Ollin BJJ Support - Mobility

Grapplers need to train mobility. The harder it is for you to move your own joints, the easier it is for someone else to break them.

TL;DR:

• This is a simple and logically organized program to develop mobility as characterized by internal strength.
• Strength is it’s own sport. An internal and (quasi) isometric model is helpful for grappling where we do a lot of “holding.”
• Michael (and Co.) did a great job of including mobility resources to explain the movements and vernacular.
• Hoping mobility will save your defense is like hoping strength will be your offense. It’s an asset, that you still need technical ability to make use of.

Problems in Jiu Jitsu:

The discussion and outline in the free preview week of this program do a really good job framing the complicated state of affairs in BJJ. Here are some key points I want to highlight:

• “BJJ is particularly vulnerable to fad-driven training because it was developed largely apart from traditional strength training.”
• “BJJ is a unique sport. Trying to improve at it by mimicking other sports—like weightlifting—rarely produces predictable or positive outcomes. While some crossover exists, the real question is: at what cost?”

Speaking for myself, problems I’ve had related to mobility training are that:

• It’s often relegated to an afterthought. If you wanted to get stronger (or better at BJJ), would you only spend 5 minutes / day doing it?
• Advertised trends on social media are often extremely contextually broad which results in those 5 minutes being a cluster fuck of random stuff from the internet.
• Tiered / progressive overload either doesn’t exist (“yoga” in the vague sense) or requires specialized proprietary equipment.

Each of these things was adequately addressed in the Ollin program (or in supplemental newsletters). I’ll admit to being skeptical when I started seeing things like a “funky press”, but truth-be-told I have to work pretty hard to nit-pick any areas for improvement.

“Even if you’re not into jiujitsu, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s a one-of-a-kind program designed to reduce systemic stress and enhance training precision through accurate application of stress.”

Program Overview:

The introductory description of the program states:

“This is a 6-week progressive program that addresses common problems found in jiujitsu athletes. This is an introduction to sport-specific support for the demands of BJJ. There are 4 sessions per week. Each session progresses in intensity and focuses on isolating and correcting the limitations of specific joints. It is based on the theory of The Internal Strength Model (ISM) and is blended with a wide variety of strength, strength-endurance, as well as capacity signals.

I don’t see any reason that this can’t work for you even if you simply tossed a couple of these sessions in to your regular training routine as active recovery. However, see my “problem” above regarding committing to what you’re wanting to improve.

Something I really appreciated was that the “work” portion of each session was easily scalable to however I was feeling that day. That is absolutely critical.

Unless you’re tracking RPE for every round you roll (which isn’t a terrible idea now that I said that), it’s hard to estimate how “hard” each session hits or what it costs you in terms of recovery.

While some chest-strap devices can help with this you’re still having to adapt after-the-fact rather than moderate intensity in real time on the mat.

Being able to look at a prescription and know where to add a little (volume / load) or take some away is a skill on it’s own, but well worth developing.

Paradigm Shifts:

A major problem with “soul sports” (surfing, skating, climbing, grappling, etc.) is that they’re developed outside traditional ball-sport training modes — e.g. conditioning and nutrition. In a lot of ways this is a good thing.

However, it means we’re slow to learn, develop, and integrate those things when they clearly have a benefit in every other athletic endeavor.

On the flip side, strength (and endurance) are their own sports. A “bodybuilder split” is probably only marginally helpful to the grappler, and likely only so if they’re already out of shape.

As described in this program, the focus shifts from muscles (red stuff) to connective tissue (white stuff) and an “internal model of force.” It’s a particularly interesting observation that people become more supple when under anesthesia. This means that, like strength, “mobility” has a large neurological component.

It’s hard for me to not concede that “old school wins again” with this model. I don’t think Devon Laratt (one of the greatest arm wrestlers of all time) called his training EQIs, but his training is one of the first things I thought of when I started this program.

For the record, Firas Zahabi didn’t consider an armbar or back strangle a viable option against Devon. So, maybe there’s something to this idea that strength is about tension and perhaps creating internal tension to resist external movement.

Progress & Results:

I didn’t have any huge game-changing revelations, but the mobility “PRs” were simple and satisfying — “Hey, this position / movement doesn’t suck as much!”

