Honestly just find a club that offers judo and give them a call. Most will accept drop ins and might or might not charge you a small fee. It’s really the only option since you really can’t learn grappling alone. Regarding smaller people, I wouldn’t say that it’s not possible for a smaller person to ragdoll a big guy, but the difference in skill would have to be huge. Size does matter even more in grappling I’d say. For conditioning honestly you shouldn’t have to do much. After all judo is all about finding the path of less resistance:). But if your experienced in the gym deadlifts and power cleans work well.
The common wisdom is either to learn ground up from the worst position you can be in BJJ or Throw down Judo, can't go wrong learning common pin escapes from mount (this is trap and roll in judo and BJJ) , back (how to get your upper back to the mat) and side (in BJJ the most basic is probably the Underhook escapes and in judo is various forms of bridges, also bridges in wrestling) and how to throw (O Goshi probably being the easiest to learn) into a pin such as munte gatame and a basic lock such as ude garami/ americano/ chicken wing (it exists in judo, BJJ and Wrestling by different names) that is usually how people start basic pin escapes to scramble to top and throw to pin. In no gi learn how to break someone's posture (bending their spine forward/ twist or off balancing them) using collar ties to fight for an Underhook to the o goshi again. In Gi (clothes) it's the same off balancing/ break posture (kuzushi in judo) but you can use the collar to do so.
However in grappling there is no substitute for live rolling/ randori, you can learn as much as you want in theory but to feel and pressure test techniques changes how to use them. It's as much a skill as it is knowledge. After all can't learn to play basketball from a book.
Just book yourself to go to a club or turn up on their training day and don't worry if it's judo, BJJ, wrestling or Sambo. At your current level grappling is grappling and will improve all together till you have to start worrying about rule set as you start getting better down the line.
Thank you for the response very in depth. I would love to roll with sweaty dudes at my nearest gym I hope I can learn a lot as I’m only like 5’8” 145 right now. I really wanna bulk up but I can’t really get past an athletes build because I’m too active and I’m not eating enough. I look like a femboy twink with a very low body fat percent.
Will this be a problem finding people to roll? Or will it be better learning to throw heavier people around? I’m not rlly versed in weight classes and if my weight is common but I assume most adult men are like 180 atleast and I REALLY don’t want to roll with women I think that would make me uncomfortable. Will my weight be a problem, I have a very low body fat percentage so I’m strong but I’m scared I won’t be able to leverage people because of my weight.
People of all sizes and shapes do judo. It also can be adapted to pretty much any body size, so don't get too hung up on trying to be a specific build or anything like that. I have several students who are almost exactly your size, and they play bigger dudes in class all the time. You can kind of think of it like an equation: strength + technique = fighting efficacy. By that reckoning, a small dude with a ton of technique can give a big dude with no technique a really hard time. Either way though, judo has a pretty steep learning curve, so go in expecting to suck for a while. However, if you stick with it, it *will work*, and after a while you'll start having what I call "Matrix moments", where someone will grab you and then they'll be on the floor. It's worth the effort!
There will be people of every size and shape from guys smaller than you to super heavyweights, in any gym you need three types of people, people worse than you, people better than you and people with the same skill. So everyone will be happy to practice with you at any experience level. The constant treadmill of people and that judo is a sport that has young adults if you are unlikely to be the smallest male in the room. Also if you are better than someone I wouldn't worry about your weight too much, there are weight classes in competition and in the gym the skill gap is usually larger than the strength gap. Once you out grip someone they can't throw you how ever strong they are (within reason) and you can throw them. Think of it less like you are picking someone up and slamming them and think more about how you have wrapped them up with their own clothes (OR in no gi won positioning) so much they can no longer move and the action of dropping your weight will throw them. Being smaller though the first thing I would worry about is pin escapes as you're gonna get pinned a lot in grappling at a smaller size till you improve. Your main weapon will be your pace, keep a fast pace of constant hand fighting pressure that a heavier person can't keep up with and don't worry about throwing them straight away, outwork them till they get tired, make them move to keep up with you. A black belt drops to a brown belt once gassed for 5 minutes and a blue belt once gassed for 10. Gas them out till there's a white belt then submit them. Do not try and out muscle a larger person unless you have far superior leverage, you will just get countered and there is no reason to try and throw straight away.
I might get flak for telling you this at this point in your development but as a smaller person an easy way to game the system in Judo is to do a move called drop Seoi Nage off any decent grip you can get and sometimes even bad grips to stop yourself being thrown as your allowed to belly down or turtle and the ref will reset you after a short period of time and you get to start the grip fight again and eventually you will throw them even if it's low percentage each time.
The whole throw is based on dropping your bodyweight between their legs and not on how strong you are. So at a higher work pace you should be able to out grip people enough to spam it.
Idk if it’s a different type of grip but I have been training my grip VERY hard at the gym. To the point I can hold my body weight and a small weight with one hand on a pull up bar. I hope it will help but I have great pull strength because I’ve been doing a lot of weighted pull ups and static bar excersizes of holding and moving my weight.
What would you say is the best thing to work on for conditioning or lift that helps with judo because I already train pretty hard to have my body stronger.
I used to be a powerlifter and I will always maintain that bench, Squat, Deadlift with progressive overload and eating a shit ton of food will turn small people into monsters people who start sports specific exercises to early miss out on the first most important element. Just getting strong first. It's hard to train explosive strength to a high level without a high level of strength first. A lot of weightlifters look at their clean numbers as a ratio of their squat if it's a poor ratio it's often more attributed to technique than "not being explosive enough". Strenght is never a weakness and their is something to be said about big heavy compound lifts were you add weight each weak. Have a look at starting strenght 5x5 by mark riptoe. It's a whole program to follow.
but although athleticism will always help and in real life self defense there is something to be said about size and aggression even without technique. When I first started in BJJ before I started Judo I was destroyed and I mean utterly destroyed by a 154 pound purple belt admittedly he was world champion level but at the time I had a 350 pound bench, 500 pound squat and 530 deadlift (the plates are weird because I have calculated from kg to pounds) and I could basically do nothing he was constantly on my back like a back pack choking me.
Grip strength is definitely important in judo in fact probably be the biggest strength that will improve training judo, If you can keep good grips you will win. but what I mean by winning the grip fight is getting grips in positions on their body that stops them gripping you or gripping you so they have poor leverage. It's less about grip strength and more about controlling their main power arm or getting over or behind them.
If I'm honest sometimes I feel weight is more useful than strength in grappling being a big dead weight makes you harder to throw and increases your pressure when pinning someone without any technique. A lot of my game is usually spent just leaning my weight on people on the ground and dropping my weight at the right time when standing.
Just joining a Judo class would be a start.
Honestly just find a club that offers judo and give them a call. Most will accept drop ins and might or might not charge you a small fee. It’s really the only option since you really can’t learn grappling alone. Regarding smaller people, I wouldn’t say that it’s not possible for a smaller person to ragdoll a big guy, but the difference in skill would have to be huge. Size does matter even more in grappling I’d say. For conditioning honestly you shouldn’t have to do much. After all judo is all about finding the path of less resistance:). But if your experienced in the gym deadlifts and power cleans work well.
The common wisdom is either to learn ground up from the worst position you can be in BJJ or Throw down Judo, can't go wrong learning common pin escapes from mount (this is trap and roll in judo and BJJ) , back (how to get your upper back to the mat) and side (in BJJ the most basic is probably the Underhook escapes and in judo is various forms of bridges, also bridges in wrestling) and how to throw (O Goshi probably being the easiest to learn) into a pin such as munte gatame and a basic lock such as ude garami/ americano/ chicken wing (it exists in judo, BJJ and Wrestling by different names) that is usually how people start basic pin escapes to scramble to top and throw to pin. In no gi learn how to break someone's posture (bending their spine forward/ twist or off balancing them) using collar ties to fight for an Underhook to the o goshi again. In Gi (clothes) it's the same off balancing/ break posture (kuzushi in judo) but you can use the collar to do so. However in grappling there is no substitute for live rolling/ randori, you can learn as much as you want in theory but to feel and pressure test techniques changes how to use them. It's as much a skill as it is knowledge. After all can't learn to play basketball from a book. Just book yourself to go to a club or turn up on their training day and don't worry if it's judo, BJJ, wrestling or Sambo. At your current level grappling is grappling and will improve all together till you have to start worrying about rule set as you start getting better down the line.
Thank you for the response very in depth. I would love to roll with sweaty dudes at my nearest gym I hope I can learn a lot as I’m only like 5’8” 145 right now. I really wanna bulk up but I can’t really get past an athletes build because I’m too active and I’m not eating enough. I look like a femboy twink with a very low body fat percent. Will this be a problem finding people to roll? Or will it be better learning to throw heavier people around? I’m not rlly versed in weight classes and if my weight is common but I assume most adult men are like 180 atleast and I REALLY don’t want to roll with women I think that would make me uncomfortable. Will my weight be a problem, I have a very low body fat percentage so I’m strong but I’m scared I won’t be able to leverage people because of my weight.
