Stop Guarding the Belts! The Raw Truth About Jiu-Jitsu Promotion.

um and kind of highlights a real problem in jiu-jitsu belting in general and and and the ability to gain belts without tournament wins. Uh and without even showcasing your talents in a tournament setting where you have live opponents, right? Because I didn't win my tournament. I mean, I took third, but and ironically, I took third with that reverse triangle, right? That's what gave me the third place spot. Uh but you know, and I got to showcase what I'm truly capable of in terms of dynamic submissions from from losing from losing badly. [laughter] Like I was way behind on points. It's like 122 or something like that. Like I was really behind on points. Uh, and I I just think that we have a problem in jiu-jitsu and honestly tournaments solve that and we probably should enact some sort of a tournament system. But then the problem is these tournaments end up becoming who regulates the tournaments and what are the rules sets of the tournaments. it just becomes way too messy to say you must do a tournament because even my coach wanted to say you must do a tournament to get your next belt. But then we had uh we have a student who's really really talented but they're in their 60s, right? And not only they're they have grandkids like they don't they're not just in their 60s but they have grandkids and they're never going to get out to compete just from a sheer work a full-time job, come in in the morning and train. uh have all the talent in the world, like everyone can see that they're they were blue belt level. Uh and they're not going to get to go out and compete. So, it's it's not a stature of, you know, it would be unfair to not promote them is is what I'm getting at, especially at that talent level. Uh when when you could see how how good they were in live roles against