#236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  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, 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, Rhonda Rousey, Travis Stevens, and many others. Plus, he's now my judo coach, along with Travis Stevens. And now, a quick few second summary of the sponsors. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. First is Roka, my favorite sunglasses and prescription glasses.

• 0:44Lex Fridman?

  Second is Athletic Greens, the all-in-one nutrition drink I drink twice a day. Third is Ladder, a service that helps you find life insurance. Fourth is Linode, Linux virtual machines. And fifth is MasterClass, online courses from world-class experts. So the choice is style, nutrition, insurance, computation, or knowledge. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors in the description. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too.

• 1:25Lex Fridman?

  This show is brought to you by Roka, the makers of glasses and sunglasses that I love wearing for their design, feel, and innovation on material optics and grip. Roka was started by two all-American swimmers from Stanford, and it was born out of an obsession with performance. I got to meet one of these founders, Rob, and he's an incredible human being. The place they have here in Austin where they make the glasses and the sunglasses is also just a super cool place. There's also a gym there. You can get some hard workouts with some badass dudes. So I love the people, I love the company and the product.

• 2:07Lex Fridman?

  The style and the function is designed to be active in, so it's extremely lightweight, but there's a great grip, so it stays on, but yet it's comfortable. And like I said, the style is kind of minimalist and classy. So I can wear it when I'm running, I can wear it when I'm wearing a suit, it doesn't matter. Same glasses perform well in both cases. Anyway, check out Roka for both prescription glasses and sunglasses at roka.com and enter code Lex to save 20% on your first order. That's roka.com and enter code Lex. This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens and its newly renamed AG1 Drink,

• 2:49Lex Fridman?

  which is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It replaced the multivitamin for me and went far beyond that with 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink every day. I drink it twice a day now. When I go for a run, I usually, right when I get back, I'll put it in the freezer, go take a quick shower. When I hop out of the shower, it's nice and cold, just super refreshing. It's a great way to sort of celebrate a great hard run. They have travel packs, so if you're traveling, you could bring it with you. Like I said, for me personally, given that my diet is all over the place in terms of keto and carnivore, it's great to make sure I have a nutritional base established. Anyway, they'll give you one month's supply of fish

• 3:33Lex Fridman?

  oil when you sign up to athleticgreens.com/lex. That's athleticgreens.com/lex. And oh yes, fish oil is something I also take as well. This show is also brought to you by Ladder. You may have heard, I often meditate on my mortality. I think this is both honest and clarifying. If you have others in your life you love and you do the same, you should consider getting life insurance. Ladder can help you out with that. Pay a little every month in case something happens to you and the ones you love will be protected. Death, dear friends, comes first all. The least you can do in the face of the abyss,

• 4:18Lex Fridman?

  that terror, is to protect the ones you love. I should probably talk to Sheldon Solomon again. He's such a fascinating person. He's the author of The Warm of the Core and the developer of the Terror Management Theory and kind of carrying the flag of Ernest Becker, who is a famous philosopher, wrote the book Denial of Death. I had a great conversation with him before. I should probably talk to him again soon. Anyway, go to ladderlife.com/lex to see if you're instantly approved. That's ladder, L-A-D-D-E-R, life.com/lex. Once again, that's ladderlife.com/lex.

• 5:01Lex Fridman?

  This episode is also brought to you by Linode, Linux virtual machines. It's an awesome compute infrastructure that lets you develop, deploy, scale, what applications you build faster and easier. I don't know. Whenever I talk about Linux, it puts a smile on my face. I just love Linux and I love people that deploy Linux solutions effectively in accessible ways, super easy, affordable. That's why I'm a big supporter of Linode. Anyway, this is both for small personal projects and huge systems. Lower cost than AWS, but more importantly to me is the simplicity, quality of customer service with real humans 24/7/365. I never know how to say that correctly.

• 5:45Lex Fridman?

  Basically, all the time, all of the time. If it runs on Linux, it runs on Linode. Only now did I realize that my name Lex has a lot in common with Linux. Maybe I am a machine that's running some futuristic or the opposite version of Linux, some distribution that's yet to be understood or introspected properly.

• 6:14Lex Fridman?

  By myself. Anyway, visit leno.com/lex and click on the create free account button to get started with $100 in free credit. This show is also brought to you by MasterClass. $180 a year gets you an all access pass to watch courses from the best people in the world in their respective disciplines. The list is frankly ridiculous and it keeps growing. I can name a few people that I've watched. Chris Hadfield, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Will Wright, Carlos Santana, Garrett Casparo, Daniel Negrono, Neil Gaiman, Martin Scorsese, Tony Hawk, Jane Goodall, the great Jane Goodall,

• 6:54Lex Fridman?

  and that list keeps going. And like I said, it keeps growing. This is surreal that they were able to organize this and really focus the people to teach 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/lex. That's masterclass.com/lex for 15% off the annual membership. Masterclass.com/lex. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here's my conversation with Jimmy Pedro.

• 7:56Lex Fridman?

  What is the most beautiful throw in judo to you?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I think uchimara. It's the, it's the one that seems to have the most amplitude. A 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.

• 8:21Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 8:38Lex Fridman?

  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 ichimada to me never quite made sense, like why it works. 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.

• 9:13Lex Fridman?

  Can you say something?

• 9:14Speaker 01

  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, you know, swing your other leg through the middle, hold your opponent up in the air. And it's, and it's hard to, it's hard to make that contact with upper body to your, to your back, you know? You have to turn your back on the throw as well. So how does it work? 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.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Your bodies, your partner is going to start to lean towards you. And just as you start to get there, 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.

• 10:20Lex Fridman?

  So all four feet are in the air?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 10:23Lex Fridman?

  So there's just this unstoppable force, this twist. So you're all in the air. You're, you're basically doing a roll together.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 10:30Lex Fridman?

  Okay, so who to you is the best uchimata? Who has, besides yourself?

• 10:38Speaker 01

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

• 10:42Lex Fridman?

  You do have a nice video about the uchimata online, but who is a great practitioner of the uchimata to you?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Right now, Shohei Ono, who's two-time Olympic gold medalist, that's his favorite throw. And there's tons of highlight videos on the IGF and Judo Fanatics showing how he does his uchimata, 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. You know, he's just incredible, so.

• 11:14Lex Fridman?

  At a very competitive division, I guess 73 kilos, okay. And then three-time world champ too. Is he the greatest of all time to you?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  The only reason why he's not is because Nomura is a 60-kilo player. He was three-time Olympic champion. So Nomura, I mean, unless Ono's gonna stick around for another three years and win again in, win again here in Paris, then he'd match what Nomura did. But three-time gold medalist in Judo in a lightweight division? That's pretty spectacular.

• 11:47Lex Fridman?

  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?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  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 countless major events, but you know, the ability to pull it together, right? 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, 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 here he was, a four-time world champion, that's eight years, the top of the sport. He never. Won an Olympic medal.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:05Lex Fridman?

  By the way, same Fuji as Fuji.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:10Lex Fridman?

  Really? Okay. Wow. I didn't know that was an actual guy Fuji.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Our brand is is named after the mountain, Mount Fuji.

• 13:16Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  But, you know, this is a different guy. His name was Fuji.

• 13:18Lex Fridman?

  All right, well.

• 13:21Lex Fridman?

  History rhymes. What about Teddy Renee? Ten time world champ, I think. Two time gold medalist at the Olympics, two times bronze medalist at the Olympics.

• 13:36Lex Fridman?

  Probably the most dominant judoka ever. Is he in the running? What do you think about that guy?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  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. Like, I sat next to him on a bus. And like, his legs are literally the size of my waist.

• 13:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  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, it that's a, that's almost an incomprehensible feat. Two time Olympic champion, again.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  You know, that puts him in one of the maybe 10 or 12 people to ever do that in the history of the 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.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  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 in 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 against him. He doesn't give them a chance to beat him, which is why he's been so dominant.

• 15:08Lex Fridman?

  But he's not really stalling. So, I mean, he does have a really nice.

• 15:14Lex Fridman?

  Osoro 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.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:26Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. 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, messy, I'd like to call it sloppy, right? 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, six foot eight.

• 16:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 16:16Speaker 01

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

• 16:20Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Tokyo 2020.

• 16:37Lex Fridman?

  Tokyo 2020, all right. So he lost to Tamalyn Bashav. I mean, it's always sad to see a sort of greatness come to an end. It's like Correllin in wrestling and Greco Roman. Did you shed a bit of a tear to see greatness go? Or like, or is it just a way of life? I mean, what did you think about sort of this dominance, this run of dominance being stopped?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  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. But, and I think, but I think Teddy's a very humble champion. You know, he's a people's champion, you know, he's, I think he's been privileged and he makes good money from the sport of judo and the French Federation has taken care of him well. So he's a 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 put him in infamy.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 18:01Lex Fridman?

  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 epon means it's over. So how difficult is that?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  It's. 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, that's the, that's the one to beat you at. So everybody's focused on you and then there's an incredible amount of pressure on that athlete to perform, you know, you carry the flag for your country. You know, when you're in opening ceremonies, sometimes, you know, there's, all spotlight is on you. 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

• 19:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 19:17Lex Fridman?

  I've actually never gotten a chance to listen to Teddy Renee 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 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?

• 19:59Lex Fridman?

  Both on the 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.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people underestimate just how important that that side is. Meant being mentally prepared for victory, mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  There's nobody that's weak minded that can accomplish that, you know, it's it's 100% confidence and belief in yourself.

• 20:49Lex Fridman?

  If we take a big picture view, then, not necessarily Tatera, 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?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it has to, your journey is going to depend a lot by where you're from. So a path that an American might take versus somebody who's from Japan or somebody who's from Europe. There's two very, just three very distinct paths, right? Because, you know, in Japan, it's part of the culture. It's, there's a, there's a system of excellence. There's, you know, there's elementary school judo, there's junior high school, there's high school, there's collegiate, there's Olympic. And, you know. Much like our wrestling is here in the United States, right? It's very similar. There's youth wrestling, there's high school, there's NCAA, and then there's Olympic wrestling. And, you know, when you, when you, your country is a factory of producing athletes at the

• 21:59Speaker 01

  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.

• 22:17Lex Fridman?

  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, show up to your dojo, says, I want to be an Olympic medalist. What process do you take them through?

