Top 5 Methods For Fast BJJ Muscle Recovery Post BJJ Training

We will discuss the top five methods to improve your muscle recovery as a BJJ fighter. Many BJJ fighters have to go through over-training syndrome, and they have a lot of difficulties dealing with it when overtrained. If you are not recovering, then you are not going to get the same results as other BJJ fighters are getting.

So, follow the five BJJ muscle recovery tips to help you recover muscle faster. So when it comes to BJJ muscle recovery, whether you are an adult or a youngster, you are trying to build and recover muscle. You are doing everything right in the academy. You are eating well. You are doing everything you think you are supposed to do, and you are still not getting the results. You have to prioritize some things to ensure you are recovering for one.

BJJ muscle recovery is an important aspect of Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters. You need to know how you can improve or enhance your recovery. There are three main pillars to recovery for BJJ recovery: sleep, nutrition, and meditation. If you focus on each of these three categories, you will improve your BJJ muscle recovery.

As an overview, try to get seven to nine hours of sleep every night. Focus on quality nutrition, ensuring you eat enough carbohydrates, protein, and fats. With training intensity, ensure sufficient rest and recovery, and use tools like autoregulation when you are more fatigued. If you want to take a deep dive into BJJ muscle recovery, learn and practice the steps and methods given in this article.

Ultimately, it is all about that recovery because it does not matter how hard you hit the workouts or how perfectly your food is lined up with your goals. If you are not recovering, you will not get those same results. You are going to eventually overtrain.

You are going to overtax your central nervous system. You will lose motivation and get discouraged once you start over-stimulated, over-worked, and over-taxed. That tends to lead to completely quitting the health and fitness goals altogether. So you don't want to do that, especially once you get older, because at the end of the day, the older you get, the more you need this. It will help improve your BJJ game, but it will also slow down the aging process and fasten your BJJ muscle recovery.

• There are many types of BJJ muscle recovery that we have to factor in when thinking about recovering as a BJJ fighter and even when thinking about recovering as a fitness enthusiast. So, there is the physical adaptation. You put a lot of stress on your body by strenuous BJJ training. You might be lifting heavy weights or doing hypertrophy work. All these things will lead to physical adaptation.

• So, we have to focus on BJJ muscle recovery, which leads us to mobility. We might have some problem areas. We might have some joints that are struggling to adapt. We might have some joints with previous issues and scar tissue built up to improve upon. So, we have to factor in Mobility.

• Then that takes us into that mental aspect. BJJ fighters, especially, deal with mundane training. They are doing the same thing over and over again. There is a lot of pressure on them. They must balance many things, especially if you are not in a high-profile BJJ training academy. You must balance external stress and how to handle training as a world-class BJJ fighter or even as a BJJ fighter just coming through the ranks.

• Then that takes us to the nutritional aspect if we think about recovering nutritionally and how nutrition positively impacts joint integrity, our mental outlook, life, and mobility. We can now consider that nutritional aspects can impact multiple recovery spheres. That is essentially where we need to go with all these methods, but we will give you those top five methods you can use to improve your overall recovery.

The top five methods for fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training are as follows.

• Yoga is among the top five best methods for fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training. Yoga combines three things: posture, breathing exercises, and meditation. The sole purpose of yoga is to feel calm, relaxed, and energetic during your work. It brings various health benefits, including physical, mental, and spiritual.

• So, the first key tip is to execute 10 to 20 minutes of yoga five times a week. You have to embrace yoga. If you are a big guy, you need yoga the most. That is not enough time, which will help you improve your overall muscle recovery. You will be able to recover your muscles fast after BJJ training.

• There are several reasons why and how it drastically improves your mobility. When your mobility improves, you can lengthen the muscles, and lengthening is strengthening. So you start to learn how to handle different positions in deeper ranges of motion and that can lead to greater BJJ performance.

• Another key concept is that it helps you become more aware of your feelings in certain positions. Then, you can incorporate that information into your warm-ups. You can start mobilizing more effectively based on your feelings while doing yoga.

