coloured belts

[fireka]

I would start a revolution if i could just find some people to do it with me. I like the concept of white to black only. Either you know your stuff or you don't, no fractions. *sigh* but now i'm a hipocrit cause i'm gonna go test in two weeks. I keep up the shirad for a while but no one wants to teach me orange belt stuff till i'm wearing a yellow belt.

[mArTiAl_GiRl]

hey let's start a revolution together! cuz I like the concept of white and black too. lol

[Walkman]

My Uechi-Ryu dojo has 3 belts: white, brown, black. There are 4 ranks within white.

 

We don't stress the ranking system much. If you were to drop in unannounced, you'd find that no one, not even the sensei is wearing a belt.

[Sibylla]

We have nine colored belts; yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, and three browns. I think that is way to many, especially as someone mentioned, you can't really tell the difference between them at some dojos. But if you change dojo, the picture might be totally different; the kyu's standard can be much better or worse than in your previous dojo. So you might suck in one place, and be a star in another. That is not a good thing, is it?

 

Brazilian ju jitsu have a good thing going; they have blue, purple, brown and black. It takes one to two years to get blue belt. That weeds out a lot of the negativity that occurs around the belt system. If you have to train hard for a prolonged time before you actually get a belt at all, you're in it for the love of the sport/art and not so much for the desire to get belts.

[aefibird]

I agree, Sibylla. If you're willing to train for ages to actually get a belt at all, then it proves that you're there for the art and not to belong to a 'belt factory'. Lots of people rush through the kyu grades as quickly as possible and place a lot of emphasis on getting the next belt, only to be disappointed when they get to 1st kyu and 1st dan and then find that there's a long wait until they can grade again.

 

Walkman, I like what you said about your dojo. If people aren't wearing belts then there's less pressure and negative competition between students IMO. Lots of coloured belt ranks within a system can encourage people to think 'I've got a green belt, therefore I'm better than and superior to you with the yellow belt' or whatever, instead of concentrating on their training and trying to be the best they can be.

 

Lets all[i/] start a revolution and do away with lots of coloured belts! I'd love it if we just had white/black or even white/brown/black at my karate dojo...

[Budderfly]

At Tong Moo Do, our system goes like this:

 

White

 

Yellow

 

Green

 

Blue

 

Purple

 

Red

 

Brown ( which goes on to coloured stripes yellow, green, blue, red and black)

 

Black

[Budderfly]

We have ten colored belt ranks. Small steps until brown belt then things get more intense. I think most people need some recognition along the way.

 

Our school is the same. Once you get into Brown, you're at the halfway point of earning your black belt. All the basics you learned in the previous belts are applied more in brown belt and it prepared you for black belt.

[ramymensa]

I agree, there are too many coloured belts, but let's try to look at it from another point of view. Nowadays an instructor must earn his living. This is done by teaching students and grading them, thus, the need for many ranks. From the students p.o.v. the idea is similar. I start karate or any style ... you ... the instructor ... tell me I'll be a black belt in lets say 6-7 years (in Shotokan this is an aproximate tenure for BB). In the process of getting my belt it's easier for me to pass through all the testing in coloured belts and to mark my success and achievements wearing the coloured cloth

 

In a class there are many students and it helps them to know where they stand.

[stuey-san]

hrm......wasnt it like you would start of with a white obi and then over the years your obi would get so dirty it would be black (like 100 odd years ago in okinawa etc).......tbh i think coloured belts are good and useful, like you can distinguish between a more senior grade, like someone who has been there for three years but is not yet black or whatever, than sumone who had just started, and if they were all white belts there wud be like, no distinguishment (have i just made that word up?) like for the more senior students, altho like at all the comps i go to youre pretty much split into to groups within weight and height age etc, either brown belt and above (or equivalent) and then everyone from white belt to purple belt are grouped together to compete against each other, which kinda does make you wonder the poin if you can compare a purple belt to a white belt.....but yuh tis my two cents

[aefibird]

Well, one of the stories about why we have coloured belts is that your obi would eventually turn black through dirt accumulated over years of training. Personally, I think that theory is just pants. The Japanese are obsessive with cleanliness - why would they want perfectly white and spotless gi's but wear a dirty belt? It just doesn't seem to make sense to me!