3 key elements

There are three key things that allows a person to become a successful judoka:
i) Natural talent
ii) Technical mastery
iii) Hard work

Natural talent is the factor that we have least control over. Technical mastery requires two things to be present: a good coach and aptitude. Hard work is the element that a person has full control over so there should never be an excuse for this element to be missing.

Let's look at each of these elements in detail, staring with natural talent. Some people are naturally more athletic, tougher, faster, more flexible and so on, than others. These people have an advantage because physically they are just very suited for the sport. But what do you do when you are not born with such "good" genes?Answer: You work on technical mastery and you work really, really hard.

I was pretty average when it came to having the physicality for judo. I certainly wasn't naturally talented. I made up for that with by working on technical mastery and lots and lots of training.

As mentioned earlier, technical mastery requires having a good coach. I was lucky to have had one in the form of the late John Ross, a former US national coach with broad experience. I really learned a lot from him, about gripping, about the importance of newaza, about fighting spirit. I also bought a lot of judo books and collected whatever videos I could find about judo. I was hungry for judo knowledge and absorbed judo information like a sponge.

I also trained very hard. I was literally the first to arrive at the dojo and the last to leave. When I was at university, I trained every day. And to get more training, I even joined the university wrestling club. During summer vacations I would do full-time training in the UK and Germany where I trained three times a day for a stretch of three months.