Charging Up Your Cardio for Jiu-Jitsu

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all”
– Vince Lombardi

Why do so many people get tired when they compete? Preparing for competition requires a good game plan, discipline and consistent execution. A good game plan prepares an athlete for the demands of his sport, so technically, physically and mentally he is ready for the task at hand. In this article, we are going to discuss strength and conditioning; developing your body to handle the demands of competition, without gassing out.

Jiu-jitsu is a very technical sport, so drilling, rolling and practicing should be the highest priority.

Your Training Schedule

Depending on how long you’ve been rolling and how hard your team practices, jiu-jitsu can take a toll on your body. It’s a stress that needs to be accounted for when planning your workouts. Once we understand our training schedule, we can assess the rest of our week and determine if and when we need to add additional workouts to improve our conditioning. Some guys lift weights, others do yoga and some run to improve their physical condition.

Energy Systems
How do you know which is right for you?

Before answering that, let’s learn a bit about the body. Our body has 3 energy systems: Phosphogen, Glycolytic and Aerobic.

This is our quick, short term, explosive energy system. Think high intensity, short duration, maximum effort types of exercise like plyometrics, sprints, heavy weightlifting, etc.

This is our mid range, moderate intensity, moderate duration type exercise that burns: 400m runs, high intensity rolling for 1-2minutes, running hills, climbing a rope, etc.

Low power, long duration types of exercise like walking, hiking, jogging, drilling, etc.: 6 mile run, easy laps in a pool, light drilling on the mat, etc.

There are a lot of ways to train these systems, expand on them and help create a bigger battery. Jiu-jitsu requires explosive power, the ability to grind and scramble and the endurance to perform for long periods of time. In order to properly prepare, you must develop all three of these systems effectively. For the ease of understanding these terms, without getting caught up in the jargon, let’s assign each category with a color.

Green – Aerobic – 2 min +
Yellow – Glycolytic: 12sec-2min
Red – Phosphogen: 1-12 seconds

For the remainder of the article, I am going to offer you some workout templates and exercises that fit well into these different categories.

Workouts
Aerobic Workouts (Green)

Let’s start with our aerobic workouts. Although this system may not be very popular with the fitness world these days, building an efficient aerobic system is the foundation of having good cardio. Typically, people think about long runs (roadwork) or boring bouts of cardio, but it doesn’t always need to be that way. It’s possible to expand the system using a variety of drills. Check out the three different types of workouts below:

Aerobic Cruise
60-120sec ON, 2-5min OFF,
repeat 5-10 times.
You can roll, run, crawl, climb, carry, bike, swim, pull ropes, drag weights or similar.

The 2-5 min OFF may seem excessive at first, but remember, the goal is to expand our aerobic capacity, so stick to the plan.

Heavy Mo’
10-12sec ON, 1-3min OFF between goes, repeat 15-20 times.
Sprinting hills, resisted crawls, resisted VersaClimber sprints, pushing sleds, heavy ropes, dragging chains/tires or similar.

Heavy resistance, high intensity for a short time, then rest for 1-3minutes before repeating.

Aerobic Plyos
8-10sec ON, 10-30sec OFF,
repeat for 5-10 minutes.
Choose a low/moderate intensity plyometric drill like skipping or lateral leaps and perform the exercise for 8-10sec, then rest for 10-30sec in between sets. Repeat for 5-10 minutes.

Skipping, hopping, leaping, jumping in multiple planes of motion, towel taz, rope tsunamis, rope sidewinders.

Steady Eddie
Low intensity, longer duration.
Running, biking, swimming, paddle board, light ropes or similar.

These longer, low intensity bouts are great for recovery, flushing out the system and building the aerobic base.

It shouldn’t be the only thing you do, but definitely should be included in your schedule.

Glycolytic (Yellow)

Lactic Peak
20-40sec ON, 1-3min OFF, 3 sets per exercise/drill, 2-4 drills per workout.
This one is great for sport specific drills, light takedowns, positioning, set ups, mitts, bag work or similar.

Work as hard as you can for 20-40sec, rest and repeat.

Lactic Expander
90-120seconds ON, 1-2minutes OFF, 3 sets per exercise, 2-4 exercises per workout
The main difference between the peak and expander workouts is the amount of rest.

Peak workouts should allow full recovery, whereas the expander workouts do NOT allow full recovery between sets.

Any cardio drill works well in this category. Runs, VersaClimber, Battling ropes, towel taz or sport specific drills work great here.

Lactic Explosion
12-15 seconds ON, 30seconds OFF, 6-10 sets per exercise, 1-3 exercises per workout.

Now ideally, you can increase the work time each week, while reducing the rest period for each cycle.

It would look something like this:
Week 1  12-15 sec ON – 30 sec OFF
Week 2  15-20 sec ON – 20 sec OFF
Week 3  20-30sec ON – 15 sec OFF
Week 4  30-40sec ON – 10 sec OFF

Jump squats, split squat jumps, explosive push ups, med ball throws, or other explosive drills or exercises work best.

Phosphogen (Red)

Explosive Peak
7-10 sec ON, 2-5 minutes OFF, 5-6 reps per exercise, 2-3 exercises for the day.
Explosive exercises or sport specific drills done at 100% effort, as fast as possible, with full recovery.

Think speed and power for this category. Plyos, Olympic lifts or high powered sport specific drills.

Explosive Expander
10-15 seconds ON, 20-90seconds OFF, 10-12reps per exercise, 2-3 exercises per workout.

This category is similar to the ‘Explosive Peak’ workout above, but you will not fully recover. Because of the incomplete rest periods, it is best to avoid technical lifts (O’lifts) to avoid injury. We have found great success using a variety of agility drills, plyos, rope drills and sport specific exercises.

Organizing Your Training

Now that we have a better understanding of the body and a variety of workouts to choose from, we can start to organize a training schedule that helps us perform at our best and not just simply get tired. There is a fine line between training enough and training too much. These days it seems like everyone wants to be exhausted after every workout, but that can only last for so long. Train too much, too hard, too often and you will eventually suffer the consequences. Nagging injuries, tendonitis, mental and physical fatigue, poor performance and more. These are all signs that your body cannot recover and that you are doing too much.

The key is to challenge your body, without annihilating it, so you get better and are able to recover before your next training session. What we have found to work best is a schedule that varies in intensity throughout the week. Lifting heavy and rolling live every day is too intense for most people. Drilling and doing yoga a couple times per week isn’t enough. Remember our green, yellow and red intensity levels? We can schedule our workouts using these different intensity levels to ensure we get the work we need, without doing too much.

So, if you train three times per week for jiu-jitsu and add 3 other workouts, your week might look something like this:

Do you train twice per day? (AM and PM)

Intensity

The key is understanding the intensity level for each workout and the toll it takes on your body.

Green Workouts are typically light drilling, mobility work, yoga or low intensity cardio. These are essential in helping us develop a strong foundation, technically and physically. They can also help us recover from more intense sessions.

Yellow workouts are a little more intense and might include weights, intervals, wrestling, takedowns and maybe some live situations during practice.

Red workouts are short, explosive and intense: sprints, heavy lifting or explosive work on the mat. The key is 100% effort, so follow the recommended interval splits above to get the most out of these workouts.

CAUTION: If you want to introduce additional workouts (strength and conditioning), I would highly recommend adding them slowly and seeing how your body reacts to the new stimulus.

Wrap Up

Training for jiu-jitsu competitions can be very taxing on the body, so tread lightly, start slow and add additional workouts slowly over time. Your body will adapt and you will be able to handle larger work-loads as you improve. Hopefully this info will stimulate some ideas for improving your training schedule and help you develop better workouts for yourself and your team. Remember, the idea is to get better, not just be tired. My friend uses some alternative methods to train, he likes to take Austin Tennis Lessons to get his additional exercise in to keep it varied.