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
Why Nutrition IS A Key Element For Your BJJ
Have you heard the notion that diet does not matter for success in BJJ? While this may be true for some folks (potentially blasting gear) this more than likely is not the case for you. Why, in other sports do the best of the best spend so much time and money to keep themselves as healthy as possible? Think of Tom Brady, LeBron, GSP, what do they do when picking out their meals? We guarantee it's not McDonalds and Donuts.
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A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready.
Speaker 2: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? I'm ready. Diet does not matter for BJJ. Who said this? John Danaher, that's who said this, and we're going to get into why. This may be a genius or idiotic statement.
Speaker 1:Danaher is the Isra-tel of jujitsu In a lot of ways he is, I'd say, well, actually, I'd say he's a lot better than Isra-tel. That's a fucking stupid thing to say, mate. It's wild, right, but he was standing there amongst his boys and they're all like, yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter. And he's pointing to Gordon. He, he was standing there amongst his boys and they're all like, yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter. And he's pointing to Gordon, he's pointing to Gary, he even points to GSP, who's known to be one of the cleanest living humans of all time, but whatever. And then it's got a clip of Mr Intelligence himself, big, handsome Merengali, merengali, being like yo, I don't care about my diet, what does that matter? And I think the biggest problem in all of this is we're kind of underplaying the role of diet in immune system.
Speaker 1:Well tell me what is Danaher's case. His case is that in the same way, he doesn't believe in strength and conditioning. It's almost as if your skill level is high enough, then the diet won't matter. And Gary Tonin very famously said oh, if it's the difference between eating a hamburger and eating a steak or veggies or like, then your jiu-jitsu is not good enough. Like that's his strong held belief. Yeah, but if we look at the health of DDS, we can see that there are some health complaints amongst these folks.
Speaker 2:Okay, absolutely so. But before we go in there, let's, let's look at the. Let's look at the. Okay, good, the logic. Yeah, what's the answer here? So, okay, I can see Tonin's got a point there. I think it was when Tonin was fighting Krohn Gracie right, krohn, and also Kit as well.
Speaker 1:Like it was an era of Polaris, yeah, but Kit was also a hamburger eater.
Speaker 2:He was, yeah, but Krohn was considered like Sushi, yeah, sushi, cleaner, even though if you watch that Munchies Smoking weed, yeah, and he's eating like he goes and eats sushi at like two in the morning and like he's totally seemed to have a pretty fucked up kind of schedule. But in any case, I remember a lot of people in the jujitsu community arguing about it at the time being, like there's no way some hamburger eating motherfucker who doesn't take it seriously is going to be able to do anything to Krohn. He eats clean, he's disciplined like samurai spirit, like he's fire blah blah and it's like. You know I mean Totem 1, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah 100%.
Speaker 2:And so you're like okay, in that individual case of that works well for that athlete. You're like yeah. I see the logic there.
Speaker 1:I think what this misses is in the short term, when you're young and athletic and on steroids, you can pretty much do anything you want. So, yeah, you can live on hamburgers and you can do whatever. But what this misses is that there is a cost to pay for that later and that's what you're not seeing Like. That's it what is sped up here. Like through the demands of being a high level athlete and pushing your body and not fueling it right, things do break, people get fucking injured, people have immune system collapses. They develop all kinds of issues. Autoimmune stomach disorders oh my God, get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2:Autoimmune stomach disorders. Oh my God, get the fuck out of here. Imagine that I'm not doing enough steroids.
Speaker 1:That's why the fucking bacteria has overtaken me, yeah, should have been injecting the growth hormone directly into his stomach. Really, I mean, that's the answer. No, I think the thing that because people do respect John Danaher as being this super smart guy in terms of jujitsu, his ability to produce champions, all of this when he says something like this, people pay attention. People are like, well, fucking, danaher knows right. That said, danaher knows a lot about jujitsu and he's done well to produce champions.
Speaker 1:But if you look at the health and longevity of their careers, you got to maybe ask some questions because I would say GSP is the kind of exception to the rule, even though possibly when GSP was younger he may not have eaten that well, definitely later stages in his career. You follow what he ate and what he did. He was a Puritan. He's doing the ice baths, he's doing the water aerobics with the fucking resistance. He's doing all kinds of wacky stuff to just be an absolute fucking ninja, yeah.
