Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions

Lex Fridman (01:23.080)

and twist through the air.

Jimmy Pedro (01:24.520)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (01:25.560)

Yeah, so how does that throw work?

Lex Fridman (01:28.400)

What are the principles behind that throw?

Lex Fridman (01:30.400)

Is one of those throws that, you know,

Jimmy Pedro (01:33.440)

people can kind of understand how to pick up

Lex Fridman (01:35.900)

another human being in sort of trivial ways,

Lex Fridman (01:38.720)

but the Uchi Mata to me never quite made sense,

Lex Fridman (01:42.060)

like why it works.

Jimmy Pedro (01:43.820)

There's a cork, there's a twisting motion,

Lex Fridman (01:47.360)

there's some involvement of the hip,

Lex Fridman (01:49.720)

but not, it's not really a hip throw

Lex Fridman (01:52.920)

because the hip is not all the way over,

Lex Fridman (01:55.600)

so it's not, it's a very confusing throw to me.

Lex Fridman (01:58.400)

So I'm trying to say, can you say something through words?

Jimmy Pedro (02:00.920)

It's probably one of the most difficult throws

Lex Fridman (02:02.680)

to learn as well, because it is so complex.

Jimmy Pedro (02:04.980)

You do have to stand on one leg, balance on one leg,

Lex Fridman (02:07.880)

you know, swing your other leg through the middle,

Jimmy Pedro (02:10.040)

hold your opponent up in the air,

Lex Fridman (02:12.040)

and it's hard to, it's hard to make that contact

Jimmy Pedro (02:16.080)

with upper body to your back.

Lex Fridman (02:18.400)

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

Lex Fridman (02:20.480)

So how does it work?

Lex Fridman (02:22.640)

It's definitely sort of a throw

Jimmy Pedro (02:24.880)

where you need to start pulling your opponent's upper body

Lex Fridman (02:28.880)

towards you, right?

Lex Fridman (02:30.440)

So their upper body starts coming towards you.

Lex Fridman (02:32.620)

Your legs go towards them

Jimmy Pedro (02:35.120)

as your body starts to go into the throw.

Lex Fridman (02:38.400)

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

Jimmy Pedro (02:40.880)

your body, your legs are gonna go to the right,

Lex Fridman (02:43.600)

your body's, your partner's gonna start to lean towards you.

Lex Fridman (02:47.340)

And just as you start to get there,

Lex Fridman (02:48.920)

momentum coming forward,

Jimmy Pedro (02:50.520)

your leg is gonna sweep up underneath theirs,

Lex Fridman (02:53.360)

pick them up onto your hip, right,

Lex Fridman (02:55.240)

and then the finish of the throw is a twist.

Lex Fridman (02:57.280)

And a lot of times, the good judoka

Jimmy Pedro (02:59.240)

will leave their feet when they do the throw,

Lex Fridman (03:01.560)

so both bodies are in the air together,

Lex Fridman (03:04.040)

and then the thrower comes down

Lex Fridman (03:05.600)

on top of the person being thrown.

Lex Fridman (03:07.520)

So all four feet are in the air.

Lex Fridman (03:09.280)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (03:10.120)

So there's just this unstoppable force that's,

Lex Fridman (03:12.280)

so you're all in the air.

Jimmy Pedro (03:13.720)

You're basically doing a roll together.

Lex Fridman (03:15.800)

Correct.

Jimmy Pedro (03:17.400)

Okay, so who, to you, is the best uchimata,

Lex Fridman (03:21.680)

who has, besides yourself, the...

Jimmy Pedro (03:23.800)

I'm not gonna lie, there's plenty of guys

Lex Fridman (03:27.640)

that do uchimata a lot better than I do.

Jimmy Pedro (03:29.800)

You do have a nice video about the uchimata online,

Lex Fridman (03:31.800)

but who is a great practitioner of the uchimata to you?

Jimmy Pedro (03:36.120)

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

Lex Fridman (03:39.720)

that's his favorite throw,

Lex Fridman (03:40.920)

and there's tons of highlight videos on the IGF

Lex Fridman (03:44.320)

and judo fanatics showing how he does his uchimata,

Lex Fridman (03:47.680)

and it is quite different than everybody else's,

Lex Fridman (03:50.520)

but it's unstoppable.

Jimmy Pedro (03:51.680)

When he comes in, nobody stops it.

Lex Fridman (03:53.360)

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

Jimmy Pedro (03:55.960)

I think maybe in the last eight years,

Lex Fridman (03:57.440)

the guy's lost two matches.

Jimmy Pedro (03:59.280)

He's just incredible.

Lex Fridman (04:00.840)

At a very competitive division, I guess 73 kilos?

Jimmy Pedro (04:05.040)

Okay, and then three time world champ too.

Lex Fridman (04:08.640)

Is he the greatest of all time to you?

Jimmy Pedro (04:10.960)

The only reason why he's not is because Nomura

Lex Fridman (04:14.520)

is a 60 kilo player.

Jimmy Pedro (04:15.840)

He was three time Olympic champion,

Lex Fridman (04:18.360)

so Nomura, I mean, unless Ono's gonna stick around

Jimmy Pedro (04:21.400)

for another three years and win again here in Paris,

Lex Fridman (04:26.560)

then he'd match what Nomura did,

Lex Fridman (04:28.200)

but three time gold medalist in judo

Lex Fridman (04:30.360)

in a lightweight division, that's pretty spectacular.

Lex Fridman (04:34.200)

So to you, being able to win a championship,

Lex Fridman (04:38.680)

world championship, or Olympic medal

Jimmy Pedro (04:41.840)

is a measure of greatness.

Lex Fridman (04:43.920)

It's not like you have some people

Jimmy Pedro (04:46.960)

who are not as accomplished like Koga or something like that,

Lex Fridman (04:49.920)

but just the beauty, the moments of magic,

Jimmy Pedro (04:55.000)

the number of moments of magic is the highest,

Lex Fridman (04:57.600)

even if it's not championships.

Jimmy Pedro (04:59.480)

I think you have to go by that

Lex Fridman (05:00.960)

because there's so many phenomenal judo players

Jimmy Pedro (05:04.040)

that have come through the system of spectacular judo.

Lex Fridman (05:07.240)

You have won countless major events,

Lex Fridman (05:11.600)

but the ability to pull it together,

Lex Fridman (05:14.040)

those magical moments, the pinnacle of the sport,

Jimmy Pedro (05:16.520)

the world championships, the Olympic games,

Lex Fridman (05:18.760)

and proving that you can do it time and time again

Jimmy Pedro (05:21.600)

makes you unstoppable, it makes you the best.

Lex Fridman (05:24.440)

There was a guy back in the 70s and 80s by the name of Fuji

Lex Fridman (05:28.480)

and he won four world championships back to back.

Lex Fridman (05:32.320)

And back then, the Worlds was every two years.

Lex Fridman (05:35.060)

So here he was, a four time world champion.

Lex Fridman (05:37.640)

That's eight years the top of the sport.

Jimmy Pedro (05:39.980)

He never won an Olympic medal.

Lex Fridman (05:43.740)

He never went to the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (05:45.580)

So there's a guy who missed out on Olympic greatness,

Lex Fridman (05:48.860)

but was arguably the best competitor back in that period.

Lex Fridman (05:52.560)

By the way, same Fuji as Fuji?

Lex Fridman (05:55.520)

Right.

Jimmy Pedro (05:57.000)

Really, okay.

Lex Fridman (05:58.080)

Wow, I didn't know there was an actual guy, Fuji.

Jimmy Pedro (06:00.620)

Our brand is named after the mountain, Mount Fuji.

Lex Fridman (06:03.560)

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

Jimmy Pedro (06:05.640)

All right, well, history rhymes.

Lex Fridman (06:10.700)

What about Teddy Renier?

Jimmy Pedro (06:13.360)

10 time world champ, I think,

Lex Fridman (06:15.440)

two time gold medalist at the Olympics,

Jimmy Pedro (06:17.600)

two times bronze medalist at the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (06:22.760)

Probably the most dominant judoka ever.

Lex Fridman (06:26.360)

Is he in the running?

Lex Fridman (06:27.300)

What do you think about that guy?

Jimmy Pedro (06:29.000)

I think he's a freak of nature, Teddy.

Lex Fridman (06:32.160)

If you look at the size, just how tall he is,

Lex Fridman (06:35.560)

how big he is, how physical he is of a specimen.

Lex Fridman (06:38.680)

I sat next to him on a bus,

Lex Fridman (06:40.640)

and his legs are literally the size of my waist.

Lex Fridman (06:45.960)

When you sit next to him and just look at the size,

Jimmy Pedro (06:48.080)

he's a big man.

Lex Fridman (06:49.800)

So obviously to win 10 world titles in the sport of judo,

Jimmy Pedro (06:54.120)

I mean, that's almost an incomprehensible feat,

Lex Fridman (06:58.800)

two time Olympic champion, again, that puts him in one

Jimmy Pedro (07:03.960)

of the maybe 10 or 12 people to ever do that

Lex Fridman (07:06.800)

in the history of the sport.

Lex Fridman (07:08.160)

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

Lex Fridman (07:11.520)

But technically, I don't think he's as technical

Jimmy Pedro (07:15.600)

as some of the other, in terms of pure judo finesse technique.

Lex Fridman (07:21.880)

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

Jimmy Pedro (07:26.860)

Teddy also grips really, really well,

Lex Fridman (07:29.000)

which makes him that much tougher to beat.

Jimmy Pedro (07:32.400)

Because a lot of times heavyweights,

Lex Fridman (07:34.160)

especially in the heavyweight division,

Jimmy Pedro (07:35.080)

a lot of them just grab the gi and they go man to man

Lex Fridman (07:38.480)

and judo to judo and take shots at each other.

Lex Fridman (07:41.280)

And that's why a lot of them end up getting beat.

Lex Fridman (07:43.600)

But Teddy's in control, like positionally,

Jimmy Pedro (07:45.900)

he stays in really good position

Lex Fridman (07:47.880)

and he controls his opponent the whole fight.

Lex Fridman (07:49.920)

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

Lex Fridman (07:52.240)

He doesn't give them a chance to beat him,

Jimmy Pedro (07:54.120)

which is why he's been so dominant.

Lex Fridman (07:55.640)

But he's not really stalling.

Lex Fridman (07:57.440)

So I mean, he does have a really nice Osorogari,

Lex Fridman (08:01.800)

this backward trip, outside trip, in case people don't know.

Lex Fridman (08:07.120)

And he has just like technically pretty good throws

Lex Fridman (08:11.320)

for heavyweight.

Jimmy Pedro (08:12.840)

Heavyweights can be sometimes messy with their judo.

Lex Fridman (08:16.880)

He's pretty technical and clean

Jimmy Pedro (08:21.600)

in the execution of his big throws.

Lex Fridman (08:24.080)

But a lot of that probably has to do

Jimmy Pedro (08:26.280)

with the dominant gripping that he does.

Lex Fridman (08:28.360)

It's not defensive gripping, it's offensive gripping,

Lex Fridman (08:30.640)

but the dominant gripping.

Lex Fridman (08:32.280)

100%.

Jimmy Pedro (08:33.120)

He controls the grips, he controls the movement

Lex Fridman (08:36.040)

of the match as a result of that,

Lex Fridman (08:37.920)

and then he creates his own openings.

Lex Fridman (08:39.720)

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

Lex Fridman (08:43.320)

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

Lex Fridman (08:46.400)

A lot of the heavyweights tend to be sloppy.

Jimmy Pedro (08:49.460)

They're falling on the ground a lot.

Lex Fridman (08:51.520)

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

Jimmy Pedro (08:54.480)

It's hard to get that body moving

Lex Fridman (08:56.000)

and just with a simple pull motion.

Lex Fridman (08:58.400)

So he's definitely found a way to do it.

Lex Fridman (09:00.920)

But he's also, I don't know, six foot eight.

Jimmy Pedro (09:03.580)

He probably weighs 140 kilos.

Lex Fridman (09:06.460)

He's a big boy.

Lex Fridman (09:07.820)

But he had this winning streak of just,

Lex Fridman (09:10.240)

I don't know how long, but like over 100 matches.

Lex Fridman (09:13.960)

And he lost at this Olympics that we just went through,

Lex Fridman (09:17.440)

the 20, I don't even know what to call it, 2021 Olympics.

Jimmy Pedro (09:20.300)

I don't know the proper terminology.

Lex Fridman (09:22.840)

Tokyo 2020 is what they call it.

Jimmy Pedro (09:24.160)

Tokyo 2020, all right.

Lex Fridman (09:26.240)

So he lost to Tamerlan Bashev.

Jimmy Pedro (09:31.200)

I mean, it's always sad to see a sort of greatness

Lex Fridman (09:34.360)

come to an end.

Jimmy Pedro (09:35.200)

It's like Karelin in wrestling and Greco Roman.

Lex Fridman (09:39.080)

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

Lex Fridman (09:42.120)

Or is it just the way of life?

Lex Fridman (09:46.480)

I mean, what did you think about sort of this dominance,

Lex Fridman (09:50.560)

this run of dominance being stopped?

Lex Fridman (09:53.820)

I think, I mean, it's obviously sad to see LFC

Lex Fridman (09:56.640)

and champions succeed, especially people

Lex Fridman (09:59.400)

that are good people.

Lex Fridman (10:00.480)

And I think Teddy's a good person.

Lex Fridman (10:02.440)

I mean, I think there's some arrogant champions

Jimmy Pedro (10:04.320)

that everybody would like to see lose

Lex Fridman (10:06.120)

just because they don't wanna deal with their personality.

Lex Fridman (10:10.000)

But I think Teddy's a very humble champion.

Lex Fridman (10:14.000)

He's a people's champion.

Jimmy Pedro (10:15.520)

You know, I think he's been privileged

Lex Fridman (10:17.880)

and he makes good money from the sport of judo

Lex Fridman (10:19.800)

and the French Federation has taken care of him well.

Lex Fridman (10:21.880)

So he's a lifelong judo icon.

Lex Fridman (10:25.360)

So it's sad to see somebody like that get beat,

Lex Fridman (10:27.680)

especially when this could have been his third Olympic title

Lex Fridman (10:30.760)

and just put him in infamy.

Lex Fridman (10:36.680)

So it was sad to see, but I think, you know,

Lex Fridman (10:39.740)

every athlete goes through it, right?

Lex Fridman (10:42.080)

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

Jimmy Pedro (10:45.840)

The great ones fall sometimes and.

Lex Fridman (10:48.600)

Especially in judo, it's like so, like the margin of error.

Jimmy Pedro (10:53.040)

I mean, I guess the other question I wanna ask here is,

Lex Fridman (10:56.360)

in your sense, how difficult it is to not lose for so long?

Jimmy Pedro (11:02.360)

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

Lex Fridman (11:06.880)

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

Lex Fridman (11:10.480)

So how difficult is that?

Lex Fridman (11:13.000)

It's hard to stay that dominant without question.

Jimmy Pedro (11:15.180)

First of all, when you are the entire world

Lex Fridman (11:18.040)

is training against you just to beat you.

Jimmy Pedro (11:20.280)

They're studying every single movement.

Lex Fridman (11:22.920)

They're studying patterns.

Jimmy Pedro (11:24.360)

They're trying to break it down

Lex Fridman (11:25.680)

and find a flaw in your game.

Lex Fridman (11:27.680)

So everybody's hunting for you

Lex Fridman (11:29.400)

when you're the best in the world,

Jimmy Pedro (11:30.400)

especially at the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (11:31.240)

That's the one to beat you at.

Lex Fridman (11:32.980)

So everybody's focused on you.

Lex Fridman (11:35.000)

And then there's an incredible amount of pressure

Jimmy Pedro (11:37.420)

on that athlete to perform.

Lex Fridman (11:38.760)

You carry the flag for your country

Jimmy Pedro (11:41.040)

when you're at opening ceremonies sometimes.

Lex Fridman (11:43.320)

There's all spotlight is on you.

Lex Fridman (11:46.760)

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

Lex Fridman (11:50.320)

In other words, when you're expected to win

Lex Fridman (11:53.200)

and then all of a sudden now you're in a hard fight

Lex Fridman (11:55.640)

and it's not going the way you want,

Jimmy Pedro (11:57.200)

that pressure, the one who's the favorite

Lex Fridman (11:59.160)

feels the pressure the most at the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (12:01.000)

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

Lex Fridman (12:03.880)

I've actually never gotten a chance

Jimmy Pedro (12:05.640)

to listen to Teddy Renner sort of explain ideas

Lex Fridman (12:10.720)

behind his Judo.

Jimmy Pedro (12:11.920)

Like I wonder what his mental game is like

Lex Fridman (12:13.760)

because I think his English is pretty, not very good.

Lex Fridman (12:16.800)

And so, and I just haven't seen good interviews,

Lex Fridman (12:19.800)

but it's always fascinating to,

Jimmy Pedro (12:22.560)

there's certain great athletes

Lex Fridman (12:25.440)

that are also great thinkers and speakers,

Jimmy Pedro (12:28.600)

like the Satya brothers in wrestling.

Lex Fridman (12:32.160)

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

Jimmy Pedro (12:34.640)

100%, I'm going to Dagestan and talking to them

Lex Fridman (12:38.200)

because they're brilliant.

Lex Fridman (12:39.640)

But to be able to sort of, maybe after retirement,

Lex Fridman (12:43.760)

to think back, what were the systems involved?

Jimmy Pedro (12:46.580)

Both on the technical, the training side,

Lex Fridman (12:50.860)

and then the mental side.

Jimmy Pedro (12:53.520)

Because to stay that dominant, just like you're saying,

Lex Fridman (12:56.600)

everybody's studying to beat you.

Lex Fridman (13:00.440)

And the heavyweights are just these powerful dudes.

Lex Fridman (13:03.200)

So to be able to control them with your game

Lex Fridman (13:06.280)

and the game that everybody knows is coming is,

Lex Fridman (13:09.600)

I don't know, I don't know what's behind that,

Lex Fridman (13:11.720)

but there's got to be, it feels like the mental game

Lex Fridman (13:15.480)

is exceptionally important.

Jimmy Pedro (13:17.860)

I think a lot of people underestimate

Lex Fridman (13:19.520)

just how important that side is.

Jimmy Pedro (13:22.160)

Being mentally prepared for victory,

Lex Fridman (13:24.160)

mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best.

Jimmy Pedro (13:29.040)

There's no way that's weak minded

Lex Fridman (13:30.400)

that they can accomplish that.

Jimmy Pedro (13:33.480)

It's 100% confidence and belief in yourself.

Lex Fridman (13:36.560)

If we take a big picture view then,

Jimmy Pedro (13:38.660)

not necessarily Taylor Renner,

Lex Fridman (13:39.960)

but if you want to go from the very beginning,

Jimmy Pedro (13:42.600)

from day one of judo class to Olympic champion

Lex Fridman (13:47.740)

or Olympic medalist, what does it take

Lex Fridman (13:52.080)

to become an Olympic medalist in judo from start to finish?

Lex Fridman (13:56.000)

Like how many different trajectories do you see?

Lex Fridman (13:58.360)

Or is there some unifying principles?

Lex Fridman (14:01.720)

I think a lot of it has to,

Jimmy Pedro (14:03.160)

your journey is gonna depend a lot by where you're from.

Lex Fridman (14:07.000)

So a path that an American might take

Jimmy Pedro (14:09.120)

versus somebody who's from Japan

Lex Fridman (14:10.960)

or somebody who's from Europe.

Lex Fridman (14:12.800)

There's two very, three very distinct paths, right?

Lex Fridman (14:16.680)

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

Jimmy Pedro (14:20.000)

There's a system of excellence.

Lex Fridman (14:22.280)

There's elementary school judo, there's junior high school,

Jimmy Pedro (14:25.960)

there's high school, there's collegiate,

Lex Fridman (14:27.640)

there's Olympic and much like our wrestling is here

Lex Fridman (14:32.640)

in the United States, right?

Lex Fridman (14:34.480)

It's very similar, there's youth wrestling,

Jimmy Pedro (14:36.500)

there's high school, there's NCAA

Lex Fridman (14:39.000)

and then there's Olympic wrestling.

Lex Fridman (14:40.220)

And when your country is a factory

Lex Fridman (14:44.000)

of producing athletes at the highest level,

Jimmy Pedro (14:47.120)

then all of those top athletes typically go back

Lex Fridman (14:50.460)

into the sport and there's professions for them.

Jimmy Pedro (14:52.560)

They have an opportunity to coach

Lex Fridman (14:53.880)

at all those different levels.

Lex Fridman (14:55.480)

And just the level of their game and the expertise

Lex Fridman (14:58.280)

that all of them have, even down at the elementary level,

Jimmy Pedro (15:01.620)

make their skill so solid.

Lex Fridman (15:04.200)

And as a coach, in that situation,

Jimmy Pedro (15:06.000)

you can just sit back and watch who stands out

Lex Fridman (15:09.640)

as opposed to, I think in America, I guess,

Jimmy Pedro (15:12.200)

you would need to craft.

Lex Fridman (15:15.240)

You don't get to choose from a thousand people,

Jimmy Pedro (15:17.420)

a few people that naturally stand out at the age of nine.

Lex Fridman (15:21.180)

You have to actually, whatever the natural resources

Jimmy Pedro (15:25.860)

you're given, craft them into a champion.

Lex Fridman (15:30.960)

So if we look at that, the American way,

Jimmy Pedro (15:34.200)

where you just have a person with a smile

Lex Fridman (15:36.280)

show up to your dojo, says I want to be an Olympic medalist,

Lex Fridman (15:41.120)

what process do you take them through?

Lex Fridman (15:43.040)

The odds are really insurmountable.

Jimmy Pedro (15:45.360)

It's a very, very high hill to climb.

Lex Fridman (15:47.400)

And there's only a few, there's only a few people

Lex Fridman (15:50.040)

and there's only a few coaches in this entire country

Lex Fridman (15:52.680)

that really understand that process

Lex Fridman (15:55.120)

and that can help people reach that level,

Lex Fridman (15:58.280)

as it's been proven, right?

Jimmy Pedro (16:00.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (16:01.240)

Number one, you certainly have to have a solid base,

Jimmy Pedro (16:05.100)

a fundamental base of an expectation

Lex Fridman (16:08.240)

of what the training is gonna be.

Lex Fridman (16:10.120)

And it has to be a level of professionalism

Lex Fridman (16:12.680)

very, very early, where you're teaching

Jimmy Pedro (16:14.440)

all the basic judo moves, all the basic fundamental

Lex Fridman (16:16.880)

movements, posture, gripping.

Jimmy Pedro (16:20.560)

Well, maybe gripping doesn't come in so early in the game,

Lex Fridman (16:23.160)

but throwing methodology, movements,

Jimmy Pedro (16:26.640)

niwaza position, standing fundamental throws.

Lex Fridman (16:30.880)

And I think most importantly is really the work ethic,

Jimmy Pedro (16:33.960)

just the way you're gonna train,

Lex Fridman (16:35.800)

the intensity you're gonna train with,

Jimmy Pedro (16:37.360)

the ability to, mindset of going to tournaments constantly.

Lex Fridman (16:42.440)

In order to compete with the rest of the world,

Jimmy Pedro (16:44.360)

our young kids need to be tested a lot when they're young.

Lex Fridman (16:49.560)

They have to be put through adversity

Jimmy Pedro (16:51.400)

because they don't get put through adversity in training

Lex Fridman (16:53.240)

because you don't have that many good training partners.

Lex Fridman (16:55.000)

So you get put through adversity in competition

Lex Fridman (16:57.760)

and then we see what your weaknesses are

Lex Fridman (16:59.520)

and we continue to make improvements on those.

Lex Fridman (17:02.580)

But the journey is, it's long.

Lex Fridman (17:05.000)

And until they're kind of at the teenage years,

Lex Fridman (17:08.080)

they're gonna have to pretty much stay domestic, right?

Jimmy Pedro (17:10.160)

Cause they gotta go through life as a normal kid,

Lex Fridman (17:12.560)

but they've gotta be training in the dojo at least,

Jimmy Pedro (17:15.320)

five days a week.

Lex Fridman (17:17.040)

Sometimes they might wanna get an extra technical workout in

Jimmy Pedro (17:20.360)

or doing some base conditioning in addition to that.

Lex Fridman (17:23.160)

And then really at the teenage years,

Jimmy Pedro (17:24.720)

that's where we really, we've struggled in America

Lex Fridman (17:28.760)

of keeping teens in the sport of Judo

Jimmy Pedro (17:31.900)

as well as developing them properly.

Lex Fridman (17:34.520)

Cause up until around the teenage years,

Jimmy Pedro (17:36.280)

I think the Americans are on par with the rest of the world

Lex Fridman (17:39.300)

in terms of technique and in terms of skill

Lex Fridman (17:41.800)

and we've proven we can compete with the rest of the world

Lex Fridman (17:45.880)

up until that age.

Lex Fridman (17:46.720)

But that's where Japan and that's where the Europeans

Lex Fridman (17:50.780)

and the countries that are strong in Judo,

Jimmy Pedro (17:52.920)

that's where they put a lot of time, energy and effort

Lex Fridman (17:55.420)

is it to the teens where they have a great coaching staff,

Jimmy Pedro (17:59.160)

they have good training camps with 800,

Lex Fridman (18:02.000)

a thousand people going to them every single weekend.

Lex Fridman (18:05.760)

When you say teens, what do you mean?

Lex Fridman (18:07.280)

Do you mean literally like 13?

Jimmy Pedro (18:09.040)

Yeah, age 13 to 17, 13 to 19.

Lex Fridman (18:12.480)

And that's where you really accelerate your development.

Lex Fridman (18:15.680)

So you're saying like in America, when you're young,

Lex Fridman (18:19.160)

like before nine, 10, 11, 12, you stick in Judo,

Jimmy Pedro (18:24.320)

you can progress quite a bit.

Lex Fridman (18:26.120)

But then I guess the other competition there,

Jimmy Pedro (18:28.920)

if you're into two people doing stuff to each other

Lex Fridman (18:33.920)

in a combative way, the other competitor

Jimmy Pedro (18:39.960)

in America is wrestling.

Lex Fridman (18:41.640)

So Judo almost primes you, like it teaches you

Lex Fridman (18:45.560)

how to be a great wrestler as well.

Lex Fridman (18:47.560)

And so then you have to have a hard decision

Jimmy Pedro (18:51.640)

because you can probably be a collegiate wrestler.

Lex Fridman (18:54.720)

You have like a clear plan of where you're going to go

Jimmy Pedro (19:00.040)

if you wanna be a wrestler.

Lex Fridman (19:01.000)

With Judo, that plan is less clear.

Lex Fridman (19:07.280)

So you have to be on your own a bit with your coach,

Lex Fridman (19:10.360)

that kind of thing.

Jimmy Pedro (19:11.200)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (19:12.120)

Okay, so when you're on your own with your coach,

Jimmy Pedro (19:14.440)

to me, that's just a fascinating journey

Lex Fridman (19:16.160)

because then it's just like the purity of it.

Jimmy Pedro (19:19.200)

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

Lex Fridman (19:22.560)

It's all about the dedication, the five, six,

Jimmy Pedro (19:25.680)

seven days a week competing, what, once a month, twice a month.

Lex Fridman (19:33.320)

Okay, but also, you probably don't have that conversation.

Jimmy Pedro (19:36.880)

I don't know if you do.

Lex Fridman (19:37.720)

Maybe you do, saying like, we're gonna do this

Jimmy Pedro (19:40.360)

for the next eight years.

Lex Fridman (19:41.760)

Right.

Lex Fridman (19:44.840)

Do you ever sit down?

Lex Fridman (19:45.680)

Would you just take it the David Goggins way,

Jimmy Pedro (19:47.960)

which is like, let's just take it one step at a time.

Lex Fridman (19:52.720)

Let's hope we're there in eight years.

Jimmy Pedro (19:54.040)

Yeah, let's hope we're there.

Lex Fridman (19:55.160)

Do you actually?

Jimmy Pedro (19:56.360)

Like right now, you have to think about,

Lex Fridman (19:58.160)

the Olympics is gonna be in Los Angeles in 2028.

Jimmy Pedro (1:00:00.440)

They have it on their YouTube channel.

Lex Fridman (1:00:02.520)

So it's like, I hope that they will just release it.

Lex Fridman (1:00:07.520)

And for money, for whatever, but release it

Lex Fridman (1:00:10.600)

and have that history not be erased, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:00:16.320)

It'd be wonderful if athletes could buy.

Lex Fridman (1:00:19.080)

Even if you could buy your own footage,

Jimmy Pedro (1:00:20.340)

you can't use it commercially, you can't,

Lex Fridman (1:00:22.060)

but you can buy your own matches

Lex Fridman (1:00:24.160)

and have them available for yourself

Lex Fridman (1:00:25.820)

or package the footage, it'd be awesome.

Jimmy Pedro (1:00:31.600)

Thank you for that.

Lex Fridman (1:00:32.440)

That is quite heartbreaking for me,

Lex Fridman (1:00:34.240)

so I wanted to talk about it a little bit.

