第 427 期·中文精讀
尼爾·亞當斯：柔道、奧運、勝利、失敗與冠軍心態
Neil Adams: Judo, Olympics, Winning, Losing, and the Champion Mindset
奧運柔道銀牌得主談訓練的代價、勝負帶來的心理轉變與長期保持頂尖的方法。
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中文精讀由 AI 基於原始訪談改寫，非官方翻譯，可能存在偏差或錯誤；表述以原音訊與官方文稿為準。說明
Neil Adams 有時候會在凌晨醒來，渾身是汗。他剛做了同一個夢：他在趕路，急著去某個地方，要把一件拖了四十年的事情做個了結。夢裡他獲得了一次重打 1984 年洛杉磯奧運會柔道決賽的機會。可他就是到不了。路上堵車，或者有什麼東西擋著他。他在夢裡掙扎，然後驚醒。
那場決賽已經過去四十年了。
醒來的這個人是柔道世界冠軍、兩屆奧運會銀牌得主、五屆歐洲冠軍。拿起話筒之後，他成了“柔道之聲”，奧運會、世錦賽、大滿貫，幾乎所有重大賽事的決賽解說裡都有他。Lex Fridman 問他，那場決賽還會不會回來找他。他說會，而且不是偶爾，是到現在還會。
一個拿過世界冠軍、贏過幾乎所有對手的人，被一場輸掉的比賽跟了一輩子。聽他講完兩個多小時，你會發現那場比賽塑造了他之後幾乎所有的選擇，包括此刻他坐在麥克風前的這個聲音。
1980 年莫斯科，第一次上奧運賽場
那一年他二十歲出頭，第一次參加奧運會，信心滿到溢位來。1979 年他在高一級別（78 公斤）打滿了整年，一場沒輸，把世界上能贏的人幾乎贏了一遍。然後他做了一個決定：降回 71 公斤級，因為他在那個級別有種子席位。
這個決定讓他在幾個月裡吃盡苦頭。他的體重在往上走，每個月漲一公斤，身體已經完全適應了那個重量。臨到奧運會前一兩個月，他靠極度苛刻的飲食硬壓，最後還是贏了歐洲錦標賽。那屆歐錦賽的領獎臺，幾乎就是後來奧運會領獎臺的預演。
但他的營養一塌糊塗。那個年代沒有現在這套運動營養學，也沒人給他做膳食計劃。他說得很直接：如果那場決賽有什麼能怪，除了對手確實出色，就是他吃得太糟糕。
“如果我失去那場決賽有什麼原因，除了對手是個了不起的運動員，就是我的營養實在太差了。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
在那之前，他整個人像在飛。奧運會前面幾輪，他沒有一場打到時間結束，全部提前拿下。兩個漂亮的手技摔，再加一次關節技降服東德選手克魯格進半決賽。Tai otoshi（體落）、uchi mata（內股），加上他標誌性的 juji-gatame（十字固），這是教科書式的日本柔道。
決賽對手是義大利人 Ezio Gamba，一個左架選手。
這裡需要插一句背景。為什麼左架在柔道高段位裡格外難纏？因為右架選手占人口的七成，左架選手日常訓練裡絕大多數時間都在對付右架，早就習慣了。反過來，右架選手對左架極其陌生，出不了自己想要的進攻角度。
Neil Adams 說他這輩子都討厭對左架，到現在還是。
那場決賽還有一個細節：半決賽到決賽之間隔了整整八個小時。他們被拉回奧運村，再被拉回來，中間還要重新熱身。他出場的時候，之前那股一往無前的勢頭徹底斷了。
“我用了半場時間才把這場比賽救回來，但整個過程我始終差對手半步，從來沒真正進去。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
最後是分歧判定。他輸了。那一年，他整年只輸了這一場。
更恨輸，還是更愛贏
Lex 問了一個很直接的問題：你更愛贏，還是更恨輸？
他幾乎沒猶豫：更恨輸，但我也愛贏。
這句回答聽著像矛盾。往下聽才知道，它是他整個職業生涯的骨架。他公開說過自己從來沒想過會輸，走進每一場比賽都預設自己要贏。所以他真正輸掉比賽時，那種“意外”本身就要命。他職業生涯裡輸的場次屈指可數，大部分都發生在世錦賽決賽和奧運會決賽上，還有兩次是分歧判定。
他在 1986 年出的自傳《Neil Adams: A Life in Judo》裡寫過一段話，Lex 在節目裡讀了出來：
“從我記事起，我就想贏。這不是小孩在小學草地上跑一次麻袋賽跑時的那種普通感覺，也不是一個少年游泳選手為了進郡隊而願意在寒冷的清晨早起訓練的那種決心。對我來說，想贏這件事，就像我的胳膊和腿一樣，是我的一部分。它不是我在成長過程中學會的，它深深長在我裡面。也許這種爭勝的本能，就是我的公眾形象和我的內在視角之間最大的差別。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
觀眾看到的是他溫和、親切、有感染力的一面，看不到的是那股一直在燒的火。他說自己現在老了，能更好地把它藏起來，但那股火沒熄。他舉了個例子：他兒子特別喜歡跟他打保齡球，因為他打得很爛，直線球都投不出去。這件事讓他很不爽，不是輸贏的問題，是“我做不好這件事”讓他不爽。
這股勁還有更直接的體現。他講到 30 歲到 40 歲那十年，雖然已經退役，但他還能跟世界上最好的人一起訓練，誰都能上。到了 40 歲，髖、腿、膝蓋開始出問題，他不得不開始挑選訓練物件，把強度降下來。他說這件事本身就讓他難受，因為身體老了，腦子裡的那根弦沒老。
他還提到一個有意思的觀察。他會跟 Ilias Iliadis 這種怪物級別的選手在酒店健身房碰上，然後兩個人就在一堆擼鐵的人中間開始纏鬥。他說：
“你不可能真的摔倒他，畢竟你都六十多了。但你可以給他製造麻煩，他一上手立刻就能感覺到。不過你只能撐一分鐘。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
1981 年，世界冠軍和一個手臂
1981 年，他回到 78 公斤級，體重不用壓，營養問題也就不那麼致命了。那一年他打了一場職業生涯裡最痛的比賽，最後拿了世界冠軍。
他說自己在走進那個賽場之前，腦子裡沒有一絲懷疑，確定自己會贏。剩下的那一點心思全都用在“別犯錯”上。
他提到一個幾乎能用在所有對抗性專案上的區分：同樣是站在場上，有人在向前進攻，有人只是在避免輸。這兩種狀態在解說席上他看得一清二楚，一個選手的整場比賽往往會在某一刻突然掉頭，從“我要贏”變成“我不想輸”，然後比賽就翻轉了。
決賽的對手是日本選手，他後來大致記得那人剛拿過全日本選手權的第三名，也就是不分體重級別的那種比賽。這不是軟柿子。而且對方又是左架。
那場比賽中他幾次換方向攻擊，最後把對手拖進了寢技（newaza）。他說自己爬上對方背部的那一刻就知道，絕不會放手。
“我腦子裡有個很小的聲音在說，就貼住他。然後剩下的一切都是關於對那條手臂施加壓力。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
對方從趴姿開始徹底橋起，拼命想逃。他一點點把上腿拉過來，把下腿用兩隻腳推出去，重新調整重心，反覆折騰。他說最後拿下那個關節技的時候，整條前臂已經被徹底耗空，因為他咬著不放。
拿下這個十字固的那一刻，他心裡是什麼感覺？
“比對手感覺好，”他說，“好太多了。因為所有那些失望、所有那些東西，最後都匯到了這一刻，我終於成了世界冠軍。”
他 14 歲的時候說過自己要當世界冠軍、當世界最強。他說當時根本不知道那件事有多難。Lex 把這叫“年輕人的力量和愚蠢”：你還沒搞清楚那件事有多難，就一頭扎進去了，等到真的進去了，你就被套住了，只能把活幹完。
1984 年洛杉磯，熱門選手的悲劇
四年後，他是洛杉磯奧運會公認的奪冠熱門。他自己說那屆之前的狀態不對，訓練結束時整個人很累，腦子裡想的是“趕緊把這屆打完，我要休息”。這句話是奧運選手最不該有的心態。
每一場比賽他都贏了，但贏得很吃力。四分之一決賽對法國人 Michel Nowak，那是當時身體條件最強的選手之一，他勉強贏下。半決賽對 Lescak，他以前從沒跟對方打到時間結束，這次打滿了時間，但他只是慶幸終於結束。
決賽對德國人 Frank Wieneke。他以前贏過對方，但對方是個正在往上走的年輕德國選手。
決賽一開始，他所有的技術都差那麼一點。他說不清哪裡不對，就是什麼都慢半拍，協調不上。他其實一直在主導那場比賽，如果比賽再長一分半鐘，金牌就是他的。但就在某個瞬間，對方用一個假右內股做引子，突然轉向左側一個落身揹負投（drop seoi-nage）。
他輸了。
“你說‘毀滅性打擊’，這個詞都不夠。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
Wieneke 的教練和隊醫賽後走過來，只說了一句“真的很抱歉”。三週後德國公開賽，Neil Adams 在決賽裡贏了他，但他說那沒有任何意義，因為他心裡清楚那場反而更難打，對手的自信心已經完全不一樣了。
如果你以為這段故事會以“後來我釋懷了”結尾，那就錯了。他說他會從夢裡醒來，一身冷汗。那個反覆出現的夢是：他得到了一次重打那場決賽的機會，但總是到不了賽場。堵車，或者別的什麼擋住他，然後驚醒。
更沉重的部分是這句：
“決賽之後那段時間，我開始喝得太多。回頭看，那是我人生裡一段很黑的時期的入口。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
那個“停”的時刻
Lex 追著這個話題往下問：那段模糊的、黑暗的日子具體是什麼樣的？
Neil Adams 說其中一部分是第一次婚姻沒走到底，一部分是對兒子的影響，兒子後來花了很長時間才重新信任他。他承認自己有一段時間是個“能正常運轉的酒鬼”：每週還照常訓練，用訓練掩蓋喝酒，也用喝酒蓋住訓練的空洞。
他跟妻子 Nikki 說過一句話：
“如果我是個酒鬼，那我是世界上身體最好的酒鬼。她說，嗯，你大概真是。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
他說他也有抑鬱的時候，不算嚴重，但酒精帶來的後果有一套固定的模式：有多高的高，就有多深的低，他恨那種感覺，也恨自己把它變成一個習慣。
轉折點來了。他在比利時柔道隊工作，那年 12 月 20 日，他和一個比利時教練喝得一塌糊塗，對方被別人認出來了。事後他被叫到管理層的會上。他看了桌子對面那些人，半個他都信不過。
“我說，你們要開就開我。但我現在向你們保證，就這樣了，我戒了。我在心裡已經決定了。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
開車回家的路上他給妻子打了電話，說了一句“無論你接下來聽到什麼，我戒了”。然後真的就戒了。
這段經歷被 Lex 追問“給那些陷進類似處境的人什麼建議”時，他給了兩條。第一條是針對酒精：停下來的頭兩天或者第一週，你的身體會有反應，你會喜歡那種輕鬆下來的變化，這本身就是動力。第二條更泛一些：如果你長期處於低谷，先找出把你往下壓的那個東西，然後正面去攻它。他補了一句話，說得樸素但很有分量：
“總有人比你過得差。我們往往盯著自己沒有的東西，忽略了自己擁有的東西。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
“危險”這兩個字
訪談的中段，Neil Adams 講了一段關於日本訓練場的話，是整期節目裡最值得反覆聽的部分之一。
他反覆用“危險”這個詞。
他說在歐洲，他可能幾個月都不在訓練裡被摔一次；到了日本，所有人都在摔你，一天下來被摔得七葷八素。這種“危險感”把他全身的防禦機制都啟用了，反而讓他的技術往上跳了一檔。在一個奧運週期裡，他有整整兩年零兩個月，在正式比賽中沒被人得過一分。
然後他在一次歐錦賽上被人拿了三次分。他在意得幾乎輸掉整屆比賽，腦子裡全是“我兩年零兩個月沒被人得過分，現在我不是不可戰勝的人了”。最後他硬撐著贏下了比賽，但他說那一刻自己的心理幾乎崩了。他總結這件事的方式很有想法：危險感是奢侈品，它會逼出你最好的一面，但也會逼瘋你。
他提到日本道場裡那些“永遠走不出來”的高手。他說所有去過日本訓練的歐美奧運冠軍、世界冠軍，都懂他在講什麼：
“我們在日本的道場訓練，總會被一些永遠成不了世界冠軍的人摔。他們就是混在那裡的，或者唸完三年大學就走了。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
他講了一個讓人印象極深的段子。有一次，一個穿西裝、拎著公文包的上班族進來訓練，領帶一系，趁著午休的時間過來，然後開始一個一個把整個英國隊的隊員掀翻。整個英國隊排成一列站好，他一路打過去。輪到 Neil Adams 的時候，他一上來就摔了對方一記漂亮的。然後接下來的四分鐘，他被對方一次次舉起來、翻轉、摔出去，隊友在場邊笑成一片。十分鐘後，那個上班族重新把領帶繫好，回辦公室上班。
“我想象他坐在辦公室的電腦前面，忍不住就想笑。還好他沒出來打比賽。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
一顆金牙和兩年的復仇
Neil Adams 講他 16 歲那年第一次去日本訓練，被一個年長的日本學生反覆摔。那人嘴裡有顆金牙，他從此在心裡管對方叫“金牙”，成了他的噩夢。他每次被摔都會哭，被教練拉開，他還想回去再打。他後來每年都回同一家道場，就為了再跟“金牙”打。
“他早上、中午、晚上都在我腦子裡，”他說。
兩年後，他 18 歲，跟那個人已經能打成平手。19 歲那年的一次寢技車輪戰裡，他終於拿到了對方的關節技。
“拿到關節之後我沒有立刻做完，我讓它持續了儘可能長的時間。那是一場很長的記憶，我往下看著他的時候。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
“現在他大概會夢到你。”
“我不知道。我希望他記得我。”
這段對話裡藏著他對“成長”的理解：一個被反覆摔的人，透過在某一天把摔他的人摔回去，完成了對自己身份的重寫。這不是什麼勵志金句，只是一個非常具體的過程，兩年的、每一天的、在同一個道場裡的重複。
那個讓他寢技從此不敗的三角絞
1978 年的一場比賽裡，他因為在一個位置上停留多了一秒，被對方用三角絞（sangaku）抓住。他下場後只說了一句話：
“我再也不會在地面上被抓住。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
跟 20 年後那句“我戒了”是同一個句式，也是同一種性格。他的整個寢技體系，就是從那一次失敗裡長出來的。從那之後他的整個競技生涯，再也沒在地面上輸過。
後來他去美國給一些柔術選手上課，對方說“我們絕不會把背給你”。他說：在柔道的規則下，某些摔法失敗的時候背就暴露出來了，比如揹負投（seoi nage）失敗之後，背部就在那裡。這跟柔術裡主動躺下打防守是完全不同的兩種邏輯。他用這個差異來說明為什麼柔道選手在地面上那麼急、那麼兇：因為他們的地面技術是從站立摔法的失敗裡生長出來的，天生帶著時間壓力。
Lex 在這裡插了一段很好的比較。柔道選手在地面上極其好鬥，因為規則裡有裁判盯著，你必須展示出“進展”，必須做出“捕捉”，不做到就被叫停。柔術則允許你慢慢來，找位置、放鬆、思考，所以能打很久不累。柔道則像短跑衝刺，10 秒鐘就要把空氣全吐出去。
Neil Adams 順著這個話題提了幾個他欣賞的柔術選手，比如 Roger Gracie。Roger Gracie 的技術非常簡單，全世界都知道他要做什麼，但沒人能擋住。他去 Budokai 跟 Ray Stevens 學柔道，就是為了把摔倒這一環補進去，因為他明白在柔術裡，把對手摔進地面比主動躺下拉防要好。Lex 說 Roger Gracie 有點像柔道里的山下泰裕：所有人都知道他要用什麼，他就是能用。
規則怎麼改變一個專案
Neil Adams 花了很大一段講柔道的規則演變。1990 年蘇聯解體之後，一大批東歐摔跤背景的選手進入柔道，他們帶來了抱腿、單腿、雙腿摔。到了 1995 年，整個柔道的形態變得彎腰佝僂，看起來像穿著柔道服的摔跤。國際奧委會就跟國際柔道聯合會（IJF）說：要麼改，要麼我們砍掉其中一個專案。
於是禁止抱腿的規則出臺了。
他說這件事有兩面。一方面，這確實是為了讓專案保持自己的美學特色。另一方面，也是為了解決“拖延”的問題：很多人用抱腿只是為了防止對手進攻，把節奏徹底拖死。
“用柔道贏，不要用摔跤贏。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
但規則也帶來了意外的結果。他提到那些蒙古、喬治亞的選手，抓不到腿，就改成“大臂過頂”（big arm over the top）直接把人從地上拔起來，或者用 Ilias Iliadis 那種方式從地面直接絞起。規則變了，人沒變，風格也沒丟，只是路徑調整了。
他還提到柔道裁判的問題。他說在一次裁判研討會上他問那些裁判：你們有沒有跟高水平選手抓過手？如果沒抓過，你就沒法理解他們為什麼在某些握法上那麼堅持。一個頂級選手抓到你後背，你就知道接下來一定會被舉起來。這不是猜測，是身體記憶。
“當 Iliadis 把手臂搭在你背上的時候，你就知道你馬上要被舉起來翻過去了。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
Teddy Riner 和山下泰裕，誰是歷史最強
Lex 問了一個很直接的問題：誰是有史以來最強的柔道選手？
Neil Adams 把這個問題拆成了兩層：誰是歷史上最強的“柔道贏家”，誰是歷史上最強的“柔道家”。
第一層的答案他沒有任何猶豫：Teddy Riner。十次世界冠軍，兩屆奧運金牌，兩屆奧運銅牌，2024 年巴黎他還在爭。他說就算你問 Riner 本人，他大概也會說“我不是最強的柔道家”。因為柔道的“美”是一回事，贏是另一回事。
“他是有史以來最偉大的柔道贏家。這一點毫無疑問。但他不是最偉大的柔道家。有些人的柔道更美，儘管他的技術也很棒。他是終極的贏家。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
第二層，他說了一個 Lex 沒預料到的答案：山下泰裕。
Lex 一開始以為聽錯了，追問：“你覺得山下泰裕能贏 Teddy Riner？”
Neil Adams 說：我覺得能。他說山下泰裕在國際比賽中從未輸過，是那種從技術根基上理解柔道原理的人，一種技術方向打不通，他能立刻換成完全相反的方向。他跟山下一起訓練過兩年，非常瞭解他。他也說，如果真的問山下本人，山下很可能會非常謙遜地誇 Riner。
他強調這不是在貶低 Riner。他講 Riner 的強，用的都是具體的細節：Riner 只會抓袖子，然後用右臂過頂發起進攻；如果沒有袖子，他的進攻就會打折扣。所以個子矮的選手反而能給他製造麻煩。Riner 每次把壓力扔在場上，每次都贏下來。上個月他剛贏了一個叫 Saito 的年輕日本選手。
然後他開啟 judotv.com，從 2024 年巴黎大滿貫的決賽開始放給 Lex 看。韓國選手打得非常好，比分上甚至佔了上風，但在黃金得分（golden score）階段，Riner 突然一轉身得分。他說這一下“完全逆著場上的氣勢走”，但 Riner 就是有這個本事。韓國選手拿了兩個處罰，一步踏錯，整場比賽就結束了。
“就算他輸的時候，他也一直保持著風度。他不喜歡，但他有風度。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
真正的冠軍是輸的時候見真章
Neil Adams 反覆強調的一個標準，可能比他講的所有技術細節都更值得記住：
“一個真正的冠軍，是輸的時候做對了事的人。你看到他們輸的那一刻，才是看到了真正的他們。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
他說自己花了很多年才學會這件事。奧運會決賽之後，麥克風遞到臉前，最難的不是組織語言，是笑出來。
他舉了法國選手 Clarisse Agbegnenou 的例子。這位五屆世界冠軍、奧運冠軍，生完孩子迴歸，輸掉一場比賽之後說：別難過，就一場比賽而已，下次我會把它糾正過來。然後她真的糾正了，重新贏回世界冠軍。這就是他定義的冠軍。
他還提到自己前幾年開始做解說時，會對被摔的人多一分共情。盛大的一摔之後，贏的人狂喜，輸的人那一刻全世界都在看。他說那種感受他太清楚了，尤其是奧運會決賽。
他解說為什麼會好聽
Neil Adams 的解說生涯開始於 1982 年，起因是有人找他做旁白。最開始是“敘述式”的，跟現在的風格完全不同。後來他把自己的真實情緒加進去，激動的時候會真的激動起來，風格才慢慢變成今天這樣。
他講解說的兩種層級，是這段訪談裡最實用的部分之一：
“你可以解說你看得見的東西，也可以解說別人看不見的東西。如果你能講清楚那些藏在裡面的東西，可能是技術層面的，也可能是戰術層面的，你就有了優勢。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
他還說，解說的功夫有一半是知道什麼時候閉嘴。什麼時候該進，什麼時候該出，什麼時候說一句，什麼時候什麼都不說。沉默裡才有戲劇的張力，觀眾才等得到那一摔。
訓練怎麼做：技術、亂取、和“讓對手配合你”
Jimmy Pedro 是 Neil Adams 帶出來的最有名的美國選手之一，後來成了美國柔道隊的教練。他說他從 Neil Adams 那裡學到最重要的東西之一，是訓練方法論。
Neil Adams 講了自己的訓練結構。他只要“肯練”的人，寧可要 10 個肯硬扛的，不要 1 個技術天賦很高但不願吃苦的。他最好的俱樂部氛圍就是靠這批人撐起來的：一群美國人會專門飛到英國來跟他訓練，包括 Bobby Berland、Michael Swain、Ed Liddie、Jimmy Pedro。他們知道來這裡會被拖到極限。
他每週練兩次，做跑步、舉重、技能訓練。技能訓練最關鍵：
“如果你把一個動作做錯 99 次，重複並不會讓它變完美，重複只會把它變成永久性的錯誤。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
所以他在旁邊盯著，盯腳步、盯抓握、盯每一個細節，隨時糾正。他說這就是全職訓練組最大的好處，你能把技能訓練從體能和實戰裡拆出來單獨練，而在大部分俱樂部裡，技能、體能、亂取全都塞在那一個半小時裡，結果就是練得亂七八糟。
他講 Tai otoshi（體落）的教學方法時，說了一句印象很深的話：
“一半的功夫是讓搭檔做出正確的反應。我們先教會你按照我需要的方向反應，然後我按照你需要的方向反應，這樣我們才能把動作做成。這才是為什麼十個人裡有九個人學不會一個技術。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
他還提到一個具體的量級。日本的訓練營裡，選手一週大概要做 50 到 60 次亂取（randori），一次四到五分鐘。這是日本式的強度，因為他們訓練時是“輕”的，你摔我、我摔你，但不用全力頂。韓國的亂取更硬，所以那邊一週只能做 30 次。他自己在俱樂部裡每週拿到 40 到 50 次，還要去訓練營額外補。他現在的判斷是：很多國家做得遠遠不夠。
Lex 追問：那些讓人筋疲力盡的亂取，心理上怎麼撐？
