Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) is an excellent tool to have in your arsenal as an MMA fighter for many reasons. It's an overall mind and body workout that serves as an excellent foundation to build your MMA game on. BJJ is considered an essential ingredient of MMA as it equips the athlete with the ability to take the fight to the ground and control the grounded opponent into strikes and submissions.
Many MMA athletes understand the importance of investing time into their BJJ practice. Here is our 4 most popular reasons why:
1. Endurance
Endurance is what you need to survive in the cage, it’s vital that you have the ability to endure an unpleasant or difficult circumstances to inch closer to victory.
A match between two evenly skilled competitors often comes down to the endurance they are able to output in the bout, the individual with more endurance (or extra gear) is usually able to take advantage of the exhausted opponent that is vulnerable to submission.
BJJ is the perfect discipline to work on your endurance. It engages every part of the body, help control breathing and focus under pressure. Students of BJJ quickly learn to manage their energy levels during the fight on the ground. This gives the MMA athlete a valuable edge as they combine this ground component.
2. Strength
A full body workout that involves a lot of pushing, pulling and holding motions, BJJ is guaranteed to improve both your anterior and posterior muscle chains.
The different positions in BJJ require a lot of holds and gripping for a superior control over the opponent, as a by-product it strengthens the grip & joint strength of the body. Finally the act of needing to move your body weight effortlessly from one position to another will work and improve your core strength which links to all the dynamic/explosive movements required for MMA.
3. Superior mobility and flexibility BJJ will improve your ability to move fluidly from one position to another (e.g. From the standing position to the ground with ease, or moving from an unfavourable position to an improved one.)
During a roll BJJ can often present challenging positions to navigate. As you start to become familiar with the variety of positions it naturally starts to improve your overall range of motion.
4. Improved problem solving
The very nature of BJJ requires you to be constantly solving problems on the fly. How do you take the opponent from standing to the ground? How do I control my opponent without burning out the muscles? How do I continue to improve my position to chain to to a submission? etc, the problems are many! The athlete who can solve problems faster and stay steps ahead will usually be the victor over the other. When starting off it can feel clunky and often hit mental blanks. But with experience over time the mental map starts to expand and the muscle memory will help you be smooth and flow with ease. With every lesson BJJ will help you become a better problem solver and help you develop the mental fortitude required to work under difficult situations, which translates directly to the striking challenges of MMA .
BJJ is like taking a cardio, strength training and yoga/movement class all in one! Of all the martial arts it's the one touted to be the most beneficial for MMA.
Where boxing is the standing component of Mixed Martial Arts, it's a commonly echoed statement to refer BJJ as THE ground component for MMA.
If you are looking to start with MMA be sure to couple your training with regular BJJ classes to fast track a balanced MMA game.
At Wolves Den we offer classes for all the disciplines that are essential to MMA. This includes BJJ (Gi & NoGi), Boxing, Muay Thai and MMA.
Come and join the pack today, it's a one stop shop for everything you need for MMA!
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