Belts point out the degree of maturity and the skill level reached by an apprentice of martial art.
Belt colors are 6 (white, yellow, green, blue, red and black) but the grades (Kup) that brings from the white belt to the black one are 10 (from X to I) because all the belts from the white to the red distinguish between upper and lower grades.
When the black belt is reached, Kups are called Dan. Dans are 9 and are ordered from I to IX.
Reaching a superior Kup depends on the knowledge of the Pooms Se or forms while the passages of Dan depend above all on the practice acquired in the execution of the Dan Grade Poomse.
Contrarily to what is thought, belts in martial arts have been introduced in an enough recent period. On the web site www.barrel.net/belts-exams.html we discover that the first one to use them was Jigoro Kano, the inventor of Judo, in 1883. He had, in fact, the necessity to distinguish his two senior students, Saito and Tomita from the other apprentices.
Before then, in most martial arts, didn't exist a real uniform to distinguish between kup/dan ranking system.
In Japan, for example, the apprentices were usual to train in Kimono or even with everyday clothes.
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