The Shintaro Higashi Show - Judo Throws for Different Body Types

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

We all have different body types. Some of us are tall; some of us are short; some of us have long limbs; some of us are stocky. Naturally, certain Judo throws work well for certain body types, but not so well for others. How can we know which Judo throws are right for our body types? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter dig deeper into which Judo throws work well for different body types. 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 we're going to talk about judo throws for different body types. This video is sponsored by ShintaroHigashi.com Me. My new website. Go check it out please. Alright, at it now. So this is a suggestion from some of our sponsors on Patreon.

So Musa says so tips for can you guys give up give me some tips for people like me who are really weak and usually have a tough time throwing opponents I think he's his body ties more you know lanky tall yep you know and Roger also chimed in and say how certain he wanted to know what we think about how certain styles

of judo lend themselves to side discrepancies. So it's going to be like different. We kind of

touched on it on an earlier episode about judo strategies, I think, but we'll go into more in-depth

about different body types and all. Yeah. So maybe we'll start with our body types. Yeah. How maybe we'll start with our body types yeah well how did you what's your body type and how did that influence your judo game

so I'm a little bit shorter in my weight category so if I'm 220 I'm about like 220 right now actually I'm 5'9 so if you're fighting internationally you internationally fighting guys 6'2 6'3 I even fought Lucas Kropalik who was a two-time Olympic champion right and he is like 6'5 so I fought those guys and you know theoretically I understand that you have to do like Osoto, Uchimata those techniques are gonna work on a guy like this with a huge height discrepancy and I always like to say if you're within six inches of my height, up or down, then Uchimata can be effective.

That's sort of my gauge. But people who are taller than six inches than me, so five, nine, plus six inches, six, three and above, Uchimata is going to be very difficult to throw. Right, right. Because of the length of their leg. So for those people,

I try to go Ippon Seiragi. Ippon Seiragi, turn throws. And because my hips are already lower than theirs, all I got to do is turn, you know, as opposed to turning and dropping my hips

on someone that's shorter than me. So that's like sort of the basic gist of it. And it's an oversimplified idea because there's lots

of grip fighting things too that happens right if you're taller by six or seven inches and they have much longer arms that are able to push your arms you know knock it out it's very difficult to close that distance right even if you're just doing so getting you know stay on the outside and grabbing their sleeve and then getting proper hand control first where you have two hands on and they have one hand on. That's sort of the optimal place because now they can't create that barrier, which is very, very long. Right, right.

Now you want to be able to move and catch their feet coming forward with inside trips and whatnot. And then unload a turn throw where you load them on your back for like a ippon senagi i see so that's sort of my strategy with taller people right so it's not just like which techniques works it's which strategy works i see so it's like gripping is a huge part of it and then movement and then going underneath them sort of is sort of the next so yeah you know thing so what you're saying is you don't want to just say, oh, you're short, you should do seiyuu nages. Or you're tall, you should do osotogari or uchimata. It's not...

That's wrong. I don't think that's right. I see, I see. And there's a certain truth, right? Like oh, you're tall, you should do uchimata. But you don't have to be... And tall, short is sort of truth, right? Like, oh, you're tall, you should do Uchimata. Yeah. But you don't have to be. And, you know, tall, short is sort of relative, right? I know guys who are like 5'8", thinking to themselves, like, I'm short guy.

Mm-hmm. You know, going against a 6' tall person, that height, 4-inch height difference, it's pretty big. But it's not big enough to where you can't throw the person with Uchimata. Right. You can still throw them with those techniques six foot tall you know not so strong i have dominant hand position i can pull his head down and then hook osoto and run it can i throw that person with osoto absolutely can right absolutely can right i guess you just have to give like there is a little tweaks to the classic versions of the throws to fit your body types eventually.

Where are you trying to be effective? Let's say you're 5'3 and you're a shorter person because the average height is 5'7 or whatever it is. Much lower than me. I'm 5'9. If you're 5'3 and now all of a sudden you're having a hard time in the gym uh you're gonna ask how do i what judo strategy should i do right so now you're gonna compete and you compete in the 60 kilogram division relatively to the people that

you're fighting you're not sure a lot of people your height similar heights right so now that strategy that you've developed in the dojo might not be the best and i used to have this problem when i used to train with a bunch of people who are my height and i would go over the back to pull them down to control for turn throw hurray uchimata things like this now all of a sudden i'm competing uh against much bigger body types who are much taller and now there's not there's a little bit of a disconnect there so yeah i experienced that too i'm not well i'm on the in most dojos i'm on one of the lighter guys so i might uh in through college i developed a strategy to play against

heavier people whenever i go to the competition, I'll get, I wouldn't, I was always uncomfortable playing people around my size. And when I went to New York, I could find a lot more people around my size and I also gained some weight too. That was very different, I remember. Yeah. So say you're a small guy at a dojo,

you're one of the smaller people maybe like bottom 20 or something like this in size right and you know most people are bigger and then now you develop a drop senagi game but no one does drop senagi on you right because you're much taller yeah all of a sudden you're competing in your weight category 66 73 kilograms and now everybody does drop senonagi you've never seen it before you're gonna get caught with it so how would you do that like if you don't have i mean i guess we kind of touched on this and uh no judo desert episode but you're yeah you're the lightest guy no one does seonagi on you how do you get better so when we do sort of the transitional

nirwaza drills, that's when you'll be exposed to these things. So even if people don't do Taniyatoshi, people don't do drop Seinagi, people don't do Tomonagi in the gym, it's like, all right, we're going to drill for a failed Seinagi, failed Tomonagi. That way you're drilling transition.

And the person who's actually doing the technique, the throw, that transition to the ground, they're getting repetitions for doing those techniques. That way, even if you say, okay, green belt's in the low, no tani otoshi, no drop senagi, at least they're exposed to it in a drill setting. So you don't think you necessarily have to practice these during randori? Depends on how far you're going. If you're going to the highest levels, then you have to.

You have to go with people who are going to do it. But if you're trying to fight in the Greenbelt, Brownbelt division, you don't need to. You can minimize this risk by having these drills incorporated in practice. Alright guys, we're doing transition. Fail drop Sanagi, strangle from the top. Don't just drop to your knees, but actually go for the drop Sanagi. You should be able to defend it if you know strangle from the top don't just drop to your knees but actually

go for the drop sanagi you should be able to defend if you know it's coming right right right because it's not like dragging around koji drop sanagi fake fake fake boom right it's not like that it's like moving moving going for a fast drop sanagi you know it's coming you step around it and go for the strength now you have the stimulus of it being exposed to somebody dropping in front of you and if you're at the top level if if you're a top level competitor, you've got to have you've got to join a training camp or something. Yeah, that's a whole different thing. Yeah, right. So that's a way to be exposed to it, you know?

Right. So we talked about like your body type a little shorter than other people and whatnot. How about this? How about strength wise wise there was a part of the question you but you could go you know hand to hand with these guys you're a strong guy right but i've lifted weights my whole life yeah so but so my in my case too i'm not as strong but the strength has never been my uh uh biggest strength i guess yeah so i how would you like compare to even compare to my uh compared to other people who are around my weight i was never the strongest person so how would you back to that well so physicality is a big part of judah right so you know if you

look at a spectrum like really really strong to really really weak the person who has no physical strength is not going to be able to do any of this stuff right right and that's at the extreme levels and persons who's incredibly incredibly incredibly strong is going to have success early on for sure and then you know you take it even further and then you know you take a person that's you know, gorilla strong or like a gorilla even, you're not going to be able to throw that person. A lot of times

it's limited judo skill. And you know they do this comparison all the time. If I were to fight a bear, like a real bear, put him in a gi defang him, like deep claw him and then put a bear that can a real bear, put him in a gi, defang him, like a deep claw him, and then put a bear that can't bite or scratch me, and let's see if I can take the thing

down. You know, maybe, I don't know, but it's going to be very, very hard. Yeah, I'm just imagining. Of course it's going to be hard. Those things are massive. Yeah, so there's limitations. But as you're doing judo, you're going to get stronger, and you're going to get stronger in the right places.

You get stuck Ippon Senagi and you're trying to force it through, force it through. You know, ab crunch and ab crunch and doing the Ippon Senagi over and over, you're going to get stronger. Right? Lifting Ogoshi, Ogoshi, Ogoshi. And your quads are going to get stronger, so you're going to develop these strengths. Right, right. If you're really, really weak, then the Waza might be the thing for you. Because it doesn't require, like, very strong, concentric contractions.

It's more isometric, like locking the legs around, staying on his back and just being isometrically tight. It's equivalent to hanging on a bar or something for a long period of time. You can do this even if you're not very physically strong. I see. It doesn't require lots of coordination and dynamic movement if you're doing coordination yes actually right but it's more flexibility based and things like this as opposed to being standing it's not as explosive yeah yeah and you know i wrote this in the discord chat with these guys but it's hard to throw down uh throw an

athletic person yeah because generally the more athletic are, the better you are at being on your feet. Right. Think about soccer. I mean soccer is a bad example because part of the strategy is falling down. But think about like a soccer player that doesn't want to go down. He's good at staying on their feet. Yeah, they could stay up on their feet. They only go down because to force the fouls or whatever it is. But they're good at staying on their feet yeah they could stay up on their feet they only go down because you know

to force the fouls or whatever it is but they're good at staying on their feet take that person down that's you know spent their whole life running around and jumping around those people are going to be hard to take down no matter what right right rugby players football players

tough to take down that's why the hand positioning stuff really matter. If you think with five years of judo going up against an NFL player and then you guys are locked up 50-50 that you could just turn and throw them

No way. There's no way. That's why group fighting is big. That's why position is big. That's why all this other stuff really really matter you know and physicality is a part of it hate to admit it i so how i dealt with it of course i'll lift and all yeah you should lift you know yeah and but i kind of changed like all all my tokui wazas are i've kind of modified in a way that it uses the body rotation more. Because in that way, I could whip people around me and then kind of compensate for my strength.

And also, once I started training with you, the emphasis on grip fighting. It's like the way you use your body frame to lock to keep the distance and then release that and all that you do that really helps that's some of the some of the little things i've done and then once i started doing that that's when i could my range of judo expanded by a lot i could throw you just nailed it with a turn throw because you're using your whole body yeah the technique right and if it's if you do it properly you turn throw. Because you're using your whole body with the technique, right? And if you do it properly, you can throw much bigger and stronger opponents. Yeah.

But to what discrepancy, right? Can you throw somebody 50 pounds, 100 pounds? No way. That one, I have to catch people. Yeah. And what about a sumo wrestler who's never done judo before? That sumo wrestler knows how to defend takedowns.

Of course, yeah. They've grappled all their life, and they're strong as a bull. It always comes down, not always, but a lot of it does come down to each individual athlete and what the experience and skill level is of that athlete. Some athletes who have limited grappling experience are great athletes. Some not such great athletes but have great grappling experience, have very, very high level of skill.

Those things all have to be taken into account for, you know? Right. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter that much. If you're going into the dojo, loving it, training it,

doing it in a smart way with good teachers, you're going to get good, you know? So it's like not something that you should be sitting around thinking about all the time, I think. Right. You know, get yourself to the dojo and do it.

You got to do the basics. Fundamentals, I guess. Let's talk about tall people too. I get a lot of questions. Tall, lanky people. What are some of the things they could focus on? I think putting two hands on. And I like saying shorter, one hand on.

You know, one-handed judo is more important, right? If you're taller and bigger, put two hands on right away. Not right away, of course, gripping, but you want to have two hands on so you could control them a little bit more. And you can keep a distance, right? Osorogare, you have longer reach. Techniques that utilize that reach.

That's very, very big. Osorogare, a lot of leg throws, I guess. Yeah. So if you're a much taller person fighting a shorter person, bow and you put two hands on immediately and then you're able to keep a distance, don't let them come in, and then use your long legs to go triple sotogari, something like this, that's, of course, this is oversimplification. Right.

Right. That kind of stuff really, really helps. But going over the back and letting them close by and having access to your hips, that's a mistake. Because you say tall people should go over the back. Yes, they should. But they need to bring their elbow down to keep that barrier so they don't have access to your hips. Right. Because if your arms are up and then they have access, they could turn in that pocket.

Right, right. I see. Of course, this is like an oversimplification. If you're much taller than the person, it's hard to get underneath your opponent. But you have other techniques, right? Different techniques, different styles. But this is the thing. If you're 6'1",

you can still do drop seinage on someone 5'8". I think 6 inches is sort of the magic number when it comes to going up or down. I see. I could do the same strategy on someone 6 inches shorter than me versus someone 6 inches taller than me. But anything more than that, I have to kind of really change my game a little bit. Anything less than 6 inches, more than 6 inches on the other direction, I'm fighting someone someone i don't

know five three but he's 200 pounds right i might have to change my strategy a little bit i'm not doing drop seo on that guy right i can't there's no way you know yeah but someone who's like two inches shorter than me can i do drop it three inches shorter than me drop seo yes heavyweight yeah heavyweights do drop seiyuu on each other even though they're really heavy and tall you know like in the

international competitions yeah yes but the heavyweights for international competitions unlimited

oh there's no weight category right so you might get somebody who seems very small

but they're 260 or you know 130 kilograms or something going against somebody oh right taller well I meant more like minus 100 I see I see them or 130 kilograms or something going against somebody much bigger or taller.

Well, I meant more like minus 100. I see them hitting drop techniques all the time on each other. You got to look at this guy, Jorge Fonseca from Portugal. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's amazing at drop seven, I guess. Drop Senagi, Sode, and Sode Osorogorogari senagi osorogari you know that kind of thing like he's very very good at getting under and he's short right he's i think he's in the oh in that way category he's what 81 is it 90. no he's 100. oh he's 100. oh okay okay i see i see

i remember competed in the uk and uh the great World Cup. And, you know, we were weighing in. I was the shortest guy in the division. But there was this other guy, this guy, Peter Cousins from Britain. And he was my height. And he was jacked. He had a very similar, you know, Fonseca game. Fonseca game, I see. He was sitting on me, gripping a lot, moving a lot, you know.

Right. So it can be done. But that's the shortest I've ever really seen. 5'8", 5'9", and 220. So I was always in the shorter side of the spectrum. So all in all, the main takeaway is that it's not really, it shouldn't really be the focus to find the game specifically specifically for your body type it's more like you have to do your fundamentals you yeah strength training technique training all that

yep and on top of that you take away on top of that you can kind of look for different things that you can adjust yes that's a great takeaway because whether you believe you're short or tall in the dojo it doesn't matter if you're competing in a weight class tournament right right and you're gonna find if you're fighting in the same weight class you're gonna be of course there's exceptions you could fight 81 and fight you know the lore yeah yeah right for Antoine from Canada yes six four or something yeah yeah right you know what I mean right you could fight the Eli elias nasif at 81 you know he's like five six so you know there's discrepancies but majority of the people are going to be

very close to height in with you within you right so i wouldn't really focus too much on it and you nailed it fundamentals man yeah fundamentals yeah cool all right well i think that pretty much sums it up i want to say one thing oh yeah okay if you're learning uchimata from sumo who's six three the way they do it is not going to be the same as the way you're going to do it if you're five nine so that is very important right that's the little personal touch at the end yeah yes that's right because i made that mistake when i was teaching you know really tall people before oh okay oh i get underneath and i go like this and it's like they're like i'm six three it's like no you might have done like this it's like now i know

it's like math you know i guess i was wrong at that time i see i see yeah so all right well yeah Yeah. All right. Well, stick to the fundamentals and then add your personal touch at the end. Thanks for listening, guys. And stay tuned for the next episode.