(reposted from from my journal, July 19, 2007)
My next Muay Thai lesson was with a different instructor, a young man named Ray. At 24, 5'10" and around 145, Ray had been training in Muy Thai for 12 years. He travels to Thailand once a year for a month to train. He is very serious about his Muay Thai.
He owns and is the lead instructor for Khanomtom Muay Thai, located in a rectangular building painted with decorative urban graffiti. I later learned the building used to be a small cigar factory. It has a regular door at either end and a rolling garage door that's permanently closed.
The interior is unfinished, intimidating in its stark functionality. Sections of rubber mats cover a concrete floor and there's a boxing ring at the end opposite the entrance. Two 'Banana' Bags (long slender punching bags) and
two shorter punching bags dangle from the ceiling beams near the wall. There are a few folding chairs and a wooden bench, a scattering of weight lifting equipment; dumbbells, dip and pull-up station, bench press, Olympic bar. A small, doorless closet holds shelves of equipment: jump ropes, gloves and pads.
No air conditioning.
Thia is Tampa in mid-summer. It was 93 degrees outside. But I'm inside, in a building with no windows that's been closed all day. A few floor fans struggled valiantly, but stifling is an understatement.
The lesson began without preamble; no questions as to goals, current impression of my health, if I was in imminent danger of dropping dead of a cardiac during the workout. I don't think it was that Ray wasn't interested, it was more that he simply took for granted the healthy robustness of being a 24 year-old athlete and had no ability to imagine what's it's like to be 41, even a 41 in relatively in good condition.
He wrapped my hands (he offered the opinion that the straps I had were too short) and tossed me a jump rope.
"You jumped rope before?"
"Yeah." In my senior year of high school.
"Two rounds," he said, setting a ring timer.
Each round was three minutes with one minute in between. I wasn't more than thirty seconds into it before my calves started to go. I wasn't so much jumping rope as I was trying to step over it. I was good for maybe only a few jumps before the rope knocked against my feet. Jump, jump, jump... knock. Jump, jump, jump... knock. After six minutes I was sucking wind and my calves were totally spent. Sweat soaked my shirt.
After that came pad work in the ring, again working to the ring timer. Hit the pads for 3 minutes, rest 1 minute. A Muay Thai bout is 3 rounds and that's how we trained. Three rounds with 1 minute in between, then a short break. We did 9 round total.
Ray had me doing the same moves as Brian - punches and kicks. This being only my second lesson, I hadn't even developed a modicum of correct technique. We finished up with 10 minutes of stretches. I walked out of there so wet I looked as though I'd just jumped into a pool.