We are extremely pleased to announce that start of our Junior programme!

Starting on November 8th we will have a session for secondary school aged children (Academic year 7 and above) starting at 2pm at St Marys Leisure Centre.

This group (the Junior Bears) is new for the club and we look forward to bringing in secondary aged students into the club and building the programme. It is a new project for us, so please help spread the word and if you have contacts in secondary schools please tell them about our session and see if we can promote Judo.

Stay tuned for more details!

Congratulations to Aleks and Sean who participated in the BJA National Kata Championships on the weekend.

The participated in the Kime no Kata section and came second to the reigning champions!

Study of kata is a key learning method in Judo and competitions help encourage more people to participate in doing kata. Kata is also a great alternative to other training methods such as shiai and randori.

Congratulations to Sean and Aleks, who not only showed great courage in participating at all, did so as novices against black belts!

Congratulations to those who graded for their new belts today!

We were also able to enjoy a demonstration of the first set of the Nage no Kata by Gary (now 1st Kyu) and Jordan (not grading today); then a full demonstration of the Kime no Kata by Aleks and Sean (both graded to yellow belt today). 

It was great also to have Ramesh on the mat with us and even more new faces. This week we hope to welcome all the new Solent University Students who have discovered us via the sports fair.

I was struck today by the confidence everyone showed today; well done!

Our coach, is currently away in Amsterdam at the 2015 IJF World Championships Kata & Veterans.This is great for the club as it encourages us to invite guest instructors into teach whilst regular coach Lance Wicks is away. Our coach is then also able to bring the experiences and knowledge from attending these events back into the club.

The Kata championships was held this weekend. Five kata were competed in; including the Kime no Kata which we have been learning and look forward to entering our own players into the British Kata Championships in October.

The Veterans Championships is open to Judoka over the age of 30. With 5 year age categories, divided into 14 categories there will be huge amount of action happening over the five mats,over five days. British Judo (and Hampshire Judo) has a strong veterans community with regular competitions and training sessions held  that people who are older can enjoy. Many coaches (Including our regular coach, Lance and some of our guest coaches have competed at the World Veterans and can recommend it as a great experience. It is a very welcoming and fun community where the competing is equalled by the socialising and definitely eclipsed by the friendships.

Whilst Lance is away, everyone should attend the guest instructor sessions as we are very fortunate that these individuals have agreed to visit and share their time, enthusiasm and knowledge with us.

From tonight onwards we are pleased to offer a groundwork only session at St Marys Leisure Centre, Southampton, Hampshire.

This will be a regular session and anyone with an interest in improving the groundwork skills is welcome to come along (BJA, BJC, BJJ, all means all).

To mark the first session we have created a little event on our facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/429753383894504/

Please come along and let us know if you’ll be coming down!

We are pleased to announce that we have more Guest instructors joining us over the coming couple of months!

On Sunday September 20th, Peter Boniface (Winchester University Judo Club) is going to take the session and on Tuesday September 22nd Gary Hill (Southampton University Judo Club) will be in charge.

Both these instructors are friends of the club and we have enjoyed competing and training with them and their club members in the past. We will be spending more time with them during the next academic year; so this is a great chance to learn from a new course and to get to know their faces for when you meet them at local competitions or events.

We are very fortunate to be able to announce that Danny Murphy (5th Dan) will be taking two groundwork sessions for us on October 10th and 22nd.

Danny is a well known and highly regarded Judo coach and also has a background in BJJ, so is ideal for our new ne-waza focussed Thursday sessions.

Danny has been Hampshire squad manager, as well as a coach at the London Budokwai.

We would like to thank him for accepting the invitation to come and improve our groundwork. Be sure to tell your friends and if you have friends in BJJ these would be ideal sessions to bring them along to as Danny has great skills in BJJ as well as Judo groundwork.

We are pleased to be able to hold Kata specific session at the club in the lead up to the British Kata Championships (October 4th).

From this week onwards, those interested are invited to attend our 2pm-3pm session on a Sunday at St Marys Leisure Centre. We will mainly be training the Kime no Kata as we want to have a couple of couple compete.

The sessions are open to all, club members and also visitors from outside the club.

So, put it in your diary, Kata 2pm Sunday, before our regular 3pm technical session.