Marnir

Hi Ling bah I just looked at flights and realised that during my planned visit the only direct flights go to bangkok, so in order to save some time and money I am planning to go there. Can you tell me a little more about Luktupfah? How big is the gym? What is the training regimen like? What is the ratio of thai fighters and farang?

I have hoped to go to thailand and train for quite a while now, and I have done a fair bit of reading to find out where you can find suitable gyms. A lot of articles talk about the difference between different cities, Bangkok is said to have better training than Phuket for example. However, I wonder how much things like that matter for those of us that are not very high level? I have trained on and off for a three years, because i enjoy the sport but never with any serious ambition to fight. I'm not a complete rookie, but I stil have lots of pretty basic things to learn and refine. With that kind of skill level, does it really matter much how many top fighters the gym has, since the trainers will still have tons to show me regardless? Some short info about me * I plan to go to thailand for a period of 2 weeks this summer * Not a beginner, but not high level either * Right now I'm not training muay thai because I have a time consuming job * I'm keeping in decent shape by visiting the gym though, and the month before I go I plan to run 5 km every day * My goal is just to improve technique, to get lots of technical sparring and rekindle my passion for the sport Bearing these things in mind, do you have any advice on what cities or types of gym I should look for?

I have pretty poor eyesight -2,5 and -3,5 and I use lenses when i train including sparring. They have come out a few times, but thats fine. I considered getting surgery to improve my vision, however when I told the clinic that i trained muay thai they recommended not using the regular treatment that fixes your eye in a few hours. That technique apparently makes your cornea more sensitive which is a risk when you are sparring afterwards. Instead they suggested another technique which basically removes the cornea and lets it grow back. That makes your pretty much blind for a week, and hurts quite a bit though, so i decided to pass on it and just keep sparring with my lenses in.

Gavin: I agree, you can certainly benefit from working out by yourself as well. Especially now that I get better coaching in class it will be a lot easier to know what to work on in my shadow boxing and on the bag. With only 3 scheduled sessions a week during the summer, I will try to squeeze in some running and bag work on top of that. Micc: That is true, I have found a lot of less experienced trainers don't know how to adapt their combinations to work for a south paw, so they will ask the pad holder to change stance instead. I personally find that to be a very bad idea, since I am mostly going to face orthordox fighters, so I will usually just adapt the combinations myself.

Thanks Michelle. A good gym makes all the difference, and I'm thankful that I have enough experience now that I can pick out the good ones from the bad. Seemingly small things like a well thought out warm up, or that elbows where included in the padwork combos (other gyms seem to leave elbows out for some reason), shows that they are legit. Also the atmosphere was very relaxed and welcoming. As a southpaw myeself I hope your new stance works out well for you.

Different kind of positivity/accomplishment here, but I feel really exited about it, so I will leave it here. I decided to test out a few other gyms since i felt my current one wasn't very strucutured in training. Yesteday I went to the biggest thai/kickboxingclub in the city. The classes where more structured, but there where almost 30 people on 1 trainer, basically too many people to get any personal guidance. Also, i quickly discovered that the mixing of kickboxing and thai meant that people there generally lacked a clinch game. Today i tried out another place. It was a smaller club, but it was headed by a thai fighter with nearly 200 fights under his belt and woman who is a former Swedish champion. I showed up for training, we where 8 people there, including the 2 trainers. I got so much more coaching than I am used too. I even got my 1 - 2 corrected. And the trainers joined in sparring as well. Getting tossed around by a 15 kg smaller thai is good fun. Only drawback is that they have slightly fewer trainings than some of the other places, but I expect to learn a lot more from these lessons, so I'm definitely switching gyms and looking forward to growing a lot faster at this new place.

Nice to see :) This forum is delivering some solid advertisment for Toddys. I think I may end up there in July because of this forum, and from reading your blog Emma. Either there, or Sinbi, but being in Bangkok is a big plus in my book. I don't want to get distracted by the classic tourist stuff, and also my job requires me to be able to return to Sweden within a day in case of an emergency, so being close to a big airport is very good. So maybe we will run into each other in a month or so!

Thanks for the input. I especially like Stephs point about needing the aerobic systems to be able to utilize the anaerobic ones throughout an entire fight. I'm also not really a fan of running, which is why i have prefered sprints. It takes shorter time, and during high intensity trainings, I have to focus, and thus don't get bored. My friend signed me up for one of these 10 km road races last month though, so now I have found some motivation to do longer distances as well, which i think has made a difference. Generally i think both have their place in training, but it's interesting to reflect on the proportions from a sports-science perspective.

It's pretty well known that all top nak muays run. But there are different ways of running, and they bring different benefits. Sprinting in short intervals seems to be more effective when it comes to building cardio than running longer distances at a lower pace. The more classic medium distance running builds endurance in the leg in a way that short intervals doesn't though. What way do you find most benefitial for muay thai practitioners, and why?

I used to train at a pretty small gym, with only 2 groups, beginners and the rest. The sparring was also fairly hard I have realised afterwards, so I would get consistently beat up, since almost everyone sparring had more experience than me. I moved towns and stopped training for a year, but got back in another gym a month ago. After training very frequently these past weeks I did some light sparring this saturday and found myself consistently landing a lot more than my opponents could hit me. My sparring partners where not very experienced, but it stil felt good to have the upper hand for once, and finding that a lot of the combinations I had drilled for the last month actually worked. =)

Thanks for the input Steph. I'm not super picky about my vegetarianism, especially not abroad, so I can live with a little fish sauce and such. But it's always nice to know what options are available.

Im a vegetarian, my issue is rather fighting to put on some weight, I seem to have pretty high metabolism. Working on it now, I have done it before so i know it can be done, but eating 6 times a day is quite a logistical challenge. For those of you living in Thailand, how easy or difficult is it to eat vegetarian in Thailand while training? I'm hoping to go at some point, and this is one of my bigger questions for the trip.