Mount Everest
About a year back I attended a Sunday-morning jiu jitsu seminar at The Academy. Adam has John Will over from Geelong every 3-4 months. I remember John mentioned something along the lines of:
Brazilian jiu jitsu isn’t meant to be for everybody. Some things in life should remain a challenge, and should be difficult to achieve. Climbing Mt. Everest is a big accomplishment, so if somebody was to put an escalator in the side of the mountain, that challenge wouldn’t be there anymore and anyone’s grandma could make the journey. But Mt. Everest doesn’t have an escalator, and climbing it is a big achievement.
He likened the jiu jitsu journey someone undertakes to climbing Mt. Everest - unless you’re very patient (12-15 years for your black belt, versus 2-3 in a traditional martial art like karate or taekwondo) and are eager to learn from your mistakes, and trust me that’s all there’ll be for the first few years, then it’s not the right sport or martial art for you. The obvious upside to this is that you’re achieving something that the average person simply can’t.
Last week I was disappointed with how my jiu jitsu was “feeling”. I thought that I’d hit a bit of a rough spot.
This morning I received this from Adam at the bottom of an email about another matter (the new club website):
On a slightly different subject, I (me) will be presenting the Blue Belts to my students on the thursday prior to the JBW seminar - however, I would still like you to attend and support the seminar wearing your new blue belt.
So it looks like I’ll be retiring the white belt in a few weeks.
I had spoken to Adam about how important it was for me, whenever the time was right, to receive my belt from him personally. Traditionally John has awarded the coloured belts, but I requested that Adam award mine.
I’m very, very excited (and a little-bit relieved)!
awww how exciting! i think all awards and recognitions are made that much more special if they’re presented by someone you respect, admire and if they are significant to you in some way :)
congrats!
In taekwondo, a black belt (1st dan) doesn’t give you the ability to grade other students - you need a 4th dan for that, shown by a tip on the belt. From memory it takes a minimum of 6 years to go from 1st dan to 4th, and it takes a lot longer to go any higher than that. Can you go “higher” than a black belt in BJJ?
From Wikipedia :
Black belts can receive degrees, up to 9th degree, for as long as they train or teach the art. At 7th degree, the black belt is replaced by an alternately red and black belt. At 9th & 10th degree, the belt becomes solid red. Only the founding Gracie Brothers Helio, Carlos & his brothers will ever have the 10th degree red belt[15]. The Gracie family members who are 9th degrees belt holders are Carlson Gracie, Relson Gracie, and Rorion Gracie.
Generally a black belt will receive a degree every two years that they’re fighting, training or teaching. Given that it takes about 12 years to get your black (at which point you’ll be doing it full-time) and another 20 years to progress through the black degrees, it’s a significant achievement to get to your red.
I’d heard that there’s only one “red” belt which belongs to Helio, and that it’s likely that his eldest son, Rorion, will receive that honour when his old-man passes away. The quote from Wikipedia makes it seem like Rorion already has a 9th degree red belt.
The Wikipedia article on Rorion appears to confirm what I thought, that he has a black belt (9th degree). My guess is he’ll sit on this until he’s the head of the clan, at which point it’ll become the red belt, and he’ll be the only person in the world with one.
2-3 years for Karate? When I did Karate it was closer to 5 or 6 just to get to black (from memory, it might have been longer), and then there was 10 dans after that. The year I quit (this was like 15 years ago), they added 2 more colour belts. each belt had up to two stripes as well. So I would have thought given the extra belts it would be at least 8 years to get to black and then however long to progress through the black belts.
Maybe my school was different?
I have 2 belts, one is white and one is brown. They’re mostly for fashion and holding my pants up though :P
See now I know you’re lying - you have nothing fashionable.