KSW Promotions

[taiji fajin]

How often do your schools promote to the next belt color? (obviously brown to black and on takes much longer than the previous ones). I feel that mine advance too quickly, however, it is left over from my old instructor, and I have no doubt that changing it now would cause many in the class to become very upset, if not outright leave. For right now I'm just going to try to change it in brown belt to black belt, as that had a much more flexible timeframe for advancement in my school.

[White_Tiger]

I had a similar problem. I added a year to the curriculum from White to Black after the original instructor left. What I did is 'grandfather' students in past a certain rank. If they had been in a certain amount of time and were a certain rank, then the old system applied to them. Anyone below time and rank requirements had to adhere to the new system, and of course new students coming in were on the new system. It can be done without upsetting many students if any. I didn't have anyone get upset or quit because of the new requirements. If I can help you I would be glad to.

 

Good Luck!!

[PrideampPoise]

We have testing/promotions every three months. The only time I've seen anyone be promoted at another time was from white belt to yellow stripe. Those few times were because the student started right after a test and picked up the material to the point where they could test for yellow belt at the next scheduled test.

 

After that, its three months between tests, period.

 

Once we reach brown belt (I haven't yet, I just tested for brown stripe), we still test every three months, but I haven't seen anyone promoted to black belt with fewer than I think 5 or 6 stripes.

 

So, from yellow to blue, blue to red, etc, takes 6 months. Stripe after 3, new belt after another 3. Seems to be a minimum year and a half from brown to black.

 

My take is that if you are putting reasonable effort in, and are showing up, SBN will promote us each time through Black-Brown.

 

At that point, it changes, as we have some Black-Brown belts with more than 10 stripes.

 

Now, I should add that I haven't really seen anyone put "reasonable" effort in and not make reasonable progress. I'm not sure what would happen if a blue belt, for example, really was trying but just hadn't picked up the material and tested poorly.

 

It seems that those who don't make progress really aren't putting the effort in, and invariably they bail.

[taiji fajin]

In my school, people get a new belt (we don't do stripes until brown belt) every semester. If they stay over the summer, they can get one over the summer. From brown to black takes usually 2 years, if they can't test at our school and have to test somewhere else, its possible to do it in a year and a half. That's all kind of rough. So, if you try to speed through it, from joining to black belt *could* be done in 3 years, it normally takes 4.