Have you ever had someone close watch you go through a gauntlet, if so what was their reaction? Most of my students say their wives, husbands or whatever say, “WTF is wrong with you guys!”

Biggest Belt Promotion Ever!Well, at least for my gym.

Last Thursday I had the honor of promoting 21 people. 11 Blues and 10 Purples. I have always been very stingy with belts. I refuse to water down the sport and just give belts away. I think that by being slow to promote, it allows people to focus on what really matters. The community, getting better, competing and learning more about your self through hard work. But I messed up. I didn’t have a clear cut idea of what each belt should look like in my gym. You know. . . when you get your black belt its not like someone hands you an instruction manual on how to run a program. Instructing and running a program is unique to each gym and instructor so I had to develop my own views and ideas that matched up with that of my academy. When I finally finished ironing out what I expected out of each belt, I realized that during the last 2 years while the gym has experienced some incredible growth, many of my students were beyond where there current rank would suggest. Many of them had been at their current belts for 2 years and some up to 4! Yikes. So I had to reward their hard work, and to make it more fun I decided to do it all together. It made for a really fun day. My hats off to my students as I have not once heard a complaint or ever been asked for a belt promotion. Not once. So I am glad my students understand the whole point of this pajama wrestling stuff. Its not about the dyed cotton around our waist.

Anyways, I just wanted to give people an idea of why there were so many promotions and to share the video of some killer gauntlets. My morning class had around 20 people and my evening class had about 55. Made for some crazy belt whippings.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPVGY0AKcnc&w=560&h=315]