The Shintaro Higashi Show - Wrestling

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

Wrestling is arguably the most popular grappling sport in the United States, and it wields great influence over other grappling arts such as Brazilian Jiu-jitsu and Judo. As an accomplished wrestler himself, Shintaro talks about wrestling with Peter: What are the different styles of wrestling? Is wrestling right for everyone? Is wrestling good for Judo and BJJ? Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hey guys, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi show with Peter Yu. Today we're going to talk a little bit about wrestling. The different styles, wrestling for kids, wrestling for adults. Is it helpful for Judo? Is it helpful for Jiu Jitsu? I have some experience, well actually I have a lot of experience wrestling in high school and college. And then I wrestled for a little while after that too. So I have almost 15 years of wrestling under my belt. I haven't wrestled in a recent last couple of years but

still it's like it's very embedded in my judo style and all my training so yeah that's what we're going to talk about today yeah so as you guys uh as she said he has a lot of experience and i've also wrestled in high schools which uh kind of gave me a foundation good foundation on my grappling yeah and in the united states wrestling is vastly more popular than any other grappling arts because it's embedded into the school system yeah so a lot of people a lot of people coming into judo and jujitsu already have a lot of times have wrestling uh experience so yep how can we translate that into judo or jiu-jitsu in a yeah you know maybe they're just straight up wrestlers listening to this podcast too right yeah that's right which is getting bigger and bigger yeah all right so let's kind of start with uh some background

knowledge of wrestling so there are different styles of wrestling yes yes so what what are they what do we have so we got international style wrestling which is right divided into the two major sort of categories which is Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling right what's those are the two major ones Greco-Roman you can't touch the legs right so you can't do trips you can't grab the legs you can't do anything it's all upper body throws right a lot of suplex a a lot of locks, like body locks. Yeah, body locks, throws, Ippon Sanagi, all that stuff. The arm throws.

It's very, very intense. I think it's one of the most underrated grappling martial arts on this planet. I think it's highly, highly, highly applicable. I think the most misleading thing about Kureko is when you watch two high-level guys competing over an inch, where the elbow position is or something like that, it's just not appealing right people want to see people get launched right right when you have two really really good guys who are good offensively and defensively you don't see it that often right right so you know people want to see the movement people want to see the action so it's hard for people to follow i think it's you know hard for people to develop a fan base like

some other style of grappling right right that we're sort of used to so that's greco-roman wrestling now you have freestyle wrestling which is a all-inclusive like you grab the legs all the stuff and that's a very very it's also in olympics so in the olympics you got freestyle and greco freestyle is the one that you can shoot yeah you can shoot legs yeah ankle lace all this stuff right yeah so nice so and then in america we have a like a variation on the freestyle right the yeah so you have collegiate style or some people call it scholastic style wrestling which is the wrestling that you see in high school and college right right right and even from high school and college a couple different rule different rule changes happen. But I think it was genius to change the rule sets from international style wrestling to make it a little bit safer.

I heard the insurance companies were involved. It was very uninsurable with people suplexing each other and cranking on the neck like you do in freestyle and Greco. So they reward the point systems a little bit different. Freestyle and Greco, you get five points for big upside down, feet to floor, feet to back situations, right? And you get rewarded for these big, big throws. In collegiate wrestling, you don't. Right.

Even if you throw someone to the back, unless you get back points, right? It's only two points, right? Right, right. That's granted if you cover the hips and everything. Right. So scholastic wrestling is a little bit different. That's what we're all used to seeing. Right. That's granted if you cover the hips and everything. Right. So scholastic wrestling is a little bit different. That's what we're all used to seeing. Right.

Right here. And then they usually translate, I guess, when they make it to the Olympic level, they usually go for freestyle, I guess, a lot of times. So most kids, if their first exposure to wrestling is scholastic style, they get middle school, high school program, gym class or something. And then they join a wrestling team. And then they do that through college if they're successful and then after they're done with that a lot of the times they have to learn this new style of wrestling some people do it together right during the off season they compete in freestyle tournaments but they're not doing freestyle wrestling around the clock right around right i mean some people do generally speaking generally speaking right so

so like we said like i said uh wrestling is embedded into the school system in the united states so how like let's kind of talk about how kids start doing it i know like in the midwest where it's very popular like if parents will you know drag their kids to wrestling clubs and whatnot yeah so like what do you know about that how did you start wrestling yeah so kids usually just you know local wrestling club or something like that like at the high school the local area has like a high school program that's tough you have the coach running like a peewee program or something like this right and then some of the athletes who are good in the high school level they go down to the middle school or the elementary school to help out with these clubs so that's generally how it starts or somebody who was a champion starts a wrestling club like a private club but a lot of the times

it's affiliated with the school systems which makes it a very popular thing to do right right cost is so low especially if you could there's a lot of schools that are operating not at the private level but on like the public level right there's so many opportunities you brings the costs down it's not like you're trying to go to a private jujitsu club which is right commercial right it's similarly to japan to do in japan right you go through the school systems so because there's so many options people can't really charge these big outrageous monthly fees right and it's supported by the whole you know tax system and whatnot yes like the public school yeah yeah the public school systems and you know there was a wrestling initiative called uh beat the streets in new

york city that i was a part of right this guy mike novogratz who had deep pockets he was a big big wrestler and a philanthropist and he started a program i think it was like 100 after-school wrestling programs and he funded everything and he bought mats for the kids and you know he hired all the college level coaches uh athletes and i was one of those guys right so i would go to like a middle school and teach wrestling so yeah it's very interesting and lots of kids going into it and you have a lot of kids going into it then right you're gonna right produce world-class athletes yeah class athletes and then because you get the best kids you're doing it longer and then now all of a sudden you're sort of a force on the international circuit right so that's how kids start and whatnot so and then i guess do you see those wrestling

kids coming into judo and i guess that's what you did in a way well you're i did i didn't go from wrestling to judo i did from judo to wrestling i remember in like eighth grade i was exposed to it during the gym class and then my coach at the time my gym teacher at the time he was like hey man you got to try this uh thing out i heard you do a little judo and then i was pretty good in the class right and then they did like a little mini seminar like a recruiting seminar sort of a situation where they had all the high school wrestlers coming in and then all the middle school kids who were interested in it right well in the the gym class would go to this thing right right right and then you know they show us a couple moves and then they said okay let's just go live they call it live right and then i went in and i did really well and all right

you were wrestling and actually i told them no i'm playing basketball nice well that didn't happen you're a big fan of basketball yeah i used to love basketball when i was a middle school kid and i was like oh man i was pretty certain i was gonna go to the nba but then i started growing at the right height of 5'9 and that was it you I see. Yeah. But I remember we get kids from local high school, middle school, who are a part of the wrestling team coming into KBI or not. So that certainly helped. There's definitely a crossover.

Yeah. And there's judo, wrestling, BJJ are probably the three most common grappling types in the United States now. Right. Right. I'm sure I'm going to get some messages about that. So it's natural for a little bit of cross-pollination. For me, during the wrestling season, when I was in high school especially, Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, during the wrestling season, I would go to wrestling practice.

And then my mom would pick me up and take me to judo practice. Right. So it would be sort of a double-header situation. situation right a lot of the times on tuesday thursdays i'll go to the new york athletic club and wrestle there during the season you know with the competition schedule was tough to do but during the off season i would do tuesday thursday wrestling and then monday wednesday friday judo right right so there was a lot of cross-pollination there right cross-pollination so frustrating frustrating yeah so when when you have those kids in your own dojo like do you right so there was a lot of cross-pollination there right cross-pollination frustrating frustrating yeah so when when you have those kids in your own dojo like do you do you teach them different things because uh you know you know to help them with their wrestling

um or do you kind of just stick to judo depends you know i try to adopt like a sort of a differentiated instruction situation right i don't try to just teach judo, basic judo to the middle or just to everybody. Right. Sometimes like this person has certain needs. This person has certain whatever it is. Right. We have a lot of jujitsu guys in the room now who want to learn useful judo for BJJ. Right.

And that person doesn't need to learn taijou right off the bat. Right. You know what I mean? If the person's wrestling,'s like okay that's you know gi heavy takedowns might not be very heavy uh useful for them right so like thrown off the front headlock with an osoto or something like that you know or how do you close the distance you shoot in on a low double climb up the body now you have a body lock and then you're trying to throw from there right so classic upper body wrestling stuff that has sort of a judo

ish feel to it you know and there's some things judo does really well like foot sweeps right right so shooting a double climb with the body lock and then you're trying to cut the corner to go behind then you attack the foot sweep right a lot of wrestlers might not see that right right because judo sort of specializes in that kind of a movement you know so i try to show a little bit of that a little bit of this and then i try to have this open conversation and dialogue with a lot of these wrestler types that come into the dojo so a lot of foot sweeps and then maybe a lot of uh moves that could be applicable to greco-roman potentially yeah not so much greco-roman i mean greco'sco, and judo can't really help Greco so much because a lot of what you do in judo, you can't do in Greco, right?

Like Osorigari, can't do it. You can't do inside trip, inside trip. All the upper body throws have been refined. So I think judo has more to learn from Greco than Greco does from judo. I see. Look at this loop choke that I do in judo. Greco got to be like, first of all, I don't wear a jacket. Second of all, you can't choke. Okay about you know this uh inside trip it's like

can't you can't touch the legs right so that's a highly specialized thing of upper body throws right in a closer range than judo so judo can borrow from that definitely right right right but there's not much greco can borrow from jududo. You also mentioned the parterre position where now with the rule change with Judo, if one person goes down, it's still tachiwaza. So you can use the parterre techniques to flip people over, that kind of thing. Yes, absolutely. A lot of our listeners might not understand that, so probably good to describe a little bit of that.

So you're talking Parterre is freestyling Greco, top-bottom position. Right. Top-bottom position in scholastic wrestling is very, very, very different. And that's usually where the difference comes in, the biggest difference. Right. So in scholastic wrestling, you have to put him to their back and hold him there to get points. Right. Freestyle in Greco, all you have to do is to their back and hold them there to get points. Right. Freestyle and Greco, all you have to do is gain back exposure.

Just flip them. Yeah. Flip them. Boom, boom. Back and forth. You get points right away. Right. Scholastic, you can't lock your hands around the body when you're in top bottom position.

Freestyle and Greco, you can. Right. So if you're on top in parterre parterre refers to freestyle in greco you could be on top position lock your hands pick them up and dump them on his head right gain back exposure you get points scholastic that's illegal right you can't lock hands yeah lock hands yeah so naturally you get a lot of lifting off the ground picking up and then throwing in greco and freestyle which you don't really get that in scholastic wrestling. Because if you're on top,

the person on bottom, the person gets up, you grab, lock them around the body. Now you're standing, you return them to the ground. You don't get points for that. Right.

Cause you're already, the person is already on the bottom position. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So when you're doing judo and the opponent misses a throw and they're on the bottom position, the top person can lift them up off the ground and throw them now. So that's a big, big rule change that judo can definitely borrow from Greco in freestyle.

In judo, you still can't lock hands, right? You can. Oh, you can. I mean, you can't lock hands behind the back when you shoot in on a body lock situation you know i was watching the worlds and somebody did that oh yeah a mongolian guy did it connected hands and dumped them i guess maybe they changed the rules i'm not like a rule freak right constantly you know and if if my entire job was coaching people in these settings and producing athletes at that level and making sure that they compete at the highest then i have to really be in tune with the rules but that's not my goal

my goal is to teach judo teach grapplers make judo fun spread judo all this stuff so you know i try not to focus on a little bit of that i see right all right so that's how that's how we teach how you would approach teaching judo to wrestlers who've been doing it since they were kids. But now, because like you said, wrestling is one of the most popular grappling sports in the States. A lot of times, adults who have never done grappling want to learn wrestling,

integrate wrestling into your their system and whatnot so how do what do you think people do to learn as adults wrestling I think most people who have wrestling exposure now are going into the Brazilian jiu-jitsu world and then right oh man I need to learn how to do a single leg, I need to learn how to do a single leg or I need to learn how to do a double leg. And that's sort of bringing the attention onto wrestling again. Right, right.

The people who are at the demographic of 30s, 40s, and 50s, right? Those guys. Because, you know, I did like a little bit of market research on the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu average practitioner and it's like 30s, blue belt, right? Male is kind of like the average

person right that's sort of the brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner and they have very very different lives and you know the seven-year-old living in the midwest that's joined the peewee wrestling program but it doesn't have to be new as it could be jersey or pa right very strong wrestling states right right so you know it's's very, very different, and I think wrestling for adults is very hard if you haven't done it. Yeah. And the reason being, when you're shooting in on the legs, naturally you want to defend your legs,

which means you hinge at the waist and you bend by the knees. So it puts you in this position where it puts a lot of stress on your lower back. Right. And then the constant, you know, so judo, you have grip fighting. Wrestling, you have hand fighting. Right. And the goal is to take the person out of their stance, and the way you know so judo you have grip fighting right you have hand fighting right the goal is to take the person out of their stance and the way you do that is pulling their head down yeah that's pulling their head down yeah and then it stresses the lower back pushing the

head pulling the head pushing that pulling the hand hand inside position fighting for hands right so if you're sitting at an office job when you already have tight hamstrings and shortened hip flexor muscles and you already kind of have like back achy things going on right and you spend all day looking down on your phone and your neck is in this compromised position and now all of a sudden you're putting pressure down and then someone shoots it on the legs and sprawls on you you're gonna get back problems right right so it's not an easy sport to just kind of limp into right you know what i mean so how do you how should adults with no wrestling experience approach it like they need to learn it at some point with some kind of takedown if you're doing

bjj you know joining a wrestling club right may be an option but this is the thing there's not that many commercial wrestling clubs not especially for adults you could find them yeah 100 like i know people who run wrestling clubs right but it's not as prevalent as like let's say a jiu-jitsu school right and are they a lot of times are they even geared towards uh beginners like do they teach beginners or is it more for wrestlers who are kind of retired but they still want to do it you see that's i've never seen a wrestling private club that i walked in there and it's like all retired wrestlers ex-wrestlers and things like that i've never seen that before

i've never seen that before so i feel like this is a feel thing right this is not a scientifically and a situation yeah this is just my anecdotal yeah situation right? A lot of these wrestling clubs, the private clubs, are geared towards coaching kids and teaching kids privately in their offseason. So the counties happen, the states happen, wrestling season ends in March. It's like, all right, April all the way to November. That's the prime time, right? That's when we're going to run these programs. And then sort of during the in-season time, when high schools are doing actual wrestling competitions,

they kind of sort of scale it back a little bit and then have less practices, things like that. Right. But I've heard of private wrestling clubs that have a hundred kids, 200 kids, and I've heard of them. Right. And then sometimes you'll get like an ex-wrestler coming in and wrestling but you know it's tough to be in that setting i think especially if you've never wrestled before yeah who's gonna want to work out with you these kids are on a mission right they're like oh i want to make it the states i'm going to wrestle right there you're scrapping and then now all of a sudden the next guy in the room you know 24 years old right graduated college just wants to get a workout in extra he's grappling it's like i've never wrestled before i do a little bjj like i'm gonna come in and learn you know a double leg

takedown and kids are picking them up and slamming them it's not easy right i do think right if you are doing judo in a private sort of a club like mine and if you have someone with wrestling experience asking them and then doing privates or something or having them teach some wrestling in the class. I think that is the best way into learning wrestling. And I think a lot of BJJ schools are doing this. Some of the best BJJ schools are bringing in wrestlers, bringing in judo guys, and then cross training. And I think that's kind of the future

because with this information sharing time period, it's like everyone's realizing oh man there's a lot of stuff in judo that i could use in jujitsu a lot of stuff in wrestling that i could use in judo right and then vice versa so the private judo schools or bjj schools are more you know more open for uh adult beginners to learn wrestling and share knowledge yeah i mean judo and jiu-jitsu yes because it's designed to bring in new members right that's what it's about you have to bring in new members you have to promote them to yellow belt and then hopefully they stick it through the pipeline and then you're developing black belts right that's really the thing right it's also a

business right right of course depending on where you are, who you are, what your business model is. Right. You are. We mostly focus on kids. Right. That's definitely not going to be geared toward the wrestler that wants to do judo or whatever it is. Right. And, you know, for us, we try to keep a healthy 50 50. But right now, you know, KBI, because of the pandemic and everything, it's like it's like 90 percent adults. Mm hmm. Right. Right The program is dead right now. Right, right. Right, so it's perfect if you wanna learn how to, right? Yeah, as an adult.

And having an instructor that knows both styles is always, well, I can't stress that enough. You know, like one of the most important things that can be used in wrestling that can be used on the street may not be useful in judo period right right for instance the spiral ride do you know the spiral ride spiral ride hard to say for an asian person spiral ride so it's like well the person's trying to stand up of course in freestyling greco no one's going to try to stand up from bottom position. Right, because they're going to get launched. They're going to flatten out. On scholastic, you try to stand up.

So the top person goes to the near side armpit, drives the weight forward onto the hands, and then the backside hand drops into the pocket of the inner thigh, and then they spiral the person down to their hips. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, so then you drive your weight forward, so you bring your opponent's weight onto their hips. Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, so then you drive your weight forward so you bring your opponent's weight onto their hands so it makes it very difficult for them to bring their body upright and stand up. Right.

So that's great because if you take someone down on the street, right, their first instinct is to get back up to their feet. Right. They're not going to try to pull guard. They're not just going to lock down tight. They're not going to flatten out like they do in freestyle and greco.

They're going to try to get up to their feet. Right. So how do you keep them there in the first place spiral ride amazing right so like that's something that a lot of my athletes would have zero use for in judo because if you're in bottom position you're not going to be based out on your arms because you're going to get on board right right and if you're basing down on your arms your neck is exposed you're not going to stand up because you're going to get on board. Right. And if you're basing down on your arms, your neck is exposed. You're not going to stand up, because you're going to get thrown backwards. So this will never happen. It's absolutely useless in judo.

