The Shintaro Higashi Show - You Need A Sounding Board | The Shintaro Higashi Show | #271

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Shintaro and David discuss Ken Gunji, a high-level Japanese judoka training at the dojo, and the massive impact he’s had on the room. They dive into technical exchanges, differences in gripping systems, and how having an elite training partner elevates both coaching and learning.00:00 Intro to Ken Gunji00:10 Size, athleticism, and presence on the mat00:47 Role in Japan training trip and dojo connections01:11 Keio University and academic background02:20 Language differences: Japanese vs English communication02:50 Asahi Kasei career and All Japan Pro Tournament success04:05 Middle school All Japan wrestling champion04:36 How Gunji elevates the training environment05:13 High-level technical discussions and idea exchange06:31 Importance of having a true “judo sounding board”07:49 Translating high-level concepts into teaching08:42 Consistency of having a world-class athlete in the dojo09:27 Value of hands-on learning vs instructionals09:54 Differences in gripping systems (tight vs loose sleeve control)10:23 Timing-based entries vs control-based approaches10:50 Why certain techniques are hard to teach across styles11:40 Training drills: Ouchi gari finishing mechanics12:38 Gunji’s transitions: cutback to Uchimata13:09 Importance of precise, actionable feedback13:54 Problems with vague coaching (“no kuzushi”)14:24 Importance of high-level training partners14:37 Uchimata timing and hop sequencing strategy15:05 Matching opponent movement to avoid counters15:34 Continual learning—even at elite levels15:48 Mutual learning between high-level athletes16:08 Training with Gunji at the dojo16:17 Outro🚨 LIMITED-TIME OFFER: 40% OFF 🚨The All-in-One Instructional Bundle just got even better.Every major instructional. One complete system. Now at our biggest discount yet.Grab yours now at 40% off : https://higashibrand.com/products/all-instructionalsThis won’t last. Build your game today.🔥 Get 20% OFF FUJI Gear! 🔥Looking to level up your judo training with the best gear? FUJI Sports has you covered. Use my exclusive link to grab 20% OFF high-quality gis, belts, bags, and more.👉 https://www.fujisports.com/JUDOSHINTARO 👈No code needed – just click and save!Links:🇯🇵 Kokushi Budo Institute (The Dojo) Class Schedule in New York, NY 🗽: https://www.kokushibudo.com/schedule🇯🇵 Higashi Brand Merch & Instructionals: https://www.higashibrand.com📚 Shintari Higashi x BJJ Fanatics Judo Courses & Instructionals Collection: https://bjjfanatics.com/collections/shintaro-higashi/

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Welcome back to the Shantara Higashi show with David Kim. We want to talk about Ken Gungi today. He's one of my favorite guys in the gym right now. Awesome dude. You know him. Yes, he's so big. He's so large. Yeah, he's about 240.

Probably like 6'1. Maybe a little bit more after the holidays. Yes. Yeah, he's heavy. He's big. He's big. But he's nimble, bro. Absolutely nimble.

And then for those of you who don't know, he has a YouTube channel. He's at my dojo now, so you see him on all my videos and stuff. We do lots of collab posts together and such. You could find him on a YouTube channel. Instagram. You can find him on YouTube. He's great. You know, and it's such a nice thing to have a two-time All-Japan qualifier in the room, which is like the toughest tournament on this planet. Yeah. And he obviously ran the Japan tour. You know, we have some videos out about that. And, you know, he was the one who

arranged all that. He, you know, obviously knows a lot of people there and was able to sort of give us a friendly intro into some of these dojos. So he's a interesting guy, I would say. Yeah, interesting guy. I went to Keo University, which isn't even a judo university. It actually sucks as a judo program, you know? Actually, I shouldn't say that. But it's like, you know, you got the big four, right?

You got Temri, Kukushikan, Nichida, Nita Dai. Those guys always, Tsukuba's top five, you know, so you got five massive judo powerhouses. KEO's not even on their radar, dude. It's so low on the ranking list in terms of, like, university. but it's an Ivy League school in Japan. So it's like Tokyo University, Osaka, Kyoto University, Kio. Right?

