Maintaining a Jiujitsu Journal

By Liz

Why should I keep a jiujitsu journal?

A jiujitsu journal is a place where you can write down the techniques you learned that day, as well as record your physical state (“pain in right knee, very fatigued after 2 rolls, ate too much too close to training”) and general experiences during that training session (“felt great today, fun flow roll with Josh at the beginning, got smashed by Kayla during last roll”).

There are several good reasons to keep a journal devoted to jiujitsu:

• Keeping a jiujitsu journal encourages you to pay close attention during class: When you know you’re going to be writing down the techniques later, you are forced to pay attention to every detail--both while the coach is talking and while you are drilling the move. I’ve found that sometimes I space out while the coach is talking and sometimes even do the moves half-heartedly, just going through the motions without really paying attention to what I’m doing and ignoring the details. However, when I know I have to write down the techniques later, I pay close attention to what all four of my limbs are doing, where to put the pressure, when to change positions, how exactly to hold each grip, and how to transition through each move… because otherwise my notes will be crap later. This helps me get the most out of my training time.   
• Keeping a jiujitsu journal encourages drilling before and after class: Sometimes I’m so tired after class that I head to the locker rooms right away without a second thought about what I learned that day. But when I know I have to write the techniques down later, I’ll stay after class and review the moves a few times with a willing partner for five minutes, and will often come back early the next day to drill the moves again.
• The process of writing helps you remember and creates a record for later: You will inevitably forget the details, and keeping a journal allows you to keep going back and drilling moves you learned weeks or months later, helping reinforce the muscle memory of various techniques into your brain.

How should I keep a jiujitsu journal?

Here are my tips for keeping the journal:

• Drill the moves you learned that day again after class is over, and make sure you have all the details correct and solid. Ask your coach to watch you do the move once to make sure you’re doing it correctly.
• Write it down as soon as you get home (or, even better, in the locker room) in as much detail as possible.
• Keep all of the entries in one place and organized by date, and give some details for who your partner was to help jog your memory when you look back on the entry later.
• Detail how you were feeling emotionally and physically that day. Some people also keep a food journal as well. This will help you pick up patterns. For awhile, I was feeling really weak during rolls. When I went back to review my notes, I noticed that in my notes, I was writing “feeling fatigued” during most of my entries. That prompted me to see a nutritionist, who informed me that I wasn’t eating enough. If I hadn’t kept that record, I think I would have thought I was just tired and not realized that it was a consistent trend that was affecting my training.
• Frequently review your notes. Go through them once at the end of the week, and again at the end of the month. This will help refresh your memory. This will also help you get better at writing them, because when you look back on your notes from the week before, you will realize the details you left out but need to include next time.  

Keeping a jiujitsu journal helps keep you focused on technique and helps organize your thoughts. It also helps you keep track of your progress and any injuries or illness. Although it can take an extra 15 minutes of your time each day, it’s definitely worth it to keep you progressing through advanced moves.

Liz started jiujitsu in 2011, got her blue belt in 2013, and has competed in 11 competitions.

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Preparing Your Body for Competition

By Liz

How should I train for competition?

After finding a training partner of (relatively) similar size and strength to yourself, work out a consistent training plan together at least two months before the competition to strike a good balance throughout the week between:

• Drilling with little to no resistance
• Drilling with 50% resistance
• Positional rolling with 100% resistance
• Sparring for at least 6 minutes with 100% resistance
• Some weight training or cross training (such as CrossFit, rock climbing, kickboxing, pole dancing, weight lifting) on the side is also recommended

Three weeks before the competition, write up a game plan with two submissions/sweeps and two escapes from each position. I call this my “game plan.” Write out in detail exactly how your game plan will be executed (e.g., “grab the sleeve at the elbow with your opposite arm…”). Frequently review these notes before training and practice envisioning yourself executing your game plan. Drill these moves and these moves only in the three weeks leading up to the competition and avoid adding new moves to your repertoire. Try to execute your game place during live sparring. The night before the competition, imagine yourself successfully executing your game plan. Always end your “meditation” sessions with a submission.

What is the best way to cut weight before a competition?

Don’t attempt to cut more than five pounds while preparing for competition. Remember if you cut weight, you will probably be significantly weaker than you would be if you eat and drink the appropriate amounts during the days leading up to the competition.  

If you decide to cut, follow these rules:

• Be careful if you have had or have an eating disorder because this can be a trigger
• More veggies and less white bread, rice, and pasta
• Use protein shakes or smoothies to substitute for meals
• Don’t eat out at restaurants (those over-sized American portions can be detrimental)
• Cut down on refined sugar intake
• Cut down on drinking your calories. Best to avoid alcohol, sugary coffee drinks, soda pop, and Gatorade.
• FIBER, FIBER, FIBER (lots of vegetables, beans, flax seed, and fiber supplements), especially during the week before the comp. Laxatives work too but make you feel like shit (no pun intended). Supposedly you carry around up to 5 lbs of crap inside you at any given time so getting some of that out will help when you weigh-in.
• Drink lots of water up to 24 hours before weigh-ins. If weigh-ins are the night before the comp, stop eating and drinking water 24 hours before weigh-ins and make sure you’re hydrated the night before the comp. If weigh-ins are immediately before your match (at IBJFF tournaments, for example), then stay well-hydrated the day before the comp, but don’t drink or eat anything the morning of the comp (unless you are confident that you will make weight, of course).

