Guest post by Matt Bostaph of Functional Idaho Strength & Mobility for Longevity.
If you train regularly, you have probably been told to slow everything down, stay tight, and focus on control. But is that actually the best way to move and perform, or could it be the thing holding you back?
The reason many people never reach their full potential isn’t a lack of effort. It’s that they’re training their body in a way that doesn’t actually translate to how they move in their sport.
The reality is, most people are building strength in a way that doesn’t carry outside of the gym. They create tension but lose fluidity. They are getting stronger, but not more adaptable. Over time, stiffness can limit performance, restrict mobility, and increase the risk of breakdown.
That’s where a different approach comes in, one that blends strength, mobility, and coordination into something more transferable. It’s called fast and loose training, and it’s built around the idea that real performance isn’t just about how much force you can produce, but how efficiently you can apply and release that force in real time.
The disconnect between strength and real performance is one of the biggest reasons athletes never reach their full potential. This becomes even more clear in dynamic sports, where movement is constantly changing and unpredictable.
What Is Fast and Loose Training
Fast and loose technique training refers to a technique of dynamic relaxation, often involving shaking, light bouncing, or flicking the fingers and feet between heavy sets of resistance training (such as kettlebell lifts or heavy lifting) to quickly reduce muscle tension, accelerate recovery, and improve performance.
The goal behind fast and loose technique training is to reduce muscular tension, allow the nervous system to recover more efficiently, and prepare your body to produce high levels of force quickly.
Unlike traditional rest, where you stay still and let fatigue linger, fast and loose training keeps the body in a relaxed, ready state. This helps you move better, stay explosive, and avoid the stiffness that often builds during heavy or high-intensity training.
In American Jiu-Jitsu, you are continuously responding to another person, adjusting to resistance, transitions, and shifting levels of tension in real time. This makes efficiency and adaptability far more important than simply being strong. It’s one of the many reasons jiu-jitsu transforms both the body and the mind of the people who train it.
What often shows up is a disconnect between how people train and how they actually need to perform. Some athletes rely heavily on technique and time in their sport but lack the strength and conditioning to sustain repeated high-output efforts. Others build strength in the gym but develop stiffness that doesn’t transfer well into real movement.
Both approaches create limitations. Performance isn’t just about knowing what to do; it’s about being able to apply it under fatigue, pressure, and unpredictability.
That requires the ability to switch between relaxation and force instantly, not stay stuck in constant tension. This is where fast and loose training becomes so valuable, helping bridge the gap between strength and real-world performance.
Fast and loose training enhances athletic performance by teaching your body how to stay explosive without becoming rigid.
How Fast and Loose Training Improves Sports Performance
Most athletes train in a constant state of tension, building strength but often losing the ability to transition between relaxation and force. Fast and loose training develops the missing link, the ability to rapidly switch between tension and relaxation, which is critical for speed, explosiveness, and fluid movement.
Rather than isolating muscles, this approach trains the body as a connected system. It improves force transfer from the ground up, helping athletes express strength more efficiently in real movement patterns.
Fast and loose work also enhances elasticity through low-intensity rhythmic movement. This helps the body move with more fluidity and reduces the feeling of stiffness that can build from heavy or highly structured training.
By teaching the nervous system to relax while still producing force, athletes improve movement efficiency, increase speed, and may reduce unnecessary muscular tension during performance.
As athletes progress, the next step after building strength is refinement, learning not just how to produce force but when to apply it and when to release it. That is where true performance evolution begins, and it mirrors a principle Coach Michael teaches on the mat: the most important skills in jiu-jitsu often have nothing to do with technique.
Fast and Loose Training Exercises for Athletes
Fast and loose training techniques are easy to incorporate into your workouts because they require no specialized equipment, take little time, and can be added directly between heavy lifting sets or used as a quick nervous system recovery tool.
The goal of these drills is not to create more fatigue, but to teach your body how to release tension quickly and return to a relaxed, ready state between efforts. This is what allows strength to actually transfer into real movement.
Here are key techniques for easy incorporation:
- Shaking/Flicking: Immediately after your heavy set (like back squats or deadlifts), shake your hands and flick the fingers to release built-up tension. Keep the shoulders relaxed; this should feel loose and effortless, not forced.
- Light Hopping/Bouncing: Perform light, relaxed hops on the balls of your feet to reset the nervous system. Stay springy and quiet, think elastic, not heavy.
