The Shintaro Higashi Show - Drop Seoi Nage

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Drop seoi nage is one of the most popular and spectacular throws in Judo. Despite its popularity, it's one of the hardest throws to master. Why is it so elusive, and what can we do about it? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss all the details about drop seoi nage. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hello, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Today we're going to talk about drop sanagi. That's right. Yeah, drop sanagi. You know, commonly if you spam this move, you're called a drop flopper. Right, drop and flopper? I used to be one. Drop and flop judo.

Yeah, that's the worst thing you could do. You know, there's things, I have very strong feelings about this. This style of judo. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, so, yeah, let's talk about it. Like, why do people tend to like it? I guess if you're a snake-winged-naget guy,

I guess a lot of people tend to gravitate towards drop techniques rather than standing. Why is that? Or how do you do it more effectively? We'll cover all that. We're going to cover all that. We're going to cover all that. But first and foremost,

I want to plug the most concise and effective judo instruction ever made. Okay? Not an exaggeration. And it's not an exaggeration. And my whole pitch is this. Give you 15 minutes, and I'll give you 95%

of what you need to know about drop sanagi. Mm-hmm. Yes. And where can we find this? For the price of two Starbucks coffees. All right? You can go to

shintarohigashi.com and click on courses and you can learn about Drop Morote Sanagi. That's right. That's the whole point of this episode is the whole sales pitch.

That's it. That's so sad. Bye, guys. No, we're really going to talk about Drop Sanagi. That's it. Done, guys. Commercial.

Well, yeah. so if you need if you're a visual learner this episode is gonna be like a supplementary supplementary material for the course he posted on

yes on the website shintarigaish.com but yeah we're gonna talk about it so that if you're a visual learner you you can also supplement this with video. Cool.

Yeah. All right. So take it away. Standing judo classic like Ochi Osoto, turn, throw, tatoshi. You're standing on two feet, right? That kind of judo versus like a dropping judo, right? Is that when you're going for Ochi Osoto, things like this, you go in and out of stuff real quick because you're on your feet. You're very agile.

Okay. Yeah. The're very agile. Okay. The moment you drop. Right. It's hard to change directions and go for other things. And people are going to say, oh, you can go Ippon Senagi and go drop Kochi. Yeah, but that's the extent to that. Yeah. Right.

If you're standing, like even we just saw a match on the international circuit for Tokyo Grand Slam. Guy fakes pumps Ippon Senagi, drops Senagi. That's it. Mm-hmm. What comes after that? You could run your feet really good, right? So you get a fast running, finishing sort of a method also. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. So that's sort of the difference. You know what I mean? Right. You commit to the drop, you're on the ground, and if you really, really want to finish it, you could run it and finish it. Yeah.

Right? But if you don't really want to run it and finish it, and if your whole goal is to transition to the ground, then you could do this. Of course, you could run it and finish it. But if you don't really want to run it and finish it, and if your whole goal is to transition to the ground, then you could do this. Of course, you give up your back. How good is your new-on-the-defense? But based on different objectives of like, I want to burn the clock if I'm competing. Those things kind of matter.

You know what I mean? So you're saying it, drop setting, it could be an option if you want to burn the clock oh absolutely yeah let's say there's 30 seconds left in the match you're up by score yeah and this is specifically to sport judo i'm not talking like martial judo what about the self-defense application i'm not talking about any of that okay so don't get on the keyboard yet just yet i know some people love like oh don't ask he can't do this in the street. Don't ask Shintaro yet. Yeah, yeah. The street, the mythical streets, right? The street, yeah, I know. We talked about that.

Yeah. So this is the thing. You're down, you know, you're up by a score. You have 30 seconds left on the match. You drop Senagi, transition to the ground. It's not unlikely that you're getting bombed by, like, Osorigari, Uchimata. Very low now. Right, right.

And now the new rules, yes, you can pick the person up off the floor, but you're so much closer to the mat. Yeah. It's a lot easier to base out. Okay? So so then all of a sudden the person goes on top and he wants to attack the walls but he's thinking oh shoot the time is running out so i probably shouldn't engage in the waza you could turn around and pull guard yeah you could engage him drag him down to the floor now you're both entangled on the ground okay the person desperate needs to score yeah and you can't really score until you like pass and pin

on the ground or choke an armbar right right right and then you have an effective guard play right with your legs in between your opponent or inside the legs right it's not going to be something that you could do very very quickly as time's counting down you know right now you spend the first 10 seconds getting to the ground and now all of a sudden you're rolling into a leg or something like that, and you're scrambling around, you know, one, two, three, four. You're burning the clock, and if there's forward progression, time's going to keep going. Yeah.

