Episode 321: Have you heard of Cossack Squats? The Bulletproof Boys believe this to be the ultimate leg exercise for BJJ! It develops amazing lower body strength and flexibility at the same time. What starts out looking like a Kung Fu inspired stretch movement evolves into one of the most advanced weighted squat variations you can perform. JT & Joey explain how mastering the Cossack Squat will improve your passing game and balance for BJJ top game while also building crazy flexibility in the hips and ankles for better Guard retention.
From total beginner through to the most advanced levels the boys break down how you can incorporate it into your routine to unlock epic levels of lower body athleticism. If you are keen to know more check out this video from the Bulletproof For BJJ App -
https://youtu.be/6FCT90ROXnM?si=Qc3JXkYc5FMC1b0y
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Episode 321: Have you heard of Cossack Squats? The Bulletproof Boys believe this to be the ultimate leg exercise for BJJ! It develops amazing lower body strength and flexibility at the same time. What starts out looking like a Kung Fu inspired stretch movement evolves into one of the most advanced weighted squat variations you can perform. JT & Joey explain how mastering the Cossack Squat will improve your passing game and balance for BJJ top game while also building crazy flexibility in the hips and ankles for better Guard retention.
From total beginner through to the most advanced levels the boys break down how you can incorporate it into your routine to unlock epic levels of lower body athleticism. If you are keen to know more check out this video from the Bulletproof For BJJ App -
https://youtu.be/6FCT90ROXnM?si=Qc3JXkYc5FMC1b0y
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
A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point, the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready. Ladies and gentlemen, today's show is brought to you by Parry Athletics the best pair of training shorts in the game. They do rashies, they do shirts, but what I love is they have shorts for you to roll in, as well as shorts for you to chill in. I love them because they're so multi-purpose and they look awesome. Now you can get your hands on these and you get 20% off with the code BULLETPROOF20 at checkout. Get yours today.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. Oh, my goodness, it's an exciting move the Cossack Mastering the Cossack for BJJ. It is a key part, a foundation, of our standards program for mobility, but it's also very applicable to all parts of your jujitsu getting you strong. You name it, it does it. But before we go there, I want you to explain something to me, joe. You mentioned something and I was like oh, hang on, you've nailed a term here and it obviously exists. Tell me about the law of reciprocity, joe. Well, jt, the law of reciprocity. This is a concept in the area of influence. If we're talking about influence, we're talking about sales process. We recently did an episode where we're talking about uniform policies and when it's good to sell and not sell and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:And you gave the example of you go to a cafe. They give you a little thing. They're like, oh hey, we just had an extra shot of coffee, here's a little piccolo. And you're like, oh wow, like lovely, how nice, yeah. And so you instantly feel compelled to like buy more food, or let me buy another coffee or let me tip you, right. So law of reciprocity is one of the founding concepts behind us creating societies and groups, and it basically states that if I give you something, you are motivated to give me something in return. Sure, if you don't do so, you will be ostracized. Right, I'll be like fuck that cunt, he's not part of the group. And so in a, in a tribal piccolo's for you, that's right. Yeah, so in a tribal setting, if there's some, because giving and taking is a, is a is a part of it right, I've got food. You don't, here's some food. Yeah, the person who doesn't reciprocate usually gets ousted from the group, like if there's someone that's just constantly leeching and never bringing any value, then the tribe's going to be like, hey, man, you're fucking out of here. Yeah, so you could say then in simple terms that people of that line of not giving back got like weeded out of the gene pool, did not survive, exactly so law of reciprocity is really strong.
Speaker 1:Now here's where it plays into a very acute scenario that we're in right now, which is we're sitting down doing the podcast, trying to bring value to you, our listener or our viewer, and it's very hard for you guys to give us a piccolo because you're not here in the studio right now, and so I don't want you to send anything in the mail. I don't want you to. You know, keep the bitcoins, it's fine. All we want you to do as your return gesture is just to like and subscribe the show, and if you listen to an audio platform, give us a five-star rating because it helps to grow the show. And our thing is like let's get this out to as many Jiu-Jitsu players as possible and we're giving you the value. So we ask in return, give us the rating. And that is an explanation of how the law of reciprocity plays out right now. That's a beautiful thing and I know we have good people listening to us, so I definitely expect that they will reciprocate. Appreciated, appreciate it all.
Speaker 1:The Cossack I actually came across this move when I was doing Taekwondo early days. It wasn't a huge part of what we were doing, but it was like an intro to getting into splits positions when you couldn't do them, when you didn't have the kind of adductor hamstring abilities. So that was cool. But then it kind of fell out of my life later on because my flexibility was pretty good. I felt like I didn't need it. And then it came back in doing kettlebells. I was like, whoa, people are doing this with kettlebells. Like Steve Cotter was doing some crazy stuff. He was like doing snatches and presses while doing Cossacks.
Speaker 1:I was like, wow, this is wild and it has always been a test for me. How are my ankles, how are my knees, how are my hips? If I can do a good Cossack, I'm like, oh, body feels pretty good today If I go to do a Cossack and I'm like, oh, knees a bit jacked, oh, ankles a bit stiff. It does give you the feedback on where you might be lacking. And what I really like about it is. If I want to know how a person's hips, knees and ankles all work together, I say, oh, show me a Cossack. And how well they can do it usually tells me how healthy their hips are. So I think it's a really good place to start If you've never done this move and you've never heard of it.
Speaker 1:We're big fans of it, we believe it's really powerful. Just trying the move itself will be a bit of a feedback loop. Yeah, it'll give you a lot, I think. Yeah, the beauty of it is like it becomes a diagnostic for all of those things. But it's also like, if it's really just simplified, it's just like a squat. It's a single leg squat, yeah, and we like, I think, anyone listening we all know how valuable squats are, like just as a basic drill, squatting to some degree every day, right, not necessarily as an exercise, but just movement is really important and beneficial.
Speaker 1:Cossack brings in the squat element because you're on one leg, you are just squatting, but then on the other leg you're getting this nice long stretch, stretch through the inside of the hip, and that's really of benefit, particularly in jiu-jitsu. So there's this really nice like strength, flexibility, mobility thing going on, whether you're using it to limber up, or you're loading it up in the gym and using it to get strong. It's just got so many benefits wrapped into one. Yeah, the physicality is so great, like if you're someone who who's tried it and maybe is struggling with it. Getting on top of it will have huge crossover for you. So I want to talk about how. How is this applicable to jiu-jitsu?
Speaker 1:So I remember many years ago when I first went to cabrinha's gym. He was lying on his back and he was doing a spider guard drill with a barbell. So I was like, whoa, specificity's gone out of control. And I was like, well, cabrinha's the man, so whatever he says, right. And so he had, I think, maybe even 60 kilos and he was doing like one leg bent, one leg straight, oh wow, yeah, doing the kind of open guard, spider guard drills Like a supine Cossack, yeah, with a barbell on his feet, and I was like what the fuck is going on here? I was like, obviously he's a very capable guy and I had thought to myself, oh, I want to try that. But capable guy.
Speaker 1:And I had thought to myself, oh, I want to try that. But I was like, also, I might break every bone in my body, I might break my pelvis, the barbell might drop on my chest, like, yeah, it's so risky and it's not an easy thing to set up and I thought there's got to be a better way. Yeah, I thought there's got to be a better way to to improve your flexibility for guard, whether you play spider guard, open guard, whatever you like. But then also, when you think about people keeping their base when they're passing, a lot of people say to me oh, you're hard to sweep because you have a good base, because I've got that flexibility in my adductors, I can base really wide and not be off balance. And so not only does the Cossack improve your guard, it also improves your top game by being harder to unbalance.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, yeah, like the, even just the ability to move sideways. Yeah, this is something that conventional strength training doesn't really address, like it's often been a big criticism of crossfit. Right, there's no lateral movement, it's more linear. Yeah, so if you're thinking like a simple example, like bullfighter pass, just like grab the pants and you go to the side lateral movement now, sure, there's other drills to do that, but in really simple terms, the cossack is just moving your body to the side and it's like, okay, we're starting to build a pattern in now that isn't really present. If we're just squatting and deadlifting and doing pull-ups and push-ups, what's being being loaded? Where's the stretch, what's lengthening, while something else is contracting Shitload of benefit in it, keeping your posture in it right? So you think about all those positions like knee ride, you know, one leg out, one leg in, like pulling upright posture, also a position that looks quite similar to a Cossack.
Speaker 1:Now, I just want to state at this point there's a strong argument by those in the strength community that you shouldn't be training jujitsu specific positions in the gym, like cabrinha with the barbell, sure, and I would say that we generally agree with that. In general, that's not what it's about. For the most part, yes, however, and you know who knows, maybe cabrinha was like I'm just gonna fuck around with this thing. I saw on Instagram, and that was the day you walked into the gym, right? I'm pretty sure he invented it, right? Everyone else has copied him since, but and so when we're talking about this stuff, even though we can tie it to a specific position, that is a benefit. Probably, though, the greatest benefit is what we said at the beginning, where it's like knee health, ankle mobility, leg strength, hip flexibility, right. But it's also kind of cool that it mimics some positions. There is some benefit to that, definitely.
