The topic came up on Twitter, would it be possible for a hobbyist Brown belt beat a professional athlete (Lebron James, and a rugby player were mentioned) from another sport if that pro athlete had 6 months of jiu-jitsu training? Off the bat, I wasn’t quite sure what the outcome would be, another guy was sure that the Brown Belt would prevail, while another was all in on the pro athlete winning at least half the time. There was some short discussion and then the topic passed.

Except it got me thinking more about the idea and about how to quantify the situation. So, given the following conditions, I’m going to try:

The hobbyist trains 3-4x per week, does extra cardio 2x and lifts 1-2x per week. He lives a normal life with a full time job, is 30 years old, athletically built with a height and weight of 5’10 and 185 lbs, with no major injury history. They do their best to recover from their training with a good diet, basic supplements and rest. He is a former, average to slightly above average, high school athlete and was recruited to continue in his sport (pick one, it doesn’t matter for this) at the NCAA Division 3 level. I feel like I don’t need to go into that many details about the Hobbyist, after all most of us know a version of him. He’s on the mat with us somewhere.

We will give the professional athletes in this scenario recognizable names. They are top athletes in their respective sports, I won’t give all their details since they can be easily looked up. Starting with Lebron James, a natural athlete, good enough to be recruited to play college football but skipped college all together and went straight to the NBA. The other is rugger, Sonny Bill WIlliams, natural athlete, World Cup winner and former pro boxer. Right off the bat, we are starting with natural (or even transcendent) athletic ability. Now given all their years of training with some of the top strength and conditioning coaches, given their years of excellent diets thanks to professional chefs and nutritionists, and given plenty of experience working with team physios to manage and plan rest and recovery. Now add in the financial resources which enables them to focus entirely on their sport, with no thought to getting up to go to work at a 9-5 job. Lets put them into a gym with world champ Jiu-Jitsu coach, Marcelo Garcia, and give them top instruction and high level training partners. Finally, let them train 6x per week combining normal instruction, live sparring and drilling classes for six months.

Even if we used less famous pro athletes in this scenario, for example Allonzo Trier (NBA) and Craig Gilroy (Pro14 Rugby), the outcome wouldn’t be much different. You can’t teach athletic ability, and you can’t make time when there is no time to be made. From a personal experience, in our gym we’ve had both a guy who played Division 1 FCS football (blue belt) and another guy who played professional basketball in France (white belt). Each was an excellent athlete and each was a very tough out based on that athletic ability. Given the right amount of time each will/would make excellent jiu-jitsu practitioners.

After that six month period and volume of training, it is completely within reason for each athlete to rank as a Blue Belt. To me, at this point the outcome is clear as the day is long. I feel that 90% or more of the time the pro athlete would win. I listed some factors above which will absolutely contribute to their success like money, and instruction etc. But to me the two key factors are athletic ability followed by time. You can be a really good at jiujitsu without money and excellent instruction, but you can’t be really good at jiujitsu without some serious athletic ability. If you look at the current IBJJF world champions, in addition to being really good at jiujitsu, all of them possess phenomenal athletic ability. And finally, you can’t be really good at jiujitsu without the time to dedicate to training. Just showing up doesn’t cut it in this sport. In the case of these athletes, the time is a result of natural ability which allowed them to make money with that ability, which they then used to focus on jiu-jitsu for the six month period and not have financial concerns like the hobbyist.

Thoughts? Or Comments? Am I off base??

https://twitter.com/RoyBillington/status/1077889014638825474

https://twitter.com/RoyBillington/status/1077898232481697792

https://twitter.com/matthewkelley/status/1077949607089455104