Guadalajara, Jal, towards the vanguard in martial arts with the High Performance Sports Center

Guadalajara, Jalisco, will be the city at the forefront in the teaching and training of Judo, Karate, Taekwondo and Mixed Martial Arts with the first Martial Arts Sports Center (CEDAM), for the training practice and high performance of the disciplines.

This sports complex will be the first of its kind in Mexico and Latin America, and is currently in its 2nd stage of construction in Sports Unit #2 “Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla”, Colonia La Penal, in this capital.

At the beginning of the year, the municipal president of Guadalajara, Pablo Lemus Navarro, and the director of the Guadalajara Municipal Sports Council (COMUDE Guadalajara), Albino Galván Martínez, made a tour to supervise the progress of the 1st phase of construction of CEDAM, as part of the actions to promote sport as a public policy in crime prevention.

Four months after this supervision, the director of COMUDE Guadalajara commented that the 2nd stage of construction of this space has already begun, which will be open to the entire population, practitioners and federations of the different martial disciplines.

The foregoing was mentioned in Mexico City, during the press conference where Lenia Ruvalcaba, Paralympic Judo Multi-medalist, announced her retirement from competitive mats to dedicate herself to teaching, promotion and other activities involving CEDAM.

But to find out what the first Martial Arts Sports Center will be, we talked with Albino Galván, who commented that this space will be the first and only one of its kind in Mexico and Latin America, to serve all levels of practitioners.

“We are going to serve 15 thousand athletes with Taekwondo, Karate, Judo and Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), we are going to do it in conventional and paralympic sports. We are going to work with sports initiation for people who want to start in martial arts and for high performance”.

The head of COMUDE said that this complex has an investment of 80 million pesos, where the private initiative is also involved, and is in the second stage of construction, which is estimated to end in December to be launched internationally and that it can receive, even, world martial arts events.

“It will be a forum for all the federations of these disciplines to celebrate their international events and, furthermore, so that we can bring out high-performance athletes who can represent Mexico.”

In parallel, Albino Galván commented, they are looking for representative coaches of the disciplines, as is the case of Lenia Ruvalcaba, who will be in charge of the Judo area.

“We are looking for coaches who represent and who are an example of many athletes who want to be like them, as is the case with Judo, we are inviting Lenia Ruvlacaba, who is a Paralympic multi-medalist athlete, and we are also doing it with Karate, Taekwondo and Mixed martial arts.

We are in talks with the Grasso family (Alexa Grasso, UFC champion), so that they take care of the issue of Mixed Martial Arts and in Taekwondo and Karate we are seeing who will be the best prospect to lead all these athletes”.

Regarding what CEDAM will have, he pointed out that it will have eight official tatami mats, training rooms or dojos, a physical preparation area, meeting rooms, a multifunctional area specialized in high performance with the appropriate equipment, dressing rooms, and a medical and rehabilitation area.

It will also have a seating area for competitions, a place for vehicles, a commercial area and, for another stage, it is planned that there may be bedrooms.

Regarding the population they hope to serve, Albino Galván commented that CEDAM will be open to everyone, from school sports initiation, to children and young people who want to practice a martial art in order to lead it to high performance, and even those who already are at this level.

He noted that, in addition to working together with the federations to receive their high-performance athletes in training camps, work has already begun to recruit athletes in the region.

“We are opening schools of the four martial arts in different areas of Guadalajara and we are attracting students from the beginning. In fact, we invited Bertha Gutiérrez to work, who is a medalist in Karate at the Pan American Games, and is helping us open schools, in addition to inviting other talents from other disciplines to help us find talent from each art martial”.

Finally, the head of COMUDE commented that, in addition to the aforementioned martial arts, the number of disciplines is expected to increase later so that the Guadalajara Martial Arts Sports Center grows over time.

Photos: Courtesy COMUDE Guadalajara.