Weird Ranks

I was messing around with the numbers of registered Gracie Blue Belts the other day, and wrote a blog about what seemed apparent.

Today I looked at the numbers in the Purple Belt range, and things just keep getting stranger and stranger.

Here's what I found when I put the Purple Belt and Blue Belt numbers together.

208 Blue Belt One Stripe

73 Blue Belt Two Stripes

28 Blue Belt Three Stripes

8 Blue Belt Four Stripes

93 Purple Belt no stripe

17 Purple Belt One Stripe

3 Purple Belt Two Stripes

3 Purple Belt Three Stripes

1 Purple Belt Four Stripes

Weird. Only 8 four-stripe Blue Belts, but 93 no-stripe Purple Belts. This made me wonder about the numbers in the Brown Belt range.

45 Brown Belt no stripe

7 Brown Belt One Stripe

5 Brown Belt Two Stripes

2 Brown Belt Three Stripes

1 Brown Belt Four Stripes

Now I'm really confused. There is a clear pattern within each Belt color, with the lower-level students being more numerous than the higher-level ones, but no real order if the entire rank structure is taken as a whole.

Clearly something is going on here other than a simple linear progression.

I suspect that it has something to do with people joining the organization who hold existing rank from other groups. They would typically be welcomed, but their rank not recognized until they have been around for a while and received formal Gracie evaluation.

Probably, they receive the starter rank for the belt that they are evaluated at. That would explain why the number of no-stripe Purple and Brown Belts is so high, both in terms of the rank below it and also the one above it.

Unfortunately, I cannot confirm that this is the case. Although I've spent several months at the Gracie Academy, much of what they do is a mystery to me.

There is also a known phenomenon where people have a particular Belt as their goal, and work diligently towards it, and then lose direction after attaining it.

Let's say your dream is to reach Purple Belt, and to train 3 or 4 times a week for years. Eventually you get there. What now? Your attendance drops to maybe a class once a week or so. You stop really progressing, and your steady rank climb effectively stops. Maybe you still count as “active” but your drift-like training artificially inflates the numbers of Purple Belts with no stripe.

Maybe this is a part of the cause of the weird rank structure.

It is also typical that students spend less time at the four-stripe level of each Belt color before moving on. All the other levels have a mandated 8-month minimum period. Four-stipers can move on more quickly, and normally do.

So, there is a weirdly uneven progression through the ranks. Possibly incoming non-Gracie students skew the numbers, as might the “achieved goal” syndrome, or possibly shortened four-stripe training times. Perhaps it is none of these things, and the cause is something else altogether.

Maybe it's all of them.