What Regular People Can Learn From Stuntwoman and Ninja Warrior Jessie Graff

Photo: Jessie Graff attends the 68th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards on September 18, 2016. Credit: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images. I wrote this article just because this picture was so badass.

WHO BACK FLIPPED IN IT BEST?

It’s a more fun and empowering question than “who wore it best?”  It’s pretty cool to see Jessie Graff getting noticed for doing a backflip and head high kicking like a badass.

We’re going to dig in a little on what she does to be the awesomeness that she is, and also how empowering her perspective on how working out, for her, is about doing the kinds of stunts she needs to do.

A video posted by jessie graff (@jessiegraffpwr) on Sep 19, 2016 at 6:55pm PDT

THREE THINGS TO LEARN FROM JESSIE

There are some amazing articles about what Jessie does.  There’s this amazing article in the New York Post about Jessie Graff’s workout and diet, this article in Bon Appetite about her diet, and this article in the Los Angeles Times about her workout.

Those are all super awesome looks at what she does, why, and how.  In this post I wanted to make sure to highlight a few things about what you — the average workout guy or girl — can use what they learned from what Jessie Graff does.

It can be hard, when we hear about someone who is a professional stuntwoman, working out 3 hours per day and 6-7 days per week, to know if there is anything useful we can take away from what she does.  Or, if she’s just as some other level that doesn’t relate to us at all.

We’re going to start by going over what she does, and then we’re going to dive in to practical takeaways that everyone can use, for three different aspects of her program:

1. Workout
2. Nutrition
3. Perspective

WORKOUT

Her Workout:

Three day split, repeated twice:

Push Day:

• Bench Press
• Lateral Raises
• Press Handstands
• Boxing

Pull Day:

• Pullups
• Curls
• 2-3 hours of climbing
• <or> swimming

Leg Day:

• Squats
• Plyometrics
• Jump Kicks
• Spin Kicks
• Sweeps
• Feet Stances

She repeats that cycle over 6-7 days.  That means on a 6 day workout week, it would look like this:

Monday: Push
Tuesday: Pull
Wednesday: Legs

Thursday: Push
Friday: Pull
Saturday: Legs

What you can learn:

A push/pull/legs split is a good way to work out more often 

Mostly, we do full body workouts because it’s an efficient use of time. If you want to work out 6-7 days per week, it makes more sense to do a split, because you can essentially rest by body part.  If you workout pushing muscles on Monday, those particular movement patterns and muscles get to rest until Thursday.

In the meantime you can work on the opposite muscles (pulling patterns) or completely unrelated (legs).  Again, if you want to workout 6 days per week, it makes a lot of sense to break up each movement pattern group (push/pull/legs) into a separate day.

On the flip-side If you want to workout 2-3 times per week, it makes more sense to do full body workouts.  Since the average person only gets to the gym a couple times per week, you want to get “some of everything” done in each session.

Jessie Graff arrives at the 68th Emmy Awards , September 18, 2016, in Los Angeles, California. Credit: mpi99/MediaPunch

Skills Can Be A Great Way to Workout

You don’t have to do pushups or bench presses for the “push” in your workouts, you could totally work on handstands or do boxing.

You don’t have to do pull-ups for the “pull” in your workouts, you could swim or rock climb.

You don’t have to do squats for your leg workout, you could do jumps or kicks.

You could totally have a Jessie Graff themed workout program that looked like:

Monday: Handstands
Wednesday: Rock climbing
Friday: Jumps

Or

Monday: Boxing
Wednesday: Swimming
Friday: Kickboxing

Or you could even mix it up in like a two week cycle:

Monday: Handstands
Wednesday: Rock climbing
Friday: Kickboxing

Monday: Bench press
Wednesday: Pull-ups
Friday: Squats

This could be a really fun way to approach your workouts.  Sure, you don’t have the 3 hours per day 7 days per week that she has to put in as a professional stuntwoman, but you also don’t need to.

That being said, if you dial in your nutrition skills, you can totally get a lean, fit, athletic body. 

So wait — which one should I do, a full body workout, or split skills on to different days?

So, I know we just recommended that the average person, working out 2-3 times per week, do full body workouts.  That being said, most people don’t necessarily have access to all of the equipment they’d need all in once place.  To do this, most people would have to have:

• A wall and a flat open space they could handstand
• A rock climbing gym (or get out on actual rock)
• A gym with heavy bags they could kick

And for most people, those are going to be three separate gyms.  So it’s a matter of doing a three day split just for logistics.

