Top 10 Wish List for the Dream Dojo

1. Ample mat area: Having a huge hall like the kinds you see in Japanese universities is a luxury most of us will never get to enjoy. But if you can have a mat area that can accommodate up to four pairs of players doing randori (standing and groundwork), that would be pretty damn good.

2. Medium-soft mats: For training purposes, mats should be not so hard like the traditional tatami from Japan but neither should they be so soft that your feet will sink into the mats either. Medium-soft is good for training purposes.

3. Crash pads: Ideally several of them but at least one. These are for the hard throws. You absolutely need crash pads for throws like ura-nage. Or the Khabarelli.

4. TV monitor: These are useful for showing players competition clips and for illustrating certain throws as they are done in international competitions.

5. White board: This is for you to write down techniques that phrases that you want to teach the players. Also good for illustrating strategy.

6. Air-conditioning: This would be considered a luxury in Malaysia. To my knowledge, no judo clubs have this. In contrast, almost all judo clubs in Singapore have air-conditioning. Having trained in Singaporean air-conditioned halls, I can say definitively that it helps you last longer for randori. The recovery rate is so much faster when there is cool air blowing through the dojo.

7. Gym equipment: Again, this is quite a luxury and is not that common in dojos, either in Malaysia or Singapore. But if there were some basic weight training equipment, it would be useful for players who want to do some strength building.

8. Nearby amenities: Many dojos in big cities are located in the outskirts of town because it's too expensive to have a dojo in a busy and popular area. But when it's in a rather secluded place, there are usually no shopping or eating options nearby. And that's a drawback. Parents who bring their kids to judo class have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Players who want to eat something after training have to travel someplace else to do so. If you have many retail outlets nearby that's a real bonus.

9. Keen members: In Thor: Ragnarok there is a line that says, "Asgard is not a place, it's a people." Ultimately, that's true also of judo clubs. Yes, the physical infrastructure is important but even more important are the members. Having the right type of members allows you to set the right culture in your club. And if you have that, you have a recipe for success. When it comes to members, quantity is important but quality is absolutely essential.

10. Aligned vision: Operating a judo club can be a costly endeavor that involves a lot of work. It is not something you can easily do alone. So it's good to have collaborators. It's crucial that the people you work with have goals and visions that are aligned with yours. Then together you can reach great heights. 

Sunday's Program (March 4, 2017)

This is what I have lined up for you guys.

Part 1: Newaza
a) Resistance drills for yoko-sankaku & reverse sankaku
b) Transition from ground to standing for a throw (new IJF rule)

Part 2: Tachi-Waza
a) Gripping drills
b) Grip fight for entry into throw
c) Uchikomi/Nagekomi

Part 3: Randori
a) Motodachi (tachi-waza & newaza)
b) Free Randori (tachi-waza only)

Side Takedown

Our Wednesday crowd is not as big as the one on Sundays but we still had a great practice. I taught the players a technique several of them are very interested in, the European-styled Side Takedown.

Here are the highlights:

Week 7: CNY Training

CNY Weekend Training Group

CNY weekend training is not one where you're going to have a lot of people show up. Still, we proceeded to have training. I always say at a minimum you need two people to have good training. We had nine. That's not bad at all. And yes, we had an excellent training session.

We started off, as usual, with newaza. Last month I had taught the group yoko-sankaku and they were all well versed with it already. So, I moved on to reverse sankaku, which is a bit harder to do but actually more effective. Most of the sankaku you see in competition is reverse sankaku not yoko-sankaku.

I paired the players up and had them rehearse the technique over and over again without resistance. Once they had a decent grasp of the technique, I asked them to give partial resistance, which means they allow the entry but resist once the turn is done.

Once they kinda mastered that, we had sankaku randori where one player is tori and one uke and the former had a choice between attacking with yoko-sankaku or reverse sankaku.

After that we worked on two standing techniques. The first one was soto-makikomi. Not that many players specialize in this and it tends to be used by big players but Georgii Zantaraia (UKR) is a lightweight who does this technique often. And he's proven how effective it is in competition.

