Moves

I spent the morning and early afternoon training with Noriyasu Kudo. He’s an 8th degree black belt in Judo, and is also ranked in Kendo and Karate. In the 1964 Olympics (the first year when Judo was an Olympic sport), he represented Japan. Prior to that he had been “all Japan” champion twice. This was before weight classes came into the competition, so he was just straight-up the best Judo player in Japan at the time. He told the story of his promotion to 3rd degree at age 18 … how they didn’t really feel comfortable promoting him again so young, but he beat 11 3rd degrees in a row and they sort of had to concede the point.

I’ve got a bit of hero worship going on. Forgive me.

He’s in his mid 70’s now, and if this is “old and slowing down,” then he must have been just terrifying in his prime. There were perhaps 40 of us there, and he taught for 3 hours. He touched on a whole bunch of things … training drills, footwork and balance, chi (by which he meant ‘breathing exercises’), grappling, and even a bit of Buddhism. He talked about the competitive phase of his life, when he would wake up acutely aware that someone, somewhere was training right then … and it would motivate him to work harder rather than to sleep. He shared the fact that when you don’t have a training partner, it’s not unreasonable to tie your belt around a tree and practice throwing the tree. “You might lose a little skin. So what.”

There was also the gem, that if you hit someone and they cry out “they’re not a judo player.” Judo players fight hard, and then come home and wonder how they got so bruised up … because the focus during the match is on your opponent, not on any pain or injury that you may sustain. Apparently I’ve been doing that part right. Where did these bruises come from again? What the hell happened to my shoulder?

He talked about the fact that if someone teaches you something and you just learn it from them … then if they’re not around you feel a little worried. What if they were wrong? What if there was something more they didn’t teach you? On the other hand, if you figure something out for yourself then it’s yours forever. Then you have your coach with you in your own heart when you go out on the mat. He called people who get all worried when their coach isn’t around ‘momma’s boys.’ That amused me.

All of this might have been just talk had he not been taking people who I know to be stronger than me and saying things like “no no, really try to throw me,” and then just standing there with his feet rooted to the ground while they struggled … or locking up a series of 20 and 30 year olds on the ground to demonstrate some subtle point of foot placement in a pin. “no no, get out if you can. Really.” Yeesh.

Suffice to say, I had a good time.