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The return of roadwork: Developing aerobic baseline capacity for athletes

October 11, 2016

A decade or so ago the phrase “roadwork” would have conjured up the image of a tracksuit clad athlete stoically jogging through the early morning mist and up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the inspirational tune “Gonna Fly Now’.

In recent times though, roadwork has fallen out of fashion in the athletic community; now we talk about “conditioning” and flog ourselves stupid with insane high paced workouts that leave us bathing in a puddle of our own puke and sweat.

While I think it is a good thing that we’ve come to understand that running for hours on end is detrimental to the strength, health, and performance of the majority of athletes, we’ve replaced it with something just as stupid.

The majority of “conditioning” training I see people do rarely results in any kind of improved sport performance and, in fact, usually actively interferes with it.

People forget that conditioning is specific. A boxer who is fully capable of doing ten rounds of intense sparring can be left gasping for air like a pack a day smoker after just ten minutes of wrestling practice, simply because they are not yet adapted to the specific conditioning demands of wrestling.

The best kind of sports conditioning is training or playing in the sport itself, and anything that interferes with an athlete’s ability to train or play is a hinderance. That said, it follows though that anything that can increase or enhance an athlete’s ability to train or play is beneficial.

So, aside from developing strength, if “conditioning” is out, what does that leave us with? Aerobic baseline capacity training. Roadwork 2.0 if you will.

Aerobic conditioning is not domain specific so, provided care is taken to keep the level of physical stress low, improvements made allow an athlete to train in their sport longer and more frequently.

The following three methods have each shown excellent results across a variety of sports and activities.

Barry Ross Baseline conditioning

This protocol is probably the easiest and most effective I have ever come across for developing an aerobic baseline for training. The fact that it is so simple and so undemanding is probably the main reason that almost nobody will start or stick with it.

The program was developed by Barry Ross, one of the best sprint coaches in the world, who needed to improve his athletes’ aerobic base without also further fatiguing them or impacting their ability to recover from their intense sprint training sessions.

The solution he came up with was to get his athletes to walk as fast as possible for 15 minutes three times a week with the goal of walking slightly further every week. This was to be repeated for four weeks followed by a two week break before repeating.

Tempo Running

The concept behind tempo running is that as there is little or no barrier to entry to running and only in the most extreme of circumstances do people become unable to take another step. As a result it is extremely easy for athletes (or anyone else for that matter) to run too far and run too fast damaging both sports performance and their bodies. We needed a method of limiting both the pace of the run and the quantity of running performed.

For years I called the following method “Tempo Running”, before I found out that it is essentially a low tech approach to the reasonably well known “Maffetone Running Method”.

This sounds easy, but the first session crushes egos on a regular basis. All the athlete has to do is run for 30 minutes twice a week maintaining a pace which allows them to breath only through their nose. If at any point during the run the athlete breathes through their mouth, they must walk the remaining time even once they are able to resume nose only breathing.

By restricting peoople to only breathing through their nose, it forces them to work at a pace that their body can easily handle.

I got the idea after watching Russian amateur boxers working the pads and even sparring with a mouthful of water, that they were then forced to spit out between rounds to prove they hadn’t swallowed the liquid.

Steady state after high intensity training

While none of these methods are onerous, this approach is the most easily integrated into an existing routine. All that is required is ten minutes of easy, steady state aerobics immediately after an intense sport training session, six days a week.

It is important to take note that in order for this protocol to be effective, it must be performed directly after a high intensity sports training session – not as a separate session, and not after something slower paced.

Interestingly, while it is probably the least effective of these three options for developing your aerobic baseline capacity (it’s still pretty good though) this is the only one that is even remotely likely to result in additional fat loss. While aerobic training is not particularly good at mobilising fat from adipose tissue stores, it is reasonably effective at making use of it once it enters the bloodstream. By performing some steady state aerobic training after high intensity training, which is amazing at mobilising fat from adipose tissue, you are essentially giving yourself some insurance that the fat that was mobilised gets burned.

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You might have noticed that none of the above training protocols are particularly exciting or sexy. That’s the thing about training in an effective, productive manner – sometimes it’s boring.

And that’s what makes this training genuinely hard for people to do.

The long runs and the puke inducing work outs feel hard but almost everybody will do them because they also feel exciting but it’s a willingness to do the rote work, the punch the clock style training sessions, that is the mark of a genuine athlete.

Photograph by Malcolm Murdoch

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Things you can say at BJJ, but not to your partner

October 1, 2016

I’d totally tap him.

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I love it when they submit.

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How much do you weigh?

Can I have a trial session?

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I prefer to start standing.

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I’m actually going with Simon next, but you and I will go first next time.

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Can you do that inverted?

Come here – I just saw this new move on YouTube.

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Senior grades get to go first.

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I usually try to come twice a day.

BJJ In Canberra: My 14 Year Journey To Black Belt

August 31, 2016

2002 – 2005 – White Belt

I was a 21 year old who had just begun a philosophy degree at university. The local video store had allowed me to see the first five UFC events and, inspired by the exploits of Royce Gracie, my friends and I began ‘training’ in a garage. A few months later, a customer at the shop I was working at alerted me to the existence of a Machado BJJ club in the area, and so I went to have a look. Keen to test my garage sharpened ‘skills’, it was in May of 2002 that I showed up to my first class in my grass stained, low budget judo gi ready to roll.

Needless to say, I was soundly handled by everyone during sparring that night, but the roll that really captured my attention and imagination was the one I had with the instructor. Michael was only a blue belt, and he was a little bigger and stronger than me, but the way he handled me was such that at no time did I feel like anything I did mattered. He could have been a ten year old girl and the result would have been exactly the same. The dude was water. This was what I wanted to do.

The main thing I learned at white belt was to relax. Most of the guys I trained with back then were much bigger than me, as they were mainly guys with professional martial arts or security backgrounds, and so I quickly learned that pushing, pulling, or grabbing harder never really helps, but it does always tire you out and sometimes leads to injury. Once you can get that super-chill breathing going with a super heavyweight sitting on your face, then you can focus your mind on positional maintenance and problem solving in any situation.

2005 – 2008 – Blue Belt

Still at uni. One of only a handful of blue belts in a sea of white belts.

Cocky. The move collector. The cutting edge, half guard/hooks guard phenom.

You know JJ Machado? I roll like him.

“Stupid purple belt instructor is living in the past, man. Saulo Ribeiro and Marcelo Garcia are changing the game and this dope has us doing closed guard sweeps? Bleh. I’m off to the corner to do my own stuff with the other cool blue belts.“ – Me ‘07

Anyway, I was pretty deluded as a blue belt. Don’t get me wrong, the stuff we were doing on the side was good stuff, but my attitude towards moves I ‘already knew’ was misled. At that time, I thought the key to the game was simply to know more moves than your opponent, and that knowing a move was a simple matter of getting to the point that you could demonstrate it.

However, as I got closer to purple belt I started to understand that the new school stuff I had been doing was only particularly effective for me because of how much work I had invested into learning how to use it. This reality check made me see all of the techniques I had previously learned in a different light, and I started to move my training focus away from the acquisition of new techniques, and towards the sharpening of existing ones.

2008 – 2011 – Purple Belt

Public Servant. Instructing the no gi Saturday class.

“To be the man, you gotta beat the man.” – Ric Flair

More than half the rolling I did as a purple belt was against one brown belt. He was about my weight and one of the best brown belts in the country, and so I had made it my mission to get to the level needed to credibly compete against him. I adopted Saulo Ribeiro as my surrogate instructor by watching his three instructionals to the point that I sounded like Saulo, and then used these teachings to sharpen my defensive postures and escapes to the point that I was eventually able to give ‘the man’ a run for his money through sheer defensive capability.

When ‘the man’ got his black belt from Anthony Perosh, he gave me my brown.

So what did I learn as a purple belt? Teaching is a good way to figure out that you don’t know shit about a move. White belts will ask perfectly valid questions about your favourite move and you will not have an answer, and begin to question whether you yourself actually do the move correctly. However, hopefully this will lead you to find the answers to these questions, which will then further your understanding of the move. At purple belt I learned that furthering your ability to teach a move is the final process of developing your own mastery of it.

2011 – 2016 – Brown Belt

Tried to be a real estate agent in 2012. No training for 18 months. Came back out of shape in 2014.

“Wtf just happened? The little kid is a beast.” Me ‘14

Before my 18 month hiatus, I had shared many rolls with one particular teenage blue belt, and had always had an easy time beating him. I once subbed him sixteen times in a minute during a grading roll. Anyway, while I was away, not only had he grown from a blue belt boy into a purple belt man, but he had also made two six week trips to AOJ in San Diego, where he had trained six days a week.

