As a student, I have trained in multiple environments, but always as a competitor and most of the time always as a representative of the academy being an instructor.

My progression went like this;

White Belt to Blue Belt: Less Than 6 Months (Balance Affiliation)

Blue Belt To Purple Belt: In a Year and a Half (Lloyd Irvin Affiliation)

Purple Belt To Brown Belt: 2 years (Robert Drysdale)

Brown Belt to Black Belt: 4 years (Andre Galvao)

Even though I was a competitor the entire time, I still excelled in progression and clarity on the mat in order to hit my goal of being a world class instructor.  All of my promotions were based off of my applicational success at competition, I never took any “tests” or had to meet a certain time line.

Now things were different back then, it was very frowned upon in my experience to have a conversation with my instructor/professor about my current rank, what was missing and needed to be adjusted in order to get my next belt, etc.  I travel a lot still to teach seminars and I hear that this is still something that is very common of a tradition at many places.

Because of my experience, as well as my identification of responsibilities being a leader at not only my own environment but to my entire affiliation, I needed to know a standard, with clarity, that I could communicate to my students so they knew the journey they had ahead of them.  I push for open communication with my students to come to me and discuss where they are, where they want to go, and what is in the way.  My standard isn’t “learn these techniques for this belt rank” or “demonstrate these techniques” in order to get promoted, it is much more conceptual and based on my personal standards of my environment that I expect my students to have, communicating is a huge aspect.

With the platform growing consistently as it is, I get many questions about this topic.  Each academy does and in my opinion should have their own standard, so sharing mine with the world doesn’t mean anything, only the standard of where they train does.  In my opinion, being a leader in this topic can be incredibly challenging.  This is what determines if the environment is a club, a business, an actual academy or some mcdojo.  None of them are right nor wrong, but it is up to you to determine where you train and under whom.

A big red flag to me is being met with strong resistance when asking questions.  I know as a leader that I do not have all the answers but I do have clarity in my data.  Some environments wont have answers, some will claim they do,  in the end, these types of aspects are what separate the different learning environment available.

So, if you are a bit lost on your journey, you should definitely ask someone of leadership for guidance, but if you ask someone who is not your leader, the direction they give you may contradict the one who is promoting you.  While I openly communicate my standard and share it with whom ever asks, and that can be positively impacting, it is not the one that matters unless you are my student.

Just realize that just like in common experiences in life must of us experience, where you learn Is always up to you.