I am by no means an advanced practitioner in either art, but I have been on the mat at numerous judo and bjj schools.
I don't know what people will think of the schools here in Richmond, so I won't go on about that.
I have trained at Washington (georgetown) Judo under James Takemori a couple of times, as well as Jeff Ruth's in Arlington under Shin Kim (Olympic Alternate?)(Students not that good, but school training still tough). I spent at least 400+ hours on the mat at Maurice Allan's SportJudo in Alexandria(
www.sportjudo.net), where I had the displeasure of the being the little guy and doing randori everynight with two of the better teens in the region and two of the top ranked girls in the country. I took a lot of hard beatings.
On the BJJ side, I trained at Jeff's under guys like Noah Booth and Dave Carter. It was hard training. I trained informally or 'open mat' with people from One Spirit and one of the Yamasaki affiliates out in the boonies.
And of course I have trained at Goatfury's and Eric Burdo's here in Richmond.
I am no expert, but I have at least tried it both ways, with basically legit instructors and schools.
In my experience, judo training is more taxing in most if not all ways; anaerobically and aerobically, psychologically and injury-wise. It also requires more athleticism, strength, speed and power. The only thing that's tougher in BJJ is there's a real advantage to greater flexibility in BJJ that rarely comes up in Judo.
I don't think one is better than the other, they are like sisters, and what would be better than to take both sisters home?
My point is that I am ok sharing my opinion because I've at least tried both.
PS: I have tried to wrestle wrestlers before on more than one occasion, from HS wannabes to Howard starters. I don't think either BJJ or judo can hang there.
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