The Best Way To Build A Gas Tank For BJJ

A better gas tank for BJJ, improve your fitness, but you don't have to do cardio. Yes, that's right, folks. You've been sold a lie. For those of you out there who are like, oh, what about zone two? You're missing the point here, folks. There's a lot of ways for you to improve your ability to work hard on the mats and improve your energy, and it's not sitting on an exercise bike. Let me tell you. And I got into this discussion recently, uh, with, um, a good friend of the podcast, and it was, it was a little bit frustrating. Uh, because this person knows better. And I'm not sure if I should, um, name them because the thing is I used to train this person, and I kind of like perennially, like it's second-hand, give them advice time to time. Yeah. And they were like, yeah, but what about zone two? And I was like, What you thinking? Fuck out of here. Because this person's actually very fit. They train BJJ a lot. And what they're saying is it was actually really hard for them to get their heart rate up. Like it takes a couple rounds for them. Yeah. Because they're so good at jiu-jitsu. Yeah. They're efficient. They're so efficient. And, and he was saying, look, I actually don't get tired till like the fourth or fifth round. And I'm like, that's a good problem to have. That's not my problem. Um, but and so, So you're saying zone two no good for them? Well, he's already getting his zone two in rolling. Like, his heart rate doesn't get above like 140. We're just actually doing pretty competitive rolls, right? Because it's just, it's also his demeanor. He's a very like calm, chill person. And he's like, yeah, I'm just doing some jogging for zone two. I'm like, stop doing that. Because he's also talking to me about, I've got to improve my ankle mobility. I want to stop jogging. Stop fucking it up. He's like, yeah. And, and I, a separate conversation I have a different person was like, yeah, I was on the assault bike for 40 minutes. 40 minutes. That's not what the assault bike is made for. What are you doing? That's how to fuck up your posture. Like that's how to tighten your hip flexors and, and, and make your lower back sore as well as like just, just jam your crotch up. Like don't do that. So I wanted to give you a list, uh, and, and give you some alternatives for ways that you can improve your gas tank in ways that will actually translate to jiu-jitsu. Because often where folks are lacking the bandwidth is the upper end of the heart rate. Right. It's, it's, it's when you're already fatigued and it's not about I've got to stay calm now. It's working under a state of fatigue essentially. So you're like pretty much at your threshold or just below your lactate threshold and you just, you got to hang out there and it kind of sucks. And, and there's a lot of ways that you can do it that don't require you to use a whole lot of, uh, fitness equipment. And it's done in a way that doesn't necessarily require you to do something crazy. It's just your ability to maintain your output. And so the, the first thing I wanted to go to here is just very simple approach to doing strength endurance training. And this is typically what you'll see with a lot of, um, wrestlers, judo folks. They do a lot of high volume. They do high volume push-ups, high volume, uh, rope climbs, pull-ups to induce a level of fatigue. Jump squats. Yeah. Basic, basic shit. Very, very basic, but they do very high volume so they build a tolerance for that. And it's basically, basically inducing lactate and working at a rate that you can stay in it. Yeah. Or almost fatigue, bit of recovery, do it again. Or pain. Cop more pain. And, and this has been proven to improve your lactate threshold because your muscles just get better at processing it by being exposed to it. Yeah, right. And I, I think we've probably all done sessions where your coach just makes you do a bajillion reps. And it cooks you, but you find that over time once you've done this session, so we used to do a similar thing, uh, at comp class. Not that it was very, uh, scientific, but back in the day when I trained at Peter De Been's, he would make us do like 100 push-ups or 300 squats. Yeah. Or whatever it was. Just to induce a certain level of fatigue before training. Now, I'm not saying that that is necessarily the best thing for quality rolling, but what it did do was it gave everybody who came to comp class a certain level of baseline, I guess almost like a GPP, like general physical preparedness to deal with fatigue when rolling. Yeah. So all those people were tougher. It didn't mean that the rolls were super high quality, but it meant that you could kind of work through that real like gross feeling and, and you actually felt better on the other side of the rolls because you'd actually cleared out more lactate from rolling than just doing 300 squats or fucking 1000 push-ups or whatever it was. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of no coincidence that you see that with a lot of, like a lot of fight training, right? Like even when you watch, um, I don't know, you watch, uh, like UFC countdown or something. And you see some, you know, whatever, some scientific shit. You know, you see your boy Phil Daru talking about the alactic glycolytic. But it's like, yeah, we're just doing hard work. That's what, you know. We're just doing a shitload of hard work, compressing into a period of time so that you can get better at just dealing with the pain of having to do repeated hard work. Yes. And it fucking, it works. It works. You know, I mean, CrossFit built a whole business model around it. Definitely. Um, you know, obviously got the other shit going on, but, but, um, you see it with the Russian fighters a lot, with the Dagestanis and stuff. Yeah. And it's, you see it, actually, I remember watching Arthos doing some pre-camp, uh, conditioning work in the gym. Sure. And a lot of it looked a bit, like, to people like us who are, whatever, um, more experienced in the world of. More experienced and, you know, maybe a little bit more scientifically minded. You see some of that shit and you're like, oh God, that's a terrible exercise choice. Yeah. But to be honest, as long as the, as long as the person doing it is fatigued, the choice doesn't matter that much. No. It's the fact that they're just working real fucking hard. Yeah. And that, and that's the thing. When it, when it comes to building a better gas tank, there are specific ways in which you can do it. And, and we can get into that. In terms of like, um, having a specific, uh, level of endurance on a movement that you need to do. Like, for example, when wrestlers are doing like, we've, if you've done any kind of wrestling or any stand-up work where you do like a shoot and sprawl drill, where you're kind of shadow wrestling and then they go, shoot, sprawl. And then you like, or sprawl, shoot, and you got to just repeatedly do this over and over. And it just, it cooks you, right? But those are specific skills you need and you have to stay dynamic, uh, in those, uh, situations of fatigue. I, I guess the thing that when it comes to doing strength endurance work, you want it to be lower skill so you're not at risk of doing an injury. You know, like you're not doing some really complex piece of, uh, something that requires machinery or, you know, it's just grit, work hard, die a bit, do it again. Yeah. Yeah, you don't have to stop to think about the coordination of it. No, it's just grit your teeth and, and work through it. And even just a couple weeks of this, you find that there's a fairly quick adaptation. And that's, that's the thing about it. When you are working at your upper end, when you're working closer to, whether you go over your lactate threshold or you sit just below it, as soon as you expose your muscles to lactate, your body's going to process it. You will get better at processing it within days. And that's the great thing. So the, the, the argument that I'm trying to make here is that there are a lot of alternatives out there that will improve your gas tank, which have nothing to do with an exercise bike, a rower, you know, an assault bike, even a skier. Treadmill. A treadmill, you don't have to do that stuff. But that shit, but, but it, it also can, that stuff's great. It can work too. Yeah. If that's, if that's your preference, but if you're like, I fucking hate that stuff and I avoid it. It's like, don't worry about it. Do more of this shit. Yeah, for sure. You might, you might find that you actually really like this. So something that really, um, something that really cooked me first time I did it was I was doing, um, uh, uh, kettlebell complex. And then I got to do a barbell complex. And I'd never done that before. And I, I had barely, initially it was like a pretty light kettlebell, but it's like, you're going to do one rep of all these movements. Don't put the kettlebell down. Now you're going to do two reps of all these movements. Now three, now four, all the way up to eight reps. And I was like, initially I was like, fuck, this, this kettlebell's too light. Holy fuck, this kettlebell's really heavy. Like I just, you know, you just, you're feeling the pump in the forearms and your back and you just, it's become so unbearable. It's just a question of like, are you going to keep going? Like, and it's crazy what this level of like burn and ache does to your brain. And you, it's a, it's a suffering you're inducing on yourself. So it's like, how much are you