At what belt level can you teach BJJ?

[stlnl2]

For the sake of argument, let's say this is assuming you work a regular job and train 3 times a week.

10+ years is the ging average.

 

[stlnl2]

I think that people starting their own gyms and making people pay to have a blue belt teach a class is completely ridiculous. In Japan, to teach any martial art, you have to have at least 20-30 years experience to be a head instructor at a dojo. I think if a blue belt wants to teach in a place where there is really no other option for people who want to learn, the best thing to do is to start a club. At the very least, I would say a three or four stripe purple would be sufficient to teach, and have people pay for their instruction.

You do realize alot of ROC's are/were run by blue belts right?

 

[KickBoxer23]

Alot of instructors start out teaching as a blue belt my instructor did it and hes currently a brown belt. Plus we have the blue belts help out at our place and teach alot of the white belt classes. A blue belt from a legit school is more than qualified to teach white belts.

 

[burton.]

Reading this thread really makes me almost 100% more confident in my teacher. He's a brown belt and really, really good. I knew i could learn stuff from other belts, even whites, but i wasn't sure if you were "supposed" to have the black belt teaching and every other color had to be assistant. Seeing as alot of people have Purples and blues as their instructors i'm glad i don't have to be worrying about this...

Do you have to be a black belt to promote someone?

 

[D Train]

^^^^^
You do not have to be a black belt to promote. My instructor is a brown belt and he can promote to blue belt. All other promotions go through his instructor.
I think it's pretty common for purple belts to teach, especially in small gyms. You can certainly learn the basics from a blue belt though.

 

[YeahBee]

You can teach at any belt. Same thing for judo btw - we've got clubs in small towns run by orange belts (yonkyu). Of course, your students have to take the experience of their teachers into account.

On a slightly different topic, in Canada you're soon going to have to have a NCCP (National Coaching Certificate Program) certificate if you teach in a club recognized by Judo Canada ... same thing as other olympic sports. A black belt without one won't be allowed to teach, a white belt with one will. This is mainly because its a requirement of Sports Canada for sports that want federal funding, but it also is there for insurance reasons ... the idea being that the coaching certificate means you should know how to take care of the safety of your students, even if you don't know much about the technical aspect of your sport.

Of course, you could always have a judo club not affiliated with Judo Canada, though it means your students won't be allowed to compete in provincial and higher tournaments (again, mainly because of insurance).

NCCP (National Coaching Certificate Program) certificate

Is this an almsot academic degree or something you can get over a couple of weekends?

I have done a few courses and gotten afew certs myself in both football and judo, for the judo one we had to take a three holiday course for basic sports then we had another 3 for judo specific cert

As I have studied to become a teacher I was very familiar with the stuff being discussed, about differnt learning methods and whatnot, alos some strength/cardio and diet stuff.

I also see a wast differnce in teaching adults and children, atleast in Sweden you have legal obligatin to report suspected abuse and whatnot, after all a coach can be someone many children confide in. It is alos about values especially when it comes to children. Sports should have a deeper meaning and not jsut cater to the elite

It was not required thou

The football ones I have are the first steps to become a certified coach for professional clubs/countries

I think I was at step 3 and step 11 are like English Premier League coaches:icon_chee (iassume they must be a steap advancing curve)

 

[KickBoxer23]

Reading this thread really makes me almost 100% more confident in my teacher. He's a brown belt and really, really good. I knew i could learn stuff from other belts, even whites, but i wasn't sure if you were "supposed" to have the black belt teaching and every other color had to be assistant. Seeing as alot of people have Purples and blues as their instructors i'm glad i don't have to be worrying about this...

Do you have to be a black belt to promote someone?

I think every affiliation has their own ways but from my experience no they do not have to be a black belt.

 

[whipyourasstyle]

Do you have to be a black belt to promote someone?

No . . . But a general rule is you should have a black belt within three degrees of your belt. For example

You (blue belt) --> Your instructor (any belt blue or above) --> His/Her instructor (any belt blue or up) --> BLACK BELT PROFESSOR!!!

 

[dbowles]

Reading this thread really makes me almost 100% more confident in my teacher. He's a brown belt and really, really good. I knew i could learn stuff from other belts, even whites, but i wasn't sure if you were "supposed" to have the black belt teaching and every other color had to be assistant. Seeing as alot of people have Purples and blues as their instructors i'm glad i don't have to be worrying about this...

