This will be my last post wrapping up this series. I think I wrote maybe one or two blog posts after this but it was around this time I got sober and a lot of my passion and zeal for writing diminished if not completely extinguished. It wasn’t until the pandemic started when I found myself with a lotta free time and a will for expression again.
It truly means a lot to me that y’all are willing to read these and answer me back with messages of relatability and understanding.
Aside from a peek in my past, I’d like to give examples of how other gyms operate and hope you all understand how hard I work and the difficult decisions that are made to keep TBI such a chill welcoming place.
I yearn for the time when we operated at a stage 4 group (in 2021). It was prosperous and we were in full gratitude for the place and the people that was taken from us unexpectedly because of the lockdown.
Stage 3 may be ok for some people, but for me.. I know this gym is capable of much more.
I hope to see it in 2024. That is my vision I am sharing with you today.
Thank you all again for all your time and attention.
Happy New Year.
-Coach Vic 2023
The History of Coach Vik and TBI. First Fight. For Reals This Time.
2018-03-05 22:25:46
So here we are, 3 months left, 3 months into ridicule, and all I wanted was an out. After my first smoker, I decided that a six month mark into training that fighting would be a good idea; let’s call it a sort of ‘belt test’, a measure of one’s skill and/or capacity. Sure, there’s a saying in muay thai that the only belt is the one in the ring. The idea of ranking and belts can be another entire entry of it’s own, but when I think of a belt test, I personally have never heard of anyone ‘failing’ a belt test. Now, my experience of ranking has only been within the realm of Brazilian jitjitsu or second hand accounts of others testing for TMA belts and sure, there must be a rhyme for the reason of the instructor promoting the student. But regardless of them ever actually competing or not, people would be promoted rank after a certain amount of tenure. That wouldn’t/will ever be the case in muay thai. And you know what, I like it that way. Sometimes you would get the cue, from the coach or other members that it was time to compete. Those were the test. I understand the need for some arbitrary definition of one’s knowledge in the sport; a goal to reach perhaps, but I’ve seen too much emphasis and value placed in attaining a certain rank when your focus should just be training and getting better. Never mind what color you are wearing around the waist. Anyways, like I mention I can go on about this but I must digress. With fighting, there is no predetermined criteria to fill out, I’ve seen people one month in of training end up fighting, I’ve seen people with a decade of experience enter their first bout. What I like about fighting is that it’s the ultimate test. You either got your ass kicked or you didn’t. You either kicked someone’s ass or you didn’t. You were either A: a winner B: A loser. Let’s take two equally trained individuals of an equal amount of time trained each. A winner: Exponentially got better. B loser: remained stagnant in abilities or progressively got worse. In regards to victory; There are many compounding factors that contribute to one’s success. And even more so there are DEGREES to victory. You might’ve kicked some bum’s ass, a mismatch of sorts, or you might’ve gone to war with an equally skillful fighter or perhaps one that exceeds your time in training AND experience. Either way, there was skill and knowledge gained from each experience. Now, we can extrapolate from the little data we have and gather from that the mindset of fighting, skill progression and of course; victory. A winning fighter has the mindset to win. Puts in the time. Practices and drills and spars, and consumes. Becomes a sponge. My old jitjitsu coach would always talk about drilling. Doing the same technique a thousand times. Over and over to exhaustion. Different schools employ different methods of practice, I’ve always been a staunch proponent of focus based pad training, hence the style and method of teaching I employ, one that has been developed (and continues to be) throughout my decade of coaching.‘Fear not the man (person) who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man (person) who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.-Bruce Lee Fighting is real. It reveals strength, but more importantly weakness. Weakness arrives in a multitude of ways. Furthermore, you want to define your weaknesses. Where do you fail? Where does the coach see you fail? You improve in those areas. You get the word from your coach about something that needs work, or you, yourself understand the weaknesses of your game. Guess what? You make yourself vulnerable in training, exposes your flaws, get tuned up by your teammates and practice your failures one thousand times until they become you strengths. And then what? It doesn’t stop there. Just because you already know how to kick, or jab, or elbow, you don’t stop practicing each technique. You improve, you evolve, and you create. Ok– Now what’s the mindset of a loser? This is what I gather. And I feel like I’m a bit of an authority in this subject because there have been many times in my life, both in career and otherwise where I’ve been a total loser. In fighting, yes– At one point, I too was a loser. When