samanthalowe2012

Check Sophie Johnstone interview and tour of CJC on the One Show guys, it’s on BBC iplayer…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017mr1j/The_One_Show_24_11_2011/

I’ve finally dragged myself to the computer to give you all an update. So I’m 14 weeks post ACL op and it’s going pretty well. It has been up and down and at times I’ve felt extremely frustrated and couldn’t bring myself to write about my rehab as it wasn’t as positive as I wanted it to be. I had problems with infection in the scar and then I aggravated the fat pads, both hindered my progress. I seem to be over those problems now and I’m progressing nicely.

I’m back to running, on the treadmill and that’s building up nicely. I’ve started smashing out some hideous rowing sessions. I’m skipping, biking, balancing, hopping and rehabbing like a nutter! Along with my normal upper body weights. So keeping fairly busy with my part time work too.

The experts tell me I am on track for my return to Judo in December which is fantastic and very reassuring. So I have another review with the Physio tomorrow and I’m hoping to bring in some changing direction work into my program. So far I have just been doing straight line work.

I’m feeling positive, although it’s been extremely hard watching my team mates go off to compete in the World Championships and being left behind at home practicing balancing on one leg! But I have to keep the bigger picture in mind. It’s all about London 2012….

Sleeping Storm Judo Club, based in Epsom, Surrey, raised £350 for local London 2012 hopeful Samantha Lowe to help her on the road to the Olympics next year.

Members of Sleeping Storm took part in a throw-a-thon in July 2011. Participants were challenged to see how many throws they could do within two minutes. In a very close competition, Alistair Stockley came out on top and managed the most throws, a massive 42!

Sam Lowe was also present to cheer the children on and in total a giant 551 throws were achieved during the throw-a-thon. After the throw-a-thon there was a Q&A session with Sam, where youngsters had the opportunity to quiz Sam on her achievements, medals, how she started judo and her experiences of winning a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

Sam Lowe commented on the hard-work and motivation that all the club demonstrated. She congratulated and thanked the club and its members for all their efforts.

For more information about Sleeping Storm Judo Club please visit the club’s website at www.sleepingstorm.com

Congratulations to…

Simon Allen from Surrey Judo Squad who won the Pennyhill Park Spa day for Two

Len Dunce from Summit Judo Club who won the Pennyhill Park Afternoon Tea for Two

Wayne Snelgrove from Xtability who won the Golf for four at Mannings Heath

Thank you to every one who bought tickets and supported the Rock n Roll fundraising!

As I’m a little bit sick I took a few photos of my knee in the week or so after the surgery to reconstruct my Anterior Cruciate ligament. If you are queasy please do not look any further than this line- sorry! For those of you that share my strange curiosity for these kind of things please read on…
I think this was day one, pretty fat!

Day two- still very fat (and painful!)

Day four- bruising coming out down my shin

Day five- yellow leg!

Day six- still lots of bruising but swelling reduced substantially.

Day seven- still looking yellow but some shape to knee now.

Day eight- dressings completely off and healing nicely.

I’ll update my progress since the 1st week soon….

On Friday 27th May I was guest coach at Summit Judo Club in Basingstoke for all three sessions. Coach Len Dunce had very generously offered to donate all of the mat fees from the evening (and in fact ended up topping that up too!) to go towards my fund-raising.

I arrived about 30 minutes early to an empty hall. Len informed me that his usual helpers for laying down the mats had let him down that evening. No cup of tea and a sit down before my classes for me then, I started earning my keep straight away by carrying out all of the mats from the store-room just outside the hall.

The mats were laid and people started to arrive. My first class was the youngest, from 5 years old. They were so cute! From word go I could see there was very good judo etiquette at the club, which I was really impressed with. The children were well-behaved and receptive to what I was showing. I kept it very simple, we went over Ouchi gari and after several minutes practising this we then went from the ouchi gari into transition. I showed them how to get past the legs and secure the osae komi in kesa gatame. One young lad informed me that it was actually the Fred flintstone hold, very difficult to explain in text but it was a very novel way of remembering the technique. I finished off with a few standing and groundwork randori (fights) and then a game.

Next was the intermediate group. This was the largest group with nearly 30 on the mat. I went for the tactic of trying to wear them out a little first with uchikomi drills. I was impressed with their technique and discipline.  We then moved on to the technical part of the session. I went over Ouchi gari again, giving pointers on posture, gripping, weight distribution and direction of throw. Once they’d practised for a while we then looked at using ouchi gari as a set up for a second technique of their choice. They all responded to this very well and I saw some good combinations. Again I finished the class with randori’s and a game.

Last but not least was the senior class. It was quite a small group which I liked as I could spend more time with each individual helping them with the techniques I was showing. I decided to keep the last class as purely technical as there wasn’t really enough for randori.

