The Shintaro Higashi Show - Coaching - An Interview With Chris Round

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

In this week's episode, Shintaro sits down with Chris Round-- an accomplished Judoka and a PhD candidate who has a very unique, academic approach to coaching Judo. He is currently the Judo instructor at High Noon BJJ in Alexandria, VA, and you can follow him on Instagram @chris__circle. 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. Today, we have a special guest, Chris Round. Welcome aboard, Chris. Nice to see you. Nice to see you, Shintaro. Great to be on here. Yeah. So for those of you who don't know, me and Chris have a long history together. We trained at Jimmy Pejo's in early 2010, 11, those days. And you grew up training there as well, right? Yep. I started Judo with Jimmy.

Actually, my father trained under his father way back in the day. Oh, shoot didn't know that yeah yeah so i've been linked to the family for decades yeah and you know chris round is a very high level judo competitor right can you give us some of your accolades right a little bit oh thanks i appreciate that um okay so i was a junior national champion u21 um back then U20, aging myself there. But I also took third at President's Cup. I consistently was making top, I've consistently made top five and top eight at tournaments like US Open, US Nationals. And I've had the opportunity to be in the room and help folks train for really high level tournaments. I was a training partner for folks like Rhonda Rousey when I was young.

That's right, Rhonda, yeah. By training partner, I mean she was kicking my ass. But I got to help folks who were ready for OA in 2012. And as a scout, I've done a lot of scouting work. I helped Kayla and Nick ahead of the Rio Olympics. And I also helped some folks who were doing worlds during the last squad. And you have a lot of experience in BJJ as well, too, right?

I've seen you do a lot of competitions, mixing in the match and judo moves and such. Yeah, yeah. So my brown bomb was on Jiu-Jitsu under Dr. Roddy Ferguson. Oh, Roddy. I didn't know that was your coach.

Yeah. Yeah, no. And he and I have collaborated on a bunch of stuff together. Nice. The scouting work I did with Kale, that was in collaboration with him. So we both have kind of an analytics type background

and like to get in kind of an eagerness on a list enough so it works well. What's a PhD? My PhD should be done this year, finally. Okay. Yeah, what field are you in? Not grappling, right? Not grappling.

That would be cool if that was a PhD subject, wouldn't it be? Oh my God god it'd be awesome yeah um no environmental science and policy i what i do off the mat well i philosophically connected to judo is nothing related to judo all right so if you were a phd candidate in grappling what would your dissertation be on oh my god there's like i think one thing that's really interesting is when you look at the amount of dead space during matches and how athletes and coaches utilize that. So, yeah.

So what you can do when you look at is one is the amount of dead space, you know, from competing a lot of times is based on two factors. What do you mean by dead space? So what I mean by dead space is the space between Maté and Hajime. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because once Hajime started, you can argue, it's clear there's always some form of activity happening, whether we're moving or changing location around the mat,

or once we're engaged with each other. But actually, the dead space, when actually technically nothing's happening, there's still things that are happening. There's instructions that are happening in the background maybe there's a technical official is making making us say they're trying to rectify yeah and we all know those matches where that was a deciding factor you look at ole bischoff versus travis stevens in london um you know time after time looked like ole was about to pack it in and that's nothing against ole man's great fighter yeah um but then you know something would happen and travis would get yet more tape on his head Ole was about to pack it in and that's nothing against Ole, man's a great fighter. Yeah.

But then, you know, something would happen and Travis would get more tape on his head, unfortunately, and Ole would be able to get a breath in and be functional. Yeah, because Travis has a gas tank, right? And that would have played better if there wasn't that dead, you know, in between. Wouldn't it be better to say dead time? Because time has pause and it's no action that space i thought you were talking about like all the space is not being used or the space between the two grapplers maybe we're having oh that would be interesting itself um that'd be interesting itself because you think about i i think i think ringcraft um from boxing i think that's kind of under discussed a bit in judo coaching united states United States. Cause you know, look at, you know, look like a player like Nick Capopolo.

Nick was really that either playing the edge where he's trying to draw you into pushing him out so he can get underneath you. Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. So, so actually, yeah. Understanding does make some understanding positioning and ring craft within judo itself was really interesting. Cause it's something like you know you and i competed forever so we we understand it intuitively but it's not there's so many things in judo matches

that aren't visible unless you have that experience that you can spell out and you know what even at the highest levels you know like i fought my found myself like trying to get out of something bad and then all of a sudden i look down and my foot's in the red zone. And it's like, oh, shoot. And you get penalized because you're not paying attention because you're worried about getting slammed. You know what I mean? So people make that kind of mistake all the time. And then I guess, you know, having that dead time when your coach is like, hey, you're retreating.

Watch where your feet is. You know, don't get out of bounds. They're trying to crowd you out. That can make the difference between getting a penalty or not. You get two penalties, you're trying to crowd you out that can make the difference between getting a little penalty or not you get two penalties you're down right because you're a third you're a dog you get three strikes you're out right so having that second penalty based on that that time and having the proper coaching can make or break the match you know yeah and the coaching element is interesting too because i mean as you know every fighter is different what their

need is different and there's it's always interesting me when i've seen coaches that are unbelievably like spectacular coaches but the communication styles don't match um and looking at because it's a personality thing like i mean i could hear jimmy's voice through just about any crowd there was because he i came up under him um and likewise with the big voice dude oh he does um with that thick boston accent right yeah or you're like i mean you can hear carrie chandler across the state um yeah yeah yeah you know you have folks who either have big voice or you can you can hear you're just trained to hear them yes but even then there's still a communication style element where you know there are some people who it just doesn't match and And it's just it's an interesting psych element.

I could see a psych PhD out of that, honestly. Yes. What would be your life theory that you would want to test out and stuff? Well, regarding. And how would you collect the data? It would be the next question after that. Because, you know, you're you're an analytics guy, like you said. Yeah.

