This is how we do it: Newaza

To eat properly, you'll need a fork and a spoon. To do judo properly, you'll need tachi-waza and newaza.

Start with Newaza
There are several reasons we start with groundwork. Firstly, it is true that judo players generally tend to prefer standing. Judo players, by their very nature, like to throw. As such, some find newaza to be a chore, something they have to do but which they don't necessarily enjoy doing (unlike standing, which they do enjoy). As such, you need to get the chores out of the way first, otherwise it doesn't get done. If you leave the less enjoyable things til the end, by the time the end comes, no one is in any mood to do it. So they will end up doing it half-heartedly. Then might as well not do it. So, we start with newaza training just to make sure that it gets done properly.

Newaza is very important not only because it's an effective way to win but it also gives a player more confidence in his standing game if their groundwork is strong. If their groundwork is weak, they will always be a little bit afraid to throw because unless that throw scores an ippon, both players will end up on the ground.

It's also a fact that it's easier to progress in groundwork than standing (which takes more time and frankly, more natural talent). If you focus too much on standing some may find that their progress is too slow and get disheartened.

Groundwork consists of pins, strangles and armlocks (and also sankaku, as a special class of newaza techniques). Although sankaku is generally classed as a strangling technique, you can also pin and armlock from a sankaku position. So, I think it deserves its own special category.

Categories vs situations
I used to think it makes sense to teach students newaza techniques according to categories. So, let's say I want to teach strangles. Then I would progress from one strangle to another. But I'm now convinced that a better way is to teach according to situations. For example, what options do you have when uke is in a turtle position? From that position, you can break it down even further. Let's say uke is in a turtle position and you are riding on his back. That is one scenario. Another scenario could be that your are also on your hands and knees and facing him head to head. That's another scenario. Or what if uke is on his back and you are on top, in between his legs? Yet another scenario.

There are a few common scenarios and multiple attack options for each one of them. For example let's take the scenario where uke is turtling up and you are riding on his back. From there, you can do some rolls to pin uke. You can also do a few different strangles. Rolling armlocks (of which there are a few variations) are also an option. And finally, there are sankaku variations you can do from there.

Teaching students newaza based on scenarios really makes much more sense than to go by categories of techniques. When students are taugh that way, it's then up to them to decide whether they want to focus on pins, strangles, armlocks or sankakus for any particular scenario. It makes them think and it's easier for them to remember what to do in any given scenario.

Non-Resistance/Resistance
I always tell the players to offer no resistance when their partner is trying out a technique for the first time. I'll have them practice the move several times to get them familiar with it. Once they are, I'll then ask uke to start providing some resistance. Resistance drills are important because they are like a very focused form of randori.

Newaza Randori
I personally prefer a freeflow form of randori which is not separated into newaza and tachi-waza but if you don't have a newaza-specific randori, judo players will tend to stick to tachi-waza. So, newaza specific randori is a must just to make sure they get enough practice in groundwork. Later, when we have our tachi-waza randori, I will tell them to follow up on the ground if the fight ends up on the ground. No matter, no standing up. Keep fighting on the ground.

Newaza is an often-neglected part of judo. But I remember early on in my judo training, someone explaining to me how important newaza is. "Doing judo with just tachi-waza is like eating your meal with just a spoon," he said. "If you want to eat properly, you'll need a fork and a spoon". Similarly, if you want to do judo properly, you'll need newaza and tachi-waza."

At KL Judo Centre we pay equal attention to newaza and tachi-waza.

We do it because it is hard

From the very beginning it was a deliberate decision to try to recruit adults for our judo club. Everybody told us what a challenge that would be or how it just couldn't be done. Adults are very busy, they have jobs and families and lots of responsibilities and thus would not have time for judo, the naysayers said.

We do it because it is hard.

