The Most Common Mistakes BJJ Athletes make with Lifting
Lifting too frequently (...and doing too much)
High volume + high intensity + high frequency workouts + poor recovery = recipe for disaster!
We get it, you guys and gals wanna train HARD and often. Which is an admirable trait …but what’s the cost? Are you training hard/often just for the sake of it? Are you actually getting good results? Or are you getting sick, injured and burnt out? We could write an entire blog about this, but for now just be critical about how much you’re doing and ask yourself “Is more better? Is doing more going to make me better? Or am I running into problems and getting worse?” (This may be a slow degradation over time, or something quick like a catastrophic injury). Keep in mind, you can only train as hard as you recover. When it comes to lifting and jiujitsu, you need to find your minimum effective dose (and take your recovery seriously, probably more seriously than you think). It’ll catch up to you later if you don’t.
*Note: When we say recovery, we mean sleeping and eating. You need to nail these basics. No hot/cold plunges, nature walks or special supplements are going to save you until you nail down your eating and sleeping habits.
Let’s take a closer look at HOW you can over-train yourself in the gym as a jiujitsu athlete…
There are typically 3 ways you run into over-training (specifically when these stimuli are met with poor adaptation and recovery from you, the athlete):
Too much volume (high reps, short rest periods – basically a lot of “work” jam packed into your 60 minute lifting session)
Too much frequency (lifting 5-6x a week or more, doing multiple lifting double-days/week)
Too much intensity (i.e. weight. In the strength training world the word ‘intensity’ refers to the amount of load/weight you’re lifting – not how “difficult” it feels)
The problem arises when you spend too much time doing one, or more, of these training variables. It’s not to say as a jiujitsu athlete you should NEVER do high volume workouts or max out your squat, what matters is how long you spend focusing on each training variable, when you do it, and HOW you do it (and how well your recovery and jiujitsu is managed during these times). All these lifting variables need to be monitored.
In the sport of jiujitsu, there is no “off season” but it’s definitely something you’ll want to design for yourself if you’re serious about getting strong, building muscle and progressing your lifts. There may be a time and place to max out your lifts, increase your frequency or volume, but these things need to be planned out. We’re not going to give you a “special formula”, because it doesn't exist, just like the perfect workout (and perfect diet) doesn’t exist. There are a lot of variables at play. Working with a good strength coach will help you figure things out.
2. Doing too much cardio
USE THE GYM TO GET STRONG!!
And no, circuits don’t develop true strength and power… If you want to improve your stamina (your cardio/conditioning), you need to structure your training on the mats with this goal in mind. Roll with bigger people, faster people, more technical people. Attend more competition classes. Purposefully choose partners that are going to make you WORK. Give yourself little rest to recover between rounds. Push yourself. Build your stamina up on the mats, not in the gym! The gym is where you work to become a stronger, faster mother fucker. This “extra cardio” also ties back into our first point; you’re only going to run yourself deeper into the ground, adding more to your plate (i.e. “do more cardio off the mats”) is not what you need.
3. Getting hung up on “functional movements”
A quick Google search brings up a WebMD definition of functional training:
“Functional exercises teach your body to work as a whole rather than training specific parts. Strengthening the whole body in this way has many benefits for your health. Daily life. Functional training trains the same muscle movements you use in everyday life”
Okay, so wait, what? Are certain movements NOT functional? Is a bicep curl “NON functional” for grapplers because it’s “training a specific muscle group in isolation”? Do we never use our biceps in jiujitsu? It’s not like you actually need strong, mobile, healthy elbow joints to defend an arm bar or anything … okay cool. It’s the application of the bicep curl in your workout that matters. Generally speaking, unless you’re looking to put on size as a jiujitsu athlete, your arm training probably won’t be programmed like a bodybuilders.
4. DOPAMINEO BANDS! …and trends alike
To get strong, YOU NEED TO LIFT WEIGHTS!
