About Waza Book
Waza Book is a free reference for judoka preparing to grade: every technique in the syllabus with its Japanese name, what the technique actually is, and the key points an examiner looks for. Tick what you have learned and the site remembers, on your own device.
New here? How to use this site is the two-minute tour.
Technique names, spellings and groupings follow the Kodokan classification: the Gokyo no Waza for the classical throws it covers, and the katame-waza divisions for the hold-downs, strangles and joint locks it does not. Belt colours follow whichever grading scheme the page is showing. Your club's grading syllabus is always the authority on what your grading requires - if the lists here disagree with your coach, your coach wins.
The site is fully static and stores nothing about you; progress ticks live in your browser's own storage and are yours to export or delete.
It is created and edited by volunteers. The judo does not change, but the writing, the illustrations and the demonstrations behind it are added to and sharpened continually, and these are the figures as they stand today.
- Written step by step
- 107 of 113
- With a demonstration
- 110 of 113
- With an illustration
- 67 of 113
If you can make a page better, tell us on the suggestion page: no account needed, and it goes by email or to GitHub, whichever you prefer.
A federation, regional association or club can also publish its own guidance on the techniques here. For federations and clubs explains how.
Using this reference with an assistant
If you use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or NotebookLM, you can load this reference into it and revise by asking questions, out loud if the app you use supports it. The files are built for that: the whole reference in one file, or one grade at a time from the list of everything on offer. Download the one you want and attach it to a project or a notebook, which keeps it there for every conversation, or paste the address in and let the assistant fetch it.
Take one grade rather than several. Belt progressions differ by federation, and an assistant holding two syllabuses at once will answer with a mixture of the two, which is a set of requirements nobody is examined against.
The files carry what each technique is, how it is classified and the key points an examiner looks for. They deliberately leave out the step-by-step movement, which stays on the technique page in our own words: an assistant asked to describe a throw will reword it, and a rewritten throw is how people get hurt. Ask it what you are being examined on and what a key point means, then read the page itself for how the technique is done.
None of this is us answering. The assistant is yours, we cannot see what it tells you, and it can be confidently wrong about judo like anything else. Treat it as a way of working through the reference, check anything that matters against the page it came from, and take your coach's word over both.
Suggest a video
A technique, a skill, a kata and every combination, counter, transition and chain can carry demonstrations: one in the player and the alternatives listed beneath it, chosen for clear, correct form rather than highlight-reel spectacle. Found a better one? Suggestions are very welcome.
Nearly every page now has at least one, so the most useful suggestion is usually a clearer demonstration than the one that plays. The gaps that remain are mostly sequences, and a sequence is where a video matters most: what it shows is the timing between two throws, which neither technique's own demonstration can illustrate.
Paste the video link from the address bar or the share button, then name the page it demonstrates. You can submit it by email without using GitHub or editing JSON; a maintainer will add the entry.
Suggest a video, which needs no account and sends nothing anywhere until you choose how to send it, or go straight to the issue form on GitHub if that is what you already use. One thing to check first: the video must be public rather than unlisted, because an unlisted address stops working for everyone else the moment its owner changes it.
Suggest a combination or counter
A combination or a counter relates two techniques, so each one is its own small file in the content repository rather than a line on either technique's page. That is why a throw with none shows an empty section: nobody has written the file yet, and many of the throws here are still in that position.
If you know one - your club's answer to uchi-mata, the combination your coach drills every session - the whole contribution is the two techniques in order and a sentence on why the pair works. A step-by-step narration is welcome and entirely optional.
The template is in CONTRIBUTING.md, and an accepted file reaches this site at its next update.