#24 Can You Touch Your Toes?

Sounds easy enough right? But can you touch your toes? There are many of our BJJ people who are attempting all types of guard positions & inversions, but cannot touch their toes! Today we unpack exactly what’s holding you back and the injuries that can happen if you continue to push yourself on the mat and don’t fix this problem.
The Bulletproof Boys breakdown what you can do to take action to remedy this on going issue quickly and effectively, starting today!

Speaker 1: 0:04

Very careful a good martial artist does not become tense, but ready, essentially at this point, the fight is over. So you pretty much flow with the goal who was worthy to be trusted with the secret to limit the spot.

Speaker 2: 0:28

I’m ready . Welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. I am JT. Hey guys, I’m Joey. And today, guys, we’re asking the question. Can you touch your toes? This is an important thing, guys. It sounds basic, doesn’t it? But there’s a lot of people out there that try and do burn bolos . They’re trying to kiss the dragon, take the back, but can you touch your toes? A lot of our digital brethren can not . So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to drill down into different things that can help you get there because a lot of people just don’t know how and the importance of certain aspects of mobility and flexibility training, which are going to get you there faster. So I would say that I am the more restricted of the two of us, Joe , in this region of the forward fold. As we refer to it, I’ve had my challenges, but it’s something I work on all the time. Now I can’t touch my toes. That’s not a problem. Uh, but you’ve, you’ve taken it a step further. Haven’t you, Joe ? You’ve you’ve taken the forward fold to , to the next level in a lot of ways. Yeah. Back in the day,

Speaker 3: 1:29

When I was deep into my movement training , uh, there was a bit of a challenge there. It was like a , it’s an extreme standard, but it’s the head to toe fourth side is can you lock your leg out, grab your foot and then connect your forehead to your toes. God, I know it’s, it’s full on. I mean, and so it , it is kind of full on and I think you achieved that. I got it. Yeah. And I’ll be honest. I reckon I’m probably about if I did it called down probably about a fist with a way that’s still good, man. That’s crazy. That’s what I mean. I think I have a bit of a predisposition there because I’ve got short legs. Sure. You can speak to that. I can monitor shorter. You know, if you have short legs, then typically you have a longer torso proportionally, which helps you in that. It does. If you were like , um, our mate, Adam, Charles , where you got legs up to your armpits . No man . You’re not getting your forehead to that toe. No, not at all. It’s a bit of a standard, a bit of a thing in the game in the movement game is a bit of a comfort thing. Yes. And it involved a really high volume approach to developing it, which is basically , um , ballistic stretching. So almost kind of bouncing into the position for a couple of hundred repetitions every day. And it’s like, do it every day until you get it. And it’s going to take you maybe a few months or whatever took me, I don’t know, six weeks. Wow. Which, yeah, it’s quite quick. It’s quite quick. And again goes back to , um , I’m kind of blessed with mobility in certain ranges that I already have a pretty decent baseline. Sure.

Speaker 2: 2:59

So for whatever reason, yeah, it was cool. But for those there’s people out there who can barely reach past their knee caps and they want to get around modern jujitsu. And this is the discussion guys, because so many more people are trying to invert. Uh , so many more people are just trying to update their guard game. Being able to touch your toes is just a basic thing that you need to be able to do. So how do we go from not being able to touch our toes can barely lean forward without getting excruciating pain to actually getting there. What are the steps before

Speaker 3: 3:28

That? I think one of the beautiful things about digital is that you can play the game no matter what kind of body you got, of course. Right. And cause there’s going to be a lot of people out there that play this, you know, like think about it. Um, inversions , K God , um, Durham , bolos , Bruin , bolos, like all of these things that didn’t really exist when we were coming up as like white, blue purple belts. Nope . So the game back then was just like, take them down, heavy pressure. You get on top and then submit them. Right. So that game, that old school game doesn’t require mobility. No . Which you could say as a strength of it because it’s like, you can teach it to your dad. Sure. Right. He’s got. Mechanics busted, old knees and a stiff spine. He can make it work the new game. Like we’re saying like this new stuff requires more mobility. Definitely. There will be people listening that play the new game, but also can’t touch their toes. And I guess,

Speaker 2: 4:14

But my question then is how well are you playing it? And are you setting yourself up for injury?

