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

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His website

It´s good for you

It is a beautiful Friday morning, absolutely no clouds on the sky and the temperature is plesant (maybe a bit less than 20 degrees). Two weeks ago it was really cold at night and in the early morning. It was colder than it usually is in the Thai winter, often only 10 degrees. The Team Quest site was often covered in thick fog. Fortunately it has been warming up during the last days.

"Your last training before the fight on sunday!" Ni welcomes me with a cup of hot coffee in his hands. When Dylan spots my girlfriend who arrived just the day before in Thailand and is going to watch the session, he adds, directed at the coffee sipping Muay Thai trainer: "Oh! And I heard him saying that he wants a really hard workout today." Sometimes, I seriously hate trainers. Dylan grins at me.

We are just three students this morning: A beginner, a new sponsored professional fighter, Ali, and me. After the usual warm-up of having a short run, skipping, stretching and shadow boxing, we start doing bagwork. Or at least that's what I do while the other do their pad rounds. As always when I am working on the bags, I start slowly, reminding my bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments how to absorb the power when a punch or kick hits something hard. And as always I get the comment from someone to hit the bag harder. However, even if I am warmed up already, I think, give me at least one round to get used to my training partner made of leather and rags.

Jab, cross, right kick – cross, jab, left kick – teep, teep (the Thai word for frontkick) and slowly, my body awakes. The punches become harder, the footwork faster and the combinations more fluent. Two jabs, hit the bag lightly and my cross smacks into it with all the power I have. As I dot that, I take a long step forward. A long bleep sound calls for the break and then following bag work. Wow! These three rounds passed by fast!

I climb into the ring and touch gloves with Dae, who is a new trainer, and prepare myself for the coming three rounds of padwork. "Okay! Fifteeeeeen push-ups!" Ni shouts. "Same procedure as every day" I think as I do what he asked for. Then Dae holds the pads to his side "10 times!". 10 kicks with the left leg and then 10 kicks with the right one. I am expecting to go on with punches now but Dae has different plans for me. Again, he holds the pads to his left side "Nine!". Again, I switch my stance and make my shinbone smack into the pads as fast as possible, trying to keep the breaks as short as possible. He will count down since there is no time limit. The round is over after completing 10-9-8...-2-1 kicks on both sides.

I am taking a deep breath in the corner. Since I have managed to do two rounds, the last one won't be a problem. Instead I should give even more than before.
The sweat is dripping from my rashguard and shorts, the shinbones and the top of my feet got a slight red color and my breathing is fast. "Seven! Harder! Harder!" Dae shouts at em. I give my best "More hip! More hip!" - "Ozz! Ozz!" I breath out fast, with every kick – "Two! Come on! Hard!" - "Ay! Ay!" - "One!" - I move my hip in more than before, create more power and then the pad work is over.

"One more round!" Dae informs me.

"Damn it! Ok, what ever the coach says" I think silently. "At least, I am able to do this now, a few months ago I would have died already."
The next round is as hard as the one before. And it was not the last one. Again, I have to do another one. During the break that follows, I put my arms on the ropes and try to take deeper breathes in order for me to recover faster, but it does not work that well. I feel slightly dizzy but nothing bad.
"Come on!" Dae calls me over – the more tired you are, as shorter breaks seem to be.

But I do the fifth round as well. I perform well and climb exhausted out of the ring. I count the kicks: 550 kicks in five rounds with breaks, less than a minute in between. Not bad. It wasn't fun but not bad.

When I check the time I am a bit worried: We have nearly an hour left? Holy... "Clinchsparring!" Ni commands, and Ali and me climb back into the ring, kneeing each other in the stomach and throwing each other around. After ten minutes, Dae stops us "Ok! Get your shoes!". Running. Probably sprints.

With forty-five minutes left on the clock, we are getting on the track: Jogging with bringing your knees up high to the wall, jogging to the mid of the track, sprinting from there to the other side and jogging back again, to continue. Dae does not tell us how often we have to do this. Us two fighters sprint next to each other, competing, and thus, guaranteeing that neither of us will give up or run slower than he possibly can. After eight rounds my legs hurt even when jogging back to the start point and Dae motivates us by telling us, at last, we are just facing two more rounds.

We shout on the last meters of sprinting, pushing harder, trying not to lose the race, but Ali is faster than I. Nonetheless, I try to keep up with him. 10^th round -- finished – time to relax.

"No!" Dae says with a slight grin on his face. "Side-steps to this line, touch the ground, back to the start, side-steps to the second one over there, then sprinting again!". Five more sprints. I have the sentences from a famous motivation video in my ear when doing one sprint after the other: "You CAN push a little harder, and you CAN run a little faster!". It motivates me to go on – to continue to run.

The second last sprint. My legs hurt and even if I try, I cannot run as fast as before. Another one of the sentences from the video pops up into my head "And the loss of physics is merely a suggestion!".

Done. I am done. Really. This was definitely the hardest coditioning workout I have ever done. Finishing it with push ups and sit ups seems relaxing compared to the running before. The problem with conditioning is, that it does not get easier as better you become; instead, the grind is simply longer then.

But I have progressed. I am in great shape. I could not have done that a few months ago.

I am well prepared for the first fight of 2014.

supplementation

It is the first day of 2014 and with every new year people make good resolutions – from doing more sports, to eating healthier or quit smoking. The most common one may be to finally lose weight. Well... I am not a nutritionist nor is this a blog that shall help you get into shape. It´s enough when I do this and write about it. But I started a little ´experiment´ approximately two months ago and which I am going to write about today.

If you are training martial arts or another sport competitively you automatically get introduced to supplements. The list of the effects the manufacturers promise is even longer than the list of supposedly magic potions on the nutrition market. Since I've had the idea of studying sport science in my head for a couple of years now, and compete in MMA, I have a huge interest and desire to understand how the performance of an athlete is linked to his or her nutrition.

Thousands of scientific papers and doctoral dissertations were published on this topic; and for those of you who have ever entered a fitness center know that there are twice as many opinions on each of these topics. During the last couple of years, every now and again, I read dietary guides, threads in bodybuilding communities, listened to people who studied sports science and read advices of famous fighters, coaches and also scientific papers as well as summaries of studies.

Because of this diversity of way more qualified sources available, I don´t want to give advice of what you should eat or give an scientific prove why it works what I do (or why I believe that it works the way I'm doing it). Instead, I´ll simply share my experiences with you.

For me, it was always surpising how much certain studies can contradict each other – basically, science suspects a lot about how our body works, but actually knows little. The newer, more complicated or more promising a supplement is, the more different the opinions on the question of it´s effectiveness. After searching for the holy grail of ´right nutrition´ for a while, I decided to change my tactic: Instead of trying to find the ´truth,´ I want to get as much as possible out of all the different theories and put together what I think sounds reasonable and is more or less well investigated.

Personally I am a person who believes in the power of nature. I always prefer natural medicine before chemical ones. My experience has shown me that this works well for me. Basically, you can´t get any better nutrition than eating fresh, unprocessed foods. So before paying for expensive supplements, my nutrition has to be perfect already. Thus I try to eat a wide variety of foods, avoiding fast food and artificials foods, flavour enhancers. In addition, I prefer rice instead of noodles and avoid industrial sugar.

And the tuning?
I started to take supplements two months ago, because the circumstances are perfect right now: My nutrition is really, really good,,I train two times a day and my body can rest a lot – no energy is ´wasted´ on school or work. So, if supplements have a positive effect, than it´s the perfect time to try some.

My nutriton selection is basic: Whey protein, a protein complex, fish oil and BCAA´s.

I´ll give a short comprehension of why I take them – this is not a complete explanation of how these supplements effect the body or what their task is. It´s more an overview: The internet is filled with information abouth these supplements.

The proteins

If there is one thing that science knows about nutrition, then it is the fact that mucles are built by taking proteins. How much protein you need daily is controversial. Nonetheless, studies showed that, especially right after training, the consumption of whey protein (the fastest absorbed protein), leads to better regeneration and strenght growth. The process of regeneration starts faster and your muscles are repaired sooner and more effectively.
I have two shakes daily: both are taken right after each training sessions. Additionally I eat a banana in order to prevent the body from using the proteins to get energy . Instead, the body should use the carbohydrates given to it by the banana.

Furthermore I have a shake with different kinds of proteins right before I go to bed so there is no gap in supplies during the most important recovery phase, the sleep.

The fish oil capsules

The problem is that I don´t cook myself here (I don´t even have a kitchen in my flat) and so it´s impossible to get enough Omega 3 fatty acids. But these are really important for the body, inter alia for the absorbtion of vitamins, and should be part of every diet. You find them for example in fat fish, walnutoil or linseed oil. But fat fish is not a part of typical Thai cuisine and the oils are really expensive. So having fish oil capsules daily is the easiest and cheapest way.

Fish oil is simply a necessary part of a balanced diet.

