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| Benefits |
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Tsumura-Shihan (Master and Canadian Chief Instructor), identifies the following benefits of training in karate & kobudo. The Deep River club strives to maintain the training standards necessary to realize these benefits.
Fitness and Overall Health: Karate training improves flexibility, strength, coordination, and endurance of an individual. Karate's punches, thrusts, kicks, blocks, sweeps and throws tones the whole body in an explosive and dynamic workout.
Stress Reduction: In addition to the stress reducing benefits of any physical activity, Karate also improves concentration and awareness of mental attitudes that can cause stress.
Self-Confidence: While all physical activities improves feelings of well-being, Traditional Karate places special emphasis on building character, and focuses on increasing self-confidence, awareness, and perseverance through repetitive physical and mental exercises.
Self-Defense: Traditional Karate is the best martial art for self-defense because it focuses on actual defense skills rather than sport oriented techniques that are found to be impractical and inefficient in actual combative situations.
| Physical benefits include: | Mental benefits include: |
| Cardiovascular exercise Coordination Flexibility Self-defense Stress relief Aerobic activity Develop quicker reflexes Plyometric explosiveness |
Self-discipline Perseverance Humility Responsibility Self-esteem Self-confidence Awareness Practicality in judgment |
It is good to have goals, and there is nothing wrong about having the black belt as your long-term goal, but you must understand what that entails and what it represents.
With that thought in mind, following is a table of typical timelines for youth and adult karate-ka. Students that often undertake thoughtful practice outside of class are likely to progress more quickly than those that only attend scheduled classes. Students that miss many classes and exert limited effort, focus, and discipline can expect to progress more slowly, or not at all.
| Typical Durations | ||
| Accumulated Years | ||
| Belt | Youth | Adult |
| White | - | - |
| Yellow | 0.5 | 0.5 |
| Orange | 1 | 1 |
| Green | 2 | 1.5 |
| Blue | 3 | 2 |
| Brown | 5 | 3 |
| Shodan-Ho | 8 | 4.5 |
| Shodan (1st Dan) | 10-12* | 6 |
Youth student classes are half as long as adult classes and youth typically do not have the same focus as adults leading to longer times. However, it should be noted that youth students are often old enough to switch to the adult class and tend to become more focussed by the time they reach the more senior ranks [*].
The expectations of the senseis increase with belt, that is senior rank students are expected to demonstrate an evident and higher degree of ability, effort, knowledge, focus, discipline, dedication, and attitude; indeed a brown belt performing yellow-belt techniques (e.g. pinan nidan), should be noticeably different than the yellow belt student. As well, development and refinement of skills and knowledge takes time and so there are minimum dwell times in the senior ranks (e.g. blue to brown is a minimum of 1 year).
The table should be considered a guideline--nothing more. People progress at different rates for a myriad of reasons. Students and parents/guardians should NOT have fixed expectations based on the table. No true student-ka would ever make comparisons against other students. Advancement is at the discretion of the senseis only and for Shito-Ryu Itosu-Kai Canada ultimately and exclusively at the discretion of Kei Tsumura Shihan.
