | like a lifetime building up to those 10 minutes.

00:53:31.660 | That's the magic of the Olympics.

00:53:34.380 | The both the drama and the triumph

00:53:36.140 | that happens in those moments.

00:53:37.540 | And the fact that you can't relive that.

00:53:39.680 | Like Travis had a bunch of those.

00:53:43.460 | He had a bunch of times he faced like world champions.

00:53:46.940 | He won and lost and just, it's always close.

00:53:49.940 | It's always dramatic.

00:53:51.140 | - Right, right, right.

00:53:51.980 | - And none of those are available

00:53:53.540 | except like maybe the one where he beat Armbard

00:53:58.540 | or whatever the submission was, I forgot.

00:54:01.900 | - The Georgian.

00:54:02.740 | - The choke, yeah, the Georgian.

00:54:04.980 | But most things are not.

00:54:06.540 | Usain Bolt, the full races,

00:54:09.940 | not all of his races are available online.

00:54:12.240 | The race with the Italian winning

00:54:15.440 | the a hundred meter track race.

00:54:19.660 | This Olympics is not only highlight is available

00:54:22.420 | from what I saw, I didn't look too hard.

00:54:24.460 | So like, but that the fact that it's not super easily

00:54:27.540 | accessible if you're willing to pay money even

00:54:29.780 | but probably should be for free is heartbreaking to me.

00:54:33.060 | 'Cause to me, the Olympics is like some of the best

00:54:38.060 | of humanity, just like, again, the hardship

00:54:42.300 | they have to overcome.

00:54:43.260 | So like the losses are really powerful.

00:54:45.060 | - Sure.

00:54:45.900 | - 'Cause it's such hard break,

00:54:46.760 | but it's also like the triumph.

00:54:49.380 | - Where you're losing history.

00:54:50.420 | - Yeah.

00:54:51.260 | - You're losing history is what you are

00:54:52.080 | of all the magical moments of your sport, right?

00:54:55.500 | It's a sin.

00:54:57.340 | I gotta blame it on television rights and money.

00:55:03.580 | That's what it comes down to.

00:55:04.780 | It's like I'm billions and billions of dollars

00:55:06.460 | of television rights paid by NBC here in the United States

00:55:10.260 | and globally, whatever the main carriers are

00:55:13.020 | and all the other nations that are dictating

00:55:16.100 | what can be replayed and what can't.

00:55:17.980 | And it's what it comes down to.

00:55:19.380 | You know, I made a DVD or a video when I first retired

00:55:24.380 | from the sport, it was called "Fury on the Mat."

00:55:27.380 | It was kind of my story, right?

00:55:28.780 | And I did it with a friend who was a videographer

00:55:32.420 | and we grabbed a bunch of my old footage

00:55:34.700 | and Olympic footage.

00:55:35.700 | And somebody said to me, you can't use that Olympic footage.

00:55:39.940 | And I was young and I had just retired.

00:55:41.820 | I said, what do you mean I can't use the Olympic footage?

00:55:43.300 | It's not the television footage.

00:55:45.340 | It's my buddy who filmed it with his own camera.

00:55:47.500 | It's my footage.

00:55:48.340 | Yeah, exactly.

00:55:49.180 | You know, and they said, no, if it has Olympics in it

00:55:51.260 | or it's anything to do with the Olympics,

00:55:52.960 | the USOC owns it.

00:55:54.620 | Yeah.

00:55:55.460 | I said, okay, well, they said,

00:55:56.280 | well, you should get to send it to them

00:55:57.660 | and let them review it.

00:56:00.300 | So I sent it to them and I got a bill back.

00:56:02.660 | I got a thing back that said,

00:56:03.940 | if you wanna use this footage, it's gonna be like $30,000.

00:56:06.860 | And I said, man, it's only like three minutes.

00:56:09.180 | I spliced it up as much as I could

00:56:11.140 | and I only have highlights in there.

00:56:13.220 | And then I said, come on.

00:56:14.060 | I went back and I negotiated with them.

00:56:17.360 | But at the end of the day, I still had to pay like $15,000

00:56:20.420 | just to have a few minutes of footage in my own film.

00:56:23.780 | (laughing)

00:56:25.340 | And I'm thinking, you wouldn't even have that film

00:56:27.020 | if I didn't compete in it.

00:56:28.100 | You know, like you can't, you know.

00:56:30.180 | So it was a struggle.

00:56:31.940 | - This is the different, like you have the same in jujitsu.

00:56:34.780 | There's certain organizations, IBJJF,

00:56:37.780 | or like flow grappling and flow wrestling.

00:56:40.020 | I understand, I think when it's a business,

00:56:43.060 | it might make sense.

00:56:44.620 | First of all, you should actually be good

00:56:46.240 | at being a business and making money,

00:56:48.180 | which is why for me, the IOC doesn't make sense.

00:56:51.100 | Like it should be accessible, but it would cost money.

00:56:54.340 | I can't buy it.

00:56:57.580 | Like would I have to email them for this footage

00:57:00.220 | and pay $30,000?

00:57:02.060 | No, but the question is like the way you run a business

00:57:06.220 | is you make that frictionless.

00:57:08.220 | Whatever the money is, $30,000 or $30,

00:57:11.060 | you make it frictionless and easy to pay that money.

00:57:13.860 | But anyway, I understand why that might be the case

00:57:17.020 | with flow grappling, but to me,

00:57:18.940 | the Olympics is a special thing.

00:57:21.020 | - For sure.

00:57:21.860 | - It's like you said, it is history.

00:57:23.880 | Like there's not even,

00:57:25.180 | like even the world championships don't compare.

00:57:27.940 | I understand they're really important,

00:57:30.180 | but Olympics is history.

00:57:32.100 | And the stories should certainly belong to the athletes

00:57:37.140 | if they want to do like "Fury on the Mat"

00:57:39.820 | to do their own story or like on a podcast

00:57:43.060 | to talk about the most tragic moment of their career.

00:57:47.240 | Do you have a sense of how that could be fixed or no?

00:57:53.060 | - The only thing I could think of is,

00:57:56.620 | you'd have to go to the Olympic Committee.

00:57:58.340 | The US Olympic Committee is the place I would start

00:58:00.780 | 'cause the US controls the worldwide market

00:58:02.940 | when it comes to television.

00:58:04.580 | We pay the most for our television rights.

00:58:06.280 | Our sponsors pay the most for their rights

00:58:09.860 | to be associated with the best team in the world,

00:58:12.020 | which is the United States, right?

00:58:13.220 | So it's where all the money starts here.

00:58:15.260 | I got to believe there has to be a way to get that footage

00:58:18.900 | that should be accessible to the sports themselves.

00:58:22.420 | I'm surprised it's not, but if it's not,

00:58:24.740 | then it's because of dollars.

00:58:26.540 | It's because people aren't,

00:58:28.580 | the sport itself is not willing to pay enough money

00:58:31.420 | to have it on its, accessible to its audience.

00:58:35.700 | It's too cost prohibitive for them to do it.

00:58:38.660 | - No, but I think it's also, unfortunately,

00:58:40.740 | might be some mixture of incompetence

00:58:43.060 | and just an old way of doing things

00:58:45.160 | because there's a lot of money to be made

00:58:48.380 | on television rights where you live show the event, right?

00:58:52.900 | But what's not being leveraged is the huge amount of money

00:58:56.620 | that could be made on the replay.

00:58:58.060 | This is what people don't understand is,

00:59:00.820 | do you know how many times, just the tens of millions,

00:59:05.860 | of times that people watch individual events

00:59:09.020 | years from now.

00:59:10.380 | You watch like all the videos on YouTube,

00:59:12.660 | they're still getting plays,

00:59:14.220 | hundreds of millions of views on stuff that happened

00:59:16.700 | 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

00:59:18.620 | That's really powerful.

00:59:19.940 | And there's a lot of opportunity to make a ton of money.

00:59:22.340 | So it's not that they're necessarily greedy.

00:59:25.500 | They're also just not good at being greedy.

00:59:28.020 | - Oh, I get what you're saying, yeah.

00:59:29.060 | It's not the tradition, you know, think about it though.

00:59:30.980 | It's not traditional, right?

00:59:32.220 | For television studios, it's non-traditional

00:59:35.780 | to go to online streaming, to online access to information.

00:59:40.300 | It's not hard, right?

00:59:41.260 | 'Cause everybody's doing it now, but it's not typical.

00:59:45.100 | - Yeah.

00:59:46.420 | So it requires for the IOC to operate

00:59:50.060 | outside their comfort zone.

00:59:51.380 | Well, I definitely hope that's the case.

00:59:53.300 | And since Travis's video got taken down,

00:59:58.300 | it's obvious they have it.

01:00:00.460 | They have it on their YouTube channel.

01:00:02.500 | So it's like, I hope, I hope that they will just release it

01:00:07.500 | and for money, for whatever, but release it

01:00:10.580 | and have that history not be erased, right?

01:00:15.580 | - It'd be wonderful if athletes could buy,

01:00:19.100 | even if you could buy your own footage,

01:00:20.340 | you can't use it commercially, you can't,

01:00:22.060 | but you can buy your own matches

01:00:24.160 | and have them available for yourself

01:00:25.820 | or package the footage, it'd be awesome.

01:00:29.600 | (sighs)

01:00:31.600 | - Thank you for that.

01:00:32.440 | It is quite heartbreaking for me.

01:00:34.240 | So I wanted to talk about it a little bit.

01:00:36.460 | Let's go to you as an athlete real quick.

01:00:41.440 | - Sure.

01:00:42.260 | - You represented the United States at four Olympics,

01:00:45.720 | winning a bronze medal at two of them.

01:00:48.040 | Who or what was the toughest match

01:00:52.740 | or moment you had in those years?

01:00:55.220 | Maybe a moment that defined you,

01:00:58.560 | that you remember as being particularly

01:01:00.920 | defining in your career.

01:01:03.400 | - I would say the bronze medal match in Atlanta in '96,

01:01:11.320 | because up to that moment,

01:01:13.080 | the United States team had not won a medal,

01:01:15.680 | had not fought for a medal in the games.

01:01:18.560 | We were on our home turf.

01:01:20.240 | It was my second Olympic games, right?

01:01:22.240 | So I had competed in '92 and I had won two matches

01:01:25.040 | and lost in the third round in Barcelona.

01:01:28.520 | I didn't make the podium.

01:01:29.640 | I lost to a Japanese guy from Japan.

01:01:31.660 | But the gold, silver, and bronze medalist

01:01:36.000 | at that Olympics in Barcelona were all guys that I had beat.

01:01:39.480 | In fact, two of them I was undefeated against

01:01:41.640 | in my entire career, the Brazilian and the Cuban,

01:01:43.520 | I had never lost to.

01:01:45.160 | So that's when I knew I was capable of being

01:01:47.520 | on the podium at the Olympic games.

01:01:50.400 | When '96 came around, I was 25 years old.

01:01:53.640 | I was fairly in my prime.

01:01:55.200 | I had lived in Japan for six months.

01:01:56.860 | My technique was at a high level.

01:01:58.720 | I was amongst the best in the world.

01:02:02.140 | I lost at that Olympics to a guy from Mongolia.

01:02:07.840 | It was right before the match I was supposed

01:02:09.720 | to fight against Japan.

01:02:10.760 | So I was anticipating the match against Japan

01:02:13.320 | and I got beat by the Mongolian.

01:02:15.680 | So that was kind of a letdown.

01:02:16.900 | But the match for the bronze,

01:02:19.100 | in front of the hometown crowd,

01:02:21.920 | all of my family, all of my friends,

01:02:24.320 | everybody who had ever helped me in the sport

01:02:27.820 | were in the stands that day,

01:02:29.340 | including all my teammates at Brown University

01:02:31.720 | that were on the wrestling team,

01:02:32.940 | and little, my uncles, my aunts, everybody.

01:02:35.980 | Everybody was in the stands, right?

01:02:37.660 | So it was like the Jimmy Pedro day.

01:02:39.920 | And I'm getting goosebumps right now talking about it.

01:02:42.620 | But it was a match against the Brazilian

01:02:46.280 | for the bronze medal.

01:02:47.200 | I had beaten the Brazilian like two or three times

01:02:49.240 | before that.

01:02:50.080 | I found myself down in the match.

01:02:54.060 | He actually countered me.

01:02:55.340 | I came in my taotoshi and he was waiting for it

01:02:58.340 | and he countered me and he scored a yuko against me.

01:03:00.820 | So I was losing the fight,

01:03:02.640 | came down to about the last minute in the match,

01:03:05.260 | and I was just tucking in my gi and fixing my thing

01:03:08.340 | and gathering my thoughts together.

01:03:09.920 | And the whole crowd just started chanting,

01:03:12.620 | "USA, USA, USA."

01:03:16.340 | And I literally got so much energy.

01:03:18.620 | I walked out there, I grabbed the guy,

01:03:20.740 | I came in my taotoshi again.

01:03:22.280 | He stepped off the taotoshi.

01:03:24.140 | I threw him with duchimata, free pwn.

01:03:26.580 | I won my first Olympic medal in front of the hometown crowd.

01:03:31.580 | Everybody went bananas.

01:03:33.860 | The United States judo team had our first medal

01:03:36.580 | from the Olympics.

01:03:37.820 | It ended up being the only Olympic medal we won

01:03:40.100 | at that Games, but it was like a magical moment

01:03:43.240 | that defined my career and solidified myself

01:03:45.740 | in history where, hey, now I get to step up

01:03:48.140 | on the Olympic podium and I'm Olympic medalist.

01:03:50.780 | And to me, that was my defining moment.

01:03:53.660 | And after that, I was sold.

01:03:55.840 | Like, man, I had to go back to the Olympics again.

01:03:57.860 | I want to win a gold medal.

01:03:58.940 | I want to do, I want this feeling all over again.

01:04:01.680 | I don't care if I have to wait four years.

01:04:03.560 | Let's do it.

01:04:05.040 | - In your career, like moments like that,

01:04:08.480 | do you think you love winning or hate losing more?

01:04:13.480 | So do you live for those moments

01:04:17.820 | or are you more driven by just how much you hate losing?

01:04:22.820 | - So in order to be a champion,

01:04:26.340 | my belief is that you have to hate losing

01:04:29.420 | more than you like winning.

01:04:31.300 | Hate losing more than you like winning.

01:04:33.620 | But I live for those moments when you do win.

01:04:36.840 | And what excited me the most in my career

01:04:39.540 | when I was competing was I loved being in the finals.

01:04:44.300 | I loved the spotlight being on me.

01:04:46.460 | I can't think of too many times in my career,

01:04:48.900 | of course there were a few,

01:04:50.360 | but there weren't too many times where the chips were down,

01:04:54.120 | like the lights were on and I didn't win.

01:04:56.820 | Like it was, I might've lost early in the day

01:05:00.020 | and didn't make it to the finals

01:05:01.300 | or didn't make it to the medal rounds.

01:05:02.860 | But like in my career, I have a ton of golds.

01:05:06.300 | I have a ton of bronzes, which means the lights are on

01:05:10.540 | and I won and I have very few silvers and very few fifths.

01:05:14.980 | So I either lost in the early rounds

01:05:16.620 | and didn't make to the medal rounds in my younger days,

01:05:18.560 | or the spotlight came and I really shined.

01:05:21.660 | 'Cause if you look, I don't know how many silvers,

01:05:23.540 | but there wasn't very many silver medals

01:05:25.060 | in my career that I won.

01:05:26.580 | You know what I mean?

01:05:27.400 | So I just loved that moment.

01:05:28.980 | I didn't feel pressure.

01:05:30.260 | I loved the crowd.

01:05:31.740 | I loved being in the spotlight.

01:05:33.380 | I didn't have, I wasn't nervous when it came to the finals

01:05:36.180 | or I knew I was getting a medal, it didn't matter.

01:05:38.940 | You know, so it was just me against the other guy

01:05:40.740 | and that's how I always saw it.

01:05:42.340 | And I just loved that moment.

01:05:44.220 | - So your dad was your coach.

01:05:45.860 | (laughing)

01:05:48.120 | - You didn't get to meet him tonight.

01:05:50.140 | - Oh, great.

01:05:50.980 | (laughing)

01:05:53.220 | He's kind of a legend in the sport.

01:05:56.060 | So how has your dad helped you as a coach, as an athlete,

01:06:00.300 | as a human being throughout the years?

01:06:02.340 | - Number one, my dad is the most brutally honest person

01:06:07.620 | you will ever meet in your life, brutally honest.

01:06:10.540 | He will tell you, if you are fat,

01:06:13.580 | he will tell you you're fat right to your face.

01:06:15.580 | He wants you to get better.

01:06:16.780 | He wants you to be healthy.

01:06:18.140 | Doesn't want you to die of obesity.

01:06:19.900 | It's just the way he is.

01:06:21.260 | If you didn't do well, he will not sugarcoat it.

01:06:24.860 | He will let you know what you didn't do right.

01:06:27.260 | So he's the ultimate litmus test.

01:06:29.220 | Second is he is the most passionate, caring, deep,

01:06:36.100 | like always thinking about, very cerebral,

01:06:41.020 | very like a student of the game.

01:06:44.740 | Somebody who helped me immensely in defining my strategy,

01:06:49.260 | helping me improve and always look for what's next.

01:06:53.540 | In terms of training, I think that he's probably

01:07:00.380 | the most brilliant human when it comes

01:07:02.740 | to preparing an athlete physically,

01:07:06.580 | not necessarily mentally, physically for success.

01:07:10.080 | When all the chips are down,

01:07:11.460 | that athlete will be ready that day.

01:07:12.900 | And he has a system of training and preparing

01:07:15.860 | and getting the athlete to peak for performance.

01:07:18.860 | - You mean like conditioning, like the whole thing?

01:07:20.900 | - Yes.

01:07:21.940 | - Okay, 'cause I remember like, vaguely remember

01:07:25.300 | Kayla Harrison talking about her preparation

01:07:29.500 | being very difficult.

01:07:31.020 | - Yeah, that's it.

01:07:33.220 | - That's him?

01:07:34.060 | - Yeah, that's him.

01:07:34.900 | (laughing)

01:07:35.740 | At the same, you go back and ask Ronda Rousey

01:07:38.420 | about her career, right?

01:07:39.460 | My dad was her coach.

01:07:41.320 | My dad moved her to Camp New Hampshire in Boston,

01:07:45.880 | got her up, ran her in the morning,

01:07:48.160 | had her downstairs in the basement of his house,

01:07:50.700 | training with the weights.

01:07:51.680 | We brought a Russian girl in.

01:07:52.960 | She did throws on his cement outside

01:07:54.980 | with the little crash pad.

01:07:56.420 | Threw the Russian girl, 100 times that morning.

01:07:59.300 | And then every night came to Boston,

01:08:02.000 | to the training center in Wakefield, trained at night,

01:08:04.040 | went back and slept at my dad's house

01:08:05.660 | and three weeks straight before she went off to Beijing.

01:08:09.300 | And he did the same with Kayla.

01:08:11.100 | He did the same with me.

01:08:12.380 | He's just, his passion is producing athletes

01:08:16.580 | at the highest level and he knows how to do it.

01:08:18.780 | And then the one side of my dad's coaching

01:08:22.780 | where I think there's a flaw or weakness

01:08:26.220 | is on the mental preparation side of the game.

01:08:28.320 | He wasn't somebody that was, I don't know if he,

01:08:32.480 | maybe because he wasn't an Olympic champion himself

01:08:34.940 | and wasn't a world champion, he lacked the confidence

01:08:37.960 | in helping others be more confident.

01:08:39.820 | So he's more of a, this is what you need

01:08:42.460 | to work on type of thing.

01:08:43.580 | He doesn't know how to build the athletes up

01:08:46.240 | to make them feel invincible.

01:08:48.260 | And I feel like that's something that I was able

01:08:50.020 | to give all of the athletes,

01:08:51.260 | to help them with that visualization, belief in yourself,

01:08:55.060 | knowing that you're going to win

01:08:56.140 | before you step out on the mat,

01:08:57.260 | knowing that we've earned the right to victory,

01:09:00.020 | seeing success in your mind, having a positive mantra

01:09:04.600 | that you, I'm the best in the world,

01:09:06.300 | nobody's beaten me today type of feeling.

01:09:09.080 | So you go out there feeling like King Kong

01:09:10.980 | when you step on the mat, nobody's going to stop you.

01:09:14.380 | And so I think the combination of both of us as coaches,

01:09:17.960 | I'm a lot more technical.

01:09:20.280 | My dad is good at letting, identifying what they need to do

01:09:23.900 | for their techniques and what, how to, and strategy,

01:09:26.960 | how to beat opponents and putting game plans together.

01:09:30.780 | So combined, the two of us made an unbelievable team.

01:09:33.760 | - So he's not going to let the athlete be soft

01:09:36.400 | when they enter the highest,

01:09:39.360 | the most difficult competitions of their career.

01:09:43.600 | So on the mental side, what's mental preparation look like?

01:09:48.100 | Like how many years before the Olympics

01:09:50.840 | do you start helping an athlete believe

01:09:54.080 | that they can win an Olympic medal?

01:09:57.440 | - Well, I think it's got to be a seed

01:09:59.000 | in that athlete's brain, something they want to do, right?

01:10:02.280 | Nobody can quickly get there, right?

01:10:05.720 | It's a long process, but if your goal,

01:10:07.840 | if you're a national champion,

01:10:09.200 | or you've proven yourself to win

01:10:10.920 | in some international tournaments,

01:10:13.240 | and you think the Olympics is a possibility for you,

01:10:15.440 | then defining it as, hey, I want to be on the Olympic team,

01:10:19.160 | that would be the first step into getting ready.

01:10:24.160 | And I always make them put it on paper.

01:10:28.400 | If it really is your goal,

01:10:29.600 | then you show me that it's your goal

01:10:30.880 | and put it on paper and commit to it.

01:10:32.960 | I want to be Olympic medalist,

01:10:34.080 | I want to be Olympic champion,

01:10:35.080 | I want to go to the Olympics.

01:10:36.560 | World team member, maybe junior world team member,

01:10:38.920 | whatever it is, we walk before we go to the highest level.

01:10:41.720 | But if the goal is to go to the Olympics,

01:10:44.360 | let's accomplish these other things first, right?

01:10:46.880 | Because if we can accomplish these other things,

01:10:50.280 | then we're on our way to getting to the ultimate goal,

01:10:52.600 | which is the Olympics.

01:10:54.160 | For somebody like Kayla, for example,

01:10:58.520 | she didn't say that she wanted to be Olympic champion

01:11:02.240 | when she first came here in 2005, right?

01:11:05.360 | We wanted to become national champion,

01:11:07.840 | then we wanted to be on the world team,

01:11:09.320 | then we wanted to be a world medalist.

01:11:11.040 | Then our sights were set on the Olympics

01:11:12.920 | or the Olympic gold.

01:11:14.600 | So it's having those clearly defined goals

01:11:17.160 | that are attainable.

01:11:18.160 | Like they should be a reach, they should be a stretch,

01:11:21.000 | but they have to be attainable.

01:11:22.800 | They can't be just a pipe dream.

01:11:24.400 | But once you put it to paper,

01:11:28.160 | and you think it's achievable,

01:11:30.120 | then it's mapping the plan to get there.

01:11:33.080 | - Is there a daily process of visualizing yourself

01:11:36.920 | as an Olympic champion or national champion?

01:11:40.080 | - Yes, it is.

01:11:41.920 | You should do it either every night before you go to bed

01:11:45.240 | or before every training session

01:11:48.720 | or after every training session.

01:11:50.200 | One of those three times it should,

01:11:51.720 | or first thing you wake up in the morning.

01:11:54.120 | Because it may be to help some people,

01:11:55.640 | it motivates them to go do what it is

01:11:57.760 | they're supposed to do in the day.

01:11:59.460 | But the process of visualization is to me,

01:12:04.660 | is closing your eyes for a few moments.

01:12:07.600 | Your brain works really, really fast.

01:12:09.880 | And it's actually picturing the day in its entirety

01:12:14.600 | from start to finish.

01:12:16.120 | From the moment you wake up and you step on the scale

01:12:19.280 | to the moment you have your breakfast

01:12:20.560 | and you go through your morning routine.

01:12:22.320 | Like live the day that you're gonna have at the Olympics.

01:12:25.000 | So whatever it is you're trying to do,

01:12:26.200 | let's say the Olympic day, for example.

01:12:28.200 | Picture yourself making weight,

01:12:31.040 | picture yourself who you're around, eating your breakfast,

01:12:33.920 | having maybe saying a few jokes, laughing.

01:12:35.960 | This is a real day, make it real.

01:12:38.120 | Going back and packing your judo bag for the day,

01:12:42.880 | getting on the bus, driving to the venue,

01:12:45.960 | feel what it's like walking into the stadium

01:12:49.560 | for the first time, going to the warmup area,

01:12:52.200 | seeing your drawer up on the sheet

01:12:54.720 | who you're gonna fight that day.

01:12:56.800 | Watching yourself warm up, go through your warmup routine.

01:12:59.840 | Walking out of the chute, into the venue,

01:13:03.640 | going to do that first fight.

01:13:05.500 | Picture the moment of throwing your opponent,

01:13:07.560 | coming off the mat, high-fiving the coach,

01:13:10.840 | getting ready for your second fight.

01:13:12.560 | Like live the day from start to finish

01:13:15.520 | and make it as real as possible.

01:13:17.480 | All the way to the moment where you've just won

01:13:21.000 | and you're raising your arms in celebration,

01:13:23.520 | you're bowing, you're hugging your opponent,

01:13:26.000 | you come off the mat, you hug your coach,

01:13:28.840 | you're running around the stadium with the flag,

01:13:31.840 | you stepped up on the podium, you heard your name,

01:13:34.840 | Olympic champion, Jimmy Pedro, like you heard the moment.

01:13:38.500 | The medal being put around your neck,

01:13:42.040 | picture the people coming up on the podium with you,

01:13:45.080 | arms around them, taking the pictures.

01:13:47.280 | The more real you can make it,

01:13:51.040 | even before it ever happens, right?

01:13:53.780 | When you do that enough times,

01:13:56.920 | I feel that like pathways get created for you

01:14:01.760 | so that when your body gets to that moment,

01:14:05.040 | and I've been here before, this is it, this is my moment,

01:14:07.680 | this is what I've pictured my whole life.

01:14:09.040 | I'm not nervous 'cause I've seen this,

01:14:11.240 | this is gonna happen, I believe it's possible, right?

01:14:14.020 | And I believe the athletes that do that

01:14:16.020 | and make it real enough that when they get to that moment,

01:14:19.720 | they go right through, there's no hesitation.

01:14:22.240 | This is meant to be, this is my destiny,

01:14:25.440 | this is why I did everything I did,

01:14:27.640 | versus the ones that don't think about it ever,

01:14:30.080 | but just kind of like hope, it's not real to them,

01:14:34.120 | it doesn't feel attainable, they don't believe it's possible

01:14:36.840 | they haven't committed to believing it was possible.

01:14:40.040 | Without that commitment in yourself and that belief,

01:14:42.900 | it can't happen.

01:14:44.120 | - And one thing that, I talked to Travis a bit about this,

01:14:48.440 | you probably worked with him on the details

01:14:51.280 | of what you're talking about,

01:14:52.840 | but he said that you should really focus on visualizing

01:14:57.840 | the sensations you feel.

01:15:01.360 | So say if you're drinking coffee or something like that,

01:15:04.760 | you're not thinking about observing yourself

01:15:09.040 | from a third person perspective drinking coffee,

01:15:12.000 | you're thinking of how your hand will feel

01:15:15.560 | when it touches something warm.

01:15:17.440 | Do you try to replay the actual sensations

01:15:20.160 | you would feel?

01:15:21.040 | It sounds kind of strange, but meaning like

01:15:25.840 | you really wanna put yourself in the body

01:15:27.960 | as you would experience those moments,

01:15:30.580 | as opposed to watching yourself on TV,

01:15:33.280 | experiencing those moments, really be inside.

01:15:37.240 | So that means sensations,

01:15:38.520 | how does it feel when you grip a gi,

01:15:44.560 | sweating, just the sensation of sweat

01:15:47.880 | rolling down your forehead or whatever,

01:15:50.320 | all of those actual feelings.

01:15:52.640 | - When I explain it to you,

01:15:54.600 | I guess my body has been through it so many times,

01:15:57.800 | both in my mind and in reality,

01:15:59.480 | that it brings back all of those same emotions.

01:16:02.280 | I start to get goose bumps, my armpits start to sweat.

01:16:07.040 | I'm living it if it's real.

01:16:09.360 | I'm reliving it now,

01:16:10.680 | but when you're going through the visualization process,

01:16:14.400 | it has to be that real.

01:16:15.680 | The smells, the taping of the fingers,

01:16:19.520 | the more colorful and the more real you can make it,

01:16:23.400 | the more believable it is.

01:16:24.840 | - So I've been doing this kind of thing,

01:16:27.880 | just having listened to you enough

01:16:30.720 | for other stuff in life.

01:16:33.040 | And so let's see if it works.

01:16:34.440 | But do you see this kind of visualization

01:16:37.280 | being useful for other things in career

01:16:40.200 | and all those kinds of things?

01:16:41.040 | - Oh, 100%, 100%.

01:16:43.560 | Because I just know with my own life, my own experiences,

01:16:48.360 | like my wife sometimes says to me,

01:16:51.000 | she says, "Well, where do you see yourself

01:16:52.600 | in like five years from now?"

01:16:55.560 | And five years ago, I had said to her,

01:16:58.880 | "I want to have my own business.

01:17:00.600 | I want to have, this is the amount of money

01:17:03.800 | that I'm hoping I can make in a given year."

01:17:05.640 | Like you have to have goals for yourself.

01:17:07.000 | Like is this, if you put out there like,

01:17:08.920 | "Okay, I want to make a million dollars in a year."

01:17:12.040 | That's a big number.

01:17:13.200 | Like for me or for the normal person,

01:17:15.480 | like that's a really big number.

01:17:16.960 | You know what I mean?

01:17:17.800 | Like it's not, especially when you're not making

01:17:19.760 | that much at the time, it's a super big number, right?

01:17:22.840 | So having those goals for yourself,

01:17:24.480 | like it won't happen and it's not possible

01:17:27.800 | unless you dream it's possible and think that it's possible.

01:17:31.920 | And then it doesn't magically happen.

01:17:34.160 | And maybe it doesn't happen in five years,

01:17:36.020 | maybe happens in 10.

01:17:37.320 | But at least you're on the path to getting there.

01:17:39.960 | You know what I mean?

01:17:40.800 | And I said, "I want to own my own business.

01:17:42.000 | I want to control my own destiny.

01:17:44.440 | I want to be my own boss.

01:17:46.200 | I want to make my own decisions."

01:17:47.960 | Like these are the things that I told her I wanted to do.

01:17:50.120 | And now I'm at that point, you know, where, you know,

01:17:54.240 | I work for myself, I have my own company,

01:17:56.400 | I have partners obviously, but like,

01:17:58.680 | if I want to pick up and go somewhere for a week,

01:18:00.560 | I just do, I don't have to ask permission to do it.

01:18:02.800 | Right, that's what life, freedom, right?

01:18:05.160 | That's what I'd like.

01:18:06.880 | - And all of it starts with a dream.

01:18:09.200 | - In the same with my dojo.

01:18:11.040 | When I first opened, so I ran a dojo for a long time

01:18:14.880 | and I only had 60 students always,

01:18:16.640 | like 40 to 60 students had fluctuated.

01:18:18.960 | And I said to myself,

01:18:20.800 | "Why can't I get more people on my door?"

01:18:22.960 | Right, so I hired consultants to come in

01:18:25.280 | and look at my business and say, "Why?"

01:18:26.920 | Right, and they came in and said,

01:18:29.500 | "Well, this place is really intimidating."

01:18:31.400 | Like if I was coming in off the street,

01:18:33.060 | the first thing I see is this big Olympic champion

01:18:35.280 | on the wall and I see this training that's going on

01:18:37.760 | and these guys are flying through the air and landing hard.

01:18:40.080 | And as a white belt, you're telling me

01:18:41.680 | that's the class for me?

01:18:42.760 | Like, no way, I'm not gonna do that.

01:18:44.480 | So like I listened to these people and I said,

01:18:46.080 | "You're right."

01:18:47.560 | And the training was hour and a half, two hours long.

01:18:51.060 | People can't handle an hour and a half or two hours training

01:18:53.200 | when they first walk in the door.

01:18:54.200 | So I had to restructure all my programming.

01:18:56.900 | I had to look at the way I was offering my curriculum

01:18:59.640 | at my school and I had to make levels for everybody, right?

01:19:02.800 | Like here's my four to six year old class.

01:19:05.520 | Here's my six to 13 year old class.

01:19:07.720 | There's all my beginner classes.

01:19:09.800 | They don't mix in with the advanced people.

01:19:11.600 | And I had to learn how to make it accessible for everybody

01:19:16.600 | instead of just the people that wanted to train hard.

01:19:19.520 | And then the challenge was, okay,

01:19:22.160 | if you can have a lot of people in your dojo training,

01:19:25.000 | it's a recreational school.

01:19:26.120 | You can't produce champions at that same school.

01:19:28.280 | That's what I was told.

01:19:29.760 | So then I got all my black belts together and I said,

01:19:31.980 | "Listen, this is my vision.

01:19:33.560 | "This is what I want.

01:19:34.740 | "I wanna have a club that has over 200 judo only athletes.

01:19:38.100 | "No jiu-jitsu, no karate, nothing, judo only.

01:19:41.680 | "I want over 200 people."

01:19:43.800 | And inside of that dojo, I wanna have Olympic champions

01:19:47.680 | and I wanna have recreational.

01:19:49.040 | Like little kids, five and six years old,

01:19:51.260 | older guys in their 70s training, I don't care,

01:19:53.820 | but I want the spectrum of recreational

01:19:55.640 | and I want Olympic champions.

01:19:57.240 | The only way to do that is to take your instructors

01:20:00.440 | and say, "You're gonna do this.

01:20:02.160 | "Define the roles.

01:20:03.240 | "Who's gonna be the recreational coach?

01:20:04.740 | "Who's gonna be the competitive coach?

01:20:06.180 | "How do we separate these programs?"

01:20:08.620 | And lo and behold, that was my vision

01:20:10.220 | that I shared with all of them.

01:20:11.420 | And that was back in 2006.

01:20:15.000 | And by 2012, we got Olympic champion Kayla Harrison,

01:20:19.840 | we have over 200 people at the school,

01:20:21.960 | we have a successful thriving business,

01:20:24.260 | but it doesn't happen without that vision, a plan,

01:20:28.080 | and believing that it's possible.

01:20:30.480 | - Believing that it's possible.

01:20:32.520 | I don't know, but I personally have on top of that,

01:20:36.780 | almost like very specific visions of a future.

01:20:41.880 | I don't know what,

01:20:44.660 | 'cause I don't wanna give actual examples.

01:20:46.760 | 'Cause for several reasons,

01:20:49.720 | one of which is just people will, as they often have,

01:20:54.720 | they often will in your life,

01:20:56.160 | they'll just laugh at it a little bit.

01:20:59.440 | Like that seems silly.

01:21:02.280 | And I don't, I'm very hesitant to share certain things

01:21:05.320 | like that with people because they'll,

01:21:07.220 | I mean, I'm with Johnny Ive,

01:21:11.280 | who's the lead designer in Apple.

01:21:13.360 | Like you want that dream, that little flame to not,

01:21:17.160 | people will put that flame out too easily,

01:21:19.680 | even people that love you.

01:21:21.540 | So I have very specific kind of visions,

01:21:24.540 | like maybe for Travis, it would be like a specific opponent

01:21:30.840 | or something like Ole Bischoff,

01:21:32.600 | very specific, very specific situation

01:21:35.760 | of what's going to happen.

01:21:36.800 | Not just like, I wanna be Olympic champion,

01:21:39.200 | but very specific, like almost silly situations.

01:21:43.120 | Yeah, like the dynamic between Travis and Ole Bischoff

01:21:45.960 | or something like, maybe visualize that.

01:21:47.760 | For me, that helps because it makes it all real,

01:21:51.000 | even more real.

01:21:52.360 | It's not like some big goal,

01:21:54.440 | like a million dollars or something like that,

01:21:56.840 | which is also really important to have

01:21:58.400 | because you can measure it and so on.

01:22:00.160 | But it's just like you belong in those situations.

01:22:05.160 | Just believing you belong there.

01:22:08.920 | It's not the default. - It can be you.

01:22:10.600 | - Yeah, it could be you.

01:22:11.760 | And that for some reason, that really helps me,

01:22:13.620 | the little details. - Sure.

01:22:15.720 | - The visualizing, most of them are almost

01:22:18.760 | a little bit funny.

01:22:19.760 | Focusing on the funniness,

01:22:23.280 | it's the mundane-ness of it helps me a lot.

01:22:28.060 | And all the people that have done great things,

01:22:30.240 | they're just human too.

01:22:31.840 | - Correct, and I think a lot of people overestimate

01:22:36.060 | who others are, right?

01:22:38.640 | And sell themselves too short.

01:22:42.280 | Because at the end of the day,

01:22:43.580 | everybody started like everybody else, really.

01:22:47.440 | I mean, we did.

01:22:49.360 | We're all infants, we couldn't walk, we couldn't talk,

01:22:51.660 | we couldn't do anything, we learned along the way.

01:22:53.400 | But, and I think that's the one thing that I realized

01:22:56.240 | is that, and I tell this to my athletes,

01:23:00.140 | but I also tell it to my recreational students.

01:23:03.380 | Nobody is better than you are, nobody.

01:23:07.020 | Unless you allow them to be, right?

01:23:09.580 | If you really want something to happen,

01:23:11.620 | then like map the plan, believe in yourself,

01:23:16.460 | decide, and know, full out, you're gonna fail a lot.

01:23:20.740 | You're gonna get beat down, you're gonna have losses,

01:23:23.660 | you're gonna have struggles.

01:23:25.580 | And I think that's the one thing with social media today

01:23:27.280 | is that everybody sees everybody succeed.

01:23:30.640 | Nobody posts a picture when they're on the ground

01:23:32.320 | and fail, you lose 'em.

01:23:33.760 | Like nobody sees when you broke your arm

01:23:36.160 | and you had to go through rehab, whatever it is,

01:23:38.500 | like had your injuries and you're on your couch watching TV

01:23:41.500 | and you were suffering and you were,

01:23:43.220 | like everybody has really, really dark,

01:23:45.500 | bad moments in their life.

01:23:47.060 | And defeats and losses and suffrage.

01:23:50.280 | And it's only at the end,

01:23:52.140 | after they've recovered from all of that,

01:23:54.000 | they've reclimbed up the mountain

01:23:55.460 | and they've gone to the pinnacle

01:23:56.660 | that you see them on social media with the medal, right?

01:23:59.780 | But everybody else struggles and was human

01:24:03.140 | and failed many, many times.

01:24:05.320 | And convincing yourself that you're capable,

01:24:10.320 | I think is the first start with everything.

01:24:12.620 | - Do you need people in your life that believe in you

01:24:15.580 | or should most of it come from within yourself?

01:24:19.020 | - I think most of it has to come in from,

01:24:21.060 | it certainly helps, but it has to come from you first.

01:24:25.540 | You have to be driven.

01:24:26.600 | Like other people can help you define where you wanna go

01:24:30.520 | and help you get there and encourage you

01:24:32.340 | and can support you and whether it's resource-wise

01:24:36.380 | or with connections and like they can help with that path.

01:24:39.780 | But that first part has to come from you.

01:24:42.780 | It has to be your passion, your desire,

01:24:45.620 | your commitment to yourself.

01:24:48.380 | You're the one that's gonna ultimately

01:24:49.700 | make all the sacrifices to do it.

01:24:51.780 | So it has to be your decision,

01:24:53.500 | not your parents, not your spouse's,

01:24:55.880 | something that you're really motivated to do.

01:24:58.140 | - Let me ask you about Travis, Kayla,

01:25:01.300 | and maybe a few of the other athletes

01:25:03.220 | you've been involved with.

01:25:04.060 | So first, Travis.

01:25:05.380 | Travis Stevens, Olympic silver medalist,

01:25:11.560 | three-time Olympian 2008, 2012, 2016.

01:25:17.100 | What makes Travis Stevens great?

01:25:20.300 | What makes him so successful?

01:25:23.020 | What makes him unique in your mind as an athlete?

01:25:25.720 | Through all the hardship he had to overcome,

01:25:29.800 | through his weird looking sayonara

01:25:32.540 | that eventually worked out nicely,

01:25:35.420 | through the full richness of his personality,

01:25:39.020 | in the context of all the other great athletes

01:25:41.100 | you've coached, what makes him special?

01:25:45.420 | - His fight, Travis has fight.

01:25:48.220 | And you know, the first time I ever saw Travis Stevens

01:25:50.660 | was in, like recognized him,

01:25:52.900 | maybe I had seen him before as a younger boy or something,

01:25:55.300 | but like actually recognized him is,

01:25:57.820 | I brought a group of young kids to Italy

01:26:00.900 | for a competition in a training camp.

01:26:03.100 | And it was this program called U23 Elite.

01:26:06.180 | And I picked, handpicked 20 kids to go to this event.

01:26:10.740 | And it was the first time I coached an international team.

01:26:15.100 | And I had never seen Travis fight before,

01:26:17.020 | compete, train, anything.

01:26:18.800 | And during this competition, you know,

01:26:21.460 | he's an 81 kilo player.

01:26:22.820 | I think he was maybe like 18 years old, 17, 18 years old.

01:26:27.820 | And it was a really hard European event.

01:26:31.100 | And I think Travis won three matches and he lost two.

01:26:34.780 | But what stood out the most to me was like

01:26:37.220 | the fight he had in him.

01:26:39.180 | He was scrapping every fight.

01:26:41.220 | Like he scrapped hard.

01:26:42.540 | Like he wanted to win more than any of them, right?

01:26:45.140 | He didn't win, but he wanted to win more.

01:26:47.380 | And I noticed that right away.

01:26:49.700 | And then I also noticed that after he lost his second match

01:26:52.620 | and he was eliminated from the tournament,

01:26:54.400 | I saw how disappointed he was in himself.

01:26:57.020 | Like he actually thought he was supposed

01:26:58.740 | to beat those people, even though he was like 17, right?

01:27:01.900 | And he's fighting against grown men that are, you know,

01:27:03.900 | a high level judo, much higher than he was.

01:27:06.340 | And I said to him, I said, "Hey son, like, don't worry, man.

01:27:09.740 | You got a long career ahead of you.

01:27:11.220 | Like, I'm glad you're disappointed,

01:27:13.600 | but there's so many things you don't know

01:27:15.700 | and so many skills you don't have.

01:27:17.660 | The fact that you were able to hold your own

01:27:19.500 | and scrap like that, like you've got a good future."

01:27:21.860 | And I remember calling my friend, Jason Morris,

01:27:24.940 | after that tournament.

01:27:26.420 | And I said, "Hey man,

01:27:27.300 | did you ever hear of this kid, Travis Stevens?"

01:27:29.780 | He says, "No, why?"

01:27:30.860 | I said, "Man, that kid's got some fight in him, right?"

01:27:33.020 | And I said that.

01:27:34.140 | I said that to Jason at the time.

01:27:35.740 | I said, "That kid's got some fight in him, man.

01:27:37.220 | He's pretty talented."

01:27:38.640 | You know, and that's how it started.

01:27:41.360 | But so I saw that in him when he was young.

01:27:43.440 | But the other thing was, Travis,

01:27:46.280 | like there's no such thing as hard work to that guy.

01:27:50.360 | If you tell him to put his head through the wall

01:27:52.400 | and that's how he wins,

01:27:53.920 | he'll go put his head through the wall.

01:27:55.200 | He'll do whatever it takes for him to do to achieve success.

01:28:00.200 | And he hates failure more than he likes winning, 100%.

01:28:06.000 | He always has.

01:28:09.000 | He punishes himself when he doesn't do well.

01:28:11.120 | He makes himself work harder.

01:28:12.640 | He goes and just abuses himself when he doesn't succeed

01:28:17.640 | because he's so heartbroken and disappointed in himself.

01:28:22.240 | So that's a trait that I think all of the athletes

01:28:24.920 | that I work with closely, they all had that same trait.

01:28:28.960 | They hated losing more than anything.

01:28:30.880 | They would break their arm.

01:28:31.920 | They'd fall on their head.

01:28:33.360 | You know, they'd rather get hit by a car

01:28:34.960 | than lose a judo tournament.

01:28:36.680 | You know, and as a result, then they all had fight

01:28:39.320 | and they all were willing to train.

01:28:40.840 | They were willing to listen

01:28:42.160 | and they would do anything for victory.

01:28:44.440 | You know, within the rules,

01:28:46.140 | I'm not talking about taking drugs or anything like that,

01:28:47.960 | but they'd give 100% of themselves for victory.

01:28:52.760 | And, you know, Travis was somebody that when he was down,

01:28:56.120 | he found a way to get better doing something else.

01:28:58.760 | If he couldn't do standing, that's when he started jujitsu.

01:29:01.600 | He couldn't go on his feet anymore.

01:29:03.160 | He couldn't stand up and train.

01:29:04.920 | I might as well go learn jujitsu

01:29:06.440 | and get good on the ground, right?

01:29:07.960 | Because I can't, you know?

01:29:09.320 | So he always found a way,

01:29:10.520 | and no matter what obstacle was in his way,

01:29:12.760 | he just went around it.

01:29:14.320 | - So what about the,

01:29:16.080 | it'd be interesting to get your perspective,

01:29:18.120 | 'cause I know Travis's perspective

01:29:19.960 | is just the number of injuries.

01:29:24.200 | Like, what do you make of the perseverance

01:29:26.440 | through all the injuries he had to overcome?

01:29:28.800 | Specifically, like you just observing this creature

01:29:31.880 | that you've coached.

01:29:33.480 | I mean, he seems to not see the injuries as a problem.

01:29:37.200 | He just like, just like you said, head through the wall.

01:29:40.800 | It's like, what, like when we were talking about injuries,

01:29:44.840 | he kinda, he doesn't even see the injuries themselves

01:29:48.520 | as the problem, because he thinks that the injuries,

01:29:51.920 | you know, you heal back stronger.

01:29:53.740 | I forget the exact quote, but he said like,

01:29:57.200 | "My body is now less injury prone than most of anyone else."

01:30:02.920 | - 'Cause I've already broken everything.

01:30:03.760 | - I've broken everything,

01:30:05.080 | and it's just grown back stronger.

01:30:07.320 | Like, 'cause I asked him something like,

01:30:08.560 | "Do you regret sort of pushing your body

01:30:10.920 | "to all of those places that resulted in those injuries?"

01:30:15.120 | His response was like, "No, I'm stronger now."

01:30:19.520 | So I don't know if that's justification,

01:30:21.920 | but that certainly describes a mindset that,

01:30:24.740 | yeah, head through the wall.

01:30:26.440 | That doesn't, it's almost not dramatic.

01:30:30.640 | Like, look, I got this injury.

01:30:32.480 | It's so, I'm so like brave and special

01:30:35.240 | for overcoming this injury.

01:30:36.400 | He's just, that's part of the job,

01:30:39.880 | and he gets the job done.

01:30:41.600 | But like that job involves a lot of injuries.

01:30:44.400 | - One of the talks I gave Travis and that team

01:30:46.760 | at that particular tournament was,

01:30:49.120 | at the very beginning of the camp, after the tournament,

01:30:51.280 | I said to them, "Listen, my vision,"

01:30:53.440 | I shared my vision with them.

01:30:54.600 | I said, "My vision is, you know, in seven years,"

01:30:57.960 | 'cause that was 2005, I said, "In seven years,

01:31:00.680 | "I want to have a US team that steps on the mat

01:31:04.280 | "that is ready to kick ass."

01:31:06.320 | And in order to get there,

01:31:07.960 | all of you guys can be a part of this team

01:31:09.800 | and part of this process, but in order to get there,

01:31:12.320 | you guys have to be the first ones to practice.

01:31:14.400 | You have to be the last ones to leave,

01:31:15.900 | 'cause we have to work harder than the rest of the world

01:31:18.740 | because we're up against all odds.

01:31:20.600 | I said, "I am sick of America being a laughingstock

01:31:23.680 | "of judo and being the first round, easy match,

01:31:26.660 | "warmup for everybody else."

01:31:28.760 | I said, "If you get injured,

01:31:30.720 | "you're not gonna be on the side with a ice bag on,

01:31:34.900 | "taking off rounds, and then get back on the mat

01:31:37.240 | "the next day and tell me you're okay.

01:31:39.020 | "If you can train the next day, you can train today."

01:31:41.320 | So there's no injury.

01:31:42.200 | The only time you're leaving this dojo

01:31:44.160 | is if the ambulance has to take you out of here.

01:31:47.160 | And I do think subliminally,

01:31:48.960 | Travis bought into that message and heard that message then,

01:31:53.080 | said, "If I'm gonna be a champ,

01:31:54.100 | "then that's the way I'm gonna do it."

01:31:55.600 | And he did.

01:31:56.640 | And he embodied it, he lived it.

01:31:58.920 | Man, there were many times in Europe

01:32:01.960 | where I'd say, "Dude, just tape it up.

01:32:04.000 | "I'll go off to the side, just take the day off.

01:32:06.220 | "Like take the rest of the day off.

01:32:07.560 | "You're beat up, you can't do it."

01:32:08.880 | He said, "No, no, I'm gonna tape it up, I'm gonna tape it up."

01:32:10.400 | I said, "No, you don't need to right now."

01:32:12.440 | And he said, "No, sensei, I'm doing it."

01:32:14.440 | You know, the ambulance isn't taking me out,

01:32:17.000 | it's just my wrist, it's just my ankle, it's just my wrist.

01:32:20.440 | - It's just my ankle.

01:32:22.080 | Yeah, I love it.

01:32:23.280 | Yeah, what about the,

01:32:24.840 | so the other really big thing is,

01:32:27.360 | you comment on a little bit, is the weight cut.

01:32:30.500 | So early in his career, he was 81 kg,

01:32:33.840 | and that was presumably not so difficult.

01:32:37.160 | But later in his career, he is 81 kg,

01:32:40.360 | and it's becoming more and more difficult.

01:32:42.960 | So that's the other thing with him,

01:32:46.560 | is, so I've known a lot of really, really tough people

01:32:50.340 | at the highest levels broken by the weight cut.

01:32:53.080 | Like that can break the toughest minds.

01:32:55.440 | And it doesn't seem to have broken him.

01:32:57.960 | And he's delivered on it often,

01:33:00.560 | on like insane weight cuts.

01:33:03.300 | So just as a coach, what do you think about his,

01:33:06.800 | particularly his mind and the challenge of the weight cut?

01:33:10.720 | - It was part of his process.

01:33:12.440 | It was part of his way of getting ready for battle.

01:33:15.160 | - Suffering?

01:33:16.160 | - Yeah, it really was.

01:33:17.880 | And if I'm gonna suffer this much,

01:33:20.480 | then I'm gonna make my opponents pay

01:33:22.480 | for all the suffering that I went through to get here.

01:33:24.880 | That was his mindset.

01:33:26.060 | Later on in his career, you're right,

01:33:29.140 | like a lot of times, Travis,

01:33:31.280 | he would never step on a scale

01:33:33.440 | until he got to the tournament.

01:33:35.240 | And even when he'd get to the tournament,

01:33:37.640 | he'd weigh like 90 kilos.

01:33:39.580 | He'd show up at the tournament nine kilos over.

01:33:42.600 | I'm like, you have to, but I never,

01:33:44.760 | it was just an expectation of making weight.

01:33:47.640 | Not making weight was never an option

01:33:49.400 | for any of our athletes.

01:33:50.720 | And Travis knew it.

01:33:52.200 | And he said, as a professional,

01:33:54.960 | my job is to make weight.

01:33:56.400 | If I don't make weight,

01:33:57.640 | he was never gonna allow that to happen.

01:34:00.640 | And he was never gonna allow us to come to him and say,

01:34:02.760 | hey, I told you.

01:34:04.920 | 'Cause losing wasn't an option,

01:34:07.800 | making a weight wasn't,

01:34:08.900 | not making weight was not an option for him ever either.

01:34:11.740 | But a lot of times, he wouldn't even,

01:34:14.360 | he'd be nine kilos over on the plane

01:34:16.360 | going over to the tournament

01:34:18.000 | and have to make weight three days later.

01:34:20.040 | And he didn't break 86 kilos

01:34:22.200 | until the day before the tournament.

01:34:24.800 | Like he had five kilos over the day before.

01:34:26.800 | That was his way.

01:34:27.840 | But he would do three workouts,

01:34:30.560 | wake up in the morning, workout,

01:34:31.760 | then he'd eat,

01:34:32.600 | then he'd work out in the afternoon,

01:34:33.720 | then he'd eat again,

01:34:34.560 | then he'd work out again at night.

01:34:36.600 | And then he'd reward himself.

01:34:37.840 | Hey, I worked out three times today.

01:34:39.000 | He'd go have a Mountain Dew.

01:34:41.560 | Yeah.

01:34:42.560 | Or a chocolate bar.

01:34:44.120 | And then his next morning,

01:34:45.360 | he's back up to 87

01:34:48.080 | He would never touch weight

01:34:50.000 | until the morning of weigh-ins.

01:34:51.600 | He wasn't on weight for more than like five minutes.

01:34:57.780 | His process would break a lot of people.

01:35:00.800 | So the fact that he got the job done is.

01:35:03.560 | Not just the job done,

01:35:04.840 | but every single time he got the job done.

01:35:07.440 | And I made those athletes fight.

01:35:10.160 | We would fight in Paris.

01:35:11.480 | We would do a camp for a week,

01:35:13.320 | double session camp for a week.

01:35:15.440 | He'd be seven kilos over,

01:35:17.560 | have to fight the next weekend.

01:35:19.760 | We're talking two or three days later.

01:35:22.280 | Not only did he make the weight,

01:35:23.560 | but he did a grueling training camp twice a day,

01:35:26.440 | and then cut weight and then fought again.

01:35:29.560 | Then did another camp for a week

01:35:31.200 | in double session training camp,

01:35:32.800 | and then fought on a third weekend in a row.

01:35:34.440 | And our athletes went through hell.

01:35:37.360 | All of our athletes went through hell

01:35:38.720 | 'cause on the tour around the world,

01:35:42.340 | they fought in every event,

01:35:43.880 | they did every camp,

01:35:45.000 | they fought in every event.

01:35:46.600 | Whereas most of the other teams,

01:35:48.260 | like Japan comes in and fights in Paris,

01:35:50.180 | then they go home.

01:35:51.480 | They maybe do a camp for three days,

01:35:52.720 | then they go home.

01:35:53.880 | They don't stay in Europe for four or five weeks straight

01:35:56.680 | and fight in every tournament.

01:35:57.960 | And when you get to Germany,

01:35:59.480 | the Germans skip the French Open,

01:36:01.360 | they skip the camp in France,

01:36:02.540 | they're just getting ready for Germany.

01:36:04.240 | Our athletes already had two competitions,

01:36:06.160 | two training camps,

01:36:07.520 | two weight, three weight cuts now.

01:36:09.080 | And then, so they're not 100% when they fight in Germany,

01:36:12.280 | but that's all part of the experience they need,

01:36:14.720 | the training that they need

01:36:15.960 | that they don't get here in this country.

01:36:18.480 | And all of those were just preparation

01:36:20.240 | for our world championships or our Olympic games.

01:36:23.520 | So by the time our athletes got to those tournaments,

01:36:26.560 | they felt so strong, so rested,

01:36:28.600 | so like, man, this guy that felt like a monster in Germany

01:36:33.000 | feels like nothing today

01:36:34.600 | because you're fully rested now.

01:36:36.160 | But part of the challenge is

01:36:38.500 | because the American team is smaller

01:36:41.120 | and more, I mean, just smaller,

01:36:44.040 | is all the different places you go to do the weight cut,

01:36:49.040 | to do the diet, to do the preparation or the recovery,

01:36:53.760 | like that process changes every time.

01:36:58.160 | So you basically have to improvise a lot.

01:37:01.560 | - Oh yeah.

01:37:02.400 | - You show up to a hotel

01:37:03.800 | and how you do the weight cut, you don't know,

01:37:05.680 | and the different weather conditions,

01:37:07.320 | it's not, it's like,

01:37:09.080 | so what is it, Rocky versus Drago, right?

01:37:12.520 | - Right, right.

01:37:13.360 | - So you don't have, you have to just improvise.

01:37:15.160 | And that's also a fascinating part

01:37:16.840 | of the American judo story,

01:37:18.080 | which is like, you have to improvise more.

01:37:19.880 | - Well, it was funny 'cause when I,

01:37:21.600 | it was 1990 and it was at the Goodwill Games, right?

01:37:25.000 | And we were, it was a US Olympic Committee type event.

01:37:28.400 | And so we're on the bus with the swim team.

01:37:31.560 | And it was me and Jason Morris on the American team.

01:37:34.520 | We're going to the judo competition,

01:37:36.400 | but we're on the bus with the swim team.

01:37:38.160 | I'm sorry, we're going to the venue where we're staying.

01:37:40.960 | I remember being like by ourselves with no staff,

01:37:43.480 | no manager, no coach.

01:37:45.240 | We're just by ourselves going to fight in Russia, right?

01:37:48.320 | And the swim team's on there with their full sweats

01:37:52.800 | and their staff and like their managers.

01:37:54.920 | And I heard the girl go, I'm sorry, this was 1994

01:37:58.680 | 'cause it was in St. Petersburg, Russia.

01:38:00.160 | So I heard the girl on the team, she goes up to the coach.

01:38:03.520 | She goes, "Coach, do you think you can send

01:38:05.800 | the massage therapist to my room at 10 a.m.?

01:38:08.040 | You know, I'm feeling kind of jet lag."

01:38:10.320 | I looked at me and Jason, we looked at each other like,

01:38:13.400 | she's scheduling a massage?

01:38:17.680 | We don't even have a staff.

01:38:18.720 | Like what the hell is going on here?

01:38:20.400 | You know, what a difference in sporting,

01:38:23.480 | you know, different sports within the same country.

01:38:26.040 | - But that, I mean, not to romanticize things,

01:38:29.920 | but that you do represent the spirit of the Olympics

01:38:32.640 | when you're kind of, the improvisational nature of it.

01:38:37.360 | 'Cause it is just you.

01:38:39.420 | You and sometimes you and the coach and just pure guts

01:38:44.000 | and you against the world with no money.

01:38:47.480 | - The warrior spirit.

01:38:48.560 | - The warrior spirit.