I came back, and the kid destroyed me. He took vengeance for that sixteen sub exhibition I had laid on him back in the day, and it wasn’t pretty. Not only that, but he was using techniques that I was largely ignorant of. As I previously noted, I had stopped collecting moves back when I was a purple belt, but as a result I had not kept up with the newer tactics as I had always thought that my ‘brown belt fundamentals’ would see me through. Convinced that it must be the new moves that were allowing an inferior grappler to defeat me, I scrambled to learn about every berimbolo, single X, curu curu, fifty fifty, whateverty doo-dah I could find, only to arrive at a far scarier realisation.

It wasn’t the moves. The kid had just been training way harder than me, and was now a better grappler than me.

The colour of my belt together with all my additional years of experience didn’t change the fact that I threw everything I had at this kid over and over and never came close to getting an attacking position. I had been resting on my laurels, and now the student had become the master.

So I started training harder, and seeking more knowledge with clearer goals in mind, and slowly I began to close the gap. The kid’s a freak so I don’t think I’ll ever have the edge on him again, but at 36 I’m happy just as long as I can give the top guys a good competitive match. It seems dumb to learn it so late, but at brown belt I really learned that goal-focussed mat time is what leads to improvement in BJJ, i.e. train as often as you can, know what you are there to work on, and work on it.

It was in 2015 as a brown belt that I accepted a coaching position at the new Atos club in Canberra.

2016 – Black Belt

Here’s me in 2016

I’m still coaching at Atos Canberra as the women’s instructor and assistant instructor to the main class. I am enjoying my BJJ training as much as ever, and I am looking forward to continuing my BJJ learning long into the future.

So, that’s my BJJ journey so far. Thanks for reading, and good luck with your training.

Here’s a video of me getting promoted to black belt by Professors JT Torres, Antonio Mota, and Ben Langford at Atos Canberra.

Uchikomi

August 3, 2016

Most judo clubs practice uchikomi. In an ideal world, it looks like this.

Uchikomi is repetition training for judo throws. The person practicing a throw goes through all motions of the throw up until the point where the person being thrown would lose their balance. It serves as a warm up, a method of teaching and correcting technique, and a conditioning exercise. Unsurprisingly, it also allows judoka to start decades-long fights on the internet about its utility. Evidence does not usually play a part in these fights.

To start with, nobody seems capable of translating it from the Japanese. Brief internet research shows that it can mean “to beat against”, “to go in”, “invasion” and, most memorably, “hitting with nothing less than the totality of one’s being”.

Please do not hit anyone with the totality of your being; it sounds metaphysically disgusting. Instead, it might be better to accept that uchikomi is a word that doesn’t really need to be translated. Repetition training will do.

Intuitively, the benefits of uchikomi seem obvious. The trainee can practice without the distraction of someone else trying their very best to stop them. You can isolate individual elements of the throw to practice technique while in motion. Moving against slight resistance will help with conditioning in a way that is specific to judo techniques. Finally, your partner can provide good feedback on form. These are all good things. Here, learn from Koga.

On the other hand, it also sets up habitual movement patterns. This can have the effect of cementing bad habits and mechanically inefficient methods, particularly where the trainee does not receive the feedback of actually throwing somebody.

More importantly, uchikomi is nothing like a judo match; the chance of transferring a skill from uchikomi to a match may not be high. Unfortunately, designing a study where someone is able to compare judo skills with and without having learned uchikomi appears to be almost impossible, so we are unlikely to get any evidence about the efficacy of uchikomi for skills practice any time soon.

Thankfully, there is one aspect of uchikomi that can be measured: conditioning benefits. Even more thankfully, Emerson Franchini is willing to do study after study after study to do so.

Roughly summarised, two sessions of high intensity interval training per week, using uchikomi, resulted in increased upper and lower body power production test results. The authors suggest that the interaction of judo training and the high-intensity uchikomi additional training resulted in an optimal combination to improve upper-body high-intensity intermittent performance. They also note that high intensity interval training adaptations are mostly muscle specific.

Put another way, it’s not clear if uchikomi is good for technique. It’s not clear if uchikomi helps performance in a match. But if you want to get fit for judo, then consider some uchikomi.

Here are some ideas.

Image credit: Singapore 2010 Youth Olympic Games

Fundamentals of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

July 28, 2016

One thing I consistently notice when training with different Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) coaches and instructors, is that everyone has a different opinion of what techniques are considered fundamental. It got me thinking about the idea of fundamental positions vs fundamental techniques, which really made sense to me.

