Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
This is the official podcast of the Bulletproof For BJJ movement. Hosted by JT & Joey. Each episode the founders break down problems that Jiu-jitsu people experience, giving guidance and tips to improve your training for BJJ. With the goal of helping every body on the Brazilian jiu-jitsu path reduce their chance of injury, improve their strength and mobility to become more resilient.
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Use These Elite Exercises to Level Up Your Jiu Jitsu
Ever wondered how toe flexibility could be the game-changer in your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu performance? Find out how to prevent toe strain and elevate your footwork as we delve into listener Roger from Rockville's questions. We'll share practical tips to 10x your toe and foot mobility, alongside some personal experiences about the consequences of inflexible calf muscles leading to severe mat burn. Plus, discover the benefits of using active toes. We also fire back at Dr. Mike for his disdain for the Turkish Get Up. Join us for the ultimate QNA for BJJ experience.
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A good martial artist does not become tense but ready. Essentially, at this point the fight is over.
Speaker 1:So you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power?
Speaker 2:I'm ready. Um, here's the deal. If you want to leave us a question, go to the website bulletproof for bjjcom, hit the podcast tab, go down, record us a voicemail and we will play it on the show and answer. Now here's the thing. You might be thinking I'll just send the guys a dm on instagram. That's great, we love it. But here's the ask. Is that that's just a like a two-way communication, that's just us to you? What we would really like is for you to record it as a voicemail so that we can broadcast it to the masses, share it with the people, because there's more than likely many, many, many other humans in the world who are wondering the same thing as you, and so our favor is if you want us to fucking give you, the response is do the voicemail thing. It's awesome. First one's coming in from your boy, roger.
Speaker 3:Sure, this is Roger from Rockville, maryland, and I've been saving up a few questions for y'all that are kind of unrelated. Number one is about toe flexibility. So I hear a lot from your coach about keeping active toes and active feet and I'm generally pretty flexible, but when I might have, say, side control, or maybe I'm in somebody's guard and I've tried to keep my toes flat on the mat, I feel some strain in the tendons, particularly in the big toes. Toes flat on the mat, I feel some strain in the tendons, particularly in the big toes. I was wondering if there's some kind of flexibility issues that I could work on there.
Speaker 2:Uh, number two I had a question oh, fucking roger, coming in with multiples, let's go first. I like it. Toe flexibility first off the rank. All right, two things relevant to toe flexibility. A good friend of mine, carlos, had the worst mat burn on his feet when we were training in Brazil because he had the least flexible calf muscles ever, and so he would just graze the fuck out of his feet.
Speaker 3:He actually had to stop training Like.
Speaker 2:it just looked like he'd been in a motorbike accident, but his feet were bare. I just ripped all skin off his feet. You don't want that. So per vivo toes alive, feet alive, right, that's a little bit of Portuguese.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just chopped that in.
Speaker 2:But it's because I got grilled on it too. I got smacked in the foot if I didn't have my toes on that, so I know where you're coming from. One biggest problem flip-flops. Flip-flops tighten up the toes and the tendon under the big toe, so and the tendon under the big toe, so that can be one thing that is holding you back. If you're a flexible person, flip-flops are killing you. Number two is the bent Caesar position, which is something we always kind of promote. A lot of people struggle with the knees, but if you're someone whose knees are fine actually spending a bit of time with the toes on the ground like big toes on the ground, feet bent, dorsed and the knees down just sitting- there goes a long way to loosening up the toes yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um, my first thing is I don't do active toes when I'm in someone's guard. I never have, like if I'm in someone's clothes guard and it's never felt. I mean, it's different for me now because I've had the knee surgery. I don't, I don't like right, sure, sure, but I've never. I've always liked to be as close to the ground as I can, so I've always gone with like inactive feet Lower, okay, yeah, but definitely like I see the reason to have active toes and in other positions like side control and front headlock and all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you definitely want active toes, just as a coach there is there like or is it like? No, you should be active toes when you're in someone's close guard, no exceptions. Well, the way it was explained to me is is obviously, it's balance is part of it, right? So you don't want to be like active toes if it makes you fall forward and you get choked in someone's close guard. But if you and I were to have a race, like and we, we both had a starting position, if I had my toes on the ground, you're faster I'm a step ahead, yeah you will eventually have to put your toes on the ground.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you, you're one I'll just be there already yeah, so uh, but do you do it? So if, like I, pull close guard on that ass, are you? Are you going to be active toes, are you?
