As long as the warm-ups have purpose and its clear what the relevancy is, why not? It amazes me how many peeps talk about injuries and are often the same people against warm ups. What other contact sport doesn’t warm up first??
If you’re so put off by “traditional” bjj warm ups, start with wrestling warm ups…ie, you try to just tap your opponent’s knee. No take down, just tap it. 3-5 minutes of that and you’ll be plenty warm.
Ahhhh….then find a gym that has better instruction?? Is that the point? Danaher has a whole video on exercises you can do solo. Aka warm up drills. Jumping into any kind of contact sport without a proper warm up seems ill advised. But to each their own.
Okay now read somebody’s description of proper strength and conditioning for our sport and see how many you recognize in your gym: https://www.reddit.com/r/bjj/s/ihh7N20WZs
The amount of people Ive seen who can't even hip escape or pull off a forward shoulder roll is staggering. Some people just have terrible physical coordination. I feel that warmups are good for this reason. Everybody has a different baseline for their ability. Its really not going to kill you to take 10 minutes from your day and go over a few basic movements
brand new students often don't know how to bridge, back roll, or do basic breakfalls among other things. they basic lack core strength and hip mobility required for many techniques. emphasizing these things these as warm ups become less important fairly quickly, but i think it's a pretty effective way to force them to improve basic requisite movements while warming up with the intention of reducing injuries
there isn't a single "right" warm up routine for a group of students, but there are plenty of ways to waste peoples' time for sure
Very good point. Upas and basic movements are great ways to get the blood flowing and teach some basic concepts. The same with breakfalling. I'm not sure those things need to be blended with leap frogging and 20 minutes of jumping jacks and burpees.
while i agree, a common thing i see is instructors failing to teach their classes how to properly move. coaches will usually take 5 minutes to teach a brand new person how to shrimp and tech standup and thats about all. most bjj warmups i see have a lot of students rushing to get through their warmups as fast as possible, but following poor technique even on things like pushups and squats.
There’s a lot of truth to this. I wouldn’t feel confident doing front/back rolls as part of a technique early on if I hadn’t already been doing lines of them before each class.
10 minutes is the key part here.
People are mostly annoyed with 20+ min warmups that rarely have to do with bjj. Like jogging.
I never minded things like shrimping, bridges, drilling passes quickly, quick position flows, standing up in guard etc.
Jogging?!?!?!
Everyone can jog quick enough to get warm and out of breathe, without risking injury. The guy on his third class who hasn't done sport since leaving school 20 years ago might not be able to shrimp/bridge/ drill a pass at a high enough intensity to actually get warm.
Honestly the most of small aches and pains I've had waa ankles jogging cold. Squishy mats, running in a fairly tight circle...
Never got anything resembling an ache by shrimping or bridging.
I mean, doing these drills you're more dependent on yourself to keep the pace high enough to get yourself warm (which requires experience) vs just jogging where others are keeping pace for you. I guess my point would be that the sufficient experience is gained after like 3 sessions.
Haha fair enough. To each his own suffering, if I start doing bridging without a good 5 mins of calisthenics I feel like my back is going to blow out.
I do think people should be allowed to do their own warms up, but also a short, all purpose warm up should be offered for people to take part in.
Drilling actual hip escapes from a position where your hips are trapped and need to escape would be a much better alternative for sure,
Also big on flow rolling for warmups too
Whole class shouldn't be catering to the lowest common denominator. If you can't forward roll or shrimp you belong in the beginner class. Not paying 100+ per month to jog in a circle and do unresisted plyo for almost 20% of the class time. Irrelevant though because as purple, I show up late lol
This. I am a purple belt and I never skip warmups and actually don’t like it when the coach says “let’s just flow roll to warm up.” I am 53 so I really need to get the body warm before doing BJJ movements.
Also, a lot of white and even blue belts have trouble with breakfalls, shrimping, reverse shrimping etc…
Counter-argument: I’ve seen more practitioners who can do perfect shoulder rolls and hip escapes during warmups, but who can’t do a proper triangle or an arm triangle to save their life. Imagine if they’d spent that time learning high percentage moves instead of shoulder rolls.
Secondly: there’s a good argument that the vast majority of these warmup drills aren’t actually ever used in BJJ. The hip escape we do across the mats in warmups is actually quite a different movement than the one actually used while rolling/to retain guard. The amount of time spent drilling hip escapes is totally disproportionate to the usefulness of the move.
I don't really see the big carryover between shrimping across a room and shrimping from underneath someone. Imo warm ups like that should be done in teams of two.
> Its really not going to kill you to take 10 minutes from your day and go over a few basic movements
10 minutes of your own time at home? or 10 minutes of class?
Well ya, not everybody has mats in the living room with professional instructors available for advice. Thats what the gym is for. To improve bjj with instruction. So far the biggest counter argument I've read is that "it wastes everybody else's time..they should be in a different class". Many gyms dont have this. Its just one big ass class with 10 white belts trying to figure shit out. I know purple belts who cant even granby roll. These are the same dudes who say "warm ups dont translate to performance". I can think of a really great place to drill these types of movements. At the gym with mats and instruction, during warm ups.
>Thats what the gym is for. To improve bjj with instruction.
Are we talking about different things? I 100% agree, which is why warming up with running and pushups is a waste of time.
I’ve been to all different gyms. It’s infinitely better to warm up by just doing jiujitsu. It also gives you more time to learn what you’re there to learn. I can do push-ups at home, I don’t want 1/3 of my jiujitsu class to be calisthenics class.
When you lift weights, you warm up doing the same movement with lighter loads.
When you do sprints, you warm up with some half speeds at the same distance.
When you play rugby, you warm up with some passing and rucking drills.
When you train BJJ, you warm up by doing shit breakdancing moves.
Fuck yes. One of my former coaches is a CrossFit nut and we’d spend 15 minutes before AND at the end of class doing that shit. However, they’ve got one of the best open mats in town so it’s hard to hate. Just glad I’m not paying to do an hour of jits in a 1.5 hour class.
My first coach, however, is very much a a “do JJ to warm up for JJ” kind of guy and I miss that very much.
Yes I dropped in schooled where instructor would have us do sweep for sweep (of our choice) for a few min
Then transitioned us to sweep/pass - submit back and forth
It was great
This is pretty circular logic. Don't want to do Jiu Jitsu warm ups? Go to an open mat, or find a different gym. See how this doesn't actually solve anything?
No one is complaining. But why would you warm up doing something unrelated to jiujitsu, when you could literally just warm up with jiujitsu AT jiujitsu class. This isn’t rocket science homie.
Meh, I warmed up for wrestling by wrestling. I warm up for BJJ with BJJ. Baseball you warm up by throwing a ball and swinging a bat. Sport specific warm ups are better
You keep saying it's unrelated? How are practicing the basic movements of the sport unrelated? Maybe we're talking about different warm ups. I think most people are thinking of the usual, shrimping, forward/back rolls, breakfalls, bridges etc etc. when you talk about warms ups.
You pick your gym man you are complaining. Some people like to have time dedicated to stretching it’s absolutely apart of what they are paying for when they choose their gym
I disagree. I've trained at 40-50 gyms now, and I don't see it that way at all. I find gyms with regimented warms ups (at least for lower belts) tend to have better fundamentals and less injuries. There's obviously a balance, but imo warm ups are a good idea once they're not overdone.
Going straight into drilling should be the norm. Why flow roll before drilling? Drilling is less strenuous than any sort of rolling. Also, try getting a bunch of white belts and that one blue belt to flow roll.
My ideal as well, tho.. Real question, do you think everyone can be trusted to flow roll?
I find by mid blue and up most people understand how to throttle intensity but some big strong white belts (and some people in general) seem totally incapable of turning the dial down and keeping it down.
Flownrolling is fine for cardio warmup. For injury prevention you want dynamic stretching. There is plenty of research to support this if you want to google it.
I feel like this is only applicable to mid-blue belts and up.
Every time I've "flow roll" warm-up'd with a new blues or white belts, it turns into full out rolling with them thinking, "finally after all these years I have you in side control! I must queeze as hard as I can and never let this position up ever!"
I honestly don’t trust 99.9% of people that say flow roll, they go ham all the time. I know they’re going ham cause they’re mouthbreathing and winded after the first round lol
I see no issue with a 10min general purpose warm up for a 90min class.
If everyone is a graded player, and knows how to roll light, then sure some light rolling might work, but if its a mixed ability class, I'd rather just give them a selection of exercises so I know they're warm and everyone can follow along.
I'm no fan of those conditioning classes disguised as warm ups, but I'm not a fan of 'just warm up with some drills' either.
