I first saw Paddy’s Gym on the show “Human Weapon” on the history channel. I then became interested in coming over to Cambodia and training in the Cambodian style of kickboxing known as Pradal Serey and sometimes called Bokator, although from what I understand Bokator is the ancient style, similar to Muay Boran or ancient Muay Thai as can be seen in Ong Bak. Since I would be coming to Thailand I figured I would come to Cambodia for a bit to do some training at some point and got my chance when I needed to do a visa run last week.

Although there are many of places to train in Cambodia (if they were to be searched out) I was intent on training at Paddy’s Gym. If you do some reading on online about the guy you will see that he gets a lot of praise for being a great trainer. I was also happy to read that he had been a western boxing coach and my hands need a lot of work.

In my conversations with Paddy I got some background info on the history of the gym and some info on the kickboxing scene in Cambodia in general. Paddy has been training fighters for a long time and has lived in Thailand for a number of years, teaching in Pattaya and generally being very involved in the fight scene. He came over to Cambodia nine years ago and saw that he could get a shot at making his own camp, something he thought to be difficult in Thailand where there is a very well entrenched infrastructure amongst the Thai’s that is difficult to break into as a foreigner. He came to Cambodia and fell in love with the country and its people and saw in them a love for sports. This love for sports I can attest to personally, just looking around Phnom Penh it is amazing to see how many people of all ages and groups outside playing some sort of sport or game. Paddy gave me some amazing information that really caught me off guard. In Thailand there are two shows broadcast on TV on the weekend. In Cambodia there are SIX, three times as Many as Thailand in a country with about 1/5 it’s population and definitely not known for kickboxing. Paddy saw this love of boxing as well the hardness of the Khmers and could do nothing but devote himself into building the next Khmer world champion.

All of the fighters Paddy has save for a couple of guys are all 100% trained by him having had their first fight under him. He built his stable of fighters up from scratch and taught them his way. His way means focusing on the hands first then working your way down and focusing on kicks last when all the other basics have been covered. He like many others has noticed a big deficiency in the boxing skills of South East Asian fighters. The reason for this comes mostly from the fact that kicks score far more points than do punches and so naturally the focus is placed on landing kicks to the body as much as possible. Paddy views a fight differently though, a knock out in the first round is a good thing as opposed to the local mind set which see’s it as a boring fight in which the betting stakes did not get high. He is about going in for the kill and destroying your opponent. Once again I liked his thinking. What is great about all this is that Paddy has had a huge impact on every fighter in Cambodia. Before you would never see a punch in a fight, that was until his fighters starting knocking guys out with JABS and everyone decided they had to get on the boat and train their hands as well. He has forced the evolution of kickboxing in Cambodia and that alone is an amazing achievement for anyone.

Now onto my training, so I arrived at his gym and it definitely reminded me of the old school urban boxing gyms you see in the movies. Rocky style, gritty, enclosed deep inside the fitness center with the bare essentials and the sounds of a busy city outside. I immediately liked the place.

The place runs by the clock with a three minute timer on the entire time training is taking place. Paddy is of the thinking that it is better to make sure you do shirt intense work, similar to a fight instead of pitter patting a bag for 20 minutes bored out of your mind.

When he took me on the pads the first day I was there the pad work was basic, very basic with no little tricks or counters but the pace was intense and I was smoked. One twos, and kicks, that’s it. But as many as could be crammed in 3 minutes. I did two rounds with him and although I was dying I could tell that everyone was satisfied with my conditioning, they knew that those three minutes were meant to be far more tougher than a fight, so when fight time comes you aren’t gasping for air waiting for the knock out punch. It fits in very well with the motto written on the gym walls “Train Hard, Fight Easy.” This was the first day and it seemed it was just a general assessment to see where I am at. Look at my technique for the basic weapons I would need in a fight and see at what pace I could use them. That was the end of day one. At the end of the training session his team lines up in files and ranks military style and gets some feedback on the session and given any news that needs to be put out.

The next day with Paddy he focused on technique and the first thing he did was correct my jab cross. When someone with three years experience comes into a gym and the first thing the trainer works on with you is a jab and cross that tells you your working with a good trainer. There were definitely a lot of things I needed to tighten up in this basic technique and the rest of the week I was there that’s all I focused on. One, two, one two, one two.

