Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Discussions on improving your BJJ, navigating mat-politics and all aspects of the jiu jitsu lifestyle. Multiple weekly episodes for grapplers of any level. Hosted by JT and Joey - Australian jiu jitsu black belts, strength coaches, and creators of Bulletproof For BJJ App. Based out of Sydney, Australia
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Cutting Weight In BJJ: Right Or Wrong?
On today's QNA episode, we get a call from one of our longtime members of the community Ben with the infamous batman voice. He shares his struggles with his recent health scare and how he plans to go about it. We also get a question about a controversial topic: cutting weight. Is it necessary? Or is it a tradition that needs to die. Find out all in this ep.
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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 3:I'm ready.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Q&A episode. We've got a couple of questions from you guys. If you want to leave us one, go to the website bulletproofforbjjcom, hit the podcast tab and record us a voicemail. You can ask us a question About anything Gym politics, strength mobility, jiu-jitsu culture Whatever the fuck you want. Here is the first question, anonymous, of course.
Speaker 1:Hey fellas, this has been Hannah Will, back from the dead, coming to Eat your brains anyway. Uh, I just suffered from cardiac arrest, came back to life thanks to my girlfriend and a bunch of medical professionals, and shortly after that I was implanted with a pacemaker and a defibrillator.
Speaker 1:I was just wondering if you knew anybody that it happened to and what happened with their jiu-jitsu and their fitness life, how they got back into it. So any advice you could provide or any perspective you could provide from somebody you know who's gone through the same thing, I'd really appreciate it. In any case, as always, I appreciate the Bulletproof for Jiu-Jitsu program. It's been a positive influence on my life and I wanted to continue to be so. And while I can't be, uh, lifting things and being a hancher, I'm still gonna, I'm still gonna be making myself as mobile as possible until I can get back to it. Anyway, thanks, fellas, peace, my guy fuck a ben hanwell man I'm sorry to hear that, bro.
Speaker 2:It's so dramatic. That's huge. It's been in the Been in the side chat.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:It's pretty Devastating, considering he's a. He's a man monument and he can't. The uncertainty around what he can and can't do has been, I guess, more resolved now I won't go into it Super deeply, but I has been, I guess, more resolved now. I won't go into it super deeply, but I do know someone specifically who has a pacemaker, who I used to train with Nick Barker, who runs Grappling Industries, australia now instead of Ben Hodgkinson.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he still trains, he still rolls, probably not super hard rolls, I think, because he had it, he put it, had it put in like eight years ago or nine years ago. Now he might be a little laissez faire from time to time. He might just be like, yeah, just roll, you know, like classic jujitsu guy, but he, he trains like he. I think the fear when, when uh Ben first mentioned this, was I'm done, jujitsu is over. Now, like fuck, I'm fucked right, because the doctor's like don't lift weights, don't do this, don't do that, like it's, there's a lot of fear because, like I mean, I have questions. Did you go to the other side? Did you see the light?
Speaker 2:like yeah bro, that's crazy experience to literally yeah, go, go, go, go go and come back. But what I'd say is take heart, it's not the end. It's not the end. You can do jujitsu with a pacemaker or a regulator of sorts, depending I don't know the exact nature of yours and you can come back and you will eventually be doing weights and doing some other things too. So I don't think it's the end of the henchness. So in the meantime, obviously do what the doctor and the surgeons say, but based off what I know from nick and how he lives his life, you'll be able to be a healthy, fit, strong man soon enough. Yeah, for context, for other, for listeners, ben ben's been a long time bullet proffer, yes, big contributor on our community group like ask great questions. He's fucking man's got a voice for radio and he's got a voice for movie intro he's come in, he's hit us on the q a a few times.
Speaker 2:He's always asked good quality stuff. Um, yeah, I've known a couple of people. I know one guy, big dadd, who used to train here oh Not a well, I don't know but he had open heart surgery.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:He had some shit going on. They opened him up, had some pretty fucking heavy-duty stuff done and, you know, he had like a couple of like a year or two where it was like low-intensity training only. But I'm pretty sure that he's at a point where he can now get back into whatever he wants. Wow, my original coach, dan, who graded me to Brown belt he had a pacemaker put in oh, wow, yeah, I think that coincided with him closing the gym and um and I'm not sure how it affected him, cause I sort of lost touch with him at that point but um, yeah, at a point you're probably going to be able to just go back to whatever, because the reality is is like like here's an example I have.
