I recently stumbled upon a video of the current World Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Open Weight Champion Marcus Buchecha Almeida talking about his knee injury. I found his story to be inspiring to me because I am currently going through my own ACL injury. In the 2015 World Championships Buchecha tore 3 ligaments in his knee. [...]
The biggest lesson I learned from tearing my ACL is to appreciate the process. The day of the tear I thought I might never compete in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu again. The next day I was back to normal and knew I would compete once I got better. Not being able to do the sport that I [...]
*I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. I am just talking about my experience. I don’t recommend anyone do what I do. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about if you can safely squat with a torn ACL. I read in Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe: [...]
If you haven’t heard of Dan Gable he is an Olympic, World, and Pan Am freestyle wrestling champion. What I find very motivating about him is the fact that he won the 1972 olympics (he had to do 6 matches) without anyone scoring a point on him. In addition to that, he tore his ACL [...]
In Part 1 of our Strength Training for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu series I talked about the benefits of strength training and why it should be a small addition (2-3 days per week) to your BJJ training schedule. In this post I am going to list the best exercises to do if you are a BJJ competitor [...]