Camps require staff capable of taking time off from work. Although this a problem for most Judo clubs, it wasn’t for us since three of the four coaches are professional Judo coaches. Thus we had 2x Olympians Valerie Lafon Gotay and Israel Hernandez on the mat, in addition to one of my junior class assistants and me.

Valerie Lafon Gotay, Gerald Lafon, Israel Hernandez

Our first decision was what type of camp to hold. My gut feeling was that we would not have enough support from my own club members and the surrounding Judo community (more on that later) to have enough good partner pairings and group dynamics. To increase our participants, I suggested we conduct side by side a Judo camp for Judo kids and a generic sports camp for kids with no Judo background. The idea was that since we had enough space and things to do besides strict Judo training, we would somehow be able to integrate the non-judoplayers with the judoplayers at times, while segregating them at other times. We didn’t want to scare the non-players away by offering too much Judo and too many combative games.

As it turned out, the non-players wanted to do everything the Judo kids were doing! Not only that, but two of the four non-judoplayers liked it so much that their mom signed them up for Judo lessons three weeks after the first camp. From a business perspective, focusing on the kids who don’t do Judo, rather than those who do Judo, makes a lot of sense for clubs that would like to supplement their income and add students to their rosters. You just have to make sure you have enough activities and toys to keep the action interesting and fun.

Tug of War competition

Since nobody had ever run a week-long Judo day camp in San Diego, our biggest worry was whether our area would support a Judo/sports camp. Reality is parents are always scrambling to find summer camps for their kids, especially if both parents work. We found out there is an absolute need and market for such camps. To take advantage of this market, you must get an early start on advertising your camp, because you’re competing against all the other camps offered in your area. Unfortunately for us, our decision to hold a camp was a last-minute one: barely two months before the start of the first camp in July. By then, many parents had already contacted the local YMCAs or soccer organizations to enroll their kids. In spite of that, we still managed to pull off two camps, one in July and one in August, each with fifteen kids.

Cargo Net Climb

We were able to use our own facility to keep the costs down. Although our facility is only 2,400 sq ft, it’s an open, boxy space with a high ceiling, and lots of toys. To supplement our great 1,400 sq ft spring-loaded mat, we have a climbing net, climbing wall, climbing and pulling ropes, tires, medicine balls, bars for Olympic weight lifting, Swiss balls, agility ladder, cones, and a few other rascals to keep the activities varied and fun. We also had access to my neighborhood swimming pool, which we used on two days.

Keep-away: pool competition

Sunning beauties!

Since our target age was 5-13, it was necessary to make sure that we provided enough fun activities to do besides real Judo training. Today’s kids form what I call the “entertainment generation.” They are high maintenance, in constant need of fun games to keep them happy. Technical training for them is not very appealing. Thankfully, we had enough teaching experience that enabled us to incorporate many activities that were dressed in fun but actually added to their athletic, technical, and combative abilities.

I have one caveat about advertising your Judo camp. Judo club senseis will probably not pass on to their students any information you may have given or emailed them. The parents of the two outside judoplayers who came to our camp stumbled upon our camp information by doing a generic Google search for Judo camps in Southern California. Their senseis had not mentioned to them that we were holding these camps, although they were given the information. So, plan ahead and make as many contacts with parents as you can. They, not the senseis, are the ones who decide what camps little Johnny and Jane go to during the summer.

Summer camps are a great tool for dojo operators who are looking to increase revenue and membership. Based on our camp experience, and the response from the non-players to our drills and games, our club will start hosting birthday parties, another lucrative event that will help keep the doors open and provide us opportunities to show parents and kids how wonderful a sport Judo is.

Valerie making Sean suffer!

Climbing our wall

Great group of kids

]]> http://blog.betterjudo.com/summer-camp-anyone/feed/ 0 http://blog.betterjudo.com/mindset/ http://blog.betterjudo.com/mindset/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:14:29 +0000 admin http://blog.betterjudo.com/?p=608 Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

Carol Dweck is a leading expert in motivation and personality psychology. I stumbled across her research while reading The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer. I was fascinated by her findings, especially this one: praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance! Piqued, I needed to find out more, so I wrapped my arms around Dweck’s own book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

Dweck’s most famous study involved hundreds of fifth-graders in New York City schools. The students were given non-verbal puzzles to solve. Upon finishing the test, each student was given a score and praised. Half the students were praised for their intelligence, and half were praised for their effort.

They were then given the choice of two new, different tests: a hard one that would challenge them and teach them a lot, or an easier one like the one they had just completed. Ninety percent of the kids who had been praised for their effort chose the harder test. In contrast, most of those praised for their intelligence chose the easier test!

