The Shintaro Higashi Show - BJJ for Intermediate Judokas

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

It's quite common in America for intermediate Judokas to supplement their training with BJJ. Maybe the BJJ school offers more flexible class times, or they want to improve their newaza. What is the best way for them to approach BJJ to maximize its benefits? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss strategies for intermediate Judokas to effectively integrate BJJ into their training. Join our Discord server and start chatting with us and other grapplers by supporting us on Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show⁠⁠⁠. Any amount helps!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Thank you so much, Levan and Jason, as always, our two biggest sponsors. Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate you guys. Yeah, thank you guys so much for every month, you know, great support. You know, this is why we can do this. So what are we going to talk about today? BJJ for Intermediate Judo Kans, is that right? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

And vice versa, is that what we're doing? Yeah, so we're going to focus on BJJ for intermediate judokas on this episode, and then we're going to follow it up with judo for intermediate BJJers. Yes, very, very different from the white belt coming in and like, hey, I want to learn judo or BJJ, or they have zero experience. It's very, very different because then they don't have a full understanding of the sport that they're already coming from. So they can't really make use of the new information. know white ball comes in to judo and then they start

learning turn throws and they quickly realize that people are standing up for 10 seconds at a time and when they pull guard or they go for one turn throw and they're not good at it and then they get their back taken their immediate go-to feeling is this thing doesn't work yeah so so this I think so this was a suggestion from Emin from one of our patrons and then he basically said the same thing like he's uh so he right now he's I think trying to he's learned some judo and then he's dabbling at BJJ yeah and he was he said he finds some balance and body mechanics very useful from judo

but also he's trying not to fall back too much on the judo instinct so he basically wants to really you know approach BJJ

as just for the sake of BJJ instead of like trying to like you know smash people with judo throws

so how do we what are your thoughts because you've done both wait reminding again which is which episode is this judo this is bjj for judo intermediate judo guys also you are let's just say a green or brown belt in judo sure yeah something and you go into a jujitsu class and you're like, all right, let's see what I can learn here. Right? Yeah, exactly. All right.

So first and foremost, as always, you have to know yourself, your style, where your gaps in your game are. With all that being said, the goal is to learn BJJ for itself or to use it to improve your judo skills and win matches using BJJ and judo skills and win matches using bjj and judo right so like you have to see like all right do i want to go the ibjjf circuit or the judo circuit national local regional international so you kind of have to have a decision you know what i mean right first right so what's your goal here like if that's your goal why are you learning bjj after learning judo right yeah that's really important and then now all of a sudden you're spending the time going to actual classes and taking classes and they're showing spider guard or lasso whatever it is or you know even like uh inverted you know guard or some of these things that may not present itself in judo because you don't have enough time or you're just never in that position enough that's gonna not really give you the best sort of bang for your buck if you're trying to use jujitsu to

compete in judo you know right but there's certain passing types that are very very useful for judo and there's certain positions that you see in judo all the time right right so if you can sort of guide your practice in that setting maybe you're not just taking regular class and like oh today we're gonna do butterfly sweeps yeah that'd be useful for you but if you kind of like take a little bit of time before class or do privates even private lessons always a good way to kind of like customize your training yeah because the guy gotta be like oh let me show you you know uh reverse de la jiva to kiss the dragon it's like that's not what i want to learn today you know so is there a real roof that's a real thing yeah oh really yeah that's amazing yeah yeah uh but if you could say like hey man i'm trying to win a

judo match and then these are the positions like over underpass is probably one of the best ones because the rules for judo rule says like when you're passing they could belly down and then not right give up their back no problem it's kind of like adcc rules too if you pass and you accept the pass you get points taken you know the person scores but if they're passing you give up your back and then you can kind of get back up to your feet you're good so you expose your back but passing, you give up your back and then you can kind of get back up to your feet. You're good. So you expose your back but you don't give up any points.

