Gui Mendes: “Blue Belt Is The Most Frustrating Stage Of Jiu-Jitsu”
World champion Gui Mendes says blue belt is the toughest period in a practitioner’s journey.
His main point is that expectations change.
White belts know they are beginners and expect little of themselves. But blue belts start judging their level and measuring themselves against peers:
To me, the blue belt is probably the most difficult phase if you don’t have your thoughts well organized.
It’s where you’re going to feel frustrated the most and you should understand that it’s very important for you to focus on yourself and avoid the comparisons.
As a blue belt, you start having the expectation of what level you should be at and you start comparing yourself with other blue belts in the academy.
I think it can be very frustrating.
Mendes described an especially unfair comparison.
A child who starts at five might reach blue belt at fifteen with ten years of training…
But an adult who starts in their twenties, thirties or forties might earn blue after just over a year:
Of course they will have way less experience and a much weaker background than someone that has been training for 10 years.
Over the years I have seen so many people get disappointed or use this type of unfair comparison to try to judge their path in Jiu-Jitsu – and a lot of times, they end up just quitting or losing motivation.
His advice is to compare only with people who share your background:
We all have different backgrounds and we have different paths whenever we are in Jiu-Jitsu.
If you’re going to try to analyse someone else’s path to see if you’re progressing fast enough, I think it’s important that you try to find someone that has a similar background as you.
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