Train, Recover, Train: How I Rebuilt My Week at 45 - Part 6 of 10
MY BJJ JOURNEY AFTER 40 • Post 6 of 10
By Juliano | Frames Culture
Last week I told you about sleep. The boring fix. The one I didn't want.
This week is the second change, and I'm sorry to say it's boring too. It turns out most of what actually works after 40 is.
Especially if, like me, you have a lower back that's about 15 years older than the rest of you. At that point, core strength isn't optional. It's essential.
Back in Post 4 I diagnosed the problem. Hard five-minute rounds, short rests, and an aerobic system that never gets built, because BJJ never asks it to work at the pace where it grows. The engine that clears fatigue between rounds was too small for the job.
Knowing that is one thing. Fitting the fix into a real week, around a full-time job, is another.
My Old Week
For years, my training looked like this: BJJ on Tuesday and Thursday nights, sometimes Saturday.
The days in between had no plan. Recovery happened by accident, if it happened at all. And nothing in that week built the aerobic engine I'd spent two posts telling you about.
My New Week
Here's what it looks like now.
| Day | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Monday | Gi BJJ |
| Tuesday | Recovery |
| Wednesday | Gi BJJ |
| Thursday | Strength or recovery, plus rowing |
| Friday | Strength or recovery, plus rowing |
| Saturday | No-gi BJJ |
| Sunday | Rest |
The logic is simple. Train, recover, train. Then two days off the mat to build the body that has to survive the mat, at whatever intensity it can handle that day. Then no-gi on Saturday, and Sunday off.
That "whatever it can handle" part is where the app from last week comes in. If the numbers say I'm running low, Thursday becomes mobility and an easy row. If I'm fresh, it's a real strength session.
The structure did something else, too. Every day has a job now. I don't wake up wondering what I should do. I already know.
Why So Easy, and Why Rowing
The aerobic system grows from steady effort at an intensity most grapplers would barely call training. Exercise scientists, and Peter Attia in Outlive, call it Zone 2.
Here's the simple version. Zone 2 is the hardest pace where you can still hold a conversation. You're breathing deeper than normal, but you're in control. You finish feeling like you could have kept going.
| Zone | % of max heart rate | The talk test |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 to 60% | Very easy. Full conversation, barely breathing harder. |
| 2 | 60 to 70% | Easy. You can still hold a conversation. This is where the aerobic engine gets built. |
| 3 | 70 to 80% | Moderate. Short sentences only. |
| 4 | 80 to 90% | Hard. A few words at a time. |
| 5 | 90 to 100% | Maximum. No talking. The last 30 seconds of a scramble. |
Zones 2 and 3 (highlighted) are where my rowing sessions live. Hard BJJ rounds spend most of their time in Zones 4 and 5.
At that easy pace, your muscles run mostly on oxygen. Keep them there long enough, often enough, and your body responds by building more of the machinery that uses oxygen: more mitochondria, the small engines inside your muscle cells, and more tiny blood vessels to feed them.
That's the engine that clears the fatigue from a hard round. The bigger it gets, the faster your grips come back between rounds.
The catch is that it only works if you keep it easy. Push too hard and you're back in glycolytic territory, the same place BJJ already puts you three nights a week. More of that is the last thing a 45-year-old grappler needs.
And here's the good news: the machine doesn't matter. Running, cycling, swimming, a brisk incline walk. Any steady cardio works, as long as you keep it in that conversational zone. Pick the one you'll actually do.
Mine is rowing, for two reasons. It's what works for my back. And I have a rowing machine at home, so it works in the middle of summer and the dead of winter, with no excuses about the weather.
My sessions are never longer than 30 minutes, somewhere between Zone 2 and Zone 3, depending on how my body feels that day. Purists would say stay strictly in Zone 2, and go longer. I'm not there yet. For now the rule is simple: 30 minutes or less, at whatever pace my body says yes to.
Here's what that looks like in practice.
A typical Thursday row. 30 minutes, average heart rate 119, never above 134. Garmin's verdict: aerobic work, no anaerobic benefit. That's exactly the point.
How It Felt
Strange, at first.
BJJ teaches you that effort means hard. Zone 2 asks you to do the opposite, and it feels like it doesn't count.
It's a bit boring, too. Thirty minutes of the same movement, and nobody trying to choke you.
But the boring part grew on me. A session with a clear job and no ego in it turns out to be easy to repeat. It has become a habit. And habits, more than any single hard session, are what get you to 55 still on the mats.
What Happened
I started feeling better. My recovery between sessions improved.
The clearest test came on a Thursday I hadn't planned for. My gym runs a free roll night on the last Thursday of every month. I forgot about it when I planned my week, so it landed right on top of Wednesday's gi class. Two hard nights, back to back. If you looked closely at the app screenshots in the last post, that was the week.
It took its toll. But I bounced back faster than I usually do.
HRV is the part that's still messy. Some mornings land in the green, some don't, and not always for reasons I can explain. My best guess is sleep. I'm still working out how many hours I actually need, and, more than that, how to make the hours I get count.
So that's my current project: the sleep habits Matthew Walker and Andrew Huberman keep coming back to. A consistent wake-up time, even on weekends. Morning light. A cool, dark bedroom. Caffeine cut off by early afternoon. Screens down before bed. Some of these I'm good at. Some of them I'm clearly not.
Rowing turned out to be the easy part to explain. The strength days are harder, because "strength" at 45, with that lower back, doesn't mean what it meant at 25.
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Resources Referenced in This Post
Book: Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity — Peter Attia, MD
Book: Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams — Matthew Walker, PhD
Book: Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body — Andrew Huberman, PhD
Podcast: The Peter Attia Drive — episodes on Zone 2 training
Some of the book links in this post are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
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What does your training week look like? Is there anything in it that isn't BJJ?
Tell me. I read every response.
And if you're going to keep showing up to class, you might as well look good doing it.
Next week:
What's actually in those Thursday and Friday sessions. The exercises I promised you two posts ago, and why almost none of them look like the gym I grew up with.