Compete in Judo
Winning at all costs is not the true judo, but this is the reality of excelling in tournaments. The price of competition is sacrificing your safety, and the benefits of competition are recognition by peers, increased self esteem, bringing honor to your teacher and parents, the trophy to display in the case, etc. Competition is also inevitable when two individuals are doing free practice, little sleights accumulate and eventually a little club battle ensues.
Contents
Steps
Understanding What's Expected to Win in Judo
- Know what it takes to win. Concentrate on stand up techniques but be able to hold your own in mat work. Currently, the emphasis is on judo being a spectator sport with a lot of action. A lot of action translates to constant movement and lots of throwing techniques rather than arm bars, pins and chokes.
- Watch You Tube videos of matches and model your style from top level competitors.
- Learn the rules of competition by asking the referees, your teacher and reading. Winning is all that matters, know the rules and be clever. Do whatever it takes.
Getting Started in Competitions
- Join a club. It's a good idea to choose one that participates in the most tournaments, so that you can enter additional tournaments on your own or with other members of your club. Your tournament life will be short, after you get older it will be impractical to risk injury, so live in the moment and compete as much as possible.
- Besides participating in tournaments, watch videos of the Olympic and world championship tournaments.
Practicing Various Techniques to Compete Effectively
- After securing a grip, it is attack, attack, attack. You must be in great condition and be able to act without hesitation when your opponent is vulnerable. The person without a grip is at a big disadvantage.
- Study and develop this technique. Be patient when coming to grips. If you are not fighting (sparring) for a grip, like the top Judo players, your play has a big hole that you should work on.
- In tournaments, do not insist on the traditional sleeve and lapel grip. Do supplementary work by applying force with your forearms, crook of the elbow, hands close together, grasping thick bars, and from awkward positions (but mechanically sound positions, so as to avoid injury).
- Develop techniques based on your body type, inclination, etc. It is vital to thoroughly develop from there, like a flow chart, in order to be able to quickly respond to the myriad situations that can––and will––happen. Here are a few important techniques to master:
- Be able throw in all directions and modify your throws against all types of opponents. Do not excessively favor your dominant side.
- Have a handful of throws that you specialize in, but be familiar with all of the throws used. With these throws, you can make combinations, feints and drawing schemes.
- Prepare for all that can happen. Use all variations of your throws as is necessary. It's recommended that you read books about throwing techniques because they will provide a planned and thorough presentation of the many variations and contingencies.
- Use techniques from other sports that were derived from martial arts and especially amateur wrestling but also sumo belt grabbing and arm leverage moves.
- Score a point and do not get caught up in technique. In competition, full scores are achieved with the thinnest of margins: do not expect to see much textbook application of techniques in tournaments. A point is a point, but if all points could be graded on a scale of one to ten, many points barely make the grade and are merely one, two or three. The end justifies the means.
- Develop extreme follow-through. Your opponent, when you are executing your throw, will not give you a clean fall. Instead, your opponent will neglect safety, wrap you like being tackled in football, and take you down too. Expect to complete your throw, with extreme follow-through and end up in an awkward situation and with your back turned to your opponent. With extreme follow-through, fall on your opponent and expect your opponent to fall on you too, if you wrap him up when he is trying to throw you. Proper break-falls are virtually ignored in competition.
Other Techniques to Help You Win
- Supplement your training with strong rotational core movements.
- At the completion of a throw, with extreme follow-through, and with your back turned to your opponent, you must turn and face your opponent.
- When on the mat, to escape a pin, you must bridge and rotate out of the back on the mat position.
- When being thrown, you must spin and fall on your knees to avoid having your opponent being awarded the score.
- Do waist twists as a warm up, but do some waist twisting with much more resistance; be creative. Use a partner, weights, sandbags, bicycle inner tubes, something, anything to develop your waist muscles. Do twisting variations of exercises that you already do. Rotate your spine just a little, instead rotate your body around your spine.
