Belts and the Martial Arts

Since Yin Style Baguazhang is such a tight niche within the martial arts, as I've mentioned before, I'm going to try to expand the audience of this blog by posting topics on occasion that relate both to Yin Style and to other martial arts. Nearly ubiquitous in the martial arts are belts, usually of varying colors to indicate level, or some equivalent: I've seen colored shirts, pants, uniforms, sashes (which I consider belts), and necklaces all to the same function, and I'm sure there are even more variations on the theme. For the purposes here, all of these "equivalent" indicators will be considered in the same pile and referenced as being "belts" and will mean "rank-distinguishing belts." Now for the particularly interesting bit that makes this post worth making: belts are "nearly ubiquitous" in the martial arts world... but in Yin Style Baguazhang, they are not used at all. I'd like to discuss some of my thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages surrounding belts since I've spent considerable time and made considerable observations on both sides of this fence.

A quick history, if my information is correct, on this practice is that thin cords of various colors were worn in Japan by swimmers to help distinguish them at some point in that sport's history, and this practice was observed by Kanō Jigorō, the founder of Judo, and observed to have merit for ranking students, since the judo gi required a belt to hold it properly closed as it was. The practice then spread to other martial arts, and then all kinds of ridiculous legends about where the colors came from arose, such as the following: "In the beginning, everyone's belt was white, and then it yellowed with sweat over time and got grungy. Due to being thrown in the grass repetetively, it took on green hues, and then eventually grime built up until it was mostly brown from dirt, grass stain, and sweat. Eventually, the stains were so substantial that the belt appeared black, and hence a black belt meant someone who was accomplished." This story, given the meticulous clenliness of the Japanese alone, is absolutely fantastic. Belts could be washed and surely were, and the amount of rotting and degredation to fabric for it to turn black from that kind of soiling would have caused diseases that just didn't happen. Furthermore, why are students only thrown in grass at first, preventing dirt stains on their belts from arising until it's so grass-stained that it is largely green? If you throw someone down a bunch of times in one spot, the grass dies and there's dirt, usually before there are all that many grass stains. Honestly, I can't believe this kind of thing has been spread through time, continues to be spread (obviously without actually thinking about it), and (worst of all) was something I actually believed made sense when I heard it the first time.

Advantages of Belt-Ranking Systems
Ranking markers have a few distinct advantages, some of which are objective and some of which are subjective, or, rather, cultural. For the purposes of the ensuing discussion, unless otherwise noted, assume that the belt-ranking system is ideal and genuinely meaningful in an objective way. Points about how it is, in practice, sub-ideal will be discussed primarily in the "disadvantages" section below.

1. Objective Advantage: A ranking marker like a belt has the distinct advantage of indicating hierarchy within the system in a clear way, which is useful for instructors to keep tabs on the general level of the group and of individuals without requiring extensive observation. It provides a level of expectation and allows a level of assumption that facilitate the process of instruction. It also gives a clear indication to lower-level students on which people from which they should be able to expect to gain valuable insight.
2. Objective Advantage: The belt-ranking system is a clear and effective external/extrinsic motivator. Students are likely to be able to identify with and find value in the promotion from one belt to the next. Sometimes, a little extra motivation is very helpful in getting a body out there and training. The method, for the beginners of an art at least, has a strong effect in both short-term and long-term goal setting. These situations, of course, have their downsides, discussed below.
3. Subjective Advantage: Students are likely to take pride in and elevate themselves to a perceived level of practice indicative of the rank they hold or belt they wear, particularly in the lower/initial phases of training.
4. Cultural Advantage: Prospective students and even students themselves place cultural value in the symbol indicated by the ranking belt. In what I've seen, belts and sashes are held in largely equal esteem culturally, since they are, in fact, essentially the same thing (belts carry the idea that they are for holding your pants up, but martial arts belts are no good for that purpose and are indeed used more appropriately as a "sash" to hold closed a kimono or gi, a typical traning uniform in Japanese-derived martial arts). It's often enough easy for the students to make the "leap" from belts to colored shirts or pants or even necklaces, and so there is a perception of value in any ranking system that lends credibility to the art and its instructor, since there is a perception of some objectivity in the promoting of students to various ranks (although no such objectivity truly exists in any meaningful way across the board). A high-ranking belt held by an instructor is therefore, objectively, a valuable marketing tool.
5. Cultural Advantage: Particularly prospective students, but indeed many students of the martial arts in the West, at least, associate belts with a "real" martial arts program. The concept of "black belt" is so deeply ingrained in the iconography of West that literally a program without belts, or some equivalent, is often deemed to be a charlatain operation -- a real and present challenge for recruiting to Yin Style Bagua study groups since we do not wear or use belts or any equivalents, at least not to my knowledge and certainly not officially. It is possible that the growing attention to MMA (mixed martial arts) which seems to discard this line of thinking may change that perception, but as there are also no rings, octagons, widespread media outlets, or multi-million-dollar cash purses for training YSB, I doubt we'll see much positive effect from the MMA-loving community. Time may change that, but we shall have to see about that... in time.

That pretty much ends my list of advantages, unless we want to talk about advantages to school owners/operators, which I've only barely mentioned above. Those advantages look like this, details sparing:

• Marketing, as mentioned above;
• Selling belts (or equivalents), typically at a steep profit;
• Belt testing (or equivalents), typically with steep testing/promotion fees, i.e. profit;
• Student retention, via goal-setting, though this usually eventually backfires;
• Marketing again, in a more insidious but increasingly popular way: Many schools now offer an all-inclusive, pay upfront deal "this much (usually thousands upon thousands of dollars) money now and all of your lessons until you earn x belt/rank (usually black) are paid for in advance, good for your whole life or until you achieve said rank." This is particularly insidious because only about 0.01 (one in a hundred) students make it from beginner to black belt even in a fairly watered-down program and would usually have therefore paid less to have tried it until they didn't like it, quit, and then paid out the remaining of their training contracts (another typical vestage of martial arts schools in the West). This kind of program is obviously manufactured to the owner's advantage or else it wouldn't exist, particularly because it starts to give off a strongly rotten stink of "buying a (black) belt," see below for more.

Disadvantages:
The disadvantages of belt-ranking systems in the martial arts world are probably more substantive than the advantages, although from a martial-arts-as-a-business perspective, I don't believe they're genuinely outweighed.

