The Shintaro Higashi Show - Ouchi Gari

Episode Date: October 30, 2023

Ouchi Gari is possibly the most ubiquitous and frequently used grappling technique. Why is it so popular, and how can we really take advantage of its versatility? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter go on a deep dive of Ouchi Gari to answer those questions. 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 Shuntaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Today we're going to talk about Ochigari, period. Another episode of the Technic series. That's right, that's right. But we want to first and foremost thank our sponsors. Jason and Levan, thanks for your support. We really appreciate you. You guys are the reason why we can talk about Ochigari for 30 minutes.

That's right. Ochigari is inside trip. And I love inside trip. It's like every single grappling sport ever has inside trip. But the depth of it, people think it's an individual thing. How do you do Ochigari? And traditionally, there's one method, right?

Where the toe never leaves the floor. But if you look at every single competition footage the toe leaves the ground and then you kind of hop into it hop into it yeah and then you say oh you have to go at this 45 or that 45 they're all correct right many many ways to do it that's the first and foremost thing right if someone tells you no you have to open up the gi and go chest to chest and make a circle with your foot. That's not true. Right? There's so many different ways to do it. And unless you've mastered all of it, you can't really teach Osoto

or Ochi, I feel like. You know what I mean? So, is that one of the throws that you teach people first? Like, one of the first throws you teach, like, just like Osotogari? I mean, technically,

like, Osoto is the first and foremost throw. And I kind of disagree teaching that first, but I still do it anyway just because it's kind of easy, right? Yeah. It shows the mechanics of it. It shows the balance of it.

It's very easy to kind of understand, like, you know, fulcrum levers, attacking the base, et cetera, et cetera, right? So I generally teach Osotogari first, but all the different variations of Ochigari, I don't usually get too deep into it with uh the beginners yeah yeah yeah i tell them like this is the basic inside trip it's never gonna look like this because there's many reactions that you have to take into account right right right and then the intent of the throw using it as a setup versus trying to throw on the first shot when you like clipping that leg those two things makes it a very very like a versatile throw right very very different based on how you're using the technique you know you can kind of you can enter in any angle and you can finish in any angle kind of thing very yes yes and then the beauty of ochi

is like once you enter it you could force it i see like coach you can't really be much more timing oriented right unless you're doing like a kochi makikomi but kochi makikomi if you miss that leg it's completely gone yeah ochi you could hook it elevate it and then work from there and force the person down almost like drive the person wherever you want it right yes yes yes and it's a position right hopping ochi hopping inside trip it's a position yeah no different than somebody shoots in on a single leg and you start with the leg right because that person in one leg versus two legs you know what i mean so ouchi when you're able to force that position and you're good at that position you can almost always take advantage and throw the person right if you know how to stand

in one leg you know so do you recommend uh practice specifically for that like hooking it in and then and um try to uh steer the person basically yes i'm a big believer in like doing that one-legged stuff like all right let's start an ochi position nice and easy like cutting back 45 going across 45 for like cross body switch to osoto yeah right unlink the leg go uchimata etc etc you know because you can

essentially go four ways right yeah back 45 straight back 45 to the other side and then turn

throw Uchimata right and you can alternate between these you can turn Uchimata come back throw Uchi

to the back 45 yeah you know and then he hops and adjusts his base to keep it underneath the center of gravity so he doesn't fall

and as he's hopping you shift it to the cross body of soto so so let's go over there again so there are four directions just said so basically the first thing people usually do is uh forward right 45 degrees i guess yeah like i go in yeah 45 to the right yeah and then you could go forward left 45 degrees yeah and you just go straight back too if you clip them perfectly. Yeah. Or you can go back 45. Almost, no, is that what you said? You go turn throw, Uchimara.

