 Our next caller is Jenny from California. Hey Jenny, what's going on? How can we help you? Hey, thank you guys so much for taking me on here. So my question is recently I've been dieting down for a tournament. I'm doing a jujitsu tournament a couple of weeks. I've lost about 12 pounds in the last six weeks or so. And so my tournament's coming up and after my tournament, I'd like to learn more about reverse dieting because I've never heard about it before. I started listening to you guys recently. I've heard you talk about it and touched on it a couple of times, but I'd love to maintain where I'm at right now as far as my size and muscle mass and everything, but I definitely build up from here. I've been eating at about 12 to 1500 calories to get down to this cut, get down to this right weight. But I would love to continue building that so that I can eat like around 2500, something like that for my size. Okay, I'm gonna answer your question, but I have a few more questions for you before we get there. Sure. How long have you been training jujitsu? Like what rank are you? And then is what like, is this your first tournament, your fifth tournament? Like how far along are you? And did you know I had a purple belt? Yeah, I've been actually training jujitsu for about 20 years in my brown belt. I took some time off in between to have kids and kind of, you know, rest my body and all that stuff after having kids. So I've done several tournaments, but this is kind of my second or third since coming back into training pretty seriously. And this one is kind of a really big tournament. There's a lot of people at my gym going and doing it. If I can, you know, place of this tournament is gonna be a big deal. Oh, good. Is this the US Open? Yeah, no, it's Masters. Masters. Well, unfortunately Sal can't help you because he's only a purple belt. Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. I've been trained in front of you. No, you know why I asked you that question, Jenny, is because oftentimes I talk to athletes about cutting and when we have the conversation, it's better to not cut. It's typically where we end up with because as athletes, especially weight, when we have weight classes and, you know, grappling tournaments, wrestling, those are all boxing, right? Combat sports tend to have weight classes. We often believe that if we cut and go in a lighter weight class, that we'll have an advantage because we're now going against lighter people. But that advantage disappears if the cut is making you feel like crap or you're losing strength or it's really aggressive or it affects your health in a negative way. And I've seen this many times. I saw this in Jiu-Jitsu. I also saw this in wrestling and, you know, I remember my, I had a cousin who would wrestle and would cut so much weight. And I remember I convinced him once, like, don't cut weight and see how you feel. And he did better because he felt stronger and more healthy. So that's why I brought this up. But I'm assuming with your experience, this is something you've done before. So the thing is, and I totally hear what you're saying, I used to wrestle in high school and so I've been through this kind of ringer for a while. But the thing with women's weight classes is, it's 175 and above is the weight class. And so I really wanted to get, I was about 186 and I was about 24% body fat. And so I knew I was carrying a little bit extra and I really wanted to get into that next weight class, which is 175, like the capper is 175 and you have to weigh in with your Geyon and all that stuff. So I knew that I could get there and I'd much rather do that than fight a girl who's baby 200 and 230 pounds at 180. You don't want to go against that. What's her name? Gabby, whatever that goes. Gabby Garcia. Oh my God. I don't know if you guys have seen her, but she said, oh dude, it's like imagine me with long hair, but even bigger. Okay, so all right, so okay, I'm so glad you said that. Okay, so reverse dieting essentially in a nutshell without getting into the weeds is slowly increasing your calories over time while you continue your training and trying to maintain your weight or maybe build a little bit of muscle so that your weight stays roughly the same, but now you have a faster metabolism at your weight and the amount of activity that you're doing. I noticed in your question, you're saying you're eating about 12 to 1500 calories that's really low. That's really, really low. You should probably be at least, at least 500 to 700 calories higher. So when you get out of this tournament, what you want to do is increase your calories by about a hundred a day. Stay at that, you know, caloric range, see how your body adjusts and then do it again. If you see a big weight jump, then hold steady and wait a little bit before bumping again. What you really want to look for, Jenny, is do I have more energy? Do I have more strength? Am I maintaining my fitness, my health? And also, and I didn't ask you this question, but also you may notice some positive hormonal changes. Oftentimes, especially with women, when they train really hard and cut their calories, they start to notice negative hormonal changes like lowered libido, hot and cold, body temperatures, and then they lose their period or they get very spotty with their period in the sense that it's not as consistent. So those are all signs that you're maybe doing too much, not eating enough. The reverse diet should really help regulate that. And ideally, especially at your level, where we would want to see you, is for the next tournament, you don't really need to cut, but you're eating way more and you'll probably feel a lot better. So again, and in that shell, it's just a slow increase while you monitor everything. So I'll add two little things there. One, I think it's a good investment to purchase Lane Norton's book. He actually has a book on reverse dieting, or it's like an e-book. So it's relatively inexpensive. It has tremendous value. It has more specific details if you want to follow a more dialed plan. So I think that's tremendously valuable. And then the other suggestion that anytime someone's reverse dieting, I always like to really change up their strength training routine. So if you have a typical kind of program or training routine that you follow, it's when I reverse diet, so when I really like to shake that up. So I don't know what that looks like for you, or I don't know if you're following a MAPS program currently, or you would be following a MAPS program, but really shaking it up from what the norm is for you. And that will help take any of those additional calories that you're now consuming and hopefully partition them over into building muscle instead of