YouSaid · the spoken record

Jimmy Pedro

lines on the record: 157
first: 2021-10-31
most recent: 2021-10-31
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I get what you're saying. Yeah, it's not the tradition. You know, think about it though, it's not traditional, right? For television studios, it's non-traditional to go to online streaming, to online access to information. It's not hard, right? Because everybody's doing it now, but it's not typical.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only thing I could think of is you'd have to go to the Olympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic Committee, is the place I would start because the U.S. controls the worldwide market when it comes to television. We pay the most for our television rights. Our sponsors pay the most for their rights to be associated with the best team in the world, which is the United States, right? So while the money starts here, I got to believe there has to be a way to get that footage that should be accessible to the sports themselves. I'm surprised it's not. But if it's not, then it's because of dollars. You know, it's because people aren't, the sport itself is not willing to pay enough money to have it on its accessible to its audience. It's too cost prohibitive for them to do it.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I said, Come on, I went back and I negotiated with them. But at the end of the day, I still have to pay like $15,000 just to have a few minutes of footage in my own I'm thinking you wouldn't even have that film if I didn't compete in it. So that was a struggle.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somebody said to me, you know, you can't use that Olympic footage. And I was young and I had just retired. I said, What do you mean I can't use the Olympic footage? It's not the television footage. It's my buddy who filmed it with his own camera. It's my footage. And they said, No, if it has Olympics in it or it's anything to do with the Olympics, the USOC owns it. Said, okay, well, they said, Well, you should got to send it to them and let them review it. So I sent it to them and I got a bill back. I got a thing back that said, if you want to use this footage, it's going to be like $30,000. And I said, man, it's only like three minutes. I spliced it up as much as I could. And I only have highlights in there.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're losing history. You're losing history is what you are, of all the magical moments of your sport. It's a sin. Blame it on television rights and money. That's what it comes down to. You talk on billions and billions of dollars of television rights paid by NBC here in the United States and globally whatever the main carriers are and all the other nations that are dictating what can be replayed and what can't. And it's what it comes down to. I made a DVD or a video when I first retired from the sport. It was called Fury on the Mat. It was kind of my story, right? And I did it with a friend who was a videographer. And we grabbed a bunch of my old footage and Olympic footage.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not listening or not having that same kind of passion and intensity that he. And that's why I bonded well with him because I was all in, right? I went there and whatever he said I did. I didn't care how hard. I didn't care how long. I just wanted to get as good as I could. And so that's why he was a good mentor for me. But now in terms of a commentator, he's very cerebral. He loves Judo. He researches it nonstop. He's got that great voice and he knows how to bring life to the game. And that's what he's done. And now this is who he is, right? He does judo full time. This is his job.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's always been a very charismatic animated person, Neil, you know, very passionate and loud and, you know, funny. And the Brits are very funny to begin with. So he's very charismatic, but I think after coaching, he tried coaching. He coached the country of Wales for a while. He tried coaching stints in other countries. He didn't have a lot of success on the coaching side, developing an Olympic champion. I know that was a goal of his that he was a world champion. I think it was 1981. He won two silver medals in the Olympic Games himself. went on to coach for a while and had some political issues with the country of England for a while and then left England and went to Wales and I think he had a coach incident somewhere else as well didn't have a lot of success coaching in the sport with athletes not at the highest level had a great national team and things like that he was really good at teaching his technique to others because he helped me a lot but running a program I think was difficult for him you know the boy”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reinforcing your two or three attacks to set up your main attack, or if you're on the ground, you're going through repetitions of certain movements. And then I'd spend all afternoon at the club, have lunch. I'd go do my weight training in the afternoon at that place. And then in the evening, we would either do Randori training at the Nail Adams Club, or we would all get in a car and we'd drive to another location. And we'd go train in another club that might be an hour away, and they'd 50 bodies there to train with, and each night we'd go to a different dojo. And so it would be all day at the club, and I'd do that for like three weeks straight.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I show up at that place at like seven in the morning, and the first thing we would do is we'd go for a run, and we'd either be running mountains or we'd be doing a five mile run or we'd be doing something at the park. We were doing sprints and buddy carries and all this stuff. And then at 9 a.m., we'd have a technical session with Neil Adams where he would, you know, for an hour and a half, we would drill techniques and learn positions. And it was no Randory. It was that sequential drilling that we talked about before, right? Where you're.