The Shintaro Higashi Show - Gym Strength Or Mat Power? | The Shintaro Higashi Show | #272

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

Kevin Kegel joins the show to break down strength & conditioning for grapplers, blending his background in powerlifting, gym ownership, and a return to judo. The conversation dives into what actually transfers to performance on the mat, common training mistakes, and how to structure an effective program for judo athletes.00:00 Judo Journey & Fitness Background03:20 What Makes an Athlete “Athletic”06:10 Building a Smart Strength Program08:40 Training Mistakes in Grappling12:00 Exercise Selection for Judo16:20 Conditioning: What Actually Works20:00 Programming Structure for Grapplers22:40 Conditioning Debate: Running vs Intervals27:00 Critiquing Shintaro’s Program31:40 Fixing Knee Pain & Lower Body Training37:00 Upper Body Adjustments39:30 Coaching Services & Pricing41:30 Closing Thoughts & Future Topics🚨 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/

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Welcome back to the Shantara Higashi show. We have a very special guest today. Kevin Kiegel. You are jacked. You're a fitness guy. You own a gym out in Long Island, and you recently came back to judo. So let's first hear about that. And, you know, it's going to be an exciting conversation because we're going to talk lifting, training program, high performance athletes.

And then we want to talk a little bit about, you know, supplements and stuff. So it's going to be very exciting. Let's start with your judo journey. Like, you started and you came back, correct? Yeah. I kind of have a large background in martial arts. I started when I was like a teenager. I got into like Japanese jiu-jitsu, which I think we talked about you kind of have a background in too.

So I was into that a lot for a while. And as I was starting to lose focus on that, I got into judo back in like maybe like 2010. And I trained like somewhat consistently to like 2012-ish. Around then my first daughter was born and I kind of lost the time or didn't have the time to train stuff, which is kind of common. So I fell off like 12 years. And then I've just been back for about a little over a year, training consistently again in judo. So, you know, before, prior to that,

I wasn't as into the health and fitness stuff. Yeah. That also came later in life. That's like the past 10 years. So now my two worlds have collided where I kind of like use the gym and stuff like that to help with the judo and vice versa. So you weren't always this jacked? No.

I mean, I feel like I always was into the gym. I started lifting like 10th grade maybe like I found the gym and like you know I go after school and I have buddies who I worked out with but like I definitely lost it for a little bit especially when I was training martial arts a lot I felt like I overfocused on that I was just doing like pushups and pull-ups and stuff like that but I wasn't really like dialed in I think when I lost basically when I lost the martial arts training more because like the classes like you know you run the dojo the good time for classes like six seven eight o'clock at night and when I had like two jobs and the little kids, like, that wasn't really, like, feasible for me,

but I could always, like, catch a quick workout in my garage. So I feel like that's, uh, that kind of became more of my passion because I could fit it into my schedule better. Yeah. Does that make sense? Sometimes, like I said, just like, I couldn't find, like, a judo class at, like, 1 p.m. Yeah, no, that's very true. That's very true.

All right, so you're physically fit. You do a lot of judo. What sort of training regimen are you on now? And is that the same program that you would recommend across the board for all grapplers? Yeah, grapplers, you know, so I think it's more of like an athletic thing for, to start for the base. So I started off, like, prior to coming to judo, I did, like, competitive powerlifting.

And that's not probably the best thing to be on because you're not very, like, athletic in the terms of, like, moving well. So that's, like, the problem I see a lot of times when I'm talking to guys that, like, that I play with at my club where I go to other clubs and they're like, oh, like, should I just, like, squat and bench press? I'm like, eh, not really. You know, like, strength is. is a really the most transferable skill, we'll call it, right?

So strength is a skill and it kind of transfers over to everything. If you get stronger for the most part in any type of physical activity, you're going to be a little bit better. But there's a point of diminishing returns, we'll call it. So like, you know, if I get a guy and we'll just use random numbers, he's like 28 years old, he weighs 180 pounds and he could squat 315 for five. Getting him to squat like 375 for 5 isn't going to really make him a better judo player, if that makes sense.

Like he's already relatively strong. But if someone came to me as like, I don't do anything to work out, then you know, getting a baseline strength, doing squats and basic stuff would probably help a lot more. So I think as you're stronger and more athletic, you need to start dialing it into other things outside, like those big movements. All right. So let's define athletic. Yeah. So athletic would be like the human body is built a certain way. So we can't look at the sport right away.

We have to look at how the human body moves and what needs to do. We really need to be able to rotate and move through like three different planes. And all these exercises that people bring up to me are like sagittal plane exercise. Are you familiar with the three different planes of movement for your body? So we got sagittal, frontal, and transverse. So a lot of these movements, everything everybody's doing in the gym is like sagittal playing stuff. So they're only in one plane, but judo occurs in all three, right? So when we're doing squats, bench press, overhead press, all this stuff, it's really sagittal plane.

