FOR CAPOEIRA GROUPS
Your ladder is movement, music and history. Your software knows about kicks.
Every grupo grades on more than movement. A student who can throw a clean meia lua de compasso but cannot hold a toque on the gunga, lead a corrido or sing a ladainha is not ready for the next corda, and every mestre knows it. No general gym platform has anywhere to record that, so the half of the ladder that is music lives in the mestre's head.
The rest lives in a notebook. Who is close to amarela, who has not been since the last batizado, and who is quietly two years overdue. Then October comes and the corda list gets written out from memory the week before, which is how somebody stands up for a corda they are not ready for in front of a hall full of visiting grupos.
CORDAS, MOVEMENT AND MUSIC TOGETHER
Cordas, with the bateria in the same tree
The capoeira template runs corda crua through to mestre over ginga and esquivas, golpes, floreios, rasteiras, Bimba's sequences, and the bateria and canto alongside them, with each corda requiring what sits beneath it. Ginga is counted in the hundreds because that is how it is learned; meia lua de compasso is pass/fail; malícia is recorded as taught rather than scored, because a number for it would be a lie. Corda colours differ from grupo to grupo and several would not recognise the ladder we ship, so it arrives as a sample and becomes yours the moment you import it.
What that changes for a grupo
Music is graded, not remembered
Gunga, médio, viola, pandeiro and atabaque, the toques, and whether somebody can actually lead a ladainha — in the same tree as the kicks, because that is how a corda is actually awarded.
The corda list, months before the batizado
Who has met their corda's requirements and who has one toque outstanding, in October rather than the week before it.
The weeks after a batizado
A common time to lose people: they got their corda and the next one is two years off. An at-risk list ranks them while a message still works.
A grupo, not a gym
A hired hall, a roda on Saturday, an annual event that sells to people who are not members, and a lineage that matters. None of it fits a template built for a CrossFit box.
SEE IT AS THEY WOULD
Step into a capoeira group
Four seats in a 140-member grupo with a batizado coming and a beginners' class that cannot hold a toque yet. It is Grupo Raiz Capoeira, Oakland, CA, an invented gym in a sandbox that resets every night, not a customer.
Contramestra Joana Vieira
Owner — a grupo of 140, and one batizado a year
Known in the roda as Andorinha. Runs Raiz out of a hired hall four nights a week, and the batizado every October is a third of the year's income and all of its admin.
Professor Davi Nascimento
Professor — teaches the beginners and runs the bateria
Takes the Tuesday and Thursday beginners' classes and leads the bateria at every roda. Grades movement and music in the same session, because that is how it is asked for.
Marisol Reyes
Front desk — takes the hall, the dues and the batizado sign-ups
Opens the hall, checks people in, and is the one who knows whose mensalidade bounced without making it awkward.
Tomás Okoye
Member — corda amarela, going for amarela-azul
Two years in, trains three nights a week, and has just started on the gunga. Learning the ladainha is what is actually standing between him and his next corda.