The Shintaro Higashi Show - Developing Your Own Judo

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

Everyone has his/her own Judo journey, and it's important to develop your "own Judo" to be more successful and, most importantly, have fun. In this episode, Shintaro and Peter talk about how one can develop his/her own Judo. 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 today we're going to talk about developing your own judo period that's right um yeah so helping your own judo we've talked about a lot we've talked a lot about fundamentals how to develop your you know the fundamentals for your judo but now it's a bit of a more advanced topic where you build on top of those fundamentals you've built it's a basic concept, but you don't have to be an advanced player to kind of start developing your system. I think if you already have the structure in mind and you have an idea of what your judo should look like,

then even as a beginner, you could get a lot out of something like this. Right. So you're very approaching judo in a very systematic way. Systematic way. Yeah. So let's start from there first like what's uh how do you treat how do you take judo as a system and then try to find your own style yeah that's a very good question what does that mean yeah yeah so system first right it's a thing that you know later on in my career i started really really giving a lot of thought and a lot of times judo is taught in a way where it's like here's a thing that, you know, later on in my career, I started really, really giving a lot of thought. And a lot of times, judo is taught in a way where it's like, here's a sotogari.

Here's a uchigari. Outside trip, inside trip. Here's an arm throw. Here's a taiyo. Here's a hip throw. Go try it. And then you put two people in a room. You teach them how to fall.

You teach them how some of these fundamentals work and the mechanics. And you're like, go work at it. Right. And then two people put their hands on and try to throw each other. Right? And that's really how it it went for a very very long time you know that's just how it was taught judo was taught for many many years right and you know you spend five hours a day doing it you know for 20 years you're gonna get good you're just intuitively gonna get good you're gonna build this unconscious knowledge right you just kind of know the nuances the movements like you just can't anticipate

people's attacks right the system just arises organically you create a system yeah exactly arises organically so you know when you have someone who's been through that system and you ask them like hey how do you do your tai otoshi they may do their taiyo in like four or five different ways you know four or five different setups four or five different scenarios right from losing position winning position right different combinations leading into that attack right right but they can't really explain it because they do it so intuitively right so they just go in and say hey i go like this i pull the hand here i pull the hand there and i step across and i throw them it's like really throw them really what you do you know so yeah yeah

that's a develop a judo system something that can be taught something that can be looked at and you could observe it right right and intelligently speak about that's the sort of a judo system I see I think yeah so but at the end of the day you still have to important thing to remember is that you still need to know the basics and have a solid foundation to build on top, right? Yeah. I mean, you need to know, but I don't think you need to do, you know, some people say, oh, you have to drill this move a thousand times a day or you have to do this. I don't really believe in that, right? Because there's only so much you gain out of making the shape of a technique with a cooperative cooperating opponent right right right so a lot of your training should be

one-handed judo two-handed judo uh attacking from losing positions bailout techniques combinations things like that right so that's that's what i mean about systems having a system like protocols right two or three options when you get outgripped to the right and right first right and when you get out gripped right versus left what does it look like when you're getting outgripped right can you recognize that you're in losing position can you recognize that if you're losing and there's a frame right side versus left side that you can't go tile from there uh-huh you need to do other things right so it's more like a more efficient and directed way of getting better at judo in a way yeah definitely for sure yeah

definitely for sure right all right so then we we kind of have an idea of what a judo system is and why it's important what let's start with just like the standard system that everyone kind of has and then we'll go from like we'll go to diversification of that later yeah yeah so what does that look like yeah okay so obviously break falls and all this stuff and safety and hygiene that's like without goes without saying right we've already this is something that you already know if you don't know any of that stuff right there's you know there's an episode we did yeah we did yeah check that out so you have the basic idea you know a couple of techniques you're walking in fundamentals of judo to build

your system the building block should be right side versus right side right side versus left side what does that look like knowing when you're winning when you're losing right right right side versus right side right side versus left side what does that look like knowing when you're winning when you're losing right right right side versus left side is a little bit more tricky right because you have inside configuration and outside configuration with the lapel hand inside inside outside and each one of those has a certain strategy right when you're on the outside what do you do when you're on the inside what do you do? When you're on the inside, what do you do? Right. And I'm not saying inside is better than outside.

Some people always say that, but it really depends on your style, your system, right? And your preferences. So that's the fundamental first, just in positionally speaking, right? And then you're looking at the individual techniques. Right. Yeah. So you're kind of starting from different grip fighting positions and position yeah not even grip fighting i just want to say like

two verse two hand positions oh okay okay yeah oh like uh yeah just like standard two verse two like you you're not trying to break off the grips or anything like that yeah yeah yeah okay nice two verse two that's fundamental right right right right right right right verse right right verse left so then so you so basically try to start from the like the broad stroke and then try to tweak it in uh like in a in the detailed way later is that yes okay yes yeah and this is the beauty of judo right right uh what is the crazy statistic like most people in the world are right-handed right i don't know what it is right so it's like but you don't need to be right-handed to do right side of judo you don't need to be left-handed to do left side of judo that's the beauty of judo because a lot of this stuff is not

intuitive right right right so you're gonna start from the from scratch anyway you can start from scratch anyway but if you let's just say box as a southpaw and you lead leg with your right you wrestled right lead leg right then maybe you should do judo lead leg right i see and then on the left side yeah or if you played a turning sport and you're comfortable turning to one side over and over okay so that should be the side that you turn to because naturally you feel stronger turning to that side or maybe you're a snowboarder and you could only snowboard with your left foot forward okay you know maybe that's something to consider too right but right-handed left-handed shouldn't really matter too much when you're developing a judo style which is going right side or left

side i think that's just my opinion right you think um since most people are right-handed, you think it's kind of an advantage to learn judo on the left side? Yeah, I do. Well, if you're in the United States. I see. If you go to Japan or something, it's half and half almost. Oh, really? Yeah. There's a discrepancy there, right?

