The Gap 2

Related post: The Gap.

In October 2008, I had a visiting training at a competitive Judo Club in Haarlem Netherlands. The club is well-known in Europe, because many excellent Judo players come from this club. One of them is Guillaume Ricaldo Elmont. He won the World Judo Championship in 2005. It was a great honor for me to trained with him for one session. After experiencing his Judo moves, I though I would never meet a better Judo player. Ironically, I was wrong. It is said there is always someone who is better.

In May 2009, the Singapore Judo Federation hired a coach from China. His family is Zhou and everybody calls him coach Zhou. When I first met him, I was surprised that he is only one year older than me. I showed some interests of his training. He told me that he can throw me more than ten times in a minute. I was laughing inside, because even in Netherlands' national team training, the worst case was I got thrown 6 times per minute. I felt like a pizza. I told coach Zhou that I don't believe he can achieve that and I will prove he is wrong. In the end, after I tried once with him, I regretted for what I said earlier.

In his training session, I fought 5 minutes randori against him. Last time in Holland, I felt like a pizza being thrown around. During the fight, Coach Zhou threw me like flying a roti prata. In one minute, he threw me around 12 times. He reminded an old Chinese quote "There is always another heaven beyond this heaven".

I was shocked that he played so well and yet he was not a world champion. He told me his was not lucky that he only got number 5 in world judo championship. However, he trained with Kosei Inoue (the "Lebron James" in Judo) before. He threw Kosei hard and Kosei respect him and trained with him for a whole afternoon.

I was not the only one who experienced this roti prata feeling from Coach Zhou. I met a Janpanese student from Osaka. His name is Koji. He looked polite, sincere, and humble. In fact, one of my schoolmates told me her sister was very into him. In Judo, he is a smart player with sharp techniques (not like me, I use a lot of power). He is a guy who seek for strong player. After knowing him, I informed Coach Zhou and invited him to Zhou's training. Usually in the fighting session, each of the student play only one round with the coach. When Koji fought Coach Zhou in the first round, Zhou didn't use all his strength. But still Koji was thrown like a doll. To our surprise, Koji didn't walk away and fought two more rounds with Zhou. As Zhou got warmed up, his movements and techniques turned sharper. And I became a witness of how the coach "cook" Indian prata. After the training, Koji told me he respect Zhou a lot.

Without any doublets, there is always someone better. And the gap between professional players and armatures is undeniable huge. But I don't feel sad. Through experiecing top players in the world, I learned solid skills are the basic to be a topdog.