The Shintaro Higashi Show - Making Friends at the Dojo

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Making friends and finding your own community at the dojo is key to success for any Judoka. That's actually how Shintaro and Peter became friends! In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss how we can make friends at the dojo effectively, and foster a friendly environment where everyone is welcome. Join our Discord server and start chatting with us and other grapplers by supporting us on Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show⁠⁠⁠. Any amount helps!

hello everyone welcome back to the shintaro higashi show p2u today we're going to talk about making friends at the dojo making friends at judo making friends at the dojo at jujitsu whatever thing that you're doing how to do it like sort of in a socially non-awkward way well before we jump into the topic just a quick shout out to our biggest sponsors levon and jason thank you guys so much for your support yep as always yeah yeah and now all right well when you suggested this topic you know my mind immediately went to that infamous episode you did we did dating at the dojo or something like that right yes dating in the dojo kind, sort of don't do it, but, you know, if you must, it's natural to develop crushes, right?

Yeah. But I think making friends at the dojo is very much encouraged. Yeah, very much encouraged. I think it's great because when you go into the gym, right? If you go to, like, the best managed gym ever, if you have a two-week blank where you don't go to training, someone from the gym should reach out theoretically right hey where are you we haven't seen you like you were getting so good but most gyms don't have the mental capacity or the bandwidth to be able to follow everybody and

then make sure everyone's there yes they take attendance and maybe they have like an automated email thing like hey you haven't been to class in two weeks but to give that soft personal touch is very difficult right for, for retention purposes. But if there's an environment where people are very friendly and you have friends, training partners, you get sick, you have a cold, you're not there for a couple weeks, your training partners or your friends are going to be like, yo, where have you been? I know, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's very important for you to maintain, right, a consistent thing. Yeah. And someone to keep you accountable.

Yeah. A lot of benefits there. You could always, if you have a lot of friends, you could ask them for their opinion on what might be going wrong with your judo game or you can work on certain things. Or I think, like you said,

if you've been absent for a while, they'll check on you. It's a great place to make friends because just by the fact that you're doing judo or jiu-jitsu, you're of a certain breed of person. So you have a similar mentality. If you enjoy this thing, you're all like you're the same kind of weird.

You know what I mean? Where'd you from? From all those golfers. Yeah. You guys what I mean? Where'd you from? From all those golfers. Yeah. I don't accuse you guys. We're all different. You know, that's like Peter's world

with Prince and all this stuff. I can say that because my wife and I have started playing a lot of golf together. Just so you know, I'm a big golfer. By the way,

so I think, okay, so, you know, the benefits are innumerable, but let's kind of go back to the beginning. You know, if you are a complete beginner. So, for example, I think for me as an experienced judoka or grappler,

it's pretty easy for me to just kind of go into a different dojo, like a completely new dojo, and then make friends because I speak the lingo yep i can roll and you're connected at the top too like yeah exactly they do you know somebody that's a black belt that knows somebody at that gym who's a black belt yeah it's much easier if you have somebody in common right for example when i went to assembly in michigan i was connected with the owner dave garmo through you and so it was very easy for me to get to know a lot of people there it's very easy but as a beginner just walking into the dojo it's pretty i will say it's pretty overwhelming or intimidating almost because a lot of people seem to know each other and then they're like pretty rough with each other physically.

Right. For sure. So yeah, they get competitive, but you know, with any force repeated interaction, right. That's why it's so much easier to make friends in high school or college, right. Because you're in the same place geographically, you're going to the same place over and over. So no matter what, like, Hey man, can I borrow a pencil or whatever it is, these are repeated things that you kind of interact and give and take and stuff like that you're naturally gonna you know start making friends that way right and it's kind of the same in the dojo but you got to kind of keep your ego to the side and kind of

be humble a little bit you know you don't want to no one wants to be friends with the guy who's an asshole you know so you to be kind, friendly, all those things, I think, initially. These are like all normal human things, but a lot of grapplers don't kind of have it together. It's like super socially awkward. They're trying to take your head off, and they're like, I wonder why this guy doesn't want to be friends with me.

It's like, dude, you're just cranking on a freaking neck crank for 45 seconds. Why would you do that? So being a good training partner, we've been preaching about this throughout the whole podcast history, but that's all given. Don't be patronizing.

Don't be an asshole about cranking the neck or whatever. I think giving compliments is a big one. As males in this thing, there's predominantly males in the sport, and there are women too, or whatever and I think like giving compliments is a big one you know as males in this thing we know there's predominantly males in the sport right

and there are women too but it's predominantly males and you know the demographic that go to these places a lot of the times those guys get no love man

you know guys don't like hey man you're looking strong today you're big today or you know women every day they go to this thing

and oh my god did you get your hair done it looks so beautiful the nails and maybe it's not genuine but males get a lot less compliments you know, women every day, they go to this thing and, oh, my God, did you get your hair done? It looks so beautiful, the nails. And maybe it's not genuine, but males get a lot less compliments. You know what I mean? Yeah. We're not really nice to each other.

No, not nice to each other. And you don't want to be, like, facetious and, like, annoying. Like, oh, just give and praise everybody. But, you know, if someone does something that they've been working on and, oh, man, dude, that, you know, top game was nice or knee cut was good or that Uchimata was fine. You know, whatever. You know? Hey, man, you lost a little bit of weight you look great you know i think you joined to lose weight right you know having a conversation like that and you know not being stingy with compliments and then when you receive compliments as a male you just say thank you and accept it yeah and that kind of makes you cool and now all of a sudden you're developing this camaraderie. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

And I think all these things, you know, socially accepted, you know, norms and whatever are given. But I think the key point here is consistency. I think, like you said,

FaceTime, you know, you have to show up. Then people will, you know, with repeated interaction, like you said, people will just get to know you better. just by showing up yeah and you don't want to be the weirdo that's

like hey let's go out to lunch right away no yeah don't do that hey can i get your phone number don't do that right off the bat you gotta ease into that especially if you're like a bunch of dudes grappling dude that's too much you you know like too close quarters too intimate he's always making comments about how, like, in shape I am. It's a little bit too weird. You know what I mean? I think...

You need that intermediate thing, which is Instagram. Hey, can I follow you on Instagram? Is that a good thing? You gotta find each other on Instagram. Yeah. You gotta find each other on Instagram. Yeah, I think so.

I'm kind of all for on that part because I... It's kind of a weird thing to... For me, it feels a little weird to ask hey what's your Instagram can I follow you instead of like Graham you know the gram you don't say I yeah I it's more that I do have Instagram I check it a lot but just I think the norms have changed I guess here's a good one here's a good one yeah I did this like a couple months ago

once you make it from the path hey you want to get together and drill 30 minutes before class? Yeah. I'll text you. I'll let you know what time I'm coming in. Oh, very easy. Even before, I didn't even get the guy's number first. I eased into that stuff. I don't want to be creepy.

I'll hit you up before I head out or something. I know we both have kids so it's like we put each other on a schedule. You're on Instagram? And it's like, yeah, yeah. And then now we're like

Instagram buds and then it's like, yo, you training? And then we send each other memes. Memes is like the gateway to any male friendship now. And it's so easy because you have the same hobby.

I think it's any relationship really. So you send each other judo memes or moves or throws and then every now and then you throw like you know something weird and to test the water to test the waters yeah and they pull back cool it's like they're like all right we're not there yet you know what i mean if the if the person doesn't react not even a little thumbs up yeah a little you went a little too far so you gotta pull it back yeah don't send 10 memes like send one or two reels that's it you know and you gotta wait for the reactions to it it has to if you're going through the scroll it has to be a healthy balance between yeah it's

gotta be send the meme or reel they respond and then they send something back and then it's like just back and forth conversation you know are we

I have a feeling that we're just kinda going back to the dating episode it's all the time dating I mean dating yeah

dating dudes that are in a heterosexual setting maybe maybe you're gay. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Equal opportunity podcast.

Right, Peter? Yeah, that's right. Everyone's welcome in this podcast. Everyone has a space. Yep. So I think, I mean, we're just joking around, but I think dating and making friends is a social thing, so a lot of overlap here.

And I think another thing was, if you want to get involved for example you find all these clicks in the dojo i mean that's just natural definitely yeah yeah but you know you don't want to like you know butt your heads into any other clicks like like that i think it's more to like when you're just starting out i think it just kind of happens actually when some of these groups will just invite you if you just show up a lot yeah you know like yeah you kind of develop your own little you know yeah even within like the ecosystem of the dojo right like there's people who have kids that you kind of yeah also relate with and people who you are competitive with in the room so you relate with them on a grappling

level you know and you're like hey man what are you working on and that conversation is not the same as when i'm hanging out with a bunch of blue belts who have kids because you know we're not working on the same thing right so right right hey you know what is your life like and what's going on and school district stuff that it's kind of nice to be a little bit more versatile you know so it's nice having like that room where you know i think that's where the critics critical mass of the dojo kind of come into play if you have 20 guys in the room always and that's your whole gym right and everyone's 22 years old you don't have a very diverse group which kind of makes it difficult to blend in if you're way younger or way older you know right right yeah yeah and the thing it's yeah

the critical match we talked about this before you want to reach that point like kind of you can find pretty much like anyone that can share some interest with you yeah right and that's and then that kind of the snowball effect kind of grows yeah and so you mentioned uh you touched on an interesting topic also like the rivals having a rival you know i think rival is kind of in a way your best friend at the dojo yeah yeah i'm definitely not a rival guy anymore i don't have a room i'm much more cooperative right so it's like yeah well not in the wrong not rival in the sense that like you you are you have to beat that guy it's more like you know you're about the same skill level yes same similar weight yeah maybe not for me but when you go yeah intermediate guys oh yeah like the back and forth like you and eugene yeah yeah yeah and like

drew and he and the classic matchup yeah on that yes right so what do you um so you i guess you're in a different position because you are um you're basically pretty when you walk into the room not a lot of people can match your skill level i guess so you is that is that something you miss like that kind of friendship at the dojo you know what's nice i'll tell you this being in a pod sort of in the intermediate to beginner stage and collectively being afraid of someone and fearing that person and talking shit about that person i gotta miss that a little bit you know what i mean yeah like man that guy's always beating the shit out of all of us right and then it's like oh man i can't wait like one day and you know this is how i like related to uh viddy mancuso who's like my friend who's like a

freak and we were both high school wrestlers at the new york flag pub and we would go and there'd be these division one athletes that would literally just beat the piss out of us you know and then like sometimes it would be like guys who are on the freestyle international circuit for us yeah yeah just like kick the shit out of us all the time and then yeah just destroy us and then you know uh funny enough if you talk to vinnie he would say that he's never ever gotten destroyed but like i remember getting the shit kicked out of me and then be like man like those guys like he's so good and then we would like talk each other up be like that guy's not so good that guy freaking sucks we're gonna we're gonna beat them we're gonna be better than them in a

couple years but we could take him down if we really tried and like bonding over that you know oh or like that's an interesting way to turn yeah yeah yeah and like we were in high school and there was like this d1 all-american that was in the room and you know i was kind of afraid he was kind of afraid we're kind of pretending not to be afraid but we're both like you you wrestle him first you wrestle him first no no i'm gonna go i'm gonna go no no you go he's already wrestling that guy and i like walk up and I'm like, hey, you don't say roles, right? Yeah, he doesn't wrestle. Yeah, he doesn't wrestle.

And then I'm going to go live. And then I'm like, I'm good. I'm just like a high school kid, right? And then he wouldn't even wrestle me. And I'm like, oh, man. And then I'm like partially relieved. And then Vinny goes over and goes, you want to go live? And the guy's like, all right, fine. And now Vinny's in the mix. And I'm like, you know then vinnie goes over yeah you want to go live and the guy's like all right fine and now vinnie's in the mix and i'm like you know what vinnie's in there i'm gonna go in there too now you know so now i'm like in the mix now and you know we're

scrapping and you know yeah we're getting beat but that kind of a thing it creates this bond man like uh i'll never forget that just being yeah i missed that i definitely missed that yeah you know yeah and i get a little bit of that in juiu-Jitsu because I'm not always the best guy in the room because I'm still learning Jiu-Jitsu. Judo, I'm 99% of the time. But Jiu-Jitsu, I'm always working on new stuff, open guard stuff. You know what I mean?

So when you're trying new things, you're always to kind of get beat you know i'm trying this thing and uh but yeah i miss that kind of and then that's like a point of uh you know shared experience i guess like with your other black belts at the gym yeah yeah so i think every level there's a certain thing you know yeah and then you know when you're a beginner and then there's a certain thing. You know what I mean? And then when you're a beginner and then there's a woman that's much more skilled and you develop a crush. You know? Or something like this. Refer it back to our dating episode. Dating in the Dode.