• 22:56Speaker 01

  The odds are really insurmountable. It's a, it's a very, very high hill to climb. And there's only a few, I, 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, that can help people reach that level as it's, as it's been proven, right?

• 23:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Number one, you, you certainly have to have a, 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, in the game, but throwing methodology, movements, ne 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.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  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. Uh, but the journey is, is it's long and, and until they're kind of at the teenage years, they're going to have to pretty much stay domestic, right? Cause they got to go through life as a normal kid, but they've got to be training in the dojo at least, you know, five days a week. You know, sometimes they might want to get, you know, an extra technical workout in or doing some base conditioning in addition to that. And then really at the teenage years, that's where we really, um, we've struggled in America of, of keeping teens in the sport of judo.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  As well as developing them properly. Cause 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 then, 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, 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 eight hundred, a thousand people going to them every single weekend.

• 25:19Lex Fridman?

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

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, age thirteen to seventeen, thirteen to nineteen.

• 25:25Lex Fridman?

  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, nine, 10, 11, 12, you stick in judo, you can progress quite a bit.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:39Lex Fridman?

  But then I guess the other competition there, if you're into, uh, uh, two people, uh, you know, doing stuff to each other in a combative way, uh, the other competitor in America is wrestling. So judo almost primes you, like it teaches you, uh, how to be a great wrestler as well. And so then you have to have a hard decision because you can probably be a collegiate wrestler. You can, you could, you have like a, a clear plan of where you're going to go if you want to be a wrestler. With judo, that plan is more, um,

• 26:18Lex Fridman?

  It is less clear. So you have to be on your own a bit with your coach, that kind of thing.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:25Lex Fridman?

  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, once a month? Twice a month?

• 26:45Speaker 01

  Twice a month.

• 26:46Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 26:58Lex Fridman?

  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?

• 27:06Speaker 01

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

• 27:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, let's hope we're there. Do you like actually?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Like right now, you have to think about, the Olympics is gonna 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. America's gonna have 14 athletes compete in those games, one in every weight 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?

• 27:41Lex Fridman?

  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 of that? How much of cross-training to other gyms or something like that, traveling abroad? Is there something to be said about us, some aspects of that system?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  For sure. You need it all. What you just said, you 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.

• 28:22Lex Fridman?

  Are they good?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, really good.

• 28:24Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  So they're gonna, they're right around your weight, so it'll be perfect.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  They're just young boys, but they've been training hard through COVID.

• 28:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Um, 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 and they're in school now, so it's a little bit challenging, but they come five o'clock in the afternoon and they do a technical session. Through COVID, they were coming every morning doing technical sessions.

• 29:04Lex Fridman?

  What's the technical session you're?

• 29:06Speaker 01

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

• 29:42Lex Fridman?

  Do they do it for a period of time, like two minutes, five minutes? Or is it like one, do they are actually counting?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 30:05Lex Fridman?

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

• 30:09Speaker 01

  We're talking about free moving around the mat.

• 30:12Lex Fridman?

  And just dynamically and just throwing.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 30:15Lex Fridman?

  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, having gotten a chance to train with folks of that level. What I just cleanness of throw and the power and it was very nice. I immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that.

• 30:44Lex Fridman?

  To throw a little shade at Craig Jones with this current mat situation is they're very, they were quite thin. And as Travis commented on, and not just the thinness of the mats, but they were laid on like, concrete.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:58Lex Fridman?

  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, a day or two after, my entire leg, one of them, I guess it's the left leg, was just, it was just black, bruised. It didn't, it didn't hurt too bad, but it was just, the body's gotten soft. So I guess the question I have is, um, does the body get used to just that number of throws? Just over time, being thrown thousands of times a month?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Unquestionably. Your, 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. I always found out that, you know, when I was training judo a lot, it's hard to, it's hard to shed weight and keep weight off, because your body like, you know, it, it, it develops like this layer of protection on itself that it doesn't want to give up.

• 32:05Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  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, to shed the water weight, but to actually keep the pounds off was pretty hard.

• 32:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the body kind of develops, like you said, a, 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 that have different styles, but I've noticed that at the highest levels, people

• 32:44Lex Fridman?

  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 a weird little dance. It's it's techni- 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 tried to do Randori?

• 33:20Speaker 01

  So there's different styles of judo and 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 and fun and clean throws. And when you, you know, when you train in Japan, you can train fifteen rounds of Randori, five-minute rounds. That's seventy-five minutes of of straight, you know, sparring. You can do that straight in Japan without a problem. I mean, you'll get tired, of course, you're gonna fall a lot, you're gonna throw a lot, but it's very like free feeling. And it's technical, as you explained. But then when you go to Europe

• 34:05Speaker 01

  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 in Europe, you'd be hard-pressed to do eight rounds of Randori in a night. It's so physically exhausting because so much effort is going into just fighting and fending off the gripping system and the power of your opponent. You're physically drained after eight rounds of Randori. So it's a much different feel.

• 34:31Lex Fridman?

  Uh, when you say Europe, do you mean Germany, France, Britain, Russia? Is there a lot? So it's there's a kind of similarity to all of those kinds of approaches?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  The only difference would be Russia that 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 in those other countries you just talked about, France, Germany, et cetera.

• 35:00Lex Fridman?

  What about in this kind of American system where you have much less talent to work with? Is do you uh?

• 35:10Lex Fridman?

  Just select whatever works for the particular athletes. Do you have a something you prefer in your system?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  So you need a combination of all of it. If you're going to win at the Olympic level, you have to be able to deal with the finesse of the Japanese, the physicality of the Europeans. You have to focus on on the ground neowaza 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

• 35:57Speaker 01

  gripping, neowaza, conditioning, mentality, training methodology, like in in game planning, you know, to beat your opponents. And I think that's the that's the secret sauce to success for 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 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, for example, when Kayla or Travis were preparing for competition, we might only have 20 people in the whole gym work to work out with those two

• 36:41Speaker 01

  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, 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

• 37:26Speaker 01

  only had to do six or eight minutes of training the whole night, you know, so.

• 37:31Lex Fridman?

  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 it, Tom Brands and Terry Brands 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 and 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

• 38:14Lex Fridman?

  work with, which makes scale as it makes Travis's 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?

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Well, for Travis, it was Ipon Sayanagi. That was his main throw, right? But from that Ipon Sayanagi, 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 Ipon Sei that was coming, maybe it was the Koshi Guma that he did. Or maybe it was the Ipon to Osoro that he did in combination. So you typically have one main throw that you do. For me, it was Taio Toshi. For Kayla, it was her Ogoshi. For Travis, it was his Ipon Sayanagi. But then you come up with a variety of other throws that you do from the very same grip. So whatever grip you take for your main throw, you want to develop, you know, an arsenal of attacks that go in all different directions, holding that same grip.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  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 Uchimata. With the exception of a few, most of the world catches on pretty quick on how to beat you.

• 39:44Lex Fridman?

  There is something to just thinking, making sure you're really dedicated to the main thing. So for Travis, that would be like the main version of his Sayanagi. Like really making sure you don't forget to really put in the time on that. Because um.

• 40:02Lex Fridman?

  I mean, one, one way to say it is that threat being dangerous opens up a lot of things.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:10Lex Fridman?

  But also, I don't know.

• 40:14Lex Fridman?

  I think I'm just as a fan, I think it it's sad when like elite level athletes in in all like combat sports. Kind of start taking their main thing for granted. Like um, they think, okay, I've I've figured that part out. Now I'll be working on all the this whole system on variations, on different setups, on uh, lefty versus left. 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.

• 40:53Lex Fridman?

  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 off balance and finding like the right moment to strike. And and focusing on that. Again, maybe that's just like a romanticization of like. The simplicity of that, maybe it is kind of impossible to do that on a large scale, but I just um. Yeah, I 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.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Well, unquestionably, that has to happen. You 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 gonna forget that and you're not gonna 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 sanagi 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

• 42:21Speaker 01

  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 tomoinagi, which so he can, 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 sanagi, 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.

• 42:46Lex Fridman?

  Does Travis's or Koga's sanagi make sense to you? That weird, so when I

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Split hip.

• 42:53Lex Fridman?

  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 at 2008 Olympics and I was, there's something about like, uh, just the, not the cockiness, but the confidence and just the refusal to quit, the refusal to just some, that energy, whatever 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 it and just fell in love with the elegance and the beauty and the power of the sport.

• 43:26Lex Fridman?

  But also I started to mimic Travis's game, uh, his and Koga's. And I, and then, uh, the instructors I worked with, they said, that's the wrong way to do it. And I always, I never found somebody that told me that like, no, that's not the wrong way. 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. Cause I was trying to find somebody who understands this throw. Cause it was so beautiful at the highest level, especially with Koga, the way you're able, the, the quickness with which you can strike, the fact that you could stand on the feet and the elevation you can get and the power you can get. It has certain throws, just

• 44:09Lex Fridman?

  Like Uchimata doesn't look powerful. It it's just like it's it looks effortless. But like the standing Seinagi with a split hip. It just looks powerful because there's a you 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.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Right, their feet are fluttering in the air.

• 44:32Lex Fridman?

  Fluttering, so and then there's just this this pause and then just big slam. With Uchimata, it's almost like you don't know what hit you. It's like Taito, she's the same. It's almost like a surprise like, oh shit, 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. Uh, how it works, does it make sense to you?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  It does. Yeah, I'm a I was born a judoka, right? So I I've lived this stuff since I was an infant. Um, and I've seen every style and every technique. Um, the split hip Seinagi is is is difficult to learn. It's harder to learn than the the basic form, but it is powerful. And it does upon entry, both your opponent's feet leave them out at the same time. So you've got them. Once you enter, you've got them. You just got to finish, right? You just got to lock them and turn and go. So it makes sense to me. My dad did teach me how to do that when I was younger. Yeah, he wanted me to do a split hip. We have kids at the school today that we teach the split hip Seinagi same way. Um, because it is that dynamic, right? You don't drop to the ground and roll and turn.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  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.

• 45:52Lex Fridman?

  Okay, uh, beautiful. So maybe on a small tangent, so we're talking about elite level athletes in terms of randori, in terms of 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 with a particular set of throws, say the split. Say Nagi, so how do you, how do you, do you do the randori? Do you use a crash pad to get in reps? Do you, like, what do you recommend?

• 46:33Speaker 01

  So I guess there's two recreational people that we're talking about. One is somebody who wants to learn judo and become good at judo, but don't, doesn't necessarily want to compete, but just wants to get better. And I think that there's not enough emphasis in this country on

• 46:48Lex Fridman?

