How to Tie a Black Belt

Video Transcript

"Hi everybody. I'm John Graden. How do you tie a black belt? Well, that's a great question, because sometimes a black belt really isn't black anymore. Here's what I mean. Here's my current belt. This is 2009. This is the belt that I got when I earned my second degree black belt in 1982. This was as black as this one, but lots of training, lots of sweat, lots of sparring, lots of contact wore the black right off it. But this is the belt that still holds great meaning to me. So here's an interesting test. Let's see what happens. All right. I was twenty-two, twenty-five then. I'm forty eight now. Let's compare. Is the belt anywhere the same length? Well, you know, that's not bad for over twenty years. I'm still training hard. So let's see how we tie this thing. Here we go. The belt is typically going to go around you twice. You're going to fold it into quarters. Take one quarter, push it against your hip. Reach behind you. Some schools are really big about not letting the belt touch the ground, so you want to be aware of that. Bring it around, lay it on top of the short one, and then just lay it right on top, again. Bring it all the way around. And here's...kinda like tying a tie. I'm going to take the one that I just brought around, this is the working end, and I'm going to dive over both belts, see, one, two. Go under both belts, one, two. And then from here, they're uneven, so I gotta kind of shuffle 'em around a little bit. And when, you know, a good black belt has pride in his belt. Watch this. Take the top one, go over the top, and I tell you what, you talk about anchoring. That motion right there. Voom! That anchors. I am now ready for action. I'm John Graden. That's how you tie a black belt. Thanks."