Up On Game Presents BURN FACTORY Travis Stevens Judo Olympic Silver Medalist

Judo Olympic Silver Medalist Travis Stevens joins the Burn Factory Podcast. Travis Stevens has been performing the martial art of Judo since he was six years old! Travis Stevens is one of the most decorated Judo practitioners of all time! He was the first man to make two Olympic semifinals in Judo. In this episode, Travis Stevens alludes to battling numerous injuries and even winning a tournament with nine broken ribs! He also talks about the direction of USA Judo and what needs to change for these upcoming Olympic games! You will want to catch this episode!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Burn Factory Podcast with Priest and Phoenix Rivera.
Listen as the voice interview the biggest names in sports
and entertainment. The Burn Factory starts now.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome back to another episode of the Burn Factory Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
What is up?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Burn Factory Podcast.
I'm your host Priest Jove by my co host, my brother,
the one and only Phoenix.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
What's up, y'all?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
This is called the Burn Factory for a reason. I
was literally caught on fire, fifty percent chance to live,
but through that, I started this podcast because I believe
every single person out there on this planet has a
burn moment somewhere in their life.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
You heard pre say burn moment. So burn moment is
a super hard time in someone's life that they had
to ultimately get through to be where they are today.
And me and Priest believe that people go through these
burn moments every single day and a build them to
who they are today. But Pries, what a guest we
have today? Man? I am so excited. Our guest has
started doing judo when he was six years old. He

(01:10):
has won two gold medals at the Pan American Games.
He has won a gold and seven other medals at
the Pan American Championships. He's a nine time IJF Grand
Prix medalist, which includes three gold medals. He's also won
a gold at the World Masters and is the first
male ever to make two semi finals in Olympic judo history,

(01:31):
and is one of the most decorated judokas of all time.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
So please give a welcome to Travis Stevens. Thank you, guys,
thank you for coming on. So you did judo since
the age of six. You didn't do football, hockey, nothing, Nope.

Speaker 4 (01:48):
I did other sports as a kid. Judo was always
that sport that was after the sport because I would
do soccer baseball from like four to five, and judo
was always at night, like seven nine. So it was
always back to back sports and it was year round.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
You always knew you wanted to do it though, Nope, no, nope.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
So I actually my whole, like burnt thing, starts right
at the beginning, super at the beginning. So when I
was eleven, I was getting ready for the nationals and
I was on my way to like twenty two thousand
and four Olympics, two thousand and eight Olympics, Like on
that path. And then we were playing a game getting
ready for the nationals, and between the ages of like

(02:30):
seven to eleven, I lost less than ten times. Really yeah,
older divisions, younger divisions, same weight, bigger weights didn't matter.
Like winning was like drove me. And then we were
playing a game. Blew my leg out completely, my foot
got put on my hip, I shoulder went straight through
my kneecap, cut everything. I spent six months in a brace,

(02:54):
no sports from eleven to fifteen.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Was this just like Rondois or something. We're playing a game,
just a game.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
It was like sumo, but there was like eight of us,
and we had this giant circle, not a little when
a giant one, all you had to do was push
the people out. Kid went to shoot a double, got
pushed from behind. Shoulder went right through my knee.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
How long were you out for?

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Four years? No sports?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Four years? Oh yez?

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Why nothing? I had to learn how to walk again.
I lost everything.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
That's a little burn moment right there, Yeah, just.

Speaker 4 (03:26):
Right off the rip. Oh, no more sports. I went
from a total athletic kid to nothing.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Wow, how like mentally challenging? Was it coming back? I
mean being not four years like, were you like kind
of like babying it, or like, oh, like I can't
hurt it again, or was.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
Turned into like like an angry child. Like my parents
were like, we're gonna have to send you to military
school because I would do nothing but act out. I
had zero outlet. I was an athletic kid, always out
running around, playing climbing trees to can't do nothing.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
How hard was that mentally?

Speaker 4 (03:59):
You know, you don't, I don't know. I was so young.
All I remember is acting out, getting into trouble all
the time. All the time. What I did was get
into trouble.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
What did you do?

Speaker 4 (04:10):
Anything from like coming up with ways to like break
the neighbor's window and not get caught, to like you know,
making fun of like the neighbors, you know, just rough housing,
anything that like could get me attention. I guess.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
So did your parents put you into judo because of that?

Speaker 4 (04:29):
Or I got taken out of judo because of it?

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Really?

Speaker 4 (04:32):
Yeah? All sports everything. I didn't come back to sports
until my sophomore year of high school. That was my
first time. What was freshman year's second semester I came
back to tennis. Oh, I just I was tennis yep,
and then blew my knee out again for sport, had surgery,

(04:53):
same knee.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
How old were.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
You freshman in high school?

Speaker 3 (04:57):
So this is right after your knee or your other knee.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
Yeah, same knee.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Oh, same knee, same knee. Oh my first time coming
back to sports. Halfway through the season. Boom, knee gone.
What happened? Did you just plant?

Speaker 4 (05:09):
Run and just yep? I was running and I reached
too far out with my leg and my knee locked
and my whole leg hit, my two bones hit boom,
tore my meniscus. I had to get my knee scoped.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Oh my. So after like two gruesome neat like, was
there even talks of you ever doing sports again?

Speaker 4 (05:28):
Yeah? So that once I had the surgery and the
doctor like cleaned up all the scar tissue because when
I was a kid, I let it sit there for
four years. Nowadays, in like sports medicine, people wouldn't do that, right.
They'd be like, okay, you have to actively recover. People
walk out of the doctors and hip surgeries now right.
I tore my peck and I was even just recently

(05:50):
just had surgery on my shoulder. So like now doctors
are a little bit more like, you know, proactive with
the healing process instead of like let it sit for
six months. I had to let it sit for years
because I had growth plate issues and like other things.
All that scar tissue got torn in that one moment.
So when the doctor got in there, he cleaned it
all up, stitched it back up. Two weeks later, I

(06:11):
was good, good as new.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Your poor body, Oh my gosh. How many surgeries do
you think you've got?

Speaker 4 (06:17):
Not that many, I've been I've been fortunate. I've had
some like crazy, crazy injuries over the years, but only
a few surgeries.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
Okay, that's getting a few. Wow. So you're actually kind
of leading us into our first letter. So we use
an acronym on this show, burn, So each letter is
a different time in your life, so B stands for beginning.
You talked about the injuries as a child, But what
were some other burn moments that you had to go
through that got you to winning all these gold medals
into the Olympics.

Speaker 4 (06:47):
That's tough, man, There's been There's been a few. I
mean probably my most my most hectic time was twenty fifteen,
the year before the Olympics. I spent the whole year injured.
I got a massive concussion, Like couldn't remember what I

(07:07):
ate for lunch, couldn't remember what I had for breakfast,
couldn't remember the day before. For like months, I was
like in la la land. And then even when I
tried to come back, I would like my heart would
start to race, and then the room would just spend
and then I would just fall over.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Did you get thrown on your head?

Speaker 4 (07:26):
I actually threw the other guy. Oh So I threw
the other guy so hard that his shoulder dislocated. And
then my head hit the mat, and then I hit
the mat so hard. I just knocked myself into you know, tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
So you didn't remember any moments before that.

Speaker 4 (07:41):
Nothing. And I got hit so hard that the girl
I was dating, who's now my wife, I forgot who
she was. I was at the tournament and I was
sitting there and they found me in a corner of
the venue, rocking whistling to myself. I was like whoohoo
in the corner. And then I woke up and I
was like, WHOA, where am I right? And I see

(08:03):
this girl over in the corner and she's looking at me.
She's given me like the dirtiest look, and I'm like,
what's wrong with her? What's wrong with her? So I
go to the manager. I'm like, hey, hey, who's that girl? Man,
she's looking at me like I killed our dog, Like
what's going on? Had no recollection. It took me probably
twenty four hours before I could like place her and
who she was. But I missed like entire chunks of

(08:26):
like us dating. It eventually started to come back, but
there's still moments and like chunks were like it's just forgotten.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
That's so scary. Oh my, how long did that last?
The entire year leading Oh.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
That happened in February and I didn't come back until
June almost July. Wow, So we're going on like four
almost five months.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
This was before the games.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
Yeah, twenty fifteen, twenty fifteen.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Where was the year before?

