 They say that a black belt is a white belt that never gave up. Well, then that means a white belt is a black belt that just started. You see, the person has the same general capabilities. The only difference is they aren't disciplined yet. So today, we're going to show you why the white belt is the rank you need to fear the most. If you like and appreciate what we do here on this channel, then I invite you to our Patreon and YouTube membership pages. This channel is supported by our awesome viewers and in return we like to post exclusive behind the scenes looks, and bonus episodes for our members. So we invite you to check it out. There are links below in the description for each one. And if you click on the join button next to subscribe, you'll be able to see a list of features before you actually join. Thank you to everyone who supports us and keeps this project going. Quite often, the most dangerous people in martial arts are those who don't know the martial arts. And this isn't limited to just karate and white belts. This topic applies to a beginner in any martial art. You see, the martial arts are like a loaded weapon. A person needs to learn how to understand the techniques and how to use them safely. Otherwise, they are a danger to themselves and everyone around them. According to the Urban Dictionary, spazzy means an adjective used to describe someone who spazs as often, meaning they are hyper and have fits of uncontrollable excitement or nervousness. However, according to some martial artists, particularly Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students, spazzy describes the most dangerous student, the overambitious white belt in the wild. When students are new to an art, especially a grappling art, fear and excitement can get the better of them. Being put on the spot in a sparring situation without previous experience can be a little intimidating and often new students are erratic and get wrapped up in the anxiety of the moment. Let's take a look at the risks they pose to themselves and then the dangers that they pose to others, even senior students. But a new white belt can also make black belts better, so stick around for a few minutes because there might be some ways you haven't considered yet. Okay, so the first way that a white belt or brand new student might be a danger to themselves is honestly improper mechanics. They have not yet learned the finer details and the right mechanics of certain moves yet. So if they are trying something that they haven't done yet, there is an injury factor if they are not practicing properly. Also, they can gain a false sense of confidence. And this has said a lot and there's a lot of criticism of the martial arts that a student who's maybe trained only a little bit might feel confident, they might feel like a badass, they might feel like they can go out there and fight, but that could be a false sense of confidence because realistically, they might not have learned enough or trained hard enough or have the experience or resistance trained to really be able to defend themselves. And on that same sense, those students might have learned just enough to get themselves beaten up. Yes, maybe you learned a counter to, maybe you learned an escape, maybe you learned one submission, maybe you learned a block, whatever. Just because you've learned a couple things does not mean you know how to defend yourself. So a lot of white belts early on tend to get that false sense of confidence and they go out into the world thinking that they've learned to fight when they've really just started scratching the surface of the training. Another risk that white belts have, and you see this a lot in the jujitsu arts and the grappling arts, is that they haven't really have experience falling out or even being a good uke or a partner. The first thing you need to do is learn how to fall, learn their safety measures first, and if they haven't done that yet, then it's very, very easy for them to get injured. Also, a brand new student with the wrong attitude might find themselves pissing off the wrong people. And this is not everybody, of course, but it's also, again, tail ends onto the false sense of confidence. Sometimes people who start the martial arts, they talk and they show off and they feel good about themselves, they feel boasted and they like to brag about it. Even though you might feel like you're big and bad, don't go starting fights, don't go out there feeling like you're armed with this new knowledge. You still want to avoid confrontation. The goal is still to get home safely. Also, new students don't always know when to stop. They get excited about their training, they might push themselves too hard. And yes, it's great to have them go past, you know, push your envelope and kind of step outside their comfort zone, but there is a point too where it can be too far too soon. So, and that falls on instructors too, to kind of make sure the student is not overexerted themselves, but because white belts don't always know where to stop. And playing off of that, especially you BJJ guys out there can relate to this, new students tend to not know when to tap. They get it stuck in their head that they have to wrestle, they have to fight the way out of it. And they might not quite realize that they've already been submitted and they still think they can fight out. They don't know when to tap. And you know, that's the rule. When they've got you, you tap. Otherwise, what's the expression? Tap or take an app. So, basically wrapping it up is brand new students have not really learned their constraints of the systems yet. They have not learned their limits yet. And they're still kind of getting their feet wet in the system. So, when they try to step outside that boundary is when problems can occur for themselves. Now an inexperienced student is not just a risk to themselves. They can be a risk and a danger to people around them if everyone's not careful. Primarily speaking, as a new student, they lack the nuances and the finesse of techniques. They don't know that yet. They haven't learned that yet. And that's something you don't just read from a book or you just get from a first class. It takes time to get the feel of it. It's like driving a car. You can read the manual, but you know, you can read the manual all you want, but once you actually get behind the wheel, it's usually a pretty jerky ride. And it takes time to get the feel of the car, the turn of the wheel, the feel of the road. It's the same thing with the martial arts. You have to learn that finesse. And they also tend to want to go too fast because they're excited about speed and looking cool. There's a good expression out there. I love it. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Learn it properly. Learn it slow. Eventually, once you get it to be smooth, it'll get faster and faster on its own. The beginning student also doesn't know control yet. If this is the first time they've ever trained in the martial arts, they have not really regulated the power yet. They don't know what's too soft or too hard to hit. And they don't have that second nature to them yet. So control is something they still have to learn. And it takes time to learn that. And obviously, they're limited in their techniques. They've probably just started. Even if they've been there a month, they might know a handful of self-defense techniques, maybe some basic moves. And especially if you're a school, this is a school that spars early. A lot of schools make students wait until they're at least a couple of belts in, but some schools let white belts spar right out of the gate, which I think is a great experience. And you're not going to learn any faster than that way, but you might find too that the white belts might be a little bit more wild. Because again, maybe they'll have a jab and a cross, they'll have a basic technique, but they're going to resort to their instinct, which might be just a flail. And honestly too, that could take an experienced student off guard, because there's nothing more dangerous than someone wild and erratic. When it comes to grappling, and I've heard this complain a lot, we've experienced it in our BJJ class. I'm a little bit guilty of this too, when I first started, being rougher on joints. This goes back to the whole finesse thing we were talking about. Learning to manipulate a person's joints and body, there's a specific technique involved. It's not just strong arming them, literally. You have to learn the right technique rotation, figure out how the body works. My kid, my background is Kempo. We're all about limb destruction, joint destruction, yanking, grabbing, pulling, tearing. When I started Jiu-Jitsu, there was a little bit of new experience to me. Some of that carried over, and I didn't realize that the first couple of days, I was wrenching arms a little bit. Like when I was trying to get a person to flip over, I was muscling them more than actually working to technique the actual rotations to get the body to respond. Wipeouts, that is a thing. We've had new students too that they do our drills, they do our throws, and they're just pulling, yanking, grabbing, twisting, not realizing the strain they're putting on the joint because they don't have that feeling yet. They don't have that nature yet. They have to learn those boundaries. And this can carry over into the concept of submissions. There's a lot of submissions, especially if you're doing takedowns, anything with the neck or any chokes, whatever, you want to learn it carefully, you want to learn it slowly. A student that has not learned that finesse yet and how to do it safely, you know, they might not know what the limits are, they might not realize that this is a little bit more delicate than this technique, and sometimes they might just throw their whole weight into the technique, and that could cause a lot of obvious problems. And another thing, and you got to watch out for this, the white belt that gets overexcited and really into the material, that's great that they're invested, but sometimes they tend to want to experiment. And this can be a bigger problem than you think, depending on the art. We had a new student in the jiu-jitsu class, but he started getting a little bit overconfident, and there was one day in class, he did the throw, he did the perfectly, well he decided he was going to drop down and try an arm bar, he hadn't been trained yet, he'd seen the senior belts do it, so he went down, he attempted it, and thankfully we were able to catch him, and his partner was able to catch him before he did any damage, but he was starting to bend a joint against his weight, he was doing it improperly, and he almost dislocated his partner's shoulder. If you don't know the technique, don't just experiment on a person until you've learned the proper way to do it. That's training they have not had yet, so again, as instructors, you have to watch out for that because it could happen like that. They get an idea that sparks in your head, they might just try to do it. Experimentation is great, but to the inexperience, it can be dangerous. And the other thing too is, just because they're wearing a white belt and they're a brand new student in your school, you might not know their background, you don't know their experience, they might be an expert at other arts, so don't take it for granted unless you know for a fact that this is their first class because they might take you by surprise if they know something else. Now, a lot of these concepts might seem like common sense, but I have personally seen a lot of them firsthand, so they are very real risks. I'm sure there are others that we haven't covered, so I of course invite you to comment below to let us know of any other dangers that should be mentioned. When you have a white belt or a new student, it's not uncommon to find black belts or senior students who would rather not work with them, either for any reasons we just listed above, or maybe they just prefer to work on their own material and often leave the beginner ranks to work with each other. That's fair, but I think there are some real and honest opportunities here if you're willing to give the newbies some of your time. The obvious advantage is you're providing them the chance to train harder. The best way to get better at sparring or rolling is to go up against someone with more experience. It pushes new students to keep up and keep some on their toes, but there are some advantages to being