I just ran into a guy who thinks that shit like stability board work and wall pushups are the best use of strength training time for BJJ.
I don't understand why there is so much ignorance and quackery in a scene that has such a good model as wrestling. Wrestling S&C is pretty extensively studied and staffed. Lots of credentialed people working in collegiate wrestling S&C. BJJ is not very different. Why do people think it is so different? Because they can't abide the idea that "grappling is grappling?" They never wrestled and so they think they are inventing a wheel? There is a reason that wrestlers mop up normal BJJ players--because their coaches knew what the fuck they were doing, and their knowledge was built on top of the knowledge of other coaches who knew what the fuck they were doing. There was no folklore of the "ailing wrestler who succeeded using only technique." Ever.
When people talk about strength development, I think they should speak accurately and in context. And something like stability and coordination work is only ever "the best" thing an athlete could be doing if he already has above average coordination, balance, agility, mobility, cardio, absolute strength, body comp, and relative (body weight) strength. In other words, he is already a rounded and advanced to elite grappler. Not because this stuff is not hard work (it still is), but because it's diminishing returns stuff that competes for time with more important stuff, for people with limited gym time and more pronounced weaknesses.
When someone is not elite, "the best" thing to be working on is always their most underdeveloped crucial attribute, and it's always specific the individual's circumstances, so there is no blanket "best thing." If a grappler has no other major weaknesses in his athleticism (absolute strength, absolute power, power endurance, cardio/metcon, body comp, etc.) then spending extra time striving for "long tail" refinements and little improvements in coordination and balance and isometrics MIGHT make sense.
But then again, superior balance-board abilities might not mean shit when someone comes up against a guy with a 2x-3x BW squat or a 1.5-1.75x BW power clean who is also at the same technical level, not only due to the risk of being ragdolled, but because strength endurance is very much related to absolute strength and power, as they relate to that attribute of one's opponent. If I am stronger than you, then all other things being equal, you tire faster. If an athlete has neglected to work on strength and power training in favor of spending precious gym time on balance boards, he will probably lose, all other things being equal.
So this kind of stuff is a waste of good training economy unless a player is already a very advanced (usually pro) athlete, and the average grappler is better served by eschewing additional balance and coordination tranining unless he has a lot of extra time and recovery capacity to waste. Literally the last thing I would add to a normal person's training program. Dumb as fuck to direct this kind of program at beginners and intermediates.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Friday, October 21, 2016
"Fitness Bloggers" are "Narcissists Among Narcissists"
I get the irony of writing that in a fitness blog. But my point is that if you are going to start from the point of being an uber-narcissist to begin with, what you have to say should be succinct, helpful, technically and scientifically accurate, and largely devoid of confusing jargon. In my case, I also don't expect to reach an audience, this is more of an online journal than a "blog for consumption."
I guess it's just supply and demand. The average trainee can't cope with the idea that success in athletics is 80% patience, consistent hard work, and program compliance--and 20% "special knowledge," so the demand for the consumption of "special knowledge" articles is high. In a lot of cases, I think the immersion in "topical writings" actually helps to maintain the commitment. Cultural immersion can help people to "indoctrinate" themselves into activities and lifestyles, but ultimately "fanatical" activities need to be allowed to ebb and flow in life, like anything else, or else burnout can ensue.
Nobody can maintain the energy to remain the "poster child" for forever. It is the definition of fundamental values that causes real commitment. If you profess to love a thing, you should be able to leave that thing and still know in your gut why you must come back to it. It is part of you. You do not require "constant re-enforcement" of your commitment to keep it alive. You don't need to go down the "cult funnel" by abandoning all friends and family who do not practice the thing you like. As they say, its never the successful people who are posting the image macros of pithy success quotes.
Anyway, back to the excess of "fitness writers." The way to succeed in almost any sport is to train hard in the true strength basics in a gym, and then to devote a lot of time to the technical practice of your sport. Nobody writes articles about that stuff because it's too boring. The three hottest items, the three biggest keys to success in anything--are hard work, patience, and continued compliance.
Then again, the 20% of ongoing knowledge refinement does matter--because people undertake dumb things like "every day is upper body day," or "BJJ doesn't require strength" training programs, and while they may have hard work, patience, and compliance handled, they still under-perform. They may not fall flat on their faces, but their training is off the mark.
The thing is, hard work, patience, and compliance are so important that you can practically apply them to the WRONG things and still achieve a measure of success. A grappler could convince himself that the best way to become a better grappler is to master the goofy elliptical trainer at the gym, and over the course of 3 years of intense elliptical training, he will actually probably amass some incredible cardio that will hugely improve BJJ.
It's sort of like a sail or a rudder on a boat though. Or a steering wheel. You're not always adjusting these things. You orient them, and then most of your time is spent following the course. The waiting and/or rowing, not the steering, is the hard part, and is also most of the journey. Sure, you make course corrections when you perceive something to be flatly wrong, but even a navigator doesn't spend his entire journey with his face buried in the map. The focus should be on moving forward, not falling out of the boat, and making sense of the journey by constantly improving philosophical understanding of why you are who you are. Steering is not the meat of it.
I guess it's just supply and demand. The average trainee can't cope with the idea that success in athletics is 80% patience, consistent hard work, and program compliance--and 20% "special knowledge," so the demand for the consumption of "special knowledge" articles is high. In a lot of cases, I think the immersion in "topical writings" actually helps to maintain the commitment. Cultural immersion can help people to "indoctrinate" themselves into activities and lifestyles, but ultimately "fanatical" activities need to be allowed to ebb and flow in life, like anything else, or else burnout can ensue.
Nobody can maintain the energy to remain the "poster child" for forever. It is the definition of fundamental values that causes real commitment. If you profess to love a thing, you should be able to leave that thing and still know in your gut why you must come back to it. It is part of you. You do not require "constant re-enforcement" of your commitment to keep it alive. You don't need to go down the "cult funnel" by abandoning all friends and family who do not practice the thing you like. As they say, its never the successful people who are posting the image macros of pithy success quotes.
Anyway, back to the excess of "fitness writers." The way to succeed in almost any sport is to train hard in the true strength basics in a gym, and then to devote a lot of time to the technical practice of your sport. Nobody writes articles about that stuff because it's too boring. The three hottest items, the three biggest keys to success in anything--are hard work, patience, and continued compliance.
Then again, the 20% of ongoing knowledge refinement does matter--because people undertake dumb things like "every day is upper body day," or "BJJ doesn't require strength" training programs, and while they may have hard work, patience, and compliance handled, they still under-perform. They may not fall flat on their faces, but their training is off the mark.
The thing is, hard work, patience, and compliance are so important that you can practically apply them to the WRONG things and still achieve a measure of success. A grappler could convince himself that the best way to become a better grappler is to master the goofy elliptical trainer at the gym, and over the course of 3 years of intense elliptical training, he will actually probably amass some incredible cardio that will hugely improve BJJ.
It's sort of like a sail or a rudder on a boat though. Or a steering wheel. You're not always adjusting these things. You orient them, and then most of your time is spent following the course. The waiting and/or rowing, not the steering, is the hard part, and is also most of the journey. Sure, you make course corrections when you perceive something to be flatly wrong, but even a navigator doesn't spend his entire journey with his face buried in the map. The focus should be on moving forward, not falling out of the boat, and making sense of the journey by constantly improving philosophical understanding of why you are who you are. Steering is not the meat of it.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
PSA: Warning about the dangers of calf muscle specificity
This applies less to younger people because calf tears are more common in older populations, but it's good advice in general. If you're a power athlete, never undertake leg training without including some sort of power training for the calves in dorsiflexion and plantar flexion. Even for a little while.
I found out the hard way that training only heavy and maximal closed-chain flat-footed leg exercises relatively weakens the calves. In 6 months of hard training for my legs, I practically doubled my quad, glute, and hamstring strength, but I neglected calves because I supposed they would be getting enough training from other stuff, and that calf training was mostly cosmetic. I also added like 10 pounds of muscle, which is even more stress on the calves.
The problem is, my legs overpowered my calves. The first time I tried to sprint in 6 months, I immediately tore a calf muscle. This could be due solely to the rest of the leg putting down too much force, but also is due to the lack of heavier ROM training for the calves. They are strong at middle ROM but not end ROM, and one of them (right medial gastrocnemius) ripped (grade II.) it was also complicated by the fact that I had finished a heavy 5x5 session two days earlier.
It seems to be getting better pretty quickly, but the semi-obvious takeaway is to not get so obsessed with strength in certain exercises that, as an athlete, you are ignoring important sport-specific ROMs for medium to long periods of time. Even if you just sprint (if your sport involves sprinting) or do box jumps, jump squats with a barbell or trap bar, etc. When it comes to calves, shoulders, knees, etc, this is even more applicable to older athletes.
I found out the hard way that training only heavy and maximal closed-chain flat-footed leg exercises relatively weakens the calves. In 6 months of hard training for my legs, I practically doubled my quad, glute, and hamstring strength, but I neglected calves because I supposed they would be getting enough training from other stuff, and that calf training was mostly cosmetic. I also added like 10 pounds of muscle, which is even more stress on the calves.
The problem is, my legs overpowered my calves. The first time I tried to sprint in 6 months, I immediately tore a calf muscle. This could be due solely to the rest of the leg putting down too much force, but also is due to the lack of heavier ROM training for the calves. They are strong at middle ROM but not end ROM, and one of them (right medial gastrocnemius) ripped (grade II.) it was also complicated by the fact that I had finished a heavy 5x5 session two days earlier.
It seems to be getting better pretty quickly, but the semi-obvious takeaway is to not get so obsessed with strength in certain exercises that, as an athlete, you are ignoring important sport-specific ROMs for medium to long periods of time. Even if you just sprint (if your sport involves sprinting) or do box jumps, jump squats with a barbell or trap bar, etc. When it comes to calves, shoulders, knees, etc, this is even more applicable to older athletes.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Add to Dictionary: Testosterone Replacement Therapy is a Perfectly Legitimate Disease Treatment
I'm in my mid 40s, and I've been on and off Testosterone Replacement Therapy for 10 years now. I have fought so hard to get to where I am, to do the things I do. I have endured a ton of overtraining, injury, fatigue, metabolic disturbance, and just sheer misery because I have dared to want to be an athlete while possessing an anomalously shitty pair of balls.
People have a lot of misconceptions about TRT, and some of them are downright ugly and bigoted. The most prominent being the stigmatized way TRT is treated by the UFC. Fighters who NEED TRT to function as well as their compatriots end up having to give up on a medically necessary medicine just to stay "legal" and to preserve their public image.
To be fair, part of the problem is that the medicalization of T levels may kind of obscure the testing process for the illegal stuff being used in illegal amounts. A guy can cycle 500mg of street test for a year and then back off it to normal "TRT levels" like 600-1100 ng/dl and it will be much harder to detect him as an illegal user than if going off it were to plummet him to the frank hypogonadal and agonadal range of say 25ng/dl.
