To all neck hunting, arm locking, knee reaping
fans out there. As a jiu jitsu practitioner, you must maintain the obligation
to train effectively so that your jiu jitsu game is solid. I seek to motivate
and encourage you, as a progressive practitioner myself, to experiment with
different sport specific exercises that are beneficial to your specific jiu
jitsu style. I will also explain the benefits you may attain by strengthening
core stabilizer muscles to increase your chance in the evolution of your jiu
jitsu game. Finally, I will identify some flaws of traditional techniques from
my understanding of new jiu jitsu approaches. The art is always evolving and as
a progressive practitioner, I seek to motivate you to delve in various sport specific
exercises that will complement the jiu jitsu life style/community. All sport
specific exercises indirectly or directly empower your mind, body and soul with
confidence to overcome unseen limits in your jiu jitsu practice, daily
challenges, and other aspects of life.
Firstly, I
seek to redefine sports specific training here to jiu jitsu specific training. I will reach beyond the boundaries of
the art so that you may become aware of the inept transaction when you avoid
supplementing your jiu jitsu with beneficial workouts that may pay homage to
the art itself. You, as a jiu jitsu lover and practitioner, represent the sport
so in order to further evolve the practice; you own a responsibility to keep a
tentative perspective over how to progress your physical abilities to improve
yourself along with your practice of the art. With that said, I will pass on a
couple of tools to create opportunities to enhance your jiu jitsu with specific
exercises. From these exercises, you will be able to gain strengths alongside,
staying safe while you practice self-defense for yourself and others whom train
with you.
We as jiu jitsu practitioners have an ample
obligation to do what is right for jiu jitsu since it does takes care of us
both physically and mentally. If you are like me, you probably do not like to
run, stretch, or lift weights. I will discuss a common concern over training
jiu jitsu without supplemental workouts that are beneficial to jiu jitsu, as I
stubbornly have done in the past, on the one hand, and on the other hand, training
for jiu jitsu with a mixture of different sports related exercises that are
beneficial to jiu jitsu and will pass on this crucial knowledge to progress the
jiu jitsu community.
I will start from the aspect of training jiu
jitsu without supplemental workouts. An elite grappler, such as the decorated
and 4 time Abu Dhabi Combat Club tournament Champion, Marcelo Garcia would tell
you “It may take a couple of lifetimes to learn every aspect of jiu jitsu, so
just train jiu jitsu” though, I would say sure this is coming from someone who
only has enough time to do just that. If you do not have a job and all you have
is time available at your expense, sure, train jiu jitsu twice, three-times, or
maybe even four-times a day. By all means, you should solely train jiu jitsu
because it would be the only thing
you should focus on to increase your success in the sport. But many who train
jiu jitsu have day jobs, children, and responsibilities other than jiu jitsu so
this may seem impossible to do. Practitioners are not mainly focusing solely on
grappling their opponent and reviewing specific techniques day-in-and-day-out
until the movements become second nature. They go home and forget about jiu
jitsu and then come back to the academy and expect to see progress in their jiu
jitsu journey. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this type of
training is a bad habit that is not beneficial to produce positive results
toward your game or the art. If you seriously want to improve your jiu jitsu,
you need to start a jiu jitsu specific training regimen outside of jiu jitsu.
You need to find the time to find exercises, stretches, and workouts that are
beneficial for your specific jiu jitsu style in order to see progress in your
jiu jitsu performance.
You may ask, “What type of training is beneficial
to jiu jitsu specifically?” Well you are in luck my friend. The way to look at
it is this: every human being is different. We all have different body types
with weaknesses and strengths; although, we do have similarities as far as
bodily structure. Dr. Jeffrey M. Willardson states in the opening of his
article published by The Allen Press called Core Stability Training for
Healthy Athletes: A Different Paradigm for Fitness Professionals “Fitness trainers will prescribe exercises that they
believe to be the most specific or functional, depending on the phase of
training and the performance needs of the client.” Now, I am no fitness trainer
but from my 3 years of experience in tournament preparation. You may need to
try a variety of different exercises that will compliment your jiu jitsu style.
From a generalized perspective of jiu jitsu, I will give you a couple of
exercises to implement in your new training regimen. I will explain how these
two tools are beneficial to jiu jitsu practitioners who implement jiu jitsu
specific exercises into their workouts.
I will first establish the importance for an athlete to strengthen core
stabilizer muscles or the small group muscles of your core.
A strong athlete’s core is vital to success in
any sport. You always hear that you must develop the mystical core. I will attempt to convey two different exercises as
tools so that one may use to strengthen their core as it is super vital to the
evolution of your jiu jitsu game. According to Dr. Willardson’s article from
the Strength and Conditioning Journal on core stability training, an athlete’s
main target area to decrease injury should be on the lower back and hip muscle
groups. Jiu jitsu practitioners can benefit from this information because we
use our lower backs to buck opponents off of ourselves and core stabilizer
muscles to regain proper back-to-neck posture. David Behm and Kenneth Anderson
reported a study also in the journal of strength and conditioning research
titled The Role of Instability with
Resistance Training that reports the effectiveness of training the core
under unstable circumstances. In relation to jiu jitsu, an athlete cannot fully
prepare for the sporadic movements of another human being’s reactions during a
live spar session. A jiu jitsu practitioner may prepare their body accordingly
to deal with such rapid unstable movements of an opponent. According to Dr.
Behm and Anderson the best training for stabilizer muscles comes from “[t]he
advantage of an unstable training environment [that] would be based on the
importance of neuromuscular adaptations with increases in strength. Strength
gains can be attributed to both increases in muscle cross-sectional area and
improvements in neuromuscular coordination.” So in attempts to further progress
your jiu jitsu, practitioners must understand the vital importance to train
core stabilizer muscles in unstable conditions to prepare for the sporadic
shifts in body weight and posture during a live sparing session. Behm and
Anderson mention pushups on a stability ball, the use of a balance board, and
squats while on balance pads as alternative methods to strengthen the core
stabilizer muscle groups.
I will introduce another jiu jitsu specific training
exercise called kundalini yoga to increase the strength of your core, lung
endurance, and temperance that are beneficial to jiu jitsu practice. As the
legend of the jiu jitsu world, Rickson Gracie explains the importance of
kundalini yoga in his biographical documentary titled Choke. According to the world known jiu jitsu legend, Gracie
mentions the benefits to a practitioner’s ability to jiu jitsu. The practice of
kundalini yoga offers such benefits as deep concentration, various breathing
exercises, and relaxation while activating the core all at once. In an April
2012 edition of Fitness Magazine featured Kevin Harmon’s article called, A Great Complement to Sport-Specific
Training. Harmon explains how kundalini yoga is a good art for
sport-specific training because it focuses on techniques to have athletes
practice proper body posture, breathing techniques, and deep stretches to
various small muscle groups that target the core. He adds how it is important
for an athlete to develop a strong core because it holds a correlation to
increase an athlete’s endurance capacity to any sport. Athletes who practice
kundalini yoga possess more muscle endurance and a sense to control breathing,
which result in being able to perform a sport longer and more efficiently.
All jiu jitsu practitioners should focus to
strengthen their core with unstable resistance core training and kundalini
yoga. Your path to a stronger core will empower you with a huge evolution in
your jiu jitsu game. A jiu jitsu practitioner who implements kundalini yoga
understands the importance to control breathing, mental stability, and core
activation. Our sport calls us to participate in the efforts to better our
abilities by strengthening the mind, body, and soul. Jiu jitsu practitioners
must have a strong core to protect their lungs, heart, and organs from injury.
The opponent’s goal during a live spar is to pin and smash another
practitioner’s body to the floor. According to Ravinder Jareth and Vernon
Barnes, they indicate in their article called Augmentation of Mind-body Therapy and Role of Deep Slow Breathing
when we involve ourselves to control the sympathetic nervous system, which is
the automatic nervous system that controls heart rate, body temperature, and
breathing, through slow breathing exercises shows to decrease hypertension in
patients who suffer from high blood pressure. A healthy jiu jitsu practitioner
may benefit from this type of control over the auto-response system of the body
while exerting the body during wrestling an opponent over a long period of
time. This brings me to the evolution of a jiu jitsu practitioner, as well as
the art itself.
