First Quarter New Year Training: The Break-In

New Year fitness goals are extremely popular especially because it allows us to start fresh no matter where we are in our fitness journey. Regardless if you have been training for years or you are just getting started, something has lead you to this specific section in Jiu-Jitsu Magazine and I am extremely hopeful that after you are done reading this, you will at least be inspired to start or continue your fitness journey.

JIU-JITSU

If you have experienced the physical and mental challenges of jiu-jitsu, you are likely to understand the beauty of the art and you might even understand how it can be an extremely useful tool to burn calories, increase cardiovascular endurance and even develop and or tone your muscles. Popular training classes such as “CrossFit” seem to be very effective due its large variety of training principles encompassed in a training session. Although Jiu-Jitsu does NOT use weight load resistance, you are more than likely to use many training principles in a 5-6-minute sparring session than any other fitness routine. If you are not aware of what goes on in the “physical chess match” of jiu-jitsu, you can expect in one typical sparring session you might use flexibility, static strength, explosive strength all with a high heart rate and not to mention someone attacking your limbs and your throat or the other way around.

We as jiu-jitsu practitioners