The Shintaro Higashi Show - Shintaro's BJJ Journey

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

As a true martial artist, Shintaro has never shied away from other martial arts, especially Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He's been at the center of the New York BJJ scene, training with the likes of the Gracies, John Danaher, Bernardo Faria, Brian Glick and many others. In this episode, Shintaro talks about how he started BJJ as a Judoka, and the impact his BJJ journey had on his life. 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 you today we're going to talk a little bit about my bjj journey and what i've learned yeah so uh for those who don't know shintaro has also done bjj and then he's actually a brown belt brown belch brown belts that's right so and he's met a lot of interesting people especially because he was going through the new york city bjj circuit yeah New York City BJJ is pumping so he has some cool stories and then we're gonna kind of quickly go over them and then later we're gonna talk about what he learned you know from his BJJ experience so let's start from the beginning so how did you even get into BJJ like what what motivated you as a judo guy so I

knew a guy in my neighborhood right around my parents' house. Right. Right. He used to do BJJ and he invited me. He's like, hey, I'm doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I know you do judo. And this is like probably when I was 20. So probably like 15 years ago.

So it was a different world. Probably, yeah. Yeah. So I was like home from college. I was in Westchester. Right. And then my friend's like, hey, I've been going to Jojo Goren School,re in school ecu east coast united and he's like why don't you come on by so i decided to go with my friend and there's a very warm welcome and i was very surprised to see everyone

started on their feet oh nice nice yeah and i was like wow this is like judo this is almost the same thing right i didn't even know what it really was before you know right because back then i just knew that they were good at nuwaza uh-huh and i was like my nuwaza was not good at all i've neglected it i just never liked groundwork right right i'm like a stand-up person i like stand-up yeah so i went so then so how you you put on like your judo gi and then just went with them like how how did they receive you yeah i went i brought my judo gi i brought my judo black belt and they were like hey welcome you know come on in and you want to work out and it was pretty great nice nice yeah and then they all started on their feet so i started on my feet and you know

we did some judo and then you know we did some nirwaza and it felt very very familiar right right and then did you did you uh consistently go that summer or yeah so i went and then i was so impressed by jojo goran's jujitsu right his nirwaza was unbelievable right he kept doing this arm drag and he was so slick with it and the way he attacked multiple attacks right uh i wasn't used to that right right triangle choke armbar triangle choke armbar it was like oh shoot which do i defend which do i defend and i haven't really felt that before of course this is me with zero bjj experience going with the bjj black belt right right he's running a school at the time i was very impressed so i was like you know what i'm gonna go and then next class i went i brought my white belt i brought a white belt nice nice just yeah as a student as a student yeah it was really cool and the people

who weren't there the first time they were all so nice to me and they assumed that i was a white belt and we're doing sing i remember we're doing single legs and i was wrestling in college at the time right right it was a guy he was like oh man let me show you how to do a single leg and he was like showing me and he was super nice and super like excited to show me so i was just like all right and then i let him teach me a single leg and he's like give it a shot man and i was trying it and uh of course my single leg is great you know i'm wrestling in college right and he's like good job good job but you know your hand should be like this and i'm like all right you know it was kind of nice really just being a full-blown student right right you know so you you kept true to your you know the dojo etiquette we

talked about oh yeah yeah yeah and you know after he found out all this stuff that i was a judo black belt and i wrestled he was like man why didn't you tell me? And it was like a funny thing. We became good friends. Oh, nice, nice. Yeah. So it was like a summer thing for you. When you're home, you would just kind of go stop by and then train a little here and there. So I went in, walked in as a judo black belt, and then I walked the next day in as a white belt. And it was like the next day or the day after or something like that that the instructor said, hey, you know what? We're going to start you off at Blue.

Right. And that was my first. Blue Belch. Blue Belch, yep. Yeah, nice. And then I went for the summer. I was back home from the summer. And then I was going to college in Manhattan.

So when I went back to college, it's like now I couldn't go train there because it was in Westchester. Right, right. Westchester is a suburb of New York City, Manhattan. Right, right. Westchester is the suburbs of New York City. Manhattan, yeah. Yeah, it's probably like 30, 40 minutes north. Yeah, yeah. And between judo and wrestling in college, it's like I couldn't fit in jiu-jitsu.

Right, right. Even if I wanted to, I just couldn't do it. Yeah. Right? Morning lift, wrestling practice, then judo practice. I see. Where do you train jiu-jitsu? Yeah. I couldn't do it. Mm-hmm. So then so then so you kind of that was put on a hiatus a little bit and then hey this yeah some you know

a couple years went by and then you know uh i took the summer to go to henzo gracie's because my friend harry saint leisure who's out in right with the jack the Jacksonville in Arizona. He was training there. He was like, why don't you come on by? And I started developing a relationship with Brian Glick and those guys because I was doing seminars, judo seminars at BJJ schools. I see. I see. Yeah.

So I was kind of getting familiar with them, and they kept inviting me. So I went, and I spent the summer training in in the blue basement with john donahue and he gave me my purple belt oh so you're a donahue purple belt yeah so wait so that was like a summer after college like a just one summer after college or that was a that was probably yeah somewhere around there i think it was a summer where it was like, I was still in college maybe. So it was probably like three years after I had that first experience for the summer. I see. So BJJ was kind of like a summer thing for me because I wasn't really wrestling in the summer. Right, right, right.

It was just judo. Like there's no summer. Yeah, in the fall, you start your preseason. Right. You wrestle. Season ends in April or March. And then you spend two or three months kind of still obsessing over it oh god damn it i didn't you know right in conferences or something you're

still training and then in the summer summer it just kind of fizzles out for me wrestling so it's like a bjj kind of replaced wrestling in a way in your grappling training yeah in that time period yeah yeah so now i have a purple belt and you know i feel a little bit more confident about my name waza so i know donahar is like a legendary figure in the bjj community yeah so how was your experience like with him like you he's i know he's known for his uh pedagogical like style and you know his death squad you know i was actually so blown away because he wanted to have conversations about judo with me uh-huh and he was saying hey uh did you see this match with this guy when he did this koji gari and i was like what how is he so familiar

with judo and he was saying stuff about judo that i haven't even heard he was like this guy that guy and i'm like oh my god i haven't even watched that or heard that and i was blown away by right and then there was a little office in the back where you know sometimes i would go in early just to hang out with harry and talk to brian glick and i would see him in the in the little office uh watching videos like judo videos and studying it and watching matches and i was like wow this guy really is a student of the arts he's a true scholar yeah and the way he taught was amazing too because he's very uh verbose right my father didn't really teach he's like do right and then he would give some feedback but a lot of it is figuring out yourself kind of a right methodology so he was very very explicit in the way he taught like do

this with your hands do that with your hands and i was very impressed by that i see so it's harder to do that for judo right because balance is important and coordination is very important if you don't have the coordination and balance you just can't do it right but if you're on the ground it's like put your hand here anyone could put their hand there right take the hand off like this it's like okay yeah like that and then right when you see the tension across the sleeve in this way you've know you've done something right like yeah i could definitely see that as opposed to judo it's like stand on one leg pick him up on your back it's

like if you can't balance them there yeah can't do it that's an interesting part we can talk more about the like kind of your experience in bjj and then in contrast to your judo experience but yeah they're like it seems like because judo is a standing game mostly it's uh yeah it's more intuitive than like uh cerebral like bjj i think it can you can approach it as like a cerebral art yeah i think the speed in which it's practiced and the intensity in which it's practiced changes that right and we're gonna get into that a little bit right so you because when things are a little bit slower you could actually break down and analyze see all the different options and see all the different methodologies and as opposed to judo is just fast boom boom boom it's like what happened it's like i don't

know what happened the guy just grabbed him through him right a lot of the stuff that actually happens is you can't see it you can't you need the lens to be able to understand what's going on all right so dan har you know so you did he have a team then like the whole death squad thing like he's he's a prodigy that wasn't really a thing uh okay i know brian glick was in the room and he was incredible uh there were great people in there remember gregor gracie being in the room and subbing everybody. You know, and all that stuff. There were great athletes in there. I think this is pre-death squad.

I see. I see. So it's like Donovan was just starting out his whole school thing. And I've been back since that summer here and there, right? Gary was going and I would go. And I spent a couple of weeks going to the comp class because I had time on Tuesday morning at 10, things like that. And, you know, every time I go, I got something out of it. Right.

And I would always try to show whatever I knew if someone asked. Nice. That's etiquette too. I'm not going around like, hey, let me show you my tile, you know, not doing that. But if someone wanted to learn it, like, yeah, more than happy to show what I know. Wearing your purple belt. Purple belt. Yeah.

Nice. I wore my purple belt and, you know, I marcelo's right because marcelo's too yeah bernardo faria was coming to my dojo to train judah all right because this is more recent i'm jumping ahead a couple years because he was last world championship thing and he's like i want to work on my stand-up game so he's coming to my dojo for six months to a year it was so cool to meet him you know because he he's like i want to work on my stand-up game so he's coming to my dojo for six months to a year it was so cool to meet him you know because he he lived like two blocks away from the yeah you were around for that yeah yeah i i went there wasn't with him he was he's so nice like of course he's gonna kill me yeah yeah on the ground but he'll let me work on my stuff and i'll go stand up with him he'll go hard standing up yeah he came in he's like hey i

actually live two blocks away like you guys do judo here i'm like yeah come on come on in such a nice guy judo yeah he did some there was and then he invited me to marcello's like come on marcello's so i went for a couple weeks nice marcello's is in manhattan too yeah it's uh on 30 something street i see 20 yeah it's pretty close also it's like all right in midtown radius yes yeah so in bernardo like you even showed up on his uh instructions i remember yeah so i'm doing like judo fanatics and bj fanatics and in between that time from my purple belt with donahue one of my judo students got a black belt and he gave me my brown and that's kind of how it is and i see that so that's when you got so before yeah so it was like between donahue and uh of bernardo you got your brown

belt i did yeah yeah did you like it wasn't a result of like me going to a school and training for the summer or training for x amount of time it was one of those things one of my guys got a black belt and then he gave me it was one of those guys yeah so you're so i mean you're you are plugged into the community and all and everyone knew you and that kind of situation because we do judo at the dojo and that's what we're known for like a lot of jiu-jitsu guys would come all the time right right would come in hey i'm from out of town like i'm a bjj guy i saw your video on youtube can i do jiu-jitsu or hey i'm training for this thing i'm a purple belt i'm a black belt and so people are always dropping by with

jiu-jitsu experience right and during that time period you know when people would come by you know pre-covid and everything uh it was a great opportunity for my judo guys to do something and we do a lot of new wazza at the dojo as you know right right so like these guys would come in and my guys would be able to work out with them on the ground and work out with them on standing and things like this it's a great little synergistic thing yeah good relationship did you ever compete in any kind of bjj competition yeah i did i fought in two tournaments and uh yeah i did good which division like i know they divided up by like belts yeah so there was one tournament i fought it was like the good fight yeah uh it was like in new york and uh like tgf it was called and then i it was like the advanced division but they weren't like black belts like you know i see it's like a local tournament yeah

advanced heavyweight division or something like that uh and then i won that nice nice they put me in the heavyweight division i was i wasn't even that heavy they were really big yeah they gave me the option too they were like you could be in the under you know 200 or something but you'd be in like an intermediate

or you could go a little bit more advanced but heavy yeah but heavy yeah I see and I was like I'm gonna go with the heavy guys

this was with Donahar like the whole crew no this was with Jojo Gorin's team ah ok ok ok so I was a blue belt I think I see

yeah I see I fought as a blue belt I was fighting like purple belts I think it was ah it's good yeah

it's good I think that's an appropriate level yeah you just started out I remember my second match I go out and put my hands on the guy

and I hear one of his friends yelling, he does judo. Did he pull guard after? No, the guy's like, what? And then I already had gone in for a hurray. Oh, you did a hurray. Nice, nice. That's funny.

