I’m on this beautiful island of Koh Samui, Thailand now. I live in a 3-bedroom villa with my GF. My work’s awesome, but I don’t really have any friends here, so I am trying to find ways to keep myself busy. Because with too much unstructured time, the demons come.
So, I’m in Thailand. The land of Thai Boxing, right? And I love martial arts. Have been doing Kempo Arnis for over 10 years. It’s a mix of Karate, self-defense, BJJ, Filipino stick fighting, MMA. I learned a lot, grew as a person and made many good friends. More than anything, it gave me the love of fighting. Not for the sake of hurting anyone, but for play.
“You wanna go to a Thai boxing class after work?” I ask my GF. She’s down. I start telling her to get ready at 4, so we’re on our motos by 4.10 and arrive by 4.20. We roll up to the gym. A banana street vendor next to us, palm trees on one side, and the road on the other. It’s an open area. A big ring area in the middle, tatami mats around. A roof. That’s it. It looks like somebody’s backyard, not a proper gym. But that’s exactly the trick with gyms. The more run down it looks, the harder people train.
There was one teacher, around his 40ties, missing half his teeth. Happy, welcomes us with the 5 English words he knows. His assistant took our money (we paid $10 each for the class). There were a few other people. Foreigners mostly. A mix of lean and killer looking, and soft and chubby. I guess I look like a mix of both now. There was also one Thai teenager and his Farang GF.
We start the class, rope skipping. Okay, I’ve done that. I start jumping, but the rope has lead inside, it’s heavy. My hands are burning after 2 minutes, but we keep on going. We do 10 min of this. I think I took a mini break about 10 times in between, for a few seconds. But I am stubborn. After the rest, I’d get back to it. My GF struggled more. She weighs half of what I do, and used the same skipping rope…
Then we start the warm up, which was standard and pretty boring, no climax here.
Then came something that never happened to me. The teacher put the bandages on for me. I felt this solemn vibe. I am just a visitor, and he attends to me, puts on the bandages perfectly to protect my wrists and fists. If there were some epic music with it, it could be an epic movie moment. But no music except sounds of rain, so I just said thank you and got to work.
We started to shadowbox. After a few minutes, the master of the gym comes and starts to teach me. He’s an ex champion, the gym is named after him. I know this is a big honor, so I do my best. I don’t know why he noticed me. Maybe because my skin’s really pale and I stand out a lot. Maybe because they know foreigners have money. Maybe (and I hope it’s this) it’s because they saw I can move and fight, but noticed some apparent technique errors. And couldn’t help himself but show me the way.
Now I’ve been doing hook kicks for more than 10 years. I know how to kick. I can kick hard. Yet in moments, he found ways to improve that. Of course different styles of martial arts will teach different techniques. But you can’t argue a hook kick with a Thai fighter. This is their bread and butter. So what he taught me is that my kick isn’t bad, but the backwards trajectory was wrong. I would kick with force, and then kind of drag the foot back in a broken pattern. When he kicked, the kick came from 1 fluid body motion (similar to me), but then the leg returned in a similar arc motion too.
I needed almost an hour to get it. It’s very hard to unlearn something once it’s drilled into you. But once I did? Man! I felt the power! My kicks were even faster, even stronger. This is a high level experience for you. Not only being able to do it yourself. But being able to spot exactly what the person you’re teaching is lacking. And finding ways to get it across to them. It’s art.
Anyhow, he showed me another thing or two about movement. And he taught me how to do elbow strikes. My technique for that was horrible. Elbow strikes are not really taught outside of Muay Thai. We did them a little in Kempo Arnis, but more the self-defense type, not the actual strike in sparring. Then he needed to go. Apparently he is studying Chinese and he has a big test soon.
And then I worked with the other teacher. Jab, Jab. Hook. Kick. Kick. More, more… I was giving it my all. And he wasn’t stopping. I think the freaking rounds were 5min, not the standard 3min. And the entire training was 120min. I was really tired but I pushed hard. And it was fun too. He knew how to use the mats, so when I kicked, it landed. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. It’s really loud (but fun) when a powerful kick lands.
Anyway… after I did slow gentle sparring with a French guy. He was a newbie so I needed to calm him before each round. The funny thing is, when inexperienced people get afraid, they punch hard. And then you’d have to punch hard, and then one of you will end up injured. No. Sparring in training is fun. You don’t punch hard. You are working on the technique, trying to find holes in the defense. And at the end of the day, both people should be totally fine.
Then we do a quick stretch and back home – I had a management call at 7PM. I was in a really good mood Monday eve, endorphins were kicking.
But then Tuesday. Tuesday was horrible. The pain in my calves was insane, I could barely walk. Super inflamed. And I couldn’t work like I usually do. I got tired fast and was in a pretty bad mood all day. This was just tired, my body (calves) were literally breaking down. I was peeing bright yellow all day. The only other such heavy training in the last few years I remember was with Mario Tomic and Adolfo in Mexico in 2020. I just followed what they did. And then got so destroyed and inflamed I literally got sick for a full week. Neon pee for a week lol.
The thing is, when muscles are hot, and when your mindset is strong, you can push hard. But when you cool down, the pain starts. Pushing this hard isn’t smart, because you progress slower overall. I hope I’ll be able to go back to the class on Friday… but might give it a full week too.
The mindfuck? This post is about Thai Boxing. But it translates to business and everyday life too. Importance of mentors, mindset, non-importance of appearance, getting injured. It all relates.
Anyway, drop me some algo love in the comments. Let me know if you liked it, if you want more of it. If there is a must do in Koh Samui, definitely LMK. And lots of love to all of you Kempo Arnis family.
If you’d like to read more stuff like this, I finally got a mailing list going on.
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