Arnis isn’t just for adults anymore. I can imagine most of the Grandmasters you meet from the Philipines would tell you that they started out when they were kids, so why not get them started young? Progressive Arnis has a Youth program, which my son recently started, that gives him an enhanced motivation and sense of progress beyond the Adult Curriculum that we’re familiar with. The Youth program covers the same material as the regular adult curriculum, so they can still participate in adult classes, but each stripe belt is awarded as a full color youth belt. Essentially, an Adult Green Belt is a Youth Black Belt.
For kids, this is a more digestible amount of material to practice in between testing opportunities… or, if they take are comfortable with a faster pace of learning, they seemingly move a lot further with each test, and see that youth black belt more quickly, which can be extremely exciting to see that accelerated progress. Upon completion of the Youth program and being awarded the rank of Youth Black Belt, kids are encouraged to transition into the Adult program, where they will train for Adult Brown 1 and continue on to a legitimate Lakan ranking.
The table below shows the Youth vs. Adult belt ranking translation. Consider the Adult Curriculum rank for the material at each level.
| Youth Belt | Adult Belt |
| Yellow | Yellow Stripe |
| Orange | Yellow |
| Purple | Orange Stripe |
| Blue | Orange |
| Green | Purple Stripe |
| Brown 1 | Purple |
| Brown 2 | Blue Stripe |
| Brown 3 | Blue |
| Black | Green Stripe / Green |