Speaker 2:sometimes not all the time. Okay, not all the time, but I will. I will go there. Once I feel like I'm not getting fucking submitted, I'll go there. But with the foot flexibility, another good thing that can help you is rolling out your feet. Yeah, and I was thinking, yeah, like so calves and the bottom of the foot, which, if you think about it, roger, kind of the same piece of tissue. So you start at the top of the knee, on the back of the leg, you come down down, you got your calves and you got your achilles and your heels and then you got the plantar fascia and all that shit on the bottom of the foot and then that goes into the toes. So, yeah, use a lacrosse ball, beat up the tissues on the bottom of the foot. Like, just roll the foot on that motherfucker, stretch the calves. If your calves particularly tight, you might find that rolling that works well. Or like a hard massage somehow. Foam roller I find is usually inadequate, but like a hard object like a steel water bottle, is good. Um, and then, like, if you're the kind of person that finds the bent caesar um jt's recommendation difficult to get into, do the rolling out and shit and then try the bent caesar yeah, and I think bent caesar is the one right Like, if you can just expose yourself to that position a little bit every day or every couple of days, you make it part of your sort of part of your daily movement, you will hopefully, in time, get comfortable with it. Or if you're sitting on the mat at jiu-jitsu, which we all spend a bit of time doing it, be there, just try to be a little bit conscious, like, don't just sit or slump on your elbow, sit up toes on the mat and do that position. Yeah, um, I have encountered a couple of people in my life who just can't be in that position. Sure, and it will never change for them, and I think that is the case sometimes with but it's it's like very few people. So more than likely, roger, you change it.
Speaker 2:Today's episode was brought to you by Parry Athletics. They are our preferred apparel sponsor. They've been sponsoring the show for some time now and they do the best gear in the game. They do the best training shorts for the gym or on the mats, and they always have awesome designs for all of their custom rash guards. Now, if you would like to get yourself some Parry Athletics gear, we can get you 20% off when you use the code BULLETPROOF20. That's right, folks. You get 20% off when you use the code BULLETPROOF20. Get some you. Second one coming in from Roger again, okay.
Speaker 3:I like it. It's about the Turkish getup, which is an exercise I love and I heard you guys say a lot of good things about. But recently heard Dr Mike Isretel kind of shame that exercise, saying it's a circus act and I do love circus act but I'm just wondering why he hates so much on it as an exercise for preparation for BJJ and I'm wondering if you guys have a response to that. And third is just kind of a Do we?
Speaker 2:Let's talk about circus acts. If we want to talk about circus acts, let's talk about Dr Mike Isra tells head.
Speaker 1:Hang on, hang on, keep this objective. No, no, no, no, it's true. Don't go on personal attacks.
Speaker 2:Why not Because we're adults. Okay, fair enough. So boring, joe. Come on, let's be sensational. So I understand.
Speaker 2:I've watched that video and I've seen a fair few people definitely off the back of Dr Mike's criticism of the Turkish getup. People jump on that bandwagon and be like, yeah man, fuck that, that doesn't make you athletic. You should do sprints, you should do jumps, you should all right, blah, whatever. That's fine, that's cool. I would say that there's a double component here. One, dr Mike is really good at getting people more muscular, and that's what he is one of the best people in the world at. If you want to grow a particular muscle, he's going to help you out and he has no qualms of saying I just want to get people jacked. That's what it's about, that's what I like, and he also obviously helps people get strong as well, but that's the thing he focuses on. What we focus on with Bulletproof BJJ is helping people be well-balanced, strong and uninjured and uninjured.
Speaker 2:So the other criticism that Dr Mike had relevant to the Turkish getup is really it's a lot of different movements altogether. That doesn't necessarily develop athleticism, it's just a show of strength or a circus skill. It's a performance. He was kind of pointing to the fact that it doesn't develop one particular athletic trait and other than shoulder stability, which he did say it's good for, which many people do say. And the other criticism was if you can't do like a technical standup, then you've got problems. Like anyone can do that movement.
Speaker 2:But I will tell you this, the counterpoint, as somebody who has tried to put as much weight on the Turkish getup as possible, like trying to lift my own body weight at that movement it trains many different traits and that is the advantage. And this is something that does actually directly translate to BJJ, specifically in the gi. If you have someone trying to hold you down in the gi, if you don't train gi, then side control, getting outside control, isn't that hard as a no-gi thing and there's many people complaining about it who don't train in the gi. If you've trained in the gi and you've caught that cross face and you had someone crush the fuck out of you, if you can get that C-cup grip or the grip under the armpit and you're good at the get up, it will help you get out of the position or at least get your guard back. So we care about people being fit, healthy and uninjured. That's really important.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I'd say is Dr Mike Israetel doesn't like Turkish get up because he probably sucks at it. This is a guy who can't get his arms back in a proper position to squat because his shoulders are too tight. He just says his arms are too big. But I mean that just indicates poor shoulder mobility. So if you have shit shoulder mobility, you can be shit at a Turkish getup. So you know we like to shit on the things that we don't like and Mike doesn't like the you know Turkish getup. So there's that. Yeah, think um I. I agree with those points. I think the um for me. I think that there's a big, there's a big difference in philosophy, uh, between uh for us versus a guy like Mike and I, and I actually liken this to kind of like an eastern western medicine thing maybe the west right western medicine is is extremely interested in the science.
Speaker 2:It is. It is all about the science, what can be proven, and if it cannot be proven, it is ineffective. Right, if it can be proven, it's effective. Now, that obviously makes sense. There's a great logic there and that is awesome.
Speaker 2:But then you go to eastern medicine you go to like chinese medicine. You look at ayurvedic medicine. There's a bunch of shit they do very hard to prove but they've just been doing it for thousands of fucking years and they know that it works quite effectively. So what we know now and I think that this plays out almost in every realm is that a little bit from column a and a little bit from column b is awesome, like both approaches have their downfalls and both approaches have the great things that they bring to the world. So I think about this in the strength training realm. If you are 100% science driven, then your whole approach to building strong athletic humans is with machines and with barbells, because it's stuff that you can measure. You can measure the outcomes and the effectiveness of 10 repetitions of this simple movement pattern equals X difference on the track or X difference in your broad jump.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 2:Whereas you look at, you take a fucking kid that's been training with kettlebells and wrestling in Russia since they were eight years old and maybe they're not going to be the greatest through any of those extremely linear patterns. Right, Like they don't deadlift in a convention. They don't do that as a conventional lift, but you wrestle them and you're like this motherfucker is an animal strong everywhere right so it.
Speaker 2:For me, it's kind of that, the really hardcore science driven side of strength training, just sort of shits on anything that doesn't deliver an extremely scientific, linear outcome, and I think that's good. I do think that we should be looking for a direct outcome from our time spent in training, but what I know is that with something like the turkish getup, yes, its strength is that it incorporates multiple things happening at the one time, and while the sum of each of those individual components or not even the sum, but while each of those individual components might be better developed as an isolated thing through a hip thrust or a bench press or an overhead press there's also great benefit to incorporating them, because what we know is that when the body's moving on the mats, it's moving as one incorporated unit.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So it's. It's just a case that I think there's some truth to that, but I think that the that those folks tend to throw the baby out with the bath water. I would go, and this will surprise Joe. I will go just to deductive reasoning here, like pure logic. Can a person who is really good at a bench press also be really good at a Turkish getup? Maybe, but that's the thing. Being strong at a particular movement doesn't necessarily open the doors to other movements. If you are very strong at a Turkish get-up, this will give you permission to move through planes of movement, like more planes of movement than someone who is just strong at a bench press or strong at a single given thing. And that's what I'd say. You show me someone with an incredibly strong Turkish get-up and they are a strong motherfucker, right. But just because you have a really heavy bench press, that doesn't mean you'll be good at a turkish get up. You know it's not a two-way door, so I always go for the option that gives me the most options. And the turkish get up gives you the most options. Boom, boom. Now roger's got a third one. He squeezes in here. But is this a whole episode about Roger? There's two seconds left on this message, so I don't think that. Third message. So we're going to move on.
Speaker 2:Do you find you get thirsty at training? I do. I do all the time. I'm a sweaty human and I need to hydrate. Now the biggest problem is, by the time you're thirsty, it's a little bit late. You need to hydrate and that's why we got Sodi. Sodi is sponsoring the show. We've got all the colors of the rainbow, great flavors here. We've got salty citrus, salty pineapple, salty berry and, my favorite, salty grapefruit, and they will be releasing two new mystery flavors soon. So why do we need this? It's going to prevent our muscle cramps, it's going to help our energy delivery and it's also going to mean you're less tired, which is an advantage when you're training. If you want to maximize your jujitsu and feel good when you're rolling, you need to get SOTY, and when you purchase SOTY, enter the code BULLETPROOF20 at checkout for 20% off.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Third question here from Finn.
Speaker 1:Hey guys, How's it going? Just a quick question on strengthening shoulders. So I've been training for seven years now and haven't really had any major injury to keep me out of training. But recently I was having some issues with my neck and I decided to go to a chiropractor that was recommended to me and he identified that my shoulders were the issue. So he prescribed a few isolation exercises and then a lot of pharma carries and I'm just is there anything else I can do specifically for strengthening shoulders in this issue and try and mitigate any further injuries?
Speaker 2:So thanks, Okay, good man, good question. Thanks, finn. Yeah, good stuff. So he's doing pharma carries. What were the? Well, he didn't actually –n didn't break down the isolation exercises he was given. Right, he's given some iso exercises, sure, which is you know which is good. Definitely be about that, some banded shit, bit of that, bit of that, bit of these, bit of those.
Speaker 2:But what I'd say is, what is a good compliment to a pharma's carry because pharma's carries are just great exercise is an overhead carry. We had previously we talked about this on a previous episode which is just balancing out your shoulders to help correct impingement, but actually stabilizing. I actually got this from Andrew Locke when I had a shoulder injury. He had actually said you need to get your arm overhead more so your shoulder gets used to stabilizing there. And so, yeah, overhead carries is actually a thing, whether you're doing two at the same time or one. Finn, if you're already doing farmer's carries, I would recommend doing a little bit of overhead carries, provided that doesn't give you more neck pain. That's the only caveat I put on that. Yeah, good stuff. I'd say, man, look're. It's a very general response here because you know we're not.
Speaker 2:There's so many details here that we don't know. But the shoulder is such a complex joint. If if I'm endeavoring to make someone's shoulder stronger, right and this is the low-hanging fruit for me is always like, if you have a joint where you are experiencing pain and you also generally don't have great range of movement or great levels of strength in that shoulder, then I'm just gonna focus on developing the whole shit. Yeah, so it's like all right, well, let's do something that's gonna, that's gonna open up range in every part of that shoulder and then let's strengthen every part of that shoulder. Yeah, so in that way it would be like you know, yeah, you got the carries, you got the carries, you got some isolation stuff. You would be doing some kind of forward pressing, some kind of pulling. Uh, maybe some kind of pulling like a vertical pulling pattern, like a chin up or an assistant chin up. Um, getting in this variety in the upper body training so that you're training the shoulder through many different ranges, I think is going to be the key. But just just to circle back, finn said he'd had neck issues. Yeah, and so maybe also this could be a thoracic thing too, and we were talking previously about hanging and that kind of thing. Yeah, so that's just something else to consider. Even though you know tight shoulders, whatever it might be might be contributing to your neck pain, doing a bit of stuff to open up the thoracic can help too.
Speaker 2:You know, I kind of look at it as um. I was chatting with my partner the other day about um, this recommendation that you should be eating, like they know that grape, like gut. Biodiversity comes from having um 30 different plants in your diet each week. Oh, like roughly 30, right, it's a lot, that's a lot, lot, and I don't think it's saying like a huge quantity of each, but it's just like this diversity of nutrients and you know, bacteria and shit. Fiber, yeah, like is the good stuff. Well, even that right, because the fiber is like you can get the fiber from just smashing psyllium husks.
Speaker 3:No, no but different plant fibers.
Speaker 2:That's right. So yeah, and so uh, I think about it. The same with so you could go oh, my god's a bit fucked up or whatever I'm not digesting. Well, doctors like, take this fucking vitamin supplement, or it could just be, dude, I want you to go and eat fucking like three plants a day. Try not to repeat the plants on any one day, or you know like yeah, yeah, so that you get this diversity. Mix it up same with your training, it's like. Instead of going like super like into what's the thing, it's like, no, let's just develop this whole joint, let's look at everything it's capable of and try and address it with some kind of diversity in mind, and usually that takes care of most of the issues, because then you're using your body in a really like, I hate to say it holistic way, holistic.
Speaker 3:Joe you sell out.
Speaker 2:What are you going to be doing? Push an organic, bloody, single origin sandals, next Selling them to the people. Jesus, but no, I'm with you, joe. I agree, man, and something else that you might want to consider is also if you're a jiu-jitsu person. Forward head position is a bit of a thing, right, and also the fact we're on our phones. Did your physio ask you how much time you spend on the phone? Because that's a thing now. Kids are getting like bad neck problems from just looking at their phone for hours, and I've actually found myself doing it. You get stuck in an instagram fucking death spiral, oh yeah, and you've been looking down for an hour and you feel like you've been guillotined, like you. Just it fucks your neck up. Even doing some chin tucks, it feels strange to do it, but just by you retracting your chin, that can go a long way to helping reduce neck pain too yeah so sprinkle that in.
Speaker 2:Fucking. There you go, um. Thanks for the questions today, guys. If you want to leave us one for a future episode, go to bulletproof of bjjcom. Go to the podcast tab. Record us a voicemail, please do, um, and, of course, wherever you're listening to this, give us a five-star review, subscribe to it, do that whole shit. It lets other people know that this podcast is okay. Preach you, thank you.
