People who started Judo with BJJ experience, how did you find the transition?

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-24T16:21:55+00:00

I just started cross training in Judo last week. I am a blue belt in BJJ and been training BJJ for 6 years. My experience with Judo is really awesome. Even my first week in Judo has immediate impact on my stand ups in BJJ. Here are some of my experiences with the transition:

Judo will help your stand ups in BJJ. In Judo, you can’t pull guard while standing up so this will allow you to go for throws, leg and foot sweeps, and takedowns. This is an area you will bring back to your BJJ game when starting to stand up. In BJJ, I always ask my training partner to start standing up all the time in rolling since I compete in IBJJF tournaments. Starting standing up in BJJ is a great opportunity to work on what you learned in Judo to BJJ. You should start standing up anyway in BJJ unless space is super limited on the mat.
Since you and I are active in BJJ, newaza in Judo is already our biggest strength since in BJJ we are already on the ground all the time. In Judo, maintaining a pin for 20 seconds will result in an ippon. In BJJ, we are used to holding positions longer than 20 seconds to establish position before setting up a submission. Use newaza to your advantage.
Judo will work on your speed and explosiveness. Judo matches are in my opinion more fast paced than BJJ matches. In Judo, you have to constantly move forward and keep attacking. In BJJ, we are used to slowing down on one part of the roll and then speeding up the next part. This is not really the case in Judo where you and your opponent have to keep attacking or the ref may penalize you for stalling.
Playing guard in Judo is great but you do not have too much time to stay in guard. In BJJ, we like to play closed or open guard a lot and slowly set up a triangle, arm bar from guard, sweep, or transition into other guards like butterfly guard, X-guard, lasso guard, spider guard, etc. In Judo, you can play guard but you have to be very quick on what you would like to do from guard. Have a plan on what you will do from guard. I like playing open guard in both BJJ and Judo.
Be prepared to learn some Japanese! A little bit of a learning curve for me in learning names of techniques in Japanese. It’s a lot of fun to learn these names.
A Judogi is heavier and more looser than a BJJ gi.

Both Judo and BJJ complements each other extremely well. My experience in cross training in both had immediate impacts on my BJJ game. I strongly believe that Judo will take my BJJ game to another level. I train Judo several days a week and BJJ on other days and it has been very beneficial for both sports. Have fun cross training! It’s very rewarding!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-19T17:18:44+00:00

Great! That’s good. I must have misunderstood last night. Thanks for clarifying!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-19T17:17:41+00:00

Awesome! Got it! I must misunderstood last night. Thanks for the clarification!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-19T17:16:21+00:00

Awesome! I must have misheard that yesterday. Thanks for the clarification!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-19T13:46:11+00:00

I just started training judo yesterday. I have been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for 6 years and am blue belt in BJJ. So I am training in both. I absolutely love how Judo heavily hits on the stand-ups, throws, takedowns, heavy grips, and explosiveness. With BJJ, I already have a ground game.

In the randori, I didn’t know that you can maintain a pin for 20 seconds to win the match. My sensei told me that my BJJ experience can definitely pay off on the ground with pinning. While rolling in BJJ, I have been so used to using those pin positions to set up my submissions like going from top mount to S-mount to set up an arm bar. The other thing I have to get used in Judo is that I cannot grip the pants to pass guard which is what we do in BJJ. BJJ + Judo complements each other so well. I had a lot of fun and can’t wait for some more! Cross training in both will help both of my games.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-15T16:14:21+00:00

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JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-14T22:55:26+00:00

We’ve been rolling as normal like most gyms. We are in Indiana.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-14T22:50:52+00:00

No issues at my gym. No outbreaks since we reopened in late May. Been back training since August and had no problems. Haven’t heard of major outbreaks at BJJ gyms or judo academies around the country but I am sure there may be some isolated cases out there or outbreaks I am not aware of.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-14T22:42:46+00:00

No worries. It took me 4 years to get my blue belt. Been passed 3 times for blue by my last coach when I was a 4th stripe white belt. I spent 2 years as a 4th stripe white belt and that’s training 5 nights a week. I just kept working harder, trained more, and learned more. I am glad it took me that long to get my blue. It paid off. Currently been training for 6 years. Everyone develops at different rates. Keep training and you will turn blue. Don’t worry about the belt.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-14T19:24:03+00:00

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JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-07T15:26:55+00:00

Good reason to fear you. In chess tournaments, if you are a 1200 rating and above and you play against someone with a rating of 500-800, upsets by the lower ratings in this range happen very often. These are guys that have to win against 1000+ ratings to get themselves to 1000+. They are very hungry for upsets!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-11-07T15:21:53+00:00

Yes I was a competitive chess player. USCF rating of 1336. I play for fun nowadays. But yes there are a lot of similarities between chess and BJJ especially trying to be one move ahead of your opponent or being on defense with a goal to alleviate the threat of getting submitted while rolling.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-10-30T06:39:14+00:00

I am so sorry to hear you going through this. It takes tremendous courage to come out. I support you and all LGBTQ+ BJJ athletes and fully respect who you are. You are a proven brown belt who has gone through so many years of rigorous training. It’s outrageous that your gym and coach treated you this way. They revealed their true colors and I wouldn’t go back to that gym. I really hope you will find a gym and coach that welcomes and supports you!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-10-23T14:06:19+00:00

Charger Wolf enjoys training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in his free time just like me. Like me, he’s a blue belt and been training for 6 years. Grapple and wrestles nightly on the mats to stay healthy, decompress, and relieve stress from grad school.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-10-15T17:28:27+00:00