As soon as I heard that, I was like, oh man, this guy's going to pull guard. Might as well go for something now. For something, right, right. That's fun. Cool, so you know. It was a fun experience. Yeah, so you're like very much part of the new york bjj scene with the gracy's the um yeah the uh what'd you say the bernardo yeah yeah of course with uh who's bernardo's

bernardo's teacher again marcelo marcelo okay you ever heard of him yeah I've heard of him definitely Marcelo yeah Marcelo he's famous nice yeah it was an interesting you know ride so far and I learned a lot

during that time period and like I said a lot of Jiu Jitsu guys come through my dojo right so it's perfect we have a Jiu Jitsu brown belt now on the mat with us

Joe he's great nice nice and now Brian Glick we haven't talked about him he was donahue's one of donahue's first black belts ever and he is you know i think like gary tonin wrote a post like he's one of the best black belts ever in this world that no one really knows because he's never competed so that he he he's the for those who watch uh shintaro's videos he frequently shows up

on yeah uh shintaro's videos and yeah they train still like they're in a kind of pod together yes so even during the pandemic like we were in our little quarantine bubble situation and i really trust him because right he's a great guy and i'm in my little bubble and i'm very very diligent and visually with the mask and stuff so we were exchanging privates and you know this goes back way long too like during the course of this whole experience that i've been telling you about right well every now and then meet up at the new york athletic club and i'll teach him judo for an hour and he teaches me jujitsu for an hour so we've been exchanging this kind of a thing we've been working out together for years and years and years so that like always added to my jiu-jitsu and if i had a question this guy is

just such a jiu-jitsu savant right so it's like if i had any question he could just clarify it he was super concise he was super eloquent like all this stuff about him he's just incredible teacher and you know i hope he feels the same way about my judo. And I've been teaching him judo for a little while too. But, you know, he's had other judo gurus as well, right? Like Gary had a hand in teaching him and Tamok and all these guys. But, yeah, that's a long relationship. And right now, like I'm kind of getting into it too. Like we've been pretty consistent for the last three or four months.

So my jiu-jitsu game has definitely been increasing. You think you're gonna try to get your black belt in bjj too yeah you know if he wants to like reach out to me and just like hey man i think you're at a level where you're definitely deserving of a black belt here it is i definitely won't say no to that and i'm open to it but it's like that's not my primary objective right right my primary objective is to choke choke George whenever I feel like choking him in the dojo, you know, because his defense is so good. Right. He's such a strong guy.

And I just love learning Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah. And I always tell my guys, dude, it's like let not the belt be the end goal. Right. But let it be like a side effect of your learning. I love to learn, love the the process love to come in love to hang out with the guys love to choke on ball whatever learning learning learning all of a sudden your belt is darker and darker right right and that's kind of the mentality that i'm trying

to have with it of course it'll be nice right it's like a marketable thing right it's yeah double black coral judo and you know bj black ensemble it Sambo, it's like, that's nice. Yeah. But it's really not on the forefront of my mind when I go in. Yeah. Well, yeah. We'll see what happens on that front. I don't want to be the guy that sees Brian once a week. It's like, what do I got to do for my Black Belt? Yeah.

Do I need to learn the Barambola? Like, I don't want to do that. Right, right. Yeah. So you've had, definitely you have a very open mind for BJJ, not just an open mind, you are actually a student of the art. And so what, let's kind of go through your experience in BJJ and then contrast it to your judo experience.

So first and foremost, what do you think about bjj as a judo practitioner like what's the um you know it's a you know they're closely related but you know there's definitely differences so how do you think how do you see it yeah so with judo time in there was is very limited right and there's a discrepancy in the way we train there was in judo versus how it's actually applied in competition and i always talk about there's a discrepancy in the way we train nirwaza and judo versus how it's actually applied in competition and i always talk about there's a martial arts judo and there's a sport judo like olympic sport judo and it's very important to distinguish the two because if you're looking at sports judo you're playing judo or fighting judo under the rules of the ioc the ijf

right right and if you're looking at it from a martial standpoint it's like okay judo under the rules of the IOC, the IJF. Right. Right? And if you're looking at it from a martial standpoint, it's like, okay, judo, morotegari, kataguruma, are those things still judo in a martial arts standpoint? Yeah, they are. So the way we do judo in a martial setting is different from the way we do sports judo. But what we mostly see on the online, the highlight reels and all these killers on the mat and you know the most marketable thing about it is the international ijf circuit right so when we're watching that kind of judo and we're looking at the newaza there it's like you see people missing a throw turtling on bottom right missing a sumi and then being an open guard and then kind of stop having

that transitional newaza yeah and that's where it's at. But when you look at a practice, like a judo practice, and we're going into nirwaza, all right, partner up and do nirwaza. We bow, and then we just start nirwaza. Very rarely do you see the transitional side specifically trained. They did that in Jimmy Pedro. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why they had so much success with that. Right, right.

