How to Test for a Black Belt

Hi, I’m Tom Callos and I’m just about as experienced in the martial arts as anyone (Oh sure, there are lots of people who started studying before me in the 1960’s and even in the 1950’s, but with 38 years of study “under my belt” and having been involved in almost all aspects of the martial arts –and considering I’m sitting here at my computer typing this, I hope you’ll give me a few minutes of your time).

When it comes to black belt testing, there are no universal standards or requirements. I mean, while there are some organizations that have set their own fine standards, there isn’t a single requirement that every school of every style in the world says, “This is required!” In fact, the truth is that any school can set their own standards and requirements for black belt testing –and they do, and those requirements can range from the ridiculously easy to the life-threatening stupid (and everywhere in-between).

Now this lack of universal standards isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I like regionalism, as in going somewhere and not seeing the same fast-food restaurants, the same giant box-stores, the same everything until every town in Wisconsin looks like every town in California looks like every town in Texas, if you get my drift. Styles of martial arts shouldn’t look the same –and the circumstances that an art like judo developed under aren’t the same as the Russion art of sambo or the Filipino art of kali or the French martial art of savate, so it’s very OK that styles should have different customs and requirements.

What I’m here to fill you in on, is HOW one should test for a black belt (or if the “black belt” isn’t used in a particular system of martial art, then whatever it is that marks the passage between knowing nothing and knowing a lot –and having from between 3 and 10 years of experience). The black belt test should be an event that causes the participant to have to “rise to the occasion.” It should be an event that is a right-of-passage, sort of the way some cultures put their young men and women through some kind of arduous test (you know, like going out on a “vision-quest” or a “walk-about” or living through one of those big debutante balls where your family has to spend more money than God to get your picture in some blue-blood newspaper or magazine).

Of course, nobody on the planet Earth has any authority to make martial arts teachers tow-the-black-belt-line, if you know what I mean; so some black belts are just handed out (“Ok, here you go, you’ve earned it. Now let’s go out for pizza.”) and some look like some kind of college frat-house hazing (Sorry, no water or food for 3-days and you’re going to sit here and meditate for 8-hours, then you’re going to fight these 10 black belts until you can’t hold your arms up --and then we’re going to start your test. Oh, and at the end of this thing, we’re all going to kick you in the stomach. Good luck.”).

With all of the above being said, let me get to the point here –and tell you how I think black belt testing should be:

A black belt test should be your Olympics. It ought to make you reach, grow, stretch, and change. It should be something you work for, in advance, 1, 2, 3, 4, and even 10 years; and I mean “work for” as in “in-training” –where every meal, every workout, every day is lived with an awareness that the test is coming. Why? Because life just doesn’t give you many of those kinds of opportunities (any more). Testing should make you eat differently (and with great awareness). It should be a reason to get in the absolute best shape of your life. It should cause you to look deeply at how you deal with stress, conflict, and anger. A black belt test is one of those rare opportunities where you can change just about anything about yourself that you want to –and that you should, and nobody would think less of you. In fact, people would say something (in each other’s ear after you walk out of the room) like, “He’s getting ready to test for his black belt.”

If everyone treated their black belt test as if it were THE MOST important and empowering day of their lives, well...shoot, people would change (and for the better), the martial arts would get more recognition and respect for some of the things that are, really, most valuable about studying, and if we were really lucky, the world might be a wee bit better for it –as it would be filled with more people who hold themselves to higher standards.

To see more on black belt testing and how it might look if it were, indeed, treated as something important; visit the experimental black belt testing project called The Ultimate Black Belt Test (www.ultimateblackbelttest.com). You’ll find some very, very serious martial arts people there (people like us, and/but living with a serious case of “I’m on a mission.”).

Oh, and see my martial arts association at www.thenewwaynetwork.com

My Advice to the Martial Arts School Owner

My Advice to the Martial Arts School Owner Seeking Business Success –as of the Month of January, in the Year 2009

By Tom Callos

For a few minutes, please, take a break from what you have learned and know about the business of the martial arts. Empty your cup for this short report –and let’s see if I can refill it with something that, for you, rings the bell of truth.

If I succeed, then so be it. If I fail to offer you the direction or inspiration I think you ought to feel after reading this, then –at the worst –I will have wasted only a few minutes of your time.

Education is The Way

It begins with YOUR education. What do you know, what are you learning, and how are you USING it in your life, for your school, and for your community?

Warning: Through no fault of its own, as everyone involved originally intended to offer help to the industry, the martial arts business world has fallen in a rut of “make it easy.”

We have a mass of gimmick-promotions, a plethora of poorly designed ads, VIP pass disease, 200 “consultants” in every magazine who think this is their next meal-ticket (because the school-thing didn’t work out), and 90% (or more) of promotional strategies that cater to the laziest, least skilled, dumbest school owners on the planet.

Education is the new way to inspire, lead, promote, advertise, enroll, and retain. Whatever you do, from minute to minute during your work-day, in your classes, in your community, with your staff, and with your students, if it doesn’t involve education, it probably isn’t going to help your school grow.

Teach! Teach on 10 levels, no –on 20 levels! Teach fitness, teach health, teach wisdom, teach defense, teach compassion, teach humility, teach history, teach manners, teach kindness, teach goal-setting, teach communication, teach non-violence, and teach teamwork, leadership skills, and the power of education.

Point: If fitness, health, compassion, wisdom, history, humility, manners, kindness, and all the rest aren’t a part of YOUR daily life, if you do not live the practice of these ideas, then you’re trying to sell something you don’t really own. To teach it, you would be very wise to live it.

Yes, it’s a lot to ask. I’m sorry; I wish it were easier than that.

The inexperienced and uneducated teacher has a very small range of expertise and a very small range of wisdom and experience to share. Limited education and experience equals limited VALUE.

If the education you have isn’t getting you the students you need to thrive and survive, its time to learn and/or re-learn something new. It’s time to engage a new group of teachers and friends.

The Evolution of the Education We Provide

Would you recognize the future if you saw it? Here’s a bit of “the future” for you:

In the future (read: now), half of the education you provide (and, essentially, “sell” your students), will be imparted on the mat –and the other half will be delivered on your member’s only website.

The mat will be for TRAINING. The mat is for sweating, practicing, and polishing. Your member’s only website will have all the things you don’t have the time to impart on the mat; your site will have the philosophical lessons, the lessons in etiquette, the school’s history, the detailed (on video) curriculum, the interviews with the master, and everything anyone needs to know that you don’t want to have to say 1000 times on the mat.

Your member’s only website will be where you store the information, in part, that you’re SELLING to parents. It’s where you’ll store the video-lessons on manners, on anger control, on bullying, on healthy eating, on the value of education, and on everything a parent would want to know you’re going to teach their child.

“Out of the Dojo and Into the World” is The Magic Message of the Master Teacher

There was a time when “the industry” would say to you, “It doesn’t matter how good of a martial artist you are, if you don’t know how to market and manage your business, you’re going to fail as a school owner.”

That statement, in today’s world, no longer holds the water it used to.

The truth, today, is that the better of a martial artist you are, the BETTER your business will do. The issue is not setting your martial arts aside and being a “business-person,” the issue is expanding the definition of what a great martial artist is.

Do you want to be enormously successful (and YOU get to define what that is)? If you do, then your primary objective in your teaching and living is to practice whatever style you practice diligently and with tremendous focus –and then (and this is the main point), you must take what you are practicing on the mat and put it to work in the world.

“In the world” means you have to apply it to something other than a kick, punch, or throw; something outside of the school and outside of the physical aspects of the martial arts.

If you can do this, you can teach this. If you teach this, you have just elevated yourself above the huge quantity of martial arts teachers and schools who think the arts live and die with their forms, their methods of self-defense, and their tournament victories.

If you had a device which could turn mud into diamonds, you would be one popular (and wealthy) person. Teaching people to take what you live, teach and practice on the mat and apply it to their lives, to their communities, and to the world is the martial arts equivalent of turning mud into diamonds.

Things to Avoid

Imagine trying to sell someone the thrill of surfing when you’re not a surfer! Imagine trying to sell someone the benefits of the martial arts when you’re not really a martial artist.

It must be very difficult for these consultants to the martial art industry, you know, the ones who are more comfortable in a suit than in a gi, to advice an industry they know so little about (but claim to be experts in).

