Chapter 5 Training

After taking a nap I rose just before four undressing in front of the mirror and gripping the role of fat around my midriff.  Moving through different positions to find one which was flattering I couldn’t.  A large set of love handles at the sides, belly overhanging my shorts, I wondered how I’d let it happen.  When I’d met my wife I’d been in my bodybuilding prime, strapping chest, thick arms, I looked more like Homer Simpson now, years sat behind a desk eating pizza.

Unpacking my shiny new trainers I pulled on my shorts and t-shirt and headed for the gym.  It was busy as I arrived, people skipping and thudding bags as Linkin Park blared from hidden speakers.  Sitting on a bench I looked through the bodies and having expected to find everyone with taught six-packs I was surprised to see the range of physiques.  A few did have the definition of men in their prime but others carried more excess than me.  I watched as they performed their exercises; kicking bags, skipping rope, shadow boxing. 
 

‘You wanna give it a try?’ I looked up to see Andy grinning at me.

‘Nar, I think I’ll just try to get a feel for it today.’

‘O.K., but if you change your mind, you get yourself in there, alright?’

After sitting for twenty minutes I crossed the floor and removed my trainers, stuffing my socks in the heals.  Most of the boxers were shirtless, but I decided not to join, I was going to wait, wait until I looked respectable, until my belly had been replaced by what I could term an acceptable level of excess. 

Finding an unoccupied bag I looked around seeing people throwing a kick similar to the roundhouse I’d used in Karate.  Gingerly thumping the bag, it felt O.K., I was unsteady but the contact was solid, a satisfactory thump as my shin dented the vinyl.

“So, you’ve decided to give it a try huh,” I turned to see Andy. 

“Muay Thai’s a simple sport,” he continued “We’ve got two basic kicks, knees, elbows and hand combinations, that’s it. I’ll start by showing you the side kick, you can practice that today.”

Placing his right foot forward he held his hands in front of his face and stepped forward thudding his right into the canvas. 

“You see that? Now watch again. I step in and bang, see the way I twist my hips, that’s where the power comes from, and hands, you’ve got to keep those up. Today you can just keep practising that. That’s all we do, over and over.”

For the next half an hour I struck the bag in short bursts, taking breaks between to look around the gym.  After a while each kick accompanied by a dull pain and looking down my shins were red with bruising.  Reckoning I’d put in a good effort I crossed to an unoccupied space and performed a hundred press ups in broken sets continuing to the sit up boards where I hooked my feet beneath the sponge and tightened my stomach as I lowered myself backwards.  It was hard, too hard with the added incline and after a few partial repetitions I pulled myself up and spotted a white board detailing the regime.  Each day split between mornings and afternoons.  I looked at the morning runs 8Km with sprints, 10km, mountain run, 12 km, 8km with sprints.  The afternoon runs were shorter 4km with footwork, Boy Scout run, 3kms, that was the warm up and below a list of exercises we’d perform back at the gym; skipping, shadow boxing, bag work, pad work, conditioning.  “Try to learn not beat each other” it read next to the sparring. 

Dining in front of my accommodation that night it was a pleasant setting.  A tin roofed shelter with a couple of dozen tables looking to the road. I ordered chicken fried rice and watched as a red faced Thai cooked in his hygiene net.  In his late-thirties he looked content in his work, picking ingredients from the bowls in front of him, shuffling the wok with an outstretched arm. His stocky wife placing the meal in front of me her young daughter deposited a bottle of chilli sauce. 

“What’s your name?” I asked as she smiled and skipped away.  

Back in my room that night I took my diary and flipped to the back drawing up a calendar for my fourteen weeks of training leaving a space beneath for a pair of ticks.  It seemed straightforward, I went to training, came back to rest, ticked off each session, ate simple meals.  No distractions, no worries about the future.  I had my plan, and as long as I stuck to it, I was safe.  Reading about a woman found dead in a car full of snakes I turned my light out at 10.00. 

