The Evolution of Desiring, Perceiving, and Receiving Belts Part 2

The time it takes to go from belt to belt is interesting to me. I try to think about how the sport has evolved, how online resources, and print resources are widely available compared to when I started, and I wrestle with the question "Are people progressing faster now than before? Or are the belts getting watered down?" I believe it is a combination of both. Back in the day, even when I started BJJ was a very unknown martial art. Aside from my belt, belts did not come easy. The average blue belt took 2 years at least, blue to purple took 3, purple to brown took 3, then brown to black took 2. 10 years of hard dedicated training, the average has definitely lowered since then.

Looking at blue belts back then vs. the blue belts of today, on average they are the same skills, however the blue belts of today seem to have a much wider disparity in skill levels. Actually, I believe you can attribute that to every belt level aside from white (yes there are undeserving black belts out there). BJJ is no longer what it was, at least not across the board. The standards at some schools are lowered to "keep their students motivated and excited about the belts." While other schools are holding back belts to get more recognition increasing the sandbagging problem. Classes used to be very casual, warm-ups were rare, and generally was light rolling, there was no bowing to your sensei, nothing that screamed "Traditional Martial Arts." Fortunately or unfortunately, BJJ is now much more business oriented. There's a reason why the "bow to your sensei" model was working, look at a tae kwon do school, some have 1000s students. You're lucky to see 100 students at a bjj school. The general public, the every day man wanted to see a structured environment. He wanted to see his progress in real time, so what used to be a casual subjective decision by the instructor for promotion has now evolved into a structured "know exactly what you need to know" system that people focus their energies on. I believe this is a good thing to a point. When you have a school where white to blue belt is a curriculum that people follow and know exactly what they need, it works beautifully, beyond that... it fails miserably.

I remembering being in Dallas a random weekend and going to the Carlos Machado Academy and seeing 70 people in there for what I thought was a class. I found out it was a promotion day and everybody there was testing for one thing or another. Each person was vigorously studying a packet of techniques. 15-20 techniques per stripe or belt promotion. What really got to me were 2 4 stripe blue belts were walking around asking higher belts to teach them moves from the packet that they should have known being 4 stripe blue belts. Not only did they barely learn the moves, but they passed and got their purple belts. It's a disgrace in my eyes. I was already a 4th stripe purple, but one stripe had come off in training months before so I was "testing" for a 4th stripe again, I thought it was funny. What irritated me was I found out there was a testing fee involved. If I had known beforehand, I would not have even shown up. After I got my 4th stripe for a 2nd time, I had to pay for it. Is that fair? Really? Anyways, I digress...

There are 2 main types of promotions (there's a 3rd, but it's the one where everybody knows that the guy didn't deserve the promotion. I'll write a politics post and discuss this topic and others later). One where there is no doubt in anybody's mind that an individual deserved the belt; he's the guy that's been in every class, you can see his progress, he took gold at the past 3 tournaments, etc... He's 100% ready for the promotion. The other type is the guy that's been casually training, making baby steps in his progress, but always exhibiting steady progress and potential. The first one jumps right in with his new belt and is right on par with everybody at his belt level. The second one is a guy that is still having trouble rolling with guys of his new belt color, but he will grow into it. Within a month he's starting to really catch up and after 2 months he's right there with the rest of them. If somebody doesn't feel ready to be promoted and their instructor has them take the test or promotes them, then generally they fall under the 2nd category and will "grow into" their belt. Either that, or the student is too humble and too hard on himself.

There is a popular outlook amongst some BJJ practitioners that the belt isn't very important, or isn't important at all, it's all about the technique. In a purist point of view, that's absolutely correct, but with no belts there are no measuring sticks other than what you see on the mat, and there is also a lack in accomplishment. Most people NEED belts and stripes to feel good about themselves and their BJJ. I'm one of them. Like I said before, my perspective on belts has changed, one thing that hasn't changed is that I have wanted to be a black belt since day 1. When I was a blue belt, I beat a few black belts in no gi competitions, though I'm fairly humble on the outside, on the inside I was thinking "I'm the shit! I can hang with black belts!" Little by little, I stepped away from the philosophy that it's all about who you beat and how you beat them and moved towards thinking it's about the techniques you know, the quality and quantity, the ability to use them on various skilled opponents, and now at the higher level, the ability to break down these techniques and teach them to others. Going back to the desire for belts, I want to get a black belt, I want to be at that level, but I don't want it until I'm ready.

I don't believe individuals have the capacity to decide what belt level they are when they attempt to objectively look at themselves. I have always and will always trust my instructors to make that decision for me. My current instructors are Keith and Kenny Florian at the Florian Martial Arts Center in Brookline, MA (www.florianmartialartscenter.com), I have been blessed to have met them, to be able to call them my friends, and to have them as instructors. I met Keith at a turning point in my BJJ career, I had a falling out with my previous instructor and I asked Keith to be my main instructor and decide when I am ready for promotions. I was ecstatic when I heard they were opening a school and even more excited when they asked me to teach some classes there (though I did bug them about wanting to). I was a 4 stripe purple then (funny thing, one of my stripes had fallen off again, so I got "promoted" by Keith to 4 stripes also) and I knew he has a high standard and a respect for what each belt level means. November of 2008, I was promoted to brown belt (twice in the same day! I seem to get the same promotions over and over. Reason for this was Kenny couldn't be there at night to see it, and my girlfriend couldn't come at noon to see it, so Keith had 2 ceremonies for it. I was also previously promoted to 3rd stripe blue and 4th stripe blue twice). I was a purple belt for a very long time, but never did I really say or feel that I deserved or wanted my brown belt, it was as if Keith knew the exact moment I was ready, and when I got promoted, I felt like I deserved it. I will trust him when he decides I'm ready for a black belt, I know I'm not ready now, but I'll know that I'm ready when he promotes me.

Final thoughts:

Each belt level should represent what kind of BJJ you have and what your goals are. I feel like it is fairly standard across the board no matter what school you attend. White belts should focus on simply getting a feel for what the martial art is. Slowly building on their technique knowledge. They should only be taught the basics. Nothing fancy, just techniques that focus on hip movement, solid tried and true techniques for a good foundation. It's hard for white belts to truly understand the concepts taught to them, but they should be ingrained in them and they should absolutely be taught these different concepts as a foundation for their learning (concepts like position before submission). The blue belt is mainly where you begin to learn what you like and don't like, it's also where you amass the most amount of techniques. You want to learn as many techniques as possible, whether or not you think you would or could ever use them, because down the line you never know when you will begin to like certain techniques and be able to use them. Purple belt is a difficult one because it's where you find your identity. This is where you begin to define your game. You already know where your strengths and weaknesses are and thus build them in ways to make people play into your game and at the same time finding ways to improve on the areas you are weakest. As a brown belt, I feel like this is where I have been focusing on becoming well rounded. I know my game, I know how (for the most part) to make people fall into my game, but this is the time for me to improve on everything from everywhere. I need to learn how to be good at everything, I need to be confident in my techniques from everywhere. I also believe it's important that at the brown belt level there is some instructing that needs to occur, whether it is teaching classes themselves or whether it is watching other students and being able to convey corrections and improvements to their technique. I feel it's very important to not only know how to do the techniques but also how to teach them, which gives you insight and understanding for yourself. Then there's the black belt. Though I'm not there yet, I feel that it is quite true about what people say about it; it's where the martial art really begins. You trained so hard to achieve that rank, but once you get there you realize there is still so much to learn and know. I feel that my outlook will be one where I focus on amassing much more technique with a lot of detail on the little intricacies that a purple belt can't catch. Maybe I've been groomed to think this way being so blessed to have gifted instructors. I can't remember a week where Keith didn't come in and show me something he discovered that turned out to be amazing. His mind is so open and he's so brilliant in finding out exactly why things work, how to make them work, and how to make them easy to implement. He is truly a genius of the art. I hope to have 1/1000th of his ability to invent and interpret techniques.