I recently started using this concept while teaching, to help beginners learn and understand BJJ more intuitively.

Fundamental positions like closed guard, open guard, side control, mount, and back control are positions we encounter in every roll, and in most cases are easily recognisable for either person in the fight, or even a spectator. With this recognition of the position, we can use this as a sort of a cue to then get people thinking about the techniques they should be doing, and better understanding the situation that they are in.

As for the fundamental techniques, I honestly do not believe there are any. Techniques vary too much from gym to gym because they’re often based on what that instructor feels comfortable teaching and showing. This is either because they have a particular type of strong game, or they teach how they were taught when they were learning.

This of course leads me into the whole berimbolo debate – specifically, where we see a lot of people complaining about white belts learning berimbolo before other ‘fundamental’ techniques.

I never quite understood this argument. The berimbolo itself isn’t too complex, and its pretty easy to grasp which situations to use it in. In this sense it’s no different than any other technique. As long as students understand this, I don’t see an issue in teaching it as a fundamental. If they struggle to understand it, they can try other techniques to achieve the same result.

The same rules apply for every other technique. There is always a situation associated with it, and it’s followed by a reaction or lack of a reaction. Once people understand this it will help them use it in sparring.

Essentially, regardless of the technique shown and weather you consider it to be fundamental or not, I think its important to link these with positions and situations, to help people understand and recognise when its appropriate to use the techniques they’ve been taught.

Travelling with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

January 26, 2016

One of the nice things about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) is that you can travel practically anywhere in the world and find somewhere to train. Training in a new academy in a different city or even a different country from your own can be one of the most rewarding and revealing experiences you can have as every gym has its own culture, philosophy and technical emphasis. Here are six quick tips on how to get the most out of your trip and make sure that you are welcomed back.

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Do your research

Google the city you’re travelling to in conjuction with BJJ, and ask your coach and team mates if they’ve had any experience training at the destinations you’re keen on. Chances are that some of them have traveled to wherever you are going before and can suggest some good places to train. A personal recommendation is always a better bet than simply going with Google’s first page.

Once you’ve decided on a place, learn everything you can from their website. Find out the class schedule, the location, whether the sessions you plan to attend are gi or no gi, and what the mat fees are likely to be. This last point is especially important if you are planning on going somewhere famous. Places like Renzo’s or Marcelo’s academies in New York and the Mendes brother’s Art of Jiu Jitsu academy in California have significantly different mat fees for tourists and locals.

Call ahead

Apart from it simply being polite, it’s always an excellent idea to call the academy to let them know that you are coming. This is a chance for you to find out anything you couldn’t glean from their website, and for them to get an indication of who you are and how long you’ve been training. Ask which classes it would be appropriate for someone of your experience to attend, and whether they have any particular requirements regarding safety equipment or training gear.

Pack appropriately

Pack a standard white gi, and if you will be training enough to require a second gi then I would recommend bringing a white ultra light travel gi. You read that correctly – only pack white gis. Preferably ones unadorned with patches, although I do realise that’s not always possible.

Many gyms require all students to wear white gis, and many of those same gyms are not very good at communicating this requirement, so making your gi white by default is cheap insurance. Also wearing a white gi instead of your unicorn patched purple tiger striped gi is a small measure of respect for your host, which is often an under appreciated gesture. It’s the difference between attending a business lunch in a simple suit and tie, and attending that same lunch wearing a popped collar polo, tight white jeans and oversized aviators.

We all know that guy. Don’t be that guy.

Apart from that, I would also suggest packing a micro fibre towel and a notebook. It’s also a good idea to have your own sports tape, but if you are flying you should buy that once you arrive at your destination city, as airport security will confiscate any before you board the plane.

Arrive early

Make sure you arrive 15 minutes or so early so that you have time to sign any waivers, get shown around, meet the instructor and get changed. Seems obvious but many, many people fail to take these things into account and rock up expecting to be able to just jump on the mats.

Before class talk to a friendly looking blue belt

For some reason every academy assumes that all the little ceremonies and gestures of respect that make up “the way things are done” are the exact same at every gym world wide, but I have yet to visit two that are alike. So find yourself a blue belt, someone that knows what’s going on but who hasn’t been doing it for so long that it’s just a part of the background noise, and ask the following questions:

Do you bow before stepping on or off the mats?

Do you line up before or after class?

What do I call the instructor?

There’s bound to be a few more culture traps that will leave you wondering what the hell is going on, but the above should at least get you through the first 10 minutes.

Go to train

Remember the reason you are visiting this club in the first place; specifically, you are there to train. You are not there to teach – so hold back on offering your insights (unless asked specifically by the instructor of course). You are not there to show how good you are – so roll like you’re trying to improve and not like you’re in the final of the mundials. You are not there to deliver your one man comedy show – so do the drills and restrict chatting to the breaks and after class.

Why I Never Say ‘Cardio’- Thinking About The Language Of Fitness

January 19, 2016

Specialised language and jargon isn’t just fun, it can be incredibly useful. The words we use define the way that we think about topics, and so it’s worth it to carefully refine the words we use.

Here’s an example that illustrates how obsessive I am about this stuff- the use of the word ‘pull’ when talking about the deadlift. ‘How much do you pull?’ is a common way to ask someone how much weight they can do in this most storied exercise. The very concept of ‘pulling’ evokes the sort of arm-focused back-straining effort that any good deadlifter should be working to avoid. My clients (most of whom have never deadlifted before they start with me) never hear the word ‘pull’ in relation to the deadlift, but they do hear the word ‘stand’ a lot. I judge that this conditions them to think about the lift as a lower-body-driven, body-unfolding-evenly process, as they should.

Am I being over-the-top? All I know is that I want to get better and better at teaching things. It’s no great insight to say that effective communication is at the heart of teaching. Effective use of language comes down to one simple thing- understanding what a word or term means before you use it.

I feel bad picking on a word like ‘cardio’. It’s a word that was useful for a long time. It has a clear and precise meaning (physical exercise of low to high intensity that depends primarily on the aerobic energy-generating process, but of course you knew that). Meanwhile the fitness industry is littered with nightmare words like ‘tone’ and ‘detox’, marketing terms based on fictional premises that lower the common IQ of the fitness community every time they’re uttered or written. Compared to these ‘cardio’ is a fine, worthy term.

That said, modern athletes and trainers talking about ‘cardio’ sessions and ‘cardio’ fitness is a useful illustration of how the finer subtleties of language can limit our approach to our own fitness.

Athletes who start training with me tend to have a basic understanding of Cardio Training vs Strength Training. To most of them ‘cardio’ is the huff-and-puff, lots-of-reps-at-a-time stuff and ‘strength’ is about big scary weights. A cultural aspect to this exists where many athletes think of themselves as either Strength Athletes or Cardio Athletes. This false binary is about as useful as the false binaries prevalent on the political thinkpieces you read on Facebook this morning (ie not useful at all).

If pressed, any person of average intelligence will acknowledge that our muscles AND our lungs are working any time that we exercise. They’ll further acknowledge that a set of five back squats can leave you sucking wind and a long run will make your legs feel like jelly.

Our muscles are devices that we use to move and they are powered by the various substances that fuel our body, which includes oxygen. Our nervous system is as much the generator of strength as our muscles, and these various systems interrelate in subtle and intersectional ways depending on exactly what exercise we’re doing.

Sure sure, I hear you say. That’s all true, but doing cardio still makes you good at cardio and strength makes you good at strength, right?

We had a guy attend our wrestling club several years ago, who had never wrestled before. This guy was a serious athlete, a veteran of triathlons, open water swims and many other punishing endurance events. Despite this, two minutes of wrestling would leave him a melted puddle on the floor. I remember his words at the end of his first class, said with an exasperated laugh- “I thought I was fit!”

This guy thought that he had found an activity that had shown up the limits of his fitness. He was utterly wrong. His fitness was every bit as high -level as he thought it was. It was just the wrong fitness.

This guy wasn’t aware that the body has three energy systems- phosphate, anaerobic and aerobic- and that while all three of them are working every time you exercise, there is always one in primacy. Which energy system you’re using depends on how long and how intense the activity is.

A human body is going to have a different fitness in each system. It’s a pie to be sliced up- to reach an elite level in one requires a trade-off with the other two. You noticed that the third energy system is called aerobic, right? The other term for aerobic is cardiovascular. cardio isn’t part of a binary with strength, it’s part of a ternary with phosphate and anaerobic. (I’ll get a bit deeper into all this in my next column).

Once our trainee wrestler had these simple things explained to him he was much less frustrated. He had clear parameters for what he needed to work on, and a clear sense of reality. If he wanted to perform better at wrestling, he would have to increase his anaerobic fitness and allow his aerobic to be de-emphasized. Getting this right would mostly be a simple matter of adjusting the duration and intensity of his weekly exercise, plus one more important thing.

