YouSaid · the spoken record

Travis Stevens

lines on the record: 248
first: 2021-09-21
most recent: 2021-09-21
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

“And I make sure in my plan, all of my meals and how much water I need in between is allocated to still make weight because you have to eat or drink during that time.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just know exactly what it takes from my body. I know exactly what a one hour gym workout wearing a sauna suit. Going to take. I know exactly what I'm going to lose on day one, and I know exactly what I'm going to lose on day three because they're not the same. So I can instantly look at a hotel, decide, is there a bathroom, sauna, gym, temperature of the gym, access to the gym and when it is, access to the judo mats, my training partners, the Rhodes versus street lights, the weather outside, I can take a look at that environment and say, this is my weight, this is weigh-ins, and instantaneously in my head there's a plan to make weight.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I said, my weight cut would never start until I got to the hotel because I didn't check my weight the morning of. I didn't check my weight when I got there. I just, while I'm traveling, I'm doing things at like a minimal level, but I'm never not giving myself something I'm craving. If I'm thirsty, I'm drinking a diet coke. If I'm hungry, I'm buying a snickersbar. I'm buying a sandwich. I am. I accept the consequences when I get there. And then when I get there, if I step on the scale and it says 88 kilos, I instantaneously know exactly what it's going to take to be 81.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can perform poorly. You can't miss weight. Miss Weight because you can always win regardless of how bad the weight cut is. You can never win if you miss weight.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just your mind's a very powerful tool. The problem a lot of people have is. They don't accept the reality of the situation They bitch about the reality of the situation. I just.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, so I take a bottle of water. And if we were to draw a line on it, I would tip it and I would go like this. You would draw that line, but like, I've drank now water for 20 seconds or whatever it is. I get the fix.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The USOC was like, hey, you know, you can't fight 81 anymore. You have to fight 90s. And I go, I'm already into the quad. I'm not changing. I go, build me a plan where I can do this. And now we have to have an acceptable weight cut. Like it just, what do you want me to do? I'm not the IJF. I can't just change the fact that it takes two years to qualify. I know where I'm at. I know what I have to go through, and I accept the consequences. It is what it is. We won't.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Food chocolate chip cookies. Because I needed the sugar. I was 88 kilos when I stepped on the scale at 6.3% body fat. Now I got to make 81.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that became part of my nutrition plan when the USOC guy wrote my nutrition plan. I was eating a burrito bowl. With brown rice, white meat chicken, black beans, guacamole, cheese, two chocolate chip cookies, and a diok.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's only suffering if you expect the other side. I don't expect it. I accept it for what it is. Which is why I write off nutrition for athletes. It can be done without it as long as you know to what you said before you don't believe you need it. Some people believe they need it.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I go because I go to places where the only thing I can eat is Pringles and a Snickers Bar. I've done that. Like I've flown to Azerbaijan, stayed in a hotel where the restaurant is closed. USA Judo hasn't paid for the meal plan. And the only thing that's available is the thing across the street.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember when I was meeting with the USOC nutritionist after London, it was probably around 2014, I think. And when we had our team meeting at the beginning of the year and I was talking to them, he was talking about the nutrition plans that he could put us on. I was like, time out. I've done the USOC thing. Like I've done the cuckoo. I've done the lemon in my water. I go, I'm full shit. Like there was just because there's like a cookie cutter plan, right? And I was like, look, here's what I want you to do. I go, I'll listen to you, but you're going to walk into the 7-Eleven across the street from the USOC. And if you can't buy it in that 7-Eleven, it's not on my plan.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My weight cutting process was a little bit different than most people because I like to eat. I'm not the type of person that believes your athletic career is determined by your nutrition. I don't believe that. I think some sports are built that way. But when it comes to combat sports, like. Your ability to knock somebody out has nothing to do with whether you had a cheeseburger or a salad. My ability to throw you is not determined by that. I may be able to perform better because I've eaten a certain way, but not enough to justify an entire diet change. Your body is built and my body is built to operate with certain things that I've had in my system for years.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You actually were able to recover. Where on the circuit you would weigh in at 6 a.m. and the competition started at 8 a.m. It's like, well, I was cutting weight at 5 a.m.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone varies tremendously because we're not like most sports because you're dropped off in foreign countries with who knows what, right? Some places have sauna, some places have treadmills. Went to a place one time in China in the middle of winter where the roads were frozen with ice and we had to use our hotel rooms because you couldn't sweat outside because it was too cold. And every one of my Olympics, the weight cut was different just given my mass. When I went to 2008, I was probably like 82, 83 kilos walking around. So weight cutting wasn't a thing for me. In London, we actually weighed in the morning of. So Weighans were at like 6 a.m. Olympics were always beneficial to me because they actually don't start until like 10 or 11.