The Shintaro Higashi Show - Pulling Guard

Episode Date: January 1, 2024

Shintaro is now a dirty guard puller! We Judokas, and some BJJ'ers, love to make fun of guard pullers, but is the ridicule really warranted? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss pulling guard, especially Shintaro's recent experience in his BJJ journey. Is pulling guard useful? If so, when is it useful, and how can we do it most effectively? 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 with Peter Yu. Today we're going to talk about pulling guard. Guard pulling, yeah. You guys know Shintaro has become a dirty guard puller lately. I love pulling guard. But before we go into it, let's thank our sponsors, right? Judo TV, use discount code SHINTARO for IJF viewing spectatorship. It's amazing, fantastic. Go check it out, judotv.com.

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We have the link below. Join our Discord. Yeah. Chat with your fellow grab rollers. Yes. A lot of perks when you join in a sun patreon like peter would send you pictures of his feet oh my god that will i might have to charge a little

extra for that but geez yeah all right cool so guard pulling i know we've touched on it a little bit yeah you know the episode about judo for BJJ and then we discussed how you teach, what you teach at your judo for jiu-jitsu class, BJJ class. But I heard you just told me that you kind of changed the tone on it. Like you have a new theory around pulling guard.

What's up? You know, it's so martial, right? It's like such a martial tactic. You know what I mean? Pulling guard is martial? It is? It's like such a martial tactic. You know what I mean? Pulling guard is martial? It is. It's like a gambit almost. It's like a gambit.

Also, like, if you're going against someone that can't slam you, you avoid it by pulling guard. You know what I mean? And when you're looking to sweep from there, pull guard, transition to the ground, and sweep, essentially, how is that different from like a tomonage or a sumigashi or sacrifice throw right it's just like two steps instead of one step i guess yeah two steps as opposed to like

throwing your body to the floor and then kicking him over throwing your body to the floor and then exchanging later through a couple different maneuvers yeah you know what i mean so i could see why people would do it and there's a whole lesson that i've taught on like how to beat guard pullers and do inside chip and osoto and timing leg picks and things like that but it's not that effective what do you mean by that if you really want to prevent someone from pulling guard yes you, you can touch the leg or time this and that and gain two points or whatever it is. But the real thing is to be able to learn how to pass guard. Yeah, yeah.

And there's lots of nuances involved with guard pulling. People just assume, oh, he just falls to the floor and sits down. There's many, many, many different variations of guard pulling that a lot of people have certain nuances with right if you look at classic right versus right collar sleeve right you could pull toward the sleeve hand or the collar hand generally a lot of good guys pull toward the sleeve hand because they can't just reach down and grab your foot i see if you have the sleeve hand right you know what i mean yeah sometimes you have a collar hand you literally just sit down and drop to the floor. That's another method, right?

And there's things that can potentially happen when any one of those things occur. Mm-hmm. Right? So there's sort of this like invisible transitional period. Yeah. That can skew the advantage, right? that can skew the advantage, right? Well, because from my experience,

I haven't really gone with a lot of high-level BJJ players, so probably I've only seen mostly sloppy guard pulling, but what I found is that if I exploit that, like when someone pulls guard on me, I can pass the guard right away because a lot of people are not used to people just trying to pass the guard as soon as the person pulls guard. Yes.

You're kind of talking about that, right? And you could go the other way too. Yeah, you could go the other way. So I'll give you an example. If you're doing right side collar sleeve, right versus right, if he's pulling to the sleeve side yeah okay if he places that foot and extends your arm away and then as he drops you're extended where your hips

are hinged yeah that's a big that's a big problem yeah you know what i mean yeah because you're you don't have leverage you can actually that's how you're supposed to throw a tomo nage kind of right kind of tomo nage to the back hip though if you go to this direction right but if you miss that hip then you get put in yokoshigatame

alright so that's why they pull with the foot to the close side hip for them yeah yeah yeah I see I see you know what I mean and then sometimes

they'll overshoot that hip and then angle off into a delahiva hook you know what I mean right right so if you get really good you see that many guard pulling you could almost anticipate it right as you they're sitting guard you close the elbow really tight yeah right and then you can try to push that foot off the hip and then circle to

your left so you sort of end up in like half guard or close guard yeah i mean and then you kind of have a jump start on the passing game. Yeah, yeah. So that's a method. You know what I mean? To nullify guard pulling. I wouldn't say nullify it, but like making it a little bit more...

A little more advantageous to you. Yeah. But the guy who's going to pull guard is confident in their guard. Yeah.