  On just that.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  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. Where you can get very physically strong, very physically fit. Technically, you'll be better than somebody that does randori more than you. Because you're moved, if you learn good technique and you learn the movement and you learn the feel and you move the, learn the timing,

• 47:32Speaker 01

  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, hour class.

• 47:55Lex Fridman?

  Just a good workout.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  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, a specific set of, of, or 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.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Control the movement, initiate the reactions from your opponent and then have the opportunity to attack and score. And, and I think that when people train with, or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo, all of a sudden, the first thing they say is, I can't attack. I don't know how to attack. Cause 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, 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.

• 49:03Lex Fridman?

  So you really, even for recreational competitors, you really need to have a gripping system. You need to understand the gripping system.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  If you want to win.

• 49:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  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, I enjoy the, the.

• 49:20Lex Fridman?

  I, I don't even know if it's the winning or the losing. I don't, I, I think this is what, cause I competed a lot in both judo and jiu jitsu. And in judo, it feels like, cause I didn't have a gripping system. It, it feels like you're not even playing judo against the, the good black belts. You're, they're just, they're not, they're not even trying because they have, they get a certain kind of grip and you just can't do anything. And I don't have a good answer for that. I don't even know what I'm looking for. And so it's not even, it's not like even losing. It's, it's like, um, I don't know. It's like you didn't even show up to play is what it feels like. And it's unfortunate. And I, I

• 49:59Lex Fridman?

  think that is a big gap in knowledge, actually, in, um, judo schools is, is the gripping part.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  When you first go out to, to do judo, right? You, your first thing you have to do is you have to grab your opponent, right? And a lot of times I hear coaches say, get a grip. Just take a grip. Well, sometimes if you take a grip, you're in a worse position than not having a grip at all. And that's what a lot of people don't understand. Like if you hold the gi 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.

• 50:35Lex Fridman?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Right? So that's and the way you grip does set up what attacks you can do as well. So that is a huge part, and I'm not saying that you have to be 100% disciplined and only always out grip your opponent and only be able to do throws when you have a superior grip. I'm just saying that to be able to put the grips together with the throws and understand the movements is going to make you that much ahead of the game.

• 50:58Lex Fridman?

  So if we take a step to our previous discussion of going from zero to hero. So going from the, the early days through the teenage years to winning an Olympic medal. So we mentioned a lot of training, the dedication of the training, the competing. What other elements are there? The mental side is visualization, believing that you could perform at that level. So what else can you say about?

• 51:27Speaker 01

  I think that comes at the highest level, the visualization, the success that comes at the highest level. I think in the teen years, um, there's the experience plays a huge role in getting to train with other people like as Americans, we have to go train in Europe. We have to feel the European style of Judo. We have to understand that physicality. They, they grip very differently. They, 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. Um, and then you also need to get that physicality. You need to be physical, you know, strong and

• 52:10Speaker 01

  hard, I would say, by doing all those rounds with the Europeans. And at the same time, you need to go to Asia and you need to train in, in, in Japan because you need to feel that free flowing Judo for your technicals, the 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, to England with Neil Adams, who was an Olympic silver medalist and was a world champion and had a great ground game and was good at gripping and actually did Taio Toshi, which is the throw I did. So my dad said, I want you to go learn from Neil and I ended up going to. To England, probably eight to 10 times in my career and spending a good amount of time there, training at the Neil Adams Academy.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  He's now the voice of Judo, Neil Adams.

• 52:56Lex Fridman?

  What do you make of that guy? Just a brief pause. He's like the, like Morgan Freeman is the voice of like March of the Penguins and any other nature documentary. And Neil Adams is a, there's very few sports that have a Neil Adams, I would say, because he's legitimately, maybe like Joe Rogan is that from mixed martial arts. It's just like an exceptionally recognizable voice. He's really knowledgeable. Also, the passion is conveyed so well. Like many times I'll watch just because he's talking.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:26Lex Fridman?

  So who is he? Since you've gotten the chance to, to train with him, to learn from him, who's Neil Adams?

• 53:31Speaker 01

  He's a great friend of mine.

• 53:33Lex Fridman?

  He is?

• 53:34Speaker 01

  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 Jujikatami and the way that I do Jujikatami. 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, I trained with him many times and over the years, he's, he was a mentor. Great person, you know, cares, cares about people, cares about, you know, the sport of Judo. Had a good little club that was a fitness club and you know, had, it was, it was Judo, it was fitness. It, it, you know, used to go there. I'd show up at that place at like seven in the morning and the first thing we would

• 54:19Speaker 01

  do is we'd go for a run. And we'd either be running mountains or we'd be doing a five mile run or we'd be doing something at the park. We were doing sprints and buddy carries and all this stuff. And then at nine AM, we'd have a technical session with Neil Adams where he would, you know, for an hour and a half, we would drill techniques and learn positions and it was no Randori. It was that sequential drilling that we talked about before, right? Where you're reinforcing your, your two or three attacks to set up your main attack or if you're on the ground, you're going through repetitions of certain movements. And then I'd spend all afternoon at the club, have lunch. I'd go do my weight training in the afternoon at that, at that place. And then in the evening, we would either do Randori training at the Neil Adams Club

• 55:02Speaker 01

  or we'd all get in a car and we'd drive to another, another location. You know, and we'd go train at another club that might be an hour away and there'd be, you know, 50 bodies there to train with and each night we'd go to a different dojo. And so it would be all day at the club and I'd do that for like three weeks straight. You know, all we do was train.

• 55:19Lex Fridman?

  Do you know how he became the voice of judo? Do you have an understanding of what his thinking is around like how much he dedicates 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?

• 55:44Speaker 01

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

• 56:27Speaker 01

  And I think he had a coaching stint somewhere else as well. Didn't have a lot of success coaching in the sport with athletes, not at the highest level, had a great national team and things like that. He was really good at, at teaching his technique to others because he, he helped me a lot. But running a program, I think was difficult for him. You know, the boys 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, he's very cerebral. He just, he, he loves judo. He, he looked, researches it nonstop.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 57:24Lex Fridman?

  Can I ask you a small, before we return to the actual sport, the coaching of the sport, it's a bit of a political question. I did a whole rant before Travis episode.

• 57:37Lex Fridman?

  I love Neil Adams' voice. I love watching Judo. And it's really disappointing to me that the IOC and whoever's 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's matches. I can't wa-- 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 Bishov 2012 match. And it was like, one minute of, like, a small overlay of the video as we're talking through it,

• 58:19Lex Fridman?

  like, stepping through it, and it got taken down immediately from YouTube, 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. They're not showing it through their own service, like NBC Olympics or so on. There's just so many great human stories that the Olympics reveals. They're just not made easily accessible.

• 59:00Lex Fridman?

  That's the Olympics Charter, is 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?

• 59:28Speaker 01

  So you can't go on the International Judo Federation website right now and watch any of the Olympic footage?

• 59:33Lex Fridman?

  No. No. No.

• 59:37Lex Fridman?

  So the only thing they have is for certain, for example, Teddy Renee match, he lost. Not available anywhere. Really? And that's like a dramatic thing. So the, 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, I'm going to go like, I'm going to try to prevent myself from going on a rant. But, you know, people don't just want to see a, a two minute highlight of a historic moment. They want to see the buildup where the athlete is standing, the nerves, the fear, the confidence. You see the buildup to the event, say it's a gymnastic, whatever floor routine.

• 1:00:22Lex Fridman?

  Like their name is announced, they're walking the coat, then they cut to the coach and the coach with anticipation. And then go to the athlete, you want the full 10 minute thing. You don't want a two minute highlight of what happened like last second or whatever. It, it, it's just like the magic of that full story. Like a lifetime building up to those 10 minutes. Right? That, that's the magic of the Olympics, that both the drama and the triumph that happens in those moments. And the fact that you can't relive that.

• 1:00:54Lex Fridman?

  Like Travis had a bunch of those, right? Like he, he had a bunch of times he faced like world champions. Right. He won and lost and, and just, it's always close. It's always dramatic. Right, right, right. And none of those are available, except like may, maybe, um, the one where he be, uh, arm barred or whatever the submission was, I forgot. The choke. The choke, the, yeah, the, the Georgian. But most things are not, uh, Usain Bolt, the full races, not all of his races are available online. 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.

• 1:01:37Lex Fridman?

  So like, but that, the fact that it's not super easily accessible, if you're willing to pay money even, but probably should be for free. Is, it's heartbreaking to me because to me, the Olympics is like some of the best of humanity. Just like, again, the hardship they have to overcome. So like the losses are really powerful. Sure. Cause it's such heartbreak, but it's also like. The triumph.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Well, you're losing history.

• 1:02:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  You're losing history is what you are of, of, of all the magical moments of your sport. Right? It, it's, it's a, it's a sin. Um, I gotta blame it on television rights and, and, and money. That's what it comes down to. You're talking billions and billions of dollars of, 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, it's what it comes down to, you know, I, I made a, I made a, uh, DVD or, you know, a video when I first retired from the sport. It was called Fury on the Mat. It was kind of my story, right?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  And I did it with a friend, um, who was a videographer and we grabbed a bunch of my old footage and Olympic footage and somebody said to me, you know, you can't use that Olympic footage. And, you know, I was young and I had just retired. I said, what do you mean I can't use the Olympic footage? It's not, it's not the television footage. It's my buddy who filmed it with his own camera. It's my footage.

• 1:03:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  You know, and they said, no, if it has Olympics in it or it's anything to do with the Olympics, the USOC owns it.

• 1:03:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  I said, okay, well, they said, well, you should get to send it to them and let them, you know, review it. So I sent it to them and I got a, I got a bill back. I got a thing back that said, if you want to use this footage, it's going to be like $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.

• 1:03:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  And then I said, come on, I, I, I went back and I negotiated with them, but at the end of the day, I still had to pay like $15,000 just to have a few minutes of footage in my own film.

• 1:03:36Lex Fridman?

  This is.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, you wouldn't even have that film if I didn't compete in it, you know, like you can't, you know? So that was a, it was a struggle.

• 1:03:45Lex Fridman?

