My friend and I started training judo together a little over 2 years ago. A few injuries and lots of hard work later, and I've learned so much more than I thought I could. Still so much to learn.

In nagekomi we throw and remain standing after the throw is executed. But in comp it seems like most throws involve the tori rolling through at the end of landing on their opponent.

I think when I'm doing randori and go for a throw, in my mind I'm trying to emulate nagekomi and remain in a standing position.

Should I instead adopt the mindset of fully committing my body to either landing on uke (in a safe manner of course) or rolling through the throw?

On the surface this might sound dumb but hear me out.

I've trained bjj for a while. We train a small amount of judo techniques but I never feel I get enough reps where I feel competent to pull off live.

I want to drill some stuff at open mat but feel like im very likey missing a lot of the fundamentals here and don't want to drill poor habits.

Is anyone in a similar position or have very basic practice tips?

Kake in Judo seems a huge barrier. I see kids getting in, looking good and then failing to complete the almost seemingly 'suicide' part. I mean, where you almost have to throw yourself with them, ala seen often in comp.

I think my confidence in this ealrier was a lot from ukemi. When young we were jumping our own height over a partner in forward breakfalls, or even the lining up up 5-10 fellas on the floor and running, jumping them and breakfalling, kind of stuff. Made me wonder too, if that had to do with the ugly (albeit finely effective) throws in wrestling - their lack of this over commitment. Tho, it often went overboard with uchimata and the like, of course.

Even now after not having done kake or ukemi in a long time, I found myself ambivalent about throwing a fella if I get in and load fine for a nice standing seoinage. Seems so far down and might hurt my opponent, too.

How to improve kake? Especially for young kids who seems to be getting in well but cannot complete while the lift and position is fine.

As a wrestler who loves throws I often get snuffed by coaches who fear I’ll hurt people in practice with my hip throws and lat drops. Given that you all throw and get thrown as a lifestyle, how often would you say you actually get hurt? Do the throws cause a lot of injuries or is it mostly the general stuff you’d expect athletes in almost any sport to deal with (ie. ankle sprains, turf toe)?

Im either writing code or technical documents all day long, I type for 80% of my job and any issues with my fingers or wrists severely slows me down / stops me from working altogether

I experience a lot of small non-injury discomfort in my hands and fingers since I started Judo and it's made me stop altogether (im still white) as I can't risk injuries

There must be people in similar work as me that also do Judo regularly - what are your tips to prevent discomfort in hands the days after training and/or injuries ?

First post here on r/judo . I'm starting Judo on Thursday evening (recently moved to Edinburgh). Excited, but also kinda unsteady. Been teaching and training in taekwondo back in the US since I was 18 (23 years now) and have a wrestling background in middle/high school. Now moving to a new art, and just generally nervous. Gotta wipe my expectations and think like a white-belt again! But any advice/guidance from judokas here on what to expect and behavior to do/avoid would be appreciated. Don't want to look dumb or arrogant on day 1!

Thanks!

Hey everyone, my name is Scott and I own a mat cleaning company in southern California.

I recently did my first judo dojo and I wanted to share the results.

Thanks for taking a look and feel free to ask me anything- happy to share what I’ve learned.

Scott
Combat Sports Cleaning

Whenever I see anything related to judo or taekwondo, it instantly takes me back to my school karate classes. Those were the days when we truly felt like Power Rangers or ninjas—fearless, confident, and ready for anything. We gave it everything we had, pushing ourselves to our physical limits while enjoying every moment. Those memories still remind me of the excitement, discipline, and courage we built back then.

#missingmysportsday

Have been training for approx 5 years. Ukemi is basically the only bit of judo I'm good at

Training with young national team players.

Got caught with a double sleeve duck under kata guruma (that went straight back, not to the side).

I ate the whole thing to the dome and now have a concussion.

I'm not sure what more I could have done, my chin was as tucked as it goes, maybe intentionally throw my legs further?

Sad I'm out of training and feeling like my confidence has taken a significant knock.

Hoping people can share similar experiences and help me improve.

So I think Yoko Wakare is an amazing throw, it’s not something id spend loads of time trying to focus on for competition but i think it’s very fun, very cool and demonstrates all about creating and using reactions to get people to basically throw themselves.

For me personally the reaction I’m looking for is my opponent bringing their leading shoulder down and across themselves, this is because the motion of dropping for yoko wakare is perfect for extending that motion and basically making your opponent do a forward rolling breakfall over you, which especially when you can feel you controlling their descent and get that buetiful whip feeling of yor weight swinging under them.

I wanted to share this video i made of 5 of my favourite entries for Yoko Wakare, I’m sure there’s many more set ups but these are the ones I’m good at and enjoy the most.

5 Yoko Wakare Variations That Get Spectacular Ippons
https://youtu.be/x0oTNmmP224

I'm looking for a martial art/sport to train. I saw Judo and thought it looked so cool compared to other martial arts I've seen. But I have pre existing shoulder injuries. One time I almost dislocated my shoulder. Do you Judo would be too intense for me. About to turn 40yo.

For those of you who weren’t on YouTube mid 2010s there were a handful of Judo specific channels you could find on YouTube. One of them was Red Dragon Diaries, an expat named Tom Gates, teaching across Asia. At the time there was limited content you could find on Judo practiced other countries that wasn’t on physical media. However, Tom made videos in Korea of Judo on the elementary level to university level. He additionally had some vlogs of him at the Kodakan when I recall it was harder to get permission to train there as a foreigner without a connection through your sensei.

