Tuesday 9/6/15 Session (Training in the Dark)

My two youngest players, Suan Wah (12) and Cherylynn (15), wanted extra training, so I met up with them at 8pm. When we opened the doors of the dojo and tried to turn on the lights, we realized that there was no electricity going into the club. So, what did we do? We decided to train anyway. And it was great training by moonlight.

Cheryl decided to give the judogi clinging exercise a go!

They started by doing some mat edge drills & grip fighting.

First technique was straight-leg ippon-seoi-nage, Koga-style.

This is a bit of a blur but it's Cheryl doing yoko-tomoe-nage.

Next, newaza. Suan Wah has Cheryl in a Matsumoto Roll.

Cheryl tries to straighten Suan Wah's arm in juji-gatame.

Suan Wah clamping on a nice Ecky-Gatame for a hold down.

When Cheryl turns towards him, he goes for the armlock.

Now it's Cheryl's turn to clamp on the Ecky-Gatame!

When Suan Wah let's go of his grip, she straightens his arm.

My two future champions, Cherylynn & Suan Wah!

The KL Judo Way

When I decided to form KL Judo with Lim, I wanted to do something different from what is available out there. My judo competition training experience has been from the West not the East. As such, my style of judo play is very European in nature and my training approach has a more European approach to it. I'm not very traditional at all when it comes to competition training.

My approach to training my players can be considered three-pronged:
(i) technical
(ii) drills
(iii) randori.

The technical bits are not based on traditional textbook judo but on what is really happening in competitions. That is why we use video a lot as a teaching aid. I make a point to show my players actual competition footage of techniques that I teach them.

I believe very strongly in drills. I don't believe in uchikomi and only employ it sparingly. For certain techniques, it's useful to do uchikomi but for most techniques, you might as well straight away do throwing practice rather than just loading up your partner and letting them go. So we have crash pads to allow our players to do lots of throws with full force.

For newaza, we do situational drills where we break techniques down and simulate competition situations. For example for armlocks we have player do drills trying to keep their opponent down. Then we have them do drills trying to roll their opponents. Then trying to straighten their arms. And so on.

We also do situational drills. For example we train our players how to react when they are pushed to a corner at the edge of the mat. We do lots of gripping drills. How to impose a grip. How to break a grip. How to deal with certain grips. So, yes we do lots and lots of different types of drills.

Lastly, we do lots of randori. You have to do lots of sparring to get good, so we always put aside ample time for players to spar. One of the biggest problems many players face is the lack of randori partners. This is a problem in many clubs around the world. At KL Judo we are very fortunate that we have enough members that our players always have enough partners to train with.

First month anniversary coming up

So much has happened since we opened the dojo May 11 that it is hard to imagine that we've only been around for about a month. A lot of positive developments have taken place and the KL Judo Training Centre has emerged to become something far beyond what Lim and I could have imagined when we first started the club. 

For one thing, we have excellent core members who are very committed and extremely loyal to the club. We also have a few really top notch competitors who help to elevate the competitiveness of the club. To have achieved this in the first month is really beyond our expectations.

We also never thought we'd end up supplying judo-related merchandise but the need to source for various judo-related items (mats, crash pads, posters, judogis) for our own use had made us realize that we could help other clubs and individuals by supplying them with these items. It's also a way to  raise funds for our competition team. This is something we didn't foresee and we certainly didn't plan for. It just happened.

One thing that I'm personally very heartened by is the very positive culture that we've managed to foster amongst our members. I've been in clubs where players (colored and black belts alike) actually try to avoid doing randori. When you ask them for a randori, it's like pulling teeth. They will give you 101 excuses to avoid fighting. Not only do I find that ridiculous, I find it to be shameful.

Once such a negative culture pervades a club, everybody becomes like that. The juniors see the seniors avoiding randori and they follow that example. I'm delighted to say that most of our members -- and certainly all of the core members -- love to randori. They want more of it, not less.

Another great thing about our members is many of them thirst for more training and more knowledge. I've been to clubs where at most the players will come once a week or twice. Very rarely do players train three times a week. At KL Judo, many of the core members come at least three times a week and quite a few come for more than that (extra training on non-class days). At most clubs, this is inconceivable but at KL Judo, it's very real. I regularly get requests from my players for more training, not less.

The trainings at KL Judo are intense to say the least. But my players wouldn't have it any other way. They have been used to that from Day 1 so they are very accustomed to it. In fact, many of them have become intensity junkies.

Our trainings are tough. They are non-stop and they last for three hours. Yet, nobody makes excuses not to train. Every single member pushes themselves to keep up with the training and stick with it til the end of session. This is something I'm particularly proud of. We are a club where the players really want to train. I can truly say my players have the fighting spirit of judo in them. 

