May 27, 2026
White belt, black belt, red-hot takes
I am not a black belt
He says he’s no master yet, but the comments turned it into an Aikido roast fest
TLDR: A black belt in Aikido says finishing his first book made him feel like a total beginner again. Readers mostly turned it into a spicy debate over whether Aikido is profound self-improvement, impractical performance art, or just the martial art Steven Seagal sold to a generation.
A personal essay about martial arts humility somehow kicked off a full-on comment-section brawl over whether Aikido is deep wisdom, graceful art, or just very elegant falling down. The writer’s main point is actually pretty sweet: after years of practice and earning a real black belt in Aikido, finishing a first book made him feel like a beginner all over again. His message is that mastery in one field doesn’t magically make you a master in another. In writing, he says, he’s back to the white-belt stage.
But the community? Oh, they grabbed the martial arts side and ran with it. One commenter admitted watching the demo video over and over and still having no idea where the throw’s force even came from, basically asking if the partner was just yeeting himself on purpose. Another unleashed the funniest comparison in the thread, calling Aikido “the Lisp of the martial arts world,” meaning beautiful, brainy, niche, and constantly defended in theory more than in real-life chaos. That one alone feels destined for internet immortality.
Not everyone came to mock. Some commenters defended martial arts as something that changes with age: less about winning fights, more about health, balance, breathing, and staying sharp. Then came the nostalgia bomb: a reader confessed that Steven Seagal movies once convinced him Aikido was the coolest thing on Earth. In other words, the post aimed for reflection, and the comments delivered philosophy, memes, skepticism, and 80s action-movie trauma.
Key Points
- •The author says he is a second dan Aikido black belt with the Aikikai Foundation and began practicing in early 1997.
- •Aikido in Brazil used a colored-belt system for pre-black-belt students because it inherited local rules from the Judo federation.
- •The article describes white belt status as something obtained by buying the practice uniform, with rank advancement starting after formal evaluations.
- •The author states that Aikido includes roughly 2,500 to 3,500 techniques depending on naming conventions, and early students may encounter only a small fraction of them.
- •The article compares the long learning journey in Aikido to the author’s experience of completing a first book manuscript with basic writing tools.