BJJ Recovery: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Training

Mike Martin, Owner of Strong Heart Academy, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Phoenix Arizona, and third degree black belt, talks about the 5 things he does for BJJ recovery.

5 Things for BJJ Recovery

The 5 Things I Do for BJJ Recovery. I Started Training Brazilian Jiujitsu in 2000. Ive Trained through My 20's, 30's, and Now in my 40's. These Are the 5 things I do to Recovery and train as much as I can. You can try these by going to Strongheartacademy.com and trying a FREE Trial Class. or BJJ2GO.com is our online platform that can be used any where. or if your not in Phoenix find an Academy near you.

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Transcript

Today's podcast is brought to you by Strongheartacademy.com where no heart is no victory. We are also brought to you by BJJ2go, if you wanna build your game and learn jiu jitsu, go to BJJ2go.com.

Jiu Jitsu Athlete Recovery

Okay. So this one is gonna be about recovery, um, for Jiu Jitsu um, athletes. Um, obviously the older you get, the more important recovery is, um, and how serious you take it. But if you're younger and you start young, you just get the pattern set up and it's gonna be easier and easier and easier and easier recovery. Everything I'm gonna talk about today is, uh, no TRT, no steroids, nothing like that. Obviously those are super recovery tools. People think of steroids like that makes you stronger. No, it allows you to work out more, to get stronger. Um, when you're sore, it's like hard to just work out again.

Muscles and Energy

Like your muscles are just shot, uh, and energy too. So what steroids do is just allow you to cover fast or fast, faster. You can do two, three workouts a day where someone, you know, might take one to two days off per workout, just so your body heals up and you'll get injuries. Um, today we're gonna talk about just what you can do, um, without any steroids at all. And tier T now people get fishy with the TRT. They're like, you know, especially jiu jitsu athletes, um, you know, after a certain age, you're like, well, you could take, you know, TRT because you have low testosterone. You can go to a doctor. If you're gonna do it, go to a doctor, please do it. There, don't buy illegal steroids. Okay. Um, but uh, you need to be careful with those things, because I do think there's a higher risk of heart, uh, failure.

And, you know, if you have prostate problems, which you're getting older, you could actually increase the prostate. So, but they'll test you for those things, um, to make sure you don't have any prostate problems. Um, but it, if you are not catching, you're not getting tested a lot. It could lead to cancer and other problems too. So the other problem I have with TRT is that, um, once you're on it, you're not gonna get off of it. It's like for life basically. So, um, it takes a while to, if you, if you get off, it I've know people got off it and it's like, their body never really comes back. Like their testosterone doesn't stop producing testosterone. So, um, and they're so used to being on testosterone and the benefits that they get that it's like once they come off, there's a mental pro problem too, even though like their levels might get better.

Time and Energy Levels

Um, it takes time and to get used to, um, not having that recovery that you did with taking testosterone and your energy levels and all those type of things too. So, um, it's hard to get off of them once you're on them. So again, once you're on them, it's like you're on them. So just, just a word of caution, if you're gonna do that, it's completely legal, um, easy to do. Uh, just be careful. So, uh, I don't do any of those things. Uh, I'm 42, uh, as of today or as of now. And, um, I've tried everything for recovery. Um, the number one thing though, so we're gonna do five things. The number one thing is gonna be sleep. Um, you know, Americans are extremely sleep deprived. We work a lot. Uh, we don't take a lot of holidays, our vacations, um, me included, you know, I work about six days a week.

I always make sure my Sundays is my family day. Uh, and I try to just go to church and I don't do any other, um, I try not to do, I don't do any jiu jitsu for sure. Or business. Uh, unfortunately I do to work around the house. I should take that day should be completely nothing day, but I run outta days to get things done. So sleep is the big one for me. I make sure I get enough sleep. I do sleep in. I'm kind of a weird guy. I, I like I'm a, a night O um, but whatever your schedule is, figure out how you can get your eight to nine hours of sleep. If I get 10 hours of sleep, I feel like I feel like I'm 10 years younger. Um, and so just keep that in mind, you know, and, and when you're young, you might be able to get a day, a couple days in a row of like five, six hours of sleep.

