Grappling Black Belts the Same?

In BJJ the Path to Black Can take as long as 15+ years for the average person who trains 2-3 times a week but isn’t considered athletic. There have been some people that got their Black in under 4 years but they are normally super athletes or were considered advanced in another style grappling before they transitioned to BJJ.

I was introduced to BJJ back in 2002 and it’s been 18 years now and im still a brown belt sure there has been many layoffs due to injuries and important family matters that took me away from training, i think i put around 14 good years of training time in the last 18 years. In my nearly 2 decades of being around i noticed that not all BJJ clubs have the same grading standards for their students. So not all Black belts are created equal. Some rise up he ranks based on attendance and loyalty, some based on performance.

Regardless when i think of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu i think weak takedowns but death on the ground however at the black belt level if that individual dedicated at least 1/5 of that training time to takedowns he or she would be a well rounded enough to be monster for any grappler. 

In Judo it can take as long as 5-10 years for the average person at a reputable club that trains as a hobby 2 times a week. however there have been people that have got their black belts within a year or 2. i know when i was a blue belt in BJJ one judo instructor told me if i would start judo with them they would honor my bjj blue belt experience and start me at blue i would of instantly been 1 belt away from my black. i never took her up on her offer. When it comes to JUDO i noticed higer level judo guys have good take downs on average but their ground games are at a blue belt level at best.

At a reputable Japanese Jujitsu Club it can take as long as 7 years to get your black belt but the average is around 4 years. also keep in mind performance is not a focus when going up the belts, i joined a club once for a few months to improve my quick joint lock someone without having to go to the ground and those move were fine and worked for me against shoplifters that didn’t know what they was going on but even the black belts had a hard time putting locks on me and it would just end up in a scramble with me getting the upper hand once it hit the ground, and at the time i was a BJJ white belt with 1 year under his belt. 

Like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Sambo and wrestling are performance biased arts or combat sports. Unlike BJJ these Combat Sports don’t have belt systems your just divided up when you compete by age and weight classes. In Submission Wrestling Tournaments you can also be divided up by experience level. So that someone with less then 2 years experience would be in the beginner category, 2-6 years intermediate, and 6 plus years advance group to make the match ups more fair.