Balancing BJJ & Weight Training Effectively w/ Nick Garcia (SSOF Ep. 32)

Nick Garcia0:22

And it was very, very structured and there was a plan for everything and a system for everything. And to this day, I'm still a systems guy. I've went my own way as far as strength conditioning goes. I still use a huge part that I learned from him, but my programming and things are a little bit different than what we did back then. But that's my history of it.

And the way I got the strength and conditioning job at Notre Dame High is I started working with the throwers there, and my throwers got really good really fast. They were part of the football team and they got strong fast as well. So when they saw the results of that, I started working with the whole program as far as football goes. Then it evolved into baseball and the whole school, and I kind of created my own job. So that's what I do now.

James de Lacey3:02

Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. So be the pivot person to dive into strength conditioning for Jiu-Jitsu today. Obviously you've found a love for Jiu-Jitsu semi-recently, but not too recent as well. And you've obviously got some good experience behind you within strength conditioning as a coach as well. So don't, maybe start maybe with your philosophy behind strength training in general, or maybe just strength training for sport, because it kind of compasses together anyway.

Nick Garcia3:30

Well, I think that, you know, we talked about this before a little while, a while ago, there's guys who are Olympic lifting guys, there's guys who are powerlifting guys, there's guys who don't believe in Olympic lifts, you know, you can get away without them, et cetera. I'm an everything guy as far as my philosophy goes.

My whole goal here is to prepare high school students for college. And so when we have four and five-star athletes that— we have three of them this year that are going to University of Houston for basketball, Duke for basketball, and Gonzaga— I reach out to the strength coaches, say, "Hey, what do you want them to be prepared for when you get there?" So there's a whole wide range of philosophies at those levels, so I try to cover everything as far as teaching them how to Olympic lift, teach them how to squat properly, that type of stuff.

So that's the main thing, but I do not believe that you need to be a great Olympic lifter to be a great football player or a great Olympic lifter to be a great shot putter, discus thrower. There's lots of things that work for different people. And I've done it where I've got guys really, really strong, and with that route.

And then I've done it where currently I have a kid named Kai Dinus who's thrown 199 feet in the discus as a junior and 63'5" in the shot, and we train at 70%. We do Dr. Bondarchuk's system, which is the complete opposite of maximal strength type stuff.

So I do it all kinds of different ways, and my philosophy is to be open-minded. And furthermore, there's been a big debate right now on— against two— they posted a picture of King Kong versus Godzilla, like Vern Gambetta and Mike Boyle going at it on Twitter. Did you see that? And Vern's one of my mentors.

So it's a real big thing to give credit where credit is due. My systems that I've developed— I developed my own system, but it's came from Vern, it's came from Glenn McCoy, Dan Lange, who is throws coach at USC, John Smith, who's a big strength type guy at Ole Miss— he's really into the whole strength side of things. So it's came from a bunch of different philosophies.

And my whole thing is to be open-minded. Different things work for different people and different athletes, and expose them to a wide variety of different movements and different lifts so they have experience in all parts of dumbbell training, kettlebell training, Olympic lifting, powerlifting, et cetera.

James de Lacey6:07

Nice. Do maybe dive a little bit into Bondarchuk's system. I've had Martin on previously talking about the periodization and the overview of how it works, but you're already nailing it down with that high school kid. So you want maybe run through how that system works, how you're using it, and if that would be applicable possible with the Jiu-Jitsu?

Nick Garcia6:07

So as far as I use it, I use it pretty much with just individual sport athletes. If they play football and do track, it's a challenging thing to do. But if they're just track athletes, we do it with just track athletes.

And you mentioned periodization. Typically when we periodize the traditional way, we tell the athlete when they're going to be ready. So we drop the volume, increase the intensity, or make it medium, however you want to say. We manipulate that stuff and say, "Okay, you're going to be unloaded here, so you should feel good here," in a sense, right? So we tell them and we manipulate and say, "This is when you're going to be ready."

The Dr. Bondarchuk system is different. And the way it's different is each individual athlete's body is ready when their body says they're ready. And the whole thing of that is to find when they adapt and when they hit peak form.

So the gist of it is that you pick a competitive exercise. In my sport, track and field, it would be the throwing. So you would pick three implements. Let's say I'm going to throw a 14-pound shot, a 15-pound shot, and a 16-pound shot. So those are my competitive exercises, and these are the classifications— C is competitive exercise. That's a classification.

The next classification would be SDE, specific development exercise. That's something that mimics the actual movement, but it's not using the same implement. We're not using a shot. We may be doing a stand throw with a 35-pound kettlebell, or in the discus you might be doing a stand throw with a 15-pound dumbbell, somewhere along those lines.

And then you go to your specific preparatory exercises. These are exercises that use the same muscles as the actual movement of the throw, but it's not in the same pattern. So, you know, cleans, snatches— basically they're called global lifts. So your Olympic lifts and your traditional power lifts— your hex bar dead, your squat, your bench, or variations of your step-ups, things like that. Following that, and your bench press.

Following that, we have the last classification, which is GP, and that's General Preparatory Exercises. And basically the way we do it is we do one abdominal exercise, one twisting exercise, which is our transverse plane abdominal— would be obviously sagittal plane. One back exercise and one frontal plane exercise. So it covers the whole realm of the core and some back.

