SBG Cape Town - Brazilian jiu-jitsu & Mixed Martial Arts

Get to know SBG at The NGE. 🥋 🦍

Looking to build confidence, learn practical self-defence skills, and challenge yourself both physically and mentally?

At , Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) is about much more than martial arts. Through expert instruction, students learn the principles of leverage, control, technique, and body awareness to effectively manage and overcome challenging situations - regardless of size or strength.

Alongside the sport itself, self-defence training forms an integral part of every class, helping students develop practical skills, situational awareness, and confidence in a supportive environment.

Often described as "the intelligent martial art", Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu teaches problem-solving under pressure and the ability to remain calm when faced with adversity—skills that extend far beyond the mats.

Whether you're interested in fitness, self-defence, competition, or simply learning something new, SBG offers a welcoming space to start your journey.

📍 Find SBG at The Noordhoek Garden Emporium.

Full house at today's grading and Iron Man / Iron Warrioress. The new blue and brown belts were thoroughly tested with curriculum requirements and a brutal Iron Man. Big congratulations to our second SBG Cape Town female Brown belt Cristal Smith and our man of "Gees" Zavick Botha - both well earned and deserved. The blue belts were tested by everyone and came through on the other side slightly bruised but not battered. Big congratulations to Tyler, Xavier, Levi, Hannes and Neesha! ❤️🦍 (And thank you to Ginja the Ridgeback for photobombing again!)

Big congratulations to Niell for securing this month's Competition/Submission of the Month award after his double gold at the recent AJP championship !🥇🥇🦍

Some of you might have noticed that we haven't been kimura'd by Peter in a while. That's because Peter took a nasty fall off a horse a while back and hurt his shoulder pretty bad. The situation has become pretty desperate and Peter will need to get an MRI done and quite possible surgery to heal up. This is all very expensive and a few of us are feeling the pinch of this crappy economic climate right now.

Peter has always been in the forefront in providing for the gym via reduced chiropractic rates for SBG members and assisting with equipment and our MMA fighter team - now we can return the love.

So we put together a plan, with the help of a few friends who were generous enough to donate some great prizes we'll run a campaign to Fix Peter Up on Back-a-buddy.

It's only R250 to get in on the draw for one of these awesome prizes (just leave your full name when you make a donation). If you're in the fortunate position to give more then you can also do so - Thanks everyone!

Here's the link: https://backabuddy.co.za/campaign/lets-fix-peter

AJP Cape Town Tour 2026. Some new competitors did exceptionally well in their first rodeo; congratulations to Liam, Christian , Jayden and Azalea. And with great pride here's the medal tally from this weekend: 🥇Gold to Jotham, Caleb, Neill (double gold) , Tyler, Nico , Luca and Jedd. 🥈Silver medals to Oscar, Liam , Christian, Nico and John. 🥉Bronze to Liam McFarlane, Neesha, Jayden, Azalea, Levi and Tarquin .. congratulations Team SBG ! 🦍

Meet our coaches at SBG Cape Town 🇿🇦🦍

Josh had a very successful ADCC competition, in recognition of his improved and impressive game ... He is our Submission / Competitor of the Month ! 🦍✨

Your muscle rebuilds in about three months. Your tendons and cartilage take roughly a year and a half. Your bone, up to two years. Adding 40 grams of whey daily for two weeks doesn't change any of those timelines.

That's the finding from a study published this month in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The team measured rebuild rates across more than a dozen knee tissues in living older adults using a safe heavy-water tracer. Tissues sampled during routine knee replacement surgery. Half the participants kept their habitual diet. Half added 40 grams of whey daily for 14 days. At the end, the rebuild rates of every tissue were the same in both groups.

The hierarchy was dramatic.
Muscle rebuilt at about 1.2 percent per day. At that rate, your quadriceps theoretically turn over in roughly three months. Synovium, the membrane that lines the joint capsule, rebuilt at 0.8 percent per day. The fat pad behind your kneecap, about 0.5 percent. The cruciate ligaments deep in the knee, about 0.45 percent. The patellar tendon, the femoral cartilage, and the menisci all rebuilt at 0.18 to 0.21 percent per day, putting their full-pool turnover at roughly 1.3 to 1.5 years. Bone rebuilt at 0.12 to 0.21 percent per day across five sites, with the slowest taking up to 2.3 years for a complete cycle.

What this does and does not say.
It does not say protein doesn't build connective tissue. It does. Every tissue in your body depends on dietary amino acids as substrate, and the synthesis rates measured here confirm that all of these tissues are actively turning over. Bone is a living tissue that constantly remodels. Cartilage maintains itself, slowly. Tendons repair from training and from daily mechanical load, slowly.
What the study shows is that for these older adults on their normal diets, adding 40 grams of whey on top for two weeks did not accelerate the rebuild rate of any tissue measured. It is one trial. It is small and short. It cannot rule out effects in people with inadequate baseline intake, or effects that might appear with longer supplementation. What it does establish is that connective tissue synthesis rates are dramatically slower than muscle, and a two-week protein bump does not compress those rates.

That has direct implications for what protein supplementation is and isn't doing.
Protein supplementation is a tool for closing intake gaps and for hitting the per-meal threshold that maximizes muscle protein synthesis after training. It's effective at those goals. People who are not eating enough total protein, or who are not getting enough per meal to drive muscle protein synthesis in older muscle that has lost some sensitivity to amino acids, benefit from supplementation. That's well established and not in dispute.

Protein supplementation is not a connective tissue repair accelerator. Cartilage damage from running mileage, tendon overuse injuries, bone density loss in postmenopausal women, ACL rehabilitation timelines: none of these can be hurried with whey. The biology runs at its own clock speed regardless of how much you put in.

What this means in practice.
For training and recovery, the protein protocol that has actually been shown to work is unchanged. Roughly 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, spread across three or four meals, each meal hitting at least 0.4 grams per kilogram. Training stimulus and adequate sleep do the heavy lifting on muscle adaptation. Supplemental protein at the meal level helps people hit those thresholds, especially for older adults, vegetarians, and anyone with a small appetite.

For connective tissue, the levers are different. Mechanical load through progressive training is the dominant signal for tendon and ligament adaptation. Resistance training drives bone density gains. Cartilage health responds to weight management and joint loading more than to nutrition. Collagen and vitamin C combined before training has interesting data for tendon collagen synthesis, but the effect sizes are modest. None of these tissues respond meaningfully to a protein bolus in a two-week window the way muscle does after a single training session.

The bigger reframe.
We have been treating tissue protein synthesis like a single dial. The reality is that your body runs many tissue clocks at very different speeds. Muscle is the fast one. Most of what we call "tissue building" outside of muscle takes 1 to 2 years per cycle, not days. When you injure a tendon at 55, the rehab timeline is set by how fast that tendon can lay down new collagen. Mechanical load and time do the work. Adequate protein supports it but doesn't compress the timeline.

Muscle responds to protein on a short timescale. Everything else responds on a long one. The two are not interchangeable.

Houtvast et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 2026
Moore et al., J Gerontol A, 2015
Morton et al., Br J Sports Med, 2018
Bauer et al., J Am Med Dir Assoc, 2013
Shaw et al., Am J Clin Nutr, 2017