I mean, if 90% of the people in Japan are right-handed, but 50% of the people are doing judo left-sided there's a reason for that is it are they like naturally left-sided or do they do some teachers i kind of recommend depends man i've known people who do this trick where you're standing it's like you get a kid and then they make him face the other way and they shove him and then whichever foot that they step forward with first it's like okay that's your lead leg from now on oh yeah i've heard people do that yeah i've heard small dojos do like okay march anybody new comes in starts as lefties anybody new comes in that starts uh in april gonna be righties i've heard that too i've heard that too yeah you know uh

and there's some merits to that too right from a dojo standpoint because you had even number of right side and left side right even my dojo we were so skewed to the right because it's a lot easier to teach right verse right right right right verse that's a little bit more complicated a lot more judo happens uh because right verse right you're turning into each other as opposed to right verse left you're turning in the same direction so a lot of this misdirection stuff and then creating that pulse in the frame and the shoulder turn, that stuff gets a lot more intricate and interesting. Right, I see. So then, so you have this broad idea

of what you wanna do in this big situations, right versus right, right versus left, whatever. So do you recommend developing your judo system uh as the next step uh like going into grips group fightings or like try to come up with throws you could do in those situations i think grip fighting is much later on okay i see i think it's one of the most overlooked aspects of judo you're trying to teach a beginner how to do grip fighting i think it's wrong and you know it's not wrong right people do it successfully but i've seen people who focus too much on the grip fighting aspect and then just winning position winning position and once they get to the winning position they have no throwing ability because

they never train the throwing part right right you don't want you definitely don't want to develop your judo like that i see so the yeah on top of the fundamentals, it's the throws, I guess. You were saying throws are more fundamental than grip fighting. Grip fighting is important, right? Because it's a precursor situation. Without grip fighting, you're going to lose position every single time. Right, right. Right?

But in the beginning, I don't think you should be doing Rondori anyway. I see. You're not doing any Rondori. I don't think you should be doing Rundori anyway. I see. You're not doing any Rundori. So I think a lot of it should be two-handed judo, right versus right, right versus left.

This is winning. This is losing. Here are the attacks that you can do, and it's going to be back attack, forward attack, left side attack. So like a weak side attack, a dominant side attack, back and forward. Now you've already sort of covered the four ways, right? Right, right. And you're also learning this while you're not doing any Rondori.

So all of a sudden, you learn all this stuff, you're drilling all this stuff, and you go into Rondori against the Peter Yu. Right? And they can't do any of it. Right, right, right. But they can't even do it in a way where they can potentially hurt you or hurt themselves because you outgrip them every time. So then it's like, whoa, what's going on here? Right. And maybe you let them put two hands on once or twice in the entire exchange. And that's their opportunity to go for something.

But you're ready for it. Right. So in that case, there's no risk for you and there's no risk to the person actually doing Judo Rondori. I see. case there's no risk for you and there's no risk to the person actually doing judo randori i see oh so the entire system is devised in a way where it minimizes risk from randori which is the most dangerous thing you can do in judo right right right that way it takes a long time to learn this stuff they look at this system they're like oh this is fascinating this is interesting this is how it works theoretically let me try it and they're drilling it now when they go to do it against someone much higher in rank they have no clue what why it doesn't work and that'll kind of motivate them to develop their system or they could just be demoralized by peter

hopefully not i'll try to make it fun so yeah that's that's the idea then it's like okay you know uh why doesn't any of this stuff work right and peter you can explain to them it's like it's because of the positioning i'm not letting you fight in the positions that you've been comfortable right fighting right right and can they recognize it can they not recognize it some of that stuff is good for you know maybe they they're just judo i right? How much attention that they're putting into it. And then you can learn a lot from the person too. Some people get frustrated at that. Some people can kind of recognize that.

Some people just come harder, right? They just start kicking you and going nuts. And now all of a sudden that sends like, you know, that throws up some red flags about said person learning. Right. So it's a great lots of indicators there and lots of things you can learn from an athlete if you put him through that sort of a learning style that's like a critical period in your growth in the growth of your judo so okay so you got the say now you've got your fundamental throws down yeah you know one thing about that

yeah sorry to interrupt you. If you teach them grip fighting too early on, right? And you get a big, strong dude and they know. And now they're flying. Their hands are flying at your face. They're stabbing you in the eye. They're throwing the hand over too hard. And now it's like you're going to have two people, let's say, white in a green belt or yellow in a green belt.

Their hands are going to be flying. Right, right, right, right. How are they going to learn judo in that fearful state of the, just in a frenzy of just hands going crazy? You can't. That's why I like to teach them in this way of like, okay, put two hands on first,

but yes, there's a whole grip and strategy, right? And you know, they're going to get exposure to the grip and because people are going to be talking about it. I'm going to be talking about it. Yeah.

