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June 30, 2021

Get to Know CrossFit Games Champion Jamie Simmonds

Jamie Simmonds, 2019, the Third Fittest Woman on Earth, is an international CrossFit Games champion and ambassador for plant-based nutrition company Nuzest.

Formerly a gymnast and rugby player, Jamie made her name in the CrossFit competition scene in 2016 when she became a podium finisher with team CrossFit Yas.

Read From Being a Mom to the Podium at the CrossFit Games at its original source Breaking Muscle:

https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/from-being-a-mom-to-the-podium-at-the-crossfit-games

Source

June 11, 2021

Conditioning for Strength Athletes

Depending on who you ask—this can be a controversial topic. But in reality, it’s straightforward. Before we get into exactly what you should, and shouldn’t be doing, let’s take a step back and consider the bigger picture.

There’s a common misconception about what conditioning is. Most people seem to think that it’s as simple as conditioning = cardio.

Read Conditioning for Strength Athletes at its original source Breaking Muscle:

https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/conditioning-for-strength-athletes

Source

April 22, 2021

The Four Cs of Metabolic Conditioning

When it comes to strength training, most coaches and even clients understand the concept of progressing in a structured and systematic way, using percentages to build strength slowly over time.

But, for some reason, when it comes to metabolic conditioning, fitness becomes a free-flowing ocean of random, high-intensity efforts, filled with varied, whatever modalities are en vogue that week:

Read The Four Cs of Metabolic Conditioning at its original source Breaking Muscle:

https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/the-four-cs-of-metabolic-conditioning

Source

April 18, 2021

Enhance Muscle And Strength With These Sleep Extension Techniques

Most of the literature on sleep is regarding restriction and its impact on health and performance. However, there is a growing body of research on sleep extension and the potential implications on athletic performance. It’s relatively understood that sleep is a primary contributor to recovery and performance.

Despite this, it’s estimated over one-third of the American population is underslept.1 The American Academy Of Sleep Medicine recommends individuals aged 18-60 sleep a minimum of seven hours a day.1

Read Enhance Muscle And Strength With These Sleep Extension Techniques at its original source Breaking Muscle:

http://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/enhance-muscle-and-strength-with-these-sleep-extension-techniques

Source

April 14, 2021

How To Optimize Your Training for Next Year’s CrossFit Open With Former Champ James FitzGerald

For more than 99 percent of those who participated in the 2021 CrossFit Open and the quarterfinals, it’s back to the drawing board: eleven months of training ahead of you in hopes of improving upon your efforts next year.

Have you spent much time thinking about the method you’re going to employ to maximize your performance in, give or take, 320 days from now?

Read How To Optimize Your Training for Next Year’s CrossFit Open With Former Champ James FitzGerald at its original source Breaking Muscle:

http://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/how-to-optimize-your-training-for-next-years-crossfit-open-with-former-champ-james

Source

March 28, 2021

Does Fish Oil Supplementation Impact Recovery?

Fish oil supplementation has gained a lot of attention for its health benefits. Specifically, supplementation of omega 3 fatty acids has demonstrated positive effects on blood pressure, triglycerides, and heart rate.1

Additionally, they’ve been shown to improve arterial dilation, possess antiarrhythmic and anti-inflammatory properties. All of these have been shown to have protective effects against cardiovascular disease development.1

But less is known about the role of fish oil supplementation in recovery from resistance training.

A 2020 paper2 by VanDusseldorp et al. set out to examine the effects of fish oil supplementation on various markers of recovery following a strenuous bout of eccentric exercise.2

A 2020 paper3 by Heileson et al. found that the minimum effective dose for fish oil supplementation to elicit a positive response on recovery was 2 g supplemented for at least four weeks.3 However, research has been conflicting regarding what the appropriate dosing should be.

Therefore, the previously mentioned paper by VanDusseldorp and colleagues where they set dosages to 2 g, 4 g, and 6 g between groups and examined the effects of a seven-week fish oil supplementation protocol. This paper was on a well-controlled study:2

“Utilizing a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind experimental design; participants were randomly assigned to consume 2- (2 G), 4- (4 G), or 6- (6 G) g/da of either FO or placebo (PL) supplementation for ~7.5 weeks (8 participants per group (4 males and 4 females per group); a 6-week run-in the supplementation period, 1-week involving familiarization testing at the beginning of the week and experimental testing at the end of the week, and three days of recovery testing). Muscle soreness, venous blood (for the assessment of creatine kinase (CK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and indices of muscle function were collected before eccentric exercise, as well as immediately post 1-, 2-, 4-, 24-, 48-, and 72-h (H) post-exercise. Participants continued to supplement until they completed the 72H time-point.”2

  1. Participants completed eccentric squats on a Smith machine at a tempo of 4-0-1 for ten sets of eight reps using 70% of their 1 RM and taking three minutes to rest between sets.
  2. Additionally, participants were made to complete five sets of twenty bodyweight split jump squats.
  3. The primary metrics used to evaluate muscle damage and recovery were blood biomarkers, perceived soreness, vertical jump, agility test, forty-yard sprint, and maximum voluntary isometric contraction.

Researchers observed 6 g of fish oil supplementation had a beneficial effect on perceived muscle soreness.

Whereby participants reported lower soreness scores across all time points of measurement. The 6 g group also decreased the recovery time of vertical jump performance. In some cases, it also resulted in better blood values when monitoring indirect markers of muscle damage compared to the other controls.

So, what does this mean practically? Although the researchers found a beneficial effect on recovery when supplementing 6 g/day of fish oils, the effect’s magnitude was still relatively small. Therefore, a costs benefit analysis should be the basis for deciding whether to utilize this strategy.

I typically don’t recommend many supplements to individuals.

However, from a health perspective, I think fish oil supplementation is generally beneficial. So if you decide to take it for that reason, you may also experience some minor benefits of enhanced recovery.

Finally, if you want a comprehensive analysis of primary recovery strategies and how to utilize them for better results effectively, I have covered it on Kabuki Strength.4

References

1. “Effects of B vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids on cardiovascular diseases: a randomized placebo controlled trial.” BMJ. 2010;341:c6273. Accessed March 17, 2021.

2. Trisha A. VanDusseldorp, Kurt A. Escobar, Kelly E. Johnson, Matthew T. Stratton, Terence Moriarty, Chad M. Kerksick, Gerald T. Mangine, Alyssa J. Holmes, Matthew Lee, Marvin R. Endito, and Christine M. Mermier, “Impact of Varying Dosages of Fish Oil on Recovery and Soreness Following Eccentric Exercise.” Nutrients, U.S. National Library of Medicine, NIH. Published online 2020 Jul 27. Accessed Mar 16, 2021.

3. Heileson JL, Funderburk LK. “The effect of fish oil supplementation on the promotion and preservation of lean body mass, strength, and recovery from physiological stress in young, healthy adults: a systematic review.” Nutr Rev. 2020 Dec 1;78(12):1001-1014.

4. Daniel Debrocke, “Optimize Your Recovery For Maximum Strength.” Online Kabuki Strength, Accessed March 16, 2021.

Source

March 22, 2021

Too Much Rest Or Not Enough?

I hated studying for certification tests. Right after college, I took one of the more reputable certifications for strength and conditioning. While preparing, it wasn’t very reassuring to memorize concepts the test-makers thought was more important than I did.

I was arrogant for sure, just like any twenty-something-year-old meathead, but to mount a straw defense, I already had some real experience in formal strength and conditioning. I knew that many of the answers to the test questions depended on the situation.

Theory and lab results don’t always pan out in a practical situation.

One of these theoretical ideas that never sat right with me was standard rest times. Most of the textbooks would have strict guidelines for how long you should rest between strength training exercises or conditioning rounds and bouts.

I dug into why they were recommended and found it to be arbitrary.

Textbooks would assert that:

  • When weight-training for strength, you need to rest for 2-5 minutes between sets.
  • When doing circuits for endurance, 30-second rests between the exercises were best.

Heavier weight means you need longer rest time to recover and repeat—that sort of makes sense.

I think the textbook’s authors did not clarify the rest times regarding recovery or what to push?

Instead, it would help if you had answers to:

  1. Did the specific durations challenge your body’s capacity to endure stress and recover from it?
  2. Were they recommended because anyone, regardless of training history, could recover completely with that specific rest time and be ready to push hard again?

Those are two very different concepts, and I’ll explain.

What’s the Purpose of the Workout?

If you want to feel strong or tireless at the start of each set, round, or circuit, you have to pay careful attention to your rest period.

If you want to challenge how much intensive work you can do and resist fatigue, you adapt to the exercise’s stress and limit your rest.

You need to know how much rest you need first to understand how to shorten it strategically.

  • Sometimes you should be fully recovered and feel your best for each set. This recovery is the best practice for training compound-lifts with heavier weights.
  • Sometimes, training isn’t to feel the best or lift the heaviest weights possible during the training session.
  • Sometimes it’s best to work at a deficit during an individual training session to cause a long-term gain.

