How Long Does It Take To Get A Martial Arts Black Belt?

How long does it take to get a karate black belt is a question many people ask. You will hear it asked in regards to a taekwondo black belt, or a martial arts black belt. But whatever martial art you are referring to, there are wildly inflated opinions as to how long it should take to reach expert level in karate, taewkondo, or any martial art.

To get your black belt karate certification takes five years, claimed one website I visited. A well read blog went on a rant saying that less than 4 years karate training would not qualify one for a real black belt. One popular forum had scores of karateka foaming at the mouth over karate black belt degrees.

So, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, there will be lots of fellows sharpening their sickles, but I have a student who started in October, and it is now April, and he is almost to black belt. That’s about seven months. In fact, he realized the other day that it had only taken him about forty hours of martial arts instruction to close in on an expert ranking.

Before you started fashioning the noose and picking the tree, let me make a couple of points about this subject of how long it takes to get a karate black belt or expert ranking of any kind. Mastering a field of knowledge is more based on what you know, not how many push ups (kata, bunkai, etc.) you can do. Besides, with proper training,a person can master an incredible variety of difficult movements within 6 months.

Go into a gymnasium and start training in acrobatics. In six months they will have you doing some very nice back flips and twists and somersaults and what have you. These maneuvers are actually more difficult than most karate moves.

One of my martial arts secrets is that I don’t lump a fellow in with a bunch of students who don’t have any real knowledge and expect him to learn something just by mindlessly mimicking a bunch of kata or tricks. I don’t tell my martial arts students that doing a pattern will, in fifteen or so years, enlighten him (it might, but my way is faster and more sure). Instead, I give instruction on the correct physics of the martial arts, physics which are, in this day and age, not taught in any karate dojo, or taekwondo dojang anywhere.

The other thing I do is focus on learning three forms well, instead of a bunch of forms. The kata I teach are logical (they are matrixed), they have two man versions, and they cover the full range of motion and all real and usable martial arts techniques. The thing that I am doing here is not giving a work out; I am giving knowledge–I am in a classroom, not a training hall for action junkies.

My student has demonstrated full intuition within six months instead three or four years. He can mix and match strikes and kicks on the instant and with enough power to knock an elephant over. Using my methods, and stripping the various arts of all their useless and time wasting techniques and any martial art can be done in six months–and that is how long it takes to get a karate black belt, or a martial arts black belt of any kind.