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

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Jimmy Pedro is a judo competitor and coach, world champion, 3x world medalist, 2x Olympic medalist. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - ROKA: https://roka.com/ and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order - Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil - Ladder: https://ladderlife.com/lex - Linode: https://linode.com/lex to get $100 free credit - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off EPISODE LINKS: Jimmy's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmypedrousa Jimmy's Links: https://linktr.ee/jimmypedro Jimmy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimmypedrousa Jimmy's Website: https://www.jimmypedro.com/ American Judo System: https://usajudo.com/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (07:56) - The most beautiful throw (32:25) - Russian approach to randori (45:57) - Judo gripping (57:25) - IOC (1:07:50) - Toughest match (1:12:57) - Jimmy Pedro Sr (1:32:12) - Travis Stevens (1:51:42) - Kayla Harrison (2:10:00) - Putin and judo (2:14:12) - Getting started in judo (2:18:58) - BJJ (2:22:24) - Advice for young people

The following is a conversation with Jimmy Pedro, a legendary judo competitor in coach he represented the United States of four Olympics in 92-96-2000-2004, winning a bronze medal at two of them. He meddled in three world championships, winning gold in 1999. He has coached many of the elite- American Jidoka, including Kayla Harrison, Ronda Rousey, Travis Stevens, and many others. Plus, he's not my judo coach, along with Travis Stevens. And now, a quick few seconds summary of the sponsors. Check them out in the description

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The list is frankly ridiculous and it keeps growing. I can name a few people that have watched Chris Hatfield, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Will Wright, Carlos Santana, Garica Sparrow, Day on the ground on Neil Gaiman, Martin Scorsese, Tony Hawk, Jane Goodall, The Great, Jane Goodall, and that list keeps going and like I said, it keeps growing. This is so real that they were able to organize this and really focus the people to teach it like a great course that has like personal examples, but also has structure, key insights. Okay, I'm going to calm down now and say that I highly recommend you check it out. Get unlimited access to every masterclass and get 15% off an annual membership if you go to masterclass.com slash Lex. membership. What is the most beautiful throw in judo to you?

I think Uchi Mata. You know, it's the one that seems to have the most amplitude. Person goes the highest. You see a leg swing through the middle. The person doing the throw. There's a leg swinging through the middle. The other person definitely goes, you know, head over heels, flat on their back. It's probably the most dynamic, pretty judo through the wrist.

Okay. So it's a single, you're staying on a single foot and you're raising your other foot in the air and it's a forward throw, which means the, your back is facing the opponent, but they kind of both fly through the air and twist through the air. Correct. Yeah, so how does that throw work? What are the principles behind that throw? It's one of those throws that, you know, people can kind of understand how to pick up another human being in sort of trivial ways, but the h-moder to me never quite made sense, like why it works. There's a quirk, there's a twisting motion. There's some involvement of the hip, but not really a hip throw because the hip is not

all the way over, so it's not, it's a very confusing throw. So, I'm trying to say that. Can you say something for me? It's probably one of the most difficult throws to learn as well, because it is so complex. You do have to stand on one leg, balance on one leg, swing your other leg through the middle, hold your opponent up in the air. And it's hard to make that contact with upper body to your back. You have to turn your back on the throw as well.

So how does it work? It's definitely sort of a throw where you need to start pulling your opponent's upper body towards you, right? So their upper body starts coming towards you. Your legs go towards them as your body starts to go into the throat. So your head is going to go left, let's say your body, your legs are going to go to the right, your body's, your partner's going to start to lean towards you. And just as you start to get there a moment and coming forward, your leg is going gonna sweep up underneath,

there's, pick them up onto your hip, right? And then the finish of the throw is a twist, and a lot of times the good judoka will leave their feet when they do the throw, so both bodies are in the air together, and then the thrower comes down on top of the person being thrown. So all four feet are in the air. Correct.

So there's just this unstoppable force that's, so you're all in the air. You're basically doing a role together. Correct. Okay, so who to you is the best Uchimata? Who has besides yourself? I'm not gonna lie. There's plenty of guys at Uchimata a lot better than I do. You do have a nice video about the HMata online, but who's a great practitioner of the HMata? Right now, Shohei Ono, who's two-time Olympic gold medalist, that's his favorite throw. There's tons of highlight videos on the IGF and Judo Fanatic showing how he does his HMata, and it is quite different than everybody else's.

But it's unstoppable when he comes in, nobody stops it. He's won two golds in a row at the Olympics. I think maybe the last eight years, the guys lost two matches, you know, he's just incredible. So at a very competitive division, I guess, I'm sorry, three kilos. Okay. And then three three time world champ to is he the greatest of all time? You? The other reason why he's not is because Nomura is a 60 kilo player. He was three time Olympic champion. So Nomura, I mean, unless O'Noor was gonna stick around for another three years and win again and win again here in Paris. That's you know, then he'd match what Nomura did.

But three time gold medalist in Judo in a lightweight division. That's pretty spectacular. So to you, the being able to win a championship, world championship or Olympic medal is a measure of greatness. It's not like you have some people who are not as accomplished, like Koga or something like that, but just the beauty, the moments of magic, the number of moments of magic is the highest, even if it's not

championships. I think you have to go by that because there's so many phenomenal judo players that have come through the system of spectacular judo. You have one countless major events, but the ability to pull it together, right, one countless major events, but you know, the ability to pull it together, right? At those magical moments, the pinnacle of the sport, the world championships, the Olympic Games, and proving that you can do it time and time again, make sure you're unstoppable, and make sure the best.

You know, there was a guy back in the 70s and 80s by the name of Fuji, and he won four world championships back to back, And back then, the world was every two years. So he was, here he was, a four time world champion. That's eight years at the top of the sport. He never won an Olympic medal. You know, he never went to the Olympics. You know, so there's a guy who missed out on Olympic greatness, but was arguably the best competitor back in that period. By the way, same Fuji as Fuji. Right.

Really? Wow, I didn't know those an actual guy, Fuji. Our brand is named after the mountain Fuji. But this is a different guy's name was Fuji. All right, well, history rhymes. What about Teddy Renair? Ten Time World Champ, I think, two time gold medalists at the Olympics, two times bronze medalists at the Olympics. Probably the most dominant Jidoka ever. Is he in the running? What do you think about that guy?

I think he's a freak of nature, Teddy. If you look at the size, just how tall he is, how big he is, how physical he is of a specimen. Like I sat next to him on a bus. And like his legs are literally the size of my waist. Like when you sit next to him and just look at the size, he's a big man. You know, so obviously to win 10 world titles in the

sport of judo, I mean, that's almost an incomprehensible feat, two-time Olympic champion. Again, I put some in one of the maybe ten or 12 people that ever do that in the history of the sport. So he's definitely got it be in the running for the best. But, you know, technically, I don't think he's as technical as some of the other, in terms of pure judo finesse technique. You know, it's, he's powerful, he's explosive, he's dominant, he's strong. Teddy also grips really, really well, which makes him that much tougher to beat, because a lot of times heavyweights, especially the heavyweight division, a lot of them just grab the key and they go, you know, man to man and judo to judo and take shots at each other.

And that's why a lot of men of getting beat, but Teddy is in control, like positionally he stays in really good position and he controls his opponent the whole fight. So they really don't have a chance against them. He doesn't give them a chance to beat him, which is why he's been so dominant. But he's not really stalling. So I mean, he does have a really nice, a sort of garrie, this backward trip, outside trip in case people don't know. And he has just like technically pretty good throws and for heavyweight. Yes, heavyweights can be sometimes messy with their judo. He's pretty technical and clean in the execution of his big throws, but a lot of that probably has to do with the dominant gripping that he does.

It's not defensive gripping, it's offensive gripping, but the dominant gripping. 100%. He controls the grips, he controls the movement of the match as a result of that, and then he creates his own openings. So I mean, for a heavyweight, phenomenal technique, yes. And what you said, Messi, I'd like to call it sloppy, right? A lot of the heavy weights tend to be sloppy. They fall on the ground a lot. It's hard to move somebody that weighs 350 pounds. You know, it's hard to get that body moving and just with a simple pull motion. So he's definitely found a way to do it,

but he's also, I don't know, six foot eight. You know, he's probably weighs 140 kilos. He's a big boy. And he had this winning streak of just, I don't know how long, but like over a hundred matches. And he lost at this Olympics that we just went through the 20, I don't even know what to call it, 2021 Olympics. I don't know the proper terminology. Tokyo 2020. It's okay. 2020. All right. So he lost to Timeland, Bashayv. I mean, it's always sad to see a sort of greatness come to an end.

It's like Corralin and Wrestling and Greco-Roman. Did you shed a bit of a tear to see greatness go? Or is it just the way of life? I mean, what did you think about sort of this dominance, this run of dominance being stopped? I think, I mean, it's obviously sad to see, I love seeing champions succeed, especially people that are good people. And I think Teddy's a good person. You know, I mean, I think there's some arrogant champions that everybody would like to see

lose just because they don't want to deal with their personality. But I think Teddy's a very humble champion. He's a people's champion. I think he's been privileged and he makes good money from the sport of judo and the French Federation. It's taken care of him well. So he's a lifelong judo icon. So it's sad to see somebody like that get beat,

especially when this could have been his third Olympic title. And just put him in infamy. So it was sad to see, but I think, you know, every athlete goes through it, right? I mean, you, you, it's just, that's what the Olympics is all about. The great ones fall sometimes. And especially in Judo, the six so, like the margin of error. I mean, I guess the other question I want to ask here is, in your sense, how difficult it is to not lose for so long? It seems like in Judo, like a little mistake, and it's over. There's no coming

back. And Epa means it's over. So how difficult does that? It's It's hard to stay that dominant without question. First of all when you are when you are the entire world is is training against you Just to be right there studying every single Movement they're they're studying patterns. They're trying to break it down and find a flaw in your game So everybody's hunting for you when you're the best in the world especially at the Olympics That's that's the that's the one to beat you at. So everybody's focused on you and then there's an incredible amount of pressure on that athlete to perform. You can carry the flag for your country and when you're in opening ceremonies sometimes, you know, there's all spotlight is on you. And it's particularly hard

when things don't go well early. In other words, when you're expected to win and then all of a sudden, now you're in a hard fight and it's not going the way you want that pressure, the one who's the favorite feels the pressure the most at the Olympics. And that's why I think the other ones are able to win it. I've actually never gotten a chance to listen to Teddy Renare sort of explain ideas behind his judo. Like I wonder what his mental game is like because I think his English is pretty not very good.

And so, and I just haven't seen good interviews, but it's always fascinating to, there's certain great athletes that are also great thinkers and speakers, like the Satya brothers in wrestling. Again, not meaning that that's how much you do lists of 100% I'm going to a daggistan and talking to them because they're brilliant. But to be able to sort of maybe after retirement to think back what were the systems involved both on the technical the training, and then the mental side.

Because I tip, stay that dominant, just like you're saying, everybody's studying to beat you. And the heavyweights are just these powerful dudes. To be able to control them with your game and like the game that everybody knows is coming is, I don't know, I don't know what's behind that, but there's got to be, it feels like the mental game is exceptionally important. I think a lot of people underestimate just how important that side is.

Being mentally prepared for victory, mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best. There's no way this week-minded that they can accomplish that. It's 100% confidence's weak-minded. They can accomplish that. It's 100% confidence and belief in yourself. If we take a big picture of you then, not necessarily Tateronare, but if you want to go from the very beginning, from day one of Judo class to Olympic champion or Olympic medalist, what does it take to become an Olympic medalist in Judo

from start to finish? Like how many different trajectories do you see? Or is there some unifying principles? I think a lot of it has to, your journey is going to depend a lot by where you're from. So a path that an American might take versus somebody who's from Japan or somebody who's from Europe is two very just three very distinct paths, right? because you know in Japan it's part of the culture It's there's a there's a system of excellence. There's you know this elementary school judo this junior high school this high school this collegiate. There's a limpic and

you know Much like our wrestling is here in the United States, right? It's very similar. It's youth wrestling, there's high school, this NCAA, and then there's Olympic wrestling. And when your country is a factory of producing athletes at the highest level, then all of those top athletes typically go back into the sport and there's professions for them. They have an opportunity to coach it all those different levels and just the level of their game and the expertise that all of them have even down at the elementary level

make their skill so solid. And as a coach in that situation, you can just sit back and watch who stands out as opposed to I think in America, I guess, you would need to craft. You don't get to choose from a thousand people, a few people that naturally stand out at the age of nine. You have to actually, whatever the natural resources you're given, craft them into a champion. So if we look at that, the American way, where you just have a person with a smile, show up to your dojo, so that one to be an Olympic medalist, what process do you take them through? The odds are really insurmountable.

