Kiai Corner

Your arms raised by themselves, right? The entire time you pressed your hands against the frame, your brain was sending signals to your muscles to raise your arms. A signal was sent for long enough that there was tension on your muscles. When you relaxed your arms, your arms “remembered” the signal, even though your brain had stopped sending it. Weird, huh?

These are very short-term examples of something scientists call “muscle memory” and they still don’t completely understand how it works. Your muscles don’t really have memory by themselves. It’s actually brain-muscle memory.

Let’s say you’re learning how to do a new skill, like performing a front snap kick. As you’re learning, you have to remind yourself to chamber your knee, point your toes up, snap back to chamber, and put your foot down. You have to think about your balance and where your hips are. After you’ve repeated your front snap kick hundreds of times, you don’t have to think about it as much. Your body “remembers” how to do it because your brain has created a roadmap along the nerve cells to tell your body how to respond.

This is also why it is so important when learning a new skill, like playing the violin, or performing a front snap kick, that you practice the best possible technique you can every time! You are creating a road map your body will remember for many, many years. If you practice sloppy, incorrect techniques, that is what your body will remember. You want to be sure your map is accurate and you are teaching your body the best snap kick.

“Muscle memory” frees your thinking (conscious) brain from having to work while you perform your front snap kick. ... (get the May 08 issue of Kokoro to read more about muscle memory).

Fact or Fiction?

A black belt must register himself as a deadly weapon.

This is one of the oldest American martial arts legends, and there's absolutely no truth in it! The U.S. Government doesn't regulate the martial arts. There is no country in the world where martial artists have to register themselves as a weapon (deadly or not).

Belt Basics

There are many myths, legends and traditions surrounding the martial art belt. There are also numerous detailed and well-researched articles available for the martial art scholar who wants more in-depth information on this tradition. Here are a few things Kokoro was able to check out.

Myth: The black belt is an ancient martial art tradition.

OK, this depends on your definition of “ancient”. The black belt was first used by Dr. Jigoro Kano in the Kodokan Judo system in the 1880s. Prior to that time, the belt was simply a way to hold the gi together and rank was designated by a certificate, if at all. Master Gichin Funokoshi, the father of Shotokan karate, greatly admired Dr. Kano and adopted the Judo belt ranking system for karate in the 1920s.
Kokoro could find no evidence of Master Funokoshi’s rank in any budo under the kyu/dan system.

Myth: The colored belt system came about because the martial arts masters never washed their belts and the longer they trained, the dirtier their belts got, changing color until they finally turned black.

This is one of our favorites! There is evidence that cleanliness was very strictly enforced in some traditional dojos and it is highly unlikely a student with a dirty belt would be allowed to train. There is also evidence that it was typical in other traditional dojos to leave one’s uniform behind from class to class, indicating that it may well have been fairly dirty and stinky. However, common sense would dictate that any color rank developing from this lack of hygiene would result in nothing more than a dingy grey belt. It is much more likely that the current belt rank colors were a result of repeatedly dying the belts as martial artists were notoriously very poor and could not afford a new belt each time they progressed. Logically, each color would be darker than the previous color, hence the “rainbow” from yellow to brown. However, the exact origin of the color belt system and any significance assigned to each color appears lost to history. Many other styles, like Aikido, still have only white and black belt ranks.

Myth: A martial artist should never wash their belt because it contains all of their sweat and hard work.

Euwww! This follows the idea that your belt reflected your rank by reflecting how long you had been training – or how much dirt it had acquired. If you washed your belt, you went back to being a white belt, or beginner. Because martial arts students love folklore and legends, the idea of not washing your belt has become a tradition, especially in America. Logically, many instructors may enforce this idea simply because colored belts are 100% cotton and fairly cheap. Washing them repeatedly in hot water causes them to shrink, fade and bleed onto the gi. However, it’s a fairly harmless tradition to hand down, and can mean whatever the student wants it to mean, as long as they understand it is not an ancient Samurai tradition. Personally, I put a lot of time and effort into getting through the brown belt ranks and I want to preserve the memory of that effort, as well as Sensei Okazaki’s autograph, on my brown belt for the day when I’m no longer able to practice karate.

-K