Along with rugby coach, Whitney Hansen, Judo national coach Jason Koster delivered hosting sessions which reflected the differences between sports and, more importantly, the cross sport learnings for the participating coaches which have become a feature of Kia Manawanui.
Jason, who had flown into Christchurch from international competitions and training in Europe and Africa the morning of his hosting, conducted a coaching session which he says is unique in the sports sector.
“Judo is a community-based sport with the high performance part having to fit in with that,” says Jason. “During my hosting session we had big numbers of community judoka, along with five or six high performance athletes on the mat at the same time. I tried to demonstrate to my Kia Manawanui colleagues how I have to give up to 35 rookies as much time as my Olympic athletes.”
With three potential Olympic bound athletes, Jason is taking every opportunity to take away what he describes as real gems from his fellow high performance coaches.
“Our qualifying process for the Olympics is points based so we probably won’t know until June if any of our judoka will be in Paris come July.
“As a sport, judo is still developing its organisational structure. Through Kia Manawanui I’ve learned a lot about how sports like sailing and diving are structured and, quite frankly, they are years ahead. There are, however, some real similarities between my sport and diving which also has a high number of recreational, non high performance divers who are included in the sport’s coaching programme.”
Jason says a feature of the hosting session for him was the debrief workshop with course participants and his judoka the following day.
“I am highly focussed on what I need to do to take my athletes from top 20 in the world to top 10. So many of the learnings from the hosting will help with that, such as the need for me to create more distinction between my high performance athletes and the novice members of the team. I need to be able to give my high performance squad more one on one time which will be hugely beneficial for them but will also allow me to use and develop my community players better.”
The final hosting workshop for the Kia Manawanui group will be held in Tauranga next month and will feature speed climbing’s Rod Moore, diving coach James Hardaker and track sprint coach James Mortimer.