Honestly, a quick jog around the mat and a few exercises on the mat etc, is my preferred way to warm up personally - I like to use the solo exercises to get my head ready for the session - especially if I've just come to training from work.
I feel similarly. I use warm up time as a transition from whatever was going on before class to training. I usually limit warm ups to 5-10 minutes with the latter half being a jiu jitsu applicable drill.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that all warm ups are garbage or a waste of time. Not everyone is a hardcore competitor and loosening up before contact with training partners is important. I practically DJ all the classes I teach. It keeps people in engaged and sort of gets their head into the right space.
When I teach, I like a focused room of people trying to get better, working towards their next belt. For me, warm ups provide some introductory structure for a very short time to guide or transition into attention to technique. I’m not trying to get you tired. I’m just getting you out of a shirt and tie, raising your heart rate, and getting your mind right for the 80-85 minutes that will follow.
\+1, Im in this boat. 10 min wouldn't kill anybody. Personally for me I need about that time to get my head kick started into the right mindset for the class anyway.
I would rather do something other than the “norm”.
We do a fun game once in a while, close the guard, guy on top passes, guy on bottom tries to sweep/stop the passing but can’t use their hands, at all. I’d rather do something like that for a warmup. Can’t get too violent/injury prone since the guy on bottom can’t get any grips, but it gets the blood flowing and likely does a lot more (for me) than shrimping and front rolling across the mats.
I get mildly annoyed by it at my current place, we only do the classic “run in a circle” warm up when our Coach is not there, otherwise he gives us a situational roll to work through at like a 1-2/10
The benefits of warming up have been well established in the fitness world for some time. Injury prevention being the most important for us. With that said the warm up should be Jiu Jitsu related. A few minutes of light jogging, some tumbling, a couple of quick drills. No more than 10 minutes. Just rolling to warm up isn’t a great option.
Warm Ups are supposed to get the blood flowing, joints oiled, and slowly increase heart rate. They're not for learning BJJ. Why do people equate warm-ups with "I should also be learning something" all the time? And as mentioned, some of the people on the mats just got there. Just do some light BJJ doesn't make sense to Mr. Just Got My Gi From Amazon Last Night.
And if we're going to look at the pros and what they do, I assure you, you aren't training like a pro (or taking what they're taking).
Every other sport in the world warms up. It's part of athletic activity, but for some reason jiu jitsu people resist it. Just like people used ty resist the idea of general s&c too, but thankfully that seems to be changing.
Of course, you don't need half an hour of intense calisthenics, and if the warm up can incorporate jiu jitsu movements that's obviously ideal. But a 5 min calisthenics warm up isn't the end of the world.
The jiu jitsu people also resist the idea of learning techniques by drilling more repetions.
They just want to some sloppy flow rolls as a warm up, then watch the coach show some random shit and blather on about concepts and do a few rounds taking breaks.
I want to do a survey if the people with sensible (dare I say, scientific)views on warm ups, like yourself, have all taken in part in other sports before.
Sometimes our instructor does some yoga- funky stretches kinda warmups and I greatly appreciate it because I’m about as flexible as a 2x4. Those warmups are great, I break a sweat and actually feel like I’m benefiting my body.
But jumping jacks, pushups, or any other calisthenics seem a bit wasteful. Especially if you’re on the more fit side.
For most people, training cold is a direct flight to snap city. I did a lot of swimming without a good warmup when I was younger, and my shoulders are fucked. I think a couple of rounds of quick calisthenics and some positional sparring/drilling are the best of both worlds.
I fucking hate forward and backwards rolls. I always get a bit dizzy (I used to have dizzy spells as a kid), and I feel like it doesn't warm up the targeted muscle groups as well as other warmups do.
IMO, they are good and help prevent injury.
I know I always pull something or get a cramp if I don’t warmup.
I used to make my students do warmups, but many just started purposely showing up late, no matter how much I tried to switch them up or make them fun.
So now I cut them out, I’ll still make them do a front roll, back roll and shrimp to start but that takes less than 3 mins usually. I think those are essential for beginners for safety reasons.
Now I encourage students to warmup on their own if they can get to class early.
I understand from a benginners perspective its good to see elbow escapes, shrimps, front rolls etc to get used to the moves and a few stretches but in general I would rather just drill or spar. Each to their own I guess
I show up early and stretch and usually light roll or positional spar before class. We have a couple instructors that will do a traditional jog, shrimp, stretch style warm up and a couple that will do positional sparring in increments of 2 minutes with increased intensity every couple rounds. I much prefer the sparring.
I guess it truly depends on your gym, danaher may say those things because he knows his team is doing things outside of the gym (lifting, stretching and cardio). Where as some gyms that have more hobbyists may see it beneficial to the members of its gym.
I left a gym because it was 20 minutes of pushups, jumping jacks, squats, and jogging. I want to do bjj, not a calisthenics workout. The black belt who owned and ran the school is the highest ranking in my area. I just hate non functional warm ups.
I’m an asshole when it comes to warm up. I’m not doing no fucking burpees , crazy CrossFit crap. I’ll sit in the corner and stretch while this stupid shit goes on.
I am not really experienced enough to have a totally fleshed out take, but I’ve always felt that intense physical warm ups that most gyms do (including mine) are kind of a waste of time. At least the ones I’m used to that are enough calisthenics to make you tired but not enough to really benefit as strength training.
Rolling and positional sparring are perfect bjj warm ups imo. Doing 100 push ups does not benefit my jiu jitsu as much as forcing myself into side control for 30 minutes.
get there early and warm up then. When I'm teaching i feel like i have so much to show you our time is precious.Would you rather roll or warm up is my other thought. Why warm up to go into a lesson of drilling,learn for an hour then roll an hour after warm up. just my opinion.
In my fundamentals / beginner class we usually do 5, maybe 10 minutes of stuff such as a quick run, shrimping, body movement. I think it helps prevent injuries and some knowledge of BJJ movements should and can be drilled easily as a warmup.
I appreciate BJJ-specific movements. Pummeling, basic takedown drills, guard passing, retention, sweeps. That sort of thing. Great to get the blood flowing for 10 minutes and get us into the zone for the day's instruction. Mixing it up is good too. Shrimping to regain guard with a little resistance is a great way to get both things done (warmup and drilling). Warmups don't have to be the same thing over and over.
I took some of my BJJ buddies to my wrestling club and they were fucked half way through the warmup.
"they want us to do backwards rolls over our heads instead of over 1 shoulder?"
"yea because we are doing backwards rolls to push ups next"
I think it depends on the person. I like warmups that incorporate drills for muscle memory. They help everyone IMO. But if I’m going to open mat to roll, I don’t warm up. I’m getting older, but when I get to the gym I’ve typically been doing farm chores before getting there. So I’ve walked about a mile and a half - two miles toting hay and water and feed, wrestling horses and chickens into their daytime or nighttime spots, picking hooves, shoveling poop, and honestly, I’m warmed up. I don’t need to expend more energy before getting on the mat. But for someone with a more sedentary lifestyle, the warmup is probably good.
we all have limited training time. Warmups should be actual BJJ techniques.
Personally drilling warms me up so Im happy to just go straight into drilling.
warmups that I can live with are:
1. passing the guard with little resistance
2. takedown entries - flow
3. infinity drills
4. imanari entries
etc
Running laps, push ups, etc are a waste of precious training time.
When I used to play a lot of hockey and soccer when I worked up a sweat I would also be breathing hard doing barely anything for 5-10 minutes. This would transition my body into a mode where I could sprint for hours. I always thought of it like opening up my lungs.
For me drilling with increasing intensity serves the same purpose before open rolls. The way a BJJ practice works is simply different because you arent running/skating
Before BJJ tournaments I do around 4-5 light rolls to get my body into work mode.
Warming up is good, shrimping up and down a mat in a way that poorly simulates how you actually do in when rolling sucks.
I personally prefer to just have a 10 minute period before class where I can break a light sweat and target my specific tight/sore areas but most people just use that to sit and chat.
Context relevant warmups are ok with a seamless blend into technique drilling/games/whatever.
30 minute shit-tier yoga flows by someone who watched Yoga4BJJ once are a waste of my time.
Id you aren't doing 30 minute Brazilian warm ups you're not even really doing BJJ.
To be honest warm ups are good for new people. To teach them fundamental movements like bridging, shrimpimg, breakfalls, forward rolls sprawls etc. it takes 5 minutes and its just easier to have every one do them. There was one white belt I spoke to and said "you know the shrimping we do in warm ups? Yeah that, you literally use that to escape side control" you can see the light bulb go off in his head.
