• Archive through December 20, 2008 December 20 - 10:40 am [20]

As you've pointed out, the coaching material is out there. Whether or not other people are utilizing what's out there is a different story.

I wasn't trying to prove that every judo coach is great. I was just recommending people whom I've trained with that I highly recommend. I can't speak for anyone else, but my training has been highly influenced by the information presented at these clinics.

I'm not sure what a "typical" coach is. As I learned years ago, for every good coach there are hundreds of mediocre ones.

I have found that the good coaches are always wanting to learn more, willing to ask questions even whey they usually outrank everyone in the room. Needless to say, I usually see the same few people at these clinics, asking questions and/or sharing whatever information they have.

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"...I have found that the good coaches are always wanting to learn more, willing to ask questions even whey they usually outrank everyone in the room. Needless to say, I usually see the same few people at these clinics, asking questions and/or sharing whatever information they have..."

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Me2!!

Great words.

yup.

I wasn't trying to be adversarial or 'disprove' your point.
I guess mine was that Ann Maria De Mars and Pat Burris are far from average. I trained with Serge Bouyssou and Gene Shin recently at one of these coach things, and it just reminded me how lucky I ain't.

Maybe I am just a little down in the dumps. I love judo, but I don't have any good judo around.

If I would just bite the bullet, I could train at any of a number of the good BJJ schools around here. I consider most of the instructors friends, client or at least acquaintances through my work.

Same here. I live in a college town, and it takes me about two years to turn a complete beginner into a decent training partner. By then, they are usually on the verge of graduating, so they quit training regularly the last two years, graduate, and move on. Then I have to start all over again. I think it's time for me to move too.

The nearest judo club is 3 hours away, and those guys don't utilize any of the coaching info that's out there. They've stopped doing randori, they aren't brining in new blood and they only show up to sit on a promotion board every few months to promote each other. So, I haven't been up there in a while. I find that my money is better spent if I go to Cali and train w/Ann Maria and go to as many clubs as possible while I'm out there.

My brother started asking questions about judo, so I've been working w/him for the last few weeks. He's a purple belt in bjj. He just placed at Grappler's Quest a few weeks ago, and he won a few matches just on throws. He's gonna compete in judo next month, so now I have someone to do judo with.

BJJ got expensive for me, and the Brasilians don't like it if you train at other clubs. Judoka on the other hand encourage training at other clubs. Ronda trained at six different clubs when she made nationals, and when they couldn't push her any further, she moved to Boston to train w/the Pedros. Everyone at each of those clubs gets to say, "Ronda trained at my dojo," and all of them are telling the truth. Now that she's medaled in the Olympics and has returned home, she goes back to each of those clubs and gives judo clinics, for free, encouraging all the young kids to push themselves and train with as many different people as possible.

sorry if that was a little off topic....tired and hungry...

A
You back in Cruces?
I think it all depends on your teachers. I have experienced quite the opposite in BJJ. My teacher encourages us to train with others. Obviously loyalty plays a huge part in any student-teacher relationship, but different experiences make the student stronger and more prepared, not to mention it makes one appreciate the teacher they have in many cases;)
Jake

I'm in Cruces at the moment. I should be in China for the summer next year. May stay longer.

Is your bjj teacher Brasilian or American?

American. I do not deal with a lot of the.... shall we say..... bullshit that comes along with the Brazilian teachers I have met in the area. Nice guys, don't get me wrong, but I do not pay good money to get taught by a blue belt for several years;)

If 'bullshit' is the gentler word you picked... I wonder what the original choice was.

Its a fact that very few Brazilians are proficient at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. (I don't know about the 'Brasilians' though).

Feel like an intruder venturing in as I'm not really known here, but since I too am a career teacher as well as MA instructor and have spent a couple decades thinking about how to reach more people (albeit in the classroom, mostly, but in martial training, too).., am venturing.

Anyway, a short survey for teachers/instructors that I came up with some time back is: http://www.great-ideas.org/DolphinMaterials.htm (the LSOS). There's also a shorter version for students. Some will apply to moving instruction, some not so much, but I think the concepts will generalize OK.