Yeah. That's nice. Sometimes, you know, when a lady is watching and you want to impress her and you're an intermediate and you're just like going as hard as you possibly can and there's some magic there you know what I mean right

I think so yeah yeah if you're into that yeah yeah or if you're dating dating someone

and then you bring him to the dojo and like watch me do this thing I I I don't recommend that. Just because, again, like you said,

if you're a grappler, we're like a different breed. Yeah, that's very true. And not a lot of people get it. My wife doesn't really get it. She doesn't think it's hot. What would you do if you brought your wife to judo school and she was watching and somebody was just beating the shit out of you? What would she say afterwards?

She... You know, that's never happened to me before. No, not because I'm good. It's because she's come a couple of times and then every time you guys would just flop all over in front of me. We were trying to make her look good. That's my thing to do, by the way. You guys are friends but then the

the problem is she doesn't really get it she doesn't know the rules and then she kind of thinks like oh yeah

she oh everyone's kind of you're throwing yeah you threw all your friends and cool yeah but she doesn't really

get the intricacies like oh like I can't say it's like hey did you see me throw Shintaro with Uchimata you know how he's a lot better than me

you know okay let me ask you a question if you brought her to the dojo and everyone just relentlessly beat on you the whole time do you think she would find you less attractive? I don't think it'll change anything really actually yeah because she doesn't really care about that what if you're getting held down and you start crying if i start crying maybe it's like she she's she'll be kind

of concerned why i'm crying maybe like maybe i'm hurt but i asked her about this I mean this is kind of a digression but because she doesn't do any type of grappling the concept is very foreign to her

so she doesn't find grappling prowess or lack thereof yeah it's like she's indifferent

about it so you know what happened if I was like if I was a woman it's weird to say but if i was a woman and i was dating someone and i went to the dojo and then they were playing open guard stuff from bottom i would immediately be like why was this man on top of you the whole time and that's so unattractive like i can't i can't be with you anymore it's probably what i would do probably that's what happened yeah is that i

mean it is a weird position you can if you think about it that way yeah people always think top and bottom that's it and then people think oh person on top is winning

always even if you're getting triangled it's like that guy was like pushing you onto the floor huh oh yeah a lot of people yeah

that's a foreign concept I guess that you could beat someone from the ground yeah but anyway back to making friends why are you attached onto his arm that's a foreign concept i guess you could that you could beat someone from the ground yeah yeah but anyway back to why are you attached onto his arm i was like honey i was extending his arm i was i could have broken it but i didn't it's like it looked like you were clinging onto his arm for

dear life and he was holding you onto the ground like it was really unattractive well that's that's uh yeah that's that's another thing I mean back you're going back to the friendship thing like if you do this together yeah you have this shared experience you know what it feels like to be like to the point where at the brink of your arm being broken. It's very true. Very true. Or getting bombed. But anyway, so I think kind of to recap, you know, making friends at judo, you know, all the social norms, you know,

it's not like we're people. I think showing up, if you don't feel intimidated, we're all regular people. Just show up, keep coming, and then people will... keep coming and then people will yeah and then people who are already there you should try to be nice to everyone include everyone and make sure they feel welcome yeah sure how's uh so now this is kind of a our personal conversation we always have like you know because we we were the like when we were in our mid-20s whatever we were the ones who were like organizing everything going out and all that and now we've kind of moved

past that i guess we're not part of the cool kids anymore oh yeah yeah yeah i don't socialize with my students that much anymore i think with that was the era right we're like when i was late 20s you were we were all in our late 20s yeah a bunch of black belts that were all savages and then we'd all train and go eat and drink afterwards you know like those days are kind of long gone for me and i think the tail end of that where i was still kind of like hanging out and like you know bullshitting with some of the guys like if they had a birthday i would go to i think that was like yeah the last guy was like george you know and he just moved yeah so. So now I know obviously Eugene,

but he's my cousin. I see him at the end and stuff, but I think those days are very few and limited at this point. And I think, yeah, but that's just that natural progression of things, you know, I think so.

You know, it's like the S curve in business, right? What is that? You know, it goes up and then it goes down and then it like Peters off. And then that's it. You got to kind of constantly innovate and then reinvent and the dojo social scene cannot always be built around you know the instructor let's go out to dinner guys like can't really be yeah and

i have my other you know communities that i belong to in such yeah so it's kind of better that way for me to kind of like step away from it from a social standpoint. Yeah. You know, you see, you see the new like clicks coming up right now. You're like, you observe a little friend, different groups of friends happening in KBI right now. For sure. For sure. Yeah. They definitely like go out to eat and stuff.

