Getting into the swing of things

Not a huge group but they all want to train for competition.

Ever since we moved in Muayfit Damansara Perdana a few months ago we've been experimenting with our weekday training sessions. We considered having them as technical training days where the focus was on preparing players for grading. We considered having them as recreational judo days which are lighter than our usual competition training sessions. We considered also using these days purely for high-level competition training.

Because the attendance on weekdays have been rather unpredictable and unsteady it makes it hard to stick to one approach. So we've vacillated between this and that approach but yesterday, we managed to do something that I've always wanted to do all along which is to make it a purely competition training session.

It was made possible by the fact that all the players on the mat on Tuesday are competition-minded. All are planning to compete in upcoming competitions this year.

I started by getting the players to do some newaza drills. Not of techniques per se but strategic moves they can do on the mat to loosen up opponents so they can get their hands in place to do a pin, strangle or armlock. I showed them two particular techniques that always works. They were able to do it quite well. After that they revised yoko-sankaku which we had worked on last week.

Next up, tachi-waza. For this, I had the players go straight into nagekomi and work on techniques that they were familiar with. I like to have my players do actual throws rather than uchikomi. I once asked British World Champion Craig Fallon what was the secret to his success and he said when he was a young judoka, his coach had him do lots of throws. Many judokas (and coaches) mistakenly think the key to becoming good at throws is uchikomi. The truth is you have to do a lot of throws to become good at throws.

For low throws like side takedown and drop seoi-nage, I had them throw straight onto the tatami. For the big throws like standing ippon-seoi-nage or koshi-guruma, I had them throw with full force onto a crash pad.

We had six rounds of newaza randori followed by five rounds of tachi-waza randori, for a total of 11 rounds of randori, with very short water breaks in between each round. Everyone was pretty tired after the training, which lasted only two hours. But it was very intense, which is how competition training should be.

I'm hoping to maintain this approach going forward. The competition oriented ones will be the ones who come on weekdays so it's perfect for them. If they keep this up, within a few months, they will be ready for competition.