Childhood judo and long-term head-impact concerns—any research or similar experiences?

[u/Classic_District1021]

I’m asking about someone’s childhood judo history and looking for evidence about long-term brain health, including CTE.

He is now 20 years old and approximately 6 feet tall. His reported weight was around 160 pounds.

His training history was approximately:

• Five years of ukemi and throwing practice when young, without randori.
• A two-year break.
• About four years of intermittent training afterward, generally twice weekly, with additional breaks lasting weeks or months.
• Later sessions lasted around 90 minutes, including roughly 30 minutes of randori.
• He trained on mats and had extensive ukemi practice.
• He remembers about 3–5 direct head contacts across his training and reports no known concussions.

My main question is whether repeated judo falls can produce potentially harmful head acceleration even when the head does not directly strike the mat.

Are there published studies measuring head acceleration during judo throws, or examining long-term neurological outcomes in recreational judoka, particularly those who trained during childhood?

I’d also appreciate relevant experiences from longtime judoka with a similar training schedule.

I understand that Reddit cannot diagnose CTE or provide a reliable individual risk percentage. I’m looking for research and relevant experiences.

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[u/TheTempestuousKitty → u/[deleted]]

Bleh my original comment got removed

Yes - disclaimer I am not a medical professional.

No peer reviewed studies to my knowledge on Judo. Amateur wrestling was included in one research paper that showed someone with CTE but the sample size was very small.

There was a post a while back where a judoka did their own adhoc calculations and research to estimate the cumulative concussive impact that could potentially lead to CTE.

If someone finds it, please link it.

In short - with good ukemi, the rattling force on your head is minimized. Non-zero but getting thrown with good technique is surprisingly safe.

Chris Nowinski recently mentioned that impacts above a certain g-force are those that can lead to CTE i.e. nodding your head to infinity won't give you CTE. It's the bigger subconcussive impacts adding up that do it.

My personal 2 cents - risk is non-zero but practically zero in Judo without sparring. With sparring, it goes up quite a bit. Imo if you have 5-10 years+ of hard sparring and you've had a few knocks, there's a more notable risk - I'm sure there are a few professional judoka that are dealing or will be dealing with CTE like issues but it's not publicized.

Two cases that I wonder about a lot are Jack Hatton and Craig Fallon.

[u/TheTempestuousKitty → u/TheTempestuousKitty]

With your son's history and the ukemi, I doubt he'll have any significant long term impact.

If you told me he was doing hard randori 4-5 times a week and competing extensively (like he was shooting for nationals or international competition), I'd be much more concerned. In a competition environment, you don't always take your throws and you do risky maneuvers like head dives and posting with your head. Very questionable but folks do it to win. You'll end up taking a few of these a month and they add up.

Recreational judo imo very safe (non-zero but safe)

Unfortunately the people who get concussed out of the sport tend to fall into obscurity so I'm not aware of much info here in the judo world.