BJJ vs Muay Thai: Which Should You Train?

The Muay Thai fighter walks the ropes before the bell, touches each corner post and kneels to perform the wai khru, the dance that thanks the teacher. The BJJ competitor slaps hands, bumps fists and sits down. Both are about to spend a few minutes trying to make another person give up. One will do it standing, with eight limbs; the other lying down, with a lapel.

The short answer: pick by where you would rather be when it gets hard. Muay Thai keeps you on your feet and gives you striking and fitness faster than any other art; BJJ takes you to the floor and gives you control over one person that nothing else matches, at the price of a slower start. They do not compete with each other; they complete each other, which is why every MMA gym teaches both.

Key facts

BJJ in one line

Take it to the floor, control the position, finish with a choke or a lock

Muay Thai in one line

Fists, elbows, knees and shins, plus a clinch that turns grabs into knees

Time to competence

Muay Thai 6–12 months to spar well; BJJ 12–24 months to a blue belt

Injury

Muay Thai: shins and the head in sparring; BJJ: fingers, elbows, knees, neck

Competition

IBJJF and ADCC; IFMA amateur and the Thai stadiums

Best for

BJJ: longevity and one-on-one control; Muay Thai: striking and fitness fast

What you learn

BJJ teaches the fight after the fall: take a person down, pass their legs, hold a position that lets you rest while they cannot, and finish with a choke or a lock on an elbow, shoulder or knee. The art arrived in Brazil with the judoka Mitsuyo Maeda in the 1910s; the story is in BJJ: From Maeda to the Gracies.

Muay Thai teaches the fight before anyone falls, with every hard part of the body: punches, elbows, knees, the roundhouse kick thrown with the shin like a bat, and the clinch. Rajadamnern Stadium in Bangkok opened in 1945, Lumpinee in 1956, and between them they define what the art is. The History of Muay Thai follows it from the battlefield to the stadium.

Where the fight happens

Muay Thai lives standing and in the clinch. There is no ground: a fighter who goes down is stood back up, and a sweep scores for the balance it shows, not for what follows. BJJ lives on the floor; standing is a means to get there, and many BJJ players will sit down and pull guard rather than fight for a takedown at all. Put one in the other's world and each is nearly helpless, which is not a criticism. Specialisation is what the hours buy.

How a class runs

A Muay Thai class is ninety minutes of the same things, every time: skipping, shadow boxing, rounds on the bag, rounds on the pads, clinch rounds, technical sparring. In Thailand, sparring is light and playful; the fighting is saved for the ring, where Thai fighters compete every few weeks. The Muay Thai beginner mistakes article covers the first months.

A BJJ class is a warm-up, a technique of the day drilled with a partner, and then rolling: live grappling at full resistance, five or six minutes a round, several rounds, from your first week. The BJJ white-belt mistakes article explains what tapping forty times a night is teaching you.

Fitness

Muay Thai is the faster route to being fit. Skipping, bag rounds, pad rounds and clinching are cardio in the plainest sense, and within three months most people look and feel different. BJJ fitness is stranger: grip, core, hips and an endurance that is less about the lungs than about staying calm with 90 kilograms (200 lb) on your chest. If fitness is your only goal, Muay Thai delivers it sooner. If you want the kind that lets you outlast a bigger person while breathing through your nose, BJJ.

Injuries, honestly

The injuries live where the fight lives. Muay Thai's risk is in the shins, which bruise and harden, and in the head, if the gym spars hard; a gym that spars light, the Thai way, removes most of the danger and keeps the sport. BJJ has very little head trauma and a great deal of wear: fingers from grips, elbows from armbars caught a second late, knees from passing and leg attacks, a neck that carries training partners for years. Over a decade, Muay Thai's head contact is the more serious risk; over a year, BJJ's joints are the more likely complaint.

Self-defence

For a single unarmed attacker, both work, and they fail in opposite places. Muay Thai ends fights standing, and the clinch is the best answer any striking art has to being grabbed. It has nothing once you are down. BJJ has nothing much until you are down, and then it has everything. Its weakness is that the floor is the last place you want to be in public, with concrete instead of mat. Neither covers weapons or groups. Best martial art for self-defence lays out the wider field.

Time to competence

Muay Thai is the quicker payout. Six to twelve months makes you competent in sparring, and many people take an amateur fight within one or two years. BJJ takes one to two years to reach a blue belt, roughly the point at which the art is usable on someone who does not know it. After that, BJJ's payout keeps growing for decades, and it is the art many Muay Thai fighters take up when the shins have had enough.

Cost and access

A draw, mostly. Both are taught in commercial gyms in cities and priced accordingly, and many gyms teach both under one roof at one monthly fee. The kit differs: Muay Thai needs gloves, wraps and shin guards; BJJ needs a gi, and most academies want a no-gi kit too. Muay Thai gyms are slightly more common because they share space with boxing and kickboxing. Fitness Muay Thai without sparring is a fine workout and not the same thing as the art. Ask.

Competition

IBJJF tournaments run divisions by belt, age and weight, in gi and no-gi, so a white belt can compete within their first year, and the best chase ADCC, the no-gi submission championship held since 1998. Muay Thai competition is a ring and a fight. Amateur Muay Thai runs under IFMA, founded in 1993 and recognised by the IOC in 2021; professional Muay Thai runs from the Bangkok stadiums to promotions worldwide. A BJJ tournament is something you can enter on a whim. A Muay Thai fight is something you train for, and your coach decides when.

Culture

A Thai camp is a place of ritual and work: a kru rather than a coach, the wai khru before a fight, the mongkol headband and the prajioud armbands, and a run before the pads. The wai khru ram muay survives in rings from Bangkok to Birmingham. A BJJ academy is relaxed by design: belts, a professor, first names, and a room where the most respected person is often lying on his back letting a purple belt work. One is a tradition you enter; the other is a club you join.

Why most MMA fighters do both

At the first UFC in 1993, Royce Gracie won three fights in a night with BJJ. Within a decade every serious MMA fighter had learned the floor, and the striking art they most often added was Muay Thai, because its clinch and knees work against a wrestler in a way boxing's do not. Anderson Silva, a Muay Thai striker with a BJJ black belt, held the UFC middleweight title for nearly seven years on that combination. Muay Thai vs MMA and the History of MMA tell the longer story.

Who should choose which

Choose BJJ if:

• You want a skill that controls one person completely and works without hurting them.
• You want an art you can train and compete in into your sixties.
• You would rather wear out your joints than your head.

Choose Muay Thai if:

• You want to strike, and you want fitness that arrives in months rather than years.
• You would rather be on your feet than on the floor.
• You want the option of a real fight, in a ring, within a year or two.

Ideally, over time, both. Start with the one whose room you would rather walk into twice a week, give it a year, then add the other. Nobody who has done both has ever regretted the second one.

Sources

• IBJJF, Graduation System and General Competition Rules, ibjjf.com
• International Federation of Muaythai Associations, Rules and Regulations, muaythai.sport
• International Olympic Committee, IOC Session grants full recognition to IFMA (2021), olympics.com
• Wikipedia, "Brazilian jiu-jitsu", "Muay Thai" and "Royce Gracie"

Where to go next

• The hubs: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai.
• The histories: BJJ: From Maeda to the Gracies and The History of Muay Thai.
• Muay Thai against its neighbours: Boxing vs Muay Thai and Muay Thai vs Kickboxing.
• BJJ against its family: BJJ vs Judo and BJJ vs Karate.