Martial Arts Belt Colors
The belt colors in karate hold a significant vale for the practitioners and for the general public as well.
Martial arts belt colors. The truth however is a bit more whimsical than that. We took a look at the history and symbolism of karate belts in the blog post the meaning of karate belts and we all know that most martial arts use some kind of color coded ranking system to represent class advancement and reward the hard work and discipline that a student has put into mastering their art. To help you better understand how the structure works on this post i will be sharing information and insights on the history of the martial arts belts as well as an overview of the color based ranking system. However there is much more to the system of the martial arts belts including the order of their rankings and what each color belt means.
What do colored karate ranks mean. Belt colors will almost always be different from one karate school to another and the same is true in different types of martial arts and even some instructors will vary on the way they use their belts. Rankings vary widely between the many arts. White represents the start of one s journey into martial arts.
In 1883 kano borrowed from the game of go his kyu dan system of classifying his students. Belts and belt colors vary even more than rankings do. Rankings and meanings are listed accordingly. Colors vary between disciplines and even within disciplines can be different from country to country or club to club.
Thus a white belted student. White yellow orange green blue purple and black the colors of martial arts belts denote student development skills and experience. They may also include ranks within colors. We all know that a person who holds a black belt in karate is considered to be.
When a person is wearing the karate belt of any color people are perceiving that the belt wearer has taken up the specific philosophy and significant function of martial arts and thrives to undertake the challenges of acquiring expertise. Some martial arts don t even have belts. It is clean innocent a mere seed that aptly absorbs anything that comes in contact with it. However contrary to popular belief using colored belts to denote rank or ability in martial arts is a relatively recent invention in the otherwise ancient arts one that was only introduced around the turn of the 20th century.
But the symbolism of the belts remains the same across disciplines. He used colored belts obi to indicate the experience or level of the practitioner. The meaning of martial arts belt colors.