90 Days to Black Belt — What It Actually Takes (transcript)

[See parent full episode fmpWGD1OxDo for context. This 5-min excerpt covers Michelle Khare’s reflection on which Challenge Accepted episodes she’d pay to redo: the 90-day taekwondo black belt challenge with Grandmaster Simon Ray, and the Houdini water-torture-cell challenge requiring 3:30 breath-hold and lockpick training.]

Of your episodes when you look back and you can’t say all of them — that’s disallowed. If you did not have a YouTube channel but you had a thriving career, which two or three experiences would you pay to have looking back?

I would pick first of all the black belt challenge — 90 days to try and get a black belt in taekwondo. Part of this came from a personal passion of having done all of these stunts and working with stunt performers who all come from world-class martial arts backgrounds. I realized I had never actually taken the time to learn a martial art from the ground up. So what do I do? I make it a challenge so that I can devote my whole life to it.

That experience changed me. There are moments when you have a photo before and after — my body changed. But there are moments in life when you as a person change before and after, and that can be captured by a photo always. Getting to study with Grandmaster Simon Ray, one of the greatest martial artists on planet Earth — he took me under his wing and did what most instructors would have never done, which is believe in me and push me to actually get a black belt in 90 days.

Politeness — martial arts has taught me all of that. When you bow to the mat before you step on, when you say “yes sir, yes ma’am” — it might sound gimmicky to someone on the outside, but it does become a practice and an automation and a way of life. I’m doing a sequel — paying to do it again, trying to qualify for nationals this year.

The other one I would pay to do again for the experience I had ultimately, not when I was going through it, is the Houdini challenge. Six weeks to learn how to hold my breath and pick locks to attempt Houdini’s water torture cell — hanging upside down in a glass box filled to the brim with water, escaping a series of lockpicks with one breath of air. That is probably the most physically challenging thing I’ve done. Free diving and breath-holding is a level of athleticism that is so bizarre — when you’re in a workout class and it gets hard they say “keep breathing.” This is the one time you can’t do that. I got to 3:30 — most Navy Seals are 2-3 minutes; Houdini’s best time was also 3:30.

On the production side it was a really fascinating challenge because it was the first time we creatively designed our own obstacle and solution. We spent months trying to connect with other magicians who own a water torture cell — there are not many. Ultimately we came to the conclusion of designing our own. How do you create a glass box that can be filled with so many gallons of water and maintain structural integrity when there’s a person inside, with all the locks and hinges and water as an involved substance? It was a huge engineering challenge — I’m really proud of the final result because both of those things are things 2016 me would have never guessed I’d be able to do.