Speaker 3: 4:19

That’s exactly right. And I think it’s important to point out. Yeah, you can do it. There’s ways around it. That’s the beauty of your bodies. You can move around these inefficiencies in your mobility or in your strength, but do you pay a price for it down the track? We say, yes you do. Yes, sir . Um, and you know, is there also like a level of efficiency that you’re like, are you operating inefficiently to every time you invert, every time you get stacked, it’s like placing all this pressure on your lower back, your disks are getting compressed your next , getting jacked. Whereas if you had a bit more surplus, a bit more range to move in and out of, then all of a sudden you’re more comfortable in that position. The load is not being directed into a few key areas it’s being dispersed nicely. Yes. So really it’s like, okay. Yeah . How do we make you more efficient? How do we upgrade the components of your vehicle? So that it’s not just a big engine in a piece of car, but it’s like got pretty good wheels, sweet handlebar , handlebar steering wheel. You know what I mean? Like the components of good, of course. So that’s kind of what we’re getting at. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:21

We have a very, we’re going to reference this guys because this is an important text. When I first started in TaeKwonDo, stretching is a big deal. And we actually used to do a lot, like I would say I would be doing an hour a day minimum minimum. And when I was training more than an elite level, like national international level, I was doing anywhere from two to three hours of flexibility work a day, PNF dynamic static, because kicking above your head was like super important. And we have a really good text here. We have the kind of, I guess the OJI original text stretching, scientifically amazing book. And Joe has pulled it from the shelf because this is like really important. And there’s a little piece of information here. We want to share with the

Speaker 3: 6:04

Picture on the front of this book is that the author Thomas Kerrs , who’s a famous Russian sports scientist from eighties, nineties. He’s written a couple of books, both incredible. He’s doing side splits between two chairs and a , and then he’s holding a baby on his shoulder and he’s looking at the baby and making

Speaker 2: 6:20

A cheesy , well originally there was him and possibly his partner or some model that’s right. Which is next level.

Speaker 3: 6:27

But the point, the point of this, I thought I’d read it because I just wanted to clarify a couple of things in my mind, coming into this episode, I thought, you know what? The introduction here is very , um , on point. And I think that this is good for people to know. So we talk about flexibility mobility really at the end of the day, it’s the same, right? And I say that coming from this realm of like of picking a partner, but this is this and mobilities , when you add strength and it’s like, whatever, if you are doing strength training and you are doing some stretching, different kinds, movement-based stretching like dynamic staff , static, stretching, PNF, you are getting strengthened. You are getting range as a mix every other day in disowned doses. Yes . Sometimes more strength , sometimes more flexibility. Exactly. And there’s old and people hang on like static stretching, but it’s like, because it’s like, well, but you need to build strength. It’s like, well, what if I did static stretching yesterday? And then today on strengthening those muscles, does that count? Or does it have to be at the same time? Or is there a 30 minute window shop? Right? So it’s like, if you get it done, it’s , it’s the same. Anyway, it says here, the essence of flexibility training presented in this book is the simultaneous development of strength and flexibility working with your body, especially the nervous system for full flexibility, with no warmup . Right? Right. And this is very much the forms, the basis of our mobility program. Yes. The method of accomplishing these goals can be summed up in a single paragraph, tense your muscles prior to relaxing and stretching them and tense them every time. When you want to increase your range of motion during a stretch to simultaneously develop strength and flexibility, tense your muscles while they are fully stretched, as your strength in stretch positions increases. So does your range of motion and your ability to use increasingly greater range of motion without a warmup to develop the ability to instantaneously show full flexibility through dynamic movements, do dynamic stretches for a few minutes, twice a day. That is all the rest of the details. But these details make all the difference between effective training and fruitless drudgery. That is what the rest of this book is about. That’s great fruitless drudgery, right? But this is the person who’s on the mats after training life , just trying to touch their toes and doing the same stretches every day of the week and never getting any more flexible, not improving now . And that’s, I think why I felt that I wanted to read that because stretching, as most people know it is fruitless drudgery. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:52

