Sihanoukville, Cambodia

So, for the past couple days I have been in Sihanoukville on the southern coast of Cambodia. I thought I would spend a few days here to relax before heading back to Thailand for some more training but I think I may be here just a few days longer. The place is very laid back and there aren’t too many people around as it is low season.

I, of course did a search before entering the place to see if there was any place to train or at least lift weights while I was here when I saw that there were some listings on the net for a boxing club run by a French trainer.

Ironically the motorbike taxi guy that I rode into town with knew about the place and had in fact trained there. He showed me the place before dropping me off at the hotel.

The owner is actually a Doctor in Sports Rehabilitation and was practicing in Switzerland before moving out to Cambodia for good. He is also a lifelong martial artist and spent 7 years training in fighting in Thailand. A very knowledgeable guy and definitely an expert in his field. Interesting character, and I wish I was staying a bit longer to get to know him but I have to continue on back to Thailand, somewhat according to schedule.

The class that I was in was pretty much all beginners. It was run more like a martial arts class and it is better suited to beginners or people who require a structured training system. For those who have trained in Thailand, you kow that at a lot of camps there is a very unstructured train as you please appraoch that they take. Now, this may work for some people but for others it’s quite frustrating. In that respect Fitness Boxing would probably be a perfect fit for those who want a very structured and guided training system.

So on to about how the classes are run. Everyone gets lined up in a formation to do a general but sport specific warm up and stretch. After that we went to the tires. Now this part I found quite cool. In Muay Thai gyms you will often see tires that the fighters jump on, and very rarely if ever do you get to use the tires under the guidance of a trainer. Well in this case he had a whole 10 minute workout focused around the tires which I found very cool. We did different shadow boxing drills on the tires along with some plyometrics. Much harder than I thought and something I will be using for my own gym in the future.

After that we went over to the large mirror and bag area and did some basic combinations in which our technique was ruthlessly critiqued. I liked this a lot because Pierre was not going to let anyone slide by with sloppy technique. Even though I have a decent amount of experience he had a lot of things to point out to me which made a lot of sense particular about how I stand and keep my guard.

After this we gathered up into pairs and practiced counters and combinations. Gloves, no shin pads and at medium power. If your shins are not hard, I can see this not being particularly fun. However, the combinations and counters Pierre gave were stuff that I am gonna try using myself and we drilled this efor almost 45 minutes. For serious athletes and fighters, we all know the importance of drills. As much as they suck and as boring as they get. They are the backbone for learning new techniques quickly.

After the drilling the class was done and some ad excercises were followed by strecthing and that was a wrap. Good session, a bit different from your usual Muay Thai camp training but a good expereince nonethless and a good step back from the pad pounding to concentrate on just techniques for an extended period of time.

The gym is currently being expanded and will include a boxing ring and cage in the coming year. It will be Cambodia’s first MMA gym. Right now from what I can see the focus is on being a fitness resort, where one can get away live on the resort and use the facility under the guidance of trainer Pierre who is obviously very knowledagble and organized and has each of his clients have a seperate file to chart and monitor their progress. A lot of potential in this place and woth visiting if your in Cambodia or even Thailand. I will definitely be back.

If your interested in knowing a bit more and want to see some pictures. You can check out their website HERE
http://fitness-sihanoukville.com/

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