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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 until we started doing jiu-jitsu. 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
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 BJJ it is still important to be weight training.
Drink lots of water while taking this, cramping is more common when taking this.
You can take creatine in two forms 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 this 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.
BJJ 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 long because you don’t need to later your entire body with it to feel the effects. For anything from muscle soreness to bruising, we are applying the CBD cream we have that we picked up 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 will discuss how we fixed by 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)
- Fish Oil
When we find more beneficial things, we will be sure to return to this list and provide you with updated information.
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 f these brands are from massive fitness influencers who we not only admire but have huge amounts of respect for.
The products seriously speak for themselves and believe that you could not go wrong with any one of the three options.
1st Phorm
1st Phorm is probably our favorite of the three. The quality of each product that we have tested out has lived up to the hype. It is a bit more on the expensive side though so for those that are 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 that you should give this a try. Orange Dreamsicle is our personal favorite!
Jocko Fuel
We love Jocko because he is one of the people who initially got us introduced to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Him 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 options or powdered options, Jokco Fuel has you covered!
Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)
We personally have not taken BPN’s protein (yet) but 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 and 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.
Energy
We have written longer reviews on the energy supplement 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. 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).
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.
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:
We found a great blend of the two from a recommendation from Andrew Humberman. You can find it here on Amazon!
Happy Rolling!
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