I train in a gym in the West with 5 Thai trainers. Not surprisingly we all do the Wai Kru from our first novice bout - our trainers will come up with unique Wai Krus for each student, which has elements of their trainer's style, as well as the fighter's personality. (Yes, we are spoiled rotten).
For someone like me, who gets stage fright badly, I am allowed to do a basic Wai Kru, which has served me relatively well for my last 13 fights. This is a basic 2-minute version. Our pro fighters who enjoy doing the Wai Kru tend to do longer and more elaborate Wai Krus (up to six minutes), while the novice fighters tend to do a basic quick one similar to mine.
We understand that in the West, not every fighter will do the Wai Kru. We had 13 fighters compete in a show last year, and none of their opponents wished to do the Wai Kru. To save time, our Thai head trainer suggested we do the Wai Kru in batches of 4 or 5 prior to one of the fights. This worked really well.
We have had students from other gyms approach us to ask about purchasing monkols and prajads, and saying that while they wished to learn more about the culture behind their sport, their Western trainers did not really encourage it. In that case, if you wished to learn the Wai Kru from a different source and to do it for yourself, your opponent, and the cultural aspects, then why not - even if your teacher is YouTube.
If your trainer can't respect this, perhaps you should reconsider whether your gym's beliefs align with your own.
