Going the distance...

Nothing good comes easy. Sometimes you have to travel a bit to get what you want. You literally have to go the distance.

When people say "going the distance" they usually mean carrying through the course of action to completion. But in judo, that phrase can often have a more literal meaning. Many judo players have to travel great distances to get to training.

For experienced players, the reason for long distance travel is often the lack of randori partners in their home club. Most clubs are not competition clubs but recreational ones. But among the recreational players, sometimes emerge one or two competitive types. They will need to do randori with more competitive types if they want to improve their competition abilities.

A couple years back, I chatted with a German coach who ran a small county club. Most of his students are kids. Among the older players, there are a few competitors but not many. He told me that there was one who would drive literally hundreds of kilometres to another town just to get some good randoris. He would stay overnight after the training and drive home the next day.

KL Judo Club is located in Cheras. It's just where we happen to be located. We've had people who inquired about training who commented it's too far away from where they are (even though they live somewhere in PJ or KL).

But if your catchment area is the whole of Klang Valley, there is no such thing as an ideal place. If you are in PJ, you will be considered far for some KL-based people. If you are in KL, you will be considered far for some PJ-based people.

Look, nobody likes traffic jams. But at the end of the day, it depends how determined and keen you are about learning and doing judo. Some of our players live very nearby but some live quite far away. We have players who live as far away as Dengkil, Seri Kembangan and Cyberjaya. We also have a player who travels all the way from Melaka to train with us.

Last night we had a guy, a taekwondo instructor, who travelled all the way from Kemaman, Terengganu to train with us. That's about a 4.5 hour drive. He said he's long wanted to learn judo but never had the chance before. So, he was willing to travel. Not every weekend but a few times a month.

Decades ago, when I was beginning my competition journey, I felt I had outgrown my home judo club at the University of Texas in Austin. I wanted more exposure and professional training so I set out to find a good coach in Los Angeles, California. I found one and trained at his centre for three months during one of my school summer holidays. The following summer, I went to Germany and UK in search for quality training and found it.

In judo, sometimes you do have to travel great distances to get good training. Yes, in some countries there's judo everywhere. In France for instance, almost every town has its own judo club. But in many countries around the world, that's certainly not the case. In Malaysia, many states have only one judo club and some states have none at all.

I have taken my players to different states and even to Singapore so they can get some quality randori. Obviously this is not something we can do all the time. It's costly and it takes up a lot of time to travel. But you have to be willing to travel on occasions, otherwise you won't get enough good judo training.

We are thankful to have really dedicated players who are willing to travel long distances to train with us. This is what makes our club special. Our players really enjoy the judo training and there is a  good, positive, friendly atmosphere in the club. We train really hard (one of our visitors described our recreational training as "hardcore") but there's also a lot of fun and laughter. Our players are willing to travel because they know that good training, with good partners, is really hard to find. We are lucky we have each other.