Rank, yet again

It's so funny how tied up in rank the martial arts are. On the one hand, they are meaningless, on the other they mean everything.

So what does receiving rank do?

Surprisingly, a lot.

The biggest is the validation it gives the recipient. This is true both in the eyes of others, and to oneself. Blue Belts without stripes know that if they approach any stripers, they will be working with somebody of a higher skill and knowledge level. To the rank holder, it says you have been judged to have progressed, and are not just fooling yourself.

A good example of this would be Elizabeth. She is good at Jiu-Jitsu, and learns fast, but never used to roll assertively or with confidence. When she received her first stripe promotion, that greatly changed. She took things up a notch, or maybe two. Rolling with me she became the first person EVER to catch me with a hip toss. I also saw her spar with a newish Blue Belt gentleman who outweighs her substantially, and it looked like she was break dancing on him.

In most styles, rank progress is pretty predictable. Train regularly, and you will be allowed to take a regularly scheduled examination. Do OK, and you get a new level. Fail, and you know exactly when you can try again.

In our variant of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu is is more up-in-the-air.

There are two hard-line and predictable requirements, and one harder to figure out.

The first is the easiest to achieve. You MUST have trained for 8 months since your last promotion. For example, I got my last stripe at the beginning of March, so my next one cannot come before the beginning of November. Simple dimple.

The second is that you must have completed a total of 100 classes of specific types before you can be promoted. This is less easy to predict, but it can be done, assuming perfect attendance. I keep track with a spreadsheet, and remove any expected absences. I travel a fair bit. Again, with me as and example I should be completing my attendance requirement on January 15^th.

So by time, I'll be eligible for promotion in November, but won't have competed my attendance requirement until two months later.

So 10 months instead of 8.

The funny thing is that when we talk about future ranks, everybody acts as if our stripes come every 8 months. That would require absolutely perfect attendance to achieve.

The final requirement is the one that is unpredictable. After getting your time and attendance ducks in a row, you receive promotion at the discretion of the instructor.

Kinda hard to see exactly what this means. We've only had four people complete requirements under this current system. The first were three people that received rank last June, and the fourth is a gentleman who is awaiting his.

The June people were all well over their time and attendance minimums. One had been in-rank for 11 months, one for 12, and one for 13.

My friend who has just completed his attendance of 100 is a shift worker, and it has taken him a year in-rank to do it.

He finished a week ago, which means there have been 3 classes since during which he could have been promoted, but wasn't. He is awaiting our instructor's nod. I wonder how long it will take. I am watching this with interest.

He is definitely a level of skill above the other no-stripe Blue Belts.

In my own case, I would be happy getting my third stripe in January, or February or even March. That would represent a range of 10 to 12 months in-rank. That would seem to be about the pattern so far in our school.

Problem is, I'll be away from mid February until mid April. Can't be promoted while away, which would be fair if I were off sitting on a beach somewhere. In reality, I'll be training with the Gracies in HQ for part of it, and at a school in Arizona for the rest.

Missing my departure date would mean an in-rank period of a bit over 13 months.

I'm not really concerned, as my instructor has told me not to worry about it. I assume this means I'll be receiving that illusive stripe sometime in either late January, or early February.

Getting rank “late” means that all future promotion will be moved farther away by a matching amount, and no quantity of effort can regain the lost ground.