It's a very, very high hill to climb. There's only a few people and there's only a few coaches in this entire country that really understand that process and that can help people reach that level as it's been proven. Number one, you certainly have to have a solid base, a fundamental base of an expectation of what the training is going to be. And it has to be a level of professionalism very, very early, where you're teaching all the basic judo moves, all the basic fundamental movements,

posture, gripping, well maybe gripping doesn't come in so early in the game, but throwing methodology, movements, they waza position, standing fundamental throws. And I think most importantly is really the work ethic, just the way you're going to train, the intensity you're going to train with, the ability to, you know, mindset of going to tournaments constantly, you need, you know, in order to compete with the rest of the world, our young kids need to be tested

a lot when they're young. They have to be put through adversity because they don't get put through adversity in training, because you don't have that many good training partners. So you get put through adversity in competition, and then do we see what your weaknesses are, and we continue to make improvements on those. But the journey is, it's long. And until they're kind of at the teenage years,

they're going to have to pretty much stay domestic, right? Because they got to go through life as a normal kid. But they've got to be training in the teenage years, they're gonna have to pretty much stay domestic, right? Cause they gotta go through life as a normal kid, but they've gotta be training in the dojo at least five days a week. Sometimes they might wanna get an extra technical workout in or do some base conditioning in addition to that. And then really at the teenage years, that's where we really, we've struggled in America

of keeping teens in the sport of Judo, as well as developing them properly. Because up until around the teenage years, I think the Americans are on par with the rest of the world in terms of technique and in terms of skill. And we've proven we can compete with the rest of the world up until that age. But that's where Japan and that's where the Europeans

and the countries that are strong in Judo, that's where they put a lot of time, energy and effort. Is it to the teens where they have a great coaching staff, they have good training camps with 800, a thousand people going to home every single weekend. You know what do you say teens, what do you mean? Do you mean literally like 13? Yeah, 13 to 17, 13 to 19.

And that's where that's when you really accelerate your development. So you're saying like in America, when you're young, like before, you know, 9, 10, 11, 12, you stick in judo, you can progress quite a bit. Right. But then I guess the other competition there, if you're into two people, you know, doing stuff to each other in a combative way, the other competitor in America is wrestling. So, Judo almost primes you, they could teach you how to be a great wrestler as well. And so then you have to have a hard decision because you can probably be a collegiate wrestler. You can you can you have like a clear plan of where you're going to go if you want to be a wrestler. Where judo that plan is more is less clear. So you have to be on

your own a bit with your coach. That kind of thing. Exactly. Okay. So when you're on your own with your with your coach. That kind of thing. Exactly. Okay, so when you're on your own with your coach, to me that's just a fascinating journey because then it's just like the purity of it. It's the coach and the athlete and the dream. It's all about the dedication, the five, six, seven days a week competing what wants a month, twice a month.

Okay, and just, but also you probably don't have that conversation. I don't know if you do. Maybe you do. Saying like, we're gonna do this for the next eight years. Right. Yeah, I said that would you just do it? Take it the David Goggins way, which is like, let's just take it once step at a time. Let's hope we're there in the ears. Yeah, let's hope we're there. Do you like actually like right now, you have to think about the Olympics is going to be in Los Angeles in 2028.

So it's really interesting now, now would be the time and now is the time to identify talent and get commitment out of students that in seven years, you can make a US Olympic team because we're gonna have a full team. Well, America's gonna have 14 athletes compete in those games, one in every way class. So now's the time, if you're gonna go on a journey to the Olympics and stay with the sport of judo,

now would be the time to do it, you know? And so what you show up to the Pedro Judo Center and how much drilling, how much technique strategy discussions, how much run-dory or like live sparring, how much conditioning is straight training, how much of all that, how much of cross training to other gyms or something like that? Yeah, so traveling at the bar, abroad. Is there something to be said about us? Some aspects of that system for sure You need it all what you just said we need it all of it and we do do all of that right now We have a young group of kids at the Academy. You'll see tonight some of them are 14 13 15 17

Are they good? Yeah, really good. Okay. So they're gonna come. They're right around your weight. So I'll be perfect. That's nice. They're just young boys, but they've been training hard through COVID. Yeah.

We've been travesting myself, have been training them. We share responsibilities. They're doing Randory like five nights a week. You know, we have them doing Randory Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays is when they're doing Randory. They're coming to the dojo Friday night and Sunday night to do training. We also have technical sessions for them.

They're in school now, so it's a little bit challenging, but they come five o'clock in the afternoon and they do a technical session. Through COVID, they will come in every morning doing technical sessions. What's a technical session through COVID, they would come in every morning doing technical sessions. What's the technical session here? It's an hour of repetitive throwing or repetitive drilling to reinforce movements that we deem important to our successful system.

So, Néwaza positions, groundwork positions, where we want them to be put in this position, and they're gonna drill it 50 times, with resistance in big groups, doing drills over and over again, picking apart the details of the technique and what they're doing wrong, showing them how to fix it. But now we've done it so much that now we can do a whole drill session with them where they know all the different techniques inside and out and they can move from position to position really quickly.

Do they do it for a period of time, like two minutes, five minutes, or is it like one, do they actually counting? No, sometimes it's both. So sometimes we do it for reps, sometimes we do it for time. Yeah. So sometimes it might be as many as they can do

in 60 seconds or as many as they can do in two minutes. And sometimes it might just be, I want you to do every position five times. In terms of throws, we're not talking about it on a crash pad, right? It's just, we're talking about free moving around the mat and you'll just dynamically and just throwing. Correct. How many, because as I was mentioning to you offline, Travis threw me a few times, a lot

of times when he was listening in Austin and I just remembered So there's two things I Fortunately or unfortunately in my life having gotten a chance to train with folks of that level What the I'll just clean this a throw in the power and it was very nice. I can I immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that To throw a little shade at Craig Jones with this current Matt situation, is they're very, they were quite thin and as Travis commented on,

and not just the thinness of the Matt's, but they were laid on like concrete, right? So I felt, it's like soft until it's not. But being thrown very cleanly, I just felt like there's this is not going to lead to injury. It was great. It was an injury prone. But then as I mentioned to you, when I dare to after my entire leg, one of them, I guess, is the left leg was just just black, bruise.

It didn't hurt too bad. But bad, but the body's gone soft. I guess the question I have is, does the body get used to just that number of throws, just over time being thrown thousands of times a month? Unquestionably. Your body gets used to it. It gets really hard, which is why Judo is hard to come back to after you've taken a long period of time off because your body is not used to that impact anymore. I always found out that when I was training Judo a lot, it's hard to shed weight and keep

weight off because your body develops like this layer of protection on itself that it doesn't want to give up. Yeah. You know, when you're sucking a lot of weight, that means you're frail and, you know, so I always seem to retain weight more, you know, when you're doing hard judo training, as opposed to, you know, losing weight. It's easy when you go out for runs and things like that to shed the water weight, but to actually keep the pounds off was pretty hard. Yeah. The body kind of develops, like you said, a level of protection. What about the Randori, just out of curiosity, again, I haven't ever had the opportunity to train

with folks at a high level. In Jijitsu, there's different gyms at different styles, but I've noticed that at the highest levels, people can go pretty hard in a certain kind of way where it's more technical and you're not, you're moving at 100%, but the power is not at 100%. It's a weird little dance. It's technically, like you're not really forcing stuff. You're more focused on the right timing, the right positioning

of hands and feet and body and all those kinds of things. You're not like forcing stuff in the way you would in competition, like really the power. That sounds similar to you for the way you try to do render. So there's different styles of judo. And I'd say the Japanese style, the technical style of judo is exactly what you just talked about It's like it's almost like two guys in pajamas, right? We're not going we're not using it. We're using minimal effort maximum efficiency We're moving around and we're trying to feel that movement and it's timing and finesse and technique and and fun and clean throws And when you you know when you train in Japan

You can train 15 rounds of Randori, five minute rounds. That's 75 minutes of straight sparring. You can do that straight in Japan without a problem. I mean, you'll get tired. Of course, you're going to fall a lot. You're going to throw a lot. But it's very like free feeling. And it's technical as you explain. But then when you go to Europe and you try to do rounds with the Europeans, they have very physical. They don't have that same finesse in their training that they do in Japan. And in Europe, you'd be hard pressed to do eight rounds of Randori in a night. It's so physically exhausting because so much effort is going into just fighting and fending off

the gripping system and the power of your opponent, you're physically drained after eight rounds of random. So it's a much different feel. Uh, when you say Europe, do you mean Germany, France, Britain, Russia? Is there a lot of, so it's, there's a kind of similarity to all of those kinds of approaches. The only difference would be Russia that they do a lot more active drilling, a lot more sequential movement training. They don't focus as much on Randori.

You'll do much fewer rounds in Russia during training camps than you would in those other countries we just talked about, France, Germany, et cetera. What about in this kind of American system where you have much less talent to work with? Just select whatever works for the particular athletes. Do you have something you prefer in your system? So you need a combination of all of it. If you're going to win at the Olympic level, you have to be able to deal with the finesse of the Japanese, the physicality of the Europeans, you have to focus on the ground.

And it was a aspect because a lot of people are weak there in the world of the sport of Judo. That's a chance to win. We've sort of developed our American system of Judo. At least for the last, say probably the last 20 years, it would be the American system of Judo, which relies heavily on taking the individual and whatever techniques they do, perfecting those techniques and the combinations and other throws that go with those throws, but then implementing and overlaying an American system of gripping,

newaza, conditioning, mentality, training methodology, like in game planning, you know, to beat your opponents. And I think that's the, that's the secret sauce to success for the fair Americans, because there's no way that we don't have eight partners to train with in a night that are going to give us good rounds, right? We might have two, you know, so we had over the same guy four time, those two people four, you know, two times each. Now I have four good rounds, the rest of the rounds, I'm not being pushed to the limit. So we train differently.

And a lot of times we do a lot of stuff like shark bait. When our athletes are preparing for competition, for example, in K-Low or Travis, we're preparing for competition. And we might only have 20 people in the whole gym work to work out with those two Olympic medalists, right? And of those 20 people, maybe four of them are Travis's size. You know, maybe there's only one girl in the room for Kayla.

She's got a train with guys. And then the other ones are teenagers that are two week to train with either one of them. So what we would do is just put together four or five people that could give them a challenge. And we'd line them up and they would do a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute. And they'd do five minutes in a row as hard as they can.

That person can go hard for a minute with Travis or Kayla. They can't go five minutes hard, but they can go one minute hard. So it made their training much, much more intense, much more physically demanding. And then rinse and repeat that six times or eight times in a night. You know, they just got 40 minutes of intense randori. The person that was training with them that wasn't as good, only had to do six or eight minutes of training the whole night. You know, so it's so that's so difficult because then you look at like the Russian national team and you have just the world champions and so

and so, or you even have like, what is the Tom Brands and Terry Brands and the wrestling system? You have like these people, it's a small group of people, but they're all some of the best people in the world in there. Going head to head. And yeah, you don't necessarily get a good look kind of a variety of styles, but just the qualities there. And even that is missing for people your size in America. Because that is so difficult to work with, which it makes scale as it makes travel's a story that much more amazing is you mentioned kind of picking whatever the set of techniques the athlete is naturally good at or prefers or whatever. How much specialization is there? Maybe if I give you like two choices, is it good to have like one throw and try to become the best person in the world at that throw or do you want to have a bunch

of stuff like a variety of throws. Well, for Travis it was Epone saying, Igui, that was his main throw, right? But from that Epone saying, Igui, he had a variety of other attacks he could do, you know, that mixed it up so that you kept people guessing. Maybe it wasn't the Epone say we was coming. Maybe it was the Koshigumu that he did or maybe it was the Epone to Osoro that he did in combination. So you typically have one main throw that you do. For me, it was Taito Shii.

For Kailer, it was her Ogoshi, for Travis, it was his Epon Saiyanagi. But then you come up with a variety of other throws that you do from the very same grip. So whatever grip you take for your main throw, you want to develop an arsenal of attacks that go in all different directions holding that same grip. So you keep your opponent guessing as to what's coming. And because if they're just sitting on one technique at the highest level of sport with the exception of a few, right? We talked about Ono's Uchi-Mata with the exception of a few, most of the world catches on pretty quick on how to beat you. There is something to just sticking, making sure you really dedicate to the main thing. So from Travis, that would be like the main version of his say naggy, like really making

sure you don't forget to really put in the time on that. Because I mean, one way to say it is that threat being dangerous opens up a lot of things. Right. But also, I don't know. I think I'm just as a fan. I think it, it's sad when like elite level athletes in, in all of my combat sports kind of start taking their main thing for granted. Like, um, they think, okay, I figured that part out. Now I'll be working on all the this whole system on variations on different setups, on, uh, lefty versus lefty. Some like weird variation

as opposed to, you know what, if you look at some of the best people ever, they seem to have not cared about variations at all. They're just like literally, they are more like, georgeems of sushi, and like, fine-tuning their ear, their ability to detect the minute movements that give you an opening on that main thing. And so the whole time, you're just waiting for that throw, you're like dancing

with the like little bit of pressure and that like releasing the pressure and putting the pressure, maybe a little bit off of balance and finding like the right moment to strike and focusing on that. Again, maybe that's just like a romanticization of like the simplicity of that. Maybe it is kind of impossible to do that on a large scale, but I just, yeah, I don't know if you can comment on that whether there is some value in still putting in like tens of thousands of reps on the main, main thing. Well, unquestionably that has to happen. You still have to drill your main throw

and you have to fine-tune it and continue to do repetition after repetition and throws on the crash pad or throws on the mat, moving around, just explosive movements doing your main technique. You're never going to forget that and you're not going to put it to the side and not practice it anymore. It still has to be part of your repertoire and part of your daily training. But you do have to evolve. And I think that's the sport of Judo makes you evolve. You know, when I look at, we talk about Koga from before, right? And we talked about he had a dynamic he pulling say an Aggie that nobody could stop for years and years and years. But when people started to, you know, be on orthodox and come down his back and cross grip him and he couldn't get

to the lapel, he had to come up with something else. And all of a sudden, you saw Koga doing, now he did a soda, or now he did a Tomoy Nagi, which so he added to his arsenal to keep people think and keep hope of guessing. So it's not just that one trick pony. They still couldn't stop his, he put on saying, Nagi, once he got that grip, but if they stopped them from getting that grip or putting two hands on the key, he had to go to something else. And that's what he did. There's a Travis's or Koga's saying, Nagi makes sense to you that weird. So when I could split hip,

let's split hip. So I don't know, you know this, but like I got into judo because of Travis, I watched him with 2008 Olympics and I was there's something about like, just not the cockinessiness but the confidence and just the refusal to quit the refusal to just something that energy whatever it connected with me is like oh that guy's badass I want to be badass like that and then I also there happened to be in my university judo and I and I got into and just fell in love with the elegance and the beauty and the power of the sport. But also I started to mimic Travis's game, his and Colis.