Speaker 2:I got a friend who used to train with us who came to our gym when he'd broken his back. He broke his back at a trampoline park. Oh, jesus, broke his spine Right. Oh my God, it was in a full body cast, like yep and, and was in a full body cast for like three months. It was really bad. He came to our gym maybe six months after that and was like hey, man, I'm a mess, but I want to do something. The doctor told me I would never be able to lift anything heavier than a case of beer again, wow. And you're like wow, that's fucked. And you're like I can see how that makes sense. Like you broke your back, it's kind of whatever. And you're like I can see how that makes sense. Like you broke your back. It's kind of whatever. They've screwed the shit back together. But yeah, you can never go too hard.
Speaker 2:Motherfucker was deadlifting 160 kilos for reps after three years training with us right and full capacity surfing. Whatever he wants to do, he can do it. Like probably has forgotten about that injury, right, and that's kind of the thing is that they give you those recommendations which must be conservative and are based on the average person, yeah, but there's always more bandwidth. There is, and it and it becomes apparent once you get past this acute time of the injury where it's like no, you can actually get back into shit. And I don't know, maybe, maybe, yeah, maybe there is a limitation that you can't go fucking balls to the wall at the comp prep class for adcc.
Speaker 2:Sure, but you can still do jiu-jitsu man you can and I actually think this is the first step in terms of you becoming a cyborg. I think it's perfect. I think you have an unfair advantage. You've got something in you that limits your ability for your heart rate to go high. I think you'll be able to go hard and be recovered quicker because you've got something in you that limits your ability for your heart rate to go high. I think you'll be able to go hard and be recovered quicker because you've got mechanical enhancement. So I would actually look at it like actually, what happens next? Like maybe this is going to become a trend in jujitsu that elite athletes are getting in. I want what he's got. Yeah, he's got the heart regulator so he never gets tired. His heart rate never goes over 80 beats per minute. Imagine, no, look. Shout out to Mr Ben Hanawal. We wish you well, mate, and I know that you are on the comeback, so you'll be good, mate. I have great faith that you'll be back to where you want to be. There is a silver lining in every injury. There's a silver lining in every injury. This is true.
Speaker 2:I had this conversation with a member of the gym this morning. It's always fucking sucks because of all the things you can't do, but that only serves to narrow your focus on the things that you can do. Can do, and that's a chance to get really fucking good at those things. Something else, yeah, big love, man. You know what I love when someone shares a secret with me and that secret is helpful. And the secret that I'm going to share with you today is the new flavor from Sodi. I'm talking about mandarin. I didn't think there was fresher flavors, but I'm telling you that mandarin, it hit different. Not only does it give me sodium, potassium, magnesium to keep my muscles pumping, it gives me the chef's kiss of freshness. I cannot recommend it enough. Now, if you want to get yourself some new flavors they also have kiwi you need to go to sodicomau and use the code BULLETPROOF15 to get 15% off get fresh and get that flavor, jake.
Speaker 3:Hey, jake, here, 4Stri stripe, white belt. Uh, enjoy the podcast. Just wanted to ask you, um, just done a couple of competitions and where I live we have two main organizations, the uh. The one does weigh in either the day before or in the morning. The other competition does weigh-ins in the um just before your fight. Uh, I was. I'd love to hear some tips on what you recommend doing different between these two kind of competitions and how you find it it that's one thanks jake legend.
Speaker 2:Okay, I yes all right so two different comms way in the night before or the morning of, and then the other one is way in right before you step on for your first match. Now this comes back to what what I would say is, depending on your natural weight, where you sit. What I have found is for most people they either kind of bang in the middle or they're close to an upper category or a lower category, whatever it might be. And so in that way, if you like the competition format where you have to weigh in on the day, which is an IBJJF approach, you want to sit as close to the natural weight, like you want your natural weight as close to the upper end of your weight category as it can be, yeah, whereas that day before comp, whatever that, whatever that format is, that is one where maybe you know you might consider there could be some athletic advantages in getting your weight down, maybe in a way that's like, maybe not super sustainable, but whether you're in a sauna or you're, you're doing water loading or whatever you're doing to cut that weight and then feed up the night before and then come in monstrous the next day because if you don't, some other motherfucker will come in looking like glace and t-bow bro. Good, because I've had that before where I didn't cut for a judo comp and I a big, a big guy, did. I like a 105 guy cut to 90, oh, wow, and yeah, and oh my god, oh jesus, huge motherfuckers. Right, and it was just. That wasn't a federated comp. They just said, oh we, it was for convenience, they did the way in the day before. Typically they do on the day, right, but, mate, that was big trouble. So that's my advice that if you like a particular style of comp that you would want to come in somewhere near the top of your weight category, it is an advantage. That's what I say. Yeah, I think that's fair.
