by Ronda Rousey
The days at Big Jim’s blurred into one another. The eight months I spent there in 2004 were marked by boredom, soreness, silence, and hunger.
To compete in the sixty-three-kilogram weight division I had to weigh no more than sixty-three kilos before each tournament.
Virtually no athlete competes in a division that is actually their weight. Most athletes walk around considerably heavier than competition weight in daily life. In the UFC, I fight at 135 pounds—and for about four hours a year, I weigh 135 pounds. My actual weight is closer to 150. I can make 135 pounds because the weigh-in process is very different in MMA. I only fight every few months and weigh in the night before and then have a chance to recover from the physical strain of cutting weight before I fight again. When I was doing judo, I was constantly competing. I had to make weight as many as four weekends in a row and I might only have an hour from weigh-in to fight time.
Because I was always struggling to make weight, Big Jim limited the food we had in the house, which made it even worse. When the weather was warm, Big Jim’s family and members of the club would come to the lake house for a barbecue and to swim in the lake. I wasn’t supposed to eat, but I would sneak graham crackers and eat them in the basement. In the morning, Big Jim would see the crumbs.
“You have no discipline,” he would say.
I started making deals with myself when it came to food. I would figure out exactly how many calories I ate, then determine what I needed to do to burn them off. But it got to the point where I would binge eat and not go run; it was just too much on my body to run off all that I put in it. Once it got to a point where I ate so much and I felt like I couldn’t compensate for it through exercising, I would just throw it up.
The first time I tried, I failed. While Big Jim was at work, I ate a bagel, some chicken, a huge bowl of oatmeal, and an apple, but instead of being glad to be free of my constant hunger, I was overcome by guilt. I went to the bathroom and stuck my hand down my throat. I heaved, but nothing happened. I tried again, and again, nothing.
I guess I’m not doing it right, I thought.
The next few times I overate, I tried to make myself throw up again but with no luck. Then a week later, there was a barbecue at Big Jim’s house. I ate until I was full. Two hamburgers, watermelon, a bunch of little carrots, chips, a couple of cookies.
I went into the downstairs bathroom, determined to undo the damage I had just done. That particular day I ate so much that I felt incredibly guilty and terrible that I wouldn’t give up.
I stood, doubled over the toilet, shoving my hand down my throat. Sweat broke out on my forehead as my body tensed. My stomach strained, trying to maintain its contents. I tried, and tried, shoving my hand farther down. My eyes were tearing up, snot was coming out of my nose. Then it happened. It finally worked. The contents of my stomach came hurling back up. Relief.
The next time I forced myself to throw up, it was easier.
I was still mindful of limiting what I was eating, but my weight refused to budge. Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw huge shoulders, giant arms, this hulking body reflected back at me. I started forcing myself to throw up more often. A couple times a week, sometimes every other day.
I was scared of being caught. Once when Big Jim had a couple of visiting athletes staying in his downstairs apartment, I heard a sound outside the bathroom door and froze. I turned on the water in the sink to try to muffle the unavoidable retching sound.
My constant hunger was the result of trying to maintain an unrealistic weight while executing a grueling training schedule. I woke up between eight and nine in the morning. My muscles were sore from the day before. My body always ached. I reached my arms above my head and heaved myself out of bed. Big Jim always got up before me and when I emerged from my room, a hot pot of coffee was brewing and my mug was set out next to it.
Mornings were reserved for conditioning. Everything I owned fit in two duffle bags, the contents of which were usually strewn around my room. I dug through the piles looking for something clean enough to work out in.
In his basement, Big Jim had set up the world’s smallest workout room. It was probably no more than ten feet by ten feet, in which he had managed to cram in a set of free weights, a bench press, a treadmill, an elliptical machine, and a few other workout machines that looked older than I was. He had created a circuit for me that incorporated cardio, weight training, and judo drills.
The elliptical and treadmill were so old that they didn’t have any digital readout. For those parts of the circuit, I had to count four hundred to eight hundred steps, then move on to the next area. The ceiling was so low that when I did the elliptical, I had to duck my head. When I did cleans, I had about three inches of clearance on either side. Anything but perfect form and I was hitting the wall or nicking a cardio machine. The only thing not in that tiny room was the bungee cord for doing uchikomis (a judo throw drill). That station was set up right outside the workout room, next to the washer and dryer. The whole time Big Jim would be upstairs with his stopwatch.
There was no clock anywhere in the workout room, which was part of Big Jim’s strategy. Every day, I was supposed to complete the circuit faster than the day before. If I didn’t beat my time, then the next day Big Jim would add another set on to the end of the circuit and my time would start all over. Without a way to time myself, I had to try to keep pace in my head. The first day of a new circuit, I would go as slow as humanly possible. But as the days passed, I had no choice but to go faster. After I was done, I would head back upstairs, where Big Jim never told me my time, just how much I beat or missed my time by.
The time it took me to do the circuit crept upward from around half an hour to nearly an hour as Big Jim added more repetitions. I felt myself growing stronger and faster. My shoulders got broader; my calves firmer. As a kid, I used to stare at the veins on my mom’s forearms, still muscular from her judo days. Now my arms looked just like hers. I had been self-conscious of my arms since middle school when kids had teased me, calling me “Miss Man” because of the size of my biceps and shoulders. But whenever I looked in the mirror at my changing shape, I reminded myself I was training to win the Olympics, not a beauty pageant.
