How many black belts in your art?

[Luther unleashed]

Hey guys, I have been interested in these stats out of sheer curiosity. Tried googling a bit but it's a rough road, just figured I'd see if anybody has any good insight. Tae Kwon Do I am certain would be the highest anoint of black belts, but you never know I suppose.

I have studied a few arts and some didn't have any rank. The one I teach at the Rec center (Tong Che Bahk Do) though has only 85 black belts total! Actually I was the 63rd black belt added to the black belt registry. Pretty cool stat I think.

Anybody know any of these stats for either their art or another art?

[Nidan Melbourne]

At my old dojo I couldn't tell you how many Black Belts there were/are because the club had operated for 15 years or so prior to me joining. So now there could be hundreds if not thousands.

At my current club we have or had around 50-60 Black Belts in the last 8 years of training. Many of them came across as Black Belts.

[Wastelander]

I suppose I could send a letter to our honbu dojo and ask for the number of registered yudansha, as they would have that information. Unfortunately, I can't answer that, at the moment. I can say that my Sensei has promoted 8 people to Shodan in the time I have known him. He has done some Nidan and Sandan promotions, as well, but those aren't "new" black belts, so I'm not counting those.

[Luther unleashed]

I know it's a hard stat to find. I'm fortunate that I have been able to follow an accurate black belt registry for this info on this art specifically.

This brings up another thought, is there a black belt registry available online for you to see? I think this is a great feature to have as a school. I have one myself. I think it's also cool for students to see where they are on the list, just for fun.

[DWx]

TKD is so popular you are talking 1 000 000's of blackbelts in WTF, ITF and independents. How you look at the numbers depends on whether you want to look at this as a whole or break it down into the various sub-styles.

The Kukkiwon gives a figure of 9 million people holding Poom or Dan certificates which is a heck of a lot. http://www.kukkiwon.or.kr/front/pageView.action?cmd=/eng/introduce/business

They actually also have a database where you can search for poom and dan ranks: http://www.kukkiwon.or.kr/front/eng/main.action

ITF will be smaller than this and a little harder to quantify as you have 3 organisations claiming to be the ITF plus many breakaway groups. But to give some context, 10 years ago I was the 1086th person in the UK to obtain a 1st dan in my country in the ITF group I was a member of at the time. Now multiply that up to account for all the different ITF groups and independents and that's 1000's of blackbelts in my country alone. We've even had in the region of 60 blackbelts grade at our club in the past 15 years too.

Even if you look at a smaller group like the ATA, they have somewhere in the region of 350 000 students according to their website. If we conservatively say 10% of those students are blackbelts, that's still 35 000 dan ranks.

[Luther unleashed]

DWx those are some cool stats. Personally I view the different branches of TKD as different arts. If you were to look at a form in WTF, compared to ITF the common person would assume they are completely different arts so to me it's a different black belt to count.

It's pretty crazy to think of hey martial art having black belt practitioners in the millions but especially for tae kwon do it is certainly believable.

[JR 137]

Seido Juku has about 30,000 active members worldwide, according to a website somewhere. No idea how many are black belts, but I'm sure there's quite a few. I do however know we have...

1 9th dan - our founder Kaicho Tadashi Nakamura

4 8th dans - one of which is Nakamura's son and named successor. All four are the only ones ever promoted to this rank by Nakamura.

5 7th dans - I want to say 6 of them, but I can't think of who the 6th one is. My CI is one of them. 2 or 3 others have held that rank but either passed away or aren't current.

[sensei8]

Very interesting topic; thanks for starting it Lex!!

Looking through our Hombu's registry, active/inactive, we've 953 Yudansha's throughout the SKKA Network!! The overall total of the Student Body, as of Q3 2016, is 16,779 since the Hombu opened in 1957 of both active/inactive. The very first Yudansha [shodan] was earned in July 1965, and that student had been at the Hombu since the Hombu first opened. This, of course, is to also include Soke's and Dai-Soke's Judan, as well as San Dai-Soke's Judan; all three of these are inactive...two have passed away, and one was expelled.

Active/Inactive Yudansha's:

Kudan = 2 [My Sensei, when he was Kaicho of the SKKA, before his promotion to Dai-Soke, and myself]

Hachidan = 21

Nanadan = 13

Rokudan = 19

Godan = 88

Yondan = 86

Sandan = 107

Nidan = 121

Shodan = 358

JBB = 135

That's, since the conception of our Hombu, 15,826 of Mudansha ranks, of both active/inactive!!

I personally have promoted 108 to Yudansha from my Kyuodan Dojo, since 1984. Between the 3 Kyuodan Dojo's, my overall Student Body total was, 3,194.

Active/Inactive Yudansha's

Rokudan = 1

Godan = 9

Yondan = 12

Sandan = 17

Nidan = 26

Shodan = 28

JBB = 15

That represents 3,086 Mudansha's under my direct supervision.

[edit: spelling]

Edited December 24, 2016 by sensei8

[Lupin1]

There a ton of Isshinryu black belts, but my instructor formed his own curriculum with multiple forms, drills, and movement sets from other styles in addition to the standard Isshinryu requirements.

He's been teaching 35 years and last December I had the honor of becoming the 15th person he's promoted to black belt.

Unfortunately due to the nature of our club being at a youth center that kids usually stop attending once they reach high school, not too many people stick around long enough to make Shodan. I trained as a kid and left when I hit high school like most do, but I was the first one in 35 years to ever go back as an adult and make it to black belt.

[Zaine]

This would be super hard to research, but really interesting to find out. I wonder how successful a poll would be. Some arts divulge these things though.

My club had three, me being the first. It closed down shortly after the third was tested.

My sensei's dojo (Matsumura-Seito Shorin Ryu) has 32 overall black belts, with 13 of those still being active within his dojo, and 19 being listed under the "non-active" section. James Coffman, Gagne's sensei, does not have such a list on his website, so I'm not sure where the numbers are after this point.