And you know, in a couple of months, this is like the first three months i'm talking about right right i see yeah got it so yeah so then so you got this a fundamental throws in very like basic positions that the start of your judo system so then i know when you are learning throws uh we talked about this there are a lot of different styles of throws or judo throws around the world so and then with the whole you know explosion of judo content online people get you know exposed to these different kinds of throws that are not so similar to the standard ones so how do think, when do you think it's appropriate for people

to incorporate these different styles of throws into their own system and how? Well, I think first you have to learn what your sensei is teaching you, right? And finding your sensei is the most important thing. You can walk into a dojo and the guy has traditional Japanese judo and then you're like,

I saw this Georgian thing online that shintaro did on youtube yeah right and that's gonna rub the guy the wrong way because he's the expert in the room like he put in the time he deserves your attention right right right so all of a sudden you're saying like nah i don't believe this guy i watch this guy on youtube he's better let me just learn from him you know what i mean so first i think you really need to learn from your sensei He's sensei for a reason right and of course There's a whole system of like knowing whether your sensei is legit or not right right So like that takes a little bit of skill in itself But learn from that guy see what he has to say and then start building on that right Maybe he's an expert in a technique that you know everyone in the dojo is good at right

He's an expert in a technique that, you know, everyone in the dojo is good at. Right. So you learn first from that person. So your system will look similar to your sensei system in the beginning. Always. So there's a sensei system, right? Like, what does your sensei do? What is he teaching? And then there's an overall vibe of, like, what are sort of the main systems that people do in this dojo, right?

systems that people do in this dojo right because whether the sensei teaches it or not if some of the top dogs in the room develop a certain style and do certain techniques they're going to teach it to the people below them and then the people below them are going to start copying them and now all of a sudden right you have an epidemic of tanya toshis in the room yeah right yeah yeah so you know trying to absorb that right and then you know of course yeah you could look online and you could start off with that so everyone in the room is doing tanya toshi going online and looking at tanya toshi and studying it and you know just taking as much information as you can about what other people have to say about that that's going to refine yours and then when you're watching something completely unrelated how to stitch those two things together how to blend

those two things together right that's how you start really developing right right so and then it might be the case that your sensei system is like georgian or traditional japanese and whatnot but that's that would be your starting point yeah right so then um so we we did talk about this like how to learn uh judo online and whatnot but so briefly like what you're at this stage where you kind of learn the your sensei system and whatnot and you want to kind of branch out like get some inspiration from i think so what what uh what do you think people could do especially with all the online content to integrate these ideas yeah so just basic standard i actually just recently made a youtube video i just filmed it i haven't put it put it up yet it's like how to build your judo system in three moves right and you a lot of the

turn throws are very similar ipon senagi morote senagi tatoshi just turning movement pulling movement collar hand right all this stuff very very similar footwork is very similar whether you like it or not right right so back attack forward attack weak side attack. Right. Right? And I think that's just starting off with that to build your system. And I think it's very, very important. And then when you're watching YouTube or something like this, you want to pick these techniques that sort of go together. Right?

So people, I think that's one of the most things that people reach out to me for on Instagram. Right. Like, hey, does this technique work together or does that technique work together right and people just come up with uh you know three or four different techniques and they send it and generally most of the time they do yeah right right um and that's how you want to sort of start with it and just give a basic idea like if you have two hands on you don't want to throw a one-handed technique in there because it's not going to integrate with the other techniques right right i see yeah that require two hands on so you have two hands on you have a weak side

attack right a non-dominant side attack for instance it's a side and then i have a back attack with the ochi and then i have a turn throw tile um society tile right right first right we're talking about right all of a sudden you could fake ochi go tile fake tile go society go society boom create space tile right so when you're watching youtube and stuff like that first and foremost watch my channel yeah and then second when you watch uh somebody say, okay, this is how I do my hurray or my turn throw, my headlock throw. It's like, okay, how can this work with the back attack and the weak side attack that I have? Right. So it's like, so now that you know the fundamentals, you go more into detail, I guess, like different positions and then try to pick out a couple of a few throws

for that specific position and string them together yeah and the stuff that's never on the youtube or the internet is the stuff that's not fun right for instance like roll your shoulder to gain advantage and then snap the person down right it's a good right so you gain advantage and then you're breaking the person's posture quick to gain a reaction now you could attack ochi or kayo based on what they do after that right and hand advantage snap down right no one teaching that video specifically who's gonna watch that because they want to load their snap down you know boring it's like they want to people want to watch right two judo techniques that no one can stop. Right. Right.

So you have to kind of read in between the lines and sort of fill that, right, with your own mind. The whole context around the throw. Yeah, absolutely. The context is key, right? Right. I can't preach that enough. when you like uh put some combinations together and then later like how to even get to the combinations by you know adjusting your position grip fighting and whatnot yeah yeah so then okay then would you recommend like working on your combinations for us or grip fighting at this

moment i say doing you know still not grip fighting yeah i mean how deep into judo are you right yeah that really matters right and right how proficient are you are you doing rindori that's another question right does your sensei even teach grip fighting right that's a whole another story learning grip fighting takes a long time yeah right yeah can you get proficient with just two-handed judo locked up yeah but if you go compete in a high level tournament or something people not gonna give you two hands on ever right, right They're not just gonna give you what you want. Right, right because it's zero-sum game in that sense. Mm-hmm right, so In my dojo, I do teach good fighting when I teach the entire class

That's a little bit different than if I'm teaching one-to-one with someone Which is a much more catered and differentiated instruction for that specific person right but if you're new in the room and then there's 30 people already there that's been with me for a long time i'm not really teaching to that white belt maybe i'll give him two comments maybe i'll give him whatever it is maybe i'll pair them up with someone who's a black belt who can sort of show them the fundamentals right but i'm not like proactively saying like I need to teach this person gripping. Right, right, right, right.

I see. So it really depends where they are in the journey. And then the combinations, you don't want to put disjoint throws together. It's not just random. It has to be like follow each other. Yeah, follow each other. Because a lot of the times one technique, that's why I like these complimentary throws a forward and back.

Because if I go backwards for Ochi, I see a chance. You're going to lean back into me. That's going to open up this side, right? If I'm turning this direction to my left dominant side, right? This direction.

