Just curious, with your direct lineage to General Choi, what belt did you make it to under your instructor? And have you self-promoted any beyond that rank when you opened your own school?
At Chung Oh School they made it 3 years between every Dan level to balance things out, and at one point 2 years between 1st and 2nd, but then they bumped it up to 3 years like everything else.
Long answer, but a good read. Thanks for sharing. What rank do you hold today?
That's an average of 2.75 classes per week. The 10 year duration is impressive, but the number of classes per week is not. I'm also assuming you only mean classes in which you were a student, not classes in which you were instructing.
I do all of the patterns, step-sparring movements, weapons, or whatever is required for that belt level... just as if I was doing it at Chung Oh's School. At one test for example, I did all 24 patterns, one after another from white belt on up, did every step-sparring set in my entire curriculum, and did knife fighting attacks/movements.
Actually it was just over 20 years. I received my 1st Dan black belt in Nov. 2003.
I thought about following the ITF system on that, but I noticed that Chung Oh's School did not follow that system. They went 3 years for every full degree of black belt (on average). Some students might get fast-tracked based on how often they trained or taught classes however.
But you have to consider that they were only open four days per week. (M-Th). Friday was black belt class.
They do have a log at the HQ in Vienna. It is not easy to get information from them however I was fortunate to recently obtain a replacement for my lost first Dan Certificate from 1976.
If by "Legacy Guide" you refer to the 1972 Text the one year guide would likely have applied to the Military age males who populated the Oh Do Kwan most of whom had Prior MA experience. Also of note is that as the Calender time was shorter for certain Time lines the total training hours increased so that the number of hours for the 1 year time frame higher than the 18 month time frame which was higher than the 3 year time frame
Hmm, three different 1st (Dan) black belts and 23 years to 7th Dan? That dog does not hunt.
Sure. You can reach me here:
I still have my ITF certificates sitting in a drawer. Never did get around to finding a picture frame for them.
Potato, potahto
It you do the simple math of adding the belt ranks together (1 to 7) to get the years required, the math does not add up. Having step promotions in between would not matter (except for the money grabs).
By what criteria or authority are you getting your rank?
You're right, slightly over 20. But that's still less than 21, and far less than 28.
4th to 7th should take either 15 years or 18 years, depending on whether you're on a "per current rank" or "per next rank" system. Even if we assume that you should've been a 4th dan in 2011, you should've gotten 6th dan in 2020 or 2022 (minimum) and be 3 or 1 years (respectively) towards 7th.
It might be a lot at that school, but it's still not a lot in general. My school only had 1 Hapkido class per week. I went to 90%+ of the Hapkido classes. That doesn't mean I learned a lot of Hapkido relative to folks who train it even 2-3 days per week. It just means I learned a lot compared to the others at my school.
I certainly cannot speak to all the groups out there concerning their current procedures but before General Choi's death I had a certificate kicked back because they miscalculated the Time in grade with an IIC credit. After explanation the issue was resolved. Point being a school cannot ignore the organizational requirements because the organization would not issue the certificate.
