The Shintaro Higashi Show - Drilling Basics Is A Myth! | The Shintaro Higashi Show

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

In this solo episode, Shintaro Higashi unpacks the myth of drilling basics—specifically the overemphasis on repetitive Uchi Komi in judo and other grappling arts. Drawing from personal experience, high-level coaching, and comparisons with BJJ, he explains why contextual training, grip fighting, and micro-movements matter far more once the basics are in place.Discover why doing “a thousand Uchi Komi a day” might not be the key to mastery—and what you should focus on instead.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS & TOPICS00:00 The Overhyped Obsession with Basics01:00 Traditional Training in Japan: Unrealistic Volume02:00 Diminishing Returns of Uchi Komi03:00 Gripping, Fighting for Position, and Tactical Play04:00 Nuances of High-Level Judo05:00 Uchi Komi as a Warm-Up, Not the Main Course06:00 Athleticism vs. Contextual Awareness07:00 Why Mastering Movement Isn’t Enough08:00 Reading Your Opponent: The Next Level09:00 BJJ Comparison: The Knee Cut Pass Analogy10:00 Micro-Skills, Timing, and Invisible Grappling11:00 Reading Between the Lines in Judo🚨 LIMITED-TIME OFFER: 40% OFF 🚨The All-in-One Instructional Bundle just got even better.Every major instructional. One complete system. Now at our biggest discount yet.Grab yours now at 40% off : https://higashibrand.com/products/all-instructionalsThis won’t last. Build your game today.🔥 Get 20% OFF FUJI Gear! 🔥Looking to level up your judo training with the best gear? FUJI Sports has you covered. Use my exclusive link to grab 20% OFF high-quality gis, belts, bags, and more.👉 https://www.fujisports.com/JUDOSHINTARO 👈No code needed – just click and save!Links:🇯🇵 Kokushi Budo Institute (The Dojo) Class Schedule in New York, NY 🗽: https://www.kokushibudo.com/schedule🇯🇵 Higashi Brand Merch & Instructionals: https://www.higashibrand.com📚 Shintari Higashi x BJJ Fanatics Judo Courses & Instructionals Collection: https://bjjfanatics.com/collections/shintaro-higashi/

The Shintaro Higashi show is sponsored by Judo TV, your premier destination for live and on-demand judo coverage. Never miss a throat. Higashi brand. Train hard, live strong, wear Higashi brand. Hakuin AI. Hakuin AI helps you measure, predict, and solve customer churn. Visit Hakuin AI and start your free churn on it today.

Focusing on the basics. That's like one of the most popular things people say. It's all about the fundamentals. It's all about the basics. But you know, I feel like there's definitely a misconception in getting better. A lot of the guys say, okay, Uchikomi, you have to do 1,000 Uchikomi a day, you have to do the breakfalls, et cetera, et cetera. All these training programs that a lot of guys follow have been passed along from generation

to generation. And originally, if you look at a lot of the main training programs in Japan, they're training four to six hours a day. I remember when I used to go over to Kukushkan High School, it was like, you have morning training six or seven, the kids go to school, and after school. school, you have a 3 p.m. workout that goes all the way till 7 p.m. That's a four-hour training session, and then you lift weights, and then you have meal. You know, at the dormitory, like food, dinner at 8 o'clock, and then your curfies at 9 p.m. Rinse and repeat, do it again. Sometimes in the

morning, instead of making you do a morning run, they make you do a technical session. The volume of training, I'm telling you, it's like 6 to 8 hours a day. And even on Saturday, Saturdays didn't have school so you get up at 9 a.m., whatever it is, and you train from 9 to like 2 p.m. It's insane. So when you're doing that sort of volume, you can spend an hour just doing Uchikomi. Now, when you're in the modern world and you're paying money to do judo at a dojo or going to a gym, there's just no way that you could sustain that sort of time doing Uchikomi and reap the maximum benefits. There is definitely a point of diminishing returns when it comes to return on your in terms of time. Once you spend X amount of time, I think that drops off and you're better

off spending that time doing something else. And I'm not going to say the fundamentals are stupid. I'm not going to say Uchikomi's a waste of time. Do some, but cap it. I personally think maybe 100 Uchikomis per day is plenty. And I sort of use it in the beginning because you get proficient at it enough to a certain point where you can just kind of go through it really quickly and it sort of becomes a warm-off. And I think, like, you're better off doing about 100 of what you come in today. You guys could quote me on that, especially when you get to the higher levels. You know what I mean?

