There is a price to pay

#5: 13/09/06  (see last post to read the beginning of the story)

... and I start to do the pad-work. 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 "Eyyyyy!", 6, 7 "Nooooo!" With questioning eyes I turn to the side. With a serious look on his face the youngest of the trainers climbs over the ropes: "Not like this!" He grabs my glove and places it on the other side of my head. "Like this!" I am a bit confused, staring at him. But what is about the counter cross of my opponent? Is my guard not on the wrong side of the head now?

It seems as if he could read my thoughts and believes it to be the most naïve thing he has ever heard. He steps back and raises his foot in a smooth and controlled movement to the same level as my head. „You kick and your opponent answers with a headkick. Boom! Knockout!“.

I repeat the movement slowly several times to engrave it in my mind and then I focus on the pads and start again. More than once my glove passes my head on the wrong side while kicking, but to concentrate on this little detail makes it easier to forget how exhausting the exercise is. 20.

It is Piak´s turn again. It does not seem as if he is tired. I turn around, take a deep breath, and spit out of the ring. 30. My turn, the other leg. 20. Him again. 30. The pad-holder comes to my corner: "30! Come on!" - "Ay! Ay! Ay! Fifteen! Come on!" A small step out of the line of your opponent, the abs contract, a slight rotation of the torso, the hips move forward, the leg leaves the ground, and the ball of the food turns over the rough canvas of the ring. Through the rotation of the whole body, the shin accelerates into the pad. Sweat flies from the pad, dripping onto the floor and spraying throughout the ring.

Piak again. 40. I am starting the last round: Double kicks. With clenched teeth I give my best to appreciate it. Repetitions 15 – 20 are more symbolic kicks than effective ones, but I survived the extra rounds, improved my skills and finished the class successful.

While taking of my wraps I start to stretch, lean back to one of the pillars of the roof...

                                                                    Team Quest Chiang Mai outside area

 

... until my stretching gets disturbed: "Faster, faster!" - I look up: An arm in front of my face, an elbow, an index finger pointing on my sports shoes. Finger, Elbow, the eyes of the trainer – "Running?" I ask carefully. He nods.

Conditioning? Now? After all this? That is definitely not what I would like to do right now (I do feel more like having a bath in ice-cold water and drinking three liters of it), but it does not seem as if I have a choice. While I am getting into my shoes I find out the scaring truth: We will not go jogging. No. We will do sprints.

The pad-holder joins us and we start to do some running: Starting slow and getting faster, so we sprint the last meters on the concrete track of the Team Quest site. We do push-ups between the sprints. Then Nut draws an imaginary line on the concrete: We line up, our upper body leaning forward, and sweat drips from our noses on our shoes. He explains the rules: Three sprints and you should better be fast if you don´t want to do more push-ups – 5 for the winner, 10 for the second one and 15 for the loser. My pectoral muscles start to scream silently. This is enough motivation.

"Ready? Go!" all three of us jump forward, no one wants to do more push-ups than necessary, on the half of the track, Piak falls back, a few meters before we cross the finish-line, I can get a small lead. Relieved I walk back to the start. Just five goddamn push-ups. But my thigh aches.

Round two. I try to give my very best, but my legs do not want to work anymore. With a slight lead I am able to be second. 10 push-ups. Better than 15, I think. But I am done. The pain in my thigh has become worse. I massage the shaking muscle.

The last round. We breathe more heavily. Nut shouts "Go!" and I try to use all the energy I still have. Piak rushes forward leaving us in the dust after a few meters. After five or six seconds the pad-holder and me are still on the same level, he screams grim and pushes himself to be faster, I cannot keep up with him, my groin starts to hurt, I lose this round. The guys walk back to the ring, I limp. 15 push-ups and it is done.

I lie down on the mats. Wow! This was not easy. But I did it.

Before leaving the pad-holder shakes my hand: "Nice to meet you!". Maybe there is some praise in his voice or maybe this was just an ordinary training session for the fighters.

But not for me. The following night I sleep 14 hours. I have a headache the next day and stay in bed. My body is not used to the weather. Sunday I stay at home too. I am feeling better even if I could not sleep for more than one hour last night.

I have fully recovered by Monday and start to train again. Hopefully the body adjusts faster to the climate now.

Sabai, Sabai - let´s start easy

When I enter the Team Quest site for the afternoon class I already have the feeling that it will be hard today to follow my own plan to start easy into the training. Of course I did not take part in the morning session today, but I do not think I would have survived this day if I did. There are just three guys preparing for the training: Piak – a seventeen year old thai with more than 30 fights on his record -, an American and me. Basically a small class is good because it is easier for the coaches to concentrate on everyone´s needs. The problem: There are four coaches.

Four on three. That sounds like paradise, but there is something worth mentioning about the character of many trainers (at least this fits for many combat sports teachers, I think). They have the tendency to become cruel when they feel unchallenged. Not cruel in a way like beating you up in sparring or hitting you with the pads harder than necessary, but they use you to get rid of their boredom. Trying new drills, motivating students more than ever or simply losing the ability to count the push-ups correctly are just some of the common habits. Than you have to do 30 push-ups. Or 40? Maybe 50. Depending on the trainer´s mood.

In my head there starts a fight: The beliver against the disbeliever. Ending with the disbeliever getting beaten up badly and the believer starting to whisper in my ear: "This will be a good training. Enough to challenge you, but not too much. Trust me! More than 30 hours passed since your last training. You are well rested. You will have fun."

It´s right. Since my arrival, the last night was the first I slept quite well, it appears as if the jetlag has been defeated. The class takes its course and it is a really good one: Without feeling dizzy or sick I survive all three rounds on the pads. Satisfaction drips from my forehead, happiness trickles down my back. While Piak is doing his fourth round of pad-work I get a one-on-one sidekick lesson and get sent to the bags for practice.

"How many?" - "Nueng rawy" (100) I answer, stopping to kick the now wet shiny bag – "Fine." The atmosphere becomes more relaxed, I concentrate on my breathing, loosen up my legs and pour cold water on my neck. A look on the clock confirms my guess: Two hours since the beginning, the class is over.

After a few minutes of silence, it is over. Piak starts to shoot vicious kicks into the pads: 50 on each side. This is nothing special since the gym´s fighters got additional training last year too.

While I am still wondering why the American is not here anymore, the pad holder invites me to do another round too. Maybe I could become suspicious now but the subconsciousness (or the right mind?) is already blocked by all the dopamine in my body.

With a “are you able to do that, too?" - smile on his face, the trainer pushes down the ropes and I climb over them. I smile back, he sends me to the corner, places the pads right over his belly pad and leans into them. "Twenty" he asks with raised eyebrows... Your ambition does not offer "No" as an option sometimes.

I raise my hands to the sides of my head, find the right distance, shift my weight from one foot to the other, find my balance … and decide to leave you hanging here until the next post.

30 degrees, humidity: 82%

I open my eyes carefully and blink in the already bright morning´s sky. Something rings nerve-wracking under my bed. I turn to the side, trying to grab my smartphone: 06:15 a.m. I sit up, rub the sleep from my eyes and stare absent-minded out of the window. Maybe I am jetlagged, I did not sleep well this night, woke up from weird dreams and the humid air in my room. Who cares – doing sports will help the body in getting used to the climate. With a bit of food in my stomach I start off for my first training session: Muay Thai.

Jogging, warm-up, shadow boxing, bag work, technique drills. To this point nothing is a problem, but I know exactly from last year what is the worst part in the first couple of training sessions: The padwork.

Working out on the pads is given more importance in Thailand than in Europe, so it is part of nearly every single session. It offers the fighter the chance to put as much power in his attacks as possible while the trainer can correct him. Furthermore the strain on one´s conditioning is quite high.

... with these thoughts in my mind I step into the ring. Maybe it will not be as hard as expected, since my last visit was a year ago and I trained a lot and did a few MMA and K-1 fights during this time.

The first kicks hit the pads powerful, the hands are fast. I feel good, feel fit, it is fun being here again and being able to concentrate on the sport. "Jab, Jab, Kick!" Nut shouts at me, a good kick or a hard knee are rewarded with a loud "Ayyy!". I start to feel the effects of the physical exertion: A slight aching in the shoulder, but that is nothing unusual. I look at the clock real quick: Three minutes already passed. Kick, Punch, Jab, Teep, Jab, Jab "Double-Kick" – "Ayyy". A loud beep calls for the break.

                                      Pad-work with Kru Nat, 2012 at Team Quest Thailand, Chiang Mai

With a satisfied smile on my face I walk back to the corner. Having reached it, something hits me like a baseball bat: A strange feeling in my stomach, weak knees, a dizzy feeling in my head. Like as if someone slapped me, the smile disappears from my face and I lean back into the ropes, the sweat on my chest and shoulders feeling ice-cold suddenly.

It is easy to misjudge how much your body can take, especially when you are in good condition: The muslces, the tendons, your lungs and your will – everything does what it is supposed to do, you feel good and you WANT to be good.
But the cardiovascular system cannot take it, when you are not used to the heat, the humid air and the time difference. The mean thing about this is that you do not feel this until it is too late.

Just 10 more seconds.

"Fifteeeeen Push Up!" Nut shouts. I do not feel good, but I do what the trainer says. "It´s just my third day in Thailand" I explain, "Slower pace please" – "Tired?" Nut replies with a grin.

The kicks are weak, my reactions are slow, Nut has to repeat several times what to do before I understand. My lunges fill up with air that feels like right from a Swedish sauna; I wish I would at least feel good after this round.