It must be very difficult to teach people how to promote the values and benefits of the martial arts when they don’t practice --or have never lived them themselves.

It’s no wonder they sell strategies for overcoming sales objections, it’s no wonder they dole out lame techniques for tricking people into “upgrades.” It’ no wonder that their ideas have, quite literally, got so many of us kicked out of the public school system! It’s no wonder that State legislators are looking our businesses over and trying to determine how much regulation we need.

You see, the martial arts world should operate in an entirely different realm than the health clubs, than the tricky bank contract-buying salesmen, and the water-it-down-until-any-20-year-old-can-teach-it profiteers. The martial arts world shouldn’t give a hoot about what kind of car you have your photo taken in front of –or the brand-name of the watch you wear on your wrist.

Success in 2009 is a return to The Way. Success will come with us looking deeply at how we can help the world –and in way that reflects the ultimate aim of the martial arts (remember what Funakoshi wrote: “The ultimate aim of the art of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants").

What we need is an expansion of the definition of “martial arts” and our role in the world. Success in 2009 is in expanding our vocabulary and looking deeply at whether we are, truly, following a path that leads to mastery.

I, for one, refuse to give into the idea that our business success depends on hiding our prices, holding back our curriculum, getting people to say “Yes,” when they really aren’t sure, modeling “Wall-Mart” or “MacDonald's,” or any other giant corporate or franchise monster, selling long-term “get their money now” contracts, and/or the half-ass learning of some new curriculum that will appeal to kids or the masses so we can sign up more people.

I, for one, won’t be hanging up a Nintendo or Wi in my school trying to bribe people into bringing in their friends. I won’t be starting programs in my school just to “make money.” I won’t be selling a bunch of plastic crap at my front desk to “get my gross up.”

I’m going to stick with selling the genuine, deep-rooted, healthy practice of the martial arts –and the genuine, deep-rooted, healthy practice of applying the focus, the awareness, the self-discipline, and the courage we practice on the mat –to life, community, and the world.

Instead of spending your time listening to a bunch of business-people talking about how to maximize your profit potential, I’d like to suggest you look deeply at your habits, your practices, and your own life. Success will come with a life lived as an example of someone who is willing to be “The Teacher.”

The work we have to do to achieve any kind of worthwhile and fulfilling “success” in 2009, is to take where the old masters left off –and improve upon the ideas. We need to shape them to fit into today’s world. When someone writes or talks about the martial arts in the mainstream media, it ought to be with a voice of reverence.

We ought to be proving to the world that we do, indeed, teach people a lot more than kicks, punches, and throws. The evidence should be overwhelming (like this article).

Tom Callos Talks New Way / Martial Arts Business

A Lesson in Black Belt Testing

Team members, current and alumni; please allow me to remind/inform you of some of my beliefs/thoughts about our relationship and this “project.”

1. The black belt test is a sacred experience, but only if you treat it as such.

In my mind, when I say “black belt test” –it is a call to rise, it is to be treated with the utmost respect, it is a call to action. A black belt test is your own personal “Olympics” –and it calls you to train, to prepare, to rise to the occasion, and to evolve as an athlete and a person.

Do YOU have another event/thing in your life that asks so much of you? Perhaps you hear this call with parenting and/or with your significant other or with your career?

BUT, being that this is our life’s work, we would do well to hold the black belt test and the preparation for testing in the most sacred of places.

2. When it comes to your black belt test, require nothing. Nobody has to remind you.

Nobody has to wake you for training. No event, no obstacle, no injury, no bout of depression keeps you from preparing for the event.

You might miss a wedding, you might forget a birthday or an anniversary, but your training is who you are and how you work on yourself.

It’s your air, your survival mechanism; it is the outward manifestation of who you really are on the inside –and who you aspire to be. In your mind you hear the call to your test like an ever-present ringing in the ears.

You don’t sit at the dinner table, you don’t lift your feet into bed, you don’t breath, drink, stretch, or move without an acute awareness that you are testing for your black belt.

Very few people on this planet are bound by the code that you are. Very few people know how to apply themselves the way you are training yourself to do. Very few people treat their black belt test with the respect and reverence that you do –and this, my friends, is how you hone what it is you have given your life for.

