A New Aikido Grading System In Action
Long time readers of this blog may recall some posts that highlighted issues with the way gradings are conducted. Notably, that they are an opinion poll of judges, and that there are no genuine measures to determine what level someone is training at. This post is going to introduce a new system for grading that resolves this issue. The Problem It’s possible that some sensei do have very specific grading criteria. If they do though, they’re either kept by the individual, or not used at an organisational level. Thanks to…
A Revamped Grading System
The last post was on the concept of grade inflation in aikido and that it has led to overly high standards in non-japanese dojos. The big question though is whether or not there is a way to actually solve or at least alleviate the issue. I think there is and all it would require is a revamped grading system. There are a few ways that this could be done. Just get rid of it The first thing that we could do is abandon the grading system altogether. Return to a time when…
Is grade inflation a problem in aikido?
I have previously alluded to a consequence of having high standards in our gradings. Standards that are higher than what they should actually be. That consequence is grade inflation. I’m not referring to people obtaining a higher grade than the one they should have, I’m actually referring to the opposite. Many people have a grade much lower than they should have. The unfortunate thing for these people is that the keys to unlock the door to the one they should be are always held by someone else. You need a higher grade…
“It takes how long? But you said it wasn’t important.”
There seems to be a strange paradox in the world of aikido. Actually there seem to be many but one in particular that we will focus on here. The specific one I’m thinking of is how long it takes you to get a black belt, and what that actually means. This is a topic that comes up with some regularity on social media. New students generally want to know how long it takes to get a black belt. They’re almost always referring to shodan (1st dan) as well. Very few people…