Just a little bit of info on what some one can expect at True-Bee Gym. I’ll outline it in my typical day so far.

I wake up between 6 and 630 am to the sound of three kids waking up to get ready to run and clean the gym. I crawl out of bed and I am running by 6:30-645. There are a lot of hills around Pai and a nearby temple that has 400 steps. So my running alternates between doing a long slow jog around the town which is pretty flat or jogging to the temple or a hill and doing sprints. I get back to the gym around 7:15 or 7:30 and start skipping for about half an hour. Most people show up around 7:30-7:45 and do the same. Around 8 o’clock is when training officially starts and everyone gets called up into the ring for a quick warm up and stretching that lasts about 10 minutes.

After that everyone gets their hands wrapped. The hands are wrapped a little differently from what I am used to in that they fold over the first half of the cloth a few times to make a thick pad on the knuckles. Once everyone is wrapped, everyone goes through a few basic combinations, counters and techniques that can will be used later on the pads.

Once all that is done, the pad work starts and everyone not hitting the pads is free to shadow box, or hit the bags.

Rounds are not timed and so more conditioned students will get longer rounds and newer students will get rounds based on their fitness level. Some days they get straight to sparring or practice a number of techniques one at a time on the pads for an hour. Sparring is done about twice a week and technique days once.

The sparring is technical and the trainers will go with everyone and so a farang/farang sparring round is rare but happens especially when there are lots of people. It’s good to spar with the trainers because they really adjust their level to yours and so expereinced fighters are gooing to get a challenge while a beginner can feel confident that they aren’t gonna get their face smashed in.

On some days (3-4) times a week there will be clinching after the padwork. This goes on for about 15 minutes.Once training is over, everyone gets in the ring to do ab exercises and usually number at least 200.

Anyway, thats training at True-Bee in a nutshell. Obviously it doesnt differ too much from other camps. The differences in these matters can really be explained unless one already has expereince training in Thailand.

I left Chiang Mai yesterday around noon. I was not looking forward to drive up to Pai. It’s 130 km (approx. 75 miles) but takes a little over 3 hours because half of it is all uphill into the mountains. Three hours is not bad for a drive, but the sharp turns that the drive entails gives me serious motion sickness. I felt good driving into town, not only because the ride was over but because Pai is a wonderful little town and the training at True Bee is the best I have had in Thailand. I’ll get into why I think that in a bit. As I came up to the camp I could already hear the camp staff Eck going “Somchai ueee Somchai” a few meters ahead I heard Ae one of the trainers start singing the same thing. Somchai is what everyone in Thailand calls me. I got the name the first time I came to Thailand three years ago from a lady in a restaurant who couldn’t say Bashir. Every time I met someone new I would tell them my name is Bashir and they had a terrible time saying it and I would tell them they could just call me Somchai. In the end everyone chooses to call me Somchai. It’s a very old, very traditional name and so people get a kick out of calling a foreigner such a name. The “Somchai ueee Somchai” is something that a lot of people would sing as I walked past or when they would see me. This went on for a while and I never understood why. I found out it’s a very famous song about a guy named Somchai who leaves his village and is missed. Anyway, Out of the 25 or so trainers that I have gotten to know over my trips to Thailand I would say a good 10-15 of them start singing this song when they see me.

Back on track. I walked up to the camp just as everyone was training. It was good to see everyone and good to see the camp. Not much had changed. I dropped my bags inside the little room by the gym and got ready to train. I will be staying at the gym for a few days until I get my living situation sorted out. Originally I had planned on staying at the gym with the trainers for the whole three months I am going to be here but since I last left they have gotten 3 new trainers and now have 3 kids living in here as well. Bee also moved out of his in town and is staying at the gym as well. Last time I stayed here it was me, Eck (camp staff) and one of the older trainers, Pi Aun who is not here anymore. So, 3 of us in two 3 x 5 meters rooms. Now it is 7-8 people in here to sleep and with me it makes up to 9. When it is time to sleep there is no floor space only mattresses on the floor. I don’t mind but I don’t want to make things more difficult for everyone else here. So Bee is trying to get me a deal on the bungalows nearby so I can stay there for cheap for 3 months.