Finally, all students were given a test that had been written for eighth-graders. Kids who had been praised for their effort worked hard to figure out the puzzle. On the other hand, those who had been praised for their intelligence stumbled and were easily discouraged.

In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck addresses what she considers the core of her experiment findings: growth vs. fixed mindset. Those who have a growth mindset love the challenge and learn by making mistakes, while those with a fixed mindset rely on innate talents and fear failure.

What could put an end to this exuberant learning? The fixed mindset. As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart… So children with a fixed mindset want to make sure they succeed. Smart people should always succeed. But for the children with the growth mindset, success is about stretching themselves. It’s about becoming smarter.

Dweck states that nowhere is the growth mindset more clear than in sports, where great performances are the just reward for strong work ethics, perseverance in the face of adversity, and courage. But it is equally true that we have our fair share of fixed-mindset athletes: the precocious, innately talented athletes who fade as they grow older, competition stiffens, and the “less talented” pass them by. These are the athletes that coaches label early on as “sure-thing” Olympians, only to see them self-destruct psychologically when the going gets tough.

The naturals, carried away with their superiority, don’t learn how to work hard or how to cope with setbacks… Those with the growth mindset were the ones who showed the most character or heart. They were the ones who had the minds of champions… Those with a growth mindset found setbacks motivating. They’re informative. They’re a wake-up call.

Dweck’s book is a must for parents, teachers and coaches. Mindset has chapters devoted to sports, leadership, and educators, as well as one that addresses how to change mindsets. Yes, the good news is that it’s possible to go from a fixed mindset to growth mindset as Dweck herself did. But, it does take work to do so. Dweck also covers a subject that parents, teachers, and coaches all must face sooner or later: bullies and victims.

For additional excerpts from Mindset, go to the book reviews on my web site.

It’s no surprise that each Judo and jiujitsu club may have differing views on the subject regardless of the governing body’s stance. Some clubs allow children to perform submissions on adults, while others allow children to perform submissions on their peers. It is equally true that there are international tournaments for kids in jiujitsu that allow children much younger than 13 and 17 to perform submissions. I recently viewed some Pan-American Jiujitsu tournament on YouTube featuring players under-ten doing armbars.

There’s a very interesting comment that I have heard from several Judo/jiujitsu cross-trainers that may shed light on why we in Judo have such a hard time coming to grips with kids doing submissions. It appears that Judoplayers don’t like tapping out as much as jiujitsu participants do. How much of the Japanese code of not tapping out filters down to our clubs? And does this “no tap” culture cloud our judgment when it comes to kids learning submissions?

I think it’s safe to say that we can come up with training guidelines to ensure the safety of our young players while grounding them in the essential elements of submissions. A basic “catch-release-no cranking” rule would be a good start. Get a nice Bjj-style hadaka jime, and release before the effectiveness is felt, and the child freaks out or cries. Catch your partner in a juji gatame, and release the arm once it’s past ninety degrees. Of course, the training emphasis, especially at the beginning should be on getting into the right position, rather than submitting your partner and potentially doing him bodily harm.

Please vote in the two polls if you haven’t already done so. You get two votes per each poll, which allows you to submit one vote on chokes and one on armbars. Lastly, I’d like to encourage those of you who have been teaching submissions to your kids to share your experiences with the rest of us.

The more I teach Judo, the more I don’t like what is happening to my sport. And the more I am disillusioned with the direction the IJF is taking my sport, the more I find myself agreeing with the non-sport guys who say sport Judo has strayed too far from Kano Judo. Now that’s a scary thought! I don’t necessarily want what they espouse, but neither do I want what the IJF is mandating. Surely, there’s a middle ground out there somewhere.

So many Judo rules leave you scratching your head, wondering what caused the implementation of the rules in the first place. And knowing that you can lose a match for violating some of the more puzzling rules makes our blood boil…well, at least it makes my blood boil.

I know many of the rules are on the books for the “protection of the athletes.” Nanny state! There’s protection from truly egregious acts, and there’s overprotection from innocent acts like putting your fingers inside an opponent’s sleeve or pants bottom. If there’s a remote chance you’ll hurt your own fingers doing that, you should be responsible for deciding whether it’s worth the effort. You do have the ability to release your grip, you know. No player should win a match because his opponent put his fingers inside the wrong sleeve.

The misuse of matte is another one of those needless, overprotective measures that make you wonder why. Player A is standing and B is kneeling. Just before some great Judo is performed, the referee calls matte, I’ve been told, to protect the player on his knees. I don’t understand why we need to protect someone who is in such an innocuous position. How does that reflect the martial spirit of Judo? Well, it doesn’t, does it?