Even like lunging a lot of times is going to just be forward and back. So we need to start focusing on getting stronger and moving better, right? Like there's a lot of skill involved with what we do in the gym. A lot of people think it's just like building muscle, but you're building skills, right? And you're teaching your body how to do things. So we want to learn and move better through those different planes of movement. So we have strength when we go to rotate into like a throw for judo or like push off of one leg. The way the pelvis stabilizes is going to be different than like when you're squatting.

So I think we got to take the focus. off of like just like going very heavy with these bilateral movements and try to focus a little bit more unilateral and multi-planeer movements. But you were talking about someone that's the unathletic who's never lifted weight in his life. Like it's good to have some base strength, right? So like, what would you say is a baseline metric for like squat bench, deadlifting, pull-ups? It's all going to be, I look at like the individual, like age, what their body weight is. Like all of that's going to obviously kind of determine.

Like I said, if I have, I have some young guys in my club who trained judo. So when they, you know, 180 pounds, 190 pounds, you know, 5 foot 10 and they're 28 years old, like, yeah, they should be squatting close to 300 pounds, like no problem. But like if you have an older guy who's, let's say, 40s, who doesn't really have much background in strength and condition, I would say that, like, if they were squatting, maybe 200 pounds would be a more reasonable number. So it really depends on that. I think the individual kind of will know. Like I say, if you have no baseline, you could go in and build a number.

the baseline for strength, the stronger athletes are always going to be a better athlete. That's going to translate over. I tell that with my youth athletes to the parents and stuff like that. There's a certain athletic skill that each individual has that almost is not going to be able to get any better by doing any strength and condition.

Like Michael Jordan will take, for example, arguably the greatest basketball player to ever live. You're not just going to take an average basketball player, put him in the gym, get him stronger, and he's going to be better than Michael Jordan. But we could get a better version of that player. Like, you know, Michael Jordan got better. If you watched that documentary,

he spent an offseason strength training. He came back and he felt better. He was performing better from being stronger. So I think each individual is only going to benefit so much from the strength and conditioning aspect. That's very individualized. You're not going to surpass athletic ability, but there's certain things that I think when people are looking to get stronger, they're missing when it comes to the gym. Like, if you want a good routine for judo, we should be focus on unilateral movements, stabilizing the pelvis, stabilizing the shoulders. A lot of core and rotational stuff is important. I don't see that much or hear that much when I talk to people that play judo and are working

out. They're kind of just doing squats and, you know, bench press. Yeah, this is true. I mean, I do a lot of squats and bench press just to look good, you know? Yeah. I feel like it's kind of, you know, it's exciting to kind of have that kind of different world. It's not like my lifting is specifically for judo. Right.

Yeah, but so it's kind of a nice thing. But all right, so if someone comes to you and they're like, hey, can I, can you help me with a program? But you could do that, right? Because you do online programming. Yeah, so I'll do online programming. I've had clients, uh, I had a couple clients even as far as Dubai. I've had some clients in England. I have clients all over the country.

I do have a brick and mortar gym. Obviously that I'm in now. So I try to keep most of my focus there. But I will take on some online clients, especially for specific stuff. So, you know, I'm passionate about you. So I've been willing and talking to a few people to take them on as, you know, like online or just come up with a basic judo program for people to follow, you know, maybe like a competition, eight-week competition, perhaps, just some basic stuff. Like I said, like working with some of these different skills that people just aren't as familiar with or don't think about when it comes to it, the judo world. You know, and I think another thing that we have to be careful about that we didn't touch on before is like people coming too close to like mimic you.

movements. You know, like all of a sudden now they have like a cable with a rope and they're like trying to do Uchimada with like a cable machine, right? So that it becomes like this little gray area. Like are you familiar with like what the uncanny valley is? No. So it's actually discovered by a Japanese guy back in like the 1970s, but it has to do with like robotics and like how human how human likeness in like robotics or something like that, that humans accepted to a certain point and there's a big dip they call it a valley where like it gets so close to being real but it's not that like our human minds almost want to like push away or won't accept it until it's actually like human again and this we have the same type of valley in like sports or athletic training like

you don't want to mimic anything too close to the actual movements that you're doing on the field or on the mats and judo because you're going to actually like interfere with like your timing and the actual motor patterns of that movement. So even though you think you're doing like, you know, Uchimada or Ipan Sainagi with like a rope on a cable machine and now it's heavy and you're practicing it, you're messing with your own timing and motor skills. So we don't want to get that close to mimicking exercise.

So can I give an example for that? So like when you have the pulley and you have the sleeve on there and you're pulling like you're doing it, and they're like, yeah, I'm progressively overloading over weeks. and now was that 90, but now it's 100. But, you know, the human body, when you throw on them, there's downward weight as well. But when you pull on a pulley, there is no downward weight.

So, like, that kind of throws off your mechanics, do you think? It's going to definitely throw off your mechanics and your timing when it comes to train that. Like, you don't realize it. We talk about this an easy example, which is in your realm, would be like, let's say, striking, like boxers. Sometimes they have, like, little weights in their hands, but you got to remember, like, box. It's so stupid, dude. I think it's the dumbest thing because it's weighing your arms down.

So it's like you don't have that same. So they have these egg weights, which makes sense because like a boxer wears, let's say, 12-ounce gloves. So if they want a shadow box with 12-ounce weights, that's a good idea because they're training that timing. But then people, you see people in the gym with like 15-pound weights and they think they're punching. But your central nervous system is learning because muscles are sensory organs. So they're going to give feedback. So as you're punching, you're producing and you're mimicking a slower motor pattern because that weight so heavy. That's the same thing with these type of things.

So we want to train the muscles that we would be using, but not so close to what they would actually look like on the mat. And that's where I see the difference too. A lot of people are like, oh, yeah, I've been doing this thing and I'm practicing my turns because I'm doing this thing on the cable machine. I'm like, no, no, no, that's too close. So doing Uchikomi's in the gym is going to be useless. It's actually going to make your Uchikomi's worse

and your technique worse because now what you're doing is you're coming so close to trying to mimic that exercise that you're slowing down your motor patterns and you're changing how your body is actually moving compared to how it would be on the mat. Okay, so if you were to do an exercise to maximize your eponetani, for instance, what will be some good exercises? So anything, like you're talking about Uchikomi,

is like I really like face pulls, like any type of rowing. So like if you took that same rope and we're just focusing on like rear delts, rhomboids, trying to pull here, strengthening, under load, slow and steady, right? We're going to get those pulling muscles really strong, but we're not trying to mimic the actual motion. We're just trying to strengthen

the muscles that are doing it. Oh, that's great. I like that. Yeah. Some single arm, just like some single arm, even pressing, because we want to be able to press too. Some single arm presses in different ranges. We could go off an unstable surface. So sometimes I'll have guys press on like a yoga ball. You're familiar with that or like one of those like Swiss balls. So we could do like unilateral presses on that. So now we're looking for the core to really engage as we're pressing through this movement, you could feel everything rotate and press. So you're getting your pressing movement. You're getting your rotation, but you're not actually mimicking the movement you're doing

on the mat. Yeah. So if you're doing like Swiss ball, like isn't it harder to progressively overload that as opposed to having like a stable platform, like a regular bench? 100%. Yes. But like I said, you're at that point of diminishing returns. Like, and you can do both.

I'm not saying don't do both. But if you're going to just do what's that you're just training for judo, probably more of the skill, rotational, unilateral stuff is going to be really beneficial. If you're a stud like you and you just want a little good outside the gym, you know, doing some heavy stuff and then using some accessory work on the side is going to be like the sweet spot probably. I still don't love barbell movements. Like I'm coming from a world where I've power lifted. I've done some cross-fit competitions.

I'm going to do a strongman competition. Like if the barbell is a tool that you're using your sport, like Olympic lifts and stuff, too, then that's great. Then I would recommend using that. If you're not actually using the barbell and your sport, I'd rather use dumbbells, kettlebells, machines,

and other tools because, like, it's just not the best tool for the job. Like, if I want to train my chest, there's better choices than a barbell bench press. If I want to train my triceps, there's better exercises than a barbell bench press.

So we can maximize those muscles in other areas. So it might be the most bang for your buck. if you just have a quick boom, want to bang out a few sets. But there's other ways you could train better. So I would still recommend staying away from the barbell. And the wrist of reward isn't that great because you see so many guys with peck and shoulder strains doing like barbell work because it's very restrictive in the range of motion. And a lot of guys don't have a range of motion where if we were doing dumbbell bench press,

so you could get just as strong doing dumbbells. So if I'm doing a plate loaded unilateral machine, right, would you suggest doing one arm at a time for something like this for a sport like judah? Yeah, I mean, a plate loaded machine, so you have to look at, like, a machine is going to give you a lot of external support, right? So now you're able to push into the pad that you're sitting on, kind of like I'm sitting in my chair now, right?

And when you press, there's only one direction that's going. So I could squirm and worm and press as hard as I can, and that's just going to move one way. Yeah. So that would be a great exercise. That's a great machine. I'd say, like, get some extra volume in. Like, I would go high reps, not as heavy.

on a plate load machine, get a lot of volume, really try to focus on your technique and loading into the chest and the triceps. But again, you're not getting that unilateral. Like you're talking about, like, should I do one arm at a time? It's not really going to matter because you're stable, you're so stable in that machine. That's why I suggested, like, the Bosu ball or even the bench press, or you could do like standing cable presses, or we could separate out that rotation into something else. but you want to make sure that we're moving, you don't want to be externally supported if you want to develop the stabilization

because you want internal stabilization instead of external support, if that makes sense. Interesting, interesting. My assumption when it came to this kind of stuff was like, you get stronger in judo movements doing judo. Therefore, while you're in the gym, do volume, do intensity, heavy bench, heavy squat,

and then kind of build that foundational base, right? So you're saying do some rotational, sports-specific stuff, but not too sports-specific. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I like, so I definitely think that, and like said, this is a broad brush for painting with all sports. So we're going to get most of our skill,

all of our skill and our conditioning, a lot of the conditioning when doing the sport. Conditioning meaning like people are going to try and mimic rounds in judo. Like, you know, I was in Japan with you and we went and we trained and these guys just put on a five minute timer with 30 second breaks and it's like five minutes in Randori break for 30 seconds.

Five minutes of Randori, that's the best condition you're going to get. You can't remit anything better than that in the gym. If there's a reason why you're not getting to do as much as you want and you want to try to kind of mimic some conditioning in the gym, I could see that, but for the most part, skill and conditioning are going to happen on the mat. But there's going to be weak points

that you can show. that you're going to be able to develop more force in the gym. So let's say like an Uchimata where you're on one foot, if we're like really working like a single leg RDL or B stance RDL, that's a great way to develop a lot of stability in the hip so that when you're trying to produce that force on the mat, right, you have everything stabilized. So you're not going to be able to do enough reps with enough weight

when training judo and where to develop that muscle, how it needs to be developed. You need to be doing, you know, a hundred reps throughout the week of that single-like movement to really kind of strengthen. Like I said, and when you're doing judo,

especially if you're practicing throws, Uchi, Komi, whatever is, every rep is a little bit different, right? Because the Uki moves different, you move different. You want to find a space in the gym where you can lock in and do repetitive movements

exactly the same so you could really build that strength and stability. All right. So if you're doing jude, You know, most people listening probably do judo two or three times a week. I would say that's the average of our listeners. And then how long, how much more strength and training would you put in for these guys? And would you incorporate some kind of a running program?

And like how would you work out the split? Right. So again, two or three days a week, they should be gaining enough conditioning in the ways like running isn't a great. We're going to go down a different rabbit. Let me go to the first question first. about how many days a week they're going to lift. So if they're training two to three days a week, I think two to three days of lifting is probably pretty good

if the program's dialed in. I don't think they need to do more in that. If their only goal was to be able to be a little bit stronger and produce more force on the mats, if they had other goals, like they want to get jacked for the summer. How many days a week did you say? Two to three days in the gym and two to three days judo. And we're using that.

So let's say like five days total. Maybe some weeks you lift three days and train judo two days, depending on their schedule and vice versa. Six days max. That's a lot. Recovery is really important, too. In our world and strength conditioning, especially, like, if you're really taxed and I feel it too. Like, I've changed my entire lifting routine around my judo routine because I can't lift heavy one day and be crushed and then go to judo the next day. Like, we need time to recover if we're really going to perform.

That's what's going to lead to injuries is like lack of recovery. So we have to really take that into consideration, especially like I said, I think we're at about the same age. I'm 43. I can't do it like I was in my 20s. If you're in your 20s, I guess there's a lot of individual bias here. But someone kidding their 20s, he could probably do it. You know, he can't lift in the morning and go to judo at night. I can't do that.

So I would say five days a week to six max combined. Got. So the weightlifting regimen. Let's go with that. Yeah, let's stick with that. So, I mean, every person is going to be different a little bit. But for the most part, I would say each day you're going to have like one or two that are going to be like base strength movements like you're talking about. Like we could still do a squat or maybe like a leg press machine or something like that to really like drive the output.

But then after that we want to have a lot of accessory stuff that's going to be focused on shoulder and hip health and core rotational movements and frontal plane movements. So like that's going to be a lot of unilateral work for the upper and lower. And not just unilateral. Like you guys think how you're going to load things. So like if you're going to load, if you're going to take like a single leg RDL or a B stand, so you're familiar with that where you kind of have like one foot flat and the other foot's kind of just like a kickstand.

Yeah. And we're going to go into like a hinging movement where we're going to look for to train some hamstring and glute. Again, this is like really important stuff because we want to be able to explosively move hips right in judo and get into hip extension. I'm going to load that contralateral. meaning that I'm going to grab a weight in just one hand, opposite the hand of the foot that I'm using, to kind of teach myself or force my foot to internally rotate and apply pressure into the floor in the correct manner.