01:38:49.660 | How did it feel like when he, after being in two Olympics,

01:38:56.420 | beating some of the best people in the world,

01:38:59.080 | facing some of the best people in the world

01:39:01.320 | and just barely losing, what did it feel like to you

01:39:05.480 | as a coach to see Travis Stevens win the silver medal?

01:39:09.600 | - Electric.

01:39:10.840 | First of all, in 2012 in London,

01:39:16.860 | it was like, it felt like somebody died.

01:39:20.100 | I'm not gonna lie to you.

01:39:21.600 | - The Ole Bischoff match?

01:39:23.400 | - Not, no, just seeing Travis not finish

01:39:26.020 | on the podium, period.

01:39:27.120 | You know, in the Ole Bischoff match,

01:39:30.320 | I thought he won regardless of who won and who lost.

01:39:33.600 | He just left everything he had on that mat, right?

01:39:35.960 | 10 minutes of probably it was a 20 something minute match,

01:39:38.700 | but 10 minutes of fighting actually, right?

01:39:40.860 | He left everything he had.

01:39:43.060 | He wanted to be in the Olympic finals.

01:39:44.460 | He wanted to be Olympic champion.

01:39:46.140 | And when he didn't get that opportunity,

01:39:47.860 | he lost everything.

01:39:48.860 | He drained himself.

01:39:50.300 | He cried for 45 minutes straight.

01:39:52.720 | I couldn't regroup him.

01:39:53.820 | I couldn't get him up.

01:39:54.780 | I said, Travis, you've got to stop your crying.

01:39:56.900 | You've got to get off the floor.

01:39:58.440 | We've got a bronze medal fight.

01:40:00.220 | Like if you don't recover, you're not gonna perform well.

01:40:03.780 | And he just didn't care.

01:40:04.940 | Like it was gold or nothing.

01:40:06.980 | And so when he walked out against the Canadian boy,

01:40:09.740 | he had beaten the Canadian.

01:40:10.620 | I think at that time,

01:40:12.000 | he had beaten that Canadian every single time,

01:40:14.060 | except for that bronze medal match.

01:40:16.060 | But he just didn't have the fight in him anymore.

01:40:18.460 | You know, he'd left it all out in the match

01:40:19.720 | in the Bischoff match.

01:40:20.980 | So to see him come back with zero, right?

01:40:23.160 | We just had a team where his best friend,

01:40:25.980 | Marty Malloy won a bronze medal, right?

01:40:29.180 | Then the day after Travis fights,

01:40:31.620 | Kayla Harrison goes and wins her first gold medal, right?

01:40:34.180 | Her first ever gold.

01:40:35.020 | So we have a gold and a bronze.

01:40:37.060 | His training partner wins a gold.

01:40:38.460 | His best friend from growing up wins a bronze.

01:40:41.220 | He has nothing, right?

01:40:42.860 | To see him for four years go through hell,

01:40:46.980 | like literally like all of his injuries,

01:40:49.580 | every training camp, and then forget the humiliation

01:40:52.480 | because every time any reporter ever came to my dojo,

01:40:56.540 | they want to talk to Kayla.

01:40:57.620 | She's the Olympic champion.

01:40:59.100 | Who's this Travis guy?

01:41:00.700 | You know, who is this guy?

01:41:01.700 | You know, so he didn't medal.

01:41:03.540 | You know, he's not that important.

01:41:05.300 | And you know, up until right,

01:41:06.980 | till you get to the right before the Olympics,

01:41:08.820 | now they talk about he's an Olympian again.

01:41:10.940 | And yeah, but up until that point,

01:41:12.780 | and then every little kid sees Kayla's medal.

01:41:16.500 | Oh, Travis, yeah, you went to the Olympics.

01:41:18.780 | Where's your medal?

01:41:19.620 | How did you do?

01:41:20.540 | You know, he was, I took fifth, I didn't place.

01:41:22.900 | You know, it's the lowest of low every day

01:41:25.660 | having that constant reminder.

01:41:27.400 | So four years later, when that guy,

01:41:31.740 | I mean, mentally, he was ready.

01:41:34.700 | Physically, he was ready.

01:41:37.940 | That was the best and strongest Travis Stevens

01:41:41.820 | that I've ever seen and I've ever felt.

01:41:44.020 | Like, 'cause I had to get on the mat

01:41:45.420 | and do some drills and stuff like that,

01:41:47.100 | and like try to defend armbars,

01:41:49.100 | 'cause we didn't have a lot of bodies in Rio.

01:41:51.340 | And I was like, my God, he's,

01:41:53.140 | I said after one of the practices,

01:41:53.980 | this is the strongest I've ever felt that guy, right?

01:41:56.620 | Before the competitions, physically he was ready.

01:41:59.120 | Mentally, the morning of competition,

01:42:00.960 | I said to Travis, I looked him in the eye

01:42:03.620 | and I said, you know, we're ready to go over to the venue.

01:42:06.380 | I said, are you ready today?

01:42:07.980 | And he just looked at me like, he goes,

01:42:10.260 | "I am gonna shock the world today."

01:42:12.380 | That's what he told me, "I'm gonna shock the world today."

01:42:14.140 | And I said, all right, great, let's go, right?

01:42:16.940 | So we go to the venue and every other athlete

01:42:21.100 | was just like nervously, like doing repetitions

01:42:24.500 | of Uchi Komis, you could see like sweat coming out.

01:42:27.100 | You could see like all this nervous energy

01:42:29.820 | going through their body.

01:42:31.580 | And here comes Travis Stevens,

01:42:32.820 | he's got these big goofy headphones on.

01:42:35.480 | He's got a tank top that says USA on it.

01:42:38.220 | He's got the swim trunks that say USA,

01:42:41.260 | like that have shiny letters that glow in the dark.

01:42:44.340 | And he's like, and this is in the middle of the judo hall

01:42:47.620 | where all these athletes are warming up

01:42:48.780 | for their first match.

01:42:50.060 | He's like dancing around, like doing this loose warmup,

01:42:53.260 | like almost like a little kid at an amusement park

01:42:56.740 | whose dad said, "Yeah, go play."

01:42:59.540 | And it was like, he had waited four years for that moment.

01:43:01.940 | He was so relaxed, so focused, so relaxed,

01:43:05.700 | and couldn't wait.

01:43:07.380 | It was like a caged tiger.

01:43:08.700 | Like if you like coming out of the chute

01:43:10.700 | to go step onto the mat, was like this tiger

01:43:14.820 | that you were just letting out of the cage and he just go,

01:43:17.300 | like now's your time to go fight.

01:43:18.660 | And that's what he did that whole day.

01:43:20.420 | And like when he beat Chirikishvili in the semis

01:43:25.140 | and choked him out and won that fight,

01:43:27.860 | like there's nobody with the exception of maybe

01:43:31.860 | the guys in the American team,

01:43:33.300 | there was nobody in that stadium

01:43:35.660 | that expected Travis to beat him.

01:43:37.180 | - Yeah. - Nobody.

01:43:38.100 | - Yeah. - Like, you know,

01:43:40.460 | he had smashed Travis, I don't know how many times

01:43:42.420 | before that for Epone, like in the first minute even.

01:43:44.580 | It wasn't even a fight, right?

01:43:46.020 | And it was great game plan.

01:43:49.140 | - He's the world number one at the time too.

01:43:51.760 | - World number one at the time,

01:43:55.140 | world champion, carried the flag for the Georgian Federation

01:43:59.940 | walking into the games,

01:44:01.480 | most dominant 81 kilo player in that weight class

01:44:06.340 | for quite some time.

01:44:08.220 | And man, we just had his number

01:44:11.180 | and Travis was ready to go.

01:44:13.220 | It was so cool, it was so awesome.

01:44:15.220 | We was, I mean, we had already won,

01:44:17.340 | Kayla had already won her second gold, right?

01:44:20.220 | The way the event went and Travis winning that

01:44:24.340 | was like icing on the cake for our team.

01:44:26.340 | That was the best performance we've ever had in history.

01:44:29.220 | It's awesome.

01:44:30.060 | - So you mentioned Kayla,

01:44:31.620 | she is one of, if not the greatest American judoka ever,

01:44:36.620 | two time gold medalist.

01:44:39.540 | - 2010 world champion.

01:44:41.980 | - 2010.

01:44:42.820 | - For Senior Worlds.

01:44:43.860 | - Senior Worlds.

01:44:45.580 | What makes Kayla special?

01:44:49.220 | What makes her so great?

01:44:51.420 | What made this champion?

01:44:54.220 | - It's a combination of a lot of things.

01:44:57.500 | One was obviously Kayla's mental toughness, right?

01:45:01.260 | To overcome what she overcame.

01:45:03.440 | This is a girl who,

01:45:05.800 | let's, I don't wanna say forget about the sexual abuse,

01:45:10.380 | but the fact that she had to go through that in life

01:45:13.340 | and learned how to compartmentalize that

01:45:15.900 | and keep that off as a separate part of her brain

01:45:18.900 | and forget about it and move on.

01:45:21.140 | That took an incredible team to help her do that.

01:45:23.780 | And my dad was a huge part of her accomplishing that.

01:45:28.220 | - So for people who don't know,

01:45:29.580 | we should comment and say that Kayla had to go through

01:45:32.540 | trauma in her earlier life through sexual abuse

01:45:37.460 | and had to overcome that through the whole process

01:45:39.780 | of becoming a champion as well.

01:45:43.260 | - Because she had zero self-esteem, zero self-worth.

01:45:46.000 | She was at the lowest of lows

01:45:47.460 | and didn't even wanna be on this earth, right?

01:45:51.620 | So she was traumatized obviously for,

01:45:56.220 | and getting her the right help

01:45:57.500 | and surrounding her with the right people

01:45:59.120 | who could help her get through that

01:46:01.500 | and be by her side as she's getting through that

01:46:05.060 | and letting her know and reaffirming

01:46:06.820 | that she's doing the right thing

01:46:08.420 | and she made the right decision

01:46:09.820 | and she should have zero guilt.

01:46:11.820 | And this doesn't define her.

01:46:14.100 | It happened to her, but it doesn't define her.

01:46:15.860 | What defines her is what she does from now on.

01:46:18.620 | And then rebuilding that person to become who she became.

01:46:21.620 | I think the mental toughness is a big part of it, her mind.

01:46:25.380 | But then as an athlete, she's a lot like Travis.

01:46:31.740 | She's a warrior, she's a fighter.

01:46:35.060 | My dad always jokes with her.

01:46:37.220 | He says, "You're a workhorse.

01:46:39.300 | You're not a thoroughbred.

01:46:40.220 | We're not gonna treat you like a thoroughbred, right?

01:46:42.500 | You're a workhorse, so you're gonna work.

01:46:45.260 | And the way you're gonna get bigger and stronger

01:46:46.900 | is you're gonna work harder

01:46:47.740 | and you're gonna keep..."

01:46:49.180 | She came to us when she was only 15.

01:46:50.860 | So at that time, we got her

01:46:53.060 | with a really good strength and conditioning coach.

01:46:55.260 | We did all the core Olympic style lifting.

01:46:58.020 | As her body was developing,

01:47:00.380 | she was getting stronger every single day.

01:47:02.380 | And then she had the luxury of being on the mat with,

01:47:06.280 | at the time I was still young enough to train

01:47:08.380 | and be on the mat and I was around her weight class

01:47:10.500 | and Travis was able to train with her.

01:47:12.140 | And we had all the top US athletes at the time

01:47:15.540 | training here at my school.

01:47:16.700 | So she got the benefit of all the best guys

01:47:19.140 | to train within the country.

01:47:21.060 | And her doing all of those rounds, night in,

01:47:25.260 | every night, every week, every year,

01:47:28.700 | compiled with the best,

01:47:30.300 | highest level she could as a girl.

01:47:32.700 | She got the strength, she got the technique,

01:47:34.420 | she got the...

01:47:35.260 | And then she had the coaching on top of it

01:47:36.660 | with my dad being on her as working her out

01:47:39.180 | and having the wherewithal to develop a strategy

01:47:43.420 | and a plan for her.

01:47:44.240 | Because when she first came here,

01:47:46.260 | she competed at 63 kilos, which is 138 pounds.

01:47:50.260 | At the time, Ronda Rousey was also training here

01:47:55.100 | and she was 70 kilos.

01:47:56.980 | So if Kayla was struggling making 63,

01:48:00.300 | so the only way to, obviously,

01:48:01.820 | the only way to still compete is to move up.

01:48:04.260 | But my dad said, "Well, if you move up,

01:48:05.780 | "then you're in Ronda's weight.

01:48:06.900 | "So let's skip that weight.

01:48:08.020 | "You're gonna go to 78 kilos."

01:48:09.620 | And he told her, "Listen,

01:48:10.460 | "you're gonna go up two weight classes."

01:48:12.540 | She looked at him and was like, "That's 172 pounds."

01:48:15.420 | And he goes, "Well, I don't care.

01:48:17.380 | "You're already struggling making 138.

01:48:19.420 | "You weigh 150.

01:48:20.320 | "What's the difference?

01:48:21.160 | "We put 20 pounds on, go to 170."

01:48:23.260 | So that's why she jumped two weights,

01:48:24.980 | 'cause she passed Ronda.

01:48:26.500 | She went to the weight above

01:48:27.540 | so she could make the national team

01:48:29.100 | and she had a chance to go to the Olympics and all that,

01:48:31.980 | 'cause we envisioned Ronda staying around till 2012.

01:48:35.020 | - And that's also like a long-term vision

01:48:37.340 | because you kind of grow into that body then over time.

01:48:40.380 | - Correct. - So you can dominate.

01:48:41.540 | You can learn what it's like in that weight class.

01:48:43.940 | You can learn to dominate that weight class,

01:48:46.060 | excel and then dominate.

01:48:47.740 | - People that cut weight too hard, too long,

01:48:50.020 | they forget about technique

01:48:51.300 | 'cause they're only worried about losing weight.

01:48:52.980 | They're always tired in training.

01:48:54.540 | They don't give 100% effort.

01:48:56.060 | They're not getting better.

01:48:57.380 | She now is just focused on getting better at judo

01:49:00.420 | and getting bigger, getting stronger,

01:49:01.820 | getting more powerful.

01:49:02.680 | So I think giving her that purpose,

01:49:04.700 | and that was a great call.

01:49:06.540 | - What are some memorable

01:49:09.660 | or maybe the most memorable moment,

01:49:11.940 | Kayla Harrison moment to you as her coach?

01:49:14.720 | Not the most, perhaps, let's say,

01:49:19.340 | what are some memorable moments?

01:49:21.140 | - Everybody hears the good ones, right?

01:49:23.620 | So everybody knows she won the world championships

01:49:26.220 | in Tokyo in 2010.

01:49:28.780 | She was our two-time Olympic champion in 2012, 2016.

01:49:31.900 | I'll never forget those moments, right?

01:49:34.140 | 'Cause they're historic.