But here's the problem--a lot of people DO need TRT for very real HEALTH reasons. ESPECIALLY combat athletes. Primary hypogonadism can occur genetically, or it can just occur as a result of a single hard trauma. I don't think all the causes are currently understood, but the fact is that by age 30 or so, a goodly percentage of guys balls have stopped working almost entirely. So if they come in at 200 ng/dl and they are expected to train and recover like someone else who has naturally 1200 ng/dl, they have it effectively 6 times harder than that person, if their free testosterone reflects the total testosterone differential!
Eugenics became really unpopular during the third reich, because of the way the Nazis used experimentation to exploit people. The ways they abused it. It scared us all away from it for a long time, but some aspects of our society still reflect its preference. Given how there is a sort of stigma toward eugenics, it does seem weird to me that a lot of people still equate "fairness" in athletics with a type of "lottery" mentality, which amounts to accidental eugenics.
What do I mean? If someone is born with 1200 ng/dl of T naturally, they weren't "bred" to have that, but they do have a [correctable] advantage they DID NOT earn. So it would be more fair to set a baseline standard of 800 ng/dl and then bring ALL competitors up to that range. If testosterone is SO important to performance that it is the most well known performance enhancing drug, then since it's a natural chemical that is controllable, actual competitive "fairness" would involve making sure ALL combatants had roughly the same fucking amount of it!
Duh! It's not "fair" for one person to have 6x (for the sake of argument) the recovery capacity of another contender. "Fair" is when you level the playing field in every way within your control, such that each competitor has an equal opportunity to leverage his actually unique and cultivated attributes--his practice and his mindset--so he can WIN. TRT just levels the testosterone field.
It blows my mind that thousands of doctors and medical researchers can call something like hypogonadism an illness; that hundreds of studies have been conducted on its risks and disadvantages over the past few decades; that it has been documented to confer a clear HANDICAP in competitive sports, but that we continue to regard people using it to "get well" as cheating!
Testosterone is so stigmatized by the Barry Bonds and Lyle Alzados of the world that cycling's innocent cousin, TRT, gets lumped in with it. But anyone who knows anything about T will tell you that not only is 1000 ng/dl a natural level for a competitive athlete, but that there is NO COMPARISON between the performance "boosting" attributes of 1000 compared to 5000.
"Getting well" is not roiding. The closer you get to agonadalism, the more severe and potentially life threatening the symptoms become. Most non-athletes can function on 300 ng/dl, but they will probably be lower energy, tired, more irritable, and less sexual. They will have a harder life than the average guy. Then you take a guy who regularly beats his body up and recovers from it because that's his passion in life, and you want him to have the same amount of recovery capacity as a couch potato?
Can you imagine what it would be like to go for a 5 mile tempo run with your other male friends of your same age, and to be unable to participate in the next run 2 days later because your body still hasn't healed from the first run like theirs? All because you got a bum set of balls. And there are people who think you should be happy with that. Can you believe the ignorance? What if we took that attitude toward polio or allergies? "I know you have rhinitis 100% of the time, but antihistamines are cheating, sorry, sniffle away!"
There are so many anti-male assholes in this world. I wouldn't want to get anywhere near an MRA soapbox here, but testosterone is NOT evil. It is the hormone that makes men into men--whether they are macho men, or soft spoken and gentle men. Straight men, or gay men. It is a health stabilizer.
People so often associate it with rage, anger, and machismo, but the truth is that LOW testosterone makes men angry, not normal levels. The rage we associate with roiders comes from them cycling improperly--the rage comes from abnormally high estradiol or ESTROGEN levels, not the testosterone. The right amount of testosterone has a CALMING influence on men, similar to an SSRI in a serotonin deficient human of either sex.
People have been saying this stuff forever, but those who smugly disregard men's issues continue to ignore the truth, and continue to see the world through whichever lens they wish. Even in an era where we have relatively effective transgender transformations, where female to male transgenders NEED testosterone to become and stay healthy, people still act like testosterone is a poison chemical that ruins the world.
The truth is that as much as we like to bend gender, the human body does better by being firmly placed into one hormonal camp or another. Again, transgenderism has shown us this. Be hormonally male, or be hormonally female, but the middle ground is not safe for our health.
Hypogonadal men and athletes are expected to dutifully inhabit that dangerous middle ground because there is simply no valid social excuse for a "cis" man wanting to become more male. If a woman wants to become male it's progressive, but if a deficient man wants to become fully male, well he is "up to something," trying to cheat, trying to exploit someone or something. Granted, not everyone views it this way, and I don't want to come across as angry or bitter like an MRA douche, but then again, I have too little of the mellowing hormone testosterone in my blood, so it could be related.
This funny bias is even inherent in the browser I am using. As I type this, the Chrome spell checker underlines the word hypogonadism in red (a word which has been in the medical and public lexicon for both sexes, for decades) as if it's a non-word. If you right click on it, it suggests "hypothyroidism."
Hypothyroidism is an interesting comparison because it is something with which a lot of women are diagnosed. Its diagnosis is as a result of a direct correlation to an under-functioning thyroid. There is almost never any secondary cause, just as with primary hypogonadism. Plain and simple--your thyroid doesn't work well, it's a hazard to your health and metabolism, so we supplement you with synthetic thyroid hormone. Cut and dry: "Thyroid's busted. Here's a better quality of life, you are welcome."
Everyone recognizes this as a real thing--and yet, the impetus for treating it in a lot of women is a desire for a "normal" basal metabolic rate. Now you can't TELL me that when a hypothyroid woman finds out her body burns fat more SLOWLY than a normal woman, that the aesthetic and potentially "vain" aspects of the health issue don't factor into her decision to supplement. Women chase leanness the same way men chase muscularity--it's just how our culture largely works. Low thyroid is not only a health threat to women, but a threat to their opportunity to subscribe to the [contentious but real] female "beauty standard" of being thin, which a lot of women submit to willingly.
So why is that any more valid than a guy wanting to supplement testosterone in order to pick up a bit more muscle or strength than his sick self would ordinarily have? Not only will he have less of a risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other comorbidities by going on TRT, but he will be able to have a fair shot at being as "MANLY" as a normal man can. Both men and women deserve a fair shot at the kinds of bodies and lives enjoyed by other normal men and women, if they are medically possible, the same way any biped deserves a shot at knee surgery so he can get back to walking like a normal person.
In conclusion, in Chrome, I right clicked that unrighteously underlined word and chose "Add to Dictionary." Every anti-TRT ignoramus on the planet needs to add hypogonadism to their dictionary.
People have a lot of misconceptions about TRT, and some of them are downright ugly and bigoted. The most prominent being the stigmatized way TRT is treated by the UFC. Fighters who NEED TRT to function as well as their compatriots end up having to give up on a medically necessary medicine just to stay "legal" and to preserve their public image.
To be fair, part of the problem is that the medicalization of T levels may kind of obscure the testing process for the illegal stuff being used in illegal amounts. A guy can cycle 500mg of street test for a year and then back off it to normal "TRT levels" like 600-1100 ng/dl and it will be much harder to detect him as an illegal user than if going off it were to plummet him to the frank hypogonadal and agonadal range of say 25ng/dl.
But here's the problem--a lot of people DO need TRT for very real HEALTH reasons. ESPECIALLY combat athletes. Primary hypogonadism can occur genetically, or it can just occur as a result of a single hard trauma. I don't think all the causes are currently understood, but the fact is that by age 30 or so, a goodly percentage of guys balls have stopped working almost entirely. So if they come in at 200 ng/dl and they are expected to train and recover like someone else who has naturally 1200 ng/dl, they have it effectively 6 times harder than that person, if their free testosterone reflects the total testosterone differential!
Eugenics became really unpopular during the third reich, because of the way the Nazis used experimentation to exploit people. The ways they abused it. It scared us all away from it for a long time, but some aspects of our society still reflect its preference. Given how there is a sort of stigma toward eugenics, it does seem weird to me that a lot of people still equate "fairness" in athletics with a type of "lottery" mentality, which amounts to accidental eugenics.
What do I mean? If someone is born with 1200 ng/dl of T naturally, they weren't "bred" to have that, but they do have a [correctable] advantage they DID NOT earn. So it would be more fair to set a baseline standard of 800 ng/dl and then bring ALL competitors up to that range. If testosterone is SO important to performance that it is the most well known performance enhancing drug, then since it's a natural chemical that is controllable, actual competitive "fairness" would involve making sure ALL combatants had roughly the same fucking amount of it!
Duh! It's not "fair" for one person to have 6x (for the sake of argument) the recovery capacity of another contender. "Fair" is when you level the playing field in every way within your control, such that each competitor has an equal opportunity to leverage his actually unique and cultivated attributes--his practice and his mindset--so he can WIN. TRT just levels the testosterone field.
It blows my mind that thousands of doctors and medical researchers can call something like hypogonadism an illness; that hundreds of studies have been conducted on its risks and disadvantages over the past few decades; that it has been documented to confer a clear HANDICAP in competitive sports, but that we continue to regard people using it to "get well" as cheating!
Testosterone is so stigmatized by the Barry Bonds and Lyle Alzados of the world that cycling's innocent cousin, TRT, gets lumped in with it. But anyone who knows anything about T will tell you that not only is 1000 ng/dl a natural level for a competitive athlete, but that there is NO COMPARISON between the performance "boosting" attributes of 1000 compared to 5000.
"Getting well" is not roiding. The closer you get to agonadalism, the more severe and potentially life threatening the symptoms become. Most non-athletes can function on 300 ng/dl, but they will probably be lower energy, tired, more irritable, and less sexual. They will have a harder life than the average guy. Then you take a guy who regularly beats his body up and recovers from it because that's his passion in life, and you want him to have the same amount of recovery capacity as a couch potato?
Can you imagine what it would be like to go for a 5 mile tempo run with your other male friends of your same age, and to be unable to participate in the next run 2 days later because your body still hasn't healed from the first run like theirs? All because you got a bum set of balls. And there are people who think you should be happy with that. Can you believe the ignorance? What if we took that attitude toward polio or allergies? "I know you have rhinitis 100% of the time, but antihistamines are cheating, sorry, sniffle away!"
There are so many anti-male assholes in this world. I wouldn't want to get anywhere near an MRA soapbox here, but testosterone is NOT evil. It is the hormone that makes men into men--whether they are macho men, or soft spoken and gentle men. Straight men, or gay men. It is a health stabilizer.
People so often associate it with rage, anger, and machismo, but the truth is that LOW testosterone makes men angry, not normal levels. The rage we associate with roiders comes from them cycling improperly--the rage comes from abnormally high estradiol or ESTROGEN levels, not the testosterone. The right amount of testosterone has a CALMING influence on men, similar to an SSRI in a serotonin deficient human of either sex.
