So the training begins…
By the end of today I will have officially been in Chiang Mai one week and will have completed my first full week of training. Right now I am at the stage where I am trying to figure out what the best schedule is going to be for me. Basically at the moment the schedule is as such –
7 am – 9 am Muay Thai
9 am – 10 am – MMA Conditioning
1 pm – 3 pm – MMA (Fight Team Only)
3 pm – 4 pm – Grappling
4 pm – 6 pm – Muay Thai
If one were to train all day that is going to end up to be 8 hours of training a day. Although I plan to try and work my way up to about that many hours I have to be very particular about how those hours are broken down. Unless you’re a superhero, have some ridiculous genetics or are on steroids I do not think it is possible to do 8 hours of hard training in a day without eventually coming down with an injury or illness or simply breaking down your bad so bad and so regularly without rest that you will not experience any gains.
I have been to Thailand 6 times prior to this trip and on two occasions I went hard into training thinking more is always better. Both times I ended up sick within two weeks and feeling more and more worn out as the weeks passed by. I have since learned that a little bit of patience in the beginning will pay off later.
One technique that have learnt and one that any aspiring MMA fighter should utilize is monitoring ones heart rate. I take my heart rate every morning and when it seems to be higher than usual I know that it is time to back off a bit and let the body recover.
I personally think that a person can do a maximum of 1-2 hours of hard training per day and the rest should be technical. Not only is figuring out when to do hard sessions and when to be technical a challenge in logistics but there is also the very important issue of SLEEP. I have been averaging a total of 6 hours of sleep per night. That is definitely not enough to recuperate fully and I have to not only schedule my training but also naps. For example on two occasions so far I FORCED myself to sleep in so I could feel fresh. I have had sleep issues in the past but have been able to get away with it since I owned by own gym and trained at my own schedule. It’s going to be different here.
I was going to get into about what training is like here but instead it has turned into a bit of self-talk for myself. So I will save it for the next blog post, but I can tell you this much, the trainers here are good and they are understanding of how foreigners learn, the management here is made up of some real Thailand veterans (will have a separate post about them because they really are going to shape TQT into something truly special) and the MMA instructor has quite honestly exceeded my expectations in terms of knowledge and teaching ability. So that will be the next post and this weekend will have the first in our video series out!