Martial Arts Belts

What does a martial arts belt actually tell you? Reliably, two things: how long someone has trained, and what their school's curriculum covers. It doesn't tell you whether they can use it against a resisting person; that depends on how...

Martial arts without belts include boxing, Muay Thai, wrestling, MMA, wing chun, most kung fu styles, and military systems like the original krav maga. They measure progress by sparring ability, fight records, coach assessment, or level-based curricula instead. Some of...

Krav maga belts depend on the organization. Some use judo-style colored belts: white, yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, black. Others use Practitioner, Graduate, and Expert levels (P1 to P5, G1 to G5, E1 to E5) with patches. Many schools don't...

The judo belt order for adults, in most Western systems, is white, yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, black. These are the kyu grades, counted down from sixth kyu to first. Black belt is first dan and takes about four to...

How good is a BJJ blue belt? Good enough to control and submit almost any untrained adult on the ground, including bigger ones, and good enough to survive against trained grapplers. Not good enough to beat a wrestler standing up...

How long does each BJJ belt take? For an adult training two to three times a week: white to blue about 1.5 to 2 years, blue to purple 2 to 3 years, purple to brown 2 to 3 years, brown...

The BJJ belt order for adults is white, blue, purple, brown, black, with up to four stripes on each belt. After black come red-and-black (coral), red-and-white, and red, which take a lifetime. That's the whole adult ladder: five belts, and...

Martial arts belt colors in order, in the most common systems: white, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, brown, black. But the order isn't universal. Judo, BJJ, karate, and taekwondo each use different colors and different numbers of ranks, and boxing...