Podcaster, BJJ practitioner, and all around badass Jocko Willink may be a former Navy Seal, but he still thinks that active duty soldiers and veterans should have to start out at white belt when training BJJ, regardless of what rank they received in the Marine Corps MMA program.
That’s not to say Jocko doesn’t respect the military’s combatives programs. He does. He referred to them as “solid.” He just doesn’t think they are equivalent to jiu-jitsu.
“There is no equivalency to jiu-jitsu,” Willink said on his podcast. “You’ll know some stuff, but…when you go to start jiu-jitsu, you just go with a white belt on.”
That’s not to say all of that previous training will go to waste in BJJ. Jocko said you will advance faster.
But the same can be said about judokas and wrestlers who have transferred over to Brazilian jiu-jitsu; their arts are similar to BJJ, but they still don’t have the right to demand that they start out with a purple belt or higher. They will, however, climb the ranks faster than their comparatively inexperienced teammates.
Besides, as Jocko says, you shouldn’t care about your belt.
You can check out Jocko Willink’s full podcast below:
