The Shintaro Higashi Show - The Leg Grab Ban

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

The infamous leg grab ban! Introduced in 2010, it is by far the biggest and most controversial rule change ever introduced to Judo. Are Shintaro and Peter for it, or against it? Listen in to find out! Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi show with Peter Yu. Today we're going to talk about leg grabs. That's right. It's a hot topic in the judo community. Super hot. Yeah, it's so controversial. So and then we're going to get into it today and talk about everything. So I'll give you a brief history. So about the leg grab ban. So before 2010 uh you could do anything you know you could grab the legs shoot shooting on the legs double single kataguma firemen you could do everything and anything you could just grab the right leg try to yank the person's legs out from underneath them completely fine that's right and then and then in 2000 early 2010 uh it became a hanso komaki if you grab him

um yeah you can't proactively grab the legs right you can't just shoot it on the legs anymore right you could use them as a counter attack if someone comes in and then but then in 2013 it became a complete ban because they thought it was too confusing uh yes and now uh so confusing for the spectators spectators the olympic committee wanted to distinguish between judo and wrestling right exactly and then we'll get into uh more into that later and then now it's uh actually now a sheet or a warning uh you don't just get a small penalty it's like oh man you know we're not going to try to ban anyone right right based on that right yeah exactly it's not as severe anymore but people don't really shoot it on the legs It's like, oh, man, you know, we're not going to try to ban anyone. Right. Right. Based on that. Right.

Yeah. It's not as severe anymore, but people don't really shoot on the legs. Right. I mean, it's you still get a warning, which is not good. So let's get into the motivation. And there's a lot of opinions on that. So first, I think the biggest reason was it was instituted to prevent stalling via what they call grab and drop so yeah yeah yeah but you know that argument doesn't really hold for me because

it's like you could grab and drop for drop sanagi you could grab and drop for tomonage sumigaishi and some techniques get penalized much more than others right so like drop upon sanagi you know when you turn your back and give away your back like that gets penalized a lot more than the person that's going for tomonage or sumigayashi right i will tell you it was a nice strategy for shorter people who get outgripped and have a very high position and i talk about like hand position and if your lapel hand is higher than your opponent right then you have certain advantages right so if a big tall person with a longer reach can go over your back and then control and you have you know grab your belt or your back then you could shoot it on the legs because your their legs are exposed right and it's a nice way whether

you score or not to be able to escape that position so i do kind of see you know why yeah they did it so then they should have been the drop sanagis if that's that's right right because that was that's another stalling technique in so to speak and then i do know that in the especially in the middle weight or in the lighter weights a lot of people just shoot the legs from afar like if they're winning by yuko or something and then they just keep doing that but yeah you're right because there are other ways to stall. Other ways to stall, yeah. And another reason was that it was to differentiate judo

from wrestling in the Olympics. I think that's the biggest reason why. Yeah. I think that's the biggest reason. Around that time, a lot of the grappling sports in reason around that time a lot of the grappling sports in the olympics were in a very precarious position yeah and i think yeah like wrestling uh i don't know if you remember wrestling was actually voted off in 2013 oh i remember yeah remember that yeah i do remember that yeah that was a pretty serious thing and i guess the

igaf proactively took a stance and then we're to decide to change it itself so they change it yeah for sure you know what it is man it's like i think a lot of the original vision of judo right how connor invented it and how it became an olympic sport in 1964 the martial art just kept evolving and evolving now all of a sudden there's a sport aspect to it and now people are trying to exploit some of the rule sets in order to win and gain an advantage right right it's absolutely normal and there's tons of other grappling sports around the world so you want to borrow from some of the effective arts right and then all of a sudden now the landscape of judo has changed so much right and now all of a sudden it's like oh

this is not what you know we intended to sign up for for the olympics in 1964 anymore it looks like wrestling right right how is this different from wrestling we can't have two grappling sports right and wrestling already has free style greco it's like now we're gonna have gi wrestling you know that i think that was the mentality behind like oh man we need to bring back the original vision of judo how do we do that yeah and then the ioc you know we're like okay uh you know let's see what we can do to make judo exciting again let's see what we can do to make judo what it used to be right because it doesn't really look like judo anymore and then the number of people getting slammed right that's what they want you know they want spectators right it's a spectator sport huge huge iphone throws dude every time they yeah if every time someone

you know saw judo on tv and nothing happened and no one watched judo anymore then you know olympics would be like you know what forget this sport yeah so it's like how can they mix the rules to force action, force those big throws, the cornerstone techniques of the hurrahs, the uchimaras, the people getting skied. And every single time you're in sort of a bad position and you dive in for a leg, you kind of miss out on that. So I do get where they came from when they decided to ban it.

And I'll have to give props to the IJF because they were proactive. Because like I said, wrestling was voted to be off. And they had to make a lot of rule changes to get back into it. Yeah. I mean, for what I understand, it's like IOC approached both judo and wrestling. You guys got to do something. Viewership is down or whatever it is. And this is just me watching from the outside. I could be completely wrong right this is what i perceived as what was going on

and it's like you guys gotta do something and judo's like okay we'll take our leg grabs we'll force uh action and then you know we'll penalize this we'll do that you know so people could right no more two-handed grip breaks because it doesn't promote throwing yeah promotes negative you know and wrestling's like yeah go screw yourself right do what we did you know we're the oldest sport in the history of the planet right you know when we were right apes or something we were wrestling and then it was the first it was the first sport in the olympics too back in like yes it's like and then the olympics are like okay you want to go that way get out and then they were like no no i'm sorry i'm sorry yeah so then they changed their rules and all that and yeah and then this was and then

