The Shintaro Higashi Show - Tomoe Nage

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Tomoe Nage is a unique throw where you throw yourself on your back in order to generate the momentum to throw your partner. It is a versatile and useful throw that everyone should consider adding to their arsenal. How should we approach learning tomoe nage and what are different ways in which we can integrate tomoe nage into our Judo (and BJJ) game? In this episode, Shintaro and Peter take a deep dive into tomoe nage. 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 go over Tomoe Nage, but first and foremost, follow us on Instagram, Judo Shintaro NYC. I've been really up in my game when it comes to reels and short form content, so please check us out. And Peter's out there too, right? Peter, what are yours? Peter Gunu, P-E-T-R-K-E-U-N-W-O, yeah, you a little more my dm's a little freer

that is full and yeah and then please support us on patreon if you can link down in uh below and yeah let's jump into it i think our previous episode on which model was very popular so we're gonna continue doing so like kind of going over all the throws and techniques in judo today's tomoyanage like shintaro said yeah what can we what can we talk about tomoyanage that's it's a fun throw yes yeah don't ask me what the literal translation is because i never know that japanese but tomoyanage is a throw where you drop down onto your back and then you kick him over yeah and it's very very complex throw there's straight back tomonage and yoko tomonage right yeah so you should learn start with straight back i guess yeah straight back and then they had they do one type of tomonage and they try to make

it work for all positions that's why it fails all the time i'll tell you a story in a way came for a seminar in the united states and there's a video of me getting the shit kicked out. I was there, too. Yeah, you were there, too. I saw that. He did a seminar in the United States. I was like a 23-year-old kid at the time. I took a massive beating.

But I'll tell you this. He was very good, obviously. He was launching everyone, Uchimata, Osoto, whatever it is. And then in a five-minute period, he would always go for Tomoyanage once or twice. That just's like a bailout oh well he was never in bad position right nor was he given up position to be like okay go ahead try this stuff yeah right because he's uh you know legend yeah yeah he's very good he's never

gonna be put in bad position the only time he's in bad position in these things if he lets you get to that bad position right and he probably should have if he wanted to try Tomonage because then he would be lower than the person. He's a big guy, right? So he always tried it. He tried it once. He tried it twice. And then he was like, I remember he would go for it. And then he would mumble to himself like, oh, shit.

I'm going to lick my leg or pull. Right? And then he had a horrible Tomonage. But he was working on it. I didn't see him hit anybody with it. And he always went for it once or twice. So he was clearly working on it. Working on it.

Even him. You know where Kosei was working on his Tomo Enage. And this is the thing. Once you're a high-level competitor, you have a skill, you have a strategy, you stick to it, and you're very, very good at a couple things. You become an expert in those things. You don't really expand your range because why yeah you just don't if it works why not why touch it right yeah yeah and here's a good example like floyd mayweather is a very very good outside fighting right he doesn't do mike tyson stuff yeah so what you're gonna ask floyd like hey uh floyd like can you show me how to do some infighting peekaboo style boxing no he doesn't do

that yeah nor is he gonna try that and then do that in an actual match right he's just too much risk yeah yeah too much risk like why bother right so you know even the best champs have a very difficult time going for it and what i notice is he's going for the same type of uchimata over and over right yeah yeah yeah right so i think in the first step to understanding tomonage is understanding the different entries different ways different methodologies okay so now if you look at the person directly in front of you, they're straight back from a traditional bang,

and then there's yoko tomonage, which you're going to the side. Yeah. You could go to your left side, or you could go to your right side. The right, yeah. Okay? Now you stagger their stance. Is it right versus right, or right versus left? Yeah.

You could still go to your left, go to your right. Right. And each one of those are subtly different. The mechanics of the throw are different. Yeah. Right? So you have to understand all those things. And you're not going to really understand it just me talking about it and listening to it.

So you have to go watch my YouTube on different types of Tomo Nage. Right? And then now we're going to talk a little bit of conceptually why you should have Tomoe Nage. Doing each one of these things independently is important to be able to do it cleanly, and that just requires practice. And the way you practice this is a three-person setting.

