The Shintaro Higashi Show: The Mental Side of Judo

[@nicksteinick8215]

Thank you for everything you post Shintaro. You are a real gem to the Judo community.

[@Yuzelino]

Thank you for the discussion. Of the different aspects both of you covered, I appreciated the most the “Sensei syndrome.” Even though you decided not to go too deep on the issue, I think that it is an important topic and reality of our practice and experience of judo in our dojos. Similarly, to the toxicity of solely focusing on your own practice and forgetting or disregarding the rest of your judoka colleagues. Many things to keep in mind to experience more fully our own judo practice. As a side note, today we were visisted by two tourist who are BJJ practioners for training. They were mother and son from Ireland (our dojo is in Salou, Catalonia). We had a blast. They were very open to understand the differences between judo and BJJ. My point is that they had an open mind. We had a blast, and they are coming back on Wednesday! Keep up the good work both of you, and looking forward to your future podcasts. Bests, Hiram

[@aaronivsin798]

Thank you for such a high quality and focused series of discussions. Because of the 1 on 1 nature of a judo fight, many people get the wrong impression that it a contest between two individuals, and they miss the context of the community and dojo and tradition behind them. This is why sports like baseball, cricket, and softball are so interesting: in the game itself, in one batter versus a whole field, you can witness this dyanmic connection between individual and collective.

[@prideneverdies1001]

Man I chose your most recent video to ask for this (if it's possible): I train BJJ but I LOVE the Stand Up game, I love Judo, I find it beautiful. Having said that I'm AFRAID of some techniques such as Kani basami. So I have no shame in pulling guard, I was talking about it on Reddit and it seems people don't know how to defend it, counter it, maybe you need a lower stance to avoid it but then you're opening to Snapdowns but I would love to see a video on PROTECTING yourself against these kind of moves (including Kani Basami). I'm tired of being a butt scooter I want to train my Judo in practice more but I can't risk motherfuckers jumping on my legs, jumping guard and shit like that. Thank you!!

[@davidrosales2081]

If you're starting with throws, you should master the yellow-to-orange belt throws of Judo, and especially how to avoid and counter at that level. Once you do this, and if you perfect the management of your center of body at that level, it becomes really easy to avoid crazy techniques thrown at you like Kani Basami. I have personally NEVER applied Kani Basami in Randori -- it just seemed a ridiculously high risk technique for different reasons. But I've managed to avoid and twist to my benefit the attempts of others to apply it on me.That is, I've never been caught by a Kani Basami. You simply learn situational awareness and you learn to avoid the hip movements and sweeps of your opponent, and you should find that by perfecting your posture, balance and relative movement, you can dance around all these crazy moves with very little energy expenditure. I would also recommend adopting the Judo stance towards guards: The guard is not a good place to be, whatever BJJ masters say, unless you've got no other recourse. Judo doesn't take the guard seriously (to good and bad results), and often deals with it in very quick ways. Of course the problem is that because Judo doesn't take the guard seriously, it doesn't spend much time learning to deal with it once one is trapped in it, except by forcefully getting away and up from it. However, this also means that experienced Judokas will or should tend to deal with people pulling guard by avoiding it and crumpling the guarded person into a knot.

[@gianttigerfilms]

Awesome discussion, I had someone who use to physically intimidate me till I started doing judo and then it was like night & day

[@JayBeito]

Great Discussion!!! Thanks for sharing!

[@Yupppi]

A difference between a good and bad competitor might just be recognizing that you're a human and you have human qualities like fears. Knowing yourself, knowing people and playing around that and working it. If you deny your qualities or fears and reality and issues in general, you can never improve it. Even though let's say a brown belt might think that they get nothing out of practicing with a white belt for a moment, they actually do. If nothing more, they get a perspective on how far they've come (of course they know they're good, but it's one thing to experience it). Like I was just a yellow belt and we were practicing with the beginner class on the first session and we did this tag thing at the end where they were instructed to pick someone who has a gi and then just try to grab gi, and the one with gi should just try to avoid the grabs. I learned that in fact my ability to read the movement and react to it had improved greatly and I would just turn my shoulder slightly or move my hip and they wouldn't land their hand on me. And I would've never thought there was such a gap for being only a yellow belt. And it was important to me to see that I had built something more profound than being able to throw in a vacuum, I had learned some fundamental judo and body control skills that I hadn't recognized. I knew I had practiced and improved, but I didn't know that would happen. Another thing about practicing like that, say brown belt with a white belt, is that the person might be a fast to learn. Soon enough that person could be your number one partner, partially thanks to your tips during training with that person. Would you rather try to always look for maybe that one person at the dojo who is a rather good match for you, or would you prefer to have options? My personal experience has been very helpful people with higher belts and I've memorized the lessons and become better for the next time. In sense "next time they're not gonna get me with that, and they'll see I've learned it, they'll have to work harder". One thing people don't pay enough attention to in my opinion is the "mokuso" before bows. The time to meditate, to drop your earlier day up to the training and then fully focusing on being present at the training and absorbing all of it. It's a really valuable skill in life in general, the mindfulness. I know I didn't think about it much, it was just a ceremony to me before getting to train when I started. I didn't understand there was actual meaning to the moment of silence, nobody told me. Now that I have practiced meditation, I understand and can take advantage of it. Maybe the best antidote to stay away from the sensei syndrome is having a new thing that you suck at. Starting or doing a new thing like every year or how long it takes to become comfortable with the last thing. Something that keeps you humble and struggling, makes you realize that even in your own expertise you might not know everything or your perspective could prevent you from seeing the value in the different take.

[@koryonos-geheim-einherii]

This video made me want to go back and train judô. Thanks, great video.

[@LoganNWO]

I have a requested fighting moves