I’ve had the chance to spend a lot of time around jiu jitsu athletes, both on the mats with my own training partners and in the gym coaching competitors and fighters.
One thing that comes up in conversation again and again is strength training.
“How often should I lift? What exercises should I be doing?” Things like that.
So I decided to put all of my thoughts in one place.
Think of this as a bit of a brain dump on everything I’ve learned from coaching and training myself when it comes to balancing strength training with jiu jitsu.
Table of Contents
- Why Strength Training Matters for BJJ
- What Most People Get Wrong
- What is Real Strength Training?
- How Often Should You Train?
- Can You Lift Weights and Do Jiu Jitsu on the Same Day?
- Full Body vs Split Body Workouts
- Exercise Selection
- Isometric Training for Jiu Jitsu
- Reps, Sets, and Weights
- Workout Template
- Recovery
- Sample 2-Day Program
- Sample 3-Day Program
- How to Progress
- 6-Week BJJ Strength Program
Why Strength Training Matters for BJJ
Many martial artists and combat athletes ignore strength training altogether, thinking it will make them slow, bulky, or too sore to perform their skills effectively. Rest assured, this is a result of poor programming and recovery, both of which won’t be an issue after you read this article.
When you think about the impact strength training can have on your jiu-jitsu, physical qualities like speed, power, and control might come to mind. While these are all true, the main benefit of adding strength training to your routine isn’t related to performance but to injury prevention.
A strong body is a resilient body. Think of strength training as “building your armour.”
With that being said, you can’t prevent injury. Life is unpredictable, and shit happens. But you can significantly lower your risk of injury through joint-friendly strength training.
What Most People Get Wrong
1. Doing too much
Strength training for combat sports (jiu jitsu, boxing, MMA) is all about stress management. This applies whether you’re a hobbyist who simply wants to move and feel better, or a competitor looking for an edge over your opponents.
Since you already experience high levels of fatigue, your training needs to be organized in a way that allows you to build strength without taking away from your performance on the mats, or interfering with your recovery.
Most people think they need to be in the gym four to five days a week to gain any noticeable results. The average person attempting to maintain this schedule, on top of jiu jitsu and all of the other responsibilities and stresses life throws our way, will surely burn out.
Instead, consider the minimal effective dose. What’s the smallest amount of effort you need to put in to achieve your goal?
2. Program-hopping
A program is a recipe. You need to give it time to “cook.”
Many people try to find the “best” program and end up on a never-ending hamster wheel, starting and restarting a new plan each week.
Any program will work as long as you’re consistent. While some programs are better than others, a good program followed consistently will always be better than a great program done inconsistently.
3. Following a bodybuilding program
Bodybuilding programs usually follow split routines, where workouts are divided into specific muscle groups. For someone who wants to balance lifting with jiu jitsu, does it really make sense to dedicate an entire day to just “arms”?
Life doesn’t happen in isolation, and neither does grappling. Everything is full body. So you need to train that way! Sure, add some curls here and there. But keep the majority of your training focused on the major compound movements that provide the most bang for your buck.
4. Not organizing the training week
Remember that balancing strength training with jiu-jitsu is all about stress management. This begins with organizing your weekly training sessions. Ideally, you want to separate your strength training and spread it out over the week (e.g., Mon/Thu instead of Mon/Tue). I’ve included sample program templates below.
5. Neglecting mobility and recovery
You don’t get stronger from training, you get stronger by recovering from training. Training is stress. You don’t see the benefits of that stress if you don’t recover. Period.
Recovery can take many shapes, but the three major forms are sleep, nutrition, and movement.
Get seven to eight hours a night if you can. Eat protein. Do mobility.
I’ve included a recovery routine at the end of this article, which you can use after training or on your rest days to help you get the most out of your training.
Real Strength Training is Boring
Strength training is actually pretty monotonous. As with anything, you need practice and repetition in order to achieve technical mastery. Can you imagine trying to learn a new sweep or technique and only practicing it once a month? You’d be worse at jiu jitsu than I am.
This is why I like to follow the same workouts for three to four weeks before switching things up. It gives you enough time to practice your technique and progress the movements through added weight or repetitions. Since grappling is so dynamic in nature, repetition is needed for strength training to balance out the unpredictability of jiu jitsu.
One of the biggest mistakes I see inexperienced or young trainees make is switching up their workouts too often. They get bored easily and are constantly looking for new exercises in an attempt to “confuse” their muscles.
