Not long ago, one of my fathers with limited Judo experience indicated to me that instead of bringing his 7-year old son to one of my 1-hour classes, he would work with him at home for two hours.  He was upfront with me as to the reason: he wanted his son to do better.  This was certainly a valid reason.  Most parents want their child to do better.  Unfortunately, many want their child to do better NOW, not later.

No parent wants to see his child struggle and lose for months or even years before some modicum of competence is developed.  It’s painful.  I understand that very well.  My third daughter, Alexis, who is now 13, is a late-bloomer.  I’ll admit that after having developed her two older sisters into international level players, it’s been a struggle for me to see her thrown and pinned so often,.  Thankfully, I understand the value of long-term development, and I know that she’ll eventually become a much more competent player.  In the interim, she’s living our core values of courage and perseverance.

To help you coaches out there who struggle with fathers who know more about Judo or what’s best for their child than you do, and for you all-knowing fathers too, I’ve developed these talking points, which I hope will be persuasive.

• By training with you, his training partners are deprived of his presence, and vice versa. The team camaraderie and dynamics that are a great allure to participating in sports are absent.
• By using your adult body to practice, he’s working with a model that will negatively affect his biomechanics.  Bad habits will ensue because the training partner is unrealistic for his size and skill level.
• By training your son, you undermine my well-thought out syllabus.  I teach certain things, and conversely don’t teach certain other things for a good reason; long-term development vs short-term development.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your child.
• By training your child on skills we are not covering yet, you are creating information overload and potentially dangerous situations for his club training partners.  It would be nice if your child could perform well what I have taught him before adding to his inventory.
• By teaching your child, I’ll undoubtedly have to undo bad habits, like the dropping seoi you want him to do just to mention the obvious.  Not good for him or me or any of the other coaches.
• Since you’re his training partner, you’ll miss many of his mistakes because you can’t see him perform.
• Keep in mind that the number one reason kids quit a sport is parent over-involvement; too much, too soon, too many pieces of conflicting information, much of which undermines the syllabus and the coach.  Again, it’s an issue of long-term vs short-term development. Parents don’t know much about that because they have never lived through it, until it’s too late for a do-over.
• If you must absolutely help your child- which I don’t recommend your doing- reinforce the things we’re teaching him without adding to his technical load.  However, you must absolutely be sure you know what you’re talking about.  To help with this, my suggestion is to get on the mat and assist us during class so that you know what we’re working on and how to reinforce it.  This still doesn’t make it OK for him to miss a group class.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why so many kids play such a useless sport.  I’m speaking of baseball, of course.  Do parents think their child will be the next millionaire to play the professional game?  Does the notion of a college scholarship enter the picture?  Do parents believe that the game provides short-term or long-term fitness or health benefits?  Or is it simply that parents know the game and can relate to it even though the benefits are next to zilch for 99.99% of the tens of millions of kids who play the game?

Now before I get accused of not understanding baseball or not having played the game myself, let me stop you dead in your tracks.  I grew up on baseball in the streets, empty lots and parks of Secaucus, New Jersey before moving to France where I discovered soccer and Judo.  I’ve been a New York Yankees fan for as long I can remember.  I played baseball, and stickball, because that’s what every kid did.  And I was good at it too.  Looking back now, I realize that baseball did absolutely nothing for me other than keep me out of trouble.

Jigoro Kano’s creation of Judo as a method of physical education gets little traction in the U.S., unlike in Europe where the educational benefits of the sport are touted.  That’s sad considering the alarming and rising number of obese, diabetic, unfit-for-military-service kids in our nation.  Not only will this burden our healthcare system, but we are looking at a growing problem when it comes to national defense.  Yes, national defense.  Apparently, some 25% of Americans of military age are physically not qualified to serve.

Kano developed Kodokan Judo with three objectives: physical education, combat training, and moral training.  Thanks to the IJF, we’re doing a piss-poor job with combat training.  On the other hand, I believe that most coaches are doing a good job at providing moral training.  The sport itself, heavy on Japanese culture and etiquette, facilitates the development of good citizens. This etiquette, a moral code of honor if you will, is what makes Judo unique among all the grappling arts.

In regards to physical education, the sport is doing its job, but we are doing a terrible job at advertising that fact.  That needs to change.  Michel Brousse, my colleague from France who knows American Judo quite well, told me that America needs to sell the educational benefits of Judo to make it more appealing to families.  He’s absolutely right.  We know that we are more than just a sport.  We understand the transformative power of Judo.  Now, we must share our little secret with the public.  Judo is combat training, moral training, and above all, good physical education.  We are developing better citizens and a stronger nation.  Scream it out loud!