If you are ever in Cambodia please drop by this place to train or at least show your support for what is happening. In a way what he has going on there shares a few parallels with MMA Pakistan in the sense that Paddy is trying to spread the word about Cambodian boxing within Cambodia and the rest of the world which equates kickboxing immediately with Thailand despite the fact that the walls of Angkor Wat show scenes of kick boxing hundreds of years before the “birthday” of Muay Thai.

I had a great time in Cambodia and at Paddy’s Gym. For more information please check out their website www.paddysfitnesscenter.com. I will have pics of my entire trip up tomorrow.

I would like to say Thank You to Paddy Carson and the fitness center staff for making my time in Phnom Penh enjoyable and good luck to all the fighters working hard every day to do their country proud and to secure a better life for themselves and their families.

Tags: Muay Thai training, Paddys Gym, Pradal Serey

I stayed three days at Kaewsamrit. In the end this is how I could sum up my time. I got a chance to train around some of the best Thai fighters, with some very motivated farang students in a camp where I was made sure to stay busy and try to stay at a hard pace the entire time. Being around good fighters is a big bonus because you get to see the best of the best in action and I honestly believe you get better through osmosis.

All the instructors were very friendly, but to be honest that doesn’t point to much because everyone in Thailand is very friendly. The only drawbacks to training at Kaewsamrit is that it is in a boring neighborhood yet still has ridiculous pollution levels and Bangkok is really hot and humid. Despite being in great shape the humidity and smog really does a number on you and I was coughing up alot of phlegm in the mornings. But overall this is a very strong camp and I do not suggest it for beginners. To someone very new to Muay Thai maybe try a different camp with a more laid back atmosphere before heading here. For advanced students this is a great place where the trainers will correct the small details in your form and technique. You can also be sure that the trainers will push your cardio as hard as it will go as well. They will not let you slack off and if that’s a problem you have then this is a good place for you. The price is a little high but it is fair, this is Bangkok after all. The standard rate I believe is 1000 baht per day for training, a room with fan and 2 meals. That comes out to about a 1000 dollars a month which is a good price for getting a Muay Thai Boot Camp sort of experience.

So on my last day at Kaewsamrit I trained in the morning, and then got picked up by a friend of mine who also came down with me from True Bee but was a native of Bangkok and got a ride to the airport.

Cambodia has so far shown to be a very interesting place. It is poorer than Thailand and is probably reminiscent of what Thailand was like 30 years ago. Quite a few beggars and land mine victims to make your time here uncomfortable, however being from Pakistan it doesn’t bother me. Compared to Pakistan Cambodia is a walk in the park. Inner city Lahore is a jam packed symphony of human misery. I have been around the sites, seen Angkor Wat and the killing fields etc. Since this isn’t a travel blog I will just say that I had a good time and these are things worth seeing .

What I do want to comment on is my time at Paddy’s Gym. I will give a summary in this entry as I want to devote a proper article on the place in a few days. Paddy’s Gym is a unique place and one that I feel is going to garner a lot of attention in the next few years.

For starters, anyone who has seen Human Weapon should know that they did an episode in Cambodia and Paddy Carson was their main contact. You can catch him in the show and I suggest you watch it to understand how things are in the boxing scene of Cambodia at this moment.

Basically, Paddy Carson is a career fight man. He began training and competing in full contact Karate in South Africa and later started training fighters, including world champions. He has had fighters go up against guys of the caliber of Jerome LeBanner to help give you an idea of what league this guy is in. He spent a lot of time in Thailand and decided to move to Cambodia to get a shot at creating his own camp in South East Asia that would have an impact, a big impact on the South East Asian kickboxing scene.

His Gym is located in Phnom Penh not far from where all the tourist areas are so it is very easy to go there and train, cost me about a dollar each time for the ride. His gym is also a fitness so there are loads of weights and machines to use. Stuff that I put to very good use while I was there since I don’t have access to such things when I stay in Pai. The boxing area itself looks and feels like it came straight out of Harlem or some other inner city boxing gym. It is gritty and humid and the sounds of the city are very clear from outside. It fits in very well with Paddy’s style and training, which from my first impression are very “old school”and I am not saying that’s a bad thing, this guy is a good trainer, a very good trainer and I will be back here in the future.

