What to do with stripes after a long lay off
Hi everyone, looking for some advice. A while ago I trained in BJJ for about a year and half (6 months in one academy and then a year in a different one) and collected stripes on my white belt on the way. I had a long layoff (3 years) due to doing a part-time degree on top of my normal work commitments, as well as starting a family. I have now finished studying and the baby is old enough that I'm not needed most evenings (my wife may argue otherwise), so I'm going to restart training in the new year. What do you reckon I should do with regards to my old stripes. I will be returning to the same academy, but the instructor has changed. Do I take them off and start from scratch as the instructor may have different grading criteria, or leave them on as they were legitimately earned (even though I'll undoubted be very rusty, definitely very unfit, so not rolling initially at the stripe level). When I switched academies previously I took off my stripes and started from scratch and I think it slowed my advancement as at the 2nd academy I only got back to 3 stripes in the year, 1 more than I had earned at the first academy). So I'm a bit confused on what to do. Leaving them on would probably see me returning to a 3-stripe level after about 3-6 months (I'm hoping to shake off the rust and regain fitness quite quickly) if I take them off it'll probably be a year before I get back to that ranking level based on the past history.
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Originally Posted by Allan Shrek
