Some of you may notice changes to the techniques for each belt
level. We are doing this for several reasons.
First, the higher belt material builds on the lower belt material.
Therefore there are certain techniques and concepts that you must
learn as a student before you can learn a more advanced technique that
relies on that concept. You can not build a building without a good
solid foundation. You can't become a black belt without a good solid
foundation either.
Second, some of the material fits better at a different belt level.
Therefore some of the techniques are simply getting reorganized.
We will be adding some techniques. Again this is not meant to draw
out the time it takes to learn the material but there are certain
things that you just need to know by black belt. As our upper ranked
students have noticed each belt level focuses on a certain concept.
Yellow and orange cover the basics. Purple covers takedowns. Blue
covers gound fighting and grappling. Green covers weapons. Brown
covers CQB and multiple attackers.
As mentioned numerous times in class here you will earn your black
belt. But when you do get promoted to 1st dan you will be a true
black belt. I'm not about to just had out black belts to people to
keep people happy or to say I turn out X number of black belts a year
like typical shopping mall martial arts studios do.
To put this into perspective...I've been studying martial arts for
over 15 years and I'm still only a 2nd degree black belt. Mr. Holland
has been studying for over 7 years and is still a brown belt.
For our new students you will not even notice the changes. Again I
hope to have a student manual to everyone that whats one by the end of
the year. Small changes like this keep coming up. But that is the
nature of kenpo...it keeps changing with the times.