Do you have to be a black belt to promote someone?

at our school (Gracie Barra) we have to have a black belt promote us.

Our blue belts are also all capable of teaching white belts. Infact I learn more from them than I do our purple and brown belts.

 

[burton.]

No . . . But a general rule is you should have a black belt within three degrees of your belt. For example

You (blue belt) --> Your instructor (any belt blue or above) --> His/Her instructor (any belt blue or up) --> BLACK BELT PROFESSOR!!!

Hmmm i think i understand.... Only thing is the way it works at my Gym is:

Me (and 7 other kids in my class) White belts -> one/two blue belts -> Instructor (6 year brown belt)


So assuming he thought i was ready he could if he wanted to promote me to blue?

I really don't care about belts at all, i do see them as an achievement in my training but i would never want one unless my instructor was A) Qualified and B) Honestly thought i deserved it.

 

[Valiss]

Thanks for all the insight. The whole degrees of spereation thing is interesting too.

So it sounds like there is not authority on who can teach in BJJ. What I mean is that in TMA if you have BB you can teach and it's obvious who is allowed to teach (by the belt color). Now I'm not saying the TMA BB is good, but it's an easy way to see who is qualified to teach.

But it sounds like what you guys are saying is in BJJ anyone with a color can teach or run a school. Interesting.

 

[DirectDrive]

i think a good blue can teach beginners, with no problem.

i don't really feel like i needed black belt instruction until i was a mid level blue. at that point i started to see BJJ a little deeper and needed that deeper understangind until then.

i have been fortunate enough to train under Lovato Sr and Jr so i have always been under a black blet and in good hands.

 

[georgejjr]

Is this an almsot academic degree or something you can get over a couple of weekends?

I have done a few courses and gotten afew certs myself in both football and judo, for the judo one we had to take a three holiday course for basic sports then we had another 3 for judo specific cert

As I have studied to become a teacher I was very familiar with the stuff being discussed, about differnt learning methods and whatnot, alos some strength/cardio and diet stuff.

I also see a wast differnce in teaching adults and children, atleast in Sweden you have legal obligatin to report suspected abuse and whatnot, after all a coach can be someone many children confide in. It is alos about values especially when it comes to children. Sports should have a deeper meaning and not jsut cater to the elite

It was not required thou

The football ones I have are the first steps to become a certified coach for professional clubs/countries

I think I was at step 3 and step 11 are like English Premier League coaches:icon_chee (iassume they must be a steap advancing curve)

Actually its a coaching program set up by Sport Canada for olympic sports. There are five levels, each of which consists of theory (common to all sports), technical (for the sport in question) and practical (ie actually coaching). The first level, which is going to be necessary to teach judo, involves a 2-day course in theory of coaching (safety & ethics mainly, plus class preparation - lesson plan and the like), a 2-day course in technical judo (very basic judo, for the most part sankyu level), and several months of actually coaching. Safety and ethics is by far the biggest concern at level one, and its aimed at teaching children.

The following levels become more involved, and take longer (considerably for the highest levels, which I haven't done) to complete. I believe Sport Canada wants all olympic team coaches in all olympic sports to eventually be level 5. Roughly, level one should leave you prepared to teach a single class, level five should leave you prepared to develop a national program.

The emphasis, at least for the lower levels, is teaching children (ie under 18). Some of it is pretty obvious stuff, some of it was pretty new to me ... for instance, at different ages children go through periods where they can develop a particular ability rapidly, so they'll learn in a year what at any other age would take them years to develop. If you have kids of your own you'll have seen this without realizing it when they learn to speak ... a child of 2-4 can learn to speak several languages fluently in just a couple of years, something that most of us take decades to learn later on in life. Which means ideally you aim exercises at children with that in mind. Sometimes this means not introducing them to a sport too early, because they'd be better off at a young age working on something aimed at what's undergoing rapid expansion ...

 

[YeahBee]

Seems pretty much what I did childrens development and all that, I think it is a good idea to broaden sports, talents will always pull thru evne with old stereotypical methods but this opens up it for more people.

SO I guess Sweden and Canada doesn't jsut have healthcare, icehockey and mooses as common denominators

 

[lechien]

Thanks for all the insight. The whole degrees of spereation thing is interesting too.