Speaker 2:I um, I got a slightly different take on it, jake, which is going off my personal experience, whereby I had a coach back when I used to compete a lot, which was like white to purple belt and he would always be talking about the weight thing and oh, where's your weight at? And oh, you want to drop down, and always kind of like that was part of competing was like where's your weight going to be and how are we leveraging this? And I just found for me it was an extra stress at that in those early days that I just didn't need and I would. I remember showing up to a lot of comps being like half starved because I was right on the edge and you're nervous and it's comp day, and like you don't need, like you know, going in like part, like with only a little bit of food and a little bit of water, is like it's shit, right, because bad prep, yeah, and it's like on top of all the other shit you're worried about.
Speaker 2:And you know, to be honest, it never, it never made that, I don't think, at the, at the divisions, at the standard jits I was doing, it never made that much of a difference, sure.
Speaker 2:And so if you, as a four-stripe white belt, I'm like probably doesn't matter, man, like I would just go with what feels comfortable, and to that point, I would choose the division that you naturally sit at so that you can comfortably eat and drink and be hydrated and well-rested coming into the comp, and then if you've got to go against some cunt, that's a bit bigger. So what you True, you know. That said, though you might also be like no, no, no, I want to fucking take every advantage I can get. And you know those people are out there and if you do come from a culture like we know, with wrestling or judo and stuff, where like cutting is a part of the competition, that's something worth considering. I remember my coach back then doing shit like like we did an episode today where we're talking about coaches getting injured, right Sure, and we're saying how what the coach does influences what the students do Definitely yeah.
Speaker 2:And I remember going to the Asian championships and we weighed in. I think I was a blue belt, he was a brown belt. We weighed in sometime the morning of it's not before your first fight, but it's a couple of hours before or it could be a couple, it could be six, you know, depending on where your match is that day. But him having to go and like run laps with a fucking plastic bag on or whatever around the outside of the Budokan in Tokyo to like, sweat out some weight.
Speaker 2:And I'm like you're dehydrating yourself before your first match and and you're like I just got to win this first match and I can't remember he might have, but it's just so fucking stupid. It makes no logical sense in that way. I mean, look for Taekwondo, weight cutting was definitely a part of it, but what they did with black belts is you had to weigh in in the morning and then the black belts weren't on until the end of the day, so you kind of had the whole day to Hydrate. Yeah, get ready. But if you're a white belt, you weighed in and then you competed. But at international competition weigh in was day before.
Speaker 2:So everybody was at the sauna If there was one sauna in that little German town or in the hotel, every motherfucker was there and it was romanticized Like, oh, how much weight can I cut? And then eat and drink and then come in the next day behemoth. That was a big part of the culture for Taekwondo, actually for at least international competition. So it was quite interesting to me to, yeah, like similar to what you're saying, joe, just come in feeling good, fed, happy, and then just fucking put all your energy on the line. I. I definitely feel that until you've done a fair bit of competing and look, you may be very experienced even as a four-stripe white belt that, um, feeling good and being full of energy will have a more positive impact on your jiu-jitsu than just uh, you know having a slight weight advantage yes yeah, but being a fucking ball of nerves, yeah, that's it, because that that happens to you regardless.
Speaker 2:yeah, so better to just like limit the amount of fucking anxious energy to just the fact that you're about to compete.
Speaker 2:There was a guy I knew just a disaster story on weight cutting um who was fucking with these uh di diuretics and he would just swore by him. You know, he got these uh diuretic pills, he got them off his brother and he, he just like it was like the pretty strong shit. He's like, trust me, man, speed pills or some shit, oh no, you just like up kilos, except the like, I think, for whatever because of his diet. It kind of didn't work. Like he'd used it a fair bit, he was kind of relying on it, but the day it was before the pan packs, he just he'd taken a pill the night before and I said I didn't hit. So he took another one that morning and then like, and then just before warm-up he was like running to the bathroom and had a disaster before he could get to the toilet and so he only brought one gi Shat himself. He couldn't even compete because he shat the gi the worst.
Speaker 2:Oh God, poor sucker. So, man, like there can be a lot of disasters when you're playing with your weight and, yeah, ultimately you want to focus on the skill you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 2:There it is, folks. Hey, good questions today. Big love to Ben. I fucking wish you all the best on that, bro. We're always here for you, here for you. Thank you for the questions. If you want to leave us a question for a future episode, go to the website bulletproofforbjjcom. No-transcript.