In the kitchen, Big Jim would give me instructions for my run. I always ran the almost three-mile loop around the lake behind the house, but he mixed up the routine. Some mornings, I could just jog the entire way. Other mornings, he gave me intervals: jog to one lamppost, sprint to the next; or jog to one lamppost, sprint the next two; or jog two, sprint four.
Most days, Big Jim sat on the porch, with a piece of rope he used to practice tying various knots, and watched as I ran around the lake. Other days, once I hit the halfway point, he would jump into his car and drive along the road to make sure that I wasn’t dragging ass. I rolled my eyes when I looked back and saw his SUV coming up the road, but it meant something to me that he would go out of his way to try to find me and make sure I was running.
After I got back from my run, it was time to go offer estimates for trees. Big Jim was a fireman, but during the week, he worked for a local tree removal business and drove around the area giving people quotes. The two of us loaded into the car and drove around for hours, stopping in little towns around New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Big Jim puffed away on his cigar, and I sat in the car inhaling secondhand smoke. We didn’t talk, just listened to the oldies station Big Jim always had playing. When we pulled up to a house, Big Jim would size up the tree in question, looking it up and down, occasionally walking around it, then he’d jot some notes on a clipboard and hand the paperwork to the homeowner.
“That’ll be two hundred dollars, ma’am,” he’d say.
Then we’d drive to the next house.
Around three p.m. we’d cross over into Massachusetts. Before heading to the Pedros’ judo club in Wakefield, we’d stop at Daddy’s Donuts, where Big Jim met up with his friend Bobby, a burly bald guy from the judo club. Big Jim ordered a cup of coffee and a bra
n muffin. We always sat at the same table by the window. Big Jim would pull off the top of his muffin, sliding the bottom over to me. I was always hungry from cutting weight, and this small muffin butt was the greatest pleasure of my day.
Then we opened up the dojo at four p.m. There were a few hours before the senior practice, and I sat there with a textbook open pretending I was studying while Big Jim ran the younger kids classes.
At the club, there were about ten of us who were considered part of the club’s senior-level group of athletes. It was good to be outside of what I lovingly referred to as the Unabomber’s cabin, but it wasn’t like my social life blossomed within the club. Judo is a sport where athletes peak in their mid- to late twenties, making me at least a decade younger than my teammates. Besides, there wasn’t a lot of time for chitchat at practice. The minute the clock hit seven p.m., Big Jim started barking out commands and criticisms.
“Why the hell are you doing it like that?” Big Jim shouted whenever he saw me doing a drill imperfectly.
“I just . . .” I started to respond.
“I just, I just,” he said in a high mocking tone.
I hated him in those moments.
Other times, he would walk by me on the mat and simply sigh loudly and shake his head, as if resigned to accept the fact that I was a lost cause. But I knew that it was better to be criticized by Big Jim than ignored altogether. If he didn’t think you had potential, he wouldn’t acknowledge you at all.
We practiced for two hours a day, doing throws, drills, and randori (sparring) until I felt like I was going to collapse. Then Big Jim had us do more.
When we got home, Big Jim cooked us chicken and rice, he’d mix barbecue sauce in with my rice, which I thought was a weird combination, but I never said anything. I was just so happy to be able to eat at the end of the day. We didn’t talk over dinner. I shoveled the food into my mouth, dwelling on my unhappiness.
Exhausted and sore from training, I threw my sweaty judo gi on the floor, took a shower, and fell into bed, my hair still soaking wet. The next day was the exact same thing.
On the weekends, Big Jim went to work at the fire station. I had no car and wasn’t allowed to so much as leave his little cabin. I would go all weekend without seeing another person. I might not speak out loud once between Friday night and Monday morning. I would play the movie 50 First Dates over and over just to hear the sound of human voices in the cabin. Every few hours, I foraged in the kitchen for food.
I would eat Bran Buds out of a coffee cup without any milk. The dry bits in my cup looked just like guinea pig food. As I chewed, I would imagine being abducted by aliens, kept as their pet, and fed Bran Buds.
That was my entire life for the better part of the year leading up to the 2004 Olympics. My existence was miserable, but my judo had never been better.
“If winning the Olympics was easy, everybody would do it,” I reminded myself.
Back then I still believed that the more miserable I was the more productive I was being. I hated every day, but I promised myself that it would be worth it. I didn’t think it was possible to be happy every day and succeed. It took me years to embrace the sacrifices and the pain as a satisfying part of my process.
Everyone wants to win. But to truly succeed—whether it is at a sport or at your job or in your life—you have to be willing to do the hard work, overcome the challenges, and make the sacrifices it takes to be the best at what you do.
YOU HAVE TO BE THE BEST ON YOUR WORST DAY
My mom always says that to be the best in the world, you have to be good enough to win on a bad day because you never know if the Olympics are going to fall on a bad day.
