Mark Bell's Power Project - How to Gain Muscle and Strength for BJJ (Q&A)

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

In this clip, Nsima Inyang, Jimmy House, Joshua Settlage and Andrew Zaragoza answer your questions about BJJ, how to gain strength, how to perform, how to recover, and everything in between.   Jimmy: https://www.instagram.com/jhouse182/   @JIMMY_HOUSE    Josh: https://www.instagram.com/joshuasettlage/   @joshuasettlage    Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/ Code POWERPROJET for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes!   ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements!   ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off!   ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order!   ➢https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order!   ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori!   ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep!   ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off!   ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #powerproject #MarkBellsPowerProject #MarkBell

How to rehab from a lower back injury. Instead of thinking of like, okay, what's the specific thing that I should be doing? Finding what you can do and spending a lot of time working on the things that you can do pain-free. How to deal with chronic small injuries like clicking knees. Like how many times have you banged up your shoulder? It's like, oh, it's the same bum shoulder. I keep tweaking it. At some point, you have to take a step back and look at, okay, what are the contributing factors that always lead to me tweaking this shoulder?

The amount of stimulus growth, essentially, that you can give yourself from very little time in the gym. If you just take a single back machine and a single chest machine and do one to two big controlled mechanical drop sets. You're trying to build muscle. You need to be eating adequate protein, so maybe a gram per pound. You want to be eating adequate calories. Don't try to be putting on maybe four pounds of muscle every single month because you might be gaining too much fat at the same time. But eating a surplus enough where you can see maybe depending on your weight, just a small amount of weight gain each month. Peeps, how's it going? I don't know which camera to look at. But we got a lot of jujitsu, lifting stuff, questions from Instagram,

discord, all that good stuff. I got Josh Settledge here and Jimmy house guys. Introduce yourselves. Cause you're dope people done dope shit. I don't know who should go first. I'll go first. What's up guys. I'm Jimmy house.

I'm a black belt from Arizona. Currently moved to Austin, Texas to train under John Danaher at new wave. I'm also a competitive power lifter and bodybuilder. What are some of your numbers for power lifting? My most recent gym sumo deadlift PR, cheater PR, was 815 pounds. But prior to that, I did do a 740-pound deadlift at 200 pounds, conventional, the real way.

Fuck you. Josh, how much? Oh, how long have you been grappling, dog? Grappling, six and a half years, just about six and a half years. Got it. Josh? My name is Josh S half years. Just about six and a half years. Got it. Josh. My name is Josh Settledge. I am the BJJ strength coach.

I've been doing jiu-jitsu since 2017 and spent some time wrestling and coaching wrestling before that. I don't power lift, but I like lifting a lot. And I work with jiu-jitsu athletes, helping them win more matches, get injured less. A lot of jiu-jitsu athletes. Yes, sir. A lot of them. You've helped a lot of guys get super strong um and you also did a physique show in the past i did before i did jujitsu i did one bodybuilding show because i figured like oh and

now that wrestling's done you should probably try something different so i did one uh bodybuilding show and it was freaking tight and then i started jujitsu and i was like you know what it's not that tight compared to jujitsu josh covers up a lot, but he's very fucking jacked. And how long, how long have you been lifting in general? Both of you guys like lifting. How long? I started when I was five. That's the funniest fucking thing. So 22 years. Okay. I started when I was 12, 20, no, 14 years. 14 years. Yeah. I started lifting when I was 13. I'm 30 now, so 17 years. I've been doing jujitsu for almost eight years now. Yeah, I've coached. I coached a lot of bodybuilders and powerlifters and some jujitsu athletes.

And I got an elite total in powerlifting. That lifted 755, pro natural bodybuilder. So I've done a bunch of pro natural shows. And yeah. And your world's performance? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got third at ibjjf worlds at brown belt this i think it was last month i got second second at worlds as a blue belt um and i got third at pans also as a brown belt so i keep getting these third place medals dog for sure i think that i think those finishes as brown belt are pretty

damn impressive because i mean for gee that's that's like the adcc of gi really yeah that's 100 i love gi and you guys you guys are you love gian but you guys love nogi more no doubt all right i tolerate gi i tolerate much rather than nogi all the time i'm a pajama warrior dog all right yeah i definitely like using the bathrobe all right you guys ready to get into some questions let's do it all right so this is coming from discord right and sema these top ones all of these okay these are coming from my instagram josh and jimmy's instagram and then also our discord so like they're they're from everywhere everywhere all right well let's start on this one this is from uh car dot loss g maybe carlos g uh how to rehab from a lower back injury.

A little vague, but yeah, how do we rehab from a lower back injury? Anyone want to start? I think with lower back injuries, and I'm sure there's a lot of questions that we're going to go over where someone will give a very specific injury and say, how do we rehab from this? And it's important to note that if you're listening to this, it's going to be really difficult for us to say, like, this is exactly what you should do to rehab your specific injury, mainly because we're not with you in person. We don't have any history of what your previous injuries were. But as a general statement, there's a lot of things, especially with the lower back that can contribute to injury. So instead of thinking of like, okay, what's the specific thing that I should be doing to fix this particular back injury? Really, and I think we're going to cover this a lot as we answer a lot of these questions, is this finding what you can do and spending a lot of time working on the things that you can do pain-free.

And then if you can expand upon that list of things that you can do, over time, you'll be able to rehab those injuries. I know, Jimmy, yesterday you talked a lot about that on the podcast with Mark. But just start with things that you can do pain-free and then kind of write those things down, down on a list and build from there. So if you can't squat, ask to grasp pain-free, maybe do a partial range of motion squat. If you can't deadlift off the floor pain-free, maybe do a block pull and maybe do a different exercise altogether, but start with something pain-free and then continue working from there. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And progressing from that, then you assess your ability from the standpoint of all the different directions of the back moves, flexion, extension, but something that we don't think about a lot is like rotation or just being able to bend side to side. Being strong in those movement patterns is

extremely beneficial, but we don't put a lot of thought into that. So now after you assess your ability level, you progress that, then you can start getting more specific with specific exercises that are going to work the back and the spine and rotation, flexion, extension, et cetera. And then you take it a step past that. Then you start to think about all the various muscles that play into back health, such as hips, glutes, hamstrings, et cetera. And then you start to really work on strengthening those. So that long-term you mitigate the potential chance of a serious injury to the back. Another thing that we're going to end up talking about a lot is the habits that go into your daily activity so there's certain things that some

people say you shouldn't do for example when you're lifting you shouldn't let your back go into a lot of flexion you want to keep your spine straight um and one thing is in jujitsu you guys know that we get into a lot of a lot of situations, you know, we're not stacked, we're not totally straight. So you want to be able to figure out a way to strengthen your back in a flex position. That could be using cables while allowing your back to round. That could be doing things like Jefferson curls, but slowly progressing those. That's allowing yourself to be strong in that lengthened position because that's a position that a lot of people avoid. And another thing that's off to the side about the lower back that isn't directly, it's not something that will directly impact it immediately, but over the longterm can make

a difference is the way that you hold your body in the way that you breathe. Most people end up breathing, you know, very shallowly, they end up breathing in their chest and most people in fitness end up trying to keep their abs super tight, their core tight all the time. So they look like they're running around with a six pack and then they don't allow themselves to breathe through here. But all of this in your core is connected. So if you're keeping this tight and rigid all the time and you're breathing and making sure that you're not breathing deep into your diaphragm, that can affect your lower back tightness. Most of those people that tend to do that tend to have very tight lower backs. You want to build the habit, and this takes time, of breathing into your diaphragm, allowing this to relax, and allowing

this to loosen up so that over time, you're able to bend, move from side to side, like Jimmy mentioned, and all of those movements become more natural. But you got to stop being flexed here all the time. You got to allow yourself to breathe deep into your diaphragm. So those things should help. Especially on the mat. I'll just add it real quickly. Like being too tense on the mat, that's how I jacked up my ribs, and that's how I've seen a lot of people jack up their back. And he's already on his way, but also asking around the gym or the school, like, hey, has anybody else recovered from a back injury? And then take their advice and go from there.

All right, next question from Mr. Madger. That's, I guess, what I'll say. Exercises that fix what using my full guard does to my lower back. few things with cables. You can do rows that are coming from different angles, allowing your back to bend. But I think that again, a big habit that you want to try to build over time is doing things in the gym, but allowing using adequate load, meaning using light enough load where you don't have to, I mean, you don't have to say super straight to be able to pull that load. So use light load and allow your back to round through that range of motion. What I found is I used to have a very, very tight lower back because the way I lifted. But by doing that, that allowed me to strengthen my back within flexion over time.

And over time, I was able to increase that load to now like I can bend in a lot of different directions. I can lift load with flexion and there's no pain there anymore. But it was a very gradual process and I had to be very responsible with the load I used. So that would be one of my suggestions there. How about you guys? I think something else that can help, especially if you're playing a lot of positions on bottom, is just being able to squat more proficiently. Kelly Surrett originally talked about this on the Joe Rogan podcast.

And I don't think Joe Rogan really understood what he was saying initially. But when you do an astrograph squat, you're essentially in a deep guard position. You're standing on both feet. Your hips are below the plane of your knees. If you just laid on your back and did the exact same movement, it would look like you're pulling your knees to retain guard and you're in a very similar position to a lot of guard positions. So if you can improve your ability to move your hips, you can improve your ability to get into deep hip and knee flexion that can help put yourself in a little better Position when you're getting stacked or maybe when you're retaining guards that way a lot of that pressure doesn't immediately jump Onto your low back you can just move a little bit more efficiently protect your low back a little bit more

Yeah, I think that's a good point and going off that if you take a basic position like it asked the grass squat and you Just simply cannot perform that then that's probably a huge weak link as to why you would probably feel some discomfort in guard. And so I saw a video on this literally driving to the gym, which is why it's ironic that you brought it up. But most people can't sit into ass to grass squat, be it because of their knee health or ankle mobility, hip mobility, even lower back ability. And so with that said, if you just worked on progressing that to where an ass to grass weightless squat became your baseline, you'd inevitably see some improvement for sure. And I've even gotten as far as with my knee recovery to take that ass to grass squat and

start just doing that weighted over time. And it's hard to do on the podcast, but imagine me doing an ass to grass squat. And now besides just the hip benefits, I can also use it for ankles and knees and lower back, et cetera, maybe putting a little bit more weight to one side, flexing my tibia a bit harder on one side, maybe pushing my knees out to build strength in my hips. And there's a lot of different things that you can do with the baseline movements such as that. And then after that, maybe you can get into really focusing on strengthening the hip flexors and whatnot because that's obviously a position hip flexion that you're into a lot with guard, external rotation, internal rotation, all that stuff. But I think for most people that experience discomfort in that position, most likely I'd assume like a true acid grass squat is going to be difficult. So just progress that way. You progress that, grab a pole, lower yourself down, kind of use the pole. I mean, Matt, my friend Matt uses one from time to time.

I do too. It's okay. Don't you have one in your apartment? In my house, yeah. My girl has it. I sometimes swing on that thing every now and then. It's fun. I do remember that actually.

Yeah. That's funny. He was not kidding. I'm not kidding. I'm serious. But yeah, with that said, using a pole to kind of counterbalance a little bit and get yourself lower and lower over time one of my clients right now asker squat is not something that he can do but over the last few weeks we've been progressing with a normal pole not a stripper one but all the same and he's made noticeable progress in his ankle

mobility his hip mobility and now he's able to start kind of like coming off the pole a little bit, a few seconds at a time. We're going to keep progressing that until eventually maybe he can sit with like a whole 30-pound kettlebell and just sit in that position for a couple minutes. And I'll add this. A habit that can help all of this work well for you guys, rather than having the times that you do this only be in the gym

or only be like when you go to the jiu-jitsu classes, figure out a way to make this part of your day. If you're at work, maybe see if like you can hop into a little bit of a squat. You can hop into some of these random positions because that will help you be able to move the needle lower. We learned about this idea from Corey Schlesinger. It's like microdosing your exercise, doing a little bit each day so it's just part of your day, makes your day a lot easier. Anything else to add?

Yeah, actually, I think to that point, doing something every single day, how can you really lose that ability? For example, think about there's one kid where I taught at back home and his ankle mobility, he literally, like he's eight, nine years old, his toes could literally almost touch his shin. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life, like literally. And to think that that's even possible, but for him being eight, nine years old, being able to do that, imagine if every single day for the rest of his life, he just constantly made sure he just did a little bit to make sure he maintained that ankle mobility. He'd be 60, 70 years old, still being able to do that.

It's when we stop doing these things where we have that type of diminishing return. So if you just do something a little bit every day, progress that, and then never stop, there's no real reason as to why you can't keep doing that for a very long time. Cool. Let's go to the next category. I think the lower back, we beat that lower back down a little bit. Yeah, we did. All right. So this is from Alvaro Mesa 5. My bad. How'd I do that better than you Mr. Zaragoza because you know

how to read and I don't fuck with you that's all good training rehab for ACL and MCL injuries so some tips on recouping those

oh yeah oh yeah that's good so my thing is I said this yesterday I'm no knee doctor or expert but i have some experience in rehabbing myself and my general opinion on that is you start with what josh said what you can do and then if you want to get into particular ligaments then you can think about the type

of mobility and strength that's required to help alleviate some tension off of those said ligaments inevitably it's going to take time right for the ligament to heal and all that. But you can work on strengthening muscles that in the future will help take some of that pressure off. For example, when I hurt my knee, when we landed and I was like in this extreme internal rotation, my thought is if I didn't work to build that, probably just would have been completely done. Like the way we landed and everything, if my knee wasn't able to turn in as much as it can right now, that probably just,

surgery would have had to been the only option realistically, most likely. And so with that said, working on your ability to internally rotate your hip, externally rotate, being able to load weight, say in a pigeon position, that's all stuff that long-term will help strengthen the muscles so that you don't have reoccurring issues with your knee as you do things such as a Nordic curl or such as a Cossack squat or any acid grass variation, full range of motion, full flexion movement that's going to help just get blood in the muscle, strengthen the muscles in full range of motion and send that type of synovial fluid to send the nutrients needed and required to help actually heal the joints and ligaments gotcha that's an excellent

point and i think another aspect that's also important to mention since we all train jujitsu we've all been injured i think all of us have had a knee injury at some point me and josh was the same week actually yep i tore my lcl uh christmas uh christmas eve at open mat but regardless it's important that if you're training a combat sport or really any sport for anyone that's listening to this if you have some sort of injury you have to set your ego aside enough to actually dial back training a little bit there's a lot of people who get little nicks and knacks and maybe they tweak something or maybe they pull something. And it's something that they know deep down they should probably pay attention to,

but their favorite training partner showed up and it's like some big event on flow grappling. They get all fired up and like, all right, every day, let's go. And then they ended up injuring themselves worse than if they just dialed things back for a couple of weeks, really assess the situation and said, okay, I'm only going to do these positions where I can stay safe. I'm going to give myself time to recover and then I can come back stronger. But instead they jumped the gun, they get into hard training too quickly. They end up re-injuring themselves and making it worse for them down the line. And that's why also there's certain things that we're going to talk about in terms of strength training, but having your strength training in your back pocket as an option is something that's super helpful because one reason why people don't stop jujitsu for a little bit is because it's the only thing they got but if you can

build the habit and when we're talking about all these strength training things realize that strength training in the gym is a skill just like jujitsu is we've been doing it for many years now so it's like we know this like the back of our hands it's very easy for us to implement this stuff but for those of you who are new to strength training it's going to be something that you want to give yourself time to learn jim Jimmy mentioned on the podcast that we had yesterday that many of his clients that he works with, sometimes they'll see a program and they'll be like, dude, is this real? This is too easy. This is whatever. Because they're used to pushing themselves into jujitsu. But just like when you're a white belt in jujitsu and you have to progress

yourself slowly so you can get used to that martial art, with all the strength training things we're going to be talking about, you need to allow yourself to slowly progress at that. Because over time, it's going to become something that's going to give you massive dividends as far as your jiu-jitsu is concerned andrew all right so this is from rand romaine uh he's asking jimmy um if you got surgery or if the rehab was just right out like day one after the injury yeah so I didn't get any surgery and my mindset from basically day one was that I wasn't going to get it because I thought about what potential back, like what, what could happen if I did get surgery and had to deal with the repercussions that could happen if the surgery didn't go well or what have you. And I had been just so deep down

the rabbit hole of knees over toes and Ben Patrick, I was like, well, the main thing that we preach here is that you can rehab yourself if you apply these principles and concepts. So that's literally where I started. And I talked about it yesterday. I started with literally a backwards walk with my knee brace on, limping, struggling real hard, doing very, very, very partial range squats, doing everything that he basically preaches in a regressed version. Now, through that process, I also in a regressed version. Now through that process, I also learned a lot from various friends such as Phil DeRue and Luke Lewis that helped me on the other ends of the rehab spectrum, banded stuff, isometric stuff. But the biggest

thing that I would take away from my rehab was give yourself the chance to even see if you can rehab it yourself. You know, if you can't put any pressure down on your knee and you just collapse right away, I don't know. I, again, I I'm not an expert, but I referenced somebody like Nikki Ryan, who, you know, has, I don't think he's done too much to repair or even rehab his knee rather, you know, with that 70s, it's still able to wrestle and perform at a very high level, at least based upon the videos that I'm seeing Spencer Lee same way if you don't know who he is definitely look him up his excuses are for Wussis is one of my favorite

Sayings, but he won the NCAA national championship with no ACLs like period, you know, so it's like Do you do situations require surgery? Sure. But like, where is that line? I'm not sure if anyone really knows what that is because there's people like Spencer Lee that have done all this. And, you know, I did something relatively okay, right? And, you know, with that said, I don't know where that line is.