Right? So you kind of have to understand that and then you have to be confident in your top game. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So I think you kind of have to, like, understand that, and then you have to be confident in your top game. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

So I think there's a lot more than, like, guard pulling sucks. Oh, you shouldn't guard pull. You should always work for the takedown. You know, there are guys who aren't as good as passing as they are being in guard. Being in guard, yeah. Right? Perhaps their game is, like, not really sweeping it up on top, but, like, threaten the sweep and then going for Juju, going for Senkaku.

Threaten the sweep and then spinning underneath and attacking the legs or something like that. That guy who has no top game, why would he work for the takedown in the first place? Right. You know what I mean? And then burn tons of energy, risk neck exposure, etc., etc.

You know what I mean? Right, right. And then if they take the person down work all this get swept into side control that's even worse so i'm kind of changing my tone like i see why people do it you know yeah and i think it shouldn't be one of those things that's a like a crutch where it's like oh i only pull guard you have to work takedowns you have to work throws you know what i mean what if you get two guys who are both top game players and then neither of those guys want to be on bottom

then it's a takedown oriented game right you see what I mean but I think yeah well so it is

it is useful in the context of certain rules though right like I mean you can't pull guard

in judo I guess you could I mean I guess you could I mean you go tomonage yeah yeah you go tomonage and you know it's really no difference yeah right and there are very close similarities in tomonage and guard pulling yeah yeah right and i would love to cover right all the different yoko tomonage yeah lapel side yoko tomonage sleeve side yoko tomonage lapel side garpulling sleeve side garpulling right that's a very very interesting thing because the movement is

very similar it's just the way the leg is situated whether you're trying to create distance or close the distance and load the person onto that foot that's where the nuances are you know what i mean and then also like how you use the arms to draw the person on top of your leg to sweep them or throw them, you know? So very intricate stuff, right? Like you could definitely tell if you're a Tomonage guy. Yeah. Right? How similar it is.

Yeah, yeah. You know? And so like if you look at it that way, how much depth there is to that single like, oh, freaking guard pulley. that way how much depth there is to that single like oh freaking guard pulling you know now all of a sudden it becomes this like really intricate thing and it's worth looking at i think it's not something that i should just ah dismiss it like oh this is bullshit this guy's scared he doesn't know how to take down i think there's a lot more there that is so understated so in that sense like you know i maybe it's just my selection bias too because I don't really look up guard pulling techniques.

I don't think anybody does. So would you say even in the BJJ, online BJJ sphere, people don't make guard pulling videos or instructions? I don't think so because I've Googled that. I see. When I was like, you know what?

I'm going to pull guard and work open guard from now on. Yeah. There's one or two videos. Oh, you always want to pull towards the sleeve side so they can't reach down

and grab your foot. Okay. And you put your foot here, extend it, and then you sit and then you roll and then you go into the Heva guard.

Great. You know, everyone's repeating the same stuff. Like, where's the nuance? You know what I mean? Wow. That's a huge niche for you.

I didn't know. I didn't realize that no one really... I mean, look at Tomonage. Everyone teaches Tomonage the same way. You go here, you go there, you go there. But there's like five or six different Tomonages easily. And those things all interchange with each other. Whether it's going like fake back Tomonage,

yoko Tomonage, kouchi, snap down Tomonage, person comes over the back and you go to the collar side tomonage but you bring them across the body all these different things i've never really even the tomo and age like i i don't think people actively like do uchikomi on it with it no They don't That's a problem I've only I've seen one person

In my whole life That actually practiced To when I get like that KBI You know what I'm talking about Shao Yeah He does The only person

And I would get so annoyed He's really good But I would get so annoyed As a partner Because he's Fall backwards It's a really hard Hard move To be a nuke for You know It is And you know what When you do judo with him too it as a partner because he's just like fall backwards it's a really hard move

to be a nuke for you know it is and you know when you do judo with him too because he's just constantly dropping

I know he's very good guys like I have to tell you he that's his signature he can go multiple directions

with this Tomoe Nage he'll hit you anywhere and he's so unassuming about it too I know

and it's so frustrating very frustrating and he catches a unassuming about it too I know and it's so frustrating what he had caught very frustrating and he catches a lot of good guys too with it yeah a lot of good guys

it's it could be a good meta game his timing is staggered always you don't know when it's coming yeah

that's the best thing about his Tomonage he could do it from winning position losing position off an inside chip Uchimata comes out and he's circling away and then bang he's hitting That's the best thing about his Tomo nage. He could do it from winning position, losing position, off an inside chip, Uchimata comes out,