continuing on this route like there's like i would say it's a conspiracy theory in a way that conspiracy theory was it was into instituted because japanese judokas were losing to athletes from uh the newer judo countries from like the eastern european countries mongolia and then the old soviet bloc who use more wrestling based techniques yeah based on leg reps but what what do you think about that i want i want to i want to hear your opinion first i mean that's a cool conspiracy theory but like you know when more countries win medals it's actually better for the sport right right because if you're from like turkmenistan and you have a olympic gold medalist in judo all of a sudden all the kids

in that country are going to see it they're like i, I want to do judo. Kind of like how in Mongolia, right, Naidan won the Olympic gold medal. It's like, wow, the Olympic gold medalist in Olympics. You know, like an Olympic and Mongolian, you know, athlete never really had that many Olympic medals, right? Right, right. Now all of a sudden he's a national hero and everyone wants to do judo. So it's actually good for judo when there's a lot of different countries winning.

If Japan's winning all the medals, it's actually's actually good for judo when there's a lot of different countries winning. If Japan's winning all the medals, it's actually not that good for judo on a global basis. It's good for us when we're watching this judo as we know it, the clean hurray, the clean taiyos, all this stuff, and then we watch that and be like, wow, that's spectacular. And when the rule sets sort of favor that. But I just think like, yeah yeah there's some conspiracy right there's

something going on behind closers that i don't know about you don't know about there's got to be something going on right but then at the same time i don't know if i buy buy that and i don't buy either because it never it didn't happen that japan started winning everything like other they're winning a lot more though because in 2011 and 2012 they were losing a lot of matches right you think you think it's because of the ban or they changed the their like training regime or some different recruitment ban has a lot to do with it oh you think so yeah 100 because if you look at the way they train and teach right all the japanese instructors who are at the top they're teaching judo that they did

right and of course it's evolving all the time but if you look at like the tokyo preliminaries in the high school and college level you don't see that many people you know back in the day right going for judo stuff that's completely outside of regular judo i see classical judo so everyone has a very similar style and that's natural right if you go to mongolia and you go to the average dojo it's going to be influenced by their local styles right we talked a little bit about yeah judo styles right things like that so yeah i think this rule set definitely helps the japanese upright judo right can't do two-handed grip breaks you know that's another one people like why wouldn't you be able to do that but it does promote negative judo right if i feel like someone's about to slam me

and if i start just stripping hands away the entire time and not engaging at all the spectator who's watching is going to be like oh this is boring so it really was designed for the spectator in mind and if more people watch judo more people are engaged with judo then it's going to be good for judo overall right it's kind of like trying to build like a platform uh business you know yeah people who is who are on it then you could monetize it later right so and they're going to be like uh yeah go ahead yeah so yeah like this is a good segue to let's kind of go into the pros and cons about it so yeah more viewership more sponsorship more money pouring into the sports i guess more so i think visor did a great job yeah for and it was part of this whole idea that he had right and yeah you know

some people have their criticisms about visor but i think he did a great job for the sport because you know having the white and blue gi, that was a little while ago. But things like that make it clear, right? Two people in white, you know, judo gis grappling around, you can't really tell. Right. So, okay, change that. Change this Olympic qualification system. It was tough for a lot of people like me if it essentially got screwed or anything like that, you know. And it's easy to be like, oh, under the old, you know, Olympic qualificationslympic qualifications i would have done better whatever right yeah it's doing it for global judo right and

it's to be able to uh have viewership have people follow along as if like for instance the tel aviv the judo tournament just happened right the grand slam happened and you know you know who's there and what's online and what's the stakes and the olympic qualification point systems and you have a world ranking they're really following closely to what world tennis did right right right which is a popular sport yes yeah popular sport so now all of a sudden you could follow along and now all of a sudden you could click on a link and watch the judo right but if there was everyone was just grip fighting and no one was throwing and shooting on the legs people aren't going to watch that average people aren't gonna watch that but if an average person's like oh look at this you know they're from israel or something and they see an israeli

champ at the tel aviv thing it's on the news and they're like all right let's see who you know who's in the mix right and then they go to like you know judo base.org and then they look up the rankings and like oh these are the people from my country this guy's from my hometown you know judo base.org and then they look up the rankings and like oh these are the people from my country this guy's from my hometown you know what let me watch the next day of tournaments they click on the link they watch it and they just see people getting bombed right boom big hurray big you know arching throws now all of a sudden they're like i could get into this you know and then they might find someone like uh i don't know molale right who's from iran that was a refugee that went to mongolia now he's kind of succeeding there and that story the backstory right like i love that backstory right now all of a sudden you look for his matches and now he's going for beautiful stand-up throws

where they're launching people right i mean that's the vision, right? Take someone who's standing, lift them up and launch them. Yeah. And no one want to see an ankle pick or a low single or people grappling. And I get it from a martial standpoint, right? If it's a martial arts, like why get rid of stuff that's good for self-defense and good for martial arts? But from a spectator standpoint and from a fan base standpoint, I completely get it. And you will split the audience. If that was it and you you will split the audience if that was okay you will split the audience with wrestling and because yeah you can yeah from

olympian uh yeah ioc standpoint yeah yeah if you want to watch leg grabs and people fighting over points and you know you want to do nogi situation go watch wrestling right exactly you want to just see people getting flying and then people getting choked and people getting on board like go watch wrestling right exactly you want to just see people getting flying and then people getting choked and people getting on board like go watch judo all right and that's partly why judo nirwaza is the way it is also because nirwaza is not spectator friendly right if you're looking at like oh shoot like you know using bjj as an example now like the guy went for a delahiva and then went for a barambolo now he has his back and he has the nastiest seatbelt grip and he's looking to trap an arm and go for the that's not going to appeal to the average like person right average spectator that's not right people even even the practitioners say it's kind of boring to watch sometimes the they're fighting for grips

yeah there was a yeah exactly so it's kind of a like yeah go ahead look at like worm guard or something right you are bottom open guard and you have the lapel and you looping it under the person's leg average person does not know what that is right average they have no clue whether that's an advantage or not it's like wow why is that guy grabbing the bottom of his gi in between the legs like what is the purpose of that? It just seems like more. But like a judo-y poem. Two people are standing upright. One person has two hands on around the head.

