Why Training Less Makes You Better

Speaker 1: Hey, what's up? Welcome to the Q&A episode. If you want to leave us one for a future app, go to bulletproof for bjj.com, podcast tab, hit the big button, record a voicemail. We're going to answer three today. First one coming in from Dick Burke. Yes. Why you laughed at that? Hey. I like a big dick. Speaker 2: Hey guys, uh Dick Burke here from Florida. Uh been training Jiu-Jitsu for three years, blue belt in uh Brazilian Top Team Academy, Merritt Island. Um, shout out to Joe for learning the guitar. Uh 25-year vet guitar player, band nerd, metal head here. Um, question, um, recently healing from an ankle injury. Um, was rolling and I got swept and my ankle came down hard on the mat. We use two-inch wrestling mats at the academy. The uh, the injury was pretty rough. Um, I'm a general contractor superintendent, so 20,000 plus steps a day at work is very different with or without a broken ankle. Um, two months into healing, I'm walking, I'm jogging, doing daily rehab. The uh, the question is I'm back training and playing a lot of spider X Delahiva guard. Lots of game off my back. It's it's fun. Um, but the stability just isn't there for the ankle yet. And I'm curious, I'm 41 years old. Uh, you know, what's the what's the correct ratio for strength training, mobility, rehab, mobility training, and Jiu-Jitsu. Um, I train, you know, ideally three days a week. I cross train with another gym, friend of mine, Vanderley Camille, who has a kickboxing academy down here. Um, they also do Jiu-Jitsu, more of an MMA setting. You know, those are a lot of young kids, high energy, wrestling base, not particularly my game. Um, but it's fun. You know, we have a good time. Um, but what uh, what's your ideal ratio for rehab and strength training/ mobility training if BJJ is three days a week. Speaker 1: Mm, Dick. Thanks. Speaker 2: Podcast has been great. Um, you guys are awesome. I appreciate everything y'all do. Speaker 1: Ah, you're a legend. Thank you, brother. Thanks. Man, um, well, I mean, it's a it's a it's a tricky one, I guess, because we're I guess we're going to just going to assume that Dick has the time to add in whatever else on top of three days. But I mean, you know, and I'm tell me your take on this. I think, um, when when rehab is a thing, for me, I try to just tack that on to my strength training. So if I'm going in and I if I've got an ankle injury and I'm going into the gym, and I'll lift three days, maybe four days a week. Um, not, you know, I often skip sessions, miss miss sessions here and there, but that's kind of my general template. Um, I will, if it's my lower body session, and I've got an injury, I'll give half of the session to the to the rehab of the injury. And then I will be doing exercises within my strength training that are also rehabbing the injury, but just because it's rehab doesn't mean it's like easy stuff, right? I'll do some easy stuff, do some kind of precision stuff, some balance stuff, and then I'll like get into the heavy shit if that's where the stage of rehab that I'm at. But so I would I would tack it onto that. I would also I also sort of tack my mobility onto my strength. Um, you could do it as a separate thing. I would say like a simple template is like if you can squeeze in 15 minutes, uh, a few times a week, which is what you'll find in our mobility foundation program. We set it that way because we think that's a nice way to do it. Yes. You can tack it onto your Jiu-Jitsu or you can tack it onto your strength. But if you're the kind of person that likes to keep stuff separate, then you can just do it in the morning or whatever first thing and you go to the gym at night. You know, but I I don't think, um, I don't think it's about finding the perfect ratio that's going to keep you good forever. It's about right now you've got an injury. So I would put most of my resources into that, and then maybe one or two months later, things are looking a lot better, the ankle's feeling better, you can change the ratio again to support more performance. Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree with that. You've, you know, yeah, totally. Um, look, you got a flat tire, right? So you got to pull over and change the tire. Like your biggest priority in my opinion should be bringing that ankle stability back because it's kind of vulnerable. So Dick, you got to get up on it, man. Um, you know, we our prescription, our golden our golden ratio is the 233, which is uh two strength, three Jiu-Jitsu, three mobility. And you can organize that however works for you, whether you're kind of coupling them together, but I would say actually if you're rehab, it is worth uh in the same way if you've got a mobility thing you're working on to just do 15 minutes um each day of either restoring range of motion, but it doesn't sound like that's your issue. You know, you've got, you know, stability issues. To to do a bit of work either in the morning or at the end of the