the senior rank in this scenario. The first benefit is that teaching a technique can make us better at it. Being able to break it down any technique to a modular level teaches someone new and show them the nuances and reasons behind it only reinforces the technique for ourselves. If you can't teach or explain a technique, then perhaps you don't know it as well as you think you do. When sparring or rolling with them, there's a good likelihood that you'll be able to dominate them. So perhaps this is a good opportunity for you to work on an area that you'd feel like you'd like to sharpen. If you're grabbing the beginner, then it's not likely they're going to have a barrage of submissions they'll be trying on you. Instead, they're going to be trying to make, you know, the one or two things they've learned work. So let's say for example, the new white belt has just learned two new submissions. As a senior rank, you can roll lightly and let them get into position and apply them and you can instead focus on your escapes from those submissions. Or perhaps you want to experiment on body position and you want to try out a few new techniques or see if you can learn new tricks to set up an opponent for a more favorable position. You can be focused on any other areas you want to improve at the same time they're trying to apply the new techniques that they just learned. This is an opportunity to work with ideas that might not have the chance with when rolling with more experienced students. So use this as a sandbox experience. Here's an often overlooked aspect. White belts, brand new students, are coming in with fresh eyes. They might actually find holes that you didn't realize were there. And one of my favorite examples, there's a skit with Jim Carrey, for those of you who are old enough to have known the show In Living Color. He did this skit where he was a martial arts instructor and he was teaching a couple women's knife defense. And he taught them how to come in with the overhead knife attack and come in with the jab and he showed the defense for it. Well, he handed the knife to the white belt, he goes, okay, attack me, I'll show you. She just comes in and just jabs him with it. He's like, ah, no, you attacked me wrong. And she just kept jabbing with it. And he was getting frustrated because he was, she wasn't attacking the way that he was taught to learn. And it's an obvious commentary on that. There's a lot of unrealistic techniques out there. But a white belt's not going to think to go in with the pre, you know, pre-coordinated attack. They're going to, okay, jab. Sometimes that, you know, being naive or being fresh, being new brings a fresh perspective. You never know. Maybe they'll find something, a hole or a weakness or something you've left open that you didn't realize. Sometimes it's worth observing their observations. This is also a fantastic opportunity to work on your control and regulation. I don't care what art you train in. You should be able to moderate and have full control over your own power and application. Whether you hit a person with 10% of your effort or 100% is a huge difference. And you need to have the ability to control that. Working with a new student is a great chance to regulate the power, make some contact, give them something to feel and get used to conditioning, but not blast them into submission either. This is a good opportunity to sharpen your control because if you can't regulate your power on an incremental scale, then I hope you have the integrity to take off that black belt and don't put it back on until you can. This also applies to rolling. As we mentioned before, a new student may not know their own limits and tap when they should. As experienced students, that falls on us to apply our pressure and technique appropriately. If you know that you have them in submission and they're still trying to fight, then there's nothing wrong with releasing pressure and resetting. You should be able to have that same moderation and feel the reaction and know when to stop. That's not a skill that they have yet, but you do. And working with a new student is a great way to practice that. And also, put yourself back in your old shoes when you were a brand new student entering class for the first time. How did you feel when you first saw the advanced students do all the cool stuff that you wanted to learn? Chances are the white belts looking to you for the same example. They're there to become better versions of themselves just like we are. Help them learn, correct bad habits and mistakes, commend them when they do something well, find ways to make drills mutually beneficial. Be the black belt that you expect them to strive to be. They're looking at you, be that example. And if you are just starting class, here's some advice for white belts out there. Pay attention to instruction closely. That should go without saying. Also, if you're rolling, roll to learn, not to win. It's not about showing off, it's not trying to beat the guys yet. You're learning applications. So go in with the attitude that you're trying to make something work and experiment and understand how it works. You're not there to win right off the bat. Also, don't experiment on material you have not learned yet. Don't try to show off. Trust me, you're not going to impress anybody. Don't walk around like you're invincible. I know karate. No, avoid confrontations. Even if you're a black belt, it doesn't guarantee your safety. Keep it to yourself, be discreet, be humble. Don't show off, don't boast it. And the last five tips we're going to go over for brand new white belts is tap, tap, tap, tap. If it hurts, tap. If your partner has you, tap. You'd be surprised how fast you can go from conscious to unconscious just like that. If they have you, tap, reset, learn what you did wrong, and then try to prevent that from happening again. Don't try to be the tough guy. It's not going to work out well for you that way. No one wants to get hurt while training. It's the opposite of what we're trying to achieve. Be aware of our new students' limitations, understand their risks, and play your part into making sure that everyone leaves class in as much as one piece is possible. Don't be a victim to the deadly white belt.