I'm now in my third week training at Diamond muay thai and I'm really in the swing of things now. I'm training twice a day and running before each session, which means the time in between sessions is often spent napping. The weather has been turning a bit crappy recently, lots of rain so I'm not missing out on any beach time anyway. I'll be able to get some when the fight is done.
On that note, the date for my fight has been moved around a bit. First it was the 27th, then 30th and now I've been told probably 28th. It's no problem, fighting over here you kind of have to relax and just go with the flow, fight dates and opponents change all the time and you just have to roll with it. I know I'll be in the ring around the end of the month, that's all that matters. There will be a few of us from the gym on the show, so it should be a fun night. I'm looking forward to relaxing with a few beers afterwards too.
Whilst I have been embracing the grind of 2x a day training, I've still been able to find time to do a few things. Last week, I headed up to Haad Rin in the north of the island with Paul (a US fighter) and Jason (a fellow Englishman who is having his first fight on the same show I'm on). However, my bike is a little lacking in power, and there are a lot of steep hills on the way to Haad Rin, a couple of which I wasn't sure I would make it up. On the way, I fell behind Jason and Paul and, although we had already agreed we were going to Haad Rin beach, when I finally got there I couldn't see them anywhere! After walking around the beach for about half an hour, I gave up and just chilled out for a while before heading back on my own, conscious that I could do with a quick nap before afternoon training. When I saw Paul and Jason again at the gym later on, we couldn't figure out how we missed each other as we were at the same beach, we must have walked right past each other! Oh well, it was a fun ride home anyway with the hills that had been a challenge going up being much more fun going down.
On Friday I decided it was high time I got a massage. My hamstrings and quads were so tight I could feel it hampering my performance, so after afternoon training I headed down to one of the nearby massage places. The massage was amazing, she hit all the right spots with the perfect level of intensity, so it hurt but not too badly. After I told her my legs were the main area of soreness, she spent nearly an hour on them alone. Well over an hour of massage for just 250 Thai baht (about five pound) and I felt amazing afterwards!
Sunday was a day many of us anticipated all week- pancake day! One of the students here, Paulien from Belgium, had offered to make pancakes for everyone Sunday morning. I hadn't had pancakes in a long time, and was excited to enjoy this childhood favourite. As it turned out, several people didn't make it out of bed in time for the pancakes as they had been out drinking Saturday night and only got back in the small hours of the morning. For those of us who made it, this was a blessing as we could eat as many as we wanted! Six pancakes later, replete with bananas and chocolate sauce, I was more than satisfied.
In the afternoon, the weather turned shitty with pretty much non-stop rain, so I took the opportunity to have a relaxing day of sleeping and watching films. Sometimes it's great to do nothing at all.
Afternoon training today was a particularly hard one. The head trainer Mon had been off all the previous week, but today he came back and straight away called me into the ring for some freestyle pad work. There is nothing more like a real fight than this, throwing what feels natural and having him come back at you with kicks, knees and punches as well as clinching. After pad and bag work, we did clinching and I got thrown into the 'shark tank'- basically non-stop clinching with 3 different partners who rotate regularly, so they stay fresh as you get more and more tired. Oh yeah, and this was with the Thai trainers, not other students, and those guys are hard to clinch with at the best of times. I got thrown to the canvas several times but kept getting up and diving right back in. It's important to train that mindset- if your opponent scores on you, you need to go get that point right back. It's something I'm really trying to work on at the moment.
The freestyle pad work is tough, mentally as well as physically. It takes time to get the rhythm with the pad holder and to just let go, letting the instincts trained over so many hours of throwing those techniques take over. Mon keeps telling me, "don't think too much, do what you feel." I hope I can keep working on this with him regularly, as the opportunity for it is one of my main reasons for coming to Diamond.
A couple of people have mentioned that Mon said he enjoys training me, which I'm taking as a big compliment and hopefully this means I can make the most of his knowledge and skill.
So it's one day down in week 3, it's raining (again) and I will be up at 6.30am for running. Time for another chill night I think.
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