Muay Thai Training

Before coming to Thailand I read that the Thai people loved watching and betting money at one sport more than anything, Thai Boxing but in Thai it is called muay-thai. If I ever had the opportunity to take lessons I planned to say yes, and luckily, I was offered lessons at an outside gym only 1km (.5 miles) away from the Starfish Country Home School. Monday through Saturday at five o’clock I run to muay-thai for a two-hour lesson. Since I have watched American boxing I thought they might be similar, but I was wrong. First off you can do just about anything that you want to your opponent other than head butting them, so kicking the body, kneeing the person’s head, or elbowing in the eye are all legal. Before I would be able to perform the moves for five 3-minute rounds, I was going to need a lot of training. My two hours of training starts with bouncing back and forth on a tire that is five feet in diameter for 10 minutes, and then I jump rope for another 10 minutes. After resting for only 1 minute I enter the ring, but before I can do anything I must bow with my hands in front, to the picture of the king and queen that are above the ring. After that I hit pads that my trainer holds for15 minutes at a time with 1 minute breaks in between. Doing this for about one and half hours is pretty tiring, but I still have to do fifty sit-ups and twenty push-ups, and finish by doing as many pull-ups as possible (I can only do five at this point in time). I then run back to the school, were I eat dinner and take a shower before I have no other choice, but to fall asleep. What a work out, but I have not felt this fit in my life in a very long time.