When it comes to a physical sport like jiu-jitsu, having the edge in strength & power over your opponent can make the difference between a win and a loss. As a grappler myself, keeping up with a dedicated strength & conditioning routine has been a great supplement to my training on the mats.
So we're going to list out three of the best strength exercises you can perform to improve your performance on the mats.
Front-Rack RFE Split Squat
When we look at the sport of jiu-jitsu, we’ll find that a large percentage of the movements are front-loaded. Most bjj movements also happen to be unilateral. So to train this specific movement pattern, we can take the traditional rear-foot elevated split squat and front-load it with a barbell.
This is going to teach the body to produce large amounts of force through one side of the body at a time while coordinating through the trunk in a dynamic range of motion.
Using and progressing this movement will transfer extremely well over to your performance on the mats.
Towel Pull-Ups
So now we’re working on building tremendous strength in our big pulling muscles, while also placing an emphasis on grip strength, which is obviously very important in the sport of jiu-jitsu.
Let’s think about when we’re standing up with our opponent making grips. Your ability to grab and control your opponent’s posture and positioning is going to be reliant on the strength your lats and your grip, and we can train both of these qualities simultaneously with this exercise.
As you get stronger at this movement, you can progress by adding weight with a weight belt or a weighted vest.
Pause Squats
A lot of the positions found in jiu-jitsu are going to be reliant on what’s called isometric strength. Isometric strength is the body’s ability to hold and maintain force in a given position.
And it’s what’ll transfer so well over to your ability as a grappler to hold dominant positions and keeping your opponent in place. Isometric strength can be trained in all planes of motion, but here we’re going to use the squat movement.
Here we're going to be getting as deep into our squat as we can, and holding that position for five seconds. And again, seeing as BJJ is a front-loaded sport primarily, I recommend front-rack pause squats here.
And we can progress this movement by either increasing the load we're using, or by extending that pause time at the bottom.
If you want to see our full-length video on BJJ strength training, click here.
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