While I like to throw in some variety to keep things interesting, the majority of the results I’ve seen in the gym (personally and with my clients) has been through consistency in the fundamental exercises (see below for these movements).
Simple things done well. Or as Bruce Lee said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
How Often Should You Train?
When I write a program for my client, I look at four things:
- Injury history
- Training history
- Goals
- Schedule
All of these, particularly number four, play a huge factor when deciding the type of training split you should be following. If you’re a busy parent (is there such thing as a “not” busy parent?) trying to balance work, family, and jiu jitsu, going to the gym every day might be tough.
Less is more.
For most grapplers, whether you’re a competitor using strength training as a means to improve your performance or someone who just wants to move and feel better while still practicing jiu jitsu, two full body strength training sessions per week (performed on non-consecutive days) is optimal.
But let’s define “optimal” for a second.
Optimal is derived from the latin word, optimus, meaning “best” or “very good”.
Is a two-day split “optimal” for a bodybuilder? No.
Is a two-day split “optimal” for someone who wants to get stronger and go to jiu jitsu while still finding time for life? Absolutely.
Optimal is subjective and there are countless ways to write a program. This is just one example. The important thing is to find something you can stick with long-term. To borrow a quote from Gunnar Peterson, “If it ain’t sustainable, it ain’t successful.”
Here’s what a week of training might look like for you:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
| BJJ | Strength | BJJ | Strength | BJJ | Rest | Rest |
Can You Lift Weights and Do Jiu Jitsu On the Same Day?
Ideally, you would do them on separate days to allow for full recovery between sessions. If your schedule doesn’t allow that, let’s say because you work shifts, aim to separate your strength training and jiu jitsu by at least six hours.
If you train jiu jitsu in the evening, do your strength training in the morning. I prefer strength training earlier in the day as it allows me to get more out of my lifting while still feeling ready, sometimes even primed before jiu jitsu later in the day. This also comes down to personal preference.
Why Full Body Workouts?
My training philosophy is simple: what you do in the gym should make what you do outside the gym better.
So if you love jiu jitsu and you want to keep doing it as long as possible, then your strength training should support your grappling and not take away from it. That means your workouts need to be efficient, effective, and easy to stick to.
That’s why I gravitate toward full body strength training. For busy adults, I’ve found it’s the most practical and high-return approach, namely because:
1. They’re efficient.
If you train two days per week, you want to check off as many boxes as possible while you’re in the gym.
Full body training lets you hit every major movement pattern (i.e. muscle group) without needing to be in the gym five to six days a week. You can be more efficient with your time in the gym by pairing non-competing exercises together, effectively training the lower and upper body in one session.
2. They support recovery.
Most people are introduced to strength training with split body routines. One day you train legs, the next day you train chest, and so on. Split routines increase local fatigue and recovery demands (i.e. your muscles feel more sore) without offering much meaningful upside for grapplers or fighters.
Since the volume is typically lower than split body routines (meaning you’re doing less sets and reps per muscle group each workout) you recover better between full body workouts, allowing you to train harder without feeling banged up going into jiu jitsu.
Exercise Selection
Think movements over muscles. Multi-joint movement patterns are the foundation of your exercise selection and fall under five main categories, which are further split into respective subcategories:
- Knee-Dominant
- Parallel Stance
- Split Stance
- Single Leg Stance
- Hip-Dominant
- Bridge
- Parallel Stance
- Single Leg Stance
- Upper Body Push
- Horizontal (Push-Up)
- Horizontal (Bench Press)
- Vertical
- Upper Body Pull
- Horizontal (Row)
- Vertical (Chin-Up)
- Core
- Anti-Extension
- Anti-Rotation
- Anti-Lateral Flexion
These are your “meat and potatoes.” Each movement pattern offers countless progressions and regressions (ways to make movements more challenging or more approachable so they can be scaled to your current level).
Here are some examples of exercises for each movement category.
- Knee-Dominant
- Parallel Stance: Goblet Squat
- Split Stance: Split Squat, Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat
- Single Leg Stance: Single Leg Squat To Box, Skater Squat
- Hip-Dominant
- Bridge: Single Leg Hip Thrust, Hip Bridge
- Parallel Stance: Trap Bar Deadlift, Kettlebell Deadlift
- Single Leg Stance: Single Leg Deadlift
- Upper Body Push
- Horizontal (Push-Up): Push-Up, Barbell Inclined Push-Up
- Horizontal (Bench Press): Dumbbell Bench Press, Barbell Floor Press
- Vertical: Landmine Press
- Upper Body Pull
- Horizontal (Row): TRX Row, Dumbbell Row
- Vertical (Chin-Up): Chin-Up, Seated Chin-Up
- Core
- Anti-Extension: Plank, Ab Rollout, Dead Bug
- Anti-Rotation: Pallof Press
- Anti-Lateral Flexion: Side Plank, Copenhagen Hip Lift
Keep It Simple
Another common error in terms of strength training for combat sports lies within exercise selection.
