The Shintaro Higashi Show - Prehab and Strength Training for Judo - An Interview with Eugene

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

In this special episode, Shintaro's cousin Eugene sits down to share his expertise as a doctor of physical therapy. He shares tips on prehab, injury prevention, proper training methodologies and many other areas! 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 guys, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yumi. Today's guest is Eugene Secky, he's my cousin. What's going on guys? Nice to be here. Yeah, he's my cousin and we're messing around a little bit with the cameras and stuff. Let me know if you guys like it in the comments and such. Greg's behind the scenes doing some producing stuff. Peter is just on vacation, he's in Korea for three weeks. That's why we're kind of, you know, we still need to film this stuff.

So, right, we're here. Peter, we're imagining you're right there. Yeah, Peter's here with us in spirit, eating kimchi and stuff. Right? All right, so the reason why I have Eugene on today is because Eugene's a physical therapist, not only a PT, but he's also a judo black belt, BJJ blue belt. You know so much. You've done competitive sports your whole life.

Today, I really want to talk about prehab. And who's that word mean to you? So prehab, in kind of a medical sense, like in the rehab world, prehab would usually be the weeks leading up to a surgery. If you already have like a scheduled surgery coming up, let's say you tear your ACL or something, you have surgery coming up in a month, tear your ACL or something you have surgery coming up in a month and then you have to kind of restore your range of

motion maximize your strength before going in and your outcomes are better but in more of a kind of a general kind of like layman's way of describing prehab is just preparing your body for the demands that you have to put it in. So that might just be regular weightlifting. It might be you're addressing your mobility or flexibility concerns, just mitigating your risk for injury, depending on the type of sport or martial art you do. Yeah.

So we don't want to talk about the medical side. I'm preparing for a shoulder surgery. We're not talking about that because it's relevant for grapplers or grapple want to prevent injuries. Yeah. You know, so what are some like core ideas behind that? Not like specific exercises for specific people because there's,

you know, everyone, some people might have knee issues, some people might have leg issues. Yeah. You can't diagnose those guys and tell them to do certain things without CRM. What are some core ideas behind, I guess, prehab in a way where you're preventing injuries for grappling?

So this is always a difficult question to answer because prehab for one person might be completely different to the next person. come from let's say like a yoga brat background and then you start breaking into into martial arts you might have to develop kind of like a baseline of uh of strength training and stability because your background before that was all about flexibility and getting your body into into positions but when you're doing grappling it's a lot more intense. You need to put on some armor into your body. Grappling is more intense than yoga? Not for you. I think we all saw that in the yoga for judo. Yeah, very immobile.

It's very tight. I'm flexible in some areas. So someone like you, you've done tons of weight lifting your entire life you might benefit from doing some more flexibility mobility work yeah so then you know you're throwing someone or you get your arm cranked in a certain way that you've uh can get your get yourself to those positions so it's not putting stress in your joints and your ligaments when something gets cranked on. That's nice. All right.

So what do you say to the guy that's like, oh, I've never done judo before. Maybe I'll go to the gym and lift and get strong before I come. Or do you think you could just run right into judo training? You can run right into judo training. I think pretty much anybody who's doing any kind of grappling will benefit from doing some kind of work outside of the dojo, outside of just technique training, run dory, live rounds. Because you should have a foundation of strength and being able to put your body through different positions and be able to handle it. So what's like a prescriptive thing that you may say to somebody? Like, all right, how can I prevent injury while doing judo?

Let's just say average Joe kind of does like a nine to five, you know, sits at the computer most of the day or has a regular day job. They're not training all day and night. You know, what do you say to that guy coming in? Like, how can he prevent injury? So there's a lot of different categories we can we can go i would say step one is just having a baseline of strength and doing normal movements that don't require a ton of ton of technique just to build leg strength core strength upper upper body strength

kind of the normal stuff that uh you would do in a in a gym or like your first program with like a regular personal trainer doing your squats, deadlifts, bench press, like big compound movements. Then from then on is doing work that's a little bit more specific to movements in judo or BJJ, like plyometric work, being able to jump and be explosive on two legs, on one leg, any kind of mobility work where you might have your weaknesses, whether it's like rotational mobility or your shoulder mobility. Yeah. Pretty much.

or your shoulder mobility. Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, it's hard to say because so much that you can be, I would say step one is just getting a baseline of strength. You should be doing resistance training in the gym if you're doing grappling.

All right, so let's just say, for instance, you were to design me a program, like it's a little more specific to me, right? I'm already a super athlete. I'm making a judo. But if I want to do some more stuff to prevent injury and stuff, and if you were to design my workout routine, my mobility routine, like how would you break that up in sort of like a, right?

