Six Lessons for Business and Life from a Muay Thai Training Camp

To be clear I am not a seasoned, experienced or in any way particularly good martial artist or Muay Thai fighter. I am however an enthusiastic amateur in MMA, BJJ and Muay Thai and have a good track record of finding the enduring lessons that traverse the boundaries of sports, business, and life.

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to spend a few weeks at a Muay Thai Training camp in Chiang Mai’s Old City, in Northern Thailand. To say it was the experience of a lifetime would be an understatement.

For those who don’t know Muay Thai it is the most prominent martial art in Thailand. It has been exported globally to immense success and is sometimes known as the “Art of Eight Limbs” due to the ability to use punches and kicks alongside powerful knee and elbow strikes.

It’s also bloody hard work and amazing fun. Training with the Thais for 3-4 hours a day, 5-6 days per week taught me a bit about the sport itself. However, these three and a half weeks also provided a phenomenal opportunity to reflect on lessons I was learning and how they applied broadly in life and business… this is what I learnt.

You can work hard and still play

One of my long-standing pet peeves is people taking themselves too seriously. I have also observed some of the business leaders I respect the most laughing and joking whilst dealing with stressful and significant situations, saturated with risk and conflict.

The Thai trainers offered a perfect illustration of the ability to work hard and yet still laugh, play and be kind. Those trainers who were still fighting were training up to 6 hours a day themselves and those that were working and not training typically worked 13 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Their work was incredibly physically… often sparring up to 30-40 rounds per day.

Throughout these days they were always smiling. They played silly jokes on each other and their clients, they played during the sparring sessions and learnt through play as opposed to being too serious, too stiff, or too aggressive. Play is an antidote to taking the work and ourselves too seriously and it is something I will endeavour to remember in a busy 2024.

Humility helps you avoid being humbled

Learning any new skill is humbling. More so when learning that skill entails being unceremoniously dropped onto your back 10 times in the same number of minutes by a man who weighs 40kg less than you.

However, on occasion the sense of humility that the Thai trainers lived and breathed and the majority of students adopted quickly would be missed by someone. Maybe they had trained before, more likely they hadn’t but thought they were tough due to a few street fights.

This lack of humility seemed deeply offensive to the Thai trainers… they were attracted to it like cats to catnip and when those who lacked humility and acted arrogantly in sparring finally faced a Thai, or a professional Western fighter, they were humbled very quickly and very harshly. Most learnt their lesson, some left to try their arrogance in a different gym.

This is a good lesson not just for business but for life. Holding yourself in humble hands will keep you learning… the opposite will keep you getting hit hard.

You will get hurt running away

When someone tries to hit you most people will flinch, move backwards, panic, freeze and lose control. It takes extensive training to counter this instinct but to be successful in a combat sport you must do the work to be calm and not run away from the violence.

The times when I was most vulnerable and most likely to get hurt were when I was cowering from punches, kicks, and elbows. You lose your ability to see; both literally what is happening and figuratively, regarding any future beyond the next knee to the ribcage.

This is often a situation we find ourselves in at work. Sure, it won’t likely be a terrifying Thai trainer kicking your arse but we routinely find challenges, scary situations and uncomfortable office conflict. Running away in these situations is not the protective mechanism it appears to be… we need to learn what makes us flinch and train ourselves to stay calm in these moments so that we can choose our actions, and not simply respond on autopilot.

Apologise immediately when you mess up

I wanted to land the counter kick I had been practicing. I knew my partner would typically throw a punch combination and then his right kick. I saw the move unfolding, blocked the right kick and quickly threw my own right counter kick. Too quickly. We were sparring at 30%... this kick was harder than that, it hit his leading thigh much too hard and after a moment to rebalance himself I saw the red mist starting to creep into my partners eyes.

“Shit man, I’m sorry, that was harder than I meant to throw that”. It was true, I was sorry, and it was an accident. “No dramas mate”, his eyes cleared, and we got back to finishing out the round.

Meanwhile in Bangkok… a mate training at a different camp was watching police break up an all-in brawl between a group of Americans and a group of Chechen fighters after two of them had let an accidental hard punch escalate into a fight.

The lesson here is simple. People are usually pretty forgiving and understanding of mistakes… but if you are not willing to apologise a small and easily resolved conflict can spiral out of hand. How often do we see this between two stubborn people in an office causing sometimes irreparable damage and cost. Just grow up and say sorry when you f*#k up!!.

You may as well enjoy the cultural gap

I have been guilty of finding myself frustrated on occasion when working with other cultures in the workplace. My role is global, I spend a lot of time working with East and Southeast Asia, as well as, parts of the Middle East and Africa. Sometimes it is frustrating when a team won’t engage in conversation due to socio-cultural norms, sometimes it is frustrating not to know how your advice is being perceived due to those same norms.

One of the starkest examples of a cultural norm I saw whilst training Muay Thai in Thailand was how many of the Russian fighters trained as compared to other groups. I often perceived them as aggressive, using moves that seemed harsh for a training camp, but were not illegal. However, after I while I realized that despite me finding it tough to spar with some of these genuinely tough guys (there were no Russian women training at the camp) they actually wanted to spar with me. They liked that I was happy to keep up with them and that I was able to control my frustration with how hard they fought. I came to realise that for whatever reason it was ultimately just a difference in style between us and they had no malice or ill intent towards me or anyone else.

This is a good tangible lesson for me to keep in my when conducting business overseas. Some actions and behaviours seem very foreign and sometimes frustrating to me; however, they almost never represent a sense of malice or ill-content. It is better to embrace and enjoy those differences than lament the few moments they can be frustrating.

Bullies only thrive around cowards

Unlike in many, if not most, of the organisations I have worked in and for (as a consultant or advisor) bullies did not last long in this training camp in Northern Thailand.

You could tell the bullies quickly. They would use superior skills, or more often size and aggression to overpower, humiliate and sometimes hurt smaller or less experienced opponents. They would ignore the advice around how hard to go and would be focused on winning, not learning.

The Thai trainers had a well attuned radar for this and after 1-2 sparring sessions with their peers the bullies would magically find themselves sparring one of the trainers. You could hear the crash from across the room as a 60kg Thai kicked the legs from under a 100kg bully and they landed flat on their back. You could see the grimace cross their face and almost feel their sickness when the trainers blocked their kicks and threw a quick punch into their liver… immediately sending them crumbling to the canvas.

This was a system in play, a system designed to keep the majority of humble and learning focused fighters safe from the few bullies who would try to take advantage. Unfortunately, these systems rarely work in business environments, often due to a lack of courage in some leaders and individuals. It is hard to call out a top salesperson who is acting inappropriately, and it is scary to report a partner to HR when they wield a lot of power. Personal courage is a skill and developing it individually and organisationally is the only effective antidote I have seen to bullying in the workplace.

So What…

These are my lessons from a wonderful and tough experience with a beautiful group of people. I hope some of it is helpful for you… maybe you can book a flight, I would love to hear what lessons you learnt in Thailand or anywhere else!!

And thank you to the wonderful Thai Trainers who will never read this because they are working hard on the heavy bag and not reading LinkedIn!!