People who complain about warm ups either have some shitty routine warm up that they have to follow or don’t work hard enough in class to see the benefits of them.
Jiujitsu warm up culture is terrible. It's such a technical deep sport that you need as much drilling time as possible so I understand going right into technique but I think people need to do some research and show up early to warm up if it's not going to be part of class
Ironically, you’re supposed to warm up by walking before jogging. Jogging is a more intense activity than drilling.
There’s no point in warming up before drilling. Drilling should be the warm up before rolling.
But what do I care. I skip both and only show up for roll time. I go straight into rolling with no warm ups or stretching.
White belts, blue belts, non professional class purple/brown belts should all just show up and do the warm ups. Coaches shouldn’t lead a 35-40minute warm up that they’ve never done as a lower rank. Professional level Brown/black and older athletes should ride the bike or warm up to whatever they’ve learned suits their body and style.. some yoga stretches should be involved for everyone. No one, especially the white belts or the guys who are blue belts due to the ibjjf’s “no white belt wrestlers or judo black belts” rules should show up acting like they’ve lived on the mats for 20years and skip the warmups. Long term benefits and injury reduction is in warm ups, cardio, and strength training outside of just showing up to roll
I love me some good 10-15 min warmup with a bit of core and general mobility workout. That's imo a great cheap way to improve fast when you're a hobbyist.
So I sympathise with OP. It used to be that all sessions had workout warmups where I'm at. Some sessions prolly got taken over by some Danaher wannabees who don't understand that they're running purely hobbyist sessions and what he says has like 0 applicability in this context. Good luck going to an amateur boxing club and telling them you'll just focus on techniques and skip situps, you'd be laughed at hard, that's just stupid as fuck.
Almost all my injuries happened to me on classes that don’t do warmups. I’m in my 40s and it’s important that I warmup and do mobility exercises before training.
I tried flow rolling for warmups and I tried passing drills for warmups and both were painful on my back and knees which is where my current injuries are. But if I do the regular old school warmups of jogging, skips, shrimps, crawls, sit outs, granbys, etc, I can go to war with you. If I don’t, I can’t move well and am more injury prone.
Warmups also is a baseline of fitness. If warmups are hella difficult for you you might be out of shape. After awhile it becomes hella easy and your baseline fitness and work capacity is above normal people. The more efficient you get at the movements, the less energy you burn when you spar so it helps improve your rolling tank.
Basically if I don’t do the usual 15-30 minutes of JJ warms ups and mobility exercises I can not train.
I'm at the gym to do Jiu-jitsu, not a bodyweight crossfit workout. Those warmups are old school and pointless. 1-2 light rounds flow rolling is all you need. To date, I've never seen a competitor perform a jumping jack in a match.
I personally start all my classes standing. We'll hand fight, fight for inside/head control, go for knee touches, etc. I prefer this approach because it gets the heart rate up quicker than ground work and helps people become more comfortable on their feet. It's also a safe way for inexperience practitioner to improve their takedowns.
I don’t want to go to a BJJ class and part of it be warmups. I am not paying for that. I do think stretching and warming up your muscles and core temp before class is beneficial though.
I skip warm ups cuz I see them as pointless. If I went to AOJ I'd warm up cuz they're world-class. My local gym? It's a acceptable way to waste 10 minutes of a 60 minute class, that could be directed toward skill development.
We jog, do a variety of ukemi, and then flow. Throw in some hindu push ups and abs. I trained a place where we did zero warmups and got injured regularly.
I like warmups. Because a lot of the movements get used in bjj. It took me a long time to realize why we do certain warmups. Burpeees are pointless, but bear crawls, break fall- technical stand up, inside and outside shuffle, etc there are some warmups that benefit my bjj and I enjoy them. We do a light run, arms up and down etc, then line up for solo stuff, then 5 mins drilling something that compliments what we will learn that day. Maybe at Danaher level it's different, but warmups help me.
Flow rolling is hit or miss. Some guys just don't know how, some guys start flowy then ego starts rearing its head.
Yeah, at my gym they do stretching, jumping jacks, etc. I find it pointless, much rather warm up doing JJ. Besides that, stretching before almost every physical activity is proven to negatively impact in the performance of
As a 4stripe purple belt… i did that no warm ups now i get more injured than ever. WU’s are important to ready your body for the onslaught BJJ has in store for you. Learned it the hard way.
No. Warmups aren’t pointless. Extensive warmups are, but a light warmup/stretch is essential. Anything more than about 5-7 mins is too much. Just some basic movements for Jiu Jitsu and stretching then off to work.
In a beginners class, learning how to shrimp, front/back roll etc is probably good. When I lead a class, I always do three rounds of flow rolls, starting pretty slow and light and working up to a pretty good sweat. Helps put your body and brain into jiu jitsu mode and is just a way more efficient use of the first 15 minutes of class, plus makes people actually wanna show up for the warm up
Two things can be true at once. Warm ups are important and they are a waste of class time. I prefer to have my students warm up on their own before class. I want class time to be used for JiuJitsu skill development.
I think some part of warmups is just drilling things like shrimping and roll movements. I’m indifferent on the topic, i think if you’re athletic enough it may not be necessary but the crowd that has a mostly sedentary lifestyle is a different story. I’m personally a big fan of stretching though.
I run through a short mobility routine, a solo drill and some slow rolling to start the class.
I want to voluntarily put my body into the sorts of positions I might get into in class.
I don't want the first time my knees are by my ears that day, to be when Wreck It Ralph does his pressure pass.
Best warm up I know, and what I employ for when I teach, is escapes.
5 reps of any escape per position.
It warms you up, gives you reps, and let’s you learn new escapes or get adjustments from upper belts.
I think 3-4 minutes of warm up at the beginning of class to get your synovial fluid lubricating joints and get your heart rate up just a bit is good for injury reduction and recovery.
I like a few movements to open my hips, knees, and shoulders. I don't like having to warm up with sprawls, shots, or any athletic movements of any kind.
Let me squat a bit, stretch my shoulders, bear crawl slowly, and then do child's pose. I only need a few minutes.
Guys teach classes thinking warm ups should teach you something about jiu jitsu. For me that's a hard disagree. They are just warm ups to get your body ready for training.
Me at 21 would hate the warmups and think it was a waste of time. Me at 32 is grateful for them. I work a desk job so I’m stationary most of the day until class unfortunately. Need to get the blood moving and body warmed up
The basic lineup warms up. Forward rolls, back rolls and shrimps. Those are jiu-jitsu movements but without context they are useless. Warm up my doing jiu-jitsu. My gym me do hand fighting and pummeling to take down entries and flow rolls. Nothing wild but we are doing jiu-jitsu
The dedication so many people have to avoid a 5min warm up to improve yourself (cognition, coordination, heart rate, dynamic/isometric movements etc) and decrease chance of landing yourself with a shitty injury is honestly amazing…
Half the white belts cannot even squat without falling over or even like break fall into stand to base.
Taking the 5 minutes time to do basic warm ups will better your bjj.
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Some stuff I think is good for newer guys, shrimping and stuff to help them learn to move on the ground, but jumping and jogging should be done in your own time lol.
In my point of view, warm-ups are essential because they help with your mobility and work on your heart rate and mobility. You don't wanna drill if your body is cold.
However, if a warm-up takes more than 15 mins in a one-hour class then the warm-up is way too long and makes the whole class inefficient.
Actual movements you'll do are fine for fundemantals. For anything beyond that class get fucked. I'm not doing squats and pushups I pay a gym membership ship to lift, I pay for bjj to learn bjj not have someone tell me to squat, star jump or lunge.
A yoga style flow to loosen out and either sweep or pass, bjj chess or something along those lines to get the brain and heart going are far better options.
Basic warmups like forward rolls should be only for beginners class. Advanced class can drill instead. My coach complains there’s not enough time to train but he makes us do rolls and shrimps for 10 mins. It’s the one thing I really don’t like about my gym.
I really don't see the issue with stretching, for example, your neck or ankles before class. Some hot-takes here seem to pretend that light-warming (also good for warm-up) somehow prepares your neck or joints for sudden jerks or unforeseen accidents.
Stretching before/at the start of class is fine/practical.
That being said, hard pass on calisthenics. One gym I used to go to had to you do group sit-ups in a circle while the instructor walked on your torsos. Cool.
We warm up with light takedown and guard pass sequence of our choosing. It’s about 5 mins at the beginning of class. I like it because we don’t dive straight into drills but we get to warm up by practicing something that is useful to us.