I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who takes a look.

All Best,
Mark

this seems to speak to learning styles/methods/preferences which I think is pretty important;
how many times have you witnessed martial arts instruction that is only delivered in one learning style (most often verbal or visual).

Yeah, that was my hope, Jason. Thanks for the input.

BTW, when I went to high school (roughly the 1500s) it was all teacher talk...verbal, as you say. I hated it because it didn't match my outlook or style.

i agree w/jason and like the direction he's trying to point us in.

motor learning is essentially what we are doing as martial artists/athletes.

some of my earliest instructors either had an audience too large to give individual attention (collegiate wrestling coach) or didnt speak a lick of english (judo).

both of these coaches were able to produce athletes w/ decent median levels of skill, because of their understanding of how to get your body to learn physical movement, which is not the same as teaching it to you.

in fact (maybe it was just me) both these coaches were not very sociable. they communicated very poorly with their students/athletes. direct quote from mr. A " im not here to make friends im here to make winners"

but they understood motor learning an pavlovian training. given mr. Anderson did have a masters in exercise sciences/biomechanics and mr murakami also held degrees in physical education.

the other remarkable thing, and i have talked about this w/ other members from my former team who are also martial artists, but we don't remember how we learned wrestling.

when it comes to wing chun, hung gar, or all the other styles we've studied we can tell you when, and where we learned the move, why its done that way, etc. because its been explained to us ad nauseam. but no of us can tell you how to develop your shot even though we can shoot pretty well.

but then again i dont think the dog had many questions for pavlov, or started to ponder as to why the light bulb made him drool,

he just ate the food.

JP

Nice JP,

I was gonna write something similar. One of the judo dojo I trained at was run by a former Olympian who studdered. He had really beautiful throws and we were eager to learn them, but he couldn't explain what he was doing. If we didn't get the mechanics of the throw right away, he'd start throwing one of us harder and harder, over and over until we got it. In order to be spared his wrath, each of us would chime in and explain the throw, hoping one of us would explain it well enough so that we could all do the throw sufficiently so that we each didn't get slammed into oblivion.

I think we all became better teachers just to save our hides. Nothing like fear to instill greatness, no?

Plan B was for who ever was called up as uke to defer the role to a lower rank. This motivated us to do better at tournaments, which meant that we could get promoted faster and wouldn't have to take those falls anymore. Getting a medal and/or a new rank was nice, but we just didn't want to get knocked out the follwing Monday when we went back to the dojo. Good times.

Cary Kolat explains his philosophy of drilling technique for wrestling and coaching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY3NEEqQRrk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt7OXaVfjiA&feature=related

Excellent.

how to adapt 'same but different' as Pavel would say.

The best judoka have a few go to throws, and a favored grip, but, they can hit their tokui waza going in different directions, from different grips etc.

Rhadi Ferguson seemed like a very good BJJ coach when I trained with him in this regards. Deep enough knowledge to offer many variations, but the coaching sense and competitive experience to say "you can't be good at everything. You're good at this, let's do it 20 times like this, 20 times like this etc...until you own it from everywhere."

Like JP and others were saying, I'd rather be good at doing than good at saying.

and I'd certainly rather be excellent at five techniques than crap at one hundred.

I think the attitude of, "Jack of all trades, master of none," is defeatest in many respects. I read a paper a while back on competitve judoka, and the researcher found that while having five solid throws is probably good enough to get a black belt, and even be successful at the national level, what separates separates the gold medalists at the international level from everyone else, is their bigger repertoire of techniques, entries and superior conditioning to pull it off.

In particular, the study focused on Hidehiko Yoshida and Mike Swain, when they won gold at the Olympics and Worlds, respectively. There were high percentage techniques like uchi mata, seoi nage, kata guruma, and juji gatame, which everyone at that level can do, but that also means everyone knows how to counter those techniques at that level. What gave Yoshida and Swain the edge were the other techniques and entries they could do them from. Both Yoshida and Swain got ippons with at least 15 different techiniques in a competition. I believe Yoshida got ippons with over 18 different techniques. Swain was good at foot techniques. You know, those hard throws that everyone teaches in the beginning, but no one, at least in America, likes to practice because it takes a long time to master them?