I agree with this. And that’s the thing having so much time working on it, it’s way easier to maintain than to attain. So when you’re coming from a place of like my God, yeah, sure. It sounds good guys, but I can’t even, you know, bend over without, you know, feeling my back hurt or my car’s on fire and all this stuff. Cause I’ve been doing it a certain degree of flexibility, training, mobility training, almost my entire life. If I don’t stretch for a week or two, it only takes me a sessional turn. I feel great. I’m like, I’m back. And this is true of weightlifting as well. So what we want to do is really get you guys in the habit of doing this thing regularly. It’s a skill you need to practice this movement skill. Let’s start from the beginning, Joe. We’ve got people who are hearing this and they’re like, yeah, right. I’d love to touch my toes. How do I start this process of unlocking my body and feeling better when I do jujitsu, where should they start for the forward fold

Speaker 3: 9:48

Position? All right . So there’s the very first place to start for me. And this is like, beginning of your session is stretching the calves. Oh yeah. Calf stretching. Right. Really basic stuff. But something that we don’t often connect in our minds is when we are going for this forward fault position, you feel a lot of tension like in the back of the knee. Sometimes it’s more in the belly of the hamstring log.

Speaker 2: 10:10

God uses me. This is me. I feel it the worst.

Speaker 3: 10:13

And that, that back of the knee, like, that’s your hamstring. It’s just more down towards the tendons at where the muscle joins the bone. Um , so it’s crossing the knee joint there and it’s like, ah. This really has what we don’t think is that there’s, there’s this structure running through the body, the fascia , uh, which connects all of our muscles together. And these, this fascia through the back line of the body starts at the bottom of your foot. So tip your toes. And it goes on the whole bottom of foot, up a hill , up the calf back of the leg bot. And then it even wraps around, up over your , your head to the front, like just above your eyebrows. Now we don’t need to stretch that area. Right. You get that stretch when someone’s cross facing you enough. But importantly, the carves are a really common like handbrake to access the hamstrings. Yes. So this was taught to me by a mobility coach, Emma Lewis that I had for a long time. He’s like, anytime you want to work on your hamstring, flexibility, stretch your carbs first. Um , and we recommend this all the time to our people and it works wonders. So you can try this for yourself. You can like just do a simple toe touch test, keep your legs locked , standing up, straight, reach down. How far can you go? And then stretch both of your carves , uh , one leg at a time, just hanging out off like the step or the gutter or something like just drop your heel down, keep your leg straight, stretch two sets of 90 seconds on each side and then retest. And you will notice a difference. Huge

Speaker 2: 11:31

Difference. Yeah. And I can totally speak to this. Like I feel like my calves are one of my biggest limitations because my hamstrings, the place that I feel the worst in a Ford fall position is carves straight away . You feel it there? I feel it’s not hamstrings.

Speaker 3: 11:46

Back’s okay. Got meaty carbs too. So it’s a lot of surface area. What this comfort , just a lot of years of skipping guys, like for any

Speaker 2: 11:53

You out there who did striking and you know, skipping and running is a big part of that. And then you’ve come to jujitsu and you’re like, yeah, I loved you too. Yeah. Forget striking. I’m a , I’m a grappler. Now you’re going to have some jacked up cops because it helps to be able to bounce around on your toes and be agile and stuff. But that doesn’t help you when you’re trying to squad or trying to afford fold or invert . So I actually have to spend a lot of time working on my calves, but before I can actually even feel my hamstrings in those positions, and then what’s the next step we’ve loosened up our carves . We’re getting a little bit better. What do you feel is the entry point? Because I tend to skip ahead. Like I tend to go, right? Let’s put our forehead on our knees, but there’s some in between steps, isn’t it ?

