Teaching judo while being filmed for Bulgarian national television

At the Vegetarium, we sometimes organize morning practices where one person teaches others something they know. For example, I had the opportunity to learn some Paneurhytmy. During the time I have been in Vegetarium, there have been less volunteers, so there has not been so many morning practices even tough many find it important part of the life in here. So, when the filming crew came here to show how is the life in here, we wanted to show them one morning practice and decided that I would teach the others judo warm-up.

I was already very nervous the day before when we first practiced the warm-up. Even though I have been teaching judo for several years already, in this practice there were a lot of new things to me. I had only been teaching judo for kids between 5 and 13, indoors, on the tatami, in Finnish and mostly along with other teachers. Now I should organize and teach the judo warm-up for adults, in the outside, just using yoga mats, in English, all by myself and eventually in front of the television cameras.

I planned some things, but I also just went with the flow a little bit. We started by doing some animal movements like rabbit jumping and lizard walking which are very common way to warm up for children and adults in judo. Then we played shoulder tag. At the end we started learning a little bit of the judo techniques by learning ukemi which means the right way to fall, so you don’t hurt yourself. We also learned how you can effectively turn someone to their back and keep the control by using judo and without hurting them or yourself.

The next day when the film crew came, I got the microphone on me which was a little scary at first, but once we started practicing it was quite easy to forget that they were filming because there were only two people and one camera. I don’t know how much of the judo warm-up will end up on TV eventually, but for me this was a very special experience in my judo journey and I’m proud of how well everything went.

Juulia