What Percentage of People Have Achieved the Rank of Shodan or Equivalent?

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Rusty B

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The only advice I'd give, and yes, I know you didn't ask for advice, but I feel it might help anyone going forward....you probably know that in real self defense, one of the key proponents is avoiding dangerous situations and conflicts through situational awareness and common sense. The interactions one has online with other people tend to seep into real life if done enough. They create avoidable conflict.

Something we all should keep in mind.

And Happy Thanksgiving, Rusty.

For example, trying to patronize others. Take your own advice.
 
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Monkey Turned Wolf

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For example, trying to patronize others. Take your own advice.
This is actually an example of what he said. If you felt that he was patronizing (FYI he wasn't, he was genuinely just offering some friendly advice), then you could have easily ignored it. Instead, you decided to respond with hostility to him encouraging an argument/conflict. Coincidentally, you've been responding to most people with hostility, even those that agree with you.

And despite that what you're discussing as something new is something that many of us have had the same discussions, both in-person with others and online, gone through the arguments past where you've brought them and come to their own conclusions. I actually find it kind of fun guessing what your next line of logic/argument will be based on what I've heard people go to in the past.
 
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Rusty B

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This is actually an example of what he said. If you felt that he was being patronizing, then you could have easily ignored it. Instead, you decided to respond with hostility to him encouraging an argument/conflict.

Thanks, but that's something I'm not going to take from others.
 

Monkey Turned Wolf

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Thanks, but that's something I'm not going to take from others.
I edited the above, clicked reply before I finished my thoughts by accident. But like I stated with the edit, he really wasn't trying to be patronizing. You just jumped to that assumption and got defensive.
 

dvcochran

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I'm suggesting that local live events at lower levels and more common than that. For example, little podunk towns having arenas that are no bigger than that of an elementary school auditorium; wrestling and bare knuckle boxing matches at local bars, and matches when the circus came to town, etc.
But that is not at all what you said. You cannot keep jumping back and forth a century in time in your argument. It just adds to the foolishness in your method.
Why do you think so many people were/are so worried about 'training' in the 1800's? More that most people were just worried about food on the table and surviving the next winter. The 'wild' west was not all that wild. If you want to be a gunslinger have at it but your arguments and all your 'what ifs' are pretty baseless.
 
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Rusty B

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But that is not at all what you said. You cannot keep jumping back and forth a century in time in your argument. It just adds to the foolishness in your method.
Why do you think so many people were/are so worried about 'training' in the 1800's? More that most people were just worried about food on the table and surviving the next winter. The 'wild' west was not all that wild. If you want to be a gunslinger have at it but your arguments and all your 'what ifs' are pretty baseless.

Those all were separate conversations within this thread. That's why you're so confused.

For example, the only reason I even brought up Old West was to illustrate a point in response to something that Burka said about carjackings; and then it was back to the normal topic.

You do know how to follow conversations, right?
 
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KenpoMaster805

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No one can understand what he says. He refuses to use any sort of punctuation at all... and we have asked him multiple times to use it.

you don't even have to use punctuation correctly for it to help with understanding what you are saying as just putting in a mark of some sort can really help identify which words out of the many should be grouped together and sorry I can't put together sentences where the grouping of the words can make it more difficult to understand also understand that this is not directed at you Rusty I am hoping kenpomaster will read this and start to use punctuation in his future posts as it will help a lot for us to be able to understand his set of random words and as punctuation will be going on sale for black friday he could get some for cheap

you don't even have to use punctuation correctly for it to help with understanding what you are saying $ as just putting in a mark of some sort can really help identify which words $ out of the many $ should be grouped together $ and sorry I can't put together sentences $ where the grouping of the words can make it more difficult to understand $ also understand that this is not directed at you Rusty $ I am hoping kenpomaster will read this and start to use punctuation in his future posts $ as it will help a lot for us to be able to understand his set of random words $ and as punctuation will be going on sale for black friday $ he could get some for cheap
I read it but dont care
 

dvcochran

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Those all were separate conversations within this thread. That's why you're so confused.

For example, the only reason I even brought up Old West was to illustrate a point in response to something that Burka said about carjackings; and then it was back to the normal topic.

You do know how to follow conversations, right?
Yea, a conversation but that is not at all what you have been doing. No one is qualified to nor should they try have an answer for everything. Makes you come off as a total dumb ash.
 
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Rusty B

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Yea, a conversation but that is not at all what you have been doing. No one is qualified to nor should they try have an answer for everything. Makes you come off as a total dumb ash.

I swear, there are at least two or three others here besides you who must not have finished high school.

I don't see how this is a response to what I said, but to humor you... we (meaning everyone in this thread, including you) are doing something called "spitballing."
 

dvcochran

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I swear, there are at least two or three others here besides you who must not have finished high school.

I don't see how this is a response to what I said, but to humor you... we (meaning everyone in this thread, including you) are doing something called "spitballing."
Hmm. I see you are one of those people who include absolutely nothing in your profile, leading you to be seen as empty and hollow as a source of information. Of course most of your comments support this view as well.
You will see that I have two Masters degrees so yea, I finished high school and a little more; for whatever purpose that serves here.

It is comments like the one you just led with that promotes people to pile on. Really males you come off petty and as the one who is not old enough to finish high school yet.

Now 'spit balling' I can warm up to. I have to do a version of it in my work when designing systems and working out process problems in manufacturing. I prefer the 'what if' adverb but whatever works for you.

As far as style, I see your post have been primarily related to Kenpo which I have no experience in. But you have also made several post in more general threads. I also do a good bit of consultative work and business related legal advise. When a person asks & answers they give & get. Look it up if you do not understand that.

The people I think you are referring to are some of the most knowledgeable on this forum. Think about that. I for one love new people and ideas here. It is refreshing and needed to keep any forum going. But no one comes to the table as a foregone expert. That has to be earned no matter what the subject matter is. Think on that a little before replying.
 
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Dirty Dog

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ATTENTION ALL USERS:

The snarky comments and mudslinging need to stop, immediately, or some people are going to find themselves on an involuntary vacation from our Friendly Martial Arts Community.

Mark A Cochran
@Dirty Dog
MartialTalk Senior Moderator
 

wab25

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I read it but dont care
You read that most of us have a very hard time trying to figure out what you are saying, but you don't care??? Why are you spending the time to even post, if the people you are posting to, can't understand what you are saying??? Why make your posts so hard for other to understand?

Honestly, I think most people either have you on ignore or just skip your posts entirely, since they are so hard to figure out. This means that we get no input from you at all. We would like to include your input in the discussions. But, you need to help us out a little. Why are you so opposed to adding punctuation to your posts? Or doing something that would help people understand what it is you are saying? If you don't want people to understand what you are saying... why post at all?
 
D

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I had a TL;DR, but i just saw this.

Pretty sure no list exists currently, or at least at a national state sponsored level, but various orginsiations, federations etc track their various clubs and affilate students composition of ranks to varying levels and to various effecctiveness's.


You could maybe say, shoot the biggest karate orginisation in your country or area a email and ask if they have such a list if they wouldnt mind sharing their statstictics, and pending how far you want to go, would determine how many you email, or you could attmpt to commision a list. Or if you have a freind in university who has a related study try to convince them to do it for you as part of their Thesis and give you a copy. :p

The quality of the information is also a pest, many orgs dont keep their club lists up to date, so you can forget about if they have such a list it being worth anything. Or maybe they annually servey all their affiliates they just forget to update their website.


Not sure if anyone suggested any of this, you also now can maybe appreciate the difficulty historians, statsticions and other people who collect and compile information based on sources and lists etc go through to discover trends etc. :p
 
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Thats not the right question to ask. People get a black belt, or shodan for all kinds of reasons. It does not mean that they can all fight. (I would bet on a wet paper bag over quite a number of Black Belts I have seen...) Too many 6-7 year olds getting black belts, too many people getting black belts because they can wave their hands in the air without having any idea of what they are doing, too many people getting black belts without ever having tried to apply what they have "learned" against someone who does not want them to succeed.


Following the same TL;DR disclosure here as well and the just seeing part and presuming it wasnt relayed or correctly, i can answer this.


On a purely scentific note, you first have to ascertain how many of them exist to begin with before you can begin to figure out how to ascertain their "fighting ability" and to what tests you will run and what charactistics you will assess and grade and how. I would argue that both are loaded questions, that have their yeah buts and caviates to them and would require their fair share of exploitation to cover all of it. But one was asked about (so the focus lies on the asked one) the other wasnt here. (and also has been covered to a large degree elsewhere anyway) Also working on the preumption you want to assess their fighting ability or belive the black belt rank to have some reflection on fighting ability, and not seniority, compotence in teaching, or compotencey in the currculem. Fighting isnt everything in fighting, you could be good at it, but not be able to teach somone to do it as well as you. You might be terrible at it but be able to teach people how to become really quite good in it.

You could also translate the question as being "with the presumption that black belt status is a reflection on fighting skill, how many people in this population has a black belt?"


Hopefully that all made sense, and wasnt just a rehash of 20 other replies here.


This was also suprisingly short and lacked my renown tangents or war anecdotes.

Addendum: Not every variable or what if was covered here, i did miss out some varibles and reasons in the above.
 

JP3

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Some white belt will stay as a black belt some will quit some will moved and take same style of Martial Arts some will take a different style of martial arts if they can't fine the same Martial arts that they can't find thats it
Illuminating.
 

Balrog

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I was inspired to come up with this, in light of a discussion on another thread in the Kenpo section about the likelihood of running into a common thug with a martial arts background.
...

Does anyone here have any more in-depth knowledge on this?
This has stuck with me over the years. I heard it in a seminar easily 15+ years ago. The number was 10%.

If you have a group of 1,000 people who start on the same day, at least half will be gone within six months because they find out it's hard work and they ain't gonna be a Ninja Turtle in two weeks time, or whatever.

The remainder of the dropouts are financial, relocation and dissatisfaction with the instructor. By the time that group is ready to test for 1st Degree, there will only be about 100 of them left. And only about 50% will go on to 2nd Degree because the instructor did not do a good job of making them realize that 1st Degree is actually the starting line, not the end goal.
 

Kemposhot

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This has stuck with me over the years. I heard it in a seminar easily 15+ years ago. The number was 10%.

If you have a group of 1,000 people who start on the same day, at least half will be gone within six months because they find out it's hard work and they ain't gonna be a Ninja Turtle in two weeks time, or whatever.

The remainder of the dropouts are financial, relocation and dissatisfaction with the instructor. By the time that group is ready to test for 1st Degree, there will only be about 100 of them left. And only about 50% will go on to 2nd Degree because the instructor did not do a good job of making them realize that 1st Degree is actually the starting line, not the end goal.

I recall when I tested for black belt the head of my system of Kempo told us during the test (for motivation) that only 1 in 100 students in the system make it to shodan. Also that only 1 in 50 of those shodans continue to 2nd Dan. I don’t know how realistic those numbers are.

In my own observation of training in the same dojo for 14 years now, I have seen MANY students start and drop out. Younger students (teenagers) often leave to begin university in another area. Older students leave due to injury, financial reasons or just slowly stop showing up and losing interest. I’d be curious to know how many schools actually keep records of this, if any.
 

Acronym

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There was TKD Blogg claiming that somewhere around 75-80% quit after first coloured belt. And most of the ones left do not stay for black belt.
 

dvcochran

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There was TKD Blogg claiming that somewhere around 75-80% quit after first coloured belt. And most of the ones left do not stay for black belt.
Possibly after 1st Dan but I know it is not that high for first color belt. I doubt it is that high after Dan testing.

It would take a great deal of supposition but if everyone who participated in trial classes were included I could see the number getting to around 50% attrition before first or second testing.
 

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