Strength and Conditioning for BJJ

Why Strength and Conditioning is Important for BJJ Competitors 

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) involves constant movement, leverage, and pressure against opponents, often for extended periods. Success on the mat requires strength, endurance, flexibility, and mental toughness. Combine these things, and it’ll go a long way, helping you to control and manipulate your opponents, maintain positional dominance, execute submissions, and defend against attacks.

Matches can last several minutes and involve intense bursts of effort, so to do well, you’ll need to build your strength and attain a high level of cardiovascular fitness. Constant strength and conditioning training on top of your BJJ practice can feel overwhelming. How do you find the time or the energy after rolling? As hard as it is, creating a conditioning program is really worth the effort as it will dramatically enhance your performance in BJJ by:

• Building the power and explosiveness needed for dynamic movements such as takedowns, sweeps, and submissions.
• Enhancing endurance so you can maintain a high pace throughout the match and recover quickly between rounds.
• Increase your resistance to injury, which is especially vital in the high-stress, physically demanding environments of grappling arts
• Gain better body control and stability, particularly in the core and lower body, which improves your ability to maintain balance while executing techniques.
• Develop mental resilience so you can perform under pressure in competitive settings.

Now, let’s get into some more specific details about what exercises and routines you can do to improve fitness for BJJ. 

Top Strength Training Techniques BJJ

Strength training doesn’t always come naturally to martial artists, but it is still incredibly important to success in BJJ competitions. 

But you don’t want to work out without some kind of direction. Below, we’ve written about five exercises that target the muscle groups most crucial for success in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu because we want to make sure you to have the power, endurance, and stability needed to excel.

1. Deadlifts are one of the most effective full-body exercises, enhancing core stability and grip strength, both of which are crucial for controlling opponents in BJJ. By working the hamstrings, glutes, lower back (erector spinae), core, traps, and grip, deadlifts help you generate the power needed for takedowns and to maintain positional control.

2. Squats build lower body strength, which is essential for explosive movements like shooting for takedowns and providing a strong base when maintaining positions such as the guard. This exercise targets the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, lower back, and core, contributing to overall stability and power.

3. Pull-Ups/Chin-Ups are excellent for developing the pulling muscles, which are critical in BJJ for gripping, pulling opponents toward you, and securing chokes. These exercises work the latissimus dorsi, biceps, upper back, and improve grip strength, making it easier to execute throws, sweeps, and submissions.

4. The Bench Press targets the pectorals, triceps, shoulders, and core, focusing particularly on the pushing muscles. In BJJ, strong pushing muscles are beneficial for movements like pushing opponents away, framing, and maintaining pressure during scrambles.

5. Rows (Barbell or Dumbbell) are key for enhancing upper back strength, which is essential for posture control, maintaining strong grips, and pulling opponents into dominant positions. This exercise works the latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, traps, biceps, and rear deltoids, ensuring that your back is strong enough to withstand the rigors of grappling.

Dedicating time specifically to training grip strength is always a good idea, too, since it directly impacts your ability to control your opponent and complete holds, sweeps, and takedowns. Farmer’s walk, dead hangs, rock climbing, plate pinches, and wrist curls 

Top Conditioning Training Techniques for BJJ

What strength training does for your power and stability, conditioning training does for your endurance and recovery. The following conditioning techniques are specifically chosen to help you maintain a high pace throughout your matches, recover quickly between rounds, and build the cardiovascular fitness needed to stay competitive while rolling. 

1. High-intensity interval Training (HIIT) involves short bursts of intense activity followed by brief periods of rest or lower-intensity exercise. It mimics the high-intensity demands of a BJJ match, where you need to perform explosive movements followed by periods of active recovery. HIIT improves cardiovascular endurance, increases your anaerobic capacity, and helps you maintain energy levels during long training sessions or competitions.

2. Circuit Training involves performing a series of exercises, such as bodyweight exercises, resistance training, and cardio, in quick succession with minimal rest between them, making it ideal conditioning support for BJJ practitioners who need to sustain a high level of intensity throughout a match. 

3. Sprinting is an excellent way to build explosive speed and cardiovascular endurance, both of which are critical in BJJ. Short, intense sprints alternated with recovery periods help improve your ability to perform quick, explosive movements, such as shooting for a takedown or escaping from a bad position.

4. Burpees are a brutal but effective full-body exercise that combines strength and conditioning in one movement, working your entire body, including your chest, arms, legs, and core.

5. Use a rowing machine for a low-impact, full-body conditioning exercise that targets your legs, core, and upper body while providing an intense cardiovascular workout. Train in intervals—alternating between high-intensity rowing and rest periods—to work on your aerobic and anaerobic endurance.

How to Create a BJJ Strength and Conditioning Program

1. Assess your fitness level

Identifying your strengths and weaknesses will help you get a baseline to build off of, from which you can measure your progress and adjust your training accordingly. Evaluate your strength by performing one-rep max tests for exercises like deadlifts, squats, bench presses, pull-ups, push-ups, and dips so you can understand your ability to control your own body and your opponent’s during matches.

Assess your endurance by running, rowing, or cycling to test your aerobic endurance. Track how long you can maintain a steady pace or perform interval training to assess how quickly you recover between bursts of effort.

2. Set specific goals that align with BJJ

Establish clear, specific goals that align with your BJJ objectives. Whether you want to improve your explosive power for better takedowns, increase your endurance to last through tough matches, or enhance your flexibility to perform advanced techniques, having specific goals will guide your training focus and keep you motivated.

Of course, the top priority for all this training is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. That means your strength and conditioning program should support, not interfere with, your ability to practice grappling. You don’t want to push yourself so hard, so often in this program that you injure yourself or are too tired to roll.

3. Design training schedule 

Organize your weekly training by determining how many days you’ll spend in the gym and what body parts you’ll train each day. A popular approach is the three-day condensed conjugate split, which allows for effective strength and conditioning without overtraining.

Here’s how training is organized in a three-day condensed conjugate split:

• Day One: Max effort lower body and dynamic effort upper body. Start with heavy compound exercises like squats or deadlifts for the lower body, followed by speed work for the upper body. Finish with accessory exercises targeting weak points or imbalances.
• Day Two: Max effort upper body and dynamic effort lower body. Begin with heavy upper-body compound exercises, then move to speed work for the lower body, incorporating jumps or plyometrics. Conclude with accessory exercises for both the upper and lower body.
• Day Three: Focus on either muscle building with a ‘jacked and tan’ session or on conditioning and general physical preparedness (GPP), depending on your goals.

4. Integrate recovery periods

Recovery practices such as foam rolling, massage, cold therapy, and sleeping 8-10 hours every night help your body recover from the physical demands of your training program. If you don’t put in the necessary time and effort to your recovery, you risk overtraining and hurting yourself. 

5. Track your progress and adjust according to the result

Regularly monitor your progress by tracking your workouts, assessing your performance on the mat, and adjusting your program as needed. If you find that certain areas are improving while others lag, modify your training to address these gaps. Continuous assessment and adjustment will help you stay on track and ensure that your training remains effective and aligned with your goals.

Conclusion

Good conditioning allows you to maintain peak performance over extended periods, recover faster between intense bouts, and reduce fatigue. Combined with a well-rounded strength training regimen that builds muscle mass and increases bone density, conditioning helps you perform better, lowers your risk of injury, and enables you to handle more intense physical demands on the mat.

Above all, listen to your body. The BJJ practitioners with the most skill and experience learn to recognize the signs of fatigue, pain, or overtraining and take rest when necessary. This helps prevent injuries that occur from pushing the body beyond its limits. Train smart, avoid overtraining, gradually increase the intensity, and focus on controlled, deliberate movements to stay healthy and make strides in your BJJ journey.