Like being Choked? Effects of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Training.

 

Being highly proficient in Taekwondo, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), and Judo, I felt assured that I was going to win an upcoming martial arts tournament in 2020. However, my ego was immediately decimated by my opponent who had executed a judo throw impeccably (I am today still captivated by his throw) during our match. I ended up with a torn knee meniscus and I withdrew from the tournament.  It was devastating because I knew the recovery time would be excruciatingly slow.  As of today, I am still recovering from the injury. I do miss competing but I do not miss the practice training sessions for any martial arts tournament. The recovery time from those practices took days. I never took the time to fully understand why that is until today when I came across this article Effects of a Brazilian Jiu‑Jitsu Training Session on Physiological, Biochemical, Hormonal and Perceptive Responses (Branco, Andreato, Mendes, Gilio, Andrade, Junior, 2016).

The authors wanted to emphasized the intense physical demand from BJJ. BJJ training involves being in abnormal body positions for a prolong period of time in an attempt to submit your opponent by performing vertical posture throws, joint lock manipulation, and strangulation. While attempting these actions on your opponent, you are also simultaneously trying to defend yourself from your opponent attempting these same moves on you. From this study, results have shown that training sessions increases physiological responses exponentially by elevating Creatine Kinase and Lactate Dehydrogenase. BJJ athletes’ catabolic rates was also seen higher than many other physical contact sports. Lactate accumulation levels was unusually very high compared to other athletes, which makes perfect rational sense because our lungs aren’t able to inhale to its’ maximal capacity due to BJJ athletes being in awkward positions, thus restricting our airflow. Anaerobic pathways kicks in due to low O2 availability, that is unless your opponent chokes you out first (my aerobic and anaerobic pathways were definitely not working properly when I was choked to sleep more than a few times in the past).

The elevated lactate, cortisol, LDH, Creatine Kinase, protein repair enzymes levels were so high in BJJ athletes that after 24 hours, these hormones and enzymes were still present at a substantial level. The authors concluded that 24 hours for recovery is not sufficient for BJJ athletes. From this, I can better plan my schedule to accommodate potential prolong recovery times when training for my next tournament.

 

Branco B. H. M., Andreato L. V., Mendes A., Gilio G. R., Andrade A., Junior N. N. (2016). Effects of a Brazilian jiu-jitsu training session on physiological, biochemical, hormonal and perceptive responses. Sci. Martial Arts 12, 145–154.