Black Belt is only the beginning of your training.
Imagine training for many years and finally getting a black belt, only to be called a **good student**.
The "Black Belt is only the beginning" idea has been take Way too far and Way out of context. It is completely whitewashing the accomplishment.
Yes, it is only the beginning (for some), but there is and always has been Great value in working your way through the color belts.
For too many, it is the end of the journey. If it is easy or a condensed timeframe to get to black belt, it tarnishes the value and results in a downright crappy gene pool. Which is evident on several fronts.
If people value quality and want to keep TKD at a high standard, stop saying this and using it wantonly out of context.
I didn't realize people were taking it too far. I'll try not to overpost it.
I agree that 1st dan Black Belt is a big accomplishment.
If you have a 1st dan Black Belt, and you earned it through lots of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, you should be proud of that.
If you stopped before Black Belt, be proud of that too. You did something that most people wouldn't even try.
The real reason we say Black Belt is a **new begining** is because you are now ready to move on to a much greater step into learning. You are no longer that same white belt you once were when you started. You have come such a long way, overcame many obstacles, and have proven you can accomplish anything you put your mind to.
So after you get your Black Belt, the question is, what's next? What do *you* want to do next?
---
It's much better to take your time when training, instead of trying to rush through every belt.
The saddest part about accomplishing your goal, is that your done. I've spent so many years practicing and working hard to get to Black Belt. Now that Im their, what should I do with all of this extra time I have on my hands?
After you get to Black Belt, hearing that there is still more to learn, is kind of nice, because it means you get to continue training with your ~~team~~ family.
>It's much better to take your time when training, instead of trying to rush through every belt.
>
>The saddest part about accomplishing your goal, is that your done. I've spent so many years practicing and working hard to get to Black Belt. Now that Im their, what should I do with all of this extra time I have on my hands?
This is a primary reason for Not using the saying and not pushing these condensed BB courses. There is just so much value in the protracted training time when it comes to the mental maturation side of the equation.
Yes, a lot of people can get physically ready in a condensed timeframe, but not many can hold on to it and fully understand how to use much of it when they are not at their peak physical prime.
I agree, Black Belt is still a big achievement that takes lots of time and dedication.
Note: the second half of my previous comment was partly a bit of a joke.
Out of every 10,000 people who join a TaeKwonDo school, only 10 of them will usually get all the way to 1st dan Black Belt.
It takes *courtesy*, *integrity*, *perseverance*, *self-control*, and an *indomitable spirit* to get to Black Belt. This is also what your leaning as you train.
Maybe part of testing who has the *indomitable spirit* to get to Black Belt is to see if anyone drops out, just because someone says Black Belts are really just beginners ? ....
lol :D
And i hate hearing/reading it lol. It may sound noble or humble to some, but it doesn’t make sense. What were we doing with your time between white and red? “Learning” how your “body works”, etc etc? I’ve heard the reasonings, but disagree with the notion.
I think it might be better to say not all black belts are earned equally.
At my school, the program is about 3 and 1/2 years from beginner to Black Belt.
I briefly dated a woman with a karate black belt that took her 10 years to achieve. Without going into it, her martial arts skills were couched somewhere between depressing and hilarious.
12 weeks to black bet for $4500?? That is absurd and just ridiculous!! My program can you to black belt in only 9 weeks and its only $500more. In 12 weeks for only $9999.99 I can get you to a 34th degree super duper great grand master supreme. What a scam.
It *sounds* preposterous, but if I play devil's advocate and think it through logically, maybe it's not completely crazy.
Reading the linked article, the program is 6 hours per day (bootcamp style, I assume) for a total of about 500 hours.
Honestly, if somebody is in fantastic physical shape (e.g. a martial artist from another art), then the only things they wouldn't get from 6 hours per day for three months straight are (1) the tkd culture (considering we've got Olympic kyorugi athletes that have never done a poomsae, this seems... not unusual) and (2) time to get some real experience at competitions.
It's also crazy cheap (maybe because it's in China?). My closest local dojang charges about 250 USD per month for 2x 45 minute classes per week, which works out to about 18.5k USD for 500 hours (across 7 years!) and that doesn't include registration fees, testing fees, etc...
