Category: The Owner’s Corner

I thought that it might be productive to do a short blog about Strength and Conditioning as it relates to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I’ve seen other articles similar to this but, perhaps I can have a little different take. My perspective comes as a Strength and Conditioning coach turned BJJ athlete. I want to take the approach that you might want to improve as an ATHLETE by doing some work outside of the Academy. Here is my thinking on this: any athletic endeavor or sport, that you participate in, will be improved IF you make yourself a better athlete overall. This is what we refer to as General Physical Preparedness (GPP). Having said that, I constantly hear Coach Rachel in my head saying “To get better at Jiu Jitsu, do more Jiu Jitsu”. I’m talking about ENHANCING your BJJ game by improving as an athlete. This approach is why in nearly every sport, athletes train outside of their sport specific training. Now, I will be the first person to tell you that we all have different needs to improve as athletes. To illustrate this, let’s compare two real life BJJ athletes. We will take a very simple approach here. Athlete 1: 5’8″, 155 lbs, low body fat percentage, very quick, explosive, fast, flexible Athlete 2: 6′, 240 lbs, higher body fat percentage, slow, not flexible, strong It’s obvious that the two athletes have very different areas to improve upon to get better overall. One should focus on getting stronger. The other should focus on shedding body fat by doing anaerobic training. Essentially, we want to identify an athlete’s weaknesses and train those weaknesses up. By proxy, increasing that athletes overall fitness. It’s really pretty simple when you think about it. But, what movements, lifts and exercises do we use? Again, I want to take a VERY simple approach. Let’s assume a very general scenario is of a BJJ athlete that trains Jiu Jitsu 3-5 times per week and has a full time career. I think that scenario fits a good number of our folks at TBJJA. If that athlete tells me that he or she can train toward general fitness an additional 3 hours per week. I think 3 hours is realistic and attainable for this individual. Again, this is a very simple approach. If an athlete wants to be a World Champion, she is single and doesn’t have a full time job, much more training is definitely called for. Having said all of that, I want to give you a short, simple list of movements and lifts that will absolutely improve you as an athlete. This is not an all encompassing list. This list will build a foundation from which you can build. Again, as I stated earlier, we all have different needs but, these movements are FOUNDATIONAL movements that everyone should start with. 1. Squat- specifically, the Back Squat. The undisputed king of strength building. Squatting is highly functional (meaning, it applies to the real world). One wives…

After a recent, minor illness, I’ve spent some time taking inventory of where I am physically. This included nutrition, rest and training.  It dawned on me that I have not had a real injury since around June 1998. That injury occured while I was in the Ranger Integration Program (RIP) while on active duty in the Army. I was 26 years old. I’m now 42. I have not trained non-stop since then and that was a long time ago so let me account for some of that time. After the injury forced an end to my career, I attempted to continue exercising for several years. That exercise included, typical body building weight training and the occasional 2 mile run. This was what I believed to be the correct way to go about being “fit”. I ate a low fat, high carb diet and eventually, I gained body fat, in spite of weekly exercise. The worst side effect of the added fat was that it made my back hurt so badly that exercise became out of the question. Nearly everything made me hurt. Sitting too long, standing too long and worse, moving too much would nearly debilitate me for the following day. So, I stopped moving. This would have been around 2005. To stay focused on my main points here, I won’t go in to what an utter train wreck I was at this point but, eventually I got tired of being tired. I stopped listening to what the doctors at Walter Reed had told me back in 1998-99. I decided to change everything. All of the things that I did are really a story for another day but, believe me, I changed it all. This would lead us up to about 2007. Since 2007, on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being extreme athlete stuff), I’ve trained between a 6 and a 9 continuously. Not only have I not had a single injury in that time but, my chronic back injury has done nothing but, improve over the years. I will be the first to admit that when people engage in physical activity they can get hurt. In fact, for nearly any athlete in any setting, over the course of years, you will get injured at some point. However, I also believe that, that injury possibility pales in comparison to how often you will get hurt AND SICK without exercise and training. So, I said all of that to share with you how I have avoided injury in all of these years. I got a coach– This is the thing that nearly every adult that “wants” to get in to shape will ignore, men most of all. Wether you want to admit it or not, your belief system is this:  “I’m a male and because I’m a male, I know what good exercise and training is”. Here is a news flash buddy, you are wrong. What you know about exercise isn’t a whole lot as compared to what a professional coach or trainer knows. For me,…

Yesterday I engaged in an interesting discussion about CrossFit judging, it’s impact on the Games and how it can be better. The discussion actually began about a particular top female athlete and her squat depth (or lack thereof) during the competition. Most online (read FaceBook) opinions usually regress to name calling, everyone claiming to be an expert, to name calling and then name calling. This one was different. Probably because of those involved. Primarily myself and Coach Aaron Martin of CrossFit Vector/Nashville Barbell have a mutual respect for one another so, we didn’t call each other names as often as most would. At any rate, after the discussion, my fellow coach and business partner Greg Boyd recommended that I put my perspective (and opinions) down on paper. So, here I am. One of the things that I dislike about internet experts is that they will usually give you their resume as a way of validating their opinions. While that makes sense, typically the resume and the opinion don’t really match up. As an example, I’m a professional firefighter and the price of tea in China should be 2 yen because I say so and I’m the expert. You get the drift. So, having said all of that I’m not going to lay out my life’s resume. But, I do want you to know a little of my experiences so that you can see my perspective. I am a coach and Co-Owner at CrossFit Combustion in Spring Hill, TN. I love being a coach. I hope that I am a good coach. I work extremely hard at it. The gym has invested thousands of dollars so that myself and my partner can learn from the best Olympic, weightlifting, mobility and CrossFit coaches in the country. But, coaching and competing in CrossFit only forms a portion of my perspective as it relates to the judging at the Games. I have about 15 years of experience as a baseball umpire. Between 2007 and 2013 I worked in Division 1 college baseball all over the southeastern U.S. I want you to notice something. I am not holding myself up as THE top expert in the world but I do have more training than most people when it comes to sports officiating. To say that I learned a ton working in baseball would be an understatement. I always tried to work with guys that had been further and worked bigger games than I had. I wanted to know what they knew. I was a pretty good Division 1 umpire and a very good small college umpire. Over the years (and many camps) I learned positioning, concentration on a whole other level, angles, dealing with conflict, how to lock-in, investing in my profession and on and on. The learning never stopped and the lessons never stopped. Two years ago I tried to work 3 jobs that I take very seriously. Those were as a professional firefighter, a gym co-owner/coach and a baseball umpire. What I found…