more of it screencapped here.

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Afternoon training session. Pad work at Sitsongpeenong Gym on Monday April 7th, 2025.

I'm 2 weeks into a 2-month training camp in Phuket. It's my first time in Thailand, and I thought I'd share my weekly routine and monthly budget for anyone thinking about making their first trip soon. For context, I'm a hobbyist who's been training for a little over 2 years and has 1 fight.

My goals for this trip are...

1. Improve technique (especially clinching)
2. Find good training partners my own size (I'm 6'3, 240lbs)
3. Fight 2-3 times while I'm here

Choosing a gym...

My initial plan was to join some of the pro fighters who'd trained at my home gym in Mexico at Manasek in Chiang Mai, but because of burning season, I decided to look else where. I'd also considered Pinsinchai and FA group in Bangkok to try to squeeze the most out of my training, but ultimately the coaches from my home gym thought I'd do best in Rawai if I wanted to find guys my size to train with and fight (dodged the earthquake as a result).

So I chose Sinbi to start training camp and have been very happy with the experience so far. Sinbi is a huge gym that has both produced and trained legends, including Saenchai. These days it seems to have hard pivoted toward catering to tourists, but the training is still top tier.

So far at Sinbi I've counted...

• 60 heavy bags
• 25+ trainers (most former world and regional champs)
• 3 rings
• 50-60 students every session, but they get up to 100+ during busy season
• 15,000ish sqft of mat space
• 20-30 apartment units
• 1 full-service, in-house stadium with AC & comfortable seating (hosts a fight card every Saturday)

I've never seen a gym of this scale before, and it works incredibly smoothly. Every training session is 2 hours. You have 20 minutes of group warm up and stretching, then everyone breaks off into separate groups depending on what they want to work on that day. There are usually 5 options on the table every day, and you choose 4:

• sparring - they alternate between boxing sparring and MT sparring most sessions/days, but you're going to have at least a half dozen good sparring partners, size- and experience-wise, to choose from every session.
• bag work - at least a couple of trainers police bag work to make sure no one is being lazy and will step in to correct technique if they see anything glaring.
• pad work - everyone gets 5 rounds with a trainer, which rotates most of the time. This is the thing that's lacking the most from most western gyms I've trained at.
• clinching - go 20-25 minutes straight with a partner or two as trainers coach you through positions as you get stuck. Repeated bad technique will earn you 10 burpees per infraction.
• technical drills with partner - generally you and a partner will get paired with one trainer who's teaching and overseeing your technique through each drill.

I try to clinch once a day, do technical drills once a day and spar every other day. Within 5 days of training, they asked me if I wanted to fight. When I agreed, they put me in the "fight camp" and found a fight for me 2 weeks out. For folks in the fight camp, they end every session with 300 knees on the bag, followed by 10-15 rounds of push ups on one of the coach's 10-count (everyone fails), and then 300 sit ups. The fighters in fight camp also run a couple of times a week (a mix of 5-6K runs before practice and hill sprints after).

Fitness-wise, I've lost a kilo a day in my first week here while drinking 5 liters of water with electrolytes per training session. Now that my body's adjusted, I'm losing about a kilo a week. I'm on track to leave here in the best shape I've been since I was a college athlete 20 years ago. The only real knock about training at Sinbi is that everyone else training there is foreign, but unless you're a professional fighter, it's probably fine for your skill level. There are about a half dozen pro-level guys training there now, maybe a dozen fighters in the 5-10 fight range, and twice that many in the 1-5 fight range.

My Training Schedule...

• Monday AM & PM
• Tuesday AM
• Wednesday AM & PM
• Thursday AM
• Friday AM & PM
• Saturday AM

Nine session a week is the upper limit of what I can do without risking injury or my body completely crapping out on me. I'm not lifting weights right now or doing any additional S&C. There's just no energy left for it out here. Recovery wise, I get a 1-hour Thai massage ($10/hour) on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, and on Saturdays, I go for a long ocean swim right after training to loosen up. I also try to watch fights at least one a week on Tuesday and Saturdays at either Sinbi, Rawai, or Bangla stadiums.

What I've brought with me for training...

• 1 pair of shinnies
• 2 pairs of gloves (for AM & PM training, respectively, with 1 pair being 16oz for sparring)
• 6 hand towels (I sweat a lot)
• 8 shorts for training
• 8 tops for training (optional)
• 3-4 pairs of hand wraps
• mouth piece
• nail clippers
• spray bottle with cleaning solution
• 5 liter water jug (you buy at any 7-11)

What I eat daily (about $16.50/day or $500/month)...

• 2 x 5-liter jugs of water ($2.45 USD)
• 2 x 20oz electrolyte sports drink ($1.20 USD)
• 2 x 30g protein drink ($3.00USD)
• 1 cappuccino ($2.10 USD)
• 1 big fruit plate ($3.00 USD)
  
• Chicken fried rice plate with basil and egg over easy ($2.40 USD)
• Fish & rice plate at Thai buffet ($2.40)
• Fighter meal (comes with training package)

Training is about $330 per month and my accommodation is $750 - though you can probably find something for half that price looking outside of Airbnb. My scooter costs $120/month, but I average one encounter with Phuket police per week bringing the total cost of the bike to about $250/month with gas.

So all-in, my monthly costs are about $2500, not including flights.

