Sunway Judo Club to be revived!

There are not a lot of private clubs in Malaysia. And you barely see judo in colleges or universities. There is some correlation there. Let me explain.

If you visit Singapore to do some judo you will find not only are there a lot of thriving private judo clubs (many with multiple branches), there's also a lot of judo in institutions of higher learning. Practically every junior college, polytechnic and university has a judo club. And that's because of the private clubs. Read on to understand why...

Sunway Judo Club committee members explaining judo to prospective new members.

A lot of these private judo clubs are the ones that provide the judo instruction at the junior colleges, polytechnics and universities. This approach is something worth emulating and KL Judo is going to do it.

Next Monday, we will have our first judo session at Sunway University as we have been invited to help revive the Sunway Judo Club (which has been on hiatus for 10 months now).

Signing up new prospects for the club

Thanks to the valiant and proactive efforts of the club president, Bruce Leong, the revival process has been fast-tracked. He did the administrative work to obtain the necessary permissions, secured the venue and quickly reassembled his committee.

He and his team also managed to recruit several prospective members -- enough to have a critical mass of players to have our first session. There's also an even mix of male and female players. So, we're all set for a great re-launch.

My approach for Sunway Judo will be the same as for KL Judo. I favor a very practical, activity-oriented training session over one that is focused heavily on theory and tradition. Yes, we will bow in and of course we will use Japanese terms (which is the language of judo). But we won't spend the whole two hours just doing break-falls and forward rolls.

We'll do warm-ups but it'll be in the form of judo games. We'll get them working on some newaza moves, first without resistance, then with resistance. We'll also get them doing some uchikomi (not too much) and quickly move on to nagekomi (on a crash pad, not on the tatami). I'll probably bring my iPod and portable speaker so they can have some music when doing these drills. And yes, before they end, they will do some light randori under supervision.

You see how we introduced Amber Chia to judo? That's what a beginner will experience in their very first lesson. They will actually get to do judo. Not just break-falls and forward rolls.

Times have changed and our approach to judo training must change with the times too. Gone are the days when you can just relegate beginners to doing nothing but break-falls and forward rolls for weeks on end. People will quit after one week of that. Players need to feel that they had a good workout, that they learned something practical and that they had fun doing it. Then they will want to come back for more.

I've always felt that the biggest challenge that judo has is recruitment. Getting people interested enough to give it a try is always the hardest part. Once they try it -- especially our training system -- they will realize how fun judo is and how good it is for them physically and mentally.

Thanks must also go out to Mr Mok and Mr Daniel for facilitating all of this.