See? Not die!

Tonight will be my third night at Tiger Muay Thai training camp, and as I'm sitting here on my meager mattress in my 10'x10' sauna of a room, I'm finally starting to get a realistic picture of what the next few months will be like.

The day that I arrived I spent settling in, trying to get the lay of the complex and figuring out some of the administrative concerns. At the reccommendation of the front office, I didn't train during the afternoon training session, so that I could start a whole day on the morrow. Overall, I suppose my accommodations could be worse, as I have a television, a large wardrobe, and a small refrigerator all to myself, but my bed would be more appropriately termed a cot, with a mattress not wider than my index finger is long. Also, what I was led to believe was an air-conditioned room has turned out to in fact be a small room with three windows and a wall-mounted fan; the air circulates well, but it's just as hot outside, so little is gained. While I admit I was unimpressed by the room when I walked in, I've done what I can to forget my expectations, and I think I'm adapting well. My sleep schedule is a bit tangled with a twelve-hour time difference, but there's no shortage of fatigue, so it's been easier to adjust than perhaps it would be otherwise.

I'll skim over the second day of my stay, as I really wasn't able to accomplish much due to lack of sleep and the vague cold that I seem to get every time I change continents. I tried to go to a conditioning class that morning before the real workout began, but I was thoroughly murdered after even that first hour, so apart from a feeble attempt at jogging in the afternoon, I spent the rest of the day just trying to recover.

Today was the third day that I've been in Thailand, and for the first time I really felt the full force of Tiger Muay Thai training. Opting out of the supplemental conditioning class, I went straight to the regular morning training session, which, it turns out, is four hours long. I can say with certainty that I worked more in those four hours than in any other full day of my life. We jogged, we shadow-boxed, we did burnout drills on the pads, we sparred at 50% speed and power, we did more jogging, we did more shadow-boxing, we did more drills on the pads, and then we did 300 sit-ups and 100 push-ups, after which the trainer made us lie on our backs while he slammed a 15-pound medicine ball into our stomachs between 20 and 60 times depending on the person (I was assigned a gentleman's 40). Needless to say, I didn't manage to stagger out of my room for the afternoon session, which, I'm told, is the hard part.

All that said, I have to say that the most remarkable thing about the training here is the trainers themselves. With perhaps three or four exceptions, the instructors are all native Thais, and they speak a broken but fervent brand of English which makes up in intensity and volume what it lacks in grammar and syntax. It is important for me to point out, however, that these men are not drill sergeants, or even any close approximation to them. They yell constantly, but in more of a playful, even joyous way. They grin at us encouragingly from behind their wrapped fists, and they give visceral cries of "uuaaahhh!" and "eeeeeaaayyyy!" when we deliver a solid blow. Needless to say, they make it clear that our limbs are simply incapable of doing them any damage, but they regularly offer words of dubious encouragement, clapping us on the back with arms made of iron and knotted rope and delightedly crying "See? Not die!"

Right now I am more sore than I can ever remember being before. My knuckles are bruised and split despite the handwraps and 16oz. gloves, but somehow I'm still looking forward to seeing these jolly little boxing gnomes tomorrow, as they show me other things which, despite my previous expectations, will leave me 'not dead' again.