For a long time I pursued the hallowed ‘Dan Grade’ and I got it too. In fact more than one, in more than one art.
However, the belts mean nothing.
That’s right, nothing.
I don’t mean the gradings meant nothing – they weren’t easy, especially my first degree in Tang Soo Do – that was 8 straight hours and finished with multiple rounds of contact, unpadded sparring (no full power shots to the face, so that was okay?).
I don’t mean the journey meant nothing – I got my 1st Dan relatively quickly. 3 years to be precise, but that doesn’t tell the full story. I was awarded the grade in 2001, but during that three years I trained fairly relentlessly and I had also trained in Tang Soo Do before going to university as well as training in Wing Chun Kung Fu, Chinese Kickboxing and Shotokai Karate in my teens and Shotokan Karate and Judo at university. Suffice to say I wasn’t new to martial arts or the style itself when I started that journey.
So when I achieved my Dan grade it meant something – it was the culmination of over a decade of combined training and three intensive years in that system. I achieved my Black belt alongside a number of other hard working and skilled students of various ages ranging from cadet level to people with a good few more years on the clock than I had at the time. The process was rigorous and by no means a foregone conclusion – the day was hard and we were all exhausted, but proud.
Back then, the belt represented genuine capability – it was proof you’d done the work, survived the process, earned the knowledge. But I’ve since learned that prioritising the qualification over the capability is a dangerous game, whether you’re talking about martial arts, education, or any system that’s supposed to develop real skill.
Following that first Dan grade I got my senior 1st degree, my 2nd and senior 2nd degrees and a 1st degree in a different (although related) style, but through the same club and instructor. However, time marched on, my instructor emigrated and I switched to training in other styles and arts – Wing Chun (actually going back to my instructor from my teens), jujitsu, Aikido, karate, kickboxing, Thai Boxing, Taekwondo and lately Krav Maga/Combatives.
I haven’t even bothered tracking the grades anymore. Most of my training has been in styles where this isn’t even a thing – you turn up, train and that’s it. You can grade if you want. My Krav Maga ‘yellow belt’ – the level 1 grade – was the single hardest thing I’ve done in martial arts. One of the grading group literally crawled off the mats to throw up. However we never wear belts in class and literally no one could tell who has been through which gradings and who hasn’t and literally no one cares.
So what is the point?
At first the belts were motivators. They gave me waypoints to assess where I was in the curriculum. They gave me goals to work towards and points against which to measure this. It gave me a structure and a timeframe. They shaped my sense of achievement as I was approaching them and when I acquired them. But that changed.
I remember after my first instructor left the country and I was searching for another club that I came across a ‘karate’ place using a local school as a venue. It was within walking distance of where I was living so I gave it a go.
The red flags went up early doors.
The students were all young, not for the last time I found myself the oldest guy in the room and this was over a decade ago, so I wasn’t even as venerable as I am now. The ‘instructor’ seemed young, but then I had been in my mid 20s when I got my black belt and knew of many black belts who were younger than that, but I still got the sense that they seemed ‘green’ (belt colour pun fully intended).
The biggest red flag came when we did some ‘self defense’ work. This was how the instructor pitched this, this was not my retrospective interpretation. The ‘self defense’ was from a single straight punch to the mid section and the technique (you should never learn a ‘technique’ as a defense, just principles and movements – techniques are for drills) was an inside to outside block – wax off Daniel San!
I could barely stop myself from speaking up.
Firstly – no one ever has had to defend themselves against a single straight punch to the mid section outside of set sparring in a dojo/dojang/kwoon. It doesn’t happen in the real world.
Secondly, reactive blocks using massive arm movements are impractical at best. You might parry, intercept or cover (think boxing), but blocks aren’t real and anyone who has trained a self defense application will tell you the same. Your average ‘block’ isn’t a block at all – it’s usually a strike, grab, breakaway technique, literally anything other than a block.
The final straw was at the end of the class when I had a quick chat with the instructor to find out the background to the club and what it was all about. They had acquired their instructor grade in SIX MONTHS!!! Prior to this they had been coaching exercise classes and they went on an intensive course for six months.
I left without comment.
By this point I suspect that I had been training for between forty to fifty times longer than this ‘instructor’. But hey, they had the belt!
There is a tendency for people both within the martial arts community and those from outside of it to see the ‘Black Belt’ as an indicator of skill, knowledge and ultimate badassery.
It’s a piece of cloth.
The journey, the skill, the knowledge, the commitment, the effort, the time – these all make the martial artist, not the belt. I’ve trained with ‘black belts’ I could pull apart in seconds and white belts who could embarrass me on the mats every day of the week.
The belt means nothing.
When we prioritise the qualification above all else and turn the acquisition of the thing into the end goal of the process we open the door to all of the issues I describe above.
Now imagine what the impact of this is on our school and university system – the end goal is the paper, the certificate, the ‘grade’ and not the process.
Now add AI into the mix.
How many real ‘black belts’ are getting handed out and how many are actually being earned?
I guess we are lucky that, unlike in martial arts, self defense and combat sports, you’re unlikely to get your ass handed to you if it turns out your skills don’t match that belt. However, what we get instead is a dysfunctional assessment system that doesn’t give students the real skills that they need and these gaps are exposed in higher study and the workplace.
And now AI is here to speed that process up! Certificates, badges, belts and trophies at the push of a button. But this is not the fault of the learners, but of the system that prioritises the metric of the grade above the actual learning that goes on.
The difference is, in martial arts, reality has a way of checking your credentials. In education, we’re handing out black belts to people who’ve never been in a real fight.
We need to change and change fast.