The Shintaro Higashi Show - Judo Drills

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

The traditional Judo training doesn't involve a whole lot of drills. It usually starts with a warm-up, standing uchikomi's, moving uchikomi's, and maybe 3-person uchikomi's, then randori. Does Judo training need to be as repetitive? Can we incorporate some fun and effective drills to engage people better? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter explore the idea of Judo drills that may make your Judo practice more fun and exciting. 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!

Welcome to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Before our main show, I just want to give a quick shout out to our official sponsor, LeVon. Thanks for your support, LeVon. And I hope you guys enjoy the show. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Today, we're going to talk a little about judo drills. Drilling in judo, what things you can do for it to be fun, safe, all that stuff, improve your judo game. things you can do for it to be fun,

safe, all that stuff, improve your judo game. I think, yeah, so like, in a traditional judo school, there's not much like, not many drills. You do standing ochikomis and then moving ochikomis and then, right? Yeah, three-person ochikomi, nagakomi, that's it, right? Yeah.

So, what kind of, you're bringing some modern drills into the game now, right? Modern drills, yeah. And, you know, some of the stuff that I sort of created on my own, right? Yeah. For instance, like a grip fighting game. Okay.

How does that work? So right versus right. Yeah. You don't want to reach with your right hand, right? It's left hand, right? Left hand sleeve, left hand lapel. And then you move on. Those are the first two points of contact generally. And then every now and then you put two

hands on at the same time, sleeve and lapel at the same time. So those are the main three points of contact that you want to gain first. If you reach out and grab that sleeve, then you can put the second hand on a lapel, right? So you give a point for each. You touch the sleeve one point, touch the lapel one point, and then two hands on at the same time is also a point. Yeah. Okay? Notice I said left-hand sleeve, left-hand lapel. Yeah. My left angle

is to your left-hand sleeve. My left angle is to the left-hand lapel. Okay? Not right-hand to their sleeve, right-hand to their lapel, because that's the wrong thing to do if you're grip fighting right side versus right side. Right. So if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you should look up grip fighting judo 101, Shintaro Higashi on YouTube.

Right. Now you know what I'm talking about. So now that's a game. Right versus right. I have a specific goal. You have a specific goal. And now we're going to play. Okay.

Now, when you do this kind of coordination drill, it's much safer. It preserves your hands too, right? Yeah. Because you're just coordinating touching the sleeve and the lookout, right? Yeah. So you have a left hand is sort of offense first, right hand's defense first, you know? So now you're playing this game, touching, touching, and now you can sort of game it a little bit. And there's strategies that come from this game, making it look like I'm going to go for that sleeve and then touching that lapel, right?

Making it look like I'm left hand, left hand coming and two hands at the same time, right? Baiting this lapel, as they're coming, I take a step back, I parry it, and then touch my left hand on the collar. Right, right. Just like you would in grip fight. Yeah. And then you kind of make it a game where it's like, hey, guys, play this back and forth, right? If you circle to your left, that sleeve hand and lapel hand is going to get closer, right?

Make sure this side is defended. Come back and forth, play side to side, parry the hand as it comes to you, and then it becomes a game. But the most important thing, doing a drill like that, is letting everyone know, hey man, this is a game for skill acquisition. It's not a win-lose game. It's not a win-at-all-cost thing. If your hands are flying and you poke someone in the eye, I'm going eye i'm gonna ask you to sit out because you're missing the whole point yeah yeah you know what i mean we did this the other day i was like i cannot stress this enough right really you have to tell people that yeah and then the second game in one guy like was

flying with his hands and poked the guy in the eye and i was like oh man you have to sit out sit out yeah yeah because that's not the point of the game we're not trying to get a champion here right people get overly competitive with this stuff it's like why are you getting competitive the more competitive you get the less you're going to learn here right right because you're trying to slow it down and find ways to game this thing you gotta look for strategy you have to devise strategies on the fly if you're already a pretty good grip fighter, you kind of already know the strategies. You know what I mean?

So like you're kind of doing it in real time. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? So this is an example of a game. That's the right versus right. You can do the same thing right versus left. The most important initial hand is going to be that cob.

Right? Yeah. So protecting it, touching that collar hand. Faking, parrying it, touching that hand. Right? As the hand's coming, you parry with the other hand and put that hand on it's just like a quick back and forth game like kind of like a warm-up game yeah you know what i mean so you do when do you do this in the beginning in the beginning yeah i use it as a warm-up right i see i see this is better than doing jumping jacks or jogging around the mat you know yeah i see i see and if you use this as sort of a warm-up drills like all right guys

go right now is not to win or gain points or rack up any of this stuff it's just to get moving right of us are warm we came from a job you're sitting on the subway yeah right like it's nice and easy as if you're like walking out the door for like light cardio. Go for a walk on Saturday. The first mile you get a jog. Yeah. You know. Right.