Lex Fridman (1:00:37.960)

Let's go to you as an athlete real quick.

Jimmy Pedro (1:00:41.440)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (1:00:42.280)

You represented the United States at four Olympics,

Jimmy Pedro (1:00:45.720)

winning a bronze medal at two of them.

Lex Fridman (1:00:49.160)

Who or what was the toughest match or moment

Lex Fridman (1:00:53.520)

you had in those years?

Lex Fridman (1:00:55.240)

Maybe a moment that defined you,

Jimmy Pedro (1:00:58.560)

that you remember as being

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.760)

particularly defining in your career.

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:06.320)

I would say the bronze medal match in Atlanta in 96,

Lex Fridman (1:01:11.660)

because up to that moment,

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:13.080)

the United States team had not won a medal,

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.680)

had not fought for a medal in the games.

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:18.560)

We were on our home turf.

Lex Fridman (1:01:20.240)

It was my second Olympic games, right?

Lex Fridman (1:01:22.240)

So I had competed in 92 and I had won two matches

Lex Fridman (1:01:25.040)

and lost in the third round in Barcelona.

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:28.540)

I didn't make the podium.

Lex Fridman (1:01:29.680)

I lost to a Japanese guy from Japan.

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.800)

But the gold, silver, and bronze medalist

Lex Fridman (1:01:36.060)

at that Olympics in Barcelona were all guys that I had beat.

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:39.520)

In fact, two of them I was undefeated against

Lex Fridman (1:01:41.680)

in my entire career,

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:42.520)

the Brazilian and the Cuban I had never lost to.

Lex Fridman (1:01:45.200)

So that's when I knew I was capable of being

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:48.360)

on the podium at the Olympic games.

Lex Fridman (1:01:50.440)

When 96 came around, I was 25 years old.

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:53.680)

I was fairly in my prime.

Lex Fridman (1:01:55.240)

I had lived in Japan for six months.

Jimmy Pedro (1:01:56.880)

My technique was at a high level.

Lex Fridman (1:01:59.680)

I was amongst the best in the world.

Jimmy Pedro (1:02:04.320)

I lost at that Olympics to a guy from Mongolia.

Lex Fridman (1:02:07.880)

It was right before the match

Jimmy Pedro (1:02:09.320)

I was supposed to fight against Japan.

Lex Fridman (1:02:10.800)

So I was anticipating the match against Japan

Lex Fridman (1:02:13.360)

and I got beat by the Mongolian.

Lex Fridman (1:02:15.720)

So that was kind of a letdown.

Lex Fridman (1:02:16.940)

But the match for the bronze in front of the hometown crowd,

Lex Fridman (1:02:21.940)

all of my family, all of my friends,

Jimmy Pedro (1:02:24.300)

everybody who had ever helped me in the sport

Lex Fridman (1:02:27.820)

were in the stands that day,

Jimmy Pedro (1:02:29.340)

including all my teammates at Brown University

Lex Fridman (1:02:31.720)

that were on the wrestling team

Lex Fridman (1:02:32.940)

and little, my uncles, my aunts,

Lex Fridman (1:02:35.460)

everybody was in the stands, right?

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.660)

So it was like the Jimmy Pedro day.

Lex Fridman (1:02:39.920)

And I'm getting goosebumps right now talking about it.

Lex Fridman (1:02:44.060)

But it was a match against the Brazilian

Lex Fridman (1:02:46.260)

for the bronze medal.

Jimmy Pedro (1:02:47.200)

I had beaten the Brazilian like two or three times

Lex Fridman (1:02:49.240)

before that.

Lex Fridman (1:02:50.080)

And I found myself down in the match.

Lex Fridman (1:02:54.080)

He actually countered me.

Jimmy Pedro (1:02:56.240)

I came in my Taiyo Toshi and he was waiting for it

Lex Fridman (1:02:58.320)

and he counted me and he scored a yuko against me.

Lex Fridman (1:03:00.840)

So I was losing the fight,

Lex Fridman (1:03:02.640)

came down to about the last minute in the match

Lex Fridman (1:03:05.280)

and I was just tucking in my gi

Lex Fridman (1:03:06.960)

and fixing my thing and gathering my thoughts together.

Lex Fridman (1:03:09.920)

And the whole crowd just started chanting,

Lex Fridman (1:03:12.580)

USA, USA, USA.

Lex Fridman (1:03:16.320)

And I like literally like got so much energy.

Lex Fridman (1:03:18.620)

I walked out there, I grabbed the guy,

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:20.720)

I came in my Taiyo Toshi again.

Lex Fridman (1:03:22.280)

He stepped off the Taiyo Toshi.

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:24.160)

I threw him with duchimada for Ippon.

Lex Fridman (1:03:26.600)

I won my first Olympic medal

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:29.320)

in front of the hometown crowd.

Lex Fridman (1:03:31.700)

Everybody went bananas.

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:33.840)

The United States judo team had our first medal

Lex Fridman (1:03:36.560)

from the Olympics.

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:37.840)

It ended up being the only Olympic medal

Lex Fridman (1:03:39.680)

we won at that games.

Lex Fridman (1:03:41.080)

But it was like a magical moment that defined my career

Lex Fridman (1:03:44.440)

and solidified myself in like history where,

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:46.920)

hey, now I get to step up on the Olympic podium

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.360)

and I'm Olympic medalist.

Lex Fridman (1:03:50.760)

And to me, that was my defining moment.

Lex Fridman (1:03:53.660)

And after that, I was sold.

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:55.840)

Like man, I had to go back to the Olympics again.

Lex Fridman (1:03:57.860)

I wanna win a gold medal.

Jimmy Pedro (1:03:58.960)

I want this feeling all over again.

Lex Fridman (1:04:01.680)

I don't care if I have to wait four years, let's do it.

Jimmy Pedro (1:04:05.040)

In your career, like moments like that,

Lex Fridman (1:04:08.480)

do you think you love winning or hate losing more?

Lex Fridman (1:04:13.480)

So do you live for those moments

Lex Fridman (1:04:17.840)

or are you more driven by just how much you hate losing?

Lex Fridman (1:04:24.340)

So in order to be a champion,

Lex Fridman (1:04:26.340)

my belief is that you have to hate losing

Jimmy Pedro (1:04:29.400)

more than you like winning.

Lex Fridman (1:04:31.280)

Hate losing more than you like winning.

Lex Fridman (1:04:33.600)

But I live for those moments when you do win.

Lex Fridman (1:04:36.840)

And what excited me the most in my career

Jimmy Pedro (1:04:39.080)

when I was competing was I loved being in the finals.

Lex Fridman (1:04:44.320)

I loved the spotlight being on me.

Jimmy Pedro (1:04:46.440)

I can't think of too many times in my career,

Lex Fridman (1:04:48.920)

of course there were a few,

Lex Fridman (1:04:50.360)

but there weren't too many times where the chips were down,

Lex Fridman (1:04:54.120)

like the lights were on and I didn't win.

Jimmy Pedro (1:04:56.840)

Like it was, I might've lost early in the day

Lex Fridman (1:05:00.000)

and didn't make it to the finals

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:01.280)

or didn't make it to the medal rounds.

Lex Fridman (1:05:02.860)

But like in my career, I have a ton of golds.

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:06.320)

I have a ton of bronzes,

Lex Fridman (1:05:07.840)

which means the lights are on and I won

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.600)

and I have very few silvers and very few fifths.

Lex Fridman (1:05:15.000)

So I either lost in the early rounds

Lex Fridman (1:05:16.600)

and didn't make it to the medal rounds in my younger days

Lex Fridman (1:05:18.560)

or the spotlight came and I really shined.

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:21.640)

Cause if you look, I don't know how many silvers,

Lex Fridman (1:05:23.560)

but there wasn't very many silver medals in my career

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:25.560)

that I won.

Lex Fridman (1:05:26.560)

You know what I mean?

Lex Fridman (1:05:27.400)

So I just loved that moment.

Lex Fridman (1:05:29.000)

I didn't feel pressure.

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:30.240)

I loved the crowd.

Lex Fridman (1:05:31.720)

I loved being in the spotlight.

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:33.400)

I didn't have, I wasn't nervous when it came to the finals

Lex Fridman (1:05:36.200)

or I knew I was getting a medal.

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:37.840)

It didn't matter.

Lex Fridman (1:05:38.960)

You know, so it was just me against the other guy

Lex Fridman (1:05:40.760)

and that's how I always saw it.

Lex Fridman (1:05:42.360)

And I just loved that moment.

Lex Fridman (1:05:44.200)

So your dad was your coach.

Lex Fridman (1:05:45.880)

Yeah.

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:48.880)

You didn't get to meet him tonight.

Lex Fridman (1:05:50.120)

Oh, great.

Jimmy Pedro (1:05:54.080)

He's kind of a legend in the sport.

Lex Fridman (1:05:56.080)

So how has your dad helped you as a coach,

Lex Fridman (1:05:59.180)

as an athlete, as a human being throughout the years?

Lex Fridman (1:06:02.360)

Number one, my dad is the most brutally honest person

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:06.360)

you will ever meet in your life.

Lex Fridman (1:06:08.360)

Brutally honest.

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:09.360)

He will tell you, if you are fat,

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.400)

he will tell you you're fat, right, to your face.

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:14.560)

He wants you to get better.

Lex Fridman (1:06:15.400)

He wants you to be healthy.

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:16.720)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:06:17.560)

Doesn't want you to die of obesity.

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:18.640)

It's just the way he is.

Lex Fridman (1:06:20.080)

If you didn't do well, he will not sugarcoat it.

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:23.680)

He will let you know what you didn't do right.

Lex Fridman (1:06:26.080)

So he's the ultimate litmus test.

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:28.000)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:06:28.840)

Right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:29.680)

Second is, he is the most passionate, caring, deep,

Lex Fridman (1:06:37.240)

always thinking about, very cerebral,

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:41.020)

very like a student of the game,

Lex Fridman (1:06:44.740)

somebody who helped me immensely in defining my strategy,

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:49.260)

helping me improve, and always look for what's next.

Lex Fridman (1:06:53.540)

Third, in terms of training,

Jimmy Pedro (1:06:58.100)

I think that he's probably the most brilliant human

Lex Fridman (1:07:02.180)

when it comes to preparing an athlete physically,

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:06.580)

not necessarily mentally, physically, for success.

Lex Fridman (1:07:10.060)

When all the chips are down,

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:11.460)

that athlete will be ready that day,

Lex Fridman (1:07:12.900)

and he has a system of training and preparing

Lex Fridman (1:07:15.860)

and getting the athlete to peak for performance.

Lex Fridman (1:07:18.860)

You mean like conditioning, like the whole thing?

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:20.900)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:07:21.920)

Okay, because I vaguely remember Kayla Harrison

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:27.860)

talking about her preparation being very difficult.

Lex Fridman (1:07:31.020)

Yeah.

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:31.860)

That's it.

Lex Fridman (1:07:33.320)

That's him.

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:34.160)

Yeah, that's him.

Lex Fridman (1:07:35.660)

At the same, you go back and ask Ronda Rousey

Lex Fridman (1:07:38.420)

about her career, right?

Lex Fridman (1:07:39.440)

My dad was her coach.

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:41.320)

My dad moved her to Camp New Hampshire in Boston,

Lex Fridman (1:07:45.880)

got her up, ran her in the morning,

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:48.160)

had her downstairs in the basement of his house,

Lex Fridman (1:07:50.700)

training with the weights.

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:51.680)

We brought a Russian girl in.

Lex Fridman (1:07:52.960)

She did throws on his cement outside

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:54.980)

with the little crash pad.

Lex Fridman (1:07:55.820)

Nice.

Jimmy Pedro (1:07:56.660)

Threw the Russian girl a hundred times that morning,

Lex Fridman (1:07:59.300)

and then every night came to Boston,

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:02.020)

to the training center in Wakefield,

Lex Fridman (1:08:03.380)

trained at night, and went back and slept at my dad's house,

Lex Fridman (1:08:05.660)

and three weeks straight before she went off to Beijing.

Lex Fridman (1:08:09.300)

And he did the same with Kayla.

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:11.100)

He did the same with me.

Lex Fridman (1:08:14.500)

His passion is producing athletes at the highest level,

Lex Fridman (1:08:17.460)

and he knows how to do it.

Lex Fridman (1:08:18.800)

And then the one side of my dad's

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:23.860)

coaching where I think there's a flaw or a weakness

Lex Fridman (1:08:26.220)

is on the mental preparation side of the game.

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:28.320)

He wasn't somebody that was,

Lex Fridman (1:08:30.840)

I don't know if he,

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:32.480)

maybe because he wasn't an Olympic champion himself

Lex Fridman (1:08:34.940)

and wasn't a world champion,

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:36.240)

he lacked the confidence in helping others be more confident.

Lex Fridman (1:08:39.820)

So he's more of a,

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:41.680)

this is what you need to work on type of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:08:43.580)

He doesn't know how to build the athletes up

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:46.240)

to make them feel invincible.

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.260)

And I feel like that's something

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:49.380)

that I was able to give all of the athletes,

Lex Fridman (1:08:51.300)

to help them with that visualization, belief in yourself,

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:55.060)

knowing that you're gonna win

Lex Fridman (1:08:56.140)

before you step out of the mat,

Jimmy Pedro (1:08:57.260)

knowing that we've earned the right to victory,

Lex Fridman (1:09:00.020)

seeing success in your mind,

Jimmy Pedro (1:09:02.260)

having a positive mantra that you,

Lex Fridman (1:09:05.300)

I'm the best in the world, nobody's beating me today,

Jimmy Pedro (1:09:07.380)

type of feeling.

Lex Fridman (1:09:09.080)

So you go out there feeling like King Kong

Jimmy Pedro (1:09:10.980)

when you step on the mat,

Lex Fridman (1:09:12.380)

that nobody's gonna stop you.

Lex Fridman (1:09:14.420)

And so I think the combination of both of us as coaches,

Lex Fridman (1:09:17.960)

I'm a lot more technical.

Jimmy Pedro (1:09:20.260)

My dad is good at letting,

Lex Fridman (1:09:21.900)

identifying what they need to do for their techniques

Lex Fridman (1:09:24.820)

and what, in strategy, how to beat opponents

Lex Fridman (1:09:28.420)

and putting game plans together.

Lex Fridman (1:09:30.780)

So combined, the two of us made an unbelievable team.

Lex Fridman (1:09:33.760)

So he's not gonna let the athlete be soft

Jimmy Pedro (1:09:36.420)

when they enter the highest,

Lex Fridman (1:09:39.340)

the most difficult competitions of their career.

Lex Fridman (1:09:43.580)

So on the mental side, what's mental preparation look like?

Lex Fridman (1:09:48.100)

Like how many years before the Olympics

Lex Fridman (1:09:50.820)

do you start helping an athlete believe

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.060)

that they can win an Olympic medal?

Jimmy Pedro (1:09:57.460)

Well, I think it's gotta be a seed

Lex Fridman (1:09:58.980)

in that athlete's brain, something they wanna do, right?

Lex Fridman (1:10:02.260)

Nobody can quickly get there, right?

Lex Fridman (1:10:05.700)

It's a long process.

Lex Fridman (1:10:06.740)

But if your goal, if you're national champion

Lex Fridman (1:10:09.220)

or you've proven yourself to win

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:10.940)

in some international tournaments,

Lex Fridman (1:10:13.260)

and you think the Olympics is a possibility for you,

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:15.420)

then defining it as, hey, I wanna be on the Olympic team,

Lex Fridman (1:10:19.140)

that would be the first step into getting ready.

Lex Fridman (1:10:24.180)

And I always make them put it on paper.

Lex Fridman (1:10:28.340)

If it really is your goal,

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:29.580)

then you show me that it's your goal

Lex Fridman (1:10:30.880)

and put it on paper and commit to it.

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:32.940)

I wanna be Olympic medalist,

Lex Fridman (1:10:34.100)

I wanna be Olympic champion,

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:35.060)

I wanna go to the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (1:10:36.540)

World team member, maybe junior world team member,

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:38.900)

whatever it is, we walk before we go to the highest level.

Lex Fridman (1:10:41.700)

But if the goal is to go to the Olympics,

Lex Fridman (1:10:44.340)

let's accomplish these other things first, right?

Lex Fridman (1:10:46.860)

Because if we can accomplish these other things,

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:50.260)

then we're on our way to getting to the ultimate goal,

Lex Fridman (1:10:52.580)

which is the Olympics.

Jimmy Pedro (1:10:54.140)

For somebody like Kayla, for example,

Lex Fridman (1:10:58.500)

she didn't say that she wanted to be Olympic champion

Lex Fridman (1:11:02.180)

when she first came here in 2005, right?

Lex Fridman (1:11:05.300)

We wanted to become national champion,

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:07.820)

then we wanted to be on the world team,

Lex Fridman (1:11:09.260)

then we wanted to be a world medalist.

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:10.980)

Then our sights were set on the Olympics

Lex Fridman (1:11:12.860)

or the Olympic gold.

Lex Fridman (1:11:14.540)

So it's having those clearly defined goals

Lex Fridman (1:11:17.100)

that are attainable.

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:18.100)

Like they should be a reach, they should be a stretch,

Lex Fridman (1:11:20.940)

but they have to be attainable.

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:22.700)

They can't be just a pipe dream.

Lex Fridman (1:11:25.300)

But once you put it to paper and you think it's achievable,

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:30.060)

then it's mapping the plan to get there.

Lex Fridman (1:11:33.020)

Is there a daily process of visualizing yourself

Lex Fridman (1:11:36.860)

as an Olympic champion or national champion?

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.020)

Yes, it is, and you should do it

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:43.060)

either every night before you go to bed

Lex Fridman (1:11:45.180)

or before every training session

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:48.660)

or after every training session.

Lex Fridman (1:11:50.100)

One of those three times it should,

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:51.660)

or first thing you wake up in the morning,

Lex Fridman (1:11:54.020)

because it may be to help some people,

Jimmy Pedro (1:11:55.580)

it motivates them to go do what it is

Lex Fridman (1:11:57.700)

they're supposed to do in the day.

Lex Fridman (1:12:00.820)

But the process of visualization is, to me,

Lex Fridman (1:12:04.620)

is closing your eyes for a few moments.

Lex Fridman (1:12:07.540)

Your brain works really, really fast, right?

Lex Fridman (1:12:09.820)

And it's actually picturing the day in its entirety,

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:14.580)

from start to finish,

Lex Fridman (1:12:16.100)

from the moment you wake up and you step on the scale

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:19.260)

to the moment you have your breakfast

Lex Fridman (1:12:20.540)

and you go through your morning routine.

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:22.300)

Like live the day that you're gonna have at the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (1:12:24.980)

So whatever it is you're trying to do,

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:26.180)

let's say the Olympic day, for example.

Lex Fridman (1:12:29.300)

Picture yourself making weight,

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:31.020)

picture yourself, who you're around, eating your breakfast,

Lex Fridman (1:12:33.900)

having maybe saying a few jokes, laughing.

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:35.980)

This is a real day, make it real.

Lex Fridman (1:12:38.100)

Going back and packing your judo bag for the day,

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:42.780)

getting on the bus, driving to the venue,

Lex Fridman (1:12:45.820)

feel what it's like walking into the stadium

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:49.420)

for the first time, going to the warmup area,

Lex Fridman (1:12:52.060)

seeing your drawer up on the sheet,

Jimmy Pedro (1:12:54.620)

who you're gonna fight that day,

Lex Fridman (1:12:56.660)

watching yourself warm up, go through your warmup routine,

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:00.940)

walking out of the shoot, into the venue,

Lex Fridman (1:13:03.500)

going to do that first fight.

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:05.380)

Picture the moment of throwing your opponent,

Lex Fridman (1:13:07.420)

coming off the mat, high fiving the coach,

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:10.700)

getting ready for your second fight.

Lex Fridman (1:13:12.420)

Like live the day from start to finish

Lex Fridman (1:13:15.380)

and make it as real as possible.

Lex Fridman (1:13:18.100)

We're all the way to the moment where you've just won

Lex Fridman (1:13:20.860)

and you're raising your arms in celebration,

Lex Fridman (1:13:23.380)

you're bowing, you're hugging your opponent,

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:25.860)

you come off the mat, you hug your coach,

Lex Fridman (1:13:28.700)

you're running around the stadium with the flag,

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:31.700)

you stepped up on the podium, you heard your name,

Lex Fridman (1:13:34.700)

Olympic champion, Jimmy Pedro,

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:36.860)

like you heard the moment,

Lex Fridman (1:13:39.020)

the medal being put around your neck,

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:41.900)

picture the people coming up on the podium with you,

Lex Fridman (1:13:44.940)

arms around them, taking the pictures.

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:47.260)

Like the more real you can make it,

Lex Fridman (1:13:50.900)

even before it ever happens, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:13:54.660)

When you do that enough times,

Lex Fridman (1:13:57.700)

I feel that like pathways get created for you

Lex Fridman (1:14:01.660)

so that when your body gets to that moment,

Lex Fridman (1:14:04.900)

and I've been here before, this is it,

Jimmy Pedro (1:14:06.700)

this is my moment, this is what I pictured my whole life,

Lex Fridman (1:14:08.900)

I'm not nervous, because I've seen this,

Lex Fridman (1:14:11.100)

this is gonna happen, I believe it's possible, right?

Lex Fridman (1:14:13.900)

And I believe the athletes that do that

Lex Fridman (1:14:15.900)

and make it real enough that when they get to that moment,

Lex Fridman (1:14:19.620)

they go right through, there's no hesitation.

Jimmy Pedro (1:14:22.700)

This is what this is meant to be, this is my destiny,

Lex Fridman (1:14:25.340)

this is why I did everything I did,

Jimmy Pedro (1:14:27.540)

versus the ones that don't think about it ever,

Lex Fridman (1:14:29.980)

but just kind of like hope, it's not real to them,

Jimmy Pedro (1:14:34.020)

it doesn't feel attainable,

Lex Fridman (1:14:35.420)

they don't believe it's possible,

Jimmy Pedro (1:14:36.740)

they haven't committed to believing it was possible.

Lex Fridman (1:14:39.940)

Without that commitment in yourself and that belief,

Jimmy Pedro (1:14:42.780)

it can't happen.

Lex Fridman (1:14:43.940)

And one thing that, I talked to Travis a bit about this,

Jimmy Pedro (1:14:48.340)

you probably worked with him on the details

Lex Fridman (1:14:51.180)

of what you're talking about,

Lex Fridman (1:14:52.740)

but he said that you should really

Lex Fridman (1:14:56.900)

focus on visualizing the sensations you feel.

Lex Fridman (1:15:01.260)

So say if you're drinking coffee or something like that,

Lex Fridman (1:15:04.660)

you're not thinking about like observing yourself

Jimmy Pedro (1:15:08.900)

from a third person perspective drinking coffee,

Lex Fridman (1:15:11.140)

like you're thinking of how your hand will feel

Jimmy Pedro (1:15:15.460)

when it touches something warm.

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.140)

Like you try to replay the actual sensations

Lex Fridman (1:15:20.020)

you would feel, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:21.660)

So it sounds kind of strange,

Lex Fridman (1:15:24.980)

but meaning like you really wanna put yourself in the body

Lex Fridman (1:15:27.820)

as you would experience those moments,

Jimmy Pedro (1:15:30.420)

as opposed to like watching yourself on TV

Lex Fridman (1:15:33.140)

experience in those moments, like really be inside.

Lex Fridman (1:15:36.420)

And yeah, so that means sensations,

Lex Fridman (1:15:38.220)

like how does it feel when you grip a gi?

Lex Fridman (1:15:40.460)

How does it, yeah, the sweating,

Lex Fridman (1:15:45.180)

just the sensation of sweat,

Jimmy Pedro (1:15:47.140)

like rolling down your forehead or whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:15:50.020)

like all of those actual feelings.

Jimmy Pedro (1:15:52.500)

When I explain it to you,

Lex Fridman (1:15:54.100)

like I guess my body has been through it so many times,

Jimmy Pedro (1:15:57.660)

both in my mind and in reality

Lex Fridman (1:15:59.340)

that it brings back all of those same emotions.

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:03.060)

I start to get goosebumps, my armpits start to sweat,

Lex Fridman (1:16:06.580)

like I'm living it if it's real.

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:09.180)

I'm reliving it now.

Lex Fridman (1:16:10.500)

But when you're going through the visualization process,

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:14.220)

it has to be that real, the smells,

Lex Fridman (1:16:16.700)

the taping of the fingers,

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:18.740)

like the more colorful and the more real you can make it,

Lex Fridman (1:16:23.220)

the more believable it is.

Lex Fridman (1:16:25.500)

So I've been doing this kind of thing,

Lex Fridman (1:16:27.700)

just having listened to you enough

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:30.540)

for other stuff in life, so let's see if it works.

Lex Fridman (1:16:35.140)

But do you see this kind of visualization

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:37.140)

being useful for other things in career

Lex Fridman (1:16:40.060)

and all those kinds of things?

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:40.900)

100%, 100%, because I just know with my own life,

Lex Fridman (1:16:46.380)

my own experiences, like my wife sometimes says to me,

Jimmy Pedro (1:16:50.860)

she says, well, where do you see yourself

Lex Fridman (1:16:52.500)

in like five years from now?

Lex Fridman (1:16:55.460)

And five years ago, I had said to her,

Lex Fridman (1:16:58.820)

I wanna have my own business.

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:00.460)

I wanna have, this is the amount of money

Lex Fridman (1:17:03.700)

that I'm hoping I can make in a given year.

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:05.540)

Like you have to have goals for yourself.

Lex Fridman (1:17:06.900)

Like is this, if you put out there like,

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:08.900)

okay, I wanna make a million dollars in a year.

Lex Fridman (1:17:11.860)

That's a big number.

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:13.060)

Like for me or for the normal person,

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.340)

like that's a really big number.

Lex Fridman (1:17:16.860)

You know what I mean?

Lex Fridman (1:17:17.700)

Like it's not, especially when you're not making

Lex Fridman (1:17:19.620)

that much at the time, it's a super big number, right?

Lex Fridman (1:17:22.740)

So having those goals for yourself,

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:24.380)

like it won't happen and it's not possible

Lex Fridman (1:17:27.660)

unless you dream it's possible

Lex Fridman (1:17:30.300)

and think that it's possible.

Lex Fridman (1:17:31.780)

And then it doesn't magically happen.

Lex Fridman (1:17:34.060)

And maybe it doesn't happen in five years,

Lex Fridman (1:17:35.900)

maybe it happens in 10,

Lex Fridman (1:17:37.180)

but at least you're on the path to getting there.

Lex Fridman (1:17:39.820)

You know what I mean?

Lex Fridman (1:17:40.660)

And I said, I wanna own my own business.

Lex Fridman (1:17:41.860)

I wanna control my own destiny.

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:44.300)

I wanna be my own boss.

Lex Fridman (1:17:46.060)

I wanna make my own decisions.

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:47.820)

Like these are the things that I told her I wanted to do.

Lex Fridman (1:17:49.980)

And now I'm at that point,

Jimmy Pedro (1:17:53.180)

where I work for myself,

Lex Fridman (1:17:55.260)

I have my own company, I have partners obviously,

Lex Fridman (1:17:57.420)

but like if I wanna pick up and go somewhere for a week,

Lex Fridman (1:18:00.460)

I just do, I don't have to ask permission to do it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:18:03.180)

That's what life, freedom, right?

Lex Fridman (1:18:05.060)

That's what I'd like.

Lex Fridman (1:18:06.780)

And all of it starts with a dream.

Lex Fridman (1:18:09.100)

In the same with my dojo, when I first opened.

Lex Fridman (1:18:12.740)

So I ran a dojo for a long time

Lex Fridman (1:18:14.780)

and I only had 60 students always,

Jimmy Pedro (1:18:16.540)

like 40 to 60 students had fluctuated.

Lex Fridman (1:18:19.860)

And I sit there and say,

Lex Fridman (1:18:20.700)

why can't I get more people in my door, right?

Lex Fridman (1:18:23.260)

So I hired consultants to come in

Lex Fridman (1:18:25.300)

and look at my business and say why, right?

Lex Fridman (1:18:27.580)

And they came in and said,

Jimmy Pedro (1:18:29.620)

well, this place is really intimidating.

Lex Fridman (1:18:31.420)

Like if I was coming in off the street,

Jimmy Pedro (1:18:33.100)

the first thing I see is this big Olympic champion

Lex Fridman (1:18:35.300)

on the wall and I see this training that's going on

Lex Fridman (1:18:37.780)

and these guys are flying through the air and landing hard.

Lex Fridman (1:18:40.140)

And as a white belt, you're telling me

Lex Fridman (1:18:41.780)

that's the class for me?

Lex Fridman (1:18:42.840)

Like no way, I'm not gonna do that.

Lex Fridman (1:18:44.580)

So like I listened to these people and I said, you're right.

Lex Fridman (1:18:47.620)

And the training was hour and a half, two hours long.

