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Don’t make this classic training error!

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

About 10 years ago I was talking to a pioneer of early MMA. This fighter trained all the time, even between fights.

But whenever he had a fight coming up he’d go absolutely mental and grind himself down into an exhausted mess.

For example, he’d start training 3 or 4 times a day, which is already pretty hardcore.

But then he’d start doing even more. Like adding a long-distance run from his home to the training facility. And then training. And then adding a second run AFTER training back to his home. These runs added at least an extra hour and a half of exercise to his already excessive regime.

Not surprisingly he was continually injured. And continually sick. And sometimes he’d lose fights to guys he could’ve easily murdered in the gym!

This was all because of something called ‘overtraining.’

Overtraining is basically breaking your body down faster than it can recover.

Because of these conversations I ended up doing a lot of research about overtraining. I’m not sure that that any of this research ever helped changed this guy’s mind – as far as I could tell he continued with the status quo – but I certainly learned a lot for myself.

So I summed up my newfound knowledge in a couple of slightly egg-heady articles that I then published in ‘Ultimate Athlete’ magazine. Unfortunately this magazine is now defunct, and I don’t think you can get back issues. But you can still read both articles on my website…

Here’s how to figure out whether you’re overtraining or not, and how to organize your training so you don’t overtrain:

Part 1) http://www.grapplearts.com/Overtraining-Article.htm

Part 2) Peaking and Tapering for MMA and Grappling Competition

Like the old saying goes: “take my advice, I’m not using it!”

Posted in conditioning, fitness, Injuries, overtraining, top articles | No Comments »

The Six BJJ Supplements That Really Work

Monday, January 10th, 2011

When it comes to supplements, most people either take nothing at all or far too many!

And most serious grapplers go through a phase of taking tons of supplements in hopes of boosting their jiu-jitsu game.

I went supplement-crazy myself about 8 years ago. I was taking at least 50 pills and tablets each day, including thrice-daily multivitamins… Selenium… Reishi extract… Chromium picolinate… Turmeric extract… Branched chain amino acids… Phosphatidyl serine… Etc. Etc. Etc. The list went on and on. And I continued taking all these supplements for about 6 months

So what was the effect of all these supplements? Did I get bigger? Stronger? Faster? Did my jiu-jitsu game jump up a full belt level?

No! Despite the placebo effect (more on that later) I didn’t notice ANY improvements to my strength, energy levels or recovery times.

But I did spend oodles of money on various pills, tablets and powders…

Probably the only real effect was that my urine became very expensive!

Why do so many people take so many different kinds of supplements? Here’s a few reasons off the top of my head:

1 – Wishful Thinking. Wouldn’t it just be easier if you could pop a few pills every day rather than doing the hard work to maintain a healthy diet, putting in time under heavy iron and doing cardio,

2 – Advertising. Bodybuilding magazines and fitness websites exist in order to sell supplements. I’ve followed this industry for the last 20 years and there’s ALWAYS the next best thing. Last week it was fermented Siberian yak toenail clippings, and this week it’s 2,3-dimethyl-nitro-killyouquick.

These magazines and websites wouldn’t exist if they didn’t sell supplements. It’s the advertising revenue that keeps them afloat and provides them with a reason for being.

But it’s not only the advertisements themselves – you can’t trust the ‘articles’ either. Even if they’re not getting kickbacks directly for endorsing various products, the authors of these articles are financially tied to the well-being of the magazine or website.

3 – The Placebo Effect. The placebo effect is known from medicine when a doctor ‘prescribes’ sugar pills to a patient and that person then experiences all sorts of positive results and improvements.

Basically a placebo is a drug (or a supplement) that works just because you think it’s going to work, not because of anything about the drug itself.

Scientific American summed it up by saying “belief is powerful medicine, even if the treatment itself is a sham.”

And every study that has ever looked for a placebo effect has found one…

The placebo effect is huge when it comes to sports supplements. For example, there’s nothing more convincing than a friend who swears that a certain new product is ‘the bomb’ and urges you to try it too!

If someone tells you that extract of Saccharum edule helped 50 lbs onto their bench press then you might just want to rush out and buy yourself a bucket of that supplement too. But Saccharum edule extract is just another name for table sugar….

4 – Faulty Research. The wild claims made by the supplement companies and their cronies are usually backed up by so-called ‘research.’ But when you look at it more closely, this research is usually a just a single study (or a cherry-picked selection of studies which all back up the claims being made).