Speaker 1:The crossover is pretty obvious to look at someone doing the movement. But if you're someone who struggles to do the movement, this is the thing that always interests me. People in the jiu-jitsu context they put on the gi or they put on their no-gi stuff and they're like well, anything in the name of jiu-jitsu, but oh, no, I can't. Oh, I can't squat below 90. No, it's bad for your knees. It's like, like what the fuck are you talking about, bro? Like you can't squat under your own bodily control but you're gonna have someone jump on your back and you're gonna fall sideways, and you know what I mean. Like it's. It's one of those things that I am. I'm such a advocate for you, just learning how to control your body and and the Cossack is something that really helps you. Yeah, keep your posture, work your hip, work your knee and work your ankle in a very nicely coordinated way. That will translate to Jiu-Jitsu and it's just one of those things.
Speaker 1:That single leg strength, like asymmetrical that's the other thing which people probably underestimate. It's just how asymmetrical Jiu-Jitsu is. It's really chaotic. So if you're not training asymmetrical movements, then you're also like. It doesn't mean you can't get strong doing a deadlift or doing a back squat, but just by doing this it's a great way to re-coordinate your body for jiu-jitsu, absolutely Like. Think about someone coming like picking up a single on you and you're like fighting it, pushing, and you're on one leg. Yeah, like okay, holy shit, all of a sudden, now one leg's out, you're balancing on the other leg, you're hopping around. This is a capacity. If you could train some kind of position similar to that that's loading up one leg, this is going to help, definitely. And and here's the cool thing, this is what I love about it, which is it's made me love the move all the more.
Speaker 1:Recently dr mike israel was uh, bas was bashing the Turkish getup and I had posted. You know like I respect the guy, but I posted underneath in my own not so snarky but very, very open way that I actually think Dr Mike probably doesn't have the shoulder mobility to do a good Turkish getup. That's probably why he freaking hates it. You know like we tend to hate on our insufficiencies, right, and maybe I'm wrong, but show me the fucking video If you have a great back squat.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean you have a great Cossack, no. But if you have a great Cossack, I'm going to say you have the potential to have a great back squat because it is more technically demanding, right? So once you've mastered the Cossack as a mobility exercise, you can start to load it up and actually and we've talked about this before adding that little bit of load can actually help you counterbalance, yeah, and kind of get a bit deeper. Yeah. So if that loads on the front, yeah, yeah, when you, when you put the like holding a kettlebell or holding a dumbbell, whatever it might be in front of you, it does get different when you start to put a barbell on your back or whatever that looks like. But that's quite advanced. But the the thing that I I've realized messing with it recently the barbell forces you to straighten up and that's actually really good for the technique. Yeah, I've been messing with the sandbag and the sandbag does not force you to straighten up.
Speaker 1:60 kilos, was it? I did a 60 kilo and it felt okay, and I'm pretty horrendous, I'll do 80 and I nearly blew out my glute, my back, my everything. Wow, because it just it pulls you so far forward. Right, it's so hard to maintain the. To have good Cossacks squat technique, you need to really keep your back straight. When you've got no load, you can kind of round and compensate, but when you add load, you can't do it incorrectly. And when you've got a kettlebell or something, you can push it away from you, whereas a sandbag you have to keep close to you. So, yeah, I can see how that's not particularly accommodating. It's precarious, which is the beauty of doing it at a level.
Speaker 1:So I would not recommend that you just start pumping out the bear hug Cossacks, it's just me fucking around. So you know, give me that for being a madman, but for yourself, if you're like, all right, this sounds cool. Like, at what point do I chuck on a bit of weight? Like, how do we approach this? So, generally, what I'd say is, if you can do, say, 10 Cossacks on each side with your body weight, with good technique, okay, now start to look at oh, I'm going to hold an eight kilo kettlebell, I'm going to hold a five kilo plate or whatever it might be, because what you'll find is actually having that little bit of weight in front of you is as much an assistance as it is a resistance Yep, that's what I find To your point there like a decent quality Cossack or like 10 reps each side of a good quality.
Speaker 1:What are we looking for in terms of quality? We're looking at depth. So, almost straight away, our friend George sent me a video of him holding like a 20-kilo plate and not below 90. Jt's like no rep, no rep, no rep, no rep. Every time we are looking for… Let me know when the reps start.