Stuff as well, and it covers all three planes. So a typical cycle would be your competitive exercise, two to three SD—if you're a hammer thrower, or sorry, one SD—and then two to three SEs. And if you're a hammer thrower you kind of take out bench press, but if you're discus and shot putter you leave that in. So that would be three SPEs, and then finally your GPE circuit. And you do the same thing every single day, so it's the same thing every day at roughly 70% of your max.

And you chart the distance of the throws. So I take the same amount of throws with the same implements in the same order, I do the same amount of lifting each day with the same exercises with the same intensity, and I track my throws to keep track of when I'm at peak form versus when I'm not at peak form. And you'll see peaks and valleys, and then you'll see a big peak, it'll level off, and then you have a big drop off. And that big drop off is you're done with peak form and you've adapted, and so you got to change.

And the whole goal is to figure out the pattern of right before that drop off. We want to know we're going to hit peak form and you want to be done with that before you hit that drop off so you can switch everything. And some athletes it takes 18 to 25 sessions, some athletes is 40 sessions, everybody's a little bit different. And that's how the system works, and it's the same if you do it right—each time it's the same pattern every single time. And that's basically the gist of the Dr. Bondarchuk system.

James de Lacey10:16

It sounds extremely complicated, but it's actually a really easy system to run. Would that be possible in a sport like jiu-jitsu where you don't have, I guess, something that you can measure every day in terms of performance that would be jiu-jitsu? Would you have to use something like a throw as almost like a proxy?

Nick Garcia10:44

Yeah, a throw or a jump. So what I would do is sports kind of like that that don't necessarily have a closed movement—like I would classify shot put, discus as a cyclical movement, right? Because it's kind of the same thing every time. Jiu-jitsu is not like that. Golf's not like that, because you have different clubs, different lengths, etc. So yes, in order to do that you would do a vertical jump or a med ball heave for distance right when you get done warming up.

Like let's say we get on the mats, we do our warm-up, which is maybe some side shrimping, some regular shrimping, some front reverse shrimping, we do all our different warm-up stuff. And then we go do our test, so we're going to test our vertical jump three times, chart that in Excel, and then we go to our training.

And so then maybe you would—okay, we get done with our training, that's more of our competitive exercise. So then we'll go to our specific development exercise, and that could be maybe a glute bridge with a floor press with the bench. That could be your specific development exercise for that, because it's very specific to trapping and rolling or elbow escaping, etc.

And then we would do something for our SPEs, like maybe a Bulgarian split squat or something that is very similar to the movements we do in jiu-jitsu, the many movements. Or maybe like let's say a jammer press, because if you're trying to go in for a double leg, it's very similar to that same movement as you step. And then we would do our core exercises that relate to jiu-jitsu. And you could definitely do it, it's just a little more challenging with the fact that you have to go in there and test something first before you start your training.

James de Lacey12:28

Yeah, because you would have—if you want to do that every day as well, as you mentioned, obviously you have training on the mat. So that training on the mats would almost impact the following exercise you're going to do in the gym if you're going to do it straight after, theoretically.

Nick Garcia12:28

Yes, absolutely. Now you usually go two days on, one day off. There's a few ways we do it: two days on, one day off. If you're a person who likes to set schedule, you would go three days on, one day off, two days on, one day off, because then you're training Monday through Wednesday off, off Thursday, Friday, Saturday off Sunday. If it's two on, one off, two on, one off, two on, one off, it's different every week, but that two on, one off throws in an extra day of rest every now and then, so that helps a little more as well.

But the whole key there is adaptation. So if you're rolling every day and you do it in that sense, then your body's going to adapt to that. Each day you obviously get less sore the more you roll every day, and same thing as lifting. You have that stuff together, so it should work in the same way.

But the only thing I would recommend: if you do five rounds a day rolling, then I would say make sure it's five rounds every day. It's not eight rounds one day and two rounds another day. You got to do the same thing all the time for it to work perfectly.

James de Lacey13:41

Interesting. Yeah, that's interesting, interesting concept. So different to, I guess, how we traditionally normally train or traditionally plan something. Because as you mentioned, you're manipulating variables, peaking for whatever that thing is. You have a set structure and that program changes almost depending on the cycle, potentially week to week, based on the intensity and volumes changing, whatever. But obviously with the system, same thing every day. And as you adapt, you're looking to potentially, as it changes, the exercises then to start to spur different adaptation.

Nick Garcia14:12

Yeah. So what you do is, once you—there's, like, I named the classifications, so we have what, four classifications? We have the CE, the SDE, the SPE, and the GPE. Now those four classifications, when you—that's called a developmental cycle. And when you're done with that developmental cycle, when you know you hit peak form and you're starting to drop off, then you go to what we call a cleanse cycle.

And a cleanse cycle is basically bodyweight movements—five bodyweight circuits or four bodyweight circuits—and you do that every day. And you do that like for 15 to 20 sessions, and that washes you out of all the exercises you did before. It's all bodyweight, it's just very—you're staying active, you're keeping the muscles active while washing out those old exercises. And then you move into another developmental cycle, if that makes sense.

And so there's three cycle classifications: there's developmental cycle, which we had just talked about; there's the rest cycle or cleanse cycle that I just talked about; and then there is a maintenance cycle. Now maintenance cycle, if you look—let's say, let's take for example, since the people listening to this are grappling, fight-type fans—let's take ADCC for example. So my objective would be to hit peak form at ADCC, like those two days, three days. I want to be feeling my best, performing my best physically, etc.

