What’s an ichi kyu? In American Kyokushin karate, students of karate track their progress by wearing colored belts. These colored belts are called the “kyu” ranks; the ichi kyu is designated by a brown stripe, and it’s one rank below black belt. That sounds pretty fancy! In our style, reaching ichi kyu level can take anywhere from four to seven years, depending on how fit and flexible you are when you start, but also how much free time you have for practice and class attendance!
What’s a shodan? A recipient of a shodan, or black belt , is considered “competent” in karate.
Reaching competency
Passing from an ichi kyu to shodan is basically graduating to a level in which you are considered competent in our style. For us, this means you can teach kyu ranks.
Currently, both my teenaged children and I have received our shodans and have helped, in various capacities, to keep our small but mighty karate organization running, through and after the pandemic. We recently applied status as a 501c(7), so we are official!
The older blog entries record my journey from ichi kyu rank, through my shodan test and into my first year as a teacher.
I’m hoping to slowly change over the format of this blog to be more useful to our small karate group.