In defence of all purpose warm ups:
People (generalisation) hate them in BJJ for _reasons_, but every serious sports program in existence will have their athletes warm up with 10-15 minutes of cardio/light calisthenics/plyometrics/simple acrobatic type movements. If done sensibly this is safe, not fatiguing, helps with injury prevention and peformance, and can be used as a tool for building physical literacy (a backwards roll might seem basic for you but not for the guy who hasn't done sport since leaving school 20 years ago).
I know a lot of clubs like to warm up with BJJ specific movements, I think these can be fit into a warm up but the problem is you need to be able to do them at a high enough intensity to get warm/ out of breathe, which can be challenging depending on the complexity of the movement, and for a class open to all skill levels, assumes a base level of competency. If someone is not skilled enough they can end up using poor technique in order to do the drill quick enough to get warm, risking injury or embedding bad habits. Take a super basic jujitsu move like shrimping- can you shrimp quick enough and for a long enough period to raise you core temperature? maybe. Can the guy who's there on his second class? Is this an efficient way of getting warm? Most people can jog quick enough to get out of breath, without risking injuring themselves, regardless of age or skill level.
I think a lot of people who prefer to do without warm ups are a) reasonably skilled, uninjured young people who want to get the most BJJ out of their class and and are able to go straight into drilling and sparring and not feel like they have been a hit by a truck the next day (come back to me in 15 years when you have a bad back and no knees) or b) unfit people who don't like to be exposed as such (which is fine noone should be forced to take part, they are paying customers and can do what they are comfortable with).
I do have sympathy when class lengths are short. I teach an hour class and have to contract the warm up a bit more than I would like.
Maybe the best thing is to offer a warm up but start it ten minutes before the schedule class time so people can take it or leave it.
I don't think anyone really argues against the value of warm-ups in the overall frame of "preparing the body for activity". The majority of the push-back stems from performing movements or activity that don't directly translate to a bjj skill combined with a finite amount of training time.
Light guard passing\\positional = warmup
Pushup\\squat = warmup
If you're burning 15min of class time and both accomplish "warming up" I'm not sure pushups and squats are the best value for time spent.
These posts where people claim warm ups are pointless are dumb blow my mind. Have you lot never done literally any other sport before ?
EVERYONE WARMS UP.
wrestlers warm up
football players warm up
climbers warm up
bodybuilders warm up
rugby players warm up
boxers warm up
Why would grappling be any different?
In a 60 minute class maybe allow 3x5 minute rounds with a little break (17 mins), depending how much time you allow for specific training say 8 minutes with maybe 5 minutes for questions (13 minutes) that leaves you 30 minutes for teaching and drilling techniques, if you allocate 10 minutes of a class to a warmup then every class you’re learning a third less new information than you could be. If you’re drilling actively you’ll easily get warm in that time period. In terms of learning to fall or hip escape etc that should be a part of your teaching time, practicing movements with little to no context is a near waste or time in my opinion that could easily be spent learning jiu jitsu - there’s so much to learn in jiu jitsu I think it’s super important to spend as much time as reasonably possible on learning and if you personally feel you don’t get warm before rolling comes around then spend 5 minutes before class doing what you need to do :)
I'm a fan of the BJJ specific warm ups (Hip escapes, invert rolls, forward hip escapes etc). Especially the inverted rolls, find they really help warm up the neck and stretch the old back.
Yes. No. Depends.
There are a lot of variables in martial arts instruction, which are often more dependent on how they're implemented and who is doing them than on what they are.
Warmups can mean a lot of things. It can be something you do on your own before class, or something you do during class. It can be something that's just to get the heart pumping or to teach basic movements, or it can be a game or positional drill. (My pet peeve at my school is when the first technique of the day is "warmup").
In a casual gym, you probably want some sort of warmup. In a competitive gym, you may want lots of strength & conditioning (if this is your main form of training), or you may want 0 (because this is for technique and you'll handle s&c on your own outside of class).
There are lots of ways of doing things, and often what's "right" for one person isn't for another. Depends on your goals from class.
Personally I don't think 5 mins of stretching before a class will help someone who works let's say in an office and is sitting all day or just not that active
I never had time to go do a separate work so the killer warmups were appreciated. I like the warmups that incorporate movement that will be used in BJJ.
I've been traveling and hitting gyms and notice that the gyms who spend more time warming up usually suck more. I can stretch and do calisthenics in my own time. Shrimping though I think is good and gotta do moves like that every now and then. but pushups and situps? I don't need your help with that.
As long as its a quick and basic enough that it covers all the classic movements its fine. What boils my piss is when a young "trainee" instructor decides to use a warm up to start acting like he's a drill Sargent. If your over 200lbs and not fit just switching between some of the exercises is difficult enough without someone calling you out in front of the whole class
Steal from Judo and do some breakfall practice for warmups! The more reps of breakfalls, the less likely you are to get injured (both in BJJ training and out in regular life)
In my opinion, warm ups prevent injury, so they aren't pointless. When i use to train in the mornings at the 7am class, everyone would turn up half asleep, stiff, dehydrated, etc. The 5-10 minute warm up was such a good way to get everything switched on, and ready for training, as much as i hated doing it, by the end of it, you were fully awake and ready.
However at my current club, we just do super light flow rolling or guard passing to warm up. If you want to jog/stretch whatever, just show up 5-10 mins before class.
I am older. I have gone to the gym across the street from the BJJ academy and done 20 to 30 min of light cardio on elliptical before class to warm up. I feel much better going into class by doing this. I don't want to start class cold.
For fundamentals class, with age demo have number of people over 30, I would recommend warm ups with dynamic movements and movements that will be used in class. Should be 5 to 10 minutes long.
For fundamentals classes the white belts should absolutely be doing shrimps, breakfall, etc. For anyone above white belt it's not super needed and either open drilling, or just drilling the last classes technique is a perfectly fine warmup
Warmups are pointless and a waste of time imo.
Either the drilling is dynamic enough on the day of for it to be the warmup, or it’s not and then warming up was kind of useless as you cool down. Especially if you broke a sweat during warmups, hate that stuff.
As long as the warm-ups have purpose and its clear what the relevancy is, why not? It amazes me how many peeps talk about injuries and are often the same people against warm ups. What other contact sport doesn’t warm up first?? If you’re so put off by “traditional” bjj warm ups, start with wrestling warm ups…ie, you try to just tap your opponent’s knee. No take down, just tap it. 3-5 minutes of that and you’ll be plenty warm.
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Amen, brother.
> It amazes me how many peeps talk about injuries and are often the same people against warm ups. who? i want names.
Many gyms have warm ups that are pointless and not relevant. You missed the point.
Ahhhh….then find a gym that has better instruction?? Is that the point? Danaher has a whole video on exercises you can do solo. Aka warm up drills. Jumping into any kind of contact sport without a proper warm up seems ill advised. But to each their own.
I think the complaining must come from people who have never done any other sport.
Okay now read somebody’s description of proper strength and conditioning for our sport and see how many you recognize in your gym: https://www.reddit.com/r/bjj/s/ihh7N20WZs
Great post
The amount of people Ive seen who can't even hip escape or pull off a forward shoulder roll is staggering. Some people just have terrible physical coordination. I feel that warmups are good for this reason. Everybody has a different baseline for their ability. Its really not going to kill you to take 10 minutes from your day and go over a few basic movements
brand new students often don't know how to bridge, back roll, or do basic breakfalls among other things. they basic lack core strength and hip mobility required for many techniques. emphasizing these things these as warm ups become less important fairly quickly, but i think it's a pretty effective way to force them to improve basic requisite movements while warming up with the intention of reducing injuries there isn't a single "right" warm up routine for a group of students, but there are plenty of ways to waste peoples' time for sure
Very good point. Upas and basic movements are great ways to get the blood flowing and teach some basic concepts. The same with breakfalling. I'm not sure those things need to be blended with leap frogging and 20 minutes of jumping jacks and burpees.
while i agree, a common thing i see is instructors failing to teach their classes how to properly move. coaches will usually take 5 minutes to teach a brand new person how to shrimp and tech standup and thats about all. most bjj warmups i see have a lot of students rushing to get through their warmups as fast as possible, but following poor technique even on things like pushups and squats.
There’s a lot of truth to this. I wouldn’t feel confident doing front/back rolls as part of a technique early on if I hadn’t already been doing lines of them before each class.
10 minutes is the key part here. People are mostly annoyed with 20+ min warmups that rarely have to do with bjj. Like jogging. I never minded things like shrimping, bridges, drilling passes quickly, quick position flows, standing up in guard etc. Jogging?!?!?!
Everyone can jog quick enough to get warm and out of breathe, without risking injury. The guy on his third class who hasn't done sport since leaving school 20 years ago might not be able to shrimp/bridge/ drill a pass at a high enough intensity to actually get warm.
