The Blue Belt Survival Guide
“I’m pretty confident when I say that blue belt is the worst belt in Jiu-Jitsu.
A blue belt is like a white belt in terms of ability (a little bit higher, but not much), but the beginner’s perks usually start to wear off. The honeymoon phase of BJJ doesn’t usually last through blue belt.
There’s a reason that so many people get “the blue belt blues” and quit BJJ at blue belt. A significant amount of the top competitors back from when I was a blue belt are nowhere to be seen nowadays. They’ve disappeared.
Some people survive blue belt, but it takes them a decade. Others survive blue belt but their relationship with the sport of Jiu-Jitsu is changed forever.
Very few people thrive at blue belt.
For me, despite feeling like I was completely losing my mind (blue offered me some of the hardest experiences I’ve had in my personal life to date), I made it through blue belt in the bare minimum of time, with medals from some of the biggest tournaments in BJJ that I could participate in, and despite everything, I still loved Jiu-Jitsu.
Looking back, here’s everything I wish I had known when I was brand new blue in Jiu-Jitsu.
This is the blue belt survival guide.
The hard truths of becoming a blue belt.
I came into Jiu-Jitsu with very high expectations of myself because I came in with a wrestling background.
I came in expecting to be one of the toughest guys anywhere I trained, and it didn’t help that on my first day of Jiu-Jitsu ever, someone asked my already delusional 17-year-old self “When are we going to see you in the big show?”
I legitimately thought that my future was going to be in mixed martial arts. I didn’t know any better.
I also didn’t want to be a white belt for very long at all. I loathed being a white belt. I was almost embarrassed to be a white belt. I wanted to get my blue belt as fast as possible.
After about a year and some change, I got my wish.
Here’s what happened next:
When you get your blue belt, the expectations of you will rise (both from yourself and others), and your skill level doesn’t rise that much and not at all directly because of your promotion.
Belt tests don’t mean anything if you didn’t know that already.
This puts you in a strange position that makes a lot of blue belts want to quit BJJ.
They get their blue belts and realize that they still aren’t very good, they have a long way to go before they’re going to be good, and because they now have a new belt color, there is a perception in the training room that they are better. This also means that there is going to be an even longer wait until their next promotion (at least 2 years!)
You will probably deal with some imposter syndrome over this, and that’s totally normal. In my opinion (and I’ve had both happen at different belts), it’s better to grow into your belt than to get it overdue.
However, to do this, you do need to know how to manage your expectations in relation to your actual skill level. You need to have self-awareness.
You also need to view blue belt as a step toward becoming highly competent at grappling. Stop viewing belts as markers of skill.
A blue belt is basically a glorified white belt.
You still have a long way to go.
How to approach training at blue belt.
When you’re a Jiu-Jitsu white belt, everyone tells you to “just show up”.
You don’t know anything, so really, any knowledge is good knowledge. Most of your time in rolling is spent getting your butt kicked anyway, so you might as well really just focus on survival.
The truth is, you shouldn’t really need a “survival guide” for blue belt because you should have already built the habits that will carry you through the majority of your training time at white belt, but I digress. This doesn’t always happen because most BJJ coaches don’t tell their students about “good training habits”.
Instead, they just have them shrimp up and down the mat and do burpees for 45 minutes each session.
As an indirect result, people still quit a lot at Blue Belt. “The blue belt blues” is a thing.
If you haven’t built good training habits by blue belt, that should be your primary focus. If you don’t, when the hard times come (and they will) you’re going to be in trouble.
But after you’ve got good training habits, how do you take the next step?
Here’s something to remember at blue belt that changes from white belt, in my opinion.
STOP “just showing up”.
For a white belt (or a beginner), just showing up is seen as something very momentous.
“Did you show up every day this week? As a white belt? Great work!”
But as a blue belt (going back to the above section on expectations), showing up is the bare minimum. It’s not enough to progress.
Just showing up can get you to blue belt, but it won’t get you past it.
So what do you do to keep progressing?
This is when you need to start taking initiative and working on your Jiu-Jitsu by yourself. Start finding things you like to do. Things that fit your body type, your interests, and even your personality.
Start building your game.
Doing what you can to make Jiu-Jitsu more fun is the best way to make it easier to “keep showing up” despite whatever else is going on in your life.
The problem with competing at blue belt.
Blue belt is the most competitive division in BJJ in terms of volume.
The blue belt IBJJF Opens when I was competing in them always had more competitors than any other division — including white belt. Normally, blue belt had the biggest divisions and either brown or black belt had the smallest divisions.
This is great because there are a lot of opportunities for matches against people at blue and there are definitely going to be people who are better than you and worse than you.
Unfortunately, however, the best part about competing at blue belt is actually going to become the worst part about competing at blue belt if you’re not mentally in a good place.
You need to learn to see the big picture a bit.
We get it — you want to win. Everyone wants to win.
The problem with the blue belt divisions is that a lot of blue belts compete in them with delusions of grandeur. They think that they are a lot better than they really are, and they are completely unprepared for the experience of being just one man in a division of more than 30 people.
At the IBJJF Worlds one year, I had 126 people in my weight division alone.
All of us were one of the best guys at our gyms, all of us were pretty good, and all of us had “tapped black belts in training” before the tournament. We all thought we were going to be the next big thing, and yet, a lot of those guys never even made it to black belt. I don’t remember most of them.
If you want to survive blue belt, you really need to develop a healthy relationship with competition. With your ego. With the idea of failure.
When I was a blue belt, I had a 6-month streak where I basically lost in every tournament I competed in. It took a whole year before I started winning and I was training every day, 2 or 3 times per day.
During that whole time, I was questioning myself. Questioning if competitive Jiu-Jitsu was “for me”. I questioned if there was something better I could be doing with my time. Life was hard and I wasn’t sure if it was worth it.
White belt is humbling, but blue belt tests you more. It makes you feel like more of a face in the crowd.
I also believe, however, that these test can have a really positive payoff in the long run.”
Check out more from Chris on his Substack!
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