She taught me that it is not enough to just be better than everyone else. You have to be so much better that no one can deny your superiority. You have to realize that the judges are not always going to give the win to you. You have to win so clearly that they have no choice but to declare you the winner. You have to be able to win every match twice on your worst day.
From the time I was six years old, I dreamed of winning the Olympics. Back then I was on the local swim team, so I imagined winning in the fifty-meter backstroke. I dreamed of standing on that podium with my gold medal hanging around my neck. Dad had told me I would shine on the world stage. I dreamed of the crowd’s roar and the way the national anthem would fill the natatorium. When I started judo, I took my dream of winning the Olympics with me.
My mom agreed to let me get a cat. I named her Beijing, after the host city of the 2008 Olympics. I’d never imagined that I’d compete in Athens in the 2004 Olympics. Though I’d been dominant at the junior level, I was unranked at the senior level and was still recovering from the ACL surgery.
But, after I returned from my injury and catapulted myself atop the national rankings, I realized that I could make the 2004 Olympic team. There was nothing that I wanted more. After I won the 2004 senior nationals that spring, again beating Grace Jividen, who previously held the No. 1 spot at sixty-three kilograms, I went from dark horse to favorite. Suddenly, the spot on the Olympic roster was mine to lose and I was not going to give it up.
Not everyone was thrilled with my rapid rise. At thirty-nine, Grace was more than twice my age and had actually been a teammate of my mom’s six years before I was born. Grace wasn’t happy to lose her top ranking to a teenager, but she was always nice to me. The same couldn’t be said for some of my new US teammates.
Several Olympic team hopefuls trained at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. The OTC judo clique was largely a bunch of partying mid- to late twenty-somethings who were pursuing the Olympic dream without a prayer in hell of achieving any level of international success. I was a seventeen-year-old kid already making a name for myself. When they looked at me, they saw what they would never accomplish. When I beat Grace for the top spot in the division, they had an excuse to be openly cold toward me.
At the Olympic Trials in San Jose, I breezed through the opening rounds with ease. During the break between the semifinals and finals, I sat playing my Game Boy on the cool linoleum in a hallway dotted with athletes—some disappointed to have been eliminated, others jogging up and down the hallway. Coaches and officials milled around waiting for the championship round. My mom and her friend Lanny stood next to me, recounting their judo war stories.
Two chicks from the USOTC team whispered as they walked past me. I heard my name, but couldn’t make out anything else. A few minutes later, they passed by again, this time shooting dirty looks my way.
“Look at them,” Lanny said to my mom. “Trying to psych Ronda out before she goes out to fight Grace. You better tell her to be mentally ready.”
My mom laughed and gestured at me. “I’m not telling her anything. Ronda never thinks about those women walking by her trying to stare her down, and she isn’t going to be psyched out by Grace or anyone else. If anything, she’s thinking about if Big Jim will let her have a chocolate donut if she wins.”
I looked up. “Big Jim would never let me have a donut.”
I went back to playing my Game Boy. Then I beat Grace by ippon, locking up my spot on the Olympic team.
Less than two months later, I was on the plane bound for Greece.
We arrived two weeks before competition to train and acclimate to the time difference. From the moment we landed in Athens, my teammates were eager to soak up the Olympic experience. They made plans to visit the Acropolis. They buzzed with excitement over the Opening Ceremony. They sorted through the bags of sponsor swag distributed to each member of Team USA.
For me, competition was the only thing I was thinking about. I would wake up in the middle of the night and sneak out the window to go running around the Olympic Village. As I slipped through the window, I had the biggest smile on my face. My story, my adventure, was just beginning.
It was quiet as I ran around the village, past the dorms filled with sleeping athletes. Everyone is sleeping but me, I thought. I’m the only one out here t
raining right now, and it’s because I want it more than anyone.
With the competition coming up, I had to cut weight. My Athens roommate and teammate, Nikki Kubes, had the opposite problem. A heavyweight, she was having trouble keeping her weight up. I usually made weight by a fraction of an ounce, so I wasn’t really eating, but I went with Nikki to the Olympic cafeteria anyway.
It was the most magical place in the whole village. The very first time I walked in I was filled with such wonderment at all the different people and all the food that I wasn’t even angry I was cutting weight and couldn’t eat.
The cafeteria was this huge, almost warehouse with tent doors. The middle was filled with enough tables and chairs for at least one thousand athletes. Olympians from around the world were chatting away in languages I could not understand. There was food station after food station, any kind of food you could think of: Chinese, Italian, Mexican, Halal, Japanese. There were fruit stations, salad stations, bread stations, dessert stations, even McDonald’s had stations. The food was unlimited and free.
Nikki and I filled our trays and sat down. I passed Nikki my tray.
“Here you go,” I said. “Enjoy.”
Her face twisted in an odd mixture of guilt and awe.
“Eat up,” I said trying not to hate her. “Start with the pizza. Then that . . .”
“What is that?” Nikki asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I got it from the Asian food area. It looks delicious. Make sure you put kimchi on it.”
Nikki picked up her fork. I looked longingly at the food. My stomach grumbled. I took a swig of water.
When Nikki was ready for her next course, I slid over a plate topped with pastries.