  This is the difference. Like you have the same in, uh, jujitsu. There's certain organizations, IBJ, IBJJF or like flow grappling and flow wrestling. I understand, I think when it's a business, it might make sense. First of all, you should actually be good at being a business and making money, which is why for me, the IOC doesn't make sense. Like it should be accessible, but it would cost money. If I can't buy it, like would I have to email them for this footage and pay $30,000? No, but the question is, like, the way you run a business is you make that frictionless. Whatever the money is, $30,000 or $30, you make it frictionless and easy to pay that money.

• 1:04:27Lex Fridman?

  But anyway, I understand why that might be the case with Flow Grappling. But to me, the Olympics is a special thing.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:04:34Lex Fridman?

  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 Fury and the Mat, to do their own story, or like on a podcast to talk about the most tragic moment of their career. It, do you have a sense of how that could be fixed or no?

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  The only thing I could think of is, you know, 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 why the money starts here. I gotta believe there has to be a way to get that footage that should be accessible to the sports themselves. I'm surprised it's not, but if it's not, then it's because of dollars. You know, it's because people aren't, the sport itself is not willing to pay enough money to have it on its, you know, accessible to its audience.

• 1:05:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  It's too cost prohibitive for them to do it.

• 1:05:51Lex Fridman?

  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 that could be made on the replay. This is what people don't understand is, do you know how many times? Just the tens of millions of times that people watch individual events years from now. You watch like all the videos on YouTube, they're still getting plays. Hundreds of millions of views on stuff that happened 10 years ago, 15 years ago. That's really powerful and there's a lot of opportunity to make a ton of money.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:06:35Lex Fridman?

  So it's not that they're necessarily greedy. They're also just not good at being greedy.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  I get what you're saying, 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, you know, online access to information. It's not hard, right? Because everybody's doing it now, but it's not typical.

• 1:06:58Lex Fridman?

  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, I hope that they will just release it. And for money, for whatever, but release it and have that history not be erased, right?

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  It'd be wonderful if athletes would be, could buy, you know, even if you could buy your own footage, you can't use it commercially, you can't. But you can, you can buy your own matches and have them available for yourself or package the, you know, the footage, it would be, it'd be awesome.

• 1:07:44Lex Fridman?

  Thank you for that. That is quite heartbreaking for me, so I wanted to talk about it a little bit.

• 1:07:51Lex Fridman?

  Let's go to you as an athlete, real quick.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:07:55Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  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 had 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 medalists at that Olympics in Barcelona were all guys that I had beat. In fact, two of them I was undefeated against in my entire career. The Brazilian and the Cuban I had never lost to. So that's when I knew I was capable of being, you know, on the podium at the Olympic Games.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  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 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,

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  my uncles, my aunts, everybody, everybody was in the stands, right? So it was like the Jimmy Pedro day. And I'm getting goosebumps right now talking about it. But it was a match against the Brazilian for the bronze medal. I had beaten the Brazilian like two or three times before that. I found myself down in the match. He actually countered me. I came in my Taotoshi and he was waiting for it and he countered me and he scored a Yuko against me. So I was losing the fight. Came down to about the last minute in the match and I was just tucking in my gi and fixing my thing, gathering my thoughts together and the whole crowd just started chanting, "USA, USA, USA."

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  And I like literally like got so much energy. I walked out there, I grabbed the guy, I came in my taletosh again. He stepped off the taletosh, I threw him a tuchimata free pone.

• 1:10:39Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  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, won at that Games, but it was like a magical moment that defined my career and solidified myself in like history where, hey, now I get to step up on the Olympic podium and I'm an Olympic medalist. And to me, that was my defining moment. And after that, I was sold. Like then 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.

• 1:11:18Lex Fridman?

  In your career, the, 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?

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:11:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  But I live for those moments when you do win. And what excited me the most in my career and my, when I was, um, competing was I loved being in the finals. I love the spotlight being on me. I, I can't think of too many times in my career. Of course there were a few, but there weren't too many times where the chips were down. Like the lights were on and I didn't win like it was. I might have lost early in the day and didn't make it to the finals or didn't make it to the medal rounds. But like in my career, I have a ton of golds. I have a ton of bronzes, which means the lights are on and I won. And I have very few silvers and very few fifths.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  So I either lost in the early rounds and didn't make to the medal 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 won. You know what I mean? So I just loved that moment. I didn't feel pressure. I love the crowd. I love 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 love that moment.

• 1:12:57Lex Fridman?

  So your dad was your coach?

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  You had to get to meet him tonight.

• 1:13:03Lex Fridman?

  Oh, great.

• 1:13:07Lex Fridman?

  He's, he's kind of a legend in the sport. So how has your dad helped you as a coach, as an athlete, as a human being throughout the years?

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  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 you're fat right to your face. He wants you to get better. He wants you to be healthy.

• 1:13:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Doesn't want you to die of obesity. It's just the way he is. If you didn't do well, he will, will not sugarcoat it. He will let you know what you didn't do right and what he's. So he's the ultimate litmus test.

• 1:13:42Lex Fridman?

  Yes.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  Right? 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, and always, you know, look for the, what's next.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  In terms of training, I think that he's probably the most brilliant human when it comes to preparing an athlete physically, not to say mentally, physically for success. When all the chips are down, that athlete will be ready that day and he has a system of training and preparing and getting the athlete to peak for performance.

• 1:14:32Lex Fridman?

  You mean like conditioning, like the whole thing?

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:14:35Lex Fridman?

  Okay, because I remember like vaguely remember Kayla Harrison talking about her preparation being very difficult.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:14:46Lex Fridman?

  That's him?

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's him. Say, you go back and ask Rhonda Rousey about her career, right? My dad was her coach.

• 1:14:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  My dad moved her to Camp Camp New Hampshire in Boston, got her up, ran her in the morning, had her downstairs in the basement of his house, training with the weights. We brought a Russian girl in, she did throws on his cement outside with a little crash bag.

• 1:15:09Lex Fridman?

  Nice.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Threw 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 to 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 flaw or 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.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

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

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  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 in strategy, how to beat, how to beat opponents and putting game plans together. So combined, the two of us made an unbelievable team.

• 1:16:47Lex Fridman?

  So he, he's not gonna let the athlete be soft when they, 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?

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's got to be a seed in that athlete's brain, something they want to do, right? Nobody, nobody can quickly get there, right? It's a long process, but if your goal, if you're a national champion or you've proven yourself to win it in some international tournaments, and you think the Olympics is a possibility for you, then defining it as, hey, I want to be on the Olympic team, that would be the first step into, you know, into 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 an Olympic medalist. I want to be an Olympic champion. I want to go to the Olympics. World team member, maybe junior world team member, whatever it is, we, we walk before we go to the highest level.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  But if the goal is to go to the Olympics, let's, let's accomplish these other things first, right? Because if we, if we can accomplish these other things, then we're on our way to getting to the ultimate goal, which is the Olympics. For somebody like Kayla, for example, you know, she didn't, she didn't say that she wanted to be Olympic champion, you know, when she first came here in 2005, right? We wanted to become national champion, then we wanted to be on the world team, then we wanted to be a world medalist. Then we, our sights were set on the Olympics or the Olympic gold, you know? So it's having those clearly defined goals that are attainable. Like they, they should be a reach, they should be a stretch, but they have to be attainable. They can't be just a pipe dream, you know?

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  But once you put it to paper and you think it's achievable, then it's, it's mapping the plan to get there.

• 1:18:46Lex Fridman?

  Is there a daily process of visualizing yourself as an Olympic champion or national champion?

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. You should do it either every night before you go to bed, or every, before every training session, or after every training session. One of those three times it should, or first thing you wake up in the morning, because it may be to help some people, it motivates them to go do what it is they're supposed to do in the day.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  But the process of visualization 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 gonna have at the Olympics. So whatever it is you're trying to do, let's say the Olympic day, for example. Picture yourself making weight, picture yourself, who you're around, eating your breakfast, you know, having maybe saying a few jokes, laughing. This is a real day. Make it real.

• 1:19:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Going back and getting, packing your judo bag for the day, you know, getting on the bus, driving to the venue. Feel what it's like walking into the stadium, you know, for the first time, going to the warm-up area. Seeing your draw up on the, you know, on the sheet, who you're gonna fight that day. Watching yourself warm up, go through your warm-up routine. Walking out of the chute, you know, into the venue, going to do that first fight. Picture the moment of throwing your opponent, coming off the mat, high-fiving the coach, getting ready for your second fight. Like, live the day from start to finish and make it as real as possible. You know, where all the way to the moment where you've just won and you're raising your arms in celebration.

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  You're bowing, you're hugging your opponent, you come off the mat, you hug your coach. You're running around the stadium with the flag, you know, you stepped up on the podium, you heard your name. Olympic champion, Jimmy Pedro, like, you heard the moment. The medal 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?

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  When you do that enough times, I feel that like pathways get created for you. So that when your, your body gets to that moment, and I've been here before. This is it. This is my moment. This is what I've pictured my whole life. I'm not nervous. Cause 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 kinda like hope.

• 1:21:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:21:57Lex Fridman?

  And one thing that, uh, I talked to Travis a bit about this. Uh, you probably worked with him on, uh, on the details of what you're talking about. But he said that you should really, like, focus on visualizing like the sensations you feel. So like, say if you're drinking coffee or something like that, you're not thinking about like, like observing yourself from a third person perspective, drinking coffee. Like, you're, you're thinking of how your hand will feel when it touches something warm. Like you tried to replay the actual sensations you would feel, right? So it, it sounds, uh, kinda strange, but meaning like you really wanna put yourself in the body

• 1:22:41Lex Fridman?

  as you would experience those moments, as opposed to like watching yourself on TV experiencing those moments. Like really be inside. And yeah, so that means sensations, like how does it feel when you grip a gi? How does it, you know, um, the, yeah, the, the, the sweating, just the sensation of sweat, like rolling down your forehead or whatever, like all of those actual feelings.

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  When I explain it to you, like, I guess my body has been through, through it so many times, both in my mind and in reality, that it brings back all of those same emotions. I start to get goosebumps. My, my armpits start to sweat. Like I'm living it if it's real.

• 1:23:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  I'm reliving it now, but I, in your, when you're going through the visualization process, it has to be that real. The, the smells, the, the, the taping of the fingers, like, the more colorful and the more real you can make it. The more believable it is.

• 1:23:38Lex Fridman?

  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?

