The Shintaro Higashi Show - Coaching Strategies and Pedagogy - An Interview With Chris Round

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

In this episode, Shintaro sits down with Chris Round for the second time to discuss his coaching strategies and pedagogy. They discuss Chris's nonprofit initiatives, and the growth of his judo club, High Noon Judo, based in Alexandria, Virginia. The conversation also dives into the pedagogical approaches in judo training, particularly the ecological approach, and how Chris analyzes data to improve his students' performance. Chris also shares insights from his dual black belt journey in judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, his experiences attending various training camps, and his thoughts on the current state of judo in the United States. 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. First and foremost, thank you to our sponsors. We have Jason, Levon, David. Thank you guys for your continuous support. You guys can support us through Patreon. I'm going to put all the links down below. Judo TV, use discount code SHINTARO. Thank you very much.

Higashi brand, of course. That's my thing. Thank you so much for your continued support. Reach out to us if you want to sponsor the show and then get a shout out or a 30 second advertisement or whatever it is. Thank you very much again. Welcome, Chris Round. Thank you for being here.

Shintaro, great to be back. Thanks for having me. What's going on? What have you been up to these days? Oh, I've been busy with a few different things. I'm actually graduating my PhD. Oh, congratulations.

That's awesome. Yeah. What was it again? I always forget. Chemical engineering? Environmental. Close. What was it again? I always forget. Chemical engineering? Environmental. Close. Environmental science and policy.

I look at the interface between artificial intelligence and attack and depart. All right. So this whole episode is going to be dedicated to climate change. But yeah. But the main thing I've been working on has actually been, other than that, of course, that's a little involving. I've been working on my judo club. I've been working on has actually been, other than that, of course, that's a little evolving. I've been working on my Judo club. I've been working on the nonprofit.

So the Judo club is high noon Judo based out of high noon Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Alexandria, Virginia. We're just outside DC. And that's been very exciting. Then we also, we launched a nonprofit last fall. Actually, you know, a couple of the board members. I remember Radu. Oh, Radu's on there. Nice. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then, um, what we do with that is we kind of have three fronts for working

on. One is we work with athletes in terms of mentoring, make sure they have resources. So right now we have like K of Argus, Solomon Tron, Madeline Solis, Justin Mata, um, just to name a few, we have about six or seven people total. August Solomon, Sean, Madeline, Solis, Justin Mata. Um, just to name a few, we have about six or seven people total. And then the other thing we do is we try to help build opportunities to just grow Judo through like the camps that we're running. So, and so I'll talk to you about that a little bit for a little bit of context.

So if you're listening, me and Chris were on the same team together, team force back at Jimmy Pejo's. When I was there for a year, trying to make an Olympic team in back in like 2011 2012 Chris was there also so we go way back and now Chris you know he's a judo black belt obviously and a jiu-jitsu black belt too correct yes he's a double black belt runs his dojo you know doing big things over there getting a PhD so that's who you are listening to we did a previous episode too you guys could probably

go back and talk right and listen in to it we talked a lot about like coaching properly and uh using data to drive decisions and how to guide your athletes and things like that so that's a really interesting episode check it out so didn't mean to interrupt you uh you're working on this non-profit how's your dojo doing by the the way? Is it growing? It's growing. So, you know, we're not a big program, but what we've been able to do is

we have people sign up and they don't leave because we've created a dojo culture that's very inclusive. You know, I make sure, look,

going into nationals this year, yeah, we've got two people that could threaten to win a senior black belt and don't get me wrong, I get really hyped about that stuff. Who are they?

Justin Mata, who trains with us and trains with American Judo and Jiu-Jitsu out of South Carolina. His original sensei is Elijah Fletcher. How far are you from South Carolina? Fletcher. I have like eight hours. So Justin just joined up as a fellow with my nonprofit. He had come up previously and done a little work with us.

And then he was at the last and done a little work with us. And then he spent the, he was at the last training camp where we had worked with Al Al-Adrisi, worked with Nafeli Papadakis, worked with a few different, and he had a great experience and they kind of checked out.

So, and then we have Madeline Solis, same thing. She came to one of our training camps, really liked the coaching, came back up to check us out some more

and she trains with us and Eastside. So the nonprofit's separate from like your actual club running day-to-day like guys in the room training there's a general population like a gem pop group right do you segment basic beginner class and advanced class or just all same one big mush um we do segment slightly we basically say we have two operating curriculums at any given time. So we have the advanced one, which cycles on about 24 week basis. And then a basic one cycles on a 16 week basis. So interesting thing.

And actually this will touch a little bit back to our previous episode. So we've been working on some, we try to change our pedagogy and stay on top of whatever, like is the latest and greatest according to literature. So like, for example, when you're hearing a lot about stuff like the ecological model of learning,

stuff like that, we will look at that. And because we record so much comp data on our main players, we've got 15 people. What kind of research? So like a logical approach, like that's every, all the jujitsu guys are just kind of echo chambering that,

you know, thing. And most people don't really know what it's taught, what it is. And is there actual research studies in grappling about this? In wrestling. In wrestling and in basketball. So, yeah.

So, a lot of the research that's been done on this is actually in other sports. So, you have to look at. All right. So, we can go. There's not really a lot of research in terms of Judo. I was about to say. I actually. Yeah.

