Teaching Principles

When I was a competitor, I had to myself a lot of things. I did have coaches who taught me a lot of things but my access to them was limited (usually during my university's summer vacation period, which was about three months). For the other nine months, I was left to my own devices.

I thought a lot about how to improve my judo and my approach to judo training was definitely not dogmatic. I was constantly experimenting and trying out new ways of doing things. This attitude is still with me today as a judo teacher.

While my approach to teaching is constantly growing and evolving, there are a few basic principles that I hold on to:

a) Just because something is traditional or has been done for a long time, doesn't mean it is the best or the optimal way to do it. Do not be afraid of slaying sacred cows.

b) That said, it's important to avoid making changes for the sake of making changes. If a traditional way of doing things is working fine, then adopt it. Change it only if it is not working well.

c) There are seldom stark right and wrong ways of doing things, just more effective and less effective ways. If a student wants to do a technique with a funny grip that happens to work well for him, why the hell not?

d) If a newaza move is too complicated, forget about it. Judo is a fast-paced, fast-moving sport. There's no time for complex maneuverings. Judo groundwork is all about quick, decisive action.

e) It's always easier and faster for a judo player to progress in newaza than in tachi-waza (assuming the same amount of training) because newaza just requires practice. Throwing, in contrast, requires some element of natural talent.

Why we insist on judogis only for judo training

Most of our members came to us as absolute beginners, so they don't have any legacy gis that they want to bring with them. But occasionally we do have players who come from BJJ and they usually want to continue to wear their BJJ gis.

In our first year, we were a bit lax about this and allowed it (although it was strongly discouraged, or rather we encouraged them to buy proper judogis). Within a short time though, we decided to implement a strict policy that if a person wants to train in judo at our club, they need to wear a judo.

They don't have to buy a judogi from us, they could order their own. But it has to be a judogi, not a BJJ gi or any other martial arts UNIFORM. Most definitely, it cannot be a karate or taekwondo gi.

We are a judo club. If you want to train in judo, you have to wear a judo uniform. It's as simple as that. You don't play badminton using a tennis racket. And you don't use soccer boots on a badminton court. You need to have the right vear for the sport you are playing.

Some people might say that a BJJ gi is close enough to a judogi that it's pretty much the same. It's not. BJJ gis are usually tighter and shorter than their equivalent sized judogi, which are very strictly regulated by the International Judo Federation. The sleeves need to be of a certain length, a certain size, etc. If the gi is too short or too tight, it's illegal because it gives the player an unfair advantage when nobody can grip their gi properly. So, from a sizing and looseness requirement alone, it is not practical for someone to wear a BJJ gi for judo.

But beyond that is also aesthetics. BJJ gis come in all colors and usually have a lot of patches on them. The only colors allowed in judo are white and blue and where your patches can be placed is severely limited. That is why judo players have a very common look. Some people say that's boring. Maybe it is but those are the rules.

As mentioned earlier, we're a judo club. Not a Mixed Martial Arts club or a judo club that also offers BJJ. We only do judo, so we expect our players to wear judogis.

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.