Brazilians Are Training Hard in Tokyo with the Japanese National Team
Ten judokas from the Brazilian senior men's team are in Japan for a training period.
After their great performance in the Pan American Championships held in Edmonton, winning the title in the overall chart and by teams, a part of the Brazilian male team went to Tokyo for training.
Since last Tuesday, May 5th, Felipe Kitadai, Eric Takabatake, Charles Chibana, Alex Pombo, Victor Penalber, Rafael Macedo, Tiago Camilo, Luciano Correa, Rafael Silva and David Moura share the mats of the Ajinomoto National Training Center with the male judokas from Japan. The activity is considered very intense from the physical point of view and it has a high technical level.
"The training is going very well. The biggest advantage here is the number of athletes in one’s category for training as well as the number of randoris done here. Many randoris and with different opponents. There is no place in the world where you can have this quality and training load," the heavyweight Rafael Silva explains.
On their personal pages, some Brazilian athletes registered some moments spent in Tokyo. For instance, the lightweight Felipe Kitadai took a picture of the after-workout together with Tiago Camilo and Charles Chibana. New comer in the team, Rafael Macedo took a picture of himself together with Jigoro Kano’s statue from the Kodokan, the judo’s birthplace, as well as of his training with Japanese athlete.
On Thursday, the team begins the final stage of training and it moves from Ajinomoto Center to Nippon Taiiku Daigaku, the University of Sports Science from Japan. The activities will be running until next Wednesday, May 13th and the athletes will come back on 14th.