Right? So there's a big discrepancy there. success with that right right right so there's a big discrepancy there so in in terms of judo like you think you i mean i i i think you it's safe to say you will definitely recommend bjj to improve your judo newaza so yes and no oh yeah yeah yes and no because if your goal is to do judo, compete judo successfully, what are the nirwaza positions do you see in judo most often? I go

tomanage. I fail. Now the person's in open guard in the top position. You have five seconds to improve position or it stops right back up to your feet. So this idea of, OK, shin to shin, he goes there, that go put him on his butt, you know, Barambola, all the stuff like that stuff just will never exist in judo because there's not enough time it takes to get into those scenarios. It's just too long.

Like the referee will never allow it to go continue. Right. So spending a lot of time doing that is not very useful if you're trying to do judo and compete in judo and using bjj to enhance that right right right but stuff that you could do in bjj like attacking the back right if it's fast and it proves position it keeps creating motion like something like that could really really benefit the judoka it's like and it proves position it keeps creating motion like something like that could really really benefit the judoka it's like quick guard passes or off the back attacks even quick guard passes might not be useful because in judo you don't get rewarded for

passing the guard right right you get rewarded for passing the guard and pinning the right right right so as soon as the quick guard pass happens the judo person can turn their back and give up their back because you don't lose points right right right i see getting pinned you'll lose points giving up your back you don't lose points so it's in the best interest when you do a quick x pass to just go to your stomach right right right right so now you're in this position it's like yes you're giving up your back in sport judo right oh you're susceptible to the choke but all you have to do is keep that position for one two three four five seconds the ref's like okay done back up your feet right so it's in the best interest of judo people to fight that way and train that way

so but will it make you a better martial arts practitioner a judo practitioner yeah that's a different story so in that yeah so for those judo practitioners judokas who don't necessarily want to focus on the competition side of things what do you think how do you think they should approach bjj because well i think they should learn BJJ almost as a separate art, right? Right, I see. And it's very important because if you're looking at, for instance,

like the pinning idea in judo, you hold them for 20 seconds and you win. Right? Simple as that. Right. But if I'm practicing with the goal of improving

my groundwork period as an overall grapple as a martial artist, pinning someone down for 20 seconds is nothing. If we're doing a five-minute round, I pin him two or three times, that's a good portion of the match that we literally did nothing. Right, right. Right? So pin the position, pass the guard, pin the person, hold them for 10 seconds, and then transition to something else. Or even look for submissions from the pinning position.

Right? Judo guys don't look for submissions from the pin position. Right. They just simply don't. Yeah. Because that's the end of the match when you pin them. Right? So you kind of have to look at it like that.

I see. Because the rule sets really, really makes a difference. see because the rule sets really really makes a difference so if you're a judo person and you want to compete in judo and you want to learn guard passes a lot of the guard passes are completely useless for judo people because it doesn't lead to a pin it doesn't lead to anything that gets rewarded in terms of points right so the over under pass or what jimmy pedro calls split the legs that's the best because when you go for it you pressure you control the hips and the legs while you're passing as you're passing the person is being prevented from going to their stomach right which leads to being yes rewarded yeah biopsychome by the pit right so you're a judo guy you want to do bjj to improve your judo competition, you go to a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school,

and if they're teaching over-under pass specifically, that's good. That'll help you. But if they're only doing quick passes, not really going to help you. I see. So you are a judo competitor as well as you're a martial artist. So how did you approach bjj

like what what did you try to get out of it and like throughout your journey well this is the thing yeah while i was competing i had no knowledge of this stuff i was just kind of i was really clueless and you know i wish i knew all the stuff right that i know now yeah and i wish i had someone you know like me to kind of teach me some of this stuff when i was up and coming i did it so for me it was like oh jujitsu guys are good at nirwaza i'm gonna go do bjj right my nirwaza is gonna get better right oh look at this ankle lock i can't use that in judo anyway i'm not gonna learn it right look at this thing that we do with the wrist i can't use that in judo anyway right let me just try to learn the stuff that is semi judo applicable judo ish yeah and something that like i really liked was a knee cut pass ah but it's like boom knee cut pass and then it's like people

rolling out to their stomach right never scorned from it it was very frustrating right right right and i never really made that connection until I went to Jimmy Pedro's and Jimmy Pedro was obsessively making everybody train back attack juji and over under pass. Back attack juji, over under pass. Back attack juji, over under pass. Right?

Right. It's like, person drops Ippon Senagi, back attack juji. Person misses Sumigayashi, over under pass. Over under pass, yeah. And I'mhi over on the pass yeah and i'm like oh okay got it got it i see and then you know you see guys like bernardo faria who specializes in the over under pass and then when he was coming to the dojo i was like bernardo please teach me that over under pass right right and he's like okay if you teach me uh drop senagi yeah i was like okay yeah you know yeah

nice so little by little like it started shaping together i see and now i kind of have a good understanding of it and i wish i had this understanding before but you know now i'm not a judo competitor i do judo specifically for the martial side of it i see so you'll see even now in the dojo you haven't been there in a while but i'm doing a little bit more on the nail on stuff that's yeah yeah you know even like the body lock stuff the upper body body lock greco-roman throws like in judo and sport judo you can't connect your hands behind the person right no bear hugs yeah no bear hugs but we're doing it we're learning it nice and i specifically say you can't do this in competition but it's good to know this stuff because we're trying to be grapplers we're trying

to be martial artists i see so it's like it's like the stuff we talked about in the you know how to find your own judo system you you had you you're exposed to all of this and then you internalize it interpret it in your own way yeah And then kind of try to be more expansive in your view on the... Yeah. You have to loop it back to your own goals always. Yeah. And people say, hey, is jiu-jitsu good for self-defense? Yeah, a lot of it is.

But it's not purely self-defense. Right. Because being in a nirvana position where you have the person's back, that may not be the most conducive thing, right? If you're trying to defend yourself against multiple attackers. Right, right. Right? Also, like, for instance, give you another example, like the deep half position, right?

Really bad if you get punched in the face. Right, right, right. Can't really go for it, right? Deep half is not so good for that. can't really go for it right deep half is not so good for that you know or even like the seated guard when one person's standing in like sort of a upright position looking for these fast passes and things like that and you're in a seated guard like if you get kicked in the face not very good so you're you're essentially your goal throughout your journey kind of changed at first you're a judo competitor try to find stuff that you can apply to judo from bjj

but that as you become more of a teacher or martial artist like you're focusing more on the martial art martial side of things and now you're really approaching bjj as an art you're trying to learn it more as a whole in a holistic way i guess not just like that something you can use uh for judo yeah right yeah so that's what's going on hey man yeah we have a leak in the house so we got a plumber coming in oh okay we'll cut that out hold on we'll just wait it's okay it's all right yeah you need to cut it try to be as authentic as possible on the Higashi and Peter show.

Well, all right. So let's see. Sometimes your pipes leak, yo. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we don't, we don't, it's a, it's a pandemic situation. We don't have a dedicated studio or anything like that. Yeah. Cool.

Okay. So now let's flip the script and then let uh, let's, I'm curious about how, what you think about how BJJ guys, BJJ people can approach judo. Like, you know, I think, I think a lot of times, a lot of times that they just kind of say, Oh, you know, I don't really learn about takedowns at my BJJ school. Can we just can i just show up to judo like i see that a lot yeah yeah you can but you need a very educated instructor to be able to do this right right and it's the same idea with the judo with the bjj on the reverse side i actually made a dvd about this called low risk judo for bjj players commonly you go into a judo school and it's like hey i'm here

to do judo to help my BJJ game. The instructor goes, okay, let me show you a turn throw. Right. Probably one of the worst things you could start with. Yeah. Can you elaborate? A learning curve. A learning curve.

Yeah. Takes a very long time. Once you get your turn throws very, very powerful and skillful, it takes a very long time to get there. The more powerful it is, the harder it is to stop. Right, right. But in the beginning phases of learning it, it is not powerful at all because it takes a very long time to get there yeah more powerful it is the harder it is to stop right right in the beginning phases of learning it it is not powerful at all because it's not very intuitive and then every time you go for it the consequences are high because you're giving up your back you put yourself in bad position every single time you go for it right right right right so you really shouldn't start by trying to learn these massive turn throws because they're not really going to help you in your game. Right.

So it's the same way like how you approached BJJ as a judo competitor. If you want to improve your takedown because you want to become a better BJJ competitor, you have to look for those things that actually apply better. Yeah. And if you look at any dojo they're probably going to teach you osotogari first right right teach you osotogari in an upright position which you'll see in judo now more because there's no more leg grabs because right talked about olympic judo sport judo right doesn't allow leg grabs when you're not allowed to

do any leg grabs you're going to be a little bit more upright and if any sort of negative judo where you're not actually going to throw somebody gets penalized you're going to be more upright because you want your hips closer to be as offensive as possible right so if you're learning judo and osorogari in that context and now you're trying to bring it back to brazilian jutsu everybody shoots in on the legs so their defense is a lot lower right they don't get penalized for negative judo or negative throwing where you're going away from the technique not offensively throwing somebody naturally you're gonna have people who are just trying to strip the hands off right right back down and then keeping their hips low that'll sort of guy that you learn in judo not gonna work

right right so you need an instructor with the knowledge to be able to say okay how do you apply this in brazilian jiu-jitsu some people can just sort of analytically make this kind of a connection right off the bat how can i take this to sotagari how is this applicable to my jiu-jitsu style i see some people could do that most people cannot i was never able to do this right so now all of a sudden you know you can ask your instructors like how does this is going to work is this going to work in jujitsu and then if the judo teacher says yeah of course it's going to work just do it like this right you know uh then maybe the guy doesn't know right right right because you just don't know what you don't know so it has to be nuanced yeah

right it has to be specific yeah right and if your jiu-jitsu game every single time is being in bottom position sweep get the points pass get the points and now work from side control and that's your entire game going for a big turn throw is not going to help you in the least bit right right because you want to be in that bottom open guard position right right so now you need to learn a tomonage sumigeishu where you put yourself in that position when you fail the technique then now all of a sudden you could go into your position right i guess that's uh that's a good way to do it because you know if you just learn uh a turn throw uh as a bjj player and you might get frustrated you might just give up the whole alert

the whole thing about learning judo altogether I made this mistake many times yeah right jiu-jitsu guy comes in hey I want to learn this thing you know judo to help improve my takedown game and I'm like okay let's start with grip fighting and let's start with a nice little right right right right right not knowing you know at the time i never really made that connection between this might not be effective for the people who are trying to do it in their own context this is a different context and if you're unfamiliar with bjj how are you going to be able to make these two things work together so that it's the same idea as like the wrestler that comes in and goes i want to work on on my throws. Right. I don't know.

There's no Greco-Roman places, no freestyle places. I just know collegiate wrestling. I want to learn how to throw somebody. Can you show me? Okay, come on in. Here's how to do a tai toshi with two hands on the lapel. It's like there's no lapels in wrestling. Right, right.

How do you account for that? Oh, just go for an underhook and a wrist. Okay, is it that simple? You know, maybe it it is maybe it isn't depends on the level the guy's wrestling right if you don't know wrestling you never you're not really going to be able to help them right so um so it's it's a very important for the instructor to know a lot of these other arts too because you you want to help out other practitioners too that are interested if that's something that the judo instructor wants to do, then it's important for them to know.

Right. But some judo instructors are like, hey, man, I do judo. I teach judo. That's it. In judo, you can do this. You can't do that. And this is how we live and die by it. Right.

We're doing this judo, right? And if that's them, that's God bless them. They're allowed to do that. That's their right. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a jiu-jitsu guy i want to learn stand up okay you could learn our judo that's it right some people are like this so nowadays now knowing what you know now what when the bjj guy comes in it's like hey i want to get i want a better takedown game for my bjj what do you yeah what do you usually show for the first time well so this is general so i had this happen to me maybe three weeks ago too right guy wants to

do a private and then the first thing i ask is what belt are you in jujitsu and what is your game right oh so you try to personally tailor yeah yeah you have to personally tell especially it's a private right group setting it's different it's like, I'm going to teach this during class. I don't have time to figure out what you do and differentiate the instruction. Just for you, if you're only here for one class. Right, right. It's not fair to the Peter yous that come three times a week. Yeah.

That comes four times a week. Yeah. Who I emotionally and just overall invested in. Yeah, yeah. I care about them. Right. So the guy that comes in for a group class you know oh let me pay my mat fee and then let's try it once hey sensei i know this is a group

class but can you dedicate your entire session to me and making my jiu-jitsu better i'm like get out of here with that right right right i'm not gonna help that person generally right i will i'll give them maybe one or two things that's it they. They can take it or leave it. Maybe they can do something with that information. But it's not really on the forefront of my priority list. Right. What I want... Private lesson is different, right? Because it's me and him.

And it'll always start with a conversation. What belt are you? And what's your jiu-jitsu game? So what... And then you go from the... Maybe you will show Sumigai and Tomoyanage first. And you go from there potentially yeah so the other day i asked this question to this guy is that hey what are some of your things that you're

successful on your feet what are some of the things you feel comfortable doing and what are some of your issues issue number one was i had there's a lot of wrestlers in my jiu-jitsu school they take me down right what am i doing wrong all right let's grip fight a little bit and then he was going for the lapel with his lead leg which means he's not really protecting his lead leg and a wrestler that's a wrestler's dream to be ducked and shoot go under the arms because arms are the first line of defense right right right right right so that was number one so it's like hey don't reach with your lead leg reach reach with your other hand, which just happens to be the left hand. Right, right.

Right? Punch the hand in. Now your lead arm is protecting your lead leg. Let's start off with that. What are some of the successful throws that you've been hitting? What sort of society combination that you showed me last time

that has been really working well for me? How can we diversify on that? You know, and he had a Muay Thai experience. So he's used to some of these foot sleeps. He's used to the movement of the society. I see. I see. i said okay you put sasai and deashi together it'll work really well for you but if the jiu-jitsu guys crouch down real low it's going to be very difficult right let's work a snap down let's work the sasai let's work the deashi and then now you

could start really developing your technique i see i see no yeah that's um yeah this kind of systematic approaches um i think it's very important so let's switch gears and um let's kind of talk about so yeah so having gone through all you know trained with all these like premier bjj schools from around new york city um what are some of the things uh you think judo especially in the united states can learn from their success of these bjj schools i think the barrier of entry is very different from judo jiu-jitsu and the learning curve is different right when you're starting in judo the impact is really high and when you learn osorogari the consequences are real if you fall wrong or reap the knee the wrong way.

Jiu-Jitsu, you learn close guard, opening the close guard, consequences low. Anyone and everyone can potentially do it. Right, right. Right? So the barrier of entry is a lot different. And I think that's one of the really important pieces. And because of the nature of the technique with Judo, there's a lot of balance, coordination, and force that goes behind it. Not everyone can do it right away.

And like I said, the consequences are high. In Jiu-Jitsu, it's very, very different. Right. It's a little bit slower. The pace is different. So now when you're looking at something like the simple arm bar, you're looking at a hinge joint, lever arm, fulcrum, applying force force and then the elbow goes in the opposite direction right right right right it's a lot more intuitive and people when they learn this kind of a stuff it's much more easier to explain so the pedagogical side when people explain these things they have a

much more eloquent way of presenting this information right it's a lot more easily digestible for the person actually learning it right right as opposed to judo it's a lot more easily digestible for the person actually learning it right right as opposed to judo it's like stand on one leg do this do that keep your balance keep your core tight reap this knee the person has to fall do kemi blah blah blah okay try it uh it's kind of hard okay now do it live right right when was the first time you hit an osorogarian live after you learned it yeah because i remember like when i first learned judo throws in korea like doing all this uchikomis and when they first put me kind of threw me into even nagekomis i was kind of scared like i didn't know very scary yeah it's just yeah getting launched there are so many you're throwing the

whole body and like you said, there are multiple. It's not just one joint that you're focusing on. There's a lot going on. And think about how long it takes, right? Like I just said. Also, from the time you learn to actually hitting it live. Versus thinking about actually learning how to open a closed guard. And actually being able to do it live.

Probably the same day if you're relatively athletic. Yeah. But humans are good on staying on their feet and they're athletic you play every single sport basketball baseball uh football the first and foremost rule is stay on your feet right so a good athlete comes in they're used to taking regaining balance yeah reading and keeping the balance and keeping the knees bent and being strong right anybody and everybody could bench right keep the person away right it's hard to throw somebody right right right open close guard and you've never done close guard before and now a lot easier and that kind of immediate feedback yeah immediate feedback what's the consequence of someone opening your guard ah you open my guard right what's the consequence of someone slamming your sort of gary when you

just learned the breakfall huge huge yeah they're not coming back after that so what do you what are some of the specific things that you've done to lower this barrier of entry for judo you know i still do teach osorigari sometimes right depends on right i don't let these guys do live and i explain to them up front right i try to manage the expectations like hey we're teaching you osorigari this is how you do it it's not going to work in i guarantee you it's not going to take you a long time to actually do this on somebody because there's a lot of you know skills before you can you're going to work in. I guarantee you, it's not going to take you a long time to actually do this on somebody because there's a lot of skills before you're going to be able to do it on a resisting opponent.

First and foremost, you have to be able to make the shape of the throw. Second, you have to throw a cooperating opponent and then only after you master those two, then can you graduate to throw on a resisting opponent. That's months from now. Right, right. And once I tell them that,

they're like, oh, I have to be able to make the shape of the throw first right because if you show them osorogare and if they expect to be able to do it they're not going to be able to do it i guarantee it right right on a resisting person they're just not so manage the expectation manage expectations be up front with it does this work in live can i throw somebody right now with it no you can't be up front with it does this work in live can i throw somebody right now with it no you can't right you can't not for a while yeah and all the thing is you know that kind of immediate feedback is also important to you know keep the students engaged how do you how do you structure that or like account for that yeah well so you know like if they're learning osotogari it's like hey i'm

cooperating i'm letting you throw me just remember right like we're gonna go and then we get taken down and then hey good job right kind of like this right and then having someone experienced to be able to guide them through it it's like what am i doing wrong and having the person who knows right right most common thing in osorogari when you're going into osorogari you pull yourself in this direction inadvertently you're taking the other person and pulling them in the wrong direction right i'm pulling myself over here yeah yeah yeah person lean in the opposite direction and then you're trying to tell them that way that's a very very common mistake that 90 of people make as a beginner right right if the person teaching that technique doesn't even know that then it's like all right now you're you're behind. The person's not going to learn it.

Right, right, right. So having students know is huge. And like I always talk about, man, you don't know what you don't know. That's the most difficult thing about martial arts, I think. It's getting a little bit more philosophical, right? Right. And it's kind of like going looping back to the BJJ stuff. I always thought judo n nirvana is great until you

see some of these bjj guys doing it wasn't you're like oh that's that's that's like a very good version of the judo nirvana over there you know you just don't know what you don't know right right i see all right so then yeah that that kind of stuff and um yeah it's interesting that they i think you told me that i forget who but like a bjj school like they don't yeah they don't even let white belts or students do live rounds until like way into their game or something yeah yeah i mean live randori is like everyone who does judo think like oh that's the golden cornerstone of judo why would you do judo without doing randori it just doesn't make sense and that's coming from the

perspective of the people who've survived already so it's their survivorship bias there yeah right oh if you can't handle randori you know you don't deserve to be on this mat it's like man but you know you got lucky you never got injured you had good people maybe you were a fuddy right that you shouldn't have that kind of expectation for everybody like everyone's not the same right the 45 year old accountant that sits on the couch all day or whatever it is at a desk all day that guy should have the ability to learn judo in a safe way without you being like oh you gotta do a door you gotta get slammed right right and i think that's the beauty of jujitsu i see anyone can do it right yeah of course i'm not saying anyone can do it at the highest level i'm not saying that but the barrier of entry is very low yeah we talked about

this in other episodes but yeah that's kind of how do you make it in judo you know it means it that's different for everyone and you know we shouldn't be different from everyone yeah condescending to people who may not be able to compete or do live rounds as much as you can yeah also on the topic of learning what judo can learn from bjj yeah bjj is a marketing machine right right i think about all the isms in bjj that it's just really penetrated all the martial arts world right right 90 of fights end up on the ground yeah right i mean there's some truth to that yeah right but they can really fight what percentage of fights is one-on-one yeah think about that in a self-defense setting right right what percentage

of fights is multiple person versus one person in that case you go to the ground you're gonna get stomped yeah right it's a marketing machine and there's nothing wrong with that right it's it's a marketable sport marketable martial art they should be right if you look at the bjj world it's like you could have a blue belt masters three division and that person gets on the podium in front of this beautiful thing and then they get to put it on Instagram and feel good about it

and they have a lot of support and love from each other. Like, hey, congratulations, you're doing amazing. You know, judo, you could win a regional tournament on the Northeast, you know, a D-level, national level thing, the Liberty Belt Championship. You're standing on milk cr the northeast you know a d level national level thing the liberty belt championship you're standing on milk crates you know in a dingy gym somewhere in like a high school gym that they rented out and then the volleyball teams like rolling in you know and judo tournament take all day and you know the jiu-jitsu guys really thought this part through right you don't need a regulation mat size in order to do a full-blown event.

You don't need that type of space. Right, right. Jiu-Jitsu's got it scaled. It's like, okay, 10 matches going at once. Right, right. What about weigh-ins? Oh, it's kind of a pain in the ass to do weigh-ins. You step on the scale.

Boom. Weights are good. Go on the mat. Compete. 2.30, you're competing you do it you could go have beers with your buddy you could have dinner with your friends right right right judo tournament is not like that yeah right it's not a good product the judo tournament is not a good product the local judo tournament is not any way shape or form a good product so it's not just about

the business side is so much more refined in the jiu-jitsu world you know and that's something that comes from i mean there's money in the sport now because it's such a fast fast growing sport yeah it's crazy how you can learn from this and the judo people are not really taking on these ideas and why can't we step on the scale before we go in so we don't have to do morning weigh-ins? Right. Why can't we? Give a five-pound allowance. That's the dull...

Why can't we fight in a smaller match space so we can have more matches going on at once? That's the most dull part of the judo competition, kind of weigh in and then waiting around. Why can't we spend $1,000 for a nice backdrop so they can put something on Instagram after they get a medal right right why can't we we can we just don't do it because no one cares enough to do it and you know people do something a certain way long enough like this is the way it's always been done this is the way it's always going to be and you know jiu-jitsu doesn't have that kind of a history in the united states so So it's all new. It's all young people. Not all young people. There's a lot of young people, a lot of people who are coming into this world and saying, hey, there's an opportunity here.

