The Karate... Adult

I haven't started training yet. But ideally within a month or so I'll be able to break a grown man's forearm with very little effort. And ladies - isn't that feminism?

It was the nostalgic magesty of Cobra Kai that did it. In late December, during a cruel summer in Sydney Australia, a twenty five year old drama student along with her two true loves (wine, and her cat Dorothy), cracked open a shiraz with unbridled excitement as she binged Cobra Kai for the first time, despite an early start at work the next morning.

I'd heard vaguely that Cobra Kai existed, and that people liked it. However, the Karate Kid purist in me didn't think she could cope with the cringe factor of a grown Johnny Lawrence and his sad, weatherbeaten face regurgitating famous lines from the 1984 classic for sentimentality's sake. I believed the creators and the stars were, Disney style, cashing in on the nostalgia of the millenial generation with their remakes and their culturally innappropriate Mulan's. (Chi is not witchcraft). My heart also hadn't recovered from the Jaden Smith/Jackie Chan Karate Kid poisoning the minds of the generation below me. "Have you seen Karate Kid?" "Yeah! The Jaden Smith one!" "Get out of my apartment."

I was afraid that Cobra Kai would take this beautiful, perfect thing and wreck it for me, but how wrong I was. Seeing my faves back together in the same space, my ears blessed once again by that classic soundtrack, with actually well written new characters and a diverse cast - I don't know. It did something to me. It changed me on a molecular level. Gosh darned it - I felt inspired.

I'd been considering doing something drastic for a while - since I witnessed a violent crime outside my home.

I live in a small art deco building on the wrong side of the tracks, my kitchen window facing an alleyway that led behind a bunch of good, and not so good, chinese restaurants. There were bins. There were rats. There were questionable meet ups and old people shamelessly sifting through the skips in search of unwanted treasures. One night there was a crying girl in a Japanese schoolgirl outfit walking by with a helium balloon at 3am like something out of the exorcist. Scary. And then of course there was the odd twelve person brawl at 2:30am on a Tuesday morning.

I was woken by the noise first - there'd been a lot of late night drama in this back alley, I was used to it, but nothing like this. I tentatively pulled back my blinds and in the orange tinted light of the street lamps, I watched. It was horrendous, and violence the likes of which I'd never seen. Punches were thrown, broom handles bludgeoned skulls, cement blocks were being catapaulted into the air. A shirtless bald man screamed "I'M GONNA KILL YOU" as he hurtled towards one of the group, I suppose his percieved enemy. A woman in a sparkly skirt was one of the worst, screeching with every punch, every slap she threw. She was a major instagator, hitting while people's backs were turned and body slamming while someone was already well and truly down for the count.

I watched the police arrive and the group scattered as one couple flagged them down. The majority of the group hid behind a shed door opposite my kitchen window - a door I'd seen some questionable characters going to and from on a bi-daily basis.

I was too scared to leave my house and give a statement, and I had a full day of rehearsals and a performance that day. I went back to bed, welcoming a rough sleep, and was woken by my housemate the next morning.

"A guy from channel 7 just knocked on our kitchen window! Apparently there was a brawl last night! Four arrests, three hospitalisations - someone's in an induced coma!"

She somehow slept through the whole thing.

"I know - I watched it out the window," I said blearily.

"Wow! You wanna go talk to Channel 7?"

No, I really didn't. I saw that door where they all hid - was there a drug operation happening next to my home? Were the headquarters of a dark underworld within a stones throw of where I slept? If I were to talk to the police, or the news, would the perpetrators see my face? Figure out which apartment was mine? Destroy the witness? Okay sure - I'd probably watched one too many true crime documentaries by this point. But the fact remained - a channel 7 reporter easily managed to get onto my back balcony to access our kitchen window. My housemate and I had also figured out that if we were stupid enough to forget our keys, we could leave the window open, weave our arm through and easily open the door. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to break into my place.

It hit me - I lived in a very dangerous area in an insecure property. I felt for the first time that a home invasion wasn't just a morbid imagining, or something that happened to other people on the news - but a probability. Even an eventuality. And what would I do in that scenario? I have no upper body strength, not a great deal of coordination, and no self defense training whatsoever. I thought about moving, but by this point had about $7 in my account. I contacted my property managers and asked them to come by and increase security measures, but this was never followed through. The police didn't even want my statement (presumably because I wasn't 100% willing to go on record) and therefore the gaps in information - like why the fight had happened and who these people were, were left up to my neurotic brain to fill. I felt like I was being let down by the systems upon which I am forced to rely. It was only while watching Cobra Kai weeks later that I thought - hey, karate.

Only, not karate. I deep dived into the recesses of the internet for information on the sport and the art, and found that many karate dojos were, what they call "McDojos" (profiteering black belt factories), and that a lot of traditional karate techniques were non practical and difficult to apply on a street-fighting level. I then met a friend of a friend who happened to teach Muay Thai, and he informed me that either kickboxing or Jiu Jitsu would make you street ready fast, and belt levels in Jiu Jitsu are more well respected, as it takes around ten years to reach black belt with consistent training. However by that point it became not just about self defense - martial arts became a platform upon which to change my entire lifestyle, of course with the added bonus of being able to kill a man with my bare hands.

As an actor, watching Cobra Kai with my bottle of wine, my double chin and bloated stomach spilling every which way, I thought damn. Would I be able to do these stunts? Would I be cast in these roles? Would I be able to follow fight choreography? I felt too jiggly, too vague, too sleepy. I'd for a long time tried to find an exercise regime that worked for my uniquly depressed yet simultaneously hyperactive brain. Yoga was nice but too slow. Running was boring and the streets are dangerous, and I freckle and burn easy in the sun. HIIT workouts and the gym just felt pointless and repetitive and I just really don't get gym people. They're boring, and empty, and rely on brute strength rather than skill in my opinion. Martial arts, however, is practical. It's useful. It's a vehicle upon which I can gain confidence, become sharper, more alert, more dangerous. A HIIT workout that might also save my life.

The more I pontificated on how much I wanted to become a martial artist, and the more I learned from watching youtube videos and reading blogs, I managed to change my diet without even thinking about it. The choices I made were different. I lost the desire to drink every night, as I knew that would only slow me down and lead to weakness on the mat. I lost my taste for sugar and craved vegetables and protein. I developed this desire to run to increase fitness, and do yoga not just for the sake of it, but because flexibility would help me in a fight and prevent injury. Everything became about martial arts and what steps I could take to improve. While in-home workouts seemed pointless and boring before, they too became part of a journey to become a fighter.

I found a mixed martial arts gym and am starting with Jiu jitsu, for defense, and then later I hope to start training in the korean martial art 'Hapkido' - to look cool for acting of course, like those kids on Cobra kai, with their high kicks and flips. God love em.

So that's it. That's the resolution. Making martial arts my top priority. That's the 2021 wellness journey which will hopefully continue on for years to come. I do this thing, though, where I quit when things get too hard, or when I'm not perfect at it on my first try. I'll just have to remind myself, when my ego's been bruised and my pinky is broken, and I'm lying on the jiu jitsu mat in my thick, blanket like Gi, red faced and sweating in places I didn't even know I could sweat, that there might be a drug lord outside my window preparing to murder me.

I guess keeping an MMA exercise regime going is the one instance where my chronic neurosis may actually come in handy.