Officially, I started my jiu-jitsu journey at Buckhead Jiu-Jitsu. Unofficially, I took a couple of classes in Seattle. It was during a trial period at an academy that offered a variety of martial arts – Muay Thai, Kali, Jeet Kune Do, and (obviously) Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Bouncing between classes and arts, I ended up taking about three or four classes of each. I didn’t even own a Gi at that time or my own belt. Instead I wore baggy scrub pants and a borrowed academy jacket and belt. The strange part, quite a few students mirrored this haphazard approach. I thought this was par for the course for newbies – unready to commit or weren’t taking the journey seriously. They wandered in for the hour class and then wandered out. Maybe they earned a stripe after a few months, but more likely they faded away. Heck, you can argue I faded away from that academy.
Those serious students, the ones who owned their own Gis, wore maybe a stripe or two on their white belts. Three seemed as rare as a snow leopard sighting. In fact, the only guy with three stripes walked around the mat as if he owned the place. His Gi, a dark black with red accents, looked as intimidating as his stripes (and a big reason I didn’t wear a black Gi for years and years). Rumor has it, he even competed and medaled at some unnamed local tournament. Three stripes and a medal was serious business. The top of the heap. An shark in a sea of floundering and clueless white belts.
One time a couple of blue belts wandered in to roll with the purple belt instructors (and the highest ranked people in the academy at the time). The blue belts seemed bored, wasting time until the open mat after class. They whipped through their reps and stroked their stubbly beards as if contemplating the deeper waters of jiu-jitsu. The only purple belts I knew were the instructors. They seemed confident, relaxed, and infinitely more knowledgeable than me (and maybe they were). I didn’t even know brown belts existed. I assumed black belts lived in some other dimension, only appearing via a cloud of smoke and chokes.
So a white belt with four stripes? I didn’t know what that meant until I moved to Atlanta and saw my first one. His belt hung loose from the waist, as if the dingy stripes dragged one end down. The belt’s color faded to some hue reserved for hospital walls and rental properties – not quite white and not disgustingly cream colored. The shoulders and arms of his Gi were worn and crinkled like a smoking jacket or robe. He warmed up via an extravagant set of stretches and hip movements. I imagined he was made of metal and grit, surviving the weeks and months it took to be beaten over and over again by higher belts, only to survive long enough to stand at the edge of being promoted to a colored belt. There’s something intimidating by survivors. There was something intimidating about him. Especially when I learned he received his blue belt not much after that first sighting. I never rolled with him while he was a white belt.
(Writing this years later, it’s funny how we see people through the lens of the moment. This white belt was Kennith Jackson. He’ll pop up in later entries. I promise.)
With time, I witnessed others accumulate stripes on their belts. One, two, three, and finally the fourth. To me, I knew these people – my training partners, teammates, and friends. I saw the time they spent on the mats – drilling, sweating, and working. So to me, they never really “appeared” as a fourth stripe (or further). Instead, I witnessed how they earned each one. To me, they were simply Matt or Hannah or Cedric. I stopped seeing people by their rank because I stopped caring about my own. Until on the precipice of a color change.
The first of my white belt comrades to earn a blue belt was Matt. He won the local competition triple-crown – gold at Copa, New Breed, and an IBJJF open. Sam promoted him on the IBJJF podium. At that time, I hadn’t even competed yet. Yet I was warming to the idea.
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After earning my fourth stripe, I started adding up the months and days and medals. I’d won double gold at NAGA and New Breed. An IBJJF (International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation and widely considered the most prestigious Gi jiu-jitsu tournament circuit) loomed in February. I knew the score. I knew the precedence. I knew my time before blue belt ticked away. Other white belts earmarked me as “next.” I was giving blue belts a good roll (not beating them, per se, but at least making them sweat a little) while white belts felt easier and easier. No matter what, unlike others, I felt ready. I didn’t dread the belt upgrade. Instead, I looked forward to it, even if to simply join my friends on the “other side.”
That’s the thing about four stripes, you’re stuck in this “in between” state. You’re half scared of the next step – what it means, the impending challenge, the weight of the color change. Yet you’re also half ready – the same belts aren’t challenging you, you start planning blue or purple or brown or black accessories, the next challenge excites you. It’s a bit like being 17 or 18 years old. Not quite an adult, but not quite a kid anymore. In between two stages and unsure when the next step will happen.
Days and weeks pass. You start forgetting how many stripes you have until pulling your belt out of the washer. It dawns on you that a color change looms. This seems so arbitrary and frankly silly, but I see it over and over and over again how people get really weird (including myself) when standing at the precipice between belts. They start doubting themselves or play down their abilities, dreading that next step. Or they start puffing out their chests, hinting to everyone within earshot about how they’re ready and have been tapping upper belts, and generally coming across as entitled. Either way, something rots inside people when they stay at four stripes too long.
For me, I’m goal oriented. So I want to check off goals at each belt. I wanted to move up to the “big leagues” of the IBJJF. To feel what an IBJJF white belt feels like. Would they be full of flying triangles and cartwheel passes? Would they demolish me in ten seconds and send me back to a life puttering around the local competition scene? Or, as I predicted, would I be more like Matt (albeit he won all his matches in decidedly more exciting and dominating fashion compared to me, but wins are wins), walking home with a new belt and a gold medal?
Living on the edge of blue belt, all I thought about was that next tournament – the IBJJF Open in Atlanta – and being like Matt. I wanted that blue belt podium promotion, dammit.
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Years later, I think about returning to Seattle and the place where I – technically – started my jiu-jitsu journey. I want to know whether those instructors are black belts now or if that snow leopard of a four stripe white belt still trains. I want to thank them for being a good environment to start and possibly be a (spoiler alert) good example of what can happen if you don’t quit and just keep rolling. Of course I also want to roll with all of them, to see where I stack up and the trajectory my training took after my handful of classes there.