My BJJ school has the option where you can pay to come in twice a week, you can pay to come in three times a week, or you can pay for unlimited classes per week. Of course its not truly unlimited as you are limited by how many classes they run per week. Still if you want to come in more often I think its a good option, its only about a $10 dollar difference between unlimited and three times a week and only about a $10 difference between three times a week and twice a week.
Black Belt Definiton
- Thread starter Martial_Kumite
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My BJJ school has the option where you can pay to come in twice a week, you can pay to come in three times a week, or you can pay for unlimited classes per week. Of course its not truly unlimited as you are limited by how many classes they run per week. Still if you want to come in more often I think its a good option, its only about a $10 dollar difference between unlimited and three times a week and only about a $10 difference between three times a week and twice a week.
Hyoho
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If you were not a fighter before you began to do M.A. you will always get your butt whooped. Even a legitimate school won't help you with something you never had in the first place.
Paying for it won't help either.
I couldn't disagree with this more. Not even with a disagreeing machine.
Absolutely. From personal knowledge, here's what I think a Black Belt is...
In my own Tomiki-ryu aikido programs, it represents a general understanding of the principles, how & why they work, and the ability to use them to some degree in free practice (i.e. on the fly), competence in the basic kata techniques, and a growing competence in more advanced and variation of techniques. This takes, depending ont he student and how many mat hours per week they get, anywhere from 1.5 (very fast) to 4 years (pretty slow) to get to shodan... 1st degree black belt. Oh, and you can fall in any direction without hurting yourself.
In judo, the same basic core of teaching, but as instead of 17 basic techniques and 10 more advanced ones (and some other drill training stuff) you've got the gokyu-no-waza (traditional) 40 throws (not to mention the groundwork, choke and armbar submission training) or the USJA list of throws, which is 67 deep. At the black belt rank demonstration, generally the judging panel will require the aspirant to demonstrate every single one of these throws, and most of the groundwork as part of the demo. Mine took 3.5 hours to get through it all. The promotion requirements include having to go get a certain number of tournament points for each promotion, so you run up against some economic pressures which can slow you down as well. Thus, there is a big range in getting to black belt. It "can" be done in aout 3 years, but that's almost totally dedicating yoru whole deal to it. Usually, it's more of a 6 to 10 year thing.
BJJ, by association, I know a guy who trained steadily in BJJ for about 10 years before he got awarded his black belt. He was doing what he was supposed to be doing, too, training 3x a week if not more, going to grappling/bjj tournaments, teaching. Even opened his own school as brown belt. Still, 10 years.
My TKD black belt, wwhich apparently represented mastery of the basics, and excellence of skill in advanced techniques, took me 4.5 years, similar with Hapkido.
And, as you can note if you glance up at it at the date and time this post is uploaded, I've yet to reach the 500 posts necessary to be a Black Belt on MT.
So, depending on style, a black belt means, "You've got the basics." It can mean, "You know the whole syllabus and can do it all." It can also mean, "We know you know what you know because we've seen you show us that you know it." And, it can also mean, "You've hung around here for long enough so here you go." This last is like a participation trophy. Unfortunately, there are a lot of schools out there that give out their real world black belts in this fashion.
I wasn't clear. Where I've seen it the per-class cost of the "Black Belt Club" classes was higher. So, it might be $100/mo for 2 regular classes/wk (8 classes, most months). The BB Club might be $50 for two more classes (not per week, per month).
If the classes are smaller and specialized, that might be a reasonable higher fee. If they are not much smaller and/or aren't particularly different in content, then there's little justification.
It's one of those things that can be bad or good, depending how it's used. I just haven't run into it being used the good way as often as the bad.
TSDTexan
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My teacher told me when I was a gup, back in the '90s... "a black belt simply means that you have mastered the basics, and are now ready to begin learning".
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Well if you're doing 8 classes a month for $100 that would come to $12.50 per class. If you were in the black belt club and you did 10 classes a month for $150 that would be $15 per class, a bit more per class than what an student who is not in the club pays. But in addition to coming in more often you would also have longer classes, students in the Black Belt Club sometimes stay after class to get in additional training which means that the classes during the extended class time would be smaller and more specialized since only club members would be there. So you've got to factor in that too.
