Epidemiology of Sports Related Concussion in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

The medical question

How common is concussion in grappling, and how soon do practitioners return to the sport after one?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about how often concussion occurs in grappling, who reports it, and how soon practitioners return to training. The study’s reliance on self-reported lifetime history from a volunteer sample of Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners determines which questions it can inform.

Summary

In a survey of 778 adult Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners in the United States, 25.2% reported having had a concussion while doing the sport.

What the work reports

• Adult Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners in the United States answered a 17-question online survey sent to coaches and school owners and posted in social media groups. It asked about concussions before and during participation in the sport, symptoms, and how soon they returned to practice. The survey gave a broad definition of concussion: a blow to the head or body followed by any of a list of symptoms.
• 187 respondents (25.2%) reported a concussion while doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The proportion was 43.0% among females and 22.9% among males. Among those who reported a concussion, the median time before returning to the sport was three days, 30.3% returned on the same day, and 26.7% reported a second concussion from the sport.
• In the authors’ regression model, a concussion before starting the sport (odds ratio 1.76), female gender (odds ratio 1.95), the lifetime number of competitions and competition density were each associated with greater odds of a concussion from Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The authors conclude that coaches and practitioners need more education on concussion symptoms and on return to sport.

Limits to keep in mind

• Concussions were self-reported from memory over a lifetime, using a definition given in the survey. The authors note risks of recall bias and response bias.
• The survey spread through coaches and social media, so the response rate is unknown and the sample may not represent all practitioners. The authors note that self-selection may have led to over-reporting and that people who left the sport after an injury may have been missed.
• The authors state that the reliability and validity of the survey were not formally tested.
• The survey did not record how concussions happened or whether they happened in practice or competition, and only 89 respondents were female.

Source issues recorded

• The article reports that 187 respondents (25.2%) had a concussion while doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu. 187 of all 778 respondents is 24.0%. The article states that percentages were calculated from the number of participants who answered each question, and it does not give that number for this question.
• The abstract and the Results section give different chi-square statistics for the comparison between females and males (15.129 and 19.222). Both report p < 0.001.
• The Discussion says there were no increased odds of a second concussion. The Conclusions say that practitioners who competed more times per year had increased odds of a second concussion. This record reports neither statement as a finding.
• Europe PMC gives the article number as E53. The article and Crossref give 53, which this record uses.

Publication status and notices

Published in Sports, a peer-reviewed journal. Original research article in Sports.

Form of this work: Version of record. The version of record is the final article as issued by its publisher.

No correction or retraction notice was found in Crossref or Europe PMC when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record.

PDF files

Article details

Relationship

External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.

Published online

25 February 2019

Repository date

25 February 2019 (Europe PMC first-publication date)

Date used here

25 February 2019 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)

Rights

CC BY 4.0. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0), as recorded by Europe PMC and the licence link in the source record. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. No text or figure from the article is reproduced here. Licence terms.

Source check

12 November 2026, against PubMed Central full text, Crossref and Europe PMC. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.

Appraisal

The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.

Clinical review

None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.

Funding and conflicts

The article states that the research received no external funding and that the authors declare no conflict of interest.

Catalog

FH-045, added 12 November 2026

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

Matthew Spano, Donald A Risucci, Mill Etienne, Kristina H Petersen. Epidemiology of Sports Related Concussion in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: A Cross-Sectional Study. Sports. 2019;7(2):53. https://doi.org/10.3390/sports7020053

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Related on this website

• Fighter Health: Head injury, concussion and post-bout assessment