The Shintaro Higashi Show - Teaching Styles

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Judo teaching styles have evolved over the years, and Shintaro is a living embodiment of that evolution. In this episode, Shintaro describes how his father's traditional teaching style was like, and how he took his father's style and improved it to the style he follows now. 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. First and foremost, ShintaroHigashi.com. I have some instructionals out. Please check them out. This is sponsored by my website, ShintaroHigashi.com. Not like a big Fortune 500 company or a big company. It's just me, right? Did you pay yourself like marketing fees?

No, it means that I bought this headset. That's what that means. So yeah, instructionals out. And today we're going to talk a little bit about different teaching styles Jonathan Potter emailed me and specifically said hey

you know I had two major judo teachers influences on me in my life so I realized how judo can be from different teacher to teacher so you know

that's where he wanted to ask like what is my teaching style is it the same as my father's et cetera et cetera right it was a very thoughtful well written email thanks for that Jonathan yeah so we'll take it away I know They was my father's, et cetera, et cetera. Right. It was a very thoughtful, well-written email. Thanks for that, Jonathan.

Yeah, so we'll take it away. I know. So he specifically mentioned the difference between your style, your teaching style, and your father's teaching style. I think we talked about that a lot. Not specifically focused on it, but it alluded to it. So what's the story there? So there's like many different schools of thought on this, but it alluded to it. So what's the story there? So there's like many different

schools of thought on this, right? And then traditionally judo is like, hey, here are the moves. Osoro, ochi, taiyo, ipansenai, these are the moves. Go train it with each other. Go do it on each other, right? And that's always been sort of how they did it in Japan, you know? Because you have tons of time. Tons of

time, tons of people. So you have unlimited resources to think Japan, you know? Because you have tons of time. Tons of time, tons of people. So you have unlimited resources, think about it, right? And you have all these people doing it with unlimited amount of time. Okay, here are the moves, go figure it out, go do it on each other. And generally the people who are the most athletic, the most coachable, who has these like athletic traits,

like learning, coachable, all these kinds of people naturally stay in the sport and they develop nuances and start putting these moves together. Naturally. Naturally, you know? And you start getting a feel for it, right? And then it's a feel, intuition-based thing, like, oh, I'm in trouble here.

But it's not quite like, hey, why, you know? It's not like conscious, why this is that, this is that this that this you know what i mean so yeah that was never usually taught explicitly back in the day right your father was learning it yeah that's how the way my father learned and then many generations of judo teachers taught this way right but now because we don't have the numbers to support this kind of training. Right. If you have a hundred people on the mat, Hey, go figure it out. A lot of people can figure it out.

Yeah. No, you have a class of 15 people. Right. And it's all sorts of varying skill levels. Right. Right. Right. And then it's not unlimited time because you don't train for four hours like you do in

Japan every day. You do a one hour, two hour class two or three times a week. Yeah. So teaching has to be explicit. What are the positions

you're looking for? Why are we looking at those things? And then they have to not be communicated in a much more different way, you know?

Yeah. So that's the style that I've embraced over the years. You know, teaching style, right? How did that change came about?

Because as a kid, you definitely practice how your father taught you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Just you learn the basic mechanics of the moves and then you go and try it out, right? Yeah. And you had success in that. You're already a national, international level competitor.

Yeah. By the time you were in your 20s. Yeah. So when did that change in thought or style, teaching style come about? You know, little by little, right? I started to sort of see like a flaw in the way people taught and learned, you know? Yeah. And for instance, going against a tall lefty that came over my back.

Okay. Yeah. What does that even mean? You know, I have inside for instance, going against a tall lefty that came over my back. Okay? Yeah. What does that even mean? You know? I have inside position. He has outside position. He's much more tall than me. How many inches?

Maybe six to eight inches taller than me. Right? Right. Not a tall guy. You know? All right. So what is the solution to that? And I've asked this question many, many times to people.

You know? Some of the best coaches in the world would be like, Kyle, you know, drop Sanagi. But it was missing so much context. Right. Right. How do you even get to drop Senagi? Is it like deep over the back or is it over the shoulder? What is my other hand doing? What about my foot position?

Is it inside foot position or outside foot position? What techniques does this guy do? You know? Like, all these different things, like, almost minutiae, right? But they're very, very important, relevant pieces of the case that should be mentioned. Yeah. That just gets pushed to the side.