他講了 Nishida 的故事。這個人被 Neil Adams 稱為最好的技術型搭檔之一，每次訓練結束他都會說“再來一次”。Neil Adams 說自己必須裝作不在意，然後回報一次。有一次兩個人連著打了 15 分鐘，對方隨時可能把他摔出去。他說這就是為什麼歐洲訓練營重要，因為你會同時跟德國人、荷蘭人、法國人、俄羅斯人打，每一種風格都要你從不同的地方挖出力氣。
他還講了一個具體的比賽記憶。有一次捷克公開賽的決賽，他的前臂已經完全鎖死，比賽結束後他連對手的手都握不了，領獎的時候獎牌都握不住，只能用腋下或下巴夾著。另一場比賽他一天裡對上了東德的一號和二號選手，那也是一個需要往深處挖的日子。
面對初學者，他會說什麼
Lex 最後請他給剛開始練柔道的人建議。
Neil Adams 說，如果你把 10 個初學者扔進一間屋子說“開始吧”，結果就是一片混亂。他給出的核心是三條：好的指導、好的俱樂部氛圍、不要把贏當成唯一目標。
“練武的人裡 90% 是為了樂趣。你需要一個氛圍混一點的俱樂部：想走競技路線的人有路，剩下的人就享受這項運動本身。但一定要有好指導，因為有了好指導、好根基，你才會有更多成功。說實話，我們在某件事上越成功，我們越喜歡它。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
他還講了一個關於“根基”的判斷：法國有一位女選手，練柔道八年就打進 2012 年奧運會拿了銀牌，然後狀態掉下去，後來又回來，到現在已經在最高水平待了 13 年以上。任何東西都一樣，根基紮實的人通常走得更遠。
他還加了一句很有意思的補充：技術可以救你，你靠技術能在一段時間裡掩蓋體能問題，但最後一定會被找出來。要走到最後，得是完整的一整套。
歷史最佳的對決與看點
訪談裡 Lex 和 Neil Adams 一起回顧了幾位他認為值得看的選手。
柏崎克彥（Kashiwazaki）在他心裡是“柔道天才”。他說自己在 1981 年世錦賽拿冠軍那年，柏崎也拿了世界冠軍，比他低兩個體重級別。Neil Adams 開啟影片給他看柏崎的決賽，那個背身投進去、直接連上寢技的轉換，看起來毫不費力。他說柏崎的路數他再熟悉不過：先製造空間，再直接連到地面，然後一點點把對手困住。他一邊看一邊解說，柏崎怎麼把上腿拉過來、怎麼把下腿用雙腳推出去、怎麼重新平衡重心。
“他的臉上有一種平靜。整個動作做下來，最後一下，腿出去了，活幹完了。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
野村忠宏（Nomura）：三屆奧運冠軍，奧運會上從未輸過一場。他每一屆奧運會之間會休兩年，然後回來，按需要的量去累積奧運資格。但要在日本拿奧運資格，先得過日本國內的選拔。日本這個專案裡的深度不可思議。他提到 Shozo Fujii，四屆世界冠軍，是史上最偉大的中量級選手，兩次倒在奧運會日本國內的選拔裡，一輩子沒參加成奧運會。
小野翔平（Shohei Ono）：Neil Adams 說他是技術層面最全面的選手之一，能左能右、能抱能摔、能打地面，早期很多比賽是靠地面贏的。他唯一有點保留的是小野在場外展現自己的方式，他覺得一個真正的冠軍應該是整個人都過關，包括場下。
還有他自己在訪談裡一直列為“最愛的”的柏崎，Lex 提到他喜歡 koga，還有 Inoue、Iliadis。Neil Adams 補了一個區分：有些人的存在本身就是一項榮譽，他們不一定拿了最多的金牌，但他們的打法、他們想贏的方式（想贏在 ippon 上）改變了這項運動的審美。他用泰森打了一個比方，當一個人出場時所有人都知道會發生什麼，比賽要麼互相咬死、要麼有人倒下，那才叫開放的對局。當兩個人一上來就關門防守，那就不叫比賽了。
給想真正走進柔道這件事的人
Neil Adams 在訪談最後說了一句開場，Lex 說了一句結束。這段交流本身沒什麼特別，但把整期節目的情緒收得很穩。
他說，他有時候會想，如果 1984 年那場奧運決賽贏了，他的人生也許會完全轉向另一個方向，也許就不會參加 1988 年奧運會，也許就不會遇見現在的妻子，就沒有現在的家庭。他想了一下說，用現在擁有的一切去換那塊金牌，他不換。
“我不會拿我現在有的東西去換任何東西。”（尼爾·亞當斯）
這句話不是安慰。它是在兩個多小時裡聽完一個人的巔峰和深淵之後，一個有重量的陳述。那場失敗的決賽跟了他四十年，把他推向過一段黑暗的日子，也把他推成了一個在麥克風前懂得對倒下的人共情的人。這塊金牌他沒有拿到，但那種被失敗反覆磨出來的理解，是任何一塊金牌都換不到的。
如果要把這期訪談變成幾條能帶走的行動，下面這些是可以明確落地的：
- 把失敗當作資料，而不是判決。一次具體的失敗（比如被三角絞），可以換來一輩子的技術升級。找到那一次失敗裡的具體原因，然後把它變成訓練計劃的一部分。
- 不要在訓練裡讓重複固化錯誤。與其讓一個動作做 100 次，不如讓一個人盯著你做對 10 次。重複讓動作成為永久習慣，而那個習慣可能是錯的。
- 把技能訓練從體能和實戰裡拆出來。別再讓技能、體能、實戰全都擠在同一堂 90 分鐘裡。技能需要單獨的空間和盯著你的人。
- 訓練搭檔的一半工作是學會“被摔”。讓搭檔按你需要的方向反應，這項功夫和學技術本身一樣重要，也是很多人學不會一個動作的真正原因。
- 上場前問自己一句：我現在是向前進攻，還是在避免輸？在解說席上，這兩種狀態能從一個人的姿態和腳步上直接看出來。你自己也能感覺到。
- 把亂取的量提上去。一週 40 到 50 次才是應有的量級；平均每週做二三十次的，要反思自己的訓練結構。
- 如果你在低谷裡，先找那個把你往下壓的具體東西。酒精、關係、壓力，都能被具體地找出來。找到它，正面去處理它，不要等到有人把你叫到桌子對面。
- 看一個人是不是真正的冠軍，看他輸的時候。看你自己輸的時候是怎麼走下場、怎麼面對麥克風、怎麼面對對手。這部分比金牌更能定義你。
最後用 Neil Adams 那句回答 Lex 的話收尾：真正難的不是贏下所有比賽，是在某一天決定不再回避一件事，然後真的不再回頭。他自己用兩次做到了：一次是對三角絞，一次是對酒精。兩次之後，他的人生才真正開始往他要的方向走。
文稿來自 Lex Fridman 官網公開發布的官方 Transcript（含說話人與時間戳）。
Neil Adams (00:00:00): When we go to the dojos there, we all get thrown by people that never come out to be world champions. They’re just in the mix or they’re going through three years of university and then they go. We had a guy, we had a guy that came in. He was business guy, came in with his suitcase in his tie up like that. And he’s in his lunch hour. He’s in his lunch hour, right? So it’s got to be quick.
Lex Fridman (00:00:22): Yeah.
Neil Adams (00:00:24): So he comes in and he goes through, he’s working his way through the whole of the British team. We’re all lined out, right? 10 minutes later, he’s tying his tie up like that. And back to work like that. Imagine him sitting behind his desk and his computer.
Lex Fridman (00:00:39): Yeah, yeah.
Neil Adams (00:00:41): I’m glad he didn’t get out.
Lex Fridman (00:00:44): Who do you think wins, Yamashita?
Neil Adams (00:00:44): I think Yamashita. But I…
Lex Fridman (00:00:45): Wait, you think Yamashita beats [inaudible 00:00:46]?
Neil Adams (00:00:46): I think so.
Lex Fridman (00:00:53): Strong words.
Lex Fridman (00:00:58): The following is a conversation with Neil Adams, a legend in the sport of judo. He is a world champion, two-time Olympic silver medalist, five-time European champion, and often referred to as the voice of judo commentating all the major events, world championships and Olympic Games. Highlighting the drama, the triumph, the artistry of the sport of judo. Making fans like me feel the biggest wins, the biggest losses, the surprise turns of fortune, the dominance of champions coming to an end and new champions made. Always speaking from the heart. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Neil Adams.
Lex Fridman (00:01:47): You are a five-time European champion, world champion two-time Olympic silver medalist. Let’s first go to the 1980 Olympics. Where was your mind? What was your preparation like? What was your strategy leading into that Olympics?
Neil Adams (00:02:01): That was my first Olympic Games. So my preparation was a little bit different to how it was the ’84 and the ’88 Olympic Games. And I’d kind of done part of the preparation as well for ’76 Olympic Games. I wasn’t quite old enough for those, but I was first reserve. So in 1980 I’d had four years build up and I was hungry and I was one of these young athletes and I see them so often now that was developing and full of, I won’t say I was full of myself, but I was certainly confident of my ability and I wanted to conquer the world. And I’d had a couple of really tight matches with the current Olympic world champion. So I knew that there was a possibility that I could get there for the ’80 Olympics.
Neil Adams (00:02:54): So building up to the ’80 Olympics was quite interesting because I was kind of coming through the weights and I was halfway in between the 71 kilos weight category and the higher weight category of 78 kilograms. And I got third place at the ’79 world championships, the weight below. Fought the whole year at the higher weight category, didn’t lose a contest. So I’d beaten everybody in the world. And then I had to make the decision as to whether to drop to the weight below because I was seeding in the weight below. It was a different seeding then. And so I decided to drop into the weight below because I was seeded in the top four. And as it happens, I think it was probably the worst decision I made.
Neil Adams (00:03:48): Well because…
Lex Fridman (00:03:49): Well…
Neil Adams (00:03:50): Simply because, I mean, it was the only contest that I lost was the final of the Olympic Games in that year.
Lex Fridman (00:03:55): So you’re a young kid, what? Like 19-20 at that time full of confidence, vigor. So the decision to cut weight, how hard was it for you to cut weight to the 71 kg division?
Neil Adams (00:04:08): I’ve got to say that it was the hardest because as I was going up, it was 73, then it was 74 kilos, 75. So I was moving through the weight category. It wasn’t like I was stuck in the middle and then I dropped the odd time to compete. It was literally going up in weight by a kilo every month. And then by the time I came to a month or two before the Olympics, it was really hard. Fought the European Championships at the higher weight category and won that. And so everybody that was on the Olympic rostrum at the Olympic Games was my rostrum at the European championships.
Neil Adams (00:04:52): So was it a mistake? Yeah, because I didn’t have my diet sorted out. My nutrition was appalling and when I, it wasn’t as kind of readily available as it is now for the nutrition. And I would say that if anything lost me that final, other than the fact that I was fighting somebody was terrific. He was an excellent, brilliant athlete, but definitely didn’t help that my nutrition was not very good.
Lex Fridman (00:05:22): Okay, so you lost to Ezio Gamba. There’s probably a lot of that we could say about that particular match. Maybe let’s zoom in. What were your strengths and weaknesses, judo-wise in that Olympics? You said you haven’t really lost the match, you won the European Championship leading into it, but if you had weak spots, okay, you already said diet, but specifically on the mat in terms of judo.
Neil Adams (00:05:46): I think that none of the fights lasted time going into the final. So I won fairly quickly and every match by ippon way before time.
Lex Fridman (00:05:58): Do you remember how you won the matches?
Neil Adams (00:06:00): I won them by throw, a couple of throws for ippon and then an armlock for ippon. Semi-final was an armlock against the East German Kruger. And yeah, I was flying through.
Lex Fridman (00:06:13): What were the throws? Do you remember?
Neil Adams (00:06:15): Tai otoshi, uchi mata. My favorite kind of te-waza, my favorite throws. And then Juji-Gatame as well, which was a Juji-Gatame roll. Against an East German who I’d beaten before but always had a really tough match, but managed to beat him well.
Lex Fridman (00:06:34): So you had a beautiful exhibition of Japanese-type Judo in the first two matches. You threw people and then you also did the [inaudible 00:06:43], unbarred a person. Great. So going into the final, what are the weaknesses going into the final against the Italian?
Neil Adams (00:06:49): Like I say, taking nothing away from him as a great athlete and a brilliant Judo man and left, which wasn’t good for me. That was definite no, I hated fighting leftys, still do, but I’ll tell you why in a minute. I just did…
Lex Fridman (00:07:05): That’s great.
Neil Adams (00:07:05): It’s one of those. But I think as I went through the contest, we had an eight-hour break from the semi-final to the final. They took us back to the Olympic village, then we had to come back in and then we had to start a warmup again. So I kind of lost my momentum, I had to start again, and I just had a job to get going. I got halfway through, started to rescue a dying match, and I was kind of one step, half a step behind all the way through. So never really got into it.
Lex Fridman (00:07:39): So why do you hate fighting leftys? And leftys are, we should say, overrepresented in terms of the higher ranks of Judo. I don’t know why that is.