And then you resist in the opposite direction. It's going to open up my weak side attack. Right. And if you're recovering from this weak side attack, right now I could go. Right. So that's i think is a nice way and people go crazy about like i want to learn tai i want to learn taiyo i want to learn harai or whatever it is they're all essentially similar in the same it's unpopular opinion right but like they're all essentially the same the footwork is very similar you don't need to work 10,000 hours on Taiyo,

10,000 hours on Harai, 10,000 hours on Uchimata, 10,000 hours. You don't need to because they're all similar. The movements are similar, right? The entry and the timing is all similar because you're turning to the dominant side. Yeah, yeah.

So you could all bundle that whole thing together. Learn that, learn weak side, learn back side. I see. Understand the position position winning and losing right and now you want to be able to attack from winning position but you want to be able to do your new system another sort of systematic approach of when you're losing position when you're getting outgripped right versus right or when you get an outgrip right versus left i see what does that even look like has to be the first question, right? Someone comes over my back. I have the low on the lapel.

I can't turn anymore. I can't influence his posture. If I go Oji, he controls my posture more so he could counter my Oji, my back attacks a lot easier, right? So he shut down my turn throw and my back attack, my forward and the back attacks. Do I go weak side? Weak side techniques are weak for a reason right right right so it's like he's ready for this so what do you do there right having two or three bailout attacks i did get out of this right so having a system from weak side position right first right right first left

that's sort of the next step i think i think this is like when judo gets really fun like you it's like a problem solving not just like rote practice i guess yeah yeah yeah and now you have that right now you're on the giving side of it peter you got two hands on right hand comes over the top and he's kicking the shit snap me down right he's being a dick right and now it's like yeah the guy's uncomfortable he's gonna go for a bailout attack right drop say nagi sumi or tomonagi because he wants to transition to the ground because he's about to get bombed yeah yeah or you could fake that and then get out of it or strip the hand or gain a little advantage of position or look to counter one of your dominant throws right right do you have a counter yes no maybe no okay maybe. No. Okay, let's abandon that idea. Right, right.

Can you escape Peter's wrath of just being dominant position, just coming after you like a savage dog? You know, you're maybe a little bit not as experienced. No. Okay, so best bet, Tamanagi or drop Senagi. But Peter knows this too, right? So as they're dropping to the ground, Peter has a set of transitional Nwaza attacks.

Right, right. Drop Senagi, going for the loop choke right away. Right? Yep. Sumi Gaeshi, right? Split the legs over on the pass pin. So it's like you're looking for the gaps in your system and try to fill them at this point. Yeah.

Once you're going to recognize, like, and then this is the thing someone you're going against is just a great athlete and that says no system is just a super athlete they're just going they're flying they put two heads on they can just turn and throw somebody because they're big strong and fast and powerful yeah right okay now you have to really focus on gripping now yeah now yeah shut them down don't let them get two hands on because they're too powerful in there right and that should be your entire system so it's like then now shutting now yeah shut them down don't let them get too hands-on because they're too powerful in there right and that should be your entire system so it's like then i'll shut them down yeah so it's more like you the gaps in your judo system will kind of lead you through these different areas

like oh you now different positions and then now you get to the grip fighting stage when yeah like someone can't yeah like someone who's that athletic can't be just simply thrown with different situations. You have to get there. Yeah. So you could filter people in based on like how you feel, right? Right. If I'm doing judo with someone completely new and they're not like a freak athlete or something like this but you know i don't really know them we have similar body style types yeah similar weight and all this stuff i'm gonna take the first minute to kind of try to figure out what this guy's gonna do

right first point of contact like does this guy know how to grip really well right which lead hand lead you know arm uh does he prefer one side to the other side does he have a weak side one-off attack all these things I'm collecting information. And as he's showing me a couple of moves, I'm like, okay, this is what it looks like. Right. Right. And then every time I outgrip him, what does he do? If he does two drop Sanagi's in a row, you're going to guarantee that he's probably going

to go for the third one. And that's, I'm going to strangle him. Yeah. I'm ready for that. Right. He's not going to see it coming. Right. Cause I'm not going to give it up. Right. I'm going to let him drop. I'm ready for that. He's not going to see it coming, right? Because I'm not going to give it up.

I'm going to let him drop. He does drop Sanagi. Let's see if he does it again. Dominant. Boom. Over the back. Faking Taiyo, whatever it is. He drops Sanagi again.

I don't even go try to force Nawaza. Let him be comfortable with this. So now he thinks to himself, every time I lose in gripping, I feel like Shintaro is about to throw me with Osoto or something. If I go drop Sanagiagi i can escape this right third time he's like confidently goes for sanagi yeah and then i'm already straight i'm you know right you're halfway there already yeah so that's kind of the idea right right right so the recognizing patterns so now it you've kind of moved on to uh like your judo is not just like a physical uh just a physical activity you get it now you have to use your brain to like

recognize these patterns and try to adjust your own system yeah you don't have to though this is a thing you can be big strong athletic and you don't have to do any of this stuff you just go put your two hands out and just start ripping and roaring. That's how a lot of people have done it. Yeah, that's nice if you can do it. Yeah. Right? But first of all, no one's going to want to work out with you.

