The best conditioning I've ever had grappling came from leopard crawls

[don't ask]

I'm a little bit in disbelief. I've been doing Original Strength every day in addition to my regular workouts for awhile now, but over the past month I was out from BJJ with an injury and focused on leopard crawling. I was really happy with all the problems that got cleaned up the OS resets, but let me tell you when I rolled into BJJ last night I was a TANK.

When I compete in tournaments, I'll ramp up my conditioning with HIIT, and what this means is I can still be strong and explosive while sucking wind instead of succumbing to fatigue. But last night, I just didn't get tired, at all, so I never started sucking wind.

All I've been doing is setting aside ten minutes to do leopard crawling and that was enough. Torso is stronger, with fantastic endurance, and everything between my fingers and toes feels like it's all one unit. Getting my structure out of alignment last night was a real challenge for everyone I rolled with.

 

[LooyStLouis]

 

[Robocok]

@50 seconds

 

[Fahcough]

WTF lol. just start from beginning for full effect

 

[don't ask]

@50 seconds

Yeah, that's the stuff. There's deceptive power in these moves. Going forward challenges everything to work as a unit and going backwards really targets the strength of the upper body.

I think it does more (for me) in terms of strength than bear walking and other forms of crawling (i.e. lizard crawls) because it's all about holding form. In other forms of crawling, it doesn't matter if you start compensating for weaker movements as long as you do the work, but in leopard crawling you've got a clear form to maintain -- head up, butt down, shoulders down. My weak areas were never allowed to let the strong areas take over. OS has really helped with muscle imbalances.

 

[Smato_rules]

I’m a big os and Tim Anderson fan so this is cool to hear.

 

[MeatPlow]

when I was training BJJ and Judo crawling became my secret weapon also, thanks to Tim Anderson. I also bought a vest and would drag my logging chains forward and backwards. It makes you extremely strong and conditioned. Add some isometric work and you are golden. The magic question is why did I quit doing it after I stopped BJJ training...I should put it back in the mix.

I found HIT never done crap from my mat conditioning. All this and that explosive style work never produced any improvements. It could have been down to my style of rolling, I like slow grinding heavy pressure, maybe more of the old school classic BJJ that I was originally taught. Never did any of the competition style stuff with all the leg stuff.
https://www.oldschooljiujitsu.org/

 

[23rd Century Sweetheart]

@50 seconds

this man has insane length on his neck.

 

[ThunderL1ps]

I did one of the workshops years ago. It's legit.

Have you tried some of the John Brookfield inspired Becoming Bulletproof workouts that Tim has posted on his other channel or from the book of the same name?

 

[NoSmilez]

Nah I train with too many brothers and Puerto Ricans to do this in the gym. They made fun of this dude eating a banana aggressively and the dude never came back. I am still recovering from the why you got slits on the side of your shorts burning from 2012

 

[deadshot138]

Nah I train with too many brothers and Puerto Ricans to do this in the gym. They made fun of this dude eating a banana aggressively and the dude never came back. I am still recovering from the why you got slits on the side of your shorts burning from 2012

Indeed this looks sus as fuck. I could see how it would helpn with grappling tho

 

[deadshot138]

Gonna start implementing these on days the joints don't want resistance training. However doing these at 300+lbs is very much resistance training.

 

[don't ask]

I did one of the workshops years ago. It's legit.

Have you tried some of the John Brookfield inspired Becoming Bulletproof workouts that Tim has posted on his other channel or from the book of the same name?

i didn't know Becoming Bulletproof was a Brookfield kind of workout, I can't even imagine what that would look like. I saw an article (video?) where Tim talks about the secret to his 45+ minute crawls is the belly breathing: because he's purposefully breathing in a relaxing way, his brain and body accept that they're safe doing what they're doing and so he's able to do it forever. I thought that was an interesting hack.

 

[deadshot138]

i didn't know Becoming Bulletproof was a Brookfield kind of workout, I can't even imagine what that would look like. I saw an article (video?) where Tim talks about the secret to his 45+ minute crawls is the belly breathing: because he's purposefully breathing in a relaxing way, his brain and body accept that they're safe doing what they're doing and so he's able to do it forever. I thought that was an interesting hack.

So he crawls for time instead of distance?

 

[don't ask]

So he crawls for time instead of distance?

As far as I can tell, he does not do that as part of his usual training, but he periodically forces himself to do crazy-difficult workouts just to keep his mind strong.

this is what he was explaining, the famous video where he crawled for a mile in 44 minutes without taking any breaks:

 

[ThunderL1ps]

i didn't know Becoming Bulletproof was a Brookfield kind of workout, I can't even imagine what that would look like. I saw an article (video?) where Tim talks about the secret to his 45+ minute crawls is the belly breathing: because he's purposefully breathing in a relaxing way, his brain and body accept that they're safe doing what they're doing and so he's able to do it forever. I thought that was an interesting hack.

The breathing does help to manage things, but obviously someone isn't going to jump to crawling that far overnight. If I recall correctly, I think Tim has said if you can crawl 10 minutes straight without a break, it feels the same as crawling a mile.

I struggled with the breathing aspect in the workshop and in general until I had a biofeedback appointment once, hooked up to different gadgets, I had some one-on-one coaching, a screen with my heart rate of where it was and where it should be....It really helped to get a better handle on where the breathing starts (pelvis) and how far it travels up (upper chest).

I leopard crawl with a football field and I still have to take breaks even to go 100 yards. Tim said in an interview once he had a NCAA division 1 soccer team do leopard crawl and they couldn't go past two minutes. I imagine if I did it every single day for weeks on end, my CNS and breathing is going to allow me to take it further and further. When Tim crawled a mile, that's 1760 yards or doing 17 and a half (or thereabouts) of trips down a football field. It really puts it into perspective.

Becoming Bulletproof is a collection of workouts that have some Brookfield workouts among others. The idea is to break through limitations and plateaus. You mentioned doing interval training, but I've heard Brookfield say in a couple of different interviews that interval training lets you "off the hook" in the sense that if you are doing say a one minute interval before switching to a different task, you're mentally letting yourself off the hook. In other words, you are making the workout easier before you hit a wall. The real gains are when you hit that wall, relax mentally and keep going.

Tied into the one mile concept and John Brookfield, I've done the battling rope pull (he invented the battling ropes), where you get down a three point stance, wrap the 50 foot battling rope around a pole and you pull for a mile. I would do that once a week as a challenge and every week, chop 10 minutes off of my time. The first week it took 1:20 total time counting breaks and everything and I got down to 33 minutes two weeks in a row. I didn't so much do the belly breathing Tim talks about, but tried to mentally relax like Brookfield says, think like a farmer in the sense of trying to stay on task and get the job done. This is a very interesting and challenging workout for the mind and body.

If you don't have a battling rope, another good workout that is in the Becoming Bulletproof book, is called "The Weight of Water." You'll need two five gallon buckets. Fill one with water, place them about three to four feet apart, get into a plank and empty one into the other using a cup or a shot glass without spilling any on the floor. Every time you scoop the water up, you have to place the cup on the floor before switching hands. Every time your mouth pops open from labored breathing, it means you need to take a break and quickly get back on task. Here are some horrific progressions that Brookfield is demonstrating with Tim Anderson in the background.

 

[don't ask]

The breathing does help to manage things, but obviously someone isn't going to jump to crawling that far overnight. If I recall correctly, I think Tim has said if you can crawl 10 minutes straight without a break, it feels the same as crawling a mile.

I struggled with the breathing aspect in the workshop and in general until I had a biofeedback appointment once, hooked up to different gadgets, I had some one-on-one coaching, a screen with my heart rate of where it was and where it should be....It really helped to get a better handle on where the breathing starts (pelvis) and how far it travels up (upper chest).

I leopard crawl with a football field and I still have to take breaks even to go 100 yards. Tim said in an interview once he had a NCAA division 1 soccer team do leopard crawl and they couldn't go past two minutes. I imagine if I did it every single day for weeks on end, my CNS and breathing is going to allow me to take it further and further. When Tim crawled a mile, that's 1760 yards or doing 17 and a half (or thereabouts) of trips down a football field. It really puts it into perspective.

Becoming Bulletproof is a collection of workouts that have some Brookfield workouts among others. The idea is to break through limitations and plateaus. You mentioned doing interval training, but I've heard Brookfield say in a couple of different interviews that interval training lets you "off the hook" in the sense that if you are doing say a one minute interval before switching to a different task, you're mentally letting yourself off the hook. In other words, you are making the workout easier before you hit a wall. The real gains are when you hit that wall, relax mentally and keep going.