So, it's funny there's actually a really good book published by rootledge looking it's like the science of judo it's actually a lit review on terms of a lot of different areas that judo's that where there has been research on judo and there's very limited research on the ecological approach within a judo setting but they were able to in the review they said hey look two things we found one is the more shapes someone actually knows the more the quicker they'll actually advance under an ecological model and this is really important we talk about judo because judo we spend so much time dedicated to developing shapes we talked a lot about shapes last time i

was on um and actually my basic curriculum was pretty much all about teaching people how to make all the fundamental key shapes. Like how do you create the hook for Oji? How do you, you know, the body movement I do for Ichimata and Osoto is ultimately very similar to an extent. So like trying to get so people get all those shapes down before they're ready to move to advanced curriculum, which is a bit, which does use a significant amount of influence from that ecological approach. use a simple map influence from that ecological approach. But the more experience someone has going into that, as long as it's good experience and they have good habits,

the quicker they'll advance. So because we record all this data, and I use Athlete Analyzer as my principal platform for this, I was actually able to sit down and look at, all right, how are my students doing before we implemented some of these strategies? How are they doing after? And it's not as broad a scientific as I would like as a PhD,

but I'll tell you. Yeah, like based on the sample size of four people, it is larger than that, but it's not much better. It's like 10. Still better than what anyone else is doing, you know, if you're looking at, right? Let me just teach the way I've been taught and see how it goes, you know it's not much better it's like 10 still better than what anyone else is doing you know if you're looking at right let me just teach the way i've been taught and see how it goes you

know so with the changes we've made in the last year so like one of my high performance kids like the family's like all in they're going all the major tournaments stuff like that so she had made 20 significant attacks in an entire year of competing um like i, not just like, hey, I kind of should... I mean, like, real, like, made an attempt to throw kind of thing. Or at least, like, bothered the foot enough. Out of how many matches? One year or so. 20 matches?

20 to 30. So she's making one major attack per match? Pretty much. She's very gun-shy. Like, let's be clear. You know where i came from um that's not enough under my book um so if those of you aren't familiar jimmy teaches a very very aggressive style judo um but what i ended up finding was actually the first two tournaments

that she did she did more attacks in one of those tournaments than she did an entire year and not just like she made 25 attacks yeah she made 80. oh wow yeah so actually we're able to measure and see where these changes are like how is this impacting you that's 20 attacks a minute um 80 across several matches okay yeah, I was about to say. Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, that'd be insane. Though, actually, I believe that's kind of one of the Brazilian match strategies.

It's one of the reasons why you see people getting sheeted out against them. Yeah, the Brazilians do that kind of thing. Out-hustle. But, yeah. So, you know, we're looking at this one tournament where she had six or seven matches. We see 80 attacks in those six or seven matches compared to 20 across like 20 to 30 matches. And this was after two months of changing to the style teaching. That's pretty good.

What are you giving her, cues and stuff? Oh, of course. Yeah, I'm very active math side. All right, so let's see. Ecological approach, research studies, and wrestling. Can you talk about that? yeah i'm not i'm very active mat side all right so let's see ecological approach research studies in wrestling like can we talk about that um i wish i could remember i need to i need to go back and dig it up um unfortunately sorry for us then but you could next episode but do you remember like some of the like it was a good sample size they you know

were they looking at beginners or intermediates or do you remember any of this any something something a lot a lot of the focus i had found when i was looking at like the ecological model teaching it wasn't just to be clear it wasn't just wrestling they looked at things like basketball i looked at other things we don't care about basketball so that said you will care about this example um okay is it boxing out for getting rebounds or something then that's a little bit more relatable it's not it's not far it's actually about um guarding it's about sensing where the other person's weight distribution is and where they're going to go next interesting so that's very relevant as a skill for judo you know spatial awareness yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

that's very interesting man yeah so what they found was they found that athletes who you know just learned to dribble around a cone to move around when there's some kind of interference were completely like night and day difference between them and just giving somebody someone to just kind of pressure play a little game with in terms of pretending to guard um and creating a very constraint based approach whereby the person who's learning how to dribble properly around movement it's much closer to the real thing now it's set up in a way where you know the penalty for losing in that circumstance is smaller than just like the game being switched over the ball's changing hands so like people feel more willing to feel more

comfortable taking risks yeah and that's actually that's actually the point of that approach really is that you're creating constraints that allow people to in their brain like feel more comfortable shooting an armbar from guard because if it doesn't work we just reset back they're down a point so to speak versus being stuck and then also it's you know deliberate practice right just spending time in that position you know what i mean and uh yeah boy you also it's, you know, deliberate practice, right? Just spending time in that position. You know what I mean? And yeah, boy, you know, that's good. You know, you spend like 20 minutes in that.

You know, I read an example by the guy, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a book about it. It's like how many times you see that backhand, high backhand, you know, when you're playing tennis. It's like in an actual game, you're just playing pickup tennis. You see it twice maybe in a whole game. But you spend two hours, you know, just being exposed to that one stimuli. Now all of a sudden you've gained a year's worth of exposure in just that one shot you know what i mean and similarly to that like oh you know you could just have time on the shot on goal and all the stuff and yeah it's a very good approach you know but i think it's just like it just kind of annoys me to hear ecological approach now because everyone's just repeating

that term over and over you know what i mean well you're the only person that was like there's actually a research study about it you know i tell people it's research back but i didn't even i wasn't even aware of the research so you're way ahead of me buddy no worries um i so you know what i'll say is this um i think one mistake people make when they look at approaches they think well it well, it means I don't have to teach my students anymore, so to speak. They think, oh, we do all basically variations of situational inquiry. That's not true at all. You actually need to make that work well. You actually need to have a pretty deep level of technical knowledge.

Oh, for sure. You've got to give them feedback, right? You have to give them feedback. You have to know how to design the games. You have to know what the underlying principles are like to be honest with you it's actually i think it's a kind of a really advanced way of coaching and it only works if you yourself are highly like uh warm-ups oh my god great question um yeah i hate i hate what we don't it's like the biggest waste of time dude this kind of game,

it's just like, all right, guys, we're going to lightly grip fighting, no intensity, 20% just move. That's the best way to warm up. Warming up, doing the shapes of the actual, that's relevant to what you're actually going to do

full speed as opposed to statically stretching or going through these motions. You know, there's people who need an active warm-up to do push-ups because they never do push-ups on their own. But, you you know any sort of person who's already in the dojo like majority of the people are already in decent shape you know what i mean because if you're completely out of shape a lot of people don't come to the dojo you know what i mean so it's interesting um you know i was mentioning just before the show i actually just listened to you

had spoken to my mentors um you know i spoke to Jim, you spoke to Roddy. And one of the things Jimmy brought up in his podcast was, you know, the whole thing where you have people walking off the street and they're deconditioned. And how do you, and you know, how long it can take to onboard somebody. What I found with these games is that I can, with some of them, not all of them, to be clear. Some of them are, you know, this is, all right, all the senior black bus gang rapes, nationals, you're going to go do this. But for a lot of the beginner people coming off the street playing, like if you've done any labs clinic, which I'm sure you, I'm sure you've got a chance to share that with him. Um, Oh, I'm sorry.

