I don't think that we talk about her yet, but Helena Crevar did an amazing run, starting the year at blue belt and finish it at Black Belt, spending 3 month at purple and like 6 at Brown.
On the way she won almost every competition in a pretty impressive way submitting a lot of girls.
So, my questions are :
- Being super dominant in competition allow you to speed run belts ?
- Is the coach free to graduated the way he want no matter of the rules of time in rank ?
- would you vote for her based on that time at each rank ?
For me it is right since her coach decide to do it this way, he's the one who know her the best, by doing this he engage his name and his school name. If she's to dominant at low level, she need to go higher if she's ready for it. I will vote for her by respect for her coach opinion and because of her proof in competition.
"Hi,
I don't think that we talk about her yet, but Helena Crevar did an amazing run, starting the year at blue belt and finish it at Black Belt, spending 3 month at purple and like 6 at Brown.
On the way she won almost every competition in a pretty impressive way submitting a lot of girls.
So, my questions are :
- Being super dominant in competition allow you to speed run belts ?
- Is the coach free to graduated the way he want no matter of the rules of time in rank ?
- would you vote for her based on that time at each rank ?
For me it is right since her coach decide to do it this way, he's the one who know her the best, by doing this he engage his name and his school name. If she's to dominant at low level, she need to go higher if she's ready for it. I will vote for her by respect for her coach opinion and because of her proof in competition.
What do you think about it ?"
I honestly think is a no win situation. If they promote her early, people complain that she was promoted early. If they don't, people accuse her of sandbagging.
In the end, belts aren't important and shouldn't be taken so seriously.
"I honestly think is a no win situation. If they promote her early, people complain that she was promoted early. If they don't, people accuse her of sandbagging.
In the end, belts aren't important and shouldn't be taken so seriously."
I don't think that you can be accuse of sandbagging if you stay one year at one belt, and she is way under that...
Something else, nowadays, people sometimes think that belt didn't matter, but you have to know that there"s a progression process based on each belt with goals to archive, normaly it should mean something. But now it's the modern era, everyone can learn with instructionals, train at 3 gyms at the same time to get a full schedule.... the techniques are everywhere so it's way easier now....but decade ago, when we had only blue belt or a very few purple before 2000, every belt you might archive mean tonnes of sweat, tiers and blood.
I talk like a dinosaure but we do not forget where we came from
"I don't think that you can be accuse of sandbagging if you stay one year at one belt, and she is way under that...
Something else, nowadays, people sometimes think that belt didn't matter, but you have to know that there"s a progression process based on each belt with goals to archive, normaly it should mean something. But now it's the modern era, everyone can learn with instructionals, train at 3 gyms at the same time to get a full schedule.... the techniques are everywhere so it's way easier now....but decade ago, when we had only blue belt or a very few purple before 2000, every belt you might archive mean tonnes of sweat, tiers and blood.
I talk like a dinosaure but we do not forget where we came from"
You can argue that the argument is illogical, but people DO make the accusation of sandbagging for everything nowadays. I've experienced this first hand. A teammate of mine won silver at euros at blue belt and like clockwork was accused of sandbagging at the very next tournament she competed at, despite the fact that she was a blue belt for LESS than a year and was not allowed to be promoted according to IBJJF regulations. I've had the same thing happen to me.
And I really think we need to keep in mind that most combat sports (Wrestling, Judo, Boxing, Muay Thai, MMA) get along just fine with no belts whatsoever. Even judo, which does have a belt system doesn't use it for their competitions (at least not where I live). I could understand the importance of belts if there were an actual curriculum, like in judo for example. But given that we don't, they are honestly kind of meaningless outside of our own bubble.
Separating by belt like Jiu-Jitsu does is in all honesty the exception, not the rule. And honestly, I'm pretty sure Helena Crevar has a technical level most of us could only dream of reaching and has spent more time on the mats than most black belts have. The time at belt is honestly a bit laughable in her case. If feels less like respecting the past and more like the old guy complaining about "kids these days".