All of what they say may be true but just because something is hard doesn't mean you don't do it. Sometimes, you do things because they are hard. Because the challenge is worth it. To quote JFK when he spoke about the USA's effort to beat the Russians to the moon in the 1960s:

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
~ John F. Kennedy (1962)

Well, the USA did manage to get to the moon first and yes, we did manage to build a judo club for working adults. If you want to understand what NASA had to do to achieve that, you can watch the movie "First Man", starring Ryan Gosling which is in the cinemas now. And if you want to know how we managed to get a critical mass of adults to come together for judo training, you can read on.

Perhaps the most critical thing is awareness. People must know that your club exists, what it stands for, how you conduct your lessons and so on. In this day and age, that means having a strong online presence. For us, it has always been three key platforms: Website, blog and Facebook Page. Most recently, we added Instagram too.

Our website recently got an update!

Most people think having a FB is sufficient. It's free and it's easy to use which is why many prefer it over the other platforms. For sure, FB is super duper important but it's not in itself enough. I've always felt every organization, company and club needs to have a website that's a central hub for people to go to. In it would be information about the club, the instructors, schedule, fees, contact information etc.

To do a good website requires a bit of investment in time and money. You don't have to know how to write HTML code to create a website these days but you do need to have some basic sense of aesthetics, to choose the right template and to modify it to fit your club's needs. All that takes quite a lot of effort and time. And, if you want your website to look professional, you will need to pay a premium subscription. The free option usually features ads and other branding stuff on it.

If you want to convince someone that the club is what they are looking for, you'd better offer up something professional. So I invested some money in a website and spent considerable effort setting it up and fine-tuning it along the way. Was it worth it? Absolutely. The website is a crucial component of our online marketing mix.

The other thing I decided to do was set up a blog. Blogs are free platforms but you'll need to spend a lot of time on it because blogs essentially consist of articles. Most people don't find it easy writing articles. It just so happens I'm a writer by profession so the writing bit is not a problem. But nobody reads blogs anymore! (Or so everyone tells me). My instinct was that there will be people out there who want to know more about our club and what we are doing, etc. So, I decided to set up a blog.

To everybody's surprise, it was a hit. A typical blog entry doesn't get thousands of views but it does easily get over a hundred and the more popular postings will get a few hundred views. That's not huge but think about it, every time I post something new about our club, on average it reaches over 100 people. These people might be in other cities and towns. Or they might not be in a position to join us for whatever reasons but they are at least aware of our club and might tell their friends.

Then, there's FB. Everybody's on FB and many clubs have FB Pages. But ours is very active with lots of original and interesting content. We started the practice of posting group pictures on a regular basis. Very transparent. People can see how many members come for training -- sometimes it's a lot, sometimes very few. But it's all there for people to see. We also put a lot of effort on making short video clips so people can see the instruction and the randoris that go on in our club. Through our FB Page it will be very clear to everyone what a typical training session at our club is like.

I recently looked through our membership list and was not surprised to see that close to 70% of our members came to us through our online initiatives. The other 30% came through word of mouth. Some found us through the website and some through our FB Page. Most tell me: "I've read your blog".

The website is important because it contains all the essential information that a working adult would need to decide whether this club is worth giving a try. Our club philosophy, class schedule, pricing etc are all there for everyone to see. Everyting's transparent and professionally presented. And on the website are links to our blog and FB Page for them to investigate further.

The blog is our "killer app". It's what really differentiates us from the rest. Many people would opt to do Instagram rather than a blog. With Instagram you just snap a picture and that's it. Easy, simple. Don't have to compose an article. But how much can Instagram convey about a club? It's good for snapshots... literally. And there is some promotional value there (that's why we have Instagram too) but for those interested in a deep dive, a blog is where it's at.

I'm very outspoken and I have very strong views about judo, about training, about club culture, about how we should do things in a judo club. By reading this blog, the prospective member will be very clear about what kind of club KL Judo Centre is. We are most definitely not a very typical Malaysian judo club.

FB is great because postings can go viral very fast. If people Like your post or they post a comment about it or share it with their friends it can increase your readership very fast. And that has happened with a lot of our postings. Sometimes it's for something as simple as a quirky picture. Most of the time it's for a nice little video clip we've done of the technical segment. Randori clips accompanied by music are always popular. But even interesting little games that we play (yes, judo games are popular even with adults) get quite a lot of attention. What surprised us at first was that the livestreams are a hit. Even I was not so sure whether people would want to watch a livestream but those regularly get over 100 views per stream.

All these three online initiatives combined (website, blog, FB Page) will give a working adult a really good picture of what kind of club KL Judo Centre is. It will make clear what kind of coach I am (competition-oriented, not very traditional and doesn't just teach but participates in randoris as well).  It also tells them what kind of members we have (a melting pot of adults of different sizes, from different cultures, all keenly doing judo whether it's drills or randori).

Viewers will also know that we train for three straight hours (with only minimal water breaks) on a Sunday afternoon. Imagine that. Getting working adults to put aside three hours (and more, if you include travel time) for judo on a Sunday, which is really very much a rest day for many people.

Having all these online resources serves a dual purpose actually. Firstly, it allows us to reach out to our target audience: working adults (and working adults with teen children who want to learn modern judo). But secondly, it also serves as a natural vetting process. Our club has a certain ethos. Our members are eager to learn, train hard, like to randori. We don't want to dilute that by attracting the "wrong" type of members. If you are someone who likes to work only on techniques that you already know, do lots of mindless uchikomis of techniques that you already know, and then sit out the randori segment, KL Judo Centre is NOT for you. Please do not bother to apply. And many who are like that do not. Thankfully.

We want members who love to play judo, who are keen to learn new things and are not afraid to train hard. That's the kind of members we want. And I'm so happy that we have managed to attract people like that to our club. Our membership is not huge but we do have a critical mass -- a core group -- that anchors our club. We will continue with our online initiatives as we head towards a new chapter in the evolution of our club: moving to a new location. :Check back regularly for updates!

Why KL Judo is special

Some interesting philosophy from Thor: Ragnorak

I could list a slew of reasons why KL Judo Centre is different from other judo clubs. But there's only one reason why it's special: its members.

There's a line in the Thor: Ragnarok movie where Heimdall tells Thor: "Asgard is not a place, it's a people." There's lots of debate whether that sentence is actually grammatically correct (it sounds awkward but apparently it is grammatically sound). But whatever the case, the point is clear. Asgard might have been destroyed (in the movie, it was) but as long as the people are together, Asgard will continue to exist because it's the people who make Asgard what it is.

That's exactly how I feel about KL Judo Centre. We started out in a dojo in Cheras. It was our first endeavor to start a judo club of our own and the facilities were fine. It was spacious with decent mats and plenty of crash pads. I liked the premises. But when it was time to move on, I had no sentimentality over the place. What was important to me was that the members would follow us to the new place.

Whenever you move to a new location there are bound to be some dropouts. It's inevitable. Sometimes the new location is simply too far away for some and they can't afford the time it takes to get there. Or they can't afford the travel costs. Or, perhaps they no longer had that much interest in the sport and felt the change in location was an opportune time to make a clean break with the sport.

We lost a few players with that move but about 80% of our membership stayed with us, which was a remarkable feat considering that the move was way across town. It was a drastic change but it was the best option we had at the time. Our players knew our situation — we always believed in being transparent about things — and stood by us.

Anybody who has trained with us will notice some very unique things about our members. For one thing, we have an incredibly diverse membership. The harsh reality about the judo scene in Malaysia is that most clubs are divided among racial lines. I don't think that's necessarily by design. It just happens to be that way.

There's a big club in the north where most of the members are Chinese. There's a government-funded club, also in the north, where most of the members are Malay. There are three other government-funded clubs, one in the East Coast and two in a Southern state which are predominantly Malay. There are three clubs in states just south of KL whose memberships are overwhelmingly Chinese.

KL Judo Centre doesn't neatly fall into any such racial categories. There's no way anyone can classify us as a predominantly Chinese club or a predominantly Malay club.  We are truly a melting pot of Malaysians and internationals.

