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3 Ways To Grow Judo | The Shintaro Higashi Show

Shintaro Higashi

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In this solo episode, Shintaro Higashi breaks down three powerful ways to grow Judo in the United States. From unifying national organizations to creating viable pathways for judo in schools and drastically improving the customer experience at tournaments—this is a must-listen for anyone passionate about the future of Judo in America.

🎧 Whether you're a dojo owner, competitor, or parent in the Judo world, this episode is packed with insights, real talk, and practical solutions.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 Unifying Judo Organizations in the U.S.
02:00 Consolidating Local Affiliates & Reducing Admin Burden
03:00 Why Judo in Schools Isn’t Scaling (Yet)
04:00 The Phys Ed Pipeline: Getting Judo into Public Education
05:00 A Career Path for Judoka: Become a Gym Teacher
06:00 Educating Dojo Owners on Customer Experience
07:00 What Disney World Can Teach Us About Running a Dojo
08:00 Tournament Experience is Driving People Away
09:00 How TaeKwonDo Tournaments Set the Standard
10:00 Making Competition Accessible for Non-Competitors
11:00 Why Many Quit After Tournaments & Belt Deflation Issues
12:00 Weigh-Ins, Sandbagging, and Fixing a Broken Product
13:00 Final Thoughts: Grow Judo with Better Structure & Vision

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20 Comments

@you_picked_the_wrong_nose 11 months ago

I know it wasn't in the call to action, but if there were options for outsiders (those of us not currently getting to play) to help and contribute to the judo community, I'm sure many of us would be all ears.
I'd love to see judo grow and have an option to train in it again.

@jamesbarringer7935 11 months ago

You are so right about the utter disaster that is a typical local judo tournament. I first fought in one as a 6 year old in 1972 - and NOTHING HAS CHANGED SINCE. It’s still people with handwritten draw sheets screaming out names, and one PA system with faulty speakers that no one can understand, in a giant echoing room filled with over 500 people all talking. Un-freaking-believable.

@warriorworkouts5397 11 months ago

First thing I think of after hearing your ideas is just the difference of experience for Judo in a smaller Midwestern city as opposed to the Northeastern seaboard lol. My dojo hosted a tournament two weeks ago with about 120 competitors but other than that, the closest one otherwise is usually a four hour drive away. So you burn a day no matter what. I’m competing, two of my kids are competing and our whole team normally goes out to eat and chill afterwards so it’s not something we really mind. Obviously not an every weekend activity but it’s good.

I also can’t believe I didn’t hear you suggest or read any comments yet suggesting trying to get Judo into BJJ gyms. As we know BJJ is exponentially more popular here in the US. My town of roughly 50k has only us for Judo but two BJJ gyms and an MMA/BJJ gym. Plus around half a dozen more within a half hour drive. As we also know current sport BJJ doesn’t incentivize heavily investing in takedowns but a lot of BJJ guys still really want to learn them anyways and Judo has a lot more to offer to gi competition than wrestling IMO. My most recent tournament had five total people including myself and of the five, four of us were BJJ blue belts that have started training Judo recently.

It also lets instructors keep their costs low if they’re just getting paid to teach at someone else’s dojo one or two nights a week rather than maintaining their own space and overhead. Heck, maybe it would even be possible in some instances to teach classes out of multiple gyms on different weeknights. I just started my Judo journey after coming from a wrestling then BJJ background but that’s something I think would work.

@bolieve603 11 months ago

Idaho, Oregon, Washington have tournaments pretty locked in. Not perfect and the hardest part is the reffing quality but the organization of the tournament is solid. Plus the lunch buffet for the black belt room will knock your socks off and get you into the next weight class quick

@mikegrin2323 11 months ago

I just had 7 matches in ~90mins at San Jose Open. There were some issues but those type of issues happen on all levels. So I'm pretty happy with the organization.

@TheAirborneKite 11 months ago

In your experience, what does the funnel look like for judo? Is the problem that not enough people are showing up to a first class, is it that they don't come to a second class, or are they dropping out after 20 classes? Where do you think the most space for improvement is?

@georgemdonnelly 11 months ago (edited)

The product to market fit definitely needs a rethink and it starts at the organizational level. Once the organizations are solved then coaching + club standards can be well defined and funnel everyone forward.

@Dave-x8j 11 months ago (edited)

Perhaps it could be a process of being “top down driven”. By this I mean, that the IJF says we are only going to deal with one primary entity in each nation. Within the nation, you may have several offshoots, but this would serve to better coordinate and indicate “primacy”. By this I mean, one prime organization to which all others feed into.

