Rafa Mendes: 'I Don't Do Strength And Conditioning Anymore, I Just Do Jiu-Jitsu'

It was a good interview, although I tend to view it as part of a pyramid of specificity. Rafa spent a lot of time with ATOS working on general qualities at a very high level, and now has relatively few weaknesses in GPP. The transfer of nonspecific means will be weaker for him.

That said, Cobrinha, while less dominant, is obviously within the same range as Rafa in terms of capability and definitely DOES NOT believe the same thing. With BJJ in particular, I think there are some additional non-transfer based considerations of using specific means for general traits, as the risk of collision-based injury and burnout are massively higher in using your sport as the only means of physical improvement. @Dirty Holt has talked about this before in regard to elite wrestling practice.
 
I have gotten to the point where I don't train S&C or BJJ. I simply meditate on BJJ and think about moves and transitions.
 
In a different interview Rafa mentioned he does train his grip strength buy doing pull ups.
He doesn't do a lot of other S&C as he doesn't have the time anymore and he doesn't consider it very important.
 
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Outside of things like grip, neck, low back, abs, strength training has diminishing returns. Strength training deals with overload and adaptation. In BJJ, you pretty much never deal with overload after a point, because everyone has to weigh in at the same weight.

Diminishing returns are not always purely physical. The mental drain of spending lots of energy for very low yielding return can really fuck with your motivation. Seeing as Rafa took a long break and has kids with legos all over the floors, a nagging wife, and having to constantly replace 800 watt blinding white lights at his academy, the stress and time to gain a little bit of strength he most likely will not need to win the competitions he is entering isnt really worth the pain in the ass.

Now, someone like Cobrinha, he is stronger than most guys he will face. Why does he continue with strength training? Because the physical gains might be diminishing returns, but the mental attributes he gains would be devastating for him to lose if he stopped lifting. I could be wrong about that, I dont know Cobrinha, but I know guys like that. Every guy has a few things they do to really boost confidence.
 
I´m sure they (Mendes bros) used to work out a couple of days a week. I remember when there was training videos from most of the top guys always doing some kind of strength & conditioning in order to get over their competition. When everything you do all day long is training like most of these guys do I guess you need to think bout something else to get and win over other guys doing exactly the same routine as you.

Now he owns a gym with very good talent to train all day long + he gets to train with whoever drops in to visit + he get to train with some of the Atos guys so I guess you get to a point when your mindset goes back to basic, there are no extra workout necessary but just sharp your jiu-jitsu to a point of perfection.
 
I still dont want to walk around at 145 as a grown man. Ill stick with some weight training even if it takes time away from bjj.
 
Dirty Holt said:
Outside of things like grip, neck, low back, abs, strength training has diminishing returns. Strength training deals with overload and adaptation. In BJJ, you pretty much never deal with overload after a point, because everyone has to weigh in at the same weight.

Diminishing returns are not always purely physical. The mental drain of spending lots of energy for very low yielding return can really fuck with your motivation. Seeing as Rafa took a long break and has kids with legos all over the floors, a nagging wife, and having to constantly replace 800 watt blinding white lights at his academy, the stress and time to gain a little bit of strength he most likely will not need to win the competitions he is entering isnt really worth the pain in the ass.

Now, someone like Cobrinha, he is stronger than most guys he will face. Why does he continue with strength training? Because the physical gains might be diminishing returns, but the mental attributes he gains would be devastating for him to lose if he stopped lifting. I could be wrong about that, I dont know Cobrinha, but I know guys like that. Every guy has a few things they do to really boost confidence.
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So true. I've got a teammate (he's gotten a bit wiser in his older years but it still holds true to a certain degree), that gets like a +5 on his confidence roll as long as he gets his conditioning in.

He'll go to a point of overtraining 3 days before fights that I think is detrimental to performance but he steps in so much more confident because in his head, he's completely outworked his opponent and there's no way in hell they can be more prepared than he has/
 
It might be an age thing... At a certain point - your mid 30's say - you need some weight training to hold your body together and correct all the imbalances that years of training have created.

Marcelo Garcia used to say the same thing as Rafa ("Just do jiu-jitsu") but last I heard he had added Pilates to his regimen to try and manage his various injuries...
 
He will change his mind later. You have to train with weights if you don't want to lose muscle mass later in life.
 
Dirty Holt said:
Outside of things like grip, neck, low back, abs, strength training has diminishing returns. Strength training deals with overload and adaptation. In BJJ, you pretty much never deal with overload after a point, because everyone has to weigh in at the same weight.

Diminishing returns are not always purely physical. The mental drain of spending lots of energy for very low yielding return can really fuck with your motivation. Seeing as Rafa took a long break and has kids with legos all over the floors, a nagging wife, and having to constantly replace 800 watt blinding white lights at his academy, the stress and time to gain a little bit of strength he most likely will not need to win the competitions he is entering isnt really worth the pain in the ass.

Now, someone like Cobrinha, he is stronger than most guys he will face. Why does he continue with strength training? Because the physical gains might be diminishing returns, but the mental attributes he gains would be devastating for him to lose if he stopped lifting. I could be wrong about that, I dont know Cobrinha, but I know guys like that. Every guy has a few things they do to really boost confidence.
Click to expand...

Word on the street is that Cobrinha's knees are pretty wrecked and his outstanding S&C is what allows him to stay together.
 
Dirty Holt said:
Outside of things like grip, neck, low back, abs, strength training has diminishing returns. Strength training deals with overload and adaptation. In BJJ, you pretty much never deal with overload after a point, because everyone has to weigh in at the same weight.

Diminishing returns are not always purely physical. The mental drain of spending lots of energy for very low yielding return can really fuck with your motivation. Seeing as Rafa took a long break and has kids with legos all over the floors, a nagging wife, and having to constantly replace 800 watt blinding white lights at his academy, the stress and time to gain a little bit of strength he most likely will not need to win the competitions he is entering isnt really worth the pain in the ass.

Now, someone like Cobrinha, he is stronger than most guys he will face. Why does he continue with strength training? Because the physical gains might be diminishing returns, but the mental attributes he gains would be devastating for him to lose if he stopped lifting. I could be wrong about that, I dont know Cobrinha, but I know guys like that. Every guy has a few things they do to really boost confidence.
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Great post. Also worth considering that Rafa is arguably on the backside of his time as an elite guy, yes he's only 27 but lighter weight class guys tend to peak earlier and decline earlier, and he's been competing intensely at the top level for years. Both the accumulated physical stress of that much training combined with a possible diminishing overall work capacity might very well mean that to stay on top he has to concentrate solely on technical skills maintenance (to say nothing of the time and effort he spends on teaching detracting from his own total training time + effort available). Different guys do different things to stay on top, for some they might feel that their physical capacity diminishes more than their technical capacity so they do more physical training rather than skill work to train and maintain that edge. But it doesn't sound like that's the direction Rafa is going, at least at this point.
 
fanboysareevil said:
Pharmaceutical science is pretty amazing...
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You still have to lift. Roids help you heal faster and put on more muscle than you otherwise would, but you don't get jacked sitting on the couch no matter how much gear you pump into your ass.
 
That's really not true and I'll get the studies in a little bit if needed. Train BJJ 2x daily and juice a ton and you can bet your ass someone will looked jacked with a halfway decent diet.
 
I don't think anyone would categorize 'training bjj' as 'sitting on your couch'.
 
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