Here are some pics from last weekends BUCS, more to follow soon….
So, it is nearly upon us! The British University and Colleges Championships 2014. Our men’s team are hoping to defend their three year reign and we’re also hoping our women’s team will medal for the first time ever. The good thing about judo is you just never know! Even through we’ve trained pretty hard we could go out in the first round. Anyway, below is the five weeks of training we have done in preparation. We’ve been pretty busy and just have to hope the hard work pays off 🙂 Unfortunately some of our key players are injured and won’t be able to fight but that’s just something we’ll have to get on with.
We have around 12 full-time athletes currently and we’re hoping this will raise to around 20. We feel 20 will give us enough to run strong sessions but few enough to be able to focus on individuals. Our full-time players are boosted over this period but he stronger kyu grades who will fight in BUCS, this year we’re taking our biggest team ever – 20 athletes and all have trained hard.
Here are some pictures of our training programme. Obviously we don’t just train like this for BUCS, our full-time athletes train throughout the year.
Here are some pics of our training sessions throughout the five weeks 🙂
And here are some pics from the NHC open, one of our preparation events …
If you would like more information on the Anglia Ruskin Judo Programme please visit http://www.anglia.ac.uk or email judo@anglia.ac.uk.
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:
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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 🙂
Filed under Anglia Ruskin Judo club, Coaching Judo, Judo, Women's judo
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.Â
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……
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Anglia Ruskin retain BUCS judo crown – News – Anglia Ruskin University.
Filed under Anglia Ruskin Judo club, Coaching Judo, Judo
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
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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.
This weekend was once again the British University and Colleges championships and another very successful weekend for Anglia Ruskin University. The competition is fought over two days with individual championships fought on the Saturday and the Team Championships on the Sunday.
We had a strong squad of player this year with 13 players fighting. We also had a mix of kyu grades (coloured belts) and dan grades (black belts). For the first time this year we also had female fighters. We had a very successful day with three golds, and two bronze in the dan grades and two 5ths in the kyu grades. In total we had 58 fights in the individual competition with 40 wins, 37 of which were ippon! The medallists were –
Mike Stewart u66 dan grade GOLD
Adrian Markov u81 dan grade GOLD
Andre Cojuhari +100 dan grade GOLD
Johnathon Morris u81 dan grade BRONZE (only lost to Adrian)
Janaina Magalhaes u63 dan grade BRONZE
Brian Koehn u73 kyu grade 5th
Ishmael Tappaev u73 kyu grade 5th
I think in someways we were unlucky to have all three of our u81 dan grade men to end up on the same side of the draw, if not we could have maybe got gold, silver and bronze in that weight group. This is also our first female medal ever.
The team event on the Sunday say 16 universities in the mens section. The Anglia Ruskin team was aching from having so many fights on day one (25 fights between the 5 of them) and we lost our heavy weight forcing us to put in a reserve. We also withdrew our women’s team. The team was still strong:
u66 Mike Stewart
u73-90 Glenn MIller
u73-90 Adrian Markov
u73-90 Johhny Morris
+90 Josh Plant
We fought Aberdeen, Nottingham, Birmingham, Imperial, and Herriot Watt on our way to face Oxford in the final. The scores were:
Anglia Ruskin 5 Aberdeen 0
Anglia Ruskin 4 Nottingham 1
Anglia Ruskin 5 Birmingham 0
Anglia Ruskin 5 Imperial 0
Anglia Ruskin 4 Herriot Watt 1
Anglia Ruskin 3 Oxford 1 (there was one draw)
Overall on day two the team had 29 fights and 26 wins, 21 of these were ippon.
In total over the weekend Anglia Ruskin’s 13 players had 87 fights with 66 wins. Of these 66 wins 58 were ippon. For the second year running we have run the mens team championships, this year we also topped the medal table for the individual event and we won our first women’s medal.
