When first starting BJJ eager white belts want to get good as fast as possible. They want to earn belts and master the sport. As a brown belt is an advanced BJJ athlete lower BJJ belts want to know how long they need to train until they can reach this level.
How Fast Can You Get A Brown Belt In BJJ?
You can get a brown belt in BJJ in 3 to 4 years of training if you train 12 + hours a week, even faster if you come from a high-level wrestling or Judo background. Most people take around 6 to 8 years to earn their brown belt training 4 to 5 hours per week.
How fast you earn your brown belt will depend mostly on how often you train, your previous grappling background and your overall athleticism and natural talent.
If you commit to training BJJ 12 + hours every week for the next 4 years you will get really good at BJJ and have enough talent to earn your brown belt. Whether or not your coach promotes you this quickly will depend on their own personal preference but you will definitely have the skills of a brown belt.
Let’s look at the maths if we estimate it takes the average BJJ athlete 8 years to reach earn their brown belt and over those years they have averaged 3, 1.5 hour sessions per week that equates to 1872 hours of training.
If you train 12 hours a week for 4 years you will have put in 2496 hours which is 33% more than the average brown belt put in to earn their belt. This is surely enough training to justify your promotion even if people scoff at your short training career.
You can reduce this 4 years down further if you happen to come from an accomplished grappling background. Travis Stevens a Judo Olympic silver medalist was promoted to brown belt by John Danaher after just 6 months of BJJ training and then received his black belt after only a year of training.
While we may not all be Judo Olympians if you wrestled in college or are a Judo black belt you could definitely earn a BJJ brown belt in 2 to 3 years if you trained 12 + hours a week. Your previous training will help you big time in your goal of earning your brown belt.
Your athleticism and natural BJJ talent will also play a role in how quickly you get that brown belt. You may be one of the chosen ones and possess sick amounts of natural BJJ talent. There are just some people who have great grappling instincts, can easily move their bodies and pick up the movements super quickly.
If you happen to be highly athletic and pick up the sport quickly you can get extremely good quickly. the 10th planet black belt Martinez brothers come to mind. They were originally breakdancers who were extremely strong, explosive, and coordinated.
When they started training BJJ they were able to pick the techniques up very quickly, as BJJ doesn’t require nearly the levels of coordination that breakdancing does. In just 2 years Eddie Bravo awarded them their black belts and they are now world-class competitors.
Even if you have no prior grappling experience and you are an average athlete you can earn your BJJ brown belt fast in about 4 years by simply training a lot. Hitting the BJJ mats 12 hours a week for the next 4 years should be enough to earn that coveted brown belt.