and he's circling away, and then bang, he's going underneath. Huge pain in the ass. I mean, it came from his own needs, I think. He's not a big guy, so I think in order to find his own way to beat big guys, he found that, hey, if I can hit him when i get in losing positions i can surprise these guys and then all that is probably i'm assuming it came about something like that and he's amazing at it and i guess that kind of goes back to what you said

in the beginning of the episode about people who are just specializing in guard games why would they want to fight fire with fire like takedown with taked guard games why would they want to fight fire with fire like take down with takedown yeah why would they want to do that yeah and if it's not their expertise yeah why would they even want to be on top and risk getting swept and then on board or something or swept into a bad position right they know if they pull guard they're very flexible they have a good open guard right they're gonna be there right now so but now like kind of okay so we got the idea like okay carpooling should be more studied more systematically and whatever but how would you like there are two contexts i can i think in bjj it's easier to

practice probably right would you say like yeah pulling? Yeah. Because you just encounter that a lot. Yeah, no one gets thrown on their head. Yeah. But then on the other side, we're still judo players. So what's guard pulling in judo? Should we just study Tomonage in more depth? I think you got to study Tomonage in more depth I think you gotta study Tomonage in more depth

and it's one of the harder throws to learn yeah and this is gonna be a shameless plug but I have a Tomonage video all over the internet and it is a skill

that everyone can learn you know and it's so hard to do on someone new but there's three person uchikome drills that you can do with Tomonage

to actually gain that skill there's so many different kinds of Tomonage that integrate with each other Yeah, you know I mean and the whole other piece of it is if you could fake the Tomonage Mmm, it opens up The backward attacks Kochi, Ochi, etc, etc, right? Right because it's it you could sit down Yeah, sit back, you know same thing against if you're going against a jiu-jitsu guy who's going to pull guard, right? If you fake preemptively

that you're going to pull guard first, they really don't want to get sucked into that. Right. So they're going to have a very strong reaction. Yeah. And then that's when you can open up a little bit and then wait for them to pull guard. Now you have momentum, right?

Yeah. But Tomonage, yeah. Jidokas, if you're trying to and you know having a nice closed guard game is good because when you go tomonage a lot of the judo guys will lean back and then drop to their knees yeah because they don't want to get loaded right the goal for jiu jitsu is to create a pulse on the hip and then create distance sit and then have them hip hinge and then go into different guard kinds of guard play Judo's a little bit different. You want to bring the person and load them onto that leg.

It's going to be natural for the person to posture and then sit their hips down, which lands them in closed guard. Having a two or three fast attack system right off that closed guard I think is a very important thing, important

skill that judokas need to be able to do that's the equivalent of a judo guard pull right yeah I see it's not a thing but how to pull guard

in judo yeah that could be a meta game yeah tomonage fast closed guard attacks and Kanto

Flavio Kanto was a master at that he would do a type of yoko a master at that he would do a type of a he would do a type of yoko tomonage right slide it to the side

towards the sleeve and then he would loop that leg over the collar and then go for the Kanto choke immediately so that transition

was masterful and it's kind of amazing how this guy came and did all that and no one took it and then just ran with it you know it

would have been nice to see some successors come after him who take all his transitional stuff and then build on it and then study it and refine it and make it new you know what i mean so i'd love to see that yeah yeah someone go out there study flavio canto make videos about it maybe it's me yeah maybe it's you today yeah I think I mean I've heard BJJ people talk about

Flavio Canto too so I think he's very I mean he's Brazilian so I did hear that he also trained BJJ on

he's a double black belt you know I think someone said he's a double world champion I don't know if that's true but that would be impressive that would be really impressive but he his time is a little bit different you know earlier on in bjj right it's much more impressive to win a world championship now than it is 10 20 years ago because the sport has evolved and the population has you know quadrupled exploded yeah maybe even 10x i don't even know yeah all right i see i see so

for so bottom line is i guess it's the sacrifice throws that need to be studied more i guess that's kind of what you're saying well the sacrifice throws you can use to bail out of bad positions which a lot of people do and then you know using that to transition to the ground to bail out of a bad attack to prevent getting thrown is one method right and obviously using

to throw somebody is the favorable outcome you throw somebody from the sacrifice throw but if you go for it you don't throw them and then to transition into the nirvana

right there attacking an immediate flash attack I think that is something that Jidoka should shine at and some athletes who are very very good

Nwaza athletes do that yeah yeah you know what I mean no Jidoka have a very long drawn out open guard game like a spider lasso because you just don't have enough time to do

anything with it you just made a video about that yep yep yeah check out YouTube so yeah i think it's very interesting then how so i we touched on this a little bit in the last few episodes but when you teach this to bjj people do you actively encourage them to throw then or what like with tomonage yeah yeah you know so i don't want to introduce all these judo throws in the room when i'm teaching a jujitsu class right yeah and then they try it in the gen pop regular jujitsu class and then people getting thrown on their head yeah yeah if you're at least doing the class with me in judo then you're exposed to the

falls you're exposed you understand where you're gonna land etc etc right but if they have in judo then you're exposed to the falls you're exposed you understand where you're gonna land etc etc right but if they have no judo skills at all and a guy learned from me and then all of a sudden starts bombing people with it you're gonna you're gonna get in trouble yeah yeah so i try to make it a safety first thing and tomonagi is one of those things where if you do it wrong the guy lands on his head right right so i'm not it's not one of the main things that i teach in that class i teach a lot of hand positional stuff you know hand position stuff right snap down setups ashiwaza foot sweeps and things like this so you haven't even gone through the guard pulling this type of stuff we were talking about in i have taught it i've taught it and then i showed different types of

tomonages etc etc cetera, et cetera. But you know this is the issue, right? A lot of these guys who learn the Tomonages just default to the natural way of pulling guard. Because the movements are so similar that it's so easy to default to the extending of the legs too prematurely. Right, right. Because it's a lot safer. Yeah. You know what I mean?

I see, I see. It's a very safer yeah you know what i mean i see i see um it's a very very similar skill a lot of overlap this could be a good video for me and glick actually yeah yeah it'd be very interesting because i'm actually surprised that you know that this hasn't even been explored that much in yeah jiu-jitsu even i guess people just say okay you just sit just to get things going on the ground instead of oh this is actually like you say it's an opportunity to gain advantage yeah i mean sumi gaeshi is like pulling guard too yeah you know but it requires some grip fighting and advantages to be able to tip the person over. Yeah. Right? So like the chest to chest over under, controlling that sleeve side

and then going into sumi this way or bringing the arm across the two on one and then bringing it backside for sumi gaeshi as opposed to tomonage guard pull and you can just do it from anywhere and everywhere. Right? Because the goal is to just transition to the floor. So,

yeah, very interesting how that is. You know? Yeah. It's, yeah, I think it would be, so yeah very interesting how that is you know yeah it's yeah I think it'll be I think the people will appreciate

some visual aid here but yeah I think it'll be yeah it's a niche that you could go into such a niche and yes of course

like what is you could game this whole thing of like before the guy's pulling guard you reach down and grab a leg and touch the leg yeah it's two points now it's like a takedown yeah it was a

takedown for a long time and jiu-jitsu rules oh okay so it was very easy for someone to be like oh he's pulling guard to my sleeve hand side you know hook the leg and call it an Ochi or a Kochi, get two. But now, they changed that to like, you have to, whoever initiated gets it, right?

So, I have to initiate the inside chip or a Kochi before they decide to pull guard in order for the thing to go. So,

they're pulling guard already, they're going backwards and if I grab a leg or go chip inside chip, outside chip, it doesn't count for a takedown. You know?

So, there's a lot of intricacies there and now, before, it used to be like a takedown yeah you know so there's a lot of intricacies there and now before used to be like oh my god you know guys pulling guards frustrating i wanted to take them down into a favorable position i don't look at it like that anymore and me being the guy that's usually heavier in the room who wants to work more just i'm there to work jujitsu if i'm in a jujitsu room right of course i'm in the room for judo too and i'm doing judo actively as well right but if i'm there for jiu-jitsu i want to work my open guard and stuff from bottom i'm pulling guard myself there's no need for me to throw the guy to monage what am i going to get yeah i throw like a younger smaller person like overhead and then i land on top and

i'm holding him there for the whole time like that really doesn't make me better you know yeah yeah so those are some of the ideas i see that i've been having and even with guard pulling i'm like i see the beauty in it you know i never imagined that we would make an episode about guard pulling yeah there's a thing called double pull too when two people sit at the same time but I've only been like I've only been you know exposed to that

through Reddit I've never actually seen it myself but people mercilessly make fun of them yeah so

I mean if you I guess once you get to know the intricacies like people get it but then at the same time but you know you see this kind of stuff everywhere you know what I mean it's silly but then you get to know the intricacies, people get it, but then at the same time...

But you know, you see this kind of stuff everywhere. You know what I mean? It's silly, but then you get two heavyweights that only want to go Osorogari, right versus right, and they get locked up,

like locked horns, like two bulls, and they just spam Osoro, whatever it is. You see that all the time too. That's silly. That's ridiculous. Also,

turtling up is ridiculous, you could say, I guess. You could say ridiculous. Or you get two drop and flop judo guys where they both just drop and non-stop saying I can drop I can drop

you know you get right you see that too yeah we call them drop and floppers I used to be one I used to be one

drop and flop over and over if both sides do it dude it's ridiculous yeah yeah so I mean you know,

you get two guys. Who are we to judge? Who are we to judge? There's so many dumb things you can do out there that look silly. Yeah. You know,

especially to like the average person. Not everyone can just have a super aesthetic high amplitude Uchimata all the time. Yeah. You know?