He was in New York, but I had too many, uh, kid birthday stuff and this and that. And I just couldn't make it out there. He was in New York. It was a big deal for everyone here, but I just kind of like, couldn't make it't, you know, make it out there. He was in New York. It was a big deal for everyone here, but I just kind of, like, couldn't make it out, you know, single dad stuff, you know what I mean? You know how it is. I can't really burn an evening with my kid, you know, because I got to make dinner for her,

make lunch for her, all this stuff. It's tough to break out of my schedule. You know, she knows, hey, Papa's home on Tuesday. It's like, oh, Neil Adams here on Tuesday. She doesn't give a shit about that. She's six. So I have not shared a mat. Everyone thinks like, oh, he was in New York.

I didn't go. It's OK. It's fine. It's cool. There's a cool drill that he does that actually is very similar to some of the stuff we do, where you just go out and your goal is to touch the other person's lead shoulder. Nice. stuff we do where you just go out and your goal is to touch the other person's shoulder um and you actually like that's just that's an example of like a constrained space approach where like

i'm trying to defend and offensively deal with at the same time the amount of you know the penalty is relatively low if i lose like it allows people to like have a chance to have fun and this is the other part that research is important is basically when people have fun the traditional way of like all right we're gonna go do 2000 she call me so i'll be bored as shit and tired um actually you can do that you will learn the shape that way but if you set things up in a way where it's somehow actually fun the number of reps it takes drops from you know 400 to 600 to 20 to 40 um, it depends on the complexity of the movement. You know, Uchimata is still a relatively complex movement. But, like, you can teach a lot of throws that way.

You can – or at least teach people how to get into throws that way. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. So you don't have your guys do a lot of static Uchikamis? Yeah. None. Yeah, me too. Almost none.

Almost none. Yeah, at the beginner level when the first learning footwork yes but like or like just you know maybe there's something to clean up with somebody but no it's it's moving it's dynamic or why are we doing it past agreed agreed okay so your dojo has been running for a little while now right and then but less than two years and you're renting mat space from high noon bjj is that correct we're actually it's it's a total partnership we're not renting space yeah so we operate under their umbrella um and then what happens is the way the non-profit interacts i

run both the judo program and the non-profit so a lot of the non-profit events like our training camps um they end up being hosted there. And then it helps to raise money for the nonprofit so we can, you know, one, help people go and compete and get great training opportunities. And two, we're starting to try to work with partnering with some other GEO programs who want to, you know, offer scholarships, training scholarships to youth coming from tough homes. So how are you getting the funding for this? Donations. The camps raise money for it the clinics raise money for it so for example we have our we have a big clinic we're prepping not a big camp we're prepping for on july 6th we have you coming in that's right i'm doing a seminar over there yeah yeah so all these events they raise money to help put people to tournaments and training opportunities and also have to keep a nonprofit open so we can partner with clubs and help them. Nice, nice, nice. And that's going pretty good?

Yeah, it's going great. What's your student base like right now, High Noon Judo? 22 people. 22? Okay. Yep. Which is small, but you know what's funny is mixed, mostly adults. But the kids we've got, they don't have a ton of training partners,

but they're competitive on the junior national level. But it's all you though, right? Because 99% of it. So I have five assistant instructors who work underneath me and help me. Let me ask you a question. You do work too?

Like you have a job yet right now? I have a day job. Research? I work at, not quite. I actually am a project manager working with the Department of Energy through Booz Allen Hamilton. I help to bring early energy technologies

and help to get them up to speed. Nice. So it's interesting work. It's probably tough for you to get out at like three o'clock to run kids programs then. Nice. So it's interesting work. It's probably tough for you to get out at like three o'clock to run kids programs then. Yeah. So I do have to rely on my assistant instructors and I have a great set. Nate Whitney, Jordan Stone, Alex Painter, Heidi Holtz, a few other people help out from time to time.

And I'm really lucky in that respect to have their support because they're all awesome human beings and you know they get they get some discounts on their memberships and I I go out of my way in particular to make sure that they're taken care of you know they don't have to pay for a lot of stuff like instructorship like incentive because we don't really have that you know and uh yeah what is the assistant instructorship thing like so two things one is they get discounts on their memberships if not if they help with more than one class a week they tend to get almost their entire membership just just more than one class they get their whole membership comp that's pretty good i i have to double check with our book person um but they get you know they get uh the idea is i don't anyone. I don't want anyone who helps me with this stuff to not get something back.

I don't agree with the model of having paying customers unless it's like explicitly you want to do like a coaching. Yeah, that's different. Because that's a service that you're providing. That should be you should be compensated for that because you're probably putting together a curriculum. You're probably thinking about it a lot. You're probably giving them feedback. You're probably structuring things around their training if you're doing that right because i know how you are yeah you know yeah yeah oh yeah i mean i um i'm anything i am nothing if not scheduled and

organized on that on that front but but i don't believe in this model that judo has relied on I get very angry when I see it from established um established for-profit clubs particular if it's a non-profit club okay but or or you know if you've got somebody who's a competitor who already is getting a lot more extra attention from you and this is how they're oh I can kind of put up with that uh like I was fine like the way Jimmy did I was fine with because I was part of team force with that. Like, I was fine. Like, the way Jimmy did, I was fine with because I was part of Team Force and I got a lot of his extra time. Yeah, and you were able to train in the mornings.

It helped to train me as an instructor. There's definitely a lot. Yeah, so I got a lot out of that. What I don't like that I see happen with some places is that they'll go, all right, hey, paying member who pays 200 bucks a month, you're going to teach for me once or twice a week and get no compensation thank you for your money like you're contributing to a for-profit business in some state that's actually illegal um and without compensation

you have to make sure people think that volunteers are unpaid that's's not true. I learned this working on political campaigns. Volunteers are paid in fun. That's not a political campaign. For the love of God, don't. The one came out and was like, what is your stance on abortion? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But volunteers are paid in fun. they're paid in access and they're

paid and they're paid in support. So a good example here, um, you know, in my case, my, my volunteer assistant instructors, they're actually getting my money off their memberships and some monetary support. They are getting access when we have a lot of times when we have big clinics, um, unless it's something that's really, really really expensive they don't have to pay they get um they and i make sure there's space for them if they are paying um if you know the data analytics work a lot of data analytics work when i work with outside people it's two to three hundred dollars a month for that support because it's it takes a while like it can take you a half hour an hour we'll go through a 60 kilo match um so they get that support for free they get if they

need to call me at 2 a.m because they have a technical question that's keeping them up at night and this has happened um i'm going to pick up the phone they're going to get that kind of support so i i one of the things that i wish when we look at a lot of people for, and I, I understand that there are some dojos that are nonprofit or some other element, but I think part of the professionalization of Judo is treating what we traditionally thought of just volunteers, instructors, intriguing them like what they are, which is they are providing a service to the club they're providing service to the dojo make sure that you're compensated because those are the people they're going to keep your dojo alive when you know i i had to take off for a family emergency for a week last week and you know i had people to cover it was no question we were all set all right agree or disagree with this statement well first of all your family's good yeah they're good thank you for asking uh you're not talking about the lizards behind you are you i am not talking about those behind me though they're they're doing in great shape all right agree or disagree with this statement judo should be free you ever hear that

i disagree yeah i disagree i hear this all the time dude i hear this a lot you know and people look at me like matt fee dropping fee i'm like i'm a black belt you know i'm like more the reason to pay you know i don't give a shit yeah it's like you you're an informed consumer man it is like that that really drives me up the wall a little bit you know uh when they feel entitled to free judo because they're a black belt and yeah you know but why it's like you just spent you know 12 at starbucks and then buying this and then and taking 45 classes at soul cycles but you can't support one of your own you know that that drives me nuts you know i pay a math fee i sometimes i'm gonna go to your dojo and cranford very soon and i'm gonna pay my fee it's 20 that's what he charges everybody

i will not leave there if he and if i walk in i'll be like yo if you don't accept this i'm not staying in training you know end of discussion you know but that's like how it should be i think you know especially like uh you got to give back to your your clubs you know what i mean you got to give back to your dojos and you know you know and i've made i've made occasional exceptions on the map piece stuff just because, Hey, this is somebody who, you know, look, Shintaro, if you walk into my dojo and say you want to train my first instinct,

just because we were teammates and stuff will be, you don't have to pay. Then you're going to probably have it anyways. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I have made exceptions for people who it's like, this is actually a training partner that I might pay to come in anyways for

such and such a person. But like, there's still a form of payment there it means they don't get to turn down round the rounds I want them to go you know but that's not just that's such a specific instance that's like you know that's like when we have what we've seen like boxing or MMA where someone will be brought in to act as a training partner to simulate somebody. I'll say that, yeah, I mean, if we don't have money flow into these dojos and there's, I try to be very charitable with my time and everything, but if we don't have money flowing into the dojos, they aren't going to exist. That's just the fact of the matter. Now,

if you're not, and even if you're a nonprofit and you're going, hey, well, you know, we provide services, then just hear your pricing. Like, because, you know, even if you're a nonprofit and you're going, hey, well, you know, we provide services, then just hear your pricing. Like, because, you know, even if it's something where it's like, hey, this is an area where I know people don't have a lot of money. I'm going to say it's 15 to 20 dollars a month or something like that for kids. That's cool. I get that. But still ask for something. Because if you give it away for free, it's not worth it.

Absolutely not. You know, people value these. You know, money is a whole psychological component to money. Absolutely. You know? people value these, you know, money's a whole, there's a psychological component to money. Absolutely. You know? Yeah. I found the people who I just gave free memberships to almost never came. Whereas the,

yeah. Versus the people who, the people who would pay like all of a sudden they're there three times a week. Very true. Let me ask you a question. So you know that training center now that they have with the guy, Eric? Yeah.

Is that close to you? About eight hours. I took a crew down there in December when they had the national training camp. Yeah, how was that camp? I'm curious to know. It was a good camp. That episode just came out last week or just like two days ago on Monday. I need to listen to it.

I like Robert. No, I need to listen to it. I like Robert a lot. So I'm definitely interested in it. I thought it was good. I think that it was my conversations with him have been really interesting. I want to listen to the podcast where I comment too much. But I think Robert understands that US is a decentralized system and it's very difficult to get it to completely centralized. And there, and there are people, a lot of people do know what they're doing and the way he posed it to me was very much like, you know, I'm looking to partner with clubs. Like, yes, I want residential athletes, but I also, you know, I want their, the coaches, the residential athletes to still be involved. Like, I think he has a great value proposition, you know,

but it's close enough that I can throw people in a car to drive down and on the train is an hour or how they know it's eight hours that's not close at all oh no it's close it's close enough for a camp that I can drag people down yeah eight hours right just fly it's might be six but still I get what you're saying I'm used to driving really long long distance why let's just take a plane um i don't even know how how close is that airport um this is a very good question um but it's also i wanted to have a car like 50 miles an hour airplanes like 500 miles an hour dude no. No, I, I understand that.

I, I, um, I wanted to have a car while I was down there. Cause I was running people around for the training camp. And if I need to go running, it's nice having your own car. I hate rental cars,

man. They're clunky, different blind spots, you know, the seats, funny smells, all this stuff. Yeah.