And then the instructors I worked with, they said, that's the wrong way to do it. And I never found somebody that told me that like, no, that's not the wrong way. There's a lot of ways to do it. And there's like the classic way. And you have to understand it and you have to learn it. But that's not the wrong way. There's a lot of ways to do it. And there's like the classic way, and you have to understand it and you have to learn it. But this is not the wrong way because I was trying to find somebody who understands this throw. Because it was so beautiful at the highest level, especially with Koga, the way you're able, the quickness with which you can strike the fact that you can stand on the feet and the elevation you can get and the power you can get. It has certain throws, just like Uchimata doesn't look powerful. It just like, it looks effortless.

But like the standing St. Agi with a split hip, it just looks powerful because there's a, you're like, you're stepping into them, You're lifting the opponent and they still have they're not surprised They're now like helpless, right? Fluttering and the flattering so and then there's just this this pause and then just big slam With which you mod it's almost like you don't know what hit you It's like I told you she's the same. It's almost like a surprise. I go, oh shit, I'm now on my back. And so I just love that throw, but like, it didn't make sense to me. Like, when trying to explain it to others, when trying to learn it didn't make sense to me,

how it works, doesn't make sense to you. It does. Yeah, I was born at Udoca, right? So I've lived this stuff since I was an infant, and I've seen every style and every technique. The split hip-say and Igi is difficult to learn. It's harder to learn than the basic form, but it is powerful, and it does, upon entry, both your opponents feet leave them at the same time. So you've got them. Once you enter, you've got them, you just got to finish, right? You just got to lock them and turn and go. So it makes sense to me. My dad did teach me how to do that when I'm really younger. Yeah, he wanted me to do a split hip. We have kids at the school today that we teach the split hip, say and Igy,

same way, because it is that dynamic, right? You don't drop to the ground and roll and turn. It's not the classic form where you're giving way to your opponent It's actually you go pick the guy up in the air and then you slam it so Okay Beautiful so maybe on a small tangent so we're talking about elite level athletes in terms of Randori in terms of rep like Drilling for more recreational athletes. Like, you know, I have personally that situation going on, but there's other people that are just recreationally training Judo.

How do you recommend they improve Judo? Like, if I wanted to compete a bunch and do reasonable, or the particular set of throws, say this split, Say Nagi. So how do you do the Randori? Do you use a crash pad to get him wraps? Do you like what do you recommend? So I guess there's two recreational people that we're talking about. One is somebody who wants to learn Judo and become good at Judo, but doesn't necessarily want to compete, but just wants to get better. And I think that there's not enough emphasis in this country on paying attention to that type of student.

Everybody pushes them to competition. But in reality, there's a huge audience of people out there that would love to learn judo and be very proficient at judo and have the skills to go execute if they haven't needed it. And there's a class and there should be a program for that athlete. And that athlete does not need to do Randori. Like the sport of judo is physical enough when you're picking somebody up all the time

and moving their body weight around them at all the time. You can get very physically strong, very physically fit. Technically, you'll be better than somebody that does Randori more than you because you're moved, if you learn good technique and you learn the movement and you learn the feel and you move the, learn the timing, you'll actually be a better athlete than the person that just focuses on Randori who does ugly technique and wins with force. So you know, we have a recreational class at our school where they don't do any Randori. They have an option afterwards if they want to stay for 15 minutes or stay for 30 minutes

where they can participate in Randory, but most of the adult students choose not to, because they're already so tired from the other, you know, hour class. Good workout. Right, they're already dripping sweat. They're already like, if you, you know, work hard and drill hard, it's an intense workout. You're exhausted. You know, so that's a specific set of program, I should say, at every academy. And then, if you want to get good and you want to compete, then to me, once you have your techniques, it's learning how to implement a good gripping system, to put yourself in a position where you can always dominate

the grips, control the movement, initiate the reactions from your opponent, and then have the opportunity to attack and score. I think that when people train with, or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo, all of a sudden the first thing they say is, I can't attack. I don't know how to attack, because positionally, they don't know where to put their hands, they don't know how to hold the key properly, they don't understand that they're, you know,

they have an inferior grip, and they don't know how to get into better position so they can attack. And that's a big part of the game that not a lot of people really understand. So you really, even for recreational competitors, you really need to have a gripping system. You need to understand the gripping system. If you want to win, yeah, I mean, if the goal is to go and compete, that's a different story.

You're going, I don't have fun getting beat up or losing in competitions. I enjoy the, the, I don't even know if it's the winning or the losing. I don't. I think this is what, because I competed a lot in Bolotudo and Jiu-Jitsu. And in Jiu-Jitsu, it feels like, because I didn't have a grouping system. It feels like you're not even playing Jiu-Jitsu against the good black belts. You're, they're just, they're not, they're not even trying because they have, they get a certain kind of grip when you just can't do anything. And I don't have a good answer for that. I don't even know what I'm looking for.

And so it's not even for, it's not even losing. It's like, I don't know. It's like you didn't even show up to play is what it feels like. And it's not for it. And I think that is a big gap in knowledge, actually, in judo schools is the gripping part. When you first go out to do judo, right? You're the first thing you have to do is you have to grab your opponent,

right? And a lot of times a hero coach is like, get a grip. Just take a grip. Well, sometimes if you take a grip, you're in a worse position than not having a grip at all. That's what a lot of people don't understand. Like if you hold the key in the wrong way, your opponent can attack you, but you can't attack him. So why would you ever do that grip if it's only to your detriment? Right?

So that's, and the way you grip does set up what attacks you can do as well. So that is a huge part. And I'm not saying that you have to be 100% disciplined and only always outgrip your opponent and only be able to do throws when you have a superior grip. I'm just saying that to be able to put the grips together with the throws and understand the movements is going to make you that much ahead of the game. So if we take a step to our previous discussion of going from zero to hero, to our previous discussion of going from zero to hero,

so going from the early days through the teenage years to winning an Olympic medal. So we mentioned a lot of training, the dedication of the training, the competing, what other elements are there? The mental side is visualization, believing that you could perform at that level. So what else can you say about that? I think that comes at the highest level,

the visualization, the success, that comes at the highest level. I think in the teen years, there's the experience to play as a huge role in getting to train with other people. Like as Americans, we have to go train in Europe. We have to feel the European style of Judo We have to understand that physicality they they grip very differently They they put you in very unorthodox

Positions and if you when if you don't know how to deal with that you get thrown before you even have a chance to try your own throws You know, so it takes a lot of it takes a lot of that experience and understanding what's going on. And then you also need to get that physicality. You need to be strong and hard, I would say, by doing all those rounds with the Europeans. And at the same time, you need to go to Asia, you need to train in Japan because you need to feel that free flowing judo for your technical side. And I think that's one of the things that I was able to benefit from.

My dad was a coach who said, listen, I've taken you as far as I can take you. I want you to go to the next level. I want, you know, he sent me to England with Neil Adams, who was an Olympic silver medalist and was a world champion, had a great ground game and was good at gripping and actually did Tautoshi, which is the throw I did.

So I said, I want you to go learn from Neil. And I ended up going to England, probably eight to 10 times in my career and spending a good amount of time there training at the Neil Adams Academy. He's now the voice of Judo, Neil Adams. What do you make of that guy, just a brief pause? He's like the Morgan Freeman is the voice of like

March of the Penguins and any other nature documentary and Neil Adams is There's very few sports that have a Neil Adams I would say because He's legitimately maybe like Joe Rogan is that from mixed martial arts. It's just like an exceptionally Reconensible voice. He's really knowledgeable also the passion is conveyed so well like many times I'll watch just because he's talking. Right. So who is he? Since he got in the chance to train with him, to learn from him, who is Neil Adams? He's a great friend of mine. He is. He's a mentor. Like I said, I lived and trained at the Neil Adams Club in Coventry, England. Since I was like 16 years old. I went and visited him

for the first time. He's the one who originally taught me how to do jujuge tatami in the way that I do jujuge tatami. I trained with him. He was just retired. He was in his early 30s when I first went out there. And you know, so I trained with him many times. And over the years, he was a mentor, a great person, you know, cares about people, cares about, you know, the sport of judo. Um, had a good little club that was a fitness club and, you know, it was, it was judo, it was fitness, it, you know, used to go there. I'd show up at that place at like seven in the morning. And the first thing we would do is we'd go for a run and we'd either be running mountains or we'd be doing a five mile run or we'd be doing something at the park, we were doing sprints and buddy carries and all this stuff.

And then at 9 a.m., we'd have a technical session with Neil Adams where he would, you know, for an hour and a half, we would drill techniques and learn positions. And it was no random. It was that sequential drilling that we talked about before, right? Where you're reinforcing your two or three attacks to set up your main attack, or if you're on the ground, you're going through repetitions of certain movements. And then I'd spend all afternoon at the club, have lunch, I'd go do my weight training in the afternoon

at that place, and then in the evening, we would do the Duran Dori training at the Nal Adams Club, or we would all get in a car, and we'd drive to another location, and we'd go train to another club that might be an hour away, and there'd be 50 bodies there to train with, and each night we'd go to a different dojo.

And so it would be all day at the club, and I'd do that for like three weeks straight. All we'd do was train. Do you know how he became the voice of judo? Do you have an understanding of what he's thinking is around like how much he dedicates to himself to just commentating on judo? I imagine the amount of research required, but also just like psychologically, just the excitement he has in his voice, it takes work to do that. Do you have an understanding of like what his vision is with that?

He's always been a very charismatic animated person, Neil. You know, very passionate and loud and you know, funny. And the Brits are very funny to begin with. So he's, you know, very charismatic. But I think after coaching, he tried coaching, he coached the country of Wales for a while, he tried coaching Stinson other countries. He didn't, he didn't have a lot of success on the coaching side developing an Olympic champion. I know that was a goal of his that he was a world champion. I think it was 1981. He won two silver medals in the Olympic Games himself. He went on to coach for a while and had some political issues with the country of England

for a while. And then political issues with the country of England for a while. And then left England and went to Wales. And I think he had a coach in Stint somewhere else as well. He didn't have a lot of success coaching in the sport with athletes, not at the highest level. He had a great national team and things like that. He was really good at teaching his technique to others because he helped me a lot. But running a program I think was difficult for him.

You know, the boy's not listening and not having that same kind of passion and intensity that he, and that's why I bonded well with him because I was all in, right? I went there and whatever he said I did. I didn't care how hard I didn't care how long I just wanted to get as good as I could.

And so that's why he was a good mentor for me. But now in terms of a commentator, I mean, he's very cerebral. He just, he loves judo. He, he looked, researches it nonstop. He's got that great voice. And he knows how to bring, bring life to the, you know, to the game. And that's what he's done. And now this is who he is, right? He, he does judo full time. This is his job. Can I ask you a small before we return to the actual sport, the coaching and the sport? It's a bit of a political question.

I did a whole rant before Travis episode. I love Neil Adams's voice. I love watching judo. And it's really disappointing to me that the IOC and whoever it's as responsible, I don't understand this, that they don't make it easy for people to watch the Olympics in replay for years after. Like I can't watch Travis' matches, I can't watch, like they make it very difficult to watch

stuff online. So what happened is I uploaded the Travis Stevens episode, and we talked about his Ole Bishoff 2012 match. And it was like one minute of a small overlay of the videos, we're talking through it, we're like stepping through it, and it got taken down immediately from YouTube that the whole four-hour conversation because of that one-minute little clip and the way it got taken down automatically is because the IOC has that video uploaded. It's set to private but it's uploaded. So like they have the video and they choose not to show it. It's not that they're asking for money or whatever They're just not showing it anywhere that they're not showing it through their own service like on NBC Olympics or so on

There's just so many great human stories that the Olympics reveals They're just not made easily accessible. That's the Olympics charter is you want to I think That's the Olympics charter. You want to, I think, the actual line is to ensure the fullest coverage and the widest possible audience in the world for the Olympic Games. And it seems like to me as a fan of the Olympic Games, we're not getting any of that. Do you have an understanding of why that is? Like, why we can't watch Kayla's matches, Travis's matches super easily, even if we're willing to pay money for it. So you can't go on the International Judo Federation website right now and watch any

of the Olympic footage. No, no, no. So the only thing they have is for certain, for example, Teddy Renair match he lost, not available anywhere. Really? And that's like a dramatic thing. For example, Teddy Renair match he lost. Not available anywhere. Really. And that's like a dramatic thing. So the one thing they have is for certain sports at the highest level, like gymnastics, they'll have a highlight, which is the most frustrating thing to me.

Because this is what I can't, I'm going to, like, I'm going to try to prevent myself from going on the rant. But you know, people don't just want to see a two minute highlight of a historic moment. They want to see the build up where the athlete is standing, the nerves, the fear, the confidence, you see the build up to the event. Say it's a gymnastic, whatever floor routine, like their name is announced, they're walking the coat, then they cut to, their name is announced, they're walking, the coat, then they cut to the coach, and the coach with anticipation,

and then go to the athlete. You want the full 10 minute thing. You don't want a two minute highlight of what happened like last second or whatever. It's just like the magic of that full story, like a lifetime building up to those 10 minutes. Right? That's the magical Olympics, that both the drama and the triumph that happens in those

moments. And the fact that you can't relive that, like Travis had a bunch of those. Right? He had a bunch of times he faced like World Champions, he won and lost and just it's always close, it's always close. It's always dramatic. Right. Right. Right. And none of those are available except like me maybe The one we be Armored or what what of the submission was I forgot the choke the choke the judge yeah the the Georgian but most things are not

Usain Bolt the full races not all of those races are available online. Um, the, the race with the Italian winning the 100 meter, uh, the, the track race, uh, this, this Olympics is not only a highlight is available from what I saw. I didn't look too hard. So like, but that, the fact that it's not super easily accessible, if you're willing to pay money even, but probably should be for free. It's heartbreaking to me, because to me, the Olympics is like some of the best of humanity, just like again, the hardship, the have to overcome. So like the loss is a really powerful, because it's such hard break, but it's also like the triumph. We're losing history. Yeah. We're losing histories, what you are of all the magical moments of your sport, right? It's a sin.

I got to blame it on television rights and money. That's what it comes down to. You're talking billions and billions of dollars of television rights paid by NBC here in the United States and globally, whatever the main carriers are and all the other nations that are dictating what can be replayed and what can't. And it's what it comes down to. I made a DVD or a video when I first retired from the sport, it was called Fury on the Matt. It was kind of my story, right? And I did it with a friend who was a videographer

and we grabbed a bunch of my old footage and Olympic footage and somebody said to me, you know, you can't use that Olympic footage. And I was young and I had just retired. I said, what do you mean I can't use the Olympic footage? It's not the television footage. It's my buddy who filmed it with his own camera. It's my footage. Exactly. You know, and they said, no, if it has an Olympics in it, or it's anything to do with the Olympics, the USOC owns it. Yeah. I said, okay, well, they said, well, you should get a send it to them and let them, you know, review it. So I sent it to them. And I got, I got a bill back. I got a thing back to said, if you want to use this footage, it's going to be like $30,000. And I said, man, it's only like three minutes. I spliced it up as much as I could. And I only have highlights in there.

And then I said, come on, I went back and I negotiated with them. But at the end of the day, I still have to pay like $15,000 just to have a few minutes of footage in my own film. This is, I don't think you wouldn't even have that film if I didn't compete in it. You know, like, you can't, you know, so that was, it was a struggle. This is the different, like, you have the same and, uh, just to their certain organizations, I'd be, I'd be JJF or, like, flow grappling and flow wrestling.

I understand, I think when it's a business, it might make sense. First of all, you should actually be good at being a business and making money, which is why, for me, the IOC doesn't make sense. It should be accessible, but it would cost money. I can't buy it. What I have to email them for this footage and pay $30,000. The question is, the way you run a business is you make that frictional. Whatever the money is, $30,000 or $30,000, you make it frictionless and easy to pay that money. But anyway, I understand why that might be the case will flow grappling, but to me, the Olympics is a special thing. For sure. It's like, like you said, it is history.

Like there's not even, like, even the world championships don't compare. I understand they're really important, but Olympics is history. And the stories should certainly belong to the athletes if they want to do like fear in the mat to do their own story or like on a podcast to talk about the most tragic moment of their career. Do you have a sense of how that could be fixed or not? The only thing I could think of is you'd have to go to the Olympic Committee. The US Olympic Committee is the place I would start because the US controls the worldwide market when it comes to television. We pay the most for our television rights. Our sponsors pay the most for their rights to be associated

with the best team in the world, which is the United States, right? So it's where the money starts here. I got to believe there has to be a way to get that footage that should be accessible to the sports themselves. I'm surprised it's not, but if it's not, then it's because of dollars, because the sport itself is not willing to pay enough money to have it on its You know accessible to its audience. Yeah, it's too cost prohibitive for them to do it

No, but I think it's also unfortunately might be some mixture of incompetence and just an old way of doing things because There's a lot of money to be made on television rights where you like live show the event, right? But what's not being leveraged is the huge amount of money they could be made on the replay This what people don't understand is do you know how many times Just the tens of millions the of times that people watching individual events years from now Mm-hmm You watch like all the videos on YouTube, they're still getting plays,

hundreds of millions of views on stuff that happened 10 years ago, 15 years ago. That's really powerful. And there's a lot of opportunity to make a ton of money. So it's not that they're necessarily greedy. They're also just not good at being greedy. And I can't really say it. Yeah, it's not the tradition, you know,

think about it though. It's not traditional, right? For television studios, it's non-traditional to go to online streaming, to online access to information. It's not hard, right? Because everybody's doing it now, but it's not typical. Yeah. So it requires for the IOC to operate outside their comfort zone. Well, I definitely hope that's the case. And since Travis's video got taken down, it's obvious they have it. They have it on their YouTube channel. So it's like, I hope that they will just release it. And for money, for whatever, but release it. And I'll have that, that history

not be erased, right? Maybe wonderful if athletes would be could buy there, you know, even if you could buy your own footage, you can't use it commercially, you can't, but you could, you can buy your own matches and have them available for yourself or package the, you know, the footage, you'll be, to be awesome. Thank you for that. It is quite heartbreaking for me, so I wanted to talk about it a little bit. Let's go to you as an athlete real quick.

Sure. You represented the United States at four Olympics winning a bronze medal at two of them. Who or what was the toughest match or moment you had in those years? Maybe a moment that defined you. That you remember as being particularly defining your career. I would say the bronze medal match in Atlanta in 96 because up to that moment the United States team had not won a medal, had not fought for a medal in the games. We were on our home turf. It was my second Olympic Games, right? So I competed in 92 and I had won two matches and lost in

the third round in Barcelona. I didn't make the podium. I lost to a Japanese guy from Japan. But the gold silver and bronze medalist at that Olympics in Barcelona were all guys that I had beat. In fact, two of them I was undefeated against in my entire career. The Brazilian and the Cuban I had never lost to. So that's when I knew I was capable of being on the podium at the Olympic Games. When 96 came around, I was 25 years old. I was fairly in my prime. I had lived in Japan for six months. My technique was at a high level. You know, I was, you know, amongst the best in the world.

I lost at that Olympics to a guy from Mongolia. It was right before the match. I was supposed to fight against Japan. So I was like anticipating the match against Japan and I got beat by the Mongolian. So that was kind of a letdown. But the match for the bronze, you know, in front of the hometown crowd, all of my family, all of my friends, everybody who had ever helped me in the sport were in the stands that day, including all my teammates at Brown University that were on the wrestling team

and little my uncles, my aunts, everybody was in the stands, right? So it was like the Jimmy Pedro day and I'm getting goosebumps right now, I was talking a lot of, but it was a match against the Brazilian for the bronze medal. I had beaten a Brazilian like two or three times before that.

I found myself down in the match. He actually countered me. I came in my Taitochi and he was waiting for it and he countered me and he scored a Uco against me. So I was losing the fight. Came down to about the last minute in the match and I was just tucking in my ghee and fixing my thing, gathering my thoughts together and the whole crowd just started chanting. USA, USA, USA, USA. And I like literally like, got so much energy. I walked out there, I grabbed a guy,

I came in my towel toche again, he stepped off the towel toche, I threw him with Ducy Mata free-pone. I won my first Olympic medal in front of the hometown crowd, everybody went bananas. You know, the United States judo team had our first medal from the Olympics. It ended up being the only Olympic medal we won at that games, but it was like a magical moment to define my career and solidified myself in like history where, hey, now I get

to step up on the Olympic podium and I'm Olympic medalist. And to me, that was my defining moment. And after that, I was sold. Like, man, I had to go back to the Olympics again. I want to win a gold medal. I want to do, I want this feeling all over again. I don't care if I have to wait four years. Let's, let's do it.

In your career, like moments like that, do you think you love winning or hate losing more? So do you live for those moments or are you more driven by just how much you hate losing? So in order to be a champion, my belief is that you have to hate losing more than you like winning. Hate losing more than you like winning. Hate losing more than you like winning. But I live for those moments when you do win. And what excited me the most in my career,

when I was competing was I loved being in the finals. I love the spotlight being on me. I can't think of too many times in my career. Of course, there were a few. But there weren't too many times in my career. Of course, there were a few, but there weren't too many times where the chips were down, like the lights were on and I didn't win. Like it was, I might have lost early in the day

and didn't make it to the finals or didn't make it to the metal rounds, but like in my career, I have a ton of golds, I have a ton of bronzes, which means the lights are on and I want, and I have very few silvers and very few fifths. So I either lost in the early rounds and didn't

make to the metal rounds in my younger days or the spotlight came and I really shined because if you look, I don't know how many silvers, but there wasn't very many silver medals in my career that I want. You know what I mean? So I just loved that moment. I didn't feel pressure. I loved the crowd. I loved being in the spotlight. I didn't have, I wasn't nervous when it came to the finals or I knew I was getting a medal. It didn't matter. You know, so it was just me against the other guy and that's how I always saw it.

And I just loved that moment. So your dad was your coach. Yeah. You had to get to meet him tonight. Oh great. He's kind of a legend in the sport. Yeah, yeah. Um, you're gonna get to meet him tonight. Oh, great. Um, he's, he's kind of a legend in the sport. So how is your dad and helped you as a coach, as an athlete, as a human being throughout

the years? Number one, my dad is the most brutally honest person you will ever meet in your life. Brutally honest. He will tell you a, if, if you are fat, he will tell you your fat, in your life brutally honest. He will tell you a if if you are fat, he will tell you're fat right to your face. He wants you to get better. He wants you to be healthy. Yeah. Doesn't want you to die of obesity. It's just the way he is. If you didn't do well, he will not sugarcoat it. He will let you know what you didn't do right. What he's so he's the ultimate litmus test. Yes? Second is he is the most passionate, caring,

like deep, like always thinking about very cerebral, very like a student of the game. Somebody who helped me immensely in defining my strategy, helping me improve and always look for what's next. In terms of training, I think that he's probably the most brilliant human when it comes to preparing an athlete physically, not necessarily mentally, physically for success. When all the chips are down, that athlete will be ready that day, and he has a system of training and preparing,

and getting the right athlete to peak for performance, right? You mean like conditioning, like the whole thing? Yes. Okay, because I remember like vaguely, I remember Killa Harrison talking about her preparation being very difficult. Yeah, that's it. That's him. Yeah. That's him.

That's it. Say, can you go back and ask Rhonda Rousey about her career, right? My dad was her coach. Yeah. My dad moved her to Camp New Hampshire in Boston, got her up, ran her in the morning, had her downstairs in the basement of his house, training with the weights. We brought girl in she did throws on his cement outside with the little crash pads through the Russian girl You know hundred times that morning and then every night Came to Boston, you know to the training center in Wakefield trained at night and went back and slept at my dad's house and Three weeks straight before she went off to Beijing and he did the same with Kayla. He did the same with me.

Like he's just, his passion is producing athletes the highest level and he knows how to do it. And then the one side of my dad's coaching where I think there's a flour, a weakness is on the mental preparation side of the game. He wasn't somebody that was, I don't know if he, he, maybe because he wasn't an Olympic champion himself and wasn't a world champion, he lacked the confidence in helping others be more confident. So he's more of a, this is what you need

to work on type of thing. He doesn't know how to build the athletes up to make them feel invincible. And I feel like that's something that I was able to give all of the athletes to, to help them with that visualization, belief in yourself, knowing that you're going to win before you step out of the mat, knowing that we've earned the right to victory, seeing success in your mind, having a positive mantra that you, I'm the best in the world, nobody's beating me today, type of feeling. So you go out there feeling like King Kong when you step on the mat, that nobody's going to stop you. You know, and so I think the combination of both of us as coaches, I'm a lot more technical. My dad is good at letting identifying

what they need to do for their techniques and what, you know, how to in strategy, how to beat how to beat opponents and putting game plans together. So combine the two of us made an unbelievable team. So he's not gonna let the athlete be soft when they enter the highest, the most difficult competitions of their career. So on the mental side, what's mental preparation look like? Like how many years before the Olympics,

do you start helping an athlete believe that they can win an Olympic medal? Well, I think it's got to be a seed in that athlete's brain, something they want to do, right? Nobody can quickly get there, right? It's a long process. But if you're a goal, if you're a national champion or you've proven yourself to win in some international tournaments, and you think the Olympics is a possibility for you, then defining it as, hey, I want to be on the Olympic team, that would be the first step into, you know, into getting ready. And, you know, I always make them put it on paper.

You know, if it really is your goal, then you show me that it's your goal and put it on paper and commit to it, I want to be Olympic medalist, I want to be Olympic champion, I want to go to the Olympics. World team member, maybe junior world team member, whatever it is, we walk before we go to the highest level. But if the goal is to go to the Olympics, let's, let's accomplish these other things first, right? Because if we, if we can accomplish these other things, then we're on our way to getting to the ultimate goal, which is the Olympics. For somebody like Kayla, for example, you

know, she didn't, she didn't say that she wanted to be Olympic champion, you know, when she first came here in 2005, right? We wanted to become national champion. Then we wanted to be on the world team. Then we wanted to be a world medalist. Then, then our sights were set on the Olympics or the Olympic gold. So it's having those clearly defined goals that are attainable. They should be a reach, they should be a stretch, but they have to be attainable. They can't be just a pipe dream. But once you put it to paper and you think it's achievable, then it's mapping the plan to get there. Is there a daily process of visualizing yourself as an Olympic champion or national champion? Yes.

It is. You should do it every night before you go to bed or before every training session or after every training session. One of those three times is should, or first thing you wake up in the morning Because it maybe to help some people it motivates them to go do what it is they they're supposed to do in the day But the process of visualization is is to me is closing your eyes for a few moments your brain works really really fast, right? And it's actually picturing the day in its entirety from start to finish, you know, from

the moment you wake up and you step on the scale, to the moment you have your breakfast and you go through your morning routine, like live the day that you're going to have at the Olympics. So whatever it is you're trying to do, let's say the Olympic day for example, picture yourself, make and wait, picture picture yourself who you're around, eat your breakfast, having maybe a few jokes, laughing. This is a real day. Make it real. Going back and getting packing your judal bag for the day, getting on the bus, driving to the venue, feel what it's like walking into the stadium for the first time,

going to the warm-up area, seeing your draw up on the, you know, on the sheet, who you're going to fight that day, watching yourself warm up, go through your warm-up routine, walking out of the shoot, you know, into the venue, going to do that first fight, picture the moment of throwing your opponent, coming off the mat, high-fiving the coach, getting ready for your second fight. Like, live the day from start to finish and make it as real as possible. You know, we're all the way to the moment where you've just won and you're raising your arms in celebration, you're bowing, you're hugging your opponent, you come off the mat,

you hug your coach, you're running around the stadium with a flag. You know, you stepped up on the podium, you hug your coach, you're running around the stadium with the flag, you know, you stepped up on the podium, you heard your name, Olympic champion, Jimmy Pedro, like you heard the moment, the metal being put around your neck, picture the people coming up on the podium with you, arms around them, taking the pictures, like the more real you can make it, even before it ever happens, right? When you do that enough times, I feel that like pathways get created for you

so that when your body gets to that moment, and I've been here before, this is it, this is my moment, this is what I picture my whole life, I'm not nervous because I've seen this, this is gonna happen, I believe it's possible my whole life. I'm not nervous because I've seen this. This is gonna happen I believe it's possible, right? And I believe the athletes that do that and make it real enough That when they get to that moment They go right through there's no hesitation

This is what this is meant to be. This is my destiny. This is why I did everything I did Versus the ones that don't think about it ever, but just kind of like hope. Yeah. It's not real to them. It doesn't feel attainable. They don't believe it's possible. They haven't committed to believing it was possible. Without that commitment in yourself and that belief,

it can't happen. And one thing that I talked to Travis a bit about this, you probably worked with him on the details of what you're talking about. But he said that you should really like focus on visualizing like the sensations you feel. So like say if you're drinking coffee or something like that, you're not thinking about like like observing yourself from a third person perspective, drinking coffee, you're thinking of how your hand will feel when it touches something warm.

Like you try to replay the actual sensations you would feel. Right? So it sounds kind of strange, but meaning like you really want to put yourself in the body as you would experience those moments, as opposed to like watching yourself on TV experience in those moments, like really be inside. And yeah, so that means sensations like how does it feel when you grip a key?

How does it, you know, the, yeah, the, the, the, the, the good sweating, just the sensation of sweat, like rolling down your forehead or whatever, like all of those actual feelings. When I explain it to you, like I guess my body has been through it so many times, both in my mind and in reality, that it brings back all of those same emotions. I start to get goosebumps. My armpits start to sweat.

Like I'm living it if it's real. I'm reliving it now. But when you're going through the visualization process, it has to be that real. The smells, the taping of the fingers, like the more colorful and the more real you can make it, the more believable it is. So I've been doing this kind of thing,

just having listened to you enough for other stuff in life. So let's see if it works. But do you see this kind of visualization being useful for other things in career and all those kinds of things? All 100% 100% because I just know with my own life, my own experiences, like my wife sometimes says to me, she says, well, where do you see yourself in like, you know, five years from now? And five years ago, I had said to her,

you know, I want to have my own business. I want to have, you know, I, this is the amount of money that I'm hoping I can make in a given year. Like you have to have goals for yourself. Like, is this, if you put out there, like, okay, I want to make a million dollars in a year. That's a big number. Like for me, for the normal part, that's a really big number. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, especially when you're not making that much at the time. It's a super big number, right? So having those goals for yourself, like, it won't happen and it's not possible, unless you dream, it's possible. And think it that it's possible. And then it doesn't magically happen. And maybe it doesn't happen in five years,

maybe happens in 10. But at least you're on the path to getting there. You know what I mean? And I said, I wanna own my own business, I wanna control my own destiny, I wanna be my own boss, I wanna make my own decisions. Like these are the things that I told

that I wanted to do. And now I'm at that point, you know, I work for myself, I have my own decisions. These are the things that I told I wanted to do. And now I'm at that point. I work for myself. I have my own company. I have partners obviously. But if I want to pick up and go somewhere for a week, I just do, I'll have to ask permission to do it. That's what life freedom, right?

That's what I'd like. And all of it starts with the dream. And the same with my dojo. When I first opened, so I ran a dojo for a long time and I only had 60 students always, like 40 to 60 students had fluctuated. And I said to myself,

why can't I get more people in my door? Right? So I hired consultants to come in and look at my business and say, why? Right? And they came in and said, well, this place is really intimidating. Like, if I was coming enough the street, the first thing I see is this big Olympic champion on the wall and I see this training that's going on and these guys are flying to a year and landing hard and as a white belt,

you tell me, that's the class for me. Like, no way, I'm not going to do that. So like, I listened these people and I said, you're right. And, you know, the training was hour and a half, two hours long. People can't handle it. I want to have it two hours training when they're first walking in the door. So I had to restructure all my programming. I had to look at the way I was offering my curriculum, my school, and I had to make levels for everybody, right? Like, here's my four to six year old class.

Here's my six to 13 year old class. There's here's all my beginner classes. They don't mix in with the advanced people. And I had to learn how to make it accessible for everybody instead of just the people that wanted to train hard. And then the challenge was, okay, if you can have a lot of people in your dojo training,

it's a recreational school. You can't produce champions at that same school. That's what I was told. So then I got all my black belts together and I said, listen, this is my vision. This is what I want. I want to have a club that has over 200 judo only athletes. No jiu jitsu, no karate, nothing. Judo only. I want over 200 people. And in that inside of that dojo, I want to have Olympic champions and I want to have recreational, like little kids, five and six years old, older guys in their 70s train. I don't care. But I want the spectrum of recreational and I want to have recreational like little kids five and six years old older guys in their 70s Train, I don't care, but I want the spectrum of recreational and I want Olympic champion. The only way to do that is

To take your instructors and say you're going to do this you get to find the roles Who's going to be the recreational coach who's going to be the competitive coach? How do we separate these programs? And lo and behold that was my vision that I shared with all of them. And that was back in 2006. And by 2012, we got a Lumber Champion, Kayla Harrison. We have over 200 people at the school. We have a successful thriving business, but it doesn't happen without that vision, a plan and believing that it's possible.

Believing that it's possible. Believing that it's possible. I don't know, but I personally have on top of that, almost like very specific visions of a future. Like, I don't know what I think, because I don't want to give actual examples, because for several reasons, one of which is just people will, as they often have, they often will in your life, they'll just laugh at it a little bit like that seems silly.

And I don't, I'm very hesitant to share certain things like that with people because they'll, I mean, I'm with Johnny Ive, I was the lead designer and apple. Like, you want that dream, that little flame to not, people will put that flame out too easily, even people that love you. So I have very specific kind of visions, like maybe for Travis, it would be like a specific opponent or something like Oli Bischoff, like very specific, very specific situation of what's going to happen, not just like I want to be Olympic champion, but very specific, like almost silly situations. Yeah, like the dynamic between Travis and Ole Abishov or something, maybe visualize

that. For me, that helps because it makes it all real, even more real. It's not like some big goal, like a million dollars or something like that, which is also really important to have because you can measure it and so on, but it's just like you belong in those situations. Just believing you belong in there. It's not the full, yeah, it could be you. And that for some reason that really helps me the little details.

Sure. The visualizing. So most of them are almost a little bit funny. Like the focusing on the funniness. It's the the mundaneness of it helps me a lot. And all the people that have done great things they're just human too. Correct. And I think a lot and all the people that have done great things. They're just human too Correct, and I think a lot of people overestimate who others are Right and don't and and and sell themselves too short Yeah, because at the end of the day everybody started

Like everybody else really. I mean we did you know We're all inference. We couldn't walk. We couldn't talk. We couldn't do anything. We learned along the way. But I think that's the one thing that I've realized is that, and I tell this to my athletes, but I also tell it to my recreational students, nobody is better than you are. Nobody, unless you allow them to be. If you really want something to happen, then map the plan, believing yourself, decide, and no, full out, you're gonna fail a lot, you're gonna get beat down, you're gonna have losses, you're gonna have struggles.

And I think that's the one thing with social media today is that everybody sees everybody succeed. Nobody posts a picture when they're on the ground and failure. Losing. Nobody sees when you broke your arm and you had to go through rehab, you know, whatever it is like had your injuries and you were on your couch watching TV and you were suffering and you were like everybody has really, really dark bad moments in their life and defeats and losses and suffrage. And it's only at the end, after they've recovered from all of that, they've reclined up the mountain and they've gone to the pinnacle that you see them on social media with the

metal, right? But everybody else, like struggles and was human and failed many, many times. And convincing yourself that you're capable, I think, is the first start of everything. Do you need people in your life that believe in you or should most of it come from within yourself? I mean, most of it has to come in from it. It certainly helps, but it has to come from you first. You have to be driven.

Other people can help you define where you want to go and help you get there and encourage you and can support you. And, you know, whether it's resource wise or with connections and like they can help with that path. But that, that first part has to come from you. It has to be your passion, your desire, your, it's your commitment to yourself. You're the one that's going to ultimately make all the sacrifices to do it. So you, it has to be your decision, not your parents, not your spouses, something that you're really motivated to do. Let me ask you about Travis Kayla and maybe if you're the other athletes

you've been involved with. So first Travis, Travis Stevens, Olympic Silver Medalist, three-time Olympian, 2008, 2012, 2016. What makes Travis Stevens great? What makes him so successful? What makes him unique in your mind as an athlete? Through all the hardship he had to overcome, there is a weird-looking Saiyana Ghi that eventually worked out nicely

through the full richness of his personality, in the context of all the other great athletes, you've coached, what makes him special? His fight, Travis has fight. And you know, the first time I ever saw Travis Stevens was in like recognized him Maybe I had seen him before as a younger boy or something, but like actually recognized him is I brought a group of young kids to Italy for a competition in a training camp and it was this program called you 23 elite

And I picked hand picked 20 kids to go to this event And it was the first time I coached an international team. And I had never seen Travis fight before, compete, train, anything. And during this competition, he's an 81 kilo player. I think he was maybe like 18 years old, 17, 18 years old. And it was a really hard European event. And I think Travis won three matches and he lost two.

But what stood out the most to me was like the fight he had in him. He was scrapping every fight. Like he scrapped hard. Like he wanted to win more than any of them, right? He didn't win, but he wanted to win more. And I noticed that right away. And then I also noticed that after he lost his second

man, he was eliminated from the tournament. I saw how disappointed he wasn't himself. He actually thought he was supposed to beat those people. Even though he was like 17, right? He's fighting against grown men that are high level judo much higher than he was and I said to him, I said, hey son, like don't worry, man, you got a long career ahead of you. Like, I'm glad you're disappointed, but there's so many things you don't know and so many skills you don't have. The fact that you were able to hold your own and scrap like that, like you've got a good future.

And I remember calling my friend, Jason Morris, after that tournament, and I said, hey, man, do you ever hear this kid Travis Stevens? He says, no, why? I said, man, my kids got some fighting him, right? And I said that. I said that to Jason at the time, I said, that kid's got some fighting him, man.

He's pretty talented. You know, and that's how it started. But so I saw that him and when he was young, but the other thing was Travis, like there's no such thing as hard work to that guy. If you tell him to put his head through the wall and help and that's how he wins, he'll go put his head through the wall. He'll do whatever it takes for him to do to achieve success.

And he hates failure more than he likes winning. 100%. He always has. He punishes himself when he doesn't do well. He makes himself work harder. He goes and, you know, just abuses himself when he doesn't succeed because he's so heartbroken and disappointed in himself.

So that's a trait that I think all of the athletes that I work with, like closely, they all had that same trait. They hated losing more than anything. They would break their arm. they'd fall on their head. You know, they'd rather get hit by a car than lose a judo tournament. You know, and as a result, then they all had fight

and they all were willing to train, they were willing to listen, and they would do anything for victory. You know, within the rules, I'm not talking about taking drugs or anything like that, but they would give 100% of themselves for victory. And, you know, Travis was somebody that when he was down, he found a way to do, to get better, doing something else. If he couldn't do standing, that's when he started Jiu-Jitsu. He couldn't go

on his feet anymore. He couldn't stand up and train. I'm out of my mind, I was going to learn Jiu-Jitsu and get going on the ground, right? Because I can't. You know, so he always found a way, and no matter what obstacle was in his way, he just went around it. So what about the, it be interesting to get your perspective, because I know Travis's perspective is the, just the number of injuries. Like, what do you make of the perseverance through all the injuries you have to overcome? Specifically, specifically like you just observing this creature that you've coached. I mean, he seems to not see the injuries as a problem. He just like, just like you said, head through the wall, it's like what, like when I, when we're talking about injuries,

he kind of, he doesn't even see the injuries in themselves as the problem because he thinks that the injuries, you know, you heal back stronger. I forget the exact quote, but he said like, my body is now less injury prone than most of anyone else. Because I've already broken everything and it's just grown back stronger. Like, because I asked him something like, do you regret sort of pushing your body to all of those places that resulted in those injuries? He was his response was like, no, I'm stronger now.