Speaker 4 (08:50):
Yeah? Year before?

Speaker 2 (08:51):
And where was the Olympic Games at that following.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
Year twenty sixteen in August and of July August?

Speaker 3 (08:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Like whatctional?

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Real?

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Did you ever like did you think you were going
to go and compete again or did you tried?

Speaker 3 (09:08):
You tried?

Speaker 4 (09:09):
Yep. I went from one of the top five players
in the world to own five in my next five events,
coming off of the coming off the concussion, lost every time.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Wow, was that mentally challenging, Like, man, I just I'm
like the top in the country.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
And I actually sent a letter to the coaches and
the staff and I was like, f it, I'm off
the team.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
You're done.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
Done, And they were like, who whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hold on a second, let's not let's not overreact. And
I was like, Nope, that's it done. I'm not quitting judo.
Whatever you guys are doing, I ain't following it. I'm done.
And then we actually sat down and had a conversation
and I was like, I don't care where I go.
I'm going by myself to where nobody really knows who

(09:50):
I am, and I'm just going to exist and then
I'll figure it out. So I ended up going to
a college called Tokai, which is one of the number
universities in the world, and all they do is fight.
That's it. You show up, you do fifteen rounds of
five minutes, you go home, you wake up the next
day and you do it all over again. Where is
this at in Japan? In Japan, okay, So couldn't talk

(10:12):
to anybody. No one could talk to me. All we
could do is fight. And I was like, okay, here
we go. I'm going I'm gonna spend the next three
and a half weeks and then no one's gonna email me,
no one's gonna talk to me, no one's gonna ask
me how I'm doing. I'm just gonna figure it out.
And then the day before we get on the plane,
I break my thumb in half, snapped straight.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Off coming home the flight, coming back, going there or
going there.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
Going there.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Oh my god, snapped it in half. What happened?

Speaker 4 (10:41):
So I have this weird rest position, which is a
little different than most people, and I kind of like
sit and I lay down with my hands just like relaxed.
So my thumb kind of like dangles out. And so
I was trying to rest and I was laying there,
and a guy from like over there came down boom,
landed right on it, took it right off, knocked it

(11:02):
straight down, and then it just dangled there.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Did it? Did it hurt?

Speaker 4 (11:06):
Or did yeah?

Speaker 3 (11:07):
No?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Good?

Speaker 4 (11:08):
Whole thing swelled up. I went to the doctors the
next morning before I got on the flight. And they
made me like a custom molded like sleeve that like
velk rode around and then I would take it off.
I taped it when I was in Japan, and I
fought with one hand for like three weeks. And then
when I got out, I put the thing back on.
I taped it back up, and I went back to

(11:29):
my room and cried.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
Kind of that put it like a risk of even
more damage in less than a year. Got to do
whatever it takes, didn't matter, You didn't care own. So
you were there for three weeks and then you come
back and as soon as you came back, what was
that time?

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Kind of like.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
When I came back three weeks from that? Yeah, one
PanAm Games.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Panic, Oh you won it, won it? Wow?

Speaker 4 (11:50):
So I went from zero to five to PanAm Games
gold medal.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Weeks in Japan.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
That's another Barre moment right there.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
And then it didn't there. My year wasn't over. I
turned right around from pan Ams almost had my leg
chopped off. Yep.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Oh my god. So you had your head, then you
had your thumb, then you had your leg.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
All in one year.

Speaker 4 (12:14):
Not done there. I had an mike, so I got
three bacterial infections like staff infections in my leg, three
different kinds. At one time. My whole leg swelled up
and at the time we didn't know what it was.
I went to the hospital, I went everywhere, and they
were like, ah, you have bresidas in your knee, and
I was like, okay, but my whole leg was like

(12:36):
twice the size of my other leg. So when we
got on the plane, I wrapped it with an ace bandage,
and then to prevent the swellings it was hurting. Went
to the World's ended up shooting like novacane into my
back to like help deal with the pain like a
nerve block. Almost ended up losing in the second round,

(12:57):
got choked for the first time in my career, embarrassed,
whole US team got slaughtered. Came back and I'm laying
in bed and I'm waking up in like massive amounts
of puddle of sweat, like massive, like you have to
clean the sheets every time I fall asleep, And come
to find out my heart is beating at like one

(13:19):
hundred and sixty beats a minute in my sleep, which
is like I'm running like a marathon, Like I'm having
trouble keeping weight on and so my girlfriend and my
wife at the times like we're taking you to the hospital,
and I'm like, Nah, I'll be fine, don't worry about it.
It's like nope, We're going to the hospital. Go to
the hospital. I'm in the er and the er doctor
comes in and they're like, hey, whoever you have to call, call,

(13:43):
but you may lose your leg today. And then she left,
and I was like, what am I supposed to do
with that information? Who leaves after making that statement? They
rushed me up into a special room upstairs for like
bacterial infections. I spend the next seven days in a hospital.
They pump like three hundred c seeds of like orange

(14:05):
pussy goo out of my leg, and then I'm in
surgery like ten days after that, I spent two months
in in home care with pick lines running through my body.
And then now we're into like October September.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
What was that burning moment like you're like, I'm not
gonna let this overcome me.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
It wasn't then at that point I was like, you
know what, like I can make it through this, Like
there's still time. I remember looking at the surgeon going
just cut my leg today, because every day you wait
is a day I don't have to train and get
ready for the Olympics. The longer I wait, the harder
it is to come back.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
So you were mentally ready to chop it off.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
And right now paralymic yep. I was like no, like
my nake. So they had the So what they did
is they cut a massive thing and they took a
scalpel and they cut all the infection out through my bone,
all my muscle, everything through my leg. And that was
the plan. Was like we're just gonna cut it out.
But the doctor didn't want to have the surgery until

(15:08):
after he knew what it was. And I was like,
why wait, Just cut it out, be done with it,
because every day you wait, I can't train for the Olympics.
And then when I came back, my body was so
fragile that I took I ran like thirty feet. My
heartbeat was two hundred and two beats a minute because

(15:29):
all the medicine and bacteria and everything. My whole body
was like flipped upside down. I couldn't run very far
without like hyperventilating in like panic. It was like the
I don't even know if I can train again, like
really like get back to like full strength, and so

(15:51):
I spend two weeks like really making a conscious effort
to like I don't care how I feel, but my
body has to be pushed and like almost like sweat
it out, like get back to normal. And in that
moment I come in for a throw with a guy,
I pop my s eye joint, just straight out done.

(16:12):
And the s I joint is where your spine meets
your tailbone. And what happened was was my shoulders went
one way, my hips went the other, and just boom,
and it got stuck. And I was supposed to go
to China like and I remember laying in bed and
my coach, who I didn't tell I wasn't going because
I was like, I'm not gonna tell anybody. I'm gonna
go make weight. I'm gonna get through this cause my

(16:36):
number one rule is make weight and fight. If you
don't even step on the mat, you can't win. So
whatever I do, I just have to make sure I
can step on the mat. If I can do that,
I think I can win. Just need to be able
to get there. So I'm just telling myself I'm gonna
get there. I go to the gym, I try to
ride the bike. Can't happen. I'm like, you know what
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna sit in the sauna and
I'm gonna put my back on the wood because the

(16:56):
heat's gonna help.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Right.

