Is our martial arts infographic correct?

[clfsean]

Tcma?

Traditional Chinese Martial Arts

 

[J W]

I've trained TKD and Wing Chun; the TKD school I attended used an orange belt, but no yellow, and brown between blue and red. The Wing Chun school I attend has no rank system at all. So, 0 for 2 based on my own personal experience.

As was said before, the chart will only be accurate for the specific schools/orgs that you are using as sources. There's way too much variation within the martial arts to be able to put a one-page chart like that together and have it be accurate; you'd need hundreds of pages in order to list all the different ranking systems used by different schools and organizations within those arts.

Also, kung fu is a general term for hundreds of different Chinese martial arts. It's impossible to generalize a single rank structure for all the arts that fall under the "kung fu" umbrella.

 

[WaterGal]

The Kukkiwon/WTF TKD schools I'm familiar with use the belt system that's shown as ITF TKD on this graphic. KKW doesn't mandate what color belts schools are required to use, but IIRC the "official" ones under WTF competition rules are white, yellow, green, blue, red, and black, and then you can use whatever in-between.

 

[wingchun100]

I didn't even scroll down far enough to see wing chun listed there. Most lineages I know of don't use belts, although there are a few. However, if you want to be picky about semantics, they actually refer to them as "sashes."

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

they actually refer to them as "sashes."

If you have to handle your opponent's body weight, the sash cannot protect your waist as good as the belt. All weight lifter will recommend "belt". I have both sash and belt. I can tell a big difference there.

 

[Chris Parker]

That's really completely besides the point, of course… the comments on "belts and sashes" is to do with a representation of rank within a particular school, and doesn't really mean the physical objects used to represent the rank, nor their physical properties.

 

[wingchun100]

If you have to handle your opponent's body weight, the sash cannot protect your waist as good as the belt. All weight lifter will recommend "belt". I have both sash and belt. I can tell a big difference there.

Okay, but that is completely off topic. We aren't talking about what protects you more; we are talking about the semantics of what different schools use for their ranking system.

 

[thebrightidea]

Hi again,

We have updated the infographic according to the thread here + comments from other forums, etc.:
15 kampsport og 182 bælter - her er bæltefarverne for karate, judo, taekwondo og andre kampsport | Find Hold

Thanks a lot for your help.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Hi,

We are just about done with a big infographic with the belt colors from 12 different martial arts.

But as we haven't trained all 12 martial arts ourselves, we worry that some of the belts/belt colors aren't 100% correct... so please tell me if you spot something that is wrong, etc.

Thanks,
Mads

There is no standard Traditional Chinese Martial Arts belt/sash ranking, meaning not one for Kung Fu, Shuai Chiao (Shuaijiao), Wing Chun or any other martial art that is considered traditional CMA, basically there are no belt/sash rankings. There is a Duan system followed by the Chinese Government but that is about as close as you can get to a standard belt ranking system and that is not used by many, even in China

As to Aikido I do not know what all schools do but my daughters has no orange belt

The thing is, that as far as I know there is no real standardization followed by everyone in all styles of martial arts

 

[Flying Crane]

Hi again,

We have updated the infographic according to the thread here + comments from other forums, etc.:
15 kampsport og 182 bælter - her er bæltefarverne for karate, judo, taekwondo og andre kampsport | Find Hold

Thanks a lot for your help.

once again, there are many different capoeira ranking systems in use by various different groups. There are many "kung fu" ranking systems that differ dramatically. Oh, and Wing Chun is a system of kung fu, so why separate it?

This isn't going to work. Trying to compile this will simply be out of control. Again, what are you trying to accomplish with this?

 

[K-man]

Even within Goju there are schools that use just yellow, green and brown before black to those that use a rainbow of colours. In aikido we have an extra red belt in the mix as we start at 7th Kyu, not 6th. In Krav there are different styles so that don't match what is listed either so I think that whatever you put together with be wrong when measured against many schools.

I think you are fighting a lost cause if you are trying to have an accurate representation of belt colours.
:asian:

 

[Chris Parker]

Hi again,

We have updated the infographic according to the thread here + comments from other forums, etc.:
15 kampsport og 182 bælter - her er bæltefarverne for karate, judo, taekwondo og andre kampsport | Find Hold

Thanks a lot for your help.

Still just as wrong, still just as pointless.

You've been asked a few times now, without any success, but I figure I might as well try once more… What exactly are you hoping the outcome/result of this chart will be? What use is it?

 

[tshadowchaser]

face it each system uses its own color code and even within these systems different schools use variations so No color coded index is going to be correct for all systems and schools

 

[J W]

Still just as wrong, still just as pointless.

You've been asked a few times now, without any success, but I figure I might as well try once more… What exactly are you hoping the outcome/result of this chart will be? What use is it?

I certainly don't speak Danish, but their website looks to me like it's designed to help Danish folks understand various sports and then find local clubs for all those various sports. So my guess would be that the chart is supposed to help people "understand" the various rank systems of the martial arts.

To OP, the chart might make some sense if you titled it EXAMPLES of belt ranks within the martial arts, or some such, and then credited the specific school or organization whose belt rank system you are using for each martial art. That way it is clear that you are only citing examples, and not trying to represent the chart as completely accurate for EVERY Karate school, TKD school, etc.

Then, at least it will be fairly accurate in a very narrow context, instead of inaccurate in such a broad context.

 

[skribs]

I can't speak for anything but TKD, but the colored belts in TKD are largely subjective to the school. For example, when I started as a kid, my school went:
White
Yellow
Orange
Purple
Green
Blue
Brown/Red
Red/Brown
Black

(I can't remember the order of Brown and Red). In this school, it started off where as a white belt you got 3 yellow stripes across your belt, and then as a yellow 3 orange, etc...then they changed to a system which was simply a yellow belt with a white stripe and then a yellow belt with a black stripe, which resulted in far fewer tests (not sure about the time between tests because it was more than half my life ago).

Now, I'm in a different school, and pretty sure under the same overarching organization, and it goes:
White
Yellow
Purple
Orange (note that orange and purple switched spots)
Green (Green I Stripe)
Blue (Blue I and Blue II)
Red (Red I and Red II)
Black

Instead of white and then black stripe, we get a black stripe down the middle and then Blue II and Red II are a black stripe on either side with the blue/red in the middle (actually, these belts are really unadorned black belt with the colored stripe down the middle). At our school, brown belts are used for students transferring in from another school until they can test into a "real" belt rank.

So, I would say that most of the colored belt rankings in TKD, and probably in a lot of other arts, are subjective to the school instead of consistent across the organization. It probably depends on how much control the organization has over the affiliated schools.