Last Sat

Our LA vacation in the second half of February, 2015....

Day 02/28

Yesterday, Friday, the noon class was exhausting.

Add to that a mess of yard work, and a big beach walk, and I was pretty well done in. There was no way I could suit up and repeat the daytime training at the evening class. Therefore, I took to the sidelines to watch instead.

Interestingly, it was nothing like the daytime class at all. If anything, it was harder. I sat there, pleased at my decision to watch. Everything they did was old hat, and grueling, until near the very end.

Rener showed a cunning control/guard/sweep/escape thingee. I had to snap out of my stupor, and try and do some spectator learning, as well as get it all written down.

Now it's Saturday morning; the last Los Angeles Saturday; the last class of my two weeks of training.

Tomorrow, we pack up the car, hug Denise, and our holiday ends.

Card Flaws

Our LA vacation in the second half of February, 2015....

Day 02/25

About to do my last private session, and then a noon class. If anything at the noon class is lift-oriented I'll avoid the evening session. Tomorrow I only have one class and then we hit Disneyland. My back can rest, maybe.

I have just been looking over my attendance card, which is actually a whole package of them stapled together. Last winter I did 101 classes, but only 92 got recorded. For this visit I have so far done 13, and only 9 are recorded. Of the 3 privates completed so far, none are on the card. It isn't a perfect system.

The cards work better for locals as their cards are easily accessible. They keep the cards for visiting CTC students behind the desk, and I can't always get mine, especially for the 7 am classes. Luckily, my attendance doesn't count for anything down around here.

Week one I made it to 10 classes and 2 private classes in six days, or two per day. This week not so good, it will be only 7 classes and 2 privates in 6 days, or only 1.5 a day. Don't know how I managed to train 13 times a week for eight weeks straight last winter. Having no injuries at all must have been a bigger factor than it seemed at the time.

I will miss the private sessions with Jordan.

Loving It

Our LA vacation in the second half of February, 2015....

Day 02/24

I am loving this visit to Los Angeles even more than the one last winter. Adding on a few private lessons has taken things up a bit, fat notch. Also, writing down the techniques for each class is really helping me retain stuff. This is even if, as seems likely, I can't make heads or tails of what I've written down after we get home. The very act of writing forces me to think in a different way, and to not let my brain collapse the moment a class ends.

I came here with a few injuries this time, and am allowing myself to sit out sometimes. Yesterday I trained at the noon class, and we did stuff that was not great for my wrecked hand. I therefore sat out the evening class, which is always pretty much a repeat of what is done mid-day. My brain got useful repetition, and my hand didn't have to do any heavy lifting.

Was all smart avoiding a second lifting class, and yet got caught in one the very next evening. It was going well, except I pulled a muscle in my back.

Fate.

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.

Crunch it

Today I was trying to look up somebody who trains at a different Gracie certified training center than myself. Along the way, I noticed some stuff about the rank structure of the Gracie system.

The first earned belt is a Blue one. Each colored belt has five levels associated with it. These are no-stripe, one-stripe, two-stripe, three and four.

The Gracie distance education program is so new that it's promotion scheme has only had an effect on Blue Belt ranks at this time. All Gracie students with higher rank that that are those who train at the Gracie Academy in Torrance, or who live very close to it.

For the purposes of this evaluation, I will ignore no-stripe Blue Belts. My reasons are that such students are still pretty new to the system, and I am too lazy to try and count how many there are registered online with the slow internet I have access to right now.

That leaves the lowest rank of this evaluation to be Blue Belt Stripe One. There are a total of 208 listed. I am leaving out any whose rank is listed as “unverified.” 7 of them are from our school in Gibsons, or roughly 3.5% of the total. Of these, 3 are currently active, either at home or on Vancouver Island. The grand total of 208 includes both current and inactive students, unless they have been promoted.

There are three ways that these 208 students could have earned their rank. It could have been awarded directly at the Gracie Academy, or at any of a number of certified training centers. It also could have been received without direct contact by students of Gracie University through taking an online video exam.

That takes us to Blue Belt Stripe Two. There are 73 folks who've earned their second stripe. Gibsons is responsible for just 1 of them, or a shade over 1%. This is the absolute highest rank that can have been reached by Gracie University students, while Certified Training Center and Gracie Academy students can be still higher. This will change as time goes on and more Gracie University exams become available.

The highest rank that it is possible to have reached under normal circumstances through a Certified Training Center is Blue Belt Stripe Three. There are 28 of this rank that have been produced at either CTCs, or at the Gracie Academy itself. Gibsons has 2 three-stripers, or just over 7% of the total.

All ranks above that have been awarded directly by the Gracie Academy, or at a very small number of other, special locations. At the rank of Blue Belt Stripe Four there are currently 8 listed.

None of the numbers available are perfect. I suspect that the main Gracie Academy removes their local students from the list if it is known that they have become inactive, but I don't know this for sure. How could they have produced only 8 four-stripe Blue Belts that have not progressed to higher rank? That 8 number would have to include all currently active four-stripers, as well as all who have reached that level and then quit. Possible, but unlikely.

The list does include all CTC and Gracie University to have achieved a level, inactive or not.

The numbers do show a bit of a trend.

There are about a third as many two-stipers as ones, and about a third as many three-stripers as twos. The trend continues with roughly a third as many four-stripers as threes.

Everybody says the dropout rate lowers significantly above Blue Belt, but even so a single belt-color inference can be drawn from what we have. For every 243 students to attain a Blue Belt under this mix of routes, only one will continue training long enough to earn a Purple Belt.

Start of Week Two

Our LA vacation in the second half of February, 2015....

Day 02/23

Training week two will begin in a few hours. This week they are hosting a cops-and-military course. That means a canceled class for me mid-day Tuesday. It also means that the mat will sometimes be full of big guys doing everything awkwardly.

...
Dropped Helen off at the beach on my way to my Monday Morning private session. She says being on the beaches around here is her favourite LA activity. Her pickup will be about four hours later, after my private class and a mid-day group session. I wonder if she'll get her fill today.

Our  time here is pretty weird. We do some stuff together, and some with Denise. Other times, I'm off doing my Jiu-Jitsu gig. Sometimes, Helen just wants to do things on her own like her beach trips when I'm training.

It all seems to work.

End of Week One

Our LA vacation in the second half of February, 2015....

Day 02/21

Private lesson two was outstanding. Reviewed everything from last time, and added some more new magic. Jordan saw my ipad and suggested we video next time. Very generous for somebody who makes his living teaching this stuff. Will bring my tiny tripod along.

***

Saturday class was great. There was only one class, and it was taught by Rener Gracie. It was all side mount from the bottom, and all new to me. I really want to remember all of it. A really sweet part was how well it all meshed with what I've been doing with Jordan in my private lessons.

After class, Helen and I went for lunch with our good friend Denise, then we were off for a big, long walk along Hermosa Beach. LA has great beaches, but there are little tar blobs that escape from offshore oil rigs. They got on our feet, and are difficult to get off.

Tomorrow is Sunday and there is no training at all. What will I do with my time?