I kind of get it, but eight hour drive, man. That's not a question for me. I don't have back issues, dude. If I did that, but the camp was good. Oh, the camp was good. Um, Oh, the campus good. Um,

so it was about two hours of session. Um, you know, the first hour was technical and was there enough space to do? Yes, there was a lot. I mean, there was a lot of people on the mat. Um, probably, you know, if I were to guess somewhere between 5,200 people, 5,200 people, it was a lot like, you know, if I were to guess somewhere between 50 to 100 people. It was a lot like, you know, I was just, I just took one of the fellows Maddie A. Solis over to Japan. It was cool

seeing the number of bodies on the mat on an American mat. That's crazy. Yeah, we're not used to that. We're not used to that. There needs to be more collaboration between clubs and, you know, I say this all the time, but I don't really like follow it just because, you know, my life gets kind of crazy sometimes too, you know, and we're all doing our own the time, but I don't really follow it just because my life gets kind of crazy sometimes, too. We're all doing our own thing sometimes.

But yeah, these camps are great. You ran a camp, too, didn't you? Yeah. So I run two a year and one's to prep for senior nationals, one's to prep for US Open. And then my juniors get the support they need because they're getting all that training. I guess Junior Olympics is in between them. getting all that training because junior olympics is in between them so you were mentioning earlier that you wanted to do content a little bit more with your non-profit and then instructions and things like that and sometimes i it pops up on my feed but it's not as consistent you know like i uh

i remember one you did a little bit of a content with megumi she's a japanese champion that lives in chicago now and trains there and has a dojo there. She came to do a seminar at Euro Gym and you guys did like a thing, right? Tell me more about what you want to do with content. Long term, I want to develop a platform. I want to have it so it's where your revenue coming up to the nonprofits support our projects. I am looking to try to find instructors who I think are high quality and also just generally good human beings. So I want to push up, um, and have availability.

It ultimately is a nonprofit. So, you know, I look at projects like how BJF and access set things up or how Marcel Garcia online or I think it's MD and action. Justin Flores is doing something too now you know i love just this platform i've never watched it but i've seen the commercials for it and i'm like oh man should i buy this thing you know oh i got it it's i he actually has i really love his progression on how to teach tomoi um because i was actually so yoko tomoi sumigayashi i'm cool i have no issues teaching that i regular tomoe was never

really a part of my physical vocabulary so i was it was coming up on my basic curriculum so like okay well let me make sure like i know how to do this obviously but i'm just curious who else is putting out content on this and lo and behold i pull up justin's academy and there's a whole thing about tomoe and i was able to pull some ideas for how to teach it that made the progression much easier um I actually think that's a fundamentally one like really interesting thing is when we look at modern judo versus when you and I were fighting versus 10 years before that because like when when you and I were teammates you could go on to like judovision.org or like find stuff on YouTube but the amount of material that's just available it's unbelievable and you. It's unbelievable.

And you know, it's challenging too. People always talk about the upsides, but there's a lot of noise and a lot of bullshit too. So it's very difficult to sift through. You listen to the wrong thing and you're focused on the wrong thing. You're not going to get better. You know, you got to find the gems, you know, you got to find your guru that's going to speak to you.

And you got to trust that that person's very knowledgeable because if you're not an educated consumer, you don't know any better. How can you even have an eye to decide was this person's worth listening because if you're not an educated consumer you don't know any better how can you even have an eye to decide with it was that this person's worth listening to you know oh yeah and i think a sensei is one of our jobs has to be to help help students carry to next time so so my actual my actual schedule for what how everything's taught is like available to my students they know that on they know that like last week was going to on the advanced advanced side was gonna be you know how to score from an inside position what the general techniques are gonna be they can actually see hey with the hands or inside position in what context

right versus right um with the hands basically talking about when you're in a bad position someone has sleeve sleeve neck on you or same side over the back funny enough one of the things i teach there was something you did to me on a regular basis. I call it a ghost exit. When I would grab your sleeve and your neck, your ability to walk out into the open space underneath my power elbow. I don't know if you recall that, but we were at a train camp in Montreal.

I was dead exhausted. I'd get my grip, and then you did that, and I was just like, oh my goodness, I'm really frustrated right now. You were just slipping the head underneath? Yeah, and literally walking past it, you put your sleeve, sleeve i'd have total control of your sleeve hand you put your sleeve hand behind my back and managed to rip yourself out i don't really remember um man montreal he's got some great training camps at nicholas gill oh my god yes crazy crazy training camps man unbelievable so when i just it's funny because when I designed these training camps,

the first thing is talking about trying to work together. The last training camp we did, I got Al Aldris and Cristiano Aldris to come in and bring their group because I've known them forever, so it was great to have them come through. I also reached out to the Zalics and Denver Judo, and they brought a huge crew out. I try to make sure that these camps are collaborative in the sense of like we get everybody's bodies on the mat and everyone

gets some representation and gets to kind of raise everybody up because you know if we don't do that then we don't have people show up and attend and we can't run these events so so you know it was and also it's an opportunity for the instructors to all cross-pollinate with each other. You know, I really enjoy how Ala instructs. So it was really cool to be able to see how he teaches some, like, he was showing some body Judo stuff. And actually he was showing his Ashiguruma and the way he shows his Ashiguruma I really like. Nefeli Papadakis was out here with us and she actually was teaching a lot of gripping, which is, usually my wheelhouse but it was interesting to see like because it was a different set of patterns than what i grew up with so it was interesting to watch how she was gripping she was addressing

the same problems but a little differently and that like that to me is fascinating i love seeing that when it's just like okay we're trying to achieve the same goal but you're doing something you're you're addressing differently like as someone who's like an academic, I love that part of coaching in judo. I think it's really fun. I think that's actually where a lot of the fun in coaching is, is seeing, hey, here's different solutions. And then like, hey, is this the right solution for this person?

And really diving deep and thinking about what's the right thing for each individual. So we're actually, and you know, the students students appreciate that we're actually bringing a big crew out to senior nationals we're bringing novice players we're bringing veterans we're bringing about so i haven't been out to nationals since like 2016 or something there's a novice division now they added a novice division they added a brown ball division uh they added an ijF junior division. Really? Yeah.

