Meta data on Judo potential growth vs bjj potential growth

Here is an interesting take on potential of Judo vs potential of BJJ. I personally believe the author has some interesting points.


http://theselfdefenceexpert.com/why-bjj-will-overtake-judo-and-have-more-participants-by-2020/

afulldeck wrote:Here is an interesting take on potential of Judo vs potential of BJJ. I personally believe the author has some interesting points.


http://theselfdefenceexpert.com/why-bjj-will-overtake-judo-and-have-more-participants-by-2020/

I am not trying to be negative or acerbic but it's more than a bit speculative, wouldn't you think so ?

Firstly, without any proof, the author uses Google Search Terms as representative for the interest in, and extrapolated from there, the participation numbers in judo vs BJJ.

It's bad, it's really bad, from a scientific point of view. Judo as a term is included in all dictionaries, BJJ is not, it's new. Judo is a name that for decades has been used as a term to refer to any tricks even if they are not judo, hence terms such as "judo kicks" etc. So the term 'judo' has been a part of language for a long, long time; BJJ is not. It seems logical that for any new term there is going to be a sharp increase in searches. I would not be surprised if the increase in search terms for "Miley Cyrus" or "Justin Bieber" is higher than for "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley", so does that imply they are going to exceed in long-time success, or by 2010 any either "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley". This raises another issue that is completely baseless, namely assuming that the current conclusion is for today, how could he extrapolate this towards the future ? It might well be that, let's say, tomorrow a gigantic pedophilia scandal would break out in BJJ that damages the discipline beyond repair.

Another thing to wonder about ... the search term 'BJJ' is also 'BJJ' in Japanese, but the term 'judo' is not 'judo' in Japanese but 柔道, or дзюдо in Russian or cselgáncs in Hungarian, etc.

I know many 80-year olds in judo who still come on the tatami, and this in most countries. There may well be some 80-year old BJJ players in Brazil, but there is not an abundance of them, certainly not in most other countries. Many of the 80-year olds I know in judo never use computers or Internet, but they are still judo practitioners. It seems to me that judo also has a lot of smaller children, more than BJJ, who still aren't really doing Google searches. The selection of a proper research tool is important. It needs to be accurate, have good reproducibility, little variation, be precise, and be actually researching that what we assume or postulate it is researching. In this case, it seems to me that the author takes many liberties with regard to the limitations and delimitations of Google searches for what he aims to research. By the way, even a tool such as the "more academic" Google Scholar is not without problems as scholarly research has shown: http://www.istl.org/12-summer/article1.html

There are many other issues which make this at best a "opinion piece", nothing more, nothing less. I think that both the results and predictions need to be taken with a grain or a pinch of salt.

There is no question that the term BJJ is becoming more common, but judo is still more recognizable. The growing number of google searches for BJJ doesn't really translate into potential students. It is all about familiarity with the term. More people don't know what BJJ is than people who don't know what judo is, which is why they are looking on google. After all, BJJ is just an abbreviation and it may not be familiar to the average person when they hear it, so they go to google to figure out what it is. These could be MMA spectators who would never try it out, just like the spike of people searching for judo during the olympics but who never turn into new students. I just don't see the connection between searching google and attending classes.

Cichorei Kano wrote:

afulldeck wrote:Here is an interesting take on potential of Judo vs potential of BJJ. I personally believe the author has some interesting points.


http://theselfdefenceexpert.com/why-bjj-will-overtake-judo-and-have-more-participants-by-2020/

I am not trying to be negative or acerbic but it's more than a bit speculative, wouldn't you think so ?

Firstly, without any proof, the author uses Google Search Terms as representative for the interest in, and extrapolated from there, the participation numbers in judo vs BJJ.

It's bad, it's really bad, from a scientific point of view. Judo as a term is included in all dictionaries, BJJ is not, it's new. Judo is a name that for decades has been used as a term to refer to any tricks even if they are not judo, hence terms such as "judo kicks" etc. So the term 'judo' has been a part of language for a long, long time; BJJ is not. It seems logical that for any new term there is going to be a sharp increase in searches. I would not be surprised if the increase in search terms for "Miley Cyrus" or "Justin Bieber" is higher than for "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley", so does that imply they are going to exceed in long-time success, or by 2010 any either "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley". This raises another issue that is completely baseless, namely assuming that the current conclusion is for today, how could he extrapolate this towards the future ?  It might well be that, let's say, tomorrow a gigantic pedophilia scandal would break out in BJJ that damages the discipline beyond repair.

