Tomorrow I fly out to Istanbul on what is an exciting new adventure in my Judo career. I am going to Istanbul as part of the European Judo Union (EJU) Computer/commentary team.

This is a bit exciting for me and nerve-wracking too.

For those of you who are new, or perhaps are not aware. The EJU now stream all top level events live onto the internet. It's internet TV of all the big events. This week the EJU hosts the 2011 European Judo Championships and they will be streaming it live (for free) with me as part of the team doing commentary on the fights.

I try to watch as much of the streams as I can normally, but being on the camera is something new for me. And at such a big event too. I am rerally excited about it and have been waiting for someone to pinch me as it seems unreal to be part of the EJU team!

The stream will be available via the EJU website of course ( http://www.eju.net/ ) and I would like to invite anyone reading this to to watch the stream when the event is on later this week.

I'll be there with my laptop and picking up emails etc, so if you have any comments, questions or criticisms to make please let me know. My email is lw@judocoach.com or if you do the twitter thing I am @lancew on twitter.

I hope I manage to do a good job you will have to be the judge of that.

Lance

In this post I want to provide a little of my thoughts on the British Judo Association's (BJA) partnership with OnSport.com offering Judo clubs "free" websites. before I start, let me state clearly that I am not against the project, I think it has value and could be good for some clubs. However, as per the original title of this post, these is no such thing as a free lunch and I feel it is important that some of this is discussed in the open before people commit to a OnSport website.

What is being offered?
Basically, the OnSport/BJA deal is that clubs can get free websites. You get a subdomain on the OnSport.com which contains your website. That website is a template designed by OnSPort and the BJA. There is a Judogi background, Judo pictures rotating in the banner and links to the BJA and the BJA online Shop.
You can login to the site and make changes online, adding pictures, news stories, information about your club sessions etc etc.
It is worth noting that the system was not designed for Judo, rather it is a generic system for all sports and you can tell pretty quickly looking at the default setup that it was team sports, not Judo.

What does it cost?
In terms of cash, the websites are free. However as per the opening paragraph you don't get anything for free in the real world. To understand a little of what using a OnSport/BJA website costs you need to look at the parties involved and of course the terms and conditions of use.

BJA: The BJA have a link to their website and to their shop, that is the obvious benefit that the BJA get form this deal. I am not in a position to know what the legal deal is between the BJA and OnSport so I can't say how this works. Personally, I suspect that the BJA see this as an opportunity to get free sites for member clubs; pure and simple. The links to the website and shop are a bonus, but not that big a deal I think.

OnSport: OnSport are a business, they are in fact Maxinutrition AKA MaxiMuscle. This is good to know as it gives you some perspective on where they are coming from.
You need to browse their terms and conditions before you sign up to their service and doing so will enlighten you to some of the ideas this business has on how OnSport will generate revenue for Maxinutrition.

Here are a few of the key points I spotted that I think are important for you as a BJA club to consider:

3.5: By signing up, you agree to receive marketing material from Maxinutrition, though you can "opt out".
So from this you can assume that part of the reasoning about running OnSport is that Maxinutrition are using it as a tool to get direct contact with sports clubs in the UK. Which makes sense if your business is that of selling supplements.

4.3, 4.4: Maxinutrition owns anything you put on the website and has permission to use it as they wish. So your photos, text, etc etc etc are all Maxinutrition's property. You don't own it the moment it goes on the site. So, that award winning photo is now Maxinutrition's and they can put in in a poster, on a product, whatever and you have already given them ownership/permission.

8.1: Advertising, Maxinutrition have your permission to put adverts on your OnSPort website. This is another key revenue idea, so you can see the model, use BJA clubs to generate traffic which they can then "monetize" by putting adverts on the site (your club website).

9.1: Links, Maxinutrition (or third parties) can provide links to other sites on your club website. So examples already there are the BJA website and Store, but they could be to anything. So maybe to the Maximuscle webiste or perhaps to all sorts of other websites willing to pay Maxinutrition to put a link on your website.

11.1: Maxinutrition can cancel your account/website without notice. So your website could disappear. They can also edit or delete any content on your site. I read this as being part of them covering themselves from you as a user posting bad content. But you need to consider that your content is in the hands of a supplement company. I would not expect that post about how bad supplements are and how you should just eat healthy balanced diets to be popular and would I suspect be a candidate for "amending" or Deletion.

