Blog#6 Belts

The ranking system in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is very unique. In most arts your average practitioner will take 3 to 5 years to receive their belt. In BJJ the ten year mark seems to be the average, some will get it before and some will take a little longer but on the average one decade of consistent training in the art and you will achieve that goal. Rener Gracie is known for saying that 10% of people who start Jiu Jitsu will stay till blue belt and 1% of the 10 percent will stay for Black Belt. As of 2022 there were around 8,000 registered black belts. Now many of us are not registered so that number is significantly higher. When I look and I see someone wearing a black belt I really see someone who has a aptitude for discipline. Meaning that life is continually dropping pebbles in our pond and sometime they are rocks and on other occasions it is a boulder and the stress and anxiety waves that then come are distracting and powerful, because in the ten years it takes to receive that rank you, got the girlfriend/boyfriend, lost the GF/BF , you got married / divorced (or both) , you had a baby, lost a loved one, got the job, lost the job, got injured, ect…… the list goes on and on. So many things happen over the course of a decade, but this person kept coming through all of it. In Yoga we call this abyasa and viragya. Two things that are required for the practice. abyasa meaning prolonged uninterrupted practice and viragya meaning dispassion (meaning coming to work at something even when you dont want to). My father is a black belt in Judo. He received his black belt from the Kodakan in Tokyo Japan in 1966. He had trained for about 4 years under Mr. Shina in NY. When i received my brown belt in jiu jitsu my father called Mr.Shina and told him and Mr. Shina’s responce was “oh very good, that is like Ni Dan (second degree black belt) in Judo. I never forgot that because he was correct in relation to time and skill acquired. In any endeavor I undertake im always comparing myself in the bjj ranking system. One of my first martial arts teachers had a great saying he would always say to the white belts, “the only difference between a white belt and a black belt is the black belt kept coming to class”