Sleep

It's just not, it catches up to you. There's a price to pay and you can't really catch up sleep. You just gotta get your sleep habits back, set a time that you want to be unconscious. And what, how long does it take you to get from that, to that now? Uh, I have a doctor friend. He wrote me a whole like prescription of how he does it. And I don't mean drugs. I mean, like he goes, go to the bathroom, do read a little bit, do this. Once you get in bed, you do not leave your bed. The last thing with the sleep thing is, well, not the last thing, but is make sure your room is very dark. You don't want that blue light when you're staring at your phone right before you go to bed. Uh, I tend to read off of an iPad, so that's not good.

Reading

I do a lot of reading before I go to bed. Um, but I think it's better for my eyes versus like, uh, reading a book with bad lighting is not good. Uh, I have really good eyes still for my age. I don't have any glasses or nothing, so I like that better, but they say that blue light makes it more difficult to go to sleep. Definitely don't have any TVs in your room. Uh, so many people, I, I know have TVs in rooms. I I've gotten away with that one. It's kind of me thing with my wife. She's always had TVs in a room and I said, look, this is be hard for her to sleep. You know, it's not good for you. You're not supposed to have any light, your body reacts to light. That's how it wakes up. So knows if it's day or night and, and humans are meant to sleep at night.

Jiu Jitsu: Clear Thinking

So there's always exceptions to this rule. Again, like I said, I, I like to go to bed really late and I like to sleep in. It's hard to do that. Just find your routine. What's gonna work for you. And really, really, really, really try to get that eight hours minimum of eight hours. Um, you know, I've done the game before, like, okay, if I go to bed now I'll get, oh man, I'll get five hours. I'll get six. It's just, you'll break down your body needs rest. Your mind needs rest. You won't think as clearly, you'll be, you know, you'll make mistakes in jiu jitsu. You'll make, make mistakes in your job. Um, you'll get be irritable. There's so many things it's actually bad for your, uh, diet, your metabolism, lack of sleep slows your, um, it, it slows down your metabolism. So there's, there's so many benefits.

I mean, there's so many studies about sleep. That would be my first one. Um, the second one I would say would be water. Um, um, I'm in Arizona, I'm in Phoenix, it's a desert. So we gotta drink a ton of water. It's summer as currently as we're speaking. And that's gonna be 106 today. I think, um, you're sweating. You're an athlete. If you're doing GE Jisu, you know, you have that big, heavy GE you're basically exercising with the jacket on it's great exercise. You're sweating so much, and it's easy to be in kind of a deficit and like a low grade dehydration. Now your body needs water to, for everything to move waste, to, uh, rehydrate your muscles. Um, I find you can get more injuries when you're dehydrated. And again, back to not thinking clearly when, and when you're not thinking clearly dehydration sometimes is that if you're getting headaches, those are all things, uh, for me, like I'm, I'm making sure I pound that water and we're back, uh, technical difficulties.

Water Intake: BJJ

So, uh, back to water, um, that's helps with your metabolism also. So if you're trying to lose weight, um, cutting weight, uh, water's important. Even if you're cutting water weight, you wanna rehydrate first. So tech tech, uh, you know, MMA fighters, uh, or actually anyone cutting a lot of weight. If you pound a gallon a day, you can do a gallon gallon and a half a day, gallon and a half, and you slowly cut it during the week until you're ready for the water cut and the water cut's always done the night before the weigh in, or the day of the weigh in. So, you know, even that you, the water's super important and you will just feel so much better with energy wise. You know, that's what I'm saying by recovery. Like you're tired, you're sore. Water is huge. It is a huge benefit to making sure you're getting enough water intake during the day.

