Gyms are full and are turning away students for high season.

When I was at Phuket Top Team, the owner Boyd mentioned that he would cap the student count at 50 so training would never suffer.  Having too many students and not enough trainers leads to poor training for everyone.  Gyms like Tiger Muay Thai sometimes has up to 300 students training at any given time during high season, which is December through April.  The only reason why TMT is able to do it without training really going down the toilet is because they have so many classes and four separate levels of Muay Thai, beginner, intermediate, advanced, and fighters only.  The beginners and intermediate classes suffer the most during high season as even if they have 10 trainers, it's still hard to give 50+ students attention.

As for Phuket Top Team, I don't know if they ever actually had to turn anyone away, but there's one gym here in Chiang Mai that recently did.

Much respect goes out to Santai Muay Thai for actually turning away business and valuing good training more than money.  I recently met an English guy that started training at KC Muay Thai because Santai Muay Thai was too busy and actually turned him away.  He originally wanted to train at Santai because it was far away from the city and distractions and offered a really peaceful area to live and train.  They told him that there was already 30 students training and that was their maximum limit so they could keep a 3:1 student to trainer ratio.  I always knew Santai Muay Thai was good gym, but hearing this first hand really made me respect their gym even more.

Santai recently posted a thread on muaythailand.com's forums entitled "High season, make a reservation."  They got a lot of skeptical people on there thinking it might have been some type of clever marketing trick but I can vouch that it's actually true.  I'm not sure if you would get more priority if you plan on staying for a few months or longer verses if you're just staying for a week or two.  It would make sense if they did.  Either way, if you plan on training there in the next few months, email them at info@santaimuaythai.com first.

On a side note, the reason why I try to avoid all internet forums, including MuayThailand, Sherdog, and others is because 99% of the people on there don't actively train or fight.  They often don't know what they are talking about but make it seem like they do, and it's easy to believe them.  When it comes down to it, a good rule of thumb is never listen to anyone's advice or opinion online if they are posting anonymously.  If they don't have a recent photo of themselves, aren't using their real name, and have nothing to lose and no credibility, they might as well be a 13 year old kid and very well might be.

On a super side note, training today was excellent.  I went for a run and make a right this time instead of my usual left, and ended up running through a really nice nature path that lead to a helicopter hanger.  It was nice to run somewhere totally away from cars and buildings, and the best part was on my way back, I saw a big herd of goats and sheep.  I had actually seen the same herd during the day, on my way back from lunch and ended up spending an hour breaking down tree branches so they could eat the leaves, and herding runaways back into the group with my bicycle. I really love Chiang Mai for the nature aspect.

After the run, we shadow boxed as usual, then went into boxing sparring.  Today's class was huge, I counted 15 students total, which is more than double what we normally get at KC.  I know I've been promoting KC Muay Thai a lot because I think it's a great gym, but honestly, maybe the reason why it's so good is because they don't have a website and never more than 5-10 students per class.  They hired a new trainer, an ex-lumpinee fighter, just in time for high season, but I'm still not sure if that'll be enough if more people start training.

We did 5 rounds of Boxing sparring, I had all really good sessions with 4 different partners.  Then instead of doing bag work for 2 rounds, I asked one of my partners, an American guy if he wanted to spar a bit more, and he agreed so we ended up doing 7 rounds of sparring each, which was really good.  I'm glad that even though it was busy, we still all got 3 rounds of pad work, which I think is very important.  Overall, the small KC Muay Thai gym and staff handled having a large class very well, and I hope it continues this way though this high season.

Warm Regards, and happy training.


-Johnny @ MyFightCamp.com

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