Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category

5 days later…

Posted on: April 10th, 2013 by admin 1 Comment

I want to tell the whole story of my ONEFC MMA fight and I figured it to be best to start from the end. It’s been 5 days since my fight and I can say that my current existence is defined as desperately trying to put myself back in that ONEFC. I refuse to accept that it’s over and the days are passing, and these cuts, theses badges of honor on my face are going to be healing. I want to keep those moments in the cage fresh, but daily life and routine is working its way in. It’s like a reverse PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) where the situation was so intense, but in this case positive that it becomes hard to move on and let go of that experience.

Everything is sinking in and things have changed, how they have and will change I am yet to see as quite frankly the dust has not just yet settled. But I can tell you this much, MMA in this country is not going to the same anymore. A storm is brewing and it’s exciting me and scaring me at the same time. The success, the exposure, and the recognition I have wanted for MMA in Pakistan, these things I dreamed about and for which people thought me a fool are now here upon us. Let’s see what form it is to take.

Me and my cornermen, Afnan and Mahmood are like war buddies. Our experience at ONEFC together as the first Pakistani representatives in international MMA and on such a grand stage are going to be something that we can understand. Those who have seen it on TV or on the net cannot understand what it is like to really be there.  The first time we heard the BOOM of the drum from the ONEFC theme and saw the cage and the lights and the sound echo amongst 9,000 screaming fans, your blood would chill and you would get goosebumps. It’s really happening you think to yourself…

Us three keep going back to that moment and night and it won’t leave us. I will do my best to give you all my best effort to try and take you there while you read on…

Training Partners and Sparring

Posted on: November 17th, 2012 by admin 6 Comments

Since I have been here at Team Quest, one of the biggest things I have been taking advantage of is training partners. I have a different experience with training partners than others might have but I am sure most people will be familiar with some of my issues.

For one I am the coach at my gym, I am the person who introduced MMA to Pakistan and I am quite sure I will be the person to carry it forward until it takes off on its own and I am long forgotten (or pushed out of the way). So being the coach brings three separate but related problems. 1) I have a problem with getting sparring partners that are at my level or have my experience. Which means I don’t get challenged as I need to be and my training gets boring. 2) Being the coach and the pioneer of MMA in Pakistan I can’t take the risks I need to in training because I am always under pressure to save face and “be the best” which means I am always relying on my A game while others are improving. This is something I have realized is my problem and not of my environment. As a leader I am supposed to set the standard not simply reinforce the status qou (the myth of the untouchable master) 3) Pakistani society unfortunately is experiencing corruption that extends past the government and into the psyche of the people, one of the manifestations of that is too much ego. So when people spar it usually ends up in people trying to beat the person. One of the few times I tapped to a student was during a heel hook and the sad part about it is that I could have tried to get out of it, but I really felt that if I hesitated or took too long that heel hook would  be cranked 100 percent with bad intentions and I would be possibly never compete again. I have been in heel hooks here in Team Quest and I take my sweet time and look at the position and try to get out of it because I have peace of mind that no one going to try and hurt me. When I think about that time in Pakistan, it really makes me resent the person and not want to teach them and that’s unfortunate because they have a lot of potential.

After my experience here I have learned a lot as a student and surprisingly a lot as a coach and not simply in terms of technique but in terms of the training VALUES I need to impart to my students which maybe I have failed in. I need to create a positive LEARNING environment where everyone can LEARN without any negative thoughts about winning or losing. We can save that stress for competition. So for these lessons I really need to thank Team Quest for creating the type of environment with great people, no egos and sincere desires to get better and grow with your team mates and not at the expense of them. In fact just today, I was telling Joel Bowen, the manager at Team Quest Thailand that I have not enjoyed martial arts this much since I started about 6 years ago.

Just to clarify, my gym has great people too, and I hope I haven’t blown things out of proportion. But I need to strive for perfection and although it may never get there I need to make sure it is closer to that ideal with eaach passing day and with each passing lesson I receive in martial arts.

