A Very Geeky Private At Dragon

So, as mentioned back here, midway through my Tiger experience, I was feeling a bit frustrated. The hefty conditioning:technique ratio was killing my attendance, and leaving my questions about form unanswered.  Overall progress was slow, to say the least.

By the last week, Andy had been promoted to the Advanced class, and in all fairness reported back that the technical content was more focussed in those sessions.

The intensity had once again stepped up a level (20 minute clinch rounds for example) but there was a much smaller attendance, and a definite shift from “just do something fast” to “make sure it’s right as well”.  So it may well be that Tiger training really kicks in at the higher levels (there is also a Fighter class) and they just go through the motions with the beginners.

I didn’t actually do any Muay Thai at Tiger in those last three days, so we’ll never know if I would have got bumped up too. When I asked Andy how he thinks I would have got on in the Advanced sessions, the consensus is that technically I would have been fine, but sparring might have been a bit hairy (I’m well out of the sparring side of things, and still prone to eye-shutting, back-turning and the like).  Anyway, given a few more weeks, maybe it might have sorted itself out. But as I tend to lack confidence in my ability anyway, and being simultaneously clobbered by a pro fighter might not have helped that, I decided to take a different tack.

Fern House is just around the corner from Dragon Muay Thai and as a consequence we normally walked past their gym a couple of times a day.

It’s much smaller, but seemed way more personal. With a bit of spare cash left over, I decided to splurge 500TBH (about £11) on a private.

As it happened, it turned out to be 600TBH (about £13) but it was probably the best money I could have spent at the time. The woman in the office issued me a coupon and told me to come back on Sunday at 4pm for a session with Rolex.

Rolex has been training Muay Thai since about the age of six, and has, by his own admission, had something like 500 fights.  Given my demeanour at this point was about as threatening as a week-old kitten, his experience was about to be put to the test.

What we worked on will sound deathly dull to most of you. There were no spinning, jumping, stunt-style moves here. It was basic, basic stuff – walking backwards and forwards, jabs, cross, single elbows, kicks etc – but analysed and corrected every single time. And weirdly, it was exactly what I wanted.

Anyone listening (thankfully being Sunday, few people were around) would have heard something along the lines of:

[WHACK]

“Stop leaning back”

[WHACK]

“Don’t jump into it”

[WHACK]

“Move your hips”

…and the like, for 60 minutes (interspersed with some water and massages, which, having the inhibited nature of the British, I found mildly awkward).

I discovered a multitude of tiny flaws which I have doubtless had for years, and which I now know to focus on.  Stuff like stepping and then punching, rather than bundling it all up together. 

By the end of it (right after 100 situps) I felt like I had worked, but in a smarter way.

I had things to go away and practice, I knew what I was doing wrong, and at least theoretically how to put them right. Plus I’d really enjoyed myself.

We were leaving for Cambodia a couple of days later, so I couldn’t stack up any extra sessions at Dragon, but we’re hopefully returning to Thailand in March, and I’m definitely factoring more privates into the training equation.

We Go Up A Level…Aka The Intermediate Muay Thai Class At Tiger

Sure enough, after a couple more beginners sessions with Mr Miyagi (coincidentally almost  carbon copies of the first lesson, complete with infidelity tales) we got bumped up to the Intermediate level.

It’s not like a friendly graduation thing, the trainer literally accosts you during the warmup, frogmarches you round the corner, and deposits you on the mat of the new class. Anyway, we were promoted.

The Intermediate class runs roughly in the same format as the Beginners one, with “runs” being the operative word.

We were hoping that the get fit onslaught would drop and the technique-finessing element rise in honor of our new status – we swiftly found it was just more intense all round. 

As a swift numerical breakdown:

1) Running. Of course. Heels, knees, arm swinging, all that jazz.

      2) Stretching, and a chance to look at your sweaty, grimacing face in the mirror.

3) Wraps on (nothing makes you feel like a lady more than having someone wrap your hands for you. A marriage proposal perhaps), gloves on, and then partner-based combination drills. Again, your partner is largely picked for you – you’ll understand who you’ve been matched with because the krus will point wildly and occasionally just shove you in the right direction.

      4)  Shadow boxing. Works a bit like X Factor, they watch you and decide which trainer will take you on the pads for the next bit.

5) Three rounds of padwork (we’re guessing they were about five minutes each), interspersed with twenty press-ups in between. As before, how this goes largely depends on who you get as a trainer – one guy helped tidy up my narrow stance, another just yelled “20 left kicks, 20 right kicks, 20 left kicks, 20 right kicks,” continuously at me, followed by, “You smoke cigarettes?” (I don’t) when I gave him the “I am not enjoying this in any way" face.

      6) Three fiveish minute rounds on the bags, interspersed with 20 press-ups.  Often with mandatory continuous jumping knees, and shouts of “more power, more POWER” as a backdrop.

7) Three rounds of sparring.  At this point most people will be able to have a go at sparring (the beginners class housed a few non-starters on that front) – Andy’s end of the room was speckled with more technical, fluid ability (and a few “win at all costs” aggressive types), my side of the mat looked somewhat more awkward and ill-timed.

      8) 30 minutes of lactic acid inspiring fitness drills. Often with a partner – could be continuous kicks, continuous press-up variants, split-lunging jumping stuff, or hopping on one leg back and forth across the room. Whatever it is, it will burn like a mother (bear in mind this is not generally a point in the class that you wish to embrace cardio).

      9) 300 situps and 200 pressups.

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are “Clinch Days”, which means you skip the shadow boxing but get two ten minute rounds of continuous clinch sparring instead, followed by laps around the outside of the gym.

In terms of the fitness, and this is a personal thing here, I found it problematic. By this point we were taking two bottles of water (one frozen cold, one filled with rehydration salts, which are sold everywhere on the street) to the class, which certainly helped. I was also taking magnesium supplements to help with muscle recovery. But it’s no secret that I’m not of optimum fight age, and I found that 2.5 hours at such intensity was too long, or at least too long to recover enough to train again the next day.

So, despite having fantasised about training twice daily all through January (particularly whilst stuffing my chops at Christmas), what actually happened involved quite a lot of time out, yoga sessions and massage before I could take on another high intensity stint.

For me, a schedule where the technique is split away from the conditioning elements (perhaps in back to back sessions that you can opt in or out of) might have been more workable in terms of everyday training.

And again, from a very personal perspective, I’ll admit I didn’t find these group classes the quickest way to fine tune my technique.

As mentioned a couple of posts ago, I already had some basic Muay Thai knowledge, gleaned from various sources over the years. But whilst I can theoretically string together combinations of basic punches, I am painfully aware that my form looks like that of gibbon full of Red Bull.  So yes, I need some definite sparring practice to find out if those combinations are impractical, but I also need someone to take me aside and say things like, “What’s with these wildly flapping elbows?” “Stop looking off into the middle distance” and “You’ll break your hand if you keep hitting things like that”.

Tiger teach hundreds upon hundreds of folk a week, and the machine-line nature of their business, coupled with the large class numbers, means it’s really hard to build any kind of ongoing training relationship with a singular trainer.

Perhaps if I’d attended on a more continuous basis (see the paragraph above), or bought in to a 10 class privates package, some kind of rapport might have developed. There were certainly a couple of trainers who volunteered advice whilst training (Andy maintains I got roughly ten times more interest than him, on account of my feminine charms).

But, and it pains me to break the hearts of Tiger aspirants across the globe, those were the noteworthy ones.

And in general, there were just as many who looked, well, a bit bored, with teaching hapless farangs.

Three weeks in and the ratio of broken body:learning wasn’t quite working for me.  It was time to rejig my training plans again…

Living On Tiger Street

I can’t even begin to pronounce the name of the street that Tiger is stationed on. Heck, I’m not even sure which bit is the street name. 

Here’s how the address is listed on Tiger’s website: 

7/6 Moo 5 Soi Tad-ied Ao Chalong
Muang Phuket
Thailand
83100 

Anyway, as I said earlier, the general area is filled with at least three major Muay Thai camps – Tiger, Dragon and Phuket Top Team. 

