This Sunday, July 3rd 2016, I tested for my Brown Belt in BJJ.
There were 3 of us testing in total. My good friends and gym nemeses (plural of nemesis... I had to look it up too) Mathieu Dubois and Louis Bernard-Desrosiers had to go through a 3 hours test under our instructor and Black Belt Richard Martens. The process is similar to a nice waterboarding session at Guantanamo bay (:
Belts 101
White belt: You are basically a noob. You just show up and well... unless you're an athletic freak, you'll pretty much get raped/molested for 6 months depending on the caliber of your gym. Good times!
Blue belt: You must know the basic curriculum. 8 ways to get out of side control, 8 ways to get out of full mount, 8 ways to get out of a headlock, etc. The basics really. It's mostly defensive with a few of the core submissions thrown in there. To earn you blue belt, you must demonstrate on cooperating partners that you have this knowledge in your head. You finish with a few rounds of sparring and the final round is you getting crushed by your instructor (he's fresh, you are tired btw).
Purple belt: Here you begin to merge defensive and offensive. By now you should know the foundation of the sport and you start being more fluid in your movement. Instead of merely escaping a bad position, getting to neutral one and then thinking of going on the offensive (like you do as a white and blue belt), you begin to think of offensive grips/positioning while you escape. The purple belt test requires you to demonstrate some of these techniques on a willing opponent first and then you must demonstrate them on live, resisting opponents. A few rounds with someone on your back, and you have to shake him off and escape the bad position. A couple rounds with a partner crushing you in side control. Couple rounds with someone headlocking you, etc. At the end you spar just like the blue belt test.
Brown belt: This is the level where you've been doing it long enough to develop your own style. We all go through the fundamentals in our first years but then comes a time where your personality starts to shine through your jiujitsu game. Some are aggressive, some are counter-fighters, some are flexible, some are tall, some are short, some a athletic, some are fat! Your mindset and personality greatly affects your game. Anyway! This test is about 10% technique and 90% on resisting opponents.... for 3 hours lol. We had to escape 3 times with 3 different partners (so 9 times total) different positions and submission attempts. That means someone puts you into an armbar while you are exausted and you have to get the fuck outta dodge.. 9 times. Then it's the same for triangle chokes... You also have to show that we can dominate and finish our opponents technically (you have no choice but to use leverage and body mechanics since you have zero strength left after the first hour)
Finally we spar! We do a bunch of rounds against fresh guys that keep a fast pace going so that you are super soft and easy to crush when your final round with the black belt comes around.
And so I will show you guys in pictures what this looks like! Enjoy the walk through.
BTW if you are wondering what the Black belt requirements are... I'm about to look into it (:
Walkthrough of the Brown bel test
Here I am on the right getting squashed by big Ben. Currently trying to escape his side control. If you are good with physics or a mechanical engineer, you will notice his body position is meant to be HEAVY lol
During the dominance section of the test, I manage to pull off an armbar from the English holdown (a.k.a. heavy ass S-Mount) This picture is also there because the internet loves nip slips.
"At that moment Marc knew....... he fucked up!"
I swear I'm not caressing his forehead like a parent putting his child to sleep would.. no. I'm actually using my forearm as a frame to prevent him from bringing his left elbow back to his core/ribs (without expending muscular energy). If he can do that, he might escape the upcoming submission.
Now that his hands are separated, I can lock out his Left elbow to finish the armbar.
This is little Mat... pretty tired. You can tell by his stance (:
This is Louis. Pretty drained as well. You can tell by his "WTF am I even doing this" face.
Here's little Mat trying to shake off Vincent from his back. This escape in particular is tiring as hell by the way...
This pic is awesome! It not only shows the contrast between energy levels (I'm trying to break open his guard and he's just hanging on there talking to the cameragirl) but it also reminds me of the game Worms when you choose the bungee cord:
Anyway... scew that guy d: Moving on!
Here's Marco trying to armbar me. GOD DAMN that was a tough couple of minutes. He used up a crapload of strength (and he has multiple crap loads of it) on my already pretty weakened arm. It was spaghetti from that point on... I couldn't swing up (using my legs as pendulums) or bridge him over my right shoulder since he really pinned his left knee down into my face like a champ!
Louis exploding out of an Armbar! With his majestic mane and all ^^
Yes Mat.... I'm still stuck in Marco's armbar. I have to escape 3 times remember... and I'm not getting any less tired!
This is one of those FML moments for Louis. Big Dan has a body triangle on him and one of Louis' arms was trapped in the mix. Such a shitty place to be in. We laughed about it afterwards haha
Finally a bit of a breather. Managed to the the top position with his left arm out of posture. Time to laaayyyy.
My last round before I spar our instructor! Big Ben putting a metric ton on me for a solid 5 minutes. This is the Guantanamo bay moments I was talking about. You are exausted but if you stop fighting, you end up in an even worse position where you will have even more trouble breathing. Experienced jiu-jitsu players know where to position their weight to make it extremely difficult for your rib cage to expand to get that precious oxygen.
And now my final round. Not going so well considering.. THERE'S A FRIKIN' BLACK BELT ON MY BACK!
Get it off get it off!!
And we are pretty much done. Our instructor telling us what he would like to see for our next belt test.
Joking that Rich probably got us extra long belts from Obese 'R Us like he often does ^^
Farewell purple! Hello Brown!
Life is coming back to Louis' face.
Well earned Mat!
What a great Sunday morning! Thanks for the decade of quality instruction Rich! And thanks Louis and Mat for going to war 4x a week.
Finally thanks to all the badasses that showed up to beat us up! I would be hard pressed to find a better bunch of dudes than the Sherbrooke BJJ crew.
To anyone looking to meet open minded people with egos in check. I can't recommend BJJ enough. I'll most likely write a post about why that is. For now I hope you enjoyed getting a glimpse of what this sport is like.