I don't know if anyone does, but I say at least give yourself a chance to see if it's worth pushing for without surgery. Yeah. To add a small thing onto that, Mark Bell, who's the host of this podcast. Andrew, what was the weight that he fell underneath? A thousand.

A thousand eighty-five. He fell under a thousand. Yeah, something like that. Something like a thousand eighty-five and he blew his knee to pieces. He didn't get surgery. He slowly rehabbed it. Did he really?

He didn't get surgery. Wow, I did not. He didn't get surgery on that shit. But he blew that shit apart. And this is the thing. We're not saying don't get surgery because I had a but he blew that shit apart. And this is the thing. We're not saying don't get surgery because I had a meniscus tear and I had a partial removal. It was helpful. I rehabbed that pretty quickly.

But many people do rehab exercises, do some of Ben Patrick's stuff, do some of the stuff you're talking about. And if they give themselves time, they're sometimes able to go without having to go under the knife. That doesn't mean going under the knife is bad. And each individual situation is different. But just understand that it's not the only option you have. And just because a doctor may say you have to get surgery, that doesn't mean you have to get surgery. Anything you have in mind? Nope. You guys covered it.

All right. Perfect. Andrew. All right. This is a cool one. 11 underscore over underscore 10. How to deal with chronic small injuries like clicking knees and should I still train, squat, etc.? This is something that's pretty common. This is like a super common question for anybody

that's just getting started in fitness or the gym, and it's often like, oh, my knees click when I squat. Should I stop or is something wrong? And the general consensus is that if your knees are making noise or clicking and it doesn't cause any pain, you're probably fine. You probably don't need to worry about it. You should still, you know, pay attention to it in case that progresses and starts to cause pain. But if there's no pain, then you're probably fine. Um, as far as dealing with chronic small injuries, a lot of times, uh, people will have, or they'll say at jujitsu, like, oh, you know, I banged up my shoulder again. It's like, again, like how many times have you banged up your

shoulder? It's like, oh, it's the same bum shoulder. I keep tweaking it. And at some point you have to take a step back and look at, okay, what are the contributing factors that always lead to me tweaking this shoulder? Do I let submissions go way too long? Cause I just don't want to tap. That's a big one. Am I getting injured because I'm competing every other single weekend and I'm in the most intense forms of competition? I'm not actually giving myself a break to rebuild anything. So take a step back and try to look at what are the root causes of those chronic injuries and then create a plan to address those things, get better so you can come back stronger in your next competition or at least be able to train pain-free.

Anything you want to add? No, I think that was exactly what I was thinking. Yeah. I think that's good. Cool. That was fucking awesome. Okay. Interesting.

From Wes Moore 37, I think he's wondering about Jimmy. So how can I find the podcast where you talk about recovering from knee injury? Is that what he's referencing? Yeah. Well, that's the podcast we just had with Jimmy. We'll link it in the description. So that's there. There you go.

BrandonRoberts.Fitness. Has your injury impacted your jujitsu game? In what ways if it did? Yes. Well, especially at the beginning. So back before the injury injury i've always been relatively strong at wrestling been strong on top but before the injury i got really really good at back control and i got really really good at guard like i hadn't had my guard pass in arizona in a while

and i was starting to have a super high submission rate in training at least from the back and the reason why i actually had so much success from the back outside of just understanding just basic hand fighting principles is those nordic curls for whatever reason just gave me so much confidence because i can't body lock anyone except for you for some reason because his waist is like i was telling john carlo about that the other day i was like yeah and seem i had never body locked anyone under or over 180 pounds until Encima. I body locked him. There's like three inches of space. It was a wild thing. I hate that.

Why can't I have a... Walk your waist. Why am I so perfectly symmetrical? I hate this shit. Sounds for Jiu Jitsu. Fuck. Seriously. I want to be a pear. Oh my gosh. Seriously. So when I started doing those Nordic curls, not being able to body lock most normal people my size,

that gave me such great hamstring strength and mobility to be able to control people. So that allowed me to get really good. However, when I injured my knee and I went back into training, and obviously new wave is probably not the best starting point to gauge where my skill is at. However, just trying to do things i used to do like even just hold like if we started in back control and i tried to hold the guy like trying to curl my my uh foot down i would feel extreme tightness

or my pcl tore and now i don't feel that as much anymore i had the nordic curl progression to thank for that but that was one of the things i noticed right at the bat also i don't know why maybe it's because of some of the extra weight that i put on from just not training as much but my guard like my ability to invert and bring my knees up to my chest without without thinking twice about it that was a struggle i had people pass my guard all the time just felt very off you could also contribute that to just not practicing the skill of jujitsu for about half a year but those are the main things that I noticed right off the bat. Just anything lower body related, maybe even more than physical limitations, just mentally thinking twice about. Because like I said on the podcast yesterday, there's so many times where I had to tap early, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Or I found myself guarding rather than actually thinking about how to advance or get out of something. rather than actually thinking about how to advance or get out of something. One round, Marigold is working his way to my back, to the side and turtle. And instead of even attempting to stop him, I'm more so just guarding my knee just in fear that he'll do something without realizing that that's my hurt knee and that type of thing. Since then, I've been able to overcome some of those mental limitations that have helped a lot and just physically getting stronger but those are the main things main three things that I noticed right off the bat say uh can I ask a white belt question okay so you were saying that uh

doing Nordic curls helped your um your game from the back is that like would you guys agree with that like having stronger hamstrings can help uh control someone's back because that's something I struggle with big time like even if you allow me to get everything locked in hooks, everything, you're just going to squirm, like just literally turn around and be back in my guard within seconds. So is that something you guys would recommend? I was just, the reason why I felt that it works so well is because how the tension is loaded at a Nordic curl versus a traditional hamstring curl, traditional hamstring curl, traditional hamstring curl.

The tension Mac is the hardest at the top, but in a back control position, unless it was a body lock, we very rarely ever get here. But for me, because of my shorter stub, your legs against people, my size are bigger.

I'm usually in a position where my, my degree of leg flexion is about like right here. So before I didn't have much strength here, but when I started doing the Nordic curls, like the hardest part of the Nordic curl is at the very end. Pull it up on my IG so you can see what I mean. And so what I found was I just started developing a lot of strength when my leg was closer to extension like that,

which gave me much more control over the opponents. And, of course, you have hip abduction exercises that'll help like kind of with your pinch and stuff like that. And you can even argue like a lot of the, um, isometric stuff that Josh does with medicine balls can help with the upper body control. But this, this specifically, if you look at his leg angle here at the bottom, that's very similar to where at least somebody my size would be controlling somebody from the back without a body lock. And you're going to find that like at that end point of the Nordic, that's where like, if you're starting doing that movement, that's where you're going to fail. Like it's going to be hard to have strength within that long range of motion. But if you progress Nordic curls,

you progress your hamstring in a long range of motion. Josh, you. I think another great thing about the Nordic curls that you build a ton of eccentric strength, just training yourself on learning how to control your body weight on the way down. And I think a lot of times with jujitsu athletes, they may miss the importance of developing eccentric strength because a lot of times someone is going to be fighting to unlock your body lock or even clear hooks. And you have to constantly be fighting against their resistance. And sometimes they may create a little bit of space. So where that knee angle increases a little bit. But if you can control that and still stay strong in that position without completely giving up, that can make the difference between maintaining hooks and losing a hook

and being able to reestablish position and staying in a good position. Cool. Yeah, we might have to have like an alert added in, like white belt question incoming. That might be pretty fun. That's cool. Cool. All right. From John F.A.

Do you know what your testosterone levels are at? How about your estrogen? How about your prolactin? How about your cholesterol? If the answer is, I don't know what they're at. Well, we've been talking about blood work for a long time now.

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which will give you interventions that range from lifestyle supplements to potential hormonal health treatments that can help move you in the right direction. But it all starts with knowing on what's going on down here. So get your blood work done. And, Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, we have two options for you guys. Head over to MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. That's M-A-R-R-E-K Health.com slash PowerProject.

There you guys will see the PowerProject panel that Nsema was just talking about. And at checkout, enter promo code PowerProject to save $101 off of that panel. Now, if you want to custom select your own panel, you guys can use promo code PowerProject10 to save 10% off all labs. Again, that's at MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject. Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Advice for rehabbing shoulders for jujitsu after injury. I want to be able to compete without worry. So to kind of echo what Josh said on the last thing, because there's going to be a lot of questions on rehab, you want to figure out what are the things that are potentially leading to that injury continuously. Okay. So you want to pay attention to that, but whenever I've had,

cause I've had things that have happened to my shoulder in jujitsu, um, whenever I've gotten to those positions, when I coming off of that, when I'm trying to get like strength back in the shoulder, what I'll try to do is I'll try to get my shoulder in different ranges of motion and strengthen it in different ranges of motion. So I may do some overhead work. I may do some work where I'm coming in this direction. I may do some work where I'm coming in that direction. I'll do pulls and or pull downs. I'll try to strengthen my shoulder in a lot of different ranges of motion and even odd ranges of motion. And the reason why I only don't focus on presses is because in jujitsu, again, you're getting into, you're pulling from a lot of different angles. You're pushing from a lot of different angles. And if for some reason you're only very strong here, but you get in this

position, you feel weak. That's not very good. So one thing that I think that might be very powerful for a lot of jujitsu athletes to kind of venture into is working with the cable machine because the cable machine allows you to work with the load from many different angles low angles high angles you can work from the side you can do a lot of different things and as you're rehabbing one big thing to think about is post-injury one of the big goals is trying to drive blood towards the tissue that is injured so what are the lightest types of loads you can use and things that you can do that can help you drive uh drive blood towards that muscle, figure that out, work with light enough load. Um, there's a lot of stability things you can do. You can do carries,

you can do weighted carries overhead walking to help with stability, but there's a lot of different options. But one thing I think is again, work with different ranges of motion, work with adequate load, um, and make sure that post rehab, you don't necessarily stop doing all the things that helped you get better. One reason why people get re-injured is because they stop all the things that help them get better once they feel good and then they're injured again. That's huge. You bring up an amazing point.

And I've had a lot of conversations where people have experienced something similar where I injured my shoulder six months ago and then I saw a physical therapist. I did the exercises. It feels great. But now it's injured again. And I'll ask him like, well, what happened? Like, well, it was kind of like the same injury that I got the first time. It's like, all right, bro. Like, let's take a step back. Have you been doing your exercises? Like, have you been maintaining the stuff that, you know, got you back to the dance? Cause once you get to the dance, you can't

just stop. You got to keep up. Sure. Maybe it might not be three times a day, every single day, but sprinkling those things in microdosing those things either once a day, or maybe just even a couple of times a week is a great way to make sure that you're continuing to develop strength and mobility in those areas. That way you decrease your likelihood of injury in the future. Once you get back to the dance. Let me ask you two a question real quick. Are there any pieces of equipment that you think would be, if somebody can manage, would be really good for people to have at home? Because as we talk about a lot of these things, they're like, if you don't want to have to go to the gym to do everything, and maybe you just want to hit it up in your living room real quick or go to your garage, it seems that having some

equipment at home is helpful. Yeah, I would say shoulder specifically, just a simple PVC pipe, and then just a miniband, honestly. As long as you have something to tie it up to, you can do a lot. Gotcha. A lot. PVC pipe is great. They're super cheap. Mini band is awesome. One thing that has been my favorite thing from slingshot has been the infinity loop because you get so many different handles. It is, it's not connected as one big circle, like a mini band, but the different handles on there are lighted to do. They allow you to do so many different exercises that could be great for shoulders, even great for knees, things like that.

So I'd say a mini band. And then more recently, this is a, probably a little bit more of an expensive purchase is that a club that David Weck has. And if you guys have seen that, Oh yeah. The RMT club.

Yes. Andrew, pull that up. Yeah. If you guys are watching on the video, you guys will see some exercises that in SEMA and Graham do where they're swinging that club. I've been playing around with that for a couple weeks now, and that feels freaking amazing.

It is a little bit more expensive, but it's easy to store in your house as long as you don't knock over a vase or anything and have your wife get mad at you. You could use it at home, but it's pretty sick. You could do that stuff anytime. I'd also say maybe try to get yourself a light kettlebell, and this is for everybody. Get yourself a light kettlebell you can have at home. A slant board because a slant board can allow you to do a lot of different types of movements. I know this isn't shoulder, but knees, lower back, all that type of stuff. There's a bunch of other things we'll mention, but it is good to have a few easy pieces of equipment at home. So again, the gym isn't the

only place where you do some stuff for your body. Right. Right. I don't know if they still make these anymore, but even just like those pull-up bars that go in your door, we should bring those back. Yeah. Like, I think we were all in middle school and started cranking out pull-ups all the time. Those things are amazing. I'd say it worked pretty well. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. Baseblocks also has a lot of good products for at-home equipment, at-home body weight calisthenics type equipment. So you guys might want to look into that too. I have a few of those. So yeah. Cool. All right, let's move forward. There's a couple more neat questions, but I'll just skip those for right now.

So from Jack Rasmussen, favorite preventative slash preparation drills and movements for strength athletes starting jujitsu. Damn, I love that. One thing that I would say that would be a good thing to check out is one of our podcasts that we did with an athlete named Kador Ziani. And Kador Ziani is 50-something years old. He can still dunk. He is the goat father of dunk, as he calls himself.