It's a great way to utilize, you know, and work the clock. Right? It's also a great way to get out of bad positions if you're on your feet, if you're about to get bombed. Okay? You can just turn and drop real quick and then reset. Yeah, reset. You've gotten out of that positions if you're on your feet, if you're about to get bombed. Okay? You can just turn and drop real quick and then... Reset. Yeah, reset.

You've gotten out of that position for a second. You know? And of course, if you keep spamming it, you're going to get penalized in competitive judo. Right, right. So... And I can't stress this enough. This is not a self-defense situation.

Okay? Even though drop standing nagi can work in a self-defense situation, right? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about specific to sport judo. Yeah. What are some other pros of drop Seoi Nage?

When I first learned Seoi Nage, I found myself doing it more the drop style. It's just I found it easier. We'll cover why you don't like this type of style of judo. I didn't say I didn't like it.

I said I have strong feelings about drop and floppers. If you're just a drop and flop guy without any of the nuance, then I'm not a big fan of it. But if you're doing it with purpose and intent, like you look at the Korean team. They all do massive for this.

Yeah. Drop Seoi Nage is you look at the Korean team. They're all doing a masterful at this. Yeah. They are drop saving nuggets like the thing. Some players only do that in any position. They got, in Korea,

they got, you know, like Blackpink and Lisa, K-pop stars, but then in Juno, you got the K-drop stars. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah, drop. You like that one? I just came up with that one. That was pretty good but yeah it is true

like there was a 90 kilo player or Lee Ik-yoon and he even among the Korean professional players he was known

to be like he doesn't he doesn't care he will just drop any position yeah I mean when you're dropping down

you let gravity take over right so gravity does a lot of the work for you. Yeah. You know? And if you can time it right, you have two hands working towards it, whatever it is. And then you drop it underneath the person.

And if you can run your legs properly, you know, proper execution of the throw, the finish of the throw. Right? Right. And then you adjust. There's adjustments that need to be made. Right? Cutting that angle this way, cutting that angle that way, running your feet. Yeah. Right? As the person tries to adjust. cutting that angle that way, running your feet. Yeah.

As the person tries to adjust. You can adjust the turn of the throw, right? Like how the degree of turn, right? Yeah. Sometimes you just drop 180 degrees and the person tries to step off on the backside. In that case, you can anticipate that and do a shallow turn.

Yeah. So then he loads up on your back and then once he's there, you could run it forward and try to run your feet. And then you can do like sort of a sprint off the block. So it's a very powerful throw if done properly. You know, and the only way to really stop that is like really sort of step forward. Sinking the, yeah.

Yeah, sinking the heel down and putting the brakes on. And if you do that, you open to kochi, ochi, backwards techniques. Right. So it's a very effective style if you know how to do it, but in order to get there, you're just constantly dropping because you need to do the technique to learn. People like that because it takes the risk of

getting bombed with osoto or something high. It's a lower risk for a lot of people. Which one would you rather happen to? Try to learn osotogari, go in for os Osor and someone just bomb you straight back onto your head and feel the risk

for years right or you could just drop and the worst thing that can happen is oh the guy strangled me yeah or you know take him over

yeah yeah so but it's not as impactful I think that's one of the reasons why I like prefer that probably in the early days earlier days of my judo. But also, that point about running it through.

So, you know, I learned my Seoi Nage in Korea first. And they really emphasize that. So, they'll teach you to squat all the way down and then stand up, basically in the in between the legs so it is easier than like standing and then try to like you know the koga style where you like lift the person off the ground yes so that's that's it's easier to learn as a beginner i think if you if you have the leg mobility i guess yeah yes yeah for sure and then you know some people have painful knees slamming out of the knee all the stuff is difficult right right right it's such a hard throw to understand you know if the person's not you know

just cooperating it's easy to do there's lots of different concepts that you can implement right away if you know what it looks like to make it There's lots of different concepts that you can implement right away if you know what it looks like to make it an effective throw for you. Right. And that's really what I talk about,

right, in the video. In the video. Okay. ShintaroHigashi.com, literally I was like, all right, how can I distill