A final thought to ponder. My wife was training yesterday and she was watching the twin brother instructors Joe and Jen spar. She remarked about how fast they were and skillful etc. But one thing that really stuck out and just summed up what the sparring experience should be like 90% of the time she said -

“It looks like they’re helping each other”

Now, when she said this, it wasn’t because they stopped mid spar and gave each other tips. She said that because she noticed that they gave each other opportunities sometimes to try  new techniques, they would back off and let the other throw a combo, they went back and forth and gave each other every opportunity to play with any and every technique with no risk of getting hurt, elbows, knees, throws, every technique, dangerous and otherwise you see in Muay Thai was on display this is the standard that is technical sparring.

What are your thoughts on this matter PAKMMA fans and readers of this blog? Sparring, ego in training etc? Write your comments below!

Halfway

Posted on: November 12th, 2012 by admin No Comments

So I am at the halfway point now. Doesn’t feel too bad, feels like I have spent a decent amount of time here at Team Quest Thailand and I have felt myself improve, so to add another chunk of time is not bad although I am already making plans on how to return here as soon as possible. 11 weeks is enough time to make improvements without burning out and I think my future plans will be too stay for 15 weeks and train hard and fully immerse myself and then spend 8-12 weeks in Pakistan training at 75% and consolidating the info I picked up and at the same time focus on business matters like running PAKMMA and running the gym. This would be my ideal schedule/rotation for the next couple of years.

Some bad news though. Looks like I won’t be fighting MMA during my trip here. Unfortunately due to Thailand banning MMA competition in the country, the nearest place to fight MMA is in Malaysia. Malaysia has an exploding MMA scene and I would have loved to have gone down there and fight as well as document whats going on with what is an overnight phenomenon. However, I am experiencing a bit of a catch 22, or maybe you could say a double edged sword experience. According to Sherdog I am 1-0 in pro MMA, however I am signed to ONEFC and I have a significant online presence. What this means is that the promoter is finding difficulty in getting me an opponent with a similar record to mine. Fighting a more name opponent is an option but as this particular promotion is a feeder organization for ONEFC, they don’t fly people out nor do they pay anything substantial as a purse. So, I would be paying 5-1000 dollars to go to Malaysia for a fight I wouldn’t be paid more than 50-100 dollars for. It’s an unfortunate situation and it puts me in a peculiar place as I would like to get some more MMA experience before stepping into the ONEFC cage but considering how new the MMA scene is here I can’t afford to be paying substantial amounts of money for a fight.

I may do another Muay Thai fight before I leave as another tool to help increase my skill and experience in preparation for ONEFC.But we will see their are some other MMA fights coming up during that time that I need to make sure I am healthy for. Can’t mention them just yet but I will definitely announce it as things become set in stone.

So I am halfway back to Pakistan and I am looking forward to it because the time here in Thailand has re-energized me and we have some cool stuff going on in Pakistan right now. I am also hoping I stay regular with this blog as I have been here because it really is going to end up being the best way that my fans can find out about me and how I am.

That being said then I will sign off and post this, once you read this check out my other posts and articles on PAKMMA which should be getting a BIG makeover some time early next year.

And to all the admins on the PAKMMA fanpage and those helping to run the organization, time for a public reprimand. We have so much news and history on our site, even if youtube is down in Pakistan you all can still show people what has been going on in the past for PAKMMA and show them where we have come from and the evolution it has taken for us to get here.

People will often come to me with ideas, Bashir you guys should do this, this and this. I say “Great, you like what we’re doing so much, maybe you can help us out” than they dissappear. This sort of thing has made me really jaded with my mission in Pakistan since I created PAKMMA for it to take off by itself. Not so I could be a babysitter for others while making financial and career sacrifices. If poeople have all these great ideas, how come when I make them admins on a facebook page they can’t even update it, how long does it take to update a facebook page? 30 seconds?

“But Bashir, your the leader of PAKMMA!? You could do it!”

