Breathing
A fundamental to life is proper breathing, especially at high altitudes. It is a well known fact that breathing at high altitudes is challenging. When the outside air pressure is lower than inside your lungs, it is difficult to breathe in the thinner air, making it harder to pump oxygen throughout your body. It is equally as hard to breathe while practicing jiu jitsu with someone’s body weight on top of you. When the human body struggles to breathe, its respiration rate increases in order to bring in more oxygen. Here are a few breathing techniques to ease your lungs:
Slow down your breathing rate and take deep breaths. Focus on breathing slowly and deeply until your stomach expands. Avoid breathing quick and shallow breaths.
Practice the pressure breathing technique in order to increase how much carbon dioxide you exhale. Try pursing your lips while you exhale with a little force. Avoid overexertion by slowing your pace and slowing your breath in order to continue exercising consistently without pauses.
Breathing the correct way has many benefits; it will calm down your nervous system, nourish internal organs, help build up your immunity, and most importantly, give you more energy. Practicing correct breathing during jiu-jitsu will help prepare you for your next 14’er!
Serenity
Serenity with jiu jitsu will come in two forms; the jiu jitsu journey itself and healthy breathing.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference. This is the essence of jiu jitsu. Jiu jitsu gives us a path to a deeper awareness of self through acceptance, courage, and change. A peaceful body brings a peaceful mind.
Acceptance brings serenity. Accepting the fact that there are things out of your control. Accepting the fact that wisdom does not come immediately, instead, through training and time. Accepting the fact that you cannot control what others do, only what you do. Accepting change. Accepting everyone no matter the differences, because once we step on the mat, we are all one.
It takes courage to get off the couch and attend class, it takes courage to step outside of your comfort zone, and it takes courage to become part of a BJJ family.
Healthy breathing will allow deepening meditations and healing through focus and relaxation. When you learn how to focus on your breathing, your body will restore its equilibrium. It will reduce the effects of everything else going on in your life and all of the negative influences on your health. Once your body inhales and exhales smoothly into equilibrium, it brings clarity and comfort. There is a clear balance between breathing pressures that can be blocked by fatigue or stress. Prana is a breath that influences the sympathetic nervous system which regulates many bodily functions. Prana is also a universal energy that balances the body to the mind, the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system, and the conscious to the unconscious. By controlling your breathing you take control of your own body, your inner spirit, your emotions, and your mind. All very necessary tools to improve your Colorado lifestyle.
Adversity and Mental Blocks
Jiu jitsu is a challenging sport but the tools learned from jiu jitsu on how to overcome adversity and mental blocks will definitely help you attack your next 14’er or marathon. Jiu jitsu builds your confidence in yourself and your ability to defend yourself. There will be times in your BJJ career where you feel stuck or aren’t quite getting a move and you’ll want to quit. You can quit or you can stick with it and succeed. Once you succeed you will instill a belief in yourself and silence any self doubt. BJJ forces you to take control of your life and embrace the unknown. Jiu jitsu teaches you to only focus on what you have control over. Jiu jitsu keeps you positive and optimistic, even when you’re tapping from a choke. You don’t always learn just from winning, but you learn more from losing. You learn how to accept loss, how to adapt, how to change and never give up.
Muscle Building
We’re not talking body building strength, rather, actual building of the muscles in your body. With jiu jitsu, you are using muscles in your body that you have never used before, and with muscles, you truly lose it if you don’t use it. Therefore, once you train those muscles, you’ll get a good growth stimulus. You body will automatically send nutrients to that area to start rebuilding itself to grow stronger. There are over 600 skeletal muscles in the human body. Imagine all of the new muscles you will use during a jiu jitsu roll that you have never used before. Those will transfer to other aspects of Colorado living, such as hiking, white water rafting, rock climbing, and mountain biking; the advantages are limitless!
Stamina and Endurance
Have you noticed many athletes train at higher altitudes to prepare their body before a tournament/fight/ or game? At higher altitudes, the air is thinner. Your working muscles require more than what you’re able to breathe in one breath because there are less oxygen molecules. Your body will then create more red blood cells to compensate for the decrease in oxygen. Let’s just say, it takes time and work. Jiu jitsu is sometimes viewed as a sport that doesn’t give you the best workout, but jiu jitsu will undoubtedly help build your stamina and endurance. Oftentimes, new people are surprised at how gassed and exhausted they are after just one roll. It truly is a great workout and will assist you in other high altitude activities.
