What are Karate Belts?

A white belt is the belt you start as when you begin Karate. White is chosen as it represents a clean, blank canvas upon which you will paint your newly acquired knowledge.

If you imagine your journey to black belt as if it were a day, white would represent the pure, bright morning light at the dawn of your Karate adventure.

Upon completion of your first grading, you will be rewarded with the rank of yellow belt. 

Continuing with our depiction of your Karate journey as a day, yellow would represent the first rays of the sun beginning to illuminate the land. This can be thought of as your knowledge and skill in the sport steadily becoming more in depth and pronounced.

Our next grade is orange belt, progressing on from yellow. Your knowledge in the sport is steadily growing and your previously blank canvas becomes a deeper colour, showing the increasing depth of your understanding.

As the sun continues to rise on your learning, it casts a steadily more intense light on what you know, while illuminating that which we have yet to learn.

Next is red belt, a colour which can have many meanings based on where it comes in the grading system. While it can represent the blood that you have shed in pursuit of your goals, it may also show a continuation from yellow and orange as a fire that is steadily increasing in intensity.

As the sun rises higher in the sky, it's heat continues to intensify, as does our focus on our learning.

The green belt heralds somewhat of a change in our Karate learning. Techniques, kata and kumite are all starting to become more advanced and challenging, bringing somewhat of a second wind into our Karate journey.

This is similar to the first signs of a growing plant beginning to sprout, feeding off the energy of the sun that has risen throughout the day. As such, our green belt follows on from our yellow, orange and red.

So far in our Karate journey, the sun has risen to show us what there is to learn and the seeds of our knowledge and skill have truly begun to sprout. As you continue to learn and grow, the blue in your belt represents the flowers of understanding that are beginning to bloom, just as flowers do in the warmth of summer.

We are past the half way point to our black belt now; following on from blue belt is purple.

The flowers of our knowledge in the martial art continue to develop, growing more intense and shifting from a blue colour to a vibrant purple, one of the rarest colours to occur naturally. With a purple belt, you have shown excellent skill and dedication to the sport and a genuinely in-depth knowledge of the ethos behind Karate.

The time for colours is over. Once you reach brown belt, you are only a handful of steps away from the black belt that signifies mastery of the sport.

All the colours that have come before show us individual steps in the growing process when it comes to learning a martial art. Now, as you become more and more advanced and knowledgeable, the colours that come before begin to blend together, starting out with a simple brown.

Brown belt is split into three groups, each signifying one step closer to black belt. With a single black stripe along the centre of your belt, you have shown that you are really beginning to understand to subtle intricacies of the sport, as well as demonstrating a clear skill set that is only minor refinements away from being black belt level.

The final kyu sees a second black stripe around your brown belt. At this stage, there is more black on your belt then brown, showing that you are now within arms reach of completing the Karate grades to begin to practice as a black belt.