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  All hundred percent, hundred percent, because I just know with my own life, my own, my own experiences like I, like my wife sometimes says to me, she says, well, where do you see yourself in like, you know, five years from now? And five years ago, I had said to her, you know, I want to have my own business. I want to have, you know, I, 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. Uh, that's a big number, like for, like for me or for the normal person, that like, that's a really big number. You know what I mean? Like it's not, especially when you're not making that much at the time. It's a super big number, right?

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  So having those goals for yourself, like it, it, it won't happen and it's not possible unless you dream it's possible. And think it that it's possible and then it doesn't magically happen. And maybe it doesn't happen in five years, maybe happens in 10, but at least you're on the path to getting there. You know what I mean? And I said, I want to own my own business. I want to ha- control my own destiny. I want to be my own boss. I want to make my own decisions. Like these are the things that I told her I wanted to do and, and now I'm at that point. You know, where, you know, I work for myself. I have my own company. I have partners, obviously, but like, if I want to pick up and go somewhere for a week, I just do. I don't have to ask permission to do it. Right? That, that's what life, freedom, right? That's what I'd like. It's so.

• 1:25:20Lex Fridman?

  And all, all of it starts with a dream.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  In, in the same with my dojo, when I first opened, so I ran a dojo for a long time and I only had 60 students always. Like 40 to 60 students had fluctuated. And I sit there and say, why can't I get more people on my door? Right? So I hired consultants to come in and look at my business and say, why? Right? And they came in and said, well, this place is really intimidating. Like if I was coming in off the street, the first thing I see is this big Olympic champion on the wall. And I see this training that's going on and these guys are flying through the air and landing hard. And as a white belt, you're telling me that's the class for me? Like, no way. I'm not gonna do that. So like I listened to 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 an hour and a half or two hours training when they're first walking in the door.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  So I had to restructure all my programming. I had to look at the way I was offering my, my curriculum at my school and I had to make levels for everybody, right? Like, here's my four to six year old class. Here's my six to 13 year old class. There's, here's my, all my beginner classes. They don't mix in with the advanced people and I, you know, and I had to learn how to make it accessible for everybody instead of just the, the, the people that wanted to train hard. And then the challenge was, okay, if you can have a lot of people in your dojo training, it's a recreational school. You can't produce champions at that same school. That's what I was told. So then I got all my black belts together and I said, listen, this is my vision. This is what I want.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  I want to have a club that has over 200 Judo only athletes, no Jiu Jitsu, no karate, nothing. Judo only. I want over 200 people. And in the, inside of that dojo, I want to have Olympic champions. And I want to have recreational, like little kids, five and six years old, older guys in their seventies training. 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 gonna do this. Define the roles, who's gonna be the recreational coach? Who's gonna be the competitive coach? How do we separate these programs? And low and behold, that was my vision that I shared with all of them. And that was back in 2006. And by 2012, we've got Olympic champion Kayla Harrison.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:27:43Lex Fridman?

  Believing that it's possible. I don't know, but I personally have, uh, on top of that.

• 1:27:51Lex Fridman?

  Almost like very specific visions of a future. Like, I don't know what, because I don't want to give actual examples.

• 1:28:01Lex Fridman?

  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, and with Johnny Ive, who's the lead designer in Apple, like you want that dream, that little flame to not. People will put that flame out too easily, even people that love you. So I have very specific kind of visions, like maybe for Travis, it would be like

• 1:28:42Lex Fridman?

  a specific opponent or something like Ole Bishov, 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 Bishov or something like, maybe visualize that. For me, that helps because it makes it all real, even more real. It's not like some big goal, like a million dollars or something like that, which is also really important to have because you can measure it and so on. But the, it's, it's just like you belong in those situations. Just believing you belong.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 1:29:21Lex Fridman?

  In there. It's not the.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  It could be you.

• 1:29:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it could be you. And that for some reason, that really helps me, the, the little details.

• 1:29:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:29:29Lex Fridman?

  Like visualizing, 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.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Correct. And I think a lot of people overestimate who others are.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  Right? And don't and and sell themselves too short.

• 1:29:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Because at the end of the day, everybody started like everybody else, really. I mean, we did, you know, we're all infants. We couldn't walk, we couldn't talk, we couldn't do anything. We learned along the way, but and I think that's the one thing that I realized is that, and I tell this to my athletes, but I also tell it to my recreational students. Nobody is better than you are. Nobody, unless you allow them to be, right? If you really want something to happen, then like map the plan,

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  believe in yourself, decide and know full out. You're gonna fail a lot. You're gonna get beat down. You're gonna have losses. You're gonna have struggles like, and I think that's the one thing with social media today is that everybody sees everybody succeed. Nobody posts the picture when they're on the ground and fail, you're losing. Like, nobody, nobody sees when you broke your arm and you had to go through rehab, you know, whatever it is, like had your injuries and you're on your couch watching TV and you were suffering and you were like, everybody has really, really dark, bad moments in their life and defeats and losses and suffrage. And it's only at the end after they've recovered from all of that, they've re-climbed up the mountain and they've gone to the pinnacle that you see them on social media with the medal.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Right? But everybody else like struggles and was human and failed many, many times. And, you know, convincing yourself that you're capable, I think, is the first start of everything.

• 1:31:25Lex Fridman?

  Do you need people in your life that believe in you or should most of it come from within yourself?

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  I think most of it has to come in from, it certainly helps, but it has to come from you first. You have to be driven, like other people can help you define where you want to go and help you get there and encourage you and can support you and, you know, whether it's resource wise or with connections and like they can help with that path. But that, that first part has to come from you. It has to be your passion, your desire, your, it's your commitment to yourself. You're the one that's gonna 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.

• 1:32:12Lex Fridman?

  Let me ask you about Travis, Kayla, and maybe a few of the other athletes you've been involved with. So first Travis. Travis Stevens, Olympic silver medalist, three-time Olympian, 2008, 2012, 2016. What makes Travis Stevens great? What makes him so successful? What makes him unique in your mind as an athlete? Through all the hardship he had to overcome, through his weird-looking saynagi 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?

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  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 U23 Elite. And I picked, handpicked 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, you know, he's an 81 kilo player. I think he was maybe like 18 years old, 17, 18 years old.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  And it was a really hard European event. And I think Travis won three matches and he lost two. But what stood out the most to me was like, the fight he had in him. He was scrapping every fight. Like, he scrapped hard. Like, he wanted to win more than any of them, right? He didn't win, but he wanted to win more. And I, and I noticed that right away. And then I also noticed that after he lost his second match and he was eliminated from the tournament, I saw how disappointed he was in himself. Like, he actually thought he was supposed to beat those people, even though he was like 17, right? And he's fighting against grown men that are, you know, a high-level judo, much higher than he was. And I said to him, I said, "Hey, son," like... Don't worry, man. You got a long career ahead of you. Like, I'm glad you're disappointed,

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  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, did you ever hear of this kid Travis Stevens? He says, no, why? I said, man, that kid's got some fight in him, right? And I said that. I said that to Jason at the time. I said, that kid's got some fight in him, man. He's pretty talented. You know, and that's how it started. But so I saw that in him 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 that's how he wins, he'll go put his head through the wall. He'll do whatever it takes

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  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, they'd 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 might as well go learn jiu-jitsu and get good on the ground, right? Because I can. You know, so he always found a way and no matter what obstacle was in his way, he just went around it.

• 1:36:27Lex Fridman?

  So what about the, it'd 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 he had to overcome? Specifically, like, you just observing this creature that you've coached. I mean, he seems to not see the injuries as a problem. He's just like, just like you said, head through the wall. It's like, what, like, when I, when we were talking about injuries, he kinda, he doesn't even see the injuries themselves as the problem. Because he thinks that the injuries, you know, you heal back stronger.

• 1:37:08Lex Fridman?

  I forget the exact quote, but he said like, "My body is now less injury prone than most of anyone else."

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Because I've already broken everything.

• 1:37:17Lex Fridman?

  I've 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, he's just, that's part of the job, and he gets the job done. But like, that job involves a lot of injuries.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  One of the talks I gave Travis and that team at that, at that particular tournament, was at the very beginning of the camp, after the tournament, I said to them, "Listen, my, 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, that is ready to kick ass." And in order to get there, all of you guys can be a part of this team and part of this process. But in order to get there, you guys have to be the first ones to practice. You have to be the last ones to leave, because we have to work harder than the rest of the world, because we're up against all odds. I said, "I am sick of America being a laughingstock of judo and being the first round, easy match, warm-up for everybody else."

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  I said, if you get injured, you're not going to be on the side with, with, you know, with a ice bag on, taking off rounds and then get back on the mat the next day and tell me you're okay. If you can train the next day, you can train today. So there's no injury. The only time you're leaving this dojo is if the ambulance has to take you out of here. You know, I, and I do think subliminally Travis bought into that message and heard that message then. Said, if I'm going to be a champ, then that's the way I'm going to do it. And he did. And he, he embodied it. He lived it. Man, there were many times in Europe where I said, dude, just tape it up or go off to the side. Just take the day off. Like take the rest of the day off. You're beat up. You can't do it. He said, no, no, I'm going to tape it up. I'm going to tape it up. I said, no, you don't need to right now. And he said, no, sensei, I'm doing it.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  You know, the ambulance isn't taking me out. It's just my, it's just my wrist. It's just my ankle. It's just my.

• 1:39:33Lex Fridman?

  It's just my ankle. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. What about the, so the other really big thing is you comment on a little bit is the weight cut. So early in his career, he was 81 kg. And that was presumably not so difficult, but later in his career, he is 81 kg and it's becoming more and more difficult. So that's, that's the other thing with him. Is, uh, so I've known a lot of really, really tough people at the highest levels broken by the weight cut. Like that can break the toughest minds and it doesn't seem to have broken him. And he's delivered on it often on like insane weight cuts. So, um,

• 1:40:18Lex Fridman?

  just as a coach, what do you think about his particular, his mind and the challenge of the weight cut?

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  It was part of his process. It was part of his way of getting ready for battle.

• 1:40:28Lex Fridman?

  Suffering?

