Judoka vs. bodybuilder: The different lifting approaches 

1:25 - Bodybuilder training 2:30 - Judoka training 3:05 - Squat 4:25 - Pull up 5:25 - Rowing deadlift 5:50 - Bench press 6:30 - Injuries preventions 7:50 - Conclusion

I did 5 years in federal prison on drug related charges. I powerlifted, and got very strong for my weight (175 with 305 bench, 425 bucket squat, and 565 deadlift with wraps). Judo (brown belt), bjj (blue belt) and boxing have changed my life since I’ve been out, but the powerlifting has been tremendously helpful in competition. I’m 165 now and in competition I haven’t ran into anyone that I felt was stronger in my weight bracket. Of course skill can beat strength, I get whooped in class regularly, but it sure does help when you’re matches with someone similarly skilled. Now I alternate powerlifting and endurance lifting. 15 sets of 10 (db press, bb row) with strictly 60 seconds rest has made it where I don’t get sore after training anymore. Also one set of 200 squats and one set of 200 sit ups/100 leg raises has helped. If a muscle is sore the next day I consider it a weakness and work on it. Upright rows are one I’ve focused on a lot recently.

> High rep kettlebell swings, c&p, or snatch. > Body weight exercise(i.e. pull-ups, dips, push-ups, dive bombers). > Neck strengthening exercises. > Mobility and flexibility drills(especially for age 50+). > Proper rest and nutrition.

I think deadlifts can be very helpful because they work your entire posterior chain even more effectively than squats. The posterior chain is very important for any athletic activity and it helps maintain your posture. I also think core work (not situps and crunches) will also be help to keep your posture from being broken, help transfer power from the legs to the upper body and give you strength doing newaza off your back. Mace training like the kind the pelwani wrestler the Great Gama can also help with throws.

Between Judo, BJJ, Boxing, Surfing, and the Military half of what I do is rehabilitation. Knees over Toes guy has some great content. I can't recommend Slant-board Step Ups, Knees Over Toes Lunge, Norwegian Curls, and Tibialis Raises enough. I would also add X-band walks or Monster Walks as well. With all of this, your lower body should be well protected. I will add that deadlifts with a Hex Bar are a good substitute for "primary strength" for those that get injured too often with squats.

I wonder how many Judoka and others are using kettle bells . Great video Chadi . Liked and *SHARED* .

Great Video Chadi - I appreciate your clearly differentiating training for appearance (bodybuidling) vs. training for functional strength (Judo / Grappling). It's great to big big and strong as a grappler as long as you are able to apply that strength and size efficiently and effectively!

I've never done bodybuilding as part of training. I've personally found that power lifting and strongman work really well. Strongman in particular with the weighted carries translates perfectly into grappling.

Thank you Chadi for another excellent video.

Wow Thanks Chadi.

I lifted weights for several yrs when I started karate as a teen the head instructor Tom Conner competed n bodybuilding n his 50s so the dojo was fully stocked w the gear... but by mid 20s I changed dojos n I was doing calisthenics now I'm 53 n wish I kept up the weights ... I'm still working out but the extra muscles worked like a suit o armor I should have kept lifting... well I do have some dumbbells I work w but not same

Awesome video brother Chadi. All these exercises are not only beneficial for any grappler but also necessary. One exercise though, that I think all grappling based martial artists need to incorporate within their strength/conditioning regimens is grip training. Training your grip to become like a vise, is extremely important to all grappling styles.

I really appreciate your analytics👍👍!!!

KneesOverToesGuy’s programming is nearly perfect for grapplers, I probably wouldn’t be able to train without it.

I need to get myself dumbbells. Thank you for sharing ☺️.

As a former world champion powerlifter - before that national bobsleigh athlete and football player in university - as a powerlifter I became incredibly strong; but my athleticism took a huge dive. The 225lb bobsledder me vs the 255lb powerlifter me would destroy him. Elasticity and velocity are are dominant. Everything has its diminishing returns. Ie. once you can squat 600 is there a point to squatting 750??? Or would it be more beneficial to improve speed once a 600 is achieved. Everything has trade offs.