But he has these certain positional things that he does every single day upon waking where he's like maybe sitting in Seiza. He sits in a squat for a little bit. He sits in the pigeon position. He's built the habit of getting his body into different positions. Um, and I've started, I spilt that habit too. And what that's allowed is that now when I go to jujitsu, I'm not having to warm up everything before starting. Cause my body is already feeling good and warm. Um, he, I would say go fricking buy his book, but check out our podcast with them. His books on Amazon. Again, building a habit out of these things makes it much easier so that you don't have to, okay, these are the things I do right before jujitsu. Instead, if you can bake these habits a part of your day, I think long

term, that makes being an athlete a much easier process. What do you guys think? Yeah. I actually noticed when you're working today, you're just in certain poses and whatnot. And I saw the videos of you eating on the floor and everything like that, just the micro dosing and just where normal person just be sitting there and doing nothing. Like think about what you can kind of multitask in order to obtain some of this mobility or just ability for that matter. That was one of the biggest things that I noticed. I've just, I think being around you guys a lot, I just see daily habits implemented without a second thought that you don't see much elsewhere. And that's one of the benefits of being here really is being able to just kind of observe

these people and see what they do in their day to day, or even in the moments where like, we wouldn't even be thinking about benefiting ourselves, such as working on the computer or eating. Like most people work on the computer at the desk versus and seem as like in a pose, you know, doing, doing yoga at the same time and Seema's like in a pose you know doing doing yoga at the same time so it just I don't know stuff like that speaks to me as to what what how hard are you really trying to to help yourself because obviously like there's stuff that you can be doing all the time so I think another to that point and kind of to circle back to the OG Kelly Sturette he talks a lot about the 10 minute squat test if you're a strength athlete

or an athlete from any other sport where you don't spend a whole lot of time in deep hip flexion, knee flexion, ankle flexion, just working up to being able to sit in an astrograph squat position for 10 minutes, maybe you break that up into 20 sets of 30 seconds and then go to 10 sets of one minute. Whatever you can do to gradually get better

at being comfortable in those positions is a great way to get started on building mobility, specifically for jujitsu. And we drop these names all the time. Kelly Surrett, Corey Schlesinger, we got their books on the shelf and we talk about them all the time. But there's an easy way to begin microdosing some of these habits into your daily life. And just because it's not at the gym doesn't mean you can't get started on working on those things either at home, at the office, wherever else you're at. Let's go on to the next one. That was awesome, but this is a great purchase. Supple Leopard Kelly Strut. You should buy it. Okay. From Glassman underscore Chronicles underscore, how to heal a minor pec strain

that affects pressing. For me, I had a minor pec strain a couple years ago um I was benching and I got pinned under 135 it was super embarrassing and I strained my pec um and so I don't know Mr. Glassman if this is your issue but what had happened to me I was doing jiu-jitsu and I'd wrestled for a long time and I ended up having a lot of nerve damage that affected the nerves in my left arm which meant that my tricep wasn't firing the way it should be put all the load on my pec and ended up pulling my pec pretty good so just from my experience some things that helped with that minor pec strain was just dialing things back all the way to step one getting back to being able to do a push-up making sure that my neck is getting stronger making sure that the nerves in my neck

have cooled off and weren't as inflamed anymore and then gradually building back up using really light dumbbells doing assisted dips like a lot of stuff that you know kind of sucks you have to regress back to if you're used to just cranking out body weight dips and then you got to do dips in a slingshot it can be a little demoralizing sometimes taking a couple steps back but taking those few steps back allowed me to take a much greater steps forward because i was able to address the root cause of my pec issue, which was the nerve damage in my neck. Gotcha. Yeah, I would say that I'm going to reference back

to when I power lifted when I was 18, 19, a lot of the older, more experienced guys around me. If they had an injury or a problem area, the answer was wrap it or suit it or just, and then ice it and then lift more weight than you did prior to the injury. And so maybe that's not exactly what you're doing, but I would say a lot of people though, to some degree you get injured and it's like you're injured. And then you're still like, how can I still keep bench pressing? How can I keep, still keep squatting or deadlifting after

I just hurt my back deadlifting or whatever. Maybe you find a variation of it that's regressed and that actually helps promote the progress but we let me just jump straight into the the modality that injured us too too quickly or trying to maintain that and It's a simple answer and I don't mean to sell anyone's intelligence But even even for me at times like when I hurt my knee, okay Well, how the fuck can I start dead lifting again? You know like what week two already had 65 pounds on the bar. Like I'm going to get this shit up to 700 again, one way or another, you know? So like, uh, but to some degree though, at least I started with 65 pounds instead of like four or five or whatever. But you know, I think all of us,

myself included, try to jump back into things just too fast to your point. If you hear yourself bench pressing or whatever the case may be, maybe, maybe not try to rush back into that specific barbell bench press and find a dumbbell or a machine that helps get the blood flow to help promote the healing, but not necessarily like just keep running your head into the same wall. Let's call it. Yeah. Now, one thing that is a theme that will help almost everything. And there's another habit that you want to build is the habit of myofascial release.

Now you'll see some people out there that say, Oh, it does nothing but help you feel good. Um, but these right here are tune up fitness balls. You can get them on Amazon. We talked deeply about this with our podcast with Jill Miller. She sells these Mark,

myself, Andrew, we use these things every day. We smash ourselves on these every single body part throughout the day, um, all the time. But the power of pressure on different muscle groups, like you'll, day. We smash ourselves on these every single body part throughout the day all the time. But the power of pressure on different muscle groups, like you'll be rolling on this and then you'll

find something that's just, oh, there's something there. Okay, let me rub that out a little bit. But you'll find that after you build the habit of doing this over time, you'll start to feel a lot better. Certain places that maybe you were rolling on one of these and it was painful, isn't painful anymore. Typically that's when people stop doing it. But this is again, why Mark and I and Andrew, we use these things literally every single day, almost everywhere, because we noticed it's one of those things that is just a consistent benefit for the way our body feels for places that might be feel, feel sore, injured, or might be problem areas. Build the habit of myofascial release. It's not hype. What's the best way to address tricep tendonitis? Tricep tendonitis is pretty common in jiu-jitsu with everybody getting armbarred all the time. And if you're lifting and you're

benching a lot, it's going to exacerbate your likelihood of developing some form of tendonitis. There's a lot of different contributing factors to what could cause tricep tendonitis. But a big thing is just overuse, doing the same motions over and over and over and over and over again, and not including much variation in your training. So if you've developed some form of tricep tendonitis, a lot of things that are going to help is just increasing blood flow to that area, and then changing up your training a little bit. If you always bench with the same bar with the same grip every single week, maybe use a different grip, maybe use a different bar, maybe even use an entirely different implement

like dumbbells or kettlebells, something that will just change up the loading on those tissues. And then find an exercise that you can do pain-free that allows you to get tons and tons and tons of blood into those inflamed tissues. So things like banded tricep pushdowns, you can even do certain exercises like pushups or doing things that instead of benching with a neutral wrist position, you go into a flexed wrist position. There's a lot of things that you can do to address tricep tendonitis, just as long as you're changing it up and getting a lot of blood flow to those tissues. Yeah, I would just add on to that by saying that now after fixing the issue, long-term wise, as far as preventing that from

happening, this is where I took a lot from the full ROM guys, actually. Jared Feather had showed me a tricep pushdown variation. I mean, it's nothing crazy, but the concept is we're trying to get the most length out of the tricep head as possible. So when you're coming up in a rope pushdown or what have you, you're pulling your elbows back as you come up and then letting it pull. And so the more you pull your elbow, the more you pull your elbows back as you come up and then letting it pull. And so the more you pull your elbow, the more you pull your elbows back, that tricep stretches a little bit more. Let it come up. You get a little bit more tension right at the very tip of the elbow. And of course, as we control weight and use adequate weight for the exercise, that long-term can help prevent a lot of that either tricep tendonitis or just anything running down into the

elbow just strengthen the tricep again repetitive uh terminology here but in a full range of motion to help prevent injuries like that and one thing that you could do throughout the day and you don't need any type of equipment for this uh but when you do get to the gym you can use equipment are isometrics so for example you can hold your arm out and you could push down in this direction you're going to feel a little bit of tension here. Don't push down so hard that it's painful, but hold that isometric for maybe 30 seconds to a minute. You can do the same thing in the opposite direction. If you were pushing down on your arm here, now you can push down here and you'll feel that back there to hold it for 30 seconds to a minute.

Do that multiple times, four or five times a day. Those isometrics can help tendon health, can drive blood flow to that area without the use of any equipment and can speed up your recovery. And post-injury, you can probably try to add in some type of isometric work anyway into anything that you do. Any type of movements that you do, you can try to pause them. We've had, what's the dunker's name? Isaiah Rivera. Isaiah Rivera does a lot of isometric work on the leg extension machine, meaning that he will put the leg extension out so he'll go into knee extension, hold that for 30 seconds with a load, and he's found that guy has a 53-inch vertical,

but he's found that that has massively been super beneficial for his tendon health. So isometrics is something that you guys might want to try out. All right, let's go. So isometrics is something that you guys might want to try out. All right, let's go up from purple desk chair. What are the best longevity tools slash practices for jujitsu? I'll start off. I'll keep it simple.

I think that again, you want to try to figure out ways to bake in positions into your day, sitting in SESA, sitting on the ground, sitting in a squat, as Josh talked about, just having little tools. Like for example, this right here is a slack block. I know we have so many fucking toys, but this is something that I'll randomly just keep in my car. I'll carry around with me. And I learned about this from again, Kelly Sturette, but I'll just stand on this every now and then throughout my day helps with single leg balance. But what's also going on is when you stand on this, your ankle will be shifting around to help you handle your weight. Initially, when I was using this, I was falling off. But over time, I'm able to just stand on this pretty easily.

You can take these out. It gets more difficult. But that's been helping my balance. That's been helping my little intrinsic muscles in the ankle that help with balance. And it's another simple thing that is just easy to microdose. So I would just say, figure out a way to microdose little habits into your day so that it's not only tackled when you go to the gym. To that point, it's not about what you do.

It's about what you can recover from. So whoever's asking this question, if you feel like you're constantly banged up, you're constantly fatigued, you may need to just look at your recovery habits. You can't really expect to sprint through an entire marathon. You may need to have certain points

or certain seasons of your jujitsu career where, okay, this is going to be a sprint. I'm prepping for this competition. I'm training twice a day. I'm doing all this stuff. And then when that competition's over, you dial it back a little bit, give yourself some opportunity to recover,

give yourself some opportunity to grow. And then when you're ready to go into that sprint again, you're prepared and you're feeling good and you can hit it. Say it again. It's not about what you do in the gym or on the mats. It's about what you can recover from that leads to progress. Yes.

That's awesome. Sleep. But go, go. My takeaway from my workout with Mark today was just the amount of stimulus growth, essentially, that you can give yourself from very little time in the gym. give yourself from very little time in the gym. If you just take a single back machine and a single chest machine and do one to two big controlled mechanical drop sets, it's not the only way to train. But if you look at Mark and how he looks at his age and everything he's done, he looks phenomenal. We all thought he was about to do a bodybuilding show. And this is for what he was

telling me, the majority of how he trains now. And he's able to maintain muscle mass, maintain strength, maintain a physique, and still recover in order to be able to perform and running. And there's no difference in jiu-jitsu. And to our earlier point, a lot of jiu-jitsu athletes, because it's social media, movies, what have you, we think we just have to go so, so hard in the gym. Otherwise, you're not doing it correctly. And that's just fallacy, honestly, because even now where I'm at, I'm switched my lifting to three days a week doing jujitsu, probably forest right now. And I'm still seeing progressions in my strength. So there's no fine line that says you have to lift this much or this long or this hard. You just have to give your body a reason,

AKA a stimulus in order to grow or progress or what have you. And that's different really for everybody. So I want to add in this, we've on, on this podcast, we talk so much about sleep. There's a video we just did that is a long podcast on sleep hacks so that that are going to be beneficial for your health. But I think the biggest thing, as Josh mentioned, it's, it's what you could recover from the biggest recovery metric. That's going to be beneficial for your health. But I think the biggest thing, as Josh mentioned, it's what you could recover from. The biggest recovery metric that's going to be best for every single person that's listening right now is getting enough sleep.

When you're young, you tend to think that, oh, I only need four hours. Like you drink caffeine at 6 p.m. and you think you're okay because you need that pre-workout. Like sleep. Yeah, who does that? You don't do that.

I throw my man under the bus. My man's a beast. But he'd be beastly-er if he got more sleep. But this is the thing. Our boy Stan Efferding, who's been on this podcast multiple times, it's a quote from him. He said, if you're not getting quality sleep, it's like skipping over $100 bills for pennies. So you guys want to make sure, number one, watch your caffeine intake. Because if you have caffeine too late in the day, that can affect your quality of sleep because

caffeine has a longer half-life. It'll stay in your system as you sleep. Your sleep quality will not be as good. So have caffeine, the last amount of caffeine or pre-workout or coffee may be at noon, but try not to have it after that. Try to get to sleep at a certain time each day, just so your circadian rhythm is consistent. So if that's 9 p.m., if that's 10 p.m., whatever, try to get to sleep at the same time each day. We'll talk about more in the video that we'll have in the description that goes into a deep cut on sleep. But the thing is, is like, take your sleep seriously. As a young athlete, you might not think it's that important because you might be going by and you might be feeling okay in training. But I'm telling you

right now, if you start getting good sleep if you want to start adding in strength training like we're talking about now along with jiu jitsu and you want to recover from session to session you don't want to get beat up you want to mitigate your ability to get injured sleep is your friend stop around with it andrew yeah next one i actually i did have something to add to it um as somebody who's been i'm a white belt in jiu jitsu but in life i'm a white belt in jujitsu, but in life, I'm a white belt with like maybe a stripe or two. Uh, so what I'm saying is I'm older than a lot of people that I go and train with. And what I see often is people cannot let go of their ego.

Tap early, tap often. I've heard that so many times and I live that and I've been doing pretty good by that. But so for my longevity tip is like, Hey, just because you're going to go four times a week this week or four four days this week each day isn't gonna be a fucking full-on oh how do you say go bojada you know like every day yeah it's not gonna be that so like today i went i knew it was gonna be a light day and i was like hey i'm gonna go drill today i went and drilled my drilling partner drilled and then went full out on the next roll and i'm like that's what's preventing you from like recovering from injuries because i know tomorrow tomorrow I am going to go a lot harder, but

today that just wasn't it. So yeah, dropping the ego at the door and then moving forward and understanding that just because you're going to, you know, you started jujitsu, you want to get better. Doesn't mean you're going to get better in the next month. It's going to be a lifetime thing. Treat it as such. Don't worry about every single freaking day. It's going to, you'll be fine. All right. Let me see here. My phone went to sleep. All right. Okay. There's no name on this one, but okay. How do you structure your training during the week? For me, I am not necessarily in prep for competition. I'm not necessarily trying to get ready for anything major. So my form of training and my training schedule is probably going to look a little bit different than Jimmy and in SEMA's. But for me right now, I try to train at jujitsu four to six times a week,

and I lift three days a week. Those lifting days are split up into, um, what Phil DeRue would call a condensed conjugate. So instead of doing two max effort days, one for the upper body, one for the lower body, and two dynamic effort days, one for upper, one for lower, we condense that down into just three days. So one day would look like doing something really heavy for the lower body, and then following that up with something really heavy and explosive for the upper body. The second day would be basically the same format, but flipped around, something really heavy for the upper body, something really fast and explosive for the lower body. And then the third day, which is, you know, from Mark Bell is jacked and tan day. You're just literally just trying to get as jacked as possible, have a good time and then head out of there. So I think a lot of people will ask this question, looking for some

sort of prescription, like, okay, how many days do you lift? Cause that's what I need to do. Or how many days are you going to jujitsu? Cause that's what I need to do. And it's really not about what Nseem is doing. It's really not about what Jimmy's doing. It's not about what I'm doing. You need to find what works best for you, what allows you to make the most amount of progress in the shortest amount of time that you can actually sustain for the longest amount of time. So if that means that you're only going to the gym twice a week, because that's all you can recover from, then that's great. You don't need to feel pressure to increase your training volume in the gym if it has a negative impact on your jiu-jitsu training. If you're someone like Andrew, where Andrew and I, we got families, we got other

stuff going on with work and things like that. Not that you guys don't, but Andrew and I aren't necessarily like top echelon competitors. Our training habits and our training frequency looks very different. And so we can't expect to compare ourselves to your guys' form of training, mainly because our goals are different, our lifestyles are a little bit different, and our priorities are lined up a little bit different. So for anyone that's asking, and I'm sure we have a lot more questions asking about how many days you should lift, how should you structure training, got to find what works best for you, something that you can recover from,

something that you can maintain over a long period of time, something that allows you to make a lot of progress while you're at it. I have a question for you, Josh, because you also have a concierge type of program for high-level jiu-jitsu athletes. So for the jiu-jitsu athlete, and Jimmy, this is a question for you too,

for the jiu-jitsu athlete who is focused on jiu-jitsu, I'm a competitor in jujitsu, and you want to try to figure out the amount of time they should be training per week. Everyone has different amounts of time. But what are your thought processes when you go about that? I think it depends on how they're structuring their skills training. There are some jujitsu schools where they train super hard all the time,

which oftentimes leaves athletes with not much room to recover from additional weight training or additional strength training. So in that case, I might implement something very similar to Corey Schlesinger, where we're just micro-dosing a couple exercises, maybe two exercises before every jiu-jitsu session over the course of, say, maybe five, six days a week. Nothing super intense, nothing high volume. There are other schools where they spend a lot more time

focused on technique and drilling. So it's a little bit easier to recover from those skill sessions. And so they have a little bit more room to do a 60 minute or maybe a 75 minute strength and conditioning session. And we might plug those in two, three times a week. I'd say for the most part with most of the athletes I've worked with, whether they're high level competitors or someone just starting out, it's usually a good idea to start, you know, strength training two to four times a week. There's not a whole lot of guys that I've seen that have been super successful competing in jiu-jitsu, lifting super hardcore six days a week and training jiu-jitsu super hardcore six days a week. They may need to dial things back a little bit, have a little bit more realistic expectations

about how much time you can spend in the gym versus how much time you're training on the mat. Yeah, I'll give you my perspective from training Mayor Gulley, and he's a decently high-level athlete. What I've come to find is like a lot of the problem is that let's say you are an avid competitor and you're trying to somehow communicate to your coach that you have a regimented lifting schedule.

Thumbs up. Sweet. We're still training hard as fuck. You know, like it's hard to like get that through some people's head that like the recovery, one, is the priority amongst the jiu-jitsu and the lifting. But in order to maximize what the lifting is doing for the jiu-jitsu, there has to be some kind of give and take there. I think a lot of coaches have a hard time seeing that. jujitsu, there has to be some kind of give and take there. I think a lot of coaches have a hard time seeing that. And so in a perfect world, I'd be able to say, communicate to your jujitsu coach about your lifting schedule and figure out a way to make that coincide with your jujitsu schedule. The reason why observing how the people on New Wave work, I like it, is because John's there

every single day, two times a day at Roka, two times a day at Henzo's, one time doing MMA. So he's always there, right? His dedication is guaranteed. But for the athlete themselves, John isn't necessarily contingent on you have to be training every single day with the best guys in the room, super, super hard. He kind of leaves that up to the athletes. And so for Merigali, he trains with me four days a week in the morning, specifically while we're doing four days a week, because he has a goal of strength and as well as building size specifically in the upper body so we devise a program we're doing a little bit higher frequency in the gym so we have a little bit more time to break muscle down rebuild it and get a little bit bigger but this is like a six month six month period that we're really working on after that break it down to more so two three days a week

focus on maintaining and building strength slowly over time. So something like him where currently he wants to use lifting to get better at jujitsu, get bigger, get stronger. So the frequency raises for a controlled period of time. After that though, when he's maybe more in season or content with the gains that he's made, we bring the frequency down, focus more on maintaining, then he can allocate more time for the jujitsu training. So whatever ability level you're at, take what I just said, break it down to something that's relatable or realistic for you, and then build off of that. That would be my best general advice for the question. And I'll say this, I'll keep this very short. Figure out what your goal is. Are you someone who wants to compete at the level of Nicholas Marigali and compete all the time and your focus is being a jiu-jitsu athlete?

You might need to, like you still need strength conditioning, but it's not going to be your focus. You're not going to be focusing on those sessions. Those sessions are to help your jiu-jitsu. Is your goal instead to focus on your body composition? You're trying to build some muscle. Maybe you'd want to build some strength and jiu-jitsu is a hobby for you. Well, go and train jiu-jitsu.

Control your intensity when you're on the mat. Focus on technique. Don't go super hard all the time so that you have the ability to go into the gym and have good, strong, hard training sessions. You can balance these things, but the thing is your goal has to be kept in mind during all of it. Yeah. Alrighty. How long should a strength session last for a jiu-jitsu athlete?

I think that coincides with the last answer, which is it just doesn't, there's no right or wrong answer there. And I think naturally, let's say if you're a powerlifter doing jiu-jitsu, your sessions will probably naturally be a little bit longer, especially if you're lifting a little bit more weight. And you're taking the pauses, you're sitting down between every single set, you're drinking

your little Kool-Aid. Might take three hours. Post every set setting your story on Instagram and then go yeah But if that's not you You could get away with 30 minutes you get away with 60 90 Maybe 90 is like a general sweet spot if you have a decent amount of exercise selection and you want enough rest time 60 minutes you can still do a lot 30 minutes You know I've had in-person clients in the past where I know for a fact, the only time that they're lifting that week is probably realistically 45 minutes with me after we do our warmup. And they've made very trackable progress from week to week to week, as long as

the consistency is there. And even with my online clients, when they asked me, how many times do you think I should be lifting a week? And I started with, well, honestly, if you really wanted to, we could get stronger with one day a week. Now, in accordance with my price, they don't really like hearing that. So I'm like, okay, we'll lift a little bit more. But to that point, as long as your exercise selection is good and it covers a lot, you can get stronger with very little time and very little days in the gym. You bring up an excellent point. There's a lot of stuff that Mark has said about, you know, doing as much as you can with as little time in the gym as possible. And Mark's also talked about how, you know, Mark is one of the strongest people

who's ever lived. He set world records and all these different, different lifts. And he's talked about how long his bench workouts were and how long his squat workouts were. But you look at the guy and you look at what he's doing now, he's not doing these three hour bench workouts anymore. He's not doing these five hour squat workouts where every set you got to get in your suit again and do some crazy thousand pound squat. And so I think a lot of times people will look at, you know, who is, you know, at the peak of what they want to achieve. They'll look at a guy like C-Bum and look at his workouts. They'll look at, you know, maybe you guys and say like, oh, I got to replicate what they're doing. And again, it's about finding what works best for you and maybe implementing some trial and error. Can you

do a workout that takes only 90 minutes and get great results? Awesome. Did you spend those 90 minutes talking a lot and wasting time? Could you get all that work done in 45 minutes and have 45 extra minutes to take a nap between training sessions, get some more food in or whatever you need to do. So implement some trial and error and find that sweet spot for you. For some people that might be 30 minutes, some people that might be 90 minutes for other people might be somewhere between those two. And when you're near to strength training, like we talked about earlier to skill. So you might, your training sessions might be a little bit shorter because you can't handle the fatigue that from the movements you're getting in the gym over time, you might be able to handle more volume and then your training sessions might be a

little bit longer but give yourself the time to adapt to strength training to get better at strength training so that you can progress consistently and then over time maybe your sessions are 45 minutes or maybe they're 60 but they don't have to be a 90 minute session or a 60 minute session get a lot done like j Josh said, in 30 minutes. All right. Is explosive training needed for jujitsu? Yes, I would say so. I know when people look at jujitsu and they view it from an outsider's perspective, they may say like, oh, it doesn't look very explosive. You know, jujitsu athletes don't need to be explosive or fast or be capable of doing those things. And that's true. Like maybe 90% of the matches aren't super explosive or aren't, you know, really fast paced, but every

jujitsu athlete should at least have some capacity to handle those things. If a jujitsu athlete has built his game around being a little bit slower and a more control-based game instead of something focused on lots of movement that's great that they've had a lot of success with that really positionally heavy control-based game but the minute that they do need to be explosive they should have the capacity to do it it doesn't mean they need to build an entire game plan around being explosive but every jiu-jitsu athlete should have some capacity to be explosive and you don't need to do a whole lot of explosive training to develop that capacity. You could just be mixing in some things like what we were doing in the gym earlier today, some explosive med ball throws once or twice a week, getting your body prepared and in better shape to do jumps on two legs, jumps on one leg, jumping forward, backward, side to side, just sprinkling in some of that explosive work can go a long way, whether you're a competitor or even if you're a hobbyist. How do you implement in a simple way? How do you implement make bands and chains? So you're speaking my language. It's like

my favorite thing ever to talk about, but I'm a huge fan of the conjugate system. For those of you who are unaware, conjugate system is a format of training that was developed in Russia, and then it came over to the United States, popularized by you by Louis Simmons, pretty popular and powerlifting. But there are some big components about explosive training within the conjugate, conjugate system called the dynamic effort method. And that basically just means taking a lighter weight and moving it as fast as possible. There's, there's so many different ways that you can do that you can do that with a bench press, taking 50% of your normal bench, doing a few sets of maybe one to three reps, and just doing it as fast as possible with perfect form. You can also take that outside

and do some sprints. Our boy Graham, the barefoot sprinter, has some amazing content on how to get yourself in shape to do some faster paced runs. You can do things with kettlebells. You can do things with med balls. But as far as how I've been implementing some of that explosive work with the jujitsu athletes that I work with, I typically start them out with an exercise that they're already pretty used to and just dialing back the load and having them do it faster. So we already do pretty heavy Zurcher box squats. For now, as we introduce dynamic effort work, you're going to do the Zurcher box squat. Everything is exactly the same from a form perspective. We're just going to take about 50% of the weight off. And I'd like to do it as fast as possible with perfect form and

technique. Once they develop the skill and the ability to handle that well, maybe we'll get into some new stuff, mixing in some of the landmine exercises from Alex Kanellis, mixing in maybe some Weck method stuff where it's a little bit more rotational based. But again, we started from building a foundation of teach them a certain exercise, make sure they can do that exercise proficiently, then start to speed it up and have them do that exercise more explosively. As explosive work, I really do love the landmine work that I learned from Alex too. So we did a podcast with Alex. If you want to learn more about landmine work, the podcast will be linked in the description below. But it's a very simple way to add in some of that type of training.

The landmine's a very simple setup, and the movements he does are simple to implement, easy to do, but they will help you build that ability. So that's something to check out. If you think about the term explosion, I think a lot of us just immediately associate that with offensive movement, which is why somebody can make the argument. I'm not very, I'm not very explosive. You know, that's not really my game. However, from a defensive standpoint too, you

could be going against somebody that's offensively explosion explosive, and then have to call on defensive explosion, be able to just keep up or stop them. That's why to your point and preparation and explosion training, that's why it's important really for everybody because yeah, you might not be the one that's taken blast doubles every second or wrestling up from guard or what have you, but you might be going against somebody that does. And if you want to defend that adequate adequately, you might need to prepare yourself for that type of force coming your way, which is a hard stop or a hard hip or what have you. I think that's where a lot of people in jiu-jitsu run into issues because they go against somebody that's super explosive and they don't train that way because the majority of jiu-jitsu competitors

maybe up until just recently aren't very explosive, but then being able to try to handle that for a prolonged match, eventually something gives way. The technique holds strong, but if the technique's comparable amongst the two, the explosive guy kind of edges it out because the other guy's just not prepared for it. Yeah. Alrighty. Let's see.

From I'm Noah V. Do you believe Olympic lifts should be a staple in a college wrestler's off-season program? Both of you guys are wrestlers. What do you think? I think the main argument that's said about this one is the olympic lifts are very beneficial but the time and i think i've heard you talk about it but the time that it takes to get efficient at those movements to then reap the benefits may not be for everybody so then you have variations that tie into maybe kettlebell

work or landmine work or, or just like hinge variations of exercises that'll get you the same effect, but without the time necessary to get absolutely perfect and dialed in with those. Also probably a little bit safer to acknowledging that if you did get good at those movements at a certain point, you'd have to progress those with weight or resistance and then that's when the chances of injury just rise because olympic weightlifting is such a skill and that's it's not given nearly enough credit i i don't do it at all i'm it's not a skill of mine whatsoever but just watching it though i i don't think we really understand how skillful you have to be in order to just fling 400 and 500 pounds, catch it, and then recatch it to get at the top or be able to fling 400 pounds and just catch it straight

arm. It boggles my mind, really. There's so many great Instagram accounts that do these slow motion videos of people doing weightlifting at the Olympics. And people will see that and be like, that guy's super explosive. I should do that to get super explosive. What Instagram doesn't show is that when that guy was five or six years old, he spent six months doing that with a PVC pipe, nothing else. And there's not a whole lot of college wrestlers that I know that want to spend six months with a PVC pipe. There are so many great benefits from the weightlifting movements if you can do them properly and safely. But to Jimmy's point, at what cost? If it's going to take you six months, maybe even 12 months to learn how to do them proficiently, you just spent six to 12 months working with a PVC pipe when you

could have used a landmine, could have used a kettlebell, could have done literally a hundred other exercises that can give you a similar benefit, but don't have the same requirement of time needed to learn to do them proficiently. The learning curve of the landmine can be very, very quick. And the dividends that you can get from it because you can easily start loading it fairly quickly is immense.

So what they said right there, that's something that you really want to think about. Next question. Okay, from, oh boy, from Selkohe. Selkohe. Selkohe. okay from oh boy from selk oh he self-sell going so go he how can i build muscle while doing jiu-jitsu as an immediate intermediate lifter as an intermediate lifter what would you guys actually define an intermediate lifter is because i think some people may may i would label it more so as somebody that it's just like consistent in the gym, maybe without specific direction. Because I think when you start to have specific direction, like I want to compete

in powerlifting and I want to compete in body, I want to do all this stuff. Then you're starting to at least elevate yourself to more of an advanced level where your goals in general, just higher than most people. So I don't know, intermediate toate to me is like the guy that's consistent at the gym but doesn't necessarily have any competitive endeavors with it. So you don't necessarily have to venture down a rabbit hole and get more advanced with your programming or your technique or what have you. Would you say that an intermediate lifter also has kind of reached the point where they can be a little bit more autonomous in the gym?

Like they don't need someone to hold their hand as often. You can kind of just give them some exercise and say, hey, knock yourself out with some squats and some curls. And you just trust that they can handle it. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. One thing to think about is like outside of just the strength conditioning side of things, you want to be, if you're trying to build muscle, you need to be eating adequate protein.