Because a lot of the times you're balancing the person on the leg, and if they're about to fall over, they're going to land on their head or fall over to the side you can't work on this so you have one person holding the back of their belt providing upward lift right so you drop underneath and then you're working your tomonage finding the right position the person is sort of giving you a lift the third person is grabbing the back of your belt and lifting the person for you so So you practice pulling yourself underneath and then loading him onto the leg, whether it's going to this right side or the left side or go straight under. You know what I mean?

So that's a good way to start working on your mechanics right off the bat. Right. But you have to understand it. You have to try the mechanics. Right? And that's sort of the progression. There's a progression to learning Tomonage. And I think I have a lot of videos on this on YouTube. So if you look up Tomonage Shintaro Higashi, there's a ton of videos progression there's a progression to learning tomonage you know and i think i have a lot of videos on this on youtube so if you look up you tomonage shintaro higashi there's a ton of

videos out there uh okay so that's where i would start off with nice and then so you mentioned that you know integrating tomonage into your game is strategically advantageous and you told me recently too like how i should i used to do a lot of yoko tomoyanage but some for some reason i stopped doing it yeah um probably because i kind of suck but um so what what's uh what's a good why is it beneficial like well what is it what's the edge you're uh looking for here with tomoyanage so tomoyanage is great for really two things. One, as a bailout attack. If you're losing in position, the person controlling your head, okay? Yeah. There's always a path where you could move your head and then go to the floor.

And if you can go to the floor, you're not going to get thrown. Because the goal is for the person to slam you onto the ground, right? Yeah. And then if you preemptively go down to your back, you're not going to get thrown, right? Right. So, anytime you're in losing position, you could use it as a way to get to the ground. Obviously, if you go for it every single time,

they're going to time it with Kochi or Ochi or whatever it is. Right? And they're going to take advantage and exploit it. Maybe they have a very fast over-under pass.

Right. So you mistime that by pump faking Tomonage. Pump fake it. And then they go, oh, this guy Tomonage and then the guy kind of defends and then you could adjust

back position or you could go underneath after that. Right. I see. And I think that's the most underutil go this guy tomonage and then the guy kind of defends and then you could adjust back position or you could go underneath after that right i see and i think that's the most underutilized thing in tomonage you could pump fake this thing oh pump fake tomonage go to the ground and bail out of bad positions right so if i'm doing judo with someone much bigger than me stronger than me faster than me very. But if I'm going with somebody in the same position, I don't know, it's a difficult beast.

Right? So if I'm doing judo with someone like that and then they put me in that position, right, and I feel like, oh shoot,

I'm about to get thrown, I don't know what's coming. Right? That's the big thing. Right? Is he going for Osoto? Is he going for Sasai? Is he going to pull my,

I don't know what's about to happen. I'll freaking go to Munaghe. First time. Yeah. Yeah, first time. Second time I'll pump fake it. I'll pump fake it because they're going to react to it because they anticipate. Know that you have Tomo Nagi. Yeah. And then I might do a Tomo Nagi to the reverse side. Maybe. Right? Yeah yeah another reason why you could go to monage right is if you have a better nirwaza game than the opponent and people in judo think nirwaza attacking turtle because that's the most common position right right but if you have a good open guard game on bottom and the person doesn't have a good top game on top of Nwaza. It's a huge advantage.

Right. So if you're a jiu-jitsu guy and you're good at the open guard game, right, and you have your grip settled already. You have grip settled. Upper body to upper body. You're facing each other. You're grip fighting. You have purchase on any proportion of gi, whether you're winning or not. Yeah, yeah.

Sleeve, lapel, lapel, sleeve, sleeve, double sleeve, elbow grip, whatever, right? It doesn't matter. Because if your goal is to pull the person into Nwaza, you can't just sit guard in judo. Yeah. And even jiu-jitsu, it's like people just pull guard. Why do you pull guard? Just go for tomonage. Just go for it. Yeah.

Right? Worst case scenario, you miss, and then now you're in open guard on bottom. Or, I mean, you get passed, but still, you know. But I think it's better if you try to really pull the tomonage off when you pull guard. you miss and then now you're in open guard on bottom or i mean you get passed but still you know but i think it's better if you try to really pull the tomonage off when you pull guard because if you just sit down people can anticipate your guard pull and then pass it right away yeah like because you that's why you pump fake tomonage yeah pump fake tomonage they react you push koji yeah snap them down and you go tomonage again if you throw them great if you don't now you're an open guard now you can engage your legs and then you could

do your you know whatever you want to do tripod sweep belly heave all that stuff yeah so that those two purposes that's why and then um we talked about how to practice it how to and the advantage of it or what else is there about tomoe nage i guess well it's very versatile yeah because you could go you know like you do a tile right right you're taking them in the arc over your shoulder yeah to your dominant side that's it your legs outstretched you're taking them over this way. Tomoe nage, you could spin him like a Tomoe nage. Spin him like a Zenpo, like a forward roll. Load him on the hip and then use the other leg to assist over. You could go backwards and switch directions mid-throw.

You could pump fake one way and then go the other direction. And it works really, really well from losing position. Majority of judo takedowns, for instance, like even sumigayashi, which is a sacrifice throw also, it requires winning a certain position to block the shoulder to go for it. Right. If I want to throw someone with osorogari, I have to be in dominant position to go for it because it's easy to counter. Tomoenage is one of those throws you could do from bad position. I'm losing in position,

but then I could still go for it and slide underneath. Yeah. That's why it's such a unique throw. You could do it from losing position. You can use it as a bailout. It's very, very, very versatile. And it's easy to pump fake it

and get a reaction. I think that's the... I've never thought about that part, like pump faking it. Yeah. You're right, because you can use it as a setup for other forward throws, too Yeah, yeah, so I think Tomoyanagi is one of the most versatile throws and it's the least understood It took me years to figure this out the Tomoyanagi. I still don't have it mastered But I have a very good understanding of it you know is it part of your game like do you regularly go for it or yeah i'll always go for it i'll always go for it especially if i'm going

with someone very good and if they are trying to force positions right like if i was fighting a georgian guy and he puts me in georgia i talk about this a lot like i'm not too comfortable georgian a georgian b i do it. Don't get me wrong. But if I'm fighting a Georgian champ from Georgia and he puts me there, it's going to be a little bit, yeah, I'm at a disadvantage. So, boom, the arm comes over the back. I'll try to distance and then just slide underneath and go Tomonage. Will I throw the guy?

Probably not because my Tomonage isn't excellent. But at least it got me out of that one time that I was in that bad position. Because the game is, this person's trying to force his Georgian A, which is my Georgian B. Because it's a position. If he's doing the Georgian grip, I'm receiving it. Georgian A position versus Georgian B position. So if he can throw me there, he's going to try to get there. The whole game becomes, do I know the position as good as him? No.

Okay, so he wants to get there. I don't want to get there. We're grip fighting. Sometimes I'm succeeding. Sometimes I'm dominant right versus right. Sometimes I can offensively win. And then sometimes he outgrips me. First time he outgrips me, defend, Tomonage, we're on the ground.

It's like a free pass. Right, right, right. it's a get out of jail free card right second time around I might pump fake it and then do something else

and then do something else yeah yeah because you can't keep doing it because if you're fighting in the context of sport they're going to penalize you for

right doing these false attacks you're not really trying to throw the person you're just trying to get out of the position right yeah so i will incorporate it in that way where if i'm losing in position i will try it i will go for it i will pump fake it i'll use it as a means to set up other stuff you know but i'm always a little bit you know because it's kind of annoying to

receive a shitty tomonage. Yeah. Because anytime you get good position and then the person drops, it's like, dude. It's like, and frustrating your opponent. You have to be conscious of this stuff because you spam Tomonage three, four times in a round. It takes 10, 15 seconds to get back up to your feet. Because in training, you're not doing standing to ground and staying on the ground because if your neighbors are doing tachiwaza it's too dangerous you compartmentalize the training

right right right either everyone's doing tachiwaza or everyone's on nirwaza for safety reasons yeah right for safety reasons yeah so you go to the ground you get back up yeah you spent tomanage three four times majority of the round is over yeah right so then no one's gonna want to work out with you anymore now you got no training partners now you're not gonna get better so you have to like sparingly go for these drop stuff do you remember adam like he used to drop do dropis too much. Yeah, yeah. It's frustrating. Every time you get a hand on, he's dropped on his foot. And then you get caught every now and then. But it's like one of those things.

