martial arts, judo

That’s a pretty broad question, but I’ll try. I did judo for many, many years and would still be doing it if I weren’t back in school. More recently I have been studying another grappling art, catch wrestling.

I encountered players of all shapes and conditions; each had learned to adapt his techniques to his body type. One of the best players I’ve met was David Letourneau. He was on the team at Cumberland College, the number one team in the US several years. He had a heart condition, a bad valve, which caused him to have almost no endurance. That meant he had to win his matches in 30 seconds or so. He almost always did.

Another competitor I’ve only met a few times was a gentleman named Bruce Toops (I’m not sure of the spelling). He was, shall we say, very hefty. Very, very hefty. But he had learned to take advantage of his weight. I’m sure I could have run circles around him. But I couldn’t budge him in the process; he threw me many times, always with a foot sweep.

So you need to adapt your technique to your body type and your training to your technique. The single best training for judo is judo; you’ll get all the strength training and endurance training you need from your sport if you do enough of it. We also relied very heavily on surgical rubber tubes with which we’d practice our throws. Some people like to tie ropes to tractor tires and just drag them along the ground.

Endurance is probably more important than strength; judo can be pretty grueling if you’re evenly matched, so get your wind up. One good exercise is carrying a heavy object across your shoulders at a run up a hill (drag it back down, lest it cause you to topple, then run up again). Dragging yourself with flat palms from one end of the mat to the other and back is good; no using the legs for this one. If this gets too easy you can have one of your fellow judokas sit on your back as you go. This changes the exercise from the “slug” crawl to the “snail” crawl.

Practice mental toughness; never tap out unless your arm is about to snap or everything’s going black. Every once in a while you’ll miscalculate and wake up on the mat confused, wondering why there are people in your bedroom. I used to imagine that if I didn’t keep fighting I’d be killed; that seemed to help to strengthen my resolve.

Certain exercises should be avoided. I signed up here to get some advice on coaching and neck strengthening exercises. I used to stand on my head (no hand, just my head), do wrestlers’ spins, butt the heavy bag and other things to strengthen my neck I got a strong neck, but I also lost, eventually, two cervical disks which causes me a lot of pain nowadays. So I need to reconsider that. I hope someone will advise me on this site in that regard, so watch for that.

Judo is a wonderful sport, even if the country where it originated kills endangered species. With a little discretion you can practice it for life.