Hi all, well I must be in training as I'm injured! :(
More on that later, a odd week, not entirely as I planned it, and up to today it was going pretty well.

Monday
Judo at Paul Jones' in Basingstoke.
A nice solid session, enjoyed myself. The nice thing about this session for me is that the senior men are all pretty large, but the grades are pretty low. So for someone doing what I term "remedial Judo" it is ideal, good physically and yet I am not getting slammed too often.

Tuesday
Running 45 mins.
Still doing the Jeff Galloway 4/1 Run/walk programme. It was a pretty decent run, felt good all the way around. It's getting pretty cold and dark out there by the time I get out (8pm ish), I may have to consider morning runs (shudder).

Wednesday
Judo, HMS Sultan.
Enjoyed this session, did mainly Kumi Kata (Grips) with one other guy. He is fit and a former boxer who is now doing MMA. So there is lots of strength there to work against. The speed he adjusts is great, so it started pretty light and then cranked up through the gears quite nicely.

Thursday
Okay... excuses time.
I got back late and was feeling knackered (see below) so I skipped my run.

Friday
I meant to catch up today. In effect switching my Friday rest day to Thursday... unfortunately I slacked off again.

Saturday
1) Run, I did 5.46 miles first thing.
2) Judo, the rest of the day was taken up with attending sessions at HMS Collingwood, morning and afternoon. By late in the day I was struggling due to injury though. Good to spend that much time on a mat though, my Gi is/was soaked!

Sunday
Nope... I am writing this on Saturday night, but my injured neck (see below) is going to mean no training on Sunday.


Okay... so I am injured.
I have hurt my neck today mucking about at Judo, it's not even an honourable injury sustained in battle. I was just mucking about and have twisted it wrong. It was okay at first, but has stiffened up nicely and now I can barely turn it left without bringing tears to my eyes. :(

This week, I have learned an important lesson, I needto get to bed earlier. Looking back at this week I see 5 consecutive late nights, which lead to the slacking off later in the week, and probably to me being wesk in the neck department today.

A right shame, but the whole point of this training and in particular blogging about my training is to revisit bing "an athlete" and learn by doing.

I have read articles and heard anecdotes about how athletes often don't rest properly. Both in terms of too much training too close together, but also plain old fashioned sleep.

This week, I made that mistake and paid the price later in the week, and arguably today hurting my neck!

The thing is you know you should sleep, but life gets in the way. The next day you don't feel too bad, heck even after a couple of days I felt okay. But come Thursday evening I was shot! I did nothing, and yet, ended up staying up later than I should again. It;s so easy to do, there is blogs to read and write, TV shows to watch, family to be with, sleep is the easiest (and last thing in the day) thing to cut down on.

But, it's a false economy. By the end of the week I was knackered and missed 1-2 sessions. Then if you factor in tiredness into my neck injury, you can say I may have lost many many sessions.

I'd like to know how many athletes have similar tales, if they are aware of how much sleep they need and how much they are getting in each week.

So, lots of pain, but I feel happy at least that it made this post have a point. That it's reminded me as a person and as a coach that being aware of the rest players are getting is as important as knowing how much training they are doing.

Hopefully my neck will feel better after a good nights sleep! :)

Hi All, here is a new design I have been playing with. Thoughts?


P.s. it's part of the work I am trying to do for a friend of mine, Marcon.

Hi everyone, so week three is the start of my second micro cycle within my eight week macro cycle. I don't think I have discussed what I have planned in my training, so as well as boring you all with the actual content of my week I wanted to share some of the thinking behind what I am doing.

So... this macro cycle is broadly titled "Strength". The overall goal is to develop my strength. To be fair it won't be hard as this is remedial really. :) Anyway, so I am trying to develop my strength in this cycle and develop my endurance in the next cycle.
I've read quite a few papers and abstracts talking about strength before endurance and endurance before strength and it would seem that the modern thinking is that Strength should come before Endurance as there is less of a detraining effect that way around. (please do correct me if you know better okay)

My micro cycles are two weeks each, the first was aimed at just getting started and finding a training schedule. This cycle is aimed at getting steady and doing more strength work in the gym. As I've said, I am trying to get to a weights programme that works and I enjoy. Basically, having tried some fancy ones, I think I am going to settle for plain old graft on the equipment at the gym I go to.

So in this two weeks I'll be trying to get it steady and get more strength work in so by the end of this micro cycle I should be prepared REALLY do some strength work in the remaining portions of this macro cycle.

So, what did I do this week.

Monday
I had the day off, it was my kids first day at school and I wanted to be there. My Monday session is near my work, so I skipped it. But too make up for it, I did a bit of a strength session in my Dojo at home. Mainly body weight stuff and some dumbell work.

Tuesday
Running... out for a 40 minute run, still on the 4 minute running, 1 minute walking plan. It's quite positive as the running pace is probably quite a bit faster than if I was not taking the minute breaks.

Wednesday
Judo... HMS Sultan.
I took the session as Pete was away. Quiet session working primarily on technique (Tai Otoshi). Pretty steady work rate, nothing too hard.

Thursday
Running... 43 minutes (give or take).
Again felt comfortable, which is a plus. My speed in the running sections is pretty quick and I was able to push pretty hard.

Friday
This week I rested Friday, calves a bit sore (still).
I am trying to find the ideal layout of days, Friday is pretty good. Thursday was great last weekm but I am in the habit of a Thursday run.

Saturday
I took a nice 5.5 mile run around the back of Durley village, beautiful clear morning, not a cloud in the sky! Steady pace, nothing too hard, not too light.

Sunday
Slacked off again. :)

So there you have it! Hopefully this week, I'll keep the work going, hopefully smoother with less slacking. ;) I want to get a Sunday training in, hopefully some more focussed strength work.

Hi, so over in Rio the worlds are underway and it has been eventful already.

A new IJF president has been elected (Marius Vizier of the EJU) and Japan for the first time does not have a seat on the executive. Scary.

And already there has been some great Judo on display, sadly no coverage here in the UK (Typically!). There is a little probably illegal footage out there (try www.judovision.org ).

On there you'll see Kenji Suzuki go out of the tournament to the Lithuanian in a dodgy call by the referees, to save you going looking here is the video:



Now... I fall on the Japanese side here, I think Suzuki started the movement and that the Lithuanian landed flat on his back, well before the Japanese. That said, there is most definitely an attack on the way down by the Lithuanian.

The problem here is that the attacking player (Suzuki) should IMHO be given the benefit of the doubt. I also believe that in this sort of situation there should be a decision to award no score if it is this close.

The score is not clear, Judo scores should be clear. If they are not, they should not be scores.

Now... You'll see there that it looks like the referees go over to the table, I can't tell if that is consulting video footage or not. But I'd like to know.

It reminds me of the excellent debate we hosted at University of Bath in August on video to assist refereeing ( www.judocoach.com/debate ). One of the arguments against video in Judo is that it still relies on people to make the call. Watching this footage a second, third, fourth and even a fifth time, can you make a decision, does it get easier?

I'd say no. The issue is the more we slow it down and analyze everything it does not become clearer. Personally, I would like to see referees more openly address this difficulty and alter the rules to reflect it.

I'd like to see Judo become clearer, Ippons need to be harder than they are sometimes. If the score is confused as it is in this case, there should be no score so that the players can decide who wins, not the referees as was the case here.

My take on it is this... if in doubt, give no score and let the players fight and decide who wins. Don't over referee our sport, it just makes for controversy and dull uninteresting judo for us to watch.

For example, if this fight had continued, do you think Suzuki would have gone up a gear? Would the Lithuanian have realised he had a chance and gone up a gear? In either case it would have been good to watch as opposed to seeing referees kill a great fight as they did here. :(

Hi all,
well a week of ups and downs, all in all a good week...maybe.

MONDAY
I decided to try some Judo in Basingstoke. I went along to the Paul Jones School of Judo, which had me worried at first seeing a bunch of kids in black Judogi. But the session itself was good, he has a bunch of fairly large kyu grade men.
So, I was able to get a solid Judo session. Unfortunately I did drop someone a bit hard, my timing is all over the show. Sorry mate!
Another plus was discovering that the instructor (Paul) is a friend of one of my fellow students at University of Bath, they were full-time Judoka together in Camberley. In fact my friend showed up which was nice to say hello to him.

TUESDAY
Running after work.
Still following and enjoying the Jeff Galloway plan. 4 mins running, 1 min walking... repeat. It was nice to go running with my wife. We left quite late in the evening and took the country lane behind the house. By the time we got to the return leg of the run it was pretty much dark, almost. It bat-tastic! Literally, lots of small bats flying above the hedgerow on the side of the road. I like bats... at least in wide open spaces. :)


WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday I went to the Judo at HMS Sultan again. Small session, a lot of people away on some Navy thing I think. But, it was a good session, I spent most of it working with Mark "The JuJitsu Guy".
I really enjoyed working with him and he's got a load of potential and learns fast. He is also really strong and has a wrestling/Ju Jitsu background, so I get a challenge.
I really get a lot from fighting him on the ground, it reminds me about how sloppy my Judo is at the moment.

THURSDAY
Okay... I was experimenting with Thursday as my rest day. Which felt good, physically I am really feeling the training. Starting from such a low level. So, the break midweek is potentially useful and better than a weekend rest day?

FRIDAY
I planned to hit the gym, but unfortunately was doing the train to work thing. So missed getting into the gym. :(

SATURDAY
Got up and hit the road in the morning. It was an hour run, 5.5 miles. Good long run, felt comfortable and enjoyable.

SUNDAY
Okay.. here is the problem with a midweek rest day.
I didn't do any "exercise" today.

Summary...
So too much rest this week. Couple of things brought that on, external and internal. That said, the session I did this week were good, well excluding the gym, I only made it in once and had a nightmare session. I am changing programme as I can't get my head around the "5 3" programme, starts slow... too slow for my liking.

The weekend was absorbed almost entirely by hard labour cutting my hedge. Saturday & Sunday both, which is not exactly a "workout" but is at least physical right?

I spoke to another "master" for the Belgium masters event. He is keen so I am hoping to have maybe 4 guys there next year. COOL!