Sunday officially a day off I woke to an unprecedented stiffness, shuffling from the bed and reaching to touch my toes until I felt my hamstrings loosen.  I looked down at my swollen shins.  ‘It’s just something I have to go through’ I told myself.  It was the toughening process, baby skin beaten until it became leathery tough. 

Taking a lukewarm shower to complete the process I set out to explore.  Turning left from the gate, I passed the camp and found the road lined with stalls.  We didn’t have anything like it at home; barbecued meats, fried chicken, fruits, vegetables, mysterious curries in large metal pans.  Not feeling brave enough to experiment I continued to a Dunkin Doughnuts I’d spotted the day before.  I’d never been to one in England and standing in front of the frosted rings I was tempted.  I thought about my bulge, about my desire to stand in front of the mirror and stare at a six pack.

“Ice coffee please.”

Taking a seat by the window most of the customers were female students dressed in neat white blouses with short black shirts.  They were all pouring over textbooks and glancing at the girl beside me I saw it was all in English, the unmistakable demand and supply curves of an economic model.  It seemed like they’d been there for hours, drinks long empty, ice lying melted in the dregs of syrupy coffee. 

Looking in on Andy as I returned he told me it wasn’t an official training day but people would be attending and eager to get going I returned at four.

“You guys running?” I asked as two characters loitered at the gate.

“Yeah,” replied a sprightly gazelle with milky white skin.

“This it? let’s go,” ordered a bald German. 

“How far you guys running?”

“Three kilometre, short run today,” the German responded. 

Pleased to find the pace a slow jog rather than the run I’d anticipated I trundled along comfortably, tenements giving way to fields we passed a deserted condominium and turned back onto a track running parallel to a highway.  

Back at the camp I took water from the cooler and lent against the ring watching the boxers. Only half a dozen training the German and Gazelle kneed bags while the others skipped.  I relaxed for a few minutes and resumed kicking as I’d been shown the day before, the moment my leg connected a sharp pain shooting down my shin.  I stepped back and hit it again remembering Jean Claude Van Damme in Kickboxer ‘Wiggle the palm tree’ his instructor had ordered.  After a while I only felt numbness, as if my body had given up protesting.  The bruising was redder, but no more puffy than the day before.  I performed a hundred sit ups in an empty ring and finished with my press ups. 

I could hardly believe I was there, for so long a life of mortgages and promotions.  Perhaps it was all pre-destined but I sensed I’d made a decision somewhere, a decision to let the life inside me speak, opened my mind to let it evolve towards its highest level and somehow it had carried me to Thailand. That was what life seemed to be for everyone, an evolution conducted with as much or as little consciousness as you were prepared to face.  You could tell yourself at some point life was as good as it was going to get or you could keep exploring, keep testing the boundaries and that was where I always felt myself most alive. 

That night I repeated my visit to the restaurant outside my guesthouse and returned to my room pulling out my notebook and adding a tick.  Everything was in place, if I kept up the simple routine in three months I’d be returning to a place in The Legion.  A flight to Heathrow, another to Marseille and I’d be standing before the gates uttering the immortal words “I want to join.”  My first long run awaiting the next day I read Bangkok 8 until my eyes closed. 

When the alarm rang out the next morning I jumped from bed excitedly.  Six fifteen I grabbed my unwashed kit and made my way to the camp.  It was dim outside, street sellers setting up in the road and smoke wafting from freshly lit coals.  The gym was deserted as I arrived.  I walked to the board and checked the run ‘University, 8 kilometres with sprints’. I thought I might have got the time wrong and considered returning to bed, but then they appeared one by one, like ghosts, bleary eyed figures emerging from all corners of the camp, from chalets, from the road, Andy approaching from his house.

“Just follow the others, you shouldn’t get lost,” he said.

