Written by Jonny Betts, Tuesday 6th Mar 2012
Good to be back!

After nearly 10 months of boredom in England, I’m so happy to be back at Tiger. This place really feels like my home, and my trainers and training partners are my family. Still have some issues with injuries that hold me back from doing some things and need to get sorted (on the National Health Service waiting list now), but I’m back hitting pads, sparring and clinching now. This makes me very, very happy :)
After 1 year off from hitting pads, I nearly died my first day back training. I somehow managed to make it through 4 rounds of pads with Laimangkon, who is a brutal pad holder. He likes to use one pad and one glove, making me come forward and knee while he is throwing hard punches to my body and head. Perfect for fight training! However after 1 year of no training, he absolutely destroyed me. I don’t think I have ever been as tired as I was that day haha
After 2 days of training I was really surprised at how quickly my fitness started returning, and now after 1 week of training I’m feeling a lot stronger and can keep up with the frantic pace of the padwork rounds with Laimangkon, Nontachai and Lamsongkram. I’m very lucky to have these guys training me, as they are perfect trainers for “muay kao” which literally means “knee fighting”. All of them are tall, heavier than me and strong clinchers, so I’m sure I’ll get strong again soon training with these beasts every day…