i) technical training
ii) drills
iii) randori
iv) strategy
Of course if you want to be nit-picky, it can be said there are many more elements like cutting weight, building strength, improving stamina etc. The list can go on and on. But I've limited the core to four items that a player usually cannot do on their own and need the guidance of a coach or the presence of a training partner.
Things like weight training and endurance exercises, they can do on their own. Weight cutting, they can do on their own. Drills and randori, however, they can't. For those, they need a training partner. Technical training and strategy -- that usually comes from a coach. Let's look at the four core items in detail:
Technical training
The easiest thing in the world is to learn very basic Kodokan judo. Why? Because there's plenty of resources. Any dojo would have a sensei or senior player who could teach the basics. There are also plenty of books on traditional Kodokan judo. Go to YouTube and you can get tons of clips on how to do the traditional version of a throw or groundwork move. What's difficult is learning how to do those moves in a randori or competition setting whereby the opponent is resisting with all their might. The traditional version of techniques usually don't work in such settings.
Ippon-Seoi-Nage is the best example of this. In the traditional version, tori does the technique off a sleeve grip. In almost all competition examples, it's done off a lapel grip (or in Koga's case, armpit grip). That doesn't mean it's impossible to do ippon-seoi-nage off the sleeve, it's just very difficult and rare. Easily 90% or 95% of ippon-seoi-nage in competitions are done off the lapel.
The leg positioning in traditional ippon-seoi-nage calls for tori to bend his knees (stand-up version) or squat (drop version). Yet, neither of those two positions are ever seen in competition. For the stand-up version players either insert their driving leg in between uke's leg (the way Koga does) or they enter with straight legs (the more common way). As for the drop version, almost all players (yes, including the Japanese) drop down to their knees.
If you were to follow the traditional version taught in most books and videos, you'll end up trying to do ippon-seoi off the sleeve and entering with knees bent or squatting -- and you will fail to get it to work.
Ippon-seoi is just one example. This is true for almost all techniques. The competition version is often very different from the textbook version. If you have a competition coach who knows his stuff, he will teach you how various judo techniques are actually done.
Drills
Uchikomi and drills are not the same thing. Uchikomi can be said to be a kind of drill and it's useful when a player is learning a technique for the first time. They need to know how to enter and load uke for the throw. But once they've mastered the mechanics of a technique, they have to move on from uchikomi to nagekomi, which is also another form of drills.
Nagekomi is important because it teaches a player how to throw a person (uchikomi only teaches a player how to enter and load but not throw). However, nagekomi is also not enough because it's a static situation against a non-resisting partner.
What is ultimately needed are situational drills where the coach has players trying out moves under different scenarios e.g. trying a technique in a kenka-yotsu (opposite stance) situation and an ai-yotsu situation (similar stance); trying to do it against an upright opponent and a bent-over opponent, etc...
In a country like Japan where a university dojo could have 50 black belts on the mat, you don't really have to do drills because you will come across all kinds of gripping scenarios in the course of your many randoris. Most of us don't have that luxury. Getting even one or two suitable randori partners is a challenge in most clubs. When you don't have variety in randori partners, you need to do situational drills.
If a player only has two randori partners and both are right handed, that player will never learn how to fight a left-hander. So, it's up to the coach to create drills that simulate that situation for them (by asking their partners to purpose adopt a left-handed gripping situation). Similarly, if that player's partners naturally prefer a traditional sleeve-lapel grip, that player will never know what it's like to come to grips with a player who prefers a Russian high grip. Again, drills is the answer. A good coach will know what drill to apply.
Randori
Randori or free sparring is the hardest thing to find in Malaysian judo. Other than in government-funded clubs which has tons of students, you will be hard pressed to find more than two players in a club that are suitable randori partners for you. In many cases it's just one or none.
I know one guy from a neighboring state where he has nobody in his club who is his weight class and equal in terms of skill level. I know of another guy who actually trains in a state which has the largest private club. He told me at most he has two players whom he could really train with and even they are not in the same weight class and also not quite the same skill level.
This is not an easy problem to solve. One thing a coach can do is to bring his players to visit other clubs but more often than not that means travelling out of state. Why? First of all, in many places there's only one club in the whole state! Secondly, even if there are other clubs in the state, some of them might not emphasize randori or might not have it at all. I once visited a club where they trained for 2.5 hours and not one minute of that was set aside for randori.
In the context of my judo club, it probably means travelling as far as Singapore to get really good randori sessions for my players. But how often can we afford to travel to Singapore? It's costly to do so and it takes up a lot of time. A more practical option is to extend on open invitation to players from other clubs to visit us and do randori with us. We've had some success with this but it's not something you can rely on for regular, weekly randori.
At the end of the day, as a coach, you have to do your best to build up your own randori squad and make sure your players show up for training regularly (if not religiously). You have to make them realize that whenever they fail to show up, they are not only denying themselves a randori opportunity, they are also reducing the number of players their teammates can randori with.
In a club, it's everybody's responsibility to ensure that there is a critical mass of players to do randori with. When the club culture is such that players feel that responsibility they will show up for training. Even if they are tired or may not be in the mood for training, if they know their training partners are relying on them to be there, they will be more likely to show up.
Fostering that culture is not at all easy but it is a necessity for the club to thrive. You cannot rely on external parties for randori. At the end of the day, you have to foster a strong randori culture in your own club.
Strategy
Strategy is seldom taught at judo club. Most senseis feel it's enough to teach their players techniques. There's no need to teach them gripping, no need to teach them rules, no need to teach them how to outwit their opponents. Just technique. That's okay if you are training them for kata. But if you are training them for competition, they need to know strategy.
The IJF has implemented a bunch of new rules, which have been tweaked and updated fairly regularly since 2010. It's my job as a coach to adapt my players to these rules because the rule changes absolutely affect the way the game is played.
Take the new 2018 rules which requires a score to win in Golden Score (GS). In the past, a shido was enough. Now, no more. That will totally change how GS is fought. Another example: Leg grabs are now regular shidos which means it actually requires three infractions before you get hansoku-make (for a long time it was just one leg grab infraction for hansoku-make, then it became two before the current rule change). In a scenario where there's only a few seconds left in the match and you have non shido on the board or just one shido and your opponent comes in for a big leg throw, do you grab the leg to stop his throw? If there's only 10 seconds left, hell yes. It's worth getting the shido because you are stopping what is potentially an ippon throw. With 10 seconds left and with no shido or just one shido on the board, you can afford that additional shido from a leg grab. These are things a competitive coach has to teach his players.
At KL Judo Club, we teach all four things. All our players are shown how traditional techniques are taught and then shown how those techniques are actually done in competition. They do uchikomi and then nagekomi, after which they are given situational drills to do. We have at least one hour of randori each session. Lastly, our players are regularly taught and reminded about competition strategy based on current rules.
Other things like strength training, endurance training, flexibility training etc, they do themselves. We focus on the things they can't do on their own.
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