The Shintaro Higashi Show - Judo and Recovery

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Judo, as well as other grappling arts, is quite taxing to your body, and it is commonplace to hear grapplers complain about their sore bodies. Therefore, it is very important to have a good recovery routine not only to protect yourself from injuries but also to improve your skills by training more. In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss how they recover from Judo and make suggestions on what you can incorporate into your recovery routine. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Have you ever been to judo and got a little banged up and wonder to yourself like I need to recover a little bit Never have that peter. Of course all the time like last for three days, man. I'm so sore everywhere Yeah, eugene. You guys know eugene my cousin who's a physical therapist He came to judo at night for the first time in a long time and he threw down And there was a target on his back. Everybody wanted to work out with him So all our brown nuts and black belts like eugene eugene so he had so many rounds lined up and i was kind of feeding into the frenzy a little bit too i was like hey greg go get eugene hey george go get eugene hey hey go this is a great chance to work out he doesn't usually

come recently you know so he had like a million different rounds with variety of people now he's going to be banged up today that's right how do you recover from that exactly that's the topic today and this was a question from one of our supporters on patreon augustine he goes how do you guys recover from training i'm constantly sore and tired i have a friend who claims going to the sauna helps him recover. Yeah. Interesting. He goes several times per month. However, sauna membership is expensive where I live.

I mean, yeah, you got to pay for the gym or something, right? So I like to hear other people's experiences while recovering from training. Yep. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Sauna is great. I like sauna. Joe Rogan is a huge proponent for Yeah. Love it. Love it. Sauna's great. I like sauna. Joe Rogan's a huge proponent for that.

Does it work? Does it work? I mean, you know, there's a science of heat shock proteins and it is relaxing. And, you know, there's a level of like taking care of yourself

that has a mental effect on this recovery thing. I like, oh, I'm doing the right things. Better doing that than going out drinking. Oh, definitely. You know, and there's like, oh man, I took care of things. Better doing that than going out drinking. Oh, definitely. There's like, oh, man, I took care of myself this weekend.

I went to the sauna. I'm definitely feeling more refreshed on Monday, whether it's placebo or not. I don't really know. I'm not like an expert in this field. But let me tell you, sauna is expensive. And essentially at the end of the day, you're heating up your body. Why not do that in the shower? Why not do that in a bath?

Hot bath, cold bath. Essentially, at the end of the day, you're heating up your body. Why not do that in the shower? Why not do that in a bath? Hot bath, cold bath. Those are tools that you can use to sort of help aid recovery. Right. And it's sort of what you make of it. Yes, there's a lot of science behind it. But it's, let's just say, for instance, cold baths, cold ice baths. People are diehards when it comes to like the Wim hof method and you know being in this really cold environment but if you absolutely hate it why would you do it right and then you're

dreading it you know after practice going to the trainer's room or going to a place right and it like takes away from the quality of your life and you know you're doing judo because you love it and now all of a sudden you hate it because you have to go to the cold baths yeah like what's the you know you gotta do a cost-benefit analysis right right you know what i mean so i i guess in that sense i love a hot shower or i guess in the summer cold shower after practice showers yeah yeah after after a hot day you know so i guess in that way whatever makes you feel good i guess yeah and i love so how about more systematic approach like eating dieting and stretching and all that they're all linked together that's the thing they're all recovery tools so you have to think of it in a way where you have sort of a tool bag or a tool box why did i say tool bag that makes sense maybe i have a purse with tools in it so you have a tool box and you're

picketing selecting right the staples this is like the thing that's like oh maybe yes maybe no like eating that's like goes beyond like if you're not eating properly you're not recovering from your workouts right right so the basics of it is after you work out your glycogen stores are depleted because your body stores carbohydrates in your muscles in form of glycogen therefore you eat carbs to replenish those stores if you eat too much you're going to store that as fat eat carbs eat protein amino acids building block of muscle right this is like bio 101 from ninth grade. All right.

Mr. Zerlip would be proud if he. And eat your veggies too, I guess, for all the, you know, what do you call them? Magnesium, whatever. Yeah, vegetables. Yeah. The fiber content in the micronutrients and vitamins, that's the thing about the.

But this isn't an episode about diet. Diet gets overly complicated, but at the end of the day, eat your carbs to replenish your glycogen stores because your muscle runs on this stuff. Eat the protein to build up the muscles that you've broken down. You definitely need fats. Eat greens, fiber, micronutrients, and vitamins. Done. That's right. Don't overeat. There's the right amount that you can eat. That's eat greens, fiber, micronutrients, and vitamins. Done. That's right. Don't overeat.