The BCAA´s

BCAA is definitely the most controversial part of my diet. Studies that investigated the advantage athletes have after taking BCAA´s before and after training contradict each other because, one factor being that, it is too difficult to meassure the effects. But it is believed that BCAA´s protect the muscles from being used as a source of energy during long workouts, what leads to enhanced recovery.
First, I was sceptic but eventually I decided to take BCAA´s because of the overwhelming amount of positive reviews from different sources online. Give it a chance.


So what is the result after two months of good nutrtion + a basic supplementation? I didn´t grow huge muscles or become really bulk, nor did I suffer any negative effects. But what definitely increased is the effectiveness of my recovery process. I have less aching muscles and recover way faster after having a day off.
The supplements didn´t turn my training world up side down and they are definitely not magic potions.But combined with a natural, healthy nutrition they definitely help achieve your athletic goals.

As you see, the explanation of the effects of each supplements is really short – I thought about making them longer, but I don´t want to start a discussion about the effect, or non-effect, of certain supplements. Nonetheless, I wanted to share my experience.

I will go on taking supplements and maybe have a break to see if I feel a difference then again. To prove twice to myself that it works... or even answer the question tconcerning he necessity of supplements.

But so far, I am content with the effect they have on my recoveryprocess. I will write again about my little experiment in a few months.

2013 + 2014

I started to review my year, or better, my journey so far yesterday and want to continue with this today.

After I suffered the injury, I didn´t fight for six weeks. This interfered with my plans to fight once per month as long as I am in Thailand. But after this break, when I started to prepare for a fight again, an idea came up in my mind: The Thais fight so much, even several days in one week. Who says I cannot do this as well?

As I already mentioned in older posts, the Thai idea of fighting, that it is something you simply do instead of making it a big deal, is something I really, really like. And I envy them for this, for it seems to be a ´natural´ attitude. Muay Thai is the national sport so it is strongly connected to the culture of the country and to the people. Combat sports in Germany are far from being mainstream. When I came to Thailand the first time, I was used to having six weeks for preparation for an upcoming fight. What made me kind of stunned, when I was asked if I want to fight in a couple of days – thus I didn't fight here during my first stay.

But this year, I stay longer and I have time. In addition I try to learn the language, get to know the culture and try to understand the Thai way of living and of course the Thai way to teach, train and fight Muay Thai. I will never completely understand this martial art; simply because I didn´t grow up with it, it is not a part of my culture. But I can try to make it a part of it by copying behaviour and routines. So why just fighting 12 times in a year? If my physical condition allows it, I can fight more than that.

And so I did in December three fights in 14 days, being succesfull in all of them, even accepting a fight on one hour notice, what was a completely new experience to step in the ring without being focussed 100%. For me it is special to fight so many times in such a short time, but for the Thai fighters it´s just business as usual. Still, I am proud of the five fights I did here. I got a lot of experience and I definitely want to go on with a high pace – so maybe one day, it will be normal to fight every couple days.

Even if I wasn´t able to have a MMA fight so far, what is basically what I like to do even more than fighting Muay Thai, I am really, really content with the outcome of my first four months in the country of smiles. I learned a lot; the fighting is going well; I always performed as good as I could, even when I lost; I didn´t get hurt really badly and besides the sport I met many, awesome people. I am able to speak at least a bit Thai and there is nothing that tells me, that the next year will not be as good as this one.

So what are my plans? First, I will fight on the 5th of January again at Loikroh Stadium. The fighting on a high pace has to wait because I will have a two weeks break afterwards from training. My body needs it (maybe I will write a detailed post about this) and my girlfriend will come here. The perfect time to get some distance between me and the sport in order to come back refreshed and relaxed.

In the end of February I have to do my next visa run – I will use this to travel, get some more input at other gyms and maybe return afterwards to Team Quest or end up in a gogo bar in Pattaya... no, not really. I will keep my focus on fighting in 2014 as well. But don´t ask me where I will go, where I will train or what ever happens. The only thing I know is there will be a lot of training involved.

So after an awesome 2013, what are my good resolutions for 2014?

Simply put: same thing as last year. Training my ass off, seeing new places and fight, fight, fight. Hopefully I can do five more fights, before I leave Chiang Mai at the end of February. I´ll keep you up to date!
Happy New Year and thank you for following my blog!

 

My Buddha (middle) will keep an eye on me in 2014 - at Wat Doi Suthep

2013

The year 2013 is about to end and with that the first four months of my journey passed already. It really didn´t feel like four months, the time passed by so fast. That means it´s time to look back and assess this journey so far – did everything work out as I planned it? Were my expectations fulfilled?

