LogFAQs > #933402342

dancer62 posted...

Black belt traditionally marks the journeyman level, where you can teach independently. 6-8 years, mastering 15-20 full-length katas/forms and 10-15 weapons, self-defense techniques, sparring, supervised teaching hours, success in tournaments.

This varies wildly from school to school and from martial art to martial art. You're ascribing a common standard where none exists - there is no universal accreditation that stipulates what a black belt must be capable of.

To use your degree analogy, in many Okinawan kobudo styles a black belt is like a high school diploma - a mark of basic proficiency. In the particular style of karate I practice, a black belt is like a PhD (you actually have to write a dissertation on martial arts philosophy and application as part of your test), though even staying within karate there's wild variation in terms of what is acceptable.

Also, your standards also seem a bit wonky, given that a lot of what you're stipulating isn't practised in a lot of martial arts - for instance, traditional karate does not use weapons, there are no forms or tournaments in arts like iaido or kyudo, so on and so forth. And for the record, unless you have a substantially different definition of mastery than I do, there is absolutely no way in hell you are "mastering" 10-15 weapons in just eight years. I've been training in kobudo for more almost 20 years now, run my own dojo, and I can use nine weapons with at least some level of proficiency - I wouldn't consider myself a master at any of them. Hell, there are people who spend lifetimes just mastering a single weapon, nevermind a dozen of them.

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