4 weeks in Phuket!

Hello! So I have been 4 weeks in Phuket so far. Switching accomendations in friday. Going to stay in Floraville for the rest of the trip. The place is about 100m from Cocoville and like 150m from Tiger. So really close to the place I am training at. The place looks almost the same as Cocoville, since it is also build on top of huge garden. Lots of green stuff all over the place :D It also has a nice pool and wifi. The room is probably half the size of where I am staying at, which is good since I dont need the space. The big deal is that Floraville small room only costs 10k atm, compared to 18 in Cocoville atm, so huge save there. I was lucky there was one room left.

When Im not doing training or eating outside, I mostly watch tv, read books or do stuff on my Ipad and I do it on my bed so no need for desk or sofa. It has been raining a lot for the past couple of weeks. Some sun almost everyday but it normally doesnt last long. So much time is spent inside.

After fridays bjj session I did some resting and recovery. Saturday, sunday and not until monday late evening I did nothing physical, except some abs. Monday night did bjj and today also, tuesday. Been making already huge progress in bjj. Lots of guys with so much more experience tell, that I learn really fast. Monday training was great, first session in a while, when none of my muscles hurt! In sparring I do better all the time. I have managed to do kimuras, armbars, armtriangle chokes, rear naked chokes, guillotine chokes and many more during sparring. I was mentally prepared to get owned atleast for month, before I manage to submit anyone... Of course I lose to most guys hands down but the time I can survive, without getting submitted gets longer as I learn more. Today in training my arms started to hurt again like crazy. I put some Tiger Balm on them and fought trough the pain. Wanted to do the sparring even it hurt. Tomorrow morning going to take a massage, its going to hurt I am sure of it but it should help with the recovery.

For now, I plan to do bjj everyday but not saturday or sunday. With couple of gym sessions, swimming and a Muay Thai session every week my training schedule is staring to form up. The sparring is kicking my cardio up pretty quickly, so no need to run every day. About 7 weeks training left. I am going to work really hard, so when I get back to Finland, my cardio, fitness, muay thai and specially bjj are going to be sick, compared to what they were before. Also I dumbed using sugar.. So no more coke,  pepsi max, chocolate, ice cream or anything with added sugar. Only lots of sweet and awesome fruits and proper food!

Thanks for reading! Keep it up! Some blurry images follows.

Argh!

So in my last post I told about pain in my triceps. I took a day off and did jujitsu again in friday night. After the warm up, doing technique and my arms start to hurt like crazy. I take a couple a painkillers. Still before we start rolling and doing sparring it hurts really bad. So I decide no way im rolling with this much pain, even if it is annoying to do warm up and technique but skip the most important part, that is sparring. I talk with the instructor, he says I should take 3 days off and use lots of ice. So I figure my arms havent been getting enough time to rest a.k.a I have been over training them.

So I am going to take it easy until monday night, the next bjj session. This week we did a lot of armbars and how to escape from them. We also did transitions to guillotine choke from armbars and omoplatas. Raining again as I write this, drinking coffee in Cocoville lobby. So I figure, I will be reading and watching movies for the next couple of days.

Met a couple of guys from Sweden last night in bjj. They arrived just before the session and were doing the session in jetlag. Haha looked pretty tired in warm up.. Nice dudes, they are staying at 2 home bungalows. I am going to probably check it out, since it costs 12-14k a month, compared the 18k in Cocoville. 5days left in Cocoville, I recommend the place for everybody. Next time when I come here, I am going to stay for month and in Cocoville. 3months is just too long in a high quality place like this. Prices range from 4000-20000bht a month on averag near the Tiger. Of course the island is full of real hotels, which cost a lot more. But in general, 10-20k bht = 250-500e a month you will find a great villa/bungalow with pool, tv,  ac, wifi, huge bed  and stuff. If you are travelling with friend or girlfriend you can save HALF. There is easily room for two in every accomendations and they wont charge extra for it like on Finland..
Hope you enjoyed my wall of text! Gl hf!

Photos!

So decided to post some pics of TMT. Yesterday was a recovery day, only did some abs in my room. I was pretty tired from last bjj session tuesday night, I also swam 1.5km before it. Today had some what lackluster gym session. My triceps where hurting like crazy, when doing pull ups. Managed to  do almost all back excercises of the day. I took these pics after that painful gym session.

Oh by the way, not sure if my nose is broken. Its been bruised and black for 2days, hurts when I touch it. It doesnt bleed and it should be pointing in the right direction, so I guess im fine. I still have a week remaining in Cocoville, its really great but I am going to start looking a bit cheaper option soon.

Another week begins!

So its monday and a whole new week! Last week, friday was my rest day. Week consisted of 6gym sessions, did two running sets, 2 times swimming and two muay thai sessions. My legs were destroyed for the most part of the week, so couldnt do much muay thai. Not going to do squats anymore :D Atleast not with much weight.

Im so impressed how much my swimming has progressed in a couple of weeks. Swam 1200m yesterday, before this trip 200m and I was dead.. Next week going to do 2km. The weather has been very cloudy and lots of rain for the last week. Yesterday, I think was the only day, when you could see the sun. Still in less than an hour of swimming, I managed to burn my back.. Again!! Also started running. First times I ran the street towards Chalong pier and back, lots of ups and downs. Now decided, that its better ( safer ) to run around TMT, than on the public street. If you run on the street (no such thing as sidewalks) you have to be alert, so that you dont get hit by a bus, scooter or a streetkitchen going 60km/h.. Much of the ppl running here, run the TMT lap, which is about 200m. So if you run it 10-20times, you get a good warm up.

Talking about street safety, talked to a nice dude from Egypt. He arrived 2 weeks ago but started training yesterday. Why? He showed his arm, which looked still pretty nasty. Phuket street tattoo.. He had an accident with his newly rented scooter.. So he hasnt been training for two weeks.. Sucks if
your trip lasts for month. He said that in Egypt, they drive on the right side, like in Finland. So it is very confusing at the start and the traffic rules? What rules, hah. Read an article before coming here, that in Phuket, on average one turist dies on every other day from traffic collisions.. Pretty damn scary sounding statistic. So decided, that im going to keep my own ass safe! What also suprises me, is that pretty much nobody wears helmet when driving. It is recommended and looking at the facts, I think stupid if you dont wear any. 
Just came back from training, had a nice fish filet and now going to take a nap. Going to no gi bjj 
later tonight. Stay tuned! When the weather gets better, Im going to take more pictures ans post them here!

Im baaack!

Been training hard for the past week and a half. Only saturday has been a total rest day so far. Everyday I have been swimming, running, doing muay thai, gym or the combination of two of them. My legs were feeling like they were destroyed for like 4days after doing squats with weights. Not a good idea when you are running, doing muay thai everyday. Barely could walk for the next 3days. So only been doing gym and swimming most of this week. Swimming is great, even though my body was destroyed, its still easy enough for your body. Been doing looots of pull ups. Want to be able to do 30 in a row, before end of this trip. Like a month ago, I think my weight was around 74kg, now foe the past days it has been 70.4kg. Been losing fat around my waist atleast, even though I didnt come here to lose weight.

Some videos I took. I dont speak english in them though. In the first one my plan today was, that I go
 swimming 1.2km and take some sun. Weather was great. So I pack my things and step outside... Sky breaks and huuge rain starts pooring in... So I decided to go and do pull up excercises at the TMT gym and stretch my body properly. 2nd video I took in the MMA area, when doing stretching.

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Okey, so some problems with video not showing. In the meantime pics!

Training!

So I decided to post how my first week of training has gone. One goal for this trip was also to swim a lot, because I have always sucked at swimming. Before this trip I managed to swim 200m, never probably even tried to swim longer. When arriving here I started by swimming 5x30m (the pool is 15m)= 150m. Now after a week I just swam 750m in 30 minutes and did it easy!

First week of training ( started swimming before though)

Monday         Muay Thai 2.5h

Tuesday         Swimming 600m 20x30m

Wednesday   Muay Thai 2.5h & Thai massage 60min

Thursday      Swimming 750m 25x30m &  gym session 60min

Friday           Muay Thai 2.5h

Saturday        Rest

Sunday          Swimming 1050m 35x30m

My body has already started to recover in really small time. I think the swimming, stretching, massage and lots of sleep make it possible. Back home this would be very hard to pull off. Muay thai second training session went better than the first. It was raining really hard, so there were only 10-15 of us training. Also the owner of Cocoville showed me a bookstore, that sold used books. Bought a couple. Also tried Pizza here, with Coke it was great change to thai food. Thai massage was also great, altough I almost screamed when she massaged my triceps and feet, as those were pretty bruised.

The day after

Hi again!

I had my first Muay Thai training session yesterday. It lasted about 2 hours and 45 minutes. It consisted of warmup, stretching, then following technique, sparring, pad work and fitness excercises. The session was brutal to say at least. I probably lost like 1000-2000kalories and couple of kilos in that. 

   The warm up was hard but mainly because it wast my first session in this weather, temperature was like +30 celcius, eventhough it was morning. Some people were throwing up middle of training and some had to keep pauses a lot, some were only doing part of the training, like technique. There were about 25 students and 5-7 teachers. Students were from 20 different countries, talk about meeting different cultures. 

    We did a lot of push ups through the training, which I liked, one thing I managed to do quite easy. Pad work with the coach was best part of the training. He gave good instructions and they were supportive. Sparring sucked, though. It was my first time doing Muay Thai in a long time, so wasnt feeling too confident. I did good against two dudes but the last one from Australia, did take it a bit too hard on me. Couple of good shots to my stomach and I gasped for air. I told him to take ot easy but I quess he didnt know the meaning. 

   We also did a lot of bag work and shadow boxing. In the end, when everybody was exausted, head coach ordered us to do 300 sit ups.. When doing them, coaches hit our abs, which was bruutal but I still liked it. One dude from Florida was ordered to come in front of everybody. Headcoach then told us, that he was slacking and needed to be punished. One hard hit with a bambustick to the lowerback later, everybody suddenly got more energy to do knee strikes to the bags. One Spanish dude also got 
some "special" attention, because he didint speak or understand good enough english from the headcoach...

Morning after, when I woke up, my back was suprisingly the only place which was hurting. After I 
did my first Muay Thai training session in Finland 5 years ago, every muscle in my body was screaming for a week. Thank god, I came in at decent shape at least. Today I swam 600m at the pool 
and did a lot of stretching. Tomorrow again Muay Thai! I also bought new Top King 16oz gloves, which cost half the amount compared to Finland. Also bought sweet Hayabusa rashguard for no gi bjj. Some pics of great and cheap food at the end!