Episode 318: Do you do Gi pull-ups? Do you know where to start in the gym? Joey and JT talk about the many mistakes made by grapplers in the weight room, and how they should be training. Trying to replicate Jiu Jitsu techniques in the Gym is a common mistake which will not only slow your strength gains but potentially lead to injury.
So you can show up every week to training ready to roll and feeling strong you need to do a certain amount "Complimentary" training to help undo all the kinks, cranks and imbalances Jiu-Jitsu can create. Reinforcing movements from BJJ and adding weights is a sure fire path to digging your own injury grave. But what is the right training to do and how do you make it fir in with BJJ?
the boys go deep on exactly what to do so you can maximise your gains in the gym while also feeling energetic and strong when you show up to your next Jiu-Jitsu class.
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Episode 318: Do you do Gi pull-ups? Do you know where to start in the gym? Joey and JT talk about the many mistakes made by grapplers in the weight room, and how they should be training. Trying to replicate Jiu Jitsu techniques in the Gym is a common mistake which will not only slow your strength gains but potentially lead to injury.
So you can show up every week to training ready to roll and feeling strong you need to do a certain amount "Complimentary" training to help undo all the kinks, cranks and imbalances Jiu-Jitsu can create. Reinforcing movements from BJJ and adding weights is a sure fire path to digging your own injury grave. But what is the right training to do and how do you make it fir in with BJJ?
the boys go deep on exactly what to do so you can maximise your gains in the gym while also feeling energetic and strong when you show up to your next Jiu-Jitsu class.
Stay Hydrated with Sodii the tastiest electrolytes in the Game! Get 15% OFF: BULLETPROOF15 https://sodii.com.au/bulletproof
Parry Athletic - Best training gear in the game... Get 20% OFF Discount Code: BULLETPROOF20 https://parryathletics.com/collections/new-arrivals
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Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. Now I don't know about you, joe, but have you ever just found like 20 bucks in the pocket of your jeans? You put, put on a pair of pants you haven't worn for a while, maybe it was a jacket. Put the jacket on, you reach and you're like oh, my god, I'm rich. It's a, it's a cool. It's a cool feeling, right, it's fucking best. It's a surprise, it's a nice feeling, and I feel like I would love to share that feeling with more people. You know what I mean that that surprise, that little bit of oh, that was cool, that was nice.
Speaker 1:And I spoke to someone recently who I never expected follows our podcast. It's my sister's mechanic, doesn't do BJJ. My sister was like I don't know, just talking about how she's editing our podcast and stuff and like, randomly meet this guy. Oh man, I listen to the podcast, oh, what he's like man, you guys. Oh, I love it. I was like, wow, that was such a nice experience that I never expected from a random person who doesn't do BJJ. It made me feel like you know what I just found? 20 bucks that was. It was a great feeling for me, but he was just expressing, you know, he was pretty happy with it and that was cool.
Speaker 1:And a way that I guess you can share this with other people, my good friends, is by liking and subscribing. But a little step further on that if you're listening to this on an audio platform, follow us and give us a five-star rating. You are secretly sneaking $20 into the pocket of an unsuspecting person. So when they reach into their podcast player they go oh my God, what's this bulletproof? They have a listen, ka-ching. They get that good feeling and you have done a good deed and we appreciate that Now there is a mistake that BJJ people are making. They are trying to do BJJ in the weight room. It's a massive mistake. Now some people think it's specificity, but actually it's not helping you. Some may even call it functional.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, look, there's plenty of people out there. They're doing the gi pull-ups, they're doing weighted sit-ups, they're just basically doing more of the same in the gym and it doesn't mean it's actually helping them. And I want to talk about this. Why? Because I have heard some complaints saying oh, where's the explosive rotational strength you need for jujitsu in your program? Where's the key pull-ups? Where's the more of the same stuff you would already do in jujitsu?