Because a lot of times, like I see you guys walking around on like the outside of their feet. So there's a lot of mechanics here about how the hips work and how they apply force correctly into the ground. And then like I said, explosive movement's going to be important too. We should have some power movements in there. I don't like anything that's too high in skill because, again, now you're learning a new skill and you're not just training what you have to do. So you guys see, like, do like barbell cleans. Like a lot of people can't barbell clean really well where they catch it into the front of

rep position. I can't get into a rack position because my elbow hurts so much. I can't, you know, I can't do it. Right. Scratch it, right? Don't even bother with it. Right. But what's important is the power development that you get from that exercise, not really the exercise

itself. Again, another example of why the barbell is sometimes not the best tool. You can do that with like a trap bar. You're familiar with trap bar, like a hex bar. If you stand in the hex bar and you explosively come up, have a little jump and like shrug and then go back down, you're developing

as long as you're getting no hips back. Another hips back or like moving would be like a heavy kettlebell swings. Like anything that's getting your hips to drive back and then forcibly come forward because that's a really important movement in generating power, especially with a lot of throws in judo.

So you don't have to do a barbell clean. If you're hindered by the skill of that movement, we really just want to learn to develop the power. So we have to find other ways to do that. Nice. All right. Back to running. Running is useless for judo.

Right. Let's start with that. I know. Running is useless for a lot of things. I hate running. It's useless. So think of judo. Running is steady state cardio, right?

So steady state cardio is meaning like, and the more useful. do it, the better you get at it and the less effective it is. So like now, like right now, if I went and ran a mile, my heart rate would probably be like 180, right? But if I did that every, if I did that every day for two months, I'm going to adjust so fast. And now all of a sudden my heart rate is going to be like 105 while I'm jogging my mile, right? So, but that's not what judo is. Judo is basically like you're going to have like a steady heart rate that's elevated and then you're going to need to explosively do a movement and explosively go. And

explosively go. So you're kind of have to mix in like a little steady state with some quick spurts of full effort like energy and power into it. So like a steady state run isn't really going to condition you for judo because you just took a runner and introduced them into something where okay, now we're we're jogging but every 15 seconds you have to do a max effort, whatever it is. You know what I mean like that would mess up their whole conditioning routine. So that would be more of a lines. If you were going to train. something for judo inside a gym you would do like almost like a hit or like a timed rest period where you would keep your heart rate somewhat elevated and then you would do like something that's

very max effort the low skill because we don't want to injure ourselves so the more fatigues you get the higher the skill movement is in the gym the higher the chance of injury so what i would like to do is yeah keep it a low skill movement like i don't know like a sandbag throw i have like sandbags and stuff here i know everyone doesn't have access to this stuff like sled pushes like something where i could kind of keep my heart rate. Let's even take like the assault bike. Like I could just like kind of pedal softly on the assault bike for like 20 seconds, max effort 10 seconds, pedal softly 20 seconds, max effort 10 seconds, and then keep going like that. And you want to be able to keep that max effort the same at the same level as you progress through like let's say like a

three minutes span. So if your max effort after three minutes is like barely pedaling compared to your first one, that's what you have to build up. So your ability to kind of like, have all that strength and energy after doing three minutes of it. Does that make sense? Yeah, what about just straight sprints are great. Yeah, sprints are great. Yeah, sprints is another one that you could do. So if you wanted to kind of like walk or do like a light jog and then sprint and then like, let's say like a 15 second sprint, 20 second jog, 15 second sprint, 20 second jog. The other thing I don't really like about running is like people have really bad form.

They do. Sprinting and running. They're horrible. And like, so their gate cycles mess up, their foot contacts messed up. There's like a lot of impact, especially if like people are jogging as they get fatigued, they're running like heel first. So they're making a lot of heel contact, which isn't really great. So I just think there's better things to do than just run.

But if they're, if someone loves to run and they're good at it, then that's a, that's an option. But you don't have, my message would be you don't have to and there's probably better options if you don't want to. to do if you don't want to run. But if you're going to run, you have to do some type of interval training for judo. You can't just steady seat run like for like two miles straight. All right. So how about this? For the lightweights that are trying to cut weight or lose weight, oh my God, you know, I fight 66, I'm 145 on 160. I need to get out in the mornings and do this like steady state, low impact, long runs, five miles maybe just to keep my weight down. That's good though, right? Yeah. I mean, we're talking about a different.

adaptation now instead of our adaptation being what you know like getting better at G-O and can gain better conditioning or getting stronger now your your adaptation is just losing weight so we've kind of like the mark so you have to look at it like that like there's no good or bad exercises or anything like that in general it's just like application and execution okay so it's like how you apply that exercise and how you execute that exercise is really what you it comes down to. So you can't classify. I know I'm saying I hate running, which I do, but nothing is necessarily good or bad. It's just, are you able to execute it well? And are you applying it to your program correctly, depending on what your outcome is? You know what I mean?

