Why do BJJ and Judo teaches lie about strength?

[Burning Hammer]

Great! We got an Olympian on our forum and he will tell us all secrets.

You don't need to be an Olympian to know strength and speed are utilized just as much as technique if not more at that level.

 

[Striderxdj]

The perpetuated idea that the best judo/bjj guys dont use strength is humorous and nonsensical.

Some level of stength is required.. look at their faces when they throw or attempt certain techniques.

 

[n.diazismylife1999]

There are oversimplifications on both sides.

Strength is important, but it's not as simple as "strength and technique > technique." Everyone has SOME strength, and people's technique isn't equal either, and someone can have a technique/techniques that work well against heavier opponents, etc. Ultimately it always comes down to the individuals, after the obvious statements that technique is important and strength matters.

 

[Dogstarman]

Instructors tell beginners this so they can work on their technique. Technique beats strength. Strength and technique beats just technique. Don't worry about it so much.

 

[TehGwarch]

Competition kind of ruined things, it was intended to be a tool, not an end in itself. Once people know each others game there's no more surprises and tie goes to the strongest.

Naturally the "athletes" came and they have mediocre skills but can still win with speed, power and the same 3 throws.

They are "good enough" at Judo and super athletic, so they try to fall so as not to get points scored, tumble all over each other in a heap like white belts, do gymnastics or land on their face to avoid a throw, etc.

It's shit IMO but hey. lol

 

[AnotherOldGuy]

You can't walk across the floor without using strength - anyone who has a relative in the late stages of cancer knows this.

Kano's philosophy in judo wasn't to use no strength, it was to use what strength you had with maximum efficiency. A bit after Kano died Mifune took over the Kodokan (home of judo in Japan), and started to teach a philosophy of using minimal strength. Very idealistic, but competition judo is still based on Kano, not Mifune, for the obvious reason that you need strength to do anything, so use whatever you have - just use it efficiently.

Technique tends to work as a multiplier - it can double or triple your effective strength. But if you have almost no strength, it makes less difference than you think; three times almost nothing is still almost nothing. Think of a lever; using one can double what you lift, but if the next guy can lift three times as much as you, he'll still lift more than you can with a lever.

And anyone who thinks anyone winning medals in Olympic judo doesn't have phenomenal technique is fooling themselves. Throws don't look clean at that level because everyone is very, very good at both offense and defense. Do some randori with an Olympic judoka and, unless you're near that level yourself, you'll find that suddenly they can pull off very clean techniques. Everyone at the Olympics is very athletic, there's only a few percentage points of distinction in strength and speed between them (you see this in timed events - the difference between first and last in the 100 m sprint is typically less than 5%, and often less than 1%). The ones winning at level are the ones with the best technique.

Its like looking at a top level baseball pitcher striking out batters, and thinking that batters in major league baseball have lousy technique. Put them in your recreational league and you'll see just how good their technique really is.

 

[dmwalking]

I'm not sure what OP's point is, but yeah, strength and size are important.

 

[hanfeng]

i think, IMO, that martial arts (especially bjj) are sold to give a weaker, less athletic person an advantage when competing/fighting with someone larger, stronger, etc. and it may be true to a certain extent if the other person is untrained. However, if your opponent is a trained person, of course their strength and speed will playing into the fight. I think if two people have equally perfected a technique, a sweep for instance, and one person is stronger/faster/etc, that person is likely to hit it more successfully.

 

[Chungungo]

My teacher always say that Judo is smart way to using power, of course if you have strength that can use for judo is not bad...

 

[Thrawn33]

Unless you're a judo god like Mifune strength helps.

Look at Kimura FFS.

 

[Bayonet]

Several Judo 'Gods' for reference.

'Demon' Yokoyama Sakujirō
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/10/2b/19/102b191daf067ce8373ffb095054cfb2.jpg

Mifune
http://judomania.no/wp-content/uploads/MifuneBody.jpg

Tatsukuma Ushijima
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Tatsukuma_Ushijima.jpg

Kimura
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...93).jpg/220px-Masahiko_Kimura_(1917-1993).jpg

Anton Geesink
http://asaikarate.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/geesink-training.jpg

Look how jacked these guys technique's are. Tatsukuma's friggin neck is just swollen with knowledge.


Strength matters. It might be second place to good technique, but it's a damn close second.

 

[McA]

Today I was hearing how the Olympic guys all use technique, that they hardly use their strength or speed advantage it's all technique. ...

Olympic sports include judo, boxing, taekwondo, and wrestling. If you are talking about the judo and didn't actually watch any of the judo competitions, then your opinion is uninformed. This year, judo gold and silver was all about technique: get a small score early, and then stall until time runs out. People pretending to attack and not getting penalized; people wasting time with pretend groundwork. Waiting for the opponent to attack, performing a weak counter, getting an undeserved/barely deserved yuko, and then wasting time seems like bad judo and bad sportsmanship to me, but was clearly planned beforehand.

 

[irc]

All else equal, strength wins.

 

[Hotora86]

I blame The Karate Kid. That movie perpetuated this myth of mystical training allowing the weaker, less athletic guy to beat up the athletic guy who trains hard all the time, and it's utter BS. Daniel-san would have gotten his ass kicked in that tournament in real life. He had never sparred! He got his black belt in like 4 months! But the popularity of that movie and others like it in the 80s led gym owners to market along those lines. You may think that I'm being silly blaming a movie for it, but if you look at martial arts stuff prior to the 80s it was pretty hardcore, even arts we now think of as not that serious like TKD and Karate. But once people figured out that they could sell 'disiprine' and 'character' rather than hard sparring and get more students they started doing so en masse. And thus the martial-arts-delusional-complex was born.

The Karate Kid is responsible for McDojos and the watering down of Karate and TKD! Crazy but I love the theory.

 

[QingTian]

Tatsukuma Ushijima
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Tatsukuma_Ushijima.jpg

Wow, I am jealous of that man's hair.

 

[Gorbag]

You will not go far with zero aerobic and anarobic capacity either.

 

[Forceof1]

My dad always taught me:
"When all else fails, brute force prevails"

 

[Gorbag]

My dad always taught me:
"When all else fails, brute force prevails"

Your dad was wrong - what do you do with brute force after gassing?

 

[rmongler]

People too focused on the 'minimum effort' part rather than the 'maximum effect' part.

The 'minimum effort'/'pure technique is how intelligent persons, such as myself, prevail over the barbarians' part is most attractive to people who can't hack the 'maximum effect' part in any case (so it is in fact populist, its apparent elitist sensibility a mere pretense), and hence functions as a strategy to save face and gain social status in absence of actual virtues, intellectual or otherwise, and as a rationalization to prevent any existential angst caused by their solipsistic self-idealizations being contradicted by reality.

 

[freaky]

Today I was hearing how the Olympic guys all use technique, that they hardly use their strength or speed advantage it's all technique. Even if you're at worlds for BJJ they use technique before physical skills. I just want this blatant lie to end. The people who believe it probably aren't athletes. Speed and power are obviously good WITH technique but everyone at those levels has good technique. Not only that, they will use those advantages to get into position to apply proper technique. It's ridiculous we feign ignorance to students like this still.

how else are they going to get little midgets to train their art? Same reason why Helio chose Royce to fight at UFC 1.

Also they are saying technique > strength. But when technique is the same, then what's next? The person with the more strength will win if same technique. There is a balance between technique and strength. Of course, it is always more favorable to the stronger guy but the weaker guy have much better technique then the weaker guy will still win.

Also go youtube that bodybuilder guy vs that bjj guy.