7 Things to do to Gain Your Blue Belt! (Checklist)

Your Checklist to gain your Brazilia Jiu Jitsu Blue Belt:

1. Learn a Take Down!!  - doesnt matter which one it is. Just try to learn one that you feel most comfortable with and just go for it!

2. Learn One Pass - ideally you should have several types of guard passes that you can chain together to develop a complete passing game but at the white belt level, after a few months of learning and drilling the different passes, choose one and be relentless about going for it. 

3. Learn a Sweep - as a brazilian jiu jitsu player you need to be able to work off your back. I would learn and try to drill several sweeps from the closed guard, half guard and any other guard you feel comfortable but at the end of the day you need a GO-TO move. My preference would be the butterfly guard sweep or the classical half guard underhook sweep. 

4. Submission - try learning one basic submission to attack. I recommend either the arm bar or the triangle. Both are available from top and bottom. Both take years to really master but you can use these basic attacks at any level. 

5. Go to a Seminar - you want to get your belt but you really have not seen any BJJ until you have gone to a seminar, preferably with one of the top instructors or competitors. You will find seminars everywhere on the internet. Pick one and try it out. It would give you a second perspective and its a lot of fun if you go with your team for a few hours to learn something different. 

I strongly recommend seminar of more classical jiu jitsu guys especially and white and blue belt levels. 

6. Private Lesson - an excellent way to make progress is to take private lessons. At the end of the day it is for you to actually make notes and ask the questions. if you ask the good questions, you will get the information from your instructor that you need to make progress. Take a private lesson every month or two and you will be a much better brazilian jiu jitsu player. 

7. Compete! So you want your next belt huh? well you need to deserve it! you may have been training for a year or two but only in competition can you really find out where you are on the food chain. Compete as much as you can at white belt, gain confidence and it will be a matter of time before your instructor just hands to you that long awaited blue belt

I would say that typically it should take at least 2 years to gain a blue belt training at least 3-4 times per week (consistently) but the reality is that if you actually want to get good at this sport you need to train as much as you can. 

How Long Does it Take to Gain Black Belt in BJJ (basic grading guide)

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is famed for being one of the martial arts where you truly have to earn your black belt on the mat with thousands of hours of drilling and sparring, showing the people around you that your skill in rolling is up to the level of black belt.

According to the IBJJF guide you have to be at least 19 years old to gain a black belt and should have spent a minimum of 4.5 years training at least 2 times a week. While this is clearly a minimum, there is no doubt that at the top-level competition academies, students train very often 2 times a day if not more combining all aspects of the sport from self defense and standing techniques such as judo throws, to gi and no-gi groundwork.

For example guys like Keenan Cornelius who clearly trained professionally at academies like Atos and Team Lloyd Irvin have dedicated themselves full-time to the sport and still only managed to reach the black belt after 8 years. 

Others such as BJ Penn and Caio Terra have been promoted much more rapidly and without a doubt remain one of the top brazilian jiu jitsu practitioners having won the world championships (IBJJF) at black belt level.

I think you would typically see a lot of practitioners reach black belt in around 10-15 years of consistent training. I think this should refer more to black belt level rather than the black belt itself as unfortunately today with the rise of the popularity of the sport, some instructors have started to bend the rules and gradually bring down the quality of the sport.

For example there is no denying that the level of intensity and general quality of the sparring partners varies significantly between academies. I personally have found that "family" style academies such as Gracie Barra have a much lower quality of practitioners with many blue belts corresponding more to white belt level and purple belts to blue belt level. Even though the instructors may be the top world class competitors, sometimes you will find that the academy as a whole and the head instructor will choose to promote some of his senior purple belts faster than he really should in order to show that his academy has a big group of senior grades and not just blue and white belts.

There is just no real escape from mat time and dedication required and I think to a great extent the quality of the teaching is very important. The student teacher bond whereby the instructor is really investing time into the student is necessary in order to achieve great results.

Overall I think the time required to achieve the technical ability to reach belt differs but I would say that one needs to be training for at least 2-3 years in each belt to attain a certain level of understanding of the techniques and develop the game. This fact is also supported by the polls I have held on this blog for a while now. I think 2 years per belt is something that is achievable with a minimum of 4-5 training sessions a week schedule and 3 years per belt at 3-4 sessions. 

That makes for around 4 trainings*50 weeks*3 years * 4 belts = 2400 training sessions overall to achieve the grade and 12 years of training required. 