Esse canal me fez ver o judô com outros olhos 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Very good video as always. Next time you're asked "do you even lift bro", tell them "yes,and I throw bro. Wanna be my training partner"...corny as hell I know,but f them shit talkers.

Ive known about knees over toes for a long time. Now that a judo guy has recommended it, I’m now sure I will buy his new book!

Hey Chadi, what about aerobic cardiovascular output in judokas? Even though anaerobic output is needed in overall performance, how do judokas get past that initial energy dump of the first match, while still maintaining fuel in the tank for future matches?

Love your videos. Would be cool to see more videos on American catch wrestling and carnival wrestling. Not much quality content on the history of grappling out there.

Them: do you even lift bro? Chadi: ...yes lol

Deadlifts really aren't any more dangerous than any other barbell lift. People are more likely to be injured by attempting Olympic lifts with poor technique. Also, I don't think you can really compare deadlifts and rows since they're different movements (they're both great).

Excellent

Well done. A body Builder lifts for size, symmetry and definition. not the best applications for an athlete. ono was actually performing the full Clean and Jerk and Snatch lifts and he will also train the assistant exercises that a Olympic style lifter would do. Again, you made a excellent point.

Great video, i have just one remark - it wasn't chin-up that you showed but one-handed push-up. Cheers 😎👍

I remember being a young teen and wanting to look like a Mr Olympia...and then Eddie Guerrero died, and he wasn't even THAT big for THAT long. Bodybuilding has seriously lost its way. It started as a way of perfecting the human form and now it's about distorting it as much as possible

Disagree entirely with your take on deads. They build strength in the entire body, also, it's important to be skeptical about certain statements from competitors/influencers, they are known for exaggerating to get views. There are some highly naive people who actually took Arnold's statement "milk is for babies, men drink beer" seriously.

My dad's judo teacher said if he caught them at the gym he'd kick them out of school.

Functional Strength and conditioning is the way.

Great video Chadi. Thanks for including knees over toes, it’s been huge for my bjj journey. After 10 years, I’ve accumulated several injuries. So many people focus on pure strength because it sounds/feels good but it really doesn’t translate well into performance in bjj (and judo I imagine).

Also I think deadlifts are still useful for judoka, since they hit hamstrings and spinal stabiliser muscles, which you don't train with rows or squats. Throws like O-soto gari really depend on strong hamstrings, spinal stabilisers important for almost any but especially lifting throws like ura nage.

This is good. Fitness is almost equal to technique in importance in my opinion. The more strong and fit we are, the more effective the technique.

one-handed pull-ups on a finger board are absolutely insane!

Sir could you make a video about judo and indian wrestling

I may not know much about judo but I know something from having tried it in two different clubs and I have been studying lifting for a long time. If you are very short, young and healthy something like a one arm pull-up may be feasible but depending on your injury history, weight, height and age it might be a waste of time to work on. People are born to be good or bad at certain exercises and you should not glamorize any single exercise just because it looks impressive. Doug Brignole has good ideas about lifting; he basically says to use less weight and fewer compound exercises; more gains for less injury risk. Using excessive weight in biomechanically advantageous positions makes you feel like a superhuman but it does not contribute to your growth nearly as much as you think. Imagine borrowing a book from a library that weighs three kilograms and the text is really densely printed and small so you have a lot of words on every single page. Also imagine the book is about bird watching and you are extremely curious to learn about swans. Now imagine a book that weighs only 250 grams (one quarter of a kilogram) and has some pictures and the lines of text are spaced farther apart with a bigger font so there's far fewer words per page but that book happens to be about swans exclusively. Which book is going to give you more information for your troubles? Reading that huge book makes you feel like a bird watching bad ass and you might even get a Ph.D in ornithology and feel your ego inflating like a balloon but some guy with a high school education who only cares about swans might still know more about swans than you. Similarly when you get buried under 500 pounds in the squat or nearly snap your arms trying to bench 400 pounds you feel like a bad ass and you think that all that poundage is somehow transforming your entire body and everything that's being squished by the weight but that's not how it works. An arm wrestler who actually works on his forearms properly will easily overcome a powerlifter of similar height and forearm length in arm wrestling or in exercises that actually target forearms (three major muscles plus smaller ones below the elbow) intelligently. If you can train a muscle directly and are serious about getting stronger and bigger, why not train it directly instead of hoping that the muscle will somehow catch up as long as you do compounds where the muscle may act as a synergist? If you want to move to Brazil, learning Spanish helps with learning the local language (Portuguese) but it's much smarter to simply start learning Portuguese right now (the direct approach) than to learn Spanish and hope that things will work out. I'm not against compound lifting though as long as they are safe lifts and don't give you any pain. I would not recommend deadlifts or bent over barbell rows. I know people who wrecked their discs for life with that. There are safer and just as effective ways to give the MUSCLE the same stimulus without beating up your spine and joints. After all strength training is not about abusing your joints and spine and trying to use leverage to move excess weight but targeting the muscle. Athletes in competition will maximize leverage to minimize muscular effort but that does not help when it comes to getting stronger for real instead of fooling yourself with leverage and trickery.

Very interesting, it's true that judo give a very specific body. With a big back, large hips... BUt i feel like the morphotype is changing nowadays, wit tall guys like the spanish sherazadishvili etc

It's important to caveat all of this with the fact that most professional athletes are on steroids, judoka included. I mean, how on earth can you be a train judo 3 times a day - every day, be absolutely jacked to the point where you could compete in a bodybuilding competition AND have a 600lb deadlift + 500lb squat? Plus, Ono is 5'8 and competes at -73kg. Rofl, give me a break.

I saw the video where Mr Oberst said that. I disagree. That might be true for the context he used it in. As a football player and for some athletes. But as a grappler of any grappling sport I believe deadlift is very important. Pull ups and rows will not strengthen the lower back like a deadlift will. Or squats for that matter. Deadlift with squats equates to that strength in picking a dude up and setting him down enthusiastically! Squats used in conjunction with deadlifts will up your strength for grappling sports exponentially and will greatly Injury proof your back. Now if you’re a gym bro and forget that lifting is a supplement to your judo and are all about the ego and maxing, then you will certainly injure yourself squatting and deadlifting.

5:00-5:10 holy shit

Chadi my friend, you are correct saying bodybuilding splits are not the way to go for fighters, but you did not read Starting Strength yet. Its going to help you a lot in a video like these one. *After Barbell back Squats, the Deadlift is the most superior exercise you could do to get stronger*. Thats not a matter of opinion, that is how strong people got strong....Compound movements like Squats, Deadlifts, The Press, Bench Press, Chin-ups/Weighted Chins and Power Cleans/Snatchs are the foundation of strength! Later you should do too some auxiliary movements like Dips, Rows, triceps extensions, etc.. to help the numbers on the core lifts continue going up. You correctly value the importance of the Power Cleans but did not relate the Deadlift as its basis. The way to squat correctly is of course with knee over toes... so doing squats with correct technique is enough to make your knees really strong!

I love doing my push, pull split. Recently trying to lift heavier with fewer reps.

Consider training this push up - only doing a push up on your finger and toe tips. This will train your whole body from the tips to your spine - everything will be engaged. The key to every exercise is mindfulness. Most people "just do" an exercise in any way they are used to move their body that is what we truly need to be focused on bringing back the mindfulness. Mindfulness is happiness - it is seeing and feeling in your spirit that your doing will bring results because you do it that way anyway - before we do anything we have a vision or thought about before we go into action. True power comes from your spiritual strength your body has to adapt to your spiritual sate - if you want to train you train trust. as long as it is alined in your spirit :D

Lunges are a Godsend and a heavily underrated lower body excercise that I feel are just as beneficial as squats

(5:22) Should my dumbbell roll be 60% or 80% of my body weight

I am personally struggeling with core strenth, any idea or suggestion?

I do MMA, when it's not specific training striking, grappling, this is a lot of body weight exercises, squats, pushups, pull-ups, chin-ups, Burpees, mountain climbers, etc... I have days for plyo and cardio, when I use weights that's for compound movements the only isolation movement I use are wrist curls.

i was just wodering what sort of split judoka should be doing. e.g. if doing a ppl split, how much time should be spent on push, pull and legs in training for the best possible judo?

Thanks for the education in how to Do things smart in strength and flexibility training Thumbs up 👍

Judoka vs ENHANCED bodybuilder. That's nothing like a natural bodybuilder.

How many days a week we should do this work?

Deadlifts are fundamental. Squats are fundamental. But never pump bench press because it is directly affects your shoulder mobility which is extremely important in judo.

I love the filosophy of kneesovertoesguy, it's similar to mine, but I'd add the inner and outer flexions, like pencak silat stances, strong and flexible joints

I love the body of Judoka

Bodybuilding and combative arts goes together perfectly. By bodybuilding, I don't mean powerlifting. Central to bodybuilding is beauty and symmetry. You play tennis, you pick up a racket and you became a fiddler crab, totally lopsided and uneven. A central concept in bodybuilding is the symmetry of the antagonistic muscle/motion. calf raise, aka tiptoe, aka relevé has its opposite toe raise aka dorsiflexion. Combative arts are like like that, it's Ying-Yang, push-pull. Tennis is like that too. Move forward, backwards, left, right. Hit up, down, left, right, near, far. Perfect if you play tennis ambidextrously. The antagonistic concept in bodybuilding is also built-in into martial arts and martial sports. I tried to play a Judo video game, Uchi Mata for the Commodore 64 in emulation. The 2 fighters grab each other. I thought I was the character on the left of the screen. I move the joystick to the right, my character pushes his opponent backwards. I move the joystick to the left, my character pull his opponent forwards. Then I thought to myself, "Wait a minute! How do I know that I am the character on the LEFT?" Because pushing to one is pulling to the other! It's Ying-Yang, push-pull.

Total body connectivity with compound lifts and tons of calisthenics. Work in that transverse plane! Most programs are filled with movements almost exclusively along the frontal and Sagital planes. It us all about neuro motor recruitment and the entire body being connected and unified.

Chadi Kimura vs Rener Gracie make it happen flograppling

Try looking at another type of strength training, rotational strength training using clubs/gada and kettlebells. In Judo you are using a lot of rotation movements and adding weigths doing these movements will make you very strong and help increasing mobility. Take a look at Scott Sonnon who was a Sambo athlete and pioneered these training movement from India and Persia to the rest of the world. Now people like Mark Wildman dedicate to these types of training. I started changing my training about 7 years ago from bodybuilding/powerlifting/strongman (20 years of training) to this new type of training. It has changed my life, now I have a lot more mobility and added functional movement strength that at the age of 45 I started doing Judo. 7 years ago I would have never been able to do so, my body was in a really bad state. For my legs I added doing squat sits for time and partial squats for lifting my opponents and use a lot of sandbag training to increase core strength.

Chadi, how do I get a big strong leg like Ono? Damn, that leg is really huge

Trap Bar Deadlift Romanian Deadlift You can work this combo If you don't like Deadlift

Anyone got a program that covers these things that they'd recommend?

Should have timed the video when you said " do you even lift bro" with the pic of you deadlifting the mother load

Good stuff here but you forgot neck. Gotta have the thickest neck in the world to protect the upper spine when getting thrown

Hey Chadi.look the bodybuilding routines you talked about are modern,if you wanted to compare Judoka to Classic bodybuilders,you should have talked about Classic bodybuilders.. meaning those from the 1950s and before

Buen Video!!!! Gracias

When ever I’ve done press ups etc my right wrist always starts to ache, even when I try to put less weight on it

How do Japanese get calf like that ?? Please explain

Robert Oberst is a prime example of someone who was probably already stronger than 99% of people before he ever bothered learning anything about training. So when the guy who was 6'1" and 220 at 12 years old tells you to not worry about your deadlift...maybe disregard that shit. There's also many ways to deadlift, so if they feel bad to you, find a variation/form that doesn't. Probably just a limb/torso proportion issue.

