Category Archives: Health & Nutrition
Choke Recovery in BJJ and Submission Grappling
The first time I saw someone choked unconscious it scared the crap out of me. And it was made worse by the fact that it was a friend of mine…
It was many years ago at a local tournament. My friend was winning his match but got caught in a sneaky gi choke. (more…)
How to Stay Fit on Holiday
How many people do you know who gained 10 lbs or more over a relatively short trip to an all-inclusive resort, or a week of Christmas celebration? The holiday bulge phenomenon is really, really common. And maybe you’ve even experienced it yourself… (more…)
Yesterday I was training my side mount escapes. My partner and I repeatedly started with me pinned, and then we worked until I got out or until someone tapped.
Well I got sloppy and ended up on the receiving end of this rather horrendous armlock/choke/neck crank technique that’s one of Marcus Soares’s signature moves. (more…)
A few weeks ago I wrote about getting an inguinal hernia on New Year’s Day and my subsequent surgery.
(For those of you who don’t know, this type of hernia is when your intestines start protruding through a weakness or tear in your abdominal wall and show up as a bulge on the outside of your belly. (more…)
Off to the Glue Factory?
Here’s a question I received recently:
Q: “I’m 56 years old and in pretty good health except for a few old injuries. My question is whether it is it too late for me to start training in grappling without wrecking my body too badly? (I’m not interested in competition).” (more…)
Well here we are, roughly 5 weeks after New Year’s Eve and resolution-making season. Have you made progress on your goals? If not, then here is a harsh but great quote by Merlin Mann on getting your ass in gear: (more…)
Functional Training Gone Bad
Today I’m going to tell you about one of the sillier ideas I’ve ever had…
About 10 years ago I got interested in functional training and sports specific exercises. I wanted to get away from the Pec Deck and do exercises that more closely mimicked the movements I was using on a daily basis in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, judo and wrestling. (more…)
Catch and Release - What to do if your opponent just won't tap?
Back when I was mostly training in Judo I heard that there were some traditional dojos in Japan where tapping out to a choke was frowned upon – even in club sparring sessions you were supposed to fight the choke right to the bitter end (more…)
The Two Meanings of the Tap
Tapping out is sending a message to your opponent. The most common message is “OK, you got me with that submission. Now let me go”
Many grapplers don’t realize that tapping out can also be used to send a different message (more…)
The Pre-Fight Check In
A few days ago, in class, it was time to spar. I walked over to an older white belt, new to the club, who was standing by himself at the edge of the mat. I introduced myself and asked if he wanted to do some rolling. (more…)
The Stiff Arm (in Grappling)
The stiff arm on the Heisman Trophy is an iconic posture in football, and it is used by players in every single game. In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, however, the stiff arm has a bit of a bad rap. (more…)
Train Hard, Recover Smart
Quick: what’s the most important meal of the day?
If you said “breakfast” then you’re wrong, at least if you’re a hard-training combat athlete. According to Martin Rooney, author of ‘Training For Warriors, the Team Renzo Gracie Workout’, the two most important meals of the day are your pre and post-workout meals.
Senior Jiu-jitsu
Stephan’s note: todays’s tip is brought to you a guest columnist, my friend Don Whitefield (www.jiujitsulife.com). Not only does he offer good advice for older BJJ players, but if young punks were to adopt some of the advice I guarantee they’d get better faster… (more…)
We’ve been discussing injuries a lot recently, and it seems to have hit a chord with the Grapplearts readership. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I wanted to discuss one more thing before we leave this topic. (more…)
The Simplest Way to Avoid Injury
Several years ago I found myself waiting for a Jean Jacques Machado seminar to start: I was sitting on the mat, watching people train, and chatting with a friend. Jean Jacques, the jiu-jitsu superstar, strolled over to us and told me something that I think about almost every time I train. (more…)
Several tips ago I gave some advice to a reader who had suffered a rather terrible string of orthopedic injuries while training in MMA . I also opened up the conversation to other readers of this newsletter and invited comments on several martial arts forums. (more…)
A reader writes:
Q: “I’m in my forties and and started MMA training a few years ago. Since then I have had many injuries including a shattered elbow, a torn knee, separations in both shoulders, and many, many more minor injuries. (more…)
A few weeks ago I was doing some standing pummeling; both my partner and I were fighting to get underhook positions in the clinch (some things you can do from an underhook). (more…)
I Can't Run: The Excuse List
If you are a longtime reader of this newsletter you know that I think very highly of running as a conditioning method. Long runs, sprints, hill runs – as you can see from the following articles I think that they are all great. (more…)
Q: You’ve previously discussed dangerous submissions. Do you think that the twister spine lock is a dangerous submission? How dangerous is the twister compared to other submissions, say something like a toehold? (more…)
Monitoring Morning Heart Rate
Longtime readers will recall that I’ve written about overtraining, under-recovering and exercise-induced illness before (e.g. Don’t Get Sick and Overtraining in MMA). It sucks to have a streak of hard training sessions interrupted by the flu, and being overtrained makes catching that flu almost inevitable. (more…)
I’ve received lots of feedback about a previous tip discussing how some methods of neck conditioning can be problematical for some people.
Grapplearts newsletter reader Kevin shared his favorite method of neck training with us: (more…)
The Pros and Cons of Bridging
Neck bridging is an exercise that is unique to the grappling arts. It is also controversial.
Broadly speaking, there are two main ways of bridging: the backwards neck bridge (belly to the sky) or a forwards neck bridge (where you are belly-down to the mat). (more…)
Cutting Weight: A Rant
Today I want to write about a practice I don’t like and don’t endorse, but that is probably here to stay: cutting weight to get into a lower weight bracket for competition. (more…)
The Berserker
There’s one at almost every club. The guy who can’t lose. The guy who always goes 100%. The guy who applies every submission with speed and power. The guy who fights as if his life depends on it. (more…)
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