- Your values marry up with your Judoby Curmudgeon In Chief
The things you value in your life are unique to you, there’s noone else with that same balance. These values you hold dear are an acquisition based on your life history, your experiences, your circle of friendship or affiliation, your genetic make-up. They make you what you are.
When you are in alignment with your values you are in a state of harmony. Problems develop when you subject yourself to or find yourself in situations where you are in conflict with your values.
Values and Judo
There is only one value that Jigoro Kano originally called out, that of: Jita Kyoei. It translates to “mutual benefit and welfare”. The idea behind it is that you may be fighting against an opponent but the experience should be mutually beneficial to the other partner. You and your partner must both be learning and receiving benefit from the experience.
It can be argued that Kano never intended for Judo to become a highly competitive Olympic sport. That’s best left for dissemination by someone more learned on the subject than me!
Judo Values in action
It would be of interest to the casual ready if I presented examples of how my values impact my Judo. Here are a few:
- I value newcomers to the sport and openly encourage them. Hey, we all were complete beginners once. When in randori with a less experienced player I will deliberately hinder my abilities (i.e. not use my full strength, or restrict attacks to just my weaker side, or solely do one specific attack). If I get thrown I purposely don’t admit to my self-imposed handicap.
- I don’t want anyone to get hurt from my practice. I may look to impose myself on someone but I’m not going to make any extreme movements that may knowingly injure the other party.
- A win’s a win. When in competition I make it clear that I’m “all-in”. This way, whether I lose or win the outcome from my side was completely honest.
- I value my health and longevity over progression in the sport, any sport. I’m currently working through a bout of golfer’s elbow. It’s really slow in healing. I’ve found that the more I go to Judo the more it flares up and sets my progress back. Because of this I train Judo once a week which is a little disheartening.
Why do I bring all this up?
I made a hard decision recently to leave a club that I’d been with for the better part of five years. There were a number of factors which forced me to take this route, but the main factor was the emphasis the club had on randori.
Whilst my emphasis is (and always has been) on skill acquisition the club focus was always on randori and competition. Don’t get me wrong – being great at randori and competition is without a doubt a major asset in British Judo. The current pathway is such that if you don’t compete your progress will be severely limited. You mostly need to compete in order to get to the next belt particularly when you reach the Dan grades.
As a player who’s well past his peak I know that every time I engage in randori (particularly at the pace imposed by my old competitive club) I was risking injury. Not only that but I wasn’t necessarily developing the beautiful technical excellence that comes with drilling a particular technique over and over until it becomes smooth, instagram-ready perfection.
I had raised this on a number of occasions with the head coach. To be fair to him, he did meet me half way at some point – he set up a 40s+ players class for this very purpose. Unfortunately he then devolved that class by re-introducing randori into it.
Conclusion
To get the most out of life you benefit from knowing what truly matters to you. When you take decisions and act in harmony with your values you stand to be happier and more content.
It’s good time well spent to reflect on what you value most. And you will experience conflict with competing values but the more you know yourself, the more settled in yourself and your life you will be.
Previous ramblings..