Hi doctors,
I’m not sure how familiar you are all with Kneesovertoesguy, but I’ve been looking at his stuff and am curious about BBM’s take on it. Is there any merit to his approach of strengthening the joints, tendons, and ligaments through extreme ROM?
As a BJJ practitioner often in awkward, “unnatural” ROM positions, intuitively his approach seems plausible. In BJJ you use your feet, ankles, and spinally flex in different directions. These are also common injury points in BJJ, but “traditional” programs don’t specifically train these movements. So it seems valuable to strengthen those movements through ATG exercises like tibialis raises or a Jefferson curl.
I’m thinking of incorporating some of his movements as GPP, or perhaps replacing some SBD movements with ATG alternatives. Please let me know if this just doesn’t make sense.
Thanks!
We are somewhat familiar with this individual, though admittedly his messaging is not geared towards us. There are concerns with his fund of knowledge and many of his suggestions. As such, we do not recommend his content or products.
Regarding the musculoskeletal system at large, it adapts to what is asked of it, provided it’s progressively loaded at a rate that the person can keep up with. This is reflected in the SAID (specificity of adaptation to imposed demand) principle.
Practically speaking, we recommend exposure to many different positions via lots of exercise variety rather than focusing on a specific exercise, e.g. low bar squats 3x/wk vs 1 back squat, 1 split squat, and 1 hack squat weekly.
Whether or not to include a specific movement in a program should be guided by preferences, goals, and “trainability”, with trainability referring to ability to perform, load, and respond well to the exercise as measured by important outcomes. For example, a front squat is a bad choice if someone can’t yet rack a barbell and leg extensions probably don’t do much for squat strength.
Regarding the ATG suggestion, which I would not recommend for you personally or BJJ in general, as I do not think there’s a significant advantage to doing so over a below parallel squat. I feel similarly about the tibialis raises and Jefferson curls. Neither are super trainable and I feel like your training resources are better spent elsewhere for now.
-Jordan
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