How many lower belts are better than you at your academy?

[calvus]

When I'm rolling with lower belts I'm usually working on specific areas of my game that are weak. And occasionally I'll get tapped because of it. But I don't see that as a problem; its actually a great way to learn.

 

[Higher Learning]

Wrong. A child green belt is NOT a white belt. Most children's green belts are actually considerably better than the adults at their gyms. A green belt that turns 16 is typically promoted to, at least, blue belt. I've seen green belts go directly to purple belts.

Think about it, regardless of age, a green belt has gone through white, yellow, orange to green so they've spent many years training compared to your 1 year blue belts.

exactly...

I don't think you guys understand what a juvenile greenbelt is, it is NOT a 4 stripe white belt... it is far closer to a high blue and often purple

and to TS, no, no blues tap me regularly although there is one new blue (very strontg & athletic guy) who can pass my guard at least once most rolls

 

[pesadissimo]

Herein lies the beauty of the white belt... I can honestly say that while I've caught plenty of blues and a purple here or there, no lower belt has tapped me

 

[Dirty Holt]

I believe what the OP is asking is more about parity in the requirements of belt skill rather than some ego trip. I will say in my gym, there is a ton of parity. There are a few wrestlers who have been white or blue belts for like a year that absolutely wreck higher belts who dont compete at all. Older players get beaten fairly easily by younger guys of much lower rank.

Where I train, you only get promoted on your gi skills. It seems to me that the promotion is more coming from the acquiring of familiarity of concepts and execution of specific adjustments more than win/loss ratio compared to upper belts. I say this because in a 6 minute match with points, there are humbly very few people in my gym that I cannot beat. However, their mastery of gi jiujitsu core areas are far superior to mine.

 

[Gabicho]

Getting tapped by lower belts is only a big deal if the submissions come from making "lower belt" mistakes: one arm in-one arm out, double leg into guillotine, crossing your ankles in back control, isolating and extending your arms under mount/side control, etc.

If you get consistently passed, smashed and destroyed, while making no technical mistakes in accordance to your belt rank, well, too bad, the other guy is better at winning. You need to fix some variables to offset that.

It's also interesting that there's people who are percieved as the "gym sharks", that are AWESOME during training and will tap you and everyone else consistently, but when they compete, they, well, suck, OR, the kind that are mat wizards, but if they stub their toe, they stop training for 2 weeks.
And then there's those guys who kind of suck during training, but they're gritty as hell when it comes to competition, go into beast mode, and smash people left and right.

 

[KGB256]

exactly...

I don't think you guys understand what a juvenile greenbelt is, it is NOT a 4 stripe white belt... it is far closer to a high blue and often purple

and to TS, no, no blues tap me regularly although there is one new blue (very strontg & athletic guy) who can pass my guard at least once most rolls

Not all greens are created equal, because it is the maximum rank allowed prior to age 16. Going straight from green to purple is fairly rare, because it means achieving green prior to turning 14.

At my dojo, we've had some greens promoted to blue immediately at 16, but many others simply convert to a 4-stripe white. To my knowledge, we have not had any greens promoted directly to purple.

 

[Higher Learning]

Not all greens are created equal, because it is the maximum rank allowed prior to age 16. Going straight from green to purple is fairly rare, because it means achieving green prior to turning 14.

At my dojo, we've had some greens promoted to blue immediately at 16, but many others simply convert to a 4-stripe white. To my knowledge, we have not had any greens promoted directly to purple.

true true, it is a bit of a grey area...

but these guys were talking like a juvenile green is just a WB which is very often not the case

 

[lechien]

making a green belt wear a white belt is wrong (even with 4 stripes on it).

I know 2 green belts.

It is about 4-5 years of training already.

They might not hang with blue belt adult because at 16 they have not develop lot of muscle but in their case, they were already around 80 kg by 14 year old anyway.

 

[Ice 9 Cobra]

I compete a lot, and there are two blues I always dread rolling with. One white belt too. Style match ups matter more than belts

 

[Modern Warrior1]

true true, it is a bit of a grey area...

but these guys were talking like a juvenile green is just a WB which is very often not the case

I personally have been training for just over two years. I'm 15, and have always trained in an adult curriculum. I'm able to compete with high level blues.

On the other hand, I'm young, so I could understand considering a green belt a white belt.

 

[RAWilliams]

Right now? All of them. My knee is jacked up and I have ACL replacement surgery scheduled for January 21st.

 

[flyingnecklock]

 

[LS1Rx7]

I just became a blue belt, and as far as I'm aware I don't think there are any white belts who can get the better of me in the gym.
I can usually get the better of most of the low/mid level blue belts as well. There seems to be a massive skill gap between mid blue and purple though, because on avg I can't touch the purple belts still.

 

[Ice 9 Cobra]

It stands to reason that if you just got your blue, you were the white belt getting the better of upper belts.

 

[mj12]

Jiu-jitsu has made me realize its not about who is the better man, its about how good you can become.

Who knows if its limitless.

 

[trianglegrrl]

Who are better than me? None of them. Who can handle me with few problems if we're going all out? More than one. I'm a 41-year-old female purple belt with a bum knee. I am under no illusions what some of these 22-year-old purple belt guys could do to me if they didn't hold back.

Each of us have technical skill, strength, size, athleticism, mental focus, etc. We have these attributes in different amounts, and they're weighted differently. I think strength and size are often very underrated because we suffer from this delusion that jiu-jitsu is the great equalizer where technical skill beats physical attributes. That's only true against people who don't know any jiu-jitsu at all. Once you're talking blue belt or above, that straightforward advantage becomes much more complicated. It has been several years since a new person in the gym gave me any meaningful challenge under jiu-jitsu rules, even those who outweigh me by 100 lbs or more. But man, give somebody 9-12 months of consistent training; teach them about underhooks, keeping their arms tight, and keeping their base wide and low; and the story changes.

One of the things that women and small guys have to face is that you have to be WAY technically better than somebody for it to be an even match-up, where across X number of rolls, the number of sweeps/passes/controls/submissions are split equally between the two of you. And the higher you go in belt level, the bigger this difference has to be (e.g. it's pretty easy for a decent smaller purple belt to clown a big white belt, but very very hard for a much smaller brown belt to dominate a bigger purple belt).

 

[ElKarlo]

None. I've been a blue belt longer than some purples have done bjj

 

[richmFTW]

There are quite a few blue belts that tap me more than I tap them. ( I am a purple belt). Most of these guys are either younger,bigger,better,more consistent in there training.

Are there any lower belts at your academy that tap you more than you tap them?

dont feel bad dude. I took 8 months off because my ex moved out and had to pay her half of the bills. I'm just now getting back into it. All the white belts are much better and a few of them are now blues (I'm a blue). It sucks but I'll get my skills back.

 

[eembach]

funny how BJJ is all about technique and a chess match until you get tapped by a lower belt, then its all about physical advantages.

 

[trianglegrrl]

funny how BJJ is all about technique and a chess match until you get tapped by a lower belt, then its all about physical advantages.

*edited to be less thoughtless*

I think the idea that BJJ is "all about technique" is something people say to make a complex idea simple. Like I said above, it is very true when you are doing jiu-jitsu against someone who doesn't know jiu-jitsu. It is absolutely not the whole story when you are paired with somebody who does know jiu-jitsu (or any grappling, really).