So if you—let's take, say, Gordon Ryan for example. He had a fight against Felipe a few weeks before that, right? Felipe Pena, correct. So that's an important fight to him because he talked a lot of stuff and he wanted to make sure he won that fight, and then he also has to win ADCC. So let's say that he had himself hit peak form for Felipe's fight, then he had to hold that peak, and so that's called a maintenance cycle.

And when you do that maintenance cycle, every two weeks you change the exercises, all of them, and that holds your peak form. Now I have data in the throwing that proves that it works perfectly. In the throws, you want to be plus or minus in the shot put 30 cm every competition when you're in maintenance form, and it works extremely good. Like I've held peak form for a long period of time doing it that way.

There's all—you change all, every exercise, so between seven and eight depending on what you're doing of those in those classifications. But we started doing another way called terracing, and it works the same way, but you don't change all the exercises. So once you hit peak form, you say, okay, I have to go on maintenance now, so I'm only going to change the competitive exercise.

Okay, so let's say instead of going five rounds of rolling or sparring, you go three rounds this time. And then you do that for two workouts and do everything else the same as the previous developmental cycle. Then you have to change the SD, the specific development exercise, so you change that after two sessions. So at four sessions now, you have new rolling or new sparring rounds, or levels of sparring rounds, and new specific exercise.

Then after two movements—you have, or two sessions—you change the SPEs. So now I'm going to change my clean to a snatch, and then two more I'm going to change my squat to a step-up, and then two more I'm going to change my bench to a floor press. And so now we're at about eight sessions now, and so you almost have the entire thing new. Two more sessions, you'll change all the GPE exercises to four new ones. So after about 11, 10 to 11 sessions, everything's new again, and then you just keep repeating that sequence every—

Two sessions you switch a classification every two sessions, and that works really well as well because you have a new stimulus each time, but it doesn't shock the body so much by changing everything and you don't really get sore. So that's another way you can look at doing a maintenance cycle.

James de Lacey18:02

Is it that novel stimulus that is kind of keeping that peak there, just getting something new and that's kind of the thing?

Nick Garcia18:02

Exactly, exactly. So after, I said, 10 or 12 seconds depending on how many exercises you have in there or classifications, you start over all again, all new again. So you're not shocking the system with a whole complete change of all six or all four classifications and all eight to nine exercises. You just switch one every two sessions. It gives you that little bit of stimulus, but it keeps the rest of the body kind of stable so you don't get sore and feel a little beat up for the first couple sessions. Does that make sense?

James de Lacey18:50

I guess that makes sense. I guess the question is what kind of—I guess if someone's maybe hobbyist or likes to compete, what kind of person would benefit from doing a program like this? Because I can imagine a lot of people would find it boring doing the same thing two on one off or three on one off or whatever it is, but it's exactly the same day and day out, same weights, same exercises.

Nick Garcia19:16

Well, I think a very disciplined person would benefit greatly from this, and I also think that people who may not be confident in their movements of all lifting movements would from this. You're doing the same thing every day, so you're going to get good at that, and the body's going to figure it out. The body eventually figures it out. This is a better term—the body will figure it out properly, and everybody has their kind of their own movement characteristics on how they—you could take one athlete in the clean and somebody else in the clean, and they will both have really proficient technique, but they're going to look extremely different just because they're different body styles and maybe have different mannerisms, if that makes sense.

So I think that somebody who maybe not as—how do I say it—very, has great technique or not as experienced in the lifts that they're trying to use, they'll get really good at them really, really fast. They're doing it every day, and so by the end you're very good at that movement. It's something like the 1 by 20 where the whole goal there is to get good at the movement, get stronger, and when you adapt to that movement then you change that movement to something else. It's very much like that.

So a disciplined person and somebody who needs to get better at maybe some specific movements in their lifting regimen or their lifting toolbox.

James de Lacey20:33

Nice. I want to also dive into your training schedule as well and how you've managed to balance the idea of strength training and jiu-jitsu, because a lot of people struggle in that area. And I think that's probably the biggest deterrent for people not getting to the gym as a jiu-jitsu athlete, is that balance. Because one, they either feel too sore from what they've done in the gym, which negatively affects their training on the mat, or two, they feel like they lose flexibility from training in the gym and then come to the mat. So you want to maybe dive into kind of how you have managed to structure it?

Nick Garcia21:05

Yeah, and I've got a perfect thing for the whole flexibility thing. So typically I train at night from 6:00 to 8:00—typically is what time I train in jiu-jitsu—and I try, I do no-gi twice a week and I do gi twice a week. So I get both forms, and actually when you do gi, your fingers get a little more and your hands get more sore because you're grabbing the gi, lapel chokes and whatnot.

But I usually try and get up extra early and do my lifting early in the morning before my day starts, and it's very important to me. I feel much better when I get done lifting, and I know that will benefit my—at least I feel it benefits my jiu-jitsu. And the way I structure my workouts, I train typically on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It doesn't matter if I do jiu-jitsu that night or don't do jiu-jitsu that night, I still train, however it falls in the schedule.

And I set it up—I have three, I call them three modules. Some people call them pods or tri-sets, et cetera. And it's set up the same way each day but with different movements. So for example, module one is an explosive movement, a core movement, and a prehab movement—injury prevention type, but I know people don't like that word all the time. And then I actually have my training right here. And then the second, you go through that—I usually do three sets of each movement, between three to five reps depending on the week.