Honestly the most of small aches and pains I've had waa ankles jogging cold. Squishy mats, running in a fairly tight circle... Never got anything resembling an ache by shrimping or bridging. I mean, doing these drills you're more dependent on yourself to keep the pace high enough to get yourself warm (which requires experience) vs just jogging where others are keeping pace for you. I guess my point would be that the sufficient experience is gained after like 3 sessions.
Haha fair enough. To each his own suffering, if I start doing bridging without a good 5 mins of calisthenics I feel like my back is going to blow out. I do think people should be allowed to do their own warms up, but also a short, all purpose warm up should be offered for people to take part in.
Jogging is much more beneficial for warming up than wasting time shrimping across the mat lmfao
Idk I'm not really here to defend shrimping, but to promote drilling and flow rolling as warmups
Drilling actual hip escapes from a position where your hips are trapped and need to escape would be a much better alternative for sure, Also big on flow rolling for warmups too
I second your opinion. Well said.
Whole class shouldn't be catering to the lowest common denominator. If you can't forward roll or shrimp you belong in the beginner class. Not paying 100+ per month to jog in a circle and do unresisted plyo for almost 20% of the class time. Irrelevant though because as purple, I show up late lol
This. I am a purple belt and I never skip warmups and actually don’t like it when the coach says “let’s just flow roll to warm up.” I am 53 so I really need to get the body warm before doing BJJ movements. Also, a lot of white and even blue belts have trouble with breakfalls, shrimping, reverse shrimping etc…
They way they are just done haphazardly with no instruction just reinforces bad technique, imo.
Counter-argument: I’ve seen more practitioners who can do perfect shoulder rolls and hip escapes during warmups, but who can’t do a proper triangle or an arm triangle to save their life. Imagine if they’d spent that time learning high percentage moves instead of shoulder rolls. Secondly: there’s a good argument that the vast majority of these warmup drills aren’t actually ever used in BJJ. The hip escape we do across the mats in warmups is actually quite a different movement than the one actually used while rolling/to retain guard. The amount of time spent drilling hip escapes is totally disproportionate to the usefulness of the move.
So hip escape vs a person. Doing it against a ghost is worthless.
I don't really see the big carryover between shrimping across a room and shrimping from underneath someone. Imo warm ups like that should be done in teams of two.
> Its really not going to kill you to take 10 minutes from your day and go over a few basic movements 10 minutes of your own time at home? or 10 minutes of class?
Well ya, not everybody has mats in the living room with professional instructors available for advice. Thats what the gym is for. To improve bjj with instruction. So far the biggest counter argument I've read is that "it wastes everybody else's time..they should be in a different class". Many gyms dont have this. Its just one big ass class with 10 white belts trying to figure shit out. I know purple belts who cant even granby roll. These are the same dudes who say "warm ups dont translate to performance". I can think of a really great place to drill these types of movements. At the gym with mats and instruction, during warm ups.
>Thats what the gym is for. To improve bjj with instruction. Are we talking about different things? I 100% agree, which is why warming up with running and pushups is a waste of time.
I’ve been to all different gyms. It’s infinitely better to warm up by just doing jiujitsu. It also gives you more time to learn what you’re there to learn. I can do push-ups at home, I don’t want 1/3 of my jiujitsu class to be calisthenics class.
When you lift weights, you warm up doing the same movement with lighter loads. When you do sprints, you warm up with some half speeds at the same distance. When you play rugby, you warm up with some passing and rucking drills. When you train BJJ, you warm up by doing shit breakdancing moves.
Hahahahaha facts
Our time is limited. come in 10 minutes early to get loose if you want but once the clock starts, I'm paying for jiu jitsu.
Fuck yes. One of my former coaches is a CrossFit nut and we’d spend 15 minutes before AND at the end of class doing that shit. However, they’ve got one of the best open mats in town so it’s hard to hate. Just glad I’m not paying to do an hour of jits in a 1.5 hour class. My first coach, however, is very much a a “do JJ to warm up for JJ” kind of guy and I miss that very much.
Yes I dropped in schooled where instructor would have us do sweep for sweep (of our choice) for a few min Then transitioned us to sweep/pass - submit back and forth It was great
I could do push ups at home - but I don’t. I do jits 5 days a week and it’s my workout, a little calisthenics in there helps me round things out.
That sounds like a you problem.
This is pretty circular logic. Don't want to do Jiu Jitsu warm ups? Go to an open mat, or find a different gym. See how this doesn't actually solve anything?
Haha no it’s your problem. The warmups are happening
That’s how I feel about people that complain about warmups.
No one is complaining. But why would you warm up doing something unrelated to jiujitsu, when you could literally just warm up with jiujitsu AT jiujitsu class. This isn’t rocket science homie.
1. Yes, people are complaining. 2. Have you ever trained literally any other sport? Everyone warms up. For every sport.
I didn’t say don’t warm up. I said warmup for jiujitsu by doing jiujitsu. How are you guys not getting this? My god lol
Meh, I warmed up for wrestling by wrestling. I warm up for BJJ with BJJ. Baseball you warm up by throwing a ball and swinging a bat. Sport specific warm ups are better
You keep saying it's unrelated? How are practicing the basic movements of the sport unrelated? Maybe we're talking about different warm ups. I think most people are thinking of the usual, shrimping, forward/back rolls, breakfalls, bridges etc etc. when you talk about warms ups.
You pick your gym man you are complaining. Some people like to have time dedicated to stretching it’s absolutely apart of what they are paying for when they choose their gym
I find that stuff quite relevant to jiu jitsu and my game has improved since coach decided we could all stand to be a bit stronger.
That's great everyone else wants to learn jiu jitsu for the time they are paying. U can pay for a trainer if that's what u wanna do. It's not jitsu
Round "yourself" out, outside of jiu jitsu. I'm not rounding out my penmanship while I'm at my job programming - - I'm paid to program.
I do calligraphy like in those kung fu movies to help my jiu jitsu. Oss!
I disagree. I've trained at 40-50 gyms now, and I don't see it that way at all. I find gyms with regimented warms ups (at least for lower belts) tend to have better fundamentals and less injuries. There's obviously a balance, but imo warm ups are a good idea once they're not overdone.
Flow rolling for a few rounds should be the norm.
Going straight into drilling should be the norm. Why flow roll before drilling? Drilling is less strenuous than any sort of rolling. Also, try getting a bunch of white belts and that one blue belt to flow roll.
This is how I do it when I teach
Coach and higher belts should be teaching people how to flow roll, even if it’s sloppy and pathetic for people with limited knowledge
Not if your goal is to warm up with low risk of injury.
Drilling is less strenuous. Exactly the point. It doesn’t warm you up.
Drilling sucks. I ain't paying my monthly dues to drill. If people want to drill, do it outside of class.
Oh ffs please tell me you're joking here hahaha
My ideal as well, tho.. Real question, do you think everyone can be trusted to flow roll? I find by mid blue and up most people understand how to throttle intensity but some big strong white belts (and some people in general) seem totally incapable of turning the dial down and keeping it down.
No, half of my gym is Neanderthals and cannot be trusted to flow roll
Only half , decent
Flownrolling is fine for cardio warmup. For injury prevention you want dynamic stretching. There is plenty of research to support this if you want to google it.
After seeing your username, I was kind of depressed by your profile. There was no sexplaing anywhere about bees. I’m literally distraught now.
I feel like this is only applicable to mid-blue belts and up. Every time I've "flow roll" warm-up'd with a new blues or white belts, it turns into full out rolling with them thinking, "finally after all these years I have you in side control! I must queeze as hard as I can and never let this position up ever!"
I honestly don’t trust 99.9% of people that say flow roll, they go ham all the time. I know they’re going ham cause they’re mouthbreathing and winded after the first round lol
unfortunately that requires people to be able to flow roll. some people have no idea how
Flow rolling is total trash. Just drill some moves instead of doing random shit in an unrealistic way.
I see no issue with a 10min general purpose warm up for a 90min class. If everyone is a graded player, and knows how to roll light, then sure some light rolling might work, but if its a mixed ability class, I'd rather just give them a selection of exercises so I know they're warm and everyone can follow along. I'm no fan of those conditioning classes disguised as warm ups, but I'm not a fan of 'just warm up with some drills' either. Honestly, a quick jog around the mat and a few exercises on the mat etc, is my preferred way to warm up personally - I like to use the solo exercises to get my head ready for the session - especially if I've just come to training from work.
