The Best Strength Training For Judo

I started training Judo 10 weeks ago, been in the gym/sports for over 10 years and aged 26 I can now do cartwheels for the first time in my life, which im amazed by as I weigh 125kg. The sport itself seems to be great for athletic development.

Dont underestimate balance muscles (in lower legs and feet), which you can train with single leg squats, lunges and split squats. Also body rotation, which is mostly obliques, is key for throwing. Very few of the big power excercises hit these. Finally spinal erector muscles and hamstrings!!

Keep the Judo Videos coming! I am a Judo athlete and Coach and finishing my Sports Science degree and i always share your videos with my judo community. Really valuable information and there is a lack of it on the Internet!

Every time Daire talks about minimum thresholds for the deadlift... I feel personally attacked.

More Judo S&C please. Also feel free to do another judo athlete reaction the shohei ono vid was brilliant!

Strength helps a ton with Judo, I don't think I'm terribly skilled relative to how long I've been playing it (6 years), but being able to hit a 275kg squat, 315kg DL and so on really can cover up gaps in lacking technique, and make the techniques so much more powerful. With bands, it's more about drilling the muscle memory for the throws rather than building strength.

I'm the opposite, my background is karate from 13 , kickboxing from 16 , western boxing from 20 , mma (early pre 2000s too 2008) , wrestling and judo from from 2002 , then retired and played rugby till age 44 , I've got my sons doing bodybuilding light weights , stretching, bodyweight exercises , cardio . Admittedly I do a lot of neck exercises, my neck is so thick and joins my body unlike 99.99 percent of men , I've made up neck and jaw exercises like arm wrestling men do forearms . Again they are slow body building neck exercises , i out wrestled every scrum head wrestling with every front row in rugby with ease , one thing I did was gum shield top and one bottom and neck curled rope thro the weights , beware tho u need good teeth lol

Great vid lads.Keep up the great work 😁

I love this content. Keep it up. Helps me alot as a Jiujitsu and judo guy

4:30 talking about those isometric throws, I'm a fairly new judoka but I don't believe those are don't to build muscle but instead they work more on the Technique of forcing through a resisting opponent and maybe some neurological aspect.

Very interesting video. Thank you.

More judo content, please! Also, tips on how to get as strong as possible without gaining too much weight!

Thanks for delivering on the requests! Regarding the banded "exercises". That's not actually gym training which some might mistake it as. That's technique training. It's called "Tandoku-Renshu", basically shadow judo. Or an extension of it. Or at least correctly applied it is, some athlete might have actually mistaken it as resistance training and do a weird loose aerobic exercise instead of focusing on the correctness of the movement, the power and mobility, over the amount of movement done (for example the guy doing some sort of ballerina spin dance with loose bands and odd power/speed phasing in the video example). It is stupid difficult to practice your body's movement through air in a controlled fashion without any resistance, so many judokas use bands when they want to do technique training in the style of "uchikomi" - entering/repetition practice for a throw, but don't have access to a training partner, for example there is no training session. A lot of judo is about how you enter into the throw and practicing that without partner is just very difficult. The bands allow you to experience the lift of arms for example or give a bit of counter-resistance when you kick your leg high up for example practicing uchimata, one of the more difficult and mobility demanding throws. To summarize: people shouldn't mistake the very lightweight banded exercises as resistance training - it is extra technique training because nobody has personal uke (the receiver of throw) access 24/7. Shadow training the entrance to a throw is very difficult in terms of moving your body the correct way, without any resistance at all. The resistance to throw is also interesting. Often times if you put your leg in the right place or drop your weight, the amount of force in the throw becomes much less important. But when you're equally skilled and the opponent took advantage over your shift, the strength always becomes a big part of the game. Some really strong guys' style is just overpowering the opponent when they get the slightest opportunity - where normally you wouldn't be able to carry the throw to the end, but the strength they have allows them to nudge it to the finish line or compensate for a small technique short-coming. However the japanese are nuts. The lightweight guys are so good at fundamentals that they can easily throw bigger guys, because they just force you into that mistake that makes you fly like a child. They get a grip, they have the foot technique, they bite like a shark when there's an opening and they force you into that opening one way or another. Worth mentioning is also the katame-waza, wrestling on the floor or what should you call it? When talking about the rotational strength and resistance to that. So much of the floor action is twisting and turning.That was a Shintaro Nakano clip, wasn't it! I find generally that the most difficult thing about judo and resistance training is fitting both in a week. I feel like the resistance training should be done in so much lesser intensity/volume to not affect your judo training that it feels like you're just fooling around at the gym. At least my experience has been that a good gym training takes that time to recover and between judo sessions it's difficult to even fit an effective training from judo recovery needs.

Excellent! Thanks!

great work

Take a shot every time Gurph says Trows 🍻 thanks for another great video boys

Algo gainz 💪🏻🔥

Thanks guys great work. What are your thoughts on exchanging the straight bar with a Safety squat bar and a trap bar for DL’s ? I have old herniated discs that sometimes flare up on those 2 on traditional barbell exercises. But since migrating to the SSQ bar and Trap bar it’s been a lot better Any thoughts

Many S&C coaches that work with high lvl judoka shy away from deadlifting. I think it can be valuable simply because there just arent that many full body exercises, that are both easy to learn and allow you to load a lot of weight onto a barbell. Seems like you guys feel the same way.....

You’ve talked a lot about lower body movements, which I will agree is the core of judo, lower body and lower back strenght is the most important. But what would you do for upperbody? Weighted pull ups, weighted dips, and overhead press? Would those be sufficient in creating that upperbody strenght?