You know what I mean? We are laughing because there's a little bit of inside joke here. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, there was a little minutiae because these good coaches, especially from Japan, they figure them out naturally because they probably have gone against tall lefties. They probably have, yeah. And then, so these are things that most of the experienced athletes don't even think about, right? So if he's tall and he has inside foot position, I'm in trouble.

Big Uchimata is coming right but most good guys who are good at senagi and have very relatively skill near skill sets are going to try to game inside foot position as well right to be able to turn you know so that is like a precursor yeah you know what i mean but if i'm a great tall guy i'm coming over the back and i have the inside foot position i'm not trying to set up taniyatoshi there you know what i mean It's like, what is this tall guy looking for? You know? And just the fact that all the best coaches couldn't give me good nuance advice on that specific position led me to kind of go down the rabbit hole of like, okay, what is going on here? And then try to decipher and understand and decode all the stuff that was happening, you know? So now when someone else asks me the similar

question, I can give a little bit of a better answer. You know what I mean? Because you've gone through that thought process yourself. Yes. Yes. You try to, so basically you started thinking this way because of your own needs. Yeah, absolutely.

You know? And then let's say same tall person, they have inside position and they have a strong post. How do you get rid of it? Right? And then a lot of people will say, okay, you know, you they have a strong post. How do you get rid of it? Right? And then a lot of people will say, okay, you know, you punch the inside of the elbow, right, to make their elbow bend, and then you put your elbow over it. Great.

Right? That's one solution. If I just look for that, it'll never work. Right, right. Right? So it's like, all right, how do I add more things and more depth and more layer to that? You know? I attack Kosoto, he's stepping out, and then I do it.

You know what I mean? I try to punch it, it doesn't do it, so then I grab my own lip out and try to cut it. Right? So now I have two or three different methodologies to go into that. Right? So it's contextual. You know what I mean? Maybe I'm looking for that far sleeve go Ippon Senagi wants. So make him think about that I'm looking for that far sleeve, go Ippon Senagi once.

So make him think about that far sleeve. Now he's thinking about that Ippon Senagi. And then I punch his hand and now I can bend it. You see what I mean? Right. So now there's like four or five, six different methodologies just to do that one thing that's been taught. You know what I mean? So how do I teach that?

Right? And I wish somebody were able to verbalize it and communicate this idea to me you know when you're growing up and still you see this to this day when you ask a teacher hey how do you clear the knee shield in Jiu Jitsu push it down and you go like this

you go like this you go like that right but there's some nuanced things like hey you push it down he opens like this then you may try to game maybe you go for this maybe you go for that you know what his is called and if he's But there's some nuanced things like, hey, you push it down, he opens like this, then you may try to game this. Maybe you go for this, maybe you go for that. You know, what his collar, and if he's pulling your head down and you can't posture up, you can't do it, right? You can't do any of this shit. So if he's doing that, you have to clear that collar hand first so you can posture up and then work that leg, right? So as you're doing it, he may start fishing for that collar brick.

You have to protect it, so you have to kind of like step back and work on something else and then return to that new shield. You see what I mean? So like this kind of, how do you teach that? How do you communicate that? You know, what are the goals of each position? And, you know, like you said, there was the needs of me wanting to learn this stuff and no one was able to express this to me. That led me to my teaching style, which is sort of like this conceptual goal oriented thing you know so you you specify the goal of oh going back to that example of big lefty like you're in this disadvantageous position what do you do yeah that's the goal like oh it's drop say that is a good option then you try to point out all the different avenues to get to the goal state. Yes, yes, yes.

What are my objectives? What are the other guy's objectives? Because when you teach somebody, this is what you do. Go here, go there, go here, go there, go here. You're not really taking into account what the other guy's doing. But you can't go over every single thing that the other guy wants to do because you don't know that. So you kind of have to generalize it and say, Hey, theoretically or conceptually, this person

is looking for these things. I want to keep those things in mind and address those things, but we're working. This is my goal here. You know what I mean? Yeah. That was going to be, that was actually my next question. Like you can, there's so many different ways to do it. And then you can, you can't possibly explain all the details, right?

So how do you cover all the grounds? I mean, you've spent a lot of time thinking about it and training for it. Yeah. Well, you know, hobbyists like myself just don't have that luxury. Yeah. But at the same time, like I said, if you just show a few ways, you may miss a lot of, your student may miss a lot of details. So you may, they may not be able to get there and then they'll come back to you

and then complain that things don't work. Yeah. How do you balance that? So the first thing that needs to be able to do is to make the shape of the movement, right? You have to do it slow, completely unresistant. That's step number one. Progression two is getting in there and feeling it out.

