One Huge Lesson I learned from Rose Namajunas

“Be Regular and Ordinary in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

— Gustave Flaubert

Rose Namajunas is an American Professional Mixed Martial Artist and two time UFC Strawweight champion. Besides being inspired by her incredible skillset and spirit, I recently learned why she shaves her head. And quite honestly, it’s a beautiful lesson for anyone that wants to study, practice and learn deeply.

If you’d like more lessons on the daily pursuit of art and expression, I think you’d like this book: Steal Like an Artist- By Austin Kleon.

Adapted or Adaptable?

Are you stuck? Physically unable to move forward and adapt to new training stimuli?

Maybe it’s a mental/emotional issue? Everything is all very well connected. As my mentor Frank Forencich once told me “There’s no such thing as physical fitness.”

Now Frank was simply stating that the entire person must be healthy not just their physical selves and how fitness in one area carries-over and influences the others.

I’ve been there and I see it with my sons right now. They possess the physical skills to take on new tasks quite well, but maybe they’re worried about the bigger kids in the room? Or maybe they’re afraid of failure? But at times they are very reluctant to try out new things and it has nothing to do with their physical abilities.

This is a very broad topic that we’ll be talking more about as we travel along our paths together. But today I’d like to talk with you specifically about being physically adaptable as opposed to adapted or a one-trick pony.

What do you prefer? 

A body that learns new things easily? A body that responds well to new stresses and challenges or a fixed, rigid body that can only complete one very specialized skill?

I’ll take the former thank you.

Let’s examine 2 videos.

The first video is The American Top Team, a group of professional martial artists in Florida. One of the best mixed martial art teams in the world.

Let’s look at their bodies, strong, lean, flexible and agile.

Let’s look at their skills. Now, these gentlemen are at the top of their fields in the world of martial arts but the skills they possess in tumbling and gymnastics are incredible. They are not professional acrobats or gymnast either, they are fighters.

They may not be the best at powerlifting, Olympic Lifting or Kettlebell Sport but I’m very comfortable saying that these men are strong and if they wanted to, they could easily excel at any strength sport if they chose to. They could climb, swim and do well in many track and field events as well. That’s just my hunch, I could be wrong though.

They are adaptable.

This is my goal for myself, for my sons and for the entire Iron Kimono Community. You included!

Now let’s look at the second video of an elite powerlifter.

Yes, it is 1008 pounds. I fully understand the awesomeness of that feat and I can appreciate his efforts in pushing human strength limits to new heights but at what cost?

That’s all I’m asking. At what cost?

He may be an awesome person. All the powerlifters I know personally are awesome people and this is not a critique of those individuals.

And I may be pointing out the obvious but have you even seen a powerlifter walk? How about run? How about throw a baseball or a punch? Right. Looks kind of silly. Labored. Difficult.

They are adapted. Turtles. One trick ponies. Of course not all are. I’m sure there are some powerlifters that possess more skills than deadlifting, squatting and benching. I’ve seen some jump fairly well.

And powerlifters are not the only tribe. Bodybuilders are pretty adapted and stuck as well.

When I was in high school almost all of the training information you could get your hands on was in the form of bodybuilding magazines. In one issue there was a challenge between Gary Strydom and Samir Bannout. Who could run a 40 yard dash faster?

Guess what happened during the actual race?

They both cramped up and neither could complete the 40 yards. All those years of training. All those muscles. Such nice abs and low body-fat and they couldn’t run 40 yards. You can check out both bodybuilders here.

Long distance runners are another tribe. I trained one women, a long distance runner, who could not perform one (1) lunge or bodyweight squat with good form.

Once when discussing wrestlers and conditioning with my boy Zach Even-Esh he told me a story about Russian wrestlers being half gymnast and half Olympic Weightlifter and I thought that was a pretty great combination to create an ultimate, well-adapted athlete.

Part wrestler, part gymnast and part o-lifter. Nice.

If you want to be adaptable vs. adapted. If you want to learn new skills easily and enjoy physical freedom here are some tips that you might be useful.

Nothing Trains the Body Better Than the Body:
Get a good grip on your own bodyweight before moving onto the super heavy weights. Gymnastics, martial arts, Dance, Acrobatics, free-running, Parkour, try them all out. Experiment.

I’m convinced that the combination of grappling, gymnastics and dance will create super-fitness and movement skills and I will work diligently to create a world-wide tribe of Physical Creatives that teach and spread such wonderful practices.

Hang Out with Awesome Training Partners:
Training partners are super valuable. I love the term cooperative-challenge. Push one another. Make one another work. Make one another smile and succeed.

Currently there are some pull-up challenges going on in our club using some odd pull-up tools. The first day we tried out the new tools, the max number of pull-ups was 3. One week later it was 18. 18!!!!!