And in Arizona, you're just constantly sweating. If you're outside, if you have an outside job, um, you know, you're, you need to be making sure you're getting a gallon a day. You know, this is not eight, uh, eight, eight glasses of water. I don't know where that ever came from. I don't know how many ounces in a glass. So what is that like? How big is this glass? Just make sure that you're drinking a gallon of water if you're an athlete. Um, and I think even, even back east where it might be a little cooler, I think a gallon is still a good gauge just because, um, you're an athlete and you'll be sweating so much when you train. So especially if you're train twice a day, you definitely gotta get a gallon of water in you, cuz you're kind of always. And when you wake up in the morning makes you drink a glass of water, a big glass of water.

First thing in the morning, before we get your coffee, before we get your, whatever you're drinking in the morning water first. Okay. Cuz you slept again. Let's say that we did the eight hours. That's eight hours of no water. Um, we want to, we need to, we're gonna be dehydrated. You're gonna pee you probably in the morning. You're gonna lose some hydration there. You probably sweat during the night. Uh, so you need to get that water back inside you and you'll feel you'll feel so much better. These so far, these are very simple things that cost $0. Okay. Now the third one I'm gonna talk about is, uh, protein. So, uh, protein helps me tremendously. Now my favorite protein is actual steak. Now steak is gonna have some other stuff in it that I think for me, I just feel like it helps, um, with my intake.

Protein for BJJ

Um, so you know, I'm going through I'm training a lot. Um, I wanna make sure that I have enough protein that my muscles, uh, are performing at the right, uh, level. They're going to feel better, not so sore. Okay. I think creatine is in it. Irons in steak too. Uh, I was using P protein. Somebody recommended pre proteins, a plant-based protein. Some people have problems with weight, figure out what works best for you. Now the other thing that I use, I go to Costco and I buy those things of protein, uh, shakes. Pre-made shakes. Why? Because I'm lazy. I don't want to clean shakers out. I don't, it makes a mess. Uh, they have like 30 grams of protein, low sugar. I shake it up after I get done training. And before, before I train, I pound one after training, I pound another one. Um, that's how I do it.

Now you can do the measures like your weight, how much protein you should ingest. You can look those measurements up online. Uh, but protein, you have to be taking in protein. Again. If you don't eat meat, there's P protein is awesome. Hemp, protein. Um, it's still protein guys. It's still gonna help you out now for me again, if I eat a steak at night, I will feel amazing. The next day I really do. Red meat is huge for me. Um, but I think everyone operates a little bit differently. Besides protein. Everyone needs protein. Uh, if you're not getting enough protein, your muscle's gonna break down and then you don't recover. Okay. So the next part would be for muscles too. Is foam rolling. Now I like to use, uh, foam rollers. If you go to BJJ, uh, BJJ to go.com, which is our online platform.

I have a whole series on foam. Rolling on there. You can check it out. You can look online too. If you'd like, I like to use, uh, different balls to get different areas. Uh, and different softness of a ball will help different areas too. I, I start with my feet and I work my way up. So I stand on the, on a, uh, lacrosse ball and I roll out my feet first, work my way up, my calves thighs inside. And I, and think about each, uh, limb six sides of a limb, okay. Or four. However you wanna look at it. Six is more accurate, um, or massages. So I try to get a massage. I get to two a month. Uh, but I also foam roll. So I would foam roll when I'm really sore. I start formula wheeling. Some people formal before they do exercise too.

Warming Up for BJJ

I've I actually think that's a great way. The older you are, the more warmups you need. And again, preventing those injuries I think is huge and extremely helpful. Okay. Now here's the last one. The fifth one is a sauna or cold plunge. So I use a sauna when I work out, I do one. So on per week I try to do 30 minutes. Uh, but I think two is, would be more ideal. I just don't have access to twice a week. So once a week I do a sauna or they call it heat, shock proteins. I don't know what that means, but I do know that I feel much better from saunas. Um, my recovery is so much better. I'm gonna start doing my cold plunges again. I used to do that when I'm really, I mean, I'm really drained cold plunge. I used to do four to 12 minutes.

