The Shintaro Higashi Show - Common Beginner Mistakes in Judo

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

When you first learn a new skill like Judo, you're bound to make mistakes. Being cognizant of this and addressing it appropriately can really accelerate your Judo journey. So, what are some common beginner mistakes in Judo? Are they mostly on the physical side like bad posture or stiff arming, or are there some mental elements to it? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss common beginner mistakes in Judo and how to address them. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Today we're going to cover beginner judo mistakes. Yeah, so this was a suggestion from one of our patrons, Karina. She basically mentioned common beginner mistakes like bad posture, staying loose, and all that, like stiff farming. And Shintaro did make a video about this, but're trying we're gonna try to go more in depth yeah so I made a YouTube video about it so I think I'd said like five most common beginner mistakes in judo and I only listed three blowing it up on the comments but yeah beginner mistakes let's hit right to it you know first one you've got the first one what do you think it is? I don't know. Stiff?

Stiffness? Yeah, stiffness, not taking breakfalls, but it's going to go with the number one overarching concept, conceptual thing. And all these mistakes come from that one thing. It's getting too competitive in the gym. Oh. Being competitive.

It's more on the mental side. Yeah, because then if you're too competitive and you're afraid to fall, you're not going to take a break fall. If you're afraid of taking risks to go for the throw because you're afraid of getting countered, you're going to be a little bit stiff. You're going to be risk averse. You're not going to be doing an offensive judo game, right? So that's why getting competitive, I think, is the first mistake that white belts get. You know, they get competitive with everybody.

You know, generally, people don't do white belt, white belt randori rounds because it's too dangerous because they tend to get competitive with each other not even they're just two inexperienced people they're gonna hurt each other yeah so most gyms don't let white belts go with white belts same in like boxing they don't let two beginners spar they don't oh you guys are brand new why don't you guys put gloves headgear on just spar usually they'll put you with somebody pretty good so they could kind of like manage you a little bit teach you sort of show you the ropes they say right right right right so same thing in judo so if you're a white belt you're coming in now all of a sudden you paired up with someone that's a green belt in jujitsu it'd be like a white belt versus a

purple belt or something getting competitive with that person and then attacking them with the intent of winning you're not gonna win maybe there are some factors that can overcome your skill set difference let's just say for instance you play division one football you're freaking six three 250 pounds you are a specimen right yeah yeah and then you're a white belt you never grappled before but now all of a sudden you're going up against the person that's 150 pounds purple belt you know good at judo whatever it is can you overcome the skill difference with the sheer athleticism maybe if you have big enough size difference athletic difference yeah right but majority of the time

that's not the case you know what i mean if there's no you're saying there's no point in being competitive i mean i like besides all the bad because people have that but when you're thinking about winning right yeah you just it it's no longer a skill acquisition round you're not trying to learn stuff you're not collecting information you're not trying to learn stuff you're not collecting information you're not trying to analyze your movements or look for the best possible path your goal becomes beating that person but if you don't have the strategy and the tactics to apply those things in the actual match now you're just kind of flailing and going aggressive for no reason so there's aggression with no intent right why are you so aggressive

because i feel like aggression will win because we're so ingrained to think in combat the aggressor takes the cake they win that's how you win becoming more aggressive right right but there's times to be aggressive there's times to taper that down right it's a balance game you know but you just don't know enough to do it so when a beginner goes in with a competitive mindset, they tend to be a little bit too aggressive, and that's one of the sub-mistakes. So we kind of covered this in Randoi too. Yeah, you're right.

The competitiveness, as you said, is necessary in certain situations. So for beginners, though, who are not necessarily going to prepare for competition, do you see any place for being competitive in judo practice at all? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because everything you do is kind of a... So it's like game theory. When you study game theory, it's like cooperative and competitive, right?

And it's sort of a balance of both when you're in the gym as well you have cooperative drills and competitive drills right right the competitiveness like when you're competing with somebody in front of you to do a certain thing right if the competitive goal is to win right you're not going to beat a black belt you're not going to beat a brown belt right you know you don't know what it means to win a lot of these guys who are beginner white belts they don't have a good understanding of the rules. Right, right. Perhaps you're in a judo gym doing nirwaza with a jiu-jitsu guy, and then the guy doesn't really understand the concept of pins. So who wins in that case?