Monday 8/6/15 Session (Competition Training)

We had a special guest today: Wei Leong from Penang who happened to be in town. We gave him a big KL Judo welcome that he would never forget!

A true sport, Wei Leong went along with the High Intensity Interval Training that I usually get the players to do. Normally I have them do three sets. On Monday, I had them do only one set as I had other drills in mind for them to do as well.

Everybody uttered a huge sigh of relief when I said only one set for today cos they were already quite tired after one set. Perhaps they had not recovered yet from Saturday's super intense training.

I talked to them about the importance of mat edge play and emphasized how they should not allow their partners to force them to step outside the contest area.

Next, mat edge drills. Everyone was paired with a person more or less their size, and tori would try to push uke outside the contest area.

After the drills, I got them working on the Neil Adams juji-gatame roll.

Most of my players are already pretty good at it, even the beginners know how to do this roll, which is quite an advanced technique.

Wei Leong gives it a try.

During newaza drills everybody crashes into each other.

During the rolling juji drills, if tori is able to roll uke into a juji-gatame position, uke has to do 20 jumping jacks.

Next, I show them how to straighten the arm. It's not the first time I'm showing them this arm-lever move but many still don't quite get it.

Matthew, who is familiar with the arm lever, helps Zaki adjust his grip so he can get it to work.

Little Suan Wah trying to straighten his partner's arm.

Allowing your arm to get straighten means 20 sit ups.

Lots of people did sit up on Monday.

No exception. Even our guest had to do it after he got his arm straightened.

Exhausted is an understatement!

But there's still tachi-waza. I demonstrated the European-styled leg-lift ura-nage.

Before they started throwing, I got them to do ura-nage uchikomi with leg lift.

Little Suan Wah has become quite good at the leg lift ura-nage.

Matthew always gets great heights with this.

Nazrul seems like he's made to do ura-nage.

The session can't end without randori! Wei Leong gets his fair share of it.

The team applauds Wei Leong for getting through our session without puking!

Everybody say "Ippon!"

Sunday 7/6/15 Session (Elite Personal Training)

Some of my players wanted extra training on Sunday so I met up with them for a light, technical practice.

The juji-gatame roll is not so easy to learn. It's not rocket science either. It just takes a lot of practice to get the hang of it. I got my players to do lots of drills rolling their partners onto their backs.

Cherylynn, who is 15, has developed quite a good feel for the roll. She didn't know how to do it so well before but by Sunday's training she could do it quite well. Personal training makes a lot of difference. Clinton, one of the players who attended the session, said the same thing. He understood the mechanics of the movement better after attending the personal training.

I also got the players to practice the Matsumoto Roll. Here, you can see Clinton doing it on Andy.

I initially thought of having the practice as a purely technical session but since the players seemed up for it, I asked them to do a bit of newaza randori. Here you can see Suan Wah (12) trying to armlock Cherylynn (15).

For tachi-waza, I taught them yoko-tomoe-nage. I highlighted how this throw is usually done from a kenka-yotsu (opposite stance) position.

Andy executes a fine example of yoko-tomoe-nage. Good to have an old hand like him around to help with the training. Andy's a really safe, technical player.

After that, it's side takedown. The kids really liked that throw.

We end with a light randori. Pretty good practice lasting about two hours. Everyone left feeling quite satisfied with what we achieved during our Sunday night extra training.

Saturday 6/6/15 Session (Competition Training)

I didn't expect much of a crowd on Saturday cos many of my black and brown belts were out of town. I thought if six people showed up, that'd be great. In the end about 12 showed up, so that was pretty good.

I decided that today we'd focus very heavily on newaza, and in particular juji-gatame.

First drill, I got them to try to keep their partners on the mat. They are not allowed to allow uke to stand up. Anybody who fails to keep their partners down during the duration of the song played (about 3 minutes) had to do 20 push ups.

Our guest Sven looking pretty tired. He had had a long day at work but still came to practice.

Next, I got them to work on rolling their partners using the Figure-4 grip invented by Neil Adams.

Here you can see 12-year old Suan Wah trying it out. By his mid-teens, he will be a juji-gatame specialist!

But right now, the rolling juji-gatame drill is proving to be too tiring for him. It's not easy for a young boy to be training amongst young men.

We have a pretty big mat area so there's plenty of space for people to roll around during newaza.

Still, people do tumble into each other.

Sometimes I have to stand in between the players to make sure they don't collide into each other.

The last drill I had them do was arm-straightening. He's doing his utmost to pull the arm straight.

He's finding this exercise very tiring.

Matthew is tired too.

We ended the session with some standing randori. Every session must have randori or it is not training.