I agree, which is all the more reason why in my opinion wanting to earn a black belt is a good goal. You've completed your "initiation" and now the real learning, and the real fun, begins.
TSDTexan
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In my current Dojo, the Shihan says:
" there are 4 levels of Kata in our Karatedo. "
1. Learning the movements of a kata.
2. Polishing the movements of a kata.
3. Learning bunkai of a kata.
4. Learning the spirit/ki energy of the kata, ie the meaningful significance and applications from a TCM kind of perspective.
A blackbelt in our traditional Okinawan Karatedo is a slow thing. Very slow.
One student here has been coming for a very long time and has a brown belt still. It is a blessing and a detriment that we have so many forms.
Kanken Toyama learned and preserved 110 kata from Okinawa. To this He added forms from Taiwan and Chun-fa forms from a Korean student. And He created 7 forms of his own, (a mini system).
His late brother (ju-dan) Hanshi Isao Ichikawa, practiced 110 different kata almost daily.
He knew far, far more.
My Shihan only knows 96 or so of them. He has been doing this 44 years.
The (Ju-Dan) Hanshi Nobuo Ichikawa the Honbu dojo in Austria, also knows all of the Toyama curriculum, and has created 4 or 5 of his own.
One of which he created from his deep understanding of TCM, and credits it for helping his body defeat a diagnosis of cancer. (Seriously) the kata was created specifically for self-healing the body.
Over here
Blackbelts of shodan might know 30-35.
As rank is gained, polished kata & bunkai requirements increase, and with it, the number of kata also grow.
Brown 2ND might only know 28.
The more you learn, the more you become aware of what you have yet to learn.
Most systems I encounter besides Bjj/Judo
Put a BB at the Batchlor picture in the link below.
Judo and BJJ put the BB at the masters degree.
And imo...
Shihan's are about the PhD area, and the have done the researcher bit.
Hanshi's are the full post docorate professor, teaching the researchers/PhD candidates.
The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
By Matt Might
This work of his is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
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The above sounds familiar. My initial as an adult aikido teacher described it as: First, I show you the steps of the dance. Then, you walk through the steps of the dance. Next, you add "music" which is life and strife, and you begin to dance and finally, you make it rain. No, he wasn't Amerind. Just a guy with a cool take on words.
In the Tomiki aikido, we call the shodan the equivalent of graduating from high school, then run it up the line from there. It helps people understand "where they are," really, in their training.
Hyoho
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I meant on the street. Plenty of tough guys out there that never had a lesson in their lives that don't go by a set of rules. A shodan (1st degree) is an acknowledgement that you do have some fighting skills.
By that thinking, it would make Martial arts training completely useless for self defense.
It would also make many of us here, the greatest Martial Arts teachers in the world.
Hey.....wait a minute!
Hyoho
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I guess that depends on how much you charge.
jobo
Grandmaster
I think that is probably true in extreme positions, you cant teach complicated movement patterns to someone who has little capacity for developing motor skill , and certainly someone who has good motor skills at one sport will find it a lot easier to develop motor skills for another sport, so someone who is already good at fighting will find it easier, but the same is true for someone who is good at soccer or even table tennis. That said people can improve so they can be better at what they do, quite often a lot lot better. If that makes them good at fighting depends on where they started and who they are fighting
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I also have to disagree with this pretty strongly, based on personal experience.
Before I started training martial arts I was extremely physically timid. I was scrawny, weak, uncoordinated, inflexible, had no endurance, was afraid to get hit, was afraid to hit hard, was easily intimidated, and had no clue as to the realities of violence.
At this point in my life, I've fought full-contact in the ring as an amateur, I've won a few street scraps with criminals, I've sparred hard contact with unpadded sticks, I've sparred with a number of amateur and pro MMA fighters who are preparing for fights (even though I'm twice their age). I do get my butt whooped sometimes, but I also do my share of butt whooping and am always in the fight, win, lose or draw.
I'm not a professional fighter. I'm not any kind of incredible badass. But I have made the transition from someone who was naturally in the bottom 5% of the general population for fighting ability to someone who is solidly in the top 1%.