So he has to be really, really intelligent to get there. And you couldn't tell from the way he speaks English because he's still pretty, he's an English language learner versus how his native language is. You know, when I speak to us... Tell me more about how he's different in Japanese than English. Because I think this would be interesting. Yeah, so when you talk to him, he sounds like an academic,

you know, like a very smart, educated. He's talking to me in like Ivy League Japanese and sometimes like, listen, man, you got to talk to me like a community college kid because my Japanese is like, it's good, but it's not like... It's a household Japanese, right? It's like, every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So sometimes like, I was like, what did you say? What does that word mean, you know?

Yeah, yeah. For instance, I think he says something of the equivalent nature of like eloquent or something like that in Japanese. And I was like, I don't know what that is. You talk good? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, he's like, you talk good, bro. And I'm like, I got it. I got it.

You know? Yeah. But so he went to Keo and then he went to Asahi Kase, which is like the number one pro team in Japan along the likes of Nagase on those guys. And there he got really good. And then he took second in the All Japan Pro tournament. So it's like the professionals have the weight class tournament. Right. So he took second there, which is pretty legit.

Second in Japan in the pro circuit is really good. Yeah. I mean, actually, when I was in Japan, at Arta BJJ to Jiu-Jit-School. Yeah. And one of the guys I met there, Japanese guy, knew Gunji, you know, knew of him. Because I guess he worked at Asaikaze. And he was like, oh, you're like, you know, you're with Gunji-San. Okay.

And I was just like, oh, okay. You know, he's got some. Some think of a, you know, following out there. So I was, yeah, I don't know. He's definitely famous in that in that world. He's also a heavyweight. And the Japanese love heavy weights. You know, and then there's a lot of like,

fatter, sloppier heavyweights that aren't very good. But the guys who are at the top are all freaking stacked, you know? So he has like the height. He has the look. He's jacked. So, like, people love that. You know, he fought hundreds. He fought 100 plus.

So, you know, he's kind of an anomaly in that way. Did you know he was all. Japan champion in wrestling when he was in middle school? No. Yeah, he won the middle school, all Japan wrestling championship. He's like, I'm going to do it, did it, won it, and then he was like, I'm going to stick to judo.

It's too easy. So, but anyway, you know, having a guy like that in the room is amazing because it elevates the room. And, you know, you would think it would make my judo better, but it made me actually worse because it's like, now when guys come to visit, I'm like, all, good, you go, you go work. I don't have to work. I'm not working out.

You know, so it's good and bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's interesting. I mean, maybe we could dig down on that a little bit more because I imagine, I mean, obviously you've been running your school for many years. You've had good people come in.

You've had good people grow up in that system. But obviously, you know, Gungi being who he is, there must be certain concrete things that having a guy like that in your dojo, it's a little bit different. I mean, the number one merit for me is I could just like ask him questions about stuff. And if I have a theory about something, hey, man, this is what I do here in this position. How would you do this? How would you handle that?

And then we have this like incredible back and forth. We're just talking shop all the time. You know, the other day, like on Wednesday, we did the jiu-jitsu. And then we had like a nice three, four-hour break between him teaching. He does private lessons at the dojo now. So if you guys are, and we get visitors all the time from across the country coming just to do private lessons of Gengji, so you could definitely

reach out to me or him. But he had a little bit of a time, like a four-hour break, and then we were discussing Satoshi Ishi's Ochi. Hmm. Right? And then he's shown some stuff online. It doesn't look like how it's actually done in real life, and then we're breaking it down.

Satoshi Ishi's stuff on life. His stuff doesn't look like it. He actually does it. I mean, sometimes, you know, he does it multiple ways, but like he's clipping it low and keeping the foot on the ground, right? So it's like we're discussing that, how he does it, you know, is it different from right versus right, right versus left? And because we both have the language ability to kind of be descriptive about it,

we're just talking back and forth, talking back and forth, hey man, he did this, he did that, he goes like this, let's confirm it, we're watching the video, all we're looking at the same thing. He says he sees this, I say I see that. So now it's like this like super high level like conversation that you could have about technique. And then you can really kind of, and you can't. really do that with anybody, you know, that's not super high level. Oh, you have a friend. I have a friend now. You have a judo friend. Yeah. This is usually so heartwarming. 95% of the time it's me talking at somebody. Yes. When it comes to judo stuff, just like I'm doing right now, you know.