Another thing to wonder about ... the search term 'BJJ' is also 'BJJ' in Japanese, but the term 'judo' is not 'judo' in Japanese but 柔道, or дзюдо in Russian or cselgáncs in Hungarian, etc.  

I know many 80-year olds in judo who still come on the tatami, and this in most countries. There may well be some 80-year old BJJ players in Brazil, but there is not an abundance of them, certainly not in most other countries. Many of the 80-year olds I know in judo never use computers or Internet, but they are still judo practitioners. It seems to me that judo also has a lot of smaller children, more than BJJ, who still aren't really doing Google searches. The selection of a proper research tool is important. It needs to be accurate, have good reproducibility, little variation, be precise, and be actually researching that what we assume or postulate it is researching. In this case, it seems to me that the author takes many liberties with regard to the limitations and delimitations of Google searches for what he aims to research. By the way, even a tool such as the "more academic" Google Scholar is not without problems as scholarly research has shown: http://www.istl.org/12-summer/article1.html

There are many other issues which make this at best a "opinion piece", nothing more, nothing less. I think that both the results and predictions need to be taken with a grain or a pinch of salt.

I agree with you that the piece was speculative and it certainly was not scientific. But as a reader, I made that mental adjustment while reading the piece. So for me, reading the piece was an exercise in thinking about "what ifs" and "what could we change" rather than an absolute this is right solution.

However, CK you raise a great point around scientific methods and the topic of judo. Can proper scientific methods solve, track or predict future trends of judo or BJJ when the methods employed are perfect? Perhaps scientist could give us some answers, but these answers would only be right by happens chance.

Scientists and scientific methods can only answer 'some' practical problems in the sphere of all practical problems. Sure scientists might be able to calculate the resulting impact force of uke hitting the mat, the resulting grabbing strength of player A vs player B. But there are other practical problems that science and scientific methods cannot answer such as: what is the best way to organized judo for the most participation?, what should the rules be?, will judo grow or shrink in popularity (remember pet rocks?). In short, science cannot solve a single practical problem involving political, moral or what I would call social science choices (human activity). These types of practical problems are the ones that fall into speculation....

afulldeck wrote:

Cichorei Kano wrote:

afulldeck wrote:Here is an interesting take on potential of Judo vs potential of BJJ. I personally believe the author has some interesting points.


http://theselfdefenceexpert.com/why-bjj-will-overtake-judo-and-have-more-participants-by-2020/

I am not trying to be negative or acerbic but it's more than a bit speculative, wouldn't you think so ?

Firstly, without any proof, the author uses Google Search Terms as representative for the interest in, and extrapolated from there, the participation numbers in judo vs BJJ.

It's bad, it's really bad, from a scientific point of view. Judo as a term is included in all dictionaries, BJJ is not, it's new. Judo is a name that for decades has been used as a term to refer to any tricks even if they are not judo, hence terms such as "judo kicks" etc. So the term 'judo' has been a part of language for a long, long time; BJJ is not. It seems logical that for any new term there is going to be a sharp increase in searches. I would not be surprised if the increase in search terms for "Miley Cyrus" or "Justin Bieber" is higher than for "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley", so does that imply they are going to exceed in long-time success, or by 2010 any either "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley". This raises another issue that is completely baseless, namely assuming that the current conclusion is for today, how could he extrapolate this towards the future ?  It might well be that, let's say, tomorrow a gigantic pedophilia scandal would break out in BJJ that damages the discipline beyond repair.

Another thing to wonder about ... the search term 'BJJ' is also 'BJJ' in Japanese, but the term 'judo' is not 'judo' in Japanese but 柔道, or дзюдо in Russian or cselgáncs in Hungarian, etc.  

