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

The following is a conversation with Jimmy Pedro, a legendary judo competitor and coach. He represented the United States at four Olympics in 92, 96, 2000 and 2004, winning a bronze medal at two of them. He medaled in three World Championships, winning gold in 1999. He has coached many of the elite level American judoka, including Kayla Harrison, Ronda Rousey, Travis Stevens and many others. Plus, he's now my judo coach along with Travis Stevens. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, here's my conversation with Jimmy Pedro. What is the most beautiful throw in judo to you?

I think Uchimara. It's the one that seems to have the most amplitude. That 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 throw there is.

Okay, so it's a single, you're standing on a single foot and you're raising your other foot in the air and it's a forward throw, which means the, your, 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 is 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 Ijmata to me never quite made sense, like why it works. There's a, there's a cork, there's a twisting motion, there's some involvement of the hip, but not, it's not really a hip throw because the hip is not all the way over. So it's not, it's a very confusing throw. Can you say something?

Probably one of the most difficult throws to learn as well, because it is so complex. You do have to stand on one leg, balance on one leg, you know, swing your other leg through the middle, hold your opponent up in the air, and as. And it's hard to, it's hard to make that contact with upper body to your, to your back. You know, you have to turn your back on the throw as well. So how does it work? 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 throw. So your head is going to go left, let's say your Body, your legs are going to go to the right, your body's. Your partner is going to start to lean towards you. And just as you start to get their momentum coming forward, your leg is going to sweep up underneath theirs. Pick them up onto your hip. Right. And then the finish of the throw is a twist. And a lot of times the good 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. So you're all in the air. You're basically doing a role together.

Correct.

Okay, so who to you is the best uchimada? Who has the. Besides yourself?

I'm not gonna lie, there's plenty of guys that do uchimada a lot better than I do.

You do have a nice video about the uchimada online. But who's a great practitioner of the.

Uchimada to you right now? Shohei Ono, who, who's two time Olympic gold medalist. That's his favorite throw. And he. There's tons of highlight videos on the IJF and judo fanatics showing how he does his uchimada. 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 in the last eight years, the guy's lost two matches.

He's just incredible at a very competitive division. I guess 73 kilos. Okay. And then three. Three time world champ too. Is he the greatest of all time?

The only reason why he's not is because nomura is a 60 kilo player. He was three time Olympic champion, so no more. I mean, unless Ono's going to 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. 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, 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, have spectacular judo, have Won, you know, countless major events, but, you know, the ability to pull it together, right, Those magical moments, the, the pinnacle of the sport, the World Championships, the Olympic Games. And proving that you can do it time and time again makes you unstoppable. It makes you the best. You know, there was a guy back in the 70s and 80s by the name of Fuji, and he won four world championships back to back. And back then the worlds was every two years. So he was here, he was a four time world champion. That's eight years the top of the sport. He never won an Olympic medal. You know, he never went to the Olympics, you know, so there's a guy who missed out on, on Olympic greatness, but was arguably the best competitor back in that, that period.

By the way, same Fuji as, as Fuji, right? Really? Okay. Wow. I didn't know that was an actual guy.

Fuji. Our brand is named after the mountain, Mount Fuji, but this is a different guy. His name was Fuji.

All right, well, history rhymes. What about Teddy Rena? Ten time world champ, I think. Two time gold medalist at the Olympics, two times bronze medalist at the Olympics. Probably the most dominant judoka ever. Is he in the running? What do you think about that guy?

I think he's a freak of nature, Teddy. You know, if you look at the size, just how big he, how tall he is, how big he is, how physical he is of a specimen. I sat next to him on a bus and like his legs are literally the size of my waist.

Yeah.

Like, when you sit next to him and just look at the 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. But, you know, that puts him in one of the maybe 10 or 12 people to ever do that in the history of the sport. So he's definitely got to be in the running for, for the best. But you know, technically I don't think he's as technical as some of the other in terms of pure judo. Finesse. 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 gi and they go, you know, man to man and judo to judo and take shots at each other. And that's why a lot of them end up getting beat. But Teddy's in control. Like, positionally, he stays in really good position and he controls his opponent the whole fight. So they really don't have a chance to 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 osoto gari, this backward trip, outside trip, in case people don't know. I mean, he has just, like, technically pretty good throws. And for heavyweight.

Yes.

Heavyweights can be sometimes messy with their 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, as a. For a heavyweight, phenomenal technique. Yes. And what you said, Messi, I'd like to call it sloppy. Right. A lot of. A lot of the heavyweights tend to be sloppy. They've fallen on the ground a lot. It's hard to move somebody that weighs 350 pounds. You know, it's hard to get that body moving and just with a simple pull motion. So he's definitely found a way to do it. But he's also, I don't know, 6 foot 8.

Yeah.

You know, he's probably weighs 140 kilos. He's a big boy and.

But he had this winning streak of just, I don't know how long, but, like, over 100 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.

Tokyo 2020. All right, so he lost to Tamerlan Basheev. I mean, it's always sad to see a sort of greatness come to an end. It's like Karelan in wrestling and Greco Roman. Did you shed a bit of a tear to see greatness go or like. 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, you know, their personality or. But And I think. But I think Teddy's a very humble champion. You know, he's. He's a people's champion. You know, he's. I think he's been privileged and he makes good money from the sport of judo, and the French Federation has taken care of him well. So he's a. He's a lifelong judo icon. So it's sad to see somebody like that get beat, especially when this could have been, you know, his third Olympic title and, you know, just because put him in infamy, you know, so it was sad to see. But I think, you know, every athlete goes through it, right? I mean, you. It's just, that's what the Olympics is all about. The great ones fall sometimes.

And especially in judo, it's like so, like the margin of error. I mean, I guess the other question I want to ask here is in your sense, how difficult it is to not lose for so long. It seems like in judo, like a little mistake and it's over. There's no. There's no coming back. And ippon means it's over. So how difficult is that?

It's hard to stay that dominant without question. First of all, when you are. When you are, the entire world is training against you just to beat you, they're studying every single movement, 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 the one to beat you at. So everybody's focused on you. And then there's an incredible amount of pressure on that athlete to perform. You know, you carry the flag for your country. You know, when you're at opening ceremonies, sometimes, you know, there's all spotlight is on you. And it's particularly hard when things don't go well early, you know, in other words, when you're expected to win. And then all of a sudden now you're in a hard fight and it's not going the way you want. That pressure. The one who's the favorite feels the pressure the most at the Olympics. And that's why I think the other ones are able to win it.

I've actually never gotten a chance to listen to Teddy Rena 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 Satia brothers in wrestling, again, not meaning that's on my to do list 100%. I'm going to Dagestan 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 that technical, the training side and then the mental side, because like, to stay that dominant, just like you're saying everybody's studying to beat you and, and the heavyweights are just these powerful dudes. So to be able to control them with your game and like the game that everybody knows is coming is. I don't know, I don't know what's behind that, but there's got to be. It feels like the mental game is exceptionally important.

I think a lot of people underestimate just how important that that side is being mentally prepared for victory, mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best. There's nobody that's weak minded that they can accomplish that. You know, it's 100% confidence and belief in yourself.

If we take a big picture view, then not necessarily Ted Rena, but if you want to go from the very beginning, from day one of judo class to Olympic champion or Olympic medalist, what does it take to become an Olympic medalist in judo from start to finish? Like, how many different trajectories do you see? Or is there some unifying principles?

I think a lot of it has to. Your journey is going to depend a lot by where you're from. So a path that an American might take versus somebody who's from Japan or somebody who's from Europe, there's two very, three very distinct paths, right? Because in Japan it's part of the culture. There's a system of excellence. There's elementary school judo, there's junior high school, there's high school, there's collegiate, there's Olympic. And much like wrestling is here in the United States, right? It's very similar. There's youth wrestling, there's high school, this ncaa, and then there's Olympic wrestling. And you know, when you, when you, your country is a factory of producing athletes at the highest level, then all of those top athletes typically go back into the sport and there's professions for them. They have an opportunity to coach at all those different levels and just the level of their game and the expertise that all of them have, even down at the elementary level, make their skill so solid.

And as a coach in that situation, you can just sit back and watch who stands out as opposed to, I think in America, I guess you 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 get, 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, says, I wanted 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, and there's only a few. There's only a few people, and there's only a few coaches in this entire country that really understand that process and they can help people reach that level as, as it's been proven, right?

Yeah.

Number one, you certainly have to have a solid base, a fundamental base of, of an expectation of what the training is going to be. And it has to be a level of professionalism very, very early where you're teaching all the basic judo moves, all the basic fundamental movements, posture, gripping. Well, maybe gripping doesn't come in so early in the game, but throwing methodology, movements, newaza, 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. The mindset of going to tournaments constantly 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 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 dojo at least five days a week. You know, sometimes they might want to get, you know, an extra technical workout in or doing some base conditioning in addition to that. And then really at the teenage years, that's where we really, 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 in. Of terms, you know, we've. We've proven we can compete with the rest of the world up until that age. But that's where Japan and that's where the Europeans and the countries that are strong in judo, that's where they put a lot of time, energy and effort. Is it to the teens, where they have a great coaching staff, they have good training camps with, with 800, a thousand people going to them every single weekend.

When you say teens, what do you mean? Do you mean literally like 13?

Yeah. Age 13 to 17. 13 to 19.

And that's where sort of, that's when you really accelerate your development. So you're saying, like in America, when you're young, like before, you know, 9, 10, 11, 12, you stick in judo, you can progress quite a bit. Right. But then I guess the other competition there, if you're into 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. Like, it teaches 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 could. You have like a, 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 coach, to me that's just a fascinating journey because it then is just like the purity of it. It's a coach and the athlete and the dream. It's all about the dedication. The, the five, six, seven days a week, competing, what, once a month? Twice a month. Okay. And just. But also, you probably don't have that conversation. I don't know if you do. Maybe you do. Saying like, we're gonna do this for the next eight years. Do you ever sit down? Would you just do it? Take it the David Goggins way, which is like, let's just take it one step at a time.

Let's hope we're there in eight years.

Yeah, let's hope we're there.

Do you 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 U.S. olympic team. Because we're going to have a full team. America is going to have 14 athletes compete in those Games. One in every weight class. So now's the time. If you're going to go on a journey to the Olympics and stay with the sport of judo, now would be the time to do it, you know.

And so what, you show up to the Pedro Judo center and how much drilling, how much technique, strategy discussions, how much randori or like live sparring, how much conditioning and strength training, how much of all that, how much of cross training to other gyms or something like that, traveling abroad? Is there something to be said about some aspects of that system?

For sure. You need it all, what you just said, we needed all of it. And we do do all of that. Right now we have a young group of kids at the academy. You'll see tonight, some of them are 14, 13, 15, 17. Are they good? Yeah, really good.

Okay, so they're gonna wait.

They're right around your weight, so it'll be perfect. They're just young boys, but they've been training hard through Covid. Yeah, we've been. Travis and myself have been training them. We share responsibilities. They're doing randori like five nights a week. You know, we have them doing randori Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays is when they're doing randori. They're coming to the dojo Friday night and Sunday night to do training. We also have technical sessions for them. They're in school now, so it's a little bit challenging. But they come five o' clock in the afternoon and they do a technical session through Covid. They were coming every morning doing technical sessions.

What's the technical session?

It's an hour of repetitive throwing or repetitive drilling to reinforce movements that we deem important to our successful system. So nawaza positions, groundwork positions, where we want them to be put in this position and they're going to drill it 50 times 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 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or is it like 1, 2, they're actually counting?

No, it's sometimes it's both. So sometimes we do it for reps, sometimes we do it for time. Yeah. So sometimes it might be as many as they can do in. In 60 seconds or as many as they can do. In two minutes. And sometimes it might just be. I want you to do every position five times.

In terms of throws, we're not talking about on a crash pad. Right. It's. It's just.

We're talking about free moving around the.

Mat and just dynamically and just throwing.

Correct.

How many? Because as I was mentioning to you offline, Travis threw me a few times, a lot of times when he was visiting in Austin. And I just remembered. So there's two things I, fortunately or unfortunately in my life haven't gotten a chance to train with folks of that level. Just cleanness of throw and the power. And it was very nice. I immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that. To throw a little shade at Craig Jones with his current mat situation is they're very. They were quite thin and as Travis commented on not just the thinness of the mats, but they were laid on like concrete.

Right.

So I felt. I felt it's like soft until it's not. But being thrown very cleanly, I just felt like there's. This is not going to lead to injury. It was great. It wasn't injury prone. But then as I mentioned to you when I. The day or two after, my entire leg, one of them, I guess it's the left leg, was just black bruise. It didn't. It didn't hurt too bad, but it was just the body has gotten soft. So 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. So it hardens, it gets really hard. Which is why judo is. Is hard to come back to after you've taken a long period of time off because your body is not used to that impact anymore. And I always found out that, you know, when I was training judo a lot, it's hard to. It's hard to shed weight and keep weight off because your body, like, you know, develops like this layer of protection on itself that it doesn't want to give up.

Yeah.

You know, when you're sucking a lot of weight, that means you're frail and, you know, so I always seem to retain weight more, you know, when you're doing hard judo training as opposed to, you know, losing weight, it's easy when you go for runs and things like that to shed the water weight, but to actually keep the pounds off was, yeah. Pretty hard.

Yeah. The body kind of develops, like you said, a level of protection. What about the Randori? Just out of curiosity, again, I haven't ever had the opportunity to train with folks at a high level is, you know, in jiu jitsu, the, 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, it's more technical and you're not, you're moving at a hundred percent, but the power is not at a hundred percent. It's, it's, it's a weird little dance. It's, it's technically like you're not really forcing stuff. You're more focused on, 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. Does that sound similar to you for the way you try to do randori?

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, we're using minimal effort, maximum efficiency. We're moving around and we're trying to feel that movement. And it's timing and finesse and technique and fun and clean throws. And when you, you know, when you train in Japan, you can train 15 rounds of Randori, 5 minute rounds, that's 75 minutes of straight, you know, sparring. You can do that straight in Japan without a problem. I mean, you'll get tired, of course. You're gonna fall a lot, you're gonna throw a lot of. But it's very like free feeling and it's technical, as you explained. But then when you go to Europe and you try to do rounds with the Europeans, they are very physical. They don't have that same finesse in their training that they do in Japan and in Europe. You'd be hard pressed to do eight rounds of randori in a night. It's so physically exhausting because so much effort is going into just fighting and fending off the gripping system and the power of your opponent. You're physically drained after eight rounds of andor. So it's a much different feel.

When you say Europe, do you mean Germany, France, Britain? Russia is there a lot. So there's a kind of similarity to all of those kinds of approaches.

The only difference would be Russia, that they do a lot more active drilling, a lot more sequential movement training. They don't focus as much on randori. You, 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, do you just select whatever works for the particular athletes or 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 newaza aspect, because a lot of people are weak there. In the world of the sport of judo, that's a chance to win. We've sort of developed our American system of judo, at least for the last, I'd say probably the last 20 years. It'd be the American system of judo, which relies heavily on taking the individual and whatever techniques they. They do, perfecting those techniques and the combinations and other throws that go with those throws, but then implementing and overlaying an American system of gripping 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 Americans. Because there's no way, if 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 to have the same guy four times, those two people. Four, you know, two times each. Now I have four good rounds. The rest of the rounds I'm not being pushed to the limit. So we train differently. And a lot of times we do a lot of stuff like shark bait when our athletes are preparing for competition, or, for example, when Kayla or Travis were 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 to train with guys, and then the other ones are teenagers that are too weak to train with either one of them. So what we would do is just put together four or five people that could, you know, give them a challenge. And we'd line them up and they would do a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute. And they 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. They just got 40 minutes of intense. Randori, the person that was training with them that wasn't as good, only had to do six or eight minutes of training the whole night. Yeah, you know, so it's.

So it's so difficult because then you look at, like, the Russian national team, and you have just the world champions and so. Or you even have, like, what is the Tom Brands and Terry Brands in the. In the wrestling system, you have, like, these people. It's a small group of people, but they're all some of the best people in the world, and they're going head to head. And, yeah, you don't necessarily get a good look, kind of a variety of styles, but just the quality is 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 Travis's story that much more amazing. 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 Ippon Seiyanagi that was his main throw. Right. But from that Ippon Seiyanagi, 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 Ipponsewi was coming. Maybe it was the Koshi Gruma that he did, or maybe it was the Ippon to Osoto that he did in combination. So you typically have one main throw that you do. For me, it was Tai Otoshi. For Kaylor, it was her Ogoshi. For Travis, it was his Ippon Seiyanagi. But then you come up with the variety of other throws that you do from the very same grip. So whatever grip you take for your main throw, you want to develop, you know, an arsenal of attacks that go in all different directions holding that same grip. So you keep your opponent guessing as to what's coming, you know, because if they're just sitting on one technique at the highest level of sport, with the exception of a few, Right. We talked about Ono's Uchimara. 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 dedicated to the main thing. So for Travis, that would be like the main version of his say Nagi, like really making sure you don't forget to really put in the time on that. Because I mean one, one way to say it is that threat being dangerous opens up a lot of things, right? But also, I don't know, I think I'm just as a fan, I think it, it's sad when like elite level athletes in, in all like combat sports kind of start taking their main thing for granted. Like they think, okay, I've, I figured that part out. Now I'll be working on this whole system on variations on different setups on lefty versus some like weird variation as opposed to, you know what? If you look at some of the best people ever, they seem to have not cared about variations at all. They're just like, literally they are more like Jiro dreams of sushi and like, like fine tuning their ear. Their ability to detect the 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 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 the 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, there's unquestionably that has to happen. You still have to drill your main throw and you have to fine tune it and continue to do, you know, repetition after repetition and throws on the crash pad, you know, or throws on the mat, moving around, just explosive movements, doing your main technique. You're never going to forget that. And you're not going to put it to the side and not practice it anymore. It still has to be part of your repertoire and part of your daily training. But you do have to evolve. And I think that's, and I think that's the sport of judo makes you evolve. You know, when I look at, we talk about Koga from before, right? And we talked about he had a dynamic Ippon Sayanagi that nobody could stop for years and years and years. But when people started to, you know, be unorthodox and come down his back and cross grip him and he couldn't get to the lapel. He had to come up with something else. And all of a sudden, you saw Koga doing. Now he did a sode or now he did a tomoe nagi, which. So he added to his arsenal, you know, to keep people thinking, keep people guessing. So it's not. You're not just that one trick pony. They still couldn't stop his ippon sei and AGI once he got that grip. But if they stopped him from getting that grip or putting two hands on the gi, he had to go to something else, and that's what he did.

