The advice below assumes you are training at a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school, but have extra time at home you want to use too. Nothing can replace regular attendance at a real BJJ academy with a qualified instructor. You can’t really learn BJJ practicing it on your own or with a few friends who don’t know what they’re doing either.
Here’s what you can do with extra time away at home to keep improving your BJJ:
Study BJJ instructionals. You can learn a lot from watching videos. There has never been more material available on DVD or streaming online. But don’t get lost in hours of mindless cool moves or collecting techniques you’ll never use. Every technique you want to really learn needs to be backed up with hands-on drilling and sparring.
Analyze BJJ tournament footage. Footage of competition matches is at an all time high too. YouTube and Budovideos On-Demand has hundreds of hours. You can look up matches from the most recent events, or study a specific fighter’s gameplan across events. To get the most out of it, try to figure out what the key moments and techniques were.
Do strength and conditioning training. I’m not here to be your fitness guru, but with a little research you can put together good workout routines to do at home. My main advice is to not get too fancy or silly like trying to do inverted guard spins against a heavy bag. Stick to classic exercises like squats, lunges, push-ups, sprints, etc. As with BJJ, I recommend getting real instruction before doing any workouts where bad form or simple mistakes could harm you.
Stretch and improve your mobility. Learn stretches you can do at home to gain flexibility and correct any posture problems you have from BJJ and your normal life (like sitting at a desk all day). These are especially valuable if you’re also working on your S&C. You could benefit from going to yoga classes to pick up stretches and poses.
Eat healthy. You don’t need to do anything extreme to eat healthier. Eat more fruits and vegetables, don’t eat too much sugar, salt and fat, and make sure you’re getting all your vitamins and minerals. Avoid fad and cure-all diets.
Get good sleep. The important things are often the simple things. Get to bed on time and make sure you’re comfy enough to put in a night’s worth of restful sleep. Your body needs this time to rest and recover.
Build a home gym and have friends come over to train. Convert your garage or basement into a mini-gym. You can buy roll-out mats to put in your garage, or research how to construct your own grappling mats. I’ll leave it up to you to make friends at the academy who want to show up at your place and put in extra reps. Make sure your homeowner’s insurance will cover you in the event of an unfortunate accident!
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The advice below assumes you are training at a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school, but have extra time at home you want to use too. Nothing can replace regular attendance at a real BJJ academy with a qualified instructor. You can’t really learn BJJ practicing it on your own or with a few friends who don’t know what they’re doing either.
Here’s what you can do with extra time away at home to keep improving your BJJ:
Study BJJ instructionals. You can learn a lot from watching videos. There has never been more material available on DVD or streaming online. But don’t get lost in hours of mindless cool moves or collecting techniques you’ll never use. Every technique you want to really learn needs to be backed up with hands-on drilling and sparring.
Analyze BJJ tournament footage. Footage of competition matches is at an all time high too. YouTube and Budovideos On-Demand has hundreds of hours. You can look up matches from the most recent events, or study a specific fighter’s gameplan across events. To get the most out of it, try to figure out what the key moments and techniques were.
Do strength and conditioning training. I’m not here to be your fitness guru, but with a little research you can put together good workout routines to do at home. My main advice is to not get too fancy or silly like trying to do inverted guard spins against a heavy bag. Stick to classic exercises like squats, lunges, push-ups, sprints, etc. As with BJJ, I recommend getting real instruction before doing any workouts where bad form or simple mistakes could harm you.
Stretch and improve your mobility. Learn stretches you can do at home to gain flexibility and correct any posture problems you have from BJJ and your normal life (like sitting at a desk all day). These are especially valuable if you’re also working on your S&C. You could benefit from going to yoga classes to pick up stretches and poses.
Eat healthy. You don’t need to do anything extreme to eat healthier. Eat more fruits and vegetables, don’t eat too much sugar, salt and fat, and make sure you’re getting all your vitamins and minerals. Avoid fad and cure-all diets.
Get good sleep. The important things are often the simple things. Get to bed on time and make sure you’re comfy enough to put in a night’s worth of restful sleep. Your body needs this time to rest and recover.
Build a home gym and have friends come over to train. Convert your garage or basement into a mini-gym. You can buy roll-out mats to put in your garage, or research how to construct your own grappling mats. I’ll leave it up to you to make friends at the academy who want to show up at your place and put in extra reps. Make sure your homeowner’s insurance will cover you in the event of an unfortunate accident!
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