Training the endurance and tolerance of fast-twitch muscle fibers to curb fatigue is part of the foundation for your capacity for strength.

These fast-twitch types are the very ones that dominate strength and power movements.

Alactic capacity, the general capability to maintain high-intensity movement, makes up this foundation. To train these abilities, you need to monitor, reduce, and alter how long you rest between exertion periods in a workout as you become stronger and more conditioned.

Does a Real Standard Exist?

The recommended rest times for heavy strength training are usually based on the length of time the Central Nervous System (CNS) and energy substrates, which cause muscle contraction, need to recover.

It makes sense, but I’d strongly disagree that the average rest times given in the textbooks are standard for most people. I assume these studies take place in laboratory conditions.

I can’t emphasize enough how many people I’ve seen not fit this model in a practical setting.

The values, at the least, need to be looked at and tested further. I’m basing my view not just on what people tell me but on my concrete observations of how long it took them to repeat exercises with the same effort and intensity. And, I’ve seen these deviations in both inexperienced and experienced clients.

Textbooks for the associations that certify coaches usually mention that rest times can be changed and provide a range for this.

Still, I’ve never seen any solid recommendations on how, when, or how much to change it.

The Breath Can Tell Us Something a Device Can’t

Technology has created some great tools since these textbooks were written that monitor fundamental physiological shifts and monitor recovery. Heart rate monitors and devices that track heart rate variability are some of them.

While having data to track is invaluable, I think we have a built-in regulator that we can put to use in deciding how long to rest—the breath.

Observing the breath can tell us something that a device can’t.

It gives clues to how psychologically ready we are to take another heavy set or go through another intense exercise period. Controlled breathing can calm the body and mind, and by simply observing it, you can tell if you’re still panicking.

The word panic may seem dramatic, but it’s describing a stress-induced state from a mental attitude, voicing, “I’m not OK, or I can’t do this.”

However, even when heart rate lowers and other metrics show the body to be recovering, your breathing may still be speedy or labored.

And if the breath hasn’t calmed, your mind hasn’t calmed.

The mind can immediately speed up heart rate and blunt neural signals to the body to act coordinated, strong, and powerful. So even if the heart rate slowed and the nervous system and energy substrates had enough time to reset, you’re unsettled mind will kill your effort on the next set or round.

This calm is primarily an overlooked point of performance and recovery, but we teach it in great detail in our JDI Barbell course.

The Signals to Observe

If you’re trying to monitor your recovery between sets by tracking heart rate, you also need to pay attention to the quality of your breath.

  • When you finish a set of weights or round of conditioning, your breath speeds up alongside your heart rate.
  • You may also feel that your shoulders and chest elevate with every breath, even if you usually have a healthier breathing pattern where you expand and narrow your inhale and exhale through your lower torso.
  • Your body is trying to take in more oxygen to make up for what you spend during the exercise.
  • The breathing muscles in the chest, neck, and shoulders cause you to get taller with our inhale and shorter when you exhale. But they’re the back-up muscles for breathing, kind of like afterburners.
  • The lower torso muscles that expand and narrow the belly, sides, and lower back on inhaling and exhaling should be the dominant breathing muscles, especially when resting.
  • So even though those secondary breathing muscles can and should kick on to help you take in more air while you’re pushing through intense exercise, the primary forces should be responsible for your breath before your next set or round. If this doesn’t happen, then you haven’t fully recovered.

This up and down breathing pattern signifies that your breathing is labored, and you’re still in a stressed state.

Observe the Breath’s Patterns

To use the breath to decide our rest times, we have to make sure we naturally breathe horizontally where the torso widens on inhaling and narrows on exhale. If you want to dig into this, you can check out the work I’m doing with Dr. Belisa.

  • If we have this excellent pattern, we can start to track how long it takes after a set to switch from using those afterburner muscles to a relaxed horizontal breath.
  • There’s no need to force it; watch it and record it to use as a baseline. You can also track your heart rate to see the relationship between the two.
  • Keep a log on how long it takes you to make this switch after each set until you find the average time across all sets over two weeks of workouts.

Also, make a note as to how you felt during each set or round:

  • Did you feel like you were pushing just as hard each time?
  • Were there sets where you waited just a little longer because you were more in touch with your breath?
  • Were those sets better when you rested longer?
  • Were you able to keep pushing hard for each set as fatigue crept in as it always will the longer a workout lasts?
  • According to the standards I mentioned above, did you start your next set as soon as your breathing became more relaxed?
  • What happens when you take a few more calm breaths even after you start breathing only horizontally before beginning the next set?