But a single study proves nothing! And what’s even worse is that these studies are often small, poorly designed and improperly controlled experiments that nobody else has ever managed to duplicate.

And, by the way, the same people who did the study also own the company making the supplement…

That’s why in science nothing is ever proven until many different and unbiased researchers have found the same result.

I’ve spent enough time in academia and doing research to know how easy it would be for an unscrupulous individual to tamper with the results of a study to make it ‘prove’ whatever they want it to prove.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. When it comes to claims about sports supplements I urge EXTREME SKEPTICISM!!! Distrust everybody

So, are there any good supplements you should be taking?

I recently had a conversation with Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon Ph.D. on the topic of the science behind supplements. We were trying to figure out which sports supplements have rock-solid track records.

(By the way, Krista is the research director for the Healthy Food Bank and runs the strength training site Stumptuous.com. So she knows her nutrition inside-out. And she also trains and competes in BJJ and grappling!)

Here’s Krista’s feedback about some of the supplements which have strong evidence for really working in a sports-enhancement context (plus my own comments)!

“Hi Stephan!

In order of preference, the supplements that have real science behind them are the following:

1. Colourful fruits and veggies (e.g. dark berries, dark leafy greens, beets, red grapefruit, etc.),

Stephan’s note: Absolutely!!! The people I know who eat the least vegetables tend to have the MOST health problems. And just for the record, potatoes and rice don’t count as vegetables…

2. Protein from varied sources – check (baseline 0.75 g/lb day for average people; 1 g/lb per day for athletes).

Stephan’s Note: that means if you’re an actively training 200 lb grappler then you should be consuming about 200 grams of protein every day.

3. Fish oil – yes, very useful. (5-15 g daily)

Stephan’s note: this is a LOT more fish oil than most people take. Some recent studies suggest that you should be taking 900 mg of DHA, which is a component of fish oil, daily. But the average fish oil capsule only contains about 100 mg of DHA, which means that you have to take about 9 capsules a day to get your DHA…

4. Vitamin D – 2000-4000 IU daily in the winter, purposeful sun exposure in summer.

Stephan’s note: in the winter months I take about four vitamin D tablets a day, which works out to 4000 IU. You definitely need Vitamin D if you live in northern climes, but don’t overdo it with this one – it IS possible to poison yourself with this vitamin if you take too much of it.

5. Creatine for athletes doing strength/power work.

Stephan’s note: I personally don’t take creatine all that often unless I’m trying to get ready for a specific event. Also note that some people don’t respond to creatine, but for most people supplementing with 2 grams a day for a month will add about 5 lbs and a fair bit of strength if they’re also weightlifting at the same time.

6. Caffeine in SMALL doses (50-100 mg, about 1/2 to 3/4 cup coffee), 1 hour before training.

Stephan’s note: I don’t drink coffee, but if you’ve ever met me then you know that I’ve got a thing for dark chocolate. So I guess I’m ‘supplementing’ with caffeine in my own way

There are other supplements of course. For example, BCAAs (Branch Chain Amino Acids) are definitely well corroborated, but if folks get the first four items I mentioned right (or, frankly, even just the first two items), then things like BCAA are really just gravy. In my experience, almost nobody, even athletes, is really even doing #1 and #2 properly. Anyone who nails #1 and #2 consistently and correctly should see a significant increase in performance, wellbeing, and recovery.

And the big one, that trumps pretty much all others: SLEEP. If you get 30-60 min more sleep per night consistently, it kicks the ass of nearly any supplement! For the dudes in your audience, sleep bumps up regular endogeneous testosterone production more than just about anything else.”

Posted in nutrition, overtraining, physical attributes, training, women | No Comments »

Coming Back from a Training Layoff

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Coming back to training after a layoff is a tricky thing. There is a real danger that you jump back into full intensity training and re-injure yourself right off the bat (especially if you’ve been gone for a while and/or are coming back from an injury).

No, you need to ease back into training. Give your body some time to ‘remember’ what it used to do and ramp up your intensity slowly.

I actually have some authority to dispense advice here, because I’m coming back from a training layoff myself.

Three months ago, in November, I was working like crazy on some new grappling instructional products. Filming, producing, editing, writing and quality control took up almost all my time. I trained, but not very much.

Two months ago I injured my chest. This interfered with most aspects of my training, and so I was only on the mats once or twice a week in December.

