FIGHT!!

The Cold Steel Challenge

From the moment I signed the health and safety waiver and walked into the hall I was a bag of nerves.
All around me I could see groups of athletes warming up, swinging weapons, doing stretches and generally looking menacing...

Enormous muscular dudes with mohawks and intimidating game faces that looked straight out of the UFC mingled with cowboys with bowie knives casually strapped to their belts.

A group of tough looking stick fighters dressed all in black huddled to one side muttering game plans and tactics, effortlessly swinging sticks backwards and forwards with a 'swoosh' that cut through the air and carried across the hall.

A young guy with a samurai haircut and brightly coloured army fatigues literally knuckled like an ape across the hall, shouting to a group of long haired men carrying six foot boar spears...

A woman who looks straight out of Zorro swings a bullwhip at the gathered photographers...laughing as she cracks the whip inches from their lenses..

A guy with thick NHS-looking glasses suddenly makes me jump as he turns and attacks his teenage son with a walking stick who parries at lightning speed with a cane of his own..the clattering of their weapons turning a few heads and attracting a few friendly shouts

A giant of a man with long plaited hair and a blonde beard (looking for all the world like a Viking who had travelled through time to compete)brushes past me laughing while carrying armfuls of spears..

The bleachers are filled with a noisy audience of martial arts fans,friends, family and curious locals attracted by the thought of a weapons tournament here on a sunny afternoon in Ventura.

At the back of the hall a bewildered American film crew crowds around Cold Steel President Lynn C Thompson as he demonstrates brutal looking martial arts techniques on a muscular (and increasingly bruised) TV tough guy.

From outside comes the thump of axes hitting wooden targets. A large group has gathered to watch Richard (an English throwing expert) as he launches his tomahawks with impressive ease into the targets over twenty feet away..

Here and there I spot familiar faces from the martial arts world. The internationally renowned whip master sharing a joke with the olympic fencing maestro. The legendary japanese shoot fighter talking to one of Bruce Lees relatives. Japanese swordsmen, Filipino knife fighters, Chinese Wu Shu experts...the world's best have come to watch and to compete..

With my newly aquired gum shield pooching out of the corner of my mouth and my little sports strap keeping my nerdy glasses on my head..My oversized checked shorts and baggy tee shirt that I'd deliberately bought two sizes too big to try and hide my flabby body...I felt like a kid who was playing dress up. Any second now these real life warriors were going to see me for the limey nerd I really was and kick my ass...

These people were the real deal. They were tough and they were here to fight.
I respected and admired every one of them...and they scared the hell outta me..

But,training with the Cold Steel team had changed me a lot.
In the first week they had bombarded me with training up to four times a day. From weight lifting to sword fighting, from cycling to boxing, axe throwing to rope swings. I had been broken down (literally) into a bruised pulp.
But, like the best of drill instructors, Lynn had begun to rebuild me..the relentless barrage of training with a succession of enormous training partners was beginning to take effect and the lessons started to sink in.

Slowly but surely I was learning...and then, sweetest of mercies..after 12 days of relentless training, I got a day off!
Chilling in the California sunshine at Santa Barbara I reflected and got my head in the game. I thought about how far I had come and I resolved to not let my fear hold me back..
And the next day...I fought...

What happened next I hear you cry..well, I don't want to give anything away. This is after all a behind the scenes blog for a film.
More soon...I promise...

thanks

Andy