Speaker 4 (16:57):
So I'm like sitting there and I'm like I can't.
I can't sit and I'm like, I'm just gonna sleep
this off. I'll deal with it when I get to China.
I lay down in my bed. I wake up. I
can't lift my legs. I can't do a sit up,
I can't do anything. I'm like stuck. I can't my core,
can't flex nothing. And I'm like, I don't even know
what to do. I call my coach, who's at the

(17:19):
airport right now at like five o'clock in the morning
waiting for me, the only guy he's got a coach
to go to China. And I'm like, I'm not making it.
I can't get out of bed. And he's like, well,
now I got to go all the way to China
to coach these other players in the United States. Now
that you're not going, thanks for that, hangs up the
phone on me, goes to China. I go to the

(17:41):
therapist the next day, he pops my a side joint
back in place. I spend two weeks doing therapy. I
go to Japan, which is one of the toughest tournaments
in the world, take fifth, and that was my like,
I'm gonna win the Olympics. I knew right then and
there because on no training, I can take fifth fighting

(18:02):
the best guys in the world.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
You've got to have like the highest pain tolerants I've
ever met before to go through all of that. Do
you even did you even feel pain rat now anymore?

Speaker 4 (18:12):
Yeah? A lot, a lot.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Oh my gosh, I was just one year. How can
you don't do any ice baths or nothing?

Speaker 4 (18:20):
Do you hate the cold? Oh passion? I would rather
be in pain than do an ice bath. Really, I
hate it.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Okay, so we have a we have a cold point
here and we do it every single day. You'll never
do it really doing it. So you can you can
fight on torn whatever is, but you can't. You can't
sit in the ice bath ice bath.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
The only time I do ice baths is when I
find the actual like massive tub, like when you look
the steel ones, like when you go to Turkey and
you get in like an ice bath, like a Turkish bath.
The tub is like the size of this room. It's
like a twenty foot by twenty foot that's like six
feet deep of like ice water. It's like you don't

(18:59):
have to like inch your way into it. It's not
like you put your foot in it, then your leg,
then your hips and like sit. It's like a here
we go, and then you just jump in the middle
and then you have to get back to the end.
But by the time you get back to the end,
your body's like activated to it, so then you can
kind of like float around in it. That's the only
time I'll do it. If I have to walk into it.
It ain't happening, nothing, not happening.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Really, what would it take you to go do the
cold plunge outside?

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Not happening, happening, not happening.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Now if someone offered you like one hundred bucks a day,
would not happen? One thousand not happening.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
One hundred thousand into the millions. Really, it's not worth
my discomfort. Not happening.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
That's crazy coming from someone who's in Massachusetts and it's
cold all the time, and I make.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
My athletes do it. I don't think I don't do it.
Get out there with the sledgehammer breaking it in the winter,
like getting it in their underwear in the middle of
the snow, like not me.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
How cold do you think it is? And over there
in those ice pass.

Speaker 4 (19:59):
Same year ice is ice like thirty two? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Interesting, our is this? What is the cold punch? It's
probably like in between thirty two and thirty seven degrees.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
Ah, it definitely not happening.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Really, I don't know. It's weird for me, like I
don't like so we golf and like I don't really
do it for like a physical thing, but my mental
clarity after it's like it's crazy, like I'm sharp. I'm
just like boom boom, boom boom. It makes you alert. Yeah,
it really does make you alert. And that's honestly what
I do it for. It's almost like it's kind of
like high you like you get like, well I got coffee,
Well I have coffee and the ice ponge now, so

(20:34):
I got double what you got now. But all right,
So going back to that time leading up to the
twenty sixteen games, So after that injury, what was that
time kind of like where you're just like full throttle,
like all these injuries are in the past, like it's
just I'm focusing on that.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
I just knew I was gonna win, because once once
that happened, you go into this like state of there's
like a mental side of like you can't believe in
what you know. Right when you believe something, it means
you're unsure, like you're hoping. I didn't believe it anymore,

(21:16):
like I knew it like no matter what, Like I
was making the Olympics and I was winning there, it
wasn't a question anymore in my mind. So like my
whole thought, the training, the execution, like I couldn't be
brought off that pedestal because it didn't matter what happened.
Even when I went to Germany in February right after Japan,

(21:39):
I lost in like the second round, and I had
one of my worst performance in Germany. Is like my event,
like I win Germany, and when I lost in the
second round, I lost very poorly, but it didn't change
the idea that like I'm winning, it's okay that I'm losing,
don't even mind because my site was already on the
aftermath of like winning reh, so I couldn't even be

(22:01):
deralped mentally from winning that tournament.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Wow, talk about mental strength like I need crazy. I
need that whenever I go into a golf tournament right there.
I need to find that. I need to find that
bad moment, whether it's playing a terrible round, because if
I do play a terrible round, I know the next
round I'm gonna go out there and play the best
I can. But that's crazy that that Japan tournament gave

(22:27):
you a certain type of confidence. Yeah, And there's just
a difference in knowing what was that? What was the
tournament that you won after Japan? Or did you win
a tournament after Japan? Not until World Masters? Okay, I
lost every other time. How hard is how hard is
the World Masters to win.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
World Masters? Is top sixteen in the world are the
only people who are allowed to go, And if one
of the top sixteen doesn't show up, it goes to
top seventeen, then top eighteen, and then on its way
down until you get a full sixteen roster.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
Okay, so it's the it's the best of the best.
And I actually went into World Masters not planning on
winning it and didn't think I could because the the
idea was we are World Masters was not a tournament
we were prepping for World Masters, was a tournament we

(23:24):
were training through and we were trying to gain experience
to build our playbook for the Olympics. It just so
happens that I won the tournament while building my playbook.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Did did that win in that tournament? Did it give
you a whole another confidence on top of what you
already had going into that tournament?

Speaker 4 (23:46):
Yeah, because it was I knew that like the one, two,
and three weren't at the tournament, but five through like
the rest were. So when you go to the Olympics,
it's seeded. So I was five or going into Rio,
so I knew I wasn't gonna fight the other guys
until the semis. So the draw now didn't matter to

(24:07):
me because I was gonna beat anybody in that draw
up until the time when it mattered.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Speaking, I was gonna say, speaking of Olympics, how hard
is it to win in the first round?

Speaker 4 (24:19):
That's probably one of the most difficult rounds to win. Really, Yeah,
it is the first one.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Why is this so difficult?

Speaker 4 (24:28):
So the Olympics for judo is different than most sports,
right because most sports in the Olympics are time based
or your performance based. But for us, we actually have
somebody preventing us from getting to the next round where
they can physically grab you like wrestling. So you're stuck
into two scenarios. Right. You're either a seeded athlete that's

(24:52):
not going to fight another seeded athlete, which means that
you're kind of in this limbo of do I get
somebody that's completely off the wall because the Olympics give
wild cards, so random players from around the world can
get a wild card, which is like the IGF saying

(25:14):
you get to go for some reason or another. And
then there's people that don't directly qualify, but they're the
next in line, and every country gets a next in
line participant and they can land in there. So what
happens is you could get a world champion first round
who's not seated because he may not be top five

(25:35):
in the world if he suffered an injury like I did,
where I didn't get that many points in twenty fifteen,
so my ranking kind of started to drop and then
I was able to bring it back up because of
the World Masters win. But for the ones that skipped
it or didn't go, they fall below the seed, so
you could just end up that way, it gets nervous.

(25:57):
Then you have the other side where it's like you
have a random Joe that you should beat, right, but
when he knows he's gonna lose and he's at the Olympics,
he throws the kitchen sink at you. Yeah, and if
you don't do well, that messes with people's like meant
to like, I'm not prepped, right, I'm too tired. That
should have been easy. It was difficult, and it kind
of sets the tone for your day. So mentally that

(26:20):
that is really difficult. You see a lot of like
European Champions, World champions go out in the first round
all the time.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
How many matches are in a day? Five five five,
so you fight the almost the entire tournament in one
day one day?