Specifically, some benchmarks I took note of were:

• Week 3: I started being able to crack my own back (thoracic extension / scapular contraction).
• Week 4: I noticed feeling much more comfortable in a deep squat than I ever have before.
• Week 5: It started feeling more natural to drive over my big toes rather than flare my heels in while walking, running, or lunging.

I didn’t notice a huge change in my grappling other than a little more comfort with guard retention in a supine (laying on your back) position.

The biggest contribution to grappling for me was the secondary effect of active recovery. The latter sessions of the program added a bit of capacity and hypertrophy work, but overall I kept the intensity very moderate.

That was intentional as my focus this year has been on “better” rather than “more” or “harder.” Whatever I can do off-the-mat to make sure I’m excited for and perform well on-the-mat (which includes recovering ahead of time), that’s what I want to do.

I also found this article on EQIs which sums things up nicely:

“Based on the relevant literature, EQIs may provide a practical means of increasing total volume, metabolite build-up, and hormonal signaling factors while safely enduring large quantities of mechanical tension with low levels of peak torque.” (ref.).

In summary, EQI’s help people avoid doing dumb stuff under high loads or high volumes. It’s nice when literature supports common sense.

The article also points out that there is a lower conversion ratio to dynamic applications with this training method.

One example of this is the lack of transferablility in “grip strength” between say wrapping your fingers in a gi, holding a 1/3 inch edge climbing, or pulling deadlifts with a fat bar.

However, that’s where ENG (eccentric neural grooving) can help.

Potential Improvement:

I have to try really, really hard to find anything that needs polishing — especially from a technical perspective.

A couple things to think about moving forward might be:

• Application of Intensity
• Measuring Progress / Outcomes

For the former, both the Escape Velocity (ESC) and Free Fall (FF) programs did a good job of emphasizing up front that “the program” may be written as 6 weeks of 6 sessions / week, but “your program” may take longer or shorter depending on your sport practice and time availability.

Having done those programs, this was intuitive to me. The hybrid sessions were very easy to scale easier or harder depending on how I was feeling that day, but that process might not be a clear route for everyone.

Regarding progress, it did come out in one of Michael’s later “Mobility Weekly” newsletters that “mobility never gets easier.” He noted that while few people will sketch (chalk) their range of motion, it is possible to “cultivate a feeling of improvement.”

This was exactly the case for me. Though, one idea for “testing” might be movement dependent capacity (e.g. death-by-burpee); which does work it’s way into the last session of the program, but a pre-test is also useful data.

Most of this is covered in the Ollin material in one place or another, but the repetition wouldn’t hurt if things are being published as standalone programs (e.g. if people are new to Ollin, right off the BJJ mats and have modest experience in strength training or in doing their own programming).

Conclusion:

There’s a lot to like about this hybrid-strength-mobility program. For the most part it is intuitive and does a great job of being analogous to jiu jitsu regarding how we use quasi/isometric strength, joint manipulation, and unilateral and odd-object movements.

The more typical “pump” or “circuit” segments also won’t leave you wrecked, unless you want them to of course.

I was totally new to the FRC terminology and am inherently skeptical of trendy things; often because they’re “good, but unnecessarily complicated.” In this case it was “just new and unfamiliar to me.”

It turns out that things like PAILS/RAILS mechanically operate exactly how I would in breaking a joint. The difference is we’re strengthening the tissue via an internal force rather than breaking it via an external force.

I think it was in the old NP Strength Manual that they said “sometimes you need something to push against until you can push yourself.” In that regard, “traditional” strength training still has relevance from a GPP (general physical preparedness) standpoint.

Lastly, the program reminded me of the value of long warm ups — often close to 50% of the total session time. In that vein there’s also the reminder that there is no substitute for volume.

Perhaps you can improve at something only training it 5-minutes / day (e.g. mobility). However, that’s not even lip service if you just spent the last 50-minutes contracting your tissues and destroying your joints… and you’ve done that several days per week for years or decades.

I’ve long said that supplemental training, be that strength, endurance, or mobility, has great benefit both to the novice — because they’re bad at everything and almost anything will help — and for the expert — because of overuse and injury limitations.

Grapplers need to train mobility. The harder it is for you to move your own joints, the easier it is for someone else to break them.