Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - General Thread

I think an element of soreness following a BJJ session once you're past 35 is probably inevitable. I don't know anyone training in that age bracket, and training reasonably intensely, who doesn't report feeling a bit broken up. Although there's a distinction between acceptable soreness the day after a session and actually carrying injuries.

Personally I find magnesium salts in a hot bath (soak for 15 minutes) helps, your mileage may vary.

I'm not really a believer in a lot of other stuff although I do practice some yoga and I feel like that did improve my general tissue quality and I feel like if you have a base level of mobility then it is inevitably going to mean you're more comfortable when brought to extreme positions in the course of a roll.

In terms of managing lifting and BJJ as a masters athlete:-

Frankly it depends on what your training actually is in both contexts. If someone is training 4 times a week in the gym but they are just dicking around then BJJ on top of that it is not going to massively effect their recovery because they are probably not doing enough to illicit adaptation in any case.

On the other hand, if someone is lifting a number of times a week and the programming is genuinely demanding in terms of volume and intensity then inevitably there will be a knock on effect. Squatting and deadlifting - whether the programming revolves around intensity or volume, or whatever combination - are intensely demanding and you are not going to go heavy and have multiple productive BJJ classes during the same week and keep that up for very long, unless you are napping, eating and recovering around the clock the rest of the time. A high volume of BJJ on top of a programme based on adding weight to the bar on a regular basis, or setting PRs in terms of reps completed, is also going to cause stalling earlier than it otherwise would. Finally, I would also question whether it would be very easy to add lean muscle mass while training that much... Even if you were doing the work in the gym the BJJ would mean you would need to consume an absolute ****-tonne of calories in order to stay in a calorific surplus.

An option for managing a high workload is to consolidate the stressors. You'd ideally do your lifting and your BJJ on the same days. For example, if someone is training 3 lifting sessions and 4 BJJ sessions you might aim to still keep two days of the week which are total rest days, no training whatsoever, for recovery. Still excessive for almost any masters trainee I can think of, however, maybe barring people who are accustomed to that volume all of their lives. Or, as I said, people who are using the gym more for recreation / active recovery.