What Does It Mean to Be a Blue Belt?

Being a white belt is tough. This is because you don’t work for your white belt like you work for more advanced belts—you endure it. It takes a lot of humility and dedication to start from the bottom and work your way up.

To use an analogy that Rick Ellis of The Art of Skill mentions in the above video, when you walk into class on your first day, your instructor will hand you a toolbox. Unfortunately, that toolbox is going to be empty. You are in charge of filling it with tools. The only way to acquire those tools and learn to use them is to come to practice, to drill, and then to roll with your classmates.

When Do You Become a Blue Belt?

Old school practitioners of jiu-jitsu will likely say that a person reaches blue belt status when they can convincingly defend themselves against a bigger, stronger, and faster opponent who is not trained in martial arts.

Of course, no instructor is going to tell their white belts who are on the cusp of becoming a blue belt to go pick a fight with a stranger at the bar, so there needs to be some kind of equivalent metric that demonstrates basic competence in a few key areas. For Rick, this comes down to being comfortable in the basic positions of jiu-jitsu either when you’re on the defensive or when you’re attacking. You can learn about the full list of moves that Rick expects his blue belts to know by checking out our previous post about the belts.

In most cases, this takes the average person who is in fairly good shape about 1-2 years to achieve. If you already have a background in martial arts and you’re training hard, you may be able to get to the blue belt level within a year. If you’re starting later in life or you’re not in great shape, it will likely take longer.

What Should I Focus on to Get Better?

When you start taking jiu-jitsu classes, expect everyone to be better than you. Unless you’re rolling with someone who started the exact same day as you, everyone else in the class is going to have more experience. Therefore, one of the first things that you should focus on is learning to not focus on losing. Losing is not a metric of failure when you’re a beginner. The only metric for failure at that point is quitting.

Escapes

That said, you are going to get tapped a lot and you are going to find yourself constantly on the defensive. Consequently, you should focus on learning how to use technique and strategy to escape. This means learning how to get out of side control, how to pass guard, escaping from back control, and so on. You need to also know several variations because not everything is going to work the first time.

As you gain more experience escaping, you will also notice that you are more comfortable in bad positions. After all, if you spend a lot of time in these kinds of positions, you will eventually stop panicking every time someone gets the upper hand because it will be familiar. This will allow you to think more clearly during a fight and make you more physically and mentally tough.

Establishing and Maintaining Control

Being able to escape is absolutely central to being able to defend yourself. Once you’ve learned how to escape, though, you then need to be able to establish control and maintain it. Moreover, you need to be able to do it in several different positions (mount, closed guard, side control, back control, knee on belly, etc.).

You also need to learn not to telegraph everything that you’re going for. You’re not a major league pitcher who’s challenging someone with a 100 mile per hour fastball. You’re a white belt. Misdirection can help you fool your opponents, throw them off balance, and keep them from escaping or establishing control.

Your Goal Is Not Losing

There is a tendency to focus on who won when you’re rolling. Did you push your opponent to tap out? Did your opponent push you to tap? These are terrible metrics for a white belt. Rick notes that a far better metric is asking, “Was I able to control that person from a dominant position?”

Especially when you begin to transition from a total beginner who is constantly getting thrown around like a rag doll to a more experienced beginner who can effectively escape from bad positions, you often lose control early on because you’re so excited to be in the dominant position. Rather than working methodically, you quickly try to go for the submission.

This can backfire.

As Rick says, “Position before submission.” If you’re just going for submission, you’re not going to have control over your opponent. If you’re going for an arm bar, for example, you need to have control over at least the shoulder line. Maintaining control is not just about finding the perfect way to hold your opponent but knowing how to respond to their attempts at escape and to keep them subdued as best you can.

Rick notes that you need to also learn how to effectively attack with techniques like arm bars and chokes from a variety of positions, but that it’s important to recognize that you’re not going to get to deploy these very often when you’re starting out. As a new white belt, focus on not losing and only use these techniques once you’re certain you’ve established control.

Stick to the Basics

Finally, Rick recommends resisting the temptation to find novel or secret techniques that your training partners don’t know. Staying up all night watching videos about these kinds of moves won’t help your game. To improve, you need reps on the mat that teach you how to escape, how to establish control, how to maintain control, and how to advance an attack. Moreover, you need reps to establish good timing, which is the ability to both recognize an opportunity or vulnerability and to react quickly enough to make the most of the opening.