Speaking of internationals, we are remarkably cosmopolitan. Our membership isn't huge but even among our small numbers are players from France, Senegal, Syria, Britain, the Philippines and Indonesia. This makes it very interesting because judo is not just a sporting activity. It's also a social activity and by mixing with people from other cultures, religions and backgrounds, you get to learn a lot more about the world.

Our players are also by nature very open and welcoming. That's been our club culture all along. And perhaps because it's been like that from the very start, a virtuous cycle has been generated. When people first join our club, they find that they can very easily fit in and they pay that back in kind by welcoming other newcomers in the future.

Judo clubs in this part of the world tend to be very traditional. Endless uchikomis, no grip fighting, everything according to the Gokyo. It's like judo is stuck in a time warp and stopped dead in its tracks in the 1960s. It's no surprise that they produce players with a very narrow mindset and no interest in learning anything new. They just want to stick to their drop seoi-nages and their endless, mindless uchikomis.

I've found this to be the case with many players who joined us from other clubs. Most of them end up dropping out because they find us to be not "traditional" enough for their taste. They want to do "Japanese judo" (by that they mean 1960s judo). Ironically some of the greatest innovations in world judo today comes out of Japan. Look at Naohisa Takato's side takedowns. Look at Soichi Hashimoto's one-handed sode. Look at Ryuju Nagayama's reverse seoi-nage or Mashu Baker's other form of reverse seoi-nage. Or Haruka Funakubo's newaza turnover. Or Kaori Matsumoto's famous roll. None of these things can be found in the Gokyo.

But these are the kinds of things that are taught in our club (alongside the Gokyo). And our players lap it up. They absorb new knowledge like a sponge. Many of them have traditional techniques in their repertoire but crucially, they supplement it with new stuff. As a coach I don't want to strut around watching players do the same endless, mindless uchikomis all day long. I want to see them grow and evolve as players as they learn and adopt new techniques. This is what makes teaching judo exciting and fulfilling.

As we head towards the end of the year, we have to move again. We will be relocating to a new place which is always a challenge. To be honest, when I first faced the prospects of having to relocate, I found it to be rather daunting. But my confidence was bolstered after speaking to some of my players about the impending move.

I recall speaking to one of the and asking if he would be willing to move with us although at that time, the location was still uncertain. He hadn't been to training much in recent months due to work but he told me, "Don't worry coach, wherever KL Judo moves to I'll go along with it."

Another player who has been with us since almost the very beginning was concerned about the financial viability of moving to a new place (better location and new mats means higher costs) and surprised me by paying a whole year's worth of training fees up front. "I hope that will help with the finances," he said.

If I ever had any doubts that KL Judo Centre would be able to survive a second relocation within the span of a year, those fears have now all been erased because of the support of our members. I'm delighted to say that 90% of them have committed to moving with us when we re-open in Bangsar in December.

KL Judo Centre is not a place. It's a people.

The value of a good partner

I always liked the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A simplistic way to look at it is 1 + 1 does not always equal 2. Sometimes it can equal 3 or 4 or more. Here's why. When we collaborate with the right partners, the results can be significantly better than what any of us could have expected.

In recent weeks I've been hunting high and low, looking for the right place to house our judo club. Finding the right premises is quite a challenge. Finding the right partner is even harder. Call it good luck, or perhaps good karma, but I've been fortunate enough to have found both.

Our new location is going to be in Bangsar, which as central as you're gonna get when it comes to finding a middle ground to please the folks who live in KL and those who live in PJ. In Bangsar, it's fair to everyone. It's also a nice, upper middle-class neighborhood with plenty of amenities nearby, including an LRT station and lots of food outlets.

My partner-in-crime in this new endeavor is a fitness studio owner with vast experience in the fitness industry, both as a personal trainer and a group fitness instructor. Her studio offers a slew of programs including Airflow Yoga, Barre Body (postures inspired by ballet), TRX (suspension training), Pound (full-body cardio inspired by drumming) and Piloxing SSP (Pilates meets Boxing meets Dance), among others.