That came about from athletes pushing one another and having a good time teasing each other while fully supporting the progress of each athlete.

Don’t Specialize too Early:
Don’t be the kid that only plays Baseball or football. Swim. Skate. Bike, Run. Sprint. Mix it all up. There’s a common term in strength and conditioning circles, GPP, General Physical Preparation. And as Pavel Tsatouline points out in his book Easy Strength, the emphasis is on preparation, GPP is a process.

Become a generalist. Be well-rounded. You’ll know if you possess super-abilities. A coach will point it out somewhere along the way. When that happens you look into specialization but don’t rush it.

Finally. Eat a ton of Brocolli.
I made that up but I’m sure it will help.

My Favorite Author and His Book Collection

I was recently asked to share one of, if not my favorite author in the coaching and movement fields. This was an easy question for me. To be honest though, I do go through seasons where I’ll all about the science and in other seasons I’m all about the intangibles. I like both.

What I love about the books below is how well the author, Frank Forencich combines both elements in a beautiful and easy to understand writing style. I’ll link to all his work below the video. Enjoy.

Way of the Owl

Exuberant Animal.

The Exuberant Animal Playbook

New Old Way.

Beautiful Practice

Change Your Body Change the World.

The Sapience Curriculum.

Play as if your Life Depends on it.

The Art is Long.

Stresscraft.

Frank’s website and other work can be found here:

Exuberant Animal.

Sapience Curriculum.

Let's Talk About Artist & Entrepreneurs

I’m going to be sharing quite a bit from my morning readings. These morning readings are some of the sweetest parts of my day. Just me, a good, strong cup of Brazilian coffee and a good book. I hope you find some enjoyment in them as well. This latest book note is from The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

I love this type of book because of it’s simplicity. One page per day. One meditation per day. That’s it. Read. Meditate. Act.

You can check it out here: The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

I spoke about another passage on this blog post earlier: On Being Self-Reliant.

On Being Self-Reliant

Would you be happier by doing less?

Would you like more free time to explore other approaches and options?

Maybe create more space to explore other movement arts and simple physical practices or tools?

As part of my daily ritual I read at least 10 pages. Most of time I read one book until I complete it or lose interest.

And at other times, I’m guilty of jumping around from book to book and subject to subject.

This is way I prefer to read actually. My artist/entrepreneur brain just enjoys finding the relationship between multiple fields and combining them in creative ways.

The book-note below comes from The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur. If you don’t consider yourself an entrepreneur no-worries, simply substitute artist, mover or teacher and it will be just as relevant.

Click here to check out this book on Amazon: The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

How to Plan Your Training Week

Planning your training week does not need to be complicated. There are a lot of variables to consider for sure, but it’s best to keep it simple.

Simplicity is a skill and can be refined and perfected through practice, just like any other skill.

That’s why I’d like to share a system with you that I learned from my business coach several years ago.

The details will be different for everyone, but the framework remains the same.

Here’s the general design.

Divide your training week into three distinct days. Those days are:

• Free Day

• Focus Day

• Buffer Day.

A Free Day is where you do not train at all. This is your rejuvenation time. Use your Free Days to totally unplug from training and stress and just chill.

This does’t mean you’re not active or enjoying yourself physically. You’re just not tracking or moving with a performance goal in mind. Hiking, swimming, playing with the kids or pups are all wonderful options. Just be in the moment and enjoy, don’t worry about pushing your pace at all.

Focus Days are used to “focus” on your chosen or focus activity. Use these days for your priorities. For me, this is BJJ (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.)Yours could be kettlebell sport or improving your deadlift personal record. This is where you do your best, most dedicated work and actively train to improve your performance goal.

Buffer Days are used to maximize the potential of your Free and Focus Days.

Use Buffer Days to provide some tender-loving care and smooth out the rough areas that may have developed during your Focus Days. For me, this is more mobility work and some gentle stretching. After a Focus Day of grappling other humans for 3 hours, I need a buffer day to help me workout the kinks. Placing another Focus Day immediately after a BJJ Focus Day would quickly lead to overtraining, for me at least.

Buffer Days can and should be placed before and after most Focus Days, but can be used very well before Free Days also to help prepare you for a day or two of leisure.

The only issue you may have is if you actually have more than one focus. For example, trying to up your deadlift PR and and win the BJJ world championship in the same month. But it can be done. It takes another level of care and attention. But that’s exactly what you use those buffer days for. Planning and physical prep.

If you need some guidance on putting it all together I do offer online coaching for other professionals and practitioners. I know it can be confusing at times and I’m here to help.

The Story of Sgt. Bailey and 100 Boots...

I wanted to share a story with you about a person that, although I hated at the time, helped shape many of my approaches to training and to life.