I know many 80-year olds in judo who still come on the tatami, and this in most countries. There may well be some 80-year old BJJ players in Brazil, but there is not an abundance of them, certainly not in most other countries. Many of the 80-year olds I know in judo never use computers or Internet, but they are still judo practitioners. It seems to me that judo also has a lot of smaller children, more than BJJ, who still aren't really doing Google searches. The selection of a proper research tool is important. It needs to be accurate, have good reproducibility, little variation, be precise, and be actually researching that what we assume or postulate it is researching. In this case, it seems to me that the author takes many liberties with regard to the limitations and delimitations of Google searches for what he aims to research. By the way, even a tool such as the "more academic" Google Scholar is not without problems as scholarly research has shown: http://www.istl.org/12-summer/article1.html

There are many other issues which make this at best a "opinion piece", nothing more, nothing less. I think that both the results and predictions need to be taken with a grain or a pinch of salt.

I agree with you that the piece was speculative and it certainly was not scientific. But as a reader, I made that mental adjustment while reading the piece. So for me, reading the piece was an exercise in thinking about  "what ifs" and "what could we change" rather than an absolute this is right solution.

However, CK you raise a great point around scientific methods and the topic of judo. Can proper scientific methods solve, track or predict future trends of judo or BJJ when the methods employed are perfect?  Perhaps scientist could give us some answers, but these answers would only be right by happens chance.

Scientists and scientific methods can only answer 'some' practical problems in the sphere of all practical problems. Sure scientists might be able to calculate the resulting impact force of uke hitting the mat, the resulting grabbing strength of player A vs player B. But there are other practical problems that science and scientific methods cannot answer such as: what is the best way to organized judo for the most participation?, what should the rules be?, will judo grow or shrink in popularity (remember pet rocks?). In short, science cannot solve a single practical problem involving political, moral or what I would call social science choices (human activity). These types of practical problems are the ones that fall into speculation....

If something is a pure physics or chemistry process, predictions of a known process are usually straightforward. In biomedical issues it's different as medicine isn't an exact science. We know from research that when a bacteria is sensitive to a certain antibiotic, that given that antibiotic will likely be effective in killing the infection, but that does not prevent other complications from arising, such as person suddenly starting to bleed and die from loss of blood because of the infection.

When we are not longer talking about the sciences or biomedicine but moving into the area of the humanities, economy or liberal arts, predictions become quite different. They are not impossible depending on what process is followed to come to the predictions and how large the number of confounders are. If I invite 100 women age 16-36 and in front of them I put a chainsaw and a pair of Leboutin shoes and a judogi and tell them they can pick one thing for free and keep it, most, including the judoka will likely pick the Leboutin shoes.

Anyhow, that there are things which are easy to predict and things that are difficult to predict is a given, but ... irrespective of those difficulties the method used to predict is critical as it may be a fairly reliable or fairly unreliable method. I think in this case that the author did not use a very good method. If his method would have been more solid his predictions might be more reliable without ever reaching the degree of reliability of a physics or chemistry test. In some areas, like sometimes in economy or military interventions (Iraq, Afghanistan) the number of confounders is so large that most predictions deviate pretty far from how something turns out ... So, no, no perfect predictions in these areas, but some may be more accurate than others depending on the solidity of the method.

Cichorei Kano wrote:They are not impossible depending on what process is followed to come to the predictions and how large the number of confounders are. If I invite 100 women age 16-36 and in front of them I put a chainsaw and a pair of Leboutin shoes and a judogi and tell them they can pick one thing for free and keep it, most, including the judoka will likely pick the Leboutin shoes

Shido. Your example has a low barrier to entry.... Better yet, how about 100 women freely choose between Leboutin shoes, Louis Vuitto handbag, Channel Sunglass, and Orlando Bloom. Science would have a hard time predicting....

Cichorei Kano wrote:

afulldeck wrote:

Cichorei Kano wrote:

afulldeck wrote:Here is an interesting take on potential of Judo vs potential of BJJ. I personally believe the author has some interesting points.


http://theselfdefenceexpert.com/why-bjj-will-overtake-judo-and-have-more-participants-by-2020/

I am not trying to be negative or acerbic but it's more than a bit speculative, wouldn't you think so ?

Firstly, without any proof, the author uses Google Search Terms as representative for the interest in, and extrapolated from there, the participation numbers in judo vs BJJ.

