In 2006 I was training very hard and ended up being selected for my first training trip to Japan for two weeks and then to Europe for four weeks.
Unfortunately, due to work commitments, I had to leave later than the rest of the team and had to organize my own training in Nagoya. Through a friend, I got a place to train at Chukyo University in Nagoya.
I came to Japan and got stuck in training. I ran or did weights in the morning and did three hours of solid Randori each and every night, I was doing really well against some fighters but some of them were amazing technicians.
There was a judoka who trained at Chukyo University and his name was Michi. He was a tough fighter and we always had good fights with each other. It was going great for my two weeks, but in the penultimate round of my last day of training, Michi spun me around in a circle, but my foot got stuck on the mat. Then, when he swept me with Osoto gari, we both heard my knee ‘snap, crack and pop’.
It was horrible, I was lonely and sad and my knee was the size of a balloon.
The next day I flew to Europe and stupidly did another 4 weeks of training with a torn ACL and torn medial meniscus. I trained at the Tata training camp in Hungary before taking the train to Slovenia, where I placed seventh in a junior tournament and lost the first round in the Dax cup.
I came home and had a knee reconstruction and was forced to go 11 months without judo training. it was the worst. After a few months, I started to get back into judo training by doing a series of solo judo drills, including:
– uchikomi shadow
– moving shadow uchikomi
– uchikomi rubber band
– exercises with elastic bands
Although after 11 months without training I discovered that when I returned to training it was as if I had never left and this was due to the fact that I trained a lot of Judo alone at home.
Practicing judo at home is a great way to develop your coordination skills, your timing, and a general understanding of what you need to do for each repetition.
There are many judoka who believe that doing solo judo exercises at home can destroy your technique and create bad habits, but I believe that if you do them correctly, the benefits easily outweigh the negatives.
Judo Training at Home is great for people who are unable to attend Judo training regularly and want to do something similar to Judo.
I encourage everyone to perform shadow uchikomi as part of their warm-ups or cool-downs in training or at the gym. In this way you will be constantly thinking about Judo and by doing so your technique will improve.