BTG 184 - Taking a break before you break

Hello and welcome to breaking the guard. On today's episode, I wanted to talk about taking a break before you break. There are benefits to taking a break where you don't do any training and you just allow yourself to relax, unwind. It can be very difficult if you're a gym rat to peel yourself away from the gym, especially if it was something that didn't come naturally to you. I know for a lot of people, the gym is its own church, if you will, where they have to go to constantly renew vows to themselves to being fit, to pursuing the goals that they wish to attain. And if they stop for even a moment and they break their routine, it could be extremely difficult to get back on the routine. So they're kind of hooked. It's the opposite of an addict, if you will, where, you know, an addict obviously has to stay away. Let's say if you're alcoholic, stay away from alcohol. If you even touch it once, it could send your life into a tail spin. It's the reverse situation. It's like, well, I have to keep training constantly because if I stop training, then I'm going to start doing other things, I'm going to throw my life into a tail spin. So, that is something that I know exists. It's anybody who's trained long enough can understand that. And you feel like, well, you best just never get off the wagon, right? Just stay on the wagon the whole time. But there are benefits obviously to getting off and one of them is recovery. When you're in a strict physical regimen, particularly if you're a young guy and you're, you know, training multiple times per day, six days a week, it's hard in the body. And while when you're younger you're capable of recovering, there is damage being done. And while you might recover enough to be able to perform and perhaps even improve week to week, long term, you could benefit from a rest at some point. When I say taking a break, I don't mean like a year off or anything like that. I'm I'm saying like a week maybe two weeks, depending on what's going on in your life and where you're at in your career, could yield a significant benefit. I know at times I've taken time off because I'm traveling or whatnot and when I return I find that not only do I feel a lot better because I've gotten a good rest. I sometimes am a bit sharper because certain techniques or strategies that I've been working on while I was away have somehow solved certain problems subconsciously so that when I return things just move better. It's not to be underestimated that taking a break can be very beneficial for you, especially if you are at a point where you feel like you might be overtraining. I'll be clear that most people probably haven't experienced overtraining because you have to really be redlining it for a good period of time to achieve that. But it is possible and you'll know if you're overtraining because you start getting hurt a lot or performance starts to decline. When you see those two things happening consecutively is a good indicator of overtraining. Not absolutely you could just be an idiot not tapping and hurting yourself. But if you're doing things right, or at least you feel you're doing things right, but you're still getting injured, particularly towards the end of practice, that's usually a sign that you went a little too far. Right? For myself, I'm not training for a competition anymore. I'm just training for fun, for health, and for the love of the game. I take breaks more than I would have when I was younger just because I know I want to be able to keep doing this. For example, I injured my neck the other day in training. I went to double leg somebody. I had my hands locked on my knees. I I just had to give him a good drive off my my head to bump him over. When I did it, my neck cracked. I scored the the taked down, but at great cost to myself. Uh there was nothing that I would have known could have really caused that to be honest. It's kind of one of those random things. The technique wasn't bad. I was postured up, head up. was just bad luck as far as I can tell. And as a result of that, my neck was really stiff. I was like, I could barely look left or right. The next day, had to do some treatments on my neck, the Indeiba thing. I I've told you guys about the radio frequency thing, cold plunging, steam showers, uh doing little stretches and skipped a few training sessions as a result. I've been doing other things in the absence like I've been doing walks and you know, like I said, stretches just so I still exercise, but I'm not going to try to do something to aggravate this and make it a more significant injury. So to me, this is an example of taking a break. Right? Now you might say, well, you kind of got broken before you took your break. Okay? And perhaps in that case, I might have gotten really close to it. Um but there are similar situations where I've had where before going to training I feel extremely sore and not in a good way where like oh you know once they get the blood flowing you will feel better. This is like more achy. I I tell people this too like some people ex mistake soreness for hurt right? Soreness, at least as I experience it, is dull pain. It's not sharp. It's not staty. It's just like ah, all right. But as you move, it tends to feel better. Hurt is different. It's short, sharp jabs. Like when you move like a like you flinch when you feel it. That is hurt. And hurt doesn't get better with motion, it gets worse. And usually the hurt signal increases. So understanding the difference between the two allows you to make better decisions as far as pursuing training or not. So if I feel hurt, I'm definitely not going to do something that will make me experience more hurt. I have to let that heal. If I'm feeling sore, I could possibly train through that and feel better as a result. If I feel excessively sore, I might not be able to move effectively and I might put myself in a position where I am going to get hurt because I have too much accumulated soreness. Right? There's a I feel like there's a certain amount that you can play with, but if it's just overwhelmingly sore, like maybe I did a full body workout lifting like crazy and the next day I could barely move, that's probably a good day to take a break and do some, you know, what they call active recovery, like go for