Episode 815 - Ranks Below Black Belt Fade Over Time
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about why Ranks below blackbelt fade overtime.
Ranks Below Black Belt Fade Over Time - Episode 815
Blackbelt is often regarded as a coveted title in the Martial Arts world while ranks below it are not. Blackbelts are often treated with great respect and honor, while lower ranks may be asked to start over at a white belt level or to take a few months of classes before being tested and evaluated for a blackbelt again.
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about why Ranks below blackbelt fade over time and whether is there a need to revisit the treatment of black belts as a title, and the potential consequences of this treatment.
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below
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Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What's happening everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, and on today's episode, Andrew and I are gonna chat about this observation that I've had. That ranks below black belt fade over time. What does that mean? While you're gonna have to stick around to find out, we're gonna chat about it if you're new to the show. I'm Jeremy Lesniak, founder and host of Martial Arts Radio, joined by my often co-host, producer, good friend, training partner, road trip buddy. There's a lot of titles that you fell, Andrew. Thank you, Andrew Adams. Thank you.
Andrew Adams:
Roommate. When we go away, place.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Roommates, meal companion.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
General. All around. Great guy.
Andrew Adams:
I try. I try. How's it going, Jeremy?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Good. Thanks for being here. Now, if you happen to be new to whistlekick in all the things that we do, might I suggest that you visit whistlekick.com where we have so many things, all the things that we're doing. Did you know that we're rolling out a new training program pretty much every month right now? I know because I'm writing them and they take a lot of work. The team knows because I'm constantly bugging them with, hey, what about this? Or feedback, or whatever else. But there are so many things over there, and you can buy a program or a shirt or any number of things in our store. And if you are a listener to the show, you get to save 15%. Podcast15 saves you 15% on anything there. And while you're there, just check out all the other stuff, the events that we've got going, content in the blog, and just so much stuff. Martial Arts Radio has its own website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com because we put out two episodes each week. So it's a lot of stuff, so it needed its own space. And if you go over there, what are you gonna find? Well, every single episode we've ever done. You're gonna find that you're also gonna find a way to sign up for the newsletter or tip us, read transcripts of the episodes. Lots of great stuff there. And if you wanna support us, if our mission to connect, educate, and entertain our goal to get everyone in the world to train for six months, if that means something to you, let me give you three things that you can do. Right off the bat, you could buy something. Like I already said, you could share an episode with somebody. Hey, did you check out this episode? If they did, maybe you can talk about it. If they didn't, maybe you can get them to listen to it and then you can talk about it. But we also have a Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick. It's the place to go, and if you're watching the video, you can see Andrew being ridiculous, which I love. Patreon for two bucks a month. You know what episodes are coming up on the show? We don't release that information anywhere else, but you also get bonus content. We recently had an episode that we had to redo, but it was for technical issues. Well, there was still some good and original stuff in that first recording. We released it to the Patreon folks, we do a lot for them. They do a lot for us. So thank you to all of you. And if you are a whistlekick Super fan, if you are part of our family, might I suggest you check out the family page, whistlekick.com/family. We update it weekly. Andrew.
Andrew Adams:
Jeremy.
Jeremy Lesniak:
When I shared this poorly formed thought with you, ranks below black belt fade over time, something that I jotted to myself in my email a couple weeks ago. You responded stronger than I expected you to.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, it was not something that I had thought of until 10 minutes ago when you told me for the first time, little peek behind the curtains for you listeners and viewers that, you know, sometimes we just come up with these ideas…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes.
Andrew Adams:
On the fly. And it wasn't something I had thought of, but. It may, as I thought about it in just a quick couple of seconds here, I thought when I went to the current school that I'm training at, I had a third-degree black belt in Shudokan, and my instructor said to me, you are a black belt. Like, I'm not gonna take your black belt away from you, like you, and you know, this topic is not to discuss how you should handle other students in school.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sure. We've talked about that on the topic.
Andrew Adams:
But he said, you know, you are fine if you would like to wear your black belt because you are a black belt.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right?
Andrew Adams:
But I also in college trained in Gōjū-ryū and that's what I first started training in. And when I was in college, I got my EQ or in Japanese systems are Okinawan styles. It would be the rank right before black belt, so a brown belt with, a stripe on the end of the belt. But I don't consider myself a brown belt in Gōjū-ryū.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right?
Andrew Adams:
I mean, I earned one. I probably, if I looked hard enough, I think I might even find a certificate that says I got it. But I don't consider myself a brown belt in Gōjū-ryū. I consider myself a black belt in the styles that I have ranked in, but not in Gōjū-ryū.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, there's something here and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, and that's part of why when I gave you, when I shared this idea with you, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. Because what you're talking about is a very common occurrence. It certainly doesn't, isn't what happens everywhere. That someone will say, oh, you have earned your black belt in maybe a style that's similar, maybe not even similar at all, as I've experienced. You are a black belt, right? Like that? Definitive as if it's a standard.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
As if by crossing that threshold, you can never go back, and yet, I've witnessed in plenty of schools, lower ranks are handled very differently sometimes. Well, we want you to start over at white belt. Sometimes it's you know, we'll. Why don't you come in and take class for a month or two and then we'll test you and kind of evaluate you and see where you're at...
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And rank you. But even in the schools that I've participated in where black belts are asked or encouraged or given the choice to start over as white belts, they are still often treated as black belts. You know, there are sometimes these honorariums that occur with, well, you know, we're gonna have all the black belts stand up in the front of the room and, you know, yes, you're wearing a yellow belt right now, but you've earned a black belt, so come stand with us, right? Like, I've seen that. You've probably seen some stuff.
Andrew Adams:
It happened in our school, in the school that I'm in now. At your friend of the show, Abby. Has, a black belt, a third-degree black belt in TaeKwonDo. But in our school, she chose of her own volition to start over at White Belt. She was given the option to keep wearing her black belt, but she wanted to go to white, which is fine. And so she's been slowly progressing through the ranks, but when we have a test, she sits up on the black belt, quote-unquote, board with the others. And, you know, she's encouraged to wear her black belt for that type of, scenario in that case.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah. And that's a great example because, you know, it's a recognition that you have achieved at some manner of standard, you know, this black belt standard that we all argue about, that there is no standard.
Andrew Adams:
Nope.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Cause it's different everywhere. But there's some, I think, intuitive recognition of accomplishment in there. And it makes me wonder, right, because we've had the conversation about at length on this show. It comes up in various ways that a black belt here is not a black belt there. And I believe very strongly that, that's actually a good thing. You know, nobody should be able to dictate, well this is exactly what a black belt is cause it leads to all these problems. But we still at a really fundamental level want to recognize that accomplishment. And I think this goes even further into the appropriate analogy that a black belt is like an academic degree.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, no, nobody ever brags. Well, you know, I took Philosophy 108. You know, but they'll say I have my bachelor's degree in philosophy.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right? And I just, I keep wrapping my head around that comparison, because credits might transfer in the same way that we talked about, well, we're gonna evaluate you and see where you fit in in our system. And I know that there are schools that do that, even if you trained in the same thing, even if you're in the same lineage.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
They want you to kind of test in and see where they are in the same way that a lot of people might do when attending higher education.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. And that's a good point about the education cause no one typically walks around saying, I did a year and a half of college and then I left.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But if they do, they're usually like you know, self-deprecating.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, exactly.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, it's a regret or something.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
So the question is this to me, is this by design or by accident, or is it just natural law that this is going to happen? And if, it is something that we can adjust, should we?
Andrew Adams:
I think it leans more towards accident and just a happenstance. I don't think it's by design. I don't.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I agree. I don't think anybody's out there doing that, but I do believe it is a consequence…
Andrew Adams:
Yes.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Of the way we talk about black belts.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We've talked about that. Just as an aside to the audience, we've talked about this, my personal feelings, and I, Andrew, I think you agree with me that by saying black belt is the standard, it creates some consequences, this being one of them, that because we say it's a standard, it becomes a standard and we don't want to compromise that standard.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. So here's the thing to think about. When I got my brown belt, in college, I would've been, let's say 21. Early twenties, let's say. I had kept training and got my black belt at 22 and then quit training, and 15, 20 years later, I decided to start training again. I'm still a black belt, right? I got a black belt. But let's go back a year, 2000 in, you know, when I was 21, I got a brown belt and I stopped training for 21 years and start training again. I'm not a brown belt? Like there's, that's a hypothetical question, like rhetorical question, like what is really different between the brown belt and the black belt?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Here's what I'm thinking. I'm trying to come up with, as we're talking, I'm trying to come up with equivalencies outside of martial arts, cause quite often it's easier for us to find examples and I'm thinking about this and it comes down to title. We treat black belt as a title, the way we would treat
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Sabonim or professor or Renchy or Sensei within the martial arts Shifu in a way that we don't treat other ranks, color belt ranks.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Those don't tend to carry that same, how do you say the word? Titular. Titular?
Andrew Adams:
Titular. Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Titular, okay. That we, that don't seem to carry that titular connotation. And it's funny there cause there are a lot of schools where you earn a black belt, you're automatically, it carries some title, but plenty of other schools. It's very separate. I've known schools that, you know, you could be third, fourth, or fifth-degree black belt. And your title is awarded differently that someone might have higher rank and someone else might have higher title.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Because title tends to be more teaching, and whereas rank may not be related to teaching in that school. Go ahead.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, and my experiences is predominantly Japanese and Okinawan styles, and even within those styles, there is a word for anyone who has a black belt. There is a separate word. Whether you've been given a title for having your rank or not in the Japanese and Okinawan disciplines, if you have a black belt, regardless of what rank black belt it is, you are Yudansha.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, I thought that was term.
Andrew Adams:
Anyone who has a black belt. And so, and there may be a term for anyone who doesn't have a black belt. But I don't know it, and I've been training a long time, so Yudansha one that everyone knows like, oh, you know, this meeting is only for Yudansha. Like, it's not only for black belts. It's like it has its own title already. So that's interesting. Thought of that.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think there's also something interesting in that, the way most schools, regardless of system, right? I mean we see this in pretty much all styles of karate, TaeKwonDo, I see it in a lot of other areas. The belt color doesn't change. You just add stripes. Whether it's figurative or literal, you add stripes.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
But the belt remains black. And for plenty of people, you know, if you train at a school where you know that black belt shows up somewhere, 5, 6, 7, 4, 10, whatever years, but you trained for decades. I mean, I wear the same black belt most of the time that I have had since I was 16. I don't know too many people who wear the same belt for 30 years doing something else, right? Like…
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Yeah. That's a good...
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, there's, so I guess the question is, the big question to me is should we, should this be an on-off switch at black belt? Or should it be more gradual? Should the situation you articulated with yourself at EQ at that, just before a black belt stage, should that have been treated similar, were this case to come up, you know, to the way a black belt might be handled? Or should it be its own set of rules? And I don't know that there's an answer.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah, I don't, I mean, I think it, I would agree. I don't think there is a definitive black-and-white. This is the way it should be. And you know, we, whistlekick try pretty hard to not make those types of distinctions regardless cause everything is nuanced. And I think your, so again, using me as an example, I don't consider myself a brown belt in Gōjū-ryū. If I were to start training in a Gōjū-ryū school, they might ask, do you have any prior training? And I would tell them what I have, right? But I wouldn't expect to wear a brown belt. But my knowledge of Gōjū-ryū is way more than a white belt, even though I haven't trained, I haven't trained Gōjū-ryū. Let's see, I'm 48 years old now. I was 21. It's been 27 years, right? But my knowledge of Gōjū-ryū, just because I've done so much other training, is way, way, way, way, way, way, way higher than someone who steps in for the first day, right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
And even the way you're talking about it, and I don't know that you realize it, you're talking about it in the way that we might talk about academic pursuits, right? Well, I didn't, you know, I took all of these classes, I learned this information.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Much of it has faded. I could relearn it faster than I learned it the first time.
Andrew Adams:
And I still remember a lot.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And you have parallel pursuits that support it.
Andrew Adams:
Yep.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It's kind of like if you earn a master's degree in engineering and you go back to. Take your, you know, maybe you had started undergrad in physics, you know, if you wanna finish up your degree in physics and go on for a master's degree in physics, there's gonna be some overlaps.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah.
Jeremy Lesniak:
And some core requirements will carry, but regardless, you're gonna be able to get there faster than you would otherwise.
Andrew Adams:
Okay.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You know, this is one of those episodes where we talk through some things and it doesn't come to a nice, neat bow at the end.
Andrew Adams:
No.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I want the audience to understand that Andrew and I are talking through our thoughts on this, but this one is wide open. And if you look at this, go ahead.
Andrew Adams:
And we'd love to hear your thoughts. Like you…
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah.
Andrew Adams:
What after you listen or watch this episode, if your gears have started to turn, that's a great thing. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on how they feel. You know, if, for example, you determine that I was a brown belt, but because it's been 27 years, I can no longer call myself a brown belt. First off, I don't. That's fine with me. I don't really care. But what if I had gotten my black belt and stopped training for 27 years? Did that knowledge really fade as well? And like there's no right or wrong answer. It is just stuff to think about makes you ponder.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think my big takeaway from our conversation is the idea that we treat black belt as a title and we do not treat lower ranks as titles. They are reflections of current understanding. I like when we do this. It's fun.
Andrew Adams:
Yeah. Makes you ponder. I really, I like that too.
Jeremy Lesniak:
It does.
Andrew Adams:
As Arsenio Hall would say, things that make you go, hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Oh, I would, when you said Arsenio Hall was like where are you going? I don't think hyping up the crowd. I don't really think that's gonna play well.
Andrew Adams:
Oh no.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Hey, you know what?
Andrew Adams:
He had a segment on a show that was things that make you go hmm.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I do recall that. Yes. Audience, if you enjoy what we talk about here, if you enjoy these shows if you enjoy thinking, and that's part of why you come around when we record, I hope you'll consider sharing the episode and supporting us and the wide variety of ways that you have available. Join the Facebook group whistlekick Martial Arts Radio behind the scenes. A couple other things you might consider doing seminars. You could have me in for a seminar, I could bring Andrew with me. It could bring some of the other folks who are part of the whistlekick core team. They'll probably show up anyway, whether you welcome to or not. We've got a good group, but if you wanna have me in, to offer up my, I think, semi-unique blend of conversation, contemplation, and training, would love to do that. With you and your students, and also consider that we offer consulting. The entire team here gets involved in some way or another on our consulting stuff. And whether you're looking to grow your school by numbers or by dollars or some other method, don't be afraid to reach out to jeremy@whistlekick.com. If you have feedback for Andrew, andrew@whistlekick.com and our social media is @whistlekick. Until next time. Train hard, smile, have a great day.