Mr Nuk

Maniacal, his cheeks strained wide to contain his gigantic leering smile, both rows of white teeth were clearly revealed. his massive hazel eyes were alive with energy and looked ready to leap right out of his skull. They didn’t break contact with mine, not even for a second (I was later told he maintained this crazed look throughout all of his fights). He swayed back and forth on the balls of his feet, though I would have placed somewhere between 50-60 based on the deep lines of his face, his legs looked strong and quick enough for me to steer well clear of them at all costs. This was Mr Nuk my trainer for the day.

Somewhat unsure of how to proceed with the situation I looked to those around me for some sort of visual cue as to how to proceed, everyone however was already absorbed in their own laborious training. Ok I thought, if anything this will be interesting. The pad work began routinely enough and rapidly spiraled out of control, as each round progressed so too did Nuks enthusiasm/insanity, the white of his eyes grew wider and wider as he moved both fluidly and unpredictably around the ring, when he held up the pads he would side step at the last second before I made contact with them and hook me in the ribs, or jab me in the face, these were all the time accompanied by whoops of ooo-eeee, ahooooy or wooo-eee!! When I faked a punch and landed a kick instead this seemed to please him but also resulted in a swift onslaught of kicks and punches from him. I remember at one point catching the gaze of another fighter whose expression seemed to suggest both intrigue as to what was going on but also clear relief that it was me and not him up there. This madness continued for 4 rounds, though there were intermittent periods where we focused on some countering techniques, which it appeared I clearly needed.

In retrospect I’m sure Nuk is not completely bananas, and that there is a method to his madness so to speak. Doing pads with Nuk is alot more like being in a fight than doing pads and forces you to be a lot more aware of the distance and angles between yourself and you opponent as well of course as keeping a tight guard and following up with counter strikes. Furthermore when doing pads with other trainers now I can see the clear improvement in this that has been brought about as a result of training with Nuk. One thing is for sure though Nook really, really enjoys training people, I have yet to see anyone else be so excited in a boxing ring.

Born in Australia, training in martial arts since the age of 9. My first trip to Thailand was back in 2007. Since then i have made numerous visits back to the "land of smiles" to feed my addiction of Muay Thai. During the month of November in 2010 i had to decide between working a 9 to 5 job back home for the rest of my life, or sell all my worldly possessions and move to Thailand to live and train for the next few years. Thankfully i chose the latter. I now spend my time training Muay Thai, meeting new and interesting circles of people, sipping coconuts under palm trees on the beach and measuring the cost of everything on how much Pad Thai i could buy with that money.

Mike (Admin)

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