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's a mentor. Like I said, I lived and trained at the Neil Adams Club in Coventry, England since I was like 16 years old. I went and visited him for the first time. He's the one who originally taught me how to do Jujigatami in the way that I do jujigatami. I train with him. He was just retired. He was in his early 30s when I first went out there. And, you know, so I train with him many times. And over the years, he was a mentor. Great person cares about people, cares about the sport of judo. Had a good little club that was a fitness club and it was judo, it was fitness. It used to go there.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he sent me to England with Neil Adams, who was an Olympic silver medalist and was a world champion and had a great ground game and was good at gripping and actually did Tayotoshi, which is the throw I did. So I said, I want you to go learn from Neil. And I ended up going to England probably eight to ten times in my career and spending a good amount of time there training at the Nail Adams Academy. He's now the voice of Judo, Neil Adams.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that comes at the highest level, the visualization, the success that comes at the highest level. I think in the teen years, there's the experience. Plays a huge role And getting to train with other people. Like as Americans, we have to go train in Europe. We have to feel the European style of judo. We have to understand that physicality. They grip very differently. They put you in a very unorthodox positions. And if you don't know how to deal with that, you get thrown before you even have a chance to try your own throws. So it takes a lot of that experience and understanding what's going on. And then you also need to get that physicality. You need to be strong and hard, I would say, by doing all those rounds with the Europeans. And at the same time, you need to go to Asia and you need to train in Japan because you need to feel that free flowing judo for your technical, the technical side. And I think that's one of the things that I was able to benefit from. My dad was a coach who said, listen, I've taken you as far as I can take you. I want you to go to the next level.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's, and the way you grip does set up what attacks you can do as well. So that is a huge part. And I'm not saying that you have to be 100% disciplined and only always outgrip your opponent and only be able to do throws when you have a superior grip. I'm just saying that to be able to put the grips together with the throws and understand the movements is going to make you that much ahead of the game.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you first go out to do Judo, right? The first thing you have to do is you have to grab your opponent. And a lot of times I hear coaches say, get a grip. Just take a grip. Well, sometimes if you take a grip, you're in a worse position than not having a grip at all. And that's what a lot of people don't understand. Like if you hold the ghee in the wrong way, your opponent can attack you, but you can't attack him. So why would you ever do that grip? It's only to your detriment.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you want to win. I mean, if the goal is to go and compete, that's a different story. I don't have fun getting beat up or losing in competitions. I enjoy”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's a specific set of program, I should say, at every academy. And then if you want to get good and you want to compete, then to me, once you have your techniques, it's learning how to implement a good gripping system to put yourself in a position where you can always dominate the grips, control the movement, initiate the reactions from your opponent, and then have the opportunity to attack and score. And I think that when people train with or when they jump into a higher level of the sport of judo, all of a sudden the first thing they say is, I can't attack. I don't know how to attack because positionally, they don't know where to put their hands. They don't know how to hold the gee properly. They don't understand that they're, you know, they have an inferior grip and they don't know how to get into better position so they can attack.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Afterwards, if they want to stay for 15 minutes or stay for 30 minutes where they can participate in Randori. But most of the adult students choose not to because they're already so tired from the other, you know, hours. Are already dripping sweat. They're already like if you work hard and drill hard, it's an intense workout. You're exhausted.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On paying attention to that type of student. Everybody pushes them to competition, but in reality, there's a huge audience of people out there that would love to learn Judo and be very proficient at Judo and have the skills to go execute if they ever needed it. And there's a class and there should be a program for that athlete. And that athlete does not need to do Randori. Like the sport of Judo is physical enough when you're picking somebody up all the time and moving their body weight around the mat all the time where you can get very physically strong, very physically fit. Technically, you'll be better than somebody that does Randory more than you because you're moved. If you learn good technique and you learn the movement and you learn the feel and you move the timing, you'll actually be a better athlete than the person that just focuses on Randori who does ugly technique and wins with force. So, you know, we have a recreational class at our school where they don't do any Randori. They have an option.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guess there's two recreational people that we're talking about. One is somebody who wants to learn Judo and become good at Judo, but doesn't necessarily want to compete, but just wants to get better. And I think there's not enough emphasis in this country on”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kids at the school today that we teach the Split Hipsai and Agi, same way, because it is that dynamic, right? You don't drop to the ground and roll and turn. It's not the classic form where you're giving way to your opponent. It's actually, you go pick the guy up in the air and then you slam him.