FOOD

Jessie Graff’s nutrition:

• Eat 1-2 portions of protein at every meal
• 1-2 portions of carbohydrates at every meal
• Pack in as many vegetables as possible, especially dark leafy greens
• Eat a meal every 3-5 hours

There is so much awesome here.  Clearly, she needs enough carbohydrates to fuel the 21 hours of working out she does every week, not to mention how active she is at work as a stuntwoman.  And, she needs a lot of protein to maintain all of the strength and muscle to do the stunts.  Lastly, vegetables are awesome.

Most of us just aren’t anywhere near that active, and probably don’t need quite as much.

We recommend for average workout folks: 

• Eat 1-2 portions of protein at every meal
• 1 portion of carbohydrates at every meal.
  • Most of us workout 1 hour per day, or less, so we don’t need that extra portion of carbohydrates.
• Pack in as many vegetables as possible, especially dark leafy greens
• Eat a meal every 4-6 hours
  • Most of us workout 1 hour per day, or less, so we don’t need to fit in an extra meal by eating more often

So, if you workout several hours per day, you’ll need an extra portion of carbohydrates (per day) for each extra hour you workout.  And, if you’re doing a schedule with as many extra hours as Jessie, you’ll probably need to eat more often and have extra meals as well.

That just isn’t most of us.  Most of us do well with one portion of everything, 3-4 times per day.

PERSPECTIVE

Jessie Graff’s perspective:

• It’s not about “staying in shape”
• It’s about being strong enough to do the stunts she needs to do
• Injury prevention: “Armor” to withstand the kind of physical punishment she’s going to take doing stunts

Though I’m just beginning to learn what it means to be a role model for women, I really want to share one message: being strong doesn’t make you manly or unfeminine. It just means you can do more things.  It builds confidence and self reliance and opens all kinds of pathways and opportunities.
—Jessie told the Los Angeles Times

What you can take away

Dan John has used the metaphor of muscle as “armor” in contact sports like football before.  It sounds like stunts are pretty similar: Jessie needs both the kinds of exercises to prevent injury and the muscle to withstand all of the falls and throws and punishment of doing stunts in movies and TV.

There’s nothing wrong with having a perspective where you want to work out to look better.  The danger is when that’s the only perspective that you have for working out.  Or worse, when you use working out as a punishment for food.  That’s not what working out is for.

Taking a look at Self-Determination Theory, we find people have different kinds of motivation they use for working out:

• Working out as punishment for “eating bad” or “looking bad”
• Working out because you feel guilty if you don’t
• Working out because you value being strong, or value moving well and being able to do cool stuff, or value looking good
• Working out because you’ve integrated working out with all of your values, like being strong, looking good, being a good parent, being effective at work, and so on
• Working out because you enjoy movement

What we find is that the people who are the least successful at their fitness and enjoy it the least, are the ones who always use the first (red) two.

People who are the most successful with their fitness, actually use all of them.  They use the top (red) one much less often, because they use the bottom (blue and green) three a lot.

I wish I could tell you that there is some magical world where you can graduate to always using enjoying movement for every workout, but research doesn’t back that up.  Even pro athletes and personal trainers, sometimes workout just because they’ll feel guilty if they don’t.

Research indicates that a healthy relationship with a workout motivation is all of the above.  What makes it healthy is using your values a lot of the time.  The goal is to notice what you value about working out, why it matters to you.

And then, if you can find some movements or workouts you do just for the fun of it (like rock climbing or boxing!)

Bringing it back to Jessie — for her, it all comes down to being directly related to her job.  A job that she clearly loves!  So, you could say that all of it — from the stunt practice to the strength training to the injury prevention is all completely integrated with her values.

The shortcut, if there is one, is to focus on things you want to be able to do, and why you want to be able to do those things.

To focus on why good movement matters to you or the cool things you want to be able to do.

And, eventually, you might even find that you want to work on something like backflips purely for fun =)

By Josh Hillis

Photos licensed from Associated Press and Shutterstock, respectively.

P.S. Supergirl and Agents of Shield (two shows Jessie has done stunts for) are two of my favorite TV shows ever =)

P.P.S. NINJA WARRIOR

Lastly, if you haven’t seen her Ninja Warrior video, it’s a thing of beauty.  There’s nothing I dig more than seeing someone move with that level of grace.  It’s an awesome combination of strength, coordination, and fluidity that’s amazing to behold.

Check the video below: