Not a success story. Just a thank you to the sport that taught me so much.

I can’t get my hip to rotate. My trainer shows me again… Pivot on the ball of your foot. Turn the hip over. Let the kick snap.

I nod like I’ve got it.

I try. I look like an elephant trying to do ballet.

My hip stays locked. My hands, which I’m supposed to keep up for defense, drop after about 30 seconds because my shoulders are screaming. My legs feel like wet concrete.

And then he wants me to remember a combination on top of all this?

The place where it first happened.

Objectively, my first Muay Thai session was a disaster. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing but…

There was a moment, somewhere in the middle of the tenth time he’s shown me the same thing, where something shifted.

The chatty brain went quiet.

Business decisions. Self-analysis. The mental list of things I need to do. The constant right/wrong calculus running in the background. All of it was… gone.

Just me. The pads. My body doing something it barely knows how to do.

This isn’t a rags-to-riches story. This isn’t “I found my sport and became a champion.” This is simpler than that.

This is a thank you.

The Detached Tenant

For most of my life, my body was a thing I had, not a thing I was.

I mostly ignored it. Feelings for it? Locked away. The body was just the vehicle that carried my brain around, and I didn’t think much about the condition of the vehicle.

There were exceptions. Some “forced years” where I’d try to hammer myself into shape.

Sport as punishment. Exercise as penance for existing in a body I wasn’t connected to.

Me 2015 trying to convince myself real hard I love running

The goal was always an outcome: lose weight, look better, fix the exterior.

It never stuck. Because I was never actually there. I was using my body as a detached tool for results I thought I should want, but I wasn’t inhabiting it. I wasn’t feeling it.

So mostly, I just… didn’t. I disconnected. Easier that way.

The Random Door

Thailand two years ago. An exploration phase in my life. No grand plan. Just saying more Yes.

I found Muay Thai the way you find most good things. Randomly, without looking for them.

I booked private coaching because I was too scared to join a group class. Too unsporty. Too clueless. Too much of a beginner to be a beginner in public.

The first session was… humbling.

Actually, “humbling” is too polite. I sucked.

Not in the “oh, I’m not great yet” way. In the “I cannot remember a single thing I just did” way.

My body hurt. Not a little sore, but screaming. Pure pain. Muscles I didn’t know I had staging a full revolt.

I had to take a nap after every training session. Not a luxury nap. A survival nap. The kind you only take when you’re sick or your body has completely run out of negotiating room.

I have never done that before. Ever.

The Crucible: Motivated by Sucking

Here’s the weird part: I kept going because I sucked.

Not despite it. Because of it.

There was something clarifying about being so objectively terrible. No ambiguity. No room for ego.

Just the plain, honest fact… I was bad at this, and the only way forward was through.

The pain taught me something I’d only understood intellectually before. Short-term suffering creates long-term strength. Not as a motivational poster. As a felt reality.

Every session where my body screamed and I showed up anyway, I was building something. Not just muscle. Trust. Trust that I could endure.

And the perspective shift? Massive.

When you train Muay Thai and you see people doing this full-time. Fighters whose whole lives are built around this level of output. It recalibrated what I thought is “hard.” The things I used to complain about? Business stress? Creative blocks? They didn’t disappear, but they got smaller. More manageable.

If I can survive another round when my body is begging me to stop, I can handle a difficult conversation. I can sit with uncertainty. I can do the thing I’m avoiding.

The Violence That Isn’t

From the outside, Muay Thai looks brutal. The Art of Eight Limbs. Elbows, knees, violence. You’d think a combat sport would attract people who love hurting others.

I’m not violent. I don’t love punching people. I never have.

But this isn’t violence. Far from it.

Fun sidefact: I think I listened to more “love songs” while training than anything else. Especially in Asia. The trainers love songs like this…

It’s a consensual, respectful, contained game. Everyone in the gym has agreed to it. When you’re in it, you’re not thinking about hurting anyone. You’re just present.

It’s the closest thing I’ve found to meditation that doesn’t require sitting still.

Maybe it’s because I’ll never fight for real. I’m just a chicken at heart. But after two years, I know what this is for me.

This is play.

Permission to Suck

The Japanese Zen Buddhists have a term for this: Shoshin. Beginner’s Mind.

It’s the idea that approaching something with openness and zero preconceptions, even when you’re advanced, keeps you curious. Keeps you learning.

I didn’t know the term when I started. I just knew that being terrible at Muay Thai felt… freeing.

I wasn’t performing. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. I was just there, in the mess of learning, enjoying the process of getting slightly less terrible every session.

Humbleness isn’t something you decide to have. It’s something that gets beaten into you (sometimes literally) when you’re willing to show up and suck in public.

The Global Ground

Thailand. Vietnam. Indonesia. Malaysia. Germany. Serbia.

Muay Thai gave me something I didn’t know I needed. Almost everywhere I landed, I found a gym. Every gym, a different flavor of the same medicine.

The gratitude hits me sometimes when I’m showering in some basic building halfway across the world, after I got my ass kicked by someone half my size.

Completely exhausted after a session in Vietnam

I get to do this. Worldwide. How many people get to have a thing they can take anywhere?

The Body as Home

This is the big one.

I didn’t just get fit. I didn’t just change my physique (though that happened). I reconnected.

For the first time in my life, I could feel my own power. Not as an idea. As a sensation. The force of a kick. The rotation of a hook. The way my body moves when I’m not thinking about it, just responding.

I wasn’t using my body anymore. I was in it.

The Tough Love Earned

Here’s something I think I’ve noticed across multiple gyms, though I’m not 100% sure if this is a universal pattern or just my own interpretation.

Once your trainer sees you’re serious. Once they see you’re giving it everything. Two things happen.

First, the stretching afterward gets way better. They care about you. Sometimes they’ll massage out the knots. It’s a quiet kindness, earned through sweat.

Second, they start hitting you. Sounds amazing right? Haha.

In the pauses between rounds, they’ll make you do extra push-ups or squats, and every time you come up, they give you a slap with the pad on your belly.

It probably sounds worse than it is. It’s actually nice.

It’s their way of saying: “You’re serious now. You’re one of us.”

I can proudly report: I have unlocked the Tough Love Protocol in multiple countries.

That matters more than I thought it would.

Kuala Lumpur. Dragon Muay Thai. Got tough loved here multiple times.

The Silence

My brain is usually… chatty.

Business. Ideas. Problems to solve. Decisions to make. The endless internal monologue of someone who thinks a lot about everything.

Muay Thai shuts it off.

For one hour, my brain goes quiet and my body catches fire. I don’t think about anything. I don’t analyze. I don’t plan.

I am just here. In this moment. In this body. Doing this thing.

A state where I act without thought, without ego, without the static of consciousness getting in my way.

I didn’t go looking for that. I just found it in the space between exhaustion and presence.

Thank You

I’m still completely exhausted after every session.

My body still aches in ways I didn’t know were possible.

I still can’t remember combinations half the time.

Maybe I still look like the elephant doing ballet.

But I show up. And I love it.

Not because I’m good at it. Not because I’m chasing a belt or a title. Because for one hour, I get to be in my body.

Fully.

Without the noise.

Thanks to all my trainers.

Thank you, Muay Thai.