So if your goal is to just lose weight and you need to do some stay, say, cardio every day to kind of keep your weight down or shed weight, that's completely different than trying to develop conditioning for judo. True. All right, let's rate my program. Are you ready for this one? This is like a selfish thing. You ready? All right. My lifted program is on an A-B-Split, okay? And this is right now specifically, I just came off a knee thing.

I want to get Jack for the summer, but I don't want to kind of do this like bro-split, push-bow legs. So this is like my alternative right now, and I've been on it since like November, you know? I've actually taken a D-load week right now. So A-B-Split, A-D-D-D-Days, I do a chest push, row, leg press, and abduction on the hip. Okay. Okay, probably do three sets of each, and then every week I progressively overload. If I get the 10, you know, reps of three sets, then I go up and wait, and it's been pretty steady, you know? Right.

And that's my A day. On the B day, I do a shoulder pressing movement, a pull-down movement. I do Romanian dead lifts with a dumbbell, and then I do abduction to work the insides, mostly for knee rehab, but same sort of thing. Three heavy sets, try to get 10 reps, go up and wait. and it's been sort of progressing week by week for the last, you know, since November. So it's like five months or so. And it's an A-B-split. I do like a Monday or a Tuesday, Thursday or Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

So I get three workouts a week. So it's like A-B-A, B-A-B, that kind of thing. If you start Monday with A, you're going to repeat like A again later in the week, and then you're going to start the next week would B and so on. Yeah. And then I tried to get one. cardio day over the weekend where it's like maybe I

walked to the local track and I do 10 sprints over there. So that's like sort of my cardio day. That's more, you know, just for to keep up the ability of sprinting because I used to be a good sprinter and I've lost, I've declined a lot in the last couple of years. I'm 41 down and I'm daddy now. So it's like, you know,

you lose a lot there. You know, you know what I mean? I know. So, yeah. And then I do a Monday, I do jujitsu and I do, you know, once or twice of judo a week where I'm actually on the mat, like grappling with guys. Right. So that's my current split, right?

I'm not trying to make an Olympic team or anything. Right. If you would have rate that whole setup. How would you rate it? I don't like it. It's pretty low. I love it. I love it.

I love it. I'm honest. It's going to be a blessing and a curse. So, yeah. Basically, and from what you demonstrate to me, because you didn't really specify, but basically everything you're doing is going to be bilateral, right? I mean, like when you're doing your chest press, you're doing both arms at a time.

I am, yeah, I am. Leg press. And then, I mean, and you are kind of familiar with this thing. Everything's in the sagittal plane. Like, you're not using any frontal plane movements. So the only muscles that you're training in frontal planes are your abductors and your adductors. So ab is AB is in and adduction is out, right? So.

Is that? Yeah. So because your abductors, AB ductors are on the inside of the legs. They pull everything together. So now what you're doing is you're training those muscles in their. like basically how they they go from point A to point B but your abductors don't function

that way like when you when you're walking running or playing judo they function to stabilize the pelvis they don't function to bring your knee immediately means into center line right but that's how you're training them so for a rehab purpose sometimes like that machine can be good like I had it in abductor injury

which I would use a machine like that just to kind of put some blood through the injury. But if you really wanted to improve the muscles that help with abduction and adduction, you would do unilateral, unilaterally loaded unilateral movements on the lower body, really frontal plane. Because you're talking about frontal plane muscles that now you're working, sitting down. So you want to be standing up, getting those muscles to work, stabilizing you back and forth. Hip airplanes or something like this? Hip airplanes are great.

The single leg already yell into a hip airplane is great, but it's not very loadable. But you could do something as simple as like, I love like walking lunges or like my top exercise. That's like my desert island exercise. If I had like one lower body exercise, I do every day, it would be walking lunges with weight. It's very loadable. So I used to love it, right? I used to love that. And from my defense of my program, there's some things, you know, for instance, like I have both knees kind of hurting right now.

Right. So the left knee I had, you know, Patella release, the lateral release. least because the kneecap was tracking too far. And then I had an arthroscopy and the right knees doing something funny with the meniscus. So it's like the, I love, I used to do lunges, walking lunges. They used to be this machine there. It was like a lot of pole and you could load the plates on the chest. You ever see that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, I used to do that. And I used to be able to put like 90 pounds on and do walking lunges. The lunging movement, it destroys my knees. So it's like, I can't do it. So we could try a few things. You could try like a step back, what we call them or like a reverse lunge? because a lot of times the pressure from the knee is the impact

and your knee kind of absorbing the weight as you're coming forward. So if instead the working leg stays stable and we step back with the non-working leg. And you can also limit the range of motion by, like, putting pads on the ground. You could do something like a rear foot elevated split squat or like a Bulgarian split squat. Some people would call it where you raise the rear foot and you split.

