How long to get a black belt in judo
A great many new judokas have a common question ” How long to get a black belt in judo ?”. “Does anyone know what the average is?” Answer to his question is a hard one to come up with and there are many many different ones, all of them correct.
But first what does actually means to be a black belt in judo?
There are many different answers to this question too.
It all depends where in the world are you and what are yours moral standards, and what do you get out of martial arts training and also how do you look at judo and what it does mean to you. Are you a competitive judoka, do you train judo just to get some exercise, do you love the art of throwing, holding your opponent into submission choking and arm holds make you feel bad-ass?
Answering some of this questions can make you get closer to getting answer to one of the two questions asked before.
First black belt in judo “shodan” literally translates as “first level” or “beginning step”. So if you are expecting some super human attributes once you get your black belt, well sorry but, not going to happen. If you are aspiring to be competitive judoka belt ranking probably will not be most important thing for you. Shodan black belt means that you have overcome the first set of obstacles towards learning judo.
How long to get a black belt in judo?
The most simple and straightforward answer is:
“It depends.”
What does i depend on?
There are great many factors, the biggest one is how much hours do you spend on the tatami.
There also is that how old are you, what part of the world do you learn judo in, who is your sensei?
How is any of this important?
The first one is obvious, the more time do you train better you get.
Right?
Well, NO!
If your sensei is not teaching you right and you do not have any other source of knowledge concerning judo, and trust me with martial arts learning it from a book or of the internet is next to impossible, you will become proficient in doing something wrong. After that you must spend a lot more time fixing broken posture, bad kuzushi or a wrong reaction on an opponent assault getting you on your back.
In addition to this one judo federation’s approach to awarding judoka a belt often differs from others. Some national federations follow the Kodokan judo institute guidelines strictly while others modify go kyo.
For example, some judo schools like San Jose State in the US use only u white, green, brown, black, depending on the judokas competitive ranking and San Jose had six judokas qualified for Universiade in Taipei.
About the actual timeline
You can get a Judo black belt in a year. It might take 10 years.
How to be closer to a year than to a 10 years for a black belt.
- Train judo 2 hours a day, or more, every day.
- Get yourself a top quality instructor.
- Train with good partners than know more than you.
- Free yourself from any issues that might hinder your learning.
- Compete a lot.
In case you do all this without having prior background in similar martial arts, the bare minimum to competing is about 600 to 700 hours on the mat.
It does sound a lot it is years at stake here if you train 2-3 times a week it is likely to take you as much as 4-6 years to achieve this kind of goal. But be honest to yourself you probably spent about the same amount of time scrolling the Facebook news feed, in last four years than 2 hours a day 2-3 times a week.
To sum it all up
What you need is training hard, loving the art, good environment and TIME.
In the end it is not really important how fast do you get there, what matters is to enjoy the road you are on, i know i did!
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