Since this is the first post on martial arts on our blog, we would like to talk about something which is most looked out when someone mentioned that they are taking up martial arts. It is the BELT LEVEL. Belts are often used as an altitude to evaluate the skills of a practitioner.

Before even beginning to give him a level for his skill, there are a few simple questions you should ask yourself.

1. What is a black belt?

A: It is a black-coloured belt.

2. Why is it so lame?

A: How can you even judge anyone’s skills by colour?

3. How long and how often he trains to get his black belt?

A: Modern day martial arts have degenerated to an extent where belts are obtained as easily as training once a week while not putting in any effort.

One excellent example is TaeKwonDo. Majority of the practitioners only practice once a week, half the time, they are socializing with each other, kick air for 15mins, the rest of the time, they are doing their pattern, a.k.a. Kata, which obviously already lost their meaning just like contemporary WuShu. Regardless of all the unsightly elements present during their training, they can obtain their black belt in 2 years time.

Just like how you can neither judge food by the cook’s looks nor the height of the cook’s hat; judge strength by a person’s size or muscle; one person’s financial status from the way he dresses, you cannot judge martial artists’ skills by their belt level.

I know of a boy, nerdy and innocent as he looks, he joined TaeKwonDo. At yellow belt, he defeated brown belts and at green belt, he started taking on black belts. It does not matter whether the green belt is stronger than normal green belts, or the black belt is weaker than normal black belts. Either way, it gives true full account of how trivial belt colours can be.

Modern day martial arts have been ignorantly yet guiltily involved in commercialization which brought about their superficial artistic values, slowly but tremendously outshining their true values of health and the knowledge of human body.

Commercialization has also brought about lenient grading standards, which fully utilizing human’s urge to acquire more. Nevertheless, they have failed to understand that this will ultimately undermine their martial art. Antagonistically speaking, these martial arts now only serve as a confidence booster.

4. What is the meaning of holding a black belt in the modern day society then?

A: Now, it has become a mere proof of how much your instructor has taught you and not how skillful you are.

Therefore, how can those practitioners, whom I would call them players rather than fighters, ever be proud of their black belt?

How can they even show them off?

That, my friends, is a mystery I cannot solve.

Definitely, there are still some martial art schools which still maintain their high grading standards, like Brazilian Jiujitsu, who take 3 years to go from white belt to their next belt level.

Four basic ways to judge a person’s martial standards.

1. The easiest way is to see how well he fights;