Nowadays amateur wrestlers say Bodybuilding in judo I don't know. In wrestling? It is not the right. However Japanese nowadays integrate all and make Kaizen.

I'm doing a push pull leg split at the gym while doing Judo, simply because I'm skinny and I need a large, strong looking body.

Japanese aumented strength by by bodymass. This may come from the thought that the gravity is in the mid section. In history they used the word 'hara'. Even Saito in judo. And the 'light' Yamashita overweighed Geesink and Ruska a lot. But what is more dangerous 40-60 kg overweight or shredded to death with drugs?

The Underground Strength method created by Zach Even Esh is what I’ve been following since I found him in college in 2013. Basically combines heavy barbell lifts with a lot of strongman, body weight, and bodybuilding work. One of my favorite underground inspired workouts is kettlebell clean and press combined with a pull-up ladder… after that’s done hit some farmer walks and sleds. Stuff like that has great transition to grappling. As I’ve gotten older (I’m now 30) I’ve stopped doing so much barbell work and transitioned to more explosive work with kettlebells and dumbbells … much easier on my joints

Chadi handsome asf dayum son

One arm pushup (not one arm pull-up )

I follow LA Serria PE workouts it helps me stay agile flexible and on toes in any position.

Hey Chadi, you said chin ups when you ment to say Push ups

Great video! I recommend checking out the Bioneer's RU-vid page, absolutely tons of info about functional training and athletic performance. Many thanks.

I think the judoka shown around 2:40 are oversized and clearly trained like bodybuilders. They are a bad example. I don't agree with the 8 to 10 rep range with heavy weights as shown around 3:10 Judoka should do quarter squats only in the endurance range (load with own bodyweight and do at least 15 reps per set) + somewhat heavier weights in the strength range (load with bodyweight + 20% for 5 reps max per set)

4:00

Brining up alternatives to weight training in the west tends to bring out folks who immediately assume you’re arguing against the use of weights for some reason. Kind of a weird paradigm since weights are relatively “new” in the grand scheme of fitness. There is nothing wrong with weights at all, nor is there with calisthenics which was the norm for the majority of human history and every grappler there in. Idk why folks get so tribal about it.

شادي انت عربي ؟

Imma need giant legs like the japanese.

Ironwolf?

I would disagree about the 1 armed chin push etc.You need to much specialization for that.A judoka in my opinion should have the upperbody of a weightlifter and the legs of a Nfl player.

Firas zahabi said knees over toes was horrible for you

If you are not genetical skilled in your movement become a sensei like Kano or Putin. It is like in football. If you want to make the show in body mass and freaky shape go to professional wrestling. In other traditional Japanese martial arts, the sensei are allmost forbidden to use tricks. Of course they are often also familiar with show. Money corruption is the last.

No natural bodybuilder follow the buendia gym bro split with frequency once a week. This is a poor comparison. Natty bodybuilders need to do strength work on squat, deads... in addition to accessory and hypertophy work. Athletes need to also do strength but may backoff on bodybuilding work if they try to maintain weightclass, and might add plyometrics and powercleans... the Oberst statement is not true, there is nuance to it I know, but deadlift is a great hip hinge and build up posterior chain that is very important for athletics, fatigue just needs to be managed because it is more taxing, but a great exercise

judokas are basicaly bodybuilders who use humans to build strength instead of metal

It’s all good just take roids 😂

But bodybuilding is not fitness though! I recommend trying with kettlebells and clubbells, and training 4 times a week (kettlebells twice a week and clubbells twice a week). If I was to do a barbell program, I would only do deadlifts, squats, rows, and overhead press

Bodybuilding and martial arts... that doesn't fit together. Other ways of lifting weights goe well together with martial arts, but not body building. Bodybuilding is just a waste of resources.