So, you are a purple belt – a senior(ish) grade, that’s excellent, you’ve passed the point that the vast majority simply don’t reach. Pursue that excellence, draw wisdom from everything – good and bad. Trust the process and begin to fashion your own: your style, method, quality, and approach; it’s starting to make sense now; it should all start to come together from this point on and as you’ve passed the point that most others stop, now, don’t live in a shell of mediocrity.

If a white belt’s concern is ‘survival’ and a blue belt should act like a sponge, insatiably soaking up breadth of knowledge, a purple belt should be motivated by exploration, a search for depth and self-discovery, this is the point where you shape your trademark game.

Practice unobstructed self-expression

There are no right or wrongs at this stage, technical errors have come and gone and you should have learned from them; you are not getting caught in submissions as much, getting stuck in a position is a thing of the past, and your guard is difficult to deal with. Furthering your ability from this point will come from unobstructed self-expression and experimentation. Yes, mistakes will surface intermittently but that’s down to the aforementioned exploration, be unobstructed, create breakthroughs.

From white to black we are all taught the same principles and concepts that make Jiu Jitsu function, all through a variety of delivery systems but now, you play the game with your own style and panache – embrace that, bring your own nuance to the ‘table of suggestion;’ embrace your funk, your style, and your uniqueness.

You’ll have idols, individuals you attempt to emulate, you’ll notice what they do well and copy them but, love what you’ve become and love how you do it. If you remove the pressure of doing it ‘their way’ you’ll remove the ego from being ‘wrong’, there is no wrong. Provided your Jiu Jitsu works, and you are adhering to the principles and concepts that govern success, it’s just style. Innovation never came from copying.

Innovate the game, innovate yourself.

Look for thematic connections

As a “faixa roxa” you will have a battery of techniques, some you’ll do better than others and these you’ll fall back on regularly to save yourself in that period of unobstructed self-expression, but you’ll do better if you look deep. Begin to recognise shapes, scenarios, and situations.

Discover, distil, do … it’s ‘3D’ learning.

To novices, one position may well seem different, illogical, or indeed alien, but through your lens: an open guard has shape to catch a foot, the scenario of a leg entanglement is a roll away from a back take and a mount situation is just an upside-down guard. Observe Jiu Jitsu in this way and you’ll appreciate how to “bring your own style” to the mat.

Appreciating thematic connections will open conversations between your conscious Jiu Jitsu mind and the subconscious, thus, you’ll gain the ability to play in the dead space during scrambles, your opponent’s unsighted focus, and cognitive blind spots. This appreciation of themes will develop speed of thought and another undervalued feature of skill – intuition.

Value your intuition

More frequently, when you roll, things will happen subconsciously. Training partners will ask: what do you do there? How did you do that? Your subconscious knows but it doesn’t always need an explanation. Yes, reverse engineer it – that’s how you’ll recreate and grow, but also accept things just happen, requiring no explanation; that’s flow – that’s intuition.

Intuition is the bridge between your conscious and unconscious mind, find that flow more.

Make smaller circles

This unconscious association will progress as you delve deeper into your Jiu Jitsu. The change in belt colour has replaced the early survival and more recent appetite for breadth, now refine that know-how, it’s no longer 2D tangents and vectors, we’re moving past into 3D.

An ever-deepening depth of knowledge will expound your 4-dimensional understanding, the pursuit of depth over breadth empowers a growth philosophy based on insight and foresight, follow this advice and side-step oversight and hindsight.

In most cases as a purple belt, you will have touched the essence of a technique. Depth of knowledge will develop further as you begin to incrementally condense external manifestation. Over time, focus more, connect more, feel more and as your expansiveness decreases your potency will increase.

Master the fundamentals

Prior to the purple belt, everything before this moment was preparation. You should now have a solid grasp of the fundamentals and the laws that govern their successful execution. You’ll be making less unforced errors and you understand the principle of discipline but do not let your ego stray away from those fundamentals – stay in touch with the core of the art.

Some techniques that will attempt to steal your concentration, the allure of a new ‘move’ and whilst all ‘new’ techniques are simply established techniques with added lateral thinking, applying the fundamentals will result in further deeply inter-connected knowledge that expands and comes back to the central point.

The art oscillates; white to black and black to white.

Seek the ugly zone

Despite the advice to look deeper into governing concepts, to develop thematic connections and to remain loyal to the fundamentals, you should also seek the ‘Ugly Zone’: that place where our performance falls short of our expectation.

Seek that feeling, that is what brought you here, it paved the way for you to step onto the mats. By now you have experienced perceived inadequacy as well as oversight and hindsight, as a purple, it would be easy to shun that feeling, to ease off the gas. But that is where growth occurs, take that unobstructed self-expression and trial your ‘funk.’

Don’t pick and choose, but challenge. Be soft not brittle and embrace the feelings. Remain attentive to the intrusions and learn to tolerate the turmoil.

Be at peace in the chaos

The ‘ugly zone’ brings with it chaos, unknown and confusion but by entering teach yourself to think clearly under pressure.

Jiu Jitsu isn’t just on the mat, the more you are at peace here, the more you’ll be at peace when the shit hits the fan at home and at work. The mere fact that you can be present in the chaos ensures you’ll be present in all areas of life, there is power in that presence.

Do the reps in plain sight; don’t slope when nobody is looking, not only for yourself but also as a driving force for others that are watching – yes, you’ve become a bit of a role model now. Just like at blue, you have what people desire and even more so now. The process I outlined as a white belt doesn’t stop. Take agency and understand that growth in just on the other side of hardship, be at peace with the ugly zone and the chaos – lean in, lean into the plateau that will inevitably coming, enjoy the plateau.

Don’t live in a shell of mediocrity, garner unobstructed self-expression, develop depth, search for thematic connections, and value your intuition. Make smaller circles, master the fundamentals, and use the ‘ugly zone’ regularly. Finally, be at peace in the chaos.

So, you are a purple belt now. Start to think differently.