Turning a vicious cycle into a virtuous one

Last month, despite half the club being away for a competition, we were still able to have a great session back home.

Building up a judo club is tough because when you first start out, you will naturally have very few players. And in such a situation, you are in a vicious cycle. When new prospective members come to your dojo, they see very few people training and are reluctant to join. Because they are reluctant to join, you continue to have very few players. And the cycle goes on.

It's like that classic employment vicious cycle for fresh graduates. Nobody wants to hire you because you don't have experience. Because nobody wants to hire you, you can't gain experience. But as long as you don't have experience, you won't get hired.

So, what you've got to do is to break that cycle. In the case of employment, it might require working as an intern for a very low salary or even for free just to get that experience and break that cycle.

In the case of a judo club, I wouldn't recommend offering free training though. That's not the right way to build a membership as you will attract the wrong type of members. The cheapskates who want everything to be free. No, that's not how you break the vicious cycle.

What you do is focus on a particular segment and gradually build it up. In our case, it was the working adults segment. There were other judo clubs around but they were catering to kids and young teens, not late teens or adults. So, we filled that niche.

It wasn't easy. Anyone who's involved in judo will tell you building an adult membership base is probably the hardest thing to do. Some people thought we were mad. "Why don't you just open up a kids class instead?" they would ask rhetorically.

But we stuck to our guns and we gradually built up a small but dedicated adults group. Growth was slow and as to be expected, people came and people went. But a small core stuck with us and in time that core grew.

It will take time but if you stick with it, eventually you will reach a tipping point where the vicious cycle suddenly turns into a virtuous cycle. When newcomers drop by and see a sizeable number of players on the mat, they are encouraged to join. And when they join, that critical mass grows, which further attracts new members who like seeing so many people on the mat. Thus, the virtuous cycle.

To get to that point though is not easy, of course. I earlier mentioned that our target market was working adults. That's a rather broad classification though and it actually has to be segmented further. Not only do you want to get a critical mass of adults, you also need to get a critical mass of:
a) each gender
b) age groups
c) experience levels
d) sizes
e) player expectations

Generally, it is said that it's harder to attract women to judo than men. We have found that to be the case as well and it's something we are still working hard on. When you have just one or two female players, it's a turn-off for new females who come in and see so few female players on the mat. But if you have a few core players who are dedicated, you can slowly build up the numbers until you reach the tipping point, where it becomes a virtuous cycle.

The same for age groups. You need a critical mass of kids and early teens, late teens, adults in their 20s and 30s, and those who are 40 and beyond. If you have very few teens, very few teens will want to join. And the same for each age group. So, build up each segment so that you can break free of the vicious cycle when it comes to age groups.

Experience levels is important. If everyone is a beginner, and experienced player who checks out the club will not be excited at the prospects of playing only with beginners. Similarly, if all your players are experienced, beginners will be intimidated. So, you need to have a good mix of beginners, intermediate and experienced players. All are needed.

Size is a crucial thing. There are clubs where most of the players are small. A big guy over 100kg will feel out of place in such a club. Or if you are a club full of heavyweights, a small player will not want to train there. So, you need to get all sizes.

Lastly, player expectations. Do they want to do judo to compete and win medals? Or do they want to do judo as a recreational activity? Or is judo just another form of exercise for them? Again, you must have a bit of each. If everyone's a competitor, you won't be able to attract any recreational players. If everyone is a recreational player, a competitor will not want to join. So, you need to have all types.

If after reading all this, you realize that it's damn difficult to build up a judo club, you're right. It's damn difficult. But it's worth it and it can be done if you are willing to grow each segment of your target market, bit by bit. It requires a tremendous amount of perseverance and also confidence. You have to believe you can break that vicious cycle and turn it into a virtuous cycle.

So, in 2020, which of our target segments do we still need to grow? The answer is all of them. We cannot rest on our laurels and take it easy. Only the paranoid survive. Yes, we do have a critical mass of players now and yes, for many segments we have entered the virtuous cycle zone. But all this could disappear very quickly if we should ever become complacent. You can be sure we are always cognizant of that.

Our dojo at the start of the year

We've always aimed to get the best infrastructure for our members. That means:
a) big mat area
b) high-quality, 5cm-thick mats
c) crash pads (plenty of them, and both thick and thin ones)
d) TV monitor to show them judo videos
e) portable speaker for the TV and to play music during randori
f) wall paddings for safety

It took a long time for us to be able to offer all these things to our members but as of this new year, we managed to do it.

