Late year (BJJ) and MMA legend Enson Inoue announced he was demoting himself to purple belt. His rationale? The growth and transformation of bjj has been so radical that this is a rational course of action. He was met with plenty of support in BJJ community, but quickly following the first wave of support the critics came out. But this has drawn our scope at Purple belt once again and made us ask a question:

Is Purple Belt The True First Step To Mastery?

While BJJ was in its inception, blue belts were mythical beings, almost as rare as those who mastered jiu-jitsu. Back then the schools were small and scattered so often a blue belt was running a school because there were regions where there were literally no other belts around.

Nowadays, the situation is quite different. Most of the time you can make the daily pilgrimage to your closest jiu-jitsu black belt and not even blink about it.

Could it be that purple belt is the first rank suitable for teaching? 

Some fresh purple belts describe how the lacked focus during the blue belt tenure and a coherent playstyle. Namely a style is often shaped by the techniques one is exposed to in addition to what they choose to add based on their personal preference or an inkling. This is why you’ll rarely see two players with the exact same style and technique details.

Purple belt is a lot about refining yourself and forming links between compatible techniques. You start to chain things together and evolve. It goes beyond being able to demonstrate a lot of separate techniques.

So when is someone ready to pass on the knowledge? What level should one be before they assume a teaching role?

Many say that purple belt level is just it. Many renown competitors took up teaching at exactly this level. But for example Ze Radiola was teaching from the time he was a blue belt.

It is Rickson Gracie’s opinion that an athlete becomes fit to wear the blue belt with the knowledge of facts. At that point, one has everything within his scope and he just has to perfect all of those aspects to achieve the black belt. It becomes a game of perseverance in order to hone in your technique.

“What is missing to the athlete after the blue belt is the practice and reflexes. It has everything you need to black belt, you just need to keep up the consistency, ” said Rickson.

Is consistency really the biggest separator between the 3 highest ranks in bjj ?

Purple belt is generally considered to be the beginning of “advanced” jiu-jitsu”, general opinion mirrors Rickson Gracie’s. Prior to rapid international growth of jiu-jitsu there were no belt divisions in competitions, especially in NoGi. There was just beginner, intermediate and advanced.

You’d be on your own to classify yourself but typically white would make for beginner, intermediate was typically blue and advanced was purple, brown and black.

Even in the early days of Abu Dhabi World Pro, these 3 belts would be in one division. This is something that possibly shaped the perception that purple belt is the adequate level of knowledge to start teaching.

Think about it. You rarely see any essays or posts complaining about a purple belt teaching.

The bottom line is that anyone can teach, in fact most people who are reading this have given a sparring partner a suggestion aimed at bettering the partner at one point or another. Is purple belt really the true first step to mastery?

Check out this video from a (then) purple belt Dan Lukeheart (Trumpet Dan) on Roger Gracie technique: