Pre BUCS preparation…

I said I would blog about our pre-training and I wanted to do it before BUCS because I feel reflecting upon the training once you know the result sometimes affects you opinion but I can only do what time allows.

I would say I am very experienced in short term preparation for specific competitions. When I competed for the army it was common to have a 2-3 week intense preparation period for a specific competition and since these competitive days I have coached the army and combined services in a similar scenario, often for the combined services championships or the national team championships.

This year was slightly different in terms of our BUCS preparation. Firstly I now work with a group of full-time athletes, the train around 20hrs per week so their level of preparation is very different. Secondly BUCS was brought forward by two weeks to the end of Feb, whilst this doesn’t sound like much students generally do not return to campus until the end of Jan so that only really left about 4 weeks to prepare for some students. Most of the full-time players did return earlier though in order to prepare for the British trials and some local players train with us regularly.

When I designed the original plan it was very much around the full-time players so there was around 6 weeks of training prior to BUCS and I figured if the kyu grades dipped in and out of the training as much as they could then this would be more training than most kyu grades.

Inevitably things change though and the number of injuries meant I had to include the kyu grades more and more. To be honest I am surprised how much the managed.

Here is the overview of the training:

 

To be honest there is no real secret, for me it is about mat time and volume of randori. I get as many dojo sessions as possible and just increase the volume of randori each each microcycle. I use both 7 day and 14 day microcycles in order to achieve volume, intensity and rest. The preparation ended in an overload week – the aim was for athletes to achieve 60-72 randori’s in the week. The most we did in one session was 13 x 5mins, I nearly always use 2 minute rest periods for hard randori, this is something I have experimented with a lot and I find after about 90 sec players are ready to go again and facing their partner, this leave 30 sec with them thinking ‘come on, i’m ready’ and this means they seem to always feel like they can do more.

Here is an example of a microcycle:

I am fortunate enough to now be surrounded by some coaches and athletes who can challenge my thinking and during the overload week I was challenged by a few coaches who thought we were doing too much and people were too tired. I like to be challenged like this, it forces me to really reflect, a very deep and questioning reflection. I decided to persist, I expected more players to be struggling than were and although there was some emotion it just felt right to me. I have already thought about how I will change things for next year based on a conversation with Yasuke Hayashi (a Japanese judoka visiting us).

Anyway, this post is getting far too long! Next post i’ll talk about the competition itself

BUCS training 2013

Well it has been too long since I last posted. The last couple of months have been very hectic, firstly there was marking to do over xmas, then preparations for the British trials and then preparations for the British University and Colleges championships (BUCS). It is the latter I am blogging about.

BUCS is an amazing event, previously they have had 29 sports over one week, normally in Sheffield. This year is slightly different as they have split it into team sports and individual sports with the judo being over the weekend of the 23rd/24th Feb. The judo has individuals on the Saturday and a team event on the Sunday (males teams of 5 and female teams of 3).

For the previous two year Anglia Ruskin University has won the men’s team event and last year topped the medal table overall. This year our training has been far more intense and structured, our team is also much larger as for the first time we are including a substantial number of kyu grades. 

The pre training hasn’t been without its hazards and I have lost two of our strongest players, in fact we’re now four very strong players down (Danny Williams, Mike Stewart, Glenn Miller and Natasha Collins). Of course we still have a strong team and we’ll just have to see how it goes.

Our pre training has been four weeks long (six weeks for those that went to the British trials and those that helped them prepare) with the final week for rest (rest started yesterday). Numbers are good, we normally have between 25-30 on the mat.

Not wanting to make the post too long i’ll pause for now and reflect upon our actual training in my next post……

 

The summer block has started….

Monday saw the start of the summer block of the European Judo Union Level 4 performance coach award.

As explained in my previous post there are 4 modules – year one are predominantly doing physiology, year two are doing biomechanics and Strength & Conditioning.

 

Today has seen our first years looking at EMG and our second years doing strength and conditioning. There was also a keynote session by world and Olympic champion Maki Tsukada (JPN)

Here are some photos from so far….

 

 

 

European Judo Union Level 4 performance coach award – Week one

A very busy first week of the Easter block of the European Judo Union Level 4 performance coach award. This award is split across six two-week blocks over a three year period and is arguably one of the best coaching programs in the world, across all sports.

Over these two weeks our two year groups will take three module. Year 1 students are doing a 30 credit module called “Applied pedagogy in Judo” and the year two students are doing two 15 credit modules – Sports Development and Talent Development Pathways in Judo. After th block each group will also have an online module each.

Lecturers this week have included….

Bob Challis (Pathway Leader & EJU level 5 high performance coach)

Dr Mike Callan (Director of judospace and President of IAJR)

Nuno Delgado (Olympic Bronze Medallist & EJU level 4 performance coach)

Dr Lisa Allen (Judo event manager London Olympics 2012)

Kat McDonald (Presented on Athletes in Education and works at TeamBath)

Matt Divall (England Excell coordinator and EJU level 5 high performance coach)

Craig Fallon (World and Olympic champion)

Our mat based sessions have been at Comberton Village College who Anglia Ruskin already work closely with for their judo program. These sessions have been world class! I will post more information on some of them in others posts.

It was also god to see some of our judo players from our full-time program making the most of this special environment and coming along to the sessions.

Anglia Ruskin retain BUCS judo crown – News – Anglia Ruskin University

Anglia Ruskin retain BUCS judo crown – News – Anglia Ruskin University.

Even more BUCS photos – Podium shots

Here are some of the podium shots from BUCS, we won three golds and two bronze in the individual making us the top of the medal table and then the mens team championships. Medals went to:

Mike Stewart Gold U66kg

Adrian Markov Gold U81kg

Andre Cojuhari Gold O100kg

Johnny Morris Bronze U81kg

Janaina Magalhaes Bronze U63kg

More BUCS Photos – Markov Vs Morris u81kg

This fight was the semi final of the u81kg, two Anglia Ruskin players – Johnny Morris and Adrian Markov, the fight went to gold score and then to hantei. Adrian won on hantei and this was the only fight Johnny lost out of the 12 he had over the weekend.

Some Photos from BUCS

 

There’s more to come, we have lots of video too.

New Judo kits and youtube video

Anglia Ruskin University have received their new judo kits – the new fighting films superstar kit with out logo on. All players that fought as part of this years British university championships received a blue and a white kit.

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We have also finished our vide of the British university championships, the quality isn’t great but the judo is

Is womens judo on the brink of evolutionary change?

In 1991 there was a major shift in the world of judo. The former soviet union collapsed and became 15 countries instead of one. This meant that on the world stage you now potentially had 15 former soviet countries rather than one per weight group. It should be noted that these soviet or URS countries were not all the Eastern European countries, it did not include Romania, Hungary, Poland or Bulgaria for example. It did, however, include some now major judo nations, including: Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. We should also remember that there was an influx of Chechen wrestlers/judo players to Turkey and Georgian wrestlers/judo players to Greece.

In the 1992 Olympic games only three of the former Soviet countries competed under their own flag (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia) the remainder competed under a unified team. The second big change in the 1992 Olympic games was the inclusion of women’s judo. Some countries have hugely benefited from the inclusion of women’s judo, particularly Great Britain, Japan, Cuba and France but the former soviet countries have had little influence in women’s judo. Sure you have Eastern Europeans, Romanians, Hungarians and Polish but not many former Soviet countries.  The world Championships has seen a rise in Eastern Europeans from Romania, Poland and Hungary, Romaina in particular is winning multiple medals on the world stage.

We could argue however the changes are coming, the video below shows Arutiunyanfrom Armenia throwing with a huge Te-Guruma in the 2010 world championships in the u48kg weight group. In fact the 2010 world championships saw Romania, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Russia (x 2) and Slovenia win a bronze, Hungary won a silver and there were 5 & 7th places for Hungary, Ukraine, Mongolia (x3), Russia and Poland. I would happily predict Mongolia and Romania as serious medal contenders for London 2012!

So, where can this assumption of a rise in Eastern European women’s judo lead us? If we look at mens judo – 31 men from former soviet union countries have won Olympic medals since 1992 Olympics and only two women from former soviet union countries (both Russia). You add the sudden increase of former Soviet union countries and the existing Eastern European countries rise in medals to the Olympic stage and this could spell trouble for the current countries who do well in women’s judo such as Cuba, France and Japan.

The question is this, how well prepared are the worlds elite women for this shift? Countries like Mongolia and Armenia are sending women judo players who have a style most women judoka are not used too!