Speaker 1:But if you look at a guy like Gary Tonin, he's kind of like the antithesis of that which is parties loves the strippers, just down to grapple anyone at any time. No fear, just his psychology around. No fear, just his psychology around. Jujitsu was. I have the skill and the will to make it happen, but also if we have a look at you know and I don't, because I love gary tonin, so I say this with full respect one of my favorites he had gone through some stressful time when he started to cut weight and he started to do mma, and I don't know the exact contributing factors, because obviously there could be a genetic component, stuff like this, but Gary's hairline ain't what it used to be right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was losing. It looked like he had alopecia or something.
Speaker 1:Alopecia areata Right and huge chunks, like really full on, and this is an inflammatory, immune response right.
Speaker 1:Basically, your body's immune system is attacking itself, and I know this too. Like I get eczema and also get a thing called iritis, which is basically inflammation of the eye, and when my immune system like when I'm not eating enough and I'm having too much caffeine, I'm not sleeping enough I will start to feel these things. My skin will flare up and I do get this thing. It's kind of crazy where my eye will literally almost double in size, so I can't close my eye or fully open it and I go a bit blind in that eye. Wow, and I basically have to, like, get rid of all caffeine, sleep a ton, take a bunch of like anti-inflammatories as well as put anti-inflammatory stuff in my eye to get it to calm back down. And it is an inflammatory response, and what we do know for certain is that a lot of your immune system, and the majority of it, is in your gut. Yeah, and if we go to Gordon Ryan, who is considered to be the greatest no-gi grappler of all time, why is he kind of on the bench?
Speaker 2:Like often sidelined because of these gut issues, because, I mean it was misdiagnosed.
Speaker 1:but they kind of got to the point where it is a fungal kind of growth in his small intestine and it's from a bacterial imbalance. Where does that come from? Diet guys, let's be clear.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, diet is a huge contributing factor.
Speaker 1:It is a massive component of your gut health. And I mean, obviously we're not going to go super hard into microbiome and gut health and go full hippie on you, but what we want to talk about is more the role of diet in immune system and the reason why and this is what I would say without going too hard on it a lot of these guys got away with shitty diets is because of steroid use.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think that we've spoken about steroid use generally and I think that the issue there for a lot of recreational users these days is that they use it as a way to mask all of the other shit. They're not doing well, so their sleep is shit, they drink too much alcohol, they don't eat particularly well, they probably don't lift as as as kind of regularly as they should be, but they're like yo, I'm just going to pump steroids and it kind of takes care of a lot of it and I feel good yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm feeling good, I'm putting on muscle mass, I'm still only training once every sort of 15 days, but yeah, you know. And so while I don't actually have a problem necessarily with someone choosing to pump steroids, like you really should be like sort of taking care of all that low-hanging fruit first Before you go there. And so I think what's dangerous about this kind of thing is that for a lot of people, they will hear this out of context, and the context for Danaher is I produce the most winningest jujitsu competitors in the world. I don't care about anything besides that the skill. All their job is is to be as good at grappling as possible. So whatever the fuck if they want to, like you know, be at the fucking strippers all night and fucking burger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I don't give a shit. I don't, you know, strength conditioning, I don't care. Their performance on the mats is what matters and and we know this that for the elite of the elite, in any sport, they often have some really gnarly kind of irresponsible behaviors which almost, in a way, like allows them to be as good as they are Right. It's like this wildness contrasting kind of John Jones, dark and light sort of shit, definitely, but but. But when your everyday grappler, who is the majority of people listening to the show, he's out there like fuck, diet doesn't matter, you're like fuck, yes, can't.
Speaker 1:You are not gordon ryan, thankfully thankfully you know, maybe you just don't have the liver enzymes to keep up with his fucking stack, like you've got to think that it. There's so much information out there now about the downsides of steroid use, as much as they've shown that, like, if you, if you are lower in testosterone and you take TRT and it brings you to a normal level, you will get a lot of benefits. But going above and beyond the good level of testosterone, you need to grow muscle. There is way more negatives than pros. Even though you might be able to roll longer, roll harder, there is so many other effects that are really not well well understood and actually it makes you dumber that's what they've shown because it actually it blocks your ability to use your prefrontal cortex. Really, yeah, because the higher t levels keep you more in your um kind of uh, your lizard brain, lizard brain so it's more, more fight or flight.