People have been saying this stuff forever, but those who smugly disregard men's issues continue to ignore the truth, and continue to see the world through whichever lens they wish. Even in an era where we have relatively effective transgender transformations, where female to male transgenders NEED testosterone to become and stay healthy, people still act like testosterone is a poison chemical that ruins the world.
The truth is that as much as we like to bend gender, the human body does better by being firmly placed into one hormonal camp or another. Again, transgenderism has shown us this. Be hormonally male, or be hormonally female, but the middle ground is not safe for our health.
Hypogonadal men and athletes are expected to dutifully inhabit that dangerous middle ground because there is simply no valid social excuse for a "cis" man wanting to become more male. If a woman wants to become male it's progressive, but if a deficient man wants to become fully male, well he is "up to something," trying to cheat, trying to exploit someone or something. Granted, not everyone views it this way, and I don't want to come across as angry or bitter like an MRA douche, but then again, I have too little of the mellowing hormone testosterone in my blood, so it could be related.
This funny bias is even inherent in the browser I am using. As I type this, the Chrome spell checker underlines the word hypogonadism in red (a word which has been in the medical and public lexicon for both sexes, for decades) as if it's a non-word. If you right click on it, it suggests "hypothyroidism."
Hypothyroidism is an interesting comparison because it is something with which a lot of women are diagnosed. Its diagnosis is as a result of a direct correlation to an under-functioning thyroid. There is almost never any secondary cause, just as with primary hypogonadism. Plain and simple--your thyroid doesn't work well, it's a hazard to your health and metabolism, so we supplement you with synthetic thyroid hormone. Cut and dry: "Thyroid's busted. Here's a better quality of life, you are welcome."
Everyone recognizes this as a real thing--and yet, the impetus for treating it in a lot of women is a desire for a "normal" basal metabolic rate. Now you can't TELL me that when a hypothyroid woman finds out her body burns fat more SLOWLY than a normal woman, that the aesthetic and potentially "vain" aspects of the health issue don't factor into her decision to supplement. Women chase leanness the same way men chase muscularity--it's just how our culture largely works. Low thyroid is not only a health threat to women, but a threat to their opportunity to subscribe to the [contentious but real] female "beauty standard" of being thin, which a lot of women submit to willingly.
So why is that any more valid than a guy wanting to supplement testosterone in order to pick up a bit more muscle or strength than his sick self would ordinarily have? Not only will he have less of a risk of heart disease, diabetes, and other comorbidities by going on TRT, but he will be able to have a fair shot at being as "MANLY" as a normal man can. Both men and women deserve a fair shot at the kinds of bodies and lives enjoyed by other normal men and women, if they are medically possible, the same way any biped deserves a shot at knee surgery so he can get back to walking like a normal person.
In conclusion, in Chrome, I right clicked that unrighteously underlined word and chose "Add to Dictionary." Every anti-TRT ignoramus on the planet needs to add hypogonadism to their dictionary.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Strength DOES matter in BJJ. But the answer is not as simple as people think.
Powerlifting can be potentially important in grappling, because it develops absolute strength. Absolute strength directly correlates to your ability to perform technique, because it helps to enable good "relative strength," but it does this along with a dependency on body composition.
Good relative strength (your strength/weight ratio) is a prerequisite for good athleticism, especially in grappling sports. IOW, if you're a fat guy with weak legs, good luck with standing guard passes. Likewise, if your abs/glutes are made more of beer than muscle, good luck chasing with an open guard, or getting out of side control, or squatting for mount armbars. A lean guy with a good diet and less fat is going to need less absolute strength to obtain good relative strength, a fat guy is going to need more. You can improve the S/W ratio either by getting stronger or by getting leaner, or both. A lean guy (unless super weak) is going to have good relative strength, and a "fatstrong" guy might too...but the former will have better cardio because his body is simply going to be better at exercise metabolite clearance.
Beyond the point where the body is strong enough [strong relative to body comp, thus "relative" strength] to support the ability to execute techniques correctly, then extra amounts of absolute strength are just a bonus [that can be converted through RFD training to power, and thus greater explosive speed/RFD] but that is not really necessary for the average player for three reasons: 1) because technique tends to be the main differentiation between two "equally fit" (relative strength capable) people of equal weight; 2.) because powerlifting at a high enough frequency in-season (above a maintenance level) tends to interfere with the ability to train BJJ with the necessary frequency and intensity to maintain mat cardio, and 3) because PL gains tend to hit a point of diminishing returns at or above the level of advanced totals*, so you end up doing a lot more work for less recovery and time value.
There is such a thing as "strong enough" when the point of barbells/dumbells/kettles is to support a sport, rather than to be the sport itself. However, that "strong enough" point is higher than a lot of people think, AND, for grappling, it totally depends on your body comp (diet.)
Do you want to know the simple truth? Unless you intend to be a serious BJJ competitor, in a lot of cases because of the way that powerlifting intensity and rolling intensity tend to interfere with each other, you're probably a lot better off chasing relative strength by way of dietary restriction than by trying to get super strong while also rolling a lot. You CAN hit great advanced totals while rolling 3x+/week, but you have to either have great recovery to be able to do it quickly, or else you have to be willing to wait 1-3 years to get there slowly with something like 5/3/1. Not many people can do the Texas method or Madcow and 3x/week BJJ at the same time.
Honestly, wrestlers have known this for a long time. That's why they diet so carefully in-season, because they know they can't just hulk out in the weight room while also having to practice an intense sport. It's also why they hit the weight room twice as hard off season--because that's their chance to make good progress toward "strong enough." Because players with advanced level strength AND advanced level technique usually defeat players with average level strength and advanced level technique.
So you have a few basic choices that can affect your rate of athletic improvement--get strong slowly with a slow progress plan like 5/3/1, get strong faster by creating for yourself a virtual "off-season," and run some kind of self-abusing Smolov or Sheiko shit, or enhance either one with an improved diet and body composition. Frankly, the middle road is probably the smartest.
*Cliffs: Get to 2x/2.2x/1.5x BW PRs in squat/DL/bench (optionally 1.75x/2.0x/1.0x is probably fine) and then from there, just maintain your strength and and build power (5/3/1 is fine, but barbell/kettle power complexes are better) and then focus on BJJ.
Good relative strength (your strength/weight ratio) is a prerequisite for good athleticism, especially in grappling sports. IOW, if you're a fat guy with weak legs, good luck with standing guard passes. Likewise, if your abs/glutes are made more of beer than muscle, good luck chasing with an open guard, or getting out of side control, or squatting for mount armbars. A lean guy with a good diet and less fat is going to need less absolute strength to obtain good relative strength, a fat guy is going to need more. You can improve the S/W ratio either by getting stronger or by getting leaner, or both. A lean guy (unless super weak) is going to have good relative strength, and a "fatstrong" guy might too...but the former will have better cardio because his body is simply going to be better at exercise metabolite clearance.
Beyond the point where the body is strong enough [strong relative to body comp, thus "relative" strength] to support the ability to execute techniques correctly, then extra amounts of absolute strength are just a bonus [that can be converted through RFD training to power, and thus greater explosive speed/RFD] but that is not really necessary for the average player for three reasons: 1) because technique tends to be the main differentiation between two "equally fit" (relative strength capable) people of equal weight; 2.) because powerlifting at a high enough frequency in-season (above a maintenance level) tends to interfere with the ability to train BJJ with the necessary frequency and intensity to maintain mat cardio, and 3) because PL gains tend to hit a point of diminishing returns at or above the level of advanced totals*, so you end up doing a lot more work for less recovery and time value.
There is such a thing as "strong enough" when the point of barbells/dumbells/kettles is to support a sport, rather than to be the sport itself. However, that "strong enough" point is higher than a lot of people think, AND, for grappling, it totally depends on your body comp (diet.)
Do you want to know the simple truth? Unless you intend to be a serious BJJ competitor, in a lot of cases because of the way that powerlifting intensity and rolling intensity tend to interfere with each other, you're probably a lot better off chasing relative strength by way of dietary restriction than by trying to get super strong while also rolling a lot. You CAN hit great advanced totals while rolling 3x+/week, but you have to either have great recovery to be able to do it quickly, or else you have to be willing to wait 1-3 years to get there slowly with something like 5/3/1. Not many people can do the Texas method or Madcow and 3x/week BJJ at the same time.
Honestly, wrestlers have known this for a long time. That's why they diet so carefully in-season, because they know they can't just hulk out in the weight room while also having to practice an intense sport. It's also why they hit the weight room twice as hard off season--because that's their chance to make good progress toward "strong enough." Because players with advanced level strength AND advanced level technique usually defeat players with average level strength and advanced level technique.
So you have a few basic choices that can affect your rate of athletic improvement--get strong slowly with a slow progress plan like 5/3/1, get strong faster by creating for yourself a virtual "off-season," and run some kind of self-abusing Smolov or Sheiko shit, or enhance either one with an improved diet and body composition. Frankly, the middle road is probably the smartest.
*Cliffs: Get to 2x/2.2x/1.5x BW PRs in squat/DL/bench (optionally 1.75x/2.0x/1.0x is probably fine) and then from there, just maintain your strength and and build power (5/3/1 is fine, but barbell/kettle power complexes are better) and then focus on BJJ.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Corrective exercise is what most of us need the most--and the brain needs the most correction of all.
You can probably safely ignore this post if you're a yoga teacher for a living. Or if you're a 15 year old kid who tends to walk 20k steps per day, just as a result of your active school/sport/fun lifestyle. But if you spend 8 hours a day sitting at a desk, unless your posture is perfect and you get up and walk around every 15 minutes (how do people concentrate on deep thinking tasks if they do that?) then chances are you need corrective exercise MORE than any of your favorites.
So many men out there think their arms need to be bigger, their abs need to be flatter, or their chest needs to be puffier. Women tend to think they should cycle through the entire lexicon of available glute exercises until they get a perfect buttock, or they will spend endless amounts of time on an elliptical or treadmill trying to make sure they stay thin.
Both suffer from gender bias. Women's tendencies are actually healthier than men's, but you'd be hard pressed to tell me that obsessing over your ass is inherently LESS vain than obsessing over your biceps, just because it happens to incidentally hit the mark by aiding hip health.
People want to be liked. And accepted, and loved, and fucked, and chosen. They want to stay relevant to their lovers, they want to have the confidence to find new ones. They tend to associate certain self-image stuff with that confidence. For men, it's having a commanding presence. That is almost uniformly associated with a muscular upper body.
On a primal level, our ancestors who were either more naturally endowed up top, or whose rough lifestyles incidentally caused hypertrophy probably WERE better able to defeat other men in a fight. All things being equal (and that includes a complete lack of skill, and the absence of leg training) a guy with a big upper body probably still WILL win an unskilled 1 on 1 fight.
The problem is, that's not the world we live in. That type of self-image, rooted in primal dominance, is only really true in the absence of: 1) grapplers, 2) boxers, MMA fighters, or just about anyone else with skill, 3) guns, gunfire, weapons, etc, 4) friends of your enemy to kick your face, 5) significant differences in leg strength.
