Why Training Less Makes You Better

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Transcript

Welcome And Voicemail Instructions

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hey, what's up? Welcome to the QA episode. If you want to leave us one for a future app, go to Bulletproof for BJJ.com, podcast tab, hit the big button, record a voicemail. We're gonna answer three today. First one coming in from Dick Burke. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Hey guys, uh Dick Burke here from Florida. Uh bringing training jujitsu for three years, blue belt in uh Brazilian top team academy, Merritt Island. Um, shout out to Joe for learning the guitar. Uh 25-year vet guitar player, fan nerd, metalhead here. Um, question um recently healing from an ankle injury. Um, it was rolling and I got swept and my ankle came down hard on the mat. We use two-inch wrestling mats at the academy. The uh the injury was pretty rough. Um, I'm a general contractor superintendent, so 20,000 plus steps a day at work. It's very different with or without a broken ankle. Um, two months into healing, I'm walking, I'm jogging, doing daily rehab. The uh the question is I'm back training and playing a lot of spider extelahiva guard, lots of game off my back. It's it's fun. Um, but the stability just isn't there for the ankle yet. And I'm curious, I'm 41 years old. Uh, you know, what's the what's the correct ratio for strength training, mobility, rehab, mobility training, and jujitsu. Um, I train, you know, ideally three days a week. I cross-train with another gym friend of mine, Vanderlei Camillo, has a kickboxing academy down here. Um, they also do jujitsu, more of an MMA setting. You know, those are a lot of young kids, high energy, wrestling base, not particularly my game, um, but it's fun. You know, we have a good time. Um, but what uh what's your ideal ratio for rehab and strength training slash mobility training if BJJ is three days a week? Thanks. Podcast's been great. Um, you guys are awesome. I appreciate everything you all do.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

You're a legend. Thank you, brother. Mate, um, well, I mean, it's a it's uh it's a tricky one, I guess, because we're I guess we're just gonna assume that Dick has the time to add in whatever else on top of three days. But I mean, you know, and um tell me your take on this. I think um when when rehab is a thing, for me, I try to just tack that on to my strength training. So if I'm going in and I if I've got an ankle injury and I'm going into the gym and I'll lift three days, maybe four days a week. Um, not, you know, I often skip sessions, miss, miss sessions here and there, but that's kind of my general template. Um, I will, if it's my lower body session and I got an injury, I'll give half of the session to the to the rehab of the injury. And then I will be doing exercises within my strength training that are you also rehabbing the injury, but just because it's rehab doesn't mean it's like easy stuff, right? I'll do some easy stuff, do some kind of precision stuff, some balance stuff, and then I'll like get into the heavy shit if that's what the stage of rehab that I'm at. But so I would I would tack it onto that. I would also, I also sort of tack my mobility onto my strength. Um, you could do it as a separate thing. I would say like a simple template is like if you can squeeze in 15 minutes uh a few times a week, which is what you'll find in our mobility foundation program. We set it that way because we think that's a nice way to do it. Yes. You can tack it onto your jujitsu or you can tack it onto your strength. But if you're the kind of person that likes to keep stuff separate, then you can just do it in the morning or whatever, first thing, and you go to the gym at night. You know, but I I don't think um I don't think it's about finding the perfect ratio that's gonna keep you good forever. It's about right now you've got an injury. So I would put most of my resources into that, and then maybe one or two months later, things are looking a lot better, the ankle's feeling better, you can change the ratio again to support more performance.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

Yeah, I would agree with that. You've you know, yeah, totally. Um look, you've got a flat tire, right? So you've got to pull over and change the tire. Like your biggest priority, in my opinion, should be bringing that angle stability back because it's kind of vulnerable. So, Dick, you've got to get up on it, man. Um, you know, we our prescription, our golden, our golden ratio is the two, three, three, which is uh two strength, three jujitsu, three mobility. And you can organize that, however works for you, whether you're kind of coupling them together. But I would say actually for your rehab, it is worth uh in the same way if you've got a mobility thing you're working on, to just do 15 minutes um each day of either restoring range of motion, but it doesn't sound like that's your issue. You know, you've got you know stability issues to to do a bit of work either in the morning or at the end of the day, but sounds like you're an active guy with your work. So um I know for me when I had a shoulder injury in Andrew Locke, RIP, um was helping me with my shoulder. He made me do rehab every day. I he until my shoulder was stable, he's like, you do this every day. And I was like, Oh, I'd never heard anyone say that. He's like, Yep, you have to do a hundred reps of this, 100 reps of this, 100 reps of this, he do it every day, come back and see me in a week. And then he was testing my scapula stability. He's like, no, do it again, do it again. It took three weeks, and my shoulders got fucking jacked. So it was interesting because he was just like, if you imagine you're in a battle and you got hit with a club, he always had very masculine fucking analogies, and he's like, your arm half popped out the socket. Well, you just have to keep using it until it healed. And so, and I'm not telling you to overdo it here, I'm not saying do it every day, but I would encourage you to factor in your rehab um regularly through your week, whether that be uh three times a week with your strength training, like Joe said, or um little snacks in there for the for the stability work.