But a majority of my guys are coming in. They're like, you know, I want to also learn how to defend myself if I take someone down on the street. And if they don't know this stuff at all, right, they're going to take someone down. They're going to expect someone to pull guard i'm not gonna pull guard no one's gonna pull guard yeah yeah so it's like okay we need to

teach him a spiral ride i see so i'm gonna actually might i was gonna teach it today actually oh okay because you know what we were we were talking last night right and you were like maybe we'll do an episode on wrestling i was like yeah sure and i was thinking about wrestling and then i was like oh man i gotta teach the spiral right at the dojo today. Nice. I'll check in on you. Well, how it went. So Khabib does something like that, too.

Khabib, yeah. He does a body lock, a high body lock. And then he drives the shoulder forward to bring the person's weight onto the hands. And then he, like, wraps his legs around the other opponent's right legs it's like different position though yeah that is true because it's yeah they're facing each other we're talking turtle top bottom right right yeah so so that that's a good segue to like how we like you said the rule sets are very different from judo to wrestling to bjj so you need you need to be smart about integrating like borrowing stuff from wrestling to judo bjj for your own you know the right purpose so how um how do you approach that like what will be like a general maybe idea to you know in bringing those wrestling techniques into your game or how yeah so this is the way i approach it

for a very long time right when i'm doing judo i'm doing judo i'm doing when i'm wrestling i'm wrestling right right and then i'm learning wrestling and the more i learn wrestling even though i have a judo a much more heavier judo background the more i learn the more i realize okay what can i integrate from my judo into wrestling? That is useful. Right. So I go reverse of that reverse. Right.

So I'm a judo specialist, right? Judo is my main thing. And now I'm cross training and wrestling high school and college. Right. But I'm learning wrestling for the sake of wrestling. Right. But the more I learned,

the more I think I could bring judo into my wrestling. So now when I'm wrestling in competition, of course course i'm drilling all this stuff and trying to make myself do this stuff right i'm exposing a lot of these athletes that i'm competing against to judo stuff that they've never been exposed to in the wrestling world so that leads to a little bit of success there which gives me a little bit more confidence right i see now i'm gaining steam as a wrestler and the more i do that the, the better at wrestling I get. And now I'm taking elements of that and then infuse it into my judo style. So back in the day, when I used to be able to shoot in on the legs in judo,

it was a very, very nice crossover. And the way I implemented my leg grabs is when I would get outgripped, I would shoot in on the legs. Right, right. Because dominant position, right versus right, leg grabs is when i would get out gripped i would shoot it on the legs right right because dominant position right first right a lot of times high grip control the posture right and you're in the right yeah yeah resting ducking down and shooting on the legs and escape that but i use it almost like a bailout attack right right you know and of course i wasn't really like refined back then like

i am now in terms of like uh you know i was still young and i was still figuring a lot this stuff out. And the beauty of everybody now who's getting into this stuff is you can go on YouTube and learn all this stuff. Right, right. You know what I mean? I have to like sit through a video cassette tape with John Smith teaching the low single, like fast forwarding and rewinding. And then like, that's all I had. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And it wasn't like an online marketplace where I could just buy this stuff. Right. You know, like somebody had it. I borrowed it. Didn't return it.

Now you're watching this thing. And I'm trying to do low singles. You know, and it had zero carryover to my judo style. So there was a lot of issues with that, you know? I see. I'm not trying to make excuses or anything like that, right? But now, like, you could see all this stuff and all the information is out there on YouTube. And you can consume it and then you can see how it can integrate with your own system. But you have to be a specialist in one already.

And you have to kind of have a developed system already to be able to incorporate some of this stuff. Because they have to work together. Right. So that's a good point. You can't just go and learn wrestling or judo or BJJ for that matter, saying, oh, I'm going to just pick and choose, try to pick and choose whatever is good and then try to integrate into my own game. That's like the result of you actually immersing yourself into that particular art. And because you gain deep knowledge

you can see how the fuse can happen for yourself yeah yeah i'll give you an example yeah you're a bjj guy that does delahiva guard from bottom right you're just amazing at it delahiva and spider that's what you do yeah now all of a sudden you go into wrestling and you learn how to do a blast double okay but you have no top position every time you're on top you get swept yeah it's like okay you're every time you're on top you get submitted you know it's okay so now that doesn't really integrate well right it doesn't really connect yet yet right but eventually it will start to connect because you're gonna have to develop a top game and then you know you blast double take down and pass the guard now you have top game right and then if you double takedown and pass the guard. Now you have top game, right? And then if you can't take the person down,

now you can sort of go Tomonage and then go into the Aljibar guard. Right, right. Oh, shoot, I don't have a Tomonage. I'm going to go Judo and learn that. You go to a Judo class and they teach you Harai. This is the best turn throw ever. It's like, okay, but that's not useful for me. I want to learn a Tomonage, right?