Neil Adams (00:07:50): Well, the thing is about a lefty is a lefty will have more opportunity to fight rightys, right-handers. I mean 70% of the population are right-handers, 30% left. So they get to fight more right-handers and it’s just a fact that happens. So the thing that they hate is fighting left against left. They don’t like it left against left. Whereas a right-hander will go right against right, but the opposite is awkward would for me because just simply, I like to go onto the sleeve and then I like to dominate the grips, but the actual angle of the opponent wasn’t what I wanted, so I had to work hard, really hard against it.
Lex Fridman (00:08:41): What happened in that match?
Neil Adams (00:08:43): It was a split decision in the end. And so to lose an Olympic final on a split decision is pretty, it’s something that’s still on my mind. And I think that it’s a strange one because I can still wake up, that one and four years later at the Olympics, I was silver medalist at the Olympics four years later as well. And yeah, it still haunts me.
Lex Fridman (00:09:10): Do you sometimes wake up and think like, “Eh, I should have eaten better” or maybe a specific grip that you’re like, “Ah, I shouldn’t have taken that grip.”?
Neil Adams (00:09:19): I do. I mean the diet side of it, its difficult to really admit that, isn’t it that you went to an Olympic Games and the one thing that you really sucked at, right, was one of the most important things now at world level sport. Where you’ve got the nutrition, we’ve got it, you would think that most people have got it sorted, but there’s still people making mistakes and still people that haven’t got it totally sorted.
Lex Fridman (00:09:48): And then there’s people like Travis Stevens who I think doesn’t care. He’ll just have atrocious nutrition and he just makes it work. I think the way he spoke about it is you can’t always control nutrition, so it’s best to get good at having crappy nutrition.
Neil Adams (00:10:06): That’s a good way of looking at it. I never, yeah, maybe that’s what I did.
Lex Fridman (00:10:11): Exactly, exactly. Do you remember what you were eating? Are we talking about candy or?
Neil Adams (00:10:15): Yeah, well I got a sweet tooth, but it wasn’t really, I mean, I didn’t have a lot of money at that particular time either. So the diet wasn’t steak and good nutritional salads and things like that. I did what I thought was best without proper advice. And the crazy thing is that I had such good advice as well when it came to fitness training and things like that. We’re quite ahead of our time and we really had it nailed as far as the conditioning was concerned, the judo training as well was way in advance. I was a good trainer and I trained more than most. I can honestly say that. It probably got me away with a lot.
Lex Fridman (00:11:01): Where was your mind? So mental preparation going into that Olympics, you said you were confident, but is there some preparation aspect behind that confidence?
Neil Adams (00:11:11): I think in the early days I didn’t think I was going to lose. I never thought it was possible to lose. And I think that I went into every contest expecting to win. So when it didn’t quite go my way, I didn’t lose that many contests. So the only ones I lost were in the final of the world championships or in the final of the Olympic Games. I didn’t lose that many. I never lost a European title. I had seven golds at European championships, five at seniors, two at juniors under twenties. I never lost a final. And then I only lost two on a split decision. So I didn’t lose that many. And my attitude was that I wasn’t going to lose and couldn’t lose. So I was always surprised when I did, when something happened.
Lex Fridman (00:12:00): In Neil Adams, A Life in Judo, written in 1986. You wrote, “Ever since I can remember I have wanted to win. It wasn’t the ordinary feeling that children have when they take part in their first primary school sack race on a grass track or even the keen determination of a young swimmer prepared to train early in the cold winter mornings in order to make it into the county side. With me, the desire to win was and still is as much a part of me as my arms and legs. In other words, it wasn’t something I learned as I grew older, but rather it was deeply rooted in me. Perhaps this competitive instinct is the greatest difference between my public image and the view from the inside.”
Lex Fridman (00:12:47): So people see the kindness, the warmth you have the charisma of the excitement, but there’s this big drive to win inside you. So what’s behind that? Can you just speak to that, that drive to win and how that contributed to your career?
Neil Adams (00:13:05): Do you know when I look back now…
Lex Fridman (00:13:08): This is a lot of years ago, we should say.
Neil Adams (00:13:09): It is a lot of years ago.
Lex Fridman (00:13:11): Is that true or were you just being poetic?
Neil Adams (00:13:12): It’s not far off. No. When I think about it now, I’d like to think that I’m a different person now. And since I’ve kind of calmed down, I see athletes now and I see them and their kind of arrogance, their walk, and it’s a strut and it’s a kind of a confidence, isn’t it? As we’re older and as I’ve become older, I’ve calmed down, but it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, it’s still that will to win. And I’m much better at masking it now if I don’t. But it still bothers me as much.
Lex Fridman (00:13:53): You’re talking about like… I don’t know, even just stupid, silly things. Like I don’t know, a game of pool or something like this or just anything.
Neil Adams (00:14:00): Yeah, I’m still trying to win. Like my son loves to… He loves to play me at bowls because I’m useless and I just can’t throw a straight bowl. So he loves playing me at that, but it bugs me that I’m not better and there are certain things that I do. It really bugs me when I’m not good at it. And I guess it’s one of the reasons that long after I’d finished competition judo, people still want to train with you. And even at an older age, even now if I do in a seminar or they’d still, “Do you still do? Do you want to still go? And can I feel it?”
Neil Adams (00:14:44): And one of the things that’s in me is that I just all the way up to 40 years of age, so from 30 when I finished competition up to 40, I could still train with the best and I could still go with anybody. And then when 40 hit, kind of things started to fall off a little bit and I used to get either my hips or the legs and my knees. And I realized that I had to pick my practices and that rankled as well and I had to then just calm it down a little bit, otherwise I was going to be injured and I was going to be… It’s not a good thing when you getting older and you’ve still got the same competitive mind, but things change.
Lex Fridman (00:15:26): So it’s still there. You get on the mat probably even now, right? You get on the mat with a world champion, you still the current world champion, there’s still a little part of you. Could I still toss this guy?
Neil Adams (00:15:38): But you know…
Lex Fridman (00:15:38): Kids these days are soft.
Neil Adams (00:15:41): Well, you know what, some of these athletes, I mean I give you a prime example, right? Is Ilias Iliadis. He is a monster, right? And of course you couldn’t because just at sixty-something you couldn’t, but you like to think that you could.
Lex Fridman (00:16:02): You could, you never know. You got to find out.
Neil Adams (00:16:03): You know what you would do. What you can do is you can cause them problems and they feel it immediately. But you’d last a minute.
Lex Fridman (00:16:11): So you’ve trained with Ilias Iliadis, I’ve gotten a chance to train with him as well. He’s a really nice guy, really great.
Neil Adams (00:16:16): Great guy. He trained with me. We were training together every hotel that we used to go into, we’d end up in the gym together and we’d train. And this one time he was in there and he just wanted somebody to grab and grip hold of. And so we ended up doing this kind of grappling in the middle, the people doing weight training and the different things watching these two mad men doing… I’m glad we weren’t on a mat at that particular time. But good fun.
Lex Fridman (00:16:43): What do you think about that guy? He like you achieved a lot of success when he was young.
Neil Adams (00:16:49): 17, can you imagine that? 17, 18 years of age and he’s able to compete with the men. There’s not many men can do that. And it doesn’t happen very often. It happens later with the men and often they’re not physically as developed as they… So for me, for example, I fought Nevzorov who was world Olympic champion. He was the current world Olympic champion, and they sent me to the European Championship senior at 17 and that doesn’t happen very often. And I fought, I pulled Nevzorov, I fought Nevzorov and I had him really worried because he expected without a doubt, to come out, throw this kid and junior.
Lex Fridman (00:17:33): And he was thick and shredded. [inaudible 00:17:36] he’s a man.
Neil Adams (00:17:36): He was shredded. There’s a picture of him in his judogi and his judogi is just cut and he looks the business. And there’s me in this baggy…
Lex Fridman (00:17:46): Skinny kid.
Neil Adams (00:17:49): Skinny kid inside this baggy thing. And the thing was is that the more he tried and the harder he tried, and the more he panicked, the further it went away from him. And so of course he got the decision at the end and deservedly, but I worried him. And so for me that was a massive step forward because year later I was starting to fill out and two years later I was competing for the Olympic title.
Lex Fridman (00:18:24): I don’t know if I remember, but Ilias Iliadis is interesting because even at 17 I feel like he was doing big throws, like literally lifting them with the hips.
Neil Adams (00:18:34): Just rips them out the ground. And I was saying to Nikki, my wife, and she said, “What would you do now? It was different than the way you did then.” I never had any pickups. That’s not what we did. But you have a look at the young Ukrainians or the young Russians or the young Eastern Bloc Mongolians and they’re ripping people out the ground. I mean it’s just different style of judo and it just looks different. But now they’re starting to do traditional style judo as well.
Lex Fridman (00:19:09): So can you speak to that? What are the different styles of judo? So for you, you mentioned uchi mata, tai otoshi, these… How would you describe them? They’re like these effortless, less lifting off the ground and power and strength and more timing and position, movement, momentum, all this kind of stuff. That’s more traditionally associated with Japanese judo because for Japanese judo, the traditional judo, you’re supposed to throw people in a big way without much effort.
Neil Adams (00:19:40): And of course, 1990 we saw the introduction of all these Eastern Bloc countries. There were so many more, I mean it was Soviet Union when I was competing. And then of course in 1990 everything changed. And then there were so many more of them out there, different countries, their wrestling styles were introduced into judo. Put a jacket on them and let’s get into judo.
Neil Adams (00:20:08): So judo kind of changed shape. It changed shape from this upright standing and having to know the technicalities of how to get a body that’s weighing 14 stone, or whatever it is, up into the air and using the momentum and the balance and the direction and the skill to do that and knowing how to do it and how to use movement. And then you get the wrestlers and the leg picks and the single leg, double legs. And by 1995 judo was bent over. And so it was the IOC that went to IJF, International Judo Federation. And they said, “You’ve got to change this, or we’re just going to have one wrestling style. It looks like wrestling with judo, with judo jackets on. “So you either change it or we are going to take one of you out.”
Lex Fridman (00:21:07): By the way, we should sort of clarify when we say people are bent over, that’s usually how you see freestyle wrestling. Wrestlers are more bent over to defend the legs and so on. And traditional judo people are more standing up because that’s the position for which you can do the big throws and all that kind of stuff. But I think the other case to make for banding leg grabs is a lot of people are using it for stalling and not for beautiful big throws and all that kind of stuff. So it’s not just to make it different from wrestling, it is also like you want to maximize the amount of epic throws and dynamic judo and exciting stuff to watch, right?
Neil Adams (00:21:44): Yeah. Win by judo, not by wrestling. And I think that the ones that were shouting about it were the wrestlers, right? Because they like to compete with both. They want to do both. They want to do their wrestling matches and then come into judo. So basically, I mean, what we’ve said is they learn to do judo and there’s nothing stopping you then from doing both, but not from the other way around. All right?
Neil Adams (00:22:10): So rules always dictate development. They’ll always dictate which direction it goes. So if you introduce a rule that states that you cannot dive at the legs and just pick up, then you’ll have to do it standing up. And also it increases the possibility of defense with the hips. Because actually good defense, judo wise, standing up is with the hips as opposed to sticking your arms out and then sticking your backsides out there just to defend. All right, so if you attack me and I move my body in the wrong place, so I’m in the wrong place at the right time, so you don’t hit the right target. And then also I use my hips. So again, it’s a form of judo that was being lost. So now we’ve got it back.
Lex Fridman (00:23:02): So let’s go there. Let’s speak about judo as if we’re talking to a group of five-year-olds. So what is judo? What are some defining characteristics of judo as a sport, as a way, as a martial arts, a way of life, all that kind of stuff?
Neil Adams (00:23:18): I think when you say it is a way of life, I mean I think the great advantage that we have in judo, my young grandson… So I got two little boys that are three and a half years of age, love going to our dojo. They love it. So dojo was the first word that they used. It was one of the first. So when they come see us, so seeing my wife and I, it’s like dojo. It’s not grandma granddad, it’s dojo. So dojo. They take their shoes off going into the dojo. So they have respect for where they’re at. I think it has that kind of feeling that I tried to build my dojo with a feeling of reverence. It’s kind of almost peaceful. I’m not a religious person, but I like going to old churches because when I go into an old church, it doesn’t matter what the religion within the church, but there’s a reverence in there.
Lex Fridman (00:24:19): Reverence is a good word. It feels like a really special place no matter which dojo you go to, it’s just you bow and there’s a calmness before the storm of battle or whatever it is.
Neil Adams (00:24:32): Yeah, and respect.
Lex Fridman (00:24:32): Yeah, respect.
Neil Adams (00:24:33): I mean, look at the respect. We were just talking about it just before we came on air. We were just saying that we very, very seldom do we have a situation where there is animosity other than them fighting. So I’m not saying that they don’t fight each other because sometimes it does turn into a brawl and at the end, two people bow off and show their respect. And one of the things, so a champion, I see people winning events and they’re good judokara, they’re excellent, they win world championships might even win the Olympic Games.
Neil Adams (00:25:13): But a great champion for me is somebody who does the right thing when they lose. So when you see them lose, that’s when you see the true them. And actually that was one of the biggest things that I had to really cope with. So when I lost that Olympic Games in Moscow and also the one in Los Angeles, the hardest thing is when the microphone’s in there and you’ve got to be respectful and nice and the hardest thing is to smile.
Neil Adams (00:25:49): But actually some of the great champions, they’ll go, “That’s just one match.” I remember, we’ve got one great champion, Agbegnenou, she’s a five-time world champion, Olympic champion. She’s favorite as well to get this Olympic gold medal. French. What a great champion she is because she lost one of the matches. I mean, she’d come back and she’d given birth, come back after giving birth and everybody was going, “Well, will she…?” And then she lost one of the matches on the way through and she said, “Well, don’t be upset. It’s just one match. It’s just one contest. Next time I’m going to put it right.” And she did put it right and now she’s back up there and she won the world title back. So these are great champions for me.
Lex Fridman (00:26:44): Yeah, I mean that’s the right way to see it. But it’s also tragic to lose the Olympic Games.
Neil Adams (00:26:49): Twice.
Neil Adams (00:26:52): Yes, it is tragic. And I do have sleepless nights.
Lex Fridman (00:26:57): I mean that’s the magic of the Olympic Games. Anything can happen. And your 1980 Olympics were very different from 1984, but if we just linger on ’80 and just what we’re talking about, how much you wanted to win, do you love winning or hate losing more?
Neil Adams (00:27:17): I hate losing more, but I love winning. When I won the world title the year later, and I had no doubt when I went into that day that I was going to be world champion. No doubt.
Lex Fridman (00:27:31): So you won the ’81 World Championship.
Neil Adams (00:27:34): At the higher weight.
Lex Fridman (00:27:36): At the 78.
Neil Adams (00:27:38): Yes.
Lex Fridman (00:27:38): Kg. Actually, can we go there? What was going through your mind? You ended up arm barring a Japanese fighter. I talked to Jimmy Pedro, a friend of yours, somebody who said you were a mentor to him for many years, and he told me a bunch of different questions to ask you, but he said that was a really special time. That was a really special dominant run you had, and especially finishing with an arm bar against a Japanese player. So take me through that. What do you remember from that?
Neil Adams (00:28:16): I think that it was, so my weight was better. I didn’t have to lose weight. That was one thing. So the nutritional side wasn’t as important, but probably it still wasn’t as good as it could be. My nutrition. Although it was getting better and I was trying to eat the right things at the right time, but I still trained really well and I was so confident that going into that world championships that I could win it. I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to win. But obviously the corner of your mind, you’re thinking just don’t make mistakes.
Neil Adams (00:28:54): But this is the incredible thing, is that once you start to ask you, once I see contests change direction when I’m commentating. So I can see somebody who’s in there just going forward trying to win. And that’s a difference to somebody who’s trying not to lose. And there’s two different ways there. So sometimes when you… When I was world champion then I had a period of time where every time I stepped out there I was really afraid of losing. And I think that that’s what happens later on in your competitive career.
Neil Adams (00:29:33): The great champions managed to come through that. Teddy Renair is one of those, he puts it out there and he keeps beating them so they can’t take it away from them. It’s fantastic.
Lex Fridman (00:29:44): So stepping on the mat, every single encounter you’re trying to win, you’re looking for the grips with the intention to throw big, even when you’re ahead on points and all that kind of stuff.
Neil Adams (00:29:56): That’s a really good point is that if you go ahead in a match and you look at the clock, it depends when you go ahead. So I sometimes…
Neil Adams (00:30:00): … match. And you look at the clock, it depends when you go ahead. So sometimes you can go ahead in the first minute, and you’ve still got three minutes to go. So I see the ones then that go into, “I don’t want to lose”, because they go into defensive mode. And then sometimes they can lose it on penalties or something can go wrong, and the other one comes on strong and then they can sneak the contest. And so it’s really difficult. But when I was coaching, I was trying to always encourage that positive attitude for the full four minutes, five minutes then.
Lex Fridman (00:30:33): I’ve competed a lot in judo and jiu-jitsu. I’ve always hated that part of myself. When I’m up on points by a lot, you look at the clock and it’s what you do when you look at the clock, it’s a minute and a half, you’re really tired and you quit. You just defend. And I hated that part about myself. It’s like that-
Neil Adams (00:30:52): It’s saying don’t do it. Yeah.
Lex Fridman (00:30:53): Yeah. Well as opposed to, in judo for a big throw, just keep going For the throw. In jiu-jitsu, it’s go for the submission, win in the real way, versus on points. I hated that part of myself. Mostly underneath that is cowardice induced by exhaustion.
Neil Adams (00:31:13): Exhaustion is the one, isn’t it? But it is, isn’t it? It’s a mindset as well. So actually trying to get your mind positive all the way through. So if you listen, when I commentated now is I say I hope that they don’t change the mindset. And they are going forward all the time. And actually they’re then more difficult to catch. We had one just a couple of weeks ago, and he lost in the final second of the contest. He was the only one to score. He got penalized all the way up. Two seconds to go and stepped out of the area. But he went like that, thinking the bell was just going. And the bell went one second after he actually stepped out. So he got penalized, lost the match and lost all of the points for qualification. So that’s paying high price. That’s paying high price.