IJF junior. Those are junior nationals though, huh? Yeah, but a lot of those IJF juniors would be fighting at senior nationals anyways. One of the things that I think we have a fundamental issue with in the United States is match time. So when I saw USAG don't do this, I was ecstatic. Has it done? Because.

I remember when they first did Brown Belt Nationals. Unconsented, most of the divisions. I mean, my guys all had a lot of matches last year in Brown Belt divisions. Brandon Reddy, I think, had like four or five matches. What about Navas? I didn't see that as much, but I'm looking at the division now, and there are people signing up. I have a woman who's fighting Navas Heavyweight.

She's got two people to fight. It's not going to be 16 32 person divisions yes it is if there's a lot of guys maybe i'll take some oh no it's not it's not smooth it's 480 usa judos platform jesus christ but so you're you are able to check it but yeah i would take a look at it um and then the other thing is though they they are pairing with Golden State, which is what they did with Dallas Presidents Cup. So now you're able to go and you can, I have one junior who's probably going to fight for three days. Yeah. Because they're going to get matches with senior nationals. They'll get one day at Golden State for one division, one day at Golden State for the other division.

get one day at Golden State for one division, one day at Golden State for the other division. And they're able to go ahead and get 10 to 20 matches in a weekend, which when you're 15 years old, that's what you need. Jimmy said 50 to 100 domestic matches a year is what you need as an up-and-coming competitor.

So, yeah, that makes sense. Mm-hmm. Yep. Man, that's how you gain experience. Wow, that's great, man. The U.S. Nationals, when is it? Coming up soon, right? Oh, yeah, Memorial Day weekend. It's coming up about two, I think two or three weeks.

Yeah. I was a little go, but I'm going to Worlds for Judo, for the IJF. That's so cool. It is pretty cool. I'm jealous. It's pretty cool. It's kind of nice to be back out there. It's also sad, you know, but it's also I'm very happy for the happy for the ij after doing so good and then it's like much bigger than it

was and more professional and all this stuff and really really cool stuff man i love being out there you know yeah so yeah you know it's funny um so we were talking about like people you refer to like it's like i i have a go-to list of folks i i have like five or six people i say hey students you want examples let's go to even if it's different than what i show and that's like you it's shintaro it's it's the american judo system with jimmy and travis it's a few other folks who it's like okay these are the folks that i know they're going to show solutions that one actually make sense and two like are within the realm of what I would agree would be viable versus like, sometimes you might see something that looks really cool,

but what they don't tell you is that's the Kata version. Um, so, and that's not the hate on Kata. I was just like, that's okay. That, that version is not viable in international competition or local competition.

Interesting, man. Thank you. I appreciate that. Appreciate that. Oh, all right. so where can people find you oh so we're at uh so you can find us on instagram at hi ninjudo um you can also find

us in alexandria alexandria virginia um 85 south bragg street so we've got two big events coming up right now on june 1st we have you um on that saturday and then from june 6th to the 12th we're going to have magumi shikawa back along when are you when she's coming um she's coming for the camp july 6th that's really great that's really great yeah yeah so she'll be there for a few days and lauren's going to be there for most of it and that's to get everybody ready for us open but here's the deal just because it's people getting ready for us open you know i give i help folks out we're like hey i can only come for a day well let's figure out what the pricing is for you for a day i i have folks come in who are a lot less experienced you know basically the only thing i ask for a camp

is that you have at least a few months of judo experience yeah gotta be at least an intermediate you know yeah yeah so it's uh so we have those two big events coming up. And all together we're trying to do some interesting and new stuff. It's not that I don't appreciate this, but we're not the dude in their 80s teaching stuff that they learned in the 60s and 70s and hoping it works now. We're trying to stay on top of the game. How many matches do you think you had in your lifetime? Oh my god.

So Nick Del Poppo and I were buds and we were trying to guess this top of the game. How many matches do you think you had in your lifetime? Oh, my God. So Nick Del Popo and I were buds, and we were trying to guess this for each of us. And it has to be close. It has to be, right? Yeah. Dude, I fought you when I was like 16. You fought me in a competition? Yeah.

You double-liked me into the next universe. Did I? I didn't know we fought in a competition. We did? Yeah, because I would show up and fight 73s, 81s, and 90s. I didn't even remember that. Yeah, I was 15, 16 years old, maybe a little older. Because I knew I needed match time.

Over a thousand matches. That's insane. You know what though? I'm up there too, man. Because I remember somebody asked me, how many wrestling matches did you do? And I had 100 wins minimum in high school. I remember I did that, like, going into senior year. Wrestled offseason, wrestled in college. I had over 250 matches in wrestling alone, you know?

So that's just wrestling, you know? So, like, between that and judo, man, it's probably over 1,000, dude. You know? Yeah, I mean, I'm combining judo, wrestling, BJJ, to be fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, it's up there and it's like and when i think about it that kind of if i'm trying to bring up a competitor that's a lot of money could you imagine you took all that money and just invested it in the spy

next month you'd be rich. Oh, my God. Look, do not bother me with alternate timelines. Oh, my God. Keep that curse away from me. That's impressive, man. Yeah. Yeah, well, so, you know, here's the thing, though. I'll tell you, actually, kind of like the most interesting time I think of competing was actually I competed for a while at Boobaba BJJ.

And it was interesting because it ended up impacting a lot how i coached in the black belt level in judo because you know you've experienced this it's you're doing something new initially your instance just to do what you already do but it's eventually clear like you're only going to get so much out of that so i for a while most of my coaching was actually with bj and MMA fighters because they were bringing me very interesting problems to try to help them solve. And I thought, you know, I did that. You know, I was a little off the judo scene from a coaching perspective for several years. And that was because I was really more focused on working with those kind of like unique situations.

