Does Muay Thai conditioning help BJJ?

[SAMURAI SPIRIT]

Before I ask this question, here is my own story.

When I started in BJJ, I was gassing out on the mat like crazy. A few minutes of low pressure rolling would cause me to gas out and become a vegetable on the mat for everyone. Back on those days the internet wisdom on Sherdog dictated "forget conditioning outside of BJJ and just roll more." Every day I would show up on the mat and turn into an out of gas veggie!

My professor told me that more BJJ is not going to help you develop a bigger gas tank at white belt level. In order for BJJ to serve as a cardio activity, you have to be in the game long enough where you have enough arsenal to go from situation to situation until it becomes a cardio game! For a newbie white belt that is a bad advice. He suggested that I cut down BJJ to 2 to 3 sessions a week and add some cardio specific workouts int the middle days.

I added Long distance cardio (treadmill, elliptical, swimming laps) and boom! My endurance went up the roof. If I was tapping, it was due to technique being flawed or lack of knowledge instead of not having enough gas. Soon I was a blue belt! This basically illustrated to me how beneficial was cardio outside the mat to what happened on the mat. Since then I have made it a point to keep BJJ 3 days a week and add 2-3 days of some kind of conditioning work, be it swimming laps or doing cardio work in the gym.

I was wondering if adding Muay Thai in those "conditioning days" would make sense? My goal is really not to become a world class striker here. I used to do Kyokushin Karate and I have a solid base when it comes to striking. I am only considering Muay Thai as an interesting and motivational conditional activity that would / should give me the overall conditioning to help my grappling game. Besides cardio conditioning that leaves fighters breathless (something I could use on BJJ mat) they also spend a lot of time stretching and developing flexibility. Lastly they do a lot of abs and core work which should help in BJJ too. Also when conditioning is done as part of a group, you are more eager to push yourself more.

The other part of me says, Muay Thai is a world to its own requiring outside conditioning of its own. There may be less bone jarring form of cario out there that will help BJJ more and Muay Thai may not be the optimum cardio conditioning as means to "supplement BJJ."

I would love to hear peoples thoughts on this. Specially those who do both. Does one help the other? Thanks.

 

[cakemuncher]

I don't think Muay Thai as a conditioning would be any more beneficial for BJJ than any other form of conditioning. Plus, being a contact sport, there are more chances to get injured.

However, if MT is already included in your gym membership and you want something more fun than e.g. running, then why not.

P.S. I think it's weird you were told as a white belt to cut down BJJ classes to 2-3 times per week. More is always better IMHO.

 

[SAMURAI SPIRIT]

P.S. I think it's weird you were told as a white belt to cut down BJJ classes to 2-3 times per week. More is always better IMHO.

Internet wisdom always dictates that all your allocated training time be spent into rolling on the mat. Yet there is not a single BJJ competitor at a high level who does split total training time available between rolling as well as adding conditioning work be it cardio or weights. Rudolfo Viera does a lot of weight training circuits and so does Andre Galvao and Ricardo Arona. So what he said to me was out of line with most internet rhetoric but in line with what happens out there in the real world.

 

[Quebec Nick]

Depends on how the MT class is run, if you do a lot of pad work and a decent amount of ''boot camp'' type of training (pushups, sit ups, burpees...)

In my kickboxing class we do about 20 minutes of bootcamp like training and the rest is pad work or light sparring (heavysparring is only for those who want to do it after class).

Bootcamp training is the best equivalent to a hard roll IMO. You have to use strenght and cardio at the same time. Which is different from straight up cardio like running.

I also run intervals, (2-3 minutes at the highest pace possible). I think that the best thing for BJJ is to have the quickest recuparation time possible.

It's not science, but it does work for me

 

[Crotalis]

I don't think Muay Thai as a conditioning would be any more beneficial for BJJ than any other form of conditioning. Plus, being a contact sport, there are more chances to get injured.

Ignore this. Most of the time you can take a Muay Thai class where you don't have to spar, or where you can at least spar with someone who wants to go a little lighter, so the injury thing is not as much of a concern. My advice is just anecdotal based off of my own experience and that of some of my team mates, but for us MT helped out BJJ cardio in unexpected ways. In my case, I had a nasty habit of holding my breath while rolling. This is pretty common and most people (myself included) don't even know they are doing it.

Training MT under a good coach helped me reinforce positive breathing habits (try and throw an effective 3-4 technique combo while holding your breath ...) which carried over into BJJ. It helped me be more relaxed and I subsequently gassed a lot less. Heavy pad hitting sessions don't exactly hurt the gas tank either. It was a really good supplement to my BJJ training.

 

[Uchi Mata]

Internet wisdom always dictates that all your allocated training time be spent into rolling on the mat. Yet there is not a single BJJ competitor at a high level who does split total training time available between rolling as well as adding conditioning work be it cardio or weights. Rudolfo Viera does a lot of weight training circuits and so does Andre Galvao and Ricardo Arona. So what he said to me was out of line with most internet rhetoric but in line with what happens out there in the real world.

That's true for those guys because they're already so good. It's a question of diminishing returns: if your technique is already among the best in the world, and that's true of your competition as well, you're not going to gain a significant edge via further technical improvement but you can gain an edge via improved conditioning. And if you don't do the conditioning and focus only on technique, then your slight technical edge won't compensate for the larger physical gap with your well conditioned opponents. Not to mention, those guys are already training constantly anyway so it's not as if they're ignoring technical training to focus on S&C.

None of that applies to you. You're just starting to learn BJJ, you'll experience far greater returns on your time from learning more BJJ than you will from S&C. Now, rolling specifically is not what's going to make you much better at this stage, but technical work, drilling, and positional sparring at varying levels of intensity is going to do much more for you than lifting or running. If you have time you can be on the mat, be on the mat. A great deal of what people often think of as cardio in BJJ in actuality has nothing to do with physical shape, it has to do with efficiency that comes from being skillful enough to manage your energy. Again, being on the mat will help you with that, being in the gym will not. I've seen triathletes and marathon runners gas two minutes into their first roll because the demands of BJJ are so different from what they're used to. The best way to get efficient at what you're looking to do is to do it and do a lot of it.

I kind of feel like you're looking for a shortcut here, but there isn't one. Getting in good shape is most beneficial when you're already pretty good at BJJ, for beginners the best way to achieve what you're looking for is to get better/more efficient at jiu jitsu. I can roll for days with pretty much anyone not because I'm in great shape, but because I really don't use any more energy than necessary when rolling.

Edit: sorry, wall of text and I didn't even address the core question. Muay Thai is awesome, it's great conditioning, most classes you do a lot of bag, pad, and partner work but don't spar so injury isn't really a huge issue, and it's a hell of a lot more interesting than running.