What about the day of the competition? What should I eat, and what should I bring?

Pending your weigh-in situation, eat a normal and healthy dinner the night before. My go-to is a baby spinach salad with chickpeas and fried eggs. For breakfast the morning of, eat something with chia seeds! Put them in your oatmeal, eat chia seed pudding (coconut milk + honey + chia seeds is my favorite), and/or drink Kombucha with chia seeds. I also usually drink a five-hour energy shot, but any kind of pre-workout mix or drink with caffeine in it, like coffee or Red Bull, will do. Experiment with all of these things during competition training beforehand so you know what works with your stomach. 

Don't drink too much water before and after your matches! You don't know if you'll have another match coming up soon and competing on a stomach full of water is the worst. Stop drinking water 1 hour before your first match.

Key things to bring:

• Snacks to munch on before your matches start (my favorites are bananas, raspberries, and honey)
• Water (for yourself and to share with your teammates)
• Coconut water (which naturally replaces electrolytes)
• Flip flops
• Extra contacts (I once had to compete with one contact in because one of my contacts fell out during my first match)
• Tampons
• Bring food, a protein shake, and Gatorade for once your matches are over
• A change of clothes, including a clean bra and underwear
• Deodorant
• Camera
• Tasty snacks to share with your teammates once their matches are over
• Your favorite pump-up playlist! I like to listen to the same playlist before jiujitsu training in the months leading up to the competition. On the night before the competition and again when warming up before my matches, I listen to the playlist with my eyes closed while I envision my game plan in my head. Here are some song suggestions to add to your own playlist:
• Roar by Katy Perry
• Fight Song by Rachel Platten
• Shake It Out by Florence + the Machine
• I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift
• Watch Yo Back by Trina
• Beautiful by Akon
• Get Back by Ludacris
• Eye of the Tiger by Survivor
• Halo by Beyonce
• Set Fire to the Rain by Adele
• Womanizer by Britney Spears

And always remember:

Liz started jiujitsu in 2011, got her blue belt in 2013, and has competed in nine competitions. Although she is from California, she is currently training and coaching jiujitsu abroad. She’s learned through training that vulnerable people are powerful people.

Email us at liz.meg223@gmail.com with your questions or comments, and we will post our answers in the next blog post! Look for our posts on Sunday night EST every other week (every second and fourth Sunday of the month).

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Fueling the grappler’s body: eat to train, don’t train to eat

By Liz

Why do we care about nutrition as female grapplers in particular?

I’ve always been self-conscious about my body. Every time I look in the mirror, I’m either too skinny or too fat, too bony or too muscular. My roommate said to me the other day, “I remember one of my first impressions of you was that you were really skinny.” I thought back to the time when she and I had first met. It was a time when I thought I was fat, and I was actively restricting my eating and exercising like crazy. I thought I was fat, and yet when I look back on pictures of myself at that time, I look emaciated.

As women, distorted images of our own bodies are all too common, and as a result, many of us tend to have very destructive attitudes toward food. Some of these habits include not eating enough, disordered eating, and feeling averse to building muscle.

Firstly, we need to make sure we are taking in enough fuel to support our unique BJJ lifestyle of actively building muscle, burning high amounts of calories, and sustaining endurance through long training sessions.

We’re not the cardio bunnies on the treadmills. We aim to train and eat for power and strength, not so we can look as slim as possible. So we require unique nutrition, namely high amounts of protein and carbs. According to my nutritionist, for someone weighing 140 pounds and regularly training jiujitsu at least two hours a day, this means eating at least 95 grams of protein per day (equivalent to four hamburgers) and 300 grams of carbohydrates per day (equivalent to five bowls of pasta).

Secondly, I believe in eating in order to fuel training, not training in order to eat.

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I train hard so I can eat whatever I want. If I didn’t train, I would be so fat.”? I know I have. And still do. I often think of jiujitsu as a way to support my over-indulgent eating habits. From macaroni and cheese to ice cream, I love my fatty and sweet foods, and being able to burn off the calories from the foods I love is a huge motivating factor for me to get to the gym. However, training in order to eat can easily lead to restricting, binging, and purging behaviors, an unhealthy road of disordered eating that none of us should start walking down.

Although I myself am guilty of this mindset, I want to advocate for abolishing this unhealthy attitude and replace it with a new way of thinking. Let's think of food as the fuel for our training sessions, rather than thinking of our training sessions as reasons for eating. As grapplers we have to watch what we eat so we have the strength to be the best we can be, not so we can lose weight.

