7 Best Supplements for BJJ Athletes

Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a sport that requires a lot of your body. If you decide to stick with this sport for the long haul, you will have to change your habits completely. Food and nutrition are the backbones of building a lean, strong, and efficient body we must make sure that the things we put into it are fueling the progression of our lifestyle. Choosing to put the best supplements to practice while doing BJJ will make all the difference in your progress.

What you put in your body, especially as you get to higher levels, will make or break you. To be top-tier you must do what top-tier individuals do. Even if your goal is not to become top-tier, choosing the right things to put in your body will increase your overall mood and get you looking your absolute best!

Healthy Lifestyle Choices

When you choose to start your Jiu-Jitsu journey healthy lifestyle choices happen naturally.

Getting good rest, nutrition, and exercise start to become habits. Up until we started practicing jiu-jitsu, we never cared too much about nutrition. We were eating junk food, felt tired, and were sitting at an unhealthy BMI for our size/weight. I always thought that the eating part of fitness was too complicated to get down. We made every excuse under the sun to not take it seriously.

Changing lifestyle habits and choices will carry over and impact other aspects of life. Living a healthy life is one of the four pillars we must focus on to achieve our personal goals.

Best Supplements for BJJ Athletes

Using supplements will help take your body to the next level and help you recover faster. Without our routine, we would be dealing with all kinds of nagging injuries.

We saw an excellent thread on Twitter for supplement recommendations by Andrew Huberman. If you do not know who he is he is a world-renowned neurobiologist who studied at Stanford. We took the recommendations from this thread AND did independent research to find some great things all people should be taking. 

Here are some of the things we use to be at our peak:

Creatine

This miracle substance helps with muscle recovery and getting shredded. Creatine has been a proven supplement that helps increase muscle output and helps you get more out of your lifts. When training Jiu-Jitsu it is still important to be weight training. 

Drink lots of water while taking this, cramping is more common when on creatine.

Creatine supplementation can be taken in two different ways. The pill form or the powder form. We recommend taking it in powder form. Originally we bought the pilled version and got sick of having to slam down six pills to get the recommended dosage by Huberman (about 5 grams daily).

You can find some great options on Amazon!

CBD Cream

CBD has been a game changer in solving our issues with muscle and joint soreness. At first, we were skeptical about the stuff but now that we have ample amount of mat time under our belts it would be really hard for us not to say this is an essential item for those that train.

Jiu-Jitsu is very tough on the body and to stay healthy enough to keep the mat time consistent we use CBD creams on sore areas. CBD cream lasts a while because you don’t need to lather your entire body with it to feel the effects. For anything from muscle soreness to bruising, we are applying  CBD cream from cbdMD. 

CBD Oil and Gummies For Better Rest

CBD cream is not the only CBD-based product that we use. Because we work on a computer for our day job and have this website we spend a lot of time getting exposed to blue light. If you are unaware, too much exposure to blue light messes with our body’s natural sleep cycle known as the circadian rhythm (source). We were having a huge problem with our sleep which led to several issues that we fixed through supplementation. Taking cbdmd Sleep Gummies and having hot tea with our Life Cykel Reishi Mushroom extract have been game changers for us on the quality of sleep we were getting.

Winding down has been challenging for us for almost 4 years now and now that we understand the power of proper supplementation, the issue is pretty much fixed.

Vitamins & Minerals 

The food we eat in most cases is not filling our bodies the way we need it to. If you look at the labels of today’s food unfortunately you are going to find a bunch of ingredients you cannot pronounce and that do not add any nutritional value. 

This is why we supplement and take the things we do. We know that it can be very difficult to get everything we need just from the food we ingest so adding these supplements to your routine will enhance the fact that you are fueling your body with what it needs.

The vitamins and minerals we take are the following (the people who showed us the benefits are listed next to the supplement):

• Magnesium Glycinate (Grimhood)
• Boron (BowtiedLoon)
• Vitamin D (only in winter times. Trade out for sun exposure when warm out)
• Calcium & Zinc (we use a blend from Trader Joe’s)
• Vitamin C
• Fish Oil

When we find more beneficial things, we will be sure to return to this list and provide you with updated information.

Why are vitamins and minerals important?

Getting the right amount of vitamins and minerals is extremely important in order to boost your immune system and overall health.

For example, Vitamin D has some amazing health benefits including the ability to absorb and retain calcium and phosphorus. Both of these materials are extremely necessary to maintain bone structure and strength.

Vitamin C allows for the absorption of Iron and strengthens the immune system!

Omega 3 Fish Oil is a fat that aids in muscle fatigue and recovery after intense training.  The fatty acids found in Omega 3 oils help lower levels of inflammation in the body making it easier to recover after tough workouts!

One of the worst feelings as an athlete is not being able to play due to injuries or illnesses. Keeping your immune system high by getting the proper nutrients through vitamins and minerals allows you to continue to do what you love!

Protein Supplements

We have tried almost every protein powder under the sun at this point. The supplement that we have been taking the longest has been this and below are our personal favorites. It just so happens that all three of these brands are from massive fitness influencers whom we admire and have huge amounts of respect for.

The products speak for themselves; we believe you could not go wrong with any of the three options.

1st Phorm

1st Phorm is probably our favorite of the three. The quality of the protein supplements that we have tested out has lived up to the hype. Created by Andy Frisella, 1st Phorm is a brand that offers plant-based protein and whey protein in the form of powder, bars, and other snacks. Their protein powders have all of the essential amino acids needed for optimal function and muscle growth. 

It is a bit more expensive, so for those looking for a cheaper option, this one is probably not for you.

But, if you are like us and do not mind spending more money on great quality things, we think you should try this. Orange Dreamsicle is our personal favorite!

Jocko Fuel

We love Jocko because he is one of the Jiu-Jitsu practitioners who initially got us introduced to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His being such a huge advocate of the martial art made us leap in not only trying it out but also his products!

Jocko Fuel has a wide range of supplements and protein flavors for all people who are looking to take their nutrition to the next level. Whether you want on-the-go or powdered options, Jokco Fuel has you covered!

Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)

We personally have not taken BPN’s protein (yet) but we have tried and asked about other supplements that they offer and have only heard good things. The protein is priced right around the same price as Jocko Fuel so for people that are price sensitive, it may be a good option for you!

The supplement that we have taken and can say works great is the G1M Sport. When we go out for long runs, we take this supplement. It keeps us from cramping and allows us to get the most out of our muscles. Getting the most out of our muscles is not only subject to running but also our time spent lifting weights and at our BJJ gym. 

Why protein is so important

Nutrients such as Whey protein and other forms of branched-chain amino acids are necessary for human life. Proteins are made from building blocks known as amino acids. Amino acids help repair bones and muscles and can create essential hormones as well. When the body is running low on carbohydrates proteins can be used as an energy source.

Differences between plant-based and whey protein

Energy

We have written longer reviews on the pre-workout supplements that we take from MatFuel. This is a nice little bonus that we need to get our minds focused when we are rolling on the mats.

If you train in the morning or later at night this could be a great supplement to add to your cart to increase exercise performance. It gives us the added push we need to get through training and feel alert while doing so (even in those graveyard early morning classes).

Benefits of Pre Workout

Pre-workout has many performance benefits that athletes can use to their advantage. To list a few, Pre-Workout 

1. Increases energy levels

2. Enhances endurance

3. Increases strength in muscles

For those that are looking to cut weight and want to even add a fat burner, MatFuel has a good selection. They were kind enough to send us a sample of CombatCut, their latest product. It’s been keeping us looking lean without compromising any muscle that we have worked hard for.

Testosterone Boosting Supplements

Do not take TRT or any other steroid unless you have at least given what we are going to recommend a try. We suffered from Low T and have been huge advocates for men in our life to get their blood levels checked out (seriously go do it).

It should go without saying that testosterone is a huge factor for male health, it is the main hormone that makes us different biologically. Testosterone levels, from a general standpoint, have never been lower than they are in today’s world.

Benefits of High Testosterone

As stated previously, testosterone is the hormone that makes a man, a man. T is known to allow for easy muscle growth in Type I and Type II Muscle Fibers also known as your slow and fast twitch fibers. A composition with high testosterone will be able to build muscle mass through strength training and resistance training faster than those with lower testosterone levels. Testosterone is also known to lessen muscular fatigue in athletes.

There are a number of options you can go with but they do not come without risks. When putting synthetic stuff in your body you begin to grow a dependence, try a more natural route with things that can be found in nature first before going that route.

Throughout the day we used to have to rely on caffeine to get us through. We were tired of feeling sluggish ad tired halfway through the day at work so we reached out to people on Twitter and watched podcasts to uncover some ways to boost our testosterone more naturally through supplementation.

Here is what we currently take to help boost our T-levels:

• Fadogia Agrestis
• Tongkat Ali

We found a great blend of the two from a recommendation from Andrew Humberman. You can find it here on Amazon!

Happy Rolling!