Combat Sports and Recovery.

I’ve been looking all over this site for info on this, but can’t find any. Does anyone have any info on recovery for people who lift and do a combat sport?

I was told to keep my lifting to twice a week, and to avoid going to failure in the weight room. The logic was going to failure in the weight room and training Judo at the same time would be too much for the body to handle. All that stress increases the injury risk too much on the mat.

I guess I’m looking for advice form people that have been in my shoes (or my gi, if you look at it that way)

Recovery is definitely an important part of your training, especially if you’re doing combat sports.

Is your conditioning good? I’d imagine if you’ve been doing judo for a while then you’re in decent shape. So, if conditioning isn’t a priority, you could get away with lifting 3x a week. Just focus on total body workouts and try to not go to failure on every set, as it’s taking on the CNS.

Make sure you get plenty of rest, too. If you’re not getting a full night’s sleep, it makes lifting and training in judo or whatever discipline very difficult.

As for me personally, I train BJJ and muay Thai 2-4 times a week, depending on my schedule. I lift 2 days a week when I take more classes and 3 days a week when I can’t get to class.

Hope that helps.

[quote]Djwlfpack wrote:
Recovery is definitely an important part of your training, especially if you’re doing combat sports.

Is your conditioning good? I’d imagine if you’ve been doing judo for a while then you’re in decent shape. So, if conditioning isn’t a priority, you could get away with lifting 3x a week. Just focus on total body workouts and try to not go to failure on every set, as it’s taking on the CNS.

Make sure you get plenty of rest, too. If you’re not getting a full night’s sleep, it makes lifting and training in judo or whatever discipline very difficult.

As for me personally, I train BJJ and muay Thai 2-4 times a week, depending on my schedule. I lift 2 days a week when I take more classes and 3 days a week when I can’t get to class.

Hope that helps.[/quote]

this is almost the exact thing I do. Same BJJ/lifting schedule too (creepy). 2-3 days is all you need.

The idea is that at judo (good on ya for rocking judo too. that shit is hard as hell) you must neurologically learn the techniques. If you’re fried CNS-wise form lifting to fatigue then the learning process will be hampered for sure.

As far as recovery goes think about these variables, in this order even:

Eating - your recovery is inherently limited by your food intake. keep animals up and junk down. as many meals as you can during the day. Be sure to rock a sugar and protein drink WHILE training. We both know how long bouts of training can go for and wallowing around in cortisol for 1.5 + hours is retarded and BAD for recovering later.

Sleeping - just as important as eating. Also if you are skilled at sleeping (unlike say me) then try a 20 minte nap in the car before judo. I find I have monumental practices after a snuggly little nap… I mean 20 minutes of bad ass power napping.

Schedule - make sure squats day isn’t right before hip throw day or you will not enjoy life on hip throw day. Or any throw day. After a good bout of squats even getting back to standing is a pain.

Sauna/ice plunge - Sit in the sauna for a while and get warm. I good hot ass shower will work the same. Then hop out and get into some type of cold pool, such as a cold pool. Some gyms have a ice plunge whirl pool. After “chilling out” in the whirl pool muscles won’t be half as sore.

ice - I like to put bags of frozen veggies on my shoulders before I eat them. Feels so good after holding up thai pads for round after round. For you you might put ice or ice rub on hamstrings and esp. forearms. A bucket of ice and ice water is your best friend after a couple rounds of randori involving grabbing grabbing and more grabbing od gi’s.

lakota indian heat rub - fun to bring to the gym so you can put it on the back of someones knee and watch them move faster than ever.

-chris

I would define first if your a judo player who lifts for his/her sport or is judo a recreational activity you do but are a lifter at heart.

Also, is strength a limiting factor or major need you have to address to better your performance on the mat.

I have made great gains and maintained strength with 1-2 abbreviated strength sessions a week when involved in heavy skill/sparring training for sub grappling/mma.

We do alot of partner drilling and conditioning in practice so my extra sessions would be some strength work,gpp and longer aerobic for weight maintence and recovery

I’m a Judoka who lifts. I like what you get from weight training, but Judo is the priority.

Basically, I want to fight in 198 pound weight class. I’m at 184 currently. So the goal is to get as strong as I can at 200, without killing myself.

Good posts here. I am a beginning judoka as well and have wrestled with this same problem the past few weeks. From my personal experience, I know I can only lift legs once a week and still have adequate recovery. So my lifting is now two sessions a week, one upper and one lower. On the lower body day, however, I will usually finish with a pull-up circuit (5 pull ups, 5 neutral grip, 5 chins all in a row, repeat 3x). If I try to lift lower body twice a week I’m either sore as fuck, or can’t put enough into the lifting to make it worth a shit. I also put the lower body day on a saturday so I have all sunday and monday to recover. Honestly though, I probably don’t even need to be lifting because after years of it I really have no deficiency there, and instead spend class getting tooled by people half my size because I have not developed good technique yet.