We’re nearly 2 weeks into the New Year and by this point most people have already dropped their resolutions.
I’ve never been big into resolutions because what’s the point of only setting one goal once per year?
The New Year is a good time to check in and recalibrate, but the goal is order and progress – a plan, discipline to execute, and continued gains, forever.
Now if you haven’t set a goal for this year, I’ve got one for you.
Rotational strength.
And here’s why you, a grappler, or any person focused on resilience, performance, and longevity should pursue it.
Unified Strength
If you’re like me, you spent years getting strong doing traditional exercises like squats, presses, and pulls.
Those moves are excellent for building absolute strength, a quality that’s important for resilience and longevity in itself.
Muscles get strong, bones get dense, ligaments thicken.
Excellent.
But, most of these exercises are performed linearly and in the sagittal plane.
Life and sport happens in the transverse plane, which is the rotational plane.
Muscles, tendons, and fascia needs to be strong here too.
That’s where rotational strength training comes in.
When you begin to train with loads in the transverse plane you are unifying the strength you’ve built to become fully integrated.
You strengthen the odd angles and compromised positions that life throws at you.
In turn, this makes you not only stronger in sport and on the mat, but more resilient.
Watch your strength and performance reach new heights after rotational strength training.
Injury Prevention
As mentioned, life and sport happens in the transverse plane. In fact, the only sport that doesn’t is powerlifting.
Nearly every sport, and certainly jiu-jitsu, requires rotational movement. The reason why is because you need to move your body for sports, and the body was designed to rotate.
Natural human movement is rotational movement. Try running, throwing, cutting, juking or grappling without rotation.
It’s impossible.
Yet, many people expect to reduce their chances of injuries by training mainly with linear, bilateral movements that resist rotation.
Now, as I said in the previous section, there are resilience benefits to this type of training.
However, wouldn’t you want to strengthen yourself in the patterns and positions you will actually meet while engaged in your sport?
And Im not referring to hyper sport specific movements either. Im referring to basic rotational patterns that all humans use and were primarily designed for.
Additionally, rotational training, when done with a club, stretches your fascia, decompresses your joints, and improves your movement symmetry for even more injury-proofing benefits.
Longevity
Now longevity is a hard one to program for. It’s a buzzword term that gets thrown around by biohacking charlatans and snake oil salesmen.
The only real way to know if something promotes longevity is through multi-decade long studies following people into old age.
But even then, there are too many influences that can contribute to someone’s mortality, like genetic, environmental, and social factors.
So the way I approach it is more simply, and with respect to training, specifically.
The truth is, you can’t train if you’re hurt. And if you can’t train, you can’t get all the life-extending benefits of exercise, play, and social connection.
Pain equals stress on the system. Injury equals stress on the system. Training equals stress on the system.
How can we reduce the first two and manage the last?
If we can makes ourselves stronger and more resilient, while managing our training load, in theory, we should be able to elongate our training careers and therefore our lives.
Again, longevity is impossible to guarantee.
But by improving your strength, reducing your chances of injury, and being smart about your training methods, you can set the stage for a long, pain-free life.
Im willing to play those odds with rotational strength training.
BONUS: Your Competition Isn’t Training Rotation
If strength, resilience, and longevity wasn’t enough to motivate you to rotate in 2024, realize it could also be your secret weapon.
Only a tiny fraction of the BJJ community is aware of the enormous benefits rotational training, like club swinging, can deliver for grappling.
Kudos to you, you’re a reader of this blog and have a leg up on the competition.
I realized from an early age that an edge can be had by adding strength and conditioning to your BJJ training.
Fortunately, I later discovered rotational training can deliver that same edge for resilience and longevity.
If you want to improve your rotational strength in 2024, get started with Foundations of Rotational Strength.
