Learning Judo and a Visit from Athlete Louise Renicks
This week we had a visit from Scottish judo athlete Louise Renicks. Louise spent the morning with pupils teaching them some basic judo moves and then giving a presentation to everyone at assembly.
Each class had the opportunity to come to the gym hall and spend some time with Louise. She demonstrated how to practice each move before allowing pupils to try them out. Kieran did a great job assisting Louise by helping her to show the other pupils what to do.
After the judo session in the gym, we all gathered for assembly where Louise talked to us about her achievements, including winning a gold medal at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and showed us her medal. She spoke about the importance of a healthy diet, with occasional treats, and regular exercise and the impact this has on your energy levels. She then talked about her training - Louise trains for six hours six days a week! She showed us her warm up routine and everyone got up and tried doing the moves with her and then went onto demonstrate some judo techniques, which Jason and Jack helped her with. We finished by watching a video of Louise and her sister, Kimberley (who is also a gold medal winning judo athlete), competing at the Commonwealth Games. All the pupils were given out medals and a picture signed by Louise at the end to keep as a memory of the day.
This was a great experience for our pupils and they enjoyed learning more about judo. The pupils who took part were all very engaged and had a lot of fun being able to take part in the sport and try out their new moves on each other in a safe environment. We are hoping to get involved with a local judo club to take this learning further for some of our pupils.
We would like to say a massive thank you to Louise for coming along and spending some time with us. We had a great morning!