After stretching against a ring we set off at quarter to seven following the same route as the previous day and continuing onwards when we hit the highway.  Rather than turning back towards the camp we continued for another two kilometres, passing Dunkin Doughnuts and ten minutes later turning right towards the mountain. In the distance I watched as the lead runners turned right and reaching the same point a minute later saw it was the entrance to the University.  The path lined with the girls from Dunkin Doughnuts, pressed white blouses and short black skirts, they were all so thin.  Thin girls at home were those who weren’t that fat, but here, they just didn’t have any. 

Relaxing my pace I drifted back from the pack, I was a gladiator in training, my audience some of the prettiest girls I’d ever seen. I hadn’t even liked them on my first visit, something to do with the seediness of Bangkok and being scratched by a long nailed prostitute on Kho Samui but these girls were from a fantasy.  Like the Japanese girls dressed in their sailor uniforms, the combination of order and beauty arousing my desire.

The green campus was dotted by whitewashed buildings, flowering bushes lining the path and butterflies drifting across the road.  Coming up a hill I found the other runners stopped on a rugby field. Walking to join them we waited for a couple of stragglers and then Andy gave his orders.

“O.K., this is the sprints, for those not familiar we jog a length of the pitch, do ten press ups and sprint back, then ten more press ups and jog to the furthest tyre, sprint back and so on until we’re finished, got that?”

I looked down the field, five tyres spread evenly between the rugby posts.  Jogging the first length and pumping out my press ups I gave it everything on the sprint back.  Pleased at not being last I pumped out more press ups before repeating the cycle. By my fourth tyre a skinny lad had already finished, veins running like rivers across his body.  My lungs barely able to keep pace I thundered through the final length, collapsing face down and tasting the dewy grass in my mouth.

“Good work people, I’ll see you back at the gym,” Andy called.

Pushing myself up the others were already running and forcing my legs to a reluctant gait I followed.

The others were already skipping and kneeing bags as I returned to the gym.  It was like an endless procession, no time to rest, just moving from one element to the next.  Taking water Andy approached with a grin. 

“So, how was that?”

“That was tough, really tough, what do people do next?” I asked.

“Well, you’ve seen the board, that’s basically it. You come back and skip or work the bags. That usually lasts about forty minutes and when you feel ready you can start with the trainers. The last thing’s the conditioning; I’ll show you that at the end. Just do what you can.”

“You think I should try training once a day for the first week or so?”

“I never recommend it, if you take your rest, you’ll get into it.”

As he walked away I thought about what he’d said, ‘I never recommend it, you’ll get into it’. I’d always had a tendency to over-train, trying to lift too much weight too soon, working my arms six days a week instead of three.  In my bodybuilding days I’d read rest days were the key, the time when the body rebuilt itself to meet new demands but Muay Thai didn’t seem to allow for that, a mantra of do or die trying, forcing the body through its changes without giving it time to reflect.

Having a first attempt at kneeing the bag I gripped the neck and pulled it towards me crashing in alternate legs as I’d seen the others do.  It was hard, hopping from one leg to the other, like running up the vertical.  Every element of the training was designed to drill the body until each act became effortless. 

“Remember the power’s in the hips,” Andy said as he came to demonstrate.

Red dots gradually growing to bloody grazes on my knees I turned the bag to find a smoother surface and paused between sets to watch the other boxers. There was an unstoppable momentum in the gym, the kind you got infected by, the kind that took any lingering doubts about why you were there; you were there to train pure and simple.

Towards the end Andy called me to the ring demonstrating the conditioning. 

“This is the Hindu press up,” he said lying in a press up position with his legs apart.  He dipped forward in a rolling motion and rose to stretch his neck to the sky. Copying the movement I heard an unfamiliar crunching in my shoulders, the forceful turning of cartilage as the muscles rotated through their effort.  Moving to the sit ups I hooked my legs over the bottom rope of the ring and followed Andy.  He was fast, rising and falling in waves. The overhead pull ups were the final task. Taking turns to heave ourselves up I managed seven and watched as the lad with the veins pumped out a dozen, every muscles visible in his back, every ounce of excess flesh already stripped away. 

