Training
Centers
San
Diego
Albany,
NY
Univ.
of Iowa
An Interview with Coach Hrbek - Dec 1998
1. What does Judo mean to you?
Judo becomes a way of life. That may sound contrived or cultish but I can assure you that it is neither.
Judo is a martial art, a sport and also a discipline. In order to excel and to continue to grow at the physical parts of Judo, it is necessary for the practitioner to continually challenge himself and to expand his, or her, horizons. This is true, in part, due to the fact that as an individual sport or activity it demands standards of performance from the individual. The individual must, in turn, make demands on himself. Less than the best in terms of practice, dedication, interest, creativity, effort and many other variables quickly becomes apparent when the weakness permitted by the “less than best” effort manifests itself as the underlying reason for a loss at the hands of someone better prepared. In this sense, Judo is a brutally honest activity. You can take shortcuts, compromise, and find reasons (which is another name for excuses) - if you allow it, you can generally fool yourself into believing you are trying your best. If this is happening to any individual, the truth is only one opponent away and you can usually depend on the truth to come to get you if you have cut corners. In this sense it is something like cheating on a diet you can kid yourself all you care to but the scale always tells the truth. Well, so does Judo, and it usually does it much more dramatically.
Much in the same way the personal growth that can come from Judo often arises from the individual standards we must impose on ourselves, growth also comes through our need to work with others. Judo is, in its truest sense an individual sport, BUT - preparation to do as well as possible competing in the individual sport is extremely people, group, and teamwork oriented. No one can develop well enough practicing alone even though much conditioning, strength training and even some technical work can be performed solo. There is a very real need to have partners and there is the most real of “give and take” situations that runs hand-in-hand in the training. All judoists need to perform throws and chokes and armbars and they need to perform them for the most part against live partners. “WITH live partners” is a better explanation, however, since each partner also needs to perform his or her own throws and chokes and arm bars. Partners can do things TO one another, treating one another like nothing more than practice dummies - or they can help, encourage and assist each other, applying each practice move WITH the partner while keeping common goals in mind. Due to the nature of the practice activities that include labor, fatigue, sweat, discomfort, occasional pain and an element of danger, it is vital that each partner can depend heavily on the other to take care to be careful of his well-being at all times. Judo surely teaches responsibility both to self and to others. It teaches teamwork as well, and caring, and consideration, and drive, and determination. It teaches one to be able to get to sort through details, to analyze, and to get to the truth.
Once we become experienced and know what is and is not particularly dangerous, choke practice, for example, is not very ominous - but for the inexperienced - person think about that. We are the only activity where people routinely strangle partners to the edge of unconsciousness. What a leap of confidence in the partner it was for each and every one of us to actually sit still and ALLOW someone to choke us that first time.
We learn to think and analyze. We learn to both quest and question. We take initiatives to work harder and smarter, to improve, to be open to new ideas, and to grow. We learn to have consideration for our partners and to value the consideration that is extended to us. We learn teamwork. We learn disappointment - and to deal with disappointment, whether it is the disappointment of a loss or that of a training partner who promised to show up but didn’t. We learn to succeed and to fail. We learn that when we succeed we must still continue to apply ourselves in order to continue to succeed, and when we fail we mustn’t despair. Instead, we get to work, find the reason(s) why we failed and get to work on correcting them.
All of this is a powerful lot of benefit to derive from a sport or martial art or social activity. Each of the things I have mentioned are easily integrated into our lives and can positively impact our school or work performance, or our inter-personal relationships elsewhere.
2. If you had to explain to someone who knew nothing about Judo, what would you tell them Judo was?
Judo is a physical activity that finds its roots in martial arts and is fully functional for self-defense applications. Judo is practiced in a manner that allows it to be done safely and the nature of the practice permits it to also be an enjoyable sporting activity.
The art of Judo is based on developing physical abilities that will allow you to physically control an opponent or partner. There is no magic or trickery and all Judo moves work because there is an underlying principle of physics that causes them to work. Judo, then, is the study of using sound scientific principles to enable us to perform a wide variety of throws, immobilization holds and submission moves to a cooperating, or to a resisting, individual, whether a partner or an assailant.
Judo skills include the ability to throw the other person’s body to the ground both from and to a near endless combination of positions and directions. There are throws over the shoulder, the back, the hip and the head. There are throws moving forward and backward, indeed in all 360 degrees of movement around both thrower’s and partner’s physical locations. There are pinning and immobilizing techniques to be applied once an opponent has been taken or thrown to the ground and there are chokes and armbar applications that are submission holds.
When Judo is practiced as a sport, it is done so under a strict set of rules that rewards throwing, immobilizing, and forcing submissions from, opponents. The rules are well developed so that the sport can be practiced as safely as possible. This includes implementation of age, weight, gender and skill-speciific and appropriate divisions of competition.
3. Do you think Judo is more mental than physical? Explain.
This is a broad-based question and could go in a few directions.
The question could be asking whether the mental/spiritual is more important than the physical. I think the answer to that is that in all physical pursuits, the things of personal value that are learned and can be re-applied to other areas of our lives are greater than the particular physical pursuit itself. The physical pursuit in this regard is a means to an end. This is along the same line as Judo founder Jigoro Kano’s ultimate goal for Judo - the perfection of the human spirit. That sounds grandiose and presumptuous but growth is growth and when we can cultivate that growth, it is indeed a move in the correct direction.
OR - the question could be aimed at whether the mental or physical is more important in the development of the actual Judo skills. This angle is a little more difficult, but not much. There is certainly a minimum level of innate physical ability that is necessary to do Judo. Here I will state that it is not necessary for everyone to become a World Champion to derive huge benefits from studying Judo. As a matter of fact it is not necessary for them to want to be World Champion, much less become one - or maybe even necessarily to compete at all. What is necessary is a desire to learn, to explore, to self-challenge and to improve. Everyone’s horizons and potentials are different. Each individual needs only to take aim at being the best he or she can be within the limits of the time or effort he is willing to invest.
Improving is surely a function of hard work but the hard work cannot be accomplished without drive, determination, constancy, dependability, cooperation with others, and thoughtful application of knowledge. Not only must work be performed diligently and regularly by a willing, enthusiastic practitioner, but in order to maximize gain, informed choice and selection of WHAT must be practiced and HOW the practice should best be accomplished must also be a part of the whole. In these senses, working towards progressively higher levels of proficiency is indeed strongly a mental undertaking.
4. Any information that could help me make my essay on Judo the best and easily understood?
Once you have identified the physical elements of the sport, which would not be necessary if you were writing on baseball, basketball or any of a dozen generally familiar sports, you will have to move into the mechanics of the “how-to’s”.
As you know, if you want to build a shed, you first have to know what you want it to look like - how high, wide or long - will it be four sided or a hexagon? - will it be shingled or just raw plywood? - will it have a peaked roof or just a tar-paper flat roof? Painted? - or unpainted? Get the picture? Before you can build it, you have to plan it - or get plans that have already been made by a designer or architect.
Same with a dress. Decide how you want it to be cut and make a design - or go out and find a dress design that is about what you want and then buy it. Then you still have to choose the material - and the color or colors. You have to decide on pockets, trim, collars and all those things - first, if they will be there at all, and then how big, and then what color. Once you have done all of that homework, you will need to decide if you want to sew it yourself or pay someone to do it or - just go to the store and buy a dress that pretty much fills the bill.
Building a shed requires physical skills. So does making a dress. So does Judo. You always have to figure out what skills to develop and then, after you have developed them, HOW you will use them.
Almost everything we do, or at least, how well we do it, is a function of significant mental effort before during and after the physical effort.