• Then, we finally talk about the mental aspect. Think about the over-training syndrome. Almost all over-training syndrome relates to mental focus and mental adaptation. What yoga does is force you to disconnect from the digital world to embrace who you are internally and start to have that self-reflection time. It enables you to almost get into that meditative state. So, use yoga four to five days a week for 10 to 20 minutes.

Yoga has a lot of health benefits. Its role can be realized from the following points, which all contribute to optimal muscle recovery.

• Yoga provides many physical benefits, such as improved muscle recovery, posture, flexibility, and balance.

• Yoga saves you from diseases. If you are suffering from a disease, it helps manage it. For example, It helps reduce high blood pressure levels and heart disease risk.

• Yoga makes your immune system strong, making you ready to fight against diseases.

• Yoga makes your sleep peaceful and increases the quality of your sleep.

• Yoga increases your energy levels and makes you energetic for BJJ training the next day.

• Yoga increases and improves your performance as a BJJ fighter.

• Yoga prevents you from injury.

With all these benefits from yoga, you become prone to fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training. Each point contributes directly or indirectly to fast muscle recovery.

• The second way for fast BJJ muscle recovery is meditation. This is how most people think it is useless because they don't realize its role. People think it is very easy, but the reality is the opposite. It is the most difficult of the five ways to achieve fast BJJ muscle recovery. Meditation means sitting in a quiet place, blocking everything that disturbs you, such as noise, music, lights, etc.

• What you have to do in mediation is to remove all negative things from your mind. Clear your mind from the demotivating thoughts. Relax and calm your mind. Focus on positive aspects of your life. Focus on mental awareness. Simply put, meditation helps you focus on positive things and what you want to do and deviate your mind from negative things and those you don't want to do or think of.

• You just have to sit for 30 minutes. It is way harder than people think. In the first 10 to 15 minutes, your thoughts will bounce all over the place. Then, as you gain control and have that specific intent, you start to control your cognitive function. So try to figure out how you can engage with meditation 4 to 5 days a week for 30 minutes daily. It is going to drastically improve your mental adaptation.

• Yoga takes us into the second key aspect of BJJ muscle recovery: meditation. You can also call it quiet sitting or prayer. So, if you are religious, it is going to be prayer. If you are more focused on a specific type of philosophy or spiritual awakening meditation, if you are more focused on just general disconnection, you can call it quiet sitting. Call it whatever you want, but separate yourself, sit quietly, and try to hollow out your mind.

• You start controlling your cognitive ability and can quiet those thoughts. So, some people like to meditate before and after training. You can do that for maybe half an hour before or after training. Some people like to meditate early in the morning when they first wake up to remove all unnecessary things from their minds. Others might like to do it post-workout. Some BJJ fighters even like to meditate during their BJJ training. They might like to visualize first, meditate, and then help with their recovery post-BJJ training.

• It is advised for meditation to find a place where you can turn the lights off and block out all external noise. You should turn off all of your electronics, your cell phone, your TV, and your computer.

Meditation has a lot of health benefits. Its role can be realized from the following points, which all contribute to optimal muscle recovery.

• Meditation saves you from mental health issues. It protects you from mental diseases like depression, anxiety, and mania. You start focusing on the things you want to do and clear your mind from the negative thoughts.

• Meditation saves you from many diseases, such as gastrointestinal (GIT) diseases. It strengthens your immune system. It helps manage your blood pressure and heart rate.

• Meditation strengthens your brain. You become mentally strong, which enables you to focus on your BJJ game.

• Besides these benefits, meditation provides many other benefits, such as helping you be creative, increasing self-awareness, and helping you become patient.

With all these benefits from meditation, you become prone to fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training. Each point contributes directly or indirectly to fast muscle recovery.