12: Prohibited uses. Ok this section has lots of protecting themselves text, so should you do anything illegal, Maxinutrition is protected.

12.4: Interestingly you are not permitted to use the site for "sports related services", which seems womanly be big stuff (like selling naming rights to a stadium) but technically I think includes most of us. For example you are not permitted to use the site for "representation of athletes" so no trying to get sponsorship for your athletes via you club website.
I think this means that Maxinutrition have a side of their business that does that sort of thing and it is just template bit of legalese to protect their business interests. But remember breach this term (in Maxinutrition's eyes) and your club website can be deleted without notice.



Discussion:
Maxinutrition are a business, they have a legal obligation to act in the interests of their shareholders and that means make money. OnSport.com is I think a good service for simple generic websites for clubs. However, it is important to be aware that Maxinutrition need to make money from the onSport website at some stage. This I think is most likely to be in the form of advertising and links on the website pages (your pages) but also potentially interactive features.

Maxinutrition have also made the landgrab for your content. This is not unusual, most social network sites do this. But Judo clubs perhaps are not familiar with this. Anything you add to the website belongs to OnSport/Maxinutrition and they can use it as they like. You should also be aware that you are responsible for any copyright infringement on your site not Maxinutrition, so if they say used an image or video from your site (which they can do) and then got sued, they would I suspect just say that it was your fault… so the law suit lands on your lap. Scary, unlikely but scary.

Other implications you need to think about is that your club is now a mere sub domain on a large corporate website. You need to think about how search engines and visitors will react to this.
From a search engine perspective it is hard to tell how people like Google will react. In general owning your own domain is better than having a subdomain like what is offered. In other words www.myclubinmytown.co.uk is better than myclubinmytown.onsport.com. Also there is a fair amount of content duplication going on in the templates, so search engines are likely to not like that.

Also, when/if visitors find your site, does it represent your club well? Does it give an accurate portrayal of your club or is it a generic sports website with a Judo club shoehorned in? For example, I think most (if not all) Judo sites on OnSport have a tab for "Squads"; which is not something most Judo clubs in the BJA have. It is something that is in the system from it's original design, but you have it on your Judo site.
Equally by default no dojo address or session times. You can add them but again the sites are not immediately relevant to the Judo use.

Design, the template design on the site is nice, almost valid xHTML (techie talk there) but they all look the same, even after customization. So your site will look very similar to every other Judo website on the system.
The personality and uniqueness of your club is lost. Now I prefer the OnSPort layout to many Judo websites out there. Judo websites are normally old style and ugly. But at least they normally describe a little of what the club is like.

People see a professional, generic looking website like the OnSport club websites and expect… a professional generic Judo club. Are you a professional generic Judo club? Or are you a small village club that is run by unpaid volunteers that teaches little kids once a week? Or perhaps you are a tough contest club that is ready to rock and roll, in either case you are not a generic club so do you want a generic website?

Cost… So it's free. That is… no I must correct myself… that WAS a big selling point in the past. Getting a website may still seem hard and expensive, but now days getting a free website is very easy to do. Try Wordpress.com or Google's Blogger or Google Sites as examples.

Even a "paid for" website is not expensive, I do it for a living by the way. A club website will start at about 60 quid a year for the domain and hosting. A realistic budget to get a simple website together would be a few hundred pounds by the time you include some simple design work. A grand or two if you want a great site.

Summary:
So there you have it, some points to consider before you sign up with the BJA/OnSport website scheme. It is in my opinion a good thing to do if you really really don't want your own website.
You do need to consider the reasons why a supplements company wants to give you a free website, the answer is "to make money" by the way. They way they will make money from you is not clear but there are some clues in the terms and conditions of the OnSport site.

Personally, I doubt I'll be putting my club, my content or my time into OnSport. Mainly as I want to own my content and because I trust a hosting company with my content more than a supplements company looking to try an experiment with web hosting /social networking.

I do not think that the OnSport offering really gives us very much and Maxinutrition actually get quite a lot from you and your club.

My advise is that you explore what they are offering and what other services like a web hosting company, wordpress or google can offer you and make your own decision.

If you have any questions, you can contact me and I'll answer any questions I can.

Lance.

Many of you who know me, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook or even know me in real life; know I am running a half marathon on February 13th, 2011.

I will be running to raise money for Mahana Clutha who is a young Judo athlete from my country, New Zealand. We are collecting your very kind donations at http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14331.

I looked at the training I have done for this race and here are some of the numbers:

Started training: 19 October 2010.
Time training: 44 hours and 23 minutes.
Miles run: 239.1.

I have followed a thoughtful programme, I have rediscovered my own training limits and adjusted accordingly. I am completely prepared for this race. It is 13 miles and I know I can run it. I know this because I have trained for it and in my training I have run 239 miles and have run upwards of 16 miles in a training run more than once.

Looking and thinking about my training has had me thinking about Judo training.

I know precisely how many miles and hours that I have trained. I knew exactly what I was setting out to do on every run. I had a nice clear goal and I knew how long I had to train for it. I also had an understanding and belief that the programme I was following was going to get me ready to perform.


The question that I have in my mind is this:

"Do you have a detailed long-term training programme for your Judo which translates into a session by session plan?"

Can you quantify your training or your athletes training? Can you match what you had planned for a session against the training programme? Can you map the long-term goals against a plan and know that what you (or your athletes) are doing in this session matches what needs to be done?

In our world, we have a couple of variables:

Volume
Intensity

We can tweak both and have to, you can't have both at 100%. We need to balance how much training we do (volume) against how hard we train (intensity).

You need both, so your training programme has to slide up and down the percentages. For example, near a competition you want to ramp up intensity perhaps to get players operating at a higher level.

If you are building base fitness, then maybe lower intensity and a lot more volume. Of course, the period immediately before the competition you might taper the intensity and volume.

The question then becomes, how do you know how and when to change the variables if you don't have a plan? So you need to plan, it's really key to going from being a Judo player and a Judo athlete.

As a coach; you are probably going to be the person who does the planning (at least initially). You need to think in the big picture/long term. You need to also consider the plans of every athlete under your care.

If you don't have a long-term, medium term, daily and session plan. You won't be giving your best to those under your care.

Lance

Hello everyone and welcome to a new year and a new decade! It’s one more year until London 2012 and the Olympic games. The Judo athletes around the world are ramping up for the biggest event in their careers. They are working harder and longer, fighting harder and harder for those few prized qualification spots and for the big shiny gold medal in August 2012.

It’s the biggest challenge any Judo athlete can face and takes superhuman effort to get there let along win there.

I am fortunate to have met Olympian Judo athletes past, present and future. Just today I was at the famous Camberley Judo Club for a mid day open Randori with some young Judo athletes who are all either trying to make 2012 or 2016 and beyond.

Being a Judo athlete is a tough job, tougher than being an office worker or some such. Not only do you have to train/work everyday you work weekends too. And “work” means physically and mentally torture... of your own choosing! You run, push weights, sweat and strain. You battle and fight and hurt yourself and others. You will get injured, you will get hurt, you will feel pain, lots of pain.

So, what I would like you to do as your new years resolution is find yourself a Judo athlete (or group of athletes) and look at what you might be able to help them a little bit. If each person that reads this blog helps one athlete a tiny bit, a whole lot of athletes will be better of, feel better for knowing people out there care and perhaps be able to train better, harder, more or make it one step higher on the podium in London 2012!

So, what can you do? For a start, you can go and meet one. Watch them at a competition and shout for them at the top of your lungs! You might have a skill that they or their team could use? Perhaps you are a nutritionist or run a gym or are a physio or accountant? They might need your direct help. Maybe you can support them financially? Put some money into the training fund, or travel fund, or pay for a competition entry fee.

For me, my focus is on Kiwi Judo athlete Mahana Clutha and her colleagues at the Camberley Judo Club; training under the watchful eye of coach Luke Preston. I have been trying to lend a hand here and there where I can both with Mahana and the club. This year I’ll be doing more hopefully, and it starts now!

In February, on the same day Mahana fights the World Cup in Austria, I shall be running a Half Marathon along the Portsmouth Coast (yes, there will be mud!). It’s 13 and a bit miles, and last month I ran over 60 miles in training.
Why do I bring this up? Because I have decided to use the half-marathon as an opportunity to raise some money for Mahana. Sadly, she receives zero funding, so her expensive competition and training schedule needs paying for out of her own pocket. Which given she has no income is somewhat of a problem, as you can imagine.