It's like a general grappling round. I know that's how I approach it. You know what I mean i see so in this instance you have to kind of like look at a little bit differently you know if you're talking about a white belt doing a competitive round you have a competition sort of the goal is to get the dominant position the goal is to try and make these attacks okay if we learn osotogari try Osorigari, try Tsusai,

make those two work together. You know what I mean? So that's your goal. This is a competition because the person that's in front of you is not going to let you do those things most of the time.

So instead of playing the full-on judo game, you kind of play these mini games. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I see. So for instance, you can be competitive within that

yeah and then we'll do like grip fighting you know the goal right side versus right side is to put the hand on the collar right get the hand higher than the opponent's hand or the goal is to take that collar hand off so that's a game that's a competitive game that white belts can do together that's has going to have direct influence on their randori skill later down the line right it's competitive it's safe of course i preempt them with like hey don't poke each other and i don't throw haymakers over the top you know what i mean don't like you know chop at the arms like you're still going 50 60 right and it's like i'm pretty clear about it and then as soon as i see escalation i'm like hey guys watch out you know be careful reduce intensity a little bit you know because you want to make this thing sort of a mechanical game

where i go here you go there i go there you go there it's like chess you know like people equate this to chess like judo like chess but no one's actually doing it like chess you know if you look at chess it's almost like a turn-based game right i go you go i go you go i go you go you know so in that way the analogy doesn't really add up you know it's like oh it's like chess but then you're just kind of randomly throwing stuff and going crazy and it's like no we're playing chess no you're not you know i don't know what that is right so yeah in order to build yourself to be able to play the game, you have to kind of go sort of at a slower pace. Right, right, right.

And you do have to have – Build it up. Yes. And then there has to be some competitive elements because if it's all cooperative, you're doing karate. No, I'm kidding. That's a joke. That's a joke. No, no.

There's competitive stuff in karate too. That was a joke, guys. I'm sorry. But like – no, but like then, you know, okay. Here's an example. It's all karate with just form. That's what it becomes. Right, right, right.

Right. Or like judo with just kata, I guess. Yeah, that's, yeah. Not judo anymore then. Yeah. Yeah, I see. So those mini games, I think that's where competitiveness could come in for beginners. And so the mistake is that beginners just go full on competitive with the whole judo

when they don't even know what judo is yet. Yeah, because you know what? Most of us have been ingrained, like, did you win? Yes or no? Yeah. Oh, I won. I lost. It's very binary in this way, right?

And, you know, that's how it was. Like, you know, know oh i got in a fight at school did you win son you know like right yeah yeah and then the very best that you might get is like you know what did you get on your test it's like oh i got an a i got a b i got a c now we're talking like different degrees of this stuff you know what i mean right so there's a mosquito sorry i'm trying to mosquito situation yeah so anyway don't get bit yeah so it's like uh it's like that and you know you kind of have to look at it in a way where like what is a win you know you have to have different goals for different practices different people you know it's sort of a mental thing and it took me forever to figure this out too because if i go into judo practice

with the intent of winning okay the skill level that i'm at i could beat a white belt the yellow belt the green belt the brown like i yeah you know it goes without saying i'm also heavier than everybody so could i lock my arms out not let anyone throw me and then throw them once and then win every round yeah but am i going to get anything out of the practice no first of all it's not a good workout because i'm not moving as much second of all it's demoralized no one's going to want to work out with me so i'm going to lose partners yeah third of all like i'm not trying new stuff i'm not like learning certain positions that i'm good at or bad at like i'm not refining anything you know but if i'm looking at in terms of winning and losing did i beat everyone yes under this specific rule set it's freaking waste of time

why bother you know what i mean right right yeah i i'll probably get more going for a walk for two hours because first it's less risk and i'll burn more calories that way maybe you know yeah so so this is the root of all the other problems, root cause of all the other problems. So. Yeah. Being way too competitive

for no, without purpose. Yeah. So what, the wanting to win side leads to aggression. The not wanting to lose is a different thing.

Yeah. Okay. So there's like that statement and then the negation of that statement and they're not really opposites of each other, right? Because there's like that statement and then the negation of that statement. And they're not really opposites of each other, right? Because you could want to win and go compete, right?

Or you could go into a match not wanting to lose and now you're full defense. You're not actively trying to win. You know what I mean? Right. And so like the stiffness really comes from that. It comes from the same root competitiveness, which is sort of the beginner mistake, right? Don't get too competitive, you know?

