Had an interesting moment. Someone I was going to promote to blue belt almost four years ago but disappeared and never heard from again… shows up last week. We are catching up. Then asks “hey do you have that blue belt on you I heard you were going to give me?”
I think it’s classicthey think I am humping around their blue belt with me at all times, years later. I told them to join back up and we’ll see. Hasn’t trained since. I mean, technically I was already going to give it… but, it didn’t feel right in my body that they just gets it right away after stepping away for so long. Human relations within bjj is ridiculous lol
“Hey guys… I feel I’ve gone as far as I can under SpeedKing9 and now feel that in order to grow, I need to branch out on my own and do my own thing. When you guys get to this level, you will understand.”
“I’d like to thank SpeedKing9 for all he’s done for me over the years. He changed my life. On that note, if any of you guys want to come across the street to check out my daily open mat I’ll be giving a nice discount on tuition that’s lower than Speedking9. We are all one. Oss”
I bet covid resulted in a ton of delayed promotions. I guess it would depend on the reasons for someone leaving, whether they maintained a good relationship with their instructor while they were gone, and whether they are still at an acceptable skill level for the new belt. If someone took an extended time off with no BJJ training, it is possible their skills are less than they were the date you were going to promote them.
A local bullshit academy in my city did the opposite. A bunch of dorks who took off end of 2019 until mid 2021 magically got their black belts after covid. They didn’t train for close to 2yrs and then 3 months after covid they have a belt ceremony. They are all fat and bloated and looked like they hadn’t trained in years. I guess the instructor just promoted them for surviving covid or coming back to pay tuition or some shit.
Very similar, I know a school where the instructor left for over a year and moved to another city. He said, “Whoever is the highest belt that shows up that night, teaches”. Over that year membership dwindled, as there was no real instructor.
Next year, out of the blue, the the absent instructor calls a bunch of his old brown belts and says that he will be in town and they need to come for promotions. A couple of the guys hadn’t trained in over a year. They all got black belts. [I ended up teaching a couple of those new black belts for a while.]
One kept doing the Kimura backwards during drilling of the Kimura. The f-ing Kimura. Like a white belt would. I know not all BJJ BBs are experts at BJJ, but I just do not know how anyone on earth gets a BB in BJJ without knowing how to lock a Kimura in their sleep. I am pretty sure they were kinda embarrassed about what they didn’t know and that contributed to them both disappearing after a while. They weren’t even close to brown belts, IMO. One was kinda like a new purple belt who got promoted even though he doesn’t come to class very much and the other was like a terminal blue belt who stopped paying attention to anything years ago.
A couple years later I met another one of these black belts, who was actually pretty good and he told me he hadn’t been inside a BJJ school for well over a year when he got his black belt.
So yeah… standards in BJJ have never been higher nor lower.
This jerkoff promoted a woman who hadn’t trained in close to 4yrs because she had a kid. She had been back maybe a month our two and he promoted her. She was probably 50lbs heavier than when she left. Her gi didn’t close all the way.
We have literally had grown men quit for not getting a stripe.
have a few belt farms up the road, Im a white belt an I clown there blues pretty regularly an we are close to the same size, they tell me that I’m really a blue belt an a few of our blue belts should be purple. I’m like no dawg, y’all just suck.
For the longest time I thought he just didn’t wanna promote, now I realize he just wants our belts to carry some weight. Even though I thoroughly enjoy causing misery to people who think a pice of cloth gives them a status symbol and just showing up to class is enough. It’s about retention of the technique and putting yourself in bad positions, experimenting with unfamiliar concepts.
Don’t get me wrong I respect what the belt actually means an see a purpose in showing other the time an effort you have put into your craft. But now it just seems like a attendance certificate, or a buddy system.