Then the second module of the day, after I get done with those three sets, I move on to the next module, which is a lower body movement, an upper body pulling movement, and a mobility movement. Now this mobility movement is going to prepare me for the upper body pushing movement which is going to be coming in module 3.

So module 3 is going to be a hinge/hip movement, an upper body pushing movement, and then another mobility movement. And that mobility movement counters what made me tight from module 2's lower body movement. So if I'm squatting, I'm going to do like a pigeon stretch or a supported pigeon stretch, something along those lines, to go ahead and make sure that I still stay mobile even though I might be squatting heavy. So does all that make it clear so far? Making sense?

So those three modules per day, and I got this from watching Shannon Turley training, who was a training coach at Stanford when they were extremely good at football, and there's a junior college coach out here named Robert Dos Remedios who also used a very similar system to that where I grabbed that stuff from, and I kind of developed my own system.

Now, three sessions a week. That would be what a typical session would look like. Now on session one, day one, I use more a traditional thing, so I'll do my cleans, my front squats, my normal style bench press on those days, still with the other things I mentioned, the mobility and the upper body pulling on there and my hinge/hip, et cetera.

Day two, and that's more of a bilateral day. Day two is more of a unilateral day, which you and I both know is obviously more specific to a jiu-jitsu style workout—so much stuff is unilateral and you're moving one leg in one place and one arm in another place.

So that day, I do my explosive movement—that's typically some kind of one-arm snatch or one-arm high pull with dumbbells or kettlebells. My core movement is going to be, if I did a sagittal core movement on day one, I'm going to do a frontal plane core movement on day two or a transverse one. And my lower body movement's typically some type of kettlebell Bulgarian split squat or goblet squats, something like that. So everything's very much unilateral.

My dumbbell stuff, my bench, my pressing stuff will either be some eccentric dips, things like that, or I call them tempo—maybe not so much eccentric, but we do it with a tempo on the way down and explode on the way up. And I usually tend to use the velocity-based training for all my training. So tempo on the way down, four seconds on the way down, and then explode on the way up. So that would be more day two is all mostly unilateral, trying to work different planes that I did on the first day.

And day three is what I call my super jiu-jitsu-specific day. I do everything—it still falls the same format, we got explosive movement, we got core movement, we got prehab, all that stuff—but here I do everything for time, 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off or 15 seconds off. Because when you're pinned or you're mounted on somebody, most beginners are in a big rush to try and get a submission or whatever, but you also want to apply pressure.

You're getting applied pressure on you if you're unfortunate enough to be on the bottom, and you kind of got to relax a little bit, and so that's kind of your 10 or 15 seconds off before you hit a big burst. In my mind that's how I train.

And here I do lots of carries. So in a sense, my lower body movement would be more of what I call surrenders. So I put a band around my body, and it's attached fairly to a rack, and I have it around my shoulders and my neck, and I go down to my knees and then up on my feet, down on my knees, up on my feet, down on my knees, up on my feet, one side at a time, for time. And then I'll do for a carry, I'll do a heavy farmer's walk.

For grip strength I'll do a dead hang holding on the ropes or towels. That's my real jiu-jitsu-specific day. And I don't want to fail to mention that not only do I mix that with jiu-jitsu-specific training, but I also—there's a guy named

Peter Attia, who I listen to all the time, and he's more of a longevity specialist. Grip strength and things like that are a major tell in how long you're able to live, they say. And so that's why I mix those carries in as well and the grip strength stuff as well, because there's certain things that he has come across or data he has come across. If you could farmers walk your body weight for two minutes, then you're probably going to have a long life, there's data that shows that.

And for those of you who think I'm full of crap, listen to his podcast. I believe it. If you can dead hang for a certain amount of time and you're 40 years old—which I am 43—then you're above the curve and you probably have a higher chance of living a longer life. So I mixed those two together.

So it all makes sense how I set everything up. So I got a bilateral day which is more traditional Olympic lifting type stuff, and then I have a unilateral day which is everything's unilaterally done, and then I have a really jiu-jitsu specific day where everything's for time and rounds and things like that, as far as I lift. So that's how I evolved it. It's been fun and unique for me to be able to do something to kind of get specific to jiu-jitsu.

James de Lacey27:56

Nice. You mentioned you train jiu-jitsu four times a week. How, I guess in terms of the grip training, extra grip training—how many times a week of jiu-jitsu would you think you would need to train to kind of pull back some of that grip training? Do you think that can always be in there regardless of how much you're training?

Nick Garcia27:56

I think it depends what level you're at. If you look at some of the high level guys like Kurt Osiander, I've seen videos of him, he's got tape all over his fingers. These guys got—I don't know, you can sustain that if they're training 8 to 10 hours a day or whatever they're training, every single day and teaching class.

And I think without the gi you can do it, but with the gi it's way, way—it's way, in my mind, it's way different. I'm not some expert, but it's way different to me. You know, to me, gi is a little more stressful because you also have to worry about getting choked by the gi. No-gi, you don't have to worry about necessarily getting choked with a lapel or something or somebody sneaking your lapel at the bottom, lapel up and choking you with that or whatever. So it's a little more stressful and a little more grip oriented in the gi versus no-gi.

James de Lacey28:42

For sure. I mean, now I'm only doing no-gi submission grappling now here with the gym I found. It's been epic, four days a week of just that, not having to worry about doing gi, having to worry about my hands getting destroyed. And I don't have—I know what you mean by obviously doing a lot of gi, your fingers get pretty wrecked and your grip can take it. But just been doing the no-gi stuff, it's being nice. My hands don't feel wasted and I can go do whatever I need to do in the gym as well and I don't have that to teach.

Nick Garcia29:30

It's interesting because I started off at Gracie University by my house and they closed during COVID. And we, the guys who were just one stripe white belts, we're like, "Man, this sucks, we can't train now." So we started training in my garage and we did everything off of Rener and Ryron's videos. And then we tested for our—they call it a Combatives belt. A Combatives belt is like a rookie blue belt, you're good enough to be a rookie blue belt.

And they don't—they're very, very strict on letting you roll until you have that Combatives belt. Because a lot of places just throw you to the wolves and you don't know how to defend yourself, you don't know any of the moves, no elbow escapes, nothing. And you just kind of figure it out as you go. Well, this style—six to eight months you do this Combatives or this white belt Combatives type class, and then you're for the most part ready to roll after that.

So you get your Combatives belt, your rookie stripe—it's a rookie, it's a blue strip with a white belt. And so we passed, and when we passed the test, we became our belt and we kept rolling in my garage with the instructors. There was like 12 guys who would show up every other night. We got good enough and we got promoted our blue belts by the instructors. And so that's how it started.

Now then the whole place is closed down again and our place closed and people stopped coming to the garage. I'm like, "What do I do?" And then I started going to 10th Planet, and that's when I started doing all the no-gi stuff because 10th Planet was open, it was by my house.

And what I was getting at is we talk about gi versus no-gi—the elbow escapes in no-gi are different than the elbow escapes in gi. Because if you're elbow escaping in gi, I got to have that head control to keep him close to me so he doesn't try and choke me with a lapel. With a no-gi, I could get both my hands down on his hip and be able to bridge and get out without having to worry about getting my neck choked by the gi.

So little things like that is different. But I really enjoy it. I got a transition—it was hard for me to transition when I started going to 10th Planet of grabbing things. I would still grab rash guards and things because I was used to doing that and I had to stop doing that.

James de Lacey31:27

That's funny. How would your training in the gym then change if you were preparing for a competition?

Nick Garcia31:27

If I was preparing for a jiu-jitsu competition? Well, I would actually do it very much like a periodization plan. If I was doing a traditional type training—what I'm doing now, I guess you could say—is I would definitely have a cycle leading up to my competition. If I was 13 weeks out, I'd have a specific cycle where we would run them in four—we, increments.

So getting back going back to how I prepare for a competition: I would have basically a 13-week cycle and we would run in 4-week increments, or a 13-week plan with 4-week cycle. And I would consider my first cycle my base cycle where it's a little bit higher volume and medium intensity.

And each week within that cycle, that first cycle, would have a theme. The first thing would be a base week which is about medium volume, medium intensity. The second week, I would increase the intensity a little bit and increase the volume. The third week, I would completely unload, so that means maybe I might spar two rounds instead of six rounds or whatever you want to say. And then the fourth week would be more of a performance week where my intensity is up, volume's a little bit lower, but I'm rolling really hard, really aggressively, and hopefully I'm executing everything very, very good.

Then I would repeat that again the next four-week cycle, and that would be basically my, I guess you want to say, a strength development cycle. And so the first cycle was volume, the second cycle was strength development. And I would drop my volume a little bit, increase the intensity as far as lifting and training goes. And I would follow that same pattern of the weeks: base, volume, unload, perform.

And then the last weeks, I would consider that neural training. So I understand, maybe you could argue that jiu-jitsu and grappling—there are bursts and you got to do different type of explosive bursts, so you definitely need a good nervous system to be able to handle that. But you also need very good cardio as well.

But I would obviously drop the volume even more, increase the intensity even more. And my rolling going into a competition, I would very try and be as fresh as possible. I wouldn't be rolling six rounds a day or training two hours a day. I'd cut it down because at this point I should already know how to do what I'm doing and be very specific what I'm doing—no drilling, none of that stuff, just straight rolling and trying to be fresh.

And then one week out, I call that my prep week, and that would be medium volume, medium intensity, be as fresh as possible. And then week 14 would be compete. So does that make sense? So we have the three cycles: the first four-week cycle is volume, the second is strength development, the third is neural training, which is very much like an Olympic lifting type setup. And I got this style from Coach Conroy—are you familiar with Coach Conroy, USA Weightlifting?

James de Lacey34:42

No, I don't.

Nick Garcia34:42

He's out of Idaho. But that's how I'd set it up. And then within those weeks we have theme weeks: we have a base week, a performance or a volume week, an unload week, and a performance week for each of those cycles.

That unload week is very, very important. You always, every two weeks, you get to unload a little bit and feel good. And it kind of mimics the way you're going to feel in competition in a sense, because you're going to be unloaded. So it kind of mimics that and gives you a chance to recover. So that's how I would do it. Now, as I had more experience, I might adjust things, but to start, a starting point, that's what it would be.

James de Lacey35:29

Nice. I like how you mentioned about manipulating the sparring with the live rolling stuff, and I wanted to get your take maybe on this for people who maybe they compete, maybe they don't, whatever. But maybe just for longevity on the mats, obviously if you wanted to, you could go every Jiu-Jitsu class you go to, you could smash yourself and just roll five rounds to the death and just walk out there wiped.

Obviously in the long term it's going to take its toll on the body, injuries, all sorts of things going on. So I guess just from a general longevity standpoint, do you have any maybe advice or tips for anyone of how they can manipulate, I guess, rounds, their roll intensity and things like that from maybe day to day and week to week?