This shit absolutely KILLS me. Unfortunately, this bullshit band training crap has been heavily marketed to grapplers. Promoted by Helen Maroulis…
Their website says: “Elite athletes use dopa!” … “Application: all types of sports & fitness, strength and explosive power”
Anyways, it’s a marketing gimmick, don’t buy in if you’re looking to get strong as fuck. These bands ain’t gonna help you with that. For practising movement patterns, stretching and doing solo drills, sure! But to develop relative strength and explosiveness you need to lift a goddamn weight! Lifting works. No need to fix what’s not broken (I hate it when gimmicky fitness companies try to reinvent the wheel!)
5. You don’t follow a plan when you lift
Are you changing your workout every time you lift? Are you following a “strength training curriculum”?
Just like in jiujitsu, depending on the gym, your instructors may follow a curriculum to teach their students. You may also develop a plan for yourself so you continue to improve. If you’re methodical in your learning or you’ve been doing it long enough, you probably have a plan in your mind of the things you want to work on when you train. Lifting is the same thing.
Hire a coach that knows what you need, avoid listening to bro-science and what your BJJ instructor (with little strength training education and client coaching experience) tells you to do. Working with a good coach can also help teach you how to lift when you’re injured.
6. Only doing “The Big Lifts”, or only doing “rehab exercises”
It’s not uncommon to see grapplers ONLY focus on the big lifts (i.e. variations of deadlifts, squats, bench/pressing and chin-ups/pulls), but the opposite is also true - placing too much emphasis on what we would call “remedial/rehab/accessory” exercises. Both are important, but to varying degrees which will be dependent on the person and their current situation. Generally speaking, if your body is more fucked up, you’re older, struggling with mobility and pain issues, you’ll probably need to spend more time on remedials/rehab, but don’t skip out on the meat and potatoes! If you can’t do the big lifts (the meat and potatoes), you should make it a goal for yourself to progress there. Don’t avoid them because it hurts. That’s a sign of a poorly functioning body, and we can’t have that for jiujitsu!
7. Shitty range of motion
I cannot stress this enough for grappling athletes (and it’s probably one of the biggest mistakes I saw working in a big commercial gym), not lifting through a nice, beautiful, FULL range of motion (commonly butchered exercises in this regard are the chin up and squat).
Maybe it’s because you don’t know better, you’re tight (and physically cannot move through certain positions) or you DO know better and you’re just being lazy. Regardless of the reason, if you’re a jiujitsu athlete you NEED to work towards strengthening your joints through a full, healthy range of motion. A good strength coach can help you with this (disclaimer: there is a time and place for partials, but that needs to be discussed with your coach, and planned for a specific block in your lifting).
Some people complain and say “lifting made me tight, and immobile” when I hear this I’m like “wtf were you doing?” You’re not doing something right … or at least, that’s not how people feel when they lift with us. If you’re tight and immobile, we work with you to gain the range, and then train the range. In jiujitsu, your joints are put through all sorts of compromised, vulnerable positions. Just look at the concept of a joint lock submission – take the joint as far as it will go until you get the tap. Strength through a healthy range of motion needs to be a major priority in your lifting. Don’t cheat your reps because it allows you to lift more. Leave your ego at home (...or on the mats lol, jk)
Final word of advice…
Our mentor, Charles Poliquin, was a huge fan of having his grappling athletes dedicate an 6-8 week period once or twice per year to build strength (and muscle) and back off their training on the mats. He used to say something like, “You can’t ride two horses with one ass”, meaning you need to dial in your goal, focus on it, get it done and then re-evaluate.
Let’s say you’re training for IBJJF Worlds in June, and jiujitsu is your main focus from October-June. After competition, take July-September to dial in your lifts, increase your lifting frequency and focus on building strength (and/or muscle), but during this time dial back your jiujitsu. Come September, shift your focus back to jiujitsu (which means you reduce your lifting frequency and up your BJJ training)
If you’ve made it this far, thank you! Please share this page with your training partners who lift
