Your company faces a much bigger rival. Is in that location a mode to turn your competitor's size into an advantage for you? Your fiercest opponent is gaining momentum in the marketplace. How can you turn that momentum confronting him? Your arch rival keeps beating you to the punch, cutting into your business organization with superior speed. What tin can you do to flip the state of affairs around and win dorsum your customers?

Jimmy Pedro knows a lot nigh flipping things around and a lot about winning. Pedro, the 1999 globe judo champion, is the first American in 12 years — and only the third American in history — to win that title. A three-time Olympian and the 1996 statuary-medal winner, xxx-twelvemonth-old Pedro has been the top-ranked American judoka for the past decade, winning 5 national titles.

Judo (Japanese for "the gentle way") emphasizes winning in gainsay past using your opponent'southward weight and forcefulness as weapons against him, while preserving your own mental and physical energy. It embodies the principle that adept technique tin win out over sheer force. In a judo match, a slight person can overcome a heavier, stronger opponent. There are no kicks or punches. Instead, after a bow to begin the lucifer, players score points by "throwing" their opponent or by using a hold-downwardly, a asphyxiate, or an armlock.

Judo was created in the belatedly 19th century by Jigoro Kano, a Japanese educator. A pacifist, Kano modified the ancient samurai fine art of jujitsu ("the gentle practise"), a system of weaponless defence force, past irresolute some dangerous holds and dropping others altogether. Seeing judo every bit a mental discipline too as a physical i, Kano founded his own judo school and instituted a strict lawmaking of ethics and humanitarian philosophy.

Pedro officially retired from the sport subsequently the Sydney Games and is now working every bit a marketing VP for Monster.com in Maynard, Massachusetts, where he manages the company's 2004 Olympic-sponsorship program. Information technology'due south Pedro's kickoff ix-to-5 task after years spent running his judo studio in Andover, Massachusetts, training, and competing. While he still runs the studio, Pedro'southward latest mission is to help onetime U.S. Olympians make the transition to the world of business organisation using a Spider web-based customs and mentoring organization that connects current athletes to sometime athletes, lists chore openings, and provides a identify to mail resumes.

Pedro recently coached Fast Company in the business concern awarding of judo: how to permit your opponents beat themselves.

Minimum effort with maximum efficiency

It'south a master tenet of judo: "Minimum effort with maximum efficiency." Instead of resisting forcefulness, use it to your advantage by going with it and adding your own force. Don't fight dorsum when you lot're attacked. Yield. It sounds counterintuitive, but you want to be attacked. When someone shoves you, that person is a little off balance and can easily be thrown. If I'grand on the mat with someone and he'south non attacking me, I somehow need to become him to act. I might push him a little flake just to run into what he does, and if he pushes back, I'll use that movement confronting him.

Judo is a total-contact hyperspeed chess match. Matches run for five minutes or until someone scores a indicate — whichever comes first. Because judo is incredibly fast moving (you lot can lose an entire friction match with ane split-second lapse), you have to maximize every opportunity. And y'all accept to recollect several steps ahead all the time. You must anticipate what your opponent is going to exercise so that you tin can either counter his motion or execute an assail before he does. The moves are logical and sequential: action, reaction, activity, reaction. If I'm pinning somebody, there are sure escapes that my opponent is capable of performing. Every bit he'southward trying to go out of my grip, I switch my hold, and now there are unlike possible escapes. If I'yard ahead of him when he starts to make his next move, I can counter it and stay in control of the state of affairs.

Study the contest

How practice you lot make bang-up dissever-second decisions when you're nether a huge amount of force per unit area and every move counts absolutely? Past knowing the contest before you step out onto the mat. I accept videotapes of every single person who has competed in an consequence anywhere in the earth in the past year. Even if I don't nourish an event, someone's in that location taping for me. Of course, when you're studying the competition, you desire to run across how that person performs against competitors who are similar to you. I'm a medium-sized lefty, and then I report people fighting medium-sized lefties. I notation their strengths and weaknesses. I look for concrete qualities similar stamina — whether they get tired if they're pushed. I look to see how aggressive the person is. I option out the master techniques that each person uses and which throws he succumbs to.

I have notes on all of these details so that I can create a game programme before a competition. Yous accept to know what your opponent is capable of beforehand in order to make good decisions quickly. Know your own strengths, know your opponent's strengths, and utilize both of them to your advantage.

Drill your strong points — and remain unpredictable

It'due south amend to do a few things uncommonly well than to do a whole gamut of things in a mediocre fashion. There are near 65 dissimilar judo throws, and you tin become an Olympic champion having perfected just two or 3 of them — if you lot can throw every single person in the globe using those throws. Eliminate those ii or three techniques from your repertoire, and y'all won't be able to throw anyone. So at present you've got everyone studying those 3 techniques. That ways that you take to evolve continuously and develop new techniques. If you've perfected 3 throws, there are still 62 others for you to learn.

