One of the biggest shifts we’ve ever made at Easton Training Center was when we decided to put a stripe requirement on live training.

When we first started everyone trained.

We threw Day 1 students into live training with everyone else. To us, the training is what made Jiu Jitsu fun.

It’s how we hooked people.

Over time we noticed a few concerning trends.

First, new students were getting hurt. A lot.

When this inevitably happened, they would pause their membership or quit altogether.

We started losing way too many new students and we struggled to grow.

We also saw more disgruntled long-term students. People who had been training with us for years had bad experiences with unskilled new students.

They would get hurt or have bad rolls. Sometimes they had to turn up the intensity to keep themselves safe, which inevitably put the new student in more danger.

Soon enough we had tenured students who didn’t want to train anymore because of the liability new white belts created.

The second thing we noticed is an increasing frustration from new students.

They couldn’t understand why the techniques they just learned in class wouldn’t work.

Instead of realizing they just needed more reps and time, they concluded that jiu jitsu didn’t work and quit because of it.

Why would you want to train in a martial art that is hard to learn, painful, and doesn’t work?

Martial arts are like language in many ways. You have to understand the basics of how the language works before you can try to converse with anyone.

Even if you can pick out a word or two, if you can’t form a sentence you aren’t going to get far.

We realized there had to be a better way to get students ready to “speak” the language of Jiu Jitsu before asking them to converse in a live setting.

No Training for New Students

We addressed this challenge by implementing a stripe requirement for all white belts to begin live training.

Before a student is allowed to train live they have to earn two stripes on their white belt.

When we first implemented this policy we weren’t sure how it would work out. Could we hook new students on BJJ without the live training aspect?

What we found is that our retention of new students actually increased significantly. We also had less disgruntled long term students.

It takes the average student about 4 months to earn two stripes on their white belt. This assumes they are averaging 2 classes per week throughout that period.

Instead of focusing on the frustration of techniques that won’t work, new students get to focus on the basics of the fundamentals curriculum.

They learn how to move, what tapping is and how it works, basic nuances of positions, and a few of the most fundamental submissions.

Essentially, they learn how to speak the language of jiu jitsu, albeit at an elementary level.

When they finally earn the opportunity to train, they are by no means skilled practitioners.

In fact, they’re very much the average white belt you encounter in your school everyday.

They still have to learn the pacing and tempo of training live.

But when they do get to start their live training they at the very least have a basic understanding of positions, escapes, and the overall idea of jiu jitsu.

They can form sentences in a conversation and it becomes a much more productive roll for both them and the person they’re training with.

The Added Benefit of Incentive

One of the unexpected benefits we found after we implemented the two-stripe policy is that it gives new students something to strive for.

When they first start, they are funneled into fundamentals classes and are held there until they get the 2nd stripe.

There is no live training in our fundamental classes. The closest we get is positional training with pre-determined outcomes.

What this means is that if the fundamentals curriculum for the day is focused on armbars from the closed guard, we will end class with a few closed guard positional rounds.

The person on the top is meant to offer light resistance while the person on bottom works for their armbar. Even with the light resistance, each positional round will end with a “victory” for the bottom player as they will eventually work into an armbar.

This allows the new students to troubleshoot techniques against light resistance, but ultimately they will experience success in each round.

It also teaches students important concepts like tapping, levels of resistance in training, and navigating through the imperfections of a technique when it comes up against resistance.

The idea behind all of this is to prepare the students for live training when they become eligible.

We’re straightforward with any new student about the requirements for live training, so as they go through the fundamentals curriculum, they have the goal in mind of getting to their second stripe so they can begin live training.

The 2nd stripe also makes students eligible for intermediate classes, which always include some aspect of live training.

Intermediate classes and live training act as an incentive for new students and gives them something to strive for in the first months of their training.

Since we made the change to not allow new students to train live, we’ve seen our retention rates skyrocket. Not only for new students, but also for our more advanced students.

The biggest thing to keep in mind with this approach is that you will need to stay on top of promotions and do them on-time and frequently. 

If you don't promote your students on time they will eventually lose interest and quit before they ever get to try live training. 

It may go against what you’re doing now and how you were originally brought up in martial arts.

It certainly did for us.

But after we made the decision to implement these changes, the culture in our schools improved. We keep students for longer. And we end up with happier, more skilled practitioners.

Give it a try in your school and see if it works for you.