Focus On Training
Forget The Belt
Everyone who begins Karate, or any martial art, has their own reason. Ideally Karate becomes a lifelong pursuit that enriches and strengthens the practitioner. Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons, many people become fixated on the belt and get sidetracked. The black belt has become a symbol of “success” in the martial arts community. I have begun to think the belt may be more trouble than it is worth. Many people get “the belt” and then quit, having “achieved success” and in their mind, learned all the karate.
Dojo lore is rife with the tale of the ‘old days’ where everyone just had a white belt and, over many years of training and effort, it would become black. So This is where the black belt comes from.
This is absolute fiction and people should stop believing it. Stop. The. Madness.
In traditional Japanese martial arts, there are no belts. Belts are a relatively new thing, only about a hundred years old. There is a lot of talk about the “meanings” of the colors of each belt, how white represents purity, and green perseverance…etc. It’s tosh and nonsense.
If you do not overcome your tendancy to give up easily, your life leads to nothing — Mas Oyama
Ok, so what does it really mean?
The belt system as it currently exists is nothing more than a convenient way to break down the curriculum into a manageable format that has a somewhat logical progression.
That’s it.
In Okinawa, there was no need for belts at all because the instruction was mostly private. There were no large schools where hundreds of students were practicing together. That method of teaching martial arts is a uniquely Japanese construct.
I’ve seen schools where the students show an obscene amount of respect to the belt itself. This to me smacks of martial idolatry. In one school I visited I was told, and I’m not joking, that I had “disrespected” my belt by letting it touch the floor. I immediately asked if we all disrespected the belt when we laid on the ground to stretch or do throwing exercises, but apparently that doesn’t count. I’ve seen promotion ceremonies where the recipient must bow to their old belt before bowing to the new one and putting it on with great pomp and ceremony.
My first Shotokan instructor quite literally threw my green belt at me and said “you passed, wear this now” and that was that. Zero pomp. Zero ceremony. Zero focus on what isn’t important.
Other schools will insist that one should never wash the belt because it would wash away all the training and, presumably, the hoodoo belt spirits who dwell within. Belts are traditionally made of heavy cotton. I have a silk one, but I dislike it and never wear it. In the course of a good training session, my belt is often soaked with sweat. They will eventually start to stink and, belt hoodoo or no, you don’t want to be the smelly kid in class. Wash your belt.
Why do I bring this up at all?
I’m glad you asked.
Karate has no philosophy. Some people think that the tradition of Karate came from Buddhism and Karate has a connection with the absolute, space and universe, but I don’t believe in that. My philosophy is to knock my opponent out, due to the use of only one technique. One finishing blow!” – Mikio Yahara
Anyone who has studied martial arts for any length of time, let alone instructed it, can tell you that student turnover is a nightmare. People quit, for various reasons. That’s fine. It happens and we wish them well. For an instructor, though, to see a student quit immediately after they’ve spent years training the student is the worst kind of disappointment. But in many cases, the instructors are setting themselves up for this.
By putting too much focus on the belt in the first place.
Those training in martial arts will, from time to time, hit a plateau. They will simply stop seeing progress and much of the time, just quit. The continued effort is not worth the little strip of new cotton. Instructors would go a long way to prevent this kind of turnover by ensuring the focus of training isn’t just getting to the next belt, but the intrinsic rewards of training itself.
In short, instructors need to deemphasize the belt as the goal. Focus the student on the journey itself. Develop within them the habits of a karateka.
"The heart of our karate is real fighting.There can be no proof without real fighting. Without proof there is no trust. Without trust there is no respect. This is a definition in the world of martial arts." ~ Mas Oyama
