Diet and Nutrition for BJJ

I am personally a big fan of intermittent fasting mixed with flexible dieting as a method to control weight and body composition. I don’t believe in restricting the types of food I eat (e.g. no pizza or ice cream), but the overall calorie amount, as well as the amount of carbs, fat, and protein are important. This is known as flexible dieting.

Fasting

Most men prefer to eat large meals and feel full. The problem is that if you do that 3 – 5 times a day, you will quickly take in too many calories. An alternative would be to eat a lot of small meals, but in order to hit a low calorie target, that means each meal is very small and you’re never full. The better solution would be to eat 1 or 2 big meals and then eat nothing the rest of the time. At least this way, you get the feeling of being full some of the time. And fasting is not as hard as you think. If your sleep time is part of the fast, that’s about 8 hours. And in the morning if you have a black coffee or two to suppress your appetite, it’s very easy to make it to lunch without eating. Even going farther to dinner is not that hard once you’ve had a little practice. Fasting can help you to create a healthier relationship with food. If you’ve gone a day without eating before, you come to realize that nothing bad happened. It’s no big deal at all. If you refrain from eating every X hours, all your muscle isn’t going to suddenly vanish. And you can learn to tell the difference between real hunger and just eating because you’re bored or trying to repress negative emotions.

Fasting also has a lot of health benefits not directly related to fat loss. See the links below for more on this, or Google autophagy and fasting, and life extension and fasting. Fasting is NOT recommended for those who have had issues with eating disorders in the past.

Flexible dieting / IIFYM

The concept of flexible dieting / If It Fits Your Macros is that you can eat whatever types of foods you want as long as you hit a target value for overall calories, carbs, protein, and fat. The idea is to make things psychologically easier by not restricting any particular types of foods, and allowing for some cravings. Of course, portion control is important. Flexible dieting is highly compatible with fasting, because if you fall off the wagon and eat a bunch of high calorie foods one day, the next day you can just fast a little longer to make up for it.

My routine:

I eat nothing for breakfast. I drink a black coffee about an hour after waking up, and maybe another one an hour after that if I feel like it. The caffeine in the coffee helps suppress my appetite. On the weekends I make a big batch of some kind of stew or chili made with fresh vegetables, dried beans, and fresh meat. I bring a big serving of this from home to eat for lunch. I train in the evenings. Before training, I’ll have a small meal of some oatmeal or yogurt. After training I’ll have a dinner of whatever I feel like, which can include some junkier foods like ice cream, pizza, etc. I sleep well with my stomach full.

I would not recommend training fasted, but I don’t think it reduces performance as much as you might think. I’ve trained after doing a 24 hour fast and my performance was probably reduced about 5%. It’s not really that big of a deal either way. The book Eat Stop Eat mentioned below goes into more studies on this topic. Essentially the evidence shows that training after a short term fast causes a very small performance penalty. The placebo effect may cause some people to perform much worse. If you train in the morning, then maybe you could look at eating breakfast and lunch and skipping dinner for your fast.

Links

Fasting and flexible dieting both bring up a lot of questions when someone first reads about them. The links below give a much deeper introduction to all of these things and should answer your questions.

This blog post by Larry Lindenman outlines a simple evidence based approach to fat loss, which incorporates both fasting and flexible dieting. The well known trainer Dan John commented positively on this post.
http://pointdriventraining.com/2016/01/01/point-driven-fat-loss/

http://www.iifym.com/ is a good starting place for an introduction to flexible dieting.

For those who are science-minded, this is a good roundup of the evidence on intermittent fasting:
http://www.lift-heavy.com/intermittent-fasting/

Here Mark Sisson gives an easily readable layman’s introduction to the health benefits of fasting:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/health-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting/

This is a short, free, online e-book on nutrition expert John Berardi’s experiences with different forms of IF.
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting

LeanGains is Martin Berkhan’s site. Berkhan did much to popularize the 16/8 style of fasting, where you fast every day for 16 hours (basically just not eating breakfast), and then you can eat during the remaining 8 hours.
http://www.leangains.com/

Kinobody’s approach is similar to LeanGains, but in some aspects slightly easier to follow:
https://kinobody.com/workouts-and-exercises/how-to-do-intermittent-fasting-never-get-hungry/

Brad Pilon’s book Eat Stop Eat is easy to read but thoroughly documents the science behind IF. I highly recommend checking it out. Pilon recommends a program where you go 24 hours without eating 1 -2 times per week. Compared with the 16/8 program, I found Eat Stop Eat to be a little harder to adhere to over the long term.

http://eatstopeat.com/
http://bradpilon.com/

Defending and countering the over/under guard pass

Please take a look at my post ‘Open guard retention principles‘ for more on open guard retention.

Defending and countering the over/under guard pass

Here are my thoughts on defending this pass, which is one of my favorite pressure/smash passes.

The key principles are:

Control his hands

Your opponent needs to put one arm under your leg on one side, and the other arm grabbing your other leg and holding it down on the other side. If you can control at least one of his hands, it will prevent the pass from ever starting.

Push the opponent’s head to the same side his legs are going

As we discuss in almost every guard retention post, the opponent wants to end up on side control, with his head on one side of your body and his legs on the other. If you can push or pull his head to the same side of your body as his legs, he can’t pin you. With the over/under pass, the opponent will put his shoulder in your stomach and his head across your body from where his legs are. You can block his head from coming across your body to the left side of your body by using your left bicep to push his face to your right.

Be ready to defend the leg on shoulder smash pass

The over/under pass is so-called because the opponent can pass over your leg, which is the most common, and if that meets resistance, he can pass under the leg that’s on top of his arm. The Josh Vogel video that I link below addresses this issue. Aside from the move he shows to prevent the issue, if you do start getting stacked, I’d focus on keeping the arm that’s under your leg, away from your neck, and looking for an elbow push escape. You can see an example of this in this video by Jeff Rockwell, ‘MG Sit Up Escapes 2’ starting at about 1:00:

This video by Babs Olusanmokun ‘Rolled Up Episode 34 Bonus technique with Babs’ demonstrates defending the over under pass by pushing the head and using an armpit grip like a whizzer.

This video by Josh Vogel, ‘Quick over/under guard pass counter :)’ focuses on pushing the head and also addresses the threat of the leg on shoulder smash pass:

This video by Revolution BJJ ‘Over/under pass defense to crucifix’ shows pushing the head and getting up to a crucifix:

This video by Jeff Joslin, ‘Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) Technique – 2 Over/Under Guard Pass Counters’, shows head pushing and getting up similar to the one by Babs, and then a loop choke alternative:

Here’s Cobrinha ‘Miragaia Counter Sweep ~ Cobrinha BJJ & Fitness Alliance Los Angeles’:

Sometimes people teach the ‘harpoon sweep’ as a counter to the over under, as shown here:

‘Over Under Pass Counter by Diego Gamonal’:

I’m not that big a fan of this one because I think once you set the grips for it, it’s very predictable and also hard to switch to something else. But it is certainly a legitimate move taught by a lot of good people.

http://bjjpressure.com/defending-against-the-leg-on-shoulder-stacking-smash-pass

http://bjjpressure.com/category/guard-retention/

Defending and countering the Toreando/bullfighting pass

Please take a look at my post ‘Open guard retention principles‘ for more on open guard retention.

Defending and countering the Toreando pass

The Toreando pass, aka the bullfighter pass, at a very oversimplified level, involves grabbing the legs at the pants, throwing them to one side, and running around to the other side. My thoughts on defending the Toreando are:

You should prevent them from grabbing both legs at the pants

Since grabbing both legs at the pants is a prerequisite for executing the pass, preventing that situation will automatically prevent the pass. You’d accomplish this by establishing control over their hands and breaking their grip immediately if they do get a pants grip.

If you can sit up, you should sit up.

This keeps your knees close to your chest, which is an important guard retention principle. If someone is trying to Toreando you, usually they’re grabbing your legs, so nothing stops you from sitting up. When you’re sitting up, you can use a lot of hip movement to help prevent the pass, which will be demonstrated in some of the videos that I link below.

Pull or push their head to the side that their legs are running around to

The opponent wants to end up on side control with his head on one side of your body and his legs on the other side. If you can force his head towards the same direction as his legs, he won’t be able to pass. This is part of the reason why the collar drag is such a common counter for the Toreando.

Move your hips away from the side that their legs are running around to, and point your knees towards that side

The top guy’s goal with the Toreando is to force your knees to point away from his hips, to prevent you from putting him back in the guard. If your hips stay where they are and he pushes your knees away, they will end up pointing away. But if he pushes your knees away, and you also move your hips away, you may be able to keep your knees pointing towards his legs.

See below for some YouTube clips that illustrate these principles.

Here’s Firas Zahabi on ‘powerful guard pass prevention’ against the Toreando pass. It involves using a collar grip and hip heist to get up and collar drag.

Here’s Jeff Glover using an arm drag / rollover sweep:

Here’s Flavio Almeida using a wrist/sleeve push (The clip is named ‘Defending The Bull Fight Guard Pass’

Here’s Jeff Joslin with ‘Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) Technique Breakdown – Bullfighter Guard Pass Counter’. The technique involves moving the hips and throwing the opponent by.

This Demian Maia clip ‘Demian Maia Science Of Jiu-Jitsu Series 1 – Defending The Guard Pass’ is mostly about defending the Toreando through hip movement and framing.

Open guard retention principles

Open guard retention principles: How to develop an unpassable guard

Here are some important principles to understand for recovering guard and defending against open guard passes. These would apply to preventing guard passes like the leg weave, various smash passes, knee slice/cut/slide, toreando, over/under, and pretty much anything else.

Using your free leg

When one leg is in trouble (getting pinned or dragged), you usually need the other leg to save you by pushing on the opponent as you pull your vulnerable leg back. Don’t neglect the pull part. That’s equally important as the push.

Therefore:

Keep your knees close to your chest in general. It’s ok to extend one to push away the opponent, but never extend both legs. Think of how a boxer keeps his hands close to his head most of the time, and extends one or the other to punch, but never both. When both are extended, there is no potential to push the opponent away.
Since you want to keep your knees close to your chest, if your opponent pins your feet to the ground, sit up to move your chest closer to your knees.
Never allow your knees to come too close to each other. If they get pinned together, one won’t be able to help the other.

Facing the opponent and maintaining the angle

If your opponent is passing to your right, you want your hips and knees to be facing to the right. If your hips and/or knees are facing left, there’s no way your left leg can help defend. So, even if he manages to drag your leg to your left, you need to point your knees to the right, and this will allow you to bring your left leg into the game.

If your head is at 12 o’clock and your feet are at 6 o’clock, you want to keep your opponent’s feet at 6 o’clock. If he starts running around to cut an angle on you, you need to spin to keep your feet pointed at his feet.

Pushing the head

Your opponent wants to pass the guard by getting to side control. His head will be on one side of your body and his legs will be on the other. You want the opposite. If he’s passing with his legs on your right, you want to push his head to your right. When you do this, it will be very easy to square up with him.

Here’s an example of this from Great Grappling, ‘Half Guard Pass Defense Push on Face’:

and here is The Grappling Academy:, ‘The BEST Ways to Protect Your Guard – Principle 5 of 6’, which talks a lot about head pushing.

Points of contact / lines of defense

You always want to have 4 points of contact with the opponent if you can. Two hands, two feet. As you transition between guards, it’s inevitable that you’ll have to drop that number to 3 sometimes, but try not to go lower. Think of rock climbing. Your opponent will constantly be trying to remove your points of contact by breaking your grips, and pushing and pulling your legs. When he succeeds in removing a point of contact, immediately move it somewhere else on his body. If your limb is just hanging in the air, not able to push or pull on anything, it’s useless.

If your opponent gets past your feet, maybe you can still use your knees. If they get past your hands, maybe you can still use your elbows/forearms. If they get past your knees / elbows, maybe you can use your arms or legs to bump them forward from behind.

This video from Keenan Cornelius on the 8 lines of defense demonstrates this principle:

‘Keenan Cornelius Worm Guard Seminar in Kuala Lumpur’ goes deeper into the same principles:

And this one by Ryan Hall, ‘Ryan Hall – Defensive Guard, Strategy, Fundamentals, Building Walls, Sweeps & Submissons’
also talks about lines of defense:

Additional links:

This video by Xande Ribeiro demonstrates most of these principles, and I think is one of the best on this topic:

This series of videos by Ostap Manastyrski shows some defenses to common open guard passes.

Here’s Demian Maia on this topic:

This video by Brea Jiu-Jitsu breaks down Keenan Cornelius’s open guard game, and includes a lot on guard retention, which starts at about 16:20:

Episode 1 and 2 of the Martin Aedma Jiu-Jitsu show focus on open guard retention and are fantastic and well worth a watch. Be warned that they’re about an hour each.

This clip by Kit Dale on ‘Fundamentals for Open Guard in BJJ
‘ describes some fundamentals of open guard retention:

This clip by Bernardo Faria, ‘Guard Retention: How To Stop Your Guard From Getting Passed’, talks about staying tight, which would include keeping your knees close to your chest, or turning to the knees to avoid the pass.

For more from me on open guard retention, check my guard retention category on this blog:

http://bjjpressure.com/category/guard-retention/

BJJ and grip

Why do my hands hurt so much? How do I strengthen my grip for BJJ?

Most times when beginners complain about their hands hurting, it’s mostly a technical issue. Beginners tend to grip too hard when they shouldn’t and waste their grip. I see this a lot even with young healthy guys.

When you are grabbing someone’s gi and they aren’t actively trying to break the grip, just grip gently with a mostly relaxed hand. You only need to grip hard for short durations.

When you’re gripping, make sure your wrist is perfectly straight and put a little bit of tension in your wrists so they don’t bend. Bending the wrist weakens the grip considerably. Your opponent will try to bend your wrist in order to help break your grip. Gripping hard with a floppy wrist is very counterproductive. Roger Gracie explains the importance of wrists here:

Whatever you’re trying to do with your grab on the gi, if you try to do it by just using your arms, it will burn your arms a lot more than if you use your body positioning and legs and core properly.

e.g. if I am on the bottom of closed guard and I have my hand in his collar setting up a cross collar choke and he’s trying to push away that hand with both of his arms, if I just try to pull him down with my arms, it will put a lot of strain on my grip. But if I realize that now his arms are not posting on my body, I can easily just sit up, clinch him and pull him down.

In summary, training your grip strength is well and good, and I do recommend doing it, but especially for beginners, problems with grip are mostly technical and not physical, and the fix is technical, rather than just trying to strengthen your grip with exercise.