If there was no way to counter leg grabs then by banning it, surely that makes leg pickups a fundamental grappling skill. It weakens a martial art to remove fundamentals. However I do enjoy the focus on upright relaxed grip throws so im happy eitherway.
I'm only a beginner who mostly does Judo to compliment my JJ (well, and because it's fun of course), so my personal opinion is rather uninteresting. I know several Judoka though, and interesting enough pretty much everyone is annoyed with all the new rule sets, banned techniques and such. Especially those who were competitors. So after listening to some of the stuff the got changed, even I ended up wishing, they would go back more to the roots.
Some people would moan about any role change and others moan because their specialty techniques were banned. The leg grab changes were necessary to safeguard judo's place as an Olympic sport and that status is incredibly important.
And that's at the same time the point, that lots of people think took its part and "destroying" Judo bit by bit. (I'd like to point out again, that this is mostly the opinion of Judoka I know and quite a lot of people from another forum; I myself can't compare both situations enough. But I like the encounter of different opinions, before I make my way to my own.)
Judo evolves as a sport, not as a martial art. If that's not what people want then judo might not be for them.
No it wasn't. Competition for competition sake only came later. The drive for olympic status and viewing figures is in danger of leaving the grassroots coaches and non elite competitors behind. And lets face it, judo is never going to be a mainstream spectator sport, and the more rules and penalties you apply to it, the more it will become a parody if its original vital self.
There are those in the Judo world of a more cynical mindset who believe that the changes are more about repositioning the standing of Japan in the rankings than anything to do with Olympic inclusion.
Grassroots judo receives a huge amount of funding as a result of the money brought in by TV contracts and in many countries, judo is a mainstream spectator sport. We all benefit from that status.
The IJF has only changed rules for IJF competitions. If there was truly a groundswell of support for old school judo then freestyle judo would be the norm and not on the fringe of the fringes. People vote with their competition entries.
Yes, because starting from scratch to provide a rival format to a well established circuit with state funding is so easy.
I think, that's essentially what a lot of people were complaining about, when the subject came up. "Olympics are castrating (or raping, depending on who wrote it) Judo" is another complaint I hear a lot. And I have to admit, aside from people who do Judo themselves, I have never met anyone who had actually watched (let alone understand or thought it interesting) Judo and enjoyed it. I guess, some took a look at it during the Olympics, but I can't say I ever heard somebody saying: "Boy, did you see that fight?!", unless they do Judo (or another MA at the least) themselves.
Judo is a big sport in many countries. The UK is a very small country. Extrapolating your experience to the world is generally a bad idea.
That state funding is tied to the Olympics and Judo's Olympic status is tied to it being a viable spectator sport and the IJF rules have made it a better spectator sport. Is it about money? Yes. Should it be about money? No. Do we live in the real world? Yes. Does the grassroots judo player benefit from that money? Yes. Is this question and answer style of rhetoric annoying? Yes.
Not really. It's a mid-sized to large country. It's also a country with decent levels of Judo participation and a country with tens if not hundreds of TV channels. Therefore I'd suggest it's a fairly reasonable average representation. Yes there are countries where Judo is more popular, but I'm sure France and Germany are only televising a handful of events. There are also bigger countries where Judo is less popular (such as the US) which balances it out somewhat. Even in places where it's more popular with a couple of exceptions it's hardly a mainstream spectator sport.
Maybe my view on that part is naive and/ or dumb. But my problem with that statement (from which I think it's true; so it's nothing personal): Should Judo be a sport how is was, with more allowed techniques, more stuff Judoka could do/ try, less castrated? Or otherwise put: Should it be a sport, the people who are committed to like doing, or should be a sport for spectators, who watch it once every four years? Edit: My teacher took me this year to my first visit of the Bundesliga here; premier league as well as second league. Seeing how "many" people there were I wouldn't call it a sport, that gets lots of spectators.
