This was a short post I wrote the day after I received my purple belt in June 2014.

I want to share some of the thoughts and feelings I have on my recent promotion to purple belt.

When I started BJJ in late 2009, my first instructor was a guy named Pat. Pat was an amicable, kind and gentle retired police officer from New Jersey. He had opened his school for less than 2 years and had promoted one batch of blue belts at the time. Pat himself was a purple belt under the Migliarese Brothers and the Relson Gracie lineage.

Pat was probably at a black belt level of skill as a purple belt. He was also the only purple belt I had contact with since everyone else at his gym was a blue or white belt. To me he was superhuman in his grappling ability. He would handle everyone in the gym like they were children. He would gently toss them around, manipulating submissions and slowly advancing positions while casually having conversations with people on the other side of the gym. His purple belt was beyond destroyed from hundreds of hours of rolling and use as a strength training apparatus with weights and heavy bag pulling.

With no other frame of reference, a purple belt to me was something mystical. Blue belts wrecked me of course but to roll with Pat and get a glimpse of his level of understanding was like peering off into the ocean and trying to understand how much water is there.

Thus, I pictured being at a purple belt level of skill as having “arrived” so to speak. If I ever earned a purple belt, I thought, I would be a certified bad ass.

In reality, my vision of a purple belt was inaccurate. Pat as a purple belt (he is now a black belt) was far beyond average. After I changed gym locations a few times and rolled with people all over the country, my understanding of what a purple belt is changed and reflected reality a lot more.

I started to see “purple belt” not even close to having “arrived”, but simply to have reached a certain level of understanding.

As a white and blue belt, you’re a beginner. You’re learning the art, trying to get why things click and work the way they do. Purple belts all seem to “get it”. They’re not as encyclopedic as a black belt or as efficient and smooth as a brown belt, but they get why and how jiu-jitsu moves work. They can improvise on the fly and reach from a moderate pool of knowledge and experience.

As I advanced in my time as a blue belt I became more and more seasoned and things fell into place for me. I trained an average amount of time, 3-5 hours per week. I am not a physical specimen. At 5’9″ and 172lbs I’m a very average-sized guy. I am relatively strong thanks to years of strength-specific training and little bit of powerlifting.

Where do I think I fall right now as a fresh new purple belt? I think I’m right where I should be. I got promoted almost exactly on par with expectations from Aesopian’s promotion time chart. Four and a half years to purple belt. I definitely have felt like a purple belt for a while now and people in the gym were clamoring for my promotion. It’s not at all the anxious, scared feeling of being a fresh blue belt and doubting my legitimacy. I feel like I’ve grown up a lot and just earned my driver’s license after years of having a learner’s permit.

I finished the post here, at the time of writing. Now at the time of publishing this, I would add that earning a purple belt in BJJ is a huge milestone. I was able to attend Pat’s gym while he promoted some of my old training partners to purple belt. He was explaining to the family members in attendance that earning a purple belt in BJJ is like earning a black belt in any traditional martial art.

The other thing that strikes me is how blurry the belt divisions become after purple belt. It seems like once you reach this level, you “get” jiu-jitsu. Everything beyond this is just further refinement. You could lump purple, brown and black belts together and without the gi on you’d be hard pressed to arrange them in correct order of rank. I guess this is like the “expert” divisions at no-gi grappling tournaments.