You don’t need to make every exercise “BJJ-specific.”
Do simple movements (squat, deadlift, chin-up, press) and do them well. You’ll get everything you want out of strength training if you follow that principle.
With that being said, there are movements or muscle groups you might consider prioritizing specifically for jiu jitsu.
1. Grip Strength
Aside from the obvious benefits for grappling sports, grip strength is one of the best ways to predict longevity, acting as a major biomarker for overall health and aging.
Your grip will get stronger simply by lifting weights consistently. A common exercise is farmer carries, but I never use these because, frankly, they’re boring. I don’t want to walk around the gym holding dumbbells.
You have an abundance of exercises to choose from when it comes to grip training, but here are a few that I like:
Dead Hang: Hang from a pull-up bar as long as you can. Not only does this improve grip strength, it decompresses the spine. Men should aim for two minutes, women for one minute. If you can’t do it your first try, just hang as long as you can, rest 30-60 sec, and hang again. Complete 1-2 total minutes of hanging in as few sets as possible. Do this at the end of your workout.
Fat Grips: You can buy a pair of Fat Gripz and use them with your basic dumbbell or barbell exercises (ex. presses, rows, curls). These increase the circumference of the handles, making it harder to grip. They also alleviate elbow tension during certain exercises.
Wrist Roller: Now we’re getting a little fancy. Watch the video below to see how to do wrist rollers. Do 4-5 reps working flexion, and 4-5 reps working extension for 2-3 sets at the end of your workout.
2. Trap Bar Deadlift
Legs, back, core, and grip are all working together here in a movement pattern that you do daily: pick things up (sometimes, people).
Trap bar deadlifts are easier for most people to learn when compared to barbell deadlifts, with less potential stress on the lower back. Since you’re standing inside of the weight with the handles positioned at your sides as opposed to behind it, it’s better aligned with your center of mass.
Unless you’re a powerlifter, you do not need to deadlift with a barbell. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
3. Chin-Up
My favourite exercise. Aside from my own personal preferences, if I were to suggest one exercise that most people should train and get better at, it’s chin-ups. For jiu jitsu, your pulling strength (especially if you train in the gi) is invaluable.
If you can’t do chin-ups (yet), watch the video below for alternatives and how to train to do your first chin-up.
4. Floor Press
Think bench press, but on the floor. You can do this with dumbbells or a barbell. Either way, pressing from the floor, rather than the bench, does a couple things.
- It reduces the range of motion, placing less potential stress on the shoulders (an area that is commonly nagging or sore among jiu jitsu practitioners).
- In regards to jiu jitsu, it mimics a rolling situation better than the bench press. I mean, you roll on the ground. I can’t remember ever rolling on a bench.
5. Hip Thrust
I don’t like doing hip thrusts with the barbell, mainly because it’s cumbersome to set up but also because it tends to place stress on the lower back, especially the way most people perform it.
Instead, I prefer single leg hip thrusts, performed either bodyweight or loaded with chains or a sandbag. This strengthens the glutes as they extend the hips.
In jiu jitsu, everything is with your hips. Shrimping, scrambles, etc. Your glutes are your biggest muscles. Train them.
6. Core
You’ll recall seeing anti-extension, anti-rotation, and anti-lateral flexion in the core movement patterns.
- Anti-extension: Strengthens the core to prevent the lower back from arching or hyperextending.
- Anti-Rotation: Strengthens the core to resist rotation.
- Anti-Lateral Flexion: Strengthens the core to resist bending to the side.
Your core’s primary responsibility is to stabilize the spine. For this reason, I like to build core strength and stability by resisting movement, rather than creating it. That doesn’t mean you should never do any dynamic core training that involves movement in the trunk, but most people would find benefit in learning how to control movement before producing it.
You’re constantly resisting movement in jiu jitsu, making this type of core training a great addition to your program. Below are some of my favourites to get you started.
