How to deal with injuries while preparing for tournaments
How to Deal With Injuries While Training For Tournaments
One of the most common problems while training for tournaments is the injuries you sustain while training hard for a short period of time. You have about 2-3 months to get ready for the tournament but a shoulder, knee, or back injury could keep you on the side line for weeks sometimes.
Taking weeks of training will not only regress your progress but also will mentally make you weaker for your matches. In the back of your head you know you didn’t train like you planned and you might doubt yourself while progressing in the tournament.
What I found out over the years is that even though many times I had injuries that caused me to stay away from sparring and drilling techniques, there are training variations in other sports that can simulate my matches.
Recently in my last tournament I injured my back and my lower back was so tight that I could never even apply an arm bar. I could not train or drill for a full week. I was preparing for the World Jiu-jitsu Championships and my matches were ten minutes. I knew my conditioning would play big role in the matches and I only had four weeks until the tournament. I decided to do what I always do when injury gets me; I simulated my matches by doing different exercises that didn’t hurt my back.
Swimming was the best exercise that I could find that would give a great work out and not only would it prevent my back from getting worst but it actually helped me get better. I would swim for ten minutes straight trying to simulate the match intensity, and then I would take a five minute break and repeat that until I did three, ten minute simulated matches in the pool. I knew I was going to have to grapple three times so that is what I figured I needed. The way to measure your performance is by counting how many laps you do in ten minutes. I started at twenty-five and end up doing thirty by the end of the week.
Example:
25 meter pool/ 25/30 Laps in 10 minutes( I was doing 3/10 minutes because I knew I had 3 matches)
After that week my back got better and I was able to resume training, I felt my performance didn’t go down and I was actually training better than before.
The point is there isn’t anything like training live and drilling but sometimes you have to be creative to maintain that high level intensity needed to keep your training intensity all the way until the day of the tournament.
Tags: Cross Training, Matches, Swimming, Tournaments
