A Visual Representation of One Aspect of Belt Ranking

This is one way of understanding my developmental progress thorugh the jiu-jitsu belts. Let me know what you think.

White belt: Not sure what’s going on but ready to learn. This would look something like this.


Blue belt: Getting to understand what’s going on, but definitely realizes and acknowledges that this is a really difficult sport and there is a lot of pain to the body and the ego. Big highs and big lows. There are times when I felt I was getting progressively worse week after week after week. This is the time when I felt the most beat up physically and mentally. Partially because I WAS getting beaten up and partially because as you progress, you (and your ego) eventually learn to feel it less.Visually, it would look like this.

If you can make it past this, then the time periods where you feel you’re getting progressively worse get smaller.

Purple belt: Understands the pain and learns to ignore and/or avoid it and realized that the times of frustration won’t last too long. Recovery is faster.This wave would look like this.


Brown belt: Small bumps, but a good solid foundation and direction, so no big ups and downs. More just stretched out time with small ups and downs.


Black belt: Enough of a strong foundation that it becomes experimental, incremental, and minute. It also becomes playful, hence the small curly cues.

*The circle represents a magnified view!

More Language

Sometimes I hear beginners say that they can’t do any of the moves they learn on anyone during sparring. Sure they can do them during drills but not with someone actually resisting and fighting back! So, in going back to the analogy of language, you can learn a foreign language in a classroom and have “conversations” with your teacher. But to really start to understand the language you have to go out and interact with someone speaking back to you (like visiting the native country of the language)…but then you realize that the people don’t respond “the way they are supposed to” so you’re not sure what they are saying or what you are supposed to say next. It is the same as rolling in jiu jitsu…when you’re trying to do a move and your partner isn’t responding the same way as in the drill, they aren’t letting you do your move! So, in the same way, it’s really about mat time or in the analogy, spending time in the native country! It's walking out into a foreign country only knowing a few word and phrases from the audio tape lesson you listened to on the plane. In both cases, the more you practice with real live partners and learn how to work with unpredictable responses, the more you learn how to react to different situations. In language, as in jiu-jitsu, you learn to automatically and appropriately respond. Only practice will help you to learn more and better responses for more and more situations.