Changes

A lot of people have asked me why we moved from our previous location in Cheras to our current location in Damansara Perdana. It's a long story but the short version is this: I felt that in order for the club to grow and fulfill its potential, I needed a strategic partner that believes in our vision.
Through a recommendation from one of our members, I was introduced to the good folks at Muayfit Damansara Perdana and we came to a meeting of minds. So far so good. But soon, it will be even better.

Muayfit will soon be rebranded and the location of the gym will be moved to some place nearby. After they discussed with me the new terms and showed me the new premises, I decided straight away to continue our partnership with them.

The new terms will give us more flexibility in the things we want to do as a judo club. And the new location, which is pillar-less, will allow us to have a full contest mat area so that means not only can be train unobstructed, we can also conduct our own competitions in the future.

The move will happen very soon, certainly within this month and latest by end of the month. Once we have settled into the new place, I will be able to provide details about all the exciting plans we have in store for our players and for anyone interested in learning judo.

For now, this is what I can reveal:

Centre of excellence
When I was a competitor training in the UK, we used to go once a week to a common dojo (dubbed a centre of excellence) where players from various clubs would gather to do randori together. It was a good way to get lots of randori with new partners. One of the problems judo players -- not just in Malaysia but in many parts of the world -- face is the lack of randori partners. If you fight the same people over and over again, your judo gets stale. How nice it would be if once a week our players could do randori with players from other clubs. Under the previous arrangement with Muayfit, this wasn't very feasible but under the new terms we can do this. KL Judo provides the instruction for Sunway University Judo Club so we can have their players come over. I'm in talks with two other clubs to see if they might be keen for a joint randori session once a week. Will they go for it? I hope so. We'll certainly make it affordable for them to do so. So, let's see. This is something definitely worth trying.

Exchange visits with sister clubs
I know many players and coaches in different countries but to date, I've not really offered any concrete plans for friendly training visits between us and them. As a team we have gone to other countries for competition and we have made training trips but it wasn't part of any structure or formal program. Perhaps it's time we start doing that. That is, formalizing "sister club" relationships with judo clubs from other countries and initiating exchange visits. In in talks with judo people in three Asian countries who might be interested in bringing their teams for a visit sometime this year. That would be really great. They could come for a holiday-cum-judo training trip. The first one could happen as early as September.

Training camps
In Europe there are many training camps where players from various countries come together just for randori. There's nothing like that in this part of the world. Maybe we can host something like this. These training camps would be different from the exchange visits, which are meant to be more of a friendly holiday-cum-training visit. These training camps I'm thinking of are meant specifically for randori. It's about bringing many players from many clubs from many countries together for the purpose of randori.

Competitions
This is not going to be easy but it's something worth trying. There are not many judo competitions in Malaysia so it would be nice to host some competitions to give our players and other players a chance to get more competition experience. Since we don't have any experience doing this it will take some time and perhaps we will need the help of an experienced competition organizer to assist us at first. This is something we hope to do next year.

Many of these things are not concrete yet but these are our ideals. It's what we really want to do. Hopefully, with the relocation to the new place, with a bigger, pillar-less mat area, and new terms that give us more flexibility, we will be able to achieve these things.