The beeping sound of the timer ends the pad-round and a wall hits me immediately. I feel like I have to throw up, I lay my arms and head down on the corner of the ring, breathe heavily trying to get rid of the dizziness This marks the end of my training today or, at least, the end of the conditioning part of it.

While sitting on the side of the ring, having a cup of ice-cold water and trying to recover, I watch a better acclimatized team mate doing his third round on the pads. I will definitely not overdo it during the first week and just train once a day to get used to the different circumstances. Our body is not made for switching and getting used to a new climate- and timezone in just 11 hours.

After two rounds of smooth sparring and 100 knees on the bags I am released from training to have my well-deserved breakfast.

The heat and the devil

#2 13/09/04

Do I know this street? It is somehow too small as it could be the Thanon Rama IV. And where are the rails which are supposed to be here? I stop and check the time: 40 minutes until my train to Chiang Mai leaves, basically enough time to make it, but Bangkok is huge – too huge for walking around lost in thought. Furthermore it is evening, the people are heading home from work – the traffic is insane.

My backpack sticks to my back as it is a fat, organic creature which has swallowed a heater, my T-Shirt is close to complete its metamorphosis with my skin. I wipe the sweat from my forehead, than I stroke my shin bone. A feeling like touching extreme fine sandpaper: The smog of Bangkok is not as unvisible as you think it is.

A few hours earlier:
The wheels of plane VN 601 get in contact with the landing strip of airport Bangkok with a crashing noise. I get thrown to the front lightly, a suitcase falls down a row behind me, my seatmate, a British Businessman grins at me as he wants to say: "This guy still needs some practice."

My biological clock tells me it is 4 a.m. but the sun over Bangkok welcomes me with a dazzling brightness of a 10 o´clock Tuesday morning. I feel weary. I leave the plane, get my backpack, pass the security check and take the train to the city. At Hua Lamphong Centralstation I buy a sleeper ticket for the train leaving at 6 p.m. to Chiang Mai. The most time of the day I spend in the Lumphini Park. I like big cities, but Bangkok is too much. Too much of everyhing: 14 Million habitants, unfiltered exhaust, coughing engines, honking, all this shrouded in a muggy, scorching heat.

I turn back, take the right street on the last crossroad I passed, think about taking a taxi but dismiss the thought in view of the stop-and-go on the streets and start to walk faster.
30 minutes later I am sitting in the train, happy to not have taken a taxi (this weird, pink, japanese coach was my constant companion the whole entire 20 minutes walk to the trainstation). With a deodorant, a fresh shirt and the freezing cold of the aircon I get control over the situation again. At least a bit.

It is nine o´clock in the morning, the train doors open clicking and hissing at the trainstation of Chiang Mai. After getting rid of the most insistent Tuk Tuk drivers I take a taxi to the Team Quest gym: I will train here the next few months. Joel, one of the gym owners, gives me a warm welcome – we know each other from my last year trip. Secretly I regret not having talked to him before I left Bangkok: The quite uneventful train ride would have been more thrilling if I would have known that in the last months eleven trains have been derailed on this line.

With the help of Joel I find a really nice and cheap flat, a ten minutes walk away from the gym. I just hope I did not sell my soul to the devil when I signed the contract, written in Thai. Because Joel ist from the United States he could just reassure me with telling me that there have never been any problems with students living in this apartment house. At least you pay in cash here. That is kinda credible. It is Honest.

I do some shopping, enjoy a couple of delicious fruits and the day takes a relaxed end.

What will follow here?

Hello everyone!
My stay in Thailand lasts now for 23 days and I decided to translate my German blog to English. During the next days I will upload the posts from the last weeks and than go on with the brand new stuff.

#1: 13/09/01 – What will follow here?

For not boring you with stupid travel-preparation posts I decided to create this blog just a few hours before I leave Germany. So you know what I am planning to do, here are the most important facts about my upcoming trip:

Since years it was my plan to stay a year aborad after finishing school - where to stay was not that important. The need to make this experience was given to me by my father I think, who did a few months long trip through the Middle East when he was at university. Even that he does not talk much about that time, when he does, I always have the feeling that this journey left its indelible mark on him – at least I imagine that enough to do such a trip too.

My choice was suddenly quite easy when I began doing a new sport when I was 16 and immediately fell in love with it. I started doing thaiboxing and realized that my way from soccer to badminton to dancing to playing the guitar had finally lead me to the one kind of sport I love. A few months later I started to train grappling and MMA additionaly.

Muay Thai is the nationalsport in Thailand and so I did a four weeks trainingjourney with two friends last year to this beautiful country. To give you an idea how intense my impressions from this one month were I would like to quote from my traveldiary: "To make this trip was the best decision of my whole entire life."

Because these 4 weeks were already amazing and I am fascinated by the country, its people and furthermore it is my dream to be able to concentrate 24/7 on nothing else than the training I have choosen Thailand for my year abroad.

I will start my trip at Team Quest Chiang Mai, I already trained at last year.

Felix – 13 hours before departure