To be honest, judo doesn't naturally fit in with the range of fitness programs the studio offers, which is not combat sports oriented. And since what I was looking for was just a place to conduct my competitive judo classes, a simple way to do it would have been a simple rental arrangement.

We could have done it that way but as we explored different possibilities, new ideas quickly emerged. After an initial meeting, I sent her a PowerPoint with four ideas on how to make judo more accessible to a broader demographic.

A follow-up brainstorming session resulted in a brand new idea that took a few elements from my original proposals and added in new elements that she felt would make judo more appealing to the masses.

I have to say, it's not something I would have thought of myself. I don't think it's something any judoka would come up with because we are too deep into the sport to be able to really think outside the box. It takes a non-judoka fitness professional to be able to look at judo with fresh eyes and come up with a brand new approach, simply called "Judo Fitness".

It's sort of like if you want to come up with a Chinese fusion dish, you won't be able to do that by having a Chinese chef brainstorm with another Chinese chef. They can come up with some amazing new Chinese dishes but don't expect it to be fusion in any way. If you want that, you'll need to ask a Chinese chef to brainstorm with say, a French chef or an Italian chef or a Japanese chef. Then you will get something truly unique.

So, what will this new Judo Fitness program be all about? That, you will have to wait and see. I'll be revealing more details about it and the studio we'll be moving into, in future blog posts.

Just to be clear, the hardcore, randori-oriented judo training that KL Judo Centre is well-known for will carry on three times a week at the new place. But there will also be the brand-new Judo Fitness classes offered there as well.

Basically there will be two types of judo classes there. Judo for competitors and judo for everyone else. :)

Building a club that you, yourself, would like to train in

Technically KL Judo is on hiatus as we are in the midst of relocating but a few of the players wanted to do some training so we make use of this temporary facility. The space is very small but we make do with what we've got.

Sometime back I wrote an article about Goh Ai Ching, the founder of Penang-based Piktochart. There was something she said that really resonated with me because her motivation for wanting to build her own company was exactly the same reason I wanted to build my own judo club.

She said she did not like the job she had before and wanted to create a company that she, herself, would like to work in. Well, I wasn't happy with the judo club I was training at and felt the only way to get what I wanted out of a judo club was to build one myself.

A job we don't like. I think most people have experienced that to some degree. That's why so many people complain all the time -- about their work place, about their colleagues, about their bosses. How many people do you know absolutely love their jobs? For sure there are some but they are truly few and far in between.

The harsh reality is that most people don't like their jobs. But not many people are in a position to do anything about it. The greatest irony is when someone is in a position to create their own company but doesn't end up creating a good working environment. So they are as guilty as their previous boss whom they hated.

I always told myself if I ever had the chance to create my own company, I'd make it a place I'd like to work at. Which is exactly what Ai Ching has done. Well, I am not quite as entrepreneurial as she is and the closest I've come to forming a business is being a freelancer.

But I have founded a judo club that's been running for more than three years now. We've come a long way since the early days when we had just three or four members. It's not been smooth sailing and we've had our ups and downs. But through it all, I stayed true to my philosophy of building a club that I, myself, would like to train in.

I'm quite a demanding customer. I have high expectations of a judo club because I've trained at some of the best judo clubs in the US and the UK. So, I've set a high benchmark for my club. I want it to be absolutely world class, if not in terms of facilities, at least in terms of the training program.

The other thing I learned from Ai Ching, which I think is very insightful and instructive, is that corporate culture is everything. If you allow someone disruptive to ruin the corporate culture, it will ruin your company. And so it is with judo clubs as well. I totally believe that club culture is everything. If the wrong culture sets in, your club is doomed.

I'll share a case in point. There was a club I used to train at where it was not only permissible but was actually common practice for players to refuse to do randori. You'd literally have to go around the room asking multiple people to do randori before you could find someone to agree to spar with you. The rest would just sit around twiddling their thumbs because they are too tired or too lazy to spar.