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Wow, how many rounds are there or matches throughout the
whole tournament.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
Yeah, it's a round of thirty two, somewhere between twenty
four and twenty six. So you figure thirty two eighteen
plus that probably round like forty matches for men, probably
a little bit less than that for women.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Oh my gosh, are you not like mentally fatigued already
go into like the semis there's.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
A well, now, where a lot of people really know.
Really yeah, and that's where people really struggles because they
don't know how to do it. And if you don't
actually compete and win internationally your flow of your day,
you don't you don't know what to do. And some
people that don't train that or get that experience, they struggle.

(27:26):
So you'll see a lot of people make like semis,
take a break, and then they don't know how to
like re prep for a semi or a final, and
they'll just finish fifth all the time.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Wow, that's it's actually funny. So growing up, I did
judo too, and I was probably like eight or nine
at the time, and we were at nationals in Atlanta, Georgia,
and I remember I literally had to fight literally like
five times that day. And so I'm going through going
through the draw and my dad and Ed Liddy, who
you probably know, where my coaches, and they're like, man,

(27:56):
he's he's going to be a national champion, like he's
got it. I kind of go through everyone, and then
I didn't know how to fight again, like for the
final time for the fifth time today, and I was
just so done. I literally just like went up and
I literally just fell down and like threw up my
leg like this and it's just done. And I literally
got pinned by a kid that I epaonned and like

(28:17):
my very first round, I fought him yep. But it's
just so mentally like fatigue and you're just like I'm done.
But well, I could have been a national champion if
I would have sucked it up. But I ended up
getting third, I think, which was still.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
Some people just don't know how to make that turn
off and then turn it back on like a few
hours later. And everyone's different, so you know, a lot
of mistake A lot of like people coming up through
the ranks do is they do what like the older
athletes do instead of doing what they need to do
because everyone's a little different. Like my routine is different
than a lot of other people's because I f off

(28:52):
for the day, like I just leave, like I leave
the venue, I leave the town. I actually put myself
into a community type setting where we do other activities
other than judo. Like for the Olympics, I actually left
the whole venue and I went and watched fencing.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Really, yeah, just you have that much time in between
a couple of hours, a couple.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Hours did you do any other activities during that time?
Just watch just watched fence. How was that in person?
Is that crazy?

Speaker 4 (29:23):
It's it's a little difficult to watch.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
Yeah, I almost feel like they should have like a
lightsaber type s you could see it instead of like
hear it because it just looks like the hands waving.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Do people get so is fencing the word like they
run or whenever like they're fighting?

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Yeah? Yeah, and then get points?

Speaker 2 (29:42):
How do you not like, how does it the fence
not go through there?

Speaker 4 (29:45):
Like it's like a really it's a really thick leather though.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, so they're not in danger? No, no, no, it doesn't.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Like I think it goes to a point and they
put like a little ball on the end of it,
I think is what happens.

Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, I didn't I know any about fencing. I knew
what it was, but it was like, I see these guys,
I'm like, how are they not like bleeding or something
from it.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
This portion of The Burn Factory Podcast is sponsored by
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Speaker 2 (30:23):
All right, but Travis, we gotta go to you and burn.
You just took us the beginning all those injuries as
a kid, from literally almost losing your leg. But I
actually want to share in unfortunate burn moment myself back
whenever I was in sixth grade. It was a week
before summer. I'll never forget it. I'm a competitive golfer.

(30:44):
My dad bought me a new set of golf clubs.
We actually just moved into this house right on the
golf course. And June thirteenth, go to school, thinking it
was a normal day. Science class comes and the teacher
was gonna take The teacher says she's gonna do his
science experiment in front of the class. So she gathers

(31:05):
all of us up, takes us outside, and next any note,
it's like a bomb literally went off right in my face.
And it's it's pretty crazy because like you have this
out of body experience where you're literally looking down at
myself and I can see that I'm on fire, but

(31:25):
I didn't know, and I could just hear, like you know,
like a swimming pool where you can hear kids like
screaming and like kind of stuff like that. That's what
it sounded like. And all of my here's like he's
on fire, He's on fire, He's on fire. And then
like I come back to my like kind of what
you said about concussion to like kind of my nonsense.

(31:45):
And I'm in the ambulance on the way to the
hospital and they're actually talking about how they're gonna flight
for life for me because they're talking about how fifty
percent chance to survive, and the ambulance because the swim
was so bad around my neck and then ah, try
not to get the much, but the song on around
my neck was so bad, and take me to the

(32:07):
hospital and I'm in the bed and around like a
couple of days, I've had seven surgeries around my face
and burns. They have to like scrape off the dead's
skin to get to the normal skin. And around a
couple of days in the hospital, I had my dad
go get my putter and I actually put a couple
of balls into a glass jar and I actually called

(32:28):
that my burn moment, saying, you know what, I'm not
gonna let this affect me and I'm gonna push forward
because I'm a champion. And that's how I got the
idea of the burn moment. But I'm sure you've had
many unfortunate burn moments yourself, so tell me about that.

Speaker 4 (32:43):
Yeah, you know, I've had a few moments where you know,
you just mentally like call it quits. And I went
through a time in my judo career where I've been
labeled as at one point like the bad boy of
judo because I did everything with a massive chip on

(33:06):
my shoulder, and I actually felt like the entire world
of Judah was against me and did everything in their
power to make sure I lost. That's how slighted I felt.
And there's nothing worse than knowing that when you do

(33:26):
all of this work and you put all this effort
into it, that it's actually impossible to succeed. And when
I was in Austria I think it was Austria, I
actually I was sitting at a bar having a diet
coke just and I just quit. I was done. I

(33:49):
was like, I can't take it anymore. I had just
lost London, I had lost every other event. I couldn't
figure out Judo, I couldn't figure out how to win.
And I mentally, when you when you prep for the games,
you believe, like from the deepest cell of your body,

(34:09):
that you're gonna win. And when London was taken from me,
because I didn't lose. Even to this day, I don't
felt like I lost. I felt like I was cheated,
and you don't think you could ever come back from
those moments, right, So, when I'm sitting at the bar

(34:31):
and I'm by myself, there's no one around, I'm like,
this is it. I'm done. I quit. I actually typed
up a massive, like three page letter to USA JUDO
or the USOC and I bagged it. I was like,
I'm done. I had one of my worst years ever
after twenty twelve. I felt like I couldn't do anything,

(34:54):
and it was it was really only like a four
month like term from like August to like February when
I bagged it. And if it wasn't for the people
that had actually made sacrifices in their lives to make
sure that I could be successful, then I would have

(35:14):
just walked away because I just felt like there was
nothing left that I could have done in the moment
to actually get through the hurdle that I was getting
through because of the mental struggle I was having with
the entire ecosystem of the sport. And then sure enough,

(35:35):
once I, once I gave up on it, I actually
threw the rule book out the window and actually had
one of the best years I've ever had because I stopped.
I stopped myself from caring so much about the success
and got back into the why I do what I
do and why I love what I love. Because I

(35:57):
once I lost London, I felt like I had chip
I had to prove, and mentally, every time I didn't
do it, it just chipped away at me and chipped
away at me and chipped away at me, until I
felt like I had nothing and I was actually you know,
I didn't talk to anybody. I wouldn't even eat in
front of people. I would take my food and I'd

(36:18):
go right back to my room. At the twenty twelve
Olympic Games, after I lost, I was too embarrassed to leave.
I would go get McDonald's, I would come back to
the room and then I just sat there twenty four
to seven by myself because I felt like everybody was
looking at me and laughing at me for losing.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Well, even though that you didn't, I mean, you didn't
even really lose Nope, you went to a golden score,
and then they went to a judge's decision. And even
the judge's decision was weird because jud they're all supposed
to raise the flags at the same time, yep, and
the middle judge kind of raised it and the other
two kind of looked like, oh blue, Like yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
There was a bunch of stories and articles written about it. Really,
but that whole time, like, even after that, I got
slighted every step of the way.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
Really, yep.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
I even got suspended from the sport for a.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
Little bit because of what you said.

Speaker 4 (37:04):
Because of what I did. I threw a water bottle,
you know, at or in the direction of somebody I
shouldn't have it. It was a very important person in
the world of judo that controlled a lot of things.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Can you say who it is?

