Good way of getting in shape off the mats for grappling?

[Brandon Miller]

I’m not sure if I asked this question correctly but I realized grappling takes good cardio to persevere through multiple rounds of rolling after getting thrown and throwing your partner repeatedly for the past previous hour. My question is what can I do to get into better cardio shape for grappling off the mats since Sambo is only Monday through Thursday for me? Thanks fellas. Threw a pic in tonight before my practice. I’m loving my sexy crotch riding shorts.

 

[drop bear]

If you are doing sambo then thematically you should probably do kettlebells.

 

[MetalBoar]

Physical endurance is mostly a product of three things:

1. Skill at performing the activity. How hard do you have to work to accomplish your goals? How efficient are you in the application of your art? You can really improve your effective endurance a lot by getting more skilled at grappling even if you don't improve your overall fitness simply because you don't have to work as hard to get the desired result. So, practice, practice, practice.
2. Metabolic adaptation (how your body utilizes energy and oxygen, processes cellular waste, etc.). How well adapted is your body to the activity for which you want to have endurance? Metabolic adaptation is fairly specific so the best way to improve it is by actually doing the thing you want to be better at in the fashion that you want to be able to do it. Specifically you want to spend a sufficient (varies by activity) amount of time, several days a week practicing your art as close as possible to how you want to actually use it in competition or other desired application. So, practice, practice, practice - but this practice needs to be as close as possible to the format and intensity that you expect to use when you're doing it for real.
3. Physical strength. The stronger your muscles are the less relative effort it takes to perform physical actions. So, the stronger your muscles the more work you can do before you get tired. This doesn't hold up perfectly for very specialized activities like running marathons, but grappling performance should simply be improved across the board by increasing your strength, both in terms of your ability to apply techniques and your endurance. In my opinion high intensity resistance training, focusing on big compound movements, with either machines or free weights is the most effective way to increase strength.

Based on the idea that you're doing grappling classes 4 days a week Monday through Thursday, I'd do one day a week of extremely high intensity strength training on Saturday and rest Friday and Sunday and then focus on getting as much out of your classes as possible. If you are young, healthy, eating a lot of high quality food and getting plenty of sleep I'd flip that to two days of extremely high intensity strength training and rest on Saturday. Doing some low effort skill focused training on your rest day(s) would likely be fine as well.

This is predicated on the idea that you spend a portion of each class rolling at a fairly high intensity. If your grappling classes are very technical and skills focused with limited time spent rolling then you'll probably benefit from figuring out how to do some metabolic training that closely mimics the efforts of competition. If you're trying to absolutely maximize your results then you can experiment with increasing training frequency and intensity until you hit a point of diminishing returns and then back off slightly. Really good record keeping will serve you well regardless of which approach you take.

I'm happy to expand on any of that or explain it later, but I'm exhausted and heading to bed. Hopefully I wasn't completely incoherent in my sleep deprived state...

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

Repeat your solo drill (partner drill without partner) 250 times non-stop.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

If you are doing sambo then thematically you should probably do kettlebells.

This was going to be my suggestion. I like short-rest interval-ish kettlebell routines for grappling. If you get the right mix of exercises, they work all kinds of odd muscles in the trunk of the body, as well as the important stabilization muscles in the shoulders and back. Keep the pace moving, and you get some cardio with it. And it's all Russian-y.

 

[drop bear]

This was going to be my suggestion. I like short-rest interval-ish kettlebell routines for grappling. If you get the right mix of exercises, they work all kinds of odd muscles in the trunk of the body, as well as the important stabilization muscles in the shoulders and back. Keep the pace moving, and you get some cardio with it. And it's all Russian-y.

Pavel is especially Russian-y.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Pavel is especially Russian-y.

Enough so that you probably have to grunt with a Russian accent when you do the workout.

 

[jobo]

I’m not sure if I asked this question correctly but I realized grappling takes good cardio to persevere through multiple rounds of rolling after getting thrown and throwing your partner repeatedly for the past previous hour. My question is what can I do to get into better cardio shape for grappling off the mats since Sambo is only Monday through Thursday for me? Thanks fellas. Threw a pic in tonight before my practice. I’m loving my sexy crotch riding shorts.

there's good advice above, but really two points, adaptation needs rest, if your training hard Monday to Thursday, then that really all the training you need and the best use of Friday to Sunday is probably not doing anything whilst your body adaps and recovers, over training is a real thing, and can at best slowdown the rate of progress your making.
2) your aerobic capacity kicks in once you have exhausted your anaerobic capacity, if your training for an hour and then doing nuktipe rounds, which is how a read your post? then yes your going to need a good amount if aerobic capacity, but that's training for training ability, grapling for a few rounds in competition, will put completely different demands on your energy system, where it would seem sensible to work on boosting you anaerobic capacity, so you need less and less aerobic capacity to do what you need to do, ie with out requiring much oxygen

 

[Deleted member 39746]

Do more grappling? (you could ask people to do it with you from the school on the off days) that tends to work, other than that just compound weight exercise (yes it builds up your cardio) or just the standard cardio routine or circuit routine. With what ever exercises you can do/like to do.

I dont think there is a grappling specific routine you can do, just increasing your cardiovascular systems strength will help. It will build up grappling muscles but would it actually help your performance that much in the endurance game? In terms of cardiovascular system specifically and not muscle endurance.

 

[Danny T]

Really depends on how hard your Monday through Thursday training is.
As Jobo has already stated, you may be better off resting if they are hard and physically taxing.
Otherwise I suggest kettlebells and either some type of aerobic workout. I'm quite certain your regular workout is quite an anaerobic type already.

 

[Brandon Miller]

Thanks guys for all the advice I really appreciate it! You guys definitely answered my questions.

 

[JR 137]

Just to add to what’s been said...

On off/rest days, work on flexibility. Yoga. I don’t know anything about the different types, but nothing like hot yoga nor anything else absurd.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Just to add to what’s been said...

On off/rest days, work on flexibility. Yoga. I don’t know anything about the different types, but nothing like hot yoga nor anything else absurd.

Yeah, we often get too fixated on strength and cardio. Flexibility will help you avoid injury, get into some techniques others cannot, and get out of some techniques others cannot. And will be pretty valuable as you age, too.