Announcement 2013 IJF 8th International Research Symposium - Rio, August 2013

IJF 2013 International Symposium

For those with a scientific interest in judo I recommend attending this symposium. It offers an opportunity for some networking and get a better idea of what scientists worldwide are working on with regard to judo. I have held presentations myself at previous IJF symposia and would like to reach out also to beginning researchers. The threshold is relatively low so it is a good place to try out new things. Participation fee is not cheap though (£390 for nonmembers) and add the costs of producing a professional poster, the costs of a hefty airfare to Rio and the cost of lodging, which may limit people's participation to either those employed by an academic institution with foreign conference travel funds or individual patrons with deep pockets. Judo federations typically have little or not interest in judo unless you can prove a direct link to increasing the number of gold medals, so don't count on them to pay for your expenses, and conference travel grants are usually intramural university grants and the few that are not may have stringent eligibility requirements difficult to meet unless you are an active faculty member or at least university-affiliated scientific personnel.

So implied here is that there is some inspirational chance (albiet slim: 1 in million) to be able to afford this type of boondogle if one is clever enough to devise a proposal to convince ones federation that you can produce analysis that will promise to help them to increase their future medal counts... A good analytic salesman (aka contractor) might be able to talk them into funding one trip, a great analytic salesman maybe two trips, after that threats of furloughs and budget cuts...

FightingSpirit wrote:So implied here is that there is some inspirational chance (albiet slim: 1 in million) to be able to afford this type of boondogle if one is clever enough to devise a proposal to convince ones federation that you can produce analysis that will promise to help them to increase their future medal counts... A good analytic salesman (aka contractor) might be able to talk them into funding one trip, a great analytic salesman maybe two trips, after that threats of furloughs and budget cuts...

Yup. Contrary to Kanô's wishes jûdô in both the West and Japan has now developed into a remarkably anti-intellectual structured and conceptualized discipline. Jûdô federations talk in only three languages: (1) the color of your medal, (2) the extent of your money, and (3) the height of your dan-rank. Whereas cycling results have spearheaded thanks to the use of carbon fiber frames and aerodynamic cycle designs, track and field sprinting disciplines have cut off half a second due to use of creatine monophosphate, Jûdô has remained one of the few Olympic sports where federations have remained proudly immune against grasping the importance of science. Instead, they prefer to train just like they did in the 1970s or rely on witchcraft by hiring a performance director who might have been a past world or Olympic champion and wait in silence to see how that person's result will magically transfer to the entire team ... This remarkably even applies to the Japanese team, and past world champion Kaori Yamaguchi, not a stupid cookie (see: Interview Kaori Yamaguchi), in an interview talks about the need for "diversified opinions" pointing out how even in Japan understanding of jûdô is fading and training methods in jûdô not up to date. In the past the former East-German and Soviet teams were about the only ones where there was scientific input, but mostly geared towards developing strength and power. That knowledge from the 1970s now has been translated in more widely known information, but since not much new has been added particularly since those countries and their structure and teams no longer exist. Few top coaches or federation presidents show up during the IJF scientific symposium and even less of them scrutinized top-scientific developments through other channels, but there are exceptions. For example, I remember during one of my past presentations, Densign White asking me a question and it was to the point and relevant. I have also seen Jean-Luc Rougé pop in. On the other hand, I have never seen the USA Judo executive director or president or coach there. I can't exactly say how many then do attend since obviously I neither know nor would I recognized every federation president. In any case when I have talked about these things with federations, their thinking was always very linear, namely who will this or that scientific development increase our medal count ? You cannot directly say if A applies then B will follow, since the number of factors that mediate the outcome of a jûdô contest is quite a bit higher than the number of factors that mediate the outcome of a 100 m sprint. My experience is that in the absence of such guarantee, most jûdô federations then rather choose to do nothing to help jûdô science forward or welcome its application to their teams.

As an active member of another operations research society, I can appreciate that this Int' Judo Research Society is a fantastic initiative, and the potential value added toward the sport...
Cost is an unfortunate dilema, but given our advances in technology I suspect that there might be some mutual interest toward seeking possible enhancements and/or work-around solutions...
A couple/few of the biggest challenges within our research society is 1) access to open and transparent data, 2) ensuring the research questions are infact the questions that the stake-holders are interested in have researched (vs those that analyst desire to pursue, 3) Ensuring that the type of data being collected is the directly tied to the data necessary for the specific research, 4) ensuring the analytic tools used are infact validated and approved for the intended purpose of answering the specified research question.
Suspect that there is no real good way to share/collaborate presentations remotely?