Ok, so we've been in Thailand for about ten days now. Hadn't even thought about trying Muay Thai kickboxing until one of the girls I met in the hostel (Freja) mentioned it. When I asked Pong, the hostel owner he said you can only do 1 week courses... NOOO. 1 week would be amazing but we don't have the time!
We looked online and found a school which looked really good, and it was close to the hostel too. The info was good, although the pictures looked a bit outdated so that made us question whether everything was up to date. We took down the number to call the next day. Its quite a famous school, with a good rep. Pong told us it gets a lot of press because one of their champs has now become a lady boy! There's even a movie about him apparently. With all his winnings he managed to save up for all the procedures. She must have quite broad shoulders... Anyways, the point is more that the school has produced a champion, so it must be a good training camp. I was excited!
I have done so little exercise (apart from hiking) since we left for our trip about a month and half ago; I like martial arts; and we were going to learn Muay Thai in Thailand! I couldn't wait!
We had to decide whether we wanted to join the morning session, 6.30- 9.30am, or the afternoon sesh. The website recommends a decent meals about 2 hrs before you train. We didn't really fancy waking up at 4am so we decided to just spent the day relaxing, 'conserving our energy'... In this time, I found a magazine to flick through which had a review of the boxing camp, and the guy wrote about a 8km run... as a warm up! I was like aah shit. Freja who had spent the day doing a cooking course, and eating was still up for joining us, and Laura (who had just ate 2 bananas the whole day) was coming too. We were going to be the foreigners who can't handle the heat and throw up with exhaustion.
So we walked to the school. All 4 of us, breaking a sweat just walking in the afternoon 30 odd degrees heat. We got there and as instructed on the phone I asked for Pom, who let us get away with skipping as a warm up. Phoooo. Still so sweaty though.
We then got our hands wrapped and shown the basics. For a right handed person you have to adopt the orthodox stance (left foot in front) which I'm not used to because of my Jeet Kune Do background. Jab, punch, hook, elbow, knee.
Then onto the bags. We would have to stop and do push ups every 20 minutes or so. This gets harder as you get more tired and its quite awkward with big gloves on. Ok so you're skipping, or shadow boxing, or doing bag work, or sit ups, and the big chiefs will call people up to the ring to do pad work.
After more push ups
I was gutted because everyone I went with had been up and I hadn't. Train near the ring area, and pretend you're not very good?? Anyways, I think Pom noticed I hadn't been up yet so she told one of the guys and soon it was my turn. A wee shame because by this time one of the helper guys had been feeding pads for 3 hrs and he just couldn't be bothered anymore. Now and again he would unconvincingly try and push me over or swipe my legs. But watch out because Freja's trainer swiped her straight off her feet!
There was some sort of structure to it but everyone just seemed to do their training then leave. There was no real cool down or anything. I would have loved to have attended for 5 days or so just to get into it, and get a real feel for it. Maybe next time.
1 session = 400 baht. Definitely do it!
Then take a rehydration drink, take a shower and go for a Thai massage.
No comments:
Post a Comment