Alongside the evolution of jiu jitsu, a jiu jitsu
practitioner must come to terms with the truth about the flaw of traditional
techniques. The reality of the practice is that the greater the window of an
opportunity an opponent has the more you will have trouble controlling that
opponent. Not to downsize traditional jiu jitsu because if you practice
something over 5,000 times you are inevitably going to be an expert. The point
here is to enjoy the privilege of options at your disposal. If you owned a
restaurant and you only sold one product, do you think your restaurant would be
successful compared to others in the market? Your success in jiu jitsu depends
on how many transitions and attacks you master. On top of that your clinch game
controls the speed of a live spar. The tighter your clinch is the fewer windows
of opportunities will be present to your opponent. The main goal of a jiu jitsu
practitioner is to keep your opponent from slipping out of your clutches. A scramble is when an opponent is able to
free himself from your clutches and is able to solidify a dominant position.
Eddie Bravo explains a tentative jiu jitsu system that addresses how to better
control an opponent. He reveals various techniques from sister arts of jiu
jitsu, such as wrestling/sambo, judo (art of throwing), aikido (art of
wristlocking), wing chun (close hand-to-hand Chinese boxing) to reduce the
opportunity of a scramble within his book “Advanced Rubber Guard”. Many jiu
jitsu players are all practicing the same techniques with the same names and
many stalemates occur during competition. Eddie Bravo is hated by many within
the jiu jitsu community because of his radical Sapir-Whorfianistic-like
approach to change and tweak the names of various traditional moves. Paul Kay
and Willett Kempton explain Whorf’s linguistic hypothesis in their article
titled American Anthropologist published
by the American Anthropological Association. Kay and Kempton explain that the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis addresses the truth about reality to exist in the mind
of the perceiver through a language taught by a specific group. In Bravo’s
case, he renamed many transitional positions merely to perceive and teach his
followers his system easier. His controversial system proved to get him the win
over a jiu jitsu legend in ADCC where he implemented the use of yoga-like
flexibility to immobilize and trap Royler Gracie, who is Rickson Gracie’s
brother. His win not only proved to the jiu jitsu community that the convention
of training traditional jiu jitsu does not translate when the conditions of the
practice changes but Bravo introduces the importance to develop a strong clinch
and the ability to maneuver your body around your opponent without allowing
space to scramble. He also mentions that flexibility can limit your jiu jitsu
game significantly if one lacks the ability. He adds that all practitioners are
able to develop flexibility comparable to a learned skill such as driving or
climbing up stairs.
With this newfound training perspective all that
is left to do is to get up and go out there and work on your core, flexibility,
and techniques that specifically suit you. You should look to modify and
improve some abilities of your body, i.e. flexible elbows, knees, hip joints,
legs. All of your modification from your training will be beneficial
specifically for your jiu jitsu style only. From this path, you will empower
your mind, body, and soul without ever really knowing it. Now all there is left
to do is go out there and train, and remember distract with attacks!
By: Luis A. Martinez
Sources
Advanced Rubber Guard
Jiu Jitsu for Mixed Martial Arts Competition
Eddie Bravo
Source type: Book
Published by: Victory Belt Publishing Inc.
Yoga
Kevin Bernard Harmon.
American Fitness 30,
no. 2 (March 2012): 52-53. Health Source - Consumer
Edition,
EBSCOhost (accessed
November 20, 2014)
Core Stability Training
Willardson, Jeffrey M “Core Stability Training For Healthy
Athletes: A Different Paradigm For Fitness Professionals” Strength and Conditioning Journal (Allen Press) 29.6 (2007): 42-49.
SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 6 Dec. 2014
Instability Resistance
Training
Behm, David G, and Kenneth G. Anderson. “The Role of
Instability with Resistance Training” Journal
of Strength & Conditioning Research (Allen Press Publishing Services
Inc.) 20.3 (2006): 716-722 SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 6 Dec. 2014
The role of deep
breathing
Jerath, Ravinder, and Vernon A. Barnes “Augmentation of
Mind-Body Therapy and Role of Deep Slow Breathing” Journal of Complementary & Integrative Medicine 6.1 (2009): 1-7
SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 6 Dec. 2014
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Paul Kay and Willet Kempton “American Athropologist” American Anthropological Association,
Vol. 86, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp 65-79
Article Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uta.edu/stable /679389
