Does anyone of you do Calisthenics? What's your opinion?

[The Accuser]

I've been grappling for several years now and consider myself a rather mediocre blue belt. I enjoy BJJ but my very limited athleticism holds me back (I'm almost 40, not much strength nor cardio or flexibility). Actually BJJ has helped me less than I've hoped to get in shape, sure I am stronger and more coordinated than I was when I started but it's very hard to lose bodyfat with BJJ. That's why I'm thinking of picking up calisthenics on the side, like twice a week. What do you think, is it a good addition to BJJ? Or is it somewhat unhealthy like Crossfit?

 

[jr jr]

I am a few years older than you. I can get lazy rolling with less skilled players. I need to watch my diet first to loose weight. Then ride my mountain bike finally bjj.

 

[RJ Green]

olympic lifts and calisthenics are not unhealthy.

doing them without a progression is.

doing them to the point of rhabdomyolysis is.

doing them as fast as possible with shitty technique is.

if you want to lose weight, clean up your diet and add more cardio.

It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you've got to do it every day. That's the hard part.

 

[JosephDredd]

I do gymnastic bodies Foundations, Handstand and stretching series. Best thing I've ever done. 36 years old and moving better than when I was a 25-year-old weightlifting and boxing. Injuries disappearing.

GB's philosophy is: "Being strong isn't enough, being flexible isn't enough: you have to be both." You don't need the stretching series since every strength course pairs strength work with flexibility/mobility.

 

[ItsArun]

i've been in the weight room for as long as ive been grappling, and about 2 years ago i switched over to calisthenics almost exclusively, only doing conventional weightlifting about 20% of my routine. In all honesty I have never felt so athletic as I do now, after focusing more on body awareness, proper biomechanics, form & movement, instead of just "gripping and ripping" (and destroying my body in the process).

jiu jitsu puts a lot of torque on the joints, so I try to dedicate some time to stability training, as well as mobility and flexibility. Honestly, in my opinion, grappling alone makes you strong. I do the big lifts (i.e. deadlift) more for injury prevention. It's the other stuff, mentioned above, that's worth more in my opinion.

 

[RJ Green]

i think you might do well with Yoga too. it's difficult, but not impossible. extremely complimentary to grappling.

i mean if you think about it, BJJ is more or less involuntary yoga.

 

[The Accuser]

Does it take great athletic ability (flexibility, body awareness, strength etc) to get started?

 

[winterbike]

I've been grappling for several years now and consider myself a rather mediocre blue belt. I enjoy BJJ but my very limited athleticism holds me back (I'm almost 40, not much strength nor cardio or flexibility). Actually BJJ has helped me less than I've hoped to get in shape, sure I am stronger and more coordinated than I was when I started but it's very hard to lose bodyfat with BJJ. That's why I'm thinking of picking up calisthenics on the side, like twice a week. What do you think, is it a good addition to BJJ? Or is it somewhat unhealthy like Crossfit?

If you're scared about crossfit being unhealthy you might want to swap BJJ with gardening. And of course calisthenics will help, simply make sure you have access to a good progression. As for body fat... it's mostly diet. Good luck with that!

 

[stinkoman]

if you go into doing calisthenics I think having a specific goal is a great motivator and way to mark your progress since your not counting numbers on weights. One of my goals was I wanted to be able to do strict feet together 1 arm push ups.I found a program that was based on 10 steps progressions based on your level of fitness. If you can do a regular push ups that was level 5 .So since I had a goal, and a program with guide lines that had little goals when to progress the next step it kept me motivated. When you hit your main goal you can always find and even harder one to go for.

 

[RJ Green]

Does it take great athletic ability (flexibility, body awareness, strength etc) to get started?

fuck no. there are plenty of fatties and half of the MILFs there don't lift anything heavier than a glass of wine.

 

[Turtlepawah]

I've been doing cali excercises for about a year now, and it has been a major help in keeping injury free. It kinda sucks in the beginning as you are often not strong enough to really get a good workout from it, but as long you are patient and always remember to focus on technique over reps, after a while you will really reap the benfits from it.

Regarding weight loss, the mosy important aspect of that will always be diet. Excercise is only complementary. Think about it. When you burn energy through traing, the body will want to compensate for that by craving extra calories, making you want to eat more. If your diet consists of lots of junk, that just means you will eat even greater amounts of junk that causes you to gain weight. The best diet for weight loss and muscle retention is generally a whole food vegan diet where you cut out meat, dairy and eggs (i.e empty calories in the form of trans- and saturated fats) for starches, green vegetables and legumes. I'm most likely to get flamed for this by the science bros on this board, but try it out yourself and see how it works out for you before disregarding it.

 

[NateTx4112]

olympic lifts and calisthenics are not unhealthy.

doing them without a progression is.

doing them to the point of rhabdomyolysis is.

doing them as fast as possible with shitty technique is.

if you want to lose weight, clean up your diet and add more cardio.

