Why is judo against evolution and innovation of styles?

[u/harderdaddy123456]

So kind of as the title says, why is the IJF so keen on keeping judo so traditional or even setting it back years from what Kano would have wanted. I've seen bjj guys have more respect for the old style judo inviting the "illegal" style takedowns and even managing to create ways to perform them safely that only gets butchered by white belts and now they lost all their CL's in their knee.

my main question is just why does the IJF dislike innovation? because it seems like every 10 years, some new variation of a technique is created and then banned due to "safety", reverse seoi being an example being banned while the main issue was just the fact that judo is a martial art that requires you to be thrown to prove a technique works.

leg grabs also being banned are a bit strange, it was just to differentiate judo from wrestling which i also dont think kano would have wanted to be banned and the IJF keeps using that was a veil to hide the fact its because they dont want to innovate.

its always under the guise of "safety" as if competitors don't make their own style. pistol grips being banned due to "stalling" and safety when they're extremely effective, the main thing is the IJF just does not want to adapt.

I love doing judo but sometimes reading these rules makes me very confused because everything new is banned. its like IBJJF banning heel hooks due to danger, while in a sport where the point and philosophy is to injure your opponent or neutralize them.

not saying don't ban some techniques like kani basami where its high risk when you're moving extremely fast, but im saying just because something is effective does not mean that it should be banned when its attempting to move the sport more forward into a modern push, styles make matches and just one technique variation can put a country on the map, every time i see someone experimenting randomly at an open mat with tachi waza, the idea becomes an "illegal grip" so no matter how effective the throw is at shutting someone down and getting their shoulders to the mat, it becomes useless to use in judo. (which also contributes to the reason why many people quit judo for bjj but thats another post for another day.)

the main question is just why can't judo evolve while bjj has evolved and new techniques "created", kickboxing new feint techniques and entries to attack, same as muay thai and boxing, even sserium which is just korean wrestling lets you do virtually anything as long as its with the grips.

EDIT: nevermind apparently rulesets changed while i wasn’t looking and this post was useless cause everything I said is basically legal now. Also this isn’t an ad for bjj, I just wish it was possible to stay away from curriculum because it gets a bit boring following a set path.

[u/Rodrigoecb]

Double legs were banned in 2009 competitive Judo since 1930, can you point a time in history that double leg was among the top 5 or even top 10 scoring techniques?

[u/Slickrock_1 → u/Rodrigoecb]

It's extremely common in current sport sambo, whose standup game is basically old school judo in shorts.

[u/Rodrigoecb → u/Slickrock_1]

It was never a high scoring throw in "old school" judo, and by old school i presume you are talking about pre-2009 era.

[u/Slickrock_1 → u/Rodrigoecb]

Do you realize that when we talk about pre-2009 judo rules we are not talking about one throw? There is morote gari, te guruma, kata guruma, kibisu gaeshi, kuchiki taoshi, etc, all sorts of variants of them, and even regardless of their own collective scoring having to guard against them opens up upper body throws. And these throws remain mainstays in sport sambo, BJJ, and MMA, for good reason.

Whether or not these are good techniques from a scoring perspective, that's not why they were removed from competition. And they remain part of the kodokan, and some remain in naga no kata in their original leg-grabbing form. Removing them removes part of judo, and in turn moves it from a comprehensive martial art to a competition system.

[u/Rodrigoecb → u/Slickrock_1]

They were removed because a lot of these techniques were used for stalling, in MMA you can punish panic wrestling via strikes in Judo you can't and that made the sport quite boring.

Its pretty dumb to call it "watered down" martial art when strikes are not even allowed in the first place which favors a bent over posture.

I do miss leg grabs but people talk like they were remove because they were "too effective" which isn't the truth at all.

[u/Slickrock_1 → u/Rodrigoecb]

What I've been told by multiple coaches is that for the purposes of Olympic competition leg grabs were removed to differentiate judo from wrestling and to make it exciting by creating more high flying ippons, also for the benefit of a TV audience.

As a martial art you do lose something by removing effective techniques from training. And there's no reason they have to be removed from the average dojo, but the fact is they have been.

One thing I like about training sambo in addition to judo is that we still learn all those throws. The rules of sport sambo are very similar to judo, so rounds play out like pre-2009 judo.