#59 Pre Workout is Bad For BJJ: Why you need to drop the powders to roll better.

Need a pre-BJJ pick me up? C4, Jacked 3D, Total War?! If you know these brands and consume these powders we’re going to recommend you Stop! These various super supplements  designed to give you an intense energy boost, muscle pump and extra strength are actually hurting your performance on the mat. In this episode JT & Joey highlight the ingredients that aren’t helpful. They explain why, discuss the pitfalls of taking a product designed for bodybuilding  and what you should do instead.

Speaker 1: 0:04

Better listen. Very careful.

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A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready,

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Essentially at this point, the fight is over.

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So you pretty much flow with the goal

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Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limit this power.

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I’m ready,

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. Hi guys. I’m J T Hey, what’s up guys? I’m Joey. And today we are discussing why pre-workout is bad for BJJ, huh ? O what do we mean by pre-workout we’re talking about is that like, have like masturbating before training. We’re gonna move forward. So guys, we’re talking about those crystals and plastic container. It usually has a skull on it, and it says death mixture fuel or something like that. Ultra extreme diet day , but pump tomorrow, some blah, blah , blah . And essentially it’s gonna contain a bunch of elements, usually a lot of caffeine , uh , some L arginine for, you know, muscle pump and a bunch of other stuff, amino , a lot of amino acid. Isn’t there bit of particular ones, bit of a minute . Depends on the type, right ? C4 is one of the more famous and it’s got Jack 3d back in the day. Good act 3d there’s there’s a bunch that are levels. I actually did a , uh , pre-workout review, which was like semis sponsored. I dunno , whatever, six, seven years ago. And it now has like, I dunno , thousands of views on it. People commenting, no , bro, what you are talking about is nothing. I take this volcano death and like, I was like, man, whatever. Like I just, I reviewed the six most popular pre-workouts right. I like caffeine where on YouTube or something? Yeah, just on my YouTube channel. What I wanna say is this, there’s a lot of people out there taking pre-workout before jujitsu and it’s not good for you. Yeah. You gotta stop, I guess , um, to give context, it comes from the body building realm, doesn’t it? It does. It’s you gotta to these so supplement shops, they got all this that’s designed to, to sell to you, to help you get bigger and stronger and train harder. And yeah, it’s big in the body building realm because it , whatever it jacks up, your energy gets you all excited. Yep . And you know, in some like, yeah, in some styles of training, some circumstances that might be a beneficial effect. I mean, well , you’re all gonna go into the , how it works aren’t we? But if you are relying on that to be able to turn on the energy. Yeah. I believe you’re masking a problem. Ah , definitely. And , and then also like as somebody who does consume a lot of caffeine as much, I would hate to admit this , uh , in truth, if I’m doing like quite a long session, like say you’re doing a double class, like you do the like at Alliance, you know , we’ll do to the kind of , uh , fundamental class, five 30 , uh , and then the advanced class six 30 till eight. If I know I’m doing two and a half hours of training, I won’t really caffeinate before that really, because one of the biggest problems with caffeine and stimulants in general is dehydration. And we are , you know, both Joe and I are always talking about hydration, have your water bottle, all these things. The biggest problem with , uh , caffeine itself and most pre-workouts are a huge amount of caffeine. Like if we say one scoop of sea four , which I know for sure is like 350 milligrams of caffeine, like that’s, how’s that relevant to like a double shot coffee. So if we say at a very rough estimation, my friends , one shot of espresso is anywhere between 60 and 80 milligrams of caffeine. Right. Right . So if you are having a double , maybe you’re at like a hundred double 3,040 . Yeah. Maybe one six . So it’s more than double that. It’s it’s a double double . It’s a quadruple. Yeah . And that’s, that’s that grown man level coffee right there, mate . That’s I got five kids to feed two jobs, train it to five nights a week, lifting weight before the sun comes up Jocko also Italian discipline equals freedom. And this is what I take to make it happen. Yeah . Like I , I don’t think it’s parti healthy now. There’s so many people out there like, oh , but this famous jujitsu person does this, which is