• The third way for fast BJJ muscle recovery is to sleep. You may be thinking at this stage how sleep can be among the five best methods for fast muscle recovery. However, it is a fact that sleep is the most underrated way to achieve fast muscle recovery. It is the easiest one. You have to do nothing. You just have to sleep for some hours each day, and that’s it.

• It is advised to get outside at 7 to 8:00 in the morning and see the sun for 30 minutes. That is going to help set your circadian rhythm, and in turn, your sleep is going to be better. We should get exposed to sunlight early in the day and then again around noon.

• If you want BJJ muscle recovery as well as possible, you should get 8 to 10 hours of sleep daily at night, and then around the middle of the day, you can get 15 to 30 minutes of a nap. It dramatically improves your overall recovery.

• The third key tip to improve your recovery is simple. It is called sleep. Please get to bed. This is another classic. We have some of the best BJJ fighters in the world who prioritize sleep over unnecessary things. They use sleep as a way to speed up BJJ muscle recovery.

• You may have heard some BJJ fighters talking about doing the new group game where they drop into certain areas, and they are playing until one o’clock in the morning, and then they have to wake up at 7:30 to go to work, and then they are exhausted. So, this is a reality. This is what a lot of people are dealing with.

• Prioritize your sleep. If you are someone who maybe meditates before bed, what you can do is take an hour out of bed. That is when you flip the switch. That is when you are trying to quiet your brain. So maybe you spend 30 minutes of meditation, and if you are religious, you meditate for 30 minutes, do 10 minutes of prayer, and then unwind and prepare for bed. You are getting ready to go to your bedroom.

• You know you have already brushed your teeth. You have gone through that night-time ritual. You have blackout curtains; ideally, you don't have any electronics near your bed except for your cell phone on the other side of the room, which might be your alarm clock. One big key many of us are missing regarding sleep hygiene is not seeing sunlight earlier in the day.

Sleep has a lot of health benefits. Its role can be realized from the following points, which all contribute to optimal muscle recovery.

• When you are sleeping, the master gland in your body (pituitary gland) releases growth hormones. These growth hormones are necessary for fast muscle recovery after BJJ training.

• When you are in deep sleep (the last stage of sleep), your muscles feel relaxed. They receive more blood than when you are awake. More blood means that they will receive more oxygen and nutrients. This will help you in your fast muscle recovery after BJJ training.

• Sleep is also linked with protein building in your body. More protein means your muscles strengthen and repair, resulting in fast recovery after BJJ training.

• Often, after BJJ training, you will feel muscle soreness or inflammation in the muscles around your body. When you sleep, your body releases prolactin. It treats your muscle's inflammation and soreness and helps you in your fast BJJ muscle recovery.

Sleep provides your muscles the perfect environment to relax, repair, rebuild, recover, and prepare for your next BJJ training. With all these benefits from sleep, you become prone to fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training. Each point contributes directly or indirectly to fast muscle recovery.

• The fourth way for fast BJJ muscle recovery is a sauna. A sauna is a small room usually heated at 70 to 100℃. The room can be heated using electricity or gas. Usually, woods are burned, and the room is completely closed with negligible space for air to heat the room and keep the room at the desired high temperature for a long time. Electricity is also used for heating. Humidity is kept low at 10 to 20%. Other methods used for heating the room are infrared light, rocks, and steam.

• If you see the studies on sauna, then most of the research out there will show you that if you do the sauna for 4 to 5 days a week at 170° Fahrenheit for about 20 to 30 minutes each time that you go in there, you are going to notice a drastic improvement in your recovery and your overall well-being now.

• The fourth key tip will be based on whether you have access to the tool. The tool is called a sauna. A traditional sauna is often advised. You must have access to full spectrum, where you can use infrared or near-infrared, depending on what you believe is best. But most people think that the traditional one is just fine.

• This is because it stimulates something called heat shock proteins. It will enhance your sensitivity to heat and even improve mitochondrial volume. So, if you can see the mitochondria volume increase, you will start improving your endurance. Then, you can use sprint interval training to enhance your mitochondrial respiration.

• So using the sauna can improve your endurance, it can improve your ability to recover. Don't forget that you can disconnect during this time. Put your cell phone somewhere else, maybe once in a while. You should listen to a podcast or something along those lines, but just going into the sauna and chilling out is advised. Use this to improve your ability to sit quietly or to meditate, and it's going to lead to not only physical recovery but also mental recovery.

Sauna has a lot of health benefits. Its role can be realized from the following points, which all contribute to optimal muscle recovery.

• The Sauna provides heat to all parts of your body. Your muscles get heated. This helps them repair after BJJ training.

• The heat you get in the sauna room improves blood circulation. It means that your muscles start receiving more blood than before. More blood means more nutrients and more oxygen. This will help your muscles rebuild and repair faster after BJJ training.

• Your muscles get inflamed and sore during BJJ training, not every time but often, especially when just starting. Sauna treats your inflamed muscles by providing heat, aiding in fast BJJ muscle recovery.

• Sauna heat improves your cardiovascular function and decreases the risk of heart disease. This helps you recover faster BJJ muscle.

With all these benefits from the sauna, you become prone to fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training. Each point contributes directly or indirectly to fast muscle recovery.

• The last way to fast BJJ muscle recovery is nutrition. Nutrition is the backbone of your BJJ training. Your body gets energy and support from nutrition. So you can never ignore nutrition. You must keep some foods and drinks to boost your energy levels before BJJ training and after BJJ training to help your fast BJJ muscle recovery.

• Protein: 20-40 grams after BJJ training daily.

• Carbohydrates: 70-80 grams after BJJ training daily.

• Water: 450-750 ml before BJJ training, 450-750 ml after BJJ training for every pound of water lost, 120-240 ml water after every 15 minutes during BJJ training.

• Now, the fifth key concept is something that many BJJ coaches take for granted, and they believe that their students are doing everything they should be doing, but in reality, they are not. This is going to be a nutritional improvement.

• We will discuss and provide basic guidelines for nutrition. So, what are some basic guidelines for nutrition to fast BJJ muscle recovery? For this you have to first understand what are macro and micronutrients.

• Our body needs nutrients to get energy, maintain structure, and perform daily tasks. Some nutrients are required in large quantities, while others are required in small quantities. Nutrients which are required by our body in large quantities are called macronutrients.

• Carbohydrates, fats, alcohol, and protein are known as macronutrients. So, you should take one gram of protein per pound of body weight daily. This can be from plant protein. This can be from animal-based protein. You can also use supplements like whey protein. These are all fine ways to improve your protein consumption.

• Let's proceed to the next step. Getting a fair amount of carbohydrates, specifically microbiota-accessible carbohydrates (MAC), is often advised. These are the types of carbohydrates that are not digested in the human body.

• Instead, they are metabolized by microbes in the human body's gut. The benefits of the MAC type of carbohydrates are numerous, with a prominent being that they prevent us from inflammatory diseases such as autoimmune diseases, allergies, or infections.

• So these are carbohydrates that are going to be digested in your colon, and in turn, they are going to help you have more lean muscle mass. You are going to feel better with digestion. This is going to be found from sources that are high in fiber. One rule of thumb for carbohydrate consumption could start at one and a half grams of carbohydrates to two grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight.

• This is a good baseline and the factor if you have to cut for a weight class. Make sure that you are not overeating because you could end up having excess mass and not being able to make that weight class.

• So, just make sure you are prioritizing your actual nutritional improvements. Focus on the protein. Focus on the carbohydrates. Make sure the carbohydrate source is flourishing. It is filled with microbiota-accessible carbohydrates (MAC) and will improve your overall recovery. 

Nutrition has a lot of health benefits. Its role can be realized from the following points, which all contribute to optimal muscle recovery.

