Oliver

For sure dude, at Numponthep, It's kinda in a back street behind the Channel 3 TV building, off Soi San Suk Sounds like a silly reason, but it's so great for the heat as there's a huge open bathtub size tank of purified water for everyone, - with a giant block of ice in it delivered every day. Never seen something that good in a gym before.

Much obliged!

Actually, come to think of it, anybody else notice how so many BJJ people have technical or computer day jobs? Bet that's why they have more memes. Plus there's more of them than ppl who go to Thai gyms. Dunno about America, but it feels like there are Gracie Bara gyms all over the place nowadays.

Helllloooo. Will be needing a place to stay for 6 months in Bangkok around the Thong Lo area and can't spend much, so any accommodation advice would be greatly appreciated. Looking to spend around 5,000B a month (or less if poss) and only want a small room with a shower, nothing fancy, no air con, no elevators or condo buildings etc - don't mind if it's the most basic possible thing. Also, am not able to sign a 1 year contract etc, and can't really speak Thai beyond counting to 10, and my trainers can't speak English. So would love to hear suggestions around that price bracket. If this is unrealistic then sleeping at the gym is cool.

Don't know how to edit the pics to put the funny text underneath... this done on a phone app or from the computer? Well. Day 1 of your face when your trainer shows you how to clinch and you got no idea what you doing, and you're about to be rag-dolled again.

if you had more fun in the one with more new people and more comfortable environment? Sounds like it would be a more enjoyable time training, and more likely to keep going back. But up to you.

Yeah for sure it's confusing advice, the try not to try thing. Kinda like when people in real life generally say, "Oh just be more self-confident". In your head you're thinking...wait...how do you *just be* more self-confident if you're not self-confident? If you're not... then you don't yet know what it would feel like if you were...so you got no frame of reference... so how can you instantly give yourself that new feeling without knowing what it feels like? Seems like a damn minefield. So is trying to be relaxed if you're not relaxed. We probably make ourselves less relaxed in the attempt to be more relaxed. Back in the day the sax player Charlie Parker used to say it's good to learn techniques & theories etc, but when the times comes, it's more important to forget all that stuff and 'just play'. Not that music and sports are in any way similar - they're not, but it virtually every area of life you get real seasoned pros coming out with these sayings. Kinda pseudo-clever jedi mind trick expressions that they were told themselves by the masters when they were new and didn't understand. Until way down the road, when the understanding just happened to them after a hell of a lot of non-understanding. Actually talking of non understanding, all of the above sounded way more coherent when it was in my head.

Yeah 8 is a lot.

How long were these combos? Lot of us forget or get the order wrong when its over 3 or 4 hits, totally normal.

Not just for shadow but also good for those hand weight things. Only doing 1, 2s but not in your stance, just neutral and flat, so only looking for upper body to fix this, the thing where the punch comes back in straight and quick to protect the head as the other one goes out to hit, back and forth etc, and check both sides for constant protection. Because punching was always my weakest thing. So nothing but weighted 1 2s for 5 min straight and make sure my sketchy punch comes back to sender. Every day, added up, it kinda helps.

Got the feeling he would have done it to whoever. But Eastern European trainers would do this too, for sure. Probably because, they don't care if you suck or how little you know, but if you do anything out of laziness or even look like it, that pisses trainers off more than anything.

Now that you put it that way, kinda makes sense. My other foreigner training partners were mostly Korean, Japanese or Chinese, so it was Google Translate friendships and hand signals. Sometimes Brazilian and French dudes but they didn't do the unsolicited advice.

Yeah that sounds fair enough on the touchey feely thing. Seriously never thought about it that way, it's probably from growing up taking ridiculously crammed trains and busses every day where you have your face rammed into a 3 day unshowered armpit for 45 mins straight. Kinda becomes normal....and maybe it shouldn't be. And the face slap with the Thai pad thing? Yeah it was thrown full throttle and without warning. But you just gotta accept it's your own fault, carry on, and show no facial reaction of being shocked or annoyed. Cuz if you do, then you're really fucked, and he'll keep pushing that button. Originally he showed how to hold hands further up in a higher guard, then did it at first and he was happy, then forgot to do it after fatigue set in, so he's like...OK I'm gonna make this dude pay for his laziness. Crack. After that? Never did that shit again. So you can't really argue with the guy, it worked.

Nah, you wouldn't react like that in a yoga studio. They have that whole hippy vibe. Ya know, peace & love, universal oneness, candles, pan pipe music, white people with dreadlocks. It's immediately obvious to you that you're not in any danger. Actually wait, whats the difference between getting touched by a yoga teacher and your trainer in the gym slapping you hard in the face with a thai pad if you drop your guard too much?

