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Thought on brown belts promoting students
6 year(s) ago • 45054 views • 135 replies
TPBlack beltVerified
2 year(s) ago
Maybe even the contrary. After 9 years as black belt, a lot of people are probably way behind the game due to age, life, injuries, training intensity. I've been a black belt for 10 years but I also for sure can not confidently say that I can assess someone's skills in modern Jiu Jitsu techniques/trends. I simply don't follow the developments of the sport anymore in the same way.
Hahaha, for real!
I think a better rule would be that after the 3rd black belt degree, you would need a young (under 30 year-old), competition-savvy brown or fresh black belt to co-promote, because you've very likely fallen so far behind the times.
I think a better rule would be that after the 3rd black belt degree, you would need a young (under 30 year-old), competition-savvy brown or fresh black belt to co-promote, because you've very likely fallen so far behind the times.
Edited 2 year(s) ago
RDBlack belt 4th degreeVerified
2 year(s) ago
Hahaha, for real! I think a better rule would be that after the 3rd black belt degree, you would need a young (under 30 year-old), competition-savvy brown or fresh black belt to co-promote, because you're very likely fallen so far behind the times.
Ouch! That hurts
CGBlack belt 4th degreeVerified
2 year(s) ago
Hahaha, for real! I think a better rule would be that after the 3rd black belt degree, you would need a young (under 30 year-old), competition-savvy brown or fresh black belt to co-promote, because you've very likely fallen so far behind the times.
It's gonna get complicated on Beltchecker if Johan adopts this 😂
RDBlack belt 4th degreeVerified
JBrown beltVerifiedDallas
2 year(s) ago
Holy moly, if competition savvy is a prerequisite, that’s going to exclude a giant portion of us who prioritize dang near everything over competition! I am over here judging people on their ability to avoid defeat and protect their face and now I gotta get a 29 year old dude who is competition savvy to verify I’m not senile ?? This is getting more and more complicated by the day! But I am just a brown belt so maybe this is a secret technique you learn between brown and black.
JBlack belt 3rd degreeVerified
2 year(s) ago
It's gonna get complicated on Beltchecker if Johan adopts this 😂
That's actually my new experiment, for year two here! ;-)
Nah, I think we need to separate belts and skills. Belts really SHOULD mean a minimum of skills (not necessarily new school style), but a certain level of skills does not need to equate a certain belt. Although it pisses a lot of people of majorly when they quite obviously got the skills but you dare say they still need to prove they got the belt! }={D>
Let the young'uns keep their berimbumpallovertheplace newschool fancy stuff and get all the medals, but we old timers got to BB first, so all your BB stripes is belong to us! Including the magic first two stripes :-)
On a marginally more serious note, I don't think seniority within BJJ is just about performance in a competition rule set context or even expanded to MMA/Vale tudo or self defence. Do we really need belts for that? The mats speak for themselves and I doubt many coral or red belts, having trained for many decades, would dominate if they entered the worlds together with young guns who have trained for not even 10 years. Perhaps not even if they were temporarily brought back 30 years in physique.
They do however have another kind of seniority in that they have the journey in them in a way that really cannot be rushed. They might have been fighting an injury for years and other battles which the juniors have never even fought as well as helped others through their battles. Older and having been around longer in the world of BJJ is not necessarily wiser and the reverence of the old can go to extremes where they stand above being questioned, but I actually think years in black means more than just developing (or deteriorating : -) in your sparring skills.
Nah, I think we need to separate belts and skills. Belts really SHOULD mean a minimum of skills (not necessarily new school style), but a certain level of skills does not need to equate a certain belt. Although it pisses a lot of people of majorly when they quite obviously got the skills but you dare say they still need to prove they got the belt! }={D>
Let the young'uns keep their berimbumpallovertheplace newschool fancy stuff and get all the medals, but we old timers got to BB first, so all your BB stripes is belong to us! Including the magic first two stripes :-)
On a marginally more serious note, I don't think seniority within BJJ is just about performance in a competition rule set context or even expanded to MMA/Vale tudo or self defence. Do we really need belts for that? The mats speak for themselves and I doubt many coral or red belts, having trained for many decades, would dominate if they entered the worlds together with young guns who have trained for not even 10 years. Perhaps not even if they were temporarily brought back 30 years in physique.
They do however have another kind of seniority in that they have the journey in them in a way that really cannot be rushed. They might have been fighting an injury for years and other battles which the juniors have never even fought as well as helped others through their battles. Older and having been around longer in the world of BJJ is not necessarily wiser and the reverence of the old can go to extremes where they stand above being questioned, but I actually think years in black means more than just developing (or deteriorating : -) in your sparring skills.
BMBlack belt 1st degreeVerified
2 year(s) ago
Let the young'uns keep their berimbumpallovertheplace newschool fancy stuff and get all the medals
Hey, they give out medals in the masters division too, and you should already know that berimbumpallovertheplace was so last year's move.
Get with it, old man.
Get with it, old man.
MBlack beltVerified
2 year(s) ago
If it's approved by his Black belt instructor then I guess it's ok.
![Slideyfoot [jun]](userimg/5e25cf311adfd.jpg){kind=small}
SJBlack belt 1st degreeVerified
2 year(s) ago
As there's a more recent but similar discussion going on at the mo, thought I'd bump this.
Though I think the thread I wanted is still out there, I'll keep searching through the archive. ;)
Though I think the thread I wanted is still out there, I'll keep searching through the archive. ;)
JBlack belt 3rd degreeVerified
9 month(s) ago
Re-bumping. Two years later and I'm myself beginning to wonder if there's any longer a reason for a non BB to promote anywhere in the world, besides a very limited number of isolated islands etc? E.g. the Globetrotters club on the Faroe islands.
Promoting by a proxy to a BB who knows the student well is another matter, but those who do really should do better at producing evidence when doing this, e.g. the promoting instructor acknowledging the promotion in his/her name in a social media post.
(personally, going forward, I'll be a lot more restrictive with up voting colored belts promoted by colored belts, even if I don't down vote)
Promoting by a proxy to a BB who knows the student well is another matter, but those who do really should do better at producing evidence when doing this, e.g. the promoting instructor acknowledging the promotion in his/her name in a social media post.
(personally, going forward, I'll be a lot more restrictive with up voting colored belts promoted by colored belts, even if I don't down vote)
SJBlack belt 1st degreeVerified
9 month(s) ago
In most countries with a developed BJJ scene, probably not. The UK is certainly well beyond that point now.
But the world is a big place, I would assume there must still be pockets where BJJ remains very under developed?
But the world is a big place, I would assume there must still be pockets where BJJ remains very under developed?
JJBlack beltVerified
9 month(s) ago
In most countries with a developed BJJ scene, probably not. The UK is certainly well beyond that point now. But the world is a big place, I would assume there must still be pockets where BJJ remains very under developed?
The world is not all clustered together like Western Europe.
JMBlack belt 1st degreeVerified
9 month(s) ago
I think the majority of comments make solid points. The world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is getting smaller and smaller as numbers continue to grow, but there are plenty of regions where there is simply not a black belt always available. I think the two instances presented by Christian make perfect sense 1) The Brown Belt Coach is without affiliation or a coach himself 2) the affiliate coach has given his blessing for the Brown Belt to issue promotions.
This was the case with me in both directions... Early on, I trained under a brown belt who's own instructor was over 500 miles (>800 km) away and from whom I received my Blue Belt. Given enough time, I too became more directly associated with that same Black Belt and over the years I received my own brown belt from him, and often saw him once or twice a year. During these years I ran my own club, and at some point during my brown belt I was given authority to promote white belts under his authority. To date, I have some people listed as promoted by me and those promotions were presented while I was still a brown belt.
The reality is, they could have just as easily listed the authorizing black belt (which I encouraged for posterity), but many of them declined stating they had only spent a few hours in proximity to him, but had hundreds of mat hours with me. It made sense and still does...
Now, I am only stating this in regards to promotion to Blue Belt as that is the only gap with which I was comfortable. To this day, I feel a Brown Belt (especially one with a decade of training under his belt) has enough skill gap to assess the path from white to blue.
Let's not even mention how much training the competition level Brown (or even Blue & Purple) have in the media driven evolution of the game whereas many older black belts are either injured / less athletic and limited in what they train or simply busy running the academy with less time to quickly absorb the newest trends and evolution... this is the equation that should create a much more advanced skill / belt expectation moving forward. What the black belt often has is a superior methodology for teaching, people managing, and structuring learning, but that definitely doesn't mean they are technically more skilled than many colored belts in today's landscape.
This was the case with me in both directions... Early on, I trained under a brown belt who's own instructor was over 500 miles (>800 km) away and from whom I received my Blue Belt. Given enough time, I too became more directly associated with that same Black Belt and over the years I received my own brown belt from him, and often saw him once or twice a year. During these years I ran my own club, and at some point during my brown belt I was given authority to promote white belts under his authority. To date, I have some people listed as promoted by me and those promotions were presented while I was still a brown belt.
