The path to a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is notoriously long and arduous. UFC commentator and podcast host Joe Rogan shared his personal experience with the journey. He talked about how his time as a brown belt stretched for nearly a decade.
“I was a brown belt for eight years,” Rogan disclosed during a conversation about BJJ progression. “But it was just because I wasn’t training as much as I should have.”
Rogan’s candid admission highlights a reality many BJJ practitioners face: life commitments often interfere with consistent training. For someone with Rogan’s busy schedule—juggling a successful podcast, UFC commentary duties, and comedy tours—maintaining the necessary training frequency presents a significant challenge.
The respected martial artist emphasized that legitimate rank advancement in BJJ requires genuine skill development rather than mere time served. “They don’t give them away,” Rogan explained about black belts. “You have to be a real black belt.”
According to Rogan, a decade represents a realistic timeframe for the average person to progress from white belt to black belt, assuming consistent dedication to training. This stands in stark contrast to other martial arts, where practitioners can sometimes earn a black belt in just a few years.
While acknowledging this standard timeline, Rogan noted there are exceptional cases where talented individuals advance much faster. “You’ll see a guy go from white belt to black belt in three years,” he said, “but they have to be super exceptional—really unusual athletes, unusual mindset, unusual discipline.”
To illustrate this point, Rogan referenced BJJ legend BJ Penn, who achieved the remarkable feat of winning the Mundials (World Championships) after just three years of training. “BJ is a special guy,” Rogan remarked, acknowledging the uniqueness of such rapid advancement.
Recently, Derek Moneyberg, a controversial businessman, received his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) black belt in just 3.5 years. This incident has drawn widespread skepticism from the BJJ community.
To defend his rapid promotion, Moneyberg claims he did over 3,000 hours of mental training—thinking about techniques, watching videos, and mentally rehearsing moves—on top of his physical training.
“I put in the, you know, 3,000 hours of real training,” Moneyberg explained. “And then, you know, I spent more than 3,000 hours when I wasn’t training—thinking about it and making the adjustments in my head, watching tape. And a lot of it is thinking about it. People don’t understand, like, processing through your head.”
In a podcast with Jake Shields, his coach and a former UFC contender, Moneyberg argued that mental processing time should count toward mastery. Shields supported this, saying their sessions were often long and deeply focused on mental visualization.
“A lot of people come and do one-hour privates—we’d do sometimes, like, five-hour private sessions. But sometimes you need to sit there and kind of stare off into space. I learned pretty early that you were, like, mapping the stuff out in your head. That your brain worked different. Because I could see you, like, compounding stuff,” Shields explained.
Moneyberg also made bold claims about his physical condition and abilities, saying he’s 10% body fat at 46, stronger than most, and no longer gets submitted by elite UFC-level grapplers. Many in the BJJ world doubt these claims.
