The debate over whether jiu-jitsu athletes need to lift weights keeps circling back, and on Episode 108 of Jits and Giggles, guest Dante Leon had something direct to say about it, with Mikey Musumeci squarely in his sights.
Host Alysa Couce brought up Musumeci’s claim that he does not lift weights and credits his physique entirely to jiu-jitsu.
Leon’s response was unambiguous: “Yeah, 100%. If Mikey looks like that and he doesn’t touch any weights, then Mikey is so genetically gifted that he shouldn’t open his mouth about training or anything, because that’s like Barry Sanders just being like, ‘I never worked out or I never ran.'”
“But then you can just watch his highlight video and you’re like, ‘Okay, so you’re a gift from God.’ You don’t deserve to talk about what you should or shouldn’t do.”
Leon made clear he is not buying the idea that rolling alone builds the kind of physique Musumeci carries. He pointed to specific physical markers as evidence.
“He’s very thin. He doesn’t have a thick build or a super aesthetic build, but he obviously has muscle mass and very lean and very worked muscle. He’s not only lean, but he actually has muscle mass and muscle density. So the only way that he would build that is by stimulating the specific muscle groups that you see that are defined on his body.”
“He’s not going to get his chest as defined and thick as it is by doing jiu-jitsu. He’s not going to develop obliques and serratus and the V-taper down to the bottom from not stimulating those muscles and putting his musculature under load.”
The argument is grounded in basic physiology. Functional, visible muscle development in specific groups requires direct loading. Jiu-jitsu, for all its physical demands, does not deliver the same targeted mechanical stimulus as resistance training.
Leon allows for the possibility of outliers but frames them as the exception rather than a template other athletes should follow.
“And just if you’re that gifted, you don’t really get to tell people what they should or shouldn’t do.”
