True Amatuer Training

By Ethan Brack

Many thanks to MMT community member Ethan for his submission.

It’s a cliché as old as martial arts themselves, the aspirant goes off in search of the great master or retires to a remote mountain and returns years later in possession of the ultimate technique.  True or not what the modern practitioner can take away from this story is the idea that mastery of the martial arts takes time.  Unfortunately, for most of us time is the one thing we have no control over in our lives. Family, jobs or even geography can prevent us from finding that master or climbing that mountain.

For those of us who have decided to commit the time and effort that it takes to train Muay Thai the pace of modern life poses certain questions that we, as martial artists/athletes need to address.  In the coming posts some of the topics I plan on focusing on are, What it means to be True Amateur, Training without a Muay Thai School,  Training and/or teaching at a mainstream gym, people’s view of Muay Thai,, and possibly some of the issues of validity of amateur training. Hopefully these issues will spark some discussion in the community and help us all engage with our own practice a little more.

The Amateur Experience:

Amateur: one who engages in a pursuit, study, science, or sport as a pastime rather than as a profession: amateur often applies to one practicing an art without mastery of its essentials <a painting obviously done by an amateur>; in sports it may also suggest not so much lack of skill but avoidance of direct remuneration –Merriam-Webster-

In a sense the majority of us are amateur in that we do not get paid to train, but even that definition has been skewed in the modern world.  With the UFC TV show, Friday Night Fights, etc. the gap between actual professionals and amateurs has lessened.  Most of us know at least one person, who devotes all their time to fight training, maybe holds some random job to pay the bills and just hasn’t had that breakout fight to officially brand them a Pro.  Can you call someone at that level an amateur any more than an Olympic athlete with their face on a Wheaties box but no contract? If in today’s world all that stands between a Pro and an Amateurs is a signature on a contract where does that leave the rest of us?  Does this shift in semantics mean that those of us with jobs and families who can’t spend all of our time training are less devoted or lesser practitioners?  Is our practice less valid since it is not leading us to Lumpini?

As a Personal Trainer, my work is about getting people to their goals and I think that applies to being a True Amateur as well. A True Amateur is someone who engages as a pastime not a profession, so it encompasses all of us who train with dedication and intensity but are not necessarily headed for the Octogon – those of us whose ambitions in Muay Thai lean more toward making a decent showing at the next smoker or interclub, rather than a shot at the belt, who train Muay Thai as an integrated part of our lives, something that can make us better rather than a source of income.  We all train for different reasons but since many of us can only get to the studio twice a week it is even more important to maintain focus. The lack of quantity has to be made up through quality. If anything our practice must be more devoted in a way than those who are lucky enough to be able to train in Thailand or Have the time to hit the gym seven days a week.  Each hour we have must be more focused and optimized since it’s likely we won’t be back for a few days.  In order to achieve that there are some tough questions we as the True Amateurs must ask ourselves, beginning with “what do we really expect from our training”. If we are there for exercise we can then turn up the intensity on our bag work.  If we are there for self-defense our pad work can take on new meanings with a renewed focus and awareness. If we are there for a more spiritual or cathartic experience we can really focus on that part of training which brings us closer to whatever enlightenment we seek, the purity of sparring for instance, or hitting “the zone” on pad work or heavy bags.

A lot of self help or success books champion setting defined goals and keeping journals or charts of our progress and that principal works here too. Even if you don’t use actual hard copies having a clearly define goal can help us optimize the precious time we do get at the gym.  By engaging more deeply into our practice we can offset the limited frequency.  Muay Thai is a lot deeper than many people are aware but by approaching it in stages with defined and clear goals we can approach the same exposure as those who are able to train all the time. While there really is no substitute for lots and lots of practice Limited intense and focused practice can narrow the gap.  Some suggestions I’ve found useful:

• Know your science: if you know a little bit about what’s behind the movements you can break them down yourself both during and after practice.

• Read and watch all the time: We are trained to learn through watching and listening in school, so read the books, articles etc.  Watch tons of fights in slow motion to saturate your brain, because in general if you can envision yourself doing it  you can get your body to comply

• Set defined goals for individual sessions or blocks of practicing:  Though this seems redundant as everybody trains for faster, stronger, better etc. engaging with the specific goal of a faster, tighter knee strike during your twice a week can really entrench that Neuro-muscular connection when you don’t have time for thousands of repetitions.

• Look out for number one: If you’re attending a big class and there are clearly more advanced people, bogart the heck out of their time, make sure you are their pad partner, etc.  This might be a little controversial since it goes against the whole humble martial artist thing and might be close to that type of ingratiating behavior we’d all like to avoid, but if you’ve only got 4 hours a week they need to be quality.

• Make friends and influence people: there is bound to be someone in class in the same situation as you, meet em, befriend em and set up times to train. Even if they are less skilled there is no bad training if you have the right focus. If they are slow focus on technique. If they are fast push your response time.

• Nerd out: I could always spot the musician back in college even just riding the bus or walking around campus because they were the ones practicing their finger placement in the air and humming to themselves. While full on shadow boxing on the subway platform is a little creepy, visualization of head movement or isometric/static muscle contraction can be done anywhere and can help make those connections second nature (meaning flexing your hip muscles or abs in the same way you would during a round kick or a teep when standing around or walking up stairs engages the same muscles for a knee).

• Lastly, there have been some great posts about training methodologies and that is super important. Trainers have a saying about morphology and working out.  ‘You look like how you train” Obvious, but on a deeper level if you do a Football workout you end up looking like a football player (American football), you hit the Olympic setup all the time you’ll look like a power-lifter, etc. Be aware of what muscle and movement plans are most important for Muay Thai and build your workouts accordingly.  You may have to sacrifice those eighteen inch arms and beach torso but if you’re not getting to the gym often enough you need to optimize!

Many of the above are simple and maybe even common sense but it’s precisely those sorts of things that the True Amateur has to be aware of.  We don’t have enough time for quantity and repetition to iron out the little things so we need to make them our focus even more than normal.  This may seem like a lot of extra work and ipso facto we as True Amateurs don’t have the time for extra work, but most of these things we can do anywhere or during the random time we are free but can’t get to the studio.

Fully integrating some aspect of Muay Thai into our day to day is a way to be truly devoted practitioners within the context of more widely focused lives. To be a True Amateur is to have a deep devotion to a thing but also to have a strong desire for that thing to inform and better the other equally important aspects of our lives. The other aspects of our life reflect and focus our passion for that thing.  It is the pursuit of this balance that makes our situation as intense, in its way as a full time commitment.  Despite all the extra work to stay on top of our game, the intense soul searching and personal questioning we have to endure as our lives and our practice struggle for priority, a True Amateur is truly lucky in that he or she can take a little of both  to create a more rewarding whole.