Muay Thai week : Day 4

Of the two hour Muay Thai training sessions, my least favorite part is the 10 minutes of clinching practice. 

For those unfamiliar with clinching (like me, up to 4 days ago), clinching in our program is essentially this: you wrap your hand around your opponent's neck or back of the head, pull them in closer, and try to knee them in the stomach or head. In practice we go easy, trying to prevent neck or head injuries and using our inner thighs instead of our knees, but I still hate it. I get claustrophobic and panicky when I'm overpowered. In clinching, differences in size and strength are much more obvious than in punching or kicking or bouncing around on the mat, and most of the opponents I face are either (a) bigger than I am, (b) stronger than I am and/or (c) more experienced than I am. 

And I don't know if it's because the trainers forgot or if Thursdays are sacred to the Muay Thai gods, but neither the AM nor PM workout session included clinching !! Such a great break for my neck.

On top of that marvelousness, today in between the two workout sessions I went to Karon Beach. (The gym area is, tragically, not as close to the beaches as I hoped, but it was only a 15 min trip by scooter.) 

Karon Beach was really long and beautiful, with great waves and a deceptively dangerous rip tides. Pretty fun for body surfing, though not as much fun when a crazy big wave careened into the shore, soaking us and all of our clothes. 

The sun also resulted in my first sunburn during my backpacking :

Bruised legs that are more burnt than bruised at the moment 

So kicking at the gym was painful on multiple levels today ...

My gym supplies for each workout: 

Boxing gloves, rented from a nearby fight supply store

Handwraps, purchased at the Phuket Top Team store for 250 baht ($8)

1.5 L of water + 2 packets of D Lyte- electrolytes + vitamins 

I've also taken to bringing a workout towel to mop off the sweat on my brow in between rounds with the pads, punching bag or sparring. Most of the guys in the class go shirtless, so during the cool down- which involves knee kicks, sit ups and push-ups- their sweat is flying off of them. After sit ups today one of the guys looked over at my relatively dry area of mat and asked, 'why is your area so dry?!' 

I claimed that I had 'sweet lady sweat' so I don't sweat as much. What I didn't tell them was that between my sports bra and tank top, I was wearing two more 

layers than each of them, and that between the two layers they had absorbed probably a liter of my sweat. My clothes are soaking when I have to nastily strip them off, pre-shower. 

For dinner I tried a new place across the street called 'Calorie' which includes the caloric breakdown of each meal, so I ordered the delicious 537 calorie chicken, broccoli and sweet potato mash... 

I love how health conscious all the people/ restaurants are on this street ! Everyone here is really healthy, or at least trying to be, and there are a LOT of muscular people here. Probably why one of my friends claimed it's nicknamed 'Beefcake Boulevard'.