It was always interesting to me at the time. And it's one of the ways it's impacted. We're talking about like different sources. You know, I watch sometimes people do. Here's Judo for BJJ. If you're not a Jiu-Jitsu black belt, man, you don't know the, you don't know. You need to have both. You need to know both properly.

I've seen guys like, oh, Judo for BJJ. Sure, let me show you a Taitoshi. It's like. They're never going to let me show you a tai otoshi. It's like... They're never going to move the way you need for tai out. It doesn't happen. You know what's the most, the two most successful moves I've had in terms of crossing the BJJ were Jimmy's

drop ochi, which I would just do from different grips the moment I could catch something, and a step-on foot sweep. Oh, yeah, step-on the foot. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Either step-on or the sticker I learned from Jay. Like, you know, I would just walk out. I'd hook the leg and just wait for them to figure out what was going on. And they would either pull or they would try to take a single.

And fine. Yeah. Please do. So, it's, though there was enough Soto variation I eventually happened upon that was also pretty good. But it it was so you would not have come to it if you're just thinking from a judo perspective because effectively you just walk out and before you put your hands on you just hook your heel behind their knee and that's a solution that's so BJJ specific it really is so I think and you know you probably experienced this through wrestling, having to solve different problems, that probably helps you a lot as a coach and teacher now,

because it means that you have a lot of different kind of core points in your grappling knowledge to pull from to resolve something when someone shows up with something brand new. So it's an interesting space. Do you have a lot of jiu-jitsu guys doing judo in your club? Yeah. It's funny because a lot of uh jujitsu guys doing judo in your club yeah um it's funny because a lot of them are very nervous and you when they first start because you know they're nervous about taking calls and yeah so one of the things that so i address this in three ways um one is

we do have nice it's going to be more gripping oriented which is what a lot of them actually want it's funny they initially come thinking takedowns and they realize, oh, if I can fight in Cyclos guard, I'm a, I have a much better chance of surviving in Cyclos guard. But the other is, you know, the game's approach allows us to do stuff that's lower impact, which also helps all the novices. And then the final bit is eventually people were like, oh, this is cool.

Like, and we have good mat. We have a safe mat area. all the novices and then the final bit is eventually people are like oh this is cool like and we have good mat we have a safe mat area like we have experienced instructors oh you you specifically did jujitsu yes but not if i was competing not really to score um it was i have a i have a cross collar or sleeve guard that i learned initially from radhi um and i got to be pretty viable from there but ultimately if i'm on bottom it was a classic if i'm on bottom here it's probably means i've either had to make a tactical choice where i've run somebody who i know is just better in this space or something's gone horribly, horribly wrong. So I worked on that a lot, but how about you? That's mostly what I work on in JITs, bottom stuff.

You know, once you get good at it and once you understand what the goals are of like, okay, how do I make this cross collar sleeve useful, you know, with a De La Riva hook or whatever it is, then it's like, all right, you can try to learn to negate it when you're on top, know so it was good for me yeah i do a lot of that stuff my um my black belt exam for bjj was was it reminded me a lot of my phd defense now i think of it because so yep um it was expensive expensive you have to pay for it? No, no, it was expensive. Oh, I was about to say, I was like, how much did you spend on this thing? No, God, no. No, so I was down with some athletes working with Rod D.

So my ranks were Rod D. I was down there. And he and I had a long 23-minute roll. And then afterwards, you know, hey, good job. And then I was there for the week for a camp. And then about 24 hours later, he texted me and says, I need you to be at the place at 8 a.m. I'm bringing a couple of the black belts I'm friendly with to basically provide peer review. And I rolled with both of them and nice guys.

And effectively, I was just told outright, this isn't a full comp round. They're trying to see what you know to um, to see, Hey, do you actually know all the things you need to know and function, et cetera. And it, it was, you know, it was a exam kind of role. So we're, we're moving around at the end. They're like, yeah, I know he, this checks out. And then they put me, I was fighting out of butterfly guard. I was playing my open guard.

I was having to move through each of the positions and also the inverse of that. So it was, you know, it was a series of technical roles just to verify, hey, I know what I'm doing in each position. And it's funny, we finish up and they turn to Rod D and say, yeah, he's ready to go. He's ready for his black belt. And Rod D goes, all right, well, if you can get a black belt, I don't have any on hand to promote you with. But, you know, next time you're down here, bring a black belt i don't have any on hand um to promote you with but you know next time you're down here bring a black belt with you i'll promote you i go if i could get a black belt before i leave would we be able to do this yeah sure so what i do we're talking about rental cars earlier um i walk over the rental i go i'll be right back and i walk over the rental car i drive to a hardware store and i buy a bunch of electrical tape and I grab,

I have that red and black belt from the USGA and I then grab a bunch of black electrical tape, come back, sit down and just make a BJJ black belt out of it. And Roddy walks over and realizes what I'm doing because I approve of that. And then I basically had to, I basically handmade a Brazilian GC black belt. So, okay, I have one. We can, we can do the ceremony.

Wow, that's pretty cool. I like that story. That's a good story, man. Yeah. Well, that sounds amazing, dude. Congratulations on that. So what was, thank you. So what was your experience like working towards your black belt in BJJ?

It was kind of scattered, you know. I did, the first time I walked into a Jiu-Jitsu school was ages ago. And I did a summer. And then, you know, the second day they gave me a blue belt-jitsu school was ages ago, and I did a summer. And then, you know, the second day they gave me a blue belt because, you know, pretty proficient on the ground. Not proficient, but like I was pretty good on the ground. They kind of started me a blue. And then it was like two months in the summertime when I was home from college or something like that. And then I didn't really touch BJJ for a little while.

And then I was training. I went to John Donahue's class for a summer, and then he gave me a purple belt. then i was training i went to john donahue's class for a summer and then he gave me a purple belt so like that's actually like probably like three four or five months total of like being in a room and then like some of my judo black belts became jujitsu black belts and kind of gave me a brown belt one of them did he's like you know you're a brown belt now okay and i was like all right cool whatever you know and then brian glick and i would meet once a week and we would just train together, judo and BJJ. We would just kind of trade sessions. That's awesome.