- Go beyond the falling techniques you learned in class, and study gymnastics. You will be upside down and in all types of awkward positions, so get used to it and prepare for it: tournament judo is not like class judo.
- When being thrown, you must reverse your position and not get thrown on your back. At the very least, practice cartwheels and do some upside down, body weight press-ups.
- At risk to your elbows, you must take some falls on one arm to avoid giving your opponent the point. Relax with yoga headstands.
- Develop skill, speed, power, flexibility, agility, and muscular and cardiovascular endurance and not necessarily in this order. Do not replace your class with your supplementary training program though; going to the judo class is the priority.
- Stretch, throughout the day and every day. Study stretching.
- Form, in addition to stretching, can be done often, do it often. Practice simple and complex techniques and counters. Make a playbook, or a mental playbook, and go through the scenarios that can (and will) happen. Mental training can be done anywhere, so do it!
- Complement your club workouts with a supplementary training routine.
- Cycle your training, very methodically, to coincide with your tournaments. Many Olympic athletes cycle their training, so do the same. Cycle everything, your strength, flexibility, skill, and psyche, and expect to get criticized by those who say they put 100 percent all the time. Your resources are limited, use them in a clever way.
- If you can do 40 push ups year round, with cycling you would do just 30 push ups for most of the year and work up to doing 50 push ups 5 times a year such as in the wavelike pattern on the graph. The five times a year when your are very strong would be when you have a tournament.
- Choose and plan your supplementary training very carefully and thoughtfully. Consider your time, finances, fighting style, available equipment, capabilities, recovery capability, and inclination. For example, if your tournament career will be ending soon, build your strength, focus on simple techniques and in tournaments attack like a tiger. But if you have many tournament ahead of you, gain experience and develop your skills.
- Examples of supplementary training: weights, a partner, sandbags, running, wrestling, machines, bicycle tubes, gymnastics, drills, skill movements, etc, be creative.
Psyching Up for the Competition
- Do not be a club fighter, by winning in practice and losing in tournaments. Focus on tournaments and set your ego aside in practice. Be cunning––your buddies in practice may be your opponents in tournaments.
- Do not show off in practice, have a lot in reserve for tournaments. Aggression wears on the nerves, there are many other aspects of judo that you can practice in regular practice sessions and especially against others who are not competitive.
- Do not lose your humanity, your club mates are your friends.
- In tournaments, lose your humanity, but do not try to hurt your opponent.
- Compete in a weight class that your can keep your weight at, choosing a weight that will not affect your performance. Body fat will not help you unless you are in the highest weight class.
- Have enough sleep before a tournament and enough rest on a daily basis. You must be very sensitive to your limitations and avoid over-training. Be aware (your eyes focus with muscles, rest those muscles and your brain) and adjust to the changing conditions, do not perform like a robot. Get everything together by tournament time, plan it that way.
Tips
- Do not follow most of the expert advice on recovery. Train less, much less than you ever imagined, but keep gradually increasing the intensity to eventually frightening levels. Like many other endeavors, most of the participants are at the beginner's level and the expert advice is for them. Strength, endurance and speed training, and judo itself, a sport derived from fighting are very stressful to your body and mind. Ration your energy realistically and achieve high levels. All of this ties in with cycling and not being a club fighter.
- The allocation to training time is specific to each player's abilities and tournament officiating. This article's recommendation to spend a lot of time on standing techniques was based on observation of 2011 World Championship in Baku. Conditions change and you must adjust to the present conditions of officiating at the tournaments you participate in. Do not train just on your strengths and inclinations.
- Although judo can be a dangerous sport, it does not have the head trauma and concussions like football or boxing. As a martial art, it is not as effective as mixed martial arts or possibly boxing, however for the legal reasons, judo is a good choice and this is evidenced by law enforcement favoring restraining techniques versus striking.
- Study physical education books at a college library.