As usual, I had the players do a bit of uchikomi (not much) and once they learned the entry, we quickly switched to nagekomi, which is more important for them to get a feel of the technique. Highlights of our soto-makikomi training below:

After that we worked on a competition-style tsuri-goshi which involves a grip and an entry that is similar to soto-makikomi, except they grab the back of uke's belt. The players adapted to this very quickly and did a good job of it.

Week 6: Grading, newaza shiai & randori

For Week 6, we did not work on new techniques. Instead, we revised some techniques we've been learning in recent weeks.

But before the session began, we had a simple ceremony awarding yellow belt to Kenneth, who has mastered all the techniques needed for yellow belt. Different countries have different syllabuses for belt colors and even different clubs have pretty different standards. I've seen yellow belts who hardly knew any techniques. At KL Judo we've set a pretty high standard. The players are required to know five standing and five groundwork techniques. Plus a set of Japanese terms. Kenneth passed with flying colors. In the coming weeks and months we will have more players "graduating" to yellow belt. I think it's about time. Anyone who sees our videos can see our players are pretty good fighters for white belts. But being a good fighter, of course, is not enough. They must know the techniques in the syllabus. Our ideal is that our colored belts are players who (a) know the techniques (b) fight well. One without the other is not sufficient.

Taping up the fingers ahead of the gripping drills.

Athletic tape is such a necessity when you do competition training.

After the players finished their gripping drills, we had some "hanging" contests.

How long can you hold on?

A good way to test gripping strength

We also did some newaza shiai for the first time.

But we can't end the session without some standing randori and shiai.

Week 5: Arm Lever for Juji-Gatame & Tenri Grip Uchimata

For our first session of February, we continued with our juji-gatame training, this time focusing on how to straighten the arm.

For tachi-waza, we tackled something quite hard: uchimata. There are so many ways to do uchimata. The leg movement alone has so many variations. I taught them the catch-up version. While there is consensus on what the sleeve hand (hikite) should do, there are many different variations on what the lapel hand (tsurite) should do. For this, I taught the the Tenri grip, which is the favored tsurite grip of many uchimata specialists, such as Varlam Liparteliani of Georgia.

The occasional judo player

As a book editor I once worked with a writer who was a music student training to be a professional musician. I asked her how long she would practice the piano and she said up to seven or eight hours a day. That's what it takes if you want to be really good at piano.

Judo players from sports schools in this country train twice a day. It's not surprising that at national competitions the podium positions tend to be dominated by then. It's hard not to get good if you're training twice a day, five times a week.

Of course those of us who have to hold down full-time jobs or study university courses will find it difficult to train more than a few times a week. But as long as you train regularly (two or three times a week) and train intelligently (that's a topic for another blog posting), you can see significant improvement in your judo.

Then there are those "occasional" judo players who come for training maybe once a month or once every two months. If you've been in judo for any length of time you'll know such people exist. It's one thing if the occasional player is a black belt who has more or less given up on training and just wants to attend a session once in a blue moon. Such a player has presumably already developed his judo to a certain level. It's quite another if the player concerned is a white belt. There is no way the white belt occasional player will see any progress in their judo.

Judo might not require the eight hours of training per day that piano requires but you still need to practice regularly if you want to be good. The thing that I find funny is that quite often these occasional players will shake their heads after training and say things like "I don't know why my techniques are not working". The answer is obvious. They're not working because you hardly come for training!

It's true that some people are naturally more athletic than others. Such people will have a head start and will usually do better than other white belts at first. If that athletically-gifted player doesn't show up much for training though, they will soon see all the other white belts move ahead of them. The person that was so easy to throw is suddenly not so easy to beat anymore. That's when reality bites.

I don't know what it is about judo that makes some people think they can come for training just once a month or less and hope to develop any kind of skills. Think about it. Is there anything in life that you can do just once a month and hope to become good at it? Occasional judo players shouldn't waste their time. If they can't devote the necessary amount of time to train in judo, they shouldn't bother because it will only lead to disappointment.

It's hard enough to become good at judo when you do train regularly. Imagine what it's like when you don't.