Speaker 3: 12:35

Yeah. I think the next thing is to develop strength through those muscles, because here’s the thing, when you reach forward and try and touch your toes, you actually got quite a bit of body weight behind that. And so you’re kind of hanging the weight of your torso off the hamstrings. Yeah . And as we know, and for folks maybe who don’t know stretching or flexibility is a neurological thing, your body won’t allow you to go into certain ranges of motion or certain positions. If it doesn’t feel confident that you’re strong enough to be there. So what you process as are these tissues aren’t long enough. Like I need to stretch them out. It’s not, that’s not the case. It’s a case of your nervous system applying a handbrake because it thinks you’re going to hit yourself. Oh

Speaker 2: 13:18

Yeah, don’t go there. Don’t mess yourself up. Yeah. So

Speaker 3: 13:22

We need to strengthen the hamstrings, strengthen the calf muscles and all the muscles of the back line through simple exercises, two favorites that , that we use and that we have in our program , uh, um, single leg, Romanian, deadlifts, or Romanian deadlifts, right. It doesn’t have to be single leg and the stride stance . Good morning. Yes. Which is standing on one leg, you got your other leg place just slightly behind. It’s giving you a small amount of assistance. And then keeping a really like extended spine, like almost arch through the low back, you’re hinging forward into this like forward fold position, but keeping a nice straight back and you’re getting this aggressive stretch through the hamstring. It’s intense, but there’s actually a lot of load in it because the majority of your body weights now in that one leg. So it’s actually kind of, it’s a real nice mix between strength and flexibility, these drills, because you have the potent mix of strength and stretching, I think are the really good starting points. Yeah . Particularly for, and this would be most of our lessons. If you’re, if you’re training to do two and you’re tight , you probably are quite strong because you’re trained to do it . It requires you to be inherently strong. So you’ve got a lot of like layers of strength and dense tissue to work through in order to access some of this stuff. So, you know, if we just get you to stretch your hamstrings, it’s not enough. Like you need, you need a hammer. Yeah. And drills like this are the hammer they are. I

Speaker 2: 14:45

Know. I agree with you. And look it for some of you out there, you might have a bit more weight around the torso for some of you there, you may not have as much, but that said, if you cannot do these body weight movements, which is what we’re talking about here, that they’re essentially just your body weight. You shouldn’t be checking weight on your back. You know, like plenty of you out there will be like, I want to do a back squat. Yeah . Okay. Yeah, sure. And plenty of you out there go , man, I want a deadlift. Yeah. There they are all great movements. And there are ways to train those. But if we consider that you are actually practicing a level of bodily control, it’s good for you to start at the bottom, just start at the simplest level and both these movements, which are part of the Bulletproof BJ program don’t require any equipment. It’s really simple. You could be doing them right now. So if you’re like unsure of these movements, the videos are on the program. And the next stage on this, like let’s say people have already been doing these movements and they’re like, I’m better than I was, but they’re halfway down their shins. How do they go from not quite getting there to the next step, which is touching the toes.

Speaker 3: 15:52

That last bit, it’s like two sets of 90 seconds on the calves . Three sets of 10 on the stride stance . Good morning. Three sets on each leg, do 10 reps, hold last rep 10 seconds. You’ve done that. Made some gains, but you want more? It’s like, all right, how do I take it to the next step? I suppose one of the, one of the drills that we use a lot in that we’re big supporters of is the Jefferson Kell . Yes, indeed . And I think that the Jefferson Cole is a really nice progression of like the stride stance. Good morning, it’s adding load and it’s adding movement into your hamstrings and through this whole back line of the body, and it’s taking you to that position, that end range position where you’re really at this sort of the limit of your toe touch or your forward fold, but you are having to find ways to produce force there and create tension in the position, which is strength, right? And that’s, what’s going to make you more flexible at Jefferson. Kell’s big one .

