I believe the judoka being quoted may have misheard, misremembered, or is misapplying a different point that is sometimes taught and that is not insane. I have elsewhere heard the advice that bulking up too early in one’s judo studies is counterproductive, because you have more margin for error in techniques if you can make up for doing them not-quite-correctly by being very strong, so really buff people may fail to notice and correct flaws in their form. Then they get whupped by people who actually mastered the techiques.
Of course, once you’ve reached yudansha, and already have a good grasp of form, then you’re supposed to bulk up to be able to beat other yudansha.
It’s not that important to what I was saying, though: the essay is mostly about how martial artists in particular have terrible epistemic hygiene. The idea of lack of measurement is only mentioned in passing, along with the remark that theoretical physics manages to be respectable despite it and that the real problem is not that martial arts lacks measurement, but that martial artists are much more sure of themselves than their paucity of data justifies.
I believe the judoka being quoted may have misheard, misremembered, or is misapplying a different point that is sometimes taught and that is not insane. I have elsewhere heard the advice that bulking up too early in one’s judo studies is counterproductive, because you have more margin for error in techniques if you can make up for doing them not-quite-correctly by being very strong, so really buff people may fail to notice and correct flaws in their form. Then they get whupped by people who actually mastered the techiques.
Of course, once you’ve reached yudansha, and already have a good grasp of form, then you’re supposed to bulk up to be able to beat other yudansha.
Could be true.
It’s not that important to what I was saying, though: the essay is mostly about how martial artists in particular have terrible epistemic hygiene. The idea of lack of measurement is only mentioned in passing, along with the remark that theoretical physics manages to be respectable despite it and that the real problem is not that martial arts lacks measurement, but that martial artists are much more sure of themselves than their paucity of data justifies.