It's an outdated vibe. I'm a gen Xer so my generation came right after the Arnold generation, and we probably got the worst of the bodybuilding aesthetic. Everything was mass, size, arms, etc. Bicep day, tricep day, forearm day. I mean some people probably even had a separate forearm day.
The millennials are a little smarter than we are, but not without the benefit of our mistakes and knowledge. People bag on Crossfit but a lot of the fundamental principles are sound for sport science and health--even if individual boxes sometimes do take it to dangerous or frivolous extremes (which comes more down to individual personalities than a problem with the idea itself.)
Now we are in a third, new era. Post-Arnold, post-Yates, post-Coleman, even post-kipup, post-"squat every day", post-"all types of lifting machismo". Stuff like Gray Cook's FMS and the idea of true functional fitness, the value of balanced physical attributes based on personal assessment, is starting to really take firm root.
This is frankly not as important if you are 20 because your body hasn't even been alive long enough to accumulate significant amounts of wear and tear and large muscle imbalances. Where this matters most is for aging athletes.
The saying "Fast is slow, slow is smooth" is popular in the BJJ community. This could not be more true when it comes to attribute self-assessment. Fitness is a concept based on purpose--fitness to a task. Health is a concept based on feeling and well-being. They largely intersect at this balance point. Baseline fitness IS health, and baseline health is fitness--for life.
A strength athlete that can't run 100m is not fit for life. He is not healthy. He is also ultimately not even fit for his sport, because that cardio matters DURING lifts. Likewise, a grappler who sits on his butt for 8-14 hours a day is only suffering from a lack of strength IF strength is the leading attribute that is putting him at risk for either being unfit, or unhealthy. So if you are so pelvic tilted that you look like a centaur, there is no benefit in being able to bench press 405. If you can't touch your toes, you may still be able to wrestle, but if you play guard long enough, you'll get hurt.
A woman who stretches and runs 40 miles a week on a treadmill is not fit for life if she can't hoist a 30lb bag of dog food for her German Shepard and walk it to her car. Given the fucked up world we live in, I am also of the mind that most women are fundamentally unfit for life (police dependent) if they don't either carry a gun, or learn some basic grappling, because a man's upper body is about 50% stronger than a female's, and 1 in 3 women gets raped at some point in her lifetime, so learning to deploy your legs to protect yourself is as essential as other health attributes. As a big guy who lifts weights and fights, I just can't imagine how so many women walk around every day in this bubble of security, while probably 10% of men eyeing them on the street contemplate hurting them. And many don't--some women just walk around, living in fear, almost all the time. And they don't have to. Enough of that tangent.
So in terms of correctives, the most important thing is constant assessment. Where am I? What weakness is my lifestyle and genetics imposing on me, how do I fix it? How can I combine it with the stuff I like? What other attributes need to be emphasized, based on where I would like to compete with others?
In addition to assessment, the second most important thing in the whole world is compliance. How much time do people really spend creating a personal ideology that permanently commits them to the routine practice of exercise? Is it discipline? Belief systems? What can you do to make your exercise programs not only balanced and assessment-based, but also so firmly ingrained in your mind and your values such that doing them is virtually the same as brushing your teeth, or taking a shower--a form of hygiene. An ante, a non-negotiable price of admission for being alive.
These two problems--biased self-assessment, and a lack of long term compliance, are the top two reasons that people never reach their fitness and health goals. So doesn't it make sense that a LOT of energy should be devoted to making sure you end up having a bias toward working on THEM?
Sometimes, smart people hire athletic trainers to help them eliminate their personal bias. This is great. Sometimes people even do it themselves, after enough trial and error (or after an injury.) But when it comes to compliance, you can't rely on a trainer to yell at you long term (unless you're wealthy) and likewise, relying on group exercise is ok, but it's still an external motivator, and as soon as you lose interest in the group, you will probably lose interest in the exercise.
These concepts are not just native to exercise. They are true in life. Success is created by focused hard work. The hard work part is actually easier--nearly anyone can "slave away" at "hard" things they enjoy, in order to feel a sense of movement and accomplishment in life, but that's an illusion. The "focused" part is the actually "difficult" part, because blindly putting a lot of effort into something is neither "focus," nor "difficulty." Anyone can waste energy. We all generally have plenty of it. Willpower, however, is the limited resource. Values generate willpower, but only introspection generates REAL values. Introspection is, therefore, the true "hard" work.
Selectively working "hard" in directions that are mentally easy for you and your ego is tackling intensity, not tackling difficulty. Things that are actually difficult are most often mentally hard to endure in SUBTLE ways that challenge the self-image, not just in a "pain tolerance" manner. The key to balanced success is to develop a personal discipline and dogma that allows you to consistently subject yourself to necessary kinds of pain that you DON'T like, not just the kinds you do. Nobody is fooled when you "sacrifice" for intense "difficulties" which happen to serve your ego and self-image. A lifter who loves to lift intensely is not doing "hard" work by lifting "hard." "Hard" work is the inner work.
Think hard about what you REALLY want out of exercise, obliterate the trite, petty gender normative ego devices and defense mechanisms, dig deep and get a strong "why" for your choices, make it part of your soul, routinely re-examine the biases and skew that creep in, and consistently EXECUTE based on a personal version of self-discipline that doesn't just exist for its own robotic sake, but that is borne of a very strong and EMOTIONAL belief that what you are doing is a very important and permanent part of who you are and who you NEED to be, forever. "God put me here to do this," is not the worst idea an athlete ever had, but even a secular athlete can find equally strong reasons to become who they want to become and to stay who they wanted to be.
So many men out there think their arms need to be bigger, their abs need to be flatter, or their chest needs to be puffier. Women tend to think they should cycle through the entire lexicon of available glute exercises until they get a perfect buttock, or they will spend endless amounts of time on an elliptical or treadmill trying to make sure they stay thin.
Both suffer from gender bias. Women's tendencies are actually healthier than men's, but you'd be hard pressed to tell me that obsessing over your ass is inherently LESS vain than obsessing over your biceps, just because it happens to incidentally hit the mark by aiding hip health.
People want to be liked. And accepted, and loved, and fucked, and chosen. They want to stay relevant to their lovers, they want to have the confidence to find new ones. They tend to associate certain self-image stuff with that confidence. For men, it's having a commanding presence. That is almost uniformly associated with a muscular upper body.
On a primal level, our ancestors who were either more naturally endowed up top, or whose rough lifestyles incidentally caused hypertrophy probably WERE better able to defeat other men in a fight. All things being equal (and that includes a complete lack of skill, and the absence of leg training) a guy with a big upper body probably still WILL win an unskilled 1 on 1 fight.
The problem is, that's not the world we live in. That type of self-image, rooted in primal dominance, is only really true in the absence of: 1) grapplers, 2) boxers, MMA fighters, or just about anyone else with skill, 3) guns, gunfire, weapons, etc, 4) friends of your enemy to kick your face, 5) significant differences in leg strength.
It's an outdated vibe. I'm a gen Xer so my generation came right after the Arnold generation, and we probably got the worst of the bodybuilding aesthetic. Everything was mass, size, arms, etc. Bicep day, tricep day, forearm day. I mean some people probably even had a separate forearm day.
The millennials are a little smarter than we are, but not without the benefit of our mistakes and knowledge. People bag on Crossfit but a lot of the fundamental principles are sound for sport science and health--even if individual boxes sometimes do take it to dangerous or frivolous extremes (which comes more down to individual personalities than a problem with the idea itself.)
Now we are in a third, new era. Post-Arnold, post-Yates, post-Coleman, even post-kipup, post-"squat every day", post-"all types of lifting machismo". Stuff like Gray Cook's FMS and the idea of true functional fitness, the value of balanced physical attributes based on personal assessment, is starting to really take firm root.
This is frankly not as important if you are 20 because your body hasn't even been alive long enough to accumulate significant amounts of wear and tear and large muscle imbalances. Where this matters most is for aging athletes.
The saying "Fast is slow, slow is smooth" is popular in the BJJ community. This could not be more true when it comes to attribute self-assessment. Fitness is a concept based on purpose--fitness to a task. Health is a concept based on feeling and well-being. They largely intersect at this balance point. Baseline fitness IS health, and baseline health is fitness--for life.
A strength athlete that can't run 100m is not fit for life. He is not healthy. He is also ultimately not even fit for his sport, because that cardio matters DURING lifts. Likewise, a grappler who sits on his butt for 8-14 hours a day is only suffering from a lack of strength IF strength is the leading attribute that is putting him at risk for either being unfit, or unhealthy. So if you are so pelvic tilted that you look like a centaur, there is no benefit in being able to bench press 405. If you can't touch your toes, you may still be able to wrestle, but if you play guard long enough, you'll get hurt.
A woman who stretches and runs 40 miles a week on a treadmill is not fit for life if she can't hoist a 30lb bag of dog food for her German Shepard and walk it to her car. Given the fucked up world we live in, I am also of the mind that most women are fundamentally unfit for life (police dependent) if they don't either carry a gun, or learn some basic grappling, because a man's upper body is about 50% stronger than a female's, and 1 in 3 women gets raped at some point in her lifetime, so learning to deploy your legs to protect yourself is as essential as other health attributes. As a big guy who lifts weights and fights, I just can't imagine how so many women walk around every day in this bubble of security, while probably 10% of men eyeing them on the street contemplate hurting them. And many don't--some women just walk around, living in fear, almost all the time. And they don't have to. Enough of that tangent.
So in terms of correctives, the most important thing is constant assessment. Where am I? What weakness is my lifestyle and genetics imposing on me, how do I fix it? How can I combine it with the stuff I like? What other attributes need to be emphasized, based on where I would like to compete with others?
In addition to assessment, the second most important thing in the whole world is compliance. How much time do people really spend creating a personal ideology that permanently commits them to the routine practice of exercise? Is it discipline? Belief systems? What can you do to make your exercise programs not only balanced and assessment-based, but also so firmly ingrained in your mind and your values such that doing them is virtually the same as brushing your teeth, or taking a shower--a form of hygiene. An ante, a non-negotiable price of admission for being alive.
These two problems--biased self-assessment, and a lack of long term compliance, are the top two reasons that people never reach their fitness and health goals. So doesn't it make sense that a LOT of energy should be devoted to making sure you end up having a bias toward working on THEM?
Sometimes, smart people hire athletic trainers to help them eliminate their personal bias. This is great. Sometimes people even do it themselves, after enough trial and error (or after an injury.) But when it comes to compliance, you can't rely on a trainer to yell at you long term (unless you're wealthy) and likewise, relying on group exercise is ok, but it's still an external motivator, and as soon as you lose interest in the group, you will probably lose interest in the exercise.
