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I’ve spent many years navigating the male-dominated world of iron and ego – otherwise known as the gym.
I’m well-versed in steeling myself against unsolicited form advice and sleazy advances, but the world of martial arts is an entirely new beast.
After watching a Muay Thai fight and thinking, This looks so sick! I decided to book a plane ticket and rawdog a three-week intensive training camp in Thailand, just hoping that I wouldn’t completely hate it.
Pulling up at Sinbi Gym in Phuket, it was a mission to find my accommodation, but I found the gym with ease. The cacophony of grunts and shouts, the rhythmic slap of gloves on pads, and the chaotic energy could all be heard from a block away. Suffice to say, I was intimidated.
Inside, Thai trainers – actual fighters, some even famous champions that had fought in the prestigious Lumpinee and Rajadamnern Stadiums – trained alongside and coached clueless tourists like me.
They greeted me with warm smiles and wrapped my hands for boxing with the utmost care and attentiveness that is so emblematic of Thai culture. It probably didn’t hurt to be a decent-looking white girl.
What’s unique about Muay Thai – the Art of Eight Limbs – is that it attracts colourful characters from all over the world. Walking into the gym was like embarking on an ethnographic study of humanity.
In one corner, a fitness influencer unabashedly recruited her friend to film her twerking on the floor during class – go off, queen. In another, young men were aggressively punching bags, seemingly exorcising personal demons that probably warranted a therapist more than a Muay Thai coach.
And then there were the fighters: mostly foreigners who had moved to the island to dedicate their lives to the professional fight circuit. Their austere demeanour, always showing up to training like they were going to war, contrasted the Thai trainers (also fighters), who were playful; always teasing, prodding and laughing.
The first time I did push-ups, a couple of the trainers, astonished, asked point-blank, “You a man?” – the highest compliment for a female gym rat!
There was a hint of madness in everyone training at the gym. Voluntarily annihilating your body in 90% humidity and suppressing the biological impulse for self-preservation requires you to be, at least partially, unhinged.
People often left class early, on the verge of throwing up. If your shins aren’t covered in bruises by the end, you aren’t training hard enough—because as Thais say, “no pain, no Muay Thai”.
Despite my initial enthusiasm, the daily double training session that fighters adhere to was overly ambitious. I managed two sessions in one day once before resigning myself to a single session routine.
Pushing your physical limits can morph into a quasi-spiritual experience.
There’s something about the threat of being clocked square in the face that forces you into a flow state, so that two hours later you realise you’ve been fully present – an elusive feat for the seasoned office worker. Muay Thai isn’t just about fitness; it’s about cultivating mental clarity and locating the grit within you.
