Easy for me to say this as a black belt, right? Afterall, I made it to the place where I don’t have to care about it. To be honest, I did care before my black belt… but not for the reason you might think. 

How does your school define each rank/belt and what do they require for each one? Chances are a lot of people read that and said ‘huh?’.

To those that say, “winning competitions”, I would argue that the competition scene in southern California is much deeper than that in North Dakota. If someone is a great blue belt in North Dakota competition scene and moves to southern California, does this mean they are not legit? Dumb measurable. Hell, I guess John Danaher isn’t legit since he didn’t really compete.

To those that say, “you just know when you see them rolling”. To this I respond back that it’s bullshit too. If it’s done by comparison, it’s a floating target based on who they are compared to. They might be doing well because they know the types of games played in the school but might get moped up anywhere else. Dumb measurable. You don’t know that they perform well outside of what your gym does or apart from the specific game they developed due to a lack of expectations and curriculum. Shit, they might only roll with shitty people to look good (we all know the types).

To those that say, “when they have attended X number of classes”, I can understand this better since it’s not squishy but still bullshit. You have no idea how much was absorbed, nor do you have a way to ensure that if this is all you care about. You want to put your name on that?

To those that say, “Memorize and demonstrate a set of techniques”. Go do Karate if you want to make sure someone can memorize something that they may never actually use or do. A great way to ensure someone is battle-tested is to make them demonstrate moves they don’t actually do to meet some random number of moves you prescribed without real reason (sarcasm). This is dumb.

I can go on and on about the bullshit of most grappling schools’ promotions, but ill cut to the point. Belt/rank promotions should be as objective as possible, not subjective.

To me, it seems like a money grab to see students showing up, busting their ass to learn the technique of the day (usually without a curriculum or focus – just whatever the instructor feels like doing that day), rolling hard, fighting through injuries, then not get promoted as fast as the next person because they don’t grab drinks together with the instructor on weekends (or, in some cases, sleep with them). While this is an extreme, we have all heard the stories and they keep circulating because people dump money in places with this subjectivity and no objective standards, which opens the doors to speculation. And for anyone that says, “you will promote if you keep showing up”, while not entirely wrong you are still part of the brainwashed that perpetuate this.

My challenge: Find anything in your life you are willing to dump thousands of dollars a year into while risking injury without knowing the expectations to succeed in whatever that is.

Couldn’t find one, huh? 

So why are you doing it in grappling.

We need tests and determining criteria that separate each belt in our schools. We should expect more from each belt, not less – and students should know on day one exactly what is expected to earn that belt/rank.

I recommend you ask your head instructor what each belt/rank means, what is expected to earn it (objective, not subjective requirements), and see if they can answer it and if it makes sense. If not, good luck with what you do next…

To those who wonder why I cared before my belt promotion…

The black belts all talked. To get promoted, it seemed like they needed to be on the same page. If I had a bad night and black belt X saw me, I was concerned that they would tell the other ones I wasn’t ready and push me back farther because of a bad night. The idea of having to perform for watching eyes made me a bit paranoid that I would be stuck even longer at any rank over this. And I wanted the belt so I could do my own thing and say shit like this without it seeming like I am just shaking trees because I didn’t have my black belt.

And I can say “bow to your sensei” or something.

Mathematical Jiu-Jitsu has clear requirements and a test for each rank/belt that are known to each student on day one. What defines each rank/belt, and its expectations, are known. Nothing is hidden and subjectivity is removed as much as possible to ensure standards are not goal posted.