- George Chung
- Jan 30, 2024
- 5 min read
by Floyd Burk
Managing belt ranks and promotions would appear to be a straightforward part of running a martial arts school, but for many instructors, the process is not easy to implement and keep up with. If you’ve owned a school for long, you might have discovered that for yourself.
You probably also know that for many who train at your dojo, earning rank is important. For that reason, you need a good rank-advancement program. Many people fail in this area, and that can be a key reason for low retention rates and even the collapse of the school.
Why is it so important internally? Your school’s rank program provides goals for your students. Those goals then supply the motivation they need to work hard and achieve success. Furthermore, the testing fees deliver a substantial income stream to your operating budget. It’s a win-win.
Your belt-rank system should be easy to understand. If you can explain it to a 4-year-old, you’re on the right track. At my school, we’ve found that it helps to create a graphic of the system with colors and visuals that enable students to immediately comprehend the progression. This is important for goal setting.
I suggest putting your rank system on a medium-size poster that’s placed in a conspicuous location in your dojo. I hung such a poster in the lobby of our dojo and posted it on our website. It’s positioned low on the wall so children can easily see it. On the left side are the 10 colored belts, and on the right are the 10 levels of black belt.
The message conveyed to students is this: “We start at the lighter colors (white, yellow and orange), and the belts get darker (blue, green and brown) until we get to black belt.”
They know exactly where they’re going. Your rank requirements must be attainable within the estimated time frame you’ve established for students to advance from one belt to the next. If yours don’t meet this standard, you need to adjust them. Reasonable time frames are two to five months for each lower colored belt and six months or more for each higher colored belt. For levels of black belt, a year or more for each is common.
To maximize attainability, the requirements should be set on a sliding scale for the age groups you establish. Our school uses four such groups: 5 to 7 years old, 8 to 10 years old, 11 to 15 years old, and 16 and older. The reasoning is obvious: The older a student is, the more material that student needs to know and the more he or she can retain.
Your delivery system for those rank requirements works best when it supports your estimated time frames. Many years ago, I tried to just go with the flow and teach kata one day, situational self-defense the next day, sparring the day after that and so on. Sometimes I would teach a little of each in every class. It turned out to be a mess.
Although it was fun for me, it wasn’t very effective for learning. Finally, we settled on a system that divides the year into quarters. January is kata month, February is self-defense month, and March is sparring and combinations month. In April, the cycle restarts with kata month. We’ve found this system to be the most productive for getting students where they need to be.
The next component is “requirements met,” and it’s more important than you might think. Students get notified that they have met the requirements for a promotion, which breeds excitement. The notification also fosters some healthy nervousness related to the upcoming test, which is good.
At the beginning of the month in our school, we post on the dojo bulletin board the names of those who are ready to test. We then give them a belt-test slip that lists the cost of their test. Because testing is a week or two away when they’re notified, they have time to look forward to and prepare for the test, as well as turn in the testing fee. We’ve noticed that students are thrilled when they see their name on the posted list.
Belt testing is done monthly at our school, usually during the third week of the month. Personally, I would rather do the testing quarterly, but monthly works better for our staff and students. When we run a test during class, we have a handful of candidates on one side of the dojo demonstrating their mastery of the material while the other students are training.
Our tests are always closed to spectators because we prefer to focus on individual progress and potential rather than universal requirements. We chose this path because all kids have unique motor-skill development and attitudinal maturity, with some having special needs. Therefore, we evaluate them on an individual basis.
The reason we do the same thing for adults is they have differences in age, body type, physical limitations from injuries and so on. Because potential observers wouldn’t be aware of each person’s uniqueness, not allowing spectators avoids problems.
Testing is usually completed within the class period, and we give students the results right then and there. We don’t make them do all their material every time. That’s a mistake for many dojo, especially those that teach a lot of content. We’ve learned that it’s overly stressful for people to prepare for their “final exam” all year long.
Promotions are held a week or two after tests during the final 15 minutes of class. We invite parents, family members and friends to the dojo. Students line up (with social distancing), and after a few words from me or another instructor, each one walks to the front to receive a new belt and certificate. Then they all put on their new belts, and we go through a few formalities.
After we bow out, I invite the visitors into our dojo photo area, which has our school logo painted on the wall. One at a time, they take pictures of their loved ones. Many parents then post the photos on Facebook and other social media.
In December, we do things a little differently. We rent a large facility (usually a church or parks-and-rec building) and have a formal promotion ceremony that can include demonstrations and the presentation of special awards. Sometimes we have guest speakers. This is when black-belt promotions happen.
To those who haven’t experienced the joys of teaching martial arts, all this might seem like a lot of work, and it is. Properly training students while making sure your business thrives is not a walk in the park. It takes effort and energy to do it right — but as you know, there’s no better job in the world.
For more information about testing and promotions, consult the Martial Arts Industry Association at maiahub.com.
Floyd Burk is a San Diego–based 10th-degree black belt with 50 years of experience in the arts. To contact him, visit Independent Karate Schools of America at iksa.com.
This article originally appeared in a 2022 Black Black Magazine edition.