A leader is not a leader because he does everything himself as others look on and admire. A leader is someone who inspires other to do as well. So either am I failing in my duties to bring together everyone and work together for a sporting and lifestyle phenomenon to emerge in Pakistan or those who want to see MMA rise up in Pakistan and their futures in the sport a long with it are not yet ready to realize that you get what you put in.

Training smart and Kru Ni

Posted on: November 8th, 2012 by admin 1 Comment

Been a while since I updated this thing and I am sorry. It’s just that I have hit that period in training where you realize that a fighters life is not exciting. It’s monotonous, it’s painful, it’s tiring and repetitive. I am not saying I would like to do anything else. I feel most at peace when my world revolves around focusing on my skills and getting to be the best that I can be.  But, that being said, there is not much to write about. Train, sleep, eat, train, sleep eat. To think about other things (including this blog) seems like an unnecessary chore, which is not good since I happen to also be pursuing a graduate degree at the moment.

However, I do manage to get the time in to complete all the tasks I need to do because as I have gotten older I have learned truly, what training smarter and not harder is. Training smarter and not harder is not about training less. It’s about not being compulsive in your training and having to have every single session be so exhausting it hurts to pee.

MMA is a complicated sport with many factors and so one needs to put in A LOT of hours of work if you want to get better fast. However the good news is that not everything has to be to the point of near death. That’s what conditioning is for, and hard, make you wanna puke conditioning need not be done every single day. If your training 6 days a week and twice a day as I am, that means you have 12 sessions per week to train, if you include conditioning in that, you have 9 sessions of technique to work on. Yes for the out of shape person those technical sessions might be kind of hard but we’re not talking about the slug who peeled himself off the coach. We’re talking about people who have already made the commitment.

I am lucky in that the trainers here at Team Quest Thailand the instructors respect my training choices and treat me like an adult. I have been at other camps before where my own ignorance and more so, the guilt and pressure the trainers put on me to make every single session on the pads a high intensity cardio session. I always wondered why after months of training my cardio didn’t seem to improve and that’s because technique was an after thought, blasting the pads with 1000 kicks EACH AND EVERY SESSION was the point. This is often done because the trainers are used to the Thai style of training where their training partners have been there since they were 6 years old and retire at age 25. Or it is done because people come to train Muay Thai to get fit and so they assume just pushing everyone to the extreme is the only way to make farang happy.

Here at Team Quest Thailand the trainers each have their individual nuances and styles but one trainer I went with today and whom I go with most regularly probably is a guy named Ni. Ni, doesn’t seem like a good trainer at first glance to be honest with you. He is so goofy and random you don’t expect him to take training seriously or put any thought into the pad rounds but so far he has been the most technical with me on the pads. He knows I am in shape and he knows I work hard so he has no need to push me. Every time I am on the pads with him I tell him what I want to work on and we do that for the entire session, he doesn’t just ignore me and have me do only punch kick combos. The pads are used not as a tool to exhaust me but as a teaching tool so that I can strike a person without him having to get hurt.

Kru Joe (with the PAKMMA gloves) and his brother sparring

Kru Joe is the Captain of the training team. And He is the captain for a reason, he LOVES Muay Thai, loves to break down the game and loves explaining things, he sets the tone for the week and sets aside six techniques that he drills over and over again every morning which are to be used on pads rounds during that week. This is something I have not seen anywhere else and something that Kru Joe’s leadership has helped set Team Quest apart from other gyms across Thailand.

I was actually going to write some more about some of my training partners at the gym but the post has already become far longer than I originally anticipated!

Til next time.

 

MMA Fight to come?

Posted on: October 30th, 2012 by admin 2 Comments

One of the things I plan on taking advantage of while I am here is being able to fight in MMA. I have had three MMA fights before in Pakistan but I never really consider them fights that challenged me or gave me opportunities to assess myself and explore what I can do to make myself a better fighter.  These three fights have a total time of a little over 3 minutes with the first fight being the longest at 2 minutes something. If this was the UFC, these facts would be something to be proud of, unfortunately it is not the UFC it is Pakistan, a country where I introduced the sport 3 years ago. So based on that it is safe to say I have not fought a real fight in about 4 years, that’s over half of my total time training in combat sports.