Lex Fridman (00:32:14): Yeah. There’s a thin line between triumph and tragedy in those competitions. But especially at the Olympic games. So let’s just stick on ’81 World Championship. What did it feel like to win that world championship. And also getting an arm bar as a Japanese player? Jamie told me your arms were exhausted.
Neil Adams (00:32:36): Yeah, the thing is sometimes when it’s competitive as well, hours is a different intensity to jiu-jitsu, where you can take time a little bit. Hours is, bang, it’s transitioning from standing down. You’ve got 10, 15 seconds to go in there. You go in a hundred percent. It’s a bit like running full out for 10 seconds. And then you’ve got to decide then, especially if they’re defending it, whether you let it go. Because when you get up and your forearms are blown, and you’ve got lactic acid in there, and you’ve still got to grip up, because remember ours is about gripping as well on the jacket.
Neil Adams (00:33:18): So if you can’t grip up, then you can’t gain the advantage, then they can throw you. So you have to decide. So I had a massive attack on him and we changed directions four or five times, and then I wasn’t going to let him go. But still when I was turning him there, I had to decide am I going to go all out for this? There has been occasions when I’ve released it, just if I’ve got a minute to go and just block out.
Lex Fridman (00:33:51): Yeah. Correct. So what you’re saying on the feet, there is a change of direction of all different kinds of attempts and then you went to the ground. Do you remember that decision of like, okay, am I going to finish this?
Neil Adams (00:34:01): Yeah, I knew it. As soon as I climbed his back and then I thought he’s not going. I’m not going to let him up. So I was just changing-
Lex Fridman (00:34:10): Little voice in your head.
Neil Adams (00:34:12): Little something in my head was going, “Just stick on him.” And then it’s always about pressure on the arm. And of course he was like that, defending. He was almost total bridge trying to get out of it.
Lex Fridman (00:34:28): Did it start in turtle and did you flip?
Neil Adams (00:34:30): It started in turtle, because I did an attack, came back out of the attack and then he went on to his front. And then I was on his back. And then I started the whole [inaudible 00:34:41].
Lex Fridman (00:34:41): Saw the opening. You just went for it?
Neil Adams (00:34:43): It was an automatic transition. So the transitions are what we teach, because the ones that are quicker down with the transitions are the ones that catch it. That’s our newaza. Our groundwork is the transition from standing down to ground. We don’t have a situation where you can work your way in. You are in or you not in. You’re standing. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re in. And so I was just on his back like a leech and I never let him go.
Lex Fridman (00:35:14): So that’s where the arm bars, that’s where the attacks on the ground, which is called newaza, happens is in the transition. At that level, at that high world-class level?
Neil Adams (00:35:23): Yeah, he was no mug either. I think he just got third place in All Japan Championships, which is all weight categories. So he wasn’t a mug. He was strong. And I’d fought him once before and I knew he was a lefty as well, which was really awkward for me.
Lex Fridman (00:35:42): Did it feel good?
Neil Adams (00:35:43): Better for me than him. It did. It felt amazing. Because it was almost like all these things, disappointments and everything had come to this one point where I was at last champion of the world. It’s everything I said as a kid that I had no idea how difficult it was going to be. So as a kid, as a fourteen-year-old kid, I remember saying, “I’m going to be world champion. I’m going to be the best in the world.” I had no idea how difficult that was going to be.
Lex Fridman (00:36:13): Well there’s wisdom to that. There’s power and stupidity of youth.
Neil Adams (00:36:18): I like that. It is.
Lex Fridman (00:36:19): Yeah. Just I’m going to be a world champ. I’m going to win this without knowing how hard it is. And then once you go after it, you’re trapped. You’re going to have to do the work.
Neil Adams (00:36:30): Yeah, well you see it a lot with parents as well, don’t you? Parents, “Our little Johnny, he’s amazing. And he’s this, that and the other.” And they have no idea what’s out there. I remember the very first time I stepped out, 1974, into the European cadets. And I remember that we were fighting, I only ever fought in Great Britain. I was unbeaten in the juniors, kids. And went out there and there were these different fighters out there that were treating me with total disdain. And I remember thinking, “How dare they?” And I realized when I came back from that event, there’s other people out there. And there are different levels. Majority of people are just not informed as to what’s out there and the different levels that there are out there.
Lex Fridman (00:37:27): Do you remember a certain opponent that for the first time you felt like, “Holy shit.” Somebody just gripped you up and you’re like, “There’s another level to this game.”
Neil Adams (00:37:41): Ezio was one of them. And I fought him and I beat him in the European championships. I beat two times, and then lost him in the Olympic games two months after I’d beaten him in the European championship.
Lex Fridman (00:37:54): Oh wow.
Neil Adams (00:37:55): Yeah. So that made it even more difficult.
Lex Fridman (00:37:55): So that’s literally your nemesis there. Wow.
Neil Adams (00:38:03): So that made it more difficult. And so Ezio was one. And I remember getting hold of Nishida of Japan. And he had me going up and down. And I thought, “Wow, this guy is amazing.” And first time I had ever fought Japanese in a major tournament. And I felt the danger. I always talk about the danger when we go out to Japan to train. I could go probably months without getting thrown in training here in Europe. And go to Japan and everybody’s thrown you. And that’s difficult to accept. And the reason that kind of danger and that kind of feeling of danger is something that puts a real edge on. And so that was the first time. When I got hold of Nishida, “I thought, oh my god. This guy.” It didn’t matter which way he was turning, like that you’d be stretched out. And I thought, “I want to do this.” And then I ended up fighting him again in Japan.
Lex Fridman (00:39:13): So that feeling of danger is really interesting. I’ve did randori with a lot of world-class people from different parts of the world including Ilias Iliadis. And there’s certain parts, like Eastern European judo, you feel like you’re screwed the whole way through. The gripping. You really feel it in the gripping.
Neil Adams (00:39:35): It’s the gripping that does it.
Lex Fridman (00:39:36): But with really good Japanese style, judoka, it’s a terrifying calmness, or at least the experiences that I’ve had. You don’t really feel it in the gripping, you just feel like anywhere you step you’re getting thrown. It’s a different-
Neil Adams (00:39:53): It’s a different thing, isn’t it?
Lex Fridman (00:39:54): It’s a different thing.
Neil Adams (00:39:55): So I mean mine was a mixture. I liked it to be a mixture because the gripping is definitely the key point. So if you get a high level guys that are gripping up, and I always used to put this to the referees when we were doing referee seminars when we first started them. And I’d say, “How many?” Because they would referee to their understanding of the match. So they were penalizing for certain grips that were… So as an ex-athlete, high level I would say, have you ever gripped up with high level? All right, because if you haven’t, you need to do it. Because then you’ll understand why they do certain things with the grips. Because these guys, when somebody grips you and you know you’re going to go. When Iliadis puts his arm over your back, all right. And you know you’re going to go up and over. You know you’re going to go over. That’s it.
Lex Fridman (00:39:55): It’s a cool feeling. It’s like whenever-
Neil Adams (00:39:55): Not for me.
Lex Fridman (00:41:02): I understand. Because it feels way more powerful than it should. It’s weird. I don’t know. You want to attribute it to strength and all that kind of stuff. People say you have immense upper body strength, but it’s probably something else. It’s technique. It’s some kind of weird-
Neil Adams (00:41:16): It’s mix of everything.
Lex Fridman (00:41:17): Just something hardened through lots of battles and randori and that kind of stuff. But it’s cool that humans are able to generate that kind of power. It’s cool.
Neil Adams (00:41:27): When I was ’84 Olympics, but I’m just going to go there now just quickly, but we had a freestyle wrestler. He’s American actually, but he had the English nationality. Noel Loban, his name is. And he competed for Great Britain. He got third place at the Olympics in ’84. We were training at Budokai and he was training. He came to do some judo, and put jacket on. And of course he was training with some of the lower levels and he was really handling himself well. When we did randori, so he did some randori with me, and I immediately thought, “I got to catch you. I got to stop single leg and double leg.” Because he was really quick. So strong as well, 90 something kilos. He’s a big guy.
Neil Adams (00:42:26): I caught his sleeve, immediately caught, and controlled him. And then he couldn’t start. So he said, “I needed to feel the difference.” So then I thought, “I better reciprocate this.” So we did the randori and I throw them a couple of times. He said, “I’m really glad we did that.” So then I said, “I need to feel the difference as well.” So we take the jackets off. So we took the jackets off and he was a nightmare. This guy was a nightmare. And like a monster. He was single legging me. And it was just totally different. So the jacket makes a massive difference. Huge difference to something. And people think it’s just the jacket that we’re wearing, but it isn’t. It’s our only tool actually.
Lex Fridman (00:43:16): Yeah, and it’s a way of establishing control over another body. And it’s a whole art form and a science. And I don’t even know if you understand it really. You understand it subconsciously through time, because there’s so much involved. Because pulling on one part of the jacket pulls other parts of the jacket and the physics of that is probably insane to understand.
Neil Adams (00:43:40): It’s absolutely insane. And then they change the rules for a little while and they changed the rules so that certain grips were not allowed. They only allowed certain amount of time. And there were a lot of penalties from it. And then they had some of the ex-fighters into the referee commission. And so we were pushing for just let them grip. Because that’s our game. That’s what makes us different. So they were on about Teddy Riner. Teddy Riner comes out, takes his sleeve, big arm over the top and then he throws people. So they were saying, “Yeah, but stop…” You can’t stop him doing it. This guy is six foot nine and he is built like Garth. And not only that, he’s skillful as well. And he’s got that mentality of a winner. He has got that mentality of a winner there. He just wins important matches.
Lex Fridman (00:44:41): And he goes over the top of the grip. Where’s that land now in terms of rules over the top? Because those are some of the most epic awesome types of grips. Just over the top, just big grab.
Neil Adams (00:44:53): Yeah, well as long as they throw from it. So they can take any grip as long as you move them and then catch them, action-reaction really. As long as you catch them on the move, then you can do it.
Lex Fridman (00:45:05): So as long as you’re not using it to stall or that kind of stuff.
Neil Adams (00:45:08): Yeah, you can’t block out. So for example, if I’ve got a dominant grip on you, and I just block out and I just stop you attacking me. So then what? I get you three penalties, get you off and you haven’t done an attack. So you’ve got to stop that. You can’t have that.
Lex Fridman (00:45:26): Yeah, definitely. You were the favorite to win the 1984 Olympics, but you got silver. I watched that match several times. You probably have it playing in your head. So there is a nice change of direction by your opponent, German Frank Wieneke.
Neil Adams (00:45:44): Yeah.
Lex Fridman (00:45:45): It was a fake right uchi mata? And then to a left drops seoi-nage. How did that loss feel?
Neil Adams (00:45:56): Devastating is not enough really. Because the strange thing is coming into that Olympics, I was tired. Really tired. So my mental state wasn’t the best. Wasn’t certainly the same as it was coming into the previous. And I remember thinking, “I just need to get this over with, and then I’m going to have a break .and just have a rest.” And that’s totally the wrong attitude. It’s just not good for going into an Olympic games. And so I was coming in there with a different mindset. And I remember every match that I had, I was winning well, but I was winning with a struggle. I’d fought Nowak, of France, who was one of the strongest physically. That was in the quarterfinals.
Neil Adams (00:46:57): I beat Brett Barron by an ippon. I armlocked him. I won my first match by ippon as well. And then Michel Nowak, I was fighting, of France. And I was lucky to win it. I was up, I scored on him. But I was starting to defend and just everything that I talked to you about, and then just about held on. And then I won. So him and I were talking some years afterwards and he said, “I was close, wasn’t I?” “Yeah, but not close enough.” I didn’t mean it, but I had to say it.
Lex Fridman (00:47:37): Of course. Of course.
Neil Adams (00:47:39): And no, he was right. And it was one of those. So it’s through to the semi-final. I fought Lescak, and I fought him in the semi-final of the Worlds as well. I’d never gone time with him. I’d always beaten him fairly easily by ippon. And that went time. So I was just glad to get it done. And I was in the final then against Frank Wieneke of Germany. And I’d beaten Wieneke before, but he was just a young German coming through. And when I started the final, and I started all my techniques just that little bit off. Nothing was coordinated. I can’t really explain why it was just a little bit off. I see it so often now with a lot of the guys that are going for second, third Olympic games. And I see their technique just not quite there and they’re struggling. And I know what they’re going through and I empathize with them.
Lex Fridman (00:48:48): Well it felt like you were dominating that final.
Neil Adams (00:48:50): I dominated it, yeah. I was winning. And actually if it’d gone another minute and a half, it would’ve been all over and I would’ve been Olympic champion. And it would’ve been done. He wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. Because he would’ve fought me really, really well. And we talked about it afterwards. And he said, “It was just a good day for me.” And he knows. He was very respectful. This guy is very respectful.
Lex Fridman (00:49:13): He was surprised almost. Not almost. He was very surprised and celebrating like a surprise [inaudible 00:49:19].
Neil Adams (00:49:19): Jumping up and down. And you can look at that, can’t you go, well it wasn’t ippon. But would I have got it back? I don’t know. I think that actually taking the pressure off, because that was another thing as well. Pressure of being favorite. And I see that with a lot of them. And the great champions, the ones that keep coming through, Krpalek. There’s a guy. He can look very ordinary and then comes to the big tournament and he’ll win it.
Lex Fridman (00:49:52): The tragedy of the Olympic games. You were the favorite. And just like that split moment, you lost it.
Neil Adams (00:49:59): Split moment. Devastating. And lived it, probably not every day, but Niki, my wife will tell you that woken up in sweats. And I think they contributed as well, because I had a period of my life after where I was drinking too much. And I think when I look back, led into that dark period in my life. And I never ever, ever did it go through my mind anything else. But it definitely affected me. And I was on a downward spiral in a lot of different ways.
Neil Adams (00:50:43): And we have an amazing marriage and we have an amazing family, and everything’s great. But I still wake up sometimes and I’ll say, “I’ve just dreamt it.” And it’s the same reoccurring dream where I’m trying to get somewhere and I’m trying to put it right. And I’ve got this chance of putting this Olympic final right. In this dream I’ve got a chance of doing it, but I can’t get there. And the traffic’s stopping me or something stops me. And then I wake up and I’m sweating. And you think, well after all this time that’s not possible. But it is. And it happens.
Lex Fridman (00:51:22): Yeah, in the match itself, there’s that feeling, for me just watching it. You’re going for throws, you’re almost getting there with the throws and it’s almost like he’s going for a crappy uchi mata. And then you’re blocking it. And all of a sudden… That’s the beauty of the Olympics, he finds it in himself to switch, against a favorite, against the great British judoka, just finds the perfect drop seoi-nage.
Neil Adams (00:51:55): Well his team doctor and coach, he came up to me afterwards and said, “I’m just really sorry.” And that’s all they said is, “I’m just really sorry.” They were sorry because the obvious sadness about that. And I went actually, was it three weeks later? The German open? So he had to compete in the German open three weeks later. So I went over to fight him and beat him in the final of the German open. And it didn’t do anything for me. Because it was a much tighter match. He was a lot closer, he had a lot more confidence coming in. So he fought me a lot differently. And then it was me pulling it back and just managing to win in the final. And I thought, “Well it appeased nothing.” Didn’t do anything.
Lex Fridman (00:52:51): When you give your whole life to judo and your love of winning, it’s crazy how much the Olympic games mean.
Neil Adams (00:52:59): It means so much. And I’ve got to say this, and this is honestly, that if I’d have won that Olympic games and it had to change my life into a different direction, which I probably would’ve not competed in the ’88 Olympic games then, all right, so if it had changed my life and then I didn’t meet my wife, and I didn’t have my family that I’ve got now, I wouldn’t swap what I’ve got now for anything.
Lex Fridman (00:53:29): Well, part of the demons that you’ve gotten to know, because of those losses as part of probably the central reason that made you the man you are, a legend of the sport. You could have been not that. Because an gold is just an Olympic gold.
Neil Adams (00:53:47): Yeah. And it is, isn’t it? And I think that there’s a lot of Olympic champions and world champions that win and then are forgotten. And I said to Niki, my wife, I said, “I don’t want to be forgotten and I want to be remembered. So if I’m going to do anything, anything I do, if I’m going to do commentary or whatever it is, coaching, I want to do coaching to a high level. And I want to commentate at a high level.” I remember the first commentary I ever did. It was terrible. And I just thought, “I’ve got to do better than this.” And I thought I need to do it well, and I’ve got to do it professionally.
Lex Fridman (00:54:30): In the book A Game of Throws, you have a chapter titled Lessons in Losing. What are some of the lessons here? What are some of the deeper lessons you’ve pulled out of losing?
Neil Adams (00:54:42): I think great champions are made up of the people that handle it in the right way. And you could say, “Well, I don’t like losing.” And you could throw your dummy out the pram and you can be a bad loser in front of everybody. And actually people pick up on that very, very quickly. You know what it’s like in broadcasting, right?
Lex Fridman (00:55:04): Mm-hmm.
Neil Adams (00:55:04): Somebody Has a bad word to say about somebody, but actually the ones that endear themselves to you are the ones that handle it in the right way, the correct way. It doesn’t mean that you’ve got to like it. I didn’t like it. And I thought that I handled it, certainly in later years, in the right way. And I like to see athletes do it in the right way. And I think it is a make or break situation. It’s not all the contests they win, it’s the one that they lose .and then how they pick themselves up and handle themselves after. So I think that is a big one for me.
Neil Adams (00:55:42): And also I went through obviously a later divorce. And that was difficult on my son, really difficult on Ashley. And then I think that some of that was the fact that I wasn’t drinking all the time, but I was drinking in excess at the wrong times. And I think that that’s what a lot of people do sometimes is that they use it for the wrong reasons. And I used to hear it, I hear it now all the time, and it’s that I need to knock the edge off, and I need to just forget, and you need to be in a fuzzy place for a while. And I had a lot of time in fuzzy place, and I needed to get rid of that. And I needed to clear my head.
Lex Fridman (00:56:32): Where was that place? Some of the lower points in your life that you’ve reached mentally?
Neil Adams (00:56:41): I think definitely the fact that my first marriage didn’t work. And it’s a mix of things between us. So that’s not where I wanted to be at the time. And the effects that it had on my son, and it took a long time for him then to come round and to trust me again, and to have belief. He always had belief in me, but to trust me again. I think that that was low. And I think that when I look back is that a lot of my bad decisions were when I was in that fuzzy haze. And that it got progressively worse.