Nick Garcia35:51

My thought is that for me personally, I'm older, so it's a little bit different I'd imagine. But I think drilling or flow rolling twice a week and rolling hard twice a week has seemed to work really, really good for me right now. I've been doing that right now and that's basically been the best I felt. My body, I don't feel like a truck hit me after every Jiu-Jitsu session.

Before, when you roll hard for five rounds every single day, it just adds up. Everything adds up and you feel like a truck hits you worse and worse every single day. But now it's kind of like Monday is more of a roll hard day, Tuesday is more of a flow type day and drill type day, Wednesday roll hard, Thursday more of a drill type day, and then you get to recover over the weekend if you don't go to any class over the weekend. So that's my best advice, but that's from my experience. That's what worked best for me.

James de Lacey36:46

Yeah, I found similar. Back in, well, maybe four or five years ago now, I was at class four or five times a week and after every class it was just hard rolling, multiple rounds. Yeah, you felt like a truck sent you. Now, where I'm training now, it's only rolling after the class if you want to.

So I've been able to control kind of what days I'm doing what. So Mondays mentioned, I roll a little harder, maybe a couple more rounds. Tuesday, Thursday, I might not even roll any rounds or maybe just roll one light round. And then Friday, positional sparring, and that's just an hour. I know that's my hard day. So I can almost plan my week to the point now where I know Friday is the hard day, that's all good, because all the other days can kind of be a little easy and I don't have to be stupid about how much I'm going to do each day.

Nick Garcia37:39

And even then, say for example Friday's open mat. So if you're still feeling good on Friday, maybe you go and get another, if you're feeling good, go and get a couple rounds in an open mat. If you don't, then you don't, right? So it kind of works out good that way.

And I think it also depends on the school. I've been to three different schools now. Gracie isn't, the way we do things isn't as aggressive as far as drilling type stuff. You drill things, but they want everything done very deliberately and very technical.

10th Planet is very technical as well from my experience there, but we also get after it at the end when we roll. Checkmat, I think, is the most aggressive that I've been to. I've only was there a few times, but they would teach you a move, a move from guard or something, and they say, "Okay, we're going to drill now. You cannot let anybody get past your guard. If they get past your guard or submit you, then you stay on the mat. They get off and you got to survive as long as you can, and you just keep rotating."

I was like, my first day there, I'm like, "Holy crap." And I went against a few higher belts than me and I passed their guard and I submitted one of them. And it was like, "Okay." And then they just kept coming and it was like, I know what these guys were doing now. These guys were saving a little bit of energy. That's why I was able to get past their guard and beat him a little bit, because they knew how long this was going to last.

And then after that 15 minutes of that, then it's like, "Okay, now we roll." And at that point, you're like, "Oh my God." So at least in my experience, Checkmat has been the most aggressive as far as wearing you down and making you get after it at the end.

James de Lacey39:13

Yeah, for sure. It's definitely different cultures and different gyms. And especially even some of the more traditional Brazilian style gyms as well often have really hard rounds near at the end of class. And a lot of them. And sometimes extra, that's one thing I really don't like about some gyms, when they make you do extra conditioning and stuff, push-ups and runs. I'll do that in my own time. I want to learn while I'm here and I can do that whenever else.

Nick Garcia39:34

Exactly. In relation to the whole different school thing, how they promote is extremely interesting too. At 10th Planet, I felt that the blue belts are actually, they're all about equal, right? And they have purple belts who are really, really good, and they even have white belts that are really good that aren't blue belts yet but maybe probably are technically as good as blue belts.

And people listening who may be a white belt, you could definitely tell a difference between a purple belt, a blue belt, a white belt, at least in my experience you can. And then you go to a different school and you have, you roll against a brown belt and he's not very good. You think, "This guy's not that good." Or maybe even a black belt and they're not that good. But then you get a purple belt who's an absolute murderer and you're like, "Man, how is this possible? You're a black belt, you're a brown belt, this purple belt is just destroying everybody."

So I guess what I'm saying is that I guess it really doesn't matter what belt you are, typically. Because isn't Nicky Rod, isn't he still a brown belt? Call him the black belt slayer. I don't even know what belt he is.

James de Lacey40:50

I think they call him the black belt slayer because he's still a brown belt, I think. But obviously he was an ADCC final, so he's pretty good. Must be sandbagging.

Nick Garcia40:50

Sandbagging. And it's great too, because Tom Hardy just promoted our sport a little bit by the tournament he was in. And I saw a bunch of memes on Instagram and stuff. It had all the reporters with Tom Hardy after he won his, and you got Gordon Ryan, the greatest guy, the king right now, the best in the world, and maybe the greatest of all time, you could say.

And no one even cares outside of our world. But everybody outside of the world cares about Tom Hardy being a blue belt and winning a blue belt tournament. So that's kind of interesting.

James de Lacey41:11

Oh, that's funny. Do you have any thoughts maybe on extra conditioning off the mats? Do you see a place for it? Is that something you think people should spend their time off the mats doing, or should basically most of the conditioning come from the stuff they were doing in class?

Nick Garcia41:35

Well, I think the specific conditioning, yes, comes from the mats. But one thing that really has helped me is, I mentioned I lift on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Typically, that's my lifting sessions. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I typically do some type of cardio session.

