The Shintaro Higashi Show - How to Run Practice Efficiently

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Most of us are Judo hobbyists who have only a limited amount of time for Judo practice. Then, how can we get maximize our Judo practice time? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss how practice is run at Shintaro's dojo Kokushi Budo so that it can help you make your practice more efficient. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi show with Peter Yu. Today's episode is going to be purely commercial and we're only going to plug Patreon. I'm kidding. We're not going to do that. We're going to talk about practice, running practice efficiently and how to get the most out of practice. But I am going to plug our Patreon. Right.

Peter, take it away. Yeah. So if you can help us, sponsor us on on patreon monthly uh you can you get to join our discord server where we can you can talk to us on a more personal level about judo or anything else you know what's going on with your life um and another perk we started doing on the discord server is that we created a technique review channel where you can post videos of yourselves doing certain techniques and you can get personal feedback from yours truly chintar higashi and maybe i'll chime in too yeah as much as i can chime in definitely yeah

yeah and other people too because we're like trying to create a community we got a little community so it's like a you know pull knowledge community knowledge so that we can make everyone and each other better so yes support us if you can let's do it yeah support us if you can and we'll keep pumping out good content hopefully we keep this going right there's not too many judo podcasts out there judo related podcasts out there yeah so yeah let's keep going all right how to run practice efficiently right so um you know different styles of practice and i do think that yours uh practice your style of practice at kpl was very you know i thought it was good because a lot of times you know i i don't have much time to do judo after work but i come in i get this

i learn new techniques and i get a good workout and everything so let's kind of talk about how you think is the best way to run practice efficiently yeah so it depends on the room really depends on the room i'll tell you right now like if you are anywhere that is training high level athletes that practice looks very very different than a commercial gym right right uh depending on whether they're old school or new school how much teaching the students need whether they're at the high school level or the collegiate level at the highest levels in japan all these places look very very different. But generally, there's a warm-up, drills, randori. Right. That's how it is.

Right, right. And I'll tell you, one of my favorite rooms to be in is Kokushikan University in Japan. One of the best judo universities on the entire planet. And I remember the last time I went in 2016, the entire Georgian team was there. And all the best guys from the different countries will visit it's like you pay homage to this place right right right and then you train with the university so you have 100 people on the map oh my they ran their practices in a way where it was like all right we're gonna give you guys 10 minutes practice starts at like 3 30 or 4 p.m we'll

give you guys 10 minutes run around do whatever you want 10 minutes on the clock oh okay right yeah everyone's jogging chit-chatting right and then it's like all right we'll put 10 more minutes on the clock for uchikomi do whatever you want all right now you're 20 minutes in and then you like bow in they beat the drums and then it's like all right we're gonna go right into life i see i see yeah we're gonna do 10 rounds of five that's the first set uh-huh yeah we're gonna do 10 rounds of five that's the first set uh-huh then we're gonna do 10 rounds of five second set oh man right then we'll do 10 rounds of five and uh you know that's gonna be nirwaza actually it's like five rounds of five usually nirwaza right right you know you have a three to four hour practice maybe three right and it's

90 of it is just live because they can they're all high level people and they don't need to drill high level people and then sometimes they'll do like a technical session like later in the day right but it's like how close are they at the you know to a tournament where are they in their training cycle right and then they're expected to do the physical stuff whether it's weight lifting or sprinting on their own not really on their own they do it as a group but like right outside of that practice right right right so that's one sort of philosophy but if you're running a gym in the united states you know for as like a service like a product right it is a product and then you need the money

to keep the lights on and you want to have sort of income rolling in because it's something that you're doing. And people say, oh, judo is not about money. Yeah, maybe not. And maybe some of us can transcend money and money doesn't matter at all. But at the end of the day, you have to pay rent if you want a nice space. You need to pay the cleaning person if you want a clean dojo. Right, right, right. And if you take that stuff into account you can't do randori for

two three hours who's gonna sign up for that that's right nobody yeah yeah so so for a hobbyist it's different it's a different story so even for high level guys you know you can get a lot out of these commercials you don't have to train like you're in japan right it's so the way i like to do it yeah different context for sure yeah in context i think you know you don't want to say teaching to the middle but you kind of are right because you want everyone to get the most out of that class some people want to come for self-defense some people want to be intellectually stimulated and learn something so then you have to have a instruction as part of the entire practice and some people just want to

work out and then I want to work out I want to use it as a workout you have to provide that especially at the end right whether it's conditioning and you know those people right off the bat just by sort of looking at them mm-hmm so you have to see how to cover everything yeah so how do you typically so let's focus on that crowd yeah you know okay service and then also how do you typically, so let's focus on that crowd, you know, the service part of it. So how do you usually start the practice? Usually it's a warm-up. Yeah.

