Wanderlust

Two weeks off. Not only from the blog but also from the training. After training 4 1/2 months straight without a break, (other than the two days off before having a fight) my body was tired. The recovery process slowed down, injuries didn´t heal well and, sometimes, I had a slight feeling of boredom when hitting the bags. It was not too much for my body for I would not have fought then; but it was time for a break.

After losing the fight by points after five tough rounds (even if I am not content with my performance) there was absolutely no reason not to lean back and get some space between me and the sport. My great girlfriend and my coach from my Team Wolfpack Cologne both arrived in Thailand at the beginning of January, so the circumstances for being lazy couldn´t have been better.

I ate everything I could find; especially a lot of pieces of chocolate cake at ´Duke´s´. They have by far the best chocolate cake in town. Seriously: This cake is massive. Throw it at someone and you´ll end up in jail for attempted manslaughter. Also, I enjoyed the beautiful nature of Northern Thailand: We went on short trips to surrounding national parks and relaxed for hours at waterfalls while simply listening to the sound of the jungle.

When you train, you know how it feels, when you have a break, right? It´s pretty cool but a part of you still wants to be in the gym. I miss the sport already and can´t wait to be on the mats again. Nonetheless, these two weeks also awoke something inside me again: Wanderlust.

Even if I wouldn´t do martial arts, I would have done the journey anyway – it´s basically just a fortunate incidence that I love a sport so much that it can be my central purpose of travelling. I travel to train; I travel to learn; I travel to fight and, on the other hand, I train to travel. That I want to compete on a regular basis requires me to stay at one place or gym for a longer period of time, so I´m not that much of a traveler like the BJJ Globetrotter, aka Christian Graugart (really cool book by the way).

during my last fight

But life is so easy and enjoyable here that you can easily get into a routine and settle down way too fast. Not in a boring or bad routine because the last 5 months have been great. I love it to train all the time, hang out with the people you know at Team Quest, doing stuff in Chiang Mai (there are still thousands of things I haven´t seen yet). But I feel that it is time to shoulder my backpack and go on. I have to use the time I have and the big opportunity to travel and learn at different gyms.

Still, I want to focus on fighting. So the chance that I will settle down somewhere else for a couple of months again is pretty high. I have to get more input from more people in the next time. I will stay until the end of the month at Team Quest and, depending on how I feel, I would like to do a last fight here and then go on. Travel to new places and train at new gyms, meet more people, listen to more concepts of life and ways of doing an armbar escape.

Getting out of my routine also means that I will not continue writing this blog ... for the moment. If I feel like sharing my experiences again, I may go on here or start a new blog; or maybe I will solely concentrate on my German blog. I have no idea – that´s the great thing of being a traveler. Today, I don´t have to know what I do tomorrow.

Whatever happens, I will inform you here where you can follow my journey and, of course, you can still contact me here if you have questions or so. So far, my trip is an absolutely awesome experience, I had a lot of fun already, fought more than I original planned to do, had great rolls and sparrings, improved my game in Muay Thai and MMA – everything is fine.

Thank you guys for following my blog!

Hope to meet some of you on some sweaty mats somewhere on the globe.Best regards and chok dee,
Felix