So maybe a gram per pound. You want to be eating adequate calories. You want to be trying to, if you're trying to put on muscle, don't try to be putting on maybe four pounds of muscle every single month because you might be gaining too much fat at the same time but eating a surplus enough where you can see maybe depending on your weight just just a small amount of weight gain each month you don't need to be seeing it on a weekly basis but you want to see some progression forward as far as what you might be seeing on the scale but try to be eating enough food because if you're doing jujitsu and you're doing lifting, one thing I noticed from a lot of jujitsu athletes is they tend not to eat enough food

and especially protein. And that's something, again, if you're trying to grow, whether you're trying to get stronger, whether you're trying to literally get bigger, you need to be eating enough food. A tool that can be useful for everyone here is going to use the Precision Nutrition Calculator. If you type that in on Google, it's a pretty solid calculator that can give you a good start of the amount of calories you should be eating of protein, carbs, and fats. You'll go there, you'll put in your stats for how much you weigh, the amount of activity, all those different things. You can even put in the ratio of macronutrients you want to eat along with a style of diet that you want to eat, and it'll spit out something that's kind of good for you you can start there and improve over time we've also

done many podcasts on nutrition so if you guys want to go down that rabbit hole you totally can that's a good place to start to thinking about your nutrition moving on from uh roomie.qa how to design a weightlifting program if you are training jiu-jitsu five days or more a week. I would go back to some of the other stuff that we talked about, which is acknowledging that the simple fact is that most people could probably progress

pretty damn well with the correct exercise selection and load management on one day a week. A step past that, if you feel like you could squeeze in a second day, make sure that if you are doing one day a week a step past that if you feel like you could squeeze in a second day make sure that if you are doing five days a week maybe not or you double up on your jiu-jitsu day so you can allocate for probably at least one day of rest i think that's probably the safe bet the problem that i see with a lot of people is they um have their jiu-jitsu specific days and they're lifting specific days and acknowledging there's only seven days in the week, then they, they just run out of days in general. So one, here's, here's a question

for you guys. Cause I was wondering what you guys thought about this is, is that, uh, I forgot who it was, but his suggestion was if you have a high intensity lifting day and a high intensity jujitsu day, it would be best to pair those two together and keep your lower intensity jujitsu and lower intensity lifting days also paired together so that you are able to better maximize recovery. That was his opinion. So paired together and not on the same day, right? Or like one day, then the next day. Uh, no, like on the same, like you can have a legit day off the next day. Right. That's, that's what his thought. Yeah. And I can definitely see the point. I just think, I was just thinking to myself, what, what performance of either or be like on the same day?

Because I have trained a new way with Luke and Dan, and they fucked me up for a couple hours, and then I went to go do my deadlift session. I did 675 for a triple, but the next week I came without doing the jiu-jitsu, and I pulled 705 for a triple way easier than 675. So there's a drastic decrease in my performance, obviously, you know, so that, that was something where I wondering what your guys' opinions was. If you were designing a program, would you ever do that with one of your people? I'm a huge fan of that. And I think

before we dive into it too deeply, it's important that everybody listening knows that they need to understand what their goals are. If your goal is to be a powerlifter, rolling with Big Dan and Luke right before your powerlifting session may not be like the most optimal way to maximize your growth in powerlifting, but vice versa. If you're a jujitsu athlete, smashing yourself and like doing the craziest leg workout ever right before you go roll may not also be the best option either. So understand what your goals are. And then something that I know Andrew is familiar with this concept, something I've talked about before is separating your training days in your week between intensity days and skills and drills days. That way, you know, you have a day where you kind of know already mentally going into it. Okay,

this day is probably going to be a little bit of a challenge, have my strength and conditioning session. It's not going to be so ridiculous that I can't train afterwards, but it's going to be pretty tough and fatiguing. I do my hard sparring rounds. And then for the next, say 24 to 48 hours, all I'm focused on is recovery. So say that's on a Monday, your intensity day is on Monday. You lift in the morning, then go to juiu-jitsu afterwards. After that, you eat, you sleep. Tuesday, all you have going on is jiu-jitsu. That session, in my opinion, should be a little bit lower intensity. You're just focusing on skills and drills, focusing on getting better technique, maybe doing a few positional sparring rounds to get some resistance on some of those new techniques you've learned. That way, when you come back to your high intensity day you feel fresh and you feel good and you feel ready to go that's usually what i suggest for competitive grapplers but they've stated to me that that's their goal they want to maximize the growth that they can have in their skill development and also become a better athlete as well so that's why we would stack those sessions

together the lifting and the high intensity sparring sessions right yeah because that's where i have quite a few power lifters that are doing jujitsu that come to me. So then it's almost the exact opposite, which is why we just keep reiterating that it comes down to the individual because yeah, to that point, if you're in a power lifting prep and you are doing jujitsu that same day beforehand, you inevitably will be seeing decrease. And if you don don't how can you track how much your strength decreases to be able to actually progress that week to week so if you are running like a legitimate strength program where you're expected to hit a percentage range or rpe or a specific weight week to week maybe something to consider on maybe those days like a like a heavier deadlift day or

a squat day maybe at the very least put that before your jiu-jitsu. Maybe keep your leg volume after you hit your numbers for the deadlift or squat like controlled, but make it to where at the very least the element of fatigue is not a limiting factor in your progression and your strength program. Assuming that you are maybe a bodybuilder or a powerlifter, doing jiu-jitsu more so as a hobby

rather than jiu-jitsu is your first priority as a competitor. So there's so many different reasons why people are doing this comes down to the person. One thing that you guys need to think about is that, again, progress is a long-term thing, and you need to, building the skill of listening to what your body feels like on a certain day is extremely important

because you may get a program from your coach and you may have the days that you're lifting in the gym, but one of the days that was supposed to be a high intensity day in the gym, you just wake up and you're just not feeling it. And today you're supposed to deadlift a lot of weight. You go to the gym, you warm up and you're fucking blasted. But then you do what's on the program and whoop, whoop, I pulled something in my back because you didn't listen to how your body felt. So just understand that again, this is a long-term process. Weeks are going to be different. Your recovery, especially if like you're not sleeping that great sometimes, or there's a little bit of more stress, life stress out of certain area,

your recovery might be, your recovery might be complicated on a day-to-day basis. So keep that in mind. And potentially you may want to adjust. Oh, okay. Today was supposed to be a high intensity day of training for jujitsu, but my body's not there today. Okay, go in, have a smart session, do some stuff, maybe skill and drill, and maybe push the intensity a little bit, but try to recover. If you were supposed to go in the gym and have a high-intensity workout, but your body is not there, I know how we love to push things. I know how, as an athlete, you want to get to the next level.

But getting to the next level also means that you need to last. You need to be the athlete that doesn't get injured and doesn't ruin their career because they're trying to go too hard, too fast. So listen to your body whenever you have any program that's set up from any type of coach. And if you just don't have it on that day, don't be so hard headed that you still do it. Sometimes that's good, but sometimes backing off will allow you better long-term progress. I think it's important to remember that we are not spreadsheets. And there are so many times where I know the three of us have been there. Andrew, I know you've been there where your coach gives you a spreadsheet and you're like,

all right, coach, this is what the spreadsheet says. And I'm just, I don't feel like it today or I don't feel up to it today for, you know, you're injured, you tweak something. So remember that you're not a spreadsheet. And then for all the coaches who are listening, remember that your athletes are not spreadsheets. They have a significant amount of input on how they're feeling.

And they may not be able to adhere to the spreadsheet 100% based on a variety of factors from their jiu-jitsu training or other things that happen. What's your best definition of the fine line between being able to make the smart call and take it easy that day versus actually just calling yourself on your bullshit and putting in work when you're just feeling lazy? I tend to err on the side of caution. Like I'd much like if I lift and then I have

jujitsu later and I have the choice to make like, okay, should I go up and go for like one more, you know, super hard set or should I dial it back? Usually I'm going to err on the side of dialing it back. And then I know that, okay, now I'm at jujitsu. So I dialed it back at, uh, at the gym. So now I have more time to show up and push myself at jujitsu. And unless I'm going to be a little pansy, I need to push myself at jujitsu. So that's normally the scale that I go off of. I feel like I've injured myself way too many times going like, I think I got it. Nothing. Yeah, nothing good ever comes after you say F it, I'll go for it, right?

That's what we learned from Mark. And then for me, just really quick, just especially because I'm at a white belt level, my body and mind will whisper that I'm tired in the form of like I'll do dumb stuff on the mat still. Because even if I go into autopilot, there's nobody driving still like, I'll do dumb stuff on the mat still, you know, because even if I go into autopilot, I don't, there's nobody driving still. So I'll do dumb stuff. And that's when I'll realize like, Oh, you're probably tired. When I ignore that, I get sick or I get hurt and pretty much in that order too. So that's something for me is like, you just really, really need to pay attention and listen to your mind and body. This is the last thing I'm going to say about this point. I feel like everybody has a level of like, they err more on the side of it. I'm sorry to be crass, but they err more

of the side of pussy. And some people err on more of the side of hardhead. All right. And the hardheads are the ones who are like, they blow out after a few years because they've been over training and people on the hard side of the pussy, they don't end up making any progress because maybe they don't end up doing anything that they're supposed to do. And they're like, I'm not making any progress. So I think one thing that you can do, and you kind of asked this, Jimmy, is go in. Maybe if on a certain day, if you're not feeling it, go into the gym. Just see how you feel.

Move around some weight. Get some blood flowing. Because you might get some blood flowing. You're like, oh, okay. It was there. I was just being a little busy. Or you might go in and be like, oh, fuck. I was right. I don't have it today busy. Or you might go in and be like, oh, fuck, I was right.

I don't have it today. I need to get the fuck out of here. So maybe still try to go, go into your jujitsu session, your lifting session, and just see how you feel and progress accordingly. But back off when you know you got to back off.

That's smart. I like that answer. Yeah, all right. Okay, cool. Let's see here from Gasparler Enzo1. Power Project family, your normal shoes are making you weak. This is why I partner with Vivo Barefoot Shoes because they have a wide toe box, they're flat, and they're flexible. So with every single step you're taking, if you're taking a 10-minute

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sprinting on a assault bike or some random sprinting here and there but if you're doing like hard sprints it's very fatiguing very fat fatiguing. And that'll, that'll impact your training quite a bit, especially if you don't train sprinting often. So if that's a skill you want to build, cool. It's each to an individual, but just understand that like, if you sprint, you want to baby yourself. Okay. If you haven't been sprinting and I've made this mistake where you're just like, I got this, let's go sprint at a hundred percent. And you pull a hammy like I did. That's because you're going too going too intense too quickly so just like everything we've been talking about if you want to do that you can just modulate your intensity of your sprints maybe 60 60 percent right um and just pay attention to how wreck how it like has an effect on your lifting and your jujitsu because it is a very

fatiguing thing to do sprints you mentioned mentioned the echo bike, which is great. If you're thinking about sprinting, it's super important to think about the reason why you want to start sprinting is because you want to have a faster paced gas tank, or at least be able to hit some of those higher intensities and then pick the modality that works best for you. You know, we've all been there before. Like we catch this train that Mark is on, on running. Then he starts doing some sprints. He's been working on it for six months and we jump in like, all right, yeah, Mark, you know, we've all been there before. Like we catch this train that Mark is on, on running, and then he starts doing some sprints. He's been working on it for six months and we jump in like, all right, yeah, Mark, you know, what's up? I'll sprint with you. And then you, you know, you pull your hamstring, but you can go pretty hard in the paint on a rower, a skier, a fan bike, and still get some of the benefits of sprinting without necessarily blowing your hamstring off. Right. Yeah. I would say Mark and I also talked about this, the risk to reward for sprinting,

you know, per person can be maybe more than it's worth actually doing me recently. I've been sprinting just to kind of prove that I could after the injury, but I would say having something like an echo bike or a sled, because I think the main reason people get injured when they, when they sprint is they're not warmed up enough. Theirstrings aren't trained enough and then they're requiring those muscles of fire like super super fast so it's not even a aspect of strength that's the issue because you could have a really strong power lifter with really strong hamstrings take off in a sprint and they pull it but it's requiring the muscle fibers to like fire very very quickly unexpectedly kind of that's that's what a sprint is so if you have something like a weighted sled

that you can still sprint through but it slows it down to the point that's much safer and if anything technically theoretically carrying over into the sprint a weighted sled sprint would make you faster at the sprint without actually having to do it and you progress with strength too which is going to be a little bit more applicable to grappling if this is where it's coming from, because I relate forward sled to takedowns, guard passing, like your upper body is stabilizing something, whereas your feet are continuously pushing and you're putting your body weight forward into something. So I think the forward sled probably, if I were to rank them, outweighs them even more than sprinting a little bit, to be honest, Echo Bike or what have you. Even backwards running, I'd do probably before a sprint consistently, unless you're a sprinter, unless you're an Olympic weightlifter.

What are your goals? Is it worth doing the actual skill and then risking hurting yourself? Or would you rather find a variation that's safer that you can possibly get even more benefit from? All right, from Johnny Drama, do you still do conventional gym lifting slash bodybuilding or all mobility training and jujitsu now? I'm gonna keep it short. I still do lifting. I still do bodybuilding movements.

But the main concept I try to keep with all the things that I do is I just try to have a longer range of motion and controlling the load with that movement. The main reason I increase the range of motion with those movements is because in jujitsu, a lot of the things you're going to be doing are in long ranges of motion. You're supposed to be strong in awkward positions, and that's what I do try to do. So when I do a lot of movements, I really do try to take it to kind of an extended range of motion. Yep. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. If you structure your training right, you can

still get the benefits of bodybuilding, conventional strength training, and mobility as well. From Sam underscore P underscore Robinson, my bad, it just simply says neck strength and stretches. Which I'm really curious

because right now my neck's jacked. When it comes to neck strength, there's so many neck injuries in jujitsu and some things that can help you be better prepared to withstand the stressors of jujitsu, specifically in your neck. It's just developing isometric strength. You don't need to start out right away with doing all these crazy neck bridges and putting yourself into compromised positions in flexion or extension, but just doing either a neck plank or maybe even doing something like an iron neck and just holding your head and isometrically strengthening the muscles of your neck is a great place to start. Then also just, you know, making sure that when you're on the mat in training, if someone has your neck locked up and you can't escape, you might as well just tap. You don't need to wait until the cloud starts, you know, closing in and you're going to pass out before you tap. You can just tap earlier and start the rollover and go again.

Yeah, easy enough. If you don't use the muscle, then it's probably going to start hurting. And I would go on to say that most people just don't work out or even move their neck that much for that matter. So just moving your neck and all the directions that it can move can be started out as a beginner exercise. And then naturally finding a way to progress that with resistance, be it a band, iron neck, plate on your head with a towel underneath, anything like that. There's a specific product that's like a plate loaded. Oh, yeah. You guys have it, right? Yeah. Do you know what the name of it is?

The strong neck? Strong neck? Yep. The strong neck is another tool. So the iron neck is nice, but it's a little bit expensive. The strong neck is very inexpensive, and you can load that bitch up. All righty. So Physiera 5, what are some great exercises for ankle mobility that you recommend?

So I won't necessarily recommend exercises. I'll just recommend habits. For example, sitting in Seiza, certain parts during the day, which means get sitting on top of your ankles, um, maybe get a slant board and you can do some, uh, like if you put your foot on the slant board and you do a lunge towards it, you can with load move, uh, have, what is it? Ankle dorsiflexion. Yeah. You can work that range too. Um, but I just find that doing like sitting in SESA and trying to do those things, like even sitting in a squat or sitting in a, uh, an extended lunge where there's a bit of weight on the ankles that tends to be pretty beneficial. Yeah. I would just add in as far as traditional lifting movements, any type of

toe elevated calf raise, you can do that straight legged or my favorite personally is a KOT knee over toe calf raise where you're maximizing how far you can send your knee over your toe before your heel has to lift up. That's going to load the Achilles tendon. And then from there, you're performing your traditional calf raise. That's one of my favorites. Cool. All righty. Is overhead strength important for jujitsu? Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of people that I've heard say that overhead strength isn't as important for jiu-jitsu athletes because you're not always going overhead, but your arms are able to move overhead, so you should develop strength in that range of motion.

