Back in 1987, the Warrior Heart School 戦士心門 introduced the colour belt system to enhance group interaction and motivate modern practitioners. This shift was driven by a suggestion Les and Noelle Conn made to Master Kwan Yuen Cheong 關潤昌, recognising that while survival was once the primary reason to train in the martial arts, today’s practitioners require a different kind of motivation. This point is crucial for the preservation of the warrior art and the school as a whole. The belt system provides structure and helps students measure their progress, fostering a sense of achievement and direction in a world where the stakes are no longer as high as they once were.
Interestingly, the new belt system was not a far cry from the traditional method already in place within the Warrior Heart 戦士心 lineage. Historically, the transmission of knowledge relied on nine levels of mastery, each closely tied to the ‘secrecy’ of information at each level. By introducing the colour belt system, we preserved this structure while adapting it to better suit the needs of modern practitioners, ensuring both continuity and motivation for today’s students.
In the Warrior Heart School 戦士心門, our colour belt system includes multiple belts during a preparation stage that typically lasts around five years. Following this, there are nine levels of black belt, a structure that closely mirrors the original method of transmission in our lineage. The use of nine levels for hierarchy and knowledge transmission was a common practice in Ancient China. Furthermore, the nine black belt levels align closely with the ten black belt system used in Japan, thereby reinforcing the integrity of our approach.
The Chinese historical origin of the nine levels grading system can be found in this article.
