Every so often, it pays off to look up from the grind and see how far you’ve come.
This is true of jiujitsu academies, but it’s also true of you on your own personal jiujitsu journey. We’ve all experienced plateaus, since this is a dynamic and challenging art that will never be fully solved. Your plateaus are always higher than your previous personal bests — but it’s hard to see that.
We’ve been open five and a half years total, and we’ll celebrate our fifth anniversary downtown this May. Taking a look at some of the numbers we’ve gathered over that time might just help if you’re looking for a perspective shift — and they’ll illuminate the path to our anniversary celebration this spring.
Since we opened Bellingham BJJ in 2018, more than 1,200 people have trained with us. Some of those have been guests, seminar instructors or visitors — but a lot of those folks are just people that came to train. Our goal has always been to introduce people to jiujitsu, and it’s gratifying to see how many folks have taken us up on that.
A lot of those folks have stuck with it. If that’s you, you might be on the grind (good!) toward your goals. You might also be in one of those moments known as the Blue Belt Blues, even though they affect all belt levels — a moment where you’re struggling to see your own accomplishments.
Belts are always going to be difficult to get here. Setting high standards and making sure people meet those standards is the best way toward collective progress. And though no one should train just for a belt, everyone should think about what a BJJ belt promotion means (and what it doesn’t mean). If you keep training with your eyes on skill goals, everything else takes care of itself. We aim to be transparent with our promotion standards, and you can see those here.
If you run through those standards, you’ll see that every belt promotion requires a ton of knowledge — and demonstration of that knowledge. Achieving a promotion here means you’ve learned a lot, and demonstrated that you can apply those skills.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Check out the data.
Since Bellingham BJJ opened in 2018, we’ve awarded:
- 58 blue belts
- 9 purple belts
- 5 brown belts
- 2 black belts
At first glance, this is about the ratio you’d expect. Blue belt means you know the basics, and the upper belt ranks take longer to achieve. But look closer.
That’s out of 1,200-plus people. Of all the people who have tried jiujitsu here, fewer than five percent have gone on to earn a blue belt. Less than one percent have earned any of the other belts.
Less. Than. One. Percent. Visually, that looks like this:
Over the next five years, all of those circles will get bigger, we hope. We want more people to try jiujitsu, and we want the whole pie to expand for everyone. But it’s striking how rare an achievement a belt promotion is, no?
If you’re at that moment in your training where you can’t figure out why the pendulum sweep isn’t getting it done against big wrestlers, or if learning complex leg entanglements is a challenge … remember that you’re further than you can imagine from the person you were when you started. Know that, if you’re in the middle of the blue belt blues, you’re a lot closer to black belts than you think. And give yourself the flowers you deserve for getting to a place that few others reach.