13 minute mile. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You start slow. Nice. Yeah.

This is the pace that I want you guys to do it. Touch, touch, here, move back and forth. Yeah. Right. And then don't escalate it. You don't bang. Okay. All right. Pick up the pace a little bit.

You know, three or four rounds in, people can start moving a little bit more. Right, right. Right? What else do you do? So I'll do this game with the hand where you try to break the person's balance. Oh, yeah, I love that game.

Yeah, that's a great game. Yeah, it's a game. Yeah, so that's a good drill. That's like a beginner, like a warm-up game too. Right. Like giving the right amount of push and pull at the right time. Yeah. So for those of you who don't know what game I'm talking

about, you're standing directly in front of each other, arms length. So you can reach out and touch the other person's shoulder. Yeah. And you can only move your hands back and forth so you can get a push up motion. Yeah. And then you could slap each other's hands, high five. Right? And then try to make them take a step

forward or backwards yeah so your feet are planted if you're the first person to move their feet like even by like a centimeter

yeah and again this is not a competitive game if you're in the dojo and someone goes nuts doing this thing you gotta that person gets a flag

right there's like a orange flag that like gets signaled like hey man you have to stop being overly competitive right there's like a orange flag that like gets signal like hey man you have to stop being overly competitive right it's a good way to kind of figure out how people are i guess in general personality-wise yeah yeah it gets more competitive yeah and then like making it look like you come in and then they go to push back and then you you really right you know and then there's other like levels of this game too like so going and

then pulling one hand back right and kind of generally like knocks and tilts them a little bit and then you go two hands things like there's a fun game it really is a fun game right you know even like sumo is a great game oh you play you play sumo with adults too no i mean i have but it's very dangerous right so you gotta kind of go away where it's like yeah you gotta like really be like all right man like this is not you know a competitive thing i wouldn't do if i were you guys i have done in like a fun setting kids with kids this could be fun you're saying it's dangerous for kids too it's all but we have a bunch of drills there okay yeah so now you could do things like, all right,

if you're touching sleeve, lapel, right? Yeah. And then two hands on, right, first right. And if you accumulate five points or whatever it is,

then what you want to be able to do is we know that you can put your left hand on collar sleeve, collar sleeve pretty good, right? Yeah.

And now what you want to do is touch their back with the right hand. And then when you get that, it's over. So now you can really gamify it. Right? First five with the points. And then once you rack to do is touch their back with the right hand. And then when you get that, it's over. So now you can really gamify it. First five with the points. And then once you rack up those five points,

which means you're able to put the initiative on first. So theoretically, if you're gripping the gi, you have that gi. So now it's all about the hand over the back. And then I have to emphasize this again when I do this drill, if someone close fist throws their hand over and punches someone in the ear, you're getting sent home. You're doing two of those, you're out of the dojo. No questions. Right. So, you know, people respond to that too. Right. And then I'm walking around, Hey man, you know, relax, bring it down. You know, don't go so crazy.

Why are you going nuts? And I'll think on the map and I'll say their name. Hey, yeah. Hey, you know, and then it's like, map and I'll say their name hey yeah hey you know and then it's like hey man it gets to a point sometimes I pull them aside like listen man if you can't do this safely

you can't do this at all yeah and people usually respond to that right you know so these drills are so far have focused on

grip fighting do you have do you have drills that address other aspects of judo like maybe the throws yeah let's start off

50-50 position and let's gain position right so like cutting the sleeve squeezing this pushing pulling faking

right cutting this side cutting this hand so the goal is two versus two 50-50 the goal is to take the hand off

and force two on one right without disengaging your hands so you have a sleeve and a lapel right versus right yeah the goal is to take one of their hands off without letting go with your your hands that's a great game i we do this shit all the time you know right right and that's a great game to like understand position and how to take the hand off. And then you could introduce like, okay, you could throw feint.

But the moment someone hooked on Osorio, I'm like, Johnny, what did I say? No attacking, right? And no assholes will throw Osorio in there. And then it's like, you have to listen to me, man. This is a safety thing.

If you did that and you tip them over and there's an issue with space. If we have 40 guys in the room and it's a small New York City dojo with New York City rent, there's only 1,000 square feet of space. So if we're all doing this game at once and if one person gets caught

on Soto and he falls, it's like, no big deal. But he lands on someone else's leg, that person's getting injured. That's why everybody has to follow the rules. Yeah. Oh, yeah, no, it's not a big deal. I got this hand off and I went, oh, gee, ha, ha, ha. No, because you do it, that person does it,

that person does it. If three people in the room do it, now all of a sudden it's chaos. Right, right. You can't do this drill. And what is the alternative? We're going to have eight guys on the mat doing this drill at a time

and everyone's going to stand outside. That's boring,'s boring yeah no we can't have that kind of downtime too much so everyone has to be engaged at the same time in a safe way and then right versus left similarly you're trying to gain position what is the winning position right my frame's better and then shoulder turn right stronger pulse shoulder turn yeah so now we're playing that game and then you know you introduce like feints stuff like this you could faint and then another one like this you could faint and snap them oh right but this is a little bit later than in the practice where it's like you're warm you don't want to snap somebody down and they've been sitting all day in office if you do that to me i'll throw my my back out. Right. And I'm injured for a week. I can't

do anything for a week. Why? You just got hurt? No, I throw my back out. Oh. If I throw my back out, dude, it's like two or three days that I'm immobile. Yeah. I mean, it's very important.

So you're like adding stuff onto it and then you try to gamify it and then it's not like a repetition like Ushikomi. Yeah, so now you're playing this game of like trying to improve position, like there's a back and forth, there's a goal, and then you're doing it in sort of a non-cooperative combative way where there's conflict, right?

Yeah. Without the risk of getting thrown. Yeah. So if someone improves position, right? They're gaining position, gaining position right versus left, and your shoulder's being turned. Normally, the first reaction is like, oh, shit, I got to get out of here. I'm about to get thrown.

And their hips go back. They get defensive. They're thinking about doing a shitty job saying, I can do a bailout throw, right? But because there's no throwing, you could stay in the pocket and try to fight back for position yeah right and then that's when someone goes for a tile and i will yell at that person yeah because you're not getting the point of the drill right yeah it's okay to get out gripped and down then there's just regular old grip fighting yeah it's a little bit more intense you probably should be warm by then right and then

you know you do like a three-person uchikomi where you're doing ochi and then you try to drive the person to the other end of the mat you know that kind of thing or when you're taking it you're kind of just doing this kind of a shifting countering ochi thing so the guy gets a feel of like keeping yourself stabilized through that drive. So that's another drill that I really like to do with some of these guys. It depends who's in the room too. A white belt's not really going to get much out of that. Yeah, they got to learn the basics first.

Yeah, but if we got five or six Ochigari guys and they want to go into a competition or something, that's a drill that we might do. Yeah. want to go to a competition or something that's the drill that we might do it seems like it's more like your drills are more like close to to Randori in a way like you're trying to simulate a lot of these situations that arise during a

competitive match or Randori in a safe way because just doing what you call me, you don't get exposed to it. It's not really a drill. I said drill, but these are drill games, right? Because with a game,

it comes an objective, right? And there's some kind of resistance. And you have to systematically, tactically overcome these resistance and what's the word? Not hazards, but obstacles. Obstacles, yeah. And then, you know, you take throwing out of it, and now it's a lot safer.

Right, right. Right. And then, you know, obviously, like, Rondori is a game. The Wiles is a game. But then you limit some of the stuff, right? All right, we're going to start in half guard today or leg extraction position. Or one person starts, or you can do A man, B man, or A woman, B woman. A, whatever you identify with, B, whatever you identify with.

Right? Where it's like person A does offense, person B does defense. Oh, you do that too? Not often. More similar? Not often because now all of a sudden it's a little bit more dangerous because the offensive person feels like, oh, I should be able to throw this guy. Ah, okay.

Yeah, but that is a game that you can play. Right. And then, obviously, the regular drills of like, all right, guys, grip up. Person A, right? Faint, advantage, two or three combinations. Faint, advantage, two or three combinations. Or trying to gain advantage right away is difficult because they're not going to let you.

Yeah. But when you show something, they're reacting to that initial threat. And then you gain position, right? Whether it's like locked up 50-50, I show a turn throw, you throw your hips back, I snap the head down and I cut the hand. Now I'm in winning position. And now I'm going to do a combination where it's like, oh, it's your time. Yeah.

So that is a good drill to be able to do. Right, right. I see. Fake, improve position, two or three moves. Fake, whatever that I just said, and two or three moves. Do you usually show exactly what to do or do you just let people? I'll show examples. Yeah, right guys let me show you an example inside position right versus left okay right we're dead even here gaining the position to this winning position is very difficult because he's pressuring

down on my collar head i'm gonna fake a turn throw and fake a tanya toshi he pulls that leg back to not get a t Toshi. Yeah. That's my opportunity to throw this hand up and shelf it on the collar and then pull that sleeve. So now I'm in winning position. And now the combination I might do is also Ochi-Osono. Quick two step combination. So now I'm going to show it.