3. You are part of a team. You may be a part of many teams, and some of them are very important to you, but in this endeavor you must cultivate an awareness of “team” in a way that warrants the most extraordinary care.

The fabric of the UBBT is woven on something intangible.

It is a recognition of our place in history –it is an understanding that collectively we stand to influence and change and improve the processes, the outcome, the culture, the direction, and the essence of “what is the martial arts.”

I am sitting at a table on my deck on The Big Island –and you are reading this in your own home or office –but we could just as easily be sitting next to each other.

This is the nature of the internet –and of a kind of connection, facilitated by our communication, that ignores distance and time differences.

Someday in the future I will be gone –and this body of work will be what I made of my life. This work will be what I did, what I worked on, and how I made my way. I might be remembered, for a time, as a very dedicated martial arts practitioner and teacher.

This is it.

This work, these messages, the call to treat our “test” and each other with a rare sort of respect, these ideas ---of peace, kindness, activism, environmentalism, anger management, leadership, purpose, intent, and mission ---this is what I/we will leave behind.

NOW is the time to recognize the opportunity we have to make change. We are not like Charles Barkley, who I heard declared he “was not a role model.” We are treating our position with the understanding that we are role models –and we are acting as if what we do –and how we go about it –will influence the quality of life in a million people who follow us.

All of this affects the solemnity of how I expect you to treat our relationship. TO treat it any other way would be far, far from “the ultimate.”

By treating our "black belt test" with this kind of respect, we make "being" a black belt something
worthwhile.

Tom Callos Talking from BJ Penn Academy in Hilo

Here I am promoting my martial arts association, The New Way Network. Training with the Penn Family in Hawaii (ooh Boy, tough --but fun!).

The UBBT School, a Movement of Engaged Martial Arts

In art history there have been a number of movements or schools that defined a particular kind of art. The Hudson River school was a mid-19th century art movement comprised of landscape painters that embraced romanticism. My favorite artist of that movement is Albert Bierstadt, known for his beautiful paintings of the western United States.

The Ashcan School was a progressive group of American painters and illustrators who portrayed the realities of New York City life in a raw spontaneous unpolished style. Le Corbusier started the movement known as Purism in protest of Cubism. The German Bauhaus School was made up of architects, artists, and philosophers who had a significant influence on art and architecture before (and after) World War II.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Samuel Mockbee, and Frank Gehry, three very different kinds of architects, have each represented new schools of thought in their field.

Writers, artists, architects, scientists, fashion designers, poets, thinkers, and action-takers in almost every field can pioneer movements that end up generating new methods, ideas, and schools-of-thought.

I believe that the Ultimate Black Belt Test (UBBT) project represents a movement and a school of thought that is markedly different from what was the status quo prior to its inception. The UBBT was/is a protest of sorts; a movement to bring a new kind of innovation, authenticity, and intentional complexity to an “industry” that was/is suffering from a dumbing down and homogeneous commercialism of its methods, ideas, and character.

Many of the students and participants in the UBBT are practicing and implementing a new kind of methodology in their schools –much of which is a radical departure from commonly promoted methods.

The changes in curriculum content and design, promotional practices, philosophy, teaching methods, testing, and general motivation and intent pioneered and promoted by UBBT members represents what I would call an organic approach to teaching and living the martial arts.

The Buddhist monk and renowned peace activist Thich Nhat Hahn has coined his approach to spirituality as Engaged Buddhism; he advocates a kind of involvement with the world that brings the practitioner out of the meditation hall and into daily life. Being heavily influenced by Thich Nhat Hahn, I am coining the kind of martial arts being explored and practiced by UBBT members as Engaged Martial Arts.

There are two phrases embraced by students of Engaged Martial Arts that illustrate the UBBT School of thought:

“Out of the dojo and into the world,” and;

“My life is my dojo.”

The first was borrowed from Yogi Seanne Corn’s description of yoga practitioners needing to take their practice, “Off the mat and into the world.” The second is attributed to Master Gaku Homma, the last live-in student of Aikido Master Morihei Ueshiba.