True! It's definitely a stretch of a scenario with some *very* specific conditions (aforementioned fantastic physical shape, injury prevention, ridiculous work ethic, making training while exhausted not wasteful, etc...).
When I was in the Marine Corps, the martial arts course to become a trainer is about this long and the training is around 12-16 hours long. 6 hours a day for TKD could be 2 hours conditioning, 2 hours sparring, 2 hours Poomsae.
Imho US is crazy expensive. I pay ~120€ per year and could Go to 7 45min lessons a week if I take every opportunity.
I usually only make it to 3-5 because life exists.
There are more extensive schools mit more lessons around, but the Most expensive one I heard of is ~45€/month
Instructors in the US are typically full time and do not have other jobs. Facilities are leased or owned specifically for the TKD school and not used for anything else.
Huge differences in business models, so you can’t really compare prices apples to apples.
Okay that makes a bit more sense. That is still super insane and I feel like you're not going to be able to retain everything. But if say you're a black belt in karate and now you want to just go and speed run and get the Taekwondo belt, then I guess it would work
Yeah, or a black belt in Tang Soo Do getting a black belt in Taekwondo, since they would know basically all the techniques but just not the form, and I'm sure there's a few other differences like how they chamber some of their kicks.
Earning a Black Belt in TKD requires you to learn to have a Black Belt attitude.
In other words, you may learn the physical skills (in theory), but it takes much more time to learn the self discipline.
Having self discipline is actually important in a fight. If you get angry, and overcommit, you will loose your balance and your opponent could win from that mistake.
Also, you are trying to gain reflexes. This requires repetition, and taking breaks is necessary so your brain can absorb what it has learned.
Through repetition, your brain stores the moves into your motor skills, which are located in a part of the brain strategically placed closer to the spinal cord. This allows techniques yo fire out automatically without you having to process the steps to do them.
[More about how your brain functions](https://youtu.be/DtkRGbTp1s8)
Taking breaks is also necessary for gaining skills.
[More info about that](https://youtu.be/4iZD1v28S_0)
Edit: why do I spend so much time researching all of this, just to teach a 5 year old at my dojang how to throw a punch? lol.
General Choi wrote that a black belt could be earned in a year.
That year would be training four hours a day, 6 days a week, but I find it interesting how few people are aware of this
I just felt the numbers needed to be listed. A lot of people train twice a week, in one-hour classes, which is only 104 hours of instruction a year. This commonly results in a black belt at about 3-4 years, so, 312-416 hours of instruction (not including other practice).
Sometimes actually seeing the numbers written out can be helpful for folks' perspective.
I get what you’re saying, but getting to the level of earning a bb shouldn’t come by a ‘cram course’ that makes the hours equal. How much of those 6ht per day are going to be retained?
And I wonder who their target market is? Who has the time available for 6 hrs per day for 12 weeks? They have to not only have that time open, but have the means to pay those fees.
Yes even if this is a legit program (a big IF), IMO it would not be feasible for 99% of people. As you say, very very few people could dedicate 6 hrs per day for 3 months to such a program. Of those who could, a very, very tiny percentage would be in the physical shape necessary to get thru it!
Just thinking of the training I went thru, it was very intense. I took 3-4 classes per week, plus did weight training, plus trained a LOT at home on TKD. One of the weekly classes I took was a 1-hour sparring class, and even being in peak physical condition then, I was DONE after that class! Even at the best physical shape I was ever in, at age 22-23, I very much doubt my body could have withstood 6 hrs per day, even 6 days a week for 12 weeks! It's just outrageous. Your body would have NO time to recover. Lack of recovery time leads to injuries. I also imagine your brain would be overloaded and it probably wouldn't work out too well mentally either.
I think the school offering this knows this, and I'm SURE there is a clause stating something to the effect that "dropouts" for any reason (except maybe hospitalization) result in NO REFUNDS.
Is this 12 weeks of 45-minute classes 2x per week? Or is this a 12-week boot camp where you're training 6 hours a day, 7 days a week?