The slideshow, which was put together by my daughter Valerie and her daughter Breanna, was an eye-opener for my current members. Seeing pictures of our past national champions, team uniforms, training sessions, camping trips, pool parties, and other family outings got the juices flowing.  Time to revive some of these events!

Creating the 13-minute slideshow took about 70 man-hours.  The process of finding old pictures and scanning them pointed out that we need to do a better job at taking pictures more often.  I can’t believe the number of times I said to myself, “Why in the world don’t we have a picture of so-and-so or of such-and-such an event?”  Preserving pictures for posterity in one depository is another issue that needs to be solved.  With digital photography that will be easier for my next 40 years.

As part of our character development and leadership program, I had suggested to my juniors that if they wanted to say something during the celebration, we’d love to have them make a speech.  Much to my surprise, six of them had the courage (one of our three core values) to stand in front of the crowd and talk about the benefits of Judo in their lives. Kids never cease to amaze me.

Waiting for the slideshow to start

The keynote speeches were given by my two most accomplished athletes; Valerie Lafon Gotay (2x Olympian) and Todd Brehe (2x World team member).  Valerie’s speech focused on work ethic, and how Judo has positively affected her life.  Her “hard work is virtuous” resonated with the crowd.  Todd spoke of the fun times as a junior competitor, and that thanks to Judo he has visited some 32 countries throughout his competitive career.  He ended with a call to make Judo a “part of your life.”

I wrapped up the speech part of our celebration by saying that my 40 years as a coach almost didn’t happen but for the hand of providence.  Sure, I had done Judo as a teenager and I loved the sport.  However, with my service in the Marines during the Vietnam War, my Judo had come to an end.  I had given little thought to resuming Judo once I was back safely in the States.  Fortunately, someone had a different story in mind.  Within months of becoming a civilian, I returned to my pre-war studies at San Diego City College.  I spotted a flyer advertising a new campus Judo club.  My interest was piqued.  I attended the first administrative meeting.  It was quickly decided by those in attendance that since I was the senior rank (as an Ikkyu I was senior to even the college advisor) I would be the coach of the new club.  And there you have it.  I became a coach because I was in the right place at the right time.

Todd’s presence gave me an opportunity to touch upon another of our core values; perseverance.  As a junior, Todd’s only medal was a third place in Spokane, Washington where, as he pointed out to us in his speech, there were only eight competitors in his division.  Early on, I was convinced that Todd would eventually be a world-class athlete if only he persevered through the losses and didn’t quit.  He didn’t quit, and eventually became a 5x national champion, and 2x World team member.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the last 40 years.  Kids have gotten softer and are less motivated to reach for the heights that Todd and Valerie attained.  The “entertainment” generation is fun-driven and work-adverse.  Work ethic?  We don’t need no stinkin’ work ethic.  Today’s kids have many options; too many jacks-of-all-trades and masters-of-none.  More and more kids seem to have problems with time management.  Putting down that iPod, iPad, cell phone or shutting off the computer might help.  Parents, all well-meaning, have gotten more intrusive and just like their kids softer, too.  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was spot on when he said centuries ago, “Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”

While I long for our glory days of athletic achievement during the 80s and 90s, it still gives me great satisfaction to watch Judo work its transformative magic with our entertainment generation.  While I’m no longer developing future Olympians or even national champions, more importantly, I’m building better citizens armed with our core values of courage, integrity and perseverance.

She didn’t have any words of wisdom because she didn’t want any Tom, Dick, or Harry starting a Judo club and offering bad Judo, emphasizing that we already had enough bad Judo out in communities across the country, and that it gave Judo a bad name.  Point well taken.

Upon deeper thought, she suggested that prospective teachers of Judo should find a mentor, get educated as coaches, and become a student of the game before they actually started teaching Judo.  No dispute here.

So, although I agree with her that bad Judo instruction is hurting Judo’s reputation, it remains that we’re losing prospective Judo participants to other arts for an obvious reason: there aren’t enough Judo clubs in the country to service those who want to do Judo.  For our lack of Judo clubs, people get stuck doing taekwondo, BJJ or MMA when they actually want to do Judo.

The sad truth is we don’t have enough elite Judo athletes willing to teach Judo to significantly alter the number of Judo clubs in America. So, we’re stuck with the following dilemma: Is bad Judo better than no Judo?  I say yes, with one caveat.  Prospective teachers of Judo must commit to have a mentor, to be educated in the art of teaching, to become a student of the game, and finally, to continue improving their Judo skills.  This is exactly how I did it.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I was probably one of those bad instructors my daughter is not fond of when as an ikkyu I started teaching Judo at San Diego City College in 1972. But through mentorship, education and training, it’s safe to say that I became more than a decent coach.

I like to tell people how soccer was spread through the U.S. by the American Youth Soccer Association (AYSO) over the last 50 years, because there is relevance for Judo.  Soccer grew thanks to the efforts of volunteer coaches, mostly parents who couldn’t play the game.  Yet, over years of coaching their children’s teams, many of these coaches with two left feet became excellent soccer coaches by growing alongside their players.  Why can’t this become Judo’s method of expansion?

Here in San Diego, BJJ spread through the efforts of many blue belts who started in garages before moving into small, but permanent facilities.  Can’t we do the same with Judo?  It takes only about 10-20 members to cover the overhead of a small commercial or larger industrial facility if you’re willing to charge an appropriate fee.  How hard is that?

As I’ve said before, we need a “Manhattan Project” devoted to the expansion of Judo.  If our national organizations focused their efforts mainly towards coach education and club development, Judo would have a presence in many more communities.   More coaches, more clubs.  More clubs, more registered members.  More members, more competitors.  More competitors, more medals.  More everything, more money.  More money, more Judo industry.

In my opinion, bad Judo is better than no Judo, because we can make bad Judo good Judo. Accepting only good Judo is not an option for us.  I’m convinced that there are many players willing to teach Judo if only they were supported by proper mentorship, coach education and business training.  Can’t we make that happen?

My dad is the reason I do Judo.  He studied Judo in France during World War II, and then later at the world famous Budokwai in London under Gunji Koizumi, the founder of British Judo.  The picture below was taken at the occasion of his promotion to ikkyu in 1947 when he was 22.

Pierre Ernest Lafon (1924-2012)

At 56, Dad was still practicing Judo, and other martial arts, when he stepped onto the mat of my club in 1980. He had fallen in love with sutemi waza by then, explaining that sutemi was much easier on an old, slower body than tachi waza.  Sadly, I never asked him what his favorite techniques were as a young man.  Back then, I guess it wasn’t important enough for me to know.  Now, I feel a piece of the puzzle is missing.  I’ll never know the answer because I failed to ask the pertinent question when I could.

My grandfather Rene founded La Coupole, a very famous restaurant in Paris, in 1928.  Because the restaurant was a family business that involved aunts and uncles, then later on the kids, my dad’s entire work life revolved around the restaurant business.  During his years in the U.S., he worked at many of the famous French restaurants in New York City.  However, his true love was Judo.

About ten years ago, much to my surprise, I found out that what he really had wanted to do was teach Judo.  My mom put a stop to that for some reason.  I’m not sure whether that was a good thing or not, but I’m convinced that dad passed the Judo teaching gene to me.  And, naturally, I have been running wild with it for 40 years now.

My last visit to my father occurred in August 2011 in Paris during the World Championships.  By then, he’d suffered memory loss due to two small strokes, but he still had the body of a 60-year old.  Three of my four kids were there to meet him.  He was very proud of his grandchildren’s Judo accomplishments in particular.

Tomorrow’s Judo practice at my club will be dedicated to my father.

R.I.P., dad.

SoCal Judo is coached by Valerie Lafon Gotay and her husband Israel Hernandez.  Both are Olympians, but don’t let that fact discourage you from trying to start a club the same way.  Anyone with a good program who understands the nuts and bolts of running a business can succeed, Olympian or not.

Israel Hernandez and Valerie Lafon Gotay

After the Beijing Olympics in 2008 Valerie started a personal training company called Fitness by Val.  Israel, who had stepped away from his coaching duties with USA Judo, had become a consultant to several international sports organizations.

Once the economy started tanking, many of Valerie’s clients could no longer afford the private lessons.  Israel was getting tired of the travel that would take him away for weeks at a time.  I suggested that while adults were curtailing their activities, parents weren’t cutting back on their children’s programs.  Thus, it would make more sense to start teaching Judo as the main course, with personal training and consulting as a side dish.