An hour of stand-up, an hour of jiu-jitsu. And that went along. That's just like a weekly thing, just to get together, hang out, talk shop, talk parenting, all sorts of stuff. That went on for like a decade, just friendship going back and forth. And then every now and then I would dip into a jiu-jitsu school. And then he gave me my black belt. And then I started going to essential jiu-jitsu maybe like a year and a half ago with JT. Because it's really right down the street from my house.

And then I was like, all right, I'm going to take this seriously. Like, I can kind of like gumby my way through positions. You know, like I'm pretty athletic. I've been doing judo and wrestling my whole life. So it's like, you know, I could hold my own, but I don't really know any of the positions well. I was really reliant on athletics. Right. So now like I just spent a year and a half just like learning. I go like five days a week, dude.

That's awesome. Now it's like, I'm very proficient and you know, I wouldn't say proficient, but like, you know, I'm not like where my judo is, you know, definitely not, but any black belt could roll with me and be like, this guy's a black belt yeah yeah yeah it's it's funny you know one thing is interesting too like by the time you get to the point where you're a black belt you see where things were meant to work in terms of when you think about how judo is and what was removed and how like in a larger self-defense or in a larger sport grappling context where things would fit like understanding that hey if I miss this Uchimata

well the foot's already in between my legs rolling into a knee bar makes sense um which you know we've seen that for years but like it yeah but it's that was one thing I realized to like kind of it was funny it was just i spent some time i've spent some time training with kosen judo players in japan um and it was interesting to train with them because i would kind of see like what my ideal was as a grappler if i wanted to be as good on the ground as i was on the feet and vice versa. And seeing how this all could properly interlink. And I think it's not, they're both complete martial arts in their own right. But if you compare them, even if it's only a minor on one and major on the other,

I think you end up with a much more enriching martial arts experience. Definitely. I had no Nehwaza back in the day, you know. So now it's like pretty good. And it's nice to have. It's nice to have. You know, you don't have to worry whenwans in the back of the net, you know. So now it's, like, pretty good. And it's nice to have. It's nice to have. You know, you don't have to worry when you're in the dojo and a jiu-jitsu guy comes in with crazy cauliflower here.

He's like, I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu. You don't have to worry anymore. You're like, whatever, you know. Yeah, sure, let's do it. Let's go. I can take him down. I can submit him. You know, not to be, like, arrogant, but, like, you know, it's fine.

You know, so it's definitely, you get confident, you know. So. You know, it's fine, you know? So it's definitely, you get confident, you know? So. You know, it's interesting. There's not, there's still not a lot of folks who were on like the national scene from a judo perspective and then have their black belts in BJJ. It's like kind of like a small group. And, and like, it's kind of funny because a lot of us are all kind of under similar lineages. Like the number of guys, like number of folks who are under Henzo in some way through Danaher or elsewhere. I know that Alex Moore, Jacobson, and I are both.

I think he's a Ricardo Laborio black belt. I don't know for sure. And then Rod D got his black belt from Laborio, and I'm under Rod D. It's funny how, like, that's not really a thing in judo. You know, like, you don't say I'm a Jimmy Page or a black belt. No. I say, like, hey, i started and i grew up at jimmy's um but it's not usually like hey i'm a jimmy it's a weird connotation of ownership you know what i mean like that i don't kind of like in that world of like hey i'm with this guy's black

black belt under this person it's like you know what i mean like it's kind of weird you know i find it a little bit weird and uh it's it's it a little bit weird. It was bizarre how that was like that in Japan back in the day with Japanese jiu-jitsu and judo. But then even Japanese guys are kind of going away from that a little bit now. You know what I mean? And the Brazilian guys loved that and they kept that going. And now all of a sudden it's not really a thing, except in that community it still is.

They're living in the 60s. You know what I mean? It's such a bizarre thing, but it's kind of interesting it's unique to their culture you know it's like kind of like bringing back the oldies really you know you know i like i have mixed feelings about because they're a person i like i do like the association i like that you know i like that i can say hey i got my black belt under Jimmy Pedro and Trudeau my black belt was like just under it's funny I realized I was probably the only person running around with a black belt from two different members of the Athens Olympic team but um but at the same time people need to have room to grow and be their own brand if they wish to do

that and be their own have their own thing so you know i think when it's brought up in a way that's like friendly and saying oh yeah well i know these people maybe you know these people and stuff like that when it's done in that way i'm cool when it's done in a way where somebody's asserting some form of ownership or power dynamic here i get a I get a little yeah yeah okay so but you know so judo does it though I think in a way that we do need to it's worth talking about is it's not necessarily that people identify as I'm a Shintaro Higashi black belt it's I'm a Kakushi black belt or I'm black belt from Kano martial arts and black belt from Pedro's like I think I think that's interesting that's more like people identify with the club a little

bit more yeah as opposed to jiu-jitsu there's a lot more you know so-and-so's name attached to your thing you know like i don't know maybe because they focus so much on lineage you know i don't know maybe that's what it is but definitely a different interesting different you know unique thing there yeah yeah yeah anyway chris best of luck to you man thank you for for being on here i have to go pick up my kid so i don't want to like cut you short but thank you so much great conversation and uh these guys will be looking for you hi new bjj i'll be doing a seminar at your gym june first or second first first right so we'll kick it off great we'll make some content right we'll do some stuff sounds

great that's your plan pick a list of stuff that you want to show on my channel and then we'll do it right and then we'll uh have like a little collaborative thing it'll be fun we'll talk shop you know so yeah before before we go shantaro i just want to say you're doing awesome stuff thank you um and and thank you for trying to uplift you know people like me everybody else that you're bringing with you. You're very welcome. People should hear your ideas on judo and stuff. You have so much experience. Over 1,000 matches, PHG and double black belt.

That's rare. That's very rare. Don't you think? Yes, that is very true. I only think, yeah, there's not that many of you out there. So thank you, Chris. Thank you for doing what you're doing. Thank you so much.