Ryan Hurst is the founder and head coach of GMB Fitness as well as lifelong martial artist. Ryan holds black belts in Kendo, Judo, and Kempo, a purple belt in Jiu Jitsu, and practiced 10 years as a competitive gymnast.
After a career ending Judo injury he dedicated his life to fitness and helping people master their bodies so they can continue to do the activities they love.
Ryan takes a unique approach towards health, fitness, and longevity, and focuses on strength, flexibility, and control with an emphasis on mobility, body awareness, and making fitness fun.
In this episode we discuss:
- The methods he teaches to ensure continued progress on the mat and in the gym.
- The value of “play” in your workouts.
- The benefits of the GMB fitness methods.
- One thing you can go today to reduce injury and limit pain.
- The importance of and how to maintain movement quality while under stress and how that translates to injury-free BJJ.
- How he structures jiu-jitsu classes to train smarter with less injuries.
- How to change your mindset toward training as you get older to reduce injuries.
- The lessons he learned from gymnastics that help with BJJ.
Take Action:
- Visit www.gmb.io to learn more from Ryan.
- Follow Ryan on Instagram here.
- Start slowing down your reps in your next workout to feel every part of the movement and identify where you may be losing your form.
Interview Transcript
Will: Alright, and we’re back today with Ryan Hurst from GMB fitness.
Ryan: Cheerss, thanks for having me yeah.
Will: No thank you man. I’m really excited to talk to you. I know I’ve been following you for years. You guys have had GMB fitness for since like 2010 or 12 and I’ve always just seen your stuff and been a long time follower for those of the that are listening that don’t know about you, would you mind just giving the brief background? I know you’re. Kind of a lifelong martial artist, gymnast, and trainer.
Ryan: Yeah man wow, how can I shorten this? Basically I grew up in the United States doing gymnastics and started martial arts when I was in junior high and that actually led me to come to Japan. I’ve been in Japan now. 28 years, yeah, so I’ll be 50 this year. But anyway, yeah, so I came over. I did martial art, graduated from university over here. Well and in the United States and then came back and I moved to Osaka. Ended up working at a martial arts complex. I worked there, excuse me, I worked there for eight years. Over here is pretty interesting. They have shrines and so it was a Shinto shrine and within the complex there are martial arts hall and they still do and it was really cool because I got to work there for eight years and you know, sit in and all of the in the classes, whether it be you know I came over for kendo and judo. I continued with that, ended up doing for example like a diet told you I could use it to shortage of Kempo. With cheese, what else? Some other? Cut out these styles and stuff like that. So that was eight years. It was a lot of fun and then ended up. During that time I was heavily involved in fitness. I ended up working for an organization located in the United States while still in Japan. So and what I would do is, I ended up becoming the Director of programming for them, and that’s actually how I met my current business partners Andy and Jarlo, and we started GMB Fitness and so I really just started off, you know, I had a major injury in judo. One of my competitions where I was thrown and had my shoulder completely ripped out basically. And so I had reconstructive surgery on that. It was a lot of fun and that kind of ended my judo career in terms of competition. As a matter of fact, that was my last competition in judo, and prior to that I was basically competing all the time and focus more on rather than you know how can I take a person down time about tie up in a pretzel like how can I help build people back up and so I really got interested in that and was looking for you know earlier in my career I guess like ways of how I could get stronger and that kind of led to jarlo who’s my business partner saying hey man, I’m going to send you some rings. You ought to do rings again and I hadn’t done gymnastic rings. Just you know, I was like 18 or something and so I got back into them and then post some videos and people really loved it and so we ended up putting out a program and it was called rings one very original title. But that was our first official GMB program. We had actually had one, maybe two before that, but it wasn’t under the GMB Fitness title. It was just the three of us kind of getting together and releasing some stuff. But yeah, man, that was over 10 years ago. And so GMB we’ve been around for quite a while. A lot has changed, you know, in a nutshell, it’s really just about the method and how we can help people not do more exercise, but find what’s going to be good for them, to help them to do the stuff in their life. They want to be doing, whether it be, for example, like you and I, you know Brazilian jiu jitsu or for example, surfing. Or it doesn’t really matter. You know, playing with your kids, I’m just not, you know, feeling like you’re getting older or whatever it might be, you know. So like. That’s what we’re more after right now. Again, you know, I turn 50 this year. I feel great and I just want to help other people to be able to be like you know what? I still or whatever you’re doing. You know i can not only get better, but I can. Actually, you know, enjoy the process a bit more and so yeah, I mean just so much to unpack there, but that’s kind of it in a nutshell, so.