Speaker 1:Well, my friends, for those of you who maybe haven't had this experience, you actually need to use what you're doing in the gym to help balance out what you're doing in jiu-jitsu. Now, we have banged on a little bit about this, but I wanted to point to it because I got on the internet and I could not find a specific term for this, and actually it was you, joey, who I feel not coined it, but you put a word to it which I liked and I'd like you to speak about it yeah, your training in the gym should be complimentary complimentary to your jiu-jitsu training yeah, and it's because what you want to think is this my friends, when you're rolling and you're doing jiu-jitsu, you're like taking a nice, smoothed out piece of paper.
Speaker 1:Maybe there's a coffee stain on it, maybe it's a little crumpled, but you're crumpling it up into a little ball. Now, if you do not do anything, if you give it some time, it will slowly uncrumple, but it won't be fully uncrumpled. And if you just put weights on that and do the same thing, you're crumpling it up even tighter and you're throwing it in the bin of injury. My friends, that's what you're doing. We actually need to make it so that when you're in the gym, you're in the weight room, you're smoothing out that piece of paper, nice and fresh, so you can go back to jiu-jitsu, scramble it all up again and repeat this cycle.
Speaker 2:We want to keep you coming back and we want you to enjoy your jiu-jitsu, but just doing more of the same in the gym is not helping you do that there's a dilemma with with the way we view strength and conditioning and grappling, and I think that, um, what's a big part in this dilemma is social media, because it really does like it's. It's a very visual thing and we're looking for like small hits of dopamine and whatever, and one of those things that often sort of really gets viral is when there's a movement that is the same as jiu-jitsu and then it's like you're doing it in the weights room and for the person who hasn't like spent their life working on this stuff, they'll look at that and go that's the fucking that's the secret right there.
Speaker 2:That's what I need to do. I remember someone asking me, someone asked me about it, like bro, you, bro, you know someone, a friend of ours, mutual friend, will remain unnamed, relatively untrained, you know, in the gym and I just I don't want to do that boring stuff, but I watched this video of Bernardo Ferrer when he was getting ready for Worlds back in you know 2008 or whatever, and he had this thing, you know, he had bands and shit pulling. He was in a guard position and he's got bands and shit pulling him and I'm like, nah, dude, like I get it, I get it, I get why you've asked. So I think it's very natural and I guess I'm just giving license to think that that's the answer right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe should we maybe zero in on that and kind of talk about like… why is that not the answer? And why is our sort of general approach to getting stronger and becoming more flexible? Why is it that that is the answer?
Speaker 1:Well, so I will go, step slightly to the side and talk about, for example, people who shadow box with dumbbells. Now, when you're holding light dumbbells and you're punching now, people have done this for generations in boxing and people have been great boxers who've done that drill, but they're not great boxers because of that drill. They're great boxers in spite of that drill, because what it's been shown is that, even though it fatigues your shoulders to be able to hold the weights up like that, it actually shortens the forearm and the bicep, which is not actually what you want for boxing. You want to be able to stretch that arm out and snap and you actually need to be able to keep your arms relaxed. So actually holding weights in like a boxing guard position isn't the best way for you to get better at boxing, even though it creates localized fatigue. And people who've gotten better doing it aren't doing it as a result of it. They're getting better in spite of it because of all this other stuff they're doing.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people are like, yeah, but my coach, he was like a world world two-way champion, blah, blah. And you're like, yeah, but you've got to be able to. You've got to be able to separate the two things. Like some people will talk about the Diaz brothers. Yeah, but like they've got hella gas tank and cardio but they smoke weed. They don't have a hella gas tank and cardio because they smoke weed. They it's not causal, right, you're correlating them it's. They have that because they train just fucking animals a crazy amount right, they train crazy with the, the detriment of all that weed smoking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and it's in spite of so, we don't want you to then go in the gym and make your bodies less athletic. So here's the thing which is confronting a lot of people who are good at jiu-jitsu aren't necessarily the best athletes you know, I always say that it's kind of disappointing because I used to think, oh bj, athletes are the best at everything.
