Judo club joins disability scheme

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 27th Mar 2008

judo

Southend Judo Club has signed up to be a part of the Essex Disability Sport Academy. The scheme has been set up by Sportessex to encourage people with a disability to take up new sports. The club already has promising young player Charlie Russell amongst its ranks, who is tipped as a potential competitor at the 2012 Paralympics.

As part of the scheme, the club were recently visited by British visually impaired judo coach Steve Gawthorpe.

The former-Olympian says that because of its close-quarter nature, judo is particularly suitable for people with a visual impairment. He said: "Everything is 'touchy feely' and you can get one person demonstrating whilst the visually-impaired player actually feels where they are, so there's no problem."

The British coach hopes schemes like the EDSA will help to encourage people to take up the game. "There are a very limited amount of people that we actually have. We're going on a recruitment drive shortly, and we're going to have a big drive for new people," he says.

Charlie Russell, who lost his sight at the age of two, took up the sport eight years ago and is currently at blue belt level. Russell is being tipped for the 2012 Paralympics

He says: "I found martial arts generally interesting and it was something that I could do. The competition is really good and it does get your confidence up a lot."

Judo is quite a technical sport, with complex moves to be mastered. But Russell says that not being able to see the instructor's actions is not a problem. "The best way to learn them is to use them. If you do them enough times you'll learn it eventually. I just want to be as good as I can. You've got to be willing to put in the work."