Isometric Training for Jiu Jitsu
One type of strength that often gets overlooked in the gym, but shows up constantly in jiu jitsu, is isometric strength.
An isometric contraction occurs when a muscle produces force without changing length. In simple terms, you’re creating tension while holding a position instead of moving through a full range of motion.
If you think about it, this happens all the time in grappling.
Holding someone in side control. Maintaining a frame while defending. Fighting for grips. Keeping a closed guard.
These are all situations where you’re producing force without much visible movement.
That’s why adding some isometric work to your strength training can be valuable for grapplers. It helps improve positional strength, joint stability, and your ability to maintain tension under fatigue.
There are two types of isometrics:
- Yielding Isometrics: Holding a position to improve muscle endurance and stability. For example, holding a plank or pausing at the bottom of a squat or top of a chin-up.
- Overcoming Isometrics: Pushing or pulling against an immovable object to increase max-effort strength and rate of force development.
Both methods teach your body to produce force from difficult positions, something that transfers well to jiu jitsu.
I was hesitant to include overcoming isometrics in this article, because it’s a method I only reserve for advanced clients. Do not attempt this if you’re a beginner or intermediate. Focus on getting strong with the fundamentals first.
If you’re interested in seeing what overcoming isometrics looks like, watch the video below. Again, this is for advanced athletes only.
Reps, Sets, and Weights
When it comes to how many reps you should be performing, this is a topic where we often major in the minors and make things unnecessarily complicated.
Here’s my super, super complex formula for deciding rep ranges.
- Power = Low reps, high intent
- Strength = Low to moderate reps, high intensity
- Muscle = Moderate reps, moderate intensity
- Endurance = High reps, low intensity
Most of my clients train almost exclusively in the 5-10 rep range. Any less and risk of injury starts to go up. Unless you’re a powerlifter, you don’t need to max out your lifts.
Conversely, fatigue sets in north of ten reps, which can lead to form breakdown and, again, increases risk of injury. High-rep sets also take longer to recover than low-rep sets, causing muscle soreness. You don’t want to feel sore from strength training, as it will interfere with your jiu jitsu. Remember the minimal effective dose.
How many sets per week?
The total amount of sets you do per week per muscle group depends on whether your goal is muscle hypertrophy or strength.
According to a 2017 meta-analysis by Dr. Schoenfeld, 10-20 sets per week per muscle group is the “sweet spot” for hypertrophy (i.e. building muscle). This is considering sets are taken close to failure with adequate recovery and nutrition accounted for.
Conversely, if your goal is strength, the recommendation changes. Research suggests a total weekly volume of 4-8 sets is optimal for strength. Again, this is assuming sets are hard with recovery and nutrition accounted for.
It’s important to note that these numbers are not set in stone.
You can absolutely build muscle doing fewer than ten sets per week, and you can definitely get stronger doing fewer than four. There’s plenty of research supporting this, and I’ve trained clients this way for years with great results.
For someone balancing strength training with jiu jitsu, doing 20 sets per muscle group per week is way too much volume. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, remember the minimal effective dose. What’s the smallest amount of effort you need to put in to achieve your goal?
Personally, I tend to stay on the lower end of the volume spectrum. Most of my clients perform one to two (sometimes three) hard sets per movement or muscle group per session.
If you’re doing two full body strength training workouts per week, that’s 2-6 hard sets per movement pattern or muscle group per week. From a time and recovery standpoint, it just makes sense (especially for combat sport athletes). You can get an effective workout done in under an hour, and you’re not so sore that it interferes with the rest of your training.
Workout Template
If you don’t have a ton of time, you need to be efficient and make every minute of your workout count. That’s why having a clear structure matters.
Personally, I want to be in and out of the gym in under an hour. Strength training should support your jiu jitsu, not take over your schedule.
For this reason, I like dividing workouts into blocks, with each block serving a specific purpose.
Each session takes 45–60 minutes and includes the following structure:
- Warm-Up
- Power
- Block A
- Block B
- Block C
This format keeps your workouts organized, efficient, and easy to repeat from week to week.
Warm-Up (8-10 minutes)
The goal of the warm-up is to prepare your body and mind for training. I like to focus on a combination of mobility and activation exercises that directly support the workout.
Power (2-4 minutes)
Power is your ability to display strength quickly. Since it declines as we age (before strength), we need to train it to maintain it.
A common misconception is that power training is only for athletes. While it is certainly valuable from an athletic standpoint, the average person can benefit from incorporating some form of power development into their program. Cognitive function being one of the many upsides.
In regards to jiu jitsu, it improves your reaction time and agility immensely.
I like to do some low-impact jumps or medicine ball throws directly after the warm-up. I call this part of the workout the “light switch”. It switches on your brain and body, priming you for the strength training ahead. I had a client tell me it feels like drinking a double shot of espresso, and I think that sums it up perfectly.
Block A (15 minutes)
This is the main strength block, where you’re aiming to lift heavy using big, compound exercises that offer the most bang for your buck.
Pair two non-competing exercises together (ex. one lower body movement and one upper body movement).
Block B (10-15 minutes)
This strength block builds off the previous. Here, you’ll have another paired set (two non-competing movements performed back to back) or a tri-set (three non-competing movements performed back to back) with different exercises.
If Block A included a knee-dominant and pull exercise, I’ll typically program a hip-dominant and push movement in Block B. This “rounds out” the session, so you’re “checking off” all the major movement patterns each workout.
Block C (5-10 minutes)
We finish off with two to three non-competing accessory exercises that target the supportive muscles used in the previous blocks.
Paired Sets and Tri-Sets
To make the most of your time, each block uses paired sets or tri-sets.
This means you perform two or three exercises in sequence.
Typically, these exercises are non-competing movements (for example, pairing a lower-body exercise with an upper-body exercise). This allows one muscle group to recover while another works, which makes your workouts more efficient without sacrificing performance.
How to Select Weights
To keep it simple, here’s how I tend to choose weights for my clients (you don’t always have to do it like this, but it’s a great option for most people).
For the exercises in Block A, I like to work up to a top set, incrementally increasing the weight each set. The last set is the heaviest, where you’re using a weight that pushes you to go to technical failure. This is when you can’t complete any more reps with proper technique.
This is not going to complete failure, where you literally couldn’t do another rep if their life depended on it and your form gives out. I like to choose weights that challenge my clients to perform the last couple of reps without sacrificing their technique. The risk of injury is a lot lower and you recover way better, while still getting the strength adaptations.
For the exercises in Blocks B and C, use the same weight across all sets and pick one that really challenges you to complete the last 2-3 reps while maintaining proper technique. Always err on the side of caution, starting with a lower weight so you can get comfortable with the exercise and slowly work your way up overtime.
Rest Times
These workouts are not “strength circuits”, where you sprint between exercises. Take the time you need to recover so you can perform the exercises safely.
The following rest times are guidelines. If you need to take a little more time, take it. If you feel like you don’t need the full rest, feel free to start your next set. With that being said, if you feel like you can jump immediately into your set with little to no rest, you’re probably not training hard enough 😉
Power: 30-60 sec rest between exercises
Block A: 90-120 sec rest between exercises
Block B: 90-120 sec rest between exercises
Block C: 60-90 sec rest between exercises
Mobility “Fillers” Between Sets
I’ve had clients who literally can’t sit still between sets because they feel like they’re wasting time just resting.
For this reason, I often program mobility “fillers” as a form of active recovery.
Fillers are low-intensity exercises or drills performed between sets to improve mobility, prevent injury, and address imbalances. They help you get more out of your workouts by “filling the gaps” in your training.
Instead of scrolling Instagram while waiting for your next set, you can perform a quick mobility drill.
By micro-dosing mobility work throughout your workout, you gradually improve your body’s baseline level of readiness. Over time, this means less stiffness, fewer nagging aches, and shorter warm-ups before training.
Instead of feeling like the Tin Man every time you step onto the mats, your body will already be primed to move.
Motion is lotion.
Recovery
You don’t get stronger from training, you get stronger by recovering from training.
Training is stress. It’s good stress, but it’s stress. And we only see the benefits of that stress if we recover. You want to start that recovery process immediately after training.
- Breathe: Lay on your back with your eyes closed and focus on slow, controlled breathing for two minutes after training. This brings you back to what’s called a parasympathetic state, which helps you recover from the stressful “fight or flight” sympathetic state we’re in during training.
- Mobility: Hip, shoulder, and upper back mobility is important for everyone, but especially for jiu jitsu practitioners. Mobility is your ability to move your joints through ranges of motion. You need to be consistent to see any improvements. I think of it as daily movement hygiene. You brush your teeth every day (I hope). You should move every day. Go here to see a simple mobility routine you can follow before your workouts or on your off days to help you recover.
