Martial Vitality

Trump and Putin, 2018 How does a high-ranking judoka handle President Trump's handshake?  Introduction Trump and Gorsuch, 2017 I'm fascinated by how world leaders and other officials deal with President Trump's handshake. Today I saw footage from a press conference hosted by Presidents Trump and Putin in Helsinki from 2018, and I got to see how a high-ranking judoka reacts. Background Warning:  this is not a political post.  It's a post about movement, balance, and technique. If you're not familiar with President Trump's handshake style, the story Donald Trump's strange handshake style and how Justin Trudeau beat it  is a good overview. A jiu-jitsu school's technique for defeating the Trump handshake also caught the attention of Vice News . I'm going to concentrate on the standing handshake in this post.  A so-called "movement expert" claims in this  video  that Trump is showing "affection" via his handshake style. I think Mr Trum...

Travis Stevens on YouTube, https://youtu.be/xLNpi2HHPsU Travis Stevens, American judo Olympian, spent over two hours on YouTube describing how to fix the American competitive judo system. He said he has spent several years advocating these changes and pitching it to multiple audiences. This post is my attempt to summarize his main points. I thought his presentation was compelling, so I wanted to capture highlights. If you want it straight from him, please watch the video. The First Step: Startup Revenue Through Seminars The First Step The first step is to hire a coach to perform two main functions. The first is to teach judo cadets, those under age 18 years of age. The second is to have that coach teach 18 seminars per year, across the US. (That's 18 seminars, not just seminars for 18 year olds.) Figure 1 below shows the revenue that a single seminar could generate, depending on the attendance and the cost per person. Figure 2 shows shows the revenue that 18 seminars could generat...