You know? Similarly with judo, you could give up your back, no problem. And then, you know, a couple seconds of stalemate, people will stand you up. So over-under pass

is a very good one. And then being very, very good finishing mechanics with finishing from the back. That's another really good one. You know, those two are probably like the best bang for your buck,

you know, in terms of spending your time using bjj for if you want to use bjj some of the things from bjj for your judo right yes yes yes and then so yeah go ahead yeah so i just wanted to like divide this episode into two parts i guess so let's go keep going with if you want to just take some elements from bjj for to improve your judo game yes and then we'll touch on the other way like you want to just learn bjj and then maybe touch on how your experience has been and i can kind of jump in there and there too so yeah let's keep going with uh you know taking elements so uh from dj so you said over under path yeah because you can't you can prevent people from bailing down yes when you're pricing right and then

you're there all the time people go sue me Tomonaga any sort of sacrifice though that they go to their back it always presents itself the one leg is up yeah like is up you they're on their back the legs are right there you go over on the pass you prevent the turnout you know how to finish it properly pass and pin you know because you have points for that yeah yeah so that's number one yeah what so what are some other things so attacking the back is very good finishing mechanics for any choke chokes you know right finishing uh you know all those nitty-gritty details like bj really goes through that well yes but then you have to be able to alternate and rotate through them quickly while creating movement.

So you have to make it Judo relevant. You know what I mean? Attacking the neck, going for Jiu-Jitsu. When you get to Jiu-Jitsu, if you can't unlink the hands in Judo, after a certain amount of time, they're just going to send you back up. You just don't, yeah.

So getting really good in that position, being able to go for it really quickly, because Jiu-Jitsu is unlimited time. But because you're spending a lot more time in that position of trying to unlink the hands and trying to finish the juji and you're learning mechanics finishing mechanics that's very useful for you you know right right and then also obviously some of the open guard stuff that relates from you doing sumigaishi tomonage and transitioning from standing to ground and then going for flash arm bars and such from bottom

from standing to ground and then going for flash on bars and such from bottom that's always really helpful yeah i mean so when you show up to so when you show up to a bjj school with this mindset and you know what to work on like you know those three things you just mentioned yeah how can you really like structure your practice around it because a typical BJJ school is not necessarily going to tailor everything to your needs. No. You mentioned privates, but, you know,

for some, privates may not be possible. That's very true. I'll tell you this, man. Yeah. When you're going to a judo school, right, how many randori can happen

at once on the feet? Not that many because space is always a concern, right? Yeah. You can't have 100 guys on the mat doing stand-up randori together

unless you're in Japan in a massive space. So you get less randori rounds. 100% in judo. I'll give you an example. My dojo, which has a little bit more than 1,000 square feet of mat space. We're in Manhattan. I know some of you are like, oh, it's a small dojo. It's like, yes, we're in Manhattan.

It costs a lot of money. It's a fortune. You have 1,000 square feet. I know some of you are like, oh, it's a small dojo. It's like, yes, we're in Manhattan. It costs a lot of money. It's a fortune. Yeah. You know? You have 1,000 square feet. Okay? We got maybe eight guys doing Tachihaza Rondori.

Yeah. So we do short two to three minute rounds. Right? And then we just keep going and then we filter them out. Don't double up until later. People get tired. They go fall off. But we could have 25, 30 guys working out at the same time in Nwaza. Right.

Right. See what i mean so you could do more rounds you could do more roles consistent consistent consistent right so you can always rely on the number of roles that you get into jiu-jitsu sometimes judo it's like all right guys eight eight people go out there or ten people go out there let's do some randori you may not be able to get that space on the mat yeah and maybe you're at a dojo where it's not a lot of students. Maybe that's the case. You know, maybe, you know,

you have a lot more space. Who knows? Okay. But generally speaking. So now, you have a certain amount of a lot of time and number of rolls

and now you can allocate your focus. For instance, instead of doing loose passing, fast passing, the Torriando pass and all that stuff,

you want to be a specialist in over-under passing. That pressure passing style. You know what I mean? Yeah. Person goes, Tomonage,

whatever it is, get really quickly into that, you know, split in the leg position and then go right, diving right into that over-under pass.

