Jimmy Pedro is a judo competitor and coach, world champion, 3x world medalist, 2x Olympic medalist. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
- ROKA: https://roka.com/ and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order
- Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil
- Ladder: https://ladderlife.com/lex
- Linode: https://linode.com/lex to get $100 free credit
- MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off

EPISODE LINKS:
Jimmy's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmypedrousa
Jimmy's Links: https://linktr.ee/jimmypedro
Jimmy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimmypedrousa
Jimmy's Websitbe: https://www.jimmypedro.com/
American Judo System: https://usajudo.com/

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:43 - The most beautiful throw
25:12 - Russian approach to randori
38:43 - Judo gripping
50:12 - IOC
1:00:37 - Toughest match
1:05:44 - Jimmy Pedro Sr
1:24:59 - Travis Stevens
1:44:29 - Kayla Harrison
2:02:47 - Putin and judo
2:06:59 - Getting started in judo
2:11:45 - BJJ
2:15:11 - Advice for young people

SOCIAL:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
- Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

The following is a conversation with Jimmy Pedro, a legendary judo competitor and coach.

He represented the United States at 4 Olympics in 92, 96, 2000, 2004,

He medaled in 3 world championships, winning gold in 1999.

He has coached many of the elite level American judoka, including Kayla Harrison, Ronda Rousey, Travis Stevens, and many others.

Plus, he's now my judo coach, along with Travis Stevens.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now here's my conversation with Jimmy Pedro.

What is the most beautiful throw in judo to you?

You know, it's the 1 that seems to have the most amplitude.

A person goes the highest, you see a leg swing through the middle, the person doing the throw, there's a leg swinging through the middle.

The other person definitely goes, you know, head over heels, flat on their back.

It's probably the most dynamic, pretty judo throw there is.

Okay, so it's a single, you're standing on a single foot and you're raising your other foot in the air and it's a forward throw, which means your back is facing the opponent, but they kind of both fly through the air and twist through the air.

What are the principles behind that throw?

It's 1 of those throws that people can kind of understand how to pick up another human being in sort of trivial ways.

But the Ichimada to me never quite made sense, like why it works.

There's a cork, there's a twisting motion, there's some involvement of the hip, but it's not really a hip throw because the hip is not all the way over.

So I'm trying to say, Can you say something for once?

It's probably 1 of the most difficult throws to learn as well, because it is so complex.

You do have to stand on 1 leg, balance on 1 leg, swing your other leg through the middle, hold your opponent up in the air.

And it's hard to make that contact with upper body to your back.

You have to turn your back on the throw as well.

It's definitely sort of a throw where you need to start pulling your opponent's upper body toward you, right?

So their upper body starts coming towards you.

Your legs go towards them as your body starts to go into the throw.

So your head is gonna go left, let's say.

Your partner's gonna start to lean towards you, and just as you start to get there, momentum coming forward, your leg is gonna sweep up underneath theirs, pick them up onto your hip, right?

And then the finish of the throw is a twist, and a lot of times the good judoka will leave their feet when they do the throw, So both bodies are in the air together.

And then the thrower comes down on top of the person being thrown.

Okay, so who to you is the best Uchimada?

There's plenty of guys that do Uchimada a lot better than

You do have a nice video about the uchimata online, but who's a great practitioner of the uchimata to you?

Right now, Shohei Ono, who's two-time Olympic gold medalist.

And there's tons of highlight videos on the IJF and Judo fanatic showing how he does his Uchimada and it is quite different than everybody else's.

He's won 2 golds in a row at the Olympics.

I think maybe in the last 8 years, the guy's lost 2 matches.

The only reason why he's not is because Nomura is a 60 kilo player.

So Nomura, I mean, unless Ono's gonna stick around for another 3 years and win again here in Paris, then he'd match what Nomura did.

But three-time gold medalist in judo in a lightweight division, that's pretty spectacular.

So to you, the being able to win a championship, world championship or Olympic medal is a measure of greatness.

It's not like You have some people who are not as accomplished like Koga or something like that, but just the beauty, the moments of magic, the number of moments of magic is the highest, even if it's not championships.

I think you have to go by that because there's so many phenomenal judo players that have come through the system of spectacular judo.