Electrolytes And Recovery Sponsor Break

When Pain Becomes A Real Injury

SPEAKER_03 5:53

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SPEAKER_00 6:56

Hey, JT and Joey, Hannah here from San Diego, California, longtime listener. I am a bluebelt. Um, I've been training for about three years. Um, my question there's a general question and then a more specific question. Generally, what is the point at which you decide that your nagging pain is a nagging injury and needs to be rehabbed versus just a kind of a standard jujitsu wear and tear, something that you can work through, something that bulletproof for BJJ can help with? Um, how do you guys determine when to take it easy? And um then more specifically, uh, do you have any tips for groin pain? I have uh the right side, my right groin is has been bothering me. And I'm just wondering if you guys have any exercises that you would recommend specifically for that. Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

Yep. Okay. Yeah, I think I mean for that injury piece, when this shit's keeping you up at night, like when it's stopping you from sleeping properly and it's like not getting better and it's kind of getting worse, that's when it's that's when it's a proper injury. I think the niggles, niggles come and go, and you can cop it for a couple of days and it's not too bad, and you're like, yeah, it's fine. But I think you know when it's like, nah, this thing's been some weeks now and it's affecting other areas of my life, and I'm changing the way I roll, or I'm you're protecting it a little bit. I think that you know, you could if you can the fact that you've asked means you're probably at that point.

Groin Pain Tips And Hip Stability

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Yeah, yeah, that's a that's actually a good point. Yeah, when you're asking yourself that question. For me, it's always range of motion. If I if I have less than say 60 or 70 percent of my normal range of motion, then I'm like, what am I doing? You know, like it's it was like it's it's silly for me to not take care of it now because it even though it sounds strange, it it can get a lot worse if you don't if you don't do something about it, either get it checked with a physio or um go to some kind of therapist to be able to give you some treatment which will help it um heal. So I think that's that's the key thing. And then uh relevant to groin pain, um I it depending on when we say groin, whether it be kind of if we say it's inside a hip, if it's more to the front, there's slightly different prescription here. But what I'd say there is actually activating the opposite group of muscles can help settle it down. So if it's like more adductor, like inner thigh, groin, crutch, uh medial glute, like side leg raise, getting the medial glutes fired up is very good. Or if you've got pain at the front of the hip, like hip flexory region, front of the groin there, getting glute max um activated hip extension, um, single leg glute bridge is very good for getting it to settle down and creating a bit of stability around the hip. That's my tip there.

SPEAKER_03 9:56

Yeah, it's a wonderful tip. I think it's very hard for you know for us to kind of give anything that's not totally general. So we're being very general here, yeah. Absolutely. But but I would also ask the question are you addressing sort of all aspects of the hip in your strength training? And if you're not, then maybe that's a thing. Are you addressing all sort of three aspects of the hip in uh your mobility work? If not, then maybe that's a thing, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Are you also playing a lot of butterfly guard against really heavy people and trying to hoist them on yours? And that that that could be a contributing fact. I don't know. Like, yeah, there's probably a few more details there that we would need to give you a good answer. And if you want to message us on Instagram, we could probably give you a few more details.

Getting Better With Less Training

SPEAKER_03 10:38

Shout out to San Diego, live there for a summer, one of the best times of my life. Shoo yeah, the bay. Here we go.

SPEAKER_04 10:44

South SF, my mistake. Joey. What a name.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Uh 47-year-old black belt living in San Francisco. So at the beginning of uh this past year, I started training at a new uh pretty competitive no-gee gym. But I was only able to train two days a week uh due to some life circumstances. And I was a little bummed about this at first, but um I actually may have like cracked the code on how to get better at jujitsu. So what I did was um in between my two uh training sessions, I started watching a ton of Gordon Ryan instructionals and I did uh mobility and uh strength uh sessions from your app. And it was so cool because I would like show up to training and I'd be like moving well, you know, feeling well, and I'd have like really specific like technical things I wanted to work on that day. And I just noticed over time I'd be getting better faster than like most of the people who were there, like training every day, fighting to the death. And like by the end of the year, I was like competitive with like even the top competition guys in the gym and like hitting cool wrestling moves. And wow, I don't know. It was just a cool experience, and I wonder why I didn't start training like this earlier.

SPEAKER_03 12:20

Wow, Joey, I appreciate you sharing. Man, it sounds like you're on a fucking on a vibe, brother. Less but better. Look, I um I I'll I'm gonna shout out a couple of the boys at the Balmain over at Joel's gym, Balmain, but I'll tell you these these motherfuckers sit around and watch Gotham Ryan shit, and then they come into the gym and they just drill it, drill it, drill it, drill it, and then they go watch the next thing and they come and drill it, drill, and it's a fucking effective way to get better at jujitsu. Yeah, like the people that that have the mind for that, the the instructionals thing, and then just systematically go through whatever they're learning and just drill the fuck out on the mats, it is extremely potent. Yeah, so um, so I I can vibe with that as being a a a winning strategy.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

And also the less training. Actually, I heard this from Hoyler Gracie many years ago, a seminar of his. He said he had some guys in Rio at his famous Gracie Humaito Academy who were like doctors and lawyers and stuff, and they only trained three days a week. But when they came in, they were just having the best time, and they were actually housing the competitors because they weren't as tired, they weren't as sore, and they were just enjoying their jiu-jitsu, and they were just fucking putting it on these guys. And he's like, what is wrong with he was giving his like competitor team a hard time? He's like, They're lawyers and doctors and their suits, you're meant to be hard competitors, but they were so beat down by you know the porhada that these guys having a good time and training less, like you say, kind of crack the code, finding that sweet spot on like what's enough jujitsu for you to get better. Like, mate, sounds like you've uh you've found the recipe.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

But it is a privileged place because I don't you can't be there unless you are like unless you have a mountain of experience, right?

SPEAKER_04 14:06

To to get to that level. Once you get to black belt, yeah, you do want to find like what's the the right thing for you. And it sounds like you've cracked the code.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

Hey, um, great question today. That's three from the US today. Yes. Holy shit. Fucking shout out to you guys. Um, if you want to leave us one future rep, go to bulletproof for bjj.com, hit the podcast tab, record it, and we'll speak to you on a future episode. You salute