r/judo • u/MasterofLinking shodan • Dec 17 '24

Competing and Tournaments Kouchi while grabbing your own leg.

At a recent local tournament we had this situation, that was a little bit of a controversy. While Tori is not grabbing Ukes leg, in my opinion preventing the possibility of stepping back and thus defending the throw would still fall under blocking the leg. What's your opinion? Would you have given the score or shido?

>! decision was score !<

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '24

He touches the opponents leg with his arm. I remember similar situation happened with Rafaela Silva during Olympic games (I dont remember which was it probably 2020) and I think she got shido’ed.

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u/EchoingUnion Dec 18 '24 edited Dec 18 '24

Rafaela Silva scored with that, she didn't get a shido. It was correct reffing. What she did in that match was completely legal, it's different from what happens in OP's video.

Rafaela grabbed the opponent's sleeve with her right hand, and used her right elbow to block her opponent's leg while driving forward, all the while still maintaining her grip on the sleeve with that same arm. That sort of action has always been legal.

In fact, current -73kg olympic and world champion Heydarov has always used this sort of leg blocking action with his arm/elbow for his kata guruma his whole career. As long as the hand is still maintaining a grip on uke's gi, that corresponding arm/elbow blocking uke's leg is perfectly legal.

Gaba's kata guruma that he used to beat Abe Hifumi at the Paris mixed team finals also used this sort of leg block. It's always been legal, as long as tori maintains the grip on uke's upper body. Of course if tori loses the grip and touches uke's pants that's a shido.

On the other hand, what OP's video shows is tori grabbing himself while hooking around uke's leg. There is zero doubt that what tori in OP's' video did is illegal, there's no controversy around that despite what MarsupialFormer claims.

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '24

Well heydarov’s doesnt really block leg from the start. Very late and it looks like it doesnt impact the throw at all or almost at all.

Gaba’s doesn’t block leg at all.

Rafaela’s technique doesn’t work without the leg block on the other hand.

If tori grabs their own leg, the impact on uke would probably be from the arm-leg contact, compared to that technique without leg grabbing. You could argue that by grabbing his own leg he can keep it tighter or put more weight on the throw, but that’s why I wrote SIMILAR. not the same.