Double Class

Ever since my return to Malaysia for my 2 months holiday, I've been constantly attending my Muay Thai class.The class is always fun but tiring. Sometimes it can get a bit discouraging when I fail to punch and kick hard. The worst part is when the Kru (Thai word for instructor or teacher) constantly yells at me for doing the exercise wrongly. Nevertheless, at the end of the class, I often feel so good and confident knowing that I'm fit and I'm improving my fighting skills. Just yesterday, I thought about going for both classes. The usual classes that I have been attending all the while starts from 6:30pm to 8:30pm everyday. There is also another class everyday from 8:30pm to 10:30pm; however, I never attended that class ever since my return. Thought about exceeding my capabilities to see how far I can go, I decided to attend both classes. Consequently, I trained from 6:30pm till 10:30pm; 4 hours of non stop training. Although the training was dreadfully tiring, at the end of the class, I felt better than before.

The 6:30 class began with a couple of warm up exercise followed by some leg stretching session. To us martial artists or even athletes in any form of sports, warm up and stretching is very important. Without it, one will bound to suffer from muscles aches. When we finished warming up, the Kru instructed us to get a partner and stretch. Guess who was my stretching partner? It was Mr. Sarno, my former college lecturer. Helping him stretch was slightly difficult considering the height and size of his body. I remembered he suffered from a slight pain in his left knee when I helped him with his butterfly stretch. Well, that was nothing unusual since Mr. Sarno is not that young anymore. After completing our stretch, the class got themselves ready for some punching drills.

As we got ourselves ready for our first exercise for the day, we told ourselves to give it our best and not disappoint our dedicated Kru. We were told again to look for an exercise buddy and guess who decided to be mine? Yeah, you guessed it right; it was Mr. Sarno again. Having Mr. Sarno as your exercise buddy can be painful. This is because when he punches the focus pads you hold, you'll have your arms flying everywhere due to the strength of his punch. Many of the small size students like me will try to avoid having him as his exercise buddy but I couldn't really be bothered much despite the pain seeing that I know I will get my arm muscles stretched properly with him sending my arms flying everywhere. Our punching drills involved throwing jabs, crosses, hooks and uppercuts. We were also trained on how to slide in, deflect, scoop out, catch and wave out all with the purpose of avoiding the opponent's hand attacks. The punching drills were exhausting yet we continue giving all we had. Mr. Sarno who was holding the focus pads for me was constantly motivating me to throw harder punches as I started to lose my focus due to the extreme exhaustion. Like me, Mr. Sarno was also tired since he was sweating profusely and stammering trying to catch his breath. Although he was dreadfully tired, his punches were still strong but not really accurate. I still remember when I was holding the focus pad for him to throw his hooks, Mr. Sarno accidentally threw one to my face instead of the focus pad. I always talked about how hard Mr. Sarno's punches were, so I guess you can really imagine the pain I suffered from his hook. Fortunately for me, my jaw was still in one piece (which was surprising) and there were no bruises at all (even surprising).I can't really blame him as he was losing his focus due to the exhaustion he suffered from. After 30 minutes of punching drills, we were given a 2 minutes break before our drills on the Thai pads.

Like the punching drills, our drills on the Thai pad was also torturing. If you were to ask any of the students in the class about the drills on Thai pads, many will say they still prefer the drills on the focus pads and the leg shields. The Thai pads are heavier to hold; a feeder will feel a bit annoyed with the weight of the pads. Not only are the Thai pads heavier but the small area of the pads limits the landing area of the strike. This means that if the attacker misses that target, he or she will hurt the feeder real bad. Mr. Sarno wasn't really annoyed or uncomfortable holding the Thai pads since he was big and strong enough to absorb any strike impacts on the pads. On the other hand, my forearm hurts like hell every time Mr. Sarno does his crocodile tail kicks on the pad. The moment where I had to hold the Thai pads for Mr. Sarno's knee strike exercises, I was deeply worried that his hard knees would crash into my groin instead of the Thai pads. Fortunately for me, nothing happened to my groin that evening.

15 minutes before the first class ended, we stopped training and decided to do some cool down exercise. Just like our warm up exercise, our cool down exercise involved a couple of stretching. Later on, we did some breathing exercise before ending the first class. As the first class ended, I took a big gulp of water, did some weight lifting and took a short rest getting ready for my second class.

The second class which began at 8:30pm were mostly attended by new comers to the art of Muay Thai. Knowing that the majority of the students for the second class were newbies, I knew training wouldn't be as hectic and tiring as the first class. For that, I was slightly relief and grateful. The second class began with some warm up exercises followed by a couple of basic punching drills for new comers. Despite I'm an advance student in the class, I still participated in the basic hand strike exercise which I thought was great because I got to review my basics. It really reminded me of those early days when I first attended the class. After the basic exercise, my kru told me to pair up with this old man for some hand and leg attack combo exercise ( for advance students).

Like me, this old man was an advance student. He was around the age of 60 judging by his looks and initially, I thought that this old chap wouldn't be able to perform well due to his age. On the other hand, I was truly wrong when I witnessed his rock solid and lightning speed hand attack combos. Boy, was I truly amazed by him; I began to realized that he was better than me and it was a big mistake to judge his physical capabilities based on his age. As for his kicks, they were as good as his punches; however, I was slightly troubled by the fact that he couldn't really kick above the waist level. I remembered how worried I was when I held the kicking shield for him to practice his front, side and back kicks; his kicks were all at the groin level which made me worried. The old man however manage to kick slightly higher after constantly reminding him to kick higher. The class ended 2 hours later with cool down and breathing exercises. At the end of the class, I was half dead due to massive fatigue.

Although the training was dreadfully tiring, at the end of the class, I felt better than before. Those muscles developed due to all the countless punching and kicking toned my body. Besides that, with all the combo attacks I've learned for both classes that day, I really feel confident as I know that I am capable of defending myself.