Speaker 2: 16:42

You , I mean, you guys might’ve jumped on YouTube and just Googled Jefferson Cole and you’re going to see some crazy business. There are some really strong mobile people out there, but we’re not saying you should go pick up a barbell and try and hang 60 kilos of your torso. That is a certain way to do yourself mischief. We’re talking about very small amount of load, you know, a light kettlebell or a dumbbell between your two hands, whatever you kind of have close to your reach. And this leads us into the, I guess the next part of this conversation, which is about using your abdominals and your quads to draw down into the position. We’re not just hanging the weight off those muscles. Like yeah, we’re putting a little bit of load there so they can work gradually with controls through this range of motion, which is something you may have never done. But also, and this is the thing that kills me is when you get to that, the end of that range, whatever that is for you to find more range by contracting your abdominals, by switching on your quads, by not just hanging out there and just weathering the storm, being like, oh , this is killing me. It’s like, no, I’m actively drawing into the position, this something, which is very helpful. And , um , we’ve talked about this before, Joe .

Speaker 3: 17:53

Yeah. So again, going back to that idea, I’m going back to what Thomas said, like strength and flexibility trained together. Yes. This is the combo, right? And so again, the going back to that simplified view that a lot of people have the flexibility. It’s like, oh, I just have to stretch those things out. And then they get longer. And then I’m more flexible. That’s actually really problematic because if you think about that, you’re just creating laxity and Alexis is not like an athletic person, right? Not at all. So I’ll use the bicep and the tricep is a good example of this. Imagine straighten your arm. If you’re listening to this, you can hold your arm out in front of you right now, straighten your arm. And imagine that your tricep is really tight and you want to stretch your tricep. So to stretch the tricep, you’re going to flex the elbow. So you’re going to pull your forearm. Like you’re going to do a bicep curl, right? JT is Sean . It’s what that looks like. He’s maybe trying and wants to try to fall, and you’re going to pull your , your wrist or your forearm towards your shoulder. Right? So now your elbows bent, your tricep is stretching here . Now, most people won’t feel this in their tricep , but it is stretching so straight arm it’s, it’s contracted. And then , um, flex the bicep. You get what I mean? So what’s allowing me to do that. Well , it’s a contraction through my bicep that is pulling my wrist towards my shoulder. So it’s a contraction of the bicep that is lengthening the tricep. So when we think about the Jefferson kale, and if you don’t know the Jefferson Kell , imagine , uh , you’re just sitting on the ground, both legs out straight, and then you’re reaching forward to touch your toes. The same that visualization will work. So instead of just thinking about hanging this white or stretching, so that those, the hamstrings and calves and whatever, getting tugged on, think about the muscles on the other side of the joint, which in this case, not the bicep, but it’s your quadriceps, your hip flexes in your abs. Think about those muscles contracting or shortening in order to pull your body into this fold position. Now we start to take our intention or our focus off the fact that the back of the body is stretching. But we start to focus on this shortening of the muscles on the opposite side of the joint. The result of that is it allows the nervous system to say, oh, I’m actually quite strong here because the body’s producing force in this range of motion. In which case the body says, oh, well , let’s go a little bit deeper. And this is that idea. You’re in that position, you’re creating force. And then you’re the, body’s letting you go a little bit deeper. So when we’re doing the Jefferson curl as a more advanced kind of approach to it, something that we try to get people to incorporate into it once they’re sort of just comfortable with the basics of the movement, it’s like, alright , now we want you to focus on contracting quads, hip flexes, and abs in that in-range position. As you push the kettlebell towards the flaw, and you will usually hold that for 10 seconds, relax and do a few reps per set. It’s

Speaker 2: 20:41

Active. So you’re not just hanging out there. And this is a term I actually learned from Joe, which is this idea of end range. Closing is getting a degree of muscle contraction when you hit the end of your range. And you’re actually working there. Guys, I sweat so much when I do this, like it’s a hard work. And the other thing is too, this idea of contracting the opposite group of muscles so that you can get the, the group of muscles you’re stretching to go further is called reciprocal inhibition. So by contracting the abs, contracting the quads , contracting the hip flexors , those other muscles will allow more range. And this is actually, it’s not secret, but it’s just something we don’t do because you will feel a greater intensity of stretch. You can track your abdominals and you could track your quads, men , you are going to feel it through your, back, through your hammies, through your calves. I know I do. When I, when I get to that point, I’m like, it’ll take me there, but God , this is intense. Yeah. It’s full

