Just a note for lower belts the IBJJF told me that the belt requirements from blue to purple does not matter if you were registered at a certain time or not. Just has to meet the 2 years at the belt and get your instructor to sign verifying the promotion dates. Not sure why they wouldn't just do the same for brown to black.

If you register for the first time as a black belt, they make you do a two year provisional status term, meaning that you can't be considered one of the certified black belts in that time, be the head instructor in a IBJJF certified school, or sign off on any IBJJF applications on any students. You can still compete in their events as a black belt. If you're a brown belt registering for the first time (meaning you didn't register any of your other belt rankings), they also make you wait, to make sure you aren't a brown belt when you sign up, and then a black belt 6 months later. They do it to ensure that you aren't lying about belt rankings, and game the system to fast track a black belt ranking. This is what happened to me with them, I was promoted to black belt in 2014, but I didn't register with the IBJJF until 2019, I had provisional status until the beginning of this year, and did my black belt certification earlier this year. The crazy thing is that my IBJJF promotion cycle on my black belt starts this year, meaning that I can't receive my first stripe from them until 2024 (10 years after my initial promotion

I'm afraid that if I register as blue they will start 2 years from the moment I activate. Anyone know if that is the case? I did two as a white belt in 2019.

This happened to me. I was a blue belt for 1.5 years. They won't let me register for purple belt until the 2 year mark that I registered at blue belt. If you know that you're close to purple, just wait it out. If you register as blue belt now, you have to wait a full 2 years to register as purple belt.

To be fair, the IBJJF minimum requirement from blue to purple is 2 years so blame your coaches for not following that guideline if you're looking for IBJJF certification.

That is my point however. It's a dumb rule to be blunt. Should they not trust the judgement of a black belt that is registered to the ibjjf? If not then what is the point of ibjjf certification? Many examples of people in the ibjjf that reached black belt extremely quick and still competed. The rule makes no sense.

If you do the math in the requirement it's still possible to get the Black Belt in under 5 years which is half the norm. So if your instructor is under the IBJJF and you want to be registered with them, then your instructor is somewhat obligated to follow those rules to prevent problems like you're having. Would you have left your gym if your instructor had made you wait another 6 months? Probably not. Having requirements for minimum times isn't a terrible idea, in my opinion. How else do you create some kind of quality control in a program that is famous for being difficult to achieve status? One way would be to create an overall curriculum that requires testing at each stage and then as the curriculum changes get paid more money by requiring updated testing. This is how academics work (bachelors. masters, PHD and continuing education credits) as well as most professional certifications (Microsoft, Cisco, PMP, etc). It's also how Judo does it. I hope that NEVER happens to the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world as the ingenuity in it is what makes it so exciting. And challenging. So the other way to do quality control would be to allow your certified instructors to have full control over their promotions, as you are suggesting. Well, you can kind of blame the spread of the art for ruining this because that is how it used to work. If you look up my status in the IBJJF it will say 'Provisional' Black Belt. That means I received it BEFORE all these requirements were put into place and therefor they don't apply. These 'new' requirements came because people were getting Black Belts that were not up to the same standard they had been. Giving belts became a way to make money. People would leave gyms and go to people that were giving the belts out quicker. So there goes that notion. So you are left with time as the factor. And purple belt is the marker for being 'good' at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It's the equivalent of Black Belt in most other Martial Arts. So it becomes the hardest, or longest in time, to achieve. I actually think that this is reasonable and not the worst thing the IBJJF has ever done.

It just makes divisions more sandbaggy at blue belt and increases the skill gap to where at pans and worlds it's mostly guys who should already be purple belt. It could also encourage instructors to promote their students from white to blue faster maybe so that they have the ability to compete at purple sooner. I think it effects the adult competitors the most. The masters not as much except for heavyweights. As a lot of 28/29 year old's end up having to face 17/18 year old 'blue belts'. I also think for the guys under 200 pounds at least 2 years is a good thing as the competition is more technical in the lighter weight divisions and they should be getting good matches. Really it's more about what you are gaining from the experience and if your getting competitive matches then good. The real problem can be for heavyweights who are actually very technical. The skill at blue belt heavyweight is often closer to white belt, while the skill at 150 pound blue belt can sometimes be closer to purple. Executive/Masters 200+ division competitors having to wait over 2 years can hinder their growth if purple belt divisions are basically blue belt divisions for them...competing in blue belt divisions at 30+ if you have been training over 3 years consistently and it took you over 2 years to get your blue can just feel like a waste of time except maybe at worlds/pans where everyone is sandbagging. For example I have been competing mostly against purple to black belts. Yet I can still compete at blue in IBJJF if I can find a coach to sign for me in the next 4 days I was thinking of doing Pans lol. This seems stupid to me. Yet I am still interested in doing Pans/Worlds as I know its basically going to be other people who have been doing the same and they are basically purple in skill level so the quality of matches at those 2 events should be very good.

James with all due respect, you speak in a lot of absolute terms in the way the IBJJF and a lot of things BJJ operate for a guy with 3 years of experience.

If you register for the first time as a black belt, they make you do a two year provisional status term, meaning that you can't be considered one of the certified black belts in that time, be the head instructor in a IBJJF certified school, or sign off on any IBJJF applications on any students. You can still compete in their events as a black belt.

