Do You Agree With Bruce Lee Not Agreeing With The Belt Ranking System?

Question

He said something along the lines of "Belts are only good for holding up your pants." in references to the martial art level belts.

Answer 1

A belt or rating system encourages existing practitioners of a fighting system to improve their skills - its one way to promote a system when otherwise someone may lose interest due to lack of a defined goal. "Why am I still practicing this?"

On the other hand, Bruce had a point that there is more to hand-to-hand combat than level of skills. He was always big on practical street-fighting. No bowing. No legends. No rituals. Freeform, practical arts.

Answer 2

Not a new concept by any means.The founders of karate never wore belts  any search or study shows them training in shorts and t shirts.This was practical no air conditioned dojo training was usually done in the masters back yard or on the beach and the average temp in OKINAWA is 90 to 105 deg. F

The belt system was introduced by the JAPANESE and the karate gi in the beggining of japans influence was the heavier sturdier judo gi

Answer 3

Belts can be a good or bad thing.  The Tracy brothers originally came up with the colored belt system in order to effectively teach certain material at certain levels  according to your progress.  It is also a way for a student to be more excited about reaching the different levels and keeps the new student from being bored.

On the bad side, the belt is useless without the knowledge and if you don't practice you will not have it.  There are some actors that are black belts but admitted to not have practiced in over 10-20 yrs.  How useful is the black belt now.  Anyone can buy a black belt, it will cost you about 5.00 but keeping up the knowledge to really deserve it is entirely different.  The best T shirt saying that I've seen about this says "Don't fear the belt, fear the one who earned it"

The belts to me have always showed a sense of accomplishment and has made me train even harder to be worthy of the rank.

Answer 4

Look, belts can be a good thing as they identify different levels.  But essentially, one's martial arts knowledge does not come from a piece of material does it?  It comes from what they absorb in and out of the class.  In most martial arts, belts are a way of life but rather than look at them as levels, look at them as aanother step in your martial arts journey- yeah, I know that sounds lame but it's true.