I’d like to get a gauge from people of where they have had privates and trained, what they got out of the experience and what level they are.

I am currently in Thailand on week 3/4 on my journey and have done kick boxing for about a year in Melbourne along with other martial arts.

(MTA) I spent the first week in Bangkok where I trained at MTA and did privates with the boxing coach Purya Rokhneh. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a coach that has taken the time to go over all the fundamentals in such a comprehensive and easy to understand way. You start with a warm up, basic stretching and some skipping to warm up followed by 1:1 pad work where he corrects foot work and technique. All of which I was told was solid in Australia at kick boxing and boxing gyms. I’ve taken away some absolute knowledge of how to get my technique to a T, footwork drills and how to get faster. I couldn’t recommend him enough.

Group classes were more fitness based than technical but the drills all made sense and sharpened my skills. MTA Muay Thai beginner classes are fairly basic with friendly coaches that do good padwork followed by some light sparring. I really enjoyed the vibe here! Although I more so went to improve my hands.

(Sitjaopho) I’m now in Hua Hin, the place I travelled to go to the legendary Sitjaopho to train at. I spent 5 classes here and although it had a super friendly and homely vibe I got a lot of the same reactions from newcomers as I did myself. You skip, shadow box, get 3x3 rounds of pads and then spar, followed by clinch. (Night class) I can’t say that I was guided through what to do at all and felt super lost. I also didn’t get anything technical out of the classes just super high level sparring with friendly students. I asked Kru F if I could do privates and he said that he wasn’t currently doing them.. I was also rag dolled by an American wrestler that I consistently asked to be more technical and less power based with… I dropped out after being picked up and slammed twice without the sotjaopho coaches doing anything about except for standing there speechless watching….

This lead to my next gym, I found a coach on Instagram from a local gym called king of Muay Thai where I directly messaged him for privates which he was super pleased to do, although he would only book one in.

(KMT) While doing the private lessons we started with basic stretching and warm up followed by a light round of pad work to gauge my experience and where I was at. Straight away he picked up on plenty of basics which he lead me through the technique of and then spent rounds doing padwork until my time was up. I started going to group classes and after seeing my dedication was able to book privates daily. Every day the coaches took time to go through techniques that were practical and had thought and planning behind th it’s safe to say in 2 weeks I’ve learned more than my time in Australia doing boxing and kick boxing combined. The group classes consist of running (light) skipping, stretching then some technique, they then run you through bag drills and then do padwork. (Three nights a week they do sparring) which coaches and some very experienced people join in for. I found that these classes had a lot more technical work than other gyms I had been to and safe to say where I’ve accidentally reached my conclusion to call my Muay Thai home. The only downside is that they don’t do much if any clinch in class. Having said that they’re more than happen to do this training if asked for in privates or with the coaches during sparring.

Open to any questions and I’d love to hear from other people’s experiences and gyms that they have been to and experienced bot group and privates!