When injured - BJJ
As I've already mentioned I am currently sporting a Stage II sprained ankle - this means that BJJ at this moment in time is not possible. There have been many debates about what you can do to increase your strength and stamina for BJJ but I don't recall reading a lot about what to do when injured.
This is clearly injury specific. If for example if you have a broken finger, I see no harm (and have witnessed this regularly) to strap it up and carry on. If you have a broken leg however, things are slightly different.
Certain injuries will allow you to continue with CV exercise which will help maintain your stamina/endurance but not your strength. Others (like mine) prevent any form of CV exercise but allows me to train upper body weights thus keeping an element of strength but likely to loose some stamina/endurance ability.
Although I'm not aware of any 'scientific' findings or in fact research into what training is best for BJJ - it would be commonly accepted that to get fit for BJJ you're best doing BJJ. I agree that you can complement this with other sport specific training to 'help' but your stamina/endurance for fighting/sparring is only really going to increase when you increase the intensity and length of sparring you actually do.
Today I did a relatively simple upper body weight session - it consisted of Bench Press, Incline Dumbbell Fly, Seated Shoulder Press & Upright Row. These exercises wouldn't normally make my work out booklet (app) but given my current condition whole range movements like swings, Olympic lifts aren't recommended. Normally I would use Kettle Bells and Olympic style lifts, whole range movements that engage far more then 1/2 muscle groups. BUT when that isn't possible what can we do....?
My conclusion - and again this is very injury specific is to swim. I can isolate my ankle only using upper body and still keep and from previous experience of swimming increase my stamina/endurance ability.
This is a horrible time for any athlete and non athletes tend to suggest we just relax and enjoy our 'time off' -but we all know that isn't possible.
I would welcome any pointers here and certainly accept comments that would help me and many others who face this small dilemma. If any of you have workouts that have helped then please post them up. I will put up my workouts over the next few weeks and when I start training will let you know if (at all) they helped keep me close to my usual output capacity.
As ever - thanks for reading