
It’s true that some high-level athletes recommend training every day or even multiple times a day. And it’s true that all things being equal, more training equals faster progress.
The problem is that all things are NOT always equal in this formulation. And to some extent, this advice is the product of survivor bias; you only hear from the people who did this and were successful, and not the people who tried this and destroyed their careers.
The anomalies who were able to handle daily training for some reason, now think that everyone should do it too.
The truth is that people who train hard multiple times a day are 1) genetically blessed, 2) and/or young and full of natural testosterone, and/or 3) older and heavily supplemented with unnatural testosterone and related substances.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that you really, really want to get good at jiu-jitsu as fast as possible. Because of this, you do your very best with diet, nutrition and sleep. You do lots of prehab and take care of injuries when they occur.
So if you’re doing all that can you get away with training everyday?
Well, it depends on what you mean by the word “training.”
If you mean absolutely destroying yourself on the mat every single day, then my answer is no. If you’re training that hard, then you should take one or two days off a week.
But if by “training” you mean a variety of activities, some of which are easier then others, then maybe you can get away with it.
In this case the key thing is realising that it’s OK to go light sometimes.
Not every training session needs to be back-to-back death matches interspersed only by puking in a bucket. Occasional days where you simply rep techniques, do some light positional sparring and play some skill-improving games will allow your body to recover.
If you do it correctly, some activities like easy, long, slow cardio can actually be restorative. There’s a reason that hockey and soccer players jump on the bike after a game: it helps remove waste products from the muscle.
(This is what I try to do. I try to get regular and consistent exercise on non-jiu-jitsu days and am not too picky about what form it takes.)
I should point out that your easy day could be watching a jiu-jitsu instructional while on the exercise bike or walking on the treadmill. All jiu-jitsu, even mental jiu-jitsu, counts.
Fnally, I think it’s really important to recognise the early signs of overtraining and know when to take a day (or several days) off completely. If you don’t then getting sick or injured is just a matter of time.
Most high-level sports recognize the need for variation. Nobody is more intense than powerlifters, but even they have built in rest days every week and also often do intermittent “deload weeks” where they train at significantly lower volume and intensity.
As I hinted at earlier, it’s entirely likely that your favourite influencer advocating physical grind culture is injecting steroids in his ass and snorting a mixture of ground-up Adderall and cocaine but not telling you about it. Therefore his advice may not apply to you.
I’m all for testing yourself occasionally and delving deep into the suck zone. But that should be a rare occurrence. As legendary endurance athlete Mike McCastle once said, “Train often, test rarely.”
Cheers,
Stephan Kesting