You do sets of 10, sets of 20. That's 10 sets of 10. That's really enough. And a lot of what happens after that, right? Or the outside of what I like to call contextual judo is like the gripping and the fighting for position and then doing the attacks. And even within the tax, there's... direct attacks, misdirections, and combinations.

And the beauty of those five things that I just said is the interplay between all of those factors. For instance, you're grip fighting for position, you like the position, the guy's trying to adjust out of it, you're throwing in fates, you're doing a misdirection attack, maybe look for a Soto and then goes to Sassai or something, and then it doesn't work, so you're gripping up and then going for a higher grip. Now all of a sudden the guy notices that your hand is higher on the collar, they break it off, you separate, and now that's one sort of exchange, you spent a portion of time on each one of these

things. And how useful was doing a thousand in Uchimadas during that time period? I don't think it's that useful. And a lot of the current champions sort of has this survivor bias or confirmation bias, where they've done a thousand Uchikomi's a day for 25 years or so. They've been doing it since they're a kid, and everyone has been told Uchikomi is a key, fundamentals is a key, a thousand Uchikomi's a day, That's how you get better. That's how you get better. And now, all of a sudden they preach that stuff. It's like, oh, you have to do these things to get better. And it's all about the basics.

It's all about the fundamentals. Yes and no. You watch a great athlete as a champion. And then you have a new lens from like ears of coaching, ears of doing. You see all these micro movements, these nuanced things that they do, whether it's a quick faint or setting something up two minutes down the line or just attacking something and gaining position or attacking something. to set something up later on in the exchange,

like that stuff really separates the really, really good athletes from sort of just like the average run-of-the-mill judo guy. You know, it's a lot more than just, okay, you bow, you lock up, and then you try your soda, you try inside trip, you go for an arm throw. This guy tries this throw and you try to stuff it. There's so much more happening in between. So I'm going to go ahead and say,

do 100 Uchikomis. That's great. You know, you keep that tradition going, you keep that thing, sort of to get your mind in the right place, the flow state, right? You're getting into this place where I do 10 Uchimadas, 10 ohuchis, 10is, 10 this, 10 this. And once you get through the 100, now your body is warm, you're prime for training. From there, you do your combinations. Like I said, the misdirections. I do 10 attacks. You do 10 attacks. And then all of a sudden,

you could kind of go into positional training, grip fighting training, and now all of a sudden, you're working on all the context, all the invisible side of stuff. And then, eventually, if you can sort of create your own classes, right? You fake forward, you do Ochi, and as the body separating, you cut the hand, so you're mixing a little bit of the gripping, and then you're doing sort of some of the major attacks as well, right? And obviously, this goes without saying, like, if you can't execute a clear, beautiful, sharp Uchimada on an unresisting opponent, you know, you have no Uchikomi skills whatsoever, you can't even do the throw without falling over. Obviously, you know, that's not what I'm talking about. This, I'm talking to like the intermediate

it guys, the guys who's been doing it for six months, one year, two years. I'm trying to tell you guys, all right, you got to a certain level with the Uchikomi. It looks a certain way, and let me tell you, it's not that hard to make it look a certain way. I'll give you a story. I had a really, really coordinated dancer friend. I did ballet for a hot second there, you know, trying to meet people and hang out and stretch and, you know, for my physical awareness. It was like a physical education period of my life. I had a ballet friend come in, and I showed this guy Tatoshi, and he could do it in two seconds. He can make the shape completely, and I was like, whoa, this is how you're doing Osorogari. Bang, bang, bang. He did the most perfect Osorogari ever in the history of