These concepts are not just native to exercise. They are true in life. Success is created by focused hard work. The hard work part is actually easier--nearly anyone can "slave away" at "hard" things they enjoy, in order to feel a sense of movement and accomplishment in life, but that's an illusion. The "focused" part is the actually "difficult" part, because blindly putting a lot of effort into something is neither "focus," nor "difficulty." Anyone can waste energy. We all generally have plenty of it. Willpower, however, is the limited resource. Values generate willpower, but only introspection generates REAL values. Introspection is, therefore, the true "hard" work.
Selectively working "hard" in directions that are mentally easy for you and your ego is tackling intensity, not tackling difficulty. Things that are actually difficult are most often mentally hard to endure in SUBTLE ways that challenge the self-image, not just in a "pain tolerance" manner. The key to balanced success is to develop a personal discipline and dogma that allows you to consistently subject yourself to necessary kinds of pain that you DON'T like, not just the kinds you do. Nobody is fooled when you "sacrifice" for intense "difficulties" which happen to serve your ego and self-image. A lifter who loves to lift intensely is not doing "hard" work by lifting "hard." "Hard" work is the inner work.
Think hard about what you REALLY want out of exercise, obliterate the trite, petty gender normative ego devices and defense mechanisms, dig deep and get a strong "why" for your choices, make it part of your soul, routinely re-examine the biases and skew that creep in, and consistently EXECUTE based on a personal version of self-discipline that doesn't just exist for its own robotic sake, but that is borne of a very strong and EMOTIONAL belief that what you are doing is a very important and permanent part of who you are and who you NEED to be, forever. "God put me here to do this," is not the worst idea an athlete ever had, but even a secular athlete can find equally strong reasons to become who they want to become and to stay who they wanted to be.
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Two pairs of eyes vs. "one size for all": The case for personal trainers.
"One size fits all" program discussions are all too common. "What if I modify 5/3/1 into a 1/3/5? Is that ok? What if I invert the Texas method with upside down hanging power cleans as my main lift with squats biweekly?" These discussions ought to be about "How do I find a personal trainer that is right for me so I can make sure I am making the most of my limited training time?"
I see it kind of like the "What is this huge lesion?" or "I really fucked up my ankle, internet doctor needed" kind of threads. I don't understand why people will pay perfectly good money for tons of clothing, frivolous drinks in bars, extra food, movies, and whatever else they spend their disposable cash on, but they will never hire a personal trainer.
Are people afraid of being on the hook and being unable to sever the relationship? It doesn't even have to be like a semi-permanent thing. Like when you go to a psychotherapist, they are invested in your continuing to believe that you need a therapist, and they will often times color the discussion to that extent. Only the best therapists will actually proactively say to you "ok, you're done, you don't need therapy anymore."
Some personal trainers are the same way. But there is a literal flood of online trainers available these days. If you grow tired of online instruction, you just stop payment, and stop communicating. How hard is that?
Maybe it's the glut factor itself--the act of finding a good provider of ANY kind of health care is often a daunting tasks. Even finding a primary care provider. But if people put as much energy into threads discussing and vetting the specializations and traits of personal trainers as they do creating threads asking for non-assessed advice, it'd be pretty easy, and very many people would end up with perfect matches.
And that is the very problem that mandates trainers in the first place--a lack of assessment. People pop up on the internet as little more than a forum username, and immediately tons of users begin recommending things to them without knowing anything at all about that person's age, weight, goals, injury history, muscle imbalances, sleep, diet, recovery capacity, hormone panel, personality and compliance characteristics, etc. Do people actually think none of this stuff matters?
Personalization is everything in athletic training. When you see someone on a forum saying "I've gotten great results on 5/3/1" or whatever else, if they are training themselves, you can pretty much guarantee that they made 10x the number of mistakes on that road than they WOULD have made if they had put a little time into finding an appropriate trainer and then taking advantage of that person's customized experience and expertise. And if they got great results, they probably could have gotten GREATER results.
Even if you are vain enough to think that you're just as good a trainer as someone who went to school for 4+ years and passed tests like the CSCS, you can't outrun the concept of the "blind self." Every person, no matter how self-aware and no matter how intelligent, suffers from blind spots in their knowledge about their own character, tendencies, strenths, and weaknesses. Because of this, a second pair of eyes can make a huge difference to even the most experienced of trainees.
Even the wise old trainer's trainer Dan John uses a personal trainer. Are you smarter than Dan--or just more stubborn?
I see it kind of like the "What is this huge lesion?" or "I really fucked up my ankle, internet doctor needed" kind of threads. I don't understand why people will pay perfectly good money for tons of clothing, frivolous drinks in bars, extra food, movies, and whatever else they spend their disposable cash on, but they will never hire a personal trainer.
Are people afraid of being on the hook and being unable to sever the relationship? It doesn't even have to be like a semi-permanent thing. Like when you go to a psychotherapist, they are invested in your continuing to believe that you need a therapist, and they will often times color the discussion to that extent. Only the best therapists will actually proactively say to you "ok, you're done, you don't need therapy anymore."
Some personal trainers are the same way. But there is a literal flood of online trainers available these days. If you grow tired of online instruction, you just stop payment, and stop communicating. How hard is that?
Maybe it's the glut factor itself--the act of finding a good provider of ANY kind of health care is often a daunting tasks. Even finding a primary care provider. But if people put as much energy into threads discussing and vetting the specializations and traits of personal trainers as they do creating threads asking for non-assessed advice, it'd be pretty easy, and very many people would end up with perfect matches.
And that is the very problem that mandates trainers in the first place--a lack of assessment. People pop up on the internet as little more than a forum username, and immediately tons of users begin recommending things to them without knowing anything at all about that person's age, weight, goals, injury history, muscle imbalances, sleep, diet, recovery capacity, hormone panel, personality and compliance characteristics, etc. Do people actually think none of this stuff matters?
Personalization is everything in athletic training. When you see someone on a forum saying "I've gotten great results on 5/3/1" or whatever else, if they are training themselves, you can pretty much guarantee that they made 10x the number of mistakes on that road than they WOULD have made if they had put a little time into finding an appropriate trainer and then taking advantage of that person's customized experience and expertise. And if they got great results, they probably could have gotten GREATER results.
Even if you are vain enough to think that you're just as good a trainer as someone who went to school for 4+ years and passed tests like the CSCS, you can't outrun the concept of the "blind self." Every person, no matter how self-aware and no matter how intelligent, suffers from blind spots in their knowledge about their own character, tendencies, strenths, and weaknesses. Because of this, a second pair of eyes can make a huge difference to even the most experienced of trainees.
Even the wise old trainer's trainer Dan John uses a personal trainer. Are you smarter than Dan--or just more stubborn?
Thursday, May 5, 2016
"Rickson Gracie never needed weights!"
This kind of outmoded Gracie folklore is the problem with 21st century BJJ. So what? That's like saying a prize winning mathematician can win a high school math competition. How is that relevant to high schoolers who want to win? Rickson destroyed people because he was a technical outlier, at a time when few people had anywhere near as much submission grappling skill. "The best BJJ practitioners" are not most of us, and we will never, ever become half as technical as Rickson.
Technical outliers in just about any sport can defeat just about any dabbler who tries to abuse strength. Tennis, hockey, even in weight lifting. A guy with less muscle mass can often lift more than a guy with more muscle in the snatch, if he has better technique.
However, in contact sports, a slightly better dabbler will almost always lose to a much stronger dabbler, because athleticism is a huge part of the equation. It's not as elegant or as mystical as the martial arts folklore we want to believe, but strength dominates the lower tiers (and often the higher tiers) of contact sports. If it didn't, weight classes would be unnecessary, and you would see lightweights winning the absolute division left and right.
Typically most people in BJJ are a few years in, and are looking for an edge. That edge comes from having a body that is generally physically prepared to practice the sport, and at least, a body that is not a liability to itself. Like I said, this goes against the Gracie marketing dogma, because their intent is and has always been to sell BJJ to the average guy (much bigger market, the base of the pyramid) and not so much to the serious athlete (the middle and top of the pyramid.)
And this dogma is kind of fair in a rote self-defense context; it is indeed true that a bean pole of a kid with 12 months of BJJ can destroy a clueless oaf with 40lbs on him in a fight. But let's not create a false dichotomy wherein everyone is either some physically weak Helio-esque BJJ hero or an untrained oaf--if your intent is to fight other BJJ practitioners at a competitive level, they are not unskilled oafs, and typically they strength train, at least sometimes. They might even be setting their alarm to wake up and tear it up on an Olympic platform. In which case, you might be fucked.
The differential in game-changing skill between two competitive mid-belts is often pretty narrow. Strength and other physical attributes will and always DO play a significant role. If the skill gap is too wide, well, then that player probably belts up. Therefore, if you are competing, you have to bring your physical A game as well as your technical one. It is simply not realistic in 2016 to think that you can show up to a competition as a mushy-bodied dorkus with 2 stripes on your belt, suffering under the delusion that somehow the 2 stripes on your belt confer you a magical advantage over the 2 stripes on the other guy's belt, unless you have a complete gameplan from takedown to submission that you have practiced 500 times.
The athletic dominance advantage enjoyed by a 165lb blue belt with a 450lb deadlift compared to a kid in his weight class with a 200lb deadlift is enormous, it's as pronounced as 2 weight classes, because he's as strong as average players of that size, and probably has the same amount of lean body mass. Now, this weaker kid can choose to train 12x/week to try and neutralize that strength advantage with skill, but he also might slip and fall on a purple belt, and the value of his skills advantage might then be negated. His instructor could just hold him back, but then he risks being accused of sandbagging.
That's one good thing about strength--it can't be sandbagged! A true mongo can show up and hulk smash everyone with little talent, toss them around like the mountain or a giant in Game of Thrones, but the worst that will be said of him is "man, that guy is fuckin strong!" Sandbagger is a really pejorative title that will stick with you, but "ragdoller"...well, dog with sunglasses, lol. "Deal with it." Very few people get sympathy for losing to a stronger opponent in competition. Do you want sympathy, or victory?
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Being old is hard, but it's easy because wisdom is suffering's recompense (Wisdom is not magic.)
It's kind of a paradox. Getting old. In this context, the sporting context, getting old is specifically defined as "getting old enough that your hormone levels drop significantly, and you DO notice it."
It's like one of those "I never thought it could happen to me." One day in my 30s I was getting drunk 3 times a week, powerlifting 4 times a week, and still somehow making it to work 5 days a week. My lifts went up if I blew on the bar.
Then, around age 38, it all changed. In most cases the typical "old guy" or masters cutoff is 35, but there is some variance between people. I was a late bloomer in puberty so it would make sense that the air would drain out of my recovery balloons (testes? lol) a little late too.
It'd be really easy to indulge the sob story--pity me, young whipper snappers, it's like I have a disease called age where everything I do physically or socially costs me twice as much as it costs you. And it's kind of true, you do notice it. I look at my lifting stats from 10 years ago (and I keep pretty good stats) and I wonder if another person was doing them.
But that shit about aged wisdom is TRUE. And it's not just some automatic thing granted to older people as a consolation prize, or to make younger people feel inferior or stupid. In fact, not all older people become wise. People always advise you to respect your elders, but some truly are not worthy of respect, because they don't do the work--the work to build the wisdom.
Because wisdom comes from examining our failures. People can act like they are born with it, or that there is some magical gene they posses that confers it on them, but that is just narcissism and self-promotion. The only reason older people are wise is because they have been through more shit, and I am not talking about the "good times."
The fun times probably do confer some wisdom in that they remind us that life is precious and that we should cherish the opportunity to share great moments with other people because you never know when that person whose arm yours is around in that photo may be gone forever. But it is more likely the loss of that person, or the loss of health, or the onset of extremely fragile exercise recovery that actually increases and improves the contextual intelligence of older people.
If I had to draw a hard line between the older people who are not wise, and the ones who are, it'd probably be drawn at those who wish they were young again, and those who are happy with where they are. One of the most powerful aspects of wisdom is the loss of concern for regret. You are who you are at the time where you are, in the place where you are, and in the body you have, let's get going.
Our culture is many things. It's complex; there is no "hard urging" or necessarily a sinister influence (that I know of) which strives to make people feel dissatisfied with life (other than advertisers?), but for whatever reason, there is a lot of influence in the direction of wishing and regret. The desire to move backward. Restoration products, movie remakes, reflection, nostalgia, youth worship. Certain segments and voices in our society act like young people are the only people who are worth anything. Maturity and wisdom is the ability to see through all this occluded nonsense, and to clearly envision gratitude for NOW, for where you are, and who you are. Present-mindedness.
In a BJJ context, my view is that elder wisdom means enjoying the social aspect more. People are sharing and risking their bodies with you, being playful in a way that we should have never lost. Enjoy the personalities you meet. Enjoy the opportunity, the privilege, of still being able to move your spine and legs, like so many other people in this world cannot. Even if you move them poorly, even if you get choked over and over. Every time you fail to die when someone chokes you, it should be a reminder that you are still here, and are fortunate enough to still have whatever physical, mental, familial, and social assets you do have.
It can mean being realistic about training frequency, instead of giving into peer pressure and competitive hysteria. Love golfing? Love spending 3x/week watching movies with your wife? Then train less. There is no punishment for training less. The biggest gap in skill, fitness, knowledge, and other rewards exists between training 0 times and training once a week.
Someone who is 20 who happens to have the time and money may train 12x/week. That's fine. Balance is either something you find, or it is something that finds you. If you find it first, it's more kind to you. When it finds you, there are often consequences.
Many people who obsess over one activity or skill at the expense of every other aspect of life that creates a good balance--friends, family, love, spirit, work, health, etc., end up paying for it later on. I know because I used to be one. And I guess the only reason I do know, is because of wisdom. Balance found me. Yet again, nothing special about me, just old enough to have failed. Thus my case for wisdom being a natural feature of the aged landscape, rather than some form of magic.
It's kind of funny though, because younger people rarely seek out the advice of older people. Some are just blind, some are worried that elders will present defeatist, overly "realistic" viewpoints, and they sometimes do. But often they do the opposite. They encourage you to chase what you love, but to also make an effort to stay grounded, and balance is what it is all about.
Clarify what you love, pursue it in an avid but balanced way, and if some day that sentiment changes, don't bother giving into regret--just carefully change course, and pursue something else. Even having the privilege to pursue more than one loved activity in a lifetime is a blessing reserved for the fortunate, most people the world over never get the opportunity to even do really one thing they love.
There is nobody so fortunate in this world as the person who manages to not only master the thing they love, but to make a healthy living off it, all while maintaining enough balance that they still have genuine connection back to their humanity, in the form of friends, love, family, spirit.
It's like one of those "I never thought it could happen to me." One day in my 30s I was getting drunk 3 times a week, powerlifting 4 times a week, and still somehow making it to work 5 days a week. My lifts went up if I blew on the bar.
Then, around age 38, it all changed. In most cases the typical "old guy" or masters cutoff is 35, but there is some variance between people. I was a late bloomer in puberty so it would make sense that the air would drain out of my recovery balloons (testes? lol) a little late too.
It'd be really easy to indulge the sob story--pity me, young whipper snappers, it's like I have a disease called age where everything I do physically or socially costs me twice as much as it costs you. And it's kind of true, you do notice it. I look at my lifting stats from 10 years ago (and I keep pretty good stats) and I wonder if another person was doing them.
But that shit about aged wisdom is TRUE. And it's not just some automatic thing granted to older people as a consolation prize, or to make younger people feel inferior or stupid. In fact, not all older people become wise. People always advise you to respect your elders, but some truly are not worthy of respect, because they don't do the work--the work to build the wisdom.
Because wisdom comes from examining our failures. People can act like they are born with it, or that there is some magical gene they posses that confers it on them, but that is just narcissism and self-promotion. The only reason older people are wise is because they have been through more shit, and I am not talking about the "good times."
The fun times probably do confer some wisdom in that they remind us that life is precious and that we should cherish the opportunity to share great moments with other people because you never know when that person whose arm yours is around in that photo may be gone forever. But it is more likely the loss of that person, or the loss of health, or the onset of extremely fragile exercise recovery that actually increases and improves the contextual intelligence of older people.
If I had to draw a hard line between the older people who are not wise, and the ones who are, it'd probably be drawn at those who wish they were young again, and those who are happy with where they are. One of the most powerful aspects of wisdom is the loss of concern for regret. You are who you are at the time where you are, in the place where you are, and in the body you have, let's get going.
Our culture is many things. It's complex; there is no "hard urging" or necessarily a sinister influence (that I know of) which strives to make people feel dissatisfied with life (other than advertisers?), but for whatever reason, there is a lot of influence in the direction of wishing and regret. The desire to move backward. Restoration products, movie remakes, reflection, nostalgia, youth worship. Certain segments and voices in our society act like young people are the only people who are worth anything. Maturity and wisdom is the ability to see through all this occluded nonsense, and to clearly envision gratitude for NOW, for where you are, and who you are. Present-mindedness.
In a BJJ context, my view is that elder wisdom means enjoying the social aspect more. People are sharing and risking their bodies with you, being playful in a way that we should have never lost. Enjoy the personalities you meet. Enjoy the opportunity, the privilege, of still being able to move your spine and legs, like so many other people in this world cannot. Even if you move them poorly, even if you get choked over and over. Every time you fail to die when someone chokes you, it should be a reminder that you are still here, and are fortunate enough to still have whatever physical, mental, familial, and social assets you do have.
It can mean being realistic about training frequency, instead of giving into peer pressure and competitive hysteria. Love golfing? Love spending 3x/week watching movies with your wife? Then train less. There is no punishment for training less. The biggest gap in skill, fitness, knowledge, and other rewards exists between training 0 times and training once a week.
Someone who is 20 who happens to have the time and money may train 12x/week. That's fine. Balance is either something you find, or it is something that finds you. If you find it first, it's more kind to you. When it finds you, there are often consequences.
Many people who obsess over one activity or skill at the expense of every other aspect of life that creates a good balance--friends, family, love, spirit, work, health, etc., end up paying for it later on. I know because I used to be one. And I guess the only reason I do know, is because of wisdom. Balance found me. Yet again, nothing special about me, just old enough to have failed. Thus my case for wisdom being a natural feature of the aged landscape, rather than some form of magic.
It's kind of funny though, because younger people rarely seek out the advice of older people. Some are just blind, some are worried that elders will present defeatist, overly "realistic" viewpoints, and they sometimes do. But often they do the opposite. They encourage you to chase what you love, but to also make an effort to stay grounded, and balance is what it is all about.
Clarify what you love, pursue it in an avid but balanced way, and if some day that sentiment changes, don't bother giving into regret--just carefully change course, and pursue something else. Even having the privilege to pursue more than one loved activity in a lifetime is a blessing reserved for the fortunate, most people the world over never get the opportunity to even do really one thing they love.
There is nobody so fortunate in this world as the person who manages to not only master the thing they love, but to make a healthy living off it, all while maintaining enough balance that they still have genuine connection back to their humanity, in the form of friends, love, family, spirit.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
"Relative Strength" is everything in BJJ
"Pull your own weight."
One of the biggest reasons that BJJ practitioners are big on pullups is because they are an instant sanity check. Am I strong enough to move my own weight? In sport science, "relative strength" basically means the ability to move your body through space, the ability to move your own weight.
If two deadlifters pull 405, and one weighs 220 and the other weighs 165, the lighter guy has more relative strength, at least in the deadlift and associated musculature. Now his bench might suck, but in general, people who value relative strength tend to often be pretty rounded out and balanced in where they are strong. A lot of "bodyweight fitness" people fall into this category.
I see people recommending bodyweight fitness and kettlebells to BJJ players all the time. First of all, both are great, IF they bring you to a point of excellent relative fitness, coming from an untrained state. But what is excellent? What is acceptable? You should be fit enough to do a high number of pullups (20), pushups (50+), bodyweight squats (50+). The military has historically also used things like situps and crunches, but unnecessary flexion of the lumbar and thoracic spine during strength training is something that is viewed more and more as increasing risk for repetitive stress spine injuries--see just about any interview with Dr. Stuart McGill.
However, there is more than one type of relative strength, because there is more than one body type. A lot of people think that relative strength and fitness has to mean being a super lean and cardio dominant athlete. In BJJ, and in life and health, this strategy CAN work very very well, but like many fitness ideals, this alienates a large percentage of the population, specifically mesomorphic and endomorphic body types.
An ultra-heavyweight who noodles around with goofy looking 60lb kettlebell swings is going to get demolished by an advanced powerlifter of equivalent technical skill. Kettle bells are mostly popular because Pavel Tsatsouline is an confident writer and skilled promoter whose book caught on. The traditional use for kettlebells is throwing them around, not swinging them around. They are good for barbell users who are recovering from an injury, or if they are heavy as shit, but typically in most gyms, they are not. The use of 60lb kettle bells will not get you to a 1.5-2x BW baseline strength level in any of the important movements, excepting maybe OHP. It will get you stronger than a novice, and you will develop a higher than average RFD for your strength, which is good, but you will still only be of intermediate level strength at best.
If you are fat, come from fat genes, with fat folks, fat uncles, etc, the ideal of you ever being the ripped ab guy is bullshit. Your basal metabolic rate just does not work that way, and you will never achieve that without starving yourself. Additionally, a lot of people who CAN achieve that (typically younger people too) manage to be that lean while getting drunk weekly and eating submarine sandwiches. I know because I was like that in my 20s too.
What I am getting at is that the the path to relative strength and thus reliable BJJ performance for older and bigger people goes directly through leg and posterior chain training, period. It does not matter if you weigh 270 lbs if your heart stroke volume is strong, your V02 max is good, you get regular cardio, AND you can squat twice your bodyweight. In fact, you are going to pretty much kill everybody.
