Day 1 – A fighter is born

Some days are not like all the others. Some days things happen that cause you to focus your efforts and start moving forwards as you know you should. Today was one of those days for me.

Nothing monumental or earth shattering happened today. No epic story of heroics or bravery. Just an overweight guy making the first few steps on the road to fitness that he has desired for so long.

Today was my first day attending classes at Tiger Muay Thai and I will be honest… It was hard! First off the lessons were 2 and a half hours long, which is a stretch to say the least. Secondly I attended class twice today.

Normally the classes I go to back home are either an hour or an hour and a half when I want a hard day so the change in pace was really noticed. Even the warm up to this class was tough. After stretching off and limbering up we went on some sort of never ending run around the room. I expected it to end after a couple of laps… 10 mins later I was ecstatic when the whistle was blown to stop running and start wrapping our hands. Never have I been so glad to actually start a workout!

Credit where credit is due, I have only been here a day but I can already tell the Trainers here at TMT know what they are doing and are good at what they do. I was worried before I got here that there would just be one instructor for the whole class and that it would then be us amateurs (I am in the beginner class) using pads together and not really having a clue. That is not the case at all. I am not sure exactly how many instructors there were in class today but if I had to put a number on it I would say at least 10, all lead my the stoic Mr Miyagi (I couldn’t make this shit up! He even looks like him and has the beard and head scarf and everything). For part of the class everyone is just following a single instructor and doing what they are saying mirroring punch for punch, kick for kick, elbow for elbow. Other instructors mingled among us spotting bad technique and correcting it before it became a habit. There may be a language barrier at time but something transcend language (plus it was usually just not having arms high enough which is quite easy to explain with a few well place prods).

After the group mimicking session it moves into partner work with today being clinching and knees. They tweak what is taught in the morning and afternoon classes slightly so if you attend both you have an advantage about what you are doing but there are still new things to learn. Once we completed about 20 mins of partner work clinching it move onto pad time with the instructors who seemed to appear out of the woodwork and swarm the mats. There were a lot of them, but still more students so we rotated and shared bags and pads. I really enjoyed this style of teaching as I first thought it would be really difficult to get anytime with an instructor on pads given the shear number of students in the class but our teaching swarm came to the rescue and delivered what turned out to be a brilliant class.

After the second class I felt dead but accomplished with myself just a little for actually being here and doing it. It seems so far from the “I’m totally going to do that one day” dreams of the past that have finally come to fruition. My triumphant walk home however was a slow one. My legs have kind of given up on me now and I had to make an improptue stop at Chalong Reggae to get some chicken and rice to fuel the rest of my 5 min walk home. At 50 TBH (about a quid) though I cant really argue too much!

Oh one other thing. On my travels today I popped into a shop for a drink and decided to get a Red Bull… or at least what I think was a Red bull. It had the same logo and information as the drink we have back home, but trust me, the Thai’s were not messing about with their version! “Carbonated, I think not. Get rid of that extra water too” was probably the conversation the product manager had when it was imported here. Here Red Bull comes in little glass bottles and is closer to a syrup than a drink. It tastes pretty much the same as if you opened a can and left it on the side for a few days, then boiled it off for a little while to get down to the raw ingredients. To be honest I enjoyed it for its coldness and flatness but it did feel like pure sugar directly into my veins. Hopefully I get the energy boost I need!

Probably going to need another just to make it through tomorrow.

– Dan