It is very important that the workouts you are completing as part of your fitness and conditioning are Judo oriented. Judo fights last 5 minutes and you need to be fit enough to be able to fight hard for five minutes, have 5 minutes to spare, and then fight again. Therefore, your training should be something very similar to this.

Here are 6 circuits designed specifically for Judo. These circuits will dramatically increase your cardiovascular fitness quickly.

Metabolic circuits

Metabolic circuits are designed to simply destroy you metabolically. This simply means that we get a particular muscle group and one minute of work on it. When the muscle is on the verge of failure, we switch to a different part of the body and repeat.

I chose to do 7-10 minute metabolic workouts.

Metabolic Circuit 1:

1 minute squats with body weight

1 minute push-ups

1 minute jump

1 minute chins

1 minute shuttle service

1 minute spoon push-ups (Hindu push-ups)

1 minute extended

Rest five minutes and repeat another 2 rounds.

Metabolic circuit 2:

Minute chin ups

1 minute squat jumps

1 minute jump

1-minute farmer’s walk (dumbbell walking)

Rest five minutes and repeat another 2 rounds.

Metabolic circuit day 3:

15 deadlift

15 push-ups

And then repeat 14, 13, 12, etc., up to 1 rep.

Circuit 4: Tabata intervals

A Japanese sports scientist, Izumi Tabata, studied and came up with the Tabata interval training system.

It’s a pretty simple training session:

5 minute warm-up

20 seconds of a particular exercise at 100% effort (as hard as you can)

10 seconds rest

Repeat 8 times

2-5 minute cool down

You can do Tabata intervals with:

Burpees, Sprints, Sumo Deadlift high pulls or Skipping (if you are a good skipper).

Circuits in operation

There are times when you can’t go to the gym or you only have a jump rope and a pair of shoes. If this is the case, these next two workouts are fantastic.

Operating circuit 1

Jumping 200 times

Sprint 200 meters

Repeat for 20 minutes.

Operating circuit 2

This exercise is great if you have nothing but a pair of running shoes and nothing else.

Run 1500 meters (or if you don’t know how far you are running, run for 6 minutes)

5 minute break

Repeat 2 more rounds.

Run 1000 meters (4 minutes 30)

Run 500 (2 minutes)

Repeat 2 more rounds

If you add these workouts as part of your cardio training, you will feel the benefits on the Judo mat.