So now all of a sudden you have right so you have a coach that teaches you tomonage right so blast double blast double right of course guillotine exposure yes but you've already mastered this yeah right and you've overcome that and you learn how not to get guillotine when you that's why blast double right can't do the blast double tomonage del jiva now you have a well-rounded system from standing to the floor everything it goes together i fake tomonage i could go in for a leg pick snap down tomonage again i'm doing the jiva i sweep i have top position i'm good at top position now because i can go double and they take down and pass guard now right because i've developed that right and

you know it helps if you have a coach that already knows all three things. Yeah. And eventually we're going to get there. There's going to be a new crop, a new generation of athletes and grapplers who wrestle in high school and college like me. They did judo their whole life. They did BJJ their whole life. They're double black belts. And there's people like that out there. I don't know if you know this guy Shannon. He was a KBI guy for years.

Yeah, yeah. He was a Division I wrestler. Came to the dojo. He's a judo black belt he moved away you know he got into crossfit and bjj he's in unbelievable shape he's a bjj black belt i think he won like 67 matches in a row or something crazy oh nice yeah he always black belt level yeah he was great he always comments on your videos yeah yeah love shannon yeah he's great you know he's one of my heroes so like that guy yeah right but you know you get that guy coaching he knows them all yeah yeah maybe he should open pedosha yeah oh yeah yeah right but then more and more you're gonna get people like that right and the newer generation has access to all this stuff on youtube right right so now they're gonna be able to put together

their own thing put together their own style it's very exciting future for agrappas i think yeah all this like cross training cross pollination like you said happening but wrestling man i gotta tell you wrestling we didn't really talk about wrestling we're always kind of like a little bit of back to judo and jiu-jitsu but the truth of the matter is the number of people doing it make it very competitive yeah any local wrestling tournament and have 35 36 kids in a bracket so now all of a sudden if you're wrestling in your local high school and just to even get the states get the nationals right for us it was like you have to take top four in district then you have to take like counties and yeah then you have to win sections it was like district sections

right and then you win sectionals then you go to states and back when i was wrestling they didn't have big school small school everyone together in new york states oh okay so it was one big massive division uh right so you had the sections, and then you had the Catholic school state champs, and then the New York City champion, and then the section one, section two, section three champs, all wrestling. And now if you place top four there, you could wrestle at the U.S. Nationals. Man. And you get four kids from every state. So the hoops you have to jump through to even get there was like insane.

Right? It's super competitive. It's like doing judo in Japan. That's really what I equate it to. It is. Yeah. It is really like that. Yeah.

And they build these kids tough because the collegiate style wrestling is designed to keep it safe, first of all. And then it's made so that you get dragged into these long matches. Freestyle wrestling, it's like boom, throw them five points, right? Rotate, rotate, rotate, done. Tech fall, tech fall, done. Collegiate wrestling,

you have to win by 15. Win by 15, and you can't do those five point throws so easily because you gotta tark them and you know you gotta throw them and then keep them there for a count right i don't know exactly what the rules are now but it's not easy and even with a takedown a takedown is two points right they escape you get one point yeah so i take the person down and then he gets up and goes right you generally want to keep him there to turn him. The person gets out.

I only have a one-point lead. Right, right. Right? So in college, it's a seven-minute match. There's seven minutes of someone constantly pulling your head down. You're shooting into the legs. They're sprawling, shooting the legs, sprawling. So the way these guys train, they really, really emphasize endurance.

Right, right. End really, really emphasize endurance. Right, right. Endurance, endurance, endurance. So the training in the wrestling room is like lots of grass drills, lots of shooting, lots of wrestling, of course. After practice, like hit the stairs. You're doing like sets of 10 stairs, come back, push-ups, sprints, wrestle, hand fighting, right? So like that kind of mentality really breathes like these tough tough tough kids right and judo could borrow from that too yeah you know they do this in japan for judo right but the private gyms can't really train their athletes like that right because you have a 6 to 7 p.m

slot a 7 to 8 p.m slot everyone has to get up and go to work the next day college wrestlers that's a lot of those guys who are on scholarships, it's like, hey, we pay for your school. You're here. This is your thing. This is your dream. You wrestled your whole life. This is your priority, right?

