This is something I remember from when I was a black belt in high school. For those unaware, there's not really a Single Ranking System for martial arts, but it's fairly consistent across all systems that black belts denote expert status in a style – and immediately before that are brown belts. In my school our expected progression was one year to brown, then one year to black; brown-with-stripe was usually given six months through the year just to ease the process (and increase testing revenue, I suspect), since prior to that point the ranks were coming hard and fast, but brown belt was supposed to be when a student stopped "just" learning and started refining their techniques.
Around this time is when, in theory, we'd start encouraging students to go back to the novice classes and work with the white belts. Openly, it was because of the usual "go back to basics" stuff – you know a lot more, so go back to the class where we teach fundamentals the exact same way and see if you missed anything. It was also a good way to inspire the white belts & remind the brown belts of how far they'd come, from struggling to do a set of 10-point crunches to doing them as a matter of routine.
Less openly, however, there was one reason we wanted brown belts training with white belts that was arguably far more important: control. Brown belts usually train as a loose cohort, meaning that they all are getting stronger and tougher at about the same rate. They're doing the same workouts, they're holding pads for each other as they kick and punch, and most troublesome, they're learning how to cooperate with each other during technique practice. If you've gone hard on partner dancing you probably know the difference between a dance partner that is leading/following you because you both know the same cues that mean X, Y, or Z motions vs a partner that is actually leading/following because you both know how to make bodies move. The same thing happens with martial artists – there comes a point where their throws look smooth and easy, but it's because their fellow students know "this is how I'm supposed to fall" and not "they are moving me quickly/correctly enough to actually throw me this way."
White belts are, by comparison, people off the street. They don't have the strength & conditioning. They don't know the "right" way to be thrown. They are, quite simply, exactly the kind of person a brown belt might pick a fight with because "yeah, I know some kung-fu, fuck you I'll beat you up," and they have no idea how much harm they're (in)capable of inflicting. Training with white belts means they have a safe (or at least, safer) environment to try kicking someone like they'd kick their fellow brown belts and go, "Oh shit, you moved WAY more than I expected and you're groaning like that hurt bad, are you okay?" It's where they can try to do a throw, wiggle them around without actually getting them to the ground, then go, "Hang on, let me try this again But Better."
As you can imagine from this being a Formative Experience™ of my childhood, I see a lot of parallels to a lot of "advanced amateur" situations elsewhere in life. The Dunning-Kreuger effect isn't real—statistically it's an artifact of linear regressions, emotionally it's more often a clash between knowing the theory (episteme) without having put it into practice (techne)—but there is absolutely a period where "non expert" practitioners are prone to cause more problems than experts, precisely because they think they're still harmless/worthless. I call 'em "brown belt moments," and now maybe you will too.
I think I needed to read this. I think I need to let it sit a while and read it again.