I thoroughly enjoyed all 3 classes at Summit Judo club and it was a pleasure seeing the discipline and respect from even the youngest of players. I am looking forward to visiting again in the future!

Me with coaches Len and Paul

Adrian Pearman kindly invited me to take a 1hr session at his club Tora Kai in Walton on Thames on Thursday 26th May, for a donation to my fundraising pot. I was delighted to take him up on the offer.

The class was made up of around 20 teenage boys and one young girl. I started them off with some fun shrimping newaza warm up drills which seemed to wake them up and get their interest.

We did a few sets of uchi komi with some different drills such as doubled footed bound over your partner who is on all fours, your partner jumps up and you turn in for your uchikomi, this is repeated 10 times. Once we had gone through a few sets the boys looked pretty puffed out so I moved on to the technical part of the session.

Due to my knee injury I was unable to demonstrate any standing techniques and so chose to show what we call our long Camberley strangle. The technique begins with your partner on all fours and you catch the double lapels and roll, from there you change your grip for Okuri eri jime. If you can’t apply the strangle from that position I showed them how to manoeuvre the partner off the body in order to climb the body and then sit back and use your legs to apply pressure on the shoulder and finish the strangle. It is a fairly complex move but after breaking it down into simple steps most of them got the hang of it.

By this time I had used up most of the hour, we had just enough time to do a few newaza randori’s to see if they could get the new move to work!

That was the hour class, over in a flash. After the class everyone gathered around to see the club’s new promo video and also a clip of when they were on TV with Joe Pasquale helping him break a Guinness World record for number of judo throws! Very impressive.

I’m sure I will be back to visit them all again soon at Tora Kai Judo Club!

A huge thank you to our coach Luke Preston and support coach Jim Warren for organising this amazing trip!!

We set off early doors for Newquay on Sunday 8th May, everyone piled in the Camberley minibus ready for the adventure, we were all buzzing.

We were all really looking forward to trying our hand at a new skill but it was fairly obvious that some of the full timers were taking it much more seriously than others. I won’t name names, but in the week leading up to the trip we did have people practising in the lounge jumping from laying to standing on the board and also watching youtube clips of surfing tips! Who says we are a competitive bunch?

The journey went quickly and we arrived at ‘Goofys’, our home for the next 2 nights. Very friendly staff and a comfy bed to put our weary heads down at night.

After a little time to settle in our room and grab some food we all met back up ready for lesson one!

Jim Warren is a regular surfer and got us a great deal with ‘Surfing is Therapy’ and instructor Ben Ridding. So we arrived at his ‘office’ which was a room full of wetsuits basically. He sized us all up and sent us off into the changing rooms to get our suits on. Simple. NO! That was a work out in itself!! I was convinced my suit was too small and did nothing but moan about it (hard to believe I know), I eventually got it on and I have to say I’m not sure I have ever felt that unattractive before.

Once everyone had their suits on we grabbed a board and walked in pairs down to the sea. This was probably only a 10min walk, absolute max, but I was already feeling a little worn out! We had a very quick lesson in how to stand up on the board. Unfortunately I had just found out I had torn the ligament in my knee and so although pain free it was unstable. This meant I was not allowed to attempt standing up- just body boarding for me. So we were told to remember the important technical pointers and to take it slowly, be patient, get used to the water, the board, timing of catching the wave etc before trying to stand up. We had been in the water 30 seconds and Ian was already up on his board and fairly swiftly back down again!

We were out in the water for 2 hours, and we absolutely loved it!! It was so much fun, and everyone seemed to pick it up quite quickly, probably through sheer competitiveness and stubbornness.

I was disappointed I couldn’t try standing up but I thoroughly enjoyed it never the less.

It was exhausting. I was shattered. We grabbed our boards and walked back in pairs across the sand and up the dunes. I seriously don’t know how non sporty people do it, my calf’s were burning lol.

We all went for a well deserved refreshment or two (apparently it’s compulsory in the surfing scene- who were we to argue!) after to discuss our triumphs and near death experiences.

The following day we had another lesson on Fistral beach and then in the afternoon we went to a different beach (I can’t remember the name) for our last surfing session. When we waded out we saw a sea lion about 3 metres away from us which was pretty cool! It was brilliant, I know nothing about surfing so excuse the lay-mans description here.. basically the waves were much more spread out, as in there was more time between them. They were also much bigger. So we had to paddle out through the waves (some of them massive!) turn the board around and then when the wave was coming up behind you paddle like your life depended on it. When you actually caught a wave the feeling was incredible, I was shocked how fast you go. I say shocked, I mean scared really. Again everyone did really well and by this last session most people were able to stand up.

To finish off a brilliant trip, Ben the instructor did a BBQ for us in a little cove right down on the beach.

It was the perfect end to one of the best weekends I’ve ever had away with my club mates, just what the doctor ordered!