How Olympic Weightlifting Can Benefit Your Grappling
When it comes to grappling sports such as BJJ, Judo, Sambo and Wrestling, there is a high demand of technical proficiency. Experiences and time spent on the mats helps build the necessary foundation to be successful within each sport but as of late there has been a trend of incorporating strength and conditioning to the complex. Strength and conditioning for grappling athletes helps to improve the physical capabilities which can complement the skills training grapplers spend hours trying to master. Improving the strength, speed and metabolic capacity within each athlete allows them to perform at higher thresholds with less effort and can be that little extra cream on top of the sundae. It's no secret as wrestlers have been doing it for a long time, making it obvious as to why they are so ridiculously athletic compared to other grappling martial artist. Even world class BJJ athletes such as Romulo Barral, Darin Conner or Gezary Matuda all have dedicated strength and conditioning coaches working alongside their grappling coaches.
Olympic Weightlifting
One method of training that could be beneficial to grappling strength and conditioning is Olympic Weightlifting. Olympic Weightlifting is a power based sport that involves the most weight lifted for the Snatch and the Clean and Jerk. Due to the nature of the sport, many Weightlifting athletes are quite athletic, being very strong and explosive whilst having impeccable mobility. Despite the benefits that Olympic Weightlifting might contribute however, there are also detriments as to why we shouldn’t incorporate it into our grappling specific strength and conditioning sessions.
We’ll start off with why we think you should add it in.
Speed, Power. Precision and Force Absorption all in one
As mentioned above, Olympic Weightlifting is a power based sport. This means that you are training strength and speed qualities which have a high correlation to grappling sports. Despite people saying that Judo or BJJ are “gentle sports”, you do require a minimal amount of force to implement throws, locks or chokes. If you are given two athletes with the same skill set, the more athletic individual would have a higher chance of winning. That is also why there are weight classes. Training Olympic Weightlifting gives us the opportunity to practice moving heavy weight with the most intent. Due to the technical demand, it enforces us to maintain rigidity between movements whilst teaching us to be precise. For example within the Clean, we are initiating with the first pull off the floor which requires tremendous leg strength and lumbar isometric strength so that we do not lose position. We then transition into the second pull which starts to speed up the movement as we extend the bar up using our legs and hips in a powerful jump like motion. We then change direction quickly to get under and receive the bar which forces us to absorb the impact whilst maintaining rigidity. All these qualities can translate well to grappling as it is a dynamic sport which involves change of direction and resisting external force within a short amount of time. The speed and power qualities when we try to extend the bar via triple extension helps to improve overall neural excitation for us to be explosive.
Mobility
Olympic Weightlifting has a high demand on mobility as well as stability around our joints. Maintaining control over positions that require a significant amount of flexibility such as the Power Jerk or in the bottom of the Snatch helps to build stability in our joints and teaches us to maintain tightness against external load within all ranges of motion. Often times you will catch weight in awkward positions due to an error in technique or load and our ability to recover from that can only be beneficial to grappling.
Considerations
Despite all the benefits it can translate to grappling there are a few things we need to consider before adding it into our training, with the first being time constraint. Due to the Olympic Lifts being the most technical barbell lifts you could perform, it takes a lot of time and consistency to be able to practice them often. This means it could actually take away from your grappling training especially if you do not have the time to cater to learning them properly. To master the Olympic Lifts, it may take years to become accustomed to efficiently performing the movements and can cognitively drain you in between sessions due to the high demand on your central nervous system. The second thing is stress. Again having a high demand on your central nervous system, you are also lifting heavy weight which means that you are placing more stress on the body compared to other lighter ballistic exercises, especially if you are already doing plenty of painful training on the mats. This could lead to over training or a stimulus too big to recover from so in turn, forcing you to reduce the overall volume of other exercises within your training program.
Conclusion
While there are other ways of training power and speed qualities such as plyometrics or ballistics, there are also other always ways around implementing Olympic Lifts to improve physical qualities such as variation movements (Snatch Pulls, Clean High Pulls, Power Snatches etc). If however, after reading the considerations you want to implement Olympic Weightlifting into full effect for your grappling specific strength and conditioning, we advise you to seek out a professional coach who can cater their time to teach you the movements properly to relate to your grappling. Olympic Weightlifting can be an awesome addition to your strength and conditioning provided you add it in intelligently
We hope this article helps to evaluate some of the benefits of Olympic Weightlifting and how you can incorporate it into your grappling training!
Peace out Movement Fam!
Coach Matty