Oh, Uchimara. Yeah, I see what you mean. So those are the four directions. Like 45 right, left, forward, and then backwards. I mean, technically you could hop on them more and then turn them to your backside 45 that's yeah but you know like now we're getting hairs you know right right right yeah the one thing that can't happen is I can't be directly in front of you and throw you over and behind me there haha I just can't do it that was freaking impossible to do a

little back flip that would she back it. Yeah, Ochi back flip maybe. I don't know what that would look like. That would destroy your knee I could already tell you. Yeah. Um, I see. So, so yeah, you recommend actually

practicing that like not just the entry but like once you hook it going all these different directions. Yeah. Yes. So like you could like

fake forward and then go Ochi and anticipate which direction that he's going to go and then rip it to one side. Yeah could definitely do that you know you could drill this kind of a thing fake turn throw cut back ochi right uh or you could just sort of start in the hooked position where you anticipate it that the guy's gonna be able to space out with their

leg because they're very good athletes and then start from there and try to put your weight on the person and off balance them and try to take them down from there you know what I mean you guys you guys do that all at KBI you do yeah every now and then you know I gotta revisit it sometimes

sometimes like I'll start doing drills consistently people get really good and then I don't revisit that drill and then now all of a sudden people have forgotten you know that's

that's a thing that happens pretty frequently so you know it's just like there's so many drills to be able to do in such a short amount of time you know so's just like there's so many drills to be able to do into the short amount of time you know so yeah another beauty of uh of ochi guy is that it links really well with all you know

we already mentioned uchimara but it can open up a lot of other throws like yeah so it's part of a chain basically yep and when you enter ochi generally the person shifts their weight to that leg and then you can attack that other leg whether it's a tai toshi ankle pick knee pick right if you're doing jujitsu you could go osorogari tai toshi harai you could do all these different things you know yeah so ochi uchimata ochi uchimata ochi harai is a very very very common one that all the japanese do yeah you know and you know where kosei famously he could seamlessly blend ochigari and uchimata together that was this thing yeah so good so good yeah go back forth back and forth back and forth and yeah just wouldn't know i mean that's that's how you would hide it i guess yeah so how how do

you recommend practicing this do you do a lot of you know techniques chaining together techniques yeah I think first and foremost doing uchikomi is like the tiny tiny piece of it and then doing uchikomi

against the wall oh okay right so like having the person sort of angled off from the wall so when I enter ouchi

they base out and I cut back to the 45 and put their wall I put their back on the wall right so the wall is holding them up enter Ochi, they base out and I cut back to the 45 and put their wall, I'll put their back on the wall, right? So the wall is holding them up. Something like that. You know what I mean?

I see. I see. And then go in the opposite direction and then, you know, having the person angled off in the other direction and then putting their back

against the wall and driving them. So you get used to putting your weight onto the person and then transitioning between the different types of Ochis.

Right, right. It's really no different than three-person Uchikome. Yeah. And then, yeah, to drive and drive and making sure that the guy doesn't counter you. Because ochi counter is pretty easy. Right? We'll talk about that later, yeah.

Yeah. Because it's like a simple teashi almost. Yeah. Almost, yeah. And it's very intuitive to go for that. Yeah. As you're falling, just pull him over and twist. Right?

So, all these different things are good drills to start with first and then just doing that one like a drill where you're like hopping on one leg and trying to finish it that's also another good drill you know so how how about practicing using Oh sugar as a setup for another throw like you like you mentioned like Tautoshi yeah all right gooshi or i usually do a lot of seoi nage after that but it's uh it's not as like it's not simple as simple as just ochigari and then doing it doing the next throw no i think there's more nuance to that definitely definitely it's almost like for me how it feels that you do ochi gari and then I

have to almost let him let the person go away from me so that the person will have the reaction

to come back onto me so that I can turn yes yes yeah so that's one way

and then the other way is like you go ochi high right and then try to finish whatever it is and then the second you go ochi high you right? And then try to finish whatever it is. And then the second you go ochi high, you stab that step down and do like a two-step Uchimata.

It's almost like, hey, I'm going to go for ochi, but then you plant that leg and then dive into the next thing, right? So that's a really more common one. Or even like go ochi, go ochi, and then you know the person as soon as you slip that leg in between their legs to hook it, they're going to shift their weight to the outside. So you like sneak it in and then immediately go to the outside leg, obviously while doing the right thing with your hand, proper hand position with the chin and the shoulder. So that's another thing that you could potentially do. So drilling this kind of a thing,

anticipating the person's reaction, majority of beginners and intermediates, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? But a lot of the times, you're not really taking into account Uke's movement. Yeah. You know?