Will:Sweet, no, that’s awesome. I knew you would be the perfect guest for this show because this season we’re actually focusing on durability. Always afraid of is that catastrophic injury that’s going to end your career so. Yeah, i’m sure you have a ton of knowledge that you can share with us, but let’s get to kind of like the main components of the GMB fitness program. I know it’s based around like 3 three things right strength. –
Ryan: Three things strength yeah. So we focus on strength, flexibility and control. And one thing we want to mention here is it’s not just the stretching we’re looking at them. You know mobility, so you’re actually putting this into motion. This is really important. For us, the other caveat here that we’re after is can you do this with your body? So we’re after physical autonomy, and it’s not just how much like you can bench or something like that. As a matter of fact, we don’t teach people how to, you know, use weights. It’s again focusing on the body weight and so when you first come into GDB you’ll see me doing some funky animal movement type stuff. But it’s not just limited to that. I want to be clear, it’s really the method and taking the principles that we have. Applying those to for example, integral strength program that we have where we use, you know you can do just body weight. You can also use gymnastic rings. You can also use if you have a bar as well if you have parallettes you can use those too, so it’s looking at the strength principles. The method that we have and applying it to that piece of equipment. Whatever you have we use what’s called the triple A framework and so this is really important for us and that is you assess where you’re at and so you really need to be honest. About not only where you are in, let’s say for example your phase of whatever program you’re doing, but actually taking a look at, you know the micro side of that. Where are you today? You know you might say today is your high intensity day, but if you go into your session that day and you’re exhausted and you just can’t perform well, then you know you need to make adjustments. And this is where assessment comes in. This is just one example of that. And then what you do is the second part of that is you address what you need that day, and so this is difficult because a lot of people are like, well, I don’t know how to make these adjustments, and so we’re like, hey cool, we got you, we can help you with that. And then the final point. On there or in there is application, so it’s addressed or part of me assess address, apply application. Part of it is simply to simplify it. Do the Prescripted work so for you know you’ve assessed what’s going on. You address what you need to do, and then you take that protocol and you just do it, and then you go back and you assess address and apply again. And so those are kind of like the big three that we have. Of course you know we have a whole different way that we like to do things. We focus more on practicing movements. It doesn’t mean that we don’t push ourselves because we do have a section in there where we push, but it’s really like. Well, can you perform a movement and I’d like to say, you know, make it pretty. That’s my thing. So you look at high level athletes. It doesn’t matter what sport it is. They move beautifully because they have control over their body. They know what their body can do, they they’ve they practice these things for so long that it’s ingrained. And they know what to do, and that’s what we’re after. We’re not saying we’re trying to be, you know athletes or anything. I don’t consider myself an athlete at all anymore. And all but you know every day I am doing this stuff and I’m really just focused on getting better at whatever I’m doing. And you know, especially this comes back from to my martial art because I’ve just done martial art almost, you know, since I’ve junior high so long part of my life and we all know that you have to practice in order to get better. And another thing within that is also we call it play and that’s exploration and a lot of people don’t have this in their workouts and so this is what we’re really trying to help people. To wrap their head around is it’s not just pushing yourself as hard as you possibly can. Every single time what you first need to look at is practicing the thing and getting really good at it, exploring it through play, and then you’re able to go beyond and finish things up by pushing yourself, but just the pushing side of it. While it can get you stronger, while it can get you ripped or whatever you’re after, if you really want to be good in your life and you’ve got to practice. And make whatever you do. A big component of that.
Will: Got it so a lot of questions there, but I think one of the biggest ones for me is what kind of benefits do you see from this style of training with this approach toward training? –
Ryan: There’s a couple of things right off the bat, and one thing is people learn that what they think they were doing is different from what they’re actually doing, which is huge and let me try and break this. Like you want to get better, everyone wants to get better, but sometimes a lot of people when they come in and they don’t realize how much they’re actually holding themselves back by thinking that they need to do faster, harder, longer or what not. That is necessary. Ok, at certain points, but typically what I have people do is, I say, hey listen, let’s slow down, but like literally slow the movement down. And by doing that. You actually notice things that you missed before that. You can then get better on within that movement. For example, breaking that movement apart because each movement there’s three parts. There’s a beginning, middle, and the end, and if you’re able to make one part of that, the beginning of it or the middle of it, let’s say it’s a push up and you’re just cranking out the push-ups. Ok, cool. But what if you really slow that down and you realize that you’re really flaring your elbows? Oh, and that’s causing my shoulder pain. Ah, Ok, and so. Then you just realize I just need to pull my elbows closer to my body. It’s going to alleviate that discomfort and allow me to be better at the push-ups. Therefore make them better. I’ll get stronger, less pain, which will carry over to you know my activity that I’m doing simply because you slowed down and brought better awareness to what’s going on. That is probably the number one thing that we see is that people try to rush through not just their exercises, but life. Let’s be honest and you know, try to actually pack more in there than they possibly might need nowadays. I mean, let’s be honest, everybody’s looking for a hack. They’re looking to supplement. They’re looking, you know, what else can I do? Sometimes it’s not a matter of what else you can do, but actually just