23 April 2015

How to warm up for BJJ

BY Reza Tahar

How to warm up for BJJ

The purpose of warm up is to raise the core temperature of your body, increase the elasticity and stretch of your tendons and ligaments and to introduce more blood into your muscles to promote good blood flow. It is a prelude to even greater activity in those said areas. Therefore in BJJ we need to warm up the muscles that we are going to use a lot. This is why the warm up has to be more specific than a general warm up such as just doing some jogging or jumping jacks.

In BJJ arguably you actually use all the muscles in your body however some muscles are more likely to be used more than others such as your glutes, hamstrings and adductors. With that being said we still cannot ignore the rest of the muscles but we can emphasize the ones listed.

1. Hip escape/shrimping: This is an excellent warm up tool that you can do. Perform 20 hip escapes on each side for 2-3 sets. Hip escaping is a fundamental tool in BJJ and is a buildup for a lot of movements in BJJ due to the emphasis on hip movements. Do not focus so much on speed but instead concentrate on making the movement slow and feeling the muscles working throughout the movement. This is a warm up and if you do it too fast it can become a cardio session. 

Hip Escape: https://i1.daumcdn.net/thumb/C480x270/?fname=https://i1.daumcdn.net/svc/image/U03/tvpot_thumb/SRKXwaNOPnU$/thumb.jpg?t=1365828297794

 2. Running around the mats: This is a good overall lower limb warm up strategy. Ensure you incorporate many variations of running especially kickbacks, side shuffling, carioca and high knees. About 3-5 minutes of this with varying running styles should suffice. To involve the upper limbs you could also perform running while swinging your arms in circles in both directions.

3. Takedown lunges: It’s like going for a takedown except there’s no one in front of you, so you perform a double leg take down but instead of picking someone up you just follow through with your back leg and perform again with the opposite leg leading this time. Perform 10 reps for 2 sets.

Take Down: https://tatameonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Double-Leg-e-Single-Leg.jpg

 4. Light rolling: It’s exactly what it sounds like and is a chance for you to drill techniques with very minimal resistance from your partner. Take turns to allow each other to perform one or two moves. The point is to have flow and just keep moving without any exertion. Just get the movements in as smoothly and with as much technique as possible.

https://www.kitdalebjj.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/bjj-rolling.jpg

 5. Drilling: You can also drill moves such as arm bar from guard, or triangle choke from guard for repetitions. Doing BJJ specific movements is the best way to warm up because it uses the exact same muscles for the exact desired function.

6. Position transitioning: Practice transitioning from position to position for example. Mount -> knee on stomach -> opp knee on stomach -> side control -> north south -> opposite side control -> mount (repeat). You can come up with your own transition cycles however just ensure there is some resemblance of flow and make sure your partner gets a turn too!

Your muscles should be pretty warmed up and if you did it right you should be sweating and breathing a bit harder but not to the point where you are panting and look more like you just took a shower. If you’d like you can incorporate some stretching but it is much better to stretch after a warm up instead of before.