Why it's important to teach techniques from the standpoint of stance

Ai-Yotsu

When I teach standing techniques, I always demonstrate them from the standpoint of ai-yotsu and kenka-yotsu. This is important because the mechanics of techniques done from each stance are often very different.

When traditional techniques are taught, they are often taught from a square stance scenario, which is totally unrealistic. This is one of the key reasons beginners have great difficulty pulling off techniques they learn. Because they learned those techniques from a square stance and in randori, nobody adopts a square stance. It's usually kenka-yotsu but occasionally ai-yotsu.

So, if you want to get some techniques to work for you, you'd do well to learn how to do those techniques from both the kenka-yotsu and ai-yotsu situation.

When it comes to newaza, there's no ai-yotsu or kenka-yotsu but there are still different scenarios you have to prepare for. Take the turtle position. You can teach your players how to do a certain technique on an opponent in the turtle position. But once you start attacking your opponent, they will react. You have to have answers for every likely reaction.

For example, what can you do if uke decides to flatten out onto his stomach? What can you do if uke tries to stand up? What if he turns away from you? What if he turns towards you. You have to prepare for all these scenarios. And when I teach a specific technique, let's say a turnover, I usually try to teach how to respond to a number of different, likely responses by uke.

Why it's important to get new recruits

As a judo club we are always trying to get new recruits. This is important for a number of reasons.

Firstly, you need the numbers so that your existing members can have enough training partners. Judo is an individual sport but you need other players in order to train. So having the numbers is crucial.

Imagine a player having only one training partner whom he/she trains with all the time. The lack of variety not only makes the training boring, it also hinders the player's progress because he/she needs to be exposed to different styles of play. If you're training with the same partner over and over again, pretty soon you'll be very familiar with how that other person plays their judo. You can't improve that way.

We are pretty lucky in that we currently have quite a few players who are heavy, medium and light-weight. So, there are enough partners for everyone to train. However, people sometime have to miss training due to work, family commitments, falling ill, etc. So, it doesn't hurt to have more members so that there will always be enough people on the mat that everyone can have a good training session.

Secondly, churn or turnover is part and parcel of what every organization has to cope with. A judo club is certainly no exception. Again, we are fortunate that our turnover rate is not high. Our members tend to stick with us. But turnover is unavoidable and we do lose members every now and then. So, new recruits are necessary to replace the ones we've lost.

Thirdly, it costs money to maintain and upkeep a judo club. You want to give your members great facilities so you're constantly upgrading equipment and buying new equipment. These things cost money. Mats, crash pads, audio-video systems -- these aren't cheap items. Having more members keeps the club on a strong financial footing.

The natural question is how big do you want to grow? Is there an optimal number given the space you have on the mat and the number of training days you have in a week? At some point, it is possible for the mat to be overcrowded (but if that were to ever happen, it would most definitely be what you would call "a good problem").

Right now, we have 30+ members and while I would consider that as being a critical mass, it is just barely so. It's enough that we can have judo training six days a week and have each session fairly well attended. Still, there's a lot of spare capacity left in terms of space. We could easily accommodate more people per session.

So, what's my ideal? I would say when we hit 50 members, we would be in good shape. Can we make that this year? I think so. That's my target to be achieved by year's end.

A place for working adults to train judo

Judo for everyone -- including adults!

In many places, not just in Malaysia, judo is a children's and youths' sport. I've often asked people why they think this is so and the most common reasons given are that adults don't have time for sports like judo and adults don't want to feel sore the next morning when they have to go to work.

All this may be true but there are adults who like to go play badminton. That takes up time too. As for soreness, once you are training regularly and your body is used to it, the soreness isn't that bad anymore.

I think the main reason is more mundane. It's a commercial issue. Judo just isn't a very popular sport, compared to something like badminton. From a purely commercial standpoint, it probably makes more sense to have a children's class.

Judo might not be a popular sport like football or badminton but many parents do have the impression that judo is a good sport for their kids to learn. As such, judo for kids is not a very hard sell, especially when compared to judo for adults.

That is probably the reason why so many clubs focus on children. But KL Judo started life as a judo club for working adults. We've since opened up a children's class, which is going well, but the majority of our members are still working adults.

This makes us unique as a judo club. If you're an adult and you want to play judo, you want to go to a place where there are lots of adults training in judo. There's no point in you going to a place full of kids and where there's only one or two other adults on the mat.

The other day I got a query from a prospective new member who says he wants to take up judo. He said he decided to approach our club because we specialize in judo for adults.

Conversations with people like him affirm that we have indeed carved a nice niche for ourselves. There may be only a small demand for judo for working adults but we cater well for that demand.

Good start to a new year

Getting new recruits is one of the toughest things about running a judo club. It's a very
slow process that requires a lot of patience.

January was a good month though. We picked up seven new members, which is probably the highest number of players we've ever had join us within a span of a single month.

Two were introduced to us by existing members. Two found their own way to us through our website. Another two came from a high school where I'm helping to teach judo.Lastly there was one who found us through social media.

Turnover is inevitable and we lost a couple of players but that's to be expected. The important thing is that the bulk of our members have decided to continue to training with us.

Going forward we've had quite a few inquiries as well as people who have said they plan to join us in February. We'll see if they actually do but so far this year has gotten off to a good start with lots of interest in the club.

To improve in judo, do more judo: Part 2

At KL Judo, we don't spend a lot of time on physical fitness training although on some sessions we do HIIT exercises as warm up drills.

There is a practical reason why we don't devote too much time to physical fitness training. Our players, who are either students or working adults (not full-time athletes) don't have that much time to spend on judo training so whatever time they have should be spent on judo skills training.

Weight training, running, calisthenics, etc... etc... can all be done outside of judo session and can be done at their own time. They don't necessarily need a judo training partner to do any of these things.

They can't however train in judo without a training partner. They also can't train in judo without a mat area. So, when they are in the dojo with training partners ready to go, they should be spending their time doing judo.

Should judo players supplement their judo training with jogging, swimming, weight training etc.. All these things build up your fitness and your strength and that must be helpful, right? Of course. And these are things you could do and should do if you are a full-time athlete who does judo twice a day and are up to your neck in judo already.

When you've done enough judo that it doesn't make sense for you to do any more judo than you already do, it makes all the sense in the world to do these supplemental training. When I was training full-time as a competitor in the early-90s, I did judo twice a day. I also ran and did weights. But I was a full-time athlete then.

None of my players is a full-time athlete. They are either students or have got 9-to-5 jobs. Most come for training only two or three times a week. If they really want to improve their judo, any free evening they have should be spent on the judo mat rather than running or doing weight training.

If you are already doing tons of judo and still have the time (and energy) to do weights and running and other physical activities that build up fitness, strength and agility, by all means do them. But how many people have that luxury?

So, whenever a player asks me: What should I do to improve my judo?, I always tell them the same thing: Do more judo. It is as simple as that.

To improve in judo, do more judo: Part 1

Several years ago when I revisited Camberley Judo Club, the club I trained at during my competitive days in the early 90s, the coach there asked me to give BJJ a try. They had sublet the mat to a BJJ class and their judo players usually would join the class.

He then passed me a white belt and said I should wear that in the BJJ class. It was the right thing to do because I had at that point zero experience in BJJ. I didn't know the rules, I didn't know the moves, I was an absolute beginner.

The stark differences with judo became obvious to me very quickly. Firstly, the moves they taught (for getting an armlock or a strangle, for example) were really very elaborate and took a long time to achieve relative to judo moves. I thought to myself, "That might prove to be an effective move if you have the time but in judo, a matte would have been called long before that happens".

When it came time to randori, we started on the ground (there wasn't even a pretense to start standing up). As a judo player, my instinct was to turtle up. Later, I found out this was exactly what BJJ players would not do. They never like to give their backs to the opponent. Instead, they pull guard (and lie with their backs to the mat).

