alot of judo clubs sucks at teaching, even if the teachers are good at judo and randori. Teaching is alot harder than doing and people default to what theyre taught, which is conditioning and uchikomis.
Ironically however, all the skills they learnt comes from little habits and principles that they learn in randori that they dont really consciously know but remember to do when they spar.
to find good techniques you often have to study the pros and what they do in competition.
Judo needs to funnily enough embrace the aspect of bjj which is a more variational and study based approach to teaching. Instead of showing traditional uchimata, show specific high percentage variations of uchimata and drill that
I agree with the “good at judo but suck at teaching” idea, but idk if the BJJ method would work. I’d be interested to hear from people who came out of good programs/schools as far as what worked well.
The hardest part for me is that it's alot harder to get that ''increasingly dynamic'' type of training in Judo. BJJ is (relatively speaking) so static that it's incredibly easy to just ramp up the resistance more and more.
Something like uchi-mata almost anybody can do as a Kata, but almost nobody can really do it in Randori (even the competition) versions. Probably because it's really hard to controlledly ramp up that resistance + alot more dangerous for Uke than something like BJJ.
thats also true. In newaza dominant positions are alot more dominant and stable than in standing. If I get mount there is a real stable advantage I get and if you want to escape you have to expand more energy. Meanwhile a dominant standing position is alot easier to escape from unless I get your back.
Yea it's also just things like for example; you have dominant collar+sleeve for uchi-mata, but I'm posting on you, keeping my hips away, rotating away from you. At some point you're going to have to jump in there (and jump in there DEEP) to do what you want to do - without the attempt being too weak, meaning I can just counter.
It's not going to be possible to practise executing against that realistic type of resistance without a lot of confidence, repetitions, and some level of risk to both players.
I’m a white belt so my opinion does not really hold much weight… but are there clubs that focus on “positions” / “situations” / “sequences” in Judo?
For example, explaining what a dominant position is, versus 50/50, versus losing. Then there are sessions on what to do with dominant. Then 50/50, so on.
I’ve also contemplated a lot on how a coach can teach movement / “feeling” opponent’s weight shifts or reactions. I’m unathletic and uncoordinated so this concept of weight shift is alien to me. It’s probably a “do judo and randori for 2 years straight, 3 days a week” sort of thing for me to get a slight grasp on.
Definitely agree to this— my background is around a decade of very traditional, kata based karate, and it was a bit of a shock moving into judo, I’ve been to two clubs now (one at college and one back home) and both of them really struggled to teach in a way that my karate dojo didn’t, precisely in how you’re describing
I think that’s a product of focusing on the sport so much that they push out a lot of people that are not interested in competing. All that’s left are the athletes, but most athletes just focus on doing the thing. Not how they do it.
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u/Azylim Jun 07 '25
alot of judo clubs sucks at teaching, even if the teachers are good at judo and randori. Teaching is alot harder than doing and people default to what theyre taught, which is conditioning and uchikomis.
Ironically however, all the skills they learnt comes from little habits and principles that they learn in randori that they dont really consciously know but remember to do when they spar.
to find good techniques you often have to study the pros and what they do in competition.
Judo needs to funnily enough embrace the aspect of bjj which is a more variational and study based approach to teaching. Instead of showing traditional uchimata, show specific high percentage variations of uchimata and drill that