An email exchange with a judo colleague this week prompted me to think about the sort of life that high performance judo players in Japan have, their career experiences and the sort of expectations that are set for/by them.  I selected one of the senior students from Sagami HS as a mini case study.

The Sagami HS judoka in the picture is Naohisa Takato - he started his judo in a machi (community) dojo and continued doing judo in Sagami HS as a junior and a senior.  Last year he was the All Japan Senior HS Champion and entered only 2 events outside Japan – the Bremen u20 and World Junior Championships  in 2009 (u60kg) winning gold both times. He currently trains in the Sagami and Tokai University dojos for 25+ hours per week plus fitness training (runs everyday and weights). Takato is a product of the Japanese Judo Development System.

Tokai’s recent results are outstanding – no 1 in the All Japan University and High School Championships and they won the Kanagawa Junior HS Team Championships last weekend (49 five boys per team – straight knockout) – losing only one individual contest on the day. This is the strongest region in Japan so this result bodes well for the 2010 champs.  For those interested, there were also 32 Junior HS Girls Teams (3 girls per team) – a state funded school team won the comp.

In reviewing Takato’s judo career to date and his current training regime, I have been wrestling with a question that we rarely think about in the UK – how honest are we with our competition players when we help them set their judo aspirations? Three schools of thought spring to mind in response to this question:

1. We ask them to do their best and see how far they can go.
2. We tell them that they can go a long way and give them all of the support that we can.
3. We be honest with them and tell them about the training regimes/support in place in countries such as Japan and see how they react before asking them to commit to a judo career of a decade or more of serious training.

There are probably more options – these are the first 3 I thought of!

There are a number of factors at play here:

• Self development – are we encouraging players to compete for self-improvement, developing confidence, for fame and fortune (not!), keeping fit, other purposes?
• Financial – should we be financing some of these players (in any way) without them understanding what they are getting into/up against and committing for the long term?
• Ethical – is it right for us to encourage players to go for a full competitive judo career if they have little chance of winning medals on the world stage (as the odds of them doing so are slim when you consider the judo development system in the UK compared with that in Japan)?

I favour the “being honest” approach.  Lets tell, show and help our players understand (at an early stage) what the competition is doing in terms of how and now much they train, what is expected of them (by coaches, peers, the organisation helping them) and how they are being supported.  Lets show them videos of the competition (major nations) training and competing.  Lets show them videos of the All Japn High School Championships.  Lets help them manage and set their own expectations – and understand what it takes to become a champion in this sport.

For those kids that are still keen having been shown this startk reality, it is then down to us – and here I am talking about governing bodies, schools, coaches of all levels, performance analysts, sports scientists – to put the right judo development system (funding, coaches, facilities, programmes, school/club/university links) in place that gives them a fighting chance of being successful.

At the moment, in my view, a few areas that we need to improve upon in the UK include:

• Helping all judoka better master the fundamental principles of our sport I am not just talking about using the right terminology here) – better grassroots coach education in this area is critical.  See uchi-komi video clip below.

• Talent ID – we need to improve these processes to include an assessment of the fundamental principles and characters of potential GB squad/supported candidates.
• Providing more “on the mat” and”off the mat” training time – in my view the only way to do this in the UK is to have 5-10 regional secondary schools around the UK providing an integrated judo and education programme (a bit like the French judo development system) – they should be running a judo coaching programme set by the BJA National Coach and should undertake regular assessments of players.  These schools could also be delivering judo classes to local secondary and primary school students and have links with regional squads/local clubs.
• Scholarships – why are we not offering scholarships for judoka with the most potential to attend (part-board at) the secondary schools mentioned above?

From what I see at the moment we are just tinkering with the current GB – largely club-led – judo development system.  Should we really leave the fate of our olympic/world medal record to volunteer coaches running (competitive) community clubs (don’t get me wrong here – I am one of these coaches and we do sterling work!)? Maybe the time has come to adopt a different approach that embraces the value of being honest with ourselves and our players and the obvious need for our judo development system to be overhauled by working closely with the UK’s education system.

Comments welcome.