It's like, wow, this is not a baby. You can't really play your game at all as a partner. Yeah. There was some... I don't know if there was a... I forget who, but there was a guy at your dojo trying to be a Tomoyanaga specialist. Xiao? Oh, yeah.

I think it was Xiao. Yeah. Did you ever have a conversation with him? Like, oh, hey, easy on that thing. But what if... Well, I'm like, don't do it on yellow belts. Okay. But he's gotten very good at it.

Yeah. He was trying to make that as his Tokui was which was very unique I've never seen a he's person he's got it he'll catch so many people and he does this he's lefty and then he'll pump fake and then go OG so he has a good OG and a good to win a gay and he does too man he is a very very unique player yeah yeah he found his own game i've never seen his own game yeah i want him to like refine it develop it maybe he could even teach you one day i don't know yeah nice nice yeah and then um yeah so it's it's versatility is really good

and it can lead to a lot of things and even there was a like you said yeah so maybe we can talk a little bit more about that like tomoyanagi is because of his versatility i think it could be very useful for people uh bjj folks yeah um so how can they integrate it properly into a bjj match for in this match. Instead of pulling guard, never pull guard, always go for Tomonage. I have a Judo for Jiu-Jitsu series. It's literally Tomonage,

fake Tomonage, ankle pick, fake ankle pick, Tomonage, fake Tomonage, ankle pick, fake Tomonage, kochi, ochi. You're not really exposing your back at all like you're not doing like a big throw yeah yeah and i i kind of coined this term like no turn judo system that i was going to make a dvd about but i never did yeah we talked about it in the episode yeah yep we did yeah and if the opponent goes to do pull guard you're doing leg pick kochi

And if the opponent goes to do pull guard, you're doing leg pick kochi. You're always trying to time. So it's a lot of linear back and forth. And then every now and then you throw a side yoko tomonage. And if you miss it, if you get it, great. You throw them, you land on top. You get points. If you miss, you're on bottom.

It's as if you were to pull guard. So it's like, why wouldn't you? There's no downside to it yeah why would you just jump guard this way right if you're doing jujitsu practice and if you roll you know i don't know five times and if you pull guard you know five times in each one of those and you're pulling guard 20 times yeah in a practice right you pull and guard 20 times do Tomonage actively 20 times then you'll get good at it how good will you get Tomonage how soon will you get good at it you'll get Tomonage very very good very very fast

maybe that's how I should practice it I'm going to BJJ gym mostly now you do Gi over there? both I do Gi mostly maybe I'll do that can you do it over there? Both. I do Gi mostly. Yeah.

Maybe I'll do that. Can you do a no Gi? Tomoe nage? It's tough. Yeah. Tough. Yeah. I've heard that some people do it with like Russian, Thai, and then Tomoe nage.

But I don't know how mechanically it'll work. You know what I mean? Theoretically, yeah, I guess you can, but... Do people pull guard a lot yeah maybe i'll have to give it a yeah do people pull guard yeah people pull guard all the time in nogi too yeah they just say oh oh not jump guard like jumping into guard jumping guard that's a whole nother thing Well, yeah, there's maybe another time but yeah, Tomoe nage. Yeah, maybe that's how I should practice it. Yeah, I try to but yeah, Tomoe nage can be very useful BJJ. I mean that's that's Very I think it's a good point Like if you're gonna just pull guard why don't you just go for a throw if it fails yeah that you just pull the guard if you succeed you're on top and top top is i think it's