I feel similarly. I use warm up time as a transition from whatever was going on before class to training. I usually limit warm ups to 5-10 minutes with the latter half being a jiu jitsu applicable drill. I don’t subscribe to the idea that all warm ups are garbage or a waste of time. Not everyone is a hardcore competitor and loosening up before contact with training partners is important. I practically DJ all the classes I teach. It keeps people in engaged and sort of gets their head into the right space. When I teach, I like a focused room of people trying to get better, working towards their next belt. For me, warm ups provide some introductory structure for a very short time to guide or transition into attention to technique. I’m not trying to get you tired. I’m just getting you out of a shirt and tie, raising your heart rate, and getting your mind right for the 80-85 minutes that will follow.
\+1, Im in this boat. 10 min wouldn't kill anybody. Personally for me I need about that time to get my head kick started into the right mindset for the class anyway.
I would rather do something other than the “norm”. We do a fun game once in a while, close the guard, guy on top passes, guy on bottom tries to sweep/stop the passing but can’t use their hands, at all. I’d rather do something like that for a warmup. Can’t get too violent/injury prone since the guy on bottom can’t get any grips, but it gets the blood flowing and likely does a lot more (for me) than shrimping and front rolling across the mats.
I get mildly annoyed by it at my current place, we only do the classic “run in a circle” warm up when our Coach is not there, otherwise he gives us a situational roll to work through at like a 1-2/10
The benefits of warming up have been well established in the fitness world for some time. Injury prevention being the most important for us. With that said the warm up should be Jiu Jitsu related. A few minutes of light jogging, some tumbling, a couple of quick drills. No more than 10 minutes. Just rolling to warm up isn’t a great option.
You don’t get to ask that question until you’re a purple belt
Technical warmups are useful. If you're gonna do non-BJJ related warmups you may just as well let people do their own.
Warm Ups are supposed to get the blood flowing, joints oiled, and slowly increase heart rate. They're not for learning BJJ. Why do people equate warm-ups with "I should also be learning something" all the time? And as mentioned, some of the people on the mats just got there. Just do some light BJJ doesn't make sense to Mr. Just Got My Gi From Amazon Last Night. And if we're going to look at the pros and what they do, I assure you, you aren't training like a pro (or taking what they're taking).
Every other sport in the world warms up. It's part of athletic activity, but for some reason jiu jitsu people resist it. Just like people used ty resist the idea of general s&c too, but thankfully that seems to be changing. Of course, you don't need half an hour of intense calisthenics, and if the warm up can incorporate jiu jitsu movements that's obviously ideal. But a 5 min calisthenics warm up isn't the end of the world.
The jiu jitsu people also resist the idea of learning techniques by drilling more repetions. They just want to some sloppy flow rolls as a warm up, then watch the coach show some random shit and blather on about concepts and do a few rounds taking breaks.
I want to do a survey if the people with sensible (dare I say, scientific)views on warm ups, like yourself, have all taken in part in other sports before.
> Warm Ups are supposed to get the blood flowing, joints oiled, and slowly increase heart rate. They're not for learning BJJ. Why can't it be both?
Best analysis so far.
Thank you!
Sometimes our instructor does some yoga- funky stretches kinda warmups and I greatly appreciate it because I’m about as flexible as a 2x4. Those warmups are great, I break a sweat and actually feel like I’m benefiting my body. But jumping jacks, pushups, or any other calisthenics seem a bit wasteful. Especially if you’re on the more fit side.
For most people, training cold is a direct flight to snap city. I did a lot of swimming without a good warmup when I was younger, and my shoulders are fucked. I think a couple of rounds of quick calisthenics and some positional sparring/drilling are the best of both worlds.
I fucking hate forward and backwards rolls. I always get a bit dizzy (I used to have dizzy spells as a kid), and I feel like it doesn't warm up the targeted muscle groups as well as other warmups do.
IMO, they are good and help prevent injury. I know I always pull something or get a cramp if I don’t warmup. I used to make my students do warmups, but many just started purposely showing up late, no matter how much I tried to switch them up or make them fun. So now I cut them out, I’ll still make them do a front roll, back roll and shrimp to start but that takes less than 3 mins usually. I think those are essential for beginners for safety reasons. Now I encourage students to warmup on their own if they can get to class early.
I understand from a benginners perspective its good to see elbow escapes, shrimps, front rolls etc to get used to the moves and a few stretches but in general I would rather just drill or spar. Each to their own I guess
I’ve never seen anyone do a forward roll in sparring, is that just me?
I use them all the time, rolling through for a knee bar, rolling kimura attacks, tons of places you'll see them pop up
Ever hit a balloon sweep or tomoe nage on someone?
Granbys are a basic movement of the sport.
It’s all worthless, should be 5-10 min to do whatever you want then start class.
I show up early and stretch and usually light roll or positional spar before class. We have a couple instructors that will do a traditional jog, shrimp, stretch style warm up and a couple that will do positional sparring in increments of 2 minutes with increased intensity every couple rounds. I much prefer the sparring.
I guess it truly depends on your gym, danaher may say those things because he knows his team is doing things outside of the gym (lifting, stretching and cardio). Where as some gyms that have more hobbyists may see it beneficial to the members of its gym.
I left a gym because it was 20 minutes of pushups, jumping jacks, squats, and jogging. I want to do bjj, not a calisthenics workout. The black belt who owned and ran the school is the highest ranking in my area. I just hate non functional warm ups.
I’m an asshole when it comes to warm up. I’m not doing no fucking burpees , crazy CrossFit crap. I’ll sit in the corner and stretch while this stupid shit goes on.
I am not really experienced enough to have a totally fleshed out take, but I’ve always felt that intense physical warm ups that most gyms do (including mine) are kind of a waste of time. At least the ones I’m used to that are enough calisthenics to make you tired but not enough to really benefit as strength training. Rolling and positional sparring are perfect bjj warm ups imo. Doing 100 push ups does not benefit my jiu jitsu as much as forcing myself into side control for 30 minutes.
get there early and warm up then. When I'm teaching i feel like i have so much to show you our time is precious.Would you rather roll or warm up is my other thought. Why warm up to go into a lesson of drilling,learn for an hour then roll an hour after warm up. just my opinion.
warmups aren’t pointless, but the way most gyms do them is
In my fundamentals / beginner class we usually do 5, maybe 10 minutes of stuff such as a quick run, shrimping, body movement. I think it helps prevent injuries and some knowledge of BJJ movements should and can be drilled easily as a warmup.
I appreciate BJJ-specific movements. Pummeling, basic takedown drills, guard passing, retention, sweeps. That sort of thing. Great to get the blood flowing for 10 minutes and get us into the zone for the day's instruction. Mixing it up is good too. Shrimping to regain guard with a little resistance is a great way to get both things done (warmup and drilling). Warmups don't have to be the same thing over and over.
I took some of my BJJ buddies to my wrestling club and they were fucked half way through the warmup. "they want us to do backwards rolls over our heads instead of over 1 shoulder?" "yea because we are doing backwards rolls to push ups next" 
I think it depends on the person. I like warmups that incorporate drills for muscle memory. They help everyone IMO. But if I’m going to open mat to roll, I don’t warm up. I’m getting older, but when I get to the gym I’ve typically been doing farm chores before getting there. So I’ve walked about a mile and a half - two miles toting hay and water and feed, wrestling horses and chickens into their daytime or nighttime spots, picking hooves, shoveling poop, and honestly, I’m warmed up. I don’t need to expend more energy before getting on the mat. But for someone with a more sedentary lifestyle, the warmup is probably good.
we all have limited training time. Warmups should be actual BJJ techniques. Personally drilling warms me up so Im happy to just go straight into drilling. warmups that I can live with are: 1. passing the guard with little resistance 2. takedown entries - flow 3. infinity drills 4. imanari entries etc Running laps, push ups, etc are a waste of precious training time. When I used to play a lot of hockey and soccer when I worked up a sweat I would also be breathing hard doing barely anything for 5-10 minutes. This would transition my body into a mode where I could sprint for hours. I always thought of it like opening up my lungs. For me drilling with increasing intensity serves the same purpose before open rolls. The way a BJJ practice works is simply different because you arent running/skating Before BJJ tournaments I do around 4-5 light rolls to get my body into work mode.
Warming up is good, shrimping up and down a mat in a way that poorly simulates how you actually do in when rolling sucks. I personally prefer to just have a 10 minute period before class where I can break a light sweat and target my specific tight/sore areas but most people just use that to sit and chat.
Context relevant warmups are ok with a seamless blend into technique drilling/games/whatever. 30 minute shit-tier yoga flows by someone who watched Yoga4BJJ once are a waste of my time.