day, but it sounds like you're an active guy with your work. So, um, I know for me when I had a shoulder injury and Andrew Lock, RIP, um was helping me with my shoulder. He made me do rehab every day. I until my shoulder was stable, he's like, you do this every day. And I was like, oh, I'd never heard anyone say that. He's like, yep, you have to do 100 reps of this, 100 reps of this, 100 reps of this. You do it every day, come back and see me in a week. And then he was testing my scapular stability. He's like, no, do it again, do it again. It took three weeks. And my shoulder's got fucking jacked. So it was interesting because he was just like, if you imagine you're in a battle and you got hit with a club. He always had very masculine fucking analogies. And he's like, your arm half popped out the socket. Well, you just have to keep using it until it healed. And so, and I'm not telling you to overdo it here. I'm not saying to do it every day, but I would encourage you to factor in your rehab um regularly through your week, whether that be a three times a week with your strength training like Joe said, or um little snacks in there for the for the stability work. Speaker 1: Yeah. This episode is brought to you by the makers of the greatest electrolyte in the game, Sody. We've been partnered with these guys for some time, and the reason that we love Sody is that they have a potent electrolyte product, which is exactly what you need for a sport like Jiu-Jitsu where you sweat a bunch. When you sweat on the mats, you lose electrolytes, and this is why supplementing with them is an absolute game changer for recovery and performance. And check it out. You can actually go for the single serving packs, which are great. I pump one of those after every training session, or you can get the tub. And the beauty of the tub is that less plastics, but also you can moderate how much you have. So if you just want to have a smaller dose, like you're having it in the morning first thing when you wake up, you can go for a half dose, or if you want to have a little top up at night or something like that, you can choose how much per scoop. You can get 15% off Sody now when you go to their website, Sody, that's S O D I.com.au, and you use the code bulletproof 15 to get 15% off. Go there now and enhance your performance and recovery. Uh, next question coming in, no name here. Speaker 2: Mystery. Speaker 3: Hey, JT and Joey, Hannah here from San Diego, California. Longtime listener. I am a blue belt. Um, I've been training for about three years. Uh, my question, there's a general question and then a more specific question. Generally, what is the point at which you decide that your nagging pain is a nagging injury and needs to be rehabbed versus just a kind of a standard Jiu-Jitsu wear and tear, something that you can work through, something that bulletproof for BJJ can help with. Um, how do you guys determine when to take it easy? And, um, then more specifically, uh, do you have any tips for groin pain? I have uh, the right side, my right groin is has been bothering me and I'm just wondering if you guys have any exercises that you would recommend specifically for that. Thanks. Speaker 1: Okay. Yep. Okay. Yeah, I think, I mean, for that injury piece, when that shit's keeping you up at night, like when it's stopping you from sleeping properly and it's like not getting better and it's kind of getting worse, that's when it's that's when it's proper injury. I think niggles niggles come and go and you can cop it for a couple days and it's not too bad and you're like, it's fine. But I think you know when it's like, no, this thing's been some weeks now and it's affecting other areas of my life. And I'm changing the way I roll or I'm protecting it a little bit. I think that, you know, if you can the fact that you've asked means you're probably at that point. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's actually a good point. Yeah, when you're asking yourself that question. For me, it's always range of motion. If I if I have less than say 60 or 70% of my normal range of motion, then I'm like, what am I doing? You know, like it's like it's it's silly for me to not take care of it now because it even though it sounds strange, it can get a lot worse. Yeah. If you don't if you don't do something about it, either get it checked with a physio or um go to some kind of therapist to be able to give you some treatment which will help it um heal. So I think that's that's the key thing. And then uh relevant to groin pain, um I it depending on when we say groin, whether that be kind of if we say it's inside a hip, if it's more to the front, there's a slightly different prescription here. But what I would say there is actually activating the opposite group of muscles can help settle it down. So if it's like more adductor, like inner thigh, groin, crutch, uh medial glute, like side leg raise, getting the medial glutes fired up is very good. Or if you've got pain at the front of the hip, like hip flexory region, front of the the groin there, getting glute max um activated hip extension um single leg glute bridge is very good for getting it to settle down and creating a bit of stability around the hip. That's my tip there. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a wonderful tip. I think it's very hard for, you know, for us to kind of give you anything that's not totally general. Sorry, we're being very general here, yeah. Absolutely. But but I would also ask the question, are you addressing sort of all aspects of the hip in your strength training? And if you're not, then maybe that's a thing. Are you addressing all sort of three aspects of the hip in uh your mobility work? If not, then maybe that's a thing. Right? Speaker 2: Are you also playing a lot of butterfly guard against really heavy people and trying to hoist them on your hooks? And that that that could be a contributing factor. I don't know, like, yeah, there's probably a few more details there that we would need to give you a good answer. And if you want to message us on Instagram, we could probably give you a few more details. Speaker 1: Shout out to San Diego. I lived there for a summer, one of the best times of my life. Shoo. Speaker 2: Shit. Yeah, the bay. Here we go. South. My bad. SF, my mistake. Speaker 1: Joey. What a name. Speaker 4: Uh, 47-year-old black belt living in San Francisco. So, at the beginning of uh this past year, I started training at a new uh pretty competitive Nogi gym. But I was only able to train two days a week uh due to some life circumstances. And I was a little bummed about this at first, but um I actually may have like cracked the code on how to get better at Jiu-Jitsu. So, what I did was um in between my two uh training sessions, I started watching a ton of Gordon Ryan instructionals and I did um mobility and strength uh sessions from your app. And it was so cool because I would like show up to training and I'd be like moving well, you know, feeling well, and I'd have like really specific like technical things I wanted to work on that day. And I just noticed over time I'd be getting better faster than like most of the people who were there like training every day, fighting to the death. And like by the end of the year, I was like competitive with like even the top competition guys in the gym and like hitting cool wrestling moves and I don't know, it was just a cool experience and I wonder why I didn't start training like this earlier. Speaker 1: Wow, Joey, appreciate you sharing. Man. That sounds like you're on a fucking on a vibe, brother. Speaker 2: Less but better. Speaker 1: Look, I um I I I'm going to shout out a couple of the boys at the Balmain over at Joel's Gym, Balmain, but I'll tell you these these motherfuckers sit around and watch Gordon Ryan shit and then they come into the gym and they just drill it, drill it, drill it, drill it. And then they go watch the next thing and they come and drill it, drill it. And it's a fucking effective way to get better at Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah. Like the people that that have the mind for that, that the instructional thing and then just systematically go through whatever they're learning and just drill the fuck out of it on the mats, it is extremely potent. Yeah. So, um, so I I can vibe with that as being a a winning strategy. Speaker 2: And also the less training. Actually, I heard this from Hoyler Gracie many years ago, a seminar of his. He said he had some guys in Rio at his famous Gracie Humaita Academy who were like doctors and lawyers and stuff and they only trained three days a week. But when they came in, they were just having the best time and they were actually housing the competitors. Because they weren't as tired, they weren't as sore, and they were just enjoying their Jiu-Jitsu and they were just fucking putting it on these guys. And he's like, what is wrong with he was giving his like competitor team a hard time. He's like, they're lawyers and doctors and their suits. You're meant to be hard competitors, but they were so beat down by, you know, the poor harda that these guys having a good time and training less, like you say, kind of cracked the code, finding that sweet spot on like, what's enough Jiu-Jitsu for you to get better? Like, mate, sounds like you've uh, you've found the recipe. Speaker 1: But it is a privileged place because I you can't be there unless you are a like unless you have a mountain of experience, right? Speaker 2: Of course, yeah. To to get to that level. Once you get to black belt, yeah, you do want to find like what's the the right thing for you and it sounds like you've cracked the code. Speaker 1: Hey, um, great questions. So that's three from the US today. Yes. Holy shit. Fucking shout out to you guys. Um, if you want to leave us one future app, go to bulletproof for bjj.com, hit the podcast tab, record it, and we'll speak to you on a future episode. You salute.