Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Discussions on improving your BJJ, navigating mat-politics and all aspects of the jiu jitsu lifestyle. Multiple weekly episodes for grapplers of any level. Hosted by JT and Joey - Australian jiu jitsu black belts, strength coaches, and creators of Bulletproof For BJJ App. Based out of Sydney, Australia
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Everyday Porrada: Jiu Jitsu’s Biggest Lie
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What if the relentless "everyday porrada" mindset in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is actually holding you back? We're here to debunk the myth that grinding away with maximum intensity every day leads to success. Learn how to actually advance your jiu jitsu journey in the most consistent and productive manner possible.
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. On today's episode, we are busting the myth of everyday poor harder. We'll explain to you why showing up every single day and going as hard as you can is actually sending your jujitsu backwards. We also discuss the strange balance between intensity and consistency and how you can find your sweet spot. Also, why coach's advice to just show up is not necessarily the best way for you to improve with your jiu-jitsu techniques. And, last but not least, why the intensity of your life can infect your ability to deliver intensity on the mat and how you can tweak it to get the most from your BJJ. Let's get into it now. Now, if you like stuff like this and you want to share it with your friends, please like, subscribe and give us a five-star rating. On whatever platform you're watching this on, better, listen very carefully.
Speaker 1: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. Paul Harder BJJ's biggest myth. Now the everyday Paul Harder gets bandied around. It's its own brand name. You know, it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, just go hard, go as hard as you can, as much as you can. I've got it right here. No, that's slightly different, joe. No, but the word yes, it's in there. It's within the cultural zeitgeist of jujitsu, which is this idea of just going so hard to the point of like fighting, like it's like a brawl, it's like wild. Like a brawl, it's like wild. It's possibly like when you see two world champions trying to destroy each other. It's this idea of intensity and we all know that to be the best at anything, it does require a degree of intensity. But what we're going to talk about today is like why is Pohata bullshit? Because we know that jujitsu takes a long time to get good at. It. Doesn't matter if you started when you're a kid or you started in your forties. It's going to take a while to get to a high level of skill. And if you just go ultra hard straight out the gate which is what we often do when we get excited about shit you're going to actually cut your journey short. And it's interesting that these different assumptions and behaviors are well-known in jujitsu, like people retiring at Blue Belt, yeah, but we still are like nah, pull harder, like go for it as hard as you can all the time, and so I want to unpack this. I want to talk about the relationship between intensity and consistency and how we can find the sweet spot and what that means for different individual people Right Now.
Speaker 1:For the uninitiated who don't know the word, can you just define it for us? Okay? So I've heard different people come at it different ways, but essentially, pojada is essentially like a brawl. It's like when you see two it's basically like a fight, like a melee, and so when you see two or more people going porrada, it's basically like they're trying to beat the shit out of each other.
Speaker 1:I believe the way this has been attributed it's not a Japanese word either. No, it's a Portuguese word. It's a curse word. It is a curse word. No, it's not a curse word. No, no, no, no. But, forgive me, my Brazilian friends, porra is, and it is an extension of that. No, they're unrelated. I've looked into that.
Speaker 1:Okay, elaborate, joe, please. Well, they're two different words. I know they're two different words, but the way it Like fuck, fuckery, like no, no, no, no, because no, I remember we had this conversation sometime ago and I fact-checked it and said no, no, no, they're two different words. Can you elaborate as to why they're so different? Well, pohada means to fight, and poha is like come, yes, and so it's kind of like the word yes. They're just separate. But I believe that the word po poor heart is not a polite term to use like oh no, I think. Well, I might understand I'm anyway not to one linguist, but yeah, I think it's just fight. So, but beyond that, because people, it has been turned into uh, or popularized as like, this idea of everyday poor heart is like a philosophy, yeah, a hardcore philosophy, and, as you would well know, I like hardcore shit. I'm into the kind of taking something to the nth degree because I believe it's exciting. But oh, this is a good definition right here, please.
Speaker 1:Uh, beating or hiding, levar porjada is to take a beating. To take a beating, yeah, yeah, and you, you would all well know that that can happen on a pretty regular basis at jiu-jitsu. Yeah, it doesn't matter who you are, you can cop that hiding. It speaks to like just in terms of a sentiment. It speaks to like, obviously, the fight side of it, but like the struggle of jiu jujitsu and that quality of like being able to go fucking hard, the willingness, yeah, and and like that's a really important, like there's a. There's a lot of good stuff in that sentiment, but yeah, the what comes at a cost it does, and this is the thing.
Speaker 1:It's also like many others in life, we we humans are lazy and so we tend to default to like what is the easiest solution or what is the easiest answer to a question. And you know, especially if a coach has been asked a question a million times by a million white belts or thousands of white belts, they'll say you know, just keep showing up, just be here as much as you can. But the thing that we have also discussed is that that may not actually be the best thing for you physically, like being at jujitsu every single day. If you're someone who hasn't done sport for 10 years, or you're a bit deconditioned, or you work in an office, or you've just wrecked your body doing physical work, now adding jujitsu hard every single day can break you, and so that means that maybe you even retire before you get the blue belt because of this poor, harder mentality. Yeah, I didn't want to do it anyway. I thought this shit was going to be cool like karate. Yeah, why can't I just have wicked sick skills without hurting too much.
Speaker 1:But this is the thing intensity versus consistency. Now, if we were to draw up the kind of two by two chart and we had the low consistency, low intensity, the four quadrants, the four quadrants People aren't going to get far if they've got low intensity, low consistency. They're not getting far in many things. Yeah, can I draw it visually for the folks? So we've got four boxes. So if we think of consistency as time, because it's like the continuation across the bottom, and then you've got intensity as the up, like how high can you push the intensity right? And you think in the bottom corner is low intensity, low consistency. This is somebody who's probably not going to get really good at much of anything, yep. And then you can go above that and you've got high intensity but low consistency.
Speaker 1:We all know varieties of people who who can go really hard at something for a very short space of time and then they kind of disappear. Yeah, like that person that doesn't come to class much. Yeah, they show up once every few weeks and fucking go hell for leather and then disappear again for a month, maybe contract another serious injury and disappear and have to recover. Then we go over to the other side of the chart and we've got the high intensity, high consistency, which is very few people can manage. That and I'm going to unpack that a little bit, that quadrant. And then we go just below that and we've got the high consistency folks with low intensity. So these are people who can just kind of go forever but maybe don't necessarily achieve huge things other than they are able to be there. And so we see that more in the folks who are career like we talk about. You know, people say hobbyists, but someone who's always in class. They don't compete, they show up, they never roll too hard, but they're always there and they'll be there forever. And that's awesome. There's, there's a value in that. But what we're talking about is we're trying to find the sweet spot in these quadrants.
Speaker 1:Now here's a problem. I'm not calling anyone out here specifically, but I am going to point out a problem here. If you've had a coach who's used steroids to enhance their ability to stay high intensity, high consistency, which is artificially supported it's pretty hard for them to demand the same of you without them going hey, here's my stack. You know, if you want to be like me and do high intensity, high consistency. You should get on the drugs because that'll support it. Right, because they're setting the culture. Yeah, they're setting the culture. And so if they're not honest about their drug use, I think this is unfair to people because they go.
Speaker 1:Well, you don't have the heart of a champion, like bro, your heart of a champion. Your valves are straining under the weakened state you've put it under Cardiac load. Yeah, so, like with that example, you're saying, like that, the athlete that's juicing, the coach that's juicing, the coach that's juicing they, like, the juice allows you to operate at a high intensity for longer than someone who's not using. Yeah, because you're wolverine, basically, yeah, you're healing consistently. Yeah, like when you do a workout and you break your body down, like in the gym, this gives you, uh, like, a response where your body produces certain hormones, and and and and allows your body down, like in the gym. This gives you a response where your body produces certain hormones and allows your body to then create this healing state, which takes time. But if you've chemically injected that into yourself, you've got that 24-7. You're never not in that state of mutant healing factor. So, of course, you can show up every day, twice a day, three times a day, yeah, so of course you can show up every day, twice a day, three times a day.
Speaker 1:So it is an unrealistic expectation for, say, those folks out there who look to that high consistency, high intensity person and go, oh, they're just going harder, bro, what's like? No, if you're not prepared to do what they do, you can't necessarily expect to see what they get. You also don't see the darker side of that. If you know, they experience that, and more athletes have opened up about their steroid use more recently. Like you know, like Josh Saunders is pretty open about you know to be. I fucking don't believe it. I thought he was Natty, you know, but he's, you know. He said you know he does a lot of fucking dump raises. He does those too, I'm sure. But it's just one of those things that it's for you.
Speaker 1:If you're out there and you're like, well, but everybody at my gym goes really hard and I'm struggling to keep up, there may be an unrealistic expectation, because not everybody's talking about the fact that they may be taking drugs or doing other things that are supporting what they're doing, right, so, um, fair, what about like? What about an unrealistic expectation? Um, aside from drug use, okay, so you know. So what about just the, the high intensity approach? Um, where we and let's just say for argument's sake, all natties but just go really fucking hard.
Speaker 1:We know that you'd like to go poor harder. We know you like to go hard, and sometimes it can be a little bit too much, and you can't go poor harder if you're dehydrated. No one's training good when they're dehydrated, and we want you to win the battle on dehydration. How do you do that? You do that with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium and magnesium. You need Sodi. Sodi is the best product for hydrating yourself so you can train hard, bounce back and do it again. Go to Sodi S-O-D-I-I dot com, dot A-U, use the code Bulletproof15. You get 15% off. Get hydrated and you get back after it, shoo Peep.
Speaker 1:Everybody's tolerance for stress is different. So and this isn't just age dependent, because obviously, if you're younger you may have less damage, maybe, maybe not. But basically, if you took two physical humans and they're exactly the same but you were to give them two completely different regimes of activity, this will indeed change their outcomes. Now, if one person is doing resistance training and flexibility training and taking supplements and doing all the right stuff, and the other person is partying, studying, fucking, working like not doing Sucking dicks for cheeseburgers, bad diet, grind set, all that. They're going to have very different outcomes. Yeah Right, and so the difficult thing is that it might look like they're both doing similar things on the mat, but they're doing different things outside of the mat, which means their outcomes will ultimately be different. Mat, but they're doing different things outside of the mat, which means their outcomes will ultimately be different.
Speaker 1:The ability for the person to be consistent who's got a really fucked lifestyle. They're not going to be able to be consistent. They're going to struggle, whereas if someone has a very stable, boring, normal life not even normal, sub-normal doesn't go out, doesn't do these things and prioritizes everything perfectly just so they can get better at the thing they are going to find it way easier to be consistent. So when they come up and go hard, and then old mate inconsistency comes up and goes hard and they go head to head, the one who has all the supports and the nice other aspects of their life allows them to show up again, whereas I may not show up again for a week. Yep, if that makes sense, yep.
Speaker 1:So the idea of poor hearted doesn't really take into account your life and who you are as an individual, and that's not a judgment. If you want to party and you want to fucking do all that shit, that's cool. But it is unrealistic for you to think, oh, I'm going to be able to show up every week is unrealistic for you to think, oh, I'm going to be able to show up every week, week in, week out, and do this shit as hard as I can. That's kind of a fallacy that we put on ourselves. Yeah, right, at that level of intensity, into the fire, yeah, and we all do it from time to time. Right, like we might have a pretty cruisy week, and then you know how, you just have that one role that turns into a war, and then you're subsequently wrecked for any role thereafter. It's like each individual brought maximum intensity and it wasn't necessarily planned or expected. Yeah, and then you're like now my quality is down, yeah, and then the next two days you're like why am I sore everywhere my elbow, my neck, why have I got that weird thumb bruise on my face, like we, we all know that's like where we feel like shit. I feel like I got hit by a truck, and that is a chaotic aspect of jujitsu, when two individuals who want to really get after it go head to head, which is the idea of porjada.