Based on how, you know, how much I train, you know know on a day-to-day basis how do you what would you say so you have a pretty complex history of injuries yourself so that that would that would be kind of the meat of it i already know that you have a lot of knowledge and a deep background in weightlifting project yeah as soon as yeah okay so but and anytime you're in the gym and you're doing uh when you're already doing your normal normal workouts setting aside 20 minutes just to work on your on your shoulders so if you're like for you specifically pretty limited in your in your shoulder shoulder range of motion and your shoulder is going to get pushed to the extreme, especially in BJJ.

If you have shoulder lock, like full external rotation or full internal rotation. So you might be really strong in a strict bench press or a strict shoulder press, right? Or dips. But in these end ranges, you might have this steep drop off of your strength once you're in this end range. So being able to strengthen through that lengthened position and shortened position for your shoulders just to kind of like bulletproof your joints. Yeah. But there's always an amount of force that can just, no matter how strong you're at the end of the range, you can do everything perfectly right. And then it can just take somebody chopping your knee the wrong way or just a reflex reaction.

You put your hand out or like someone takes you down, you land on your head in a weird way. You can't avoid everything. Okay. So let's just say the average practitioner, Judo. Yeah. He's like a green belt or something. White to like ground belt range.

You know, like never really lifted, kind of strong. Like what do you think are some basic exercises that should be done in the gym? Like specific exercises or how to program like different parts of the training? Let's do both. I think that'll be interesting for the listener. program like different different parts let's do both training that'll be interesting for the listener so i would say for programming overall just to hit all the different parts of your your training if you already have your judo or and your martial art already already set maybe you're training three three or four times times a week yeah at least two days of just strength training, resistance training.

You should have some amount of cardio too. A lot of times when injuries occur, it's when you're in the state of being fatigued. Your reflex is going to be a little bit slower. They have some studies about this too. Like in soccer players, the majority of injuries happen in the second half or in the last quarter. That's when everybody's like more fatigued. So that's good to know too. If it's like the end of practice, you're feeling like really,

really tired, super, super fatigued. Those could be the times then you're a little bit higher risk for injury. Anecdotally, like the ACL tears that I've seen in the dojo, majority of them happen those could be the times then you're a little bit higher risk for injury. Anecdotally, like the ACL tears that I've seen in the dojo, majority of them happen after, you know, in the randori phase, like second half of that. So, yeah.

Yeah, so just building up some cardio and your strength and endurance so you're not constantly in this fatigue state when you're in training. And that's pretty easy to do, just hopping on a on a stationary bike going out for a ride going out for for a run yeah because those uh lower level like lower zones of your heart rate cardio is a little bit different than what you would be doing in in judo so it's good to have both low intensity cardio

strength training and then working on your own weaknesses so that can be specific like prehab exercises whether it's for your knees for your shoulders, lower back your neck, that's

going to be different for everyone. And if you need to work on your mobility and flexibility, that'll be the last. So what about high intensity animal training? Do you suggest that? You do a lot of sprints. Yeah. You just run at the nationals? Yeah.

I just came back from Masters Nationals. Yeah. Fast. Nice. It seems fast, but out there in the Nationals, with all the fastest guys from 30 plus, it's just a different league. I mean, that's all they do.

They've been sprinting their whole lives. Yeah. But I like being out there. I like competing against the best nice yeah and they're not trying to rip my head off they have their own lane i have my my own lane they're really dropped right yeah so a lot of it is just competing against yourself it's nice but yeah high intensity interval training is definitely definitely important because judo can be really intense, really explosive.

So I think sprint training is really good for that. And Olympic weightlifting. How much can you really train to be a certain way? For instance, I'm naturally fast fish too. I've always been since I was a kid, right? Yeah. But if I want to run a marathon, it just doesn't suit my style right my body type and things like that yeah i see these guys coming in who are just like long distance skinny you know slow twitch guys can

they develop a athleticism and like an explosive way like how much could you really go the other direction you know i mean you there is you definitely can but there's a window of your physiology yeah you know so your the makeup of your your muscle fibers and the way that you process and metabolize oxygen and getting oxygen to your to your muscles and your different energy systems that you use you're gonna have a window where you kind of fit whether it's uh in a in a sprint like 100 200 meters or more of like a distance runner but because judo already is pretty pretty explosive yeah even if your physiology kind of uh sets you in this windy window more like a distance and endurance athlete you still benefit from doing some explosive training because you

need that. It's kind of just a part of the sport to be able to go in to a throw fast and take someone down. You know what everyone's, maybe I think you said it or something, the two reasons why people get injured is asymmetry and then going too hard too soon, not having the proper progressive overload. What do you think about that? Did you say that or no?