Women are under incredible pressure to have the perfect figure not only from the media and the men in our lives, but also from other women and ourselves. How often do we talk to other women about how fat we are? About how we’re trying to lose a couple of pounds? And however unintentional, we are under a lot of pressure from ourselves and others to please the men in our lives by striving for that perfect figure. That perfect, elusive, impossible figure: Big boobs, six pack, thin waist, and big butt.

To quote one of my favorite books called Eating in the Light of the Moon, by Anita Johnston, a book that has been invaluable to me in overcoming my own eating disorders:

“Why is it that those aspects of a woman’s body that are most closely related to her innate female power, the capacity of her belly, hips, and thighs to carry and sustain life, are diminished in our society’s version of a beautiful woman?”

Thirdly, I advocate for building muscle.

Sometimes I worry I’m putting on too much muscle. People say jiujitsu is designed for a smaller opponent to defeat a larger opponent. Well, I call bullshit on that. If they are significantly stronger and bigger than you, you have a notable disadvantage. And so I’ve taken up weightlifting and rock climbing as a way to get stronger, and I’ve noticed significant improvements in my game. Yes, you still have to concentrate on technique, and yes getting stronger won’t instantly make you better. But putting on muscle is a part of the game and it’s helped my jiujitsu a lot.

Besides, I enjoy weightlifting and rock climbing, and muscles are sexy!

What and when should I be eating?

Here is my daily training and eating plan while I’m living in the States, which gives me good nutrition, enough calories, and is cheap and time efficient for the student lifestyle. I created this plan after meeting with a nutritionist and after many months of trial and error.

I haven’t included exact proportions because these will depend on your body weight: heavier and more muscular people need to intake more calories than shorter and more petite people. Portion sizes will also depend on how active you are and whether or not you are strength training and trying to build muscle. In the end, the best thing to do is what I like to call “body’s choice": eat until you feel full, and eat when you’re hungry.

Breakfast: A bowl of oatmeal with whole milk, ground flax seeds, and grapes
Mid-morning snack: A few slices of cheese and an apple
Noon workout: One hour of lifting weights, BJJ drilling, kickboxing, or rock climbing
Post-workout: Protein shake
Lunch: Chicken with rice or bean chili
Afternoon snack (Three hours before evening training): Greek yogurt with fruit
Pre-workout: Banana
Evening workout: Two hours of jiujitsu (usually one hour of drilling and one hour of cardio intensive rolling)
Dinner: Spinach salad with kidney beans, eggs, or chicken and ranch dressing.

I also eat nuts, peanut butter, and whole milk throughout the day to reach my caloric goal, especially on intense training days.

After creating this plan, I kept track of my calories and estimated that I consume around 3,000 calories a day and burn about 1,000 calories a day. I recommend MyFitnessPal for a week or two just to see how much you’re consuming, and for longer if you’re actively trying to gain or lose weight.

Remember to HYDRATE, HYDRATE, HYDRATE till your pee is clear! I drink coconut water on hard training days and during competitions, because it naturally replaces electrolytes. I also really like to drink kombucha (fermented mushroom) drinks with chia seeds especially on hard training days. Otherwise I try not to drink soda pop, coffee, or alcohol. I stop eating three hours before training and stop drinking water one hour before training.

It’s essential to consistently be eating enough calories with high nutritional content. Eating well the day of training isn’t going to help much if you’re eating like crap the rest of the time. It’s the same with water: drinking a gallon of water right before training isn’t going to help. It’s more about staying hydrated throughout the day.

Here are some other tips my nutritionist gave me that I found useful:

• Eat slowly and enjoy your food. It should take ~30 minutes to eat a big meal.
• Listen to your body. Follow your body’s choice, and eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. Eat what makes you feel good in the long run.
• Eat a lot of vegetables.
• It’s okay to cheat sometimes. Obviously the ideal is to eat well 100% of the time, but we all know this is virtually impossible. Shoot for eating good foods 80% of the time and let yourself eat bad foods, like white bread, fried chicken, sweets, etc, 20% of the time. 

TL;DR?

I know way too many women who think they’re fat when they’re incredibly gorgeous.

I wish for all of us to be happy with our bodies however they look right now--short, tall, muscular, lanky, skinny, or fat. Because we are gorgeous no matter what size we are. What we need to focus on as grapplers is giving ourselves the correct nutrition and the appropriate amount of calories to fuel our training that will help us improve our health and our jiujitsu.

It’s easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that having a perfect body will make us happy. It’s even easier to get caught in the mindset that if only we had the perfect body, people will like us more. Sometimes we think that food will fill some sort of void that we are missing--love or sex or companionship--or we use food to help with stress, anxiety, or loneliness. I know I’ve been there.

In taking this journey together, I wish for all of my BJJ sisters to realize the beauty of their bodies while thinking about food as essential fuel and as an important part of the training process. Love yourself, love your body, love your training. Take care of yourself and TRAIN HARD!

Liz started jiujitsu in 2011, got her blue belt in 2013, and has competed in nine competitions. She's learned through jiujitsu that she is only confined by the walls she's built herself.  

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Email us at liz.meg223@gmail.com with your questions, and we will post our answers in the next blog post!