This gets into a topic that I find extremely interesting: promoting the young adults (16 to 18) that started training and many times competing at very young ages (3, 4 years old). Quite a challenge to the coaches. To state the obvious, Helena is an exception in the sense that her level of skill is above the average, but there are many kids around 18 with 10+ years of training. I don't have a strong opinion, in general, if the coach/professor is good, their judgement is good enough for me. I do like that the IBJJF had minimums, but those were created well before we had this wave of very young practitioners that have been training for their entire lives.
For me and my opinion you can't just state "competition only is good enough" or "knowledge only is good enough". This martial art I believe, is defined by lineage, ie, who taught us, the history, and if we have the skills to use what was taught to us from those people. There will be outliers, but if John Danaher says she is a black belt, then good enough for me. Even if she didn't compete, but I think everyone has their own evaluation of what makes a "XXX" belt.
For some teachers, you need to compete a lot, or be a very good wealth of knowledge, etc etc. There is no one-size-fits-all-answer, but with helena, that is certainly a ton of time on the mats but not a ton of time in some of the belts. I think she probably would have skipped some if that wouldn't have made folks crazy :D
I've never heard of her and don't have an opinion one way or the other. But as someone else said this is a no win situation for her: she either didn't do her time or she is sandbagging. As far as being dominant in competition goes, that depends on the level of competition. If she's dominating Worlds it's one thing. If it's dominating local shows it's something else because the competition pool isn't nearly as deep in most places. Also as others have alluded to, she may have the total training time for black belt because she started young. This has been talked about plenty of times on this forum before. Kids today are starting at 3 or 4 years old pretty commonly. When those kids turn 16 they will be at a black belt skill level, but are only allowed by IBJJF to be promoted to blue. I'm no fan of IBJJF guidelines, but I think there is something to be said for maturity in awarding belts and we shouldn't be passing out black belts to kids who still have several years of youthful ignorance ahead of them before they turn into useful members of society. That's not to say there aren't any 18 year olds that are ready to be black belts. I believe with proper mentoring it's possible, but it's not going to happen very often.
"I've never heard of her and don't have an opinion one way or the other. But as someone else said this is a no win situation for her: she either didn't do her time or she is sandbagging. As far as being dominant in competition goes, that depends on the level of competition. If she's dominating Worlds it's one thing. If it's dominating local shows it's something else because the competition pool isn't nearly as deep in most places. Also as others have alluded to, she may have the total training time for black belt because she started young. This has been talked about plenty of times on this forum before. Kids today are starting at 3 or 4 years old pretty commonly. When those kids turn 16 they will be at a black belt skill level, but are only allowed by IBJJF to be promoted to blue. I'm no fan of IBJJF guidelines, but I think there is something to be said for maturity in awarding belts and we shouldn't be passing out black belts to kids who still have several years of youthful ignorance ahead of them before they turn into useful members of society. That's not to say there aren't any 18 year olds that are ready to be black belts. I believe with proper mentoring it's possible, but it's not going to happen very often."
For background, She has been destroying everyone and if I'm not mistaken became the youngest silver medalist in history at ADCC last year. Even dominating adults.
Hasn't she trained since age 4 or something? Who cares anyway? She routinely beat black belts. I'd say don't hold her back. If a person is super good and talented, let them challenge themselves against tougher competition.
But what do I know. Took me over 6 years to go from brown to black belt.
"The exception proves the rule" is a saying for a reason. For these rare phenoms (ESPECIALLY if they've been training through the junior belts), I have no issues with shortcutting the minimum belt length requirements. The results speak for themselves and the adult belt length requirements should be flexible enough to account for those students whose total training and competition time includes years at the colored belt levels. For 99% of us, minimum belt length requirements give credibility to the achievements overall, but they shouldn't be so rigid as to deny progress and achievement to those who are so clearly deserving based on irrefutable evidence.
