The Shintaro Higashi Show - Shintaro’s Current Training

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Many of you may be curious about what Shintaro's current training looks like. How many times a week does he do Judo? How about BJJ? Does he lift at all? Does he run? In this episode, Shintaro gives a detailed breakdown of his current training! 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!

Hey guys, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. Today, we're going to talk about something a little bit interesting. My favorite topic in the world, me. All the time. Yeah, how amazing he is. Yeah. Specifically what? My training.

My training. That's right. Dude, I get people hitting me up all the time. What are you training? How are you training? Yeah. You know, sometimes it's misleading. You know, you see these like interviews and podcasts with top level athletes and you see

these articles back in the day, like, what does your training look like? And you know, it changes depending on where you are in the cycle. You know what I mean? What your goals are during that time period, you know, and right now my priority first and foremost is looking good for the summer. you know and right now my priority first and foremost is looking good for the summer so that's a great goal yeah yeah and you know uh as you guys already know i had a bunch of health issues you know with the stroke and the atrial fibrillation and all this stuff so i really really really want to get my weight down body weight down right so i'm focusing on that and then you know doing it through martial arts is my favorite way to do it you know yeah so i'm upping my training these days and uh you know that's what i'm doing right now you know let's let's start from there how many how many hours a day do you train or how many days a week

all right so usually in terms of like lifting i generally like to do three to four times a lifting a week. Oh, wow. Yeah. Usually three to four. Every day we're spreading out like one rest day and stuff. Yeah. I'll throw in a rest day, but it's like every other day, almost usually for lifting. And then I'll go like upper body, lower body, upper, lower, upper, lower. Yeah.

Or sometimes I'll do push pull legs protocol, you know, but I usually go heavy. Do always a progressive overload, 10 weekweek freaking program, all this stuff, right? And then I would do sort of two days of like low intensity, two, three days of low intensity cardio, which is like generally walking for 20, 30 minutes in the gym, right, or outside. And then I'll do one day of high intensity sprinting work because i don't want to lose my fast twitch abilities right but this is the thing it's too taxing on my body to do more than once a week now my freaking knees hurt my back hurts yeah that's why people are like why are you so quick and fast and explosive almost 40 it's because of that i train for that specific reason you know but you

just do sprints up and down kind of thing yeah and i And I'll manage it in a way where it's like, I'll do it, you know, maybe like at the end of the week, right. Or I'll save it for the beginning of the week, depending on how the week progressed in terms of judo training. If I tweaked the knee because I went with George and he like chopped at my knee, then I'm not going to be doing sprints after that. Right. I mean, but if I had good judo, good lifting, I felt pretty good all day, all week.

And then it's like, you know, Friday going into the weekend, I know I'm going to rest for two days. I'm going to blast myself sprinting and do hard judo at night and then call it. Saturday, Sunday, I'm just going to go for long walks and chill, hang out with my kid, and then come back Monday hard, right? Yeah. Generally, that's like my outside the dojo training. And then before I would do three, you know, judo nights at my dojo. Right. So I would do two, two nights of Rondori. I try to. Two nights of hard Rondori, but you know, when there's too many white belts on the mat, I'm a little bit too stressed. You know, there's too many people on the mat. It's like, I want to make sure people don't, people get theirs, right? They're there to do judo. And it really depends on the crowd of the night. You know, Gianni is competing. He needs me. I'll go in and do rounds with him. Right. But he's cutting weight. He banged up, you know, these guys are going to phone over, they're all tapering down. You know, they just want to go

light with sort of the intermediate beginners and you know, the matchups are great. I won't touch it. I'll just stand on the side and coach because that's where i'm more valuable in the room right right but that's my general training method and i do a wednesday morning with glick brian yeah yeah i've been to those yeah it's the best that was generally my system leading up to the till about about two weeks ago right so with glick you would do a lot of bj So with Glegg, you would do a lot of BJJ. I know, Wednesday. Yeah, we would do a lot of stand-up too, Nogi stuff. You know, he rolls in at like 11.

We go till like 1.30, you know, like two and a half hours almost, just hanging out, rolling. You know, he teach some technique, right, because some of the judo guys are in there. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. It's great.

Amazing class, yeah. But recently. Yeah. I sort of decided that I really don't need to be lifting so much anymore because I don't need to get, I just want to maintain. I want to do a maintenance phase. Yeah.

