Belts and pants.

[j_m]

I was curious how many poeple here trian in some form of Chinese martial arts and have a "belt system" in thier training. Besides the belt that you wear to keep your pants up I saw a post on another forum about what some people refer to as "belt factories" and was just curious where some people think the line is drawn with blets, promotions, tests, and such.

1. Do you have belt ranking at your school (or in your system)?
2. Do you wear a belt/sash when you work out?
3. How many belts (ranks) do you have in your system (including degrees, etc)?
4. How many belts/ranks are too many?
5. How often are tests/promotions and how fequent?

Any other comments on the subject are welcome,




jm

 

[HammerFist]

Yes we have a belt or sash system at my school.

I wear my sash while I work out. So does everyone else in class.

I'm not sure how many belt ranks we have. Probably about 12.

How many are too many? Don't know.

How frequent are tests/promotions? At my school everyone tests when they are ready. There is no set time or testing dates. It's working out to be about every 5 months or so for me.

I sorta believe in the belt system because thay do mark achievement but I don't believe in just persuing belts. For example there's this guy at my school who has recently passed me in rank. I don't have a problem with him passing me but I do have a problem with the fact that he doesn't know the material as well as I do. It cheapens everything that I and others have worked so hard to accomplish. When I test for a belt/sash it's because I feel that I know the material well enough to move on. It's not my ultimate goal to become a black belt. It's my goal to become the best martial artist I can be regardless of belt/sash color.

 

[clfsean]

1. Do you have belt ranking at your school (or in your system)?
2. Do you wear a belt/sash when you work out?
3. How many belts (ranks) do you have in your system (including degrees, etc)?
4. How many belts/ranks are too many?
5. How often are tests/promotions and how fequent?

1 -- Main school no, college club yes.
2 -- Main school if I remember to put it on, college club yes.
3 -- Main school none, college club 2 colors 3 stripes
4 -- None if it serves a purpose
5 -- Sifu's discretion if there's a test

 

[7starmantis]

1. Do you have belt ranking at your school (or in your system)?
2. Do you wear a belt/sash when you work out?
3. How many belts (ranks) do you have in your system (including degrees, etc)?
4. How many belts/ranks are too many?
5. How often are tests/promotions and how fequent?

Any other comments on the subject are welcome,

1.) We do have a "sash system" at our school.
2.) I dont in our morning class or when working outside of class. In the night class I do. (I do however wear pants while working out.)
3.) Lets see....I think 15. Thats including 6 blacks. At black 1 you can take a jow gow test which is kind of a national KFE test. You get to fight with students and sifus of our other 9 schools. Then if you want to go on to sifu after black 6 you can take a sifu test if you like.
4.) I wouldn't say there really is a number that is too many. If they take over the focus of your training, than 1 is too many in my opinion.
5.) We have a graduation each 8 weeks, but each one is not a belt test. My sifu wanted to get back to the "old school" way of teaching a little, having them work on it for a while then show that they know it before moving on.


I lke the belt system deal for one reason. It helps new martial artist count their progression. Its encouraging for them to look back and see where they have gotten over the last few years. In my opinion I would rather do away with the sashes altogether, but thats just my opinion. Most people in our advanced class could really care less about what color sash they have, or you have for that matter. I just tested for my black sash and in my opinion, I'm just starting to really learn kung fu. So, for a tool of seeing your progress, they are useful. For determining skill level, they are completely useless. Well, not completely, but close.

Now tests, I like more than belts or sashes. Tests allow you to evaluate not only your students skill, but your teaching skills too! Also, it is important to produce skilled MAist and especially teachers. Tests allow you to make sure you are increasing the skill level of your students. If they want to be a teacher and claim lineage under you, it is important to make sure they have the skill to stand on, or back it up with.

7sm

 

[7starmantis]

j_m, what about you?

7sm

 

[j_m]

j_m, what about you?

7sm

Who? Me!? :uhyeah:

I guess what spurred my thinking was that I have been in both camps... so to speak.

I spent time at a school that had a belt/sash ranking sytem ( about 14 lvls maybe ... incl blacks), a promotion/belt test every month, and everyone wore thier belt [and uniform] all the time with no exceptions (while at the school). At the time I didn't think too much of it except that I thought the structure was good... especially for lazy Americans like myself. But there were definatley students (and instructors) at various ranks that did not really have the skill/gong to back it up. But that's probably normal since everyone is a unique individual anyway. Maybe?

Currently I am somewhere where I no longer have to concern myself with belts/sashes at all. Ranking (if you want to call it that) is only considered by the time and energy (imagine that!) that a student puts into thier training. There are no scheduled promotion tests and I must say I prefer things the way they are now. Basically we just concern ourselves with training and learning. I guess I'm sort of under the opinion that belts can not only give a false sense of "confidence" but also can spur the students to train for the wrong reasons (ie. to get the "next" belt). Of course, this is just my opinion for the moment

7*, I liked your comments on tests though. That is something I had not considered too much in and of itself. I think tests could, and are, a much better "tool" for this purpose. I suppose under my current teacher there are so few of us (a mere handful) that we all get a lot of personal time in which we are constantly tested over and over. Definatley something to contemplate on.



Thanks for the responses so far,


jm

 

[CMack11]

(I do however wear pants while working out.)

And I'm sure the people you work out with are very appreciative of that. :ultracool

 

[7starmantis]

Hehe, I'm sure they are!

7sm

 

[Silo-Fu Kung-Fu]

1) ranking system ?? Yes we have one
2) wear a sash? Yes everyone wears as sash
3) # of levels/ranks? 12 (3 levels of green, 3 levels of Blue, 3 levels of Brown, black, white, red)

4) How many levels is too many? Who am i to say whats too much in any style ?

5) there are promotions/tests, there once a year, and theres no cost.

 

[Dronak]

1. Do you have belt ranking at your school (or in your system)?
2. Do you wear a belt/sash when you work out?
3. How many belts (ranks) do you have in your system (including degrees, etc)?
4. How many belts/ranks are too many?
5. How often are tests/promotions and how fequent?

I learned as part of a college club, so that could affect my answers a bit. We didn't have a belt ranking system and were told that traditional CMAs don't have such a system. We were given belts/sashes to wear during practice (black in color and thicker in the center). Since we didn't have a ranking system, I can't answer the third question. As for the fourth, I don't know how many are too many. I suppose if you use them, you want enough to distinguish large differences in skill, but I don't know how you'd decide what's large enough and when to award new belts/ranks. We never really had tests in our club. There was one, near the beginning after we had learned two of three basic level forms. We had to perform those two forms and if we did well enough, our teacher would let us learn two forms instead of one during the following semester. We never did that again though.