The Easiest Way To 10X Your Strength

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The Episode Referenced: https://youtu.be/BnFzjcPTSsc?si=p1c0v7t-iBxz9rk-

Chapters

• 0:03 Minimal Training, Max Results
• 0:32 Tendons, Not Muscles: The Focus
• 2:46 The 10-Second Hang Protocol
• 4:30 Why Short Work Beats Long Sessions
• 6:30 Grease The Groove In Daily Life
• 9:17 Isometrics Explained And Applied
• 12:18 Connective Tissue First For BJJ
• 14:20 Consistency Over Intensity

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:03

Better listen very carefully. A good martial mattes does not become tense but ready. Essentially, at this point, the fight is over.

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

So you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready.

SPEAKER_02: 0:32

The secret methods behind getting you strong for BJJ, and it's not what you think. Many people out there feel they have to do huge hard workouts to get stronger. But recently I was privy to some information and it it confirmed one or two things that I've learned in my career that have shown me you can get stronger by doing less more frequently. And it it it it I think it surprises a bunch of people. I had actually seen somebody quoting this the other day on Instagram, referencing this episode. So I thought I'll go have a look at this. And it's an episode between Tim Ferris and a gentleman named Keith Barr. He's Dr. Keith Barr at UC Davis. And it's all about tendons and ligaments. He's talking about tendinitis in the elbows. And I was like, this is very uh relevant to jujitsu folks. But the thing that really surprised me, Joe, was the very minimal effort that was applied, and it got uh people very, very strong. Right on. So I mean, what's the what's the breakdown? What's the fucking what's the secret juice here? What's the juice? Well, many people who I talk to when it comes to strength training often say to me, I don't have time. They're like, I haven't got an hour. I can't, you know, I can't get away from work or I can't leave the house, blah, blah. But what was very interesting about the the studies that um Dr. Barr had done was they were only 10-minute long sessions. Right. Now, this was relevant specific to strengthening tendons and ligaments. He wasn't actually trying to get muscles bigger or anything like that, even though that is his background, is like getting getting hench. Um, and which just break down the difference between connect like tendons and ligaments versus muscles and developing so for the best part, um, yeah, you muscle growth, it was always associated like oh, the the bigger you are, the stronger you are, because there's a direct correlation between cross-sectional size and your ability to produce force. But you know, this has evolved over time, and we can see it in many different sports where you've got someone who's more compact or smaller, and they've got more muscle fibers or myofibrils, they're denser, and they can produce a lot of force even though they're not as big. Yeah, and so the reason why this was um surprising because he this this this gentleman, Dr. Dr. Barr, it it was his research used by a top-level rock climber. And this rock climber basically saw the research and was like, shit, I got elbow tendinitis because I'm climbing all the time. Maybe I could use this research to help me, you know, not cure, but like treat my tendinitis. So what he what he did was he was doing 10 second hangs submaximally. So he'd work for 10 seconds doing like fingerboard hangs, and with but with his feet on a step. Uh so it wasn't, you know, it was about 70%. And then he'd take a break for 50 seconds. And he did 10 sets, you know, on the minute every minute for for 10 minutes. Fuck you, that that that German volume training for finger strength.

SPEAKER_00: 3:33

But it's 10 seconds, it's it's tiny. It was very minimal considering this guy is like 10 sets of 10 seconds.

SPEAKER_02: 3:38

10 seconds.

SPEAKER_00: 3:39

I'm no mathematical genius, but that's like that's a hundred seconds.