01:49:35.400 | One of the biggest moments

01:49:38.660 | that I like sharing this story with everybody

01:49:41.100 | is that in 2010 in January,

01:49:45.860 | Kayla was still a developing athlete,

01:49:48.020 | and we had a local tournament in New York.

01:49:50.260 | It was in Brooklyn, New York.

01:49:51.700 | It was called the Sterrett Cup.

01:49:53.600 | And I knew that at that tournament

01:49:55.180 | that two of the Canadian girls,

01:49:57.200 | they were like ranked 15th or 20th in the world.

01:49:59.740 | They weren't superstars, but they were tough players.

01:50:02.520 | Both of them I knew were gonna be at that tournament.

01:50:04.740 | So I said, "Kayla, we're gonna go to this tournament.

01:50:06.980 | "You're gonna compete against the Canadian girls,

01:50:08.500 | "get some good experience,

01:50:10.040 | "figure out what you need to work on,

01:50:11.200 | "and then we'll go home and work on some stuff."

01:50:13.780 | Well, she went to the tournament.

01:50:14.900 | There was only three girls in the weight,

01:50:16.500 | her and the two Canadians.

01:50:18.400 | At that tournament, she lost both fights, right?

01:50:22.700 | So this is January, 2010.

01:50:24.740 | She lost both matches.

01:50:26.300 | She was competitive,

01:50:27.220 | but certainly things she needed to work on,

01:50:29.380 | it was good development thing for her and for us.

01:50:32.500 | It also opened her mind to say,

01:50:33.680 | "Oh, man," 'cause she was already

01:50:35.820 | a junior world champion at the time.

01:50:39.460 | But so now there's another level.

01:50:40.880 | This is a senior level, right?

01:50:42.120 | You gotta go up another level.

01:50:43.360 | Here's two girls that aren't even medalists

01:50:45.460 | that are beating you.

01:50:46.300 | So now there's more work to be done.

01:50:48.080 | And so I like telling that story

01:50:49.520 | because everybody sees the champions in the greatest moments.

01:50:53.440 | They don't see them when they have bad days.

01:50:55.560 | And could you imagine being O and two?

01:50:58.680 | You feel like a failure, right?

01:51:01.600 | But 10 months later was Tokyo, 2010.

01:51:06.780 | She went from O and two at Starrett, New York

01:51:09.640 | to world champion 2010 in the motherland in Japan.

01:51:15.920 | I mean, that's an amazing turnaround.

01:51:19.200 | And that's only possible if you put the losses

01:51:22.520 | in their proper context.

01:51:24.320 | You don't let it destroy you mentally

01:51:26.560 | and just keep moving forward.

01:51:28.080 | Correct.

01:51:28.920 | So funny.

01:51:31.120 | So you were there at 2010 at the Starrett Cup?

01:51:34.360 | Was Travis there?

01:51:36.000 | Yeah.

01:51:36.840 | I made all those.

01:51:37.680 | We fought at every local.

01:51:38.920 | Like the mentality of our team was

01:51:41.540 | no tournament is beneath us.

01:51:43.800 | If our goal is to go to the Olympics in the world and win,

01:51:47.880 | there's no tournament that's beneath us.

01:51:49.580 | We're gonna get experience.

01:51:50.880 | We're gonna fight.

01:51:51.820 | We're gonna learn.

01:51:52.840 | We're gonna compete.

01:51:54.020 | We're gonna get better.

01:51:55.160 | I actually just as a funny little side,

01:51:59.920 | I was there, I competed.

01:52:01.880 | Really?

01:52:02.720 | This is one of the earlier tournaments,

01:52:04.160 | like the beginner division.

01:52:05.480 | Oh no, I actually did black belt division too.

01:52:07.760 | (laughing)

01:52:09.040 | That was one of the, actually, yeah, I remember that.

01:52:11.840 | That's when it was so early that I thought,

01:52:15.200 | like I was also really strong at that time,

01:52:19.000 | just like physically like power lifting stuff.

01:52:21.140 | So I thought like it'll be good experience

01:52:24.300 | to also do a black belt division.

01:52:26.520 | And remember it must've been actually Travis's division,

01:52:29.680 | which is funny.

01:52:30.520 | Is Legere brothers?

01:52:33.720 | Yeah.

01:52:34.560 | Harry and Gary.

01:52:35.560 | They are super, they're super good

01:52:37.640 | and they're super dominant,

01:52:38.720 | but I think Travis faced one of them and beat them.

01:52:42.500 | I don't know, I just remembered,

01:52:45.400 | it's funny how there's just like these little roads

01:52:48.680 | that later reconnect.

01:52:51.380 | But yeah, there's some incredible people there.

01:52:54.440 | And I saw obviously the positive things

01:52:57.480 | and it's interesting that Kayla's story

01:52:59.880 | was also intersecting there.

01:53:01.520 | And that was one of the lower points for her.

01:53:04.560 | Another story I like to share is that

01:53:07.000 | you have to know your athletes, right?

01:53:10.000 | And you have to really get to know their psychology,

01:53:13.440 | what they're thinking psychologically,

01:53:15.000 | mentally, what's going through their head.

01:53:16.560 | Another story was in Tokyo.

01:53:20.060 | It was 2015, the Tokyo Grand Slam.

01:53:25.060 | So we had had Kayla face off against almost

01:53:28.840 | all the top girls in her division.

01:53:30.920 | She had beaten everybody going into the 2016 Olympics.

01:53:34.120 | But at the 2015 Tokyo Grand Slam,

01:53:37.640 | there was a girl from Japan

01:53:40.680 | that she hadn't fought in a long time

01:53:42.240 | and she lost to the girl last time she fought her.

01:53:44.400 | So it was something we wanted her to beat this girl

01:53:47.500 | going into the Olympics

01:53:48.560 | so that she knew she could beat everybody.

01:53:50.660 | And it was a first round match

01:53:54.640 | and it was going to be tough for Kayla, right?

01:53:57.920 | It was going to be a really hard fight.

01:53:59.160 | And she had won a bunch of tournaments in a row

01:54:02.520 | leading up to that.

01:54:03.360 | So her confidence was really high,

01:54:04.560 | but at the same time,

01:54:06.600 | she didn't think she needed this fight.

01:54:08.700 | And she showed up to the tournament and she said,

01:54:13.840 | "I don't think I can fight today.

01:54:15.400 | "I've got a stinger in my neck.

01:54:17.160 | "I've got a stinger coming down my neck

01:54:18.640 | "and I'm kind of sore."

01:54:20.360 | She didn't tell us.

01:54:21.760 | She went and told the trainer.

01:54:23.400 | She walked around, she's holding her neck

01:54:25.720 | and me and my dad were like, "What's up with her?"

01:54:27.760 | I don't know.

01:54:28.600 | (laughing)

01:54:29.440 | And then so, like, I don't know,

01:54:31.560 | maybe she doesn't want to fight today, I don't know.

01:54:32.960 | Yeah.

01:54:33.800 | Right?

01:54:34.620 | So all of a sudden the trainer comes up to us

01:54:35.960 | and she didn't come to us.

01:54:37.000 | The trainer came to us and says,

01:54:37.840 | "You know, I really don't think it's a good idea

01:54:39.680 | "that Kayla fight today."

01:54:41.600 | And we looked at him and like,

01:54:43.620 | "Well, your opinion doesn't really matter, does it?"

01:54:45.680 | Right?

01:54:46.520 | Like, what's up with her?

01:54:48.160 | Yeah.

01:54:49.000 | "Oh, she has this thing in her neck.

01:54:49.820 | "It's like a pinched nerve and there's this."

01:54:51.720 | And then we talked.

01:54:54.240 | I said, "Is there a risk of her getting injured?

01:54:56.960 | "Like, is this pain or is this risk

01:54:58.600 | "that she's going to get injured

01:54:59.580 | "and she's going to set her back like long time

01:55:01.400 | "in her career?"

01:55:02.800 | He says, "No, she's not going to get injured.

01:55:04.400 | "Just a pinched nerve,

01:55:05.280 | "a little pain she's going to have to deal with."

01:55:06.560 | I go, "Okay, well, can you fix the pain?"

01:55:08.760 | He says, "Yeah, I can do this and that

01:55:11.480 | "and I can give her a shot and the pain will go away."

01:55:13.760 | I said, "Okay, then do that."

01:55:15.640 | And so Kayla comes up, she goes,

01:55:17.180 | "Didn't the trainer talk to you?"

01:55:18.960 | I said, "Yeah, he talked to us."

01:55:20.280 | Well, he said, "I can't fight."

01:55:22.200 | I know, but we already talked to the trainer and.

01:55:24.120 | (laughing)

01:55:25.680 | I love it.

01:55:26.520 | And you're good to go.

01:55:27.720 | She looked at us like,

01:55:29.400 | and then we had to talk to her and say,

01:55:30.660 | "Listen, you're not injured, you're in pain

01:55:34.140 | "because we just came from a camp."

01:55:35.520 | I said, "You're in pain, but here's the deal.

01:55:38.000 | "We want you to fight this girl.

01:55:39.340 | "Why don't you go out there and beat this girl, period.

01:55:41.180 | "I don't care, but I want to know

01:55:42.600 | "that you can beat this girl.

01:55:43.500 | "This is why we came.

01:55:44.540 | "This is our last hard tournament before the Olympic games.

01:55:48.240 | "This is what we want from you."

01:55:50.440 | And lo and behold, she understood.

01:55:53.360 | They gave her a quick shot.

01:55:54.800 | The rest of the world thought we were crazy

01:55:56.720 | making her compete.

01:55:57.920 | Yeah.

01:55:58.760 | And then she went out there, she fought,

01:56:01.760 | didn't even know she was injured.

01:56:03.120 | No, you know what I mean?

01:56:04.040 | She just went out there, she fought the tournament,

01:56:06.000 | she beat the Japanese girl,

01:56:07.400 | she ended up going through the whole tournament.

01:56:09.720 | She took a gold medal, she won the event.

01:56:12.480 | That turned out to be a great confidence builder.

01:56:16.280 | Yeah.

01:56:18.000 | And that kind of sets you up for all the chaos

01:56:21.400 | that can happen at the Olympic games.

01:56:23.120 | And it tells you, if you can beat these girls

01:56:26.000 | when you're not 100% and you're not at your best,

01:56:28.440 | you're physically beat, mentally beat,

01:56:31.800 | imagine what you're going to do when you're fresh.

01:56:33.360 | Well, when she was going to the Olympic games,

01:56:35.080 | there's a lot, she had the mental game-

01:56:37.760 | Down.

01:56:38.600 | Down.

01:56:39.440 | Down.

01:56:40.260 | There wasn't a girl in that division

01:56:41.100 | that thought they could beat Kayla going into those games.

01:56:42.920 | Yeah.

01:56:43.760 | Not a one.

01:56:44.580 | They just looked at her and went, "No, not happening."

01:56:46.600 | Yeah.

01:56:47.600 | That's great.

01:56:48.440 | I mean, she's a great Olympic champion,

01:56:50.080 | two-time Olympic champion.

01:56:51.600 | But there is something that she's commented on,

01:56:55.720 | which is she's suffered or went through depression

01:57:00.080 | after winning her second Olympic gold.

01:57:02.440 | Why do you think this happens?

01:57:04.120 | You often hear stories of great champions

01:57:08.200 | becoming depressed after the Olympics.

01:57:11.040 | There's a lack of purpose afterwards, right?

01:57:14.360 | Because you've done in life what you set out to do.

01:57:18.480 | You've had a goal every day you woke up.

01:57:20.560 | You knew what your purpose was.

01:57:21.920 | You knew what your day looked like.

01:57:25.880 | You knew why you were doing that.

01:57:27.920 | And all of a sudden you won and you got all the fame

01:57:31.640 | and you're all happy.

01:57:33.800 | But then you wake up and you go, "Now what?

01:57:37.840 | I don't have a next."

01:57:39.440 | And also because there was nothing for her,

01:57:42.200 | there was no path set out for Kayla that said,

01:57:46.440 | "Okay, you're going to become an ambassador,

01:57:49.080 | a global ambassador of judo.

01:57:51.800 | The IJF is going to help pay a salary.

01:57:54.000 | The USA judo is going to give you a salary.

01:57:56.320 | Here's what we want you to go teach children.

01:57:58.440 | We want you to go be an ambassador for women.

01:58:01.040 | We're going to fly you around."

01:58:02.480 | And whatever it is, "We're going to give you a job

01:58:04.920 | and here's what you're going to do if you'd like to take it."

01:58:07.600 | There was nothing for her.

01:58:09.600 | I remember doing the interview at the Olympics with her

01:58:12.520 | and they said, "Are you going to compete

01:58:13.800 | in the next Olympics?"

01:58:14.720 | And I said, "No."

01:58:15.760 | Like, "Why?

01:58:16.720 | She's already a two-time gold medalist.

01:58:18.000 | What does three-time gold medalist do for her?"

01:58:19.760 | Nothing, right?

01:58:21.240 | Doesn't motivate her to do it again.

01:58:23.880 | They said, "Are you doing MMA?"

01:58:24.960 | I said, "No, why would she do MMA?

01:58:26.480 | That's ridiculous.

01:58:27.800 | Like, she doesn't need MMA.

01:58:29.280 | She should be able to make a living

01:58:31.480 | off of what she's accomplished in this sport

01:58:34.200 | for the rest of her life."

01:58:36.120 | But what happens is,

01:58:37.720 | and what most people don't understand is,

01:58:39.960 | once you say, "I'm retired,

01:58:41.760 | I'm no longer competing in the sport of judo,"

01:58:45.800 | you don't get a salary from USA Judo anymore,

01:58:48.880 | which she was getting.

01:58:50.000 | I think she got like $72,000 a year

01:58:53.200 | from USA Judo at the time.

01:58:55.120 | You don't get a stipend from the Olympic Committee anymore.

01:58:59.920 | Goes away.

01:59:01.120 | Your sponsor, like the New York Athletic Club,

01:59:03.440 | was a great sponsor for her for all those years.

01:59:05.720 | In fact, she could have never been the athlete she became

01:59:08.760 | without the support of the NYC.

01:59:10.800 | 'Cause I talked to them when she was 15.

01:59:12.640 | I said, "Hey, I got a girl that's really good.

01:59:15.160 | Someday, if you invest in her now,

01:59:17.920 | I promise you she'll pay back for you."

01:59:20.120 | And I remember the day she won the Olympic gold,

01:59:22.400 | I called the guy up, I said, "Hey, I told you."

01:59:25.040 | So, but they can no longer give you stipends

01:59:28.600 | because you're not competing and representing them anymore.

01:59:30.880 | So that goes away.

01:59:32.160 | All of your sponsorships and all of your money

01:59:36.200 | that you would make from your TV commercials or whatever,

01:59:38.480 | that didn't happen for her after the Olympics

01:59:40.840 | 'cause judo's a obscure sport, right?

01:59:42.800 | So she didn't have any opportunities for that.

01:59:45.800 | At the end of the day, she has no revenue coming in.

