As the regular visitor to this site might be aware, I am training for the World Masters Judo Champs. You may also know that I am coaching myself, I am applying what I learnt on my three year coaching course at University of Bath on myself.

The process is really interesting as I have posted about previously, being both player and coach gives you some amazing perspectives.

I spotted an article over a Cool Runnings about coaching yourself and found it interesting, so here it is: http://www.active.com/running/Articles/ ... horter.htm

Let me know what you think.

Lance

This morning I listened to Mike and Gene's podcast with Karo “The Heat” Parisyan, a MMA fighter in the USA.
It was a terrific interview and was very enlightening to me, you should go take a listen over at www.thejudopodcast.com if you have not heard it already. (theer are a bunch of great podcasts up there for you to listen to).

Anyway... Karo made a really interesting comment; that the quality of Judo competition is way too high! Not too low, too high. He refered to himself as an example, that he is in teh top 3 in MMA, but in Judo he’d only be maybe top 50 or top 75!
Now we can slap ourselves on the back and say how much better Judo is compared to MMA, but then Karyo made the other point I’d like to comment on. Karyo said that in the 16 years he’d been in Judo all he had done was “pay pay pay”, in the few years he’s been in MMA he has gained some fame and a living, as in money to live off.

So there are two issues here that I have discussed with people on many occasions, one is the “elite” element of Judo being so important and also the lack of a viable economy in Judo for athletes.
So lets start with the second point, Karo was apparently at the level of Judo athlete, that was ready to hit the Olympic level. Much like New Zealand All Black rugby player Steve McDowell was at one point apparently invited onto a NZ Olympic squad in Judo. However, both Karo and Steve decided to take the other path and this is for us in the Judo world a bad thing! That is people walking out of our sport, and for every Karo or Steve, I would put money on their being 20-100 lower level athletes who step out of Judo to pursue other sports because there is no future in Judo for them in terms of fame and or fortune.
I know I have thought about it, but we all (and specifically the governing bodies) need to, in my opinion, need to put time, thought, effort and action into! Especially if we consider the first point that Karo made about the extremely high level that the Elite Judoka needs to reach.

Karo, rightly said that the level of the elite Judo athlete is amazingly high, too high.
You can extrapolate from what he said and say that he is a successful MMA fighter but (ARGUEABLY) would never had made the elite level in Judo, let alone top 3 in the world. I know how he feels, I was never good enough to make the Olympic level. And gto be frank, in Judo if you are not of that elite level, you are nothing.
Look at our sports funding and approach, what is dedicated to those amazing few who are that good, how much is dedicated to us the majority who are not ‘that’ good. There is so few of “them” and so many of “us”, so where is my reward, my support to participate in Judo?

Worse, what about the people I meet on a regular basis in Judo who are not necessarily even at my own modest level, the brown belts or the adult novice? The 18 year old dan grade who is good, but not “that” good?
What keeps them in the sport? Where is their, and I steal this term directly from a international level athlete Steve Withers, come successful Judo Coach, where is “My Olympics”? Where are the big events for the rest of us?
Why is there no governing body built series of events for the rest of us?
Why do governing body websites have news stories about the elite players and not about Joe Bloggs winning the area kyu grade championships?
Why do we in Judo focus on the elite so much?
Why are the non-”elite” so looked down on?
Why is the elite so improtant? Maybe the “elite” should be a lower level?

I recently argued this witha World Champion and a European champion, and it got heated. I argued the case that the Olympics are dead for many of us, especially for us from smaller nations. The whole qualification system sucks for Judo, so maybe we should get out of it!
You no longer need to be the best in your country, you have to be better than that!
Small nations that are not good at Judo no longer have the opportunity to attend the Olympic games, they can’t even go, let alone hope for a “lucky throw”. They don’t get to even march into the stadium and enjoy the Olympic experience. That is tragic!
Recently i have been discussing why adult beginners participate and continue to participate in our sport. It is a hard subject as so few of “us” know as a vast majority of adult Judo participants are people who started as kids.
So, we discussed it and recalled why we liked it as kids. For most people it was the competing I think. We love fighting, and we love winning. We hate losing, so the high level of Judo competition is a negative for beginners.