Yeah. And then you want to be an expert and then you want to make sure that you spend a lot of time there, understand all the different nuances

of the reactions, the main line of defenses, the things he may do to prevent you from doing those passes so now you're an expert in that right yeah so that's a really really good way to focus on that you know i mean obviously starting from someone's back like getting there is difficult in jiu-jitsu roles but you can kind of talk to the person hey can we start you know with you on my back and then trade positions that's something that's reasonable that's a reasonable request hey i'm working on finishing from the back or sometimes classes goes hey let's start in finishing juji position you know hands locked

or whatever it is so that's kind of gives that that's how you structure your own training you know by communicating to your partner or communicating to the teacher etc etc you know what i mean i'd say you can always take 10 minutes after class and be like, hey, let's work these specific positions. That, like, I don't know any teacher that's like, no. You can just come 10 minutes early, 15 minutes early, given that there's no kids' class happening beforehand or whatever. Like, that's totally okay to just kind of specifically work positions.

You know, that's fine everywhere almost, right? Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know, and everywhere almost right yeah yeah that makes sense and yeah you know and i think most teachers will find that very good because you're like dedicated and motivated and you sure and just don't be a you know yeah don't be a dick about it dick about it yeah exactly so all right so now let's move on to the other case where you want to, you're a judoka, intermediate judoka, but you want to learn BJJ as BJJ. Yeah.

I mean, I guess it might be simpler because you just show up and just train, but you know, a lot of judo habits might kick in and then your ego as a judoka might kick in, I guess. Yeah. You know, and I think the ego is the biggest killer for progress I think you know and

that's one thing I learned to not have an ego and even now still to this day you know I put myself in bad positions I give positions to like older yeah people or people not as athletic or even people way below my skill level right yeah so they'll work on positions like for instance like if a really good black belt passes my guard, for me to retain from there is very difficult, right? Yeah, yeah. But, like, a not-so-good blue belt who's a little bit older, who's a little bit lighter than me, like, I can let him get there, no problem. He feels good about himself. Obviously, I don't give it to him in an obvious way.

Right, right. I do the right reactions, this and that. He goes for this, this and that. And then he passes really quickly. Great. I'll accept it, and then I'll try to work myself out of it, you know? Yeah. And in the process, if I get submitted, it's not a big deal you know and i never let them extend my

i don't trust blue belts ever right like when they go for it i was like oh you got it good nice work you know okay and then like we'll continue in this way you know and i think that's very very helpful because now winning is not the goal for me yeah you know what i mean yeah if winning is the goal i could take anybody down land in side control keep them there the whole time and that's a win for me i can win that way in air quotes but i don't learn anything the other person doesn't learn anything and it's just like the most useless way to spend your time on the mat you're not there to like represent judo and then dojo yeah no no no that's not that's not why i'm there you know what i mean yeah like so like right now i'll give you an example this guy marcus showed me his like spider

guard system you know not like a spider guard traditionally like one foot goes up there but he'll plant the other foot off balance and try to go into the other leg entanglement to the opposite side you know guys leading with this right leg usually you doahiva and entangle that lead leg but using that spider guard to entangle the other leg which makes it very difficult because if you don't lead with your left and you don't knee cut with your left or don't do any of this stuff with your left now all of a sudden you're forced yeah to do that i see you know what i mean so i've been trying to do this kind of stuff and in the process i learned that my legs are really short right so it's very difficult it's not the same because this guy's really lanky that i'm learning yeah right and then i'm making lots of little mistakes

that ultimately leads to them maybe throwing the leg by or something get past right right right you know it's fine and then even when i get past when they throw that leg by with the spider hook like i'll do different reactions you know what i mean? I know when a blue belt does that, I can grab the sleeve, you know, push it across, frame through, and then when he lets go, I can re-guard. But I'm not going to do that every time, you know? I may let him throw the leg by, and I may give him my back and then roll into a knee bar or something. But I'm going to try to give different looks, different reactions to kind of, like, feel a little bit more. You know what I mean? to kind of feel a little bit more.