Start Somewhere

Sometimes it makes sense to shorten your rest time to train your ability to recover and push the needle on both local muscular and total endurance. Without a baseline, though, how do you challenge this?

You need to know how long it takes you to recover entirely from each type of activity. You also need to know the feeling of rebounding to a fully rested state.

Becoming more conscious of your breath’s changes and quality will improve the connection and awareness you have of your body.

Often you’ll see those who throw themselves too far into the deep end, trying to work at an intensity that’s not sustainable with too high a stress level for them to recover or adapt.

They’ll plan short rest times based on nothing other than what they’ve been told makes the workout challenging. If you have no idea how long it takes for you to recover completely, you’re just guessing, and you may shorten your rest too much to sustain your effort throughout your workout.

There’s nothing wrong with testing your ceiling, and there’s a time for that, but every set isn’t your last, and you can’t treat it like it is.

If you know your baseline, though, you can set challenging rest times in that sweet spot that pushes you, challenges your ability to recover, and also keeps you moving forward.

Consider the entire picture when planning strength or conditioning training. If you plan to do eight rounds or sets of something but only get through four of them because you pushed yourself to a breaking point during the first few sets, what was the point?

You couldn’t sustain the effort because you went too hard in the beginning.

In the end, you did less work, despite the frantic effort of your first couple of sets fueled by listening to loops of Rocky-themed death metal music remixes.

Sometimes training’s primary focus should be on maintaining as close to the same effort as possible for every bout. This primary focus includes all of your training sessions in a given week.

And to give every set a similar effort, you’ll need to monitor how much rest time you need after each set, circuit, or round to keep this up, and tracking your breathing can give you the details.

Track Your Breath for a Useful Metric

Let’s go over specifics. For the breath to be a helpful metric in deciding rest, we need to make sure we have an excellent horizontal breathing pattern and that our breathing muscles are strong. After this, we can start tracking the breath changes to get a clearer picture of our fitness.

Observe:

Make your set, your sprint, your circuit, or your round hitting a punching bag, as usual. When it’s time to rest, don’t intentionally slow or control your breathing. Watch a few breaths.

Ask yourself how the exercise bout influenced you:

Question 1. Is Your Breathing Labored?

  • Specifically, are you breathing horizontally through your torso while also through your neck, shoulders, and chest?
  • Are you not broadening and narrowing at all through your belly, sides, and low back and instead only using the shoulders and chest’s secondary breathing muscles?
  • Record yourself or look in a mirror. Are you just getting taller and shorter as you inhale and exhale, or is your mid-section moving with it too?

A. 1. The first question’s answers will tell you if your primary breathing muscles need more work and how hard the effort was.

  • If you find you’re just using the secondary muscles (breathing up and down with no broadening and narrowing of your mid-section), you need more conscious practice in using the right muscles and patterns.
  • And if you do practice and strengthen these muscles, your recovery ability and performance will immediately improve.

Question 2. How Do You Inhale and Exhale?

  • Are you inhaling and exhaling through your nose and mouth?
  • Are you inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth?
  • Are you inhaling and exhaling through your nose and mouth synchronously?

A. 2. If your answer to the second question is yes, it probably means you’re using both primary and secondary muscles.

  • You may still be breathing well horizontally, but if you notice your chest and shoulders actively engaging when you breathe, you have more information about how hard that set was.
  • If you’re breathing through both your mouth and nose, you’re pushing yourself physiologically and will need more time to recover sufficiently.

Keep it Going

Instead of slowing down the breath, controlling it, or quickly changing it to nasal only, let yourself breathe rapidly in whatever way comes naturally. Just watch it closely for at least 10-50 seconds without interruption.

At the moment, it starts relaxing even a little, deepen and extend your inhale and exhale without changing the pace of your breath too drastically or trying to inhale only through your nose if you haven’t naturally started doing it.

Take several breaths like this until you switch to an easy more nasal-only breath without forcing it.

Track and Repeat

Have a stopwatch or clock with you, and note how long it took for the change in breath to happen. Remember to write it down. Then make a judgment about whether you feel psychologically ready to start the next set, round, run, or drill and repeat the same effort as the last.

The longer you train, the more fatigue you’re going to build regardless of what you do in between sets, but the idea is to give as consistent an effort as possible throughout the whole training session.

