Juggling BJJ with another Sport (Mainly Powerlifting & BJJ)

Also it seems people from other threads have been asking about balancing an S&C program and BJJ. I feel there is immense importance of understanding principles imho, before you tailor a program for yourself. I've linked 2 videos that have relaly helped me gain basic insight into weights/BJJ:

Mike Israetel on balancing weights and BJJ

JTS on this topic

JTS actually gives template training schedules for people to use in this video, but imho, they might be too much for the hobbyist roller to fit into a 9-5 work schedule, much less to recover from. I might be wrong though, cuz my sample size is small, but it's a good backbone to start off from.

loolucas95, post: 63978, member: 36765

Hello everyone!

After many years of observing from the sidelines, I've finally made the mental (and financial ><) plunge to commit to this amazing sport as part of my quarter-life crisis roadmap. This is my 3rd month training and I am still fine tuning my recovery landmarks. I am an even newer member of GG, just only a day old, so still getting the hang of this UI.

I would love to pick people's brains here, particularly those that juggle BJJ and another sport, and maybe give others insight as well based on my experience.

Background: I am a competitive powerlifter but only making it to national level (UK/Ireland) :(. Was a competitive rock climber as well back in some Asian/EU circuits. So I do have experience juggling two sports for the majority of the last 7-10 years. I coach university powerlifting teams and international-level athletes in London. I got into studying BJJ about 5 years ago after being approached by the university BJJ club to work on creating S&C programs to prep their athletes for tournaments (also cuz I was under JTS around the time Chad went mainstream into BJJ HAHA). I believe I have a solid foundation and good understanding of S&C and overall sport training principles, but always willing to learn more as there is so much we do not know in this space and I find a lot of my learning epiphanies come from anecdotes from athletes of all backgrounds.

The biggest difference I experience adding BJJ to the mix is the unpredictability of a BJJ training session. With climbing/lifting, majority of the time I can quantify the amount of training stress I want to accrue, i.e. a hard/light training session is very easy to plan and amount of recovery needed is predictable. Maybe it's a bit premature of me to be asking this as a white belt, but I am told by higher belts, especially those that lift, that as I get better, I will be able to quantify and plan total stress I want to attain going into a session, i.e. "light"/"hard" rolling. I've gobbled up almost everything JTS/CWS/Mike Israetel/Jocko Willink has to say about the topic, but finding it challenging to put it into practice... I feel the same (i.e. sore af, bruised, joint immobility, etc.) regardless if I go into a session with the intention of going hard or just "chill rolling" or just telling my sparring partner what I want. I also don't want to be that guy that just becomes a starfish, tapping out early, or give little/no resistance. First question:

1. Regarding dialing intensity of training sessions: Does anyone have insights/advice into this? Does it get better? Am I just fragile in the BJJ sense HAHA?

I have many more questions, but I will start with this first just to see if I can get the ball rolling on this thread. I just want to bounce ideas off people and maybe gain insight I would not have been able to with my background.

Next, what are your goal for BJJ? One way to go could be to try to stay as relaxed as possible during bjj lessons/rolling and focus on timing and technique. If you get tired, you have used your strength, not your technique.

So BJJ is more like recovery sessions. If you miss your timing, tap - don’t muscle your way to safety.

You could also have one session a week when you allow your self to use your strength…

Morning yoga has helped me to improve my recovery which has allowed me to continue lifting 4x a week while also training BJJ. Even more important is sleep, sleep enough for your body to recover and it will treat you well

TL;DR: It’s possible. Experiment and track down how your body responds to different types of scheduling.

I was doing 3 times per week powerlifting training before I started bjj a few months ago. Since I wanted to make the most out of bjj I had to find a way to program my weights training so that a) I don’t feel like a bag of potatoes when rolling and b) still be able to lift weights.
After watching carefully the jts video and doing some experiments on changing my weights training schedule and recording how that affected me physically both for bjj and weights training, I ended up splitting my powerlifting schedule from 3 times per week to 5 times per week.

What this actually means is that now I have 1 hard weights day which I schedule to be on Monday, 1 medium day (usually Wednesday or Thursday) and 3 easy to low medium days. In terms of bjj this actually means that I can train every day except maybe the day I hard lift. I leave the weekends to be full rest days and I try to have at least 6hours gap between a powerlifting training and bjj. Except the hard and medium days I can decide whether I want to train bjj in the morning and hit the weights in the evening or vice versa. If I go for bjj training on a hard/medium day, I try to focus more on technique and less on speed/stamina/strength. Which means that I get submitted more easily in some cases because of my low stamina or speed. But I don’t care since I am well aware of my physical condition at that point and my goal for that day’s rolling.
I’ve been following this schedule for more than a month now and it seems to be clicking great for me. I’d really love to add a conditioning day/workout but honestly I feel like my body and/or mental health will crash if I do. That’s why I prefer to take full two days off on weekends so that I can fully recharge properly. At some point, open mat day which is on Saturday will be my way of doing some conditioning and bjj at the same time but not yet.

It goes without saying that especially since you’re a competitive powerlifter, nutrition and sleep are more important than anything else.
What works for me might not work for you, but I thought I’d share my experience since we have some things in common (new to bjj and powerlifting in parallel). The only caveat about my schedule is that it has small room for skipping days. But when life happens and for example I miss one easy day, I squeeze it together with another easy day and I get a low medium intensity day (affects bjj rolling in the way I mentioned earlier).

I have been weight training since I was 14 (I'm 52). What helped me reach my strength goals is that I didn't start BJJ till my mid 30's. Now that I'm on the downside of my peak (I've lost significant strength and size) weight training 3 days a week gets it done for me goals wise. I only train BJJ 2 days a week but it's the balance I can consistently pull off. If I had to I could probably drop to 2 days with the weights and 3 days on the mats.

loolucas95, post: 63978, member: 36765

Regarding dialing intensity of training sessions: Does anyone have insights/advice into this? Does it get better? Am I just fragile in the BJJ sense HAHA?

The more skill you gain relative to your training partners the more control you have over where the roll goes. Skillful higher belts can use white belts almost as active drilling.

As a powerlifter you probably have plenty of explosive strength. Maybe forcing things through using it? A way to lower the intensity is to focus on timing to make moves work. Sweeping or escaping when you feel their weight on top shifts.