Belts and grading

[JaRmEz]

i was just wondering how ur dojo goes about grading and belts cuz mine dont even use belts and we are graded for every form we know. but since there ant too many forms in wing chun i was just wondering how other sifus do it :D

[t_niehoff]

My advice - coming from someone practicing WCK for 22+ years now - is not to worry about "belts and gradings", instead be concerned about understanding and skill. Even Rickson Gracie said that "belts are only good for holding your pants up." It's what you can do that matters. JIMHO.

Good luck in your training.

Terence

[yuanfen]

Agree completely. Best to concentrate on skill development.
But some people depend on those crutches.
If I wear a sash- it's a beginners sash.

[TjD]

well.. its not a dojo because my wing chun isnt japanese :)

however, in my kwoon we dont have belts - "a belt's only good to hold up your pants" - our opinion as well.

if you want to know whose your senior, its who has been coming to the school longer.
if you want to know whose your real senior, chi sau with them.

the grading we do is simple (there is none formally). if sifu thinks we're ready to learn the next form we do.


the closest thing i have to a belt would be my kung fu shirt. it started out white... now its getting more yellow/brown. hopefully one day itll be black (if by then i can still fit into it). yes, i do wash it :D

[JaRmEz]

yeah they are my opinions aswel i was just wondering realy if it was done in wing chun or not because of the amount of forms there is my sifu thinks belts are pointless to show real skill is to have it

[Grendel]

Originally posted by JaRmEz
yeah they are my opinions aswel i was just wondering realy if it was done in wing chun or not because of the amount of forms there is my sifu thinks belts are pointless to show real skill is to have it

Does the drawstring in my sweatpants count as a belt? What rank would that make me? :p

[anerlich]

A BJJ belt is useless for holding your pants up. That's what the drawstring is for. The belt is to keep your jacket closed and to provide a gripping point during gi training.

Royce's most quoted line was, " a belt covers two inches of your ass - you'd better be able to cover the rest."

Belt systems have value as a goal-setting mechanism and for the management of larger classes and organisations. They can be useful to many, but anathema to some. The mistake is to assume that they are the goal rather than one way of getting closer to it.

[UltimateFighter]

Grads/ belts are a good way of showing that someone has reached a particular standard as long as the testing is hard. The point is you can train for 20 years and still be a load of rubbish, or you can train for 5 years and be a much higher standard. That is where gradings are useful.

[JaRmEz]

i see :D yeha teh belts arnt realy the goals i would say the skill level was but a belt i suppose is a way of showing people that in a material way

[Grendel]

Originally posted by JaRmEz
i see :D yeha teh belts arnt realy the goals i would say the skill level was but a belt i suppose is a way of showing people that in a material way
Your hands show your level "in a material way." :cool:

The charging of money for testing and promoting for an arbitrary rank is another nontraditional Wing Chun "material way." :D

Regards,

[wingchunalex]

the school i go to we just started using a sash system in the last 2 years. we first started it in our kids class then added it to the adults.

belts are good those people who want to learn some martial arts but aren't lifelong martial artists. it gives people somthing to strive for and work towards. for those of us who are die hards, belts aren't to too important. they are just sorta funny. they don't really matter. just do it cause i love it.

They are also useful in tracking people's progress and making sure they know what they are suposed to. its also kind of nice cause you know what your supposed to be working on at any given time.

[reneritchie]

Dojo is a Japanese term. In Cantonese MA, you typically see "Kwoon". Likewise, there is traditionally no grading system in Chinese MA, though some like the Jing Mo have flirted with them over the years. Typically, once you could do one thing, you were taught the next, and the nature of the relationship between Sifu and Todai, like father and child, played its part.

In recent years, to compete commercially with arts like TKD and Karate, some people began using "sash" systems equivalent to the belt ranking system in those arts, but there are no universal standards, not it colors, meaning, level indications, etc.

Personally, having been involved with both belt and non-belt MA, I've usually found the belt to be more hinderance than help. Almost without exception, especially for beginners and people without experience in non-belt arts, the belt becomes the purpose, not the skill achieved, and they will shortcut the latter just to get the former for appearances sake.

BJJ can be an exception at times. Trivia-wise, they started with only two belts, light and dark blue for student and teacher, I believe, but later went to the current model. While some schools seems to give them away or sell them like anyone else, mostly they seem to rank actual fighting skill (you get a purple belt when you can "hang" with purple belts), and are thus useful for catagorization in tournaments, and for a rough indicator of grappling skill.

Royce's line is classic. One of Rickson's most famous uses of the belt apparently is to tie down his own hands when he grapples, and then still dominate other world class folks. Gotta love the Jordans of the world...

RR

[gnugear]

We don't have belts, rankings, certificates, or uniforms ... but we're going to get some T-shirts made soon :)

[Mckind13]

While I do not belong to a school that emphasis ranks, grades or the like, my personal thoughts are that in a a school that has enough students, there should be classes that are for more advanced practitioners.

While I think no one should ever give up practicing the basics, a class for only students who have advanced past a certain level might be very beneficial.

The class could be by invite only or by achieving a certain skill/knowledge.

David

[nvisblfist]

We introduced belts in our school so that students would stick closer to our curriculum. We found that many times students would try to advance before they had really learned a concept. It was a visual reminder for the more advanced students not to show advanced tecniques while the basics were being drilled.

[loungying]

belts are a way of telling beginners who to ask questions of also it igves the student a goal in society today from first day of school people are taught to aim for a goal.
but as for myself belts i never went for unless sifu told me to i am more concerned with practicing the art than a piece of material around my waist and also my main object in class is to bring honor and respect to my sifu that is my lifes ambition nothing else but to be the best student i can be.
respectfully yours loungying.

[TjD]

we dont have belts, as my sifu tries to keep our school to people who want to learn wing chun, as opposed to conning them into it :D of course, we dont have too many students because of this (most i've seen at a class is 17 - normally we have around 5-10). that first month or two of doing only siu lim tau and some applications really weeds the people out who dont want to learn wing chun, or have no attention span. :p

[yuanfen]

TJD- hats off to your sifu. I dont know him but he appears to have
the right idea on who to teach.

[TjD]

he definately is a great sifu. he may not make a lot of money doing what he does, but he does it for the art instead. the school may not be the largest in terms of size, training equipment or number of practicioners; but i really can call the people i train with my kung fu brothers and sisters. the kwoon is like a home away from home - with a lot less stress :D

its really nice to be able to train with a group of people you can really trust, and who are serious about what they're doing.

i think in the last year or two people have really started to notice the good thing we have going, and slowly but steadily we've been gaining more people. it's nice to see my sifus hard work starting to pay off.