BJJ legend Roy Dean recently shared his thoughts on what practitioners should be focusing on at each belt rank from white to black. It’s a long journey for everyone and with just 5 different belts for adults, each one will often take years to progress through. Some grapplers have been promoted to black belt faster than the average of course, but even the fastest in the history of the sport have still taken a few years to reach that level. For most people though, the full process will often take a decade or more. In fact, comparing the progress of thousands of black belts all around the world shows that the average is a little over 12 years.
Every belt level on that journey signifies a certain amount of progression, and Dean was asked about what he thought the focus should be at each stage. White belt is the very start of the BJJ journey of course, so Dean doesn’t have any big expectations at this point:
“At first, you know from white belt to blue, you just want to make it through. You want to make it through the class. I remember tying on my white belt and my heart beating really hard like I’m going to get my a** kicked, but I was willing to do it because I was so hungry for the knowledge, right? So white belt, it’s just about being able to hang in there and be competent. You want to be a competent white belt and if you focus on that, eventually you learn the fundamental movements and techniques.”
Although white belt is a clear signal that someone is a beginner, blue belt is the first mark of clear development. Although many people start to really understand how the sport works, Dean believes that you still need to work on seeing the bigger picture:
“You might think you know a lot but that’s where I think the humility needs to come back in at the blue belt level, like you don’t know that much. You know some things but you don’t really have enough experience to contextualise it; like when that move would work, against what kind of body types that would work, all of that. So blue still wants to tap people consistently and that is a struggle, reverse-engineering and getting your systems down.”
The next step is purple belt and for many people, this is when someone is considered a ‘higher belt’. Roy Dean reflected on how white and blue belts focus on what they learn in order to better explain what they should focus on now that they’re halfway to black belt:
“At purple, yeah you’re tapping people and that’s satisfying… Yet you are still getting beaten by brown and black belts and you’re not quite sure why, it’s not as obvious. Like ‘oh that guy knows a lot more’, you know a lot too. So there it’s more about going deep. At white belt, everything could be useful information. At blue belt you’re a little but more focused, kinda basing it around your A-game and what kinda fits with your body. At purple, you need to go deeper into what you’re already good at so you can expand on those technical systems.”
Brown belt comes at a point when practitioners have dedicated a huge amount of time to the sport and have probably spent over a thousand hours on the mat. Despite that, everyone has weaknesses and Dean believes that this is what brown belt is all about:
“Once you get brown belt, now you need to go back and fill in the holes. If your takedowns suck, you gotta learn takedowns. If your Judo sucks, you need a couple of Judo throws. If your wrestling sucks, you need to down whatever. If you have no half guard, now’s a good time. If you’re totally unaware of leglocks, okay let’s get some of those under your belt because you don’t want to be doing that at black belt.”
Dean believes that the final belt promotion is when things come full-circle:
“Once you hit black belt it’s like okay, it’s a rediscovery of the basics.”
The full interview with Roy Dean where he shares his thoughts about what to focus on from white to black belt was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of The Grappler’s Perspective:
