When I have friends/family members ask me about my experience as a grappler, my number one description is that jiu-jitsu is great for “stressing your body out to the max but having a great time doing it.” If you’ve been practicing BJJ for a significant portion of time, you’ve probably experienced some sort of injury while on the mats. This is because the sport of grappling places our bodies in weird positions and the movements are unpredictable. As BJJ athletes, we need to prepare our body physically for the demands that will be put on it in a sparring session or tournament. While an injury can have a many different causes, there are still ways we can reduce the risk of common injuries found in the sport so we can keep training and doing what we love.
1) Lower Back Pain
Lower back pain seems to be the most common injury that has an athlete sitting on the sidelines for a significant time waiting to heal. Looking at the movements of the sport, you can probably see why lower back pain is so prevalent. Whether we’re being stacked by our opponent or working to shrimp and recover guard from bottom side control, our lower back can be put in precarious positions. If you’re prone to lower back pain during BJJ, there are a few spots to look at that may be the cause.
A lot of times, pain in certain parts of the body aren’t fixed by looking at that specific area, but rather by examining surrounding joints and how the body moves as a complete system. One big area to look at will be the movement capabilities of the hips. Let’s start with the hips.
Our bodies, by design, are systemized to take the path of least resistance when it comes to completing a physical movement, even if it’s not the correct path. If you’re shrimping to recover guard from bottom side control, you must internally rotate your outside hip to place your foot on the outside of your body to gain the leverage to drive back and bring your knee between you and your opponent.
But if your hips lack proper internal rotation mobility and stability, you’re probably not using the hip to complete this movement. You’re more than likely twisting your lower back to move the foot to the correct position and push off. If the hips lack proper range of motion, the lower back will more-than-likely take over for a job it’s not needed for.
If you sit a lot, your hip flexors may be overactive in comparison to your hips extensors of your posterior chain. If you’re trying to pass guard and driving hard through your hips, if your hip flexors are overactive and restricting the movement capabilities of your hips extensors, guess what will probably take over? That’s right, the lower back. As a ball-and-socket joint, the hips need to be able to move in multiple planes of motion to correctly perform the job needed of them.
Now, how can you test the mobility of your hips? I recommend performing the Thomas test to screen for possible mobility restrictions. This screen will also pinpoint uneven joint relationships so you know what muscles are in need of strengthening.
2) Neck Pain
You’re holding back mount with your opponent turtled up. You’re looking to feed lapels and secure a choke, but you need both of your hands to do this and stay tight to your opponent at the same time. So what’s left to balance on? The good ol’ neck. In fact, bridging on the head is a fairly common place to be during a roll, as well as being over-extended while being stacked or over-flexed from front-rolling improperly.
In all these positions, your neck is placed in a weird position while having to endure the weight of not only yourself, but your opponent as well. This can lead to some nasty neck injuries, ranging from pulled muscles to a slipped disc in the cervical spine. Now how can we work to prevent injuries to the neck?
By training the musculature of the neck, which doesn’t typically get trained by common strength training exercises. We need to train the muscles the flex and extend the neck forward and backwards, as well as the muscles that assist in flexing the neck laterally and assist in rotation.
The easiest way to do this is with a resistance band. You’ll tie one end of the band on something sturdy, while the other end will go around your head. This will give your neck a source of light resistance to work against. Make sure the muscles you’re trying to work are facing away from the band attachment.
For example, if I want to train my neck extensors, I will face the attachment straight on, and then begin extending my neck against the resistance. The same goes for training the neck flexors, where instead you’d be facing away from the band attachment and flexing your neck up and down. As a BJJ athlete, your neck should be trained just like every other muscle group.
3) Knee Pain
Ah yes, the dreaded knees. I can’t tell you the amount of tournaments I’ve been at where I’ve witnessed competitors lying on the mat clutching their knee with medical staff standing over them. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to set aside the instances where somebody didn’t tap fast enough to a knee submission like the heel-hook.
Yes, this will account for a good percentage of knee-related injuries happening in BJJ, but given the fast-paced unexpected movement happening during a BJJ match, there are many instances where the knee is placed into precarious positions where injuries to the ligaments and other structures of the knee are common, like certain sweeps and takedowns.
Now to assess knee pain, we probably shouldn’t be looking at the knee itself, but rather the major joints above and below. There are two approaches we can take to protecting the knee. Number one would be to assess ankle and hip mobility. The reason being that our joints work together to create movement of the whole system. If my right hip lacks sufficient stability in a certain range, well then the knee of the same leg will probably experience some difficulties.
Since I already talked about the hips above, we’ll look at the ankles. It seems like a small, insignificant joint, but if an athlete is lacking proper dorsiflexion in their ankle, it can lead to all sorts of problems up the chain from knee pain to hip pain to lower back pain. If you’re experiencing knee pain (or hip/lower back pain), I recommend testing your ankle dorsiflexion with the half-kneeling dorsiflexion screen to pinpoint limited range of motion of the ankle joint.
The second thing we can do to prevent knee injuries is to strengthen the musculature surrounding the knee joint. Different types of squats (back, front, single-leg) and lower-body posterior exercises such as the RDL, hamstring curl and good mornings are all essential pieces of a strength & conditioning program.
However, one muscle that isn’t worked as much as the others during these movements is the adductors, the muscles of the inner thigh. This usually leads to a imbalanced joint-relationship where the anterior and posterior muscles of the leg are vastly stronger than the adductors.
So, it may be a good idea to start implementing certain exercises to target the inner thighs in your routine like Copenhagen planks and Cossack squats.
Our bodies are complex, and assessing pain in a certain area can certainly be monotonous and frustrating. I know what it’s like to sit out with an injury that keeps me from training. You’re cut off from something that, at least in my case, is a staple of my life. But, by taking the time to prevent common injuries happening on the mats, you’ll improve your longevity in athletics, as well as in everyday life.
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