It's bad, it's really bad, from a scientific point of view. Judo as a term is included in all dictionaries, BJJ is not, it's new. Judo is a name that for decades has been used as a term to refer to any tricks even if they are not judo, hence terms such as "judo kicks" etc. So the term 'judo' has been a part of language for a long, long time; BJJ is not. It seems logical that for any new term there is going to be a sharp increase in searches. I would not be surprised if the increase in search terms for "Miley Cyrus" or "Justin Bieber" is higher than for "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley", so does that imply they are going to exceed in long-time success, or by 2010 any either "The Beatles" or "Elvis Presley". This raises another issue that is completely baseless, namely assuming that the current conclusion is for today, how could he extrapolate this towards the future ?  It might well be that, let's say, tomorrow a gigantic pedophilia scandal would break out in BJJ that damages the discipline beyond repair.

Another thing to wonder about ... the search term 'BJJ' is also 'BJJ' in Japanese, but the term 'judo' is not 'judo' in Japanese but 柔道, or дзюдо in Russian or cselgáncs in Hungarian, etc.  

I know many 80-year olds in judo who still come on the tatami, and this in most countries. There may well be some 80-year old BJJ players in Brazil, but there is not an abundance of them, certainly not in most other countries. Many of the 80-year olds I know in judo never use computers or Internet, but they are still judo practitioners. It seems to me that judo also has a lot of smaller children, more than BJJ, who still aren't really doing Google searches. The selection of a proper research tool is important. It needs to be accurate, have good reproducibility, little variation, be precise, and be actually researching that what we assume or postulate it is researching. In this case, it seems to me that the author takes many liberties with regard to the limitations and delimitations of Google searches for what he aims to research. By the way, even a tool such as the "more academic" Google Scholar is not without problems as scholarly research has shown: http://www.istl.org/12-summer/article1.html

There are many other issues which make this at best a "opinion piece", nothing more, nothing less. I think that both the results and predictions need to be taken with a grain or a pinch of salt.

I agree with you that the piece was speculative and it certainly was not scientific. But as a reader, I made that mental adjustment while reading the piece. So for me, reading the piece was an exercise in thinking about  "what ifs" and "what could we change" rather than an absolute this is right solution.

However, CK you raise a great point around scientific methods and the topic of judo. Can proper scientific methods solve, track or predict future trends of judo or BJJ when the methods employed are perfect?  Perhaps scientist could give us some answers, but these answers would only be right by happens chance.

Scientists and scientific methods can only answer 'some' practical problems in the sphere of all practical problems. Sure scientists might be able to calculate the resulting impact force of uke hitting the mat, the resulting grabbing strength of player A vs player B. But there are other practical problems that science and scientific methods cannot answer such as: what is the best way to organized judo for the most participation?, what should the rules be?, will judo grow or shrink in popularity (remember pet rocks?). In short, science cannot solve a single practical problem involving political, moral or what I would call social science choices (human activity). These types of practical problems are the ones that fall into speculation....

If something is a pure physics or chemistry process, predictions of a known process are usually straightforward. In biomedical issues it's different as medicine isn't an exact science. We know from research that when a bacteria is sensitive to a certain antibiotic, that given that antibiotic will likely be effective in killing the infection, but that does not prevent other complications from arising, such as person suddenly starting to bleed and die from loss of blood because of the infection.

When we are not longer talking about the sciences or biomedicine but moving into the area of the humanities, economy or liberal arts, predictions become quite different. They are not impossible depending on what process is followed to come to the predictions and how large the number of confounders are. If I invite 100 women age 16-36 and in front of them I put a chainsaw and a pair of Leboutin shoes and a judogi and tell them they can pick one thing for free and keep it, most, including the judoka will likely pick the Leboutin shoes.

Anyhow, that there are things which are easy to predict and things that are difficult to predict is a given, but ... irrespective of those difficulties the method used to predict is critical as it may be a fairly reliable or fairly unreliable method. I think in this case that the author did not use a very good method. If his method would have been more solid his predictions might be more reliable without ever reaching the degree of reliability of a physics or chemistry test. In some areas, like sometimes in economy or military interventions (Iraq, Afghanistan) the number of confounders is so large that most predictions deviate pretty far from how something turns out ...  So, no, no perfect predictions in these areas, but some may be more accurate than others depending on the solidity of the method.

