Hi! It's Richard Mosdell and this is my daily karate vlog #80!
And today's theme is how I got my 6 karate black belts. Today is Sunday, and I always come in this afternoon and clean the club, put around, try and get things right, I want the club to look just nice, and in the process I found all my old black belts.
So let's go through and see what they each mean. Let's just flip the camera, ok 1989 I got the first one. and I thought I was in the original Wadokai style from Japan, um in Canada at the time you couldn't get a black belt with the label of the Wadokai, so the only black belts I could get at the time has the Japan Karate Association, which is actually a big Shotokan karate association, as you know the shotokan style. So I wore this black belt for ages as I was teaching.
Then when I went to Japan in 1993, people said "Hey!", they would look at my black belt and go "You're Shotokan!", and I'd say "No I7m not, I'm Wado!", and they'd say "No, you are not Wado either", oh I was like that was weird, so I had to start training in the original Wado style in Japan and in the process I got myself a very simple black belt, and here this one is so old that the Wado badge came off. And here it says "Toddo Mosdell", because I used to go by my middle name, and here it says " Wa-Do-Kai".
Then in 1998, I was back in Japan, I was coming and going, but I was back there and uh and here is the actual logo, the Wadokai and here it says "Ka-Na-Da Wa-Do-Kai", and I was starting to use my first name "Richa-do T Mozuderu".
In 2000 I switched my club name to Kenzen Karate. And so I have the name "Ken-Zen Karate Wa-do-Kai" on the new belt then here just "Richa-do Mozuderu", and there is the Wadokai badge.
Of all my belts, these ones are from Hirota, my very first one was from Tokaido, and as you can see this one I got the most use out of as I was wearing it all the time.
I went to Japan in 2004, and by 2005 I was the head coach, and this says "Seiritsu Gakuen Karatedo-du", the Seiritsu Gakuen Karate Club, it's the oldest in Tokyo, and my name "Richa-do Mozuderu", and just for my style I got Wadokai on it.
And as you can see for the 10yrs I was there I used it quite a bit.
2014 I came back to Canada and opened KenzenSports Karate and as a gift a different martial arts/karate maker called Shureido, who I ordered all my karate uniforms in Japan through for my karate club there, they gave me this as a gift and it says "Mozuderu Richa-do", "Kenzen Supotsu Karate".
And that's my 6 karate belts! And that was 2014, 3 years ago. So let's see, how often do I normally get a new belt, well there is about 4 years, 5 years, 2 years, 4-5 years, oh that was the longest, basically 9 years.
So this one is still holding up pretty good, thank you very much everyone over at Shureido! And uh, I am going to be using this for quite awhile, oh there is the office, so a karate uniform and a belt, those are just workout tools, the belt is a great signifier for where you are at, but the effort you put in is most important!
And while they go white and people think that's really cool, it's more important is putting in that effort, putting in that physical exercise, meeting your friends, having an awesome time, and if you can, come workout with us whenever you want.
I'm Richard Mosdell, this is my club Kenzen Sports Karate, and my daily vlog #80, and tomorrow going to bring you stuff training with the kids here, thanks a lot for watching!