The Shintaro Higashi Show - How to Actually Win Judo Matches

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Judo is one of the most technical and physical sports out there, but you can't win all your Judo matches with your physical prowess and techniques. Then, what else do you need to win Judo matches? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter go in depth about the oft-overlooked side of winning Judo matches. Join our Discord server and start chatting with us and other grapplers by supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about the gameness of Judo or Jiu-Jitsu. We're going to talk about things that win actual matches. But before we do, we're going to give a huge shout out to our sponsors. Go ahead, Peter. LeVon and Jason, thanks a lot. Amazing dudes, thank you guys. It's because of you guys that we could keep these shows going.

So please, if you guys are listening join our discord join our patreon do all that stuff buy our stuff videos mostly right reach out to me with seminar requests right you can find me on instagram at judo shintaro nyc yep yep all the good stuff all right all the good stuff all right so back to the main program so what are we actually talking about? You kind of gave me a general idea, but you wanted to get the conversation going. Yeah. So it all started, like we're training, right?

Yeah. Jiu-Jitsu, I train Jiu-Jitsu in the mornings. Everyone knows that. And they're talking about like winning and losing by advantages. Yeah. And advantages in Jiu-Jitsu is like

you pull guard or whatever it is and you go for an armbar. You almost get an armbar. The person slips, so that's an advantage. You're passing someone's guard. You're trying to pass someone's guard. Almost pass someone's guard, right?

But then you don't, and you get an advantage. And let's just say now you sit in the guy's closed guard for the rest of the time. The person that takes that advantage point wins the whole thing. There's no actually even points. Oh, you can win by advantage. It could be 0-0, and you can win by an advantage. And a lot of matches are won and lost this way. And, you know, obviously people are very quick to criticize something like that.

Like, oh, man, this is stupid. This is garbage. The rules don't work. And then, you know, I'm quick to kind of make those judgments myself. But if you look at judo, shido, penalties really determine the shape of the match all the time. Right, right. And no one's really training for it. Not a lot of people are training for it.

And it's sort of like we do like a soft skill versus hard skill thing. But the hard skill is to actually throw the person, the technical stuff. But when you're learning it in the context of the judo room, you're never really taking into consideration how many penalties are on the on the scoreboard or like where you are in relation to the out of bounds area right what sort of managing up you are doing to the ref oh even like dealing with the ref dealing with the ref you know because when you get a penalty in japan shido or shido yeah means like instruction yeah so it's like an instructional tool hey you're not doing something right you know here's a little bit of a thing and right In Japan, shido or shido means like instruction. So it's like an instructional tool. Hey, you're not doing something right.

You know, here's a little bit of a thing, right? And you're supposed to bow to them or something. And you say, thank you very much for the instruction. As opposed to like the American way. It's like, oh, I'm going to screw up. Like, why am I going to break a bottle? Right? So even like, I don't want to say managing,

but always being polite, interact with those guys. You know, after the match, you say managing, but always being polite, interact with those guys. After the match, if you disagree with something, hey, can you help me understand why I was penalized for this thing? And most of the time in the midst of the match, you don't really understand what's going on until you get heated. That shouldn't have been whatever it is. And then you're arguing with the ref and then you go back to watch footage of you actually competing. And you're like, oh, I get it. I stepped out in the red.

That doesn't look like an actual attack. It sounds to me you want to talk more about how to train managing matches, match management. is that what I'm getting? Kind of. So for context of what we're talking about, we're trying to come up with a title

for the podcast. You don't like you don't like management i don't like it you know and like there's just so many it's a soft skill yeah right as opposed to a hard skill but we already did like a soft skill hard skills kind of a thing and yeah check out that episode by the way yeah but it's not even that right it's like if you're in a company if you work in a corporate environment how to appeal to the higher ups and make it look like you're doing more work right and those office politics all these things kind of play a role and who gets to move up so i get i think it goes back to you know you always talk about how you should determine what your goal is doing judo bjj is it for fitness self-defense uh but some for some of you it might be to win competitions

yes and but this is the thing right yeah maybe you're not into competitions at all yeah but training in this way where you're thinking not just what's going on like skill wise right you're not into competitions at all. But training in this way where you're thinking not just what's going on skill-wise. You're keeping track of what happened to the exchange before that. What happened to the exchange before that? And even this exchange now, what should happen? Because in judo, there's a lot of exchanges. And the way I say exchange, it's like these mini rounds. Me and you come out.

We're scrambling. I go for something. I go for something. We go out of bounds, stop. That's one exchange. One chunk of time, right? Between the referee saying start and stop. That's one exchange. Okay?

Maybe you try to take me down with a drop senagi nine times in a row. Yeah. We go down to the ground. I try to force the wazoo. We're going. We end in a stalemate. Referee goes, stop. Yeah yeah that's another exchange right keeping track of those two exchanges and trying to win as many of those as possible whether it's actually not scored but who's the aggressor right

who pushed who out of bounds who was mostly defending you know it's like possessions yeah in a football game or a soccer match yeah right in soccer match like oh this team had 70 of the time that position of the ball you know that doesn't always mean that they win the game right right but if you have the ball more than you're taking more shots it's so i i think i'm kind of getting a better idea so yeah i've been i've been playing a lot of golf lately oh my god well it's just uh it's like a thing my wife and i started doing but there's two aspects in golf right as with any other sport like you said it's um you can learn you can be the best ball hitter like you can hit the ball straight like 300 yards every time.

But that doesn't mean you're a good golfer because there's an aspect of how to manage. They call it course management, but it's like there are hazards. There's a little pond. There's a little bunker in front. And what if you get into that? How many beers you drink

yeah exactly how many beers and then are people behind you holding are people in your group

hitting better than you as a psychological aspect definitely so you're saying judo is not about executing

those throws every time perfectly it's more about when those throws every time perfectly. It's more about when you get into the Rondori level, there are more variables to think about. It's like a more holistic approach. Yeah, there's definitely a holistic approach,

but it's being mindful and keeping track, understanding where you are relative to the other person in terms of like spatial awareness and stuff and where you are inbounds out of bounds and then adding on to that the hard skills right so using let's say for instance you're in that corner where the out of bounds meets right that corner edge how you use that properly oh i i think i think what you said is right. Being mindful. How to be mindful. Yeah. So it's like, and it trains being mindful.

When you're doing judo for self-defense or MMA for self-defense, it's you versus the other person. Yeah. But when you train in this manner, when you're looking at the clock or whatever it is, there's always a clock. Yeah.

Right? The moment you're getting mugged and you're screaming for help and you're screaming for help and you're scrapping there's a finite amount of time until the police get beat you both up right so it's like that that's a time period so there is a timeline thing right and then like understanding you know like if you're shoving and pushing the guy on the street on the sidewalk outside of a bar and then you know you scramble in for a double and you're running and then sometimes right like you just run them into

the street sometimes that's happened i've seen that before i've been uh you know in that before right well like when you're like oh shoot he's swinging duck on the you're taking that double and it's not quite deep enough to like lift them and slam them right but they're like backpedaling away but they're backpedaling towards the street and then it's like you were both scrambling and then you're like sliding between the cars onto the street and then if there's a car coming you get hit yeah right so like inbounds out of bounds you know what i mean in new york city you have those uh pot of garbage or like those little sections where they segment off for like little plants. Yeah.

And then running a double into something, into someone over that thing could trip them pretty good. Right? So it's like being aware of that kind of stuff and then training in this like environment where you're taking into the environmental context. And then the time, like those two things can help you in a self-defense context as well Not just winning judo matches. You see what I'm saying? I see I think it's more that yeah I think it being how to be mindful. I think that's a good title. I think that's why you're trying to say it's a It's you're not just going about like doing Randor is like oh like mechanically like oh I do this you know Yeah, I saw a video Shintaro setting up the Seibu Nage throws like this and that and you know, it's not about that

It's more being mindful of the whole situation. And then if you have another goal like self-defense you can kind of make the Connection between Your judo training or BJJ training what have you into your ultimate goal yes is it and i want to gatekeep some of these exercises you know i usually don't gatekeep any information at all oh you want to gatekeep a little when i'm trying to like teach judo in the room i'll just do it i'll show it i'll put it on the video you know people are always like oh don't you want to keep the best technique stuff for yourself i'm like nah not really like it's it's good for me to just put it all out there everyone has access to it you know gets better you know we

had a visitor recently an international visitor who took like uh a medal in his own respective country and he had such good judo and it was so like familiar and he was like dude i want i've been watching your videos for three, four years now. I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. Anyway, this was an exercise that we did. The person has their back to the out-of-bounds area. If you physically just shove them out-of-bounds, you're going to get penalized. Yeah.

You can't do that in judo, right? Because all they want for you to do is to take the person down. And if you're not actively going towards that, you get penalized. for you to do is to take the person down and if you're not actively going towards that, you get penalized. Yeah. So, you do an inside trip,

ochi gari, and you're pushing them out of bounds while you're trying to throw ochi. But you're not trying to finish the ochi, you're just trying to push them out of bounds. Okay? Once they get to that red area, you're going to box them out,

right, by angling off to keep them there. And then they're going to make sudden movements to one direction to run past you, kind of get by you. And that's when you try to time

a Taiyo if it's this direction, a Sasai if it's to that direction. I see. Right? So, planning that where you're using, right,

you're manipulating the person into like getting them so that their back is getting closer and closer to the red zone. Okay? And obviously, boxing does this, right? Boxing right you're talking about cutting off lanes and like putting their back to the ropes things like that but you know no one physically trains this and when you're wrestling in cars no one really training this kind of stuff too they're just like watch out for the line or don't step out or whatever it is but i think there's they don't take advantage of the

bounds yeah yeah i mean some people do every all the best guys do this naturally you know But I think there's... They don't take advantage of the bounds. Yeah. I mean, some people do. All the best guys do this naturally. And when you see it in actuality, you're like, wow, that was so masterful. But most people don't realize what's actually going on. And let's just say you have two defensive posture or two penalties on the board. The third one, you're done.

Yeah. So you're using a tactic like this. It's like, hey, two exchanges. You have two penalties. The third one, I'm boxing you out.'re using a tactic like this like hey two exchanges you know you have two penalties the third one i'm boxing you out and then i'm trying to force you you're like oh man if i get another one it's over right right right so they're really going to try to fight out of that position and that's when something big opens up yeah yeah it's like really working that kind of an angle i see right yeah or even like when the guy goes for drop saying you could defend it or try to force a false attack by cutting and staying standing on your feet

because if they go for a drop senai and if you cut and stay standing they're going to call that guy for a false attack right i think i guess you're trying to be you're saying it's more than just being mindful. It's more about being strategic. Yeah. It is strategy. But it's not like how to throw the guy. It's like kind of gaming the rule sets and finding different ways to win. Yeah. Right.

Right. You ever play Catan? Yeah. I love Catan. Yeah. So it's not just like building. It's about like getting the longest run. Yeah.

You can win it in different ways. there's different paths to victory and i'll never forget like ishii you know when he won the olympics he like was penalizing everybody he's just out hustling out hustling non-combativity penalties just flying at the other guy yeah yeah you know i've seen guys win championships like this not a point scored on the board but just forcing penalties and is that like a true martial way no yeah but you're winning yeah and these skills can be taught these skills can be learned so doing some of this and obviously you don't want to be like just a loophole guy right right you know you're just like constantly just spamming and playing to the rules all the time you want to be that just a loophole guy right right you know you're just like constantly just spamming and playing to the rules all the time

you don't want to be that guy but it's very very beneficial to use that and then integrate it into your training I think so now these guys who are competing

can learn how to win yeah these guys who are want to go back and think about their matches and analyze their own training they could they have to be mindful enough

to keep track of what happened in these exchanges right these stop and goes how many stop and goes are there you know usually training for five minutes on the clock you're just going the whole time yeah right it's constant go but in an actual match stop go stop go stop go it's actually not five minutes if it's a five minute match it's more like eight minutes yeah yeah right so you know how do you account for this stuff how do you keep track and how do you have exchange goals like goals like okay first two

exchanges happen it's minute two and a half now i probably have a 30 second go here of like a hard burst how what is my goal here uh-huh all right do i want to put a penalty on the board don't want to get an advantage on the board if you're doing jujitsu and it's not always just going for a takedown yeah you know maybe you're setting up something deeper later down the line and in the meantime you're accumulating advantages or right making the other person get penalized right so training in this way these are soft skills and then managing the referee and then appealing to the referee in a way where it's not kind of a douchey thing yeah you know so these are the kind of things that I'm really thinking about and working on. You guys actively practice this at the dojo?

We kind of just started. Okay. And because it's so new, I don't want to make a video about it and be like, hey, guys, I don't want everyone just gaming the thing. And it kind of takes away from the sport a little bit. But I think it's a very important skill that's often super overlooked right you know and i think there's guys like for instance i know kids programs that only teach over the back koshiguruma uranagi yeah all right and they get away with that and win

and drop sanagi three moves yeah that's it and they win all the kids tournaments right but i'm sure there's programs that can just take the rules of judo who know the rules of judo and just run with that and just force penalty, force penalty, force penalty. Grip fight, grip fight, transition to the ground. You know, time management, right? Burning the clock in the waza as you transition down to the ground. Like, there's people who could probably do this and win tons of matches.

Intermediate level, high level, advanced level. You know, obviously you've got to, like, you know, not suck at judo also. That's why I'm calling this a soft skill. When you're in the corporate world, there's things you can say and things you cannot say. And you have to stick to kind of these rules. And if you do zero work, then of course you're going to get fired. Right, right. But you can do minimal amounts of work, be really good at office politics, have really strong soft skills and then, you know.

Maximum efficiency, minimal effort. That's what it is. It's a big piece of it that gets overlooked. That's sort of my thinking right now. I'm thinking a lot about it. You know, there's statistics on this stuff too. In wrestling, they say the person who scores first usually is a takedown

because they started defeat neutral. the person who scores first usually it's a takedown yeah right because they started their feet neutral person who scores first has a 73 likelihood of winning the match something like that you know and it's like if you get scored on you have like a 73 chance of losing you know like that's a huge statistic to overcome yeah right and then so like there's things that we don't see I think that we can sort of train for you know

and so it's a really cool thing you know so it's yeah it's not even being mindful I mean I think ultimately it's just like soft skills

like we're gonna do you're like trying to focus more on the soft side soft skills side of judo yeah but it's not like the soft skills that we talked about yeah before yeah like critical thinking skills like uh ability to take constructive criticism it's like a little bit different from that too you know it's like gameness i don't know

what you guys would call it if you guys are listening and watching this on youtube like give us some suggestions it's already too late because we already put it out. Like, give us the suggestion for the title. I'll look something up. I'll think of something too. Yeah, Peter will think something.

He's a genius. Yeah. Maybe I'll ask ChatGPT. ChatGPT. That's a good idea though, right? It's a very cool thing,

you know, right? Yeah. And then, you know, they're going to be pushing back when their back is to the thing and how do you, you should have a Tomonage game maybe. Yeah, yeah. Tomonage, and then you you know they're going to be pushing back when they're back as to the thing and how do you you should have a tomonage game maybe yeah yeah tomonage and then you go to

monagi and now all of a sudden you're trying to work the clock how do you sweep them from here you know in a way that you're not going to get penalized and force nuwaza and even it was man it's not about choking the guy or turning and pinning the guy too a lot of times it's just about creating motion to keep the clock running yeah and that's a skill in itself right most guys who use nuwaza as a tool to win are not turning over everybody and pin them or choking them or all barring at will that's not what they're doing you know they're using it to sap the opponent's gas tank work the clock there's many many ways to use nuwaza as a tool to win a lot of this stuff is not trained you know so it's like

that's a good thing that we might do at the dojo too it's like all right guys for a minute your goal is to create motion while you're in top position internal so you know um you mentioned this too but like there must there are there's gonna be pushback to this type of approach right there is obviously this has to run concurrently with actually doing judo there's going to be pushback to this type of approach, right? There is. Obviously, this has to run concurrently with actually doing judo. If you're just doing this and winning, you're just a piece of shit. No, but you're not playing the same game.

The spirit of the game, whatever. Yeah, spirit of the game. You know what I mean? Yeah. But the best guys in the world already do this yeah right so it should be in the training regimen somehow you know so it's more like yes there's criticism yeah if you're just doing this stuff like you're kind of having to focus on the wrong thing yeah uh but it's okay you know like take it or leave it you know if you want to win at all

costs this is your path to victory it's like this You know how you said in Japan, because a lot of these judo athletes have so much mad time under their belt that a lot of these things come naturally. And they, you know, without being explicitly taught. But yeah, well, I'm talking about techniques here, like, you know, grip breaks and whatever. yeah uh well i'm talking about techniques here like the you know grip breaks and whatever but you know here in america especially for hobbyists we just don't have enough mad time so it has to be more directed and guided explicitly and then you're a lot on the other side of the coin you know all these soft skills you talked about like management skills need to be taught explicitly in America. Should be.

