belts in aikido

[Manny]

Can you tell me how is the grading in aikido, I mean the belt colors and time you need to achieve each one?

Manny

 

[Chris Parker]

Hi,

I'll defer to the Aikido practitioners here, but I believe that Aikido (in most schools/organisations) have two belts: white, and black. There is a kyu-grade structure for the white ranks, I have seen different schools range from 3 kyu grades, to 6, to 9 depending on the instructor(s) and the school. Yudansha (black belt graded students) also wear hakama.

The time taken between grades depends again on the instructor, the organisation/school, and obviously the student, but the idea of 5 years plus to achieve Shodan would be average from Aikidoka I have spoken with.

 

[theletch1]

Depends somewhat on the specific sub-style of aikido you happen to be studying. Many have white for beginner students, brown for advanced students and black for the dan ranks. Others have just white and black as was stated and yet others have adopted a modern belt ranking system similar to many other arts. My style of Nihon Goshin Aikido uses a colored belt system that runs White, Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple for the kyu ranks that are getting new techniques and brown for i-kyu. Our I-kyu ranking is sort of like the probationary black belt that you see in some of the kempo systems in that you aren't getting any new techniques but are expected to fine tune the techniques you've got to perfection and get some teaching time under your belt. As for time in rank, it really depends on the school, the instructor and the student. It's not uncommon for an aikido-ka to take 6 or 7 years to make sho-dan with the I-kyu rank being held longer than any other colored belt. Hope that helps at least a little.

 

[Laus]

In my school you wear a white belt until you are a black belt - we have 7 kyus. At shodan you also start wearing a hakema, so the black belt is never outwardly displayed. I have heard of some schools switching their kyus to a green belt around 3rd Kyu.