Sin comentario...

afulldeck wrote:

Cichorei Kano wrote:They are not impossible depending on what process is followed to come to the predictions and how large the number of confounders are. If I invite 100 women age 16-36 and in front of them I put a chainsaw and a pair of Leboutin shoes and a judogi and tell them they can pick one thing for free and keep it, most, including the judoka will likely pick the Leboutin shoes

Shido. Your example has a low barrier to entry.... Better yet,  how about 100 women freely choose between Leboutin shoes, Louis Vuitto handbag, Channel Sunglass, and Orlando Bloom. Science would have a hard time predicting....

Unless of course, you threw yourself into the above choices then we all know the answer, you swag devil :-)

Warning? Grumbling and references to old times....

They told me that Judo must change or it would never be as popular as wrestling!
They told me that Judo must change as aikido is going to surpass it in few years!
They told me that Judo must change as karate is going to surpass it in few years!
They told me that Judo must change as kungfu is going to surpass it in few years!
They told me that Judo must change as modern jiu jitsu is going to surpass it in few years!
They told me that Judo must change as taekwondo is going to surpass it in few years!
They told me that Judo must change as MMA is going to surpass it in few years!

Now they tell me that Judo must change as BJJ is going to surpass it in few years!

FWIW: some in the BJJ community (as evidenced for example by popular threads on Sherdog, Atama etc forums) feel that BJJ is becoming subsumed by MMA. That is to say, straight BJJ is declining in popularity, corresponding to the rise of MMA and the sportification / rule changes in competition jiujitsu, as it moves away from a more holistic art (which involves vale tudo (BJJ responses to striking opponents), throws and take-downs, self defense etc)

Sound familiar? :/

PS: Note by the way the controversy & interest in Gracie Combatives. Part of the bruhaha is over the 'internet grading thing'; another part ("why are so many people interested in combatives"?) is because...people seem to be interested in something that isn't MMA but also isn't this





As they said on Battlestar Galactica: "All of this has happened before. And all of this will happen again".

I had an amazing discussion regarding this topic on my facebook page (if you want some more personal viewpoints
https://www.facebook.com/beyondgrappling

Do you have a specific link to that coversation or was this linkbait?

afulldeck wrote:

Cichorei Kano wrote:They are not impossible depending on what process is followed to come to the predictions and how large the number of confounders are. If I invite 100 women age 16-36 and in front of them I put a chainsaw and a pair of Leboutin shoes and a judogi and tell them they can pick one thing for free and keep it, most, including the judoka will likely pick the Leboutin shoes

Shido. Your example has a low barrier to entry.... Better yet,  how about 100 women freely choose between Leboutin shoes, Louis Vuitto handbag, Channel Sunglass, and Orlando Bloom. Science would have a hard time predicting....

You must know some very strange women for this choice to be a problematic one. The answer depends of course on the relative retail prices, rarity, and current condition of each of the items, the clear choice being that with maximum resale value... So probably Orlando Bloom?

The funds from which then go towards things the value of ownership of which is less blatantly fallacious, such as books and Judo practice.

Yeah, it's an easy choice ...

Funny, my (Brazilian) BJJ teacher says BJJ isnt that popular in Brazil and that Judo is much more popular. He even said that BJJ was just for people who werent very good at Judo, though he said thats changed a bit recently since the Americans became obsessed with it - dont shoot the messenger !

Creamy creamy baileys wrote:Do you have a specific link to that coversation or was this linkbait?

i have never heard of link bait before - but no you cannot link to specific posts on FB (which is a touch silly)
Maybe i should have put a date on it

Creamy creamy baileys wrote:Do you have a specific link to that coversation or was this linkbait?

I just googled it and you CAN link to FB posts:
Here you go
https://www.facebook.com/beyondgrappling/posts/540636169367733?stream_ref=10

and for those who want to know how you click the date and it will give you a specific URL to the post

Thank you; will give it a read

(what happened to the +/- & thanks buttons? I voted someone up on another thread and now can't cast any more votes)

I get really tired of hearing about BJJ. We have tons of that stuff in our MMA school but our Judo program has people with the best dedication. I have been in the Martial Arts for 30 plus years and seen all kinds of fads. The holier than now attitude towards it is sickening.

The author has added a follow up article on his views on making Judo popular...

http://theselfdefenceexpert.com/how-to-make-judo-bigger-and-more-popular-than-bjj-and-mma/

So the entire analysis comes from looking at Google analytics and cherry picking quotes and trends from websites, then adding a dash of extrapolation?

