On a recent episode of The Shintaro Higashi Show, fitness coach and Judo practitioner Kevin Keegel made a case against steady-state running as conditioning for grapplers.
Keegel opened with a deliberately provocative stance. “Running is useless. I mean, running is useless for a lot of things,” he said, arguing that steady-state cardio quickly becomes less challenging as the body adapts.
According to him, the more consistently someone performs the same type of run, the more efficient their body becomes at handling it.
“The more you do it, the better you get at it and the less effective it is,” he explained. To illustrate the point, he offered a simple example. “So like right now if I went and ran a mile, my heart rate would probably be like 180. But if I did that every day for 2 months, I’m going to adjust so fast and all of a sudden my heart rate is going to be like 105 while I’m jogging my mile,” he said.
The core issue, in Keegel’s view, is that Judo competition does not resemble a steady, predictable pace. Instead, it demands repeated bursts of effort layered on top of sustained exertion.
“Judo is basically like you’re going to have like a steady heart rate that’s elevated and then you’re going to need to explosiv ely do a movement,” he said. Because of that structure, he argued that athletes conditioned primarily through steady running would struggle to keep up.
“If you just took a runner and then introduced him to something where okay, now we’re jogging, but every 15 seconds you have to do a max effort whatever it is, that would mess up their whole conditioning routine,” he added.
Rather than eliminating conditioning work altogether, Keegel advocated for methods that maintain an elevated heart rate while incorporating short bursts of maximum effort. He emphasized keeping the movements simple so athletes can focus on output rather than technique.
“What I would like to do is keep it a low skill movement,” he said, pointing to exercises that can be repeated under fatigue without a steep learning curve. “Like, sled pushes. Something where I could kind of keep my heart rate. Let’s even take like the assault bike. I could just kind of pedal softly on the assault bike for like 20 seconds, max effort 10 seconds, pedal softly 20 seconds, max effort 10 seconds,” he explained.
Running itself is not completely off the table, but only if it is structured to mirror the demands of competition. “If you were going to run, you have to do some type of interval training for Judo,” he said. “You can’t just steady state run for like 2 miles straight.”
He also raised concerns about the physical risks associated with poor running mechanics, especially when fatigue sets in.
“People have really bad form sprinting and running,” he said, noting that technical flaws can compound over time. “Their gait cycle’s messed up, their foot contact’s messed up. There’s like a lot of impact, especially people are jogging as they get fatigued, they’re running like heel first,” he explained.
When the conversation shifted to the relationship between skill development and conditioning, Keegel was equally direct about where the majority of meaningful progress should occur. “We’re going to get most of our skill, all of our skill, and our conditioning, a lot of the conditioning, when doing the sport,” he said, stressing that live training remains the most specific and effective stimulus.
He pointed to training environments in Japan as an example of how elite programs structure conditioning within practice itself. “These guys just put on a 5-minute timer with 30-second breaks,” he said, describing the rhythm of repeated sparring rounds. “That’s the best conditioning you’re going to get. You can’t re-mimic anything better than that in the gym.”
