Has banning leg holds worked??

I earned my first black belt in Hawaii as a young man

later i moved to the mainland and became involved with wrestling and kickboxing [and founded an MMA club in 1993] however I did a few years of Judo back in the mid 90ties in Louisville KY

today i operate a mma club in Wilmington NC and have a member who is very interested in learning Judo

I had not trained Judo in a long time and only had a Judo GI because I had recently moved to a small town near Wilmington NC and needed a GI to use at the local BJJ club [I never liked BJJ but that was all i had available]

Now I have my own gym again and we are doing MMA Sambo Muay thai international wrestling and Judo

I began researching modern Judo last year and was SHOCKED to learn that all leg holds have been banned!!

I am watching a fair amount of modern Judo on youtube and dusted off all my old VHS tapes for classic Judo and I need an expert opinion as to if this has had the desired effect the IJF and IOC was after....

thanks...

I assume you mean that during tachiwaza one can not grab hold below belt.

The history of combat rules sport has been always a fight between
A) How to make combatants be active to make fights entertaining
B) How to stop one combatant from negating other one's attacks with moves that are low risk to him and are not meant actually to do anything.

In my youth  ne-waza was allowed to continue as long as "one on top was active" and "active" meant that your wrists made movements outside the opponents neck "hey I'm trying to strangle him like pose" without actually trying to do anything, just to run the clock down.  My then coach would yell to me because I actually tried to strangle my opponent instead of just making a safe pose without actually committing. … Then rules changed.

The above is an example of activity that was allowed by the rules, was not Judo, but allowed one to win.

At some point IJF (note IOC not involved at all) noted that some players
1) engaged with other in trying to secure a good grip
2) if the won they made an attempt to win
3) if they lost they made an attempt of morote gari, but body so low that succesfull throw was not probable, but neither was there a real possibility of counter throw.
So morote gari was used when judoka felt that he was in disadvantageous position to restart gripping.
Same could be done with single leg attempts.

An effect was also the disappearance of uchi-mata as judoka learned to grab but-and-head and drive the thrower towards ground.

You ask what has the above to do with anything. … At least the idea has been that active judoka would have advantage over passive judoka and grabbing below belt was tricks employed by the passive judoka.

So the idea behind these changes was to make judo more active and reward someone that is willing to turn his back towards the opponent.

In IJF opinion the change has been success as more of the matches have been won by ippon.