5 Best Exercises for JiuJitsu

Brazilian JiuJistu (BJJ) is a form of mixed martial arts, and focuses on floor grappling. BJJ is great to add to your workout regime, but it’s not for everyone. It’s a game of chess, and forces you to get creative under one on one rolling time. BJJ is a full body activity, and I thought deserved a post/video dedicated to explaining the best exercises for the sport to avoid injury and optimize your health while you’re participating. 

I’ve seen a common theme amongst BJJ, and that is that many people get into it to lose weight. It’s not a uncommon thought process since BJJ really makes you sweat and you burn a lot of calories doing it. The problem with this decision is that sure you burn calories, but if you go home after BJJ practice and drink a beer or eat fried foods for dinner - you aren’t doing yourself a favor. In fact you may be doing yourself a disservice and causing more problems for yourself. Not to mention that BJJ is very taxing on the body, and if you are not weight training or doing any sort of fitness training you are setting up yourself for possible injury. 

In BJJ you are using a lot of hamstrings and back….

1. Nordic Curls // Stability Ball Hamstring Curl

   1. These are the best hamstring exercise, and if you can’t do these without using your hands, then it’s definitely worth your time to start incorporating them into your routine.

   2. You can do these modified falling to a box and coming back up 

   3. The hamstring curls you can do at the end of your training as a “burn out” 

2. Back Extension

   1. You can do these laterally or regular, but it’s a great exercises similar to deadlift that strengthens the erector spinae muscle - the muscles that hug and support the spine 

3. Ab Rolly Polly 

   1. The best ab exercise. 

4. Rows, Rows, Rows

   1. Cable Rows, DB Rows, Close Grip Pull Down, Chest Supported Rows, 

   2. Rows thicken and strengthen the mid back/rhomboids which is super important for the scapula - retraction and protraction. You want to focus on training your mid back to retract and protract so when you are training BJJ you can easily grab the GI and control your opponent, versus relying on all shoulder which is oftentimes what happens to mostly women who don’t have the mid back strength.

Ultimately it comes down to start incorporating more weights into your regime. BJJ is a lot of cardio, but if you can not last 2 minutes of a round with muscle endurance then it’s time to start with 2-3 days/week of weights. 

You can simply do the machines at your gym and split it up in 2 days:

Day 1 upper day - all machines 

Day 2 lower day - all machines 

For conditioning if your gym has a sled I would suggest you do these, too. It’s a phenomenal full body exercise. Just make sure you do it in a place where there aren’t too many people otherwise people can get in your way - I typically just keep pushing the sled towards them until they move or I just run them over.

Be well, 

Yelena