And they throw their hips across and the guy gets slammed down into the floor. Like, everybody gets it. And even though I was. Like boxing. Right. Oh, like getting knocked out. Yeah. Everybody gets getting knocked out.

If someone gets punched in the face, boom, right? They get that, right? That's why Mayweather is like, you know, with the defensive movement and slipping and then the point and then fighting for, oh, I won this round, I won next round, I won third round. Okay, you know, like now I could kind of cruise and try to, like that's not going to appeal to the average public. That's why he's so hated, right?

And so many people want to see him lose.'s part partially why they're polarizing yeah and of course yeah and of course there's showmanship there's a lot more going on there right that's my you know spiel about why right do you know the way it is it's got to be a spectator friendly sport and that's the entire vision of visor and i get it yeah and i mean this is kind of a segue i mean uh it's it's we're kind of going away from the main topic but you think bjj would not get into the olympics i don't even know they are if they are pushing for it but you know that'll be kind of interesting to see right but i think their champions are too concentrated in two countries u.s and brazil i see it's not i mean yeah okay you could argue like oh hajj was in

uk and there's people in europe starting to do jujitsu but you know you look at judo right it's a global global sport in terms of country participating it's like one of the most participated sports on this planet right and people used to throw around the statistic of like it's the second most practiced sport in the world behind soccer right i don't know if i buy that i think that's kind of like uh there's no way i just don't freaking buy it right i don't think it wasn't in terms of the population point into like you say in terms of the number of countries yeah i've heard that too yeah you know and just based on that it's like okay what are the three most populated countries on this planet? India, China, United States.

How many people do judo in there? In the United States, it's under a quarter million people. So based on those three populations, period. But in terms of Olympic participation by country, judo is the top. Yeah, exactly. And then if you look at which countries are tough okay you know we got russia france brazil cuba right japan right korea korea is competitive israel is competitive now yeah right it's a global system like thing right so that's

my argument about why i'm not saying it shouldn't be in the olympics right i'm just saying in terms of global participation and then spectator friendliness to the average practitioner or not even it's not very difficult to get in not even a average yeah non-practitioner yeah that's right average person and this is the thing how can we make it more exciting to the average person? People want to see people get bombed. Right. All right.

You got wrestling and judo already for that. Yeah. It's too similar. That's the reason why karate will never get into the Olympics because Taekwondo is already in there. Right. And there's got to be, you know, a lot of political stuff. Right. Yeah. And I know when Korea wanted to put Ta put takundo into the olympics they're

like hey you know case against there's not a lot of striking arts in there and this and that and i you know they donated a lot of money to the you know olympics and all this stuff right it's super politically heavy sort of a situation i just don't see the brazil having that you know having that i don't know i maybe i'm wrong right but i'm not talking bad about brazil i'm not doing that right but when brazil already big on judo so maybe they don't have already big on judo yeah dude it's like brazil's most winning medals in sport is like yachting uh what is it what is that sport called? Sailing, I guess. I mean, there's different kinds of... Yeah, I'm not sure, but... And then it's judo.

Yeah. And then they're good at soccer too. They're very good at soccer. Is that an Olympic sport? It is, it is. But then you only get one medal per team, you know? Where judo, there are multiple weight classes, so you can win more.

I'll tell you the biggest biggest right thing about the olympics that annoy me is that a swimmer swimmer can win eight medals right it's kind of i won eight medals in one event it's like how many medals have you won in judo and it's like oh we got this guy you know teddy renair he won like three right he's like big deal y'all got not you know i get nine in one event one one freaking four-year site it's like man that's not fair right how's that fair swimming is like that because every where do you draw the line yeah 50 meter 75 meter 100 meter 114 meter 11 Right. And then add freestyle, backstroke, this, that. You know, like, okay, now let's do another event

with, like, freestyle, backstroke. We'll call it a medley. And then get a medal, too, over there. I think they should have in judo, too. Like, freestyle and greco are already a thing. Right. Judo should have that. Maybe Nevada should be a separate event.. Judo should have that. Maybe, maybe Neewada should be

on a separate event or Kata. I believe that. I think there should be sort of a, you know, Jiu-Jitsu, BJJ should kind of ride the coattails

and the political connections of Judo get in with the people at the top and be like, hey, all right, Judo going to be two divisions, all right?

Right. Now it's going to be a standard, whatever rule set that it is now and then we're going to also have a rule set where time is unlimited and leg grabs are allowed. Right. So it's like almost modern BJJ rules. Yeah. You could even call it the BJJ division, but it'll be like in the judo umbrella.

