How to strength train around your BJJ injuries
10 min read
*Disclaimer; this is my experience working with injuries both on myself and with my clients. Please get cleared by your doctor before you try any protocols. Remember it’s important to treat serious injuries on a case-by-case basis*
Injuries are a pain in the ass — especially if you’re an athlete, or wanna-be athlete, and like to train hard and often. Contrary to popular belief, they don’t have to stop you from lifting (most of the time).
Here’s my 5 step process for dealing with BJJ injuries and learning how to lift around them.
Step 1: The injury happens!
It’s important to first recognize and determine the severity of the injury…
Is it a completely torn ACL, or did you sprain your hamstring tendon?
Is it a dislocated toe, or did you stub it?
Is your rib broken, or is it just a minor bruise?
When in doubt, check it out!!
Get imaging, see a sports doc asap if you’re unsure or want to know exactly what you’re dealing with. If you sense the injury is really bad (you’re in a lot of pain, there’s a ton of swelling, can barely move the site of injury or bear any weight), take a couple days of FULL rest, feel emo about yourself, and then collect yourself and create a plan to move forward. Take action and be proactive!
Step 2: Create a plan
You’ve determined the severity of the injury (or you’re in the process of doing so), now create a plan.
At this point, if it’s bad, you’ve seen a doctor and/or are getting an appointment to get imagining, or you’re working with a trusted body worker (chiropractor, osteopath, RMT, physio, etc) for treatment.
Next:
Focus on rest and recovery. It’s common for injuries to happen when we’re under recovered, meaning we are training TOO hard for what our body can handle at the moment. Other times, injuries happen because BJJ is a contact sport, it’s rough, sometimes you’re in the wrong position at the wrong time and “BAM!”, injury happens. Regardless of why it happened you need to focus on prioritizing the basics of sleep, nutrition, hydration and stress management the best you can. Now that you’re forced to take some time off, this is a good time to really dial in on the basics of recovery.
Try adding in hot/cold contrast therapy: you can do it in the shower directly on the injured area or apply an ice pack alternating with a heat pack (for example, in the shower you can go: 30 sec cold blast as cold as you can handle, followed by 60 sec hot, 3-4 rounds; or if your using ice/heat pack go 5 minutes cold, 5 minutes warm, 3-4 rounds)
Sauna: If you have access to one. I love to do this when I’m injured, specifically the infrared sauna. It’s been useful to help temporarily improve my range of motion of the injured area, improve circulation, reduce swelling, calm me down and increase my overall sense of well-being.
Step 3: Lifting - rehab/accessory/corrective exercises
Rehab is going to look different depending on the person and the nature of the injury, so there’s no way to prescribe the perfect plan without understanding the issue.
A few general guidelines and goals to keep in mind when you’re rehabbing at the gym:
Aim to lift/move with minimal pain; a 6/10 or LESS on the pain scale (0 = no pain, 10 = excruciating pain, more on this later)
Get blood flow to the joint by using higher, very CONTROLLED, reps with little to no weight. You should also be very focused and intentional with your movement – don’t zone out!
Things to modify: range of motion (shortened), tempo (GO SLOW), weight (go light, no weight at all or use additional support/assistance when needed), movement/exercise selection (if you don’t know what exercises to do, or how to regress/progress, you’ll need to work with an experienced coach who can help you)
Listen to your body – How does it feel doing XYZ exercise/movement? How does it feel the next day? (You can even start journaling to track how you feel before, during, and after certain exercises to begin making connections)
Side note: PAIN vs DISCOMFORT (while lifting)
We could write a whole blog about this, but long story short it’s important to distinguish between PAIN and DISCOMFORT. Getting stronger, getting better and pushing yourself outside your comfort zone (in a productive manner) will produce feelings of discomfort – this is a GOOD thing. When it comes to actual pain, that’s different, this could be a NOT so good thing. Pain-free movement is the goal when you lift (and train BJJ), but feelings of discomfort (such as my legs are tired and burning) are fine. Something we’ve noticed when working with people in pain or coming back from injury, is that when performing an exercise some of them feel discomfort in their initial set, which will eventually diminish in the proceeding sets. So don’t be so quick to brush something off that causes initial discomfort (give it a chance - it might go away). This is another important reason you should focus and pay attention to your body when rehabbing through your injury. For example, the first set you do might feel like a 6/10, you rest, then go for your second set and it’s down to a 4/10 – this is usually a good sign, but take note of how you feel the next day and report back to coach!
Step 4: Progressing back to big lifts
Once again, there is no exact timeline for this, as returning back to the “big lifts” will be a case-by-case basis. Don’t return back to the big barbell lifts (squat, bench, deadlift, etc) that engage the injured area until pain free range of motion has been restored to match (or has come very close to) the non-injured side. The last thing you want to do is to get under a barbell when your left and right legs are still terribly uneven. This could be a recipe for disaster. Don’t do it! Take your time and get it right.
When you do get back to the barbell doing whatever lifts were affected by your injury, start light, GO SLOW and like always, prioritise a nice, healthy range of motion. You can integrate things like pauses and very slow concentric and eccentric tempos. It’s a good idea that before you get to the point of working with the barbell, you train with dumbbells first to iron out the strength imbalances between the injured and non-injured side. Why? Because dumbbells allow for more ‘unilateral movement’, meaning the left and right sides can move independent of each other (vs at the same time using a barbell)
When I came back from my meniscus injury in 2020, the first thing I did with my squats after bringing my injured leg back up to par were SUPER SLOW sets of back squats with an empty bar following a tempo of 5-2-5-2 = 5 seconds down, 2 second hold in the bottom, 5 seconds up, and 2 seconds at the top, for 5 reps or as many as I could handle without pain or my technique breaking down. I was very intentional with my movement, focusing on fully bending my knee (which was nearly impossible to do when I first injured it) and maximizing my depth and weight distribution across my left and right legs.
From my experience, the speed of an exercise, the weight itself and a lack of focus can all contribute to aggravating pain and injuries when you lift. When coming back from injury, you need to slowly (and methodically) work your way up to heavier, faster reps by programming phases of slow, intentional, lighter reps using movements that were affected by your injury.
Step 5: Are you ready to get back to BJJ?
You have to decide what you feel comfortable doing, just be smart and go in with an open mind willing to learn about what you can and cannot handle. If you’re injured, don’t expect to roll with perfect ease and awesomeness.
If you want to get back on the mats and are recovering from injury, you need to be realistic with yourself. It’s not wise to go back to training full throttle — you’ll need to modify your training and create an ‘injury recovery game plan’ for yourself.
What does this look like? Once again, it’ll depend on the nature of the injury, but here’s an example:
You broke your toe? It’s getting better but it hurts to pass guard, so avoid it, force yourself to play more guard, which will (hopefully) reduce the chance of discomfort and re-injuring the toe (but that’s not a guarantee in this sport lol)
It’s also important to:
Pick your partners wisely
Let your partners know about your injury
Tap early
Leave your ego at home and give up certain positions that are causing pain — you might have to let your opponent win the round (and that’s okay! You don’t need to win every round)
Final thoughts…
As annoying as injuries are, I try to treat each one as a learning experience. Whether that be learning about effective rehab protocols for your injury, correcting mistakes in your BJJ that led to the injury, or gaining more body literacy throughout the whole process.
It’s also a good idea to reflect and ask yourself questions like:
Have I been diligent with my accessory/rehab work leading up to the injury?
Do I need to take my recovery more seriously? Or do I need to modify my training because of lack of recovery? (Maybe your a masters athlete with 3 young kids that keep you up at night and you work a high stress job — your BJJ training needs to reflect this … or injury due to under-recovery is likely to happen)
Do I need more regular soft tissue work with a body worker? Is there any particular modality of treatment that I find most useful to keep me feeling good and injuries or pain at bay?
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope this was helpful. If it was, please share it with your injured and busted training partners.
If you want to learn more about our 90-day signature strength training program for BJJ (and how we help you navigate around your injuries), send us an email info@kaliberhealthonline.com or follow us on Instagram @kaliberhealth. We understand that BJJ injuries happen and we have the knowledge and experience to help you.
Oss!
