Every sport has its own advantages and some are better than other to your body. More people are turning to sports like football or basketball than martial arts, but the popularity is rising every year. People are starting to realize how beneficial is to train BJJ or similar sports because you will gain more strength than in football and you will be able to self-defend.
Some of the best MMA fighters are using Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as their main tactic to win matches. You can compare BJJ fighter, Roberto Abreu, to other athletes and see the difference in strength. You will have to be able to move quickly and lift large weights while knowing many techniques to become good in Jiu-Jitsu. You can read more about Roberto Abreu here.
Anaerobic or Aerobic
Some power coaches think grappling is more anaerobic while others think it’s more aerobic. In reality, it is both and you can see that when you look at a grappling match that lasts 5 minutes. For the white belt division, five minutes is the standard match length. It can easily be compared as sprinting for 5 minutes, it is very hard to accomplish. The anaerobic method means that you have a large power output with a short burst. Depending on the situation this isn’t very efficient because a larger amount of lactic acid is produced. It means that your body can’t handle that much effort for a short amount of time.
When you are in a match, the technique that wins the match usually requires anaerobic system, but for rest of the time, you will use the aerobic system. If you use more brain when competing, you will rely more on the aerobic system which can sometimes make your opponents impatient which leads to a mistake. To perform like the best you need to use both systems.
BJJ over Cardio
In every club, you will see people training cardio or with weights, and many of them that train cardio still struggles when they need to make through 5 minutes of grappling. You can’t compare a big guy trying to get you in a bar and running on the treadmill. You are controlling the pace when you are doing cardio. When you are grappling you need to adapt to the situation and the opponent sets the terms.
There are only two things you can do in this situation and that’s to set your own pace that the opponent will follow or be defensive and wait for the opponent to react. At BJJ you are doing weight lifting and cardio at the same time. Another advantage over cardio is that people tend to do what they are good for and forget about other things. This is bad because you won’t advance as you should. When the time comes to use techniques you don’t like, you will have a problem.
How to Get Ready For BJJ?
If you want to be prepared in advance for BJJ you have to incorporate anaerobic conditioning, aerobic conditioning, and resistance training. The best way to gain strength is to go through many BJJ rounds. There is some recommendation that you can try throughout the week to prepare for it.
Training with larger weights once a week with a low number of reps without going all in is the first thing you can do in the week. One of training should be muscle endurance where you have more repetitions. The third training should be cardio with a variety of exercises. You can adapt these exercises according to your BJJ routine. Recovery and mobility are also very important. You need to be prepared for the next training.