So I don't know if that's justification, but that certainly describes a mindset that, yeah, head through the wall. That doesn't, it's almost not dramatic. Like, look, I got this injury. It's so, I'm so like brave and special for overcoming this injury. He's just, that's part of the job and he gets the job done. But like that job of also a lot of injuries.

One of the talks I gave Travis and that team at that particular tournament was at the very beginning of the camp after the tournament. I said to them, listen, my vision, I shared my vision with them. I said, my vision is, you know, in seven years, because that was 2005. I said, in seven years, I want to have a US team that steps on the mat. It is ready to kick ass. And in order to get there, all of you guys can be a part of this team and part of this

process. But in order to get there, you guys have to be the first ones to practice. You have to be the last ones to leave because we have to work harder than the rest of the world because we're up against all odds. I said, I am sick of America being a laughing stock of Judo and being the first round, easy match, warm up for everybody else. I said, if you get injured, you're not going to be on the side with, you know, with ice bag on, taking off rounds and then get back on the mat the next day and tell me,

you're okay. If you're going to train the next day, you can train today. So there's no injury. The only time you leave in this dojo is if the ambulance has to take you out here. You know, I do think subliminally Travis bought into that message and heard that message then, said, if I'm gonna be a champion, that's the way I'm gonna do it. And he did. And he embodied it, he lived it. Man, there were many times in Europe,

where I said, dude, just tape it up. I'll go off to the side, just take the day off, like take the rest of the day off, you beat up, you can't do it. He said, no, I'm gonna tape it up, I'm gonna tape it up. I said, no, you don't need to right now do it. He's not, I'm gonna tape it, I'm gonna tape it. I'm gonna say, no, you don't need it right now. And he said, no, since I am doing it, you know, the ambulance isn't taking me out of just my wrist,

it's just my ankle, it's just my, it's just my, it's just my ankle. You know, it's, yeah, love it. Yeah, what about the, so the other really big thing is you comment on a little bit, it's the weight cut. So early in this career he was 81kg and that was presumably not so difficult. But later in his career he is 81kg and it's becoming more and more difficult. So that's the other thing with him. So I've known a lot of really,

really tough people at the highest levels broken by the way cut. Like that can break the toughest minds. And it doesn't seem to have broken him. And he delivered on it often, unlike insane way cuts. So as a coach, what do you think about his particular, his mind and the challenge of the way cut? It was part of his process. It was part of his process.

It was part of his way of getting ready for battle. That's right. Yeah, it really was. And if I'm gonna suffer this much, then I'm gonna make my opponents pay for all the suffering that I went through to get here. That was his mindset. Later on in his career, you're right.

Like a lot of times, Travis, he would never step on a scale, you know, until he got to the tournament. You know, and even when he get to the tournament, like he'd weigh like 90 kilos, he'd show up with the tournament, nine kilos over. I'm like, you have to, but I never, it was just an expectation of making weight. Not making weight was never an option for any of our athletes.

And Travis knew it. And he said, as a professional, my job is to make weight. If I don't make weight, he was never going to allow that to happen. And he was never going to allow us to come to him and say, Hey, I told you, you know, because he losing wasn't an option, making weight wasn't, not making weight was not an option for him ever either. But, you know, a lot of times he wouldn't even, he'd be nine kilos over on the plane going over to the tournament and have to make weight three days later. And he didn't break 86 kilos until the day before the tournament. Now he had five kilos over the day before that was his way. But he would do three workouts, you know, the wake up in

the morning, workout, then he'd eat, then, you know, the wake up in the morning workout, then he'd eat, then he'd work out in the afternoon, then he'd eat again, then he'd work out again at night, and then he'd reward himself, hey, I worked out three times today, he'd go have a, you know, a mountain dew, yeah, you know, or a chocolate bar, you know, and then he's next morning, he's, you know,

it back up to 87 and he would never touch weight, I tell them wanting of what. That's a, when he, that he, he wasn't on weight for more than like five minutes. His process will break a lot of people. So the fact that he got the job done is... Not just the job done, but every single time. He got the job done.

And I made those athletes fight. We would fight in Paris. We would do a camp for a week, double session camp for a week. He'd be seven kilos over, have to fight the next weekend. We're talking two or three days later. You know, so not only did he make the wait, but he did a grueling training camp twice a day and then cut weight and then fought again. Then did another camp for a week in double session training camp and then fought on a third weekend in a row.

And our athletes went through hell. You know, all of our athletes went through hell because on the tour around the world, they fought in every event. They did every camp. They fought in every event. Whereas most of the other teams like Japan comes in and fights in Paris, then they go home.

You know, they maybe do a camp for three days, then they go home. They don't stay in Europe for four or five weeks straight and fight in every tournament. And when you get to Germany, the Germans skip the French open, they skip the camp in France, they're just getting ready for Germany. Our athletes already had two competitions, two training camps, two three-weight cuts now, and then, so they're not 100% when they fight in Germany, but that's all part of the experience they need, the training that they need that they don't get here

in this country. And all of those would just preparation for our world championships or our Olympic games. So by the time our athletes got to those tournaments, they felt so strong, so rested, so like, man, this guy that felt like a monster in Germany feels like nothing today because you're fully rested now, you know? But part of the challenge is because the American team is smaller and more, I mean, just

smaller is, you know, all the different places you go to do the way cut, to do the diet, to do the preparation or the recovery, there's like that process changes every time. So you're basically have to improvise a lot. Oh yeah. You sharp down a hotel and how you do the wake cut, you don't know. Right. And it's the different weather conditions. It's like, what is it? Rocky versus Dr.

Go right? Right. So you don't have, you have to just improvise. And that, that's also a fascinating part of the American judo story, which is like, you have to improvise more. Well, I was funny because when I was 1990, and it was at the Goodwill Games, right? And we were, it was a US Olympic committee type event. And so we're on the bus with the, the swim team. And it was me and Jason bus with the swim team. And it was me and Jason Morris on the American team. And we're going to the judo competition. But we're on the bus with the swim team. I'm sorry, we're going to the venue where we're staying. You know, I remember being like by ourselves with no staff, no, no, no manager,

no coach, which is by ourselves going to fight in Russia, right? And, uh, and the swim team's on there with their full sweats and their staff and like their managers and I heard the late the girl go, oh, sorry, this is 1994 because it was in St. Petersburg, Russia. So I heard the little girl on the team, she goes up to coach, she goes coach, um, do you think you can send the massage therapist to my room at Tanyaam, you know, I'm feeling kind of jet lag. I love the, Jason, what the, what the, what the, Jason, like, she's just, she's just, she's just, he's on the side.

Yeah. We'll even have a staff. Like, what the hell is going on here? You know, what a difference in sporting, you know, different sports within the same country, you know? And, uh, I mean, not to romanticize things, but that you do represent the spirit of the Olympics when you're kind of

the Improvisational nature of it because it is just you you and sometimes you and the coach and just pure guts and You against the world with no money the warrior spirit the warrior spirit How did it feel like when he after being in two Olympics, beating some of the best people in the world, facing some of the best people in the world and just barely losing? What did it feel like to you as a coach to see Travis

Stevens win the silver medal. Electric. Like, first of all, in 2012 in London, it felt like somebody died. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to lie to you. Like the only Bischoff match? No, just seeing Travis not finish on the podium period. You know, in the only Bischoff match, I thought he won regardless of who won and who lost. He just left everything he had on that match, right? 10 minutes of probably

was a 20-something minute match, but 10 minutes of fighting actually, right? He left everything he had. He wanted to be an Olympic finals, he wanted to be an Olympic champion, and when he didn't get that opportunity, he lost everything. He drained himself, he cried for 45 minutes straight. I couldn't regroup him, I couldn't get him out. I said Travis, you've got to stop your crying, you've got to get off the floor, we've got a bronze medal fight. Like, if you don't recover, you're not going to perform well.

And he just didn't care. Like it was gold or nothing. And so when he walked out against the Canadian boy, he had beaten the Canadian, I think, at at that time he had beaten that Canadian every single time Except for that bronze medal match, but he just didn't have the fight in him anymore You know, he left it all in the match and the bishoff match So to see him come back with zero, right? We just had a team where His best friend Marty Maloy won a bronze medal, right?

Then the day after Travis fights Kayla Harrison goes and wins her first gold medal, right? Then the day after Travis fights, Kayla Harrison goes and wins her first gold medal, right? Our first ever gold. So I have a gold and a bronze. His training partner wins a gold is best friend from growing up wins a bronze. He has nothing, right? To see him for four years, go through hell, like literally like all of his injuries, every training camp, and then forget the humiliation because every time any reporter ever came to my dojo, they want to talk to Kayla. She's the Olympic champion. Who is this Travis guy?

Yeah. You know, who is this guy? You know, so he didn't metal. I went, you know, he's not that important. And, you know, up until right until you get to the right before the Olympics now, they talk about he's an Olympian again and yeah, but up until that point and then every little kid, C. Kalez medal, oh Travis, yeah, you went to the Olympics, where's your medal? How did you do? You know, you know, it took fifth that in place. You know, it's it's the lowest of low every day having that constant reminder. So four years later, when that guy, I mean, mentally, he was ready.

Physically, he was ready. That was the best and strongest Travis Stevens that I've ever seen and I've ever felt. Like, because I had to get on the mat and do some drills and stuff like that. I didn't like try to defend on bars because we didn't have a lot of bodies in Rio. And I was like my god He's I said after one of the brothers. It was stronger than ever felt like guy, right before the competition So physically was ready Mentally the morning of competition. I said to Travis

I I looked him in the eye and I said, you know, we're ready to go over to the venue I said are you ready today? He just looked at me like he goes I Am gonna shock the world today Yeah, so he goes, I am gonna shock the world today. So he told him, I'm gonna shock the world today. And I said, all right, great, let's go, all right. So we go to the venue. And every other athlete was just like nervously, like doing repetitions of Uchi-Komis,

you could see like sweat coming out, you could see like all this nervous energy going through their body. And here comes Travis Stevens. He's got these big goofy headphones on. He's got a tank top that says USA on it. He's got the swim trunks that say USA like that have shiny letters that blow in the dark.

And he's like, and this is in the middle of the judo hall where all he's out there, it's a woman up for their first match. And he's like dancing around, like doing this loose warm up, like almost like a little kid at an amusement park whose dad said, yeah, go play. You know, and it was like kid waited four years for that moment. He was so relaxed, so focused, so relaxed, and couldn't wait. It was like a cage tiger. Like if you like coming out of the shoot to go step on to the, that a mat was like a cage tiger. Like if you, like coming out of the shoot to go step on to the,

that a mat was like this tiger that you would just let not of the cage and he just go, like now is your time to go fight. And that's what he did that whole day. And like when he beat Cherkish Ville in the, in the semis and choke them out and won that fight, like there's nobody with the exception of maybe the guys in the American team. There was nobody in that stadium that expected Travis to beat him. Yeah. Nobody. Yeah. Like, you know, he had smashed Travis. I don't know how many times before that free poem. Like in the

first minute, even, it wasn't even a fight, right? And it was great game plans. He's the world number one at the time too. World number one at the time. World champion carried the flag for the Georgian Federation walking into the games. Dutmo's dominant 90 81 kilo player in that way class for, you know, quite some time. And man, we just had his number and Travis was ready to go, you know, quite some time. And man, we just had his number and Travis was ready to go, you know, it was so cool. It was so awesome. We was, I mean, we had already won, Kela had already won her second goal, right? The way the event went and Travis winning that was like icing on the cake for our team. I was the best performance we've ever had in history. Awesome. See, much in Kayla, she is one of, if not the greatest American

Gidoka ever, two-time gold medalists. 2010 World Champion. 2010. For senior worlds. Senior worlds. What makes Kayla special? What makes her so great? What made this champion?

Combination of a lot of things. One was obviously Kayla's mental toughness, right? To overcome what she overcame. You know, this is a girl who, you know, let's, I don't know if she forget about the sexual abuse, but the fact that she had to go through that in life and learn how to compartmentalize that and keep that off as a separate part of her brain, you know, and forget about it and move on. That took an incredible team to help her do that, and my dad was a huge part of her accomplishing that. So for people who don't know, we should comment and say that Kayla had to go through trauma

in her earlier life through sexual abuse and that to overcome that through the whole process of becoming a champion as well. She's because she had zero self-esteem, zero self-worth. She was at the lowest of lows and and You know didn't even want to be on this earth. So she was traumatized, obviously, for, and getting her the right help and surrounding her with the right people who could help her get through that and be by her side as she's getting through that and letting her know and reaffirming that she's doing the right thing.

And she made the right decision and she should have zero guilt and you know this doesn't define her it happened to her but it doesn't define her what defines her is what she does from now on and then rebuilding that person to become who she became. I think the mental toughness is a big part of it her her her mind. But then as an athlete, you know, she's a lot like Travis, you know, she's, she's a warrior. She's a fighter. You know, my dad always jokes with her, you know, he says, you're a workhorse. You're not a thoroughbred. We're not going to treat you like a thoroughbred, right? You're a workhorse. So you're going to work in a way you're going to get bigger and stronger. You're going to work harder and you're going to keep, you know, and she came to us when she was

only 15. So at that time, we got her with a really good strength and conditioning coach. We did all the core Olympic style lifting, like as her body was developing, she was getting stronger every single day. And then, you know, she had the luxury of being on the mat with, at the time, I was still young enough to train and be on the mat. And I was around her weight class and Travis was able to train with her and All we had all the top US athletes at the time Training here at my school. So she got the benefit of all the best guys to train within the country You know and and her doing all of those rounds You know night in week night every night every week every year compiled with the best, you know, highest level she could as a girl.

