BORETS
In this guide
The strongest grappler in the room is rarely the one who lifts the most. It is the one whose strength shows up in the fourth round of the fifth session of the week, when technique is tired and the body has to hold the position on its own. Strength and conditioning for BJJ and wrestling exists to serve that moment. This is how we organise it at BORETS: the mat comes first, the weight room supports it, and every decision about volume is made with next week's training in mind, not this week's ego.
What strength actually does for a grappler
Strength does not replace technique; it removes excuses for technique. A grappler who can hold a solid frame from the bottom of side control does not get flattened by weight alone and gets to use the escape they drilled. A wrestler with a strong posterior chain finishes a double leg with a drive rather than a hope. Strength buys the second in which skill can work.
It also makes the body more tolerant of the same hard training, because joints surrounded by progressively loaded muscle handle the odd angles of grappling better than joints loaded only by grappling itself. That is the practical argument for lifting, and it needs no promise about injury-proofing, which no honest coach makes. The trade-off is real: every hour in the weight room is an hour and a recovery cost that could have gone to the mat.
The mat-first rule
Decide your mat schedule first, then fit lifting around it, never the reverse. Grappling four times a week, two strength sessions are plenty; grappling six times, one hard session and one light one is often the honest maximum. A programme that leaves you too sore to drill is a bad programme, however impressive the numbers.
Lift on days when the next mat session is light or absent, or lift after grappling on the same day. Lifting heavy the morning of a hard sparring night is the classic mistake: the legs feel fine at the start and disappear in round three. In the weeks before a competition, lifting shrinks to maintenance and conditioning moves onto the mat. Strength is built in the months between events, not the weeks before them.
A two-day strength template
Day one, lower body and pulling. A hinge, trap-bar or conventional deadlift, three sets of five with two reps in reserve. A rear-foot-elevated split squat, three sets of six to eight each side. A horizontal row, three sets of eight. A loaded carry, three trips of thirty to forty metres. A core anti-rotation press, three holds of ten seconds a side.
Day two, push, squat and grip. A front or goblet squat, three sets of five with the same two-in-reserve rule. A floor press or push-up variation, three sets of eight. Chin-ups or towel hangs, three sets stopped a couple of reps short of failure. Hip thrust or kettlebell swing, three sets of ten. Thick-towel dead hangs, two or three holds of twenty to forty seconds.
When every set reaches the top of the range with two reps to spare, add a little weight next week. Each session takes forty-five to fifty-five minutes with the warm-up; if it takes ninety, it has become a second conditioning session with barbells. This is a starting point for healthy adults with lifting experience. Beginners should learn the movements under supervision, and anyone with an injury or health concern should consult a qualified professional first; the current resistance training guidance from the American College of Sports Medicine is a sound baseline for how much and how often.
A mat-first week
For a hobbyist grappling four times: Monday, technique plus positional sparring; Tuesday, strength day one; Wednesday, technique and sparring; Thursday, rest or twenty minutes of easy mobility; Friday, strength day two after a lighter drilling session; Saturday, open mat; Sunday, rest.
For an athlete grappling six times with a competition ahead: strength shrinks to Tuesday and Friday, cut to the first three exercises of each day; conditioning happens on the mat through round structure; one full rest day is non-negotiable. If sleep is short and the body is sore three days running, the next lifting session becomes a mobility session. That is planning, not weakness. Two-a-days add load even when one session is technical. Build them around your recovery and competition plan with your coach, rather than copying an elite athlete’s weekly total.
Conditioning: on the mat, in the rounds
Use round structure to target a specific need. Controlled positional rounds give you repeated practice under a manageable load; harder rounds closer to your competition duration test whether you can keep making good decisions as fatigue rises. Build the volume first and avoid making every round maximal.
A low-impact bike or rower can add conditioning without another contact session. One possible interval session is six rounds of 30 seconds of controlled hard effort and 90 seconds easy. Adjust the number of rounds to the rest of your week. Track whether you maintain pace and recover between sessions; one heart-rate reading alone cannot diagnose fitness or overtraining.
Recovery decisions you make every day
Sleep first: seven to nine hours is the range most adults need, and no supplement has replaced it. Food second: enough protein across the day, enough carbohydrate to fuel hard sessions and enough total food to avoid the low-energy state many grapplers mistake for discipline. Then the daily readiness check: how did I sleep, how sore am I out of ten, do I want to train? Two bad answers out of three and the session is scaled. When mat sessions are hard, sleep is poor and the joints are talking, a deload week at half volume returns you sharper. Use those notes to adjust the next week rather than pushing through an accumulating recovery problem.
Kids, older athletes and where BORETS fits
For young athletes, prioritise movement quality, play and qualified supervision. Appropriately taught resistance training can also be useful; readiness and instruction matter more than a blanket ban on equipment. Adults over forty lift with the same principles and more patience: longer warm-ups, an extra rep in reserve, a week off heavy loading whenever recovery lags. We have coached both groups for years and the principle holds: the weight room serves the mat.
If you want your own plan looked at, BORETS membership gives you consultations with Ievgen Skyrda, Oleksandr Oliinyk, Kostiantyn Zhyvanov, Yaroslav Blazhko and Mykola Chaban and the option to request a video breakdown of your specific conditioning or technique question. The video school is still being prepared, so registering now is the first step; the BORETS YouTube channel already shows how our athletes train in the gym and on the mat.