Speaker 1:So what I want to talk about is people treat BJJ like it was something simpler, like running. We want a simple answer, we want a simple approach, but jiu-jitsu is a pretty complicated system of things. It's hard to just analogize it to something as simple as running. But people are like well, if I want to get better at running, I just run more. If I want to get better at squatting, I just do more squats, right? Well, no, when you start getting into the realm of resistance training, it does become a little bit more complicated, because you've got to make things a little bit lighter some days, a bit harder other days, and jiu-jitsu is essentially resistance training with a dynamic weight, a chaotic element which is another human, and it's not always the same human. Sometimes it's a bigger human, a little human, a fiercer human, and so, as a result, you've got to keep moderating yourself to keep up with this challenging intensity, and that's the thing. You can't just treat it like running. People are like yeah, but I just need to get better, so I just need to do more. And the simplest answer that you often get from a coach is like oh you should. You're not getting where you want to go. You should just train more.
Speaker 1:This is a mistake, all right, so allow me to make an observation. Let's just say I'm david goggins. Please, I would say to you you're a pussy, just fucking run cunt. And I would just get on the mats more and I would say that's cool, d, could you do that without draining your knees? Could you chase me If I didn't pull a hundred mil of fluid out of your knee? Could you chase me? No, you fucking couldn't. So who's the bitch? Now, like, if I heel hook you, are there any ligaments or cartilage left for me to break? Like sure, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1:I am actually a fan of David Goggins, but I think David Goggins is like any concentrated substance you only want a small amount. He's like pure cocaine. You don't want to Tony Montana, that shit. You might just need just a little bump to get your Goggins on. Just use your key. Don't chop up a whole. Yeah, don't. Just. You know we're not, we're in columbia for a couple of weeks. Let's just fucking ease into it. Yeah, let's just modify right.
Speaker 1:And so that's the thing I often think this about. Like any individual where people are polarized by them, like even a guy like kanye west, like there's something I don't. I'm don't love modern era Kanye West. I kind of liked him before he was incredibly financially well off when he was actually making some music. I liked him before that, even before that. But you know, there's a thing where his level of confidence or egotism for many people out there they don't have that right and all you need is like 200 milligrams of Kanye and you're like, oh, I can do this, you know, and self-belief is really important, but the idea of more is better is totally played out and we we recognize it in other parts of our life. But because jujitsu feels so good, we're like, nah, just fucking give me the whole cake, baby, go wild, you know.
Speaker 1:So what is the sweet spot? So this is what I want to talk about with this quadrants piece. We've got the low intensity, low consistency, high intensity, high consistency. Like what is the sweet spot there? So, if I'm viewing this right, consistency needs to remain constant, relatively speaking. So we're more or less going for high consistency. If we can, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And then we have to gauge our intensity based on our life, and this is the problem. Life is always demanding and there's never not stress in your life. Whether it's starting a new job or you just lost a job, or you had a family member die, or your girlfriend dumped you, or you got in a fight with your business partner, something happened in your life that has made life more intense. This is going to take more from you, so you will actually have less intensity to be able to give to your jujitsu, less intensity to be able to give to your jujitsu. So your sweet spot right now might be I go to jujitsu five days a week. Awesome, I'm getting better. I'm the best. This is the best jujitsu I've ever had. Five days must be the magic fucking pill. And so then something else goes wrong in your life. Or your subcontractor injured their knee at jujitsu you do jujitsu together and your heel hooked your subcontractor, and now you don't have a subcontractor. You're like spilling young bloke. Now I've got to carry my own bricks. Yeah, dang, hey, guess what?
