Not everybody can brag they have a president like this one. Leonardo Bressan is an MD, a general practitioner, and president of the Coordination of Croatian GPs for the County of Primorsko-goranska, and we are bragging of him because he is the president of the judo club Rijeka which is implementing the JudoINclusion project, financed by the European Union – European Social Fund.

Dr Bressan took his daughter to training sessions and so entered the world of judo. He thus encountered judo first as a parent, when his daughter started practising 18 years ago, and, today, the JC Rijeka judo contestants are under his medical supervision. What is the impact of judo on the health of those who train? This is what Dr Bressan said:

“In terms of health, judo is quite good for health, because it has unique characteristics. Except for being dynamic and exhaustmg as a sport, and thus it enables the organism to learn how to useoxygen, which is good for the immune system, judo is the sole sports activity which develops the ability of bodily spatial coordination almost to perfection. The brain receives the data on the position of the body in space from joints, balance organs in the inner ear, and from the centre for sight. Making sense of this data overload takes place continuously while judo activity goes on. Judo contestants posses the harmony of movement outside training too, and it is more than visible they have a different stability of the body in space. Furthermore, by doing judo, the child learns how to respect the other, to be happy for each, even the slightest success, it teaches self criticism and the fact that every win in every sphere of life consists first of a series of defeats. This makes each child a lot more stable in terms of psyche and less prone to excesses in the sense of depression or feelings of lesser worth. Judo, actually, is not at all a struggle in the meaning of the first impression of strength – it is more of a face off of ability and skill learnt. In the JC Rijeka, during the past 25 years, we have had several million trainings, through which several thousand of children and adults went through, and there were no injuries. Our judo contestants prepare well for competitions, and we do not allow them to compete unless coaches are 150 per cent sure of their psycho-physical condition at the time. Besides, this is a sport with strict rules, and one takes good care not to hurt the opponent.

Because of this, judo is also adaptable to children with developmental difficulties. Condition these children are in makes them bereft of many things that are available to other children and they thus enter a vicious circle – they are excluded from society. This occurs not necessarily because the society is bad and rejects them, but because they cannot follow the same rhythm. This also does not mean they cannot do sport, they can, but in their own way. This is why we brought the sports activities of judo closer to them and got a wonderful effect – these children proved to tap the undiscovered potential the community does not deal with because they are ignorant, but instead they remain in the care of the families and, here and there, certain uncoordinated professional departments, because of which the effect of effort of those that do work with them remains low. With our trained trainers, we have tried to get out of these children what nobody is developing in them, which is coordination. When children with developmental difficulties regain self assurance, once somebody has shown them how, once they have received the opportunity to be taught this by somebody, this leads to improvements of overall inner relationships within the family which takes care of the child with developmental difficulties.  Parents of children with developmental difficulties also carry a stigma of their own, and just think of the beauty of the feeling when their child who has mastered certain moves participates in the Christmas tournament of the JC Rijeka, and when their grandmothers and grandfathers come from places 800 km away, just to see their grandchild fight judo and who is merry among other children, coaches, granddad and grandma. Through JudoIn, the quality of the family life is lifted up to a whole new level – this is the aim of inclusive judo – not merely the child – and not just the family – but we want instead for the results to spill over to the whole community,“ Dr Bressan says.