Speaker 4 (37:22):
I can't, Ah, But it turned into like an international
ordeal because I was That's how angry I was at
the whole situation. Because I was angry enough to curse
at a referee on a mat, I was angry enough
to throw an object at another person. I was angry
enough to cuss out that same person in the middle

(37:43):
of an entire international venue in the middle of the venue,
so everyone heard it and everyone saw it. They suspended
me from the tournament. They suspended me from judo, and
then when I came back, I still got screwed. And
then I was like, you know what, f it, We're done.
I'm out. And then my coaches actually like brought me
back into it and I didn't actually have down time

(38:06):
as much as they they gave me the lee way
to compete without pressure, because all they wanted me to
do was compete. They never wanted me to win anymore.
They we flipped the script on what was really important,
and it was more important that I competed. And I

(38:26):
remember having the conversation with my coaches and I was like,
just so you know, the rule books out the window.
If I have to cheat to win, I'm cheating. I
don't care if I get penalized. I don't care if
I get thrown out because I was done anyways. And
then sure enough I won the next tournament.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
What tournament was that?

Speaker 4 (38:42):
Germany?

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Germany?

Speaker 4 (38:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (38:44):
Didn't you beat Bishoff there too? Right in his own country?

Speaker 4 (38:48):
Yeah? So was that kind of like was that like
like that was one of my highest moments and not
because of him. It was what happened after the tournament.
So there's a Bundesligue that happens. It's one of the
premier leagues in all of Europe. It's like a professional
judo league. And there's a team that Jimmy used to fight,
who are called TSV Abensburg. They're one of the best

(39:09):
teams in all of Europe, in the entire world as
far as professional judo goes, and a lot of the
best players in the world compete for this team, and
Bischoff was one of them. And after I beat Bischoff,
I won Germany and the coach of the team came
over and was like, we want you to fight for

(39:30):
our team. And then I signed on for Bundesliga and
fought for Abbensburg for like the next eight or nine years. Really, yeah,
So I went from when I beat Bischoff, it was
my first international gold medal where I beat the Olympics
champion I think he was at the time. Yeah, Olympic
champion of time.

Speaker 3 (39:48):
Well he won in two thousand and eight, right, yeah,
and then did he win in twenty twelve again silver.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
He lost the same Olympic finals the Korean and the
German bold. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:59):
Wow, that's kind of cool though. I mean for like
us and the tragedy that happened to our family, and
in hindsight, it was such a blessing because we I
mean we wouldn't have this podcast, we wouldn't be sitting
here talking to you. And I really feel like it's
those moments, those burn moments in your life that builds
you to who you are today. And in that moment
of you were like, you know what, I'm done, I

(40:19):
can't do this anymore, you actually fought better because you
were just pressures off. I don't even care if I lose, like,
which is cool to see.

Speaker 4 (40:28):
Yeah, changes the perspective on what you do and why
you do it, and you get back into the reasons
why you started instead of the reasons why everybody thinks
you're doing it and that pressure that the outside community
puts on you, and then you get true joy out
of you know what you do every day.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, I almost need to start taking that to once
again to my golf itself. Actually put in well, uh,
what was it farmers the farmer's pre call for us?
That's actually a PGA tournament locally here San Diego. And
I actually told my mom on the first tea box
because it's my very first tournament kind of back and

(41:07):
I told my mom, I was like, you know what,
I'm not going to do this because like all my
friends are saying I want to do I'm gonna do
this for me because I want to be out here
and I just want to enjoy. And I actually played
one of my best tournaments possible just because I was
just loving what I wanted to do best. And same
way with the same thing with you.

Speaker 4 (41:24):
I tell all the young athletes now, the people who
love you will love you whether you win or lose.
So compete for you because no matter what happens, the
people who stand by your side will be there when
you're done, so they're not going to change their opinion
of you just because of what happens during the time
of the competition. We're all going to come back, we're
all going to be friends. We're going to win and

(41:45):
lose together, and it's not going to play a part
into the relationship around you. Because what happens is when
people see a little bit of success, they start treating
the people that are around them only being there because
of the success, and that's not true. Win or lose,
like we're still there.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Did anyone turn on you?

Speaker 4 (42:05):
No?

Speaker 3 (42:05):
No one, no one person. Wow, that's cool, that's I mean,
that's a shocker to see because a lot of times
in your darkest moments is when people they want to leave.
But whenever you take silver in the Olympics, like oh yeah,
I know you.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Like same with one of your greatest moments. Like people
who turn away on you when you're just first starting
and then like you see they see you winning, then
they're going to want to try to come back, and
it's just like, well, hold up, you blew me off early.

Speaker 4 (42:30):
Well, we had a very small circle from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
That's cool.

Speaker 4 (42:34):
Yeah, it was a very tight knit group and a
tight knit family. And it was even to the point
where we felt like our small group of athletes and
coaches we competed against the world as a unit. So
it was more about when we stepped on the field,
one of us is walking away with a medal. And
that's how we've we viewed it because if if our

(42:57):
fifty seven girl didn't medal, we knew we were going
to we were going to pick up the slack and
then if I couldn't do it, then Kayla would do it,
and we started competing as a unit and then just
building off of each other each and every time, and
it just made things easier and more enjoyable.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
Did it kind of take the pressure off too, because Yeah,
everyone like had each other's back during those times.

Speaker 4 (43:20):
Yeah, because we actually supported and like we're actually happy
for the other person. You know, most of the time
when you get into these events, the actual people who
you think are your friends are actually cursing behind your
back because they actually want to outperform you. But for us,
we wanted to collectively beat everybody else, whether it was

(43:41):
you or me. I wanted all of us to show
all of them that we were better and we could
do more with less, from less funding to less training
partners to you know, less experience.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Still to this day, are all you guys close Yep,
that's so cool.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
That's cool. So yeah, So you move fast forwarding back
to twenty sixteen. You're in the semifinals again for the
second consecutive Olympics. So was it mentally challenging being like, Okay,
I lost the last semi finals, Like, let's not do
it again, or did you go in just like whatever
happens happens, I I'll be low.

Speaker 4 (44:18):
Oh, sure I was gonna win. The coaches were looking
for me, and they found me with my button a chair,
feet on a table, leaning back with my hands behind
my head, watching Judo in the shoot, ready to go
fight the Olympic semifinal. That's where they found me. I
was so sure of it, it didn't matter. And the

(44:38):
guy that I was fighting I was zero to five against.
Between twelve and Rio, he beat me all five times.
I beat him in twelve he beat me five more times. Yeah,
I was that confident that I was gonna win.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Where'd it come from? Just mental?

Speaker 4 (44:55):
Just from that day in Tokyo. I knew I was
gonna win, guarantee.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Wow, And you beat him, and you beat him, I've
got a burn moment.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
On the exact minute we planned it really Yep, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Huh, I saw. I watched your whole video. You broke
down the entire twenty sixteen Olympics, and he said, I
was just gonna wear on him. It didn't matter if
if how I got into the ground. I'm gonna get
into the ground. And then right at the one minute work,
I'm getting it done. Yep, you pinned him. Oh, no, no,
you submitted it.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, I submitted him. That's right.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, yeah, I need to give my judah terminology to
high level. I'm sitting here trying to like okay.

Speaker 4 (45:35):
And looking back at it, I feel so bad for
that guy because he was one of the best judo
players in the world. No Olympic medal, multiple time world champion,
no Olympic medal.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Where was he from Georgia? Oh okay, yeah, junior world medalist,
world medalist, just at the Olympics.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
He ran into me both times.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
I feel like you mentally beat it him, like beat him,
because you can see in the video he was so frustrated.
He was like, dude, what is this guy doing? Like
and then boom, submiss him.

Speaker 4 (46:03):
That playbook is important. The playbook is important.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah, I have a playbook. You gotta have a playbook.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
If I have a dude, Jude, I'm gonna have a
little playbook sheet in my pocket or in my back.

