Every beginner has an impossible hurdle in front of them – how to get to the coveted next rank – the blue belt. Often time people will estimate progress among them based on how often they’ve been to class or how long since they first joined but Rob Biernicki and Stephen Kesting show a different outline.

In their minds it’s crucial to posses a certain skill and each skill is represented by a stripe.

So yes while flying triangle and berimbolo all provide a sort of intrinsic motivation most coaches will be grading and estimating your progress on entirely different merits.
This is where the fundamentals class comes in play – each stripe represents, in their minds, a single fundamental skills.
The skills are:
1) Guard Retention
2) Guard Passing Movements
3) Sweeping Movements and Back Takes
4) Control movements
According to Stephen and Rob these skills can be acquired in any order, the most important part is to have a well rounded experience, to get around with every single one of these aspects.

But a four stripe white belt does not a blue belt make! In their terms this is just half the journey to the blue belt. Another aspect of getting a blue belt is knowing different movements. This is where the emphasis should be as opposed to just retaining a position.

A fundamental class in their opinion is a month long course split into 4 parts, each has a designated week (or 2)  dedicated to one of the following aspects.

And how does one get to purple belt from there? Well Rob Biernicki suggests developing a complex scheme where for each of these options you have an ABC map in terms of options you have. And this is what distinguishes even more advanced belt levels, the more options and kind of mind maps you have the better you’ll do in terms of ranking.