Phoenix BJJ & MMA Academy Fitness Blog

Raise you grappling fitness to new levels!

Phoenix BJJ & MMA Academy Fitness Blog - Raise you grappling fitness to new levels!

5,3,1/7,5,3 Reps to a 50 Pound Gain in All Your Lifts


I came across the 5,3,1/7,5,3 rep scheme many years ago and have always found it to be an amazingly simple and effective program. The strength of this program is in its simplicity and the fact that it is very low volume program allowing you to recover much more quickly. We will talk about volume in later articles, but for now I just want you to understand that grappling is a very tiring sport and keeping our strength training at a lower volume will help you to gain strength while not burning out. I personally have put 50+ pounds on my bench press, squat, and deadlift in 30 utilizing this program. Now let’s move on to the nuts and bolts of the program.

Let’s start by choosing the bench press as an example exercise (you must choose a compound lift to perform the 5,3,1/7,5,3 reps scheme). The first step is to find your 1 rep maximum in the bench press. In this example we will say you managed a 1 rep max of 200 pounds. Now you can apply the 5,3,1/7,5,3 to your bench press. You will subtract 30 pounds from your max (this would put your first lift at 170 pounds) and perform 5 reps. Add 10 pounds to the bar making the weight 180 pounds and rest 3-5 minutes. Now perform 3 reps of the bench press. Add 10 more pounds to the bar making the weight 190 pounds and rest 3-5 minutes. Now rest 3-5 minutes and add 15 pounds to the bar so you can attempt a new max of 205 pounds. Next week you will follow the same pattern but instead of performing 5 reps, 3 reps, and 1 rep you will instead perform 7 reps, 5 reps, and 3 reps. For example you would take the bench press again and start at 170 pounds, but instead of performing 5 reps you would perform 7 reps this time. The next set you would add 10 pounds to the bar making it 180 pounds, but instead of performing 3 reps you will perform 5 reps. Once again add 10 pounds to the bar and instead of performing 1 rep you will perform 3 reps. Now if you desire you may perform 1 more set trying to beat your 200 pounds maximum again. The 3rd week we will start over again but our starting weight will be 10 pounds heavier. So you will start your bench press at 180 pounds instead of 170 pounds and perform 5 reps. You will then perform 3 reps with 190 pounds and 1 rep with 200 pounds. You will continue to follow this pattern week after week until you begin to stall out and cannot complete the prescribed reps for the workout. At this point you will pick a similar exercise such as a floor bench press, find your 1 rep max, and then start this whole sequence over from the beginning.

By changing the exercise to a similar exercise you will be able to continue to make progress without burning out your central nervous system. Once you complete this sequence with the new lift, and begin to stall out, you may go back to your original bench press exercise, or choose another slightly different exercise such as the incline bench press. Have fun with this and I hope you are able to get the same great results I got from the program. As always if you have any questions please feel free to e-mail me.

Tired of Getting Injured?

In the world of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu injury is something that happens to everyone at some point, but hopefully the injuries are minor.  Many times people end up with a tweaked toe, finger, lower back, or shoulder.  This is a normal thing in bjj, but hopefully this is not happening to you often and when it does happen you recover fairly quickly.  If you are finding your getting injured more often, such as weekly injuries, you may be lacking something in your fitness.  If you are one of those people who is constantly injured this article is for you.

I would like to start off looking at why people get injured in our sport.  One of the major causes is overtraining.  Some students can’t get enough training time lifting weights and running daily in addition to coming to bjj practice 5 or more times per week.  This type of training is okay for short periods to prepare for a tournament, or fight, but this pace cannot be continued for long without inviting injury.  If you want to train this hard it is okay, but every 4 weeks you need to have a back off week training light and cutting your total training sessions in half.  Back off weeks give your body a chance to recover, repair, and prepare for the next upcoming 3 week cycle of hard training.  Every 12th week should be taken completely off to allow the body to have a much needed break from all of the hard training.  Many people worry they will lose skill, or strength, during this week, but the truth is most people come back better than ever after this short break.

Another cause of injuries in bjj practitioners is taking time off and then coming back in full force.  This also is true for new bjj students.  If you are new, or have had some time off, your body will not be used to this hard training and needs to be eased back into it.  If you start off at 5x per week doing all of the warm ups, technique drills, and then sparring very hard you are asking to get injured.  A much better way to approach this is to ease in by starting out training only 3x per week.  By training less days you give your body a chance to get used to this new stimulus and start adapting.  As your body gets used to this training you can start adding in more days.  You also could start out training 5x per week, but I would advise making some days very light training days.  In this example you could train hard 2-3x per week and the other 2x per week would be light, possible doing just the technique portion of practice and sitting out of sparring.  I understand the urge to train all the time so you can learn, and progress, as quickly as possible, but if you are constantly injured you will miss a lot of practice and will actually progress much slower.

The last reason for injury is a lack of general physical preparedness.  This concept could get a whole article on its own, but I want to at least address this subject.  If your overall fitness level is low you will generally have a higher risk of injury.  Now the question is what constitutes good fitness?   This is not as simple to answer as one might think.  Some people think lifting a large amount of weight makes a person fit.  Others think running long marathons will make you fit.  The truth is those things are specialized and while it takes fitness to perform them it does not make you fit.  Lifting weights, running, calisthenics, flexibility, balance, nutrition, and agility are all parts of being fit.  If you take a weight lifter and have him run sprints or long distances he will have difficulty because he specialized in only one form of fitness and ignored the rest.  The same is true for a marathoner that is put into a weight room.  It is okay to specialize in something, but you also need to bring up your general fitness to prevent overuse injuries.  In our case Brazilian jiu jitsu would be our specialty.  If we trained only bjj we could improve our fitness at bjj and probably see some increases in our general overall fitness.  Over time if we did not do anything else we would probably start finding our rear deltoids were always sore, as well as our lower back, hips, and knees do to the fact we over developed the muscles used in bjj while neglecting other muscles in the body.  How do we correct this?  By adding in a general fitness program including calisthenics, weight lifting, flexibility and cardiovascular work.  These sessions do not have to be long since their main purpose is to supplement our current specialty, bjj.  These sessions could be as short as 10-20 minutes per day and in the form of circuits.  An example could be Monday morning you perform 3 sets of 30 push ups, 30 sit ups, and 30 squats as quickly as possible using correct technique.  This circuit would tax the cardiovascular system, muscular endurance, and would help to increase overall work capacity.  Another example could be picking up a heavy object and carrying it for distance, or pulling a weighted sled for 10 minutes straight.  These different options will tax you in all different ways and will only help to improve your overall bjj game.  In the next article we will explore more about general physical preparedness, or GPP.

How to Build a Sandbag

Some people feel they cannot workout because they can’t afford equipment or they do not have room to store it.  I am here to tell you that you need very little space, money, or equipment to get a good workout.  You could get into incredible shape using just a sandbag and your body weight.  Sandbags build real man strength.  This is the type of strength that people look at in awe.  In this article I am going to teach you how to construct a sandbag that is adjustable in weight and very cheap.

First you will need to purchase a army duffel bag.  They are usually very cheap and can be found used at an army surplus store.  They generally cost $10 to $20.  They look like the bag below.You will also need a box of contractor 2ml thick trash bags, a few bags of play sand, a bathroom scale, and a roll of duct tape.  The first thing you will do is take a contractor trash bag and fill it with 25# of sand.Play sand usually comes in 50# bags so you will empty about half of the bag into the trash bag.  Weigh the trash bag on the scale.  Once you have 25# in the trash bag squeeze all of the air our and tie the trash bag.  I usually duct tape the area where I tied the bag to keep it closed.  Now take your trash bag and put it inside of another trash.  Squeeze the air out of the second bag and tie it in a knot.  Duct tape this knot as well.  Now you will usually wrap duct tape around the trash bag a few times to give it a little extra support.  Now take your duct tape sandbag and put it into the army duffel bag.  Now continue this process until you have between 6-8 25# trash bags of sand.  Now you have a sandbag that can be adjusted in 25# increments from 25# to 200#.  When this bag is not in use I just store all of the trash bags in the duffel bag and keep it in the corner of the garage.  If you want to to be able to adjust in 5# increments then purchase four 5# weight plates from the store.  If you want a weight in between the 25# increment you just need to throw in a few of those 5# plates.

In future articles I will discuss some examples of how to use sandbags in your workouts.  Have fun building this monster and get ready to build some real man strength.

Strength Training For Grappling

People who compete in wrestling, bjj, or mma usually put there bodies through the grinder in terms of training.  It is hard to recover from strength training workouts if you are grappling 4x-5x per week because grappling is like performing strength work.  If you have to much volume or your intensity is to high it can be very difficult do recover and lead to joint pain or injuries.   One program I really like for grapplers is Wendler’s 5/3/1.  This program is low enough volume that you can recover, but produces good results.  I am going to lay out the the basics of the program below.  The website elitefts.com has a book by Wendler explaining his program in even more detail.

I would suggest following a 2 day per week template using two compound lifts each day.
Day 1:
-Squat
-Bench Press

Day 2:
-Deadlift
-Military Press

You can add assistance exercises to either of these days but usually no more than two assistance exercises in a day.  For example you may choose a triceps push down to supplement your pushing exercise.  Now find your 1 rep max for each of these exercise and subtract 10%.  This will be the max you use to figure out the weights you are working with.  So if you bench 200 for 1 you are going to do all calculations from 180.

Week 1
-3 sets of 5 reps for each exercise on day 1 and day 2.
-Set 1 will use 65% of the 1 rep max you calculated (using above example it would be 117#)
-Set 2 will use 75%
-Set 3 will use 80% (also on this final set you can do more than 5 reps with the weight, just stop 1 or 2 reps before failure)

Week 2
-3 sets of 3 reps
-Set 1 will use 70%
-Set 2 will use 80%
-Set 3 will use 90% (on this set you can do more than 3 reps but stop short of failure)

Week 3
-Set 1 is 5 reps, Set 2 is 3 reps, Set 3 is 1 rep
-Set 1 will use 75% of max
-Set 2 will use 85%
-Set 3 will use 95% (you can attempt to do more than 1 rep but stop short of failure)

Week 4
-This is a deload week to help your body recover
-3 sets of 5 reps
-Set 1 is 40%
-Set 2 is 60%
-Set 3 is 70% (you can perform more than 5 reps but stop short of failure)

After the fourth week you have finished 1 cycle. Now for the bench and military press add 5 pounds to that calculated max and start back at the week 1 prescription. If we take the 180# calculated max we were using before we would add 5 pounds to it (now 185#) and use that weight when we calculate the training percentages.  For the squat and deadlift add 10# to the calculated max and start back at week 1. Work through the 4 weeks and continue to repeat the pattern adding the 5 or 10 pounds. This works very well and your strength will sky rocket.

Here is an excel sheet that will calculate all the weights for you.  Choose the 2 day per week tab.  Enter in your actual 1 rep max for each exercise.  Now the spreadsheet will calculate everything else for you and you can just print it out and take it to the gym.  No calculators needed.  Wendler Calculator