Ever wonder how many calories you burn during Jiu Jitsu class? Me too.
That’s why I picked up a WHOOP heart rate tracker that I can wear during training. If you ever listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast, you’ll hear him promoting this device. It’s now pretty easy to monitor your heart rate and figure out how many calories you’re burning during BJJ.
My WHOOP shows that if you’re like me, on average you will burn 509 calories per hour training Jiu Jitsu. Here’s the graph of a recent hour and a half training session:
Pretty darn cool, right? You can see the exact moments where my heart rate spikes from warmups and tough sparring rounds.
How to Use a WHOOP in Jiu Jitsu Class
Using a WHOOP to track your heart rate during Jiu Jitsu class is pretty simple, the only thing you need is their bicep band accessory. Then follow these 4 steps to convert the wristband to the bicep band, and wear under your BJJ gear:
Step 1: Remove tracker from wristband
Step 2: Place tracker in impact upper arm sleeve
Step 3: Make sure sensors are going to get clear contact with your bicep
Since the WHOOP is fully concealed by your Jiu Jitsu gear, it won’t interfere with training or bug your training partners.
Alternatives to the WHOOP
The main competitor to WHOOP is the Oura ring. I actually used one of these to track my sleep before switching to the WHOOP.
Similar to the WHOOP, the Oura ring tracks your heart rate (as well as other factors like heart rate variability and respiratory rate) to give you an overall score for sleep and recovery.
I do like the Oura’s sleep tracking capabilities. The interface is also simpler and easy to use. For martial arts though, it’s totally impractical (not to mention dangerous for you and your training partners) to wear a ring during training.
Whether you’re trying to lose weight with BJJ or just want to monitor how hard you’re training, I highly recommend picking up a WHOOP:
where do I find this bicep band?
Actually I use the Impact Upper Arm Sleeve: https://shop.whoop.com/collections/impact-sleeves/products/whoop-impact-series-upper-arm-sleeve
They have bicep bands too: https://shop.whoop.com/collections/bicep-bands
I would go with the sleeve though, it’s pretty beefy for BJJ impact. Although your training partners might complain when in a head and arm choke! haha