all the Senagi dash? I could have done volumes and volumes on this stuff. Right? Yeah. Different types of Morote Senagi, how to enter,

this is the timing, you can do Ochi drop, Kouchi drop, what are the differences, you know, Sasai drop Senagi, right? Different types of Morote Senagi, how to enter, this is the timing, you can do Ochi drop, Kochi drop, what are the differences, you know, Sasai drop Senagi, right? Hai Senagi, Low Senagi, Fake Senagi, Into Senagi, Korean Senagi, Reverse Senagi, right? But it's like, what is anyone going to get out of that? And I really

think the issue now, you know, when you enter the information age, everyone's dying for information, now there's too much. Switch noise, right? It's like, how can I distill down only the most important parts, and then you could take that information and fill in the rest and make it your drop Sanagi. So that's what this is. Literally, like, under 15 minutes, this video. Yeah.

It's 10 bucks. Okay? The idea is you watch it once, you watch it twice, you can get it downloaded to your phone or whatever it is. Yeah. You have it on your phone. You watch it. Right. That's right. Maybe give it whatever it is yeah you have it on your phone you watch it right

maybe give it two or three watches and then pick up different things along the way you're going to the dojo and you can immediately apply it

that's the appeal of this that's a good point about learning a technique in judo because everyone has a different seoi nage because everyone

his body is different the strength is different what have you and the biggest thing is to understand the fundamental mechanics and then the rest is just details you have to

do the reps and then yeah the old thing of like here's one combination kochi to drop senagi here's a uchi to drop senagi go try these things it doesn't really work

because it doesn't take into account what the other person is doing and the concepts behind it that's driving it to make these techniques work yeah right right that's right so um so that's the context of the video and then that you guys can watch it for, you know, more details about the technique. And to complement that, I was wondering, like, so say you're a beginner, and would you recommend learning dropshipping? Like, do you usually recommend that? Or, like, how does one develop this and then integrate the technique into their game?

Yeah. That's a very good question. body type right if you have knees that don't bend all the way it's gonna be a little bit tough right if you're if you're in a dojo where they prohibit you from doing drop senagi it's gonna be tough to do right those are real issues you know i don't let white belts drop do drop senagis because when they take it from another white belt their head gonna go first into the floor and they're going to get hurt. Right, right. So it's literally no drops for green and below. Greens can do it.

Greens can do things. So no drops on the green belt, you can't do drops, right? If someone does it, that person's getting told like, hey man, you can't do... And I'm pretty strict with this kind of stuff. So when white belts start spamming drop Senagi, it becomes sort of a crutch. And like I told you, like, it takes you out of bad positions, right?

If you're on your feet. And then if you're playing the rule set of judo in sport, you don't really get punished for it. Even jujitsu, you don't get that punished. Like you get choked in practice, fine. Big deal. You give it back, you get to work on your back defense, whatever.

Not like in a street fight or something, if you turn drop senage, you miss it, you eat some big shots to the head, right? You know what I mean? Yeah. So you think starting in, if you want to specialize in it, you think it's okay to start a little later, like in green belts?

Can. You know, it depends on your body type. It's not what you want to do. You know, it's a way to learn. And like all things, this stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum. Right. Right. So like if you're an over the back power hand power grip kind of a person right

then drop senagi is very difficult to implement yeah because oh he's grabbing low on the collar he's gonna do senagi senagi kochi ochi oh he goes over the back now he's just gonna go harai taiyo uchimata right so you want to sort of like bring those two things closer if you go like right by the collarbone right hand on the collarbone and you can play that game very well then you could do fake taiyo drop senagi moving inch it up go uchimata haraio soto and then you can kind of toggle back and forth between the two systems like seamlessly right to where they can't see it you know so those things kind of matter you know what i mean like if you're six foot five and you fight in a 90 kilos or something, then will this drop Sanagi game be very, very good for you? Probably not, you know, but it doesn't mean that you can't, then most people won't expect it. So it's very nuanced. It's always like a nuanced answer when it comes to this kind of stuff. You know, do I think that a white belt should buy this video? A hundred percent. this video 100 and this is my new thing like i'm trying to make it sort of a series right where it's like the most concise distilled down you know watch this and then take your judo off

because i truly believe a lot of the instruction that they're not you know shade at all the other people who are making instructionals and my series too it's like sometimes a lot of this fluff man it is yeah you know because people want that like volumes volumes it's like the chapter one is this chapter two is that you know they want like oh i'm paying for it i want four hours of you know this study like deep positional study and who has the time or the ability to watch that and who can sift through it and then actually have the lens to say like this is actually what's important you know there's no like marker on the sideline side note of like you should this is 90 of it or this is 10 of it or there's no real right so here it is man like this is all you need to

know from start to finish right and it's rarely ever just the actual technique yeah everything's surrounding it right right if you take a conceptual approach, you can sort of apply it and make it your own. Here's the framework. What drives the drop saiyanagi? You're teaching people how to fish instead of giving the fish. Yes, that's right.