Where I just keep my strength and keep my size and then lose body fat. Right. And that protocol is lifting about one 10tenth of the volume that i usually lift it's lifting once a week now full body and then majority of the days i'm doing low intensity interval cardio just walking i try to get in 10 000 steps a day right and then count my calories okay that's sort of the physical fitness outside the dojo protocol you cut out the sprinting portion too i am still sprinting all your students okay i forgot to i forgot to mention that okay but i haven't in the last week and a half because my knees been killing me

oh yeah yeah you know how it is actually i did it last week i did last week but now i discovered that the dojo right near my house jt tor Taurus' Essentials Jiu-Jitsu, has a great 10 a.m. class. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little. Tell me about this a little. Yeah, so I started going to that.

The 10 a.m., what's the crowd? Good, man. There's 20, 25 guys on the mat. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Man, how does it pull so many people yeah that's it's amazing in a morning class generally those are very difficult to fill yeah you know so i've been going to that i've been doing jujitsu essentially five days a week now which is crazy i'm falling back in love with it oh wow wait are they all mostly hobbyist or more well 11 to 1 is like their pro class trait like cop class oh so a lot of the guys come for the 10 a.m and stay throughout

i don't have the luxury to stay the whole time right um you know just based on work and time and stuff like this and also like i'm trying to ease back into it you know because i had that heart surgery you know two and a half months ago i'm gonna ease ease back into it, you know, because I had that heart surgery, you know, two and a half months ago. I'm going to ease them back into it. Yeah, so I'm doing jiu-jitsu five days a week right now. It's a good source of cardio, right? And I'm very engaged. I love it.

And then I do judo two nights a week, like hard judo. I'm still trying to do that. So, you know, I'm doing a good seven, eight days of – eight sessions of hard, you know hard on-the-mat training. One day in the gym. Hard gym right now for maintenance. My goal is to do this consistently for three months and get shredded.

Well, okay. In three months, we'll have a little check-in. Yeah, because I need to increase the size of my dating pool. No, there's a huge difference between me at 220 me at 210 200 190 huge difference what's the optimal i'd probably 195 ish i'm telling you yeah right because i'm big enough to where i'm distinguished but i'm not carrying body fat so we've been like that

what i mean when i'm at 220, I feel powerful. I'm like heavy, powerful. But it's the only attention that I get are from dudes. Yeah, I've had dudes at this rate. Yeah. And then the lower I go in body weight, the less attention I get from dudes and the more attention I get from women. Yeah.

Very interesting observation. I'm about like 215, 210 now. So I'm still at the cost of like dudes, you know, but I've lost that edge. At 220, guys are like, damn, you're big. You're a big dude, right? But like, I'm like average jack, you know, t-shirt jack.

T-shirt jack. At 210. I like that. If the shirt comes off, it's not impressive at all. But you want to be shredded. So when you take your first part. Okay. 210.

At 210, I look relatively impressive in a t-shirt because of the size of my chest, size of my shoulders and arms. Right. I look pretty jacked. Like probably by 220, I'm huge. But only t-shirt big. Yeah. 220 I'm huge But only t-shirt big Yeah So when I get down like 205 200 then the shirt comes off

I look a little bit leaner I'm no longer t-shirt big I lose the t-shirt big And at 195 I become t-shirt small You know what I mean When I'm wearing a t-shirt I look like a small person Really You probably look bigger? When I'm wearing a t-shirt, I look like a small person. Really? You probably look bigger than me.

I'm like, yeah, yeah. Small shirt, t-shirt small, no shirt small. Yeah. You're going for that. Well, I don't know if you guys have watched this new show on Netflix. It's just ended. Physical 100. Yeah. A lot of ended. Physical 100. Yeah.

A lot of good Jack people there. You want to go for that Iron Man look from that? That skeleton player? I don't know who that is. You know who that is? It's by far the best athlete on that show. He didn't make it. Oh, I'm not going to spoil it.

I like the Akiyama look. The Akiyama look. The Akiyama look. The tan. He's tan. That guy is like almost 50. He's 50. Yeah. He's more jacked than a lot of people there.