Right. That way you don't have to do this whole thing because it's already there, already established. Right. The infrastructure and the path is already paved. It's already there right well so i think that's what they should do i don't know if i i don't know if ijf will be convinced to do that probably not but you know uh marius visor becomes best friend with the biggest bj you know political figure in the planet maybe and then they get talking

and visor's like oh i like bjj now i like nawaza right you know maybe we need the planet maybe and then they get talking and visors like oh i like bjj now i like nirvaza right you know maybe we need to work on this thing yeah you know make it make it more exciting so yeah we'll see it'll be an interesting move so getting back to the pros and cons a little more um so what do you so now the competition scene has changed so do you what kind of changes did this leg wrap band bring about to the actual uh like dojos and then the education of judo definitely changed definitely changed the landscape of judo period one of the biggest thing was like defensive posture gets penalized in judo right but naturally when you could shoot in on the legs you have to bring your legs away from your opponent's hands so now you're going to take a stance where your hands and your head are much

more further out right to protect your legs right because first line of defense against shots hands second line of defense against shots head then you know you use your hips right so it's arm heads so now you're gonna take this natural stance so defensive posture which gets penalized is not so i mean it is defensive but it's the natural defensive leg grabs right right so it's like there's sort of a conflicting thing there you know what i mean so now all of a sudden the rule change happens it's like no now you can't shoot it on my legs now i'm going to be completely standing upright which is good because your hips are closer to your opponent which means you could throw faster right right right so it definitely

changed the landscape of judo and i think some dojos allow leg grabs and even in my dojo too it's like i i sort of allow it if two parties agree to it. Right, right. And we've done this before. Like we had a guy who's training for the Sambo Worlds or Sambo Pan Ams. They're training and there's a jiu-jitsu guy in the room and there's a wrestler in the room. And sometimes they'll be like, oh, sensei, can we do leg grabs on the back mat? And I'm like, yeah, sure.

You know, and then sometimes like if we're on that kick you know people are really interested in learning it then i'll be like all right you know the back you know because we have three mats right the back is just all dedicated to leg grabs you guys can do whatever you want on the back mat right but you limit it to you know this belt only or that belt only still can't do kanibasami all this stuff right yeah for me personally because i wrestled first so when i first started judo my favorite technique was kataguruma because i i was doing fireman's carry and wrestling anyway but then when the leg grab got a ban was instant uh started uh i actually thought it was beneficial for me because i could actually force i had to force myself to learn all the the big traditional throws so it actually worked out for me and but i know like a lot of people complain about it and and because they lost

their tokui wazas and whatnot. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of the leg grab ban. And then honestly, I don't even know if the double leg shots were that effective in Judo because of the Gi. Yeah.

So if you're within grab touching distance right like if someone has the hand posted on my collar right in nogi situation you could post and go under or you could chop the arm down and then go right things of that nature but if they're within posting distance with the gi on they could grab your gi which means that gi's not the hand not coming off that easily right which means you really can't shoot on that so you have to shoot from a little bit further away but But this is the thing. There was a strategy where you could do no-handed judo, where you're just shooting on the

legs, then you could do one-handed judo with lapel grabs and Ippon Senagi and leg picks and things like that, and then there was two-handed judo, so you kind of had to have a system, right? If the person's anticipating you pulsing on that lapel every time with that grip-fighting exchange, and then the second, third exchange, they think you're going to come forward and then that you change levels and shooting on

the leg that can be a little bit more effective and you see people have a little bit of success with that right right also in wrestling right if you get taken down right you get rewarded for different tiers of takedowns right you know you have to have back exposure where the back touches the mat samotu you grab the legs and the person goes to their knees and turn you get one point and judo if you're shooting on the legs and they go down to their stomach it's no points yeah right so you know as soon as the person feels like oh shoot you know they're they have to shoot farther away right they have to take the level like level like from a distance where you can't really grab them right so they're shooting from farther away and then whoops you know i mistyed

my hands he shot in on the leg okay he's coming into my legs i'm just gonna go to my stomach right so definitely not as easy to score with those outside shots with a judo right right and i get that yeah that you know but the thing is you can't keep spending that's why like i have this idea of like all right you could shoot in once which is actually interesting yeah right you mean like a shot counter or something maybe that it might get too confusing but i i could see the appeal to it yeah this guy chadi uh he's a youtuber as well like he does history of judo and he has an idea like golden score when you're in overtime you

could do anything you could grab the legs right and i thought that was a kind of a cool idea right so but it's hard to maintain the consistency but yeah we'll see and yeah we'll talk about the future of the band later too but and for did you have to when the band was uh instantiated like did you have to change your judo at all like how was your experience yeah because i'm always the short guy in the division because i'm wide and stocky and i lift weights and i'm heavy right so i was already in the wrong weight class i was fighting 220 from the time i was in i don't know 2007 2008 right reason being like i was wrestling that season and then i was going down to like 184 and then like i came off the weight cut and then i just blew up and i just fought at nationals at 220 and i actually won it oh okay i've never won it before so now all of a

sudden i have ranking and points at 220 and it's like all right do i really want to cut down and start over right right right and that was the thing so now all of a sudden i got the ball rolling as a national level competitor at 220 and the 220 wasn't as competitive back then at you know at the national level so i just kept having success there and i just started competing there, but I'm short, 5'8", 5'9", so most of the time, people who were taller, who had much bigger reach, who would come down my back, and all of a sudden, I'm having struggles, right, so every time they reached over the back with a deep over-the-back grip, I'd just duck on there and shoot on the legs, and then, of course, I wouldn't score most of the time, they would go to their belly,

but now I've gotten out of that position for that exchange. And now I could force Nwazu. Right. So it was always a good out. And I didn't really have a Tomonage or Sumigayashi back then. So it was a big, big, big portion of my game. I see. One hand on, moving around.