There are two main reasons why True-Bee gym has become my favorite place to train in Thailand. It’s the most authentic Thai camp out of all the Farang gyms that I have been to. What I mean by that is the way it is run and the atmosphere surrounding it. First of all the physical location of the gym is great. It is surrounded by rice fields, a very simple bamboo village, some very basic bamboo bungalows and a great backdrop of lush green rolling hills. There are a whole bunch of chickens running around in the camp as well as some dogs that the camp has adopted. Next door to the camp is a traditional Thai family living in a bamboo hut, they are living very basic and bathe outside under a make shift shower. Every day during training you watch farmers till their fields across from the gym, very cliché Muay Thai camp surroundings. I think it’s great.

Add to that the trainers. First of all they are all from Isaan save for one of the new guys “Tree” who is from Pai district. Isaan is the home of the champions. To name a few fighters from Isaan, Yodsanklei, Saenchai, Jomthong, and Buakaw. You get Isaan trainers in Bangkok, but most of the trainers whom I have met in Phuket are from Southern Thailand. Not to take anything away from them, because great fighters come out of Southern Thailand as well such as Nam Sak Noi but Isaan is where 75% of the Thai champions come from because of the rugged life and poverty that they live in. Isaan is all rural and the poorest part of the country. The camp that I was at before, Sor. King Star is also in the heart of Isaan. One of the reasons that I enjoy the fact that the trainers are Khon Isaan (People of Isaan) is that I personally enjoy the life, food and people of Isaan more than any where else in Thailand. The trainers here love the fact that I can eat Isaan food at Thai spice levels and can speak a bit of their dialect.

There is no business atmosphere at the gym at all. Yes you have to pay. But you don’t have a cash register and receipt greeting you like at some camps (i.e Tiger Muay Thai). Every camp I have been to the trainers have been great and there is always a great bond formed between everyone. At True-Bee this camaraderie is taken to another level, students are always asked to eat with the trainers after the training session, and are invited to their homes for dinner or just to hang out. I have noticed that Bee always has a very close relationship with his students and even after two months here I felt these guys were like my family. I actually missed them the whole time I was in Pakistan.

True Bee gym is unlike most other Farang Gyms in Thailand, because this camp is run entirely by Thai people. Most gyms that cater to Farang with good reps are run by Farang. To name a few, Kaewsamrit, Legacy, Lanna, Tiger, and Rawai. These are gyms that I have trained at and know for a fact are run by foreigners. Please note I am saying this to say that the training there is, because of this fact inferior. Not in any sense. I do not imply that at all. These are top notch camps that top fighters have gone to train for their fights. But it does give the camp a different vibe. And if one wants to come to Thailand to not only make their Muay Thai better but really understand the culture and lifestyle of a Muay Thai camp without having to go to a camp where no one speaks English True Bee hands down has the upper hand in that respect out of all the farang camps I have trained at. No one even comes close. I am not saying that they don’t exist. I just haven’t come across any yet. You get to see a lot of interesting things about Thai culture, for example the gym not only trains fighters for Muay Thai but trains…chickens. For cock fights. They have a whole stable of roosters that they take to local fights and bet on them. You may not agree with, I am not sure I do but it is very interesting facet of Thai rural life to see.

Onto the training. I can’t complain about any gym I have across in terms of training. I have always benefited in some way from every camp be it in technique, in cardio or just learning a new drill that I can work on when I am on my on. However, I have to say overall I have benefited most from True Bee Gym than any other gym I have been to. There are two reasons for this. One is that it is not the biggest name out there yet. So, there is never a huge crowd training there and you get a lot personal attention. Second reason is that they are open to teaching you things you want to work on including HOW you train.

