Jiu Jitsu Calories Burned Calculator

Calories burned in jiu jitsu is the energy your body uses while you warm up, drill and roll. It depends mostly on your body weight, how long you train and how much of that time is live rolling.

What the Jiu Jitsu Calorie Estimate Measures

It estimates the energy cost of the minutes you were actually training, from easy drilling to hard rounds. It does not track your heart rate or know how hard your partners pushed you. It is a standard estimate built on group averages.

The Formula

The calculator uses MET values. A MET is a multiple of your resting energy use, and 1 MET is about 1 calorie per kilogram of body weight per hour².

Calories burned = MET x body weight (kg) x time (hours)

Split class: calories = (5.3 x kg x drilling hours) + (rolling MET x kg x rolling hours)

The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities has no entry for Brazilian jiu jitsu. It lists "jujitsu" as an example in its general martial arts row, so this calculator uses that row for live rolling, and the judo value as a stand-in for hard, competition-pace rolling¹.

How This Calculator Computes Your Result

Enter your age group, your weight in pounds or kilograms, and your training time. Then either pick one training type for the whole session, or split your class into drilling minutes and rolling minutes. Pounds are converted to kilograms and minutes to hours.

Only count time you were moving. Time sitting on the wall between rounds is not counted, so the split mode result is labeled active time only. The result is rounded to the nearest 5 calories. You see the total, calories per hour, calories per 30 minutes, and a table of all three training types at your weight. The numbers are gross calories, which means they include the energy you would burn at rest anyway.

The tool is for adults. Under 18 it shows a note and no result. For ages 60 and over it shows the adult result with a note that values for older adults may be lower, because the older adult compendium has no martial arts values.

What Your Result Means

Pick the type that matches your session. A 70 kg (154 lb) adult would burn¹:

A normal class sits between the first two rows. For example, a 180 lb (82 kg) adult who drills for 45 minutes and rolls for 30 minutes burns about 745 calories in split mode. That is an average of 7.3 METs, well below the 10.3 used for rolling alone. A heavier person burns more at the same effort, because the formula multiplies by weight.

What Changes Your Burn in a BJJ Class

How much you roll. Most classes run warm-ups, then technique, then drilling, then live rounds. Drilling with a cooperative partner is far easier than rolling. That is why split mode usually gives a lower and more realistic number for a full class than picking "live rolling" for the whole hour.

How hard the rounds are. Rolling is stop and start, not steady. In regional competition fights, athletes worked about six seconds for every one second of pause, and hard bursts lasted only about 4 seconds³. Lower-intensity work took about eight times as long as high-intensity work³.

Gi or no-gi. The uniform changes the grips, but not the effort much. In a study of 12 athletes, heart rate and blood lactate did not differ between gi and no-gi matches, although gi matches had more pause time⁶. So this calculator does not ask which one you trained.

What Studies of Live Rolling Show

Near the end of a hard round, energy use can climb above the compendium numbers. In 10 advanced grapplers, oxygen use at the end of a 6-minute no-gi round was estimated at 44.2 mL per kg per minute⁵. That is about 12.6 METs, before counting the large share of energy that came from anaerobic sources (energy made without oxygen)⁵.

A normal class looks different from a test round. In 12 trained men doing five 6-minute rounds with 90-second breaks in a regular session, average heart rate was 164 beats per minute, about 85% of their maximum⁴. Athletes with higher aerobic fitness had lower heart rates and lactate in the same rounds⁴.

How BJJ Compares With Judo, Wrestling, Boxing and Lifting

One hour of jiu jitsu and other activities, using the 2024 compendium values²:

The wrestling value is marked in the compendium as estimated rather than measured, so treat it with care next to judo¹. Boxing sparring and vigorous lifting both land well below an hour of live rolling.