Speaker 3: 21:38

On. Sometimes I’ll , I’ll just, my abs will I’ll get a cramp. Yeah . I get in my quotes . Yeah. And you’re like, oh . You know , but it’s the cramp is, you know why it’s good. It’s like, it means you’re, you’re turning it on. Yeah. So you kind of just have to work with it.

Speaker 2: 21:52

I think this is going to take us to the next step guys, because the forward fold as a position is an important part of the new Bulletproof of video today’s standards. And this is something that we really want you guys to master. So touching your toes is pretty basic. And if you can’t get there , that’s okay. You can get there and we have a method that will help you get there. But another thing on top of this, this is something I just wanted to touch on. Joe is this idea of super setting, a mobility exercise with an active work, exercise, strength , exercise , strength based exercise. And look like we’re saying, we’re blurring the lines a little bit here, but it’s just so we can separate it for you guys. I found pairing a strength movement with another movement, which helps disengage the handbrake on that movement. Very helpful. Like I find by the end of that combo. So let me highlight that to you guys. So for example, and Joe might have a different example doing a , a toaster bar as a movement to really engage your abdominals and your hip flexors and your quads. So like

Speaker 3: 22:52

Hanging from the bottom , from the bar, raising the straight legs up, touch the bar, keeping your legs straight,

Speaker 2: 22:57

Touching your toes to the bar with control, no swing, then doing a set of those. And then pairing that with, say a Jefferson curl . The , I find that to be, I can find more range when I go to the Jefferson because my abs and my quads are fired up. So when I go to lower into the position, those muscles are firing and ready to go. And I actually find, I control down in the position a bit more. Do you have any examples like that, Joe ?

Speaker 3: 23:24

Yeah, I guess like, hopefully for folks listening, they can see the parallel between those two movements, right? One, like they both involve the body folding in half or piking. And obviously it’s using contraction of the muscles on the front of the body and then lengthening of the muscles on the back. I suppose, like we kind of, we kind of like to use that in our program possible because it allows you to make that small window of training. So it’s like, I’m going to do three sets of Jefferson calls today and I’m going to do whatever four or five sets of toes to bar or, you know, some kind of variation thereof. It allows you to make both of those exercises more potent because they are complimentary to each other. They are now, it doesn’t necessarily make it easier. It’s not hot . Right. But in our opinion, frigid, Jitsu folk like us, our main focus is spending time on the mats . So the time spent in the gym should be used as efficiently as possible, which means that over the course of the week, it should be as little time as needed to produce the result that I want. And so that’s where I’m like, well, we super set , uh , like a mobility and a strength through wherever possible. So that one, you get more out of both drills, but two , you get more out of the workout. So looking at it from a wider perspective.

Speaker 2: 24:37

Yeah. The minimum effective dose guys that comes from, you know, the world of supplementation and science and drugs testing .

Speaker 3: 24:44

And I’ve always used it talking about us . I E you know what I mean? Cause that expensive when you get the good stuff. So it’s like, what’s the minimum effective dose here to really get the results I need from this bowl. I say , well, I , I couldn’t

Speaker 2: 24:57

Say for sure. It depends on if they’re using straight

Speaker 3: 24:59

Guarana syrup or if you’ve

Speaker 2: 25:01

Got that sweetened, condensed milk on top, you know, you having that watered down essay . Uh, no guys, I was ESA . If you go to Rio, then Wharton watering down, nothing. That’s the Asahi , uh , DIA guys. Anyway, what I was going to say in regards to this, we had a guy post on the community recently, who sounds like a tough guy. If he’d guide , uh , his brown belt, he’s on a lot of training. Ex Navy guy loves, smash it up and also has done CrossFit for a long time. And he said, guys, I’m worried. He’s only done two days of the program. He he’s like, I think I might, I might slide back. Like my fitness will fall away on me if I’m doing this, it’s only two days a week. Oh, he was all nervous.