Uchikomi's even. Like this guy's been doing judo for 25 years, but let me tell you something. He can throw anybody. Why? Was he not strong enough? No, he was plenty strong. He was mobile, because he has no context of the interplay between these positions and then how to feel the opponent out all these different things that come into play but he can master these positions the shape of the technique literally in two seconds

any technique that I did and I even did this funny thing was like are I faking first right cross step Ochi separate drop Sanagi that's a pretty advanced cluster I would say most green belts might not be able to do that

really in a clear way and if you want to try it at your Dojo, okay? It's lapel sleeve, fake turn throw, Ouchi, separate, and then when they react backwards, you do a drop Sanagi. This guy was able to do it. First shot, never done grappling before. Skinny as a toothpick, doesn't look like a grappler. You could probably, if you saw this person, you would have been like, oh, this guy is probably the weakest human on this planet. You would never even know he was a dancer. Unbelievably athletic, capable of making these shapes. I could take him down in three seconds, right? So that just kind of goes to show, even though it's an anecdotal, this is not like a research study or anything like that,

just because you can make the shape and do the drills, doesn't mean that you could take someone down, bigger, stronger, faster. That really is the idea of judo. You know what I mean? So, Uchikomi, yes, combination yes, contextual stuff, yes. And then getting to that next level from being able to make these patterns is kind of reading your opponent and having some mindful judo, where you're sort of actively reading what the person's doing, setting up the thing, and when you're constantly in survival mode,

you're not capable of thinking sort of this long-term, tactical, strategical way. So, my whole spiel right now, Uchikomi's great. Do 100 a day, cap it at 100 a day. Maybe I'll even title this podcast, only do 100 Uchikomi's a day, it's enough. But there's so much more contextual stuff. For instance, I'll give you another example. for the Jiu-Jitsu guys out there.

Everyone can do a knee-cut pass. I've never seen anyone who's done Jiu-Jitsu more than three months that can't show me how to do a knee-cup pass. Okay, now go up to that purple ball and pass the guard using that knee-cut. Can't do it. Can't do it. Why? Because there's so many nuances in between the knee-cut, right? The option, how do you filter them into that headquarter position is the first skill?

And once you get there, what does this person? and trying to do it. If he spins underneath and gets his weight underneath your center of gravity and destabilizes you, now there is no more knee cut. So you have to have a skill set of preventing that, right? You're fighting for position. He pulls on the collar. You got to break the collar. You have to be stable first and foremost. Get the headquarters. And then maybe they try to pummel the leg in. Maybe they're trying to go for K guard. You're trying to prevent those things. Right. So active give and take of doing preventing, doing preventing. And then the interplay between that and then getting to headquarters and then getting to the knee cut and then stabilizing

yourself and then looking at all the different reactions that they might throw, right? Whether it's trying to get the knee shield in or posting and framing a certain way. You know what I mean? So how beneficial is it to just drill the knee cut on a person that's not resisting whatsoever? I think it's not that useful. And you see beginners do it all the time. You see blue belts do it all the time. You even see purple belts who aren't good at all.

the knee cut over and over and over and over. I've seen this guy drill like 40, 50 times in a row. Is that really beneficial? I think it's not. But no one will criticize that. But everyone will criticize the Uchikomi situation. It's a very weird thing. I think it's very parallel, very similar sort of an idea. But yes, so really focus on sort of the invisible side. And it's like kind of like reading a book, right? You're not just looking at the words and then telling yourself, ah, this, that, boom, boom, boom. You know, you're really trying to go from sentence to sentence and you're trying to make inferences and trying to figure out what the author's trying to imply. You're reading between the lines. You know, I remember when I first

heard that term, reading in between the lines. I was like, oh, the lines here, the lines there, there's nothing in between. It's black. I remember thinking that as like a third grader when the teacher's like, read between the lines. And then I was like, what the hell are you talking about, right? But you really do, you know, you got to fill in the blanks with your mind, right? You have to make inferences. And then there's so much more that's being said or happening in between these moves. Ochi, Taya, Uchimada, right? What's happening in between is kind of the idea. And to master that is mastering invisible judo, invisible grappling, the micro stuff, you know, the nuanced contextual grappling. So that's it for today. Thank you so much for

listen to my rant. See you next week. Higashibrand.com. I have tons of products. I have hoodies, shorts. I have geese now coming, right? I have tatami sandals, instructional videos. Call me for a seminar. I'm available to all. I'm working on my health. I'm going to be super healthy. Ready to do it with you. Thank you so much for listening as always.