How Long to Earn a Black Belt in Aikido?

This Aikido Newsletter was originally published on August 10, 2004. It was sent out as Gedanate's Aikido eLetter, Issue #002.

Did you notice how I added an Aikido Dojo List page last month, and announced it in this Aikido eLetter? Well I'm flattered to see that another Aikido website has copied the idea, and added their own Dojo Listing database. I must admit it's pretty good though.

This month I have included some of your questions, left on my website via the Comments/Feedback page. The questions are quite old because the original emails never reached me. (They were lost among tens of thousands of Spam emails, which I deleted.) I only discovered the questions while doing site maintenance months later.

I get these Spams because I used to have my email address listed on my site's web pages. (My big mistake. The email address got "harvested" by spam bots and added to junk email lists sold to Spammers.) Now I just have a "Contact Me" form, but the damage has been done. I get more than 300 junk emails every day... too many to scan through manually. And no, I don't need any l0ans, med1cat1ons or s.e X sites!

Anyway, here's one of the more interesting questions left on my web pages -- and my answer:

Hi David.

I have gone through this website and I would like to learn more about Aikido. how long does it take to reach black belt? what are the stages in learning Aikido?

Alexandrina C.

Hi Alexandrina,

There is no hard and fast rule, but from what I've learned, I'd expect it to take up to seven years to reach Shodan (1st Dan black belt) from starting as a complete beginner. The fastest I have ever heard of someone reaching Shodan is three years... But this was a student who trained every day with the late John Gay Sensei down in Melbourne.

First you work your way DOWN the Kyu grades... You learn how to do the stretches and the warm-up exercises. Then you learn how to do back breakfalls, then side breakfalls, then forward rolls.

In Tomiki Aikido, you start by learning the first five Aikido throws which throw your partner, Uke, onto his (or her) back... the Atemi Waza.

Then you learn the Elbow techniques, and then the Wrist techniques. And for these you need to learn Kote-gaeshi breakfalls - where you have to jump over your own arm before it can get broken.

And so it goes on. More techniques, more skills.

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