I'll give you one concept that I talk about. So in the mechanics of the throw, there's the turning and then the dropping, the level change. Yeah. So there's two ideas the throw, there's the turning, right? And then the dropping, the level change. Yeah. Okay. So there's two ideas. How do you do that?

And what are the things that you may encounter to resist that? Dropping is usually easier, right? Right, right. You can just freaking drop. Yeah. To prevent the person from dropping, right? Not as, yeah. It's a little bit easier.

Right. The turn, right? Like, where does it come from stiff farming, person's control on the sleeve how do you deal with those things so I'll give you some ideas on how to deal with these things then you can troubleshoot your own senagi

and then here's some ideas that's right here's some examples so it is a lot of nuance into this throw, and I guess I could share a little bit about how I... I'm kind of going back to when you said this drop-sandwich could be a crutch. I really identify with that because I was a spammer.

Like you said, I remember when I first walked in. Yeah. Because it was very effective. I could get out of a lot of positions. And I was really good at drop seoi nage. I could change my level quickly and then drive. But then because I was so reliant on that i my judo was very limited so if i don't get into the perfect position to do a seoi nage i i was basically shut down so then it was my when my

knees started getting banged up a little more like bruise i i started stopping myself from going for a drop seoi nage again and incorporating other throws and it actually worked a lot better. Sure. So things like that, you gotta really think about that. I mean, it's not there's no one best path.

No one can make no one can take a smooth path towards being good at judo. You have to experiment, and you have to identify problems. And that's why learning these principles is important. All right, so I'll give you a question about your judo. Yeah. So your drop senai became a crutch for you.

Yeah. In what way? Why did it give you comfort oh because uh i've already mentioned it but there's another reason right for for my case well maybe this is like a meta question maybe i don't even know the answer to this yeah there's a lot of times you notice more things about my judo than i i do there's another one good reason was that I could really just be lazy and go for it instead of trying to get into a good position.

Yeah. Getting out of bad positions. Yeah. And there's another reason? There's kind of another reason that's like indirectly linked. It's another safety thing. I don't know. It has something to do with the space on the map. Another safety thing. I don't know. Yeah. It has something to do with the space on the mat.

Oh, maybe I want to. I tend to, like, go out of bounds. Is that what? Yeah, yeah. So you can put the edges of the mat, right? Yeah. And then you can justify it. Because you're playing the edges of the mat,

and you're very close to the out of bounds, right? Where your back is towards the out of bounds. And then if you feel like you're in trouble, you could step out of bounds. Right. Okay. But if the person's like, oh, this guy's close to the, you know, out of bounds, let me just shove them out of bounds. Right.

You get that cue to drop and turn because they're pushing into you. You know what? That's very interesting because I've, in competition, I threw, I've thrown a lot of people at the edge because of that. Yes, of course. Of course. And it's a thing that works, but you become too reliant on it. And then it's this mental thing of like, oh, if I'm in trouble, I'll just step out of bounds.

Right. And if he pushes me out of bounds, it gives me the same value. So it's like a good win-win for you kind of. Right. But then if you're too reliant on this, you know, a guy who knows it can, you know... She told me out of the match. Yeah. Penalize you, penalize you out of the match because they know how to actually like coach you, push you,

shove, like going for an actual throw on the out-of-bounds mat and then force penalties properly. They know how to do this, right? They could time this, right? Yeah. So, but in practice, no one's called these penalties. Doesn't matter, yeah. You know, it's kind of like unfavored to call penalties, oh you can't do that you can do this like you don't want to be

that guy stop being that guy okay everyone who's listening guy or girl don't be that person that's like you know oh that's a pistol grip you can't do that yeah don't be that come on oh wait hold on i'm about to get bombed but let me me like tell you about the new rule changes that I watched Neil Adams' video. That person, right? Anyway. But yeah, so that's, there's two reasons why it could be a crush. And those two are enough to sort of really pigeonhole you into that, right? Right.