- High Velocity, Low-Effort Reps: For sprinting use strides, which is running fast but relaxed focusing on fluid mechanics rather than max effort. If your face or shoulders feel tight, you’re going too hard.
- Short-Burst Drills: Use quick, 20-repetition lateral and forward backward line jumps between sets to improve coordination. Stay reactive and light, don’t let your feet stick to the ground.
Integrate these movements into your rest periods between sets. Instead of standing still and letting tension linger, you are actively telling your body to relax and reset so the next set can be performed with better efficiency and less fatigue.
Coach Michael Egley of Egley Train Academy also emphasizes kettlebell work and mobility as a key part of building strength that actually transfers. Some of his go-to movements include kettlebell swings, Turkish get-ups, and mobility drills, all of which reinforce the ability to create and release tension efficiently.
How to Apply Fast and Loose Training in a Real Session
This is what fast and loose training looks like inside a real strength session. The goal is not to add fatigue, but to improve recovery between efforts and keep the nervous system in a ready, responsive state.
Here’s how fast and loose training fits into a real training session. This is not additional conditioning, but a structured way to reset the nervous system between strength efforts.
5 Min EMOM:
- Minute 1: 5 single arm kettlebell snatches per side. Remaining time: shake hands, flick fingers, relaxed hops on balls of feet.
- Minute 2: 5 single arm kettlebell snatches per side. Remaining time: shake hands, flick fingers, relaxed hops on balls of feet.
- Minute 3: 5 single arm kettlebell snatches per side. Remaining time: shake hands, flick fingers, relaxed hops on balls of feet.
- Minute 4: 5 single arm kettlebell snatches per side. Remaining time: shake hands, flick fingers, relaxed hops on balls of feet.
- Minute 5: 5 single arm kettlebell snatches per side. Remaining time: shake hands, flick fingers, relaxed hops on balls of feet.
The goal is to move fast while staying relaxed. These drills help reduce accumulated fatigue, improve recovery between sets, and train the nervous system to return to a relaxed state faster. Over time, this improves how efficiently you recover, how quickly you can produce force again, and how well your movement carries over outside the gym.
Watch how Coach Matt from Functional Idaho teaches fast and loose training in a real coaching environment at Egley Train Academy.
At Egley Train Academy, we see this principle in action every round. Training with the right partners accelerates how quickly athletes develop selective tension and real-world application, which is one of the reasons our students progress so fast. If you’re looking to improve your American Jiu-Jitsu directly, you can book a private session at Egley Train Academy HERE.
Common Mistakes When Using Fast and Loose Training
Now that we’ve covered what fast and loose training is, how it improves performance, and how to apply it, let’s look at some of the most common mistakes athletes make.
- Going too hard: This is not conditioning. If you are getting out of breath or heavily fatigued, you are missing the purpose. These drills should leave you feeling more refreshed, not drained.
- Staying tense during the drills: The goal is relaxation. If your shoulders, jaw, or hands are tight, you are reinforcing the same tension patterns you are trying to eliminate.
- Replacing strength training with it: Fast and loose training enhances strength; it does not replace it. You still need to build force before you can refine how you express it.
- Overthinking it: This is not meant to be complicated. Focus on staying loose, reactive, and aware of how your body feels rather than trying to perform perfectly.
The goal is to improve recovery between efforts and train the ability to stay relaxed while producing high levels of force.
Train Intentionally at Functional Idaho for Strength, Mobility & Longevity
At Functional Idaho Strength and Mobility for Longevity, we believe that real progress comes from training with purpose.
By integrating fast and loose training into real strength environments, we’re helping athletes:
- Recover faster between efforts
- Maintain technical quality under fatigue
- Transition between tension and relaxation more efficiently
- And carry gym strength into sport performance
If you can build strength but cannot relax under pressure, you are leaving performance on the table. The athletes who separate themselves are not just the strongest, they are the ones who can switch between tension and relaxation instantly.
Fast and loose training is not about doing more. It is about doing things more efficiently, so your strength actually shows up when it matters.
Our goal is to help you build strength, improve movement, and feel your best physically, mentally, and spiritually. If you are ready to stop guessing and start achieving real results, we are here to help you.
Come experience what personalized health and fitness looks like. Claim your free tour and consultation today.
