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…

A Tentative Trip To Tiger Muay Thai

The morning after our mega-journey we were a tad worse for wear.

Going through a-day-and-a-half’s worth of time zones had left Andy looking crumply-faced, and me under a pile of tissues.

Suffice to say, neither of us felt up to having our mugs smashed in.

So we did the next best training thing, and headed down to Tiger Muay Thai to enrol.

For those that aren’t up to speed with the area, it’s based around one road.

Tiger is up one end (about a third in) and Dragon is up the other (about a third from that end). Somewhere round the corner is Phuket Top Team.

The rest of the area is comprised of restaurants, hotels and hostels, scooter hire places (sometimes these three services are all housed under the same roof), pharmacies, tattoo parlours and a reassuring (under the circumstances) ambulance station.

Anyhow, Tiger is by far the biggest gym in the vicinity, looking roughly 5-10 times the size of Dragon down the street.

It’s also, if we’re honest about things, probably the most well-known gym in terms of tourist trade. Your Muay Thai aficionado may well nod approvingly if you’ve trained at Dragon, but pretty much every bloke in the bar will know what you’re on about when you mention Tiger. But more on those differences later.

So why bring it up?

Well, because it sorta explains what happened when we hit up the registration office.

Whether it’s down to the guaranteed rate at which folk rock up begging to enrol, book privates and buy the Tiger-branded t-shirt, or whether the ladies housed within had just had their fill of farangs, the service was pretty much non-existent.

In the land of smiles, we were hoping to be walked through the signup, hocked a bit of training gear, and then guided in the direction of the classes (it’s a big place).

Instead someone begrudgingly took our passports and money (approx. £217 each for the month once credit card fees kicked in), handed us a schedule and we were out on our proverbial arses.

So far, so perfunctory. But, somewhat ironically given the speed in which we’d been pushed out of the office-cum-shop, we actually needed to buy quite a bit of stuff before we could start training.

According to the Tiger site, 16oz gloves are compulsory for sparring, so both of us had budgeted enough to buy them on the ground.

Andy needed shinpads to protect his delicate pins, and we were both up for some wraps and Thai shorts to look the part.

The YouTube vid for Tiger showed a well-stocked selection, whilst UFC veteran Brian Ebersole assures us they have "everything you need for your trip to Thailand".

Heck, shopping is my second favourite sport, so I figured perusing the range of Thai Boxing gear in Thailand, in a shop that could even order stuff in on request, would be an almost orgasmic experience.

As it happened, the only 16oz gloves on the shelf that day were Tiger-branded ones, and the salesman’s chair was empty.

So we headed over the road to Fightlab, where the functional (if not in any sense extensive) selection awarded us two pairs of Fairtex gloves (2100THB/£45 each, Fairtex is a premium brand with a higher price point), two pairs of shorts (Fairtex ones 1200THB/£25, non-Fairtex ones 700THB/£15) and a couple of pairs of own-brand handwraps (250THB/£5 each).

Here we are modelling our his-and-hers haul.

Andy snuck back to the Tiger shop and picked up his Fairtex shinpads the next day for 1700THB/£36.

As I skimmed over before, the Asiana baggage allowance was stringent, and my gloves in the UK are a measly 14oz, so I’m not going to bang on too much about the end cost of our protective swag.

It is worth factoring into your budget though if you’re planning – in a country where dinner costs a couple of quid, laying out nearly £300 each in an afternoon smarts a bit.

Anyway, we were finally set for our Muay Thai date with destiny, or at least with a room full of trainers and some other sweaty folks. Hands up...

The Atos Attitude

Three days after landing in San Diego, we took our first class at Andre Galvao’s Atos academy. We had made a visit to 4425 Convoy Street on the Saturday, but that was to mainly gawp in awe and trepidation, before scurrying back to the Suites to speculate what it would be like to train there.

My own relationship with martial arts, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in particular, has been up and down over the years. After some hard-partying in my teens and twenties, I fell into kickboxing around 2004, during a two-week pre-holiday gym binge. I’ve always been entranced by contradictions, and relatively arsey to boot, so when the instructor seemed less than thrilled to have a girl in his class, it only made me want to prove him wrong. And at a statuesque 5’7’’, making my body stronger, fitter and athletically capable seemed more achievable (and mentally healthy) than the size-zero aesthetic championed by all the women’s classes.

Over the years I’ve felt a little chuckle every time someone asks what I do in my free time. I enjoy seeing the shock on their faces when they realise that the woman in front of them chooses to roll around on the floor, grappling with a variety of men and their sweat, for relaxation. And the day that I got my purple belt, back in 2011, was one of my proudest achievements. But with obsession comes a whole heap of heartache, and there have been some definite slumps over the past four years of BJJ training.

As anyone who does it knows, Jiu Jitsu is hard, progress is slow, and your ego and body take a pounding. On a day where you beat the odds (being female, 10 or 20kg smaller and a decade older than anyone in the class) it feels great. But after a run of weeks or months where you’ve been smashed into the mat and pinned down by complete beginners who have zero official technique to their name, it can feel pretty lousy. The black dog of “who are you kidding?” kicks in, swiftly followed by “you really should have started this when you were younger” and “everyone’s wondering why you’re wearing a purple belt”. If anything is going to mess with your flow and rolling, it’s being caught in a cycle of introspection. But, and this is where BJJ is a cruel mistress, whilst walking away will temporarily alleviate the embarrassment, long-term you will miss it. ’50 Shades of Grey’ can take a hike, this is sado-masochism at its very finest.

