The Shintaro Higashi Show - Right vs. Left

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

One of the most difficult and intricate parts of Judo is the right vs. left position, or kenka-yotsu. It may seem daunting at first, but once you understand the nuance behind it, right-vs-left, or kenka-yotsu can be very fun and rewarding. In this episode, Shintaro and Peter discuss why right-vs-left hard, and how to tackle and master it. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

hello everyone welcome back to the shintaro higashi show with peter yu today we're going to talk about right versus left in judo what does that even mean right-handed versus left-handed right-sided versus left-sided southpaw versus orthodox like what is all this about right so i think it's a lot of people because most people are right-handed um maybe they're uh they're not really exposed to this kind of situation all too often. And, you know, left-handed people maybe may have like a little bit of advantage, I guess, in a way. But let's, yeah. So there's some terminologies people throw out there like

kenka yotsu, ai yotsu, whatever. So it's kind of related to right versus left. So what are those what are they what do they mean yeah so there's terminology iotsu iotsu means you know right versus right or left versus left right same sign yeah yeah kenka yotsu kenka yotsu is right versus left right opposite side yeah yes yeah and then so now it's important to distinguish like what right-sided judo looks like and left-sided judo looks like right okay a lot of the times if you're punching somebody and you're right-handed you're going to punch with your right

hand and in order to drive the most amount of impact into that hand you're going to lead with the opposite leg so if i'm right-handed my left leg goes forward my right hand goes back and then i pull that arm back and boom i throw that hand forward right right and it's natural if you're right-handed and you're a righty boxer right you're an orthodox boxer you stand with your left leg judo and wrestling if you're a right-sided player, you lead with the right leg. Right. Right. And your right hand goes on the collar.

Right. So opposite stances. And then you could turn to your left. Okay. If you're a left-sided judo player, you lead with the left. Turn to your right. Right. Turn to your right.

Right. Really interesting. So this is the thing uh you mentioned yourself most people are right-handed right hand dominant of course people you're gonna get people like i'm ambidextrous okay great good for you so even if you're right-handed it doesn't matter whether you do judo right-sided or left-sided i'm a big believer of this i guess you can make the argument that the right hand the power grip right if you're controlling the person's posture you want your

stronger hand right out front to be able to pull the person's head down yeah but the sleeve hand where you're trying to neutralize the opponent's power hand or pulling the person right that's just as important right right so naturally when you're doing, let's just say baseball, right? You're trying to learn to throw a baseball and be a pitcher. If you're right-hand dominant, there's not a world where you would start throwing the ball with your left hand. Right. Less coordinated, not as strong. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah.

Boxing too, generally, if you're right-hand dominant, you want to be able to put the most amount of power in the backhand and then set stuff up with the other hand. Right, right. Whether it's a jab or a hook or whatever it is, jab, jab, slip, boom, right, throw that hand. In judo, it doesn't really matter because a lot of these movements are not so intuitive. Right. Being right-hand dominant or left-hand dominant doesn't really affect you so much. Right, right. So I've heard people say, like, how do you determine who is right, who or left hand dominant doesn't really affect you so much right right so i've heard people say like how do you determine who's right who is left right i heard people say

like okay if you snowboard with your right leg forward and you're comfortable with your right leg forward you can just lead leg with right or if you snowboard at the opposite side and you always like lead with the left leg you could do this right or if you have extensive boxing experience and you're comfortable standing with your left leg forward okay might as well link that together and then right because you don't want to be switching every single time and some people have uh martial arts background and they're they're already strikers and they want to integrate judo into their striking game yeah right and if you're an mma fighter doing some fighting you can't box orthodox wrestle and do judo right right-sided so now every time you want to throw or punch you

have to switch stances and that's like a sign yeah yeah so now it's like i want to stand in band with you i'm standing as a lead leg left right i'm throwing my punches boom boom you know what i want to take this guy down but i can't really shoot with my lead leg left right right right i have to like punch punch switch stances and now i could shoot with my right leg because i'm a right-sided wrestler right right that there's no yeah it doesn't integrate very well yeah yeah right so i box lefty i box softball oh interesting i see yeah and a lot of the things because like my i hurt my right shoulder and it's not you know as strong as my left side strength while much more coordinated with my right hand obviously and then also i wanted sort of a striking style because i picked up boxing a little bit later right right right so you know and it

