Over the years International Martial Arts Alliance / Martial Arts Australia has been approached by many people around the globe to assist them in
(a) helping them achieve their black belt (b) validating their existing black belt grade.

Previously, we have only assisted martial artists with existing dan grades, where candidates just send a video or perform in front of our grading panel.

There has been a lot of enquiries from people that have been training on / off, for 5 -10 years or more, but have never obtained their black belt. Our first response has always been to help them find a local instructor, in a style they feel comfortable undertaking. For some this has been challenging across a wide range of issues, so we decided to find a solution.

After several years of development, we have created a creditable, fair and appropriate pathway for these people to obtain a black belt equivalent.

We present two options -
They can present a number of techniques from a list we provide and they send a video of them performing them. They do a Q&A and write an essay on what it means to be a black belt that includes their journey to date.

Alternatively, if they can’t perform the appropriate number of techniques we have specified, they can learn from the resource material we have created. They would then present the assessment tasks as stated above.

The outcome is a generic black belt, not in any style, but the candidate will have demonstrated competency across all techniques. Our assessment of their performance will be matched to our knowledge, of what we believe the black belt standard should be.