Speaker 4 (46:14):
Like you guys keep playbooks for golf, right, certain holes,
certain courses, Yeah, certain place Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Like it's kind of like a yardage book.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Yeah. Like yeah, so each hole have like our numbers
and like specific sound playing fottels and.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Just the history of where you know to put it
in like ranges.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
It's almost like judo though, like everyone in the judo
circuit you kind of always see each other again, and
same thing for golf, like you kind of are always
playing the same courses, so every time you're taking little
mental notes like Okay, I hit it over here, I
can't do that this time, so you don't. So it's
it's so cool to see how, like so many sports
are so similar with each other.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Certain certain players you want to beat inside the first minute.
Certain players you don't even want to try to score
on until the last thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, oh, how is it? Is it hard to do
like film on judo opponents because they're so different from
each other, And.

Speaker 4 (47:09):
It's difficult in the sense that when people break down film,
they tend to break down athletes and in a way
that doesn't benefit them, but they think it does. Right. So,
I'm a right handed player, but I also have a
very specific style that's to me. So if I watch

(47:30):
the Georgian for example, that I was prepping for, if
I watch him fight other right handed players, his actions
and reactions are based on that player, not me. So
it makes it difficult to actually break down videos where
you know exactly how that player is going to react
to me. I almost need information on him by getting

(47:52):
my hands there and getting a feel so that I
can conceptualize what the future is going to lead. And
then it's a guessing game, and you use all your
history and all your data to kind of guess. When
we break down video, we reverse engineer it to look
for consistencies in the players. So when I was competing

(48:12):
against the Bulgarian and the Quarters, I had never even
done around with him, never touched his gee. Never. All
I've ever done is seen him compete and seen him
in the room training, never worked out with the guy.
I knew I was going to beat him because when
we watched his film and we watched him compete, he
used a very specific throw which is exactly how I win,

(48:35):
and he does it when he gets tired and when
he gets put into danger. So I could compete against
him in a way where I don't have to take
any risk. I could just try to push him to
the point where he gets tired and then he'll do
this thing that'll allow me to win. And sure enough,
two minutes in, he got a little winded, got a
little nervous, and his just natural instinct kicks in and

(48:57):
then once that happens, he's done. Now he's not thinking.
You know a lot of athletes, they really struggle with
the mental side of things, and they don't practice the
mental game during their training. They train as hard as
they can physically to do the best they can physically,
and they leave the mental out of it. When I

(49:17):
was in Tokyo, one of the things I do is
I pin everybody, and when athletes do a specific throw,
I can pin them. It's like a ninety percent certainty.
If you do that on me, you're getting pinned. And
it was so blatant that I could do it that.
When I was fighting the Russian in Tokyo, when I

(49:37):
came back from that injury, the Russian coach goes, hey,
you can do anything you want except for this move.
If you do this move, you're gonna lose, and he goes, okay,
I got it. He kicks the shit out of me
for like four minutes and forty seconds, and then sure enough,

(50:00):
twenty seconds to go in the match, he does what
he's not supposed to do and gets pinned because he
just got him, he got tired, he made a mental
lapse because he's not focused and lost it. He just
started pounding his fist in the mat and crying like
a little kid. And then the coach was like, I
told you, and he's.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Like, yeah, yeah, I feel like in Juli, you can't
get too comfortable. You always need to be on your
toes and always be with it. Yep, because whenever you
get into that little small thing, that's when you open
up the door and you can with them. Did you
guys work with mental coaches though at the OTC? Is
that kind of how you got so? Mentally?

Speaker 4 (50:39):
Me? Never? No, I didn't do it until after twenty
twelve because when I was hating the world, I was like,
something's got to change. And then I found a sports
psychologist that had a different look on mental training, mental preparation,

(50:59):
mentally preparing yourself and your body to actually compete and win.
Most people when they envision themselves doing something successful, they
envision the act right. So before I used to see
this sports psychologist, what I used to do is I
used to know who my opponent is, and I used

(51:21):
to visually in my head see myself throwing that person
and then I would picture it again and again and
again and again, and when I would compete, I kept
noticing that I would lose matches because I would get
it put into my brain that I am beating you
with this, and when I couldn't get it, I would

(51:42):
just keep trying to get it because I've told myself, like,
this is how I'm beating you, and I think I
can do it, and I kind of get tunnel visioned
into this way of winning. And I lost a lot
of matches because of it. And when I explain that
to her that I get this like tunnel vision, what
she told me was, I need to remove the actual

(52:05):
acts of what's happening and I should focus more on
the feeling that I get during certain stages. Right. So
you probably get this when you golf. There's a certain
level of anxiety that happens when you step into the box.
It's like a little bit right, just that a little
bit right. There's a certain bit of anxiety when you

(52:28):
pull into the parking lot and grab your clubs a
little bit right. There's a feeling there and there's you know,
a little bit of anxiety when your backstroke starts to
happen there's a little bit of anxiety when you're walking
to your ball after you've made that drive, Right, there's
that little bit, And she said, when you can focus
on that feeling and the recreation, on what that means, Like,

(52:52):
let's say you hit a bad shot, what does that
feel like? And so when you ignore the surroundings and
you think about the field of play as a blur
where it's not the object of the person but the
act that happens as being the important factor. So I
would think like, Okay, I'm thirty seconds in what does

(53:12):
that mean?

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Like?

Speaker 4 (53:14):
What do I feel like thirty seconds into a fight?
Am I breathing heavy? Does my throat hurt? And when
you start to do that right, you start to get
those like pins and needles, You can start to get goosebumps,
you can start to get that anxiety running and then
you think like, okay, I've gotten a sheet. Oh how
does that make me feel? And then you start focusing
on it, and your body neurologically falls into this place

(53:35):
where like it's feeling all of these emotions and all
of these stressors, and that's what your body needs to
feel in order to perform, and it's not the first
time you're feeling it. So I started training myself where
I was focusing on the feeling and the emotion of
it and the actual like how do my feet feel
on the mat? Is it too slick? Is it too slippery?

(53:58):
Is it sticky?

Speaker 3 (54:00):
You know?

Speaker 4 (54:00):
How does that make me feel? Emotionally when I look
at the scoreboard, like how does that make me feel?
And then when I compete. These are all emotions that
I felt so many times. It's just second nature to me.
I'm not overly worried. I'm not overly confident. I'm not
not confident enough, and I'm not too concerned or not

(54:24):
concerned enough. I'm kind of in this middle tone of
like this is just everyday life for me.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Now.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Is that something you kind of practice in the practice room?

Speaker 4 (54:32):
Yep all the time?

Speaker 2 (54:33):
So did you even get nervous right when you got
on the mat before been there?

Speaker 4 (54:39):
I fought the Olympics so many times from an emotional
standpoint and a physical standpoint where like I would actually
get myself tired just thinking about it. Even when I'm
driving a car, like I would just like zone out
and I could just get my hairs to like stand
up and like the emotion of winning that it just

(55:01):
became second nature.

Speaker 3 (55:02):
So then whenever you get like into those zones and
you start to feel that again, how do you like
get almost rid of it because you say you weren't
even nervous.

Speaker 4 (55:10):
But you want it. That's the key is like it
becomes a state of comfort now, so instead of nervous energy,
it just becomes energy. Right, Like when you the number
one killer for athletes is anxiety, So you don't want
to not feel anxiety, which you don't want to do
is have a massive sense of it and then an

(55:32):
adrenaline dump. Right. That happened to me in the two
thousand I think it was the fourteen World Championships. I
was like, we thought I was gonna win it. We
were like, I've never performed well at the Worlds. I've
lost every time in like the first round, from like
the crappiest of draws to the crappiest of trainings and preparations.
But this one I was uninjured. I'm ready to win.

