The Best Workout for Jiu Jitsu

When I started this journey my goal was to figure out which Diets, Workouts and Supplements were best for Combat Sports athletes (particularly Jiu Jitsu practitioners).

I'll cut to the chase: There is no such thing as a single workout, diet or supplement that is universally the best for BJJ or any combat sport. As my coach and No-Gi World Champ Thiago Aso would say "A body is just a body". Meaning everyone's body is a little different and therefore everyone will have to train a little different.

Some people need to focus more on improving cardio, some strength, some flexibility. Yes, ideally you should work on all of these things, but we also have different backgrounds and genetics with various strengths and imbalances to focus on. 

If that was enough for you awesome, problem solved. If you'd like to read more and see what my workouts look like, let's keep going.

As I poked around and researched I found some good info for MMA Guys, Wrestlers, and even Boxers, however there wasn't a lot specifically for Jiu Jitsu. I kept digging and eventually settled on what a lot of us do, I cobbled together a program by combining things I found online.

I found a article about cutting weight from a channel I watch on YouTube: https://www.grapplearts.com/weight-cutting-plan/#  and countless articles like This One with workouts for MMA.

None of these quite hit the mark so I came up the the first version of my workout which combined what I found online with the equipment I have available in my home gym and married the two together using my previous workout experiences as a college athlete.

With some external motivation from Jocko Willink I decided my training days would look like this:

The best way to describe the type of workouts I was doing was High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) so that's what I labeled them. If you would like to see what my workouts looked like on a daily basis you can view them HERE.

This plan worked well and my cardio during rolling drastically improved but something was missing. I'm about 160lbs but most of the guys I roll with at my Jiu Jitsu School are 185bs+ so I was still getting manhandled.  Eventually I decided I needed to add more strength training to my routine so I went back to everyone's favorite research tool, Google.

Still there were very few resources dedicated to Jiu Jitsu so I was back to square one. Knowing I wanted to keep up my improved cardio but also build substantial strength I turned to workouts designed to do both of those, CrossFit.


CrossFit has many benefits but it's not designed specifically for improving BJJ performance so I had to modify traditional CrossFit workouts. With CrossFit some days your workouts are done Every Minute on the Minute, some days it's As Many Rounds As Possible and other variations.

Most BJJ tournaments I've competed in have 5 minute or longer rounds so I modified traditional CrossFit workouts to fit into 5min rounds simulating a Jiu Jitsu tournament. Each day I do at least four 5min rounds with a 90 second rest between each round. You can download my workout HERE.

This workout proved to be much more effective as my cardio stayed at a high level while drastically improving my strength. I'm definitely getting closer to the optimal workout for my body and my BJJ game. 

You can always do better so I will continue to research and try new ways of working out and eating to improve my Jiu Jitsu game. Stay tuned as I keep testing.