If you've read Part 1 of my series "Functional Strength - Are You Missing the Point?" then you've already had a taste of how I feel about the current state of "functional fitness" and what an under-educated, misrepresented circus it is quickly becoming. I've spoken to crossfitters that have breathlessly explained to me that the only way to achieve any respectable level of fitness is to do 5-7 random WODS a week with 110% intensity and no periodization at all. Then I listen to an interview with Crossfit Games contender Chris Spealer, in which he intelligently and articulately explains how he essentially does a west side split, with a weekly 5/3/1 squat day and work with an olympic lifting coach, while doing 2-3 metcon WODs a week for conditioning with assistance exercises to address his weaker muscle groups. How is it possible that both of these people think they're on the same team?
Anyway, one of the hot topics of debate is isolation movements, and whether or not they have a place in an athlete's program. The knee-jerk reaction of many functional training advocates will be "No, in fact for every bicep curl you do, an angel is hurled into a swirling abyss of spikes, fire and Nicki Minaj music" but bear with me for a moment. It is very true that in terms of training economy, compound multi-joint movements should take precedence over isolation exercises. My workouts have been very cramped lately, so my priority is getting my work done on the primary movement. I haven't had much time to do assistance work at all, let alone isolation work. That said, isolation does absolutely have a place in the preparation of a BJJ practitioner/competitor.
The major case against isolation is that simple, single-joint movements happen rarely if ever in a lifestyle/sport situation. Most of our athletic efforts outside the weight room are full-body, so of course compound movements like squats, deadlifts, pull-ups etc should have better carryover. The thing is though... we actually do have isolation movements in our sport. They're called submissions, specifically joint locks. The techniques used by bodybuilders to promote sarcoplasmic hypertrophy in a given muscle group are designed to remove as many other large, strong muscle groups from the equation as possible and focus a high degree of force at a single joint. If that sounds familiar, it's because that's exactly what the joint-locking techniques of BJJ are designed to do. With this in mind, isolation exercises alongside a joint mobility practice should start to make more sense from an injury prevention perspective. It honestly doesn't have to be a lot. You could throw a few sets of curls, lateral raises, skullcrushers, rear delt flies, external rotations, hamstring curls and other isolation movements into scattered workouts over a course of months, or just hit them all in a row with some theraband tubing as a prehab circuit you do before or after training. What I will tell you is that when the inevitable happens and you let an armbar go a little too far while drilling, having thickened the tendonous attachments with a bit of special attention can mean the difference between shaking it off and continuing, or being off the mats for a week.
This isn't just for BJJ, either. In a recent EliteFTS article, professional strongman competitors were asked if they were only allowed five gym exercises, which ones they would choose. Three of them included curls, and all for exactly the same reason - when you do curls, you tear your biceps less often. No matter the sport, when you take a look at the common injuries you'll see a similar pattern - that the injury occurred when a particular joint or muscle which is usually supported by other larger muscle groups was placed in a situation where it had to fend for itself and failed to do so. The difference in our sport is that instead of a chance occurrence, the situation is being planned and engineered by a human being. A quarterback may go several years throwing a football the same way until the one day he takes a funny step while doing so and strains his bicep tendon, but if on a weekly basis you're having your joints twisted and bent on purpose, it becomes just short of inevitable. You need to be prepared. Nobody is talking about performance implications - you aren't going to try to curl your way out of the armbar or prioritize machine leg extensions over squats. If this article is used as an excuse for that then we'll have to have an unpleasant conversation. I'm simply saying that if you add just a bit of isolation work to your routine along with regular joint mobility practice, you have a better chance of not missing mat time and that's worth sucking it up.
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