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Speaker 1:Something happens in your life. Your partner gets sick and now you have to do extra work with the kids. You've got to do the school drop-off you didn't have to do that before. Or you've got to cook meals you didn't have to cook before. You've got a sick parent and now you've got to care for them. That now means you can't do the five times. You can do it, but it's hurting you more because you're sleeping less, you're not eating as good, you haven't got that extra bit of time to ice bath or go for a walk or do the stretching you were doing, and now five times a week is breaking you down and you're feeling shit and you're like what's happening? Am I a little bitch now, david Goggins? Have I become a bitch now? Should I make my mind tougher?
Speaker 1:No, you've got to reevaluate your life to understand that the sweet spot for you now to get better at jujitsu might be three times a week, and this is because the intensity of your life has gone up. Therefore, it will be harder, not impossible, for you to consistently maintain an intensity at jujitsu at five days a week. Does that make sense? So the sweet spot is contingent. Your tolerance for the intensity of jujitsu is context dependent. So if you're not looking at your life and understanding jujitsu in the context of your life, not looking at your life and understanding jujitsu in the context of your life, you may disappoint yourself, and if you're blind to it, you may also injure yourself, which then means all jujitsu progress is kind of pushed off to the side and we've lost the consistency and now we've got nothing.
Speaker 1:So here's the deal. I feel it does evolve over time For me. I believe when you're earlier in jujitsu it is easier to have higher intensity, not just because of the froth, but because there's so much to learn and there's so much new shit and this is like kid in a candy shop Wow. When you've done jujitsu for a longer period of time, you actually don't need as much training to get better. But you do need high quality. And this is the quality over quantity. And this is where I wanted to circle back around to something we've talked about many times. If you can only get to jiu-jitsu three times a week, if you can make those sessions super high quality, you can still be golden, you know.
Speaker 1:But if you've got a kind of a volume approach or like a quantity approach which is like I'm not training enough, like oh, I just you're rushing things and you're just trying to fit more and more stuff in and when you go to jujitsu it's low quality, you, you, you're really missing out on an opportunity for it to be great because you're still trying to do more, do more, do more. And this is the poor, harder of life. It's not just your coach saying to you at jujitsu oh, you've got to go harder at jujitsu, and whatever. Society's telling you that You're not good enough.
Speaker 1:How come you don't know about AI? How come you haven't done this? Why haven't you updated your LinkedIn profile? Where's your Bitcoin? Know about ai. How come you haven't done this? Why haven't you updated your linkedin profile? Bitcoin holdings app? Yeah, what's going on with that? You know there's all these things sell, sell, sell, um, but that's. I guess.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing we can. It's very easy for all of us to buy into the idea of more is better because we live in this modern capitalist society and that's what we're told. But ultimately, ultimately, if you better understand not only where your jiu-jitsu is at, but where your life is at, you can say well, you know what? Actually, in this context, three days a week works out better than five days a week, because five days a week is actually going to eventually kill my consistency and I can't train. Five days a week is actually going to eventually kill my consistency and I can't train, whereas the program that allows you to stay consistent and also get better. That is the sweet spot and that is what we need to be working toward. Yeah, I feel that I mean three.
Speaker 1:I would make the argument that, even if your training sessions were not extremely high quality, three is probably still better. You know, if you're just standard, like you know what I always do just show up and do whatever is being taught and pay attention, but not super attention, and, you know, try to kill everyone in the roles. You know it's basically the story of my jiu-jitsu career. You still get, still is, yeah, shit Everyday. Paul Harder, motherfucker Sunday yeah, um, you still get, still is shit everyday. Poor hearted motherfucker, um, sunday, yeah, um, no, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's it's like the uh personal trainer that like tells you to eat healthy and shit and do all the shit, and then you catch them at fucking the burger shop. What the fuck you doing here, bro, work life balance, bro, yeah, um, but yeah's like because there is a physical cost. And so I think like that's sort of inherent in this discussion is that, like, once you can't keep up with the physical cost, like once you're unable to pay the physical cost, you're going to stop, yeah, yeah, and so If you can have consistency but have intensity at a level that, on aggregate, allows you to kind of to maintain it whether it's some higher days, some lower days, but over the week it's like you can recover from that then you can stay in the game For sure. But if you're constantly exceeding that and fucking going overdraft on your bank account, it gets to a point where you're like, man, we can't, the debt's too big, we're bankrupt. And that's when you're like I'm not really feeling jiu-jitsu, I think I'm going to start tennis. Well, you never know, there's plenty of injuries to be had in tennis. But I don't even do tennis. I already have tennis elbow. How did this happen? But no, I saw a comedian, it was pretty funny international debt of the um of britain and he I think he might have been an was, he could have been scottish.