1. The belts are arbitrary: This is pretty clearly true to anyone that doesn't buy into them, and more strangely seems to be held simultaneously true and false by everyone that wears a belt for long enough in many of the martial arts programs I've seen. "The belt doesn't matter," people say. "It's what you know that counts, and you still know it when you take off your belt." Right. Then why are you holding it when you walk around and demanding people call you by your rank-given title? Why do you put stripes on it? Why do you care what color it is? One problem with this situation is that eventually people either realize this fact and lose some faith in the belt system and are kind of forced to believe in double-speak or they never realize it and live a proud, empty life centered on their rank and title (see below for more). Another problem is that the entire system, because there isn't an infinitely large rainbow and because there isn't an infinitely long belt, is that this system is inherently limited. That puts a "finish line" on the process for many people, and for most, that finish line is "black belt." Look at the attrition rate of almost any commercial martial arts school's black-belt level students compared with its rate among students that clear the first half of the "under black belt" ranks. I'm pretty sure more people quit within a few months of earning black belt than otherwise. That seems a bit disturbing and is obviously centered on the belt-awarding system itself: "I achieved this goal, so now I'm done with this." What an empty practice.
2. Ego and pride: I've met an awful lot of people that believe they're very important or, in some cases, some of the best martial artists in a town, state, region, country, or the world based on the fact that they wear a particular belt and umpteen-three people signed a certificate saying that they deserved to wear that belt. Many of them might deserve some recognition for what they've done, but as often as not it seems to grant more self-importance than anything else. It certainly doesn't grant martial skill, even in the case where it's warranted, and in fact seems, often enough, to grant just the opposite in a way (see the next point).
3. Sense of having accomplished: Possessing a sense of accomplishment about one's training is very important, I think, and valuable to the continuity of it. This, in fact, is one of the advantages of a belt-ranking system. This disadvantage, which is different -- a sense of having accomplished, which is in the pluperfect (past perfect) tense, is very common, as I've seen it. I've even been guilty of it. It can be summed up by the following attitude: "I am a Glory Belt; I have accomplished; I no longer have to accomplish," although the last part of that attitude is only actually expressed in regards to things like doing basic exercises and whatnot. For myself, after earning a black belt in karate, I essentially stopped the practice of stretching all together and lost a huge proportion of my once rather impressive and quite valuable flexibility. I figured that warm-ups and stretching were optional for black belts, and so I didn't really need to do them any longer. I had arrived, if you will. The prevalence of "coffee dans," as they're somtimes called (dan means black-belt-level ranks in the world of Japanese-based martial arts, usually with an ordinal number given before it to indicate rank and can be taken to mean "__-degree black belt," where the __ indicates the ordinal, like third) is pretty high. I'd guess more folks with 3rd degree black belts and higher don't do as much working out/training as they do talking and "instructing," as compared with how many do train regularly and honestly, and even fewer still work hard on basic developmental exercises. While that's a subjective proportion, I think I'm probably qualified in making that guess from my observations and experiences. I've also noticed that as the ordinal increases, particularly past "fifth," the amount of doing seems to decrease proportionally, though this is not a universal situation. In my opinion, though, higher rank should indicate more work, not less, but it usually goes the other way.
4. Extrinsic motivation: The motivation conferred by belt systems, because they are ultimately arbitrary and actually rather empty of meaning, is entirely extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation can only take you so far, particularly in a system where faith is lost in the motivator as time passes because of its obvious arbitrarity.
5. Non-objectivity: There is no, and really can be no, universal board that indicates meaningfully what the level of black belt means. It varies widely from style to style, system to system, and school to school within any given system. Of course, these requirements are typically a huge source of pride for people at each school, usually all of whom believe their belt requirements are the best, most comprehensive, most meaningful, etc. That means that one of the main values of a belt-ranking system is only valid in the microcosm: the tiny world within a particular martial arts school, occasionally a larger martial arts system of schools, or a necessarily rather small organization of similar martial arts schools. The rectification of this issue is a nearly impossible goal to realize, even on the small scale, because as everyone knows, the more rules, regulations, and beaurocracy that enter into any system, the more sluggish and ineffective it becomes. Furthermore, people in terms of both students and instructors are different people with different opinions on what is passing quality and what isn't, on what is important and worth ignoring, and so on. The only way to really make objectivity work is to have a central testing board with well-written, clear, objective proficiencies that must be obtained, and that is strongly limiting in terms of how large such an organization can hope to become. It also turns the higher-level practitioners into administrators instead of active participants in the art. They just can't possibly have time for both. That's going to lead to a degredation of the objective quality over time all by itself. Subjectivity is the rule in this regard, but it further renders the ranking system meaningless.
6. Money talks: It's commonly said and largely true: if a school is commercial and wishes to retain its students, eventually rank promotion has to occur. That means eventually, almost without regard to proficiency so long as some very basic requirements can be satisfied, people move forward if they've played for long enough, unless the instructor is so high in his/her standards that (s)he is willing to sacrifice his/her own business to adhere to principles. In this world, most people can't afford that kind of austerity, and those that can frequently aren't willing to. That further degrades the objectivity of rank in a deeper and more meaningful way than from school-to-school: it really means that a belt rank is meaningful only in context to the individual. This, of course, is the only real measure of performance that actually matters, and so this could be a good thing hidden within a bad one except that the rank is still billed, particularly within the school, as being substantive in an objective sense. Students aren't universally sheep and can see this kind of thing, which makes it clear that there is some level of double-speak even within the confines of a particular school. Of coruse, the ability (or perceived ability) to "buy a belt" at "McDojo" is perhaps one of the biggest injuries to the spread and growth of martial arts that's out there, turning off perhaps the most valuable sector of the population from training -- those that think training should be about getting good at something, not just about getting, earning, or wearing a belt (or equivalent).

To as well as I can think of them, that's a rather inclusive list of advantages and disadvantages of belt-ranking systems in the martial arts, according to what I've seen and experienced. As mentioned, it's difficult for YSB groups to grow without them, but with all told, I don't grudge their absence in the lesat. I'd love to hear some commentary about this topic, including especially points that I might have missed on either side of the fence.