Know Your Real Burn
Connect a Bluetooth heart rate band and watch your BPM live, round after round. Calories come from your real effort, not a number borrowed from a running app.
The Guard BJJ
BJJ training, measured
Every roll counts.
Live cardio, real calories, your journey.
Jiu-jitsu is a road nobody walks the same way. The Guard tracks yours, the way you actually train: on the mat, not on a treadmill.
- Real-time heart rate
- Belt milestones
- Readiness score
- Monthly goals + calendar
- Your training crew
- Home screen widgets
- Apple Health & Health Connect
Built for how you actually train
Your Training, Everywhere
Every session saves straight to Apple Health and Health Connect, heart rate and active energy included, right next to the rest of your health data.
Your Path to Black Belt
Promotions, stripes, competitions, injuries. Your whole timeline in jiu-jitsu, with the date on every milestone from white to black.
Every Session, a Memory
The post-training photo, the technique of the day, what your partner caught you with. Save it all. Each roll becomes something you look back on.
Tag Every Technique
Label each session by what you drilled: guard passing, sweeps, submissions. See which positions really run your game.
Ready to Roll?
A readiness score weighs your intensity, recovery, and consistency, then tells you when to push and when to rest.
Train with Your Crew
Follow your partners and your academy. See who hit the mat, react to their sessions, keep up with promotions in one feed. You choose what you share.
See What Others Miss
Heart rate curves per round, insights into your real game, the full belt journey, and CSV or PDF export. Your edge on the mat, season after season.
Stay on the Mat
Set a monthly mat goal and watch the bar fill round after round. The calendar shows whether you really showed up.
One Glance, Zero Excuses
Your streak and session count right on the home screen. One look before you head to the gym.
Athlete Mode
Train with intent. Measure every roll.
Turn your heart rate band into a performance cockpit built for BJJ.
Live cockpit
Your heart rate inside a live zone ring, %HRR, calories, and your 2-minute peak, all while you roll.
Automatic training blocks
The Guard splits your session into blocks, warm-up, drilling, rolling, conditioning, straight from your heart rate curve. Relabel any block in a tap.
Planned vs actual
Set a target zone and see how much of your active time you really spent there. Know whether the session did what you meant it to.
Train with your coach Soon
Link to your coach, accept their plan, and your day's focus is set for you, right in the pre-workout check-in.
From the mats
"I used to run the room on feel and I got it wrong plenty. Now I can see who's cooked and who's got another hard week in them before I ever write the plan."
"One of my guys dropped 4kg for a tournament and still trained hard the whole camp. We only pulled that off because the calorie numbers came from his real rolls instead of a running app's guess."
"I never really knew what my rolls were doing to me until I saw it on screen: the calories, the months I actually showed up, the whole timeline. First training app I've kept past week two."
"I'm not competing and probably never will. But watching my streak climb and my sessions pile up is the thing that gets me off the couch on a Tuesday. Didn't expect that."
Built for the mats
Dark, focused interface designed for quick logging and real training flow.
Free or Premium?
Yes, the app is genuinely free. Track every session and every belt, for as long as you train. Premium is for when you want to dig deeper into your own game.
Free
Everything you need to log and train.
- Unlimited workout logging: heart rate, calories, photos, notes
- Last 30 sessions on the calendar with core stats
- Monthly mat goal with calendar progress
- One belt milestone on your timeline
- Works fully offline, no account or internet required
Premium
Go deep on your own game.
Everything in Free, plus:
- Athlete Mode: live performance cockpit, automatic training blocks, and planned-vs-actual
- Full session history, no 30-session limit
- Heart rate curve for every round, not just the numbers
- Insights that show where your game really is, like "40% of this month was guard passing"
- Full belt journey, white to black, with auto stats between promotions
- Cloud backup and sync across devices
- Export everything to CSV or PDF, filtered by date
- Watermark-free shareable cards
Compatible devices
Live heart rate tracking uses the standard Bluetooth Heart Rate Service (BLE 180D). We recommend BLE armbands, they stay secure during rolls.
Armbands
Coospo HW9, Polar Verity Sense, Polar OH1/OH1+, Wahoo TICKR FIT, COROS Heart Rate Monitor, Scosche Rhythm24, and similar BLE armbands.
ANT+ bands require an external adapter; not natively supported on phones.
Frequently asked questions
Is the app really free?
Yes. Track every session, log your journey, set monthly goals, use home screen widgets, and share progress cards, all free, forever. No account, no ads. Premium is an optional upgrade for deeper insights, full history, and cloud backup.
Do I need a heart rate band to use the app?
You can use it without one. Logging sessions, your journey, monthly goals, widgets, and progress cards all work band-free. But live heart rate and real calorie tracking, the whole reason this app exists, need a band. Without one you're getting a slice of what The Guard can do.
What do I get with a heart rate band?
This is the heart of the app. A BLE band gives you live heart rate every round, calories based on your real effort instead of a rough guess, readiness and recovery guidance, and richer data in Apple Health and Health Connect. A logbook without a band is useful. With a band, The Guard becomes the only app that shows what your body actually did on the mat.
Does it work for no-gi and MMA?
Absolutely. Heart rate, calories, and session logging work the same for gi, no-gi, or MMA. The journey feature is BJJ-specific, but everything else applies to any grappler.
Does it work without internet?
Completely. The Guard BJJ works fully offline. Log workouts, track heart rate, and check your stats with no connection at all. Your data lives on your device. Upgrade to Premium and cloud backup syncs when you're back online.
Is my training data private?
Yes. Your data stays on your device by default. We don't sell or share your information. If you enable Premium cloud backup, data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Read our privacy policy for details.
Which heart rate band do you recommend for BJJ?
- Chest straps can lose contact or shift during heavy pressure positions like side control (100kg).
- Wrist bands and smartwatches tend to slip off during gi training because of sleeve grips.
- Forearm bands stay secure. They sit above the wrist (away from grips) and below the chest (away from pressure). Best of both worlds for grappling. We recommend optical bands like the Coospo HW9.
Download now
You good? Compared to who? With your own data, you find out.
The Guard BJJ is free on the App Store and Google Play. Premium insights come with an optional subscription.
