Strength Training and White Belts (by Owen)

I'd been training for about 6 months when one of my friends asked me to lift some weights with him. As I'd usually turn up to class early I thought I’d give it a go. Within 6 months I found that I became much stronger. In fact, I went from benching 60kgs to benching 100kg. This newfound strength also came in handy on the mat. I found myself powering out of submissions and getting tapped much less. However, this short term success came at a price.

These short term gains ended up holding me back. As my classmates became more technical I became less technical, relying on my new strength to get me out of tough situations. After coming to this realization, I stopped strength and conditioning training until I received my purple belt. I probably could have started a bit earlier but at that point I could fully understand how to apply my strength technically. This effectively made my progress through though purple belt very fast.

There is no point having a fast car if you don’t know how to drive. First develop the technical foundations which BJJ is all about, then reinforce them with some Strength and Conditioning. As every white belt gets told, "forget about your strength", I too had to find out the hard way.

 

How to Improve Fuel/Motivation Economy When Driving/Training

You have a full gas tank that has just enough petrol to take you home. There isn’t enough petrol to take you any further. In fact, driving incorrectly may cause the fuel to run out quicker. Things like accelerating too much, or driving faster than you need to will increase fuel consumption.

As a result, you slow down as you approach red lights long before you reach them, you don’t accelerate when you don’t need to and you drive according to the legal speed limit (my mum is smiling right now…).

Had you accelerated unnecessarily or exceeded the speed limit you may not have reached home, or you may have crashed along the way.

Right now you are probably thinking ‘WTF’, but bear with us because we haven’t lost the plot (yet…). The above excerpt applies to driving, but is also a perfect training analogy. All we have to do is substitute a few things: home = goal, fuel/petrol = motivation, car = you, red lights = injury/burnout, acceleration = big increments, speeding = too frequent…

Your motivation is just enough to take you to your end goal (whatever it may be). Training incorrectly may cause you to burn-out, and subsequently miss your goal. Things like training too frequently or overloading incorrectly will be too much for your CNS and your motivation will decline quickly, causing burnout.

As a result, you slow down before you are even close to feeling burnt out or injured, you increase with steady increments and you allow enough recovery time between sessions (you didn’t progress too fast).

Had you aimed for huge daily improvements or trained too frequently you would probably have lost motivation and not reached your goal (or become injured).

But, now you are out of fuel does that mean when you reach your goal that’s it? Definitely not! There is a petrol station near your house that can top you up.

The shift from BJJ 'Practitioner' to BJJ 'Athlete'...

In our last article, Owen spoke about how supplementary training has not only become accepted to improve sporting performance in BJJ, it is now a necessity. Don't jump in the car and head to the gym just yet. It's important to understand the metabolic demands of your sport before creating your training program. Below is a basic breakdown of what we think are the dominant fitness parameters in BJJ.

Competitors are categorized in weight-classes and matches go for anywhere between 6 and 10minutes. Because there are weight restrictions, being the strongest in your weight-class is advantageous (Relative Strength). However, this isn't enough. Strength means nothing if you can't maintain your output - Muscular Endurance is essential. The goal is to be as strong in the last minute as you are in the first. There is more to the equation - you also need to make sure you are anaerobically fit. The pace of combat sports is high, so it is important you train above your anaerobic threshold (>80% of your MHR). The traditional approach of going for a 45-minute run to improve your cardio is losing its credibility - fighting is intermittent, chaotic with every movement performed with maximal intensity. Long-distance running does not match this tempo!

Gi and No-Gi are a little bit different. Gi tends to place a bigger emphasis on muscular endurance. If you have ever competed in a Gi tournament you will have probably experienced this first hand, when your forearms feel like they have doubled in size because you have been gripping so hard. Because there are less grips in No-Gi, you can move around a little easier and subsequently the match pace has the potential to be a lot faster. No-Gi requires a greater emphasis on anaerobic-cardiovascular endurance.

Time to dig a little deeper. We also believe that the importance of certain fitness parameters varies according to weight-class. Heavyweights are expected to be strong. With competitors in lighter divisions like Bantamweight, Featherweight and Lightweight, the expectation to be strong is lower. The percentage of 'strong' competitors in these divisions is less than the heavyweight division. By focusing on fitness parameters that your fellow competitors haven't refined puts you at an advantage. But, don't forget about what everyone else is good at! If you are in the lightweight division and you have neglected your cardiovascular endurance because you thought strength was the weight-class weakness, you may be in for a surprise. First, make sure you have adequately developed the fitness parameters competitors in your weight-class are expected to possess, then focus on weight-class weaknesses!

Technique over strength. But what happens when technique is equal?

Back when I started BJJ, the sport was all about technique. Most of the BJJ practitioners that I knew almost exclusively trained BJJ. There were a few guys who did some strength work, but these guys tended to improve more slowly as they missed the whole point of BJJ. Whilst the concepts of BJJ haven't changed (like using leverage, your opponents weight and timing), the practitioners who participate in the sport even at a social level have. Becoming more mainstream means that a greater array of participants now practice BJJ including those who have athletic backgrounds. Now, more than ever is technical perfection (or as close to perfection as possible) essential, but what happens when your opponent is technically as proficient as you.

This is the new breed of Jiu-Jitsu practitioner. Have a look at the Mundials or Pan Ams. Rarely do you see an athlete who doesn't have a strength and conditioning coach or program. Check their Facebook fan pages or tweets and you'll see heaps of posts and videos of battling ropes, conditioning circuits, kettlebells, tyre flipping and much more. About the only athlete who doesn't advocate some form of cross training is Kron Gracie, and with his linage it's understandable why, and even without this his accomplishments are impressive. However I can't help but wonder what he'd accomplish if he did...

This shift to including supplementary work to compliment sporting performance was bound to happen. In Olympic Sports, coaches have used non-specific drills to improve athleticism for decades. Here comes the next problem - How do you actually improve sporting performance from BJJ? Understanding the demands of your sport before you begin training is critical. The goal of your S&C program is to maximize your sporting performance, and this can only take place when you identify the dominant fitness parameters and then program accordingly. In RT's next article, they will break down which fitness parameters you need to develop for BJJ success.

Here is a nice video of Cobrinha training for the ADCC in 2009. 


Great exercises, but be careful about blindly following another person's training regimen just because they are a professional athlete. After all, I could have posted this video...