There are so many clichés about becoming a black belt, being a black belt, and how you should behave once you eventually get one.
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But the problem is that for some people, it doesn’t stop there. One black belt isn’t enough. They want another grade, then another. More stripes on the belt.
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When I started training in the 1970s, obtaining a black belt wasn’t even a consideration. I would have been happy reaching brown belt. To me, that was the limit of what I might realistically achieve. Shodan felt so far out of reach it was almost mythical – black belts were as rare as hen’s teeth.
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Some of the gradings – ‘promotion’ is a word I don’t like, as it implies something has already been decided – that I have seen and attended display such a poor level of skill that I genuinely wonder what the instructor is thinking.
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In the early 2000s, a group of us in the UK tried to form an organization that would list approved, certified, and verified black belts. The idea was simple – people could see what was genuine and what was not.
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Of course, this only works if there is a standard to follow.
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And that’s where it falls apart.
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You can take a group of certified individuals and connect them all together, but does that automatically make those outside the group fraudulent? Of course not. The bad ones would still be where they are – and so would some of the good ones.
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Unless such a group becomes ‘the’ standard, it ultimately makes no difference, no matter how well-intentioned it is.
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Standards are group- and association-dependent. My grade would be worthless if I walked into a different dojo or joined a different organization. And unless there is an overall standard – which there isn’t – it will always be that way.
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If a grade has any meaning at all, it isn’t found in the color of the belt or the number of stripes stitched onto it.
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It comes from context.
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Context in how and why the person trained. Context in what they were expected to deal with, and what they deliberately avoided. Context in whether their training prepared them for something real, or simply for the next grading.
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Behavior matters just as much. Not in the theatrical sense of bowing correctly or using the right words, but in how someone conducts themselves when there is nothing to gain. How they speak to others. How they respond to criticism. Whether they feel the need to defend their rank, or whether it quietly stands on its own.
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Capability is harder to hide over time. It shows up in movement, in depth of knowledge, and in improving skill. It shows up in knowing when not to act just as much as knowing how to act.
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And then there is accountability.
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Who assessed the grade? Under what conditions? Could it have gone the other way? Was failure a genuine possibility, or was the outcome already decided long before the day arrived?
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I once had someone say to me, quite casually, “I’m getting my black belt at the weekend.”
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That stopped me in my tracks.
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There ‘was’ a grading. But listening to the way it was said, the outcome already felt decided. The event itself seemed less like an assessment and more like a confirmation of something agreed beforehand.
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Failure did not appear to be a genuine possibility. When a grading exists without the possibility of an unexpected outcome, it stops functioning as an evaluation. It becomes procedural. The belt is awarded not because it was earned on the day, but because it was due.
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And once a result is guaranteed, accountability quietly disappears.
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In that sense, the problem is not that there are too many black belts. The problem is that too many grades exist in isolation, disconnected from clear expectations, clear standards, and real consequence.
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A belt cannot carry meaning on its own. Meaning only exists when it is anchored to context, behavior, capability, and accountability. Remove any one of those, and the rest quickly unravel.
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– Adam Carter