Many black belts no longer have a relationship with their original instructor and are therefore stuck at their current rank. In this article, we explore the two alternative options for black belt degree promotions without an instructor: IBJJF and Beltchecker.
For some people, getting promoted in BJJ is more about managing relationships than anything. Regardless of your skill level in the gym or competition, you need to consistently be “under” a higher ranked instructor to stand a chance of being promoted. However, progression in Jiu Jitsu takes many years—often decades—and relationships with instructors doesn’t always last. For various reasons—such as personality differences, moving locations, disagreements, integrity issues, or even death—many find themselves without a promoting instructor by the time they are black belts and eligible for their degrees.
The problems with this can be many, but most notably, a second-degree black belt is required to promote black belts yourself and/or sign off on students’ IBJJF forms. New or 1st-degree black belts running their own team without a relationship to a higher-ranked promoting instructor can therefore be stuck in a situation where they are unable to promote their students to black belts, regardless of their performance, experience, and years dedicated to the art.
In contrast to the colored belt system—which is based on performance in sparring or competition—black belt degrees are based purely on “time served”. Basically, as long as you stay alive, you are eligible for promotion after a specific number of years:
- 1.-3. degree: Three years between degrees
- 4.-6. degree: Five years between degrees
- 7.-8. degree: Seven years between degrees
- 9. degree: Ten years since 8th degree
Once a black belt has served the time as listed above, they are technically eligible for promotion to the next stripe on the belt. However, since it is heavily frowned upon to promote oneself, a body of authority must be involved to keep the promotion system legitimate.
These days, there are three routes to getting promoted to black belt degrees:
- A promoting instructor
- The IBJJF
- Beltchecker
Let’s explore them one at a time.
OPTION 1: BLACK BELT DEGREES THROUGH AN INSTRUCTOR
Traditionally, the promotion of black belt degrees is done by a higher-ranked instructor. Usually, two degrees higher than the promotion given, is the standard. Just like the colored belt promotions, no paperwork is required. The promotion is done on a “handshake basis” and the legitimacy and reputation of the promoting instructor’s rank will stand as the authorization of the new black belt degrees.
Naturally, most people will prefer this way of getting their degrees, but many are without a relationship with their original coach, making this impossible. The only option would be to find a new, higher-ranked instructor; something that often requires signing up for an affiliation or starting a business relationship of some sort. Not to mention that at this point in most black belts’ careers, they might have their own affiliation already and are not very interested in “putting someone else’s name on their work”.
OPTION 2: BLACK BELT DEGREES THROUGH THE IBJJF
The world’s largest tournament organizer is also positioning itself as the governing body of the sport, despite being a for-profit, private company. Unknown to most, IBJJF offers online promotion of black belt degrees based on time served in the art.
Their requirements are as follows:
- Time served as a black belt
- ID verification
- Membership renewed every year since the black belt promotion ($40 the first time, then $35 per year)
- Black belt certification application ($400 for the first application, then $150 per degree application)
- First aid or CPR course certificate
- IBJJF referee course within 12 months before the request of each degree ($80 per course)
- For some countries: Background check
- Must train in an academy that has been paying a membership fee to IBJJF since promotion to black belt ($70 for registration and $70 for each modification)
- Must be a professor in this academy or academy must have an IBJJF certified 2nd-degree professor
- If your first registration with IBJJF is as brown or black belt, you’re required to be a paying member for two years (“provisional member”) before you can request a black belt certificate or degrees.
If you can check off all of the above, IBJJF will officiate your promotion and send you a certificate for your new black belt degree that you can put on your wall. Notice that no signature from an instructor is required for promotion with this method. Basically, a private business will be able to act as your “professor”.
OPTION 3: BLACK BELT DEGREES THROUGH BELTCHECKER
If the two first options don’t appeal to you, there is an alternative that has become more and more popular in recent years: Community verification of black belt degrees via Beltchecker.
Beltchecker has been growing steadily since its launch in 2019 and is acting as a community-based platform for verifying promotions, competition records, and training careers. Despite facing criticism in the beginning, the concept of the verification system has held water and doesn’t seem to stop attracting new users from around the world any time soon.
In contrast to the traditional authentication of ranks through an instructor of the IBJJF, Beltchecker works completely decentralized. Verified profiles can approve or dispute others, depending on whether they trust their credentials to be accurate or not. Once a user is verified by the community, it qualifies to verify others themselves. Should someone try to put incorrect information on their profile, the community can downvote it and it will be marked as disputed.
Through this system, the platform can constantly keep its content in check by having thousands of eyes on the promotion data that are being entered into the profiles.
Therefore, black belts without a promoting instructor can claim their degrees free of charge on Beltchecker under the following requirements:
- Time served as a black belt
- Full ID and photo verification
- Full promotion history
- Enough votes from the verified community to confirm your profile and promotion history is trustworthy (1,000 points required; the equivalent of votes from 10 black belts)
While initially received as a controversial idea by some, this is in line with what the IBJJF offers, and at the time of writing, more than 240 black belt degrees have been claimed and verified by Beltchecker. And should the BJJ community at any point disagree with this method of promotion, any verified profiles have the power to downvote black belts who claim their degrees like this and thereby take away their rank verification. Therefore, both the promotions themselves and the promotion requirements must be backed by the global BJJ community to be validated.
SUMMARY
Many black belts no longer have a relationship with their promoting instructor and therefore can not be promoted unless they join a new affiliation. For many black belts with their own students, getting to the second degree is desirable, since they can then promote black belts themselves. The classic alternative is to let IBJJF keep track of the time served but Beltchecker has become more and more popular in recent years and seems to have started a small revolution of the BJJ promotion system.