What You Can Do to Help Pump More Muscles for Home Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Training

Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a self-defense type of martial art and combat sport. It involves ground fighting, grappling, and submission holds.

Whether you’re a professional or an amateur, it’s easy to see that jiu-jitsu requires excellent skills to force someone into submission.

However, no matter how great of a skill you have, if you’re unable to train your strength and tone your muscles, there’s no telling how you can perform well.

So, on top of your skills and to help you get started, here are a few tips to help you improve your muscle and strength for Brazilian jiu-jitsu training.

Cardio Training

Every athlete must know that cardio is an essential training course that they should never skip. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), muscles are significant during a match.

So, you must have a relevant cardio workout that can help improve your large muscles to stay in motion for a long time while increasing the breath and heart rate rapidly to produce more energy.

In simple terms, it strengthens your heart and lungs to help build your endurance and stamina.

Not only that, but it also affects other elements of your athleticism, such as aerobic capacity and core muscles.

Aerobic Capacity Training

As you train for cardio, you should understand that it helps your aerobic capacity.

The aerobic energy system allows you to recover faster between intense efforts, which would help you during competitions where you’ll need to deal with matches after matches throughout the day.

So, if you’re training from home, there are two ways you can perform a cardio workout for BJJ: through the help of a machine or by a simple routine with no machine at all.

If you have a mini gym at home, consider indulging yourself in a rowing machine that would help improve your hand and leg muscles for more grip and chest for more oxygen. Consider working past your limits to figure out how far you can go.

For non-machinery cardio training, the jumping rope would never betray you. It helps with coordination, balance, and muscle training.

It helps in pushing your limit by overcoming breathing difficulties by figuring out new effective breathing techniques. You can gradually increase the number of sets until you can easily skip through the numbers to your next workout.

Core Training

As mentioned, there are many types of cardio training. However, in BJJ, athletes get most of their strength in their core.

So, you’ll need to find cardio training to help you improve your core on top of your aerobic capacity training.

Moreover, the usual core training for BJJ is strenuous and thus puts a lot of pressure on their cardiovascular system.

For BJJ athletes training at home or away from the gym, you should consider swimming as a low-impact cardio exercise that directly targets your core muscles. The repetitive long lap swimming also helps recovery less strenuous.

Moreover, you can also DIY a sandbag and use it to deadlift to help pump up muscles and enhance your strength.

You can heighten the intensity by running or squatting while carrying the bag. This exercise can also serve as endurance training to kill two birds with one stone in a single training.

Apply Tempo Intervals

In simple terms, tempo intervals involve breaking up your tempo runs. So, it starts slowly and usually lasts for five to 20 minutes. Then, there will be a short recovery interval in between.

Then, the tempo will gradually build up every break until it reaches hard or your limit. You can also apply tempo intervals to other sorts of exercise to ensure you’re putting in higher work intensity.

Moreover, tempo intervals are usually performed by activities off the mat, like running and weightlifting.

For instance, for a pushup, you can plan to have a 20 seconds effort together with ten pushups every 60 seconds. Then, increase it to 25 seconds for the second week.

Take a Rest Day

Most importantly, it would be best if you never forget to take a rest day. It’s because working out tears your muscles on a microscopic level.

Thus, you definitely need rest after a week-long of training, and during the period of your rest, the fibroblast cells repair these tears and help with the growth. Then, it becomes stronger.

Although it can be scary to take a break, especially if a match is coming up, rest can help you calm your mind. That’s why it’s recommended to sleep the night properly before every big match.

Aside from that, you should also take time to drink your whey protein every after training to help build and restore your muscles during the resting days.

Final Thoughts

Brazilian jiu-jitsu is unlike any other sport. Since it deals with the core muscles of your body, you can’t just perform spot training to improve a particular part.

You’ll need to be 100% dedicated to training for a BJJ. Although training for this sport can be hard, you can still perform individual training at home.