I see. And yes, it is hard to throw a guard puller. It is. Because they're trying to throw themselves out on the floor already before you do it. You know what I mean?

Doing the job for you, I guess. Yeah, but like I said, it's like a gambit. You're conceding a little bit of... You're conceding and then you're going down and then you're trying to work your best game and then... Do you think people should be penalized for it? You know, right now, my understanding is the BJJ rule, you don't get rewarded, but you don't necessarily lose anything.

But you think it should be punished? I think there were some rule sets where the other guy gets an advantage or something. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It's tough to say, man. I have a lot of ideas about jiu-jitsu ruleset too. Even judo ruleset. If you get off bottom, I think you should get a point. Oh.

Point. Point. You should get one point. Or if you retain guard. If you get past and you put him back in guard, you should get a point. Like a wazari? No. No, jiu-jitsu.

Oh, jiu-jitsu. Okay. Yeah yeah judo is tough to do but I made a video about judo nirwaza versus BJJ nirwaza right

yeah yeah and the incentive of the person internal on bottom is to force a stalemate yeah yeah and the person on top is to

gain position continuously and not be in stalemate for five seconds yeah yeah in order to progress so why not give penalty for stalling. In order to progress. So why not give penalty for stalling

on the line? If they did that, then you'll see a lot more guys rolling into the leg or trying to get the guard or whatever it is. You know what I mean? Like maybe a little shero or something. Interesting.

How about this? If you go double hooks and flatten them flat onto their stomach, that's considered a pin. Isn't that what they do at Sambo or something? Oh, no. That's a...

Oh, it's full guard. I think full guard is... Full guard chest to chest on bottom is a pin. It's a pin. Yeah. Yeah. That'll speed things up.

I mean, if you're belly down and the person's holding you down on your stomach and you can't move you're being pinned bro yeah you know what I mean that'll actually

yeah no more totaling then you can't do it yeah so if they have to get off bottom yeah as they're standing up opens up a lot of exciting suplexes

that's right yeah that's right and then the IJF will ban it because too many kids will get concussions as they're standing up, opens up a lot of exciting suplexes. That's right. And then the IJF will ban it because too many kids will get concussions. Yeah, well, don't give them ideas. It's a tricky game. It's a very tricky game because you have to protect your athletes. You have to make it spectator-friendly.

But you have to also keep people safe. It's a very difficult thing to do. I think it's one of those things. We kind of make fun of double guard pulling, but at the same time, there are some nuance take on that, even for double guard pulling, right? But at the same time, I know people love to bash on IJF for like, oh, they're just so trigger happy with the bans.

But it is, like you said it's more nuanced than that they're not just trying to like ban everything you know it's a balance they're doing the right thing

I think yeah so yeah God bless all the guard pullers out there who are listening yeah I know well I

might have to you know offer my apology because I kind of I've I've I kind of I've I've done that before I've looked down upon

guard pullers yeah and you know this is the thing right there's guys who only work one or two things that work for them and they keep going

that's it right they don't have a well-rounded game yeah so you definitely want to work takedowns and throws too you know don't just be a one-dimensional person yeah

you know what I mean you have to have a top game you have to do you know escapes and things like this it's you gotta be I mean I guess

if you're trying to win a world championship that's your entire game then yeah do that you know but if you're 99% of the people out there

doing it as a hobby dude yeah you can be well rounded you know I mean that's I'm guilty of that too like for example when i was going to bjj for a bit like i just focused on my top game more i wasn't trying like you did you do you're doing right now like trying to work on my bottom game you know i i wasn't i

and then i'll always get frustrated with people who pull guard on me and they do leg locks and i'm just like oh i don't know how to really defend that and i didn't really spend time to work on leg locks either so yeah i'm guilty of that so i i'm you know i'm i'm not i'm not in the position to like call others like dirty guard pullers but it's okay to pull guard it's okay to pull guard. It's okay to pull guard. You hear it from the man. Shintaro says it. Pull guard, guys. Pull guard. It's okay to pull guard. All right.

Well, I guess I'm seeing that I'm hearing another video coming about this topic, right? Yeah. Yeah. So stay tuned for that. Anything else? Nope. Thank you guys for listening. Yeah.

Thanks for listening, guys. And we'll see you guys in the next episode.