Martial artists influenced by the UBBT School (school of thought) are experimenting with what I call martial arts activism –where they take what they practice on the mat and see it manifest in their communities.

This idea changes a martial arts school’s approach to curriculum, to philosophy, to promotional practices, and testing procedures. The UBBT Schools influence has spawned a variety of creative programs and practices including The National Leadership Team Project, the Diabetes Education Project, The Environmental Self-Defense Project, and the Anger Management Teacher Education Program.

Participants and members of the UBBT include influential instructors such as Dave Kovar, Fariborz Azhakh, Bill Kipp, Chris Natzke, Charles Chi, Chan Lee, Dan Rominski, Dave McNeill, Gary Engels, and Tommy Lee. For more information on the Ultimate Black Belt Test and programs its members are involved in, visit www.ultimateblackbelttest.com.

This year your life will change, for the better.

This year your life will change, for the better.

This year you will have more influence with your students –and in your community –than you have ever enjoyed before.

This year you will save someone’s life.

This year you will simplify –so that your life isn’t ruled by things, by name brands, by the desire to shop, own, acquire, and consume; this year you will, as if you died and then had a second chance to live again, begin to appreciate what is genuinely important about living.

This year you will shed the pain you have been carrying.

This year you will step-up in an extraordinary way to bring peace, compassion, empathy, and wisdom to the world. You may not change things for the better single-handedly, but you will do your part to the best of your ability.

This year you will be part of a large group of people who are seeking to make being a “black belt” and/or a “master instructor” MEAN SOMETHING important, something vital, something heavy with integrity, purpose, and mission.

This year you will transform yourself into the person you want to be –and you will do it one day at a time.

This year you will be in the here and now –as often as you can be aware of, as often as you can pinch yourself to remember, as often as is humanly possible.

This year you will stop eating abundant amounts of sugar and processed food; you will be more aware of the connection between what you consume and how you think and feel.

This year you will forgive all trespasses. You will let go of all hate, misunderstandings, and grievances. This year, you will forgive and forget.

This year you will change your school’s curriculum to reflect wisdom, vision, and your mission as a human being; this year you will begin to teach the most important mental, emotional, and spiritual ideas –transcending the standard fare of the martial arts.

This year, whether you make more money –or less, you will live with a sense of joy, with a sense of “I am here for a reason –and it is to serve others,” and each morning you will awake, take a deep breath, say your prayers of thanks, and begin your day with a sense of purpose far and beyond simply “making a profit.”

This year you will practice being a true “master.”

Every year I invite a group of martial arts teachers, school owners, and students to join me in a project called The Ultimate Black Belt Test (UBBT). The UBBT is about living as a martial artist –but in a new way, a way that reflects something more than the kicks and punches of the martial arts; a way that transcends the “phone call,” the “intro,” the “black belt club,” and the profit and loss statement; a way that suggests the rank of “black belt” is meant to be something more than an incentive to pay for a course, something more than a piece of cloth and a certificate.

In the UBBT we seek to come together as a team, regardless of age, rank, style or system, and do, together, what would be impossible for any one of us to do individually. We’re working on changing and improving the entire martial arts world. We’re bringing new methods, new meaning, and a sense of mission to the martial arts that expresses our potential as human beings.

While people are capable of amazing things, they all too often do nothing, nothing at all about making a difference in the world. They sit back and watch, they sit idle and do as little as possible, self-absorbed - somehow justifying their inactivity.

In the UBBT we seek to BE AND DO something that reflects the best of what we are capable of. It’s not easy, but we must begin somewhere. By BEING "that kind of black belt" --we hope to leave a trail for others to follow.

We predict the martial arts of the future will be a richer, more interesting, more meaningful activity --and that someday "being a black belt" will carry with it a sense of responsibility that reflects those things that are best about the world --and about life. Real self-defense is recognizing our connectivity -and showing a deep respect and appreciation for self and others. Someday, black belts will not only be fine examples of the physical skills taught in their various styles, they will also be roles models of the best of the best of humanity.

This year I invite you to be a black belt, to be a martial artist in an all new light.

www.ubbt.squarespace.com

Tom Callos

Notes for Master Teachers

Teaching the techniques of the martial arts is an obvious part of our profession. While technical instruction is important, it isn’t as important as the ROLE that the martial arts instructor can play in the life of his or her students.