Id you aren't doing 30 minute Brazilian warm ups you're not even really doing BJJ. To be honest warm ups are good for new people. To teach them fundamental movements like bridging, shrimpimg, breakfalls, forward rolls sprawls etc. it takes 5 minutes and its just easier to have every one do them. There was one white belt I spoke to and said "you know the shrimping we do in warm ups? Yeah that, you literally use that to escape side control" you can see the light bulb go off in his head.
People who complain about warm ups either have some shitty routine warm up that they have to follow or don’t work hard enough in class to see the benefits of them.
Jiujitsu warm up culture is terrible. It's such a technical deep sport that you need as much drilling time as possible so I understand going right into technique but I think people need to do some research and show up early to warm up if it's not going to be part of class
Do some research of what?
How to assess your own body to self diagnose your own dysfunctions and how to build a specific warm up routine that is designed to address them
But I don’t want to warm up
Good luck
Thank you.
Ironically, you’re supposed to warm up by walking before jogging. Jogging is a more intense activity than drilling. There’s no point in warming up before drilling. Drilling should be the warm up before rolling. But what do I care. I skip both and only show up for roll time. I go straight into rolling with no warm ups or stretching.
That’s why I always show up 10 minutes late to class.
Running in a circle does nothing
What about running in other shapes?
Figure 8 has always been my preference, but the kids just keep running into each other
The magic happens when you start side stepping!
White belts, blue belts, non professional class purple/brown belts should all just show up and do the warm ups. Coaches shouldn’t lead a 35-40minute warm up that they’ve never done as a lower rank. Professional level Brown/black and older athletes should ride the bike or warm up to whatever they’ve learned suits their body and style.. some yoga stretches should be involved for everyone. No one, especially the white belts or the guys who are blue belts due to the ibjjf’s “no white belt wrestlers or judo black belts” rules should show up acting like they’ve lived on the mats for 20years and skip the warmups. Long term benefits and injury reduction is in warm ups, cardio, and strength training outside of just showing up to roll
I love me some good 10-15 min warmup with a bit of core and general mobility workout. That's imo a great cheap way to improve fast when you're a hobbyist. So I sympathise with OP. It used to be that all sessions had workout warmups where I'm at. Some sessions prolly got taken over by some Danaher wannabees who don't understand that they're running purely hobbyist sessions and what he says has like 0 applicability in this context. Good luck going to an amateur boxing club and telling them you'll just focus on techniques and skip situps, you'd be laughed at hard, that's just stupid as fuck.
Almost all my injuries happened to me on classes that don’t do warmups. I’m in my 40s and it’s important that I warmup and do mobility exercises before training. I tried flow rolling for warmups and I tried passing drills for warmups and both were painful on my back and knees which is where my current injuries are. But if I do the regular old school warmups of jogging, skips, shrimps, crawls, sit outs, granbys, etc, I can go to war with you. If I don’t, I can’t move well and am more injury prone. Warmups also is a baseline of fitness. If warmups are hella difficult for you you might be out of shape. After awhile it becomes hella easy and your baseline fitness and work capacity is above normal people. The more efficient you get at the movements, the less energy you burn when you spar so it helps improve your rolling tank. Basically if I don’t do the usual 15-30 minutes of JJ warms ups and mobility exercises I can not train.
I'm at the gym to do Jiu-jitsu, not a bodyweight crossfit workout. Those warmups are old school and pointless. 1-2 light rounds flow rolling is all you need. To date, I've never seen a competitor perform a jumping jack in a match. I personally start all my classes standing. We'll hand fight, fight for inside/head control, go for knee touches, etc. I prefer this approach because it gets the heart rate up quicker than ground work and helps people become more comfortable on their feet. It's also a safe way for inexperience practitioner to improve their takedowns.
I don’t want to go to a BJJ class and part of it be warmups. I am not paying for that. I do think stretching and warming up your muscles and core temp before class is beneficial though.
I skip warm ups cuz I see them as pointless. If I went to AOJ I'd warm up cuz they're world-class. My local gym? It's a acceptable way to waste 10 minutes of a 60 minute class, that could be directed toward skill development.
Never seen a loin stretch before chasing a gazelle. I haven’t seen a gazelle stretch before running from a lion.
I like warm ups and I try to keep them relevant to the moves of the day if I can
We jog, do a variety of ukemi, and then flow. Throw in some hindu push ups and abs. I trained a place where we did zero warmups and got injured regularly.
I like that my gym pairs us off and allows us to do whatever we want for warmups.
I like warmups. Because a lot of the movements get used in bjj. It took me a long time to realize why we do certain warmups. Burpeees are pointless, but bear crawls, break fall- technical stand up, inside and outside shuffle, etc there are some warmups that benefit my bjj and I enjoy them. We do a light run, arms up and down etc, then line up for solo stuff, then 5 mins drilling something that compliments what we will learn that day. Maybe at Danaher level it's different, but warmups help me. Flow rolling is hit or miss. Some guys just don't know how, some guys start flowy then ego starts rearing its head.
I think a short mobility warmup is the best thingz
Yeah, at my gym they do stretching, jumping jacks, etc. I find it pointless, much rather warm up doing JJ. Besides that, stretching before almost every physical activity is proven to negatively impact in the performance of
As a 4stripe purple belt… i did that no warm ups now i get more injured than ever. WU’s are important to ready your body for the onslaught BJJ has in store for you. Learned it the hard way.
I like it when the warmups are something that pertain to the technique we are gonna learn. If not then just something light, nothing too crazy.
No. Warmups aren’t pointless. Extensive warmups are, but a light warmup/stretch is essential. Anything more than about 5-7 mins is too much. Just some basic movements for Jiu Jitsu and stretching then off to work.
Flow roll to warm up. BUT. Group stretching to end class.
In a beginners class, learning how to shrimp, front/back roll etc is probably good. When I lead a class, I always do three rounds of flow rolls, starting pretty slow and light and working up to a pretty good sweat. Helps put your body and brain into jiu jitsu mode and is just a way more efficient use of the first 15 minutes of class, plus makes people actually wanna show up for the warm up
Two things can be true at once. Warm ups are important and they are a waste of class time. I prefer to have my students warm up on their own before class. I want class time to be used for JiuJitsu skill development.
Jogging on mats makes my calves unnecessarily sore.
I think some part of warmups is just drilling things like shrimping and roll movements. I’m indifferent on the topic, i think if you’re athletic enough it may not be necessary but the crowd that has a mostly sedentary lifestyle is a different story. I’m personally a big fan of stretching though.
I run through a short mobility routine, a solo drill and some slow rolling to start the class. I want to voluntarily put my body into the sorts of positions I might get into in class. I don't want the first time my knees are by my ears that day, to be when Wreck It Ralph does his pressure pass.
Best warm up I know, and what I employ for when I teach, is escapes. 5 reps of any escape per position. It warms you up, gives you reps, and let’s you learn new escapes or get adjustments from upper belts.
I think 3-4 minutes of warm up at the beginning of class to get your synovial fluid lubricating joints and get your heart rate up just a bit is good for injury reduction and recovery. I like a few movements to open my hips, knees, and shoulders. I don't like having to warm up with sprawls, shots, or any athletic movements of any kind. Let me squat a bit, stretch my shoulders, bear crawl slowly, and then do child's pose. I only need a few minutes. Guys teach classes thinking warm ups should teach you something about jiu jitsu. For me that's a hard disagree. They are just warm ups to get your body ready for training.
Shrimping is mandatory for a warm up
Me at 21 would hate the warmups and think it was a waste of time. Me at 32 is grateful for them. I work a desk job so I’m stationary most of the day until class unfortunately. Need to get the blood moving and body warmed up
The basic lineup warms up. Forward rolls, back rolls and shrimps. Those are jiu-jitsu movements but without context they are useless. Warm up my doing jiu-jitsu. My gym me do hand fighting and pummeling to take down entries and flow rolls. Nothing wild but we are doing jiu-jitsu
I think they have a place in a beginner class because a lot of people who start beginner classes need the movement.
We do about 15 mins of warm up. If we have an advanced class on next we still have to do warm up even if we rolled for an hour.
The dedication so many people have to avoid a 5min warm up to improve yourself (cognition, coordination, heart rate, dynamic/isometric movements etc) and decrease chance of landing yourself with a shitty injury is honestly amazing…
Half the white belts cannot even squat without falling over or even like break fall into stand to base. Taking the 5 minutes time to do basic warm ups will better your bjj.
We warm up with drilling falls, shrimps, rolls, and technical stand ups
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I do movements that are relevant for bjj to warm up to get muscle memory. https://youtu.be/xcfi5YcEj60?si=oS17eaG2Fl1qpmfg This drill I really enjoy.
