Effects of a Judo Training on Functional Fitness, Anthropometric, and Psychological Variables in Old Novice Practitioners

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effects of a 4-month judo training (1 hr session, biweekly) on physical and mental health of older adults (69.7 ± 4.2 years). Participants (N = 30) were assigned to a judo novice practitioners group (n = 16) or a control group (n = 14), which did not receive any training. Before and after the program, they underwent anthropometric (body mass index and waist and hip circumferences); functional fitness (upper and lower body flexibility and strength, coordination); and psychological assessments (perceived physical and mental health, body image, and fear of falling). The judo group showed reductions of waist circumference (Δ = −1%, d = 0.2) and improvements for lower and upper body flexibility (Δ = +69%, d = 0.4 and Δ = +126%, d = 0.5, respectively) and strength (Δ = +12%, d = 0.6 and Δ = +31%, d = 1.6, respectively). The control group showed a decline in lower body strength (Δ = −12%, d = 0.8). Psychological variables did not reveal statistically significant effects. Judo seems beneficial for improving anthropometric and functional fitness variables, relevant aspects of successful aging.

Effects of Olympic Combat Sports on Older Adults’ Health Status: A Systematic Review

“…Every study obtained 60% or more of the scale's total score (15 points), as can be observed in Table 1. One study obtained a score of 9/15 [46], two obtained 10/15 [42,45], one obtained 11/15 [37], four obtained 12/15 [41,44,47,48], three obtained 13/15 [38,40,43], and one obtained 14/15 [39].…”

“…Twentytwo studies were excluded because they were not OCS interventions; twelve because the mean age of the sample was less than 60 years of age; thirteen because they did not correspond to the research object, i.e., they were not centered on the health outcomes of older adults; three because the full texts were inaccessible; five because they were not randomised-controlled trials; and four because they were reviews or case studies. After this process, the total number of studies that met the selection criteria was equal to twelve [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48].…”

“…Five studies were developed in Germany [42,43,[46][47][48], two in Italy [38,39], two in South Korea [37,44], one in the United States of America [40], one in China [41], and one in Brazil [45]. As to the practiced OCS modality, two were interventions through boxing [40,41], two through judo [38,39], six through karate [42,43,[45][46][47][48], and two through taekwondo [37,44]. No research that used fencing or wrestling as an intervention modality for older adults was found.…”

“…One study had 20 participants [44], five had 30 to 40 [37][38][39][40]45], three had 40 to 70 [42,43,46], and three had more than 80 participants; specifically, Witte, Kropf [48] had 89, Witte, Emmermacher [47] had 90, and Hu, Guo [41] had 198. In total, the sample contained 735 older adults (392 females and 343 males) with a mean age of 69.6 years.…”

Risk assessment in different Judo techniques for children and adolescent athletes

“…1 Judo has specific effects on bone health 2 and can be practised safely until older age. 3 Competitive Judo matches involve two contestants, wearing the judogi (Judo uniform) and fighting each other using different techniques. These techniques can be classified into throwing techniques (nage-waza), in which the thrower keeps the standing position or loses balance in order to project the faller, and grappling technique (katame-waza), which includes holding (osaekomi-waza), joint (kansetsu-waza), and strangulation (shime-waza) techniques.…”