Speaker 1:We are looking for a degree of depth. So ideally, we want to see hamstring touch calf. Like that's different for everyone, right? Ideally, ideally. Right, like, if you that's the goal we want to see your hip get below 90. And if you can't, that's okay, that's all right will have a tendency to shift the weight into the toe and have the heel come up off the ground. Yeah, like, oh, I can get all the way down.
Speaker 1:Here's the problem with that. It makes it very quad, very quad oriented, and then you, you're not really showing anything at the hip. It's kind of like the restless squat version of it. Yeah, that it. It actually shows us nothing about your ankle, nothing about your hip. It just loads up your quad and so, yeah, you could say, oh, and that's cool too, but you're kind of bypassing an inefficiency, you're missing it. Yeah, and really the biggest problem I find for most people it's the ankles. Yeah, what's your recipe for success there?
Speaker 1:Well, I would agree, I would think like I'm gonna push back slightly on the depth piece. Okay, because ideally we want to see that, but I know someone that's like tight and you know athletic and whatnot we might be able to address, we might be able to get the Cossack looking decent, but the depth kind of sucks and sometimes adding weight for that person is going to be the unlock or holding a pole, exactly right, like something that can accommodate or add some more load or whatever. But I think what? Yeah, main things are like the positioning of the, the leg, so the squatting leg, knee over the toe, yeah, knee is traveling in the direction of the toes, or even a touch wider, depending. Yeah, but I would like to have the toes and the knee pointing same way, same direction.
Speaker 1:Yep, um, and the hip stays inside of the knee and the toe, and this sounds a bit odd. But when you see someone do a Cossack where the hip comes on the outside and the knee comes in, you can very quickly. Oh, that doesn't look right, that's like not a strong position. So we want the hip, or like your butt cheek, to stay on the inside of the knee and the foot, which, if you look at a back squat, the knee and the foot which, if you look at a back squat. The way I always explain is, if you look at someone doing a back squat, their hips come straight down and then their knees and their feet are just outside of that. So if you cut that person in half, that's what one half of the cossack squat should look like. Yeah, and then on the other leg we're looking for knee locked, toes pulled back, nice active contraction through the quad. I would say if you could do that to even to like a horizontal thigh position, that's great. Then it might be the case. It's good, it's a great start. It's a great start.
Speaker 1:The main thing is you're not breaking any rules. You're just not getting as deep as we'd like, sure, and that then, in my view, is like okay, well, now we can load it up a bit responsibly. Good place to build from. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And look often if it's not say tight adductors, because sometimes people bend the leg. That should be straight extended leg because they feel tightness in the kind of mid-knee. You feel like that shit's going to rip. Yeah, you feel like, oh, my God, I'm going to do me groin, understandable, don't, don't go as deep, definitely Don't injure yourself doing this thing. But typically the most common problem I see is tight ankles. Yeah, so that's why people want to lift the heel off and that's also why people can't get as deep because they feel like they're going to fall backwards.
Speaker 1:Similar is to just get a small weight plate two and a half kilos or, if you've got really tight ankles, you know 20 kilo plate, whatever it is. Chalk that heel and just work on the depth on that side. Now, that's a bandaid. You shouldn't just go all right, I'll just chalk my heels every time I do this. You should be actively working on your ankle mobility, you know, in tandem. But what that means is it allows you to get that bit deeper and allows you to get unlock the benefits of it without having your ankles kind of hold you back. Yeah, exactly, that's, and that's the key one. Right, it's like there's an argument for not accommodating things. Yeah, sure, that's great, but in that case you're accommodating one thing the ankle but you're unlocking all this extra benefit so much more. Yeah, and I really I totally agree with that. Make sure you're working on the ankles in tandem. That's the best advice ever.
Speaker 1:I would say that for the majority of people we've trained, elevating the heels has been the key thing that has unlocked the cossack for them. Yeah, it's like we both have pretty good ankle range, not bad. So when we demo shit, it like looks pretty, pretty slick in that regard, pretty easy, and so I I know that. I know that I'd say we're sort of ankle range is better than average. Yes, so for the average person, cossack's going to be real tricky. You elevate the ankles all of a sudden. Oh, now I can get into it. Get a bit more. Yeah, start reaping those benefits.