Told Andy’s wife would prepare breakfast I showered and returned to a patioed garden outside his house, three picnic benches laid out with English menus and tubes of honey.

“You want order breakfast?” Andy's wife called from the kitchen.

I went for muesli, a huge bowl stuffed with freshly cut fruit and topped with a heavy dollop of yoghurt.  Enjoying the satisfaction of eating after hard work I was joined by a blonde guy who extended a hand and introduced himself as Karl from Sweden. I’d seen him in the gym, the best six pack of them all, he wasn’t bulky, more like a model. He told me he’d been at the camp six months after a year at China’s Shaolin Monastery.

“So, what brings you to Lanna?” he enquired.

I’d delivered a pitch I’d prepared for anyone who might ask. 

“Hurm, I always wanted to try Muay Thai and I knew I had to do it before I got too old, so here I am, how about yourself?”

“Oh, you know, a last stint of travelling before I settle down, I have an advertising business at home but at twenty six I decided I wanted to do this before I have a family.”

He didn’t look he wanted a family. I’d spotted him on the run, Bjorn Borg hair band pinning back his long golden locks, I’d put him down as a playboy. The kind of guy who came to train just to tell people he’d done it. When he asked me what I did at home I drafted out another pre-prepared line.

“Anything for money.”

It was perfectly succinct, an answer to set the enquirer at ease and one I deduced one unlikely to bring further questions. I’d read a Chinese philosopher who’d said people tended to be happier in the company of the seemingly un-ambitious and that rang true. I’d thought about the people I enjoyed spending time with, they were the straight people, the people just happy to speak without aggrandizing. My friends at home, travellers I’d met, it was the self promoters who left me twitching, those who’d tell you what they did and what they were going to do, told you what they earned and told you what you should do. 

My first time training twice a day I was determined to make the afternoon run, this time four kilometres up and down the lanes. My legs still stiff from the morning I stretched in the gym and followed Andy as he took the lead. The outward trip was fine, but performing the footwork halfway I couldn’t keep pace; running backwards, sideways, leaping into the air, crossing legs like a Latino dancer. It was the same feeling I got when I asked to do something for the first time, the moment I got one move, Andy leading us to the next. He looked super fit, six feet tall, broad shoulders narrowing to a bottled waist. I guessed he might be in his late thirties, but only from the lines in his face. 

Back in the gym I watched the others bind their hands and caught Andy’s eye for a demonstration. He held the tightly coiled cloth and with his spare hand wound the tape around wrist and fingers. 

“It’s pretty simple, but I’ll do it for you today,” he said. “It’s got to be tight, too loose and you could really hurt yourself.”

As he finished I had a flashback to school, the teacher showing me how to tie my laces, an impossible thing I could never imagine being possible. Leading me to a bag he showed me how to punch.

“This is simple, you jab with your left, that’s the lighter punch to keep the opponent away and then bang, the power's in the right.  You can throw a jab and a cross, double up on the jab.  There’s a few ways of doing it but just stick to the basics for now.”

As the day before I concentrated on the simple lesson and threw in the occasional kick. It felt good, the remnants of bodybuilding giving my right a thudding power, my jab was a little slow but nothing a few thousand repetitions couldn’t fix.  Completing my Legion exercises I felt my body begin another protest. Two training sessions had turned my walk back to my room into a hobble, each leg a single lump as I gripped the banister at my guesthouse and dragged them one by one.

The next morning the tightness was like never before and climbing into the back of Andy’s Isuzu with a ten kilometre run ahead of me I wondered how I was going do it.  

“What happens if we don’t make it?” I questioned a guy across from me.

“Andy’ll pick you up.”

As we moved down the highway out of the city I tried to make myself comfortable, the camp dogs wriggling through arms and legs, the boxers sat in silence. Pulling off the highway we continued down a quiet road and emerged to a view of a lake, mountain at the back, early morning sun casting an orange reflection on its surface. We stopped next to a pagoda, Andy setting off towards the mountain with his dogs and the other boxers setting off back down the road. No one seeming keen to start I counted ten minutes before the lad with the veins took the lead.