I will have to do some research on this. A friend of mine was promoted to BB in 2012 and never got around to registering (apparently then it wasn't really a thing unless you wanted to have a school/team then) and didn't think he would be able to at all at this point. Do you know if there is a specific form for first time black belt registrants or do you need to email in FMI?

James with all due respect, you speak in a lot of absolute terms in the way the IBJJF and a lot of things BJJ operate for a guy with 3 years of experience. There has always been the issue of newer belts being canon fodder to the 4 stripers who probably should have been promoted a while ago to the next level. To Joe's point, and one that I firmly agree with, there is no issue with the time standard set in place for the IBJJF in regards to belt promotions, this does in fact give a standard to what belt levels should look like. I have personally seen people who have been fast tracked to higher belts get destroyed by lower level belts in tournaments because their coach doesn't follow a set standard, or they are the only school in a small town, never compete, and only train with themselves, and therefore have no real litmus test as to where their skill level is at. When I was the Newbreed director, I saw a black belt female in our Dallas show who was 24 years old... And with all due respect, she didn't look like she was a physical beast, or in very good shape (especially at the time, when other known female black belts were athletes, this girl looked like she just rolled off the couch). The ONLY match we could find for her was a girl who just got her purple belt 3 weeks prior, and was 20 lbs heavier than the black belt (I convinced her to take the extra match, just go have fun, she had nothing to lose out there), I walked up to the match halfway in the match and the black belt was down 38-2, and just looked lost.... Came to find out afterwards that she got her black belt in 4 years, from a coach in the Texas area who didn't care about the IBJJF standards, and just promoted how her felt it should be. In regard to the 18-29 year old age gap that the Men's and Women's division uses (before Masters divisions start), that is the widest gap of competition, but they won't let a 17 year old compete in it (16-17 are in the juvenile division), and from my experience, I have students and have known students to have 10 years of training, and are avid competitors at the age of 18, going up against a 27 year old with 2 years of training experience quite frequently. Hell, Cole Abate will MURDER the adult blue belts starting next year (he's already beating black belts) if he doesn't get promoted up. Just because they are at that 26-29 age range, doesn't mean that they are sandbagging, on average, a kid at any weight who is been training/competing regularly since age 10, they'll give that adult fits, which is usually the case. Remember in every case, there are exceptions to the rule.... But for every BJ Penn or Caio Terra, there are 1000 more whoever the girl from Dallas was. I would also ask you to consider this, you yourself are a blue belt with 3 year of BJJ training, and from what I recall, your promotion was fairly recent... You have mentioned several times that you compete regularly against purple, brown, and black belts, and have alluded to a high level of success, why has your instructor than not promoted you up? It's because he probably adheres to the same time standard that we all do. Don't be enamored with all the 'I got my black belt in 4 years, so buy my DVD and come to my seminar' guys, just enjoy the journey and process and keep you love of competing up. Good luck getting into Pans, they closed out registration months ago (although have recently opened up some for those on the wait list). I had to withdraw from it due to dislocation my right pinky at the Orlando Open a few weeks back, pretty bummed about it, but there is time to sign up for Master's Worlds in November in Vegas (although yesterday the IBJJF did say that it was at 78% capacity, so do it soon).

I am not that great...my point was more that heavyweights and lightweights are normally drastically different in technical level. That a Purple belt heavyweight is basically a blue belt lightweight in skill on average and this is kind of a problem. More that if they are going to enforce all these rules I wish that instructors wouldn't promote heavyweights so fast just because they crush smaller guys in practice. I do well against purple belt heavyweights my age normally but it doesn't feel like oh I am beating good purple belts. It feels more like other academies are just promoting people to fast and a lot of the purple belts should still be blue belts. And a lot of the blue belts should still be white belts. That is more of my complaint. I don't feel that I am special or that great I feel like I should be an average blue belt...I just feel like other places are promoting people to fast and it waters down everything else. The holding back of students is more rare than people getting promoted to soon. And when everyone is getting promoted to soon it then just magnifies any gaps/sandbagging when they do occur. It makes it less fun everyone from the no lifers to the casuals. In general I wish it would take the heavyweights longer to get promoted to blue belt so that the competition level would be closer in skill gap at the larger weight classes. Smaller weight classes are normally very competitive no matter what. Heavyweight divisions can just be very boring. I have a lot more fun in the absolute divisions because normally the 170 to 190 pound guys are much more of a challenge then then 200+ pound guys. If you haven't had the experience of mostly always competing against guys over 200 pounds you may not understand my frustration at least at the lower belts. I am sure at brown/black it isn't an issue. But their are places that do promote to black belt to fast as well just based on time spent and they feel like purple belts not black belts. I much prefer when people have to pay the iron price and not just show up for 10 years and get their decade achievement award. I personally think that anyone should be able to earn their blue belt but purple belts should be damn hard to earn and not everyone should be able to earn a black belt just because the clock ticks away or they help teach. Just going to be Karate/TKD in a few more years. I go to tournaments excited to get to face purple belts hoping to have challenging matches or get my ass kicked so I can learn something new and way to often the purple belts just feel like mediocre blue belts. This is not fun. I look forward to the losses and hard earned wins. I can't stand the easy wins. It doesn't feel like you achieved anything and just wasted your time.

I guess....you can make a new registration! Now with the current belt. The bad thing is that you will have to pay the registration fee again. You don't need to wait your 1 year registration expire to create a new one. You can create a new registration, with your new belt* and it will be valid for one year. *If you have all other requirements.

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