2400/ (50 weeks) / 2 years / 4 belts = 6 trainings per week to achieve the black belt in 8 years

Based on the above you should spend 12 years * 12 months / 4 belts / 5 (since you can also have no stripes) = 7.2 months per stripe! (with 4 training per week)

Of course my calculation is probably a little more strict than reality. I think in reality most people will reach purple belt in 500 sessions and black in 1000 sessions.

It is of course a question of motivation.

Training 6 times a week you should spend 8 years * 12 months / 4 belts / 5 = 4.8 months per stripe

How Long to BJJ Purple Belt?

I think most academies you will go to, people will tell you that it does not matter what belt you are and that what is more important is technique. While I cannot agree more to this statement, belts count a lot in BJJ. 

While at white belt you spend most of your time especially six months into training thinking about when will be the magic day when you get your blue belt, when you actually get to blue belt things change a lot. You are on the other side of the fence I would say. Those hungry and athletic white belts will want to hunt you down and get that sacred submission on you.

A couple of weeks ago I experienced such a moment. I was rolling with a white belt, may 6 or a year into training BJJ. I was quite tired and I think it was my fifth sparring roll and there he was going as hard as he could to try to catch me on something. He was at least 20 kg or 45 lbs heavier but having managed to attempt to take my back he latched on to try to get the choke on me. How upset was he that despite his best efforts (I mean with all his strength he tried to force everything he knew) he could not do anything and he was really upset. 

I think the blue belt is when white belts really start hunting you. I thinking many of us were that guy. Four striped white belt looking to catch a fresh blue belt on some submission hold. 

What is for sure important is belt colour whether we want to admit it or not. It is an enormous boost when you come to training and beat a guy of a higher grade and it is also an enormous set back when you come to training and you lose to a lower belt. Happens to me I think every day. Some time I go hard and try to win while at other times I like to roll light or for position, to maintain position but not use strength and of course sometimes the guy is good or you just werent focusing. The most important thing is to learn from the mistakes  as at the end of the day what is important is how you fight in competition. You can lose to everybody in training but if you come back home with a bundle of IBJJF medals and they don't, this is the real test. 

Gradually we become used to the blue belt. After a year or more you become more mature and technical. Suddenly white belts pose no real threat to you. It is no longer about you defending but it is now about attacking and holding the position you attain. As I became a mature blue belt with nearly two years at blue belt, I realized that it is nothing special for me to be able to successfully defend against other blue belts and hold my ground. Now it is time to develop my attack: actively initiating sweeps and guard passes. I don't want to recover guard from half guard. I want to transition and obtain the dominant position and then retain it at will. The more I practice the better I become at passing the guard but when I get there in side control, I want to retain this position at will. This is the next level I think and even if some submission does not work out, I want to get side control and then work to transition to mount or back or submission depending on the situation giving no room for my opponent to escape. I think this is where purple belts try to gain this additional level of expertise and whats sets them apart from the blue belts. Unlike blue belts, they already have a strategy, what passesses they like, which sweeps from the bottom work for them and they not only can defend but can also start to attack when they see the opportunity.

I have read that the IBJJF minimum number of classes for Blue Belt is somewhere around 120-130 and for Purple Belt at a minimum 360 classes. I think at Alliance it is also minimum 360 classes.

Thats a minimum of 140 classes at blue belt. Today I have had 228 classes as a blue belt so I don't think the minimum counts for much and the level at each belt can vary drastically. 

I've seen some guys here in Russia that are very good at blue belt while in the USA I have encountered some purple belts that did not appear to have that much grappling skill as I would have expected. I think really the difference is in the style of training. There are family BJJ guys that train two times per week. These guys are like 35-40 years old and it is just not fair to try to compare a 20 year old guy who trains 5-6 times a week and does conditioning. Both can be of the same belt colour.

In my fair assessment, I think I would like to hit pruple at around 350 classes at blue. I thinks thats a fair number. at three times per week thats only two years and a half which is fine in my opinion. You need to earn it and I think you want to feel purple belt and not just get it. 

Purple belt is an elite grappler in BJJ. Its a Judo black belt and a really skilled guy that should be able to easily overcome any white belt in class and also teach blue belts a thing or two about BJJ. I also think the purple belt should be well rounded, knowing at the minimum two or three good guard passing techniques, two good submissions and know one type of guard as the "go to place". Plus I think a good purple should have competed at least a couple of times. Its important to be a complete fighter that has the experience to share with the younger grades. It would be a shame for me at white belt to get advice from a purple belt about competitions if he has not entered. Of course everyone has there one situation but for purples that teach I think they should have some competition experience so they know what works and what does not in a comp.