So it's actually it's effectively it's called coding and qualitative research so what you would start with is when you identify kind of behaviors i'm trying to track for um there's two ways of doing this one is if i'm looking at let's say i'm looking at that time if i wanted to focus in on the coaching the first thing i do is i try to get transcripts and time stamps of all the coaching that was going on and then i'd also need to watch the video and visually recognize and see if I could encode the behaviors I'm seeing in the match and then see if I can find linkages.

And upon, you have to more or less have two separate code books. The code book is like a physical behavior code book for the match itself, which actually isn't that different from what you would do in a scouting scenario. Like I built scouting analytics stuff for my team all the time.

I actually have a side business doing that. But what you would then do is you take a lot of that data and then try to see if it even quotes what the coach was saying okay yeah and then you would do a regression analysis or something like this you could um it it would depend on your approach um you could do that that you could go the natural language processing route as well so okay so back to the coaching because that's what you're kind of in this game for right yeah so i know you know we've competed together you're entering a new phase in your life where you're starting your own gym uh club yes um judo club yeah it's judo jiu-jitsu so actually we're within a brazilian jiu-jitsu club um high noon brazilian j, Brazilian Jitsu in Alexandria, Virginia, um, Virginia.

Okay. Yeah. Just outside of DC. Yeah. So we've been there for almost a year now. Um, I train five days a week. Hey, um, we've got a solid group of assistant instructors. Um, I developed, I wrote up a whole curriculum and I've nice.

Tell me about that curriculum. Sure. So it's, so it's funny because you start when you go to write that curriculum you write down like almost everything you possibly think you know and grappling and go all right they've got to know all this stuff then you're right ah they've only got so much time in the week i've only got so much time in the week and it's been paring down paring down paring down i'm actually on the verge of finishing up have a 2.0 version.

Okay. But in developing that, what I'd sat down, I said, all right, well, let's actually take, you know, think of the three classic parts of a throw because this is Koriakake. Well, you can break that down even further. You can break it down to like kind of basic elements of a throw. We look at the different types of movement. So like a swing step on like a swing step uchi mat. Oh, yeah. Okay. swing step on like a swing step uchi mat um or the way yeah okay or the way an ochi way different ochi hooks happen like a tight hook for like a classical ochi versus like have a more broader

hook from what like jimmy's ochi you know i love that you're saying this because this kind of shows like your depth of understanding right because people say oh when you go ochi your toes should scrape the floor in a nice circle and there's no other way you know some people still say this kind of thing and you're like yeah this guy doesn't really know but i like it that you said that there's different types of hooks when it comes to the ochi those things have to be taken into consideration yeah it really shows your understanding of the style it's great thanks jantara oh yeah yeah i mean i spent a lot of time i spent a lot of time training a guy named ryan hall um really of course yeah you know everyone knows ryan hall yeah so ryan and i worked together for like five years um i didn't know that wow that's so cool

yeah yeah on the bj side i so on the judo side most of my time was with jimmy i spent a lot of time with jason and radhi and then on the bj side my ranks through radhi um and i also trained with a local club phoenix in the boston area that was an awesome club. But I got a chance to train with folks like I've trained with Ryan for about five years. I've trained with a little bit of Morello Santana. Yeah, cool. Yeah. So like a good example of when we're thinking about these elements of throws is let's think about your Shimada for a second. You think about that classic elbow debate.

You know, hey, why is somebody's elbow high? Well, let's take a second and think about what are we actually trying to do mechanically here? I'm just trying to create a seesaw underneath somebody effectively. Does it matter where that elbow is? As long as I'm getting that seesaw effect. Not really. Yeah.

So break throws down to those basic elements and kind of, we can understand like what is actually important. Yeah. So in rewriting my curriculum now, what I basically did was try to break down all the different elements that someone would need to know physically and like having their, um, physical vocabulary to do different types of judo throws and focus on that while also meeting some basic requirements, USA judo sets. And that way

they have the physical tool set so let's say they go to a camp and it's you know someone who comes from a wildly different style judo um someone who's like teaching like a mongolian style judo or something like that they have the physical tools or they understand they can break it down understand what's going on and that's what i'm trying to do with my basic curriculum and that's a basic curriculum wow that's interesting so is it like a eight week program, six week program? Is there like different moves that get, you know,

or is it conceptual based? Like what kind of, tell me more about this. So it's about six months. Um, six months curriculum. Bam. Okay.

Nice. Yeah. So I'm still finishing up the edge of the 2.0 version. Um, and what, a lot of what I'm doing is once you get to brown belt when you're working with me it becomes much more conceptual like i'm fixing things like making sure you understand your gripping making sure that you understand there's more advanced you do have good gripping

thank you i appreciate that yeah um it didn't help me much when when you and i were trading but a long time ago you know this is the thing right like you and me training in 2012 we were two different people you know this is uh now who knows man you probably a lot better, you know, this is the thing, right? Like you and me training in 2012, we were two different people, you know? This is true. Now, who knows, man? You're probably a lot better. And, you know, I have a different style too. And, you know, our judo game evolved.

So whenever I knew your judo from 2012, I'm sure it's not the same as, and even then your gripping was good. So I'm sure it's even better now. I appreciate that. Do you introduce gripping in the basics curriculum? Yes. I introduced kind of some of the basic openers. So if you think about gripping, so people talk about grappling is chess all the time,

but they don't actually think they apply that thought. You know, I love it that you just said that. I love it that you just said that. You're absolutely right. Because even in chess, there's many different openings, right? King's pawn, queen's pawn, gambit, this and that. And then, right. And then there's all these philosophies about, you know, structuring your pawn structure,

like all these different concepts that come along with chess openers, like, you know, chess tactics and such, like judo is like chess. All right. You know, uh, do you play chess? It's like, ah, you know, not really. Uh, you have to think about, cause you have to actually think about when you're teaching, particularly when you teach gripping, you have to talk about openers, you have to talk about what the mid-game feels like, and then what the end-game feels like,

and then what you can do. So there's, in my opinion, there's like two, like there's mixes, of course, but there's two main routes you can go about doing this. One is you lay out the gripping foundations, not in that you want your white belts

