The Three Biggest Jiu Jitsu Strength Training Mistakes
So you’re training jiu jitsu and you want to do everything you can to get better. There’s just one problem— there’s really no more time in the day or logistically that supports more jiu jitsu. So what do you do? You go to a gym or to a trainer at a gym like ours, and work on your strength and general fitness.
There’s still a problem.
A thought enters your head that maybe there’s a better way to strength train for jiu jitsu…
…and you may not be doing it.
Does this sound familiar?
If this sounds like you, then your suspicion was correct— there is a good way to train for jiu jitsu and grappling sports more generally. There is a good chance you may be making the jiu jitsu strength and conditioning mistakes that so many athletes often do.
The most common mistakes people make in the gym when trying to supplement their jiu jitsu training isn’t always obvious because they tug and fight at your ego. It’s hard to be a beginner again, or hard to admit sometimes that less is more.
That said, here are three pitfalls to avoid that will ensure your time in the gym is useful and productive and will keep you from making the most common mistakes when strength training for jiu jitsu.
3 Biggest Jiu Jistu Strength and Conditioning Mistakes
1. Not Understanding that Your Individual Needs Trump Everything Else
The most important thing to understand in order to strength train for jiu jitsu properly (and to be a better jiu jitsu athlete in general) is that you are a person first with individual needs. No amount of sports specificity, energy systems focus, or carefully chosen exercises will help you if you have a bad shoulder or knee and are unable to execute them properly.
2. Pretending you have a high training age and expecting as much of yourself as the “other guys” in the class
This advice applies mostly to the white and blue belts in jiu jitsu, but it can also apply to other colored belts who may not have previously had much gym experience.
The reason I pick on white and blue belts here is because they are inherently newer to training BJJ and find themselves extremely bullish and motivated to progress quickly.
The people they seem to emulate the most, though, have much higher training ages and experience levels. Their role models’ bodies have adapted over many years of training to the loads they subject themselves to, and they also have progressed through phases you may have never experienced.
I’ll give you an example. I once worked with a guy in his late 30’s who started jiu jitsu only a year prior. He spent, by his own admission, most of his life not taking the best care of himself and being generally overweight. Before starting jiu jitsu, he lost a large sum of weight over the course of 2 years.
Once we were training together for a few months, he felt amazing and increased his frequency of jiu jitsu training, as well as his own extracurricular lifting, citing a desire to keep up with other guys his age at the gym and involving himself in some friendly competition.
What he didn’t realize was that these 30-something year old peers of his had been high school wrestlers, some were college wrestlers, and all of them started lifting as teenagers. They arrived at 37+ years old with 20+ years of experience being physical regularly. That’s a training age of at least 20 years.
My client’s training age was 2, maybe 3 years at best (with barely 1 consistent one in jiu jitsu). He found himself getting hurt a lot and missing classes, even as we discussed training schedules and recovery. It got frustrating for both of us.
A guy in his 30’s who has only been training a couple of years will never have the inherent work capacity of someone who started in their teens— at least not right away.
You need to train in a way that supports you building your work capacity, your strength, and ultimately something you can recover from. You may not be able to cheat time and increase your training age overnight, but you can build these other traits by intelligently programming and accounting for where YOU are right now.
3. Not lifting weights and only training with Unconventional products
Usually the biggest advocates I see for equipment and products that exist outside the norm of your typical weight room are either selling something, or they find that certain unconventional accessories allow them to preserve what they have and gain a little more around the margins over time.
The latter is actually very commendable— if you get your body to place where you know it so intimately that you can manipulate it inoffensively with battle ropes, special bags and bands, etc, then you’ve dialed your training to a level many aspire to…and you’re probably a veteran of this stuff and you might want to check out some of my other articles.
That said, never forget G.A.S.— or General Adaptation Syndrome — and that your body adapts to the stress you put on it. This also means a lack of stress will cause a regression or de-adaptation. This means your work capacity decreases if not sufficiently challenged. This is a very common BJJ strength and conditioning mistake.
That’s why nothing beats progressive overload in the long run. Progressive overload doesn’t always look like manipulating weight, however that’s a subject for another article entirely.
A Parting ThoughtMuch has been made about trying to mimic movements on the mats in the gym. It’s widely accepted that this is a poor strategy, so I didn’t even waste much time talking about it here. Truthfully, I think this has become a social media straw man and I never see people do this anymore. Not real coaches at least.
If you can mind the above advice, you’ll find that you can make a variety of strategies, equipment and programs work for you. Remember, your individual needs addressed properly will lead to the most progress. Keeping the above in mind will ensure you don’t make the most common jiu jitsu strength and conditioning mistakes.
Hello! I’m Mark DiSalvo, CSCS
I’m the founder and owner of DiSalvo Performance Training. I started my gym in NYC in 2015 with the desire to bring a higher standard of training to jiu jitsu athletes, in New York City and around the world.
I’m a NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Sports Performance Expert, and I work with BJJ athletes every day at all levels, from ADCC Champions to hobbyists and working professionals. I’ve also been a grappler myself for over 10 years.
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