Reducing Soreness in Combat Sports

How to reduce soreness.

What is the biggest limiting factor on how often you train?

Time?

Money?

Or the ability to recover from your training?

For most people (especially when they pass that 30 year mark) it’s the latter. There is no doubt that BJJ can be harsh on the body. Many people get sore from most training sessions, especially when they contain hard sparring.

So how can you reduce or even eliminate the soreness and pain that you get in muscles and joints?

In this article I will look at certain foods, supplements and tactics that you can use to limit the amount of soreness that you get and improve your over all recovery. After all, the better you recover, the more you can train, the better you get!

Before I go any further, this is the part of the article where I tell you that good nutrition beats everything. If your nutrition sucks then your recovery and training will suck. Nothing that I mention in this article will make up for poor nutrition. In many cases having a well thought out nutrition plan will sort 90% of recovery issues. If you’re not sure on how to set up a good nutrition plan then please speak to your coach or a professional.

Ok, with that in mind, let’s look at how we can maximise recovery and reduce soreness.

I’m going to split this into two articles. One that looks at specific recovery techniques while the other on diet and supplementation (coming next month).

Firstly let’s look at specific recovery.

Recovery is hard for BJJ athletes. If they aren’t training then they want to be doing kettlebells, running hills, drilling, jogging, doing hot yoga etc etc. The fact is that most athletes would benefit from doing nothing in between sessions and making sure they get the right amount of sleep. There are however a few things that you can do to maximise recovery.

While I know that many of you will already know about the following things mentioned, I would bet that you don’t do it with any kind of regularity. Hopefully this article will serve to remind you to do these things, rather than giving you some new knowledge that will change your life forever (cool if it does though lol).

Baths

There are many baths that fall under this heading from ice baths, contrast showers, Epsom salt baths and just hot baths.

In my experience the best two that I have found are contrast showers and hot baths. Most people choose not to do contrast showers (no one likes the idea of standing under a freezing shower for a few minutes) however they are by far the most effective in reducing soreness and lactic acid build up in the muscles.

The second is just lying in a VERY hot bath then taking a short nap. I’ve found that this technique works better for the slightly older BJJ athlete however women also seem to favour it.

Foam Rolling.

I don’t think that there are many people out there that don’t know about foam rolling and it’s benefits. However those benefits are so great that it is well worth repeating.

Do your damn foam rolling!

Foam rolling is one of those things that you only realise works when you stop doing it. Get into a habit of doing it (ideally) every day or at least after every session.

A quick youtube search will yield the best movements for your tight areas.

Stretching and Mobility work.

For some strange reason stretching seems to have fallen for favour in the BJJ world.

I have no idea why.

Being able to move better and being more flexible is a massive advantage in a sport where you end up looking like two pretzels trying to kill each other. Not to mention that if your muscles are supple and flexible, they will be able to perform better and therefore recover better.

For Mobility work I recommend doing DeFranco’s agile 8, and for stretching I would recommend on focusing on the hips, hamstrings, groin, chest and back.

Massage.

Lastly I will mention massage. Not the one with a happy ending but a proper sports massage.

While a well done sports massage will be a little painful to get, most people will confess that they feel ten years younger after one. Having one of these done every month or so will keep you in good shape to recover quickly and will help keep your muscles feeling supple rather than tight or achy.

Chances are there is already someone in your gym that does this for a living. However if there isn’t, then other members of your gym will probably be able to recommend a local one.

This is a very short list of techniques and practices that will help you recover quicker and help reduce soreness and pain that normally follows hard training.

Next month we will look at certain things that you can add to your current nutrition plan to help the recover purpose further.

Stay healthy,

Mike