*meanwhile I very much have the expectation of waiting three years plus before getting a cookie* on a serious note, I agree. Median times may be a better indicator of actual average time before blue belt, since a lot of the numbers may include when people started grappling as a whole, rather than formal BJJ training.

I know a lot of people won't agree but there's a fundamental danger of filling your head with false positives when you compete at white belt for too long. The entire meta of how you win white belt matches is not particularly useful to the long term development of skills and so i advocate moving up sooner rather than later.

*meanwhile I very much have the expectation of waiting three years plus before getting a cookie* on a serious note, I agree. Median times may be a better indicator of actual average time before blue belt, since a lot of the numbers may include when people started grappling as a whole, rather than formal BJJ training.

I know a lot of people won't agree but there's a fundamental danger of filling your head with false positives when you compete at white belt for too long. The entire meta of how you win white belt matches is not particularly useful to the long term development of skills and so i advocate moving up sooner rather than later.

You can compete up at some tournaments if your instructor doesn't mind. Just check with the tournament company that's what I do and it's much more fun to challenge yourself. You learn a lot more when your challenged as well and find out where your weakest at which is really the main reason I do tournaments to begin with is to find out areas that I need to work on as your opponents will always help you find exactly what you need to work on. White belt is just nothing but controlling chaos most of the time especially at heavier weights. It's really boring tournament wise after you've had over a 100 matches at white belt your not getting much more out of those matches in general once you already know that you can control non strategic chaos. Blue Belt matches people start to spaz less and it's much more fun. More strategy and finally getting to play the game. A lot more relaxed most of the time and explosive movements have more purpose and strategy. And if they don't let you compete up in the Gi you can still do intermediate or advanced nogi.

Rob Biernacki had a good way of putting it, he said that as a beginner you're essentially asking your opponent questions like 'do you know a triangle escape?' 'do you know how to get out of lockdown?' etc. You end up winning some matches because there are just gaps in the knowledge of white belts, particularly if you go to more obscure positions and submissions. I got stuck in single leg x for a large chunk of time in my first tournament and just wasn't sure what to do. As you go up the belts, you have to them assume the answer to all those questions is 'yes'. Meaning that you're not going to win with a tricky submission or pass guard with one attempt at one guard pass, you have to know what your opponents most likely reaction is, to the move you initiated and attack that. That's where i'm trying to get my knowledge to now, but still a long way to go.