a walk, maybe on the bike, uh get some blood movement, you know, I would definitely, you know, sauna for sure. uh just to get the blood flowing because like I said, soreness usually gets alleviated when you can move it around a little bit. But when everything hurts to move, it's going to be difficult, especially in a sport like ours where people are trying to break your arm and slam you and throw you around and punch you. If you can't move well, it's going to be you're going to be a punching bag and you're probably going to end up getting more hurt. And this is also when having smart partners can pay off. Uh the other day we had uh one of the guys I was training with had a hurt lower back and he was paired off with me. So I'm like, "Okay, we're going to, you know, take it easy. I'm not going to body lock you." And then we had someone else jump in the group and the first thing they did so he went for like a bear hug and squeezed the guy and he wasn't too happy about that. And then uh he did it a second time afterwards. So I was like, "Okay, not great." I like some people just don't follow instructions. Um, so you want to be sure that you're partner up with people that are going to take care of you and work around anything that you have going on. But every so often, you'll be benefited by just taking a break. Just step away from it. assuming that you're not in the what I call like the reverse addict situation where you do have the discipline where I can step away for a day or two or maybe even a week and then return to my routine with no issues then I would urge you give it a try when you're feeling you've accumulated a good amount of damage and or maybe you're just stressed and like the the routine is getting you to a bit nowadays they call this de lo right and weightlifting you know oh you got going to take a D load week. I heard one of the younger guys saying he was just going to do a dload week for MMA. I'm like, "Okay, that's good." Like people are understanding this is a a valid thing to do. It's not being, you know, lazy or whatnot. Just being able to step away and just focus on recovery. Allow your body to heal up so that you can come back in. And a good break off will really allow you to supercharge quickly. Especially if you're a younger guy, like you'll just it's like the energy bar in a video game. You you just resume to 100% pretty quickly when you allow the body to recover. Our bodies are constantly fighting to recover. I feel like as you get older that the capacity diminishes, but if you're overloading yourself constantly, even as a younger guy, you're just won't have the capacity to to recharge to 100. So, don't be afraid of taking a break, going on a vacation or something like that. And taking a break doesn't mean not doing anything. It just it might mean just don't do what you normally do because what you normally do is what got you here to begin with. And it's probably accumulation, right? It's just every sport has seasons and cycles and if you think of marathon runners, there's a specific training protocol in order to have you peak at the right moment before your race. And the exercises are tailored as such to get you to the peak at just the right time. You can't be at a peak 24/7 365. It's just not possible to be optimal. It's a small window. And everybody's a little different. And so understanding what that means for yourself is important as an athlete and just as an individual so you know what you have to do to get yourself into the right state of mind and state of being. Now I imagine most of you that are listening to me are not competitive world-class athletes. So you might well this is a little bit over me. But I think that more so that you can benefit from a break because you don't have the pressure of having to perform on stage at the highest level in this sport, but you still want to be able to train like that. And you just have to remind yourself, well, since if I'm not going out there and having to compete, I can afford to give myself a little bit more downtime just so that I'm able to recover. And again, the intention of this is not to be lazy. It's to not get hurt. If you overtrain, especially as you're older, you will break yourself. And if you break yourself, guess what? You're going to be gone out of training anyways. So being able to recognize the signs that things are starting to fall fall apart for you. One, like I said, if you have hurt, short, stabby pains, that's not going to improve with movement. You have to do whatever you you can do without feeling that. And uh if you have a injury that doesn't allow that at all, that's frustrating. And then that's going to be a little bit more patience on your side. I know I've had a few injuries like that where it's really hard to work around ribs. It's really hard to do anything when you have a popped rib because breathing hurts. So guess what? Anything you do is going to suck. Uh and that's why I hated rib injuries. It's just so hard to work around because everything hurts. moving around, turning side to side, breathing. So, guess what? If you're doing cardio and you start heavy breathing, it starts bothering you. Uh, it's a real pain. And those are the that's one where you have to take a break. And the only thing I can think of, I've been fortunate. I've had a significant rib injury in a while. I did have somebody kne me on a grappling situation, which I was pretty upset with. dropped the knee from standing right into the middle of my sternum. Never had that happen in the 30 years of training. Uh kind of gave me a contusion. Didn't pop the rib fortunately. But that's another one I also had to give myself some break. And I was grateful that it didn't pop out, you know, because sometimes I've had it where the rib I can feel the rib or it's not necessarily the rib, but the connective tissue comes loose and starts moving around. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, but I felt it on a deep exhale. I'm like, okay, that's another one where I'm like, well, okay, got to give myself a few days off. But for the most part, I haven't had one of those in a in in a good long while where they came completely loose. But, uh, shoulder injuries can do that to you, right? Uh, and you might think, well, a shoulder is just your arm. But when you realize whenever you turn, your shoulders are moving. Uh, I had a AC separation a long time ago and man that was very miserable. I remember I was a young guy too. I was probably like 23 or something and I popped it going for a rolling arm bar and I just went straight home. I kind of wanted to pretend like it was going to be okay when I woke up. I just went home. I didn't ice it. I didn't do anything. And I just showered, went to bed, woke up around 3:00 in the morning with my shoulder having its own heartbeat and then I had to go to the bathroom and trying to get myself out of bed was a nightmare because I had to roll over and it was I pretty much had to yell and kia my way out of bed because there was no easy way of doing it. Uh yeah, very very miserable. And uh so yeah, that's a hard one to walk around too. That's one that you're going to have to give yourself a break because you can't even run because again everything's shifting. Uh I did some bike and that was a tolerable. I'm getting a little sidetracked here, but the point being if you're hurt, only do things that don't make you feel the hurt. And if you have nothing that can do that for you, hot bath, sauna, steam room, one of those three, or even just like localized heat pads, just so you can get blood flow moving. I can't stress enough that having blood, fresh blood circulating to the area is going to promote healing and regeneration much better than being stagnant. If I'm just staying still, not doing anything, everything's going to tighten up and it's not great. So, if you can do, like I said, a sauna, steam room, hot bath, or hot compress on the affected area, that's going to help your recovery for sure. If you're sore, do as much movement as you can. Especially if you warm up well. A lot of times if you're just sore, a good warm-up will go a long way. You guys know I've talked about this. I do warm-ups now. They're like 30, 40 minutes now, just doing the yoga mobility stuff. And after doing those, I feel pretty good and I'm pretty much ready to go. If I did a one of those and I felt like total crap, I probably wouldn't train. I would just like, "All right, I'm going to sit out." Because if the mobilization and the warm up and the stretching didn't make me feel better, then I might be just overly sore, right? To the point where I'm going to end up pulling something or tearing something. It's just not a good state of mind to go. I might go to training just to watch or take notes, but I'm not going to participate, especially in anything that's re-rolling, sparring or explosive motion. So, understanding the limit of your your body is important to keep yourself preserved because not every day has to be about showing how tough you are, right? I know there is a voice. I have it. My voice has gotten down significantly, but in the past, especially as a younger man, there's always that voice in the back of the head. If I ever wanted to take a break or skip around, don't be a right? And that would be, all right, I'm going to do this now. And sometimes you get away with it. And then sometimes that's when I got a knee hurt or I got elbow popped and you're like, "God damn it." You know? Uh so don't always put yourself to task that way. There is times for toughness training where you do got to push yourself to the limit and those are best done with supervision by a coach on the outside so that they can recognize the signs. If I see this guy starting to overtrain, I will pull him. He's not gonna have to tell himself he was a because I pulled him off and I'm his coach. I'm allowed to do that for him without hurting his ego or his manhood or whatever you want to call it. That's more difficult for in my situation because my brother and I were our own coaches. So, we didn't really have the third party. So, it's it was in our own head that we were telling ourselves what to do. So, I feel like having a coach is going to save you from a lot of trouble because they get to be the responsible party. They get to take that load off your shoulders. Anyhow, hopefully that's helpful for you. Don't be afraid of taking a break. Uh, as long as you don't let yourself go completely, you'll be fine with to return. Now, mind you, I I'm fairly disciplined. I think some people think I'm very disciplined. I think compared to what I have been in past points in my life when I was competing or whatnot where I had to practice extreme discipline to be able to maintain the training regimens, the diet, being able to do my my school work and then be able to do the business stuff. That took a lot more disciplined muscle. Whereas now I am still disciplined. I journal every day, you know, I work out every day. I You guys see on the website, I post every day. And this is now going over two years of doing that. Haven't missed a a daily post. So, I'm filming stuff constantly. I'm editing constantly. I'm helping my wife with her business. I'm doing my my stuff for my gym in Miami. So that might sound like very disciplined, but for me it's it doesn't really require that much effort for my part. Like it's very automatic to me and even when I'm away on vacation, I'm still doing my journaling. I'm still tracking everything I eat every day. Uh you know, I send out my emails that I have to do. So, it's not a big exertion for me because I enjoy what I do. I enjoy filming these things and sharing my my points of view with you. I enjoy the physical training. So, it's not a big ask for me. And I know that might not be the same for everybody else. I know for some people they're doing the physical training because they want to get into better shape, but it's not an easy thing for them. So being able to step away from it is somewhat scary because the temptation to fall away from it and and return to another form of living which may have caused health problems or whatever else in their life could be trickier. But if you can manage it and just take a brief break. Maybe for you instead of a week it's like two days and just don't put in those two days I'm going to go you know all you can eat buffets and drink or do whatever craziness like no just don't train for two days but do other things that are productive and especially things that promote recovery of your body or at the very least just to release stress and relax. It will benefit you in the long