gripping, fighting each other to death, but you lay it out where they at least they kind and when they go with a brown belt they kind of know all right don't give the brown brown belt my right hand first um yes okay and you give them all right here are your basic openers and here's like here's a few grip breaks and here more the more important part is understanding what are the different positions that you get to play from and then from there when you show say upon sewanagi they can start to think hey where can i plug this movement in um i think this was something i didn't

love no i love it i love it just love it so this was something i hadn't thought of really actually when i got hurt the first time um you i think you were with at this the time i blew my shoulder out um i remember i was taking organic chemistry class at the time I blew my shoulder out. Um, I remember I was taking organic chemistry class at the time and that was a miserable experience, but, um, but a lot of organic chemistry, it's picturing two molecules and seeing how they come together. And I realized it's, it's the same style of thinking we have for grappling. And then I started thinking, well, if I can take this movement, where else could I place it? And that's where you you start to recognize I think that's one of the things that really changes when you become a serious competitor at the black belt level and

even if you're not intellectually like figuring it out this way it's like okay I've got a Morote Seinagi that Morote Seinagi can come with Sode from a different group man that's really really good I was just saying this with Peter not what you just said so eloquently but i was talking about ipan senagi and sode is the cousin and if you could do the entry for ipan senagi the sode might be there the cousin can fill in for this you said it much better but nice that's great yeah i love that i love that yeah you know people intuitively do it right and then a lot of times the high level competitor and grappler aren't academics or intellectual i don't say not intellectual i'm not saying that but like they take a different approach it's field-based they're tactile kinesthetic learners generally right yeah

so the way you just explained it you know nailed it really and it's really important i appreciate that it's really important to be able to break things down like this not necessarily because i want to have more people to death but what we have to like, there's a lot of things we have to do for America to become better on the, on the world scene judo. But one of the fundamental things we need is we need more quality teachers. Um, and if you can break, if we can break things down like this, like, do I want to be coaching people who make an Olympic team someday? Of course.

Like what coach doesn't want to do that. But one of my primary goals is I want to make sure that I produce a lot of black belts who can teach because they're going to go ahead and they'll move on with their lives and hopefully they'll stay involved in judo. And that will, the less siloed, um, kind of the elite sections of American judo are the more more this information is out in the general public and taught in a systematic way. I think you'll see a better quality of Judo come from it. Oh, yeah, definitely. Nice. That's so interesting.

So now you're breaking into this world. And I'm kind of like hung up on the curriculum side of things. You're fine. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, I was like, wow, that's a really interesting approach to the curriculum. I love what you said about, OK, white belts gripping. You don't want to go gripping death. Like, don't put your right hand out. You know, I was like, wow, that's a really interesting approach to the curriculum. I love what you said about, like, okay, white belts gripping. You don't want to go gripping death. Like, don't put your right hand out.

You know, they're dominant, right? And don't forget situational work. Before we move on, just don't forget, I can teach my white belts gripping, and I can still just set them on 50-50, you know, lapel or tricep each and go, all right, you guys are just going to be working on your throwing here. You can use, I think something that people make a mistake about is when they think about teaching gripping, I can just use situational Randori as a way to bypass those barriers so people will develop, still develop that throwing capability. Yes, because you don't want somebody to grip a lot but can't throw.

It's like how much you focus on each thing, right? Yeah, and then sometimes, you know, you're doing your sensei judo and you're kind of like hanging out just fighting position defending stuff and then you're like look in the room and people start copying that now everyone's own sense that you know they're not actual throwers that kind of happened sometimes too you know so yeah and now okay so you're running this new program you're launching it right you've already launched it or yeah um launched in june last year we're coming up our one year anniversary on the 11th. How's that going? Going well. We've got a small club.

What I've kind of tried to do is there's a few really good players in the D.C. area and I've kind of tried to get it so we can all kind of work together. So I'm going to coach in Ecuador next month for the concert to open there. I'll be working with Yasmin. You're going to coach with the national team? Yeah. Oh, shoot. I'll be working with Yasmin. You're going to coach with the national team? Yeah. Oh, shoot. I didn't know you were doing that. Yeah.

I'm working with two folks right now. I'm personal coaches. I'm the personal coach going down for Yasmin Alamin, who she works with a lot of clubs in the area. She trains at like Sport Chitos. She trains at a bunch of places. Okay. And then David Terrell, who's over training with Ryan.

Yeah. Okay. Wow. Nice. Nice. So you're trying to climb up the rankings of the usa coaching certificate and all this stuff yep um can you give somebody yeah go ahead content the what i'm content till right now um so for folks who are interested in this pathway yeah let's talk

about that and all the different levels and such and how you can get onto this scene of coaching some guys you know they can't really do judo but they know judo and they should be good coaches, right? So they have to take the credentials and let's see how does that system work? Yeah. So, um, number one is you have to go to a coaching, basic coaching introduction clinic. Yeah. Um, Pat Burris tends to run in USA judo. So he's the person. Yeah. If you go through USA judo, you go to Pat. Um, USG has a good program as well usgf has a program if you want to coach internationally though you have to go through usa judo um and pat is very supportive of people trying to move amazing yeah so there's different levels there's state there's regional national um continental international international gold so i started out based because of my success

in competition i started out right out the gate as a national coach oh is that the thing i didn't know that was a thing yep um i because i and i spoken to pat and i said hey pat you know i have this background here's my competition record here's where i came from i was like okay yeah he knew you for years yeah so what is the ranking again go ahead from the beginning um i believe it's state i might be missing a level so yeah um so i believe it's state regional national continental international international gold um international goal wow yeah that's if you've been coaching on a world team or an olympic team oh wow i know i'm international but i know there was one above it you know maybe on continent i don't even remember yeah those guys yeah i gotta look it up i have to

i'm trying to get towards my international right now because right now if you're below international if you go to coach at like a content to open you do need permission and you also need to if you're not the official usa judo coach you are you have to be attached to certain athletes like you know as i said i'm i'm helping david who you know represents ryan ryan's school i'm helping and yasmin represents a few schools in the area. I'm also working with, right now I'm working with Nick DelPablo as well. So I'll probably go into some events this year to help him. Nice.