Speaker 1:It's like either fight or fuck. Yeah, like that's, that's that's where you're at. I got that Danaher brain man, shit. But what's funny is, for the best part, like to be really good at jujitsu. You need to be able to think, yeah, you really need to be able to like process and learn and do all these things. But for the best part, these guys in Danaher's team, they're already the best. They've done all the learning and now it's all about just execution and fucking staying in the fire as long as possible. But we see you guys fuck out.
Speaker 1:And I think this is the thing that's not talked about enough is the role of food in terms of immunity support, because I'm someone who's I've had my share of staph infections over the time and that's partly to do with the immunity with my skin, because I do get eczema and I do have dry skin and it cracks and it's easier to get infections and you know I always shower after training. It's not a question of that, but it's more along the lines of if you are immune, compromised in some way, it's harder. Like health is that foundation for fitness and performance? And if you and it's typically happens when people are cutting weight. It happened to Hodger Gracie and even with Gordon. You know he's had a lot of staph infections that have stopped him from competing. Pulling out of stuff, um, cutting weight really thins out the like. Starving yourself and still training hard thins out the kind of mucus lining of your stomach. It lowers your immunity as a whole. Yeah, and typically guys have to pull out of fights because they either get injured or they get infections because they're immune compromised.
Speaker 1:Yeah, having a shit diet is very similar and they've shown that when people consume super high amounts of sugar, this also suppresses the immune system. There's so many things to suggest that not even suggest that show that actually eating better just makes you less sick. You know, so wild. Imagine. So, even though we can, we can. You know you don't have to go into like paleo, high carb, low carb, none of that. But if we just go right, you don't want to to be sick so you can be on the mat feeling good. You know, no staph infections, uninjured. You want to make sure your base level of health is is higher, like this is.
Speaker 2:This is a thing yeah, and I mean again just thinking about the 99.9 of grapplers out there. Yeah, you know, life is a life's a bit of a struggle. You know you're really fucking busy, you, nothing is ideal. You want to do a lot. We're's a bit of a struggle, you know you're really fucking busy. Nothing is ideal.
Speaker 2:You want to do a lot, we're all trying to do a lot, and so it's like, well, you're going to need energy for that, and the energy comes from sleeping well, comes from eating well. You know you're going to need nutrients. That comes from eating well, like all this shit is, is absolutely essential to support you in trying to be as productive and as hungry to fucking succeed as you can be. So, yeah, for, like the you know, for the 31-year-old grappler out there, that's like working fucking 12 hours a day and, you know, trying to show up to JITS four times a week, hearing diet doesn't matter, is just it's really misleading it is, but the thing is part of the and this is why I think that Dr Mikey's core is good.
Speaker 1:I think Danaher knew like this is going to get some intention. You know, like he knew this is a soundbite, People are going to talk about this shit, Right.
Speaker 2:But, but he it's. It is the same as what he said about strength training Right when he got asked about that, where he said like I've not really seen anything that's made a significant difference.
Speaker 1:So seen anything that's made a significant difference. So then I don't really think it matters that much and you're like, fair enough at that level, except that your best athlete pumps a ton of juice and lifts a bunch of weights.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but he was talking about which style of strength training? Right, and he's like I've seen that work, I've seen that work. He doesn't fucking know.
Speaker 1:Like John Danaher is not an S&C, like he's not the person to ask, in the same way you wouldn't ask Lachlan Giles about S&C. The guy doesn't lift, it's not part of his life.
Speaker 2:No, that's right. But again he's not being asked like what's your advice for grapplers? It's like for you, he's like it doesn't matter what matters is that they're in techniques?
Speaker 1:It's because he doesn't fucking know, like, if you look at his best grapplers, they all take steroids, they all lift weights. So the fact that John's like I don't care, well, what do your athletes do? His athletes are not just a byproduct of his teachings. They are also a byproduct of these other things they do which is not attributable to him.
Speaker 2:Right. I've wasted a lot of money on expensive electrolyte drinks like Gatorade, like Powerade, that are really very ineffective. When I switched to Sodi, which is a scientifically formulated blend of electrolytes, I actually noticed the improvement in my jujitsu both performance but also my recovery post-training sessions. And, to be honest, I get mad at myself every time I forget to take Sodi to training and I end up having to go back to the corner store to buy the diluted Gatorade or whatever it is. So here's the deal, guys If you want to get the most out of your training and get the best recovery, you need to get yourself Sodi. And the best part is, if you go through us and you use the Bulletproof code, you can get 15% off your purchase. All you got to do is go to Sodicomau, get whatever you get and then use the code BULLETPROOF15 at checkout for 15% off. Get the electrolytes now, get hydrated, and you too will notice the benefit on the mats.
Speaker 1:So I think this is where we've got to go, like anything. We've talked about this before. We don't want to put too much stock. As much as we admire our jiu-jitsu coaches and we and we have our jujitsu heroes it doesn't mean they're the best people Like and it doesn't mean they know everything. They know the thing they know and that's good. And I think this has been a thing for me even like talking to someone who's really good at strength conditioning, but maybe their diet's shit. I'm not going to take dietary advice from someone who's smashing McDonald's like three times a day. It's like I know that's not good and I don't need to be a dietician to understand that you know. So I think you can.
Speaker 1:You can look at somebody and appreciate what they're really good at. The problem is when we hold them up as like the fucking prophet and if you've ever stood next to John Danaher, you you feel like you might catch leprosy, like you. Just he's an unhealthy motherfucker. You could just look at John and be like, oh, this guy needs some vitamin D. He needs to get out in the sunshine a bit. He's practically see-through. He is an unhealthy guy. The whole energy of the guy is just like Sith Lord there's something Star Wars-ish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, kind of slightly sunken June, kind of Dark rings under the eyes.
Speaker 2:What are the bald guys? Harkonnens guys, harkin the?
Speaker 1:Harkinons, there is a bit of that. You just see him emerge. Oh, they're fucking cool warriors and shit. John no no, no, but the head of the Harkin like floating out of the black oil bars, oh barren fucking yeah. Yeah, with the fucking fat neck and shit. It's like you can see the evolution of John as he gets more successful and just kind of gets more kind of Harkonnen-esque.
Speaker 1:But to the side, how does this apply to you? Like, were you thinking about this? All right, is Danaher wrong about this? Yes, he fucking is. It's so sideways, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:What we probably neglect is we admire many other athletes. We look at other athletes and we're oh what a great athlete, whether it be like an elite athlete from football or an elite athlete from basketball or anything like someone who is just the best at what they do. And it's funny that in so many other sports other than Brazilian jiu-jitsu or submission grappling, they have to be so dialed in To be the best, to be like LeBron James or to be a Steph Curry, or to be like the best quarterback and to be a Tom Brady things have to be so dialed in. Now, obviously, a front rower or a defensive tight end or whatever, they're strong as fuck, but they're like huge fat units. They're not necessarily the healthiest, but if we look at the absolute elite in a sport, their diet is dialed in, their recovery is dialed in Because there's so much money around those sports.
Speaker 1:They are thoroughbreds and so they do so many things to the nth perfect degree, because if you don't, you can't be the number one guy and, I think, because jujitsu is still not quite in its full realization of its development. That's why you still have these. I wouldn't say they're exceptions, but you've got people coming in displaying amazing jujitsu but then the dark side of that is they kind of burn out because they haven't looked after themselves and we haven't seen somebody who has a LeBron James-esque kind of 20 years, 25, you know, like career. It's a good point. The jujitsu careers are short because we really burn our bodies doing it, and so if you're someone who has struggled with injury or you have struggled with skin infections and different things like this, you want to consider that this could be related to your immune system and that maybe you know you need to get a bit of blood work done. Maybe there is an underlying issue there and diet can make that better or worse, depending on your specific instance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shit, maybe you need to eat a salad every now and again. Yeah, you know, I mean, pick up an apple. Yeah, maybe we're down the Big Mac man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just, it's just one of those things Like, even when you start getting into like FODMAPs, which is just like if your body can tolerate certain sugars, uh, my partner, ola, she uh can, she can't tolerate oligosaccharides, which means like onion, garlic, um, lentils, there's just certain things that she she can't digest them well, so when she has them she feels sick and bloated and it affects her really negatively. You take those things out the diet, she feels amazing. And this is just stuff that she didn't know before and she had to do a few tests to get it. But now she knows it, she doesn't eat those foods and she feels great, and so it's worth doing a bit of investigation for yourself. Do your own research to just know where your body is at, not just taking some general advice from from you know, dr John.