Safety comfort zone of never actually having to learn you know other stuff and never getting bombed and looking pretty good in the gym yeah you know so interesting right if you think of it that way dude i didn't even notice but no i'll tell you guys this shinto when i when i was really bad about this mat management you know always going out of bounds he would yell at me remember he was like stay in the middle stay in the middle yeah that's easiest right but it's not you know, always going out of bounds, he would yell at me. Remember? He was like, stay in the middle, stay in the middle. Yeah, that's the easiest, right? But it's not, you know, it's like I always say, it's a little bit more nuanced than just go circle in, circle in.

You know, those are the cues, but then you have to explain why and how to do it and all this stuff. You know, you're playing the edges and the guy's trying to like, you know, you're controlling space. Right, right. It's like if I have all the mat behind me and you have no mat behind you playing the edges and the guy's trying to like you know you're controlling space right right it's like if i have all the map behind me and you have no map behind you and you're sort of on the edge right i'm winning that that yeah yeah of like controlling this is mine i'm taking that land

from you right right it's like the real estate is mine i'm like shoving you off the grounds right so that's not a good thing usually yeah maybe they can make another video of that too space management yeah and then you know we'll circle and then circle it in how do i you know right person's shoving you out he's controlling all this mass space you know you fake and you do a society now you've rotated it's like sweeping right from the ground right interchange position fake turn 30s distance aside you're not trying to throw the person weeping from the ground. Interchange position. Fake turn, throw his wrist in, you're not trying to throw the person, you're just trying to change positions. Now, you're the one

controlling it. It's like the reverse card in Uno. He pulled the reverse card. That's what we used to do. Whenever someone's shoving me out of bounds, I'd just decide and I'd pull out the reverse card. I was just like, throw it up. How funny would that be? That's funny.

That's funny. So, yeah, that's some big things about the drop set, Agui. And I love that. You know, when done masterfully, I've seen, you know, you guys heard of Uchishiba. Yeah. There's an Olympic gold medalist. He actually got it taken away from him for... Yeah.

He has some accusations. He got me too. Yeah, he got an accusation. He went to prison in Japan. Yeah. But he had the most spectacular drop Sanagi game I've ever seen, man. I'll never forget.

I was at Kukushikan University. I was in high school. I was training. I went to see him. Not him, the practice. I was training there. And I got to see this guy him the practice and I was training there and I got to see this guy yeah

work people I'm talking like standing Senagi Motte Senagi Kochi you know every now and then Tomonage

but he would like guys I'm talking like in a five minute period he'll be able to throw anybody any exchange you know with Senagi

whatever he wanted literally and majority of the time it was like a drop Senagi you know and he he wanted, literally. And majority of the time, it was like a drop Sanagi, you know? And he's trying to create this negative space underneath them, right? Because he's trying to shift their center of gravity away from the base, and he would just drop in that pocket and explode, like a bomb.

It was like you take a grenade and throw it underneath some... It was unbelievable. So I've seen it in the highest levels, you know what I mean? and it's a great system but the people who kind of just drop

and hope you know yeah you're kind of playing that thing I like to call hope judo you don't want to be doing that

you know purposeful yeah yeah and seriously guys check out chantarohigashi.com right

yeah and if you get nothing yeah there's on the landing page of the front page you could kind of give your email and then we'll give you a free how to make a judo better immediately video so you can just get that it's free you know yeah give me an email address and i will send you video emails about like you know But I'm trying something new. Yeah.

He doesn't spam you. He won't spam you guys. I won't spam you. You know, I won't. Yeah. Yeah. I won't sell you an email either. Cool, cool. Yeah, check out the video, guys, if you're interested.

And hopefully this podcast episode will complement the video better. Like, kind of gives you the context and why. And then the technical details will be in the video. Yeah. All right. Well, anything else about Drop Save Inagi? I mean, there's a lot more, but, you know,

I could speak forever about this. But yeah, I don't want to bore you guys to death. So we got to watch the 15 minutes. They're still down. All the good stuff. To learn 99% of all you need to know is increase to 99

oh yeah you just added 4 more percent yeah 95% he says on the website but you could get 99% there too

you know cool yeah all right well I hope you guys found this episode helpful and we'll see you guys

in the next episode