Right, right. Right? Second of all, if you find someone and work out with someone just as big, strong, and athletic as you, this sort of intelligent system is going to beat that. Right, right. Right? this sort of intelligent system is going to beat that right right right and the idea is like a technique and mind overcome strength and power it's like it depends on what varying degree to a degree right yeah yeah and i always like to use this example like if you put a gi on a silverback gorilla yeah can you out grip them and outmaneuver them no you can't i can't i know i can't you know right i'll be that that's there'll be a disaster like anyone tries to do that yeah i mean maybe

teddy renair can but yeah not me so there's a certain level of that uh physicality that that really does matter right and you know you know like 12 year old judo champs they can't throw you know 25 year old adult a lot of times yeah most of the time right depends you know depends right yeah so yeah that is uh very important i think you know create that system and right so then now you we got so you going through the whole process now you're like filling the gaps and like grip fighting strategy and then you're now even like adjusting your own system uh to different people so then that's when you would just say that's when like your system is in place and then evolving and whatnot anything else so the system has to evolve always right

right i always develop my style well so my style changed many you know over the course of the years many times i used to do a lot of drop senagi a lot of you know low lapel stuff but then i realized like i was having a lot of elbow pain oh you know so i had to kind of abandon a little bit of that marote stuff right right right so it was ever evolving and you know there's other aspects of this building your system too right now we have to talk about grip fighting now we have to do one-handed judo right because as you're fighting for grips you put one hand on right and now maybe you take the initiative you have an advantage now you could attack off that one hand while you're

trying to put the second hand on right that. That's an entire system in itself. Right. So you have to kind of develop that. And maybe you don't have that at all. Right. So if you have that idea, like you got to sort of go with that idea to be like, OK, I want to be able to attack off one hand. Like you have. You have that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, know gotta constantly evolve and constantly make things better because now all of a sudden you're going against a russian guy that comes over the back to georgian georgian style we talked a little about georgian yeah right how do you encounter that do you just never let him get it right right right if we bow we're about to do a vandori of 10 minutes and the entire 10 minutes he's just trying to come over the opposite shoulder just coming over the opposite shoulder over and over he's gonna get there eventually yeah right if you look at an exchange of maybe 20 to 30 seconds a piece where you know we go through our motions someone goes for a technique goes to the nirwaza and then right if we look at that one exchange and we look at a

10 minute session you know you get 20 exchanges Out of how many of those can you realistically outgrip the person every time in dominant position? Right, right. If you say, okay, let's say evenly skilled 50% of the time, right? So now you're in this losing Georgian position 10 times for 20 seconds at a time. Right, right. Right?

So that's like that close-range judo. With Georgian, there'sorgian a and georgian b the person having the georgian grip and the person receiving the georgian grip right right and there's a system for both sides of this yeah right so do you know that system well so now you kind of have to develop that just in case right so now you have these little levers like all right first i have to get really good at gripping to prevent the georgian all right so now you have these little levers of like, all right, first, I have to get really good at gripping to prevent the Georgian. All right. So now you're only giving Georgian A to this guy 25% of the time.

Right, right. 25% of the time, let's just say in a 10-minute match, that's like five times. Right? So now all of a sudden, out of those five times, maybe I just bail out twice. Tomonage or whatever it is, drop Senagi. Good. So now he only has two or three opportunities to really throw me right right right and now maybe i have a counter in there

maybe i don't have a count in there who knows yeah so now you're sort of creating this system based on how to fight this one person yeah so it's not just your system right it's based on this guy's style you know you have some people saying like never adjust to anybody's style or never play to anyone's your system onto them kind of yeah but it's like okay do you even know what the other person doing though right you gotta know right you have to at least know to be able to shut certain things down right so you can't be saying that stuff in those isms if you have no clue what's actually going on right that's not right i think uh i think that's a good point like it it your judo system has to be grounded to like realistic situations yeah like you know the you can't just develop a you know counter georgianian system without actually playing someone who does the Georgian style judo.

Yeah. Right. Yeah, for years, man, it was just like someone comes over the back for Georgian, I would just try to hug him close and dump him straight back because I assumed that they were going to go Uchi or Soto or something like this. Right, right. Right? That worked well for me because I know relatively how to grip

and I try to you know not be in that position right but fighting in that way led me to not be good at receiving georgian like georgian b right as i like to call it like i'm not that good at it so now i'm like trying to explore that so i'm still trying to develop my own system right in that area right right right so it's ever evolving you know it's never stops so one sickness yeah so one key to that is like you have to find people with different different styles and yeah what how do you i know like in new york like your your dojo you know we we are fortunate enough to receive a lot of guests you know who have different styles and whatnot and we have a decent i think in new york city because of how because how diverse the city is like we get a lot of

different styles anyway but how would you is do you think there's a way to kind of compensate for that when you're not your dojo is not in that kind of situation just to see a lot of different styles yeah i think uh the beauty of youtube now right and i talk about like learning judo on youtube and stuff right but if you're an average practitioner of like white yellow green belt it's gonna be tough right because you don't know what you're looking at you know you don't know right you don't know where the gaps are you don't know what's being left out for instance like grip fighting precursors are very boring a lot of people don't even cover that in their instructionals right right right because you know a lot of what's youtube's

whole purpose a lot of times is to get views right that's how we get compensated by getting views right so the person it's not in their best interest to put up some very technical boring stuff because no one gonna watch it and then the youtuber or the content critic doesn't get rewarded right right so it takes a very smart and an intelligent eye right a perspective to be able to sift through some of the stuff that makes sense of a lot of this stuff but your sensei is a sensei for a reason. So if you're in a dojo in the middle of nowhere and you don't have guests from Georgia, you don't have guests from Mongolia,

then sometimes you have to ask your sensei, like, hey, can you check out this system? And then teach it to me. I think it's a great approach. And if you have a sensei that's kind of proactively always liking to learn and involve themselves, right? Now those people have access to all this stuff. Right. And then they can learn it.

