Work-in-Progress

Smaller group, shorter time for training -- but the important thing is that we got some training done!

Our judo club is a work-in-progress as we are constantly striving to improve the quality of the training for our players.

As mentioned in a previous post, Sunday is our strongest day. But even Sundays are a work-in-progress. We had a basic core formula of 1/3 newaza technical, 1/3 tachi-waza technical and 1/3 randori (over a course of 3 hours) and that worked quite well but we have just started introducing personalized training in the technical segments to accommodate players of different levels. It worked quite well last Sunday and for sure we need to continually finetune it to make it even better.

Our Tuesdays and Friday sessions are a bit trickier and we have not yet settled in on a regular routine. The number of players who attend is smaller and the time we have allocated for training is shorter. So, we have to take those two factors into consideration when structuring a training program.

Yesterday, we did a bit of newaza (Briggs Sankaku), a bit of tachi-waza (gripping drills and Yoko-Tomoe-Nage) and then a few rounds of randori. It was all over very quickly and didn't seem like there was enough time. I expect that in the future as many of our beginners acquire more skills we can skew Tuesdays and Fridays to be more randori days where the bulk of the training is randori.

Some people have inquired whether we can have Open Mats where others can join in. This is something we can consider for randori days. We still have a "no walk-in" policy for technical training (that is reserved for our regular members only) but for randori, we can consider. Just have to work out a fee structure for that.

But even if we were to have Open Mats will still be by invitation-only. We need to be selective about who we invite to train with us because we want players with the right attitude on our mats. I've written extensively in the past about the importance of having the right dojo culture. It's something we've worked very hard on, to get the right culture, and it's something we want to maintain.

Our club is growing steadily with a few newcomers having joined us since we moved into Muayfit Damansara Perdana. It's not a flood of new players. More like a trickle but that's fine. I'll take quality over quantity any time. And what we've got is quality. Players who are keen and committed to learning and training. This is what we want.

We have a couple of plans to continue to spread the popularity of judo, which we will hopefully be able to announce in the coming weeks. Watch this space!