The SAID principle and how it can help guide your training.

Do you every think you’re not getting fitter in your Jiu Jitsu training? Not losing weight, or gaining muscle like you did at the start? It might be to do with this.

SAID- Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand.

This is how your body works when it comes to physical activity. You impose a demand on it (lifting a heavy weight for several repetitions, for example), and your body adapts and changes to the demands you place upon it, growing new muscle, and becoming more neurologically efficient at doing that specific thing.

What it doesn’t do very well is GAID- General Adaptation… I don’t know if I just made that acronym up, but my point is that if you do a 60kg bench press for 10 reps, your body won’t adapt to make your legs stronger, or your sprint time faster. You need to do some specific work for that.

Now all of that is pretty well known in physical terms, even if you weren’t familiar with the SAID principle before this. You know as you’re reading this as a non-sports scientist, that if you go out and run 5k twice a week for a few months, you’ll become better at running 5k. Your legs will get stronger, your heart and lungs will become more efficient, and probably your technique will improve. You can tell this by one of 2 methods. The stopwatch, or how you feel after your run as compared to the first time you did it.

Jiu Jitsu- A Complex Activity

But it’s less well known in terms of a more complex activity like Jiu Jitsu. There are a lot more variables that might effect your performance on the mat. Skill and technique, weight, strength, conditioning, and the big one, who you’re doing at against. A more skilled partner might make you feel like you haven’t improved at all. A less skilled partner, and you can feel like a World Champion for a few minutes. So it’s important that we don’t rate ourselves session to session, and instead look at ourselves over the course of a month to 6 weeks.

Keep in mind that I’m just talking about the physical act of training, the “fitness”, not the acquisition of skill, which is another article entirely.

The Builder's Paradox

Now let’s talk about another factor- The Builder’s Paradox. A builder’s labourer should be ripped. He hauls blocks, shovels, swings a sledge, handles a kango, and moves all day. But they’re not. For sure they are stronger than the average man, but they’re not in prime physical condition. That’s because that adaptation only goes so far before the body says “enough”, and requires more stimulus to grow and adapt again. The demands on the labourer are pretty much the same week in, week out, so the body stops adapting. It doesn’t need to.

The human body is a marvel at becoming more efficient, and using the least energy possible for survival.

So when you’re on the mat, training like you always have, your body stops adapting. The demands are about the same every session. You’re the builder. No more fat loss, no more muscle gain, no increased cardio.

Unless…

Focus in Jiu Jitsu Training

Unless you put thought, focus, and effort into the process. Now I know what I said earlier about this being just about the physical fitness element, but there is good news here from a skills standpoint, this focus will improve your skills too. Let’s use an example of a specific position- passing the guard.

Imagine you are the average Jiu Jitsu fighter, and the drill of the day is passing the guard, and that drill goes for 3 minute rounds before you swap from top to bottom. You have to get as many guard passes as you can within the 3 minutes. It is easy to bluff through a round like this, you can sit off, hand fight a little, make an attempt, reset, and then maybe get one before the time goes. Or, you can set your focus on trying to make something work as quick as possible, imagining a match in which you are down on points and must pass the guard. You add urgency and focus.

Do this drill and tell me what happens. I watch this happen in training all the time, so I can tell you that the latter person gets better and always seems to be improving. That’s because this training is self-scaling. It’s not like a 60kg weight which stays 60kg all of the time. If you pass the guard once in the 3 minutes the first time, then you set the target to 2 passes the next time, 3 the next time, or with tougher partners the next time, or a new technique, or by focusing on output, or pressure and so on.

Breaking the Adaptation

I call this Breaking the Adaptation. Once you’ve adapted, you’ve plateaued, you need to add a novel stimulus.

Your best stimuli in training are people. You should train with people of all different shapes, sizes, flexibility, and of course, skill levels. The easiest adaptation breaker is a better training partner. But if you don’t have the option of one of those, then how about a heavier one for escapes, or a faster one for guard retention, or a fresh one when you’re tired? How about giving someone a head start, letting them have a bad position before starting.

You’ll have a favourite partner of course, but it’s important to not become a Black Belt in training with Bob. Use the dozens of bodies in your Jiu Jitsu training room as you would weight machines in a gym.

The Benefits for your Jiu Jitsu

This type of focus on your own training has so many benefits. The first is the fitness element. Your demands will always be changing, so your body will constantly be using the SAID principle. You won’t fall into The Builder’s Paradox.

The second is that your skills will improve. We’ll do skill acquisition another time, but novel stimuli is a massive skill builder.

And finally, this is the most fun type of training. Training with focus and goals. I do go through times when I just tick a box, cruise, and let training take care of itself. You do need those times to just relax and enjoy yourself and your team mates. But even after 26 years of martial arts, I’m still trying to develop something new most of the time. It’s so much more fun, and I get to train with so many more people in different ways.

I hope this helps you improve your Jiu Jitsu!

See you on the mat,

Barry

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