And you do have to sometimes Uke blame. You're like, yeah, you're not giving me the right reaction. I'm trying to work this one reaction. You know, you're trying to do an Ochi Uchimata with the person's leaning back. Back, yeah. Obviously, there's no Uchimata there

if the person's leaning backwards, right? So, it's like, hey man, can you push into me and then understanding the right reactions to defend. Usually, it's like a late stage you push into me and then understanding the right reactions to defend usually it's like a late stage defense thing right because you're not going to be going for this from losing position yeah so winning position or 50 50 and then you're entering ochi so the person's leaning into you so that's the proper late stage defense right reaction which i just did a video on that so you guys can check that out on youtube yeah i, I did see that.

Yeah, it's a good one, right? Alright, so I guess it's such a versatile throw, so there's a lot to practice for. So let's kind of be more specific. So how do you use Ochigari in your game? Do you use Ochigari a lot? lot all the time oh yeah I like to like clip it what I mean yeah that's just like blast it and just like chop at their leg from the inside and then I surprise them and then take them down right away right I said when they don't go down I'll just adjust it to cross

body or whatever it is which mother I sayata. I see. But I use it to off-balance him a lot. Split the legs, open the legs. It's almost like a... Snap him down. Yeah. Just so that... I remember when I play you, because of all your ashiwasa,

it's hard to stay grounded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why you're... You always have to... You can't relax. I mean, that's the point, I guess. Yeah. You don't necessarily want to finish the throw

I mean I do but a lot of my stuff now is like Lots of moving hand position moving hand position attacking the feet attacking the feet creating movement attacking the feet kind of a thing Yeah, and then I try to set up a big throw at the end of that usually yeah You know so they don't see any of this stuff coming You know I could kind of rely a little bit more heavyweight style judo because I'm pretty big. I'm heavy. So definitely trying that kind of a method

and then parlaying Ochi into like a hopping thing and an Uchimata Kenken thing. I'm pretty good at it, but I'm not like the best at it. You know what I mean? So I'm still kind of working on that sometimes, especially when I teach it. I get to do the drill and then see the gaps in my own thing right

so you know because a lot of my guys we don't teach them to do like a dangerous wrap and throw their body down Taniyatoshi

like it's pretty yeah discouraged in the gym right so it's like I am sometimes susceptible to that kind of a nasty type of Judo too

you know even though I have enough experience to kind of like feel if they're gonna do it you know none of the best guys really do it because it's kind of a nasty type of judo too. You know, even though I have enough experience to kind of like feel if they're going to do it. Yeah. You know, none of the best guys really do it

because it's kind of like low, you know, high risk, low reward kind of a thing. You know, high risk in a way where you could easily get countered, right?

Yeah. So it's like people don't really go for that, you know? Yeah, and a lot of times, especially Tanya Otoshi, it's like a last ditch effort

if you, and yeah. Yeah, like just that spammy Tanya Otoshi against the inside chip or inside control position, it's like high risk for getting taken down. And it's also high risk of injury. So it's like double the risk. Yeah. So it's not great. And I personally find that Oshigar are very useful in the BJJ setting too.

Do you do that a lot? I mean, I know you try to play more guard in BJJ. I'm definitely a guard puller these days. I'm there to learn Jiu-Jitsu, so it's like I'm not there to do Judo. You know what I mean? And then if someone wants to work stand-up with me,

I'll let them. And so it's like not in a way where I'm trying to relentlessly take them down. What's the point of that? I'll let them work on stuff, and I'll defend it and this and that. And then eventually, even if they take me down, it's fine because now I'm in the bottom position. I get to work my guard, which I wanted to work on in the first place. But I would give them good looks.

And I fake a lot of shots and fake a lot of snap downs and enter inside chip and stuff. But there's no real need for me to like take them down and work top position because I believe like if you're training jiu-jitsu

you should be able to sweep them from bottom. Right? Right. Sweep from bottom, work on guard and if you can sweep them now you're on top

and then you can work on your passing. You know? I know that's kind of controversial to say because it's like oh people make fun of guard pulls all the time.