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really was. And if I'm going to suffer this much, then I'm going to 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 at the tournament nine kilos over. And like, you have to, but I never, it, 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,

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  As a professional, my job is to make weight. If I don't make weight, he, you know, he, he was never gonna allow that to happen and he was never gonna allow us to come to him and say, hey, I told you, you know, cause he, losing wasn't an option, making a weight wasn't, not making weight was not an option for him ever either. But, you know, a lot of times, he wouldn't even, he'd be nine kilos over on the plane going over to the tournament and have to make weight three days later. You know, and he didn't break eighty-six kilos until the day before the tournament. Like he had five kilos over the day before. That was his way. But he would do three workouts, you know, wake up in the morning, work out, then he'd eat, then he'd work out in the afternoon, then he'd eat again, then he'd, he'd work out again at night.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  And then he'd reward himself, hey, I worked out three times today. He'd go have a, you know, a, a Mountain Dew.

• 1:41:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  You know, or a chocolate bar, you know, and then his next morning, he's, you know, back up to eighty-seven and he would never touch weight until the morning of lands. That, that's a, when he, that, he, he wasn't on weight for more than like five minutes.

• 1:42:12Lex Fridman?

  His process would break a lot of people. So the fact that he got the job done is.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  Not just the job done, but every single time.

• 1:42:19Lex Fridman?

  Every single time.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  He got the job done. And I made those athletes fight. We would fight in Paris. We would do a camp for a week, double session camp for a week. He'd be seven kilos over, have to fight the next weekend. We're talking two or three days later. You know, so not only did he make the weight, but he did a grueling training camp twice a day and, and, 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, cause on the tour around the world, they fought in every event, they did every camp, they fought in every event.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  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 a hundred percent when they fight in Germany. But that's all part of the experience they need, the training that they need that they don't get here in this country. And all of those were just preparation for our world championships or our Olympic Games. So by the time our athletes got to those tournaments, they felt so strong, so rested, so like,

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  man, this guy that felt like a monster in Germany feels like nothing today. Because you're fully rested now, you know?

• 1:43:50Lex Fridman?

  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 for, to do the weight cut, to do the diet, to do the preparation or the recovery, there's, like, that process changes every time. So you basically have to improvise a lot.

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:44:15Lex Fridman?

  You show up to a hotel and how you do the weight cut, you don't know. And the different weather conditions, it's not, it's like, what is it, Rocky versus Drago, right?

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:26Lex Fridman?

  So you don't have, you have to just improvise. And that's also a fascinating part of the American judo story, which is like, you have to improvise more.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  Well, it was funny because when I, it was 1990, you know, 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 swim team. And it was me and Jason Morris on the American team. And we're going to the judo competition, but we're on the bus with the swim team. I'm sorry, we're going to the venue where we're staying. You know, I remember being like by ourselves with no staff, no, no, no manager, no coach. We're just by ourselves going to fight in Russia, right? And

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  And the swim team's on there with their full sweats and their staff and like their managers. And I, I heard the lady, the girl go, I'm 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 a massage therapist to my room at Tanya M? You know, I'm feeling kind of jet lag.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Me and Jason looked at each other like, she, she's scheduled on a massage?

• 1:45:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  What do you have a staff? Like what the hell is going on here? You know, what a difference in

• 1:45:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Sporting, you know, different sports within the same country, you know, and

• 1:45:40Lex Fridman?

  But that, I mean, not to romanticize things, but that you do represent the spirit of the Olympics when you're kind of the, the improvisational nature of it. Cause it, it is just you, you and sometimes you and the coach and just pure guts.

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:57Lex Fridman?

  And you against the world with no money.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  The warrior spirit.

• 1:46:01Lex Fridman?

  The warrior spirit.

• 1:46:04Lex Fridman?

  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?

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Electric. Uh, like, first of all, in 2012 in London, it was like, it, it felt like somebody died. I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna lie to you, like

• 1:46:35Lex Fridman?

  The Ole Bishoff match?

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  Not, no, just seeing Travis not finish on the podium, period. You know, in the Ole Bishoff match, I thought he won regardless of who won and who lost. He just left everything he had on that mat, right? 10 minutes of, uh, probably it was a 20 something minute match, but 10 minutes of fighting actually, right? Um, he left everything he had. He wanted to be in the Olympic finals. He wanted to be Olympic champion. And when he didn't get that opportunity, he lost everything. He, he drained himself. He cried for forty five minutes straight. I couldn't regroup him. I couldn't get him up. 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.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  And so when he walked out against the Canadian boy, he had beaten the Canadian, I think, at that time, he had beaten that Canadian every single time. Except for that bronze medal match. But he just didn't have the fight in him anymore. You know, he'd left it all in the match, in the Bischoff match. So to see him come back with zero, right? We just had a team where his best friend, Marty Malloy, won a bronze medal, right? Then, the day after Travis fights, Kayla Harrison goes and wins her first gold medal, right? Our first ever gold. So we have a gold and a bronze. His, his training partner wins a gold, his best friend from growing up wins a bronze. He has nothing, right? To see him for four years, go through hell, like, literally, like, all of his injuries, every training camp,

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:48:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  Who's this Travis guy?

• 1:48:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  You know, who is this guy? You know, so, he didn't medal, you know, he's not that important, and, you know, up until, right, till you get to the, right before the Olympics, now they talk about, he's an Olympian again, and, but up until that point, and then every little kid, see Kayla's medal. Oh, Travis, yeah, you went to the Olympics. How, where's your medal? How did you do? You know, he was, I took fifth, I didn't place. You know, it's, it's the lowest of low, every day having that constant reminder. So, four years later, when that guy, I mean, mentally, he was ready. Physically, he was ready. That was the best and strongest Travis Davens that I've ever seen and I've ever felt.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  Like, because I had to get on the mat and do some drills and stuff like that, and like, try to defend arm bars and, because we didn't have a lot of bodies in, in Rio, and I was like, my God, he's, I said after one of the practices, this is the strongest I've ever felt that guy, right? Before the competitions, physically was ready. Mentally, the morning of competition, I said to Travis, I, I looked him in the eye and I said, you know, we're ready to go over to the venue. I said, are you ready today? And he just looked at me like he goes, I am gonna shock the world today. So he told him, I'm gonna shock the world today. And I said, alright, great, let's go, right? So we go to the venue and um every other athlete was just like nervously, like doing repetitions of Uchi Komis.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

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

• 1:49:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:57Speaker 01

  And and he's like, and this is in the middle of the judo hall where all these athletes are warming up for their first match. He's like dancing around, like doing this loose warm up, like almost like a little kid at an amusement park. Who's dad said, yeah, go play, you know? And it was like he had waited four years for that moment. He was so relaxed.

• 1:50:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  So focused, so relaxed and couldn't wait. It was like a caged tiger. Like if you like coming out of the chute to go step on to the to the mat. Was like this tiger that you were just letting out of the cage and he just go. Like now's your time to go fight. And that's what he did that whole day. And like, when he beat Chirikishvili in in the in the semis and choked him out and won that fight. Like, there's nobody, with the exception of maybe the guys on the American team. There was nobody in that stadium that expected Travis to beat him.

• 1:50:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  Nobody.

• 1:50:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Like, you know, he had smashed Travis, I don't know how many times before that free pole. Like in the first minute even, it wasn't even a fight, right? And and it was great game plan.

• 1:51:02Lex Fridman?

  He's the world number one at the time, too.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  World number one at the time, uh world champion, carried the flag for the Georgian Federation walking into the games. Uh, the most dominant ninety, uh eighty-one kilo player in that weight class for, you know, quite some time and. And 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, Kayla had already won her second gold. Right? The way the, the, the, the event went and Travis winning that was like icing on the cake for our team. That was the best performance we've ever had in history. It's awesome.

• 1:51:43Lex Fridman?

  So you mentioned Kayla. She is one of, if not the greatest American judoka ever. Uh, two-time gold medalist.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  Two thousand and ten world champion.

• 1:51:55Lex Fridman?

  Two thousand and ten.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  For senior worlds.

• 1:51:57Lex Fridman?

  Senior worlds. What makes Kayla special? What makes her so great? What made this champion?

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  It's a combination of, of a lot of things. One was obviously Kayla's mental toughness, right? To, to overcome what she overcame, you know, this is a girl who,

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  you know, let, let's, I don't know, see if I get about the sexual abuse, but the, the fact that she had to go through that in life and, and learned how to compartmentalize that and keep that off as a separate part of her brain, you know, and forget about it and move on. That took a, an incredible team to help her do that. And my dad was a huge part of her accomplishing that.

• 1:52:41Lex Fridman?

  So for people who don't know, we should comment and say that Kayla had to go through trauma in her earlier life through sexual abuse and had to overcome that through the whole process of, of becoming a champion as well.

• 1:52:55Speaker 01

  Right. She, 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, right? So she, she was traumatized, obviously, for, and getting her the right help and surrounding her with the right people who could help her get through that and, and be by her side as she's getting through that. And letting her know and reaffirming that she's doing the right thing and she made the right decision. And she should have zero guilt and, you know, this doesn't define her. It happened to her, but it doesn't define her. What defines her is what she does from now on. And then rebuilding that person to become who she became. I think the mental toughness is, is a big part of it, her, her, her mind.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  Um, but then as an athlete.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  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, 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 gonna work. In a way, you're gonna get bigger and stronger, you're gonna work harder and you're gonna 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,

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  training here at my school, so she got the benefit of all the best guys to train with in the country. You know, and, and her doing all of those rounds, you know, night in, week, night, every night, every week, every year, compiled with the best, you know, highest level she could as a girl. She got the strength, she got the technique, she got the, and then she had the coaching on top of it with my dad being on her as, you know, working her out and, you know, having the, the wherewithal to develop a strategy and a plan for her, because when she first came here, she competed at 63 kilos, which is 138 pounds. At the time, Rhonda was, Rhonda Rousey was also training here and she was 70 kilos. So if Kayla was struggling making 63,

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  so the only way to, obviously, the only way to still compete is to move up. But my dad said, well, if you move up, then you're in Rhonda's weight. So let's skip that weight and you're gonna go to 78 kilos. And he told her, listen, you're gonna go up two weight classes. She looked at him and was like, that's 172 pounds. And he goes, well, I don't care. Like, you're already struggling making 138, you weigh 150, what's the difference? We put 20 pounds on, go to 170. So that's why she jumped two weights because she passed Rhonda.

• 1:55:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  She went to the weight above so she could make the national team and she had a chance to go to the Olympics and and all that because we envisioned Rhonda staying around till 2012.

• 1:55:48Lex Fridman?

  And that's also like a long-term vision because you kind of grow into that body then over time.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:55:53Lex Fridman?