the worst reason to do anything because let’s just break this down on a chemical level. Like what caffeine does other than blocking you feeling tired . It doesn’t actually give you energy. This is the misconception. It, it gets in and it blocks the tiredness feeling it adheres. So the receptors in your brain that help you feel tired. And it says, no, you’re not gonna feel tired right now, which builds up this sleep pressure. And as soon as it wears away, it just crashes on you and you’re gonna feel wrecked. But what it also does is it blocks anti-diuretic hormone. And alcohol does the same thing. You know how if you might be having a couple of drinks, you’re like, man, I gotta go to toilet a lot. It’s because literal really your body is just shedding water. And caffeine has a similar effect right . Now, some people rely on caffeine as a diuretic effect. Cuz maybe their diet isn’t good. They haven’t got enough fiber and they need some bit more water and they got to push things out. Right? Yeah . And so part of that morning ritual. Yeah. Just getting the old downstairs, moving but relevant to JSU when we are looking at pre-workouts, which are huge amounts of caffeine, you are dehydrating yourself, even though you think, oh my energy’s up. If you are taking these pre-workouts and you know, it’s usually not in much concentration of water. You might have a scoop in how many meals of water that is not enough. You are gonna be sweating. You’re gonna be peaking before you’re even warmed up. You know, there’s so many memes about you don’t wanna miss time. That peak that’s. No, that’s terrible. You know, there’s so many memes about taking it’s like the , and you’re like mashing your teeth and like slapping your chest and people like , and we’re just doing star jumps, like just hips escapees bro . Yeah . And, and then the , the , the next thing on this and you know, there’s , there’s been plenty of examples of this is , um, really one of the things that can happen at comp when you get too much adrenaline. So we’ll put the pre-workout aside for a second. You have that really hard role at comp. The first role adrenaline’s pumping, everyone’s watching your , the first place to really , uh , out is your grips. You know, forearms get really jacked and pumped. You’re like, oh my God, I can barely grip. We all lose. You’re like, I don’t know if I can do another round. Right. And this is very common. Even, even experienced people feel this. You’ve gotta get that first round out the way and try and get everything back to level. If you go too high, if you , if you go over peak arousal , you just blow a gasket. You you’re no good for the rest of the session. If you take a huge amount of caffeine. And also if you combine that with L arginine and a bunch of , uh , night trick outside , which is meant to increase VA dilations , it just makes you pump. Yeah . Like it’s designed for body builders. It’s not designed for ju people. Literally this product is gonna make you feel really pumped. It’s gonna blow your forearms out quicker, like quicker. Yeah . That’s not what you want. Like why would you do that to yourself? Great point, Nate . So that’s, that’s one of my major beefs with the whole pre-workout before training. Now you said that you have a story around. Yes . I mean, I took some pre-workout once. I never liked the idea of it. Here’s my , here’s my views on it. Like I said before, if you require, like, if you are reliant on an external thing, be it a training or somebody else or a supplement that you have to have in order to be able to apply yourself in training. That’s not ideal Cru . Yeah. It’s a crutch. And usually you are masking the fact that you are low energy and that is because you don’t get enough sleep or you’re over training or whatever it is. So I’ve always been of the view that you shouldn’t really need those things if you wanna with them every now and again. Sure. I use caffeine, but that said, I don’t use caffeine. I train jujitsu at night and I don’t, I don’t caffeinate really after lunchtime. So , uh , so it doesn’t play into that. And what I’ve always found personally is that if I am hyper decaffeinated , um, sometimes I used to train midmorning and I remember I’d caffeinate hard before I’d go. It would kind of mask my ability to focus. Right . Because I could roll really hard, but I wasn’t actually like cognitively showing up to the session. Right. And I was extremely tired and I was just masking that. Right. But I remember trading in Brazil, first gym , uh , one of the first gyms I went to friend of a friend hooked me up, said, oh my buddy trains , you can go with him. He was pretty new to it. He was a white belt , but he was a big, strong athletic guy. I said, yeah, come, we’ll take you to , to the class. We’d go to, and him and his mates they’d , they’d go train jujitsu. And then they’d go do weights afterwards. Right . And , uh , I was a blue belt . What a combo? What a combo. Yeah. Dang . And the academy was inside a gymnasium. So it was like, you know, you can do it all there. And uh , we would, we’d go to , we went to this jujitsu class and they all to pre-workout before the class T and I remember like, these guys just tried to put it on me in the class. Yeah . The first round with it was about three of them. Like the guy that I , that I’d met, been introduced to, and then his teammates, they just came at me like balls outta the gates. Yeah. And I weathered the storm. Yes. And then , uh , I remember it came time to roll again. It was a very small class and I was like, Hey, his name was Gasa or goose . I was like, Hey, goose . Let’s , let’s go again. And he, by the , we’d done three rounds or I’d done three rounds. I don’t know what he’d done. And he was already off to the side just , and he was like, And I’m like, bro, what’s up? He’s like, oh man. Like my heart, like I just, I’m not feeling good, man. I need to just come down . I think I had a big weekend. And uh , I was like, oh, it’s that supplement that they’re taking? Like they’re having like heart palpitations or some. Yeah. And so whatever, like I continued rolling, you know? And , and , and what , you know, so what I realized was these guys were jacking out their adrenaline taking this. It allowed them to bring out, put a lot of pressure on for the first 10, 15 minutes. Sure. But then they just crumbled yes . In a massive anxiety and, you know , lack of capacity. Yes. So it was just another one of those things that kind of reinforced my view where I’m like, man, you don’t wanna be pumping that. Not before jits. No . Like maybe if you’re showing up, I don’t know . Maybe there is a time, maybe you’re doing some , a comp class and it’s like, you know what I mean? Yeah . But I cause like , Hey , just get after it. Yeah. Partly, partly. But this is what I’d say in your hard role. Like we’ve probably all experienced this where, you know, whatever you’re training and then there’s that one person or that one role and it just goes war in just that person either you don’t get on or they kick you in the face or they kick you in the groin. You’re like, man. And it , you , you get a little , maybe a little bit emotional a little bit, but it really turns it on. And it’s, it’s a war. You’re both going pretty much a hundred percent. You don’t need any more adrenaline than you are gonna generate already. True. You got enough. Yeah. And so in terms of like really good performance, my problem is I tend to err on the side of going too , too far. So I actually, it’s important for me to back it off a little bit. If I’m gonna sustain good roles and it’s like, I’m gonna have like five or eight really hard roles . I’m really working hard between rounds to bring myself back down. If I go too much out the like first two or three rounds, I’m gonna just be terrible for the rest. So here’s the thing, guys, if you understand yourself and you, like, Joe’s saying maybe you are a bit low energy , maybe you are tired. There’s something else that you could fix, which can’t be fixed by a powder or a pill, you know? Like that’s yeah . That’s you can mask it short term, but long term won’t fix the problem. You know, you don’t want to be a Meow brother just scooping. Pre-workout straight into your mouth, chugging the water. But I mean, those guys, Supreme athletes, like surely everyone that’s listening aspires to represent that in life. Oh God disfigured from the game. Just I’m li savages. Don’t get me wrong. Absolutely. They have achieved a lot in the last 10 years, but now they are quite broken. What are they like 20? Yeah . What is it ? The oldest looking 20 year old you ever see ? No , you could be a long rest of the life. I think they’re in their late twenties and they’ve, they’ve really sacrificed a lot, but I think the biggest misconception around pre-workout is, oh , it works for elite level lifters. That is very different energy system to what we use for BJJ . Yeah . And being able to be able to control your adrenaline and all that is actually quite important. So even though I am someone who does love caffeine and uh , drink a lot of coffee, you a hundred percent honest with you. I have stuffed myself up trying to over caffeinate and, and compensate for being tired as well. And just it being a hard session coming in hydrated well fueled and being calmer results in a much better session overall. So trying to adopt this product, which is just a product guys , just trying to make money , uh , from body building to jujitsu is a mistake. Mm . Great call. All right guys. Thanks for listening. Appreciate you all fam . Thank you for listening guys. If you need help with your training, go to Bulletproof of bjj.com. You can take out free trial, start training your strength and mobility, build athleticism for BJJ and reduce the injuries. Use the code BJJ podcast and you get 20% off. Nice. Cheers fam . Thank you guys . Thanks JT . Thank you .