Create Your Baseline

Keep tracking rest times based on the changes in your breath and the effort that follows. Follow this over a couple of weeks with every training method you put yourself through, whether it’s weight training or conditioning bouts.

Now you have your average rest needed for a baseline to use across the board based on your biology and condition.

Create Your Training Plan

Remember that sometimes you can challenge your conditioning (both strength and endurance) by limiting rest. With a baseline that gives you concrete evidence of how long you need to make a full recovery, you can reduce your rest strategically to challenge and improve over time.

It’s also easier to make adjustments. Say you reduce your rest time by 20%, but you’re fighting to finish your training each week. You can adjust and make it only 10% until you adapt to this first.

Re-evaluate and Adjust

Keep following your baseline or adjustments every time you train for the length of a training cycle (3-6 weeks), but stay in touch with the feelings of your breath.

Then, test your ability to recover again. Now you can set and play with rest based on this new baseline.

Just remember, this isn’t always a linear advance. When you change complexity or style of exercise and movement or become stronger and can challenge yourself with heavier loads and implements, recovery requirements can change.

But always, you can check in with the breath.

Source

March 17, 2021

Does Protein Distribution Effect Muscle Mass?

When it comes to the accretion of new muscle mass, protein intake is one of the primary variables to consider. Common discussions range from how much protein, protein source and bioavailability, refractory periods, and protein distribution.

This article will give a brief distillation of the currently available evidence and offer clear and concise recommendations to optimize protein distribution throughout the day and maximize your results.

Protein’s Role in the Body’s Functions

Protein serves various functions in the body, including but not limited to growth and maintenance of tissue,1 catalyze biochemical reactions,2 recovery from injury,3 and normal immune function.4

But of particular interest is its role in the synthesis of skeletal muscle. Muscle protein synthesis (MPS)5 is the process by which our bodies synthesize new muscle tissue. It’s a primary variable that galvanizes tissue remodeling.

Muscle protein breakdown (MPB)6 is an oppositional effect whereby muscle proteins degrade. This effect occurs through autophagy, and calpain, and the ubiquitin-proteasome systems.6

The balance between these two processes determined whether an individual will gain, maintain, or lose muscle mass.

  • When the rate of MPS outpaces, MPB new muscle is accrued.
  • When MPB outpaces MPS, muscle loss is observed.

Optimize Muscle Mass Gains

A 2019 paper7 by Iraki et al. established recommendations for natural bodybuilders in the offseason.

The authors reiterate what the larger body of evidence suggests: total protein intake is a more significant determining factor in developing new muscle mass than protein distribution.

Currently, the research suggests a protein intake of 1.6-2.2 g/kg per day is sufficient to optimize muscular gains.7

However, when protein, calories, and any resistance exercise protocol are standardized, we still see a slight benefit when protein distribution is optimized throughout the day.

One of the more obvious reasons for this is the refractory period of MPS. The leucine threshold describes the amount of leucine required within a protein feeding to stimulate MPS8 maximally.

Does Protein Distribution Effect Muscle Mass? - Fitness, immune system, resistance training, protein, hypertrophy, Elite Programming, leucine, protein synthesis, bodybuilder, calorie burning, rebuilding, The Recovery Guide

A : changes in muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and muscle protein breakdown (MPB) in response to feeding (i.e., amino acids). B : changes in MPS and MPB in response to resistance exercise and feeding. Chronic application of these anabolic stimuli, as in B , results in muscle hypertrophy8.

Protein quality and bioavailability aren’t the subjects of this article, but generally, what’s observed is animal-based protein seems to be superior to plant-based proteins in most cases.

However, several non-animal-based protein sources are high quality. If you’re interested in diving into this topic, you can get started by reading this paper, and this one, and this one. But I digress.

Assuming a sufficient quantity of protein is consumed, we maximize the MPS response (roughly 20-40 g). This response comes with what’s known as the “muscle full effect,” as described by Schoenfeld et al. in his 2018 paper.9

Essentially, once MPS is maximally stimulated, there is a refractory period by which MPS can’t be maximally stimulated again.

A 2017 paper10 by Kirksick, et al. found “Ingesting a 20-40 g protein dose (0.25-0.40 g/kg body mass/dose) of a high-quality source every three to 4 h appears to most favorably affect MPS rates when compared to other dietary patterns and is associated with improved body composition and performance outcomes.”10

So does protein distribution affect the accretion of muscle mass? Yes, it does, but the effect is small. However, I would caution against assuming that small is synonymous with not meaningful. Its value is relative to the individual and their goals.

