Coffee & Judo With Steven Cohen & Travis Stevens

[@Yupppi]

The talk about Japan in judo is very interesting. It's a totally different system in how judo is organised, totally foreign to any other country. Everyone does judo, even companies have judo teams. Seems very collectivist like the society in general is. They face their own challenges in developing athletes. They have an incredible heritage of knowledge and skill and incredible pool of talent like your average person can be so good at judo, but it doesn't seem any easier for them to develop the top individuals like in the more individualistic countries where you might even be on your own getting private classes all the way from beginning to the top. Or this is my interpretation on the surface, obviously it goes pretty deep in every country and I might be misunderstanding a lot of it. Great to see Travis back too, was almost surprised by the bearded guest of Steve. And the rants are back as well, very welcome. Shintaro Higashi has been trying to keep the discussion up for American Judo system's future in the meantime. The psychology of "what's a bad injury" for an athlete is quite a fascinating topic as well. Like athletes are already accustomed to discomfort and pain for training and competition, pushing themself. But the meaning, the consequences of the injury to their goals is something athletes seem to think immediately even when in great pain - not the pain and injury itself but going through the fear of how it might impact their future training and near future goals, their career progress. Not if they can still walk smoothly at the age of 50 but if they can train in the following months. My least favourite "injury" was when suddenly I started having pain when loading dorsiflexion on one foot and it'd limit the dorsiflexion. Techniques like every throw that requires squatting or turning was ruined, because either the pain caused involuntary alteration of motion/loading or the body sensing you're about to enter that region and stopping you from going there, altering the motion again. For example my hip started doing a turn that ruined positioning the uke on the back to avoid that foot dorsiflexion.