Speaker 1:Well, no, that's not true. Yes, I used to think that actually, because athletes are the best at everything. Well, no, that's not true. Yes, I used to think that actually, because I'm like you know, you need to be flexible, you need to be strong, you need to be fit, you need to be explosive. You've got good grip strengths, like. I used to think of jujitsu as being the most dynamic thing ever. Right, but the more I've come to do it, the more I've come to understand that no, it's a very specific skill set and you can shape your body to be good at that, but it doesn't mean you'll have a good vertical jump. It doesn't mean you'll have a good squat. It doesn't mean that you can sprint 100 meters absolutely not you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:You've you've developed very specific skills, and that works. In a context, you become a static monster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to an extent you do because you, yeah, if whether you're on guard or on top. So what I then started to think about was looking at the most athletic people around and when I say that it's the person who exhibits the most athletic qualities, and there's, you know, there's a whole list of athletic qualities. But, like, are they strong, are they flexible, do they have endurance? Like also, how's their body composition? So I went to a strongman competition on the weekend just to have a look. There is a lot of heavyset, high-calorie humans wearing shirts that said athlete on the back. And, yes, they towed a truck. And that's one thing. For you to be able to pull on a rope and to tow a freaking Mack truck, that's impressive. But if you had asked them to run 100 meters, not towing a truck, it would be a different story. It would take a long time. I would consider that to not be athletic per se. No bias, that's just my take on what it is. The person who can exhibit the most athletic traits to me is the best example of what an athlete can be, not purely specialized, and even though jujitsu people are very good at their jujitsu skills, it doesn't necessarily make them great athletes.
Speaker 1:When we get you in the gym. We want to improve your athleticism. We want to improve the strength of your shoulders. We want to improve the strength of your hips. Just making your hip flexors tighter doesn't make you more athletic. We need to improve the strength of your hips. Just making your hip flexors tighter doesn't make you more athletic. We need to actually strengthen your glutes. We need to provide some balance. If you have really well-developed abs, but you have really terrible lower back muscles, like your spinal erectors aren't developed, then that's really imbalanced. So that doesn't speak for you to be a strong human. And so here's the key thing even though jiu-jitsu does develop some qualities, we're missing a lot, and that's why I feel we need to talk about the other stuff we need to do to help complement your jiu-jitsu yeah.
Speaker 2:So I see the the complementary thing is kind of sort of breaks into two parts. One is that we want to balance out the negative effects that jiu-jitsu has on your body, which we've spoken a lot about those. But you know, it turns you into a little golem kind of, rounds you into this little ball, un-fuck yourself. Yeah, this shape is really effective for jiu-jitsu, right. But the tricky thing is that we don't just want to go all in on being that shape, because you're also going to have to live your life and you're also going to have to try and sit up straight and not deal with back injuries. And even and this is the hard part to get your head around is, even though that shape is beneficial for jiu-jitsu, there's an end point to that. There's a point where, hey, now you're just fucking yourself harder and you've got more and, and then that's potentially going to take you out of the game, right. So there's kind of a cruel irony that your body will morph into the shape that is most effective for your sport, but if you just go all in on that continuously forever, you will end up being forced out of your sport. Yeah, so that's the first thing is we want to balance that out right. And you look at well-rounded athletes, they usually have the ability. I'm going to say, if you look at well-rounded athletes, whatever that is to you, they are going to have capacity in a lot of areas. We're not saying that. We don't want you to become like a vice when you catch hold of people. Absolutely you need it, but we don't want you to only be in that shape. You need to be able to extend, you need to be able to open your hips. You know this is this is key for explosive hips, right as an example. But then the other side of it of being complementary is that you know you do want to develop the attributes that are specifically required for jiu-jitsu. Yes, you want strong legs, legs that can squeeze, that can clamp. You want strong calves, protected knees, lots of muscle around them, strong, tend. Yes, you want strong legs, legs that can squeeze, that can clamp. You want strong calves, protected knees, lots of muscle around them, strong tendons. You want fucking strong biceps, elbows, shoulders, trunks that can squeeze and frame and and rotate and push and all those things. And so there's a balance in doing the stuff that balances you out and then doing the stuff that pushes your performance forward. Yes, and it's our belief that, like, if you can just get that balance right and you can keep that on a consistent basis, then this allows you to kind of lead with your best athletic performance while also not just screwing yourself up on an ongoing basis. And you know, you can look to the people in your gym that absolutely go all in on being the best like gnarliest grappler they can be, and they are usually the people that will be able only be able to do that for the shortest period of time. Yeah, because to be the absolute best grappler you can be, you have to go.
Speaker 2:I'm not concerned about longevity, life after 35. No, I'm not concerned about my knees or if they last me a lifetime. I'm not concerned about bulging discs. If they last me a lifetime, I'm not concerned about bulging discs. I just want to fuck people up on the mat and that's great. Like we love that. That's fucking, we need it. You know I love to watch that shit on TV. But I think it's safe to say that most people hearing this are not trying to be that person. No, they're trying to be like yeah, I want to be really, really good jiu-jitsu, also want to be strong, good at life and capable and and be able to keep playing for a long time, definitely, and and that's the thing it's not to say.
Speaker 1:Because here's the deal for many people out there getting into jiu-jitsu, they may have not had a gym routine prior.
Speaker 1:They, you know, they vast majority I'd say or maybe it's been a while, maybe they did back in the days, but they haven't done that since they were younger. But they want to do Jiu-Jitsu. And when you get that stimulation, that sweet taste of rolling glory, when you choke your first training partner out or your armbar or something, you get the sweep. You've never been able to get it. You get it. You're like, yes, this is the best.
Speaker 1:The thing is what a lot of people and this is just a subtext of Jiu-Jitsu when you come up against somebody who is stronger and they are more flexible and they are better conditioned and they're more athletic than you, you're like, oh, it just doesn't work against that person because you know they are stronger than you. And so it was told to me very early that when you had a person, two people of equal physicality, whatever that you know it's a very general term the person who had better jiu-jitsu would win. Right and provided, if you had somebody who was kind of stronger, more physical, fitter, but also had better jiu-jitsu, they would definitely win. But if you had two very unskilled people, you don't know who's going to win that exchange. This is a very general, but this was told to me when I was a white belt. So I was like right, so if you're good at jujitsu and you're also like really athletic, then you have greater chance of winning Great.
Speaker 1:But it's so interesting to me that there's still a bit of a stigma on athletic guys. I'm like, oh, that crossfitter smashed me and I'm a purist jiu-jitsu. There's still this mentality of I don't need to train for jiu-jitsu, I just do jiu-jitsu, and I think that this is actually this is a bit of a problem. I digress, but what is surprising is the benefit people get when they start doing complementary training for their jiu-jitsu. They're not as sore, they have more energy and they're like my jiu-jitsu got better. I think people are still surprised by this yeah, I'm not feeling.
Speaker 2:I'm not feeling beat up after that 50 minutes in the gym and my jiu-jitsu is benefiting and actually I am stronger than I was and wow, yeah, I didn't expect that to happen yeah, people are surprised, which is which is surprising to me If we're looking at, when we see athletic people.
Speaker 1:If you envision whatever athletic looks like to you, I'm thinking more like a 400-meter, 800-meter type sprinter person, not a marathon runner per se.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking of Werner Gunthor.
Speaker 1:Who is Werner Gunthor?