integrates really good with my grappling right i can throw the jab out there change level shoot and then i could throw the punch and if they close the distance i could lock them up and throw them because my leg is already lead like right right right so that's sort of the kind of way people kind of get their intro into right versus left right a lot of judo schools mostly teach right versus right you bow and you know that kind of works too because it's like but i'm left hand dominant right hand dominant some teachers are like it doesn't matter right hand goes on the collar left hand goes on the sleeve oh yeah right and i actually did a podcast with chuck jefferson recently right for judo fanatics podcast, and we were talking about it. And he said he grew up in a judo club where everybody was left.

Left versus left. Interesting. Yeah. So most dojos are right versus right. Was this dojo trying to exploit the fact that most people are not familiar with left-handed players? Very interesting that you say that but if you're only doing judo left versus left all right you don't have an advantage because you're not going against righties so yeah that's right yeah but this is where the advantage

comes from everyone in this dojo is doing left versus left everyone else in the world is doing right versus right 99 of the dojos are doing that now you go to a tournament every time you go to a tournament you're fighting righties so the more times you go to the tournament the more exposure you have to the kenka yotsu position right right therefore you're going to get better there i see and you're already kind of uh comfortable with the left-handed stand so you can like try to yeah interesting yeah yeah so the really cool right yeah so that's why that's why it's hard you know the different position kenkayo and whatnot so uh i think it's a lot the to practice the position you gotta have you know left-handed players or right-handed players but sometimes it's hard to find that match yeah so how would you recommend uh approaching this

i've heard you know many different ideas right i've heard people in like poland you know every time somebody comes into the dojo turn around and then they shove them and whichever foot that they step forward first is like oh you step forward your left leg your lead leg left you're right side of judo uh you're a lefty judo player step forward to your right after you shove them it's like oh you're right side of judo player now so now naturally you sort of you know some people are left some people are right right right i've heard dojos doing like okay january anybody who signs up is going to start doing judo as a left february anybody who signs up is going to start doing judo as a right that way you get an even number of people right i see that's a way that's a way yeah the way i like to do it is classically it's right hand on the collar left hand on the sleeve you know and then

i explain to them you don't have to be right-handed to do right side of judo you don't have to be left-handed to do left side of judo you could pick and choose right right there's generally two configurations right versus right or right versus left and then everything else sort of fits into that no matter what right whether you have whether even if you switch sides sometimes some people switch sides or whether you like the georgian position or whether you like two on one right you're gonna either favor one side or the other right so it's like why don't you try both and see what feels comfortable right so that's kind of a way into it and then every now and then i'll teach right versus life left specifically all right we're doing tai toshi today we're going to do right versus left all right let's try this technique

that technique and this is only specific to right versus left because tai toshi doing it against the righty doing against lefty looks very different when i teach this go try it how many lefties are in the room people raise their hand there's six or seven okay go grab them first but if you're going with another righty right then have one person stand left right right right and then let that person try it as a lefty too and then swap right that way the other person gets exposure to trying it and then i could say if you like it you could keep doing this you've been doing judo for five months it's not too late to switch right it's very early in the game yeah and you know what truthfully you'll have an advantage faster that's true because yeah people are not familiar with it more yeah people aren't familiar with it

um eugene you know my cousin that you've had any battles with in the room he's a lefty judo player right he's right-handed though right yeah he's right-handed yeah right but this is the thing like he snowboards with his left leg forward right and uh you know he used to just drop in every now and then at the dojo and then he would have no problem going against righties because his technique against other righties is very very good right so that yeah that's like because he told me yeah like he's right-handed but he's just like oh he saw what's happening and how people are not really familiar with the left-handed players. So he just kind of started off that way.

Right. Yeah. It's very interesting. So you could do that too. Yeah. So this stuff has been like studied in boxing already. Right. Right.