Right? I like to assign warm-up to whoever's in the room. And then sometimes it'll keep them up to those two. It's like, hey, you do warm-ups. And it's like, oh, I've never done warm-ups before. Do your best. Give it 10 minutes. Right.

That way you kind of like get people to step into a leadership role and then see who's good. And then like it kind of, you know, I like it. It isn't the right way. It isn't the right way. You know, what is a warm-up? Proper warm-up, right? Yeah. I've spoken to fitness gurus and I had a strength and conditioning coach.

And he does a training for warriors dynamic warm-up and i really believe in that stuff you know uh so you could be more professional about warm-up like really maximize yeah i could definitely like standardize it and everybody does the same warm-up and it becomes a spiritual thing but i like kind of like the community building like oh that person did the warm-up today this person doesn't want to do warm-up today like i kind of like that feel right it gives it a little bit more of like a community boutique feel as opposed to like all right guys you know this is the most efficient way to do it this is the best warm-up to do and this is what we're gonna do and everyone's

gonna do this i'm not really right crazy about that i see you know okay so community driven warm-up you don't necessarily a lot of it is you have to do warm-ups period just from like an optic standpoint right i've if it were really up to me everyone comes in you know at 6 30 or whatever they do their own warm-up seven o'clock all right class is starting guys circle up i'm gonna go right into technique don't go hard because some of us are cold right we're just gonna go right into it to really maximize every minute that they're on that map right right right right because time is so finite and especially in new york city when people are really scheduling themselves down to the minute of the day right right you want to be like i'm

really really you know tight on start time i see i see but you know from like i said like an optic standpoint like if someone gets hurt it's like oh that guy didn't even do a warm-up right right right it just sounds really bad so it's like we have to do a warm-up i see you know i see yeah so then what what happens after warm-up you go to so warm-up depending on how many people are beginners we do breakfalls right i see a lot of people on the mat then we don't do side to side as much right just because somebody goes the wrong way and i sort of differentiate and look at the room and then see how what the needs are of doing the break fall right right right sometimes the too many people brown and black belts off sometimes

it's like all right we're just going to do break falls because we need to just touch up on it we're just going to start off standing we're going to do five five side side done go into rolls right but the zempo kaiten ukemi the forward rolls i don't specifically like explicitly teach it and then say hey this is how you do this i do it i kind of let them figure it out and do it over time right and it's something very very short and little by little you see progression in the students and then you see sort of how they're learning it right and it's a good way for me to measure not athleticism but athleticism you know i see yeah yeah i mean it kind of involves everything right like simple kind of thing you jump off and you need to have coordination balance yeah that's a good way yes and i want to keep the the ball rolling right so sometimes if someone's

brand new and they look like they have two left feet i don't want them doing the four rolls and then just jacking up the entire line and everyone's like oh man right right right right right so in that case i'll be like all right why don't you stand on the side and then once everyone else is doing uchikomi you'll have somebody assigned to you so you could learn it. Right. I differentiate at many, many different levels. Everyone can generally do the warm-up, but break falls, not everyone can do them.

Right, right, right, right. Based on that, maybe I'll have them watch a few times so they can see what it looks like first. I don't want anyone to just jump into it right away. Right. Differentiated instruction really is the key. Right. Because you don't want to hold up the whole group

because you're the one person. And you can't do the same breakfalls every single time regardless of who's in the room, who's not in the room. Right. Then it's just not right. Then people just go through the motions. And that's partially what makes the dojo unique for me is like it has that boutique feel and it's unique because i'm always sort of inputting and this is not scalable anyway so

from a business standpoint this is wrong right you're supposed to standard warm-up break fall move of the day minutes down to the thing, curriculum, so anyone could walk in and teach it. I see. That's how you really scale. That way I could have a class here. I don't even have to be there. I could have this class over there.

I could have another dojo. Hey, follow this curriculum. That's the proper way to scale. I see. I don't like that. First of all, it's really boring for me. I know entrepreneurial business types say good business is supposed to be boring, right? Right.

