You are not old. You are at a great age to being training. I started judo when I was 14 going on 15. Many start much later. I was ranked 4th in the country as a teen. Another guy from our dojo that was a couple of years older than I when he began went much further than I. He traveled to world doing judo. He participated in all of the World Games, Pan Am games, etc starting in 1984 to prepare him to compete in the 88 Olympics. Phil Porter was the highest ranking person in judo in the US at that time. He said that he would have gotten him for the 84 Olympics if they had had a chance to see earlier, but it was too late to get him qualified for the Olympics that year. He even gave him a 4 year scholarship to train in Colorado to train with the Olympic team. Most of the people in our dojo were nationally ranked. Phil Porter is the one that informed us our our ranking after we had been invited to train with the Olympic team for a weekend. They even came to train in our dojo a few months later. I wasn't even old enough to drive then. My friend was about 18 when he started.

So if you can't be Michael Jordan you just quit playing basketball? Because you'll never hit the ball like Tiger Woods golf is just a waste of time?

Do you enjoy judo? Then keep doing it. Focus only on getting better today. All the rest will fall into place.

There are people older than you that have done extremely well in Judo. From your standpoint you are getting a bit old. From my standpoint you are very young and can do anything that you set your mind to. The question is how much do you want to be a champion. Champions are made by hard training. And knowing that it is not necessarily a bad thing when you do not win. Losers get all bummed out and see loss as defeat. Champions see a loss as a clear chance to see what you do wrong and work on correcting it.

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Ask your coach what do you need in order to participate in a local tournament first and then you can move on accordingly.:)

Olympic medalists and top elite competitors do not live the lives that some people think they are. They train too much for the average standards for many years, they may take steroids, is not something that many people would like to do.

An average teenager trains around 4 hours per week. An average adult martial artist trains around 5,5 hours per week. Am average top elite competitor trains around 23 hours per week for 7 years. Is not that someone can not do that, is that people have other things to do, this is why there are just a few of them that are going for this. Many are dreaming of becoming Judo and TKD Olympic medalists. Now if you really want to try, find a good coach that is doing this, (trying to get people to do that) and train with him.

your body hasnt fully matured but if u

need to ask this question then u are ready for naudge

i really feel disapointed because of the fact that the majority of champions started in an early age, like ilias iliadis, and teddy riner...because i just started judo and i'm almost 16 years old :(, and i'm still a yellow belt