Right? I see. But not wanting to lose full defense, full stiffness. Now you have no offense. Now everything is at a distance, you know? Right, right. And it's a lot less intuitive for judo and grappling sports, right? Because if you look at boxing, right?

If I decide I don't want to get, right? And then there's no ring. Let's just say no ring. In an infinitely open space, right? If the one person just starts running, there's no boxing. That's it. You got to like chase after the person. And even then, there is no like, you know, slipping and ducking and then backstepping

and then faking because the person has their back turned to you and they're sprinting away from you. Right, right. So now you got to run them down and tackle them. That's not boxing, right? That's it, yeah. So the rules really force you guys to do, you know, to play the game. Engage each other, yeah. Yeah, more than, you know, you imagine.

You know, and it's like so conceptually out of the question. People don't even think about this stuff, you know and it's like so conceptually out of the question people don't even think about this stuff you know and same thing with judo it's like okay if you're locked their arms out then you're not engaging in whatsoever it's very difficult to play the game yeah one person's not playing the game you know and people say like why would i open myself up why would i get closer and risk why why can't i just lock and play defense you can but like i said you know you could just also run away from a boxing fight and then you know obviously in the ring there's a confined space right right so that's another restriction that forces the two that happens

in every single sport like i heard that shot clock in basketball yeah because that happened yeah well it actually happened in the final a long time ago apparently the i forget which one basically one team was heavily favored so the underdog pat kept passing the ball around and they was like a 20 to 24 or something yeah and score so they instituted shot clock i think 24 seconds or something right yeah and but yeah that means that you got to play the role yeah yeah so like in competition yes of course the referees would be like penalty penalty penalty and people make this argument all the time like oh in a self-defense situation there is no forget that you know you're playing a goddamn

sport here it's a sport there's a game street you want to talk about the, you're playing a goddamn sport here. It's a sport. There's a game. The street. You want to talk about the streets? You know, grab a handful of sand, throw it in their eyes, and then kick them in the stomach. You know what I mean? Right? And then they make this stupid argument like, oh, they could do the same thing. Yes, but they didn't think of it first. I thought of it first. I'm prepared for it.

I have a fucking handful of sand in my pocket right now. That's an advantage. Whether you like it or not. Right. You know what I mean? Pocket sand, man. Pocket sand. You know what?

That might be a great invention they uh i saw this video this is kind of we're kind of digressing but they want i saw it on instagram it's an ad where it's like a piece of cloth or something that you can wear on around your wrist so that you can choke people. It's like a self-defense thing. I don't love that because your hands are tied up like this and then your face is wide open. It was kind of weird. I don't know.

I mean, people... I wouldn't be surprised if people try to sell pocket sand too. Pocket sand is the way to go, man. Because if you pepper spray someone and then you end up grappling with them, you'll get it in your own eyes get it but you throw sand at them right it gets in there you know it's not gonna like jump from their eyeball to your eyeball all right so if anyone's listening to this and they want to start this thing with me

yeah hit him up yeah shintaro's pocket sand for fighting kind of perfect right yeah the only issue is like uh if you throw it into the wind and then the wind blows it back into your own face that's why you have to weight the sand you have to make it a little bit heavier heavier yeah then it'll actually do some that you might do some damage with the weight yeah it's like a BB gun or something. Anyway, so going back to being defensive. Okay, so it is a martial art, but it is also a sport. And then during practice, you got to treat it more like a sport, I think.

Yeah, because within the rule set and the sporting aspect of it, you refine the skills that could potentially lead you to be able to use it in a martial right right it's martial arts for a reason martial is war like you know you can't try to maim your opponent every single day and you know come out of it and practice no you can't practice it and too many judo is already dangerous as it is you know we had a knee injury last night you know what i mean it's horrible oh no yeah you don't know this guy maybe you know him he's the guy i don't want to say names what happened okay i gotta follow up with one of those also it was a tie-up tie-up down screaming i know yeah one of those guys we'll see how it is today yeah anyway so stiffness and then it leads to like not wanting to take throws and embracing the falls and the takedowns, right?

And that's why break falls are so important because it teaches you to embrace the fall. Oh, I'm falling. Tuck the chin. Relax. Embrace it. I can get right back up. That's the whole idea behind judo. Embracing the failure.