Yeah. So I'm still at the beginning stages of that. It was funny because I saw Jimmy at Nationals and I was running around with a chick in my head cut off. And it was funny because a couple of times I did get to counter coach Travis and, or I got to just watch Jimmy coach. And I'm still learning from just watching him and listening to him coach. And I think something that I do think something that a mistake that people make when they're coming into coaching is one, they assume just saying, you know, go, go rah, rah, and cheerleading is doing much. It can, but it's not that it's not high level coaching.

You know, some people respond to that too, though. Some people really respond to that, you know? Oh, there were moments. I mean, I had a, there was a bronze medal match I was coaching through where like the last two minutes, I just needed this guy to stay in it, to not mentally break. Like there's moments for that. I think that you have to study other coaches and what they're doing and you have to just as you would it's not adversarial um but

you have to study just as i would study opponents when i was getting ready for competition i have to look at what other coaches are doing either in their mat site coaching or in discussions around how they run their place because it'll give me ideas how to improve but i think yes yeah if you let this stuff get stale it's easy for me to say right now because i'm in my 30s i'm young ish um in the stage but if you let this stuff get stale then you know it stops being fun oh yeah for sure without a doubt no you got to learn and keep you know getting better and better so yeah speaking of good coaching like what do you think makes a good coach what do you think distinguishes you and what did you learn from jimmy jason some of the coaches that you had specifically in judo because you know yeah that would you do too so

you know one thing that it's funny because um he's known as being pretty rough around the edges but i actually really appreciate i always felt like there was some empathy underlying big jim um if you you had to as you know you had to kind of like sit there and look for it yeah but he wasn't going to bullshit you he was going he wouldn't and you could tell it was very much a i'm gonna tell you the truth because i want why i want what's actually best for you like it's not just i want you in my dojo be a training buddy for my actual star person like yeah this is what i think is actually best for you and i think leading from i think that's different when i think of other coaches that were kind of the hammer that i've had um what

separated big jim from a lot of them was I always had a sense of, he really is intending what's best behind that versus I'd have other coaches, you know, that, that hammer coach, like in wrestling, it's like, are you,

are you giving me crap just because you had a bad day? Like that's the whole week on the guy, you know? Yeah. That was never my feeling with him. Um, that extends a bit to Jimmy. What I got from Jimmy was Jimmy taught me how to teach. jimmy used to tell me he goes look you need to teach as if you're working with blind

students because that way one people who are who are just auditory learners and they'll get more out of it you'll understand the technique better and visual your visual learners will see all the details and get reinforced and then you'll come back with your tactile learners. And a lot of times you'll get them on the way back. I don't know if he ever broke it down quite that far, but I remember him repeatedly talking to me about imagining. It's definitely learning types that's a real thing. People like interpersonal learners, interpersonal learners. They're very different types, right?

So you have to kind of differentiate instruction based on that, you yeah what about jason what kind of good coaching things that he um jason was good at introducing me a slightly different style judo um i specifically coaching though talk about coaching so like what did you learn from you know to be a good coach jimmy big jim you know jason because those are the people who are main players in the game right now right yeah you're affiliate with yeah so what i picked up from jason was jason tend to bring a strong confidence mat side oh yeah that's to say the least um and he really i he really wouldn't let a bad call stand easily and yeah, people can go overboard with that. But one thing I definitely picked up from Jason was one, he's was really good Matt side. So I tended to learn a lot from that.

Both him and Jimmy were. And I just understanding kind of when to put the gas on a bit on refer tech officials, because something isn't quite right. Yeah. I appreciate that from him i also for what it's worth i mean i used to go train with him every summer and i used to get just like ran random stuff out of him that was just kind of useful um so i remember seeing you know being coached against jason right so i'm competing against one of his athletes and jason's

coaching one of his athletes against me and you know I remember had a match with this guy not to cut you off anything I'm sorry but you know just talk about coaching and uh just like what you said with the instilling confidence in your athletes he did that so good with his guy who I believed I outskilled him by a lot right and then you know I went for something I didn't work you know we went down to the ground and as we were walking back Jason goes you see this guy sucks you're not that good he's got nothing right and then i was like what you know it kind of got in my head and then the guy was like yeah maybe you know yeah he was like yeah and he was like chipping away at my confidence just mad side right and then it was like uh he the guy went for

something and almost like countered me he's like you see see, that's what it is. It's there again. It's always going to be there, dude. You see, you got this. You can throw him. You're in the game. You're in the game. And then he got on his kid. He got more and more confident.

And the kid just started getting more and more aggressive. He's in the game. He's like, yeah, you got it. You got it. And I'm kind of like, ah, ah, you know? And then Jason was kind of like preemptively saying the stuff that I was about to do. Yeah. He was like,

he's looking for that Uchimata, you know, just step over and stretch it. You can stretch it. He says, Uchimata sucks. And then I was like, wait a minute,

should I go for this thing now or is he going to step over and make it a stretch? Because Jason was good at that, right? Eventually I threw him, you know? But then I remember Jason

coming up to me, he goes, you know what your problem is? To me, right? He goes, you just gave him too much confidence because you didn't end it quick enough you gave him too much confidence i was thinking

to myself like you did that but you know i was like maybe i should have been a little bit more aggressively trying to finish it in the beginning but it was very like i walked away from it thinking like oh you know that's a very interesting experience that yeah i think you just nailed it better in terms of describing his mat side coaching than i did um yeah because it it was interesting that you because i fought i grew up fighting all of his guys all the time and there was an element where eventually i did have to learn just like i have to tune that voice out yeah um because he was very good at getting into the other guy's head as well um I appreciate all the folks I've mentioned.

I appreciate their technical coaching. A lot of how I approach curriculum design and a lot of how I kind of think of grappling from a theoretical basis comes from Dr. Ferguson. I mean, really, a lot of how I think of judo and grappling overall from a theoretical base, talking about things like the elements of a throw or understanding how to reuse stuff, a lot of that I think of Judo from a wrap and grappling overall from a theoretical base, talking about things like the elements of a throw or understanding how to reuse stuff.

