The many components of competitive judo training

To be a good competitor, you have to take part in a lot of
competitions. There's no two ways about it.

American coach Jimmy Pedro once said that you can't train judo like they do in Japan, Brazil or Russia because you simply don't have the numbers.

Over there, they have judo halls with 50 black belts for you to do two hours or randori with every day. Over here, we're happy if we can get a dozen people to come for training.

When you have few players and not that many who have a lot of experience, it's crucial to have a system. You can't just do uchikomi and randori and hope to get good results.



Gripping
First and foremost is proper gripping. Typically, gripping is a skill set that is not taught. In Japan and other countries where judo is popular, players develop good gripping through the sheer amount of training they do and the randori they have with all sorts of players. When you have very few players, it's hard to develop good grips just by doing randori because the variety of grips are very limited due to the small number of players. So, you have to teach them gripping techniques and strategies.

Newaza
Let's be honest, newaza tends to get neglected in judo. That's because judo players do tend to prefer throwing over groundwork (in general). Being good in newaza gives you an edge over other players simply because they probably would have neglected newaza.

Uchikomi
I'm not a big fan of uchikomi but I do think it's useful when a player is first learning a technique. When they have no clue how to do something, it's useful doing repetitious drills that teach them how to enter into the technique. Once they've learned the proper entry though, you'll have to start getting them to throw. At that point, you can abandon the uchikomi. Nagekomi is far more important as it trains you to do the whole movement.

Nagekomi
We use crash pads. These will allow tori to really slam uke, which is what is required if you want the throw to work in randori or competition. When throwing on tatami, players always slow down the throw and of course they don't land on their partner. They let them down somewhat gently and even lift them up a bit as their bodies impact the tatami. That is the absolute worst way to learn how to throw. If you do that too often, you'll develop a habit of always trying to do cushion your opponent's fall. In randori or competition, you will not be able to throw anyone like that. And you can't just turn it on and say in randori and competition, I will throw harder. You have to get it ingrained into your mindset that whenever you throw, you have to give it all you've got. You can only do that with a crash pad.

Moving Nagekomi
There is a huge difference between doing something from a static position and doing it from a moving situation. Even without resistance, players often find it hard to execute a new throw when their partner is moving around the mat. So, it's important to get them to try to get the from a moving situation. There will be a lot of failed attempts but eventually, you'll learn how to get into the throw even when your partner is moving about.

Randori
Randori is the ultimate test because not only is uke moving about but he's resisting with all his might as well. Not only that, he is also looking throwing you. So, it's really not easy to develop even one throw from scratch. It takes a long time. But when it finally works in randori, it's a really great feeling.

Strategy
Judo is a sport and as a sport it has rules. The International Judo Federation in the past eight years or so has passed a lot of new rules. In general, I think they are quite good and have helped to improve judo as an Olympic sport. However, many players are left uncertain about rules and don't know how to make the most of it. It's important for coaches to update their players on the latest rules and to teach them how they can make the most of the new rules. Sometimes good techicians lose to good strategists. The former has better judo but the latter is more familiar with the rules and can use this knowledge to outplay the technician.

Shiai
Because there's not a whole lot of competitions in this part of the world, it's important that players are giving opportunities to compete.  I know someone in Indonesia who does something called "Internal Cup" which is basically an in-house competition amongst the players of his various judo clubs in the city. We do something similar except it's far less formal. We have our players fight in a mock competition, with a referee to give scores and shidos. This is an approximation of what it feels like in a competition and it's a good experience especially for those who have never competed before.

Competition
Well, there's nothing like a real competition to get the adrenaline flowing. I've seen players who are are great on the randori mat but fail miserably in competition. It's good to test your skills against others to see where you actually stand. If you do poorly, then this is a good opportunity to really analyze your judo and figure out what went wrong. If you do well, it validates all the hard work you put in and makes it all worthwhile. In any event, the more competitions you go to, the more experience you accumulate, the better you get at fighting in competitions.