And my favorite, well, not my favorite, but my favorite thing that carries over is the assault bike. And I do intervals on the assault bike. So I have a five-minute round and I'll go 20 seconds as hard as I can go, and then 10 seconds rest. I'm still pedaling and stuff. So if you really think about it, it's very much like Jiu-Jitsu, where, "Okay, all right, I'm pinned. Now I got to think about how I'm going to get out." Or, "I mounted this guy. What's my next move going to be? What's my next setup going to be?" It's very much like that.

So I'll do that for five minutes and then I'll rest for a minute, and then I'll do it for another five minutes. I'll rest for a minute. I'll do six rounds of that on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

James de Lacey42:47

Six rounds? What's that, on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday you'll do six rounds?

Nick Garcia42:47

Five to six, yes sir. Now, sometimes if I'm feeling I'm a little beat up, I might use the rower instead, because I feel the rower is a little bit easier than the assault bike. But that type of interval...

That's how I do it. I do it in five-minute increments, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. And I look at my wattage. I try to keep my wattage above a certain time or above a certain wattage for the 20 seconds, and then I try and limit how low I go on that rest.

So for that 20 seconds, I might try and be over 60 on the watts of the assault bike, or over 65 or 70. And then while I'm resting and pedaling still for those 10 seconds, I'm going to want to try and keep it about 50. Because there's a big difference between 50 and 65 or 50 and 70 in my experience on the assault bike.

James de Lacey43:36

Have you found you're able to hold higher wattage now that you've been doing it for a while?

Nick Garcia43:36

Absolutely. And even more, I do some zone two training as well. I'm glad you mentioned this because I want to talk about this a little bit.

I was doing my zone two training, and that's basically I go 45 minutes and I keep track of how many watts I can generate the whole time, the consistent time of 45 minutes. And my heart rate stays in zone two—so 137 for me, 137 is right at the edge of zone two.

And so I was doing really good, and then I got COVID. And I had dodged it for two and a half, three years, and I was able to keep my watts at 52 or 53 for a long period of time for that 45 minutes. And then after I got COVID, my first workout back, I could only manage 46 or 45. So it dropped my cardio way down just after four or five days of COVID.

So it's been a long process, but I built it back up. But what I do notice rolling-wise is cardio-wise I'm okay, but it seems like when people put pressure on me now—side control, whatever—it affects me far more. And other people who have gotten COVID have told me the same thing, where sometimes they had to tap under pressure after they've had COVID because they couldn't breathe as effectively. It's hard to breathe anyways when you're under pressure, but it's even far worse now.

And I've experienced that now, and the only excuse I have is that I chalk it up to COVID. Because I'm in a little bit better shape as far as my wattage goes, both zone two and on the whole interval training. So that's kind of an interesting thing to look at as far as the side effects COVID may have on you. Or it also depends on what person, because chimy have had issues too, I think, with the whole COVID thing from what I've heard.

James de Lacey45:47

How long did it take you to bring back your cardio, your performance?

Nick Garcia45:47

Three months. So I got it in June, so July, August, September. At the end of September I was back, so three months.

James de Lacey45:47

Well, in that time then, I guess what did you do in that time to bring yourself back without putting yourself back in the hole?

Nick Garcia45:47

I did more zone two training than I did my interval training, because that was important for me to be able to get my cardio up as far as the zone two part goes. So I would do that every other day and stick with that. But that's basically all I did.

And there's a doctor named Dr. Michael Joiner, and he's at the Mayo Clinic and he's part of the Gambetta Network as well with Vern Gambetta. And I sent a message. I said, "Hey, Dr. Joiner, here's the deal. I got COVID and this drops way down. Is this normal?" He said, "Yeah, we're seeing that all over the place. So just keep working on doing what you're doing, keep working back up, and it'll come back." And so it finally did.

The only effects I have is when I'm under more pressure. When I'm under normal pressure for the same people now, it's just more pressure. And to me, I don't think they've gotten better at putting pressure on. I just think that whenever I get in that position, it's worse for me now. Hopefully it goes away.

James de Lacey47:06

So it's still now, the pressure is tough? When they're on top of me?

Nick Garcia47:06

Yeah, when they're on side control putting hard pressure on me, or knee-on-belly, things like that, it's a little bit tougher for me now than it used to be. I used to be able to really relax, but now it's a little bit tougher as far as breathing. I just can't explain the feeling, the difference in the feeling, but it's definitely there.

Because I used to pride myself I could take all the pressure you want to give me—maybe not against Bernardo or one of those guys, but against the guys we roll against, I can take anything you have. But now it's man, this sucks, this really sucks. I got to get out from underneath here. And so because of that, you can't relax as long and try to figure out your way out. You got to burst real fast and try to elbow escape or roll or whatever you can do to get out of that.

So hopefully it goes away. I felt that I've gotten better over the last number of weeks. It won't—it used to happen maybe the first two or three rounds, but now I'm able to get the first two or three rounds, and then round four or five it starts to happen more. So I think I'm getting better. But yeah, that part of the effect. My college coach, Glenn McKee, who's also a jiu-jitsu practitioner, he told me the same thing. He's felt the same way.

James de Lacey48:14

Wow. Hopefully that comes right. But you mentioned because you trained in your garage during the lockdown, so you obviously have mats in your garage there too. Have you played around with solo drills, shrimping, and things like that for extra conditioning?

