On May 2, 2015, I wrote a blog post called "A dream comes true...", which was all about the impending opening of what would eventually become KL Judo Centre.

Time flies when you're having fun. Fast forward 11 years and now, we're about to upgrade the club in a big way.

When we first started, we ran the class from someone else's dojo in Cheras. Later, we moved into a martial arts gym in Damansara Perdana. We bought our own roll-out mats when we moved to Bangsar, where we rented some space from a yoga studio.

After that, we moved into a badminton complex in Pudu, where we had an open-air concept (no walls, just a mat on top of a badminton court). From there, we moved into another badminton club, also in Pudu, where we actually had walls erected around the club, so that we had more of a proper club feel to the place.

We've been there for the past five years. It's been a good run. And now it's time to move on. This time, we are no longer sub-renting from someone else. We are getting our own shoplot in Q Avenue, in Bandar Sri Permaisuri.

The first big challenge was finding a suitable shoplot. Many shoplots are too narrow and have pillars or staircases that get in the way. We needed a rectangular shoplot where we could lay down some roll-out mats.

Our property agent, who was recommended to us by the good folks at the badminton hall, helped us find a really suitable unit, in terms of the size, the price and the location.

Two major upgrades we'll be making are getting brand new roll-out mats and installing air-conditioners.

We toyed with the idea of re-using our old mats but they were already kind of worn out. And it would be a hodgepodge of three different types of mats (roll-outs, jigsaws and tatami) to fill up the space. And it would require cutting up the mats to fit the dimensions.

It was all too complicated and not to mention, very expensive, to customize the old mats to fit the layout of the new place. We might as well buy new ones and have them placed wall-to-wall so the entire place has the same type of mat throughout.

Our club has plenty of crash pads. In fact, we have enough that they can be lined up against both the right and left walls and act as padding for the walls.

In our old club, fans lined the side of one wall. We won't be doing that anymore. We don't want to take up valuable mat space for fans. So, we will use wall-mounted fans instead.

We will also get air-conditioning. The wall fans plus the airconds should be enough to keep our members cool, especially on Sundays, when there's usually a big crowd.

Up until now, we've always run our children's classes at the same time as the adult classes on Sundays. That's because we were in a badminton hall and we could expand the mat area by putting jigsaw mats on an adjacent court. We can't do that in the new place. So, that means kids and adults will train at separate times.

This will affect a few adult members who are parents of kids who do judo as well. Going forward, their judo classes will now be held at different times as their kids. But this can't be helped.

We are going to expand the number of classes on offer at the club. Instead of just four classes, the adults class will increase to six. There will be two days devoted just for grading practice, two days for fundamentals and two days for advanced training. There will be more randori opportunities but these will be detached from the instructional classes. So, those who don't want to randori, don't have to.

For kids, there will be morning and afternoon sessions on Sundays. And for advanced kids class, there will be one on Wednesday and Friday. So there will be a lot more options for members.

Every time we move to a new location, there will inevitably be some drop outs. But we've always grown from strength to strength. And we hope and expect to continue to do so with this very exciting move.

Over the years, the club has evolved considerably. When we started, it was a club only for adults. It was only much later that we started having a kids class. Now, our kids class is bigger than our adults class! We will continue to grow the kids class, which has both recreational and competitive components.

As for the adults class, the focus is on recreational. My model for KL Judo these days is the Budokwai in London, which is a premier judo club with classes for working adults. There will be a small group that wants to compete, and we'll cater to them. But fundamentally, the club will be a place for working adults to learn and play judo.

I've always wanted to make a series of judo videos that would capture all of the knowledge I have accumulated over the years. I wasn't able to do that properly at the old place because it was too noisy. At our new place, which will be much quieter, there's no limit to what we can do.