The strength of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is its diverse applicability.
Self-defense check!
Resilience check!
Discipline check!
Weight loss check!
In the years that I have been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I have significantly improved my fitness.
I have also seen how it helped the people around me lose weight in a fun way.
The question that often occupied my mind
How many calories do you actually burn by doing BJJ?
What turns out
That this is quite a difficult question to answer.
This is due to the many variables in a class
For example:
Is it technical training or intense sparring?
How long does the session last?
What BJJ level do you have?
When you know what you are doing, you use your energy efficiently, a beginner does not.
Currently, there is unfortunately no scientific research into energy consumption in BJJ.
For other (combat) sports like Judo and Muay Thai, this is the case.
What we are left with are estimations.
To make an estimate, I used data from the most recent research paper I could find online.
Karsten Øvretveit wrote a report on the physiological and perceptual responses to sparring in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Based on this, I trained myself with a Polar Ignite on.
The Polar has a smart calorie application.
According to my estimate based on this data, I burned approximately 557 calories in 30 minutes (high tempo) of sparring in BJJ and 1066 calories in 60 minutes.
In Øvretveit's study, the 30 minutes consisted of 5 rounds of 6 minutes with ninety seconds of rest in between.
That is what I did.
Øvretveit's study was based on 12 male BJJ athletes with:
An average of 4.6 years of BJJ experience. An average weight of 81.2 kg and an age of 30.6 years.
Average heart rate during sparring was 164 beats per minute.
That corresponds to 85% of the maximum heart rate.
Experience ranged from white to brown belt.
An average of 10.3 hours of training volume per week.
There are also other estimates of the number of calories burned in BJJ. According to My Fitness Pal, a person weighing 81 kg doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu burns 410 calories in 30 minutes or 820 calories in 60 minutes.
It is not clear whether this is only sparring or if it includes drilling and warming up.
Does BJJ burn more or fewer calories than other martial arts and sports?
If we use my estimated figure above of 557 calories for 30 minutes of high-tempo sparring, we can compare how many calories BJJ burns relative to other activities and combat sports:
Activity 30 minutes burned calories:
BJJ sparring 557 (According to my measurement)
Boxing sparring 365
Wrestling 252 (This seems unlikely to me)
Jogging 406
Basketball game 325
* Other figures are based on My Fitness Pal estimates with 81.2 kg for calculations. I myself weigh about 100 kg.
Does BJJ make me fit and is it good for weight loss?
Personally, I have lost about 18 kg in total in the years that I have trained BJJ.
I weighed 106 kg at the time.
Through BJJ and conscious eating according to the BJJ lifestyle, I weighed 88 kg after a year.
Now it's a lot more due to strength and Kettlebell training.
At the time, I lost a fair amount of strength.
However, I lowered my body fat percentage to about 13%.
That was first around 21%.
A 2017 study on the physical and physiological profiles of BJJ athletes showed that they generally had a low body fat percentage.
12% for men and 19.3 - 24.2% for women, regardless of whether they were beginners or experts.
High-level BJJ athletes must be in excellent condition to meet the demands of training and competition (every top athlete, of course).
Aerobic power, muscular strength, endurance, and flexibility are important.
Another study of 56 participants at the IBJJF European Open in Lisbon in 2013 found that experienced BJJ athletes had more explosive leg power and isometric hand strength compared to beginners.
That also makes sense if you are constantly squeezing a gi or need to firmly grip someone.
Isometric strength training is something I train weekly and recommend to everyone.
Steve Maxwell is a good resource.
BJJ is a great way to train but it may not turn you into a super athlete.
More research by Karsten Øvretveit on BJJ athletes of different levels and weight classes in Norway shows that BJJ may not be the most optimal sport for improving VO2max.
As I said in last week's blog, you don't need to have Dafne Schippers' V02 max to attend a training. I really meant that!
VO2max is one of the best indicators of aerobic endurance, which is important in a BJJ match.
The study showed that the BJJ athletes he studied had a V02 max that was only 8% higher than the general population.
This means they were classified as “recreationally trained,” a moderate result compared to athletes in other sports.
Øvretveit’s conclusion was that BJJ alone might not improve VO2max and that there could be a “ceiling” effect on how much VO2max improves through BJJ.
His other research has shown that a BJJ practitioner's VO2max can be improved by aerobic interval training.
You can do this by jogging, rowing, cycling, using a cross-trainer.
Is BJJ a good workout?
The fastest way to find out is with a trial class!
Before you attend one, I will tell you what a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class looks like.
An average BJJ class includes gymnastic exercises.
Warm-ups with Animal flow.
Dynamic stretching exercises.
If you can't control your own body, you can't control someone else's.
Technique and rolling (That's what we call sparring in BJJ)
This provides a good mix of mental and physical.
The number of sparring rounds and how sparring is done depends on the goal.
At Amersfoort BJJ, we divide the technique and sparring rounds into segments.
You don't just spar because you won't achieve anything that way.
Positional sparring on the ground and drilling your techniques standing is a proven effective method.
From the aforementioned study by Karsten Øvretveit on 12 male BJJ athletes who sparred in five 6-minute rounds, it was found that the average heart rate was 164 beats per minute, which was 85% of the athlete's maximum heart rate!
BJJ is a mix of aerobic and anaerobic.
Low intensity combined with short periods of high-intensity movements.
Aerobic training (e.g., running or cycling) is great for cardiovascular endurance and muscular endurance, and anaerobic training (weightlifting and sprinting) is good for burning calories and boosting your metabolism.
Like any sport or martial art, you can sustain injuries in BJJ.
Studies show that elbow injuries, such as sprains, are the most common injuries in competitions.
Research has also shown that during regular training, the most common injury sites are: shoulders, knees, hands and fingers, feet and toes, rib cage, and more.
Our blog about whether BJJ is dangerous and the most common BJJ injuries contains all the information you need.
Why it is difficult to know accurately how many calories are burned in BJJ
It is difficult to get an accurate picture of how many calories are burned in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Karsten is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
He also heads the project describing and developing the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athlete, with several published research articles on BJJ.
According to Karsten, there are two reasons why it is difficult to measure how many calories are burned in BJJ,
two of the most important are:
1.
The energy requirements in BJJ depend on many independent variables, including size, fitness level, skill, and the style of play of not only the person being measured, but also the training partner.
2.
Accurate measurements of energy expenditure in full-contact martial arts using methods such as indirect calorimetry is challenging, if not impossible, and while heart rate can currently be measured, this is only an indication of potential calories burned and must be combined with other data to obtain a more accurate estimate.
Karsten indicates that it is complicated to calculate how many calories can be burned in BJJ with a simple example:
A white belt rolling with a black belt.
The black belt would use very little energy and the white belt naturally more. Efficiency!
To solve this, one could account for differences in skill.
Having a high belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (black) is no guarantee that you will lose against a driven young competition beast (purple).
With a new objective skill metric, you can measure it better.
“Once that is resolved, you need to quantify the level of uncertainty inherent in BJJ itself, e.g., the many ways a match can unfold due to factors such as tactics and randomness.”
According to Karsten.
This article was originally published in Dutch. Read the Dutch original.
