The revolving door of judo

Whether we like it or not, every judo club has a proverbial revolving door.

I read with interest an article written by a Canadian coach about the topic of people quitting judo. In it, the coach quoted his own sensei stating the following pearls of wisdom:

Building judo clubs is like building sandcastles. You build them up, and they get washed away. Then you rebuild.

Anyone who has ever tried to start and run a judo club knows what he says is so true. Sometimes when the chips are down and the membership has dwindled, it is easy to succumb to the fallacy that it is only your judo club that suffers from this. But I have been in touch with many judo coaches around the world and this is a problem almost all private judo clubs face.

There are many challenges in building up a judo club. You need to find the right location, you need to get the right equipment, you need to get the right instructors but the most challenging of them all is getting people to sign up for judo and sticking with it. Every coach, every sensei, every experienced player who has been in judo for more than a year will tell you that recruiting members is indeed the single biggest challenge any club faces.

When I first came back to Malaysia, I joined a judo club where the membership at one point dwindled down to two people: me and my long-time judo friend, Jason Lim. For a sustained period of time, it was just the two of us coming to the dojo to train. Over time the membership recovered somewhat. So I know what it's like to struggle to keep a club alive. 

Even with KL Judo we faced a similar situation. At one time, the membership was reduced to just two players, Shen and Eric Chung (one of our pioneer members who has been with the club the longest). She was a -52kg player while he was a -90kg player. Imagine the mismatch. But they kept training and kept the club alive, just like Jason and I did before that with the other club we were at.

The blog posting I referred to lists 10 reasons why people might quit. Some of the reasons are more convincing than others. Injury is a common reason. If a newcomer gets injured early on, you can be sure they will quit judo. That's why it's important to have a culture of safety in the club. Dangerous players who tend to injure everybody need to change their ways or eventually leave the club.

Discouragement or demoralization is another. That one is harder to mitigate because it really depends on that person's own psychology. When I was a beginner, the fact that everybody else in the club was better than me served as motivation. Each time a black belt (or any colored belt for that matter) threw me, it made me more determined to improve myself so that one day I could stop their throws or even actually throw them. It took me nine months of dedicated training before I could throw anyone in the club but not once did I waver in my resolve.

But not everyone is made up that way psychologically. I have met many, many aspiring judokas who gave up before they even got their yellow belt because they were frustrated about their inability to throw others in the club. Sometimes it happens after their very first session, believe it or not. I recall a visitor we had (a black belt from another martial art) who visited us to learn judo. After his very first training, he shook his head in frustration saying his techniques are so bad.

I wanted to tell him, "What are you talking about? This is your first session. You don't have any techniques!" But instead, I just encouraged him to come for more trainings. He came for one more and after failing to throw anyone he quit. This is an extreme example but it is quite common for beginners to quit out of frustration because they expected to master judo skills much faster. When a player has that kind of attitude, its hard to help them.

There is also a group of players who drop out for mysterious reasons. They show a lot of keenness at the start. Sometimes they are the keenest of all. Then they suddenly drop out without giving any reason. That happens too.

I call this the "hangat hangat tahi ayam" syndrome. It's inexplicable and I've learned not to try to figure it out because there really is no logical reason for this behaviour. Nor is it worth getting perturbed by it. In the words of Paul McCartney, I just "let it be".

Then there are those who you are actually glad to see gone because either they are too reckless and dangerous or they have a bad attitude. We occasionally see those types too. But I won't devote too much time writing about bad apples here. I'll save that for another post. There are many more interesting topics to explore regarding players who quit.

The blogger I referred to posed a few imponderables. For example, what do you do with someone who is just visiting for a short period of time? Do you invest time and effort into training them even though you know they will only be with you for a few weeks or a few months? (Usually these are students who have come back during school break from their overseas studies).

The answer, as far as I'm concerned, is absolutely. I do not discriminate between my "permanent" players and visiting players. If someone has chosen our club as the place they want to learn judo, we owe it to them to give them the very best instruction possible. It doesn't matter that they will leave in a matter of weeks or months.

The other imponderable the blogger posed concerns newcomers who don't seem that certain about judo. Do you invest time and effort into training them given that they might just quit a few weeks down the road? The author says he would generally "err on the side of generosity".

For me, it's simple. It's not an issue of whether you are new or not or whether you have potential or not or even whether you are likely to stay or not. It's all about your commitment to learning. If you show me that you really want to learn, I will teach you. Simple as that.

Lastly, there is the issue of dedicated members who have to leave the club for reasons beyond their control. Usually it has to do with them moving away to another city, state or even country. It's always sad when you lose a dedicated member and we've had that happen in our club in the past. I always view it philosophically though. Rather than be sad over the fact that we won't have them anymore I'm happy that we had them around for the time that we did. They contributed positively to the history of our club and helped to make it what it is.

Two teens that I have been training over the past year will be leaving the country by mid-year. It's sad to see them go but I am glad that I got the chance to train them and build up their judo. Who knows, they might return someday and re-join the club. Anything is possible.

The harsh reality of our sport is that judo clubs have revolving doors. People come in, some stay for a while, some stay for a long time, and some leave very quickly. You can't lament the fact that many people will come and go, and only a few will end up sticking around for the long run. The best that you can do is make the most of the time you have with them. If you think about it, this reflects life itself.