Embracing the fall. All right. That actually also, if you don't learn that, you become a bad trading partner like you can't even do what you call me yeah what you call me so i get called me with someone who is so stiff or like it's not even just being stiff and not taking the thoughts you know like when people are afraid of being thrown they sit into their hips and then yeah you can't really practice the kuzushi. And you have to force the throw. They're scared. They're resisting.

When you're doing a cooperative drill, the name of it says it. It's a cooperative drill. You're letting the guy do the thing. So it's like you have to let the person do it because it's a cooperative drill. If you're afraid to fall, you're going to have a little bit of resistance and your body naturally does certain things stiffen up tighten up try to shift their weight so they don't get bombed right and it's the thing once you're doing that and when you're conscious like you can't you're afraid to fall you're afraid to get taken down you're going to make mistakes because now

all of a sudden in an offensive setting you're less likely to take risks and go for stuff because you're afraid to get taken down. You know? Yeah. Well, like if you're falling, you don't embrace it. And then you try to catch yourself by putting the hand down.

It's like, yes, if you're tripping over a backpack in your living room, you could put your hand down and catch yourself. Right. But if someone else is attached to you, like with the key locked in, you're putting your hand down,

your body weight, their body weight, and they're trying to force you into the floor. Your arm's going to go. Well, yeah. You know what I mean? like with the gi locked in you're putting your hand down your body weight their body weight and they're trying to force you into the floor your arm's gonna go well yeah you know what i mean there's there's a famous video from the olympics uh what's his name yoshida yoshida yeah yeah trying to post out of uh uchimata and then break his arm yeah that was a nasty break yeah the Brazilian yeah you know yeah

so but yeah so that yeah like if you if you actually fall if you want to fall

it's actually safer yeah in a way no you know which is kind of yeah oh tipping point I'm going

oh my knee is locked out right yeah if I resist it you know what is it valgus force with the force coming inward into the knee right it's going to cause a lot of issues the structure of your knee right oh shoot my knee's locked out i'm going to try to jump off and then dive over and straight

onto my back tuck the chin yeah and then you get up and you say hey you got it yeah but if you're in that position and you have to make a split-second decision, right my knees locked out I'm falling I'm gonna maybe just hopefully it doesn't my knee doesn't break or I don't want to take a fall Hopefully I don't go to my back You know I don't want to get thrown for you pawn in front of everybody land on your shoulder and your shoulder gets dislocated you know and you can only take so many of those things if Consistently every single time you take a clean fall,

you get right back up and go for it. You know, you take risks, bang. You know, you go in Georgian, you go for a Soto. This guy might lift me up and bomb me on my back. It's okay because I could tuck my chin fall. I'm learning. I'm learning. Right?

The goal isn't to compete with this person today in front of me. The goal is to try to refine my movement, refine the position, understand it a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah. So we cover kind of those things to uh the mental side of things i guess yeah weight being way too competitive for the wrong reasons and which leads to the stiffness and defensiveness and yeah all the other things so uh why are there more like physical things you know where like technique mistakes i don't know what i haven't watched that video yet but i would have just covered it it's literally almost the same thing i see i see i see so then um so yeah i am actually curious about that though like you know is it just purely

like a lot of the judo movements are very unintuitive you know so any like one thing i could think of is uh you know um when you do when you a beginner learns seoi nage they they don't engage the core or something or the body mechanics and all do you do you have do you see any other common mistakes in terms of those or do you think that's way too like involved and detailed for beginners i'll tell you this man when i see beginners do turn throws they turn and then their toes come off the ground which means the weight is shifting back into their heel so that's really common anytime you teach uchimata and then people drive through their heel

and then the toes come up that means the weight's going backwards right so like i always say like put the focus on the toes like drive your toes into the floor shift your weight forward onto the ball of your feet you know it's kind of counterintuitive like long time ago when you were squatting and say drive through the heel now they say like midfoot half connection but like when you're doing judo you want to drive on you know forward right right most of the time so you know that kind of uh that's a physical mistake you know what i mean um i think one of the mistakes that lead from something like that is when you're drilling with someone and someone gets overly critical and now you're just standing there talking during drill time you want to drill you want to let your body