Speaker 1:And the other thing which can put people off, or it means that people are not moving quite as well, is just because ankles might be tight and it feels like you're going to fall back. People really round their posture and they reach forward as far as they can to compensate and it just means their spine is totally curved and that actually, I mean it's not the worst thing, but it means that you can't really progress if you haven't got your back straight, and I think you know we were talking before about posture with knee rides, stuff like that, doing things that practice. You know, good thoracic extension, good spinal alignment, is going to be good for your jiu-jitsu. So if you can't get lower without like really slumping, then we've got to spend a bit more time picking that up, because that's a bit of a common mistake, I see, is just people hunching over a bit. Absolutely Elevating the heel often takes care of that too, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it can, because that lean forward is to. That's the counterweight, yes, yeah. So as soon as. So you know, if you're that person, elevate your heels Now, try and stay more upright, and you should be able to find a sweet spot where it's like okay, I've got a bit of heel elevation, I'm still leaning forward a little bit, but I'm trying to lengthen my spine and if you're trying to do it and it's improving, that's a good spot to be, and it might not look like nice sort of almost vertical spine just yet, but like edging towards it. This is the good stuff, yeah, and then, once you've spent a bit of time on it, it actually doesn't take a long time to improve, provided you're being consistent.
Speaker 1:So I mean, I'm always fitting in a variation of this movement, usually before every class. It's just to check in with the body. It's just basically turn the engine over like, how are the knees today, how the hips today? Yeah, it feels pretty good. Okay, I'm good to go, but then at least once a week I will do it under some loaded condition, whether it's kettlebells in a, in a rack position or a kettlebell you know, goblet squat position, barbell on the back, holding a sandbag, like I like to mess around with it and just see how my structure holds up under that load not maximum heavy, but it's. It's a loaded stretch.
Speaker 1:So when you start to take that step towards, um, adding load to the cossack, be aware that you could get pretty sore, like I think this is. This is like deep, like you're like oh, my goodness, I'm feeling that. Yeah, deep in the bits up in the jibs, the giblets you got. Oh god, I got some soreness in some strange places. I would say don't rush to make it a heavy movement, absolutely not just just just a. Just a small bit of load will help you get that little bit deeper, but it is also going to offer some challenge. Yeah, like to.
Speaker 1:To simplify that for folks when we're talking about an exercise like a back squat, there's not a lot of like load on tissues at the end range in a back squat, so it's kind of say it's a very that's why it's a very strong position. You go down, you come up, you can lift heavy weight relative to to most other exercises. When you do something like cossack, now there's load on certain tissues, like your adductors, at an end range and this is riskier, right, it is. So we can't apply the same sort of like lens, your mentality as a back squat to something like that. We have to respect this is now an end range exercise and we've got to be slower and more gradual about it. However, if you've done the time and you've prepared the tissues correctly, you should be able to make that pretty heavy too. You just got to give it the time, yeah, and we've. We've built this into the standards program. So where the cossack is, um, relative to the whole workout, it is at the start. It does start pretty pretty easy, whatever. Whatever level you're at and as you progress, then it will, it will go up, but there's like I don't know, 16, 20, 21 progressions like, yeah, and you need to spend a good four to six weeks really at each progression to really get the confidence in it, um, and and then also just be proficient, because it can look gymnastic, it can look elegant or it can look like a fucking butchery.
Speaker 1:There's a guy I follow who is trt'd to the gills and a pretty athletic guy. I think he was like a footy player or a track sprinter. He's very dynamic. I think he's in his mid to late 50s oh, is this that the big, be more athletic the bit. And he's always doing the weird leg stuff. Yeah, he's doing the a skip jacked, he's so jacked. But then I saw him super loaded up with like um, maybe it was like a landmine or like it was like a barbell, it was a lot of weight and he was really gritting out these like not very good looking Cossacks and he was only going to 90 and the other leg was a bit bent, a bit shaky. He was maxing like five rep max and it almost made me want to unfollow him because I'm like you're wrecking it, dude, yeah, right, but I mean you've got to give it to him. He always does very interesting stuff, interesting different stuff, so you've got to give it to him. He always, he always does very interesting stuff, interesting, different stuff. So you've got to give it to him for experimenting and and going outside the box.
Speaker 1:But for you, my friends, we would like you to do it in the nice, gradual way, so not only do you feel good about doing it, but you know that you're not gonna do yourself harm. Yeah, that's, that's the main thing. Yeah, absolutely, and look like we have it in standards work on the cossack, do your four or five sets of that and then, as your accessory work, you just do some regular squats, yeah, goblet squats, boggain, split squats, you know whatever, like something more simple, but that's that's how we structure it and that's a beautiful way to get it into your session for sure. There it is, folks, master the cossack, and it will improve your jiu-jitsu. We'll see you next time.