It's only going to help you be a better athlete and help decrease the risk of injury. Cool. That also ties into pulling movements too, not just pressing, you know. Yeah. I dig it. All not just pressing, you know? Yeah. So. I dig it. All right. Where did you, oh, you moved it.

All right. From Ella Bizer. Sorry, I can't read. What are your favorite assault bike workouts for BJJ endurance? I personally like to do assault bike hit. So I have a heart rate monitor from this company called Morpheus. It's from Joel Jamison, who works with a lot of athletes.

The cool thing is that with that heart rate monitor, you don't have to pay a membership. You can just see what's going on right there and then. Um, but when I do a salt bike workouts, I typically like to have a high intensity portion. So that might be 20 seconds or 30 seconds. And then my rest portion might be double that. And I'll do that for different cycles. So maybe it'll be 40 seconds hard, right? And then maybe 80 seconds rest, 30 seconds hard, 60 seconds rest. And I'll do that for multiple, maybe eight, nine, 10 cycles. But when you start out, you might want to start with five or six cycles. And what I pay attention to, and this is something that I've done with Andrew, is keeping a consistent wattage for your high intensity bouts on the assault bike. So that

might mean that maybe on your 40 second bout, it's very difficult. Maybe your goal is to try not to go under 500 Watts on the assault bike. And then on your 30 second bout, try not to go under 600 Watts for your 20 second bout. Try not to go under 700, 700 Watts. Keep an eye on your heart rate. But I like to do that just so that in those different segments, I have a consistent output. And I have found that now when I go to the mats, I can have potentially higher consistent output for certain types of bouts of intensity than I had before. Cool. All right. Yeah. Do you want, okay, so I'll just ask this one and then if you guys can decide, how can I build up an aerobic base for rolling?

Roll more often? Yeah, I think the simple answer to that is roll more often for sure. Obviously, the takeaway from that is the more you roll, the more chances you have to get injured. Something in wrestling that we do, I'll answer this real fast, is called play wrestling. I learned it from one of my buddies that wrestled at West Point. And it's in some ways harder than real wrestling, like live wrestling, but you're just constantly like hitting moves. You can equate it to flow rolling, but at a much higher pace.

And so if you have a cooperative partner that's willing to do that with you, just being able to consistently hit movement to movement for time sessions could tie very well into your actual rolling without necessarily having to risk the injury that is associated with like hard rounds. Okay. Yeah. One thing I'll say is like, also, you know, when you're first starting out in jujitsu, even on the, on the rounds that you might be feeling tired, you've done it for a few rounds and you feel tired, maybe do the next round, but try to modulate your intensity. So don't try to push everything. And if you get in a bad position, try to technique your way out of it without using too much energy. That'll be something that over time, your gas tank

will get better, even if you try not to stop when you're tired. But we do have a tendency initially to just like, and this is where you kind of got to be smart, but we have a tendency to, if we're feeling a bit tired, okay, we won't do the next roll. Sometimes that's a good decision, but sometimes that could be stopping you from being able to build more capacity. All right. From beta underscore ray underscore chill. Best way to remind yourself to breathe through your nose during a hard roll. Josh?

This may sound like maybe a little bit arrogant, but just keep your mouth shut. Like every time you open your mouth, just remember like, oh, I got to keep my mouth shut. And, you know, maybe it will help to have a training partner where you guys are working on it together. And every time you get your training partner to open their mouth and start breathing, be like, look, dog, you better close that mouth. And, you know, they could, you know, keep you accountable in the same way. So that'd be my advice. We talked a lot about nasal breathing on this podcast. We've had a lot of guests like Patch McEwen, James Nestor,

Belisa Vranich, many professionals that have come on and talked about the benefits of nasal breathing. And I started focusing on that a few years ago with Jiu-Jitsu. I'm a pretty big guy and usually big guys gas out. But as I focused on nasal breathing while rolling, I don't have the tendency of gassing out easy. And usually when I roll, I'll see my opponents start opening their mouth

and breathing faster than I do because I've been focusing on breathing through my nose. I also use mouth tape at night when I sleep. So I breathe through my nose when I sleep. A lot of us have the tendency of opening our mouth and snoring when we sleep, which affects our sleep quality. We've talked about that before. But breathing through your nose with jujitsu

or any type of cardiovascular bout is a long-term skill that takes a while to build. But when you're at the point where you can breathe in your diaphragm and your nose and relax fashion while doing high intensity work, you'll find that a lot of that work ends up being a lot easier. I have a question. If somebody has literally done nothing but snore their whole life and they jump straight into like the mouth tape, is that like dangerous? Cause I, I feel like you would just die, honestly. But is there a progression in that, or can you just start and you'll be okay?

Andrew, I think you have some good bits on this. Yeah, I actually still snore a lot to this day, but I dove right into mouth tape, and what happens is your body or whatever happens, like your nasal passageways just kind of open up because your body's like, well, this nasal passageways just kind of open up because your body's like, well, this is the only way for me to get it. So it's going to work. Uh, the other thing is if like, you're still a little bit on the fence and that sounds a little scary is like,

just throw it on during the day and realize that like you can survive without breathing through your mouth. And then that will also train you because it's still a muscle. And so that's going to get you to micro dose and do all the stuff that we've been talking about on this podcast. Uh, just breathing through your nose and doing it for a little bit. Okay. Hostage change has nasal strips that Mark uses. Andrew uses a lot of people use.

It helps open up your nasal passageway. Just makes it easier for those of you have a little bit of difficulty breathing through the nose. It makes it easier for you to breathe through your nose. So that could be something you use during the day. So you get used to breathing through your nose. And if you are a mouth breather, just learn how to during the day, shut your mouth. All right. Is zone two cardio good for jujitsu athletes? Yes, it can be super beneficial for those of you who are unaware

zone two conditioning or zone two cardio is essentially anything that you can do where you can maintain a conversation. So that can be running on the treadmill or dragging a sled, even doing some light GPP weightlifting stuff in the gym. I think the biggest misconception that jujitsu athletes have with zone two cardio is that it has to be running and jujitsu athletes may not be physically prepared to run for 30, 45 minutes, but they could a circuit style for 30, 45 minutes and build up a lot of zone two conditioning that way. So it is very beneficial. It's great for increasing your aerobic base as a grappling athlete. It just doesn't always have to be running. Cool. Got it. All right. Cool. From sun underscore fire, underscore me, underscore sleep, sunfire me sleep. Nice. Is there anyone who shouldn't do jujitsu example certain past injuries etc what do you guys think probably that you could probably take somebody out there you know with

like no legs or a heart or something you know but hey my boy tyler uh tyler bray yeah he has spina bifida and he like he well yeah but But I get what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, probably you could, somebody, maybe somebody on their deathbed that probably has like a day left might be too, too late. Right. But I would say most people could probably find a way based upon all the things that we've said already.

If you implement that concept of regression and progression and being able to manage the type of training volume you're doing most anybody could do it and that's where tap early tapped often comes into play like it's okay to like if somebody just grabs something just tap tap tap that's what i had to do with my knee you know so if you have a bad injury to your neck hip whatever just tap tap tap tap tap and just get used to saying that and that's okay you know and over time the injuries that you may have will get better because i've had people that have messaged said, Oh, I have this knee injury. I have this back thing. Just go in and start at your own pace. Don't try to bite off more. You can chew and you can practice

because if you do jujitsu, the goal, at least my personal goal is to do it for the rest of my life. So I might have these injuries here and there. You might have injuries here and there, but your goal is to get past those injuries over time. Um, and also there are so many different positions in jujitsu. Like I know guys who only play half guard because there are just certain things that they can't do in other positions. So they're half guard annoyances, but there's a lot of positions in jujitsu that you can do and modify for your body.

So that's something to keep in mind. Yeah. I would just tell the person on the deathbed to pull guard. Don't pull the plug, pull guard. Oh, I'm going to butcher this one from Michael Tigchelar. How was your first jujitsu lesson? I want to start it. I want to start it too. And I'm really curious about that. Oh, my first jujitsu lesson, I got my ass beat and I got my ass beat for like a continued good year and a half for, you know, and the fun, the fun thing about jujitsu is I started at 265

coming straight from powerlifting, very strong and guys that are like 160 were handing me my dick. You know what I mean? They were just really just giving it to me every single day. And it sounds as bad as I'm making it sound. Cause that's how it felt to me. It's just how it is. And the people that are able to last through that, those are the people that are able to stick with jujitsu and ends up becoming really fun. But a lot of people do not like being humiliated on a daily basis. And that's just something you come to terms with.

Yeah, I would just say for me, maybe not as close to his just because of the wrestling experience coming in. But with that said, being a wrestler and being a bigger stronger guy i remember going against certain individuals that were 150 160 pounds and i was thinking to myself like i i shouldn't be having to try this harder this shouldn't be this hard you know that type of thing and having to understand how the guy that's so much smaller

than you or even in a lot of cases females females are handing you your said dick, you know, and, and being able to, you know, imagine them actually saying that after your first session, you're like, here's your dick. Hey, I ripped this off when you tapped. I'm sorry. You can have it back though. That's how it feels, man. That's just how it feels. Literally. Yeah, so it's a huge ego hit, and you just have to understand that going into it.

There's a lot of gym bros that come in, and they try jiu-jitsu, and that same process happens. And if they're not ready or expecting that, then it's very rare to see them be consistent over time. You will inevitably get better. And inevitably, if you're coming in as a gym bro, your size and strength will probably play some sort of advantage at some point,

but you have to give it time to actually flourish. And so that's the biggest thing with anyone is just literally expect the ego hit, be ready to accept that it's okay to lose. And actually being at New Wave now, it's been really refreshing because I've had to apply these white belt concepts or bits of advice that i'm giving to the people here to myself on a daily basis like no i'm gonna get get tat probably up to 10 10 times a day you know i'm probably gonna lose every single round like that's that's good that's good that's how you get better that's okay and understanding that josh your first time my experience was a little bit different uh than

jimmy and insema's I had wrestled too before I started jiu-jitsu coincidentally my first jiu-jitsu class was with all white belts and they didn't let us roll the first day which I think was so smart so the first maybe like three four maybe even five jiu-jitsu classes that I took we didn't do any rolling even though I felt totally comfortable rolling. Cause I came from wrestling. It was a good reminder right from the jump to say like, Hey, we're going to slow things down. And since everybody here is new to jujitsu, we're only going to work on the technique. And that was, you know, the process for the first few sessions. And then we started slowly implementing some live rolling. And I think it's important that if you're taking your first jujitsu

class, it's good to have the expectation that you probably aren't going to roll the first day or at least shouldn't roll the first day. I've seen, unfortunately, a lot of people try jujitsu and get injured their first day because either the instructor doesn't care to pay attention to the newest person who isn't familiar with rolling or there isn't a process to help get that new individual in the position to where, hey, this is called live rolling. It's going to be a little bit more intense than just the practice that we did for the last 30 minutes. If something hurts, it's okay to tap. If you don't know what something is, you might as well just tap and everyone here should be willing and able to help you work

through this process. And over the next couple of weeks, you know, the goal will be to get you comfortable with doing some form of live rolling, but just know that today on your first day, we're going to take it super, super, super slow. That way you decrease your risk of injury. I want to add something real quick. Um, especially if you come in as a white belt over at our school at Casio running jujitsu in Sacramento, Casio does not allow white belts to roll with white belts. And that is the very, that is a smart move. Um, because he has a lot of upper belts in the class and the smartest people and the best people that are going to be, you're to be able to train with are upper belts because they know what's safe. They know what's not safe.

They know when you're doing something stupid. But a fellow white belt typically doesn't understand enough to be able to be like, oh, I'm pushing into this arm bar. And it's just if you can, try to roll with upper belts. If your school is set up where white belts can roll with white belts, again, if there's a curriculum and everybody understands it, that can be safe, but I would err on the side of trying to train with people that are better than you because they'll be able to really poke out things that you should be working on. So that's something to keep in mind. Then also realize that you don't have to roll with everyone that asks you to roll. Okay. There are certain people that don't roll with me, even though I'm a very safe training partner, I'm also 250 pounds and they don't want to roll with

me. And I respect that. So you don't have to say yes to every single person that chooses to roll with you or that you, that asked to roll with you. But something to think about is if you do want to get better, you do need some training partners that are going to push you. So something to keep in mind. I was, go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say as a woman too, like especially apply that for sure. Cause obviously the woman in jujitsu is not a very high number at your average school. So you'll be forced to roll with guys. And if you know a guy that's spazzy or you're not sure of a guy or you're not sure of his looks or whatever, just it's okay to say no or it's okay to sit down and watch or whatever the case may be.

Or even one thing that I advise students back home was, you know, if you're a female and somebody asks you to roll and you're not comfortable with it, just say, oh no, I'm going to roll with my instructor. And then just ask the instructor, if the instructors are going to instructor, then they'll, they'll roll with you and you trust the instructor hopefully. Right. So those are, those are little strategies that just help women specifically, or even just like a smaller, maybe not as confident male, uh, get used to rolling without having to worry about always being like overpowered, dominated or hurt. Yeah. I have prior to jujitsu, I had zero grappling experience. So my first exposure, I was super scared. I was extremely nervous, had no idea what I was doing. I wish it was only technique, but we kind of did a second of

technique and then, all right, let's go ahead and roll. Um, and so just a forewarning for anybody that's new, I had the absolute worst mat burn on my feet. I literally couldn't even walk. It was so bad. So don't drag your feet is all I'm going to say. It sounds very, very simple, but nobody told me. And so here I am telling you guys.

From Bev Yer, how to retain techniques in jujitsu. When I roll, I can only remember some movements. Same here, bro. I picked this up from you and Seema. I started filming all of my training sessions in 2019. So I have probably like 95% of every training session that I've done over the last four years. And even though not all of those videos

are always going to be best to watch back because you roll out a frame or someone sits right in front of your camera, which is kind of frustrating. You at least are able to look back at what you were doing because oftentimes you only remember getting tapped or you only remember tapping somebody else, which is great. It's good to remember those things and track those wins or track those marks of progress. But if you miss the important part that got you to the submission, like, I don't remember how I passed that guy's guard, but I tapped him from out. It's like, well, it'd be good to have a video to look back and watch like, okay, this is how I got past his legs. Or this is how he escaped a certain position. This is how, you know, this person likes

to do this sweep, which I've been working on and I can't get, but he gets it every time. So having some form of feedback that you can reflect back on is, in my opinion, a great way to start retaining techniques and also looking at your performance and monitoring progress over time. And I'll say I wasn't a former grappler before starting jujitsu. And when you're a white belt and you're just starting, jujitsu is like having a high-power fire hydrant being just sprayed at you. And that's how you feel. hydrant being just sprayed at you and there's that's how you feel and nothing will really sink in um for a while because you're learning so many things grappling is not like boxing where punching is like second nature so you just need to continue going to practice trying to learn the ask questions that's one big thing that helped me i'd ask questions after every single role

um and just understand that it takes time to understand a base level of grappling because it's like a language. As you speak it more, as you do it more, you start to become more fluent and then you can actually learn new words. And when you hear a word, you can then understand it. When you see a move, you can understand what's going on. The second thing I think might be very beneficial is specific training. That means that when you're now sparring, you don't always have to go into a specific spar. You can tell your sparring partner, can you just start off in side control? Or can I start off in your close guard? Or can we start in this position? Because if there's a specific position that you're trying to work, if you're just sparring and you're not being able to do anything specific, you might never get into that position on that day. But if

you're trying to work on your close guard, you can just tell your training partner, please start in my close guard. And then you can start to progress that specific goal for the period of time that you're trying to work on it. Yeah, I would say think about it in levels. So learning, you have the teaching environment. Then you have the drilling environment. To his point, doing the move that you just learned and drilled in a positional controlled round, like if it's a choke from the back, starting on the back and practicing, going for that specific choke. So you have repetition in the live atmosphere. And then the step past that would be, be able to tie it all together in a, in a full live round.

And each one of those progressions to me kind of like puts a little wrinkle in my, in my brain that kind of cements that I've always, I've always said this, but even back in high school, I would say if I learned to move and I made it a point to hit it in live double leg, single leg, whatever it was, it was like the equivalent of doing 50 repetitions and drilling for whatever reason, that one single move that I hit in live just stuck. And not to say that you shouldn't drill, but I think the more and more and more you can hit something in live as it naturally happens, the more likely it is to stick regardless. The videos are amazing. The questions amazing. You know, know i would i would

weigh what i'm saying right now over like note taking to be honest with you like making it like literally stick application depending upon the type of learner you are but that's what's worked best for me yeah i like video because i can also send you guys like hey how come this isn't working or how come he got this on me because i can't even formulate the correct question but i can show you like hey i got smoked here can you help me understand why so i film my yeah my training as well yeah if you can film every single role then i would say do it 100 okay cool good to move on yes all right from live fuck from leviathan lifts uh what advice do you have for someone who comes from a powerlifting background who is looking into getting jujitsu? Uh, PS, this podcast has changed my life and built a foundation of great habits that have made me a better athlete and happier human.

Hell yeah. The first, I'll just be quick with this. The first thing I'll say is jujitsu, especially when you're not a former grappler, it will have wear and tear on your body. You'll be feeling things that you have never felt before because your body's moving into positions that's never been in before that's going to happen is now your gym training and your lifts are going to take a hit that is okay that'll happen for a period of time but when your body gets used to the rigors of jujitsu and the martial art and it doesn't end up fatiguing you as much over time maybe over six months or whatever you'll get back to the gym and you'll start to be able to do the four numbers that you're doing before. But just try to disconnect yourself a

little bit from the former power lifting numbers you've had while your body gets used to the stresses of jujitsu. Cause that's why a lot of people quit. They don't allow their body time to adapt to the stresses. Something else takes a hit. They're like, oh, this jujitsu shit's not just for me. And then they go right back to the gym. Yeah. A hundred percent. I, my first, maybe year and a half of jujitsu was kind of just what he just said. And I noticed most people, bodybuilding or powerlifting, they want to do jiu-jitsu and they try it, and then they see their numbers go down or what have you,

and then they're like, oh, no, I can't do it. We got to go straight back. You like resort back to running to where you came from instead of giving it the chance to flourish. Because, I mean, come on, there's so many people out there that have proven it's possible put on muscle while doing jiu-jitsu get stronger while doing jiu-jitsu so it's not like it's not like at a certain point you're just going to hit a wall and just get weak all of a sudden that's just nonsense but just give yourself give yourself the chance like stick it through right that's where we get stronger as

people mentally so why not just use that and make application in it for this specific scenario? Yeah. I think to your guys' point and Mr. Leviathan lifts, go back on Jimmy and Nsema's YouTube channels because I think you guys both have videos of your first jiu-jitsu experience or what it was like to be in that mindset, first starting jiu-jitsu as a strength athlete. That is huge.

When you guys started, there wasn't really any of that. You guys are some of the first strength athletes to transition into jujitsu and be very open about what your experience was like. Instead of looking to where Jimmy and Nsema are at now, go back, filter their YouTube videos, go all the way back to the beginning and watch Nsema's video on what it was like. Like, hey, this is what it was like for me as a strength athlete doing jujitsu for the first time. Watch Jimmy's videos about what it was like for him the first time he did jujitsu.

That's a great way to learn and start to get a better understanding of what you can expect and also learn from some of their mistakes and hopefully not make those mistakes yourself. We'll put those in the description. Cool. From Sloan's Abroad.

Pat Projafemi, how's it going? Now we talk about sleep all the time on the podcast because it's one of the biggest things Cool. From Sloan's Abroad. amount of times it takes you to fall asleep, your tosses and turns, your heart rate variability. It changes its temperature through the night based off how you sleep, but not only yourself, but maybe your partner on the other side of the bed. It is an amazing mattress. Andrew, how can they learn more? Yes. Head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. That's 8 spelled out E-I-G-H-T sleep.com slash power project. Along with more information, you guys will actually save $150 off of your entire order automatically. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. My son is about to start jiu-jitsu here in South Korea. We are 100% new to jiu-jitsu.

Is there anything an 11-year-old should know before he goes? I think that's a question for you, Jimmy. You did a lot of kids training in Arizona. You know, I think so much of that comes down to the instructor because, and it depends on the type of child you're dealing with, but the instructor in itself. So my advice to you as a parent is to take your time picking a gym and make sure you pick a gym where you can see and observe. And also a step, a step before that, like there's nothing wrong with you literally just

sitting in on a class, even without your child, just to see how the instructor teaches, because depending upon the child that you have in their personality, they may respond well to certain instructors and not so well to others. To me, the instructor needs to be able to maintain a strict environment, but also keep it fun. Because if you come in there like a drill sergeant, that just turns so many different kids off and their kids. So they just accept it for what it is. And they almost equate it to school, but that's the problem. You don't want kids to think about jujitsu as school. It's when kids spend all day at school and then they come to class and then they're under a drill instructor that just, just drill, drill drills. And then they come to class and then they're under a drill instructor that just, just drill, drill drills.

And then all of a sudden you just see like the light in their eyes go from learning jujitsu. This is fun to school homework. And you have to be able to decipher the difference when you're, when you're dealing with children. That's the most important thing. So as a parent, I'm looking for somebody that takes time to get down to the kid's level, make them laugh, joke around a little to the kids level, make them laugh, joke around a little bit, make them, make them feel comfortable in the environment, right? Cause there's so many different types of kids.

I had, I had one of my favorite kids back home. It took maybe like four weeks to really get him comfortable to where he wasn't, he wasn't crying every single class. And I, and I had to like start with, I was his partner and then we worked his brothers and being his partner. And then eventually month or week four came around we finally got him open to going with another kid but he would have not even been willing to go through that process had I not put the extra effort in early on to like progress literally progression is the whole thing of this con the

podcast sorry is knowing how to progress each individual kid. And you don't get that unless you have an instructor that truly gives a shit. How about keeping him? Yeah. How about keeping him interested though? Like, and making it fun and making sure that he keeps coming back. Cause I see that a lot. So I'll give you some examples. I would do my little kids class, Toriondo passing, right? Pushing the knee, Jay camping, as Gorn and Ryan talks about. Okay, we're going to move the knees to the left and then push them down. And then look, ring around the Rosie, ring around the Rosie. All of a sudden, kids, boom, ring around the Rosie.

They're laughing, but they're doing it correctly. And they don't think about it as jujitsu. They don't think about it as school. This is fun, but they're doing the movement. And the movement is what's important. If you're having your kid in jujitsu at a young age, the most important thing that they can get out of it is learning how to be around their peers, learning how to apply all the different concepts that come with the workout that the jujitsu teaches. The jujitsu is literally the

last priority. It doesn't matter if it's jujitsu, if it's soccer, it doesn't really matter. It's what does the jujitsu allow the kid to learn and apply that brings them into adulthood. That's the most important part about what jujitsu does for the kid. So, again, you make it relative to what they know, what they like. Get to know the kids. Spend time talking to the kids. Talk to their parents. Get to know and build relationships.

That's what an instructor that gives a shit does when it comes to leading a kid's class. How about some mistakes? He's all fired up. How about some mistakes that parents make? Um, so let's see. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. No, I can. Yeah. Sorry. There's a, there's a story behind that one. Anyways. Um, so I would say, yeah, it's important because I think a lot of parents come in and they want their kids to be disciplined, which is perfect. That's exactly what it should do. But also, again, maintaining a level of fun. I think a lot of kids like just do whatever to my kid, like make him run, make him sprint, all that.

And like maybe has a time and place. just do whatever to my kid like make him run make him sprint all that and like maybe has a time and place but the the kid enjoying coming and having fun and prioritizing fun and jujitsu is where they're going to maximize what jujitsu can give them they have heart elements all right kids we're gonna everybody sprint down and back until i say stop but i'm saying it like we're having fun versus i'm saying it like run down and back quiet you know so like sit on the bench right like there's a there's a difference that motivates kids want to keep coming and it motivates kids to then ask me as the instructor hey what about this tournament when the kid asks the instructor then then you got him sold then then they're bought in then

you got it you got a jiu jujitsu practitioner for life nearly guaranteed. And it's important to have the relationship with the instructor. And if the instructor doesn't work on building a relationship with the parent, my opinion is you need to find a different instructor because it's the same thing as why parent-teacher conferences are important and all those different things in school.

Like in order for the parent to really feel like they're giving their child to somebody they can trust, the instructor should put emphasis on talking to the parents, getting to know them, talking to them off hours, updating them on how their kids are doing. You're in a teacher role, you're in a coaching role, and with that is more than just, here's a technique, go do it. All right, bye, see you tomorrow. There's just so much more to the job than that and if you find an instructor that fits these certain criteria then you're at the right place solid all right cool from the romeo stone sorry dog don't apologize that was fantastic i got fucking fired up man i am fucking shaking yeah well i mean i'm getting i want my son to

start jiu-jitsu as soon as possible, so that's why those are mainly for me. Squeeze this. All right. From the Romeo Stone, for someone who has never trained jiu-jitsu but wants to, what should I be looking for in a jiu-jitsu gym when trying to make a choice? Two, what fitness level should I be at before starting jiu-jitsu gym when trying to make a choice to what fitness level should I be at before starting jujitsu? This is a great question. And this is one that, uh, I think we've, the three of us have been getting much more frequently because of how popular jujitsu is getting some things that you could look out for in to Jimmy's point is looking at the kids program. If there's a lot of kids or the kids program is really strong, that means that parents feel comfortable enough bringing their children to learn from some of these instructors, which is a good reflection on how the adult classes are going.

Other things to look at would be cleanliness. If the gym looks dirty, it's probably like a freaking dump and there's probably some goofy skin stuff on the mass that's rolling around. Other things that would be important to look at would be look at the position that the instructor has in the lives of everybody else if he's just a jiu-jitsu instructor and that's it that's a pretty good sign if this is their personal trainer and also legal advice person and also their marriage advice person and also someone that has like some weird authority complex outside of jiu-jitsu that's a huge red flag and then there's also little things like if you can only wear their branded stuff, you have to make that decision on your own,

if that's going to be a deal breaker for you. There's weird things about paying for promotions and things like that. Not that any of those things are enormous red flags, but you need to get that information before you commit to training at a school. You don't want to be in a position where you didn't know that going in and you train there for a couple of years and it's time for you to, you know, potentially get promoted to blue belt. And then you get hit out of the blue, like, oh, that's an extra a hundred bucks for a promotion fee. That would be pretty discouraging. And I've heard of a lot of people have had to change schools because of that, because the business owner or the head instructor wasn't upfront and transparent about the way things are done at the school. So those are all things to look out for. As far as fitness level, there is no minimum required fitness level. But one thing

that Matt winning says that I think is super important. He says, modify, don't miss. He says that quite often. So modify how modify the training to what your current fitness level is if you're just starting out. That shouldn't necessarily mean that you have to miss jujitsu altogether, but maybe take things way slower. Maybe you don't roll every six minute round that's available. Maybe you just watch the first day or maybe you just dial things back way, way, way, way, way, way back. That way you can have a little bit more of an enjoyable experience and have a much gradual introduction into jujitsu. Man, you killed that. I just want to echo down on that cleanliness thing, man. I've been to some jujitsu dungeons because I sometimes go to a few different schools and I can tell this is going to be a sketchy place to roll at. So there's this

company called Absolute Defense. They have this spray on foam and this is for everyone. I will spray that on my body, my neck, the back of my head, and anywhere that's exposed, especially when I'm going to a different gym that I don't know how their cleanliness is. Because, again, I've never had a ringworm doing jiu-jitsu. I've never had anything. Why?

Because I make sure my shit stays clean. I don't want that. So keep that in mind. Yeah, arm bar soap all day for me. Yeah, got to keep it clean. I'm an OG HIPAA cleanse guy, but that's like. HIPAA cleanse? It's just like what high school wrestlers would use back in my day.

It's like a can of shaving cream, right? Yeah, it works fine, I guess. But I need to upgrade for sure. All right, cool. From Muscle Bound Werb, does strength matter in jiu-jitsu and in actual fight? I'm personally going to keep it short. Strength does matter. The thing is

many of you might be coming from a strength background. Maybe you are strong. Maybe you are a lifter. Your strength can be something that makes your jiu-jitsu process and learning a little bit longer because being stronger can allow you to get away with a lot of things. It can allow you to just bench press somebody off side control or just do some wild spazzy type passing because you're a strong individual, but that is going to make it harder for you to learn good technique.

So my suggestion to some of you people who are already strength training, you're already very strong and you're moving into jujitsu, try to have that be your last resort for a lot of things. Try to do techniques and if it's not working technically, don't force it. Just try to have that be your last resort for a lot of things. Try to do techniques. And if it's not working technically, don't force it. Just try to better your technique because if you can then be strong and have good technique, you are extremely dangerous. Right. Yeah. How can somebody practice that, though?

Because if I'm, let's say I'm really, really flexible and somebody is like, hey, don't use your flexibility. Just focus on technique. I know that's a weird example, but if somebody is really strong, they're going to revert back to what they know and what they're good at. So, yeah, I would say a lot of times you hear you don't use strength. Don't use your strength. And as much as the principle behind that has its correct aspect, there's a part of that too that kind of gets the person to have a misconception of what that means like just don't use any strength or just lay there let the

person flip you type of thing i dealt with this a lot back home when i was training with my friend austin because he's strong as hell he's technical he's a competitor he's he's intense and i'd be trying to use technique and flow and certain things and then and then like i would just let him like sweep me like way too easily because i try to find the technical way out the technical way out is your priority but if you have a certain attribute flexibility speed but what what have you strength then it's it's about and this is experience this is really experienced but finding the happy medium between still using your best attribute especially if you want to carry it into something like a fight, it's not like, Hey dude, like I'm not, I'm strong, but I'm not going to use it on you. You know what I mean?

Uh, but with that said to like giving the time necessary to add to the technical side to it, it's, it's hard. Like I would describe it as if I'm going for a choke and I'm just like forcing it, I'm just like squeezing the guy's eye like this like maybe my technique's off a little bit right and the guy's like ow my fucking eye but at the same time it's like you gotta get under the neck to choke my guy

you know but also at the same time too if I'm going against a behemoth and I somehow put Big Dan in a choke like technique maybe not I might be squeezing the shit out of his neck. It's trying to actually get a choke on big Dan. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's, there's a point to where you use the technique to get there and then use the string to polish it

off. I will say like, like Jimmy said, it's an experience and a skill thing, but over time in jujitsu, there's a skill in learning how to relax and flow. Right. Um, so not everything takes a crazy amount of effort. If you are a 220 pound guy and you're rolling with a guy that's 160, 170 pounds, like something I keep in the back of my head is like, I should not be having to use a lot of energy to deal with this person. And that's in the back of my head.