I first started fighting, I lost my first 3 fights (two muay thai and one boxing). What made me a loser? I can spout off an array of reasons. The biggest one I would say was fear. Scared of losing. Scared of getting hurt. Scared of embarrassment. Scared of getting tired (this would come later). Fear. As a sum, we can reason that emotion played a huge factor, but overall all these factors can be remedied by proper coaching. And this isn’t a dig on my instructors. I say instructor’s because after more than a decade of knowing them I still default to their advice and guidance. But I have learned to: improve, evolve, and create. Now the topic of emotion can be an entire chapter on it’s own (yet again), two different thoughts and arguments for pro vs. con emotion. There are emotional fighters that do very well, and there are cerebral fighters that do very well. Yet again, that’s a whole another thing to write about. Anyways lets get back to the story. Here I am. 3 months further into my training. 6 months total. I made it. After still much ridicule and harassment my first real test was here. I told myself this would be a good test in my abilities. After all, I decided to do muay thai for fitness but most of all to learn to defend myself. What better way to test that then against someone with the actual intention of hurting you. Sparring is one thing. There are many roles that sparring has, but once that timer rings and indicates the end of the round we all know that we are done for that time being. Generally you are sparring with teammates in a very controlled manner of different shapes, sizes, and level of experience. The goal isn’t to win, but rather to build your skill. The actual danger in sparring lies in injury. There are of course freak accidents but those are outliers in these situations. A fight is the real fucking deal: One hundred percent power, aggression, gameness and preparation against an unknown opponent. The luxury of familiarity is stripped, and is replaced with that awkward feeling of confrontation. It was around the new year of 05’, about 4 weeks out, I sign up to compete and get matched up with someone from a neighboring school at a weight of 130 lbs. Around this time, I had switch from a full-time working schedule to part-time to focus on school. This allowed me extra time in the gym to put in work. For the next 4 weeks I diligently attended every class I could. I maybe ran a few times a week but in retrospect I’m sure it was just a mile; hardly enough distance or time to have any sort of effect on my conditioning. The day came, a Saturday in Feburary. I clock out of work, go home and pick up all my gear. My XXXL muay thai shorts, my still unmolded and unwashed grimey mouth piece, my XXL athletic supporter that sagged beyond my waist and wasn’t nearly filled to the capacity my delusional mind convinced myself it would be. And my brand new fairtex shinpads ordered straight from Thailand that took for FUCKING ever to arrive. The same brand and style I still u today. 5 pm to weigh in. I meet my opponent, New York Nick from Sityodtong. Older, worn, thug looking guy. Maybe in his late 20’s? We weigh in and shake hands. We agree on a kickboxing match rather than a muay thai match with clinch knees because up to this point I had done ZERO clinch work . Why? Well, It wasn’t really taught in the class, second I wasn’t invited to train with the fight team as they despised my guts. Anyways. A few hours pass as I wait around the gym listening to music. I’m told to get ready as I am the 3rd fight of the night. No corner men again, but Vaughn, from my previous exhibition smoker, takes pity on me (yet again) and decides to help me out. My then trainer, Malaipet see’s Vaughn and decides to join. They wrap me up, douse me in boxing linament (thai oil) and warm me up. /Ding Ding the bell rings indicating the start of the next bout. The announcer reads off his cue cards: ‘ In the blue corner, weighing in at 130 lbs, fighting out of the Muay Thai Academy making his fighting debut, Victor Acosta!’ /crickets chirp I go over the top rope, my corner men put on probably the worst headgear we had laying around, duct tape me from head to toe and give me a firm pat on the back. We meet in the middle, tow the line, touch gloves. Ref: ‘Judge number one, ready? Judge number two, ready? Judge number three, ready? Ok, CHOK!’ (chok = fight in thai) He blitz, comes forward with the utmost aggression I’ve experienced at that point of my training. I stand there, with a ‘deer in the head lights’ reaction and put my hands up. He immediately grabs my neck and starts kneeing my supple, pudgy gut. /BREAK the ref warns him and reminds him of the rules we agreed. After that I don’t remember much, just a few things really:
- I think I threw one punch the entire time. I was all kicks, which people led me to believe I was fighting ‘Thai Style’ (LOL)
- Until this day, that’s the most exhausted I’ve ever been. Nothing compares to that first real fight. After the first round ended I just clung over the ropes, my chimpanzee like limbs draped over the top rope. I question myself, what the fuck have I got myself into.
- My corner forced me out of my chair into the second and third round, each time coming back more exhausted and delirious then that last time.
- Now the part of the whole experience that has stuck to me was that Malaipet told me in the last round to do nothing but push kick.