“One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity”
- Bruce Lee
I’m sure this concept can be applied to many things in life, but in my experience regarding training this is an essential key to obtaining results. To do this, you must strip away the non-essentials and do what produces the fastest results possible. To learn something fast and get the most benefit from your time investment you need to:
A). De-construct,
B). Streamline, and
C). Remap (I stole this concept from life hacker Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Work Week).
Allow me to explain.
I train in the martial art Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Gracie Barra Chicago and also train quite a few jiu-jitsu practitioners/competitors (often upwards of 9 practitioners a day). You learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t from your time in the gym, staying in academia, and testing and applying what you’ve learned. We treat our training facility like a science lab. Constantly testing and assessing our training methods, keeping what works and removing what doesn’t.
So for all my jiu-jitsu athletes, allow me to strip away the non-essentials. For anyone reading this that is not training for a particular sport, this is still for you. Everything discussed from here should still be applied to your training.
1). Perform a needs analysis: (more simply put, what does your sport require): For jiu-jitsu that’s relative strength (strength respective of your body weight), some hypertrophy in certain areas to protect joints (the more muscle you have around a joint, such as your knee, the more protected it is from an injury), and strength endurance so your muscles and lungs don’t gas out before your opponents.
2).Determine what you need the most at the time: For instance, if you’re not training for a tournament there’s no real need to get super conditioned. Your sport (in this case jiu-jitsu) will provide at the very least a base level of conditioning. So why not train a strength quality your sport might not be getting you, such as relative strength. If you’re a professional badminton player then you don’t need a lot of strength, but with jiu-jitsu you can never be to strong. You don’t want to lose a competition because you were to weak.
Also, increasing your max strength will have a ceiling effect on your strength endurance because you won’t have to use as much strength from a percentage standpoint than you once did (you want proof, read this short research study ).
Now lets say you’re going to compete and you have 6 weeks before the tournament. Your training emphasis should switch to getting as conditioned as possible while maintaining the strength you’ve built up previously.
3). Determine the time needed to improve: Because of step 2 you now know what you need the most. But do you have enough time to improve it. If someone only had 2 weeks to get conditioned before a tournament then they’re not going to see the best results. There’s not enough time. So they need it but there’s not enough time to improve it that much.
For the remainder of this article we’ll say you need to get stronger.
De-constructing where you need to focus your strength training for jiu-jitsu. Here’s the key areas.
- Grip: The first thing that attaches you to your opponent. A stronger grip will also transfer to stronger lifts else where. ( Read grip article Here)
- Triceps: This will alway you to keep your distance from your opponent. For instance, if your opponent has you in side control, strong triceps will help you create space and recompose your guard.
Erectors: You hear a lot of people talk about the core, often referring to the abdominal muscles. The erectors are a part of the core but don’t get enough attention. These are muscles that run up the sides of your spine and help protect your back from to much flexion (check out the picture on the right). For instance, when you’re in your opponents closed guard and he’s breaking your posture. Strong erectors, triceps, and neck extensors will make it a lot harder for you to be broken down.- Lower Body Unilateral Exercises: There’s nothing wrong with bi-lateral exercises such as squats or dead lifts, but unilateral exercises also train your prime movers AND stabilizers. Movement takes place unilaterally, not bilaterally.
Now that we’ve established the main areas to focus on, we must choose which exercises will benefit you the most. I’ve written about this in many previous posts, so I won’t go into detail here. Essentially, here’s what you’d want to do though.
- Best Grip exercises: pick one
- Best Triceps exercises: pick one
- Best Erector exercises: pick one
- Best Glute exercises: pick one
Questions to ask yourself.
- Is this the best choice of exercises to elicit the desired training effect?
- Is this exercise needed and why?
- Will this exercise improve something more than another one or one already performed?
Now, before writing just a workout for the day, you need to write out your plan/program with the end in mind (week 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, example).
Don’t make the mistake of adding more just to add more. Strip away the non-essentials. Everything you do should make sense.