How does your school handle baby white belts?
No, no! Not THIS kind of baby! I meant “baby” as in “new”!
I was scouting out BJJ academies to visit during my vacation home and I came across Cassio Werneck’s gym. More specifically, I came across their school guidelines and read something interesting:
The white belt stripe rules break down as follows:
0 & 1 stripe:
Only permitted to train with blue belts or above.
2, 3 & 4 stripes:
Can train with anyone two or more stripes.
This made perfect sense to me. Absolute beginners are a lot of struggle and no finish, and they’re the ones most likely to hurt you and themselves. Stick two absolute beginners together and that’s a formula for bad.
My gym does not have any policy like this, but our instructor assigns sparring partners during class. Our class typically runs for an hour and then there’s a half an hour open mat. During that open mat, anyone can spar with anyone.
I find myself a bit afraid of big guys who have no stripes on their white belts. Little tiny guys, like the 15 year old skinny boy in our class, that’s okay. New people (even me) use strength and don’t always know how to control their bodies. I can deal with a kid who weighs 90 pounds and whose waist is smaller than my thigh, but a big, muscular dude who can bench press me with one hand? Those guys scare me. At first I didn’t know to be afraid of them. After all, here’s one of the guys I sparred with my very first day:
Okay, he’s not REALLY an orange belt. He’s a blue belt who FORGOT HIS BELT! ^_^
Eddie is a big dude, but he knew how to control his body. I was never injured with him. I trusted his skills.
So what does your school do with newbie white belts? Can they spar with anyone? Who is usually put with the brand new people during their first roll? Are there “standard” people to help break them in?
I like the sound of Werneck’s policy, although that would only work if you already have quite a few blue belts. Where I train, there isn’t any specific policy in place, although the instructor does normally match you up in sparring. Same is true of the other place I regularly train, when I go to Bristol to visit my gf.
Closest I can think of to a specific beginner policy is at the main RGA school. They split classes by level, so in the beginner class, there are only white belts up to four stripes, and there is no free sparring, just specific. You also have to attend an intro class before you sign up (although that is also so they can do a sales pitch, which I think is fairly common as I’ve seen it at other schools too).
In my gym, in the first few trainings, white belts don’t participate of the training with others, they are guided separately buy a black belt which teaches the first steps of the jiu-jitsu (guards, hip escape, regular positions) and some self-defense for real life situations, so after few classes he is allowed to be part of the regular training with the other guys.
And i kinda like the way it is, i’ve seen in many gyms white belts completely lost when the guy ask them in the first day “close the guard on me”, and he looks like “wtf?”.
Yep, I remember someone saying on my first day “Okay, now pass my guard.” Me: “I don’t know what a guard is, much less how to pass it.”
In both gyms I’ve been to here in Korea they are just in the normal class.
Eddie was kind enough to loan me his blue belt when I showed up to my belt promotion day not realizing I was supposed to bring my own belt. 😛
I think that sounds like a pretty good policy in general, as Slideyfoot says, if you’ve got enough blue belts for it.
Ooooh good to know. Maybe one day when I feel like I MIGHT be close to my blue belt I’ll buy one and give it to the instructor and say “Please give me this when it is TIME!” 🙂
We don’t have a noob policy. Generally on someone’s first day, they’re taken aside (with the other noobs, or alone if there are none) and taught standing in base, the basic positions, and maybe, MAYBE something general like the knee-through guard pass. They aren’t prohibited from rolling on their first day but they almost never do, instead sitting and watching with big googly eyes. Second day they start getting in there, but when I see someone unfamiliar in either a loaner gi or a brand-spankin’ new gi, I steer clear. Bigger, very experienced whitebelts or higher belts of any size usually break in the new guys (I mean that only in a general way… no one “goes after” them at all.) We don’t stripe whitebelts so it’s a matter of starting to recognize someone and seeing them around a while before I’ll risk it.
Also we don’t have specific days for promotions, nor belt tests, nor belt testing fees. You just show up for class and (usually) get surprised when our instructor pulls you to the front of the room and makes a little speech, ties your new belt on, and sets up a gauntlet. He belts you with a cheapie karate belt, but if you’re kind you give it back to him when you buy a nicer BJJ belt, so he doesn’t have to keep buying karate belts just for promotions. (Some of the people are clueless about this, so they get iron-on black stuff for the end of the belt and just start using it. Whatever 🙂 )
Ooo, promotions: that gives me an excuse to post up this again. 🙂
Nice! I like it when you link to your interesting stuff. I hadn’t read that article!
Also, we have a pretty decently-sized school. At any given time there’s usually at least 5-10 of each belt from white to purple, and maybe 3-6 browns, so there’s no pressure on me to sacrifice myself on the altar of spazzy noobdom.
In my new school white belts and higher ranks are separated in different classes. From what I’ve seen when sitting and waiting for my class to start, they do specific technique drilling, no live sparring.
In my old school white belts were thrown into the mix right away and told to do takedowns and live sparring. When I rolled with a brand new white belt I would first explain what the objective of the roll was (in simple English, not using jiu-jitsu terms) and we would only work on one thing instead of doing 101 submissions on him/her. The higher belts and white belts were separated in class however drilling different techniques.
Most of the brand newbies I’ve rolled with were Korean speaking only, which is why I’ve started learning to give directions in Korean 🙂
about bring your own belt to promotion, Here in Brazil they give you the next belt, most part of times you don’t even know you are going to get it, then you pay the cost of the belt later.
At my school brand spaking newbies attend the same class as everyone else. It sounds like our school is similar to G’s, as normally you are taken aside and shown some super basic things. Our instructor, however assigns all grapples… and newbs only roll with blue belts+. Unless they are female. Fabio tends to put new girls with mostly girls, and almost all of our girls are white belts. Though, he puts them with the higher ranked men as well. …and he almost never puts girls with white belt men. (Except in the day time class, however that is just due to lack of higher ranked people who go to the day time classes.)
Yeah – I think new gals get put with the other gals. Personally I think that if there are enough blue belts that they should be farmed out to the newbies. 🙂