Classes

Muay Thai is Thailand’s national sport and the reason most people get on a plane to train in Bangkok. Eight points of contact: fists, elbows, knees and shins. It rewards patience far more than aggression, which catches a lot of newcomers off guard.

A class runs ninety minutes. You warm up, work through joint mobility, skip, then shadowbox until your shoulders start complaining. After that come partner drills, and then three rounds on the pads with a coach who will stop you mid-combination to fix whatever needs fixing. Conditioning closes it out, at the point where you have nothing left, which is rather the idea.

There is a fitness test once a month if you want a number to measure yourself against. Plenty of people ignore it entirely and get on fine.

Jiu-Jitsu happens on the ground, and it is the most humbling hour in the building. A smaller person with better technique will fold you up like laundry, and after that has happened a few times you stop arguing with the idea that leverage beats strength.

Classes open with drilling, move into positional work from one specific starting point, and finish with live rolling. You roll at whatever intensity you and your partner agree on, and nobody is out to hurt anybody. Beginners start on day one. The first few weeks are mostly about learning to keep breathing while somebody heavier than you sits on your chest.

It is the best possible counterweight to a striking-heavy week, and most of our Muay Thai regulars end up on the mats sooner or later.

Boxing here is built on the two things people skip: footwork and head movement. Anyone can learn to throw a hard punch. Not many can throw one, move, and not be standing there when the answer comes back.

Expect rounds on the pads, partner drills, bag work, and controlled sparring once your defense holds up under pressure. Coaches watch your feet as much as your hands and will happily spend an entire round on one thing if that is what your jab needs this week.

It sits well alongside Muay Thai. Boxers who cross over usually find their hands are already good and their stance needs taking apart.

One hour, women only, taught by female coaches. The same Muay Thai as every other class on the timetable, with real technique and real pad work. There is no watered-down version of it.

What changes is the room. Some people would rather learn to fight without an audience of men watching them learn, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing to want. Plenty of women here train in the mixed classes too, some only in this one, and nobody thinks twice about either.

If you have never done anything like this before, this is the easiest door in the gym to walk through.

As far as we know, this is the only dedicated kids MMA class in Bangkok. Striking fundamentals, grappling basics, and a great deal of coordination work disguised as games, because a seven-year-old will drill a technique for an hour if you call it a game and for ninety seconds if you call it a drill.

The martial arts part is real. So is the other part: turning up on time, bowing before you step on the mat, shaking hands with the kid who just swept you. Parents tend to notice that half first.

The class has quietly become a hub for Bangkok’s homeschooling families, and there are often parents training in the adult session next door while their kids are on the mats.

Not everything here involves hitting something. Mornings start slowly: joint mobility, a yoga series, breathwork, and a stretch of sitting still at the end that some people find harder than the pad rounds.

This is the class fighters skip for a year and then come back to when their hips stop cooperating. Good for stiff shoulders, good for a busy head, and good for anyone who wants to be in the gym without being in a fight.

No experience needed, and no flexibility required. That is rather the point of it.

We are building accommodation on the property for people who want to stay and train seriously for months at a time, with longer and heavier sessions to match. It is not open yet. When it is, this is where you will read about it first.

Everything above runs on the same timetable and the same passes. Trial passes, class packs, monthly memberships and long-term DTV visa training all open up the whole schedule rather than one corner of it.

A fight camp is what Tiger Eye is. It is not all that Tiger Eye is. We have just under a rai of land in the middle of Bangkok, and we have spent it on more than mats.

You can train here twice a day, shower, and go home, and plenty of people do exactly that. But if you want the other thing as well, the garden and the chickens and the Thai lessons and the neighbors’ kids running through the middle of it, that is all here too, and none of it costs extra.