One and a half months ago – on New Year’s Day no less – I was shocked to find out that I had a hernia (a direct inguinal hernia, to be precise). It didn’t hurt, but I really didn’t want to make it worse, and so I stopped ALL training and ALL conditioning until my surgery.

Three weeks ago I had surgery, during which they lined my abdominal wall with a prolene mesh. The recovery has gone well, and I’ve just been cleared to get back to strenuous physical actiivity

So I didn’t train much for a couple of months, and then not at all for the last 6 weeks. I’m recovering from two injuries and one surgery. Should I just jump back into class and start training, hell bent for leather?

Obviously not.

I really, really want to get back to training, but I’ll have to make haste slowly. It would really suck to have my repaired hernia explode again (or to injure myself somewhere else).

My back-to-the-mats program has consisted of two things so far:

Easy bodyweight exercises: pushups, pullups, squats, shrimping, hip heists, etc. Nothing too strenuous and certainly nothing to failure.
Non-competitive partner flow drills for repetition of basic grappling techniques. And I’m only using sane, in-control, and relatively light partners for this drilling.

I feel like a bit of a wimp going so light and easy, but there are three things I’m trying to do with this program. I’m trying to:

Get my body used to the physical strain of exercising again.
To recover a bit of timing and help my body to remember how to move like a grappler.
To test things out in a nice controlled environment. If either injury flares up again, I want that to happen in a controlled setting, and not with some bozo doing a flying knee-on-belly technique on me in sparring.

In another couple of days I’ll start with some (light) sparring. And here I’m going to pick and choose my partners very carefully: lighter guys with self control only, thank you very much.

For once I’m taking my own advice, and it feels weird!

Posted in drills, Injuries, overtraining, training | No Comments »

Off to the Glue Factory?

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

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).“

A: I’ve actually addressed this topic quite often in the past few years (maybe that’s because I’m turning 40 this summer).

In any case, my answer is a guarded ‘Yes.’ You can definitely start training and make progress, BUT it depends on a few critical factors:

You HAVE to be careful
You HAVE to go slow when you spar, and be ready to tap out when you get caught in submissions (or even awkward positions).
You HAVE to watch out for overtraining (also known as under-recovery)
You probably SHOULDN’T train at a school with a lot of young studs who all want to fight in the UFC
You might want to consider taking BJJ, not submission grappling. There is often a lot of testosterone and explosive movement in submission grappling, which tends to lead to worse injuries than the more controlled and methodical sparring in BJJ.

And here is some more reading that you might want to do before you start:

To balance all this out, keep in mind that you’re still younger than my teacher (and inspiration) Dan Inosanto when he started Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And now he’s a very respectable BJJ black belt…

Good Luck!

Posted in Injuries, older grapplers, overtraining, teachers, training | No Comments »

Some Housekeeping (Conditioning Q&A)

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Today I want to tackle a bit of newsletter housekeeping. A series of recent newsletters on conditioning have generated a lot of feedback, and more than a few questions.

First, I want to sincerely thank everyone who wrote in, even if I wasn’t able to respond to every email personally (there were too many). Please rest assured that I did read and appreciate every single comment.

Secondly, let me take a stab at answering a cross-section of the questions posed by you, the readership:

Q: I just started up with your newsletter and really enjoy it. One thing you did not mention in Mat Time vs. Conditioning Time article is periodization. Amateurs can train as if they are pre-season, in-season, and post-season. This is a reasonable way to train to make sure time is given not to overtrain and to combat “stale” training.

A: I completely agree that periodization can be used to prevent overtraining – leaving it out of that article was an oversight on my part. Periodization systematically varies the quantity and intensity of your training over the course of weeks and months, and prevents the burnout that comes from training at full intensity all year long.

I have previously discussed periodization in an article on peaking and tapering for competition, and it’s still a good read for anyone interested in the topic.

Q: How strict is the form on your pull ups. Do you do a dead hang before pulling up, or are your arms a little bent.

A: It depends. I usually start out a set pretty strict (unless I’m doing kipping-style pull ups), but then as I start getting tired I sometimes start cheating a little in order to crank out a few more reps. Cheating might include a (small) kick with the legs, or only going to 95% arm extension instead of straightening them the whole way.

Q: In a previous article where you wrote about recovery from workouts you mentioned proportions of carbs and protein for pre and post workouts. May I ask what brand you use for getting these?