@HahnJames 11 months ago

I coach the judo club at a smaller Midwestern university. It is a pain finding new members. Then, the majority of them are gone over the summer break. Very few of them will continue doing judo after they get their degrees.

@dkartzinel 11 months ago

I love the idea of micro tournaments or shorter buy ins - these full day insanity events for 5-10 minutes of activity are so inefficient

@C-w7w 11 months ago

The fragmentation of the Judo NGB in USA is easily the largest contributing factor to Judo's stagnation.

@catlopezg 11 months ago

Vivo en Chile y es basicamente lo mismo aqui pero con aún menos gente involucrada. La experiencia en campeonatos es exactamente la misma (estar todo el día, gente que se lesiona y no vuelve más), y la gente que compite es un 5% de la que va al dojo. Yo tuve la idea de hacer demostraciones por niveles en mi dojo, tanto para niños como para adultos, tipo evento anual para mostrar lo que se ha aprendido a familias, amigos y la comunidad local. Eso refuerza el autoestima de de quienes aprenden judo, pueden mostrar lo que hacen a cercanos (e incluso puede incentivar a otras personas a hacer este lindo deporte gracias a lo que ven) y como dices tú, pueden postearlo en instagram y sentir la emoción de lo que es pararse en un tatami a hacer judo y que mucha gente te vea (sin riesgo de lesionarte porque no estás compitiendo). Si acaso logre que se lleve a cabo un evento así, les contaré y espero que le sirva de idea a otras personas que te siguen y tienen influencia en este deporte. Saludos!

@rafile6 11 months ago

Paolo Miyao showing up at a novice bracket is borderline criminal 💀💀💀

@stuff4232 11 months ago

Yeah if you want to make judo popular in college you need to make it popular in elementary and highschool

@lmh4162 11 months ago (edited)

Would love to hear more about the Paulo Miyao story? Did he have an Orange belt or was he just put in that category? What was his official ranking?

I agree very unfair for them to out him under Orange especially for hobbiest and parents who are just doing it for experience.

Loving the content. Please keep it up.

🙏

@mightiestentertainment9069 11 months ago

One of the issues is you can’t compete unless you’re with a school I have practiced take down techniques a lot but my gym doesn’t have an affiliation so I can’t enter any judo related competitions so I’m finding alternative competitions. That hinders growth.
And also find a way to make Judo no go like jiu-jitsu.

@Dynamic6000 11 months ago

Judo in schools would expand Judo but that seems like a very slow burn.
The missed opportunity is really putting immediate focus on trying to grow adult hobbyist.
No one disagrees, a few high profile Zuckerberg types getting into Judo would change everything. So hard focus on creating a Hobbyist friendly environment so they bring in friends and kids or future kids is key. This is the big miss many can’t seem to comprehend. An adult who is part of the sport/ culture is much different than an adult who just picked any martial art to drop their kid off.

With hobbyist you have an enthusiasm that comes with free advertisement, not just telling friends and getting kids involved but them physically wanting merch and posting to their social media etc. These hobbyist bring in different ideas with disposable income and willingness to contribute. Currently hobbyist are second tier when really they should be a big priority.

@DougBeardsley 11 months ago (edited)

I think the best way to solve the problem of making Judo tournaments a better quality product with a better user experience...is for the biggest Judo body (or all the Judo bodies collaborating) to make a detailed written guide "How to Run a USA Judo Sanctioned Tournament". Probably the biggest problem with that would be that the Judo Tournament organizers might not want to go to all the trouble of compliance. Well, how about solving that by having the Judo organizations try to help make the experience of running a Judo tournament a profitable thing? I understand that money can corrupt that kind of process. But I think it is also possible to do it well in a way that is genuine and stays true to the values of Judo. Just because it's mildly profitable shouldn't mean that they have to sell out the values to make it profitable. There's got to be a happy medium like that. I realize that the Judo organizations probably don't have enough money to fund something like that. Well then what if they try to find donors or, dare I say...investors. I realize this is probably going to be a controversial comment with no shortage of people point out all the ways it can be done wrong. But I'm specifically asking the community to ask themselves...NOT "What's wrong with this idea?", BUT RATHER "What if we could do this and still satisfy everyone's (or the vast majority of people's) user experience concerns? What might that look like? How do we make this thing into something that people WANT to come to?"

@LUCAS7V 11 months ago

I think Judo already has a great product. I stopped Judo because as white belt I have two big injuries because of higher belts who were not executing what the teacher propose.
Altough I reached the Sensei and the teachers they never send me a message to see how I was so I realized they did not care about a white belt.