That's super normal in yoga though. Its legit, not meant to be creepy or molesty at all.

Yeah that's fucked up. 100%.

That's like... thinking about it / over analysing it way too much for me to comprehend. Isn't life hard enough without deliberately making it harder, and bringing it that level of negativity into your brain when you're doing what you love? But to be fair, that's fairly shocking that white people will come into your gym and preach to her after over 200 fights. Surely you just have to see somebody shadowbox or do 1 body kick to know if they're better than you..? Maybe our gyms are quite different, yeah. Like, not only did none of my trainers speak English, but neither did the other farang really. Only had my 1 Brazilian friend to talk to in almost a year in Bangkok, which was awesome tbh. It lets you off the hook if you're a quiet person who doesn't talk much anyway.

Not sure I understand - this older person doing the sensei-sim thing, is this a Thai or a farang? Only met a couple of white dudes over there who would chat shit to you constantly, & usually they wanted you to invest in their pyramid scheme or something after bestowing their great boxing knowledge. But like, sketchy characters who left fairly quick. As for the mansplaining thing... often what you're looking for you will find, whether it's there or not.

For sure this happens way more in Western gyms than in Thailand. What country did this happen to you in, just out of interest? Not a trainer, but out of pure guesswork? Might be the lack of training time & resources that makes this happen. 1 trainer and 40 people on the mat for a mere 1 hour session, basically means you get hardly any input from the teacher, so the 3 or 4 most experienced people in the room will - out of honest to God good intentions - try and help the new people in their first few weeks / months. Because somebody did it for them once. Which is nice of them - and to be fair, helped me out a tonne on my first day. But you also get it from people who suck and have douchebag attitudes, so yeah that's the frustrating part. Training in different European countries makes you realise that half the job is remembering who to never partner with again, who to never spar with again, and regularly position yourself on the far side of the mat from them so as not to be paired up. Sounds bitchy, but there it is. You guys often think this is 'mansplaining' but.... like...genuinely.... guys do this to each other more than they do it to girls. It's also a question of different people being wired to learn in totally different ways. Dunno how to prove it, just an instinct. But personally, always been totally incapable of learning anything by reading or listening to teachers give long winded speeches. The way a musician learns has always made more sense, you watch your teacher's movements, his finger mechanics, listen to the sound produced, then try to do it yourself. No reason for it to be more complicated than that.

Littewada would be really cool

Just don't go to a gym near a beach or anything too touristy that's full of of permanently hungover westerners and fancy new equipment with no Thai fighters. Those trainers are used to seeing people for 2, 3 weeks at a time and having a revolving door of fresh foreign customers. So there might be less personal care if the whole thing feels more transactional and short termist. Go anywhere else, like a regular part of the country, stay long term, one of any of the so many random gyms with predominantly young thai fighters training and living there, and maybe a few other foreigners dotted about. Trainers care about you way more in that context, and genuinely want to see you improve and win, and are good about getting you fights.

Super common though, happens all the time to guys and girls, of all weights. You get your fights cancelled all the time at the last minute, or get told to fight the night before when something opens up. Just gotta go with it. It's probably not trainers or gym owners deliberately trying to screw you.

Very tough to talk about without people getting pissed off. Like....OK, let's do this another way. Ya know how disgusting coffee usually tastes outside Europe, especially outside Italy? Every single tiny shithole cafe on a back alley corner in Italy does gorgeous, smooth tasting espresso with a beautiful crema for 1 euro or something. Like pretty much everywhere. There are other European countries that do it to a similarly high level as there is such a thing as European coffee culture. But Britain and the US.... 80% of the time (and that's being generous) you're given burned, overpriced, liquid dog shit in a paper cup. A lot of people are even delusional enough to think they know and appreciate what good coffee is, because they're ordering from a menu of 200 flavoured options with 5 different sizes written in 3 different languages. Or some will say stuff like, "yeah but yeah but yeah but.....umm.... there's like this cafe in this town in X country that actually does it amazing and imports their coffee beans from Italy and the owner actually learned his roasting technique in Naples etc, so there..." - OK that's all fine and good...but.... as soon as people start saying that kind of shit to defend their country's coffee they lose all perspective and don't realise they're talking about the exception.

For long term? Also factor in hospital money. You'll for sure get sick or injured, or both. Also bring a kilo of painkillers with you to save money on that side of things once there. Another thing that's worth doing is make up your own med kit. Gauze, pads, cotton balls, saline solution, voltaren, iodine, betadine, whatever you want.

wait wait wait, so those girls do that to other girls too and not just us?!? Damn