What Would You Give for An Endless Gas Tank

Starting to train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu can be one of the most physically demanding endeavors that you can undertake, especially if you have not been active for a while.  Heck, even if you have been active, few activities can challenge your physicality from so many angles.  BJJ class is guaranteed to challenge your cardio.  Think of the first few months going through just the warm up in class.  The warm ups alone can be more rigorous than the average person's "hard" workout.

Once you begin rolling or sparring, the cardio stresses increase exponentially and can leave you completely wiped out in only a few minutes.  For five minutes, or whatever your round time du jour, you and your training partners agree to try to kill each other, in a nice way of course.

And this is just your cardiovascular system we're talking about.  We haven't even touched on how BJJ impacts your muscles.  An average BJJ workout can fatigue nearly every muscle in your body, leaving you more sore than you've ever felt the next day. 

But there's an interesting phenomenon that can occur with BJJ.  It's similar to what happens when you're a long distance runner.  Over time, your body actually works less  because it becomes more efficient.  It gets better at the movements of running and the systems that power your body through a long run actually become better and better at handling the workload.  The exact thing happens in BJJ, except because BJJ is also skills-based, the more skilled you become, the less you seem to need to work.  By understanding and employing the elements of leverage and perfecting the execution of your techniques, you are able to use the least amount of strength and most likely cardio power as well, to do what you need to do.

Because of this, if you're not careful, your overall cardio and strength levels could actually plateau and like I've seen happen in my own experience, because your working more efficiently, you are burning less calories and if your diet isn't as clean as it can be, you could gain excess weight.

Now that you know, you may want to consider some supplemental activities that can train your cardio and strength systems to continue to grow and be challenged.  Adding the right activity to your training agenda can do wonders for your stamina, strength, and ability to train long and hard on the mats.  But what is the perfect activity that will do all of these things for you, without keeping you in the gym for hours on end?

Strength and combat athletes have known the powers of the kettle bell to provide heart pounding and muscle scorching workouts that can be completed in as little as 15 or 20 minutes.  World class BJJ athletes like Bernardo Faria and Tom DeBlass swear by the use of kettlebells for their workouts.  You will find that kettle bell workouts most closely mimic the effects of your BJJ classes.  You will be breathing hard and using every muscle in your body.

BJJ Fanatics, along with strength and conditioning expert Mike Perry have put together a new instructional video that will give you everything you need to know to begin creating an endless gas tank.  Check out the sample video below in which Mike Perry explains the hand to hand swing.  Make sure you note the highly detailed and methodical explanation of the technique.  Afterwards, check out KB Essentials for yourself at BJJ Fanatics.

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