You have won countless major events, but the ability to pull it together, right?

Those magical moments, the pinnacle of the sport, the world championships, the Olympic games, and proving that you can do it time and time again makes you unstoppable, it makes you the best.

There was a guy back in the 70s and 80s by the name of Fuji, and he won 4 world championships back to back.

And back then, the world's was every 2 years.

So here he was, a four-time world champion.

So there's a guy who missed out on Olympic greatness, but was arguably the best competitor back in that period.

Okay, wow, I didn't know there was an actual guy

Our brand is named after the mountain, Mount Fuji.

But this is a different guy, his name was Fuji.

What about Teddy Renner, 10 time world champ, I think, 2 time gold medalist at the Olympics, 2 times bronze medalist at the Olympics, probably the most dominant Judoka ever.

You know, If you look at the size, just how big, how tall he is, how big he is, how physical he is of a specimen.

Like I sat next to him on a bus and like his legs are literally the size of my waist.

Like when you sit next to him and just look at the size, he's a big man.

So obviously to win 10 world titles in the sport of judo, I mean, that's almost an incomprehensible feat, two-time Olympic champion.

Again, that puts him in 1 of the maybe 10 or 12 people that ever do that in the history of the sport.

So he's definitely got to be in the running for the best.

But technically, I don't think he's as technical as some of the other in terms of pure Judo finesse technique.

He's powerful, he's explosive, he's dominant, he's strong.

Teddy also grips really, really well, which makes him that much tougher to beat.

Because a lot of times heavyweights, especially the heavyweight division, a lot of them just grab the gi and they go man to man and judo to judo and take shots at each other and that's why a lot of them end up getting beat.

But Teddy's in control, like positionally, he stays in really good position and he controls his opponent the whole fight.

So they really don't have a chance against them.

He doesn't give them a chance to beat him, which is why he's been so dominant.

So I mean, he does have a really nice, Osorogare, this backward trip, outside trip in case people don't know.

I mean, He has just like technically pretty good throws and for heavyweight.

Heavyweights can be sometimes messy with their judo.

He's pretty technical and clean in the execution of his big throws, but a lot of that probably has to do with the dominant gripping that he does.

It's not defensive gripping, it's offensive gripping, but the dominant gripping.

He controls the grips, he controls the movement of the match as a result of that, and then he creates his own openings.

So I mean, for a heavyweight, phenomenal technique, yes.

And what you said, messy, I'd like to call it sloppy, right?

A lot of the heavyweights tend to be sloppy.

It's hard to move somebody that weighs 350 pounds.

It's hard to get that body moving and just with a simple pull motion.

So he's definitely found a way to do it, but he's also, I don't know, 6 foot 8.

You know, he's probably weighs 140 kilos.

But he had this winning streak of just, I don't know how long, but like over a hundred matches.

And he lost at this Olympics that we just went through, the 20, I don't even know what to call it, 2021 Olympics, I don't know the proper terminology.

I mean, it's always sad to see a sort of greatness come to an end.

It's like Karellin in wrestling and Greco Roman.

Did you shed a bit of a tear to see greatness go?

I mean, what did you think about sort of this dominance, this run of dominance being stopped?

I think, I mean, it's obviously sad to see LFC and champions succeed, especially people that are good people.

I think there's some arrogant champions that everybody would like to see lose just because they don't want to deal with their personality.

But I think Teddy's a very humble champion.

I think he's been privileged and he makes good money from the sport of judo and the French Federation has taken care of him well.

So it's sad to see somebody like that get beat, especially when this could have been his third Olympic title and just put him in infamy.

So it was sad to see, but I think every athlete goes through it, right?

I mean, it's just, that's what the Olympics is all about.

Especially in Judo, it's like so, like the margin of error, I mean, I guess the other question I wanna ask here is, in your sense, how difficult it is to not lose for so long?

It seems like in judo, like a little mistake and it's over.

There's no coming back and Ippon means it's over.

It's hard to stay that dominant without question.

First of all, when you are the entire world is training against you just to beat you.

They're trying to break it down and find a flaw in your game.

So everybody's hunting for you when you're the best in the world, especially at the Olympics, that's the 1 to beat you at.