  So you can dominate, you can learn what it's like in that weight class, you can learn to dominate that weight class, excel and then dominate.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  People that cut weight too hard, too long, they forget about technique because they're only worried about losing weight. They're always tired in training. They don't give a hundred percent effort. They're not getting better. She now is just focused on getting better at judo.

• 1:56:13Lex Fridman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  You know, and getting bigger, getting stronger, getting more powerful. So I think given her that purpose and that, that was a great call.

• 1:56:21Lex Fridman?

  What are some memorable or maybe the most memorable moment, Kayla Harrison moment to you as her coach?

• 1:56:30Lex Fridman?

  Not the most perhaps, let's say, what are some memorable moments?

• 1:56:35Speaker 01

  Everybody hears the good ones, right? So everybody knows she won the, 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? Because they're historic. One of the biggest moments that I like sharing this story with everybody is that

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  in 2010 in January, Kayla was still a developing athlete. And we had a local tournament in New York. It was in Brooklyn, New York. 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 were going to be at that tournament. So I said, Kayla, we're going to go to this tournament. You're going to compete against the Canadian girls, get some good experience, you know, figure out what you need to work on and then we'll go home and work on some stuff.

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  Well, she went to the tournament. There was only three girls in the weight, her and the two Canadians. At that tournament, she lost both fights. Right? So this is January 2010. She lost both matches, you know, she was competitive, but certainly things she needed to work on. It was good, you know, development thing for her and for us. It also opened her mind to say, oh, man, you know, because she was already a, a, a junior world champion at the time. But so now there's another level. This is a senior level, right? You got to go up another level. 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 could you imagine being,

• 1:58:10Speaker 01

  you know, oh, and two, you feel like you feel like a failure, right? But 10 months later was Tokyo 2010. She went from oh, and two at Starrett, New York

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  to world champion 2010 in the motherland in Japan.

• 1:58:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  I mean, that's an amazing turnaround.

• 1:58:32Lex Fridman?

  And that's only possible if you put the, the losses in their proper context. You don't let it destroy you mentally. You just keep moving forward.

• 1:58:41Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:58:42Lex Fridman?

  This is so funny. So you were there 2010 at the Stera Cup? Was Travis there?

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  I made all those, we fought at every local, 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?

• 1:59:09Lex Fridman?

  I actually just as a funny little side, I was there. I competed.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:59:15Lex Fridman?

  This is one of the earlier tournaments, like the, the beginner division. Oh, no, I actually did black belt division too.

• 1:59:22Lex Fridman?

  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'll be good experience to also do a black belt division. And remember, it must have been actually Travis's division, which is funny.

• 1:59:45Lex Fridman?

  Is Legere brothers?

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Harry and Gary.

• 1:59:48Lex Fridman?

  They are super, they're super good and they're super dominant, but I think Travis faced one of them and beat them.

• 1:59:57Lex Fridman?

  I don't know, I just remembered, it's funny how there's just like these little roads that later reconnect.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:04Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  Another story I like to share is that you have to know your athletes, right? And you have to, you know, really get to know their psycholog- 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 had Kayla face off against almost all the top girls in her, in her division. She had beaten everybody going into the 2016 Olympics. But at the 2015 Tokyo Grand Slam, there was a girl from Japan that she hadn't fought in a long time. And she lost to the girl last time she, she fought her.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  So it was something, we wanted her to beat this girl going into the Olympics so that she knew she could beat everybody.

• 2:01:05Speaker 01

  And it was a first round match and it was going to be tough for Kayla, right? It was going to be a 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.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

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

• 2:01:46Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  Right? So all of a sudden the trainer comes up to us and she didn't come to us. The trainer came to us and says, 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?

• 2:02:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Well, she has this thing in her neck. It's like a pinched nerve and does this and that. 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 a long time in her career? Says, no, she's not going to get injured. Just a pinched nerve, a little pain she's going to have to deal with. I go, okay, well, can you fix the pain?

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

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

• 2:02:38Lex Fridman?

  I love it.

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  He said, you're good to go.

• 2:02:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

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

• 2:03:11Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  And then she went out there, she fought, didn't even know she was injured. No, you know what I mean? She just went out there. She fought the tournament. She beat the Japanese girl. She ended up going through the whole tournament. She took a gold medal. She won the event.

• 2:03:27Lex Fridman?

  That turned out to be a great confidence builder in it. Yeah.

• 2:03:32Lex Fridman?

  And that kind of sets you up for all the chaos that can happen at the Olympic Games.

• 2:03:36Speaker 01

  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 gonna do when you're fresh.

• 2:03:46Lex Fridman?

  Well, when she was going into the Olympic Games, there's a lot. She had the mental game.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  Down.

• 2:03:51Lex Fridman?

  Down.

• 2:03:52Speaker 01

  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, no, not happening.

• 2:03:59Lex Fridman?

  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? You often hear stories of great champions becoming depressed after the Olympics.

• 2:04:24Speaker 01

  There's a lack of purpose afterwards. Right? Because you've done in life what you set out to do. You've had a goal every day you woke up. You knew what your purpose was. You knew what your, you know what your day looked like. You knew why you were doing that. And all of a sudden, you won and you got all the fame and you're all happy and it, but then you wake up and you go,

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  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, we're gonna, you know, you're gonna become an ambassador, a global ambassador of judo. You know, the I J F is gonna help pay a salary. The, 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 you around and, and you know, whatever it is, we're gonna give you a job and here's what you're gonna do. You know, if you'd like to take it. There was nothing for her. Like, I remember doing the interview at the Olympics with her. And they said, are you gonna compete in the next Olympics? And I said, no. Like, why? She already two-time gold medalist. What, what does three-time gold medalist do for her? Nothing, right?

• 2:05:34Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:05:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  But what happens is, and what most people don't understand is, once you say, I'm retired, I'm no longer competing in the, in the sport of judo.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  You don't get a salary from USA Judo anymore, which she was getting. I think she got like seventy-two thousand dollars a year from, from USA Judo at the time. You don't get a stipend from the Olympic Committee anymore. Goes away. Your sponsor, like the New York Athletic Club, was a great sponsor for her for all those years. In fact, she could have never been the athlete she became without the support of the NYC. Cause I talked to them when she was fifteen. I said, hey, I got a girl that's really good. Someday, like if you invest in her now, I promise you she'll pay back for you.

• 2:06:32Lex Fridman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  And they, and I remember the day she won the Olympic gold, I called the guy up. I said, hey, I told you, she'd be, so, but, you know, they can no longer give you stipends because you're not competing and representing them anymore. So that goes away. Um, all of your sponsorships and all of your money that you would make from your TV commercials or whatever, that didn't happen for her after the Olympics, because judo's a obscure sport, right? So she didn't have any opportunities for that. At the end of the day, she has no, no revenue coming in. How do you live? You get a bonus of twenty-five grand from the Olympic Committee or whatever for, for winning a gold. But aside from that, you're not going to live on that money. So, no purpose, no goal, right? What am I going to wake up and do tomorrow? I don't know. So she has no direction.

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  And at the same, then at the same time, she has no money coming in. So everything shuts off. So now it's like, where do you turn? What do you do? You know, and, 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?

• 2:07:34Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 2:07:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:07:45Lex Fridman?

  I mean, she's in mixed martial arts now, but she has a lot of stuff going on.

• 2:07:49Speaker 01

  Right. 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.

• 2:08:07Lex Fridman?

  I'm gonna ask you to start some trouble, but I heard that she said somewhere that she can beat Khabib Nurmagomedov in judo. What do you think?

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  To be honest with you, I mean, I don't know what level of judoka.

• 2:08:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  I don't know what level he is.

• 2:08:21Lex Fridman?

  But I do know that that Russian system respects judo immensely.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  What I will tell you is this, I trained with Kayla and I was an Olympic medalist and a world champion in judo. And granted, I was older when I trained with her, but you have to go as a man. You have to go 100% or she will smash you as a man. And I could tell you that if Khabib doesn't do a lot of just judo, doesn't like, you know, gripping and doesn't understand, like if he, you know, 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

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  and he has to grip up and just throw. I'd 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, some of the guys that went and won our, medaled 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, you know, to a, to a senior national champion, you know, or Olympian in our sport. But she will go toe to toe with every other male, eh, black belts or not.

• 2:09:57Lex Fridman?

  Speaking of Khabib and Russia,

• 2:10:01Lex Fridman?

  Vladimir Putin, I don't know if you have heard of him. He's the president of Russia, but he's also a judoka.

• 2:10:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:10:08Lex Fridman?

  Have you gotten a chance to see him do judo? What do you think about his judo? If you were to analyze it?

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  So I'm actually really good friends with the Russian Federation. The guy in charge is Ezio Gamba. He's an Italian. He's a mastermind behind their success of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic teams. 2020, he suffered from leukemia, blood cancer. So he wasn't part of their 2020 program, but he was part of 2012, 2016. That whole national, the Olympic team in 2012 came to our studio and lived here for a month in Boston. They went to school in Boston. I brought them to my house. They had three Olympic champions.

• 2:10:50Lex Fridman?

  Oh, my God. What a team.

• 2:10:52Speaker 01

  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, you know, it's hard when you're older to move in judo. I mean, I was at a high level and I'm, you know, now 51. It's hard for me to move like I used to. So at his age, he's got to be what? 60, between 62, 65 ish? I mean, he moves really well for somebody that's that age, you know, and probably hasn't done very much judo for the last however many years, right? So that tells you he, at one point, he had to be a really good judo player.

• 2:11:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, he put in a lot of work at some point to develop the technique. You could 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.

• 2:11:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:11:47Lex Fridman?

  The way they go in for a sayinaghi, 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, he's good at judo and that's kind of fascinating.

• 2:11:59Lex Fridman?

  It's fascinating to see political leaders. I've gotten to interact with quite a few for whom judo was a formative experience in their life. And that's so interesting that for a lot of people, judo was played a big part in their life, early development. It's similar to like, 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 like your body can do, the sort of the artistry and the skill of it. Also, the power being able to dominate another human being with technique.

• 2:12:37Lex Fridman?

  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.

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  Memories.

• 2:12:51Lex Fridman?

  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, in their, who they are, judo.

• 2:13:06Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 2:13:07Lex Fridman?