So it sounds like there is not authority on who can teach in BJJ. What I mean is that in TMA if you have BB you can teach and it's obvious who is allowed to teach (by the belt color). Now I'm not saying the TMA BB is good, but it's an easy way to see who is qualified to teach.

But it sounds like what you guys are saying is in BJJ anyone with a color can teach or run a school. Interesting.

I think it is mostly due to the popularity, the supply and demand of BJJ around the world.

In remote area, where there are no BB, people would put up with training under a blue belt.
Such scenario will never happen in Rio for exemple.

My guess was once a BB will relocate in the remote area, people would switch to train under a qualified BB.

But actually, I know some people that still rather train under a blue belt instead of training under a BB. Maybe they feel some loyalty towards their original club or maybe it is hard for them to swallow their pride and train under a qualified BB. Who knows?

My problem is with club started by blue belt instructors. They will affiliate themselves and receives their BB within 5-7 years by organising annual ($$$) seminars with their head instructor. But what do they really learned and who do they train under meanwhile? Surely a annual seminar is just not enough. It is basically a Mc Dojo!!

 

[lethalazn]

Based on my personal experiences:

White Belt: Having sessions amongst friends, and even that is sketchy (if the guy's a spazzer....or forgets details easily, uh oh) Shouldn't teach actual classes, even if they know enough to teach, they should spend about 90 percent of their time learning anyways. However, most of them are more than capable of just showing moves (people interested in self defense are actually better off learning from a decent BJJ white belt than some Mcdojo black belt.) I've shown people (who don't train) something simple like Mount escape or Sprawl+Guillotine which saved them a trip to the hospital.

Blue Belt: 1 on 1 sessions with white belts to small group get-together sessions, "O crap, our instructor is in Brazil, who's gonna teach now?" I started my grappling under a few blue belts and I don't think there's much of a difference between being taught by a blue belt and a purple belt in the very beginning.

Purple belts: They run classes in other people's gyms and start getting paid for it. I've never seen a blue belt run a class and get paid for it. O and I don't recall a purple belt opening his own gym around either.

I've never encountered any brown belts, only one black belt.....OBVIOUSLY black belts can teach....

 

[The Colonel]

When I first started training in BJJ in 1996 my instructor was a blue belt.
He eventually got his purple (I think he's a black belt by now) but back in the day after I got my blue anytime he had some beginner's come to class he'd have me teach them. Showing them simple things like standing up in base, how to do a straight armlock, how to elbow escape etc.

Currently the club I go to is run by a high level purple/soon to be brown belt and on days he can't make it to class I teach. I'm still a blue belt but most people seem to think I'm ready to be a purple. I still teach the basics (I think any good blue belt is more than capable of showing someone how to escape mount, do an armlock etc.) but sometimes I'll go over something that I picked up from a dvd.

I live in a pretty isolated area but none of the guys seem to mind at all that I'm just a blue and teaching them. They always thank me after class and like how my specific teaching method differs from my instructor's. I plan to one day get my black belt and I look at it all as a good way to get more experience teaching, that and it does help my game out as well.

But I don't begin to pretend to know everything and there will be sometimes where I'll readily admit, "look I suck at x-guard, you should ask our instructor about that" or sometimes if its a really funky question I'll tell them freely that I don't know. Our club is free though and I would never ask to be paid for teaching as a blue belt.

 

[sheddy]

I don't see anything wrong with blue belts as assistant instructors, but to be the sole BJJ teacher somewhere, I think you should be at least a high purple getting ready to move up to brown.

Fair point, but in all honesty, some people might be good at BJJ, but no good as a teacher.
Learning/practicing it and teaching it are 2 completely different things.

 

[batman69]

i started teaching our morning class part time as three stripe blue belt, and it seems to have worked out well for all those involved.

 

[DaDiazBros**]

There are people who have been blue belts for four years and up, meaning their experience is easily comparable to black belts in numerous other martial arts styles: e.g., I'm sure there are many Taekwondo black belts with less time than that in their discipline. If you're a white belt, then there is plenty you can learn from a good blue belt. A black belt is generally preferable, but there's nothing wrong with a good blue belt teaching beginners.

dude you could get a black belt in TKD in like 2 weeks.