Since Valerie was already working out of her garage, she got rid of some equipment, moved things around, and built a 16 x 20 ft spring-loaded platform for her mats.  Fortunately, I had some used mats that I was no longer using, so start-up costs were kept to a minimum.

From the garage...

Through word of mouth, school flyers, and her web site, membership grew slowly but surely.  It didn’t take long to figure out that many potential new members were not comfortable with the club being in someone’s house.  Even some of the members intimated that they would bring in friends once the club moved to permanent facilities.  After about fifteen months, it was obvious that membership would not grow any further until the club had larger, permanent facilities.  So, it was time to look for a permanent site.  Three months later, SoCal Judo moved into a commercial building off one of the main drags.

...to this!

Besides a small kids class, most of the SoCal Judo members had been taking private lessons from Valerie and Israel.  Private lessons offered good income, and Valerie and Israel enjoyed working one-on-one with their clients in the garage.  However, privates are labor intensive and the wear and tear for uke is substantial.  It finally dawned on both of them that they would need to wean their students off the privates and focus on larger group classes, which ultimately would generate more income.

As predicted, once SoCal Judo moved into permanent facilities, members brought in friends, prospective new members had better “attitudes” when they came to check the club out, and membership double in just three months.

With the permanent facilities, there is room for spectators and family members to watch. The garage offered no such thing.  It’s palpable that some of the parents and non-Judo playing siblings are now showing interest in doing Judo.  Parents have become more involved in the program whether they do Judo or not.  They’re ready to help run tournaments, and spread the word.  They’ve taken ownership of the club.

Kids at work!

Initially, besides offering fitness classes and Judo, the schedule was going to include no-gi classes.  That idea has been shelved for now.  Why?  Because Valerie discovered that there was a great interest in just Judo, and that she wanted to showcase straight Judo.  She told me, “There’s no shame in just teaching Judo.”  I couldn’t agree with her more.  She did admit that perhaps down the road, she might hire a coach to teach something that complements Judo, like yoga or Olympic weightlifting.  What she’s not going to be involved with is the MMA type gym.

Dojo Entrance

Road Sign

SoCal Judo is open six days a week, and offers morning, afternoon, and evening classes.  She and Israel spend more time at the club now than before, but that’s what it takes to grow the membership.  The more classes you offer, the more likely someone will join.

Her future projects include training assistant coaches for private and group lessons, developing social events for SoCal Judo families, hosting in-house tournaments and inter-club workouts, and creating a youth leadership program.

If she had to do it over, she would have left the garage sooner.  I’m just glad she finally pulled the trigger and moved.  The survival of Judo just got a decent shot in the arm.

The Grand Opening of the club is on February 25, from 1-4pm.  If you are in the neighborhood, please stop by.  Let your friends in Temecula know about it.

The IFJA is appropriately named “alliance” rather than federation or association because we don’t seek to politically control any person or entity.  We’re a support group of like-minded coaches, players and clubs.  We’re interested in making it easier for you to transition from IJF to Freestyle rules.  We want you to know that others share your IJF-generated misery.  And we definitely want Mr. Referee to see the evidence that we’re fed up with the IJF and we’re doing something about it.   Finally, we seek to empower you to take the first steps towards a more meaningful approach to Judo competition.

Steve and I have also discussed the idea that while the AAU Freestyle rules serve as the springboard for the IFJA, there’s room for other ideas.  I’m personally in favor of ippon not terminating a match.  This has historical precedence.  Syd Hoare states in A History of Judo:

One noteworthy fact about these Butokukai and Kodokan rules is the absence of any reference to Kime-waza or decisive technique.  The ippon throw is usually thought of as a real combat deciding technique, but clearly fighting for the best of three ippons sidesteps that definition.  Kano said that competition and randori rules were to test the ability of the contestants in standing and groundwork.

I’m sure that many of you have good ideas as well.  Share them with us on Facebook.  If you have run tournaments (no matter how big) with alternative rules, tell us what your players and parents think about them. Let us know how your rules are helping develop sound combative skills.

I’m sure that our efforts will succeed in making Judo relevant once again.

Well, the evidence is all around us if we are willing to take off the blinders.  Mr. Referee has a problem understanding the demise of Judo in the U.S. because he doesn’t step outside his comfort zone, which is his little world of sanctioned tournaments and referee colleagues.  He can’t hear the disgruntled voices on the martial arts discussion lists.  He doesn’t field the phone calls from prospective members who inquire whether my dojo’s curriculum is IJF rules-based.