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does. I was born a Judoka, right? So I've lived this stuff since I was an infant. And I've seen every style and every technique. The split hip say and Igei is difficult to learn. It's harder to learn than the basic form, but it is powerful and it does upon entry both your opponent's feet leave the mat at the same time. So you've got them. Once you enter, you've got them. You just got to finish, right? You just got to lock them and turn and go. Makes sense to me. My dad did teach me how to do that when I was younger. Yeah, he wanted me to do a split hip.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, it's not, you're not just that one trick pony. They still couldn't stop and say, Aggie, once he got that grip. But if they stopped him from getting that grip or putting two hands on the gee, he had to go to something else. And that's what he did.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's unquestionably that has to happen. You still have to drill your main throw and you have to fine tune it and continue to do repetition after repetition and throws on the crash pad or throws on the mat moving around just explosive movements doing your main technique. You're never going to forget that and you're not going to put it to the side and not practice it anymore. It still has to be part of your repertoire and part of your daily training. But you do have to evolve. And I think that's the sport of judo makes you evolve. You know, when I look at, we talk about Koga from before, right? And we talked about he had a dynamic epoch and say anagi that nobody could stop for years and years and years. But when people started to be unorthodox and come down his back and cross grip him and he couldn't get to the lapel, he had to come up with something else. And all of a sudden you saw Koga doing, now he did a sode or now he did a Tomoy Nagi, which so he can, he added to his arsenal, you know, to keep people thinking, keep people guessing.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For Travis, it was Epo and saying I. That was his main throw, right? But from that Epole and saying Agi, he had a variety of other attacks he could do that mixed it up so that Kept people guessing maybe it wasn't the Ponsau's come and maybe it was the Cauchy Grooma that he did, or maybe it was the Epo and Tu Soto that he did in combination. So you typically have one main throw that you do. For me, it was Tyotoshi, Faqler. It was her Ogoshi for Travis. It was his E-Pollin saying Agi. But then you come up with a variety of other throws that you do from the very same grip. So whatever grip you take for your main throw, you want to develop an arsenal of attacks that go in all different directions, holding that same grip. So you keep your opponent guessing as to what's coming. Because if they're just sitting on one technique at the highest level of sport, with the exception of a few, right? We talked about Ono's Uchimata, with the exception of a few, most of the world catches on pretty quick on how to beat you.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That person can go hard for a minute with Travis or Kayla. They can't go five minutes hard, but they can go one minute hard. So it made their training much more intense, much more physically demanding. And then rinse and repeat that six times or eight times at a night. You know, they just got 40 minutes of intense randori. The person that was training with them that wasn't as good only had to do six or eight minutes of training the whole night.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stuff like Shark Bait, when our athletes are preparing for competition, for example, when Kalo or Travis were preparing for competition, we might only have 20 people on the whole gym work to work out with those two Olympic medalists, right? And of those 20 people, maybe four of them are Travis's size, you know, maybe there's only one girl in the room for Kayla. She's got to train with guys. And then the other ones are teenagers that are too weak. Train with either one of them So, what we would do is just put together four or five people that could give them a chance and we'd line them up and they would do a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute, and they'd do five minutes in a row as hard as they can.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've sort of developed our American system of judo, at least for the last, I'd say probably the last 20 years would be the American system of judo, which relies heavily on taking the individual and whatever techniques they do, perfecting those techniques and the combinations and other throws that go with those throws, but then implementing and overlaying an American system of gripping Neuaza, conditioning, mentality, training methodology in game planning to beat your opponents. And I think that's the secret sauce to success for Americans because there's no way we don't have eight partners to train with in a night that are going to give us good rounds, right? We might have two. So we got to have the same guy four times, those two people four, you know, two times each. Now I have four good rounds. The rest of the rounds, I'm not being pushed to the limit. So we train differently. And a lot of times we do a lot of.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you need a combination of all of it if you're going to win at the Olympic level. You have to be able to deal with the finesse of the Japanese, the physicality of the Europeans. You have to focus on the ground Newaza aspect because a lot of people are weak there in the world of the sport of Judo. That's a chance to win.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only difference would be Russia that they do a lot more active drilling, a lot more sequential movement training. They don't focus as much on Randori. You'll do much fewer rounds in Russia during training camps than you would in those other countries we just talked about, France, Germany, et cetera.