He's yoked. But yeah, so my primary goal is to get good at jiu-jitsu also. Get more grappling time with less wear and tear on my body because, you know, judo is so hard on the body. I can't do three nights of hard Rondori anymore. I just simply cannot. I mean, I can, but, you know, Wednesday would have to be like a taper down. Yeah, it'd be like a light day of like,

you know, drilling, kind of hanging out, like mostly blocking. Right. When I say like hard Rondori, I'm saying like aggressively going after takedowns and trying to develop my skill. Right. That's different from like,

okay, let me do some Rondori and then throw some people and hang out you know sensei judo yeah i do a lot of sensei judo nowadays uh but yeah in terms of jujitsu man i'm really trying to learn yeah so how's that like like what are you focusing on uh you kind of mentioned that you're pulling guard now yeah so most of my jujitsu training was like sort of in like a closed ecosystem situation right yeah so i'm very not limited but you know i had my teachers who i you know followed and very dedicated to right so i learned a lot of their style uh but now i'm exposed to those guys jiu-jitsu styles, which is like heavy passing, hard passing, quick, agile movements from the top, and then from the bottom, it's like lasso, spider, de la jiva, you know?

So I really want to learn their system and, like, make it sort of not mine, but, like, be very, very, what's the word, proficient with it, you know? Yeah. So, like, I'll pull guard, right? And then I'll try to get into, you know, shallow lasso slider and then De La Riva and then try to look for sit down bare and bolos, drive that foot, you know, sit up and sleep, that kind of a thing. This is Gi? Well, yeah, right now I'm specifically talking about Gi. But there's no Gi stuff too, you know.

You don't give them too? I do, no, you don't give them too sometimes. But the 10 a.m. classes are mostly geese so I'm kind of like doing that eventually I'm going to make myself into the comp class too you know they're all very very warm and welcoming and say hey come to any class you want essentially

but you know I'm just easing my way into it and test the water and so what do you do so when i was doing more bjj for the past year i i struggle with leg locks and stuff do you yes like how do you how do you approach those well so brian glick is very good at that you know so like i learned a lot from him and we do a lot of leg lock stuff okay so you're you have you already have a good understanding. I don't want to say a good understanding.

I'm, you know, maybe like a green belt or something in leg locks. I don't even know. You know, I'm not that good at it, but I know it. You know, I know the ideas behind it. I shouldn't even say I know it. I'm familiar with it. Familiar with it. So I definitely want to get good at some of this stuff.

Definitely different from judo. You know, but it's really nice to have a room that's filled at 10 a.m that i could go to you know and that's the issue with a lot of judo schools they don't have that you know and you can do the 10 a.m to 11 a.m one o'clock whatever it is and then you come back in the evening and train again people can do that in jujitsu very difficult to do that in judo yeah because your just body won't hold up yeah how many times can you get slammed on your shoulder you know it takes one mistake you blow your knee out you know it's so easy to tear an mcl and then you're not training through a torn mcl you know

stand-up wise because you can't pick on it you know yeah ground stuff you can kind of like tweak your shoulder and protect it yeah ankle style i like kind of rolled my ankle whatever it is i didn't i'm just saying as an example yeah if you rolled your ankle you could tape it and be like hey man i rolled my ankle today can we you know not can you stay away from my ankle and you protect it you can do that right but to blast in for a turn throw with those ankle that you just rolled very difficult yeah you know you're gonna make it worse right um yeah, that's the kind of thing that I'm trying to just get more map time in. I'm falling back in love with it. I'm watching more judo and jiu-jitsu now again.

Nice. And it's kind of nice to be into it while I'm trying to get in shape. How do you want to get in shape this summer? I just want to be shredded. I haven't been shredded in years. It's probably been six years since I've been like lean. Six years, like when we went to Texas for nationals? Yeah.

One seven year and I'm lean. You know, right? You're shredded then. I was lean then. Yeah, I was lean. But you know, it's different. I wasn't shredded or lean. I was lean then. Yeah, I was lean. But you know, it's different. I wasn't shredded or lean. I was skinny, which is different.

Oh, I see. You know what I mean? Because depending on how I bring that weight down, I could lose a lot of muscle mass too. Right, right. And then I didn't really properly do it at that time. So I wouldn't even say I was shredded or lean. Aggressive. Yeah, I took an aggressive cut.

