Unequal Colours

People always wonder about the belt rank thing. Just what does it mean?

To get my Shotokan Karate Black Belt it took me a little over four years. Some do it faster, but most don't.

It didn't mean I was a master or anything like that. It meant I'd done enough to be accepted as a raw beginner. A Black Belt in Japan is a beginner.

I'm training now in Jiu-Jitsu with a similar intensity. I recently earned a Blue Belt. With the same amount of Karate training I was a Yellow Belt. By the time my Blue Belt gets a fancy stripe added it will be about a year from now. By that time in Karate, I'd passed through Orange, and gotten my Green.

In Karate, my third year earned me a Blue Belt, a Purple and the lowest of three levels of Brown Belt.

My third year in Jiu-Jitsu might get me a second stripe on my Blue Belt.

A fourth year in Karate, and I'd moved through the two levels of Brown Belts and was about to get my Black Belt.

A fourth year in Jiu-Jitsu and I might have a third stripe on my Blue.

Perhaps this is an unfair comparison. Here we have to deal with a long-distance type of situation in our training. If we could train at the main school in LA the progress could be twice as fast.

Let's say my early skill level as a Karate Black Belt would be equivalent to somewhere between a three-striped Jiu-Jitsu Blue Belt, and a single-striped Purple.

How does this all compare to other arts? Judo levels mean about the same as Karate ones. Taekwondo Black Belts tend to be a little quicker to earn by maybe a year.

It's all just different standards. Japan and Korea consider Black Belt to mean beginner, while Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu considers it to mean that one has mastered the skill.

Neither system is better than the other, but it is nice to understand what it all means.