This is precisely one of the reasons belts can be useful. There are many among us who want to get better, but have no inclination to "win", especially if winning entails causing harm to someone else (as with full-contact competitions, etc.). For those folks, belts give us something else to work for.
You'd think so, but it never felt that way to me. I dawdled at every rank, became the most skilled person at that rank, sometimes more skilled than those who outranked me, and progressed at my own pace. I sometimes only got one new technique in 90 days, so spent a lot of time working on what I already had. At most ranks, after I collected all the curriculum for that rank, I'd spend another 6 months just getting better. Eventually, I'd decide to test and move to the next part of the curriculum. It was a long path, but one I wouldn't change.
There should be improvement at every stage. Arguably, one of the biggest improvements in many styles is to the first belt (yellow in NGA). Many students go from being stiff and unbalanced to loosening up and starting to move with better balance and some gracefulness. In Shojin-ryu, they also gather a small collection of fairly easy defensive techniques, so many go from having no idea what to do if someone attacks to having a small arsenal of quick defenses that improve their odds.
True enough on both counts. The former is normally the result of a lack of enforced standards in a school, perhaps grading on seniority alone. The latter often throws off rank comparisons within a school - I knew a guy who was a brown belt for something like 10 years. He was easily as skilled as I was when I first got my BB - better in some important ways - and his belt did not reflect that, except for the fact that it had faded nearly to tan.
I've never really considered myself tough, but I suppose I am, given the number of falls I've taken over the years. That's one of the areas I spent a lot of time getting good at: taking falls. I'm mostly just really curious, and enjoyed exploring and learning and getting better. There was so much to learn in each new set of 10 techniques that I just didn't feel the need to move on to the next ones. To give you an idea, the bare minimum time to shodan in mainline NGA is 3 years (based on time-in-grade requirements). Most folks take about 7 years (a very few around 5 years, only one I know of that was closer to 3 years and after the fact he felt that was too fast), and those who dawdle typically take about 10 years. I'm an over-achieving dawdler.
I've never really considered myself tough, but I suppose I am, given the number of falls I've taken over the years. That's one of the areas I spent a lot of time getting good at: taking falls. I'm mostly just really curious, and enjoyed exploring and learning and getting better. There was so much to learn in each new set of 10 techniques that I just didn't feel the need to move on to the next ones. To give you an idea, the bare minimum time to shodan in mainline NGA is 3 years (based on time-in-grade requirements). Most folks take about 7 years (a very few around 5 years, only one I know of that was closer to 3 years and after the fact he felt that was too fast), and those who dawdle typically take about 10 years. I'm an over-achieving dawdler.
The juvenile brain is a very different system than the adult brain. At your age, you're right between the two (a major neurological pruning is underway, and you have yet to complete development of your executive center). I won't teach NGA to kids for a number of reasons (I start at age 16), not the least of which is that the complex concepts aren't well-suited to them. I could prepare a separate curriculum for young kids that would graduate them to NGA as they matured, if I had time to teach those classes. A friend who holds rank in both TKD and NGA teaches a TKD-based curriculum to kids, because it adapts much more easily to their needs.
That time from Sr. Red to black is about the same as brown to black in mainline NGA. There, it's a technical requirement, since they must do a year of student teaching at brown. There's almost nothing new added to their curriculum at that time - it's just meant to be time for them to polish and become more efficient.
Someone who will do that because of belt rank, will also do it without the belt rank. "I'm better than you" doesn't require a colored circle at your waist.
