Jump to content

Review of Sumalee Boxing Gym


Recommended Posts

Background: 

I trained at Sumalee Boxing Gym for 2 weeks. I also lived onsite. 

 

Overall impression (tl/dr): Good for women; good for beginners; good if you want a 'one stop shop' (everything you need is in the gym); not so good for more experienced practitioners. 

 

Muay Thai Training:

The training is decent but can be improved. Rounds are only 3 minutes long with 1 minute rest in between. In between rounds of pad work/heavy bag, you are expected to do 10 pushups/situps/squats. 

A typical morning session lasts 90 minutes (7:30-9am) and will usually have this structure: 

- 15 minute skipping/jumping on tires

- Stretching

- Wrapping hands

- Shadowboxing (supervised - the trainer will correct your technique)

- 3 rounds of pads with trainers 

- 3 rounds of heavy bag (unsupervised - all the trainers are on pad duty)

- Conditioning exercises (sit ups, repetition of basic technique)

- Stretching

A typical afternoon session lasts 2 hours (4-6pm). The routine is similar to the morning session, except there are 3 rounds of light sparring before pads/heavy bag and there are more conditioning exercises. The sparring is supervised in the sense that the coaches will make sure you don't get hurt. However, they won't be correcting your technique between rounds. 

Overall, I found this structure to be just OK. On the one hand, there are plenty of coaches (2:1 or 3:1 student to teacher ratio) and they are friendly people. They are also very well versed in dealing with beginners and will even go so far as to wrap your hands for you. However, on the more negative side, I feel like there is too little emphasis on technique. For example, most coaches do not correct your form during pad work. There is also no standard block of time dedicated to teaching technique - on 2 occasions, we learnt how to catch  a kick and counter but that was it. Furthermore, there is no clinching and most students are complete beginners (they come for the Yoga) - the latter means you really have to hold back when sparring with them. There are 2 sponsored fighters at the gym (1 male, 1 female) but they barely interact with the students beyond a standard 'hi'.  

Due to the lack of technical instruction during group classes, I highly recommend you do some privates on the side. I did 6 while I was there (700 baht/private, 3600 baht/6 privates) and that's where the trainers really shine. The trainers were all once well-experienced fighters, ranging from having 300+ fights (Keng) to 30+ fights (Na), and will happily work on fine tuning anything you want. They will spar with you, clinch with you, teach you strategy - all with patience and in a totally safe/fun environment. I personally recommend Keng as he is the most experienced and he really breaks everything down very, very clearly to you. 

Overall, its clear to me that the trainers know their stuff and are passionate about what they do. It is a shame the group training itself is so watered down.

 

Facilities:

The gym itself has 2 rings, a general matted area and heavy bags. On the good side, the gym is cleaned regularly and is kept very tidy. They also have new flooring which is nice. On the not so good side, out of all the heavy bags, I was surprised to find that only one was a full length one. Others were much shorter which means you can't practise your low kicks on them. I also found the bags to be filled with very hard material - to the point where I could never go beyond 30-40% on them. The gym does have gloves and shin pads you can borrow - however, most of the gloves probably need to be replaced as there are holes in them (often near the palm area) and they stink.   

Outside of MT, the gym also offers Yoga classes once a day. I am a complete novice to Yoga but I tried a couple of classes and they were pretty good. The instructor Rhian is very nice, you get plenty of instruction and it is a relaxing experience. 

There is also a pool on site, a pool table and scooters for rent. There is a pro shop as well which has everything you need for MT - from handwraps/mouthguards to gloves/shinpads to keyrings. The pro shop charges prices comparable to my home country though (e.g. a pair of shorts starts from 1200baht).  

 

Accommodation:

Accommodation is basic but kept very clean. 

 

Food: 

There is an onsite restaurant which sells both western and thai food. The food is pretty good and almost of restaurant quality. The wait staff are also very friendly and there are (a few) vegetarian choices. However, if you arent on a meal plan, ordering a la carte is expensive with most dishes costing anywhere between 5-10 USD. 

Due to the price, most of the students will instead go to Nanas around the corner. You can get a dish and a drink for 48baht there. 

 

Camp Location: 

The gym is in a non-touristy area of Phuket. This is good if you want to train without any distractions. This is bad though if you want to do any sight seeing. There is a convenience store directly across the gym which sells basic amenities (washing powder, shower gel etc.) and you can walk 25-30 minutes each way for massages/7-eleven/phamacy but everything else requires a taxi. 

 

Safe for women/solo travellers? 