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's very like free feeling and it's technical as you explain. But then when you go to Europe and you try to do rounds with the Europeans, they are very physical. They don't have that same finesse in their training that they do in Japan and in Europe you'd be hard pressed to do eight rounds of Randori in a night. It's so physically exhausting because so much effort is going into just fighting and fending off the gripping system and the power of your opponent, you're physically drained after eight rounds of Andorra. So it's a much different feel.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's different styles of judo, and I'd say the Japanese style, the technical style of judo is exactly what you just talked about. It's almost like two guys in pajamas, right? We're not going, we're not using minimal effort. Maximum efficiency. We're moving around and we're trying to feel that movement and its timing and finesse and technique and fun and clean throws. When you train in Japan, you can train 15 rounds of Randori, five minute rounds, that's 75 minutes of straight sparring. You can do that straight in Japan without a problem. I mean, you'll get tired, of course. You're going to fall a lot. You're going to throw a lot.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unquestionably. Your body gets used to it, so it hardens. It gets really hard, which is why Judo is hard to come back to. After you've taken a long period of time off because your body is not used to that impact anymore. And I always found out that when I was training Judo a lot, it's hard to shed weight and keep weight off because your body, like, you know, it develops like this layer of protection on itself that it doesn't want to give up. When you're sucking a lot of weight, that means you're frail, and you know, so I always seem to retain weight more when you're doing hard judo training as opposed to, you know, losing weight. It's easy when you go for runs and things like that to shed the water weight, but to actually keep the pounds off Pretty”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, sometimes it's both. So sometimes we do it for reps, sometimes we do it for time And so sometimes it might be as many as they can do in 60 seconds or as many as they can do in two minutes. And sometimes it might just be, I want you to do every position five times.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an hour of repetitive throwing or repetitive drilling to reinforce movements that we deem important to our successful system. So Newaza positions, groundwork positions where we want them to be put in this position and they're going to drill it. 50 times with resistance in big groups doing drills over and over again picking apart the details of the technique and what they're doing wrong showing them how to fix it but now we've done it so much that now we can do a whole drill session with them where they know all the different techniques inside and out and they can move from position to position really quickly”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've been Travis and myself have been training them. We share responsibilities. They're doing Randory like five nights a week. You know, we have them doing Randory Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays is when they're doing Randori. They're coming to the Dojo Friday night and Sunday night to do training. We also have technical sessions for them. They're in school now, so it's a little bit challenging, but they come five o'clock in the afternoon and they do a technical session. Through COVID, they will come in every morning doing technical sessions.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, you need it all. What you just said, you need it all of it. And we do do all of that right now. We have a young group of kids at the academy. You'll see tonight. Some of them are 14, 13, 15, 17. Yeah, really good They're just young boys, but they've been training hard through COVID.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like right now, you have to think about The Olympics is going to be in Los Angeles in 2028. So it's really interesting. Now would be the time and now is the time to identify talent and get commitment out of students that in seven years you can make a U.S. Olympic team because we're going to have a full team. America is going to have 14 athletes compete in those games, one in every weight class. So now is the time. If you're going to go on a journey to the Olympics and stay with the sport of judo. Would be the time to do it”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've proven we can compete with the rest of the world up until that age, but that's where Japan and that's where the Europeans and the countries that are strong in Judo, that's where they put a lot of time, energy, and effort. Is it a teens where they have a great coaching staff? They have good training camps with 800, 1,000 people going to them every single weekend.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The mindset of going to tournaments constantly in order to compete with the rest of the world, our young kids need to be tested. Lot when they're young, they have to be put through adversity because they don't get put through adversity in training because you don't have that many good training partners. So you get put through adversity in competition and then do we see what your weaknesses are and we continue to make improvements on those. But the journey is long and until they're kind of at the teenage years, they're going to have to pretty much stay domestic, right? Because they got to go through life as a normal kid. But they've got to be training in the dojo at least, you know, five days a week. Sometimes they might want to get, you know, an extra technical workout in or doing some base conditioning in addition to that. And then really at the teenage years, that's where we really, we've struggled in America of keeping teens in the sport of judo, as well as developing them properly. Because up until around the teenage years, I think the Americans are on par with the rest of the world in terms of technique and in terms of skill.