How To Recover Better For BJJ?

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?