Daki age is a banned technique that would spice up ne waza, specifically pulling and being in the guard. It’s no more dangerous than a devastating O soto gari or O uchi gari after a leg pick-up.  Since uke has the ability to disengage and counter the pick-up, I see no reason to ban it. It would certainly return some of the martial art to the sport.

Most of the gripping rules are overbearing. Why does it matter how you grip as long as you are attacking? Ah! The aesthetics of Judo must be the answer. Some of the grips might not look pretty, but it’s OK to stop matches constantly to award shidos for grip violation. So much for keeping the match flowing and interesting.

All the rules that define what you can’t do with your own gi or to your opponent’s gi are not very martial artsy. I can’t use my gi or belt to encircle my opponent. I’m not sure how practical this is, but if you can pull it off, why not? I can’t put my foot in my opponent’s belt or gi, but I can put my hand there. Hello! And why can’t I use my own gi to strangle my opponent?  I’m at a loss as to why these rules exist. Were they implemented to weaken Kosen Judo? Why wear gis then if you can’t use them as weapons? Why not fight naked?

The ban on scissoring (dojime) the truck, head, or neck is another perplexing rule that sissifies Judo. Yes, I’ve heard that in the old days ribs were broken. We can break arms and triangle our opponents to our heart’s content, but extending legs to apply dojime is verboten. Isn’t that why tapping out exists? Would dojime change ne waza or not?

Finally, we come to armbars and chokes for children. It’s a touchy subject fraught with emotions and overprotective thoughts. My colleagues tell me that children are not mature enough. Their vertebrae are this and that. Then there are the growth plates, blah, blah, blah. I get the message. We don’t want injuries. But folks, why can Brazilian jiujitsu make this work for kids, and we can’t even broach the subject without getting hysterical? And how does wrestling get away with teaching some of the pretzel-like holds that apply pressure to joints in ways that would make most judoplayers cringe?

The gap between the two extremes- early vs late introduction of chokes and joint manipulations- is not logical considering how closely Judo, BJJ and wrestling are related. Culture and methodology certainly play a role in why a six-year old in BJJ can armbar and choke, but a judoplayer must wait until he is 13 or 17 before he can perform those same skills. With the right training, mentality and culture, most kids should handle chokes and armbars well before the arbitrary ages designated by national and international organizations.

I’m all for being prudent and safety-conscious. That’s why I pay close attention to how my players are paired off in training, and why I spent over $8,000 to provide them with a spring-loaded mat and Judo tatami, rather than throw down wrestling or fold-out mats on concrete. But when it comes to most of the rules on the books, enough is enough. We must stop crippling Judo.

Kano created for the masses a wonderful form of physical education for the modern era by eliminating dangerous jujitsu techniques. Thanks to him, Judo ascended, and jujitsu descended into near oblivion. Those paths have now been reversed. Judo has oversimplified, overprotected, and emasculated itself into near oblivion while jujitsu has reinvented itself.  It’s obvious to me that we need to put back some of the martial art into the sport in order to survive. We can and should do that without sacrificing safety. We must do that to make Judo more effective, and thus, more respected in the grappling world.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this were coming from USA Judo? Well, it didn’t come from USA Judo. It came from U.S. Soccer’s president, when he introduced the federation’s newly appointed youth technical director.

Even though U.S. Soccer should be applauded for creating the new position, isn’t it a bit late? You see, they developed the national team program and the adolescent program (13-18 year olds) prior to developing the youth program (6-12 year olds) which I think is backwards. How can you develop a national team program when your raw material and programs at the grassroots level are less than adequate? Seems to me that you forgo winning at the national team level for a decade or so while you strengthen the youth program.

It appears that we are working ass-backwards in Judo too, or going through the motions while pretending we are developing Judo. Although we have some of the ingredients of a national team program- a high performance director and national training centers- these are only labels with little substance behind them. We also have on paper an under-23 team but not much of a program. And unless it snuck by me, we don’t have anything that would even remotely resemble a national youth development program. So, we continue to have the results we have- a few dedicated players manage to win some international medals in spite of the national program, not because of it.

Judo and soccer in the U.S. suffer many of the same ills. We play both sports in the U.S., but we have no Judo or soccer culture. There is pressure on youth coaches to win at the junior level often with precocious athletes who fall by the wayside once maturity levels of the not-so-precocious athletes catch up. For both sports, winners are often the biggest, strongest and fastest, but not necessarily the most technically proficient. In fact, internationally we are behind when it comes to the technical skills in both sports.