It all started with a few senior belts who began to say no to randori (too tired, too lazy). The lower belts couldn't help but notice this and they probably thought: If a senior belt can say no to randori, so can I. Soon enough, lower belts started saying no to randori. In the end, it trickled all the way down to white belts. Can you imagine the ridiculous sight of a black belt asking a white belt for randori and the white belt saying no simply because he didn't feel like it?

I'm not making this up. This was how it was. The thing is, the sensei should have nipped it in the bud. If a player declines to do randori without a good reason he should be reprimanded. (Being injured or about to throw up are acceptable reasons for sitting out a randori. Feeling tired or lazy are not).

Ai Ching said that at first she didn't have the courage to deal with troublemakers but later on she built up that strength to confront them because she knew that if she didn't do it, it could infect the rest of the workforce. The same applies to judo clubs. Once you let someone get away with a bad attitude, it will eventually infect the rest.

Club culture, just like corporate culture, is at its most fragile in the early stages of the club. Over time, as the club matures, the culture will seep in deeply among the members. And that in itself is a rail guard against disruptive forces. If a new player joins the club, they will learn very soon what the club culture is like, what is acceptable behavior and what is not.

If that person wants to introduce some destructive new attitude, he's going to find no takers. There will be no accomplices. The existing members are there precisely because they like how training is conducted. They are not going to start saying no to randori just because some lazy bum likes to have the option of slacking off.

Over the years, we've had players come and go. The ones who fit well within our club culture stay. The ones that don't, leave. As a club, we always like the idea of having more members but not at all cost.

There's always room for improvement and I'm certainly open to new ideas about ways we could do things better but I dare say we have a damn good club culture at KL Judo. The players train hard, they have a keen fighting spirit and they play fair. There's not much more a coach could ask for.

Time out for relocation...

KL Judo Centre will be on hiatus in the month of November and will re-open in December in a new, swanky location (Hint: it is very central and likely the most universally accessible point for residents
of Klang Valley, whether you live in KL or PJ). Here's what the interiors look like.

Not a huge place but big enough to have a decent practice.

The big question on my mind right now is what type of mats to get. There are three basic options but I've pretty much ruled out judo tatatmi mats although that would be the ideal. The reason is that we are sharing the space with other gym activities so after training we have to store away the mats. That means either jigsaw or rollout mats.

Green is rollout, blue is tatami and blue + yellow is jigsaw. Will have to decide between rollout and jigsaw soon.

Different types of mats

Many martial arts can be done on a hard surface but judo needs to be done on mats because the high amount of throwing that gets done.

Since I decided to get our club our own mats I have been doing a bit of research on mats. There are three basic options for judo mats:
a) roll-out mats
b) tatami mats
c) jigsaw mats

Each type has its pros and cons. Here are the key things you need to know about each.

Roll-out Mat

These are the most convenient when your classes are held in a multi-purpose hall. When you need the mats, you roll them out and when you're done, you roll them up (just like a carpet). They can be held together via velcro connectors.

Cheerleaders use these mats too and their version usually has a carpet finish. For judo, you'd want a PVC finish, ideally with a tatami-grain texture. In terms of thickness, 4cm is good for judo although it's possible to get them in 5cm too.

The main drawbacks of roll-out mats are
(i) they are very expensive, often more costly per square meter than even judo tatami mats
(ii) while their lengths can vary according to your liking, their widths are usually fixed at 1.52m or 1.83m because of the machines that make them. You can request that the manufacturer trim the width, for example down to 1m, but you would still have to pay for the original width, so it's a costly proposition.

Tatami Mats

These are usually favored by judokas because tatami mats are what we are used to. However they can be quite costly and they are meant to be fixed mats. If you use a multi-purpose hall, tatami mats are not suitable as they can weigh up to 15kg each. The mats will also need to held in place, usually with some kind of wooden frame otherwise they will fall apart. The mats typically come in 2m x 1m configurations although you can get 1m x 1m pieces too.