School, you know, depends on what school you go to. Yeah. Yeah, that's, I think, I've also heard that, you know, that's like the reputation of american wrestlers around the world too when they go to the olympics they're just like you know tough you know in great endurance because i i heard you know other countries like russia for example they they don't really train in that way they focus more on like the techniques and then big throws and whatnot yeah it's true and it isn't you know are they in good shape yes they are of course the thing is like you don't need to be in as good of a shape to do

freestyle and greco as you do scholastic right yeah because just the nature of like the point system if i'm on bottom my intention is to stand back up and get back up right right if you're on top the point is to not let the person stand up i have to keep him down and then turn him with control to get back points yeah or pen right yeah yeah so there's obviously a big conflicting thing there right dilemma right i want to stand up you want to keep me down i want to stand up that's very exhausting right right freestyle and greco we're parterre if there's no action they say okay back to feet, kind of like judo. So you could, I mean, you can't rest down there, but it's not as physically intensive and active as like a scholastic wrestling top-bottom situation.

Right, right. Right? So that's, yeah, the rule set changed. So how, do you even think that, I mean, you mentioned that like it's hard to integrate that kind of endurance training into private gyms, how do you even think that i mean you mentioned that like it's hard to integrate that kind of endurance training into private gyms but do you can you know how do you do that yeah so the way i like to sort of frame it is like hey you're here to learn judo right right if you want to get in crazy shape and if you want to do all the endurance stuff and lift in and run and all that so that's on your time right if you came in yes, we could do some judo and then run stairs and do sprints and do push-ups the whole time.

That's not really what you're paying for, right? You're coming here to learn judo, train judo. So if you want to supplement that with intense cardio, high-intensity interval training, you got to do that on your own time. Right, right. Right. So that's kind of the way and then you know some people do right and then if you're a competitor i sort of almost expect them to be doing that right and then you know and some people have better endurance some people

don't and then it also depends on your judo style right you know because you have guys that just kind of lull you to bed and lull you to sleep and then like boom they they whip it you know right yeah right right yeah yeah i was just i was thinking just that yeah i'm i don't really have great endurance either so i'm more about you know i try to finish as quickly as possible you know it's efficiency too right if you're fighting in good position the whole time then you don't have to burn as much energy right right it's like uh you know great boxers throwing their hands out there but they're not throwing hard punches every single punch right they're landing yeah yeah and the thing is like you could be in way better shape

than me and if you're wrestling and then you take two bad shots and i'm sprawling on top of you and i have my weight on you i have my weight on you fight out of that front headlock two or three times now you spent so much more energy than i did okay and now all of a sudden i take a shot i take it down and it's clean now i'm on top and then he has to get back up to his feet and all i'm doing is driving my weight forward and he's carrying my weight the whole time right you know two minutes goes by he's tired i'm not right even though the kid could run you know circles around me in a sprint or a run or whatever it is right and then people will look at that and be like, oh, Shintaro's in great shape. It's like, actually, no, I'm not in good shape.

It's management, techniques. Energy management, efficiency, all that stuff really matters. And that comes with NER, just a lot of practice and time on the mat, I guess. You have to try to think it that way. Wrestling's great, man. There's a real tough aspect to it and then uh you know hand fighting grip fighting and stuff like that and there's a very very fine line between like pulling the head down and then giving a little bit of an extra couple inches and then like snapping the head down versus like now you're clubbing the head down right right so naturally your head is getting dinged around.

It puts a lot of pressure on your neck, right? Person shoots, you're throwing your whole weight down on the person, right? And there's a lot of athleticism going on because you can't win position and keep it. In judo, you could grab them and then grab the gi and then hold them there, right? Right, right. In wrestling, you could grab the wrist and the head and it's like, yeah, yeah, that theoretically is a huge advantage. Wrist slips out slips out right he moves and now it's gone right so it's a lot more it's fast a little faster right yeah and now it's it's more applicable that kind of

uh you know wrist slipping out it's more applicable now that nogi stuff is getting more popular right yeah so yeah for sure i guess that's another way to uh you know learn wrestling because doing some nogi stuff yeah you can learn some nogi stuff right so now let's just look at the flip side with the jujitsu guy trying to learn wrestling right all right now all of a sudden you've done jujitsu for a very long time now you want to learn wrestling okay and they teach you a high crotch and then your neck is exposed right i don't know how to you know defend the guillotine from that position right right because you're never usually there right if you don't want to get guillotined you won't put yourself there but all of a sudden when you're shooting in a high

crotch you're putting yourself there and if you don't know how to finish instantaneously you're gonna get caught with a guillotine right right. Right? So now you're telling your coach this, and the coach has never done jiu-jitsu before. They're not going to know the answer to that. Yeah. Right? Now all of a sudden, okay, so another scenario. You are a jiu-jitsu guy. You want to learn wrestling.