Speaker 2:He's my favorite. I think he's a Swedish shot putter, who's Werner Gunther he's my favourite I think he's the sweetest shot putter. Oh okay, you would have seen his highlight video as a heavyweight oh yeah, back in the 80s with the mullet and the purple yeah, the purple, and he's doing huge back extensions, yeah, and he had these wide like he could fucking jump like a mullet power powerful human.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know who you're talking about. I don't think him. Not, because his mullet wasn't just fucking pure fire, it was, it was, it was lustrous. I think of somebody who can be strong but also can be fast and can be flexible. I often think of a gymnast, yeah, but with probably gymnast meets wrestler, maybe like a jordan burrows, right, like jordan burrows is strong he is.
Speaker 2:I mean I would say, yeah, wrestlers tend to embody a lot of what I would consider athleticism, because they have the gym In a well-rounded yeah. You think about some of the acrobatic stuff they have.
Speaker 1:Head flips, head flips, it's all there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, strong as fuck, but also fast and not flat-footed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. That's it we. I've spent a bit of time messing with this, like I used to do a lot of sit-ups back in the day Before I did jiu-jitsu, I used to do vertical sit-ups, kind of inspired by Bruce Lee, you know. You get the kind of ski boot hook things. You hang on your, you lock on your feet, you hang upside down on a chin-up bar, because I was like vertical sit-ups are the hardest.
Speaker 1:I used to do like hour-long ab routines because I was obsessed I have to have abs and then I came to understand that actually what that wasn't that helpful for me and it only took me like fucking four years of completely fucking around to to work that out. You know, let me save you some time and and I think what's been really beneficial is working out this idea of the minimum effective dose, which is getting people to do the right thing for the right amount to get the best result. Just the right amount. And you don't need to be doing super long workouts. So spending heaps of time replicating jujitsu in the gym is wasting your time. So if you only have enough time to do two workouts in the week, I feel that we've been able to work out what is the right amount of helps your jiu-jitsu and helps balance out your jiu-jitsu.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, we have I'd like to make a point just about the, the specific training that you know that's popularized, like gait pull-ups and stuff like that, and we've, you know, we, I like gait pull-ups, we like them. Sure, we put them up on our instagram before it's like, like, yeah, here's a cool thing, you know, it's actually a part of our program which is the towel, yeah, towel, hang Pull-ups yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, for someone who's like I don't get it, like, how can that not be of benefit? Here's where the problem lies Like a pull-up right stronger in very general terms, and this is great for jujitsu. Now if we add the gi grips to that, yeah, that also makes our grip stronger and our fingertips and all the little joints in the hands and stuff like that. But if we look at one of the negative effects of training a lot of jujitsu is that if you're training in the gi all the time, you are gripping all the fucking time and you would know this you end up with kind of gnarly fingers. Often you get little finger injuries. The tendons get really fucking worked and this of course gives you great strong hands.
Speaker 2:But it doesn't necessarily equate to just doing more of. That is going to be better, because then you become that person with chronic hand issues because your hands are always getting wrecked. There's no period of recovery. You're doing gi pull-ups in the gym, you're rock climbing on the weekend, you're doing jiu-jitsu and now your hands are fucked. So in that way you could say that your specific gi grips will strengthen through training jiu-jitsu when you're in the gym. This is your opportunity to build bigger muscle groups, bigger structures within the body that are going to complement your jiu-jitsu a stronger back, better, stronger shoulders, stronger biceps. This stuff here is going to carry over to the specific things that are happening on the mats, and so this is where, like I think, our approach is the shit doesn't need to be sexy, no, it's basic strength and flexibility work, yes, that you apply to the whole body and then this gives you the base to go and build the specific capacities, like your gear grips on the mat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and here's the other thing which is deceptive. Like humans, we're very visual creatures. So we look at someone and like what looks athletic or jacked right. So we constantly think about the front of ourselves. We think about the chest, think about the abs, think about the quads. You know we're very front centric, it's you know people don't say, oh, look at my very developed erector spinae. You know we're not looking at that. But if you think of a very strong human, it's like a roadmap back there they got, they got glutes, they got hamstrings, they got a big, strong upper back. And I can't remember who said this. But they said you want to have a back like a bodybuilder, but a chest like a powerlifter or something. You don't want to have a huge chest, you want it to be strong, but you can never really have a strong enough back.
