The CEO of Meta, the man who built Facebook in his college dorm, a guy worth somewhere north of a hundred billion dollars — what's he doing on a sweaty mat getting choked out by guys half his age and twice his physicality?
Training Jiu Jitsu. And competing. And winning.
Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most visible BJJ ambassadors in the world right now. He's not a black belt and he isn't pretending to be. But what he is doing — training hard, competing against strangers, putting his ego on the mat — tells you something important about why Jiu Jitsu has become the martial art of choice for some of the busiest, most accomplished people on the planet.
How Zuckerberg got into Jiu Jitsu
Zuckerberg picked up BJJ during the pandemic, when his at-home cardio routine started feeling stale. He got connected with Dave Camarillo, a legendary black belt who has coached UFC champions like Cain Velasquez and Jon Fitch. From there, he was hooked.
In May 2023, he competed at a small jiu-jitsu tournament in Woodside, California — using a fake name, "Mark Elliot" — and came home with gold and silver medals in the Master 3 white belt division. Two months later, on July 22, 2023, Camarillo promoted him to blue belt.
That's a fast pace, but it isn't unusual for someone who trains as much as Zuckerberg reportedly does. He's built a private training room at his property in Hawaii, regularly hosts elite grapplers like Mikey Musumeci, and has invested serious time and money into getting better.
What Zuckerberg has actually said about BJJ
In interviews on the Lex Fridman podcast, on Joe Rogan's show, and in his own posts, Zuckerberg has been remarkably consistent about why he trains. A few things he keeps coming back to:
"Combat sports are one of the most efficient things you can do. There's a lot of fitness in there, but it's also so engaging that you can't think about anything else."
"If you're not engaged for an hour, the worst thing in the world will happen. So you can't stop paying attention. It's hard to do that with anything else in life."
"I don't know if it's that I find the time, or that I'm so much more energetic and focused on the rest of my life because I do that for an hour or two a few times a week."
The core idea: Jiu Jitsu is the rare activity that forces you to be 100 percent present. You can't think about your inbox. You can't think about your stock price. If you do, you wake up staring at the ceiling wondering what just happened.
For Zuckerberg, that mental reset has become non-negotiable. He's said publicly that training is one of the things that keeps him sharp for everything else.
Why this matters for the rest of us
You don't have to be a billionaire to feel the same effect. That's kind of the point.
The reason Zuckerberg's story resonates with people in our gym is that it cuts through the most common objection to starting BJJ: "I'm too busy." If a guy running a company with tens of thousands of employees can carve out a few hours a week to train, the average professional in Grand Rapids absolutely can.
Three things stand out about how Zuckerberg approaches the art, and they mirror what we tell new students at Kraken Jiu Jitsu every week:
He started as a complete beginner. No martial arts background, no athletic prodigy story. He showed up, tied his belt on, and got submitted a lot. Everybody starts there. Nobody walks in good.
He competes, even though he doesn't have to. Competition is where you find out what you actually know. Zuckerberg could have stayed in the safety of private lessons forever. He chose to test himself in a public tournament under a fake name and got a real result.
He uses it for stress, not just fitness. Running a company is hard. Raising a family is hard. Living a modern life is hard. Zuckerberg has been clear that the mental side of training matters as much to him as the physical side. That's just as true for the engineers, dentists, teachers, and tradespeople we train every week.
You'll notice this pattern in our other celebrity-views posts too: Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink say almost exactly the same things about why they keep coming back to the mat.
Train where Zuckerberg's logic actually applies
You're not Mark Zuckerberg. You don't have a private training room or a black belt on retainer. What you do have is a real BJJ academy ten minutes from your house.
At Kraken Jiu Jitsu in Belmont, just north of Grand Rapids (and at our Cadillac location), we train people exactly like the version of Zuckerberg who walked onto a mat for the first time — beginners with no background, no athletic gifts to fall back on, and not a lot of free time. Our adult program meets multiple times a week with class times that work around real jobs and real families.
You'll get the same thing he gets: a coach who knows what they're doing (Professor Tony is the only IBJJF-certified black belt from West Michigan), training partners who push you, and the only hour of your week where you literally cannot check your phone.
If you've been on the fence about starting, take it from one of the busiest people on Earth: the time investment pays for itself in everything else.
Schedule your first class at Kraken Jiu Jitsu
