I was a bit apprehensive about my first one-on-one session at Tiger Muay Thai. I had traveled a long way to learn Muay Thai from the masters, but found the group sessions to be more for those who are trying to do Muay Thai for a living. They put a lot of emphasis on conditioning. Something that I sorely needed, but it was way beyond what my 48 year old body could endure.

I had done OK in the group sessions, and by most accounts, I had proven that I could hang with the youngsters, but I was more interested in learning the nuances of Muay Thai. I was fortunate enough to have met a trainer named Sawat.

I was put into a somewhat uncomfortable situation in a sparring session from our group lesson. I was put up against a very skilled fighter that had a bit of a chip on his shoulder, and was looking to prove something. I was able to out-perform him, and garnered some respect from some of the trainers. Most notably, Sawat. He approached me after I bested the toughest guy in the intermediate group at Tiger Muay Thai, and asked if I wanted to train with him. Today would be our first session.

Given that the one-on-ones are only an hour long, I expected them to be easier… they weren’t. They are far more intense, and you have a trainer right in your face the entire time.

Sawat isn’t one of the more aggressive trainers, but he is a warrior nonetheless. He is a few years younger than I, but you can tell his body has been through much more punishment. He has a very pleasant demeanor about him, and I grew to like him very much.

I really respected the fact that, despite his age, he still fights. He is 43 years old… 5 years younger than I, but Muay Thai years are like dog years. It is very difficult to sustain the rigors of this sport for too long. He doesn’t have that attitude you get from the younger trainers. He has nothing to prove.

My biggest challenge with Sawat was learning to understand him. The Thai trainers have very deep accents. Most of them at Tiger Muay Thai speak very good English, but the Thai language is not Latin-based, so they enunciate much differently than I am accustomed to. Also, they have different terminology than I am used to. An example is, if he says, Hook, punch, he expects me to throw a hook, and them a left straight punch. To me, Hook punch is a single motion.

I also found that he was different form many of the trainers I had worked with during the group sessions. Sawat wants you to grab him when throwing knee strikes, while other trainers want you to stay outside. The problem is, they get really pissed if you don’t do it their way. They literally scream at you. You just have to make the adjustment, and remember how they like it.

I would spend the next week training with Sawat. He was a very good trainer. In fact, he was perhaps too good of a trainer, because he was in high demand. We would stop working together because he was training some other fighters that were preparing for bug fights, and it became difficult to schedule sessions with him.

For today, he was my trainer, and I couldn’t be more excited. We began with some very light 2-man shadow sparring-meaning, he didn’t hold pads, but held his hands in front of me and called out combos, just to see how I moved. We got a pretty good rhythm going, and before I knew it, 20 minutes had elapsed. I was sweating profusely as usual, but barely noticed how hard I was working until afterward. We spent the next 20 minutes working on technique, based upon what he has evaluated from our 2-man sparring session. I was amazed at how tuned in to what I needed work on, and even more impressed with the guidance ha gave me. My footwork has always been sub-par, and I have always left myself exposed when I throw power techniques. He was on top of it, and we work on some very subtle fixes to these weaknesses.

We finished with some light sparring, then some very rigorous conditioning. I left just as tired as I had the 2.5 hour sessions as he didn’t cut me any slack during this time.

I would spend the next week with Sawat, and really learned a lot. He is an outstanding trainer, and a really good guy. I am very fortunate to have been able to work with him.

It was time for me to shift gears a little bit though. I decided I would do the group session and some private sessions. I wanted to test myself, and was beginning to feel as though my body could take it.

Sawat’s style was very ‘front-legged’, meaning he emphasized kicking with the front leg a lot. This would be in contrast with other trainers I worked with at Tiger Muay Thai, but I’m very happy I got the exposure to it. It would have fit much better with a 20 year old me, who was quick and agile. I am slower and older now, and power is more my thing than finesse. My next trainer would be a ‘power’ guy, but the way I met him was very unpleasant.