If you are already following my blog for a while you may already know the answers that come with these questions, but I also want to come to a conclusion so far and furthermore I want to look ahead. Since I arrived everything worked out perfectly, from travelling to Chiang Mai, to finding a flat and to getting the training started.

As far as I can judge my own performance, I think I evolved in several parts of my game, I did in Muay Thai as in MMA and grappling as well. It is amazing how fast you make progress when you train so much. It is way easier to concentrate on a specific technique or weakness because there are no long timeframes between the classes. After practicing one and the same movement for one hour, you realize at the end of the morning session, that if you change this little, tiny thing it may be the key to making the movement way more effective. There is no time to forget something either. A few hours later you will step on the mat again and simply continue where you had stopped before.

I had only two pure boxing classes per week in Germany because all the grappling, wrestling and Muay Thai classes had to fit into my training schedule as well. Now, while I was injured, I had 22 classes in two weeks. Even if I wanted to train so much (boxing), I neither had the time nor the possibilities to do so in Germany.

For example: On Monday, one of the coaches tells me to do this and that while sparring and try a new way of movement or so. By Friday I had improved visibly. Goals are reached way faster and it feels like training on a magic drug. It is not like I didn´t train much before since I trained six times a week for the last three years; but this double up of the classes leads to a whole new pace of effective learning.

But there were also disappointments. The worst thing that bugged me, or still bugs me, is the knee injury I suffered during a sparring session. I have no idea what really happened because it began to hurt the next morning. The pain is still there. Even if I don´t think anything got badly injured, this injury has affected my schedule even after two months. There is absolutely no problem during training, and even competing, Muay Thai. However, I barely did any grappling in the last weeks – bending the knee and sitting on my lower legs, as you do in all the top positions in grappling, causes pain after a few minutes.

I have this fantastic opportunity to live my dream, but the time for that is limited and I don´t want to waste my valuable time with resting and recovering from an injury. What I want is to use this time for the sport, to get as good as possible in this year and learn a thousand other things.

On the other hand, I guess, this is part of the everyday life of all the professional fighters: Dealing with injuries and adjusting your schedule around these.

So if being hurt will be usual (even more usual than it already was in the past few years) I should view it in a positive light: The injury made me concentrate on my boxing and on the Muay Thai. This has given me the opportunity to compete a lot in the pass weeks.

Well... that doesn´t hide the fact, that I missed dozens of grappling classes and, with that, opportunities to make my ground game stronger. But at least there is something positive about the situation.

I keep telling myself that thinking positive helps with everything. I am not sure yet if this is true; but until now, it worked.

Tomorrow, I will continue my review - I´m not finished with you yet, 2013!

Goals

When I started to do this sport I was sixteen years old and had tried a couple of hobbies before such as soccer, badminton, dancing, acting and playing the guitar. It’s not that I didn´t like these activities because I did all of them several years (especially for playing theater I spent a lot of my free time). But when I stepped on the mats for the first time to participate in a Thaiboxing class, I realized that this sport was something totally different. The training was way harder than anything else I have ever done before and, of course, I was fascinated by the concept of being ´strong’ and ‘tough’.

I started to work out at a local gym a few months before I entered a martial arts gym the first time. However, after the first Muay Thai training, moving barbells only was not satisfying anymore. All the time I was doing strength training I wished to kick some pads instead.
Literally, I fall in love with this sport from the first moment on.

After half a year of training three times a week Muay Thai I added Grappling to my schedule. This came due to being introduced to MMA and I liked it even more than just the stand-up fighting. With this second sport added to my list, I started to train six days a week (what caused, of course, some trouble with my parents – "only if it works out with school!") From this point on, the sport became the center point of my life. From this time on, I began to ask myself: What am I aiming for? What are my goals?

When I discovered MMA and became a grappler, I was sure about that I want to compete one day – not only in grappling tournaments but also full-contact fighting. While other say that they want to fight once only, I wasn´t that sure about that before I entered the ring the first time. If I liked it, I would do it again.

And I liked it. And did it again. And again. And again.

Now I made the decision to come to Team Quest and concentrate a whole entire year on fighting only where I could compete a lot and train as much as possible. Where do I want to go? I cannot deny that it is a dream of someday being able to fight at bigger events and that it would be great to fight at a more professional level. Maybe 95% of the people who compete and fight seriously have this dream, so why should I not have this dream too? I am young and I have a lot of time to improve. But what if this does not happen?