Right. You know what I mean? So I developed that sensitivity to be able to react, right, to like which option is the best and make that, you know, on the game, on the fly sort of decision. You know what I mean? And then, yeah, so that's how I've been kind of approaching my training. And then, you know, after people kind of realize this, they're not looking at it like, oh, I've got to watch that guy

because he's going to smoke somebody or I want to see Chantal slam somebody in the beginning it was a little bit like oh man i wonder if he's gonna slam somebody and then i'm just disappointing everyone because i'm not throwing anybody in the room yeah but now you're not there to throw i'm not there to some guys and they can get hurt because they don't have experience taking falls so now i'm at a i'm at a point where it's like oh you know he's just a guy in the room training, you know, there's no pressure, you know, I get passed and, you know,

submitted all the time. That's part of the training for me. You know what I mean? I see. Yeah. So then, yeah, that's now kind of, yeah,

that's a good segue to your own experience as, you know, showing up. You're not an intermediate jiroka by any means, but you did show up to BJJ school.

So, how was that? Like, I know, you know, you've BJJ school. So, how was that like? I know, you know, you've done all that, like, leaving the eagle at the door

and then, you know, you're there, you appreciate as, you want to, wanted to learn BJJ as BJJ. You weren't there to,

right? So, how's it been? I've been learning, you know, from Brian Glick. I have a long history with Brian.

Yeah. But it was once a week, you know, we get together and, you know, I have like a couple months stints here and there. Like, I did three months at Hentos, you know, with Donaher. And he gave me my purple belt and such. And, you know, I go sometimes, like, to this school for a couple weeks or something like that.

But it's very sporadic, very little, like, not real training. You know what I mean? Yeah. But this is the first time that I strung together probably eight or nine months where I'm going all the time. And, like, actually embedding myself in the country and trying to learn. You know what I mean? Yeah. Nice.

So do you feel like it's helping you with your judo or vice versa or both? What are some of the things that you've gained? Do you recommend this yeah I'll tell you the people the way I gained confidence in my new waza yeah different you know what I mean before a jiu-jitsu BJJ black belt like a gem pop black belt who's a little bit older can visit my dojo and challenged me to know waza and if my goal was to just not get submitted and beat him I could do it yeah yeah but now like it's like i really know their game i really know jujitsu so i'm a lot more proficient and then also there was a guy

who reached out to me from japan he was a junior world champ right oh recently and he's like hey man i'm gonna you know he texted his buddy who speaks english and he hit me up and he's like yo this guy's coming and he's my size my weight he's like late 20s he's a killer right yeah and I was like oh man like this might be the day when he comes that I'm gonna get taken down

in front of everyone in the dojo you know what I mean yeah this guy sounds like it's no joke but it's you know three minute Rondori round

I can hold my own with anybody yeah but I was like you know what though I'm gonna embarrass him on the ground first oh

I'm gonna submit him four times and first oh i'm gonna submit four times and then he's gonna fear me and then by the time we get to tachiuaza you know he's gonna be just his spirit's gonna be broken you know what i mean maybe like put six minutes on the clock for the ground and then just hammer him for six minutes straight right okay demoralize him and just make him feel the fear of god right and then when we get to stand up he's going to be a little bit like oh shit I better not miss

you know I better not go for a drop say now he missed because he's a drop say now guy because he's going to strangle him he's going to punish me you know and even though we're not

you know we're training stand up there's the risk of getting submitted if you're giving up your back if you miss so that pressure may slow down or delay

his drop say now game you know so that pressure may slow down or delay his drop Senna game you know so that gives me confidence for sure did it work out how did that go

he didn't come last minute he didn't come last minute and I was very relieved actually that would have been interesting

I would have flown to New York to just see that yeah I don't know what's his name. But he was relatively current, and he was on the world tour. He was very successful.

So I was like, this guy, I'm going to have a hard time with this guy because he's also big. He's also heavier than me. He's taller than me. He's current. He's in his late 20s. So I'm like, all right, this guy is going to give me a hard time. So you've become more well-rounded.