Speaker 3: 25:46

Like I said , not full on enough. It’s not heavy enough yet . But had said,

Speaker 2: 25:50

Yeah , I have a litany of injuries. I can’t, I can’t function as well as I want to. I’m in pain

Speaker 3: 25:55

And I’m like a massive like overachiever and I myself up. Yeah. And it’s

Speaker 2: 25:59

Like, yeah, don’t get me wrong guys. I definitely always feel the urge to do more. But I think what’s important for you guys. And this is what we’re speaking to here. When we’re talking about combining a degree of mobility with your strengths work and fitting it all in is if you do it effectively and you do it to a good level of intensity, you don’t need more than 45 minutes an hour. And if you’ve got other stuff going on in your life, which I’m sure you do, if you’re homeschooling your kids or you’re trying to zoom call your boss, or you’ve got all different stuff going on in your life, you’ve got a young kid you’re not sleeping, whatever. It might be two days a week, if you do it right. That is really all you need. In truth. Maybe with a few sprinklings of other things like mobility session here, maybe a bit accessory works there, but ideally we’ve set it up that if you use your time, well, this is the minimum effective dose.

Speaker 3: 26:52

Yeah. I think there’s a real thing in training. And this happens to all of us. And you could I’m way kind of gone through this a bit ourselves now where, you know, like when you’re into training and particularly anyone that’s come from a military background or, you know, maybe you were into CrossFit real hard or whatever. Maybe it’s just from jujitsu, but you go real hard, but you just throw down, right? Yeah . Put your body on the line, lift real heavy train five days a week, push it. And then you usually get to like somewhere in your thirties and start to get some little niggling injuries. And then you’re like just got to find the right solution so I can keep pushing harder . And it’s like, you keep bashing your head against this wall. Right. Proverbial wall for awhile until most people just throw the towel in because it’s like , oh, well I can’t maintain my training anymore rather than going, you know what maybe that approach that I was taking up is no longer sustainable. Um, and maybe I need to change my perspective on this thing a little bit, pull back on the intensity and maybe the high frequency and go for something that is more sustainable. And, and then that means like for jujitsu players, right. For people like us, it’s like, well, how are you actually rolling? What, what style of digits are you playing? That probably has to start to change a little bit too . Yeah . Because all of a sudden you’re rolling with people who are not as, you know, they’re 10, 15, 20 years younger than you, but they’re men, they’re not restricted by their lack of athleticism or declining testosterone or lack of sleep, any of that. Right? Like, and so it’s just part of this greater perspective shift, which is like, okay, I’ve gotta be a bit smarter about this. And so I find like speaking to that guy’s point and for so many people I’ve met and just sort of trained with over the years, it’s like the ones that don’t say that they don’t adapt and don’t adapt are the ones that constantly struggle with injuries and questioning. Whether I can continue to do this thing I love and the ones that adapt to it, great problem . They find this path of least resistance and they , uh , you know,

Speaker 2: 28:53

Yeah. What would this look like? If it was easy, it doesn’t all have to be the challenge of your lifetime. You don’t have to always be in pain. Look, this is where I think we have to separate guys the idea of peak performance to optimal performance. What is something where you are performing at an optimum, which is your performance is like really good. It may not be world championship. Good, but you can show up every day you can play with your kids. You don’t feel completely wrecked at the end of the week. And you’re enjoying what you’re doing. It’s not this love, hate relationship. Like I’m on fire. I’m better than everyone. Oh , I hate myself. I can’t even train I’m at home crippled. Like it’s not that guys, really what we are trying to put across. And it’s not even that it’s not sexy. It’s just not pushed in culture. Right? It’s not on Instagram. It’s not on Facebook. You know, it’s, it’s not the glory work. It’s the things that you do to look after yourself. And the idea of looking after yourself and doing the thing that is right for you, which is doing enough to keep you healthy. And then in just enjoy the thing that you do is not promoted in our culture because we all want to celebrate the Michael Jordans and the Lance Armstrong’s and all these, these top performers. But then when you look at it, it cannot be sustained when you hit a peak, the only way from there is down. And that’s not what we want for you guys. We want you guys to stay in the game, feel fit and healthy and at least be able to touch your toes. Right? Yeah.

