Legends of Judo: Neil Adams, Jimmy Pedro & Steve Cohen Share Stories and the Future of Judo

[@Yupppi]

Thanks for delivering this chat. Always fun to hear giants share their thoughts. Also I miss Cohen's coffee hour reviewing competitive judo clips. I really like Adams' ideas about newaza. I was watching wrestling in the olympics and it was interesting what they had going, like free attack on the ground to the opponent if you're passive and other things. Also the head touch I think could work out so that tori's head does not matter, only if the uke's head touches the mat. Because almost always tori's movement is very controlled and if the head touches the mat, it's very softly and rolling to the shoulder often from rather low bent over position, not smashing forehead first and often still feet on the ground. Definitely not hansoku make worthy at least. When uke hits the head to the mat it's almost always trying to deny a score and comes quite dangerously (in my opinion) taking the impact instead of the body. I also like how they supposedly do things in Japan, like you have to be certain age and level to be allowed to perform some techniques, and head touching the mat could be one of those things. In general I like the idea of restricting some things to more experienced and mature judokas, so they have the necessary skills and responsibility about it. So you wouldn't let the head touch the mat for kids or inexperienced players, but as they mature and become very proficient in technique, you could allow something like that because they're not recklessly diving in techniques they don't handle. I'm also a big fan of the idea that leg grabs would come back with at least one hand on the gi before going for the leg in techniques and no double leg grab techniques. Grappler Kingdom's video "Banned Judo Techniques - Leg grabbing throws" has 10 minutes of examples of really beautiful and athletic positive leg grab throws.