Judo for Parents . com

Judo is all about application of principles, as a parent you can understand the principles without having applied them yourself.

As such, you can help your child learn to throw better even if you have never done Judo.

In this post, we shall outline some fundamental principles of Judo standing work and throwing. If you can understand these ideasand help your child to understand or at least apply them, their Judo will improve.

Balance

Balance is the key to Judo. If you child is on balance they can not be thrown… at least until their balance is broken. So you want to ensure that your child stands in a balanced posture. This generally means standing upright not bent over pushing and pulling. They want to be in a posture that would be comfortable and maintainable if their partner disapeared suddenly.

Breaking Balance

Before any throw will work your child needs to break their partners balance. Once they are off balance, your child can throw them in the direction they are off balance.

A common way to break the balance is with movement. If your child moves backwards, their partner will need to move forward to prevent themselves being taken off balance. If your child moves backwards and quickly turns 180 degrees and drops their weight, their partner will be off balance and fall forwards over your child. At this point your child is throwing with Seoi Nage.

Levers (seesaws)

Back in school you will remember learning about levers, about fulcrums and that sort of thing. A principle of many throws is the use of levers and turning yourself into the fulcrum around which your opponent rotates/falls.

In the throw discussed above (Seoi Nage), your child takes the partner off balance by moving backwards. They then rotate 180 degrees and lower their body, so that their hips are low. When they throw, bending forwards, their hips act as a fulcrum.

Imagine your child and their opponent as a seesaw, your childs hips is the center axle, the partner the plank.

If your child does not lower their hips low enough, then imagine a lopsided seesaw, it will be hard to throw. If they drop low enough, forces are equal and it will be easy to throw. Drop slightly lower and the partner may be top heavy and throwing will be even easier.

Mum/Dad as coach.

As you can see from the above text, it’s pretty simple to see when your child has not gone low enough. Seeing when the partner is not off balance is harder but often easily seen from off the mat.

As a parent, you can coach your child (when and as appropriate); by watching for mis-application of principles. In the example we have been using in this post you can coach your child be observing the following points:

• Moving backwards to break balance
• 180 degree rotation
• Lowering of body/hips to act as fulcrum

If you notice that your child is not doing one of these things, you can help encourage them to do them. Especially if you are practising in the living room. If it is a club situation, best leave the coaching to the club coach normally.

lancew Judo balance, coaching, fulcum, Judo, levers, seoi, theory

So your little Jane or John just loves Judo and looks really good at it, but are they “Good“.
Are they better than average, are they a potential champion?

The short answer is sadly… NO.

Statistically speaking, the odds are severely stacked against your child being a world champion. There are a tiny number of champions and a huge number of people that are not champions. Remember, if the goal is Olympic Gold; then there are only 14 champions every 4 years. Lets look at this closer, if you have a child who is a female 48kg fighter for example, there is only 1 person every 4 years. But there are millions of people doing Judo, so it is unlikely that your child is a future Olympic Champion.

To further dash your hopes, unless you are reading this post from Japan, Korea, China, France or Cuba, the chances are even less likely that your daughter will win a Olympic Gold. Sorry!

So why am I destroying your dreams?

Because you have to be realistic and it may be worth considering not even trying to be a champion! Seriously, every player, parent and coach needs to look at a player and consider the commitment and pain involved in trying to be the best and weigh that against not trying.

Especially as the parent you need to find what is best for your son or daughter in the long-term. Is chasing Olympic gold what is in their best interest? Or should they go to University and become a doctor? Judo is hard and the rewards are few, your son will not be earning millions as a World Champion in Judo. After it’s all over, they’ll need to come back to the world most of us live in and get a job etc.

All that said, your five year old may well have everything it takes to make it!

Until this year, an American woman had never won an Olympic medal in Judo. It would have been easy for Ronda Rousey to decide that there was no point even trying, but she did and she now has a place in Judo history and will forever be the first US woman to win a medal in Olympic Judo history.

Maybe you daughter is going to be the first person to win Olympic gold in judo for your country? Maybe your son will win more World titles than anyone else in History? Maybe they’ll be come a legend in the sport.

If they don’t try they’ll never know.

The awesome legend of Ice Hockey, Wayne Gretzky is credited with the quote:

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”

If your child never trys to be their best, they (and you) will never know if they had what it takes to make it.
As a parent, you are concerned with ensuring that your child achieves the absolute best they can in life. Maybe Judo is the area where your child will achieve their greatest accomplishments. Only you and your child can decide that.

So… maybe they are, maybe they are not.
But there are clues you can look for. Some indicators (arguably) that your child will “make it”, are:

They are obsessed/passionate about Judo.
They love the practise as much as the fighting
They practise more and harder than anyone else… without being told to.
They win everything they enter.
They lose everything, but come back for more!
They hate losing.
They train with the best coaches and players in the world.

