Martial Arts Belt Rankings; Are They Worth Anything Today ?
Sun 01:37 PST. Posted by staff@riposte.org.
I don’t know about you but I came of age in the 1970’s. At that time the Kung Fu TV series was airing and the most popular karate movie was Enter the Dragon! It is against this backdrop that I started taking karate lessons. First Okinawan karate at my jr. high school and later I took a couple of years of Lima Lama. I attained my first rank in Lima Lama – ultimately becoming a Blue Belt. Later I went on to learn Kenpo Karate and attained many degrees of Black Belt. By now most people understand that belt ranks are analogous to grades in school but do the belt systems hold any real value to martial arts students today? That is the question I will ask in this post along with some examination of the expectation and meaning of “attaining rank” in today’s modern fighting systems.
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