Back then, I didn't know any better so I happily turtled up shielded myself from armlocks and chokes. My training partner climbed on top of my back and clamped on but wasn't able to really do anything. After a while, I thought he would move to a different position and try something else but he seemed content to clamp onto my back. Later, when I chatted with him, he when he clamped onto my back like that, in BJJ it's a score.

After the session was over, I went over to another judo guy and asked him what he thought of the training. He said he does it because the coach asked him to but he doesn't particularly like it because it's quite different from judo, which was his focus. I felt the same way.

I know some people who favor cross training point to the fact that the Japanese national judo team does occasionally train with BJJ people. So, it must be a good idea.

What they don't realize is that the Japanese national team players train practically every day, at least twice a day. They do so much judo that it would really be overkill for them to do any more judo than they already do. So, they try other things like BJJ to complement their training.

It's sort of like how rugby players in the UK tried some judo to complement their rugby training. These are professional rugby players who train rugby full-time. They do so much rugby training, they can afford to do something a little bit different just to offer some variety to their training.

For the rest of us, we hardly have enough time to train in judo. How many among us actually do judo six days a week? In my club only one or two players do anything close to that. A small handful train three to four days a week. Most train once or twice a week.

When the frequency of training is like that, any spare time you have for training should be spent doing judo, not some other "similar" sport. If you train in judo so much (like the Japanese who train twice a day), yes, you can afford to do other sports to add some variety to your training. But when you're hardly getting enough training in judo itself, you should be doing more judo (if you want to improve in judo).

Think about it. If you're a badminton player who trains only a few times a week, if you want to improve your badminton, you should be spending your time playing more badminton, not playing tennis instead. Yes, both sports involve racquets and both sports involve hitting an object back and forth on a court but they are really not the same sport. Different rules, different skill sets required.

Judo and BJJ might seem similar but even the gis we wear are different (judogis are generally longer and looser). The rules are very different. The scoring system is different. The moves themselves are different. The style of play, the tactics, the emphasis -- all different.

If I'm a Japanese player up to my neck in judo training, maybe I would like to do some BJJ on the side. But I'm not. I don't get as much judo training as I'd like so if I have the time to do more training, I'd rather spend it doing judo.

Instruction vs Osmosis

When players have a lot of opportunities to do randori as well as shiai, it's possible for them to pick up a lot of good fighting skills even without much or proper instruction.

They achieve this through osmosis. By sparring with many good training partners, they naturally pick up winning techniques and habits.

Take for example, the skill of gripping. Even if a player has never been taught anything about gripping, if he spends enough time sparring with good players, he will develop good gripping skills. Either that or he'll drop out of judo. But if stays on, he will sooner or later pick up those skills. He has to, in order to survive.

Learning through osmosis only works if there is a lot of opportunities to do randori and lots of different players to train with. That's not usually the case at most places though.

If you don't have the luxury of learning through osmosis, you have to learn via instruction. If you are lucky, and have a good coach, you can learn a lot that way. I was lucky and had a really good competition coach who taught me the foundations of what I know about competition judo.

You can also learn from videos these days. There are a few online resources offering premium content for a fee. There's also lots of free content online via YouTube and social media. Some of it is very good. And, of course you can do your own analysis of international judo competitions and competitors and learn from that.

I did all those things, and more, when I was starting out. I bought tons of judo books, tried to collect as many instructional videos as possible and watched as many competition videos as I could get my hands on. You have to be like a sponge, soaking up all the knowledge that's out there.

In my club, I try to provide a very systematic approach to learning techniques but I also try to foster an environment where people can get to do a lot of randori and also some mock shiai. We do lots of these, even though we don't have anywhere near the number of players in top judo places like the university judo clubs in Japan.

When it comes to learning judo, it's not an either/or thing. It's not learning via osmosis vs learning via instruction. It can (and should) be both.