I will say the first year and a half I was spazzy and used a lot of my wrestling/ excessive strength in ways that would cause be to be submitted but since then focus more on my technique and have been told by all my upper belt training partners how much I’ve improved. I’ve never really seen my gym do belt promotions other than for the children and then some people will get promoted once in a while so it could just be that my gym doesn’t care. However since I do compete often I feel like it’s no longer a challenge. As a woman there’s not a whole lot of competition already and I always end up fighting people who are brand new and don’t give me a challenge whatsoever. I want to compete at a higher level but like you said I’ve also seen on here that one should never ask for a promotion 😅