  At the core of it.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  It makes you the human being that you are. It really does. Like it, it becomes a fabric of, if people, the people that stick with it, right, that stay with it and it, 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, it's such a hands-on sport that it's very memorable. And it, and people love it so much. Like, right now, at my dojo, we have like four generations. Like, somebody that did judo with my dad, you know, had a kid who, who trained with me, who loved, you

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  know, judo so much, had a kid, that kid was, you know, now in his twenties, who did judo and now has a kid who's two or three or four that's coming to my toddler program at my school. Like, we're talking four generations and they all loved the experience so much and what it did for them and their lives, that they wanted the next generation to also experience the same thing.

• 2:14:13Lex Fridman?

  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 judo, or maybe to jiu-jitsu gym owners? Like, how do you get judo as part of your life in America?

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, if you're fortunate to live near another dojo, right? A place that has judo locally, then that's your best opportunity to learn, is to go learn from another school. Unfortunately, sometimes the nearest dojo might not be for two hours or three hours away from where you're at, which is an obstacle. You're not going to do that. So, I mean, Travis and I did start the American Judo System online. It's at USAJudo.com. And we've broken down every single judo technique to the very, very basic elements of just movement. So, we teach every technique of how you do it mechanically with just your feet, then how you incorporate your hands and your feet together, how you

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  do it in all directions, moving forward, sideways, backwards, how to then introduce a partner into the movement, how to do basic uchi komi or repetitions with a partner, then moving with a partner, then how to throw your opponent static, how to throw your opponent. So, basically, from the very foundation of the movement, all the way to the most advanced level, we've documented this through separate videos. And we've taken now, I think, 12 to 15 of standing techniques, combined with a whole bunch of groundwork techniques. And our goal is just to continue to build this platform out, so that anybody, anywhere, can learn online. And can ask questions. We have a live training class every couple of weeks, every two weeks,

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  he or I answer questions online for our, our members. Ideally, what we'd like to do is have a, a, a standing curriculum for jujitsu instructors that want to learn and become black belts in judo. Here's how, these are the techniques you need to know. This is how many reps you need to do. This is how efficient you need to get at that, at those techniques to become certified as an instructor or become a black belt. And eventually have an online promotion system where anybody, anywhere can just submit videos and show us that they can do those techniques. And obviously we have people review them. And this is a, a dream and a vision, but we've already started the platform.

• 2:16:49Speaker 01

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

• 2:17:05Lex Fridman?

  So you also want to do certification there. It's not just instruction?

• 2:17:10Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 2:17:12Lex Fridman?

  That would be amazing. Yeah. I mean, for me personally, sort of, I'm mostly in Austin, Texas now.

• 2:17:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:17:18Lex Fridman?

  And there's a few judo schools, but it's not, not really.

• 2:17:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:17:24Lex Fridman?

  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, a couple of times a week. But it's not a system, a dojo, a, a, an instructor or integrated into a jujitsu school or not.

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  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. The, 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.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  So it's it's a challenge to go learn. And then a lot of times the the the schools are old school. So they go make you do falls for a half hour. They make you do thing, you know, make you do things. Maybe you're a 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. And so you still have to fall for six months, which turns a lot of people away as well. So it's, you know, it's like any business. If you don't deliver on your customers' expectations, you're not going to have very many customers, which is the way it is now.

• 2:18:57Lex Fridman?

  So a lot of people who listen to this, but in general, in the United States, practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which has a lot of similarities to Judo, as obviously its origins in Judo. How would you compare the two arts from the perspective of people just interested about both arts? Do you recommend people who do Jiu Jitsu get into Judo? How can 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?

• 2:19:28Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that Judo is a hard sport for adults to do. It just is, you know, especially people that are haven't fallen in a long time, haven't, you know, aren't very athletic, you know, haven't. I think I think about my own experience, right? Other than Judo, when did I ever do like a forward somersault? Maybe when I was in grade school, right? That's the last time I've left my feet was in grade school. Most people haven't got off of a chair or a couch. They spend eight, 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.

• 2:20:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  Right? That's their last athletic endeavor, most of them. So you're talking about as an adult that's 35 or 40, wanting to start a sport. Judo is a really hard sport to start, especially in today's dojos that don't have a recreational adult program. You know, when it's one size fits all, it's hard. So for those people, Jiu Jitsu makes a heck of a lot of sense. Good self-defense. It's cerebral, where you got to use your brain. You're a smaller person, you have to use technique, and you know, it teaches all the same things as Judo, but it's a safe way to do it. And Because of the validation it has with the UFC and MMA today, right? Everybody knows jiu-jitsu, so now they can be part of mainstream society and talk intelligently

• 2:20:51Speaker 01

  about what they see on television or what's going on on ESPN today, right? They have some knowledge, so they they have an identity. And also, there's a good culture in jiu-jitsu where it's becoming a family. You know, the dojo is the family place. You go to feel good, you go to see your friends, you go to get fit and you have a good time. Right? So it makes a lot of sense why it's growing. Judo, on the other hand, I think is a better sport for children to do. It's more, I would say, fun and interactive. It's a little easier to teach the kids how to do the 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, it makes them better athletes because it's a lot more three-dimensional,

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  in my opinion, you know? Um, so I think there's a good fit between, judo can thrive from kids till, you know, whatever, high school, college. Jiu-jitsu thrives from that eighteen-year-old up. Right? Right now, that's kind of where it is.

• 2:21:53Lex Fridman?

  So, so as a dojo, you have to kind of focus on the the teens and the college, like early twenties, that kind of?

• 2:22:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:22:24Lex Fridman?

  You, uh, got an education at Brown's. You're somebody who's amazing because as a Olympian and an Olympic coach, you've always emphasized kind of balance and educational, uh, all of that side of life, so developing your brain too. So you are an Olympic medalist, a coach of Olympic medalists, you're a business owner, so successful in all these domains. So I have to ask, what advice would you give to young people today? High school, judo age, high school, college, undergrad? How to be successful in their career or just in life in general, how to live a life they can be proud of?

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

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

• 2:23:49Speaker 01

  You know, where your brain and your heart and your passion is all towards one thing that you really like. Then you'll be successful. And I left the job. I had three kids. I was working for um monster.com. I was in internet marketing and I was working for that company, great company, nothing wrong with the company. But sitting behind the desk from eight till five, and then I get to go to judo from six till nine at night. You know, my whole day is tied up doing something that I'm really not passionate about. She said, if you know, if you can figure out how to make money from your dojo and other things judo related. Then I think you'll be successful. And so she's the one that my wife Maria 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.

• 2:24:33Lex Fridman?

  And if the opportunity doesn't exist, how to make money on it, you can create the opportunity.

• 2:24:38Speaker 01

  Be be resourceful, figure it out. Don't, don't let anybody tell you you can't do it. Right? I I didn't know that I could have a 200 person judo school that only taught judo. Because it really didn't exist in this country. You know, that that actually charges money like jujitsu charges, right? We're talking not, there's plenty of clubs out there that charge 10 bucks a month that might have 100 people. But there's not many that, you know, where the tuition is $150 a month, having 200 people. So that's a successful business. Um, but it wasn't done before. But be passionate about it, understand you're going to fail. Understand you're going to get knocked down, beat up. Right? There's going to be dark days, but you got to persevere. You got to believe in yourself. You got to have a plan. You have to be willing to learn from other people.

• 2:25:22Speaker 01

  And that's what I did. I I if I didn't know it, I brought somebody in to tell me what am I doing wrong? Like, look from the outside. What do you see? Okay, great. Then we got to be willing to change, going to be willing to adapt. You know, and I think listening, believing in myself and, you know, creating opportunity. And the other thing is helping others, something I always did in my, in my Judo life and in my business life. If somebody came to me and asked for help with, hey, man, is there something you can do to help me? I'm trying to get this thing started. You know, I'm trying to get this, this, this dojo off the ground, or I'm trying to run this event series, or, you know, I was creative and trying

• 2:26:05Speaker 01

  to figure out a way to help them make it work. Cause if that really was their dream and I could help them do their dream, I felt like that person would then give nothing but good, good comments about us, good, good, like they remember it forever. They 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, uh, 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 mats for his, Brian Simmons with his, his thing, or, you know, uh, any of the

• 2:26:48Speaker 01

  gray seas, I, it just, it just became like family. And then I just work hard and deliver on what I say I'm gonna do. If I say I'm gonna do it, I do it, you know? And I think it goes a long way.

• 2:26:57Lex Fridman?

  Well, and I got a comment, so in a small way, I've, uh, people may not know, I think it's still on YouTube. We, we previously talked many years ago. And I remember it, uh, you were so kind to me and you didn't really know who I was. You just took me as a human being. You welcomed me into your dojo and we just had a conversation on, on a podcast or whatever the heck you call that thing. And you were just very kind and, um, and you were also just...

• 2:27:27Lex Fridman?

  It was the last conversation I had when I showed up to MIT and it stayed with me. So I resumed doing this podcast, but it stayed with me because you said, you said that I did a good job at this and people, especially at that time, didn't tell me that. You know, didn't, and just that, that little act of kindness is probably just a regular part of your day. You had a busy day. It was the end of the day. Just saying that, that was powerful and that pays off somehow. So thank you for that.

• 2:28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it was sincere, right? It was genuine. I felt like I had been to so many interviews. When it's around 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. Or they get something wrong about the background or they offend me because they call me five minutes before that they're supposed to be there and say, oh, sorry, we're running late. We'll be there an hour and a half. Well, I'm a busy guy too, you know, like, but you were somebody that showed up, was so prepared with your notes. Knew everything about like the history of what I had done.

• 2:28:44Speaker 01

  The questions you asked were intelligent questions. They were well thought out. And at the end of that, that interview, I was really genuinely impressed. And I wanted to let you know, you did a great job because you stood out from the rest.

• 2:28:58Lex Fridman?

  Thank you. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was like showing up to like the Mecca, like the track. I mean, I didn't, you know, you don't always want to just tell that to people, but you show up. You know, obviously you're the legend of judo in the United States. And so that was like Boston is the Mecca. Like that's where you travel to talk to the great. So the fact that you were kind to me just stuck with me for a long time. So it pays off to, to be kind to others, to give them.

• 2:29:30Lex Fridman?

  To give him a, to give him a chance. Jimmy, thank you so much for giving me another chance and spending your valuable time. And you've also were kind enough to invite me to train with you today at your dojo. So I can't wait.

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 2:29:45Lex Fridman?

  Let's go do some judo.

• 2:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Lex.

• 2:29:48Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jimmy Pedro. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Bruce Lee. "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.