And you know, the better you are at judo, right? And the more you're like, all right, I can throw this guy anytime I want. This guy has zero shot of throwing me. Might as well just like rack up some penalties and advantages. You know what I mean? Yeah. Might as well, right?

I know this guy's going for a drop Senagi. It's going to suck. Yeah. Right? So I could cut it, you know? Maybe score once. He goes for a drop Sen's going to suck yeah right so I could cut it you know maybe score once he goes for a drop again

cut it and then just run the clock out maybe 30-40 seconds do it again and it's a much safer way of approaching because if I say you know what

I can throw this guy he'll never throw me but I just lock up 50-50 every time and stay in there blasting away there's a good chance I make a mistake

and I get caught right so it's another way to circumvent and reduce risk reduce risk and enforce your opponent to make mistakes so it's easier even easier to throw your opponent yeah yes yes I mean I don't know how this kind of uh you know like there's a double pole rule in jiu-jitsu and I don't really know the rules of jiu-jitsu so much so i can't really speak to it but there's all these things that are invisible that you can't really see that can what's a double pull rule so if we pull guard at the same time what happens yeah it's the whole thing oh like if our butt sits at the same time and the referee goes like this

and it's a double pull then even if you get up you don't get awarded any points do you oh you get points for pulling guard so if you try to pull guard

and then you sit down but your butt hits first and then my butt hits second and then you get up and jump on top it's a takedown you may get a sweep point because your butt went down you pull guard

right but i'm pulling guard at the same time and you stood up so technically it's considered a sweep oh okay you might get points for that yeah see but if we're butt sits at the same time it's a double pull so now we can just sit there and then whoever right

and most of the time people pull in gargoyles they want to be on bottom yeah so you get like this sort of both guys are sitting with their legs facing

each other you know and then like 50-50 yeah and then they can kind of like determine and one person gets up it doesn't really

matter because you're not going to get points for it or anything like that so you gotta have this like this weird like leg entanglement situation i've guys correct me if i'm wrong right yeah you know with jujitsu rule sets i don't i don't really know what i'm talking about you know so i say i was just curious yeah you know but there's a way to game that yeah and you could specifically train for this yeah yeah um does your bjj school do train for it they did that right before the world championships oh yeah and then people who are fighting the worlds and stuff like that like all right guys we're gonna dedicate 10 minutes doing this thing and that's when i first heard about it i'm like wow this is very good that they're doing that yeah right they're doing like yeah yeah yeah there's someone

behind the scenes thinking about this stuff and planning for it, right? Oh, and then this is the thing. When they mentioned it, a lot of the guys, including myself, were like, what the hell is a double pull? And how do the points work? And what are the implications of it in a competition? Yeah, yeah. Right? So it's like I got to start kind of thinking of this way in judo, especially now that there's a lot more interest in my novices trying to compete.

You know, I don't love competition for a lot of reasons but if they're gonna go out there they should be prepared you know all these are the ways that yeah i'm starting little by little and you know there's so many other factors right as a novice like you're getting caught with something so much higher yeah yeah i think this is much more important as you progress and then get to a higher level because both people are skilled both people know what to do right and then those little advantages here and there of getting a penalty or not getting a penalty you can make or break the yeah i see i see all right yeah i forgot what to call it you know so you think once uh this type of curriculum is more refined you'll make some videos about it.

Oh, it would be called like winning judo matches or something like that. Winning judo matches. Okay. It's like a... I see. All right. All right.

So this was like a little sneak peek into your brain. Like a little... A little bit. Yeah. I'm thinking about this kind of stuff and why it's good to train this way even if you're not competing. And we talked a little bit about that.

Mindfulness, keeping track. Yeah. Just bat awareness, spatial awareness. Time management management there's always a clock man there's always a clock you know and people always say like in the streets in the streets there's a clock because that's an interesting point yeah you're grappling with somebody and it's only a matter of time until someone jumps in yeah right you know it's only a matter of time until a police officer comes and takes you away yeah and see yeah and then makes sense i mean yeah and then they were like you said there are boundaries too in the on the street you know yep yeah bound definitely boundaries on the street like well there's a lot of bounds on the streets like yes there is right that's funny

this is a street yeah well mythical streets yeah all right well uh we'll be looking forward to your videos i want yeah i'm very curious how this type of uh uh training will go so anything else no yeah i gotta come up with a good title for this i will hopefully it'll be a very apt one all right well thanks for listening guys and uh we'll see you guys in the next episode