On 2-3 September the BJA staged a Technical Congress, which attracted 150 coaches, referees, officials from all around the country and which was very welcomed by all of them.

The congress was structured as a series of presentations by speakers, which included myself, Lisa McIver, Roy Inman, Colin McIver, Rowena Birch, and two foreign presenters. Jane Bridge of France gave an overview of their approach to children’s judo, and Ulrich Klocke of Germany gave a justification of a "technical/non-competitive" grading scheme for juniors, which they are running successfully for a number of years. 

The prinicpal topic of the Congress was the concept of LTPD, and many presenters stated that modern judo has become a children’s sport. This thesis was outspoken by most of the presenters and proved with statistics, which indicate that on average 75% of members of National Judo Associations are children under 16.

Also, they had to admit that success in judo for long was misinterpreted as exclusively a ‘medals tally’, that is how we allowed modern children’s judo be an exact replica of Adult’s all-out Performance Judo, and that is how we have lost the “technical quality” of children’s Judo to a great degree. Read about the coming actions and changes in the issue 3 of MatsideCoach.