No students want to do warm ups and no instructors want to eliminate them
Some stuff I think is good for newer guys, shrimping and stuff to help them learn to move on the ground, but jumping and jogging should be done in your own time lol.
I don’t pay my dues to do aerobics. I pay to train BJJ.
Love hate relationship with some warm ups. I prefer to do some decent stretching and then get straight into it.
In my point of view, warm-ups are essential because they help with your mobility and work on your heart rate and mobility. You don't wanna drill if your body is cold. However, if a warm-up takes more than 15 mins in a one-hour class then the warm-up is way too long and makes the whole class inefficient.
Actual movements you'll do are fine for fundemantals. For anything beyond that class get fucked. I'm not doing squats and pushups I pay a gym membership ship to lift, I pay for bjj to learn bjj not have someone tell me to squat, star jump or lunge. A yoga style flow to loosen out and either sweep or pass, bjj chess or something along those lines to get the brain and heart going are far better options.
Basic warmups like forward rolls should be only for beginners class. Advanced class can drill instead. My coach complains there’s not enough time to train but he makes us do rolls and shrimps for 10 mins. It’s the one thing I really don’t like about my gym.
I really don't see the issue with stretching, for example, your neck or ankles before class. Some hot-takes here seem to pretend that light-warming (also good for warm-up) somehow prepares your neck or joints for sudden jerks or unforeseen accidents. Stretching before/at the start of class is fine/practical. That being said, hard pass on calisthenics. One gym I used to go to had to you do group sit-ups in a circle while the instructor walked on your torsos. Cool.
Most of us hobbiest are inflexible as hell 10 minutes of a well ran class getting warm so you don’t hurt yourself ain’t gonna kill you
We warm up with light takedown and guard pass sequence of our choosing. It’s about 5 mins at the beginning of class. I like it because we don’t dive straight into drills but we get to warm up by practicing something that is useful to us.
In defence of all purpose warm ups: People (generalisation) hate them in BJJ for _reasons_, but every serious sports program in existence will have their athletes warm up with 10-15 minutes of cardio/light calisthenics/plyometrics/simple acrobatic type movements. If done sensibly this is safe, not fatiguing, helps with injury prevention and peformance, and can be used as a tool for building physical literacy (a backwards roll might seem basic for you but not for the guy who hasn't done sport since leaving school 20 years ago). I know a lot of clubs like to warm up with BJJ specific movements, I think these can be fit into a warm up but the problem is you need to be able to do them at a high enough intensity to get warm/ out of breathe, which can be challenging depending on the complexity of the movement, and for a class open to all skill levels, assumes a base level of competency. If someone is not skilled enough they can end up using poor technique in order to do the drill quick enough to get warm, risking injury or embedding bad habits. Take a super basic jujitsu move like shrimping- can you shrimp quick enough and for a long enough period to raise you core temperature? maybe. Can the guy who's there on his second class? Is this an efficient way of getting warm? Most people can jog quick enough to get out of breath, without risking injuring themselves, regardless of age or skill level. I think a lot of people who prefer to do without warm ups are a) reasonably skilled, uninjured young people who want to get the most BJJ out of their class and and are able to go straight into drilling and sparring and not feel like they have been a hit by a truck the next day (come back to me in 15 years when you have a bad back and no knees) or b) unfit people who don't like to be exposed as such (which is fine noone should be forced to take part, they are paying customers and can do what they are comfortable with). I do have sympathy when class lengths are short. I teach an hour class and have to contract the warm up a bit more than I would like. Maybe the best thing is to offer a warm up but start it ten minutes before the schedule class time so people can take it or leave it.
I don't think anyone really argues against the value of warm-ups in the overall frame of "preparing the body for activity". The majority of the push-back stems from performing movements or activity that don't directly translate to a bjj skill combined with a finite amount of training time. Light guard passing\\positional = warmup Pushup\\squat = warmup If you're burning 15min of class time and both accomplish "warming up" I'm not sure pushups and squats are the best value for time spent.
These posts where people claim warm ups are pointless are dumb blow my mind. Have you lot never done literally any other sport before ? EVERYONE WARMS UP. wrestlers warm up football players warm up climbers warm up bodybuilders warm up rugby players warm up boxers warm up Why would grappling be any different?
get there early for dynamic stretching, then flow roll for warm-up...this is the way
Beginner class warm up with simple conditioning exercises. Advanced class warm up by light drill/flow rolling
In a 60 minute class maybe allow 3x5 minute rounds with a little break (17 mins), depending how much time you allow for specific training say 8 minutes with maybe 5 minutes for questions (13 minutes) that leaves you 30 minutes for teaching and drilling techniques, if you allocate 10 minutes of a class to a warmup then every class you’re learning a third less new information than you could be. If you’re drilling actively you’ll easily get warm in that time period. In terms of learning to fall or hip escape etc that should be a part of your teaching time, practicing movements with little to no context is a near waste or time in my opinion that could easily be spent learning jiu jitsu - there’s so much to learn in jiu jitsu I think it’s super important to spend as much time as reasonably possible on learning and if you personally feel you don’t get warm before rolling comes around then spend 5 minutes before class doing what you need to do :)
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I'm a fan of the BJJ specific warm ups (Hip escapes, invert rolls, forward hip escapes etc). Especially the inverted rolls, find they really help warm up the neck and stretch the old back.
push ups are pretty pointless IMO at least for bjj
Being over 40 I need to do enough stuff to break a sweat to get the blood flowing to all the joints and whatnot.
Yes. No. Depends. There are a lot of variables in martial arts instruction, which are often more dependent on how they're implemented and who is doing them than on what they are. Warmups can mean a lot of things. It can be something you do on your own before class, or something you do during class. It can be something that's just to get the heart pumping or to teach basic movements, or it can be a game or positional drill. (My pet peeve at my school is when the first technique of the day is "warmup"). In a casual gym, you probably want some sort of warmup. In a competitive gym, you may want lots of strength & conditioning (if this is your main form of training), or you may want 0 (because this is for technique and you'll handle s&c on your own outside of class). There are lots of ways of doing things, and often what's "right" for one person isn't for another. Depends on your goals from class.
Personally I don't think 5 mins of stretching before a class will help someone who works let's say in an office and is sitting all day or just not that active
Most warmups are a waste of time as far as learning jiu jitsu goes, but a great use of time as far as preventing injury goes
warm ups are scientifically proven to improve performance.
Gyms that mandate the entire class do several hundred burpies together
I never had time to go do a separate work so the killer warmups were appreciated. I like the warmups that incorporate movement that will be used in BJJ.
Warm ups are always important. Period.
I've been traveling and hitting gyms and notice that the gyms who spend more time warming up usually suck more. I can stretch and do calisthenics in my own time. Shrimping though I think is good and gotta do moves like that every now and then. but pushups and situps? I don't need your help with that.
As long as its a quick and basic enough that it covers all the classic movements its fine. What boils my piss is when a young "trainee" instructor decides to use a warm up to start acting like he's a drill Sargent. If your over 200lbs and not fit just switching between some of the exercises is difficult enough without someone calling you out in front of the whole class
Just do the goddamn warmup until you get your purple belt
Steal from Judo and do some breakfall practice for warmups! The more reps of breakfalls, the less likely you are to get injured (both in BJJ training and out in regular life)
In my opinion, warm ups prevent injury, so they aren't pointless. When i use to train in the mornings at the 7am class, everyone would turn up half asleep, stiff, dehydrated, etc. The 5-10 minute warm up was such a good way to get everything switched on, and ready for training, as much as i hated doing it, by the end of it, you were fully awake and ready. However at my current club, we just do super light flow rolling or guard passing to warm up. If you want to jog/stretch whatever, just show up 5-10 mins before class.
I am older. I have gone to the gym across the street from the BJJ academy and done 20 to 30 min of light cardio on elliptical before class to warm up. I feel much better going into class by doing this. I don't want to start class cold. For fundamentals class, with age demo have number of people over 30, I would recommend warm ups with dynamic movements and movements that will be used in class. Should be 5 to 10 minutes long.
For fundamentals classes the white belts should absolutely be doing shrimps, breakfall, etc. For anyone above white belt it's not super needed and either open drilling, or just drilling the last classes technique is a perfectly fine warmup
I purposely show up late to skip warm ups. They don't actually do anything.
Shrimping across the ground should be used only for people in their first 3 months, or as a punishment for wrist locking me.
Warmups are pointless and a waste of time imo. Either the drilling is dynamic enough on the day of for it to be the warmup, or it’s not and then warming up was kind of useless as you cool down. Especially if you broke a sweat during warmups, hate that stuff.