But you know like I'm trying to work on that so why wouldn't i want to you know what's the point of me throwing them taiyatoshi landing side control and holding them there for five minutes there's zero use or utility in that for me i don't get nothing out of it yeah you're not learning anything the other guy learns nothing too yeah you know he learns like oh judo guys are dicks that's what they want they're not gonna want to work out with me anymore after that yeah so that's the whole and you also uh run still run the judo class there right like yes yeah so do you teach ochigari a lot i do i do i teach ochigari it's like a leg pick i teach ochigari into uchimata sometimes uh oh that's pretty advanced yeah ochigari to uch teach ochi gary into uchimata sometimes uh that's pretty advanced yeah

which guy to uchimata yeah but kenken uchimata only for those guys i see a backstep kenken uchimata with the close side collar framing down so then they can't wrap you up right i see i see because it's a different style you know a little bit of like keeping the distance with your arm and yeah right around yeah yeah and i remember like one of the guys asked me like their hometown jujitsu school the teacher was like this is how you do uchimata and he wasn't even a judo guy but like throwing the hips really deep across because he saw it performed like that in like an instructional but i was like you know the guy's not wrong but it's almost impossible to hit that on a jujitsu guy who's defensive in your rule set

and there's other types of uchimata that are probably a lot better to go for first yeah you know what i mean which matter is on another throw that's kind of like uchiha in a sense that there's so many different entries and yeah to finish it yeah but that's why it's popular yes but the two most closely related throws that work really complementary well together and everyone says this right but they don't to explain why it's because you're attacking inside leg position with your dominant leg yeah not dominant leg but like in a way where you're entangling your leg yeah right and you're both forced to stand on one leg right right right so like having that

balanced explosivity from there that feel very very difficult but you know they're very related yeah it's both powerful throws

yeah timing's important but not as important you know yeah those two you know I've been working on that all my life

but it's just as a Seiya Nage player it's just a little different hard to get to yeah drop Se life, but as a Seiya Nage player, it's just a little different, hard to get to. Drop Seiya Nage player. Drop Seiya Nage. I don't stand unless I have to. So, okay, now we kind of covered how to attack this move, but now we briefly mentioned earlier about the counter so yeah there's a very easy counter

where if you come in with your ochigari without breaking the balance of the of your partner they can simply just turn like they don't even really need to sweep they just kind of go with the throw and the turn and then yeah you could counter that so yeah and then there are other ways to counter so like how can we prevent that is it just a matter of quick fighting again yeah I mean so there's three stages of defense here right so it's like first if you're locked out with your arms and they can't get close they obviously can't go out you know when they get chest to chest then you could hip check and turn the opposite direction right and then weight that leg make that leg heavy and then turning your

shoulders and pulling their sleeve in right so that's another later stage defense like i just said there's a youtube video on that right and then you could time that entry and then take him over with a dash or a society to the back side right and then the third type of defense is like obviously hopping on one leg and keeping your base leg underneath you the whole time right while keeping your balance and while messing around with the hands so there's many different uh levels to the defense you see what i mean um i think the one that's very very common is that big turning society or or the Dai-Ashi. Yeah.

And it generally happens because you're not controlling the person's upper body. Mm-hmm. Right? And they know it's coming and they could time it. They can anticipate it. Even if they enter in it and then they're just driving without controlling this side arm, right? Then they could rip it and turn. So if you can prevent that shoulder from turning, right?

Then it's very, very difficult to do it. Mm-hmm. Even if I could turn, if you get underneath the elbow, right, so you could have control underneath the elbow, and then you could lift it, right, to where their center of gravity or center of axis gets skewed first, and they get tipped over first, then you could prevent that as well. So there's many many different ways to kind of get it, you know what I mean? Yeah, so that's such an interesting point about both ochi guard and uchimata because everyone thinks it's i mean those are both classified as leg throws but and everyone does that leg part well because that's the most apparent part of the throw but then they always forget that how a lot of people forget that

how important it is to control the upper body like you said the uchimara you have to lock it down and keep pushing down the head and then with ochigari you have to make sure the shoulder can't turn and all that yeah yeah is that is it just a matter of doing what we should call me it's like how how can we make sure to do that double body i think doing like sort of like low intensity drills where you're like not really finishing so there's no real risk of getting bombed yeah you know and then you make an agreement beforehand like you're gonna take me down yeah i'm gonna kind of give you a little bit of a hard time but you're gonna win right yeah yeah so there's no pressure of like winning losing the battle it's technically cooperative but my goal is to kind of give you the right looks yeah i see like those kinds of training i think is like a very very important piece of the puzzle that i think most

gyms are missing you know because if you take the pressure out of winning or losing ego you know and people say leave the ego at the door but how many people actually do that when it's like all right go take downs you know who's gonna let you you know what i mean it's very difficult to do especially you know even the higher belts yeah right so i think that's a way to be able to drill that you know like sort of low intensity like the russians drill like this all the time you know yeah there's no winning in training right everybody wins that's what they say but yeah it's hard to do it in practice yeah um they uh i know that i think bjj kind of structures that practice better that way like with the positional drilling it's a little easier i think it depends where you go man most gyms kind

of teach a couple techniques and they put five rolls on the clock, six minutes each or something and then that's it. 30-minute instruction, 30-minute rolling and that's it. And there's a huge gap

between actually drilling these techniques that we're doing. You know what I mean? If you're learning D-Path or something like that, D-Path, sweep, whatever it is,

now all of a sudden you're going for a roll. How many times are you going to be exposed to that exact stimulus? Not that many times. But what about the 10 a.m. class guys, Nick Donjone? like he'll do let's just say he'll do like all right

open and close we'll start and close guard and we'll do that position for like the first five rolls you know one minute each or something like that so you're exposed to it at least yeah like start from that position that you just yes but i don't think that's the standard i think still 90 of gyms just kind of like hey let me show you a couple of techniques here. Go, go. Yeah. Wasn't it like that at your gym that you were going to?

Oh, actually, the instructions was they'll teach and then they'll do the positional drills before as I come up. Okay, that's good. Yeah, that's good.

I like that because you're right. They'll teach me these crazy Lasso guard or whatever. I don't even know the name but then when whenever I would actually get to hit that in Rolling because I'm just say, you know, I'm better guard from to begin with and you know Yeah, but yeah, that's that's a good point so I think yeah you have a tripod sweep try oh yeah I love that I hit that a lot that's like a coachee it is a coach I guess yeah oh yeah cuz I'm like kind of like hooking

the back of the hill yeah yeah coachee ankle pick that's what it is maybe I should make an instructional. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, it's, doing uchikomi is just a very tiny part of the whole,

like mastering that technique and you gotta work on all these different positions. Especially throws like uchigari where there's so many

variations and stuff. Yeah. The Ochi Uchimata instructional video is out. It's like the most concise. It's like a 15 minute video It's 20 bucks. Yeah, check that out. That's the only reason why we do this topic. Yeah

We'll link it down below. It's really really Simple and you'll see all the drills that I just mentioned, right? Yeah kind of get a nice view more like a visual aid You know, I know I've got we've gotten Comments about these episodes while it's interesting. It's hard to visualize. So, I mean, this is complementary to the YouTube channel.

So now, if you heard what I was just saying this whole episode, now you understand it conceptually and then you see the video and then you understand it visually. Now all you got to do is do some of the drills

in the gym. Pick someone before class. Like, it's okay. Don't okay don't you know fall is fine don't resist so much and then do these drills and now all of a sudden you sort of you're gonna be a menace in the room you know when you guys are going live that's like yeah you know so yeah you can you can take a listen on this get the concepts watch the visual aid on youtube yep and then come back and listen to it again so that you get the best better uh understanding of the concepts that we and we get two listens out of it yes yes yes yes yes all right uh anything else that's it thank you very much guys thank you very much for listening and then please join us on patreon

support us and thank you very much Peter for being here as always yeah thank you Shintaro yeah you're the star of the show

you know no stop alright thanks for listening guys and we'll see you guys in the next episode