Taking care of yourself is the single most important thing you must do to maintain a long and healthy Brazlian Jiu jitsu career. Jiu Jitsu, like any contact sport, can leave you with chronic injuries that hamper your ability to train and while some injuries are unavoidable or accidental, there are many things you can do to minimize your risk of sustaining them.
Warm Up
The idea of a warmup is often scoffed at by practitioners who feel it is a waste of time and eating away at precious minutes of training. There are some who may never do a warmup and never sustain a serious injury and some who always warm up and do become injured but looking to these cases to inform our feelings about warmups is an example of survivorship bias. Research shows that dynamic warmups that stretch your muscles through movement increases elasticity and blood flow to your muscles and joints, offering additional flexibility and range of motion that could be the difference between a tap and a tear. Examples of dynamic warmups include 90/90’s, lunges, squats, high knees, shoulder inversions/extraversion, etc. All of these movements use motion to activate your muscles and prepare them for your roll. Your warmup should be tailored to your needs. If you already have bad knees, spend more time getting those joints moving than you spend on your other joints. Above all, Jiu jitsu is a sport and should be treated as such.
Know Your Limits…Tap Early, Tap Often
You need to become familiar with your flexibility, strength, and stamina as a means of preventing injury. Maybe you have elbows like Jell-O and can survive any arm bar or maybe the slightest twist of the shoulder will reinjure your rotator cuff that you first hurt in the glory days of high school football. It is important to know these things about yourself so when you feel a certain submission coming you know where your limit should be, particularly in joint locks. You must also consider your strength, as sometimes fighting a submission against a stronger opponent may lead to a sudden loss of grip that creates enough unsuspected momentum that can cause an injury. When trying guard entries, sweeps, escapes that are complex and/or require a lot of movement, it is best to ensure you know the movement well and your body can handle it. For example, hitchhiker escapes require a certain level of shoulder flexibility that not everyone may have, rolling the wrong way in a heel hook can blow out every ligament in your knee, and a rolling back takes means you need to actually be able to do a somersault. There is no shame in not knowing or not being able to do every single move that exists in jiu jitsu, just make sure you try it out slowly and in training rather than in a live roll.
Knowing your limits also comes to your stamina. Jiu Jitsu is a sport and cardiovascular capacity is a very real thing, as many of us found out in our first weeks of training. Good cardio can never hurt anyone and there is no shame in bad cardio, but don’t push yourself to dangerous levels of overexertion that can leave you feeling sick and unable to train. If you need a break, take a break. No one likes to be the person who pukes on the mats and pauses class so they can watch you wipe it up.
Cool Down
After training, it is time for static stretches. These exercises will help lactic acid disperse from your muscles and will also improve long-term flexibility. A cool down is often skipped by everyone because it is very hard to convince yourself to sit down and stretch after physically exhausting yourself or as the result of a time crunch. While not as important as a warmup for preventing injury, a cool down stretch will help your muscles feel better the next day, hopefully inspiring you to train more, and the added flexibility will help guard you from a sprain or tear in a roll.
Recovery
Jiu Jitsu is a sport. You need to nourish your body if you want to perform well and recover effectively. Hydration is far more important than people realize, and athletic performance drastically decreases as hydration decreases. Stay hydrated throughout the day, always bring a water bottle to class, and when your coach offers a water break, make sure to take it. Smaller gyms or gyms with poor ventilation/HVAC can allow very high humidity during large classes which will increase perspiration, make sure you are replenishing this lost water. Eating throughout the day is also important so you have energy during training but making sure you eat after training is even more important. You are burning a lot of calories and breaking down muscle and this needs to be replenished with carbs and proteins. It honestly does not really matter what you eat as long as you eat something. Some foods are better than others for recovery, but all foods are better than nothing. Failure to eat properly can both limit muscle growth (which also applies to cardio) and can lead to injury if your muscles remain malnourished for too long.
Be a good training partner to your teammates and to yourself. You are the person you are going to roll with the most in your life and taking care of yourself physically and mentally is crucial to having a long and enjoyable career in jiu jitsu.