taking a step back and saying, Ok, what am I doing? How can I just do that better and more efficiently? And that’s what that’s what it is. And so that’s what the number one thing is slow down and we find people. Having so much more awareness to what they’re doing that they realize wow, you know I’m getting a lot better just because I’m am slowing down and not doing everything. And then we find people where they’re like. I didn’t realize. Let’s say you know, you know my back pain has really gone away just by doing this stuff, even though that wasn’t necessarily the reason we were having them do it. You know, like they’re coming in because of back pain. No, it was like something they didn’t really realize. That they even had right. But when they did slow down, they had that awareness and realized, you know what my back is hurt for so long. I just thought it was just normal. Right now I realize I don’t have the pain like I did anymore. So you know, different things going on. But I would say the number one thing is that is the awareness of what’s going on in the body so. – Speaker 2 : Ok, and so for anyone out there who’s working out. I think one thing that they could do even without doing a GMB program, is just. Slowing down and say attention being more deliberate with their movement. – Speaker 1 : Yeah, that’s it man. And so it’s. I mean, if we were even wanted to bring it back, I know because you know martial arts and I’ll try not to give too many references. But if you think about it in BJJ and it’s like you know it’s like you learn a new move. It doesn’t matter what it is, you know, learn a new move and you try and pull that off right away and go as fast as you can. It’s not going to work. I’m just going to be honest. I mean, you know. Then you go and you try and roll. It’s no, it’s not gonna happen. You gotta slow that thing down. You gotta understand exactly what’s happening with your body. And then on top of that, you’ve also got to do it without resistance. Then you start adding in where you know your partner might be doing cross collar grip or something and adding a little bit of resistance making it more difficult for you. And then you notice, oh, when he grabs that cross collar, it’s breaking my posture. Therefore I got to get my hips under. So there’s these little tweaks and this is what I’m talking about. Then we look at for example assessing what’s going on, and so if you’re looking at a squat, if you’re going to load your body with weight and do a squat, you first really need to be able to do a good body weight squat without pain with proper position. Understand what’s going on in your body. Then you can start to add that resistance and be able to do that slowly, because if you’re just. Again, cranking out reps. This is really where accidents happen and you know, we know this. You know it’s the same with when you’re rolling. You know. Typically people don’t get injured when they drill because they’re looking at one thing and they’re doing it in a way where they’re just focused on that. The trouble happens is when you just speed things up and you do it without control and you don’t have the necessary range of motion needed for that movement, whether it be body weight. Squads push-ups or another example there. You know. Just bringing that awareness and slowing it down gives you an opportunity to be conscious of what’s going on. When you’re performing that movement.
Will: Excellent, so bringing it back to specifically grapplers and jujitsu, actioners. Is there anything well? What are what are like? Some of the movements that I mean, is it just squatting and push-ups, or do you incorporate other types of movements that you find beneficial for grapplers?
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And so our program elements is a great example. Where it’s not designed specifically for grapplers, but it’s specific for grapplers and sounds. Funny, but it’s one of those things where we would all benefit from being able to have better range of motion while moving, which is mobility, right? So we start off with our assessments in the program and we’re looking at what I call the A-frame If you do yoga, it kind of looks like a downward facing dog, but the thing that we’re after here is we don’t want to label. What we’re doing and think. You know you should look like this because it’s not about this and GMB. It’s all about where are you today and so we have this a frame where you’re sticking your butt up into the air and what we’re after here is Ok, where are you feeling this? You know hamstrings, you know Achilles shoulders whatever it’s not Ok, let’s get into a downward facing dog. And this is exactly how you have to do it. No, it’s an assessment. And the thing about this that why I’m bringing it up for the grappling side of this is that. When you do this as an assessment and you do it a lot like every single day, it becomes a measuring stick and it lets you know immediately. Ok. For example, let’s say like last night you were working a lot of really doesn’t need to matter. Like let’s say you were practicing knee bars and so you know or having them practiced on you and you wake up the next day and you realize, oh man, my hamstrings were, you know my glute or something is just. It’s wow, I didn’t realize just how tight I am from having my leg pulled back. For this, you know, knee bar and me trying to resist it and so there you can say Ok, it doesn’t mean stop your workout that day. It just means you bring awareness to that and then you can work on making that better. Whatever it is and so then you just put that a frame into motion and what we call the bare walk. And so the cool thing about this is that you’re looking not only at just getting better at coordination and control. You’re also looking at strength in terms of scapular strength, shoulder blades, right? So because you’re always pushing away from the floor of the scapular elevation, Ok, you’re looking at straight arm strength. You’re looking at improving the wrist you’re looking at improving mobility, flexibility in the hamstrings, you know, looking at the ankles, there’s a lot of stuff going on when you’re doing that movement, and that’s just the basic movement. Then the next movement we have is called the monkey, and this starts off with the squat and saying Ok. What’s going on with your squat when you squat down? Are you able to keep your knees from caving inward? Maybe you’re tight on one side. Another example is myself, where I had a really nasty ankle break where I fell my ankle broke to the side and my foot twisted completely behind me, broke, you know all the bones in my ankle, so like obviously I’m not going to have full range of motion in the ankle anymore, but it doesn’t mean that I still can’t do the things I want to do, it’s just that I need to be aware of. Call my ankle is that day. So then I get into the squat and I can test that ankle from there. I’ll put it into motion. We’ll do what’s called the monkey, which is where you place your hands on the floor and you travel laterally. And this is also something that’s really important is if you think about a lot of the workouts out there, they don’t have twisting rotation and there’s not a lot of lateral movements that you actually work on, whereas we have these in there and that is extremely applicable to being on the ground. Having to move around an opponent Ok, but you’re not going to be able to do that under load. In that case, when someone is grabbing a hold of you and trying to tie you into a pretzel, unless you’re really able to do that without load, and so this is where this can come into play. Again, risks, how are you placing your hands on the floor? I know we don’t want to place our hands, you know too much on the floor when we’re doing Brazilian jujitsu, but there are times you have to. If you shove your arm out there and you’re not comfortable. And really know how to address the floor. I know it sounds silly, but you know, like you do, see wrist issues and you know elbow problems because people are straight arming themselves in the floor because they’re getting swept. They want to post. They post out, they do something silly, you know, and they just don’t have that control and that strength then the other thing that we have is called the Frogger and the Frogger. Excuse me is where you start. In the quadruped position. And so all you’re doing is you’re floating your knees. Slightly off the ground while pushing into the floor. This is a great core not only core exercise, but also control when you’re front loading the body, so this is actually similar to if you’re doing a pass, and so where you need to make sure that you have the ability to front load. Put pressure on your opponent while keeping your hips mobile and being able to rotate. Twist side to side whether it be, for example a knee cut. Let’s say you’re in headquarters and you need to load front and then you need to twist out of that. So like. So many different examples, whether it just be for passing or whatnot. The last one that we have. There’s four in our elements program that are based off of. This is the simple crab walk. A lot of people are like, you know, these are just basic stuff I did and you know, PE class and I’m like, yeah right. But The thing is we build off of those of course, and there’s a whole lot of different variations, but the crab is where we’re looking at pushing down into the floor and being able to lift our hips and then put that into motion. And so this is of course where we’re face. Up so this is an example of, you know I am relating this presentation to of course, because you know that’s what I love so much because it is applicable. But if you look at it that way. I mean, how many times are we sitting? You know, maybe we don’t play butterfly guard. But how many times are we in the prone position? You know, you know whether it be open guard, whether it be whatever guard you’re playing half guard and having to sit up post an arm again in order to transition going to dogfight? Whatever you’re doing, you know. Trying to get to the back there is that movement in there. We can’t hope to be really good at doing those things unless we first have control over our body and know we can do it in a safe environment and get really good at it. So these are just four examples of you know, assessments and movements that we use in elements. Again, it’s not a BJJ program, but The thing is so many BJJ players use this and they’re just like Oh my God, I didn’t even realize. How much this would help me and we’re like sweet cool, you know yeah, so there you go, yeah.
Will: That sounds awesome man. I mean functional if you’re. If you’re training, like if you’re a human being, you’re training to be a functional human being. It’s gonna carry over to yeah, exactly so these movements you’re using as an assessment and also a workout. Or is it warm up or?
Ryan: It’s a workout in and this is the thing it’s let me break this down real quick if I can so again, the things that we’re focused on is practice. We want to get really good at these movements now in each workout if you will, we have a broken up into five parts, and the first thing that we have is prep. You can think of it as your warm up, Ok, but everything is based off of what are you practicing that day. So let’s say that day we’re working on the monkey, and so the monkey once again is where you’re in a squat position. You place your hands in front of you and you pull your legs to the side. Naturally, Ok, you’re going side to side now. Our prep, let’s say if we’re just working on the money that day, our prep could be alright. Let’s focus just on opening up our hips for the squat. We’re going to look at the ankles. And we’re also going to look at warming up the wrists because we’re going to be loading ourself when we’re doing the monkey. And so the prep is actually going to be quite quick in terms of we’re not going to spend 30 minutes just warming up. Ok, we want to get you in warm up the joints that you’re going to be using. For the thing you’re practicing and get you going. So then you move into the practice portion so it’s called the five piece prep practice is the next one. Practice is where we’re going Ok. We’re going to take a variation of this monkey today and all we’re going to do is we’re going to focus on getting really good at one key aspect of this, and it might be, for example, in the monkey. Not load so you’re sitting in your squad, but you’re placing your arms forward and the key point here is don’t bend your arms. That could be the single thing you’re focused on today, and so as you pull your hips to the side, place your hands in front, pull your hands to the side, you load the arms, and then you pull the hips over and all you’re saying is did I bend my arms? If so, Ok, let’s focus on getting you to not be in your arms. What this is doing now is not only giving you good at straight arm strength is bringing better awareness. To actually what you’re doing when you’re doing movements, the other thing too. Obviously you’re working on improving your core. You know your control. You’re looking at improving the strength of your hip flexors and being able to, you know, use the core as a bridge to communicate between the upper and lower body while you’re doing two different things. Ok, so simultaneously doing that. So that’s our practice portion. The next thing is we move into the third component, which is play, and this is something that you really don’t find in any. Workouts right is this play and people think well what are you doing running around, you know with a hula hoop or something we’re like no. Ok, play is exploration and So what you do is you’re taking that movement and what I would do is compare it to when you learn a technique, a new technique and you’re pretty comfortable with that technique like you’ve done it and you’re like, Ok, I’m getting pretty good at this. That drilling this thing. You then start to explore. What if. The person grabs me this way. Got you? What if X and so this is where you can take that monkey that we’re working on and say Ok, what if I were to change my hands to slightly? What changes in my structure? If I were to, you know further load myself right now. What’s that going to? What’s that going to do to me? Ok, so this is where again you’re taking a movement that you’re already very comfortable with because you’ve practiced it a lot and then just kind of seeing what’s going on. This further awareness of the movement actually allows us to get not only better at the movement, but also adapt, and this is huge because let’s be honest there are those oh shit moments in life where if you’re only working in one plane when something happens outside of that plane is when you get injured. And so that’s what we’re trying to do is expand that, you know. Report of the position that we’re after, and This is why. That’s why I have so many different variations of these movements. It’s all based on those four basic movements, but it goes from there. So then the next component of it. So our fourth component is where the majority of people live and that is push. So we had prep. We had practice, we have play, we have push pushes, the actual workout component. This is where you literally push yourself in order to build on your. Whether it be you know aerobic capacity. Strength, endurance, stamina. Ok depending on how we use the protocols for that day that this is where most people live, so it could be. For example, if you have your monkey, we’re saying Ok, you’re going to take the most basic version of the monkey. And you’re going to do it for like 2 minutes straight and you’re just going to perform each repetition as beautifully as possible, but you’re going to just try and keep going. And The thing is you’re not using a movement that’s at the edge of your capacity. You’re using something that again, that is just pretty easy for you, but because you’re repping it out. If you will, Ok, you’re performing. You know volume and doing it for time. This is very important. We actually don’t do reps in G and B. We focus on duration of time and making each repetition beautiful, and if you can do that, you’re not only getting stronger, you’re not only improving your range of motion, you’re not only improving your control. What you’re actually doing, which to me is more important, is pushing yourself in a way that’s going to allow you to perform that movement under stress. And so I see, you know you hopefully you see that’s extremely important and what we’re after when we roll it doesn’t matter like what movements you know. It’s how you can do those under pressure and do them well. And that’s it. And so that’s what our push is, and it can be like even chin UPS. So if you’re looking at when you know are performing chin up, how many chimps did you bang out? I don’t really care. I, you know people would be like hey man, like I can do 100 pushups. Like great, how many of those do you actually do well and they’re like? Well, once I get to 20 my form starts breaking down and I’m like, congratulations you’re doing 80 crappy push-ups, which means, which means that you’re actually practicing bad technique, which is what your body is going to actually move towards when you’re under stress and you’re needing to do those. And so that’s not what we want. We want to be able to do these repetitions as beautifully as possible and expand the box again. Like I said, to be able to do these, you know when we need to do them and do them so well and know it so well that we can’t do it incorrectly. That’s what I’m after. And that’s our push and we finish with ponder and ponder is it’s there’s no woo woo about it. It’s just simply going alright. How’s my session go? What went well? What could have I done better? What do I need to do for next time? And this could be like 30 seconds you’re done go and live the rest of your life. Ok, and so there’s five things that we have and we don’t always have all of these components in there. Depending on the goal of the session, it might just be prep practice a little bit, and you might be done that day, or it could be you know all five or it could even be prep practice, push you know, and so it really depends on what you’re after, but I really try even to this day, you know it’s. You know every single day when I’m doing my workout, if you will, there is something in my focus that day where I’m just like, Ok, I’m going to spend a little bit of time with this movement, and even if it’s just a minute or two, that means I’m getting better at that movement. And I do the same with my Brazilian jujitsu. It’s I actually especially because I’m older now. Ok, I prefer to drill more, but drill specific for example. I mean, if my look like we’re kind of sparring, but basically we’re looking at situational sparring and drilling those things a specific position rather than just free rolls all the time where you know what happens is, hey man, let’s go light. It doesn’t happen that way. It just turns into, you know, just like oh wow, we went for 15 minutes and killed each other and wake up the next morning. And you’re like, I feel like crap, you know. So it’s kind of like what we’re after here is and GB. The template that we have is actually because the three of us have been martial arts their whole life, and this is kind of where it comes from, and so this protocol is basically like when I did show in kempo you know and judo it was the same. This we just kind of put it into our fitness. Yeah so I got a little excited.
Will: That’s great, sounds awesome. It sounds really cool. And actually it sounds like there is a lot of parallels to jujitsu. The play thing, I think is phenomenal, I think. For me, I didn’t start doing that early enough in my jiu-jitsu career. I think that is like I’m sure you know, Tommy and Espen over in Norway, right? Doing is amazing. That’s like all those guys do. Like they’re class is just play like they’re just exploring stuff and there’s so many breakthroughs that you, yeah, you have there and then the your point about. You know, practicing really good technique. I know a lot of. Black belts who the way that they drill? They only drill with like almost close to 100 % intensity. Like a lot of people drill very like lackadaisically. Yeah you’re drilling sloppy technique when you do that, you’re never going to roll like that, right, so, and then the ponder is another thing, like that is the i was called the match chat at the end of the class. With you exactly, you’re just thinking about you know what you did.
Ryan: Very cool stuff yeah but that’s how I train. I’m really lucky you know, the group that I’m with over here my coaches. I’m really lucky because. Yeah, my coaches. Three strike black belt and then we’ve got. We’ve got what 7 black belts where I’m at and. It’s basically open mat each session with a theme if that makes sense, and so we all go in and it’s like the coach is like all right, what are you going to be working on today and then you know want to work on this? And then it’s like the other person. And then that’s how we do it is basically we start off and you know we make sure that we’re prepared and we just go easy and then we go through that protocol. Basically just like how we’re doing with GMB. We don’t roll a whole lot. Recently it’s really focused on, you know, hard drilling and. It’s great, and so I guess I think I’m just really lucky because my coaches know, you know, GMB and so you know, I was just like, hey, can we train like this from time to time? And they’re like of course, and that’s kind of how it’s actually ended up going, which is really nice. So I’ve been lucky. I guess because I am a with an A group that’s very open to that sort of thing. So yeah i do know it’s different for a lot of places though, so. –
Will: Yeah, but that sounds like you’re training a lot. Smarter and as you get older, that’s exactly how you need to train too.
Ryan: That’s it exactly what you said, and I’m not saying that you know everybody in GB’s You know a bunch of just old farts and stuff like that. That’s not. I mean it’s not it. But The thing is like Ok? We’re not after the 20 something crowd. To be perfectly honest, you know. Yeah, I mean the shit I did when I was in Judah. I just there’s no way I could train the way I used to train, you know, 2A days along with weight training you know. And just like and finish off with a big drinking session afterwards. You know what I mean? It was like, you know Japan, right? But there’s no way I could do that anymore. And there’s no reason I way I want to be honest, it’s yeah smarter. Yeah, smarter is the way to go. –
Will: So for the recreational athlete, let’s say who’s you know, past the 35 year old mark? I feel like 35 is the year that everyone starts. How often, like how do you break up your training with your GMB? And yeah and all that.
Will: Yeah, if we’re looking at like in again, I don’t consider myself an athlete at all. I stopped. I think I was. I’m gonna screw this up. I wanna say 33 when I blew my shoulder out. Don Don, you know? And even then I was more of the recreational because even though I was still training judo every single day and I was on the team i my responsibility was towards my family because my daughter had just been born and so yeah blue my shoulder out. My wife is like ah no more, you know so yeah, but this is what I’m getting at is that I think the big thing. Is to understand that unless you are on the competition team, you’re not a competitor and that’s Ok. And I think this is the biggest thing that people really struggle with. I struggled with it, but The thing is, you’re not a bad person if you’re not training. Like you know, the top guys out there, and the reason why is you’re not the top guy and that’s perfectly fun. So I think the biggest thing for me, the mindset for me was. I needed to change the way I train in order to feel better after my session. That was the key thing, and that’s hard, and so you know how do you do that? Well, you know. First off, what are you training for? I think that’s the number one thing, and so you know right now in my life i’m very lucky because I am privileged. I’m just going to throw that out there because I built. My life to be this way so that. I get a train, but I actually sit in front of the computer. A lot longer than people think. You know. Recently I just finished some updates to one of our programs. I’m not exaggerating. 8 hours a day in front of my computer and a lot of people think Ryan it’s really cool. All you do is just train and think up these things. I’m like, no, I don’t, Ok, But what I’m getting at is why are you training? And so, for example, are you training to simply not just feel good, but make sure that you don’t hurt your back again, right? You know. Like Ok, where did that come from? Well, The thing is let’s be honest. If you’re playing jujitsu and you’re on bottom a lot, you’re back is going to end up hurting. This is how it is. Ok, something’s going to happen. So are you training not just in jujitsu but outside of jujitsu. In a way that’s going to allow you to continue to do this in a way where you’re not going to have to, you know, have surgery or blow out your back so that you can’t be a good father so that you can’t, you know, do your job. That’s the most important thing, and while we would all love to think about it this way, Oh yeah, I’m training for Brazilian jujitsu. Actually, no, you’re not going to be honest. You’re training to make sure that you can do your work so that you can go to Brazilian jujitsu practice. That’s really what it is. And this is where took me a long time to kind of just be like Ok with that, you know. So you know. And this is also, and I’m kind of going off on a tangent. But this is also why. Whenever and well now with COVID. Of course I can’t, but it used to be where I would travel almost every month and teach somewhere in the world and every single time when I would go somewhere like hey man, let’s roll, you know I would teach a seminar, and at the seminar afterwards they would want to roll. This is not a Brazilian jujitsu seminar. This is an exercise thing, right? And every single time. As much as I might want to, I would always say no. This is not the appropriate place to do this, and what I’m why I’m saying this is because I am extremely selective now of who I roll with. Yeah, and that comes back to how I train and so you know, if you’re looking at the protocol and the way that I train is now, i actually only trained three times a week now in Brazilian jujitsu and the other days are when I do my. Which might be considered to other people. My heavy strength sessions. So on the alternate days I still do. A body weight style session on the days I do Brazilian jujitsu, but it’s after my Brazilian it’s and that’s really important. And so I make sure that when I show up to Brazilian jujitsu, I’m prepared. Ok, I’m doing my mobility work beforehand. I slowly work up into doing the stuff that we’re doing. Then I make adjustments depending on how I feel that day. You know, great example was last week we were doing top bottom. So the guy on top he focus on. Just passing and if you get to decide you’re done, the guy on bottom do not let that guy pass and we did that for 45 minutes and so we did two minute rounds. So we did 2 minutes. Then we switch and then we do a two minute rest and then we keep doing that there. You know I was playing bottom and my back started hurting and so then right away I was like hey my back started hurting. I need to take a rest and they’re cool and then my coach is like just play top the rest of the time you know I’m lucky because we have the ability and the communication. Where I am to be able to do that? But what I’m saying is if something is hurting and you’re representing jujitsu. Don’t let your ego mess you up. And you know, it’s tough. And so that’s, again, you know i’m particular about who I roll with. Very lucky because every single guy that I trained with at our place. They’re all good guys. And there’s one girl and it’s great. But The thing is I don’t go to a new don’t let you call them Dojo or gym anymore and just go to open mats because you never know who you’re going to be with as much as I would love to. And I live for that. You know that was I was like, yeah, you know, yeah, but that’s the same way my training is that I alternate my training each day. But when I’m doing the training, I’m still assessing what’s going on, and I think that’s the biggest thing rather than protocols, it’s Ok. Is this movement right now serving, me, and that I think that’s the most important thing. It’s not that you don’t want to do it, it’s a lot of the times, all right. This is a movement that I love. But like something’s going on in my shoulder. Yeah, I’m not just going to push through it, right? So then what you do is modify it doesn’t mean you don’t do something, it’s that you modify it so that you’re not in discomfort. And I think that’s huge. I know I’m going all over the place, but this is something I think about, like literally every single day is. How can I not only meet my own workouts, but how can I help other people understand that the faster the earlier that we can assess and be aware of what’s going on in our bodies, both physically and mentally, the better off we are going to be? I want to be able to train. I want to be able to do Brazilian jujitsu and my other martial arts for as long as possible, and the only way you can do that is to be an adult. And that’s really, that’s really what it is, yeah?
Will: Right on man. That was that that’s just wisdom, right there. That’s from you know, years on the mat. So I think the takeaway. Like you just said, being adult and listen to your body, you know, check the ego and I think you said that you made a good point about almost like having a real like real talk with yourself like what am I doing this for right? Yeah I gave up like everyone wants to be a competitor, right? That’s like I would love to complete forever, but I had to have an honest, you know, kind of conversation with myself and say, you know it’s this is not. This is just not the lifestyle. You like, that’s not what it’s about, so now and once you accept that, it kind of makes jujitsu way more fun. It like takes off you and it’s like I’m not for everybody else, right? I’m in this for my own thing.
Ryan: And that’s it, that’s it. That’s it, man, sorry to interrupt you, but like you just nailed it, it’s. Fun, I think. So many people want to misunderstand what fun means and but the other thing is I’m going to say a bad word Ok, but fuck everybody else. Ok, that sounds horrible. Ok? Don’t go to jujitsu because you’re trying to prove to someone else. Ok, don’t do don’t go surfing because of what you know. Like make it about you. You’ve got to be selfish and this sounds horrible. But you first need to be selfish. Or yourself in order to help other people, and that’s what a lot of people. I don’t think. Git, you know, because it’s just like I’m just going to sacrifice myself. No, that’s not helping anybody by, you know. And you being hurt, not you literally. But by being injured all the time, you’re not serving your training partner because you can’t be there for them. And so by being selfish and really saying Ok, I’m here Brazilian users for this is why I’m doing it. And the other people around you actually, if they understand that things are better and this is what I mean by communication, and so with the place that I’m at where we all are, we know why we’re there. And you know you’ve got a person. There’s you know, like guy right now who’s really wanting to compete. And so we’re all helping him for that. But it doesn’t mean that we’re in the competition mindset in terms of yeah, we’re going to crush and whatever. So sorry, got excited again.
Will: That’s awesome, man, I think. Ok, there’s like a part of you that needs to just say fuck everyone else’s opinion too. Yes, I don’t that’s what it thinks about me. If you want like I’m not going super hard this round, fuck it. I really don’t give a shit if you if you think I’m soft or whatever it is. It’s like I have bigger goals here and that’s to do jiu jitsu for the long term. So rolling hard with this round is not going to do anything, you know. –
Ryan: I’ve had so many people tell me that they’re like, dude, I thought you well. For one, it cracks me up whenever I go teach somewhere, so they’re always like I thought you’d be bigger. Yeah cool, you know, and it’s like you know, whatever you know you know. But once you can get past that man, it makes things so much easier. It’s just like, yeah anyway, go ahead, sorry.
Will: No, I just wanted to kind of wrap things up here. We’ve been going for about 50 minutes and just I know you have a really extensive gymnastics background. This was just something I was curious about. Is there anything from gymnastics that you find translates? Over really well to jujitsu.
