Judo

Judo, the gentle way. A Japanese martial art and sport. Consisting of throwing and ground fighting, Judo is a dynamic exciting sport that also provides a unique self defense training. Most of all it improves those involved creating better people in virtually every country of the world.

My Judo Background:

I started Judo at the age of ten in Auckland, New Zealand. At the Massey dojo of the Rendokan Judo club, run by Ray Roberts.

Since then Judo has taken me all over the world first as a young fighter representing New Zealand.

I have been fortunate to have traveled and learnt from every Judoka I have trained with. I have tried to share this knowledge both in my own coaching and via this website that has been in existence since the early 1990's

I am presently expanding my knowledge through study. I am studying for a Judo specific degree in Sports Performance at the University of Bath.

FdSc 2006

I have completed all my studies for the year. :-)

The final assignments were Learning in the workplace and Talent Identification. I really enjoyed developing my Talent Identification (TID) assignment. I research quite a bit and enjoyed taking a different view of the subject compared to the "received opinion" within Judo (perhaps).

Research

Now I have (slightly) more time, I shall be attempting to complete the research I started on the 2006 Commonwealth Judo Tournament. It is a Notational analysis project. I notated almost 100 fights at the event and have entered them into a spreadsheet and have been calculating averages, standard deviations etc.

I am looking for evidence that recording the statistics I have collected is useful. Also, I am looking for evidence of trends in the data that might be applicable to coaching.

For an example, a quick bit of math showed me that something around 70% (from memory) of fights are won by the person who attacks the most. So as coaches (or players) we might take this as evidence that we need to encourage our players to attack more.

The research is now available here 2006 Commonwealth Judo Tournament Statistics.

Podcast

After listening to and being in contact with the good guys at thejudopodcast.com I have become involved with www.thejudopodcast.eu, a european podcast about Judo in Europe and of course anywhere else.
Early days so far, please stay in touch and let us know what you would like to hear on the podcast.