Kyle. Please don't.
This reminds me of an article I read recently by Greg Everett, where he was saying he'd trained a woman who couldn't lift a cast iron frying pan off the stove with one hand, she had to use both hands - but, he said, she set records in her class. He didn't name her or tell us her weight and age, so for all we know the records were 12yo 120kg girls or something. But either way, as I read the article, I just thought, "Are you saying that if she were stronger she'd be a worse weightlifter?"
Looking at Crowder's face while Rip was giving him shit about his lifting, I got the feeling it came down to, Crowder was happy to push hard in the dojo, but just didn't want to push hard under the bar. I don't think it's about what's optimal, it's about what you love doing. Which is fair enough, you do what you love. But don't pretend it's because it's optimal.
Kyle. Please don't.
Hey Mark - I saw an AAOS EMT Manual on the shelf behind you. Polishing up on your first-aid?
I have a hard time thinking of someone I've known who became a blue belt in 8 months that didn't begin with a solid background in another grappling art, but that's not quite germane to the conversation at hand. Here's something that perhaps is:
Mr. Crowder, I appreciate your perspective on these things, and I completely understand where you're coming from. I actually sometimes say that I'm glad I was weak when I began training BJJ. It forced me to learn really solid technique (at least for a white/blue/purple belt), since I didn't have the option of using poor technique + lots of strength to make up for it when training with pretty much anyone. (Still, it took me a year and a half to earn the blue belt).
It wasn't until I was in the middle of my purple belt and had successfully competed in a few amateur MMA fights that I realized I was too weak. I won the fights, but I was clearly under-strong in the cage in 3 of the 4 fights. I was both too weak for my weight class and in general. I saw a YouTube video of a guy who I had MMA opponents in common with deadlifting 400 lbs (I think he fought as a 140) and couldn't believe such strength was possible. That's actually how I came to find this website, Rip's books, buy a squat rack, train and coach friends, then others, then attended the seminar, etc...
I'm not by any means the most talented grappler in the world, but I am one who can tell you first-hand, that being a pretty strong 155 or 160 lb grappler is a much better thing to be than a weak 155 or 160 lb grappler, Mr. Crowder. Or a weak 135 lb grappler, a little stop I took along the way between when I was skinny-fat at my current weight and now.
More importantly, so can the guys I train with. In fact, they never shut up about how much tougher I am to deal with now. Not because I abandon technique for strength, but because I can use that strength to execute that technique.
I used to have to resort to playing my bottom game with absolutely everybody. Now, unless I'm either completely out-classed or give up the better part of 100 lbs, I get to play a lot of top game. I never got to play top game before. I never had a top game. Have my skills continued to improve? Sure, I like to think so, but so have everyone else's that have been there training alongside me. What's changed is that I was weak, and now I'm much less so.
It's not an either/or proposition. You don't have to choose between getting better mat skills and stronger muscles with which to execute them. Strong ain't wrong. Get your squat up to the mid-400's for sets of 5 across like Rip recommended and I'm willing to guarantee you'll draw the same conclusion.
Agreed. I can tell you exactly where that was for bird-boned, unathletic me.
Once I hit that 1100 or so total, it would take months for me to add any weight to my lifts. Even then it was relatively insignificant.
Bill Starr 5X5, Wendler's 321, even *gasp* WSBB.
If at any point I did 3 days of BJJ or more (which is not enough to progress significantly anyway) I would often get weaker. When I was hitting the mats 6 times a week, my game was advancing at an incredibly pace, but I'd be lucky to add 10lbs to my squat over the course of 6 months.
Again, huge advocate of barbell training. I've used my platform to try and advocate strength trainig for years. But if one can't look at that and say "okay, that's reasonable," then I'm afraid that you SS'ers won't be able to find commonality with many people.
I'd hate for the combat community to remain in the dark.
If anyone breaks a sweat here in responding, I think we're missing the point. We all agree on the fundamental premise: increasing maximal strength is key. After a certain point, raising your 10# 1RM squat will take too much time out of your sport, especially if you have to hold a weight class spot and can't just eat through the problem, so you'll try to maintain.
Sure, if you're blowing through PRs like tissue paper every time you hit the gym (ie: linear progression) and don't have to gain weight to continue to do so, you have no excuse to skip the gym. At the other extreme is 475X5 for a 220# roller. It will certainly transfer into some serious drive on the mat, but it takes a lot of maturity and intelligence (and some luck) to do both sports at the same time and make that target safely. If I've got a 20 year-old lifter/grappler/moron on an LP who keeps hurting himself on the mat because he's A) Too aggressive in sparring and B) Too stupid to program intelligently around practice (hint: me, many moons ago), I need to fix some other issues before I can get him safely rolling and gaining at the same time like Adam can.
And what I'm trying to tell you, ineffectively apparently, is that if this is the case you were training incorrectly, ineffectively, by yourself, failing to interface the sport practice and strength training without a good program and without effective coaching. You assume here that grappling practice requires effective coaching in a good gym, but that strength training is something anybody can just DO, by themselves, with WSBB's instructions for competitive powerlifters in the APF or Stronglifts 5x5. That's what you're failing to understand here.
Just like an expert grappling/BJJ instructor offers an expertise that is absolutely necessary to advancement in sports skills and proficiency, the strength to express these skills against a strong opponent must be developed under similar guidance, and you appear to remain satisfied with what you already know. I mean no disrespect by this, but it is a common characteristic among decent-level athletes.
Could we please stop referring to BJJ/MMA as "combat"? Thanks.
Good point, Will.