Originally posted by arnisador
In some ways Judo is a victim of its own success as an Olympic sport.
One could even say in many ways:
1. The impression has arisen that judo has no value outside of the ring, which, if one looks solely at the way the art is practiced in competition, is a valid assumption.
2. The current scoring system has led to a disproportionate use of throws, thereby reducing the amount of time spent on ground grappling -- When Kano developed the art, it was supposed to be around 50/50, today it is often trained more like 80/20 in favor of throws.
3. Much of the character-building that was inherent in pre-Olympic judo has decreased if not dissapeared -- it is now common to see competitors argue with referees over a call, something that was unimaginable back in the 50's.
4. Respect for the authentic and orthodox execution of a technique has eroded almost completely, and many techniques are now executed almost completely through strength as opposed to proper form.
5. Many very talented MAists have moved away from judo into to other grappling arts due to the aforementioned reasons, thereby decreasing the pool of potentially great judoka. (Mike Swain's new take on judo rules, which has less of a disparity between throws and ground techniques, as well as support from the higher-ups in judo, who are now realizing that they are losing talented practitioners to BJJ and sambo because of this disproportion of techniques, and are making a sincere effort to do something about it, are hopely putting this problem on the road to resolution).
Realize that in traditional schools that equally emphasize the sport and self-defense aspects of the curriculum, these are not nearly as large of a problem. Unfortunately, schools like that are becoming more and more rare. My hope is that as people realize this, the situation will change.