So being here at Team Quest Thailand is giving me access to not only great training but a lot of opportunities to fight. I can not only fight MMA but also Muay Thai on the regular and a good fight against a challenging opponent win or lose is worth months of training. So I am excited tha I get this opportunity to grow even more as a fighter. The one problem however is, that fighting hurts and after a fight, if you got a fair match up there are good chances your going to have a few aches and pains that might take a few days to a couple weeks to get over and that take away from precious training time. On top of that you need to start tapering off before your fight, once again losing precious training time. So right now a big question I have now is, I am here for 11 weeks (well now there are 7 left), how many fights can I get in without sacrificing too much training and what is the best tradeoff, more fights or more training? It’s a real tricky question and one that is simply cemented an already growing assumption that I will need to come back here very soon for an even longer period of time. 11 weeks is simply not enough time to catch up on the years I have lost in self improvement from being in Pakistan, something I addressed in this post HERE.

So, I have a few options coming up for MMA in November and possibly December in Malaysia which I am looking at. I just need to make sure that the finance are there since through the lens of Pakistani Rupees, even the relatively cheap South East Asian airlines costs can cut into the savings account based on Pakistani rupees!

So, with that I am gonna leave you all wondering as I am as to what is to come. Just know that I am very excited to get these chances. On a side note, gonna make up for lost time by adding a lot more posts this week with a lot more pictures!

Keep reading and make sure you guys check like Team Quest Thailand on facebook http://www.facebook.com/tqthailand

The mental game

Posted on: October 29th, 2012 by admin 2 Comments

“Training is 90% physical and 10% mental, fighting is 10% physical and 90% mental” – Rich Franklin

These words could not be any truer. People seem to forget where the impetus to fight comes from. Fighting can be surmised to be at its most bare, an expression of rage or passion, defending oneself or one’s family, a sinister desire to take with force from others what is not theirs, to right a wrong and to make level a slight to ones honor. These are all reasons why people fight – and it all starts in the mind and how it ends typically ends there as well. The desire to win, to fight intelligently and to be mentally tough enough to handle the highs and lows that come from combat not to mention the daily grind of rigorous training are all accomplished from ones mind.

The decision to write this came at the advice of Joel Bowen, the manager at Team Quest Thailand. After losing a Muay Thai fight I slumped down on a chair and felt like the most worthless person there, I had failed myself, I had failed those looking up to me in Pakistan and I had failed my trainers at Team Quest. I now had a choice, I could dwell over this or I could go back and see what went wrong and fix them. This is one thing you can be assured of here at Team Quest and that is that they don’t take being a team lightly AT ALL. If you put in the work, these people are gonna support you 100%.

So back to the point of mental toughness – this post isn’t about HOW to be mentally tough because that is gonna be something the person reading this is going to have look at themselves and see what they need, be it spiritual strength, psychological counseling (not trying to be funny, sport psychology is legit) or a reaffirmation and belief that whatever you are trying to achieve is within your grasp. This post is about how these things are important, especially in a game like MMA where you need every weapon possible. This post is about how you have the right environment here at Team Quest Thailand to cultivate mental strength via a supportive staff, Thai and western, a lack of unhealthy distractions like one would find in places like Phuket or Bangkok (clubs etc…) and an abundance of extra activities that help nurture the soul like meditation retreats, beautiful nature filled get aways and yoga courses. However in the end it will all depend upon the focus you put into training yourself mentally, if that is something that you neglect than it doesn’t matter where you are, it’s going to end up screwing you.

In Pakistan, a lot of the guys at my gym from poor backgrounds have this trait inherent in them. Their lives has been filled with so much misery that it had made them mentally very tough, more than any of the people who are reading this are because if you can read this, you had enough resources for an education that probably shielded you away from hunger a life so messed up that a broken appliance could mean cutting down on the amount you eat for dinner at night.

