Yesterday I had a conversation with Dave, one of our black belt instructors at KL Judo, where the topic of technique came up.
I can't remember what sparked that conversation but I recall Dave saying: "Every sport is technical in its own way but judo is incredibly technical."
What he said is very true. There's so much to learn in terms of techniques, gripping, strategy.
Even after more than three decades in judo, I am still learning things every time I watch video clips from the latest competitions. The learning literally never ends.
While it's true that with all sports, the training never ends -- you've always got to keep training to be good at any sport -- with some sports, the technical mastery of those sports can more or less come to an end. Then what you have to do to become better at that sport is to become better and better at executing the techniques that you've learned. But there aren't really new techniques to learn.
In judo, if you stick with the same technique and never make adjustments to it or don't learn anything new, you will not only stagnate, your judo will deteriorate, even if you become an expert at that particular technique.
Judo is different partially because the International Judo Federation changes or tweaks the rules almost every year. The purpose is to improve the sport, and for the most part, the tweaked rules do achieve that. However, as a result, the technical aspect of the game also changes.
Sometimes the changes are huge. In 2010, leg grabs were banned. This completely changed the way judo is played. A common joke among judo coaches at the time was, "Now, my players have to switch to a new sport."
Leg grabs had become very common in judo. Almost everybody did it. But because judo wanted to differentiate itself from wrestling, it banned leg grabs. And all of a sudden, all players had to adapt and change their fighting style. Even if a player was not a leg-grabber, their playing style was affected in that they no longer had to worry about leg grabs and thus could adopt a more upright posture. They could also start doing leg techniques like sasae-tsurikomi-ashi and hiza-guruma without worrying about getting their legs grabbed.
In other words, the rule changes completely up-ended and changed judo forever. Over the years, more rule changes happened -- some big, some small -- and judo evolved because of this. On the whole, it's been positive. Judo is a much better sport for it though some quarters do complain that the rule changes happen too often.
The other thing that keeps judo evolving are the players themselves. A player could be really good at a technique but if they don't evolve and introduce new variations to their techniques, in time their opponents will figure out ways to stop them. So, they either offer new twists to an existing technique or they develop new techniques to confound their opponents.
Olympic and triple World Champion Toshihiko Koga is one of my favorite players. He started his international senior career at the 1987 World Championships where his main techniques were ippon-seoi-nage and kouchi-makikomi. :At the 1989 World Championships he was still doing those two techniques but he introduced a one-handed sode, which was not common at all at the time, and a one-handed morote-seoi-nage, also not common. By the time the 1991 World Championships came along, his opponents were wary of his established techniques. He caught everyone by surprise by introducing a brand new cross-grip sode which nobody had every seen done before in judo. Koga continued to surprise in the 1992 Olympics when he started throwing people with tomoe-nage, something nobody had seen him do before. Instead of the typical yoko-tomoe-nage favored by most competitors, Koga did a twist on the traditional tomoe-nage done of the same grip he used for ippon-seoi-nage.
Koga's example is typical of a successful judoka's evolution. You've gotta keep growing your repertoire. Sometimes this means learning something completely new. Sometimes it means tweaking your existing techniques. And sometimes it means even inventing something new.
Technical development in judo never ends. You can master every technique in the Gokyo and there will still be tons for you to learn. But that's what keeps judo fascinating.
I can't remember what sparked that conversation but I recall Dave saying: "Every sport is technical in its own way but judo is incredibly technical."
What he said is very true. There's so much to learn in terms of techniques, gripping, strategy.
Even after more than three decades in judo, I am still learning things every time I watch video clips from the latest competitions. The learning literally never ends.
While it's true that with all sports, the training never ends -- you've always got to keep training to be good at any sport -- with some sports, the technical mastery of those sports can more or less come to an end. Then what you have to do to become better at that sport is to become better and better at executing the techniques that you've learned. But there aren't really new techniques to learn.
In judo, if you stick with the same technique and never make adjustments to it or don't learn anything new, you will not only stagnate, your judo will deteriorate, even if you become an expert at that particular technique.
Judo is different partially because the International Judo Federation changes or tweaks the rules almost every year. The purpose is to improve the sport, and for the most part, the tweaked rules do achieve that. However, as a result, the technical aspect of the game also changes.
Sometimes the changes are huge. In 2010, leg grabs were banned. This completely changed the way judo is played. A common joke among judo coaches at the time was, "Now, my players have to switch to a new sport."
Leg grabs had become very common in judo. Almost everybody did it. But because judo wanted to differentiate itself from wrestling, it banned leg grabs. And all of a sudden, all players had to adapt and change their fighting style. Even if a player was not a leg-grabber, their playing style was affected in that they no longer had to worry about leg grabs and thus could adopt a more upright posture. They could also start doing leg techniques like sasae-tsurikomi-ashi and hiza-guruma without worrying about getting their legs grabbed.
In other words, the rule changes completely up-ended and changed judo forever. Over the years, more rule changes happened -- some big, some small -- and judo evolved because of this. On the whole, it's been positive. Judo is a much better sport for it though some quarters do complain that the rule changes happen too often.
The other thing that keeps judo evolving are the players themselves. A player could be really good at a technique but if they don't evolve and introduce new variations to their techniques, in time their opponents will figure out ways to stop them. So, they either offer new twists to an existing technique or they develop new techniques to confound their opponents.
Koga's example is typical of a successful judoka's evolution. You've gotta keep growing your repertoire. Sometimes this means learning something completely new. Sometimes it means tweaking your existing techniques. And sometimes it means even inventing something new.
Technical development in judo never ends. You can master every technique in the Gokyo and there will still be tons for you to learn. But that's what keeps judo fascinating.
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