The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - I Just Got my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) Blue Belt - Here's How You Can Too! | PPP #62

Episode Date: December 13, 2020

I share my experience from the past couple of years as I worked to earn my Blue Belt in the grappling art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ).

This episode is dedicated to a close family friend of my wife and I, who was one of the strongest fighters I know, and her husband, who fought right along with her, who unfortunately she lost her battle, her match with cancer after four years of fighting so strong and so hard, but gave this world two beautiful children and a wonderful man and her husband. We love you, Ashley and Aaron. Thank you for setting the example on how to face adversity, push through it as much as you can, and keep loving each other through hardship.

Everybody, thanks for coming back to the People Process Progress Podcast, Episode 62, Five Considerations to Achieve the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Blue Belt. I was fortunate to achieve that about a month ago, and it was not an easy road. I have kind of written and rewritten a post in this episode of how am I impactful. Then I typed it out, and I'll share this. It's on the peopleprocessprogress.com website, so please also stop by there. For those that don't know, I post about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu all the time, but not everybody follows it like I do.

For those that do not know, a basic summary of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and I've shared that in previous episodes, and I'll share those links on the post, the history of it. It's a quick thing. It's a combat art from Japanese jiu-jitsu that focused on chokes and locks. So what if a samurai lost their sword? How can they still fight? And that evolved into judo, which is a lot of throws and trips and some ground games still, and wrestling, like grappling and control, right?

So in other words, to me, the summary is we learn how to physically control resisting opponents through dominant body position combined with the threat of choking someone unconscious or breaking a limb or joint. So and the end result is, as I think Eddie Bravo mentioned on Joe Rogan podcast, I mean, the end result really, is if you don't tap when you're choking somebody unconscious, and this is, you know, part of that controversy and chokeholds in law enforcement, they will die. So in jiu-jitsu, you learn how to do that to the point that someone says, yep, I'm good because I'm going to go unconscious. And if you needed to, in a real confrontation, you could control someone through knowing how your body moves through all these hours we'll talk about here

and hold them to where the fight comes out of somebody when the choke's on. That's real life. So it won't go down that road of controversy, just to say. And good to see, so good to the Gracies too, that jiu-jitsu's starting to show up in law enforcement training, so that's awesome. So anyway, to say the least, the gentle art, as they call Brazilian jiu-jitsu, oftentimes does not feel gentle, but I love it. And a great, my wife and I just watched this movie, Chick Fight.

I recommend it. It was really cool. Spoiler alert, too. So if you haven't seen that, I'm about to tell you something. But the core message of it is learn to fight, and then the struggles in the world are less. And that is, to me, a perfect parallel to Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You go there, you're exhausted, you get your butt kicked, and then the meeting that's not going great isn't so bad. You're not quite hot enough. Starbucks coffee isn't so upsetting, right? So the other thing is that

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu builds confidence and serves as mental and physical therapy for everyone that practices it, including me for sure. So I know I looked a lot for how do I get to blue belt? The next level is a white belt. What should I do? And again, for folks that aren't training jujitsu or aren't aware of it, the belts system is there's not a lot of belts because it's real. The only way to get better is actually fighting or rolling with other people. And so there's a white belt that everyone gets when you start up. Blue belt is the next level.

Then there's purple belt, brown belt, and black belt. That's all the belts. The estimated time is like 10 years to black belt. There's so many different factors. You can Google all that. To blue belt, it took me a couple of years and I'll get into the details of kind of what that means. Supposedly about 10% of the people that start Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu actually get to blue belt. So I feel very honored to have pushed myself so that my professor, and professors like the head coach, and then you have instructors that teach under them, is my understanding of that. But I feel very honored that my professor decided

I was at the level of knowledge in Jiu-Jitsu to earn the blue belt. It's fantastic. I did learn, so I'm gonna do an old school, if you recall, if you've been a fan of the show for a while and you listen, it used to be called Between the Slides. I would give the Between the Slides five tips. So I'm going to do that today.

I'm going old school, like five things, right? You could, if you Google jujitsu and blue belts and getting to blue belt and white belt knowledge, there is infinite stuff out there. So I'm going to try and keep it simple and give it more of a, you know, a personal advice. I'm not going to, you know, I'm in no position to start teaching techniques and all that jazz. So I'm going to tell you what I think worked for me, right? And the first one is that you have to accept that we will lose more than we will win. There's no getting around it. When I started as a new jujitsu student a couple years ago, I thought I could wrestle a little

better than I could, right? I had some, I wrestled one year in high school, but you very, very immediately learn within your first intro or your first class that someone smaller than you, certainly someone bigger, but someone smaller that has better technique, that's pretty strong, because strength does matter to some extent, and has that endurance, can easily submit larger opponents. There's folks I rolled with that are 50 pounds less than me. I'm a couple hundred pounds and smoke me. They would literally kill me. And you just have to accept it. You just have to. You're going to lose a ton. As we develop, though, that curve is going to change, right? It's going to change your stance among the other white belts, your ability to defend longer against maybe the blue belts.