So, what I would like to ask is that you click the Pledgie button below. This will take you to a easy donation system (using Paypal) that will allow you to donate a few pounds/dollars towards the many thousands of pounds that her 2011 budget requires and currently lacks!




Please consider donating, every little donation will make a big difference!


So, in summary, I’d like you to help a Judo Athlete. Help in anyway you can, be it financially (say donate above to Mahana) or through what you do for a job. When 2012 rolls around and you are looking the medal winner you will be able to stand proud and be able to tell the person next to you that you helped that medallist!

The alternative of course is that when 2012 rolls around you might have some nagging guilt to live with. Not that I am pressuring you!! ;-)

Lance

Hi all,

I have been a busy coach, I have been introducing kids to Judo at the Alresford Judo Club, Perins School and students at the Southampton Solent University Judo Club. And of course coaching the sailors at HMS Collingwood Judo Club.

It is fascinating coaching these different groups and seeing what works consistently across them all and those ideas and techniques that only seem to "take" with one or another group.

With the kids classes, I have taken half a term focussing (almost) solely on the BJA Mon grade syllabus and the requirements the kids needed to pass the informal grading we held on the last session before the half-term break. The Grading was attended by Keith Adams (BJA Hampshire County Chairman) who kindly came along and played the "bad cop" examiner.

With the university students I have been trying to cover a broad spectrum of Judo in the beginners session, so they have started with ne-waza, done some self-defence, learnt some throws and even explored elite Judo techniques.

With the Navy, most of the sessions have been performance specific. In that we are working on things the players themselves want to work on. We have worked on preparation for the Navy Champs and then looking at how they performed and doing sessions purely working on specific areas for each player.

Mixed in with all of this, I attended a UK Athletics course and I think gained a lot from being exposed to some new ideas from outside of Judo. I run a Running club (Well I founded one and technically run one), so I am hoping to further explore coaching by doing some more road running training and coaching and seeing how that affects me as a coach.

Over the past months, I have really tried to increase my time actually coaching. As Bob would put it, I needed to increase and improve my "craft". The EJU coaching courses, the blogging and the research has all improved my understanding and knowledge but actually coaching is improving my coaching craft and has been helping me develop.

I have been watching more and more high level Judo and deciding what I can show to the different groups I coach. I have also been involved more than ever before with the "Elite" level of Judo. Recently I was fortunate enough to be able to be a Matside coach at the GB World Cup and have been exploring the UK performance Judo world more than ever before in both theoretical and practical ways. This has been interesting and has highlighted that performance is all about the people and the systems, not about "secret sauce". You can have the best facilities, resources, budgets, ideas and still mess things up and a single person can be enough to make up for a complete lack of money, resources, facilities etc etc etc.

A highlight of recent months, was the opportunity to attend the Judo club of Karen Briggs MBE, 4x World Champion, 5X European Champion. I participated in a fantastic session at the club in Hull (here in the UK) and then sat down and recorded an interview with her for the podcast.
It was a great highlight to be able to talk with her and I was struck by the quality of the session she and her husband Peter put on and by her story of course.

In January, I hope to start on the EJU Level 6 (Masters Degree) coaching qualification. Which I am really looking forward to as I see it as a great opportunity to continue improving myself as a coach. The focus of this course is very different to the EJU 4 and 5 courses I have completed already and being in Rome not the UK it should be very interesting indeed.

All in all, I think my plans to increase the amount and type of coaching I do have been successful. I certainly am coaching more and am coaching a variety of sessions. This I hope is improving me as a coach, time will tell.

My view is that if you are going to try and improve athletes by coaching them, you have an obligation to try and improve yourself as a coach. This is the core reason why I have made myself go through the effort of doing the FdSc and BSc (EJU 4 & 5) and will be doing the Masters/level 6. The podcast, blogs and research are all for the same reason. My increase in coaching hours and (hopeful) improvement in my coaching craft I think is key if I am going to stand before any group of athletes and have a clear conscience when I coach them.

Anyway... this has been a bit of a personal reflection which I wanted to put out there as I strongly believe in "living out loud" and hope it is of interest to someone else out there perhaps. Maybe a coach or athlete who is curious about the inner machinations of a Judo coach. :-)

Lance