First Impressions

I'm sorry I don't have any pictures or video to accompany this post, I'm going to try to bring my video camera tomorrow for one of the sessions to get some pics and video.

I've been staying at Keatkhamtorn camp for the past 4 days living the Muay Thai lifestyle and learning the "sabai, sabai" life that everyone talks about. I wanted to give some details on my experiences so far. A warning to my non-Muay Thai friends, this entry is a little more technical. Stay tuned for a followup soon about my non-training experiences and impressions.

Session 1: Fixing my leg kicks
After arriving, I pass out after settling in for 4 hours before my alarms wakes me up for the morning session. The trainers tell me to skip the 10k run while they break me into the process. Even though the first session consisted of only 5 pad rounds and a little shadow boxing, it was already groundbreaking for me. The one thing I thought I had down was my lead and rear leg kicks. The first thing they critiqued on me was my kick. Because the trainers spoke very little english, I couldn't quite understand what they were telling me. It was really discouraging when they showed me what I looked like, and they show me the correct technique and I couldn't tell the difference.

Session 2: Long Knees
Session 2 kicks off just 5 hours later. I'm still trying to figure out what is going on, and what I should be doing. Once again right at the start, the trainer, Kai, calls me out and starts working pads with me. He tries to fix my kick some more, but I can see his frustration when the message isn't getting through. He moves on and starts correcting my long knees. Apparently, I have gotten into the habit of pivoting my base foot on my long knees, and he didn't like this. After my pad rounds were done, I hit 7 more rounds on the bag mostly drilling my kicks and long knees, occasionally interrupted by Kai telling me to slow down.

Session 3: Footjab and finally fixed my leg kicks
After the first day, I noticed that many of the guys do partner drills/light sparring, and also everyone does clinch at the end. I really enjoyed watching, but I couldn't wait to actually hop in. I woke up still a little exhausted and sore from day one. Perhaps I should've trained a bit more before coming over here. As session 3 started, I finally was finding a rhythm. I got my hands wrapped and then hopped onto a bag to do 200 skip knees to warm up and then went right into rounds hitting the bag. Kai pulls me out again and makes me shadow in front of the mirror. Once again he breaks down my kick errors and I finally understand him. My hip motion isn't quite right. I had developed a kick where I generate all my power by rotating my hips to swing my leg at the last second. While they still pivot to turn over the kick, they push their hips forward through the end of the motion to drive the leg up and forward with the glutes. This is going to take some getting used to. On a more minor point, they also fixed a bunch of other body mechanics including my head position so I was looking more directly at the target, my torso angle so that I was more upright, and my guarding hand position so that my palm is on my temples instead of my thumb. On top of fixing my kick, Kai also pointed out an issue with my teep (push front kick), where I don't bend my leg much going into the teep because it was a pointer I picked up from another gym. He has me bending my leg much more as I lift for my teep. At the end of session 3, I got to join into the clinching fun. Granted, I was with a 14 year old, it was still pretty awesome because that 14 year old was taking me to school.

Session 4: Working lead and rear shields
Moving into session 4, I'm not getting a pretty solid grounding, and this time I end up skipping the pad rounds, and they put me with one of their oldest fighters for some drilling. I got to work my shields and return kicks and knees off the shields with him for over an hour. My feet have always been so heavy and with such poor rhythm that I have always been terrible at shielding. Even though, I only improved marginally, I picked up a lot on how to shrink and alternate my rhythm alongside making my weight distribution a little more neutral, and my stance a little more narrow in order to more quickly get either of my shielding legs up. On top of the working on my shield, I noticed that he was throwing a lot of body shots on me. In retrospect, all the trainers I worked with were throwing lots of body shots on me. It dawned on me that night that they were pointing out an issue with my guard. I knew I would have to work on my guard first thing in the next session.

Session 5: Refreshed, ramping up, and fixing my guard.
I woke up Sunday morning quite glad that we were not training. My body was still adapted and could definitely use the rest. More to come later on my sightseeing adventures on this Sunday. Monday morning rolls around, and I wake up amazingly refreshed. Don't feel most of the soreness that I felt the day before. That rest day couldn't have been better timed. Session 5, I'm pretty much in full swing with the workouts now. I start warming up with 200 hundred skip knees followed by 2 rounds of shadow boxing. I started taking the little tips and repositionings that various trainers had given me through the sessions to figure out where I should be keeping my hands. I've known for over a year now that my guard leaves me exposed for body shots, so I am really happy they not only spotted it, but gave me great pointers on what to do about it. I followed my shadowboxing rounds with 10 bag rounds before Kai pulls me into the ring to kick pads. He seems quite impressed with my progress and asks how long I'll be training here. I finish up the session with some more bag rounds and then clinch work followed by calisthenics.

Session 6: Tightening up my Clinch + Sparring
I finally joined in for the warm up run, so now I'm doing the full Thai workouts. After my bag and pad rounds, where Kai has started working more elbow varieties in, I start working with another young teenager who couldn't be more than 4'10" and 80lbs. Once again we're doing a drilling session, except he seems a little less patient in dealing with silly farangs, so it escalates to a light sparring session. It was quite eye opening how poor my rhythm and footwork is compared to even their middle level fighters. I had a blast trading with him, and we even started joking a round and I pulled out a few MMA moves (that one was for you J-mo). We closed up with some clinching as always. This time after I finished working with one of the juniors, of the trainers grabs me and starts clinching. This guy is probably a few pounds heavier than me and about 10 years better than me. At first he just throws me around for a bit, and then he gives me a pretty crucial pointer on what I'm doing wrong with my clinch swim defense. I can't wait to try this out next time.

Conclusion
So far, this camp has been amazing. I've cleaned up at least one thing with every practice session. I can't wait to get my reps in to really incorporate these fixes. Even more so, I'm really looking forward to moving past basic technique cleanup and really picking up some more advanced concepts and tricks.
On a separate note, while the training has been great, I couldn't help but notice the company that I've had. Since I'd gotten here, I noticed that while there are 6-7 other foreigners signed up for full time training, pretty much no one does the morning sessions, and participation in the afternoons is spotty at best. While the training is definitely top notch, its curious how distracted most of the people training here actually are. Its a huge departure from what I had gathered from reviews and random talking on the internet. Regardless, I'm still getting great attention and training, so c'est la vie.