And then there's an incredible amount of pressure on that athlete to perform.

You carry the flag for your country, when you're at opening ceremonies sometimes, there's all spotlight is on you.

And it's particularly hard when things don't go well early.

You know, in other words, when you're expected to win and then all of a sudden now you're in a hard fight and it's not going the way you want, that pressure, the 1 who's the favorite feels the pressure the most at the Olympics.

And that's why I think the other ones are able to win it.

I've actually never gotten a chance to listen to Teddy Renner sort of explain ideas behind his Judo.

Like I wonder what his mental game is like because I think his English is pretty, not very good.

And so, and I just haven't seen good interviews, but it's always fascinating to, there's certain great athletes that are also great thinkers and speakers, like the Satya Brothers in wrestling.

Again, not meaning, that's on my to-do list,

I'm going to Dagestan and talking to them because they're brilliant.

But to be able to sort of, maybe after retirement, to think back, what were the systems involved?

Both on the technical, the training side, and then the mental side.

Because to stay that dominant, just like you're saying, everybody's studying to beat you.

And the heavyweights are just these powerful dudes.

So to be able to control them with your game and like the game that everybody knows is coming is, I don't know, I don't know what's behind that, but there's got to be, it feels like the Mental game is exceptionally important.

I think a lot of people underestimate just how important that side is.

Being mentally prepared for victory, mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best.

There's nobody that's weak-minded that can accomplish that.

You know, it's 100% confidence and belief in yourself.

If we take a big picture view then, not necessarily Tate and Renner, but if you wanna go from the very beginning, from day 1 of judo class to Olympic champion, or Olympic medalist, what does it take to become an Olympic medalist in Judo from start to finish?

Like how many different trajectories do you see or is there some unifying principles?

I think a lot of it has to, your journey is going to depend a lot by where you're from.

So a path that an American might take versus somebody who's from Japan or somebody who's from Europe.

There's 2 very, 3 very distinct paths, right?

Because in Japan, it's part of the culture.

There's elementary school judo, there's junior high school, there's high school, there's collegiate, there's Olympic.

And much like our wrestling is here in the United States, right?

There's youth wrestling, there's high school, there's NCAA, and then there's Olympic wrestling.

And when your country is a factory of producing athletes at the highest level, then all of those top athletes typically go back into the sport and there's professions for them.

They have an opportunity to coach at all those different levels.

And just the level of their game and the expertise that all of them have, even down at the elementary level, make their skill so solid.

And as a coach in that situation, you can just sit back and watch who stands out as opposed to, I think in America, I guess, you would need to craft.

You don't get to choose from a thousand people, a few people that naturally stand out at the age of 9.

You have to actually, whatever the natural resources you're given, craft them into a champion.

So if we look at that, the American way, where you just have a person with a smile show up to your dojo, says I want to be an Olympic medalist, what process do you take them through?

And there's only a few people and there's only a few coaches in this entire country that really understand that process and that can help people reach that level as it's been proven, right?

Number 1, you certainly have to have a solid base, a fundamental base of an expectation of what the training is going to be.

And it has to be a level of professionalism very, very early where you're teaching all the basic judo moves, all the basic fundamental movements, posture, gripping, well, maybe gripping doesn't come in so early in the game, but throwing methodology, movements, nawaza position, standing fundamental throws, and I think most importantly is really the work ethic.

Just the way you're going to train, the intensity you're going to train with, the ability to, you know, mindset of going to tournaments constantly.

You need, you know, in order to compete with the rest of the world, our young kids need to be tested a lot when they're young.

They have to be put through adversity because they don't get put through adversity in training because you don't have that many good training partners.

So you get put through adversity in competition.

And then do we see what your weaknesses are and we continue to make improvements on those.

And until they're kind of at the teenage years, they're gonna have to pretty much stay domestic, right?

Because they got to go through life as a normal kid, but they've got to be training in the dojo at least 5 days a week.

Sometimes they might wanna get an extra technical workout in or doing some base conditioning in addition to that.

And then really at the teenage years, that's where we really, we've struggled in America of keeping teens in the sport of Judo as well as developing them properly.

Because up until around the teenage years, I think the Americans are on par with the rest of the world in terms of technique and in terms of skill.