I am heading back to Thailand now where I will be able to sit down at my own computer and write a more in depth entry on Paddy’s Gym. You’ll see it soon.

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Unfortunately as I was editing this post the first few paragraphs got deleted. A reminder to never use a public computer for this blog again. Heres a summary of what I wrote.

I arrived at Kaewsamrit at 12 am and got shown to my room. I was staying in a basic room with fridge, dresser and fan three houses down from the gym. Kaewsamrit is located in a quiet neighborhood slightly outside of Bangkok but for really it is still part of Bangkok even if it officially isn’t.

The gym is 4 houses. One is the gym with the pro shop and rooms for fighters and trainers. The second one it seems is for the owner and his wife, another house for fighters and trainers to stay in and another houses that seems to act as a storage/kitchen and probably has people in there too. The whole area is a beehive of activity with people constantly going in and out.

At the moment of this post there are only 4 guys training there and thats not that much, I was there 2 years ago and this place was packed. I was very surprised because this is known as a very strong gym that currently still has Anuwat fighting, whom by the way will be fighting in Jamaica next month for what I have heard to be half a million baht ($20,000 ) purse which is a whole lot of money in Thailand. It is also home to Hiroya, a 17 year old Japanese fighter who recently fought Masato in K-1 for the first of Masatos trilogy fights. He is the seen by alot of Japanese as the next great Japanese fighter.

The gym is made up of two rings. One in the front on in the back.From what it seemed the foreigners stayed in the front with the trainers and the Thai fighters would be in the back and there would be casual cross over all the time but generally this was the case.

My first day there I tried running but having been accustomed to the beautiful scenery and crisp mountain air of Pai I couldn’t do it and turned around after maybe a kilometer. The air even in the suburb was pretty bad, at least to me, everyone else was doing 10k’s. Around 7 o’clock the trainers had us shadow boxing and I start sweating much faster than normal due to the humidity. Warming up and staying warm was real quick. We next did 4 x 5 minute rounds and I felt good but felt way more exhausted than usual because of how hot and humid it got. I could feel the heat trapped on the outside of my body with no where to go. I felt like I had a fever.It gets very hot in there. Very, very hot.The pad work with my first guy was really basic, but that’s normal for not knowing someone. After that we were made to hit the bags under supervision of a trainer who would be correcting us and pushing us to go harder on the pads. After that was a little bit more shadow boxing and then 200 sit ups. There was a trainer with you the whole time and they didn’t let you get lazy, during training time it is all business. In the afternoon we sparred and I sparred once with Anuwat and I don’t know what to say about that because we didn’t go very hard. But yes, the guy is very, very good.

I’ll continue with some of my thoughts about my time in Kaewsamrit in the next post along with how training is at Paddy’s Gym in Phnom Penh.

For some Good Info if your planning on heading over to Thailand to train Click Here!

Tags: Anuwat, Anuwat Kaewsamrit, Hiroya K-1, Hiroya Kaewsamrit, Kaewsamrit, Muay Thai, Muay Thai camps in Thailand, Muay Thai training, Thailand, Thailand MMA, Thailand MMA camps, Thailand MMA Gyms, Thailand Muay Thai, Thailand training journal, training in Thailand, Training Muay Thai in Thailand, true bee gym

After the fights at Wat Chan two weeks ago I have been training very regularly and at a good pace. I was getting bored of the day in day out routine of training, eating and sleeping. Luckily, I have to go on a visa run and I have decided to spend a week in Cambodia. I will go check out Angkor Wat for two days and spend the rest of my time training at Paddy Carson’s Gym in Phnom Penh.

I leave for Cambodia on the 19th so until then I will be training at Kaewsamrit in Bangkok. I have trained in Kaewsamrit before 2 years ago but it was only for one session. I will be there for three days now and I will be living at the gym, so expect some good stuff. For those who are unfamiliar this is a great gym with a very strong reputation amongst the Muay Thai scene in Thailand.