Speaker 2:Dr John Danaher, dr John, dr Mike yeah, you know, I think at the heart of this, like what's? What can be problematic about hearing something like that from Danaher is that we look at those people like Gordon Ryan and Maren Garland and stuff like, oh, what are these guys doing? Like, what they're doing on the mats often guides what we're doing right. Oh, this is the fucking back attack sequence that Gordon uses. Cool, that's what we're training in the gym, that's what's trending right now, and that's all. Cool, that's what we're training in the gym, that's what's. That's what's trending right now, and that's all really good. But you also got to remember that for the most part, you are not trying to be him.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And, like I said before, most people are really busy. Most people want to probably stay in jujitsu. They just want to keep having a good time with it for the next 20 or so years, and so your approach right now is very fucking different to what his approach is, and so when his coach says something like that, it's like, yeah, he's not talking to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, or you know, or that's not what you needed to hear, but confirmation bias is a biatch, that's right. Burgers taste good. They do, I fucking love it. Sausage rolls taste good.
Speaker 1:Bro, trust, I love fried chicken, I love a burger, I love a chip, like the next man. Milkshakes are good Fucking love me a milkshake. But that said, I also responsibly low-key, grudgingly, but I know it's good for me. I'm very lucky. I have a wife who's very adamant, slash, strict about eat your fucking vegetables, wow, eat your rice, do this, do that. And I mean I do.
Speaker 1:It's not that something I wouldn't do, but she's like she's on my back about it, you know, because she's like get your prostate check. You want me to, you want me to check that for you? I'm like babe, no, it's okay, please, it's okay. She's like I, I'm good, I'll get the health check. You got blood tests for those these days. Be relaxed. You know, like the thing is. She's so because she cares about me. She's like very and she's also bossy kind of lady. She's on my back about it and I think the thing is I love that, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:But for you, if you're out there and you don't have someone who loves burgers and you don't give a fuck about a salad, right, you're like danaher said, it doesn't matter who gives a fuck, yeah, and then like maybe gary tonin comes out and goes or say, craig jones comes out and goes fucking tobacco pouches am I right? The new zins like fucking get it in there, focus up. You're like this isn't the person you should be taking health advice from. Yeah, you know, just because your favorite athlete fucking vapes in the car before they come into train doesn't mean that's what you should also do. That is not causal to their success. If anything, they are successful in spite of that, and I think this is the misunderstanding. It was always the thing, like with the Diaz brothers right, they always smoked weed and they're great fighters, legendary fighters. And people are like, oh, fucking Diaz brothers, right, they always smoked weed and they're great fighters, legendary fighters. And people are like, oh, fucking Diaz brothers smoke weed. And you're like, yeah, but they, they also run marathons and they, they do all this other crazy shit. You know they are not successful at fighting because they smoke weed. They're successful at fighting in spite of smoking weed.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's associative, it's not causal, and this is the mistake we often make that we see a behavior and we think that's the reason why they're good and it's not, and what we want to do is just encourage y'all to be more healthy, because we know that's going to support your training. It's going to have you feeling better and you'll just enjoy your life more, because getting sick all the time is whack and you don't need that Damn right. There it is, folks. So, yes, if you want to train better, be better, be stronger, all those things we've got an app and we'd like to encourage people to use it to help them stay healthy, stay on track, just go to the app store, go to the Google Play store, download it. 14-day free trial, get around it. We'll see you in there. Let's get fitter and healthier, y'all Peace.
