What To Expect In Your First Muay Thai Class

People ask this question expecting one answer. There is not one answer. I have trained in Thailand at three different camps, and no two first days looked anything alike. One ended in a twenty kilometer run and a cloud of mosquitoes. One turned into a playful hazing in the clinch. One woke me up before it even started, and ended with me getting pulled out of the ring a minute after I finally joined in.

So instead of pretending there is a single script, here is what a first class has actually looked like for me.

Sangtiennoi's

My first real Muay Thai training happened at the gym of Sangtiennoi Sor Rungroj, a legend, a Lumpinee and Rajadamnern champion.

It had that lived-in, working gym character you only get from a place that has produced real fighters for real decades. Carpet laid over a dirt floor instead of mats. Chickens walking around the training area, and a full grown pig sleeping right in the middle of it, completely unbothered by any of us. One boxing ring, close enough to the water that you could see it over the ropes, which meant mosquitoes. Thick ones, right there at ringside. They did not care how much repellent you put on. The only real defense was to never stop moving, so pad work became even more relentless than it already was. A woman preparing food nearby while a few fighters sat hooked up to IVs after a fight, rehydrating.

The first morning, they asked if I wanted to go running. I said sure, expecting something reasonable. It turned out to be roughly twenty kilometers, away from the water and away from the mosquitoes, at least. I had to stop and walk part of it. I was good for five kilometers. Twenty humbled me.

Back at the gym after that I did bag work alone, watched the champion train for a while, then worked pads myself, moving constantly to keep the mosquitoes off. By the end of the day I was completely toast, too exhausted to do anything but sleep.

And I still went to bed wanting more.

Thirteen Coins

A year or two later I trained at a camp called Thirteen Coins, an old school gym attached to a small hotel in Bangkok. Saenchai was training there at the time. The owner, a man everyone called Coke, opened the place because he loved Muay Thai, not to make money off it, and he would sit off to the side and watch every session, drinking an actual Coke while he did it.

That first day started with a short run back and forth in the parking lot to warm up, then jump rope, then pads, then clinching. I barely knew anything about clinching at that point, so getting thrown around was part of the lesson. They did it playfully, laughing the whole time, more good-natured hazing than anything hostile, and it made the whole thing fun rather than intimidating.

It's Muay Thai, so you should always be wrecked by the end. That part never changes, wherever you train.

Fairtex Bang Pli

The camp does not exist in that form anymore, it has since become a factory, though the rings themselves are probably still standing somewhere inside it. But at the time it was run with a level of hospitality I had never seen at a training camp before. They picked you up at the airport. A group greeted you on arrival. Checking in felt closer to a resort than a gym.

I rented the best room they had, up past the boxing rings, around the pool, through the spa. I locked the door and went to sleep.

I woke up to a noise I had never heard before. Four rings going at once, three trainers and three fighters in each, twelve pairs total. They all started together on a timer. Ten punches, ten kicks, ten kicks, to open and close every round, and every single strike landed with a noise, both the fighter hitting and the trainer catching it on the pads at the same instant. Twenty four people, not quite in unison, but locked into a rhythm that had its own strange power to it. I looked out the window and realized I was watching real Thai people do real Muay Thai for the first time in my life.

I grabbed my wraps and my gloves and went straight down to join in.

I was new to Muay Thai at the time, experienced in another art but not this one, and it showed. Someone wrapped my hands, I got in the ring, and within about a minute they pulled me out. They walked me over to an older man with a single whisker jutting straight out sideways from his cheek, three inches long, and told me to work with him. I had no idea who he was. It was Apidej Fairtex, a legend of the sport.

He spent our time together on footwork. Basic stance, basic movement, nothing that looked like what the fighters around us were doing. I was amped up and impatient, wanting to smash the pads and make that same noise everyone else was making, and I did not understand why I was standing in a corner working footwork with an old man instead. He just laughed and kept teaching, unbothered by my impatience.

I wish, now, that I had understood what I was being given. The basics he was trying to teach me are the entire foundation everything else sits on, and I spent that time wanting to skip straight to the part that looked impressive instead. That is a lesson I only actually learned years later, teaching it to other people myself.

What This Actually Tells You

Three first classes, three completely different camps, and not one of them looked like what most people picture when they imagine a first Muay Thai class.

That is the honest answer to what you should expect. Not a script. Not a routine you can predict in advance. What you can expect is that it will ask something of you, physically and mentally, and that a good first class, wherever it happens, tends to leave you wanting the next one, even wrecked, even humbled, even pulled out of the ring within a minute.

If you are nervous about walking in somewhere new, that is normal. It is part of the process. The nerves do not mean you are in the wrong place. They usually mean you are about to learn something.