And the solution towards "more popularity" (presumably in the US?) is to introduce and diversify the sporting aspects? Doesn't that actually contradict the research cited, wherein the prime motivators are "fitness, strength, self defence and social"?

I haven't looked at his numbers but could it be that the reason judo doesn't appear popular is the way the segmentation was done (or not done?).

It's easy to shoot fish in a barrel and I can certainly appreciate "let's try something - anything - different" sentiment, but I'm not full convinced on this one.

I firmly believe that judo needs to stop looking over its shoulder at the aberration that is MMA and also at BJJ. Judo needs to have more confidence in itself as a product and reinforce its traditions, culture and discipline rather than sacrificing them one-by-one on the alter of popularity to appeal to the lowest common denominator as the IJF has done in recent years. Creating and reinforcing a clear differentiation between judo and other arts is the way to go and I really fear that if the present approach continues there will in 50 years be nothing clearly identifiable as judo left outside Japan and perhaps France. Instead all that there will remain will be some hybrid jacketed wrestling system - a chimera - with all semblance of "do" lost.

Jonesy wrote:I firmly believe that judo needs to stop looking over its shoulder at the aberration that is MMA and also at BJJ. Judo needs to have more confidence in itself as a product and reinforce its traditions, culture and discipline rather than sacrificing them one-by-one on the alter of popularity to appeal to the lowest common denominator as the IJF has done in recent years. Creating and reinforcing a clear differentiation between judo and other arts is the way to go and I really fear that if the present approach continues there will in 50 years be nothing clearly identifiable as judo left outside Japan and perhaps France. Instead all that there will remain will be some hybrid jacketed wrestling system - a chimera - with all semblance of "do" lost.

This is the key to any good enterprise, if you model yourself off the competition you will never have your own stronh identity.

Having been involved in Sambo for a number of years now I've found it to be refreshingly vibrant, it doesn't try to be anything else and generates it's own energy while being a dynamic contest.

Ricebale wrote:

Jonesy wrote:I firmly believe that judo needs to stop looking over its shoulder at the aberration that is MMA and also at BJJ. Judo needs to have more confidence in itself as a product and reinforce its traditions, culture and discipline rather than sacrificing them one-by-one on the alter of popularity to appeal to the lowest common denominator as the IJF has done in recent years. Creating and reinforcing a clear differentiation between judo and other arts is the way to go and I really fear that if the present approach continues there will in 50 years be nothing clearly identifiable as judo left outside Japan and perhaps France. Instead all that there will remain will be some hybrid jacketed wrestling system - a chimera - with all semblance of "do" lost.

This is the key to any good enterprise,  if you model yourself off the competition you will never have your own stronh identity.

Having been involved in Sambo for a number of years now I've found it to be refreshingly vibrant, it doesn't try to be anything else and generates it's own energy while being a dynamic contest.

The question is what precisely IS that competition ? It is not evident at all. Also note that Vizer modeled contemporary judo after soccer, not after a different combat sport or martial art. He wanted to have almost weekly tournaments, with rankings, money prizes. Even concluding whether something works or not, is not that simple as it depends on what criteria one handles. One can argue that the current IJF approach works very well since athletes now get money and have it a lot easier compared to the 1970s whereas people like, for example, Van De Walle had to go cleaning steel blast furnaces to earn some money to afford go training in Japan. There was no sponsorship and nothing to earn. Even Continental and World medals did not yield any money whatsoever. Nothing like that anymore today, so from that point of view everything works great. The other approach, realizing that basic judo movements morote-gari, kuchiki-taoshi, kibisu-gaeshi, etc, are basically prohibited, newaza is nonexisting, and international judo contests look like a circus with clownlike outfits on clownlike tatami and the discipline has little or nothing to do anymore with what it was conceived of, well, then it does not work at all. In other words, one is confronted with a multifactorial issue where any judgment is dependent on the analytical parameters and the judging framework

The sportification of judo started a long time ago already in Japan, but it has now reached a level that really Kôdôkan jûdô and IJF sport jûdô are totally different things that have nothing in common with each other anymore except for their origin. As such how it should be modeled is likely quite different for both as they now have near opposing objectives.