Thursday, August 25, 2011

New Beginnings

LISTEN UP, BITCHEZ! I'M BACK IN ACTION!!! That's right, you heard me, this fat burning, muscle building, hairy piece of sexy is back in the saddle, on track to take the next championship belt! ...Well... maybe not, but I AM back in training at my new, and totally awesome location and I can't express in words how good it feels. 

Now, update: New gym is moved from Ajarn Somboon's place on Chon Kasem Road to a new gym on Wat Pho Soi 4, near the Wat Pho Temple. Why I'm writing that will make sense later on. I am still with my friend and trainer Karim, who got this place by agreeing to train the gym owner's kids (up and coming and former champions) while he healed up from a broken leg from a bad scooter accident. This means there are a few actual examples of true muay thai roaming and training while we are there, which is cool.

The "we" stands for me and two (maybe three) other teachers from my school who've all signed up to train (I'm no longer the only farang looking guy in the room). This is good and bad in that now I have buddies of my own level to work up with, and bad in that I am a few weeks past them in training and even though I've been out of the game for a while I'm still farther up than the "guard, move forward, move backward" shit that they're just learning.

However, since we joined the new gym as a group and because Karim really can't afford to have three different skills levels all training under him at the same time (the beginner, novice and champion) I get to rework the basics with all of them. 

I'm not too angry about this simply because I do need to rework the basics and get my stamina (what little I had) back for the real training to come.

The gym itself is a lot smaller than Somboon's. It has 4 pretty beat up looking bags, a smallish concrete floor section, one situp bench, a ring, and two sets of tires. One hanging fro the ceiling, presumably for elbow practice, and one on the floor for footwork drills or whatever (excited to see it, never used something like that before). It's a little cramped, but the feel is good.

We worked the basics: guard, movement, walking drills. That was the whole night, and I was getting a little bored, but somewhere towards the end I heard something wicked cool (and unique), monks. The local temple (a pretty big one) was chanting, and the haunting echo of their prayers carried faintly into the gym adding a sort of added meaning to the mindless drills were were carrying out (oh, and 100 situps) and reminded me again of why I love Thailand.

That's all for now except my new schedule is Monday and Thursday with possible Saturdays where I go in on my own to work on shit.


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