Tied into the one mile concept and John Brookfield, I've done the battling rope pull (he invented the battling ropes), where you get down a three point stance, wrap the 50 foot battling rope around a pole and you pull for a mile. I would do that once a week as a challenge and every week, chop 10 minutes off of my time. The first week it took 1:20 total time counting breaks and everything and I got down to 33 minutes two weeks in a row. I didn't so much do the belly breathing Tim talks about, but tried to mentally relax like Brookfield says, think like a farmer in the sense of trying to stay on task and get the job done. This is a very interesting and challenging workout for the mind and body.

If you don't have a battling rope, another good workout that is in the Becoming Bulletproof book, is called "The Weight of Water." You'll need two five gallon buckets. Fill one with water, place them about three to four feet apart, get into a plank and empty one into the other using a cup or a shot glass without spilling any on the floor. Every time you scoop the water up, you have to place the cup on the floor before switching hands. Every time your mouth pops open from labored breathing, it means you need to take a break and quickly get back on task. Here are some horrific progressions that Brookfield is demonstrating with Tim Anderson in the background.

jesus titty-fucking christ, that is so much more psychotic than anything I imagined based on your description. If I saw that in a Shaolin monk training montage I would never believe it.

The thing that i don't understand is how they can push themselves that far past their limits and not spend weeks recovering physically. I push myself to a fraction of that intensity and find myself having to aggressively prioritize recovery. I guess they're mostly doing isometric or concentric work, so maybe it does less damage to your body than some of the training I do, but i highly doubt that's a major factor. If I tried that exercise (and really gave it everything I had, past every limit I've experienced previously) I doubt I would function properly for a week. i can't speak for Brookfield, but I'm pretty sure Tim does these crazy workouts as challenges now and then, so it's not like he's gradually building up them.

 

[deadshot138]

Ok so I did some leopard crawls today and my forearms were really burning. Is that normal?

 

[ThunderL1ps]

jesus titty-fucking christ, that is so much more psychotic than anything I imagined based on your description. If I saw that in a Shaolin monk training montage I would never believe it.

The thing that i don't understand is how they can push themselves that far past their limits and not spend weeks recovering physically. I push myself to a fraction of that intensity and find myself having to aggressively prioritize recovery. I guess they're mostly doing isometric or concentric work, so maybe it does less damage to your body than some of the training I do, but i highly doubt that's a major factor. If I tried that exercise (and really gave it everything I had, past every limit I've experienced previously) I doubt I would function properly for a week. i can't speak for Brookfield, but I'm pretty sure Tim does these crazy workouts as challenges now and then, so it's not like he's gradually building up them.

Brookfield still does those very long crazy workouts even into his 60's; he's Tim's mentor.

While Tim isn't gradually building up to one specific exercise, he is always training full body movements. He said he did one year where all he did was walk, march, loaded carry and he didn't lose any strength for any of the exercises he did involving kettlebells or Turkish getups. There's a video where he does a get up with 135 pound barbell at a weight of 155-160 pounds I think. Up and down with both hands.

As far as recovery, I think a lot of it has to do with doing movements that our bodies are hardwired to do which is why you recover so fast. Crawling is part of our gait pattern.

With the battling rope pulls, I was sore for a couple of days after, then fully recovered the first time I did it. The second time I did it the soreness lasted a day. Third time I did it and it was just that day and part of the next. You bounce back very quickly from this sort of full body training.

In one interview I listened to with Brookfield he had been asked what the most "functional" exercise is. He said that a lot of people like to say deadlifts, but he believes that walking is the most functional. He said deadlifts have its place --- although he said he doesn't do them -- but essentially our design is to be upright and to walk daily. Brookfield attached a thousand pounds of chain or something like that, lol, to a harness when he was training to do the tractor trailer one mile pull and would just go walk behind a trail by his home. Again, with walking/crawling being part of our gait pattern, it really speaks to how the body is able to recover so quickly. I think most of us have walked for multiple hours in a row without stopping and by the end of it, you feel it in every part of your body, but by the next day or two at the latest, you've bounced right back.

 

[don't ask]

Ok so I did some leopard crawls today and my forearms were really burning. Is that normal?

It's normal. You should be actively gripping the ground as you do this. i would alternate between baby crawls (knees on ground) and leopard crawls (knees off ground) until you get the form down. You'll probably have a tendency to look at the ground, hunch your shoulders up and raise your butt when you're doing the leopard crawls and you shouldn't be doing any of those.