Our university team can only win because of the great support we have had, in particular we would like to thank the following:
Fighting Films for providing the judo kits
Unisport UK for providing the stash
Susie Chesher for booking the accommodation
The students union who provided transport and entry
Most of all we would like to thank Dr Sheila Pankhurst – Head of Department of Life Sciences for support and funding of the entire judo project.
Some photos and videos will follow soon 🙂
For me, the best judo competition of the year is the British University and Colleges Sports Championships or BUCS. You have around 25 sports competing over the week and once accredited you can go and watch whatever you want. The judo is fought on the Saturday and Sunday, individuals on the Saturday and teams on the Sunday.
One of the great things about BUCS is the variety in players, universities generally have a three year cycle so the players you see each year are always changing plus there is a lot more foreign players and every year at least one university turns up with someone special.
Last year Anglia Ruskin won the mens team event and got a gold and a silver in the individuals. of course I would love to win the mens team event again, we’ll see. For me the journey there is more interesting, last year we had to borrow white or blue belt off our opponent – how embarrassing going into the final of the team championships and having to ask your opposition (Loughborough) for belts! If nothing else we’re much better kitted out this year thanks to last years win, all players fighting in the team have two superstars fighting films kits with the uni logo embroider on it plus we have t-shirts etc
Our training has been very different too, last year we had a 2-3 week “beat up” where we intensified the training. This year we have been at a slightly lower intensity for about 8 weeks with a lot of competitions. The players have been very motivated and have bonded well. We have used video pretty affectively again.
Last year we had the British number one in the -73kg Danny Williams, he won every fight but we do not have him this year, he is in Japan preparing for London. We’ll see what affect this has.
Another development this year is that we have some women players, this is great and I am really hoping they do well.
We are at a new venue this year – Don Valley stadium. I really hope this venue is good, last year we were on the running track at the EIS and it was great. I just hope they haven’t ruined this great event by moving it somewhere poor.
So I guess we just have to wait and see, about 40 hours to the weigh in and the battle commences Saturday morning. I have looked at the teams and there are 10 on my ‘serious’ list and 4 of them go on my ‘seriously dangerous list’. Can we do better than last year? I’ll let you know 😉
Last week was the British University championships. Over 100 universities competed in about 20 sports. The judo was contested over the weekend, Saturday was the Individual championships and Sunday was the team championships. There were 58 universities competing in the individual and 18 in the teams.
Anglia Ruskins first pool went well –
Strathclyde 5-0 to Anglia Ruskin (5 ippons)
Nottingham 5-0 to Anglia Ruskin (5 ippons)
Manchester 3-2 to Anglia Ruskin (2 ippons)
London Imperial 4-1 to Anglia Ruskin (4 ippons and a loss by yuko)
The knock out stage saw us against Birmingham who fielded a team with jut three players and did exceptionally well to get this far. They were led by Diego Scardone who is a good friend and a fantastic judo player. We beat them 4-1 and then had Edinburgh who had just beaten Bath, we beat them 4-1 with some tough fights.
In the final we faced Loughborough who are the number one sporting university in the UK (Anglia Ruskin are about 104th) but we were pretty confident and won 3-2.
I think us winning was a surprise to most people, I know Oxford were very confident and didn’t even medal, but we were pretty confident in out ability. All but one of our starting team have a senior GB ranking and he is French so wouldn’t try to get one. We also had a full team of reserves for the first time ever.
Some people are saying we only won because Bath had a weak team. I think their team was strong, not the strongest they’ve had but it wasn’t weak! So I looked at our stats for our starting team in both the team event and individual event. They fought in 59 fights between the 5 of them, they won 48 fights and lost 11, I think that is pretty good. I think they got 41 ippons in their 48 wins which also isn’t bad 🙂
We also won three medals int he individual, a gold for Danny Williams and Bronzes for Mike Stewart and Brian Koehn.
Filed under Anglia Ruskin Judo club, Judo
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