U.S. Soccer’s youth director has been tasked with creating a national educational curriculum for players and coaches.  Don’t answer all at once, but why doesn’t Judo have a youth technical director? Why don’t we at least have national guidelines for youth development?

Creating a youth technical director position is the easy part. Formulating the ideas contained within the educational curriculum requires a bit more work. The most difficult task will be how to get coaches to buy into a national youth development program that targets long-term goals and technical development rather than the short-term goals of winning what really are meaningless tournaments at the junior level?

Education has to be the greater part of the solution. Our coach education committees and development committees need to step up to the plate. Our promotion requirements should be adjusted to reflect the needs of our players rather than the demands of the go kyo no waza and nage no kata. And ultimately, our tournament rules must foster an environment that rewards technical rather than tactical abilities.

By now, you’re probably wondering about some specific ideas that should be implemented. For starters, we must point out to our coaches the importance of long-term goals vs. immediate gratification, so that they can then convey that same message to parents, players and club directors.

We should rethink having national championships for players under a certain age- maybe somewhere in the 9-12 range. We encourage those young players to compete because coaches derive satisfaction from having national champions at age seven, and tournament directors need the income these players generate, but from a national perspective it doesn’t mean squat to be a national champion when you’re barely out of diapers.

From a technical viewpoint, the focus should be on tachi waza, not sutemi waza, and definitely not any of the dropping type throws, which tend to retard technical development. I bet we all know junior national champions who won thanks to drop seoi nage, but never managed to break through to the senior ranks for lack of other skills. Coaches should encourage their players to develop large inventories of Judo skills, and should discourage them from the overuse of their “early” tokui waza, either in competition or in training.

Finally, emphasis should be placed on principle-, behavior-, and situation-based drill training, rather than the traditional uchi komi-randori-kata model.

It should be noted that several nations have instituted competition parameters that should lead to stronger technical development, even though they are being instituted for the safety of the players rather than expressly for their technical development. For example, Judo Canada’s newest parameters for under-9 and under-11 competition forbid sutemi waza, maki komi, tani otoshi, headlock throws and dropping throws, all of which can pose some danger to a young uke as well as retard tori’s technical development.

As always, waiting for our national bodies to come up with the right plan can be an exercise in futility. Coaches, either singly or in small groups, should formulate their own development plan by looking at what other sports, other countries and other successful coaches have already implemented. I offer a few caveats though: don’t imitate lock, stock and barrel someone else’s program, think outside the box, and never be satisfied with your creation.

In spite of our ability to work outside of the establishment, wouldn’t it be nice if just once the establishment would come through for us?

Promotions have long been a sore subject for many of us. They are a tool that has been abused far too often to stifle the creativity of our outliers, and control and punish deserving judoplayers, while rewarding undeserving players to the point that advancing to high dan grades has almost become meaningless. None of this is good for our sport.

Do we if fact need belts and promotions in Judo? Wrestling doesn’t have any of this stuff, and it manages just fine. Norm Miller, who runs a club in Wisconsin, has no promotion system. His players can earn a “red, white and blue” paneled club belt by participating in ten tournaments, which I think is a cool idea, especially for kids. Other than that, everyone in his club wears a white belt and has no rank. His competitors wear white or blue belts when they enter tournaments. He seems to be doing OK. To each his own.

In spite of the politics and inequities of yudansha (black belt) ranks, mudansha (under black belt) promotions are a good educational tool to encourage, motivate, and set technical and performance goals for students, while being useful to coaches as an indicator of teaching effectiveness.

My daughter’s first decision was whether to use one of the national systems or create her own. Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for her to decide that she would create one based on her own curriculum and standards. The apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree after all. In other words, she would resort to issuing those “terrible, worthless dojo promotions” that our national organizations hate because they lose out on a significant source of income.

While I think that the national standards are a good tool for coaches who don’t have the time, experience, or wherewithal to create their own, all coaches should sooner or later give serious thought to formulating their own curriculum and promotion standards. I believe professionalism requires this. It’s a benefit to coaches to be self-reliant, and responsible for creating, implementing, evaluating, and constantly improving their teaching methods, curriculum and promotion system. You can’t do this if you are blindly following someone else’s standards. When coaches create, implement and evaluate, their students benefit by having a promotion system that corresponds to the curriculum.

Some quickly point out that not having national standards will lead to abuse of rank. Well, we already have this with national standards, so what would be different? We all know who is over-ranked and under-ranked. Some coaches don’t care if their blue belts get beat by orange belts. Fortunately, more coaches do care. Tournament competition is a great evaluation tool that leads to self-correcting measures by coaches whose players are out in the open.