Hypothetically speaking, a 1% increase in hypertrophy for an elite bodybuilder may be the difference between 1st and 5th place.

For the average individual, the extra effort may not be worth the relatively small effect on results. It’s up to each individual to determine whether the investment is worth it. Good luck!

References

1. Bosse JD, Dixon BM. “Dietary protein to maximize resistance training: a review and examination of protein spread and change theories.” J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2012 Sep 8;9(1):42.

2. Cooper GM. “The Central Role of Enzymes as Biological Catalysts.” The Cell: A Molecular Approach. 2nd edition. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates; 2000.

3. Yeung SE, Hilkewich L, Gillis C, Heine JA, Fenton TR. “Protein intakes are associated with reduced length of stay: a comparison between Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) and conventional care after elective colorectal surgery.” Am J Clin Nutr. 2017 Jul; 106(1): 44-51.

4. Li P, Yin YL, Li D, Kim SW, Wu G. “Amino acids and immune function.” Br J Nutr. 2007 Aug; 98(2): 237-52.

5. P. J. Atherton and K. Smith, “Muscle protein synthesis in response to nutrition and exercise.” The Journal of Physiology, Vol 59-.5 1049-57.

6. Kevin D. Tipton, D. Lee Hamilton, Iain J. Gallagher, “Assessing the Role of Muscle Protein Breakdown in Response to Nutrition and Exercise in Humans.” Sports Medicine (Aukland, N. Z.). Vol 48, 2018. Suppl 1, 53-64.

7. Juma Iraki, Peter Fitschen, Sergio Espinar, and Eric Helms, “Nutrition Recommendations for Bodybuilders in the Off-Season: A Narrative Review.” Sports (Basel, Switzerland.), Vol. 7.7 154, 26 Jun 2019.

8. Burd NA, Tang JE, Moore DR, Phillips SM. “Exercise training and protein metabolism: influences of contraction, protein intake, and sex-based differences.” J Appl Physiol (1985). 2009 May;106(5):1692-701.

9. Schoenfeld, B.J., Aragon, A.A. “How much protein can the body use in a single meal for muscle-building? Implications for daily protein distribution.” J Int Soc Sports Nutr 15, 10 (2018).

10. Kerksick CM, Arent S, Schoenfeld BJ, Stout JR, Campbell B, Wilborn CD, Taylor L, Kalman D, Smith-Ryan AE, Kreider RB, Willoughby D, Arciero PJ, VanDusseldorp TA, Ormsbee MJ, Wildman R, Greenwood M, Ziegenfuss TN, Aragon AA, Antonio J. “International society of sports nutrition position stand: nutrient timing.” J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017 Aug 29;14:33.

Source

March 14, 2021

Avoid Burnout On The Way To Your BJJ Black Belt

Avoid Burnout On The Way To Your BJJ Black Belt - Fitness, weightlifting, bodybuilding, BJJ, jiu-jitsu, energy systems, periodization, explosive strength, muscular endurance, proprioception, burnout, cardiovascular fitness, fitness nutrition, The Recovery Guide

In the culture of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, it is encouraged for the athletes to train more and more. Athletes are training Jiu-Jitsu every evening, lifting weights every morning or vice versa, and doing two sessions a day at least five to six days a week.

If you are training this way, yet feeling like you are not necessarily progressing because you:

Then most likely, you are overtraining.

Do You Overtrain?

Many chronically overtrained athletes come my way feeling like this, and to top it all off, they are frustrated because they can’t lose weight even with all the training.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a complex sport that is very taxing on the nervous system.

It involves the constant activation of multiple muscle groups with both significant movements and small, subtle movements.

The rolling around at the gym can be up to eight minutes long, and black belt matches are ten minutes long, so muscular endurance and cardio fitness are necessary to be explosive within that timeframe. Hence, BJJ requires all energy systems to be firing at one stage or another.

Relax and Repair the Central Nervous System

There are methods for increased recovery, such as ice baths, meditation, and good nutrition.

Deep sleep is one of the best ways to deal with overtraining because it allows the central nervous system to relax and begin the repairing process. Many people don’t understand that the nervous system takes much longer to recover than other systems, such as the muscular.

Due to the nervous system affecting slow muscle firing, which then may influence:

  1. Reaction time
  2. Speed
  3. Grip strength
  4. Explosive power

Ironically, once our nervous system is fried, it’s hard to sleep, yet it’s what our body needs the most when we continually train to recover.

