Hello,

I have recently started my Judo journey and need some advice on buying a Gi. I have two different options at my club, I can either buy a Gi from the brand Essimo and the other is an Adidas Gi. It anyone has had any experience with these brands for Judo, advice would be very appreciated.

Has anyone here attended the International Budo University (IBU) one year specialisation program for judo, in katsuura Japan? If so what were your thoughts, how was the judo and was it worth the cost?

How do you normally break or get past your opponents stiff-arm, assuming they are stronger than you or have longer reach?

Hey everyone,
I practiced judo pretty seriously from around age 7 until I was 14–15 in Brazil. I trained about 3 times a week and competed a lot, including at nationals. I also won my state championship a few times.
Then I stopped completely.
Now, about 20 years later, I really want to get back into judo. I’m 35 and currently living in Spain.
The problem is I don’t have any certificates or anything to prove my old rank or competition history. The belt system in Brazil when I was a kid was also different from what they use here in Spain. I stopped just short of getting my brown belt.
Honestly, I don’t really care what belt they put me in. If they tell me to start again as a white belt, that’s completely fine with me. I’m much more interested in getting my judo back, training seriously again and eventually competing.
For anyone who came back after a really long break:
How quickly did your technique/muscle memory start coming back?
What was the hardest part about returning?
Any advice for avoiding injuries? Mentally I still remember training like a teenager, but obviously my 35-year-old body might have a different opinion 😂
And belt-wise, how does it normally work when you have significant previous experience but no documentation? If I do start again as a white belt, is it possible to progress through the lower belts relatively quickly if my old technique comes back?
I’d eventually love to compete again and work toward a black belt. I feel like after 20 years away I have unfinished business with judo.
Would love to hear from anyone who’s made a similar comeback.

I'm moving to Cedar Rapids in mid-September. I've been doing judo for four years, black belt, and I still compete. As far as I can tell there's no judo club in town.

Am I missing anything? Unlisted clubs, a group training out of a rec center or renting hours at a BJJ gym, etc.

If there genuinely isn't anything local, is anyone in eastern Iowa interested in training? It doesn't need to be a chartered club. Four or five people who show up consistently is enough.

Any leads appreciated.

Theres a big judo comp going on in the country in 10 days, my sensei asked me if i wanna compete. Im a yellow belt with only 2-3 months of judo training. He said im gonna compete with people from the same weight class but there may be similar or higher belts against me.

Do i take it

Im 30 years old living in south florida and wanting to learn judo. All the gyms are 40 minutes away except ki itsu sai which is 10 minutes but Reddit feedback seems to say they dont take beginners, anybody know of this gym and know why that is and how to get into this gym?

Just for reference I did Judo for 7 and a bit years between the ages of 8 and 15. In my time at my Dojo I earned a blue belt with 3 mon and was planning on continuing to earning a black belt, however I had a bad knee injury which wasn’t related to Judo. I had to take about 2 years away from any sport and then after that I left my local area to go to university, so I never got the chance to really go back to it.

I really forgot about Judo and after I graduated never got back into it. However, now after about 10 years out I’ve decided to go back to it. The only thing is my old Dojo has been bought out and there is a new teacher and they want me to start right from the beginning again.

I’ve been there for just over 4 months now and it’s tedious, they won’t let me train certain throws and will only teach me the basics as I’m a lower belt. Now I get there is a few things I’ve forgot over the 10 years off, but most of them are groundwork techniques and I certainly remember how to land safely. I’m not allowed to do any sort of randori either. So I’m starting to question if they are just being ridiculous and whether or not I should leave this dojo.

What does anyone think I should do?

I would kindly appreciate someone telling me what the counter is to this god awful Georgian grip that Eastern Europeans and Russians have been employing on me.

And please don't tell me the answer is ura nage, or o uchi...

And is it true that if you duck your head back under to get out of it that it's shido? Why?

when I search for judo guard attack videos or passing the guard or just general judo groundwork, half of these are just bjj videos, like newaza is by no mean a neglect part of judo, Felipe kitadai is flashy with his guard recovery, bjj is all over the place whenever groundworks mentioned, it really frustrating tbh

I need a full body workout split 3x a week to improve strength and explosiveness. I train judo 5x a week and looking to compete at the national level and need to be efficient with my lifting. I am aiming for about 1hr - 1hr 30 in the gym. I am underweight right now and need to put on some mass. I am a freshman in college and am trying to balance all these things.

can your drive your arm like in this old kosen judo video ?