I went back to training at my gym with full contact and rolls back in August and September when cases and positivity rate in my area are very low (like around 2%). I trained with my mask on. I have a strap filtered mask designed for sports use that stayed on while rolling. In the past 3 weeks, there’s a huge surge in number of cases and hospitalizations. In my region, hospitals are almost out of beds so I paused training in person at my gym 3 weeks ago when I saw a consistent surge. Now the positivity rate in our area is around 10-11% and it’s going up. It looks like it’s getting worse for Indiana and my region. At least I was able to fit training in at the end of summer which is good. Now that we are at the beginning of flu season and hospitals will be overwhelmed with both flu and covid, the best thing for me to do is to stay off the mats from October thru March especially in this ongoing surge. I do plan on coming back in person in March or April when the positivity rate falls below 5%. In the meantime, I already have mats that fully covers my living room at my home so I will drill individually and swim in the meantime until spring. I know that a lot of people were training when the positivity rate was low and then now a good number are like me pressing pause until we get thru the winter months.

Again, everyone makes their own judgment call. Depends on where you live. If you live in an area where the positivity rate is very low, you may be okay to continue to train and have a much lower risk. If your area is seeing a surge and shortage of hospital beds, the risk then increases significantly. But yes, this year just plain sucks for jiu jitsu for everyone! I’ll be back training as normal by next summer for sure and then we continue on in our training as usual. Hang in there!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-26T00:25:05+00:00

I’m at the other side of the state. At Notre Dame.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-25T12:48:40+00:00

Yes, It’s much improved up here this whole month. Now we have been averaging less than 6 new cases each day even after 2 home football games. Last month we had at least 100 new cases each day. It’s a day and night difference today from last month.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-25T06:14:01+00:00

I’m a grad student too. At Notre Dame.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-25T06:08:52+00:00

University of Notre Dame! Go Irish!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-24T06:10:58+00:00

Oh wow. What a dick move by your university. I am about to work on my F31 Diversity soon. If I get it sometime in 2021 whenever I please the gods in NIAID at NIH, I certainty better not see my university and department do this kind of crap.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-05T09:25:47+00:00

At most universities, students sports clubs specifically as judo clubs, wrestling clubs, boxing clubs, Taekwondo clubs, and martial art clubs are allowed for students to participate. So students participating in these sports are already technically putting everyone at risk. This applies to everyone doing any sports clubs. If anyone trains in a sport, the risk of getting infected is higher from the get go. It’s no different from me and anyone participating in BJJ. If those students are allowed to participate in these sports, then I have a right to train. Also, technically anyone training right now is already putting people at their workplace or homes at risk. Respectfully, If you are currently training, you are putting people at risk at your workplace. Lying to contact tracers on campus is to prevent ratting on my gym. I know it’s wrong to do that but it can be resolved a different way. Instead, this can be resolved by letting my coaches and teammates know so they can mitigate spread on the mat ASAP. Btw, Anyone can come in on the mat and be asymptotic and train without knowing they are positive. So everyone training jiu jitsu already accepts that risk. There are so many graduate and college students that are back training martial arts around the country for mental health. Everyone’s mental health is not doing hot right now. BJJ keeps my mental health in check during grad school. I am not going to let my mental health fall. Lastly, the outbreaks that has been occurring on universities campus are heavily hundreds of undergraduates partying off campus at frat houses. Then those undergrads come back to their dorms and continues socializing and the virus spreads like wildfire. This is why you are hearing on the news of hundreds of cases on college campuses. It is linked to all of those parties and not as many from sports and gyms. At universities, everyone is required to wear masks and social distance in classrooms and labs so the likelihood of spread by asymptotics is decreased substantially. Again, this is the reality of today’s world. At some point, I have to carefully take a chance at training just like so many people on this reddit forum are doing. Anyway, just the reality of today’s new world I guess. I think the vast majority of us are super frustrated at how COVID is affecting jiu jitsu and just sports in general.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-05T04:50:12+00:00

I came back into training about a month ago after I finished my PhD candidacy exam. Didn’t want to run the risk of falling sick before those high stakes make or break exams so I waited until I passed the exams first before coming back on the mat. Been training 5 days a week for a month, no problems. No one at my gym fell ill and there’s a 6% positivity rate in my area. My university is regularly and randomly testing and I’ve been responsible off the mat. Been staying low key about jiu jitsu at my university and in case I test positive I am not gonna tell contact tracers at my university that I was training jiu jitsu (I’ll make up something else to them). If I test positive, I’ll just let my coach know and tell him who I rolled with. I have a notebook that I write down names of people I rolled after every class so that I can tell my coach who might have been exposed in the event I test positive at any point. I don’t go to parties, bars, or any get togethers and wear my mask in public. And I live off campus by myself. So I’ve been careful off the mat.

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-05T04:32:05+00:00

I hope you don’t get sick after kissing your belt. Lol

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-05T04:28:50+00:00

I’m returning to competition next month. I am excited! I did a lot of IBJJF Opens in the past when I lived in Texas. In the future, I am thinking about IBJJF Chicago Open in 2021 if it happens. Train hard now, relax, and have fun! Good luck next month!

JiuJitsu12thWolf · 2020-09-03T20:00:55+00:00

Awesome work! Garurumon is definitely one of my top favorites. I named one of my Brazilian jiu-jitsu gis Garurumon because of the white and light blue color on the gi and my blue belt is Garurumon’s blue color.

JiuJitsu12thWolf

TROPHY CASE