Jimmy Pedro (1:18:51.140)

People can't handle an hour and a half or two hours training

Lex Fridman (1:18:53.300)

when they're first walking in the door.

Lex Fridman (1:18:54.260)

So I had to restructure all my programming.

Lex Fridman (1:18:56.980)

I had to look at the way I was offering my school

Lex Fridman (1:19:00.260)

and I had to make levels for everybody, right?

Lex Fridman (1:19:02.900)

Like here's my four to six year old class.

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:05.620)

Here's my six to 13 year old class.

Lex Fridman (1:19:07.780)

There's all my beginner classes.

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:09.860)

They don't mix in with the advanced people.

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.660)

And I had to learn how to make it accessible for everybody

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:16.660)

instead of just the people that wanted to train hard.

Lex Fridman (1:19:19.580)

And then the challenge was, okay,

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:22.180)

if you can have a lot of people in your dojo training,

Lex Fridman (1:19:25.020)

it's a recreational school.

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:26.140)

You can't produce champions at that same school.

Lex Fridman (1:19:28.340)

That's what I was told.

Lex Fridman (1:19:29.780)

So then I got all my black belts together

Lex Fridman (1:19:31.740)

and I said, listen, this is my vision.

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:33.660)

This is what I want.

Lex Fridman (1:19:34.860)

I wanna have a club that has over 200 judo only athletes,

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:38.220)

no jujitsu, no karate, nothing, judo only.

Lex Fridman (1:19:41.780)

I want over 200 people.

Lex Fridman (1:19:43.820)

And in the inside of that dojo, I wanna have Olympic

Lex Fridman (1:19:46.700)

champions and I wanna have recreational,

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:49.060)

like little kids, five and six years old,

Lex Fridman (1:19:51.260)

older guys in their seventies train, I don't care,

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.820)

but I want the spectrum of recreational

Lex Fridman (1:19:55.660)

and I want Olympic champions.

Jimmy Pedro (1:19:57.260)

The only way to do that is to take your instructors

Lex Fridman (1:20:00.420)

and say, you're gonna do this, define the roles,

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:03.340)

who's gonna be the recreational coach,

Lex Fridman (1:20:04.820)

who's gonna be the competitive coach.

Lex Fridman (1:20:06.260)

How do we separate these programs?

Lex Fridman (1:20:08.620)

And lo and behold, that was my vision that I shared

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:10.740)

with all of them and that was back in 2006.

Lex Fridman (1:20:15.900)

And by 2012, we've got Olympic champion Kayla Harrison,

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:19.820)

we have over 200 people at the school,

Lex Fridman (1:20:21.940)

we have a successful thriving business,

Lex Fridman (1:20:24.260)

but it doesn't happen without that vision,

Lex Fridman (1:20:26.780)

a plan and believing that it's possible.

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:30.460)

Believing that it's possible.

Lex Fridman (1:20:32.500)

I don't know, but I personally have on top of that

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:36.700)

almost like very specific visions of a future.

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.860)

Like, I don't know what,

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:44.660)

cause I don't wanna give actual examples.

Lex Fridman (1:20:46.700)

Cause for several reasons, one of which is just people

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:51.700)

will, as they often have, they often will in your life,

Lex Fridman (1:20:56.100)

they'll just laugh at it a little bit,

Jimmy Pedro (1:20:59.380)

like that seems silly.

Lex Fridman (1:21:02.260)

And I don't, I'm very hesitant to share certain things

Jimmy Pedro (1:21:05.300)

like that with people because they'll,

Lex Fridman (1:21:08.500)

I mean, I'm with Johnny Ive, who's the lead designer

Jimmy Pedro (1:21:12.660)

in Apple, like you want that dream, that little flame

Lex Fridman (1:21:16.460)

to not, people will put that flame out too easily,

Jimmy Pedro (1:21:19.660)

even people that love you.

Lex Fridman (1:21:21.500)

So I have very specific kind of visions,

Jimmy Pedro (1:21:26.820)

like maybe for Travis, it would be like a specific opponent

Lex Fridman (1:21:30.820)

or something like Ole Bischoff, like very specific,

Jimmy Pedro (1:21:34.220)

very specific situation of what's going to happen.

Lex Fridman (1:21:36.820)

Not just like, I wanna be an Olympic champion,

Lex Fridman (1:21:39.220)

but very specific, like almost silly situations.

Lex Fridman (1:21:43.100)

Yeah, like the dynamic between Travis

Lex Fridman (1:21:45.220)

and Ole Bischoff or something, like maybe visualize that.

Lex Fridman (1:21:47.740)

For me, that helps because it makes it all real,

Jimmy Pedro (1:21:50.980)

even more real.

Lex Fridman (1:21:52.340)

It's not like some big goal, like a million dollars

Jimmy Pedro (1:21:55.500)

or something like that, which is also really important

Lex Fridman (1:21:58.060)

to have because you can measure it and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:22:00.180)

But it's just like you belong in those situations.

Lex Fridman (1:22:05.580)

Just believing you belong there.

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:08.900)

It's not the default.

Lex Fridman (1:22:09.740)

It can be you.

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:10.580)

Yeah, it could be you.

Lex Fridman (1:22:11.740)

And for some reason, that really helps me,

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:13.620)

the little details.

Lex Fridman (1:22:15.100)

Sure.

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:15.940)

Like visualizing, most of them are almost

Lex Fridman (1:22:18.740)

a little bit funny, like focusing on the funniness.

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:23.260)

It's the mundaneness of it helps me a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:22:28.060)

And all the people that have done great things,

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:30.220)

they're just human too.

Lex Fridman (1:22:31.820)

Correct, and I think a lot of people overestimate

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:36.060)

who others are and sell themselves too short.

Lex Fridman (1:22:42.300)

Because at the end of the day, everybody started

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:45.980)

like everybody else, really.

Lex Fridman (1:22:47.420)

I mean, we did.

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:49.340)

We're all infants.

Lex Fridman (1:22:50.180)

We couldn't walk, we couldn't talk,

Jimmy Pedro (1:22:51.660)

we couldn't do anything.

Lex Fridman (1:22:52.500)

We learned along the way.

Lex Fridman (1:22:54.300)

And I think that's the one thing that I realized is that,

Lex Fridman (1:22:57.620)

and I tell this to my athletes,

Lex Fridman (1:23:00.100)

but I also tell it to my recreational students,

Lex Fridman (1:23:03.340)

nobody is better than you are, nobody,

Jimmy Pedro (1:23:06.980)

unless you allow them to be.

Lex Fridman (1:23:09.540)

If you really want something to happen,

Jimmy Pedro (1:23:11.580)

then like map the plan, believe in yourself,

Lex Fridman (1:23:16.420)

decide, and know full out, you're gonna fail a lot.

Jimmy Pedro (1:23:20.700)

You're gonna get beat down.

Lex Fridman (1:23:22.340)

You're gonna have losses.

Jimmy Pedro (1:23:23.620)

You're gonna have struggles.

Lex Fridman (1:23:25.540)

And I think that's the one thing with social media today

Jimmy Pedro (1:23:27.260)

is that everybody sees everybody succeed.

Lex Fridman (1:23:30.620)

Nobody posts the picture when they're on the ground

Lex Fridman (1:23:32.300)

and fail, you're losing.

Lex Fridman (1:23:33.740)

Like nobody sees when you broke your arm

Lex Fridman (1:23:36.140)

and you had to go through rehab,

Lex Fridman (1:23:37.780)

whatever it is, like had your injuries

Lex Fridman (1:23:39.580)

and you were on your couch watching TV

Lex Fridman (1:23:41.460)

and you were suffering and you were like,

Jimmy Pedro (1:23:43.500)

everybody has really, really dark, bad moments in their life

Lex Fridman (1:23:47.020)

and defeats and losses and suffrage.

Lex Fridman (1:23:50.260)

And it's only at the end after they've recovered

Lex Fridman (1:23:53.180)

from all of that, they've reclimbed up the mountain

Lex Fridman (1:23:55.420)

and they've gone to the pinnacle

Lex Fridman (1:23:56.660)

that you see them on social media with the medal, right?

Lex Fridman (1:23:59.780)

But everybody else like struggles and was human

Lex Fridman (1:24:03.140)

and failed many, many times.

Lex Fridman (1:24:05.300)

And convincing yourself that you're capable,

Lex Fridman (1:24:10.380)

I think is the first start of everything.

Lex Fridman (1:24:12.620)

Do you need people in your life that believe in you

Lex Fridman (1:24:15.580)

or should most of it come from within yourself?

Jimmy Pedro (1:24:19.020)

I think most of it has to come in from,

Lex Fridman (1:24:21.060)

it certainly helps, but it has to come from you first.

Jimmy Pedro (1:24:25.540)

You have to be driven, like other people can help you

Lex Fridman (1:24:28.940)

define where you wanna go and help you get there

Lex Fridman (1:24:31.500)

and encourage you and can support you

Lex Fridman (1:24:33.940)

and whether it's resource wise or with connections

Lex Fridman (1:24:37.940)

and like they can help with that path,

Lex Fridman (1:24:39.780)

but that first part has to come from you.

Jimmy Pedro (1:24:42.780)

It has to be your passion, your desire,

Lex Fridman (1:24:45.620)

your commitment to yourself.

Jimmy Pedro (1:24:48.380)

You're the one that's gonna ultimately make

Lex Fridman (1:24:49.980)

all the sacrifices to do it.

Lex Fridman (1:24:51.820)

So it has to be your decision, not your parents,

Lex Fridman (1:24:54.460)

not your spouses, something that you're

Jimmy Pedro (1:24:56.620)

really motivated to do.

Lex Fridman (1:24:59.340)

Let me ask you about Travis, Kayla,

Lex Fridman (1:25:01.340)

and maybe a few of the other athletes

Lex Fridman (1:25:03.260)

you've been involved with.

Lex Fridman (1:25:04.100)

So first, Travis.

Lex Fridman (1:25:06.580)

Travis Stevens, Olympic silver medalist,

Jimmy Pedro (1:25:11.820)

three time Olympian, 2008, 2012, 2016.

Lex Fridman (1:25:17.140)

What makes Travis Stevens great?

Lex Fridman (1:25:20.300)

What makes him so successful?

Lex Fridman (1:25:23.060)

What makes him unique in your mind as an athlete?

Jimmy Pedro (1:25:26.660)

Through all the hardship he had to overcome,

Lex Fridman (1:25:29.820)

through his weird looking sayonagi

Jimmy Pedro (1:25:32.580)

that eventually worked out nicely,

Lex Fridman (1:25:36.180)

through the full richness of his personality,

Jimmy Pedro (1:25:39.020)

in the context of all the other great athletes

Lex Fridman (1:25:41.140)

you've coached, what makes him special?

Jimmy Pedro (1:25:45.460)

His fight, Travis has fight.

Lex Fridman (1:25:48.220)

And you know, the first time I ever saw Travis Stevens

Jimmy Pedro (1:25:50.700)

was in, like recognized him, maybe I had seen him before

Lex Fridman (1:25:54.220)

as a younger boy or something,

Lex Fridman (1:25:55.340)

but like actually recognized him as,

Lex Fridman (1:25:57.860)

I brought a group of young kids to Italy

Jimmy Pedro (1:26:00.940)

for a competition in a training camp.

Lex Fridman (1:26:03.140)

And it was this program called U23 Elite.

Lex Fridman (1:26:06.220)

And I picked, handpicked 20 kids to go to this event.

Lex Fridman (1:26:10.780)

And it was the first time I coached an international team.

Lex Fridman (1:26:15.140)

And I had never seen Travis fight before,

Lex Fridman (1:26:17.060)

compete, train, anything.

Lex Fridman (1:26:18.820)

And during this competition, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:26:21.500)

he's an 81 kilo player.

Jimmy Pedro (1:26:22.860)

I think he was maybe like 18 years old, 17, 18 years old.

Lex Fridman (1:26:28.100)

And it was a really hard European event.

Lex Fridman (1:26:31.140)

And I think Travis won three matches and he lost two.

Lex Fridman (1:26:34.820)

But what stood out the most to me was like,

Jimmy Pedro (1:26:37.260)

the fight he had in him.

Lex Fridman (1:26:39.220)

He was scrapping every fight.

Jimmy Pedro (1:26:41.260)

Like he scrapped hard.

Lex Fridman (1:26:42.580)

Like he wanted to win more than any of them, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:26:45.140)

He didn't win, but he wanted to win more.

Lex Fridman (1:26:47.380)

And I noticed that right away.

Lex Fridman (1:26:49.700)

And then I also noticed that after he lost his second match

Lex Fridman (1:26:52.620)

and he was eliminated from the tournament,

Jimmy Pedro (1:26:54.380)

I saw how disappointed he was in himself.

Lex Fridman (1:26:57.020)

Like he actually thought he was supposed

Jimmy Pedro (1:26:58.740)

to beat those people.

Lex Fridman (1:26:59.820)

Even though he was like 17, right?

Lex Fridman (1:27:01.860)

And he's fighting against grown men that are,

Lex Fridman (1:27:03.660)

you know, a high level judo, much higher than he was.

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.220)

And I said to him, I said,

Lex Fridman (1:27:07.260)

hey son, like, don't worry, man.

Jimmy Pedro (1:27:09.740)

You got a long career ahead of you.

Lex Fridman (1:27:11.180)

Like, I'm glad you're disappointed,

Lex Fridman (1:27:13.580)

but there's so many things you don't know

Lex Fridman (1:27:15.700)

and so many skills you don't have.

Jimmy Pedro (1:27:17.660)

The fact that you were able to hold your own

Lex Fridman (1:27:19.500)

and scrap like that, like you've got a good future.

Lex Fridman (1:27:21.860)

And I remember calling my friend, Jason Morris,

Lex Fridman (1:27:24.900)

after that tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:27:26.460)

And I said, hey man,

Lex Fridman (1:27:27.300)

did you ever hear of this kid, Travis Stevens?

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.780)

He says, no, why?

Lex Fridman (1:27:30.860)

I said, man, that kid's got some fight in him, right?

Lex Fridman (1:27:33.020)

And I said that, I said that to Jason at the time.

Lex Fridman (1:27:35.740)

I said, that kid's got some fight in him, man.

Lex Fridman (1:27:37.220)

He's pretty talented, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:27:38.940)

And that's how it started.

Lex Fridman (1:27:41.340)

But so I saw that in him when he was young.

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.420)

But the other thing was, Travis,

Jimmy Pedro (1:27:46.260)

like, there's no such thing as hard work to that guy.

Lex Fridman (1:27:50.380)

If you tell him to put his head through the wall

Lex Fridman (1:27:52.420)

and that's how he wins,

Lex Fridman (1:27:53.900)

he'll go put his head through the wall.

Jimmy Pedro (1:27:55.180)

He'll do whatever it takes for him to do to achieve success.

Lex Fridman (1:28:00.980)

And he hates failure more than he likes winning, 100%.

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:08.140)

He always has.

Lex Fridman (1:28:08.980)

He punishes himself when he doesn't do well.

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:11.100)

He makes himself work harder.

Lex Fridman (1:28:12.620)

He goes and just abuses himself when he doesn't succeed

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:19.060)

because he's so heartbroken and disappointed in himself.

Lex Fridman (1:28:22.220)

So that's a trait that I think all of the athletes

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:24.900)

that I work with closely, they all had that same trait.

Lex Fridman (1:28:28.940)

They hated losing more than anything.

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:30.860)

They would break their arm.

Lex Fridman (1:28:31.900)

They'd fall on their head.

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:33.580)

They'd rather get hit by a car than lose a judo tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:28:36.860)

And as a result, then they all had fight

Lex Fridman (1:28:39.300)

and they all were willing to train.

Lex Fridman (1:28:40.780)

They were willing to listen.

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:42.140)

They would do anything for victory.

Lex Fridman (1:28:44.620)

Within the rules, I'm not talking about taking drugs

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:47.380)

or anything like that,

Lex Fridman (1:28:48.220)

but they'd give 100% of themselves for victory.

Lex Fridman (1:28:52.660)

And Travis was somebody that when he was down,

Lex Fridman (1:28:56.020)

he found a way to get better doing something else.

Jimmy Pedro (1:28:58.660)

If he couldn't do standing, that's when he started jujitsu.

Lex Fridman (1:29:01.500)

He couldn't go on his feet anymore.

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:03.100)

He couldn't stand up and train.

Lex Fridman (1:29:04.820)

Might as well go learn jujitsu

Lex Fridman (1:29:06.380)

and get good on the ground because I can.

Lex Fridman (1:29:09.300)

So he always found a way no matter what obstacle

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:11.780)

was in his way, he just went around it.

Lex Fridman (1:29:14.260)

So what about, it'd be interesting to get your perspective

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:18.100)

because I know Travis's perspective

Lex Fridman (1:29:19.940)

is just the number of injuries.

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:24.180)

Like what do you make of the perseverance

Lex Fridman (1:29:26.380)

through all the injuries he had to overcome?

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:28.780)

Specifically like you just observing this creature

Lex Fridman (1:29:31.820)

that you've coached.

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:33.420)

I mean, he seems to not see the injuries as a problem.

Lex Fridman (1:29:37.180)

He just like, just like you said, head through the wall.

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:40.740)

It's like what, like when we were talking about injuries,

Lex Fridman (1:29:44.780)

he kinda, he doesn't even see the injuries themselves

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:48.460)

as the problem because he thinks that the injuries,

Lex Fridman (1:29:51.860)

you know, you heal back stronger.

Jimmy Pedro (1:29:54.500)

I forget the exact quote, but he said like,

Lex Fridman (1:29:57.220)

my body is now less injury prone than most of anyone else.

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:02.860)

Because I've already broken everything.

Lex Fridman (1:30:03.700)

I've broken everything and it's just grown back stronger.

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:07.260)

Like, cause I asked him something like,

Lex Fridman (1:30:08.580)

do you regret sort of pushing your body

Lex Fridman (1:30:10.940)

to all of those places that resulted in those injuries?

Lex Fridman (1:30:15.060)

He was, his response was like, no, I'm stronger now.

Lex Fridman (1:30:19.500)

So I don't know if that's justification,

Lex Fridman (1:30:21.860)

but that certainly describes a mindset that,

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:24.700)

yeah, head through the wall.

Lex Fridman (1:30:26.420)

That doesn't, it's almost not dramatic.

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:30.620)

Like, look, I got this injury.

Lex Fridman (1:30:32.460)

It's so, I'm so like brave and special

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:35.220)

for overcoming this injury.

Lex Fridman (1:30:36.380)

He's just, he's just, that's part of the job

Lex Fridman (1:30:39.900)

and he gets the job done.

Lex Fridman (1:30:41.580)

But like that job involves a lot of injuries.

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:44.380)

One of the talks I gave Travis and that team

Lex Fridman (1:30:46.780)

at that particular tournament was at the very beginning

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:49.940)

of the camp after the tournament, I said to them, listen,

Lex Fridman (1:30:52.540)

my vision, I shared my vision with them.

Jimmy Pedro (1:30:54.620)

I said, my vision is, you know, in seven years,

Lex Fridman (1:30:57.940)

cause that was 2005, I said in seven years,

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:00.740)

I wanna have a US team that steps on the mat

Lex Fridman (1:31:04.340)

that is ready to kick ass.

Lex Fridman (1:31:06.300)

And in order to get there,

Lex Fridman (1:31:07.980)

all of you guys can be a part of this team

Lex Fridman (1:31:09.820)

and part of this process.

Lex Fridman (1:31:10.820)

But in order to get there,

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:12.340)

you guys have to be the first ones to practice.

Lex Fridman (1:31:14.420)

You have to be the last ones to leave

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:15.900)

cause we have to work harder than the rest of the world

Lex Fridman (1:31:18.740)

because we're up against all odds.

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:20.620)

I said, I am sick of America being a laughing stock of judo

Lex Fridman (1:31:24.220)

and being the first round, easy match,

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:26.740)

warmup for everybody else.

Lex Fridman (1:31:28.780)

I said, if you get injured,

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:30.820)

you're not gonna be on the side with, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:31:33.580)

with a ice bag on taking off rounds.

Lex Fridman (1:31:36.140)

And then get back on the mat the next day

Lex Fridman (1:31:37.900)

and tell me you're okay.

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:39.100)

If you can train the next day, you can train today.

Lex Fridman (1:31:41.340)

So there's no injury.

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:42.220)

The only time you'll leave in this dojo

Lex Fridman (1:31:44.160)

is if the ambulance has to take you out of here.

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:46.580)

You know, and I do think subliminally,

Lex Fridman (1:31:48.940)

Travis bought into that message and heard that message then,

Jimmy Pedro (1:31:53.100)

said, if I'm gonna be a champion,

Lex Fridman (1:31:54.340)

that's the way I'm gonna do it.

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.620)

And he did, and he embodied it, he lived it.

Lex Fridman (1:31:58.940)

Man, do it many times in Europe where I said,

Jimmy Pedro (1:32:02.540)

dude, just tape it up, go off to the side,

Lex Fridman (1:32:05.220)

just take the day off, like, take the rest of the day off,

Jimmy Pedro (1:32:07.620)

you're beat up, you can't do it.

Lex Fridman (1:32:08.860)

He said, no, no, I'm gonna tape it up, I'm gonna tape it up.

Jimmy Pedro (1:32:10.380)

I said, no, you don't need to right now.

Lex Fridman (1:32:12.440)

And he said, no, sensei, I'm doing it.

Jimmy Pedro (1:32:14.420)

You know, the ambulance isn't taking me out,

Lex Fridman (1:32:17.020)

it's just my wrist, it's just my ankle, it's just my wrist.

Jimmy Pedro (1:32:20.380)

It's just my ankle, yeah, I love it.

Lex Fridman (1:32:23.260)

Yeah, what about the, so the other really big thing

Jimmy Pedro (1:32:27.160)

is you comment on a little bit is the weight cut.

Lex Fridman (1:32:30.500)

So early in his career, he was 81 kg,

Lex Fridman (1:32:33.860)

and that was presumably not so difficult.

Lex Fridman (1:32:37.220)

But later in his career, he is 81 kg,

Lex Fridman (1:32:40.420)

and it's becoming more and more difficult.

Lex Fridman (1:32:42.980)

So that's the other thing with him is,

Lex Fridman (1:32:47.140)

so I've known a lot of really, really tough people

Lex Fridman (1:32:50.380)

at the highest levels broken by the weight cut.

Jimmy Pedro (1:32:53.100)

Like that can break the toughest minds.

Lex Fridman (1:32:55.480)

And it doesn't seem to have broken him.

Lex Fridman (1:32:58.020)

And he's delivered on it often, on like insane weight cuts.

Lex Fridman (1:33:03.020)

So just as a coach, what do you think about his,

Lex Fridman (1:33:06.820)

particularly his mind and the challenge of the weight cut?

Lex Fridman (1:33:10.740)

It was part of his process.

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:12.420)

It was part of his way of getting ready for battle.

Lex Fridman (1:33:15.140)

Suffering?

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:16.180)

Yeah, it really was.

Lex Fridman (1:33:17.860)

And if I'm gonna suffer this much,

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:20.460)

then I'm gonna make my opponents pay

Lex Fridman (1:33:22.460)

for all the suffering that I went through to get here.

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:24.860)

That was his mindset.

Lex Fridman (1:33:27.500)

Later on in his career, you're right,

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:29.100)

like a lot of times, Travis,

Lex Fridman (1:33:31.260)

he would never step on a scale

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:33.420)

until he got to the tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:33:35.180)

And even when he get to the tournament,

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:37.580)

like he'd weigh like 90 kilos.

Lex Fridman (1:33:39.540)

He'd show up at the tournament nine kilos over.

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:42.540)

I'm like, you have to, but I never,

Lex Fridman (1:33:44.740)

it was just an expectation of making weight.

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:47.600)

Not making weight was never an option

Lex Fridman (1:33:49.340)

for any of our athletes.

Lex Fridman (1:33:50.680)

And Travis knew it.

Lex Fridman (1:33:52.180)

And he said, as a professional, my job is to make weight.

Jimmy Pedro (1:33:56.380)

If I don't make weight,

Lex Fridman (1:33:57.620)

he was never gonna allow that to happen.

Lex Fridman (1:34:00.620)

And he was never gonna allow us to come to him and say,

Lex Fridman (1:34:02.780)

hey, I told you.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:04.940)

Cause losing wasn't an option,

Lex Fridman (1:34:07.820)

making weight wasn't,

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:08.900)

not making weight was not an option for him ever either.

Lex Fridman (1:34:11.740)

But a lot of times he wouldn't even,

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:14.340)

he'd be nine kilos over on the plane

Lex Fridman (1:34:16.360)

going over to the tournament

Lex Fridman (1:34:17.980)

and have to make weight three days later.

Lex Fridman (1:34:20.220)

And he didn't break 86 kilos

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:23.100)

until the day before the tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:34:24.740)

Like he had five kilos over the day before.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:26.780)

That was his way.

Lex Fridman (1:34:27.780)

But he would do three workouts

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:30.500)

to wake up in the morning and work out.

Lex Fridman (1:34:31.740)

Then he'd eat.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:32.580)

Then he'd work out in the afternoon.

Lex Fridman (1:34:33.700)

Then he'd eat again.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:34.540)

Then he'd work out again at night.

Lex Fridman (1:34:36.580)

And then he'd reward himself.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:37.820)

Hey, I worked out three times today.

Lex Fridman (1:34:38.980)

He'd go have a, you know, a Mountain Dew.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:41.540)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:34:42.380)

You know, or a chocolate bar.

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.740)

You know?

Lex Fridman (1:34:44.580)

And then his next morning, he's back up to 87

Lex Fridman (1:34:47.380)

and he would never touch weight

Lex Fridman (1:34:49.980)

until the morning of weigh ins.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:51.700)

That's a, when he,

Lex Fridman (1:34:54.220)

he wasn't on weight for more than like five minutes.

Jimmy Pedro (1:34:57.780)

His process would break a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (1:35:00.820)

So the fact that he got the job done is...

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:03.540)

Not just the job done, but every single time

Lex Fridman (1:35:06.220)

he got the job done.

Lex Fridman (1:35:07.420)

And I made those athletes fight.

Lex Fridman (1:35:10.160)

We would fight in Paris.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:11.500)

We would do a camp for a week,

Lex Fridman (1:35:13.300)

double session camp for a week.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:15.420)

He'd be seven kilos over,

Lex Fridman (1:35:17.540)

have to fight the next weekend.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:19.780)

We're talking two or three days later.

Lex Fridman (1:35:21.700)

You know, so not only did he make the weight,

Lex Fridman (1:35:23.580)

but he did a grueling training camp twice a day.

Lex Fridman (1:35:26.460)

And then cut weight and then fought again.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:29.580)

Then did another camp for a week

Lex Fridman (1:35:31.220)

in double session training camp,

Lex Fridman (1:35:32.820)

and then fought on a third weekend in a row.

Lex Fridman (1:35:34.460)

And our athletes went through hell.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:37.100)

You know, all of our athletes went through hell

Lex Fridman (1:35:38.700)

because on the tour around the world,

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:42.340)

they fought in every event.

Lex Fridman (1:35:43.860)

They did every camp.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:45.020)

They fought in every event.

Lex Fridman (1:35:46.580)

Whereas most of the other teams,

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:48.260)

like Japan comes in and fights in Paris,

Lex Fridman (1:35:50.180)

then they go home.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:51.220)

You know, they maybe do a camp for three days,

Lex Fridman (1:35:52.740)

then they go home.

Jimmy Pedro (1:35:53.900)

They don't stay in Europe for four or five weeks straight

Lex Fridman (1:35:56.700)

and fight in every tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:35:57.980)

And when you get to Germany,

Lex Fridman (1:35:59.460)

the Germans skip the French Open.

Jimmy Pedro (1:36:01.340)

They skip the camp in France.

Lex Fridman (1:36:02.540)

They're just getting ready for Germany.

Jimmy Pedro (1:36:04.220)

Our athletes already had two competitions,

Lex Fridman (1:36:06.180)

two training camps, three weight cuts now.

Lex Fridman (1:36:09.100)

And then, so they're not 100% when they fight in Germany,

Lex Fridman (1:36:12.260)

but that's all part of the experience they need,

Jimmy Pedro (1:36:14.740)

the training that they need

Lex Fridman (1:36:15.980)

that they don't get here in this country.

Lex Fridman (1:36:18.500)

And all of those were just preparation

Lex Fridman (1:36:20.220)

for our world championships or our Olympic games.

Lex Fridman (1:36:23.500)

So by the time our athletes got to those tournaments,

Lex Fridman (1:36:26.540)

they felt so strong, so rested, so like,

Jimmy Pedro (1:36:29.660)

man, this guy that felt like a monster in Germany

Lex Fridman (1:36:32.980)

feels like nothing today

Lex Fridman (1:36:34.620)

because you're fully rested now, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:36:37.260)

But part of the challenge

Jimmy Pedro (1:36:38.340)

is because the American team is smaller and more,

Lex Fridman (1:36:42.060)

I mean, just smaller,

Jimmy Pedro (1:36:44.060)

is all the different places you go to do the weight cut,

Lex Fridman (1:36:49.060)

to do the diet, to do the preparation or the recovery,

Jimmy Pedro (1:36:54.420)

there's, like that process changes every time.