Speaker 1:But he's like at what point do you think they're like we're not getting that money back? You know like, you know, like, how many trillion trillion dollars do you have to lose before you go? This guy's not fucking paying me. You know, like, yeah, if I gave you 50 bucks and you didn't give it back to me, I'd be upset with you. But if you come back to me ask for 50 grand, I tell you get fucked. And he's just talking about the international monetary fund, as to why, like, why do they keep giving money to Britain? Like why they keep lending them money, you know. Anyway, obviously it's far more complex than that, but it's so funny. When you hear about, you know, a nation's international debt, you're like oh, that's a confronting idea.
Speaker 1:The problem is with jujitsu, the debt that you're paying. When it comes calling, like when the knee reco comes or the bulge disc in your neck comes or whatever, everything stops, not just jujitsu. The consistency in your life goes down, your ability to play with your kids, your ability to just get up and put a shirt on, do your job and this isn't to be inherently negative. But the thing that we don't think about is this beautiful thing that adds to our life can take away in such a huge deficit as well, and so we often are not satisfied. It's kind of the hedonic treadmill of jujitsu that we, yeah, but I'd like to be better than that guy You're like. Yeah, that guy's on the source, bro, like why are you competing with him?
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, we know that in jujitsu we're competing with ourselves. I want a big, fucking muscular head like that guy. What's that guy do to get such a big, fucking muscular head? I believe he got a doctorate, fucking. Look at that head, dr Mike. I train with Dr Mike, so tell me, give me some thoughts on you know.
Speaker 1:So you said like your intensity is kind of contextual. Yes, because your life changes over time and so you know your jiu-jitsu has to kind of evolve with that too. Or you know your training. How do you see that playing out, like, how do you see that playing out when you have a certain level of conditioning, where you're like this is what jiu-jitsu is for me? Like we spoke about people that come from that culture of going super hard. Sure, right, and it's like that's what jujitsu is. I fucking show up, I go super hard. How do you talk on that then, when there's a force for that maybe to change? You can't go hard on the mat every single day, but you can get better at jujitsu every single day. How?
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Speaker 1:Well, it's like being an addict right, I'm the same. This is the thing I've had to come to terms with. Hi, my name's James Tomlinson. I'm a poor hearted addict. If you can't come to terms with it, then you're going to have to give up the game. You know you're going to have to quit. You know you can't. You can't like. It's like talking to anyone. It's like, oh yeah, like, yeah, I find when I drink I can only have like 25 beers. That's. That's like. You know, if I can't have 25 beers I can't have fun. It's a problem. This is actually a psychological problem that you actually need to find a way to overcome.
Speaker 1:Because, essentially, why did we start jujitsu? We started it because it was fun and we may have got addicted to all the other physical aspects, but essentially, if it is injecting a certain level of pain and detriment to your everyday life, then you're like how fun is this thing if I'm in pain all the time or I can't just be happy hanging out with my mates or whatever it might be? And the thing about jiu-jitsu is it's so all-engrossing, the hardest thing about getting injured or not being able to do jiu-jitsu when you're deep in it. Or you've talked about this before all your friends are jujitsu folks. They're all going to the UFC barbecue on the weekend. You know there's a grading, there's a fucking competition. You know there's always these things where you're like, when you can't do it. It hurts you twice as bad as a jujitsu addict. Twice as bad as a jujitsu addict For me.