The more functional strength you have the less effort you need to employ in any individual movement. The less effort the lighter the demands on your energy systems. That means the stronger you are, the fitter you are, at least as far as the conception of fitness that people associate with ‘cardio’ training. There isn’t a physical pursuit on earth that a well-structured strength program won’t heavily assist with.

I aim to turn all of my clients into masters of nerdy fitness jargon. I teach every client about the three energy systems within their first two or three sessions, and work to deepen their understanding of them over time. It’s easy to understand, it helps people understand their own bodies and all truly effective gym training incorporates it. When naming the three systems I use the word ‘aerobic’ instead of ‘cardio’ because it’s relation to the word ‘anaerobic’ makes for clearer explanation. I’m thrilled for you to use the word ‘cardio’ if you still prefer it, but I’d love it of you stopped using it as a catch-all term for any type of huff-and-puff exercise. Consider it a personal favour to me.

There are fitness terms and slang that are clear, useful and elegant. There are other terms that are so counterproductive that I want to remove them from the language entirely. In the middle are a bunch of terms that are just fine but used lazily, by trainers and athletes that would rather repeat buzzwords than learn the basic facts about exercise and training.

If you’re after an effective way to set yourself above the gym-goers around you (and I know you are) then watching your words is a great place to start.

Five stretches – Part 2

January 15, 2016

Following on from my previous post on stretching for Capoeira, I wanted to share five more stretches that we still use in Capoeira and outside the circle of Capoeira, with some variations thrown in.

Pike:

Standard: Keep your legs together. With your knees locked out, try to compress your body at the hips. And yes, you can point your toes if you like to make it pretty.

The Jefferson Curl:

Steve Maxwell first showed this to me, and then again most recently Coach Sommers, it is a fantastic tool for promoting both strength through the spine and flexibility.

Start by standing tall on a flat surface or an elevated surface and with some kind of weight in your hands. This could be a barbell or kettlebells. You’re not looking for the heaviest weight possible, so start light (for example, 5kg) and progress from there.

When performing the movement, lock out your knees so your legs are straight. Then lean forward slowly, and think about “peeling” each vertebrae one at a time, until your arms are hanging down as low as they can. Try not to let your hands rest on your feet or the floor.

If you can touch the floor, move up onto an elevated surface (for example, a box or weight plate). Ultimately you are looking to have your upper body rest against the front of your legs. To return to the top, contract through the backs of your legs, concentrating on your hamstrings, and roll up one vertebrae at a time.

Pigeon:

Active: This particular version of the pigeon stretch has a slight ‘tweak’ to it I guess, I’m taking this version from Ido Portal and it’s more of an active pigeon stretch. It’s fantastic for opening up your hips.

Start on all fours and slide one leg back. Lean forward to place most of your weight on the front leg. Now play around with letting that front knee fall out to the side. Find your sticky spot and hang there for a while.

Example of this would be 10 reps then a hold for 10 seconds on the last rep.

90/90:

For this one, we start with the lead leg directly in front of you, with the knee bent at 90° lining up with the foot. Then the trail leg out to the side and also bent at 90° inline with the heel.

Lean forward to get the deep stretch through the hip and glute minimus.

For the trail leg, try to square yourself off inline with the knee, if you cannot, you can lean back.

Quadratus lumborum:

Sit on the floor in what I guess you would call a typical hamstring stretch position. Turn your upper body towards the bent knee, grabbing it with the opposite hand and lean your upper body towards the foot of the straight leg. The trick with this one is to hold on tightly and think about guiding your head and shoulders towards and beyond the foot!

Cossack stretch:

This is a very common position to be in when playing Capoeira, as a way of escaping (esquiva) attacks. It’s great position to practice to ‘teach’ your hips how to do the splits.

Straighten one leg (again point your toes if you feel like it). Tuck your other leg up towards your butt, trying to keep your heel and glutes nice and close to each other. With that same leg, try to keep your foot flat on the ground, and your knee and toes pointing in the same direction.

Deltoid capsule stretch:

Lie face down (prone) and feed your left arm underneath your chest. Let your left knee fall out to the side. To add more intensity to it, reach forwards with the non-stretching arm.

Scorpion stretch (pec to bicep):

Lie prone on the floor. Reach forward with one arm, then out about 45° (so either 10:30 or 2:30 on a clock). Keep the non-stretching arm close to the body (like a push up position), and use it to create leverage and push the stretching shoulder into the ground.