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The odds are really insurmountable. It's a very, very high hill to climb. And there's only a few. There's only a few people and there's only a few coaches in this entire country that really understand that process and that can help people reach that level as it's been proven, right? Number one, you certainly have to have a solid base, a fundamental base of an expectation of what the training is going to be. And it has to be a level of professionalism very, very early where you're teaching all the basic judo moves, all the basic fundamental movements, posture, gripping, well, maybe gripping doesn't come in so early in the game, but throwing methodology, movements, nawaza position, standing fundamental throws. And I think most importantly is really the work ethic, just the way you're going to train, the intensity you're going to train with, the ability to”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think a lot of it has to your journey is going to depend a lot by where you're from. So, a path that an American might take versus somebody who's from Japan or somebody who's from Europe, there's two very distinct paths, right? Because in Japan, it's part of the culture. There's a system of excellence. There's, you know, there's elementary school judo. There's junior high school, this high school, this collegiate, there's Olympic. Much like our wrestling is here in the United States, right? It's very similar. There's a youth wrestling. There's high school, this NCAA, and then there's Olympic wrestling. And, you know, when you, your country is a factory of producing athletes at the highest level, then all of those top athletes typically go back into the sport and there's professions for them. They have an opportunity to coach it. All those different levels. And just the level of their.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a lot of people underestimate just how important that site is. Being mentally prepared for victory, mentally prepared to be the best, to stay the best. There's nobody that's weak minded that they can accomplish that. It's 100% confidence and belief in yourself.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're studying patterns, they're trying to break it down and find a flaw in your game. So everybody's hunting for you when you're the best in the world, especially at the Olympics. That's the one to beat you at. So everybody's focused on you. And then there's an incredible amount of pressure on that athlete to perform. You know, you carry the flag for your country when you're at opening ceremonies sometimes. All spotlight is on you. And it's particularly hard when things don't go well early. In other words, when you're expected to win and then all of a sudden now you're in a hard fight and it's not going the way you want, that pressure, the one who's the favorite feels the pressure the most at the Olympics. And that's why I think the other ones are able to win it”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard to stay that dominant without question. First of all, when you are the entire world is training against you just to be they're studying every single”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think, I mean, it's obviously sad to see. I love seeing champions succeed, especially people that are good people. And I think Teddy's a good person. I think there's some arrogant champions that everybody would like to see lose just because they don't want to deal with their personality. And I think, but I think Teddy's a very humble champion. He's a people's champion. I think he's been privileged and he makes good money from the sport of judo and the French Federation has taken care of him well. So he's a lifelong judo icon. So it's sad to see somebody like that get beat, especially when this could have been his third Olympic title. Know just put him in infamy, you know It was sad to see, but I think every athlete goes through it, right? I mean, it's just, that's what the Olympics is all about. The great ones fall sometimes.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard to move somebody that weighs 350 pounds. You know, it's hard to get that body moving just with a simple pull motion. So he's definitely found a way to do it. But he's also, I don't know, six foot eight. Yeah. You know, he probably weighs 140 kilos. He's a big boy.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100%. He controls the grips, he controls the movement of the match as a result of that, and then he creates his own openings. So, I mean, for a heavyweight, phenomenal technique, yes. And what you said, Messy, I'd like to call it sloppy, right? A lot of the heavyweights tend to be sloppy. They've fallen on the ground a lot.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Other, and that's why a lot of them end up getting beat. But Teddy's in control, like positionally, he stays in really good position, and he controls his opponent the whole fight. So they really don't even have a chance against them. He doesn't give them a chance to beat him, which is why he's been so dominant.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you sit next to him and just look at the side, he's a big man. So obviously to win 10 world titles in the sport of judo, I mean, that's almost an incomprehensible feat two-time Olympic champion again. That puts him in one of the maybe 10 or 12 people that ever do that in the history of the sport. So he's definitely got to be in the running for the best. You know, technically I don't think he's as technical as some of the other. In terms of pure judo finesse technique, you know, it's he's powerful. He's explosive. He's dominant. He's strong. Teddy also grips really, really well, which makes him that much tougher to beat because a lot of times heavyweights, especially in the heavyweight division, a lot of them just grab the gee and they go, you know, man to man and judo to judo and take shots at each other.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think he's a freak of nature, Teddy. If you look at the size, just how big, how tall he is, how big he is, how physical he is of a specimen. I sat next to him on a bus. And like his legs are literally the size of my waist.”
2021-10-31 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #236 – Jimmy Pedro: Judo and the Forging of Champions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source