Speaker 1:I've had to give up the idea of being the best at jujitsu, because that's also like just some bullshit I made up in my head Like no one can ever be the best at jujitsu. But what I can do is I can still find a way to enjoy the playful side of jujitsu. If I don't make it a competition, I can enjoy rolling, but if it's competition, then fuck everyone and I'm coming for it and that. But this is just, it's not. It doesn't help me learn jujitsu. It doesn't help anything. It doesn't make me a good training partner. It definitely makes my training partner's lives more miserable.
Speaker 1:Like it's not. That's me in a bad state, in a very selfish state. That's, that's just me, and I'm a very all or nothing person. But like you know you're talking about, like Jess Fraser, she's a very all or nothing person and I think for her a lot of her identity for a long time has been built up that she's a competitor and she goes fucking hard and that's really real. But she's also a leader and she gives a lot of great guidance to her community and all that as well. So she just she's a really great kind of mother bear in terms of helping other people enjoy jiu-jitsu. But as to how she works it for herself, it's it's a hard juggle, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, in terms of how you can make your week work, I believe you should only really have one day of really hard jujitsu a week. If you're training three times a week, you want to have a lighter day, a kind of more moderate day, where you like you know you're doing plenty of rounds, but maybe it's not to the death. And then you have a day where you're like, right, I'm going to push myself as hard as I can in my jujitsu, push myself as hard as I can in my jujitsu. Trying to apply that attitude to every session in the week is incredibly unrealistic and is definitely not sustainable. And if you actually go behind the doors of very high level gyms, not every session is that brutal.
Speaker 1:Like speaking with James Smith. He was talking about when he was training at B team and he came back to Hodger Gracie's gym. Hodger Gracie's gym is legendary for intensity. Like Hodger's father, um Mauricio Gomez, is famous for pressure, tapping people right, he's like 70 and he bashes people still yeah, wow, he's a mean, mean, tough, amazing jiu-jitsu practitioner. Like people are scared of mauricio. Yeah, right, um.
Speaker 1:So when james smith uh came back to the uh, henzo, uh sorry, to hodja gracie's academy in london, he's very like you know, he's obviously wearing b-team apparel and they're like, oh, you got that, you got that b-team relaxedness about you. Yeah, now if you speak to most people, when you look at the highlight videos and the security cam footage and stuff that b-team puts out, you're like those guys go fucking hard, like the scrambles between j-rodod and Damien. It's crazy. But actually for the best part, because those guys train so much, they actually enter the roles pretty relaxed and it's funny that the perception of what they do it doesn't mean they don't roll hard, but not every role is that crazy intensity.
Speaker 1:And what James was saying to me is that, like all of his tough boys in London were like, bro, you've got a different vibe about you. What is this thing here? And he was like it's just, you know the way they approach it. There is not how we perceive it to be. Yeah, you know, and I'm not saying one is right, one is wrong, but I would guess that most people would think about a guy like nicky, rod or craig or anything, that they just go fucking ham. The truth is, at select times they will, but not all the time, because that is absolutely impossible to keep up and not get injured. You know, yeah, right, it's a bit counterproductive, yeah. So it was kind of funny and I kind of was a little bit surprised by it because, like, when you roll, you roll with James.
Speaker 1:He's a pretty muscular, athletic-framed cat. He's very like you know, he's very like easygoing in the roll until you know obviously he gets into it. But he's got a very relaxed approach and you're like, oh okay, how interesting. I think that it is counterintuitive to most folks when they look at high level, elite grapplers, yeah, they expect it to be hard all the time and it's not necessarily that way. That's fascinating. So there it is, folks. I believe that you can see through the myth of poor harder. Don't buy into it. See the bullshit for what it is. But you are going to have to just do a little bit of introspection to go. You know what? What is the sweet spot on intensity versus consistency and what is the thing that I can show up and do every week so I can get better at this thing and keep loving the game. There it is, folks. If you're enjoying the content, we would ask you a small favor Please like, subscribe, follow, share and give us a five-star rating. Shoo.
