[strange619]

just wondering how many of you roll with blue belts and above. or do you all roll with only other white belts?

obviously if your just starting out then your really only gonna roll with other white belts. I have 1 stripe on my belt. and i take the advanced classes at least twice a week. there i roll with blues all the way up to blackbelts. I'll take the strictly whitebelt class once a week.

is it better to learn from rolling with and getting your ass beat by higher belts? or is it better to keep going to white belt classes, even though i can out grapple most in that class.

[rotten apple]

whenever i roll with bluebetls they kick my ass and after i ask them how they did it. ie how they would have gotten out of the postion they dominated me in.

then i take what i learned from the bluebelts and try to use it on the whitebelts.

[GentileJitsu]

i like getting my ass kicked by blue belts more than kicking white belts asses. with a blue belt, you cant be as lazy and some of the stuff that works on white belts doesnt work as well on them. so it really makes you shape your game better which will in turn allow you to kick white belts asses even more.

[Chris H]

No matter where you're at in your training you should roll with people of all different levels imo. Like the above poster said take what you learn from the higher belt levels and attempt to use it yourself. I love rolling with brown/black belts just for the learning experience.

[juanlawnmower]

I try to roll with as many upper belts as I can. At this point, I'm relatively even or not that far behind many of the blue belts. I really think that if you go with an upper belt and ask where to improve, (for the majority) you will get constructive criticism.

You always run into an asshole or two that beats on you and doesn't give advice. Try not to roll with him, you won't learn much.

[Yojimbo.]

I think as a white belt there is only so much you can learn. Your body still needs to learn how to move. Training the majority of the time with higher-ups is great and all, but a new white belt could still learn a lot from another white belt that has been training for close to a year or so. IMO

[tjsix]

I try to roll with whoever I can, usually higher belts to work on my defense, which seems to grow leaps and bounds everytime I roll with someone much higher than me just because I tend to analyze every movement when I get done. But usually if I'm trying a new submission or move I try to stick with white belts just so I can learn how to apply the move at 100% and not worry about someone getting out of it immediately so I can figure out what the most effective positioning is.

[ThinkGreen]

I try to grapple against better people, not really sure about belt levels though. I just figure if you grapple better or bigger people, it's more beneficial to you.

[rudinho479]

You should grapple with people who have differing abilities/styles/weights/experiences, etc. This also includes different belt levels. It's a thin line though. From my experience, people who only rolled with guys who were better than they were didn't actually improve all that much. Often times, they become the class practice dummy, and learn an extremely defensive style of rolling. Same with only rolling with guys who are worse. If you only roll with them, you will likely become aggressive and sloppy, and when you roll with better players, you will get caught and will not be used to the abilities of higher belts. A well-rounded grappler rolls with everyone, and asks as many questions as possible, especially to the higher belts. You can even ask the guys you tapped their perspective on what happened(so long as they aren't too bitter.) I love rolling with white belts, and will often give them position to see how they work with an advantage, and it also forces me to work on getting out of rough situations. I also will often roll with advanced players, learning from their superior games exactly what i need to work on.

[Fight_Song]

if the blues and purps and etc like you, they roll with you a lot so you develop faster and go out and smoke some white belts.

i do enjoy smoking white belts often just for fun, but usually when i'm rolling with them i'm trying to make them pick up on something for when they roll with people on their level.