And I like my Ochu, Chimada, and stuff. But it was very difficult at the international level because I'm much shorter, like I said. Right, right. So one-handed, stripping it, moving, Ippon Senagi, cutting the hand, cutting the hand,

snapping, kicking, moving, drop Senagi, right? Personnel grips me, I shoot none the legs. So it was kind of a perfect system for me. Right, right. Because it's just the way I was, the way I fought.

So when they took that away, it was very difficult. I remember fighting in the Pan American Grand Prix in Panama mm-hmm and I fought a radius to Spain who was like a previous world champ or world bronze medal for something and then I was winning my two Shido's like doing something similar and then I reached over my back and I shot in on the legs just because I felt like I was about to get thrown and then they penalized me and I was out

Hanso kumaki so yeah yeah so like really my game was affected by it uh but there's a lot of people who were very salty about that and right i was too in the beginning but then i was really trying to see the big picture of how this was an affair for judo the sport right and it does make a little bit of sense right how did you change your strat your system after that now that you couldn't i tried to do a little bit more like bailout throws of tomonage and sumi and it took me a long time to figure out tomonage right i've only figured it out recently to where i could consistently hit it in practice against people who are you know like brown and black belts like the you know higher end dojo level right i've never really thrown you know, like brown and black belts, like the, you know, higher-end dojo level, right?

I've never really thrown, you know, the best guys with it. Right, I see. But I could consistently hit it now. So, you know, that would have been nice to have, but I would use it as a means to just escape a bad position while I'm being outgripped on my feet. I see, I see. Right.

So I changed that a little bit. And then I would mix drop Senagi, Tomonagi Sumi just to get out of losing positions. Right. And that was a big chunk of it. But, you know, during that time, it wasn't enough for me to really pivot properly into being successful in the international stage. Right. And I would win a match here and there. But like internationally, I was kind of getting, you know, my ass kicked ass kicked right because i was having a hard time with the new rules right because that

your biggest asset was taken away in a way yeah yeah and you know the reason why i wrestled too in the first place i wrestled almost like a decade up until the point where they like right high school and college and then i've developed my wrestling skills pretty good right and it's almost 96 now but i developed my wrestling pretty good to complement my judo style right right so in wrestling i had like a hybrid wrestling and judo sort of a style where i could shoot none the legs climb up the body right doing judo up top shooting down low and it was like this really nice mix that i thought in my head it was like sort of perfect right and all of a sudden it's like they take away half of the stuff that i do and it's not just half because there's a very synergistic way that those two things play

right attacking high attacking low attacking low and climbing up the body right and using it as a overall strategy of if every time i'm losing in position, I could go for, you know, I have six or seven options. That was the thing. Right. Right. Man. Now, if I'm losing in position, my bailout attacks are limited to one of three. Yeah.

Mostly, you know, drop Senagi and Tomonage. Right. Drop Senagi doesn't work that well. It gets penalized well. So, the only thing that you could really go for now in terms of Ibele is Tomonage. So it really, really was limiting. And it probably took away like 60%, 70% of my Judo. Man, that was such a big change for you.

I didn't realize it until now. Yeah. But it's okay. It helped me focus on Ippon Sanagi. It helped me focus on Ochi Osoro. And it's probably good and you know I'm very grateful that I was able to live through a big portion of my judo career with leg grabs so now you know and it's kind of a bad look right when somebody comes in who's just a well

rounded grappler and they're like hey let's do judo they're shooting on the legs and you just get tackled to the floor like that's just such a bad look right right yeah like the kids living through judo now we're gonna have to deal with that 10 years from now they're running a dojo or something they're a top dog a wrestler comes in and they blast double them straight to their back yeah and now all of a sudden you gotta make excuses be like you you can't shoot it in the legs i know that's that's that's not a good look that's not a good look you know's not a good look. There's that sport versus martial arts argument. Why, if it is a martial art,

the double leg or the tackle is one of the most common things people do. Everyone does this out of nature. My three-year-old daughter is just trying to tackle me now. Everybody does this. It's in human nature to just shoot in on the legs and try to bring someone down to the ground. If it's going to be a martial art right martial warlike art and you're going to take a martial

perspective on the grappling side then you need to have it incorporated into your education system yeah so that let's go into that like i mean it's clear that we're both pretty positive about the band but let's to play the devil's advocate it really took away the martial portion of judah away and and i it's i think it's a valid criticism so what do you think about that criticism you know how can we deal with that you know i think uh it it's up to every dojo owner and every teacher to be like all right we're going to dedicate some time to doing some of this stuff as I do. And I'm not saying my way is better or anything like that. And you don't have to. Right.

If you have a dojo that's specifically dedicated to competition, you have to play to the rules. Right. Right. But competition isn't the end all. Most people in every dojo don't compete right this is the craziest thing most people put 90 of their attention on the 10 of people that compete at the dojo so what about the other 90 who are there for physical fitness learn to grapple feel good about themselves now all of a sudden they're second class citizens right and i talk

about this all the time like that's you're doing a disservice to the community of people doing Judo, right? The hobbyists and the enthusiasms, it's the majority of the Dojo, always, first and foremost, right? So if you look at every single Dojo in this country,

if you're focusing in just teaching competitive Judo, I think you're missing a big piece of it, you know, and philosophically speaking, it's like making each other better, right? Minimum efficiency, minimum for maximum efficiency not minimum efficiency that's the worst don't do that that's weightlifting uh path of most resistance right versus path of least resistance right things of this nature like i think it should be uh in part of the system that

in your curriculum right so you know i think that's that's the way you know you have to have a little bit of it you have to teach it you have to do it you know you have to do it safely and you have to incorporate it in the curriculum not too early but in a progressive way because all of a sudden out of the nowhere you're like all right guys we're gonna do regular mandori and people like okay and they're used to this pattern they're used to this tempo and all of a sudden okay all right now we're gonna let people do leg grabs yeah people gonna get hurt they're gonna start diving in on the legs going crazy because it's something new right let's kind of get into the details of that a little bit like what kind of techniques leg grabbing techniques would you teach judo people now like is it do you just focus on the defense like just uh you know the hip check

or the sprawl or do you go for the you know do you teach the you know the nitty-gritties of the double legs and the level change and whatnot what do you think yeah i think you can teach just judo leg grabs you can do that if you have a just strictly gi situation right but i think it's important to teach wrestling basics too because the wrestling basics have been ironed out for many, many, many, many, many years. And there's so many resources online too, right? And I think if you're doing judo versus BJJ, that kind of changes the game a little bit because if you're going for a high crouch or a double, your neck is exposed. So you're – and the whole thing about wrestling it's like keep your head up keep your head up head pressure head pressure right so once you

have head pressure you're keeping your head you have tons of neck exposure here right so that makes you susceptible in the way wrestling finishes those takedowns to those guillotine chokes right so you kind of have to teach both of it both of those things and then kind of like let them sort of not figure it out but you know you kind of have to teach both of it both of those things and then kind of like let them sort of not figure it out but you know you kind of have to teach both sides of the coin right right i would personally teach a double leg single leg high c the difference between the high c and a single leg is head position right single has head on the inside high c has head to the outside right right and that's a very very important distinction distinction because people use all the single legs where you grab one leg and the double leg is you grab two legs uh and it gets kind of confusing right it doesn't you

can't really explain to your right and then having those systems work together right high c fake to a single single fake to the double things of that nature how to defend it right hand head hips when they shoot and their level changes below you front headlock position right right front headlock throws are beautiful right beautiful super dangerous on the neck though yeah that's why in freestyle wrestling and greco they do it but in collegiate wrestling which is designed for high school and college athletes they don't really have a lot yeah you don't get rewarded for points for doing that right unless you could throw them cover and etc etc right right right so i would teach those things uh shot defense you know the like when the person has a single things of that nature but that that's

another whole nother thing right and now all of a sudden incorporating that into a gi setting yeah there's a couple of leg grabs that are ideal for the gi setting that i kind of figured out along the way that i never really had a chance to use during my competition days because i just didn't have that knowledge you know so i would teach some of that right but uh so you're in a unique position because you wrestle extensively so you and also judo extensively so you have the best of the both worlds you have the knowledge to do it but a lot of times you know people a lot of judo teachers probably never wrestled before so yeah how could they gain this knowledge and then teach the teacher properly how what kind of recommendation would you have to those people well you know i think a judo teacher has the obligation to keep learning themselves right there's people who

learn something and now they're teaching it just the way they were taught it and then they were good you know when they're 22 years old 25 years ago but they never really adjusted they never really adapted never really evolved and they're just still teaching the same thing from back in the day i just do it like this and you just go like that and that is another thing that does a lot of a disservice to your athletes because now all of a sudden you yourself is not being a role model by keeping up with some of this stuff you yourself are not a student anymore right right so if you don't have a lot of experience with the shots and the leg grabs and things like this you know go learn it go learn it and sometimes there's a guy in the room

that knows wrestling and then just ask him right and then i think you have to be confident enough to be you know if you're standing in front of the room to be like hey man i don't really know this thing like uh i do this with you know whatever martial art that i'm learning at the time like i don't really know leg locks so much like can you show me right and then sometimes if i don't want to do that and admit that i don't know it in front of everybody then i'll pull them to the side like can you show me that thing you did uh after class and then i'll constantly even ask my brown belts and stuff like hey how did you do that thing right a lot of times they can't explain it because it's on the fly boom right and then i will have right now is perfect because of the pandemic right and it's such a small we're not really

doing classes but it's in a very intimate setting was like hey we're working out me versus this person a one-to-one session and the person goes was like oh let's figure that thing out you just did that was amazing right right right greg like faked the soto gari the other day and i leaned in and instead of going to sai he dropped and went for tomonage it almost threw me i was like holy moly take a soto to tomonage to the back corner and then you have the lapel but the person could post on that hand i guess if you could catch it on the way down you know and greg is a fresh brown belt right right right right so like i think that's got to be the mentality of the instructor right you're a role model you're preaching you know these things these pedagogical things like you want to be a student you want to learn you want to improve

like if you yourself are not learning you know who's going to learn from you right nice get in shape too right i don't learn from uh out of shape sensei you know i'm sorry for the people who are not in shape and then you know sometimes it's not your fault right maybe you have a thyroid issue like i do i gained like 30 pounds once because all of a sudden i had an underactive thyroid right like maybe it's not your fault maybe you have insulin problem maybe it's just straight up genetics i don't know but you have to be trying to improve yourself right right right man i started i'm going off on a tangent here no no it's okay people are gonna be pissed listening in like oh man like what no i mean it didn't go nuts it's it's a good point like you know even as a teacher you know yeah you got to stay that stay as a student like at least have that

mentality so that you can become a better teacher you know always improving and that's one of the big things so now let's kind of talk about the future of the band so do you think so i know there it's gone through some iterations and modifications do you think it'll go away yeah or like leg grab ban i should should say. Leg grab ban, maybe. I think they'll bring leg grabs back eventually. But it would have to meet some of this criteria, right? It can't look like wrestling. There can't be negative judo. It has to contribute to the overall growth of judo, right?

So like, I don't know. Here's a suggestion. Standing kata groom is allowed. Right. If you go for it it and if you miss it then you get penalized now all of a sudden you check all the boxes the reasons why they take it out in the first place right right if you shoot with your knees down to the floor right and i get this right in wrestling because you're both in a crowd setting you have to drop step down

to get even lower right the person's upright you don't need to take that drop step all you got to do is just change bend your knees a little bit now all of a sudden you have this right level change availability right because you've beaten their first line of defense which is their arms in their second line of which is the head right right so you can shoot it on the legs as long as the knees don't touch the ground right because that promotes that standing judo situation right and if you miss it then you get penalized right like a shido which means yeah it's you get three penalties and you're out yeah right that's it you get three strikes you're out so you're never gonna see a match where people are just spamming leg grabs right if i shoot once get a penalty shoot twice get a

penalty now i'm not to shoot the third time. It's like I can't take this guy down with the standing firemen. I'm not going to go for it. You think it'll be a little hard to judge, though? Don't you think it might have some gray area? Like, oh, did his knees really touch? No, that's the easy one to see. That's the easy one to see.

Because with the camera technology and stuff like that, all easy one to see you think that's the easy one to see because with the camera uh technology and stuff like that all you gotta do is rewind and be like look at the thing and the knees touch right right right you know yeah that's it you don't they do it in football it's like uh you both your toes have to be in the thing and they can see that and they could do it in football they could do it in judah they do it in football soccer you know the maybe in that case um so for mogul skiing because they judge on like how close your knees stay together they put patches on the knees of your pants so that judges can see it if they're if your knees are aligned better so maybe yeah you have maybe you have a sensor attached to your knees

if it gets too crazy. It's like a goal line technology. Now you're going down a deep, deep, deep hole. Yeah, but that's an idea. Because I'm in the opinion that it will never go away. The leg grabs will never come back. You know what? I think if judo grows, jud judo keeps growing and judo keeps doing its thing and judo takes off and i'm sure there's someone out there and the international judo federation is keeping metrics of this stuff right right because

you know visor is a casino guy right he is a businessman who looks at right you can't run a casino without having basic number stuff right right and he you know that's just who he is right so he has data-driven uh reasons why he's doing things right good reason why a good example is when they took out the last minute of judo oh yeah i was about to bring that up because yeah that was a very data-driven approach it was a five-minute match judo yeah and all of a sudden they're looking at all the data of how many poems when people get slammed all this stuff and they saw across the board in the women's division that almost nobody not nobody i shouldn't say that right it was a very very statistically significant number that the number of people

getting slammed in the last minute was very very very low right so they were just like cut it out mm-hmm no women's matches

four minutes so people were like oh men and women this and that women you know all this stuff like but they were arguing I think at the time

like oh no there's men who can throw and they get thrown in the last minute that's what we want we want people getting bombed and then i guess maybe they were like all right it's not as much or maybe make it equal so then they took out the last minute of judo too right right and i get it i'm stalling most fourth minute too because i was never known for my gas tank all right i'm always gassing so it's like when they took out that last minute i'm like yes i was super happy

about it like i you know it's like if you can make it to that last minute i'm like yes i was super happy about it like i you know it's like if you can make it to the last minute you could survive till the fifth minute right right yeah i'm not i might not throw you because i'm tired but if i can make it four minutes i'm making it the the way right and that's not spectator friendly at all because he's just hanging on yeah data driven right decisions okay so now all of a sudden you see this uptick in judo boom and they pick a couple tournaments like uh okay you know you know like with the google analytics the ad tools they do like the red and the white the red and the blue the ab testing yeah the ab testing exactly like that

you know they have a couple different tournaments they they're like, all right, you can shoot another leg. Let's see what happens. You're going to go down the ground. Yeah. Yeah, if you miss, you get a penalty. Okay. And then that promotes more e-pons. That promotes more excitement.

People aren't doing negative judo. You still penalize defensive posture. Right. Now, all of a sudden, they're like, oh, A-B testing. B is a lot better. People want to see that more. more highlight reels getting pumped out there's gonna come a time when people are sick and tired of watching people get thrown uchimata i'm telling you there's gonna be a time i don't know if i'll ever get sick and tired of uchimata but yeah i could

there's gonna come a time where like the highlight reels of the youtube of judo it's like okay osoto taiyo harai i i get it i get it you know and people are going to want to see a freaking standing fireman the diving right front flip they're going to want to see that you know they'll i think they're going to bring it back eventually right but they're going to bring it back in a way that's data driven they're not going to hastily do it because judo is on the right path in terms of global growth i think yeah not in the united states right u.s judo is dying right now because of covid and judo is hurting because of covid because covid is probably

the worst thing for a sport that we do yeah because of the proximity yeah and hopefully we can bounce back and on that but yeah i think you've raised a good point because I feel like judo has this community, certain people who really want to preserve the traditional aspect of judo, which I think is important. But at the same time, we have all these tools available at our disposal, like the data-driven analytics and whatnot and that will help us really evidence-based uh a modernized judo on a like a solid data-driven evidence-based approach yeah yeah we need to be more collectively driven right as opposed to this tribalism situation of like my sensei trained at this dojo and he didn't train anywhere else and he learned from this guy and my lineage is this that's why i