They could teach it. Yeah. And then they could. And you could teach any system. Right. If you go slow enough. If you go slow enough, gentle enough. The problem with this, like, you know, with progressive overload and weightlifting, like,

if you make it too easy, you're not going to grow. If you make it too hard, you might get injured, right? Right, right. You need just the right amount of stimulus to grow muscle, grow tendons, strength, all that stuff. Same thing with judo, right? If you go too hard, too fast, someone's going to get injured. If you go too slow, no one's going to learn anything.

It's going to be super boring. Right. What's the point, right? So the sensei has to be tuned into this stuff. Sensei has to watch all this stuff and then make sense of it right right uh coming from a guy that doesn't really watch instructional like sometimes i will but not so much you know but you watch you learn and then you teach it right in a safe way and then you have to be able to teach the person how to teach uh teach the person how to learn yeah go slow figure it out and now you have a room where people are trying

to figure out you know the mongolian front uchimata right right or the greco-roman body lock and you can do it in a slow and safe controlled way yeah right and now it's like okay how do you defend this how do you misdirect how do i integrate this into stuff that i already know and how do i integrate this to the judo that i already do right so and then your dojo grows and evolves together yeah that's the idea right but this is the problem too yeah if you're running a dojo with 200 students like I was doing, and most of the time I'm worried about this or teaching stuff that or doing this and that and running it, you know, thinking about whatever I was thinking about,

you don't have time to do this stuff. Right. So right now I'm like exploring again some of these ideas and it's great. Nice. Nice. You know, because it's great nice nice you know because it's pandemic so that i think uh uh a good case study might be you teaching luca i don't know if he i kind of forget if he actually he's georgian he's been on your videos and we talked about a lot of very talented athletic judoka um does he do a

lot of uh georgian style i've been teaching him yeah yeah that's like a because that's great because you're not uh naturally you don't really use georgian style judo it's not really mine i'm also short so it's not it doesn't really behoove me to go over someone's shoulder. But he's got two systems really tightly down now. It's really starting to take shape. And he does, so right versus right. Left hand on the lapel post because left hand is your grabbing hand first. So you want to grab sleeve option A, can't grab the sleeve, lapel option B.

While you're protecting with the right hand here, right? We know this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So commonly you'll see left hand post, left hand post on a right versus right setting. Right, right. Sorry for being too technical. No one's going to listen to this. Right?

So commonly you're in that position. And Gary St. Leisure used to do this pretty good. Go Sode here. Go Sode Sode. Right. All right. So lapel, lapel. Sode right, Sode right. Sode or Sodo Go Sode, Sode. Right. So lapel, lapel. Sode right, Sode right.

Sode, Osoto, Sode, Osoto. And then if the person defends by bringing the elbow down, they go over the back, the shoulder here. That's when I have two hands on. They're over the back. Go switch to the sleeve. That's a system that Gary does really well. And back in the day, Gary would go Kataguruma from there to the weak side. Right, right, right.

And then dominant position is Sasai, back Ochi, Osoto, Sode. Gary had a phenomenal system. It was tight. It's tight. It's's amazing I used to watch it be like wow that's amazing yeah so I showing Lucas some of this stuff and he really likes it oh he likes Gary style yeah that that's sort of system right right yeah it's not specific only to Gary Gary did it really well that's just an example right so he would be in that position and as he's going for that so day the elbow goes instead of going over this shoulder he goes over the opposite shoulder yeah yeah i don't want to give up too much of his stuff but you know he's pretty good at it so so he goes so they said a georgian so they said they over the back right

he goes so they so they sometimes the soda, sometimes Ouchi. He has one hand on. He goes, he has one hand Ippon Senagi and snap down into the Georgian. So now he has a one-handed Judo system. He has a Georgian system. He has a two, get in the second hand on situation. And he has a Sode. And he has a drop Sumigaeshi situation. And he could alternate so one hand judo

system two hand judo system georgian he has two system that filters into the georgian right and he knows that position pretty well now right that's great that's amazing that's amazing that's like three different systems put together in one you know and he's a bravo he's way ahead of the game he's only been doing judo for like three years man he i don't know because now if it sounds like he kind of he's like maturing into his own system because when i he has his own style even his own system even last year when i was there when i was playing him when he was you know i saw him when he was developing his own style and then i could you know help hold him off through my style But I don't know now. It sounds like if you put him in the room from last year. Yeah pre-pandemic Yeah, who can now yeah, I think he destroyed 90% of the people in that room. Yeah destroy them

Yeah, which is insane, which is insane. So then as a sensei, you know Who doesn't really usually do Georgian, how did you teach yourself the Georgian enough to teach Luca? I still don't really do Georgian stuff. I'll do the receiving Georgian. So if you do Georgian on me, right? And that's the unique thing about the Georgian B. Right? Because you can't really force Georgian B if the person doesn't go over your shoulder for Georgian A.

Right. Right. And to be clear, there's Georgian A and Georgian B, because if I go over the shoulder, right, I have the Georgian grip. The person receiving the Georgian grip is Georgian B.

That's what I'm referring to. Right. Right. I'm saying that. Right. So because people go for it and because Luca started doing a lot of it, I started exploring a little bit more. So as my Georgian B gets better, Lucas' Georgian A has to get better.

We're kind of constantly forcing each other to get better in that way. I see. He's yet to throw me with a Georgian Harai Makikomi or something. But the day is coming. Day is coming. He'll be excited for that. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to hold off for as long as possible.