The reality is, they could have just as easily listed the authorizing black belt (which I encouraged for posterity), but many of them declined stating they had only spent a few hours in proximity to him, but had hundreds of mat hours with me. It made sense and still does...
Now, I am only stating this in regards to promotion to Blue Belt as that is the only gap with which I was comfortable. To this day, I feel a Brown Belt (especially one with a decade of training under his belt) has enough skill gap to assess the path from white to blue.
Let's not even mention how much training the competition level Brown (or even Blue & Purple) have in the media driven evolution of the game whereas many older black belts are either injured / less athletic and limited in what they train or simply busy running the academy with less time to quickly absorb the newest trends and evolution... this is the equation that should create a much more advanced skill / belt expectation moving forward. What the black belt often has is a superior methodology for teaching, people managing, and structuring learning, but that definitely doesn't mean they are technically more skilled than many colored belts in today's landscape.
SJBlack belt 1st degreeVerified
9 month(s) ago
I think the majority of comments make solid points. The world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is getting smaller and smaller as numbers continue to grow, but there are plenty of regions where there is simply not a black belt always available. I think the two instances presented by Christian make perfect sense 1) The Brown Belt Coach is without affiliation or a coach himself 2) the affiliate coach has given his blessing for the Brown Belt to issue promotions. This was the case with me in both directions... Early on, I trained under a brown belt who's own instructor was over 500 miles (>800 km) away and from whom I received my Blue Belt. Given enough time, I too became more directly associated with that same Black Belt and over the years I received my own brown belt from him, and often saw him once or twice a year. During these years I ran my own club, and at some point during my brown belt I was given authority to promote white belts under his authority. To date, I have some people listed as promoted by me and those promotions were presented while I was still a brown belt. The reality is, they could have just as easily listed the authorizing black belt (which I encouraged for posterity), but many of them declined stating they had only spent a few hours in proximity to him, but had hundreds of mat hours with me. It made sense and still does... Now, I am only stating this in regards to promotion to Blue Belt as that is the only gap with which I was comfortable. To this day, I feel a Brown Belt (especially one with a decade of training under his belt) has enough skill gap to assess the path from white to blue. Let's not even mention how much training the competition level Brown (or even Blue & Purple) have in the media driven evolution of the game whereas many older black belts are either injured / less athletic and limited in what they train or simply busy running the academy with less time to quickly absorb the newest trends and evolution... this is the equation that should create a much more advanced skill / belt expectation moving forward. What the black belt often has is a superior methodology for teaching, people managing, and structuring learning, but that definitely doesn't mean they are technically more skilled than many colored belts in today's landscape.
Yeah, I have zero issues with a brown belt promoting people to blue. Like you, I happily did that when I was a brown belt (with the ok from the black belt who promoted me), I was comfortable with that gap.
Brown belt promoting somebody to purple, that I would find a bit iffy.
Brown belt promoting somebody to purple, that I would find a bit iffy.
MBrown beltVerified
9 month(s) ago
Yeah, I have zero issues with a brown belt promoting people to blue. Like you, I happily did that when I was a brown belt (with the ok from the black belt who promoted me), I was comfortable with that gap. Brown belt promoting somebody to purple, that I would find a bit iffy.
100%….
But I also promoted a fellow officer and long time training partner to purple belt although I am still brown belt, as he trained with me for 9 years consistently since he was a white belt, he did a formal belt testing after 5 years of consistent training under our former blackbelt coach and he simply met all my criteria in terms of knowledge, skills and attitude for purple after almost another 4 years of bluebelt.
My blackbelt friend , who knows him and trained with him too when he taught at our team, backed me up though and gave me his blessing to do so! So I don’t feel it iffy in that regard.
But hey , every instructor does it differently, depending on affiliation, organization, coach, etc….
But I also promoted a fellow officer and long time training partner to purple belt although I am still brown belt, as he trained with me for 9 years consistently since he was a white belt, he did a formal belt testing after 5 years of consistent training under our former blackbelt coach and he simply met all my criteria in terms of knowledge, skills and attitude for purple after almost another 4 years of bluebelt.
My blackbelt friend , who knows him and trained with him too when he taught at our team, backed me up though and gave me his blessing to do so! So I don’t feel it iffy in that regard.
But hey , every instructor does it differently, depending on affiliation, organization, coach, etc….
SJBlack belt 1st degreeVerified
9 month(s) ago
My blackbelt friend , who knows him and trained with him too when he taught at our team, backed me up though and gave me his blessing to do so! So I don’t feel it iffy in that regard.
Yeah, you had the ok from a black belt who had trained with the guy but presumably couldn't be there, so I think that's ok.