We're smart. We're capable. It's a marketable thing. There's money in it. We're going to go for it. As opposed to you have the hobbyist judo guys who've been doing it, who work a nine to five, go run a dojo. Always done this way. Always will be this way.

Right. Right. Because they have that history. Yeah. That tradition. Man, it is impressive how BJJ came into the spotlight and became mainstream so quickly. Yeah. Even like the first UFCfc was a yeah a

thing right right like it was to showcase the world showcase that was the whole thing and there's nothing wrong with that i loved it yeah i watch it with great sense of pride because i did japanese jiu-jitsu i was like jiu-jitsu's on the map right yeah that's right this is incredible and i was a fan i was a fan i love that you know my mom hated it because she doesn't like violence right right right i had the cassette tape and i would watch it with my dad like like yo look on look at be on the lookout for your mother yeah hiding and watching this thing people you know henzo punching people in the face like yeah you know like loving it i was like a little kid yeah probably shouldn't have watched it as a little kid, but I did.

Right. So it's, I think it's maybe because in other countries, you know, we will, we'll probably dedicate another episode for this, but in other countries, it's like a lot of it is like judo is an Olympic sport. It's a state sponsor. Like it's in the education system and whatnot. So they didn't have to. I'm not saying judo is all bad. I'm not saying that at all.

Yeah, you're right. It's a state sponsored. They have the pinnacle, right? It's like the Olympics. That's a huge deal. Yeah. It's an Olympic sport. Right.

But in terms of like a business standpoint, a commercial standpoint in the United States, I think there's a lot of places to be improved upon. And I think we've got to borrow and learn from BJJ because they're doing a great job job yeah they're doing a great job you know in newaza yeah it's newaza right yeah newaza means ground uh lying techniques yeah so great newaza great marketing sense yeah getting like all those things judo could learn from them yeah we can't do this thing of like oh judo guys we've been this way and yeah we gotta innovate we gotta evolve we gotta learn because yeah the the situation in the states especially is different for judo like unlike other like france japan korea russia yeah yeah they have a different those two injury prone it's too high impact it's too painful it's too risky

yeah how can you take those things away you know my dojo i don't let people do tanya toshi how can you take out tanya toshi it's like my guys do all right we don't do tanya toshi in the dojo well black belts can do it yeah right but you know it's it but after like the 37th knee injury yeah it's like all right no more no more Taniya Toshi, please. No more. Stop that stuff. How can you take out a technique from the... You got to learn, man.

You got to keep your mind open because you don't know what you don't know. That's my theory and philosophy on life. Some people love what they know and that's all they can love. And some people love what they don't know, but you don't know what you don't know yeah that's the freaking thing that's the philosophical thing about martial arts and that's different from sport because sport it's another bag it's another animal yeah yeah so this yeah it's it's whole this uh you know we don't we shouldn't like your experience if bjj and judo you know we can all learn from each other yeah and to make us both better and yeah i think

it this dichotomy like oh bjj versus judo it's you know i honestly i used to look up those videos too because i thought it was really fun to watch but now it's baby now yeah it's it's yeah exactly it's not really the real picture and the purpose but it's never the real picture it's never the real picture and i think it's silly because you see these this martial art versus that martial art and i look at it and i'm like these people aren't even in the same weight class yeah i saw one man it was like kung fu versus mma and the mma fighter had 60 pounds on the guy and I'm like this is not a fair fight how is this fair in any way

right right at least keep him in the same weight class at least have like an age range thing you know like this master is like 54 years old going against a 26 year old like specimen like well

how is this fair yeah you know like judo versus bjj doing bjj rules the bjj guy's gonna win yeah judo versus bjj uh judo rules judo guys gonna win you know given that they're in the same weight class they have the same amount of skill level and they're respected sports and all this stuff yeah there's just too many variables to know but you know it sells right it's yeah you get the views like right judo guy meets a karate guy in the street in the back alley of the compton what happens next yeah yeah so then but yeah we had to remember that you know this there's a whole context around it and you know we're gonna try to yeah learn from each other and you know it's it and fascinating stories from the bjj judo bjj circuit in new york city um so

i think uh i think it's a good time to you know good place to end the episode anything to add yeah i just hope i didn't say anything too controversial. I know because it's like there's a little bit of history between the Judo and the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah. You know,

and I know Jiu-Jitsu is evolving really fast and people are now saying, hey, this is not Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu anymore. People are saying this is American Jiu-Jitsu. You ever heard

of this little movement? Yeah, I have. Yeah. Same with Judo. People are saying this is not Japanese Judo. This is freestyle judo. Some people say BJJ is just Kosen judo.

Really, at the end of the day, we're all martial artists. We've got to stick together. We can't keep putting each other down. We all have to have an open mind. We all have to learn and evolve together. That's what it's about. It's great i love it and i just got to say thank you shout out to brian glick who yeah teaching me brazilian

jiu-jitsu and i love our sessions and yeah you know i hope to make his judo spectacular too right don't sleep on it his judo is amazing nice nice right i love that you know i've never met him uh before yet so great yeah i'd love to yeah so yeah never met him before yet. He's great. Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you guys for listening. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me on Instagram. Please follow my YouTube channel and all this stuff. You can also find Peter. Peter's Instagram is super personal Instagram with him and his wife.

Yeah, I mean, I have babies. Not even like that martial artsy, but go go find him go bother him go stalk him yeah yeah i uh you know i love to hear it from you guys you know um i i try to you know have uh provide as much as i can to the community and thanks for listening guys and uh thank you stay tuned for the next episode