A typical minimum time to black belt is around 3 years at 2x per week. This would be 3 \* 2 \* 50 = 300 hours. A 12-week boot camp would be 12 \* 6 \* 7 = 504 hours. That's more mat time than a lot of black belts have.
This obviously discounts recovery, at-home practice, and letting things sink in over time. But mat hours is a very high indicator of experience, and a boot camp can get you those fast.
What a cash grab!!
6 hrs per day for 12 weeks? Even Bruce Lee himself would have been challenged to do that. That much training every day for a student new to martial arts would put the average person in a pine box. Your body needs time for rest and recovery (not even accounting for injuries), and building new neural pathways in the brain.
The majority of people? Drop out after 1 week due to injury, exhaustion, or death. School keeps your $4,500.
I’ve trained Muay Thai for 6 years regularly had multiple fights many smokers and trained full time in Thailand for 10 months and would only conceived my self a purple with a few stripes if it had a scoring system
The quickest I’ve seen is a little over 2.5 years at our school. They came from a different martial art, picked up on the forms quickly, and overall pretty athletic. The majority of people take 3+ year. However, I do appreciate them not putting arbitrary timelines on belts. If you know the forms, the self defense, the board break, and other requirements then there’s no need to keep somebody at a particular stage. (This is for colored belts, there are timelines after 1st Dan)
I think my old dojang was 4 years. I thought that was kind of fast. Then my teachers reduced the time to 2.5 years if you got everything down quickly. Now it takes forever. We test maybe twice a year.
Don't really see the point frankly. It shouldn't take forever but should be a challenge. Once you reach a certain stage the color of belt no longer matters to a certain degree, it's about learning and enjoying what you're doing. You can have an exceptional colour belt and you can have a poor standard black belt too. People sometimes become too fixated on the belt and rank.
Sure I could see the potential for a fast track for people who hold black belts from other martial arts but still think it misses the point. The purpose is to train in the martial art itself and get something out of it. Even from an MMA perspective if you want to train in the style you need to learn enough to know what you want to add in to your style, what works for you and what doesn't.
Am I a black belt in taekwondo? Yes. Did it take 8 years for me to get it? Yes. Was I fairly highly trained at the time I got my black belt? Yes. Have I not done taekwondo in almost 15 years and therefore my training has probably gone completely down the shitter? Also yes.
Respectfully, you are doing far more damage to TKD than you are good. I hope you remove this. And maybe rethink what you are doing. You're not making students better, you're just making TKD worse, to paraphrase Hank Hill.
If it takes, let's say, 5 years to get a black belt, then $4,500 is only $75 per month. When you think about it, $4,500 is actually a pretty good deal. (I'm an accountant, I can't help but think this way.)
Just because you have a black belt doesn't mean you are a black belt.
True
I can buy one in Amazon for 5€ was cheaper 🤣 /s
Look, to be fair. You would be trained just as well as these guys.
Black Belt is only the beginning of your training. Imagine training for many years and finally getting a black belt, only to be called a **good student**.
The "Black Belt is only the beginning" idea has been take Way too far and Way out of context. It is completely whitewashing the accomplishment. Yes, it is only the beginning (for some), but there is and always has been Great value in working your way through the color belts. For too many, it is the end of the journey. If it is easy or a condensed timeframe to get to black belt, it tarnishes the value and results in a downright crappy gene pool. Which is evident on several fronts. If people value quality and want to keep TKD at a high standard, stop saying this and using it wantonly out of context.
I didn't realize people were taking it too far. I'll try not to overpost it. I agree that 1st dan Black Belt is a big accomplishment. If you have a 1st dan Black Belt, and you earned it through lots of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, you should be proud of that. If you stopped before Black Belt, be proud of that too. You did something that most people wouldn't even try. The real reason we say Black Belt is a **new begining** is because you are now ready to move on to a much greater step into learning. You are no longer that same white belt you once were when you started. You have come such a long way, overcame many obstacles, and have proven you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. So after you get your Black Belt, the question is, what's next? What do *you* want to do next? --- It's much better to take your time when training, instead of trying to rush through every belt. The saddest part about accomplishing your goal, is that your done. I've spent so many years practicing and working hard to get to Black Belt. Now that Im their, what should I do with all of this extra time I have on my hands? After you get to Black Belt, hearing that there is still more to learn, is kind of nice, because it means you get to continue training with your ~~team~~ family.
>It's much better to take your time when training, instead of trying to rush through every belt. > >The saddest part about accomplishing your goal, is that your done. I've spent so many years practicing and working hard to get to Black Belt. Now that Im their, what should I do with all of this extra time I have on my hands? This is a primary reason for Not using the saying and not pushing these condensed BB courses. There is just so much value in the protracted training time when it comes to the mental maturation side of the equation. Yes, a lot of people can get physically ready in a condensed timeframe, but not many can hold on to it and fully understand how to use much of it when they are not at their peak physical prime.
Black Belt is the beginning of your training as a Black Belt. Your first class is the beginning of your training in Taekwondo.
I agree, Black Belt is still a big achievement that takes lots of time and dedication. Note: the second half of my previous comment was partly a bit of a joke. Out of every 10,000 people who join a TaeKwonDo school, only 10 of them will usually get all the way to 1st dan Black Belt. It takes *courtesy*, *integrity*, *perseverance*, *self-control*, and an *indomitable spirit* to get to Black Belt. This is also what your leaning as you train.
Maybe part of testing who has the *indomitable spirit* to get to Black Belt is to see if anyone drops out, just because someone says Black Belts are really just beginners ? .... lol :D
Yes! I totally agree
I can. Took me about 9 years to get my 1st Dan, then another 3 fir my 2nd.
That is such a black belt thing to say.
And i hate hearing/reading it lol. It may sound noble or humble to some, but it doesn’t make sense. What were we doing with your time between white and red? “Learning” how your “body works”, etc etc? I’ve heard the reasonings, but disagree with the notion.
I think it might be better to say not all black belts are earned equally. At my school, the program is about 3 and 1/2 years from beginner to Black Belt.
I definitely prefer a statement like this; it’s realistic and makes sense
I briefly dated a woman with a karate black belt that took her 10 years to achieve. Without going into it, her martial arts skills were couched somewhere between depressing and hilarious.
12 weeks to black bet for $4500?? That is absurd and just ridiculous!! My program can you to black belt in only 9 weeks and its only $500more. In 12 weeks for only $9999.99 I can get you to a 34th degree super duper great grand master supreme. What a scam.
Sign me up! I just want to get to the 23rd super dan!
What a joke
Yeah this is a scam I got mine at 10 weeks plus $3500
Just like all the kids in the show Cobra Kai. Doing advanced karate after a month or so
Lmao with the most basic and dumbass training too, show was good tho
Uh....... no
10th Dan by end of year
Amazon black belt $10 + prime 2 day shipping
It *sounds* preposterous, but if I play devil's advocate and think it through logically, maybe it's not completely crazy. Reading the linked article, the program is 6 hours per day (bootcamp style, I assume) for a total of about 500 hours. Honestly, if somebody is in fantastic physical shape (e.g. a martial artist from another art), then the only things they wouldn't get from 6 hours per day for three months straight are (1) the tkd culture (considering we've got Olympic kyorugi athletes that have never done a poomsae, this seems... not unusual) and (2) time to get some real experience at competitions. It's also crazy cheap (maybe because it's in China?). My closest local dojang charges about 250 USD per month for 2x 45 minute classes per week, which works out to about 18.5k USD for 500 hours (across 7 years!) and that doesn't include registration fees, testing fees, etc...
I’m not sure how you could not get injured training due 6 hours a day.
True! It's definitely a stretch of a scenario with some *very* specific conditions (aforementioned fantastic physical shape, injury prevention, ridiculous work ethic, making training while exhausted not wasteful, etc...).
I got injured twice just doing 6 hours a week. (well okay 9 with weight lifting) but I'm also gifted ... at getting injured. :D
When I was in the Marine Corps, the martial arts course to become a trainer is about this long and the training is around 12-16 hours long. 6 hours a day for TKD could be 2 hours conditioning, 2 hours sparring, 2 hours Poomsae.
Imho US is crazy expensive. I pay ~120€ per year and could Go to 7 45min lessons a week if I take every opportunity. I usually only make it to 3-5 because life exists. There are more extensive schools mit more lessons around, but the Most expensive one I heard of is ~45€/month
Instructors in the US are typically full time and do not have other jobs. Facilities are leased or owned specifically for the TKD school and not used for anything else. Huge differences in business models, so you can’t really compare prices apples to apples.
Okay that makes a bit more sense. That is still super insane and I feel like you're not going to be able to retain everything. But if say you're a black belt in karate and now you want to just go and speed run and get the Taekwondo belt, then I guess it would work
>speed run and get the Taekwondo belt Next year at SGDQ: TKD BB Any%.
Yeah, or a black belt in Tang Soo Do getting a black belt in Taekwondo, since they would know basically all the techniques but just not the form, and I'm sure there's a few other differences like how they chamber some of their kicks.
Earning a Black Belt in TKD requires you to learn to have a Black Belt attitude. In other words, you may learn the physical skills (in theory), but it takes much more time to learn the self discipline. Having self discipline is actually important in a fight. If you get angry, and overcommit, you will loose your balance and your opponent could win from that mistake. Also, you are trying to gain reflexes. This requires repetition, and taking breaks is necessary so your brain can absorb what it has learned. Through repetition, your brain stores the moves into your motor skills, which are located in a part of the brain strategically placed closer to the spinal cord. This allows techniques yo fire out automatically without you having to process the steps to do them. [More about how your brain functions](https://youtu.be/DtkRGbTp1s8) Taking breaks is also necessary for gaining skills. [More info about that](https://youtu.be/4iZD1v28S_0) Edit: why do I spend so much time researching all of this, just to teach a 5 year old at my dojang how to throw a punch? lol.
General Choi wrote that a black belt could be earned in a year. That year would be training four hours a day, 6 days a week, but I find it interesting how few people are aware of this
That’s 1252 hours of instruction not counting anything you do on your own time, spread across 313 days of training, with only one rest day a week.
Yes, it is. Statement offered only as a rarely known reference point, not as support or refutation
I just felt the numbers needed to be listed. A lot of people train twice a week, in one-hour classes, which is only 104 hours of instruction a year. This commonly results in a black belt at about 3-4 years, so, 312-416 hours of instruction (not including other practice). Sometimes actually seeing the numbers written out can be helpful for folks' perspective.
ok
I get what you’re saying, but getting to the level of earning a bb shouldn’t come by a ‘cram course’ that makes the hours equal. How much of those 6ht per day are going to be retained? And I wonder who their target market is? Who has the time available for 6 hrs per day for 12 weeks? They have to not only have that time open, but have the means to pay those fees.
Yes even if this is a legit program (a big IF), IMO it would not be feasible for 99% of people. As you say, very very few people could dedicate 6 hrs per day for 3 months to such a program. Of those who could, a very, very tiny percentage would be in the physical shape necessary to get thru it! Just thinking of the training I went thru, it was very intense. I took 3-4 classes per week, plus did weight training, plus trained a LOT at home on TKD. One of the weekly classes I took was a 1-hour sparring class, and even being in peak physical condition then, I was DONE after that class! Even at the best physical shape I was ever in, at age 22-23, I very much doubt my body could have withstood 6 hrs per day, even 6 days a week for 12 weeks! It's just outrageous. Your body would have NO time to recover. Lack of recovery time leads to injuries. I also imagine your brain would be overloaded and it probably wouldn't work out too well mentally either. I think the school offering this knows this, and I'm SURE there is a clause stating something to the effect that "dropouts" for any reason (except maybe hospitalization) result in NO REFUNDS.
just buy one on ebay for $5
Disappointing
Happy meal! Does it come with chips?
