Taking a page out of the book of our friends at the Kuala Lumpur Judo Training Centre, I wanted to share a little about the Judo training we did this Tuesday in Southampton.

Tuesday is our higher intensity Judo training session of the week. This week was a great session, our new dojo with air conditioning and fans are turning out to be ideal in the summer! I think all the members who attended training at St Marys would agree it’s great to have the cooling when we are working hard.

As well as standing randori and groundwork; we had a conversation about the scoring and points system of Judo and how that affects the strategies we use if we play the sport of Judo.

We also did our usual uchi komi, both shadow uchi komi and with partners. We introduced another style of Uchi Komi too, using belts. There are plenty of good reasons for using belts for uchi komi, it helps us develop our hand grips as well as lifting action. Also as shown in the picture, it encourages commitment of your body in the right direction. And of course, it’s a fun change from our nightly uchi komi Judo drills.

I would also like to take a moment to thank everyone in attendance for observing a minutes silence in memory of the great Judo man Roy Inman who passed away recently. Roy was a huge part of British Judo and will be sorely missed.