Strength Training for Sport w/ Alex Sterner

Combining the world of strength training and sport, specifically Brazilian jiu-jjitsu, might seem counterintuitive, but it is exactly the opposite. My guest today is here to show you how a crossover between these two worlds can help you train better, prevent injury, and enjoy the sport you love for longer.

Key Takeaways

If you want to use strength training to improve your sport, you should:

1. Track what you are doing and assess it 

2. Get your body accustomed to stress and impact

3. Be consistent with the low-hanging fruit

Finding a Balance

Alex Sterner, BS, CSCS, is a co-founder and Head Coach of Electrum Performance and the Director of Performance at Jiujiteiro. He received his Bachelor's degree in Strength and Conditioning from the University of Connecticut and obtained a CSCS through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. As a Head Strength Coach of Atos Jiu-Jitsu HQ, he led the S&C training camp that resulted in Atos winning a team Gi World title in 2017 and 2018.

Not All Stress is Built the Same

Some people are afraid to lift heavy due to the threat of injury. But the truth is, your muscular cellular system will respond positively to the right amount of stress. Alex wants to encourage you to get your body accustomed to impact in a respectful and gradual way. 

By harnessing the power of control that you have in the gym, you can teach your body how to trust increment levels of stress so that you can come back from injury and pain with more resilience. This is why strength training is such an important asset and can lead to many more years of enjoying the sport you love so much.

Track Everything

Alex believes that all progress comes down to tracking. Understanding your missteps, and being able to differentiate between short and long-term gains will help you figure out where you are going right and wrong in your training. You don't need a fancy app, just a notebook and a pen. If you can figure out when something you are doing isn't showing up, you can figure out why and make a switch. It may be as simple as adjusting your work-to-rest ratio, but without tracking, you will never figure it out.

If you want to explore strength training options, either specifically for jiu-jitsu or another sport, let me know your thoughts about Alex’s well-balanced and informed approach in the comments on the episode page.

In This Episode

• Addressing the ‘insult’ of strength in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the benefits you might not realize strength has (13:42)
• Myth busting the belief that lifting weights will cause you to get injured and take you out of your chosen sport (20:55)
• Understanding how liability in the medical system could be skewing your perception of recovery (37:30)
• Common under-rated and over-rated jiu-jitsu specific strength training and why it needs to change (41:32)
• Why the spine is so important in the context of jiu-jitsu and the nuance of loading your spine (53:20)

“Heavy lifting; it is not just about building this brute muscular athlete. It's about longevity; it's about preventing injury or minimizing injury so that you can spend more time on the mats.” (10:13)

“When people start to trust that the weight room is this deliberate thing where we don't just make bad things worse… you start to realize that these other environments are way more open than the gym, and you don't have nearly enough control.” (26:53)

“Understand what your limitations are, take whatever you still can, and go from there” (40:23)

“All of it comes down to tracking. Be aware of what you are doing, is it improving? And if it is, great! And if it's not, figure out a switch to make.” (51:25)

“Biological or