Do you want to Stop Gassing Out During BJJ?

So much, that you have to take rounds off, as your friends roll, round after round.

That means, they are getting better and you are not.

I have 5 cardio tips to stop gassing out during BJJ rounds.

Read on to build your gas tank for BJJ and have better cardio

Stop Gassing Out During BJJ

#1 The art of timing and tension

One of my coaches said,” BJJ is a lot of timing and knowing when to apply tension(strength).”

Knowing when to relax and when to apply your strength. Is a game changer.

This can mean the difference between gassing out constantly and being one of the guys who seems to have an endless gas tank at your BJJ gym.

Think of a new white belt, they have 100% tension all the time, in every situation.

The guys who has an endless gas, is not always because of their cardio..

But, this is due to their efficiency at BJJ.

If you’re always tense, you are going gas and gas out fast.

I never want these posts, to seem like I’m exiting my lane of strength and conditioning and giving BJJ technique tips. I’m no expert at BJJ. But, I do know, that no amount of strength and conditioning will help if you are a complete spaz.

If you gas out, it may help to relax using so much strength, get your fundamental BJJ skills down, and learn when to apply tension, as well as when not to.

These are more topics to ask your BJJ coach.

#2 Build the aerobic engine

You need to build your aerobic base and fitness.

A quick assessment to do is to take your heart rate, first thing in the morning for a few days and see where it is at.

high 60s+, you’re in rough shape and need to build your aerobic fitness.

If it’s in low 60s-, you are probably in a good place.

If you don’t know your aerobic system, is the one energy system we use most our life, it will give us better endurance, and recovery and even help us live longer.

Let’s talk about how aerobic fitness impacts your recovery, it will improve your body’s ability to recover in between training sessions and rounds.

If you can do a hard round and 60s later you are recovered, and you are going to get better rolling sessions.

Versus the guy, who can’t recover well in the 60s and sits out too many rounds.

Better aerobic training = better recovery and stamina, which is why this is a great tool to build your gas tank for BJJ.

Here is how to build it.

To build the aerobic system we need to operate in a moderate intensity and keep overall blood pressure down.

This means keeping our heart rate in the 60-70% max HR range and using an exercise that is more cyclical in nature, jogging, biking, elliptical, rower, walking etc(also use joint-friendly exercise as well)

Another way to think about this intensity is you should be able to talk normally while doing this.

For most people, your HR should be in the 120-140ish range.

You want to also practice, what is called dynamic energy control, which is your ability to relax, focus on breathing and pace, to control your heart rate.

If you feel like you are getting winded on the air bike, can you mentally relax, and control your breath and your pace, to bring your HR down?

If you can do this in training/sparing, you’re going to be in a great place.

Remember the higher our HR is in sparing, the more we will slow down, make dumb mistakes and our ability to think/react will go down.

How to program?

You want to do this style of training for 30-60 minutes 1-3 x a week.

You can certainly could pick 1 exercise and do that for 30 minutes.

I like to make it less boring by doing circuits like

• 2 min bike
• 2 min jog
• 2 min sled drag
• 60s farmers walk
• 0 rest repeat for 30 minutes, staying in the right zones

Another idea is to jump on a machine and watch TV shows or movies, just pay attention to heart rate.

Whatever you choose to do, make sure you just get it in

#3 Train More BJJ

You have to pay the price.

You have to do more BJJ to get better endurance at it, if you are new and worried your conditioning is not where it should be for BJJ.

Of course, it is not. This takes time, you have to put in the work and time to build the technical skills and fitness qualities, specific to the sport of jui-jitsu.

Show up and make your classes consistently.

Don’t take rounds off, if you want better endurance, you can’t take a round off every time you are gassed out. Push through and focus on slowing things down, when you’re exhausted.

Pushing, and doing rounds when you are exhausted can be a great learning opportunity.

Building the skill of keeping good fundamentals, when you are exhausted is going to help from BJJ and fitness stand point.

Don’t skip sessions.

Don’t sit out of rolling sessions, unless you have to.

#4 Get Strong

Being weak is a liability in a lot of ways.

One of them is if you are weak and everything you do, you have to exert a high percentage of your max strength.

This is going spike your heart rate, get you gassed real quick, and make it harder to recover in between rounds.

You don’t have to become a bodybuilder, 1-2 days per week working on building strength with the fundamental moment pattern like

• squat
• single leg exercise
• hip hinge
• upper push
• upper pull

Is going to pay off, in a variety of ways. Muscle takes some time to build, but you may be surprised how much strength you can build with a little work.

I go over how to do this in detail here

Get strong and improve your cardio for BJJ

#5 Sleep/eating and stress

If you have competed and had to cut weight, you know how much a low-calorie diet, can affect your gas tank and cardio.

If you are doing all the right things, but your gas tanks still feels like garbage.

How is the duration and quality of your sleep?

Are you fueling yourself with the right stuff: Protein, fruits and veggies, water and healthy carbs

If you are dropping the ball on these things, you are leaving a ton of performance and cardio benefits for BJJ on the table.

This stuff can be the toughest to change, start with 1 health habit and develop it over time slowly, kind of like we do when we learn BJJ.

Over time you’ll get better cardio for BJJ and become one of those guys, who never takes rounds off.

If you have any questions I love to hear from you and if you’re looking for coaching, apply here to get started with me.

It is said it doesn’t matter what you do in the gym but what you can recover from. Today, I’m going to show you How To Recover Better For BJJ?

If you are into BJJ, boxing, or MMA, these sports can beat you up.

