Enrolling your child in martial arts classes offers many benefits. A key one involves developing the ability to work towards goals. Because kids are awarded new belts and sashes as they build up their skills, they learn the value of hard work and perseverance. This is especially true at Iron Dragon Fitness & Self Defense in Middletown, NY, where participants in karate classes are trained to focus on a goal. When kids take karate lessons here, they learn how self-discipline leads to achievement.

Here, these martial arts professionals will explain what the different belts signify:

• White: White is chosen as the starting point in karate lessons because it signifies a new beginning, like a seed.
• Yellow: The next step, yellow, represents the sunlight first hitting the seed, helping it grow.
• Orange: Much like yellow, the orange belt stands for the growing power of the sun, as the student develops their martial arts skills.
• Green: Eventually, a plant will emerge from the seed. The green belt is meant to signify this first flowering, as the green of the belt matches the green color of a plant.
• Blue: When a plant continues to grow, it reaches out towards the sky. Students are rewarded with a blue belt to acknowledge they are striving higher and further towards their goals.
• Purple: Just as the early belts represented the rise of the sun, the purple belt represents the setting of the sun, and the knowledge the student has devoted much time to their martial arts study and is now facing a point of change.
• Brown: This belt signifies a seed that is ripened for harvest, having yielded many achievements along the way.
• Red: As a seed grows closer to the sun, it encounters more heat, signified by the red belt.
• Black: The final stage in a martial arts career is the black belt, the place of knowledge beyond the sun.

With this belt system in place, martial arts students gain not only physical prowess but mental and emotional discipline as well. To give your child this experience, enroll them in classes at Iron Dragon Fitness & Self Defense in Middletown, NY. Visit them online to learn more, or call (845) 342-3413.