Stages of learning jiu jitsu
From JiuJitsuForums Wiki
Stages of JiuJitsu - By Kintanon
White Belt - You start out knowing completely nothing and getting crushed by everyone without even knowing how it happened or why. Slowly you get better at escaping bad positions and defending submissions until you are able to sort-of-kind-of throw a little offense out there. At this point you can beat up on most brand new white belts, as long as they aren't too much bigger or stronger than you are, and white belts have a really hard time submitting you. This is ABOUT the time most people will get their blue belt.
Blue Belt - You start out having a solid escapes from bad positions and decent sub defense. Now you can start working on sweeps, passes, and subs. You collect techniques like they are trading cards and use them on the three month whitebelts with ease. You get to where you can outposition almost all of the whitebelts, and sub most of them reliably. Eventually you get good enough at a handful of techniques that you can get them on all of the whitebelts and a good portion of the blue belts. Once you start beating up on the brand new blue belts you generally get bumped to Purple.
Purple Belt - Your escapes and sub defense are great. White belts can't do anything to you unless you are letting them work or experimenting with something crazy. You can outposition almost all of the blue belts and submit most of them. This is where you start getting good at one section of jiujitsu. You end up with a few sweeps, passes, and subs that you develop into "your" game. A lot of the techniques you picked up at Blue Belt will see very little use as you sharpen up your specific game. Now you go through whitebelts like a chainsaw, most blue belts can't stop your "A" game either expect in very specific size or style matchups. About the time you start beating up on new purple belts consistently you get bumped to Brown Belt.
Brown Belt - Now your game opens back up. All that s*** you learned at blue belt and never really used at Purple? Now you're bringing it back and suddenly it makes sense! You've never met a whitebelt you couldn't submit without spilling your beer, but now you let them tap you as long as they do the technique right. You make the blues work a little harder, and you smash on most of the purples because it's good for their soul. Your game expands from the one subset of stuff you used as a Purple belt to an all around strong game with no real weaknesses. Generally you can challenge most black belts with your "A" game, but they can take you into deep water where you aren't as familiar and drown you. The idea here is to stop that from happening by broadening your library of expert level techniques again. Once you start hanging with most of the black belts get ready for the arrival of yours.
Black Belt - Congratulations, You're a badass.