It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you've got to do it every day. That's the hard part.

Adding more cardio is not really the best advice in my opinion. He can get plenty of cardio in rolling sessions 3-4 times a week. cleaning up the diet is good, adding some strength training is good, adding more cardio - meh.

<-----heard this from people who are much smarter than me and make more than 6 figures doing S&C for a living at a professional level.

 

[GKY]

science bros

Science is our best means of discovering objective reality and minimizing cognitive bias. It's an attempt to see the world as it is, not how we wish it was. Bros is synonym for meathead. Trying to paint people who attempt to be rational and objective in that manner is obviously silly and underlying a clear disdain for reality if it goes against your beliefs that you wish were true. In other words; do you even science, bro?

 

[RJ Green]

He can get plenty of cardio in rolling sessions 3-4 times a week.

meh. he'd be better off doing intervals. roll all you want you're still layin down.

 

[NateTx4112]

meh. he'd be better off doing intervals. roll all you want you're still layin down.

Intervals is a solid piece of advice as well.

Steady state jogging/cardio = Meh.

 

[Turtlepawah]

Science is our best means of discovering objective reality and minimizing cognitive bias. It's an attempt to see the world as it is, not how we wish it was. Bros is synonym for meathead. Trying to paint people who attempt to be rational and objective in that manner is obviously silly and underlying a clear disdain for reality if it goes against your beliefs that you wish were true. In other words; do you even science, bro?

I agree with you a 100%! To me, "science bros" refers to people that employs a (pseudo)scientific jargong in order to sound informed, without really doing anything else than reproducing unfounded myths and misconceptions. The internet is full of so called health- or nutrition "experts" that have no academic background whatsoever, and whose knowledge mainly stem from reading bloggs and magazines.
I'm certainly no expert myself, and my own knowledge is indeed based upon popular science (although I usually make sure to at least skim the abstracts of the cited research). Basically, I try to read up on things as much as I can, but refrains from trying to sound smarter than I am.

 

[Uchi Mata]

Exercise is the least important part of losing weight. Basically, if you want to lose weight, you need to create a continuous calorie deficit. To do that, you need to know what you're eating. Are you tracking your food intake? Weighing portions? Those are the sort of things you need to do to lose weight. Get LoseIt on your phone, start tracking your diet, start paying a lot more attention to how the portions you're eating align with the portions on the backs of packages, and you'll start dropping weight.

 

[TheeFaulted]

If you want to lose weight, eat less calories than you exert daily.

If you want to get stronger, pick heavy stuff up and put it back down.

 

[TenderLoving]

Intervals is a solid piece of advice as well.

Steady state jogging/cardio = Meh.

*WALL OF TEXT HITS YOU FOR 3450 DAMAGE*

I´m trying to change from the offshore/oil to the medical industry and I´m partaking in a medical research project. As a result of that I´ve started reading up on exercise physiology textbooks. So far the information and research presented has made me decide to add some steady state cardio on top of other exercise(BJJ, olympic, some HIIT). Our bodies are powered by different energy systems, but even during hard anaerobic training the aerobic system will be involved, I think it was even as high as 50% even during intense training. From this is it follows that it is useful to have good aerobic capacity as well as anerobic.

F.ex when it comes to lifting, simplified we pretty much all agree low reps is better for increasing strength, while middle range is better for promoting growth and longer for muscular endurance.
When it comes to developing aerobic capacity, steady state cardio is pretty much the most efficient way as well as stimulating growth of the capilliary system which is used to deliver energy and clear the waste products.
Which system is a weak link will obviously vary from person to person.

Good cardio is from the research surprisingly specific to the exercise. A world-class cross country skiier wont have as much as expected carryover to cycling. So while rolling a lot is obviously good for that specific cardio, if you have a weakness in a "sub"-system, it might be more efficient to target that with specific exercise. I think my aerobic system is weak compared to the anaerobic, so I´ll be hitting the road some. I´ll let you guys know how it goes, lol. If only running wasent such a bore..

 

[Codger]

It's bound to help.

However if you want to lose fat then the best way is to embark on a weight-training programme with suitable diet. It's amazing how quickly you can change your body shape with weights in just a few hours a week and of course the extra strength helps your BJJ.

I've had a rough couple of years with surgeries and time off. That plus the fact that i'm a greedy man in his late 40s meant I put on fat and lost my shape. I started back on the weights in November (albeit limited by injury), did my calorie-requirement calculations and ate to some basic macro targets and the difference has been amazing. I literally need to get new jeans and the wife has joked I look like Mr Incredible (i.e. more V-shaped). I do 3 sessions a week.

One significant benefit of weights is that by increasing your muscle mass, you burn more cals all the time and so it's easier to keep the weight off. Dieting and cardio has the opposite effect where you lose muscle mass and end up having to eat less and less as the diet progresses making it tough. I roughly followed the Bigger, Leaner, Stronger book but it's nothing you can't find on the web.

But calisthenics will help too, no doubt.