After traveling 13 hours from San Francisco to Taipei, Taiwan (the home town of my family) I take a shower in the Eva Air lounge during my layover. Turns out that if you fly Eva a few times they start giving you free passes to their VIP lounge where you can eat, drink and relax during your layovers. I finally arrive in Bangkok, 1 hour behind schedule and miss my connecting flight to Phuket where I’ll be training. But at least I get to have some delicious roast duck red curry and rice at the airport while waiting for my Air Asia flight.
Finally I arrive in Phuket, Thailand at the Tiger Muay Thai Gym where I’ve signed up for three months of bootcamp style fight training. This is going to be tough! So I check into my room on the camp, there are about 60 of us living on the camp itself in small rooms that remind me college. I have a twin bed, a mini-fridge, a 20″ TV with a DVD player. The showers and bathrooms are shared but luckily? I’m right next to it.
That night, I decide to combat jet lag by testing out my new Everlast boxing gloves on the bags and do some exercise. After almost 20 hours on the plane, I decide my body needs a well deserved Thai Massage. $9 and 1 hour later, I pass out in my bed and get ready for day 1 of my training.
Day 1 of MMA Camp at Tiger Muay Thai
6:00am – I wake up a make myself a protein shake – Rich Chocolate by Dymatize Nutrition. Delicious by the way, and make with Stevia instead of artificial Splenda which I like.
7:00am-8:00am – Yoga class. Feels great to stretch out and de-stress.
8:15am – Breakfast – I make myself 3 eggs in the microwave using one of those as-seen-on-tv microwave omelette things, turns out to work pretty well. The eggs here are have rich orange yolks and taste extremely healthy and organic, even better than the $4.39 a doz ones in the supermarket with Omega 3′s.
9:00am-11:00am – MMA – We start off with some light cardio and practicing submissions and escapes from the full mount. We then learn the move of the day, which today was the side choke, which I really liked. Then came the hard part, three sets of 25 pushes off my back up onto my feet, sprawl, and spin onto my back combos. Then after we were already exhausted came three rounds of sparring. I ended up getting full mount on the first couple guys rounds and even tapping out a few guys with the new side choke that I just learned. The last 6 minutes however, was me exhausted and letting my partner throw me around like a dead rabbit.
12:00noon – Lunch – I go to lunch with my neighbor, an American girl and end up recruiting a really pretty German girl along the way. For lunch I have Thai style Fresh Veggies with Chicken and a bowl of Tom Kai Soup which is a spicy chicken and veggie soup. For dessert I have fresh coconut, total cost for a three course lunch $4usd.
1:00pm-3:00pm – Me and the girls decide to explore the town by foot, we buy some random thai fruits and they patiently wait for me while I get my hair cut.
4:00pm-6:30pm – Muay Thai – I can’t believe my forced my body to do two training sessions plus an hour of yoga on day one, but it was better than letting jet lag win and taking a nap. So I went to the beginners class just to take it easy on myself, but my plan backfired. The Thai coaches quickly realized that I wasn’t a beginner and started pushing me harder and harder. I proceed to collapse with exhaustion moments later. The trainer tells me to go to the intermediate class tomorrow, but I think i’m going to stick with the beginners class until I get my cardio back up.
7:00pm – Dinner – I look at the menu and am tempted to try some Pad Thai, or a nice Thai curry, but instead I focus on my diet and order Thai Chicken and Veggies. For dessert the German girl splits her plate of fresh fruit with me consisting of fresh cut pineapples, watermelon, bananas, and apples.
9:00pm – Time to relax, the American girl comes over and we watch an episode of “How I met your mother” – I quickly fall asleep exhausted using her as a pillow.
And that’s it! Day 1 of training camp. I’m really proud of myself for getting through it and not eating and rice or bread all day. I’ll keep you guys updated on my three month journey here. If you want to check out the camp yourself, advanced reservations are required to get a room on site. www.TigerMuayThai.com
Warm Regards,
Johnny Wolf
Hey, that’s awesome. I just finished up a month at Rawai Muay Thai last week. It’s just a few miles away from Tiger. This shit will seriously get you into shape. Just be sure to pace yourself the first week or two. I did the same thing, two sessions plus running the first couple days, and I got burnt out.
A lot of guys do that and get sick or injured pretty quick.
But it was a great experience. enjoy it. And tourist girls in Phuket = so easy.
Hey Johnny,
Great to see that you’re back in SE Asia!
Some of my buddies have done Muay Thai training camps in Thailand and have always come back bruised but much tougher.
Take it easy there!