The role is that of a person who lives life with a certain disciplined gusto, using the practice of the martial arts to reveal an understanding of life. The martial arts teacher can have a significant influence with students based on the way he or she deals with conflict, with personal motivation, with business, with management, with community involvement, with spirituality, with failure, and with any number of the other parts of the recipe that make for a high-functioning human being.

No, the martial arts teacher isn’t the ultimate deliverer of all that is wise, but he or she can definitely stand tall as a part of the village of (potentially) wise people who can make a difference in the lives of others.

With this idea in mind, I offer the following advice to all master teachers:

1. You are not The Master, you are the Servant

You’re not to stand at the front of your class commanding your troops, shouting out orders, and acting like the top dog; you’re on the mat and in the world TO SERVE.

You serve your students, humbly, and through that process you help others to be better teachers, leaders, and human beings. Whenever you start getting that superior-human-being feeling, I’d like to suggest that you have a a trusted friends whack you across the knuckles with a yardstick.

Instead of nursing an inflated ego and a warped sense of entitlement, you should be falling on your knees and thanking your students for the education and opportunities they’re giving you. In the end, you learn more from your students than they learn from you.

2. What You do Outside of your School is More Important Than What You Do In It.

You’re school is a box –and in it you are a VIP. What you do within the confines of your box dictates what you “sell” as a teacher and business owner. However, what you do outside of your box, the way you engage the world, is the difference between running a “successful business” and being a “Master.”

The truth be told, if every man and woman in the world started making a difference in his or her community, started taking some sense of responsibility for fixing problems, and developed lifestyles (including sales, marketing, and educational strategies) that affected the quality of life for others, well...the world would be very different place.

I hold the opinion that a large group of very disciplined, focused, courageous, and determined people ought to serve as role models of how people could and should engage the world.

Know any groups like that?

2. Self-Defense Has Little or Nothing to Do With Punches, Kicks, Blocks, and Grappling.

Is flour an important ingredient in a cake? Yes, of course it is, but have you ever eaten a straight cup of flour? Are kicks, punches, blocks, grappling, and all the other physical aspects of personal protection an important part of self-defense? Sure they are; they represent the flour of self-defense.

But the physical aspects of self-defense don’t make up the cake of things a person really needs to know about personal protection in today’s world.

What really hurts people, today, are things like cancer, rampant consumerism, relationship dysfunction, diabetes, and poor money management (to name a few).

For the resourceful martial arts teacher this opens up a huge window of opportunity and adventure; for the less-than-resourceful instructor this idea represents a real pain in the behind.

Every Day, I Get to Begin Again.

Perhaps you don’t need reminding, but I do –so hang in here with me for a moment while I remind myself of the following.

Today is a BRAND NEW DAY!

A new beginning, a new start, and NOTHING is as important to the present and the future as how I apply myself from this moment on. The past is the past –the present and future, my happiness and progress, is not contingent on what has transpired, but on how I think and act from this moment on.

I am a martial artist, a life-long career martial arts teacher. I’m pursuing my DREAM not because it makes great economic sense, but because THIS is what hooked me. In the face of everything I might have done, I was drawn to the mat and the practice and the delight of being physical, of learning and teaching and practicing.

While other people practice the martial arts, but feel no pull or obligation to bring change to the martial arts world, I am a different animal. I feel a call from the handful of martial artists who have made a global impact on the martial arts –and sometimes the world, because of their ideas and actions.

Today, I begin (again) my “test” to be a 7th degree black belt in a way that sets the pace for every 7th degree black belt in the world –and of the future. I’m going to set the best example I can –so that any one of my brothers or sisters in the martial arts that follow me, in whatever part of the world they reside, might look to how I applied myself and find some sort of guidepost, inspiration, and/or ideas.

I want to be a 7th degree to the best of my ability. I want to be a 7th degree who has looked deeply at his flaws –at his strengths. I want to be a 7th degree that is, in accomplishment and contribution, equal to those people who I most admire in history. I believe that this kind of expectation is the right one to have for someone of my experience, rank, and position.

Today, I begin my “black belt test” again. My life is my test.