Very. The trainers are prohibited from making any kind of unwanted advances and the gym is very safe at all hours. There are also a lot of women training there (I'm talking 50-55%) and most students are solo travellers. Gunn, Sun, Lynne and Rhian all understand English and will regularly check in to make sure you are doing ok. 

 

Hope you enjoyed my review!

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Most Recent Topics

  • Latest Comments

    • "He who does not know how to read only sees the differences. For him who knows how to read, it all comes to the same thing, since the sentence is identical. Whoever has finished his apprenticeship recognizes things and events, everywhere and always, as vibrations of the same divine and infinitel sweet word. This does not mean that he will not suffer Pain is the color of certain events. When a man who can and a man who cannot read look at a sentence written in red ink, they both see the same red color, but this color is not so important for the one as for the other."   A beautiful analogy by Simone Weil (Waiting for God), which especially in the last sentence communicates how hard it is to discuss Muay Thai with those who don't know how to "read" its sentences. Yes, I see the effort. Yes, I see the power. Yes, I even see the "technique"...but this is like talking about the color of sentences written out at times.
    • from Reddit discussing shin pain and toughening of the shins: There are several factors, and people create theories on this based on pictures of Muay Thai, but honestly from my wife's direct experience they go some what numb and hard from lots of kicking bags and pads, and fighting (in Thailand some bags could get quite hard, almost cement like in places). Within a year in Thailand Sylvie was fighting every 10 or 12 days and it really was not a problem, seldom feeling much pain, especially if you treat them properly after damage, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztzTmHfae-k and then more advanced, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcWtd00U7oQ And they keep getting harder. After a few years or so Sylvie felt like she would win any shin clash in any fight, they just became incredible hard. In this video she is talking about 2 years in about how and why she thought her shins had gotten so hard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFXCmZVXeGE she shows in the vid how her shins became kind of permanently serrated, with divots and dings. As she discusses only 2 years in (now she's 13 years of fighting in) very experienced Thais have incredibly hard shins, like iron. Yes, there are ideas about fighting hard or not, but that really isn't the determining factor from our experience with Sylvie coming up on 300 fights and being around a lot of old fighters. They just can get incredibly tough. The cycles of damage and repair just really change the shin (people in the internet like to talk about microfractures and whatnot). Over time Sylvie eventually didn't really need the heat treatment anymore after fights, now she seldom uses it. She's even has several times in the last couple of years split her skin open on checks without even feeling much contact. Just looked down and there was blood.  
    • The race for cheaper "grassroots" labor to fill Entertainment Muay Thai cards is on. Rajadamnern vs Lumpinee, trad Muay Thai vs Entertainment Muay Thai. This is the next economic challenge for the sport. Who can tap the rural fighter labor source better, as the trad festival fight culture that has feed the sport for over a century is quickly eroding.   
  • The Latest From Open Topics Forum

    • Hi all, Does anyone know of any suppliers for blanks (Plain items to design and print a logo on) that are a good quality? Or put me in the right direction? thanks all  
    • The first fight between Poot Lorlek and Posai Sittiboonlert was recently uploaded to youtube. Posai is one of the earliest great Muay Khao fighters and influential to Dieselnoi, but there's very little footage of him. Poot is one of the GOATs and one of Posai's best wins, it's really cool to see how Posai's style looked against another elite fighter.
    • Yeah, this is certainly possible. Thanks! I just like the idea of a training camp pre-fight because of focus and getting more "locked in".. Do you know of any high level gyms in europe you would recommend? 
    • You could just pick a high-level gym in a European city, just live and train there for however long you want (a month?). Lots of gyms have morning and evening classes.
    • Hi, i have a general question concerning Muay-Thai training camps, are there any serious ones in Europe at all? I know there are some for kickboxing in the Netherlands, but that's not interesting to me or what i aim for. I have found some regarding Muay-Thai in google searches, but what iv'e found seem to be only "retreats" with Muay-Thai on a level compareable to fitness-boxing, yoga or mindfullness.. So what i look for, but can't seem to find anywhere, are camps similar to those in Thailand. Grueling, high-intensity workouts with trainers who have actually fought and don't just do this as a hobby/fitness regime. A place where you can actually grow, improve technique and build strength and gas-tank with high intensity, not a vacation... No hate whatsoever to those who do fitness-boxing and attend retreats like these, i just find it VERY ODD that there ain't any training camps like those in Thailand out there, or perhaps i haven't looked good enough?..  Appericiate all responses, thank you! 
  • Forum Statistics

    • Total Topics
      1.4k
    • Total Posts
      11.5k
×
×
  • Create New...