Yeah. And people love that because they could hear my passion and hear my thoughts about it. But Gungi will push back and be like, actually, no, I think this is working because X, Y, and Z, you know, even like an Osoto Garry example, right? Yeah. We had this beautiful conversation about taking the lapel hand, driving it up, and I'm like a pulse on the face guy, you know? Yeah. Right? And then he's like, I was like, how do you do it? He goes, I don't pulse on the face at all. I open the glee to get my chest onto the person.

I drive with my chest into the person, and that's what creates that forward motion. And then I argue back, listen, you could only do that because you're much bigger than the guy. Right. If I did that to you, if I did that to you, I couldn't do that to you because I'm shorter and smaller, right? So it's like, I have to grab the lapel and shove you in the chin. And if I could create this, then I could for pressure. You know, so like we're having this conversation.

Right. You know, and that's like a great example of like, that elevates my judo. And then when I teach it to everybody, hey, guys, these are the different ideas. These are the things that I think are important. But here's an alternative thing. Gunji does it like this. Goody, why don't you come out here and show us some of the stuff that you were telling me earlier? So now, and then when I feed it,

to him that way, there is much less language barrier because we've already discussed it before. Right. So it's already organized in his mind. I'm teaching the lesson and I tell Goodyo, I'm going to pull you in for this thing about that chest thing. So if you could work it out and if you have any questions language-wise, I got you, you know? Yeah. And then he'll work it out. I'm like, I'm going to teach his thing and then he does it good. And then everybody's like, whoa, you know? Yeah. Which is right, Sonsei, which is like they're both correct, you know, you asshole. You know, depends on who you are. It depends on the context.

It depends on what's happening. So that's really, really a huge benefit. And, you know, we've had great guys in the room before, you know, national champions, you know,

Olympic, we got Olympians visiting all the time and stuff like this, but like a guy of that caliber that's in the room three days a week, four days a week, like that's great,

you know? Yeah. No, I can see that. And, yeah, I mean, I remember when he first

sort of came over and started, you know, he's definitely his clientele has grown quite a bit. So I think a lot of people are seeing the value of even with the language barrier, right? I think once he puts hands on or what you put hands on him, I mean, he's very engaged. I've seen some of the lessons. And, you know, you can communicate a lot when you're in person, hands on. I mean, as much as all of us have watched material online, obviously, they've watched your material online.

and I've watched too many instructionals. You know, but I think there's still no substitute for having someone be able to feel what you're doing and make adjustments from there. Yeah, yeah. And if you guys are listening, you guys want to come and do a lesson with him, he's great.

He has a very, very sophisticated gripping system, especially with like the sleeve hand in the way. And, you know, that's something that you'll never get on my channel, not because it's not, but we have a very different philosophy when it comes to like the sleeve grip. You know, I like to hold tight somewhat traditional and I like to kind of keep the slack

out of it and control the hand. But he likes to kind of catch it and then stay loose it on the outskirts of the sleeve. And then he prevents the regroup of the sleeve with a lot more movement. And then in that movement, he finds the timing to enter Uchimada as opposed to I'm a little

bit more, you know, sort of a traditional... Locking it down. Locking it down, not letting the guy. And, you know, there's, it's varying degrees of this stuff. Yeah. You know, so we're kind of like on the two different camps when it comes to right side versus left side sleeve control, you know? The LaBelle stuff is very similar. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's like these differences are really interesting to kind of see because the way he does it, I can't really teach it, you know? I can, but like it just won't be coming from me. And I'm sure he didn't start that way. No. I'm, I mean, I'm almost certain there's no way he started that way. No. requires a lot of self-awareness, you know, a lot of finesse, right?

And, you know, who knows? Maybe part of the fact that he's a taller guy, probably for, you know, the guys who's with, you know, maybe it allowed him to explore that route, right? Whereas if you're a shorter guy, you probably, you know, maybe, like, there's more risk, probably because he's like, you know, if I lose this grip, he's going right over the top on me or whatever, you know, like it's just a riskier position, so.

