My World of Martial Arts

DeRailed is a site about Darren Lester, written by Darren Lester. Perhaps not surprisingly, this area is all about martial arts I enjoy... Mostly karate (various styles including Shotokan and Wado Ryu), but also other arts. There's a terminology page where you can get all the Japanese translations you ever wanted. There's a bit about the history of karate. Finally, if you're interested in taking up karate in the UK, be sure to check out the KUGB, which you can find about here.

The Karate Union of Great Britain


Introduction to the KUGB

The KUGB is the largest single-style karate organisation in Great Britain. All it's member clubs practice the karate style of Shotokan, the most popular style in the world today. Shotokan was founded by Gichin Funokoshi, who introduced his style to Japan in 1921. This style places emphasis on strong stances and direct, linear movements.

The KUGB is affiliated to the Japan Karate Association (JKA), which was founded by Gichin Funokoshi himself in 1948. Karate evolves, and the link with the JKA insures that this evolution is passed accurately and quickly to Great Britain, while maintaining high standards.

There are so many splinter associations and freestyle associations in the world that it is sometimes difficult to know whether the club you train with is any good! Remember that poor instructors produce poor students, and more importantly, can lead to injuries. With a KUGB club, you can be sure that the knowledge and high standards within the KUGB can be passed on to you.

To find a KUGB club near you, check out the KUGB website. Why not visit some club websites and see what they have to offer:

The Belt System

The use of coloured belts is not part of traditional karate-do. It is purely a Western idea, brought about to encourage students to continue training. In the West, we often need small measures of motivation to continue in all the things we do, and karate is no exception. Hence, the concept of coloured belts was introduced. Indeed, before coloured belts, we only used white and black belts, where a black belt indicated an 'end of apprenticeship'. Even now, we often here karate-ka say that training only truly begins at black belt; as a coloured belt, we are really only developing our basics.

Unfortunately for students of karate, the sequence of coloured belts varies from style to style, and from association to association. For example, when I trained in Wado-ryu, the sequence of belts was: white, red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, browns, black. (Note that there was more than one brown belt.) In a freestyle class I used to attend, the sequence was identical, except that red came immediately before black.

The coloured belts can be referred to as a kyu grades. In the martial arts world, the kyu grades count down from a high number (say 8, 9 or 10) down to 1 (i.e. 1st kyu). 1st kyu is therefore the penultimate belt before black belt. In the KUGB, the kyu grade system is as follows:

At black belt, we dispense with kyu grades and count up. The first black belt is referred to as 1st Dan or Shodan, the second is 2nd Dan (Nidan) and so on.

To attain a grade, the student must be able to accomplish a particular set of techniques (including basics, kata and kumite) to the required standard. This is the syllabus. If you train within the KUGB, then you can find your syllabus here:

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