grading

jnixon

does evryone think that it would be a good idea if you had to compete before grading, i think that this is a good idea on the grounds that you are learning a combat sport. Now i know people do it just for fitness buit then why do they want to grade a belt wont make you any fitter

Peetrik

A couple of styles, Judo for example, do make you compete for later belts and it can be a strong indication of ability but I'd say that more often than not, gradings and belts are more for the students own sense of achievement/accomplishment.
In some cases I'd even think that gradings are solely for the purpose of getting a few bob out of the students.

There are plenty of styles that don't have any belts, your level is measured by the number of fights you've had or better again by who you've fought. Might suit someone of a more competitive nature better

arybvtcw0eolkf

Tbh I blow hot and cold on this.

I like that in judo a fighter must fight for and win their blue, brown and black belts in national gradings, and competition in the case of the brown going for black.

I also train BJJ, but I've never been interested in either competing or grading, but I think if I'd to compete for a grading then thats something which would interest me and I'd compete/grade.

However I still get great enjoyment and satisfaction from it (without grading).

Does competition make you a better coach?.. I'm not entirely sure, but from personal experience students have more respect for a coach who is or has been competitive.. A coach with a competitive back ground can also pass on that experience to their students.

I've known a few black belts over the years, mostly in TKD and kickboxing who have never competed ~ I've little respect for their black belt.

And thats just my personal opinion, I'm not saying its right or wrong.

In the case of a style like Muay Thai, they've no gradings and I'm sure its not essential that an athlete must compete but its a bloody tough style and I don't think a Nancy boy is going to hang around too long ~ time spent training Muay Thai is something to respect.

Mellor

jnixon wrote: »

Now i know people do it just for fitness buit then why do they want to grade a belt wont make you any fitter

What about people who train simply because they want to learn the skills? Makes perfect sense that they should want to formalise their progress with a belt. A couple of my training partners don't compete, they's fine with me, but I do think they'll progress slower on average than those that compete.

In my opinion,
If you are training simply for yourself, you might as well do the gradings for yourself.
If you are training to grade, if the next belt is your goal, then you should compete.

Peetrik

Mellor wrote: »

What about people who train simply because they want to learn the skills? Makes perfect sense that they should want to formalise their progress with a belt.

Open to being corrected here but I think that's the OPs point. You don't know that you have the skills unless they've been tested.

[EDIT] *tested in competition that is

Mellor

Peetrik wrote: »

Open to being corrected here but I think that's the OPs point. You don't know that you have the skills unless they've been tested.

[EDIT] *tested in competition that is

But read the line I quoted. He suggested that people training for "fitness" don't gain anything by grading - so why bother. I'm just saying that recognition is as good a reason as any.

I agree that being tested in competition is the best way to measure your skills - but I don't think that its the only way. If somebody who never competes regularly out performs everyone one of a certain grade (who all compete at that level) in his club, its pretty safe to say he is at that level too.

Peetrik

I see your point. I suppose its just depends on how you look at it...

Why not just grade if you've put the work in
vs
Grades don't mean squat unless you've proven you can apply the knowledge


Yep you're dead right, if they are beating their training partners in sparring then they must be at a similar level although in reality I've found that very rarely to be the case as those who don't compete don't have anywhere near the stamina/fitness levels of those who do and tend to gas and go into survival mode after a few rounds of sparring. Just my anecdotal experience

arybvtcw0eolkf

Mellor wrote: »

I agree that being tested in competition is the best way to measure your skills - but I don't think that its the only way. If somebody who never competes regularly out performs everyone one of a certain grade (who all compete at that level) in his club, its pretty safe to say he is at that level too.

But if you're competing (IMO) you're not just competing against the guy opposite, you're also competing against your fears. You're competing against the guy (you yourself) who wasn't so fit 6,7 or 8 weeks ago, you've brought your conditioning to the arena and you've left your fears mat side and thats how you know, and can tell your students what works in competition and what doesn't.

I've known guys who won't compete, who can sub/throw me in the club and who are fitter than me who also have all the advise in the world when I'm defeated, tbh they can go feck themselves.

Mellor

Rosalie Few Elevator wrote: »

But if you're competing (IMO) you're not just competing against the guy opposite, you're also competing against your fears. You're competing against the guy (you yourself) who wasn't so fit 6,7 or 8 weeks ago, you've brought your conditioning to the arena and you've left your fears mat side and thats how you know, and can tell your students what works in competition and what doesn't

I agree. But I don't see what thats got to do with my post tbh.

I compete. I go to the guys above me for advise, I think of that relevant experience is the best. But of somebody who doesn't compete wants to grade, I don;t see why he can't. That's all.

I've known guys who won't compete, who can sub/throw me in the club and who are fitter than me who also have all the advise in the world when I'm defeated, tbh they can go feck themselves.

Agree. There's a few other sterotypes I'd throw in there with the "feck themselves" group too

smacl

Mellor wrote: »

But of somebody who doesn't compete wants to grade, I don;t see why he can't. That's all.