He is not aware of the clubs that have switched over to Freestyle or AAU rules, or left Judo for submission grappling or BJJ because he doesn’t interact on Facebook.  Since he’s not the person responsible for the financial welfare of the club, he hasn’t bothered to look around to see that for every Judo club in a community, there are 4-6 BJJ and MMA clubs, not to mention the still large number of taekwondo studios.  No, all he cares about is the next sanctioned event he can referee.

What about the evidence of disenchantment within the international community?  Even if you search casually on the Internet, you’ll find that there are many international organizations that are dedicated to a Judo that is other than IJF Judo.  If you are a reader of my blog you know that the World Judo Federation was founded in August 2011.

Many of us were rooting for the WJF to adopt different competition rules, but so far we have been disappointed.  That may be changing though.  WJF is a member of The Association For International Sport for All (TAFISA), which is going to hold the TAFISA Games in July 2012.  WJF has queried its national organizations to see if there’s support for participating in these Games.  I don’t know whether Judo will participate, but one thing is certain: according to Dr. Hoglund, the WJF Vice-President, “the demonstration/competition should be for a “different Judo” than the “Olympic Judo” administrated by the IJF.”

Steve Scott from the AAU and I have been lobbying the WJF to discard the IJF rules and adopt AAU Freestyle rules or something similar.  I’ve received support from Dr. Ivica Zdravkovic from Serbia who writes:

My full support to this suggestion- freestyle judo or any similar form of FREE Judo, with more groundfight, which will attract BJJ people. I am afraid that leaders of WJF have forgotten that the initial Kodokan rules were actually “free style” rules. I run “maybe-soon-to-become” a member organization of WJF on behalf of Serbia, but we still hesitate in here, because if WJF insists on using the same rules like IJF, then it makes no sense founding new organization. I also run International Shinbudo Association (ISA) where we have large international championships and we already use rules that we call “JUDO GRAPPLING” – which is similar to freestyle judo and is a mixture of judo and BJJ.

Still not enough evidence?  Here’s another distressing clue.  Since 1970, the population of the U.S. has grown by 100 million- a 50% increase!- yet the number of registered members in our three national organizations has not budged.  In fact, the numbers are so low that these organizations are enrolling members who do other arts.

How do you explain the lack of Judo’s growth?  Either Judo is no longer appealing to Americans, or Americans are doing Judo in clubs that no longer belong to the establishment.  My vote is for both.  Judo is becoming unappealing and irrelevant mainly because it has been sissified, and many of us operate “underground.”

The cure to our irrelevance and slow death is to put back the Judo that was taken out, and do Judo the way it was intended to be played.  Have the courage to make the change within your club, and to unite with us on the national and international scene.  Let’s show Mr. Referee the evidence!

In leafing through several Marine Corps training manuals, I came across the following Judo-pertinent question which appears in Values: A User’s Guide for Discussion Leaders (MCRP 6-11B). What are some of the qualities that experts consider necessary prerequisites for an occupation to be considered a profession?  Good question, indeed.  So what makes a Marine or a Judo coach a professional?  According to the manual, this is what’s needed:

Renders a unique social service:  regardless of whether we call ourselves coaches, sensei or instructors, we are above all educators.

Relies upon intellectual skills: while we deal primarily with a physical field, ultimately it takes great skills and knowledge to develop an educational program, and business acumen to make it financially profitable.

Involves long periods of specialized training and experience:  after 4-5 years we obtain our black belt, but what happens after that is what makes or breaks the deal of professionalism.  Our goal is to have 20-40 years of experience during which we are constantly improving our technical knowledge and teaching skills.  What we shouldn’t tolerate is one year of experience 20-40 times.

Has considerable autonomy and decision making authority:  we are, or should be, the master of our dojo.  The buck starts and stops with us.

Are held personally responsible for their actions and decisions: see above.

Service is emphasized over financial reward: this is obvious when it comes to Judo.  In fact, to our detriment, we excel at distancing ourselves from financial reward.  To grow as a profession, we must not shy away from charging what we are worth.

A profession is self-governing and responsible for policing its own ranks: sadly, too many of us turn a blind eye toward improper behavior on the part of our colleagues.  We can and must do better.

Professions have their own codes of ethics which establish acceptable standards of conduct for members: while we do have a code of ethics and our national organizations pursue acts of misconduct, more could be done to preempt such acts.

So there you have it folks. Judo coaches appear to be professionals.  So, act accordingly.