Right or Left or Both?

In judo, it's good to be able to attack to the right and to the left, but let's face it, very few people are truly ambidextrous. I noticed that many Georgian players train to throw to both sides. Liparteliani, Gviniashvili, Tchrikishvili -- they all seem to be able to throw to the right and to the left, almost with equal facility. But you can still tell that they are principally right-handers.

Perhaps the only judo player I know of who seems to be truly ambidextrous was the Olympic champion Angelo Parisi of France.

A natural question new judo players would have is whether they should practice their techniques to both sides. Actually, unless you are a Georgian full-time athlete, it isn't practical to try to develop every techniques to be done on both sides. It's hard enough to learn how to do uchimata or seoi-nage to one side. Imagine doing that every every single throw you want to develop. It will literally take you twice as long as someone who is developing it to one side only.

Of course it's not a good strategy to be able to attack to one side only. That's why you must have a technique or two that goes to the other side. But you shouldn't try to do every technique in your repertoire to both sides. It just isn't practical.

The same applies for groundwork. And perhaps more so. In judo, there is not much time to do groundwork. It's very easy for uke to engineer a "matte" so you have to move very fast. That requires you to really go into "auto-pilot" when you are on the ground. If you are an armlock specialist, you will tend to attack uke's arm on a specific side and not to both sides. Neil Adams for example, always attacked the left arm when doing his famous juji-gatame roll. If you strangle with your right arm, then practice strangling with your right arm and do it over and over again until muscle memory kicks in and you can execute it without thinking. That won't happen if you try to do it to both sides.

Don't kid yourself about being ambidextrous. Very few of us are able to do this. Decide which side will be your principle stance and develop most of your techniques from that side. Then work on one or two to the other side.