Neil Adams (00:57:33): That got progressively worse to the degree where it was trying to hide it, and trying to hide how much. And I was a functioning drunk. I think you could probably say that. And I was functioning, I was still training most days, crazily enough. I was training to mask it and cover it. And that was probably my savior, because I remember I said to my wife, I said to Niki, “If I’m a drunk then I’m the fittest drunk in the world.” She said, “Yeah, you probably are, actually.” I was in great condition for a drunk.
Lex Fridman (00:58:16): So the fuzzy haze, where was your mind? Did you have periods of depression?
Neil Adams (00:58:24): I had periods of depression. I can honestly say that my depression wasn’t that bad, although it’s like anything that gives you an up, it gives you an even bigger down, doesn’t it? And so I hated that feeling. And also hated myself for letting it happen. Because I have got this really, it’s a bizarre, I don’t know whether you can call it a power, but I have the ability to be able to say, “Stop.” And that’s what I did in the end. In the end, there was an incident when I was working for Belgium Judo. And there was an incident, it was Christmas, I tell you exactly the day, it was 20th of December. And me and a Belgian coach, we got absolutely hammered. But we were at the wrong place and he got noticed.
Neil Adams (00:59:23): And so I remember they pulled me up in front of this board. And I looked down at these guys and half of them were people I didn’t want to be in that situation with. They’re not people that I respected and they’re not people that I trusted. So I said, “If you’re going to sack me, sack me. But I’ll promise you now that this is it. I’ll stop. I’m just going to stop. I’ve decided.” On the way back in the car I rang Niki up, my wife, and I said, “Whatever you hear…
Neil Adams (01:00:00): I rang Nikki up, my wife, and I said, “Whatever you hear now, whatever, I’m just going to stop.” That was it, stopped.
Lex Fridman (01:00:10): You just saw the moment and said, “Stop.”
Neil Adams (01:00:14): Stop.
Lex Fridman (01:00:15): So that fuzzy place, what advice could you give to people about how to overcome that dark place, the depression, whether it has to do with drinking or not.
Neil Adams (01:00:26): I think if it’s to do with drinking, all I can say is that the two days or a week into not drinking, you’ll feel different. It’ll make a physical difference and you’ll like that physical difference. And then from a mental perspective as well, because I think that you have a massive downer. And I think that that must be because of drugs as well because I had a situation with my brother, he was professional wrestling and the drugs was an element there. So I’d never touched a drug or even seen one in my life. But I’d let the alcohol side go too far and then decided never to do that. So then I guess I had people ringing me up saying, “How can we stop?” When they say, “Can I have a word? Can I discuss something with you?” And I know then what they want to discuss with me. And the thing is that I would say, if you stop, then feel the effects of it and it will make a difference to your everyday life. And that will make a massive difference.
Neil Adams (01:01:49): And I think about anybody who is down all the time is to find the cause of what’s pushing you down. You know what I mean? And try and attack that. Somebody once said to me, they said, “Whatever you got, we’ve got something special.” We have a great life and I’ve had a great competition record. It could have been better, but it was great. But I’ve had success with my business and we’re still out there and we have great life. We travel all the world. There’s people out there that would live in your house at the drop of a hat, wherever you are. They drive your car no matter what car it is. Some people haven’t got a car. And whatever food you’re having and you’re moaning about food, somebody out there that would take that and gladly eat that. All right? So there’s always somebody worse off than you. And I think that we tend to sometimes look at the things that we haven’t got rather than the things we have got.
Lex Fridman (01:02:59): Yeah, it’s a skill probably just to be grateful for the things you have. Exactly as you said. Sometimes the little things like food and cars and all that kind of stuff, just to have gratitude for. And family, all this kind of stuff. But it’s still, having talked to a bunch of Olympic athletes, when you give so much of your life to winning and then you lose, sometimes even when you win. But when you lose, at the very top, it’s a tough, tough, tough thing to go through.
Neil Adams (01:03:37): The most difficult thing I think for anybody is when they have to decide when to stop.
Lex Fridman (01:03:42): Yeah, yeah.
Neil Adams (01:03:46): All of a sudden, and I see the ones that are going second Olympic games and then third Olympic and the ones that are there and they’re holding on and they’re in their 30s now, different to when they were 19 years of age, thirty-something is different to 19. What are you going to do afterwards? And then how do you become just a normal person? You’re never going to be a normal person, as such. But I think you’ve got to do normal things. I remember the first time that when I finished competition, I had good sponsors. This was 40 years ago, but I had two really good sponsorships, vitamin company and also a judogi company. And I had a car. Do you know, I had money. And I was going all over the world. I was successful. And then I stopped. And they took everything back. They took my car and they did it within two weeks as well. They stopped my funding. And the vitamin company said, “Thank you very much. It’s been a great. We’ve done well by you. Bye-bye.”
Lex Fridman (01:04:55): This was after your last Olympics?
Neil Adams (01:04:57): ’88 Olympics.
Lex Fridman (01:04:58): Yeah, in ’88.
Neil Adams (01:04:59): When that finished and then that was it. And then it’s right, okay. First time I had to go in there and buy a tracksuit and a pair of training shoes. Wow.
Lex Fridman (01:05:09): Yeah, those are difficult, sitting there in the evening by yourself.
Neil Adams (01:05:13): So you go from seven days a week or six days a week going into the gym and you’re working out the dojo and then you don’t have to do it. And that’s why you get a lot of, when they finish competition, they finish that 30 to 40. Ilias is still doing it now. He’s still in there and he still, because he can, right? And it’s natural. And I did exactly the same. And then, like I say, you just get to an age and you just think, well, I just going to take a step back,
Lex Fridman (01:05:47): Which is why there’s certain athletes like Ryoko Tani never stops. It just dominates for 14 years, probably one of the winning-est athletes in Judo. Seven-time world champ, two-time Olympic champ, medaled at five Olympics. So it’s always impressive when you…
Neil Adams (01:06:06): Never stopped.
Lex Fridman (01:06:07): Never stopped. So that’s an option if you’re the greatest ever.
Neil Adams (01:06:12): It’d be interesting, wouldn’t it, just to see what they’re doing now. Because at some stage you have to get a normal…
Lex Fridman (01:06:17): You do have to stop.
Neil Adams (01:06:18): You have to stop at some stage. You have to decide what you’re going to do. It’s either into coaching, the Judo is either to coaching or if you’re not in coaching, then it’s into something to do with the media. And I was lucky that it was just by accident really with the commentary. Somebody said, “Would you do a voiceover?” So I did this voiceover and that was back in 1982, I did that.
Lex Fridman (01:06:49): So you’ve been commentating since 1982.
Neil Adams (01:06:52): I did some voiceovers, I wouldn’t call it commentating, but I did some voiceovers. We did some different European championships, world championship events. And I did the voiceovers for it. The way that it was done that it was more narration. And so it turned into, then somebody asked me to do an event and when you listen to the intonation of the voice and stuff like that, it wasn’t like it is now. I guess that’s just something that developed, because then it was coming from the heart. I started to get excited and just do my thing. And it was just me really. It’s just my style.
Lex Fridman (01:07:34): Well, I’ve listened to your commentary from a while back. I don’t know if it’s the ’80s, but it’s still there.
Neil Adams (01:07:40): I think it’s timing as well, isn’t it? It’s like you get your timing a bit better and know when to go in, when to come out, when to say something, when not. I think that in the early days I tended to want to talk all the time and you don’t have to do that.
Lex Fridman (01:07:59): So knowing when to shut up.
Neil Adams (01:08:01): That’s the key, isn’t it?
Lex Fridman (01:08:02): Yeah, part of the drama is in the silence, building up to the setup and the throw and all that kind of stuff. But also you’re very good at, while radiating passion, being very precise and specific about the details of the throw and the setup and why something worked and didn’t.
Neil Adams (01:08:22): I think there’s two kinds of commentating. You can commentate what you see and then you commentate what people can’t see. And so if you’ve got somebody that is not really understanding of what’s happening in the inner part of the game, so it might be a technical thing or it might be the tactical part of the play here that’s going on. And if you can introduce that, as well, then you’ve got an advantage.
Lex Fridman (01:08:50): Quick pause. I need a bathroom break.=
Neil Adams (01:08:52): Okay. Good stuff.
Lex Fridman (01:08:54): So we just took a little break and went to Judotv.com, which is, I guess, an IGF website. IGF is the organization behind a lot of the big judo events in the world. And I just signed up, you should sign up, too. It’s great.
Neil Adams (01:09:09): Absolutely, sign up. Cheaper the price, cheaper the price.
Lex Fridman (01:09:14): And you can watch basically any match from the Grand Slams and going back through history, I guess.
Neil Adams (01:09:20): Yeah, I’ve got to say Lex, I mean everybody. Still people saying to me, “We need more judo on television.” They’ve got judo on television every other week that they can access. All of the top people in all the top events and it costs $100 a year to access everything. And they can play all the videos. I mean we’ve just accessed this here, the Paris tournament, and we’re going to have a look at Teddy Riner. It’s cheap at the price.
Lex Fridman (01:09:51): We’re now in Paris Grand Slam 2024. Teddy Riner final. By the way, super cool. You click on the draw. You can just look at any of the matches. You can go at the bottom of the finals, you can go…
Neil Adams (01:10:05): To anyone.
Lex Fridman (01:10:06): Any one of them. That’s so cool. That’s really well done. Really well done interface. Anyway, let me first ask the ridiculous big question. Who do you think is the greatest of all time? Is Teddy Riner in the running?
Neil Adams (01:10:17): He’s the greatest judo winner of all time. Of that, there’s no doubt. I think if you asked him whether he was the greatest judo man in the world of all time, he would say, “No, I’m not.” And he’s not the greatest judo man. There are people with more beautiful judo in some ways, although he’s got great technique. But he is the ultimate winner.
Lex Fridman (01:10:47): 10-time world champ, two-time gold medalist in the Olympics. I guess two-time bronze medalist. He’s going to Paris?
Neil Adams (01:10:57): Yeah.
Lex Fridman (01:10:57): He’s going after it again. So he’s right here.
Neil Adams (01:11:00): He’s right there. This is just a couple of months ago. And then last week, last week he was out again and he won again.
Lex Fridman (01:11:07): You think he gets gold medal this time?
Neil Adams (01:11:09): There’s people getting closer to him, right? He’s, obviously, age-wise and the amount of time that he’s been there, he’s obviously somebody that he’s starting not quite at his best as he was when he was younger. But like I say, he still puts it on the line. He lays it on the line every single time. And then not only does he lay it on the line, but he beats them all. And last week he just beat Saito who was a young up-and-coming Japanese fighter and he beat him in the final. It was close and he did well. There are certain people, the smaller ones, actually, not the taller ones because, like we were saying about the big arm over the top that he likes and the dominant grip that he likes, there are people that can give him a hard time. Now if at the Olympic Games he has two or three of those on the trot, it might work against him.
Neil Adams (01:12:05): It’s by no means an absolute certainty that he’s going to win the Olympic gold medal. But he’s got to be one of the favorites, top favorite. No matter what happens now, Teddy Riner is the greatest winner, and if you asked the great Yamashita, he would say the same. There’s nobody that’s, and Yamashita was unbeaten in international competition. I trained with Yamashita a lot over a two-year period and got to know him quite well. And he was one of the greatest of all times. For me, he was one of the greatest Judo men. I’m talking about from a technical point of view, from a spectacular judo point of view, understanding the fundamental principles of how techniques work. Sometimes having different techniques that work for you. So if one doesn’t work and one particular direction doesn’t work, you can change the direction completely.
Lex Fridman (01:13:04): In case people don’t know, Yamashita has this legendary judoka heavyweight. Teddy Riner heavyweight, that’s plus 100 kg.
Neil Adams (01:13:13): He would’ve caused him all sorts of problems.
Lex Fridman (01:13:15): Oh yeah, that’s cool. Who do you think wins? Yamashita?
Neil Adams (01:13:18): Yes, I think Yamashita.
Lex Fridman (01:13:21): Whoa, whoa, whoa. You think Yamashita beats Teddy Riner?
Neil Adams (01:13:24): I think so.
Lex Fridman (01:13:26): Strong words. You think so. You think so. Yamashita is on the shorter side, right?
Neil Adams (01:13:32): Yeah, and he finds it more difficult with shorter people. It would’ve been a very interesting confrontation. And I think if you asked Yamashita, he would probably say that Teddy Riner, he’s very gracious. He’s really gracious. It would be really good. It would’ve been an unbelievable matchup. And I’ve got to say this, that Teddy Riner is the greatest winner of all time.
Lex Fridman (01:14:03): Competition wise. It’s interesting. Both of them, maybe you can correct me, but have this Osoto Gari, which is kind of trip that I never understood.
Neil Adams (01:14:14): Yeah.
Lex Fridman (01:14:16): It is a very tricky thing to do, right? It’s very easy to do maybe as a white belt. You roll in. You can understand. But to do it at the high, high, high level?
Neil Adams (01:14:27): You see any of the top guys now, especially if they’re second time out. So they might catch somebody by surprise. They come out and they go, bang. And you go, “That was amazing.” But if they fought again 10 minutes later, you go, “You’re not going to catch me with that.” You’ve got a different situation here. And so it’s slightly different. But the best fighters adapt like that. And they’re able to see a situation, feel the situation, and they attack once and then go again and attack second, third time. And in the third time they make it work>
Lex Fridman (01:15:06): Both Yamashita and Teddy Riner with the Osoto Gari, they’ll just hit it over and over in the match.
Neil Adams (01:15:11): Yeah, sometimes it’ll hit first time and it won’t go. And then you make a readjustment of the way in. It’s a little bit like, I mean, if you take a really easy way of understanding it is that if we’re shooting at a target and all of a sudden you start moving that target, it’s different hitting a moving target. But it’s also different hitting a moving target that’s trying to hit you as well. And that’s our game. So we are not only trying to throw a moving target, we’re trying to throw a moving target that’s trying to throw us. So it makes it even more difficult.
Lex Fridman (01:15:45): Yeah, there’s a few folks who, you know what’s coming. It’s over and over and over it’s the same attack. Anyway, with this uchi mata it’s different. It’s different. There’s not many people like that where it’s the same attack. I mean there’s other attacks also, but they’ll just go after the same thing over and over and over.
Neil Adams (01:16:05): When I watch great athletes, most of them can throw over both flanks, not always going left and right, though our sport always, the cat are always demonstrated left and right. If you demonstrate, if you do something on one side, then can you demonstrate it on the other side? Right? Okay. So can you do it equally? No, but you’ll do it differently on the other side. So when I’m teaching, I don’t teach left and right. If I was teaching you to do a technique, first thing I’d do is say, “I need you to take the sleeve under lapel.” All right?
Neil Adams (01:16:46): So I’d let you decide what was left and right. Okay? Because often what happens is we impart on people whether they’re going to be left or right when we start teaching. You get a lot of teachers do that all. And they’ll say, immediately, “What do you write with? Left or right hand?” And it’s no indicator actually as to how we do judo because I’m left-handed and I do more predominantly right-handed because I lead off my strongest hand. And actually most people do. So actually left and right is a bit of a trap sometimes when we’re teaching. Better to get, because we can go… My point was, is that a lot of people can go both flanks, so they’ll do something over this side and something over this side.
Lex Fridman (01:17:32): But anyway, he was one-sided?
Neil Adams (01:17:36): He was one-sided, but he could switch it. So he had a seoi nage as well on the other side so he could switch it if he had to.
Lex Fridman (01:17:42): Interesting. And by the way, your opponent in ’84, was he righty or lefty?
Neil Adams (01:17:50): He was a righty.
Lex Fridman (01:17:51): So that drop left seoi, where did that come from?
Neil Adams (01:17:55): Well, I mean again, he could have probably in other contests, he’d hit me with it several times and I’ve just stopped it. Just at the wrong place at the right time for him. Right place in the wrong time for me. Right?
Lex Fridman (01:18:10): That’s life. Yeah.
Neil Adams (01:18:10): Yeah.
Lex Fridman (01:18:12): All right, let’s watch some Teddy Riner.
Neil Adams (01:18:17): This is final of Paris tournament. And this is against the Korean. The Korean had had a great day, actually.
Lex Fridman (01:18:29): Again, shorter.
Neil Adams (01:18:31): Again, shorter. So he does find that difficult. Have a look at Teddy Riner. Teddy Riner will try and catch the sleeve. He’s after the sleeve and then the right arm over the top. That’s the key point for Teddy Riner. And of course, what he has done, if he can’t always catch the big Osoto Gari over, his right-hand side, he’s been doing something to the opposite side.
Lex Fridman (01:19:01): The Korean just went for a drop sail and Teddy Riner blocked with the hips.
Neil Adams (01:19:12): A big boy has difficulty always against somebody smaller dropping with the seoi nages.
Lex Fridman (01:19:19): Has Teddy Riner ever been thrown for ippon?
Neil Adams (01:19:22): I’ve never seen his thrown ippon, but he was thrown last week for a nice technique and he’s being caught more and more.
Lex Fridman (01:19:29): So it’s getting close.
Neil Adams (01:19:30): And Tasoev, in the final of the world championships, they had a strange situation there where Tasoev was a technique down and then pulled off a counter. And they didn’t count it, but then they overruled it. Unfortunately, I was commentating at the time and I went for a score for Tasoev. Anyway, they overruled it and then they awarded a second gold medal to Tasoev.
Lex Fridman (01:20:01): What can you say about Tamerlan Bashaev who also gave him trouble?
Neil Adams (01:20:06): Yeah, Bashaev and Tasoev are the two that could possibly go to the Olympics. That was a close one there from Riner, that was closest that he’d actually been there.
Lex Fridman (01:20:16): Oh, wow.
Neil Adams (01:20:18): Didn’t have the sleeve and he relies on the sleeve, greatly. Big support there in the French, in the crowd.
Lex Fridman (01:20:26): And also maybe can you explain the penalties for stalling?
Neil Adams (01:20:31): Yeah, so if they don’t attack, if they’ve got a grip and they’ve got sleeve, lapel, or they’ve got two hands on. If they’re too passive and they don’t attack. If they’ve got dominant sleeve grip, they don’t attack. That was quite close as well from the Koreans. So the Korean here, you can see, is having a real go. The penalties will come if they don’t attack at the right time. Step outside the yellow area, they’ll get penalized as well.
