San Miguel Eskrima has a three-level curriculum and while students do not wear belts while training in their own school, they are encouraged to wear a belt (white, green, or brown) when visiting another teacher's school, in order to designate the parts of the curriculum to which they have been exposed. This helps the instructor at the visited school to expose the visiting student to new material.
In addition, a 'black belt" in our association is someone who has learned the basic material to a certain level of proficiency but has not yet started to teach a class. An "instructor" is a black belt who teaches the art on a consistant basis.
Given the lack of formality in the Filipino martial arts it is no surprise that the "belt issue" is treated with a tongue-in-cheek attitude: when instructors in our association debated the issue of whether or not to issue belts, they decided that if the belt system were to be adopted, you can stop wearing a belt upon promotion to black belt. To date, no instructor in our system has ever worn a belt.
As for tests, my opinion has always been that if you are ready to test for promotion, you should have already been performing at or above the level to which you are testing for some time. For example, when I was promoted to brown belt in another martial arts system and was preparing for my next promotion to black belt, I was told by the instructor "to act at all times as if I already was a black belt." In other words, it was not a question of learning new material, but doing what I already knew how to do with a different quality of movement and a heightened attitude. When I passed the black belt test, I understood that the difference between that level and the next black belt level was, again, a question of quality, not quantity. Again - there was no new material, you just had to do keep doing it better and better.
It's a sobering thought that the "teaching rank" in this system is three ranks above the initial black belt rank.
Best,
Steve Lamade
San Miguel Eskrima