Maybe it's five years from now. Maybe it's next week. You never know. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're listening, Luca, bring it. So you guys formed this feedback loop. Even though you're a senseii you're still learning from your student

you know that's a good oh yeah absolutely you know and sometimes when he has a georgian it's like sensei what do i do with this or that and if i don't have an answer to it i try i try always my best to be like all right let me think about it for a little bit you know or be clear with like i don't really have an answer to that it's not something that i do you know because all too commonly it's very easy to pretend like you know and be like yeah you just go like that right right right and sometimes i do have sort of a semi answer like a pseudo answer it's like yeah i think you go like this but like that's not gonna help anybody right right so i try when he you know has good questions like this to go home and think about it and give it some thought mostly on like my drive home or something.

Right. And then it, you know, helps me get better, helps him get better. Right. And yeah, it's this sort of time where it's like,

I have very close. Right. And George is another one like that too. Right. To be able to really be in it with an athlete and talk to them about these ideas and right that's such a special time george is another one that's very cerebral too he always asks questions and he always tries to improve his system yeah yeah he's great he has his own unique style yeah yeah but this is a thing this is the difference with luca and george right luca is

do right he just goes for it right right no fear just goes for it don't care about the other person's leg he'll go for it yeah just go for it all right he'll watch youtube and try it yeah watch youtube try it ripping and roaring oh right he's very dangerous george is kind of the opposite right luca really always tries the craziest stuff. George is always thinking systems. So they're kind of like on the opposite sides of the spectrum. But Luca had this sort of reckless, unrelenting method of just picking, choosing, and just going at it.

And all of a sudden, little by little, I was able to shape these things. Not I, but him too. He's a smart kid. And all of a of a sudden out of nowhere this system flourished right and now we're like putting it on the forefront of his mind and saying this is what you're doing like right the whole system right like refine it clean it up refine it clean it up so yeah he is like crazy projectile upwards right now nice i'm very very excited about him yeah and he's dedicated yeah so that that's always a huge plus and he's strong and athletic yeah that helps too yeah and all the right pieces have to come together yeah i'm excited to see him like

you know going to the nationals and hopefully he wants to he wants to compete internationally right eventually yeah i think so i hope so you know i mean not that i hope so i i hope yeah he knows what he wants and that could help him get there if he wants it you know uh i don't want to be like oh this is gonna be my guy and i'm gonna try to make him do this and that yeah no if he wants it he could have it right and that's sort of the mentality that i always have yeah for my athletes nice yeah all right so switching gears a little bit so we we also touched this a little bit but you know you when you injured yourself or when your elbows started hurting you've changed your system a little bit and a little bit yeah i've i've

had a couple of injuries there uh you know and i also you know change my adjusting my system a little bit too to compensate so i think injuries and even more broadly body types also influence your system definitely so you know any let's kind of discuss how one can be you know cognizant of that and then in shaping the system so maybe we'll start with body shapes maybe first and then go into injuries yeah body shapes you know so if you're a shorter athlete going over the back a little bit tougher because you're a little bit more extended right and upwards right going for the georgian right there's gonna be a lot of space and extension over here in the lat area right as opposed to if i'm doing georgian on someone much smaller right i'm reaching down here so i can really close off of this lat and you know we all know limbs closer to the body are stronger right so you know based on that

obviously uchimata haragoshi right things that require you to attack from a longer range it's gonna be a little bit more difficult for shorter athletes so you know in the simplest of senses right if you took let's just look at right side versus left side tall versus short tall person post long post long sleeve shoulder turn and then going for a far side or shoulder or something like that's really safe you create this really long frame here right right with that posting hand turn the shoulder right that's sort of a system that you want if i'm finding much someone taller and if i have close range judo right when we get hip to hip my hips naturally going to be lower than the other person right the lifting uranage all that stuff is going to be beneficial for me the shorter person right so really thinking about

those things kind of matter right nice nice so then so you you developed your own style based on your body type but then say uh so you it happened to you you're doing a lot of because you're in a heavier weight class and then yeah a lot of people were taller than you so you develop a lot of drops there in our gaze drop attacks but your elbows started hurting yeah so what i wanted to do is compensate yeah kind of and sort of right so this is a problem with a lot of the times when you're fighting in a heavier division maybe your dojo doesn't have that many heavyweights right and that was sort of my case right i'm five nine you know at the time growing up i was like 210 220 you know i was a pudgy little kid and then even as an adult i was a pudgy little

adult so like i was doing a lot of drop sanagi morote stuff because i'm going against guys in the dojo who are you know slightly lower than me in weight probably like 180 to 200 region and they're probably around my height so in order to get below them for sanagi i had to drop to my knees and do morote sanagi. Right, right. Right? But when I encountered a lot of these bigger guys in competition at the heavyweight 220, 100-kilo division, they're significantly taller than me. So there was kind of a gap in how I was training in the dojo versus like what kind of people that I were fighting in competition. Right, right.

Mainly height. people that I were fighting in competition. Right, right. Mainly height. So if I'm working on these drop senagis in the dojo, and it was kind of the right difference of me dropping below the person, and now all of a sudden there's a lot more space between me and the taller person, it causes sort of, like I said, a discrepancy. I had to take time to overcome that.

I see. And when I hurt my elbow, I couldn't really go for a lot of the Marote drop Seinagi, so I abandoned the drop Seinagi style in practice.

