For every 10,000 people that join a Martial Arts Academy, HALF will drop out within the first 6 months.

Of those remaining student, about 1,000 will complete 1 year of training and then quit. 500 will study for 2 years, but only 100 will see their 3rd year anniversary.

On the average, ONLY 10 will make 1st Degree Blank Belt. Usually, only 1 or will make it to 2nd Degree Black Belt.

I shall go on to teach others what He/She has learned, for the Martial Arts is now part of their life and they shall go on to share this life with others.

This person is a BLACK BELT?

This person is 1 in 10,000!

Are YOU the ONE?

Yep, this has been floating around social media for YEARS. Even school pages are posting this.

Despite the self contradictions in this (what's 1 in 10,000? Black belt or nidan?), how many people here actually believe this? I know of no nidan who claims to have had 4,999 other white belts with him or her in the dojo when they first started out.

Karate may be tough and require lots of work, and it may be beyond many people's dedication... but it is mostly certainly NOT beyond anyone's abilities. We see people with disabilities - both physical and cognitive - earn black belts all the time. Finishing high school is exponentially more difficult than earning a black belt; we just don't look at it that way because completing high school is at least semi-compulsory (i.e., you have many external motivators forcing you to get your diploma, so "everybody" has one).

maybe calling it a myth is not exactly the right word for this. The numbers mean very little, but there is no need to be that precise.

The idea, which does have much truth, is that most people who begin training in martial arts will eventually quit before reaching any significant level of skill and understanding. Even less will master it or make it a lifetime endeavour.

This phenomenon isn’t particular to martial arts either. We have all known someone who did XY or Z in their school days or youth and eventually dropped out after a few years for all sorts of reasons life might bring…starting is easy. Keeping it up for a lifetime is difficult and rare, which is why it is worthy of admiration.

What I'm noticing is this: for adults, more people quit at black belt than white or yellow. Adults are more likely to have the "finish what you start" mindset. You can tell them until you're blue in the face that "black belt is not the end," but you can't always undo the decades worth of pop culture conditioning they've been receiving before they set foot in the dojo.

For children, they're more likely to quit at white and yellow. And I think that the reason for this is because the main motive for young children signing up in the first place is that they're being bullied at school, and are expecting to have a functional level of skill in matter of weeks. When they feel let down, they leave.

But I HAVE seen children quit at black belt.

I'd say that probably two-thirds of adults stick around to make black belt. And then of those, two-thirds stop at black belt.

For children, I'd say 1 in 5 make black belt.

11 hours ago, Furinkazan said:

What I'm noticing is this: for adults, more people quit at black belt than white or yellow. Adults are more likely to have the "finish what you start" mindset. You can tell them until you're blue in the face that "black belt is not the end," but you can't always undo the decades worth of pop culture conditioning they've been receiving before they set foot in the dojo.

For children, they're more likely to quit at white and yellow. And I think that the reason for this is because the main motive for young children signing up in the first place is that they're being bullied at school, and are expecting to have a functional level of skill in matter of weeks. When they feel let down, they leave.

I never thought about it, but this makes perfect sense. I remember hearing something about 20 years ago that said if children reach green belt (or whatever the middle color rank in the style is) they are much more likely to reach black. I don't know how accurate that is now or even was at the time. but I know that came up in conversation. It also makes sense with the adults, reaching black belt could signify completing the task, then moving on.

In our Karate school we had more students quit at brown belt than any other color, because once you got to brown more was expected of you. More attendance was part of it. We had a student pass a brown belt test and then not show up to class for almost two weeks. When he did show up, he got reamed by the sensei in front of the class about his lack of dedication, saying "back in the 80s we would have held you down and taken your belt off, but we don't do that stuff anymore," so I guess he got off easy.

1 in 10,000 is a stretch. When I was young, I heard the 10% rule while coming up through the ranks. Basically, if you had 10 people start a class together, maybe one of them would make it to black belt. I think this is more realistic than the 1 in 10,000, which sounds overblown to make it sound like even more of an achievement.

I've been around a while and seen different ages of students quit at different times. I've seen a lot of kids quit at black belt level, sometimes due to parents thinking that was when things were done, or the kids getting older and moving into doing activities through the schools with their friends. Adults tend to have a hard time staying consistent due to their adultly duties, especially if they have a family and the rest of the family isn't into the martial arts.

Yeah, I’ve heard about the 1 in 10K thingy more than I care to remember. Factual or not doesn’t matter much to me because, well, as interesting or uninteresting, I simply just don’t care one way or another.

Student’s come and go. No use for me to lose sleep over that. I’m on the floor for a serious reason, and if a student can’t be serious about their training for whatever reason(s), I’d rather they just get off my floor until they can be serious about their training!

Stay…Leave…I could care less.

It should be a somewhat small percent that make it to black belt. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Yeah i think it is a lot more nuanced than that but not sure i would agree with 1 in 10k either. After the '10000 hours/reps etc to mastery' stuff (which people already wildly misinterpret) came out people kept trying to find ways to attach the number 10000 to stuff as if it was some kind of magical number. I think it makes a lot more sense to attribute it to stages which are all independent of each other - eg a common statement i used to hear was if someone got a bjj purple belt they would eventually get a black belt. The reasoning being that the time it took to get their showed dedication etc and they have basically learnt most of the techniques they would need and it is now down to little adjustments and refinements so they will eventually get there.

For karate, from what i have observed personally, i would say that most people i see start if they do more than one lesson get a couple of belts at least. Then there is a drop off at green when things begin to get a bit tougher. Not too many but a few. Then a drop off at brown as people start to think it is taking ages etc. Most people i have seen get 2nd kyu stay at least til black belt. Then a drop off at shodan as people have 'completed it' (similar to the bjj drop off at blue belt)

Edited August 31Aug 31 by DarthPenguin

On 8/30/2026 at 6:45 PM, KarateKen said:

It should be a somewhat small percent that make it to black belt. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

Everyone not doing it can be chalked up to many things, but I don't think difficulty usually it in the case of karate.

Take the most difficult kata in your system (Unsu, in the case of Shotokan). As difficult as it may be, it pales in comparision to high school geometry class. And rememer, there are more difficult math and science courses after that. But we all have diplomas because of the external motivators. In my particular state, you have to be 17 to drop out. But by the time we reach 17, we’re already half way through our junior year.

Of course, we can argue that one may simply have learned the movements of Unsu without learning the deeper meanings, but the same can also be said of the material we learned in school (i.e., merely memorizing the material so it can be repeating back on tests).

The #1 thing I attribute to is not the ability to do something difficult, but to sticktoitiveness. In reality, that's how you become good at anything in life. If you have a six year old daughter who wants to do ballet, it works exactly the same way.

Edited September 1Sep 1 by Furinkazan

11 hours ago, Furinkazan said:

Everyone not doing it can be chalked up to many things, but I don't think difficulty usually it in the case of karate.

I once opened a dojo called "It's so easy a caveman can do it, Karate" My advertising line was "white belt to black belt in 2 hours" however I had to close down. Lots of complains about how tough it was. Generation soft.