When you get against purple and brown and black belts, you're going to get smoked, right? But you still can do a little better. And you will realize even as a white belt, as you train, and there's no magic after two months or six months or whatever, but you will, as you get more experienced through rolling and class and techniques, the brand new people that come in, you will quickly see that gap in an untrained person and you that's been training for a few months. And as you train longer and longer, when the newer people come in and you've been training for a year, year and a half, it's fantastic. It's an immediate response to someone that's untrained. And the blue belt, my understanding understanding is right that I can handle myself on the streets

against an untrained person, right, of equal kind of size. Now there's 300 pound football players that certainly would suck to have to actually go against, but that's the thing. But you will see that even as a white belt. So as you progress toward blue belt, you'll see as you get untrained folks coming in for that intro, that new class, wow, this works. I'm absorbing it. So in addition to just kind of the philosophical, you have to accept you're going to lose more than you win. I know some folks like numbers and how long does it take. So I'm going to give you some of that right now for those that like that. Okay, so how do I get there? I started when I was 44 years old. It took me two years about to get my blue belt and that's at two different schools because we moved. those two years. I have partially torn a ligament in my right thumb.

I had left knee surgery to trim my meniscus from twisting around. I've been knee, elbow, nose, bloodied, mat burn, neck cranked, you know, almost choked unconscious many, many times. So the specific, and that's just a factor. So if that doesn't sound like something you want to do, you're probably not going to make it to blue belt, right? Or push through more specifically. I consistently at first went consistently to two classes and then open mat. So two or three times more for the bulk of my training, three to four times a week in classes and open mat. Each of those classes was one or one and a half hours long. There were about the breakdown was about 10 minute warmups, 20, 20- to 30-minute technique drills,

and about 20 to 30 minutes of five or seven-minute rounds of rolling. Rolling is where we grapple each other. I try and choke you or break something. You try and choke me or break something on me, squish me, whatever. That's fighting against live resisting opponents. In short, there's no shortcut, and the mats don't lie. You have to put in the time. Just think about that three to four times a week for two years, one to one and a half hour classes. And you're doing drills for half an hour, at least each class, 20, 30 minutes

each class, you're warming up and then you're rolling anywhere from three, five minute rounds to sometimes on open mats, six or seven, five minute rounds or more, depending on how your endurance gets built up. There is no getting around the fact that you're going to lose in a lot of those. You're going to win in some of those and win is air quote, right? So did you win by just not getting submitted? Did you win by actually submitting someone? Did you win because you lost and you learned from it? That's another thing. So first thing is you got to accept it right up front. You are not going to walk in a jujitsu place unless you've been a Division I wrestler. And even then, right, you're still going to get smoked by people that know jujitsu more than you.

So accept that we will lose more than we will win, number one, and that will set you rolling towards your blue belt, I feel. The second thing is that we have to put the time in outside of Brazilian jujitsu, right? There's in shape, and I've heard that, and I've said this so many times, especially to brand new people, right? There's, there's in shape. And I've heard that. And I've said this so many times, especially to brand new people. And then there's Jiu Jitsu in shape, right? There's folks that come in and they're pretty jacked and they don't have a lot of body fat. And then they start grappling with someone that knows how to grapple or wrestle or do Jiu Jitsu. And they are exhausted immediately because they're maxing out their muscle use,

all that oxygen gets burned up and they're done. And then they get tapped, right? When I started a couple of years ago, I had already kind of recalculated myself into fitness in my garage gym and that kind of stuff. And I had burpees and sprints and kettlebells and garage gym stuff. I was in good shape, like really good shape. And then I rolled and realized

there's a whole different thing when you're using your heart and your lungs and your muscles and you're trying to breathe and someone's trying to do bad things to you, right? It was humbling. And you realize you got to kick that endurance up. So what you don't want to do is gas out during a roll on the mats. And in particular, if you actually ever have to use jujitsu outside the gym, right, you want to have a gas tank where you can use that stuff. So in addition to exercising, to me, putting time in outside of jiu-jitsu includes watching videos, reading the history of jiu-jitsu. And again, I'll link to this. I have it on my website.