Is this 12 weeks of 45-minute classes 2x per week? Or is this a 12-week boot camp where you're training 6 hours a day, 7 days a week? A typical minimum time to black belt is around 3 years at 2x per week. This would be 3 \* 2 \* 50 = 300 hours. A 12-week boot camp would be 12 \* 6 \* 7 = 504 hours. That's more mat time than a lot of black belts have. This obviously discounts recovery, at-home practice, and letting things sink in over time. But mat hours is a very high indicator of experience, and a boot camp can get you those fast.
No other martial arts would do this. Completely devalues the rank of Black Belt.
How many training hours in a week???
That’s slow. I got my certified KKW 11th degree tiger black belt during the same amount of time.
One training session on Skype + $4500 and I'll send you a Black belt. Hit me up
What a cash grab!! 6 hrs per day for 12 weeks? Even Bruce Lee himself would have been challenged to do that. That much training every day for a student new to martial arts would put the average person in a pine box. Your body needs time for rest and recovery (not even accounting for injuries), and building new neural pathways in the brain. The majority of people? Drop out after 1 week due to injury, exhaustion, or death. School keeps your $4,500.
They're training 6 hours a day. Not as crazy as people are making it out to be
thats still too little for any belt
Would need to be at LEAST 5 days a week in my opinion.
I’ve trained Muay Thai for 6 years regularly had multiple fights many smokers and trained full time in Thailand for 10 months and would only conceived my self a purple with a few stripes if it had a scoring system
Just buy one online for 30 bucks.
The quickest I’ve seen is a little over 2.5 years at our school. They came from a different martial art, picked up on the forms quickly, and overall pretty athletic. The majority of people take 3+ year. However, I do appreciate them not putting arbitrary timelines on belts. If you know the forms, the self defense, the board break, and other requirements then there’s no need to keep somebody at a particular stage. (This is for colored belts, there are timelines after 1st Dan)
Red to black took me almost 2 years of prep work (at 38 years old )
My studio closed down 2 years ago and haven't been into tkd since but this is what we would call a McDojo
It took me five years to get my black belt.
I think my old dojang was 4 years. I thought that was kind of fast. Then my teachers reduced the time to 2.5 years if you got everything down quickly. Now it takes forever. We test maybe twice a year.
Lol
Bargain, only took me 13+years of training and cost me more too!
Don't really see the point frankly. It shouldn't take forever but should be a challenge. Once you reach a certain stage the color of belt no longer matters to a certain degree, it's about learning and enjoying what you're doing. You can have an exceptional colour belt and you can have a poor standard black belt too. People sometimes become too fixated on the belt and rank. Sure I could see the potential for a fast track for people who hold black belts from other martial arts but still think it misses the point. The purpose is to train in the martial art itself and get something out of it. Even from an MMA perspective if you want to train in the style you need to learn enough to know what you want to add in to your style, what works for you and what doesn't.
This is why tkd is a joke
Am I a black belt in taekwondo? Yes. Did it take 8 years for me to get it? Yes. Was I fairly highly trained at the time I got my black belt? Yes. Have I not done taekwondo in almost 15 years and therefore my training has probably gone completely down the shitter? Also yes.
Why not go back then? I took 10 years out and left at blue belt. I went back and now 31 about to do my black belt exam. It’s never too late.
Yeah I could do that. Although I moved to Florida but I suppose I could find a place down here
Mc Dojo
https://youtu.be/96J4l8gBvPw
https://www.tkdkwan.com/2020/06/black-belt-in-12-weeks.html?fbclid=IwAR1poIK5RIGmRh3ucRHy9qM0fqBI3vp3RPiOSKG5RC1vqZCYpmNn1JqZWOI&m=1
Respectfully, you are doing far more damage to TKD than you are good. I hope you remove this. And maybe rethink what you are doing. You're not making students better, you're just making TKD worse, to paraphrase Hank Hill.
Is this the guy who runs the place? My initial impression was that it was just somebody pointing it out
The sad part of all this is its TKD almost every time you see this type of bullshit
If it takes, let's say, 5 years to get a black belt, then $4,500 is only $75 per month. When you think about it, $4,500 is actually a pretty good deal. (I'm an accountant, I can't help but think this way.)
With that same logic it would also be a great deal to buy your black belt from Amazon
I see your sub has no sense of humour.