willing to lean in on this? And so once I'd done that with kettlebells within my first couple weeks of training kettlebells, I was like, that's the hardest stuff I've ever done. Then my Russian coach was like, okay, barbell. And then like it's like a certain amount of upright rows, a certain amount of cleans, a certain amount of presses, a certain amount of deadlifts. And you basically don't put the barbell down for like, I don't know, two minutes. Yeah. And then it's like, like and again. And again. And I'm like, I'm standing on the spot and I'm so gassed. I have so much lactate. I feel like I'm going to vomit. I didn't, I'm not running, I'm not jumping, I'm not anything. So I think the value in say higher volume kettlebell work where you're not, you're not necessarily doing carries or anything, you're just doing swings and snatches and cleans and jerks. Same thing with barbells. You can get a super high level of fatigue, which is going to translate to gripping and lifting and moving, which can occur in grappling, but there's no impact. You're not making your Achilles tight. You're not impacting your knees. And it really builds an insane level of lactate tolerance through your core, shoulders and upper body. Right. Have you ever done, uh, like complex work? Like complexes? I have, yeah. Yeah, I remember we used to do a bit when I was kind of fucking around with CrossFit for a while. CrossFit. Yeah, I really liked it. Yeah. It's a killer. Oh, it's brutal. Yeah. Um, I mean, I used to do a lot, like especially around that time, a lot of just conditioning because I just, whatever, conditioning seemed really important. And, um, whatever, did it hard for a couple of years. Yeah, I, I like it. I'll tell you what, I, um, I found that because I stopped doing that style of training. And I've been more interested in just strength and flexibility for some years. And I got to a point recently where I was like, I'm actually like intimidated to do conditioning work. Yeah. Like, if the reps go up and there's burpees involved and a carry and a fuck, I'm like, you know, it says amrap or whatever. I'm like, oh, I'm a little bit scared of this. Yeah. So I started doing a little bit. Oh, nice. And I realized, um, because you know, we've all got those friends that just do that style of training all the time. They love it. And you get good at what you do all the time. Yes. And so I realized, you know what, this conditioning thing is actually really good for me now, just to dose in a little bit. Yeah. This is kind of what got me back into running. Nice. Yeah, because I was like, running had that same level of intimidation for the similar reason of I don't want to do strict cardio work. Yeah. And so I started running a bit and it's become a lot less scary now and I actually kind of enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry to say. No, no, no. I mean, I, you know, I respect you still, Joe, regardless. Imagine. That's my, uh, humble acceptance of Joe's failings. The two elements that you need to guarantee your success in the gym are guidance and accountability. The big mistake that we see people making when training for BJJ is doing random workouts. That's why we made the Bulletproof for BJJ app. We have our online community that can give you feedback and help you out. And then we also have our structured programs that will get you fitter, stronger, and more flexible for BJJ. We've got a 14-day free trial. Get in there, try it out. And if you decide that it's not for you, we have a 100% money-back guarantee. So, go to the Play Store, go to the App Store, download the app, and we'll see you on the inside. No, look, if you love running and you love riding a bike and you love doing cardio stuff, do it. Like, it is healthy. There's, man, being active is way better than being inactive. Cannot stress that enough. I guess the difference for me is, if you've got limited time and someone says, I'm trying to improve my gas tank for BJJ. And that's that, that's the, that's the frame. Then I would say, hey, don't start a whole new activity. No, don't just start a whole new sport. Yeah. Spend 10 minutes at the end of your workout with these tools you've already got. Doing this, yeah. And so this is where I wanted to go to. Actually, just one thing, what I observed, because I, because I wear the Whoop now, right? Yeah. And so I was like, I've been keeping, you know, I've been looking at like my heart rate during the session. And what I noticed, this is part of the reason why I, I was like, I'm going to run more, was because every, I'd put together a little workout for myself. I'd be like, all right, we'll do, you know, 30 kettlebell swings, 20 push-ups, fucking 10 whatever and then, and then carry. Yeah. And I noticed