02/19/2026
Hey Coach! Why did you stop doing stripes!?
There weren’t always stripes. That was a newer idea presented by the Gracies around blue belt for me. All of a sudden, it was four stripes per belt. This continued with adding a grey belt for kids, striped belts of the same color before and after a solid one, kids getting stripes every month no matter what, and promoting people for X amount of classes completed. I am guilty of using all of it. I didn’t like it, but I thought the people above me were, so who was I to question it?
Over the years, you can see the cracks in the system. Promoting via class minimums robs the student of skill development within the belts. It becomes mechanical. It loses the teacher-student interaction in a lot of ways. It becomes more of a retention tool, appeasing the student who is none the wiser. “Give a mouse a cookie,” if you will. They are “earning” little pieces of tape as benchmarks for where they are in their journey.
For adults, I have seen this system implode. Stripes equal stress. They start pitting same-color belts against each other. Students start comparing their own journey to someone else’s. They doubt all of their hard work because they have four stripes and got tapped by someone with two. Adults with four stripes start getting aggressive, picking on upper belts trying to prove they’ve arrived at the new level. Lower stripes often get frustrated with themselves if they don’t receive a stripe fast enough, thinking they’re doing something wrong. So many things distracting from what is really important. This goes on and on, per belt, until black. That’s when I was so relieved I was done with it all.
Now I simply had to get better. There would be no more rewards. No more belts. You’re lucky to even hear a “good job” anymore. And it is wonderful.
Kids are a different story. They are very reward-driven. They have zero patience for the road ahead, and it’s a big ask to just do belts—especially when the journey is so long, not flashy like taekwondo, for example, and with such a limited number of belt colors. Do they need to be promoted automatically every month and have three shades of each belt? No. They should still be made to earn their keep.
Now back to adults.
At 10th Planet, something that stuck out to me is that there are no belts at all. You don’t know who you’re going against. Are they a novice blue belt? An ADCC champion? A seasoned brown belt? A salty old black belt? You just don’t know. You use your skill set to the best of your ability, and whatever happens, happens. The art speaks for itself—not your belt, not your fancy gear, not your mouth. That’s special. It keeps the mats truthful.
So now, moving forward, I give solid belts to my students. The culture of the school has always been “be happy with improving.” The new name of the school was changed to KODA: Keep Overcoming, Developing Always. With the rebrand, we have stopped stripes. We want to keep jiu-jitsu about self-improvement. I’m driving that point home by trimming all of the fat.
“Stripes are for zebras,” as a friend puts it.