Now people are telling me 12 minutes was too long, but I just threw a bunch of bags of ice in a bathtub with water. One thing I would recommend with this, I think I talked about it before is making sure someone's in the house. So if your legs give out, you don't fall and bash your head and die in the bathroom, you know, buck naked. The other thing, I always, always, I put a swim trunk on just in case. Uh, something goes wrong in a pass out. I don't wanna be naked. You know, it's not a good look. So, um, if you have access to an actual cold pledge tub, hopefully I'm gonna get one of those soon. Those are money, they work awesome. And I would highly recommend doing that now. Here's I mean, one more. My bonus thing that I do is I go to a place called, uh, route sport, me, shout out to route sport me.

I've had them on this show. Um, and we've interviewed those guys. They're great. And I kind of think of that as prehab. Okay. Prehab is like, I, I work out with, 'em only once a week. They give me exercise for the week, but I'm too lazy. I don't do them. Um, I'm gonna try to, I'm try, try to start doing that guys, but, um, it's hard. So, um, but that has made my leg stronger. It's prevented injuries. Um, they give kind of like massage, cupping, those type of things, you know, scraping, those are also recovery tools. So that's kind of like all in one. Now that would be like a bonus thing. You know, that costs more money. Totally understand it. If you can't do that, foam rolling is cheap. You don't need a massage pay for massages. Protein can be expensive, but look, it's part of your health.

Health and Diet: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

It should be part of your diet. Just get it into your diet. Somehow again, I go to, uh, Costco, I buy the big thing. I think it gives me 18 protein shakes. Um, and it's about 25 bucks, 26 bucks, you know, so, you know, probably spend 50 bucks a month probably on protein, not including steaks, but you know, it's your health, health is wealth is the way I look at it. So, you know, you could be spending money now or spending money later in the hospital when you're older and you're all broken down and your body doesn't work. Right. So, um, you're gonna spend money it's just up front or, or, or, or later on, I'd rather do it front and feel better for longer, you know, uh, nobody gets out alive, but uh, I want my time to be my batteries, keep going dead.

So I don't know, uh, sorry about that. I'm, I'm pretty much done with it anyway, but I wanted to say that, you know, figure out what works best for you, but these are my top five is, uh, water or sorry, sleep water foam, roll protein sauna. And then I go to sports, uh, uh, Shawn at sports men, a ton of my students go to the hint, those guys, again, it's gonna cost you some money, but it's your health man. And you will feel great. Like what does it cost to feel? Great. People buy objects to feel great too, but you're physically still not gonna feel great. So this is gonna make you mentally and physically better. You gotta work on your mind too. You know, you could add in meditation in there too. Um, but those aren't my top five, my top five is still gonna be sleep, water, protein, massage, and sauna.

And, um, the sauna again might cost you mu a little bit of money, but cold plunge is not. If you get a bunch of bags of ice, you could jump in your own tub, just be, be careful and mindful how long you're in there for four minutes is good. Um, you and I don't even, I don't even figure out the temperature. I just set cold, fill the tub and then put about three bags of ice in and I feel great. So it's not exact measurement. Um, but I do feel pretty awesome from that. You'll get more energy and my recovery. I mean, I feel so much better when I do those type of things. So thanks for listening for, uh, strong hearts, five, uh, ways to recover. And again, with your age guys, you're gonna have to be more mindful, more and more mindful. I'm trying to stay in jiu jitsu.

Aging Goal: BJJ

My goal is to make it to 70. I want to roll in my seventies, not just like, hang out, I wanna be rolling. And it doesn't mean I wanna be beating 20 year olds, but I wanna be able to hang, be able to keep people in front of me. Okay. So those are my goals, uh, for my happy life, happy, happy jiu jitsu. And uh, if you have any other questions, you could always reach out to me, uh, at Strongheartacademy.com and uh, if you wanna take out any classes, we have a free trial program on Strongheartacademy.com. Just hit the trial button, please subscribe. Uh, I always hear on, uh, YouTube Hulk smash, the subscribe button button. It helps me out. I appreciate any comments, leave comments. Uh, you can tell me I'm a fool. I should be taking TRT, whatever you wanna call. I don't care. It's fine with me. Opinions are great. Uh, good or bad. I don't have, I don't have a sway either way.

And that's it have a great weekend and peace.