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's always the way cut. And I think people really struggle. With that they blame cardio and training and everything else. But when it really comes down to it, like we train for an hour and a half, two hours twice a day. How are you tired after five minutes? It becomes into a mental struggle, your anxiety, your stress, your lack of belief in yourself, or in my case, sometimes it's poor nutrition. Sometimes I had one too many McDonald's meals. It just, it happens.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's probably about 20 There's certain players who you could put in a category of like they're only good for the first, you know, two-thirds of the match. After that, they turn into a different player where they're either falling into a sense of panic or uncertainty. And if you were to take a video clip of, let's say Church's Philly, right, they got Georgia and I beat in the Olympic Semi. He's somebody that would beat you in the first three minutes. And if you clipped out all of his matches and you only watched the first three minutes of every match, you would see one style. If you found all the matches where he got taken into the last minute and he wasn't winning by a major score, you would see a completely different fighter. And so going into like my Olympic I want to get to this guy because this guy is beautiful.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mine would be my aggressiveness if I'm going to pick those two areas. I think there's a third area in there that I would put myself in where I'm more of a strategist. Look at all of my opponents and all I ever see is their faults and the way I do judo is built around their faults. It's just I put myself in scenarios where I don't even know how I'm going to win. What I've done in those scenarios is I've made it very difficult for you to win. And then I figure out the rest as I go”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when you look at the people who do judo. Best, like, if we want to talk about the top 10% of the people who had competed at the games, they do both. And they do both really well, but they favor one. Because if you look at a player like Lupe Petigliani of Georgia, for example, there's a guy that stands in the pocket. But we can find numerous occasions where he's hustled some people for like a short period of time to get out of scenarios to elongate the match, to make somebody tired. So you want both sides of the coin, but you better pick the one that 80% of your strategy is going to be built around.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those people that can't picture Judo, think about it in like if you understood like what a boxing match looks like and you thought about that as like traditional gripping, when you throw a Russian grip over the back, that's more like a hockey fight. Like I'm just grabbing you and we're just going to be throwing punches left and right because when we have that grip somebody has to get thrown. We don't walk around with this grip. It's go time once somebody throws it.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I can give you any grip you want and you still can't throw me because I can put myself in a position that nullifies your ability to use those grips in a successful way.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, and so that would be the act of being able to grip is to be in a situation where you have me and I have you and I can play both offense and defense at the same time, where you can only play defense.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gripping is having the ability to hold your opponent in such a way where you have the ability to be offensive and also the ability to be defensive at the same given time. A distinction because I can hold you in such a way where I might be able to feel offensive. But if you can take up purely defensive grip and then I can't be offensive, we are no longer gripping. We are holding each other”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's the off balance one where you can either pull to get an off balance or you can give way to the force, which can also lead to an off balance. You can amplify somebody's force. So for example, if you push me, you expect a certain Reaction that you're ready for. But if you push me and I pull you, now you didn't expect that much force coming out of you. Therefore, you're off balance.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“20 seconds now. I think the distinction is their back has to be facing the mat. You have to be past their legs and your chest has to be on the same plane as theirs. Doesn't have to necessarily be on top, but it has to be on the same plane.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's definitely not as effective as being able to grab it, but I'm also on the side of the fence having competed in all three. It was definitely better for the sport to remove it as a whole”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First offense was a direct disqualification which happened at the 2012 Games to the 57 Brazilian who won in 16 She was de qued in, I think, the quarters. And it was like I wouldn't say it was blatant as much as I don't think the act changed the outcome of the match had they not disqualified her.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right after 2012 In 2012, so 2008, I fought the games and everything was free. In 2012, we could only touch the legs as a defensive action or in response to an attack. So I could try to throw you with a normal throw. And then when you try to counter, I could grab you like.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but they follow the same principles. It's just most counters. Like if you wanted to counter an Ujimata, for example, you're trying to throw me and a somersault over my right shoulder. Therefore, I would counter you by throwing you over your left shoulder. It goes in the opposite shoulder direction, but in the same somersault idea.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. You can't go to your back in the same direction that your opponent is trying to put you to your back. You have to go the other way. Or you have to initiate you going to your own back.