09/09/2026
🥷 I’m new to all this. What do the belts mean?
When you come along to any of our traditional classes you’ll see students wearing different coloured belts. These belts show their grade and how experienced they are. We’ll start with the Kids Class, our 4-8yr olds.
When you start you’ll either wear no belt or a white belt if you chose to wear a gi. This means you’re a beginner, right at the fresh start of your martial journey.
As you get more classes under that white belt (for the early grades around 20) you’ll be gently assessed in class and awarded your first belt, white with a red stripe, and a certificate.
As long as you keep attending regularly and doing your best the grades will continue through yellow, orange, green and blue. When we get to higher grades, the purples, browns and the very special black belt, your assessments will be more challenging and we’ll ask for more classes and commitment from you. But you’ll be ready for that by then. Students line up to ‘bow in’ in the order of their grades so the highest grade and most experienced student leads the class.
When you move up to the next age group class your next belt will reflect how far you’ve come already, you won’t start from white belt again.
We never grade a student who isn’t ready and we want those grades to encourage confidence and positive behaviour. We recognise effort as well as ability.
You can read lots more about how we grade on our website https://foundationma.co.uk/about/grading/
