Fitness for Grappling

There are a lot of misconceptions, outright lies, and biases when it comes to physical preparation (fitness) for grappling. From cookie-cutter bodybuilding magazine workouts to weaponized specificity, let’s boil this down to what actually works and start to think for ourselves.

Let’s start with an overview of the misconceptions, common lies, and overall problems with “strength and conditioning for grappling.”

• Marketing: We are perpetually marketed the lie that “strength and size don’t matter”, that “technique conquers all.” Grappling is a physical sport. It is a combat sport. Physicality is absolutely a tool and weapon that can be capitalized on. Weight classes exist for a reason. Injuries are inevitable, but we can certainly make ourselves more resilient against them and better informed and able to recover from them.
• Appeal to Authority and Confirmation Bias: Many programs will appeal to one area of expertise or another; grappling or conditioning. You will find people mimicking the strength and conditioning routines of black belts though the black belt is awarded in jiu jitsu, not conditioning. The opposite is true as well, there are many programs written by physiology PhDs who are blue belts. These both often miss the point.
• Opposition Reflex: Partly because of the above marketing lies, non-traditional sports (like climbing, surfing, martial arts) often view themselves in opposition to and developed separately from traditional strength and conditioning. This is helpful regarding skill development, however, it puts us decades behind overall physical training theory and methods.
• Allostatic Stress: When traditional conditioning programs are implemented they’re often layered on top of “off days”, or days that are “off-the-mat” with little consideration for managing intensity and recovery. Rest and recovery become an afterthought rather than the currency with which you buy your “hard” sessions – on or off the mat. This also tends to further exacerbate overuse injuries or structural / functional asymmetries.
• Weaponized Specificity: Everything from bands and yoga balls to barbells and sandbags can be used effectively. They also sometimes get marketed to a target audience to sell a proprietary panacea. This is the fitness equivalent of X basketball star signing a shoe contract; as if those shoes will make you play like them. In other words, because combat sports don’t have a traditional “off season”, we probably don’t need to train (off the mat) what we’re already good at (on the mat). We need is to intentionally structure training around what we want to focus on developing and what will also support that development via antagonist or recovery methods.

A Better Conceptual Framework:

Given those problems, what do grapplers need from a physical fitness perspective? Mike Piekarski (aka Dr. Kick Ass summarized this quite well in a recent post – we’ll come back to that later. As I see it – from a 2,300 hour perspective – grapplers need to develop the following energy systems:

• Active Recovery: Most grapplers I know don’t have an issue going hard. Many have an issue going hard when it matters, or selectively choosing when to go hard so that they can continue to go hard when it matters. You may be able to give a maximal effort every day, but how much of your potential is actualized by the results of or performance in that session? We need to learn how to (p)rehab ourselves and to intentionally actively recover in order to feel better rather than always beating ourselves up more.
• Endurance: A general physical preparedness and aerobic base go a long way, particularly if you are significantly out of shape and physical limitations (such as being overweight) are keeping you from training (grappling) as much as you’d like. All recovery is underpinned by the aerobic system. However, there is a long road to be able to translate this into functional grappling performance.
• Capacity: Anaerobic capacity, oversimplified as interval training, is something you likely get plenty of on the mats. “The best conditioning for grappling is grappling”; to an extent. Success in grappling is often rewarded by technical efficiency, which promotes decompensation of physical attributes. This is a well known trope – the jacked blue belt vs. the beer-belly brown belt. Aerobic capacity can help bridge an endurance foundation towards the anaerobic intervals we see on the mat.
• Strength: This is probably the attribute that correlates most directly to grappling. If we define strength as the ability to hold tension, our sport, grappling, literally means to grab and hold things (people). There’s also considerable overlap with “mobility” here if we expand the definition of the latter beyond just “flexibility” and consider our “range of strength” or an “internal model of strength.”

What that may mean in terms of programming is that our off-the-mat training can serve three main purposes (one at a time folks!). The nomenclature is still under development in my training methodology, but the concepts are still the same regardless of the name you give each of the following:

• Mirroring: Unless you’re a professional athlete, you probably don’t make it to class or open mat as often as you’d like. With that in mind, we can mirror the energy systems (not loaded “jiu-jitsu-like-movements, i.e. shrimping with a prowler sled) in the anaerobic capacity domain that combine element of explosive power, lactate thresholds, and isometric strength or impaired recovery. This is the “big burner” on the stove; which may already be cooking if you’re spending a lot of time on the mat.
• Antagonist: At the moderate, advanced, and expert levels you’ve likely developed some imbalances or overuse issues. This is your chance to correct them in order to avoid (prevent, or recover from) injuries as a result. This is the “small burner”, on the stove metaphor, that we want to “keep warm.” Movements often ignored by grapplers include squatting and pressing – typically we don’t have problems hinging or pulling.
• Mitigation: Strengthening supportive movements to grappling such as spine / neck, grip, hips, and shoulders – which are also common injury points. This has profound benefits at every level, so we really want to “simmer” this “medium burner” on our training stove.

In Practice:

In summary, the anaerobic capacity system is the most relevant to grappling (from a fitness perspective). However, that system benefits greatly from training it’s components:

1. An aerobic (capacity) foundation that’s built on a robust endurance system.
2. Sufficient strength (mobility) and power (lifting).
3. Appropriate assessment of which of the above is a limiting factor.

Obviously we use movements to train those energy systems. An endless combination of bands, barbells, balls / sandbags, kettlebells, and dumbbells can be used. However, that’s arguably the least important part of a training session.

I’m much more concerned with our intention and delivery. In my opinion the best time for technical development and specific conditioning is on the mat. The best use of your mat-time is the technical aspect simply because you don’t always have a mat or training partners available. By contrast, you can work “strength and conditioning” and mobility on your own off-the-mat.

One caveat I’d throw in there is that for competition prep you would want to be building towards more grappling time and a high percentage of those “hard training session” be spent in a sport-specific context (i.e. on-the-mat).

For general training year-round though it’s important to make sure that what we’re doing off-the-mat isn’t taking away from our ability to be on-the-mat – in fact, the opposite should be true. Even professional level athletes only have 2-3 truly “hard” sessions per week. Choose them wisely.

“Mirroring” sessions are probably rare for most people. If you’re a novice, physical fitness may well be a limiting factor. For the expert, it may be hard to find training partners that actually push your physicality – we are in a sport that rewards efficiency after all.

“Antagonist” and “Mitigation” sessions are probably where you want to spend most of your time off-the-mat. Though, again, managing intensity is paramount. We don’t want to “antagonize” so much that we now have bi-directional injuries (e.g. golfer’s and tennis elbow), so a little bit can go a long way.

“Mitigation” has almost endless benefits and should be a regular staple in everyone’s training. Be judicious with grip, neck, and spine training as we do use all of these a lot in grappling. However, one’s ability to move, to articulate control, and develop internal strength (call it “core strength” if you want) will benefit virtually everything mentioned above.

Summary:

From a movement perspective then, if I were to pick some quick hits for a grappler (who’s already well versed in general strength and conditioning), I’d look at:

1. Grip: Our entire sport is literally based on grabbing; sandbags, stones, fat-bars, and the like are great tools for this.
2. Mobility / Internal Strength: specifically the spine and neck; plus whichever is more deficient for you, your hips or shoulders.
3. Calisthenics / Plyometrics / Animal Movements: Combining these with mobility is a great progression; gain flexibility, improve control through that range, introduce a dynamic component, combine multiple joint and contralateral movements.