It gave you more confidence on the ground, obviously. Yeah. Did it? I guess. But then you've been really learning a lot of very BJJ-specific things, too, though, like Spider Guard and De La Riva and all that. And you know, this is the thing, right? I think there's a lot of stuff in BJJ that's BJJ specific that guys have not

brought over to judo yet. Oh, you think those like spider guards and they, they can be used in judo, you think? A hundred percent. I think, for instance,

when you go Tomonage, guy drops to his knees, right? Yeah. You close, close guard. Both usually parties know that they're not going to be able to open the closed guard pass the closed guard and get the pin position

within the allotted amount of time yeah so both players just accept that close this is done yeah and then it's essentially a stalemate yeah because it takes a lot of effort and time to get any meaningful attacks from there in judo, right? Yeah. So they accept it. They look at the ref. Ref goes, all right, guys, let's get back to your feet. I know both of you.

In that position, though, right? Yeah. To transition double feet on the hip after you have the double sleeves and then put the foot on the bicep for the, right? And go for a flash sankaku is completely within reason to be able to do in an actual judo match and you're there all the time

right so like going like cross collar juji like regular juji from bottom that's just not

going to happen because you can't do that you know in close guard real quick like right off the bat right

but like looking to off balance some close guard and then having two or three really flash fast flash attacks like that's something that most judokas don't do and flavio canto was successful with that right he had the collar he would off balance and then did the canto choke yeah yeah you know collar off balance juji canto choke like he would just alternate between these three and he had a tremendous amount of success.

Right, right. But usually you go into a jiu-jitsu school and it's like, okay, we're going to learn the close guard. We're going to grab the sleeve. We're going to try to bring the arm across the center line. And then we're going to try to trap that topside shoulder. You know, and if he resists back here, we're going to try to sweep him.

And then the person on top is going to try to open the close guard by doing this and standing up and blah, blah and then if he stands up you go for you know k guard or whatever entry like yeah none of that stuff is going to happen in judo right right but it i guess it's i mean i guess it's a little hard to practice that in bjj schools though i guess you have to kind of ask people to be in the position that you're gonna try this like how would you but you know by being advanced and working like the fundamentals being there yeah right and that's the issue with stand-up judo for BJJ guys right and I've realized you're gonna teach in a judo class at essential yeah and I'm doing private sometimes

with some of these guys they're asking all the right questions and then yeah the training training in air quotes right judo they're doing this stuff yeah but now all of a sudden rolling comes around and they're doing six rolls five minutes each five rolls six minutes each whatever there's 30 minutes and the other person's like oh shit he's been working judo with chantaro bang so he's yeah yeah right and then they're never really spending that much time on their feet yeah yeah 20 seconds in a row if that yeah so they don't get the repetitions and the time in that standing position where you have two parties trying to throw each other yeah you know what i mean so that's the issue, really. And even in judo, too,

and there was, it's like you're never spending that much time in close guard, so you don't develop the feel and the intricacies. How to off-balance, try to extend the limb. You know what I mean?

How to, like, show a choke and make them believe and then try to off-balance them backwards and try to sweep them, and then they're coming into you and then going for juju. You know? So it's an exposure problem like you just

if you actually think about it you just don't get exposed as much to the situation you just don't so like spending time in it can help with like feel developing that feel

feel and then that comes and the speed will follow the feel and all that yes so there's definitely

a good thing there you know and then i think the next level up is seeing things that you could bring over from judo and things that you can bring over from jujitsu and things and theories and concepts that are apparent in both right and then understanding that where no one really truly understands i'll give you an example man when you're doing right versus right people ask where do you grab the sleeve when they're grabbing your collar right yeah low sleeve mid sleeve halfway between the elbow and the wrist or like high in the bicep like where do you grab it you know and then the two most common ones are middle of the elbow when you're pushing pressure down yeah and then low sleeve and