Jigsaw Mats

Jigsaw mats are the most versatile because they come in 1m x 1m pieces and can be easily configured to fit every nook and cranny in your room. They are also the cheapest option, typically half the price of a tatami mat per square meter.

Many judokas don't like jigsaw mats for two reasons. Firstly, there is the impression they don't provide enough cushioning for throws. But that's because the jigsaw mats we are used to in Malaysia are usually 2cm or at most, 3cm thick. Many gyms in Malaysia use jigsaw mats for their martial arts areas but since those martial arts are usually not judo, the mats are very thin. For judo, you'd want to get 4cm, which needs to be imported.

The other reason judo players might not like jigsaws it that they can sometime feel a bit slippery. That's because of the texture of the surface design which comes in various forms but not usually tatami grain (at least not in Malaysia). But it is possible to request for a tatami-grain texture on jigsaw mats if you order them from overseas. That should help with the slipperiness issue.


So, which mat is ideal?
Actually that really depends on your circumstances. If you have a dedicated room that is a perfect square or rectangular in shape (no odd shapes), I'd say go for tatami. If you are sharing a room and have to remove the mats after practice, tatami won't do. Go for roll-outs or jigsaws depending on the dimensions of the room and your budget. If the dimensions are a bit odd, jigsaws would be better as the come in small 1m x 1m pieces and can be cut if necessary. Rollouts come with fixed widths that are rather odd (1.52m and 1.83m). They too can be cut but it's a costly proposition. So, if you have an unusually shaped room or if the dimensions of the room are uneven, you'd do well to go with jigsaws. Budget is also another key consideration. Roll-outs are the most expensive types of mats. Jigsaws are easily half their price per square meter.

As a judo player, I would like tatami the most but it doesn't look like it will be feasible for KL Judo Centre to have those because we will not have a dedicated room but rather will be sharing a space with other activities. So rollouts or jigsaws it must be. I like rollouts because of the convenience factor but the dimensions of the room we are looking at does not fit well with the fixed widths of the rollout mats. It might have to be jigsaws. But if so, I will get ones that are at least 4cm and a tatami texture.

Coaches must update their players on new rules

A coach owes it to their students to update them on rule changes such as this.

Many years ago when I was training at another club (before I established my own), I would make it a point to update players on the latest rule changes made by the IJF.

There was once, after the IJF made some pretty significant changes, when I told the entire class that some new rules were being implemented and that I would be explaining it to them. One of the outdated senseis said out loud "Nobody interested!" and started laughing.

So I told the group, "Those who are keen can come over here and I'll explain the new rules to you." About half the group came over while the other half went on to practice some 1960s judo from the outdated sensei.

This apathetic attitude towards new rules pervade among many old-school senseis who don't teach it to their players because
(a) they don't agree with the rules and think judo should be stuck in time (circa 1960s).
(b) they themselves are too lazy to learn the new rules
(c) the new rules are too complex for their 1960s mindset to comprehend

Usually it's a combination of all three factor although I suspect laziness is a key reason. Their mindset about new rules apply to techniques as well but that's a topic for another blog post.

Judo is a sport and as a sport it is played according to the rules. The IJF is the world governing body for judo and it sets the rules. Whether we agree with all the rule changes or not, the rules are the rules. Competitions are run according to those rules.

Coaches who do not familiarize himself with the rules are doing their students a disservice for they will go onto the mat with a severe disadvantage. In sports, you win not just through physicality and skills. Strategy and tactics come into play as well when trying to win matches. And you can only play the rules to your advantage if you know the rules in the first place.

Can judo classes ever become commercially viable?

Can judo classes ever become commercially viable like yoga and Pilates?

If you want to run a successful private dojo in Malaysia you would do well to look at how the Singaporeans do it. There are many private judo clubs there, and quite few which have several branches. All of them are run commercially without any sponsorship from a rich patron or support from the government.

