The Pit Black Belt Test Evolution
The Pit Blackbelt test
When I first started, The Pit, Hawaiian Kempo, I wanted it to be the most effective and toughest martial art in the world. I spent a lot of time doing, editing, redoing, and changing not only the curriculum, but my training and testing methodologies. I wanted to have the toughest, black belts in the world, and I felt that started with "the black belt test".
My first pit Blackbelt's test was in 1996, 10 years after I started The Pit, and even before our first group of black belts, we had a pretty well known reputation for being a very tough and effective martial art. We even had a reputation of having tougher lower belt tests, then almost every other schools, Blackbelt tests. Instead of focusing on the perfection of techniques, and the memorization of prearranged, choreographed, ineffective and nonsensical movements that had nothing to do with fighting, or even martial arts for that matter, we had tough bouts of sparring, where nothing was prearranged or choreographed, or even tone down at all. Our belt testing, was pretty much like almost all of our sparring sessions, but even more intense. I wanted all of my black belts to be in top shape, so they had to do hundreds of push-ups, squats, sit ups, pull ups, and miles of running. So basically, our Blackbelt's test consisted of beating the hell out of each other, after we were exhausted from hundreds of calisthenics, and a 3 mile run.
Our first black belt test, not unlike a lot of our other Bell test, but more of it, there was a lot of blood, pain, and injuries. For some strange reason, which to this day was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, I thought it would be great if I got in there With my Blackbelt prospects and they had to spar with me for 10 minutes each. Now, since my first group of black belts were some of the strongest and toughest martial artists in the world, including but not limited to Chuck, the ICEMAN Liddell, so me sparring, with each one of them for 10 minutes straight, one after another, every one of them in better shape than I was, younger than I was, had to be honest better than I was, it was a terrible idea to say the least. like I said, there was a lot of blood in our first Pit Blackbelt's test, but what most people don't realize a lot of it was mine. I'll ask you out there, how would any of you instructors feel about sparring with four of your toughest students, who are you were 10 to 20 years older than, and they were all actually in training for either kick boxing or MMA matches. It was a stupid idea to say the least, and needless to say, I never did our black belt test like that again.
Almost, but not quite. After learning from my mistakes in my first pitch black belt test, I still kept the sparring as full contact as the first test, but this time I mixed up the testing partners, so I wasn't the one who had to go 40 minutes, 10 minutes each with complete monsters. There were still the same conditioning requirements, and sparring requirements, but at least the sparring was spread around a little, so while it was intense, it wasn't quite as brutal as the first test. I pretty much did it this way for the next few tests, but to be honest, not many people made it to that level, so, even after 15 years of having a martial arts school, I only had less than a dozen black belts. I was OK with this, because I wanted The Pit Blackbelt to be a very revered and exclusive club. So most of my students knew that if they wanted to get the black belt, that things were gonna get much tougher, and there would be a lot of pain involved. my Blackbelt roster was still very short, and I was still OK with that, because I like the fact that being a pit black though was so highly revered.
When not only did the Blackbelt test change, but our attitude, function, and process changed towards sparring. Since the fighting ability and hard sparring was such a big part of our gym, and our culture, it took me a long time, and a lot of going back-and-forth about being in school, where everybody's fired really hard, or being a schools that spired, really smart, but still kept it's effectiveness, and toughness. That's where I had a hard time feeling good about keeping my gym, effective and tough, but minimizing brain injuries. Don't get me wrong, I'm the first to say, I never trust a man who hasn't been punched in the face, but it doesn't mean I want my students to get repetitive concussions on an ongoing basis, with absolutely, no upside, is there an upside to concussion? How can you have a tough martial arts school, if they don't spar to the knockout every time? I wrestled with that question for a long time, but one of the main things that change my mind was Crossfit.
I was always going back-and-forth, trying to create more effective combative, fitness, workouts, and techniques. I even remember when I was in basic training, Fort, Benning, Georgia, one of my drill, sergeants, Sergeant, Beard was a very strict drill, instructor, who loved to punish his soldiers with push ups. For some strange reason we hit it off, and since I wanted to stay in shape, because I thought when I was got out of basic, I would be boxing in the golden gloves, so I talked to Sergeant Beard about some different workout ideas, and we actually brainstormed for a few hours, and came up with the Now famous workout at our gym, called "blackjack"I actually came up with that when I was in basic training, and that's the first time it was ever done.
Crossfit made up my mind to finally decide on what was a great way to show incredible mental and physical toughness without causing concussions. To be honest it was hard because I've been sparring to the knockout since the mid 70s, and I always thought it was just part of my culture, and I always thought to keep our toughness we had to spar hard, I was, so what could hurt as much as hard sparring, fran, which is 45, 35 pound thrusters, and 45. Perfect form pull ups all to be done in right around two minutes, changed my mind. I met the founder of Crossfit at a Fitness Summit. I went to in California. Greg Glassman, who is the founder of Crossfit and I started talking about functional workouts. He was very into the first responder angle of working out. He focused his "functional" towards first responders and law-enforcement, while my functionality revolved more around fighting, sport and Street. We had a lot of common ideas about different workouts, and how I want ideas on functional workouts were the same, but we also realize there were some differences as well. Since we had the same general ideas about working out, but there had to be modifications, because our specific activity was much different, so the workouts had to be altered. Greg came up with the idea to call our system of working out with martial arts in mind CrossPit Crossfit taught me how pushing yourself to those limits of anaerobic exhaustion. Doing your last few sets, while trying to beat the clock and the people next to you was probably the most painful thing I've ever experienced. It felt like your lungs were on fire, and your muscles were all having painful spasms, but you wanted to beat that clock so badly you were willing to put yourself through that pain, very few people are willing to get that far out of their comfort zone. I realized, then, that that could be the missing link to my belt testing without concussions idea. I remember entering a few CrossFit competitions, and one of them was 150 wall balls, and 150 double unders, please google wall balls and double unders, and realized we had to do 300 of them in about 12 minutes. I realized then that that was the closest thing to a fight without getting punched in the face as you could ever come. That anaerobic burn during that CrossFit competition made me realize that it was only tough people would be willing to push themselves and into her that much pain, yet there is no injury, or loss of consciousness involved, sounds like a win-win to me. That is when I went full-fledged: less head trauma, more Rhabdomyolysis.
So at the end of the day, getting hit during testing was more about testing the students ability to take pain, and push himself when it's very uncomfortable. Of course I want things as Martial minded as possible. So I have kept the majority of my testing combat, minded, combat, tested, however, with less subdural hematomas. I try to simulate fighting situations as much as I can, but I also don't want to put my students in unnecessary positions of getting injured, sometimes permanently. I think with the system of testing that we have finally evolved to, we have a mixture of showing proficiency in martial arts and fighting, and the ability to keep going in the face of great bodily pain and discomfort, I think I am weeding out the weak, While keeping our students as injury, free as humanly possible. And I still think our black belt test, and the nine months leading up to it will more than thin out the herd, and only the strong will survive. The main difference is while they are still physically and mentally tough, at the top fitness level, they will still be able to remember their names.
