Knowing how to structure your training can be about as confusing as riding a bike on edibles. We’ve all walked into a gym, looked at the vast array of machinery and wondered what on God’s green earth we are going to do with it all. This poverty of wealth is compounded by a consistent bombardment of seductive tiktok reels of the newest exercises, the sleekest new gear and the sexiest results. The internet is biasing us towards novelty.
Having toyed with multiple strength and conditioning programmes for my sport (Jiu Jitsu) I have come to the conclusion that novelty is not always the answer. Rather, employing the tried and tested methods of the old timers, is, in principle, a powerful approach.
A Friend called Lindy:
Father time is a merciless beast. It is the ultimate judge of value; shredding the unnecessary and the superfluous, the bullshit artistry and the gimmicks. To consider this further, it’s worth examining the lindy principle, a heuristic coined by pit-trader come-philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He says in his book, “Skin in the game” –
“The idea of fragility helped put some rigour around the notion that the only effective judge of things is time – by things we mean ideas, people, intellectual productions, car models, etc.
Therefore, when we consider the utility of certain training methodologies, it is worth noting how long they have been around for. Why? Because much like natural selection, only the adaptive methodologies would have survived the test of time. Otherwise, why would the best guys still be using them? Lindy, in essence says – the longer something has successfully been around, the longer it’s likely to be around (and the greater its value).
Case in point, Floyd Mayweather. The guy ran an outrageous 7 miles a day and did a gargantuan quantity of pushups, pullups and crunches. His conditioning workouts were about as caveman as you could get. Throughout his career he faced opponents at the mercy of tyrannical PTs – demanding a religious adherence to their latest protocols. Why then, despite his seemingly retrograde approach to S&C, was Mayweather able to better all 50 of his opponents across a 20-year career?
In short, he was the beneficiary of ancient wisdom. It’s well known that Mayweather comes from a lineage of storied Professional boxers. The young Mayweather benefited from generations of boxing knowledge, which itself had been moulded on the work of the old timers. Mayweather’s S & C workout, for example, was much the same as Sugar Ray Robinson’s 50 years prior and Jack Johnson’s 100 years prior. He didn’t complicate it. By drawing upon a workout that had produced champions in a bygone era, Mayweather knew he was benefitting from exercises tailor-made for the sport of boxing.
Indeed, specificity is key here. There is no point copying ancient boxers if you are playing hockey. Your application of the Lindy principle should be entirely context dependent.
For my sport, that wasn’t simple. No gi grappling is a hybrid sport of Jiu Jitsu, wrestling and judo and has been around (in its current state) for no more than a quarter century. What’s worse, the guys at the top of the sport are no model exemplaries – combining a meathead gym-bro mentality with a little help from their local pharmacist (if you get my drift).
So copying them was a no no. But amazingly that’s exactly what I did for 4/5 months, chasing PRs for bench press, squat and deadlift. I’m not gonna lie; it was a lot of fun and I did feel stronger but admittedly, I reached a point of diminishing returns. There were times this workout made me feel mummified; stiff as a board and half-dead.
It was clear something had to change. Enter Alex Strambanu, a no-nonsense Russian/Romanian Behemoth, forged in post-soviet Russia and a fountain of strength training knowledge. I didn’t know it at the time, but Alex’s workouts were the lindy principle in motion. To apply lindy for a novel sport like no gi grappling; Alex had to have a look at what the old timers from related sports were doing. Namely, Bulgarian and Persian wrestlers and Japanese Judokas. These sports required similar application of physical attributes contained within different rulesets.
A good example, is the use of pummelling movements in the upper body, which require strong and stable shoulders to prevent injury. To address this, centuries of Persian wrestlers used “meels” – club like structures used in rotational patterns to strengthen the shoulders in multiple planes of motion. This is but one example of an exercise picked out by Alex to address the need for stronger, more dextrous shoulders. It’s sport specific, it works and is backed by generations of champions who have been the beneficiaries.
This blog post isn’t a crusade against novelty or innovation. Rather, it is a fool-proof method to adding tried and tested exercises to your workouts. It cuts out the bullshit and will enable you to get more specific for your goals.
If you want to apply the knowledge of legends to your workouts, ask your self three questions:
1. How long has the exercise been around? (the longer the better)
2. Who has used it? (Did the old timers use it and are the champions of today still using it?)
3. How specific is the exercise to my sport/goals?
If you answer these questions comprehensively, you will be able to zero in on a no-frills, sport-specific and effective training regimen that has stood the test of time.