Almost exactly 30 years ago I arrived at Marine Corps boot camp Parris Island. And although all of my drill instructors were incredibly intimidating, there was one that was absolutely brutal.

His name was Sgt. Bailey.

I feared this man.

He was very creative in his methods of creating chaos and stress. But he promised us that at the end of 13 weeks we would be squared-away and sharp.

He didn’t lie.

One of his favorite tricks was to sneak into the squad bay (barracks) while we were sleeping and throw all of our boots into a huge pile in the center of the room. Then he would wake us up in a panic and expect us to find our boots and be dressed within 30 seconds.

This was impossible.

All of our boots looked exactly the same and it was everyman for himself. It was pure chaos for several minutes. And we never made it on time. So of course we were punished.

Sgt. Bailey enjoyed that very much.

But as he promised, at the end of 13 weeks, we were all working together as a team and we could in fact find our boots and be dressed and on line within 30 seconds.

The transformation was impressive if not incredible.

And as he was torturing us with his creative stressors he would repeat one phrase to us …”Boys, we will practice chaos until you develop control.”

And it worked. So I apply and honor that spirit ever since.

It seems to resonate with other folks as well. So much so that our Chaos to Control training banners are the most popular. We also get quite a few requests for shirts with the same slogan. Those are on the way as well.

But for now, if you’d like to pick up one of those training banners I created a code to take 15% off until tomorrow. There are only a few left.

Snag those here: Chaos to Control banners. Use the code JCB upon check out. That will work on any gear by the way.

Play-Based Warm Up

Play-based goodness.

Often times our training is too medicinal, too sterile, not fun enough. Not engaging enough. We take people through dry preplanned warm-ups and movement prep and hope they engage.

We forget that they are human. We are training humans that are searching for meaning and expression. We are working with humans that are looking for community and communication.

Partner work/play is the ideal situation to create and encourage adaptations and dexterity.

The sample below is super simple to implement. All you need is a yoga block and two willing players.

And although some coaches try to coach their student/athletes to perform bear crawls “correctly”. I would encourage you to allow your student/athletes solve this little movement riddle themselves using a task-based approach as opposed to a shape-based approach.

Enjoy.

If you’d like to experience this approach in person please check out our Play Craft | Physical Creative Live Workshops.

How to Free Your Creative Spirit

A friend of mine created a beautiful poster size print of Corita Kent’s 10 Rules for Artists. Although these rules were originally written for her art students, you could easily apply and embrace these rules for your own movement or martial art practice and life in general. You can check out her work here:

Three Daughters Studio

Below is the link to check our Corita Kent’s books on Amazon. If you choose to purchse via that link I may earn 11 cents. Gracias and merci.

Learning by Heart- Teachings to Free your Creative Spirit.

Greasing the Groove

Are you looking to improve a general strength training exercise? Maybe pull-ups or push-ups? Maybe something a bit more technical?

I’ve got the perfect solution for you.

Just a quick personal example.

This sweet little method helped me go from 6-8 pull-ups to 21 clean reps in 3 months. It helped my oldest son achieve a personal pull-up record of 23. And I’ve been using this method successfully for over 20 years with students and athletes to get them stronger, add some lean muscle mass and build confidence in their physical skills.

This method goes by three different names:

• Post-synaptic facilitation or just synaptic facilitation. (Geek)

• Grease the Groove or GTG for short. (Pavelite.)

• Practice (most folks.)

In order for this method to work best you need these three elements to be present:

Basically, you pick a skill/exercise that you’d like to improve and you perform low rep sets of that exercise very frequently though-out your day.

A few tips that will help you progress smoothly:

• Set a target number. I needed 20 pull-ups in the Marines to score a 100% on my PFT (Physical Fitness Test.)

• Don’t train to fatigue. If your form breaks down at repetition 5, stop around your third rep.

• Perform this practice in a convenient location. In the example of my oldest son, we placed pull-ups bars on the kitchen door frame. Every time he went into the kitchen, which seemed like a 876 times per day, he had to perform a set of pull-ups. In my example, the pull-up bars were outside the bathroom. No pull-ups? No bathroom.

• General strength training exercises work best. Think push-up, pull-up or pistol squat, but honestly, you can use this method to improve any skill, mental or physical, fine or gross motor. I’ve even used this technique to help with speaking another language.

  Why do I love this method and you will too?

• Using GTG helps you improve quickly without leaving you exhausted. For example, although I practice GTG all day I’m still fresh to train hard at my Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) later in the day.

• It’s very simple to implement. There’s way too much complexity in the field of physical conditioning and preparation. It doesn’t need to be complex and you’ll experience this directly when your practice GTG.

• It helps keep us mentally and physically sharp. You will think better and feel better by sprinkling some movement throughout your day.

Thanks for reading and watching. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments. Going back to old school.