Strength & Conditioning For BJJ White Belts

My name is Bobby Collins. I”m a 3 stripe BJJ Brown belt and fitness coach of 16 years. This article is for BJJ White belts.

White belt might be the most, physically taxing belt.

You are incredibly inefficient, this makes BJJ exhausting. Since most guys are in survival mode, they often use a lot of strength.

They use it everywhere. This is exhausting and adds a fair amount of stress to our musculature, joints, and ligaments.

This can open us up to injuries. However, if you are at a solid school, your coaches should be able to negate some risks with proper training and progression.

Today, I will go over how to prepare your body physically. Not just to survive as a white belt but to thrive.

Strength training for BJJ White Belts

Like I said above, starting BJJ can be brutal on the body at first.

It can gas you out, as well as leave you very sore.

I’ve seen too many times, guys start BJJ and then abandon their lifting routine.

I get the logic of this… BJJ is taking, so much out of them.

They may think, they can’t do both.

Maybe strength training, 5 days per week isn’t the best idea.

However, to maintain physical fitness and help you fight off injuries, a minimum of training twice a week is a good place to start.

This might be tough if you have been doing a body part split for years. Only training 2 days a week might mean you are doing full body.

You may not have much experience with this style of training. Don’t worry I got you.

When it comes to strength for BJJ we want to focus on a few things

• Focus on compound movements like squats, hinge, upper push, upper roll, and single leg exercises.
• Train close to failure for reps of 5-12 reps.
• Make sure you have proper rest in between sets.
• For 1-3 sets per exercise.
• End workouts with accessories exercises to address weak points.
• Also, add power and speed work, like jumps plyos, and medicine ball variations.

If you would like to try workouts like this, you can grab my free strength programs for BJJ White Belts here

I will usually structure a workout like this.

• 10 minute warm-up
• Power or speed work
• Lower exercises
• Upper push
• Upper pull
• Accessory work (arms, grip and core work)

Cardio Need for BJJ White Belts

BJJ white belts will come into the art, with all fitness levels. This will drive what you may need.

But, you have to understand, even if you come in with good cardio.

BJJ will be exhausting because you’re going to be very inefficient.

The keys to feeling better and improving your cardio is:

• Focus on using techniques you have learned when you roll.
• Think about how you can use as little force or strength to accomplish the moves you are trying to do.
• Relax as much as you.

All this will take time, but if you continuously try to do these handfuls of things, your cardio will improve.

As well as, improving your foundation level of conditioning will help.

In general, we have two major energy(cardio) systems :

Aerobic system, which allows us to have energy for a long time, but isn’t powerful. So, the faster and harder you go the less, this system can help you. It’s also in charge of your body’s ability to recover in between rounds and training sessions.

Anaerobic system, are broken down into alactic and lactic. Alactic is your most powerful energy system but can only produce great power for 6-12 sec. Next, you have the lactic system which is not as powerful as alactic and can give you energy up to 60s-120s.

All these systems work at the same time, but the dominant one will depend on what you’re doing.

I think BJJ is mostly aerobic and alactic. With some harder rounds being more lactic.

We want to develop the aerobic system, which is the energy system we need the most on the mats, and will drive the most health outcomes.

Then I like to build the anaerobic system through interval training, sometimes we will do shorter ones to hit the alactic and longer ones for the lactic sytems.

If you’re looking for more BJJ cardio tips, check this out. If you’d like sample BJJ cardio workouts, go here.

Recovery For BJJ White Belts

Like I said before, BJJ can be the most exhausting as a white belt. Plus, you are adding an entirely new stress….

Especially if you start with 3+ classes a week.

Recovery may be a real issue for you. Any time we do something different, especially if it is done frequently and intensely.

This can lead to under-recovery and increase our chance of injuries.

This is why, when first getting started, 2 days of strength work can be plenty.

Stress is accumulative, everything that stresses us mentally, physically, and emotionally takes it’s toll.

Some of the best ways to recover is to

• Manage our stress load( controlling the frequency, length, and intensity of our training sessions)
• Getting a good night’s sleep.
• Eating enough calories, to both fuel our performance and recovery.

If you want to know more about overall recovery strategies for BJJ, click here

If you use these three tips, to stay fit and healthy as a white belt. You’re going thrive. Your blue belt is just around the corner:)

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