• Accommodation - $750
• Training - $330 (worth it)
• Food - $500 (eat out every meal)
• Recovery - $80
• Laundry (2x/week) - $12
• Scooter, gas & police fines - $250
• Haircut (1x/week) - $30
• Stadium Fights (1x/week) - $180
• Dates, weekend excursions, misc. - $400

This is definitely on the higher end of the spectrum costs wise (I've seen low season deals for $750 for accommodations, training, and meal program at reputable gyms), but my sense about those deals is that you get what you pay for (shorter training sessions, less rounds on pads, etc). Don't get me wrong, though. You'll get good training and just about any gym here, but some gyms are still better than others.

The connection between Thailand's Muay Thai and its Buddhistic culture is often seriously overlooked, especially as the sport become changed and exported as fundamentally aggressive violent. I loved these photos of Poot as he entered the ring because I know his father Kru Gai at Silk Muay Thai teaches (very informally) a kind of Buddhistic repose to stabilize and center fighters. Thai fighters, because his English is limited. As I fired away frames Poot's face never changed, he's just centered. During the fight as well again and again you can see his face settling into calm. This is more than just Jai Yen Yen (maintaining a cool heart), an aesthetic, psychological principle in Muay Thai, though it is connected to it. It's the active practice of settling one's mind. This points us toward much more broad, non-violent aspects of Thailand's traditional Muay Thai, the ways it is about control. The control of oneself, and the control of your opponent, things which often shape aspects of its scoring or fighting styles which some Westerners have trouble understanding. It's very cool to see this in a young fighter.

I’ve (23M) been doing muay thai for 4 months but took a year break and it’s my 3rd week back into this sport. I was hard sparring with somebody, even though it was supposed to be technical… I threw a roundhouse to the body, he caught it and sweeped me. On the way to the ground, I hit the back of my head on the mat, and blacked out for one second. I got up right after. And i kept fighting . I went for like 10 more rounds with different fighters and took strikes to the face. I know I left the gym different that day. I went to the er, but they didn’t wanna give me a ct scan because they advised me it was going to be cancerous. Ever since that sweep, I haven’t been feeling the same. Everything feels fake, and doesn’t feel real. Kind of like I’m watching my life through a screen. Is this permanent?

(Edit: I’m getting alot of downvotes for trying to hard spar. To be very clear, I was the one trying to go technical, but the person i was sparring turned it up and went hard. I still don’t know if it was out of ill intent. I’m over it though .)

I saw a post about how long people had trained before their first fight and that ranged from 3 months to over 5 years.

How are the fights organised to keep people of similar skill together? It would be unfair if someone with such little experience fought someone with 5 years just because it was both of their first fights?

Apologies if this has been answered before. Thank you!

So i was trying to catch the bus today and ended up falling and jamming my finger (i think). Its a bit tight and a little bit uncomfortable when i make a fist for example. I had more pain earlier today but it seems to have been relived luckily. So should i do some weihgtlifting or just bodyweight exercises instead?

Thanks 🙏

Location: Reggae Bar, Koh Phi Phi, Thailand

These videos always makes me so uneasy. One thing is the mismatch on skill, weight, or both. The other is just the bad sportsmanship.

NB: The only hospital at the island drives a golf cart with a toy horn attached to the steering wheel...

(I love Thailand ❤️)

So im thinking of doing a 10 min warmup jog and then a 4km run as fast as i can troughout the entire run. Do you guys have any tips to keep pushing myself? becuase i feel like its really easy to ease off the pace.

Thanks 🙏

Hi everyone,
I'm having a hard time finding new boxing gloves that actually fit my hands. I'm 2 meters tall and can palm a basketball easily, so that should give you an idea of how big my hands are.
They're more on the long and narrow side – not particularly wide, but just... big.

I’ve been using Fairtex BGV1 in 10 oz for padwork and light sparring, and surprisingly they fit really well after a few sessions once they broke in and stretched out a bit. I ordered the BGV14 in 14oz but they wont let me put my thumb inside at all ..

Now I’m looking for something similar (12 or 14 oz ideally) for padwork, bagwork and occasional sparring – preferably in a Thai-style glove that still has some room inside.

Any recommendations from fellow big-handed strikers out there?

thx <3

How long would you wait before training after getting a tattoo on your knee or shins?

Follow up question, those that have knee and shin tattoos and train regularly, are they getting worn off?

Hello fellow MT lovers,

I have a question regarding pausing the training after getting a fresh tattoo. So to all the people with ink under their skin: how long did you pause? Or did you pause at all? I'm not new to tattoos, but in a few days I have an appointment and it’s the first time after picking my training routine back up. Does anyone have experience with that? Thanks in advance!

Hi guys,

so I will be 4 weeks in Thailand this year and wanted to ask if any of you has experience/tipps with gyms there. I would be on a beginner level:) Can I just come and pay per training session?

Thank you!

So I'm 91 kg, I do MT & cardio obviously, I lift 3x/week the classic way ( I can bench about my bodyweight once with dumbbells on a 15° inclined bench, for strength reference), there are no kettlebells where I lift.

I'm looking at kettlebells for explosive training, and I've got no idea which weight(s) to order, as I'll be doing it at home. Any ideas? Thanks 🙏

Hey everyone I'm looking to get into muy thai and am looking to buy shinguards. I assume shinguards that have an extra section for the knee, are the best kind of shinguards, because then you can do knees in sparring as well. Is that true? And also, what kind of shinguards are these called? (i'm struggling to find many online).

here is an example of what I'm talking about. I know that these are the shitty "cloth" kind, so I wouldn't get those. But I'd like shinguards that have a knee section, similar to these, just with a better material

Are lace and loop actually a good idea. Id like to try some laceup gloves but i obviously dont wanna bother someone everytime i put on gloves.

Are those lace glove converter straps working and securing the glove nicely?