And the importance of those core jiu-jitsu white belt skills, which starts with talking to your professor, but also there's some pretty good videos and things from, from high level, um, trainers and instructors and legends in the sport. Um, you know, it doesn't replace time on the mats, but it will supplement it. Right. And that doesn't mean you're going to learn as like a week to student, the flying arm bar and actually be able to do it to anybody really focus on what are core defenses, what are core submissions or, you know, and as a white belt, like focus on what are core defenses, what are core submissions. And as a white belt, focus on defense and position. Don't worry about tapping everybody out. So second thing, got to put time in outside of BJJ, both for your mind and your body,

and put those together with what your professors and instructors tell you and the reps you get in the gym. The third thing is you have to care about your progression, right? Like anything in life, if you show up and just go through the motions, you're not going to get better. It's up to us as students to go to class regularly, to go to open mats where you get a variety of opponents because if you see the same people, right, you start to learn each other's game and it's still challenging.

Do both in the gi, which is the traditional uniform, right, with the belts and things, and no gi, which is more of like the tight shirt and kind of fighting shorts. Just keep showing up as the mantra, right? And you have to do that day after day, week after week, month after month, year after challenging jiu-jitsu year. You have to do it. So also, like life, you know, consistent BJJ training, we undergo an emotional roller coaster, right? Did you have a good role? You're going to be elated. You're going to be like, oh, I'm progressing. I'm getting ready. And then you're going to go to the next class and you're going to get smashed or you're going to quit on yourself like I have before. And you like,

you get freaked out. You have a wave of claustrophobia. You're exhausted. You can't breathe. The high level person is just crushing your chest and it feels like you're going to die. And you have to remember you're in a place where this person is not actually trying to kill you, right? And try and back your mind down. And sometimes for me, I was successful and sometimes I was not. And that is part of caring to go, you know what? I'm going to have some self-imposed shame because I quit on myself. So I'm going to accept it. I'm going to kick my ego to the curb. I'm going to wash my gear rash guard. So I'm going to accept it. I'm going to kick my ego to the curb. I'm going to wash my gear rash guard. Then I'm going to go to class and do it all over again,

year after year. That's what you have to do. And you have to care enough about it to keep doing that. We cannot accept our own failures or crumble to the hardships on the mats or in the world. And that's what jujitsu helps you do. If we don't progress in the gym, or rather we won't progress in the gym or professional personal lives, if when we have that really bad day, we quit and don't show up anymore. So you have to care. You have to keep caring. So we are accepting we're going to lose, right, as the first thing, and then we'll get better. We are putting in time for our bodies and our minds outside of class.

And we are caring about our own progression and accepting that we're going to have to keep showing up whether it was a good day or a bad day. The fourth thing for me is we need to ask questions. Someone just tapped you out. Ask them what you could have done to defend it better. The choke or joint lock. Either longer or completely. Because at some point when you go and it's higher level folks, you are not going to be able to defend it forever. That's just the thing of it, right? They're better because they have hundreds or thousands of more hours than you, just like

you're going to be better because you have hundreds of more hours than the people that are newer. There is huge value to me in conducting that immediate after action report after each, you know, five to seven minute role. Hey, what could I have worked on? I got you. And then as you get a little better and you start to, to, you know, help the newer folks, you can give them feedback, right? I've had folks say, man, thank you so much for telling me this or, or helping them making frames so they don't get crushed so much or those, then you start helping others is the other thing about caring about your progression is you care about other people's progression. That's being a teammate, right in jujitsu as well. So in addition to your training partners, though, you got to ask your professors and instructors, what do I need to work on? What's the good stuff I'm doing? I need to get better at what's the bad

stuff I need to stop doing. A great tip that I got from my professor now is I received, you know, was to do a BJJ journal. So in the journal, write for each class and overall for jiu-jitsu, what do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? For example, I want to pass the guard, which the guard for those that don't practice jiu-jitsu, I want to get around someone's leg so they can't stop me from arm barring them or choking them or something like that. So the guard is when your legs are wrapped around a person. You can hold them and control them from the bottom, which seems counterintuitive, but it's pretty wicked.

Then we should document it. Did I hit my goal today? Did I hit my goal this month? Did I hit my goal? And I need to get better at consistently journaling. And remember both. And this was huge too is don't let your mind get stuck just on the bad stuff. Remember the good stuff, right?

Balance it out. Even though you could have gotten crushed, what did you do well? Did you switch your hips? Did you get your knee shield up? Did you stop that person who then ultimately just smashed you and choked you out a little bit? Then try and do it a little bit next time. This last one of the five things is we need to be honest with ourselves, right? Is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu the hobby or sport? Is it for all of us? I would say no. That's why 90% of people that start Jiu-Jitsu don't make it to blue belt.