Even bang, boom, boom, boom. That's the only thing that you can do. Maybe you don't have an Ochi-Osono. Maybe you want do yeah right yeah maybe you're you don't have an ocho right maybe you want to do right verse right maybe you're a tile person yeah so fit those combinations for what you like to do everyone should know what they like doing and everyone who's taking this class right now probably should have an idea of what technique goes yeah and then i always say if you have no clue what i'm talking about just to pick a pick a black belt or pick a whatever it is and then they're gonna guide you or just drill whatever you know which is okay most

of the time because you have guys who just started judo right right when i say it like that people get it right yeah and then I make a basketball analogy always. Which is? You fake the shot, guy jumps up, you run around him. Right? Just like, yeah, that's very similar to how it works in judo. Yeah. Maybe fake shot, he goes, and then you try to go right, he goes that way, and you cut back and go this way, and then maybe you pass the ball. Yeah big shot. He goes. And then you try to go right. He goes that way.

And then you cut back and go this way. And then maybe you pass the ball. Yeah. Yeah. And then I always say like every single sport has this. Not unique to judo or any other sport. Tennis. That corner, that corner.

And then you bring it back to the other side. Forehand, forehand, backhand. Forcing that backhand on the person. Yeah. Shift and shift it over here. And then you misdirect. Right. So these misdirection stuff these faint into certain things all these things happen in every single sport ever football think you know handoff right yeah guy fakes the handoff and goes that way everyone thinks that guy has the ball and then you shoot it throw it somewhere else

i mean so yeah that kind of thing. So you're saying we shouldn't just focus on the throws themselves. I mean, you can. But everyone focuses on that. And then if you overly focus on that, you lose it. You know, we probably don't do as much focus on that kind of a thing. We probably should also. You know, because it's a balance of both.

But I really want to emphasize this side of judo more than like the actual just doing tile a thousand times in a day doing a hundred throws right because if you can't get the entry or the setups or the context of it you're never going to get right right that way little by little over time you can understand the general strategy and then hone in on making your individual throws better over time. So that's my sort of philosophy slash approach always. And it's safer that way. Because if I am forcing Osorigari every single time and then slamming into that knee and slamming into the guy over and over as hard as I can and initial attack is good. slamming into the guy over and over as hard as I can.

And initial attack is good. Like you really want like a guy that's been doing that, doing judo with a guy that's only been drilling Taniyatoshi. Yeah. Yeah. Figure out how. Right. We try to slam each other.

It just doesn't work that way. You know, so contextual judo, positional judo, you know, that's the stuff that I'm really, really, you know, I'm always trying to push that right it makes sense and then you can get it becomes more of a game yeah you know you could do games like this like uh fainting fainting advantage advantage and when you have two hands advantage pull their head down and make their hands touch the floor you know that's a little bit more like intense yeah right or even same idea like gripping gripping gripping out gripping once you get out gripped you know the person's snapping the head down and like gaining position showing

face and the person losing position has to do a bailout throw oh you even like put that in the bailout throw into the game that's a drill that i like doing a lot with these guys uh you know and you got to alternate between drops, Senagi, Tomonage, and Sumi, or whatever it is, because if you just do the same one bailout all the time, it's easy to anticipate and choke them. So that's a great game that I

like, or that's more of a drill. You know what I mean? And then it's not like you're going for the hardest Tomonage of your life, or hardest Senagi. You're just feeling what it's like to be losing in position and doing an attack off of that losing position to get out of there. Yeah.

So you get practice. And then you'll catch a lot of guys with this too. And then the person taking it knows it's coming, so that drop is a little bit less dangerous. And it's okay if the throw doesn't work because the goal, the objective is to get out of there. Yeah.

So the point is to expose your students in a lot of these situations without the risk of injury. Yeah. Because traditionally people would experience all of this through Rondori. Yeah. Worst idea ever. That's how it used to be. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. ever. That's how it used to be. Yeah. That's crazy.

Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, there were some interesting ideas for you guys to play around with at your dojo. Anything else? Let's try to put timestamps in there. So bang, bang, bang. So people could like scroll through it and save it.

Can we do that? Yeah. Should we make great? We can. Yeah yeah of course if yeah i feel like a lot of people wanting that yeah the time state without the time stamps like i tried to watch a podcast video a little bit with no time stamps i got like three minutes in i was like yeah it's it's it's right now and maybe i need to find a better way but uh because i do get automatic transcription but someone has to you know create a chapter create chapters basically

but we'll talk we'll talk all right so games and all that stuff have fun doing it tag me if you're doing a fun game on instagram guys spread judo yeah oh yeah put it out there put content on the internet share it's a funny make memes yeah make memes about shintaro don't make me yeah yeah so tag us if you guys have cool like judo videos or drills ideas games then yeah we'll share them on our platform too. Yeah. Cool. All right.

Thanks for listening and we'll see you guys in the next episode. See you guys. Bye.