Even though ice baths, meditation, and good nutrition will help mitigate some adverse effects of chronic overtraining, it will eventually catch up if we do two intense sessions a day.

Structure and Periodization

Bazilian, Jiu-Jitsu training needs to be periodized and structured for long-term success.

  • If you want to train on the mat daily, there need to be days selected for hard rounds and other days for more flowing rounds, focusing on the sport’s more technical aspect.
  • Strength training should only be performed about twice a week and should be done on the days you are doing flow rolls.
  • Make the strength sessions count and perform them with intensity. Then, give your body time to recover.
  • Don’t go to the gym and go through the motions just because you think you should—which so many of us do.
  • Push yourself to make those gains and make each session count.

Perform with purpose.

Choose Exercises That Mimic Movement Patterns

In the bodybuilding culture (why gyms came about in the first place), lifting started with the purpose of building big muscles.

This way of lifting is not necessarily conducive to performance athletes who need to work the compound movements of multiple muscle groups at one time for coordination or core strength for balance, power, speed, and muscular endurance.

Getting creative is the key, so try and mimic the movement patterns of BJJ as closely as possible. Think outside the box.

Here are some great exercises to perform back to back that will benefit any performance athlete.

2. Pullups With the Gi to Increase Grip Strength

Avoid Burnout On The Way To Your BJJ Black Belt - Fitness, weightlifting, bodybuilding, BJJ, jiu-jitsu, energy systems, periodization, explosive strength, muscular endurance, proprioception, burnout, cardiovascular fitness, fitness nutrition, The Recovery Guide

3. Kettlebell Swings

Avoid Burnout On The Way To Your BJJ Black Belt - Fitness, weightlifting, bodybuilding, BJJ, jiu-jitsu, energy systems, periodization, explosive strength, muscular endurance, proprioception, burnout, cardiovascular fitness, fitness nutrition, The Recovery Guide

4. Plank Holds and Variations

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5. Stability Ball Exercises to Increase Proprioception

Avoid Burnout On The Way To Your BJJ Black Belt - Fitness, weightlifting, bodybuilding, BJJ, jiu-jitsu, energy systems, periodization, explosive strength, muscular endurance, proprioception, burnout, cardiovascular fitness, fitness nutrition, The Recovery Guide

Performing the workout in a circuit-based format with little rest is ideal while building muscular endurance and cardiovascular fitness.

Aim to do significant full-body movements that activate the core to build overall full-body strength, then spend the remainder of the day resting if you can or doing technique and flow rolls. Limit these effective and intense strength sessions to only about two days per week.

Once a week, allow a full day of rest to allow your muscular system and your nervous system, and joints to recover and recharge.

Start the following week strong and repeat. By adding rest, it reduces your stress levels which will help to keep you lean.

Athletes who chronically overtrain are highly stressed, and as a result, they are holding onto body fat and water.

Train intensely with less overall volume, rest to recover and de-stress, and you will be leaner in the long run.

In It for the Long Haul

For most of us to embark on this beautiful Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu journey, we want to be in it for the long-haul. You want to keep progressing and keep your body healthy and strong by training smarter and not necessarily harder.

To sum it up, aim for three hard BJJ sessions a week, two intense strength sessions a week, and one full rest day a week.

This schedule will give you the recovery you need to keep working towards your goals without fatigue or burnout. It will also keep you progressing and on track to a black belt.

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March 12, 2021

Embrace A Long-term, 3 Step Approach To Pain-free Fitness

After 11-plus years of coaching, I have learned that pretty much every single person who shows up to train with me has some pain.

Pain is something to which we can all relate. For some, it’s an emotionally-rooted pain, and for a vast majority of adults, there’s a certain amount of physical pain they deal with every day. 

It can be tempting, as a coach, to want to fix this pain by writing the perfect training program. The OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) enlightened me to another idea. The training program is only a small part of helping your clients live without pain.

Shift Your Mindset

Most people are impatient and want results now. It’s why people try muscle ups when they can’t even do a strict Chest-To-Bar (CTB) pull up. It’s not their fault.

We have all been told we can

  • Get abs in seven minutes.

  • Lose 30 pounds in 30 days.

Unfortunately, the path to improved fitness and decreased pain is a slow one.

The key is to help our clients shift their mindset to embrace a long-term, patient approach to fitness and pain-free living. 

Here are three steps you may not have considered to change your mindset and get out of pain long-term.

Step 1: Many People Don’t Know Where They Are.