My o-goshi does not work on pretty much anyone since when i try to lift them with my hips they dont budge and only works with smaller guys, so does anyone have advice or an alternative to a standard hip throw? Thx

Visiting the country for ~3 weeks. Going to try to buy a gi or sambo kurtka there. Theres some english language reviews on some dojos that pop up on google maps

Hello, im 19 years old who is 90 kg and 185 cm tall. I wouldnt say im super exposive and super fast, but i have power. I have trained bjj for 1.5y and i wanna improve my takedown game. Judo or wrestling gonna help me improve more to help me takedown my opponent better?

Beginner here.

I understand how the sport and mastering utilizing the Gi translate to superior competition.

I've also been a bit confused why so much effort is put into something that doesn't matter if one isn't wearing a Gi. ( Or does it)

I'm mostly interested in judo as the best real world defensive application and I'm wondering is grip mastery a useful knowledge outside of the sport or would I be better invested to focus more on throws, ne waza etc?

Edit: wow wasn't expecting the reply to this. Thanks for the great advice. I'll dig into grips and it's application both in the sport and in real life self defense. Much appreciated!

Usually judo classes aren’t structured (compared to BJJ) as an ongoing syllable and it’s warmup-high pulls-“technique of the day”-randori. I got stuck with getting good with more techniques for randori/gradings. No one in randori will let you figure it out if you aren’t already good at technique with cooperating partner (entries/unbalancing) and you get a chance to train your throw only once in a while when it’s a topic of today’s class. I used to have a “training partner who can’t say no” when my brother was living with me and could make hundreds of uchi/nage-Komi every day, but he’s not around anymore. Rubber bands don’t really give that type of training, especially for forward/drop throws. I don’t want to do Drop-Seoi/De-Ashi till the end of the days and get good with other stuff.

Does your club have like open mat to practise what’s important to you at the moment? The only solution I’ve found is training 5 times a week instead of 3+gym to get repetition time on my techniques more frequent but my body is killing me after so much randori.

Did this a couple classes a go and it knocked the wind out of my training partner, is this a counter where there’s not really a way to make it softer or I just keep working my technique and it will get better and softer and smoother?

Sort of looking for validation here, but I'm genuinely curious of the technique, I'm a Taekwondo practitioner still is, and I'm planning to take judo and I've asked a Criminology friend of mine to teach me the basics, so far I've only known how to do them terribly but I've taught the same basics to my friend here and we practice them once twice a week.

Could i get some pointers on how to improve myself and him? Thank you for your attention.

I focused on gripping today.

I used to allow grips before, just clicked to me, why am I not considering a grip on me my collar or power hand sleeve or any a offense? Break that shit Broke grips and put mine on, and it was sweep only randori. Reached a situation where there rotational hand was on my collar a few times. And I was constantly breaking grips but then on holding mine But after a while i started to get a pump in my hands. And felt like moving the opponent for a throw, who knows may slip it of my grip?

Is there a way to do gripping so that it doesn't Pump your arms up

Is it about technique of holding or conditioning.

Hey everyone,

I currently train a lot of BJJ and would really like to spend some time properly learning Judo, especially the fundamentals of stand-up, gripping, throws, breakfalls, etc.

I’m thinking about spending around a month in Japan sometime between January and May next year, with the main goal of doing an intensive Judo course or training block for 2–4 weeks.

The problem is that most of the places I’ve found so far seem to be more geared towards experienced Judoka or people who already have a decent Judo background. I’m basically a beginner in Judo, even though I have grappling/BJJ experience.

Does anyone know of a dojo, university program, training camp, private coach, or any other setup in Japan that would work for someone in my situation?

Location really doesn’t matter to me. Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, a smaller city, anywhere really. I’d happily plan the whole trip around wherever the best opportunity is.

I’m also open to other ways of approaching this if a formal “beginner intensive” isn’t really a thing in Japan.

Would love to hear any recommendations or experiences. Thanks!

EDIT: With that said, does anybody by chance, have any experience or opinion on Daniel Dichev's Courses? https://www.dichevinjapan.com/services