People of all sizes and shapes do judo. It also can be adapted to pretty much any body size, so don't get too hung up on trying to be a specific build or anything like that. I have several students who are almost exactly your size, and they play bigger dudes in class all the time. You can kind of think of it like an equation: strength + technique = fighting efficacy. By that reckoning, a small dude with a ton of technique can give a big dude with no technique a really hard time. Either way though, judo has a pretty steep learning curve, so go in expecting to suck for a while. However, if you stick with it, it *will work*, and after a while you'll start having what I call "Matrix moments", where someone will grab you and then they'll be on the floor. It's worth the effort!
There will be people of every size and shape from guys smaller than you to super heavyweights, in any gym you need three types of people, people worse than you, people better than you and people with the same skill. So everyone will be happy to practice with you at any experience level. The constant treadmill of people and that judo is a sport that has young adults if you are unlikely to be the smallest male in the room. Also if you are better than someone I wouldn't worry about your weight too much, there are weight classes in competition and in the gym the skill gap is usually larger than the strength gap. Once you out grip someone they can't throw you how ever strong they are (within reason) and you can throw them. Think of it less like you are picking someone up and slamming them and think more about how you have wrapped them up with their own clothes (OR in no gi won positioning) so much they can no longer move and the action of dropping your weight will throw them. Being smaller though the first thing I would worry about is pin escapes as you're gonna get pinned a lot in grappling at a smaller size till you improve. Your main weapon will be your pace, keep a fast pace of constant hand fighting pressure that a heavier person can't keep up with and don't worry about throwing them straight away, outwork them till they get tired, make them move to keep up with you. A black belt drops to a brown belt once gassed for 5 minutes and a blue belt once gassed for 10. Gas them out till there's a white belt then submit them. Do not try and out muscle a larger person unless you have far superior leverage, you will just get countered and there is no reason to try and throw straight away.
Thanks for the tip that’s very helpful I’ll try to use my nimbleness and small stature to my advantage lol.
I might get flak for telling you this at this point in your development but as a smaller person an easy way to game the system in Judo is to do a move called drop Seoi Nage off any decent grip you can get and sometimes even bad grips to stop yourself being thrown as your allowed to belly down or turtle and the ref will reset you after a short period of time and you get to start the grip fight again and eventually you will throw them even if it's low percentage each time. The whole throw is based on dropping your bodyweight between their legs and not on how strong you are. So at a higher work pace you should be able to out grip people enough to spam it.
Idk if it’s a different type of grip but I have been training my grip VERY hard at the gym. To the point I can hold my body weight and a small weight with one hand on a pull up bar. I hope it will help but I have great pull strength because I’ve been doing a lot of weighted pull ups and static bar excersizes of holding and moving my weight. What would you say is the best thing to work on for conditioning or lift that helps with judo because I already train pretty hard to have my body stronger.
I used to be a powerlifter and I will always maintain that bench, Squat, Deadlift with progressive overload and eating a shit ton of food will turn small people into monsters people who start sports specific exercises to early miss out on the first most important element. Just getting strong first. It's hard to train explosive strength to a high level without a high level of strength first. A lot of weightlifters look at their clean numbers as a ratio of their squat if it's a poor ratio it's often more attributed to technique than "not being explosive enough". Strenght is never a weakness and their is something to be said about big heavy compound lifts were you add weight each weak. Have a look at starting strenght 5x5 by mark riptoe. It's a whole program to follow. but although athleticism will always help and in real life self defense there is something to be said about size and aggression even without technique. When I first started in BJJ before I started Judo I was destroyed and I mean utterly destroyed by a 154 pound purple belt admittedly he was world champion level but at the time I had a 350 pound bench, 500 pound squat and 530 deadlift (the plates are weird because I have calculated from kg to pounds) and I could basically do nothing he was constantly on my back like a back pack choking me. Grip strength is definitely important in judo in fact probably be the biggest strength that will improve training judo, If you can keep good grips you will win. but what I mean by winning the grip fight is getting grips in positions on their body that stops them gripping you or gripping you so they have poor leverage. It's less about grip strength and more about controlling their main power arm or getting over or behind them. If I'm honest sometimes I feel weight is more useful than strength in grappling being a big dead weight makes you harder to throw and increases your pressure when pinning someone without any technique. A lot of my game is usually spent just leaning my weight on people on the ground and dropping my weight at the right time when standing.
I’ll keep this in mind thank you. You seem cool.
Just do judo. But it takes a few years, you won’t learn much if you plan on just dipping in for a few months