Orthodox versus Southpaw. Right. Right. And people label that boxer as a Southpaw boxer, that person is an Orthodox boxer. And then people who don't, people don't want to fight Southpaw right right and people label that boxer is a southpaw boxer that person is orthodox boxers and then people who don't people don't want to fight southpaw boxers yeah right famously rocky or something right like rock it was like a thing with rocky yeah people don't want to fight southpaw boxers but in judo if you get to the international stage there's almost an even number of right and left oh yeah yeah right and it's very interesting

when you distinguish that because now you can sort of add a little bit of depth and saying okay this person goes left right but how many attacks does he have to the right right right right so kenkai it's fighters in a kenkai it stands how many weak side attacks you have. Right. Right. And that makes it kind of very, very interesting. Yeah. So we kind of talked about how we could practice, you know, like maybe even try to distribute the people in the dojo or, you know, take turns to take different sides. So what should we look for?

What do we actually do in that position, kenkai-utsu? Right versus left what what do we actually do in that position kenka it's left right versus left what do we actually do yeah so it's controlling the distance right and controlling the lead arm first that's the first battle right and then when you're doing right versus left it's a little bit different than right versus right because right versus right i have my collar on your hand my hand on your collar you have your hand on my collar sleeve sleeve collar sleeve collar sleeve it's literally half half half and a half 50 right and then the adjustments from there kind of determine who has advantage right and then there's a little bit of grip fighting to get to that dominant position right versus left you could have inside position or outside position right with that lead arm

right because it's lapel lapel sleeve sleeve yeah you could have inside position or outside position. Right. With that lead arm. Right? Because it's lapel, lapel, sleeve, sleeve. Yeah. You could have inside or outside. Outside, yeah. People say inside's always better. Not necessarily true. I can't. There's people who are very, very, very good on the outside.

And even high-level athletes, I've heard people say in instructionals, inside's always better, inside's always better. It's like, no, it's not. Right? There's people who throw from the outside all the time right it's the techniques that come from those positions that make it different right right if you're a sumi gaeshi person inside position not so good yeah because if the person's on the outside they could post they have a close hand to the post and you don't control that hand to the outside right right if you like morote sanagi you can't be on the outside

because that arm is in the way because you're on the outside the person has inside position right right right you can't try yeah yeah so if you have the inside you have a lot more attacks here if you're on the outside you have a lot more attacks here. If you're on the outside, you have a lot more attacks there. Right? So like if you're doing like, look at Colton Brown, who's this left, tall, lefty, big, 90 kilo person that goes to the outside to trap that arm to get his Sasai in. Interesting. So he goes high Sasai, low Ogoshi.

Right? Yeah. And it's all on the outside. fights on the outside that's his game right right he goes on the outside and closes the distance that's where he wins the distance because if i want to create distance if i want to get away from him he pulls it and he prevents that right so it's not always a pushing away it's the game of pushing and pulling and where do we want to be optimal in terms of distance to be able to use our techniques yeah so you gotta you gotta go from what kind of techniques you like to do yeah yeah right then every now and then right now if we're

not just talking senagi and sumi let's look at like uchimata position right right we both like uchimata we're going uchimata to the same direction right versus left and let's just at like Uchimata position we both like Uchimata, we're going Uchimata to the same direction right versus left and let's just not use an extreme example where I'm crushed over or too far away but if it's sort of 50-50 with the lead arm where we're both sort of pulsing on each other

now the second battle is the sleeve once I gain the sleeve if I could pull that sleeve towards me and beat that center line that middle line now i could turn their shoulders towards the technique closer to me right so they're farther away from the uchimata than i am therefore i have an advantage so also turning the shoulder meaning towards you like kind of square up right yeah because we have sleeve and sleeve right right so we're kind of playing this tug

of war game yeah so if you can keep a very strong pulse with the right hand or the left hand the lapel hand right you could push and then pull now you have a lot more pulling power right and if you could turn their shoulder i'm closer to my turn thrills and also your spine is out of alignment right right in order to prevent that spine to be out of alignment, right, you have to square up with me. Yeah. Which gives me more control on the inside of the foot positioning. Right. If I could be on the inside where the feet are placed, right, now I have a much bigger advantage.

Right. How do you, so I, you you know you've told me about this it's turning the shoulder and whatever all that uh but a lot of times you know if the lefty person is really strong even if i have the sleeve it's hard to turn the show his or her shoulder so how yeah how do you approach that yeah so first you need a good post. So first you need a good post, right? Right. First you need a good post. Let's say if you're on the outside and you're crunching my arm downward like this,

and then you're pulling the sleeve and now my shoulders are turned. From here, I'm not going to be able to use my tricep to push back to gain enough force to pull the arm, right? So I need to create a strong frame to be able to push off the pull. Still then, I can't really do it ah i can't really do it i can't really do it so now you're pulling my arm this way so i'll release it in that direction goes to side i see so you gotta show the other direction yeah so now i'm attacking one to the weak side not with the intent of throwing it but to apply a little bit of force that direction so that when they reset now that's my timing to fight that arm

back i see i see right because if i mess with their balance they're not going to be able to apply any force period because they're worried about their balance right that's the beauty about the balance stuff right if you're trying to gain balance your limbs kind of spread out naturally right and that becomes your focus right so you're not just trying to beat the strength the good strength is never a good look and it helps to be strong because sometimes you put two hands on the person and you want to physically just pull them in

right right right I gotta work on that society more I'm starting to realize I really need that the other side attacks so this right versus left stuff is very very important i think you know in wrestling they talk about it kind of right they don't emphasize it as much right right

but it's not as pronounced in wrestling is it right yeah you know because which leg lead leg is there like yeah yeah determines whether i shoot a high c or a single right right you know and do i have a high C to both sides? Do I have a double to both sides? Do I have a single to both sides? But they never really specifically talk about it. And when you watch some of these instructionals, lead leg right, lead leg right,

right versus right position, I want to shoot a single to that back leg. Okay, all you got to do is make them step with this leg and then shoot around and go to that leg. You know, so I don't think they have enough focus on that um and i think even jujitsu you know uh if i'm on top and you're on bottom you know which leg do they lead with you know really most of the time people just kind of walk out there and lead leg right so it hasn't been emphasized right so if you're a new jiu-jitsu person up and coming right lead leg left try that

out throw a lot of people off no seriously yeah you'll throw a lot of people off because it's something that people have not really thought about yet always trying to find a new way you know yeah new angle yeah new angle yeah i'd probably do that if i was starting over nice nice oh you would try left leg yeah you think i'd be a little bit more uh go both ways situation ambidextrous kind of yeah yeah uh i think it's important to be able to turn both directions you know people have their uh things about that you know you can't and then the old criticism was like you want to you know if you're swinging the baseball bat to one direction and you're training your body to turn to one direction, you can't really train your body to turn the other direction and hit optimal to both sides.

But that kind of criticism is little by little going out the window. Right. Because you see people do this successfully on the international stage. Right. Look at Becca Givnashvili is one of the top, top Georgian judo guys. And he does a goshoshi right a goshi left right right yeah right he goes both sides you know both sides almost equally that you know that's like you got to find the angle if that's uh yeah if that's something that could work

uh against people you know i think it's the element of surprise. I think that's always... Unbalancing element of surprise so that people don't expect you to go a certain way. Yeah. And then they can't really defend if they can't anticipate it. Cool. So that's...

So now we kind of have a general idea on what to do. Like, you know know control the distance turn the shoulder and whatnot yeah i've done tons of videos on this on my youtube right you're interested in like right versus left right versus right judo and then i like to kind of short form it to rvr rvl right because those are the two configurations right so we'll hit uh search up on youtube if you want more visual aid and yeah details yeah and um another thing maybe uh the last thing we could talk about is uh so now we know how to set up the position and whatnot this controlling the distance turn the shoulder so but any advice on

which throw to do like how to pick throws throws that are appropriate for the right versus left situation? That's a very good question. Yeah. It's not one specific throw. It's a set of throws. Right. Right. So right versus left, because of the nature of us attacking mostly here, right?

