Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is becoming increasingly popular and more and more people start training it with each passing year… But that isn’t to say that lots of people will be able to keep training after a while.
In fact, most will quit at one point. Jocko Willink and Dean Lister discussed this in a podcast episode, with Jocko opening up with the question:
You know that saying, like when they talk about Jiu-Jitsu… Like, 100 people (and) how many people make it to blue belt? How many people make it to purple belt? And by the time you get to black belt, what do you think it is? One in a hundred? Maybe less than that.
It’s weird to me that people cannot do Jiu-Jitsu anymore. Isn’t that weird to you?
Dean confirms that it is and gives his rough estimate on how many people quit by the time they’re purple belt:
I think that some people get, let’s say.. Out of a hundred, 40 get the blue belt. A lot of those will be like: “I got my title. I’ve done something in Jiu-Jitsu, but the rest is gonna be a lot of hard work… I’ve got my belt, I’m out.”
So, out of those 40, you got maybe 15 that will stay. Maybe 25 quit at blue belt. So, you have 15 left that are continuing past blue belt.
However, when someone gets the purple belt and keeps training, chances are that they’ll keep going all the way until they get their black belt:
But you get to a point when someone gets past purple. Usually, they’re kind of staying with it now. And if they stay, if they keep doing what they’ve been doing, they can get the black.
So, the biggest filter would be white to blue and then blue to purple; the two big filters in my opinion.
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