Last night I came down to Chiang Mai to watch two people from True Bee Gym fight. One of the trainers named Saen, whom I have written about before and whom has fought in Art of War in China in MMA. He had a good fight and won on points despite like many older Thai boxers, not training at all for the fight.

The other fight was from a more experienced fighter from the gym who hails from Ireland. He’s had as many fights as myself and trained very hard for the fight. He fought against (as always) a more experienced Thai and immediately went after him in the clinch and was obviously tiring him out and nicking him with elbow after elbow. However, when he broke the clinch he let his hands drop slightly and got hit with an extremely accurate shot right on the chin. Perfect aim. It stumbled him and he dropped his hands even further and 5-6 more unanswered blows and he went down and was unable to get up for the count. A very good fight where he showed a lot of improvement but unfortunately just got caught, but that’s something that is to be expected in combat sports. Things can change very quickly.

So, anyway, I fly to Bangkok tonight and start training tomorrow morning. Look forward to writing about my experience.

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After my fight I took it a bit easy for the week. I didn’t train for 2 days and then for the three days left in the week I would only train once a day. I started getting back into training the week after (one week ago) and I ended the week very well. I can tell that over the next few weeks before my next fight I will improve even more. I’m excited, I am feeling strong already and want to know how I will feel and how my technique will be a few months down the road.

Last Monday, one of our trainers Tree fought in a temple fight near his home, about 50 kilometers from Pai up in the hills. It was a small town at the top of a hill with a very old temple, the name of the place was Baan WatChan. Very quiet place, must have been what Pai was like 20 years ago.

Tree is Karen hill tribesmen who started working at True Bee soon after I left from what I understand. He has the least amount of experience in Muay Thai than all the guys. He was actually a professional boxer and has traveled to overseas to fight on behalf of Thailand. Boxing matches as a sort of “diplomacy” seems to be somewhat common in Thailand. Often on TV you see very official looking matches with a lot of pomp and speaking between Thailand and visiting nations. It seems to have a lot of diplomatic overtones that I don’t quite understand. Regardless, Tree has a handful of Muay Thai fights compared to the other guys, around 50 I would guess. He know Mr. Bee from having followed him during his career and was excited to see him at the Loi Kratong festival where I fought at Nov 07. I guess he got excited to know that he had opened a gym in Pai, not too far from his town and asked if he could get a job.

His training style is very bread and butter in terms of combinations and how he holds the pads. However, this guy does not stop. I think he averages 6-7 minutes a round. I don’t know how he does it. He’s also very open to new ways to train students because he didn’t grow up holding Thai pads for the past 25 years like some of the other guys so he is very open. He was watching a MMA instructional I had and has started using some of the pad holders techniques. He is a really good guy to have here for days when you want to have long sessions on the pads just doing your basics and doing them well.

Anyway, Tree he was a hero during his fight. He wasn’t the last fight of the night but he certainly got the most attention. Before his fight, there was probably about 20 minutes of speeches with a whole bunch of officials standing in the ring with Tree with flowers around his neck. Everyone else had to stand in some serious rain the whole time. I was hoping the fight would start soon because I got to be one of his corner men and I would be able to get underneath the tarp and away from the rain once the fight began.

Tree fought a very young looking guy, like the guys face looked like he was 12. He also looked absolutely terrified, almost in tears. I guess the focus on Tree really intimidated him. All the boys fear went out the window as he kept coming forward despite getting clobbered by punches from Tree. By round three the tide had really shifted and Tree had his hands by his knees gasping for breath swinging for dear life. Luckily, a couple of hard leg kicks in quick succession knocked the kid down with a serious look of pain on his face. Saen, one of the trainers and the other corner men jumped in the ring and being a natural showmen (He was the trainer who has fought MMA in Art of War in China) started pumping up the already ecstatic crowd which was heavily in Tree’s favor.

A very good night. The whole time it was like a field trip with the whole camp renting a van and heading out to some serious boonies by the jungles border with Burma. A night like this is only possible at True Bee located in one of the most unique places in Thailand.

Next entry will probably head back to Pakistan and write a little bit more of my experience there.

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