SPEAKER_02: 3:42

It is a hundred seconds. So that's not actually a lot of time under tension. And so he was doing this twice a day, according to the protocol, giving eight hours break. Yeah, and he did this for 30 days. Now, this is a world-class boulderer and rock climber. This is someone who can hang off one arm with like one finger, and so he wondered if he could improve his maximal hang. Because his maximal hang previously was just under a second, with adding 60% of his body weight. Right. Right? That that was his bar. After this 30-day protocol, and this this guy's just trying to sort out his elbow pain, he had improved it to 13 seconds. The one second hold had improved to 13 seconds, and he wasn't doing maximal heavy stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 4:30

Because according to the research, after about 10 to 15 minutes of a certain amount of load, it stops actually strengthening the tendons and ligaments. It's going more to the muscles and it's actually creating more damage. And yeah, you do need damage to get muscles to grow. But if you're actually just trying to get your tendons and ligaments stronger, he's saying 10 to 15 minutes is about right. He likened tendons and ligaments to his teenage daughter. He's like, I can talk to her for five to ten minutes, but after that, she's gonna tune out. And he was saying that like their research had shown that it stops being uh beneficial to tendons and ligaments and starts being more like a muscle damage type thing. Yeah, and so that this really surprised me because so much of what I've learned is that you know you've got to spend a long time under tension to really develop tendon and ligament strength. But what his research had shown is like short about more regularly was just as effective, if not more effective.

SPEAKER_01: 5:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:30

So that's why I wanted to bring this thing up because I've had a similar experience doing other training, which got me um very strong, even though I wasn't working maximally.

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:42

And so uh this is something that I wanted to share because someone was asking me about chin-ups, like pull-ups. They're like, oh, you know, how do I get better? And and I said, look, the best thing you can do is have like a pull-up bar in a doorway, and when you walk through the doorway, do a couple of pull-ups if that's where you're at. Not max out, just a couple of reps, just to grease the groove. Now I got this from Pavel Satsulin, and the way I used this was actually my shoulder, my overhead press used to be trash, used to be my weakest movement. And so my old coach If Finn was like, okay, pick a weight which is kind of submaximum, whatever it was. For me at the time, it was like 20 kilos, and he was like, I just want you to do five reps every hour or two. Whenever you're in the gym, you walk past the two 20 kilo kettlebells, do five reps, put them back down, and just do this. And he said, just do it three times a week, just that. And he was like, get you know, get about five sets, be small.

SPEAKER_00: 6:36

Like on a particular day, you'd be like, I'm just gonna kind of do this every couple of hours. Yeah, just fit it in.

SPEAKER_02: 6:40

Yeah, you know, and and honestly, within three weeks, my overhead press has gone from like topping out at about 24 kilos to I could press the 232s.

SPEAKER_01: 6:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 6:51

And I think this is where it speaks more to not just our tendon and ligament strength, but skill. This idea of like getting those muscles to work together and practicing the skill and becoming efficient in doing the thing.

SPEAKER_01: 7:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:04

And yeah, I got dramatically stronger without doing really heavy overhead press. And I think this is the thing that we underestimate that we feel like, oh, I've got to do a big ass workout. When actually, if you break it up, you can get a lot of benefits.

SPEAKER_00: 7:17

Yeah. Um, yeah, I like the grease the groove thing. It um it makes a lot of sense. I feel like it's hard to pick up a kettlebell and press it every couple hours unless you work in a year, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:30

But it, I mean, if someone works from home or you, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be um, it doesn't have to be that specific. That's just what I what I had. But you know, for my friend who's trying to work on pull-ups, they they're they're an artist, they're at home. I'm like, yeah, you just get one of those like$100, put it in the door, you know?

SPEAKER_01: 7:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:50

Just every time you walk through the door, two, three pull-ups.

SPEAKER_01: 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 7:54

And and it and it's amazing what it can do.

SPEAKER_01: 7:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:57

But um I like the idea of it too, because it because it does take the emphasis away from being like, we're working out, and this is the container, and we gotta do, you know, our it's gotta be harder than last week and and all of that stuff, to just like, oh, I'm I sprinkle this thing in across my days, yeah, and I just do some every now and again.