Admittedly, it took me longer to get competent at fighting than the typical person. It probably took me a few years of training to catch up to where the average person would start out. It took a few more to catch up to where someone with athletic talent and a proclivity for fighting would be at the beginning. If I had been looking to reach championship level while I was still in my athletic prime, I would have been out of luck. I just kept plugging along, pushing myself a bit beyond my comfort level, then a bit beyond my new comfort level, over and over and over, until I had substantially rewired my mind and my body and changed significantly as a person.
I'm really not a fan of the "you have it or you don't" attitude in any field. It's a marker for instructors who either only want to teach the naturally talented or who don't know how to teach the untalented.
jobo
Grandmaster
you cant underestimate stickability in the equation , but that then is a skill you have brought in that others may not have to the same extent. We had not a dissimilar chat in another thread, In some ways its the nature nurture debate.
Big natural Talent is of little use if you dont apply it. A little talent can go a long way if you have good teaching and you do. But applied natural talent will trump , determination every time.
I have a niece who is a particularly unco ordinated girl, she has some low level epilemsy , it took me three years to teach her to ride a bike, but to her credit and mine we stuck at it, another nice from a different blood line who was ridding in twenty minutes and was competent inside a couple of hours. That wasn't my teaching that was her applying her talents'.
Three years on,she is quite amazing, she has continued her mountain biking and and can now more than match me at tricky down hill sections( she is 8). She is not only talented she has no fear, she fall off, she gets up, she does it again, which is the personality characteristic she applied. Whilst the other girl is still challenged by high kerbs
they are both to be admired, but as a combination applied natural talent and determination, seems to outdo less of a talent and determination. I doubt that any amount of time will close the gap between them, rather I suspect it will increase if they both stay with cycling
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Hyoho
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Well I did get beat up and bullied at school. One day I hit back and the guy never got up again and I found my hidden talents. I guess this realisation could come from doing MA. I do consider it to be useful tool but in this day and age it gets nasty out there. We all do it because we like it not because we are good at it. Within a serious dojo on a yearly basis are those that will always 'make the team' and those that perhaps will never make it. But all in all they push each other to extremes and all are essential members. It just that I don't like to see anyone get illusional that if they do what we do they will all become exponents.
OK, you do have a point here ...sorta.
Some people just seem to be natural fighters. They are very tough with or without training. They "have what it takes" ...a gritty determination to win, to overcome their opponent in a conflict.
Others simply don't have that "fighting spirit". They can learn all the technique in the world, but just cave-in under real pressure.
But, by far, most of us are somewhere between those extremes. And with enough work and proper training, we can learn to dig deep within ourselves and find that drive to win, that heart.
If this is not the case, then all martial-arts training, and for that matter, all the basic training we give to solders would be a waste of time. History shows us otherwise
Natural ability can make a huge difference, but it doesn't necessarily outweigh hard work. I've passed a lot of people along the way who had much more talent than I did, because I kept at it while they gave up.
On the other hand, I have had newer people come along and pass me because they had talent and put in a ton of hard work.
If you think of the equation as results = work x talent x coaching, then it's obvious the folks at the very top of any field will be the ones who had unusual natural talent, worked their asses off for a long time, and had guidance to apply their work in the most productive directions. If you want to win an Olympic gold medal, or a Nobel prize, or an Oscar, or be at the equivalent level as the people who do such things, then you need all those factors. For the other 99.999% of the population, I'd recommend not worrying too much about one's natural limits, since very few of us ever reach the limit of our natural capacity in any field. We mostly just reach the point where we don't care about that area of our life enough to work on it any more than we already are.
jobo
Grandmaster
yes, but that's the they gave up issue, an ability to stick at things, to refuse to be defeated,is just as much a natural talent, as good co ordination. . . In a lot of ways its a rarer skill.
you've got to compare like with like. I can play football far better than those who we're greatly talented at school. Not because. I've got better,, but because they are 58 yo over Weight chain smokers with gout, its not really a fair comparison, I just kept doing it long enough that physical decay tipped it in my favour. My skill is my determination to keep myself fit
if you can take someone with very little skill and make them as good as a natural. Talent who also trains applies themselves then your point will stand
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