Georg Johansson

George Johansson, 21 years, black belt and are a member of Borlänge JC and Frövi judo club. He has been practicing judo for 13 years and now he is both a leader and assistant coach for a group of children and for adult judokas. In addition to judo he is interested in food and drinks and works as a chef/waiter. The plans for the future are to develop in his profession that is one of great interest to him, including learning new things. He likes to spend time with friends in their spare time.

 

The start

I started practicing Judo early with many other judokas. Started practicing in a child group which was then extended over time to twice a week. After a period, it became threee times a week and then later just got to be more and more training. Now I’m practicing up eight to ten times per week. But I’m nowadays starting to slow down a bit on numbers of trainings at the moment.

Competition Start

The actual path for me was like a rollercoaster. I started young to compete with only losses as a result. Continued to compete and lost all the time. The beginning o competition was not so funny for me until later on the Södra Judo Open Competition in Stockholm, were I started to perform. After that, it only went upwards. At my first Swedish Championship I came to a fifth place. After that it was only upward results for me. I continued to place myself on the podium at the major competitions. After a while the junior national team began to notice me and my results. I got a national team chance but I was not good enough back then. My performance was just outside the national team standards for about 3-4 years time. I exercised so much during that period of time to succeed. But I was not focused enough so I took a break from the competition. But so far I have taken a bronze at the Nordic Championships both in the junior and senior class, a gold in Sörmlandsträffen, three to four Swedish National medals along with many other achievements of varying degrees.

Reflections

I would like to get some new ideas and am gladly participating in good discussions about to increase memberships. We have all seen the future vision of the Swedish Judofederation. And that they want to see that thee membership increases. How can we do it differently? I hear from young judokas in their clubs around Sweden that they are focusing too much on competition. For some it’s not a problem and it’s a competetive sport. However, like many sports, there are judokas and other training opportunities within the same sports-form. So to my question: How should we work to get our youngsters who don’t want to compete to stay in the clubs? This can be great discussions and hope someone comes with great ideas.

 

Best Regards

George J

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