It’s also crammed to the rafters with differing levels of accommodation – from uber-basic (I presume, I didn’t venture into anyone’s crib to inspect closely) on-site rooms, to luxury hotels like Cocoville, The One and Signature. 

The cheapest options come in at around 4500THB (£96) a month, and the swishest about 24,000THB (£514), with a bit of variation depending on whether it’s high or low season (January is pretty much the highest point in the calendar). 

Now obviously £500 odd quid between us is pretty reasonable for top-end digs, and coming from a flatshare that cost me alone around £1,000 a month, the tendency is to rush right in with a credit card. If we were on a shorter holiday, say two weeks, I would have been holed up ordering room service 24/7. 

But of course our travels are clocking in at around 6 months in total, and we’re wringing every last penny out to make them last longer. So we took a browse through the mid-price options and came across Fern House (around 18,000THB/£385 for a couple staying a month). 

Handily, given Fern House only has nine rooms in total, it seems very few people know about the place. 

Around the third time I answered the “Where are you staying?” question accurately and saw blank expressions in return, I defaulted to “next door to Cocoville”. 

However, quite a few of the rooms are booked up by return visitors, so it pays to contact them well in advance (and directly, they have to pay commission to Tiger if bookings come in through the gym). 

Stylewise, it’s a place with relatively scant furniture and adornments, but those that are included are aesthetically pleasing, in a rustic wood and concrete kinda way. 

As someone whose obsessive-compulsive disorder inspires regular cleaning, straightening and binning sessions, this triggered way fewer neurotic outbreaks than an overstocked mishmash of cheap and nasty chairs, tables and fridges.

And given I generally pass out pretty early and don’t drink much, being 5-10 minutes walk away from camp also minimised my late-night interactions with young fighters who may be enjoying a beer or six and a girl from Patong. 

Impromptu mum-style lectures are rarely appreciated.  

Aside from the décor, Fern House had a couple of other great things going for it. 

1) A pool. With jacuzzi jets and largely no-one else in it (only nine rooms, you see?) 

Training for a couple of hours at a time, in 30 degree heat and humidity, really brings out the sloth in a girl or boy. 

Andy even took his Kindle in (it makes me wince every time I look at this picture). 

2) Tanja. As the main face of the hotel, Tanja is about as helpful and enthusiastic as it’s possible to be without spontaneously combusting. She’s on hand to offer you free bananas in the morning, patiently teach Thai phrases or turn around laundry in a matter of hours. 

To say she goes an extra mile is an understatement – when we couldn’t find a scooter hire place with a single bike left, Tanja popped next door and asked a friend if she could lend us hers. She loves a good chat (I now know quite a lot about her family setup, career history, financial planning and romantic aspirations) and her personality really made Fern House a homely place to stay. 

We have of course done the Facebook befriending thing and I hope I get the chance to return one day. 

And no, it's not a funky perspective thing, she really is that tiny. We gave her an Magnum lolly when we left in an attempt to fatten her up though.

Aside from our hotel base, the area around Tiger is…well, somewhat surreal. 

Business and tourism are pretty much based solely around the fight crowd, who catwalk their gym-branded t shirts up and down the road (the ones saying “Fighter” are particularly popular). 

In the month we stayed there, I only saw the home crowd change out of fight wear once, ironically for the “BBQ Beatdown” event at Tiger (I think some romancing might have been on the cards that evening). 

The street's inhabitants are also approximately 80% male, and heavy on testosterone. As a woman, I felt a bit like a misplaced kitten in a pack of marauding lions – not exactly prey, but a little surplus to requirements. 

And the ratio of Farang to Thai folk seems similarly saturated, with almost everyone in the latter group working in the service industry – whether dolling out food in restaurants, washing or drying gym wear, building new hotels, tattooing Westerners with tribal ink, or recommending aloe vera, mosquito repellent and prescription grade painkillers in the pharmacies. 

Couple that with the fact that every restaurant offers a comprehensive English/American menu alongside local fare (Andy went on a quest to find the best breakfast fry-up) and it’s like Thailand without too much of the Thai side of things. 

Less “authentic travel experience” and more like a steroid-amplified real-life and ongoing episode of “The Ultimate Fighter”…

Mister Miyagi And The Infamous Stick…aka the Beginner’s Muay Thai class at Tiger

So, as previously mentioned, Tiger is probably the biggest and most well-known gym in the area, with thousands upon thousands of wannabe Chuck Norrises flooding through the doors every year. Along with a few real life MMA fighters, who have chosen to set up shop (or fight camp as the case may be) there for a prolonged period.

There is also a third group of folks – those who have chosen to literally sweat off the pounds and attend the camp for weight loss.

Anyway, the point that I’m making is that it’s a very mixed bag. Which is doubtless reflected in the lower level Muay Thai classes.

Now, Andy and I have a bit of “kicking and punching” experience behind us. I did a couple of years of kickboxing/JKD about a decade ago, and Andy spent his teens and early twenties doing Shorin Ryu Karate. Both of us have dabbled in various Muay Thai and MMA classes since.

But as our first Tiger class held a very real potential for getting smashed in the chops, we pegged ourselves low and went to the Beginners session.

The class was big, very big. And whilst some folk might be more physically blessed than others, there’s literally no way of telling who can do stuff properly, and who’s a distinct liability to themselves and others. Or is just there to work off the last chocolate bar they ate at Christmas.

So they’ve come up with a format that collectively covers off all bases:

1) Running. Sweet baby Jesus, these folk love to make you run. 30 minutes at the beginning of each class, round and round in a circle. Ditto sideways galloping, running with high knees, running whilst punching and anything else that gets the heart rate up.

2) Stretching. Partially to limber up, partially to stop people having a cardiac arrest after all that running.

3) Copying moves in a mirror. Rows upon rows of students doing jabs, crosses, slips, elbows and blocks like the instructor at the front.

4) Partner drills. Trying out a couple of combos with another person.

5) Bagwork. Trying out some of your new moves a bit harder on something that shouldn’t smack you back.

6) Padwork with the instructors. Depending on which one you get, this might involve three rounds of flirting and “I’ve been to England” type chat, or someone trying to punish you for all the sins of humanity.

7) Sparring. Largely split into three groups – people they think can be trusted to fight together, women and then stragglers that don’t fit in either group.

8) Strange half hour break where chief instructor Mr Miyagi forces everyone to introduce themselves and their country of origin, before telling a story about his wife’s infidelity. Allows everyone to get their hopes up that the physical pain is winding down, whilst simultaneously getting eaten by mosquitos.

9) Getting our asses up and doing endless (well a few hundred) jumping knees, front kicks and elbows into a bag.

10) Enforced walking knees, round the room, with the promise of being beaten with a stick by Mr Miyagi if you put your heels down.

This is a shot of Mr Miyagi during a quieter, more pensive moment - admittedly it's a lousy photo, but I didn't want to risk incurring his wrath.)

11) Watching someone get beaten with a stick.

12) Three hundred situps and one hundred press-ups. Sometimes the trainers will simultaneously hit you in the stomach with medicine balls or pads for extra misery.

In total, the whole shebang takes 2.5 hours, and is offered six days a week, morning (8am) and afternoon (4pm). Overall it’s a bit like a kilogram of pick n mix sweets – there’s something for everyone and most people feel thoroughly sick by the end.

The downside is unless you get a particularly diligent instructor (more on this point later) there’s no real chance to polish the finer technical elements – the onus is on movement (of all kinds, particularly running) and entertainment (the “authentic” Muay Thai experience, complete with beatings) perhaps more than finesse in execution.

I’m not going to claim to have the “key” to this class – suffice to say by the end of it I had drained the bottle of water, and was bright red with two ripped up toes (tip: tape them before the session) and everlasting cramp in one calf.

Now if only they’ll promote me to the Intermediate level…