So you have a feel, right? So you understand conceptually in your mind, like these are the necessary steps. These are my goals. What does that feel like? What does that look like when I'm looking at this freaking guy in the eye? You know what I mean? What is the necessary sort of precursor? For instance, if I have a strong pulse and it's posted on my chin tight.

Right. And I can't close my distance. It feels a certain way. Like I'm stuck there. Okay. So if I want to clear that inside arm and I'm popping it, you know, like you got to play around with it a little bit to get comfortable with the movement, comfortable with the resistance, you know? Yeah. So you have to slow it down 10%, 10 20 and sort of little by little play fight

this is like the russian methodology you know i see you gotta put yourself there you gotta do reduce speed reduce intensity who are we working on these things and that's what i'm doing now in jiu-jitsu i'm trying to learn like a spider lasso situation right oh yes you're a dirty guard puller now. I am. Did you just see this morning? I pulled guard like 19 times today. Oh, man. At least you tried. Did you fake Tomo Nagi or were you just straight up set? I literally just sat down. Uh-oh.

Yeah. I learned how to pull guard, guys. Nice. I mean, there's a lot of details in there. You can't just jump into it. Kind of, yeah. There's a lot of... Somewhat, yeah. I'm trying into it. Kind of, yeah. There's a lot of... Somewhat, yeah.

I'm trying to get good on the ground, you know? So it's like, why would I do stand-up, you know? If the guy wants to learn stand-up, I'll play there. I'll play there a little bit, right? Right. I've had that. But right now, I'm really trying to get better at guard stuff. So, you know, pulling guard.

Nice, nice. Well, that's how you do it, you know? The way you described it. Okay, so I've been trying to get better at skiing. I realized that my form hasn't been the best. And I've been watching. I could only

go out two days this week, this season, but I really focused on working on my form. And then all the ski instructors actually say a very similar thing as you do. Yeah. Because ultimately there's so many ways to get that perfect carving turn, you know, that Instagram like, you know, highlight turns, but then the important thing is eventually

you want to feel, you want to understand the feel of that movement. You don't, you can't just think about all the mechanics, you know, the good instructors will first show what the mechanics, explain the mechanics of it is, and then maybe suggest you some drills so that you can get the feel of the mechanic, correct mechanics. And eventually the goal is for the student to understand the feel and then just do it naturally. Yes.

Yeah, because you can sit there and explain to them and give them a dissertation on like, you should feel slight pressure on the inside foot and then you're leaning at a 45 degree angle and then you're pushing and pulling and then you're driving your, it's like none of that shit matters you know some of it matters in the beginning but if you give them all that in the beginning they're not going to process all that information so where is their attention on you know yeah for me so like when i'm showing judo stuff it's like all

right right first right your hand is higher than. Yeah. A little bit more leverage for a Soto. Here we go. Bang. You know, but to move off from what this guy's asking, like, how is my Judo skill? Not just like teaching, but my style of Judo different from my father's, you know? Uh, yeah. To answer that it's very different as well. You know, like, uh, I don't do any of this stuff. Not even just teaching style now. It's like your judo style. Very different, man. So it couldn't be more different, you know? And, you know, you get two guys who are tall guy, short guy, you know, very, very different types of style generally.

People say like, oh, shorter guys have an advantage in judo, taller guys have an advantage in judo. No, it's how you play the game, what your strategy is. You know, if you're a shorter guy, if you're 5'5 and fighting in the 220 division and everyone's six foot and above and you develop an Osoto-Uchimata game, you're not going to throw anybody with that one. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

And that's kind of the problem. You're a heavier guy fighting in the dojo and everybody is average height and now you all of a sudden develop your judo that way and you compete in a tournament and everyone's 6'2", 6' two six three you're gonna have a hard time getting that overhand grip right right you know so a lot of how i developed my judo was like cutting the hand and gaining two on ones you know not two on one in the russian style but i have two hands on me as one hand on because i'm completely controlling that sleeve hand that's the style that sort of developed myself you know my father always had like this is a video uh my father's judo system nobiyoshi judo system red belt judo system you guys should check

that out on youtube it's very very interesting and power oriented it's uh right osoto left osoto right koichi left koichi and harai yeah it's like such a savage system right absolutely yeah very simple but you know it's wild it's wild it's and he he said back back when he was doing judo there were no uh there was no weight classes and he had to play a lot of big guys too right i wonder how he developed a system playing this big guy at his college. Yeah. Because Kokwitchka is known for his heavyweights, right? Yeah.

And he would do a lot of hanging stuff, chopping the knees from the side, you know? Yeah. It's a very nasty move. Yeah. It is. Othello wasn't like a clean Othello. Everything I say to not do, he did to like chop that knee in half.

I see. But, you know, that's how you did judo back then. No one gave a shit about your knees. You know what I mean? Yeah. So. If you strain your knee, you just like tape it and then keep going or something, right? Yeah.

Back in the days. Yeah. When you're looking for a good judo teacher, though, you want a teacher that knows a lot of positions, too. You want to have their expertise, right? And then they should be learning as they you're learning, right? And sometimes you don't want to teach only the stuff you know because sometimes you need to be forced to teach tabonage and all these things.

But the sensei grows, too, because you can't teach one system. One system for everybody doesn't really work. You know what I mean? It does and it doesn't, you know? Like Jimmy Pedro has his gripping system, right, versus left, right, versus right. It's very similar. He drills it into his guys, and that's all they do,

and they excel at it. I was a beneficiary of that system, right? Right, right. But if you're running a dojo, a commercial gym, most guys aren't competitors. You know, people want to be intrigued. People need differentiated instruction to feel like they're being taught something and that they can learn and thrive. Then you have to have an instructor that knows a lot of different positions, a lot of different things. I mean,

they have to personally be going out there learning themselves. They also have to be teaching stuff that they're not fully comfortable with so they get to work out their material as if they were stand-up comedians doing open mics. You know? So sometimes when I have a smaller group class, let's say, you know,

President's Day, we didn't close the whole class, you know, nine people show up. Right? All right, guys, we're going to do something a little bit different today here. You know?

We're going to do Sode, drop Sode to the weak side. And it's a lot more safe because there's a lot less people. And I can monitor each person doing this thing, and I'm learning the best way to teach this thing. Right, right. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah.

So you don't really go for your own, like, Shintaro Higashi style of judo, like kind of like how I know like your message jimmy pedro has his gym has its own style yeah and i i think you've mentioned how jason morris gym those all similar moves yeah but you don't want you don't necessarily want to go for that kind of like distinguishing i mean there's similarities right like uh there's like certain principles that are it's a non-negotiable. You have to fight for position. You know, I don't want anyone like gooning the other person over with a

forceful move or anything like that, you know? So technique and position first and foremost, cutting angles, all these concepts is universal. But I wanted the people to develop their own style, you know? And if you look at the guys in the dojo, there's people who have judo identical to mine, right? Almost as close as it can get, right? And people have completely, look at the guys in the dojo, there's people who have Judo identical to mine, right? Almost as close as it can get, right? And people have completely, look at Chao.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. He has this whole crazy style. Remember Oleg? I don't. Yeah. Oleg does everything I tell him not to do. I found success in doing everything I told him not to do, you know?

So, like, that's something. and doing everything I told him not to do, you know? So like, that's something. And then you, you don't look at a new kid like Junie, who's like crushing it right now, completely different style, you know? And I like that kind of innovation, you know, in the room and people develop in their own styles, you know? And I think it's very important. You know,

I think that Jonathan mentioned something about like a community judo club with a teacher that does nine to 5, regular 9 to 5. I think that's tough, you know, when you have a teacher like that, because, you know, where do they personally grow? You know? Yeah. You just can't have time to. If you have time in the day to like watch judo videos and do judo and train other styles

and train with other people, you're going to reap those benefits too. You know? train other styles and train with other people, you're going to reap those benefits too. That's a lot of the issue with some of these dojos. People have 9-5s. I'm not telling people to quit their 9-5s. But it would be nice if you had more full-time judo teachers who can

develop their own and train and do all this stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we dedicate an episode about that. Yeah. So check that out, guys. And anything else we missed?

No, that's pretty much it. I hope all that was interesting to you guys. Sometimes I ramble and not make any sense. And, you know, I want to it to me pertinent information that's relevant to what we're talking about you know the baseline not missing anything you know yeah yes exactly not leaving out key pieces of information yeah we don't do that here no not at this time you guys just show yeah yeah guys, just joking. Well, again, yeah, like Jonathan did, you guys could, you know, shoot us an email or support us on Patreon and join our Discord server

and then talk to us. We actually get most of our suggestions that way. So thanks for listening guys. Hope this was interesting to you guys and we'll see you guys in the next episode.