Cutting Weight, Healing Leg: Part 4 (Training Videos!)

So, this is round... I don't know, I think 3 of 5, of pad work with Coach Vik from tonight.

I'm going to approach these training videos as an explanation for those who don't know the sport, on the assumption that if you're reading this, you know me, probably, and therefore probably you don't know the sport. If you're still watching and reading and those conditions somehow don't attain: thanks for watching and reading.

In training for Muay Thai, you do lots of stuff, but an anchor activity is "pad work." Pad work is the coach (or whoever) holding pads, calling hits or combos for you to do. That's kind of the long and the short of it. Obviously what you do, how advanced the techniques are, how many are sequenced together, whether or how much you're asked to defend yourself -- all that is largely up to the pad-holder.

Coach is a very good pad holder. I've trained at not that many gyms, but not that few: 6 or 7, on different cities and continents, and by "gyms" I don't mean fitness muay thai classes but gyms that make fighters (although of course not everyone at even such a gym is there to be that). My point is that I have a non-zero comparison group, and Coach's specificity of technique and demanding pace, in particular, are admirable and daunting. There is no doubt that in fight prep the pad work is what's most grueling; you ramp up from the usual 3 3-minutes rounds, to 4, to 5, and it just leaves you empty.

You can see me kind of empty, here; slow both in how I sequence attacks and in the execution of each attack, and slow on my feet, and struggling. To some extent that's on me, but to some extent that's what happens: the goal of this work is to drive you to that point, so that you're trained mentally and physically to still operate there, to still do something, throw something (jab jab kick, go go go) even when it's all empty.

Anyway, enjoy me being tired and a bit rubbish. Thanks, Coach.