Karen Briggs Masterclass @ DJC

Ok so hand up I admit it, I may have arranged for this masterclass on one of the worst weekend logistically in the entire year! England Training for Cadets and Juniors, English Open for Minors, Bank holiday weekend leading into half term all make a recipe for a lack of people.

The thing is when you look at the calendar a year in advance you don't think of these things(well if your me you don't)

But as Freddie Mercury once sang 'the show must go on' and go on it did,

Karen and her husband Pete Inman were coaching across three different classes starting at 10am and finishing at 2pm and the first class consisted of our very young players,

Karen and Pete have been teaching in schools for years and the first class of the day was this age range. Pete remarked that to make these type of sessions successful you have to have a mixture of Judo and being an entertainer and so it was! after the judo had finished our young players were very excited to get their photos taken with Karen and Pete and were impressed when I reeled of Karen's list of achievements during and after her competitive career.

Next came the slightly older players and this gave Karen the opportunity to begin to teach some of her favourite techniques including her famous sutemi waza, which included all the little features which made them such devastating weapons in the mid 1980's. This is always exciting for this group of players (as most of them are about to turn 12 or are just over this age so sacrifice techniques are the newest thing!) and who better to learn the fundermentals from than one of the best proponents of them ever!

More autographs and pictures were had at the end of this class(always an exciting time) Karen had also brought along some of her medals including her World Championship Golds, Commonwealth Golds and her MBE, along with her 2012 torch which she had ran with as part of the build up to the games

We then moved onto our senior class(- the session was also a coaching revalidation)which I'm happy to say was supported by a few clubs from Devon and Cornwall

Players from the following clubs attended

Flo Judo Club

Ivybridge Judo Club

Penrose Judo Club

Redruth Judo Club

Drake Judo Club

The Senior Class was extremely good with lots of the participants being big fans of Karen's and keen to learn her techniques which she broke down and taught from scratch with Pete being an excellent uke.

Groundwork was also a big part of the class with a sangaku turnover and Karen claiming everyone should be able to do it as her legs were shorter than anyones and she had mastered it!

In conclusion we were extremely happy to have such an icon of British Judo here at our club is awe inspiring and would we thoroughly recommend Karen and Pete for a masterclass, they are very down to earth people with a fab sense of humour everyone laughed at the pair of them teasing each other.(though Pete was annoyed with me because his name was so small on our posters LOL)

Lets hope we see some of Karens techniques in the months to come

Ross