But for better or worse those who have not had this life experience and are interested in fighting it is time to build the fortitude that will make you come out for those final rounds when your down on the score cards.

Why go home? A bit of a rant.

Posted on: October 21st, 2012 by admin 7 Comments

I looked at the calendar today. I have a little more than 8 weeks left here and although I am not even 25% of the way into my trip here I feel depressed about going back. I don’t regret what I have done and I know that what I have done in Pakistan has made many people thankful to me and I have created an entire scene and put Pakistani MMA on the map all these things give me pride and pleasure. But I need to ask myself if maybe I have accomplished what I needed to accomplish and the time has come for me to move on. I took a break of 3 years from my training and it really saddens me when I dwell on how much better I would be if I had spent those three years on training and improving myself than focusing on MMA in Pakistan. But I try not to dwell on it because in the end I have cemented myself as a personality and player in the Asian MMA scene and there are plenty of people who have been fighting for twice as long as I have been training and are not getting the recognition they deserve.

But back to the point, is it time to hand over everything I have created to the next generation of Mixed Martial Artists and move on? I cannot get the training that I need in Pakistan nor the opportunity to fight regularly. I have a lack of training partners that challenge me in Pakistan. Some of the training partners I do have or some that I could call in from other disciplines that would theoretically serve to challenge me are illiterate and unfortunately this lack of education makes it hard for them be the best training partners that they could be. Yes they may have skill and experience but they don’t understand that i sparring and rolling maybe SOMETIMES it’s ok to go light or slow because that’s where you learn. They can’t cast away their ego to make sparring a game of give and take, it’s all or nothing and there’s a championship belt on the line ALL THE TIME. Contrast that to the Thai way of sparring which is very partner oriented, they are not trying to beat each other because they know that defeating an opponent is really important in a competition against someone from another gym. Beating your training partners, puts you at risk of losing your training partners and than what do you have? Nothing. It also puts you at risk of relying only on the things that work for you, I mean you wouldn’t try a new technique you saw on youtube in a title fight, so why would you try it in the gym with your training partner (sarcasm!!)? If you look at top players in Pakistan, whether it be in Wushu or boxing or kickboxing, they don’t evolve, they don’t usually get better with time. They learn a set curriculum in the first couple years of training and that’s it, they know the art, after that they just maintain.

One of the reasons I am enjoying my time here at Team Quest is that I don’t feel that pressure to win, win, win every time I spar or roll. Granted, 60% of that is because I am not a coach here so I don’t feel that pressure, that’s my own ego at work and maybe something I need to reexamine when I go back to Pakistan. But the other 40% is because I don’t get the feeling that the person across from me is trying to beat me, he is trying to LEARN. He is not using me as a tool to gain ego points but is using me as a means of feedback to better his skills. In general at the Muay Thai camps it is like that but to be honest, it is more prevalent here at Team Quest, the overwhelming feeling you get at the camp is that people are here to get better, not to be the most badass guy at the gym but to be better martial artists at the end of the week than they were at the beginning.

So, I want you the PAKMMA community to really comment on this one…Should I come back or do you think it is time for me to start focusing on the next stage? As the face of Pakistani MMA does training overseas ensure my success or can it be done in Pakistan??

2 weeks in…

Posted on: October 18th, 2012 by admin No Comments

I am into my second week of training at Team Quest Thailand and things could not be better. If you read my last post I had set up a training program that I was hoping to follow and so far I have done pretty good and have stuck to about 90% of it, but one thing is for sure, in terms of hours, I have not trained any less. I may have not trained a certain class one day or come later for another but I made it up by doing a class I had not planned on doing and staying after training and doing a few drills of my own for a little while.

The trainers here are great and though Team Quest Thailandd  is a Muay Thai camp they have full understanding that it’s also an MMA gym and they are altering my pad work accordingly. I have been at MMA gyms where the Muay Thai trainers do not seem to understand that people training for MMA can learn Muay Thai but must tweak it a bit to fit MMA. For example yesterday, one of the trainers, Kru Joe, did my pad rounds using only boxing while he also kicked me. I did no kicks but only did boxing and had to defend his kicks and counter with punches. In a Muay Thai fight that would be a sure way to lose a decision but in MMA punches are equal points and are rank higher in how many KO’s have come about in MMA, so punching a kicker may be a desperation strategy in Muay Thai for round number 5 or when you are outclassed but in MMA it is a path to victory. Training this way has also made me motivated to train even harder because the training has not become stale. I have many times ended up getting sick of the repetitive nature of Muay Thai, hitting the pads the same way day in and day out. I love Muay Thai, but the variety of MMA is more appealing to me in the end when you weight the two side by side.

When I started this post I was going to focus more on a particularly topic and that being of me REALLY not wanting to come back to Pakistan. I do not look forward to not having people around me pushing ME, I do not look forward to having to teach new guys of whom 90% will quit within 3 months cuz they didn’t become a ninja with magical powers and a body like Alistair Overeem within that time period ( One of the most common questions I get as a gym owner in Pakistan is “How long does it take to learn?” You dumbf&*!, how about a lifetime?) I will save that rant for later.

Right now I will leave you with a fascinating story that one of the trainers Ping was telling me over lunch about Team Quest Thailand‘s top fighter Adrien “Kaew” Rubrin. Ping is one the trainers here and also an MMA fighter, he looks much younger than his age of 29 and like many Thai people is constantly smiling and has a youthful demeanor about him and when he talks he looks a lot like Japanese cartoon the way his eyes light up. I really like the guy, and we’re becoming pretty good friends. Anyway, he was telling me that he was still at his old gym Thai Muay Thai, here in Chiang Mai, when Adrien walked in to train. Adrien had left France to just travel as many people do in their early twenties, he had no real plan just wanted to bum around and have fun. Trained Muay Thai for fun and Ping saw that he had some potential. He took him too some fights, all of which he won via knockout and started pushing him go for better and better competition. The people all around him called him crazy and said that Adrien didn;t know how to fight and had only won because he was fighting scrubs, and though he was still winning people did not take him seriously. The big breaks came when Adrien moved to Team Quest. Team Quest although a new gym has some EXCELLENT contacts in Bangkok and get people some top notch fights in Lumpinee if they show potential. Well, apparently on two occasions other fighters who were supposed to compete had to pull out due to injury or inability to make weight and they through Adrien in there just to make sure the fight still happened. Both times he won against people he was supposed to lose against and then people really started to notice. It’s been a little over a year since Adrien started training and he has exploded onto the Muay Thai scene. I will definitely keep everyone up to date with what is going on with him but his story is something that one could make a movie out of and I wish him the best and I wish that Ping and all those around Adrien who have supported his journey get some good for themselves for believing in someone people thought was just getting lucky.

Adrien will be fighting in the Toyota Muay Thai Maraton on November 1st. 3 Muay Thai fights in one day (Equals BRUTAL), this is one of the most prestigious belts one can win in Thailand so if you have access to Thai TV you can’t miss this one.

Training and Recovery

Posted on: October 14th, 2012 by admin No Comments

I just turned thirty yesterday and not only is a birthday a good reason to take it easy for the weekend, but in the beginning weeks of training I need to make sure my body recovers before I start the next week, because each week is going to get harder and more intense.  The body doesn’t get stronger via exercise. It gets stronger during recovery from exercise. Recovery is a part of training. This doesn’t, however, serve as some sort of rationalization for being lazy. If you’re waking up fresh every morning you’re probably not working out at an intensity where planning a recovery periods is important. However, if you’re constantly sore, generally exhausted and getting more unmotivated and emotionally fatigued as the week goes on, (as what can be expected for a professional fighter or someone training in Thailand), then planning recovery is very important.

I am glad it was my birthday though because based on how I feel today, I think one day of recovery could have been enough and I could have trained today. That being said, I don’t know if the one extra day of training could have made for an inadequate recovery over the weekend and then a terrible upcoming week of training. What’s done is done and I should enjoy this weekend and the crap I am going to eat because I made a pledge that after my 30th birthday, I would eat sweets only once a week –FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I am sure it wont be like that to the T, but bottom line is that it’s time to be even more careful about my diet than I already am, because what you do in your early 30’s will decide whether or not you will be competing after age 35.

Back to the point, which was about training and recovery. I have two days of recovery this week so I am going to push a little bit harder next week. This is how I’m planning my upcoming week here at Team Quest Thailand:

Monday –

0900 – Core and balance training (More about this class in a bit)
0945 – Cardio-respiratory training for MMA (aka fight conditioning)
1300 – MMA Fight Team Training
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Boxing for MMA padwork/Sparring
1800 – Rest

Tuesday –

0730 – Muay Thai Training
0900 – Flexibility Training
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Muay Thai Clinch for MMA

 

 

Wednesday –

0730 – Kickboxing (K-1 style padwork)
0900 – Core/Agility/Balance training
0945 – Cardio-respiratory training for MMA (aka fight conditioning)
1300 – MMA Fight Team Training
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Boxing with takedowns padwork/Sparring

Thursday –

0945 – Conditioning for MMA
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Muay Thai Clinch

Friday –

0730 – Muay Thai and Boxing padwork
0900 – Core/Agility/Balance training
1300 – MMA Fight Team
1430 – Grappling
1600 – Kickboxing with takedown padwork/Sparring

Saturday –

0730 – Muay Thai
0900 – Flexibility training
1430 – Grappling

So this is my schedule for this coming week. I will be planning out my schedule week by week depending upon how I feel the week before and where I think I need more work or what I see working for me and what doesn’t.  This schedule is also going to help me remain disciplined as I have now publicly posted it and will be upheld to it!

The 0900 class that is based around core/agility/balance is a class that in fact I will be running as a trial class. It’s all going to be based around things I am learning in my master’s degree in exercise science. Will be posting videos about the class and the concepts we’ll be covering week by week.

Finally, this is sort of a trial to see how I can tweak my training to best prepare me for MMA. One of the issues I have had in the past is that trainers often times don’t want to try anything new and refuse to go out of the Muay Thai box. Obviously, if I am to excel in MMA I cannot simply train for Muay Thai just as someone who is learning boxing for MMA cannot take takedowns and leg kicks out of the equation. So we’ll see how successful how this trial is.

Introductions

Posted on: October 13th, 2012 by admin 2 Comments

So, I completed a full week of training. I can confidently say that I have settled in to my training and my routine and it’s just a matter of fine tuning things this week, followed by the normal week by week adjustments that I would be making whether I was training at home at my own gym or anywhere else.

There are essentially 2 parts to any MMA camp in Thailand, the MMA portion and the Muay Thai portion. Talking with Joel (one of the co-owners of TQT) it seems the plan was to focus on Muay Thai for the first year and than begin putting more work into the MMA program in the second phase. I am lucky enough to be at the beginning of that and so all the people in the South Asian MMA (Pakistan and India – although I am sure more Pakistani’s are reading this) scene reading this post you can feel proud that PAKMMA is going to be one of the first MMA orgs/fight teams with strong ties with Team Quest. As someone who had to start things from scratch and knows the pressure, pride and passion that goes into creating a successful gym, I can relate to the things that Joel and Ian might be growing through at this phase in setting up and establishing their dream.