The usable training area (not including safety buffers) is roughly 9m x 14m, which gives us 126 square meters. That's not huge but it's a pretty big mat area (especially compared to our previous dojo where we only had 50 square meters to work with). Not quite triple the original size but 2.5 times what we used to have.

We used to work with only two crash pads. Now, we have 8 thick ones and 4 thin ones. We were able to afford these with some assistance from Majlis Sukan Wilayah Persekutuan. During randori, these crash pads act as wall paddings for the side of the dojo that doesn't have a buffer zone. So, that works out pretty well.

On Saturday, we had a small group doing some training. After the session ended, we put in new buffers on the far end of the dojo (replacing the white foam with some older tatami mats, which are sturdier). The mat area is now really pretty solid. Big space, sufficient cushioning and well-buffered.

As a coach, I think it's super important to provided good infrastructure for our players. Without quality equipment in place, you can't train properly. But at KL Judo, now you can train like a pro.

Right or Left or Both?

In judo, it's good to be able to attack to the right and to the left, but let's face it, very few people are truly ambidextrous. I noticed that many Georgian players train to throw to both sides. Liparteliani, Gviniashvili, Tchrikishvili -- they all seem to be able to throw to the right and to the left, almost with equal facility. But you can still tell that they are principally right-handers.

Perhaps the only judo player I know of who seems to be truly ambidextrous was the Olympic champion Angelo Parisi of France.

A natural question new judo players would have is whether they should practice their techniques to both sides. Actually, unless you are a Georgian full-time athlete, it isn't practical to try to develop every techniques to be done on both sides. It's hard enough to learn how to do uchimata or seoi-nage to one side. Imagine doing that every every single throw you want to develop. It will literally take you twice as long as someone who is developing it to one side only.

Of course it's not a good strategy to be able to attack to one side only. That's why you must have a technique or two that goes to the other side. But you shouldn't try to do every technique in your repertoire to both sides. It just isn't practical.

The same applies for groundwork. And perhaps more so. In judo, there is not much time to do groundwork. It's very easy for uke to engineer a "matte" so you have to move very fast. That requires you to really go into "auto-pilot" when you are on the ground. If you are an armlock specialist, you will tend to attack uke's arm on a specific side and not to both sides. Neil Adams for example, always attacked the left arm when doing his famous juji-gatame roll. If you strangle with your right arm, then practice strangling with your right arm and do it over and over again until muscle memory kicks in and you can execute it without thinking. That won't happen if you try to do it to both sides.

Don't kid yourself about being ambidextrous. Very few of us are able to do this. Decide which side will be your principle stance and develop most of your techniques from that side. Then work on one or two to the other side.

Why we let newbies do randori

A few years ago, we had a European visitor who was in town for work and he wanted to do some judo. I can't remember if he was a yellow belt or an orange belt but he had some experience in judo. Towards the end of the session, we had randori as usual. Afterwards he came up to me and thanked me for the randori, telling me it's his first time.

How can that be, I asked. He said his sensei back home would not let him randori yet since he was still a beginner. How long have you been doing judo, I asked. Six months, he replied. I was shocked. Six months and not allowed to do randori? That's pretty extreme but I've heard of worse.

I remember a Japanese classmate from my uni days telling me that back home in Japan, in high school, when he took judo classes, all they did was ukemi for about half a year. Although not many clubs would go to that extreme there are certainly many clubs that have you doing nothing but ukemi for at least a few weeks before they let you do anything else.

At KL Judo, we have you doing randori on your first day. Of course we'd pair you up with an experienced player who can take care of you but yes, you will be doing judo from Day 1. Randori after all, is a crucial part of judo.

Of course we will teach you breakfalls and rolls but we want you to actually do some judo. That means doing some uchikomi, some nagekomi and yes, some randori. Why? Because that's how you learn. Besides, it's fun and we want our members to enjoy their judo.

One of the reasons beginners love our sessions is that they actually get to do randori. They get to exert themselves, try out the techniques they learned and experience getting thrown -- all in a safe setting. That's one of the things that truly differentiate us as a club.

Return guest

Raziq had trained with us some time back for a short while when he was on university holiday from Australia. Now, he's back again to further his training with us. He is one of several Malaysian students studying overseas who have trained with us to improve their judo.

We also got an inquiry from a beginner and her friend (who is also a beginner) who have had some basic judo experience and would like to do competition training, with a view of competing in the future. I explained to her a bit about our training programs. She said they would drop by next week for a trial.

In the UK, in the 70s and 80s, the Budokwai was seen as a "judo graduate school"where judo players with some experience would go to, to take their judo to higher level. Although not by design, KL Judo is increasingly taking on that role.

Over the years, we've had guests as well as new members join us because they wanted to learn modern, effective, practical judo. And they felt (probably from watching our videos) that our club is the place for them to do that. We are delighted of course and we are happy to continue to play that role.

Many of our members started with us from scratch but increasingly, we are having experienced players come to us as well. Either way, we will teach them the kind of modern judo they are looking for.

I'm a big advocate of posting social media videos precisely because it gives people a good sense of what they can expect if they come to your dojo for training. Instead of guessing and wondering what a club is like or what type of training to expect, with videos, everyone see exactly what it's like. We are very proud of our program, which we have painstakingly developed over the years, so we want to show it off.

In fact, we have had a few people who came to us and said they chose us because of the videos. We were the only club that published training videos consistently, they said. And that's what convinced them we were the right club for them to try out.

Competition training begins

Our first competition of the year has been identified. We plan to compete in Singapore in February. Four of our players are confirmed to be competing in that one.

I will start preparing three of them today (the other one is still out of town on holiday).

They basically have seven weeks to get ready. For such a short lead time, we have to focus on a few core techniques and that's it. The training will be very focused on those core techniques.

It'll be very interesting to see how much of a difference these seven weeks will make to their judo. I think it will make a world of difference.

2020: The year ahead

We go into 2020 full of optimism. The club is on a strong footing, with a healthy membership base and good support from Majlis Sukan Wilayah Persekutuan. Here are some of the things we can look forward to this year:

Competitions
In 2019 there weren't that many domestic competitions (our club went to only two) but more are slated for 2020. Combine that with competitions in neighboring countries (namely, Singapore) and we have quite a few to look forward to. Here's the calendar of competitions so far. We will continue to update it as new events are confirmed.

Belt Gradings
Our kids class will start their gradings in January. We will adopt the Mon Grade system used by the British (18 Mons in all) but we'll adapt it for our purposes. Our adult players will continue to go for Kyu gradings as and when they are ready (we don't have set dates for colored belt gradings; whenever a player is ready, we will grade them). We also have a few players who can aim for Dan (black belt) gradings. A few of our players are brown belts and one is already a Shodan so he can go for his second degree black belt.  Dan gradings are external and our players will have until November to prepare for this.

Family Judo
Family Judo is one of our breakout success stories for 2019. Apparently, it's quite common in Europe for family members to train together in judo. We weren't sure if this would work in Malaysia but we tried it and it's taken off really well. In fact, starting in the new year, we will have a dedicated session for Family Judo from 2pm to 4pm on Sundays. After that, from 4pm to 6pm will be competition/advanced judo training. In 2019, we had a combined session from 3pm to 6pm and the mat was getting a bit too crowded, so we decided going forward, we will separate the classes.

Feeder Schools
The concept of feeder schools is a Japanese concept that we will draw some inspiration from. In Japan, it's quite common for top judo-oriented universities to have feeder schools to draw talent from. In 2020, we will be working with Alice Smith School (Primary & Secondary) with their judo program. Students who are keen on competition can eventually do additional training at KL Judo.

Visitors
Our club has always welcomed visitors. In 2019, we had a former international competitor from Scotland as well as a team from Jeju come train with us. Over the years, we've also had students from various universities abroad come do short stints with us to improve their judo. It's always been a pleasure to train them and we look forward to welcoming more guests in 2020.

Videos
We've always used videos to promote our club and it's an important component of our marketing strategy. Through videos, people curious about judo can see for themselves what kind of training we do and what they can expect if they join our club. They will also get a strong sense of the club's culture and ethos. We believe we have a good "product" to offer so we are happy to share it with our viewers. We will of course continue to do that going forward.

Something else we will do is make more comprehensive instructional videos. As our members are working adults, sometimes some of them can't make class due to work commitments. But we don't want them to miss out on the instruction. Video is a way to make sure they are up-to-date with what's being taught. We will share some  of the videos with the public but probably reserve some as exclusive learning materials for our members.