Reach the opposite leg to the stretching arm backwards over the body and just hang there.

If you’re keen to learn more or want a tailored program to help you move better, you can get in touch with me via www.simonlecoaching.com

Thoughts About BJJ

January 8, 2016

To master Brazilian Jiu Jitsu the training must be severe

This doesn’t mean that the training must necessarily be physically demanding (although it often is), it means that your training must constantly remind you of the areas of your game that need improvement. Severe training shows you where you are weak and tests you where you are strong, it strips away the comfort of self delusion and replaces it with daunting truth. This kind of training is hardest on the mind and the ego.

Train for the short term

As self evident as this sounds, it apparently bears repeating: the goal of your training is to make you better at Jiu Jitsu. Not more mobile, or stronger or even ‘better’ in some esoteric kind of way. Better at BJJ in an immediate, concrete and measurable fashion. As such, 80 per cent plus of your training time should be spent doing the things that result in this kind of improvement. Modalities like positional work, isolation sparring, rotation training and rolling are your best bet here.

Train for the middle term

Middle term training requires both a time investment and a decent foundation built by short term training, before you see much of a pay off. It is important to begin developing this area early on though, as the actual techniques of Jiu Jitsu (submissions, sweeps, escapes, etc) belong to this category.

Train for the long term

Training for the long term is probably the trickiest to do well. It improves your ability to train for the short and middle term, and as a result it is at least one level removed from improving your actual fighting skill. Because of this, it can be hard to tell if what you’re doing is bullshit or actually useful. Movement drills and slow flow rolling are great options.

Position, position, position

In BJJ circles it’s a sadly frequent occurrence to hear an instructor say something like “position before submission” before teaching 16 omaplata variations and a flying armbar guard pass. The postures, pressures and objectives of positions are rarely explicitly taught. More often, these techniques are left to the athlete to develop via the traditional “time on the mat” route, which is stupid as the main difference between levels is ability and understanding of positional control. In short, work on achieving, maintaining and pressuring in every position and your abilities will sky rocket.

Train all the aspects of Jiu Jitsu

BJJ is an art made up of many aspects: gi, no gi, takedowns, ground work, self defence, Vale Tudo and sport. Developing each is important not just for its own sake, but for the many flow on effects that occur. For example, training takedowns improves your base, grip fighting, scrambling and power across the board and training Vale Tudo results in greater facilities in control, distance management and stress management.

Isolation sparring is the fastest route to a strong game

The quickest way to strengthen your game is to isolate a position, for example, side control, and a goal, such as a submission or escape. You then roll starting in that position with the express purpose of achieving that goal. As soon as either player reaches their goal, you reset and go again.

Early specialisation leads to short term wins and long term stagnation

An easy way to get a competitive advantage early on in your Jiu Jitsu career is to specialise to the exclusion of your other skills. Deep half, 50/50 and inverted guards are popular choices, but so are guillotine and triangle chokes. While this does tend to lead to some comparatively easy wins, whenever you encounter someone who can deal with or simply avoid your specialisation you have no recourse.

Focus on the process

The process is the only part of training that you have any influence over. You can’t change the past (successes or regrets), and you can’t control the future (outcomes), so you should focus on the present (the process) and get as much as you possibly can out of each and every moment.

Enjoy the results

When you do achieve something you’ve worked for, whether it’s the next rank or nailing that sweep you’ve been drilling, be sure to take a moment and enjoy your success. Too often achievements are passed over in the race to reach the next goal and after a while this can suck some of the passion out of your practice. So next time you achieve something, celebrate and then get back on the track to your next goal.

Play is the way

Animals, including humans, learn and discover best through play. You never see a pride of lions line up and work on their ‘paw swipe to throat rip’ combination; instead they swat and wrestle each other while quite clearly having fun. A play ethic allows creative and continuous development free from judgement or expectation.

Time on the mat makes up for a lot

Poor quality coaching, lousy training partners, bad attitudes to learning, and practically anything else that gets in the way of effective skill acquisition can be made up for with sufficient time on the mat.

Use your time on the mat wisely

Regardless of whether you train 3 times a day or just twice a week, you should strive to use your mat time wisely. Time is a non–renewable resource so you should train with that in mind. The more you can get out of every minute of training the greater your understanding, skill and enjoyment of this art will be.

