Judo Competition & Agility: Improving Your Change Of Direction

Agility & Changing Direction Quickly

The ability to change direction quickly or agility in Judo could be described as the difference between being the thrower or the thrown. Here is some research that, if performed under the right personal trainer, could help change which one of the above you are.

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Chris Beardsley from Strength & Conditioning presents several studies that suggest that Eccentric Overload Training can have a significant impact on your change of direction (COD).

See his infographic HERE.

Chris Beardsley says that "Long-term training studies are still catching up with these biomechanical investigations, but we can already see that eccentric strength is able to improve force production preferentially in the deceleration phase of COD tasks, which may be key to enhancing agility. Hopefully, future studies will also investigate the impact of other specific strength qualities, such as maximum strength, horizontally-directed strength, and strength at long muscle lengths."

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What Is Less Well Known About A Personal Trainer

Now I am not a personal trainer but I work with them and it is well known that they are very good at helping build general fitness and strength. But what is less well known is that they are also very good a helping you improve particular skill sets if you give them specific directions on what you want.

In this case, if you are a competition player you could show them this research and let them go away and study it. I am reasonably certain that they would be able to come back and guide you through some Eccentric Overload Training so you could see if it helped your Judo.

Of course, you could do Uchi Komi to the point of failure (when you can't do any more) for your favourite throw, regularly and under your coaches guidance and that might achieve the same thing. But for those of you that are happy to try new things, this may be a way to vary your training regime.

Just one of my random thoughts on Judo.

Enjoy
Sensai
Richard