It depends to an extent what the grade is supposed to imply. I you take it as 'has studied the prescribed syllabus and understands the material' that's fine. Try 'can apply the martial techniques successfully under pressure against a previously unknown resisting opponent' and it gets sketchy. If you add 'an opponent who is doing their best to beat you' you're really talking competition.

Depends on the style you're practising as well I guess, some styles have grades and don't compete. The style I'm currently practising doesn't have grades but has a variety of competition formats, so competing is a good way to check where you're at and give focus to your training. If you know you're fighting a stranger in front of an audience, you really do make that extra effort, and your skills come on as a result.

GrumpyJocks

Hi...new to the forum and just stumbled across this thread.

For what it's worth, personally I don't think competing necessarily equals a better martial artist. I'm speaking from a karate perspective so can't speak of other disciplines.

More often than not when I spar people that compete they are so focused on making the "point" that often their technique is poor without kime and quite ineffective. I agree that some element of kumite or competing for grades is good but not this bouncy around on your toes malarkey that you see all too often. The Frank Brennan days of competition.....now that's a different story!

Peetrik

GrumpyJocks wrote: »

More often than not when I spar people that compete they are so focused on making the "point" that often their technique is poor without kime and quite ineffective.

I think this is pretty much exactly the point of the thread. This is a perfect example of 'knowing of the skills' but with knowledge of how to apply it.

Just in my own personal opinion, and I realize everyone trains for different reasons, fitness etc, but just IMO a grade/rank/belt in a martial art should be an indicator of martial ability/the ability to fight.
People who have poor timing and ineffective technique clearly can't fight and its doing them a disservice by awarding them a grade or a belt that implies that they can.

Mellor

I suppose it will vary a lot within each martial art. My comments were in relation to BJJ btw. A large part of which involves rolling with resisting partners. But I suppose with other martial arts somebody might get to BB level by set pieces, demonstrations (kata?).

I think my previous posts werent considering the full spectrum if MAs.

antybots

The grading system was one of the main reasons I gave up TKD after 15 years training. I competed constantly and I was always working on my speed, power, timing etc. but I hated patterns and so never paid much attention to them. This led to 3 problems.

Firstly, TKD has patterns at the core of the art and instructors believe that you can't apply TKD properly unless you know the patterns. Therefore, patterns are part of every grading and you can't pass until you know them. If you don't grade, you can't compete, so in order to compete, I was forced to learn the patterns. What pissed me off about this was I always saw time spent on patterns as training time wasted.

Secondly, in the TKD association I was part of, no matter how **** a fighter or competitor you are, if you are good at patterns, you will pass any grading. I saw many people get 2nd, 3rd, 4th dan black belts who would **** their pants at the thought of getting hit, and I even know a 2nd degree who refuses to spar unless they are forced to. To me this demeaned the very meaning of a black belt and I began to see a TKD black belt as a poor indicator of what a person can do.

I persevered through the rules and got myself to 3rd dan. I was still competing (but only in sparring) and was plodding along until I hit my third problem. In TKD, black belts are automatically assistant instructors and I found myself getting roped into teaching white and yellow belt classes, and more of my training time was taken up with teaching others. I know it's selfish, but I had no interest in teaching and the higher I got in the ranks, the less and less time I had to train, which led to some poor tournament performances. In the end something had to give and I gave it all up to do something else.

Meanwhile the people in the association who love patterns but hate fighting have gone on to get high grades, open their own schools and they are very happy and the art continues to grow. I'm happier in my current training where I have no grade and the focus is on fitness and fighting.

The moral of my story is that its horses for courses. There are people out there who practice traditional martial arts for the 'art' part and it is generally those people who open schools and do a lot to promote the art, thereby keeping it alive. Then there's the likes of me who trained for the 'martial' part and while I can fight, I didn't help maintain or promote my art like the other people did. And of course there are people in the middle who can do both .

If the grading system includes a measure of martial ability, the 'art' people won't pass which will lead the art to shrink to a core of black belts can look after themselves but who may not be the best teachers.

I think the powers that be overlook the fact that so many physically useless black belts are produced in order to keep the numbers up of people who know the technical aspects of the art with a view to teaching it to others. I know it's a cynical view, but why else would they let so many unfit softies get high ranks when it's plain to see that they can't fight?

It would be nice if gradings were physically tougher but in I can't see it happening anytime soon as long as the higher ups are only worried about attendance figures and technical ability (i.e. width of stances, posture etc.) rather than martial ability.

Doug Cartel

It depends on if competition is an important component of the style you are practising, or if it is just something that was tacked on.

In judo there is randori and shiai - free practice and competition - and they are two very different things. In Randori you are trying things out, you experiment and take risks. Quite often you'll mess up, but it's no big deal - no one is keeping score. On top of that you are looking out for your partner's safety and not looking to kill him or her. In our gym there is a ban on cheering people during randori as it encourages the wrong kind of mentality in the people taking part.

Shiai on the other hand, mimics the situation where you have one chance to make something work. You don't take chances, you do what you have to in order to end it a quickly as possible. People who ignore shiai completely are not "training for themselves" - they're just leaving out part of their training. From my experience the people who compete least are usually the people who treat training most like a competition.