that because I was going so heavy on everything, because my bias is towards weight, heavier, I actually didn't get my heart rate up that much. And I was like, fuck, I actually got to go lighter so I can move more and get the heart rate up. Um, so that's why I'm like, I'm just going to go for a fucking run. Yeah. I mean, whatever, that's, it's the, it's the, it's the soccer player in you, it's the football player in you. You want to, you want to run, you want to feel agile, you want to. I want to feel fucking. Start juggling the fucking soccer ball and ducking in and out of cones and shit and just flopping on the ground because you were too close to someone. That's fine. Get the magic sponge. All good. Uh, but no, I, I wanted to go to something we've talked about before, which is, is carries. Yeah. And this is the thing that I, I got it from strongman training, uh, when I first got introduced to it and also tied into kettlebell training. It is mind-blowing. I mean, as somebody who also loves to just carry all the shopping in one go. I don't know if you're someone like that where you're like. Standard. Come on. Like. Is there any other fucking way of doing it? Is there any other way? Like you don't want to do two trips. I don't even get bags. That's fucking pussy. I just carry all of my groceries. Just clutch. Just chuck them all under your shirt. But no, there, what is, what I have taken away as a massive difference between just lifting weights, because lifting weights is good. But a weight you can lift and then carry over space is totally different to a weight you can just lift one a couple of times. Yeah. It, it is so hard to hoist a bunch of weight and move quickly and efficiency, uh, efficiently with it. Whether that be by your side, up at your chest, overhead. And then when you make it something less conventional like a sandbag, oh my God, fucking hell. You know, whether it's on your shoulder or your hip or you can grip it or you can't, like the other element which is so great about that is the compressive force that it has on your torso, which means you can't breathe. You're just, Dyson breaths. You just, you're just barely breathing, but you have to still generate effort. And, and, and it's this mixture of isometric muscle contraction while also heart and lungs working, while having to really get your legs and hips moving, like it, it really for me is unparallel, unparalleled in how that can make you fitter with minimal equipment in a short amount of space in a short amount of time. Yeah. So that's something. Yeah, carries are sick. So good. And we, we feature them a fair bit in our program and you could do it with dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, whatever, grab a person. Grab a stone. Yeah, grab a stone. You, you know, you might have done a similar. Grab a kid. Grab a kid, grab a dog, dog under each arm, whatever. I mean, you know, any, uh, any parent of young children will, will fucking know like it often ends up in a carry, you know, when you try and go on a long adventure with the kid and they're like, carry. And you're like, fuck. And you're like, okay, it's an opportunity to get stronger. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's like, uh, it's like, uh, might, the legend of Milo where the guy would carry the, the calf up the mountain and as it got bigger, he got stronger, you know. But I, I think that's the challenge is it's not something that we think about, but you can do it, it's honestly 10 minutes and you'll get so much stronger and fitter with it. It's, it's, it's worth, it's worth the squeeze. Just worth the squeeze. Now, the thing I actually wanted to go to more towards the end is just doing more volume with a bit less rest. Now you might have found this, Joe, where you're pushed for time and you're like, fuck, I got half an hour. Or what if I just super, like what if I make everything a superset? Yeah. All right. Well, you know, I could, well, it says squats then dips. What if I just go squats, dips, bang, bang. And you're not doing a ton of reps, but by like reducing or getting rid, getting rid of the rest time, you just stay working the whole time. Heart rate goes fucking up. Yeah. You know, and you're not, you're not doing lightweight and you're not doing super high volume, but because you are moving around and you're taxing your body in different ways, it's not as though you intended to do a circuit, but just by the nature of you not chilling, you, you sweat, you pump sweat. Yeah. Heart rate goes up. You're like, oh my God, this is fucking. But then you get to the end of the half an hour and you've done the whole workout and you've also like pumped the lungs. You know, this is something I noticed friends who, friends who