Does Strength and Conditioning help Your Jiu Jitsu?

The question of whether or not strength and conditioning helps your Jiu Jitsu has long been discussed.  Many people think it is essential for competitors and others believe that all your time should be spent working on Jiu Jitsu and not strength and conditioning.  The problem with this question is that it is not black and white.  There is a massive grey area on whether or not you should implement strength and conditioning routine to your training regimen.

The grey area is that everybody is different.  Simply put, strength and conditioning may help some people and it may hurt others.  Marcelo Garcia is infamous for hating strength and conditioning and believing that you should just put all your time and effort into your bjj and gain mat time. Marcelo may just be the exception and not the rule.

So everyone is different, that is something we know.  Some people are lanky, some are short, some are tall, some are skinny, and some are muscular and so on and so forth.  With that being said some people have shown a higher rate of bjj related injuries when adding strength and conditioning into their bjj training, while others have shown a substantial decrease in bjj related injuries after adding strength and conditioning.  

Why Strength and Conditioning May Increase Injury

Strength and conditioning can easily lead to more injuries but there is a simple reason that this can be.  Some people train their strength and conditioning at the wrong time and train improperly. So they may be rolling with soreness and this can contribute to an increase in injuries.  They may also being doing the wrong workouts and doing them improperly. 

Lifting weights and doing conditioning improperly can start to impact your joints and ligaments and when combined with a rigorous Jiu Jitsu work out, can easily lead to an increase in injuries.  Some people that are full time competitors may just be timing their strength and conditioning work outs wrong.

Doing the Right Workouts at the Right Time

Time management is very important and it is a big part of being able to do strength and conditioning when you train bjj.  Many people recommend doing your strength and conditioning on your off day or after you have already trained bjj.  You have a lower risk of injury lifting weights and doing conditioning than you do rolling and training bjj.

The trick to doing strength and conditioning is to know the right workouts and do them at the right time. Check out some of our article on these topics like, “How to Help Combat Soreness and BJJ Related Pains,” and “Killer Kettlebells For Conditioning.”  Also, check out this video below showing some good workouts for bjj.

If you want to implement a smart and strategic strength and conditioning workout into your bjj training regimen, check out this 4 DVD set, “Diamond Protocol” by Ethan Benda.