The onset of grading

Four promotions this time around.

KL Judo has been around for more than three years now. For much of that time, we hardly did any grading. In fact, it was only earlier this year that we had our first grading, for a yellow belt. The reason for our apparent "stinginess" in grading is that we were so caught up with teaching players practical mat skills that we didn't put aside time for teaching grading techniques.

For players to grade, they need to know a set of techniques for standing and groundwork. They need to practice those over and over again so that they can demonstrate them flawlessly. It's almost like kata. Not quite as formal or as unrealistic as kata but still a demonstration of forms nonetheless. This was something I really didn't care about. I wanted my players to learn practical judo -- judo that would work when their partner is resisting with all their might and trying to defeat them with their own throws and ground moves.

But lately, we've had a spate of gradings (relatively speaking) because many of our players have done judo for so long and are now so skilled at fighting that it would be ridiculous for them to continue to stay at whatever belt level they were at (in many cases white).

And so we started to carve out time for players to rehearse sets of techniques -- standing and groundwork -- as well as some Japanese terms. In formulating our grading system, I decided to make ours tougher than is usually the case. Some clubs seem to be very lax when it comes to belt gradings. We didn't want to be that way. For a player to even wear a yellow belt, he or she must have mastery over at least 10 techniques (five standing and five groundwork) as well as 10 Japanese phrases.

I think keeping our standards high is the right move. If a player has a yellow belt from KL Judo, he or she needs to be at least as capable and knowledgeable as an orange or even a green belt from other clubs. From a technical standpoint, I require my brown belts to know as much as (and possibly more than) black belts from other clubs.

But there are things that I don't require them to know that some black belts might know. I don't teach them kata-guruma (in its traditional leg grab form) for example, because leg grabs are banned. There's no point in teaching that. I also don't teach them things like sumi-otoshi or uki-otoshi because frankly, those techniques are just too unrealistic. They might look good in a kata setting but not for the kind of judo we practice at the club.

Of course when it comes time for them to learn kata, they will learn kata. But for lower level belt gradings, there is no need for kata. Just simple, practical judo.

In the coming weeks and months, I expect to continue holding grading sessions as more and more players mature and develop a strong grasp of the techniques they are supposed to know for their belt levels.