Long time readers won’t be surprised when I say that you can learn a lot by studying the techniques used by grapplers of the past (check out my post on old-time grappling). Rules change and sports evolve, but body mechanics stay the same. There are, after all, only a limited number of ways to twist someone’s arm to make them say ‘Uncle!’
Back before DVDs people wrote books. The problem is that many of the best old Judo books are now out of print. And those of us who have hard copies of these books would rather lose a kidney than lend out an impossible-to-find original copy!
A reader of this blog recently told me about that a generally great website – Judoinfo.com – has a page of links where you can download digital versions of rare old Judo books for free.
Some of these books are more than 100 years old, from the era where the boundaries between Judo and classical Japanese Ju-Jutsu were fairly blurry. (Imagine Judo with leglocks – it used to exist!)
Have fun browsing throught these books, seeing both how the art has evolved and also how things have stayed the same.
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