What is a Brown Belt in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?

If you are just starting in the BJJ, the thing you might be most concerned with will be the belt you tie around your waist. This belt is the most important in your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu career. It showcases your skills and level of expertise in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu game. Your level of skill can be seen by anyone just by looking at your belt. This is how important the belt is in your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu career. The ultimate goal of all BJJ belts is to reach the black belt. But you cannot reach and get your black belt without passing through the brown belt.

The brown belt is often considered equal to the black belt. These two last belts of the BJJ belt rank system are often compared with each other. The reason simply is that there is a difference in academies that award belts to BJJ athletes. A BJJ athlete who is a brown belt in his BJJ academy may be a black belt in some other BJJ academy in terms of level of skill and mastery in BJJ and how he competes with others in BJJ matches.

Brown belt is the largest belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu after the black belt in terms of skill and mastery. Brown belt is achieved after 6-8 years of consistent BJJ training and hard work. After this belt, BJJ students have to climb just one step onto the ladder of BJJ to attain the ultimate goal of all BJJ athletes: the black belt.

According to the International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation , the requirements for BJJ athletes to get the brown belt are the following:

1. A BJJ practitioner should be at least 18 years old to get this belt.

2. A BJJ practitioner should have trained for at least 18 months under a previous belt, purple belt.

Any BJJ athlete who has fulfilled these two requirements have a certain level of skill and mastery is eligible for the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Brown Belt.

• Brown belts have historically been good enough to hang with black belts. It means that if you are a brown belt in Jiu-Jitsu, traditionally you are as good as a black belt. The difference between you and a black belt, you as a brown belt and a black belt, has to do with your professor. For instance, one BJJ athlete is multi degree, maybe five or six degrees. Now, he was under a Gracie family member and they had a difference of opinion. He was a brown belt of the time.

• So, just for example, Gracie's family member told him that we are done and we no longer have any association with you and you no longer have any association with us. He ended up having to get his black belt from another Gracie family member. So he was a brown belt, but just by changing his professor, he was promoted to a black belt. The reason is just the difference of opinions. So brown belt and black are very close to each other in terms of the skills and level of mastery.

Yes! Brown belts are good enough to compete against all belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The reason is that a brown belt in one academy may not be a brown belt in another academy. Every academy and Jiu Jitsu professor has its own rules and criteria for promoting someone to the next belt. So a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu professor who is a brown belt in one academy can compete against someone who is a black belt but in another academy. So they can be considered almost the best in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

• Competition Jiu-Jitsu is great. Rolling around in the gym is awesome. That is primarily what you should be doing because you are learning the skills of how to control another person. That is the main thing in Jiu-Jitsu and it is really fun. It is what keeps people on the map for a long time. Your favorite thing to do should be to roll around with other people and play Jiu-Jitsu. With that, it is also important that you learn a little bit about how to defend yourself. Most importantly defending punches from your guard and from mount. You need to learn how to close the distance. It will change your Jiu-Jitsu a little bit when you add punches occasionally. This does not mean that you should get hit as hard as people can hit you.

• That is not what you should be trying to do here. A lot of times, you should just do taps. This is also a part of self defense. To protect yourself from the injuries. Work on closing the distance from the feet where you are out there. How do you get to clinch? How do you get to take it down with minimal damage? Before you are awarded a brown belt, always make sure that you can at least defend against punches. If you cannot, your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is not complete. You are not worthy of being awarded a brown belt. You should remain a blue belt or purple belt forever until you learn all these things. First make yourself capable of the brown belt. Only then, your professor should award you the brown belt.

• Imagine you are running a marathon, and you are just about to reach the finish line, but you cannot. The reason is that you have suffered from the injuries. You start getting fatigued. You could not run any longer at the same pace with which you have been running before. You can imagine this example for yourself. The finish line is getting promoted to the black belt, and the marathon you are running is the training you are doing as a brown belt Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

• At this stage, you will often see people gossiping about you and saying to you that you must not have taken this long to reach the finish line or to get the black belt. They might be saying that even if their 10 years old nephew is a black belt in Karate, you are still a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

The brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has two main goals ;

• The first goal is to keep three things together: your mentality, your health, and your passion and energy to reach the finish line so you can get a black belt.

• The second goal is to combine all these things together which you have learned in all these years of your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training. You have spent years learning, training, and applying your favorite techniques.

You have not done this just to get beat up by your coach and other guys. Combine all these things together and apply it.

It takes the following things to be able to earn a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu:

• It takes long term training and commitment to the BJJ for almost eight years. You have to train consistently to get the brown belt.

• Brown belt has to possess some advanced techniques and skills in BJJ. You cannot just go with the same basic techniques and skills as you learnt as the white belt.

• You should have a strategic thinking. You should know at this high level of BJJ when you should make your next move and what is the perfect situation for your every move.

• You should have a good attitude for learning and training BJJ.

• The last but most important thing is passion. You should have a passion for moving yourself up in the BJJ belt rank system.

When we are talking about the progression in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and about the black belt being the last belt, the brown belt is the hardest belt. If you have trained long enough and hard enough to be awarded a legitimate brown belt, then you are on the final frontier. You can see the final belt, the black belt, the prize that you have been gunning for your entire Brazilian Jiu Jitsu career. Once you achieve that, it becomes easier. Because it is a very clearly defined goal, and it is like a bigger push.

Let's look at it like an ultramarathon, an Iron Man, a triathlon, and sometimes you could argue that the last 100 meters or whatever is the easiest because it is like you are getting that. You know, you got all the endorphins, and you got all that sort of like second, third, and fourth wind. It is like the finish line is right next to you.

A brown belt can be the toughest belt as well as the easiest belt for you as a BJJ athlete. Reasons just depend on the way you think of it. You can find it difficult by having to learn advanced techniques and almost be the best in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, obviously after the black belt. But in another way, you can find the brown belt easily because you are now very close to your ultimate goal in BJJ: the black belt. You will be motivated just by looking at your brown belt, which is the indication of you reaching your ultimate goal in your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu career sooner or later, however, if you continue to train BJJ.

Brown belt is the largest belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu after the black belt in terms of skill and mastery. Brown belt is achieved after 6-8 years of consistent BJJ training and hard work. After this belt, BJJ students have to climb just one step onto the ladder of BJJ to attain the ultimate goal of all BJJ athletes: the black belt.

According to the International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Federation, the requirements for BJJ athletes to get the brown belt are the following:

• A BJJ practitioner should be at least 18 years old to get this belt.

• A BJJ practitioner should have trained for at least 18 months under a previous belt, purple belt.

Yes! Brown belts are good enough to compete against all belts in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The reason is that a brown belt in one academy may not be a brown belt in another academy. Every academy and Jiu Jitsu professor has its own rules and criteria for promoting someone to the next belt. So a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu professor who is a brown belt in one academy can compete against someone who is a black belt but in another academy. So they can be considered almost the best in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

The brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has two main goals;

• The first goal is to keep three things together: your mentality, your health, and your passion and energy to reach the finish line so you can get a black belt.

• The second goal is to combine all these things together, which you have learned in all these years of your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training. You have spent years learning, training, and applying your favorite techniques.