A: Any bodybuilding or health food store has lots and lots of pre and post-workout recovery mixes. I don’t use any of them, for three reasons. First, they are expensive. Second, most of them contain whey or soy protein, both of which I try to avoid (allergic to whey, leery of soy). Third, for marketing reasons many of them contain exotic chemical mixtures, the long term effects of which have not been sufficiently studied and the risks of which are not understood.

I usually brew up my own mixture, using gatorade or powerade crystals (carbohydrates and electrolytes), maltodextrin powder (a carbohydrate) and lots of water. Sometimes I add hemp protein to the mix, but usually I just eat a little bit of protein-containing ‘real food’ together with the drink.

Finally, sometimes I just go berserk with my juicer and enjoy a carrot-watermelon-parsley-cukecumber juice, or whatever other veggie and fruit concoction strikes my fancy at the time. It may not be the exact scientific ideal every single time, but it still helps my body recover and it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing at all.

Q: Would you explain in a little more detail the back hypers and the hanging knee raises?

A: Someday I might write an ebook on this topic with detailed pictures and instructions, but until then you’ll have to make do with these:

Back Hyperextensions: you can see this exercise in these pictures here, in this little video loop here, as well as in the bonus section of my Dynamic Kneebars DVD. Back extensions are a great injury prevention exercise, as well as a very functional grappling exercise (which is why this exercise was included as part of the bonus in the video in the first place).

Hanging Knee Raises: I wrote about this exercise in a previous tip on the half guard, of all things. Note that you DON’T necessarily need expensive ab slings to do this exercise: you can try it out first by fastening two weighlifting belts around a pullup bar.

Q: Do you do workouts like you described every day or take days off?

A: I definitely, absolutely take days off!! In fact, in an average week I only do about 3 conditioning sessions, but every week is different.

One of my training challenges is that my firefighting schedule is on an 8 day rotation, whereas the rest of the world, including dojo schedules and training partners, function on a 7 day rotation. On a week when I get more mat time in I do less conditioning, and when I can’t do any rolling I do more conditioning.

Posted in conditioning, overtraining | No Comments »

Slumps Vs. Plateaus

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

Acquiring new skill sets and polishing your existing skills is the very essence of training. When everything is working properly and you’re surfing up the learning curve it is an exhilarating process. The learning curve isn’t always smooth, however, and sometimes you run into things called slumps and plateaus. These two phenomena have some similarities, but are different.

In a slump your skills and performance deteriorate. Suddenly you have no gas, no coordination, and are always a step behind in sparring. Those sparring partners you usually dominate start dominating you, tapping you out with ease.

Oftentimes there is an obvious reason for the slump (at least in retrospect). Maybe it was because you were overtrained, or fighting off a cold, or emotionally drained from work, or sleeping badly, or not training enough. In any case, you usually figure it out and your learning curve starts to go head in the right direction again. Most slumps are fairly short, on the scale of days to a few weeks. It’s very frustrating while it’s happening, but at least it’s over quickly.

A plateau, on the other hand, happens when you stop making progress and get stuck at the same skill and performance level for a long time. You might be training just as hard as you always have, but you’re just not getting any better.

Plateaus usually last longer than slumps, especially as you become more skilled. Plateaus typically last one to several months, and sometimes as long as half a year. To make matters worse, during this time your highly inconsiderate training partners insist on continuing to make progress, widening the gulf and leaving you in the dust.

Plateaus are usually more demoralizing than slumps. Anyone can handle having a bad day or two, but training hard and not seeing any obvious benefits or improvements from training is hard on the ego and can make anyone question themselves.

The underlying cause for skill plateaus is hard to diagnose, and definitely harder than figuring out why someone is in a slump. Furthermore, without knowing the cause for a plateau it’s hard to prescribe a cure, so often one is just left with a shotgun approach to solving the problem. Sometimes people have some success in ending a plateau by changing their techniques, training regimen, diet or the amount of sleep they get, but the fact of the matter is that most people’s skills improve in little steps, not in a smooth line. You work and you work and you work and then, all of a sudden, BAM! Your game jumps up one or two levels overnight!

My advice for dealing with plateaus: maybe try shaking things up in your training or conditioning routine, but mainly try not to get too discouraged and remember that everyone goes through this at some point. Definitely hang in there: everyone gets better eventually!

Posted in Injuries, overtraining, the mental aspect | No Comments »

Train Hard, Recover Smart

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

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. Furthermore, Mr. Rooney isn’t alone in this belief: there is research on sports as diverse as endurance running and weightlifting showing very significant effects of preworkout, and especially postworkout, nutrition.