So.... what I have suggested is this, that governing bodies need to develop tournament schedules that cater to the non-elite. A successful example is the Masters circuit which is flourishing! The masters scene is great as it caters to quite a high level but not the elite level (although that seems to be changing and getting higher).
So we need to discover new ways to allow the non-elite player gets to compete at a high level for THEM. Maybe we need to look at lowering the technical/competitive level of competition in Judo.
I have heard the idea suggested of creating “Top 16” events, so that the top 16 ranked players fight in events solely for them. The obvious other to this would be 17-30 events and so forth. This has some big issues as it may actually raise the level even higher, so would need to be carefully managed.
So, what are your thoughts?

It was "half term" here in the UK, so sadly my Monday session was canceled. :(
Thursday was my next session (slacker that I am), it was down at Gosport Judo Club again, there were about 10 Black Belts and at least the same in Kyu grades. I enjoyed it a lot.

Saturday I briefly attended the Royal Navy Judo championships.
Although only there briefly, it was great to attand at HMS Collingwood and see the lads throw each other about. I was a bit disapointed from what little I saw and heard at the refereeing standard, but that is perhaps always the case at tournaments.

I went for a run on Saturday morning, just short of 4 miles, not too fast, but nice and constant. This week should be better, there is even a Judo camp scheduled for the weekend.

They have the Inter-services coming up, so it was good for them to get out and "have a run".

Sunday was the Hampshire Open, which I did not attend, but i look forward to hearing about how it went.

An interesting discussion during the weekend was around officials and referees and where and how they should be recruited/supplied. The idea raised was that all clubs should only be allowed to enter players in events if they also provided officals/referees.

Want your players to fight, send a referee from your club.
I think it is a good idea. One of the highlights of an event I attended a while back (the team match between Gosport and the French club), was the young referee who officiated the fights. He is a regular at the Gosport club and it was terrific for the whole event to be handled "in house" (unlike the Navy Champs).

So what do you think of that as an idea?

Hi everyone, so this was an interesting week Judo-wise.
Started with a fun session at Paul Jones' place in Basingstoke. It felt good, nice solid session, Paul did some interesting work extending on what he allowed me to demonstrate last week. I enjoyed it a lot.

Thursday was my next session as the Wednesday Navy session was cancelled due to a boxing event in the SARC.

I went along to the Gosport Judo Club, in, well yes Gosport. :)
It was really good to go along, they have their own permanent place and well attended too. There must have I think 10 Dan grades and about 14 Kyu grades in the session. Nice to go along to a slightly more... competitive session. I enjoyed it a lot and it had a great social feel and even included a beer afterwards over the road.

Saturday I headed out on the road and as you'll be able to see if you are actually reading this on my website over at www.judocoach.com/blog you'll see the Nike+ widget where shows I ran 4.11 miles in a touch over 43 minutes. Not going to win any races with that pace, but it was nice to be running under 10 minute miles for most of the run, the enforced walk braks in the second half ruined the average. :(

So... It was a good week, lowering the amount of training is an odd way of improving my training, but I think it is a matter of quality over quantity. I feel much better these past two weeks with a lighter load.

Oddly, I have been carrying an injury I don't remember getting.
I have a pain at the base joint of my second and third toes. I have no idea what caused it, they feel quite stiff, like there is a bruise (Hematoma if you are being posh). Even weirder is that it hasn't bothered me at all, even whilst running which I though was going to be a major issue. Still sore this evening (Sunday), weird, weird, weird.

I met another masters player this week at Gosport.
It was useful as he was able to answer a couple of questions I had about the event next year. It turns out that it does not appear that I need to enter via New Zealand, I can just enter online via credit card. So that was a bonus as I was a bit concerned that arranging the trip might be a bit of an issue, being on the far side of the planet from New Zealand.

Also had a nice opportunity to discuss Judo with peers, over beers, brilliant!

Hi all,
just trying some new technology, let me know what you think.
Below is a video of a seoi nage with some simple coaching points.



What do you think?

Lance