Yeah. No, it's great to have him, man. You guys could come by, work out with us, do lessons with him. This isn't just like a commercial pitch. I mean, it kind of is also always, but like, you know, he did this thing. We're doing the Ochigari finishing mechanics yesterday. And it's like, all right, guys, we're going to do 10 seconds,

enter into inside leg position, and you're going to hop and try to finish it. The person's defensive for 10 minutes, 10 seconds, you know? So you have a countdown going on in your head, you're giving good reactions, not fully. You're hopping and not letting the guy get taken down. And the closer you get to the end of the countdown, the less intense you're going to get, and then eventually you're going to give them the takedown.

Yeah. You know, so we're doing that drill. And, you know, some people are doing great. Some people are struggling a little bit. And then I was watching Gunji do it with Anthony Venetti. And then he did like that same thing. But then he did a cutback OG, right? Hopping, hopping, and then he lifted for Uchumada there.

So the way he did that, I mean, I think that you got to have a lot of like, leg mobility height leg length all the stuff matters you know but it was so spectacular right yeah and then that with the way that he would like do a faint cutback and then drive before the you know the strong side cross-body ouchi and just like the way he did that and the way he integrated that cut back to the ucivada was absolutely beautiful yeah right so it's like i saw it i was like gunj you know that's great you know and then we're talking about it then you know the finishing mechanics and then we were watching some guys do it. We showed some guys on the side who are capable high level enough to kind of understand

this thing. And then they can't quite do it. And then they're like, oh, it's because the way he's not entangling the leg, you know? You got to dip the knee down and have the ankle higher to create sort of like this hook on the leg. And then because his knee goes high and the ankle drops, it's very easy for them to step off of it when they're entering into this position. So then he goes to the guy, hey, angle.

your foot like this for the stay. Obviously it's not easy to do right away. But I was like, well, that's really good feedback. You know, like, most people are like, you're not pulling it off. You're not doing this. You're not enough kuzushi. Like, no kuzushi. They have this like nonsense, you know, feedback that helps nobody, you know?

And I've received that for years and years of like, there's no kuzushi. What the hell does that mean? You know, but this is like a very specific feedback. I was like, that's great that you saw that, you know? and then so, you know, come to a lesson with him, really, is what I'm saying, you know. Really great. Yeah. So I think the theme of this, you know, this episode is really just the importance of having high level sounding board, you know, because no matter how good you are, no matter how much you understand. Yep.

You know, somebody is going to have an interesting perspective that even if you don't do it the way they do it, it's going to help you. And it's definitely going to help someone else. and but you need that you know you need someone you can shoot the you know shoot the shit with basically right and you know I was talking about like hopping Uchimada

can't get Uchimada yeah and then we're talking about how Mariyama likes to crowd into that space between the leg how I do it how he does it how they do it and then he goes I think you know obviously I might be giving up too much information but like he goes these guys who are doing it they're hopping too much you know

You want to, like, slow it down and hop when they're hopping to prevent the Urnage counter. Because if they're rooted and you're hopping, that's that moment when they could provide up or lift and rotate through, right? Yes. So you're hooking Uchimada and then you're trying to drive into them. And the moment they hop to catch their stance is when you hop in crowds. So it's like you're staggering the hopping timing to your opponent. So it's like a very much so like you're reading your opponent as you're trying to follow through and chasing them. Tales, baby.

And I was like, that's one thing I've never heard of. So I was like, I cannot believe I still to this day can hear things that I've never heard of in judo. And I was like, wow, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what? I'm sure. Yeah.

I'm sure Gungi is telling his friends the same thing. About me? Yeah. I doubt it. I doubt it. I doubt it. With Shantaro. And he does this thing with this hand.

I don't know. I've never seen. it before. He's like, man, that Chantaro can just talk and talk and talk and talk. That's what I was saying. He's like, he won't shut up at the dojo. You're too, you're too, you're too humble, Shantarro. But no, great, great stuff. Follow him, reach out to him, reach out to us, and then. You too can do it probably with this guy at my gym. If my neck wasn't messed up, I probably would have. Just, you know, the experience it. You got to fix that neck of yours. Dude, it's killing me. All right, guys. Yep. Thanks. Thanks.

Thank you.