Getting some extra liquid, carbohydrates and protein into your body shortly BEFORE a workout allows you to train harder, longer, and minimizes muscle damage and compromise to your immune system during your workout.

Eating (or drinking) within 45 minutes AFTER exercise actually helps heal your body, builds new muscle, and replenishes your body’s energy stores so that you’ll feel fresh for your next workout. Lack of proper postworkout nutrition is a huge contributing factor in overtraining. If you often feel like a stumbling zombie for 24 hours after intense training then the first thing you should try is making sure that you get good nutrition into your body soon after the training stops. If you’re doing multiple workouts in a day then then postworkout nutrition is often the only thing between you and total system breakdown.

It is important that your post-workout meal be consumed soon after your workout (within 45 minutes). After training your body experiences an ‘anabolic window’, during which the cells of your body are especially able to absorb and use nutrients. This window starts to close soon after you stop training, so it is better to get something into your belly fast rather than waiting and having the perfect meal two hours later.

OK, so what should these meals look like? Most people agree that the pre and post workout ‘meals’ should be in liquid form, both to provide you with liquid to replace lost sweat and to speed absorption of the nutrients. Basically we’re talking about an athlete’s version of the bodybuilder’s shake.

THE PREWORKOUT MEAL (c. 10 minutes before exercise)
This is a chance to get some liquid, fuel (sugar and carbohydrates) and electrolytes into your body before your workout, giving it something to burn up and sweat out. The addition of a small amount of protein helps limit muscle breakdown. A typical preworkout meal might consist of:

12 oz of water
20 to 30 grams of carbohydrates (glucose, sucrose and/or maltodextrin)
5 to 10 grams of protein (e.g. whey protein)
electrolytes (mostly sodium, potassium and magnesium)

THE POSTWORKOUT MEAL (within 45 minutes of finishing exercise)
This feeding gets nutrients into your body at a time when it needs them most and also when it is most receptive to them (the ‘anabolic window’ window again). A typical postworkout meal might look like this:

Lots of water
20 to 30 grams protein
80 to 100 grams carbohydrate
electrolytes (e.g. sodium, potassium, magnesium)

These formulations have a lot of carbohydrates, and that’s not random or accidental. Many athletes are so fixated on protein that they overlook carbohydrates, but carbs help replenish your body’s energy supplies AND have stimulate your body to build more muscle. If I had to choose between a postworkout meal consisting either of carbs or protein I’d go with the carbohydrates every time (but obviously having a mix of protein and carbohydrate is the best).

You can buy powdered shake mixes that purport to give you the exact right mixture of these ingredients, typically with the addition of some secret or proprietary compounds (exotics like black mamba venom, or fancy chemical names like 2,3-diethyl-dichloro-cancer-some-day). While these mixtures are convenient they are also very expensive.

A cheaper alternative is to buy bulk powdered sportsdrink (Gatorade, Powerade, etc), maltodextrin (an easily absorbed carbohydrate) and protein powder (whey, hemp, egg, etc.). Play mad scientist, mixing up different concoctions using water or diluted fruit juice as a base until you find a mixture with flavor and consistency that you like. Feel free to experiment: for example I eventually discovered that my body reacts quite badly to whey protein and now use a variety of other proteins instead.

I can’t say that I follow these guidelines religiously, but the bottom line is to try and get something into your belly immediately before and immediately after exercise. If all you can get your hands on is a small bottle of Powerade or Gatorade then that is still way better than having nothing at all. Please note that I’ve skipped over a lot of chemistry and physiology in this article: if you want to know more about this topic check out just about any sports nutrition book (‘Nutrient Timing’ by Ivy and Portman is one of my favorites).

Train hard, recover smart!

Posted in conditioning, Injuries, overtraining | No Comments »

Always Injured, the Feedback

Monday, February 18th, 2008

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. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, and here is what they had to say:

“I have realized I was getting injured when I was was gassing. With better cardio, I stayed more out of trouble.”
“Nutrition plays a huge role in injury prevention. Bones and ligaments, like muscles, need fuel to regenerate. Fish oil helps for inflammation (I use Carlson’s fish oil.)”
“Being fat is an invitation for an injury. Your body isn’t as balanced, and you’re carrying around more weight than you should.”
“The biggest thing to prevent injuries and especially reoccuring injuries is to understand what cause them, meaning the ANGLES your body is in, and where the PRESSURE is being applied to you and don’t let it get in that position again even if you have to tap for no apparent reason. I have stopped sparring matches on many occasions and my partner was like “what happened?”, I just tell them the situation and let them have to closest position with them being in advantage and restart. I have never had someone complain about me doing that.”
“Find a sports medicine doctor not a primary care…makes a world of difference!!!”
“Warm up properly. Nearly every injury I’ve received in judo has been from going hard early in the session before I’m warm and loosened up.”
“I find (as a 60 year old fighter) that my injuries come from rolling with guys that weigh 50, 75 100 or more pounds heavier than me…. At my age i would like to work with more guys in my weight class. It would be easier and i would develop quicker if i could just work with someone in my weight class.”
“Sometimes it is important to turn it up a notch and escalate your sparring. Recently I sparred with some MMA guys who outweighed me and all went 110% in their sparring. When I took it easy I found myself in potentially dangerous situations (e.g. stacked on the back of my neck), but when I went all out and got to the top position I was alright for the rest of the match. It’s important to be aware of your training partners’ tendencies, but it’s also really important to know yourself too.
“There’s a big difference between being 25 and being 37 or 40. I am now going to a traditional BJJ class that focuses on technique. That’s what I need to do to improve. Rolling with a bunch of testosterone junkies isn’t going to make me better. My goals are to (1) not get hurt, (2) have fun, and (3) improve my BJJ. In that order, since they all depend on #1.”

Posted in Injuries, overtraining, training | No Comments »

Always Injured

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

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. A sane person would stop training MMA, but i just can’t give it up. I try to minimize injuries by warming up and stretching and doing some light weight training, but even now, just rolling with other guys, I get injured. Is it possible that my body just isn’t cut out for this stuff? What should I do?”

A: It sounds like you have had a very bad string of injuries. There is definitely a problem, but without knowing you personally it is really, really hard to diagnose what is going on. This rate of injury is NOT normal, even for most MMA clubs. In addition to the pain of injury and the consequences for your body down the road, being injured all the time really cuts into your training and prevents you from reaching your full potential.

An obvious possibility is that you are training at a club full of very aggressive people, for whom every sparring session is a battle to the death. An alternative possibility is that it is YOU who is going way too hard in sparring, refusing to tap, etc. Either way, a simple way to diagnose whether you are in a hyperaggressive environment is to think about the other MMA and grappling clubs in your town: if you think that they are all way too mellow and laid back then it could actually be indicating that YOU are in the dysfunctional and counterproductive training environment.

You might be overtrained which could also lead to more injuries. Many people misunderstand overtraining – “but I’m not training that hard” they say. Overtraining isn’t just about training too hard, it’s also about under-recovering. You can overtrain doing only moderate amounts of training if your diet, sleep or stress management is inadequate. All this becomes even more important as you age – you just can’t neglect your recovery the way that the average 20 year old punk can.

Finally consider that you are training in MMA, and that injury rates in MMA tend to be higher than in submission grappling (which in turn are higher than in BJJ). It’s not always true, but as a rule MMA tends to attract younger, testosterone-fueled, ego-driven competitive types, and they can often make very dangerous training partners. In addition, MMA is a no-gi sport and that means that you have a faster, more explosive pace in sparring. By contrast, the gi in BJJ slows things down and makes it more of a mental game with strong aerobic and muscular endurance challenges without as strong a focus on explosiveness.

That being said, I’ll share some ideas of where to go from here. Not all these suggestions necessarily apply in your case, and only you can figure which are relevant to your situation.

Make a mental commitment to tap out early and often when caught in bad positions.
Ask yourself it your training partners are concerned about your physical well being; are they trying to preserve their training partners?
Visit other clubs and try a class: maybe you’ve just taken up with a bunch of psychopaths at your current school. I’m not telling you to change schools, but the experience of training at another school (or even just watching a class there) can be quite informative.
Try BJJ with the gi, rather than MMA. You may find that the challenge of BJJ satisfies the same needs as your current MMA training but that the slower, more technical pace leads to less injuries. There are a lot of old, torn up Judo players in Japan who can’t do much standing Judo anymore but still tear things up in newaza (ground grappling).
Find a sane, laidback training partner and do most of your sparring with him
Do more technique drilling and less sparring
Find out about overtraining and try to figure out if your rest and nutrition is providing the recovery you need.

Good luck with your situation – I really hope that you figure it out!

Stephan Kesting
www.grapplearts.com