A lot of that came out, came out out of discussions with him. Um, and a lot of the scouting I learned, um, I learned either from proximity to him or I, or it was based on ideas I got out of those discussions. So I really got a lot out of him.

Um, particularly after I left Jimmy's, I was in graduate school. Um, I was, um, yeah, around the working world. So I needed got a lot out of him. Particularly after I left Jimmy's, I was in graduate school. I was around the working world. So I didn't get to go back to Boston a lot, but I was always in regular contact with Rodney. So I got a lot out of those discussions. Is he still coaching down in Florida? Yeah, he is.

I'm actually going down to Florida in a couple of weeks to help him with a training camp. He runs this awesome program. Yeah. Aren't you running a training camp. He runs this awesome program. Yeah. He does. Aren't you running a training camp as well? Yes, I am. Um,

I'm running a training camp in July. It's from the 17th to the 22nd. Um, we're going to have Nick Del Papo be in town. Ajax, Tata Hera, Nina Kutra Kelly are coming out. Um,

Nina was on the last Olympic team. Ajax was on a bunch of world teams. I'm sure you two fought back in the day. Yeah, I fought that. Yeah. Many times. Um,

then, um, you know, the Tauros will be in town. We're, we're trying to put together a really good camp and it's free for anyone who's on the national roster. So, wow. Damn. Yeah. If you're on national roster, it's free and we'll find housing for you. Um, we'll, we'll make it work.

Can I stay in that little bunk bed behind you over there? Sure. That's actually that little bunk bed behind you over there in the video? Sure. That's actually not a bunk bed. I have a bunch of reptiles back there. Tell me more about that. What do you have, snakes back there? I have a blue tongue lizard. There's also a blue tongue skink.

I have a leopard gecko. I've kept reptiles. So if you're 60 or 66 kilos, they could stay in that little bin there. Yeah, yeah. You'll snuggle up with the lilyards. Yeah. That's awesome, man. So how many, is it going to be a nice turnout for this camp?

Like what is the expected turnout? What does the schedule look like? You know, training camp schedule. I know Colton's doing a camp end of this month also. Yeah, he's doing a camp. Yes, he is. And it's going to be like a morning thing. You know, this is how it's got to be, right?

The champions have to be accessible, you know, for the next generation to get brought up. And I think, you know, you, Colton, all these guys who are our age, our, you know, generation, I think we're doing, you know, a good job now, right? Pushing this kind of stuff, being out there, YouTube, this and that, you know? Yeah, you and Gary

are doing awesome work with Kakushi and Kano. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, so to answer, I still need to stop by Kano. I keep meaning to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anytime in New York.

So it's going to be two days. And the way it's going to work is it's also going to involve cross-training because we're also a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym. So there's some great Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu bodies there as well.

It's going to be twice a day and more it's going to be long technical sessions um something i picked up from rodney were deliberate practice sessions so we go in we're on the mat for three or four hours and it's you are there to perfect one or two things and you that with the objective being you leave that week or you leave those um those few morning practices with something that is it's not just i learned something new it's like okay this is now part of my game so that was a type of training i picked up from roddy so what is a good example of something that you may work on in that camp and can you choose those things or is it something that's going to be taught um it's going to depend on the person generally speaking it's going to be

a bit of choice like i'm planning to meet with each person who's coming in who's prepping for us open to say all right what are your technical objectives here here's where we can assist um more general things you know on on the feet it's there's going to be a lot of gripping there's going and going over that it's my personal specialty um we have some people there who have a stronger stronger base in Tachiuaza like Nick. On the Nwaza side, a good example of what this practice looks like is, let's look at an over-under pass. Let's say I'm dealing with somebody who has a gap in passing guard.

Well, I think if there's progressions in terms of how effective you are, in terms of where you can rate a skill. You know, the base level is static. So, you know base level static so you know you need a certain x number of static repetitions to get to a certain point yeah and then you start adding layers of difficulty you start you know all right now when this person comes in they're allowed to start shrimping a little bit now when they come in you and you progressively add that so the beginning of the practice isn't that hard you know you're doing a

route static movement and you know if you're taking calls it's hard but but eventually you're moving it up where i think too much time gets spent in pure randori i don't think that's actually as valuable it's valuable like on the on the high end it's valuable for cardio to get tougher but developing games or developing many small situational randori situations eventually you're gonna work that out and you'll be far more effective at it. Because it's not just being able to do a route movement. It's being able to do a route movement in a chaotic situation.

Yes, yes. So that's the process for the mornings is we're focusing on technical development in the mornings and then the evenings will be rumbling. Okay, so the morning practice, are they going to be situational or live? Yes, they're live. Nice.

What percentage is Tachua versus Nehwaza? In the evenings, it'll be about 50-50. Oh, good, good, good. And everyone will have to be Brazilian for an hour before that as well as part of getting ready. Is this going to be in Virginia? Yep. It'll be at high noon in Alexandria, Virginia. That's amazing.

What about food accommodation? Go out to get your own food? Yeah, to get your own food. But we're right by a supermarket. There's a hotel up the street that's pretty cheap. So, and we'll, as I said, elite competitors are coming. We'll figure something out. You might be sleeping with the lizards, but we'll figure something out for you.

