What Each Belt In BJJ Means

My turn to be the Professor.

A patch I had on a gi that encompasses the BJJ experience pretty well.

I’ve honestly started to think that the belts in Jiu-Jitsu are kind of dumb.

They’re a deeply imperfect method of determining skill, people become jaded in the pursuit of them. And in reality, all a belt is is a piece of fabric that determines where you line up at the end of class at a culty gym.

Belts are not really that big of a deal when it comes to skill.

Trust me, I’m a black belt.

But I get it, the belts hold a lot of importance to people. I have the privilege of thinking that belts don’t matter because I’ve done the thing where I went through all the belts, learned the lessons, and graduated to the next one.

This article is not about those life lessons from each belt. This is not some bullshit piece about how being a white belt teaches you more about life than studying philosophy or how getting a black belt is the equivalent of a Ph.D. I try not to lie to people who read my newsletter.

This article is about Jiu-Jitsu and getting better at it.

This article is about my personal training journey through each belt, and it’s about the different training lessons that I learned at each belt so that I could become a pretty good black belt.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.