Train with everyone

While it is important to have a regular instructor and training partners, it is equally important to expose yourself to a variety of styles and techniques. The best way to do that is to train with a large variety of people from different academies. Visit gyms when you travel, go to seminars, take advantage of open mats, and roll with people that have different grappling backgrounds.

Don’t train with douche bags

No matter how good they are or what they know, it’s never worth it. Training with or learning from douche bags is the fastest way to ruin your enjoyment of what should be a positive martial arts experience. The training partners you actually like will steadily leave, you’re way more likely to get hurt and the more time you spend with douche bags, the more likely it is that you will become one yourself.

Strength training helps but don’t let it get in the way

Strength training is a very useful accessory to BJJ. But if fatigue, soreness or even the time commitment begins to negatively impact your Jiu Jitsu training, you need to reevaluate. Ultimately you need to decide if you are a Jiu Jitsu athlete who lifts weights or a weight lifter who does some Jiu Jitsu, and then prioritise accordingly.

Consistent training is better than hard training

Consistency is the greatest determining factor in skill acquisition and in achieving high performance. As such it is much better to train 6 days a week at 70-80 per cent than three days a week at 100 per cent.

Rolling is about learning not winning

If every time you roll your main objective is to win, then you are significantly limiting your development. Rolling to learn allows you to explore new positions and scenarios, try different techniques, and experience all kinds of scenarios. Rolling to win on the other hand typically results in trying to impose the same game every time, and experiencing very little outside of that.

It’s all about hips, grips & trips

Correctly positioned hips are the keystone to good Jiu Jitsu, enabling you to apply superior leverage. Dominant grips let you use that leverage to maximum effect, and keeping your opponent off balance (trips), both physically and mentally, limits their ability to fight back.

My favourite finishing hold

November 26, 2015

A student recently asked me what my favourite finishing hold is.

Without hesitation, I answered, “The rear naked choke. Everything I do is aimed at getting me there.”

The student seemed supremely disappointed with my response. After all, there is a myriad of other significantly more exotic submissions that I could have nominated, many of which I am somewhat known for using. So why would I favour one of the most common, humdrum moves in the game?

Let me attempt to explain the reasoning behind my choice.

When I roll, I endeavour to take whatever opportunities my opponent offers me without presupposition. However, the rear naked choke is effectively my endgame, because it is the one hold that I will never choose to transition out of. This is not a conscious decision that I make because of some aesthetic attraction I have to the move. Rather, it is the logical result of successfully applying what I believe to be a technical Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) approach to submission grappling.

Over the 13+ years I have studied and practiced BJJ, I have been taught to recognise the importance of the positional hierarchy. In order from worst to best, broadly speaking, we can break down the hierarchy as follows:

Bad positions from which we cannot typically attack submissions safely, e.g. under mount, under side control, or back mounted.
Neutral positions from which both opponents can attack submissions, e.g. guard, neutral leg lock positions, head to head.
Ride positions from which we can safely attack submissions, but from which we must ‘ride’ our opponent to maintain control, e.g. side control, knee-ride, top turtle.
Attacking positions from which we can attack submissions and control our opponent without the need to ride, e.g. mount and back control.

With this hierarchy in mind, it should be clear that moving to mount/back control is the organic result of applying a technical BJJ game. We should typically look to escape bad positions, attack or progress from neutral positions, attack or progress from ride positions, and attack from attacking positions.

So, assuming that things go our way, without really thinking about it, our technical BJJ approach has taken us on an organic path to mount/back control. However, from under mount, our opponent can do one thing that he cannot do when we take his back. That is, he can bridge his hips into us.

The hip bridge is such a powerful movement that our mount attacks may often be thwarted by it. Nevertheless, if we react to our opponent’s movement correctly, their escape will allow us to transition to back control. Therefore, back control is the final destination of a technical BJJ game, and thus, the most obvious staging point for our submission attempts.

So why out of all the attacking options from back is the rear naked choke so special?

It combines spine control with incomparable choking pressure, with or without the gi.

If we lock the rear naked choke properly, then our opponent can no longer move his chin, and thus, no longer turn his spine in order to effectively use his hips to escape. With our opponent now stripped of all strong movement options, we can patiently use the structure of the hold to incrementally increase the pressure of the choke and ‘kill the lion’.

When asked what is best in life, Conan the Barbarian once correctly answered, “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

Note that there is nothing in this description that involves looking fancy.

The rear naked choke is, in my opinion, the most comprehensive demonstration of domination over an opponent that can be achieved in BJJ, and it is for this reason that it stands as my favourite finishing hold.