Have a tournament game plan

You need to think about your tournament strategy in advance of your events...

With the world cup coming up at the end of the month, I thought that it was a good to time to talk a little about tournament technique and the importance of pre-planning.

When you're a yellow belt, and everyone you meet is equally inexperienced and nervous, you may be able to get by on ability and luck alone and still win a gold, at regional level at least. But as you start to progress through the grades, it becomes more and more important to have a game plan, whether you intend to enter kata or kumite events.

For instance, say you're competing as a 2nd kyu brown belt at kata. You're not very tall and you have a powerful physique. So which kata do you choose to perform, bassai dai, with it's long stances and big movements, or one like seiunchin, which has lots of sumo stances and slow powerful moves that your physique will suit well? Similarly, even if your physiology suits a particular kata, but you're bad at the moves in it, don't be tempted to do it just because it's a high kata. I've seen too many people competing above their ability just to impress the judges, but let me tell you, it doesn't. Especially at the World Cup, where you'll be scrutiniseed by the most experienced and highly graded judges in GKR.

And don't just restrict yourself to one kata; have another one ready too, just in case something unforseen happens such as an undecideable kata-off, where after several tied, tie-breakers the judges require you to perform a different kata.

Having decided your kata, start practicing now. Perhaps six weeks is not a lot of time to practice for a world cup event, but it's better than nothing, and you can make great improvements in that time, especially if you practice every single day.

Moving onto kumite, this event requires you to put in a lot of pre-training, but also have a strong game plan on the day. Again, play to your strengths, but strengthen your weaknesses. In other words, if you are a tall person with long reach, use that reach in your bouts, but also practice your speed and learn how to deal with people who rush you to tangle your arms and legs up. There are so many kumite exercises that you can practice, but probably two things will help you above all else at this relatively late stage: practice your movement in and out, so that you can pounce and retreat with great speed. I see so many people trying to achieve too much with their reach, usually by leaning forwards or over-extending hips, when a small shuffle forwards would have doubled their effectiveness. The other thing is perhaps even more important, and in six weeks you can make great improvements - practice and increase your repertoire of combinations. Run through a series; write them down. Practice each combination 30 or 50 times a day. You don't have to do the entire set each day, but in just a couple of hours you can train your body to do things instinctively, like mastering the controls of a new computer game, so adding a greater variety of combinations to your arsenal in six weeks should be child's play! Oh, and do them all left and right-handed so that you can attack from either direction.

On the day, it's super-important to have a game plan, both generally, and for each specific opponent you fight. You'll want to have a few killer combinations to use. Don't overuse them unless you're conditioning your opponent, but try to have at least one combination per round. Save the killer blow techniques like hook kicks, spinning techniques and sweeps for sparing use, perhaps once in the qualifiers and once in the finals. Don't alert your opponents to them for minimal benefit.

So, you're fighting a small fast person - what's his likely strengths? Do you share them? How do you counter them? How can you exploit those strengths and turn them into weakness? Now your opponent is tall and likes to kick. What's your plan? Can you reach further with your kicks? Will you try to avoid them? Will you move in close and suppress them? How can you stop him from getting a target lock on you?

You'll need to answer all of these questions and more if you want to give yourself the best chance at tournament. Unless you meet me, in which case, don't bother with the game plan, just trust to luck! Heh heh heh! ;-)

In any case, I wish you all the very best of luck in the World Cup. See you all there.