My wife and I are huge fans of Cobra Kai, the Netflix series based on The Karate Kid movies, and we can’t wait until the third season is out. Even though we just recently binge watched the first two seasons, we’ve already started re-watching episodes because, well, they’re so good. It might take you a couple episodes to really get hooked, but once you get to Episode 3 or 4, I think you’ll find yourself becoming a fan, too. The writing is excellent; the series pays proper homage to the movies but also has twists, depth, and surprising gravity that maybe surpass what the movies had.
SPOILER ALERT. Although I’m not really giving anything away regarding the plot, I figured I’d warn you just in case. What I’m about to talk about happens in Episode 7 of the first season.
In this episode, Sensei Johnny Lawrence requires that every student gets punched in the face in order to learn to stop flinching. Although learning not to flinch is arguably an important lesson, I think the more important one is simply getting hit hard. I don’t necessarily think you need to get a bloody nose, lose a tooth, have a rib broken, or be knocked unconscious, but getting hit hard enough to respect and expect what your opponent can do to you is one aspect of training that I think many traditional martial artists overlook. It’s also a big reason why I think Chinese MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong has dominated traditional martial artists—he can take a punch. (You could, however, argue the punches he was taking were weak or ineffective to begin with, but that’s a topic for another blog post.)
Two boxers, one famous and one fictional, get it (and got hit). Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.” And Rocky Balboa said, “But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward.”
Now you might interpret those quotes a little differently than I do. But I think we’d agree that the essence of both is that if you want to succeed in fighting (or in life), you’d better prepare yourself mentally and physically for getting hit—so that you can hit back. Some might disagree with me, but I don’t believe anyone is untouchable. (I’ve heard of a few untouchable masters over the years, but I wonder what would happen if you put all those untouchable masters together to fight. Who would win?)
So unless you’re physically so frail that getting hit poses a serious danger to your health (or if you can’t trust the person hitting you to exercise restraint), I suggest getting hit every now and then. In fact, when I started dating my wife, I told her to hit me so that I could feel how powerful she is. I wanted her to see that I could take a hit. But I’m not stupid, so I also told her not to give me full power. She happily delivered a roundhouse kick to my thigh because that is one of her signature weapons. Thankfully she gave me only about a third of her full power. When she asked how it felt, I smiled, doing my best not to wince from the pain, and told her she was good. I’d like to think she spent the week until our next date really impressed by how tough I was, but I know for sure I spent that week massaging out the bruised knot on the side of my thigh and thinking that if I ended up with her, we’d never fight because I’d never want to get hit like that with her full power. We’ve been married for a year now, and I can happily say I’ve never felt her full power.
I’m convinced you’ll learn something from getting hit, too. In fact, in all seriousness, there are actually other very good reasons to get hit in training, but I’ll save those for another blog post. Now go out and get hit!