Promotions should not be viewed as a means to sell more belts or raise funds for clubs, coaches or national organizations as is prevalent in the taekwondo world. Increase membership fees if you need more funds to run your program. Don’t prostitute the promotion standards just for the sake of the mighty buck. On the other hand, use promotions for motivation and goal-setting purposes until your heart’s content.

My daughter and I have discussed many issues that coaches need to address. How hard do I make the tests? Should I formally test or should I use another method of evaluation? How many belts should I use? What skills do I require? Will my students’ ranks be recognized?…all great questions whose answers aren’t necessarily right or wrong, but whose answers certainly do have consequences, some good and some bad.

Emotionally, I’m in favor of walking into class and promoting a deserving but unsuspecting student. I was promoted to shodan like that. However, intellectually, I recognize the value of a formal and comprehensive test as a means to develop breadth and depth of knowledge, so I don’t pull surprises on my students, and I do test.

I’ve never worried about who will recognize my players’ ranks- my standards are high- but I do realize that it’s something that has petrified many coaches and some players. I had to deal with this problem early on in my career. I had earned an orange belt in a private club before transferring to a club that adhered to national standards. The secretary had told me when I enrolled that I would probably lose my orange belt since it wasn’t recognized by the federation. Needless to say, I wasn’t a happy camper. I was, however, allowed to be evaluated by the coach before losing my belt. Not only did he not demote me, but he promoted me to green belt within a month. He paid attention to my skills and not the provenance of my rank.

On average, most coaches I talk to seem willing to ignore whether a transferring player has official rank or dojo rank from some other club. They are more interested in whether that player can do Judo. Since skill levels vary so much even among clubs that adhere to national standards, most coaches are happy enough to evaluate transferring players and plug them into their system. The extremists, who are few, demote players or make them start all over as a white belt. Again, to each his own.

When it comes to what skills to require for each rank, we should distance ourselves from strict adherence to the go kyo no waza and nage no kata. I’m sure that in the past, these were well-thought pedagogical tools. Today, they no longer are. We can do better and we must do better. Must we start teaching techniques A, B and C, or could we consider starting with O, P and Q? Does it makes sense to require the same skills for every player within a certain rank given the principle of individuality? Or should we require x number of skills for each rank, allowing some latitude for individual characteristics and abilities?

Is it enough that our players can demonstrate techniques before they can be promoted? Or should we focus more on the performance behaviors we expect from players- behaviors which don’t necessarily have Japanese names attached to them. In other words should our teaching emphasize situation-based performance or technique-based knowledge?

The perfect curriculum and promotion system have yet to be devised. As much as I have modified my own teaching over the decades, I’m still not satisfied. I’m eager to see what my daughter comes up with. I hope that she’ll have some tremendous insight into what is for her a new subject. She might give me the last pieces of the puzzle, although deep down I know that teaching requires a never-ending search for answers, solutions, and improvement. Worst case scenario is that we’ll have some more deep conversations as we seek to provide our students with the best learning environment we can devise.

One of the reasons progress has been so slow in coming to American Judo is that we are deeply happy and comfortable with the traditions and training model of our sport, and we don’t want to be the nail that gets hammered down. By golly, if it was good enough for my sensei and his sensei, then it’s good enough for me. Unfortunately for us, progress comes from stepping outside our comfort zone just long enough so that new skills can be learned and better performances can be achieved.

After more than thirty-five years of coach certification programs in the U.S. the results are pretty dismal; few coaches participate unless they have to, and we still cling to the ukemi-static uchi komi-randori-gokyo no waza-kata model. Once a coach begins his career, he pretty much ensconces himself into his comfort zone and nothing can pry him away. Why? What are his risks?

At work might be the sensei syndrome. Senseis are infallible and know it all, and more so the higher the rank. Why risk learning something new that you may have to implement? Why tempt fate and find out that you don’t actually know everything? Why chance making yourself appear to be, well, not so infallible? If I know it all, and then I change my mind, won’t I lose credibility? And what about Kano? What would Kano think if I showed signs of unorthodoxy, never once thinking that Kano revolutionized jujitsu to create Judo? Finally, learning, relearning, changing and implementing are just so much more work, why bother? So, to play it safe and remain in that comfort zone, most coaches don’t change. The students suffer. The sport suffers.

Like coaches, players also have a comfort zone. It’s always amusing when U.S. elite players visit my dojo for there is nothing more culturally foreign to them than one of my practices. They look around wondering what the heck people are doing. They are uncomfortable because they are asked to perform unfamiliar drills rather than the familiar static uchi komi, even though the drills are within their technical repertory and ability. While everyone else is moving around grip fighting, throwing and transitioning to ne waza, our elites resort to the tried and proven- static uchi komi. With some prodding, they come along. Hey, this is actually a little like real tournament fighting! The light goes on for a few moments, but extinguishes itself once players go back to their club. What else would you expect?

Players like practicing what they do best instead of practicing what they don’t do well. This is why randori is so appealing, and drills are not so appealing. Players are aided in this pedagogical crime by coaches who are unwilling or incapable of helping their players step outside their comfort zone by creating and imposing opportunities for practicing the bad and the ugly, in addition to the good.

I once asked a visiting player what she thought of our practice. After some thought, she politely said that it was interesting. It was evident the practice had made her feel somewhat incompetent and uncomfortable. It didn’t help that my daughter, some fifty pounds lighter, had manhandled her during randori. She never came back. It was obvious she felt good being around an uchi komi-randori model where she could do things she excelled at rather than practice things that were not yet part of her inventory of skills, but that would have made her a better, more-rounded player.

Golf great Jack Nicklaus once explained to Oakland Raiders football coach John Madden that one of the reasons he was so good at his sport was that after a round of golf he would begin to practice the shots that he had missed that day, while the normal routine for other golfers was to practice the shots they hit well. In Madden’s ten-years as a coach, only one player, Jim Otto, ever asked repeatedly to watch his mistakes on film. All others wanted to watch what they had done well in games. Otto became a Hall of Famer.

I remark in passing that referees also have their comfort zone- penalties. Without penalties, referees are lost. Penalize until you’re blue in the face to effect behavioral change. We know how well that’s working. Wouldn’t it be great to see referees step outside their comfort zone? What a great competitive sport Judo could be.

Expanding your comfort zone must come early in your career, whether you’re a competitor, coach or referee. The longer you wait to tax and challenge your comfort zone, the harder the task. Judo is stagnant, thus dying, in the States. We must all do our best to step outside our comfort zone, and grow Judo while we still can.

When I got wind that Martin Bregman and his referee committee were working on a set of developmental rules, I knew that their finished product would hardly be what I considered developmental. And it isn’t. I fired off a series of emails to the USJA board to voice my concerns. This is what I told the board:

I applaud the USJA for trying to create a set of rules for developmental purposes. Coaches throughout the country have already been doing this informally for years. However, I find it unconscionable to allow the referees committee to formulate these rules. Referees are responsible for screwing up Judo, even if they won’t take responsibility for this fact. They can’t keep pointing the finger at the IJF, while acting like they too are victims. Our referees, to the detriment of Judo development in this country, follow the diktats of the IJF lock, stock and barrel. They should not even be consulted when it comes to creating these developmental rules.

New rules should be developed by coaches who understand that competition is but one aspect of the overall technical development of our athletes. Coaches have a vested interest in developing better athletes. Referees don’t. We need to start treating tournaments (and rules) as more than a means to merely designate winners and losers. If you haven’t already done so, please read Where’s Judo’s Futsal? to get a better perspective of what we can achieve with rules that facilitate technical development. This is a serious undertaking, and referees should not be allowed within a thousand miles of this project.

Only four members answered, and all agreed that the referees should be involved. Again, I was disappointed, but not totally shocked. In subsequent emails, I stated that putting referees in charge of rules is like asking criminals to effect penal reform, and I mentioned there is a reason that rules for professional sports in North America are voted on by the owners of the teams and not by the guys officiating.

USJA President DeMars justified her selection of three A referees for the project by saying that they were also coaches and past competitors; true, but irrelevant. All three are by training, mindset, and outlook referees! They are referees who happen to also teach/coach Judo. That does not make them coaches with the mindset of a coach. This distinction is important because their final project reflects their inability and unwillingness to think outside the referee box.

So what are the modifications? In a nutshell, penalties will be lessened for first time infractions: shido for grabbing a leg, followed by hansoku make; shido for a small gi with an opportunity to change into a bigger gi; and penalty-free verbal warnings. My gosh, these guys really stretched their minds, didn’t they? This is exactly what I expected from referees: obvious changes that still don’t go far enough, nothing earth-shattering, and no outside-the-box thinking.

OK, so fewer penalties are always a great idea, but let’s be honest here, these rules are not very developmental. We need rules that will promote sound, technical skills. We need to eliminate winning matches by penalties. We need to use a reward system for good Judo rather than a punishment system for bad Judo. We should reward with higher scores those skills we want to see performed by our athletes, and conversely downgrade the scores for skills we don’t want to see. We must also minimize the risk factor associated with attacks.

These are some of the ways we can accomplish the above. Eliminate most of the penalties we give out. Referees need to issue verbal warnings to shape the match. I know this works because I use this system in my in-house events. AAU and freestyle Judo rules also use this, and it makes for more exciting matches. Players must win via positive Judo and not penalty-derived scores.

To eliminate the risk factor of attacks, do way with the match-ending ippon. Let the match continue for a set time, and allow for many ippons. Mitch Palacios has run tournaments in San Francisco that require two ippons to win.

To encourage the development of standing Judo, and to mitigate flop and drop Judo, downgrade the scores of flop and drop techniques regardless of the impact, or ignore them for scoring purposes. There’s no need to ban them however. We have already emasculated Judo enough.

The purpose of developmental tournaments should be twofold: to encourage the development of technical Judo, and to encourage the participation of more players in Judo tournaments. We can achieve these objectives by using a reward system rather than a punishment system, and by increasing TIM (time in a match) by removing terminal ippons. We should also think about doing away with the standard scores and using numerical values instead. This would enable us to reward more of the skills we want to see in Judo.

I’m tired of ten-second matches under a modified double elimination system. Throw in hansoku make for illegal leg grabs and small gis, and you have a recipe for disaster when it comes to technical growth and participation. This is precisely what we are experiencing now. Developmental tournaments should also use the round robin or double elimination system.

Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. The USJA’s developmental rules are not really developmental. They are modified, which is better than the full IJF rules, but not by much. We need to send this rule project back to a committee that can think about the technical development of our athletes by thinking outside the box. Our referees couldn’t get the job done if their life depended on it. I want a do-over. Of course, nothing prevents coaches from developing their own set of rules and running tournaments as they see fit. Sadly, this may be where true change comes from.

Last week, I had a conversation with my daughter Valerie that raised my blood pressure. She was telling me about a call she had received from an adult interested in doing Judo. He’d shopped around and knew that other arts were charging $125-150 per month. After a positive talk with her prospective student, she stated that her monthly fees were $90. That was the deal breaker. He had been told that Judo was a much cheaper activity. He said he’d call back. Sure he would.

The week before I had a similar situation. A father and son came for a visit. The son had done Judo for less than a year at another Judo club. After the practice, I mentioned to the father that his son was a little lost because our teaching methodology was different from the static uchi komi model his son was used to. The father loved the drills we did and accepted the fact that his son should know more Judo than he did. As dad departed, he said he would call me the next day after he had discussed it with his son. Well, he didn’t call, but I called him several days later. Getting to the point quickly he told me that my fees ($90) were four times what he was paying at some community center. And even though he knew he was buying an inferior product, he was going to stick with it for the time being.

What makes people believe that Judo should be cheap, but that it’s OK to pay double or triple for Judo ne waza, which we call Brazilian jiujitsu? Why are so many Judo clubs still stuck on monthly dues of $20-40, when the national average for martial arts training is $130, and training in other sports can be even higher? Are we sending a message to the public that our product is so shabby that we have to mark it down in order to sell it? Keeping Judo cheap hasn’t helped us grow. We need to get into light industrial properties and malls, but we can’t do that if we are charging peanuts for our services.

Another label I don’t like is that we are the sport that teaches you how to fall. Sure we teach people how to fall, but do we want to be defined as such? A few years ago a dad who had done Judo as a child approached me about his son learning Judo. The son was already taking karate with my business partner, but dad wanted him to take Judo so he could learn to fall. Apparently, this is all that dad had gotten out of his Judo experience. I can think of a lot of reasons why people should do Judo, and a lot of benefits they derive from Judo, but falling is not in my top ten list. It says a lot- and none of it is good for our sport’s image- when a Judo-playing dad has his son in karate, but wants him to learn Judo temporarily so he can fall better.

Another label I hate is the one that pegs us as the sport that hurts because you have to take falls. This label is the one we are 100% responsible for, so it bothers me the most. It would disappear quickly if we all had better mats and a better model of instruction to handle ukemi. Many of the Brazilian jiujitsu guys I talk to in my community will admit that they would love to take Judo if it weren’t for the falls. Sadly, every time someone steps onto a hard, Judo-inadequate surface, rather than a spring-loaded platform, and comes away from the experience turned off, the sport suffers, and the label survives.

To grow Judo, we must develop a Judo industry, where coaches run successful businesses, entrepreneurs develop audio-visual materials, and participants are willing to pay good money for a great product. If we are to grow Judo in the United States, we can’t be known as the cheap sport that hurts and teaches you how to fall, or the sport you take for a few months to be a better wrestler or ground grappler.

We need to professionalize Judo. This requires better educated coaches equipped with a sound business plan to succeed as Judo entrepreneurs, and a better instructional model that allows us to compete in the ever-changing martial arts environment. Above all, we need to start listening to the way we sell ourselves and ask for compensation. We sell, albeit poorly, a million dollar product for pennies. Why?

Daughter #1, Valerie, is a 2-time U.S. Olympian. I know what you are thinking. How can an Olympian hate the sport she has done for 32 of her 36 years? The answer is simple. She doesn’t hate the sport. She hates the politics, bureaucracy, petty jealousies, and drama that go along with being an elite athlete in the sport, but when she expresses her displeasure with those things, it comes out as a simple “I hate Judo.”

Another 2-time Olympian expressed the same thing to me at the Senior Nationals last year. She told me that she hated Judo too. I could have walked away without saying anything but I chose that moment to tell her that she was lying. I told her that what she hated was not the sport of Judo, but rather, like my daughter, all the nonsense that goes along with being a player, coach, and national committee member. She looked at me, thought about it for a moment, and then told me that I was right. She loves teaching Judo. She hates all the rest.

If you’ve been around the sport long enough, you know who they are. I’m talking about all the hyper-involved players and coaches who one day just said, “I’m not going to take this crap anymore,” and walked away from the sport. Sadly, most of them walked away permanently, which is something we can’t afford too frequently.

Others have said, “I’m not going to take this crap anymore,” without walking away from the sport. They simply unburdened themselves of the negative obstacles, and took a different path. John Saylor, former coach at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, and Steve Scott, former international coach, both took the independent route as far away from USA Judo as possible. John created the Shingitai jujitsu system, which has a lot of Judo to it, and Steve is still doing Judo through the AAU. He’s even played around with the rules to make Judo competition better.

Valerie has also finally found a way to stay in the sport she loves. She’s now doing something that I thought would never happen. She’s running her own club. She realizes that Judo coaches teach more than just Judo skills. She’s making better citizens out of her students. And the icing on the cake is that my two grand-daughters are now learning Judo from mom making them the fourth generation of Lafons to play the sport. How great is that?

If you get to the point where you hate Judo, the message I’d like you to hear is distance yourself from the garbage, but stay true to the sport. What I find surprising is that many of our disheartened members don’t know how to operate outside the establishment. As a matter of fact, far too many people think you can only operate through USA Judo, USJA or USJF. So, it’s a shock when I tell them they don’t need any of the national organizations to teach Judo and stay with the sport they love to hate. “But what about liability? What about promotions and tournaments?” they ask. Once I point out options and alternatives, the process of teaching Judo without being married to the politics is not so overwhelming.

My other daughter, actually daughter #3, Alexis, is a typical soon to be eleven-year old. She claims that she hates Judo. It’s hard, it requires work and sweat, it’s no fun getting thrown or pinned, blah, blah, blah. Of course, I pay little attention to her complaints. She wants to do ballet and gymnastics, but there is no time in her busy schedule for a second activity. Since she’s a Lafon, she has to do Judo while she lives in my house. She may never be a national or international champion like her older sisters, but she will be tougher than she is today and she’ll be more capable of defending herself.

I know that many feel it’s not acceptable to force kids to do things they don’t want to do. I don’t share that opinion. Too many families are run by their children. I don’t think that’s a good thing. Kids don’t see the big picture. Parents should see the big picture, but often they lose track of their role as decision makers. Not I. San Diego County has suffered two kidnappings of teenage girls, who were ultimately murdered, and a third attempt at kidnapping within the last year or so by the same previously convicted sex offender. The third attempt failed because the girl had had martial arts training. That’s one big reason why I insist my daughters practice Judo.

My mom forced me to take Latin in school. I fought it tooth and nail for a while but gave up because my mom didn’t falter in her belief that it would do me some good. I did six years of Latin. Today, I am glad that I did. My mom was right and I was wrong. And for that I am eternally grateful.

In spite of all the bitching and moaning about Judo, Alexis is always asking me if we are going to do a fun drill today. She enjoys inventing drills and has fun once she is on the mat. I get the occasional, “Do I have to go to Judo today?” And she gets the consistent, “Yes, you do have to go to Judo today! All of your siblings are tough, and so will you be.” I’m confident that when she’s an adult, she’ll thank me for “forcing” her to do Judo.

Oh, by the way, I “hate” Judo too! Sometimes I feel I’m dangling from a tall building and the only thing preventing me from falling is the last foot of a roll of dental floss. Then I remember why I still love coaching Judo. It’s about impacting the lives of others in a positive way.