- Low-impact cardio: I love the Assault Bike. The handles create a push–pull motion for the upper body while your legs pedal, promoting blood flow through the entire body. It’s an efficient way to get your heart rate up without placing a lot of stress on your joints. Another reason I like it is that it’s primarily a concentric movement, meaning your muscles aren’t being loaded eccentrically (the part of a movement most responsible for soreness). This means you can get a solid cardio session in without feeling beat up afterward. In many cases, you actually feel better.
- Nutrition: I use the common sense approach to nutrition. Eat protein with every meal. Drink water. See a good dietitian or nutritionist if you’re looking for more help.
- Sleep: Get 7-8 hours a night if you can.
Sample 2-Day Program
Now, let’s put it all together into a program. A program is a plan. It’s a way of organizing your training so your workouts complement and don’t contradict each other.
In this program, you’ll train on two non-consecutive days per week (ex. Mon/Wed, Tue/Thu, etc).
Each workout is full body and follows the same structure outlined earlier.
Here’s the program template from a bird’s eye view:
| Day 1 | Day 2 |
| Warm-Up (Mobility, Activation, Core) | |
| Power
Jump Throw |
Power
Jump Throw |
| A
Knee-Dominant Pull |
A
Hip-Dominant Push |
| B
Hip-Dominant Push |
B
Knee-Dominant Pull |
| C
Lower Body Accessory Upper Body Accessory |
C
Lower Body Accessory Upper Body Accessory |
Here’s what that might look like after we plug in the exercises, sets, reps, etc.
(I’ve included hyperlinks to each exercise – tap or click the exercise to watch).
| Day 1 | Day 2 |
| Warm-Up (Mobility, Activation, Core)
Windshield Wiper x 8-10 Side Lying Windmill x 8-10 Adductor Rocker x 8-10 Cook Hip Lift x 5 Birddog x 5 World’s Greatest Stretch x 8-10 Band Pull Apart x 10-20 |
|
| Power
Pogo Jump x 15 sec 2-3 sets |
Power
Squat Jump x 5 2-3 sets |
| A
Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat x 5 Chin-Up x AMRAP 3 sets |
A
Push-Up x AMRAP 3 sets |
| B
3 sets |
B
Lateral Squat x 8 Birddog Row x 8 3 sets |
| C
TRX Fallout x 10 2-3 sets |
C
Prone Scarecrow x 10 2-3 sets |
Sample 3-Day Program
Two full body strength training sessions per week is plenty for most people who want to balance lifting with jiu jitsu. But if you want to train three days per week, you can follow the exact same routine, with alternating A/B workouts over a 3-day split.
Here’s what that might look like if you’re training Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun | |
| Week 1 | A | B | A | ||||
| Week 2 | B | A | B | ||||
| Week 3 | A | B | A | ||||
| Week 4 | B | A | B |
By alternating between two workouts (Workout A and Workout B) across three days each week, you get repeated exposure to the key movement patterns, which helps you develop proper technique, build confidence, and see measurable progress.
How to Progress
Strength training, like jiu jitsu, is a skill. You need to practice it to get better (i.e. stronger).
In general, I like to follow the same workouts for 3-4 weeks before switching things up. It gives you enough time to practice your technique and progress the movements through added weight or repetitions.
Here’s a super simple way to make your workouts progressively more challenging.
Week 1: Emphasize proper technique with new exercises. Leave 2-3 reps in the tank for all sets.
Week 2: Add volume (more sets or reps) and/or load (more weight) from previous week.
Week 3: Add volume (more sets or reps) and/or load (more weight) from previous week.
WEEK 4: Go as heavy as you can for the outlined sets and reps. Try to break personal records (PR’s).
Repeat this four-week cycle with new exercises. Keep in mind, this is just one of a bazillion different ways you can structure a program. The idea is to be consistent and progressively make your workouts more challenging.
Bottom Line
Strength training doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective. I always say that getting strong isn’t easy, but it is simple.
If you train consistently, focus on the fundamentals, and keep the goal in mind—supporting your jiu jitsu rather than competing with it—you’ll move and feel better while becoming stronger, more resilient, and harder to deal with on the mats.
Thanks for reading. I hope this helps.
6-Week BJJ Strength Program
If you want a done-for-you program that follows the principles in this article, I’ve put together a 6-Week BJJ Strength Program designed specifically for grapplers who want to build strength without interfering with their mat time.
The program is delivered directly to your phone through a training app so you know exactly what to do each workout.
You can learn more about it here.