How do yous choose which techniques to perfect? By knowing yourself and by understanding your advantages, your disadvantages, and your style. There are all sorts of different styles. The Russians like to pull opponents in close, lock them upwards and then they tin't motion anywhere, and then throw them over. They take awkward gripping techniques and stances that other people aren't accustomed to. They're successful because they're nontraditional. The Japanese are very technical. They like a lot of space so that they tin can execute their moves. By and large, you want to be strong in areas where other people are weak, and you want to go along your opponent off guard by being good at a diversity of attacks from the same grip. Don't ever change your style to cater to an opponent. When I'one thousand watching a videotape of a competitor, I make note of which throw beat him — but that's not the offset throw that I'thousand going to try. Execute your own techniques first and piece of work your repertoire into the match. Only if the lucifer isn't going well or if your techniques aren't working should yous use your fill-in. You always want to have tactics that yous may try in certain circumstances.

Take risks — no matter what the circumstances

You lot tin't win in the long run if yous don't have risks. When y'all're winning a match, at that place's a peachy temptation to focus on trying to concord on to the lead, every bit opposed to going for the win by taking chances. Fifty-fifty if you stop upward losing the match, it's much better to take chances than it is to fight afraid and run away psychologically.

I learned that lesson the difficult way, when I was 16, at the U.Southward. Open in Colorado Springs. In one match, I scored early and then got defensive. My opponent didn't trounce me past throwing me; he beat out me on penalties, because I was scared. I wasn't wrong for losing. I was wrong for not making the other person trounce me. I trounce myself by not having the volition to win.

That match was a turning point in my career. From that day on, I was more than afraid of playing scared than I was of losing. At present I accept the match to my opponent. I'g always aggressive. Regardless of what the score is, I'm e'er taking chances.

Attack, assault, attack — especially if the odds are against yous

I tell my students to attack as often as possible — especially if the odds are against them. If yous attack simply one time in the entire practise, then you haven't learned as much every bit if yous had attacked 100 times. And you'll acquire more by losing to someone who's better than yous than yous will by winning against someone who isn't. Learning is trial and error. If a throw doesn't work one mode, try information technology some other way, until yous develop a technique that works for you.

I too tell students non to worry virtually what's going to happen. Just do it — and worry about it later. Go habitation and retrieve about it. Visualize information technology, and try to conceptualize why information technology might accept gone wrong. Most people are afraid to endeavour things because they're agape of declining. Just with failure comes success. If y'all fail enough times — if y'all're persistent — and so you're going to get better.

It's of import when you lot're competing to "do the right thing" — apply proper techniques, fight aggressively — even at the cost of a lucifer. You lot can always learn from a loss. But if you're winning using bad techniques, you're not improving your skills, and you're going to hurt your chances in the long run when you're competing confronting better, more-experienced opponents.

My begetter was my double-decker, and if I won a national title but didn't fight the way that he had taught me, he would be sure to tell me what I did wrong. He had bigger, better plans for me than simply a national title. He wanted me to exist the best athlete I could be.

Believe it's possible — and relax

Everybody has a dream. But most of the time, people think that their dream is far-fetched. What is your dream? What is the ultimate achievement in your mind? For me, it was being the best judoka in the world. If y'all met me for the first time and I told you that, y'all'd probably think I was crazy. You might think, He's never going to be the all-time in the world. Well, if I don't believe it'south possible to get there, if I think my goal is just a pipe dream, then I'm never going to achieve it. When I began to prepare for the 1999 World Championship, I sat down and pictured what it would feel like to be a aureate medalist. I imagined what my trunk would experience — the goose bumps, the elation. I pictured myself on the stand receiving my medal, with the national anthem playing all around me. In my mind, I made up an opponent whom I'd beaten in the finals and put him right there on the second-place podium.

When your dream becomes real to you, if you can create that image in your mind, so information technology's almost equally if your body allows it to happen. Until you really think you're capable of doing something, it won't happen. Ten minutes earlier every fight, I prevarication down on the flooring, shut my optics, and think. Sometimes I think about null. Other times I recollect about whom I'm fighting, and I motion picture myself chirapsia that opponent. I win the friction match in my heed earlier I actually compete. I'd guess that at least 60% of successful athletes visualize their success before they actually compete. Information technology's a huge part of succeeding.

You don't know what yous're capable of until y'all step up to the challenge. When I was a kid, I had no thought that I was capable of being a world champion and a 3-fourth dimension Olympian. People don't realize that achieving their dream is possible. They see information technology as something that's out there. Practise you desire to be that person? Or are you lot ready to face your fears, put in the work, accept the consequences — and reap the rewards? The people who can honestly reply yes to that question are the ones who volition win the gold.

Jill Rosenfeld is a former Fast Company senior writer. Contact Jimmy Pedro by email (judogold99@aol.com).