I’ve been training martial arts for more than eight years, and I’ve never been someone who trains Jiu-Jitsu every day.
For most of that time, I’ve trained martial arts two to three days a week. I lift separately, I do cardio separately, and that’s pretty much been the formula the entire way from white belt to a two-stripe brown belt.
I think a big reason I’ve stuck with Jiu-Jitsu for this long is that I’ve never really given myself a chance to get sick of it.
When I first started training, the gym I went to required you to graduate from an adult MMA program before you could even start taking regular Jiu-Jitsu classes. Once I made it through that, I started doing both the white belt Jiu-Jitsu class and adult Muay Thai.
I did both for probably six to eight months. I was getting better, but I felt like I should have been progressing a lot faster for how often I was training. Instead, I was kind of mediocre at both.
So I decided to focus on Muay Thai.
I spent the next year or so primarily doing that and only went to Jiu-Jitsu every now and then. I joined the Muay Thai competition program, got a lot more confident, and was getting ready to do smokers and local tournaments.
Focusing on one thing worked.
Then my wife and I moved to Boston for work.
There was a Muay Thai gym right down the street from our house, but I didn’t really like training there. I was one of the better people in the room, and that bothered me. I knew I was decent at Muay Thai, but I also knew I wasn’t good enough to be the person everyone else was looking toward.
I wanted people around me who were going to push me.
The better Muay Thai gyms were pretty far away, but there was a Jiu-Jitsu gym close to us. At that point I basically decided, alright, let’s go get my blue belt instead.
I trained there for about a year and never got a stripe.
It was a huge gym. There could be 50 people on the mats at once, and the professor didn’t really roll with anyone below blue belt. If you were a white belt, it was pretty easy to disappear.
That was similar to my first gym too. My early experience with Jiu-Jitsu was pretty cliquey. If you were a white belt, people didn’t really know who you were or take you that seriously. The gyms I’ve trained at since then haven’t felt nearly as much like that.
Then COVID happened.
About six months into the pandemic, my wife and I moved back to Colorado. Once I could train again, I found a gym in downtown Denver and started going consistently.
About six months later, I finally got my blue belt.
By then I’d been doing Jiu-Jitsu for a little over two years off and on, and I definitely felt like I was sandbagging. I was submitting blue belts pretty regularly and having an easy time with most white belts.
From that point on, my training schedule really didn’t change much. I kept training two to three days a week.
I competed three times at blue belt and got two silvers and a bronze. Even when I was preparing for competitions, I never suddenly started going to Jiu-Jitsu six days a week. I’d change some of the training around it. More sprints, more conditioning, cutting weight if I needed to. But the amount of Jiu-Jitsu stayed about the same.
I eventually got my purple belt at that same gym in Denver.
Not long after that, my wife and I put everything we owned into storage and spent about eight months traveling and living out of Airbnbs. We stayed in Revelstoke, British Columbia, Alaska, Vancouver Island, and Mesquite outside of Las Vegas near St. George.
We were moving constantly, but I kept finding somewhere to train. I’d drop into a gym and get my two or three days in.
That was actually a really cool period for my Jiu-Jitsu because I got exposed to so many different people and styles. I trained at a bunch of different gyms, got to learn from different coaches, and even got a few opportunities to teach.
I competed once at purple belt while I was still in Colorado.
Eventually we moved to Texas and I started training at 10th Planet Airlock. I competed again as a purple belt at an IBJJF no-gi tournament in Austin and took silver.
After about a year at Airlock, Rei promoted me to brown belt.
I’ve competed once at brown belt so far and took gold.
Through all of that, I’ve basically never trained Jiu-Jitsu more than three days a week.
Would I be better at Jiu-Jitsu if I’d spent the last eight years training five days a week instead of three? Probably. Maybe some of those silver medals would have been gold. More mat time matters, and I’m not pretending it doesn’t.
But that also assumes I would have kept training five days a week for eight years.
I don’t know that I would have.
That’s really the point of my training philosophy. Three days isn’t some magic number. It’s the amount of Jiu-Jitsu I’ve been able to consistently fit into my life while still lifting, doing cardio, recovering, and actually wanting to go back to the gym.
If somebody can train five or six days a week, recover from it, still enjoy it, and keep doing that year after year, they’re obviously going to get a lot more mat time than I do.
For me, I’d rather train three days a week for years than go through these huge bursts where I’m training every day, I’m exhausted, and then I don’t want to go for the next two weeks.
I also don’t think becoming better at Jiu-Jitsu only happens by doing more Jiu-Jitsu.
Strength training has always been a big part of this for me. Ideally I lift three days a week, and most of my training is built around compound movements. My best bench is around 300 pounds, my squat is 405, and my deadlift is around 480.
I think being strong is exceptionally important in Jiu-Jitsu.
Cardio is too.
Ideally I’m also running twice a week, and I can absolutely tell when I’ve been running consistently because I perform better on the mats. Having a real cardio base is one of the more overlooked parts of Jiu-Jitsu training in my opinion.
I’ve rolled with good people at every belt level who just get tired.
At some point it doesn’t matter how many techniques you know if you’re too exhausted to use any of them.
The other thing I like about not training every day is that I have time to think about Jiu-Jitsu between sessions.
I’m usually going into training with something in mind. Maybe I saw something in a video. Maybe somebody caught me with something and I want to understand it. Maybe there’s a position I’ve been thinking about and I want to see if an idea actually works.
Worm guard is probably the best example of this in my own game.
I got really into Keenan Cornelius’ Jiu-Jitsu and started watching his worm guard material. I’d watch a video, pick maybe two things from it, and then go into the gym wanting to try those specific things.
I’d grab someone before class and basically say, “Yo brother, can I try this on you for a minute?”
Then I’d work it.
Next time I’d come back with another piece. Eventually those little pieces started connecting, and I got really good at worm guard.
Gi manipulation became a big part of my game from there. I love using lapels and different grips to control people, create cross-body control, and set up chokes. That’s probably the closest thing I have to a specialization in gi Jiu-Jitsu now.
A lot of that came from having enough time between sessions to get curious about something, study it, and then come back with an actual plan.
I’m also usually rested when I train. I train at 6 a.m. now, and because I’m only doing Jiu-Jitsu two or three days a week, I actually want to be there when I walk into the gym. I want to get good rounds in. I want to try whatever I’ve been thinking about.
I’ve never really had a period where I felt completely burned out on Jiu-Jitsu.
That’s probably the biggest reason I’ve kept this philosophy for more than eight years.
I want to be strong. I want good cardio. I want to keep getting better technically. I also want to still enjoy doing Jiu-Jitsu five or ten years from now.
If a white belt asked me how often they should train, I wouldn’t tell them they need to train exactly three days a week.
I’d tell them to find the amount they can consistently do without making themselves hate it.
For me, that’s two to three days of Jiu-Jitsu, around three lifting sessions, and a couple of runs.
Be consistent. Don’t burn yourself out. Have fun.