Anyway, since the Muay Thai program is pretty well established here let me tell you a bit about that first. The team here is great, the trainers are all technical and on numerous occasions I have heard them laude the “IQ” style of fighting which in Thailand translates into technical Muay Thai with an emphasis on not taking too much damage to yourself and inflicting as much as possible on your opponent. For anyone very familiar with Muay Thai, it should be pretty obvious that it’s very often a game of standing in front of one another and exchanging blows. Fighters who fight smart such as Saenchai are called “IQ” fighters and these are the people who fight into their 30’s (most Thai fighters retire in their mid to late twenties) so this is the type of Muay Thai training I want for myself and want to adapt into my MMA game. The team is led by Kru Jen who is the All Thailand 115 lbs Champion, the All Thailand Champion is up there with the Lumpinee Champion and Rachademnern Champion, so this guy can easily be classified as one the best strikers in the world. He is not only teaching but actively training and I am lucky enough to be able to regularly spar with the guy. Along with Kru Jen there is Kru Joe (Jen’s twin brother), Kru (Naughty) Ni, Kru Nat,  and Kru Ping. Your gonna read more about these people individually eventually but would like to make a separate post for that.

Along with the great trainers, Team Quest has already created some great fighters from scratch. One of these fighters and their premier fighter is a guy named Adrien “Kaew” Team Quest Thailand. He is from France and has been training in Muay Thai for about 1 year and has sky rocketed to the top of the Muay Thai scene and those in the know in Thailand are calling him a Muay Thai phenom. He has 22 fights and 21 wins with 21 KO’s. He is tall, very tall and uses that length to his advantage by winning virtually every fight by knee or elbow. In fact he fought one of Northern Thailand’s top fighters yesterday and won via knee in the 3rd round. The guy put up a good fight but Adrien’s intelligent use of his best weapons are going to very, very difficult for anyone to figure out any time soon and I don’t see any major roadblocks for this kid until he enters into the realm of Thailand’s elite. Once that happens it’s just a matter of preparing himself appropriately for the next set up challenges. Anyway, Adrien’s career will get enough attention over the course of this blog. All I can say is that I am very lucky to have this guy as a sparring partner as I hate fighting tall fighters.

Now on to the MMA program, a true, true veteran in David “Hollywood” Hulett runs the MMA program at Team Quest Thailand. David has been around the sport a long time. He has been fighting for 12 years and has thirty recorded professional fights (20-10) and about 10-15 unrecorded ones.  This guy is on the cusp of breaking it into the big leagues and has come to Team Quest to be in the environment he needs to make that happen. Although we are going to get to David in more detail later on, I have taken an immediate liking to him. He is humble and straightforward with everything and doesn’t take on any airs about his experience and skills. He is also a great instructor and breaks down techniques in detail and has very good knack for explaining the big picture that lies around each technique and how to incorporate it into an overall strategy for one’s MMA game.

The final part of Team Quest are essentially the most important and it is through them that all this has come together and that is Joel Bowen and Ian Cartwright the owners. I met both of these guys at the ONEFC Asia summit and we got along very well immediately. When I was looking for places to train I contacted these guys and the first positive sign I got from them was that they told me upfront that they were more concerned with who I was as a person than my skills. They view Team Quest as not just an MMA team but also a family they are building and that is also very important to me. When you feel close to your teammates and you respect them you give everything you have to not disappoint them.  When we met at the summit after the facebook conversation and got along so well, it was pretty much decided that I would be choosing Team Quest as my home.  Joel is an American from Oregon and trained at the original Team Quest. He is easygoing and good-natured but I can tell that he doesn’t take his role as Team Quest’s representative in Thailand lightly. He over watches the training session and takes an active part in pushing and motivating those who come to train here.  Ian is a Canadian and is the co-owner of Team Quest, along with Joel he has extensive experience training in Thailand. He shares the desire and obsession to turn Team Quest into not only one of the top gyms in Thailand but one of the strongest MMA teams in the Asian region. Looking at both these guys I can almost fast forward my brain into the future and see them in the future as being not only great managers but great coaches who are going to have integral roles in the lives of a lot of future fighters.

So, that covers the “Team” in Team Quest Thailand. I really hope this does justice to them but I am sure as the time goes on here I will be able to paint a clearer picture of the people who are setting up Team Quest for success.