Earn Your Stripes 

1st June 2023, White Belt Diaries III

My instructor wraps a piece of tape around the end of my belt. It’s only a thin strip of finger tape, but I’m utterly chuffed. I feel like a kid again getting that 50m swimming badge. My first ‘promotion’ in the sport. 

In Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, there are practically speaking only five belts*: white, blue, purple, brown and black. This is different because most other martial arts who offer belts will have much more (karate has a bunch, so does taekwondo – and this will vary from school to school). The criticism of other disciplines was that it was somewhat easy to acquire even the most senior ranks of belts, and that belts were given out with little effort or commitment.  

The jibe of ‘McDojos’ emerged because of this. The insult implied that in other martial arts anybody who wanted to say they were a ‘black belt’ could do so relatively easily. Black belts would be given for just showing up for a little while or even paying to get given one quickly. There was little to no quality control – the stereotype was that you ended up with a lot of 40-something out-of-shape guys getting black belts who really didn’t have the skillset to match the reality of what it should mean to be a ‘black belt’. 

Whether that criticism is fair or not, that was the perception, so in formulating the BJJ ranks, the intention was to reduce the number of belts and make each take a while to achieve so that the belts actually meant something. And protections were put in place to try and back this up. There are lineages for the belts so if you’re giving out easy black belts, you’ll ruin your reputation in the community – if you’re a Walter Mitty, you’ll be quickly asked ‘Who gave you that belt?’ (There’s even a website dedicated to tracking lineage like a nerdy martial arts 23 & Me). There are minimum time requirements at each belt, and so the first time you can get the next belt is generally around a year if not longer. And schools also want a reputation of tough lower belts – under-promoted people rather than over-promoted. 

Is it perfect? No, the criticisms BJJ made of other martial arts can be seen in BJJ as it has grown. Gisele Bündchen was awarded her purple belt recently, and it caused somewhat of a stir in the BJJ world – two years and she was already a purple belt. I tell you, BJJ-Insta was not happy. This was as quick as a former MMA champion B. J. Penn who climbed the BJJ ranks so quickly he won the nickname ‘The Prodigy’ – do you think 43 year old Gisele Bündchen is as much as a ‘prodigy’ and multiple world champion 21 year old B. J. Penn? *Sceptical hippo face*. 

But I digress. I’m just jealous probably. 

In summary, it’s a bunch of delayed gratification for a lot of time that you put into going to classes and practicing the sport. To deal with that interim between belts, the jiu jitsu community uses stripes on the belt to give you a little boost to your ego. The stripes really don’t mean a huge amount other than ‘well-done for turning up’. A pat on the back. 

But my word do you want that pat. People don’t wash their belts because they fear this bit of sports tape given to them by their instructor will fall off. You begin to obsess about it. I kept telling my other-half ‘maybe next week I’ll get a stripe… it’s coming up on this long and that’s when some guys get their stripes.’ You then do a reverse psychology on yourself when you don’t get them in the latest round of promotions – ‘all that matters is the skills… just that I’m getting better.’ But the reality is you’re lying to yourself. You still want the little bit of tape. You want it bad. I’d seen guys who started at a similar time to me get theirs and I was starting to get a little anxious. Was I not good? Was I unusually bad at this new hobby I was enjoying?  

But eventually I get myself a stripe and I’m finally on the first wrung of this BJJ journey.

I text a picture to my girlfriend straight away. I bounce home with a spring in my step to show off my new stripe in-person and treat myself to a beer and wings. It’s just the sort of thing you don’t get a lot of as an adult – those ‘well-done’ milestones for little things. You don’t get the attendance certificates or the swimming badges. Maybe we should do that – the ‘Not Killing Your Spider Plant’ or ‘Well Done for Remembering to Unload the Dishwasher’ badge. 

I sit there sipping my Desperado basking in the glory of my single stripe. But that night my head hits the pillow and I start to wonder… when I will get the second? 

_{*There are more than five to be honest – the top ones are essentially reserved to the family that made jiu jitsu Brazilian, the Gracies and a few others, so effectively 99.999% of people never get near them.}