Time-in-grade requirements and prior experience, catch-up mechanics

[JR 137]

The real answer is this “New instructors school, new instructors rules”.

I my self started back into martial arts about two years ago after after a long (20 year) hiatus. I had my 1st Dan from the Kukkiwon back in 1995, but I certainly did not remember every thing, and I was no wear near as flexible or in as good a shape as I was back in the day.

When I started back, I had a heart to heart talk with the owner/chief instructor at the school. He said he didn’t want me wearing my black belt as I was not familiar with their curriculum. I was fine with that, and was willing to start over at a white belt. He also did not want me to do that as it would be an unfair comparison to the new white belts.

He had me work out the first few weeks, with out a belt until, he as a feel for where I was physically and skill wise. I skipped a couple belts, and started back as orange instead of white so I had a lot of material to learn to catch up

With luck I will be testing for my brown belt in Song moo Kwan in February, and I am looking at about 2 years more to get to black belt. The time does not concern me, as I am getting what I want out of the experience. The exercise is great, and I am (slowly) getting back into shape. By the time I test for my black belt, I will be ready.




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I feel the same way. One school I visited when I was looking to restart after 15 years was a school in my former organization. They said I could wear my black belt as I earned it under them. Makes sense, but I told them I didn’t want to because I didn’t feel I was up to my former abilities and didn’t really care about rank anyway. The respected that and told me I could wear a white belt for 3 months, test, and would be ranked wherever they felt appropriate. I thought that was the best approach anyone could take.

One of the first things my now teacher told me was “you can’t wear your black belt here.” I chuckled and said “I wouldn’t wear it if you offered it. At this point it would be a glorified Halloween costume.” He laughed at that one. My progress has been as I said above. A very small part of me thinks it would’ve been better if he tested me for whatever rank he thought I should’ve been after 3 months or so rather than the way it went. But then I think “what would’ve been different if he did?” and I don’t care anymore. Even if it did get me to black belt faster, so what? It’s not like wearing the belt gives me some mystical powers. Trust me, I found that out when I earned it last time.

 

[skribs]

I feel the same way. One school I visited when I was looking to restart after 15 years was a school in my former organization. They said I could wear my black belt as I earned it under them. Makes sense, but I told them I didn’t want to because I didn’t feel I was up to my former abilities and didn’t really care about rank anyway. The respected that and told me I could wear a white belt for 3 months, test, and would be ranked wherever they felt appropriate. I thought that was the best approach anyone could take.

One of the first things my now teacher told me was “you can’t wear your black belt here.” I chuckled and said “I wouldn’t wear it if you offered it. At this point it would be a glorified Halloween costume.” He laughed at that one. My progress has been as I said above. A very small part of me thinks it would’ve been better if he tested me for whatever rank he thought I should’ve been after 3 months or so rather than the way it went. But then I think “what would’ve been different if he did?” and I don’t care anymore. Even if it did get me to black belt faster, so what? It’s not like wearing the belt gives me some mystical powers. Trust me, I found that out when I earned it last time.

It depends on the art, the structure of it, and how comfortable you are with what you're doing there.

If I were to leave my school and come back after 10 years, I would want to start right back at my rank in Taekwondo, but I'd consider starting over or testing back in to Hapkido. There's a few reasons for that.

TKD

My rank in TKD is important because of what it opens up for me. If all I ever want to be is a student, that's one thing. But I am one of the main instructors at my school, and if I wanted to get back into teaching as well, I'd need the rank to go with it. But aside from that, it's what it allows me to do with other schools in the same organization. Granted, I would need to learn their curriculum, but it would be far easier to catch up on their curriculum and start teaching as a 3rd degree black belt, than to go in as a white belt and take a few years to train their system.

The other aspect is that the way we teach in Taekwondo is that we expect a level of proficiency based on your belt. If I'm a white belt, I might only get the white belt level of instruction. It's not that we're trying to keep our techniques secret to the unitiated, but rather that a white belt has enough to worry about without all the extra details. If I were in the white belt class, I would miss out on a lot of what is expected of a black belt.

I also feel that the early belts are often used to teach you how to take the class. Sort of like how Psych 101 is more of a broad overview of psychology, or how you have tutorials in video games. If I've played a few dozen first person shooters, I don't need to learn what WASD and the mouse do. I just instinctively use them. What I need to know is what's different from the other games I've played. Similarly, if I were to take a similar art, it may just be that I need to learn what's different. Or it may be that I have a lot to learn.

Now, it may be that it is better to start over if the schools are fairly similar, but there's enough that's different. In my case, I came back from a 14-year hiatus, and I did start over as a white belt. But that was from green belt, not 3rd degree black. It did help for me to learn a lot of things my Master teaches that we didn't do at my old school, such as hand grabs and weapon techniques. But now that I have several years as an adult, and I have been teaching, I would do things differently if the situation comes up again.

HKD

My rank in HKD is less important to me, and I test not to further my position in the organization, but to "unlock" the next set of techniques. Basically to tell my Master I'm ready to learn more. I still struggle with the white belt stuff sometimes in Hapkido. Some days all I want to do is practice the white and yellow belt stuff because I noticed some flaws in my technique when I did them.

Part of this is because the Hapkido is structured. For example, the TKD white belt is largely a vocabulary test if you can hear the name of a technique and show it, and show it different than the others (i.e. reverse punch, underpunch, vertical punch). It's designed to push you towards black belt so you can learn the art from that perspective. The colored belts are like high school in that regard, and then the black belts like college.

Hapkido is more like a trade school. You drill techniques until you can effectively use them, and then test to apply for the next techniques. So most people spend more time at white belt than any other, because it takes longer to develop that proficiency.

At the moment, my rank in Hapkido isn't too important to me. If I went to another school, with a different curriculum, I'd want to start over at white belt, but I'd hopefully advance quicker than I have so far at my place. But if I quit five years down the road, when I'm hopefully a 2nd degree black belt, I might have different feelings.

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TL/DR - if I'm starting over to learn the new material, that's fine. But I don't want to feel like I'm stuck in a tutorial.