One of my players who has been training in Europe for the last year was back in San Diego for a visit. On our off-day, we decided to visit a local Judo club he used to frequent from time to time before he found his way to my club. This club touts itself as having international caliber instructors. I’m still trying to figure out why it claims that. It must be because the owners have money and travel abroad frequently. They aren’t even the head coaches for the Judo class because their primary background in the martial arts is not Judo. They have no national level players let alone international players. International caliber instructors sounds good but it’s clearly a gross misrepresentation of the truth. Caveat emptor!

When we arrived at the club, Judoplayers were milling around the mat while the tail end of a kicking/striking class was winding down. Apparently, the Judo sensei, an older gentleman, was late, and nobody found it necessary to get the class going in his absence. Precious minutes of training were lost.

Watching from the spectators area, I recognized one of the players, a young Judo black belt I had seen from time to time at local tournaments. She was giving what looked to be a private lesson in Muay Thai to a man and woman. I strolled around the facility and came across a sheet of paper on the wall. It was a list of students who had declared their desire to achieve high excellence in their given art. For Judo that meant being an Olympian. The name of the young lady who was giving that private lesson was on it!

Sensei finally arrived fifteen minutes late. Apparently he had forgotten that the Judo class schedule had changed. Players started warming up. It turned out to be more like a conditioning session- long and devoid of even one iota of creativity. More wasted training time. I was bored so I struck up a conversation with a young mom who was sitting a few chairs away from me. She informed me that the female black belt on the mat was a Pan-American player! I tried not to laugh or get angry. I even surprised myself by not saying anything to dispute the statement. I knew that she was “Pan-American” only because she had attended the heavily boycotted, no longer recognized PJU Junior Championships after the PJU had been defrocked as the official organization representing the Americas. The young lady is not even on our national elite roster, junior or senior, yet she is described as Pan-American.

After what seemed like an eternity to me, sensei took over the class. He demonstrated two throws during the rather lethargic technical part of the class. They were practiced one at a time with little movement and no grip fighting. The two could have been practiced as a combination, but that didn’t happen. Judoplayers don’t need no stinkin’ combinations! Feedback was minimal. A discussion about the rules of Judo made it clear the sensei and the assistants were not well-informed. International caliber instructors? I think not. Randori, about twenty minutes of it, came and went. It proved once again that some of our players do learn Judo in spite of terrible pedagogy and methodology. When practice was over, the “I want to be an Olympian” changed training gear and participated in a Muay Thai class that followed Judo. How much had she saved herself in Judo so she could last the Muay Thai class?

Throughout the practice, I dug deep trying to figure out how this training was going to get that young black belt to become an Olympian. I kept hearing in my mind Jim Pedro lamenting, “I feel sorry for our kids. They don’t stand a chance.” He’s right because our players and coaches are for the most part clueless. There are too many of those “unknown unknowns”, the things we don’t even know we don’t know, in the Judo community to get our players to the international level. This was further reinforced when sensei sat next to me after practice and told me that the young black belt goes to Japan once a year for a few weeks of training, which is really a euphemism for getting her ass handed to her by the Japanese university players. Holy cow!!! How are a few weeks in Japan every year, and three sub-standard, ninety-minute practices a week going to get that gal to the Olympics….as a participant? Please don’t tell me cross-training in Muay Thai is going to do it. The obvious answer is that we need to make our practices more effective and meaningful for our athletes, and we do this by educating our coaches.

The above story is true. It’s not a figment of my imagination or a compilation of several visits. And sadly for American Judo, it’s a fairly good snapshot of our sport: well-meaning but clueless, uninformed and misguided coaches and athletes. Players around the world are practicing international Judo while ours are stuck on the Go kyo no waza. Coaches throughout the world are educated, licensed and often former world-class athletes themselves while ours are mostly not. Athletes in the world have national programs with real paths that lead to success: large clubs, many good training partners, regional/national training sessions, camps and coaches; and, of course, so many opportunities to compete within small geographical areas. Meanwhile American athletes have, uh, well, we have a huge country, small clubs, few partners, few tournaments and USA Judo. But if you can get to Japan for a few weeks each year to be a throwing dummy, who really cares how crappy American Judo is, right?

I’m concerned about our naivete. I’d like to see us do better internationally before I die. I know, it might be wishful thinking, but I’m sticking to my guns. Little boys and girls in swimming, gymnastics, soccer and wrestling all seem to know what it takes to be the best. They know because their coaches know. In Judo our kids don’t know because their coaches are in la-la land. We need to shake them up and give them the tools to develop competent players who can vie for international excellence just like we do in other sports. We’ll have to do it with a different training model though, because we simply don’t have the numbers and the opportunities the rest of the world has. This is yet another instance of wishful thinking, but here too, I’m sticking to my guns. In the interim, with very few exceptions, we remain clueless.