That's amazing. All right. So, you're now running this club, right's amazing. All right. So you're now running this club, right? Your judo program. So what is your approach? We talked a little bit about the curriculum. Like what is your, let's say teaching style? Like, is there a sort of that distinguishes you from some of the people that, you know, you've learned from, from like, have you synergized everything into this, you know, Chris round pedagogical specialty thing? Like what is, what distinguishes you in this world? So I think how I teach techniques is very much, you know, coming from

Jimmy. Um, but what I, one thing I do that's very different is I'm, I can run three or four different classes effectively at a time on one mat. So I'm very big on, all right, we're're very bespoke this person needs x or this group of people need x they're often one corner doing that and being able to step in and maintain all that going on so you know that's very very that's interesting that you say that you know because it's so easy right to teach one position a couple different techniques go do it bring it back everyone freaking do it let's go on dory you know and you get a couple people trying to hit the move of the day or whatever it is you get the flavor of the week or whatever right and it's a little bit loosey-goosey it's okay you know it's completely fine you know

and uh sometimes you know the teacher knows who's in the room what they need and all this stuff but i like it and you said you have differentiated instruction for the people in the world you could put little pockets of fuel you don't want to do that tonight. Yeah. It's the other reason why it's really useful is, so let's talk about injuries for a second. So one thing that's important to me. So, you know, as, as you know, like I'm on the autism spectrum, you know, a special education was very important for me coming up. There's a special education element that is effective with both elite competitors and also your recreational folks coming in, where especially folks who maybe are dealing with a disability

or dealing with something going on, where let's say, for example, I have to help an athlete work around an elbow injury. Well, the lessons I learned from helping that athlete work around that elbow injury might be useful for dealing with somebody on the more recreational end who's maybe coming with a disability. Yes, yes, yes. And there's, there's an element where there's also another really important element where

if people get out of the habit of going to practice, it's hard to keep them in. Whereas if you develop the ability and man, it takes creativity. A lot of times it involves some being spontaneous on the fly but if you can have developing a cyclopeed in your head of different drills and practices that people can do regardless of where they're at even i've had people who've come in who i had an athlete who she really badly pulled her hip um she couldn't walk so she's not getting on the mat but so what i did was like okay here's the basics of how you do scouting we're gonna walk through it really, okay, here's the basics of how you do scouting.

We're going to walk through it really quickly. Here's kind of the craft. Yeah. You know, you brought scouting into the conversation a few times. Yeah, sure. Let's talk a little bit more about, can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, sure. Before you bring it back to what you're just talking about now, I don't mean to like take you away, but I think people are like listening to scouting. Okay.

You'll hear more about that. Sure. So there's two schools of scouting that you'll see. The main school is just, all right, Shintaro, you and I, we're working with an athlete. We're going to sit down. We're going to watch what their opponents do. We're going to mark it down and say, okay, here's a general strategy. That's like the classical version of scouting.

And that's totally legit. The more advanced one that you see, have you ever seen the movie Moneyball? Yes. Loved it. Yeah. So effectively what i'm in the middle of trying to work on is what does saber metrics look like for judo um what does that kind of quantitative analysis look like for judo now judo is such a chaotic complex sport that you're

not gonna be able to do yes go ahead no i'm loving it i'm loving it um yeah i love it you're not gonna be able to do quite the same level of precision as you would with baseball this has to do with discrete versus continuous variables and other statistical nonsense yes um but you can start to pick up on things for example all right i know this athlete has a great osoto and maybe a lot of my focus if i'm not keeping track of the data is how to counter that osoto or maybe it's or or it's my athlete. I'm like my first, okay, what do I pair with that Osoto? But if I actually, I have graph, I have a graph I use that actually just shows each of the eight cardinal directions for throws. And I can then go ahead and downsample from that.

All right. Where, how many attacks in each direction are they doing? I can then downsample and say, all right, this is how this looks like in, in each weight class they fight. This is how they looks like against a certain opponent. You've already made this? I work with a group called Athlete Analyzer. I was doing all this on my own in Excel sheets for years.

This is what I did to help Kayla Harris now before she won gold in Rio. And then Athlete Analyzer came along. I've been working with them since, and they have a system that does a lot of the computation for me. All right, all right, all right. So let's talk about some of the findings. Can you tell me about some of the findings? I have some, like, theories, too, you know,

like, and you could, like, all right, quantitatively, you could say, like, inside versus outside, right versus left. Everyone says inside's always better, and we've just kind of accepted it, but I don't think that's true, you know? And then it's like, how many drop to the weak side do you have? Like, a lot of right versus lefty everyone says inside's always better and we just kind of accepted it but i don't think that's true you know and then it's like how many drop to the weak side do you have like a lot of right versus left left players have a dropped weak side upon said i right always because like how many of those guys are successful right what is the truth with this is between how many righties and lefties right it's things like this you know like so like what is some of your

findings so some of the questions you're mentioning, I don't have enough of a sample size yet to say conclusively yet. But some things I've noticed with my folks, I noticed gaps. Like I just noticed gaps that there are certain directions they aren't attacking. That there's just nothing there. And maybe I, using that older school style of coaching, would have just been like, all right, why am I focusing? Okay, maybe I could coach you, so tell me. Oh, maybe I need to focus on developing another level change or something like, all right, why am I focusing? Okay. Maybe I punch down. I could coach you. So tell me, Oh, maybe I need to focus on developing another level change or something like

that. Or maybe there's a gripping issue. Well, fundamentally if they're only attacking back left and for, um, back and forward left and they've got nothing else going on. Well, then what am I going to use that time for?

Dude, that was my problem. So I was like 27 years old, dude. Where were you when I was 27? I was probably fighting myself. So in part of my interest. Yeah, wow.

That's so interesting, man. That's so interesting. Yeah. So part of where my interest came from that was because I didn't have the most, once again, not to themself, because I didn't have the most athletic talent, I had to sit there and see, how do I game these things out? Because I have a margin for error that's going to be less than other people. So that's where my interest came from. I used to sit down with video camera,

videotape everybody, like try to log behaviors, try to do all that and just grew out of that naturally. Interesting. Interesting. You kind of, a lot of the stuff that you had,

like physical uh issues are you already outbrew um it's more that they don't show up unless i'm compared to peers so a good example is like i can do a cartwheel uchimata if you compare my cartwheel uchimata to i like nick's cartwheel uchimata it looks like crud um it's something where compared because of all my experience in judo compared to the average person, it wouldn't come up. But if I'm compared to say like another person who had made top five at nationals or top five at president cup, they'd be like, Oh, the moveset he's using is much more limited. Um, like I had to hyper specialize in mat work and moves like Sumi. Yes, that's right.