Things should be predictable, income streams, all this stuff. Well, all the machines. But it doesn't give me any fulfillment in that case, right? I like scanning the room saying, what are the needs of the room and teaching to the room? Right. It's one of my biggest things, you know? It's wrong from a business standpoint. Interesting.

We did talk about the business side of things. Check that episode out. Okay, so we did the break fall we will warm up we're good to go blows following so what do we do do uh instructions which call me what do you generally what you call me is usually i want to give people three to four minutes to just train anything that they wanted to train right something from the last practice and then i'll precursor this by saying hey guys whatever you were working on last practice go try it you saw on youtube and you want to figure it out go try it here's four minutes sometimes it's five minutes sometimes it's three minutes depending on what the needs of the room are i see right yeah so i'll give them time to drill on their own

and a lot of the times people use this time to just sort of go through 10 and 10 right i'll do 10 ochi you do 10 oi i go 10 osoto you go 10 osoto but i don't want them to spend the first 10 15 20 minutes just drilling uchikomi i think that's a useless thing that people do because there's a point of diminishing returns right because you're only really working on just a very small piece of the technique right just the entry right in a perfect setting right right right and how often do you see that exact entry in a randori setting rarely ever so that's why you know i've heard people come from different schools and places like why don't you do more uchikomi why can't

we do 10 15 20 minutes of uchikomi and you know i don't usually get into it but it's like usually it's because you know it's first of all it's boring and then second of all it's not the best use of our time right right right if you have four hours to train in that day and people are coming in five days a week yeah do it but we don't have that luxury especially in new york right right right so so five minutes uchikomi work on what you want to work on personal Personal practice time. That's usually it. Yeah. And then... Personal practice time. Yeah. And then, well, what happens next?

And then sometimes it's moving uchikomi. Sometimes it's three-person uchikomi. And then sometimes I'll preface that with different things, right? For instance, yesterday we did three-person uchikomi. And not just going from point A to point B and attacking three-person uchikomi. But like moving, moving, adjusting position, faking faking go boom right so now you're adding different elements to the training i see yeah right and then we might do combinations right grab a partner drill combinations and it's not just ochi osoto susai tayo ipan senagi koshiguruma right because オチ、オソド、スサイ、タイオ、 イポンセイナギ、コシグルマ because techniques never really shape up

like that in live practice. It's like advantage. Faint one way, go the other way. That's one オソド. Snap the person down, go オチ. Snap the person down, turn throw. Fake turn throw, コウチ. You're adding different elements.

Like I said, setups, feints, misdirections combinations and then i get 10 attacks in and then the other person goes to so there really is sort of a creative feel it's like improv music almost i see so it's like warm up you do some breakfalls basic stuff and then you give people some time personal time to work on their own things before anything else yeah okay and then what what comes next yeah a lot of the times it's nagakomi depending on how much time i've already spent right and sometimes it's instruction right instruction you know like i said uh i kind of have a rule when i'm making other people teach the class never teach more than three minutes at a time

right three minutes right it should never be more than three minutes like instruction like the explanation part explaining part yeah yeah because you can go forever and go in loops like yeah there are two things that they could take away uh one or two things for the beginners one or two things for the advanced guys and then it's three minutes cap it go try it they're trying it three minutes. Cap it. Go try it. They're trying it. Three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, whatever it is. All right, bring it in.

Here's what I'm seeing across the board. Yeah. Right? And then a little bit more instruction based on whatever it is. Right. So you did something around to that. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's like I try to do it like that. But then again, I break that rule sometimes for myself too because I'll have a room full of guys who are higher belts and they have very, very good attention span and they want to know and they want to go deeper. And then I only have two white belts in the room. And now I'm at a point where I'm like, all right, those two white belts can kind of wait. And I'll tell them like, hey, take what you can from it. It's going to be confusing. You're going to be confused. That's fine.

You'll have exposure to it. It'll make sense for you down the line when you revisit this once you have more fundamentals. Okay? Right. So, you know, you guys go over there. And now I'm teaching a little bit more in depth, three to five minutes, sometimes even longer. Right? And now I'm doing this thing. Right?

And like I said, that's not scalable. I see. Yeah. Right? But I'm teaching a little bit more. And it depends on how i feel too because you know i understand scalability i understand business and all this stuff but a lot of what i do at the dojo is for me too yeah right you need to be like how i yeah yeah fulfill

it's like a fulfillment in my career right it is sort of a career right right and it is not i don't look at it like sort of an income producing thing, even though it is. But a lot of it is like my personal relationship with the people on the map. Right. Right. So like if you're having issues, you've probably felt this and, oh, he's specifically mentioning me. Right. We're talking about drop Sanagi.

We're talking about right versus left. And we're talking about drop sanagi you're talking about right verse left and we're talking about this and you know it could be something that i saw you doing with somebody else in a randori session and i'm only teaching really to you but everyone else could listen to it and get something out of it right right right so like that's not really a great way to run a business but you know it's interesting and i get to pick and choose who i want to work with who i am working with right without actually letting everyone feel completely isolated because it's like i'm only i only care about peter yeah right you see what i mean yeah like that's some way that i'll structure the practice and then i'm sure people know it's like

i'm working one of the sos. And sometimes dope people say like, I can't get this Osoto. Like, you know what? I got you, man. That's what I'm going to teach today. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. I've done that. And then in reality, yeah. In reality, I'm only teaching to that person. Well,

everyone can see it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Everyone can learn, you know, and then you speak in concepts, right?

Like Greg was, he's a lefty, you know, the yellow bug, Greg. And he's like, I'm doing this cross body of soto so i'm having a little bit of trouble and i see why he's having a little bit of trouble so those are my two points that i'm teaching right but when i'm teaching it i'm not saying i'm only teaching this because greg is teaching it hey guys let's look at this specific situation right versus left from inside control it can be from outside control here's the main two things that's missing a lot of the times when you're doing crossbody

asado, right? Hitting the chin to the shoulder, head control. Head control first and foremost. Finding the right angles so you can provide forward drive, okay? These are the two things I want you to look at. These are the indicators here. This is how it looks like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Go try it.

This is how you come up with all this. Yeah. No, I was going to say, this This is how you come up with all this. Yeah. No, I was going to say, this is probably how you come up with all these YouTube videos. Ideas. Kind of. I mean, YouTube videos, like, I'm like, all right, standing after Brad's like, all right, what do I want to film today?

You know, I'll just kind of wing it. Yeah, I see. I see. Okay. So that's sort of my instruction in the room, you know. Like short. You know, is it the best way short but personalized conceptual yeah conceptual personalized a little bit okay but yeah i i i

actually prefer that i mean you this is the thing like you said like you say it's a boutique style it's not like you're not getting a mass mass produced thing you get you get your handmade you know handmade hat white belt's like how do i handmade you know handmade white balls like how do i do what's taiyatoshi how do i do it i'm like anybody want to show this guy taiyo during you know yeah right and then sometimes you know you have black balls that want to teach yeah and then you know they could get into it and then they could teach over there and then right you know so that's how generally a class looks and it feels very personalized. Right. Because if you have no clue what I'm talking about, I'll assign somebody that knows what they're talking about. And sometimes the black belts are like, oh, I've heard this before.

Yeah. Let me go hang out with that guy over there who needs help. And people form relationships and clicks in the room and they're like, oh, I'm working on this thing with that guy. And sometimes I'll show something and half of the people aren't even working on something that i just showed right right you know and then it's up to me to you know make a joke about it it's like oh it's nice that you've already mastered this right verse left to soto yeah or it's like hey uh yeah that's that's good that you're doing that tile because you need that tile or maybe i'll give my two cents and or i'll just look at it and be like yeah that looks pretty good man yeah you know i see and it's not something that everyone has to listen to me at all times so

that way it the practice does feel personalized get what you want out of it is kind of the methodology that i like to approach the practice from right so then we do yeah yeah and there was a Yeah. Yeah. Nwaza, Rondori, Tachiwaza, and Rondori. Mm-hmm. What, what, briefly, what's a, what, how many rounds,

how many minutes? Mm, I'll do like the first five is Nwaza. Mm-hmm. I like warming up with Nwaza. Mm-hmm. Right? And it's a great way

to gauge the newcomers in the room. Mm. Always. Because if they start ripping and roaring going nuts tachi waza and they're fresh they're gonna hurt somebody right right right right if they're ripping and roaring spazzing out in the waza you at least have a mark now this person is x y and z

