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Hi Stephan,

I have just read your article on Periodization and found it to be very informative and I have a question that relates to the topic.

I have a grappling competition in 5 weeks time. There will be a minimum of 6 fights, and each fight has the potential to last 10 minutes. My training has not been as regular as I would like and I normally roll for 50-60 minutes at medium intensity twice a week.

Looking at the time period mentioned in your article, I have about 3-4 weeks left of training, correct? Now do I continue with twice a week rolling sessions or is there anything else I can/should do to supplement?

Looking forward to your response.

Kind regards,
C.

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Hi there,

When it comes to conditioning in an ideal world, I believe in building an foundation first. Crawl before you walk. Walk before you jog. Jog before you sprint…

In practice, that means that you should probably start with longer, easier cardio sessions. A 30 minute jog, three times a week, say. Then as your joints, lungs and heart become accustomed to the strain of jogging you move on to more intense exercises like track intervals, stair sprints, tabata protocols, etc.

But if you’re impatient and willing to accept a slightly higher chance of injury, going straight to sprint work might allow you to pick the low-hanging fruit, and get some significant conditioning improvements before your tournament.  (IF you manage to avoid injury then you DO tend to get results pretty quick with anaerobic training…)

So ultimately it’s up to you to judge your initial fitness level, your familiarity with anaerobic training, and your resistance to injury. Then make a risk vs reward decision about what kind of conditioning you’re going to do.

So if you do decide to go with sprintwork you’ll probably do very hard and very intense workouts, 2 to 3 times per week.

Here are some ideas and sample workouts you could play with:

1. http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2004/08/going-anaerobic-part-1/
2. http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2004/08/going-anaerobic-part-2-some-sample-routines/
3. http://www.grapplearts.com/Blog/2004/08/going-anaerobic-part-3-more-routines/

Make sure to stop these workouts at least 4 days before the tournament to allow your body time to recover.

(It’s important to note that not everyone agrees with me about the necessity of aerobic training. In fact here’s a lengthy interview with one of the top MMA conditioning coaches who doesn’t let his athletes do traditional aerobic roadwork and ONLY uses sprintwork).

And finally, remember that doing anything is better than doing nothing. So get your butt out there: lifting, skiing, running, cross-fitting, yoga, swimming, gymnastics, rock-climing… it’s all good!

Good luck, and have fun!

He’s also my friend and a mentor.

Recently I asked my newsletter readers if there was something in particular you wanted to ask Erik.  (Hey, if you were signed up for the FREE Grappling Tips newsletter you’d have been able to ask questions too!).

Anyway, within 5 minutes the email floodgates opened and the deluge of questions started.  At last count there were more than 500 questions in the queue…

We just finished getting the interview ready for you!  Here’s just a bit of what Erik shares:

• What training with the Gracies in their ‘garage days’ was like
• How wrestling can improve your BJJ, and visa versa
• The theory of the jiu-jitsu wheel
• The strategic and tactical differences between catchwrestling and BJJ
• The key to rapid-fire submission attacks
• Erik’s philosophy on training with and without the gi
• What’s the best time to attack with leglocks
• Leglock safety tips
• How to develop a fighter’s gameplan
• Tips for defeating larger, stronger opponents
• What training with Brock Lesnar is like
• The best conditioning exercises for fighting and grappling
• A glaring weakness (and fantastic opportunity) in today’s MMA game

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There’s at least three ways you can listen to this interview:

1) Hit play on the video below, and/or
2) Right click on this link and select ‘save as’  to download the mp3 file to your computer, and/or
3) Subscribe to the Grapplearts Podcast in iTunes.

Thanks and Merry Christmas!

I want to help spread the word about BeginningBJJ.com because that’s where I offer a free eCourse tailored for the new BJJ student. Every single day I hear from people telling me how much that information has helped them (including, ironically, many higher BJJ belts and even some teachers).

One of my big plans to spread the word about BJJ in general, and about that site in particular, was to put up a lot more Youtube videos. I’ve done a bit on this front, but unfortunately I’m too busy to do as much as I want…

But now I think I’ve figured out a way to get more videos up online. There’s tons of people these days with video cameras, or web cams, and almost everyone has a friend with a video camera…

So I’ll bribe YOU to do it! A win-win-win proposition!

You’ll win because we’ll have a big draw for prizes. I’ll win because it’ll help promote my BeginningBJJ site. And BJJ newbies will win because there’ll be some helpful new content out there.

Basically I want you to shoot a short video about a single topic that could help a BJJ beginner, and I want it posted on Youtube before May 15th, 2009 (with one catch – see below).

After May 15th, when all the videos are up, I’ll give away at least 11 prizes.

The big prize is a brand new, never-been-used 32 GB iPod Touch complete with the Grapplearts Submissions app. That’s more than a $400 value. AND I’ll also send you every Grappling, BJJ or MMA app I produce in the future.

In addition I’m also giving away at least 10 Grapplearts DVDs (and if only 5 people submit videos then that means that everyone will get 2 DVDs).

Right now I KNOW that there are some of you who are saying “what could I put on video? I’ve just been doing BJJ for 2 months…” Well in those two months I’m sure that you’ve learned something that you didn’t know before. And I’m equally sure that it would be a revelation to someone else.

Your video can be as bare-bones or as fancy as you like. Crazy transitions, slow motion and text are cool, but won’t influence the judging (since it’s a draw).

Entries by beginners AND and advanced students AND grappling instructors are all welcome.

I want you to show something that really helped you when you started OR something that makes your students progress faster.

You can show a technique OR a detail OR a concept OR a mistake to avoid.

What you show can be something that you figured out for yourself OR something that someone else showed you (feel free to give credit where credit is due).

4 SIMPLE RULES FOR WINNING AN IPOD…

1. Shoot a short video with at least one tip, technique, detail or concept useful to the new grappler. It DOESN’T need to be fancy, just informative or helpful
2. Upload your video to Youtube (it’s easy, see the tutorial here)
3. Find a way to work this url into the Description box on the first upload page: http://www.beginningbjj.com (see below for examples). YOU CAN SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT, just include that url!
   
4. Shoot me an email with your name, your address and a link to the video on Youtube.

Here are two examples of how you might make reference to http://www.beginningbjj.com and fulfill step 3

Example 2 (click to enlarge)

Thank you and good luck to all the participants. Have fun!