This is a Judo documentary about the Great man Anton Geesink, the giant man who showed us all that the Japanese were beatable.

Enjoy!

Okay, this is late, mainly because I didn't want to post anything until I had actually made it to some training.

This has been a bad couple of weeks. I haven't done much in the way of training.

However.. last night was awesome!
I had one of those Judo sessions where it all feels good, everything flows. I also did a touch of coaching which seemed to go down well with the class. It's nice to share ideas with others.

It also got me thinking about rest and performance, in terms periodisation in particular.
In my training, I have been scheduling training everyday pretty much. And I have to say that the last two weeks has possibly been a result of the density of training.

So I take two weeks and I am back and feeling great.

Now, in Tudor Bompa's work on periodisation he does recommend a "transition phase" between macro cycles. These are 1-2 weeks in duration. Now, I have completed 4 weeks, then taken 2 weeks. The plan was for 8 weeks for my first two macro cycles, this obviously is wrong for me (it might be right for you) so I am revising to keep to 4 week cycles and probably 1-2 weeks transition.

When you are working with athletes (or as an athlete), I hope that you will take my experience and the wisdom of Mr. Bompa into consideration and adjust your programmes to match the reactions of the athlete.

Bob Willingham has put a bunch (okay masses) of photos from the Denate and COnference on his site, go take a look and buy some, so Bob keeps taking them.

http://www.twoj.org/judogallery/bathdeb ... albums.php

I apologise for my own pictures there... I apparently share my kids affliction of Read Eyes and funny faces! :)

The chart above is from my research at the 2006 Commonwealth Judo Tournament.
I have uploaded the data I collected to swivel.net where some great visualisations are automatically generated. Go take a look and see what you can find out!
:)
Below are a few more graphs.

My recent return to training, or attempt at a return is an interesting and enlightening experience, I'd recommend it to any coach.

Recently, I have been struggling with a problem common to all athletes, but one that I don't think is discussed often enough. The problem I have been struggling with is that of scheduling.

So, those of you who have been following the blog for a while will be aware that my training schedule is basically like this.

Monday & Wednesday: Judo
Tuesday, Thursday: Running

This week I have missed all these, why? Bad scheduling.

I run after I get the kids to bed, about 8pm. Which has been really good for me, till recently at least. Here in the UK winter is approaching and the days are shorter and the weather colder and wetter. At 8PM it is dark now, and cold and wet and unmotivating! So I have skipped both my evening runs. On Thursday I attempted to get up at 6AM and run then. But it was still dark and still cold...so my bed won out!


Now... Judo.
I have missed both Judo sessions this week. One through work commitments and the other through swapping cars and forgetting to swap my gear out of the boot, so I had no Gi to train in.

As a... mature Judoka, I have a good (but time consuming) job, a wife and two kids.
When I scheduled my training, I did it partially with the eyes of the young man I was when I last trained seriously. back when I was single, didn't have a "career" to worry about. No house, no kids. I had much more free time and much more flexible time.

It is that flexible time that is key here.
If I could get out for my run half an hour earlier in the evening, it would still be light enough for me to consider running. Judo-wise I could do with slack time between work and Judo. I have to drive straight from work to Judo immediately after work to make it on time. Any disruption (aka working late) and I'm late to Judo. So... no flexible time.

As coaches we need to consider these sorts of issues and work with athletes to ensure that their schedule is not too tight. There is a need to have a some space is between items in their schedules. Make sure that you are factoring in contingency time.