Plantman,

Thanks for responding.

We should normalize our relative training schedules before we can compare notes...

My baseline: I completed yellow belt in about 5 months, attending 4 hours/week, and orange belt in approximately 8 additional months, going 7 hours/week.

We've been introduced to knife and gun defense, as well as some other material, across yellow and orange belts, but they haven't been a focus of our training yet, and they certainly were not in our tests.

Does your system follow a similar advancement schedule? It seems like it would be difficult to master all of the techniques through gun and knife (especially knife) at yellow belt given a similar schedule. It takes most people some time just to get the fundamentals (mindset, footwork, combatives) down, which I think is the goal of our yellow belt.