All of Me

Eight Years a Black Belt

I celebrated my eighth year as a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu last week. Actually "celebrated" is a bit rich. My training has been on a rocky road since the final day of August when I sprained my MCL during a Saturday roll. 

In some ways, it was the expected outcome after a year of outperformance - both at work and at the gym, if not as much on the mat as I'd like. It's no wonder I caught my first flu in decades in early July and the longest head cold I've ever had throughout the month of September. The 4-5x/week weightlifting for much of 2019 and the relentless dieting - yeah, an injury was pretty much what the doctor ordered.

Looking back on my log, what a fucking autumn. I didn't train at all in September or October (admittedly there were two business trips and a vacation during that stretch, as well). All things considered, not a big deal and not a bad way to recover from the August 31 injury. I came back and trained on the 7th of November and had a great session - including some stand-up. Unfortunately, I let myself get paired up too heavy the following Tuesday and ended up tweaking my knee again. I trained Thursday - or tried to - but it just wasn't working.

So the current plan is to stay off the mat for the month of December, and then slowly work my way back into training in January. I'm popping Curcumin and Cissus like they are Tic Tacs. I'm going to work on losing some weight, ideally getting down to 145 before heading to the desert for a week after Christmas. For strength training, I'm doing 10x3 for December and will probably run something like that for the five weeks leading up to my trip to Berlin in early February. The goal right now is to get leaner and stronger for longer.

Another goal is to really put in some dedicated time helping some of our newest blue belts make their way. A couple of guys I've worked with quite a bit this year - a year when the only class I've actually taught was a kid's class - and I'll admit that their appreciation of my effort to help is one of the things that keeps me coming to class when I'm not at my best - which has been more often than I'd like this year.

This late in the year it's strange to think about how 2019 unfolded - how different it turned out to be from 2018, and how clear it was early on that this would be a different kind of year. I'm kind of glad to see it go, in a few ways, and looking forward to better things in 2020.

Operation Blueberry

My Own Private Danaher

"Every student begins the game with a certain set of attributes. Some are blessed with flexibility, strength, fitness, intelligence, determination etc, etc. Possession of these determines the speed and ease with which you acquire the skills of Jiu-Jitsu.

Remember, though, that some attributes can negate others. So for example, very gifted athletes often lack staying power, just because most things come easily to them. When they find themselves being repeatedly defeated by smaller, weaker training partners, they drift away. In the end, the speed with which you acquire skills is not important, just that you get there in the end.

So I theorize that the most important attribute in Jiu-Jitsu is staying power. You must train consistently for a long time and your game will develop in accordance with your natural attributes.”

Going High / Going Low

Joel Jamieson makes an interesting point in an old article of his I stumbled across this weekend: High Low Training & MMA:

"Whether you’re a veteran of the sport trying to prolong your career or just training for fun and fitness, if you value your performance as well as your health, your goal should always be to maximize your skill development while minimizing the amount of stress and damage done to your body along the way. Anyone can go into the gym everyday out and train their guts out, but the real key to achieving your goals is to find a way to train smarter rather than harder."

Jamieson says that too many combat sports athletes spend too much time in the middle zone of conditioning: too hard to easily recover from, too light to force new adaptations in strength, explosiveness, or endurance. He suggests instead splitting the training week into two max effort days, three light days, and two days off.

One thing that stands out compared to how I've been training all year is that I have four or even six max effort days a week (including the time I did 4 day a week BB training earlier this year). Even the schedule I'm looking at for the rest of this year: two days of jiu-jitsu and two days of strength training, gives me four days on intensive work.

My guess is that Jamieson would encourage me to do my strength work on my jiu-jitsu days, ideally, I suspect, in the early morning, to give me the chance to recover ahead of jiu-jitsu training that evening. To say that's something I'd never considered is an understatement. But as I recover from my second bout of ill health since July, I'm wondering if it might be worth it to make a change.

Off Season Goals - Recovery/Rebound Training and Tempo Intervals

One of my goals in the off-season is to increase strength and conditioning. After spending much of 2019 adding muscle via hypertrophy programs like Christian Thibaudeau's 20 Weeks to Hollywood Muscle and his Best Damn High Volume Workout for Naturals, I'm close to the body comp I want. Now the goal is to train this new muscle, and trim another inch off the waistline to get in the neighborhood of 140.

Reviewing some of my favorite conditioning resources, I've been spending some time researching Joel Jamieson's Tempo Intervals. He uses them primarily as a recovery tool. They consist of 5-10 rounds of 10-12 seconds of work (at an RPE of about 7) followed by 60 seconds of active rest.

The Ultimate Recovery-Boosting Interval - 8 Weeks Out

There are a lot of different things you can do for the work sessions: running, rowing, Prowler pushing, stationary cycling, jumping rope, etc. What's interesting is that he says that for combat athletes, bag or pad work is great for the work sessions, but feels that "it’s not very easy to do this type of interval using grappling drills unfortunately."

I disagree - and wonder if Joel is just not as familiar with the ground game as he is with standup striking (his background is as a strength coach, despite is more recent work as a S&C guy for former UFC flyweight champion Demetrious "Mighty Mouse" Johnson). Especially given that you only do the work for 10-12 seconds.

A few examples that I've tried include: hipscapes (as work or active rest), technical lifts, double leg entries, reverse pivot entries, wrestling sitouts ...

Right now I'm trying to figure out where best to place these workouts. Joel suggests 1-2 a week. If I end up doing strength training on Monday and Friday, and jiu-jitsu training on Tuesday and Thursday, (and the occasional Saturday), then Sunday looks like a good place to put at least one of them. Maybe Thursday morning the other. That would give me a full day off on Wednesday and the opportunity to rev my system back up before returning to the mats Thursday night.

Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Alignment

Jiu-Jitsu's Crescendo in Blue