She got the strength, she got the technique, she got the, and then she had the coaching on top of it with my dad being on her as, you know, working her out and, you know, having the, the wear-with-all to develop a strategy and a plan for her. Because when she first came here, she competed at 63 kilos, which is 138 pounds. At the time, Ronda was also training here and she was 70 kilos. So if Kayla was struggling making 63, so the only way to, obviously, the only way to still compete is to move up.

But my dad said, well, if you move up, then you're in Ronda's weight. So let's skip that weight and you're gonna go to 78 kilos. And he told her, listen, you're gonna go up two weight classes classes. She looked at him and was like that's 172 pounds and he goes well, I don't care You're already struggling making 138 you weigh 150. What's the difference? We put 20 pounds on go to 170 So that's why she jumped two weights because she passed Ronda Yeah, she went to the way to Bov's so she could make the national team and she had a chance to go to the Olympics and

She went through the way to Bufzus, she could make the national team and she had a chance to go to the Olympics and all that because we envision Rondas staying around till 2012. And that's also like a long-term vision because you kind of grow into that body then over time. Correct. So you can dominate. You can learn what it's like in that way class. You can learn to dominate that way class, excel and then dominate. People that cut weight too hard too long, they forget about technique because they're

only worried about losing weight. They're always tired and training. They don't give 100% effort and not getting better. She now is just focused on getting better at judo. You know, I'm getting bigger, getting stronger, getting more powerful. So I think given her that purpose and that that was a great call. What are some memorable or maybe the most memorable moment Kayla Harrison moment to you as her coach? Not the most perhaps let's say what are some memorable moments? Everybody here is the good ones right so everybody knows she won the world she won the world championships in Tokyo in 2010 she was our two-time Olympic champion in 2012, 2016. I'll never forget those moments, right?

Cause they're historic. One of the biggest moments that I like sharing this story with everybody is that in 2010 and January, Kayla was developing athlete and we had a local tournament in New York. It was in Brooklyn, New York, it was called the Sterrett Cup. And I knew that at that tournament, that two of the Canadian girls,

they were like ranked 15th or 20th in the world. They weren't superstars, but they were tough players. Both of them, I knew we're gonna be at that tournament. So it's just Kayla. We're gonna go to this tournament. You're gonna compete against the Canadian girls, get some good experience, you know, figure out what you need to work on,

and then we'll go home and work on some stuff Well, she went to the tournament. There was only three girls in the weight her and the two Canadians At that tournament She lost both fights Right, so this is January 2010. She lost both matches, you know, she was competitive But certainly things she needed to work on it was good, you know, development thing for her and for us. And also opened her mind to say, oh, man, you know, because she was already a, a, a, a junior world champion at the time.

But so now there's another level. This is a senior level, right? You got to go up on other level. Here's two girls that aren't even medalists that are beating you. So now there's more work to be done. And so I like telling that story because everybody sees the champions in the greatest moments. They don't see them when they have bad days. And I could you imagine being, you know, Owen too, you feel like you feel like a failure, right? But 10 months later

was Tokyo 2010. She went from Owen to its star at New York to World Champion 2010 in the motherland in Japan. Yeah, I mean that's an amazing turnaround And that's only possible if you put the losses in their proper context You don't let it destroy you mentally and just keep moving forward correct This is so funny. So you were there at 2010 at the Sarah Cup. Mm-hmm. Those Travis there. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I made all those, we fought at every look, like the mentality of our team was no tournament is beneath us. If our goal is to go to the Olympics in the world and win, there's no tournament that's beneath us. We're going to get experience, we're going to fight, we're going to learn, we're going to compete, we're going to get better. You know, I actually just as a funny little side, I was there, I competed. Really? This is one of the earlier tournaments, like though the beginner division. Oh no, I actually did blackball division too.

That was one of the actually, yeah, I remember that. That's when it was so early that I thought, like, I was also really strong at that time, just like physically, like powerlifting stuff. So I thought, like, it would be good experience to also do black belt division. And remember, it must have been actually Travis's division, which is funny. Was, was Leisure Brothers? Yeah. How did you get it? They are super, they're super good and they're super dominant. But I think Travis faced one of them and beat them.

I don't know, I just remember, it's funny how there's just like these little roads that later reconnect. Right. But yeah, there's some incredible people there. And I saw obviously the positive things and it's interesting that Kayla's story was also intersecting there and that was one of the lower points for her. Another story I like to share is that

you have to know your athletes, right? And you have to really get to know their psychologically, what they're thinking psychologically, mentally what's going through their head. Another story was in Tokyo, it was 2015 the Tokyo Grand Slam. So we had Kayla face off against almost all the top girls in her division.

She had beaten everybody going into the 2016 Olympics. But at the 2015 Tokyo Grand Slam, it was a girl from Japan that she hadn't fought in a long time and she lost it a girl last time. She fought her. So it was something we wanted her to beat this girl going into the Olympics so that she knew she could beat everybody. And it was a first round match and it was going to be tough for Kayla, right? It was going to be really hard fight. And she had won a bunch of tournaments in a row leading up to that. So her confidence was really high, but at the same time, she didn't think she needed

this fight. And she showed up to the tournament and she said, I don't think she needed this fight. And she showed up to the tournament and she said, I don't think I can fight today. I've got a stinger in my neck. You know, I've got a stinger coming down my neck and I'm kind of sore and the, she didn't tell us. She went and told the trainer, she walked around, she's holding her neck and me and my dad were like,

what's up with her? I don't know. And then, so, like, I don't know, maybe she doesn't want to fight that out. I don't know, maybe she doesn't want to fight it out. Right? So all of a sudden, the trainer comes up to us and she didn't come to us. The trainer came to us, you know, I really don't think it's a good idea that Kayla fight today. And we looked at him and like, well, your opinion doesn't really matter. Does it? Right? Like, what's up with her? Yeah. Well, she has this thing in her neck. It's like a pinch nerve and this.

And then we talked, I said, is there a risk of her getting injured? Like, is this pain or is this risk that she's going to get injured and she's going to set her back like long time in her career? No, she's not going to get injured. She's just a pinch nerve. It's a little pain she's going to have to deal with. I go, okay, well, can you fix the pain? Mm-hmm.

Says, yeah, I can do this and that. And I can give her a shot, and the paint will go away. Okay, then do that. And so Kayla comes up and she goes, didn't the trainer talk to you? He said, yeah, he talked to us. Well, he said, I can't fight. I know, but we already talked to the trainer,

and he said, you're good to go. She looked at us like, and then we had the talk to her and say, listen, you're not injured, you're in pain because we just came from a camp. I said, you're in pain, but here's a deal. We want you to fight this girl. Why don't you go out there and beat this girl? Period. I don't care. I want to know that you can beat this girl. This is why we came. This is our last hard tournament for the Olympic Games. This is what we want from you. In low and behold, she understood she, they gave her a quick shot. The rest of the world thought we were crazy making her

compete. And then she went out there, she fought, didn't even know she was injured. No, you know what I mean? She just went out there, she fought the tournament, she beat the Japanese girls, she ended up going through the whole tournament, She took a gold medal. She won the event. That turned out to be a great confidence builder. And yeah, and that kind of sets you up for all the chaos that can happen at the Olympic Games. And it tells you, if you can beat these girls when you're not 100% and you're not at your best,

you're physically beat, mentally beat. Imagine what you're going to do when you're fresh. When she was going into the Olympic Games, there's a lot. She had the mental game down, down, down. There wasn't a girl in that division that thought they could beat Kayla going into those games. Not a one. They just looked at her and went, not, not happening. Yeah. That's great. I mean, she's a great Olympic champion, two time Olympic champion. But there is, um, there is something that she's commented on, which is, she's suffered or went through depression after winning her second Olympic gold. Why do you think this happens?

We, you often hear stories of great champions becoming depressed after the Olympics. There's a lack of purpose afterwards, right? Because you've done in life what you set out to do. You've had a goal every day. You woke up. You knew what your purpose was. You knew what your, you know what your day looked like.

You knew why you were doing that. And all of a sudden, you won and you got all the fame and you're all happy and but then you wake up and you go, now what? I don't have a next. And also because there was nothing for her, there was no, there was no path set out for Kayla that said, okay, you're going to you're going to become an ambassador, a global ambassador of judo. The IGF is gonna help pay a salary, the USA judo is gonna give you a salary. Here's what we want you to go teach children, we want you to go be an ambassador for women.

We're gonna fly around and whatever it is. We're gonna give you a job and here's what you're gonna do. If you'd like to take it, there was nothing for her. I remember doing the interview with the Olympics with her, and said, are you going to compete in the next Olympics? And I said, no, like, why? She already two-time gold medalists. What does three-time gold medalists do for her? Nothing, right? Doesn't motivate her to do it again. They said, are you doing MMA? I said, no, why would she do MMA? That's ridiculous. Like, she doesn't need MMA. She should be able to make a living off of what she's accomplished in this sport for the rest of her life. But what happens is, and what most people

don't understand is, once you say I'm retired, I'm no longer competing in the sport of judo. You don't get a salary from USA judo anymore, which she was getting. I think she got like $72,000 a year from USAGito at the time. You don't get a stipend from the Olympic Committee anymore, goes away. Your sponsor, like the New York Athletic Club, was a great sponsor for her for all those years. In fact, she could have never been the athlete she became without the support of the NYC, because I talked to them when she was 15. I said, Hey, I got a girl that's really good someday. If you invest in her now, I promise you she'll pay back for you.

And I remember the day she won the Olympic gold. They called the guy up. I said, Hey, I told you. So, but, you know, they can no longer give you stipends because you're not competing and representing them anymore. So that goes away. All of your sponsorships and all of your money that you would make from your TV commercials or whatever, that didn't happen for her after the Olympics because judo's an obscure

sport, right? So she didn't have any opportunities for that. But then the day she has no revenue coming in. How do you live? You get a bonus of 25 grand from the Olympic Committee or whatever for winning a gold. But aside from that, you're not gonna live on that money. So no purpose, no goal, right?

What am I gonna wake up and do tomorrow? I don't know. So she has no direction. And at the same time, she has no money coming in. So everything shuts off. So now it's like, where do you turn? What do you do?

You know, and that leads to being depressed because yeah, even though I've accomplished all this stuff, I'm kind of lost in life, like what's next for me? And I guess you just have to ride that out because when you're a great human being, a great champion, life has a way of helping you find a way. I mean, she is in mixed martial arts now, but she has a lot of stuff going on. Well, her kids, she adopted her sister's kids, so she's their legal guardian now.

So that is her purpose, right? Raising these kids and making them part of her family. And she's fortunate enough that she has enough money, that she can do that and she can give them a good life. You know, I'm going to ask you to start some trouble, but I heard that she said somewhere that she can be, could be numbering a meadow of in judo. What do you think?

To be honest with you, I mean, I don't know what level of judoka, I don't know what level he is. But I do know that that Russian system respects Judo immensely. What I will tell you is this, I trained with Kayla, and I was an Olympic medalist in a world champion in Judo, and granted I was older when I trained with her. But you have to go as a man. You have to go 100% or she will smash you as a man. And I could tell you that if Kabeeb doesn't do a lot

of just judo, doesn't like gripping and doesn't understand, like if he can throw, that's one thing. But if he doesn't really understand judo at a high level, she will throw him. She would beat him in a match. In a judo contest, not in a mixed martial arts contest, not in a wrestling contest, not in a submission contest, in a pure judo match where he cannot grab legs and he has to grip up and just throw. I put my money on Kayla.

Unless he's, you know, if he could go place in the nationals in Russia, he would beat her. But if he's not at that level of judo, he's more like a brown belt or he's not, he's not a high level judo player. She will win. I saw her take some of our best juniors in this country, some of the guys that went and won our medal in our senior nationals.

I've seen her smash all of them in judo. Now, she's not gonna do that to a Travis Stevens. She's not gonna do that to a Travis Stevens. She's not going to do that to a senior national champion, or a limpian in our sport, but she will go toe to toe with every other male, if black belts are not. Speaking of Kabeab and Russia, Vladimir Putin, I don't know if you will have heard of him. He's the president of Russia, but he's also Judoca. Have you gotten a chance to see him do Judo? What do you think about his Judo, if you were to?

I'm actually really good friends with the Russian Federation. The guy in charge is Ezio Gamba. He's an Italian. He has a mastermind behind their success of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic teams. 2020, he suffered from leukemia, blood cancer, so he wasn't part of their 2020 program, but he was part of 2012, 2016.

That whole national, the Olympic team in 2012 came to our studio and lived here for a month in Boston. They went to school in Boston. I brought them to my house, they had three Olympic champions. Three Olympic champions. They all came and lived here in Boston for a month. They wanted to be part of like experience

America type program. So I've seen all of them with Putin in Russia at their national training center working out with them and taking falls and doing judo with him. So, it's hard when you're older to move in judo. I mean, I was at a high level and I'm now 51. It's hard for me to move like I used to.

So, at his age, he's got to be what? 60 between 62, 65-ish. I mean, it moves really well for somebody that's that age, you know, and probably hasn't done very much judo for the last 12 of them any years, right? So that tells you he at one point, he had to be a really good judo player. Yeah, he put in a lot of work at some point to develop the technique. You can tell when a great judo player, even if they haven't practiced it, even if they're up there in age, like just the way they move, the way they go in for a say, no, I get the way they go for

a particular throw, the way they do foot sweeps and all that kind of stuff, you could just tell. He's good at judo. And that's kind of fascinating. It's fascinating to see political leaders. I've gotten to interact with quite a few for whom Judo was a formative experience in their life. And that's so interesting that for a lot of people, Judo was played a big part in our life, early development. It's similar to like if you served in the military. There's just something about Judo. It's the, as a martial art, it's not just the technique.

So yes, there's something about gaining confidence through becoming aware of what your body can do, the sort of the artistry and the skill of it, also the power being able to dominate in another human being with technique, but also like the, I don't know, the formality, the discipline of just honoring the tradition of it. So all of that mixed together somehow creates memories.

It creates memories that kind of define you as a human being and you carry that forward throughout your life. And I've just been surprised to know how many powerful people internationally have, like, in their heart and their who they are, Judo. For sure. For sure. It makes you the human being that you are. It really does.

It becomes a fabric of, if people, the people that stick with it, right, that stay with it, and because it, I mean, it teaches you so many lessons, it's so memorable because of what you talked about, the tradition. But it's also, you grow with other people, you know, and you learn from other people and you experience things with other people. It's such a hands-on sport that it's very memorable. And people love it so much. Right now at my dojo, we have like four generations. Like somebody that did judo with my dad, you know, had a kid who trained with me, who loved, you know, judo so much, had a kid, that kid was, you know, now in his 20s, who did judo, and now has a kid who's two or three or four that's coming to my toddler program at my

school. Like we're talking four generations, and they all love the experience so much and what it did for them and their lives that they wanted the next generation to also experience the same thing. This is a tricky question, but if people are interested in judo and want to start learning it in the United States, there's thousands of Jiu-Jitsu schools, for example, is there advice you can give to people interested in jiu-du or maybe to jiu-jitsu gym owners like how how how do you get jiu-du as part of your life in America?

Well, I mean if you're fortunate to live near another dojo, right? A place that has jiu-du locally, then that's your best opportunity to learn, is to go learn from another school. Unfortunately, sometimes the nearest dojo might not be for two hours or three hours away from where you're at, which is in obstacle, you're not gonna do that. So, I mean, Travis and I did start

the American judo system online. It's at usJudo.com. And we've broken down every single Judo technique to the very, very basic elements of just movement. So we teach every technique of how you do it mechanically with just your feet, then how you incorporate your hands and your feet together, how you do it in all directions, moving forward sideways backwards, how to then it in all directions, moving forward sideways backwards, how to then introduce a partner into the into the movement, how to do basic

uchi komeo repetitions with a partner, then moving with a partner, then how to throw your opponent static, how to throw your opponent. So basically from the very foundation of the movement all the way to the most advanced level, we've documented this through separate videos. And we've taken now, I think 12 to 15 of standing techniques combined with a whole bunch of groundwork techniques. And our goal is just to continue to build this platform out so that anybody anywhere can learn online. platform out so that anybody anywhere can learn online and can ask questions. We have a live training class every couple weeks, every two weeks, he or I answer questions online for our members. Ideally, what we'd like to do is have a standing curriculum for jiu-jitsu instructors that want to learn and become black belts in judo. Here's how these are the techniques you need to know.

This is how many reps you need to do. This is how efficient you need to get it that at those techniques to become certified as an instructor or become a black belt. And eventually have an online promotion system where anybody anywhere can just submit videos and show us that they can do those techniques. And obviously we have people review them.

And this is a dream and a vision, but we've already started the platform. We're about to do a collaborative effort with USAGito where all of their members will start to get access to this platform as well. And if we can get that influx of money and people on the platform, it'll allow us to hire and grow it faster.

So you also want to do certification there. It's not just instruction. Correct. That would be amazing. Yeah. Let me, for me personally, sort of, I mean, mostly in Austin, Texas now. Right.

And there's a few judo schools, but it's not really. Right. There's not, and it's just one of Right. There's not. And it's just one of those cities that doesn't quite have. I mean, there's a few. It's basically just like a few random judo people that kind of kind of gather together a couple of times a week.

But it's not a system, a dojo, an instructor, or integrated into a judo just a school or not. The problem with most judo dojos right now is that most of them cater towards the competitive side. Also, a lot of them do it recreationally, meaning this isn't how they make a living. So they're there three nights a week,

or they're there five, even if they're there five nights a week, it's still only one junior class and one senior class, and that's it. And it's one size fits all. It doesn't matter what level you're at. It's one size fits all. So you can't get out of the training, what you're looking to get out of the training. It's whatever the instructor's teaching. You know, and you can't learn because it's not at the appropriate level for you. And usually you're pushed into doing Randori where you have no choice but to do the Randori part of the training.

usually you're pushed into doing Randori, where you have no choice but to do the Randori part of the training. So it's a challenge to go learn. And then a lot of times the school's old school, so they go make you do falls for a half hour. They make you do things, you know, make you do things maybe you're a jujitsu person who knows how to fall already,

but you haven't proven it to the judo instructor and they don't break the norm. I say you still have to fall for six months, which turns a lot of people away as well. So it's, you know, it's like any business. If you don't deliver on your customer's expectations, you're not going to have very many customers, which is the way it is now. So a lot of people who listen to this, but in general, in the United States, practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which has a lot of similarities to Jiu-Jitsu as obviously its origins

in Jiu-Jitsu, how would you compare the two arts from the perspective of people just interested about both arts? Do you recommend people who do Jiu-Jitsu get into Jiu-Jitsu? How can it enrich their Jiu-Jitsu? How do you compare the two arts, the actual practice of it, and why it might be useful to you? I mean, I think that Judo's a hard sport for adults to do. It just is. Especially people that haven't fallen in a long time,

haven't very athletic, I think about my own experience. Other than Judo, when did I ever do like a forward summer salt? Maybe when I was in own experience, right? Other than Judah, when did I ever do like a forward summer salt? Maybe when I was in grade school, right? That's the last time I've left my feet was in grade school. Most people haven't got off of a chair or a couch. They spend eight to 10 hours a day either working behind a computer

or sitting on their couch watching TV, right? And they're not that athletic. And they haven't done anything athletic, at least probably since high school, right? That's their last athletic endeavor. Most of them. So you're talking about as an adult, that's 35 or 40 wanting to start a sport, judo's a really hard sport to start, especially in today's dojos that don't have a recreational adult program. You know, when it's one size fits all it it's hard. So for those people, Jujitsu makes a heck of a lot of sense. Good self-defense. It's cerebral, where you gotta use your brain,

you're a smaller person, you have to use technique, you know, it teaches all the same things as Judo, but it's a safe way to do it. And because of the validation it has with the UFC and MMA today, right? Everybody knows Jiu Jitsu. So now they can be part of mainstream society and talk intelligently about what they see on television or what's going on on ESPN today, right? They have some knowledge. So they have an identity.

And also there's a good culture in Jiu Jitsu where it's becoming a family, you know, the dojo is the family place. You go to feel good, you go to see your friends, you go to get fit, and you have a good time. Right. So it makes a lot of sense why it's growing. Judo on the other hand, I think is a better sport for children to do. It's more, I would say, fun and interactive. It's a little easier to teach the kids how to do the throwing skills and for safety and things like that. Their body can handle more than the adults can. They're less likely to get injured. You know, they can,

they makes them better athletes because it's a lot more three-dimensional in my opinion. You know, so I think there's a good fit between judo couldn't thrive from kids till, you know, whatever, high school, college, you're just who thrives from that 18 year old up, right? Right now, that's kind of where it is. So as a dojo, you have to kind of focus on the teens and the college at early 20s, that kind of... Or you need to have, if you're going to be a successful

judo dojo, you have to have that recreational fundamental adult program in your school, where people actually come to judo, learn the moves, but aren't pushed into randori training and pushed into things where they're uncomfortable and they can't control the situation because there's too many unknowns. the situation because there's too many unknowns. You got an education of Browns. You're somebody who's amazing because as an Olympian and an Olympic coach, you've always emphasized kind of balance and education and all of that side of life, so developing your brain too.

So you are an Olympic medalist, a coach of Olympic medalists, your business owners, so successful in all these domains. So I have to ask, what advice would you give to young people today? High school, judo age, high school, college, undergrad, how to be successful in their career or just in life in general, how to live a life that can be proud of.

I think you have to be true to yourself. You have to decide what it is you really want to do with your life. And it's hard because when I grew up, I didn't know I was going to be successful. When I was, you know, when I was young, I didn't know I was going to be an Olympic medalist. I certainly did envision myself owning a couple of companies that makes their living exclusively for martial arts or judo because that wasn't really an opportunity when I was a kid, but I've created that opportunity. I would just say that, pick something that you're passionate about. I was stuck in a career before where I wasn't passionate about it.

It was my wife who said, Jimmy, if you can figure out how to make your living exclusively from martial arts, you know, where your brain and your heart and your passion is all towards one thing that you really like, then you'll be successful. And I left the job, I had three kids. I was working for Monster.com. I was an internet marketing. And I was working for that company,

great company, nothing wrong with the company. but sitting behind the desk from 8 till 5 and then I get to go to Judo from 6 till 9 at night. You know, my whole day has tied up doing something that I'm really not passionate about. She said, if you can figure out how to make money from your dojo and other things Judo related, then I think you'll be successful. And so she's the one that my wife Marie gave me that advice and I would give that to others. Find something that you love doing where it doesn't feel like work, something you're passionate about.

And if the opportunity doesn't exist, how to make money on it, you can create the opportunity. Be resourceful, figure it out. Don't let anybody tell you, you can't do it. All right, I didn't know that I could have a 200 person judo school that only taught judo, because that really didn't exist in this country. You know, that it actually charges money

like jujitsu charges, right? We're talking not, it's plenty of clubs out there that charge 10 bucks a month that might have 100 people, but there's not many that, you know, where the tuition is $150 a month, having 200 people. So that's a successful business. But it wasn't done before. But be passionate about it.

Understand you're gonna fail. Understand you're gonna get knocked down, beat up. There's gonna be dark days, but you gotta persevere. You gotta believe in yourself. You gotta have a plan. You have to be willing to learn from other people. And that's what I did. If I didn't know it, I brought somebody in to tell me,

what am I doing wrong? Like look from the outside, what do you see? Okay, great, then we got to be willing to change. You're gonna be willing to adapt, you know? And I think listening, believing in myself and, you know, creating opportunity and the other thing is helping others. Something I always did in my

in my judo life, in my business life. If somebody came to me and asked for help with, hey, man, is there something you can do to help me? I'm trying to get this thing started. I'm trying to get this dojo off the ground or I'm trying to run this event series or you know, I was creative in trying to figure out a way to help them make it work Because if that really was their dream and I could help do their dream I felt like that person would then Give nothing but good good comments about us good good good like they remember it forever They become like family and they've the best advocates for your business ever and so become like family. And they're the best advocates for your business ever.

And so the kids that I taught at my dojo were treated that way. The people that worked for me get treated that way. The people that my customers that I work with and building their dojos get treated that way. People that ran tournaments, whether it was grapplers quest years ago and helping that guy with a full set of maths

for his Brian Simmons with his his thing or you know any of the graces I just it just became like family and then I just work hard and deliver on what I say I'm gonna do. If I say I'm gonna do what I do it you know and I think it goes long way. Well and I got a comment so in a small way I've people may not, I think it's still on YouTube. We previously talked many years ago. And I remember it, you were so kind to me. And you didn't really know who I was. You just took me as a human being. You welcomed me into your dojo, and we just had a conversation on a podcast or whatever the heck you call that thing. And you were just very kind. And you were just very kind and you were also just, it was the last conversation I had when I showed up to MIT in a state with me.

So I resumed doing this podcast. But it stayed with me because you said that I did a good job at this. And people, especially at that time, didn't tell me that, you know, didn't, and just that little act of kindness is probably just a regular part of your day. You had a busy day. It was at the end of the day. Just saying that, that was powerful. And that pays off somehow. So thank you for that. Yeah, but I was sincere, right? It was genuine. I felt like I had been to so many interviews when it's around the Olympic time,

there's lots of beat reporters that come out and they're trying to get your time and they're just, they're there because they have to get the story for their newspaper or their television show. And a lot of times those people show up, right? And they pronounce my name wrong. Well, they get something wrong about the background.

Or they offend me because they call me five minutes before that they're supposed to be there. And say, oh, sorry, we're running late. We'll be there in an hour and a half. Well, I'm a busy guy too. You know, like, but you were somebody that showed up was so prepared with your notes. You knew everything about like the history of what I had done. Well, the questions you asked were intelligent questions. They were well thought out. And at the end of that, that interview, I was really genuinely impressed. And I wanted to let you know you did a great job

because you stood off from the rest. Thank you. Yeah, that mean for me it was like showing up to like the mecca, like the track. I mean, and you know, you don't always want to just tell that to people, but you show up. Obviously, you're the legend of Judo in the United States. And so that was like Boston is the mecha. I think that's where you travel to talk to the great.

So the fact you were kind to me just stuck with me for a long time. So it pays off to be kind to others, to give them a chance. Jimmy, thank you so much for giving me another chance of spending your valuable time. And you've also were kind enough to invite me to train with you today at your dojo. So I can't wait. Let's go. Let's go do some jute. Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Lex. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jimmie Pedro. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you some words from Bruce Lee. I fear not the man who has practiced

10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. Thank you.