Kayla Harrison and Travis Stevens Clinic/Seminar

Over the weekend I attended a seminar in Buffalo, NY with Kayla Harrison and Travis Stephens. It was well worth the money and well attended, it was an hour for me so I made sure I made the trek out there. The whole two hours was spent on gripping patterns, part of a system developed by Jimmy Pedro that they had drilled millions of times. They kept stopping because people in attendance were not getting it at first. We then finally did 30 second drills with groups of 4 to 5 drills to get a dominant grip. Their philosophy is to “kill the sleeve” of the GI. This helps to neutralize the opponent. Kayla really did the most talking but Travis would chime in here and there to illustrate certain points. There is something about him, kind of an aura he puts off. You can tell he is an incredibly tough guy. He has huge hands and you can see he has had broken fingers at some point. There was a Q &A question and what is also interesting is that Kayla is retiring from Judo. Her and Travis really want to get standardized Judo in the US. They often go to schools where it is a few people training in a church basement with no signage. They liked the fact that Kin Tora Judo in Buffalo has a rich history and has been in the area since 1963. Travis talked about how Judo is suffering from bad marketing which makes parents gravitate their kids to Soccer and football. The competition for kid’s time was something he thought needed to be addressed to get the Judo in the forefront. Some of the political landscape kind of got brought up and you could tell they didn’t approve of it but were careful about what they said. They talked about the road to the Olympics and how long they had been doing Judo. Travis started at 17 and was competing at 22 years old professionally. Kayla started at 6 and is now 26. She is in incredibly good shape. It was nice to actually hold his second place medal from the Rio games, it was a heavy medal.

I went to a training camp in British Columbia where Travis was the clinician.

I agree about his aura, it's one of total confidence/competence in what he does and how he does it.

They definitely have their system of gripping (and of course rest of Judo as well). General public gets the tip of the iceberg, I am sure.

I got to watch Travis do randori with several athletes, let's just say that he is an amazing judoka and athlete. Has perfect control, and yeah, huge hands.

His story is pretty damned amazing.

Sorry Ben just seeing this. Yeah he is something else. It was great to go to 3 different clinics with Olympic Level Judo. It looks so effortless for him.