Judo, as we all know, is not a very commercial sport. In a way it's like boxing (not kickboxing, which is very commercial but good ol' fashioned boxing, which is not). People who do amateur boxing do it out of pure passion and there's very little money in it. And so it is with judo too. That's why there are very few judo clubs that are commercially viable.

In the US, many judo clubs are housed in community centres where rent is subsidized and most judo coaches teach on a voluntary basis out of pure passion. I know one such instructor in the US who helps run a free judo club sponsored by the city council. There is no rent, no fees to pay and the instructor teaches for free. You'll find this kind of non-commercial approach to judo in many other places as well. I have a friend in Canada who tells me his judo club gets free rent (from their city council) and that's why their training fees are very low.

But that's not how it is in Singapore where everything is expensive, especially rent. So the clubs there charge quite a high rate for judo training. One Singaporean coach told me that the way to successfully charge more is to "upgrade" judo from being a working class sport done in grimy, dingy, hot and humid rooms to a lifestyle activity done in nicely furnished, air-conditioned premises.

My immediate thought was: "That's impossible to do in Malaysia. Nobody would pay high training fees to do judo, even if the club was nicely furnished and air-conditioned."

The thing is, judo is primarily taught as a competition sport in Malaysia. Those who are into sport judo, who want to train hard and fight hard, do not particularly care about having a nicely furbished, air-conditioned room to train in. They just want a place to train in that is ideally free of charge or  very low cost. That's the typical mindset of a judo player.

That's not going to change much. Judo players will not want to pay the kind of fees that fitness gyms charge (between RM200 to RM300 per month). People will pay those kind of rates for yoga, Pilates, gymnastic, dance and so on. But not for judo.

That might change if judo-related programs can be marketed as a lifestyle fitness activity. That means creating customized programs designed to promote strength, fitness and agility through judo-related movement and activities. Could it work? Perhaps. After all, who doesn't want to be strong, fit and agile, right?

This is not my personal insight or concept but one suggested to me by a fitness professional who thinks there could be demand for such classes. Not everyone likes the rough and tumble of sport judo. Not everyone likes to fight. But some might like the movement and techniques, and indeed the philosophy, of judo.

The importance of having such classes is that they would then make it possible to hold regular judo classes where the emphasis is on hard, competitive training, randori and shiai. In other words, if the commercial side of judo is successful it makes it possible to carry on with the less-commercial side of judo.

Will this work? We shall see. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Our club is on a rapid evolutionary path

Things were going fine for us at the gym we had moved into earlier in the year. The location was acceptable to our members, the mat area was big and the mats were thick enough to absorb the impact of throws. And the gym was able to accommodate our time slot needs. Things seemed ideal and we were counting on this to last for a long, long time.

But as they say, all good things must come to an end. I've always knew that to be true. I just didn't expect our stint at that gym to end so quickly. It turns out when their lease ended the gym management decided to move to a new place. The new premises didn't work out for us. So, now we are looking at moving into a new place.

Finding another gym to house the club is not an easy thing because of the four key criteria that we had: central location, decent size mat area, suitably thick mats, available time slots.

Realizing that it's close to impossible to find a place that can fulfill all four criteria, I decided to bite the bullet, buy our own mats and rent an empty space somewhere to hold our judo practice. I even considered renting a shop lot but that would be quite wasteful because we only need to use the place for a few hours per week. It made much more sense to rent some slots at a yoga or dance studio. Unlike gyms whose peak period is 7 to 10pm, some studios have empty slots in the evenings.

There are a lot of challenges involved with this new approach. Renting time in a studio and supplying our own mats will require some up-front capital. Plus, whenever you move location, there are bound to be a few drop-outs among your members.

But every move is a new beginning and a chance to make the club even better than it was before. We'd prefer not to have to move but this might prove to be a blessing in disguise. All of us were happy with the old place but perhaps we'll all be even happier in a new place where we could implement new and exciting things we never considered before.

One thing's for sure, this will quicken the evolution of our club. And that's probably a good thing.

Arm Roll Drill