muay thai

well, to put it rather simply, today was my first muay thai training session. felt a bit apprehensive cos i didnt know what to expect and yea, the thought of getting beaten up crossed my mind a few times.

i arrived pretty early, about 20 minutes before so i could limber up and stretch. i had rowed in the morning with the juniors and so i was aching already and the groin strain from soccer two days ago still hadnt healed yet. well no pain no gain.

step into the dojo and what do i see.

one big bruiser of a guy, a few sinewy, lanky guys and all looked menancing. all men an all taller and more muscular than me. fuuccckk.

eventually i took a look around and it wasnt so bad after a while. yes, ther were the muscle-heads and the bruisers but there was also another beanpole of a guy and a skinny guy, so it wasnt gonna be a beat up session.

warmups was...well, more intense than canoeing warmups but much shorter. lotsa running and twisting motions repeated in sets. shuffles, jumping jacks, stretching...

then we were told to pair up. i met this woodlands ring secondary school teacher (the skinny guy) and we sorta paired up cos well, both same size what.

then darren came in and told me to pair up with Dave, an ang moh.

Dave looks pretty young, like about 20 plus and hes about 1.8m tall, a full head taller than me. hes also muscles galore. so well, ok, no pain no gain.

i think darren purposely did it, somehow...

anyway, darren has quite a few quotable quotes.

"if you hit a guy full in the chin and he doesnt move----run."

so it was Dave with which i started hitting the pads with. we donned gloves and practised the jab and cross. sounds simple but the technique behind it is majorly hard to grasp. especially the footwork, very the unstable and unsure.

darren added to the excitement by asking me to hit him a few times, then throwing me off balance to make known my sucky stance. well, at least i got a small tap to the head and not a roundhouse.

"open up your stance. too narrow. come on, you have big balls, open up!"

in case anyone was wondering if we actually did any real fighting. no, we didnt, but we didnt have to cos even when holding the thai pads (thai pads are thick pads with handles and straps so your partenr can punish you), i could feel the force of Dave's blows mightily. almost threw me off balance a few times. and when we mvoed onto roundhouse kicks, my forearms took a severe beating. you can literally feel your bones taking the impact.

imagine what a full kick to your stomach feels like....oh man.

to kick properly, your knee must be on the other side of the target, meaning you chop through the person and cause massive damage in between. so , do the math and it all adds up to pulverised muscle tissue and bone.

there was this once where dave miskicked a slight bit and while most of the force fell on the thai pads, he contacted my upper abs a little bit. and yes, you can feel it man. *grunt*

so, it was basically an intense "technical" (not physical, mind you, they have those as well) session today and everybody was Owned. (Darren is owning!)

haha, i punched so much (relative to my sedantary lifestyle) that i split my skin a bit on the kunckles. and when i kicked the heavy bag, my bone felt like breaking. guess i need more toughening up. yes i am a wussy.

its kinda like a blur now, but i kinda enjoyed the session, only that i couldnt continue with Open Mat after that cos of the groin and split kunckle and my legs were bruised a bit already.

he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.

meanwhile, shall work on my shadow boxing so tim can Dominate.