Lex Fridman (01:20:56): That’s dedication for…
Neil Adams (01:20:59): Absolutely. I mean it was really close, wasn’t it? They nice little kouchi gari there from the Korean. And if they touch below the belt line with the arms, they’re not allowed to grab the legs. They’ve stopped grabbing the legs.
Lex Fridman (01:21:16): Wow. The Koreans really going.
Neil Adams (01:21:17): The Koreans having a real good go at it.
Lex Fridman (01:21:20): I guess every single person in that division is probably training for Teddy Riner, right?
Neil Adams (01:21:24): You think that Teddy Riner has been there a long time and he’s got another guy here in the final of the Paris tournament. He’s got 18,000 people watching him. They’re all on Teddy Riner’s side. They want him to win. And the Korean’s out there on his own with his coach.
Lex Fridman (01:21:39): But also the pressure on Teddy Riner.
Neil Adams (01:21:43): Amazing pressure. We interviewed him after this and he said, “I’ve got pressure. People go, well, is he going to do it at the Olympic Games? Can I do it in Paris?” He wanted to go to Paris. I mean really, the last Olympic Games should have been it, shouldn’t it? The last should have been the final one. But he’s gone, “No, I’ve got to do another four years.” Two penalties are on the board already for the Korean. That Korean is really having a great go on Teddy Riner.
Lex Fridman (01:22:11): He’s got a bit of a lift on him. He’s going after it.
Neil Adams (01:22:14): He’s really going after it. It’s an amazing effort there from the Korean. And he’s getting some last minute information. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his coach, stood next to him like that. But it’s amazing. He’s six foot six and he’s about four foot six. He’s a real pitch.
Lex Fridman (01:22:34): Full of passion. I love it. He’s screaming.
Neil Adams (01:22:37): Golden score.
Lex Fridman (01:22:38): How does golden score work? Can you say?
Neil Adams (01:22:40): So the golden score, if it goes without any point on the board from a throw or a hold down or arm lock strangle, then it goes into golden score. So two shidos on the board a piece, one more mistake now and it’s going to be all over. And that’s it.
Neil Adams (01:22:57): Teddy Riner just manages to turn it on the Korean. And that went really against the run of play, didn’t it? The Korean did better. But Teddy Riner is a winner. And he says, “Right, okay, let’s have more cheering.”
Lex Fridman (01:23:15): Finds a way to score in the…
Neil Adams (01:23:18): And I have to say, that even when he loses, he’s always graceful. He doesn’t like it, but he’s graceful.
Lex Fridman (01:23:25): Yeah, there was so much love there. Celebration. It’s great. It’s great to see. It’s great that he’s doing it again, going after it. Chasing the gold medal again.
Neil Adams (01:23:33): Well, he’s chasing the gold medal. It’s going to be in Paris, which is going to be even more fantastic. He’s already the greatest. You said, “What has he got to do to be the greatest?” He’s already the greatest competitor Judo’s ever known. And that was even with the great Tani. Tani was amazing, as well.
Lex Fridman (01:23:56): Are you part of the commentating team for Paris?
Neil Adams (01:23:58): I’m part of the commentating team, but it won’t be for IJF because it’s independent broadcast.
Lex Fridman (01:24:03): Have you ever had an athlete come up to you and ask, “Why’d you say that?” Or disagree with your commentary?
Neil Adams (01:24:12): I’ve got to say that 99.9% of everybody is so grateful that I’ve commentated their fights all the way through. They know if they’ve messed up. So if I say something and I’m never disparaging, really disparaging, but what I will say is, “It was a great throw by the other guy. Or it was a great match.” And if they made a mistake, so if they walk out, they know that I will say something that will mean something. Nobody really moans about it. I try and talk the truth, if I can.
Lex Fridman (01:24:49): So who else would you consider as some of the greats? So I personally, just because I love the seoi nage, Koga. So there’s the number of times you won the world championships and the Olympic Games, but there’s also how you won and how you wanted to fight and what you did. It’s not necessarily about getting gold medals, it’s about how you fought and how you represent the sport. There’s certain athletes, like Inoue and Iliadis, that are going after the big throws.
Neil Adams (01:25:21): Only after they want to win by ippon. And I think that that’s the difference is they’re the ones that come out there and it’s a bit like when Tyson stepped out there, you knew what you were going to get. And if they went toe-to-toe, if Tyson had somebody going toe-to-toe, somebody was going to get knocked out. We got the same in Judo, when people go head-to-head and it’s an open match and I often talk about an open match, I say, “It’s an open match. They’re both trying to score. Somebody is going to get scored on. Somebody’s going to go.” And that makes it exciting. When they come out and they close up, then that’s not an exciting match.
Lex Fridman (01:26:02): Is there a case for Ono? Shohei Ono, three-time world champ, two-time gold medalist?
Neil Adams (01:26:09): I think that judo-wise, he’s got to be one of the greatest because he had such versatility. He could go right and he could go left. He could pick up. He could go to the ground as well. He won a lot of his earlier matches on the ground. I think his empathy and how he presents himself, sometimes he falls down. I think that hopefully that should come with tutoring and how to be a great champion after. It’s not just about what you do on the mat, but what you do off the mat as well.
Lex Fridman (01:26:47): To you a great champion is the whole package of how you present yourself when you lose? How you represent yourself just off the mat?
Neil Adams (01:26:55): Yeah, I think it’s how you present yourself afterwards, how you are with people, how much you can help people. I mean, people, kids, and they look up to these great champions because they want to be like them. So the worst thing is when you get somebody that’s a bit of an ass and they’re not presenting themselves in the right way. So I like to see somebody presenting themselves in the right way. And I think that it’s something that can be taught. It’s something that normally comes with a little bit of experience and a little bit of age. I like to think that I’m a little bit different now than I was when I was 19. Not that I was bad, I just think I was just, I see it often now, just full of beans.
Lex Fridman (01:27:40): You’re a beautiful work in progress. What about Nomura, Tadahro Nomura, three-time gold medalist?
Neil Adams (01:27:50): Never lost an Olympic fight.
Lex Fridman (01:27:52): There’s something there.
Neil Adams (01:27:54): Yeah, nobody ever done that. You know what I mean? So that’s got to be, it has to stand. He took two years off in between every Olympic Games and came back, did the right amount of events to qualify for not only did he having to qualify, he had to qualify through Japan. Now Japan, remember, have got the greatest depth. So they got people coming through all the time. And then he had to win the Japanese trials. I mean we had a four-time world champion from Japan.
Neil Adams (01:28:25): This is when World Championships was every other year. And this is Shozo Fujii and he was the greatest middleweight of all time and never got to participate in the Olympics because he lost the Japanese trials twice, in two Olympic possibilities. He had to qualify for Japan and then go to the Olympic Games and then do it there. Sometimes some of the best people in Japan can’t get outside of Japan. Look at the situation they had with Abe and then they had Maruyama. Maruyama and Abe were both the best. By far. In the under-66 kilos category. This is for the last Olympic Games. And they sent one to the world Championships one to the Olympic Games and they both won gold medals.
Lex Fridman (01:29:21): Yeah, that’s why the all Japan Championships is legendary, that there’s these battles with Dimash and all of them.
Neil Adams (01:29:32): Abe and Maruyama, they had trials in the Kodokan. It was 26 minutes, I think it was 26 minutes, it went. They were battling it out for 26 minutes.
Lex Fridman (01:29:45): That’s great. If we can just go to, you’ve trained in Japan. What are those randoris like? What’s that training like?
Neil Adams (01:29:54): I touched on the danger. That danger of being thrown, when you get hold of somebody or somebody gets hold of you. And I often reflect-
Neil Adams (01:30:00): Hold of somebody or somebody gets hold of you. I often reflect, and I often talk about it when I’m commentating because I can see immediately… It’s easy, isn’t it? In the commentary chair, or if you’re in the coach’s chair and you don’t really understand totally, absolutely what’s going on when somebody’s being out-gripped. When they’re in danger of being thrown, if you are in danger of being thrown, the first thing you do is stick your backside out and defend by not being in the position they want you to be in. All right? So that’s danger. You feel the danger. So in Japan, that was the place I used to go to train because I felt the danger, and so my defenses would be heightened. One Olympic cycle, I went two years, two months without having a score on me in any competition.
Neil Adams (01:31:03): Then I went to one competition in the European Championships, which I won, and I was struggling all the way through it and got scored on three times in my first pool of fights, and I was devastated. I actually nearly lost the whole competition because I was more mortified about being scored on three times when I hadn’t been scored on for 2 1/2 years. I had this thing in my head about 2 1/2 years, and then all of a sudden I’m not unbeatable and you go… I almost lost it, completely lost it. Just so fortunate, couple of things went my way and just came out, and I scraped and scratched my way to the final and won the final well, all right? But that was my best match, but I almost lost it.
Lex Fridman (01:31:57): Well, what do you do with the fact that if you go to Japan and you’re getting, you’re saying danger, you’re probably getting-
Neil Adams (01:32:02): Getting thrown.
Lex Fridman (01:32:03): Getting thrown in Japan. What does that do to your ego?
Neil Adams (01:32:06): Well, again, that was a winning ego that had to adapt. I remember we went to the kasejo, which police dojo one time, and they created this groundwork competition because they wanted to see me do the jiu-ji, how I went in and-
Lex Fridman (01:32:06): The arm bar.
Neil Adams (01:32:28): Yeah, the arm bar, right? They wanted to see how I did it from underneath or over the top, and they just created this event.
Lex Fridman (01:32:35): Studied the creature.
Neil Adams (01:32:36): Yeah, they started it and then winner stays on competition was happening at the kasejo. So I did about seven, I think it was seven in, and then my coach came in and said, “No, it’s finished. That’s it now, it’s finished.” Suddenly we realized what was going on and I was going, “No, no, no, no, don’t stop it like that.” And it was one of those moments where the boot was on my foot, you could say, rather than the other side, the other way.
Neil Adams (01:33:09): Because I had been to Japan in situation… I remember as a sixteen-year-old, I got such such a drumming from one of the Japanese guys, older students. And he had a gold tooth. And so he was Gold Tooth to me and he was my nightmare. And I remember kept coming out to fight him because he kept throwing me and I was crying and I was upset and I was like… And then that was another occasion where I got dragged away and I said, “No.” So I wanted to go back and fight him. And I went back to the same dojo every year to fight him. He was on my mind morning, noon, night. He was on my mind.
Lex Fridman (01:33:57): Gold Tooth was on your mind.
Neil Adams (01:33:58): Gold tooth was on my mind.
Lex Fridman (01:33:59): Did you ever get him?
Neil Adams (01:34:01): Two years later. Two years to me from 16 to 18 was totally different. 18 years of age I was pretty competitive with him. And it was like I was standing up with him. 19, he was in the groundwork competition.
Lex Fridman (01:34:20): And that’s when the switch happened.
Neil Adams (01:34:22): Switch happened. Because I just, well, because I remember getting the arm lock and didn’t put it on immediately. I needed it to last. It had to last.
Lex Fridman (01:34:34): Sure. It had to last.
Neil Adams (01:34:35): So I spread, the whole thing lasted as long as I could possibly get it. And it was a long memory as I was looking down at him.
Lex Fridman (01:34:45): And now he has nightmares about you.
Neil Adams (01:34:47): Now he has-
Lex Fridman (01:34:47): I wonder what nickname he has for you.
Neil Adams (01:34:49): I don’t know, I’m hoping that he remembers me.
Lex Fridman (01:34:53): He has a photo of you.
Neil Adams (01:34:54): Do you know what? He probably doesn’t say, just bat an eyelid, doesn’t say a thing about it.
Lex Fridman (01:35:01): I mean, can you just speak to that training with those folks? You said crying, just the frustration of being thrown. It’s such a beautiful part of the process of becoming great.
Neil Adams (01:35:16): Yeah, I think it is just something that doesn’t happen at this level. We were talking about levels and then at this level it never happened. And then I went out in my first European cadet and all of a sudden I wasn’t this top guy. I was in the mix. And then I had to work myself to the top of that mix and then to the top of the next one because I went to the European Senior Championships.
Neil Adams (01:35:45): And again, you’re not the top and you’ve worked your way to the top of that. I think it is a frustration, but I think it’s that kind of hatred of losing and also being out of control. I think that the first Senior European Championships I fought Nevzorov, but he was only one of my contests. Then I had to fight a Frenchman for third place. But he totally out-gripped me. And I remember I was more upset though I won the contest, I was more upset that he totally out… He did out-grip me and I was more upset. And then I fought him a year later and out-gripped him. All right. So it was one of those, it was a learning process all the way through.
Lex Fridman (01:36:36): That frustration is like, whatever that does to your soul, the building up afterwards is what actually makes you better. It’s fascinating. And do you think there’s, in Japan, just killers there that the world doesn’t know about, that just-
Neil Adams (01:36:56): Yeah, there’s world champions in the dojo. There’s people that never make it out. I remember we were training and everybody that goes to Japan, all my friends that have been world Olympic champions, they all know what I’m talking about. They know exactly what I’m saying, is that when we go to the dojos there, we all get thrown by people that never come out to be world champions. They’re just in the mix or they’re going through three years of university and then they go. We had a guy that came in, he was a business guy. He came in with his suitcase and his briefcase like that. He’s got his tie up like that. So he decides he’s going to come in and he gets changed and he’s in his lunch hour, he’s in his lunch hour, so it’s got to be quick. So he comes in and he goes through, he’s working his way through the whole of the British team. We’re all lined up. So he’s just working his way through the whole of the British team. And I knew it was my turn next.
Lex Fridman (01:38:01): In his lunch hour.
Neil Adams (01:38:01): So I get hold of him and I throw him immediately. And then it was what we were talking about when it happens in the first few seconds of the practice. So then I had four minutes of him coming at me and I’m going up into the air and I’m twisting off. And then everybody’s laughing at the side of the mat or the whole British team. He’s gone through the whole British team and then 10 minutes later he’s tying his tie up like that. And back to work like that. Imagine him sitting behind his desk at his computer.
Lex Fridman (01:38:37): Yeah. Yeah.
Neil Adams (01:38:40): I’m glad he didn’t get out.
Lex Fridman (01:38:44): Hopefully he listens to this.
Neil Adams (01:38:46): Hopefully.
Lex Fridman (01:38:48): Anybody else I didn’t mention as part of the greats that just kind of jumped-
Neil Adams (01:38:51): Kashiwazaki Sensei is my favorite of all favorites. He is what I would call a judo genius. I don’t know if you can get him up here. Can we get him up?
Lex Fridman (01:38:52): Yeah.
Neil Adams (01:39:06): So go into 1981 World Championships and I’ll talk you through the great Kashiwazaki. He was one year in Great Britain and he was a guy that was so much a genius… So you want the final of the under 60, 65 kilograms. There. The one at the top. This is him. He’s two weight categories below my weight category that I won the World championships. Same year I won it. So I’m not sure if this is going to show his final of-
Lex Fridman (01:39:45): This is a highlight.
Neil Adams (01:39:46): Oh, watch this. This he did in the-
Lex Fridman (01:39:46): What?
Neil Adams (01:39:50): Final of the World-
Lex Fridman (01:39:52): For people just listening, he did an incredible sacrifice throw.
Neil Adams (01:39:56): And then he was on top for the newaza, and renowned for his groundwork and he was on top of… Against a really strong Romanian guy, so his transition was just phenomenal.
Lex Fridman (01:40:11): Yeah, let me go back and look at that, what just happened?
Neil Adams (01:40:14): So he’s just showing you… So he does this koji thing just to create space and it’s his follow through into groundwork that is best of all. And then the Romanian, really strong, like I say, he’d gone all the way through to the final of the world championships, winning most by ippon I think, the Romanian. And he’s defending really, really well here. And you can see how persistent, he knows exactly what he wants. He’s just got to get his leg out. Now watch, he tied the arm up and then he’ll pull the top leg towards him and then he’ll push the bottom one off-
Lex Fridman (01:40:56): Always working.
Neil Adams (01:40:56): With both feet. Always working, always working. Readjust the balance. Still one leg trapped. Final of the World Championships. Good referee because he’s refereeing something here that’s happening that’s going to decide as to whether, so he doesn’t call it to stand it up at all. Watch him pull the top one now and he’ll push the bottom one.
Lex Fridman (01:41:19): There’s a calmness on his face, which is great to see.
Neil Adams (01:41:22): Calm. Pushes the bottom leg, leg out, job done. All finished. This is him again, watch this. This is another technique that he does.
Lex Fridman (01:41:33): The sacrifice.
Neil Adams (01:41:34): And then just again, sacrifice directly in, directly into the newaza.
Lex Fridman (01:41:40): Transition is everything, isn’t it?
Neil Adams (01:41:42): In judo.
Lex Fridman (01:41:43): Yeah. Well, in anything really, but judo it especially pays off.
Neil Adams (01:41:49): Yeah, I mean because we haven’t got that long. I mean we had more time here, they’ve just brought more time back. So we’ve got more time to transition in and to get the situation that we want and to get the attacking situation that we want. Because I remember I was teaching in America to some jiu-jitsu guys, and they were saying, “Oh, we’d never give you our back.” And I said, “With judo rules, certain situations it happens that when we try and do throws where we’re facing away from our opponent.” So for example, seonages, if they fail, then the back is there and that’s how we get the back. And it’s a different situation than going on your back in the guard situation. Totally different.
Lex Fridman (01:42:38): Well, Travis Stevens, I don’t know how familiar you are with his judo, but he’s a really interesting example. He competed at the highest level in Jiu-Jitsu as well. And his idea, he’s a big seonage guy, and he basically threw all of that away.
Neil Adams (01:42:38): In the jiu-jitsu ?
Lex Fridman (01:42:55): In the jiu-jitsu . He took the sport from scratch for what it is. So he almost never did a standing seonages at all in jiu-jitsu.
Neil Adams (01:43:07): No, because it would leave his back all the time if it failed. But he wouldn’t have the same kind of grip on the Judo gi or the jiu-jitsu gi. A little bit different.