Because if I'm starting to really pull and do things, I'm like, I'm doing too much in this room. Like I shouldn't be having to exert myself too much. And that's a skill. It doesn't happen immediately. That's just something that if you are a stronger person, you should just try to keep in the back of your head. And yeah,

there will be people that are say, Oh yeah, you're really strong. And that is a backhanded fucking compliment. Right. But keep in the back of your mind that like, I do want to try to get better technically because then when like your strength is always there,

it's not like your strength just disappears when you relax. But when you need to, when you need to do something, it's there. Right. I'm not saying punch a motherfucker. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just like when you need to, when you need to do something, it's there. Right. I'm not saying punch him on the face. That's not what I'm saying. I was like, if I got to do a little, you know, it's there.

Captain Insano. No, but with what he said, that's a great point. Cause the next, the next question is like, I poked the guy in the eye. Captain Insano. I got thrown out. To his point, yeah. So exactly. If I was rolling with my friend Matt or Josh, they're 160 or so pounds.

It would make sense for me to at least mentally try to bring myself to about 160 pound range. And when I roll with people that are smaller than me, I try to put about the same amount of resistance that I would assume that they feel. At a certain point, if I give them nothing, then it's not even beneficial to them. But then at the same time too, let's say your issue is you're the only big guy

at your school or the only strong guy at your school. At a certain point, you have to also mentally condition yourself to using your strength along with your technique, which is where open mat comes into play or whatever cross training that you can find if your gym doesn't currently have that. So you can practice that skill as well. Because one of the issues I ran into for a while was rolling with a lot of people that were just smaller and weaker than I, and I was working on being very technical. technical. But as soon as I had somebody match my technical ability and it was also just as strong and bigger, then I noticed like, oh, I'm not, I'm not rolling like I should be if I'm rolling with somebody that's just as strong or bigger than me. So both of which are very beneficial and both

should be practiced. I think it's important to pick good training partners. There's a lot of time that you could waste in jujitsu just by just rolling with whoever just asked you asked to roll or rolling with anybody that comes up to you i know for in semen ayakasas we have like a list of five guys that if they're there like we have to roll with them because that's where we're going to get the best training and getting the best training doesn't always mean that it's going to be some crazy war it's going to be the finals of some crazy tournament it means that like this person it this person ain't playing any games. Like I can try to like muscle my way through a guard pass or try to like, you know, overcompensate with,

with, with some strength. I think Julian is a great example. Julian's pretty damn strong in and of himself, but, uh, he's not a former power lifter. He's not a pro bodybuilder. And in Julian's case, he's so technically proficient that unless you come correct with the right technique, it's going to be really hard to make any advancements or progress rolling against a guy like that. So make sure you're picking training partners who are going to keep you honest. If you only roll with the guys who are smaller or weaker than you, then sure, you may get a small ego boost in tapping some smaller guys

or smoking a couple smaller, weaker individuals, but keep yourself honest with your training and pick the right training partners. Cool. Oh, yeah. All right, from Bamadi1, where were you boys at when you were 21? When did you really get into it all? I'm assuming he means fitness, but yeah.

When I was 21, I was pursuing natural bodybuilding. I think that might be the year I got my pro card in natural bodybuilding, and that was my focus at the time. I was also working as a trainer and I was working with clients online. I got into jujitsu at 23 years old and now I'm 30. So that was my progression with grappling. Jujitsu was at 23 and I started lifting when I was 13. So that's where my lifting started. But I've like, soccer was my main sport as a kid, played since I was six years old. where my lifting started, but I've like, soccer was my main sport as a kid, played since I was six years old. For me, that's actually pretty much when I started, I did jujitsu and turned

21, like a month or two after. So I was just entering jujitsu after I kind of, uh, started to get kind of tired of just powerlifting. So when I was 21, it was when I started here, I did, uh, I helped out with the seminar, the Stan Efferidean, Jesse Burdick, Mark Bell seminar. I think Ed Cohn was here too. And the next weekend was my 21st birthday. And that next weekend, I basically started my internship here. And at that point, I'd been doing jujitsu for about a year. But that whole 21st birthday month was a pretty pivotal month for the course of my entire life so

that's awesome yeah i was a pathetic loser at 21 so there's no need to get into it uh from hindi 89 what character are you playing in diablo and thanks to the power project uh team for helping me with my mental health all right i'll keep this quick i don't play it that much glad you played a bit i'm a druid that's what i'm fucking with right now. Alright. Some nerd shit. Let's move on. Alright. Incredible Hulk. I think that's what it's supposed to spell out. What barefoot sandals are your

favorite? Hell yeah. Here at the Power Project, we dig Shama sandals. We got some of those on our website, so you guys can check them out. You guys got any favorites? The ones you sent me, I liked a lot. Power sandal. So the Shamas. I don't wear sandals me, I liked a lot. Power sandal. Okay, so the shamans. I don't wear sandals, but I'll take some. My boy doesn't show his toes, which is fair.

That is fair. Let the dogs out. All right. The Kettle Bob. Been doing some Smooth Panther for over a year and just touched my chest to the floor on a pancake. All right. Sick. Yeah, Smooth Panther is a mobility thing.

It's on uh put the description below but it's like there's 30 mobility stretching whatever if you want a guided stretching mobility routine that's there it's fun fuck with it if you want to okay oh hell yeah from our roy melvin what's jimmy's favorite filipino food i i've always just been a big fan of chicken adobo to be honest with you. Yeah. Yeah. Just the, the taste, the taste.

Honestly, I've done it on prep a few times. It just, it just tastes really good. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. What's that blood stew that you guys have?

That's really good. It's like, it's like a dark, it's a stewy thing that you could put over rice and there's blood in it. Oh, to be honest, I don't know. You ever fuck with that bullet though?

Uh, no, I haven't. No, I haven't. We did on the podcast. Are we more Filipino that bullet though? No, I haven't. We did on the podcast. Are we more Filipino than Jimmy? I mean,

yeah, probably. What did you guys have on the podcast? We ate some bullet with Michael Horn. Michael Horn. He chose not to eat it yet, but we ate some bullet on air. Did you bring it or did you bring it?

Our boy Melvin brought it. I was going to say, you found it somewhere? He brought it for us. Lumpia is hella good too. Yeah, no doubt. All right. Again, for Mr. Badger, how do you stay hopeful about goals when you're feeling worthless and hopeless or hopeless? I think it's important to reorganize your expectations. I think we've all been in this

position where we're, the three of us are all extremely passionate about what we're doing. We're all basically working the job of our dreams. And because we're so passionate and because we love this stuff so much, we may take a lot of inspiration and motivation from people who are several steps ahead of us. And we'll often start comparing our progress to them. And that could be something that could be really discouraging because you feel like, what? How is Sebum a pro bodybuilder, youngest pro bodybuilder ever? He's way better than me. And it's like, well, you know, you got to monitor your expectations. How, you know, if you're looking at the best in the world, whether it's in jujitsu, lifting, fitness, business, whatever, and you're comparing your progress to them, you're going to set yourself up for some disappointment. And the

other thing that can help with as far as, you know, feeling hopeful about your goals is just to set smaller goals or intermediary goals in between the big goals that you, feeling hopeful about your goals is just to set smaller goals or intermediary goals in between the big goals that you have. So if your goal is to be a world champ, or your goal is to get your black belt, if your goal is to get your black belt, and you're only focused on getting closer to your black belt, and you completely forget that there are three other belts in between white belt and black belt, you may start to lose love for jujitsu, you may start to, you know, not care for it as much. But if your goal is just to say, okay, I just want to get one stripe on my white belt and move from there and maybe six months to a year into it, you get that first

stripe and say, okay, I need a second stripe. And then you progress from there. Right. Yeah. I'd say just bite off a little bit every single day. You know what I mean? Our boy Russ Swill has this phrase, get better today. So focus on what you can do today every single day. You know what I mean? Our boy Russ Swill has this phrase, get better today. So focus on what you can do today towards your goals. You know what I mean? And give yourself time.

Like a lot of people, they start lifting and they're like, I want to get big. And then year end, they've only gained a little bit of muscle and they're like, oh shit, this isn't, it's,

but, and they start comparing themselves to people who've been lifting for a decade plus. But you haven't given yourself the time to get better. So just like with jujitsu, with strength training, with all these things, give yourself the time to get better and just do a little bit each day to try to get towards that goal. There are going to be days where you think it's impossible, but you know people who've done it, meaning that it is possible to get there. So just keep giving yourself the time to improve because improvement takes time, consistency, and consistent effort. Cool. All right. From Jack Harris, 19, hot dog or hamburger? Hamburguesa.

Hamburguesa. Yeah, for sure. That's my 13-year-old or 14-year-old client from back home. Yeah, he's my little power lifter now. Yeah, he was one of my jujitsu students but hamburger typically yeah okay good of course I was about to A.O. this guy you know what I mean we don't fucking know glizzy not those glizzy gobblers

alright cool I think we can end on this one okay so it doesn't have a name, but how do you assess where you should be at each belt level? I'm a white belt, soon to be a blue belt, and I always feel like I'm not ready every time I'm promoted. Thanks for the content, guys. Y'all are the best.

You said something really good on the podcast yesterday about, like, belts. Right. Like, deserving of each belt or whatever. Yes. So when it comes to belts, my general background is that most people think I've promoted too fast and I've worked really, really hard to obtain a skill level that in my opinion, puts myself adequate up to most belts at each given belt level. But with that said too, you know, my perception of what a belt belt is is completely different than the next guy, especially if the next guy is a Purple Belt ADCC competitor under John Danaher. Your interpretation of what the belt means is neither necessarily right or wrong. It's just 100% independent to the individual in correlation to what the coach and the academy around them

defines. And so you could have somebody, again, we talked about big fish, small pond a lot yesterday. And so, you know, I was one of the better guys at my last school. And so my, my skill level represented that of a, of a black belt. But if I just transported myself to new wave and, and, you know, just randomly select what belt level that I'm at, I probably wouldn't have a black belt around my waist. I probably wouldn't have a belt around my waist anyways because there's no gear. But if I did, it probably wouldn't be black because the standards are different. You got competitors that are winning ADCC after ADCC that are just getting their black belt

or Luke and Dan just getting their purple or brown belt. So it's different. And also I think it's important that as a hobbyist, it's important to not necessarily compare yourself to guys like that all the time. Because it's very easy as somebody that's new in jiu-jitsu to see somebody like Dan get a purple belt a few months ago and be like, that's a purple belt? That's what I have to do to get a purple belt? Or what if I get a purple belt and I'm not like that? Do I deserve it? You know, that is one in a million. And the belt is not solely represented upon your skill level and correlation to other people. That's a element of it. But at the same

time, you got different elements of just character involved, consistency, what you can do for the students below you, like where you fall into an instructor role. Like a black belt has a bunch of different things. You can instruct people, you can lead by example, you lead by consistency, you lead by skill. For me in particular, one standard that I held myself to because I do prioritize competing is, okay, if I'm getting to the next belt level, like I need to make sure that I'm consistently beating, well, that belt level, obviously, and maybe a step above that for me to feel comfortable. And so that's one standard that I held myself to. And that kind of helped me despite all the, the haters online talking about X, Y, and Z, where I knew in my heart,

like, like I deserve this. You know, I had a, I got my Brown belt belt in two and a half years. The week after I got my brown belt, I went to train at Atos, and I rolled with all their world champions and stuff. One of the cooler moments was my video went viral, and then I had a bunch of people on there talking shit. Then Josh Hinger was one of the people that I rolled with when I was at Atos. He's like, I just rolled with this guy last week. We had a great round.

As far as I'm concerned, he's deserving of his belt. If you have a guy like that or a guy that you respect that says that you're deserving of said belt, well, then what the fuck does everyone else's opinion even matter? That's my opinion on belts. I think Jimmy brings up an amazing point. And kind of the last thing you had mentioned is just having trust in your instructor.

If you truly trust your instructor and he says you're a blue belt, well, you're a blue belt, right? All these people online aren't your instructor. All these people online aren't the one that you're paying to teach you these skills, right? So if your instructor says you're a blue belt, a purple belt, a brown belt, or a black belt, you know, if you trust them, then you could, you know, assume that they're correct in their assessment of you. And one thing that Casio says a lot, every time promotions come around where Nsema and I train is that as someone progresses through the ranks of the belt system, the standards of each belt become much more individualistic. What a brown belt is for Nsema is going to be very different than another guy who got promoted to brown belt on the exact same day.

And though the color of the belt is the same, and maybe they've been training at a similar, they've been training for a similar duration of time, maybe their priorities are different. Maybe their development in jujitsu specifically is different. But at the standards that our instructor Casio has, he has had a plan for Encima and he has reached that level of brown belt. He's had a plan for another guy that's different than Encima's, but on that plan, he's reached the rank of brown belt. Something that helped me out a lot when I started was by talking to my instructor, because it was very early that I realized that I really wanted to compete, and I wanted to compete at a very high level, at the highest level. So when I was a white belt, I was like, I asked Cassie about doing my first competition. He's like, oh yeah, go ahead. And then I told him like, I want to win the world at this level.

Like I want to get there. And every type of promotion has been based off of like, how are you doing around with certain types of blue belts, certain types of purple belts, certain types of brown belts. Because that is the goal. The goal is to be able to be extremely competitive in the Gi and Jiu Jitsu.

So if your goal is just to get better at Jiu Jitsu and you enjoy doing it and you enjoy the lifestyle, you don't plan on competing, just you can talk to your instructor. Ask them, hey, right now I just started. What do you think I need to focus on as far as my skill development? What would it take for me to be able to get to that next level? And they'll probably ask some tips for things that you need to focus on. But again, like everyone's saying here, I think it is good to have a relationship with your instructor so that if you're just doing jujitsu're just doing jujitsu and you're progressing, but you don't know what to do to get better.

You can ask them what it's going to take. You don't need to ask them how long it's going to take because that shouldn't matter. The amount of time it should take is it doesn't matter. But more so you should be wondering, what do you need to do to improve? Ask your professor, ask your training partners after every single role. And like Josh said, like we fucking love Casio. I trust Casio and everyone at that school trusts him too. But as we have so much trust in him,

we believe that when he promotes us, we are deserving of that promotion. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're all good here, right? Yeah,

guys, I hope you guys enjoyed this one. I, this is, this is sick. Yeah. You guys, both of you guys work with a lot of different grapplers.

But I think there's a lot of people that were listening that were able to get a lot from this. So, yeah. Let us know what you guys think in the comments. The Power Project Discord is down below. But Jimmy and Josh, where can people find you guys? Because you do work with a lot of grapplers. So, where can people find you and what you do? If you guys are interested in online coaching, you guys can apply on my website at jimmyhouse.com.

online coaching, you guys can apply on my website at jimmyhouse.com. If you guys are interested in following me on Instagram, that is at jhouse182, TikTok, jimmy underscore house and YouTube under jimmyhouse. You guys can follow me on Instagram and YouTube at Joshua Settledge. And if you go to either of those platforms, there's a link in either the description or the link in my bio where you can download a free four-week strength program to get started on building strength so you can win more matches and get injured less. And I'm Nseema Inyang. We've done so many episodes here on The Power Project. My YouTube channel is down below, but we have so many episodes to help you with your health, nutrition, lifestyle, all that type of good stuff. Please comment down below with any other questions that you guys might have, because I know

Josh, Jimmy, and myself will be stalking these comments to try to help all of you guys out, and we'll probably do something like this again sometime in the future. So comment down below. Let us know. Andrew. Yeah, I mean, we're all good. Real quick, just make sure you guys follow the podcast at MBPowerProject all over the place. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. I guess, Nseema, you want to do Mark's part?

Strength is never a weakness. I'm going to sound like Mark. Do I have a white mask? No. Strength is never a weakness weakness is never strength i'm and seema inyang and mark is gonna be here soon talk to you guys later bye