Speaker 3: 30:25

Touching the toes. You could consider that like a basic human goal. Yeah . Like, cool. It’d be cool if you could , if you can’t, don’t feel bad, but we should work on it. Yeah. Follow this stuff. We’ve given you stretch your calves, do some of the stride stance , good mornings. And then in time, start to connect with the Jefferson Kell . Our new updated is going to lay out a pathway for all of this. But in simple terms, you can go and get started on that stuff right away. If you are a user of our program, we have our forward fold turbocharger, which is in the mobility section. And that includes a really in-depth video where we discuss three different sort of progressive approaches to developing the forward fold using the Jefferson curl. It’s all in there. And yeah, I think like for a lot of people unlocking that back line of the body, just it enhances life. It’s huge because it really is rare in the sport we play. It’s usually restrictive, not even if you’re trying to play the new style game, but if you’re just trying to like be able to squat well and do good exercise and move efficiently and forward rolls and backward roles like

Speaker 2: 31:24

That will help. Yeah. Move without pain and without restriction . So you can just enjoy doing the thing you love, which is BJJ that’s right. All right guys, I think we’ll leave it there. Now we have something new you feature. We do be super special. We may eat is not. I would say that there’s only a very small percentage of podcasts out there that do this. And

Speaker 3: 31:48

The first one we might be,

Speaker 2: 31:50

But I think we might be opening Pandora’s box. Let’s see . Let’s see. So this is actually Joe’s adventure. It was a suggestion. We kind of culminated and I’m going to get your speak on it. Now, Joey

Speaker 3: 32:01

People ask us questions all the time. They come at us on Instagram, Facebook, you know , it . Just wearing the gym or like, it just it’s, it’s what we do. We provide answers and solutions. You can leave us a voicemail and you can ask us a question. And depending on how many we get, we will do an episode where we feature your question and then we respond to it. So, you know, if we get a bunch, we might do a whole episode. If we just get a couple here and there, we might just do one every who knows. We’ll see how it goes. If you go to Bulletproof for bjj.com backslash podcast. So you just go to our podcast page, all you got to do is just scroll down and touch it. And you’ll see this called little box to send Bulletproof BJ message. You hit the button and then you speak to your computer or your phone and record your message. You’ve got 90 seconds and ask us whatever strength, mobility, recovery , um , sky’s the limit. Take it wherever you want and send it to us. And then we’ll play it back on the show and, and give a response to it. It’s something that people don’t realize is when they do send us a question on Instagram, usually what they asking is something that like 10,000 other people who are part of our audience also want to know. Yes, like these questions are like frequently asked questions. So to do it in that way, allows us to share the information on our podcast , which means that we can help the maximum amount of people, as opposed to just answering it to you through a direct message. And then you’re the only one that gets the benefit. That’s

Speaker 2: 33:19

Right. And asking questions helps others guys. So it’s like that moment in class, you’re sitting there and the instructor goes, is there any questions? And you sit there and you’re like, ah , I don’t want to sound dumb in front of everybody. But this thought you were thinking possibly five or 10 other people are thinking the exact same thing. So you are doing our community, a service by going to the website, make sure you’re not eating food at the time. Make it clear because we are going to play the audio on the podcast. That’s right. Your voice will be on here. And yeah, ask that question in glass because you are going to save time and energy for everyone else. And we want to hear from you right

Speaker 3: 33:54

On guys. We’ll hear you on the voice message is going to be good. See you next week. Thanks . [inaudible] .