Judo—The Gentle Way: A Replication of Studies on Martial Arts and Aggression

There have been numerous studies of the effects of traditional martial arts training on aggressiveness, most reporting a decline in aggressiveness with training. The majority of these studies have examined students of karate or taekwondo, disciplines emphasizing strikes and blocks. In contrast, this cross-sectional study examined the effects of traditional judo training on aggressiveness by looking at 51 judo students. Furthermore, we incorporate into our analysis two variables generally associated with aggression, age and sex, to control for their effects. Aggressiveness declined as expected across training and ages, but surprisingly sex had no effect in this setting.