I think as a rule, Americans need to get away from the concept of instant gratification. At least that's what I got from my own experience and listening to Mr. Kolat's philosophy on coaching.

When I first got to Japan, I threw quite a few people my first week there. After a few days, they figured out what my go-to throws were, and they had 80 answers to those techniques. Everyone else could do 40 throws on their left and right side on a resisting opponent. I could do maybe 8.

Like most things in life, grappling is something you can't learn from simply reading a book. You need put in those hours and hours of training, repetition. It's all about muscle memory, right? So why not diversify the techniques you can do? Don't limit yourself before you've got a chance to learn something.

I was watching Michael Phelps on tv last night, and he took offense to the notion that he's somehow gifted or a natural athlete. I see that in all other world class athletes. The education data, and these athletes confirm, that you need to put in 10,000 hours to be good at something. If you want to be able get good at a throw, do it 500/day. Tiger Woods said he's not gifted. He just got out there and hit the ball at least 500 times per day. The Williams sisters said the same about tennis. Phelps said he went a whole year training every day, whcih transalted into 52 more practices than any other swimmer he went up against. If each practice is 2 hours, that's 104 hours of time in the water that he had over his opponents.

Both Ronda and Koga, after two separate practices of conditioning and randori for the day, would go home and practice for another 2-3 hours at night.

Unless you're terminally ill and only plan to do judo for another 6 months, then why would you only limit yourself to learn 5 techniques? You certainly don't limit your workout routine to the same 5 things, otherwise you'd be bored and fat by now, right?

I think Rhadi's strategy was to get you doing a few throws well while he was there to correct you. I'm sure he would expand the program if you went to train with him full time, right?

Oh, some of these same sentiments are in Malcolm Gladwell's new book, "Outliers: The story of success." It's an interesting read. It turns out that hard work also pays off in math, music and other areas of life. Turns out that Asians arent' gifted at math. They just spend more time learning it.

Michael Phelps does however have a four inch disparity between his height and wingspan, pre-disposing him success.

There is a bit more to it than 10,000 hours. No 4 foot 11 Peruvian is going to place in the Medals for shotput anytime soon no matter how many hours they put in. Nobody can do it on their own either whether your a boxer , judoka mathamatician or musician you need sparring partners uke some competitive peers to measure yourself against. Parents who are behind you if not pushing you into stuff , a good disposition , a lot of luck and perhaps a touch of OCD probably all help.

As far as repoirtoire of techniques why not learn some new ones and deepen the favourites you already have so you can pull them off every which way !!
But maybe you have to be realistic and realise you cant learn everything either.

Great post A! Care to share the paper?

Here's one of the papers:

http://www.judoinfo.com/weers1.htm

The numbes I posted concerning Yoshida and Swain were off. Yoshida scored with nine different throws. You'll have to excuse me as I hadn't read that paper in 12 years.

Jason was right. Go learn five throws and the hell with everything else. That's the average number of throws that you need to be an elite judoka.

I can't find the paper on Swain. They've put up quite a few papers since I last looked at the
website. Interesting stuff.

I'm sure environment and genetics have something to do with success as well. Would Phelps have won 8 gold medals with his freakishly long arms if he hadn't trained more than his opponents? How many other swimmers qualified for that many races?

OCD and pushy parents probably does help.

it's hard to not enjoy a sport and easy to continue with it if you win from an early age.

I like the fact that grappling offers both a short term goal (competitive success) and a long term goal (broader mastery, coaching). But the short term goal is often the entry point and the criterion by which future coaches are judged (right or wrong).

The fact is, the ante in is the ability to beat others. Until you have that, it doesn't much matter how smart you are.

So automaticity with a narrow range of skills, high levels of conditioning, sound competitive strategy first. Then all 40 gokyo no waza. Then Ju no kata.