For those of you who used to lift

[D3thr0n3d K1ng]

I think it depends on the individual person how beneficial it is. My build is hard gainer, hard loser. I can do nothing, for months, and barely lose any strength. I can lift my ass off, and barely gain any strength. The only thing that has ever worked well for me in terms of strength gains is going huge with squats. But my leg strength is already so high that I have no interest in adding more. And I don't want to add more weight overall. So really I just don't feel I get much benefit from lifting. Combine that with the fact that my joints are always strained and hurting from BJJ, and I don't like to put any more stress on them than they are already under.

If your strength varies more, however, and you recover faster, then it's probably a better choice for you. Obviously a lot of people have no problems doing both.

So i take it you have a tall, lean ecto-morphic build?

 

[Shemhazai]

Prioritizing pulling strength over pressing strength just because you can get away with it in grappling is not necessarily a good idea. Muscle imbalances are a great way of becoming injury-prone.

Also, pressing strength and 'pressing muscles' like the pectorals, shoulders, triceps, quadriceps and such are definitely important in striking.

 

[ozyabbas]

I gave up doing weights too, but I have found I haven't lost that much functional strength. I used to weight above 90kg and then stopped and over the years gone down to as low as 60kg and now stabilised at around 74kg.

Although I did go with a friend to a gym for one session and was embarrased by how little I could lift compared to a few years ago.

To be honest, I think exercises just using your body will be more beneficial to your jiu jitsu. I have heard of people doing pull ups using old gi and stuff and saying their grip strength increased alot.

Also doing weights may increase your body mass putting you in a different weight bracket and perhaps having a detrimental effect on your technique.

 

[James.Jitsu**]

Dips and chins ftw

 

[SpartanWarrior]

used to lift 3 times a week but cut it down to 1 cuz it seems like it didnt really help my jiu jitsu.

 

[IChinaManI]

I don't enjoy lifting, but two years ago I did it consistently and it added alot of strength imo. I occasionally hit the gym now.

 

[DaRuckus337]

I try to get at least one lift a week in these days, and train 2-3 days a week. Although I can't lift (or train) as much as I'd like to right now, I still find it important to get at least that 1 lift in a week, 2 if you miss a class. I maintain muscle strength and endurance better (maybe not max strength, but fairly close to it), but more importantly, I seem to recover quicker and get fewer injuries when I work in a smart and functional weight session (mixed in with injury specific rehab) at least once a week. I highly recommend it to those who can make the time.

 

[Deloitte]

I'm not sure how much I'd agree with that ... if you do all of these things with proper technical form, they require almost no pushing strength. When you shrimp, you usually want to either place a brace of your elbows, without pushing, or a straightarm against the hip. If the person sits up in no-gi, we are taught to just clamp around his body and drive him back down, no arm strength. Single leg is closest, but even there you usually want to straight arm the guy, rather than using pushing muscles.

I read somewhere that Alberto Crane's physical trainer found that he had tremendous pulling strength, but that his pushing strength was terrible because it is so underutilized in BJJ. So for MMA, the main thing they worked on was to try to develop pushing strength. Myself, I just about never use pushing strength. I just brace and use my hips instead.

Your situations are way too ideal, there are many times when you cannot react on time. Ideally you want to straight arm when shrimping, but if hes already in very tight and almost passed you won't have straight locked arms. Also your counter to no-gi depends on your game (posture or no posture no-gi game) if you want to maintain posture you want to constantly push him back when he makes an attempt. Hope you see my point, we can do A and B guard defense properly but it may not always work for various reasons. Since this isn't a technique vs strength thread, I believe it worthwhile to train your pushing muscles.

 

[Zankou]

So i take it you have a tall, lean ecto-morphic build?

I have a strange build -- wiry, lanky upper body, thick and massive legs/hips. My legs respond well to strength training, but they have far more power and mass than I need. My upper body doesn't respond much to strength training at all, very much a hard-gainer situation. Kind of weird. The upshot is that weight training has never been that useful for me.

 

[J Storm**]

personally i dont believe hard-gainers exist. there are only those who can't handle eating massive amounts of food.

 

[Deloitte]

personally i dont believe hard-gainers exist. there are only those who can't handle eating massive amounts of food.

I agree. I stopped lifting consistently for 4 months and ate less (because of school and work) and I fell to my natural bodyweight around 140lbs. I've always been a scrawny ectomorph (typical of a chinese male) that burns a lot of calories and does not gain much. However after things got less stressful, I ate so much that my stomach stretched quite a bit. This allowed me to eat a shitload more and also made me always feel hungry. I'm now walking at about 170lbs (6 months later, no I'm not fat at all).

For sure, there are some people that gain muscle a crapload faster than others. But for those that don't, with some serious effort it is possible to gain some significant muscle mass.