Heavyweights with good relative strength are nightmares. One point I keep making and intend to keep making is that our society rewards normal males for buying into the image of the large torso'd man. That's fine, IF your sole purpose in life is to bolster your confidence by LOOKING intimidating and/or sexy (in a somewhat passe way.) But grapplers are not normal males, and real intimidation comes from leg drive. Watch any GOOD wrestler. 0% of them have weak legs, or are pure upper body guys. In 0% will you see legs being a liability, unable to carry whatever's going on up top.
And I hate to say it, but not really--women get this more than we do, by a fair margin, if accidentally. Granted, a lot of the time their own motivation is a comparably narcissistic obsession with the look of their ass, but the funny thing about that is that an ass that looks full and shapely usually DOES imply a higher likelihood of good relative glute strength and hip health, so in effect, the narcissistic ideal of "skinny with a shapely butt" many of them chase ends up resulting in them being inadvertently healthier than us. All of that trendy tread-milling, pilates, yoga, and lunging go a long way toward producing a human with good hip health and good relative strength.
But as men, we tend to want more mass. With roughly 20x the testosterone of women, it is also much easier to build for us, so it makes sense that a majority of us chase it, while a majority of women chase toning, shaping, and leanness. However, functional mass is a real concept, and if you are a fighter, you have no business making the work of your hips, which are the focal point of jiu-jitsu, harder by bloating up your torso like you're Dorian Yates in 1994. You'll still get fuckin choked.
I think there is a stereotype that has developed of the heavyweight as a slower, weaker, flopping frustrated man who gets side controlled, knee on bellied, and basically dominated. This is definitely common, especially when fighting agile, strong middleweights. There ARE a lot of guys like this, partly because our society teaches men to bench press like sheep, but also because sedentary jobs and lives are common, so abdominal fat weight must be accounted for in leg and hip drive. Thus, the combination of being both fat AND strong (aka fatstrong) in the upper body is a double whammy for men who do not do leg or posterior chain work.
The main point here is that if you have a propensity to be fat, AND you like to lift hard upper body, you NEED to squat, deadlift, clean, etc in a ratio that is roughly 2:1 to your upper body work, in order to develop relative strength for BJJ, or else the people who do have that type of mobile strength are going to continue to beat your ass indefinitely.
And as I said before, you could do worse than to drop upper body work entirely, since the deadlift is the answer to most of BJJ's pulling questions. Even if you have a beer gut, if you focus on legs and posterior chain work, you will still move well on the mats, and in relatively short order, you will be a fearsome competitor.
An anecdote from Mark Rippetoe's "Strong Enough" comes to mind where he is talking about a friend of his who is a high level judoka, who recounts how he got his ass ragdolled by a much less skilled judoka because the opponent was at or beyond the cusp of the "elite" level in the powerlifts. This shit happens. Strength is a lot like weight class--being seriously outclassed is dangerous.
On the other hand, becoming elite in lifting is a waste of time for a competitive BJJ practitioner, but so is endless amounts of mat time, below the black belt level. EVERY skill in the world has a learning curve that is asymptotal. Big gains up front, followed by ever diminishing returns. BJJ technique is like that (purple is the sharp curve), powerlifting is like that (advanced strength standards.)
But if you want to become and stay competitive in a sport that is realistically probably 50% skill and 50% strength/athleticism BELOW the black belt level, where technical execution skill in participants is typically separated by less than 2 years of experience, you can't spend all your time trying to claw your way up either one of those two asymptotes (the BJJ skill one, or the lifting one) because optimizing noob gains in both attributes is far, far more efficient. Also, deliberate and accidental sandbagging is a real problem, so at white or blue belt, you could realistically come up against someone with twice your mat time, and if you do, you had better be able to throw that bastard around.
My recommendation for any competitive BJJ practitioner below the unlimited or absolute weight classes is to take up the slack in both learning curves, as rapidly as possible. If you are already very strong, roll a LOT until you are very close to the blue belt or the purple belt. If you are already a good grappler, heed these strength standards and actively pursue the non-bench powerlifts until your totals for your weight class are well into the INTERMEDIATE range. For unlimited and absolute competitors, I recommend actively pursuing the advanced pedigree, even if it means taking some time off to purely train with barbells.
If you're a purple belt, it is going to take you a LOT longer to get a big technical skill boost within the belt, and to get close enough to brown not to get tooled in a regional comp, than it would take to develop intermediate level strength. Anyone without bad genes can go from novice or even untrained totals to intermediate level totals in 6 months to a year. If [especially points-based] BJJ is 50% athleticism, and you can improve your strength and athleticism by 50% in 9 months, that's a 25% overall improvement in your competitiveness without touching a mat. Good luck getting that out of mat time in the same time period without being a 12x/week mat rat--at which point you might end up getting a brown belt by accident and have to start all over again. Lol.
That whole folklore about "Helio beat people up at 110lbs while fighting off asthmatic polio" shit purported by the Gracie family is marketing fluff designed to sell memberships to average Joes, who make up the bulk of any school's admission dues. You're not the average Joe, and Helio was either fighting people who were completely ignorant of BJJ, Judo, and wrestling, or else they had so little skill that it was basically like a coral belt beating up a blue belt. And I bet he was also really STRONG for his WEIGHT.
One of the biggest reasons that BJJ practitioners are big on pullups is because they are an instant sanity check. Am I strong enough to move my own weight? In sport science, "relative strength" basically means the ability to move your body through space, the ability to move your own weight.
If two deadlifters pull 405, and one weighs 220 and the other weighs 165, the lighter guy has more relative strength, at least in the deadlift and associated musculature. Now his bench might suck, but in general, people who value relative strength tend to often be pretty rounded out and balanced in where they are strong. A lot of "bodyweight fitness" people fall into this category.
I see people recommending bodyweight fitness and kettlebells to BJJ players all the time. First of all, both are great, IF they bring you to a point of excellent relative fitness, coming from an untrained state. But what is excellent? What is acceptable? You should be fit enough to do a high number of pullups (20), pushups (50+), bodyweight squats (50+). The military has historically also used things like situps and crunches, but unnecessary flexion of the lumbar and thoracic spine during strength training is something that is viewed more and more as increasing risk for repetitive stress spine injuries--see just about any interview with Dr. Stuart McGill.
However, there is more than one type of relative strength, because there is more than one body type. A lot of people think that relative strength and fitness has to mean being a super lean and cardio dominant athlete. In BJJ, and in life and health, this strategy CAN work very very well, but like many fitness ideals, this alienates a large percentage of the population, specifically mesomorphic and endomorphic body types.
An ultra-heavyweight who noodles around with goofy looking 60lb kettlebell swings is going to get demolished by an advanced powerlifter of equivalent technical skill. Kettle bells are mostly popular because Pavel Tsatsouline is an confident writer and skilled promoter whose book caught on. The traditional use for kettlebells is throwing them around, not swinging them around. They are good for barbell users who are recovering from an injury, or if they are heavy as shit, but typically in most gyms, they are not. The use of 60lb kettle bells will not get you to a 1.5-2x BW baseline strength level in any of the important movements, excepting maybe OHP. It will get you stronger than a novice, and you will develop a higher than average RFD for your strength, which is good, but you will still only be of intermediate level strength at best.
If you are fat, come from fat genes, with fat folks, fat uncles, etc, the ideal of you ever being the ripped ab guy is bullshit. Your basal metabolic rate just does not work that way, and you will never achieve that without starving yourself. Additionally, a lot of people who CAN achieve that (typically younger people too) manage to be that lean while getting drunk weekly and eating submarine sandwiches. I know because I was like that in my 20s too.
What I am getting at is that the the path to relative strength and thus reliable BJJ performance for older and bigger people goes directly through leg and posterior chain training, period. It does not matter if you weigh 270 lbs if your heart stroke volume is strong, your V02 max is good, you get regular cardio, AND you can squat twice your bodyweight. In fact, you are going to pretty much kill everybody.
Heavyweights with good relative strength are nightmares. One point I keep making and intend to keep making is that our society rewards normal males for buying into the image of the large torso'd man. That's fine, IF your sole purpose in life is to bolster your confidence by LOOKING intimidating and/or sexy (in a somewhat passe way.) But grapplers are not normal males, and real intimidation comes from leg drive. Watch any GOOD wrestler. 0% of them have weak legs, or are pure upper body guys. In 0% will you see legs being a liability, unable to carry whatever's going on up top.
And I hate to say it, but not really--women get this more than we do, by a fair margin, if accidentally. Granted, a lot of the time their own motivation is a comparably narcissistic obsession with the look of their ass, but the funny thing about that is that an ass that looks full and shapely usually DOES imply a higher likelihood of good relative glute strength and hip health, so in effect, the narcissistic ideal of "skinny with a shapely butt" many of them chase ends up resulting in them being inadvertently healthier than us. All of that trendy tread-milling, pilates, yoga, and lunging go a long way toward producing a human with good hip health and good relative strength.
But as men, we tend to want more mass. With roughly 20x the testosterone of women, it is also much easier to build for us, so it makes sense that a majority of us chase it, while a majority of women chase toning, shaping, and leanness. However, functional mass is a real concept, and if you are a fighter, you have no business making the work of your hips, which are the focal point of jiu-jitsu, harder by bloating up your torso like you're Dorian Yates in 1994. You'll still get fuckin choked.
I think there is a stereotype that has developed of the heavyweight as a slower, weaker, flopping frustrated man who gets side controlled, knee on bellied, and basically dominated. This is definitely common, especially when fighting agile, strong middleweights. There ARE a lot of guys like this, partly because our society teaches men to bench press like sheep, but also because sedentary jobs and lives are common, so abdominal fat weight must be accounted for in leg and hip drive. Thus, the combination of being both fat AND strong (aka fatstrong) in the upper body is a double whammy for men who do not do leg or posterior chain work.
The main point here is that if you have a propensity to be fat, AND you like to lift hard upper body, you NEED to squat, deadlift, clean, etc in a ratio that is roughly 2:1 to your upper body work, in order to develop relative strength for BJJ, or else the people who do have that type of mobile strength are going to continue to beat your ass indefinitely.
And as I said before, you could do worse than to drop upper body work entirely, since the deadlift is the answer to most of BJJ's pulling questions. Even if you have a beer gut, if you focus on legs and posterior chain work, you will still move well on the mats, and in relatively short order, you will be a fearsome competitor.
An anecdote from Mark Rippetoe's "Strong Enough" comes to mind where he is talking about a friend of his who is a high level judoka, who recounts how he got his ass ragdolled by a much less skilled judoka because the opponent was at or beyond the cusp of the "elite" level in the powerlifts. This shit happens. Strength is a lot like weight class--being seriously outclassed is dangerous.
On the other hand, becoming elite in lifting is a waste of time for a competitive BJJ practitioner, but so is endless amounts of mat time, below the black belt level. EVERY skill in the world has a learning curve that is asymptotal. Big gains up front, followed by ever diminishing returns. BJJ technique is like that (purple is the sharp curve), powerlifting is like that (advanced strength standards.)
