1-3 months into Jiu Jitsu—Endurance Training and Learning the Moves, Part 2

   The Workout

At three months in, I realized that getting decent at this sport could take a lot of time. This is when I thought it could be a year before I felt like I could win a fight that ended up on the ground. In the meantime, I could focus on getting my endurance up.

          I noticed that I had a difficult time keeping up with the running before instruction started, even though I worked out on my own. After an intense 7-minute workout at the dojo, I was panting and not having a good time. The instructor, Dax, has us run around the mat, and then we’ll do 20 push-ups, 20 squats, 20 triangles, 20 leg lifts, and then we’ll keep running. 7 minutes doesn’t sound like a long time, but it’s long when it’s intense, and you can’t stop. When we’re done with all that, we might do lines of shrimps, stand up in base, front and back rolls, army crawls, and other exercises.

For whatever reason, we never did stretches during class, which I thought was odd. Karate definitely incorporated stretching time. Many of the jiu jitsu students would get there a few minutes early to stretch out, which is a solution, but only if you're good at not being late.

I breathlessly talked to one of the other women, Grace, and asked if the warm-up was always like this.

“It gets better as you go,” Grace said. I later learned that this woman—who was about five inches shorter than me—was actually very strong because of all the biking she did. She’s like a little tank of pure muscle.

Solution: Do a Pre-Warmup

For this stage (which could last for months), I recommend incorporating a pre-warmup before coming. The perfect time is about 10 minutes of running, push-ups, sit ups, and stretching. I can take breaks if I want to, whereas you can’t really do that during practice. This pre-warmup gets you out of a stand-still and ready to do work. This is good because sometimes I don’t want to go to practice, and I think about skipping. One night, I was unenthusiastically running on a treadmill before practice, and after my blood got pumping, that’s when I got ready to go.

          After the class warm-up, my instructors go over two to three moves each week. We practice on each other for about 35 minutes, and then we spar for the last 15 or so minutes. 15 minutes of sparring is actually a really long time, and you’ll be exhausted. Sparring is when you’re supposed to incorporate all that you’ve learned during all your classes into submitting your opponent. It’s actually really difficult to remember all the past moves from the last several months, and you’ll want to write them down after each practice so that you don’t forget. This is not something you can skip if you want to get good.

Before jiu jitsu, I remember thinking that if I just put all of my strength and energy into fighting back, then I can get out of any hold. The reality is that you can only will forth so much energy when you’re on the ground, pinned, and can barely move.

I’m grateful to be getting good practice should I ever need to defend myself.