Tom’s content (before it was referred to as content) at the time was insightful and I feel was one of the early stepping stones into helping Judo reach more audiences as the internet found its way onto mobile devices and social media platforms. Which begs the question what happened to Tom and the Red Dragon Diaries? Last I saw he was teaching in China three years ago and around that time I haven’t seen much Judo related content. Anyone know what became of him?

Hey guys,

I'm a white belt who began Judo about 2-3 months ago. I come from BJJ which I've been doing for almost a year now.

In BJJ, my small wins against upper belts is passing their guard, sweeping and escaping bad positions etc. I know for a fact I will not be able to submit them, so I count small wins like that.

Just the other day, I was feeling super bummed out about not being able to achieve anything in randori. My coach told me to count the small wins - like breaking grips, breaking kuzushi etc.

What other small wins should I count during randori? My randori is honestly not good coz I can't do any throws in real time. But my kata is decent - I can manage clean throws if my partner isn't resisting.

About a year ago now after practice, I spoke with my 4 sensei‘s about my situation and how to promote. I am 26 years old and work a semi manual labor job, I picked up judo as a hobby and because I fell in love with it however, after an injury I had sustained during practice one day made me realize that I need to safeguard my health as best as I can and did some research and found that there is a non competitor route to promotion. I also looked at this route to promotion because I can never find a judo tournament nearby or during a time that is convenient for me to attend. I brought up my concerns as well as the predicament that they are well aware of with competitions. 2 of my sensei’s agreed with me 1 was totally against and the head instructor was hesitant but agreed with the other 2 and said that we would reconvene the next practice. The next practice rolls around and he had printed off what was needed to promote to brown belt for non competitors. I had met all of the requirements, time in grade, being able to perform throws to a satisfactory manner and know the Japanese and English names for the said throws as well as the pins, chokes, armbars etc. they had me perform everything that I know, and say the names of everything in Japanese and in English, I mispronounced a few and forgot the names of some but they were all impressed and said that they would talk amongst themselves about the promotion, and I never brought it up again. Just this last week after it being almost exactly a year since we had this conversation I asked if a decision had been made about promoting me to Brown belt and the head instructor said “go to a competition and beat 3 black belts and ill give you your Sankyu” my other 2 senseis didn’t say much other than that was asking a lot of me and that was the end of the conversation. i’ve been doing judo for four years. I promoted from white to orange in a year and orange to green the second year I have been green for two years straight. I feel slightly betrayed by this decision in 4 years I haven’t missed more than a handful of practices due to work or family related issues, I have fulfilled my requirements and now I’m being told want to move up go beat some black belts and then I’ll give you your entry level brown belt. Do I just bite the bullet and find the next available competition and just make time for it and hope to God I beat 3 black belts or do I protest the decision?

A compilation of Sode Tsurikomi Goshi + Sode Osoto (Gari/Otoshi) that I put together to study. Please enjoy these highlights from Hifumi Abe and Sagi Muki!

Sode Tsurikomi Goshi has always been my favorite throw, and I've only recently started incorporating Sode Osoto to play off of action/reaction. Resources on this combo are scarce — I could only find two covering it: one from Shintaro and another from Fluid Judo Japan. If anyone has further advice or additional resources, I'd really appreciate it!

I'm a older (47m) heavyweight (125 kg - 275 lbs), but I'm afraid to use takedowns that I think are appropriate for my weight and strength in randori, like ura nage or yatsura nage. I'm the heaviest in the gym, almost 40 kg (+80 lbs) heavier than the second heaviest guy. Besides that, I'm afraid of injuring my training partners, and that limits me quite a bit in competitions. I don't intend to change gyms, and I'm in the process of losing weight. Any suggestions?

I want to start judo, but I am not really confident in buying Gi yet, because I am not sure that I will like the coach or the gym itself and good Gi costs quite a lot. Is it okay to go on the first few sessions without Gi? Are there any good alternatives to Gi for those first few session? And if I buy Gi, what are some good cheap options in Europe? Appreciate your responses!

What reason is there to remove a USJA kosen judo rule assessment post?

https://www.reddit.com/r/judo/s/6VZZZPlcxR

Its relevant.

Context: A friend and I (who are both rising HS sophmores)want to start Judo together, however we don't know any good dojos. We've been doing online research, but we would prefer a place where we can go on a 'shadow day' or free trial day and see how things are before going. We're mostly looking in Battery Park City, however Soho and Chinatown are absolutely on the table.

Will be grateful for any advice!

I kinda love this technique and quite frankly, most of my ne-waza wins are from jujis. I mainly hit it from closed guard and quite rarely from tate-shiho-gatame. Please tell me about different entries whether from other positions or just different ways to get it from closed guard / osaikomi-waza.

Thanks in advance. Edit: I'm blind guys, I can't look at anything. If you have videos you find useful, link them directly so I can show them to my senseis.

So, i am a yellow belt, but only got this belt about two months ago and since i can't practice during the summer i only know white belt moves for now.

I went to the beach with my friends to do some grappling (basically no-gi wrestling), since i have judo experience and they don't have much if any grappling experience i thought i could have an easy time against them.

However i could never get any throws or submissions on them despite while they actually successfully took me down multiple times with a technique they saw on tik tok 5 minutes prior.

Since judo basically did not help me at all against 2 guys like this, i am starting to doubt if it's even useful at all.

I must clarify something tho... MY DOJO NEVER LET US DO ANY RANDORI STANDING UP! Only 5 minutes of ground randori occasionaly.

I'm not saying it is a mac dojo, but it is very unserious and close to one.

What should i do? If i go to a better dojo will my judo actually become usable?