better usually than just being on the bottom so the jiu-jitsu tomonage a little bit different than the regular tomonage you know yeah because when you do tomonage with the intent of pulling guard you want to create a barrier long leg barrier and then sit right oh yeah as opposed to in a judo tomonage you want to load him on that leg so you want to bend right so you want to pull him onto the leg so you could spring them up in either direction so you kind of have to be able to do both you know especially if you yeah yeah if you do the bjj tomonage it's hard to throw then right it's a little bit harder to throw yeah but if the goal is to just go to nirwaza yeah you know what i mean useful yeah i see yeah so you want to be able to

do it if you have an aggressive guy coming forward all the time and you're like oh shit oh shit just creating that pulse on that hip and then dropping yeah right it reduces the risk of like getting you know fast over under maybe whatever you know it's just it's a little bit it's a different technique. You know what I mean? Yeah. So if you're a jiu-jitsu guy listening to this and then you're just kind of doing that tomonage,

you should learn sort of the knee-bent spring-loading tomonage as well. Yeah. And then you got to play around with leg position too, foot position. Some people will say – you know, the classic thing is like – Hip, foot, belly, yeah. Classic thing, like put it right where the knot of the belt is it's like no it freaking depends you know yeah if you're doing the zempo lead right versus right tomonage to the first right then you have to do it to the back

hip so they can't step over to this side yeah you know what i mean so like stuff like that i feel like people you know get a little ahead of themselves and just repeat these isms from back in the day like oh yeah tomonage always foot on the knot of the belt it's like it's not the case man you're spreading misinformation without really understanding why people said that you know there's certain situations yeah that could be a guilty of that too yeah who hasn't yeah cool idea all right well uh anything else about tomo nage yeah work transitions you know go into tomo nage each one of those types of tomo nage leads to certain transitional nirwaza things if you look at flavio kanto he there's a choke invented after him yeah kanto choke and then so people always say oh kanto choke you do it from tomonage

okay let me go for my tomonage and go for it it's like no you do a straight back tomonage kanto choke isn't really there maybe if you know how to use it properly but a lot of the times he goes to the side and that's when he throws the leg over so you gotta like work the transitions

see how you hit the floor, which grips you have, anticipate which hand position you want hit in the floor, and now you're getting somewhere when it comes to transitional stuff. And then obviously when you do anything where you fall on your back, you have to be prepared to defend the over-under pass. So do you have a proper over-under pass defense? Those are some of the later deeper questions that might come out when you're like exploring tomonage like in a serious way yeah i see nice is this too nerdy for everyone

you think no i think people actually appreciate the nerdiness yeah yeah i think uh yeah i don't think a lot of people do this so no we're doing it yeah they just drop and flop and think that they're getting better. I mean, no offense, but you know, that's how I learned too. Yeah.

That's how I learned in the beginning. And you know what? I got nowhere. Yeah. And then I, Mike Oshima was the first guy that was like, Hey, I do Tomonage like that.

He is so good at it. Yeah. But he does one type. Yeah. He does this. Yeah. He does one type, but he does it very yeah he does this yoko yeah he does one type but he does it

very well in a very specific position that he baits right versus right you throw that right hand over the top you're like

I got it I know and then he shuffles back and hits this consistently so that's an amazing thing

I would like to see him like expand his sort of tomonage repertoire because there's many different ways you know but right yeah it's a really cool thing um yeah and then it started off with that and then i really started exploring it and then i you know i spoke to a lot of people about it and obviously this is not something that i invented on my own a lot of people contributed to my knowledge of tomonage as well yeah you know uh i've taken lessons from uh you know tony lettner was a german champion who was good at tomonage and i you know he's done seminars i've been in the room with him i've trained with him like i've gotten tips from him and he does it a

certain way you know watching the champions do it and trying in the dojo watching shohei do it shohei oh no oh he's got a good one yeah so now i sort of have this i'm not an expert in tomonage but i have a very broad range and a good understanding of it you know maybe i'm an expert in it you're an expert you're an expert cool so all right well that's my whole spiel yeah yeah this is a second installment of this uh technique episode i hope you guys like this one it's a tomodag is a funny one um and thanks for listening yep thank you very much everyone yeah stay tuned for the next episode