Young football coaches at Arsenal Football Club have taken a break recently from traditional coaching drills and activities to try their hand at judo through the Premier League 4 Sport programme.

Together with the British Judo Association and Capital London Judo Club, the coaches, who are all gap year and BTEC students, took part in a judo session to give them experience across different sports and learn how these skills could be applied to their traditional working environment.

As well as Premier League 4 Sport and the BTEC programme, the event provided crossover with other Arsenal in the Community programmes such as the Gap Year Internship and Arsenal Soccer Schools.

Martin Davis, BTEC co-ordinator and senior football coach. “The BTEC students thoroughly enjoyed the Judo session. It was a complete contrast to what they were used to. Many commented on the coaching style of Gabs the coach and the techniques he used that they could integrate into their own coaching.”

                        

John Olaleye, Gap Year co-ordinator “The judo session was great. Gabs really engaged the students with fun and relevant games still incorporating judo in them. We were able to relate techniques such as rolls and break-falls to footballing scenarios. Conditioning wise, judoka are extremely fit and it was really interesting to see the difference between footballers and Judo athletes.“

Working with sport’s governing bodies, the Youth Sport Trust and Sport England, the Premier League 4 Sport programme aims to engage 25,000 young people, aged between 11 and 16, to join local sports clubs and participate in four sports (badminton, volleyball, table tennis and judo) over a three-year period leading up to 2012.

The Capital London Judo Club was launched at Cardinal Pole Lower School in Hackney in September 2010, with the help of Hackney Council who fund all of our facility hire.