"Today is a new beginning, a chance to turn your failures into achievements, and your sorrows into good. No room for excuses.” – Joel Brown

You wake up to, to train, to work towards your dreams, your goals. And when you perform horribly and don’t succeed that is when the true tests starts. It tests your character, and it makes you question yourself and sometimes you need to take a step back and relax. (Which in my case- is the hardest part of all) I am currently watching the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, from home. I was supposed to go to Abu Dhabi to compete but sometimes life takes an unexpected turn. Before leaving for the Kazakhstan Grand Prix, I inured my knee the night before I was going to hop on the plane. Of course I ignored it, I am used to having little nicks and bruises, especially in the knee department. However, the two days of travel to Almaty did not help my knee one bit, and I still competed and continued to train on it without giving it any rest. I lost first round in Almaty to the eventual Silver Medalist, Anna Bernholm from Sweden. I promised myself that I would have a better week, in Uzbekistan but I was ousted first round as well by Munkhzaya Tsedevsuren who ended up taking a bronze medal.

Leaving the two bad tournaments behind me, I continued on to Israel to train at the National Training Center. Four practices in, and I got injured. I am the type of person that always pushes myself to the very end, I am always training and I never stop and now my body is fighting back. Telling me to STOP! I think it’s time for you to rest. For example, after every single tournament I literally get off the plane and go to straight to training. I love to train, I love working towards my goals. But at times I forget that rest and recovery is an important part of training- and I always ignore that part.

I was away from home for three weeks and most of the time I spent it in Israel on the side line, but considering the circumstances I had an amazing time in Israel. I had the chance to watch how hard the men and women train. Everyone has a positive attitude, everyone works hard. The girls show up practice 30-20 minutes before judo starts. Most of their practices starts as early as 8am, and then they have a second practice in the afternoon. They lift weights as a team, eat as a team. It is a great atmosphere and it was really nice to be part of the team while I was there. I am used to always traveling by myself, or if we do send a team to a tournament it is always small and our team is not that close because we are from all different parts of the country. The girl’s took me to see Jerusalem, it was an amazing time and I hope next time when I have a chance to visit again I will be able to visit the Dead Sea!!I wanted to Thank Shany Hershko, Lior Wildikan, Camila Minakawa, Rotem Shor and Yarden Gerbi for making me feel part of Team Israel!

To be an elite athlete, it’s more than just showing up to practice and going through the motions, listening to what your coach has to say. To be the best in the world, it truly takes pure 100% dedication to your sport. You need a passion, a special drive. It’s a unique passion. It’s the one that tells you to get back up after you been thrown down. It’s the one that tells you to keep moving forward even though nobody is there to support you. It’s a drive to be more than ordinary and that is what makes being an Olympic elite athlete special. You are willing to grind it out, and fight through the hard times. Everybody in the world is training, and everyone wants to win. Question Is, who really wants it the most?! Young athletes come to me and tell me, “I want to be good. I want to win.” I always ask them the same question, “How?” How are you going to win? What is your plan?! Without a destination, you are training with no purpose. You can’t be successful without a plan and going through day to day routines. Sitting on the sidelines in Israel, watching the former 2013 World Champion, Yarden Gerbi, train, just proves that there is no magic pill to success. It takes time, long hours and lots and lots of preparation to become a winner. Everyone is trying to get better, which means even the World Champion needs to improve and get better. And that is all that we can do. If you want to win, if you want to succeed you must simply prepare to do it. As I get ready for the 2015 season, I have control of how I train and prepare for these upcoming events.

The better prepared I am for each tournament, the more success!