For the first reason. True Bee hasn’t been around long enough to get a real big reputation amongst those in the “know” concerning the Muay Thai Camp scene in Thailand. It is steadily gaining a fan base and a reputation for good training and it’s a matter of time before True-Bee joins the top Farang camps in the country. But as of right now, it’s not on the top of everyone’s list and so the student to instructor ratio is low. Right now they have 5 instructors and the most people I have seen at training must have been 10 people. The trainers also have no problem giving you time and in my opinion this is one of the best camps for beginners. And for the more advanced fighters, those who fight competitively like myself this gym offers variety and an openness amongst the trainers to train not only the traditional skip, shadow and 5 pad rounds routine but to change things up, depending on you. For example, I will some times do five rounds of just play sparring. The trainer will put on shin pads, belly pad and gloves and for five rounds you play around and spar lightly. Sometimes we will do the same but work on only defense, I will not attack other then the odd jab and counter but will constantly defend low kicks, teeps and round houses. I try to change things up regularly and work on different aspects of my game that I want to improve on. You improve what you know as an experienced fighter you need to work on. You don’t get forced into doing jab, cross kick for five rounds, twice a day every day. For those who require a strict schedule played out the same week after week, this may not be the gym for you. For those who appreciate variety, flexibility and the ability to give you own input into you training than I have come across no better gym in True Bee.

I am here for the next three months so you’ll get to hear much more about how the training here works. I don’t want to try to cram everything in. Also, I am fighting on either the 11th or 18th against the guy who beat one of True Bee gyms fighters last Sunday in Chiang Mai. Stay Tuned.

So I woke up today at about 6:45. It was great to get out of the waking up at noon habit. I headed over to Sor King Star from my hotel at 8 and got there 10 minutes later. The camp looked way more busted up from what I last remember. I like it. I personally like the gritty camps, no glitz, no glamor, just hard work. Camps like this scream it at you.

The camp manager was out in front and gave me the weird, awkward smile that I sometimes get when everyone knows there’s about to be a really awkward conversation in a mix of terrible Thai and English. I wai’d him and he pointed me towards the back of the camp where the fighters stayed.

Last time I was here I came around noon or so, and everyone was having their mid day nap. This time however I saw a whole bunch of people running around, some of the meanest looking Thais I have ever seen. Among the crowd was the head trainer whom I had met last time. I asked him if he remembered me and I think he said he did (we spoke Thai) but I think he was being polite. He asked me if I wanted to fight (I said not right now) and how long I had been training Muay Thai (around two and a half years) and how many fights I had had (seven, six of them in Thailand). Here started to explain something about training and that is where I started losing him. I held up my hand to motion, “just a sec” and brought out my phone. “Put kub puen Khon Thai pom” I said, or “Speak to my Thai friend” and he smiled and nodded. Much easier then the pantomime we were playing before. After getting off the phone he then clearly remembered who I was and that I had com to the camp four months before. He also told me that there was another foreigner at the camp as well. “Si Dam…Nikro.” What he said was there was a black guy at the camp, (the Thais call black people “nikro“, my guess is that it came from the vocab of U.S soldiers during the Vietnam war who came here for RnR, it’s not meant to be offensive, they don’t know any better). I asked him where he was from and he said he was from France. I also found out that I would have to come back in the afternoon for training since morning training was already done. This made sense to me since I knew that Thai camps trained early, 530 in the morning or so. I was confused when I was told to come to the camp at 8 am. So I said thank you and started walking back to my hotel room and kill time until 4 pm when they would have afternoon training.

I returned at 4 pm and everyone was getting ready to go for their run. I forgot to bring my running shoes so instead I skipped rope for about 20-25 minutes. I saw the black guy they were talking about coming back from the run. Really tall and very jovial looking guy, fooling around with all the kid fighters, I went up to him and introduced myself. His name was “serge” or something similar, he had a very thick French accent. He was a pro fighter back at home and had 67 fights, one of them just last week, which he won by knockout in the first round. I figured this guy was a Thailand vet coming here to Sor King Star but I was wrong, this was his first time in Thailand. I asked him how he ended up here. Most, if not all newcomers to the country go to camps with a website (I know I did, Rawai Muay Thai). I asked him how he ended up at Sor King Star and it turns out that his trainer back in France is from this gym and arranged for him to come to Khon Kaen. He was even staying at the home of a friend of his trainer. I told him he was very lucky to get this experience for his time. That he got to see the real Thailand on his first trip. As much fun, and as unique as Phuket, Patayya and Chiang Mai and a couple other tourist spots are, they are not the real Thailand. Yes they do show you a glimpse of this place, but they in no way shape or form can give you an honest and full perspective of what this country is like.

