Introducing... Online judo lessons (of a different kind)

Judo Concepts

Since the Covid-19 virus ground the world to a halt, lots of BJJ coaches have taken to providing online lessons. Some even offer livestreams of them demonstrating newaza techniques in an empty studio with just one uke. Not exactly social distancing but I guess they trust their uke to be virus-free.

I've seen on online forums, judo coaches discussing different types of things that can be done online to keep their players engaged. These include things like teaching them how to do solo drills and high-intensity interval trainings during self-isolation.

One of my club members asked if I could suggest some judo fitness stuff for her and her son to do during this period of lock-down. I came up with three ideas. None of them involved watching demonstrations of techniques.

While advanced judo players with quite a lot of experience can watch a technical demonstration of a throw and be able to grasp the nuances involved, it is quite hard for less experienced players and beginners to do so. They need to actually try out the technique on a training partner, do the uchikomis and then do the nagekomis in order to get a good understanding of the throw.

You can't do shadow uchikomi on a brand new technique. You need a real life partner to provide some resistance and a coach to correct your mistakes. So, to me, offering online technical demonstrations isn't suitable when you don't have a partner to train with.

It's worse with newaza. Even I have difficulty grasping certain newaza moves that I see on video. I have to go to the dojo and try it on an uke to really understand how to make it work. So to me, it's useless showing newaza technical demonstrations to beginners if they have no chance to try it out.

So what can you do if not demonstrate techniques?

Vince Skillcorn offers a unique service: online video analysis of competition clips

One of my friends, Vince Skillcorn from Fighting Fitness Judo in the UK, has taken to offering online analysis of competition clips. He's asking people to submit clips to him and he would then analyze it for them. Quite an innovative move.

Technical analysis is something that I'd probably do also at some point although my approach would be a little bit different. But before getting into that, I wanted to do something more fundamental. I just wasn't sure exactly what or how.

Then, I interviewed Andre Ribeiro from Brazil, who had visited our club during his short visit to Malaysia. He suggested something that became a Eureka! moment for me. He said coaches should try to come up with lessons that are more theoretical that can be effectively taught online. That got me thinking and I realized there are a lot of judo concepts that can be taught – and learned – without requiring people to actually go on the mat and try them out.

In fact, just before the Covid-19 crisis hit us, I had already been thinking of teaching more conceptual things to my players but this kept being put on the back-burner because when you're physically on the mat, there is a tendency for both coach and players to want to work on the mechanics of a technique rather than on conceptual stuff. Now that we can't work on the mat, it's a great time to focus on concepts.

To kick it off, Lesson One will be on stance. Enjoy!