I was still hanging out and drinking and stuff. And then like I cut too much at the very end. I was pretty aggressive. Yeah, I took an aggressive cut. I was still hanging out and drinking and stuff. And then I cut too much at the very end. I was skinny. You didn't drink at all. I've been worried. Yeah, I cut out drinking for a little while. But I didn't drink either. We were dry for a few months.

Yeah. But I wanted to be shredded, which is like keep my muscles and keep the protein high, maybe 150, 200 grams of protein a day. And then just trying to strip body fat, you know, through cardio and training. And, you know, I got this is the perfect time right now. It's March. I got two more months. I could probably lose another, you know, 10 to 15 pounds of fat by the summer.

By the time, you know, I'm going to have to take off my shirt in like May, June. You know, people are going to have to take off my shirt in like May, June, you know, people are going to see how vain I am. I got, I got to check this out. Yeah. So two months, 15 pounds of fat. I'll be, yeah. Good. One 95 lean. So BJJ is been very good because you could just get more, you could just afford more bedtime because it's easier on your body. And then it turns up your goal.

It helps you get there faster. Yeah, but not just that, you know, like I've reignited something in me, you know, by chance, dude, it was like Thursday night a couple of weeks ago. And then my cousin from Japan was here and she was playing with my daughter, right? And then Yumi was like, my cousin from Japan was here and she was playing with my daughter right and then

yeah and Yumi was like papa you know I'm gonna play with her and then even my cousin from Japan was like yo go do whatever you want and I already had gone to the gym and I had lifted heavy and I was like what do I do

and it was Thursday night you know her dance class got cancelled and then so it's like I had all this time and I'm like what am I gonna do What do I do? It was Thursday night. Her dance class got canceled. I had all this time. What am I going to do on a Thursday evening? Usually, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I was like, you know what?

Maybe I'll check out the jujitsu club down the street. Then I went. It was awesome. Everyone was so warm and welcoming. Then I was like, you know what? We're going to get into it. I was like, you guys got morning classes? And they're like, yeah, we got morning class. I'm going to come by.

I'm going to drop my kid off at school. I'm going to drop by. Is that cool? And they're like, yeah, come by. And I went, and it was fun. It was really fun. You know? My nose isn't bad, right?

But there's things that I'm not too familiar. Like when somebody goes worm guard or someone's lanky and they do like, you know, inverted stuff, like I struggle with that because I'm not used to it. Right, right. You know what I mean? So then I was like, all right, I want to get good at some of these things. And, you know, I want to have an answer for, right? So now I'm like motivated to learn again. And, you know, I go through phases of, you know,

my two real estate projects kind of wrapped up recently. So it's given me a lot. Yeah. You need, you need something like a new challenge. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah. I've learned a lot of stuff, man. Praying mantis guard, uh, uh, the flamingo pass, tarantula guard. Those are real guards. No way. I thought you, I thought you were just making shit up for me. No, it's a real thing. the flamingo pass tarantula guard those are real guards no way

I thought I thought you were just making shit up for me no it's a real thing real thing off my chest you have to show me

I don't like the names it's corny right yeah you want the more like business like names of judo I mean I like

that's why I like uh daughter hers you know jargon it's so much more like hey man ashigarami you know inside sankaku right yeah i like these kinds of you know we talked about it all the earlier episodes we had that's a big thing about the japanese terminology you know it makes sense there's logic behind it you look at japanese numbers right yeah 11 12 13 14, it makes sense. There's logic behind it. You look at Japanese numbers, right? 11, 12, 13, 14, like it makes sense.

You know? What is 11? You know what I mean? What is 12? What is the teen? You know, you get 21, 22, 20. Like in Japan, it's different. It's 2, 10, 2, or 22. Right? Even 11, it's like 1, 10, 1.

There's logic behind the number system and naming of the numbers. Is it the same in Korea? Same in Korea. It's from the Chinese system. Yeah, so I like this. I like it. You force a 2-on-1. Yeah, that makes sense.

You sit, grab an ankle, pull him into Ashigurabi. Even X guard makes sense because you make an X with your legs. The word descriptive. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm very curious about praying the frying mantis guard. It's a, a cross collar, Delhi, Hiva inversion, right? Inverted grip.

And then you put the foot on the inside. I have shame. I can't, I can't even imagine that right now yeah i'll have to look it up yeah well it's good though i think um so you're this is kind of a new challenge for you you're gonna want to master your uh bjj side of things and you said you you you're watching a lot of videos too like i need anything recently I know they had ADCC. We've been sending each other some wrestling videos. Yeah.

I mean, I'm only watching videos, like highlights videos, but I never really sat down and watched a full jujitsu match. Yeah. Because, you know, no offense is boring to me. You know, in my defense, like judo, watching judo is boring for me too. Yeah. It is, you know, but I. Yeah, you know in my defense like judo watching judo is born for me, too Yeah, it is, you know, but I'm like, you know what? I want to really learn this now You know, so it's like sort of my new thing kind of and I'm interested in it. I'm trying it out See how it goes, you know Yeah, man, there's a part of me that sort of sparked this thing like maybe I want to get back into some of the

Competition stuff, but I'm 38 and back into some of the competition stuff. But I'm 38. You know, I'm pushing 40, right? You are competing in BJJ. There's a little bit. I mean, I've done some. Yeah. You know?

I've never lost at it, you know? Yeah. It's a 100% win rate. Yeah, but these are all, like, local stuff. Yeah. Oh, maybe you want to make it to ABCD? No, I'm not saying that. I'm not going to out myself and be that guy.

But no, I'm very intrigued, you know. I'll tell you, man, the best thing that I got out of going to Jimmy Pedro's dojo and training with Travis and Kayla and being in the room with those guys and training with them every day. And then all of a sudden, right, you start developing a similar mindset yeah you know they're doing it right and then when they talk about you know going up against a guy that's top 10 in the world i'm fucking this guy you know whatever right yeah i remember when i was going up against silva morales from cuba who was the top 10 guy in the world travis had fought him recently and he had lost. And he called me and goes, he just doesn't want to do things.

No big deal, man. You know, just the way that he talked about this guy who was one of the best guys in the world at judo. I was like, yeah, fucking guy lefty. He just doesn't want to do things. He sucks. You know, whatever.

Okay. So I was like, go do this, go do that. I got it, man. I got it. You know, and it kind of gives you this confidence, you know? Right. And so when you're in a room, you know, not that I didn't have this before with, you know, training with Glick and stuff, you know, but they're just more, you know, I'm in it more,

right? Because I'm there every other, you know, four days a week now. You're, you're where, you're right there where innovation is happening. Somewhat, yeah. And I'm not doing the comp class yet. Yeah. Got to ease myself into it and free up some time in the afternoon, you know, because it goes for two hours, whatever it is. Right. But that's my training right now, you know, and I'm icing my knees and stuff and taking my supplements and, you know.

Nice. Good for you, man. It sounds like a, you know, past schedule. You're like. You kind of had something to do with it too, a you know past schedule you're like you kind of had something to do with it too because you were doing a lot of jiu-jitsu out there in detroit you know like jiu-jitsu this and that and then i was like you know what man oh really yeah yeah so you had a definitely a say in this you know oh i'm glad that i i sparked something inside you yeah yeah it's good i love grappling man i'm a huge fan of doing it mostly you know i i recently i was i was telling you this right i recently went back to my old high school and i

wrestled with my you know yeah wrestling team there because because they were training for state finals yeah amazing yeah wrestling is so fun so fun man it man. So fun. It's like, I'm like, cause I feel like with judo, I, you probably felt this too. I felt like, well, I'm a little stagnant cause I had my own set ways and yeah, I don't really to branch out,

you know, but with wrestling now, you know, these guys are good, you know, I want to keep up with them. And I've been like looking into different ways to shoot and like russian one two-on-one ties and then try to incorporate some of my like you know trips and

rows it's it's cool looking at like wrestling instructions and stuff good yeah wrestling's fun man wrestling's so fun i love grappling period man good. I'm happy that you're still in it. You know, doing it. I'm going to keep trying and all. I got to keep it up. Yeah. I can't wait to like work out with you again, dude. Yeah.

We'll make that up. Maybe we'll do some Nogi stuff too. Nogi. Yeah. Nogi stuff. Yeah. All right. Well, that's about it, guys.

Hopefully this kind of gave you guys some idea on what you could do you know in terms of your trading and uh thanks for listening and we'll see you guys in the next episode yep thank you guys