bodybuild. Right, because we come, we have more of a strength emphasis, right, with our training, which anyone that's into strength is like heavy weights or heavy load and rest periods. Yes. And, and, and, and some, some bodybuilder types will also do a bit of that. But moreover, what I, what I've been interested to know is that a lot of bodybuilding friends are like, especially once they've been doing it for a long time, they're like, no, I don't really rest. I just go in, I do boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, 30 minutes and I'm out. Yeah. And it's actually like, you're like, oh shit, you're actually pushing the pace quite a bit. Right? Like they're getting that, that sort of cardio demand there as well. Yeah. Um, I've noticed that because I've been trying to do a bit of that in the gym and you're like, yeah, you turn what could be a 45 to one hour workout, um, at a sort of low, like a low intensity. Cruisy. Turn into like a 25, 30 minute high intensity thing. You get a lot of fucking work done in a short space of time and yeah, you, you're like, man, I feel like I just came out of like a couple of no-gi rounds. Yeah. Got the veins coming and shit and you're like, fuck yeah, I feel jacked. And you, and you just feel the sweat, right? Like I, for those of you out there who don't wear a heart rate monitor or you don't wear some kind of like a Whoop or a trackable or anything like that, you, you're missing out a little bit in the sense that, I mean, I'm not someone who wears a Whoop, but I do keep track of how gassed I am. And I will write in my journal, fuck, that was a nine out of 10. For various reasons, you know. And I will compare fatigue to like strength. So sometimes something is more taxing on strength and something will induce more fatigue and I didn't maybe lift as heavy. But I always try to pay attention to like, how tired am I at the end of a workout? And rest breaks and measuring your rest, like timing your rest break is actually huge. So what you can do, a step in the right direction for you improving your gas tank, improving your work capacity is to actually set a, a hard limit on your rest time. Yeah. But the other thing which really works here and this, this probably speaks to CrossFitters and, and which is the kind of on the minute every minute or you do a timed window. Yeah. So you've got three exercises, you go, right, I've got two minutes. The sooner I get all these exercises done, my rest break starts. Yeah. But once it, once it's been, once it goes two minutes, you got to start those, those round of three exercises again. Yeah. And you just do five sets or however many sets you plan to do. That's, that's only 10 minutes, right? Yeah. But it, it, it really does cook you because it's not about how you feel, it's just the time, the exercises, the reps, do it. And it's, it is very effective. Yeah. Yeah, it works very well. So I, I think I, I want to just finish off because we've, we've gone on this before and this is my advice to our, our, um, esteem, esteem friend who is very good at jiu-jitsu and is improving their conditioning. I said, look, stop fucking around. Your baseline cardio is great because of how much jiu-jitsu you do. They train twice a day. I said, you got to push your top end. So what I said is you need a sled and you need some kettlebell swings. I actually want them to do kettlebell snatch, but they were less familiar with the technique. So they'll build up to that. I'm like, the easiest thing you do is kettlebell swings. So I'm like, right, 30 seconds of swing swings, 30 seconds of sled. And then you get your, um, you, you, you get your, um, 30 second break. Right. And it's, yeah, two to one. I'm not talking Tabata, but this is two to one is like a, a ratio that's sure to induce lactate. And it's like, yeah, build up to 10 rounds. That's 15 minutes. Yeah. Fuck. Like you're lucky if you can get to 10 rounds. You usually start at five and you build it up. Yeah. But that is some of the hardest workout I've ever done is, um, kettlebell snatches super set with sled pushing. And it's, it's, um, two, two to one work to rest ratio. And so I, I've kind of given it to them as a project and they're working on it and they're like, man, I'm feeling fitter. And it's only been a couple of weeks. And that's the thing I want to stress to you guys is that when you start to work a bit harder using these tools where there is a bit of resistance involved, you actually adapt very quickly. It's not you're going to be fitter in six months. You'll, you'll be fitter in a couple of weeks. Your, your tolerance for the stress will increase and what you'll find is you just don't get as tired on the mat. And that's what we want for you folks. Better endurance, better energy.