Mataruna and Olympic Gold medalist Rafaella Silva
One of the things I enjoy most about James Bond movies is the gadgets: the watch with poison darts in it, the car that turns into a submarine even the simple spy pen. The use of technology enhances Bond’s ability to be a spy. Of course the technology sometimes goes wrong and that adds something extra to the plot. we can see the hero improvise and overcome the problems on the spot, as they happen.
Judo is very much a sport that is supposed to train us to develop this capacity. Using a favourite technique that you have come to rely on only to find that your opponent has an answer to it. This is when ‘new techniques’ or adaptations on the gripping or creation of hybrid techniques; a harai-goshi leg used to catch someone who jumps around your semi-nage or throwing off one lapel because your opponent isn’t letting you grip the sleeve.
Leonardo Mataruna
There are endless arguments about whether these new improvised techniques should be taught as techniques in their own right or not and many of them seem to be rooted in a larger argument about the identity of judo and what it means to be a judoka. It is not my intention to get into those discussions right now but rather to introduce you to the idea of judo’s answer to ‘Q’ in the bond movies.
‘Q’ is the backroom boy who uses science and technology to support the efforts of others. Last weekend I met the judo equivalent of ‘Q’: Leonardo Mataruna. He was part of the coaching staff for the Brazilian judo team in Rio. He was giving a presentation at a coaching event run by Mike Callan of ‘JudoSpace’. Leonardo has short cropped hair and has a soft smiley demeanour he is some how reminded me of a care bear. Don’t get me wrong he must have been tough in his day as he was a marine and an national level judo player but now he is a researcher and he obviously loves his job and is very comfortable in his own skills and his own skin. He is world class in his field, which is analytics.
There he stood inform of a group of judo coaches going through power point as we sat on the yellow and blue mats at High Wycombe judo centre. An oil painting of the former British women’s coach, Roy Inman looking down at us approvingly form above. Its in five minutes we had begun to understand just how much work and thought went into the kinds of results the Brazilian team was producing. The coaches used iwatches to link to Mataruna and his team of backroom boys. If a coach needed a video clip of the next opponent their player would be facing doing a particular technique they would find it and send it to that coach. This included live footage of fights that were still in progress on another mat or a complication that was being edited on the day. If an opponent had used a tachnique they hadn’t used in previous tournaments the coaches would be alerted to that via the watch.
This really was getting into James Bond and Jason Bourne territory! He explained that they had footage of most of the fights of international judoka and that they produced stats on their strengths and weaknesses. Which direction of movement they were weakest in, which direction they scored the most from, injuries, vulnerabilities, etc.. He talked about the problem of completely unseen players who had never been seen on the international circuit before. Leonardo had even found footage of an unknown player at a wedding and receiving a graduation certificate and analysed his everyday movement to predict his movements in judo. This included things like which foot he lead with as he stepped forward to receive his graduation certificate. Wow! we really were getting into Spy territory!
He also discussed analytics applied to the performance of players in the Brazilian team. Collating information on their wins, which countries they won in, which countries they lost in. Players who lost in Asia would be sent to train in Japan, players who lost in Europe would be sent to train in France or Germany for a while. The thing that mad Leo most famous was his warm up videos. He made personalised warm up videos for each player in the team, included subliminal messages and worked with sports psychologists and the players themselves to create little video montages of clips that would help the players with mental preparation. These videos were used in training in a very deliberate way.
Everything the team was doing was evidence lead and decided in dialogue with coaches, players and researchers. Even aspect of the players lives were monitored and analysed.One interesting finding about mobile phone usage lead to rules and an app being created to stop mobile phone usage interfering with sleep. The result? A 12% decrease in injuries. Wow! Evidence based coaching is not only effective it creates and builds adult, mature relationships and attitudes to each other. It creates a culture of responsibility and dialogue.Most importantly it helps to undercuts the source of arguments based on strongly held opinions and clashes of egos. It is rational, scientific and most importantly consultative. It is also a lot of work, Elite level coaching needs academic rigour, professionalism and maturity. Having recently fallen out with my old coach over differences of opinion I really hope this kind of culture becomes more wide spread as it helps to engender respect for each other and provides a way of testing assertions. Testing ones beliefs about judo and training as if they were hypothesis seem to me much better than raising ones voice or pouring more passion into the argument when people disagree with you.
Coach education seems to me to be the key to improving so much in judo and to overcoming the kinds of conflicts and clashes of belief that that I discussed in my article One Heart, one love let’s get together and have a fight. I found the presentation given by Leonardo very inspiring and also a little intimidating as it challenges so many of the received assumptions and ideas I have learned in judo from my own coaches and the people I looked up to in my most formative years. Even the most highly respected teachers need to keep up to date if they want to retain that respect. We need a kind of judo equivalent of the House of Lords: Experts who keep up to date and look at the latest ideas with a critical eye that is informed by a long term view. Sadly many of the older generation lack the willingness to keep up to date and simply get angry when younger coaches have new or different ways of looking at things. The future of judo and education in general will definitely require many of us to embrace the idea of evidence based teaching and coaching. Although I find this academic approach a little scary , especially if it involves numbers and mathematical formulas written by men like Leonardo with PHDs, the image of James Bond and his gadgets help me to see that it is actually very cool and doesn’t stop improvisation and on the spot decisions when the technology breaks down.
DojoCulture 