You're a Sumi guy. Yeah. Sumi doesn't require me to maintain in the same level of balance let's say it's not that i didn't have any shimada but i couldn't make that my go-to all right we're gonna win or lose on this it had to be something like a harai maki komi or sumi something where i had to create a lot of closed loops where if i entered something it didn't work i could successfully navigate my way back usually through another attack back safely to stance because if i left

openings there i couldn't rely on my own balance to be able to catch myself in the air when i spun out so interesting a lot of a lot of what i coach and focus on is developing and i don't naturally i have a kind of aggressive personality while training as you've experienced and so i have you go after somebody you know yeah so in order to stop myself from getting calendar over the place, I had to develop these kinds of closed loops. And that required me to really develop an understanding of what each throw was for. Like understanding that coach is not just the throw, it's a job, like understanding, you know, some of these things I mentioned arm to do, but understanding like, oh,

Kosovo, if I'm going to go Kosovo, that's all right. It's all or nothing. This better, this better damn work. Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, wow, man. So very interesting. All right. So bringing it back, looping it all the way back to your, your differentiated instruction. So you're teaching this woman how to scout because she's injured. Yep. And then my hope is by her learning how to scout one, that's a, that's a good skill set to have. Cause we're not all going to be able to do Randori forever, but we all want to enjoy Judo. And just like, more you know about judo these the more fun is to watch

more you see interesting things and then the other thing she's a competitor so she needs to be able to do some of this herself because i only have 24 hours in the day and if i can get it to the point where she can do the first go of it then i can look at it saves me time so and then down the road hopefully she's good enough at that she can teach somebody else and this continues this virtuous cycle that i talked about with developing teachers so you might have her teaching you know maybe some people that are interested in that like in one camp and then you'll have another group doing oh you know their elbows are injured so like a limited thing and then this group would be beginner so you'll do like a gripping thing and then you'll have four or five different classes going on at once is that what yeah usually i can run up to four in my head pretty easily if if without a ton of free planning um with free

planning you can do a lot because as long as you have people who are self-motivated you can you know all right here's a here's a throwing dummy here's what you're working saying i'll just check in with them um but typically a second but typically that's a, you figure out what someone can do. If you start with, and this kind of comes back to, you know, my experience, Jimmy's one of the first teachers I had that wasn't like, what can he not do? It was, what can he, what can he do? So I try to extend that spirit of like, all right, you're on the mat. You might have a limitation. Let's not focus on limitation. Let's figure out what you can still do to make progress. And that's kind of the philosophical approach.

Because if you do that, one is you never, you might have someone come out and it looks like they're just going to be a scrub. You never know of that person. It has one, something really interesting off the mat that they're going to enrich your club by just being there, which is a huge thing in DC. One thousand percent. I agree with you. And two, you also don't know.

This might be somebody who maybe they have an injury that they don't know about yet. And once it's resolved, they're a phenomenal athlete. Or maybe it's someone they've got the dedication, the grit, or maybe it's just someone who they're a good, they become a good training partner. the grit or maybe it's just someone who they're a good they become a good training partner and i vehemently vehemently dislike when folks don't kind of recognize that that human element to bring people in it's just it's it's just good for the club if you can find a way to be as inclusive as possible and that doesn't mean that you don't have that, all right, guys, I'm letting you all know, this is an elite practice.

I can have you over in the corner doing something and I'll help you set it up. No, my attention's here. Like that happened before senior nationals. That was where I said, okay, I have people getting ready for US nationals. That's completely okay. If you set that expectation,

hey, like I'm going to bring it back to you so they know and you communicate it. That's a huge thing, you know? Yeah. Yeah you know yeah yeah so amazing amazing so that's my approach and look i'm not perfect at there there are mistakes that occurs it's a natural thing and i i'm a young coach and i'm still learning but that's the approach i hope to maintain and continue going forward got it nice man so what is your game like for judo like let's talk a little bit about your judo game and then how do you differentiate that to like your teaching like do you try to teach them what you're good at or do you try to like identify stuff that

they're good at and try to enhance it or do you look at their judo that's already there and then you try to add stuff in or like how is it structured in a way where you can influence them maximally in a positive way so i'll say that it depends on who's coming in the door so i'll give you a good example um you know when i as i mentioned i'm working with nick right now nick already has a complete game like i'm not i'm not going to teach nick anything new um what i can do though is it's more like hey let's talk strategically what's going on here he lives in virginia no he's in new jersey he comes down here and then i i travel with him we do video and stuff like that um one of the nice things about that platform i use is that you can upload

i can have videos upload and i can do a lot of remote it makes my remote coaching much much easier um but so but to be straight to your question if i have a someone who's already coming in as an elite competitor then it's what, what do you have? Is there something, is there something that's theoretically wrong and I can't find a justification for it? Then we'll address it. Like a good example is, are you stance changing? There's not really a reason for it. Like also people do that. Yeah. And there's not like, if there's a logic to it that I understand, then like, okay, let's enhance, let's figure out how to use it. Um, a good example, a guy came in to get ready for nationals, EJ Lynch. EJ will size, but he's actually can legitimately play as a lefty.

So it's like, all right, well, how do we tactically adjust for this? Likewise, when I have people, when I have people coming through, we're just starting. I don't care if their judo resembles mine. In fact, I kind of hope it doesn't because I, and the reason is it's like, I want them, my judo is not going to work for everybody. You have to, now that said, there are certain conceptual underpinnings that have to be there.

I need everyone to know how to grip fight. I need everybody to have nirwaza. I need everybody to have a basic theoretical understanding what's going on and you know not just invest all their time to learning fourth rows that go the same direction but and they're going to be things to just naturally filter that because of my own biases people are going to pick up but the short answer is i try to help people mold the games that are right for them sometimes it looks like mine sometimes it doesn't so in terms of the waza right like how do you

is it over on the pass juju from top sankaku from top and then you know like that kind of a thing or what do you similar actually you nailed three of them those are three systems I also teach shimmy's wrist system oh the wrist okay yeah

I also because we have a lot of cross-training capability brazilian jitsu sometimes people pick up stuff from bjj and be like okay this is how you would use that um but it's overall it's that's the thing if i were to say i kind of carbon copied from jimmy like a lot of it comes from there. I will say I do emphasize the guard a bit more because I think the guard, I still maintain one. The guard's probably one of the best pedagogical tools that you could have. Pedagogical, excuse me. Yeah. Because if I can.