right and that's i think is the biggest mistake of like just asking you know many questions good but you know you don't want to just stand there and having a conversation about something and not do it you know that's more so mistake coming from the higher belt who's inclined to teach and it's like oh let me show you how much i know and now all of a sudden you stand there having a full-blown conversation you had five minutes to drill stuff you didn't drill how many reps did you get maybe three or four and then every time you did it the guy would go on a rant and then you're like oh yeah yeah yeah you know what did you really accomplish you know it's better the advice is bad too yeah sometimes advice is bad you know what drives me nuts man when i teach something new

yeah that like even some of the higher belts don't know not higher belts but i'm talking like middle level you know green belts and brown belts and then they're going with a complete beginner and they have to figure it out too the green belts it's like i've never shown it to you before i've never showed it in a class and now all of a sudden the green belts are teaching the white belts something you know their own interpretation of it and it's like no man you don't know it yourself figure it out together like it's the thing you know drill it try it figure it out you know don't try to show this guy that you know so much you know and that's partially the ego driven thing you know we all have egos right we all need you know a certain level of validation and you come into a sport like judo

it's like you know i want to i'm tough i want to show that i'm tough yeah no and you know you take pride in like your abilities whether it's like learning coachability athleticism wherever it is you're going to try to focus on and try to show that you know some people it's like oh i know this stuff more than anybody i'm going to show it to you you know right so yeah as it goes back to the competitiveness we're overly competitive i guess it all roots from ego right why do we even do martial arts or take down sports you know to to show them how tough i am yeah in so many ways it's the most perfect way right if you're jacked and you're good at grappling like evolutionarily early like we're

supposed to do that because if you're living in a tribe of 100 like evolutionarily speaking you know you get into it with someone there's too much risk to actually fight them you punch them you break your hand now you can't freaking hunt you can't use tools yeah now you can't pick berries you know what i mean yeah you fight somebody you hurt them right now all of a sudden you have to take care of that person it's an extra amount to feed it's one less person on the battlefield or the hunting grounds or the freaking picking berries you know what i mean but if i can take them down and we have come up with some rules like if you if your knee touches the ground first you lose yeah or like no tanya toshi

you can't touch the legs you can't touch the legs right yeah and then you lift weights and then you lift weights because people equate big and strong right with being able to do these because these are physical feats right that's visible yeah yeah so yeah you know in so many ways like maybe you don't even need grappa you just get jacked and then you just posture right a lot of people do that i guess yeah that's why people are so aggressive like you go to the bar the, most muscular guy is the one that... They're not muscular for women because women aren't really attracted to that. It's more so to signal to the other men that I deserve.

I'm the alpha in the room. Yeah, like, we don't need to fight, right? But I will posture like I will. I'm bigger and stronger. I can take you down and grapple, right? And then you have the right to you know procreate i guess right in like the animal kingdom we're just smarter monkeys yes oh man but you know we we should uh i think we got to go over that get over that i think one aspect of martial arts like i said we emphasize the mental side of things and then being cooperative,

being, you know, mutual benefit. We talked about, you know, the whole philosophy of judo. I mean, we can transcend this kind of raw animalistic behavior, I guess. Yeah, man, we have that, you know, lizard brain, and then we have the higher order thinking. Yeah. You know, and some people can operate in both some people operate in one section more than the other and you know yeah right yeah maybe that's it kind of boils down to it like how do you become like the bigger common beginner mistake is that you should try to be more of a like a decent human being to everyone in the

community i guess it's true yeah yeah don't try to hurt people don't try to dominate people you know you know what we need at the dojo we need we need a safe space that's what we need right if you're triggered and you're getting a little too aggressive we're gonna put you in the same space and then we'll have a social worker it's like like, hey, what's really going on in your life? Are you having a hard day at work? Talk to me. Talk to me. Tell me how you're feeling right now. Why are you doing this?

It is important, I think. That could be a good support system. I think a lot of people like it. Peter, Peter, I was joking, bro. I was joking, bro. No, are you really, though? Hey, there's no place for emotions in the dojo you know this only only throws only chokes are allowed yes that's right cool all right well

i think we covered the big theme and i think um hopefully it'll be helpful for a lot of people who are thinking of starting judo and other grappling arts or who are at the beginning of their journey so anything else? before we conclude thank you guys, find me on Instagram been putting a lot of cool content up there find me on Instagram

judoshintaroNYC thank you for listening to the podcast and supporting it support us on patreon if you can uh link down below and i'll see you guys in the next episode