I don't remember that. It sounds right. I mean, it's on the... I tell people that all the time. Is that wrong? No, it's not wrong. It's definitely two important things. If you have a major asymmetry whether it's a directional preference

which way you which way you turn your handedness a lot stronger on one one side than the other side yeah sometimes that happens just from your history of of injury too maybe you had a knee injury way in the past you develop this kind of compensation. And you might not even notice it because this is like your new normal to kind of favor one side. I mean, but judo is like asymmetrical, right? It's like one hand doing one thing, one hand doing the other. I'll never forget this Canadian judoka. He was a right hand and he'd always be pulling people down his right lat was humongous his left

he had no lat on his left side yeah it was so funny how it was like ridiculous he was like turning flexes back

it was almost like a like a show like look at my lat there would be like one humongous right lat and then the left one was like I feel that too

just playing as a lefty the majority of the people I play against are right side and I'm posting with my left hand all the time here. Kind of doing like a single arm plank on my left side and pulling over here into this position for so much of my rounds. And in a performance sense, it's kind of good to have one side that you're really, really strong. I think you make this example sometimes too, is like baseball players or golfers, you don't need to really train the other direction

when you're out there on the field, you're going to be hitting one direction. They're definitely getting less injured than some of these other combat sports. I mean, we should all just play golf instead. Yeah, that's a good one. Maybe even tennis. If tennis is going to symmetrically turn

one side to the other side, well, you just serve one hand more. So the asymmetry, maybe it's not true for judo. I guess you know what it is. No, it's the barbell. There's definitely some truth to it. Okay. Let's say you're,

um, you're always rotating one direction or you're always favoring, favoring one, one side over, over time. Then that's gonna, you're going to get this input to your body. That's like a little bit,

a little bit off. So then, uh, develop arthritis in a certain joint a little bit, a little bit earlier, it'd be a more more more risk for certain types of injuries in a performance if you're just thinking about performance yeah then it might make sense to like really focus on your main techniques your main throws the one direction that uh that you move in yeah uh For me, I like to train both sides and a lot of the clients and patients that I see,

I feel like they will benefit from doing training in multiple planes, multiple directions, and building up some of the weaknesses and addressing imbalances. So what are the most common imbalances you see in people? What do you introduce to wrestling or grappling? One of the main ones is your trunk rotation. Yes.

You're always turning to one side. And that's the same with any kind of racket sports, tennis players, baseball players, even golfers too. It's hard, explosive effort in one one direction yeah so then then you can start kind of rotating your your spine in a in a certain way your pelvis can get a little bit uh rotated and you know i'm like kind of sitting like this a little yeah and then my pelvis is like off-centered is that called valve problems uh it it definitely can let's say your your pelvis is a little rotated or your spine is turned uh turned certain certain direction that's all that's all normal like nobody's perfectly yeah symmetrical yeah but if if that

imbalance is pretty extreme and then let's say you go to the gym and you're loading up a ton of weight on a squat rack, you're doing a super heavy deadlift. So you're like a little bit, a little bit off. If that can put increased stress to like certain areas of your, of your spine and your vertebrae. Probably why I couldn't deadlift. They probably would have deadlifted 700.

Damn. Yeah. Brutal. Brutal. All right. So what do you think is some good advice for some of these people who experience that kind of imbalance? Actually, let's go back.

Common asymmetries. Is it the trunk rotation? Is there any other ones that are making it? Trunk rotation and just lower leg strength too. Like your balance and stability on one side. Yeah.

Everything happens strength too. Like your balance and stability on, on one, one side. Yeah. This, everything happens almost on, on one, one leg. Sure. Ochi gari, Soto gari. But if you're taking it,

you're balancing the other leg. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That, that too. But every time you're going to have one stance leg and one kind of swinging, swinging leg for like most,

most movements. And almost everyone in judo is going to heavily favor one side. So that's where a lot of the single leg balance and strengthening exercises come in. Because most people go to the gym and they'll do squats, deadlifts. They'll do bicep curls. Yeah, bicep curls too. But if we're talking about the legs like leg extensions like leg leg press yeah but just adding in balance exercises so you're on one leg

doing both both sides and single leg strengthening stuff like single leg deadlifts with a kettlebell or barbell bulgarian split squats yeah things like that. So you're just using one leg. And this will bring to the surface some of the imbalances too. You'll realize that one leg might be a lot more stable than the other, or one leg might be a lot stronger than the other. Nice. Do you think ice baths work? They definitely help

for like soreness, inflammation. Yeah. I think the research is kind of mixed, but if you like to suffer, then go for it. Mixed research.

Yeah. What about a nice rub and tuck? Does that work? Yeah, of course. Good, man. Thank you so much for telling us a little bit about prehab and prehab injuries. Yeah, absolutely.

We'll have to talk about rehab and most common injuries next. Stay tuned, guys. Thank you very much. Yeah, if we do another one, then maybe we can go into a little bit more detail if you want to prevent something like a knee rehab or shoulder shoulder prehab lower things like that that are really

really common I think knee and shoulder is probably the most common yeah knee is knee is definitely a big one thank you very much guys

let me know if you guys like this format with the three cameras Greg producing then this thing Greg's gonna be on too also so