Everyone who knows anything about martial arts knows belts are used for gradings. Even people who don’t train know about the coloured belts.

With this in mind, here are a few questions worthy of thought before planning a club or structuring teaching.

The Okinawan ryuha and main CI in Japan(my instructor) has only ever used a total of 5 colours including white and black.

Would a system with fewer belts be perceived as less credible by potential students?

What would be the pros/cons of keeping the same system as my instructor VS dividing the material into smaller bits and adding more belts/colours?

8 hours ago, Spartacus Maximus said:

Everyone who knows anything about martial arts knows belts are used for gradings. Even people who don’t train know about the coloured belts.

With this in mind, here are a few questions worthy of thought before planning a club or structuring teaching.

The Okinawan ryuha and main CI in Japan(my instructor) has only ever used a total of 5 colours including white and black.

Would a system with fewer belts be perceived as less credible by potential students?

What would be the pros/cons of keeping the same system as my instructor VS dividing the material into smaller bits and adding more belts/colours?

Okinawan organizations not using shogo belts for godan and above is kind of odd to me. It's normally non-Gima lineage Shotokan and its derivatives (Wado-ryu, Korean striking arts, etc) that omit them.

Anyhow, it doesn't seem odd to me. I believe Soo Bahk Do and most Tang Soo Do schools are like this. You have a small number of belt colors, but they're broken up into two or three ranks that have some kind of stripe, tape, or patch added to the belt to denote rank within that color.

Truth is, most students walking into that dojo aren't going to think they're being cheated out of anything. They likely aren't even aware of the fact that mudansha in other schools get a new belt color with each promotion within the lower half of the mudansha ranks. If they have no prior martial arts training, they're going to think your system is normal and that other belt rank systems are abnormal when they inevitably learn about them.

My adults program uses white (8-7kyu), green (6-4kyu), and brown (3-1kyu), so it's fairly minimalistic, and modelled on the common system used in my ryuha in Okinawa. New students don't generally have a concept of exactly what the belts contain, and personally, think it puts the focus more on the learning than belt.

I've never trained in a system that takes a minimalist approach to belts within the kyu grades like that, and I've heard of Shotokan schools (particularly within Egami lineage (Shotokai, SKA, etc) that only have white and black or white, brown, and black.

That said, if I "cared about belts," I'm probably going to see each kyu rank as a "temporary stop" on the way to black belt, whether I get a new colored belt with it or not.

If I were to start a new system that only had white and black, I'd likely get a high-end white Kataaro with embroidery, since the years I'd be wearing it would justify the investment...

I know Japanese martial arts have belts, but for the last 30 years I’ve trained traditional Chinese martial arts and there are no belt ranks.

but with that said, when i started Japanese Jiujitsu in 1972 we only had white, green, brown and black belts. But we also had stripes on each belt for higher rank: 1st, 2nd, 3rd degree. When i did taekwondo in mid to late 70s it only had white, yellow, green, i think blue, brown and black belts

my daughter’s Aikido school, for kids, had colored belts ranks, but adults wore a white belt until they got to black. But there were various ranks within the white belts

i think it comes down to who you are teaching. If kids, multiple ranks may be good, it keeps the kids and parents happy. For adults, i would think a minimalist approach would work, but then it really all depends, in my opinion, why they are taking martial arts in the first place

Our TKD school uses only 6 colors: white, orange, green, blue, brown, and black. But each color (not white) has two levels to it, accept brown, which has three. So we go white, low/high orange belt, low/high green belt, low/high blue belt, low/middle/high brown belt, and then black belt.

The pros to having more ranks available is that the curriculum can be broken down into possibly more easily digestible pieces. One of the cons is that it could be seen as a way to add more testings and get paid more often. However, I think that if you have an established curriculum that can be seen up-front and you are transparent about it, then setting your rank system shouldn't be an issue, so long as you stay consistent with it.

On 8/26/2026 at 8:04 PM, Spartacus Maximus said:

Would a system with fewer belts be perceived as less credible by potential students?

Yes and No.

Yes is for those who put more value to ranks than necessary.

No is for those who put no value to ranks than necessary.

On 8/26/2026 at 8:04 PM, Spartacus Maximus said:

What would be the pros/cons of keeping the same system as my instructor VS dividing the material into smaller bits and adding more belts/colours?

Pros of keeping the same system as your instructor: Respect

Cons of keeping the same system as your instructor: It’s your instructor’s system and NOT yours whatsoever.

The VS part: Smaller bits and adding more belts/colors as opposed to continuing your instructor’s system speaks towards overcrowding said curriculum unnecessarily, not to mention, more unnecessary stress on your Student Body’s pocketbook.

How many belts one has means nothing to me because a belt and the like aren’t going to improve my MA betterment whatsoever.

Imho!!

All my formal training has been in one of the oldest lineages of Okinawan karate with Okinawan teachers who used very few belts for grading.

Dans up to 6 have black, red/white for 7&8, 9&10 wear red. For kyu grades white, blue, green then brown. No different regardless of students age.

Teaching exactly my teacher’s system/curriculum is my intention. However the question is whether or not the belt/grading system below shodan should be adapted to better received/understood by potential students who are foreign to the culture.

2 hours ago, Spartacus Maximus said:

All my formal training has been in one of the oldest lineages of Okinawan karate with Okinawan teachers who used very few belts for grading.

Dans up to 6 have black, red/white for 7&8, 9&10 wear red. For kyu grades white, blue, green then brown. No different regardless of students age.

Teaching exactly my teacher’s system/curriculum is my intention. However the question is whether or not the belt/grading system below shodan should be adapted to better received/understood by potential students who are foreign to the culture.

The adaptation below Shodan that you’re proposing is worth the effort as you’ve described.

What might be noting is will the student body perceive that they might wonder, as students tend to do, how much more longer before they earn Shodan, as well as, how much more money will they have to spend for the added on tests/belts.

The old adage that says…”Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”