And the percentages go way down as you get up higher, or so they say, because I'm not a purple belt. So people don't stick with it. And particularly, it seems the statistic is that blue belt is where a lot of people don't stick with it either. But again, 10%-ish, right? Make it from white to blue out of the 100% that start. So if you're not sure if this is something you're interested in, go to an intro class,

right? A good welcoming gym should be open to anyone calling or showing up. Call ahead of time. It's always courteous because if you just show up in the middle of a class, it's kind of, you know, you could watch or something like that, but it's kind of disruptive. So I would call the gym ahead of time, look on their website. What's their schedule? Hey, do you mind if I come try a class?

And most places I know the place that I started in Richmond and here in Blacksburg. Awesome. And they're both open to that. So so find the gym near you. Right. And give them a call. And you'll know pretty immediately whether it's for you or not, right? And what you shouldn't have happen is you shouldn't get thrown right in with the spaz that's going to try and kill you like he's in a world championship match.

I know what I see, which is great, again, from where I was and where I am now, is, hey, there's a new person. Put them with the person that's not a spaz that actually has more experience. The more dangerous the people are in your jiu-jitsu gym, the safer they are to roll with because they know what they're doing. They're not trying to just strength slam you or rip your head off. They're trying to use their jiu-jitsu techniques and know they can to just let you get a feel for what it's like. And you know what? If it's with you, if you like it, welcome to the jiu-jitsu family. If you don't, good.

Godspeed to you. And you tried it. You still tried it more than the majority of folks, right? You went in and tried a tough grappling art that is legit. And if it's not for you, that's fine. But be honest with yourself about it. Because if you just keep doing it, you know, it's not going to help you like we talked about before as far as, you know, accepting the loss and being honest with yourself.

So the other thing is, if you do stick with it, you're going to face all the challenges, all the muscle soreness, the mental soreness, the potential injuries, right? But, you know, we have to keep that self-honesty at the forefront. There are days where I'm tired because I stayed up too much or had a long day at work and I don't want to train the next day or that evening. I'm much better with myself when I exercise in the morning or train jiu-jitsu in the morning than I am in the evening. Sometimes like, man, I know I'm going to be tired and get smashed again, but we push ourselves anyway, right? As a 46-year-old Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner, I do listen to my body more than if I was half my age, which is a lot of the people I roll with. That's the other thing. If you're older like me, most people are going to be younger than you by a good stretch.

So I listen to the aches and pains in my body. I take supplements. I ice when I need to, those kind of things. But I also try and stay honest with myself, right? Am I really injured? Do I really need to take a break or am I being lazy? Particularly now that it's winter, you know, do I want to keep progressing? When the warm sheets are like, man, you could just hang out and just rest instead of going outside where it's 20 degrees in your socks and flip flops in your gi to go hit those cold

baths that haven't warmed up yet. But if you do that all the time, you're going to quit and then you're not going to get better. Right? So just like the adversities in life, if we quit when it's hard, um, in practice, we're going to do the same thing in real life. So I know this is a short episode. There's so many different ways to take this like, hey, here's the magic to get a blue belt, but there isn't. It's really I think the intangibles combined with of course, there are skills that your professor will recognize that you have to have. So let's run through those five things real quick. And again, you can read more of this. It's almost not quite a transcription, but on the People Process Progress website. First thing is you have to accept that we're going to lose more than we'll win. We have to put time in outside of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for our physical fitness and mentally studying the art, the history of it, things we should know. We have to care about our progression because we own it, right? We have to take ownership of that. We need to ask questions of our training partners, of ourselves, of our professors and instructors.

And we have to be honest with ourselves. Is this for me? I hope that this short episode, that the post helps new practitioners and perspective on how to stick with it or shed some light for folks in brazilian jiu-jitsu every person that earns the blue belt then the purple then the brown and the black has gone through a mental and physical roller coaster of pain injury success all of it it's like a microcosm of life on the mats every single day and throughout the years of their studies. So it is a big deal that I am super proud to be part of. And just like I'm proud of this podcast, of everyone that's reached out to me, the folks that I've met across the world, I thank you so much for reaching out, for connecting on LinkedIn.

Find me there. Go to peopleprocessprogress.com, please. Check out that website. You can subscribe to this on every platform pretty much that podcasts are played on. Thank you for every read of my blog. Listen to the podcast, every professor and instructor and training partner that's pushed me the past couple of years in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and in life. And I would be remiss if I did not absolutely thank my family who has put up with me coming home frustrated, happy, injured. My wife that's given me the time by watching our

kids. My oldest that watches his little brothers when my wife's gone and I want to go train or need to go train. Family is everything and they have helped me get to where I am in Jiu-Jitsu. Stay safe out there everyone. Wash those hands and Godspeed.