(55:55):
I'm going I'm excited. I have the best draw I
could possibly ask for a the World Championships. I show
up first round, I'm like, I'm going, I'm going I'm
like pumped up, I'm ready to go. I'm ready to go,
And then ten minutes goes by, those guys are still competing.
I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go. I'm bouncing
up and down. I'm ready to go. My heart rate
is raised because it can't be too low. Ready to go.

(56:17):
Twenty minutes goes by. I'm still in the shoot match,
ands I got one more match to go. That match
goes another twenty minutes. I spent forty five minutes at
like my RPMs of my heart rate at like one sixty,
trying to keep myself ready to go because I don't
want to go from zero to one hundred. And when
I spend forty minutes like basically like in a slight jog,

(56:39):
I was tired. Yeah, I was mentally shot.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
And then I ended up losing in golden score like
four minutes in. Ah, that's brutal.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
It was just like bad things happen when you're not
like prep to have the confidence to go. How long
does it actually take you to get ready to like
for you, do you know how long it takes you
to go from out of the zone to end the
zone to take a shot for us. That's important. Like
I know now I could tie it down to the

(57:08):
tee of like when certain steps need to happen in
order to compete. When I step on the mat the
best I can, so I can go from like lounging
in the back having a conversation with friends to ripping
somebody's head off in a matter of minutes, because I
know those stages. I got to go through without overly committing.
In one of those stages where I get.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Too tired, you're almost like five steps ahead.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
Yeah, some playing chess.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Yeah I'm literally playing chess. But Travis, we got to
keep this show going. It's time to go to art
and burn ridiculous. I mean, there has to be some
crazy fan that asks for like something ridiculous to you
or just even like traveling overseas and stuff, there has
to be a ridiculous a moment that happens.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
So the craziest thing that ever happened, Right, was I
bronzed at the German in Grand Prix, I think it was.
And I'm walking off the mat and kids are asking
for autographs typically normal, right, and I'm trying to sign
as many as I can. But there's like kids everywhere,
and I'm signing and I'm signing and I'm doing stuff,
and out of nowhere, out of the top of my eyes,

(58:15):
I see a baby, like crowd surfing. A mother had
passed like a four month old baby all the way
down from like the top row, boom down, like fifty
sixty people must have touched this baby and let the
baby slide all the way down into my arms. And
then I'm holding this baby and I can see the

(58:36):
mother like trying to part the like all these people
like Moses in the sea right run down here to
get her baby. And then I'm holding this baby for
like three minutes. All these times, that's a long time
she had to get through the crowd from the top row.
And then by the time she got down there, she
took a picture with me and then I left the baby.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
Oh so weird.

Speaker 4 (58:57):
Yeah, it was the craziest.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Thing I saw that. I'd be like, what's going on?

Speaker 4 (59:02):
Yeah, so I'm selling autographs looking at this baby. No
way that's coming down here, right, because I can see
the mother like yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah. She's like
looking at the people in the crowd like yeah yeah yeah,
yeah yeah, trying to push the baby down the crowd.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Why why can't she just carry the baby down?

Speaker 4 (59:17):
I think she thought I was gonna leave before she
got down. She felt like if she could get the
baby there, and I got the baby, now I have
to stay. And then she got her way down there did.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
She signed autographs while holding on the baby.

Speaker 4 (59:29):
So I just tell the baby, I don't know what
to do.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
Oh my gosh, that's crazy. I actually have a kind
of a ridiculous moment myself in terms of judo.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
So at the we were at the OTC.

Speaker 2 (59:40):
Yeah, we're at the OTC, and I was like three
or four years old, and Coach Ed would sit here
and like we were all like at the end of practice,
being like this long line, and he would like call
people hope they would get their belts and like tie them.
But I never knew how to tie the belt, so
that would always be on my knees, sitting here trying
to like hide behind the people so he doesn't see

(01:00:02):
me to come in time my white belt that I
never pass, and thank gosh, you never called me up.

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
That was just a ridiculous moment I had. Yeah, they
weren't easy to tie though.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):
I didn't even know how to time so long, it's
so confusing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Yeah, I probably couldn't even tie one now I have
no idea how to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
I figure it's like back and then I.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Run a school and it's the funniest thing to watch
people like they look at it and they're like trying
to figure it out. It's like five times longer than
it needs to be, and they're like, I don't really
know what to do, and they're looking at everybody else.
It's like, why is there so short? Mine so long?
They can't figure it out?

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
The funnies it was, Yeah, it was hard. I kind
of had something like that, but I couldn't do a cartwheel,
so part of the warm ups you'd have to do
cartwheel to kind of learn how to like if you're
throwing mid air, and I could never do it. And
my dad would literally be in the basement like trying
to practice cartwheels and I could never get it for
the longest of times.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
And you know what, people who can do cartwheels, they
look at it like why can't people figure out how
to do cartwheels?

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
But majority of people can't do it. It's the craziest thing,
like to like transfer your weight like in air, it's
so weird. I just never could get it, and I
feel I don't know what happened, but it kind of
just switched and I kind of got it. But that
was kind of the time that I started getting into
like football and basketball, so I kind of started moving
away from judo. But for the longest of time, and
I was good, Like I don't think I lost the

(01:01:20):
match for like two years. Like I got third at
Nationals and I was winning all these tournaments. I was
going to Dallas and winning. But like I couldn't do
a freaking cartwheel football tackle him. That was back when
you could touch the legs literally, just football tackle. The
mine was the good old fireman. That was my throw
every single Time's in the drop?

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
What's that's like you kind of like grab like through
their legs and then like you roll.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Over your shoulders.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Yeah, oh really, yeah, I might have to try that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Before that. But all right, yeah, that is definitely ridiculous.
I couldn't imagine like holding someone's kid and it's like
so brand new, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Imagine if they drop, if someone in the crowd, Yeah,
that would have been tough. I can imagine that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
But we're moving on to our last letter. And it's
kind of like two parts, so it's like now and next.
So what are some burn moments you're going through?

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Now?

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
You looted, you have a school now, so what are
some some burn moments you're trying to get through right now?

Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
Right now, the biggest thing on my docket is Jimmy
Pedro and I started a new company. It's called American Judo.
The whole premise behind the company is trying to get
everybody unified under a system of judo inside the United States. Right,
when you look at different sports in different countries, typically

(01:02:42):
you can label them by a style, right, So in judo,
if you look at a player, not knowing where they're from,
you can decide like that's a Japanese player, that's a
Korean player, that's a Russian player, because they do judo
in a certain way. They just have different characteristics, different
techniques that they use because they have certain resources in
their country that allow them to develop certain areas of

(01:03:05):
the sport better than other places. And the system that
we used is the same system that Ronda used, Marty
mcloy used, Kayla used, I used, Jimmy used. So in
modern judo from two thousand, un till present, the metals
that were one in this country were one under this system.
So we've built a platform that we're trying to integrate into,

(01:03:29):
you know, a country that can get together and start
teaching the system so that we can become a powerhouse
in the world of judo. But it's a little bit
of an uphill battle. Yeah, there's a lot of egos involved,
a lot of like politicking involved, and a lot of headaches.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
So like USA in general, is every person kind of
has a little bit of different style, is how it is.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
And the problem with us in our country is we're
a melting pot of just cultures and races and ideologies, right,
and you get people who are very good in particular styles.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
So if you go to La the guy that used
to coach at one of the top universities in Korea
coaches in La now, right. If you go to Seattle,
the guy that took bronze at the Olympics from Mongolia
runs a school in Seattle. Then if you go to
like New York, there's a lot of Georgian players from
over there that actually fought on their team that now
live there. But when you throw them all into a

(01:04:25):
national championships. They're actually really bad players at their style,
but they compete against each other at a really young age,
so it makes it really hard to develop a specific
system to really get a kid really good at it.
If we take the kid from La and you were
to throw him into like a Korean style back in Korea,

(01:04:46):
he would never win because he's fighting other people fighting
that style where all they fight is that style, and
they're going to lose because they're not getting enough of
the interactions in the same way to really the skill set.
So for us, it's really difficult to get players to
a really high level because they compete against people who

(01:05:09):
are really bad at individual styles. It's kind of hard
to conceptualize, but it's it's a way of like American
soccer versus English soccer versus Brazilian soccer, where they play
the game a little differently in a different style.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
So do you just start kind of like in one
area and then you gravitate to like like certain parts
of the country country maybe like with you and what
did you and Jimmy are? Dan?

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):
No, we did a nationwide program. So we signed a
contract with USA Judo so that every member of USA
Judo gains access to our online platform so they can
learn right at home and follow our system from the
very beginning where they don't even need a partner all
the way up to Olympic level style techniques.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Wow. Well, what year did you start?

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
What year did you start this?

Speaker 4 (01:05:55):
Last year?

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Last year?

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Brand yeah, brand new. Wow, congrats on starting this.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Yeah, are you guys getting some kind of traction with it?

Speaker 4 (01:06:03):
Slowly? Slowly slowly. We just started an entire event series,
so now we do I think it's thirty two events nationwide.
And then we have the online platform, and now we're
getting into coaching certification and referee certification where people can
sign up and they can learn different levels of techniques
so that they can become experts in these little fields

(01:06:26):
to help pass on to younger generations.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
I see.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
So, say, someone who's doing it online, how long how
many like weeks do you think will take before they
can actually go into the gym and start rolling around
with some people?

Speaker 4 (01:06:38):
Hours?

Speaker 3 (01:06:39):
Hours?

Speaker 2 (01:06:39):
Hours, huh that's crazy hours.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you gotta think about it. I mean,
there's so many techniques and different throws to you. It's
not like you can just kind of just walk in
and start doing it, but you can.

Speaker 4 (01:06:52):
That's the difference people label it would be like at
the end of the day, I could play golf with
a seven iron if I really wanted to. Am I
going to be really good at it? Absolutely not. But
that doesn't mean I can't play. Everybody in judo right
now treats it like you have to master every club
then go play. Well, we take the idea of like,

(01:07:15):
how about you learn one thing and then play with
that club the best of your ability, and then we'll
add more clubs as you get comfortable with the sport,
and the more you go through it, the more comfortable
you get, the easier it is to learn the other clubs.

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
This reminds me of snowboarding.

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
I want to see the connection.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
I mean, so we actually went to Breckenridge, well, my
very first time being in Colorado never snowboard, and kind
of all you're saying, like a few hours and stuff,
I didn't even know how to stand on my board
and the next thing you know, I'm going down blues
within like six hours. And that really reminded me of judo.
And you're talking about how people can just learn and

(01:07:59):
then like kind of what he was doing he would
give us a technique and we learned from it. But
as we got better, the more techniques he started getting
giving to us and made us better. So that's kind
of how I got that connection right there first. I
get that kind of it's a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
Quicker though, Like these techniques in judo, you're talking about
weeks that you've been trying to do.

Speaker 4 (01:08:17):
It in hours. I can think a white belt that's
never done a throw and make it look cleaner than
a black belt with thirty years of experience. Wow, because
they follow certain steps and it's easier to teach the
white belt because he's only doing what you asked. The
black belt is doing what he saw on YouTube a
decade ago. He's doing what he saw the other guy do.

(01:08:38):
He's doing what he thought saw in the other video
from the last competition, and he's trying to like yeah,
and then kind of mesh it together.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
I see. I mean, I guess it does make sense
when you break it down like that. But there's one
thing I do got to ask is did you ever
think about transferring over to MMA? Kind of like when
you're career. I mean, you see Kayla, she's doing MMA.
Now you look at Ronda Rousey, did it ever cross
your mind? Not even really?

Speaker 4 (01:09:04):
There was no money in MMA. I guess yeah, it's
a it's a bad financial decision to do MMA because
for me, right I I had a passion from the
time I came back from my first leg injury. I
made a decision I'm winning the Olympics. I was doing that.
There was no like I'm gonna win the Olympics and

(01:09:26):
make a hundred million dollars. It was like, I'm winning
the Olympics. That's all that mattered. So it wasn't about
the money. But once that goal was done, you have
to make money to survive. Right I didn't have like
some young dream of like I'm gonna win the UFC
whatever it takes. That wasn't in me. So if it's

(01:09:47):
not going to be a business, it doesn't make sense
to start a whole new journey to do something that
like I didn't have in me to do. Would I
be really good at it, absolutely, but the financial side
of it's just not there. It is for Kayla and
it is for Ronda because on the female side of it,
we're taking real athletes that are like physically trained for

(01:10:11):
combat for twenty years in a professional setting against just
athletes that aren't combat focused. They are trying to learn
combat right, so they have a leg up against every
bit of their competition. But for men going up against
pro kickboxers, pro boxers, D one wrestlers, it's a different
beast all together. And the financial side on the men

(01:10:35):
is equal or comparable to women, especially in Kyla's league, right,
And when we look at the UFC, there's just the
financial side of it. For me is the top one percent,
but you've got to do stuff to get to the
top one percent. And it's like, do I really think
I could get there? It's a dice roll for me
because of my age and the history with my body,

(01:10:58):
just like what we do. So I didn't want to
risk four years of a maybe in my life to
like potentially make maybe one hundred grand if I'm lucky.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Yeah, And I guess you're right at that time, like
the UFC was really, I mean nothing, do you want
people aren't making ten million dollars a fight like you're
making ten and ten maybe yeah, because I want to
pay all your coaches and then all that stuff and
travel and and.

Speaker 4 (01:11:25):
It's on a maybe, right, because even GSP like if his,
if his, the guy he's supposed to fight, pulls out,
Like you don't get paid. You spent all that money
on your camp, your nutrition, your coaches, everything. Yeah, it's
definitely a gambler's game. You have to have that drive
in you to want to do that and live that lifestyle.
I don't like that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Lifestyle, especially being beaten in the head every single day.

Speaker 4 (01:11:48):
That's the other thing is like jud know you're not like, yes,
you hit your head, but that's not the goal, right
Yeah in the MMA, like that's the goal. Goals, it's
a little different.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
I don't I don't think I could ever do it.
On the side, it's tough. It's fun to train, like yeah, you.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
Know, like go hit mids, go spa a little bit,
grapple a little bit, nice and light and we're all
friends after. It's different than when your teeth in your
mouth guard.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
And you're locked in a steel cage with them, Yeah,
and he's trying to literally kill you.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Yeah, or even like snapping your shint, trying to throw
a light kick and checking wrong and just completely kind
of like Chris Whitman, it's.

Speaker 4 (01:12:26):
Just so many things go wrong, and it's just benefit
doesn't doesn't do it for me?

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Yeah, yeah, Like, why waste my time? But Travis, you
did just spell burn in your life? Where can the
audience find you on Instagram.

Speaker 3 (01:12:41):
Or Instagram is the best place at Judo Silencer? And
then what about the new thing that you and Jimmy.

Speaker 4 (01:12:47):
Are doing American Judo dot Com.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
American Judo dot Com, go visit it. Show him some
love there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Well, Travis. As a gift for coming on the podcast,
we do have a black label and hoodie only guess
can get the.

Speaker 4 (01:13:04):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:13:04):
So that is for you. Wear it loud, wear it pro.
Maybe maybe in your next seminar you can you could
throw the hoodie one.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
I might try to grab it and just rip it off.
But like always, please visit my foundation as well, Priest
James Foundation dot org again Priest James Foundation dot org
to understand why we called this the burn Factory. We'll
see you guys for the next episode. Peace all right, guys,

(01:13:32):
Tryvis Stevens just spelt burnt in his life.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
He is now the Burn Factory. Champion. Got to raise
raise your hand.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
But as a champion you have to call out someone
who are you calling out to come on the burn.

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
Factory Kayla Harrison. Tayla Harrison, I need to here. You're here, yes,
Sir Kayla Harrison. Come on, come on the Burn Factory
spell burning your life an ar