Ryan: Ohh yeah so much and it’s you find it in our programs like quite a bit there is that influence. For example, the awareness portion of it and not just the skills themselves, but actually that awareness portion of it. How well are you doing something was huge with my coach. The other thing that was big with me was again screw repetitions don’t matter in the sense that. Bad repetitions are bad. Ok, you need a lot of volume in order to get good. That’s just how it is. But The thing is you need to make sure that the volume of what you’re doing. Is done through good repetitions each time, and so This is why I don’t remember counting repetitions in gymnastics. It was you do the thing. Until you can do it right, that’s how it was, and I really believe that thanks to my coach. Has helped me in everything I’ve done because it was just basically like so many people like even my kids. They’re like how many do I need to do and I’m like. All of them you know, like until you do it. That’s just how it’s always been for me and I think a lot of people kind of missed that they think, Ok, I’m going to do three sets of 12, and I’m done and I’m like. But how are you doing those you know? And so that’s why we look at time, the duration of time. And I’m just like, even if you just do a single repetition of something cool, you can make it so difficult. And this is what I do. Actually, in seminars, a lot is where we do elevators, and elevators were the squat, whereas you just start staining and then you go down. And you hold it, and then you go down and you hold it, and you might go back up a floor and then you go down again. And I take people through and you’ll get these guys that are just like you know. And they can’t do it. And what’s happening here is not that they’re not strong enough to do it physically. A lot of times. It’s mentally they’re not prepared to do it, and so this is the huge carryover that I had with gymnastics. Is you do the thing until you’ve not just done it, but. You’re able to do it well, and so this is. This is, again, you know if you’re looking at our programs and things like that, why I’m always saying? First off, it’s Ok, it’s cool, you’re good, Ok? And understanding that you’re not a bad person for not being able to do something. Ok, that’s huge too. My coach is huge on that. Mark Folger gymnastics, and he was just like all right. Just because you can’t do it right now, doesn’t mean you know you’re horrible or whatever. And if you get frustrated, it’s only going to lead to more frustration. So just shut up, go back, get on the bar, and try it again. Take a break. Go do it again. I mean, that was my gymnastics career that was my kindo that was my judo. That’s my Brazilian jujitsu. Now you do something and it’s not like, oh, I think that’s good enough. Ok, for today that’s cool, but this is the other thing too. I like to say is good is good enough and a lot of people misunderstand that and think, oh, you’re not trying to be perfect and I’m like, Ok? Perfection is completely different. What I’m trying to do is do something that’s good. So that today that’s good enough and being good enough more often equates to you getting better rather than trying to be perfect. Not getting it. Having to take a break and then not doing it, and so it’s just you know incremental progression. So we’re looking at movements and everything like that. That’s what we’re after, so the hollow body position is a huge thing. It’s a mastics that we have, and you’ll find that in everywhere. That’s how I teach the chin up is a hollow body position and that carries over to a lot of different things. If you look at recumbent. Are you know that is a hollowed position and the better that you can move in that position with solidity the better off you’re going to be with everything else you’re doing, and so this is where this is a big carryover from gymnastics. When we’re doing that again, elbows in this is a huge one too. It’s, you know, if someone’s going to push up with their elbows out, I’m like that’s not a solid structure. Interesting thing carries over to Brazilian jujitsu. You don’t want to have those elbows. All right, if you practice by keeping your elbows in close to your body when you’re doing push-ups, handstand push-ups, pretty much anything you’re doing, you’re creating good habits, and you don’t even have to think because those are going to carry over to Brazilian jujitsu, and so these are all the things too that I got from gymnastics that carry over. But the cool thing is because it’s simply good movement, right? That’s it, yeah.
Will: Awesome, really cool stuff man. I’m really excited. I can’t wait to check out some of these programs. Because all this stuff that we’ve just discussed today is all incorporated into your program. Gmb right and you?
Ryan: Have to think you just go in there and we’ve got Praxis which is our platform and you just go in there and you know break everything down for you today you’re going to be doing this. You choose. Do you want a 15 minute session, 30 minute session or 45 minute session? You go in there you do your prep and after your prep there’s a prompt that comes up by. You know it takes you through what movements you’re doing. First, there’s a tutorial. If you need it now, there’s a timer again because we going repetitions, you do. The movement teaches you how to bring awareness after prep. It says hey, how you feeling today you ready to rock or today? Do you need to go little lighter session if you need a little lighter session, you click the button and it takes you to a little lighter session and you’re good to go. If you still want to go takes you on practice whatever it’s all laid out so.
Will: Sweet sweet last question. I ask everybody. Are there any supplements that you like that you take that have benefited you over the years?
Ryan: I would say I’ve tried a lot of different stuff, a lot of different. I’ve never done steroids though that I will say that, Ok, I’ve never done any illegal supplements if you will. I don’t really do anything right now to be honest. 18 would be the one thing if I would suggest any supplement. Simply because obviously it’s known to work, you know, and the other thing though, would be possibly magnesium. As you get older, and especially if you travel a lot. Take that sucker before bed. It’s been known to help with sleep, so in terms of supplements, that’s about the only things that I can recommend besides eating good natural food. Skip the junk.
Will: So yeah, yes Sir, awesome. Thank you so much, Ryan, thank you. Mind you, it’s obviously GMB dot IO anywhere else.
Ryan: Yeah man, just in the Google in any anywhere you search this type in GMB Fitness and will pop up.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