Nick Garcia48:39

Well, I got a dummy that I put towels into and made a dummy. And so I feel a lot of people watch these crazy YouTube things and these crazy Instagram reels of guys working on different moves. And I look at them, and as a coach—and you're a coach—you could say, "Well, that seems pretty practical," "That doesn't seem practical at all." Because lots of times people are just laying there and doing just letting them do whatever they want to when they do that fancy move.

So I drill things on that dummy that I feel is practical. And yeah, it works. It works more often than not when I drill it. And then I just—it's kind of for me—for example, a side control escape. I got to watch them do it first.

So one that I just used the other night that I hadn't used before is I get my arm locked in underneath his hip, his far hip that's on top of me, and I take my other arm and I trap it around the top of his head and I roll him. And it worked. It was a charm. I had never tried it that before, and it worked a charm. And I got that from an Instagram reel that I drilled over and over in my garage.

There's one—and I'm fortunate, my wife's a really cool person, and she'll train with me every now and then. She's not a jiu-jitsu person, but she'll go out and she'll train with me, and I'll teach her some stuff.

But recently, the trap and roll is the most basic thing you can learn, right? This might be the first thing you learn. At least in our school, it's the first thing you learn. It's the most basic thing to escape things or escape mount. And typically when you try and trap an experienced person, it's not going to work because they know how to base out and hook their legs in underneath your legs, et cetera.

So recently, the new Gracie school I'm at—Leor—he's saying, "Look, there's a sweet spot. So if you hit that sweet spot, they can't stop it. And if you don't believe me, look at Hoyce versus Galal." When Hoyce took the fight in short notice, and they said, "Look, you can't let him mount you." And I guess Hoyce said that—and this is secondhand knowledge, I'm not saying I know what he was saying—but the story is that Hoyce goes, "I'm going to let him do whatever he wants to me to prove that our school stuff type works, that this trap and roll stuff works."

And so I think it's 12 minutes in the match—if you go look at the match, Hoyce versus Galal—Galal gets trap and rolled by Hoyce, right? And so that was proof that there is definitely a sweet spot. And so the other night I was rolling with the instructor, and I hit the sweet spot. And as I was trap and rolling him, he was going, "Oh my God, I can't believe I'm getting rolled by you," right? So because obviously he's a higher level than I am.

So I drilled that over and over again. So there's that saying: drillers make killers. Well, it definitely works.

It helps, but as far as conditioning goes, I just do my interval stuff and I do my, you know, the rolling on the mat. And the one last thing I'll say that we do is we have a specific curriculum in the Gracie Combatives course, in that school, and we have a sheet of all the mount techniques you need to know, all the side control techniques, all the guard techniques you need to know. And what we'll do is it's usually about five minutes of technique and we'll go through every single move for five minutes before class starts.

And sometimes we'll get through 10 to 12 minutes of it, sometimes we'll get through all of it before the instructor starts. But that's very much a conditioning type aspect too, because we're doing all those moves really fast in a row and we're drilling at the same time. So it kind of gets the best of both worlds.

James de Lacey51:54

Nice. That's a good way to end this as well. I mean, this would have been probably one of the more practical episodes we've had too, which is great, so people can take a lot of this information and try to simulate how they want to. But if people want to learn more about you, maybe what you're doing and things like that, where can they find you?

Nick Garcia52:18

On Instagram, Nick_G_Garcia. My business account is Garcia Performance, excuse me, on Instagram. Twitter, same thing, Nick_G_Garcia. And I have a small website, GarciaPerformance.com. HMMR Media also runs that site for me. But that's where you'll find me. And if you send me an email, I might not get back, I usually get back within the day, but if it's kind of a very deep question type email, I'm going to wait until I have time so I can answer in the exact detail that you asked me and so I make sure you get everything you asked for.

James de Lacey53:08

We should actually mention on HMMR Media, Nick's got a whole bunch of resources on there too from all different training stuff.

Nick Garcia53:08

We have a basically an exercise library on there that is separated by bilateral, unilateral, explosive, by all the exercise classifications that I talked about earlier. We have a core one that says, okay, transverse core, frontal core, sagittal core, etc. Complexes, circuits. So there's a membership fee and I'm not sure what that is because Martin runs that. But there's articles not just on strength and conditioning but on sport psychology, on sprinting, etc.

James de Lacey53:39

I should say, your jump circuit video, I've been using since you put that out. I've been using those jump circuits for years. That's right, I completely forgot about that. Yeah, that's my level one now, level one preparation for whatever it is. As we progress through more ballistic plyometric stuff, my level one is jump circuit. And I've kind of modified and made my own different ones now, but the concept's good.

Nick Garcia54:06

Like I said, we talked about base volume, or we talked about volume cycle, and then a strength development cycle, then a neural cycle. That jump circuit stuff, that stuff is in the volume cycle, the first one, to prepare us for the strength developmental cycle, which typically we do a lot of box jumps during that time. And then our neural training is we combine the jumps with a sprint, or the med ball throws with a jump, or the med balls with a sprint. So that's our neural type training. So there's a progression to everything and all that stuff's on there.

James de Lacey54:31

Nice. I actually need to go back through some of the HMMR Media stuff and see and rewatch a whole bunch of things on there. I think you just reminded me.

Thank you for coming on Nick, I really appreciate it. And if anyone wants to get in touch with Nick, you can find him on his Instagrams. I'll have everything down the description as well.

Nick Garcia54:53

Thanks for having me. I enjoy being practical. I'm not really a scientist, but I know good things when I see them.

James de Lacey54:53

Perfect.