Also, while we might moan about rule changes and all that, the fact still remains that competition judo is still pretty close to the theoretical ideals of the style. You're looking to throw someone on their back (or immobilise/submit them) in the most efficient way possible. Therefore it makes sense to test someone on this if you are grading them.

On the other hand you have other styles where I get the impression that the competitive element was added on after the fact. From my limited experience with Shotokan, it seems to place a heavy emphasis on rooting down and throwing big solid hits. The most common competition format for it however, involves a lot of bouncing around trying to lightly tap someone. (At least in this country anyway.) In this kind of situation I could see how competition might not be that appropriate for grading - though my gut reaction is that if this is the case, a better solution to ignoring competition would be to get a more suitable competition format.

GrumpyJocks

I agree...learning lots of patterns/kata whatever is useless without practical application. Think that's where a lot of clubs fall down. There is not enough emphasis on bunkai and practical application. You could teach a monkey to do a kata and it means nothing. The benefit of kata though is that you practise particular moves over and over, to the point that it becomes second nature. How can you magically expect to use a move properly when it can't be performed perfectly when you are not even in a fight situation. Bit like golfers perfecting their swing with hundreds of practise shots. Kata is also a good reference point for refreshing your memory of particular applications that you have trained in sparring.

I too have seen lots of BB's that are junior grade in standard but I think that is a reflection of the particular club/association that grades them. An intregal part of any grading is kumite/sparring and a good association shouldn't allow someone make BB unless they've shown appropriate standard of sparring during grading. Nor should they be presented in the first place for grading by their instructor until they are happy with their standard beforehand.....just my thoughts.

scottie pippen

jnixon wrote: »

does evryone think that it would be a good idea if you had to compete before grading, i think that this is a good idea on the grounds that you are learning a combat sport. Now i know people do it just for fitness buit then why do they want to grade a belt wont make you any fitter

I agree, where I train - once you get past the first two 2grades,
you have to sparr to complete the each grade.
after the Kata & technique test is complete, everyone gets a drink of water then gets ready to sparr, usually 3 rounds, each round with a different person. the idea being that you use the techniques that you just demonstrated (I said technique, not kata )

My opinion, whats the point in training hard, without really testing yourself, even if your not competing, you should at lest be sparring - your kind of missing out if you don't even try, not saying you shouldn't be doing martial arts, but sparring & competing is definitely a big part of it.

Peetrik

GrumpyJocks wrote: »

The benefit of kata though is that you practise particular moves over and over, to the point that it becomes second nature. How can you magically expect to use a move properly when it can't be performed perfectly when you are not even in a fight situation. Bit like golfers perfecting their swing with hundreds of practise shots. Kata is also a good reference point for refreshing your memory of particular applications that you have trained in sparring.

Yikes, I completely disagree with all of this. I reckon kata are the exact reason why you have situations like you described earlier where you have graded martial artists who know the theory, bouncing on their toes with no timing and throwing ineffective strikes.

I could write an essay on why I dislike Kata but just for now...

• Air punching will not prepare you for punching solid objects
• You don't learn timing & accuracy
• Practicing posing mid strike instead of in your guard is just a terrible idea
• It has none of the urgency/adrenaline of fighting/sparring
• It is time wasted that could have been spent hitting pads full force/sparing

GrumpyJocks

Dont want to derail thread....but just to say I agree wholeheartedly with most your points. That's why I believe it's important that its not done in isolation but is practically applied to sparring or bag work. With lots more emphasis on the practical application than the kata/pattern piece. By just jumping straight into sparring with a dodgy move, either you or opponent are going to get hurt.

antybots

I forgot to mention that there is sparring in tkd gradings from green belt upwards, and it's supposed to be self defense type and not the point sparring bouncing-on-the-toes stuff (there's even 2 against 1 sparring), but there is so much time spent on the patterns that the students never learn to spar self-defense style and so revert to the only thing they know i.e. the point sparring stuff. It looks crap but the examiners overlook it and concentrate on the patterns. I've never seen a student fail an exam because of poor sparring (they just get told to practice defending themselves) but I've seen a lot of people fail (including myself) because of poorly performed patterns.

I have to agree with Peetrik, the notion that performing patterns/kata has anything to teach you about fighting is precisely the problem with some styles and you can see it reflected in the sparring at gradings.

In TKD or Karate you spent roughly 3 months between colour belt gradings. To prove my point about patterns having nothing to teach, I would love to get 6 absolute beginners and put 3 of them through 3 months of training using the Traditional martial art training, say TKD for example. They will learn their stances, patterns/kata etc. and whatever else as normal. At the same time, take the other 3 and put them through 3 months of fitness, bag work and drilling TKD strikes.

At the end of the 3 months when they are ready to grade, let the two groups compete against each other in both self defense and competition sparring and see what happens. My guess is that the latter 3 destroy the former 3 but fail the grading for having incomplete knowledge of the patterns.

Look, I'm not saying that patterns/kata should be scrapped. Done well they are very impressive to watch. Practice them if you like, but it's time the notion that they are useful in teaching you to fight should be consigned to the past once and for all because it's just not true.