Lex Fridman (1:36:59.060)

So you basically have to improvise a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:37:01.580)

So you show up to a hotel

Lex Fridman (1:37:03.820)

and how you do the weight cut, you don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:37:05.700)

And this is the different weather conditions.

Lex Fridman (1:37:07.340)

It's not, it's like, what is it?

Lex Fridman (1:37:11.140)

Rocky versus Drago, right?

Lex Fridman (1:37:12.540)

That's it.

Lex Fridman (1:37:13.380)

So you don't have, you have to just improvise.

Lex Fridman (1:37:15.180)

And that's also a fascinating part

Jimmy Pedro (1:37:16.860)

of the American judo story,

Lex Fridman (1:37:18.100)

which is like, you have to improvise more.

Jimmy Pedro (1:37:19.900)

Well, it was funny because when I, it was 1990,

Lex Fridman (1:37:22.820)

and it was at the Goodwill Games, right?

Lex Fridman (1:37:25.020)

And we were, it was a US Olympic committee type event.

Lex Fridman (1:37:28.420)

And so we're on the bus with the swim team.

Lex Fridman (1:37:31.580)

And it was me and Jason Morris on the American team,

Lex Fridman (1:37:34.500)

and we're going to the judo competition,

Lex Fridman (1:37:36.420)

but we're on the bus with the swim team.

Lex Fridman (1:37:38.180)

I'm sorry, we're going to the venue where we're staying.

Jimmy Pedro (1:37:40.780)

You know, I remember being like by ourselves

Lex Fridman (1:37:42.660)

with no staff, no manager, no coach,

Lex Fridman (1:37:45.220)

we're just by ourselves going to fight in Russia, right?

Lex Fridman (1:37:48.300)

And the swim team's on there with their full sweats

Lex Fridman (1:37:52.820)

and their staff and like their managers.

Lex Fridman (1:37:54.900)

And I heard the lady, the girl go,

Jimmy Pedro (1:37:57.500)

I'm sorry, this was 1994,

Lex Fridman (1:37:58.700)

because it was in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Lex Fridman (1:38:00.140)

So I heard the little girl on the team,

Lex Fridman (1:38:02.660)

she goes up to the coach, she goes,

Jimmy Pedro (1:38:03.700)

coach, do you think you can send the massage therapist

Lex Fridman (1:38:06.860)

to my room at 10 a.m.?

Jimmy Pedro (1:38:08.020)

You know, I'm feeling kind of jet lag.

Lex Fridman (1:38:10.300)

I looked at, me and Jason looked at each other like,

Lex Fridman (1:38:13.380)

oh, she's scheduling a massage?

Lex Fridman (1:38:17.660)

We don't even have a staff.

Lex Fridman (1:38:18.700)

Like what the hell is going on here?

Lex Fridman (1:38:20.380)

You know, what a difference in sporting,

Jimmy Pedro (1:38:23.460)

you know, different sports within the same country,

Lex Fridman (1:38:26.340)

you know, and.

Lex Fridman (1:38:27.180)

But that, I mean, not to romanticize things,

Lex Fridman (1:38:29.940)

but that you do represent the spirit of the Olympics

Jimmy Pedro (1:38:32.620)

when you're kind of the improvisational nature of it.

Lex Fridman (1:38:37.340)

Cause it is just you, you and sometimes you and the coach

Lex Fridman (1:38:41.540)

and just pure guts and you against the world with no money.

Lex Fridman (1:38:47.460)

The warrior spirit.

Jimmy Pedro (1:38:48.540)

The warrior spirit.

Lex Fridman (1:38:51.420)

How did it feel like when he,

Jimmy Pedro (1:38:53.100)

after being in two Olympics,

Lex Fridman (1:38:56.460)

beating some of the best people in the world,

Jimmy Pedro (1:38:59.060)

facing some of the best people in the world

Lex Fridman (1:39:01.300)

and just barely losing,

Lex Fridman (1:39:04.300)

what did it feel like to you as a coach

Lex Fridman (1:39:06.100)

to see Travis Stevens win the silver medal?

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:10.020)

Electric.

Lex Fridman (1:39:11.420)

I like, first of all, in 2012 in London,

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:16.860)

it was like, it felt like somebody died.

Lex Fridman (1:39:20.100)

I'm not going to be, I'm not going to lie to you.

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:21.540)

Like.

Lex Fridman (1:39:22.380)

The Ole Bischoff match?

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:23.420)

Not, no, just seeing Travis not finish on the podium period.

Lex Fridman (1:39:27.940)

You know, in the Ole Bischoff match,

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:30.300)

I thought he won regardless of who won and who lost.

Lex Fridman (1:39:33.620)

He just left everything he had on that mat, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:35.980)

10 minutes of probably it was a 20 something minute match,

Lex Fridman (1:39:38.700)

but 10 minutes of fighting actually, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:41.780)

He left everything he had.

Lex Fridman (1:39:43.060)

He wanted to be in the Olympic finals.

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:44.460)

He wanted to be Olympic champion.

Lex Fridman (1:39:46.140)

And when he didn't get that opportunity,

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:47.860)

he lost everything.

Lex Fridman (1:39:49.260)

He drained himself.

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:50.300)

He cried for 45 minutes straight.

Lex Fridman (1:39:52.700)

I couldn't regroup him.

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:53.820)

I couldn't get him up.

Lex Fridman (1:39:54.780)

I said, Travis, you've got to stop your crying.

Jimmy Pedro (1:39:56.900)

You've got to get off the floor.

Lex Fridman (1:39:58.460)

We've got a bronze medal fight.

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:00.220)

Like if you don't recover, you're not going to perform well.

Lex Fridman (1:40:03.780)

And he just didn't care.

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:04.940)

Like it was gold or nothing.

Lex Fridman (1:40:06.980)

And so when he walked out against the Canadian boy,

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:09.700)

he had beaten the Canadian.

Lex Fridman (1:40:10.620)

I think at that time,

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:11.980)

he had beaten that Canadian every single time,

Lex Fridman (1:40:14.020)

except for that bronze medal match.

Lex Fridman (1:40:16.060)

But he just didn't have the fight in him anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:40:18.460)

You know, he'd left it all in the match,

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:19.700)

in the Bischoff match.

Lex Fridman (1:40:20.980)

So to see him come back with zero, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:23.180)

We just had a team where his best friend, Marty Malloy,

Lex Fridman (1:40:26.780)

won a bronze medal, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:29.180)

Then the day after Travis fights,

Lex Fridman (1:40:31.620)

Kayla Harrison goes and wins her first gold medal, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:34.180)

Our first ever gold.

Lex Fridman (1:40:35.020)

So we have a gold and a bronze.

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:36.380)

His training partner wins a gold.

Lex Fridman (1:40:38.460)

His best friend from growing up wins a bronze.

Lex Fridman (1:40:41.220)

He has nothing, right?

Lex Fridman (1:40:42.860)

To see him for four years go through hell,

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:46.980)

like literally like all of his injuries,

Lex Fridman (1:40:49.580)

every training camp,

Lex Fridman (1:40:50.980)

and then forget the humiliation,

Lex Fridman (1:40:52.500)

because every time any reporter ever came to my dojo,

Jimmy Pedro (1:40:56.540)

they want to talk to Kayla.

Lex Fridman (1:40:57.620)

She's the Olympic champion.

Lex Fridman (1:40:59.100)

Who's this Travis guy?

Lex Fridman (1:41:00.940)

Who is this guy?

Lex Fridman (1:41:01.980)

So he didn't medal.

Lex Fridman (1:41:04.180)

He's not that important.

Lex Fridman (1:41:05.300)

And up until you get to right before the Olympics,

Lex Fridman (1:41:08.780)

now they talk about he's an Olympian again.

Lex Fridman (1:41:11.660)

But up until that point,

Lex Fridman (1:41:12.740)

and then every little kid sees Kayla's medal.

Jimmy Pedro (1:41:16.460)

Oh, Travis, yeah, you went to the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (1:41:18.740)

Where's your medal?

Lex Fridman (1:41:19.580)

How did you do?

Lex Fridman (1:41:20.500)

You know, I took fifth, I didn't place.

Jimmy Pedro (1:41:22.860)

You know, it's the lowest of low,

Lex Fridman (1:41:25.020)

every day having that constant reminder.

Lex Fridman (1:41:27.380)

So four years later, when that guy,

Lex Fridman (1:41:31.700)

I mean, mentally, he was ready.

Jimmy Pedro (1:41:35.540)

Physically, he was ready.

Lex Fridman (1:41:37.900)

That was the best and strongest Travis Stevens

Jimmy Pedro (1:41:41.780)

that I've ever seen and I've ever felt.

Lex Fridman (1:41:43.980)

Like, cause I had to get on the mat

Lex Fridman (1:41:45.380)

and do some drills and stuff like that,

Lex Fridman (1:41:47.060)

and like try to defend armbars,

Lex Fridman (1:41:48.660)

and cause we didn't have a lot of bodies in Rio.

Lex Fridman (1:41:51.300)

And I was like, my God, he's,

Jimmy Pedro (1:41:53.100)

I said after one of the prizes,

Lex Fridman (1:41:54.260)

those are the strongest I've ever felt that guy, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:41:56.580)

Before the competition, so physically he was ready.

Lex Fridman (1:41:59.100)

Mentally, the morning of competition,

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:00.940)

I said to Travis, I looked him in the eye,

Lex Fridman (1:42:03.580)

and I said, you know, we're ready to go over to the venue.

Lex Fridman (1:42:06.340)

I said, are you ready today?

Lex Fridman (1:42:07.940)

And he just looked at me like he goes,

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:10.340)

I am gonna shock the world today.

Lex Fridman (1:42:12.420)

That's what he told me, I'm gonna shock the world today.

Lex Fridman (1:42:14.060)

And I said, all right, great, let's go, right?

Lex Fridman (1:42:16.900)

So we go to the venue,

Lex Fridman (1:42:18.580)

and every other athlete was just like nervously,

Lex Fridman (1:42:23.140)

like doing repetitions of Uchi Komis.

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:25.300)

You could see like sweat coming out.

Lex Fridman (1:42:27.060)

You could see like all this nervous energy

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:29.780)

going through their body.

Lex Fridman (1:42:31.580)

And here comes Travis Stevens.

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:32.820)

He's got these big goofy headphones on.

Lex Fridman (1:42:35.460)

He's got a tank top that says USA on it.

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:38.220)

He's got the swim trunks that say USA,

Lex Fridman (1:42:41.260)

like that have shiny letters that glow in the dark.

Lex Fridman (1:42:44.300)

And he's like, and this is in the middle of the judo hall

Lex Fridman (1:42:47.580)

where all these athletes are warming up

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:48.780)

for their first match.

Lex Fridman (1:42:50.060)

He's like dancing around, like doing this loose warmup,

Jimmy Pedro (1:42:53.260)

like almost like a little kid at an amusement park

Lex Fridman (1:42:56.780)

whose dad said, yeah, go play, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:42:59.540)

And it was like, he had waited four years for that moment,

Lex Fridman (1:43:01.900)

and he was so relaxed, so focused, so relaxed,

Lex Fridman (1:43:05.700)

and couldn't wait.

Lex Fridman (1:43:07.380)

It was like a caged tiger.

Jimmy Pedro (1:43:08.700)

Like if you like coming out of the chute

Lex Fridman (1:43:10.700)

to go step on to the mat was like this tiger

Jimmy Pedro (1:43:14.820)

that you were just letting out of the cage,

Lex Fridman (1:43:16.300)

and he just go, like now's your time to go fight.

Lex Fridman (1:43:18.660)

And that's what he did that whole day.

Lex Fridman (1:43:20.420)

And like when he beat Chirikishvili in the semis

Lex Fridman (1:43:25.140)

and choked him out and won that fight,

Lex Fridman (1:43:27.860)

like there's nobody with the exception

Jimmy Pedro (1:43:30.780)

of maybe the guys in the American team,

Lex Fridman (1:43:33.340)

there was nobody in that stadium

Jimmy Pedro (1:43:35.660)

that expected Travis to beat him, nobody.

Lex Fridman (1:43:38.420)

Like, you know, he had smashed Travis,

Jimmy Pedro (1:43:41.580)

I don't know how many times before that free poem,

Lex Fridman (1:43:43.460)

like in the first minute even.

Lex Fridman (1:43:44.620)

It wasn't even a fight, right?

Lex Fridman (1:43:46.020)

And it was great game plan.

Jimmy Pedro (1:43:49.140)

He's the world number one at the time too.

Lex Fridman (1:43:52.820)

World number one at the time, world champion,

Jimmy Pedro (1:43:56.860)

carried the flag for the Georgian Federation

Lex Fridman (1:43:59.940)

walking into the games,

Jimmy Pedro (1:44:02.740)

most dominant 81 kilo player in that weight class

Lex Fridman (1:44:06.340)

for quite some time.

Lex Fridman (1:44:08.220)

And man, we just had his number and Travis was ready to go.

Lex Fridman (1:44:13.220)

It was so cool.

Jimmy Pedro (1:44:14.060)

It was so awesome.

Lex Fridman (1:44:15.740)

I mean, we had already won,

Lex Fridman (1:44:17.340)

Kayla had already won her second gold, right?

Lex Fridman (1:44:20.220)

The way the event went and Travis winning that

Jimmy Pedro (1:44:24.340)

was like icing on the cake for our team.

Lex Fridman (1:44:26.340)

That was the best performance we've ever had in history.

Jimmy Pedro (1:44:29.220)

It's awesome.

Lex Fridman (1:44:30.060)

So you mentioned Kayla.

Jimmy Pedro (1:44:31.620)

She is one of, if not the greatest American Jidoka ever.

Lex Fridman (1:44:36.940)

Two time gold medalist.

Jimmy Pedro (1:44:39.540)

2010 world champion.

Lex Fridman (1:44:41.980)

2010.

Jimmy Pedro (1:44:42.820)

First senior worlds.

Lex Fridman (1:44:43.860)

Senior worlds.

Lex Fridman (1:44:45.580)

What makes Kayla special?

Lex Fridman (1:44:49.220)

What makes her so great?

Lex Fridman (1:44:51.420)

What made this champion?

Lex Fridman (1:44:53.300)

It's a combination of a lot of things.

Lex Fridman (1:44:57.420)

One was obviously Kayla's mental toughness, right?

Lex Fridman (1:45:01.180)

To overcome what she overcame.

Jimmy Pedro (1:45:03.860)

You know, this is a girl who,

Lex Fridman (1:45:06.940)

you know, let's not say forget about the sexual abuse,

Lex Fridman (1:45:10.300)

but the fact that she had to go through that in life

Lex Fridman (1:45:13.260)

and learned how to compartmentalize that

Lex Fridman (1:45:15.860)

and keep that off as a separate part of her brain,

Lex Fridman (1:45:18.420)

you know, and forget about it and move on.

Jimmy Pedro (1:45:21.060)

That took an incredible team to help her do that,

Lex Fridman (1:45:23.700)

and my dad was a huge part of her accomplishing that.

Lex Fridman (1:45:28.180)

So for people who don't know, we should comment

Lex Fridman (1:45:30.860)

and say that Kayla had to go through trauma

Jimmy Pedro (1:45:33.980)

in her earlier life through sexual abuse

Lex Fridman (1:45:37.420)

and had to overcome that through the whole process

Jimmy Pedro (1:45:39.700)

of becoming a champion as well.

Lex Fridman (1:45:43.220)

Because she had zero self esteem, zero self worth.

Jimmy Pedro (1:45:45.940)

She was at the lowest of lows

Lex Fridman (1:45:47.420)

and didn't even want to be on this earth, right?

Lex Fridman (1:45:51.580)

So she was traumatized obviously

Lex Fridman (1:45:56.180)

and getting her the right help

Lex Fridman (1:45:57.460)

and surrounding her with the right people

Lex Fridman (1:45:59.060)

who could help her get through that

Lex Fridman (1:46:01.460)

and be by her side as she's getting through that

Lex Fridman (1:46:05.020)

and letting her know and reaffirming

Jimmy Pedro (1:46:06.780)

that she's doing the right thing

Lex Fridman (1:46:08.380)

and she made the right decision

Lex Fridman (1:46:09.780)

and she should have zero guilt.

Lex Fridman (1:46:11.780)

And you know, this doesn't define her.

Jimmy Pedro (1:46:14.060)

It happened to her, but it doesn't define her.

Lex Fridman (1:46:15.820)

What defines her is what she does from now on.

Lex Fridman (1:46:18.580)

And then rebuilding that person to become who she became.

Lex Fridman (1:46:21.580)

I think the mental toughness is a big part of it, her mind.

Lex Fridman (1:46:26.700)

But then as an athlete, she's a lot like Travis.

Lex Fridman (1:46:32.540)

She's a warrior.

Jimmy Pedro (1:46:34.060)

She's a fighter.

Lex Fridman (1:46:35.020)

My dad always jokes with her.

Jimmy Pedro (1:46:37.180)

He says, you're a workhorse.

Lex Fridman (1:46:39.260)

You're not a thoroughbred.

Lex Fridman (1:46:40.180)

We're not gonna treat you like a thoroughbred, right?

Lex Fridman (1:46:42.460)

You're a workhorse, so you're gonna work.

Lex Fridman (1:46:45.220)

And the way you're gonna get bigger and stronger

Lex Fridman (1:46:46.860)

is you're gonna work harder and you're gonna keep, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:46:48.580)

And she came to us when she was only 15.

Lex Fridman (1:46:50.820)

So at that time we got her

Jimmy Pedro (1:46:53.020)

with a really good strength and conditioning coach.

Lex Fridman (1:46:55.260)

We did all the core Olympic style lifting.

Jimmy Pedro (1:46:57.700)

Like as her body was developing,

Lex Fridman (1:47:00.340)

she was getting stronger every single day.

Lex Fridman (1:47:02.340)

And then, you know, she had the luxury

Lex Fridman (1:47:04.300)

of being on the mat with,

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:06.260)

at the time I was still young enough to train

Lex Fridman (1:47:08.380)

and be on the mat and I was around her weight class

Lex Fridman (1:47:10.460)

and Travis was able to train with her

Lex Fridman (1:47:12.100)

and we had all the top US athletes at the time

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:15.540)

training here at my school.

Lex Fridman (1:47:16.700)

So she got the benefit of all the best guys

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:19.140)

to train within the country, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:47:21.060)

And her doing all of those rounds,

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:24.260)

you know, night in, week, night,

Lex Fridman (1:47:26.340)

every night, every week, every year,

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:28.700)

compiled with the best, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:47:30.300)

highest level she could as a girl.

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:32.700)

She got the strength, she got the technique,

Lex Fridman (1:47:34.420)

she got the, and then she had the coaching on top of it

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:36.660)

with my dad being on her as, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:47:38.340)

working her out and, you know, having the wherewithal

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:42.060)

to develop a strategy and a plan for her.

Lex Fridman (1:47:44.180)

Because when she first came here,

Jimmy Pedro (1:47:46.260)

she competed at 63 kilos, which is 138 pounds.

Lex Fridman (1:47:51.380)

At the time, Rhonda Rousey was also training here

Lex Fridman (1:47:55.060)

and she was 70 kilos.

Lex Fridman (1:47:56.940)

So if Kayla was struggling making 63,

Lex Fridman (1:48:00.260)

so the only way to, obviously,

Lex Fridman (1:48:01.820)

the only way to still compete is to move up.

Lex Fridman (1:48:04.220)

But my dad said, well, if you move up,

Lex Fridman (1:48:05.780)

then you're in Rhonda's weight.

Lex Fridman (1:48:06.940)

So let's skip that weight and you're gonna go to 78 kilos.

Lex Fridman (1:48:09.580)

And he told her, listen, you're gonna go up two weight classes.

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:12.500)

She looked at him and was like, that's 172 pounds.

Lex Fridman (1:48:15.380)

And he goes, well, I don't care.

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:17.220)

Like, you're already struggling making 138,

Lex Fridman (1:48:19.460)

you weigh 150, what's the difference?

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:20.980)

We put 20 pounds on, go to 170.

Lex Fridman (1:48:23.220)

So that's why she jumped two weights,

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:24.980)

because she passed Rhonda, she went to the weight above

Lex Fridman (1:48:27.500)

so she could make the national team

Lex Fridman (1:48:29.100)

and she had a chance to go to the Olympics

Lex Fridman (1:48:30.740)

and all that, because we envisioned Rhonda

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:33.020)

staying around till 2012.

Lex Fridman (1:48:34.980)

And that's also like a longterm vision

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:37.300)

because you kind of grow into that body then over time.

Lex Fridman (1:48:40.340)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (1:48:41.180)

So you can dominate, you can learn

Lex Fridman (1:48:42.500)

what it's like in that weight class.

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:43.900)

You can learn to dominate that weight class,

Lex Fridman (1:48:46.020)

excel and then dominate.

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:47.700)

People that cut weight too hard, too long,

Lex Fridman (1:48:49.980)

they forget about technique

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:51.260)

because they're only worried about losing weight.

Lex Fridman (1:48:52.940)

They're always tired in training.

Jimmy Pedro (1:48:54.500)

They don't give 100% effort, they're not getting better.

Lex Fridman (1:48:57.340)

She now is just focused on getting better at judo,

Jimmy Pedro (1:49:00.500)

getting bigger, getting stronger, getting more powerful.

Lex Fridman (1:49:02.660)

So I think giving her that purpose and that,

Jimmy Pedro (1:49:05.420)

that was a great call.

Lex Fridman (1:49:07.700)

What are some memorable or maybe the most memorable moment,

Lex Fridman (1:49:11.900)

Kayla Harrison moment to you as her coach?

Lex Fridman (1:49:16.860)

Not the most perhaps, let's say,

Lex Fridman (1:49:19.340)

what are some memorable moments?

Lex Fridman (1:49:22.220)

Everybody hears the good ones, right?

Lex Fridman (1:49:23.620)

So everybody knows she won the world championships

Lex Fridman (1:49:26.220)

in Tokyo in 2010.

Jimmy Pedro (1:49:28.740)

She was our two time Olympic champion in 2012, 2016.

Lex Fridman (1:49:31.900)

I'll never forget those moments, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:49:34.140)

Cause they're historic.

Lex Fridman (1:49:36.660)

One of the biggest moments that I liked sharing this story

Jimmy Pedro (1:49:40.460)

with everybody is that in 2010 in January,

Lex Fridman (1:49:45.860)

Kayla was still a developing athlete

Lex Fridman (1:49:48.020)

and we had a local tournament in New York.

Lex Fridman (1:49:50.220)

It was in Brooklyn, New York, it was called the Starrett Cup.

Lex Fridman (1:49:53.580)

And I knew that at that tournament

Lex Fridman (1:49:55.180)

that two of the Canadian girls,

Jimmy Pedro (1:49:57.180)

they were like ranked 15th or 20th in the world.

Lex Fridman (1:49:59.740)

They weren't superstars, but they were tough players.

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:02.540)

Both of them, I knew were gonna be at that tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:50:04.780)

So I said, Kayla, we're gonna go to this tournament,

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:07.100)

you're gonna compete against the Canadian girls,

Lex Fridman (1:50:08.620)

get some good experience,

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:10.140)

figure out what you need to work on

Lex Fridman (1:50:11.300)

and then we'll go home and work on some stuff.

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:13.820)

Well, she went to the tournament,

Lex Fridman (1:50:14.940)

there was only three girls in the weight,

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:16.540)

her and the two Canadians.

Lex Fridman (1:50:18.420)

At that tournament, she lost both fights, right?

Lex Fridman (1:50:22.740)

So this is January, 2010, she lost both matches.

Lex Fridman (1:50:26.340)

She was competitive,

Lex Fridman (1:50:27.260)

but certainly things she needed to work on,

Lex Fridman (1:50:29.420)

it was good development thing for her and for us.

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:32.540)

It also opened her mind to say, oh man,

Lex Fridman (1:50:34.940)

cause she was already a junior world champion at the time.

Lex Fridman (1:50:39.540)

But so now there's another level,

Lex Fridman (1:50:40.940)

this is a senior level, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:42.180)

You gotta go up another level.

Lex Fridman (1:50:43.420)

Here's two girls that aren't even medalists

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:45.500)

that are beating you.

Lex Fridman (1:50:46.340)

So now there's more work to be done.

Lex Fridman (1:50:48.140)

And so I like telling that story

Lex Fridman (1:50:49.580)

because everybody sees the champions in the greatest moments,

Jimmy Pedro (1:50:53.500)

they don't see them when they have bad days.

Lex Fridman (1:50:55.620)

And could you imagine being, oh and two,

Lex Fridman (1:50:58.740)

you feel like a failure, right?

Lex Fridman (1:51:01.620)

But 10 months later, it was Tokyo 2010,

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:06.780)

she went from oh and two at Starret, New York

Lex Fridman (1:51:10.940)

to world champion 2010 in the motherland in Japan.

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:16.860)

I mean, that's an amazing turnaround.

Lex Fridman (1:51:19.420)

And that's only possible if you put the losses

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:22.540)

in their proper context,

Lex Fridman (1:51:24.340)

you don't let it destroy you mentally

Lex Fridman (1:51:26.580)

and just keep moving forward.

Lex Fridman (1:51:28.100)

Correct.

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:29.460)

This is so funny.

Lex Fridman (1:51:31.100)

So you were there 2010 at the Starret Cup?

Lex Fridman (1:51:34.380)

Was Travis there?

Lex Fridman (1:51:35.980)

Yeah.

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:36.820)

I made all those, we fought at every,

Lex Fridman (1:51:38.900)

like the mentality of our team was

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:41.540)

no tournament is beneath us.

Lex Fridman (1:51:43.820)

If our goal is to go to the Olympics in the world and win,

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:47.900)

there's no tournament that's beneath us.

Lex Fridman (1:51:49.580)

We're gonna get experience, we're gonna fight,

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:51.820)

we're gonna learn, we're gonna compete,

Lex Fridman (1:51:54.020)

we're gonna get better, you know?

Jimmy Pedro (1:51:56.380)

I actually, just as a funny little side,

Lex Fridman (1:51:59.980)

I was there, I competed.

Lex Fridman (1:52:01.860)

Really?

Lex Fridman (1:52:02.700)

This is one of the earlier tournaments,

Jimmy Pedro (1:52:04.140)

like the beginner division.

Lex Fridman (1:52:05.460)

Oh no, I actually did black belt division too.

Jimmy Pedro (1:52:07.700)

That was one of the, actually yeah, I remember that.

Lex Fridman (1:52:11.780)

That's when it was so early that I thought,

Jimmy Pedro (1:52:16.540)

like I was also really strong at that time,

Lex Fridman (1:52:18.980)

just like physically like power lifting stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:52:21.100)

So I thought like it'll be good experience

Lex Fridman (1:52:24.260)

to also do black belt division.

Lex Fridman (1:52:26.620)

And remember, it must have been actually

Lex Fridman (1:52:28.620)

Travis's division, which is funny.

Lex Fridman (1:52:32.540)

Is Legere Brothers?

Lex Fridman (1:52:33.700)

Yeah, Harry and Gary.

Jimmy Pedro (1:52:35.500)

They are super, they're super good

Lex Fridman (1:52:37.580)

and they're super dominant,

Lex Fridman (1:52:38.700)

but I think Travis faced one of them and beat them.

Lex Fridman (1:52:43.740)

I don't know, I just remembered,

Jimmy Pedro (1:52:46.420)

it's funny how there's just like these little roads

Lex Fridman (1:52:48.620)

that later reconnect.

Lex Fridman (1:52:51.340)

But yeah, there's some incredible people there.

Lex Fridman (1:52:54.420)

And I saw obviously the positive things

Lex Fridman (1:52:57.460)

and it's interesting that Kayla's story

Lex Fridman (1:52:59.860)

was also intersecting there

Lex Fridman (1:53:01.380)

and that was one of the lower points for her.

Lex Fridman (1:53:04.540)

Another story I like to share is that

Lex Fridman (1:53:08.100)

you have to know your athletes, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:09.940)

And you have to really get to know their,

Lex Fridman (1:53:13.380)

what they're thinking psychologically, mentally,

Lex Fridman (1:53:15.420)

what's going through their head.

Jimmy Pedro (1:53:16.540)

Another story was in Tokyo.

Lex Fridman (1:53:20.020)

It was 2015, the Tokyo Grand Slam.

Lex Fridman (1:53:25.460)

So we had had Kayla face off

Lex Fridman (1:53:28.140)

against almost all the top girls in her division.

Jimmy Pedro (1:53:30.900)

She had beaten everybody going into the 2016 Olympics.

Lex Fridman (1:53:34.100)

But at the 2015 Tokyo Grand Slam,

Jimmy Pedro (1:53:39.020)

there was a girl from Japan

Lex Fridman (1:53:40.660)

that she hadn't fought in a long time

Lex Fridman (1:53:42.220)

and she lost to the girl last time she fought her.

