Sakura Kokumai: Primed To Be An Olympic Champion — The Bledsoe Show #117
Barbell Shrugged
Doug Larson
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2019
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sakura Kokumai is training to become a karate World Champion and to represent USA in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Sakura started karate in Honolulu, Hawaii when she was 8 years old. She started competing internationally at 14, and represented the Jr. USA Karate Team for four years, winning the Jr. Pan American Championships 4 years in a row.
Sakura is currently ranked number 5 in the world! Most recently she won Bronze at the World Championships held in Paris, France, Bronze at the Combat Games in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Gold at the Pan American Olympic festival.
In this episode, we talk about Sakura's mindset, specifically the night before a tournament and walking into a tournament, the differences in feelings between winning as a 14 years old and having to win now, different Karate styles and all the meanings behind the kicks and movements and the story behind each one, her rituals to create a presence in martial arts, and much more.
Enjoy!
-Mike
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Show notes: https://shruggedcollective.com/tbs-kokumai
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Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals. Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're so stupid. |
| 0:05.7 | I lived with that story about myself for years. |
| 0:09.6 | I intellectually didn't believe it though. |
| 0:12.1 | If you asked me straight up several years ago, if I was smart, I would have said yes. |
| 0:17.8 | Convincing those around me and myself that it was true. |
| 0:21.3 | The trouble was, every time something didn't go my way in life, this phrase would pop up into |
| 0:26.5 | my head. |
| 0:27.8 | It happened when I talked to girls, when I screwed up a workout, and when I made mistakes |
| 0:32.3 | with work. |
| 0:33.3 | Can you imagine the impact that had on me over 20 years of my life? |
| 0:38.5 | That phrase wasn't something new that popped in my head. |
| 0:41.9 | That had been hanging in there since I was a little kid. |
| 0:45.8 | I fought the story so hard that I overcompensated. |
| 0:49.1 | I studied. |
| 0:50.1 | I was a bit nerdy, and I was never going to look stupid. |
| 0:54.4 | And some ways it was a gift. |
| 0:56.5 | They caused me to develop myself intellectually. |
| 0:59.5 | In other ways, it was hell. |
| 1:01.6 | I was never going to be smart enough, and it caused me to study things constantly that I |
| 1:06.2 | wasn't even interested in. |
| 1:08.5 | It was a sad and depressing process to get the smart result I was looking for. |
| 1:14.2 | I rarely noticed the story running in the background, and over time I noticed it more. |
... |
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