SPEAKER_02: 8:15

Yeah. And I think you know, m mobility is very similar to that. Like a lot of people are like, oh, but I don't really have time to do a mobility session. It's like, well, I mean, we we often feel I think socially like, oh, I can't just do it, but I can't just do a squat. But man, if I'm in a queue or if I got a spa, I mean, I'm like, if I'm standing around the airport, I don't give a fuck. Like, I mean, obviously, that's that's just me. I'm just kind of don't care, but I find that most people start to ignore you, they look over that, that guy's weird. But if you were just sitting in the way, yeah, yeah. If they just saw you in a chair, they'd be like, that guy's fucking weird.

SPEAKER_00: 8:48

Yeah, you know what I mean? And now it's proven. Oh god, he's squatting. Um, you know, it's it's funny, right? Because it it you it's like there's an irony to this, to this sort of um, to this revelation because the the gym, right? The gym is just a simulation of like of life. Yeah. So it's like, hey man, if you like, if you worked physically hard and you just picked shit up often and carried it around, you would be strong and muscular. Yeah. But you don't. So you come to the gym, and in this one hour time frame, you practice picking stuff up and walking around and pressing, and you get, you know, and so it's like now what we're saying is like just pick the shit up a little bit and you'll get stronger.

SPEAKER_01: 9:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:30

It actually makes me think about um, I was we're at Monster Trucks on the weekend. Oh, yeah. Went to Monster Gym, which is fucking sick, and it's always, it's always a sick day, and it you always get a lot, you always get a lot of folks from like um probably from like rural, like country Australia, right?

SPEAKER_02: 9:45

Outside, outer, outer submarine.

SPEAKER_00: 9:46

Yeah, and there was this, there was this like looked like like straight off the farm sitting in front. He uh he actually didn't have the hat, but he had the hat hair. Oh, right. So you could see he'd been wearing a hat all day. Yep. He was tanned as fuck because he'd just been in the sun.

SPEAKER_01: 10:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 10:00

And uh he was like um, he was like this sinewy, and you could see though, like his legs were like like he was almost black, yeah. But then when he's short, short tan, white as fuck, right? Like he just he was in the sun so much. And I just noticed him because he was there with his wife. They had a newborn and four children. Wow, they had five kids, and I was like, holy shit, and we chat him. They're a really nice family. Um, we're interacting with their kids a bit. But I was looking at him and he was just this sinewy kind of guy, works on the land with these big fucking hands. Big strong hands. And I was looking at his hands and I'm like, I bet that cunt's got a strong grip. Oh, yeah. And I was just thinking about him like it's that farmer strength, it's that builder strength, it's bricklayers. If you train with any of these people, you know exactly what I mean. Anyone that's working on the tools has strong fucking hands and grip, but they're not big. I mean, some sometimes out, but but that it's not exclusively, they're not big humans, right? Well, that's not efficient. No, that's the thing. And it's not that they train their grip or their arms or whatever, they just do a bit throughout the day every day, yes, and they turn into a fucking strong cunt.

SPEAKER_02: 11:02

That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 11:02

And it's not the muscles, it's the connective tissue. Like it's it's all of it, but but that's kind of a great example, isn't it, of of like this greasing the groove thing. Yes. Those people are living in. If you're if you're greasing the groove in your work, you will become a monster. For sure. There are a bunch of choices out there for your strength and mobility training. And when it comes to choosing a program, it's really hard to sift through what's good and what's not. One thing I can guarantee you is that the bulletproof for BJJ app is exactly what you need as a busy grappler who wants to prioritize time on the mats, which means you're not spending hours upon hours in the gym each week, but you also want the biggest returns in terms of your performance on the mats and also your recovery off. The bulletproof for BJJ app has you covered. You can take a two-week free trial right now. And if you go beyond that and you commit to a subscription and you get a few weeks in, you realize, you know what, I don't love this. We give you a 100% money-back guarantee. So nothing to wait for. Jump into the two-week free trial right now. Go to the app store, search Bulletproof for BJJ, and we'll see you on the inside.

SPEAKER_02: 12:05

And I think the other thing which uh uh, you know, this this gentleman at Dr. Barr had touched on is the value of isometrics. And, you know, I I think that this is something that uh is underrated because a lot of us out there, if you've got elbow pain, you know, whether it's kind of medial, like inside the elbow, or it's kind of just uh uh lateral, it's on top. So we talk about flexion and extension. If it's what they call tennis elbow or golfer's elbow, oftentimes we're not doing isometric work. And he was saying that's so important for developing tendon and ligament strengths. That typically comes from carrying or holding a position. Yeah. Now I don't know about you, Joe, but like what's an isometric for well there's there's it's interesting he defined it slightly different. He said there's like an overcoming isometric where you're working against a fixed spot. Like you think if you're tightening like a wrench and you're trying to tighten a bolt and you're like, I gotta get it a little bit more, and you and you just give it that little bit of extra, that's overcoming isometrics. And then he I think he said there's like a not decreasing or it's like a relenting where you have to like yeah, or yielding, yielding, yielding isometrics where you've got to hold and not yield, and it's kind of as long as you can hold it. Oh, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:23

So he's talking about you know how you have a wall sit, or it could no, that could be static, and then yielding is when you're like it kind of like an eccentric.

SPEAKER_02: 13:30

Yeah, but the interesting thing about eccentric is he was saying that actually there's as much value to an isometric as there is to an eccentric, yeah, even though you know we're quite like doing eccentrics does strengthen connective tissues, but like he was saying that there's actually a huge specific value to this stress of an isometric. And the thing about isometrics is you can't do them for a long time. And he was he was giving a prescription around like treating elbow pain, tendinitis, but he was saying it's it's actually just a great way to get fucking strong. And and for advanced strength athletes, you will see them doing um uh overcoming isometrics, like just trying to work a bar through a fixed point as hard as they can. But he was just saying, look, 30 seconds, 30 seconds, like build up, keep the tension, and then chill for two minutes. Four sets. That's it, and that will get you fucking stronger. And I was like, How dare you? How dare you give such a minimum prescription to get strong? You know, but it it's it this is his field of research. This is the thing he knows pretty much better than anyone. And he was like, Look, you know, I think people just he the reason why I like it was he's got no horse in the race, basically. Yeah, he's trying to work out how to do lab engineered tendons and ligaments. He's trying to like, yeah, that's his that's where he wants to come up with a like a you tore your ACL, here's an ACL we grew for you, put it back in. Yeah, that's where he's really focused.

SPEAKER_00: 14:57

But you know, I I would say that like that that prescription of like it's it actually sounds bang, like it sounds bang on with say even what we of what we prescribe, yeah. Right? Like if because if you think about like like say we're talking chest to bar holds isometric, perfect. We're usually like four or five sets of anywhere from um like 15 to 30 seconds, yeah, 10 to 20. Which equals usually somewhere in the realm of 60 to 90 time under tension. Yeah. If you're talking five sets of five chin-ups, let's say a rep takes you five seconds, yeah, that's 25 seconds per set. Yep. You do five sets, what's five times 25? That's 125 seconds. Yep. So it's it falls within that, right? Yeah, and and I I actually remember um, I think uh Thomas Kurz talks about it in the Science of Sports training where he's like that's about the range you need to build tendon and ligament strength. But I also remember um fitness FAQs and Cy Monster. Nice, yeah, when I did a workshop with them in Sydney, they were like 60 to 90 seconds. Yeah, like if you're training like front lever or anything isometric, just get 60 to 90 in whatever way you want to break it out. Whatever the dose is, and that's good. Yeah, you know, and it's it's it's a fucking Steve Maxwell, yeah, he's been pushing the ice banging the isometric drum for some years.

