Some of the most dominant athletes in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and mixed martial arts are abandoning the weight room entirely—and becoming stronger than ever.
The evidence is as startling as it is counterintuitive. Former UFC heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier, a man who has grappled with the world’s strongest athletes, made a stunning admission about Khabib Nurmagomedov‘s supernatural strength. Despite competing at just 155 pounds—nearly 100 pounds lighter than Cormier’s weight—Khabib left an indelible impression.
“He’s just a beast man… I go, ‘man, he feels strong,’ it’s crazy. That should not happen. He should not feel strong to me whenever I grab him, but he is,”
Cormier revealed.
Teammate Luke Rockhold echoed these sentiments, describing Khabib’s grip as otherworldly:
“He is so strong. When he grabs a hold of you in the bodylock….”
Yet here’s the startling reality: Nurmagomedov’s legendary strength didn’t come from hours spent under barbells. The undefeated champion recently revealed his minimal approach to weightlifting, admitting he was never a fan of traditional strength training.
“I have never lifted 160 kg. I have lifted 120 kg at maximum. I don’t like this kind of weightlifting. I do it to look like an athlete,”
Khabib explained.
“I do classic exercises. Push-ups, deadlifts, jumps, everything that is needed for an athlete. And I do all these exercises on top of the sports to look like one.”
While conventional wisdom preaches heavy squats and bench presses, the sport’s greatest practitioners are discovering that real power comes from somewhere else entirely.
Mikey Musumeci, one of the most technically refined grapplers on the planet, completely revolutionized his approach after making a startling discovery. During an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, the multi-time world champion revealed that he abandoned weightlifting and cardio conditioning altogether—with remarkable results.
“When I stopped lifting weights and doing conditioning, I actually got stronger in training because I started learning how to become more efficient with how I use my body,”
Musumeci explained.
His reasoning cuts to the heart of modern grappling strategy. Rather than engaging in an arms race of pure strength, Musumeci chose to develop an approach that transcended physical limitations.
“All the people I’m competing against are so strong… I didn’t want to have to rely on strength to beat them. I wanted to make my Jiu-Jitsu where it doesn’t matter the strength—it matters your body positioning.”
The results speak for themselves. Without the added muscle mass or fatigue from lifting, Musumeci’s movement became more fluid, his timing sharper and his control more effective. This transformation illustrates a profound truth: technical mastery can generate strength that no amount of iron can replicate.
Perhaps no one embodies this philosophy more completely than Rafael Mendes, whose approach to his final world championship preparation stunned the grappling community. The six-time world champion revealed that during his preparation for the 2016 IBJJF World Championships, he completely eliminated strength and conditioning training.
“I don’t worry too much these days about strength and conditioning. I feel like I was able to build my body for the division. I feel strong. I have everything I need,”
Mendes stated.
Instead of grinding through sprints and deadlifts, the Brazilian legend focused purely on refining timing, coordination and positional understanding. His logic was unassailable:
“I learned how to use Jiu-Jitsu to get faster and stronger. I don’t have to lift weights. That’s the smartest thing to do because I’m competing in a Jiu-Jitsu tournament.”
This philosophy reaches its purest expression in the training methods of Marcelo Garcia, widely regarded as one of the greatest grapplers to ever step on the mats. Throughout his legendary career, Garcia barely touched weights or machines, choosing instead to focus entirely on what mattered most—rolling.
“I didn’t do a lot of strength and conditioning. I mostly just rolled for my strength and conditioning,”
Garcia explained.
What makes this approach even more remarkable is the caliber of opposition Garcia faced. Throughout his career, he regularly dominated opponents who possessed significant physical advantages.
“A lot of the guys I faced were on steroids, and they were huge. Even in my division, I was always shorter and everyone felt bigger,”
Garcia noted.
Yet Garcia not only overcame these enhanced athletes—he dominated them completely. His secret wasn’t hidden in any gym routine; it was embedded in his understanding of technique and efficiency.
“If you’re not lifting and you’re still beating these jacked guys, it says a lot about your technique,”
Garcia observed.
The Brazilian legend’s approach centered on energy allocation and training intelligence. Rather than dividing his physical resources between the mat and the weight room, Garcia channeled everything into grappling-specific development.
“I put all my energy on jiu-jitsu because I don’t have to do anything, I don’t have to lift weights, I don’t have to jog because I believe like my energy got to be focused on this if I want to improve on this,”
Garcia explained.
This focused approach allowed Garcia to uncover a fundamental truth about grappling strength: it’s qualitatively different from gym-acquired power. The ability to move heavy weights doesn’t necessarily translate to success when another human being is actively resisting your efforts.
“It’s not about just like putting more weight, no. Someone comes against you, you know, if you can lift that weight or not, you know what I mean. Like he’s going to be on top of you, you know, you can if you can sweep or not, it’s not going to give you like for free,”
Garcia emphasized.
Perhaps most importantly, Garcia’s approach required him to develop something more valuable than muscle mass: training intelligence. By pushing himself to absolute limits during rolling sessions, he learned to manage energy effectively and understand his physical limitations through realistic scenarios.
“We don’t have to wait for the push to push us, we can push ourselves,”
Garcia noted, highlighting the mental discipline required for this approach.
The champion’s success demonstrates that sport-specific training can develop all the physical attributes necessary for elite performance. His method required practitioners to embrace discomfort and risk during training, accepting that pushing limits might sometimes result in being submitted but ultimately leads to greater understanding and improvement.
Garcia’s most crucial insight was perhaps the simplest: staying healthy trumps everything else. He trained intelligently, avoided injury and outlasted everyone through longevity rather than intensity.
“We have to train smart. When I say smart, it’s not training less or gentle—I trained a lot. But I was good at being less injured than my opponents. That’s what made me able to train more than them.”
The implications extend far beyond elite competition. For everyday grapplers, this philosophy offers a sustainable path to improvement that doesn’t require hours in the weight room or risk of injury from heavy lifting. Instead, it suggests that dedicated mat time, focused on proper technique and positioning, can develop functional strength that translates directly to grappling success.