But you want to try to find something that's, more unilateral, that's going to get that, pelvis just shipped and all those muscles to work a little bit better. And then you might find some help at the knee if we stabilize the hips, right? Because everything's going to, everything falls down, you know, down gradient. So like if the hip isn't stable, then you're getting more movement at the knee, sometimes causing more pain. Not 100%. There's a million things that could happen. But I'm just saying a lot of times if we start the hips and work down, find that we get a lot of rid of a lot of that,

chronic nagging pain. You just have to choose some of the right exercises. Interesting. And then like you said, you're a sageal plenty. Where are you rotating? Where are you getting like your abs stuff from? Not saying like it's a small program just to wrap it up. Like it's short.

Like you don't have a lot of stuff going on. And maybe you can sub-war and two things out. But like what you're doing isn't necessarily bad or wrong again. But maybe we could add in some things to compliment what you're doing. So the gym side for me, right? So it's like these rotating movements, I used to do like cable plays. with a stability ball and then doing these rotational things that I could kind of do, you know, going over and then doing these things.

I used to do kettlebell swings that I used to have like a sports specific, you know, program. But right now the goal is just kind of get Jack for summer. But this is also the thing. I don't have an hour and a half to be at the gym. I don't really like doing the bro split anymore. So like this is my full body ABA situation. In that case, then, you know, it's a little bit defensible, no? Yeah.

I think like you said, it's all about outcome. Like, what's your desired outcome? For the most part, you know, when I'm talking about a lot of this stuff, desired outcome for the guys in judo is they want to get better at judo. I got a lot of like low-rank guys. I'm already good at judo. Right, I know. So you don't necessarily need it.

But so, yeah, so like I said, it's all about application and where you want to go with it. But at the end of the day, you want to function better. And you're talking about your knees hurting and stuff like that. So you might have some space there, especially if you're doing like ABA for the week. I don't want to over confuse you, but if you just want like A, B, C and we add in some accessory work, since you're already getting three days a week anyway,

you can probably take a little more advantage of that third day of, you know, maybe some just accessories, some unilateral stuff, some rotational stuff with some power movements. You might see a little benefit at that. All right. So what I'm hearing is the abductor, abductor, those two are useless. I got to get that out of there. Unless it's for complete rehab, you think it's helping your knee?

I mean, it could be used in a rehab situation, but it not really... Well, it started for that because, you know, I got this surgery in April. Even around November, it wasn't right, you know, because it takes about nine months to 12 months. And then so, like, the movement of, like, pulling my legs in, pushing my legs out, I needed to kind of be a little bit more even. You know, I needed that stability, right? So that's why I started it and I kind of stuck with it, you know? Right. So, but I'm already strong enough on it.

Like, I could rack the whole thing for 15. reps. So it's like kind of like I'm at the point of like, you know, the glute activation stuff is kind of, I used to do that first and then go into the leg press. Right. You know, right. You're activating you're contracting those muscles, but you're not training them as they function to stabilize the hip. And that's where you really want to, that's like your next step. So if you're like fresh out of surgery a couple months, sometimes it's not bad to get blood into those muscles, build a little bit of a base. But then from there, I'd like to really see you, you know, stabilize one hip at a time, find some power movements.

And you're still going to look good. And I feel like everyone feels better when they feel a little bit more athletic, right? Maybe doing some, like, jumping and stuff like that. Like, I never want to feel like I can't just like take off running, like jump over a small fence. Like the day I lose that, is the day I'm like, I lost it, dude. You know, I got to tell you, man, the jumping is like, kills my knees, you know? So it's like, I kind of stop jumping.

Yeah. Like box jumps are great. You don't do box jumps? I used to. I used to. But ever since this knee surgery, it's like everything kind of declining. little bit, you know what I mean? Because I can't really quite.

You got to fight for that. Yeah. Okay. So abductor, adductor gone. Throw some box jumps, throw some maybe Bulgarian split squats. I used to do that back then.

Some single leg RDLs because if you're going to do a lower body movement, single leg, we want to hinge and we want to squat, right? So we want to get the knee driving forward at one point and the hips driving posterior at some point. So we got to do both of those. So upper body stuff.

How about that? Upper body. The upper body is a little less, you could still do, I just like independent weights. Like definitely dumbbell. Sometimes I take that bench for myself and I'll start on like a high incline. I'll do two or three sets and then I'll kick it back 15 degrees. Do two or three sets. I'll go all the way down to flat bench.

And then sometimes I will do like a single arm just like one dumbbell at a time because you feel like so much stabilization. You're not going to get as much strength at that. But certain things in your body are going to start to fire differently. But I just like dumbbells in general over the flat bench or the machines if you're going to choose something. You could also like sit. What app do you use for tracking your thing? So I use Train Heroic right now. I've gone through a couple different ones.

And right now we're in Train Heroic. So everyone in the gym's in Train Heroic. I have like a program for like the people in the gym. We have open gyms and like these small group classes. And then I also use that program for individual clients if they're training something different. So like, well, I'm going to do for a judo because I have already a couple of people from my club. You know, I train out here on the island at judo sports. A couple of those guys are looking to do a program.

So what I'm going to do is put it like six to eight weeks together and kind of like just be able to each guy paste it right into their thing. And they'll see each day, whatever, it's three days a week. They're going to see what that workout is. And then they could track it. And each week they're able to see like what their weights were the week before. And, you know, like, I can see it on my end. So, like, when I go on, I can be like, hey, buddy, you're not doing your workouts, or you're not completing your workouts.

So you haven't changed that. Your workouts, yeah. Yeah, you haven't changed your weight in three weeks. Like, let's pick it up a little bit, you know? So it works pretty seamlessly. I like that one. All right. So what do you charge for a program like that, like usually?

So if someone's listening, like, you know what, man, like, you know, this is a problem, right? I've been lifting my whole life. I'm pretty jacked. You know, I've been lifting since I'm like 14, 15 years old. This is the program I'm on now. You're like, ah, trash. You know what I mean? So if a guy like me cannot.

be doing the right thing in the gym, which I still don't think I'm not doing the wrong thing, but how do they reach out and get your services? Like, what does it cost? What does the service look like? Okay. First of all, just to hop on what you said, yeah, you're not doing, no one's doing the wrong thing. If you're in the gym and you're doing something, it's probably good. But I feel like everyone always wants, like, that edge, like, what should I be doing to do better? And there's a lot of things that we could be doing better. But if you're getting there consistently, you're already winning, all right? So I don't want to, like, mistake that. I don't want to, like, discourage people.

It's a bunch of different levels. So what I'm going to put together now, I have a couple of these for some people, is if I have an eight-week judo prep program and it's kind of like a baseline generic program, something like that's going to be like $150 for the eight weeks. I'm going to just upload it. It's not going to be very individualized. I do do individualized programming where I would meet on a call like this once a month, kind of figure out what the person's needs were, how many days a week they need to be in the gym.

That also comes with them sending me videos throughout the week sometimes and me making sure they're doing the right thing. Depending on how much help that person needs programs like that virtually start around $300 a month. But that's including, like I said, the call and the personalized program

that's not just kind of like generic, do this for judo. And it just goes up from there. Like I had a guy, one of the guys in Dubai wanted to talk every week. And he wanted to send me videos every day. So like it's really just about my time. So the price goes up, the more I'm involved.

But for sure. Yeah, I mean, something like this could start as low as like $150 for the eight-week program. So you divide that into the eight weeks. That's like $75 a month. It's pretty reasonable. Nice. So how do people reach you if they want to? So my Instagram is probably the easiest way.

It's at the underscore Spartan underscore Samurai. And then my gym is also at Ronan Athletic. So either one of those on Instagram. is going to be a direct line to me. So that's probably the best way to do it. You've got to do a collaboration with Ronan Brand Geese. Could you imagine? I know.

I see this. You know, the problem is it's all the jujitsu stuff. I don't see it. Do they have judo stuff? They have Roan and geese, yeah. Like judo geese, I mean? Yeah, I know the cuts are different. Yeah, a little different.

I like jujitsu geese. They're a lot lighter. You know, so it's easier to carry to and from the dojo. You know, it just, and it taxes your laundry machine last. Like, I can go on and on about this stuff, you know? Yeah. So you like, you'll play, it just drives me nuts. Like, we have a lot of BJJ guys at our club.

And they come in and like, sometimes I can't even grab a sleeve. Like there's nothing there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have my nice big judo ghee that I got from Japan, you know, like, you know, properly fitted. So there's plenty for them to grab. So they're grabbing me like crazy. Yeah, I can't grab back. So, yeah, I get a little, I don't love that.

But yeah, I do like some of the, the BJJ gees are nice. I know you do BJJ. So I mean. Both, you know. Yeah. Wow. Kevin, thank you so much for being on.

You know, we got to do another one of these. We didn't even get the supplement and things like that. Yeah. And we definitely have some more stuff here. We just scraped the surface. Yeah, because I love this stuff. You know,

I'm like a junkie when it comes to the stuff. So thank you for being on. And then, uh, guys, if you're listening, please send Kevin a message. Tell them what you ate for lunch,

what you're wearing. I love that stuff. I really appreciate. I appreciate your time. You know, always good seeing you. And, we'll definitely touch base again soon. All right. Thank you.