I've been living in Pattaya, Thailand for five months now, and today I want to talk about sports, or more precisely, Muay Thai!
What is Muay Thai?
Thai boxing (Muay Thai) is a contact martial art that allows punches, kicks, elbows, and knees. The goal of the fighters is to quickly defeat their opponent. (This is the definition given by one of the neural networks.)
I myself am not involved in it yet, since in December 2023 I broke my arm and underwent a rather complicated operation. But my son regularly attends training.
First training sessions and choosing a gym
I took him to the gym back in November 2023 (he was 5 years old then). It was the famous Venum training camp. But after a couple of months it became clear that it was not quite right for us - there were almost no children there, and the training was designed mainly for professional and semi-professional athletes.
My son is now 6 years old (soon to be 7), and he trains with a former champion named Apichai. He gets along great with kids and makes training fun. I'll attach a few videos of his fights.
The gym is a small shed on his mother's land. All the equipment is old, and some is even handmade, but this does not affect the training process in any way.
My son and I go to training three times a week, and he enjoys it. Here, a clever trick helped me - I told him that there is a special chocolate bar that gives a lot of strength, but you can only eat it before training. Like all children, he loves sweets, and now his training is associated with something pleasant.
The main thing is not competitions, but development
I absolutely do not want him to compete in the future - blows to the head have never made anyone smarter. These trainings have other goals:
- Discipline
- Self-confidence
- Will
- Strength
In addition, I hope that communication with sports guys will protect him from bad company and bad habits.
Sports unite
Today I met a 66-year-old man, a former professional hockey player from California. Next time I will try to find out more about him and maybe write a separate post.
In fact, it does not matter what sport you do and in what conditions - be it a fashionable gym or a simple canopy by the road. Sports make us stronger - both physically and mentally. It unites people of different ages, nationalities and experience.
Training camp coordinates
If you find yourself in Pattaya, you can visit this small training camp and try yourself in Muay Thai.
π° The price of one training session is 300 baht (about $ 8.9). If you take 20 classes at once, it will be cheaper.
πΈ Photos taken with a phone!
Thank you for sharing these moments with me! Until new stories and new holidays!
photo by openai
