Coloured Belts

Tae Kwon-Do uses different coloured belts as a progressive ranking system to indicate the students level of  experience. When students begin they wear a white belt and expert students wear a black  belt.

There are six different coloured belts in Tae Kwon-Do

Three Junior Coloured Belts:

Three Senior Coloured Belts:

These colours have not been randomly chosen, they are steeped in Korean tradition. The colours black, red and blue represent the various level of royal hierarchy that existed during the Silla Dynasty.

Using coloured belts is a fairly modern idea. Originally all students wore white uniforms with a white belt around the waist. These students trained hard, sometimes for hours at a time, learning how to fight, using their hands and feet as weapons to defend themselves. After months and years of practicing, their white belts, which were never washed, became soiled and darkened in colour. This became a visual sign of the amount of training and experience a student had and why the black belt symbolises an expert in the arts.

Training today is very different, students generally train indoors and their belts are not exposed to the elements that would automatically darken them during the course of their training. Therefore a system of coloured belts has been adopted imitating this progression from light to dark, appropriately distinguishing students based on their level of knowledge, experience and skill.