01:59:48.800 | How do you live?

01:59:49.640 | You get a bonus of 25 grand from the Olympic committee

01:59:52.360 | or whatever for winning a gold.

01:59:54.600 | But aside from that, you're not gonna live on that money.

01:59:56.920 | So no purpose, no goal, right?

02:00:00.040 | What am I gonna wake up and do tomorrow?

02:00:01.640 | I don't know.

02:00:02.480 | So she has no direction.

02:00:03.560 | And then at the same time, she has no money coming in.

02:00:06.440 | So everything shuts off.

02:00:07.640 | So now it's like, where do you turn?

02:00:09.720 | What do you do?

02:00:11.480 | And that leads to being depressed because yeah,

02:00:15.200 | even though I've accomplished all this stuff,

02:00:17.560 | I'm kind of lost in life.

02:00:18.920 | Like what's next for me?

02:00:21.040 | - And I guess you just have to ride that out

02:00:23.400 | because when you're a great human being, great champion,

02:00:28.400 | life has a way of helping you find a way.

02:00:32.400 | I mean, she's in mixed martial arts now,

02:00:34.760 | but she has a lot of stuff going on.

02:00:36.640 | - Right.

02:00:37.760 | Well, her kids, she adopted her sister's kids.

02:00:41.320 | So she's their legal guardian now.

02:00:43.160 | So that is her purpose, right?

02:00:44.560 | Raising these kids and making them part of her family.

02:00:47.520 | And she's fortunate enough that she has enough money

02:00:51.120 | that she can do that and she can give them a good life.

02:00:53.880 | - I'm gonna ask you to start some trouble,

02:00:56.440 | but I heard that she said somewhere

02:00:58.600 | that she can beat Khabib Nurmagomedov in judo.

02:01:02.000 | What do you think?

02:01:03.160 | - To be honest with you, I mean,

02:01:04.480 | I don't know what level of judoka.

02:01:06.560 | - Yeah, I don't know.

02:01:07.400 | - I don't know what level he is.

02:01:08.220 | - But I do know that that Russian system

02:01:10.900 | respects judo immensely.

02:01:13.260 | - What I will tell you is this.

02:01:15.020 | I trained with Kayla and I was an Olympic medalist

02:01:18.220 | and a world champion in judo.

02:01:19.860 | And granted, I was older when I trained with her,

02:01:23.020 | but you have to go as a man, you have to go 100%

02:01:26.700 | or she will smash you as a man.

02:01:29.420 | And I could tell you that if Khabib

02:01:31.700 | doesn't do a lot of just judo,

02:01:34.100 | doesn't like gripping and doesn't understand,

02:01:36.980 | like if he can throw, that's one thing,

02:01:40.020 | but if he doesn't really understand judo at a high level,

02:01:42.860 | she will throw him.

02:01:44.860 | She would beat him in a match, in a judo contest,

02:01:47.220 | not in a mixed martial arts contest,

02:01:48.940 | not in a wrestling contest, not in a submission contest,

02:01:52.180 | in a pure judo match where he cannot grab legs

02:01:56.120 | and he has to grip up and just throw,

02:01:58.920 | I'd put my money on Kayla.

02:02:01.900 | - I like it.

02:02:02.740 | - Unless he's, if he could go place

02:02:04.700 | in the nationals in Russia, he would beat her.

02:02:06.660 | But if he's not at that level of judo,

02:02:08.420 | he's more like a brown belt or he's not,

02:02:10.980 | he's not a high level judo player, she will win.

02:02:13.020 | I saw her take some of our best juniors in this country,

02:02:17.440 | some of the guys that went and won our,

02:02:21.260 | medaled in our senior nationals,

02:02:23.560 | I've seen her smash all of them in judo.

02:02:26.580 | Now she's not gonna do that to a Travis Stevens,

02:02:29.580 | she's not gonna do that to a senior national champion

02:02:34.860 | or Olympian in our sport, but she will go toe to toe

02:02:38.180 | with every other male, black belts or not.

02:02:41.660 | - Speaking of Khabib in Russia, Vladimir Putin,

02:02:48.860 | I don't know if you have heard of him,

02:02:51.580 | he's the president of Russia, but he's also a judoka.

02:02:55.620 | Have you gotten a chance to see him do judo?

02:02:58.420 | What do you think about his judo, if you were to analyze it?

02:03:01.500 | - I'm actually really good friends

02:03:03.300 | with the Russian Federation.

02:03:04.960 | The guy in charge is Ezio Gamba, he's an Italian,

02:03:09.700 | he's a mastermind behind their success

02:03:11.740 | of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic teams.

02:03:15.000 | 2020, he suffered from leukemia, blood cancer,

02:03:18.500 | so he wasn't part of their 2020 program,

02:03:21.100 | but he was part of 2012, 2016.

02:03:23.400 | That whole national, the Olympic team in 2012

02:03:25.580 | came to our studio and lived here for a month in Boston.

02:03:30.420 | They went to school in Boston, I brought them to my house,

02:03:33.340 | they had three Olympic champions.

02:03:34.980 | - Three Olympic champions.

02:03:37.100 | Oh my God, what a team.

02:03:39.300 | - They all came and lived here in Boston for a month,

02:03:41.440 | they wanted to be part of like experience America

02:03:44.340 | type program, so I've seen all of them with Putin in Russia

02:03:48.980 | at their national training center, working out with them

02:03:51.740 | and taking falls and doing judo with him.

02:03:53.660 | So, it's hard when you're older to move in judo.

02:03:58.060 | I mean, I was at a high level and I'm now 51,

02:04:01.580 | it's hard for me to move like I used to.

02:04:03.540 | So, at his age, he's gotta be what, 60,

02:04:06.540 | between 62, 65-ish?

02:04:09.060 | I mean, he moves really well for somebody that's that age

02:04:13.620 | and probably hasn't done very much judo

02:04:15.980 | for the last however many years, right?

02:04:17.820 | So, it tells you, at one point,

02:04:19.900 | he had to be a really good judo player.

02:04:21.500 | - Yeah, he put in a lot of work at some point

02:04:23.940 | to develop the technique.

02:04:25.140 | You could tell when a great judo player,

02:04:27.540 | even if they haven't practiced it,

02:04:30.220 | even if they're up there in age,

02:04:32.780 | like just the way they move,

02:04:34.380 | the way they go in for a Seinagi,

02:04:35.900 | the way they go for a particular throw,

02:04:38.140 | the way they do foot sweeps and all that kind of stuff,

02:04:40.280 | you could just tell he's good at judo

02:04:42.300 | and that's kind of fascinating.

02:04:43.900 | It's fascinating to see political leaders.

02:04:48.220 | I've gotten to interact with quite a few

02:04:50.740 | for whom judo was a formative experience in their life

02:04:55.020 | and that's so interesting that for a lot of people,

02:04:57.260 | judo played a big part in their life, early development.

02:05:00.660 | It's similar to if you served in the military.

02:05:04.300 | There's just something about judo.

02:05:06.020 | As a martial art, it's not just the technique.

02:05:09.660 | So, yes, there's something about gaining confidence

02:05:13.220 | through becoming aware of what your body can do,

02:05:17.100 | the artistry and the skill of it,

02:05:20.500 | also the power, being able to dominate

02:05:22.500 | another human being with technique,

02:05:24.680 | but also the, I don't know, the formality,

02:05:28.900 | the discipline of just honoring the tradition of it.

02:05:33.600 | So all of that mixed together somehow creates--

02:05:37.000 | - Memories.

02:05:37.880 | - It creates memories that kind of define you

02:05:40.620 | as a human being and that you carry that forward

02:05:42.740 | throughout your life and I've just been surprised

02:05:45.160 | to know how many powerful people internationally

02:05:48.420 | have in their heart, who they are, judo

02:05:53.600 | has the core of it. - For sure.

02:05:54.520 | It makes you the human being that you are.

02:05:57.660 | It really does.

02:05:58.500 | It becomes a fabric of, the people that stick with it,

02:06:02.300 | right, that stay with it because it,

02:06:04.400 | I mean, it teaches you so many lessons.

02:06:07.540 | It's so memorable because of what you talked about,

02:06:09.660 | the tradition, but it's also, you grow with other people

02:06:14.660 | and you learn from other people

02:06:16.580 | and you experience things with other people.

02:06:19.060 | It's such a hands-on sport that it's very memorable

02:06:24.060 | and people love it so much.

02:06:26.000 | Like right now at my dojo, we have like four generations.

02:06:30.100 | Like somebody that did judo with my dad had a kid

02:06:34.120 | who trained with me, who loved judo so much, had a kid.

02:06:39.080 | That kid was now in his 20s who did judo

02:06:43.960 | and now has a kid who's two or three or four

02:06:45.920 | that's coming to my toddler program at my school.

02:06:48.280 | Like we're talking four generations

02:06:49.980 | and they all love the experience so much

02:06:52.620 | and what it did for them and their lives

02:06:54.760 | that they wanted the next generation

02:06:56.500 | to also experience the same thing.

02:06:58.200 | - This is a tricky question, but if people are interested

02:07:02.680 | in judo and wanna start learning it,

02:07:04.880 | in the United States there's thousands

02:07:07.520 | of jiu-jitsu schools, for example.

02:07:09.720 | Is there advice you can give to people interested in judo

02:07:13.780 | or maybe to jiu-jitsu gym owners?

02:07:18.780 | Like how do you get judo as part of your life in America?

02:07:24.820 | - Well, I mean, if you're fortunate

02:07:26.460 | to live near another dojo, right?

02:07:28.860 | A place that has judo locally,

02:07:30.620 | then that's your best opportunity to learn

02:07:32.740 | is to go learn from another school.

02:07:35.060 | Unfortunately, sometimes the nearest dojo might not be

02:07:39.980 | for two hours or three hours away from where you're at,

02:07:42.660 | which is an obstacle, you're not gonna do that.

02:07:45.260 | So, I mean, Travis and I did start

02:07:47.820 | the American Judo System online.

02:07:50.420 | It's at usajudo.com and we've broken down

02:07:54.340 | every single judo technique to the very,

02:07:57.740 | very basic elements of just movement.

02:08:00.380 | So we teach every technique of how you do it mechanically

02:08:04.380 | with just your feet, then how you incorporate your hands

02:08:07.180 | and your feet together, how you do it in all directions,

02:08:11.160 | moving forward, sideways, backwards,

02:08:13.340 | how to then introduce a partner into the movement,

02:08:17.120 | how to do basic uchi-komi or repetitions with a partner,

02:08:23.020 | then moving with a partner,

02:08:24.460 | then how to throw your opponent static,

02:08:26.420 | how to throw your opponent.

02:08:27.300 | So basically from the very foundation of the movement

02:08:30.780 | all the way to the most advanced level,

02:08:33.100 | we've documented this through separate videos.

02:08:36.900 | And we've taken now, I think, 12 to 15

02:08:40.040 | of standing techniques combined with a whole bunch

02:08:42.920 | of groundwork techniques.

02:08:44.600 | And our goal is just to continue to build this platform out

02:08:48.020 | so that anybody, anywhere can learn online

02:08:51.480 | and can ask questions.

02:08:52.520 | We have a live training class every couple of weeks,

02:08:54.880 | every two weeks, he or I answer questions online

02:08:58.520 | for our members.

02:09:00.320 | Ideally, what we'd like to do is have a standing curriculum

02:09:05.320 | for jujitsu instructors that want to learn

02:09:07.940 | and become black belts in judo.

02:09:10.040 | Here's how, these are the techniques you need to know,

02:09:12.120 | this is how many reps you need to do,

02:09:14.040 | this is how efficient you need to get at those techniques

02:09:17.240 | to become certified as an instructor

02:09:19.760 | or become a black belt.

02:09:21.440 | And eventually have an online promotion system

02:09:24.040 | where anybody, anywhere can just submit videos

02:09:27.240 | and show us that they can do those techniques.

02:09:30.160 | And obviously we'll have people review them.

02:09:31.780 | And this is a dream and a vision,

02:09:34.200 | but we've already started the platform.

02:09:36.480 | We're about to do a collaborative effort with USA Judo

02:09:39.920 | where all of their members will start to get access

02:09:41.920 | to this platform as well.

02:09:43.400 | And if we can get that influx of money

02:09:46.580 | and people on the platform,

02:09:48.120 | it'll allow us to hire and grow it faster.

02:09:51.880 | - So you also want to do certification there.

02:09:55.640 | It's not just instruction.

02:09:57.320 | - Correct.

02:09:58.860 | - That would be amazing.

02:09:59.920 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

02:10:01.320 | - I mean, for me personally,

02:10:02.520 | I'm mostly in Austin, Texas now.

02:10:05.120 | And there's a few Judo schools, but it's not really.

02:10:10.120 | - Right.

02:10:11.600 | - And it's just one of those cities that doesn't quite have,

02:10:14.240 | I mean, there's a few,

02:10:15.320 | it's basically just a few random Judo people

02:10:18.200 | that kind of gather together a couple of times a week.

02:10:22.100 | But it's not a system, a dojo, an instructor,

02:10:27.100 | or integrated into a Jiu-Jitsu school or not.

02:10:30.600 | The problem with most Judo dojos right now

02:10:33.960 | is that most of them cater towards the competitive side.

02:10:37.860 | Also, a lot of them do it recreationally,

02:10:41.520 | meaning this isn't how they make a living.

02:10:43.280 | So they're there three nights a week,

02:10:44.880 | or they're there five,

02:10:45.840 | even if they're there five nights a week,

02:10:47.300 | it's still only one junior class and one senior class,

02:10:51.020 | and that's it.

02:10:51.860 | And it's one size fits all.

02:10:53.200 | Doesn't matter what level you're at,

02:10:54.640 | it's one size fits all.

02:10:55.620 | So you can't get out of the training

02:10:58.080 | what you're looking to get out of the training.

02:10:59.640 | It's whatever the instructor's teaching.

02:11:01.600 | And you can't learn

02:11:04.520 | because it's not at the appropriate level for you.

02:11:06.360 | And usually you're pushed into doing Randori,

02:11:08.360 | where you have no choice,

02:11:09.240 | but to do the Randori part of the training.

02:11:11.400 | So it's a challenge to go learn.

02:11:14.680 | And then a lot of times the schools are old school,

02:11:18.240 | so they go make you do falls for a half hour.

02:11:20.280 | They make you do things,

02:11:22.440 | maybe you're a Jiu-Jitsu person who knows how to fall already

02:11:25.280 | but you haven't proven it to the Judo instructor

02:11:27.200 | and they don't break the norm

02:11:28.420 | and say you still have to fall for six months,

02:11:30.200 | which turns a lot of people away as well.

02:11:32.520 | So it's like any business.

02:11:36.160 | If you don't deliver on your customer's expectations,

02:11:40.920 | you're not going to have very many customers,

02:11:42.920 | which is the way it is now.