do classical judo right i'm not gonna break break off i'm not going to do anything right that mentality's got to change a little bit and we have to look at the collective good of judo period right we can't be fighting over scraps you know which a lot of times it happens you know fighting over memberships and this that and undercutting each other on price that's another huge thing that people do in the business and when you're undercutting each other on price it's a race to the bottom right you charge a hundred dollars i charge 90 you charge 80 you charge 70 everyone students going back and forth like that's not the way to do business right right i'm not saying price fix the dojos i'm not saying that you know but this exact thing happened in california and hawaii and once that sort of thing happens all

of a sudden the dojo owners and the business owners can't rely on the dojo and the business for primary source of income. Now they can't dedicate as much time to it because they need to get a day job. And when they have a day job, they're not thinking about all this stuff. How can we make Judo better collectively? They're thinking about how can I take those students from over there so I

could break even on my judo school at night the quality drops that's a problem yeah quality drops right so we have to think collectively for judo you know and uh i think having this podcast i think is helping hopefully i'm trying right people more people listen share please with your friends i'm not saying i know everything i don't at least it's this is you know we're trying to raise awareness on these issues and, you know, have a start a conversation. And on that note, there's a, okay, so have you heard of freestyle judo? I'm sure you have.

I have, yeah. Yeah. So I think that movement is a little related to what you were just talking about. So, yeah. Well, freestyle judo, it's like a is a little related to what you were just talking about so yeah well freestyle judo it's it's like a different rule set basically where they allow yeah uh like raps and pinning so what do you think about that yeah i think they need to market a little bit better right you know to the average person they need highlight rails that are professional right not on somebody's you know iphone 6. right right and once they're capable of having attracting great

athletes i don't know what they got to do to attract it but maybe they do a freestyle judo tournament with a cash prize so you get the top u.s athletes competing in it but you know tough to say right because why would they compete if they're top u.s athlete they're trying to make an olympic team right and freestyle judo wouldn't really help yeah the payout's not going to be that big but you know you make a couple you, you run a couple events in a professional level. Right. Kind of like KBI Super Fights. We'll talk about that in another episode.

Yeah. Yeah. They just need more exposure. You know, I think you can catch on. I think the idea is great. I love that. You know, but everything I've seen online about it, it's just in terms of highlight reel, the production quality is not as high.

All right. You know, but I honestly, I got to tip my hat off to the people who are actually doing it because they have this idea they have this vision they're going for it so i'm very proud of them i don't know who it is off the top of my head and i love people taking that sort of initiative and going for it right you know but i think it can be better and i think the future is right maybe scalability and social media exposure so yeah and then that could be a data point for the ijf and then they could take a look i'll compete in the freestyle judo tournament at all maybe maybe that would be the exposure they need yeah can you imagine i do like a professional grade youtube video like shintaro goes and competes

at a freestyle judo tournament yeah i think you i think that's a good idea like when everything opens up and they're like seven times sambo world champion shows up and beats me central i i think what i heard is that it's an uh aau event um so it has some backing in that the amateur uh sports scene yeah athletic union you know they have freestyle and you know greco-roman wrestling and so yeah what we need is another judo organization because we are we don't already have like four right we have we have three in the states yeah um yeah i mean i know a lot of those guys and a lot of them, you know, do their crossover thing and they have the best interest. But it's tricky.

You know, it's tricky. It is. Yeah. Because it's not just about being good at judo. It's about, you know, you got to navigate through the politics and whatnot. Very, very political. Very, very political. Yeah.

It's just how it is. What isn't political? Right. right exactly you know what i mean government wants you to stop smoking cigarettes they're gonna raise taxes on tobacco right and now all of a sudden you have to pay 20 21 for a pack of cigarettes in new york city people aren't gonna buy it as much right that's a political thing there's lobbying powers there and this guy thinks that And this guy's an influencer. And that guy. Everything's politicized. There's some level of politicking going on in every industry.

And you look at a sport like judo, martial art like judo. And then it's a global powerhouse and an Olympic event. You're going to have people. You're going to have tons of people bickering. And it's going to be a bureaucracy. And it it's gonna be very tough to make changes in that world right that's why visor i mean i have lots of positive things to say about this guy that's why visor you know came in like this is the way we're gonna do it i have a vision and he's a great leader because he says this is my vision come along you know and i guess like

there's a things to be said about people who can do that. Right. Things to be said about people who have like that, you know, dictated feel and, you know, people are against that too. Right.

You know, throwing around his weight and power. Uh, but I think overall he did a great job for the sport, great job for judo. And, you know, I hope he keeps going.

I'm very excited to see the future of judo. Yeah. You know, and I don't forever just want to see herai right i want to see standing kata guru and i want to see judo be right the world's reserve currency everything runs on off judo now yeah judo judo is the american dollar right now right right judo's american dollar right we need a we need a bitcoin in the grappling world that's what we need yeah a disruptor right maybe that's that's visor's vision who knows right right we need something

we have enough data we have we we know enough about grappling on based on youtube and watching highlight reels that what's hot what's not Sambo's kind of going in that route. Right. With different events and whatnot to drive the viewership. Sambo's exciting, man. Sambo's exciting. So, yeah, all this grappling sports, I mean, we just started off with a simple leg grab band,

but it has so many implications in terms of how the organizations are run and then the grassroots movements. It's such an interesting topic. Anything else you want to add before we end? Nope. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. I got some content on there.

Please share this podcast because I definitely want to keep it going. And thank you, Peter, first and foremost, for taking your time out of your busy life do it of course this i mean it's it's been so fun so it's it doesn't even it's not even work for me yeah yeah thanks man yeah of course yeah that's it yeah and uh thanks for listening guys and stay tuned for the next episode