Strength and BJJ

“...At some point, all serious athletes go outside their sport-specific work to improve, and recreational athletes just want to play their sport and wear the clothes. ” -Rippetoe

Here’s a fun one. Is strength valuable in BJJ? Or is it even Detrimental?

I think I see someone ask about this once every 2 weeks on forums here and there. It always goes the same. It’s some iteration of:

“What is the best strength training for bjj?”

“Just train, strength is for the untrue”

Then some guy comes along and says “This.” or “/Thread”

I’ll be straight forward. I do a lot of strength training. I don’t have the perfect set up or conditions for it, but I make due. I dare say that I’m doing a decent job.

I don’t necessarily do strength training for BJJ. I’ve been lifting (properly or not) more than twice as long as I have been rolling. I started when I was 16. That being said, the way I have tailored my workouts recently is to make the strength as useful for BJJ and Judo as possible. I find in pursuit of better attributes for grappling (strength, but not size!) I’ve made myself better for all aspects of life.

In my view, the advantages are many, and they’re not just for BJJ functionality. Strength, like BJJ, finds utility in all parts of life. I feel that bodily health and longevity are greatly improved by strength training (Yeah, I’ve got no direct evidence, this is a blog, not ALDaily. I see weak people get weaker, and strong people get stronger, that’s all.) Strength training makes day to day chores and obligations that much easier. When you can lift more, it stands to reason that lifting smaller loads in day to day life is easier.

I think Henry Rollins nailed the more philosophical aspects in his piece “The Iron”. Lifting weights is another tool you can use (along with BJJ) to learn things about yourself mentally. You’re going to learn an awful lot about failure, about perseverance, and about hard work. In this sense, lifting parallels our beloved pyjama wrestling a great deal.

I hear a lot of people talk about the potential of being injured from lifting. This is another sense where lifting and BJJ run on the same track. If you do things with appropriate technique, while abandoning your ego, you will be fine. Proper coaching is also a key ingredient. Let’s not fool ourselves; these are physical pursuits. People get hurt.

People also get stronger and better, but this only happens when you push your limits.

Being a small guy, I’ve found strength advantageous in rolling. But not in the sense most people assume. I still don’t have size...I can’t force my weight into a sweep to make it work. The actual dynamic moves can sometimes be aided by the extra power you can generate. A cross choke benefits from grip and upper back strength, for instance. More important to me though is the isometric use of stronger muscles to hold your opponent in positions, without tiring.

An example I use here is Side control, or your modified scarf-hold (Kesa getame?). In these positions you use your core and your legs to block one escape route, and your tricep and lats to block the other side (assuming we’re thinking about the same thing here, and you are using the back side of your arm to block the far side of the opponents body.)  Being a small guy, it is the strength I can employ here that keeps the position secure. I can roll with giants and more often than not trap them here fairly effectively.

Strength, when well and intelligently employed, allows a person to fight far above their respective weight, roll longer, and pull off some things that they’d otherwise gas on.

There is a notion held by some out there, that building strength makes a person slow. It’s a ridiculous fallacy. I’m not ashamed to say that I move pretty quick. Adding strength to my frame with the 5 basic lifts (or imitations thereof,) while also working on appropriate conditioning with a Crossfit style MetCon routine the other days of the week has made me faster, stronger, and better at BJJ.

There are a lot of people out there who want you to think that it’s wrong to use bodily attributes (size/weight/speed/strength) in your daily practice of BJJ. Preposterous! It’s the interaction of all these attributes, the way they affect each individuals “game” and the way games interact on the mats that make BJJ the beautiful expression of innovation, thought and physical prowess that it is.

-J

The Start, Part 1.

Hey all. Welcome to my blog. I’m hoping I enjoy doing this and stick with it. We’ll see though. I’m fairly well occupied with other things already...

I’ve got Jits on the brain pretty much around the clock. It’s a problem, to be honest. It’s affected everything I do. In the 3.5 years I’ve been doing it, it’s touched all aspects of my life.

I know; “Cool Story Bro.”

I reckon the best place to start this, is with my start in BJJ.

I had in my mind, since high school, a notion of what it was to be tough. I lifted weights an awful lot, and that was about it. I actually started out high school about as humanly athletic as your typical Egg-laying Hen. It hadn’t yet, and I think a lot of people are still this way, occurred to me that toughness might be more than strength.

I’d recently had a bit of a realization about how not-very-tough-at-all I was when I got into a fight at a party. I lost. Spectacularly. I didn’t really do anything, other than shove some guy and get a black eye for it. Jesus was I embarrassed and ashamed. I was with my best friend at the time, your archetypal man’s man. He’d been scraping since he was born. I remember driving home in his beat up Sunbird, me with a bag of ice on my face, and he kept saying “All these muscles, and you can’t even throw a punch.”

Terrible story. In hindsight, this is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. If I ever see the guy who delivered the black eye again (I vaguely remember him) I don’t know if I’d shoot for the double or hug the bastard.

At the time, I was living in Hamilton. I’d seen some TV shows about Krav Maga... If you’re not familiar, It’s the Israeli military martial art. I did this for about 8 months. Despite the fact that I mention this with a little embarrassment these days, it did do a number of things for me. I got into better shape from it (I dropped 26 pounds or so,) developed an ability to push myself physically, learned to throw a decent roundhouse kick, and rather miraculously was introduced to BJJ.

Krav isn’t something I’d recommend these days. It has some serious methodology faults that make it , even more so than other arts, an impractical, fruitless venture. Krav is completely Piss and Vinegar based. It’s all Martial, no Art. Very un-technical. If I could sum up my diatribe, I’d just say that I spent an awful lot of time practising the fine art of kicking people in the junk. Does this require refinement? I’m not so sure. Beyond testicle soccer, the art is predicated on going ape on someone. It was never explained to me what on earth I was going to do if my would be attacker wore a cup, or if they were bigger than me. I really don’t think this had been considered.

One Saturday (March 10, 2007, in fact) there was a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seminar at this school. I didn’t have the foggiest notion of what that was, but I signed up. The guy teaching sounded well accomplished.

The day came and I introduced myself to a guy who didn’t look intimidating at all. He was in fact remarkably nice and friendly. His name was PJ. (PJ has since started his own Club: Pura BJJ) 

That day, PJ showed me a few moves I had never seen before. Things that had never honestly occurred to me to be possible, let alone practical. PJ showed some stuff that I found later was actually considered to be rather advanced techniques. I can’t recall all of them, but the peruvian necktie was one of them.

I still consider myself very fortunate that he took this approach. I was all at once marvelling with the intricacies of the sport, the sense of innovation, and the athleticism required for sparring. What more was there to this?

The Krav School I was at had PJ (and a few friends of his) come in to teach 2 days a week. I fell in love with the sport. I got my hands on a cheap gi pretty quick. I began to look forward to BJJ and rather disdainfully on the Krav. I was still doing Krav at the time, but it had become less and less stimulating for me.

Gradually, I abandoned Krav altogether. PJ had told me that he taught at another Krav School, over in Oakville another two days a week. I was now able to get in four days a week. Things were quite good. I bought a second Gi, A Keiko, so that I’d be able to show up in a non-stinky/wet gi.

Things were looking up. Jiu Jitsu had already become a force in my life. It had encouraged me to change other things in my life. I was actively pursuing effective eating and weight training for bjj, and had gained enough confidence to sign up for school.

How did you become involved in BJJ?

The history lesson will continue in Part 2.

-John