You’ll notice that there is no physical attributes listed. Being able to do 100 chinups at six years old is not an indicator that your child will win a gold. The mental attributes are often regarded as more important than the physical. And the proof may be the number of champions who have won their title whilst injured.

If you think your child has the seeds of greatness, then talk to their coach. Ask them to realistically assess if your child has potential. Remember the odds are stacked heavily against them being “that good”, but I would say it is almost always worth trying!

LanceW Judo champion, Judo, talent

Judo is done standing and on the ground. Often with juniors more time is spent on groundwork or “Ne Waza” as it is called in Judo. In this post we shall discuss the basic principles of Ne Waza so you are a parent can help your child develop good Judo groundwork.

In Judo groundwork for children, there is one way to win, hold your opponent on their back for 25 seconds (soon changing to 20 seconds). The more dangerous methods of victory used by adults are banned; specifically strangles and armlocks.

The reason that you have to hold your opponent down for 20/25 seconds is that the goal is to “control” your opponent, not just to get them on their back briefly (such as in wrestling for example).

So when learning Ne Waza, it is important to keep the idea of control in mind. The goal is not to immobilize, or crush, or tie someone in a knot. The goal is to control your opponent to keep them on their back.

As always, Judo is not a game of pure strength. Simply using muscles to try and hold down a person is not most effective. Good principles and technique will win over strength alone. As a parent you want to encourage your child not to use strength, rather to learn good principles.

On this subject, letting your child practice on you on the living room floor is a great idea. In part because your child is not likely to have the strength to hold you down. So good technique/principles will be more effective.

So, what are SOME the basic principles of Ne Waza?

The Lego picture above is in fact a good example of good Judo groundwork principles.
The “player” in white is holding down the “player” in blue; lets look at what the player in white is doing right…

On Top.
Basic, but suprisingly often done wrong. To hold someone down, it is immensely helpful to have your weight bearing down directly onto your opponent. In the picture above, I would suggest that white moves their weight forward a little more perhaps.

A good “key point” for this is the phrase “chest to chest“. If your childs sternum is directly over their opponents sternum, they are generally in a good position.

At right angles.
The storm trooper above is lying at right angles to the player in Blue. This helps prevent the person being held down from turning over.

Hips Down.
The white players hips are on the floor, not up in the air. This means his/her centre of gravity is kept low, minimising the chances of the person on top getting turned over.

There is one more very fundamental principle that the player in white is NOT doing in this picture. And this would be holding on tight !

lancew Judo groundwork, Judo, ne waza

A question that is asked regularly (and rightly so) by parents is the question of is what the child is doing appropriate. In this post I shall outline the vision as per the British model in the BJA.

The appropriate training for your child is dependent on one thing and one thing only. Your child!

In other words, all your childs training should be appropriate for your childs level of development. This means development in terms of physical, mental and emotional aspects. Your child may be big and strong, but young in mind. They may be mentally tough and able to cope with long sessions, but physically they may not be able to cope. Both you and the coach need to assess your child on a day to day basis and ensure that the training is appropriate.

The British Judo association has prepared a guide, the “Long Term Athlete Development” athlete development plan which should give a guide to you and in the UK BJA clubs at least should show what training your child should be doing.

Rather than rephrase it, I’ll paste it from the web page:

FUNdamentals – (male 6-10, female 6-10 years) this stage should be structured and FUN with the emphasis on developing basic movement literacy and fundamental movement skills.

Learning to Train Phase I – (male 10-12, female 10-11/12 years) during this stage young judokas should learn how to train and develop the basic skills of judo. This stage coincides with peak motor co-ordination and so there should be emphasis on skill development.

Learning to Train Phase II – (male 12-14, female 11-13 years) this is a continuation of learning to train phase I so there should be a continuation of training and developing the basic skills of judo along with emphasis on aerobic conditioning and greater individualisation of fitness and tactical training.

Training to Train – (male 14-16, female 13-14 years) there should be a continued emphasis on physical conditioning with the focus on maintaining high volume workloads but with increasing intensity.

Training to Compete – (male 16-18, female 14-17 years) again there should be continued importance on physical conditioning with the focus on developing maximum strength gains through the use of free weights.

Training to Win – (male 18+, female 17+ years) this is the final stage of athlete preparation and the emphasis should be on specialisation and performance enhancement.

I hope that acts a very rough guide for you as a parent to use to assess the training your child is doing. As I stated earlier, you need to remember is that this is all about your child and their development. The stages shown above are in fact based on averaged ages for growth spurts. This means that if your child is a late maturer you need to adjust the training they are doing.

The above phases are also based on physical development; the emotional and mental development needs to be assessed also and training adjusted accordingly.

As always, any questions, do ask your club coach, email the national federation, or leave a comment here.

Lance.

lancew Judo bja, children, development, Judo, ltad training