And this is, for better or worse, where I find myself on this trip. Since last summer my mat time has been seriously sketchy, my technique is rusty, and my body could do with an overhaul. In terms of timing, only a lunatic would decide to embark on a five-month BJJ sabbatical. Whether it’s my body or sanity, something looks likely to break before Christmas.

Here we are on the first morning of training. F*ck knows why I am smiling.

Andre Galvao is a multiple world champion. His wife, Angelica, is a world champion. A quick glimpse through the internet confirms that most of the folk on the mat are competing, and pretty much all of them seem to be winning. It’s no lucky accident.

The first class, where we focus on back control, is relentless, precise, and nearly two hours long. We do one position, over and over, flipping between drilling it (for two minutes) and specifically sparring it (for five) for six rounds. Note, I did not say flipping between drilling, sipping drinks, chatting about our weekends and sparring. It might be fiendishly hot, you will certainly be fantasising about the water cooler with the fervour of a Pattinson fan at a Twilight premiere…but until Andre decides it is time for a break, you stay on the mat, and you work. Hard and with zero excuses. We finish off with five rounds of non-specific sparring. There is a distinct lack of dickishness or egotism, but once again, the intensity is up there at competition level. Your partner will smile at you, but once you touch hands, you may as well be in the Mundials.

Our second BJJ class of the week, on Wednesday, confirms the same level of precision and relentless exertion. Format-wise we drill the same trio of De La Riva moves continuously for around 45 minutes, before dividing into groups of three, with one person on the bottom and the other two jumping in to attack for nine minutes at a time. Overall, it’s another two hours. At one point I get kneed in the eye and quickly realise that stopping to feel sorry for myself just isn’t an option. Even more so, I am embarrassed to have sworn out loud in front of the class, and manage to cap it through the next couple of eye jabs and scrapes with a bit more dignity and restraint.

A peculiar kind of ‘luxury’, I have two amazing brown belt women kicking my ass. Angelica Galvao is the Pan American Champion 2012, Abu Dabi World Pro Trials Champion 2012, Houston Open Champion 2012 and bagged third place in the 2012 World Championships brown belt division. That’s if my research skills serve me correctly, she’s way too polite to tell me directly, though her incessant pressure, aggression and strength would seem to rule out any element of doubt. Chelsea Bainbridge-Donner, the other brown belt, has, according to her blog, been training BJJ for circa 12 years. That’s about eight more than me, and in Atos years, about a lifetime. Peculiarly, these facts comfort me as I am wristlocked into oblivion.

The Atos academy is supported by a fitness studio, Suples, next door. Having sampled the delights of Joint Mobility*, Bulgarian Bag and a women’s conditioning class, I can confirm that Suples is run to the same exacting degree as the BJJ side of things.

Ex navy SEAL Stephen Nave and conditioning obsessive Maurizio Tangari are perpetually on hand to correct every last detail of your technique, all of the time, whether you want them to or not. Their nurturing brand of sadism translates quite often into ‘motivational’ shouting, which is the same as normal shouting, just with slogans on the wall.

The ceiling might read “Be someone special” but they should probably add “someone whose body burns like napalm” in brackets at the end.

The upside is that the studio has the kind of fitness toys that a martial artist dreams about – bone dummies, normal dummies, bars, bags, ropes, kettlebells, soft kettlebells, cycley-wheely things – and the drills are precisely tailored to mirror fighting movements (no running machines or wide stanced press-ups here).

The downside is that every single one of those toys will be used to torture you past limits you never imagined you had.

In the past week, I’ve regularly gone from “I’m just getting back into it, and I’ll take it at my own pace” through “how on earth do I control this bag/weight/rope whilst speeding up yet again”, “I’m not sure how much more I’ve got”, “I haven’t got the energy to control my face anymore”, “I’m gazing into the abyss of muscle failure/cardiac arrest”, and beyond, all whilst being yelled at.

On one particular occasion I wept silent tears onto the mat as my arms failed to complete a punishment push up. The shouting continued. Being good at something is cue only for a heavier weight, or increase in speed or technique. Even Andre gets shouted at.

Atos has a drinks machine, containing a range of energy-type beverages. Post workout or BJJ session, you will gaze into this machine, searching for an elixir to heal all misery. Nothing will help you enough.

One week in, and I can safely say, there is nothing comfortable about this kind of training. Mentally and physically it will break you. There is a very strong chance of Post Training Stress Disorder. But in an odd way, I console myself with the thought that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. And (as I sit coated in Tiger Balm and aching in more ways that I thought possible) suddenly the idea of heading back onto the mat with a big white belt seems more manageable. I’m proud of myself for surviving. And if next week I last ten minutes longer before I cry silent tears into the exercise abyss, I’ll call that progress.

(*it still hurts. Think forcing your joints into mobility with a blend of mental and physical persuasion.)