But if you want to become and stay competitive in a sport that is realistically probably 50% skill and 50% strength/athleticism BELOW the black belt level, where technical execution skill in participants is typically separated by less than 2 years of experience, you can't spend all your time trying to claw your way up either one of those two asymptotes (the BJJ skill one, or the lifting one) because optimizing noob gains in both attributes is far, far more efficient. Also, deliberate and accidental sandbagging is a real problem, so at white or blue belt, you could realistically come up against someone with twice your mat time, and if you do, you had better be able to throw that bastard around.
My recommendation for any competitive BJJ practitioner below the unlimited or absolute weight classes is to take up the slack in both learning curves, as rapidly as possible. If you are already very strong, roll a LOT until you are very close to the blue belt or the purple belt. If you are already a good grappler, heed these strength standards and actively pursue the non-bench powerlifts until your totals for your weight class are well into the INTERMEDIATE range. For unlimited and absolute competitors, I recommend actively pursuing the advanced pedigree, even if it means taking some time off to purely train with barbells.
If you're a purple belt, it is going to take you a LOT longer to get a big technical skill boost within the belt, and to get close enough to brown not to get tooled in a regional comp, than it would take to develop intermediate level strength. Anyone without bad genes can go from novice or even untrained totals to intermediate level totals in 6 months to a year. If [especially points-based] BJJ is 50% athleticism, and you can improve your strength and athleticism by 50% in 9 months, that's a 25% overall improvement in your competitiveness without touching a mat. Good luck getting that out of mat time in the same time period without being a 12x/week mat rat--at which point you might end up getting a brown belt by accident and have to start all over again. Lol.
That whole folklore about "Helio beat people up at 110lbs while fighting off asthmatic polio" shit purported by the Gracie family is marketing fluff designed to sell memberships to average Joes, who make up the bulk of any school's admission dues. You're not the average Joe, and Helio was either fighting people who were completely ignorant of BJJ, Judo, and wrestling, or else they had so little skill that it was basically like a coral belt beating up a blue belt. And I bet he was also really STRONG for his WEIGHT.
The root of cultism is unquestioned status
I don't know why some people treat black belts like they are sages. These aren't Shaolin Monks. Sure, it takes a particular set of attributes to get to the black belt level--persistence, endurance, love, toughness, grit, luck, temperance...the list goes on. But that doesn't automatically mean that the things a black or upper belt think have any real carry over into day to day life.
I'm relatively certain that a priest or a best selling author of a highly philosophical book could walk onto the mat with a white belt on and some people would still think the black belt is a more spiritual person simply because he's wearing what they want to wear. That kind of attitude causes cultism. Black belts are important people, but keep their identities in perspective. They are teachers of an art. No more, no less. The traditional overly-mystified Hollywood and fake "eastern" ideal of a martial arts master being a master of everything is bullshit at best, and unsubstantiated at worst.
It's highly likely that someone who has mastered an art has a propensity for mastery in other areas of their lives, because focused people tend to succeed repeatedly, but this is not always true. For every black belt who is a special thinker, there is another who is just an average Joe who fixated on a martial art, or worse, an extremely obsessive person who used martial arts to avoid traumatic external realities in their lives, to recover from them, or even to avoid doing inner work. Grappling is a discipline but it also functions quite nicely as a form of escapism, and escapists aren't sages.
I'm relatively certain that a priest or a best selling author of a highly philosophical book could walk onto the mat with a white belt on and some people would still think the black belt is a more spiritual person simply because he's wearing what they want to wear. That kind of attitude causes cultism. Black belts are important people, but keep their identities in perspective. They are teachers of an art. No more, no less. The traditional overly-mystified Hollywood and fake "eastern" ideal of a martial arts master being a master of everything is bullshit at best, and unsubstantiated at worst.
It's highly likely that someone who has mastered an art has a propensity for mastery in other areas of their lives, because focused people tend to succeed repeatedly, but this is not always true. For every black belt who is a special thinker, there is another who is just an average Joe who fixated on a martial art, or worse, an extremely obsessive person who used martial arts to avoid traumatic external realities in their lives, to recover from them, or even to avoid doing inner work. Grappling is a discipline but it also functions quite nicely as a form of escapism, and escapists aren't sages.
Monday, April 18, 2016
The most dangerous muscle is hidden muscle.
This is the hidden muscle BJJ blog. It's semi-anonymous. If people who know me find out I write it, I ultimately don't care much because I have nothing to hide (except muscle), however, I still believe and have always believed that the presumption of anonymity allows people to be more creative and think and write more freely in the conceptual sense. For instance, if you have an interesting, well thought out theory on sprints, and 11 people you know are in the room calling you out on the fact that you, for whatever personal reason, suck at sprints, then that is seriously going to cramp your ability to think and express freely about that topic.
I believe that the fallacy of "evidence basis" is something that kills knowledge and ideas. Not all good ideas come from people who can demonstrate excellence at every single thing they write about--champions don't have a monopoly on relevant thought. Just look at some of the top thought leaders in the weight training space, they're fat and old.
That said, my personal resume is basically this: 6 years of BJJ, and 25 years of weight lifting. I'm not PT certified but I have actively studied PT bodies of knowledge for over 10 years. I've studied and run old programs like Doggcrapp, Westside, 5/3/1, etc. Read numerous books by guys like Bompa, Rippetoe, Cressey, etc. However, I find the eastern European shit these guys read to be insufferably dry. But they are supertrainers, I'm not.
That said, the "hidden" part of this title is not at ALL about my identity, it's about my belief in what makes strong BJJ players. It's very similar to wrestling. Every serious wrestler I have ever known has been someone serious about leg and posterior chain training. Anyone who is serious about weight training is going to say "duh" there, but something I picked up from Rippetoe recently--ALL good ideas bear constant repetition because they are nearly drowning in a sea of bad ones.
I was at the gym yesterday, doing deadlifts and squats. The gym was filled with guys trying to improve their bench press. If you are a guy who wants a poofy chest to try and sleep with girls at the beach, fine, whatever. But if you are a BJJ player, a strong upper body is mainly only good for defending your neck and arms once your shitty guard and shitty legs have been passed. I will go into this in more detail in a later post, but being a BJJ "light bulb" body is better than being a weakling, but is still suboptimal.
Worse, it pushes you up in weight class. In competitive BJJ, every weight class runs the risk of bringing along with it guys whose muscle is optimized for that weight class. So if you're carrying a goofy looking bro bod with huge traps and shoulders, and your chicken legs can barely carry the weight, a guy with the opposite musculature is likely to show up and ragdoll your ass off the takedown, and drive through in any guard pass or scramble situations like a D1 wrestler.
As the former who is trying to become the latter, I look forward to ruining your strength paradigm. The hidden muscle manifesto is all about this. GIVE UP on cosmetic muscle. The most dangerous muscle is hidden muscle. I'm an ultra-heavyweight. At any given point in time, I can run into a guy who dwarfs me, and I HAVE. I can't begin to tell you how powerless it makes you feel when you find yourself basically in a daunting "absolute weight class" situation when you didn't even sign up for absolute.
The KEY is to create that power for yourself. You may never be 6'3", you may never have great genetics, but put your muscle in the RIGHT places, put it in the hidden places. You could do worse than to give up on upper body training altogether. In BJJ, if you're getting armbarred, it's because of 1 of 3 reasons: 1) you're technically inferior, 2) you're gassed, or 3) your posterior chain sucks so you can't get out from under someone who is setting one up. Reason #3 is very related to reason #2, and is even somewhat related to #1.
So that's all for now. Move your muscle to the right locations. Use your RECOVERY for the right reasons. Make your WEIGHT with the right proportions. Embrace the hidden muscle philosophy. Think like a cyclist--my hips and legs are everything. If I need to bench press somebody, I fucked up a long time ago.
I believe that the fallacy of "evidence basis" is something that kills knowledge and ideas. Not all good ideas come from people who can demonstrate excellence at every single thing they write about--champions don't have a monopoly on relevant thought. Just look at some of the top thought leaders in the weight training space, they're fat and old.
That said, my personal resume is basically this: 6 years of BJJ, and 25 years of weight lifting. I'm not PT certified but I have actively studied PT bodies of knowledge for over 10 years. I've studied and run old programs like Doggcrapp, Westside, 5/3/1, etc. Read numerous books by guys like Bompa, Rippetoe, Cressey, etc. However, I find the eastern European shit these guys read to be insufferably dry. But they are supertrainers, I'm not.
That said, the "hidden" part of this title is not at ALL about my identity, it's about my belief in what makes strong BJJ players. It's very similar to wrestling. Every serious wrestler I have ever known has been someone serious about leg and posterior chain training. Anyone who is serious about weight training is going to say "duh" there, but something I picked up from Rippetoe recently--ALL good ideas bear constant repetition because they are nearly drowning in a sea of bad ones.
I was at the gym yesterday, doing deadlifts and squats. The gym was filled with guys trying to improve their bench press. If you are a guy who wants a poofy chest to try and sleep with girls at the beach, fine, whatever. But if you are a BJJ player, a strong upper body is mainly only good for defending your neck and arms once your shitty guard and shitty legs have been passed. I will go into this in more detail in a later post, but being a BJJ "light bulb" body is better than being a weakling, but is still suboptimal.
Worse, it pushes you up in weight class. In competitive BJJ, every weight class runs the risk of bringing along with it guys whose muscle is optimized for that weight class. So if you're carrying a goofy looking bro bod with huge traps and shoulders, and your chicken legs can barely carry the weight, a guy with the opposite musculature is likely to show up and ragdoll your ass off the takedown, and drive through in any guard pass or scramble situations like a D1 wrestler.
As the former who is trying to become the latter, I look forward to ruining your strength paradigm. The hidden muscle manifesto is all about this. GIVE UP on cosmetic muscle. The most dangerous muscle is hidden muscle. I'm an ultra-heavyweight. At any given point in time, I can run into a guy who dwarfs me, and I HAVE. I can't begin to tell you how powerless it makes you feel when you find yourself basically in a daunting "absolute weight class" situation when you didn't even sign up for absolute.
The KEY is to create that power for yourself. You may never be 6'3", you may never have great genetics, but put your muscle in the RIGHT places, put it in the hidden places. You could do worse than to give up on upper body training altogether. In BJJ, if you're getting armbarred, it's because of 1 of 3 reasons: 1) you're technically inferior, 2) you're gassed, or 3) your posterior chain sucks so you can't get out from under someone who is setting one up. Reason #3 is very related to reason #2, and is even somewhat related to #1.
So that's all for now. Move your muscle to the right locations. Use your RECOVERY for the right reasons. Make your WEIGHT with the right proportions. Embrace the hidden muscle philosophy. Think like a cyclist--my hips and legs are everything. If I need to bench press somebody, I fucked up a long time ago.
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