Lex Fridman (01:43:20): And so you have to kind of consider the sport, the art of it, and also the competitors, the styles and the culture of the sport. If you want to win, if winning is the most important thing, then like, “All right, well, let’s-“
Neil Adams (01:43:31): But you learn the game, don’t you? And that’s what he did. He learned the game. And I think that is credit to him. And that’s why I was saying about wrestling, the wrestlers, I mean, good to learn the judo and for what it is and the mechanics and how it works. And then learn the wrestling. I mean, I do the commentary as well for the freestyle, and I will be at the Olympics for the freestyle and the Greco-Roman. And I love the freestyle, absolutely love it. But freestyle is freestyle. Judo is judo. I like to see people doing judo.
Lex Fridman (01:44:05): Yeah, but there’s a rhyme to the whole combat thing. They’re all, I mean, the body mechanics, it’s all fascinating echoes of each other in interesting ways. The details are different, but there’s still two humans clashing.
Neil Adams (01:44:24): Yeah, we’ve got some amazing crossovers with people like the Mongolians that have come in, with the Georgians. The Georgians do massive pickups and different techniques. And if you ask the fighters whether grabbing the legs, a lot of them would say some of the wrestling styles, the Georgians and the Mongolians might say, “Yeah, I’d like to be able to take the legs.” But a lot of them just adapted. You get Iliadis, for example, he just adapted. So he thought, “Well, I’ll take my arm over the top and I’ll just rip them out the floor that way.” You know what I mean?
Lex Fridman (01:45:05): They’re still doing the big lifts, they’re still doing the big gripping, but they just don’t grab below the legs. It’s weird. They figured it out.
Neil Adams (01:45:14): And they figured it out like that.
Lex Fridman (01:45:16): Yeah, you would think it’d take a long time. No, it was like a month.
Neil Adams (01:45:20): Yeah. No, exactly.
Lex Fridman (01:45:23): The highest level, which is crazy. So you mentioned jiu-jitsu a little bit. What to you is an interesting difference between jiu-jitsu and judo that you’ve observed? Because you’re one of the greatest ever on the ground in judo. And so jiu-jitsu is primarily focused on similar type of stuff on the ground. So what to you is an interesting difference there?
Neil Adams (01:45:49): They’re a different approach, different timescale to them, and they have a different way in. So [inaudible 01:45:57] ours comes from a standing position directly in, we’ve got a timescale on it so we have to, like the catch, I always talk about the catch. Because in judo terms, if you don’t get the catch immediately, then the referee won’t see the transition in. And also the continuation from plan A, B, C, D if something builds. So we have to build it and we have to build it quickly. And I think in jiu-jitsu terms, you have more time to build.
Lex Fridman (01:46:32): Yeah, there’s a kind of patience like, “Oh, if this doesn’t work out, I can try a different thing.” With Judo, there’s an urgency.
Neil Adams (01:46:39): There’s an urgency.
Lex Fridman (01:46:41): And there’s a ref watching skeptically. So you better show that you’re making progress.
Neil Adams (01:46:47): You’ve got to show the progression. And that’s why I always had a plan A, B, C. You see there with… That was 1981 there, the great Kashiwazaki had a progression. Everything was, he knew exactly where he had to be. It was feel. That wasn’t by accident, it was trained. And I think that that transition there and taking control of somebody’s mistake, so somebody might have made a mistake or not hit properly, or your defense has caused them to make a mistake and then you take advantage of it. And that is the difference.
Lex Fridman (01:47:25): So one of the side effects of that, I don’t know with the chicken or the egg, but judo people on the ground are much more aggressive. So probably because of the urgency, but there’s an intention behind the progress you’re making. I think jiu-jitsu is more relaxed. There’s more a culture of just finding places to relax and think of different control and positions and take your time. And as a result, it’s much, much less exhausting. So you can go for much longer. It feels like judo is exhausting.
Neil Adams (01:48:02): It’s that ten second blast, isn’t it? It’s like doing sprints all the time. And that is really hard. And that’s a special kind of condition you need and you need to be able to catch it and know when to go and when not to go. And I think also, I was going to ask you, you think it’d make a difference, I mean, certain jiu-jitsu, you can’t just throw yourself on your back into the guard. You have to throw into the situation. You have got, I mean, I know Roger Gracie, he decided that he was going to learn judo. He saw the importance of being able to throw for the transition in, and so he came to the budokai and he was learning off Ray Stevens, and they were doing really a lot-
Lex Fridman (01:48:50): Well, he’s a fascinating study because he does the most basic stuff and he does-
Neil Adams (01:48:55): Does it well.
Lex Fridman (01:48:56): He did another level of wow, it’s like Yamashita, everyone knows what’s coming with Roger Gracie, but he just does it anyway. I guess the best people in the world. It’s crazy. He’s like, everybody in jiu-jitsu at White Belt learns the techniques he’s using, and he just does it.
Neil Adams (01:49:14): Amazing, isn’t it? But he has about a thousand ways in.
Lex Fridman (01:49:17): Yeah, yeah. I mean, and the thousand ways there’s in the details, so it kind of might even look the same to people. But he finds a way to choke people. So he’s on top of them, mounted in a sort of judo pin position, and everyone knows what’s coming next against the best people in the world, and you should be able to defend it, but nobody can, it’s crazy.
Neil Adams (01:49:40): I think there’s the power element as well, that you don’t realize how when somebody’s directed in a particular way, then you have that kind of element of absolute power that you can only feel, like when Roger’s doing a technique, I think that you would only feel it if he did it on you, then you can feel it. It’s not something that happens… So tricks is one thing, but actually being able to do something really well from a power point of view. Like you say, he only does those few things, but he does them really, really, really well.
Lex Fridman (01:50:20): Yeah, I don’t know what that is about. Actually, judo pins is a very interesting case study as well, because people are able to feel so heavy. One of the things judoka are able to do is pin extremely well, and it makes you realize that it’s not about the weight, it’s about some kind of technique that makes people feel like they weigh a thousand pounds.
Neil Adams (01:50:43): It’s about weight distribution and change of balance. A lot of people don’t realize that there’s huge changes of balance on the ground. Massive. You know what it’s like. I mean, you’re a jiu-jitsu man. And the detail of the techniques is what really interests me. I mean, I’m always looking, small ideas. I’m always looking at the jiu-jitsu and it fascinates me. I would’ve done jiu-jitsu for sure, but I wouldn’t have forgotten the judo way in to the techniques. I mean, I think you’ve got to differentiate the two, but I would’ve loved the jiu-jitsu. I would’ve absolutely loved it, but it wasn’t as prominent then. Where the newaza came from, it came from a mistake, me getting beaten in a particular contest and I went, “I’m not going to be beaten again on the ground.” That’s how it happened.
Lex Fridman (01:51:44): Yeah. Well, yeah, the story of your life is like a loss creates, the phoenix rises.
Neil Adams (01:51:52): It was 1978, and it wasn’t a mistake. It was a particular movement. And I was fighting weight up from my normal weight, but I stayed in the same position for one second too long, got caught and-
Lex Fridman (01:52:10): Choked?
Neil Adams (01:52:11): Sangaku, yeah. Triangle. Triangle, triangle.
Lex Fridman (01:52:13): Wow.
Neil Adams (01:52:14): And I said, I literally just the same as I said to you, when I said, “I’m not going to drink anymore,” I came off and I said, “I’m never going to get caught on the ground again.”
Lex Fridman (01:52:27): Never lose on the ground ever.
Neil Adams (01:52:27): And I never lost in my whole competitive career again.
Lex Fridman (01:52:32): But yeah, I shouldn’t mention that there’s nothing like a pin from a judo person. And I don’t actually know if people in jiu-jitsu have made sense of that, loaded that in.
Neil Adams (01:52:44): But it’s not part of the game, is it? The pin? It’s submission.
Lex Fridman (01:52:50): Yeah, but control is part of the game, and nobody controls a human body the way judo people do on the ground. They have understood the science of control. And I think that control is extremely useful in jiu-jitsu as well, it’s just that people don’t… There’s so many other domains of exploration.
Neil Adams (01:53:13): That’s interesting.
Lex Fridman (01:53:14): I mean, just especially when you apply jiu-jitsu to the fighting setting of mixed martial arts, that control, that side control, that pin control, is really, really, really important. But then you add punching to the thing and it becomes-
Neil Adams (01:53:30): Puts a whole different thing on it, doesn’t it?
Lex Fridman (01:53:32): I mean, there’s an alternate history where you would’ve been part of the early UFCs if time was a little different maybe a few years later, because your style of judo and jiu-jitsu and the transitions and the aggression, all of that would’ve worked really well in the early UFCs.
Neil Adams (01:53:53): I’m sure I was being set up at one stage by one of the Graces, and that was when he was winning all the matches. But he came in with a couple of the cousins to one of my seminars, and he was one of the first ones, wasn’t he, that… That’s how I love to see the kind of UFC, because it was different martial arts, different skills. And he’d get close and he’d just choke them out or arm lock them or arm bar them. And that was brilliant for me. That was a revelation. That was how I saw it.
Lex Fridman (01:54:34): It’s a fascinating science experiment, which aspects of different martial arts work well and not, when they clash together. And it did turn out that Newaza worked-
Neil Adams (01:54:45): Was the key. Yeah, it was the key, wasn’t it?
Lex Fridman (01:54:46): Yeah, it was a big missing link in our conception of fighting. It’s the neutralizer of size, and a lot of other components. It just blew people’s mind. “Oh, okay. It’s not just about size. It’s not just about big guys swinging hands. It’s a lot of other components, and the groundwork is really, really important.” And of course, there’s a few judoka that succeeded in the UFC since then, which is always interesting how they adapt. When you take off the gi, how can you still throw people? How can you still do control? How can you still take advantage of the transition on the ground? Ronda Rousey is a good example of somebody that took advantage of that.
Neil Adams (01:55:29): Yeah, I think one of the biggest things for the judoka is we’ve never… There’s no strikes, and I think that’s the biggest shock, if you wish, when you get one-
Lex Fridman (01:55:29): Yeah, punched in the face.
Neil Adams (01:55:44): You get punched in the face and you’re not used to that. That’s not what we’re used to.
Lex Fridman (01:55:52): Some people are able to get punched in the face better than others, for sure. Then again, there’s Ronda Rousey who doesn’t need to get punched in the face. She just gets in close, throws a person, arm bar right there.
Neil Adams (01:56:03): And Kayla-
Lex Fridman (01:56:06): Kayla Harrison, that’s another incredible person. She could have probably been just winning Olympic gold medal after Olympic gold medal, but chose to-
Neil Adams (01:56:13): Whatever she decides. I mean, Ronda as well, whatever they decided to do they’re great athletes. They hate losing. I don’t know anybody that hates losing more than those two. They don’t like it.
Lex Fridman (01:56:27): And Kayla Harrison, I don’t know anybody that works as hard as her. That’s a crazy, crazy, crazy work ethic. Well, let me ask you about training again, Jimmy Pedro said he learned a lot from you. He learned how to do a tight ocean, the arm bar Jujigatame, but he also learned from you training methodology. So what’s he talking about? He told me about this. What’s your approach to training throughout your career and as it developed?
Neil Adams (01:56:57): I always wanted to train harder than anybody else. I still train now every day. If I don’t train, do something, I do an hour of my physical work, and I still go on the mat a little bit. I’m 65 now. And so I’m not doing really heavy stuff on the mat, but I still like to train. And when I was 21, 20 up to 30, I was one of the best trainers. But Jimmy Pedro was one of the best trainers as well. He’s one of your dream athletes. When Jimmy Pedro steps through your door, and he was just a kid. He was just young when he stepped through my door, and I had a lot of full-time trainers, so I had up to 20 really good athletes that were training hard. And I only wanted hard trainers. Give me 10 that train hard rather than your one pre-Madonna that you’re skillful, the one that could do it. I wanted 10 or 20 really hard trainers because you can do so much with them. You can make champions, you can make them world champions. If you’ve got somebody that was a special talent and they wanted to work hard, then you had a special athlete.
Lex Fridman (01:58:14): When you say hard trainers, what do you mean? Are these people that just every single day are able to just grind it out, do [inaudible 01:58:21], do the training, do the boring things, just keep coming back-
Neil Adams (01:58:24): Yeah, when the going gets tough. And I think that was him. He had a special mentality. And the thing is, you see when you’ve got him in your dojo, even when you’re tired, when somebody’s tired, what an example to the others. So he’d pull the other ones in as well. So I had somebody that when everybody was tired and everybody was sick of it, and everybody just wanted… And he’d still be there, so they had to do it. So that was for me, a win-win. So I had all the Americans, actually, I had Bobby Berland, and I had Michael Swain, and I had Ed Liddie, and I had them all coming to visit me at different times. Jimmy was there, they wanted to be the best. In the end we had such a great club atmosphere. They wanted to come for the hard work, and they knew that if they came, they were going to be dragged out and we were going to do physical training. And it was physical training like they hadn’t done before. But it wasn’t just the physical training, it was the judo and the skill side of it as well. And so I always had a great empathy with the U.S. team. Olympic team. So a lot of your Olympic medalists have been through with me. And so I’m proud of that because we had some great times and they’re still great mates now. And so in New York, in a couple of weeks time, I’m going to have, everybody is going to be there. They’re all coming in.
Lex Fridman (02:00:00): All old friends.
Neil Adams (02:00:01): All old friends.
Lex Fridman (02:00:01): And new friends. So what’s.
Lex Fridman (02:00:00): Old friends.
Neil Adams (02:00:01): All old friends.
Lex Fridman (02:00:01): And new friends. So what’s a tough week look like at your peak physical training, Randori? Is there days off? Are you training twice a day?
Neil Adams (02:00:14): Twice a day. So we do the preparation training, we do the running, we do the weight training, we do the skills in the morning as well. The skills is, for me, one of the biggest advantages that any full-time trainers can have, because what happens is that with most clubs, you’re trying to fit everything into that hour and a half or two hours. You fit your skills, you fit your physical training and your sparring and everything’s in there, all grouped in. So the biggest advantages of having a full-time group is that you can split your skills and your skills lay your foundation. So the biggest advantage is being able to work specifically on things without having to worry about getting to do your Randori or your sparring, then you’ve got to go out for… You just do the skills.
Lex Fridman (02:01:11): Well, when you talk about skills, say your specialty is a Tai otoshi, are we talking about Uchikomi, working with bands? Are you doing throws? Are you actually just having conversations about specific tiny details of throws? What does skills mean?
Neil Adams (02:01:27): All those things about doing your repetition practice, making sure the repetition is correct, there’s good repetition.
Lex Fridman (02:01:34): So when we say good repetition, Uchikomi when you’re just fitting the throw versus doing the throw? Where do you land on the value of both?
Neil Adams (02:01:41): I’m getting it moving. So one of the biggest, most important things is getting it moving. If we do something static, again, it’s that static target. You need to get it moving. So you need to do a repetition and also you need to do a correct repetition because if you’re doing 100 repetitions that are not correct and repetitions under pressure, too much pressure, without somebody overseeing those skills to make sure that you correct the skills. Because if you’re doing a skill, if you’re doing it 99 times incorrectly, then repetition doesn’t make perfect. Repetition makes permanent, so you’re going to make it as perfect as you possibly can. So actually that skills group there is the most important thing. And what I used to do is oversee it. So I’d oversee it to make sure that it was done properly.
Lex Fridman (02:02:33): So you’re watching the footwork, you’re watching the gripping-
Neil Adams (02:02:37): Everything.
Lex Fridman (02:02:37): …and then just constantly adjusting the people.
Neil Adams (02:02:40): I’ll give you an example, Jimmy Pedro. Jimmy was one of the hardest when he was 19 years of age, he’s always asking me to practice always. So he’s always on me all the time. So I do groundwork with him could I put him on his back? No, I was all on him and he’ll tell you, but he just wouldn’t go. He was going to be great, without a doubt. So I wanted everybody on with him, everybody. So everybody went on with him. And so it only improved their game and it improved him. And then small technical things that have stayed with him that we were doing with the Juji Gatame that was passed on to Kayla and then gone on to Ronda and it’s all small things that I can see sometimes that it’s passed on.
Lex Fridman (02:03:30): What about the Tai Otoshi? He said he learned a lot from you from that.
Neil Adams (02:03:34): And he does it differently.
Lex Fridman (02:03:35): And so I should mention that’s one of the trickier throw… I mean, I still don’t understand.
Neil Adams (02:03:42): It is a tricky throw.
Lex Fridman (02:03:43): I don’t understand. So for people who don’t know, boy, how would you even explain it? It doesn’t make any sense. When you just look solo, the movement you make is quite simple, but how you get a person to be off balance, how you actually get them to be thrown. And when you do throw it successfully, it looks like a whipping motion that’s effortless. It makes no sense.
Neil Adams (02:04:11): It makes no sense other than every technique starts with the hands. So it’s what we call Kazushi and you’re pulling somebody off balance, getting them moving, pulling them off balance. Tai otoshi means body drop. So it’s basically two legs across your partner’s body. I’ve got my back to you and I’ve already pulled you off balance with my hands, and then I’m going to just flex my legs up just as you are coming onto my back. And then you’re going to go over if I coordinated all right. If it doesn’t get coordinated right, then you’re going to come right on my back and try to rip my arm off. So got get it right.
Lex Fridman (02:04:51): If you can convert it into words, some secret ingredients that allowed you to pull it off at the highest levels, the Tai otoshi?
Neil Adams (02:05:01): The hands start every technique. So getting the repetition right, first of all. So to get the repetition right, you need a good partner. Actually training your partner to react in the right way is just as important as learning the throw. Actually what happens is we could get a lesson of beginners, we teach the throw and then go, “Right, off you go.” And 90% of them will get it wrong because their partner’s not reacting in the right way. So half of it is to get the person to react as they should. So if I was doing it with you, you and I, first thing I’d teach you to do is to react the way I want you to react. And then I’d react the way that you want me to react. So then we’d have success with it rather than you leaning back in the wrong way or resisting or frightened going over. So actually, that’s why nine times out of 10, people get the technique wrong.
Lex Fridman (02:06:02): It’s actually fascinating to me because in the United States where I came up, I mean, the level of judo is not comparable to the level of judo in the rest of the world. Of course the Pedro Center is an exception to that.
Neil Adams (02:06:16): Certain athletes, yeah.