• Your body has glycogen stores. When you are doing BJJ training, glycogen from these stores is converted to glucose, a source of energy for you to do BJJ training or any other kind of physical activity. Taking some carbohydrates after BJJ training prepares you for physical activity by replenishing the glycogen stores.

• Consuming protein-rich foods after BJJ training helps in protein synthesis in your body, which helps repair and rebuild your muscles and fast BJJ muscle recovery. Magnesium plays a vital role in increasing protein in your body

• Consuming vitamin C-rich foods synthesize collagen in your body, which increases muscle integrity and helps you recover fast BJJ muscle post-BJJ training.

• Polyphenols also help in fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training by reducing oxidative stress and inflammation.

With all these benefits from the nutrition, you become prone to fast BJJ muscle recovery after BJJ training. Each point contributes directly or indirectly to fast muscle recovery.

• So, we discussed the types of adaptation that we need to the stimulus provided by training. We went over the fact that we need to enhance our nutrition. We went over the fact that we need to improve our joint integrity.

• We need to improve our mental state of well-being. We provided some nutritional baseline things that you can use. We went through all those key factors around yoga, meditation, the sauna, and improving your sleep. These are the main things that are going to help you recover.

• Now, you can take these and apply them to your training and your recovery. So one of those questions people often have about microbiota-accessible carbohydrates is where can you get those microbiota-accessible carbohydrates? Where can you source your fiber to ensure you still have enough carbohydrates? If you want to become a champion, you must cultivate your power.

There are five pillars to muscle recovery for BJJ: sleep, nutrition, yoga, meditation, and spending some time daily in the sauna. Focus on these to recover your muscles fast after BJJ training. As an overview, try to get seven to nine hours of sleep every night. Focus on quality nutrition, ensuring you eat enough carbohydrates, protein, and fats.

With training intensity, ensure sufficient rest and recovery, and use tools like autoregulation when you are more fatigued. If you want to take a deep dive into BJJ recovery, learn and practice the steps and methods given in this article.

There are several reasons why and how it drastically improves your mobility. When your mobility improves, you can lengthen the muscles, and lengthening is strengthening. So you start to learn how to handle different positions in deeper ranges of motion and that can lead to greater BJJ performance.

It helps you become more aware of your feelings in certain positions. Then, you can incorporate that information into your warm-ups. You can start mobilizing more effectively based on your feelings while doing yoga. What yoga does is force you to disconnect from the digital world to embrace who you are internally and start to have that self-reflection time. It enables you to almost get into that meditative state. So, use yoga four to five days a week for 10 to 20 minutes.

You start controlling your cognitive ability and can quiet those thoughts. So, some people like to meditate before and after training. You can do that for maybe half an hour before or after training. Some people like to meditate early in the morning when they first wake up to remove all unnecessary things from their minds.

Meditation saves you from mental health issues. Meditation saves you from many diseases, such as gastrointestinal (GIT) diseases. You become mentally strong, which enables you to focus on your BJJ game. Besides these benefits, meditation provides many other benefits, such as helping you be creative, increasing self-awareness, and helping you become patient.

A sauna stimulates something called heat shock proteins. It will enhance your sensitivity to heat and even improve mitochondrial volume. So, if you can see the mitochondria volume increase, you will start improving your endurance. Then, you can use sprint interval training to enhance your mitochondrial respiration.

So using the sauna can improve your endurance, it can improve your ability to recover. Don't forget that you can disconnect during this time. Put your cell phone somewhere else, maybe once in a while. Use this to improve your ability to sit quietly or to meditate, and it's going to lead to not only physical recovery but also mental recovery.

When you are sleeping, the master gland in your body (pituitary gland) releases growth hormones. These growth hormones are necessary for fast muscle recovery after BJJ training. When you are in deep sleep (the last stage of sleep), your muscles feel relaxed.

They receive more blood than when you are awake. More blood means that they will receive more oxygen and nutrients. This will help you in your fast muscle recovery after BJJ training. Sleep is also linked to protein building in your body, resulting in fast recovery after BJJ training.