And we've proven we can compete with the rest of the world up until that age.

But that's where Japan and that's where the Europeans and the countries that are strong in Judo, that's where they put a lot of time, energy and effort is it to the teens, where they have a great coaching staff, they have good training camps with 800, a thousand people going to them every single weekend.

And that's where sort of, that's when you really accelerate your development.

So you're saying like in America, when you're young, like before, you know, 9,

you stick in judo, you can progress quite a bit.

But then I guess the other competition there, if you're into 2 people, you know, doing stuff to each other in a combative way.

The other competitor in America is wrestling.

So Judo almost primes you, like it teaches you how to be a great wrestler as well.

And so then you have to have a hard decision because you can probably be a collegiate wrestler.

You have like a clear plan of where you're going to go if you want to be a wrestler, where judo, that plan is more, is less clear.

So you have to be on your own a bit with your coach, that kind of thing.

Okay, so when you're on your own with your coach, to me, that's just a fascinating journey because then it's just like the purity of it.

It's the coach and the athlete and the dream.

It's all about the dedication, the 567 days a week, competing what, once a month, twice a month.

Okay, and just, but also you probably don't have that conversation, I don't know if you do.

Maybe you do, saying like, we're gonna do this for the next 8 years.

Do you ever sit down with Jesus, take it the David Goggins way, which is like, let's just take it 1 step at a time.

Well, no, like right now, you have to think about the Olympics is gonna be in Los Angeles in 2028.

Now would be the time and now is the time to identify talent and get commitment out of students that in 7 years, you can make a US Olympic team because we're gonna have a full team.

America is gonna have 14 athletes compete in those games, 1 in every weight class.

So now's the time, if you're gonna go on a journey to the Olympics and stay with the sport

And so what, you show up to the Pedro Judo Center and how much drilling, how much technique strategy discussions, how much Randori or like live sparring, how much conditioning and strength training, how much of all that?

How much of cross training to other gyms or something like that, traveling abroad?

Is there something to be said about some aspects of that system?

Right now, we have a young group of kids at the academy.

They're right around your weight, so it'll be perfect.

They're just young boys, but they've been training hard through COVID.

We've been, Travis and myself have been training them.

They're doing Randori like 5 nights a week.

We have them doing Randori Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays is when they're doing randori.

They're coming to the dojo Friday night and Sunday night to do training.

We also have technical sessions for them.

They're in school now, so it's a little bit challenging, but they come 05:00 in the afternoon and they do a technical session.

Through COVID, they were coming every morning doing technical sessions.

It's an hour of repetitive throwing or repetitive drilling to reinforce movements that we deem important to our successful system.

So, NAWASA positions, groundwork positions, where we want them to be in this position and they're gonna drill it 50 times, with resistance, in big groups, doing drills over and over again, picking apart the details of the technique and what they're doing wrong, showing them how to fix it.

But now we've done it so much that now we can do a whole drill session with them where they know all the different techniques inside and out and they can move from position to position really quickly.

Do they do it for a period of time, like 2 minutes, 5 minutes, or is it like 1, 2, they're actually counting?

So sometimes we do it for reps, sometimes we do it for time.

Yeah, so sometimes it might be as many as they can do in 60 seconds or as many as they can do in 2 minutes.

And sometimes it might just be, I want you to do every position 5 times.

In terms of throws, we're not talking about on a crash pad, right?

We're talking about free moving around the mat.

How many, because as I was mentioning to you offline, Travis threw me a few times, a lot of times, when he was visiting here in Austin.

And I just remembered, so there's 2 things.

I fortunately or unfortunately in my life haven't gotten a chance to train with folks of that level.

With just cleanness of throw and the power.

I immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that.

To throw a little shade at Craig Jones with his current mat situation, is they're very, they were quite thin.

And as Travis commented on, and not just the thinness of the mats, but they were laid on like concrete,

So I felt, it's like soft until it's not.

But being thrown very cleanly, I just felt like this is not gonna lead to injury.

But then, as I mentioned to you, when a day or 2 after, my entire leg, 1 of them, I guess it's the left leg, was just black, a bruise.

It didn't hurt too bad, but it was just the body's gotten soft.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions | Lex Fridman Podcast #236