On to the training. After warming up with skipping rope and shadow boxing I was told to go do some drills with a trainer wearing spandex tights and a wife beater (what we Americans call sleeveless shirts). Pretty funny looking dude actually. Very good stuff. After that I was asked to spar with the boxer for two rounds. One of the guys at the camp was a western style boxer (Muay Saakhun) and he is the pacific champion. He is fighting on Thai TV on the 16th. He fights at 112 pounds. I was hesitant at first but I said I would do one round. After settling in and seeing that this guy was a good sparring partner (kept his punches crisp but controlled his power) I ended up doing three rounds with the guy. I then did some work on the bag (filled with wet sand, may as well be cement) and some knees. Finished off the day with some clinching. The trainer said he would do pads for me and “serge” tomorrow. So I will write some more on how that went. He also asked me if I wanted to fight on the 10th. The day after tomorrow. I politely declined.

Basic overview of things I noticed. The kids at the camp are very self motivated. They hold pads for each other without the trainer telling them what they need to do or they practice different tricks or techniques with each other or spar. They basically play around very constructively the whole time with the trainer observing and correcting any major flaws. I definitely see where the Thais get much of their creativity from in the ring.

On the Mixed Martial Arts Pakistan front, I already have received emails from people wanting to know if there was somewhere in Lahore where one could train MMA. I told them right now no, and to be careful of anyone offering any training of the sort. One downside of this blog is that it gets noticed enough there is going to be some fraud trying to cash in on the work I am doing. So to anyone reading this, please be careful. My friend and partner over in India, Danial Isaac was telling me that they already have losers popping up saying that they are black belts in MMA. It’s unfortunate but in the end when it comes down to it, MMA is the kind of sport where frauds like these get exposed. To anyone wanting to try the same thing in Pakistan, remember MMA is a combat SPORT. You play it, and you play full contact. The real MMA in Pakistan can and will only come from here through myself and others whom I have verified are knowledgeable about the sport, what it entails and what it is about. Accept no substitute.

I will write some more about my time here in a few days time. I am going to try and keep my Internet use to a minimum the next few days. Thanks for the support guys, its already growing.

So here’s part two about my visit to Tigers Gym. Before I get into that I’ll give you a quick update on the training at Legacy.
I am still very pleased with the training at the gym. I finished my first full week there, minus the Monday I came back from the monastery. My pad work is improving to the point where I can now do 2 rounds HARD. Full blast. Start tiring out in the 3rd round but still keep form and then by the middle of the 4th round I start looking like an idiot. It’s OK though. I see the conditioning coming back and I suppose in another two weeks I will be pretty much back to a good baseline of being able to do all 5 rounds at a consistent pace, maybe slightly slowing down near the end (which is ironically the point in Muay Thai matches where they speed up) but not gassing out to the point of wanting to quit. I won’t be at the peak of conditioning that I got to here, which was doing 5 rounds continuously without any breaks between rounds but I’ll set the foundation to get there and hopefully above it. Today I got my full power back in my kicks. I think I have pretty strong kicks for farang standards, and this is based on what I have been told and the reactions I get from the trainers. Although I must admit the trainers like to make a comedy routine of pretending to get hurt when someone hits the pads, like they just got hit by a truck. I can’t tell you if it really does have power, but I can confidently say that each time I kick the pads, a very loud crack emits. It’s my blessing and my curse. My blessing because, well being able to kick hard has it’s obvious benefits. It’s my curse because then the trainers make me do LOTS AND LOTS of them. Kicks are tiring, way more tiring then punching. I have done 7 rounds of boxing at 4 minutes per round without too much fatigue. To think of doing the same workload with only kicks to me is almost unimaginable. The Thais love their roundhouse kick. In fact many fighters believe that the Thais have perfected it. The Thai roundhouse kick is known to be the most powerful kick in all of martial arts. Anyway, I have to guess and say I probably had to do about 35-50 kicks with my right leg per round and about half that with my left. At the end of it all I had to finish up with 50 kicks in a row per leg. It sucked, but its all going to make training easier down the road so I am happy.

