What does it mean to be a black belt? That’s a hard question to ask someone who has never had
experience with being a black belt but I do have experience with peers of mine being black belts so I can
try to explain. Being a black belt to me, means that you were just a white belt that never quit.
You are a
white belt that had the confidence, courage, dedication, heart, bravery, and hard-working skill of a black
belt. Being a black belt isn’t some award you get for coming to karate classes, it’s way more than that.
You have to earn it. Being a black belt and having one is a privilege not a prize.
When I talk to people
about karate, they think it’s some easy sport that anyone could do, they tend to just ignore the fact that
there are much more things then just kicking and punching just like any other sport.
A black belt is a
symbol of years of sparring, techniques, katas, training, boxing, and hard work. Being a black belt was
my dream ever since I started but I didn’t want to put any effort into it. As I started to grow more and
become higher belt, I realized that if I wanted to be honored as a sensei, I had to put all of my effort into
this and do better than I did the last time. Being a black belt means working hard but it also means have
respect. You should have respect for yourself, other students, sensei’s, grandmasters and even people
outside of karate. What I mean by having respect for yourself is you must believe in yourself, not on just
comparing yourself but believe that you can accomplish anything you want if you work hard for it such
as a black belt. You also must be compassionate about this sport.
You can’t just learn and forget a technique. You have to learn, work on it, perform it, find little details that you might be doing wrong, fix
them, and perform it again. When you do forms you have to be serious about it not just do the moves,
you have to do the correct stances, do the correct moves, you have to be strong, and you have to have
power. Another thing you need to have is practice. Like I said before you can’t just do it once and then
forget about it. You must keep practicing and ask questions if you don’t understand or can’t do a move
right. It’s better to ask questions then not and do a bad technique or kata. Trust me I’ve made that
mistake before. When I was part of the lowers belt from being a white belt to a brown belt, I didn’t
really care about remembering things that much. I thought as long as I knew them at the moment, I
would be okay. But as I started to be expected of more, I was getting more and more embarrassed
about how little I knew. But I’m glad that I had the learning experience because after that I made the
right choice, I went to one of my sensei’s and asked for a booklet about everything I needed to know
from katas to technique to what kicks and punching I should know. Now I’m a proud red belt with tons
of experience with everything. One last thing is that you should be humble. You must be humble about
winning or losing. No body wants to be considered a sore loser or to cocky when it comes to winning.
But you also don’t want to be to down on yourself. Everyone probably knows a lot more than they think
and having the confidence in yourself about knowing a lot is good. But you also don’t want to have to
much where it’s being rude to others and making them feel they’re not good enough.