And, uh, but you know, New York city is so transient, you know, it's tough. Right. Yeah. But New York City is so transient. It's tough. I mentioned this because I think for me, it was a little hard to let that go of that part of life because I had so much fun with you guys.

But I think we just kind of appreciate it and then kind of let it go. Things change. It was a beautiful chapter. I remember one time I was dating this woman and then I brought her around Peter kind of let it go you know i think things change it's a beautiful chapter you know i think i'll be i remember one time i was dating this woman and then i brought her around peter and peter was like that's something really mean and then she looked at me and i was like what do you want me to do and then she was like i can't believe he said that i didn't okay that was a gold digger i was

like no he didn't but i kind of maybe he kind of did like not that I have money but like there was there was one episode and a half like if you get me drunk I'll tell you but yeah that's it that was a funny situation it was fun man it was like being 20 something like you know maybe I was like 30 right yeah we all We all lived right next to each other too. So we would like, you know, go out to the local bars and then like go out after. And that's the perfect thing because it's like I didn't have to, I wasn't really working a day job. So it's like I could go out and have drinks. I didn't have kids.

So it's like, you know, all right, let's go. You know, we all lived in the 70s, right? So it was like, yeah, let's take the subway together. We go there. So you guys want to get a burger? And then we get a burger. It's like, you guys want a couple of beers? And we have like eight, you know?

One time we just wanted to grab some snacks. We had already drunk at the bar. And we were like, hey, let's get some, I don't know, snacks at the bodega across the street yeah and then we ran into all these uh restaurant walkers just hanging out drinking beer in the back of the bodega that's right and then we ended up hanging out with them until 5 a.m yeah it's good times but yeah anyway those those days are gone but i think i just want to give you guys a perspective

of what we went through and how we became friends and all. It's good to have friends. It's a good thing. It's harder to make friends when you're older too though. Definitely. Then you have more responsibilities and all that stuff. But when you're grappling, I think it's a lot easier to make friends because you're in the same place all the time.

I just think it's a really good place to yeah you know and i think a lot of times it's that this uh close contact activities yes uh kind of break down all the masks social masks people may put on yeah i think it's like a more kind of levels of playing field and yes yeah i've always like they're like yeah you know higher ups in the like banks in new york you know at your dojo and all like high like lawyers and whatnot but they all like once we were on the mat it's this everything's a grappler and yeah i really appreciate that fact yeah all right yeah well anything else we missed about making friends at judo? I feel like this was a very weird episode. Why?

I didn't think so. It was nothing to do with technical judo at all. It was just like making friends. How to make friends 101. Everyone needs that. I mean, I think a lot of times it's, you know, I think this is, it is most overlooked aspect of judo but it's one of the best and important parts.

I think that's the most important thing for retention. If you can be friendly with somebody and people are like hey man, where are you? And you look forward to seeing those guys outside of just the technical side of training. If your whole world is like I gotta go to the gym and get better and beat these guys, then you're not gonna last. But you're trying to make yourself better. They're trying to make themselves better and you could help each other get there that's a different type of friendship you know

what i mean it's not like you're working in the office trying to backstab each other for that promotion you know it's a little bit different yeah we're all trying to you know bring everyone up together and also it sounds like we made this episode so that you can delegate your retention work to your members again that's why you gotta i'll tell you this man if you made it this far i'm gonna give you a a tidbit that microaggression you got to be on top of it and you know when people hear microaggression it's like oh you know this soft twinkie pad or whatever it is yeah let me tell you something, man. When like there's guys who were wearing a black belt who were like, actually, that technique was good.

Actually, that wasn't so bad. It's like they're literally saying or, you know, implying like I didn't expect anything good out of you. You kind of suck. So the way people talk to each other, right, and not putting each other down, you know, is a big thing that you can kind of manage that culture in your community. And when you can do that, it makes it a much easier place for people to make friends safely. And then when they make friends with each other in a positive way, in a non-toxic way, then the dojo is going to grow on itself. So it's a really big piece of it because we're so close, because there's so much ego and stuff already kind of an aggression and testosterone all these different things are already there you know i mean you got to really watch out for this kind of stuff yeah and these uh friends and hobbyists are the bedrock of the dojo and then they are gonna you know help your serious competitors

compete later and you know like your serious competitors compete later and you know like go out to the world whatever you need these people absolutely you know we need to help support them so that they can support you like so that everyone benefits yes cool yeah all right well i think that's about it yeah i think it was a great episode oh yeah i don't think it was weird at all yeah i know