There’s this weird phenomenon I recently noticed. It wasn’t a secret or hidden. It just didn’t click until recently. I saw it on the mats, and honestly it didn’t even click then. Not for a few days.
The gym I train at is rapidly expanding and growing. They offer multiple martial arts I would feel safe in saying most are seeing explosive growth. So much so that we recently saw a change in the programming. This change was mostly adding extra classes aimed towards the folks who have put in the time and work. It’s designed for, in Jiu-Jitsu, blue belts and higher, and similar rank/time requirements for the other arts.
In our foundations/fundamentals class for Jiu-Jitsu and even in our slightly faster pace, more intermediate Jiu-Jitsu class, there isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t have at least 1 new person on the mat. And the days with only one are the exception, not the rule. I recall a class it was an even split of folks who had been there more than a few months and folks with less than a handful of classes. It is nuts. The growth is remarkable.
But I got to attend the new class designed for blue belts and higher. And I realized that even with all the explosive growth, the community in martial arts, in my case, Jiu-Jitsu shrinks. It’s almost shaped like a pyramid scheme, the only difference is the guy at the top honestly wants more guys up there with him. And looking at the classes lined up by rank, you can see the pyramid effect.
There’s a sea of white. Looking back, it looks like something out of a Roman war movie. Hundreds of burnout, beaten down white belts. Ok… Not hundreds, but there’s a lot. What makes it worse is they usually have no idea what’s going on, and no matter how much verbal guidance you shout back there, unless you are to go hold the hand of one of them and physically drag them into place, it looks like a gaggle of white belts.
Then there’s a bit of order with the white belts who’ve earned some of that coveted tape. Still, many a striped white belt, but not as vast as the sea behind them. Our academy just promoted a good number of blue belts, and at the time of writing this, I believe all of them have stuck around. So our blue belt line isn’t underwhelming. It may even rival that of the striped white belts.
The drastic change from the blue belt line and the purple belt line is formidable. On a good day we may see up to 5 purple belts, and in front of them there’s usually 2 browns.
And even though we line up like this after nearly every class, for some reason, this idea of a shrinking community eluded me.
Until the blue belt and higher class. That was the turning point, and again, it took a few days to click. When it was just the Jiu-Jitsu guys what had at least attained the rank of blue belt on the mat, it was something different. The overall feel felt different. There was a different energy. This level of expectation floated through the air. We were expectant of what was to come, coach was expectant of these men and women he brought up to this point. It was a small class. It was smaller than a typical blue belt line I referenced. It was small. It was intimate. It was awesome.
It reminded me of the feeling I had when I served on a SWAT team. When we would do Police Week events, and we’d show up in our fancy uniforms with our fancy gear. We stood out as an elite unit among the sea of “regular” cops. Now, I never saw myself as elite or as better than anyone else, but there’s those brief moments where you’ve realized that you’ve made it. You’ve done something others hadn’t. And it deserves a little pride in yourself for achieving those types of things.
And don’t read what I’m not saying, because I am not saying blue belts are elite. We’re not. We’re barely advanced beginners. We may get by with the adjective, intermediate. Maybe. But looking at the crowd, blue belts have done something that others haven’t. We stuck it out, we grinded it out, and we gleaned just enough Jiu-Jitsu knowledge for our coach, professor, whatever you want to call him, to bestow upon us a blue strip of cloth.
But that blue strip of cloth does put us aside. We’re part of a smaller group of people. And as the roll of tape comes out and blue belts called forward, that group will surely shrink. And as the color strap changes, again the group will shrink.
I don’t know what it’s like to be at a gym or academy with multiple black belts. I don’t know what the dynamics are, or what the culture is. I don’t know if when those brown belts up there earn their black belts, what will change. I hope it’s not much. Just a shift in the pyramid structure. A plateauing out at the top. I hope the only thing that changes in the multiplication of years of knowledge expanding. I hope the only think that changes is our gym’s credibility. Maybe some growth laterally, expanding outward. Adding locations and therefore adding to the reach of our tribe. But I am realizing that even with that potential further reach, our community, despite the growth will continue to shrink. But it’s a community that as it shrinks, it grows stronger.
Thanks for reading.
Thinking Through Jiu-Jitsu 