Lex Fridman (1:53:44.380)

So it was something we wanted her

Jimmy Pedro (1:53:46.460)

to beat this girl going into the Olympics

Lex Fridman (1:53:48.540)

so that she knew she could beat everybody.

Lex Fridman (1:53:52.300)

And it was a first round match

Lex Fridman (1:53:54.660)

and it was gonna be tough for Kayla, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:53:57.940)

It was gonna be a really hard fight.

Lex Fridman (1:53:59.180)

And she had won a bunch of tournaments in a row

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:02.540)

leading up to that.

Lex Fridman (1:54:03.380)

So her confidence was really high, but at the same time,

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:06.620)

she didn't think she needed this fight.

Lex Fridman (1:54:10.500)

And she showed up to the tournament and she said,

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:13.860)

I don't think I can fight today.

Lex Fridman (1:54:15.500)

I've got a stinger in my neck.

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:17.260)

I've got a stinger coming down my neck and I'm kind of sore.

Lex Fridman (1:54:19.660)

And she didn't tell us.

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:21.740)

She went and told the trainer.

Lex Fridman (1:54:23.380)

She walked around, she's holding her neck.

Lex Fridman (1:54:25.740)

And me and my dad were like, what's up with her?

Lex Fridman (1:54:27.780)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:54:28.620)

And then, so maybe she doesn't wanna fight today.

Lex Fridman (1:54:32.540)

I don't know, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:33.380)

So all of a sudden the trainer comes up to us

Lex Fridman (1:54:35.940)

and she didn't come to us.

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:37.020)

The trainer came to us and says,

Lex Fridman (1:54:37.940)

you know, I really don't think it's a good idea

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:39.780)

that Kayla fight today.

Lex Fridman (1:54:41.580)

And we looked at him and we're like,

Lex Fridman (1:54:43.700)

well, your opinion doesn't really matter, does it?

Lex Fridman (1:54:45.740)

Right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:46.580)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:54:47.420)

What's up with her?

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:48.260)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:54:49.100)

Well, she has this thing in her neck.

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:49.940)

It's like a pinched nerve and there's this and that.

Lex Fridman (1:54:53.380)

We talked, I said, is there a risk of her getting injured?

Jimmy Pedro (1:54:56.980)

Like, is this pain or is this risk

Lex Fridman (1:54:58.660)

that she's gonna get injured and she's gonna set her back

Lex Fridman (1:55:00.620)

like long time in her career?

Lex Fridman (1:55:02.740)

Says, no, she's not gonna get injured.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:04.420)

It's just a pinched nerve.

Lex Fridman (1:55:05.260)

It's a little pain she's gonna have to deal with.

Lex Fridman (1:55:06.500)

I go, okay, well, can you fix the pain?

Lex Fridman (1:55:09.700)

Says, yeah, I can do this and that

Lex Fridman (1:55:11.500)

and I can give her a shot and the pain will go away.

Lex Fridman (1:55:13.700)

I said, okay, then do that.

Lex Fridman (1:55:15.580)

And so Kayla comes up, she goes,

Lex Fridman (1:55:17.220)

didn't the trainer talk to you?

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:18.900)

I said, yeah, he talked to us.

Lex Fridman (1:55:20.220)

Well, he said, I can't fight.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:22.140)

I know, but we already talked to the trainer and.

Lex Fridman (1:55:24.140)

I love it.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:26.100)

He said, you're good to go.

Lex Fridman (1:55:27.700)

She looked at us like.

Lex Fridman (1:55:29.340)

And then we had to talk to her and say, listen,

Lex Fridman (1:55:31.740)

you're not injured, you're in pain

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:34.180)

because we just came from a camp.

Lex Fridman (1:55:35.460)

I said, you're in pain, but here's the deal.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:38.020)

We want you to fight this girl.

Lex Fridman (1:55:39.380)

We want you to go out there and beat this girl, period.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:41.220)

I don't care.

Lex Fridman (1:55:42.060)

I want to know that you can beat this girl.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:43.540)

This is why we came.

Lex Fridman (1:55:44.580)

This is our last hard tournament before the Olympic games.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:48.300)

This is what we want from you.

Lex Fridman (1:55:50.420)

And lo and behold, she understood.

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:53.380)

They gave her a quick shot.

Lex Fridman (1:55:54.780)

The rest of the world thought we were crazy

Jimmy Pedro (1:55:56.540)

making her compete.

Lex Fridman (1:55:58.660)

And then she went out there, she fought,

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:01.740)

didn't even know she was injured.

Lex Fridman (1:56:03.100)

No, you know what I mean?

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:04.020)

She just went out there, she fought the tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:56:06.020)

She beat the Japanese girl.

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:07.380)

She ended up going through the whole tournament.

Lex Fridman (1:56:09.700)

She took a gold medal.

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:11.500)

She won the event.

Lex Fridman (1:56:12.460)

Mm hmm.

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:13.900)

That turned out to be a great confidence builder, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:56:18.780)

And that kind of sets you up for all the chaos

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:21.420)

that can happen at the Olympic games.

Lex Fridman (1:56:23.140)

And it tells you if you can beat these girls

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:25.980)

when you're not 100% and you're not at your best,

Lex Fridman (1:56:28.460)

you're physically beat, mentally beat,

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:31.780)

imagine what you're gonna do when you're fresh.

Lex Fridman (1:56:33.340)

Well, when she was going to the Olympic games,

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:35.060)

there's a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:56:35.980)

She had the mental game down.

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:38.260)

Down.

Lex Fridman (1:56:39.100)

Down.

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:39.940)

There wasn't a girl in that division

Lex Fridman (1:56:40.860)

that thought they could beat Kayla

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:41.940)

going into those games.

Lex Fridman (1:56:43.060)

Not a one.

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:44.380)

They just looked at her and went, no, not happening.

Lex Fridman (1:56:46.580)

Yeah, that's great.

Jimmy Pedro (1:56:48.060)

I mean, she's a great Olympic champion,

Lex Fridman (1:56:50.060)

two time Olympic champion.

Lex Fridman (1:56:51.620)

But there is something that she's commented on,

Lex Fridman (1:56:55.700)

which is she's suffered or went through depression

Jimmy Pedro (1:57:00.100)

after winning her second Olympic gold.

Lex Fridman (1:57:02.460)

Why do you think this happens?

Jimmy Pedro (1:57:04.140)

You often hear stories of great champions

Lex Fridman (1:57:07.780)

becoming depressed after the Olympics.

Lex Fridman (1:57:11.020)

There's a lack of purpose afterwards, right?

Lex Fridman (1:57:14.340)

Because you've done in life what you set out to do.

Jimmy Pedro (1:57:18.460)

You've had a goal every day you woke up.

Lex Fridman (1:57:20.540)

You knew what your purpose was.

Jimmy Pedro (1:57:21.900)

You knew what your day looked like.

Lex Fridman (1:57:25.860)

You knew why you were doing that.

Lex Fridman (1:57:27.900)

And all of a sudden you won and you got all the fame

Lex Fridman (1:57:31.620)

and you're all happy.

Lex Fridman (1:57:33.780)

But then you wake up and you go, now what?

Lex Fridman (1:57:37.860)

I don't have a next.

Lex Fridman (1:57:39.420)

And also because there was nothing for her,

Lex Fridman (1:57:42.100)

there was no path set out for Kayla that said,

Jimmy Pedro (1:57:46.500)

okay, you're gonna become an ambassador,

Lex Fridman (1:57:49.100)

a global ambassador of judo.

Jimmy Pedro (1:57:51.780)

The IJF is gonna help pay a salary.

Lex Fridman (1:57:54.020)

The USA judo is gonna give you a salary.

Jimmy Pedro (1:57:56.300)

Here's what we want you to go teach children.

Lex Fridman (1:57:58.460)

We want you to go be an ambassador for women.

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:01.020)

We're gonna fly you around and whatever it is.

Lex Fridman (1:58:03.860)

We're gonna give you a job and here's what you're gonna do

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:06.460)

if you'd like to take it.

Lex Fridman (1:58:07.580)

There was nothing for her.

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:08.980)

Like I remember doing the interview at the Olympics

Lex Fridman (1:58:11.420)

with her and they said, are you gonna compete

Lex Fridman (1:58:13.780)

in the next Olympics?

Lex Fridman (1:58:14.700)

And I said, no.

Lex Fridman (1:58:15.740)

Like why?

Lex Fridman (1:58:16.740)

She already two time gold medalist.

Lex Fridman (1:58:17.980)

What does three time gold medalist do for her?

Lex Fridman (1:58:19.820)

Nothing, right?

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:21.260)

Doesn't motivate her to do it again.

Lex Fridman (1:58:23.900)

They said, are you doing MMA?

Lex Fridman (1:58:25.020)

I said, no, why would she do MMA?

Lex Fridman (1:58:26.500)

That's ridiculous.

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:27.820)

Like she doesn't need MMA.

Lex Fridman (1:58:29.300)

She should be able to make a living off of what she's

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:32.500)

accomplished in this sport for the rest of her life.

Lex Fridman (1:58:36.140)

But what happens is, and what most people don't understand

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:39.140)

is once you say I'm retired, I'm no longer competing

Lex Fridman (1:58:43.100)

in the sport of judo, you don't get a salary

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:46.980)

from USA Judo anymore, which she was getting.

Lex Fridman (1:58:51.100)

I think she got like $72,000 a year

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:53.220)

from USA Judo at the time.

Lex Fridman (1:58:56.100)

You don't get a stipend from the Olympic committee anymore.

Jimmy Pedro (1:58:59.900)

Goes away.

Lex Fridman (1:59:01.140)

Your sponsor, like the New York Athletic Club

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:03.460)

was a great sponsor for her for all those years.

Lex Fridman (1:59:05.700)

In fact, she could have never been the athlete she became

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:08.740)

without the support of the NYC.

Lex Fridman (1:59:10.780)

Cause I talked to them when she was 15, I said,

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:12.900)

hey, I got a girl that's really good someday.

Lex Fridman (1:59:16.220)

Like if you invest in her now,

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:17.900)

I promise you she'll pay back for you.

Lex Fridman (1:59:20.100)

And I remember the day she won the Olympic gold,

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:22.380)

I called the guy up, I said, hey, I told you so.

Lex Fridman (1:59:25.780)

But they can no longer give you stipends

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:28.580)

because you're not competing and representing them anymore.

Lex Fridman (1:59:30.860)

So that goes away.

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:32.160)

All of your sponsorships and all of your money

Lex Fridman (1:59:35.160)

that you would make from your TV commercials or whatever,

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:37.360)

that didn't happen for her after the Olympics

Lex Fridman (1:59:39.720)

cause Judo's a obscure sport, right?

Lex Fridman (1:59:41.720)

So she didn't have any opportunities for that.

Lex Fridman (1:59:44.760)

At the end of the day, she has no revenue coming in.

Lex Fridman (1:59:47.720)

How do you live?

Lex Fridman (1:59:48.560)

You get a bonus of 25 grand from the Olympic committee

Jimmy Pedro (1:59:51.280)

or whatever for winning a gold.

Lex Fridman (1:59:53.560)

But aside from that, you're not gonna live on that money.

Lex Fridman (1:59:55.880)

So no purpose, no goal, right?

Lex Fridman (1:59:59.000)

What am I gonna wake up and do tomorrow?

Lex Fridman (20:02.040)

So it's really interesting.

Lex Fridman (20:03.720)

Now would be the time, and now is the time,

Jimmy Pedro (20:06.600)

to identify talent and get commitment out of students

Lex Fridman (20:11.500)

that in seven years, you can make a US Olympic team

Jimmy Pedro (20:14.900)

because we're gonna have a full team.

Lex Fridman (20:17.280)

America's gonna have 14 athletes compete in those games,

Jimmy Pedro (20:20.160)

one in every weight class.

Lex Fridman (20:21.640)

So now's the time, if you're gonna go on a journey

Jimmy Pedro (20:23.720)

to the Olympics and stay with the sport of judo,

Lex Fridman (20:25.960)

now would be the time to do it, you know?

Lex Fridman (20:28.440)

And so what, you show up to the Pedro Judo Center

Lex Fridman (20:33.240)

and how much drilling, how much technique,

Jimmy Pedro (20:38.240)

strategy discussions, how much randori,

Lex Fridman (20:41.320)

or like live sparring, how much conditioning

Lex Fridman (20:44.080)

and strength training, how much of all that?

Lex Fridman (20:49.200)

How much of cross training to other gyms

Lex Fridman (20:51.240)

or something like that, traveling abroad?

Lex Fridman (20:53.680)

Is there something to be said about some aspects

Lex Fridman (20:56.860)

of that system?

Lex Fridman (20:57.700)

For sure.

Jimmy Pedro (20:58.640)

You need it all.

Lex Fridman (20:59.740)

What you just said, you need it all of it.

Lex Fridman (21:01.080)

And we do do all of that.

Lex Fridman (21:02.180)

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

Jimmy Pedro (21:05.040)

you'll see tonight.

Lex Fridman (21:05.920)

Some of them are 14, 13, 15, 17.

Lex Fridman (21:09.320)

Are they good?

Lex Fridman (21:10.160)

Yeah, really good.

Jimmy Pedro (21:10.980)

Okay, can't wait.

Lex Fridman (21:12.560)

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

Jimmy Pedro (21:14.400)

That's nice.

Lex Fridman (21:15.240)

They're just young boys,

Lex Fridman (21:17.740)

but they've been training hard through COVID.

Lex Fridman (21:20.520)

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

Jimmy Pedro (21:23.800)

We share responsibilities.

Lex Fridman (21:26.220)

They're doing randori like five nights a week.

Jimmy Pedro (21:28.920)

We have them doing randori Tuesdays, Wednesdays,

Lex Fridman (21:33.000)

Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays

Jimmy Pedro (21:35.520)

is when they're doing randori.

Lex Fridman (21:36.520)

They're coming to the dojo Friday night

Lex Fridman (21:37.840)

and Sunday night to do training.

Lex Fridman (21:40.460)

We also have technical sessions for them.

Jimmy Pedro (21:42.600)

They're in school now, so it's a little bit challenging,

Lex Fridman (21:44.660)

but they come five o clock in the afternoon

Lex Fridman (21:46.520)

and they do a technical session.

Lex Fridman (21:48.220)

Through COVID, they were coming every morning

Jimmy Pedro (21:50.320)

doing technical sessions.

Lex Fridman (21:51.720)

What's a technical session?

Jimmy Pedro (21:53.160)

It's an hour of repetitive throwing

Lex Fridman (21:56.220)

or repetitive drilling to reinforce movements

Jimmy Pedro (21:59.240)

that we deem important to our successful system.

Lex Fridman (22:03.080)

So, niwaza positions, groundwork positions,

Jimmy Pedro (22:06.060)

where we want them to be put in this position

Lex Fridman (22:08.200)

and they're gonna drill it 50 times

Jimmy Pedro (22:10.400)

with resistance in big groups,

Lex Fridman (22:12.960)

doing drills over and over again,

Jimmy Pedro (22:15.080)

picking apart the details of the technique

Lex Fridman (22:17.320)

and what they're doing wrong,

Jimmy Pedro (22:18.360)

showing them how to fix it.

Lex Fridman (22:19.920)

But now, we've done it so much

Jimmy Pedro (22:21.320)

that now we can do a whole drill session with them

Lex Fridman (22:23.640)

where they know all the different techniques

Jimmy Pedro (22:25.600)

inside and out and they can move

Lex Fridman (22:27.200)

from position to position really quickly.

Jimmy Pedro (22:29.000)

Do they do it for a period of time,

Lex Fridman (22:31.760)

like two minutes, five minutes,

Lex Fridman (22:33.920)

or is it like one, two, they're actually counting?

Lex Fridman (22:37.060)

No, sometimes it's both.

Lex Fridman (22:38.720)

So sometimes we do it for reps,

Lex Fridman (22:40.240)

sometimes we do it for time.

Lex Fridman (22:42.400)

So sometimes it might be as many as they can do

Lex Fridman (22:44.920)

in 60 seconds or as many as they can do in two minutes.

Lex Fridman (22:48.000)

And sometimes it might just be,

Lex Fridman (22:49.320)

I want you to do every position five times.

Jimmy Pedro (22:51.880)

In terms of throws,

Lex Fridman (22:53.680)

we're not talking about it on a crash pad, right?

Jimmy Pedro (22:55.640)

It's just.

Lex Fridman (22:56.480)

We're talking about free moving around the mat.

Lex Fridman (22:58.680)

And just dynamically and just throwing.

Lex Fridman (23:01.500)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (23:02.340)

How many, because as I was mentioning to you offline,

Lex Fridman (23:06.860)

Travis threw me a few times,

Jimmy Pedro (23:09.200)

a lot of times when he was visiting in Austin,

Lex Fridman (23:11.760)

and I just remembered,

Lex Fridman (23:14.040)

so there's two things.

Lex Fridman (23:15.920)

Fortunately or unfortunately in my life,

Jimmy Pedro (23:18.420)

having gotten a chance to train with folks of that level,

Lex Fridman (23:22.360)

with just cleanness of throw and the power,

Lex Fridman (23:25.120)

and it was very nice.

Lex Fridman (23:26.600)

I immediately actually enjoyed being thrown like that.

Jimmy Pedro (23:31.240)

To throw a little shade at Craig Jones

Lex Fridman (23:33.140)

with his current mat situation,

Jimmy Pedro (23:36.080)

is they're very, they were quite thin.

Lex Fridman (23:39.460)

And as Travis commented on,

Lex Fridman (23:41.160)

and not just the thinness of the mats,

Lex Fridman (23:42.780)

but they were laid on like concrete, right?

Lex Fridman (23:45.540)

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

Lex Fridman (23:50.680)

But being thrown very cleanly,

Jimmy Pedro (23:53.800)

I just felt like there's,

Lex Fridman (23:55.040)

this is not gonna lead to injury, it was great.

Jimmy Pedro (23:57.080)

It wasn't injury prone.

Lex Fridman (23:59.040)

But then as I mentioned to you,

Jimmy Pedro (24:00.880)

when a day or two after,

Lex Fridman (24:02.940)

my entire leg, one of them, I guess it's the left leg,

Jimmy Pedro (24:08.020)

was just black, a bruise.

Lex Fridman (24:11.320)

It didn't hurt too bad,

Lex Fridman (24:12.680)

but it was just, the body's gotten soft.

Lex Fridman (24:14.480)

So I guess the question I have is,

Lex Fridman (24:17.080)

does the body get used to just that number of throws?

Lex Fridman (24:21.480)

Just over time, being thrown thousands of times a month?

Jimmy Pedro (24:26.300)

Unquestionably.

Lex Fridman (24:27.300)

Your body gets used to it.

Lex Fridman (24:28.760)

So it hardens, it gets really hard.

Lex Fridman (24:30.880)

Which is why judo is hard to come back to

Jimmy Pedro (24:33.920)

after you've taken a long period of time off,

Lex Fridman (24:35.760)

because your body is not used to that impact anymore.

Jimmy Pedro (24:39.300)

I always found out that when I was training judo a lot,

Lex Fridman (24:42.200)

it's hard to shed weight and keep weight off,

Jimmy Pedro (24:46.120)

because your body, it develops this layer of protection

Lex Fridman (24:50.680)

on itself that it doesn't wanna give up.

Jimmy Pedro (24:53.040)

When you're sucking a lot of weight,

Lex Fridman (24:54.120)

that means you're frail.

Lex Fridman (24:55.560)

So I always seem to retain weight more

Lex Fridman (24:59.160)

when you're doing hard judo training,

Jimmy Pedro (25:00.560)

as opposed to losing weight.

Lex Fridman (25:02.920)

It's easy when you go out for runs and things like that

Jimmy Pedro (25:05.320)

to shed the water weight,

Lex Fridman (25:06.580)

but to actually keep the pounds off was pretty hard.

Jimmy Pedro (25:09.480)

Yeah, the body develops, like you said, a level of protection.

Lex Fridman (25:12.800)

What about the randori?

Jimmy Pedro (25:14.520)

Just out of curiosity, again,

Lex Fridman (25:15.800)

I haven't ever had the opportunity to train

Jimmy Pedro (25:18.920)

with folks at a high level.

Lex Fridman (25:22.440)

In jiu jitsu, there's different gyms at different styles,

Lex Fridman (25:26.600)

but I've noticed that at the highest levels,

Lex Fridman (25:29.180)

people can go pretty hard in a certain kind of way

Jimmy Pedro (25:33.200)

where it's more technical,

Lex Fridman (25:35.480)

and you're moving at 100%,

Lex Fridman (25:39.560)

but the power is not at 100%.

Lex Fridman (25:43.600)

It's a weird little dance.

Jimmy Pedro (25:46.560)

You're not really forcing stuff.

Lex Fridman (25:51.080)

You're more focused on the right timing,

Jimmy Pedro (25:53.880)

the right positioning of hands and feet and body

Lex Fridman (25:58.140)

and all those kinds of things.

Jimmy Pedro (25:59.140)

You're not forcing stuff in the way you would in competition,

Lex Fridman (26:02.560)

like really the power.

Jimmy Pedro (26:04.160)

Does that sound similar to you

Lex Fridman (26:05.560)

for the way you try to do randori?

Lex Fridman (26:07.240)

So there's different styles of judo,

Lex Fridman (26:08.920)

and I'd say the Japanese style,

Jimmy Pedro (26:10.760)

the technical style of judo

Lex Fridman (26:12.160)

is exactly what you just talked about.

Lex Fridman (26:14.120)

It's almost like two guys in pajamas, right?

Lex Fridman (26:18.000)

We're using minimal effort, maximum efficiency.

Jimmy Pedro (26:20.720)

We're moving around,

Lex Fridman (26:21.640)

and we're trying to feel that movement,

Lex Fridman (26:23.680)

and it's timing and finesse and technique

Lex Fridman (26:25.940)

and fun and clean throws.

Lex Fridman (26:28.060)

And when you train in Japan,

Lex Fridman (26:30.840)

you can train 15 rounds of randori, five minute rounds.

Jimmy Pedro (26:34.840)

That's 75 minutes of straight sparring.

Lex Fridman (26:38.640)

You can do that straight in Japan without a problem.

Jimmy Pedro (26:41.480)

I mean, you'll get tired, of course.

Lex Fridman (26:42.840)

You're gonna fall a lot, you're gonna throw a lot,

Lex Fridman (26:45.760)

but it's very free feeling,

Lex Fridman (26:48.120)

and it's technical as you explained.

Lex Fridman (26:50.360)

But then when you go to Europe

Lex Fridman (26:51.880)

and you try to do rounds with the Europeans,

Jimmy Pedro (26:53.900)

they are very physical.

Lex Fridman (26:55.200)

They don't have that same finesse in their training

Jimmy Pedro (26:58.960)

that they do in Japan.

Lex Fridman (27:00.340)

In Europe, you'd be hard pressed

Jimmy Pedro (27:02.200)

to do eight rounds of randori in a night.

Lex Fridman (27:04.320)

It's so physically exhausting

Jimmy Pedro (27:06.400)

because so much effort is going into just fighting

Lex Fridman (27:09.480)

and fending off the gripping system

Lex Fridman (27:11.500)

and the power of your opponent.

Lex Fridman (27:13.560)

You're physically drained after eight rounds of randori.

Lex Fridman (27:16.280)

So it's a much different feel.

Lex Fridman (27:18.340)

When you say Europe,

Lex Fridman (27:19.680)

do you mean Germany, France, Britain, Russia?

Lex Fridman (27:22.960)

Is there a lot?

Lex Fridman (27:23.800)

So there's a kind of similarity

Lex Fridman (27:27.040)

to all of those kinds of approaches.

Jimmy Pedro (27:28.840)

The only difference would be Russia

Lex Fridman (27:30.080)

that they do a lot more active drilling,

Jimmy Pedro (27:32.840)

a lot more sequential movement training.

Lex Fridman (27:35.440)

They don't focus as much on randori.

Jimmy Pedro (27:37.960)

You'll do much fewer rounds in Russia during training camps

Lex Fridman (27:42.480)

than you would in those other countries

Jimmy Pedro (27:44.120)

we just talked about, France, Germany, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (27:46.780)

What about in this kind of American system

Lex Fridman (27:48.920)

where you have much less talent to work with?

Lex Fridman (27:55.320)

Do you just select whatever works

Jimmy Pedro (27:58.960)

for the particular athletes,

Lex Fridman (28:00.080)

or do you have something you prefer in your system?

Lex Fridman (28:03.600)

So you need a combination of all of it.

Lex Fridman (28:05.520)

If you're gonna win at the Olympic level,

Jimmy Pedro (28:06.960)

you have to be able to deal with the finesse of the Japanese,

Lex Fridman (28:10.320)

the physicality of the Europeans.

Jimmy Pedro (28:12.340)

You have to focus on the ground,

Lex Fridman (28:14.560)

niwaza aspect, because a lot of people are weak there

Jimmy Pedro (28:17.240)

in the world of the sport of judo.

Lex Fridman (28:18.760)

That's a chance to win.

Jimmy Pedro (28:20.400)

We've sort of developed our American system of judo,

Lex Fridman (28:22.880)

at least for the last,

Jimmy Pedro (28:24.840)

I'd say probably the last 20 years

Lex Fridman (28:26.360)

it'd be the American system of judo,

Jimmy Pedro (28:27.960)

which relies heavily on taking the individual

Lex Fridman (28:31.640)

and whatever techniques they do,

Jimmy Pedro (28:34.080)

perfecting those techniques and the combinations

Lex Fridman (28:37.800)

and other throws that go with those throws,

Lex Fridman (28:40.080)

but then implementing and overlaying an American system

Lex Fridman (28:43.240)

of gripping, niwaza, conditioning, mentality,

Jimmy Pedro (28:47.700)

training methodology, and game planning

Lex Fridman (28:51.600)

to beat your opponents.

Lex Fridman (28:52.640)

And I think that's the secret sauce to success

Lex Fridman (28:55.660)

for your Americans, because there's no way,

Jimmy Pedro (28:58.400)

if we don't have eight partners to train with in a night

Lex Fridman (29:00.960)

that are gonna give us good rounds, right?

Jimmy Pedro (29:02.720)

We might have two, so we're gonna have the same guy

Lex Fridman (29:05.320)

four times, those two people four, two times each.

Jimmy Pedro (29:07.920)

Now I have four good rounds.

Lex Fridman (29:09.100)

The rest of the rounds, I'm not being pushed to the limit.

Lex Fridman (29:11.520)

So we train differently.

Lex Fridman (29:14.200)

And a lot of times we do a lot of stuff like shark bait.

Jimmy Pedro (29:17.160)

When our athletes are preparing for competition,

Lex Fridman (29:19.240)

for example, when Kayla or Travis

Jimmy Pedro (29:21.000)

were preparing for competition,

Lex Fridman (29:23.620)

we might only have 20 people in the whole gym

Lex Fridman (29:26.360)

to work out with, those two Olympic medalists, right?

Lex Fridman (29:29.280)

And of those 20 people,

Jimmy Pedro (29:30.840)

maybe four of them are Travis's size.

Lex Fridman (29:33.880)

Maybe there's only one girl in the room for Kayla,

Jimmy Pedro (29:36.280)

she's gotta train with guys.

Lex Fridman (29:37.480)

And then the other ones are teenagers

Jimmy Pedro (29:38.860)

that are too weak to train with either one of them.

Lex Fridman (29:41.320)

So what we would do is just put together

Jimmy Pedro (29:43.080)

four or five people that could give them a challenge

Lex Fridman (29:46.680)

and we'd line them up and they would do a minute,

Jimmy Pedro (29:48.480)

a minute, a minute, a minute,

Lex Fridman (29:49.720)

and they'd do five minutes in a row as hard as they can.

Jimmy Pedro (29:52.560)

That person can go hard for a minute with Travis or Kayla.

Lex Fridman (29:55.480)

They can't go five minutes hard,

Lex Fridman (29:56.800)

but they can go one minute hard.

Lex Fridman (29:58.240)

So it made their training much, much more intense,

Jimmy Pedro (2:00:00.560)

I don't know, so she has no direction.

Lex Fridman (2:00:02.520)

And then at the same time, she has no money coming in.

Lex Fridman (2:00:05.440)

So everything shuts off.

Lex Fridman (2:00:06.680)

So now it's like, wait till you turn, what do you do?

Lex Fridman (2:00:10.680)

And that leads to being depressed because yeah,

Lex Fridman (2:00:14.240)

even though I've accomplished all this stuff,

Jimmy Pedro (2:00:16.560)

I'm kind of lost in life.

Lex Fridman (2:00:17.920)

Like what's next for me?

Lex Fridman (2:00:20.040)

And I guess you just have to ride that out

Lex Fridman (2:00:22.320)

because when you're a great human being, great champion,

Jimmy Pedro (2:00:27.320)

life has a way of helping you find a way.

Lex Fridman (2:00:31.120)

I mean, she's in mixed martial arts now,

Lex Fridman (2:00:33.600)

but she has a lot of stuff going on.

Lex Fridman (2:00:35.400)

Right, well, her kids, she adopted her sister's kids.

Lex Fridman (2:00:40.080)

So she's their legal guardian now.

Lex Fridman (2:00:41.880)

So that is her purpose, right?

Jimmy Pedro (2:00:43.320)

Raising these kids and making them part of her family.

Lex Fridman (2:00:46.320)

And she's fortunate enough that she has enough money

Jimmy Pedro (2:00:49.840)

that she can do that and she can give them a good life.

Lex Fridman (2:00:52.680)

Mm hmm, I'm gonna ask you to start some trouble.

Lex Fridman (2:00:55.200)

But I heard that she said somewhere

Lex Fridman (2:00:57.360)

that she can be Khabib Nurmagomedov in judo.

Lex Fridman (2:01:00.720)

What do you think?

Lex Fridman (2:01:01.960)

To be honest with you, I mean,

Jimmy Pedro (2:01:03.240)

I don't know what level of judoka.

Lex Fridman (2:01:05.320)

Yeah, I don't know.

Jimmy Pedro (2:01:06.160)

I don't know what level he is.

Lex Fridman (2:01:07.000)

But I do know that that Russian system

Jimmy Pedro (2:01:09.720)

respects judo immensely.

Lex Fridman (2:01:12.000)

What I will tell you is this, I trained with Kayla

Lex Fridman (2:01:15.200)

and I was an Olympic medalist and a world champion in judo.

Lex Fridman (2:01:18.840)

And granted, I was older when I trained with her.

Lex Fridman (2:01:21.800)

But you have to go as a man.

Lex Fridman (2:01:23.600)

You have to go 100% or she will smash you as a man.

Lex Fridman (2:01:28.280)

And I could tell you that if Khabib

Lex Fridman (2:01:30.480)

doesn't do a lot of just judo, doesn't like gripping

Lex Fridman (2:01:34.960)

and doesn't understand, if he can throw, that's one thing.

Lex Fridman (2:01:38.840)

But if he doesn't really understand judo at a high level,

Jimmy Pedro (2:01:42.040)

she will throw him.

Lex Fridman (2:01:43.720)

She would beat him in a match, in a judo contest.

Jimmy Pedro (2:01:46.080)

Not in a mixed martial arts contest,

Lex Fridman (2:01:47.800)

not in a wrestling contest, not in a submission contest.

Jimmy Pedro (2:01:50.880)

In a pure judo match.

Lex Fridman (2:01:52.840)

Where he cannot grab legs and he has to grip up

Lex Fridman (2:01:56.720)

and just throw.

Lex Fridman (2:01:58.920)

I'd put my money on Kayla.

Jimmy Pedro (2:02:01.120)

Unless he's, you know, if he could go place

Lex Fridman (2:02:03.600)

in the nationals in Russia, he would beat her.

Lex Fridman (2:02:05.560)

But if he's not at that level of judo,

Lex Fridman (2:02:07.320)

he's more like a brown belt or he's not,

Jimmy Pedro (2:02:09.960)

he's not a high level judo player, she will win.

Lex Fridman (2:02:11.960)

I saw her take some of our best juniors in this country.

Jimmy Pedro (2:02:16.400)

Some of the guys that went and won our,

Lex Fridman (2:02:20.240)

medaled in our senior nationals.

Jimmy Pedro (2:02:22.080)

I've seen her smash all of them in judo.

Lex Fridman (2:02:25.600)

Now, she's not gonna do that to a Travis Stevens.

Jimmy Pedro (2:02:28.480)

She's not gonna do that to a senior national champion

Lex Fridman (2:02:33.480)

or an Olympian in our sport.

Lex Fridman (2:02:35.760)

But she will go toe to toe with every other male,

Lex Fridman (2:02:39.360)

black belts or not.

Jimmy Pedro (2:02:42.640)

Speaking of Khabib in Russia,

Lex Fridman (2:02:46.640)

Vladimir Putin, I don't know if you have heard of him,

Jimmy Pedro (2:02:50.480)

he's the president of Russia, but he's also a judoka.

Lex Fridman (2:02:54.600)

Have you gotten a chance to see him do judo?

Lex Fridman (2:02:57.400)

What do you think about his judo, if you were to analyze it?

Lex Fridman (2:03:00.240)

So I'm actually really good friends

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:02.320)

with the Russian Federation.

Lex Fridman (2:03:05.200)

The guy in charge is Ezio Gamba.

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:07.920)

He's an Italian, he's a mastermind behind their success

Lex Fridman (2:03:10.760)

of the 2012 and 2016 Olympic teams.

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:14.080)

2020, he suffered from leukemia, blood cancer,

Lex Fridman (2:03:17.560)

so he wasn't part of their 2020 program.

Lex Fridman (2:03:19.920)

But he was part of 2012, 2016.

Lex Fridman (2:03:22.400)

That whole national, the Olympic team in 2012

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:24.600)

came to our studio and lived here for a month in Boston.

Lex Fridman (2:03:29.600)

They went to school in Boston.

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:31.000)

I brought them to my house.

Lex Fridman (2:03:32.440)

They had three Olympic champions.

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:33.960)

Three Olympic champions.

Lex Fridman (2:03:36.200)

Oh my God, what a team.

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:38.360)

They all came and lived here in Boston for a month.

Lex Fridman (2:03:40.560)

They wanted to be part of experience America type program.

Lex Fridman (2:03:44.480)

So I've seen all of them with Putin in Russia

Lex Fridman (2:03:48.080)

at their national training center,

Jimmy Pedro (2:03:50.640)

working out with them and taking falls

Lex Fridman (2:03:52.720)

and doing judo with him.

Lex Fridman (2:03:53.640)

So it's hard when you're older to move in judo.

Lex Fridman (2:03:58.080)

I mean, I was at a high level and I'm now 51.

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:01.600)

It's hard for me to move like I used to.

Lex Fridman (2:04:03.520)

So at his age, he's gotta be what, 60,

Lex Fridman (2:04:06.520)

between 62, 65ish?

Lex Fridman (2:04:09.080)

I mean, it moves really well for somebody

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:11.280)

that's that age and probably hasn't done very much judo

Lex Fridman (2:04:16.000)

for the last however many years, right?

Lex Fridman (2:04:17.840)

So that tells you he, at one point,

Lex Fridman (2:04:19.880)

he had to be a really good judo player.

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:21.480)

Yeah, he put in a lot of work at some point

Lex Fridman (2:04:23.920)

to develop the technique.

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:25.120)

You could tell when a great judo player,

Lex Fridman (2:04:27.520)

even if they haven't practiced it,

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:30.240)

even if they're up there in age,

Lex Fridman (2:04:32.800)

like just the way they move,

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:34.400)

the way they go in for a Seinage,

Lex Fridman (2:04:35.920)

the way they go for a particular throw,

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:38.160)

the way they do foot sweeps and all that kind of stuff,

Lex Fridman (2:04:40.280)

you could just tell he's good at judo.

Lex Fridman (2:04:42.320)

And that's kind of fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:04:43.920)

So it's fascinating to see political leaders.

Jimmy Pedro (2:04:48.240)

I've gotten to interact with quite a few

Lex Fridman (2:04:50.760)

for whom judo was a formative experience in their life.

Lex Fridman (2:04:54.960)

And that's so interesting that for a lot of people,

Lex Fridman (2:04:57.280)

judo played a big part in their life, early development.

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:00.680)

It's similar to like if you served in the military.

Lex Fridman (2:05:04.480)

There's just something about judo.

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:05.840)

It's the, as a martial art, it's not just the technique.

Lex Fridman (2:05:09.640)

So yes, there's something about gaining confidence

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:13.200)

through becoming aware of what like your body can do,

Lex Fridman (2:05:17.080)

the sort of the artistry and the skill of it,

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:20.480)

also the power of being able to dominate

Lex Fridman (2:05:22.480)

another human being with technique,

Lex Fridman (2:05:24.640)

but also like the, I don't know, the formality,

Lex Fridman (2:05:28.880)

the discipline of just honoring the tradition of it.

Lex Fridman (2:05:33.560)

So all of that mixed together somehow creates.

Lex Fridman (2:05:36.960)

Memories.

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:37.840)

It creates memories that kind of define you

Lex Fridman (2:05:40.600)

as a human being and that you carry that forward

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:42.720)

throughout your life.

Lex Fridman (2:05:43.600)

And I've just been surprised to know

Lex Fridman (2:05:45.400)

how many powerful people internationally

Lex Fridman (2:05:48.400)

have like in their heart, in their, who they are, judo.

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:53.560)

For sure.

Lex Fridman (2:05:54.400)

At the core of it.

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:55.240)

It makes you the human being that you are.

Lex Fridman (2:05:57.640)

It really does.

Jimmy Pedro (2:05:58.480)

Like it becomes a fabric of,

Lex Fridman (2:06:01.120)

the people that stick with it, right?

Jimmy Pedro (2:06:02.560)

That stay with it.

Lex Fridman (2:06:03.760)

Because it, I mean, it teaches you so many lessons.

Jimmy Pedro (2:06:07.520)

It's so memorable because of what you talked about,

Lex Fridman (2:06:09.680)

the tradition.

Lex Fridman (2:06:10.640)

But it's also, you grow with other people,

Lex Fridman (2:06:14.280)

and you learn from other people

Lex Fridman (2:06:16.560)

and you experience things with other people.

Lex Fridman (2:06:18.840)

It's such a hands on sport that it's very memorable.

Lex Fridman (2:06:24.160)

And people love it so much.

Lex Fridman (2:06:25.920)

Like right now at my dojo, we have like four generations.

Jimmy Pedro (2:06:30.040)

Like somebody that did judo with my dad,

Lex Fridman (2:06:33.160)

had a kid who trained with me,

Jimmy Pedro (2:06:36.000)

who loved judo so much, had a kid.

Lex Fridman (2:06:39.040)

That kid was now in his 20s who did judo.

Lex Fridman (2:06:43.920)

And now has a kid who's two or three or four

Lex Fridman (2:06:45.880)

that's coming to my toddler program at my school.

Jimmy Pedro (2:06:48.240)

Like we're talking four generations.

Lex Fridman (2:06:49.920)

And they all love the experience so much

Lex Fridman (2:06:52.600)

and what it did for them and their lives

Lex Fridman (2:06:54.720)

that they wanted the next generation

Jimmy Pedro (2:06:56.480)

to also experience the same thing.

Lex Fridman (2:06:59.760)

This is a tricky question,

Lex Fridman (2:07:00.920)

but if people are interested in judo

Lex Fridman (2:07:03.240)

and want to start learning it,

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:04.840)

in the United States there's thousands of jiu jitsu schools,

Lex Fridman (2:07:08.640)

for example, is there advice you can give

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:11.520)

to people interested in judo

Lex Fridman (2:07:13.800)

or maybe to jiu jitsu gym owners?

Lex Fridman (2:07:19.840)

Like how do you get judo as part of your life in America?

Lex Fridman (2:07:25.360)

Well, I mean, if you're fortunate

Lex Fridman (2:07:26.480)

to live near another dojo, right?

Lex Fridman (2:07:28.880)

A place that has judo locally,

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:30.640)

then that's your best opportunity to learn

Lex Fridman (2:07:32.720)

is to go learn from another school.

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:35.080)

Unfortunately, sometimes the nearest dojo

Lex Fridman (2:07:39.240)

might not be for two hours or three hours

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:41.560)

away from where you're at, which is an obstacle.

Lex Fridman (2:07:44.480)

You're not gonna do that.

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:45.320)

So, I mean, Travis and I did start

Lex Fridman (2:07:47.760)

the American Judo System online.

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:50.360)

It's at usajudo.com.

Lex Fridman (2:07:52.840)

And we've broken down every single judo technique

Jimmy Pedro (2:07:57.040)

to the very, very basic elements of just movement.

Lex Fridman (2:08:00.360)

So we teach every technique of how you do it mechanically

Jimmy Pedro (2:08:04.360)

with just your feet,

Lex Fridman (2:08:05.760)

then how you incorporate your hands and your feet together,

Lex Fridman (2:08:09.320)

how you do it in all directions,

Lex Fridman (2:08:11.120)

moving forward, sideways, backwards,

Lex Fridman (2:08:13.320)

how to then introduce a partner into the movement,

Lex Fridman (2:08:18.000)

how to do basic uchi komi or repetitions with a partner,

Jimmy Pedro (2:08:23.040)

then moving with a partner,

Lex Fridman (2:08:24.440)

then how to throw your opponent static,

Lex Fridman (2:08:26.400)

how to throw your opponent.

Lex Fridman (2:08:27.280)

So basically from the very foundation of the movement

Jimmy Pedro (2:08:30.760)

all the way to the most advanced level,

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.080)

we've documented this through separate videos.

Lex Fridman (2:08:36.880)

And we've taken now, I think 12 to 15 of standing techniques

Lex Fridman (2:08:41.680)

combined with a whole bunch of groundwork techniques.

Lex Fridman (2:08:44.560)

And our goal is just to continue to build this platform out

Lex Fridman (2:08:48.000)

so that anybody anywhere can learn online

Lex Fridman (2:08:51.440)

and can ask questions.

Lex Fridman (2:08:52.480)

We have a live training class every couple of weeks,

Jimmy Pedro (2:08:54.840)

every two weeks, he or I answer questions online

Lex Fridman (2:08:58.520)

for our members.

Jimmy Pedro (2:09:00.280)

Ideally, what we'd like to do is have a standing curriculum

Lex Fridman (2:09:04.560)

for jujitsu instructors that want to learn

Lex Fridman (2:09:07.760)

and become black belts in judo.

Lex Fridman (2:09:09.240)

Here's how, these are the techniques you need to know.

Jimmy Pedro (2:09:11.280)

This is how many reps you need to do.

Lex Fridman (2:09:13.200)

This is how efficient you need to get at those techniques

Jimmy Pedro (2:09:16.440)

to become certified as an instructor

Lex Fridman (2:09:18.960)

or become a black belt.

Lex Fridman (2:09:20.880)

And eventually have an online promotion system

Lex Fridman (2:09:23.240)

where anybody anywhere can just submit videos

Lex Fridman (2:09:26.440)

and show us that they can do those techniques.

Lex Fridman (2:09:29.360)

And obviously we'll have people review them.

Lex Fridman (2:09:31.080)

And this is a dream and a vision,

Lex Fridman (2:09:33.440)

but we've already started the platform.

Jimmy Pedro (2:09:35.720)

We're about to do a collaborative effort with USA Judo

Lex Fridman (2:09:39.160)

where all of their members will start to get access

Jimmy Pedro (2:09:41.160)

to this platform as well.

Lex Fridman (2:09:42.720)

And if we can get that influx of money

Lex Fridman (2:09:45.840)

and people on the platform, it'll allow us to hire

Lex Fridman (2:09:49.520)

and grow it faster.

Lex Fridman (2:09:51.160)

So you also want to do certification there.

Lex Fridman (2:09:54.920)

It's not just instruction.

Jimmy Pedro (2:09:56.560)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (2:09:58.160)

That would be amazing.

Jimmy Pedro (2:09:59.840)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:10:01.240)

I mean, for me personally, sort of,

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:02.520)

I mean, mostly in Austin, Texas now.

Lex Fridman (2:10:04.680)

Right.

Lex Fridman (2:10:05.520)

And there's a few judo schools, but it's not really.

Lex Fridman (2:10:10.160)

Right.

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:11.000)

There's not, and it's just one of those cities

Lex Fridman (2:10:13.040)

that doesn't quite have, I mean, there's a few,

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:15.280)

it's basically just like a few random judo people

Lex Fridman (2:10:18.160)

that kind of kind of gather together

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:20.200)

a couple of times a week, but it's not a system,

Lex Fridman (2:10:23.840)

a dojo, an instructor, integrated into a jiu jitsu school

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:29.480)

or not.

Lex Fridman (2:10:30.520)

The problem with most judo dojos right now

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:33.920)

is that most of them cater towards the competitive side.

Lex Fridman (2:10:39.080)

Also, a lot of them do it recreationally,

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:41.480)

meaning this isn't how they make a living.

Lex Fridman (2:10:43.240)

So they're there three nights a week,

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:44.840)

or they're there five,

Lex Fridman (2:10:45.800)

even if they're there five nights a week,

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:47.240)

it's still only one junior class and one senior class,

Lex Fridman (2:10:50.960)

and that's it.

Lex Fridman (2:10:51.800)

And it's one size fits all.

Lex Fridman (2:10:53.160)

Doesn't matter what level you're at,

Jimmy Pedro (2:10:54.600)

it's one size fits all.

Lex Fridman (2:10:55.560)

So you can't get out of the training

Lex Fridman (2:10:58.040)

what you're looking to get out of the training.

Lex Fridman (2:10:59.600)

It's whatever the instructor's teaching.

Lex Fridman (2:11:03.600)

And you can't learn because it's not

Lex Fridman (2:11:04.880)

at the appropriate level for you.

Lex Fridman (2:11:06.280)

And usually you're pushed into doing randori

Lex Fridman (2:11:08.320)

where you have no choice

Lex Fridman (2:11:09.200)

but to do the randori part of the training.

Lex Fridman (2:11:13.040)

So it's a challenge to go learn.

Lex Fridman (2:11:14.600)

And then a lot of times the schools are old school,

Lex Fridman (2:11:18.200)

so they go make you do falls for a half hour.

Jimmy Pedro (2:11:20.240)

They make you do things,

Lex Fridman (2:11:22.400)

maybe you're a jujitsu person

Jimmy Pedro (2:11:23.680)

who knows how to fall already,

Lex Fridman (2:11:25.240)

but you haven't proven it to the judo instructor

Lex Fridman (2:11:27.160)

and they don't break the norm

Lex Fridman (2:11:28.360)

and say you still have to fall for six months,

Jimmy Pedro (2:11:30.160)

which turns a lot of people away as well.

Lex Fridman (2:11:32.480)

So it's like any business.

Jimmy Pedro (2:11:36.120)

If you don't deliver on your customer's expectations,

Lex Fridman (2:11:40.880)

you're not gonna have very many customers,

Jimmy Pedro (2:11:42.880)

which is the way it is now.

Lex Fridman (2:11:44.480)

So a lot of people who listen to this,

Lex Fridman (2:11:47.560)

but in general in the United States

Lex Fridman (2:11:49.120)

practice Brazilian jujitsu,

Jimmy Pedro (2:11:51.320)

which has a lot of similarities to judo

Lex Fridman (2:11:54.080)

as obviously its origins in judo.

Lex Fridman (2:11:57.360)

How would you compare the two arts

Lex Fridman (2:11:59.240)

from the perspective of people

Lex Fridman (2:12:00.800)

just interested about both arts?

Lex Fridman (2:12:04.000)

Do you recommend people who do jujitsu get into judo?

Lex Fridman (2:12:08.440)

How can it enrich their jujitsu?

Lex Fridman (2:12:10.560)

How do you compare the two arts,

Lex Fridman (2:12:11.920)

the actual practice of it and why it might be useful to you?

Lex Fridman (2:12:15.640)

I mean, I think that judo is a hard sport for adults to do.

Jimmy Pedro (2:12:19.680)

It just is.

Lex Fridman (2:12:20.840)

Especially people that haven't fallen in a long time,

Jimmy Pedro (2:12:24.440)

aren't very athletic, haven't...

Lex Fridman (2:12:27.200)

I think about my own experience, right?

Jimmy Pedro (2:12:29.960)

Other than judo,

Lex Fridman (2:12:30.880)

when did I ever do like a forward somersault?

Lex Fridman (2:12:33.760)

Maybe when I was in grade school, right?

Lex Fridman (2:12:35.680)

That's the last time I've left my feet was in grade school.

Jimmy Pedro (2:12:39.080)

Most people haven't got off of a chair or a couch.

Lex Fridman (2:12:42.760)

They spend eight to 10 hours a day

Jimmy Pedro (2:12:45.000)

either working behind a computer

Lex Fridman (2:12:46.400)

or sitting on their couch watching TV, right?

Lex Fridman (2:12:48.800)

And they're not that athletic.

Lex Fridman (2:12:50.560)

And they haven't done anything athletic

Lex Fridman (2:12:51.880)

at least probably since high school, right?

Lex Fridman (2:12:55.080)

That's their last athletic endeavor, most of them.

Lex Fridman (2:12:57.400)

So you're talking about as an adult,

Lex Fridman (2:12:59.040)

that's 35 or 40 wanting to start a sport.

Jimmy Pedro (2:13:01.920)

Judo is a really hard sport to start,

Lex Fridman (2:13:04.040)

especially in today's dojos

Jimmy Pedro (2:13:06.880)

that don't have a recreational adult program.

Lex Fridman (2:13:09.720)

You know, when it's one size fits all, it's hard.

Lex Fridman (2:13:11.640)

So for those people,

Lex Fridman (2:13:13.000)

jujitsu makes a heck of a lot of sense.

Jimmy Pedro (2:13:15.720)

Good self defense, it's cerebral,

Lex Fridman (2:13:18.800)

where you got to use your brain, you're a smaller person,

Jimmy Pedro (2:13:21.360)

you have to use technique, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:13:23.160)

it teaches all the same things as judo,

Lex Fridman (2:13:25.400)

but it's a safe way to do it.

Lex Fridman (2:13:27.040)

And because of the validation it has

Lex Fridman (2:13:30.120)

with the UFC and MMA today, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:33.120)

Everybody knows jujitsu.

Lex Fridman (2:13:34.560)

So now they can be part of mainstream society

Lex Fridman (2:13:37.120)

and talk intelligently about what they see on television

Lex Fridman (2:13:40.240)

or what's going on on ESPN today, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:42.200)

They have some knowledge.

Lex Fridman (2:13:43.080)

So they have an identity.

Lex Fridman (2:13:45.840)

And also there's a good culture in jujitsu

Jimmy Pedro (2:13:47.880)

where it's becoming a family.

Lex Fridman (2:13:49.480)

You know, the dojo is the family place.

Jimmy Pedro (2:13:51.400)

You go to feel good, you go to see your friends,

Lex Fridman (2:13:54.000)

you go to get fit and you have a good time, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:57.200)

So it makes a lot of sense why it's growing.

Lex Fridman (2:13:59.840)

Judo on the other hand,

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:01.040)

I think is a better sport for children to do.

Lex Fridman (2:14:04.480)

It's more, I would say fun and interactive.

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:08.280)

It's a little easier to teach the kids

Lex Fridman (2:14:10.160)

how to do the throwing skills

Lex Fridman (2:14:12.240)

and for safety and things like that.

Lex Fridman (2:14:14.360)

Their body can handle more than the adults can.

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:16.840)

They're less likely to get injured.

Lex Fridman (2:14:20.320)

It makes them better athletes

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:21.600)

because it's a lot more three dimensional in my opinion.

Lex Fridman (2:14:25.880)

So I think there's a good fit

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:27.080)

between judo can thrive from kids till whatever,

Lex Fridman (2:14:32.200)

high school, college.

Lex Fridman (2:14:34.160)

Jujitsu thrives from that 18 year old up, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:37.800)

Right now, that's kind of where it is.

Lex Fridman (2:14:40.520)

So as a dojo, you have to kind of focus on the teens

Lex Fridman (2:14:43.720)

and the college, like early 20s, that kind of.

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:46.880)

Or you need to have,

Lex Fridman (2:14:48.640)

if you're gonna be a successful judo dojo,

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:50.600)

you have to have that recreational

Lex Fridman (2:14:53.920)

fundamental adult program in your school

Jimmy Pedro (2:14:56.720)

where people actually come to judo, learn the moves,

Lex Fridman (2:15:00.800)

but aren't pushed into randori training

Lex Fridman (2:15:03.560)

and pushed into things where they're uncomfortable

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.800)

and they can't control the situation

Jimmy Pedro (2:15:07.840)

because there's too many unknowns.

Lex Fridman (2:15:09.520)

You got an education at Browns.

Jimmy Pedro (2:15:12.520)

You're somebody, it's amazing because as an Olympian

Lex Fridman (2:15:15.440)

and an Olympic coach, you always emphasize

Jimmy Pedro (2:15:17.440)

kind of balance and education, all of that side of life.

Lex Fridman (2:15:22.440)

So developing your brain too.

Lex Fridman (2:15:24.280)

So you are an Olympic medalist,

Lex Fridman (2:15:27.640)

a coach of Olympic medalists, you're a business owner.

Lex Fridman (2:15:31.080)

So successful in all these domains.

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.840)

So I have to ask, what advice would you give

Jimmy Pedro (2:15:36.680)

to young people today, high school, judo age,

Lex Fridman (2:15:40.960)

high school, college, undergrad,

Lex Fridman (2:15:44.640)

how to be successful in their career

Lex Fridman (2:15:47.520)

or just in life in general,

Lex Fridman (2:15:48.960)

how to live a life they can be proud of?

Lex Fridman (2:15:53.920)

I think you have to be true to yourself.

Jimmy Pedro (2:15:56.080)

You have to decide what it is you really wanna do

Lex Fridman (2:15:58.840)

with your life.

Jimmy Pedro (2:15:59.680)

Like, and it's hard because when I grew up,

Lex Fridman (2:16:02.280)

I didn't know I was gonna be successful.

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:04.200)

When I was young, I didn't know I was gonna be

Lex Fridman (2:16:06.880)

an Olympic medalist.

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:07.720)

I certainly did envision myself owning a couple of companies

Lex Fridman (2:16:10.600)

that makes their living exclusively from martial arts

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:14.320)

or judo, cause that wasn't really an opportunity

Lex Fridman (2:16:16.240)

when I was a kid, but I've created that opportunity.

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:19.200)

I would just say that, pick something

Lex Fridman (2:16:21.280)

that you're passionate about.

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:23.120)

I was stuck in a career before

Lex Fridman (2:16:24.640)

where I wasn't passionate about it.

Lex Fridman (2:16:26.480)

And it was my wife who said, Jimmy,

Lex Fridman (2:16:28.800)

if you can figure out how to make your living

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:32.560)

exclusively from martial arts,

Lex Fridman (2:16:35.000)

where your brain and your heart and your passion

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:37.440)

is all towards one thing that you really like,

Lex Fridman (2:16:40.640)

then you'll be successful.

Lex Fridman (2:16:41.800)

And I left the job.

Lex Fridman (2:16:42.800)

I had three kids.

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:43.640)

I was working for monster.com.

Lex Fridman (2:16:46.480)

I was in internet marketing

Lex Fridman (2:16:48.280)

and I was working for that great company,

Lex Fridman (2:16:50.080)

nothing wrong with the company,

Lex Fridman (2:16:51.560)

but sitting behind the desk from eight till five.

Lex Fridman (2:16:55.040)

And then I get to go to judo from six till nine at night.

Jimmy Pedro (2:16:59.040)

My whole day is tied up doing something

Lex Fridman (2:17:00.680)

that I'm really not passionate about.

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:02.640)

She said, if you can figure out how to make money

Lex Fridman (2:17:05.800)

from your dojo and other things judo related,

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:08.880)

then I think you'll be successful.

Lex Fridman (2:17:10.200)

And so she's the one that my wife, Marie,

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:11.760)

gave me that advice and I would give that to others.

Lex Fridman (2:17:13.920)

Find something that you love doing

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:15.720)

where it doesn't feel like work,

Lex Fridman (2:17:17.400)

something you're passionate about.

Lex Fridman (2:17:18.720)

And if the opportunity doesn't exist

Lex Fridman (2:17:20.800)

how to make money on it, you can create the opportunity.

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:23.680)

Be resourceful, figure it out.

Lex Fridman (2:17:25.680)

Don't let anybody tell you you can't do it.

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:28.000)

I didn't know that I could have a 200 person judo school

Lex Fridman (2:17:31.680)

that only taught judo

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:33.000)

because that really didn't exist in this country.

Lex Fridman (2:17:35.800)

That actually charges money like jujitsu charges.

Jimmy Pedro (2:17:38.840)

We're talking not, there's plenty of clubs out there

Lex Fridman (2:17:41.040)

that charge 10 bucks a month that might have 100 people,

Lex Fridman (2:17:43.480)

but there's not many that,

Lex Fridman (2:17:45.040)

where the tuition is $150 a month having 200 people.

Lex Fridman (2:17:48.400)

So that's a successful business, but it wasn't done before.

Lex Fridman (2:17:52.880)

But be passionate about it, understand you're gonna fail,

Lex Fridman (2:17:55.800)

understand you're gonna get knocked down, beat up, right?

Lex Fridman (2:17:58.920)

There's gonna be dark days, but you gotta persevere.

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:01.920)

You gotta believe in yourself.

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.240)

You gotta have a plan.

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:04.840)

You have to be willing to learn from other people.

Lex Fridman (2:18:07.840)

And that's what I did.

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:09.520)

If I didn't know it, I brought somebody in to tell me,

Lex Fridman (2:18:12.120)

what am I doing wrong?

Lex Fridman (2:18:13.120)

Like, look from the outside, what do you see?

Lex Fridman (2:18:15.280)

Okay, great.

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:16.120)

Then you gotta be willing to change.

Lex Fridman (2:18:17.840)

You gotta be willing to adapt.

Lex Fridman (2:18:20.040)

And I think listening, believing in myself,

Lex Fridman (2:18:24.360)

and creating opportunity.

Lex Fridman (2:18:26.280)

And the other thing is helping others.

Lex Fridman (2:18:28.960)

Something I always did in my judo life

Lex Fridman (2:18:33.480)

and in my business life.

Lex Fridman (2:18:35.600)

If somebody came to me and asked for help with,

Lex Fridman (2:18:38.320)

hey man, is there something you can do to help me?

Lex Fridman (2:18:40.280)

I'm trying to get this thing started.

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:42.040)

I'm trying to get this dojo off the ground,

Lex Fridman (2:18:44.920)

or I'm trying to run this event series,

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:47.120)

or I was creative and trying to figure out a way

Lex Fridman (2:18:51.000)

to help them make it work.

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:52.480)

Because if that really was their dream,

Lex Fridman (2:18:54.560)

and I could help them do their dream,

Jimmy Pedro (2:18:56.560)

I felt like that person would then give nothing

Lex Fridman (2:19:00.640)

but good, good comments about us.

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:02.600)

Good, good, like they'll remember it forever.

Lex Fridman (2:19:05.080)

They become like family.

Lex Fridman (2:19:06.640)

And they'll be the best advocates for your business ever.

Lex Fridman (2:19:09.560)

And so the kids that I taught at my dojo

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:12.200)

were treated that way.

Lex Fridman (2:19:13.400)

The people that worked for me get treated that way.

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:15.560)

The people that, my customers that I work with

Lex Fridman (2:19:18.600)

and building their dojos,

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:20.800)

get treated that way.

Lex Fridman (2:19:22.600)

People that ran tournaments,

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:23.760)

whether it was Grappler's Quest years ago,

Lex Fridman (2:19:26.280)

and helping that guy with a full set of mats

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:28.240)

for his, Brian Simmons with his thing,

Lex Fridman (2:19:31.040)

or any of the Gracie's.

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:34.720)

It just became like family.

Lex Fridman (2:19:36.480)

And then I just work hard and deliver

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:38.080)

on what I say I'm gonna do.

Lex Fridman (2:19:39.720)

If I say I'm gonna do it, I do it.

Lex Fridman (2:19:41.880)

And I think it goes a long way.

Lex Fridman (2:19:43.560)

Well, and I got a comment.

Lex Fridman (2:19:44.800)

So in a small way, people may not know.

Lex Fridman (2:19:48.320)

I think it's still on YouTube.

Jimmy Pedro (2:19:49.720)

We previously talked many years ago.

Lex Fridman (2:19:52.160)

And I remember it, you were so kind to me.

Lex Fridman (2:19:56.320)

And you didn't really know who I was.

Lex Fridman (2:19:58.200)

You just took me as a human being.

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:00.360)

You welcomed me into your dojo.

Lex Fridman (2:20:01.880)

And we just had a conversation on a podcast

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:04.400)

or whatever the heck you call that thing.

Lex Fridman (2:20:06.320)

And you were just very kind.

Lex Fridman (2:20:08.440)

And you were also just,

Lex Fridman (2:20:12.920)

it was the last conversation I had

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:15.600)

when I showed up to MIT,

Lex Fridman (2:20:17.840)

and it stayed with me.

Lex Fridman (2:20:20.200)

So I've resumed doing this podcast.

Lex Fridman (2:20:23.120)

But it stayed with me because you said

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:26.720)

that I did a good job at this.

Lex Fridman (2:20:28.960)

And people, especially at that time,

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:30.960)

didn't tell me that.

Lex Fridman (2:20:33.680)

And just that little act of kindness

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:36.200)

is probably just a regular part of your day.

Lex Fridman (2:20:38.080)

You had a busy day, it was the end of the day.

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:40.080)

Just saying that, that was powerful.

Lex Fridman (2:20:42.760)

And that pays off somehow.

Lex Fridman (2:20:45.000)

So thank you for that.

Lex Fridman (2:20:47.120)

Yeah, but it was sincere, right?

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:49.560)

It was genuine.

Lex Fridman (2:20:50.400)

I felt like I had been to so many interviews.

Jimmy Pedro (2:20:53.320)

When it's around the Olympic time,

Lex Fridman (2:20:54.840)

there's lots of beat reporters that come out

Lex Fridman (2:20:56.800)

and they're trying to get your time.

Lex Fridman (2:20:58.200)

And they're there because they have to get the story

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:01.360)

for their newspaper or their television show.

Lex Fridman (2:21:03.600)

And a lot of times those people show up, right?

Lex Fridman (2:21:06.160)

And they pronounce my name wrong.

Lex Fridman (2:21:08.840)

Or they get something wrong about the background.

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:10.880)

Or they offend me because they call me for the wrong reason.

Lex Fridman (2:21:14.880)

Or they call me five minutes before

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:16.960)

that they're supposed to be there and say,

Lex Fridman (2:21:18.200)

oh, sorry, we're running late.

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:19.440)

We'll be there in an hour and a half.

Lex Fridman (2:21:20.520)

Well, I'm a busy guy too.

Lex Fridman (2:21:22.440)

But you were somebody that showed up,

Lex Fridman (2:21:25.440)

was so prepared with your notes,

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:27.120)

knew everything about the history of what I had done.

Lex Fridman (2:21:32.120)

The questions you asked were intelligent questions.

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:34.920)

They were well thought out.

Lex Fridman (2:21:36.400)

And at the end of that interview,

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:38.440)

I was really genuinely impressed.

Lex Fridman (2:21:41.400)

And I wanted to let you know you did a great job

Lex Fridman (2:21:43.960)

and you stood out from the rest.

Lex Fridman (2:21:45.240)

Thank you.

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:46.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:21:46.920)

I mean, for me, it was like showing up to like the Mecca,

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:48.640)

like the track.

Lex Fridman (2:21:49.480)

I mean, I didn't, you know,

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:51.240)

you don't always want to just tell that to people,

Lex Fridman (2:21:53.200)

but you show up, you know,

Jimmy Pedro (2:21:55.400)

obviously you're the legend of judo in the United States.

Lex Fridman (2:21:58.720)

And so that was like, Boston is the Mecca.

Jimmy Pedro (2:22:01.640)

Right.

Lex Fridman (2:22:02.960)

I think that's where you travel to talk to the great.

Lex Fridman (2:22:06.640)

So the fact that you were kind to me

Lex Fridman (2:22:09.200)

just stuck with me for a long time.

Lex Fridman (2:22:11.040)

So it pays off to be kind to others,

Lex Fridman (2:22:14.680)

to give them a chance.

Jimmy Pedro (2:22:20.080)

Jimmy, thank you so much for giving me another chance

Lex Fridman (2:22:23.240)

and spending your valuable time.

Lex Fridman (2:22:24.680)

And you've also were kind enough to invite me

Lex Fridman (2:22:27.440)

to train with you today at your dojo.

Lex Fridman (2:22:30.120)

So I can't wait.

Lex Fridman (2:22:31.400)

Let's go.

Jimmy Pedro (2:22:32.240)

Let's go do some judo.

Lex Fridman (2:22:33.080)

Yeah, awesome.

Jimmy Pedro (2:22:33.920)

Thank you, Lex.

Lex Fridman (2:22:35.440)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jimmy Pedro.

Jimmy Pedro (2:22:38.520)

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors

Lex Fridman (2:22:41.400)

in the description.

Lex Fridman (2:22:43.040)

And now let me leave you some words from Bruce Lee.

Lex Fridman (2:22:46.240)

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,

Lex Fridman (2:22:50.560)

but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Lex Fridman (2:22:55.400)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Jimmy Pedro (30:01.720)

much more physically demanding.

Lex Fridman (30:03.320)

And then rinse and repeat that six times

Jimmy Pedro (30:06.160)

or eight times in a night,

Lex Fridman (30:08.240)

they just got 40 minutes of intense randori.

Jimmy Pedro (30:10.680)

The person that was training with them that wasn't as good

Lex Fridman (30:13.280)

only had to do six or eight minutes

Jimmy Pedro (30:14.600)

of training the whole night, you know, so.

Lex Fridman (30:16.700)

It's so, it's so difficult because then you look

Jimmy Pedro (30:21.640)

at like the Russian national team

Lex Fridman (30:25.180)

and you have just the world champions and so,

Jimmy Pedro (30:33.600)

or you even have like, what is it,

Lex Fridman (30:36.600)

Tom Brands and Terry Brands in the wrestling system.

Jimmy Pedro (30:39.700)

You have like these people, it's a small group of people,

Lex Fridman (30:43.100)

but they're all some of the best people in the world

Lex Fridman (30:45.760)

and they're going head to head.

Lex Fridman (30:47.360)

And yeah, you don't necessarily get a good look

Jimmy Pedro (30:50.000)

kind of a variety of styles, but just the quality is there.

Lex Fridman (30:55.120)

And even that is missing for people your size in America,

Jimmy Pedro (30:58.640)

because that is so difficult to work with,

Lex Fridman (31:02.360)

which it makes Kayla's and makes Travis's story

Jimmy Pedro (31:05.520)

that much more amazing.

Lex Fridman (31:08.120)

You mentioned kind of picking whatever the set of techniques

Jimmy Pedro (31:11.600)

the athlete is naturally good at or prefers or whatever.

Lex Fridman (31:16.840)

How much specialization is there?

Jimmy Pedro (31:19.700)

Maybe if I give you like two choices,

Lex Fridman (31:21.600)

is it good to have like one throw

Lex Fridman (31:25.080)

and try to become the best person in the world

Lex Fridman (31:27.000)

at that throw, or do you want to have a bunch of stuff?

Lex Fridman (31:31.000)

Like a variety of throws?

Lex Fridman (31:32.960)

Well, for Travis, it was Ippon Seinagi,

Lex Fridman (31:34.720)

that was his main throw, right?

Lex Fridman (31:36.440)

But from that Ippon Seinagi, he had a variety

Jimmy Pedro (31:39.200)

of other attacks he could do, you know,

Lex Fridman (31:41.440)

that mixed it up so that you kept people guessing.

Jimmy Pedro (31:44.320)

Maybe it wasn't the Ippon Seinagi that was coming,

Lex Fridman (31:46.200)

maybe it was the Koshi Gruma that he did,

Jimmy Pedro (31:48.420)

or maybe it was the Ippon to Osoto

Lex Fridman (31:50.240)

that he did in combination.

Lex Fridman (31:51.400)

So you typically have one main throw that you do.

Lex Fridman (31:55.080)

For me, it was Tai Otoshi.

Jimmy Pedro (31:56.840)

For Kayla, it was her Ogoshi.

Lex Fridman (31:58.840)

For Travis, it was his Ippon Seinagi.

Lex Fridman (32:01.200)

But then you come up with a variety of other throws

Lex Fridman (32:04.120)

that you do from the very same grip.

Lex Fridman (32:06.380)

So whatever grip you take for your main throw,

Lex Fridman (32:08.360)

you wanna develop, you know, an arsenal of attacks

Jimmy Pedro (32:11.600)

that go in all different directions holding that same grip.

Lex Fridman (32:15.080)

So you keep your opponent guessing as to what's coming.

Jimmy Pedro (32:18.280)

You know, because if they're just sitting on one technique

Lex Fridman (32:20.920)

at the highest level of sport,

Lex Fridman (32:22.320)

with the exception of a few, right?

Lex Fridman (32:23.800)

We talked about Ono's Uchi Mata.

Jimmy Pedro (32:26.160)

With the exception of a few,

Lex Fridman (32:27.460)

most of the world catches on pretty quick

Jimmy Pedro (32:29.480)

on how to beat you.

Lex Fridman (32:30.840)

There is something to just sticking,

Jimmy Pedro (32:33.040)

making sure you really dedicate to the main thing.

Lex Fridman (32:36.240)

So for Travis, that would be like the main version

Jimmy Pedro (32:39.680)

of his Seinagi.

Lex Fridman (32:41.400)

Like really making sure you don't forget

Jimmy Pedro (32:43.920)

to really put in the time on that.

Lex Fridman (32:46.200)

Because I mean, one way to say it is

Jimmy Pedro (32:51.920)

that threat being dangerous opens up a lot of things.

Lex Fridman (32:55.940)

Right.

Lex Fridman (32:57.160)

But also, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (33:00.760)

I think I'm just, as a fan,

Jimmy Pedro (33:02.560)

I think it's sad when like elite level athletes

Lex Fridman (33:06.760)

in all like combat sports,

Jimmy Pedro (33:09.300)

kind of start taking their main thing for granted.

Lex Fridman (33:12.520)

Like they think, okay, I've figured that part out.

Jimmy Pedro (33:16.540)

Now I'll be working on all this whole system

Lex Fridman (33:18.680)

on variations, on different setups,

Jimmy Pedro (33:20.800)

on lefty versus, some like weird variation

Lex Fridman (33:24.880)

as opposed to, you know what?

Jimmy Pedro (33:27.160)

If you look at some of the best people ever,

Lex Fridman (33:29.360)

they seem to have not cared about variations at all.

Jimmy Pedro (33:32.840)

They're just like literally,

Lex Fridman (33:34.880)

they are more like Jiro James of Sushi

Lex Fridman (33:37.740)

and like fine tuning their ear,

Lex Fridman (33:42.480)

their ability to detect the minute movements

Jimmy Pedro (33:45.600)

that give you an opening on that main thing.

Lex Fridman (33:48.160)

And so the whole time you're just waiting for that throw,

Jimmy Pedro (33:52.680)

you're like dancing with the like little bit of pressure

Lex Fridman (33:55.880)

and like releasing the pressure, putting the pressure,

Jimmy Pedro (33:58.600)

maybe a little bit of off balance

Lex Fridman (34:00.600)

and finding like the right moment to strike

Lex Fridman (34:03.900)

and focusing on that.

Lex Fridman (34:05.400)

Again, maybe that's just like a romanticization

Jimmy Pedro (34:08.160)

of like the simplicity of that.

Lex Fridman (34:10.940)

Maybe it is kind of impossible to do that on a large scale,

Lex Fridman (34:13.940)

but I just, yeah, I don't know if you can comment on that,

Lex Fridman (34:19.960)

whether there is some value in still putting in

Jimmy Pedro (34:22.260)

like tens of thousands of reps on the main, main thing.

Lex Fridman (34:25.440)

Well, unquestionably that has to happen.

Jimmy Pedro (34:27.840)

You still have to drill your main throw

Lex Fridman (34:30.080)

and you have to fine tune it

Lex Fridman (34:31.360)

and continue to do repetition after repetition

Lex Fridman (34:34.320)

and throws on the crash pad or throws on the mat,

Jimmy Pedro (34:37.120)

moving around, just explosive movements

Lex Fridman (34:39.160)

doing your main technique.

Jimmy Pedro (34:40.160)

You're never gonna forget that

Lex Fridman (34:41.320)

and you're not gonna put it to the side

Lex Fridman (34:43.080)

and not practice it anymore.

Lex Fridman (34:44.160)

It still has to be part of your repertoire

Lex Fridman (34:46.160)

and part of your daily training, but you do have to evolve.

Lex Fridman (34:49.720)

And I think that's the sport of judo, makes you evolve.

Lex Fridman (34:54.320)

When I look at, we talk about Koga from before, right?

Lex Fridman (34:56.900)

And we talked about, he had a dynamic Ippon Seinagi

Jimmy Pedro (34:59.760)

that nobody could stop for years and years and years.

Lex Fridman (35:01.920)

But when people started to be unorthodox

Lex Fridman (35:05.080)

and come down his back and cross grip him

Lex Fridman (35:07.520)

and he couldn't get to the lapel,

Jimmy Pedro (35:09.520)

he had to come up with something else.

Lex Fridman (35:10.920)

And all of a sudden you saw Koga doing, now he did a Sode

Jimmy Pedro (35:14.160)

or now he did a Tomoe Nagi,

Lex Fridman (35:15.720)

which so he can, he added to his arsenal

Jimmy Pedro (35:18.480)

to keep people thinking, keep people guessing.

Lex Fridman (35:20.460)

So it's not, you're not just that one trick pony.

Jimmy Pedro (35:22.760)

They still couldn't stop his Ippon Seinagi

Lex Fridman (35:25.220)

once he got that grip.

Lex Fridman (35:26.800)

But if they stopped them from getting that grip

Lex Fridman (35:28.680)

or putting two hands on the gi,

Jimmy Pedro (35:30.240)

he had to go to something else.

Lex Fridman (35:31.700)

And that's what he did.

Lex Fridman (35:32.960)

Does Travis's or Koga's Seinagi make sense to you?

Lex Fridman (35:36.700)

That weird, so when I,

Jimmy Pedro (35:38.840)

Because split hip, split hip.

Lex Fridman (35:41.240)

So I don't know if you know this,

Lex Fridman (35:43.720)

but like I got into judo because of Travis.

Lex Fridman (35:45.660)

I watched him at 2008 Olympics and I was,

Jimmy Pedro (35:47.960)

there's something about like, just not the cockiness,

Lex Fridman (35:51.960)

but the confidence and just the refusal to quit,

Jimmy Pedro (35:55.460)

the refusal to just, that energy,

Lex Fridman (35:57.640)

whatever it connected with me is like,

Jimmy Pedro (35:59.240)

oh, that guy's bad ass.

Lex Fridman (36:01.120)

I want to be bad ass like that.

Lex Fridman (36:03.160)

And then I also there happened to be in my university judo

Lex Fridman (36:06.120)

and I got into it and just fell in love with the elegance

Lex Fridman (36:10.120)

and the beauty and the power of the sport.

Lex Fridman (36:13.560)

But also I started to mimic Travis's game, his and Koga's.

Lex Fridman (36:18.920)

And then the instructors I worked with,

Lex Fridman (36:21.880)

they said that's the wrong way to do it.

Lex Fridman (36:24.360)

And I always, I never found somebody that told me like,

Lex Fridman (36:28.400)

no, that's not the wrong way.

Jimmy Pedro (36:29.680)

There's a lot of ways to do it.

Lex Fridman (36:31.100)

And there's like the classic way

Lex Fridman (36:32.760)

and you have to understand it and you have to learn it,

Lex Fridman (36:34.400)

but this is not the wrong way.

Jimmy Pedro (36:36.040)

Cause I was trying to find somebody

Lex Fridman (36:37.540)

who understands this throw.

Jimmy Pedro (36:39.960)

Cause it was so beautiful at the highest level,

Lex Fridman (36:42.400)

especially with Koga, the way you're able,

Jimmy Pedro (36:44.960)

the quickness with which you can strike,

Lex Fridman (36:46.960)

the fact that you can stand on the feet

Lex Fridman (36:48.680)

and the elevation you can get and the power you can get

Lex Fridman (36:52.560)

has certain throws, just like Uchimata

Jimmy Pedro (36:57.120)

doesn't look powerful.

Lex Fridman (36:58.960)

It's just like, it looks effortless.

Lex Fridman (37:02.400)

But like the standing Seinagi with a split hip,

Lex Fridman (37:06.760)

it just looks powerful because there's a,

Jimmy Pedro (37:10.240)

you're like, you're stepping into them,

Lex Fridman (37:12.600)

you're lifting the opponent and they still have,

Jimmy Pedro (37:14.760)

they're not surprised, they're now like helpless.

Lex Fridman (37:17.200)

Right, their feet are fluttering in the air.

Lex Fridman (37:19.840)

And then there's just this pause

Lex Fridman (37:22.000)

and then just big slam.

Jimmy Pedro (37:23.880)

With the Uchimata, it's almost like

Lex Fridman (37:25.360)

you don't know what hit you.

Jimmy Pedro (37:27.600)

It's like Taitoshi is the same.

Lex Fridman (37:29.000)

It's almost like a surprise.

Jimmy Pedro (37:30.040)

Like, oh shit, I'm now on my back.

Lex Fridman (37:32.160)

And so I just love that throw,

Lex Fridman (37:37.200)

but like it didn't make sense to me.

Lex Fridman (37:40.400)

Like when trying to explain it to others,

Jimmy Pedro (37:42.880)

when trying to learn, it didn't make sense to me

Lex Fridman (37:45.360)

how it works.

Lex Fridman (37:46.200)

Does it make sense to you?

Lex Fridman (37:47.440)

It does.

Lex Fridman (37:48.280)

I was born a Judoka, right?

Lex Fridman (37:50.120)

So I've lived this stuff since I was an infant

Lex Fridman (37:54.480)

and I've seen every style and every technique.

Lex Fridman (37:58.160)

The split hip Saiyan Aiki is difficult to learn.

Jimmy Pedro (38:00.960)

It's harder to learn than the basic form,

Lex Fridman (38:03.920)

but it is powerful and it does, upon entry,

Jimmy Pedro (38:08.040)

both of your opponent's feet

Lex Fridman (38:09.200)

leave the mat at the same time.

Lex Fridman (38:10.440)

So you've got them.

Lex Fridman (38:11.280)

Once you enter, you've got them.

Lex Fridman (38:12.640)

You just gotta finish, right?

Lex Fridman (38:13.800)

You just gotta lock them and turn and go.

Lex Fridman (38:15.360)

So it makes sense to me.

Lex Fridman (38:17.160)

My dad did teach me how to do that when I was younger.

Jimmy Pedro (38:20.000)

Yeah, he wanted me to do a split hip.

Lex Fridman (38:21.400)

We have kids at the school today

Jimmy Pedro (38:23.320)

that we teach the split hip Saiyan Aiki, same way,

Lex Fridman (38:27.120)

because it is that dynamic, right?

Jimmy Pedro (38:28.520)

You don't drop to the ground and roll and turn.

Lex Fridman (38:31.360)

It's not the classic form

Jimmy Pedro (38:32.920)

where you're giving way to your opponent.

Lex Fridman (38:34.240)

It's actually, you go pick the guy up in the air

Lex Fridman (38:36.600)

and then you slam him, so.

Lex Fridman (38:39.080)

Okay, beautiful.

Lex Fridman (38:41.840)

So maybe on a small tangent,

Lex Fridman (38:43.960)

so we're talking about elite level athletes

Jimmy Pedro (38:46.360)

in terms of Randori, in terms of like drilling.

Lex Fridman (38:49.960)

For more recreational athletes,

Jimmy Pedro (38:53.040)

like, you know, I have personally that situation going on,

Lex Fridman (38:56.440)

but there's other people

Jimmy Pedro (38:57.440)

that are just recreationally training Judo.

Lex Fridman (39:00.120)

How do you recommend they improve Judo?

Jimmy Pedro (39:03.240)

Like if I wanted to compete a bunch

Lex Fridman (39:06.480)

and do reasonable with a particular set of throws,

Jimmy Pedro (39:10.160)

say the split Saiyan Aiki,

Lex Fridman (39:13.640)

so how do you do the Randori?

Lex Fridman (39:16.360)

Do you use a crash pad to get in reps?

Lex Fridman (39:18.640)

Do you, like, what do you recommend?

Lex Fridman (39:20.320)

So I guess there's two recreational people

Lex Fridman (39:22.920)

that we're talking about.

Jimmy Pedro (39:23.760)

One is somebody who wants to learn Judo

Lex Fridman (39:25.880)

and become good at Judo,

Lex Fridman (39:27.440)

but doesn't necessarily want to compete,

Lex Fridman (39:29.680)

but just wants to get better.

Lex Fridman (39:30.680)

And I think that there's not enough emphasis

Lex Fridman (39:33.480)

in this country on paying attention

Jimmy Pedro (39:36.800)

to that type of student.

Lex Fridman (39:37.960)

Everybody pushes them to competition.

Lex Fridman (39:40.120)

But in reality, there's a huge audience of people out there

Lex Fridman (39:43.400)

that would love to learn Judo

Lex Fridman (39:44.880)

and be very proficient at Judo

Lex Fridman (39:46.800)

and have the skills to go execute if they ever needed it.

Lex Fridman (39:50.120)

And there's a class

Lex Fridman (39:51.520)

and there should be a program for that athlete.

Lex Fridman (39:53.800)

And that athlete does not need to do Randori.

Lex Fridman (39:56.600)

Like the sport of Judo is physical enough

Jimmy Pedro (39:59.120)

where you're picking somebody up all the time

Lex Fridman (40:01.000)

and moving their body weight around the mat all the time,

Jimmy Pedro (40:03.760)

where you can get very physically strong,

Lex Fridman (40:05.840)

very physically fit.

Jimmy Pedro (40:07.400)

Technically, you'll be better than somebody

Lex Fridman (40:09.280)

that does Randori more than you

Jimmy Pedro (40:11.960)

because if you learn good technique

Lex Fridman (40:14.360)

and you learn the movement and you learn the feel

Lex Fridman (40:16.440)

and you learn the timing,

Lex Fridman (40:18.720)

you'll actually be a better athlete

Jimmy Pedro (40:20.240)

than the person that just focuses on Randori

Lex Fridman (40:22.240)

who does ugly technique and wins with force.

Lex Fridman (40:24.760)

So we have a recreational class at our school

Lex Fridman (40:28.680)

where they don't do any Randori.

Jimmy Pedro (40:30.200)

They have an option afterwards

Lex Fridman (40:31.640)

if they want to stay for 15 minutes

Jimmy Pedro (40:33.160)

or stay for 30 minutes

Lex Fridman (40:34.120)

where they can participate in Randori.

Lex Fridman (40:36.200)

But most of the adult students choose not to

Lex Fridman (40:39.120)

because they're already so tired from the other hour class.

Jimmy Pedro (40:42.160)

It's a good workout.

Lex Fridman (40:43.080)

Right, they're already dripping sweat.

Jimmy Pedro (40:44.520)

They're already like, if you work hard and drill hard,

Lex Fridman (40:48.520)

it's an intense workout, you're exhausted.

Lex Fridman (40:51.400)

So that's a specific set of program,

Lex Fridman (40:55.800)

I should say, at every academy.

Lex Fridman (40:57.160)

And then if you want to get good and you want to compete,

Lex Fridman (41:01.680)

then to me, once you have your techniques,

Jimmy Pedro (41:04.520)

it's learning how to implement a good gripping system

Lex Fridman (41:09.320)

to put yourself in a position

Jimmy Pedro (41:11.320)

where you can always dominate the grips,

Lex Fridman (41:16.560)

control the movement, initiate the reactions

Jimmy Pedro (41:19.440)

from your opponent,

Lex Fridman (41:20.280)

and then have the opportunity to attack and score.

Lex Fridman (41:22.560)

And I think that when people train with,

Lex Fridman (41:25.440)

or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo,

Jimmy Pedro (41:29.080)

all of a sudden the first thing they say is, I can't attack.

Lex Fridman (41:32.360)

I don't know how to attack.

Jimmy Pedro (41:33.400)

Because positionally, they don't know

Lex Fridman (41:35.440)

where to put their hands.

Jimmy Pedro (41:36.440)

They don't know how to hold the gi properly.

Lex Fridman (41:38.800)

They don't understand that they're,

Jimmy Pedro (41:41.200)

they have an inferior grip,

Lex Fridman (41:43.040)

and they don't know how to get into better positions

Lex Fridman (41:45.520)

so they can't attack.

Lex Fridman (41:46.360)

And that's a big part of the game

Jimmy Pedro (41:47.600)

that not a lot of people really understand.

Lex Fridman (41:49.760)

So you really, even for recreational competitors,

Jimmy Pedro (41:52.720)

you really need to have a gripping system.

Lex Fridman (41:54.880)

You need to understand the gripping system.

Jimmy Pedro (41:57.200)

If you want to win.

Lex Fridman (41:58.880)

I mean, if the goal is to go and compete,

Jimmy Pedro (42:00.680)

that's a different story.

Lex Fridman (42:01.520)

You're going, I don't have fun getting beat up

Jimmy Pedro (42:03.600)

or losing in competitions.

Lex Fridman (42:04.800)

I enjoy the...

Jimmy Pedro (42:06.960)

I don't even know if it's the winning or the losing.

Lex Fridman (42:09.120)

I don't think, I think this is what,

Jimmy Pedro (42:12.080)

because I competed a lot in both Judo and Jiu Jitsu,

Lex Fridman (42:14.320)

and in Judo, it feels like,

Jimmy Pedro (42:18.120)

because I didn't have a gripping system,

Lex Fridman (42:19.960)

it feels like you're not even playing Judo

Jimmy Pedro (42:21.880)

against the good black belts.

Lex Fridman (42:24.440)

You're, they're just, they're not,

Jimmy Pedro (42:26.360)

they're not even trying because they have,

Lex Fridman (42:28.160)

they get a certain kind of grip,

Lex Fridman (42:29.840)

and you just can't do anything.

Lex Fridman (42:31.360)

And I don't have a good answer for that.

Jimmy Pedro (42:33.120)

I don't even know what I'm looking for.

Lex Fridman (42:34.800)

And so it's not even fun.

Jimmy Pedro (42:36.160)

It's not like even losing.

Lex Fridman (42:37.800)

It's like, I don't know.