02:11:44.520 | - So a lot of people do listen to this,

02:11:47.600 | but in general in the United States practice

02:11:49.920 | Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu,

02:11:51.280 | which has a lot of similarities to Judo

02:11:54.080 | as obviously its origins in Judo.

02:11:57.400 | How would you compare the two arts

02:11:59.260 | from the perspective of people

02:12:00.820 | just interested about both arts?

02:12:03.140 | Do you recommend people who do Jiu-Jitsu get into Judo?

02:12:07.460 | How can it enrich their Jiu-Jitsu?

02:12:10.600 | How do you compare the two arts,

02:12:11.980 | the actual practice of it and why it might be useful to you?

02:12:15.660 | - I mean, I think that Judo is a hard sport

02:12:17.840 | for adults to do.

02:12:19.700 | It just is.

02:12:20.860 | Especially people that haven't fallen in a long time,

02:12:24.460 | aren't very athletic,

02:12:25.860 | haven't, I think about my own experience, right?

02:12:29.960 | Other than Judo,

02:12:30.880 | when did I ever do like a forward somersault?

02:12:33.720 | Maybe when I was in grade school, right?

02:12:35.680 | That's the last time I've left my feet was in grade school.

02:12:39.080 | Most people haven't got off of a chair or a couch.

02:12:42.760 | They spend eight to 10 hours a day

02:12:45.000 | either working behind a computer

02:12:46.400 | or sitting on a couch watching TV, right?

02:12:48.800 | And they're not that athletic.

02:12:50.560 | And they haven't done anything athletic

02:12:51.880 | at least probably since high school.

02:12:54.280 | - Yeah.

02:12:55.120 | - It's their last athletic endeavor, most of them.

02:12:57.440 | So you're talking about as an adult that's 35 or 40

02:13:00.520 | wanting to start a sport,

02:13:01.960 | Judo is a really hard sport to start,

02:13:04.080 | especially in today's dojos

02:13:06.920 | that don't have a recreational adult program.

02:13:09.760 | You know, when it's one size fits all, it's hard.

02:13:11.680 | So for those people, Jiu-Jitsu makes a heck of a lot

02:13:14.600 | of sense, good self-defense, it's cerebral,

02:13:18.840 | where you got to use your brain,

02:13:20.140 | you're a smaller person, you have to use technique.

02:13:22.640 | And it teaches all the same things as Judo,

02:13:25.440 | but it's a safe way to do it.

02:13:27.080 | And because of the validation it has

02:13:30.160 | with the UFC and MMA today, right?

02:13:33.120 | Everybody knows Jiu-Jitsu.

02:13:34.600 | So now they can be part of mainstream society

02:13:37.160 | and talk intelligently about what they see on television

02:13:40.280 | or what's going on on ESPN today, right?

02:13:42.240 | They have some knowledge.

02:13:43.100 | So they have an identity.

02:13:45.880 | And also there's a good culture in Jiu-Jitsu

02:13:47.920 | where it's becoming a family.

02:13:49.520 | You know, the dojo is the family place.

02:13:51.440 | You go to feel good, you go to see your friends,

02:13:54.000 | you go to get fit and you have a good time, right?

02:13:57.240 | So it makes a lot of sense why it's growing.

02:13:59.880 | Judo on the other hand, I think is a better sport

02:14:03.160 | for children to do.

02:14:04.480 | It's more, I would say, fun and interactive.

02:14:08.280 | It's a little easier to teach the kids how to do

02:14:10.880 | the throwing skills and for safety and things like that.

02:14:14.360 | Their body can handle more than the adults can.

02:14:16.840 | They're less likely to get injured.

02:14:19.040 | You know, it makes them better athletes

02:14:21.600 | because it's a lot more three-dimensional in my opinion.

02:14:24.500 | So I think there's a good fit between,

02:14:28.400 | judo can thrive from kids till, you know, whatever,

02:14:32.200 | high school, college.

02:14:34.180 | Jiu-Jitsu thrives from that 18 year old up.

02:14:37.420 | Right now that's kind of where it is.

02:14:39.600 | - So as a dojo, you have to kind of focus on the teens

02:14:43.700 | and the college, like early twenties, that kind of-

02:14:46.880 | - Or you need to have,

02:14:48.640 | if you're going to be a successful judo dojo,

02:14:50.600 | you have to have that recreational,

02:14:53.920 | fundamental adult program in your school

02:14:56.720 | where people actually come to judo, learn the moves,

02:15:00.800 | but aren't pushed into randori training

02:15:03.560 | and pushed into things where they're uncomfortable

02:15:05.800 | and they can't control the situation

02:15:07.960 | because there's too many unknowns.

02:15:09.660 | - You got an education at Browns.

02:15:14.320 | You're somebody who's amazing because as an Olympian

02:15:17.360 | and an Olympic coach, you always emphasize

02:15:19.320 | kind of balance and education,

02:15:20.960 | all of that side of life, so developing your brain too.

02:15:25.960 | So you are an Olympic medalist,

02:15:29.580 | a coach of Olympic medalists, you're a business owner,

02:15:33.000 | so successful in all these domains.

02:15:35.720 | So I have to ask,

02:15:37.040 | what advice would you give to young people today,

02:15:40.160 | high school, judo age, high school, college,

02:15:44.240 | undergrad, how to be successful in their career

02:15:49.240 | or just in life in general,

02:15:50.880 | how to live a life they can be proud of?

02:15:53.540 | - I think you have to be true to yourself.

02:15:57.960 | You have to decide what it is you really want to do

02:16:00.720 | with your life.

02:16:02.280 | And it's hard because when I grew up,

02:16:04.080 | I didn't know I was going to be successful.

02:16:05.960 | When I was young,

02:16:07.280 | I didn't know I was going to be an Olympic medalist.

02:16:09.080 | I certainly did envision myself owning a couple of companies

02:16:12.040 | that makes their living exclusively for martial arts

02:16:15.680 | or judo 'cause that wasn't really an opportunity

02:16:17.680 | when I was a kid, but I've created that opportunity.

02:16:20.600 | I would just say that,

02:16:22.160 | pick something that you're passionate about.

02:16:24.600 | I was stuck in a career before

02:16:26.040 | where I wasn't passionate about it.

02:16:27.960 | And it was my wife who said,

02:16:29.760 | "Jimmy, if you can figure out

02:16:32.000 | "how to make your living exclusively from martial arts,

02:16:36.640 | "where your brain and your heart and your passion

02:16:38.840 | "is all towards one thing that you really like,

02:16:42.060 | "then you'll be successful."

02:16:43.340 | And I left the job, I had three kids.

02:16:45.120 | I was working for monster.com.

02:16:47.960 | I was in internet marketing

02:16:49.820 | and I was working for that company, great company,

02:16:51.600 | nothing wrong with the company,

02:16:53.040 | but sitting behind the desk from eight till five,

02:16:56.520 | and then I get to go to judo from six till nine at night,

02:17:00.560 | my whole day is tied up doing something

02:17:02.200 | that I'm really not passionate about.

02:17:04.040 | She said, "If you can figure out

02:17:06.360 | "how to make money from your dojo

02:17:07.960 | "and other things judo related,

02:17:10.240 | "then I think you'll be successful."

02:17:11.520 | And so she's the one that my wife, Marie,

02:17:13.120 | gave me that advice and I would give that to others.

02:17:15.320 | Find something that you love doing

02:17:17.080 | where it doesn't feel like work,

02:17:18.760 | something you're passionate about.

02:17:20.120 | - And if the opportunity doesn't exist,

02:17:22.240 | how to make money on it, you can create the opportunity.

02:17:25.240 | - Be resourceful, figure it out.

02:17:26.880 | Don't let anybody tell you you can't do it.

02:17:30.000 | I didn't know that I could have a 200 person judo school

02:17:33.320 | that only taught judo,

02:17:34.640 | 'cause that really didn't exist in this country.

02:17:37.280 | You know, that actually charges money

02:17:39.080 | like jujitsu charges, right?

02:17:40.400 | We're talking not, there's plenty of clubs out there

02:17:42.640 | that charge 10 bucks a month that might have 100 people,

02:17:45.200 | but there's not many that, you know,

02:17:46.760 | where the tuition is $150 a month having 200 people.

02:17:49.960 | So that's a successful business, but it wasn't done before.

02:17:54.560 | But be passionate about it, understand you're gonna fail,

02:17:57.560 | understand you're gonna get knocked down, beat up, right?

02:18:00.680 | There's gonna be dark days, but you gotta persevere,

02:18:03.640 | you gotta believe in yourself, you gotta have a plan,

02:18:06.640 | you have to be willing to learn from other people.

02:18:09.600 | And that's what I did.

02:18:11.640 | If I didn't know it, I brought somebody in to tell me,

02:18:13.960 | what am I doing wrong?

02:18:14.840 | Like, look from the outside, what do you see?

02:18:17.040 | Okay, great, then you gotta be willing to change,

02:18:19.680 | you gotta be willing to adapt, you know?

02:18:21.800 | And I think listening, believing in myself,

02:18:25.960 | and, you know, creating opportunity.

02:18:27.880 | And the other thing is helping others.

02:18:30.440 | Something I always did in my judo life

02:18:35.080 | and in my business life,

02:18:37.040 | if somebody came to me and asked for help with,

02:18:39.840 | hey man, is there something you can do to help me?

02:18:41.800 | I'm trying to get this thing started.

02:18:43.520 | You know, I'm trying to get this dojo off the ground,

02:18:46.480 | or I'm trying to run this event series,

02:18:48.600 | or, you know, I was creative in trying to figure out a way

02:18:52.560 | to help them make it work.

02:18:54.080 | 'Cause if that really was their dream,

02:18:56.160 | and I could help them do their dream,

02:18:58.120 | I felt like that person would then give nothing

02:19:02.160 | but good, good comments about us, good, good,

02:19:04.840 | like they'll remember it forever.

02:19:06.560 | They become like family.

02:19:08.160 | And they'd be the best advocates for your business ever.

02:19:11.080 | And so the kids that I taught at my dojo

02:19:13.800 | were treated that way,

02:19:14.880 | the people that worked for me get treated that way,

02:19:17.120 | the people that, my customers that I work with

02:19:20.120 | in building their dojos get treated that way,

02:19:23.560 | people that ran tournaments,

02:19:24.800 | whether it was Grappler's Quest years ago,

02:19:27.320 | and helping that guy with a full set of mats

02:19:29.200 | for his, Brian Simmons with his thing,

02:19:32.000 | or, you know, any of the Gracies,

02:19:36.160 | it just became like family,

02:19:37.480 | and then I just work hard and deliver

02:19:39.120 | on what I say I'm gonna do.

02:19:40.760 | If I say I'm gonna do it, I do it.

02:19:42.800 | You know, and I think it goes a long way.

02:19:44.520 | - Well, and I got a comment, so in a small way,

02:19:48.240 | people may not know, I think it's still on YouTube,

02:19:50.640 | we previously talked many years ago,

02:19:52.920 | and I remember you were so kind to me,

02:19:57.180 | and you didn't really know who I was,

02:19:59.000 | you just took me as a human being,

02:20:01.160 | you welcomed me into your dojo,

02:20:02.680 | and we just had a conversation on a podcast,

02:20:05.200 | or whatever the heck you call that thing,

02:20:07.120 | and you were just very kind,

02:20:09.320 | and you were also just,

02:20:12.220 | it was the last conversation I had

02:20:16.360 | when I showed up to MIT, and it stayed with me,

02:20:20.280 | so I resumed doing this podcast,

02:20:23.200 | but it stayed with me because you said,

02:20:26.320 | "You said that I did a good job at this,"

02:20:29.060 | and people, especially at that time, didn't tell me that.

02:20:32.600 | And just that little act of kindness

02:20:36.260 | is probably just a regular part of your day,

02:20:38.140 | you had a busy day, it was the end of the day,

02:20:40.140 | just saying that, that was powerful,

02:20:42.800 | and that pays off somehow,

02:20:45.040 | so thank you for that. - It's awesome.

02:20:49.000 | But it was sincere, right?

02:20:50.440 | It was genuine, I felt like,

02:20:52.480 | I had been to so many interviews,

02:20:54.180 | when it's around Olympic time,

02:20:55.740 | there's lots of beat reporters that come out,

02:20:57.780 | and they're trying to get your time,

02:20:59.060 | and they're just, they're there

02:21:00.620 | 'cause they have to get the story,

02:21:02.260 | for their newspaper or their television show,

02:21:04.500 | and a lot of times those people show up,

02:21:06.980 | and they pronounce my name wrong,

02:21:09.780 | or they get something wrong about the background,

02:21:11.780 | or they offend me because they call me five minutes before

02:21:16.380 | that they're supposed to be there,

02:21:17.500 | and say, "Oh, sorry, we're running late,

02:21:18.900 | "we'll be there in an hour and a half."

02:21:20.020 | Well, I'm a busy guy too,

02:21:21.700 | and you know, like, but you were somebody that showed up,

02:21:25.020 | was so prepared with your notes,

02:21:26.700 | knew everything about the history of what I had done,

02:21:31.700 | the questions you asked were intelligent questions,

02:21:34.500 | they were well thought out,

02:21:35.980 | and at the end of that interview,

02:21:38.020 | I was really genuinely impressed,

02:21:40.980 | and I wanted to let you know you did a great job,

02:21:43.580 | because you stood out from the rest.

02:21:45.180 | - Thank you, yeah, I mean, for me,

02:21:46.940 | it was like showing up to the Mecca,

02:21:48.580 | like the track, I mean, you know,

02:21:51.180 | you don't always wanna just tell that to people,

02:21:53.100 | but you show up, you know, obviously,

02:21:55.860 | you're the legend of Judo in the United States,

02:21:58.620 | and so that was like, Boston is the Mecca.

02:22:01.540 | (both laughing)

02:22:03.660 | Like, that's where you travel to talk to the greats,

02:22:06.580 | so the fact that you were kind to me

02:22:09.100 | just stuck with me for a long time,

02:22:10.940 | so it pays off to be kind to others,

02:22:14.580 | to give 'em a chance.

02:22:19.980 | - Jimmy, thank you so much for giving me another chance,

02:22:23.140 | and spending your valuable time,

02:22:24.540 | and you've also were kind enough to invite me

02:22:27.300 | to train with you today at your dojo,

02:22:29.980 | so I can't wait.

02:22:31.260 | - Let's go.

02:22:32.100 | - Let's go do some Judo.

02:22:32.940 | - Yeah, awesome, thank you, Lee.

02:22:35.300 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

02:22:36.900 | with Jimmy Pedro.

02:22:38.380 | To support this podcast,

02:22:39.940 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

02:22:42.900 | And now, let me leave you with some words from Bruce Lee.

02:22:46.100 | I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,

02:22:50.420 | but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

02:22:55.280 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

02:22:59.300 | (upbeat music)

02:23:01.880 | (upbeat music)

02:23:04.460 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

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

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