I have grappled once here since I arrived. The grappling instruction here is very solid. I would do it more but since I am leaving soon and wont be doing any ground fighting for a few months I am going to make sure my Muay Thai is up to par first. I need a good base before heading to Khon Kaen and then later on to Pai. I’ll train ground fighting later in the month I will be in Phuket before I leave to go back to the States to get myself ready to get back to training with my Jiu Jitsu class at Synergy MMA academy (Synergy-MMA.com).

On to Tigers Gym. I left off at making my intention of going to Tigers Gym to train. This was in Fall of 07′. In Fall of 07′ I was also making plans to graduate university and leave the states for at least a year to train and travel. On my list of things to do was train at Tiger’s Gym. I made plans to go in the new year of 09′. I had already contacted Danial Isaac and he gave me the go ahead to come check the gym out. He didn’t know that I was planning on setting up MMA in Pakistan. I figured I would talk to him about all that in person. So, end of January of this year I left Lahore and crossed the border (about 30 kms away from Lahore) into India. I was the only person going across. It was quite bizarre being the only person in an empty immigration hall. I crossed the border, took a taxi to Amristrar, a plane from Amristrar to Delhi and then another flight from Delhi to Mumbai. I got to Mumbai late that night and spent about 50 bucks for a crappy hotel room. In Delhi I thought it was really weird at the look of astonishment people had on their faces when I spoke Hindi. Hindi and Urdu (which is spoken in Pakistan) is very similar. Except for academic and bureaucratic vocabulary the day to day words that are used are the same. Urdu speakers and Hindi speakers can understand each other perfectly. I still don’t quite understand why people were so amazed to see me speaking Hindi. In Pakistan, people could tell
I was a Pakistani living abroad but it wasn’t shocking. In India I would have people come up to me and ask me if I was from Kashmir or more likely, where I learned Hindi from!. I think people who look like me are a rarity in Southern India, either way it was pretty funny. The bell hops at the hotel I stayed at thought I was the coolest guy in the world. They thought I was even cooler when they found out I was a fighter (they asked me how I got to look so strong) and I was in India to train. They were constantly bugging me asking what they could do to be like me. I’m not joking. It sounds conceited but I am being 100% honest. My only guess is, is that these bell hops who came from the slums of Mumbai have watched a lot of Indian movies and have seen the light skinned Indian guy with a muscular body strutting around with his hand picked wardrobe. Well, there in their hotel was a light skinned Indian (other then proper Caucasians everyone was much darker then myself on the streets of Mumbai) with muscles and a cut off T shirt that said Sinbi Muay Thai. It was all very bizarre. Anyway, the next morning as I was leaving, I gave them advice that they should train MMA in their spare time and showed them some websites (including Tigers Gym of course) and maybe they could be fighters, I tipped them well and went off towards the bus station.I caught a bus to Nasik, the district where Tigers Gym is at and spent 5 hours watching Indian movies on my way there. On my arrival I called Danial Isaac and he met me outside of a restaurant near his house. His arrival was actually pretty cool as well. Most if not all Indians I had seen up to that point had been pretty skinny. Well, here comes this Indian on a really, really nice bike with a solid build wearing a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu T-shirt. I must be in Bollywood I thought. He just rode up and told me to get on in the middle of traffic. It was my first time meeting him and immediately I could tell he was a very genuine, very nice and really cool guy. I felt comfortable about my stay at once. He checked me into a nearby dorm room and we later met up for dinner. Over dinner we discussed what he had done so far and I asked him some general questions about the gym and what to expect during training. I briefly told him that I was working on getting MMA over in Pakistan but we didn’t go into details. After dinner I went to bed pretty excited about my stay.

The next day, Danial picked me up and took me over to his house to register for training. His office is full of trophies and accomplishments of Tigers Gym. It’s pretty impressive, there is stuff from all over the world and some pretty cool fight pics as well as posters of his fighters. We discussed training, he gave me my Desi Fighter shirt (Desi means of the soil in Hindi, it refers to anything native to the subcontinent) and told me one of his fighters Alan “The Bull” Fernandes (first MMA fighter in India) would be picking me up for my first training session.

Anyway that’s enough for now. I don’t want to make these entries too long. I’ll continue tomorrow.