I read a blog this week by Lance Wicks on Judo4parents.com and thought I would follow on with some ideas along the same theme. Before reading this you should read Lance’s post (Click here).

In order to answer this question (and hopefully arm coaches with some science based answers for parents) I will consider two areas - Genetics & sociology. I feel a basic understanding of these areas will help coaches far more than the hugely debatable areas of psychology/mental toughness and physiology in judo.

Genetics:

In the presentation “what is talent?” which was previously posted on this website genetics was split into two main areas - Genotype  (anthropometry or build) and Phenotype (physical abilities).

Genotype: Most coaches will tell you genotype is not important in judo, “you can be any size or shape in judo” & of course this is true. However; it can be looked at another way - say the child is particularly small or large, is this talent? Well in GB we have a serious lack of -48 players and +100 players for the senior team, so it can be argued that just by being one of these genotypes they have more chance than, for example a 73kg player. Of course it is not talent in itself but certainly it adds to the equation.

Phenotype: Judo has a huge diversity of physical attributes and judo players have an ability to turn their physical strengths to “judo strengths” for example a player who is very powerful but lacks endurance will fight a very different fight to one who has good endurance but lacks power. There are some players who should make you stand up and take notice though, those who adapt and respond well to training stimuli, those who seem to be able to cope with the huge physical demand of judo. An example could be a female player I work with regularly, last year she was on a strength program throughout the year (and had been for a couple of years). In the eight weeks prior to the British champs she changed her strength program in order to peak - she increased her strength by 91% !! Should this ability to train this hard and the phenotype to adapt to this training be ignored?

Sociology:

Lance discusses this well. One thing I feel could be considered here is that someone who is talented in one sport is often talented in others and in my opinion they should base their choice of sports on two things - the sport they enjoy the most and the sport that has the strongest club/best coaching infrastructure in close proximity to them. Lets be brutally honest here, there are roughly 150-200 children on the England programme in the UK, the vast majority will come from only 4-5 clubs. Furthermore those that progress to senior level - nearly all will come from those clubs. Quite simply put, if you’re not located near one of those clubs your chances are much slimmer.

Lance also discusses the role of the parent, I feel this is essential because it is hard to find a club that trains enough times per week and children will often go to 2-4 clubs to train, only the parent who drives them to and from training/competition has a full overview.

The coach too is very important, he/she has to know how to source support for the athlete, when to pass them on and when to mentor rather than coach- this takes years of experience.

So lets be honest, it’s not hard - you have to have supportive parents, live in the right area, have a genetic advantage, train harder than anyone in another sport, have great fundamental movement skills and be prepared to be poor for the rest of your life!

Although this science stuff is useful for coaches, I would like to bring home some reality. I was talking to a very strong player on the GB squad a couple of months ago and he told me that when he was younger he was very good at basketball. I asked him why he chose judo over basketball - the money is better in basketball, you don’t get injured as much etc ... “so surely you just preferred judo?” I said. He laughed and said “my coaches [judo and basketball] told me I had to chose one sport, I chose basketball, I went home and told my mum and she said no way! I’ve just bought you a new judo kit!!”