Week before the trials

For my second blog post I thought I’d give all you interested readers a taste of life at Camberley the week before the British trials.  As mentioned in my last post, this event decides the British squad for the coming year.

Monday morning we have explosive weights.  Rather than doing things like sets of 5 on bench press, or heavy squats, we do plyometric pushups, or triple hops.  The session is relatively short, and we are keen for a hot shower and a hot lunch afterwards.  Living with about 20 full-time judo athletes however means that showers aren’t always hot, and kitchen space is sparse, so sometimes it’s as much of a fight to get the chicken under the grill as it is to get an ippon in randori.  It’s an intense, unusual environment, that not everyone would enjoy, but it produces results.

In the afternoon we relax, or some of us study or work.  Personally I resist the temptation to watch the film the boys have put on in the living room, and sit on my bed starting to write a paper based on my thesis for submission to a journal.  After making a little progress, I take a nap.

At 6:45pm we leave in the minibus for randori at the British Judo Performance Institute in Dartford.  We all chip in £2 for petrol, and listen to music while making the long journey, not talking much.  The session at Dartford starts at 8:15pm, and there are reasonable numbers on the mat.  We do a basic warmup, some newaza drills, some newaza randori, then the mat is separated into two contest size areas with a curtain, and we converge on one side to get more atmosphere for the standing randori.  We divide into women and under 66kg men, and heavyweights, and do randori of either 5 minutes or 3 minutes, with the shorter more intense.  We get about 7 fights each, with a break of the same duration in between while the other group goes on.  The 12 players from Camberley take a quick shower after the session, then pile into the minibus for the drive back, which is even more quiet than the journey there.  Everyone is tired, or thinking about the weekend.  We get back shortly after 11, and I go straight to bed.

Tuesday first thing we have active recovery, which essentially means whatever you want, although most people go for a run.  At 11:30am we have tachiwaza technique.  We warmup as always with ‘the game’, which is a strange mixture of netball and rugby, and loved by all.  We then have a short session consisting of uchikomi, explosive work, speed work, and nagekomi.  We finish shortly after 1, and I head off to make my lunch.

A particular problem for judo players is keeping their weight down so they can compete in the category that suits them.  There are all sorts of crazy stories about crash dieting, and almost everyone has done it at one point, but it is best to bring down weight steadily and well in advance of competitions.  Judo players loosing weight is not like normal people loosing weight, at least not at the elite level.   A normal person frequently just needs to do a bit of exercise and cut out the snacks, and will start to shed some pounds.  An abnormal person, a.k.a. a judo player, however, already does a lot of exercise, and needs to eat loads more than a normal person just to be able to continue training.  Most judo players make weight by adding a distance run to the schedule, usually before breakfast, and cutting down on carbs, particularly late in the day.  Closer to competitions the nasty stuff like food and fluid restriction can come into play, but theoretically most people should be able to keep eating and drinking if the make weight right, and don’t crash diet.  There is always a temptation to binge on bad foods when there isn’t a competition in the next week or so, which means a large percentage of judo players make weight badly a large percentage of the time.  Personally I have struggled to make my current weight group -63kg, not so much because I like bad food, but more because I lack the time, energy and resources (i.e. car and driving license) to get loads of fresh fruit, vegetables and lean protein, which is what I should be eating.  Making weight has been a significant issue for me, to the extent that making weight right has become one of my bigger goals in judo.  After discussions with my manager/boss/all around judo guru Lance, we decided to trial an interesting option, having meals delivered to me by the healthy meal delivery company Nutrichef.  I got my first delivery last Friday, and now the freezer is stocked with two plastic containers for each lunch and dinner for Monday through Sunday, and the fridge has a container for each breakfast.  So far the meals have all been tasty and easy to cook, it’s amazing how much energy I used to spend in trying to figure out what to eat.  I used to often live on toast and cereal, which is exactly the opposite of good nutrition for athletes.  I will see how it goes, and if it’s value for money.

Tuesday night was randori at Camberley, and there were loads on the mat.  It was a great session, although I was quite tired.  We started off with the usual game warmup, then did a bit of uchikomi, before moving into standing randori.  We divided into 2 groups, heavy and light, and did randori of various lengths.  We finished the session with three ippon-win newaza randoris for each group.

Wednesday morning 11am was again randori at Camberley, again with good numbers on the mat.  This time we started with newaza, and I got the chance to beat up Lance (I think he was being nice to me!).  After about 4 rounds we did some tachiwaza uchikomi, then went on to tachiwaza randori.  This time 5 volunteers stood out the front, and partners came out to them.  They did 2 min 30 sec with this partner, then changed partners, did the same with next partner, then the partner stays out.  This means each person gets 5 min randori with 2 different partners.  After a hard session we do a bit of a cool down and stretch, then head off for lunch.

This is where we’ve reached so far in the week.  We have tonight off, then weights and newaza technique tomorrow morning, and optional randori at Camberley tomorrow night.  Friday is no training as we drive up to the trials in Sheffield, and the juniors (U20) fight on Saturday, and the seniors on Sunday.  It should be a good weekend.