My Personal Judo Meta

The makeup of my dojo

I seem to fit somewhere in the middle in terms of height at my club, but a little heavier than those around the same height. There’s one or two people in the whole club that weigh somewhere around 100, whereas I’m around 80 kilos. Most of the younger guys also do weightlifting, but not necessarily power lifting.

There’s one guy who does stuff like snatches, squats, and bench. But most use machines like the pec deck, leg curls, and cables.

Me own exercise stuff

I definitely prefer the usual powerlifting compounds with a handful of accessories. So my usual weightlifting routine would be two compounds with low reps and high weight then some accessory work. In a week I’d do deadlifts, squats, pull ups, overhead press, bench press, and rows then throw in some curls, face pulls, lat raises, front raises and maybe some core work. I’ve sorta documented my very ideal plan for how a week would go but it isn’t set in stone really. It also includes some climbing in the morning or evening.

The thing I’m most at risk with is an overuse of the tendons in my arms, this is due to climbing being hard on your forearms and connective tissue in the arms, the grip fighting in judo also being taxing on the same muscle and connective tissues, then in addition to that, pull ups and curls being quite intense on the same muscles. I’m not sure what to do about this yet but it could be that I simply drop the pull up day and potentially slow down on curls too. Otherwise just change the intensity of the climbs, meaning less overhang and more slab, which I hate but definitely need to work on more than overhang.

My Build

So, due to all this weight training and just the length of my limbs I tend to benefit from being close to my opponents. Mark who I train with even recommended basically hugging my opponents, and then just continuously attacking with leg sweeps which can lead to a hip throw or an uchi mata.

All very useful, and the thing is that combos like that are really effective. I just happen to suck at foot sweeps though.

Da moves

I think out of these, the first three don’t really require lapel or sleeve grips and so can be done quite nicely in this hugging close contact method that favors my level of strength. Uchi Mata however is a bit of a standout here as something which might need some modifying.

The combo patterns I was thinking of given Marks advice would be starting by pulling in the opponent using my legs and arms, wrapping an arm around their back, then getting close with my hips to then initiate the leg sweeps. Really kouchi or ouchi, and as they step back with the attacked leg sweep with the other. Then pulling them closer and loading them onto my hips and sweeping with something like Harai or any other hip throw. I think I just really like Harai at the moment though because it’s a hip throw with a sweep and I think that’s cool.

The thing that has been working for me against people that try to keep me at a distance has been Tsuri Komi goshi however, so I might look into combinations for that.

Here’s what Tsuri Komi Goshi looks like:

In the Nage no kata, this is the third and final hip throw. I think one aspect I find weird is just how low on the ukes leg you have to bend and with a straight arm too!

It also gets confused with Tsuri Goshi, which is closer to a O Goshi. You load the uke onto your hip and grab their belt behind their back for the throw.

Plan for next few months

During randori and warm ups I intend to focus more on the foot sweeps, as these I tend to have trouble with simply because the movement feels so weird. I think the usual muscle memory I have for kicking tricks me into just slapping the opponents ankles which doesn’t do much.

Also the aspect of kuzushi (Off balancing) combined with this somewhat unnatural foot movement where you turn your foot inwards and sweep with your hips makes for a awkward and somewhat deceptively complicated movement. But the fact that I would be so close to my opponent anyway and using some strength ends up helping this move succeed.

I guess also the thing is that the combos don’t necessarily end in a throw happening, it just leads into the shape of other throws which will succeed like uchi mata or hip throws. So yeah, there’s your judo progress update. No grading for the next few months, so better to just focus on what works in randori.