and you sort of build that profile right and you call you decide which which enforcer you're gonna dispatch yeah yeah that's right that's right so those are some ideas when it comes to the round numbers it's like you five minutes of three we'll do 15 20 minutes in the waza and i understand like that's not usually the most beneficial use of your time like if we're doing competition training we should be training competition judo nirwaza right because there's so many bjj guys in the room also it's like all right do nirwaza however you feel just don't knee wrestle let's start off in this position let's start off in that position talk to your partner right continuity in the role and i'll guide sort of the practice a little bit the rounds right right and then i'll make specific matches sometimes

if it's needed i see all right but if it's like a yellow belt yellow belt round they'll ask me hey can we can we work out together and i'm like yeah sure i see and then we go into tachiwaza usually because there's too many people in the room the first five rounds of tachiwaza are two minutes a piece now oh wow okay okay that way yeah we rotate and people start getting right and then by the time those two sets are done people a lot of people are tired yeah yeah yeah and they're sitting now therefore the people who want to do the longer rounds now have the opportunity to do the longer rounds oh that's a good idea that's a good yeah so it's kind of scaled right and then sometimes

it's like it's a four minute round sometimes. Sometimes it's a four-and-a-half. Sometimes it's three. Yeah. Usually the first five rounds of Tachibana are two-minute pieces. I see. I see. Yeah. That's a good way. Yeah, and then Rundori happens. Rundori.

We just kind of let it run. I see. And then do you guys do – well, I know how you guys do it. But do you guys do organized cool down or anything like that? Bow out? Not really. No? Right. We do a bow out.

And a lot of the times we did a bow out between the first 7 to 8 p.m. class and then the 8 to 9 where it's all Rondori. Right, right. So we'll segment it so then I could tell the beginners, all right, guys, go home. You guys can't do Rondori yet look forward to it it's the best thing about judo but you guys haven't proven that it's safe enough for you guys to do it right right i'm trying to protect you from yourself and i'm trying to protect you from other beginners in the room that could potentially get injured right no we're ready no we're ready it's like you may be ready but it takes that one time you land on your head to get a concussion right yeah it takes that one time you land on your head to get a concussion. Right, yeah. It takes that one time someone chops at your knee to tear your ACL.

So until you can prove to me and your peers that you're safe to go live, you can't do it yet. But look forward to it because it's the best part of judo. Right. So then the battle happens. You have to be invited into that second class. And now we're doing Rondori, kind of. That's like a full-on non-stop run dory yeah yeah but then sometimes there's a lot of people in the room

who are capable of it and then we'll just go right into it right all right guys we're not doing about we're just going to roll into the eight to nine right bow off if you want to go home because you have dinner family whatever yeah yeah that happens too And a lot of guys end up sitting on the sidelines. So it's like you don't have to do all the Rondori rounds. There is no pressure to do all the Rondori rounds. And it really is go at your own pace situation. Yeah. Right?

But if someone tells me they want to compete and they want to train, they're sitting out 60%, 70% of the rounds. And we're like, dude, you're telling me one thing. You're doing another thing. Right. Right? You're telling me you want to lose weight. and then you're getting out there for three rounds and you're sitting out the rest of the time and hanging out you're not going to achieve your goals you know come on get out there right and then the beginners can watch and then

they get inspired you know they keep coming back beginners watch get inspired yeah so that's another you know important little thing that we do and And then at the end, you know, you stretch and you cool down, right? No, like, and then sometimes I'll do drilling. If someone, if there's like sort of an egregious thing that's happening across the board, everyone's making this one mistake, then I'm like, all right, we're gonna, right?

Just work on that, yeah. So that's a good overview of how practices are run at kbi i think it's a good way i've got i mean i've gone to a lot of dojos and kbi i think the kbs way of doing thing is pretty efficient and everyone can can get a lot out of it different things you know so yeah so i mean you don't have to follow this format but you can take some ideas from it um so take ideas from you know there's things that do right and things that do wrong you know from different lenses yeah exactly you know i think three guests last night and then you know have i followed up with them today no i haven't i probably should have yeah it's like it depends

you know uh but yeah you do what you can and then yeah hopefully you guys take some yeah ideas from me and if you're part of the discord you could definitely ask me direct questions about how yeah how to do x y and z and that's right gotta be great cool yeah all right anything else no man cool yeah yeah for listening as usual you know please reach out to us find us on instagram find us on patreon right there's a link to it that's right down below and yeah join us it'd be great if you can support us and you know join us for on the discord and then have a chat you know and uh thanks for listening thanks for your support and uh we'll see you guys in the next episode