And once we do the upper body battle here and then you're winning in position you want to beat your foot to the inside to maximize most of your turn throws right because we're both turn into that same direction I want to inch myself closer to the inside with my feet right right so to prevent this from happening if the other person keeps stepping it opens up that back lane having the attack to the back attack to the front attack to the back back of this misdirectional situation becomes a really really crucial part of the game right right so the so it's not you gotta have like we like what we talked about you gotta have that society you gotta have the maybe the far-reaching attacks, some turn throws. Yeah.

You got to come up with a set of appropriate throws. What do you do? What's yours? Yeah. I'm not too – I'm not, like, great at right versus left. But I will always try to feint going to the backside. But I'm a big advocate of, like, not doing Taniyatoshi in practice, as you already know. Yeah. So, naturally toshi isn't amazing right but i do have a tanya toshi and i'll fake tanya toshi and i'll go front i like ochi osoto i like sasai and deashi so i'll

mess a lot with the lead leg i'm pretty good at fighting for position on the yeah inside and both almost equally right so i'm good at fighting for position grabbing the inside and both almost equally. Right. So I'm good at fighting for position, grabbing the sleeve. I like to get the sleeve in a way where they can't re-grip my sleeve, which is very difficult to do against good people. Right. Right. Right.

But to the average practitioner or someone who's good, not great, I could do it. That's a big, big advantage and where i learned that was me in a training camp in canada going against nicholas gill who was an olympic silver medalist oh yeah yeah and he was a tall big lefty and he would not let me grab his sleeve oh but he would grab my sleeve in a way where i couldn't re-grip his sleeve famously yeah oh go ahead go ahead so you have what yeah so i had one hand on that's it he has two hands on and then as i'm fussing around trying to re-grip the sleeve right he's dominating me on this other side so you know he just told me at will at that time.

I was like 19, 20 years old. And then I was like, that is really cool. I want to learn how to do that. And I tried to learn how to do that. And I kind of did. But it's tough because he has these massive hands. Oh, I see. If you have big, big hands, you could do this.

I have very, very tiny hands. No, I'm serious. I have small hands yeah it's kind of messed up you know like uh i'm a heavier person like 210 but i have the hands of like 140 pound person it's like you know my hands are i'm not saying my hands are weak yeah i mean kind of weak but not that strong but so it's like if you have big hands it's an advantage to be able to do this maybe this should be a video like a little trick on how to grip the sleeve hand in the right versus left do you already have one no i don't think i've ever done it it's too niche no one watch it all right i'll watch it but the fun i was gonna say famously in the olympic final when nicholas Nicholas Gill won the silver medal, Inoue Kose grabbed his, you know, they were going for Inoue Kose's righty, Nicholas Gill's lefty.

But he, Inoue Kose managed to grab his sleeve and then throw him into Uchimata. So I guess if you're great, like Inoue Kose, you could beat that. Yep. That's true. that's true. That's true. Yeah. Not me, though. I was not able to beat Nicholas Gill.

Yeah. So yeah, this right versus left, it's a very intricate thing. There's a lot more judo happening right versus left. You're not turning into each other. Right versus right, you're turning into each other, turning into each other, turning into each other. right versus right you're turning into each other turning into each other turning into each other right left you're turning towards the same side right so it's it's a lot to think about and a lot to practice and i i frankly i we were i was lucky to have a lot of good lefty yeah judokas at your dojo like eugene and anthony and one that's and i got exposed to it and it's always more fun i think it's it could be frustrating but it's always like it's always a good fun so

try to practice it check out shintaro's videos on them uh if you need more details um anything else before we close nope that's it try it out hopefully you know you're not your dojo is not all righties or all lefties if they are you know and you're listening to this yeah break out break out and say you know what i'm gonna start learning opposite watch all my right versus left that's right comment on it like it and then uh you know people are gonna be like man this guy is what this guy is, you know, really hard to throw now. I've been doing judo for two months. What the hell's going on here?

I'm going to try this, too. Right. But you had a head start. Yeah. First and fast. You know, try it out. Cool, cool, cool. All right.

Well, that's about it for Right Versus Left. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for the next episode.