Open or closed or just what kind of guard are you talking about? Open guard. Open guard, okay. Yeah, open. You start in closed, but you can't really play closed in judo. So you're playing that weird, like my ankles aren't actually locked, but we're really in closed, but you can't really play closed in judo. So you're playing that weird, like my ankle aren't actually locked, but we're really in closed guard guard. Yeah.

There's so many things that's useful to teach from there. Cause one, it can be hard to teach timing in judo because if you miss it, it hurts. It just does. And there's balance issues. Yeah. There's a lot of different things playing. Yeah. But I can create using the guard, a very easy way for you to learn how to

sense where someone's body weight is and teach a basic sweep i can you know i can do with a gas pedal or scissor sweep um and you know a week or two what might take somebody three or four months to learn to sense on their own just doing stand-up judo so you're it allow the guard as a tool for teaching judo it's a tool to help under help people develop an understanding of where weight is, where weight is direction. It's a tool that you can use to create like these small, low risk games that will teach people stuff quickly that they'll then be able to bring to the feet. But you have to make it clear that that that is what is going on. It's and they still get something

useful. You know, look, I people with a fire sweep, if you can arm bar from guard, awesome. But if you can, I noticed that my own Oshu was, I got a lot better after a year or two of Brazilian Jitsu. And it was because I got better at sensing where people's weight were and sent and being able to time things that were, it's just easier to time things from guard. So once you bring some guard, it it becomes a little easier to time things in a faster motion than standing. Nice. That's a great approach, man, Chris.

Yeah. We've been here for an hour. Yeah, go ahead. You have a question. We got five more minutes. We got to run to the dojo and find me. Oh, no worries. No worries.

I was going to ask you, so, you know, we talked about a few things. What, you know, how do you approach teaching timing? How do you approach kind of teaching, positioning elements like that? Uh, I was just interested. Yeah. Just a lot of like,

uh, you know, repetition and getting the flow in. Right. So getting people to be comfortable with their stance and movement, like just the basics of stance and movement is such a big one. You know, if you're taking lots of choppy steps and you can't keep a good base and

it's going to be very difficult, you know, and hand positioning is a big thing that I teach and preach. There's a lot more gripping into dominant position, but I kind of like the idea of the Japanese style. You're already locked up 50, 50. How do you incrementally gain better hand position? And when you have a higher collar grip, you could pull their head down and disturb their stance a little bit better. And they're regaining their balance, regaining their stance. That's when you could attack the feet, you know, throwing in meaningful fades to disrupt, you know, their attacking patterns and things like this.

And, you know, drilling that sort of thing in sort of like a safe environment where no one's getting bombed, 20, 30% intensity, you know, there's no like gripping with our fingers coming at your eyes or anything like that. You just start in 50, 50. It's my drill. I'm going to do 10 attacks. Right. But you're gaining do 10 attacks, right? But you're gaining position, moving, fainting, creating angles.

It's kind of like this 20% semi-cooperative drill. Yes, that I think is the biggest one because then you get comfortable stepping, you know, moving, disturbing their balance, keeping your balance, and then meaningfully attacking, you know, in combinations, whether it's like Ochi or Soro, right? Snap down Uchimata, fake Uchimata, go Kochi, and then snap, you know, cut the hand or something like this. So I like teaching this kind of approach of like teaching guys to not flow roll, but like flow drill. Yeah.

And I think, you know, I did it earlier, but, you know, you pick it up when you pick it up, you know, and that's my kind of approach now. And then really listening to the, you know, person who's learning too is, hey, what do you know? Kind of, you know, a lot of people come with experience. Let's see where you are, you know, and kind of getting the basics like, hey, have you wrestled a box or snowboard? Which foot do you stand with first? You know, even if you stand one foot, you know, for grappling, some people are like,

yo, I play baseball and I swing in this direction. It's like, okay, so you develop a turn into this direction much more powerfully than the other side. Oh, I hadn't thought about that with other sports yeah even like you know like uh golf or something you know you're turning to one direction more right so there's eliminate limitations and mobility and stuff like that and then once you get that you can start you know build it around it you're building that physical vocabulary you're looking at what what movement you know what elements of the throw they already know yeah yes yeah and you know everyone starts different so then when you come into the dojo just asking questions like hey what are you working on hey would you have trouble with the other day

and having that communication where they can tell me you know certain things that gets them practice in verbalizing some of this stuff because we're speaking another language you know what i mean and then once you know a yellow belt tells me like like, hey, man, I was fighting so-and-so, right first left, I had inside position. He had my sleeve and my shoulders returned. I was trying to go for Uchimata, but like, you know? And then it's like, you're ahead of the game, man. Just able to say it.

You could picture it. And then you could diagnose it. As opposed to like, oh, every time I go for Uchimata, I get countered, you know? There's no context surrounding it. You know, so like having that kind of dialogue, I think just changes the game when you're teaching someone, coaching somebody, you know, and you're already doing it, you know, so amazing.

Um, yeah. Well, hey man, I know you have to run the dojo. Thank you so much for having me on and also nice to see you. Yeah. Yeah. Same here, man. And let's, let's do it again. Let's do it again.

This is amazing. What a great conversation. Where can people find you is my last question. You can find me on Instagram, Chris underscore circle. Last name's round. And you can, and I'm at High Noon Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Fitness in Alexandria, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C. Awesome. So reach out to Chris if you guys can.

You know, if you listen to this, like, oh, man, what he said resonated with me. Hit him off. Chris underscore circle. Yes. Instagram. All can. If you're listening to this like, oh man, what he said resonated with me, hit him up. Chris underscore circle. Yes. Instagram. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much.