Speaker 1:You want to have as big a back as you can, because it supports so much of what your body does, and so we're not just talking your lats, we're talking about your rear deltoids and your scapula and your traps and all these things that support your body. And even though some of that gets trained in jiu-jitsu, because we do spend so much time rounded, we don't spend much time in extension, because this is kind of dangerous. Sticking your neck out is dangerous in jiu-jitsu. Extending your arm is dangerous in jiu-jitsu. Locking your knee out is dangerous in jiu-jitsu. Extending your arm is dangerous in jiu-jitsu. Locking your knee out is dangerous in jiu-jitsu.
Speaker 1:But if you don't practice it, what is good for jiu-jitsu isn't always what's good for life, and I think this is the thing. If you haven't seen it, I have stood next to a couple of different world champions and thought to myself they look old, like they have aged themselves through this process, and even though we really we see them roll and we think it's magical, if you met some of these people who you admire, you'd realize that they have sacrificed their health in the name of being your jujitsu hero, you know, and that, given given the exchange, you wouldn't want to feel in as much pain as they do on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it comes at a cost, it does.
Speaker 1:So save yourself that pain. When you are in the gym, we want to actually be doing things which do create extension in the arm. We do want to be able to straighten up the posture, pull the shoulders back, want to use your glutes, want to use your hammies in ways that, ultimately, are different to jujitsu complimentary. So when you come back to do it, you're good to do it all again. You've washed the dishes, you clean the car. You're ready for a week to wreck it all again. You know like, even though it's not necessary I was having this chat with ola clean the house. You know like, full, clean, everything's perfect. And then about five minutes later she's like you're just gonna wreck it all again. I was like me, we, we are gonna wreck it all again, but probably me, I create the most mess.
Speaker 1:It's true doesn't mean you shouldn't clean it because you know it's worth. It's worth going through. Look after your car, look after your house, look after your goods, but so it's in good working order when you need it to function for you. You don't want to be in need and not have it there for you. Yeah, and you don't know when you're going to need a really strong back muscle, other than when that person jumps garden or the person throws the triangle on you and jerks you off balance. You don't know how valuable it is until, oh, you've bulged a disc, or maybe you haven't bulged a disc, yeah and it's. It's there to keep you safe.
Speaker 1:So not to harp on about it, but I see more and more things on social media of people replicating jujitsu in the gym and I think it's misdirection, I think it's confusion, but it's popular confusion, so people do it. So, in terms of being able to balance that out, we're not saying don't do pull-ups, we're not saying don't do things that are going to get the muscles you need strong for jiu-jitsu strong, but do spend a considerable, like a portion of time balancing that, and you may not know what that is right. So you might be like well, I have no idea what that is. We've thought about it for you. My friends, we have already put a lot of time and energy going back and forth, because Joe and I don't always agree on every single exercise. No, disagree on plenty, disagree on plenty.
Speaker 1:And so we have to go back and forth to work out what is the best thing for you. And so, within each of our programs, whether you're trying to build muscle or you're just trying to get a bit stronger, or say you're really trying to improve your mobility and flexibility. You're just trying to get a bit stronger or say you're really trying to improve your, your, your mobility and flexibility. We've made sure that we have addressed the upper body, the core, the legs, the grip, like we've made sure that we are ticking as many boxes as possible in the least amount of time, with the right amount of effort to get you the most result, and that's what we're all about. That's what we're trying to do Absolutely the most result, and that's what we're all about.
Speaker 2:That's what we're trying to do absolutely complimentary baby man, get on it. You can do a seven-day free trial on the app. You can start up right now, start training and if you don't like it you can cancel it. But if you do like it, continue on. Connect with us, become part of the community, get coaching whenever you need it. You just go to the app store and search bulletproof for bjj, and there it is, and if you stick around, we'll see you there on the community group. Beautiful, big loss Woo.