I was like, I just couldn't do it. So I was doing Ippon Seinagi a little bit more, and I was like, I have to learn how to go over the top

and go Uchimana and turn throw. So I took a lot of time learning this. And Mr. Matsumura, my father's kohai from Kushika you know would come in and teach me his uchimata because he was good at that yeah right and i spent time and time again

just doing uchimata on my dojo guys who were very similar to me in height when i went to a tournament and then i'm fighting guys six two six three i couldn't do any of it because i was much shorter than the person right right it just didn't work work right from but and i just couldn't figure out why and now in hindsight it's so obvious right i would love to give yeah my 15 year old self a call be like dude right but you know no one really my father wasn't like that kind of a instructor where he was like in my face teaching me everything he's just like be in the dojo spend time in the dojo and you know you'll learn on your own and you know that's how he sort of he learned he developed a love yeah for the sport right just like figure it out love it just come to the dojo just have a good time essentially yeah you know you just have to be there yeah yeah right

and uh you know he's very different teaching style than me uh-huh but yeah so it took me a while to figure some of this stuff out i see i see did you end up doing a lot of chimeras uh in competition too not not a hundred not a hundred kilos it just never worked for me i see yeah and before too like pre like leg grab band and stuff like that every time i got outgripped i'd drop in on a leg and shoot because i was a great wrestler not not a great wrestler i was a good wrestler right right right i was in college so yeah that got taken away and there was a lot of problems there so a lot of my problems i would say a lot of my resistance to getting to that next level and i got pretty decently far but yeah uh had a lot to do with me sort of being in the wrong division the wrong weight class not being able to

account for those differences in body types you know from our early on right so if you sort of being in the wrong division the wrong weight class not being able to account for those differences in body types you know from early on right so if you sort of look at my judo from when i was like 18 19 years old right you could probably visualize drop senagi person in the dojo right over the back uchimata person now i compete in a tournament that in 220 internationally i'm dropping too low. And all my Uchimata and Harai stuff from over the back is not there. Right, right. People are much taller. They're much better than me at gripping.

Every time I got outgripped, I used to be able to shoot in the legs. Now I can't shoot in the legs. Oh, man. And my nirwaza sucked. How do you become, like, how do you, right? So I'm going to these international events right and this is not like in the u.s hundreds wasn't you know very strong at the time uh internationally you know i had some success right right right but it wasn't i wasn't good enough at the time to make it in that division right right yeah how would you have uh hypothetically how now you know knowing

what you know now how would you have changed your style or your system i mean knowing what i know now if i were to go back and coach myself yeah right at 220 i would do a lot more one-handed korean sanagi stuff but i didn't know korean sanagi back then no one did right you know i mean only recently in the last like 5-10 years that these koreans started doing tons of korean sanagi they're like right what is that and it's been refined and refined and refined koreans really mastered that sort of idea right and now they're teaching it in the japanese system too yeah i've seen some japanese players do it yeah yeah so now it's like if I could teach myself that was going to be fighting in 220 as a shorter athlete I would develop an

entire system based on that like one-handed yeah one-handed judo of like Ipon Senagi Korean Senagi Ipon Senagi Korean Senagi both directions right a little bit more Sode and then outgripped tomonage bailout attacks for the shorter person right so that would be yeah i wouldn't even i don't know if i would even teach myself uchimata for you know i'm very limited mobility too like i'm not flexible at all at all and you have to you have to be able to kick high in like at international stage right yeah i mean yeah you gotta get you gotta get your leg a little bit high yeah thing is like in ballet it's called the arabesque and i have a ballet in my day oh yeah you know the arabesque when you have that thing with the leg up in the air i had the lowest arabesque in the room like i just my leg just

doesn't go up that high uh so it's like based on you know mobility restriction thing like this like my uchimata is not right it's not all that because at that stage you need everything right you know every bit of advantage yeah yeah so so in that I needed to create a Fosbury flop that's what I needed right what so for those uh for those who don't know about the Fosbury flop, can you describe what happened, what it is and what happened? Back in the day, this is very common knowledge, right? You can YouTube this stuff too. This guy Dick Fosbury was an Olympic athlete, the high jumper.

He came up with this idea to jump over the high jump backwards. It's crazy. So before him, everyone was jumping forward that's right yeah the golden standard was belly down right you like run up and then go down over head first right or you go do a scissor jump where you go legs up and then you kick scissors up this way right no one ever thought to go back first head first like this right right so this guy dick fosbury goes i'm gonna go backwards people like what the hell like this is already a proven system we've been doing high jump for god

knows how long like it's so dumb and now it's the gold standard he did it he won the olympics and everyone's like oh my god you could jump so much higher once you go backwards right now everyone does it what's now everyone does it. So you kind of need to create a Korean, you know, like a Cabarelli. You ever heard of that? No. Which one is that? Cabarelli is a throw from the Georgian grip. Georgian, and then you grab the belt

and then you lift him onto your stomach and do like a Ura Nake. Oh, okay. And it's named after this guy called Cabarelli. His name is Cabarelli. Right. Something like that. So creating your own version of the Fosbury flop. This is very, very, very last.

So fundamental standard judo, influence, systems, all the stuff that's already sort of out there, and then creating your own to kind of completely change the game. Right. You're a champion then. Then you got something going right right it's a throw named after you don't name that for you something completely different people are always inventing that's good stuff yeah well yeah so that's how you sort of develop

your own judo i think yeah i think it's a great way to end it like to start from the fundamentals yeah fundamental positions and add different positions and which and also which also includes grip fighting and then adjust to your your body type your opponent's body type and to top it off find your fosbury flap yeah that's very last yeah yeah cool yeah so interesting right yeah very interesting and you know this is a lifelong journey like shintaro said your system will evolve you have to evolve all the time i think yeah so uh to any parting words to the listeners uh no you know watch my youtube channel follow me on instagram you could message me if you catch me on the right day over right you know uh yeah thank you guys for listening thank you peter for doing this as usual and of course yeah i hope to watch some of your amazing judo throws on yeah somewhere

in the future uh and yeah that's right i will try to copy it and try it and integrate it into my own judo. So we're all trying to make each other better here, right? That's right. The feedback globe as a community. All right. Well, thanks for listening, guys. And then we'll see you guys in the next episode.