Levels not Belts

I’ve figured out where I want to take my Jiu-Jitsu training.

Most schools work in a similar fashion, but that doesn’t work well for me.

Students show up for a night’s training. They are shown a technique, and then practice that in pairs. There is then another demo, often related to the first, and practice again. There might be only a few such slices, or as many as a half dozen.

Students are expected to try them all, and then latch onto those that fit what they want to add to their personal bag of tricks. More get discarded than adopted. Those cast aside are soon forgotten, or only poorly recalled.

I enjoy such classes, but don’t like having valid techniques fade away.

In this, I am extremely fortunate to be part of the Gracie University system. There is a preset curriculum. Every chapter, technique, and slice has detailed instruction available online. It is all available in a logical and coherent manner. The only problem is that there is such a huge amount included.

Instructors are expected to master all of it, and to pass rigorous exams to prove proficiency.

It is all divided into 4 levels, and I have already passed the first such exam.

Doing so takes a huge amount of drill outside of class time. Right now at our school we have two people working on these technical exams. Rob is doing level 1, and I’m playing the role of his partner. It takes two to do this tango.

Shawn is our instructor, and is finishing up his level 4 with Rob and myself as his partners.

Both of them should be finished soon. It will have taken them each roughly 10 months.

Anyhow, it is my intention to train for and test on each of the 3 levels I have left to complete.

Level two, shouldn’t be too bad. Rob has said that he wants to carry on past level 1 into level 2. We would be each other’s partners.

The good news is that it won’t take anything like a year. Most of our current spare training time goes towards Shawn’s test. If we just swap that over, we will cut a ten month amount of work down to 3 or 4 months. With the amount I travel, we’d best expect the longer end of that scale.

It will get trickier after that, as no partner is currently lined up. Somehow, things often work themselves out, so I am optimistic. I’m going to say that at the rate of 4 months per level, I should be done in a year.

A major value to all of this is that I will be reasonably proficient with every movement in the curriculum. It is also a different, fuller type of learning. It isn’t just the body movements, but also includes great detail about when they are appropriate, and how to handle common counters.

About the only thing that I foresee slowing me down would be if somebody else starts this same kind of journey, and wants a partner for their training. Anybody at our school other than Rob, or Shawn, or me would be starting at level 1. I would happily become their partner-tutor, as doing so is about the finest kind of review in the world. It would also me a good method to build up good will in potential partners for my own level training. Sneaky, don’t you think? I’ll do it even if there is no chance for payback, because it’s fun.

A weirdness in all of this is that although it will be the very best kind of training I could be doing to improve my brand of Jiu-Jitsu, I will actually be facing a penalty in rank progress.

I currently wear a Purple Belt with 4 stripes as decoration. The next step for me would be the big jump up to Brown Belt. Normally, this is done by means of an exam.

A date is set, and a meeting with an authorized Black Belt is scheduled. The candidate is called upon to perform about a half-hour worth of technique, and then there is some rolling. To make the exam meaningful, the student is made aware of what will be covered, and they then are expected to practice this stuff to quite a high level.

The gentleman that would be administering my exam would be Marc Marins, the instructor at the nearby North Vancouver school. He has told me that the material that he would want to cover in the exam would be all of the specifically self-defence material in the curriculum. This makes good sense, as it both very important while at the same time being the part that students typically tend to ignore.

There has been no chance for me to start working on defence-specific technique. Since learning what Marc would require, I was away for two months, and then off of training for two more due to an injury. Every other bit of training I’ve had outside of class time has been devoted to Rob and Shawn’s exams.

Shall I postpone level 2 training for Rob and me in order to work for a few months on Brown Belt test preparation, or put off the test prep until we’ve completed level 2? There’s no way I want to delay level 2, as having a ready and willing training partner doesn’t come along just anytime.

So shall I do level 2 for 4 months, and then get ready for a Brown Belt test? That might be the way things go. That would put a Brown exam to around Christmas time. But what if Rob wants to keep going on into level 3? I’d be nuts not to jump on that. Level 4? Same thing.

My priority will be the level exams. If they become impossible, then I would worry about a Brown Belt. I also have a bit of a secret hope that my instructor Shawn will decide to recommend me for promotion anyhow, and that Marc will agree without any exam at all.

Marc has said that for any self-defence test, we would accept the corresponding level exam as a demonstration that the techniques covered were done. If I am able to get all the levels, I guess my exam would turn out to be just a bit of free-rolling, or maybe not even that.

A downside to putting off a promotion by a year or so is that all subsequent promotions will be moved a corresponding amount farther into the future. This isn’t really a big deal, as future stripes will come when they come, as long as my old body can still handle on the mat.

That only leaves one more potential belt colour change; that from Brown to Black Belt. As I understand it, this is an extremely taxing event spread over 5 days, done in Los Angeles at Gracie University, and administered by the Gracies themselves.  If I were handed a Brown Belt today, the absolute youngest I could possibly face a Black Belt exam would be when I’m 67 years old.

I don’t think I could physically handle such an exam process now, let along when I’m that much older. Don’t think this is like some skinny woman complaining she’s fat just so that her friends will tell her she’s not. This is like a short person saying he’s short. I’ve never heard that the Gracies ever take it easy on the people they give Black Belts to.

I can imagine going to such an extended grading, and after a couple of tough days having to drop out to keep from doing myself harm, even assuming I don’t get hurt in a more obvious, bone-snapping fashion.

So if a Black Belt is out, it doesn’t matter when a Brown Belt happens. I suppose it doesn’t even matter if Brown happens either, although one would be very cool.

Therefore, it’s the level exams for me.

Slippery future

The future sometimes moves farther away.

I started doing Gracie Jiu-Jitsu back in the fall of 2011, at the spry age of 55. Back then, there wasn’t really much of a path for advancement for students who lived far away from the centre.

You could be a White Belt, or could earn a Blue Belt. With an incredible amount of work, you could also add a single swanky stripe onto your Blue, but that was as far as it went. It didn’t matter, as I was mostly just trying to absorb the curriculum that we had available at the time. It was fun.

Then, in 2014, the system for rank advancement in the outlying schools kicked in for real. Things became much like they were at the Gracie’s own school. We had access to all the colour belts; White, Blue, Purple, Brown, and Black. Each of those below Black Belt had 4 stripe levels. We were set.

To get any of the belts above Blue, a student had to have completed all 4 of the stripe levels on their current belt, be recommended for promotion by their instructor, and be evaluated by one of the Gracies or a Black Belt authorized by them.

The road was long, but there was a map.

Being as old as I was, Black seemed out of the question, and Brown almost as unlikely. Purple, however, seemed a real possibility.

I trained. Time passed.

My Blue Belt stripes came in due time, and in 2016 I went down to the Gracie Academy in Los Angeles to be evaluated for a Purple Belt. I passed.

I trained on, and more time went by.

Stripes were added, one....two...three...four....

Magically, I found myself on the doorstep for a Brown Belt.

By this time, I was training three days a week at my home school, and once a week in the city at another academy. Both instructors kept talking about upcoming promotion. The consensus seemed to be late in the summer, or in early fall.

Then I got hurt. I don’t even know what caused it. There seems to be a herniated disk in my neck. My thumb and a finger are usually numb, and there is often tingling in my right arm, and sometimes an ache. For some reason, a section of my central back seems to like going into spasm. I don’t think Jiu-Jitsu caused it, but it aggravated it really badly.

This is the kind of thing an old fart of 62 years shouldn’t mess with, and when the doctor said to give it at least 6 weeks of recovery time. I did nothing much at all physically for two months.

It is all still there, but it is much, much better.

I have returned to training, but do nothing that risks my neck. There is no rolling forward or back, or getting choked, or any sparring. I treat myself as very fragile, as one good yank could put me back to square one, or worse.

This all puts any thought of a Brown Belt evaluation on hold, perhaps permanently.

This is all most annoying. If it had happened after getting a Brown Belt, I would be able to collect Brown stripe ranks without difficulty. Maybe in the three or so years that would take, my neck would improve to the point where I could eventually go for Black.

As it is now, my rank is stalled.

In a way, it isn’t a surprise. Way back in 2014 when the process for promotion came into effect, my dream was to get to Purple before some injury sidelined me, and then to eventually collect the 4 Purple stripes. That’s exactly what I’ve achieved.

It’s just that I was so close to exceeding my expectations in a very stellar fashion.

So now I work on healing, and training as I can.

Maybe Brown can still happen, just pushed off some distance deeper into the future.

Can’t trust futures.