Walderslade

1st June 2007

Our club was honoured when Densign White, chairman of the British Judo Association, paid us a special visit to present us with our bronze clubmark award. Apart from being chief of the BJA, Design was one of Britain's top competitors, having won the British championships every year between 1980 and 1992; and winning gold at the 1990 Commonwealth Games and bronze at the 1987 World championships. He also competed in three Olympic games. It was little wonder that the club was packed to rafters with the opportunity to meet this British Olympian and world medallist; although, it did seem for a while that he wasn't going to make it due to traffic problems on the M25.

But arrive he did, and after a quick change he finally came onto the mat to present us with our Bronze Clubmark Award. When the presentations were made Densign agreed to take both junior and senior classes.

Watching from the sidelines it was easy to see that the juniors fully enjoyed their master-class with a blend of tuition and good old fashion judo games.

The seniors' class was just as interesting with – for me – a complete new set of warm-up exorcises. I shall never forget crawling across the mat on my hands and knees with an eighteen stone blue belt standing on my back swaying to keep his balance! After fifteen minutes or so of these new warm-ups Densign smiled and said, “Right... shall we do some judo?”

We started with some groundwork, where Densign demonstrated various transitional techniques that I personally found to be very useful. Afterwards we went on to groundwork randori but instead of starting facing each other we began in various positions that are more akin to competition situations. The class finished with some standing randori and after bowing off we presented Densign with an official Walderslade Judo Club mug! I like to think that it is even now sitting on his desk at BJA head quarters staining some paperwork with stickycoffee rings!

It was a successful evening and we all enjoyed the master-class from one of Britain's greatest competitors.