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Mackin Part IV
04/28/2009
Well it is back to business once again as usual at Jitti Gym this week. Sandwiched between two light training sessions on Saturday morning and Sunday night was a crazy night in Pattaya (a beach/bar district 2 hours from Bangkok) with my friends from the UK.....and one Canadian. One of the fighters, Richard Cadden, will be getting married over the summer so 11 of us drove down in a bus for a night filled with bars, beer, food, women, billiards, a random encounter with Ramon Dekkers, a fighter in a dress and make up, a bunch of thai boxing fights, and a Mexican wrestling mask. As my UK friends would say, it was a scandalous night.
However, when you play hard you better work hard too so 6 am Monday morning I was at Chatuckak Park for 3 km run to start the day. After the run I was back at the gym for a light session and then went with my teammate Aaron, from Canada, to a local Thai Boxing shop so that I could get a few things for my trainer Henry Smith (Hey Henry, 100 bucks doesn’t go as far as you thought it would but I still managed to get everything on your wish list). The cab ride out to the shop took almost an hour because of all of the traffic, not to mention a cop stopping our cab driver, taking his license and refusing to give it back. Finally, after a 400 baht bribe, we were back en route.
Its amazing some of the differences I have seen since I arrived a week and a half ago. Along from cop bribes, there are no stop signs....speed limits (sounds like a line from ACDC's Highway to Hell). Throw in the fact that there are people on motorbikes just zigging and zagging throughout cars and everyone seems like an aggressive driver makes this a pretty dangerous driving environment. That being said, I am yet to see an accident, which is shocking. I see a damn accident every morning driving 12 miles from Baltimore to Howard County Jail, which has no where near the traffic Bangkok does, and yet these guys find a way to get it done.
I just like to throw in a few side notes from time to time to the blogs don’t seem to get repetitive. Well after putting in some orders for a couple custom shorts (one that reads "Mackin" on the leg....the other reading "H-Roc"), Aaron and I opted to pass up an hour cab ride back to the gym in exchange for a 20 minute trip on the metro. As we were on our way back to the gym it started POURING down rain, to the point where a few roads were flooded. This really mad things interesting for the afternoon session especially considering that we train outside only covered at times by a sheet metal roof. However, I did not even bother to ask whether or not practice was still a go. I remember my first night here I went to Lumpini to watch some thai fights and it began storming so bad it knocked out power in the stadium. That didn’t stop the fighters then, literally not even a hesitation, and it wasn’t going to stop us now.
After a half hour of skipping rope, I got in about three rounds of shadow boxing before being called into the ring to do pad work. This particular pad holder is not my favorite at the gym (really really great guy, we just don’t mesh well on the mitts), but I was able to make it through 5 rounds and felt strong. I took a short break, by this time the rain did as well, and jumped on a heavy bag and got about 4 rounds of work in. On the bag I couldn’t find my rhythm, which was frustrating. I’m not making excuses, but when you are barefoot trying to get quality bag work in on a wet, concrete floor is nearly impossible. I must have slipped and fallen on my ass at least once a round. Each time a trainer would see it and laugh. When that was done I made it into the ring and did at least 5 rounds (to be honest I lost count but I know I had 5 partners and did at least one round with each) of boxing. For the most part I felt great with my hands. I feel like I'm throwing more combos than single punches, which is a problem I recently began to fix before my last fight. Then it was straight into 4 or 5 rounds of clinch sparring, which I find myself very competitive in. Some people at the gym didn’t want to go with me at first because they assumed that I would be clinching more like a wrestler or MMA fighter, but after a few tweaks in my positioning I have been able to transition well. This was fallowed by 20 minutes or so of light conditioning/stretching and 200 sit ups and it was time to hit the showers. As you can probably imagine I was pretty beat afterward so after dinner I sat down with one of my bootleg movies and fell asleep watching it at about 9 or 10 o'clock.
I woke up this morning (Tuesday) at about 6 am and made it down to the park to do a 6 km job and then returned to the gym for some work, however last night it rained so much that the gym was partially flooded so no one made it in to train. I grabbed a little bit of breakfast and took a quick nap and then took the metro down to Lumpini Stadium to do some shopping. I was able to make it to the Twin and King Shop (both well known brands) and picked up a few things. I threw in a XXL T-shirt I thought Henry would like and the lady at the counter assumed I made a mistake. "Two X's too much" she said. I said it was for a friend and she said "He very, very big man?" and I explained that he was bigger than me but I thought he normally would wear them baggy and she replied "Ohhhh, ok.....Hip Hop? He Hip Hop?" and I said "Very much so". Good thing John Rallo didn’t give me any money for a shirt, I didn’t see any XX-Smalls there.
Enough with the side stories, this afternoon's workout was similar to yesterday the only difference being the heat. Let me tell you, when it rains all night long and then the heat picks up in the afternoon it makes you sweat like a pig in a sauna....or Dave Danecki walking up a flight of stairs. I did 5 strong rounds on the thai pads and really feel like I am beginning to fine tune my kicks. People at the gym are assuring me that I am improving quite a bit but I don’t see as drastic of a difference. They keep telling me that I really won’t realize how far I have come until I return home. After mitts I did a few rounds on the bags and about 20 minutes of footwork exercises then hopped into the ring for 4 rounds or Thai Boxing sparring fallowed by a few rounds of clinch. I didn’t drop anyone on their ass today during clinch, but I didn’t get dropped on mine either so I feel really good about that. My thai boxing felt similar to my boxing yesterday. I was throwing more combos and really using my jab well to set up my kicks. One of the guys I was sparring with even commented on how my leg kicks ate him up. I still feel like I am scared to initiate the tempo and action, which is something that has always been a bit of a problem and I will make it a goal to fix before I return home in a couple weeks.
Anyways, it is getting close to dinner time and I am pretty hungry so I am going to go see what’s cooking back at the gym. Two weeks from today I will be returning home and will look forward to seeing everyone and telling all kinds of stories. I should be posting something before the weekend, if not I will have plenty of stories first thing Monday. One of the guys from the gym and I are going to visit a few of the Temples and Palaces Saturday afternoon and then taking a bus to Chang Mai to see the famous Tiger Temple (where you get to go an pet, feed, and mess around with Tigers trained by the Thai Monks. Should have a lot to talk about after both of those trips. Thanks for reading, till next time.....
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