There's the right amount that you can eat. That's it. Diet, closely linked to sleep. Right. If you don't sleep, you can't recover. You just recover. Your body builds. Your natural testosterone and HEH goes up during your sleep.

That's why your testosterone levels are the highest at night. In the morning, sorry. When you wake up. I did not know that. Oh, I did not know that. Yep. So if you want your testosterone checked, you the highest at night in the morning sorry when you wake up that oh i did not know that yep so if you want your testosterone checked you do it first thing in the morning oh i see i see yeah it fluctuates if you didn't get good sleep it'll be lower in the morning so if you want to raise your testosterone levels naturally you want to get the optimal amount of sleep every single night i mean really the sleep is so i think in this busy modern society like you know sleep is so often overlooked and often overlooked yeah and you know we're probably not sleeping right you know uh there's historical of course i'm not a sleep scientist i gotta like

this is the sensei syndrome people i say stuff and people are like wow this must be true it's like i don't i'm just like kind of reading stuff on the internet right this is nothing like there's no science behind it history books have said people have slept on a biphasic cycle i have read that too i think that was like a new york times article about it yeah because back in the day right throughout, like we didn't have electricity. There's not really a source of like, you know, candlelight fuel was very, it's a limited resource, right? You can't, it's not unlimited. You know, it's not like you go down the store and get butane or whatever it is, right? So the night falls and it becomes dark. And all of a sudden, you know, you go to bed.

That's what you do. Six o'clock, seven o'clock, you sleep with the sun going down. Not much you can do then. Not much you can do. What are you going to do? Stay up and play with your iPad? There was no iPad back then. Majority of the history, we didn't have these luxuries that emit blue light.

Right. So now you go to bed at that time and you have a first sleep for like five or six hours. You wake up and then you do stuff for like one or two hours eat food hang out by the fireplace you know you probably have to wake up to you know start the fire again because by that time it'll probably gone yeah cuddle with your dog or your wife or husband or boyfriend or whatever it is yeah and that's what you do slip again yeah you fall asleep the biphasic sleep cycle is a thing uh and then you you wake up at sun uh sunrise yeah sunrise yeah yeah the sun comes up and you're like oh man the sun is up i'm ready to go yeah let's make use of the sun

that's how it was so now we just to try to do one sleep eight hours I guess yeah but most of us don't get eight hours I did not get eight hours today yeah I was up late watching Ozarks last night yeah it was like

the season four and I was like I had one episode to go and I was like you might as well finish it yeah dude

I was right at the cusp it was 11.30 I was like I could watch one more I'll go to sleep at 12.30

but I'm not watching it straight through right I'm like watching it could watch one more. I'll go to sleep at 12.30. But I'm not watching it straight through, right? I'm like, watching it, watching it, pause it. You know, haha, text or something. Watching it like, well, that's something interesting I should Google, you know? What's Jason Bateman doing right now? And then, you know, before, yeah, it's 1 o'clock and I got up at 8 today. It's like 7 hours. It's like not optimal. Not bad i guess yeah but recovery diet sleep

those are the two biggest biggest ones right so how about the soreness aspect like it does not maybe more like it's an active form of recovery i guess like stretching recovery yeah so light exercise is always sort of a thing, right? If your legs are sore from a very, very heavy leg day, if you go into the gym, you don't want to blast your legs again, but maybe you do. But, you know, riding the bike or taking a walk

or doing this active recovery, that's like very, very supported by science now. So going in there and, you know, getting massage is another tool. Do I believe in massage as the thing that's going to take you to this this level to the next stratosphere no i don't believe that and i don't believe there's any sort of uh what is the word panacea yeah or something that's a catalyst going to tell you yeah into the next stratosphere i don't believe in any of that kind of stuff you

know it's like take this one thing and you'll be 20 stronger no it's a combination of a lot of little small things that add up right eating perfect sleeping right maybe i get a massage maybe i take a nice bath right maybe i take one day to sort of reduce my intensity in the practice that combination is the stuff that's going to propel you from week to week month to month right here so you can constantly constantly make gains in the judo room, wrestling room, jiu-jitsu room, boxing ring, you name it. That's the idea. I wish I knew this when I was younger. So you know that you mentioned decreasing the intensity during practice to recover so i think i when i was younger i didn't it was the idea that i had to be 100 every practice was drilled into me

that like i felt guilty taking a day off or something like that but now i'm starting to change because i mean first of all my body can't handle that anymore. But how about what do you think about rest days and rest practice, I guess, as you talked about? I think one of the most underutilized methods of recovery is just reducing intensity in the room. Reducing intensity in the room. So if you're feeling banged up on a, I don't know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday practice, and you lifted weights twice already, Friday rolls around, you're like, wake up and you feel like a mummy, like, oh my God, my back is achy, I can't do it. I'm going to take a day off. Right, right.

So you're disengaging from what you're truly trying to get better at. And the goal with a lot of this stuff, yes, competition performance, but it's skill acquisition. And if you're not around the skills, you're not going to gain those skills and the knowledge. So I'm achy, I'm banged up. I'm going to go to practice anyway, and I'm going to be disciplined enough not to get roped into this rivalry of like, oh, I want to go with that guy, or that guy's asking me to work out, or this girl is going to try to strangle me, and I really want to freaking go after her today,, all these different things. Just to say, today I feel banged up.

I'm here to work out light and stick into it. Making a drill-based thing, showing up, learning, trying those skills. And if we're doing specifically the judo, everyone's doing Rondori, you're drilling on the side. Or saying to the person i'm going light today and actually going like yeah yeah this guy did this the other day and then there was a he's like hey let's go light and then ah dope on the guy and dude i was so frustrated and annoyed i was like you are a liar i didn't say that i was a little bit nicer about it but like i was like man this guy just

straight up lied and sandbagged this thing and dove onto this guy you know like what the hell man yeah exactly you know it requires discipline to take a rest requires discipline yeah and people associate training with intensity i'm going in going. I go hard all the time. That's not the best way. I've seen countless Olympians at training camps. I'm going to sit this one out. We're only training with certain people. Teddy Renner was an example. I've been in the room with Teddy Renner, who's a judo legend. Only going with select three or four people who are half his size because he's trying to work on footwork and handwork oh interesting so you would assume i can't remember which tournament was it's like a brazil grand slam or something or one of those guys i was very excited to be in the room

with the best guys in the world and i was assuming teddy veneer is gonna go slamming his face into people and go after and i was like man i can't is gonna go slamming his face into people and go after and i was like man i can't wait to see him at practice tonight i just want to like watch and be in the presence of this guy kicking the shit out of everyone yeah he literally said no to everybody he was like everyone wants to go with him right no and he had three lightweights from the french team from the french team oh okay and i feel like they didn't even compete like they were there just for him and his coach and he was like okay scurrying around like attacking the feet doing this and the society and then moving that and that and it was a good like people were doing

randori it's a training camp practice it's like a two-hour thing 99 of it is randori all right guys warm up 10 minutes people doing Uchikomi alright guys we're gonna put you know 20 rounds on the clock at 6 minutes a piece grab partner and go

you know and then you do the whole thing of like hey you wanna do the first round you wanna do second I'm already booked let's go third hands up if you don't have a partner

looking around you know there's a couple guys no one wants to work out with and Teddy Renner who's on the side working at a reduced intensity

with three of his guys with a coach standing on the side. Like, that's a good practice. Right. Maybe he was recovering from the tournament the day before. Right. Or maybe working on something that didn't go well in the tournament, things like that. Yeah. I think during that week, and of course you have to look at sort of his life cycle of as an athlete too right right this is sort of dead in the center of when he was at

his peak right because this is already like 10 years ago and uh i remember during that week you know everyone's staying at the same hotel everyone's training at the same you know convention center or whatever it is there's 100 people on the mat 200 people on the mat and during that week i probably saw him go hard on dory maybe on like a wednesday or something that was it so monday tuesday it was like very very skill oriented drill oriented didn't do any hard rounds and i think wednesday he threw down hard and started blasting these dudes you know and it was like mostly tier two tier three guys and then he would sporadically enter you know i mean i guess you don't want to like go give away your best stuff to your rivals or something if you're at the top, right?

I don't really know the psychology because I was never that, at the top like that, you know. I was just kind of good enough to be in the room. Right, right. I see. Humble brag. Humble brag. I know. You're practicing with Teddy, man.

I know you're on the you're practicing with Teddy man but then so now he's tapering down and then Thursday Friday and he's competing the next week I can't remember if there's a competition but that was sort of his thing and I think everyone could take a page out of that book you know if you just don't go to practice then you're not learning anything right and you're missing out on a lot of the stuff that maybe you could potentially gain, especially if you have a great instructor and they have interesting things to say. You know, Ryu didn't come to judo yesterday because he had a work thing, and we went sort of deep into righty-lefty stuff. Which is his focusing on?

