How I Treat My BROWN Belts.

I am going to share an idea that Black Belt Phil Migliarese shared with me one time. I am paraphrasing here and he probably doesn't remember. He advised that you should leave your brown belts alone and not try to control them. They are trying to arrange all of their knowledge so don't try to teach them if they don't want it or overload them with more knowledge.  It's a time for Jiu-Jitsu self exploration and development. (last sentence was mine).  

I took his advice and now once you are my brown belt I let you do whatever you like (within reason of course).  You want to train with other people. Go do it.  You don't want to come to class. Don't.  You want to go off and train with someone else during class. Great. You want to work on the berimbolo, X guard,10th Planet,  MMA, you rock that.   I don't take it personally.  I think it works well.  My brown belts are always coming to me with great and  very technical ideas that they are developing.  I also go out of my way to help my brown belts whenever they ask for it. 

Here is what I've found.  I find that my brown belts are EXTREMELY loyal, not afraid to ask my advice and extremely respectful to me.  Could it be because I'm extremely respectful to them? hmmmmmm?

I think Brown Belts across the board aren’t given the respect that they deserve.  They aren’t quite black belts and therefore don’t know EVERYTHING yet…lol. Like we black belts do. =)  They are great men and women who have spent years and countless hours on the mat. They deserve the respect.   I always listen when a brown belt shows me a move because there is usually gold there. 

Lastly, If you are a brown belt it might cross your mind to quit.  I don’t know why..but it happens. It’s weird.   I SERIOUSLY thought about quitting when I was brown belt for about a half hour. Seriously I was done!  Then I slapped myself and came out of it.  I told myself that I didn’t care.  I wasn’t going to give up.   You do the same.  Don’t give up. You are almost there.

It’s good to be a black belt. 

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