I was aiming to finish that day, my ten kilometres for The Legion. Watching the fastest move into the distance I found myself in a pack, then gradually moving ahead as my legs found their rhythm. I wasn’t showing off, not trying to beat anybody, it was just a natural pace, something I’d noticed in England, a speed at which the body felt comfortable, you could go faster or slower but it was an effort either way.

Half an hour in my body was straining, the white condos near the camp now visible. It was the type of running I hated, long straights with nothing to look at, always able to see a distant horizon.  At home I went running where there’d be pretty girls to appreciate the effort but here there was nothing save the occasional passing car. 

Slowing towards the end I was shuffling rather than jogging but the satisfaction on completion was immense, the furthest I’d run in my life. In the gym, no one was doing much as I arrived, I guessed the fastest had been back twenty minutes but most were stretching in the rings. Seeming to consider their work done I collected my bag and got ready to leave.  Then it began, the skipping, the striking of bags. 

Returning for breakfast they were still there, the guy with the veins pounding a set of pads held by Andy.

“Good, good,” he encouraged as he thundered in lightening combinations. Raising the pace for the final minute the whole gym stood to watch, every muscle visible, every ounce of excess already removed. Finishing with a flourish he collapsed to his knees, bouncing back as Andy tapped the head. 

“One more.”

By Thursday my shins didn’t hurt anymore but cramping between sessions had intensified. It was the walk back to the guesthouse and first thing in the morning when I felt it most. Devoid of energy before every session I felt like a self winding clock, the moment I started to run my body seeming to build on its own momentum and an hour in I’d be flying. 

As I began to familiarise myself with the faces I could pick out the most dedicated trainees, the veins belonged to Ben from the Isle of Man, the two runners from my first Sunday Oren also from the Isle and Basil the bald headed gymnast from Berlin. Another fighter who caught my eye was Turkan from Turkey. That was the hardcore, and around them a supporting cast of part timers to which the Swedish Karl belonged.  Dividing time between sit ups and sparring with himself in the mirror, he was someone who wanted to look like a fighter rather than be one. Canadian Jay was middling, seeming to take things seriously but relaxing at night with his beer and cigarettes.

Continuing my sessions through to the weekend I concentrated on the moves I’d been shown and picked up the other basic kick, teeping.  It was similar to a jab punch, a forward push kick which kept the opponent at bay and struck him in the gut.  Outside training I read Bangkok 8 and finished the story of my Chinese poet simultaneously, listening to my French tapes for half an hour a day after lunch. 

Without a motorbike I largely stayed out of town, only venturing in to change money or visit the mall. I was surprised to find myself liking the mall, no screaming children, no one rushing about. It wasn’t like at home, perhaps something to do with the air-conditioning.   

During Friday's workout a trainer approached offering tickets for the evening's fights. Two of the camps boys in action I paid and returned at seven to ride a songtao taxi to the stadium. It was the red taxi I’d see everywhere in the city. A small red truck accessed through the rear with a row of benches on either side.  Creeping through the traffic, we crossed the river and wound down a couple of backstreets to a crowded car park. It was how I remembered the Lumpinee Stadium in Bangkok, a concrete oval, barred ticket booth beside the entrance, stalls selling alcohol and snacks outside.

Showing my ticket at the turnstile I entered the arena, ring at the centre, neat lines of foreigners seated like regiments of Napoleonic soldiers around the ring and behind the cheaper benches where the locals sat. Sitting in the cheap seats I remembered how I’d been ripped off in Bangkok, the girl next to me laughing as I told her I’d paid eight hundred baht for my ticket ‘Two hundred baht’ she’d said showing me her own. The majority of matches that night had been between children, it was a sport the Thai’s stared early; peaking during their late teens and most retiring in their early twenties. It was one route out of poverty, the chance for an education, the money to see you through university. 

