No-Gi, 10th Planet and the Death of Belt Hierarchy

I have to confess that I'm not much of a no-gi guy. My school holds no-gi classes on Wednesdays and that's typically when I plan date nights with my girlfriend. The jury is still out on if that's because of her work schedule or my avoidance of the fabric-less grappling, my no-gi skill have definitely suffered as a result. When I'm traveling I also typically drop into gi classes. It's what I love doing and what I'm better at so I check a school's training schedule and plan accordingly. The one time that I can't get away with this though is when I visit 10th Planet schools ,because they are no-gi only schools. They can get a lot of hate in the community at times, but there are a number of things that I find unique about them that I really like. One of those things in particular is that when walking into a 10th Planet school (or dropping into any other school's no-gi class for that matter) you have no idea what anyone's rank is or what their knowledge and skill level is.

Us Jiu-Jitsu people can get funny about belts and promotions. They take a long time to come by and can be a big source of frustration. It's tough to be passed over promotions and it is easy to fall prey to thinking that our instructors aren't recognizing the hard work and progress that we've made. Students will sometimes even leave their instructor for a belt promotion from another school. Rank forms can form the social hierarchy within a school and, at times, the privileges of rank can even be abused. When I drop into a new school, I can typically get a quick gauge on how rolls are going to go based upon a number of things. I love to walk into a big class of upper belts, especially other purple belts, because I know that we will get to go to war once it's time to roll.

There can be downfalls to rank though, some of which were just mentioned. I think that one of the biggest pitfalls though is the idea that if you outrank someone, you should be able to beat them. This can create training sessions that are more focused on "beating" the lower ranked teammate than on having fun or getting better, which I believe is counter intuitive to improvement. If you do a quick search, you will find countless articles and videos of people addressing overcoming the frustrations of being beaten by a lower belt. These are things that I feel are often mitigated by a no-gi class because the focus is more on your skill level than what gets tied around your waist.

When you walk into a new school's no-gi class, you have no idea who is who and who knows what. Am I talking with a world champion black belt? Or am I about to roll a guy that just started training? I find this to be exciting and changes the dynamic to how I approach training for that class. I don't have to worry about trying to "bag" that black belt or feel that I need to defend my rank against a phenomenal blue belt. I feel more free to just enjoy a roll and consequently learn more, and have way more fun.

I have been thoroughly impressed by the quality of everyone that I have trained with at the two 10th Planet schools that I visited. I know that it's considered poor form to talk about wins and losses during in-class training, but I have to say that the guy below tapped me out 14 times in one 7 minute roll. I felt like a white belt all over again and laughed the entire time as I was caught submission after submission.


I love my gi way to much to ever switch over to the dark-side, but I have told myself that I will start to make an effort to drop into more no-gi classes while visiting other schools. I really enjoy the more carefree, less rank focused aspects of the training.
















About the Author:

Steven McMahon earned his Kyuki-Do Black Belt in 2011 from Grand Master Kim at Kim's Black Belt Academy and his  BJJ Purple Belt in January 2017 under Professor Charles Nunley. He trains out of Cornerstone BJJ in Fayetteville, NC. He is an active competitor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Army Combatives tournaments.