How to train smarter, not harder
There’s a saying I use a lot in class just before we start sparring: “look after each other.”
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu can be, and frankly often is, an exhausting and painful sport. And the older you get, the bigger toll it takes on your body. It’s therefore critical that you learn to manage how you train, because if your only training strategy is to roll until your lungs collapse, then congratulations, you’ve won a trip to A&E! Or at the very least, a wonderful dose of extended fatigue. Hooray.
If you want to make sustainable progress in this sport, you need to understand how to train smarter, not harder.
The “Go Hard or Go Home” Trap
For something as critical and interwoven in the sport as free sparring, it’s always amazed me how little advice is given on how to spar intelligently.
You might get vague advice like:
“Stay calm.”
“Try not to use strength.”
“Work from bad positions.”
Fine ideas, and in many cases correct, but almost useless if you’re a new grappler with no context.
So what tends to happen is you slap hands, bump fists, and go to war. You burn through your gas tank in 6 minutes and stagger off the mat feeling heroic… and then you spend the next five minutes staring in the abyss as your heart feels like it’s going to burst from your chest.
Adrenaline courses through you. You are knackered, your forearms hurt. But despite all the effort, did you actually learn anything?
Why Training Smarter Beats Training Harder
The problem with going 100% every round is that it is not sustainable, nor is it educational.
The more exhausted you get, the worse your technique becomes. Your reactions slow down, your timing goes, the worse your decision making becomes. And when your partner is just as tired, that combination turns into sloppy, dangerous play of a kind that gets people injured.
Training hard isn’t bad. But training hard all the time is.
If you want longevity, and better still, continuous improvement in Jiu-Jitsu, you need balance. You have to approach each round with purpose.
The Green, Amber, and Red Zones
If you’ve ever finished class feeling wrecked after two rounds, you’re going too hard. Here’s a simple framework to manage your effort:
Green Zone (1–2 rounds): 30–50% effort
Low intensity, ideal for warming up or active recovery. Focus on movement, creativity, awareness.
Flow rolls or slow exchanges.
Working from bad positions.
Trying new moves with light resistance.
Amber Zone (2–3 rounds): 60–80% effort
Controlled but challenging. Focus on execution and timing.
Includes positional sparring (back escapes, top control, guard passing).
Apply your A-game under pressure.
Red Zone (1-2 rounds): 90–100% effort
Go hard. Test yourself. Focus on conditioning, stress tolerance, and resilience.
High-intensity, competition-style rounds.
Push your limits, then rest.
If you treat every round like a Red Zone round, you’re burning out your body and your learning capacity. But if you balance all three, you’ll progress faster and stay on the mats longer. Win win.
The Rule of Thirds
The smartest grapplers I know structure their training partners as carefully as they structure their training intensity. I call this The Rule of Thirds.
⅓ People Who Can Smash You
These are your upper belts, your gym enforcers, the ones who make you suffer. Your job is simply to survive. You can learn to breathe under pressure, defend, and stay calm. Afterwards, ask them for feedback. Most experienced players are happy to help.
⅓ People You Can Smash
These are your lab rounds. Experiment, try new things, and focus on precision over power. Test what you’ve been drilling. Put yourself in bad positions deliberately and work your way out. Try to get maximum effect with minimum effort.
⅓ Your Equals
These are your testing grounds. The rounds that feel like a grand strategy game. Back-and-forth, gritty, and competitive, but fair. These rounds show you what’s really working and where your gaps are.
If you can roughly stick to that balance, you’ll cover all areas of growth: survival, experimentation, and application.
Know Your Limits
The longer you train, the more important this bit becomes.
Training Jiu-Jitsu at 40 is different to training at 25. Your recovery slows down, your joints complain more, and your margin for error shrinks. And as you might imagine, training at 60 feels different than training at 40.
So train like you intend to keep training. Spread your sessions throughout the week, for example, Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, to give your body time to recover. Don’t train hard two days in a row if you can help it.
On your rest days, move. Walk, swim, lift light weights, stretch. Active recovery keeps your body mobile and your circulation healthy.
Strength training becomes your ally as you age. It protects your joints and boosts longevity.
And most importantly - be selective with your training partners.
You’re not obliged to roll with anyone. If someone’s reckless, overly aggressive, or lacks control, or even if you just aren’t up for that particular person today, you can (and should) politely decline. Your longevity is worth more than the desire to prove yourself or to sate one's ego.
Play the Long Game
Here’s a little truth that might sting. You don’t get good at Jiu-Jitsu by going to war every night. You get good by still being able to show up tomorrow. Consistency beats intensity ten times out of ten.
Training smarter means playing the long game:
Choosing partners intentionally.
Managing intensity strategically.
Listening to your body.
Knowing when to push and when to recover.
Because what’s the point of going full blast for six months if you end up injured and off the mats for the next six?
Final Thoughts
Training smarter means training with purpose, with intent. And listen, I’m not saying that you should never go hard or train when you’re tired, because honestly some of the best rounds of your life will come when you’re on the limit but still able to push through. You just need to be thoughtful, and deliberate - not reckless.
The truth is, anyone can train hard for a short while. But it takes intelligence, patience, and self-awareness to train for a lifetime.
Train smart. Stay healthy. Keep showing up. That’s how you win the long game in Jiu-Jitsu.