How To Recover Better For BJJ?

If you don’t take recovery seriously. You going to get fatigued, train like garbage, and get hurt.

You might think you are tough and can push through it. But, your brain and nervous system are the big controllers of your performance. When you tax them too much, they limit your output of power, speed and kill your stamina.

Although I wrote this with combat athletes in mind, these will help everyone recover better from life and their workouts, so they make better gains in the gym as well as have better health outcomes.

#1 Strength Training For To Recover Better For BJJ?

Strength work might not seem like, it’s going to improve recovery but it will. This is more of a long-term strategy though.

If you can have a high level of force development aka more strength, when you train in boxing, MMA, or BJJ, you use a smaller percentage of your MAX strength, thus not beating your, muscles and nervous system to the same degree , if you were weak.

Getting strong will improve recovery,

When you think of more muscles around our most vulnerable joints, it limits how much we get beat up.

Muscle is protective.

If you would like to learn how to get started with strength training, check out this article

#2 Zone 2 work

Doing zone 2 work which is developing the aerobic system. Usually, this is keeping HR between 120-150 Beats per minute for 30-60 minutes

Most just think of doing cardio to burn calories, but a well-trained aerobic system, by utilizing zone 2 work will improve your body’s ability to recover.

So, you can have a faster and more complete recovery between rounds, sets, and training sessions.

If your aerobic fitness, is in rough shape, building an aerobic base can boost your recovery ability big time.

Aerobic work is easy work but time-consuming, do anything cyclical like jogging, bike, or machines keep your HR at a steady pace, you should be able to talk normally, without sounding like you are gasping for breath.

A good way to measure, if your cardio is improving. Check your heart rate in the morning, A healthy aerobic system, will give you a morning HR of low 60s to high 50s.

If yours is in the 70s, and if we can get you down to the low 60s, we are going to see some great changes to your recovery, endurance and performance.

Here is a sample aerobic training session, I had a client do this morning.

• 2 minutes light jogging
• 2 minutes air bike
• Farmers walk with KBs for 60s
• 30 minutes no rest, stay in the right zone

Your aerobic system is going be one the biggest influences on How To Recover Better For BJJ?

#3 Nutrition

What we put in our body, is going drive not only our perfomance in our training but how we recover as well.

It’s not always, how hard we train but what we can recover from, because without recovery there is no thriving. Here are a few tips to fuel your body for better performance/recovery on the mat and in the ring.

Nutrition Tip 1 Eating enough protein, Protein is the building block of all tissue in our body, and most people, don’t get enough. But as a BJJ guy or boxer, your body needs to break down and rebuild tissue fast. You can not skimp on the protein. A solid place to start for most guys and gals is 130-160 grams per day or 1 g per pound of body weight.

I recommend you eat or drink protein 4x a day getting 35-50g at each feeding.

The best protein options are lean beef, poultry, lean pork, seafood, green yogurt, eggs and protein supplements

Nutrition Tip 2 Hydration is huge, especially if you are training multiple sessions per day. Drink about 1/2 body in ounces and then I would drink 16 oz for every hour you train. Consider an electrolyte supplement if you train more than 1 hour a day and sweat a lot. I love LMNT.

Nutrition Tip 3 Carbs – Carbs are our bodies ‘ fuel for intense training without them, you are just making your body work harder.

Be sure to focus on qualities carbs you can handle without gut distress like

• White rice
• potatoes and sweet potatoes
• pasta
• oats
• fruits
• beans
• juices and carb supplements (for pre, intra or post workout)

Note it is best to get most of your carbs around your training and at night.

Nutrition Tip 4 Don’t be in a caloric deficit most of the time. when you consume fewer calories than you burn. You will always underrecover. This is a big issue if you’re a combat athlete who is training in boxing or bjj 1-2x a day as well as hitting strength and cardio maybe another 2-3x a week. You are asking for poor training session.

You can use a TDEE calculator to get a quick estimate of how many calories, you should eat and then adjust from there. You want to be eating at a caloric maintenance or surplus.

#4 Sleep

This has to be the most powerful and underrated habit in fitness on How To Recover Better For BJJ?

Team no sleep is dumb, lack of sleep kills your recovery, performance, and drive to win. I don’t care how tough you think you are. Not to mention more frequent injuries.

It also makes you irritable, eat more, and makes it harder to feel satisfied with your meals.

The recommendation for most people is 7-9 hours per night and get as much of that sleep before 12am.

Sleeping 10pm-6am is better 12am -8am.

If you want to perform at a higher level and avoid getting hurt. Get your sleep in.

A few tips that tend to help people get better sleep

• Get sunlight early in the day
• Have some carbs with dinner, to release serotonin at night, driving better sleep.
• Consider taking magnesium supplements before bed
• Do things to wind down a few hours before bed like stretching and reading, instead of mindless watching TV/scrolling on your phone.
• Sleep in a cool and dark room

#5 Active rest days

An active rest day, might seem like an oxi-moron. But..

Our bodies are meant to move, we will recover better most of the time moving more.

If we move lightly on rest days versus, just sitting on the couch watching Netflix all day. We will recover faster.

Something that you might consider doing on off days to improve recovery.

• Going for a walk or trying to hit a step count. This is even better if you do this outside and/or nasal breathing.
• Do some mobility work like foam rolling and stretching tight or problem areas
• Doing zone 2 cardio keeping your HR around 110-140 BPM

The blood flow we get from participating in these activities will help promote greater recovery.

Those are my 5 tips, on How To Recover Better For BJJ?. Which one do you need to work on the most?