SPEAKER_02: 16:11

Yeah, and I think for all of us, and we we've touched on this before, when you do BJJ, your tendons and ligaments cop it, they just fucking cop it. And it we we're in the art of yanking joints, and yeah, we get kind of hooked up on, yeah, but my muscles and my cardio, and yeah, but if your tendons and ligaments are not healthy, they're gonna break. And we're in an art and a sport of breaking those tissues, so we've got to reinforce them. And the thing that kind of really hit hard for me was it's actually easier to make them stronger than you think. You don't have to max out to make your connective tissues stronger, but you have to do it consistently. That was the thing that really kind of I got from it. And it was interesting because he was talking about um steroids and how steroids really, you know, the muscles will go up, grows a muscle, but it makes the uh tendons and ligaments um brittle.

SPEAKER_00: 17:05

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 17:05

And that's why you see people who take gear tend to get biceps tears and pec tears, and because the the tendons and ligaments take time. Yeah, wow, and so I I think this is the thing that because we can be impatient and we want to push, and don't get me wrong, I'm someone who likes to lift heavy. I have not that I have any joint issues at the moment, but when I injured my hip, the advice that was given to me was to do not maximal repetitions, it was time under tension to strengthen the tendon. Yeah, because I had done some damage to the tendon. So yeah, man, I I think this this the reason why this really struck a chord with me is it was very minimal effective dose. Yeah. And so for people out there, you're like, I don't have time. Actually, you only need about 10 minutes and you do that consistently, and you can get stronger at whatever you're working on, what whatever that might be. And so whether it be because this is this is where the this is where the lines blur slightly relevant to like strength training and mobility, and this is something you and I both know quite well, Joe, um, is you know, once you're good at a range of motion, you need to you need to load it to kind of get better there. Yeah whether that be like a split or a J curl or whatever, and you're like, oh, but at what point is this is this a stretch versus at what point is this like a lift? Yeah, and it's it's all the same, like it's it's essentially the same thing.

SPEAKER_00: 18:31

Yeah. But uh it's a slightly bi a bias, maybe in one one direction or the other.

SPEAKER_02: 18:36

Yeah, depending on your level of capacity, right? Like if you if you can't do a J curl with eight kilos, you're not gonna do it with 60 kilos. Yeah. Same thing. If you can't hold like a No, maybe you will.

SPEAKER_00: 18:45

You just might never get out of it. That one time. Okay, you got it? You got it? Okay, okay, go.

SPEAKER_02: 18:52

But uh, but then the same thing, like a middle split or a horse dance, like there's the the thing they were talking about was like you're talking about your uh you know, when you're a kid, uh, you know, gym instructor might get you to do like a wall sit. And why does that burn even though you're not moving? Yeah, and it was just talking about the the the role between like where your um there's there's muscles that will take over because they're stronger, and at a critical point, once they fatigue, the the the load will go to tendons, and that's why holding for an extended period of time is actually is helpful. And uh yeah, man, it's it's a great thing. I I listened to it and I was like, you know what? This is fucking great. We've got to talk about this more because you can get stronger in a shorter time, and it's just a matter of doing it consistently and you'll get there.

SPEAKER_00: 19:40

Yeah, I think particularly for um for like body weight exercises or a couple of movements you want to get better at, if you can have the apparatus close by, like you said, the the pull-up bar in the doorway, so that you can just fuck around with it, you know, whatever, maybe in the morning before you go to work, maybe when you come home every day, like this will be a huge unlock. Like you will if it it becomes part of your day, yeah, versus you showing up to the gym and working on pull-ups once a week.

SPEAKER_02: 20:07

Yeah. Uh the the the frequency thing is massive and and working sub-maximally.

SPEAKER_01: 20:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 20:14

I think that we're really sold on you've got to work maximally to get strong.

SPEAKER_01: 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 20:18

But actually, the research shows even at the highest level, you can improve your maximal strength by working submaximally. It's safer and you can get strong. There it is, folks. Get it.