getting stored as fat because you're sending such a new unique signal. And that could look like rep ranges and rest periods. That could look like introducing exercises that maybe you never did before, like Turkish getups or single leg deadlifts, some good movements in there that you're just not used to doing that you're probably not very good at, but that'll be really good for you while you are also increasing your calories. Yeah, Jenny, what does your, or what did your strength training look like and what it consists of besides you just do? So I usually do, I actually haven't ran like a program like MAPS or anything like that. I do boot camp kind of hit classes with that cardio and lifting and that kind of stuff. So it's more of, like we'll have arm days or leg days or back and biceps, that kind of stuff. And I enjoy lifting weights, but for this tournament, well, really in general, I've just been able to like work those classes in. But like I said, I've just recently found you guys and really have enjoyed listening to you and would love to kind of work on strength a little bit more. I joined a normal gym this last week just to work on my cardio a little bit more, get some more treadmill time. But I think after this tournament, I'd love to focus a little bit more on that too. Oh man, I'm so glad Justin asked you that question. Okay, how many days a week are you training? Yeah, how many days a week are you training jiu-jitsu? Well, right now it's five. Before this comp training, it was maybe like two to three just kind of whatever I felt like doing it. If you want more endurance and stamina, do more jiu-jitsu. There's nothing you can do in the gym. There's no other workouts you can do that will give you more applicable stamina. And you know this better than I do. You've been doing this for a long time. The type of endurance and stamina required for jiu-jitsu is different than what you would get maybe in boxing or riding a bike or running. So if you want more stamina, then train more jiu-jitsu or train your jiu-jitsu in a way to add more stamina. So do more of like the king of the hill type matches or people are jumping on you every minute or every 30 seconds, roll faster or harder or longer. That's where you'll get your stamina. When you're lifting or you're training outside of that, you wanna do something that you can do with weights that you're not gonna get from jiu-jitsu. In other words, focus maybe on strength and maybe mobility. And that's really it. What you don't wanna do is try, and it's a big mistake a lot of athletes make, is they try to mimic their sport in the gym thinking it's gonna improve them at their sport. That's the wrong way to train. So a lot of times you'll see an athlete and they're like, I need more endurance in my sport. So now I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna train for more endurance. The only time that's applicable is if doing too much of your sport is starting to hurt you, like boxing, right? Boxers, they can't spar all the time. They get beat up a lot. The beauty of jiu-jitsu, and again, you know this better than I do, is you can roll more and more. And yes, there's always that risk of injury, but it's not like boxing or football where at some point it's just, you gotta get more stamina outside of there because you just can't keep getting pounded on. Do the jiu-jitsu for the stamina, train jiu-jitsu in a way to improve stamina if that's what you want. And then when you go to the gym, focus on strength, so it's slow, it's lower reps, it's full body workouts. Don't go super intense. The intensity should be safe for jiu-jitsu. And then maybe some mobility work, which will always benefit your jiu-jitsu, but don't train in the gym like you're mimicking your jiu-jitsu. It's a huge mistake. Well, and now that we know this and we have more information, I'll be even more specific. And Doug, why don't you send her over maps and a balik? If you're gonna do, after the tournament, if you're gonna drop down to two to three times a week jiu-jitsu, I would love to see you do two times a week of maps and a balik. Perfect. I think that would be ideal. If you're gonna do anything else in the gym more, I would do mobility stuff. If you want a great mobility routine that's kind of a full body thing that's free, you go to the mapsprimeprowebinar.com where I do like a 50 minute mobility routine that's basically head to toe some of my favorite movements. You can literally just follow that. That would be the only other thing I would do in addition to the two days a week of maps and a balik. You do that in a reverse diet and watch how much you'll build so much more muscle. Yeah, let's give a shout out to your school. Where do you train? I'm at Synergy in Rockland. All right. Hey, I know exactly where that is. I have family up in Rockland. All right, good luck. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, we've got a big crew that's been training really hard for this tournament. So we're excited to get out there and show the world. Good luck. I hope you win. Hope you do well, Jenny. Thanks so much, you guys. Yeah. That's funny. I know that school. I have family that lives up in Rockland. So glad Justin announced that. Oh, man. That just completely changed. Alters the direction there. I mean, that was the big mistake I made when I trained is that I thought I had to mimic my jiu-jitsu training in the gym and nothing gave me more stamina in jiu-jitsu, like doing more jiu-jitsu. And then when I went and said, you know, why don't I just go to the gym and focus on strength? Because I can't really do that in jiu-jitsu. It was like night and day with the improvements that I made. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I was addressing that same thing going into the off season next year with the football team. Dude, we didn't spend enough time on the actual skills that we need to acquire. And to do that, you can get all the conditioning you need by just drilling these skills over and over again and it's gonna have way more impact than just aimlessly kind of running and going through the cardiovascular training. But yeah, to really focus in and hone in on the strength cycles and the strength and acquiring strength is gonna take you so much further. I mean, the exciting part is if she takes the advice and does exactly what we just said, she's gonna see tremendous results with the reverse diet. Oh, yeah. I mean, if she's used to doing all that endurance and stamina training and circuit training for weights and then we put her on a two day a week full body strength routine while also increasing calories, look out. I mean, she's primed for that to like show her incredible results if she sticks to it. Totally.