when do you do those things that's the question yeah yeah what is the intent for low sleeve what is the intent for high sleeve what techniques are good for low sleeve what techniques are good for high sleeve yeah okay and then once you now think about that right you know everyone wants to grab this collar for a specific reason. So then you can kind of reverse engineer it to prevent what they want to do and then implement your own intentions between the two sleeves. Similarly with jiu-jitsu, if they're in headquarters and they grab the collar, they want to like close that elbow knee space. But as they're doing that okay how are you grabbing that sleeve and what is the intent you know I mean if you go low

sleeve and then you could pop it off and you have sort of that cat's paw grip right yeah yeah that's more of a pulling thing right yeah as opposed to a pushing thing you don't need to push that much in that position that's why that position so what is it more apparent than common in bjj from those positions what is it called the hook grip or the pocket grip you know i'm talking about pistol yeah yeah i know it's like yeah not pistol but you like cat's paw they call it cat's paw in old judo and then they call it like a hook grip or something like this yeah you know what i mean so i know what you mean yeah yeah That leads to more length

and then you could throw your leg over for like sort of a last one. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And then one, when do you go for that high mid elbow sort of a section?

You know, when you reinforce it here then you can pull it up and you can go Tegatame or something, you know? Yeah. And then,

so like those are very, very similar nuanced things that are concepts that are in both grip fighting judo and then bjj right but in bjj no one really talks about grip fighting yeah you know knee cut there's a hierarchy of advantages right bottom leg top leg collar hand yeah and how do you get that collar hand hand on the collar is a big one because once you get the collar now you're anchored to that person now they can't chest escape away right yeah all these different things

and people are good at grip fighting there who are very good who've developed it but they don't specifically explicitly teach it like the way they do in high level judo you know what i mean so making that connection between the two sports and then being able to like understand it fully and seeing sort of yeah into the ether is that a is that a thing you know i i've heard that expression but i honestly don't know what that means but i don't know i just kind of made it up so i think that is like you know where i'm trying to look you know yeah and it's like that video micro judo that i was talking about, the nuance stuff that no one really sees,

but really makes a difference. You know what I mean? I think that's the next tier up, you know, and understanding people say, use Kazushi all the time. You didn't do enough Kazushi, but they don't truly understand.

What does that even mean? Yeah. Like how to provide that Kazushi. It's not as simple as pull this way and the guy off balances. There's a lot of push and pull, nuance, hand position,

intention, like what is intended to be done here, and then what do they anticipate is being done here. If they think I'm going to go for Tomonage, that alone is going to drive their way back, which makes it easy for me to push them back for Koji or even double Koji

in Jiu-Jitsu. Or the dummy sweep. Yeah. Right? Or your tripod sweep. Oh, I got, I'm going to run a seminar

around that. You should. All right. So this is, I think we had a great conversation about BJJ for intermediate judokas.

Yeah. We're going to follow it up with judo for intermediate BJJers. But, yeah, anything else we missed? I mean,

that's it, man. And you know, you could just do jujitsu so much more safely. And then there's a lot more availability with the jujitsu classes because it's just safer. Much more people practice it in the United States, right?

Specifically in the United States. I know everyone's been hating on me for the stuff that I say. And I forget the same in the United States. Yeah. In the United States. Because if if you go to France you have a million people doing judo if you go to Japan you have a million people doing judo you go to Korea there's a lot of people doing judo judo yeah there's like a tv show in Korea where celebrities try judo yeah yeah on tv yeah so I mean this is like specifically we're talking in the U.S. market know? So I hope people, you know, don't get too offended and upset. Uh, but yeah,

we're U S centric because we're in the U S. Yeah. Yeah. We speak English, you know? Yeah. So anyway, yeah.

Thank you guys for listening as always. And then find us on Instagram. Judo Shintaro NYC. Right. Yeah. And then all the support us on Patreon. Join us on our discord server. Yeah. And thank you. That's it really. Yeah. Great then all the support us on Patreon to join us on our Discord server. Yeah.

And thank you. That's it really. Yeah. Great. All right. Thanks for listening guys. And we'll see you guys in the next episode.