Now you're spending a ton of time wrestling, a ton of time wrestling. You have X amount of time in the week because you have wife, kids, X, Y, and Z. I get five hours a week of you know five hours a week of training all right five hours a week of training uh now i'm supplementing that with wrestling uh you know wife's not happy or husband's not happy right they're like you gotta come home you can't you can't train 10 hours a week all right fine i'm gonna double down on this wrestling

stuff because i really want to compete in this jiu-jitsu tournament right yeah right so now you spend all this time wrestling you go and you touch you grab that the wrist and then the person just sits down pulls guard right now all that wrestling is useless right right so the rule sets really do matter right you know what i mean and then if you're competing in something that's one thing because you have to design your system to be successful in that style but if you're just grappling for the sake of grappling overall health and then just loving the sport and all this side right then it's like you pick and choose pick and choose and then right you gain merits from all of it right you know for me it's like it's a knowledge game it's

like absorbing the knowledge learning as much as i can because it's interesting and fun right it's got we kind of talked about it like how how to make it in judo and like it's more about finding your own way what what that goal is and yeah also if you want to compete you know you gotta be cognizant of that and all this yeah things uh you can do it when you are really you immerse yourself into one particular for the sake of that art you know instead of trying to game the system in a way yeah if you're looking at it like is wrestling good for jujitsu or is jujitsu good for judo right that's sort of like at the very basic level right that's how you have to start thinking in the beginning right right but the more you get

experience the better you get you have to look at it sort of like a venn diagram right is that the right with the circles right yeah yeah the crossovers right yeah judo mostly standing with gi wrestling mostly standing with no gi jiu-jitsu mostly on the ground gi and no game yeah so if you have those three circles right like there's a lot of crossovers and now all of a sudden it becomes a game of like okay what's useful where how can i pull from this thing and put it into that thing right what's more common in this grappling style that can be used over here and now you're looking out outside of that whole spectrum and saying now all right which one or what things can be used for self-defense right like something that might be useful right if you're a bouncer right with my i had a really good friend he took forth at world team trials he's amazing wrestler right um he's great at fireman's carry he's great at

that he had a nice single yeah like he had a he's all great great great wrestler right freestyle wrestler mind you right right right he would be bouncing and then these guys would be drawn coming into his face like oh yeah who i am and all this stuff and then oh i gotta kick this guy out there'll be face to face like this he's not shooting the firemen's right he's not shooting a sleep single no he would body lock them pick him up and then take him out of the ball right oh just simply just carry him out yeah body lock and lifting that's like a greco-roman thing yeah is he an expert at that no but he's right but he's dealing with people who are unskilled untrained right so it's like that's a skill that is very very useful right that's probably more useful than a low single who's gonna shoot a low single right right if you're

you know on the street or something you know wreck your knees yeah wreck your knees you get kicked in the face right so it's like all right where is this useful how's this useful how can i use this right and now you're sort of like ranking all these different techniques and these grappling styles then you're picking and choosing and developing your own thing and there's always something to learn it's just the most interesting thing it's the way to do it is like you say you have to increase the size of your the whole venn diagram i guess yeah you do that by you know increasing the size of each circle yeah and then all of a sudden you're going into this realm of like all right if i'm a baseball player how do i use this you know

sliding into yeah or like a soccer player how do i apply the soccer kick yep cool all right well yeah that's like the general idea you know enjoy enjoy the art immerse yourself into each art separately for their own sake for its own sake and you know try to then you'll see the crossover happening and you know and then integrate it more smoothly into your own system yeah all right like front headlock position right is a great one from wrestling right but the front headlock integrated with some of the elements from the guillotine and stuff like this right that's judo's gap right headlock position because we don't really have that because neck cranks are punished right severely yeah in judo right right because for safety reasons and for that's for good reason right but the interplay between the guillotine the snap down from the front

headlock and then throwing from the front headlock which judo can do right and that was one of my main things right person would take a bad shot and i could lock my front headlock and then throw from there right whether it be like a sumi situation or soto even ochi i would do oh right yeah so like studying that very useful very useful yeah i know you're trying to wrap it up so no so yeah i mean that's uh those things you know you can only get that kind of deep knowledge if you know you know wrestling yeah by yourself and then judo by itself just by itself and then you can in you can try to integrate all of them together and all right well yeah so that was a good discussion about wrestling and how it relates to bjj and judo so any parting

words before we end thank you guys for reaching out i know a lot of people have been reaching out can you please share this podcast with your friends yeah so it's worth peter's time he's so busy now and then uh yeah visit us at the dojo. Find us on social. Right. Yeah, things are opening up. And, yeah, this was actually a suggestion from one of you guys. So we actually do read all of them and try to integrate and talk about it. I might not respond to everybody. Right. Which sometimes I can't.

I just physically can't. Yeah. But I will read them. Yeah. I'll, you know, scan through it. So sometimes I always be like oh that's a great idea yeah we always talk about those so yeah all right well thanks for listening and uh stay tuned for the next episode