What Does a Brown Belt Mean in BJJ?
What Does a Brown Belt Mean in BJJ?
Brazilian jiu-jitsu is one of the greatest accomplishments a person can make in their life. If you are one of these people, congratulations! Getting a brown belt in BJJ is one of the hardest things a person can achieve because it taker a lot of physical and mental toughness to endure the losses, make sense of the positional strategies and techniques plus live your regular life. If you have gotten this far, I truly applaud you.
When watching the UFC or Bellator a lot of the top fighters including Jarrod Cannonier and Alexa Grasso hold this rank. I promise you it is one of the reasons they are so formidable in the cage. If you are just a regular person and a situation begins to escalate and the other person holds a brown belt- I encourage you to let that situation cool down. Honestly, if you are arguing with a brown belt, they should be doing the de-escalating. Because they know how much pain you are about to endure and probably don’t want you to experience that misery. True misery.
But what does it mean? First of all, it means you are disciplines and tough. It means despite so many various personal setbacks you chose to return- and learn. It means you started knowing nothing and stuck through it until blue belt. Blue is when most people quit (if they even make it this far 80% who start don’t). Then you had the courage and focus to develop a personalized set of attack skils and you made it to purple! Now you are brown! The black belt is authentically in range and nothing is the same.
In simple terms, brown is the level where you really go back to working on your weaknesses. Purple belts get there in large part because you took your blue belt foundation and developed the ability to impose it on others- who know what you are doing!). At brown things change. At brown you have to face your fears.
Think about your game front to back. Where are you in the most danger? What positions are giving you the most trouble? Do your takedowns suck? How about your takedown defense? What submission holds are the hardest to escape? That is your path.
The way to black belt is through stepping more deeply into your weaknesses. It is not fun. Your ego will be tested. Your best moves don’t matter. Go improve your weak areas. You must embrace learning from a place of joy. You have to be more playful, and less tense. I know it feels weird to be told to focus and relax at the same time- but this is the way.
Adisa Banjoko is a BJJ black belt, award winning writer, speaker and documentary filmmaker. Adisa has lectured on martial arts history and philosophy at Harvard, Stanford, Brown, Oberlin and many other universities. He founded the ONLINE community, the Resilient Men’s Group to help men heal mentally, emotionally and physically.