As the first match began the band struck up in a sound similar to that of a snake charmer, two slender teenagers timidly feeling each other out with a series of teep kicks.  Working through the rounds the intensity gradually grew, kicks slapping against ribs, occasional grapples, kneeing each other until the one threw the other to the ground or the referee split them apart.  From round three the fighter in the red landed two strikes for each received and took a points victory. 

Buying water and spicy noodles outside I sat through two more non pulse bouts and then watched as Michael from our camp took the stage.  He was known as ‘Tyson’ in the gym, a fourteen year old with a man’s physique. He wiped a glove beneath his nose and hitched up his shorts, moving forward with teeps and loose looking punches. 

It was the second round when he got to work, smashing in heavy kicks and following up with barrages of punches. His opponent looked defenceless as each blow backed him across the ring. Holding his hands in front of his face, lifting knees to block it didn’t seem to make any difference. It really was like watching a young Tyson, walking forward picking his spots, thundering in blows as his opponent crumpled, the crowd roared. It was real entertainment, forward his only gear, by the fourth the opponent’s corner threw in the towel.

On Sunday I joined Andy for a walk up the mountain. The leisurely stroll I’d anticipated becoming a forced march as Andy took the lead.

“Get any snakes up here?” I panted.

“Nar, plenty of dead ones on the roads, but rare to see one up here.”

“How long’ve you been out here?”

“Thailand? Been coming since my early thirties, used to do six months in Saudi and six here.”

“What were you doing in Saudi?”

“Engineering, on call in a tin can in the middle of the desert.”

I guessed it had paid well but he hadn’t liked it.

“How about fighting, you enjoy that?”

“Tough, I fought a couple of times, got pretty banged up and decided I preferred the training.”

Giving my questions a rest I looked down at the forest, it didn’t look inviting, like something from a fairytale, thick vines winding themselves around the trees, narrow shafts of sunlight filtering through the canopy.

“Have you been married long?” I resumed.

“To Pom? We’re not married. Was when I lived in Aberdeen but that was a long time ago. Nar, we’ve got the same kind of relationship, just haven’t got the papers.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“She came to work in the kitchen when I opened the camp.  A real Thai girl, wouldn’t let me see the doctor when I got diagnosed with cancer.”

“Yeah?”

“Insisted I went to a monk, so that’s what I did, spent a week being blessed and went to the Western hospital.”

“You’re O.K. now?”

“Yeah,” he said lifting his chin to give me a view of his scar.

“Ha, I thought you got that fighting.”

“Throat cancer.”

As we reached a plateau and crossed a stream we were outside a deserted temple, orange robes hanging on washing lines, candles burning in a well kept shrine.  Starting back down the mountain the dogs raced ahead and catching up we found a small goat, one dog tail in mouth another exercising its jaws around the throat. Andy shouted but the dogs didn’t budge. Two more failed attempts to shoe them and I marched forward lifting the goat in my arms.

“Probably the temple goat,” Andy said.

Meeting a couple of monks as we returned to the temple I handed it over, one saying something but Andy didn’t seem to know what.

“You speak much Thai?” I asked as we walked back.

“Awe no, never got round to that, Pom does all the shopping.”

In the afternoon I chatted to Jay who told me him and his girlfriend had just finished a season tree planting in Canada.

“Yeah, I’ll be out here about eight months, want to have some fights and get back to start a gym.”

His girlfriend was attractive but a little dippy for my tastes, smart in the occasional sentence but slurry speech and the vacant looks had given her away. As Jay told me she’d majored in dance and her family ran a hippie commune it all fell into place. 

Returning to my room I took out my notebook and updated the ticks. It had been a solid first week, my body gradually adapting, I was sure my French would come in time and everything else I experienced was a bonus, but something was nagging me, a city waiting to be explored.  Far from the backwater I’d diagnosed on arrival it seemed to be teaming with things to be uncovered; numerous restaurants, temples, cheap shopping, massages and nightlife. I could have continued in my regime until I was ready to go but I was sure I’d have regretted it.