Jimmy Pedro (42:40.680)

It's like you didn't even show up to play

Lex Fridman (42:43.480)

is what it feels like.

Lex Fridman (42:44.640)

And it's not, and I think that is a big gap

Lex Fridman (42:47.960)

in knowledge, actually, in Judo schools,

Jimmy Pedro (42:52.880)

is the gripping part.

Lex Fridman (42:55.720)

When you first go out to do Judo, right?

Jimmy Pedro (42:59.040)

You, the first thing you have to do

Lex Fridman (43:00.320)

is you have to grab your opponent, right?

Lex Fridman (43:01.880)

And a lot of times I hear coaches say, get a grip.

Lex Fridman (43:04.040)

Just take a grip.

Jimmy Pedro (43:04.880)

Well, sometimes if you take a grip,

Lex Fridman (43:07.280)

you're in a worse position than not having a grip at all.

Lex Fridman (43:10.440)

And that's what a lot of people don't understand.

Lex Fridman (43:11.960)

Like if you hold the gi in the wrong way,

Jimmy Pedro (43:14.360)

your opponent can attack you, but you can't attack him.

Lex Fridman (43:16.920)

So why would you ever do that grip

Lex Fridman (43:20.400)

if it's only to your detriment, right?

Lex Fridman (43:22.840)

So that's, and the way you grip does set up

Lex Fridman (43:26.880)

what attacks you can do as well.

Lex Fridman (43:28.360)

So that is a huge part.

Lex Fridman (43:29.680)

And I'm not saying that you have to be 100% disciplined

Lex Fridman (43:32.720)

and only always outgrip your opponent

Lex Fridman (43:34.480)

and only be able to do throws

Lex Fridman (43:36.160)

when you have a superior grip.

Jimmy Pedro (43:37.200)

I'm just saying that to be able to put the grips together

Lex Fridman (43:40.400)

with the throws and understand the movements

Jimmy Pedro (43:42.200)

is gonna make you that much ahead of the game.

Lex Fridman (43:45.040)

So if we take a step to our previous discussion

Jimmy Pedro (43:48.480)

of going from zero to hero.

Lex Fridman (43:51.840)

So going from the early days through the teenage years

Jimmy Pedro (43:55.840)

to winning an Olympic medal.

Lex Fridman (43:58.560)

So we mentioned a lot of training,

Jimmy Pedro (44:00.920)

the dedication of the training, the competing,

Lex Fridman (44:03.940)

what other elements are there?

Jimmy Pedro (44:05.160)

The mental side is visualization,

Lex Fridman (44:07.960)

believing that you could perform at that level.

Lex Fridman (44:12.680)

So what else can you say about that?

Lex Fridman (44:13.760)

I think that comes at the highest level,

Jimmy Pedro (44:15.280)

the visualization, the success,

Lex Fridman (44:17.320)

that comes at the highest level.

Jimmy Pedro (44:18.520)

I think in the teen years, there's the experience,

Lex Fridman (44:23.240)

just plays a huge role in getting to train

Jimmy Pedro (44:27.360)

with other people.

Lex Fridman (44:28.280)

Like as Americans, we have to go train in Europe.

Jimmy Pedro (44:30.960)

We have to feel the European style of judo.

Lex Fridman (44:33.240)

You have to understand that physicality.

Jimmy Pedro (44:35.760)

They grip very differently.

Lex Fridman (44:38.080)

They put you in very unorthodox positions.

Lex Fridman (44:41.160)

And if you don't know how to deal with that,

Lex Fridman (44:43.800)

you get thrown before you even have a chance

Jimmy Pedro (44:45.480)

to try your own throws.

Lex Fridman (44:47.240)

So it takes a lot of that experience

Lex Fridman (44:50.520)

and understanding what's going on.

Lex Fridman (44:52.800)

And then you also need to get that physicality.

Jimmy Pedro (44:55.160)

You need to be strong and hard, I would say,

Lex Fridman (44:59.260)

by doing all those rounds with the Europeans.

Lex Fridman (45:01.680)

And at the same time, you need to go to Asia

Lex Fridman (45:03.560)

and you need to train in Japan

Jimmy Pedro (45:05.280)

because you need to feel that free flowing judo

Lex Fridman (45:08.740)

for your technical side.

Lex Fridman (45:10.760)

And I think that's one of the things

Lex Fridman (45:12.600)

that I was able to benefit from.

Jimmy Pedro (45:13.880)

My dad was a coach who said,

Lex Fridman (45:15.040)

''Listen, I've taken you as far as I can take you.

Jimmy Pedro (45:17.840)

''I want you to go to the next level.''

Lex Fridman (45:20.200)

And he sent me to England with Neil Adams,

Jimmy Pedro (45:23.040)

who was an Olympic silver medalist and was a world champion,

Lex Fridman (45:25.800)

had a great ground game and was good at gripping

Lex Fridman (45:28.140)

and actually did Tai Otoshi, which is the throw I did.

Lex Fridman (45:30.480)

So my dad said, ''I want you to go learn from Neil.''

Lex Fridman (45:32.520)

And I ended up going to England

Lex Fridman (45:34.800)

probably eight to 10 times in my career

Lex Fridman (45:36.660)

and spending a good amount of time there

Lex Fridman (45:38.280)

training at the Neil Adams Academy.

Jimmy Pedro (45:40.700)

He's now the voice of judo, Neil Adams.

Lex Fridman (45:43.040)

What do you make of that guy?

Jimmy Pedro (45:43.960)

Just a brief pause.

Lex Fridman (45:44.920)

He's like the, like Morgan Freeman

Jimmy Pedro (45:47.800)

is the voice of like March of the Penguins

Lex Fridman (45:50.200)

and any other nature documentary.

Lex Fridman (45:52.240)

And Neil Adams is, there's very few sports

Lex Fridman (45:54.880)

that have a Neil Adams, I would say,

Jimmy Pedro (45:56.400)

because he's legitimately, maybe like Joe Rogan

Lex Fridman (46:00.880)

is that from mixed martial arts.

Jimmy Pedro (46:02.800)

It's just like an exceptionally recognizable voice.

Lex Fridman (46:06.320)

He's really knowledgeable.

Jimmy Pedro (46:07.960)

Also the passion is conveyed so well.

Lex Fridman (46:10.520)

Like many times I'll watch just because he's talking.

Lex Fridman (46:13.560)

So who is he?

Lex Fridman (46:14.580)

Since you've gotten a chance to train with him,

Lex Fridman (46:16.640)

to learn from him, who is Neil Adams?

Lex Fridman (46:18.760)

He's a great friend of mine.

Lex Fridman (46:20.240)

He is?

Lex Fridman (46:21.080)

He's a mentor.

Jimmy Pedro (46:23.520)

Like I said, I lived and trained

Lex Fridman (46:24.960)

at the Neil Adams Club in Coventry, England

Jimmy Pedro (46:27.680)

since I was like 16 years old.

Lex Fridman (46:29.880)

I went and visited him for the first time.

Jimmy Pedro (46:31.880)

He's the one who originally taught me

Lex Fridman (46:33.400)

how to do jujigatami and the way that I do jujigatami.

Jimmy Pedro (46:37.320)

I trained with him.

Lex Fridman (46:38.140)

He was just retired.

Jimmy Pedro (46:39.480)

He was in his early thirties when I first went out there.

Lex Fridman (46:41.800)

And so I trained with him many times

Lex Fridman (46:43.920)

and over the years he was a mentor.

Lex Fridman (46:48.600)

Great person, cares about people,

Jimmy Pedro (46:51.440)

cares about the sport of judo, had a good little club

Lex Fridman (46:56.520)

that was a fitness club.

Lex Fridman (46:57.800)

And it was judo, it was fitness.

Lex Fridman (47:00.880)

It used to go there.

Jimmy Pedro (47:02.960)

I'd show up at that place at like seven in the morning.

Lex Fridman (47:05.280)

And the first thing we would do is we'd go for a run.

Lex Fridman (47:07.260)

And we'd either be running mountains

Lex Fridman (47:09.300)

or we'd be doing a five mile run

Jimmy Pedro (47:11.280)

or we'd be doing something at the park.

Lex Fridman (47:13.120)

We were doing sprints and buddy carries and all this stuff.

Lex Fridman (47:15.680)

And then at 9 a.m. we'd have a technical session

Lex Fridman (47:18.200)

with Neil Adams where he would, for an hour and a half,

Jimmy Pedro (47:21.000)

we would drill techniques and learn positions.

Lex Fridman (47:23.300)

And it was no randori.

Jimmy Pedro (47:25.000)

It was that sequential drilling

Lex Fridman (47:26.600)

that we talked about before, right?

Jimmy Pedro (47:28.080)

Where you're reinforcing your two or three attacks

Lex Fridman (47:31.840)

to set up your main attack.

Jimmy Pedro (47:33.000)

Or if you're on the ground,

Lex Fridman (47:34.180)

you're going through repetitions of certain movements.

Lex Fridman (47:38.200)

And then I'd spend all afternoon at the club, have lunch.

Lex Fridman (47:41.880)

I'd go do my weight training in the afternoon at that place.

Lex Fridman (47:45.280)

And then in the evening,

Lex Fridman (47:46.240)

we would either do randori training at the Neil Adams Club

Jimmy Pedro (47:49.400)

or we would all get in a car

Lex Fridman (47:50.640)

and we'd drive to another location

Lex Fridman (47:53.760)

and we'd go train at another club

Lex Fridman (47:55.120)

that might be an hour away.

Lex Fridman (47:56.240)

And there'd be 50 bodies there to train with.

Lex Fridman (47:58.300)

And each night we'd go to a different dojo.

Lex Fridman (48:00.440)

And so it would be all day at the club

Lex Fridman (48:02.360)

and I'd do that for like three weeks straight.

Jimmy Pedro (48:04.680)

All we'd do was train.

Lex Fridman (48:05.800)

Do you know how he became the voice of judo?

Lex Fridman (48:08.120)

Do you have an understanding of what he's thinking is

Lex Fridman (48:12.700)

around how much he dedicates to himself

Lex Fridman (48:15.720)

to just commentating on judo?

Lex Fridman (48:17.920)

I imagine the amount of research required,

Lex Fridman (48:21.280)

but also just like psychologically,

Lex Fridman (48:23.020)

just the excitement he has in his voice.

Jimmy Pedro (48:25.400)

It takes work to do that.

Lex Fridman (48:28.020)

Do you have an understanding

Lex Fridman (48:28.920)

of like what his vision is with that?

Lex Fridman (48:30.960)

He's always been a very charismatic, animated person, Neil.

Jimmy Pedro (48:35.080)

Very passionate and loud and funny.

Lex Fridman (48:38.520)

And the Brits are very funny to begin with.

Lex Fridman (48:40.100)

So he's very charismatic.

Lex Fridman (48:42.880)

But I think after coaching, he tried coaching.

Jimmy Pedro (48:46.600)

He coached the country of Wales for a while.

Lex Fridman (48:48.960)

He tried coaching stints in other countries.

Jimmy Pedro (48:51.120)

He didn't have a lot of success on the coaching side

Lex Fridman (48:54.800)

developing an Olympic champion.

Jimmy Pedro (48:56.320)

I know that was a goal of his that he was a world champion.

Lex Fridman (49:00.200)

I think it was 1981.

Jimmy Pedro (49:01.520)

He won two silver medals in the Olympic games himself.

Lex Fridman (49:05.600)

He went on to coach for a while

Lex Fridman (49:07.920)

and had some political issues

Lex Fridman (49:09.820)

with the country of England for a while.

Lex Fridman (49:12.680)

And then left England and went to Wales.

Lex Fridman (49:14.440)

And I think he had a coaching stint

Jimmy Pedro (49:15.840)

somewhere else as well.

Lex Fridman (49:17.520)

Didn't have a lot of success coaching in the sport

Jimmy Pedro (49:20.400)

with athletes, not at the highest level.

Lex Fridman (49:22.120)

Had a great national team and things like that.

Jimmy Pedro (49:24.280)

He was really good at teaching his technique to others

Lex Fridman (49:27.400)

because he helped me a lot.

Lex Fridman (49:30.640)

But running a program, I think was difficult for him.

Lex Fridman (49:33.280)

The boys not listening and not having that same kind

Jimmy Pedro (49:35.760)

of passion and intensity that he...

Lex Fridman (49:37.800)

And that's why I bonded well with him

Lex Fridman (49:39.800)

because I was all in, right?

Lex Fridman (49:41.060)

I went there and whatever he said, I did.

Jimmy Pedro (49:43.160)

I didn't care how hard, I didn't care how long.

Lex Fridman (49:45.640)

I just wanted to get as good as I could.

Lex Fridman (49:47.160)

And so that's why he was a good mentor for me.

Lex Fridman (49:50.160)

But now in terms of a commentator, he's very cerebral.

Jimmy Pedro (49:54.680)

He loves judo, he researches it nonstop.

Lex Fridman (50:00.380)

He's got that great voice

Lex Fridman (50:02.120)

and he knows how to bring life to the game.

Lex Fridman (50:05.560)

And that's what he's done.

Lex Fridman (50:06.400)

And now this is who he is, right?

Lex Fridman (50:08.000)

He does judo full time, this is his job.

Jimmy Pedro (50:11.040)

Can I ask you a small, before we return to the actual sport,

Lex Fridman (50:15.600)

the coaching and the sport,

Jimmy Pedro (50:17.200)

it's a bit of a political question.

Lex Fridman (50:18.860)

I did a whole rant before Travis episode.

Jimmy Pedro (50:23.980)

I love Neil Adams's voice.

Lex Fridman (50:26.200)

I love watching judo.

Lex Fridman (50:28.000)

And it's really disappointing to me that the IOC

Lex Fridman (50:33.240)

and whoever is responsible, I don't understand this,

Jimmy Pedro (50:36.660)

that they don't make it easy for people

Lex Fridman (50:39.440)

to watch the Olympics in replay for years after.

Jimmy Pedro (50:44.080)

Like I can't watch Travis's matches.

Lex Fridman (50:46.320)

I can't watch, like they make it very difficult

Jimmy Pedro (50:49.000)

to watch stuff online.

Lex Fridman (50:51.320)

So what happened is I uploaded the Travis Stevens episode

Lex Fridman (50:55.880)

and we talked about his Ole Bischoff 2012 match.

Lex Fridman (50:59.200)

And it was like one minute of like a small overlay

Jimmy Pedro (51:04.080)

of the video as we're talking through it,

Lex Fridman (51:06.760)

like stepping through it.

Lex Fridman (51:08.080)

And it got taken down immediately from YouTube,

Lex Fridman (51:11.760)

the whole four hour conversation

Jimmy Pedro (51:14.300)

because of that one minute little clip.

Lex Fridman (51:17.640)

And the way it got taken down automatically

Jimmy Pedro (51:20.640)

is because the IOC has that video uploaded.

Lex Fridman (51:24.960)

It's set to private, but it's uploaded.

Lex Fridman (51:27.360)

So like they have the video and they choose not to show it.

Lex Fridman (51:31.120)

It's not that they're asking for money or whatever.

Jimmy Pedro (51:33.280)

They're just not showing it anywhere.

Lex Fridman (51:35.340)

They're not showing it through their own service.

Jimmy Pedro (51:37.560)

Like an NBC Olympics or so on.

Lex Fridman (51:39.720)

There's just so many great human stories

Jimmy Pedro (51:42.120)

that the Olympics reveals.

Lex Fridman (51:44.120)

They're just not made easily accessible.

Jimmy Pedro (51:46.760)

That's the Olympics charter is you want to,

Lex Fridman (51:50.420)

I think the actual line is to ensure the fullest coverage

Lex Fridman (51:54.840)

and the widest possible audience in the world

Lex Fridman (51:57.280)

for the Olympic games.

Lex Fridman (51:58.800)

And it seems like to me as a fan of the Olympic games,

Lex Fridman (52:02.440)

we're not getting any of that.

Lex Fridman (52:04.160)

Do you have an understanding of why that is?

Lex Fridman (52:08.040)

Like why we can't watch Kayla's matches,

Jimmy Pedro (52:10.640)

Travis's matches super easily,

Lex Fridman (52:12.520)

even if we're willing to pay money for it.

Lex Fridman (52:14.920)

So you can't go on the International Judo Federation

Lex Fridman (52:17.760)

website right now and watch any of the Olympic footage?

Jimmy Pedro (52:20.520)

No, no, no.

Lex Fridman (52:23.940)

So the only thing they have is for certain,

Jimmy Pedro (52:26.960)

for example, Teddy Rene match he lost.

Lex Fridman (52:30.000)

Not available anywhere.

Lex Fridman (52:31.120)

Really?

Lex Fridman (52:31.960)

And that's like a dramatic thing.

Lex Fridman (52:33.580)

So the one thing they have is for certain sports

Lex Fridman (52:36.760)

at the highest level, like gymnastics,

Jimmy Pedro (52:39.140)

they'll have a highlight,

Lex Fridman (52:40.520)

which is the most frustrating thing to me.

Jimmy Pedro (52:43.620)

Because this is what I can't,

Lex Fridman (52:46.080)

I'm going to try to prevent myself from going on a rant.

Lex Fridman (52:50.100)

But people don't just want to see a two minute highlight

Lex Fridman (52:56.600)

of a historic moment.

Jimmy Pedro (52:58.560)

They want to see the buildup where the athlete is standing,

Lex Fridman (53:01.400)

the nerves, the fear, the confidence.

Jimmy Pedro (53:04.120)

You see the buildup to the event,

Lex Fridman (53:06.080)

say it's a gymnastic, whatever, floor routine.

Jimmy Pedro (53:09.160)

Like their name is announced, they're walking,

Lex Fridman (53:11.800)

the coat, then they cut to the coach,

Lex Fridman (53:13.800)

and the coach with anticipation,

Lex Fridman (53:15.640)

and then go to the athlete.

Jimmy Pedro (53:16.800)

You want the full 10 minute thing.

Lex Fridman (53:18.720)

You don't want a two minute highlight

Jimmy Pedro (53:20.760)

of what happened like last second or whatever.

Lex Fridman (53:23.360)

It's just like the magic of that full story.

Lex Fridman (53:28.240)

Like a lifetime building up to those 10 minutes, right?

Lex Fridman (53:32.400)

That's the magic of the Olympics.

Jimmy Pedro (53:34.320)

The both the drama and the triumph

Lex Fridman (53:36.080)

that happens in those moments.

Lex Fridman (53:37.500)

And the fact that you can't relive that.

Lex Fridman (53:41.080)

Like Travis had a bunch of those, right?

Jimmy Pedro (53:43.400)

Like he had a bunch of times he faced like world champions,

Lex Fridman (53:46.920)

he won and lost, and just, it's always close,

Jimmy Pedro (53:49.880)

it's always dramatic.

Lex Fridman (53:51.760)

And none of those are available except like

Jimmy Pedro (53:54.240)

maybe the one where he beat Armbard,

Lex Fridman (53:59.600)

or whatever the submission was, I forgot.

Jimmy Pedro (54:01.880)

The choke, yeah, the Georgian.

Lex Fridman (54:04.960)

But most things are not.

Jimmy Pedro (54:07.360)

Usain Bolt, the full races,

Lex Fridman (54:09.920)

not all of his races are available online.

Jimmy Pedro (54:13.160)

The race with the Italian winning the 100 meter track race,

Lex Fridman (54:19.640)

this Olympics is not only highlight is available

Jimmy Pedro (54:22.400)

from what I saw, I didn't look too hard.

Lex Fridman (54:24.440)

So like, but the fact that it's not super easily accessible

Jimmy Pedro (54:28.240)

if you're willing to pay money even,

Lex Fridman (54:29.760)

but probably should be for free, is heartbreaking to me.

Jimmy Pedro (54:33.040)

Because to me, the Olympics is like some of the best

Lex Fridman (54:38.380)

of humanity.

Jimmy Pedro (54:40.120)

Just like, again, the hardship they have to overcome.

Lex Fridman (54:43.280)

So like the losses are really powerful.

Jimmy Pedro (54:45.480)

Because it's such heartbreak,

Lex Fridman (54:46.760)

but it's also like the triumph.

Jimmy Pedro (54:49.400)

Where you're losing history.

Lex Fridman (54:50.640)

You're losing history is what you are,

Lex Fridman (54:52.480)

of all the magical moments of your sport, right?

Lex Fridman (54:55.760)

It's a sin.

Jimmy Pedro (54:58.600)

I got to blame it on television rights and money.

Lex Fridman (55:03.940)

That's what it comes down to.

Jimmy Pedro (55:04.780)

It's like billions and billions of dollars

Lex Fridman (55:06.480)

of television rights paid by NBC here in the United States

Lex Fridman (55:10.260)

and globally, whatever the main carriers are

Lex Fridman (55:13.020)

and all the other nations that are dictating

Lex Fridman (55:16.080)

what can be replayed and what can't.

Lex Fridman (55:17.960)

And that's what it comes down to.

Jimmy Pedro (55:20.200)

I made a DVD or a video when I first retired

Lex Fridman (55:25.720)

from the sport.

Jimmy Pedro (55:26.560)

It was called Fury on the Mat.

Lex Fridman (55:27.400)

It was kind of my story, right?

Lex Fridman (55:28.780)

And I did it with a friend who was a videographer

Lex Fridman (55:32.440)

and we grabbed a bunch of my old footage

Lex Fridman (55:34.720)

and Olympic footage and somebody said to me,

Lex Fridman (55:38.060)

you can't use that Olympic footage.

Lex Fridman (55:39.920)

And I was young and I had just retired.

Lex Fridman (55:41.840)

I said, what do you mean I can't use the Olympic footage?

Jimmy Pedro (55:43.280)

It's not the television footage.

Lex Fridman (55:45.360)

It's my buddy who filmed it with his own camera.

Jimmy Pedro (55:47.520)

It's my footage.

Lex Fridman (55:48.360)

Yeah, exactly.

Lex Fridman (55:49.200)

And then they said, no, if it has Olympics in it

Lex Fridman (55:51.240)

or it's anything to do with the Olympics,

Jimmy Pedro (55:52.960)

the USOC owns it.

Lex Fridman (55:54.640)

Yeah.

Jimmy Pedro (55:55.460)

I said, okay, well, they said,

Lex Fridman (55:56.300)

well, you should get to send it to them

Lex Fridman (55:57.680)

and let them review it.

Lex Fridman (56:00.280)

So I sent it to them and I got a bill back.

Jimmy Pedro (56:02.640)

I got a thing back that said,

Lex Fridman (56:03.920)

if you want to use this footage,

Jimmy Pedro (56:05.040)

it's going to be like $30,000.

Lex Fridman (56:06.880)

And I said, man, it's only like three minutes.

Jimmy Pedro (56:09.200)

I spliced it up as much as I could

Lex Fridman (56:11.120)

and I only have highlights in there.

Lex Fridman (56:13.240)

And then I said, come on.

Lex Fridman (56:14.080)

I went back and I negotiated with them.

Lex Fridman (56:17.360)

But at the end of the day,

Lex Fridman (56:18.200)

I still had to pay like $15,000

Jimmy Pedro (56:20.440)

just to have a few minutes of footage in my own film.

Lex Fridman (56:23.720)

This is...

Lex Fridman (56:25.320)

And I'm thinking, you wouldn't even have that film

Lex Fridman (56:27.040)

if I didn't compete in it.

Jimmy Pedro (56:28.120)

You know, like you can't, you know.

Lex Fridman (56:30.200)

So it was a struggle.

Jimmy Pedro (56:31.920)

This is the different,

Lex Fridman (56:32.760)

like you have the same in Jiu Jitsu.

Jimmy Pedro (56:34.760)

There's certain organizations, IBJJF

Lex Fridman (56:37.760)

or like Flow Grappling and Flow Wrestling.

Jimmy Pedro (56:40.040)

I understand, I think when it's a business,

Lex Fridman (56:43.040)

it might make sense.

Jimmy Pedro (56:44.620)

First of all, you should actually be good

Lex Fridman (56:46.240)

at being a business and making money,

Jimmy Pedro (56:48.160)

which is why for me, the IOC doesn't make sense.

Lex Fridman (56:51.080)

Like it should be accessible, but it would cost money.

Jimmy Pedro (56:56.320)

I can't buy it.

Lex Fridman (56:57.560)

Like would I have to email them for this footage

Lex Fridman (57:00.240)

and pay $30,000?

Lex Fridman (57:01.080)

Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy Pedro (57:02.040)

No, but the question is,

Lex Fridman (57:04.840)

like the way you run a business

Jimmy Pedro (57:06.220)

is you make that frictionless.

Lex Fridman (57:08.200)

Whatever the money is, $30,000 or $30,

Jimmy Pedro (57:11.040)

you make it frictionless and easy to pay that money.

Lex Fridman (57:13.840)

But anyway, I understand why that might be the case

Jimmy Pedro (57:17.000)

with Flow Grappling,

Lex Fridman (57:18.400)

but to me, the Olympics is a special thing.

Jimmy Pedro (57:21.020)

For sure.

Lex Fridman (57:21.860)

It's like, like you said, it is history.

Jimmy Pedro (57:23.880)

Like there's not even,

Lex Fridman (57:25.160)

like even the world championships don't compare.

Jimmy Pedro (57:27.920)

I understand they're really important,

Lex Fridman (57:30.180)

but Olympics is history.

Lex Fridman (57:32.080)

And the stories should certainly belong to the athletes

Lex Fridman (57:37.160)

if they want to do like Fury on the Mat

Jimmy Pedro (57:39.840)

to do their own story,

Lex Fridman (57:41.480)

or like on a podcast to talk about the most tragic moment

Jimmy Pedro (57:46.120)

of their career.

Lex Fridman (57:49.660)

Do you have a sense of how that could be fixed or no?

Jimmy Pedro (57:54.720)

The only thing I could think of is,

Lex Fridman (57:56.640)

you'd have to go to the Olympic committee.

Jimmy Pedro (57:58.320)

The US Olympic committee is the place I would start

Lex Fridman (58:00.800)

because the US controls the worldwide market

Jimmy Pedro (58:02.940)

when it comes to television.

Lex Fridman (58:04.600)

We pay the most for our television rights.

Jimmy Pedro (58:06.280)

Our sponsors pay the most for their rights

Lex Fridman (58:09.860)

to be associated with the best team in the world,

Lex Fridman (58:12.000)

which is the United States, right?

Lex Fridman (58:13.220)

So all the money starts here.

Jimmy Pedro (58:16.180)

I gotta believe there has to be a way to get that footage

Lex Fridman (58:18.900)

that should be accessible to the sports themselves.

Jimmy Pedro (58:22.440)

I'm surprised it's not,

Lex Fridman (58:23.560)

but if it's not, then it's because of dollars.

Jimmy Pedro (58:27.360)

It's because people aren't,

Lex Fridman (58:28.600)

the sport itself is not willing to pay enough money

Jimmy Pedro (58:31.440)

to have it on its, accessible to its audience.

Lex Fridman (58:35.720)

It's too cost prohibitive for them to do it.

Jimmy Pedro (58:38.660)

No, but I think it's also, unfortunately,

Lex Fridman (58:40.760)

might be some mixture of incompetence

Lex Fridman (58:43.080)

and just an old way of doing things

Lex Fridman (58:45.160)

because there's a lot of money to be made

Lex Fridman (58:48.400)

on television rights where you live show the event, right?

Lex Fridman (58:52.880)

But what's not being leveraged is the huge amount of money

Jimmy Pedro (58:56.600)

that could be made on the replay.

Lex Fridman (58:58.040)

This is what people don't understand is,

Lex Fridman (59:00.800)

do you know how many times, just the tens of millions

Lex Fridman (59:05.000)

of times that people watch individual events years from now?

Jimmy Pedro (59:10.360)

You watch like all the videos on YouTube,

Lex Fridman (59:12.640)

they're still getting plays.

Jimmy Pedro (59:14.200)

Hundreds of millions of views on stuff

Lex Fridman (59:16.200)

that happened 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

Jimmy Pedro (59:18.620)

That's really powerful and there's a lot of opportunity

Lex Fridman (59:20.920)

to make a ton of money.

Lex Fridman (59:22.320)

So it's not that they're necessarily greedy.

Lex Fridman (59:25.500)

They're also just not good at being greedy.

Jimmy Pedro (59:28.000)

I get what you're saying.

Lex Fridman (59:28.840)

Yeah, it's not the tradition.

Lex Fridman (59:30.160)

Think about it though, it's not traditional, right?

Lex Fridman (59:32.220)

For television studios, it's nontraditional

Jimmy Pedro (59:35.800)

to go to online streaming, to online access to information.

Lex Fridman (59:40.280)

It's not hard, right?

Jimmy Pedro (59:41.260)

Because everybody's doing it now, but it's not typical.

Lex Fridman (59:45.120)

Yeah, so it requires for the IOC

Jimmy Pedro (59:49.020)

to operate outside their comfort zone.

Lex Fridman (59:51.400)

Well, I definitely hope that's the case.

Lex Fridman (59:53.280)

And since Travis's video got taken down,

Lex Fridman (59:59.320)

it's obvious they have it.