Junior Black Belt?

[madtanker]

(and this does not come from a master martial artist, but a master sharpshooter and former security enforcement expert)

Umm, sounds like a martial artist to me.

Yeah, I just realized that part of the quote when I said it... I meant that I did not want to mis-represent myself as a person who was an expert in what we 'know' as martial arts... I know that the two are martial in nature; however, I was leaning towards not calling myself something I was not...lol.

[shinka]

Well for us.... in Hoshinkido. We have junior belts...all the way to junior black belts (16 y.o and under).... They aren't close to a normal black belt and as soon as the student become 16 years of age... He or she drops 3 belts to equals the normal rank with the ammount of technic required for a regular adult belt. I think it's normal and pretty fair.

That way, kids can enjoy getting up the ranks and get a junior blk belt and be proud but at some point with maturity...they understand they need to learn more to achieve whats missing and learn another black belt....a "real" black belt this time.... It's an honor in a way to get two.

The point is.....a junior black belt doesn't equals a regular black belt...NO

The ammount of technics required,size,strenght etc....are all ovious factors.

[chiliphil1]

I've posted in one of these categories before.

I got my black belt at 10 full fledged, not a junior belt. One thing with the school that I went to was that once you made red belt (2 ranks below black) 3 you move to adult classes, so when you do test, you meet all the criteria of the adults, you must test side by side and keep pace with them to pass there are no lax or lesser standards for anyone regardless of age.

With that said, once the black belt is earned all of the normal "privileges"] come with it, such as the ability to teach and assist with teaching, the ability to sit on testing boards for low to mid level color ranks, etc..

[JonWal]

Besides if you're going to exclude kids from having a blackbelt based on size or because they can't handle the 6ft 250lb attacker, you're going to have to exclude a lot of smaller women and men too. Not to mention in that case maybe we should have an upper age limit on a blackbelt if we're going to have a lower one based on those reasons... start getting arthritis, a dodgy hip, whatever and your ability to defend yourself against an adult starts to go down.

Good post

[ninjanurse]

Jon, I agree with DWx here too...there is no comparison. I promote "juniors" to Black Belt based on their ability within the art not their ability against someone much larger than they are. They hold a full Dan rank but are not considered equal to the adults in the school in terms of authority or voting rights.

[Nidan Melbourne]

i don't agree with young kids getting to the rank of black belt until they are old enough to understand what it means to hold it.

At my school they don't have a minimum age to get it but i feel like you should be at least 14-15 to get it as they will have the emotional maturity and physical maturity to understand what black belt really means to have.

If i ran my school that is the age requirement i would have for my students, unless the child is a prodigy and is above 12 years old.

[sensei8]

i don't agree with young kids getting to the rank of black belt until they are old enough to understand what it means to hold it.

At my school they don't have a minimum age to get it but i feel like you should be at least 14-15 to get it as they will have the emotional maturity and physical maturity to understand what black belt really means to have.

If i ran my school that is the age requirement i would have for my students, unless the child is a prodigy and is above 12 years old.

This is for adults as well, imho!!