Does Travis's or Koga's seiyanagi make sense to you? That weird. So when I. Because.

Split hip.

Split hip. So I don't know if you know this, but, like, I got into judo because of Travis. I watched him with 2008 Olympics, and I was. There's something about, like, just the. Not the cockiness, but the confidence and just the refusal to quit. The refusal to Just some. 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 a university, judo, and I. And I got into it 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 Koga's. And I. And then the instructors I worked with, they said that's the wrong way to do it. And I always. I never found somebody that told me that, like, no, that's not the wrong way to. There's a lot of ways to do it, and there's like, the classic way, and you have to understand it and you have to learn it. But this is not the wrong way because. 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 has certain throws. Just like Uchimada doesn't look powerful. It's just like. It looks effortless, but like the standing San 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?

Their feet are fluttering, fluttering.

So. And then there's just this. This pause, and then Just big slam with the uchimada. It's almost like you don't know what hit you. It's like Tytoshi is the same, same. It's almost like a surprise. Like, oh, I'm now on my back. And so I, I just, I just love that throw. But like I, it didn't make sense to me. Like when trying to explain it to others, when trying to learn, it didn't make sense to me how it works. Does it make sense to you?

It does, yeah. I'm a, I was born a judoka, right? So I, I, I've lived this stuff since I was an infant and I've seen every style and every technique. The split hip, say, and Aggie is difficult to learn. It's harder to learn than the basic form, but it is powerful and it does, upon entry, both your opponent's feet leave them out at the same time. So you've got them. Once you enter, you've got them, you just got to finish, right? You just got to lock them and turn and go. So it makes sense to me. My dad did teach me how to do that when I was younger. Yeah, he wanted me to do a split hip. We have kids at the school today that we teach the split hips, say and AGI 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 him.

So, okay, beautiful. So maybe on a small tangent, so where we're talking about elite level athletes in terms of Randori, in terms of Republicans, 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 reason reasonable with a particular set of throws, say the split, say Nagi. So how do you, how do you, do you do the vandori? Do you use a crash pad to get in reps? Do you like, what do you recommend?

So I guess there's two recreational people that we're talking about. One is somebody who wants to learn judo and become good at judo but don't, doesn't necessarily want to compete, but just wants to get better. And I think there's not enough emphasis in this country on, on paying attention to that type of student. Everybody pushes them to competition, but in reality there's a huge audience of people out there that would love to learn judo and be very proficient at judo and have the skills to go execute if they ever needed it, and there's a class and there should be a program for that athlete, and that athlete does not need to do randori. Like the sport of judo is physical enough where you're picking somebody up all the time and moving their body weight around the mat 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 move. If you learn good technique and you learn the movement and you learn the feel and you move the learn the timing, you'll actually be a better athlete than the person that just focuses on randori, who does ugly technique and wins with force. So, you know, we have a recreational class at our school where they don't do any randori. They have an option afterwards if they want to stay for 15 minutes or stay for 30 minutes where they can participate in randori. But most of the adult students choose not to because they're already so tired from the other, you know, hours.

It's a good workout, right?

They're already dripping sweat. They're already, like, if you, if you, you know, work hard and drill hard, it's an intense workout. You're exhausted, you know, so that, that's a specific set of, of program, I should say, at every, every academy. And then if you want to get good and you want to compete, then to me, once you have your techniques, it's learning how to implement a good gripping system to put yourself in a position where you can always, you know, dominate the grips, control the movement, initiate the reactions from your opponent, and then have the opportunity to attack and score. And. And I think that when people train with or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo, all of a sudden the first thing they say is, I can't attack. Like, I, 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 gi 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 positions 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.