Lex Fridman (02:06:17): It’s just certain athletes. When I trained recently with Jimmy Pedro, even the 16 year old kids are just all deadly, so it was terrifying. But I remember the Russian national team came through Philadelphia and one of the things that really impressed me is just how much easier judo was, training judo with them. They moved correctly. As the people getting thrown, every aspect of their body movement was correct in terms of it felt right to be throwing them, to be training with them. Everything about the gripping, about the position of their hips, about the shoulder, everything. It was fun. It was easy. And I always felt like I was learning. So I think all of that is loaded in, I guess, into proper training. So you’re developing through the throws, you’re developing the right technique.
Neil Adams (02:07:11): You got to develop. You have to develop between… I always had training partners that I trained with up to each Olympic games, we did the skills together and then we worked together in order to make techniques work. And we got it moving as quickly as we could. And one of the worst things that I see is, and I see a lot of YouTube stuff with them, coaches-
Lex Fridman (02:07:37): Here we go, got Neil Adams upset.
Neil Adams (02:07:40): Don’t even start me on that. Don’t even start me on that.
Lex Fridman (02:07:45): What you-
Neil Adams (02:07:46): You’re laughing because you know what I’m talking about, right?
Lex Fridman (02:07:47): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I’m actually laughing because I’m enjoying you talking trash. But you’re talking about technique.
Neil Adams (02:07:57): Yeah, well then the coaches and their clipboard guys with the clipboards and the stopwatches and they’ve got these kids running up and down the mat and then doing Uchikomi of something that’s technically incorrect 10 times and then running up and doing another 10 at the other side and actually mixing everything together. And it’s just a mess.
Lex Fridman (02:08:22): Technique is important.
Neil Adams (02:08:23): Technical mess.
Lex Fridman (02:08:24): That said, some of it is conditioning type stuff that you were doing. So what is the hardest type of physical conditioning you were doing?
Neil Adams (02:08:32): Probably ran too much when I was a kid. If I could go back now, I wouldn’t run as much. And I ran hard and I ran strong. And I remember doing London Marathon one time and I said, “I’m never going to do it again.” I said, “Never.” But I ran and the problem was when I did the London Marathon is I was trying to beat three hours.
Lex Fridman (02:08:57): It’s that desire to win again.
Neil Adams (02:08:58): It’s totally insane. It was insane. And I went out through half marathon in what I thought was a good time. Anyway, I got to 16-17 miles and totally blew it.
Lex Fridman (02:09:10): So you went out too fast.
Neil Adams (02:09:11): Yeah, I went out too fast.
Lex Fridman (02:09:12): And then you just-
Neil Adams (02:09:13): I died.
Lex Fridman (02:09:14): …wanted to keep going.
Neil Adams (02:09:16): Absolutely. I died. I crossed the line. I remember seeing this bridge over there and the bridge, it was the finishing line over the bridge and I had to get there. It was the longest bridge I’ve ever, ever walked over and I walk, run. So I got over the bridge and I took one step over the line like that, and there was a guy over there and he was trying to rush everybody through. And he was going, “Come on, come on, come on. There’s people behind you?” “Get your hands off of me.” I said, “Get your hands off me now,” like that because we’re going to fall out. And I couldn’t move. I couldn’t move. I was white.
Lex Fridman (02:09:58): It’s amazing that you made it to the finish line though.
Neil Adams (02:10:01): I did. I got over there and Donald Duck passing me was a tell.
Lex Fridman (02:10:08): Oh, there’s a person dressed as Donald Duck?
Neil Adams (02:10:10): Donald Duck, yeah. But the thing was, I still crossed over 338. I crossed over 338, but I lost 38 minutes in the last four miles.
Lex Fridman (02:10:21): So that bridge, longest bridge ever.
Neil Adams (02:10:23): The longest.
Lex Fridman (02:10:23): So you regret the running, huh?
Neil Adams (02:10:24): So anyway, I would do the running a little bit differently, but we ran hard. We did the weight training, we did good weight training. It was all conditioned. So I mean, it was never the same training all the time. So it was always, we’d have certain phases building up. It was scientifically done. It wasn’t just out there, run, weight training, judo, same judo all the time. It was always pretty scientific.
Lex Fridman (02:10:50): Good variety.
Neil Adams (02:10:51): It was a good variety. And it had build up and it had a speed phase and it had a power phase and it had a base condition.
Lex Fridman (02:10:58): What about the Randori? Was there a method to the madness there? How much Randori did you do?
Neil Adams (02:11:05): A lot. So the most important thing for me, I mean, I see now that there’s a lot of people out there that are not getting enough Randori. They’re not Randori-ing enough. And there’s a lot of sports science people and they’re running and they’re weight training and they’re doing it all to death. And there’s not enough judo. You have a look at some of the eastern block countries that are getting together, they’re having these mass camps and the Japanese, they have just massive people that they can do there. They’re doing probably 50-60 Randori’s a week.
Lex Fridman (02:11:44): Wait, what?
Neil Adams (02:11:45): 50 or 60 a week.
Lex Fridman (02:11:47): Wow.
Neil Adams (02:11:48): The average person is getting together… I mean, when I was doing Randori’s, when I went to Japan, it was just purely for 60 Randori’s a week.
Lex Fridman (02:11:59): How much is each one? How long is it?
Neil Adams (02:12:00): So they were five minutes then, they’re four minutes now.
Lex Fridman (02:12:04): That’s a lot, especially given the level of the competition there.
Neil Adams (02:12:07): But you can do it in Japan because it’s fairly light. If they throw you, they throw you, you throw them.
Lex Fridman (02:12:12): So there’s a level of you’re moving at a close to 100%, but the actual power in the force is not quite there.
Neil Adams (02:12:20): Different in Korea. Korea was harder, it was more physical. So you couldn’t do 50 Randori’s in Korea. You’d die. So you’d do 30.
Lex Fridman (02:12:31): 50 Randori’s, wow.
Neil Adams (02:12:32): But you need the Randori. And so I chased the Randorers, so I chased them into training camps, I chased them all over my country. So I was getting 40 to 50 a week in my club. And then I would go to training camps and add more. And I honestly don’t think that they do enough now, a lot of countries.
Lex Fridman (02:12:55): Somebody who doesn’t know Randori’s live training.
Neil Adams (02:12:57): Yeah, sparring.
Lex Fridman (02:12:59): Was there a few people you remember that were just really tough to go against? You mentioned Goldtooth, is there others like it?
Neil Adams (02:13:06): Goldtooth was pretty horrific.
Lex Fridman (02:13:10): Well, you got him in the end.
Neil Adams (02:13:12): I got him in the end.
Lex Fridman (02:13:18): I suppose I should say not just tough, but just good training partners that you like.
Neil Adams (02:13:21): Great training partners. I remember Nishida and Nishida, I mentioned him earlier, said he was one of the best, I mean, he was just such a great technician. So I would go there to his dojo and he’d ask me to practice and he’d finish the practice and you know that he would always say, “Another one, we’ll do another one.” So you’d go, “Oh yeah,” because you had to make out that you weren’t that bothered that you had to do another one, so you’d do another one back to back. And then he’d go sometimes, “Let’s do another one.” So we’d end up doing 15 minutes with the same guy who could possibly throw you at any time. And that was hard. But I remember those particular guys and there were plenty of those.
Lex Fridman (02:14:06): What do you do with the exhaustion that you’re feeling in those? How deep did you go in terms of-
Neil Adams (02:14:11): You have to dig deep. And I think that that was the great thing about having certain European training camps were more physical. So I remember that we would have European training camps where you’d fight Germans and then the Dutch and then the French and then the Russian. You’d have all sorts different styles and people to fight and that was something then you’d have to dig in at a different place, come out of there.
Lex Fridman (02:14:43): Where do you go mentally? How many times have you gone there where you’re really in deep waters exhaustion wise in competition, actually?
Neil Adams (02:14:53): Competition, it’s happened. So sometimes you go past where your forearms are absolutely blown. I remember the final of Czech tournament that we had and fought a Frenchman in the final. And my forearms were so blown I couldn’t shake his hand. And then I remember they were solid, absolutely solid and they had lactic acid in them. And I remember I stood on the rostrum and they were giving me things and I couldn’t grip them properly. So I was saying, “Put it under my armpit or chin,” like that, trying to hold this and I couldn’t hold anything. So there are times when I really had to go really deep. I remember fighting two East Germans the same day, one of the competitions and the number one and the number two East Germans, and that was another day where I had to really dig deep.
Lex Fridman (02:15:53): That’s the fascinating thing about some of these tournaments is if you go full distance on several matches in a row, what you’re seeing in the finals are two people that have fought a lot that day.
Neil Adams (02:16:08): And we have golden score now. So we see a lot of guys that are going into golden score and they’ve done one contest in four minutes and then they go another four minutes. And then we’ve had some go into a third four minutes, this is all back to back. It might be in the first round, it might be in the final. And we’ve got some now that are coming out and you can see the stats and the ones that win in golden score. So we got Japanese, Hashimoto, he’s the Japanese representative now instead of Ono, because Ono’s finished. So Hashimoto’s coming out. He was in a tournament last week.
Lex Fridman (02:16:42): Is he a good one to look up?
Neil Adams (02:16:44): Yeah, just have a look at him. So Hashimoto’s in white here and there’s a great example there. Well, I’m glad we got onto that. So I mean, he has got great technique, Hashimoto.
Lex Fridman (02:16:57): Effortless, effortless. Pay attention as we’re talking. Wow.
Neil Adams (02:16:58): Right, so you can see exactly what we’re talking about there, great timing. And again, sometimes he backs them up to the edge and then he’ll wait for them to come back in towards, they don’t want to step out to get a penalty.
Lex Fridman (02:17:14): I guess that’s a cross grip Tai otoshi or did I see that wrong?
Neil Adams (02:17:17): Yeah, cross grip, different grips. Oh, great examples there. Just what we were talking about.
Lex Fridman (02:17:23): Making it look so easy. Wow.
Neil Adams (02:17:26): So he’s going to be their representative at 73 kilograms. Look at him, back him up again and again, just catching him as he pushes back.
Lex Fridman (02:17:35): So push, push, push, and then-
Neil Adams (02:17:37): Yeah, action, reaction at it’s best there. And slight change of direction. He sometimes goes down onto his knee there, which is seoi otoshi. It turns from Tai otoshi, which is springing up, to seoi otoshi that’s going down.
Lex Fridman (02:17:52): Oh, the title of the video is, Tai Otoshi is a Work of Art.
Neil Adams (02:17:57): This is him at his best, showing him doing what he does best. But he had to go three times into golden score last week and dig deep and lost one of them, I think.
Lex Fridman (02:18:09): But you’re still going at it. You’re talking about all those training sessions. Niki, your wonderful wife, told me that you were going all over from Target to Target looking for workout clothes because your luggage got lost because you had to get a workout in.
Neil Adams (02:18:24): You know what? I realized that if I’m a miserable git, then she’ll get me into the gym. And the thing is that I’m better if I get in there for an hour and I just do something, at least 35-40 minutes cardio. And then I do some weights and more high repetitions. It’s not so much heavy weights now, but more functional stuff.
Lex Fridman (02:18:48): I mean, you travel all over the world for the commentary of these competitions. So is it sometimes a challenge to figure out how-
Neil Adams (02:18:56): Well during Covid then they closed all the gyms, but we were still going out. We were one of the first ones out. The judo were some of the first out, the competitions were behind closed doors, so we were in the hotel, the gym was closed, so we couldn’t use the gyms, so we had to look for other ways that we could work out. So most of the hotels that we were in were high-rise hotels. So we were in the steps, we were doing the steps right the way up. So I started it, and so I started off with me going up and then one or two of the others and the referees started to go up with me. So in the end, we’d have this trail of people going up the steps and down. And every place we went to, we had the steps. So that was an interesting situation. So we were sick of steps in the end.
Lex Fridman (02:19:52): What advice would you give to beginners, people starting out in judo, how to develop their game, how to find the beauty in the sport and the art of judo?
Neil Adams (02:20:08): If you put 10 people in a room and said, “Right, get on with it,” you’d have mayhem. And I think that whatever sport you’re doing, you need good instruction, good teaching, and a good club atmosphere, somewhere that’s not so intense that winning is the only thing. And I think that if you look at 90% of the people that practice martial arts are doing it for pleasure. So they want to get pleasure. So you need a club that’s got a bit of a mixture. They’ve got a direction to go into competition if they want, and then the rest, it’s for fun and to enjoy it, but with really good instruction because with really good instruction and a good foundation and a good base, you get more enjoyment because you have more success. Let’s be honest, the more success we have with something, the more we like it.
Lex Fridman (02:21:07): Yeah, and great technique is a way to really discover the beauty of the art. And so great teaching is really important there.
Neil Adams (02:21:14): Great teaching is so important.
Lex Fridman (02:21:18): What does it take to get from the early days when you started judo to world-class level?
Neil Adams (02:21:26): I think that with most, I mean, you do hear, don’t you? If somebody’s been doing judo for eight years and then they’re in… And I think it happened, one of the French, she went to the Olympic games in 2012 and she’d been doing judo for eight years, but then she started to lose. So she had a relative success early on. The Olympics was one of them. She got a silver medal, but then she went off the boil and then she came back and now she’s still competing and she’s been there for well over 13 years at the very top. So I think that any foundation, it’s like anything, if you lay a really solid foundation, it generally lasts longer.
Lex Fridman (02:22:12): Yeah, but that foundation again, is that technique or what does it take to build that foundation?
Neil Adams (02:22:19): I think technique, you get away with murder. With technique, you can get away with having bad condition, but I mean, you get found out in the end. But you can go out and you can win certain things by doing really nice technique. But I think if you’ve got the mixture, if you’ve got the whole package, then you can go the whole way.
Lex Fridman (02:22:42): So for people who somehow don’t know some of the greatest judo matches ever. You’ve done Grand Prix’s, you’ve done all of these events, Olympics, championship, everything. Just looking at the history of judo, what stands out to you? What events stand out to you? What are some good memories that pop to your head?
Neil Adams (02:23:03): I think some of the Paris tournaments are amazing because the crowd, they’re there, they’re on the mat, they’re all judoka, they’re well-educated to the sport. Every time somebody twitches, they’re very biased towards their own, which you expect, but sometimes I haven’t been able to hear myself speak, and that’s very unusual. You’ve got the headphones on and you’re blocked out. Sometimes Teddy Riner’s been walking out there and the crowd are going crazy and they’re on their feet when somebody twitches and then you get the crowd silences. We had one of those last week. Everybody’s cheering their man and then bang, their man goes over.
Lex Fridman (02:23:47): And then it’s silence.
Neil Adams (02:23:48): Silence, nothing like that. And then of course, we were commentating, we would go, “That was a bit of a crowd silencer.” But that happens.
Lex Fridman (02:23:57): Yeah, that is a surprising thing, at least it was to me, that Paris and France is really big on judo.
Neil Adams (02:24:04): Massive. And there’s always surprises. Paris is great. In Japan for the Olympic games, the biggest surprise was Ono getting beaten in the team event. Now Ono is the greatest Judo man. Pound for pound, probably one of the best. And he won the Olympic title and then they went into the team event against France and Ono lost to a, He’s not run of the mill German, but the German, he wasn’t certainly Olympic title-esque and beat Ono, managed to throw him.
Lex Fridman (02:24:41): Yeah. Well, the team stuff is fascinating, right?
Neil Adams (02:24:43): Yeah, it’s fascinating.
Lex Fridman (02:24:44): It changes the dynamics of the whole thing. And I mean, it’s funny you say Paris, it really makes it really big deal that this Olympics is being held in Paris.
Neil Adams (02:24:55): And they’ll be the team to beat, French team because they have the best balance of the weight categories. They have the best balance with their people that are world and Olympic champions and qualified men and women. So it’s three men, three women. They have the best balance out of anybody.
Lex Fridman (02:25:13): And an educated audience.
Neil Adams (02:25:15): Educated audience, home grounds.
Lex Fridman (02:25:16): It’s going to be awesome.
Neil Adams (02:25:16): It’s going to be mad.
Lex Fridman (02:25:18): It’s going to be super fun.
Neil Adams (02:25:20): It will be super fun.
Lex Fridman (02:25:21): Are you nervous?
Neil Adams (02:25:22): Yeah.
Lex Fridman (02:25:23): All right.
Neil Adams (02:25:23): Do you get nervous?
Lex Fridman (02:25:25): I get nervous. I get nervous.
Neil Adams (02:25:26): I do as well. I get really nervous.
Lex Fridman (02:25:28): I’m nervous right now. But given, especially because it’s the Olympics and you want to celebrate people properly and it’s everything for them. And a lot of people, especially the finals matches, it’ll be watched millions of times, the highest of stakes, all of this.
Neil Adams (02:25:51): Played over and over. And I find that with mine, I’m now a little bit more careful, so I’ll celebrate a massive throw and then have empathy to the one that’s been thrown because it’s not the best feeling in the world, especially in Olympic finals. Can you imagine that?
Lex Fridman (02:26:10): Yeah.
Neil Adams (02:26:11): Must be terrible.
Lex Fridman (02:26:12): Must be terrible.
Neil Adams (02:26:15): Just reflecting. So no, I have a bit of empathy there, and I try and say the right things because they always do come up to me and say, “You commentated my fights.”
Lex Fridman (02:26:27): Yeah, you’re the voice of the biggest triumphs and the biggest tragedies for these athletes, for the world that watches and admires these athletes.
Neil Adams (02:26:35): No pressure.
Lex Fridman (02:26:35): You’re the voice. Don’t screw it up.
Neil Adams (02:26:37): Don’t screw it up.
Lex Fridman (02:26:39): Your voice is in my head when I watch these. It’s just fascinating, it’s fascinating, but you’re a master of it. It’s a huge honor that you would talk with me. Thank you for everything you’ve done for the sport of judo, for the Olympics, for just sports in general, just celebrating greatness in all of its forms. Thank you for talking today. Keep going. I can’t wait to listen to you in Paris.
Neil Adams (02:27:07): Thank you for having me, and it’s just been an honor to be here with you.
Lex Fridman (02:27:13): Thanks for listening to this conversation with Neil Adams. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Miyamoto Musashi. There’s nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within, everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
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