Muscles

[GuardMaster]

Forum:

Different sports have different weight training regimens. Sometimes adding muscle can be a DETRIMENT as it can both slow you down and put you in a situation where you have to fight your own weight.

What are the most important muscles to train for juijitsu and why? In other words what muscles are better left undeveloped for juijitsu (so they don't slow you down) and which ones would you want to increase in size and strength?

GuardMaster

[Mr. Miyagi]

I've seen articles with Renzo, Egan Inoue, and JJMachado where they go over their weight training schedule and what excercises they think are the best for complementing grappling training. I think they all seemed to stress pulling excercises (like flys and curls) but there wasn't anything that groundbreaking about their regimens. JJM said he preferred machines to free wieghts. None of them appeared to be trying to gain weight or muscle mass.

On the other hand, Ken Shamrock sings a altogether different tune in his book. He has his fighters lift 5 sets with reps 5-4-3-2-1 respectively. The set of 5 is supposed to be about 75% and the final lift is supposed to be your max possible. By the way, the only reason the Lion's Den wasn't cleaning house in Abu Dhabhi was only because they don't train grappling to that extreme, their focus has always been MMA. It's a safe bet that if they concentrated on trying to win Abu Dhabhi they would be very successful there too. All the Lion's Den guys are super strong, even the smaller guys so you'd have to agree they are somewhat bulked up from weight training whereas a guy like JJM or Renzo would probably weight roughly the same whether they lifted or not.

I think the important concept is that all the top fighters do lift weights, however they may.

[Patterson]

Everyone knows lifting weights effectively makes you faster, not slower.

[Biker]

It all depends on how you lift. If you go for higher reps, you are training the slower twitch (red) muscle fibers. If you do fewer, such as Shamrock, you are training the fast twitch (white) fibers. The red fibers do not grow as large or are as strong as the white fibers.

[JaredExtreme]

Well, i found an overview of Mark Kerrs workout schedule if this help's anyone.

[LEGION]

Originally posted by Biker
It all depends on how you lift. If you go for higher reps, you are training the slower twitch (red) muscle fibers. If you do fewer, such as Shamrock, you are training the fast twitch (white) fibers. The red fibers do not grow as large or are as strong as the white fibers.

While it is true that there are different types of muscle fiber, skeletal muscle is divided into type I and types IIa and IIb, there is no difference in the speed of acitivation of contraction between the muscles. This is due to the fact that the mechanism of muscle contraction on the molecular level is exactly the same in every muscle fiber, and the inervation throughout a muscle group is pretty much the same too. The only difference between the types of skeletal muscle is a matter of endurance. The slow twitch muscles are red in color because of a high concentration of mitochondria within the cells, confering greater endurance than the white muscle fibers. Based on your fighting style this should help you determine if you want to do high or low rep routines, high reps if you want to bake your opponent and wait for a mistake, or low reps if you just want to overpower them quickly.

[McLeod]

As long as you keep your cardio conditioning consisten with your weight and mass increase, there is nothing..nada..zip..zilch...squat that I've discovered in my 6 years of submission/BJJ/Sambo experience that makes me believe that bigger is not better.
You MAY lose some flexibility (not necessarily) that may change your game, but you'l have to change your game if you change your body type. that is what I see most of the time, people change their body type but not thier plan of attack. while you may lose that crafty triangle due to your calves being biger, you're head and arm choke will now be twice as effective. And power DOES make a difference, especially in a 6 minte match.
Period.