This discussion was posted on another forum, which got out of hand due to abusive attempts to hijack the thread, we have a vast amount of knowlegde using this forum, so Id like to ask it here, without the trolls,

Because I was having a discussion with a guy last night about the fact that Judo is not a sport,

it took a lot of persuading and several shimewaza to get him to come round to my way of thinking,

one of the examples I used was the fact that he was wearing a Blue Gi, and I tried to explain why it wasnt what Judo is about, and that there is a reason the Gi is white, and that the IJF brought in the blue Gi for tournaments for the spectator and referee, and that the spectator was/is nothing to do with judo either, and it went on, and finally he started to understand where I was coming from,

That whilst you train to win, you learn to understand that winning in life is important, but the fact that you have mutual respect and welfare to consider, the win is important but not neccesarily at all costs,

To win with an Ippon is the idea and to win effectively,

How koka and Yoko are another abomination of the rules.

We then carried on to to talk about how sport is affecting Judo in a negative way, for example, when a footballer gets knocked over in the box and flails his arms around expecting a penalty, its no different to when a Judoka is purposely pushing Uke out of bounds or stalling with a Koka, You have to go for the Ippon,

Kano Shihan was once asked "How do you become great at Judo?", his reply was...

Never Miss a Lesson.

I have always considered Judo a martial art with sporting applications. However I would agree that the governing bodies of Judo have a lot to answer for as I think that they have moved in the opposite way from which Judo is about, as winning at all costs is acceptable and forgetting about honour and self respect which is all too apparent in todays society. Judo is a very underated combat form, I often get amusing comments aimed at me when people find out I do Judo , however these comments tend to die out after a brief demonstration of what one can do with Judo usually followed by " I thought Judo was just throwing" , then the comments tend to stop after this. I am not saying I am a bully but sometimes certain people need to be educated.

The ruling bodies of Judo need to take a long look at what is happenning in the martial arts/sports world, it isn't just Judo that is suffering Karate and other arts are also in the spotlight . Martialarts are called this for a reason keep them seperate, honour and self respect are far more important than gold medals( which are nice to have ) I know that I am long winded sorry about that but I do feel strongly about certain things and this is one of them.



Thanks for reading


Kevin

Hi Kevin

What would you say if I said Judo was Neither a Sport or a Martial Art?

An interesting concept maybe, but the original concept of Judo is/was neither, as we all know Judo is translated into Ju = Gentle and Do = Way

The difference being the Do aspect, the way, as another poster has put quite eloquently that a Do is the perfection of one's self and a Jutsu is a perfection of ones technique, therefore, Judo is a way of life rather than a martial art or sport.

Judo has a sporting aspect in its olympic links, but that wasnt Kano's intention, he in fact did not introduce Judo to the olympics, depsite being on the olympic committee. I would imagine he would not be too impressed with Judo as it stands today in the eye of a spectator.

Judo has evolved into a sport and mostly trained as a sport in sports halls without sensei but istructor or coaches and the discipline is minimal, without ritsu rei and general etiquette, I know at Shinto we have discipline and etiquette, but after visiting other dojo, it is apparent that these fundamentals are becoming watered down and Judo is turning into just a sporting activity.

Shiai (competition) was an important factor of Judo training as a gauge to see how you have personally developed, just as Kata is an important aspect, as well as randori and uchi komi, ritsu rei and much more they are all important aspects.