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You basically sacrifice your back to the mat in order to throw them into that circular pattern so they hit their back. Sometimes we use a foot, sometimes we don't.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I'm moving too slow and you still roll over your shoulders and there's no direct impact, it's only a half score. They want the force”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and if it's nice and it's smooth, it's probably not a full score. It needs to have somewhat of a violent impact. So, if you think of a drop say Nagi, if I”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Comes to forward throw, there's regardless of the name of the throw or the gripping variation that you're using, the whole principle is how do I get this person to do a forward roll in midair and land on their back? More of a forward roll I can get, the bigger the score. If I get like a quarter of a turn where like you land on your side and you don't go over your back, it's a half score. They all require me to get you. Do that forward rolling action.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you think about people who wrestle, right? If I fake shoot, it causes you to overlean forward, which means you're off balance. There's no pull, there's no push, there's no nothing. I just get a reaction that leaves the opportunity and the door open for an attack.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's some that have withstood time. You have to be able to get below their center of gravity because you have to be able to rotate them around their center of gravity. And then the other one is that was always a principle when I was growing up and I didn't change until later on in my career was you have to be able to pull. You need to be able to pull to get them off balance. But when you think about that statement as a whole, it ended with they have to be off balance. I don't need the poll to get you off balance. I just need you off balance. And when you think about it that way, it allows you to open up the doors to what do I need to do to get you off balance? I could push, pull. I could flinch. I could fake. And you could put yourself in your own off-balance state.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I was able to develop a pattern for my foot placement based on my opponent's height because the number one thing any judo coach will tell you is you need your center gravity below yours. Well, now I know exactly where to put my feet because the shorter you are, the bigger the split, because the lower I need to get. The taller you are, the less of a split I need.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you think about it from a very basic root of it, there's a philosophy and a mentality of Judo of how the throws work, right? There's a mechanical structure there of like, this makes sense. If I follow that principle, I can do anything I want Nothing else matters. As long as we follow those core principles.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the time. It drives me nuts. Drives me nuts. I was in Poland one time. Teach in a camp. And I had two coaches. Anti coaching telling their kids not to do say oh the way I do it because it never works. Crazy”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the split hit actually allows me to keep my leg straight. The farther I split my legs, the lower my center of gravity goes. Now I don't need my legs. Love it. Let's do it”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That leg strength That mass. Like when you watch Japanese judo players, their thighs and their hips, they're thick. They got a lot of power there.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When it comes to my legs, I want no part of leg pressing, single leg squats, split squat, any of that. I want no part of it.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was really a sense of one of my shortcomings as a kid. Like I hate leg day in the gym. I hate it with a passion. If you ask me to do a squat, I'll get it done, but I will bitch and moan every step of the way. I hate it. I remember one time I was at the gym with my trainer and he goes, okay, we're going to do front squats. And I want you to put 225 on the bar. And I was like, I can't do that. And he was like, what do you mean you can't do that? And I go, I physically, I can't do that. And he was like. Serious? And I go, Yeah. So he didn't believe me. We put 225 on the bar and I bottomed out. And then he was like, okay, let's go down to 185. And I was like, I can't do that. I just, it's not happening.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First, I learned just learning the very basics of the throw, you know, foot placement, all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, like anything, the basics are nice. But once you get good at the basics, it's very easy to stop, but it gives you a good fundamental platform to learn off of and to expand off of. And then I expanded when I first started watching Koga, the new wind, right? Because he's the one that first like introduced that split hip style sayanagi that I do. Once I learned that one, I built about eight different variations of Seo off that one start position. That way I could regardless of your defense, I had an answer for A throw.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then they're standing off at a funny angle. And before they know it, I've spun and my back is on their chest, and they can't go anywhere.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it creates like an A frame. But when the A frame is held together at the top half, which would be my left hand in their right hand posted on each other's chest, it means our legs are free to move and our hips are free to move right.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm actually trying to Create Sense of weightlessness for my lead leg, which would be my right leg. And Sense of resistance from my partner.”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does, but on a greater sense, what you try to do is not necessarily get a physical reaction of a look, but a lull of security where like. They've almost like relaxed for that split second because you've lured them into a sense of comfort. And then that's when you can strike”
2021-09-21 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #223 – Travis Stevens: Judo, Olympics, and Mental Toughness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source