At class last night, one of our brown belts announced that his knee was giving him problems… I congratulated him on earning his undocumented points towards his black belt promotion.  Then, checking around, I discovered that all of our brown belts either had knee pads or knee problems.

Coming from a history of two dislocations of my right knee, and one dislocation of my left knee, I’m well qualified to hold the rank I do.  It seems that if you hold a black belt in Judo, and don’t have knee problems, perhaps your rank was not earned the ‘old-fashioned way’.

Another undocumented requirement for higher rank is the ability to show up to class just after all the mats have been laid out.  Some have thought that this requirement works better if they show up after warmup exercises … but they only end up getting injured…

Hmmm… maybe this is where the bad knees come in?

Any other suggestions for undocumented requirements for Black Belt?