Judos Unknown Unknowns

“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” So spoke Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, back in 2002, regarding our knowledge of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He could have been talking about Judo, too.

Continue reading

Inactivity, Waste, and Irrelevance

It doesn’t take long to realize that there are so many different skills to learn in Judo that you can’t imagine ever having enough time to address them all. Every time I mention to a coach that he or she should work on this or that, I get the same dejected look, and reply, “I know what you are saying, but I just don’t have enough time to fit everything in.”

If you can’t increase the number of practices or can’t lengthen the training session, then you must make your practices more efficient. Actually, you should make your practices more efficient anyhow, even if you can increase the number of practices (usually a good thing) or lengthen your session (often not a good thing.)

Continue reading