Yeah. I mean, maybe he is, maybe he's not, but I'm not going to reteach that exact same lesson again. Right, right. You know, and he's going to show up on Wednesday and be likeach that exact same lesson again right right you know he's going to show up on wednesday and be like hey guys what did you learn on monday and people will be like oh i think it was this i think it was a sensei can you show me i'm like no time i'm doing something else yeah so that lesson is lost forever in the ether oh yeah yeah i see so it could be

you know training could be used as a form of rest and active learning. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, if you're completely mentally exhausted and beat and you can't function anymore and work is crazy, you know, taking sort of, I don't want to say a mental health day, but a mental health day. You know, and just not going to practice, but make sure you let your sense of know because you're still committed to the thing. Right. Yeah. That's completely fine too yeah like i said there is not people think oh i gotta go every day i gotta train 100 every day that's definitely definitely not the case you're training for the olympics and you're 22 years old and it's a hard sprint from 2022 to 2024 to qualify for the olympics

right that's a different story yeah but to 2024 to qualify for the Olympics. That's a different story. But majority of the people who are listening to this are not that. Nor do they want to be that. Because it sounds very glamorous, but it's not. It's tough. It's very tough. And it comes at a severe, severe cost.

And when you're listening to some of the best athletes in the world who've gone through the ringer that's what they'll tell you you got to go hard every day i train you know and it's mostly not like uh i don't want to say virtue signaling but it's this thing of like i'm tough i'm gritty i'm the best because i work really hard yeah and so when people ask about recovery it's like i don't take no rest days it's like what about you know your recovery tool bag or whatever it is like oh no i just freaking right yeah i just so it's not very yeah and some people they can get away with that but those are the exceptions there's people who are exceptions to the rule i've seen freak athletes yeah genetically gifted and they just recover so fast yeah genetic freaks yeah good train all day train all night needs five hours of

sleep optimal no matter what they eat they're just shredded to the bone just i don't know generation of generation of i guess like breeding you know my daddy was an olympian my mommy was an olympian my grandpa was an athlete i'm just a freak athlete in every way right ask that guy about recovery or training and that guy will have a completely different perspective right yeah naturally you know sort of average genetic makeup human that sort of obtained these skills so you have to you have to know yourself like know your body and then build up your own toolbox maybe sauna is a good way you know you have some disposable income to join a gym with a nice sauna then you go for it and if it works or you just you just like taking a mental health break as you spoke yeah that's a tool it's a tool yeah stretching is a tool you

know i heard this story it's like i remember martin rooney was one of my uh mentors early on he was a strength and conditioning coach physical therapist i was like should i stretch my hamstrings you know i feel my hamstrings are tight and he goes let me tell you a story about a sprinter that always thought his hamstrings are tight ah stretch stretch stretch took off 100 meters at a big important event towards hamstring what was different that he did this competition that he never did before stretching his hamstrings are tight for a reason too because you're naturally body naturally compensates for certain movements because he was using a lot of i see i see so even

stretching it's not just a one-size-fits-all like oh just stretching you'll be fine So even stretching, it's not just a one-size-fits-all, like, oh, just stretch and you'll be fine. That's interesting. I never thought of it that way. Yeah. We're designed to do asymmetrical movements in judo. Turn to one way. And I have a conversation about this with Eugene yesterday. Yeah.

Eventually we'll have him on. Yeah. I see. Yeah. So recovery is very important. And, you know, massage for me, I love massages. Yeah. So it's like sometimes you know at

the end of a heavy lifting week and training week you know i want to get in and get a massage you know it's good for me to kind of wind down and i think mentally i get something from it yeah i relax it's quiet i used to do that a lot too in new york city i'm yeah are there super physiological benefits of it? No It just feels nice It feels good Maybe that feel good moment is good enough to propel me For the next two or three days And say you know what I'm training hard on Monday Or it's Friday

You know what I could push through a little bit I'm fatigued but if I push through hard I'm going to get a massage on Sunday Tell my dad I'm going to the gym And go to the massage place anyway. Who knows, right? That's right. Yeah, so we cover a lot of topics.

Again, it's a toolbox. You have to understand your body, know your body, use the appropriate tools from your box. Don't be afraid to take a break. But try to stay engaged in the sport that's the key and that's my thing too if I'm showing up at the dojo and I'm committed to your growth and your learning

I expect to kind of get the same commitment back right I see the dollars that you pay the dojo is not enough for me to commit because it's small compared to how i'm invested in it right right right right so if i'm teaching you i want you to be engaged and if you're hurting if you're tired you're fatigued i'm not going to say i'll tough it out but stay engaged calm so you could still learn if you can't do because

your arm hurts do something else and then still learn from me because i'm committed i'm here yeah that's right engagement yeah and then communicate with me about it that's the idea cool yeah and talk yeah talk to other people around you your sensei other gym members to you know how they recover to get some ideas yep all right um that's it anything else no thank you very much for listening to me rant about recovery thank you guys uh thank you peter for being here as usual yeah thank you shintaro as per usual and uh stay thanks for listening everyone and stay tuned for the next episode