last trainings

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June 1st 2008

Published: June 1st 2008

it is sunday! meaning that yesterday was my last day of training and i have made it through 4 full weeks of muay thai training! tonight i get on a bus to bangkok and leave behind the life of sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress, waking to roosters outside my window, going to yoga and training, jumping rope, wrapping my hands, hitting bags and kick pads, and hearing the trainers shout, "moa powa ledy, powa!" as i consider that there just IS no power left in this lady's body.

since i was leaving soon, i made the effort to go to as many trainings as possible, even though i have been reinjuring my wrists and ankles every day. friday was particularly difficult. i think honestly, that 2 trainings a day is really just too much. if i were here for a longer period of time, i would not try to go to 2 trainings a day. the body needs time to recover. but it is hard to use that logic when i am paying for 2 trainings a day, i don't have the option for paying less for one a day, and i want to get my money's worth and take advantage of the opportunity.

friday was particularly difficult. first training was fine, but second training, during sparring, i sparred with someone who was bigger, stronger, faster, and generally much better than me. that is cool, since i will learn, but she also used more power than we are supposed to. something that is actually kind of unsettling to me is a feeling during sparring sometimes where i get hit, which frustrates me, and then i become angry. we are supposed to spar at 30 or 50% power, because it is about learning good technique, not actually fighting. in fact, i am pretty happy to use 10 or 20% power; just enough to connect, but not enough to jar the person, especially if it is a punch to the face. i feel like the lesson can be learned by feeling the glove against your face, and it needn't also make you see sparks of light. but if someone hits me harder than we are supposed to, rather than saying, "hey, can you take it easy," i just feel very angry and want to hit them back with more power as well.

i sparred with this girl, and at one point she got me with an uppercut to my jaw. i know it was my fault: i forgot to tuck my chin. it really just shocked me, she followed immediately with a punch to the face, so i put out my hands and said, "whoa" to take a breath for a second, and THEN she kicked me in the stomach.

i just felt so angry and hurt. i had the wind totally knocked out of me, and i felt so insulted by the fact that i had put down my defenses and that she had kicked me AFTER that. i have worked so hard to build it into myself not to react physically out of anger, since that is just a terrible and out of control feeling, but the result is that when i feel nothing but anger, i can't react at all. i couldn't even pick up my hands. i just stood there, and the trainer asked if i was ok, and i felt tears trying to burst out of my eyes and choking up in my throat, so i clenched my jaw to stop them, but that meant that i couldn't speak either. then, when the trainer told me to take a break and spar with someone easier, it just felt like another slap in the face. i know i was being a bit stubborn, but i don't like to quit, and i don't like other people pitying me, and that is how it felt to be told i should change sparring partners. in that moment, it felt like everyone was saying, "you are not good enough. go back to square one."

so i broke down and cried. not from pain, but from frustration and embarassment. for the second time this month, and in my next-to-last training. and the crying, in turn, made me feel more frustrated and embarassed. it was a very bad little cycle of emotions feeding off each other.

after sparring, i did more one-on-one training with kickpads. i think because of the whole thing i had become very very tense, and it was a lot harder to breathe. all i wanted to do at this point was to finish my month of training with a sense of completion and a little dignity. so, to add another insult to injury, i started having raspy breathing and couldn't catch my breath. thank you asthma. if you've ever had an asthma attack, you know the last thing you want is to bring attention to yourself because the concept of being unable to breathe for pretty much no reason is kind of pathetic. dignity? not so much.

anyways, training ended, as trainings always do, good and bad alike. and friday night there was rumor of 2 cool things: 1) a BBQ buffet that was free if you bought a drink (any drink. even a 20 baht water, HELLO frugal.) and 2) a reggae bar with live music. both were fantastic! the difficulty and frustration of the day were easily matched, if not exceeded, by the absolute raw fun of the night. it was the kind of night that was fantastic partly because there was not much expectation for it to be great. the food at the BBQ was delicious, it was a nice atmosphere, and most of my favorite people that i have met here went. a fantastic vibe.

the reggae bar was amazing. thai reggae is rather hilarious because of their accents and such. there were two live bands. we missed most of the first one (the thai one), and the second one actually may have been a jamaican band. lots of people dancing, the bar only had 3 walls, so people spilled out onto the grass and sat in lawn chairs and such on the periphery. walking around, i wasn't sure what country i was in or what year it was. tropical weather, palm trees, old VW busses, vendors selling t-shirts and hemp jewelry, really hippie-looking people, touristy-people, and thai people. it made me feel like people create little worlds wherever they go, regardless of country borders or any of that.

anyways, we danced our faces off, then drove down to nai harn beach which was right nearby, and cooled off in the ocean. it was a beautiful end to a beautiful night.

i got home at 3am, lamenting the fact that i had to wake up at 6:30 for my last training, which, amusingly, was supposed to be a special training-at-the-beach, the same beach we had just been swimming at.

training at the beach was agony on so little sleep. and it felt unfair to be so close to the ocean and all those beach chairs and people relaxing and playing, and yet be told i had to run up and down the beach 4 times and do all these pushups and kicks. my focus was not on training. the beach was teasing me.

the funny and sad thing is that i didn't get any pictures of training. it is hard to, because when you are at training, you are training, and i just felt like it wasn't really cool to stop and take pictures. and i never got a picture of the trainers and me, which i had wanted. i am not even sure if they are aware i am leaving. i hope to stop by camp today before i get on the bus, just on the off chance that they are around.

anyways, i believe it is time to get some breakfast and pack and think of some enjoyable way to spend my last day in phuket. tonight it is back on the bus to bangkok!

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