Well... who cares? I have fun doing what I do; I don´t have any pressure on my shoulders that I have to feed myself from fighting and to be honest. I don´t want to put any pressure on my shoulders by telling myself that I have to reach this and that level, fight at this and that promotion in order to build a record that is good; or that I want to become the best ever. Of course I want to be good; of course I want to be the best I can be. And as long as I train a lot and step into the ring with the maximum level of preparation while being in excellent shape, I am not willing to blame myself for a loss, as long as I gave my best in- and outside the ring. 

enjoy.

 

 There are so many really tough guys out there. So many of these guys could finish me without using any effort. So why become so results-oriented? I think this could make me overlook the fun at competing if I catch a losing streak or get hurt badly.

Right now, I can step into the ring with a smile on my face – willing to win while giving everything I got to achieve this goal. All this I do without having contracts or other events or whether or not I impress someone with my performance and all this stuff in the back of my head.

I just like fighting... maybe that is the only goal I need. To have fun.

To be on a budget - part VI

After a few weeks it´s once again time to continue this series. Today I want to talk about the things that are expensive and which are cheap here – so you know what you should bring with you and what you can leave at home.

What to bring and what to buy here?

Thailand is way cheaper than many western countries. Nonetheless you should be careful because you cannot always find a good bargain here. Before coming to Thailand, you may think that you can leave some stuff at home, because you can buy it here instead and save some money. Well... that works... in some cases.

You want to leave electronic devices at home? Don´t do that! Electronics are the same price or even more than in Germany. So if you are from the US, you will pay more than at home for sure. The same goes for supplements. I checked out every single pharmacy and supplement store in Chiang Mai – for a 5lbs protein bucket you pay approximately 10€ (~ 400 Baht) more. Only fish oil capsules and mineral- /vitamintablets are slightly cheaper.

On the other hand drugs are really, really cheap here. You can get all the basic medicine you need for when you catch a cold or accidentally cut yourself. These can be bought 24/7 at the supermarket. A box of painkillers, pills against a sore throat, wound disinfectant, tigerbalm or other ethereal oils cost around 1€ (~ 40 Baht).

Clothes CAN be cheap, but at the mall you easily pay the same price as in a mall at home. The huge supermarkets, on the walking streets and on the night bazar you can get some seriously cheap tshirts, shorts, jeans etc. You can get good quality t-shirts from 100 Baht on up and some good, simple sports shorts from 120 Baht and up.

Of course Thailand is famous for its tailors and because it´s cheaper here than in other parts of the country, even Thais travel the 700km from Bangkok up here to get a tailored suite. I haven´t tried this yet but I have seen advertisements and two friends got themselves shirts: They paid 1300 Baht and one of the tailors here advertises that you can get a set which includes a suite, shirt and tie for 120$.

Food Basically, is the cheapest thing you can get here. It is super awesome. There are thousands of restaurants in Chiang Mai and you can get healthy, good quality food at every corner – even a few minutes walk away from Team Quest. For a delicious plate of fried rice with vegetables and meat you pay 30 – 40 Baht; in the city center around 60 Baht. A huge, deepfried chicken breast costs around 40 Baht; a snack of barbecued prok on a stick maybe 15 Baht and a fresh made papaya salad is 25 Baht here. As long as you eat Thai food, it´s nearly impossible to exceed your budget even if you eat a lot. If you prefer eating burgers and stuff, have fun paying more than 200 Baht for one BigMac.

But from time to time you need the fatty fastfood (At least I do - just had an awesome XXL pizza at ´Duke´s´ for Christmas). It´s way more expensive to eat western style food, but still cheaper than at home – for a HUGE pizza I paid 450 Baht, for an Irish breakfast at a pub it´s around 200 Baht. A sushi buffet is approximately 300 Baht and a Thai BBQ buffet around 180.

Thai food - simply delicious

Alcohol is ... well... if you think it´s cheap or not really depends on where are you from. Alcohol is super cheap in Germany so 60 Baht for a 0,6l bottle in a supermarket isn´t cheap for me, . But most of the people I meet consider drinking to be cheap here. At a bar you pay slightly more, maybe 90 Baht, and for a small bottle of the cheapest whisky, you pay 200 Baht at a supermarket and 300 or more at a bar. But if you take training seriously you will not jeopardize the succes of your effort by wasting your money for alcohol. Of course you won't, right?

For now, that´s it – I hope this helps you by estimating how much money you need here. If you have questions -> leave me a comment!