England Training(REDS) @ Bath University

Sunday the 10th of Feb saw 6 of DJC's higher squad players head to Bath University for the first REDS training session post the assessment day.

We were missing Bogdan who is resting a niggle in his knee and Olivia who has ligament damage to her elbow, both players considered travelling just to sit on the side-lines but this was decided against as recovery is of the utmost importance for both

Maddox from SBJC was also missing as he too was suffering from injury unfortunately this theme was to continue throughout the day

So a early morning pickup at the LifeCentre saw Maria, Alanna, Jake, Lottie, Ellie and Reuben jump on board the minibus with Andy at the helm for the 2 hour trip to Bath, Jess, myself and Ros were also along for the ride

Bath Uni had played host to the Tennis Fed Cup and so the dojo was out of action meaning that a mat area had been set up in the modern pentathlon hall( a couple of them knew Callum! small world)

The class was being run by Jason and he was joined by former British international Adam Hall, Ros also joined in coaching the session with a number of other club coaches

The session commenced and sadly Jake suffered a very nasty injury to his right hand during the warm-up, it was immediately apparent that it was quite serious, Paramedics were called and Jake was transferred to Bath A&E where after an X-ray it was confirmed he had a nasty break to his hand, this sadly means that he will be unable to train for possibly up to 12 weeks, Jake has been breaking new ground recently and this is a bitter pill to swallow. He is however a very positive boy and i have no doubt he will bounce back from this.

The Judo began with Tachi Waza Randori and our players got stuck in, taking advantage of unfamiliar and higher graded players to test out some of their techniques, Lottie sadly had been suffering from a dead leg for the last few days and had to come off shortly after the randori started but later managed to take part in the Ne-Waza.

After Lunch the players did some Ne-Waza stretching with Adam Hall which then progressed into Ne-Waza randori where again our players all got stuck in.

The day concluded with some unique strength and conditioning drills thought up by Simon

Dan had come and picked Jake up to take him home and Jess returned to the Campus,

A good day of training which kept everyone relatively quiet on the way home but the mood was subdued due to injury to a team mate

Next REDS session is at High Wycombe