“Meet them where they’re at” is how OPEX CEO Carl Hardwick, a man with almost 20 years of coaching experience, often puts it. 

The basic idea is to get to know as much as you can about your client’s:

Then, you can design an effective program for them that considers their entire life and ultimately “meet them where they’re at” in all areas of their life

However, one of the issues with this is that many people don’t know where they are. They don’t even know what it is they want to achieve from working out.

Somewhere along the way, they decided that snatching and learning a muscle up sounded like a cool idea. Still, some clients have ignored the fact that they can’t put their hands overhead without extending their spine (or maybe they don’t even realize this is the case) and that they’re in physical pain every time they snatch.

This person keeps trying to shove a square peg into a round hole—Talk about pain!

Other people set arbitrary goals without really considering what it will take to achieve them. Have you ever had a client who says she wants to lose 20 pounds and get a pull up, but her actions don’t align with her goal?

She never sticks around to do the pulling homework you gave her, and she keeps admitting to her Taco Bell addiction. It’s frustrating as a coach to watch this person continuously fail, and it’s even more frustrating to be the person who feels like a failure. 

Much of sorting out of this emotional and physical pain stems from awareness

Helping clients figure out what they want—their intention or why—is the first step to uncover, work through, and eliminate their emotional and physical pain, explained Firass El Fateh, the owner of OPEX Abbotsford in British Columbia. 

You have to, “Dig really deep with their exact reason for doing this whole thing,” El Fateh said. This starts on day one. “It’s about setting expectations right from the start during the initial consultation. Going through the assessment together and giving the client a clear picture of where they stand physically,” he added.

Emotionally speaking, when clients are honest about what they’re genuinely willing to sacrifice, such as losing 50 pounds—they’re more likely to shed emotional baggage and work to fix their problem.

Practically speaking, putting them through a thorough assessment allows your clients to understand their limitations

  • For example, if your client knows they failed a shoulder flexion test, they’re more likely to respect the fact that maybe going overhead with a barbell isn’t a great idea just yet. Perhaps it’s even the reason they’re always in pain. From there, you can lay out a path that will help them fix this weakness and get out of pain.

The mindset change starts with awareness of what’s causing the emotional pain, physical pain, and understanding what they want to achieve

Step 2: The Beauty of Simplicity

Remember the saying in elementary school: Keep it Simple, Silly (KISS)?

As coaches, we’re always trying to reinvent the wheel to keep people interested and show off our knowledge. Another lesson I learned from the OPEX CCP was about the beauty of simplicity. 

This comes down to, as Hardwick calls them, the “Basic Lifestyle Guidelines (BLGs).”

Simply put, “Start with lifestyle,” Hardwick said. 

First, you have to look at what the person has been doing for fitness and whether they have been doing “a bunch of inappropriate (for them) contractions and movements,” Hardwick said.

Look at what they’re doing the other 23 hours of the day. How are their sleep hygiene, nutrition hygiene, and stress levels? Teach them how this contributes to their pain, lack of recovery, and fatigue, Hardwick added. 

“If the client isn’t sleeping well, drinking enough water, getting enough sun, there is no point of diving deep into the program design part of it,” El Fateh added.

Beyond sleep, stress, sunlight, nutrition, other basic lifestyle guidelines, Hardwick asks coaches to consider how many steps the person is taking each day, how much water they’re drinking, and what kind of bowel movements they’re having.

As OPEX Founder James Fitzgerald put it, if you don’t feel comfortable talking to your clients about their poo, you’re missing out. “It’s an indisputable barometer of health…You need to talk about it with your clients,” he said. 

“Identify the lowest hanging fruit lifestyle habits,” Hardwick said, “and tackle them before you bother writing a fancy training program that promises your client the world.”

Step 3: Teach Them Why.

Anyone can teach someone how to squat, press, hinge, pull. While useful, for people to indeed be on board with a long-term path to better health and pain-free living, they need to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Doing this fosters that all-important buy-in explained Hardwick.

“It has to start with having the ability to educate our clients,” Hardwick said, not just through “principles and science,” but also through your own and other clients’ experiences.

El Fateh agrees. Once his clients have a clear understanding—based on the OPEX assessment he puts them through—he can now “tie in how their program will take them from where they are to where they want to get,” he explained.

He added: “Explaining the why behind the program is important…When people know why they’re doing something, they are much more likely to keep doing it.” 

The more self-sufficient and autonomous your clients become, the more likely they’re going to make decisions when you’re not looking (which is most of the time) that are smart for them and ultimately help them get out of pain long-term.

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